Gabriel Levy interviews Pavel Lisyansky about the labour situation in Ukraine.The interview featured in People And Nature.



Amid military conflict and industrial collapse in eastern Ukraine, activists are feeling their way towards new models of worker organisation.



Factories, steelworks and mines, whether in government-controlled or separatist-controlled territory, have shut down, gone on short time, or laid workers off on reduced pay. Military violence has hastened the shift from steady employment to precarity. Workplace-based trade unions have struggled to cope.



The Eastern Human Rights Group (EHRG)  a lawyers collective that gives support to individuals, workplace collectives and community groups  is working with other activists to set up territorially-based workers organisations that will embrace the employed, unemployed and precariously employed.



Some of the largest factories just stopped paying wages, and thousands of workers are owed six months back pay or more, Pavel Lisyansky of the EHRG said in an interview. Amid military conflict and industrial collapse in eastern Ukraine, activists are feeling their way towards new models of worker organisation.Factories, steelworks and mines, whether in government-controlled or separatist-controlled territory, have shut down, gone on short time, or laid workers off on reduced pay. Military violence has hastened the shift from steady employment to precarity. Workplace-based trade unions have struggled to cope.The Eastern Human Rights Group (EHRG)  a lawyers collective that gives support to individuals, workplace collectives and community groups  is working with other activists to set up territorially-based workers organisations that will embrace the employed, unemployed and precariously employed.Some of the largest factories just stopped paying wages, and thousands of workers are owed six months back pay or more, Pavel Lisyansky of the EHRG said in an interview.





In these circumstances, people of course start looking for another job. Then the management doesnt pay them the back pay that they are owed. Why settle up with them, if they are leaving ... Nobody is interested in defending such workers rights, he added. Trade unions, traditionally industry- and workplace-based, and close to management, are indifferent to such workers problems. And it makes no sense for that worker to hire a lawyer independently; the cost might well be as great as the back pay he is owed.





Pavel Lisyansky



Lisyansky reckons this could be the beginning of the end for Ukraines old post-Soviet trade unions  not only the old official unions, that originated in quasi-state Soviet structures, but also the post-Soviet independent unions set up to compete with them.



Membership is falling: a worker who has been ignored at his time of need in his old workplace is unlikely to sign up in his new one.



In response, the EHRG is working to establish territorially-based organisations, provisionally called working peoples unions, that will bring together all workers  at any workplace or none  in a particular locality. This will be a sort of alternative to trade unions [] to address the need for additional instruments for defending peoples rights in Ukrainian society.



The principle of solidarity is being lost, Lisyansky continued. If there are two workplaces, near to each other, that both build up debts to their workers, both groups of workers will stand a better chance of success if they join together.



Workers are owed months worth of back pay at some of the largest workplaces in the region, including the Severodonetsk Azot chemical plant, where 5000 employees are owed six months wages; Lisichanskugol coal company, with 5000 employees at four pits; Toretskugol coal company, with 2500 employees at four pits; and the Donetsk railway network.



Workers have protested with strikes  and, at Lisichanskugol, with an underground sit-in and lobby of the energy ministry  and cases have been taken up by the EHRG and some union officials. ( Lisyansky reckons this could be the beginning of the end for Ukraines old post-Soviet trade unions  not only the old official unions, that originated in quasi-state Soviet structures, but also the post-Soviet independent unions set up to compete with them.Membership is falling: a worker who has been ignored at his time of need in his old workplace is unlikely to sign up in his new one.In response, the EHRG is working to establish territorially-based organisations, provisionally called working peoples unions, that will bring together all workers  at any workplace or none  in a particular locality. This will be a sort of alternative to trade unions [] to address the need for additional instruments for defending peoples rights in Ukrainian society.The principle of solidarity is being lost, Lisyansky continued. If there are two workplaces, near to each other, that both build up debts to their workers, both groups of workers will stand a better chance of success if they join together.Workers are owed months worth of back pay at some of the largest workplaces in the region, including the Severodonetsk Azot chemical plant, where 5000 employees are owed six months wages; Lisichanskugol coal company, with 5000 employees at four pits; Toretskugol coal company, with 2500 employees at four pits; and the Donetsk railway network.Workers have protested with strikes  and, at Lisichanskugol, with an underground sit-in and lobby of the energy ministry  and cases have been taken up by the EHRG and some union officials. ( More on that here .)

Lisichanskugol miners waiting outside the energy ministry during negotiations last month



Until the military conflict erupted in 2014, the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were Ukraines industrial heartland, accounting for about one-tenth of overall economic output, and a larger proportion of iron, steel, metallurgical products and chemicals production.



Now Russian-backed Peoples Republics have been formed in both regions, and the front line cuts straight through what used to be a highly integrated industrial complex. Supply chains have broken down, even between factories owned by the same companies. A blockade, initiated earlier this year by Ukrainian nationalist politicians and then taken up by the Kyiv government, has made things worse, leaving power stations short of coal.



Wartime militancy: the practicalities



The immediate impulse for the EHRGs formation  on 27 July 2014 by a group of lawyers, themselves internally displaced persons, at Debaltsevo  was the large number of breaches of human rights in the area of military operations, Lisyansky said. He had himself spent the previous ten years in independent trade union organisations.



The EHRG set up four offices to provide civil liberties advice and support, but those at Debaltsevo and Uglegorsk were destroyed after the Russian-backed separatists took control of those areas. Since January 2015, the group has been based at Lisichansk, in the part of Lugansk controlled by the Ukrainian government. There are smaller offices at Toretsk and Svetlodarsk.



On top of the campaigns over back pay, Lisyansky believes the EHRG can count as one of its successes the release from prison in the Lugansk Peoples Republic of Aleksandr Yefreshin, who had fallen into a legal no-mans land.



Yefreshin was sentenced in 2013 to eight-and-a-half years for his part in the theft and burning of a minibus  a drunken prank. He began to work in prison, under a scheme that allows sentences to be cut by two-thirds for those who do so. But with the outbreak of war he found himself in a separatist prison where Ukrainian law did not apply, and detainees were effectively used as slave labour.



The EHRG, after publishing a report on the slave labour scandal in October 2016, was instrumental in securing Yefreshins release in March this year. (See



Not a day goes by without people asking for help [from the EHRGs lawyers], Lisyansky said. Just recently we restored pension payments for a girl who lost her father, a miner, but [the pension fund] didnt want to pay her a pension, although the law requires that they do so. There are many, many similar cases.



On the Ukrainian side



In response to my question about how ordinary people in the front-line areas are faring now, Lisyansky said:

Until the military conflict erupted in 2014, the Donetsk and Lugansk regions were Ukraines industrial heartland, accounting for about one-tenth of overall economic output, and a larger proportion of iron, steel, metallurgical products and chemicals production.Now Russian-backed Peoples Republics have been formed in both regions, and the front line cuts straight through what used to be a highly integrated industrial complex. Supply chains have broken down, even between factories owned by the same companies. A blockade, initiated earlier this year by Ukrainian nationalist politicians and then taken up by the Kyiv government, has made things worse, leaving power stations short of coal.The immediate impulse for the EHRGs formation  on 27 July 2014 by a group of lawyers, themselves internally displaced persons, at Debaltsevo  was the large number of breaches of human rights in the area of military operations, Lisyansky said. He had himself spent the previous ten years in independent trade union organisations.The EHRG set up four offices to provide civil liberties advice and support, but those at Debaltsevo and Uglegorsk were destroyed after the Russian-backed separatists took control of those areas. Since January 2015, the group has been based at Lisichansk, in the part of Lugansk controlled by the Ukrainian government. There are smaller offices at Toretsk and Svetlodarsk.On top of the campaigns over back pay, Lisyansky believes the EHRG can count as one of its successes the release from prison in the Lugansk Peoples Republic of Aleksandr Yefreshin, who had fallen into a legal no-mans land.Yefreshin was sentenced in 2013 to eight-and-a-half years for his part in the theft and burning of a minibus  a drunken prank. He began to work in prison, under a scheme that allows sentences to be cut by two-thirds for those who do so. But with the outbreak of war he found himself in a separatist prison where Ukrainian law did not apply, and detainees were effectively used as slave labour.The EHRG, after publishing a report on the slave labour scandal in October 2016, was instrumental in securing Yefreshins release in March this year. (See a BBC story in English here , published before Yefreshins release, and an interview in Russian here .)Not a day goes by without people asking for help [from the EHRGs lawyers], Lisyansky said. Just recently we restored pension payments for a girl who lost her father, a miner, but [the pension fund] didnt want to pay her a pension, although the law requires that they do so. There are many, many similar cases.In response to my question about how ordinary people in the front-line areas are faring now, Lisyansky said:

The military activity is quieter, but hasnt ended by any means. People live in a state of permanent stress. Shots and explosions can be heard at all times, the whole regions is militarised. There are soldiers, weapons, checkpoints everywhere. So people are desperate, they hardly even think about day-to-day problems, they just want the war to end. [The factories are open, but people dont get paid, the back pay debts keep growing, but] people dont go out and protest, because the law enforcement agencies immediately accuse them of trying to destabilise the situation in the region.



I asked Lisyansky about the

I asked Lisyansky about the opposition by community activists to the railroad blockade inspired by right-wing nationalists earlier this year. There was very little support for the communities, he replied.

It was only us, and a group of trade unions and community organisations in the localities who spoke out against the armed right-wing radicals. We said no [to the blockade] emphatically, and called for people to sit and negotiate [to allow trade links to continue]. A storm of criticism and threats was unleashed against us. I was accused a puppet of bandits who were against the Ukrainian patriots [who started the blockade]; some of my co-thinkers were simply threatened. But the state supported the blockade nonetheless, and that put industry in eastern Ukraine on its knees. In the territory not under Ukrainian government control, many of the factories laid off workers and stopped paying wages. The separatists implemented nationalisation of factories belonging to the Ukrainian state, and those are now in a mess.



The EHRG has participated in a widespread protest against pension reforms being undertaken by the Ukrainian government



Like other worker activists, Lisyansky is also concerned about the labour law reform now under discussion in parliament. The EHRG has participated in a widespread protest against pension reforms being undertaken by the Ukrainian government at the behest of the IMF . The reform will strengthen the link between the level of contributions and what people receive, and effectively raise the statutory retirement age, by increasing the term over which a person must contribute from 15 to 25 years. Lisyansky said: Yes, I spoke out and will keep speaking out against this reform, which I think breaches peoples rights. Both official and independent unions had protested, but this had had little effect on the political process, he said.Like other worker activists, Lisyansky is also concerned about the labour law reform now under discussion in parliament.




With the line of totality for the upcoming solar eclipse running through Southern Illinois, school districts were faced with a dilemma  what to do about school Aug. 21?

For Carbondale High School District and Vienna School Districts, the question came down to safety.

Obviously, as always, the safety and security of our students is our top priority, said Steve Murphy, superintendent of Carbondale Community High School District 165.

The district buses students across 129 square miles from De Soto to Makanda. Murphy does not know how many people will actually be in town Monday, but he does know increased traffic poses a risk to students and staff on buses. Student drivers also could face increase risk.

I dont know how many more people are going to be in Carbondale on Aug. 21, but there are projections that it could be over 100,000. There is no way we could be safe running buses, Murphy said. We wanted to makes sure our students are safe, so thats why we made the decision.

Murphy thinks city officials were hoping school would be canceled for those reasons. It also gives the city another place to park cars.

School staff has given safety information to students about viewing the eclipse, as well as discussed the potential dangers that come with the increased visitor population. In addition, the district purchased eclipse viewing glasses for students and staff.

Most parents would give them that information anyway, but we wanted to reinforce those messages, Murphy said.

In Johnson County, schools made that decision early on, about a year ago. We decided not be open Aug. 21 as a county. The safety of our children is first and foremost, said Josh Stafford, superintendent of Vienna District 13-3.

Stafford said some people may not be aware of the number of visitors expected to visit the region through Monday, including some parents.

First of all, you kind of have the human element. For as many years as we have had solar eclipses, there has been some odd human behavior, Stafford said.

Another consideration was resources available in an emergency. Stafford said emergency management agency, fire departments and ambulances are staffed by volunteers, and many of them work in more than one county. Johnson County lacks the resources to handle potential school emergencies on top of the visitors and traffic.

I think it will be like a holiday in our region," Stafford said. "When you have people camping in Shawnee National Forest which surrounds our school, there could be a forest fire."

The superintendents tried to think of every possible risk decided not to have school.

On Thursday, Vienna hosted a solar eclipse field day with NASA staff from Goddard Space Center for grades five through 12. Stafford said it went well and everyone learned a lot.

The plus side for the communities is that the schools will be available for parking and events. In Goreville, University of Illinois will host a private eclipse gathering at the school.

School districts closing on Aug. 21 include all Franklin, Johnson and Union county schools, Carterville, Chester, Community Consolidated District 204 (Pinckneyville), Murphysboro, Elverado in Elkville and Vergennes, Herrin, Johnston City and Marion.

Schools open Monday, Aug. 21, include Trico in Campbell Hill, Du Quoin, Pinckneyville elementary and high schools and Randolph County schools (except Chester). Many of the schools will have special activities and some students will view the eclipse.
An air horn sounded and all of the students gathered in the playground at Stoddard Elementary School in Beatrice put on their protective eclipse glasses.

I see Mars! shouted an excited first grader, looking up at the sky.

First grade teacher Chrisy Strubel laughed.

They could see astronauts the first time they put them on, she said.

Friday was the final eclipse drill at Stoddard in preparation for the real thing on Monday afternoon. All schools in the district are making sure the kids eyes stay safe by running safety drills.

At about 1:15 p.m., students marched out of their classrooms toward the back door. The early afternoon sun, shining bright and hot, peeked through the door back door.

Heads down, first graders, Strubel reminded her students as they walked to the blacktop on the playground.

Heads stooped downward, eyes fixed firmly on their shoelaces, the kindergarten through fifth graders strolled to their spots, looking like a small, somewhat grumpy army.

They sat on the asphalt, which was warm, but, by most accounts, bearable. Teachers passed out eclipse glasses, the ones for kindergarten and first grade were attached to paper plates.

This was the third time theyd run this drill and they were old hands at it. When an air horn sounded, the kids pulled their glasses on and looked up at the sun. Then, when the horn sounded again, they lowered their heads and took off the glasses. They ran the drill twice before heading back to class.

Third grade teacher Lisa Eskra was collecting glasses from her students after the drill.

With practicing this much, the whole school practicing it at one time, the principal monitoring all the practices as well as all the staff, it has gone really smooth, Eskra said.

On Thursday, Beatrice Public Schools superintendent Pat Nauroth sent an email to parents of students in Beatrice to remind them to have their permission slips turned in. The kids who dont have one turned in by Monday wont get to go outside for the eclipse.

Stoddard principal Kevin Janssen said on Tuesday that even if kids dont get to go outside for the eclipse will still get to have a fun experience inside, with teachers planning indoor activities and letting the kids watch a live-stream of the eclipse on the computer.

Janssen also praised the districts work moving toward the eclipse on Monday.

It's going really well, he said. I think the district has done a phenomenal job of communication, I think that all the administrators are all on the same page of what needs to happen or what doesn't need to happen.

Nauroths email also reminded parents that, with the increase in visitors to Beatrice, Monday morning could be much busier than usual and reminded them to talk to their kids about being safe when walking to school or consider dropping them off and picking them up after class.

Our goal is to be safe while participating in a unique learning experience, the email said.
Lexus International has called for entries for the Lexus Design Award 2018, an international design competition supporting up-and-coming designers and creators worldwide.



Entries for the award, which started on July 24 will run till October 8.



Launched in 2013, the award is an international platform to identify and recognise the next generation of global creators and designers, whose works can contribute to society and help shape a better future.



Every year, thousands of young creative talents from around the world aspire to be selected for the final round where 12 finalists and their works will be introduced and displayed to the design community at the Lexus experiential space at Milan Design Week 2018.



Following this, four of the finalists will be chosen and mentored by established global designers, who will share their know-how and provide hands-on support, said the statement.



They will also be given a production budget of JPY3 million ($27,288) to create actual prototypes, which will be exhibited at one of the design calendars most important events, it said.



In addition to the unique mentorship opportunity and global exposure, young designers are drawn to the event by the inspiring theme that provides endless possibilities from a design perspective.



This years creative theme for the Lexus Design Award 2018 is CO-, a Latin prefix meaning with or together in harmony, echoing the brands core philosphy that great design can ensure the harmonious coexistence of nature and society, it added.



Takayuki Yoshitsugu, chief representative, Middle East and North Africa (Mena) representative Office, Toyota Motor Corporation, said: This years theme, CO-', symbolises Lexus belief in the power of design, and provides applicants with an inspiring topic around which to present their creative ideas that help make the world a better place.



The judges  who will be announced in August 2017 and are globally recognised illustrious creators, active in diverse design genres  will then assess the four prototypes, based on the interpretation of the CO- theme and how consistent the design is with the Lexus Design goal of making the world a better place, to choose the Grand Prix winner for 2018.



Previous winners have gone on to enjoy success and further develop their ideas into viable products, it added.



Applicants can find more information about the application process through LexusDesignAward.com, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
BrandMoxie, a leading advertising and marketing agency housed at twofour54 in Abu Dhabi, has partnered with Los Angeles based CreatorUp! - a YouTube Certified leader in digital media education and training around the world.



Together they will accelerate and support digital media proficiency within schools, government organizations, brands, advertising agencies, private institutions, and entrepreneur communities throughout the UAE and GCC region.



A global provider of executive training for companies like Google, YouTube, LOreal, BBDO, McCann, and other leading agencies, CreatorUp sees increasing demand from brand and agency clients for its expertise in the digital space.



Brands are spending more on digital now than on TV advertising, and now more on mobile than on desktop video, said CreatorUp CEO Mike Tringe. But theres still a lot of uncertainty about how to make sure these campaigns perform. If your digital strategy involves posting the same TV ads to your social channels, or playing them in an app, its a missed opportunity.



Sana Bagersh, CEO of BrandMoxie said: Digital media is the future. And while digital is constantly changing and developing, there are advanced methodologies and metrics that must be adopted to make content effective and relevant. We believe that our partnership with CreatorUp will bring advanced digital capabilities to the UAE and the region.



BrandMoxie provides clients a one-stop shop for the full breadth of marketing services, such as strategy consulting and research; advertising design and campaign implementation; branding and image-building, event management and activation, all the way to innovative digital marketing solutions like branded webisodes, cinemagraphs and social videos.



The agency also has a vibrant community engagement programme that include Tamakkan, an entrepreneurship and innovation platform, The Smovies short film competition platform, and Tempo magazine which is aimed at youth.



This partnership will bring next generation video content and business training to enterprises, influencers, and content creators by imparting real world skills drawn from real world experience.



Trainings are developed and taught by filmmaker-mentors with the experience, expertise and credibility to reach and impact their audience and are built on hands on project-based learning approach, impart lasting skills and actionable take-away assets, and make an immediate impact.



Sean Graham, a California-native and head of International Business Development at CreatorUp is leading operations in India and the UAE.



Its hard to put into words just how exciting this new partnership is for us and the people we will impact. It is estimated that by 2020 a staggering 80% of web traffic will be video based. The need to strategize has never been more important and the power of digital communications has never been stronger, said Graham.



Were passionate about sharing industry-leading knowledge to unlock the power of content. It is way past the time for people to take the digital landscape seriously. Our job is to help grow the ecosystem by giving people the knowledge and tools they need to succeed.  TradeArabia News Service


Agthia Group, a leading food and beverage group in the UAE, has opened its first store in Dubai and launched a partnership programme with UAE government institutions.



The new store was opened with a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by Mohamed Haji Al Khoori, director general of the Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation.



The new Agthia store, located in Um Al Ramool, allows members from a wide range of government organisations to purchase various products at discounted prices. The Ministry of Interior (Fazaa), Dubai Economic Department, Homat Al Watan, Sheikh Khalifa Foundation and many others, are participating in the programme.



The Dubai store is Agthias second store, after the one in Port Zayed, Abu Dhabi, opened in 2016. The programme is planned to expand further into Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah in the coming months.



Al Khoori said: We are proud to extend our partnership with Agthia through the launch of this new Dubai store. The Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation is driven by collaborative programmes that can benefit UAE society and this initiative further demonstrates how Agthia continues to make an important, positive contribution to the local community. We look forward to strengthening our partnership with Agthia as this programme expands into other emirates.



Tariq Al Wahedi, chief executive officer of Agthia, said: Agthia is delighted to open its first store in Dubai and launch this exciting partnership with UAE government institutions. The benefits provided to those participating in the programme are emblematic of Agthias commitment to provide local communities with convenient access to high-quality food and beverage products closer to their homes. We look forward to continuing our partnership with the government by opening further locations across the UAE over the coming year.



Agthia is a leading UAE-based food and beverage group managing a world-class portfolio of brands such as Al Ain water, Capri Sun and Yoplait, together with Grand Mills flour and Agrivita animal feed.  TradeArabia News Service
Senior executives and technical experts from the Caspian oil and gas industry are confirmed to speak at the regions leading technical conference this autumn.



The SPE Annual Caspian Technical Conference and Exhibition (CTCE), now in its fourth year, will return to Baku, Azerbaijan on November 1 to 3.



Oil and gas industry professionals from IOCs, NOCs, government representatives, service companies, academia and others are expected to attend from Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Europe, Asia and the US and contribute to the event, which will be hosted by Socar.



Under the theme Chasing the Margins, the conference will include three panel sessions that will explore the issues currently faced by the E&P industry in Azerbaijan and the broader Caspian region  and ways to resolve them.



Panel session subjects to be covered include: Modernisation, how to accelerate the leverage and take-up of new technologies; Localisation, developing higher education and the oil and gas supply chain in the region; and Collaboration, innovative solutions on how the industry stakeholders can maximise their asset value.



Expert speakers include representatives from Socar; Socar AQS; BP; Total; ExxonMobil, DeGolyer and MacNaughton; Gazprom Neft NTC; PJSC Novatek; Dragon Oil; NC JSC KazMunaiGaz; TengizChevroil; Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan; Schlumberger; Halliburton; Baker Hughes, to name a few.



Alongside the keynote sessions will be a technical programme composed of 12 technical sessions. The common theme to all these research-based presentations will be how cutting edge tools, technology and techniques are being applied in the Caspian in response to current cost pressures.



Topics for the technical programme will include:

 Well Integrity Management

 Production Management and Optimisation

 Sand Monitoring and Control

 Enhanced Oil Recovery

 New Drilling Completion Technologies

 Reservoir Modelling and Management

 Well Stimulation and Zonal Isolations

 Reservoir Surveillance

 Cost Effective Solutions in Project Management

 Risk and Uncertainty Management and Decision Making



Attendees will also be able to attend a variety of networking events that will provide the opportunity to share experiences with peers, build new professional relationships and strength existing ones.



Darcy Spady, incoming 2018 SPE president, commented: "SPE's prestigious CTCE event is significant for the Caspian oil and gas industry. The fourth annual edition taking place in Baku provides a unique opportunity for local and international oil and gas professionals to come together and share their challenges and experiences, enhance technical knowledge, build business networks, and help to progress understanding of new technologies and developments in the industry. Im planning to attend and I hope to see you there. - TradeArabia News Service




AviaAM Leasing, a global aviation holding company engaged in the business of commercial aircraft acquisition, has delivered a recently acquired Airbus A321 aircraft to one of its customers under a lease to purchase agreement.



The Airbus A321-211 aircraft was acquired from Russian carrier Aeroflot. Produced in 2004, the aircraft recently underwent a 12-year maintenance check with major modifications to interior design and seating configuration (from 170 to 220 economy class seats) implemented prior to delivery.



Tthe aircraft was then delivered to a new operator under the lease to purchase agreement. The aircraft delivery took place at Kaunas International Airport, Lithuania.



The Airbus A321 is among the most desirable aircraft types demanded by air carriers across Europe and Asia. Weve conducted a number of the re-sale projects, including various modifications, and this one is supposedly to be not the last one as well, said Tadas Goberis, chairman of the Board and CEO of AviaAM Leasing. - TradeArabia News Service
Missoula authorities are searching for a woman who walked away from the Missoula Correctional Services Pre-Release Center Friday night.

According to a news release, Jessica Stejer walked away from the centers designated smoking area at 9:30 p.m. She was last seen wearing a tank top and blue leggings and was on foot.

Stejer is a Caucasian with brown hair and hazel eyes. The 5-feet-7 woman weighs about 220 pounds. She has a tattoo of an eye on her lower back.

Stejer has a felony conviction for robbery in Missoula County and is serving a five-year sentence in the Montana Department of Corrections. Because of Fridays walk-away, a warrant for felony escape has been issued for her arrest.

Anyone with information about Stejer is asked to contact local law enforcement.
Meeting Point Turkey, one of Turkey's leading destination management companies, has been listed among the top 500 companies on the Capital 500 list, published by the Capital Magazine for 20 years.



The company, which has attracted attention with its significant investments especially in the Mediterranean and Aegean regions in recent years, is listed as the 371st largest company on the 'Capital 500' list prepared every year by the Capital Magazine where it announces the largest 500 companies in Turkey.



Meeting Point Turkey has been one of the top 500 companies in Turkey since 2013 thus making it the fifth consequent time it makes it to the list.



Roula Jouny, CEO of Meeting Point International said: Meeting Point Turkey has proven its trust in Turkey many times over the past few years with its investments in the country. The confidence we have in Turkey, the successful investment strategies we have implemented, and the way we do business that delight all our guests make us one of the top 500 companies in the country.



Taking place for the fifth time on this list shows the biggest demonstration that we have achieved a steady and sustainable success."



She continued saying that being among the first and the greatest companies in the country, motivates them to do better and they are aiming to end next year at a higher level by continuing to strive together with all employees and stakeholders to achieve better results.  TradeArabia News Service


Like dragging a magnet through iron filings, the eclipse that passes over Casper will draw power as it moves across the country. Thats what the magical people say.

The solar eclipse begins Monday morning as the moon slowly passes between the Earth and the sun. When the shadowy disc of the moon is perfectly aligned, at 11:42 a.m., night will suddenly fall across Casper. It will linger for 2 minutes and 25 seconds before the sun emerges as a sliver of brilliant light on the other side.

Druids, witches, Pagans and Wiccans are looking at this eclipse as a significant event, and many are heading to the Casper area, where the time of totality is one of the longest in the country.

Those who practice magic will cast spells, form circles and direct their will toward a purpose. For Oberon Zell Ravenheart, an author and wizard from California, the purpose is awakening. He, Nella Forest, and other local witches will congregate at Beartrap Meadow on Casper Mountain. For a Colorado man named Ken Biles, who goes by Greyhart, it will be enhanced communication. He and others from Colorado will watch from Glendo Reservoir in Platte County.

Magic takes energy, explained Forest, a witch who runs Pans Grove in Casper. During an eclipse there is an immense amount of energy.

Witchcraft practitioners dont agree on many things, said Greyhart, an IT professional. There are various sects. Some are Greek-witches or Norse heathens, following the magic and mythologies associated with those historical groups of people.

Most, like Greyhart, connect with nature, their beliefs gathered over time from others, or from their own trial and error.

The significance of the energy generated by the path of the moon between Earth and the sun may differ from witch to wizard, but most agree it is a time of power, Greyhart said.

My personal belief is that a solar eclipse is a transition, from day to night, to day again, in a matter of minutes, he said.

Transitions are powerful moments, both in cultures and in individual lives, he said.

At a spot near Glendo Reservoir, Greyhart will perform the worlds shortest ritual in the two minute of darkness. If other witches join him, theyll do so openly. If he is alone, hell do it quietly, he said.

There is an energy that surrounds everything and at this point in time, we dont have the technology to detect or measure it, he said. We as witches can feel it. Some of us can see it  We are going to take that energy from the eclipse and manipulate it to our own desires.

Many are going to look at the eclipse as a wonder of nature, understood and predicted by mans understanding of science. But for witches like Ravenheart, science and magic are connected.

I tell people who dont believe in magic, I ask them Do you believe in love? Love is universally regarded as the most powerful form of magic, he said. One definition of magic is simply The science we dont yet understand, because we dont yet have a theory for it.

Ravenheart has experienced three eclipses, gathered with other pagans. When the moment of totality passes, witches and non-believers will feel that spark of energy, he said. Witches will try to capture it for some purpose. Others will simply feel awed by what they experience, he said.

No camera is sensitive enough to pick up what you see, and what you experience is unbelievable, he said. By factors that are incalculable, it magnifies everything. It makes your hair stand up on end. You feel dizzy and get giddy. Its an amazing thing.
People in groups of three and four moseyed down Second Street on Friday afternoon as the Wyoming Eclipse Festival began with relatively light crowds.

Vendors lounged on folding chairs and guitarists played to people in the Old Yellowstone District leading into a weekend festival that organizers have been planning since 2016.

Despite the lights crowds in the blocks adjacent to David Street Station, vendors seemed mostly unconcerned about their prospects for the weekend.

Ticker Lock, 44, Casper resident and owner of Rockin Burger and Dogs, said he had enjoyed steady sales Thursday night and he expected the same for Friday evening.

Friday afternoon, however, foot traffic trickled past his truck parked on the corner of Yellowstone Highway and Elm Street.

Lock said local support had been strong on Thursday night, though he had seen less tourists than expected.

Its Friday, people are still at work, he said.

Christopher Weber, 38, of Casper, took a break from his painting business to run what he called an Eclipse blessing tent. Weber and his friend who identified himself only as Mr. Jeff, kicked back in camping chairs beneath fluorescent green paper signs advertising free dream interpretation.

The two Christian men, who also offered lessons on healing through forgiveness, seemed unconcerned with attendance numbers.

When people come and are blessed, thats whats important, Mr. Jeff said.

Thatiana Argueta, 47, Leayah Argueta, 15, and Lola B. Cardenas, 46, stood beneath a tent filled with art: original photography, stained glass and opaque watercolor paintings. The three woman, all Los Angeles transplants, said they had hoped for a bigger turnout Friday after driving past Thursday nights festivities.

Cardenas said she thought out-of-town visitors were still just arriving and expected tourists to arrive downtown later in the evening.

It seemed packed yesterday, Leayah Argueta said. Im hoping it turns out that way.

Shawn Houck, 43, owner of Frontier Brewing Company, said sales had been exceedingly steady through the day.

Houck said he expects the afternoon crowd of a couple dozen to grow considerably after 5 p.m.

Saturday will be the first time the brewery has been open for two consecutive days, and it will begin living up to its name Tuesday when the first batch of in-house beer starts fermentation. The batch will be ready to drink in about two weeks.

The afternoons ambiance was what he had hoped for, Houck said, as sunlight streamed in the front of his shop.

Its a good vibe downtown today, he said.
Gov. Matt Mead voiced general opposition to increasing taxes and said his first option for covering the looming education funding crisis would be to dip into the states $1.6 billion rainy day fund, a move that some legislators have opposed in the past.

Am I at a point now where I think we need to raise taxes? The answer is no, he said in a meeting with Star-Tribune reporters Wednesday.

Still, he seemed to leave the door open: Its in the context of what are we going to do with regard to education. ... When it comes to education, people still dont want (tax increases), but they are open to that conversation.

The states schools face a funding deficit that could reach $530 million over the two-year budget cycle set to begin next summer. Lawmakers in March agreed on a last-minute deal to cut more than $34 million from Wyoming public schools while triggering a complete review of the states education funding system.

Mead said lawmakers solution  short-term cuts and the review  was OK, though he would have preferred a broader plan to provide a blueprint for pulling Wyomings schools out of the funding hole.

It is not the grand solution I think many of us were hoping for, he said.  ... It just didnt get done.

Currently, lawmakers and state-hired consultants are beginning a process known as re-calibration. Theyll study the states current funding model, as well as look at alternative approaches that could cost the same amount, less or even more.

Some lawmakers have suggested re-calibration can be used as a tool to trim schools budgets, but educators and other legislators have pushed back on that. Mead said it was a mistake to pin reduction hopes on the recommendation of independent consultants whose mandate is not to solve a funding crisis but to recommend the best education system possible.

In any case, its unlikely that the process will deliver the kind of cost reductions that are needed to bridge the funding gap. Indeed, theres a chance that the consultants could tell the state that it needs to do more to educate its students.

Mead said he met with the consultants recently and told them he felt that schools should be offering even more, such as coding. He said that if the deficit is as significant as it is now, or if it grows wider, heading into Februarys legislative session, he would support using the states rainy day fund  with a current balance of $1.6 billion  to pay for schools.

But he cautioned, as legislators have before, that using the savings account cant be a long-term solution.

If you take $300 million out of the rainy day fund (every year), that $1.6 billion goes away pretty quickly, he said. But if the alternative is to cut education to the degree that I think sets us back, I would much rather get money out of the rainy day fund to fund education.

Lawmakers  including senators Hank Coe and Bruce Burns  have argued against using the rainy day fund in the past. Mead said it was likely more palatable to Wyomingites than raising taxes.

He acknowledged the base philosophical differences that were likely at the root of the Legislatures inability to find a comprehensive solution. Under the guidance of Speaker Steve Harshman, the House passed a bill that included cuts, conditional revenue increases and the use of savings. The chamber also killed a Senate bill that would have relied almost solely on cuts to handle the crisis.

On the other side of the Jonah Business Center, Sen. President Eli Bebout, an ardent opponent of tax increases who at one time backed a provision to cut $91 million from schools, largely stripped apart the Houses plan. As the session neared its end, the Legislature appeared deadlocked in negotiations over how to fund schools.

Eventually, at literally the 11th hour, legislators agreed to use some savings, roll out more cuts and begin the review of the school system. Revenue increases were ruled out.

At the last minute, were meeting with leadership with the general message that we cannot have you leave town without some solution to this, Mead said recently.

Asked if Harshmans plan, supported generally by educators across the state  including Natrona Countys superintendent  was the grand solution to the problem, Mead said it was on the right track.

In the background of the conversations about how to fund schools is the potential for more lawsuits. In the past 30 years, litigation has fundamentally reshaped education in Wyoming. Now, as the state finds itself in a crisis that could again overhaul schools here, Mead said he didnt want the tail wagging the dog.

I dont want to say we want to fund education so we dont get sued, he said. I want to say we want a good education system without regard to the lawsuit.
An aggressive mountain goat was shot and killed by a hiker in the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness last month bringing new concerns about the threats that outdoor recreation poses to the normally docile white ghosts of rocky peaks.

A woman from Lincoln County, Montana, shot the nanny with a .357-caliber handgun on July 19 at the top of a switchback on a narrow, cliffy section of the trail to Leigh Lake.

The 1.5-mile Trail 132 is a popular hike because of its quick access to a spectacular wilderness setting.

The woman reported the incident to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) game wardens and said the goat had been charging at her and she felt she needed to protect the two children with her on the trail.

Warden Taylor Rockafellow hiked to the scene the next day with a Forest Service employee and removed the goat carcass to reduce the chance of luring grizzly bears into the area, he said.

Neither the Kootenai National Forest nor the state wildlife agency reported the incident to the public, but talked openly about the situation when contacted by The Spokesman-Review this week.

The incident has prompted Forest Service officials to step up efforts to educate the public about recreating among the areas goats and other wildlife.

Weve posted signs at wilderness trailheads with information about avoiding conflicts with mountain goats, Nathan Gassmann, Libby District Ranger, said on Friday.

Wildlife managers have become more concerned about Cabinet Mountains goat populations in the past decade as research gives them more insight, said Tonya Chilton-Radandt, FWP wildlife biologist in Libby.

Roughly 100 mountain goats roam the Cabinet Mountains, a number right at the threshold needed for long-term sustainability, she said.

At her recommendation, the number of mountain goat hunting permits offered this year for the Cabinets was dropped to two from the six that had been offered in recent years.

We wanted to be on the safe side, she said, noting concerns for the percentage of nannies being taken. Nannies drive the population, but the females arent having their first young until age 4 or 5.

Adult females have high fidelity to the small area where they live, which curbs the chance that they will disperse and populate new areas. Reintroductions in the west Cabinets have not had good results, she said.

Evidence suggests that recreation is having an impact on mountain goats, Chilton-Radandt said. Its mostly with motorized access, where snowmobiles can come up to the wilderness boundary, she said, noting that most nannies give birth in May and production can suffer from disturbance.

Were working with the Forest Service to minimize motorized access around the main Cabinets as well as the proposed Scotchman Peaks Wilderness.

She applauded promised increases in efforts on the national forest to educate hikers and other recreationists who encounter wildlife.

When people and mountain goats come together often, its not usually good for the goats, she said.

Game wardens investigating the goat shooting at Leigh Lake say they have heard rumors that people have been feeding those goats.

We dont have proof that people have been feeding goats up there, but a Forest Service trail crew that was up there the previous week saw goats exhibiting that behavior, Rockafellow said. Goats are pretty easy to habituate.

Mountain goats have few effective predators  save for humans, and the eagles that can knock kids off ledges. When Im doing goat surveys, Im sure to look where I see an eagle circling, Chilton-Radandt said.

Goats often are salt deficient, Rockafellow said. If people pee on the trail, theyll come and lick the dirt. Theyll lick sweaty skin or chew on sweaty pack straps. They can smell it quite a ways away.

A lot of rumors have been flying around about the Leigh Lake incident, said Warden Tammy Laverdure, who interviewed the woman who shot the goat. The sportsmens community blew up over a goat being killed.

Just the week before, Id heard from a man expressing concerned about encountering an aggressive mountain goat at Leigh Lake while hiking with his son.

Similarly, she said, the woman and her kids encountered a goat being aggressive on a narrow section of the trail.

The hiker said she used her handgun to fire warning shots, Laverdure said. The goat turned and ran up the trail but came back.

Its possible the goat was just frantically trying to get past the woman and her two children. The nanny may have had a kid. It had udders, but no milk. I cant say for sure that it had a kid, but its likely.

The hikers reported they did not see a young goat.

Im not blaming the woman in any way, Laverdure said, although I feel something could have been done differently.

This woman says she normally carries bear spray, but had forgotten it in her car the previous week and it exploded while the car was parked in the sun. Had she been packing bear spray instead of a gun that day, things might be different.

The difference between a goat trying to get by on the trail and a goat thats aggressively charging might be detected by a trained eye, she said.

A goats ears would be pinned back if it were charging, she said. Apparently that wasnt the case, according to my interview.

At any rate, a goat was running at them on a very narrow trail and the lady felt for her life and her childrens safety.

She said it might have been different if she had been alone, Rockafellow said, but if she felt threatened for herself or her kids, thats all the law requires.

After our interview, Laverdure said, I truly believed the woman. I could see the remorse in her face. I didnt cite her. It wouldnt hold up in court if I did.

Wildlife interactions are not limited to goats, said Gassmann, the Libby District ranger.

Weve given a lot of attention to preventing problems with grizzly bears and we have a lot of black bears and moose  a myriad of wildlife, he said. Our goal is to heighten awareness of being around these animals.

This incident is causing us to step back and remind people that theres more to be aware of out there than grizzlies.

The Kootenai National Forest may model some efforts to educate hikers on whats happening in the Scotchman Peak area, including signage and volunteer ambassadors who hike and contact people on trails frequented by goats.

But even the Scotchman effort is not a total success. Trail 65, a 4.5-mile route to the summit, was closed two years ago after at least two hikers were injured by aggressive goats.

The Friends of the Scotchman Peaks wilderness posted educational signs and set up the ambassador program, but last month hikers were still posting photos on social media of mountain goats licking sweat off their legs.

The high popularity of the Scotchman Peak trail make it ripe for problems, Gassmann said. Here in the Cabinets we have the advantage of having fewer people. But as visitation increases, so will the problems with the goats unless people are educated.

Well be encouraging people to use bear spray and other nonlethal actions and methods to deal with aggressive wildlife.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un appears to have blinked, and President Trump can claim a foreign policy victory and justification for his strategy.

Reminiscent of President Ronald Reagans peace through strength approach to deterring adversaries, Trump stood up to the blustering despot and forced him to back down from his threat to launch missiles at Guam.

China, North Koreas biggest ally, no doubt played a role in getting Kim to change his mind, but primary credit should go to the president.

What a far cry from the policies of the last several administrations. They favored diplomacy over confrontation, allowing North Korea to proceed with its clandestine nuclear program in exchange for empty promises. Former President Jimmy Carter, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were among those who visited North Korea on various diplomatic missions. Albright engaged in a champagne toast with Kims father, Kim Jong-Il, after claiming success in getting the country to curtail its missile program. We have seen the failure of that approach and are witnessing the success of its opposite.

Though Kim seems to have backed down from launching missiles at Guam and touting his capability to strike targets on the U.S. mainland, He has retained his overheated rhetoric. In a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Kim warned the U.S., as reported by The Wall Street Journal, to take into full account whether the current standoff was to its benefit. He added it was incumbent on the U.S. to stop at once arrogant provocations against the DPRK (North Korea) and unilateral demands and not provoke it any longer.

Who provoked whom?

Kim added, If the Yankees persist in their extremely dangerous reckless actions on the Korean Peninsula and in its vicinity, testing the self-restraint of the DPRK, the [North] will make an important decision as it already declared, meaning he might still order a strike against Guam, or put some missiles offshore to test American resolve.

American resolve has been tested and has prevailed, at least for now. Kim has lost face. His military leaders and others will take notice, as will the rest of the world. The significance of the unanimous UN resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea, which included the support of China, could not have been lost on Kim.

New presidents almost always face a foreign policy test. Some pass, some fail. John F. Kennedy was judged weak by Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev, which many believe precipitated the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Iran believed press reports that Ronald Reagan was a cowboy and dangerous, so they released American hostages on the day of his inauguration in 1981.

There is a time for diplomacy and a time for displaying strength. President Obama sent a signal to the world by setting a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan before victory over the Taliban could be achieved. He apologized to the world for what he saw as Americas arrogance. Our enemies took notice and viewed his statements as an invitation to adventurism.

Trump and his defense secretary, Gen. James Mad Dog Mattis, took another approach, returning Kims rhetorical fire with rhetorical fire of their own. It worked, at least temporarily. Where to go from here remains an open question, but the goal remains the same. North Korea (and Iran) must never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons capable of reaching the United States or threatening Americas allies, including South Korea and Japan.

Trump deserves credit for standing up for the country and confronting one of the worlds most unpredictable dictators. He probably wont get any credit from the media, most Democrats, or the foreign policy establishment, but our adversaries are bound to take notice and perhaps adjust their view of the president in ways that benefit America.
Editor:

My name is Grace Belize Anderson, and Im excited to be starting my senior year at Wyoming Virtual Academy (WYVA). Ive attended virtual school my whole life, and its an environment in which I have thrived  in fact, when I started high school, my parents gave me the choice to continue my education with WYVA or attend the local brick-and-mortar school  I chose WYVA.

WYVA has given me the best education I could ask for with the flexibility I need to participate in so many extracurricular activities, give back to my community and learn about the world around me.

I have a passion for helping others. Ive logged nearly 500 hours of community service over the last four years  theres no way I could have done that if I was in a brick-and-mortar school. All those hours helped me earn my Gold Congressional Medal and the Presidents Volunteer Service Award.

Recently I was elected to serve as the 2017-18 national president of Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA). What an honor! As president, I will be traveling around the country to visit various state chapters  but I wont have to miss any school, as Ill be able to take it with me wherever I go.

Last spring, I was named one of two delegates from Wyoming to the United States Senate Youth Program (USSYP). I received a $10,000 scholarship and a weeklong trip to our nations capital, where I met many government officials  including President Trump himself!

WYVA offers Advanced Placement courses, while none of the schools in my district do. I can honestly say that if I hadnt been able to take AP government and politics, I would not have been able to pass the exam to be selected for the USSYP.

School choice enables me to partner with great organizations and be a part of something thats bigger than myself. Education should be molded to fit the needs of the student and create an environment in which we can flourish, because that is what empowers us to be successful.
finland

Police shoot man who stabbed 8; 2 dead

HELSINKI  A man stabbed eight people Friday in Finlands western city of Turku, killing two of them, before police shot him in the thigh and detained him, police said. Authorities were looking for more potential suspects in the attack.

A suspect  who police said was a youngish man with a foreign background  was being treated in the citys main hospital but was in police custody.

Security was being stepped up across the Nordic country, Interior Minister Paula Risikko told reporters at a news conference.

The mans identity and nationality were being investigated. Police said he is likely to have acted alone though it was not possible to completely rule out that other people were involved.

kenya

Opposition files challenge to vote

NAIROBI  Lawyers representing the Kenyan opposition coalition National Super Alliance filed a petition Friday with the Supreme Court challenging President Uhuru Kenyattas re-election, beating a midnight deadline.

A statement from the groups presidential candidate, Raila Odinga, and his running mate, Kalonzo Musyoka, said they turned to the court because of alleged irregularities in the Aug. 8 presidential vote.

Odinga has rejected the electoral commissions results which say Kenyatta won by roughly 1.4 million votes. He claims, without providing proof, that hackers used the identity of a slain election official to manipulate the result in Kenyattas favor.

The commission has said there was a hacking attempt but it failed, and election observers say they saw no signs of interference with the vote.

uruguay

Legal marijuana faces objections from banks

MONTEVIDEO  The legal sale of marijuana in Uruguayan pharmacies is facing challenges as banks refuse to deal with companies linked to the drug in order to follow international financial laws.

A government official said Friday that Uruguayan banks risk running afoul of laws that ban receiving money tied to the drug. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In July, marijuana went up for sale at 16 pharmacies as part of a 2013 law that made Uruguay first to legalize a pot market covering the entire chain from plants to purchase.

But one pharmacy in the capital, Montevideo, has decided not to sell it after a warning by a local branch of Spanish bank Santander. The bank said it has opted to remain out of this line of business.

State-owned Banco Republica, Uruguays largest bank, also told pot-selling pharmacies that it must close their accounts.

SIERRA LEONE

Death toll up to 450 after mudslides

FREETOWN  Rescue officials in Sierra Leone warned Friday that the chances of finding survivors in the debris of this weeks mudslides are getting smaller every day, as bereaved and homeless survivors faced the magnitude of all they have lost.

Burials and rescue efforts pressed on amid the threat of further disaster. Up to 450 bodies have been recovered in and around the capital, Freetown, after Mondays mudslides and flooding, according to Dr. Simeon Owiss Koroma, the governments chief consultant forensic pathologist. Some 600 others are missing and feared dead.

At least 122 of the victims are children, and a similar number have been orphaned by the disaster, the aid group Save the Children said.

EL SALVADOR/GUATEMALA

2 governments unite

to ban child marriages

El Salvador and Guatemala have joined a trend in clamping down on child marriage by passing legislation that would outlaw marriage with minors.

Legislation passed in both countries Thursday to ban such unions even in cases of parental consent or pregnancy.

An El Salvador government survey in 2015 found that there were 22,361 minors between the ages of 12 and 17 who had married or lived in a common-law relationship. Six out of 10 of the minors who were in a relationship with an adult lived in the countrys rural areas.

The United Nations childrens advocate UNICEF and other supporters applauded the change.

Wire reports
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Aug. 19 papers in history. With a subscription to newspapers.com you can search the Arizona Daily Star and many other newspapers using keywords or dates, and download articles or pages.
Three former Tucson police officers have surrendered their state certification, barring them from seeking work at any Arizona law enforcement agency.

In a Wednesday meeting of the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training board, Adam Bell, Blake Deimund and Gabriel Rivera all agreed to voluntary relinquish their peace officer certifications, said Sandy Sierra, an AZPOST spokeswoman.

Adam Bell

In December, Bell, 39, told his supervisor that the drivers side door to his marked police wasnt latching correctly while he was on a call for service, according to the AZPOSTs final action report on Bell.

Bell said the door was tight to open, but he would use it for his days shift. After responding to one call for service, Bell brought the car back to the station to be repaired and left with another vehicle.

The issue with the door was much more significant than Bell told his supervisor, as the damage was so extensive that the door and top hinges had to be replaced.

The damage to the door appeared that the car had been in some sort of backing collision which was unreported and investigators located a wooden pole in an alleyway behind a house Bell responded to that had damage consistent with that to the vehicle, according to the report.

In an interview with investigators, Bell said he hadnt noticed the significant damage to the door when he started his shift, according to documents from TPDs Office of Professional Standards investigation.

Bell later admitted to backing into the pole in the alley and trying to tape, wire and zip-tie the door shut when he returned to the station.

Bell was put on imposed leave pending the outcome of the investigation, but resigned from the department a month later, according to the TPD document.

Gabriel Rivera

Rivera, 41, resigned in lieu of termination in April 2015 after a TPD investigation revealed that he failed to take basic steps when he investigated three separate cases of sexual assault against juvenile girls, according to the AZPOSTs case overview report.

The first incident, that took place in 2012, involved a girl who was raped at a party by multiple male suspects.

In reviewing the case, TPDs office of professional standards documented more than 15 steps that Rivera  who was a detective  failed to take in his investigation, the report said.

Only three of the five alleged suspects were arrested and those males were ultimately charged with a lesser charge for their criminal acts, which the court blamed on policy failure.

An administrative investigation was conducted after the critical errors were discovered, revealing two more cases in which he failed to complete necessary investigative processes, the report said.

Blake Deimund

Deimund, 34, was an 11-year veteran of TPD when he resigned in October, after an internal investigation revealed he lied about a traffic stop several times, according to the AZPOST case overview.

In March 2015, Deimund pulled over a car that he said was driving 55 mph in a 40 mph zone, and the driver had no insurance or registration. Intending to impound the car, Deimund searched the vehicle and located a gun, arresting the driver on prohibited possession charges, the report said.

The driver was in jail for six months, professing his innocence, when Deimund admitted to the Pima County Attorneys Office that he wrote the speed down wrong and the suspect was only driving 45 mph.

The charges were dismissed and the driver sued , according to the report.

During multiple interviews , Deimund gave three different stories as to why he wrote the wrong speed down, after which TPD investigators decided he didnt pull the car over for speeding and lied during his interviews.
Colonial women began serving in the armed forces in 1775, so it was appropriate Friday at MontanaFair that a man describing himself as a friend of Thomas Jefferson would recite the Declaration of Independence.

Our country needs to return to its foundations, said Tom White of Billings, waiting to address a Veterans Day crowd and dressed from a three-cornered hat down to a pair of breeches as the nations third president. We even question the idea of the Almighty.

Sponsored by the Billings Breakfast Exchange Club and Singh Contracting, MontanaFair honored the nations two million female veterans during a 30-minute ceremony. Veterans and active-duty military were admitted free to the fair and also to Friday evenings Yellowstone River Roundup PRCA Roundup.

White delivered a rousing rendition of Jeffersons stirring words, many of them relevant today:   It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury among them.

Women veterans including Velma Miller of Laurel were given a shout out by speaker Sue Davidson and an ovation from the crowd. Miller was an army medic during the Korean War before using the GI Bill to attend business college.

I dont feel I really qualify for any of this, Miller said after the ceremony ended.

She said she was glad to be able to serve and grateful for the educational benefit that came after her service.

My folks in Arkansas couldnt afford higher education, said Miller, whos 81. I was glad to be able to attend college.

Davidson, a 25-year Army and Navy veteran and the chaplain for the Montana chapter of the Disabled American Veterans, called women veterans kind of a silent group.

When people see a military insignia on the Davidson vehicle, they will sometimes thank my husband for his service. He tells them, It wasnt me. It was my wife. Thank her.

The nearly 400,000 American women who served during World War II didnt earn their veteran status and benefits until 1977, more than three decades after the war ended.

When I meet women veterans, I always assure them that their service mattered, she said.

Nowadays, military women stationed overseas are serving in ways and numbers unthinkable a few decades ago, including as Humvee drivers, military police and helicopter pilots, all while under the constant threat of attack.

Today, 15 percent of veterans are women. That number will be nearly one in five veterans by 2040.

Still, she noted, a number of female veterans "find re-entry into civilian life difficult. Many are homeless with children, and many of our veterans programs are geared to meet mens needs.

Homeless women veterans must sometimes couch surf in friends living rooms, she said. They dont like to make waves, she said, but theyre still here, and they need to ask for help.

After offering thanks to sponsors and those in attendance, Davidson called for more opportunities to acknowledge the sacrifices and contributions made by women veterans.

We need more events like this one, she said, because theyre worth it.
Jeff Carver and Marc Hammond walk through the desert near Saguaro National Park West carrying a green bucket with a perforated lid.

I found one! Carver calls and motions to a hole framed by a tangle of desert vegetation, mesquite pods and cholla cactus at the base of a mesquite tree.

He had found a pack rats nest to release a rhumba of rattlesnakes  yes, thats what a group of rattlesnakes is called  born four days before. No pack rat was present, but its midden will provide temporary shelter to the young snakes.

The snakes are only 6 inches long, a finger-width wide and have a silent button tail instead of a full rattle. Each was plucked from the green bucket using snake tongs and placed in the entrance of the pack-rat den.

They quickly slithered in.

They wouldnt do that if they were adults, Hammond said. But these siblings are unsentimental. They wont stay together long, he said. By tomorrow theyll be spread out.

The young rattlers were birthed by a rattlesnake that Hammond removed from someones property, which is all part of a days work at Arizona Animal Experts Inc.

Hammond and Carver, along with four contracted employees, receive about 50 calls a week, night or day, to remove almost any kind of critter: large, small, scaly, furry, winged, fanged or stinky from the property of (often) distressed customers.

Once an animal is contained, never killed, the companys policy is to do anything it can to release it into the wild or rehabilitate it.

Their work has not gone unnoticed.

The National Geographic Wild Channel filmed the Arizona Animal Experts and three other animal relocation teams across the country for a year to produce a new show called When Nature Calls.

It premieres Monday, Aug. 21, at 7 p.m. Tucson time. The first show features Hammond and Carver releasing a pigeon-eating bobcat they captured in a coop. See a clip at National Geographic Wild website at tucne.ws/obg

The Animal Experts been approached in the past by other networks for spots on reality TV, but they rejected most of the proposals because they were asked to create fake drama, something they werent comfortable doing.

They wanted us to get into fights, Carver said, but theres enough drama between the clients and the animal.

The show focuses on teams that do animal relocation, which has been a company policy since its founding 27 years ago. Hammond and Carver founded the company when Pima Animal Care Center, then called Pima County Animal Control, cut funding for animal capture.

PACC opened the job up to the private sector, so the duo started out collecting feral cats and skunks. This move was followed by the Arizona Game and Fish Department cutting its animal removal program as well, focusing on mountain lion and bear removal now.

That leaves Animal Experts to remove and relocate almost any animal from anyones property, if they think its necessary for animal and human safety.

Hammond and Carver strive to take the most humane path when deciding what to do with the animal once captured and balancing that with the needs of the community.

Our business has always been that way, Carver said.

While working as animal cruelty investigators at PACC, they witnessed a lot of cruelty and death. The experience shaped their company ethos.

Being a snake should not be a capital offense, Carver said. Theres no sense in killing an animal thats doing what it was put here to do.

Educational outreach is also folded into their company mission as well.

Jeff and I thought it was so important to educate the children that were still doing it today, and at no cost, Hammond said.

Theyve posted videos to Facebook for years as well.

Were educating people, we talk about conservation or the environment, or why this animal is so important or why were releasing the animal here instead of over there, Hammond said.

Educational outreach is one of the reasons National Geographic Wild reached out to them in the first place, Hammond said, and why they agreed to be a part of it.
With little more than a week to go before Arizona schools are to receive A-F letter grade ratings, the State Board of Education is still working out the formula used to calculate them, saying the options that have been drafted are significantly flawed.

The new formula, which was to be adopted on Friday, would have left Arizona with significantly fewer A-rated schools than the last time the grades were issued in 2014.

The A through F rankings have been on hiatus since Arizona switched from the AIMS assessment to the more difficult AzMERIT standardized test.

Under the formula, high schools that earned 70 percent of the points possible from all categories would be labeled A schools. For K-8 schools, the threshold would be even lower, with schools earning 60 percent of the points possible receiving the A ranking.

That bothered some board members, who noted that 60 percent doesnt qualify as an A in the classroom.

But the boards staff noted that if the cutoff were set at 70 percent, only 11 out of nearly 1,400 schools would qualify as A-rated.

So clearly we saw that as problematic, and we readjusted, Jen Fletcher, chief accountability officer at the Arizona Department of Education, told the board.

Complicating matters, the grouping for school scores is very tight, making it more difficult for the board to decide where to draw the line between an A and a B.

If the cutoff were set at 55 percent, for example, half of Arizona schools would be considered A-rated.

If (the selected formula) were to be applied, we would have fewer A schools, but the Cs and Ds are similar, Fletcher said.

But State Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas said comparing the letter grades from 2014 to this year doesnt make sense because the new grades would be based on different formulas with different testing systems.

So its really kind of apples and oranges to a degree, she said.

The delay in adopting the standards called into question the boards ability to stick to their timeline for issuing school grades.

Weve come so far on this road, its been a year and now were in the 13th hour and were looking at making changes, and some I understand and some Im not sure about. But it ends up pushing the whole thing out. I mean, our schools are supposed to have their letter grades on (Aug.) 28th, Douglas said.

The board had zeroed in on a formula that would consider proficiency on the statewide assessment, growth on the statewide assessment, proficiency and growth for English Language Learners and acceleration and readiness measures for K-8 students. For high school students the formula would also take into account graduation rates and college and career readiness.

The Arizona State Board of Education on Friday was unsure that the weights for each of the metrics, and how the formula used for each metric were calculated, was the right way to go.

So they delayed, and ordered staff members to further study several issues, tinker with the formulas and come back to the board with more information.

Douglas said she was disappointed the board couldnt come to a decision, and worried that the delay would cost struggling schools time that they could use to improve.

At some point you just have to make a decision, Douglas said.
Legal counsel for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has determined the Tucson VA wrongly denied the Arizona Daily Stars public-records request seeking the names of the hospitals current dermatologists.

After the Tucson VAs privacy office refused to release the names of the hospitals current specialty staff, citing privacy concerns, the Star filed a formal appeal with the national VA system in June.

This month, general counsel for the national VA granted the Stars appeal in full, stating the Tucson VA must release the names of those providers, which the Tucson VA did on Aug. 2.

While we find that the dermatologists have a personal privacy interest in their identities, there is a countervailing public interest in knowing that VA employs qualified individuals, wrote VA acting chief counsel Kenyatta McLeod-Poole in the decision letter. As such, we find that public interest outweighs the privacy interests of the providers in this case.

Tucson VA privacy officer Donna Wilson had initially released a list of the hospitals four dermatology specialists, with all four names redacted. She argued that revealing their identities would violate the providers privacy.

It is as likely as not that they would be contacted by the media as a result of this request, Wilson said in her emailed response to the records request.

The Star appealed the VAs denial to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Office of General Counsel on June 15.

Dan Barr, counsel to the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona, called the initial denial from the local VA a knee-jerk reaction in expectation that the newspaper wouldnt have the time or resources to fight it.

I very much doubt the person who denied the request did any work to consider what the law was in the area, Barr said. A lot of public officials are counting on reporters not exercising their rights.

When the Star first asked Tucson VA officials for the names of its current dermatology specialists, VA spokesman Steven Sample said a formal Freedom of Information Act request would be required to get that information.

PRIVACY ARGUMENT

Privacy officer Wilson said a veteran, not just the news media, would also have to file a formal public-records request to learn the identities of the VAs medical staff.

The VA subsequently denied the Stars records request in May, prompting the newspapers appeal to the national VA legal team.

A separate Star records request also sought the names of all the Tucson VAs specialists, and the Star also submitted an almost identical appeal after the VA refused to release those names. The national VAs legal counsel also agreed with the Stars argument in that related appeal and provided an unredacted list of the requested specialists.

In both appeals, the Star argued any privacy concerns were outweighed by the need for transparency about the quality and quantity of specialists who care for the veteran community.

Provider shortages at the VA have contributed to significant and widely reported wait-time problems at veterans hospitals across the U.S., to the outrage of veterans and veterans advocates, the Stars appeal said. It is inarguably in the public interest for the Star, or a member of the public, including veterans themselves, to be able to determine at what level the local VA hospital is staffed by verifying the number of providers currently employed there.

The Star also argued the Tucson veterans hospital contradicted its own privacy argument by publishing a public database of its providers on the VA website.

But that public database is two years out of date: A Star reporter determined at least one of the doctors listed in the database has since moved to Texas, which prompted the reporter to request the current staff listing from the VA.
New Empire Food Market is where Tun Lim Lee befriended longtime residents, young families and students in the Iron Horse neighborhood.

He and his wife, Anne, along with their five children, served the multicultural neighborhood just north of downtown, including North Fourth Avenue and University of Arizona areas while operating the market at 526 E. Ninth St. for nearly six decades.

The elder Lee was a hard-working, humble, caring man, said his son Alvin Lee.

Tun Lim Lee died of cardiovascular disease Aug. 10 while at Casa de la Luz Hospice near his wife, their children and spouses, and grandchildren, said Alvin Lee. He was 87.

Lees legacy will be carried on at the market by his family, including Anne, and son Melvin Lee, who will manage the grocery store.

Customer Armando Alcantar grew up at the store and called Lee his adopted father.

Its hard to walk in here because he is no longer here, Alcantar said recently. He was like a dad to many of us neighborhood kids. He helped everybody and gave us candy and ice cream.

It was common for Alcantar and other children to be invited by Lee to go fishing with his family and friends. Alcantar and Lees son, Alvin, happily recalled trips to Roosevelt, Patagonia and Silverbell lakes and reeling in crappie, bass, bluegill and catfish.

The market, which has a history of different owners dating to the 1930s, still appears much like a 1960s-stylish grocery store. Wooden butcher blocks used by Lee remain in the back of the store, and Alvin Lee recalled his father still giving credit to customers, and holding on to their receipts in an old cigar box.

Daughter Tina Champlin said working in the store taught her how to be a team player and the importance of customer service. When I was about 6 years old, I had a wooden stool that was kept up front near the cash register. I started working as a bagger, she said letting out a smile. By 9, I was a cashier, and I would also help my dad stock supplies.

When Alvin Lee was a UA aerospace engineering student, he and his brother, Melvin, would deliver groceries to customers in the university area and other neighborhoods up to the Flowing Wells and River roads area. They would also deliver boxes of groceries to customers on the east side.

My father taught us many values. He taught us to never give up on our dreams and to always work hard, said Melvin Lee. My father worked long hours and would go shopping early in the mornings to buy fresh foods for the store, he said.

Alvin Lee said he could picture his father cutting beef, chicken and pork until two in the morning so his customers would have a wide selection of meat to purchase each day. At one time, we had about six employees when the market was booming in the 60s, said the son.

The elder Lee showed his love through food and would prepare meals for us and would invite neighborhood friends. He also made meals for the homeless, said Alvin Lee, recalling dishes of spaghetti, Chinese spare ribs, stir fry and chop suey.

Tun Lim Lee was born on Aug. 6, 1930, in Hoi Ping (now known as Kaiping), China, and he left at the age of 14 by ship for America after an uncle urged him to come for a better life. The ship docked in San Francisco, and then Lee came to Tucson and moved in with relatives and began working at a market on South Meyer Street.

He attended Safford School and completed the ninth grade before he was drafted into the Army in 1953. Alvin Lee said his father was a cook and also served in the infantry during the Korean War. Lee received the Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal and the National Defense Service Medal.

After completing his military service, he returned to Tucson and worked at various grocery stores before he traveled to Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, to court Anne Mee Wong, his future wife. Wong, a native of Taishan in Guangdong, China, worked in a bed-and-breakfast and lived with her grandfather, a butler for a wealthy family.

The couple married Aug. 20, 1960, and returned to Tucson and became owners of the New Empire Market.

In addition to his business, Lee was an avid bowler and a member of the Tucson Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Ying On Labor & Merchant Association, a member of the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center and president of the Lee Association of Tucson.

He received a service with full military honors Aug. 19 and was buried at East Lawn Palms Cemetery at 5801 E. Grant. A tribute to his life followed at Tucson Chinese Cultural Center at 1288 W. River Road.
On Monday, Aug. 21, the sun, moon and Earth will align, allowing a narrow band of the country from coast to coast  and the millions expected to travel there  to experience a total solar eclipse.

In Southern Arizona, however, the eclipse will be partial.

The moon will begin crossing the sun at 9:16 a.m. Tucson time and slide in front until the peak coverage at 10:36 a.m. when the moon blocks about 60 percent of the suns surface locally. The moon will finally move out of the suns glare just after noon.

This is the first total solar eclipse visible from the continental United States since 1979. The next one is in 2024.

Solar eclipses, regardless of how much of the sun is blocked, require eye protection at all times or other precautions, such as using a makeshift pinhole camera, so as not to damage your eyes.

So even in Tucson, with just over half the sun obscured, the event will draw many outside to watch this astronomical event. The local weather should be mostly sunny with some scattered clouds.

There are several public events Monday in Tucson during the eclipse where telescopes will be provided to promote safe viewing practices and also help provide an understanding of the natural phenomenon. (See box on Page A2.)

For those wanting to experience the eclipse from the comfort of their homes, most TV networks plan coverage of the total eclipse and there will be numerous internet sites  NASA.gov for one  livestreaming the event.

The total eclipse

Eclipses arent rare, but the path of totality, the strip of Earths surface where the moon completely blocks the suns light, is narrow and reaching it now could be difficult  large crowds are expected in the areas of the country where there will be a total eclipse.

On average, an eclipse occurs about once every 18 months but over only 1 to 2 percent of land on Earth. Eclipse chasers often have to battle harsh environments, bad weather and monetary and time restraints to see the event.

For people like Glenn Schneider, a University of Arizona astronomer, these obstacles are worth experiencing the thrill of a total solar eclipse.

Schneider is not a solar astronomer, he studies galaxies and exoplanet formations among other topics. He even worked on the Hubble Space Telescope. Eclipse chasing is his hobby.

Its actually more of an addiction. Its not what I do as a profession, he said.

Schneider was 14 years old when he saw his first solar eclipse in 1970 and has been hooked ever since.

For his first solar eclipse, he prepared for months by reading newspapers articles, magazines and books. He even took a bus all the way from New York City, where he lived at the time, to North Carolina, to reach the path of totality.

His meticulous planning of how he was going to spend time between his camera, telescope and binoculars went out the window the moment totality finally arrived.

He froze for the entire 2 minutes and 54 seconds of strange darkness.

It was a deer in the headlights kind of moment, he said. I was mesmerized. And when the sun returned, It took someone to shake me back to mundane reality.

He decided he wouldnt let a moment like that slip by him again. Now, almost 50 years later, Schneider has experienced 33 total solar eclipses.

Every eclipse is the best experience, except for the ones that are clouded out, which are traumatic, Schneider said. Theyre all different.

Every environment is unique, the distance between the Earth, sun and moon can change the characteristics and timing of the eclipse and there are unexpected obstacles to overcome.

Schneider has even had to take to the sky many times to avoid being clouded out on the surface. Every eclipse has its own special unique flavor.

What can be expected at any eclipse is an eerie and sudden change in environment. Although the change is most dramatic during a total eclipse.

Right before totality, you can see the shadow of the moon rushing toward you, Schneider said. Its this giant wall of darkness bifurcating the sky.

At the last instant of sunlight, you can see the sun peaking over the jagged mountains of the moon, creating a diamond-ring effect, and a phenomenon called Bailys beads right before totality.

And as the sun disappears, the temperature drops, the wind picks up, the entire sky looks like a sunset and the birds go quiet.

Eye protection can be removed only during totality, and the massive corona, usually hidden by the blinding glare of the sun, can be seen by the naked eye.

You kind of put yourself in the middle of celestial mechanics in action. It becomes very personal, he said. Its the only way that I know of where you really experience the working and scale of the dynamics of the solar system.

The big show is only available in the path of totality, a narrow band of land about 65 miles wide, stretching from Oregon to South Carolina.

A group of students from Cienega High School are traveling to the path of totality in Pawnee City, Nebraska, as a part of a citizen scientist group called Citizen CATE.

The nationwide experiment is being coordinated by solar astronomer, Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory. The goal is to station citizen scientists along the path of totality, collecting images from the total eclipse and stitching them together to create a 90-minute movie of the elusive corona.

Safety tips

Those who want to watch the eclipse, whether its full or partial, must take precautions to avoid damaging their eyes.

Never look at the sun directly or through a telescope, binocular or camera lens without a legitimate sun filter. You should only look directly at the eclipse using safe eclipse glasses, which dramatically dim the sun and block damaging wavelengths of light.

Attending one of the local viewing events is probably the best and safest way to see the eclipse.

On Monday morning, Flandrau Planetarium, Steward Observatory, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and Optical Sciences, with the aid of the UAs astronomy club, will be hosting an eclipse viewing event on the UA Mall between 9 a.m. and noon. Telescopes will also be set up in Sabino Canyon by the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, and local public libraries will also have viewing events. (See box above left.)

There are many other ways to experience the eclipse, besides glasses and telescopes.

You can make a pinhole view projector out of a cereal box. You can find a NASA video on how to make one yourself at eclipse2017.nasa.gov/how-make-pinhole-projector-view-solar-eclipse

You can also poke a small hole, which doesnt need to be round, in a sheet of paper and hold another sheet underneath. Like a pinhole viewer box, the image of the sun will be projected on the page beneath.

Or look beneath a tree for a different experience. The gaps between the leaves will project hundreds of crescent suns on the ground.

Alternatively, an astronomy professor from Pima Community College will livestream the eclipse on YouTube from the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope on Kitt Peak, southwest of Tucson, which is the largest solar telescope in the world.

Dennis Just, an astronomy professor at Pima Community College, said he expects to be able to see mountains on the moon during the eclipse.

Don McCarthy, a UA astronomer, said that besides seeing the eclipse, whether its partial or total, its also important to listen and feel, the changes in the world as the moon occludes the sun.

More than half of the suns light will be smothered by the moon here. It might get a little darker, and it might get a little cooler. There are many different ways to experience the eclipse, he said.

In 2002, McCarthy prepared the Catalina Sky Survey 60-inch telescope on Mount Lemmon for his astronomy campers who were busy gazing at the partial solar eclipse just outside.

Like many domes, the dome that housed the telescope was punctuated with small holes, possibly from popped rivets.

As the moon slid in front of the sun that day and light from the eclipsing sun peeked in through the holes like a pinhole camera, a kaleidoscope of palm-sized crescent suns were projected around the interior of the dome.

McCarthy laughed at the sight. I was giddy about it.
PHOENIX  A referendum to kill the states expansion of the voucher program survived its first hurdle despite efforts of the lawyers who dont want it going to the ballot.

State Elections Director Eric Spencer said there are more than enough signatures on petitions calling for a 2018 vote, even after he disqualified some of them. That sets the stage for county recorders to do their own verification.

Spencer rejected efforts by attorneys for those who want universal vouchers to strike even more names from the more than 110,000 submitted to call for an election.

In some cases, he said, that there is no legal basis for the objections. And in others, he told the lawyers that if they want to pursue their claims they need to make their claims to a judge  something voucher supporters already have started with a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court.

They have their work cut out for them.

Spencer concluded that petitions with more than 108,000 signatures survived the first test, far more than the 75,321 that ultimately need to be found valid.

The next step is for county recorders to do a name-by-name check of a random sample that Spencer has prepared for each. But given how many above the minimum he said cleared the first hurdle, the recorders need to find that only 69.6 percent of their samples are valid.

Hanging in the balance is whether voters will get the last word on legislation to make vouchers of state money to attend private and parochial schools available to any public school student.

The vouchers, formally known as Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, were first approved in 2011 to help parents of students with disabilities who said their children cannot get the help they need in public schools.

Since then, however, supporters have nibbled away at the restrictions. Among those now eligible for vouchers are foster children, children living on reservations and those attending schools rated D or F.

SB 1431, approved with only Republican votes, eliminates any requirements.

About the only limit is that total vouchers cannot exceed about 30,000 by 2023, a provision inserted solely to get the necessary votes. But that can be removed at any time by future legislation.

If sufficient signatures on referendum petitions are determined to be valid, SB 1431 cannot take effect unless and until voters give their approval at the 2018 general election.

In doing the initial screening, Spencers office discarded 216 petition sheets because the required sworn affidavit of the circulator was unsigned or otherwise incomplete. Others were disqualified over problems like not having the required notary seal or the failure to have attached a copy of the measure being referred.

And more than 1,900 individual signatures were disqualified for things like missing information.

But Spencer said some of the complaints by those who want an expanded voucher program have no basis.

For example, Kory Langhofer argued that Spencer should not count anyone whose signature looks like their printed name. Langhofer, who represents Americans For Prosperity, a group funded by the Koch Brothers that supports vouchers, argued that a signature must be significantly distinguishable from a printed name to be considered a true signature.

Spencer rejected that argument.

Many Arizonans use a signature that substantially mirrors their printed name, he wrote to Langhofer in response. As long as the petition signature matches the electors voter registration record, it is irrelevant how much that signature varies from the signers printed name for purposes of our review.

Spencer also rebuffed Langhofers contention that signers must include both a city or town as well as a zip code. He said one or the other is sufficient to check the signers identity.

And he said theres nothing wrong with someone using ditto marks to show that information about an address or date is the same as the person who signed above.

But in some cases, Spencer told Langhofer that his complaints need to be resolved by a judge.

For example, Langhofer contends that some people who were gathering signatures were doing so for money. But he charged that they had not first registered with the Secretary of States Office, as required by law.

To buttress his arguments, Langhofer said some of those who did not register had been paid circulators for prior petition drives. Spencer said that hardly qualifies as proof.

The Secretary of State disagrees with your premise that simply because an individual acted as a paid circulator during a past election cycle, that individual must necessarily be acting as a paid circulator during this election cycle and therefore misrepresented his or her status as a volunteer, Spencer wrote.

And he told Langhofer if he has actual substantiation to the contrary it is better presented to a court of law after consideration of testimonial evidence.
Most of the politicians and most of the people who make the decisions for large corporations could care less about the American people. If they did, they would work together to solve the problems facing us. Instead of working together, the Democrats and the Republicans blame each other back and forth like little children. We need people in charge that actually care about the American people.

These are trying times for Americans who don't have a job. The wealthy don't have these worries. When the going gets tough economically, you don't see politicians taking a cut in pay. Greedy CEOs don't either, but they sure don't have any trouble laying off hard working Americans.

It's time for our politicians to step up and do their job. In case they've forgotten what that is, it's working for a better America. The wealthy are too greedy, most of them didn't make it on their own. They just made sure they didn't spread the wealth.

R. Smith Frede

Foothills
The removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was the focal point of the march by white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, which led to clashes with counter protesters and the death of a young woman.

While some would argue that these figures are a part of our history and should not be removed, we must not forget what is being memorialized.

Yes, Lee was one of our greatest tacticians, and his battles at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg will forever be studied. But he was a brilliant soldier in the service of an evil cause, and therefore his decisions became part of that evil.

I got my masters and doctorate degrees from the University of Virginia, and that is where I met my husband, who was then head of the department of Russian and Slavic studies. To me, Charlottesville is hallowed ground. Furthermore, I am a southerner who took an undergraduate degree at the College of William and Mary, with a minor in Civil War history,

Growing up, I was taught that the Civil War was fought for states rights  as explicitly declared by Jefferson Davis in chapter XLIX of his memoirs. That is a comforting myth, but the facts tell a much darker story and Lee is complicit in that story.

The crux of the matter comes down to the exchange of prisoners between federal forces and the Confederacy. The U.S. government declared that negro soldiers (to quote Davis) were no longer slaves and the Confederacy was bound to accord to them, when made prisoners, the same protection that it gave all other soldiers. Davis response is We asserted the slaves to be property, under the Constitution of the United States and that of the Confederate States, and that property recaptured from the enemy in war reverts to its, owner, if he can be found, or it may be disposed of by its captor.

When Andersonville became hideously overcrowded, and the death rate of federal prisoners was topping 25 percent, Lee wrote to Ulysses S. Grant offering an exchange. Grant responded that he needed to know if colored troops would be delivered the same as white soldiers. Lees response: Deserters from our service and negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange, and were not included in my proposition.

Grant therefore declined, saying in his final letter that regardless of color or nationality soldiers of the government of the United States must be treated as prisoners of war. The fact that Lee regarded U.S. soldiers as property rather than as men worthy of being treated as prisoners of war means that Lee did not accept the Emancipation Proclamation.

His statue has no place in the recently-renamed Emancipation Park in Charlottesville.

May I urge all my fellow citizens to go to Georgia and tour the National Prisoner of War Museum at the Andersonville National Historic Site. There you may read the originals of the exchange of letters between General Lee and General Grant.

And may I urge my fellow southerners to look at Davis memoirs. In the same chapter where he declares the cause of war to be states rights he quotes his own orders and words, which demonstrate that the true cause was to preserve slavery. Indeed, he wrote that any federal officer found to be arming and training slaves to become soldiers in the federal army was to be hanged immediately, as felons and criminals.

This is the ugly background to the lynching of black soldiers in uniform after World War II. The image of a black man in a government uniform evoked Jefferson Davis atavistic image of a servile war, which he declared would be worse than any fought by savages.

It is 2017. It is time to face the ugly truth of the Confederacy, and not let our conscience slumber with its comforting myths.
Welcome to the Editorial Page podcast for the week ending Friday, Aug. 18.

Join the Arizona Daily Stars editorial page team  editor Sarah Garrecht Gassen, cartoonist David Fitzsimmons and editorial writer Luis Carrasco  as they talk about politics, the news of the week, letters to the editor and whatever else strikes their fancy.

This week's podcast includes discussion about Charlottesville, Ally Miller, Joe Arpaio and an interview with Doug Martin, CEO of Good News Radio Broadcasting. Martin, a conservative, made waves this week with his oped calling for President Trump to repent or resign.
More than half of Montana is in some stage of drought, according to weather data released Thursday.

The U.S. Drought Monitor lists nearly all of Montana in drought or trending toward drought, with the exception of a sliver of the southwest corner of the state. Only 2.7 percent of Montana is experiencing normal conditions.

Drought now stretches 680 miles west to east from Noxon to Sidney. This is the first summer in 10 years that so much of the state was experiencing drought at the same time and the first year since 2004 that more than 10 percent of the state was in extreme drought, the worst category recognized.

That it takes a 10-year look back in the record books to find statewide conditions this dry wasnt surprising to Eric Sommer of the National Agricultural Statistics Service. The pattern matches Montanas cyclical trends for poor crop years.

Montana is expecting drought crop losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

If you look at the crop conditions and acres over the years, you can tell the dry years. Its kind of uncanny. You can see the five-year, 10-year and 20-year cycles in terms of crops and acreage, Sommer said.

More than half of Montanas spring planted dryland crops are rated in poor to very poor condition. Montana is the third-largest wheat-producing state in the country with a crop valued at $1 billion or more each year for 10 years, with few exceptions. This year isnt likely to hit the $1 billion mark.

Spring wheat production is expected to be off 29 million bushels from a year ago. Per acre, the spring wheat yields are expected to be at 21.5 bushels, the worst yield since 1943, according to the NASS.

The states Durum wheat crop is down 66 percent, or 31.3 million bushels from last year. Both Durum and spring wheat are specialty crops of northeastern Montana which is experiencing the worst drought in the nation.

The concern, Sommer said, is that fall rain wont follow the dry summer, making it difficult for farmers to seed winter wheat in the months ahead.

The National Weather Service reports an even chance for more than average dryness or moisture through the end of the year, said Rex Morgan, meteorologist at the National Weather Service station in Glasgow.

Glasgow has been ground zero for the worst of the drought, with less than 4 inches of moisture since January, less than half of northeast Montanas normal amount.

However, northeast Montanas fever of 90- and 100-degree July days has broken. August has had 13 days below average temperatures with some highs in the low 70s and hail in isolated areas.

In northwest Montana, Northern Rockies Coordination Center is reporting forest fire fuel values similar to 2007, another epic dry year for northwest Montana forests, which brought significant fires that year.

The potential for trees and brush to burn is rated according to its energy release component, meaning the potential to release heat by the fuels within a fires flaming front. The years with fuel conditions similar to 2017 are 2003 and 2007, both bad fire years for northwest Montana, according to the NRCC. Incidentally, both years had a similar number of fire starts as this year.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for most of Montana on Thursday because of dry relative humidity and gusty winds.
The 2nd Vietnamese Goods Expo currently organized in Bangkok, Thailand is generating great responses from local consumers, who show particular love for Vietnams food.

The food section was crowded with waves of customers waiting try delicious Vietnamese dishes as soon as the expo opened on Thursday.

The two most ordered dishes are banh mi (Vietnamese bread) and pho (Vietnamese noodle soup with beef).

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, owner of a banh mi booth said she sold more than 100 loaves, each costing 65 baht (US$2), on the first day.

There have been long lines of customers in front of booths selling pho during the past two days.

The Vietnamese Goods Expo is being held at the Central Plaza Ladprao shopping center from August 17 to 21, promoting a few dozen goods from 40 Vietnamese companies and manufacturers.

Besides the signature Vietnamese foods, there are other Vietnam-made products showcased at the expo such as clothes, footwear and souvenirs.

Nguyen Xuan Ton, director of Xuan Trieu Coffee Co., said many Thai tourists have bought his coffee during their visits to Vietnam before, so he decided to bring his product to Thailand this time to reach more consumers.

Representatives of Minh Long Pottery Co., a Vietnamese firm famous for its high-quality potterware, stated that the expo is an excellent chance to learn about the Thai market and its consumers.

On Friday, Vietnamese firms participating at the expo met with representatives of Central Group, a giant Thai retailer, to discuss opportunities to introduce Vietnamese products into their store chains.

A Thai customer orders pho at the expo.

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Check out the news you should not miss today, August 19

Politics

-- Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Friday sent their messages of condolences to Spanish King Felipe VI and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy over the August 17 terror attack that killed and injured dozens of people in Barcelona.

-- Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Friday held meetings with President of Thailands Privy Council Prem Tinsulanonda and President of Thailands National Legislative Assembly Pornpetch Wichitcholchai as part of his ongoing visit to Thailand.

-- Vietnams Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong is scheduled to visit Indonesia from August 22 to 24 at the invitation of Indonesian President Joko Widodo, and Myanmar from August 24 to 28, at the invitation of President Tin Cho.

Society

-- Six members of a Raglai ethnic family were killed, while another was severely injured, as they attempted to cut open a 105mm artillery projectile for gunpowder in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa on Friday.

-- The APEC Network of Anti-Corruption Authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies (ACT-NET) held a workshop on intensifying cooperation in revoking corruption assets among law enforcement agencies on Friday in Ho Chi Minh City.

-- Police in the southern city of Can Tho on Friday arrested a usury mogul who had been running an extensive network of illegal loan giving at unfairly high rates of interest, and ceased a total of 28 firearms from his residences.

Business

-- Vietnam's crude oil imports will soar to record highs in August as the country ramps up fuel refining at a time when local crude output is dwindling, Reuters reported on Friday.

-- Vietnam's rice export is expected to reach 5.2 million metric tons in 2017, a 6 percent increase year on year, the Vietnam Food Association has said.

-- Many cases in which aviation safety has been threatened were recorded at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City in July, including a collision between an airport bus and a jet fuel tank truck on July 26.

Sports

-- Vietnam's Le Quang Liem finished fifth at the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz chess competition, held as part of the 2017 Grand Chess Tour, with 16.5 points, following impressive wins against the world's number three and seven, and 'chess king' Garry Kasparov.

-- The 2017 Southeast Asian Games, or 29th SEA Games, will hold its opening ceremony tonight, August 19, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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A number of firearms were found at the many residences of a usury mogul who was apprehended by police in the southern city of Can Tho on Friday.

The man, identified as 35-year-old Pham Huu Trong Nhan, had been running an extensive network of illegal loan giving at unfairly high rates of interest, according to officers.

The Can Tho citizen was taken in custody on charges of illegal stockpiling and transportation of military firearms.

Nhans illegal business had been discovered thanks to professional field works by investigative officers as well as reports from local residents, according to Can Tho police chief Tran Ngoc Hanh.

During a recent raid at one of the mans residences in Can Tho, police found Nhan to be in possession of two firearms and 174 bullets.

Through further investigation, police have been able to locate and bust into six other residences of Nhan in the southern provinces of Soc Trang, Tra Vinh and Tien Giang.

In total, law enforcement ceased 28 firearms from his different houses, including six military firearms.

Other confiscated weapons included sport rifles and custom-made sniper rifles equipped with telescopes and silencers, Hanh said.

Nhan claimed the weapons had been intended for leisure hunting.

According to Hanh, Nhan had disguised his usury business as a credit firm to avoid drawing attention from local authorities.

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Vietnams Ministry of Finance appears to believe that instant coffee and teabag are harmful products whose consumption should be reduced through sin tax just as tobacco and alcohol.

The ministry has recently proposed to levy special consumption tax, a kind of excise tax, on instant coffee packs and teabags, sparking outrage among local experts and consumers.

A sin tax is an excise tax specifically levied on certain goods deemed harmful to society, such as alcohol and tobacco, in an effort to reduce their consumption.

In Vietnam, the special consumption tax is exercised to regulate the purchase of similar products, as well as luxurious items such as cars.

The inclusion of teabag and instant coffee in the list of products to be charged with the excise tax is consequently deemed inappropriate, according to experts and consumers.

Hoang Dung, a resident in Binh Thanh District, Ho Chi Minh City said that packed coffee and tea are everyday products of many Vietnamese to help them stay focused at work.

The products are so cheap that it is inappropriate to charge special consumption tax on them.

Controversial tax bill

The sin tax for teabag is part of a series of proposals in the draft amendment for the tax law by the finance ministry.

The bill also seeks to increase the environment tax on gasoline from the current amount of VND3,000 per liter to VND8,000.

The new environment tax on petrol will push the price of most other products up, Thanh Thuy, a resident in District 4, said worriedly.

The finance ministry is also being rapped for its proposal of increasing the value-added tax from 10 percent to 12 percent - highest rate compared to that of other neighboring countries.

The bill also suggests reducing the personal income tax for people making less than VND20 million (US$880) a month only to 5 percent. At present, those earning between VND10 million ($440) and VND18 million ($792) are subject to a 15 percent personal income tax rate.

However, experts said the cut for personal income tax rate is modest compared to the proposed increases for other taxes.

The increase of VAT and other taxes will help Vietnam add some VND59,000 billion ($2.6 billion) to its state budget annually, whereas the personal income tax cut will reduce the state revenue collection by only VND1,000 billion ($44 million) a year, according to estimations by the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange.

Bui Quang Tin, a local tax expert, said in neighboring countries, the governments impose different VATs on different products and trades, instead of a uniform rate for all commodities.

Tin added that while the amount of money collected from tax should account for only 10 percent of the state budget, the proportion in Vietnam is as high as 30 percent, indicating that Vietnamese consumers are charged with heavy taxes.

The Ministry should therefore think carefully before increasing VAT and other taxes, Tin suggested.

The tax change proposals will be presented to the lawmaking National Assembly for further deliberation and approval in October.

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Six members of a family were killed, while another was critically injured, during an attempt to cut open an artillery shell in a remote village in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa on Friday.

At around 9:00 am, people in the Ta Luong village in Khanh Son District were shocked by a deafening explosion and a column of black smoke was seen from afar.

When villagers flocked to the scene, what they found were several body parts scattered around, and a big hammer weighing about 10kg.

Dang Van Minh, head of the Khanh Son military unit, confirmed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper later the same day that six people of a family were killed in the incident, when they were attempting to cut a 105mm artillery shell.

The shell had been cut into two halves and the victims were apparently attempting to cut open its nose cone for gunpowder, Minh added.

Seven people were at the scene when the projectile exploded, but only one of them, 55-year-old Bo Bo Suong, survived the blast and is now treated at the Khanh Hoa General Hospital.

The victims include three of Suongs children, his two grandchildren and the father-in-law of one of his sons.

The family had previously come across two other shells when working on their farms, according to a villager.

The exploded shell was the third they had found, he said.

People are seen at the scene of an artillery projectile explosion in Khanh Hoa, south-central Vietnam, August 18, 2017.

Minh, the military officer, said Khanh Son is a mountainous area and used to be a base for Vietnamese soldiers during the American war.

We have repeatedly called on locals to hand over any wartime weaponries they may find, but some poverty-stricken families, with poor knowledge and awareness, still try to cut the projectiles for scrap metal and gunpowder, Minh said.

Fifty thousand Vietnamese civilians have lost their lives and more than 60,000 others have been injured in accidents related to unexploded ordnances across the country since the war ended in 1975.

According to statistics, unexploded ordnances exist in all 63 provinces and municipalities of Vietnam, with the most heavily affected areas being Quang Tri, Quang Binh, Thua Thien  Hue, Da Nang, Quang Ngai, Hai Duong, Nghe An, Ha Tinh, Ca Mau, Soc Trang, and Dong Thap.

Approximately 6.1 million hectares of mainland Vietnam still contain explosive remnants, with the cost of their safe removal estimated to be millions of U.S. dollars.

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Australian Story profiles former Australian Federal Police Commander Grant Edwards in a story about the impact of policing on mental health.

Australian Federal Police Commander Grant Edwards is a mountain of a man. He was once Australias strongest, pulling locomotives, planes and semi-trailers with pure brute strength.

So imagine his surprise to find himself sitting under a tree one day, unable to stop crying.

I was a strong guy physically, I thought I was a strong guy mentally. It was probably the greatest wakeup in my life when I realised that I wasnt. Grant Edwards

Grant has been at the coalface of the AFPs most disturbing work. In the early days of the internet, he headed up a team investigating child exploitation.

I can still describe many of those images because they burn into your brain and you just cant get rid of them, theyre there forever. I just cant explain the amount of anxiety that builds up and the anger. Grant Edwards

As one of those charged with protecting society, hed always been taught to harden up, close those boxes in the mind and move on.

After a highly charged year training police in Afghanistan, things began to unravel.

I think his facade fell apart and all of that strength just left him. I think every box he had managed to close opened and he was just hit with everything. Kate Edwards, Grants wife

Grants doctor was the first to suggest he might have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He refused treatment, knowing only too well that admitting to a mental health issue was a career killer.

You didnt talk about your vulnerabilities because that was seen as a sign of you werent doing your job or you werent strong enough or cut out to be a police officer. AFP Commissioner Andrew Colvin

It took a breakdown for Grant to understand he was injured in ways not seen by the naked eye. After the suicide of an AFP colleague, he decided to go public with his own struggles, becoming a lightning rod for change inside the AFP. Now Commander of the Americas, Grant is on a mission to remove the stigma of mental health not just in policing, but society wide.

8pm Monday on ABC.
Cast have been revealed for the four-part crime thriller, Dead Lucky, coming to SBS.

Rachel Griffiths plays a detective obsessed with catching an armed robber who murdered one of her junior officers, her new trainee (Yoson An) blames her for the death of his best friend. The story surrounds a share-house of international students, a pair of corrupt shop owners, a grieving widow and a gunman, who all collide, leaving one dead and another missing.

The cast also includes Rhys Muldoon, Annie Maynard, Xana Tang, Ian Meadows, Brooke Satchwell, Matt Nable, Justine Clarke, Lincoln Younes, Simon Burke, Aldo Mignone, Sara West, Sarah Thamin, Tessa de Josselin and Mojean Aria.

The series by Ellie Beaumont & Drew Proffitt (House Husbands) will be directed by David Caesar and produced by Subtext Pictures.

Dead Lucky marks the third upcoming drama for SBS with Sunshine due in September and Safe Harbour now expected in 2018.

Filming begins in Sydney this week.

Updated: Rachel Griffiths said: I am thrilled to be starting Dead Lucky with world-class storytellers Ellie Beaumont and Drew Proffitt. To be able to work with our incredible crews and make content here in Sydney that can meet an international market is a dream and privilege. I am just glad I dont have to be dead to be so lucky!

SBS Director of Television and Online Content, Marshall Heald said: Dead Lucky continues SBSs run of premium, thought-provoking dramas exploring social themes which resonate deeply with Australian audiences. A high-energy crime thriller through the streets of Sydney, the story of Dead Lucky is built on the complexities and tensions in cross-cultural relationships, and particularly delves into the experience of international students and what it means to belong in Australia.

We are delighted to be working with the team at newly formed Subtext Pictures, who bring their impressive drama credits to this new series.

Subtext Pictures Ellie Beaumont and Drew Proffitt said: Were excited to be launching Subtext and working with the brilliant Rachel Griffiths and our unbelievably talented cast and crew. We thank SBS, Screen Australia, Create NSW and DRG for backing the new showrunner-owned indie on the block.
Help India!

Lucknow, (IANS): Hours before Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi lands in Gorakhpur to meet the families of children who died at the BRD Medical College, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday said people in Delhi are trying to make the city a picnic spot.

Kicking off the Swacch UP, Swasth UP (Clean UP, Healthy UP) campaign, Adityanath termed Rahul Gandhi a yuvraj and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav shehzaada and said their attempts to convert Gorakhpur into a picnic spot would be rebuffed by the people.

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Adityanath said the people of Uttar Pradesh, particularly Gorakhpur, would never allow this to happen.

More than 70 children, many infants, died last week due to encephalitis and a reported shortage of oxygen supply at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur, Adityanaths parliamentary constituency that he is yet to vacate.

We have been fighting the battle against encephalitis for a long time. More cleanliness is required for this and we are running an immunisation drive, the Chief Minister said.

Urging the people to take part in the drive, Adityanath said without active participation of the people, these drives will never succeed.

He said that people sitting in Delhi and coming to Gorakhpur for picnic neither know of hygiene and would never understand the cleanliness drive enough to be a part of it.
Help India!

By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter

If posters displayed in Varanasi are anything to go by, it seems Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi is missing. And as expected, this has not gone down well with the local Police, who have started the search for people who installed these posters.

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The poster says  jaane wo kaun-sa desh jahaan tum chale gaye, (Dont know what country you have gone to) making fun of the PMs foreign trips while neglecting his Loksabha constituency.

The poster also says that Narendra Modi was last seen in the month of March when he came to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party eyeing state assembly elections.

No political group or person has come forward to take the responsibility for the posters. Issued on behalf of helpless and innocent individuals of Kashi, the posters claim to register a FIR in search of Narendra Modi.

However, police removed the posters as soon they were displayed, but their pictures were being shared widely on social media. The Police are now looking at CCTV footages to search for the responsible person.

Local residents in whose locality the posters were installed have also been questioned by the Police.

Last week, similar posters were installed in Amethi, asking the whereabouts of MP Rahul Gandhi.
Help India!

By Mohammed Akram for TwoCircles.net

To,

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Shri Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister, Government of Bihar

Subject: Plight of flood affected people and need of food and medicines

Sir,

With due respect, I want to draw your attention towards the plight of the flood-affected people of Bihar in general and of Seemanchal region in particular. The region, you know very well, has poor infrastructure facilities and lives of people are completely devastated in the aftermath of current unprecedented floods. Hundreds of people died and hundreds are missing. I come from this region and know very well how marginalised and vulnerable people belonging to this region are. The worst victims of this flood and its aftermath are children, women and aged people, the most vulnerable sections of any population.

Sir, I want to communicate to you that I have started an online petition addressed to you at Change.org and this petition requests you to send enough food, drinking water and medicines for the flood affected people of Seemanchal region.

Sir, more than 125 people, largely university and college teachers and students, coming from different parts of the country including Bihar, have supported this petition in less than 36 hours of its origin. This reflects the seriousness of the issue we are talking about.

The content of this petition is self-evident, and we are sure, you will also agree with it. You are certainly feeling much concerned about the plight of the people affected by the flood. However, our humble concern is to ensure that no further death could occur due to lack of food or medicines in the region.

Dear sir, please send enough food items and medicines so that these could reach to the remotest villages. Please deploy additional medical teams in the region. You have already appointed special officers for implementing the rescue operations and this is a very sincere effort. Please visit the affected areas a few times more to ensure that the officials could make a little extra effort at this time of need.

The author is Professor in Department of Sociology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh (India). He has authored/ edited six books and published many papers on issues related to health and marginalisation.
CHEYENNE, Wyo.  A 25-year-old Wyoming woman charged in the death of her 16-month-old son has waived her preliminary hearing.

Sabrina Sawicki, of Cheyenne, is charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse.

Her case now moves to Laramie County District Court, where Sawicki will next appear for an arraignment. The next court date has not been set.

But her attorney, Cassie Craven, says Sawicki will plead not guilty. Craven says Sawicki was released on a $50,000 surety bond.

Court documents say that the child died April 27 and that a preliminary autopsy report indicated the child died from head trauma consistent with "shaken baby syndrome."
Ever since Doctor Who first graced our TV screens in 1963, the sci-fi series continues to captivate generations of fans with its riveting storylines and quirky adventures.

For years, however, the subject of Doctor Who and diversity has been a hot-button topic among Whovians (for the uninitiated, a Whovian is a Doctor Who fan).

Although it has been established within the world of the show that the Doctor can take on any race and gender he so chooses, all 13 actors who have portrayed the role of the shape-shifting Time Lord have been Caucasian males.

A black Doctor should have happened by now

Recently, former Doctor Colin Baker addressed this issue at the 2017 Comic-Con held in San Diego. "The white male dominance of the role has been nothing if not timid," said the British actor, per a Mashable report, during a panel devoted to the cult sci-fi series on Thursday. Bakers statement was in response to a pointed inquiry by an audience member about representation in Doctor Who, said the report.

Stating that a black Doctor "should have happened by now as well, the sixth Doctor also hinted at the possibility of having a Black Doctor real soon as he asked the fans to watch the next regeneration."

Whenever the Doctor, the two-hearted alien from Gallifrey, is mortally wounded and/or his actor leaves the show, the character dies and is regenerated into a new body, having the same essential self but a new set of personality tics.

Fans have been crusading for a female Doctor or a black Doctor or really any option besides a white male Doctor since 2008, when David Tennant, who played the Tenth Doctor, announced that he would be leaving the show, stated a Vox report.

Earlier this year, Whovians called on Chris Chibnall, the programmes Executive Producer and new lead writer, to grab the opportunity to cast a black or female actor as the 13th incarnation of the shape-shifting Time Lord following the announcement that Peter Capaldi would be leaving the show after the 2017 Christmas special.

A bold leap forward

On July 16, BBC created history by announcing that Jodie Whittaker will become the first female Doctor in the shows 50-year history.

Though most Whovians lauded the decision to cast Jodie Whittaker as the titular Doctor, a few fans were unhappy with the casting announcement.

Recently, BBC issued a written statement regarding the channels decision to cast Whittaker as the female lead.

The Doctor is an alien from the planet Gallifrey and it has been established in the show that Time Lords can switch gender, said BBC. It also quoted the Controller of BBC Drama who said that the Broadchurch star is not just a talented actor but she has a bold and brilliant vision for her Doctor.

The shows first black character appeared in 1967

According to current series writer Steven Moffat, the lead role in the fantasy sci-fi show was offered to a black actor.

I mean, weve tried. The part has been offered to a black actor. But for various reasons, it didnt work out, said Moffat who is also the Executive Producer of the show, in a Guardian report.

The series first black character was a Cybermen help-meet called Toberman in 'Tomb of the Cybermen. The character appeared in the fifth season aired in September 1967 and was played by black actor Roy Stewart.

Whats more, Paramount Pictures wanted to make a Doctor Who movie in 1988 starring either Bill Cosby or the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson, as the lead, noted Charles Norton in his book Now on the Big Screen: The Unofficial and Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who at the Cinema.
In 2015 the film Spotlight was made, it was a great success and was nominated for an Academy Award as best film for 2016. It told the story of the newspaper The Boston Globe's moral determination to uncover the story of the abuse of young children by Catholic Priests in 2001. Initially, it seemed that a few priests in Boston were exploiting children in the area. The refusal to deal with this properly and the attempts to suppress it by the church upset some of the reporters and set them digging. What they eventually uncovered was almost beyond belief, a network of abusers damaging thousands of children, working under the cloak, or cassock, of the Catholic church.

Many senior people were implicated directly in the abuse or made efforts to cover it up. It may still finally ruin that organisation.

Say anything but not the truth

It is a great shame those same reporters cannot be unleashed on the Labour party and grooming gangs in the UK today. The latest outrage by this once honourable party involves the hounding out of the Shadow Cabinet of Sarah Champion the former Shadow Women and Equalities minister. This MP for Rotherham has campaigned for many years against the child grooming in her constituency and no wonder, at least 1,400 children in the area were found to have been abused from1997 to 2003.

Miss Champion clearly thought we lived in a time when speaking the truth in order to protect the most vulnerable victims of society would at least be allowed even expected from the sitting MP, even if it was not universally applauded within her party.

But she was wrong. She said among other things that "Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men abusing white girls."

It is clear she tried to be cautious. She highlighted Pakistani men often born in Britain, but we all know that was not the defining link. Iraqi, Iranian, Indian and Turkish men were also involved operating over a range of towns and cities - Derby, Rochdale, Oxford, Bristol, Aylesbury, Peterborough, Bradford and Newcastle as well as Rotherham.

They were almost exclusively, however, Muslim men. That fact certainly would not have been allowed to be highlighted by the Labour Stasi, so she toned it down slightly, but not enough for the thought police.

Supported by equality advocates

To their credit, many people, not necessarily to the right of the political spectrum, have spoken up for Miss Champion.

These include Trevor Phillips former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) who reportedly said he was "Gobsmacked." He reminded people that only last week he had spoken praising Miss Champion for abandoning the "Bland evasion of child abuse found in every community." The present Chief Executive of the EHRC, Rebecca Hilsenrath, said it was wrong that a respected MP had been hounded out for speaking candidly about child exploitation and called her a respected advocate of equality. Nigel Farage noted that it is now impossible, to tell the truth about tough issues in the Labour Party.

Miss Champion had increased her vulnerability by sometimes going against Corbyn in the past. She was one of the many to resign previously over his leadership and now in the momentum days, where tolerance of individual views is nonexistent, she was something of a sitting duck.

Soon after her election to Parliament, (she has been MP for Rotherham since 2012), she was asked if she was a Blairite or a Brownite? This was in the heady days before Corbynistas. She said she was neither, just in Parliament to do a good job. That attitude is no longer acceptable in the party of Corbyn and McDonnell.

Catholic priests but not Muslim men?

The ham-fisted attempts to stop any real honesty by the Labour party will rebound of course upon the very community it is designed to help. Suppression only convinces ordinary people that most politicians and much of the media are trying to hide the truth. And they are! It is very interesting that in the Spotlight film and on pretty much every occasion subsequently that the abuse uncovered in Boston has been discussed; every news outlet has used the phrase CATHOLIC priests. The people know what is going on and who is responsible. Trying to hide it like sneaks only make their outrage even hotter.
Spanish police have announced that they have killed four people and injured another to foil what was supposed to be the second act of Terrorism in Spain on Thursday night, this time in the city of Cambrils. This follows the attack earlier in the city of Barcelona which left thirteen people dead and more than a hundred people injured as a car entered the pedestrian zone in the La Rambla street in central Barcelona.

Attack in Cambrils

The police reported that a van attempted to cross over to the Pedestrian Area but failed and overturned resulting in police open firing and the deaths of four of the terrorists while another was seriously injured.

Several Spanish news outlets also indicate that several civilians were injured, including a police officer before the van came to a halt. Police have said that the situation in Cambrils is under control. An hour and a half away from Barcelona, the coastal town of Cambrils is another key tourist destination in the comarca (group of municipalities) of Baix Camp, province of Tarragona, in Catalonia.

Attacks in Alcanar, Barcelona and Cambrils linked

Wednesday night saw a huge explosion in a house in the city of Alcanar, another town in Catalonia, 120 miles south of Barcelona resulting in a death and a critical injury. Police found approximately 20 canisters of butane and propane gas inside the house which they estimated to have been occupied for a few months.

While not much was made of the attack at the time as the police called it a potential gas explosion, the police now, after the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils have hinted at a potential link between the three attacks. The terrorist group ISIL claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack through its news agency saying that it was carried by its "Islamic state soldiers".

Police released a photo of the man whose documents were used to rent the van used in the attack as Driss Oukabir, believed to be in his 20s, from Morocco. However local news coming out of Barcelona indicates that the man has told the police that he was not involved and that his documents were stolen.

Europe in recent times has seen a horrific common denominator of vehicles being used in terrorist attacks.

These attacks are hard to monitor and have caused many deaths in major European cities in London, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm and now Barcelona. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain declared three days of national mourning and said the country was united against such forms of "jihadist attacks". Former President Barack Obama was among many leaders around the world who came out in support of Spain.
Over the last two years, President Donald Trump has been accused of many falsehoods. As the administration continues to defend Trump over multiple allegations, White House Counsel Kellyanne Conway is also coming to the president's side.

Conway on Twitter

After seven months in office, Donald Trump is still facing an onslaught of criticism relating to a variety of topics. While many issues plague the president, the ongoing scandal involving Russia seems to be growing by the day. The latest twist involves private meetings set up between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as the involvement of son-in-law Jared Kushner.

As expected, the billionaire real estate mogul has denied any wrongdoing, blaming the controversy on the "fake news" media and the Democrats allegedly playing partisan politics. Over the weekend, Kellyanne Conway was interviewed on CNN by host Brian Stelter and dropped an unusual excuse for Trump's falsehoods, simply claiming the president doesn't believe he's lying. In response, fellow CNN host Chris Cillizza responded to Conway's comments, which triggered the former campaign manager on Twitter on July 24.

.@CillizzaCNN that's all you gleaned from 25-min interview?Obamacare lies, woeful hcare stats, opioids, focus on Russia (CNN) v America (WH)  Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) July 24, 2017

Following Chris Cillizza's reaction to the aforementioned interview, Kellyanne Conway fired back with a pair of tweets on Monday afternoon.

"@CillizzaCNN that's all you gleaned from 25-min interview?Obamacare lies, woeful hcare stats, opioids, focus on Russia (CNN) v America (WH)," Conway tweeted out.

Not what I said. Read instead of reading into it. How to square 6% of US saying Russia #1 issue and 75% of media coverage = Russia #1 issue? https://t.co/39iVCp7ZA2  Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) July 24, 2017

"Well, saying that the president isn't lying because he believes it is sort of a big thing, no?" Chris Cillizza responded in a tweet of his own.

In a follow-up message in response, Kellyanne Conway once again hit back at the CNN host. "Not what I said. Read instead of reading into it," Conway wrote, before adding, "How to square 6% of US saying Russia #1 issue and 75% of media coverage = Russia #1 issue?" This isn't the first time that Conway has clashed with members of the press, as the back and forth has become commonplace, while highlighting the ongoing fight and war of words between the Trump team and the mainstream media.

Next up

While Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway, and the rest of the administration push back against the allegations of being in cahoots with Russia, evidence and speculation continues to mount. As the months move on, only time will tell if the media and the facts are on the right side of history, or if the former host of "The Apprentice" has been telling the truth.
The military threats President Trump made to Venezuela raised tons of eyebrows last week as he had already tripled-down on his threats to North Korea in the same week. Trump's threats toward the Latin American country can likely be attributed to Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Fl.) who reportedly increased his security protection recently when authorities learned that there was a possible assassination plot against him. That plot was reportedly connected to a powerful Venezuelan lawmaker named Diosdado Cabello, a delegate and vice president for the country's Socialist Party, and member of the new assembly which was put in place when Maduro's party seized power of the Venezuelan parliament.

Rubio's moment of opportunity in Trump's White House

Since Donald Trump entered the Oval Office. Sen. Rubio positioned himself as a person of influence for the White House's thinking on Latin America. As the President was positioning himself to make a decision on U.S.-Cuba relations, Rubio reportedly met with the President to discuss enforcing the embargo on Cuba again and rolling back Obama-era efforts to establish a relationship with the Castro regime after over half a century. Rubio was so determined to stop the former president's efforts during his two terms that he held up nominations for an ambassadorship to Mexico.

With Trump in office now, Marco Rubio has taken advantage of an opening to influence the administration's policy on Latin America, a responsibility that Trump has essentially taken away from the State Department.

Seven months into the administration, the president still hasn't filled positions at the State Department and is actively pursuing taking funding away. His Secretary of State has reportedly been frustrated with the lack of opportunities available to him to have some control of the State Department. One clear indication is the fact that Trump has given much of the responsibility of a secretary of state to his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Rubio: 'acting Secretary of State' for Latin America

This is the case with Sen. Rubio, who seems to "have it out" for the Venezuelan government. According to one report by the Miami Herald titled: "The Trump whisperer: Marco Rubio has President Trump's ear on Latin America," soon after Trump made his statement about Cuba, Rubio "moved in" to give him ideas about Venezuela.

Rubio also has the world's attention as Venezuela has made headlines for months over President Nicolas Maduro seizing constitutional control as the country loses control of its economy and struggles with food shortages and high prices.

Its been reported that people in Venezuela who have had great difficulty getting food had to force their way across the border into Colombia last year, overpowering guards who were blocking the way. Maduro has continued to gain more control of the country day by day and the military power of many of the country's services, even allegedly staged coup attempts. Reports of more violence from protests are also growing. With little interest from the Trump White House to engage with Latin America, Marco Rubio has more power to enforce his political agenda in the region than he did before.
Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Missouri state senator, has become a unifying figure in a kind of backhanded way. Shortly after Charlottesville, Chappelle-Nidal posted on her Facebook page about how much she hated Donald Trump. The post elicited a great many negative comments. To one of the comments, she responded, I hope Trump is assassinated! The fallout to the ill-considered reply has not been favorable to State Sen. Chappelle-Nidal.

Calls for resignation

The Missouri political establishment has risen on a bi-partisan basis to demand that Chappelle-Nadal resign.

Both the Republican governor and the chairman of the state Democratic Party have offered this helpful advice. Senate Minority Leader Gina Walsh condemned the statement and suggested that Chappelle-Nidal ought to be ashamed of herself. For her part, the state senator remains defiant. She will not resign. However, she has committed a federal crime and is under investigation by the Secret Service.

Trump hatred is getting out of hand

Chappelle-Nadal's rant was not as creative as the ISIS-style beheading image that Kathy Griffin published with her holding what looked like the severed head of Donald Trump. Still, anyone who thinks that the heartache they feel about Trumps election is going to go away if someone takes him out should think again.

Heartache would be just the beginning. Take it from someone who lived through the Kennedy Assassination.

There is nothing like being gunned down to turn a controversial politician into a revered martyr. John F. Kennedy had his detractors before Dallas. After Dallas, no one would criticize him for almost a generation. His murdered caused trauma to the nation from which it never recovered.

As a result, Lyndon Johnson, his successor, was able to pass much of Kennedys agenda, including civil rights legislation, an across the board tax cut, and putting a man on the moon.

It would be the same for Trump, though perhaps worse because his supporters are pretty sure that the Washington establishment has it in for him.

Conspiracy nuts would have a field day. Anyone who ever even had a cross word to say about Trump would be forever marginalized.

Pence, who would follow Trump as president, would pass his agenda in short order. Obamacare would be history. The Wall would become a memorial to the fallen president. Tax reform and infrastructure would be slam dunks. As a bonus, there would not be a Democratic president or a Democratic controlled Congress for decades.

So, if the gentle reader hates Trump, he or she would be advised to pray for his safety on a daily basis. The alternative would be too horrible to contemplate.
Sen. Steve Daines is correct on the filibuster; Sens. Mitch McConnell and John McCain, and Evan Barrett (Aug. 12 guest opinion) are not.

A glaringly pressing need now, as always, is defending our republican democracy. About this Hamilton said the fundamental maxim of republican government  requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Madison said about the use of super-majority vote: In all cases where justice or general good might require new laws to be passed  the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed.

In Federalist No 22, Hamilton also said what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is required for a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser.

In all, Hamilton and Madison did not say that legislative majority vote was merely important, they declared it to be "fundamental" to our form of government. Our republican democracy does not square with a system under which each chamber of Congress can willy-nilly determine how many votes is needed to pass legislation. Yet, today the U.S. Senate has morphed to a routine requirement of a 60-vote supermajority. The U.S. Senate, and only the U.S. Senate, decided that it must be 60 votes to pass legislation.

To Barretts comment that the end of supermajority vote would hurt Montana, I ask how? Tell us specifically how Montana would be hurt? Montana has two senators in the Congress, representing less than 1 million people, one of the highest senatorial representations, per population, in the United States. The Great Compromise ensured that all small states would have a disproportional Senate representation to help prevent the large states riding rough shod. However, the Great Compromise was not a repudiation of simple majority rule in the Senate.

Senator McCain, Senator McConnell, how would the end of super-majority in the Senate hurt Arizona or Kentucky? Exactly how would it change the Senate? After all, both the Republicans/Democrats have already changed two super-majority voting requirements, and the Capitol still stands. Our states are still functioning.

McConnell, McCain and Barrett also say that ending super-majority would harm America. I ask, how abiding by the fundamental principle of our republican democracy  simple majority vote  would harm America? I say ending a minority political party's veto over the majority of the Senate, the majority elected House, and the president would be good for America. Regardless who is in majority.

Regarding Barrett's comments on broad cooperation, and bipartisanship, all representative of our government should work for cooperation and bipartisanship. However, this country is not a pure democracy. It is a republican democracy, and our republican democracy was to be ruled by the simple majority of its citizens.

The Senate super-majority vote must be eliminated. It is a pox on the fundamental element of our way of government: simple majority vote. It meddles with the basic structure of our government.
Previously on #Alaskan Bush People season finale, the Browns are still troubled by Amis worsening condition. The kins matriarch has received treatment options for her worsening 3B lung cancer. However, she keeps on losing weight, and the doctors see this negatively which could affect the whole process of recovery.

Worse, if the Alaskan Bush People star loses another 5 pounds on her weight, the doctors will have to install a G-tube for her to survive. Thus, everything that matters now is the holistic restoration of her body mass to keep up with the whole treatment process.

Worst case scenario

The family asked Alaskan Bush People executive producers to interpret the treatment news they have received from UCLA Medical Center. EP Sheila McCormack relays that the doctors prescribe #Ami a radiation procedure. She explains that this radiation process should be done five days a week for about six weeks.

Then after the radiation, Ami will be required to go to another facility where they will put an IV in her, and she gets chemotherapy for about four hours. But the dilemma doesnt end there. The EP also reveals that there's a potential problem with Amis weight. The mother of seven currently weighs 94pounds, and if in case her weight count drops another 5 pounds, the doctors will be compelled to put her on a #Feeding Tube.

What are the Browns up to?

Meanwhile, the Alaskan Bush People patriarch is deeply worried about Amis health struggle amid receiving word of his wifes treatment.

He knows she was hurting pretty bad and expressed how it affects the whole family.

He also noted during last Wednesdays episode of ABP that their family is probably in a lot harder road than theyve ever faced and theres no doubt about it.

The Alaskan Bush People son Bam seconded his fathers sentiment. For him, whats going on in their family is the most challenging thing theyve gone through all throughout their time in the Alaskan Bush.

More importantly, because its happening to Ami and its real cancer.

He even shared that neither a house burning down, a boat sinking," nor "needing 5 stitches can be a bigger deal compared to the difficulty of having their mom sick.

Where are they exactly?

Meanwhile, I previously reported that the Browns are currently residing in Colorado  Will a new Browntown spring in Colorado?

[VIDEO] But, according to People, the family is currently residing somewhere in Southern California after they left the Browntown.

Catch "Alaskan Bush People" Season 7 on Discovery Channel every Wednesday at 9 PM.
"Days Of Our Lives" fans know that Abigail made a huge mistake when she divorced Chad and married Dario. Abigail is finally clear on just how big of a mistake it was as she sees that Dario has no limits on how far he will go to get Chad out of his wife's life.

The following will contain "Days of Our Lives" spoilers. If you want to be surprised by the storyline, stop reading now.

Dario is more dangerous than Abigail knows.

Viewers of "Days of Our Lives" know that with the truth out about Dario's illegal activities and Abigail is being blackmailed to stay married to him.

This isn't a good start to a happy marriage, but Dario is determined to get Abigail to forget about Chad.He doesn't realize that Abigail would never have given him a chance and helped him avoid deportation had she known he was a crook. Abigail is still very much in love with her ex-husband and refuses to let Dario destroy him.

According to "Celeb Dirty Laundry." Dario will be headed to jail soon. Abigail can't enjoy the break from him because she fears that he will tell the police about the picture of Chad standing over the body of Deimos with a knife protruding from his chest. She takes some precautions in an attempt to protect Chad and put a stop to the whole situation. Abigail has had enough of the criminal activity she has been living with.

A tight lid on Ron Carlivati script spoilers.

Ron Carlivati just took over the "Days of Our Lives" script writing and details are hard to come by, but we have a real clue of what is coming. Dario will get of jail somehow. He could have escaped, or he could have paid bail, but he is out no matter how the scenario plays out. Gabi learns the truth about her brother's marriage to Abigail - that it was only to avoid deportation.

She is upset and turns to Chad to vent and share the story. Of course, this sends Chad into action as he realizes Abigail is in danger because of Dario. He loves his ex-wife and plans to save her from Dario's evil clutches.

Dario changes the lives of the trio forever when he points a gun at Chad and pulls the trigger. Abigail jumps in front of him to protect him, taking the bullet herself.

At the end of July, "Days of Our Lives" fans will see Jennifer, JJ and Chad hold a vigil at the hospital, as Abigail hangs in the balance between life and death. It is rumored that Chad will reflect on his love for Abigail and his deepest desires to reunite his family. This is the long-awaited beginning of the Chabby reunion fans have been pleading for.
"Days Of Our Lives" spoilers for the current week reveal that Chad DiMera and Abigail Deveraux's relationship and feelings will continue to grow more and more intense. Although they are no longer together, it's getting harder and harder for these two to deny their love for each other. Chad will seemingly be wearing his heart on his sleeve, and when he bumps into Abigail's brother, JJ Deveraux, the conversation will get a bit heated. JJ will be able to tell just how much Chad is longing for Abby, and he'll warn his former brother-in-law to stay away from his sister, who has her own live now.

Abigail's life is spiraling out of control

However, Chad won't be able to stay away from Abigail. As many "Days of our Lives" fans know, Chad recently found out that Abby's new husband, Dario Hernandez, was the person stealing money from DiMera Enterprises, and he'll want to give Abigail a chance to handle the situation without going to the police, or getting revenge on Dario, which could hurt Abby. However, Kate now knows that it was Dario who was crossing them, and she'll want to do something about it. While Kate will try to put a plan into action, Andre, knowing Abigail's situation, will likely side with his brother Chad. This will put Kate in an awkward position, and she'll be forced to confront her husband over their disagreement.

Did Chad really kill Deimos?

Meanwhile, Abigail is dealing with some major drama. As "Days of our Lives" viewers recently found out she now knows about Dario's illegal activities, such as the fact that he's been counterfeiting money. When Abby confronted Dario about the scheme he tried to lie his way out of it, but Abby's proof left him with no choice.

Dario played the only card he had in his hand, which was telling Abigail that if she went to the police with the information against him, he would give them proof that Chad was the person who killed Deimos Kiriakis.

Blackmail leads Abigail to do something drastic?

Dario is now blackmailing Abigail for her silence, and after she realized that Dario has a photograph of Chad seemingly murdering Deimos, she has no choice.

Abby is in some big trouble. She doesn't want to stay married to Dario, a crook who could potentially be dangerous, but she also wants to protect the man she loves, Chad, who is also the father of her son, Thomas. "Days of our Lives" fans will see Abigail struggle with the situation before things finally reach their boiling point.
''Game of Thrones'' fifth episode of the seventh season ''Eastwatch'' has brought into attention some severe aspects Westeros will have to deal next. The episodes sketched some hard-to-imagine possible alliance for the sake of the living ones. Thus Daenerys Targaryen and Cersei Lannister may end up as allies against the army of the dead. But, up until that point, there is plenty of roads to cover, and a lot of hatches must be buried into the ground first. The previous episode witnessed the very first encounter of House Lannister's army and Daenerys fire force.

That scene with Drogon burning down to the ground the whole army had a certain level of epicness attached with it. With Jamie Lannister barely surviving, the strategies must be adapted for both sides.

Jon Snow made contact with Drogon which resulted in an epic scene

Daenerys Targaryen's biggest dragon was given a huge role in this seventh season. As expected, it was a matter of time until Jon Snow will come close to the supernatural creature. Returning to Dragonstone, Daenerys and her dragon landed outside the fortress area just where Jon Snow was standing scanning the sea. The dominant creature and the King of the North had quite a meeting, and even Daenerys seemed surprised of how well things turned out.

Caressing Drogon, Jon Snow has sealed the pact between him and Daenerys. Eventually, it seems that he didn't bend the knee in that cave.

Taking a quick look behind the Wall thought Brandon Stark's unique set of skills, it seems like the White Walkers are marching in the Wall's direction threatening to obliterate the entire living race from Westeros.

And Jon Snow is heading right into them as he needs a piece of evidence that the White Walkers are the real threat to the Realm. It's a bold strategy trying to unite Cersei and Daenerys to fight for a common cause.

Littlefinger is plotting on something while being in Winterfell

With Jon Snow out of Winterfell, Sansa Stark has the authority in her hands.

But Petyr Baelish also known as Littlefinger sees an opportunity to make a move for himself. Somehow, he seemed to have lured Arya Stark into something that is yet to be determined. While Sansa is struggling to keep things in order, the situation may escalate in Winterfell now that Arya has been caught in the middle of something shady. Judging by how the situation presents itself at the moment, there is a fragile balance in Westeros. With Lannisters and Daenerys at war, House Stark may act as the weighing element.
A drilling platform manufactured by Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co. [Photo by Liu Debin/For China Daily]

China Shipbuilding Industry Corp, one of the Chinese Navy's biggest contractors, announced debt-to-equity swaps which will see eight investors picking up stakes in two of its unlisted subsidiaries for an estimated 22 billion yuan ($3.27 billion).

It is the country's first defense-related industrial enterprise supervised by the central government to restructure its finances via such swaps.

Li Jin, chief researcher at the China Enterprise Research Institute, said: "Swaps could lower the company's leverage ratio and ease its financial burden by increasing capital adequacy. It will eventually promote CSIC's sustainable development."

China Cinda Asset Management Co Ltd and China Orient Asset Management Co Ltd, two of the eight investors, will contribute around 5 billion yuan and 2 billion yuan, respectively, toward servicing debt of CSIC's Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co Ltd and Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co Ltd, according to a recent filing made to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. In return, they would pick up equity in the two CSIC subsidiaries.

The other six investing companies will go in for straightforward cash-for-equity deals. They include State-owned enterprises Venture Capital Fund Co Ltd, Enterprises Structural Reform Fund Co Ltd, and China Life Insurance Group Co.

Their investment details will be released after receiving the regulatory approvals, the document said.

In 2016, CSIC reported a debt-to-asset ratio of 68.74 percent, almost bordering the red line set for manufacturing companies.

CSIC's latest debt-to-equity plan appears to suggest a merger with China State Shipbuilding Corp, another major defense-related company, may be possible, said Zheng Minggang, a senior analyst with Dongxin Securities Co Ltd.

"Any such merger would increase the two giants' operational efficiency and augment their capability to attract international orders," he said.

China has launched a slew of government guidelines and funds to reduce SOEs' high levels of debt and enhance their financial health. The debt-to-equity program is considered a significant and efficient way to tackle the debt woes.

Data from the Ministry of Finance show that by the end of June, SOEs' total liabilities amounted to 94.13 trillion yuan, up 11.4 percent from last year.

In terms of revenue, 91 central SOEs earned higher revenues in the first quarter of this year. And 54 of them, including defense-related industries, construction material companies, and those in pharmaceuticals and modern services, posted revenue rises of 10 percent or more.

Companies in sectors such as oil, steel and coal saw their revenues rise at least 40 percent, according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

Zou Shuo contributed to this story.
China will continue to refine the value-added tax reform pilot program to enable further economic transformation and upgrades, a State Council executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang decided on Friday.

The reform was first piloted in Shanghai in 2012. It was expanded nationwide in May 2016. China's VAT rate structure was further cut from four to three tiers (6 percent, 11 percent and 17 percent) last month, with tax rates for farm produce, tap water and books reduced to 11 percent from 13 percent.

"The full implementation of the VAT reform pilot program is a strong pillar of this administration's efforts to boost the effectiveness of the proactive fiscal policy and the supply-side structural reform," Li said. "One year on, the reform is paying off. Sectors across the board have seen their tax burden reduced. It did not come easy."

It was also decided at the meeting that the government will push forward legislation on the VAT, fine tune VAT arrangements for maximum results and secure progress through legislation.

"The VAT reform is a systematic project, and government departments should work in synergy. The VAT reform, besides reducing tax burdens for enterprises, can leverage institutional reforms and contribute to innovation, entrepreneurship, job creation and expansion of the industry chain," Li said.

"In the meantime, it is unifying the country's tax regime, expanding the tax base and improving the tax regime in both clarity and transparency," he added.

The total amount of tax cuts from the pilot program has reached 1.61 trillion yuan ($241.1 billion) as of June, including 85.12 billion yuan in tax cuts since the program's expansion in May 2016, according to the Ministry of Finance.

The services sector has received a significant boost, having grown by 7.8 percent and accounted for 51.6 percent of the GDP in 2016. Firms in the manufacturing sector have seen tax burdens reduced by 24 billion yuan since May 2016, spurring upgrades to the sector.

The reform also has given rise to innovation, entrepreneurship and development of new business models. Small firms have been the biggest beneficiary among all market entities.

Problems remain, though. The VAT rates are still more tiered than the international average. There are still inconsistencies in rates for goods and services and for different businesses in the same sector. Some sectors and taxpayers are still yet to enjoy full VAT deductions.

Those at the meeting on Friday decided that more training will be offered to familiarize taxpayers with new policies and bring about the reform's full benefits.

Authorities will work on service delivery by simplifying taxation procedures for greater efficiency and convenience to taxpayers, and promoting the application of electronic invoices.

"The tax reform is a fundamental and significant reform that will benefit economic development. We need to keep adjusting and improving the tax regime and solve problems that come along in a timely manner. Excessive taxation is off limits," the premier said.
To commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45) and the World Anti-Fascist War on Sept 3, students from a primary school in Qingdao city made a series of eggshell paintings which narrate stories of war heroes. They collected discarded eggshells and cleaned and dried them. Then they used compass points to carefully paste eggshell pieces on drawing boards.

Hu Baoqin, a primary school student in her fourth grade, is working on an eggshell painting which tells the story of war hero Wang Erxiao. [Photo by Zhang Jingang/Asianewsphoto]
Thirteen years ago, Penpa Drolkar was too busy baking bricks to harbor dreams of being lead dancer in a Tibetan opera troupe.

Today, she is among a group of performers that stage a spectacular show featuring ethnic singing and dancing at the renowned Tibetan Opera Art Center in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region.

Penpa Drolkar is with the Yuanda Migrant Workers' Troupe, which consists of 49 farmers and herdsmen from around Lhasa. None of them has ever received professional training, and many of Penpa Drolkar's peers used to bake bricks in factories.

"Many people can't remember our troupe's name, Yuanda, so they simply call us the brick bakers troupe because we used to fire bricks," she said, adding that Yuanda means "ambitious" in Chinese.

The troupe was formed in 2005. At first, it was a loose collection of a few migrant workers who were passionate about performing in their spare time. Performing helped them relax and brought joy and laughter to their factory co-workers.

"The troupe staged a few shows for the military and performed for free at construction sites for the crews on the Lhasa-Xigaze and Nyingchi-Lhasa railways. They were quite popular," said troupe leader Losang Jinba.

Their performances typically feature singing, dancing, skits and cross-talk, a traditional Chinese comedy style. As the performers were migrant workers, the audience felt close to and connected with them. When they started to become popular, the troupe began to perform paid shows in villages surrounding Lhasa.

"In the early days, we received coins and small notes for payment," said Liu Hua, deputy head of the troupe. "We realized that the money must be from poor residents in poverty stricken villages, so we just returned it."

Tibet has about 2.3 million farmers and herdsmen, accounting for 74.4 percent of its entire population. Many of them still live in poverty.

"Many villagers were just grateful," Liu said. "Now, whenever big events like Shoton Festival come, they simply request our shows."

The troupe has attracted the attention of professionals, too. Jamyang Gyatso, a director with the regional song and dance ensemble, was deeply moved by the migrant workers' passion and simplicity.

"I was surprised at what they delivered, but I also felt bad for the workers," he said. "They can sing and dance, but they needed better material, a signature performance that was distinctively the brick bakers'."

Jamyang Gyatso created a show titled Working between Heaven and Earth for the troupe. The show debuted at the Tibetan Opera Art Center last month to immense success.

But it was not easy creating a big show for amateur performers, he said. "For professionals, I can easily explain some movements and get the idea across to the actors within a few minutes, but for migrant workers, it could take a whole day for just one movement," he said. "One should try to help them understand the stories behind each dance."

But since the show is about workers, using worker performers like Pengpa Drolkar is necessary, he said.

The show has won critical acclaim. Tenzin Tsering, former head of the region's Ethnic Art Research Institute, said the actors "delivered like pros".

"They were born workers with an understanding of working lives, so their performance was natural, which is precious," he said.

Penpa Drolkar and her peers will perform in more Chinese inland cities. Tibetan opera shows like Princess Wencheng have had great success in the market in the past, but the brick bakers will find their own way to success, said Wei Dong, deputy head of Lhasa's cultural bureau.

"Princess Wencheng was created with significant historical background, but Working Between Heaven and Earth tells the stories of ordinary people," Wei said. "We hope that the show will come to represent Tibet."

Pengpa Drolkar added: "I hope that one day, I will also become a director. I want to teach girls like me to dance, and tell stories with movement."

Xinhua
British Prime Minister Theresa May has said that it is wrong for the London landmark Big Ben to go silent for four years.

The Elizabeth Tower which houses the Big Ben bell is scheduled to undergo four years of renovation. The bell will ring for the last time at noon on Aug 21 when the ringing mechanism will be cut.

Speaking in Portsmouth after a ceremony involving the new British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, May told reporters: "Of course we want to ensure people's safety at work but it can't be right for Big Ben to be silent for four years.

"And I hope that the Speaker, as the chairman of the House of Commons commission, will look into this urgently so that we can ensure that we can continue to hear Big Ben through those four years."

May's comments were more restrained than those of her Brexit minister, David Davis, who said on Tuesday that the silencing of Big Ben for such a long period was "mad".

The silencing of Big Ben was announced this week to the surprise of many, even though it has gone silent many times during its 157-year history.

The administrators of the Palace of Westminster, which houses the Houses of Parliament and the Elizabeth Tower, defended their actions, which they said were first agreed in 2015 by three separate committees of members or parliament.

They said in a statement: "Starting and stopping Big Ben is a complex and lengthy process. The striking hammer is locked and the bells can then be disconnected from the clock mechanism. The weights are lowered within the weight shaft to the base of the tower and secured in a safe position. The whole process takes around half a day to complete.

"Following a thorough assessment, experts have concluded that it would not be practical or a good use of public money to start and stop the bells each day, particularly as we cannot fully predict the times that staff will be working on this project."

The House of Commons website confirmed that the bells will stop as planned at noon on Aug 21 but added that they would be happy to hold further discussions on the duration of the silence. The sound of Big Ben's bongs became associated with Britain around the world during wartime BBC news broadcasts.

AP contributed to this story.

conal@mail.chinadailyuk.com
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The Ministry of Construction (MoC) and the South Korea International Co-operation Agency (KOICA) held a workshop in Ha Noi on Thursday to review implementation of the Green City Planning Decision Support System (GDSS) in Viet Nam.  Photo baoxaydung.vn

HA NOI  The Ministry of Construction (MoC) and the South Korea International Co-operation Agency (KOICA) held a workshop in Ha Noi on Thursday to review implementation of the Green City Planning Decision Support System (GDSS) in Viet Nam.

Under the project, which has been operating for more than half a year now, The South Korea Research Institute for Human Settlement and the Construction Ministrys Project Management Board, as well as the administrations of Thai Nguyen and Kien Giang provinces have compiled a set of green urban indicators and a GDSS to evaluate urban development nationwide.

Workshop participants said this would be the foundation for building a legal framework and guidance document for green city planning in Viet Nam.

They also discussed ways to improve project efficiency and expand it in the future.

The projects bigger aims are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen climate change adaptation and initiate reasonable and effective use of natural resources.

The project will be piloted in urban areas in Ha Noi and Thai Nguyen and Kien Giang provinces.

Viet Nam faces various serious urban problems including inadequate infrastructure and environmental degradation as a result of rapid economic development and urban population growth.  VNS
HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc expressed his hope that Thai businesses would make the most of co-operation and investment opportunities in Viet Nam, especially in the context of Viet Nam promoting mergers and acquisitions along with the equitisation of State-owned enterprises (SOEs).

He made the remarks while addressing the Viet Nam  Thailand Economic Co-operation Forum held in Bangkok on Friday. PM Phuc was attending the event as part of his three-day visit to Thailand from August 17-19 at the invitation of Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.

The forum, hosted by the Thai Business Association in Viet Nam, Thailands Kasikornbank (KBank) in co-operation with the Ministry of Planning and Investment of Viet Nam and the Vietnamese Embassy in Thailand, featured some 500 firms from both Thailand and Viet Nam.

Phuc said Viet Nam was stepping up merger and acquisition (M&A) activities in combination with equitisation of State enterprises in transport, infrastructure, food, agriculture, telecommunication, trade, services, tourism and construction.

The Vietnamese Government leader invited Thai businesses to become shareholders of Viet Nams State-owned groups and corporations.

According to the PM, since the two countries established a strategic partnership in 2013, co-operation between Viet Nam and Thailand has flourished, with bilateral trade turnover increasing from US$5.78 billion in 2009 to $12.5 billion in 2016.

Thailand now has 470 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects worth more than $8 billion in Viet Nam.

Vietnamese tourists to Thailand hit 830,000 while nearly 270,000 Thais visited Viet Nam.

According to Phuc, Viet Nam has a stable macro economy and has consistently recorded growth of about 6 per cent over the past 30 years.

It is home to about 23,000 FDI projects with a total investment of over $325 billion and has signed 12 free trade agreements and is negotiating another four deals to link its economy with 55 nations, including those from the G7 and G20.

The Vietnamese Government is intensifying efforts to reform institutions and legal framework while promoting public-private partnerships in infrastructure development and enticing foreign investors with flexible capital contributions and favourable mechanisms.

The country encourages startups and connects the countrys startup ecosystem with the region and the globe as well as creating the best conditions for foreign companies to invest in local startups.

PM Phuc affirmed that the Vietnamese Government would support foreign investors in the country in the spirit of win-win co-operation, adding that his government would develop infrastructure, train human resources and improve the business environment to fuel development.

At the forum, PM Phuc and Thai Deputy Prime Minister Prajin Juntong witnessed the signing of co-operation agreements between the two countries in power, hi-tech agriculture, goods distribution, sales of farm produce and construction.

The two leaders also witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Thailands Siam Cement Group and the Viet Nam National Oil and Gas Group on investment into Long Son Petrochemicals (LSP) Complex worth VN122.5 trillion ($5.4 billion) in the southern province of Ba Ria  Vung Tau.

Located some 100km from HCM City, LSP is the first petrochemical complex in Viet Nam. The project aims to develop a one million-tonne ethylene cracker with flexible gas and naphtha feed, creating an olefin capacity of up to 1.6 million tonnes per year.

Business meeting

After the forum, the PM met with leading Thai enterprises.

At the meeting, Phuc said the Vietnamese economy was worth more than $220 billion and the country is striving to become an ASEAN 4 level economy by 2020. Viet Nam is also in a golden population period, with 60 per cent of people in working age.

Thai business representatives thanked the Vietnamese government for creating favourable conditions for investors from Thailand and the ASEAN member states to join in SOEs equitisation.

They pledged to keep expanding business operations in Viet Nam in the fields of retail, food, farm produce manufacturing and processing, energy, tourism and transport.

Thai companies said they were also learning about Viet Nams tourist attractions and wanted to link up with Vietnamese airlines to increase tourist arrivals in the two countries.

Meeting Chairman of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand Kornrasit Pakchotanon, PM Phuc asked for accelerating the construction of a thermal power plant in the central province of Quang Tri.

Pakchotanon pledged to ensure environmental protection and use advanced technology in construction.

Meeting CEO of the Central Group Tos Chirathivat, Phuc hailed the firm as one of the largest retailers in the region, which is performing well in Viet Nam. He asked the group to bring more Vietnamese farm produce to Thai supermarkets.

Chirathivat said his company wanted to work with Vietnamese partners to do business in hotels, tourism and retail, adding that the Central Group is ready to sell Vietnamese fruits in Thai supermarkets.

During a reception for Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of KBank Banthoon Lamsam, the PM said the Vietnamese government wants KBank to continue partnering with the State Bank of Viet Nam, ministries and agencies to share experience in settling bad debts and help firms overcome difficulties.

Lamsam said KBank planned to launch a financial support model for Vietnamese businesses, part of efforts to help the Vietnamese government achieve its goal of having one million firms by 2020.

Talking with an executive from Siam City Cement Public Company Limited (SCCC), the PM suggested SCCC continue investing in industrial projects and construction materials using modern technology, as well as transfer technology to Vietnamese partners.  VNS
During the official visit to Thailand, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Viet Nams high-ranking delegation yesterday attended and cut the ribbon opening the second Vietnamese Goods Week in Thailand. Photo nongnghiep.vn

BANGKOK  During the official visit to Thailand, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Viet Nams high-ranking delegation yesterday attended and cut the ribbon opening the second Vietnamese Goods Week in Thailand.

The four-day event, which takes place at the Central Plaza Ladprao in Bangkok, attracted more than 40 Vietnamese firms in industries of food, household goods, fashion, footwear, accessories and souvenirs.

This is an opportunity for Vietnamese manufacturers to directly approach and understand the needs of Thai consumers. It also helps Vietnamese firms to have more information and visions to enhance the exports to the potential Thai market.

Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh said that the Vietnamese Goods Week in Thailand contributes to the sustainable growth of two-way trade between Viet Nam and Thailand. It is an important channel for introducing Vietnamese agricultural and food products to Thai consumers.

Besides, the week also helps Vietnamese enterprises understand consumer tastes and requirements of quality standards so that they can improve their competitive capacity to be able to better exploit the Thai market in particular and the international market in general, Anh said. - VNS
HCM CITY  Members of APECs Sub-committee on Customs Procedure (SCCP) met this morning (August 19) in HCM City to discuss ways to ensure trade security in the supply chain, with a focus on prevention of smuggling, commercial fraud, and counterfeit and imitation products, as well as border enforcement of intellectual property rights.

As many as 70 delegates from customs administrations of APEC economies, the APEC Secretariat and the Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) took part in the meeting today.

The participants also discussed the WTO agreement on trade facilitation; Authorised Economic Operator programmes; use of IT and risk management in customs and border-related activities; enforcement of intellectual property rights; and promotion of cross-border e-commerce.

To modernise customs procedures, the Common Action Plan (CAP), which SCCP submitted to the APEC Secretariat for adoption in 2016, aims to reduce the number of administrative procedures to save time and money for the APEC business community.

SCCPs objectives include improving connectivity and effectiveness in regional customs cooperation among APEC economies.  VNS
HCM CITY  Amending provisions on competition policy in free trade agreements (FTAs) and economic partnership agreements (EPAs) should be a top priority, participants said at the first working day of APECs Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI) at the third Senior Officials Meeting (SOM 3) now being held in HCM City.

Around 100 delegatee from 21 APEC-member countries attended the workshop, where experts and lawyers spoke about the benefits of establishing an amended chapter on competition in FTAs and EPAs and its impact on domestic economies based on empirical research.

Marie Sherylyn D Aquia, chair of the CTI, said There is a strong and complementary relationship between trade and competition policies. This is due to their similarity in objectives. Both trade and competition policies seek to enhance welfare by providing for more efficient allocation of resources, whether it is lowering trade barriers or promoting competition.

New, comprehensive economic or trade agreements now feature specific provisions or entire chapters to competition-related matters, she added.

Satoshi Ogawa, a lawyer specialising in competition issues in the OECD competition division, said Now as never before, it is important to include competition provisions in FTAs and EPAs in the globalised economy.

As international cooperation is needed to fight anti-competitive conduct beyond national borders, these amended provisions would benefit competition authorities and the business community, he added.

Meeting participants also discussed challenges facing each economy in negotiating the chapter on competition.

Competition laws and competition authorities are still new in some of the APEC economies. APEC is making guidelines and a database to share competition information among APEC members, said Hiroshi Kuro, senior deputy director of the FTA/EPA Negotiations Economic Partnership at the Investment Policy Division of the Economic Affairs Bureau at Japans Ministry of Foreign Affairs

APEC has an important role in promoting the competition chapter, he said.

CTI, established in November 1993 under the APEC Trade and Investment Framework, provides a forum for APECs 21 member economies to discuss trade and policy issues.  VNS
HCM CITY  Experts from APEC member economies on Saturday afternoon spoke about the need to invest in quality infrastructure at a workshop hosted by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) in HCM City.

The workshop was the second activity of APECs Committee of Trade and Investment held during the Senior Officials Meeting (SOM 3) and related meetings in the city.

Speaking at the workshop, Kazuko Ishigaki, director of MLITS international planning for the construction industry, said: As the APEC multi-year plan on infrastructure development and investment endorsed in 2013, well-designed, sustainable and resilient infrastructure enhances economic growth, boosts productivity and provides significant positive flow-on effects.

That is why APEC promotes a Connectivity Blueprint and other related initiatives to promote infrastructure development. This is being orchestrated with global trends, she added.

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference, she added that its important to fill the financial gap at first, but because of budget constraints, it is important to make the most of the investment.

Governments should invest in infrastructure in a smart and effective way. If we build fragile infrastructure, it will be easily damaged by disasters like floods and earthquakes. It is also important to design infrastructure in an effective way so that we do not waste any investment, she said.

The experts ideas and suggestions about improving the quality of infrastructure will be submitted to an APEC high-level meeting on quality infrastructure to be held in Tokyo in October.

Vu Thanh Son, an official of the Ministry of Construction, said the meeting was a good opportunity for Viet Nam to learn from developed economiesexperience in investing in quality infrastructure.

In an aim to attract more foreign investors, Viet Nam was making significant investments in infrastructure, he said, adding that it needs US$480 billion to develop infrastructure from now to 2020. VNS
The National Assembly Standing Committee discussed the draft of the Public 

Policy Law during its 13th meeting yesterday. Photo quochoi.vn

HA NOI  The National Assembly Standing Committee discussed the draft of the Public Policy Law during its 13th meeting yesterday.

NA member Tran Thi Quoc Khanh, head of the law drafting committee said that she proposed the Public Policy Law in 2013. In May, 2015, it was first put into the 13th NA resolution and was officially presented in the law building program by the 14th NA.

Khanh emphasised the importance of the draft in clarifying the relations and responsibilities among stakeholders in public policy; setting up a modern and transparent public service and establishing a foundation for civic engagement in public policy. On that basis, it will contribute to creating a positive impact on the relation between public and private sectors.

The draft includes seven chapters with 54 articles regulating general principles of public policy, administrative procedures and public policy services, e-government in public policy, relations and responsibilities of stakeholders in public policy.

The public policy draft law is the first project initiated by an individual in the history of Viet Nams NA. This is a challenging project which affects the national administration.

However, due to difficulties of time and human resources, the draft has its own disadvantages. To be specific, the drafts contents are simple and do not touch upon the drawbacks of present regulations and laws on public policy. Some articles are impractical and difficult to apply, deputies said.

To improve the draft, on the same day, the NAs Law Committee held a discussion session.

Nguyen Khac inh, Head of the NAs Law Committee said that the need for the law is not persuasive. Also, it does not specify disadvantages of the present administration. Therefore, the draft needs consideration in order to avoid overlaps with other regulations.

NA Deputy Chairman o Ba Ty said that the government has not had any official opinion on the draft. Therefore, it will be difficult for the NA to evaluate articles in the draft.

He advised the compiling committee to distinguish regulations in the draft from academic concepts. Additionally, they need to ensure the draft and other regulations on administration are consistent.

Ha Ngoc Chien, Head of the Ethnic Council said that Public Policy was not necessary at present. Besides, NA Chairman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan emphasised the need to build up a proper concept of public policy and advised the compiling committee to adjust articles in the draft.

Other contents of public service management mentioned in the draft, such as e-government, were also discussed at the meeting.  VNS
BANGKOK  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc yesterday met with President of Thailands Privy Council Prem Tinsulanonda and President of Thailands National Legislative Assembly Pornpetch Wichitcholchai as part of his ongoing visit to Thailand.

At the meeting with President of Thailands Privy Council Tinsulanonda, PM Phuc hailed the Thai Royal Familys contribution to the development of friendship and co-operation with Viet Nam in recent years, and thanked the Royal Family for supporting the Vietnamese community in the country.

Tinsulanonda said that the Thai Royal Family and Government treasures ties with Viet Nam, considering Viet Nam an important partner in the region, noting that Viet Nam is the only strategic partner of Thailand in ASEAN.

He expressed delight at the signing of many co-operation agreements on the occasion of PM Phucs visit, saying he believes the visit will deepen the strategic partnership between the two countries.

He also noted that the Vietnamese community had contributed to the development of Thailand as well as the growth of the partnership between the two countries.

At the meeting with President of the Thai National Legislative Assembly Wichitcholchai, PM Phuc congratulated Thailand on its new Constitution, adding he believes Thailand will successfully hold upcoming elections.

He suggested that legislative bodies of both sides maintain delegations exchanges to increase information sharing and mutual understanding, while co-ordinating closely in building the ASEAN Community through different channels, including the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly.

The PM also proposed that the Thai side open its door wider for Vietnamese goods and encourage Thai investors to invest in Viet Nam.

For his part, Wichitcholchai said that the Vietnamese Government leaders visit would create new momentum for the development of the strategic partnership between the two countries, especially in economics, trade and investment.

He agreed to beef up ties between the two legislative bodies through promoting the role of the two countries friendship parliamentarian groups.  VNS
Vice Chairman of the National Assembly (NA) Uong Chu Luu (R) receives Secretary General of the Mongolian Parliament Office Tsend Tsolmon in Ha Noi yesterday. Photo quochoi.vn

HA NOI  Viet Nam always treasures and wants to consolidate and further enhance traditional relations with Mongolia, Vice Chairman of the National Assembly (NA) Uong Chu Luu said.

Luu made the statement during his reception in Ha Noi yesterday for Secretary General of the Mongolian Parliament Office Tsend Tsolmon, who has been on a five-day working visit to Viet Nam.

He highlighted that achievements in bilateral relations over the past six decades would lay the foundation for the two sides to promote co-operation in a more practical and effective manner.

The leader hoped that the two countries would maintain high-level meetings and visits to enhance friendship and mutual understanding between the Vietnamese and Mongolian people, increase political trust and expand co-operation.

Viet Nam and Mongolia should coordinate closely in issues of common concern and support each other at regional and international forums, he said.

For his part, Tsend Tsolmon expressed his delight at the positive development and close coordination between the two countries in the past.

He hoped that the National Assembly Office of Viet Nam and the Mongolian Parliament Secretariat would strengthen co-operation, focusing on sharing experience, the application of information and technology as well as communications for parliamentary activities.  VNS
National Assembly Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong (R) receives Chairwoman of the Mexican Senates Foreign Relations Committee Gabriela Cuevas Barron in Ha Noi yesterday. Photo quochoi.vn

HA NOI  Viet Nam and Mexico need to promote co-operation between their parliamentary friendship groups, National Assembly Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong said while receiving Chairwoman of the Mexican Senates Foreign Relations Committee Gabriela Cuevas Barron in Ha Noi yesterday.

Expressing delight at the development of bilateral relations in economy, politics, culture and society, Phong affirmed that Mexico is Viet Nams leading trade partner in Central America.

While lauding Senator Barrons candidacy for President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Phong said that with her experience, competence and leadership capacity, she would receive great support from IPU member parliaments.

For her part, the Mexican Senator said she had been impressed by Vietnamese people and their achievements in national construction and development during three visits to the country.

This visit would create opportunities for both sides to exchange views on bilateral and multilateral issues, she said, adding that Mexico expects Viet Nam to back its candidacy for IPU chairmanship for 2017-2020.

She also hoped that the two countries would enhance collaboration in IPU activities in the future.

Barron on the same day met with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh.

Minh said that co-operation between Vietnamese and Mexican legislative bodies had contributed to the development of bilateral relations, adding that the Vietnamese Government offers full support for increasing parliamentary co-operation with Mexico.

Praising the growth of Viet Nam  Mexico relations in politics, trade and co-operation at international organisations and multilateral forums, the Deputy PM asked Mexico to help expand the ties, which would contribute to the success of the APEC Year 2017 and Economic Leaders Week in Viet Nam.

For her part, Barron stressed that Mexican leaders and the Senate valued and wanted to bolster comprehensive co-operation with Viet Nam.  VNS
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship to hold event

This service, led by Ronya Hoblit, Liz Loos, Liz Anderson and Karen Van Fossan with music by Elicia Faul, at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship and Church, 818 E. Divide Ave., in Bismarck, will be an opportunity to hear the latest news from UU churches around the world  and from this year's General Assembly. Discussion on the theme of "Why We Love to be UUs (and All the Newest News from UU General Assembly" includes engaging the emerging, multicultural spirit of Unitarian Universalism, touching on a range of ideas for revising the 7 Principles and learning a new song or two.
HCM CITY  APEC economies are strengthening their cross-border efforts to fight money laundering and bribery cases in addition to other corruption activities, participants said at the Anti-Corruption Authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies meeting held this morning in HCM City

Eighty delegates from 21 APEC-member economies discussed how to improve international cooperation in bribery cases, repatriation of fugitives, and recovery of stolen assets.

Step-by-step guides on both informal and formal cross-border cooperation in bribery and ongoing prosecution cases are also part of the APEC effort to curb corruption.

The first meeting of the APEC Network of Anti-Corruption Authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies was held in China in 2014.

This afternoon, members of the APEC Anti-corruption and Transparency Working Group (ACTWG) will meet at the APEC Senior Officials Conference (SOM-3) now being held in the city.  VNS
HCM CITY -- Anti-corruption authorities and law enforcement agencies from 21 APEC member economies vowed to strengthen measures to fight money laundering and bribery at a workshop held on Aug 19 during the APEC Senior Officials Meeting (SOM 3) in HCM City.

The 80 delegates at the 4th Meeting of the APEC Network of Anti-Corruption Authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies agreed that corruption erodes social integrity and fairness, undermines government accountability and public trust, and impedes healthy economic growth.

Speaking at the meeting, Nguyen Van Thanh, Government deputy inspector general and chair of the meeting, said: Greater cooperation is needed in combating money laundering and recovering stolen assets, and promoting international cooperation in bribery cases, repatriation of fugitives, and informal international cooperation.

I believe that our deliberations at this meeting will facilitate direct connections among law enforcement agencies, and create a platform for international cooperation in information exchange, mutual legal assistance, extradition, asset recovery and joint investigation of corruption cases, he added.

Corruption in Viet Nam had caused resource losses, reducing the efficiency of public investment, destroying trust of investors, and weakening national competitiveness, Thanh said.

Peru, an APEC member economy, for example, has made great progress in fighting corruption by strengthening international cooperation and participating in global anti-corruption activities, according to a report from Perus High-Level Anti-Corruption Commission.

Corruption is one of the main threats and vulnerabilities that allow the commission of acts of laundering and terrorist financing, the report said.

Also speaking on the sidelines of the workshop, Denis Kunev, head of the Organisation and Analytics Department at the Investigative Committee from the Russian Federation, said: We expect stronger commitment and cooperation among the member economies in the Asia Pacific region to fight corruption.

The meeting provided an opportunity for member economies to speak about challenges faced by law enforcement agencies in fighting money laundering and recovering assets related to corruption cases, Kunev told Viet Nam News. It had a lot of useful information on anti-corruption, which we can use for training investigators in Russia.

The Network of Anti-Corruption Authorities and Law Enforcement Agencies was established at the 17th APEC Anti-Corruption and Transparency Working Group Meeting in Indonesia in 2013.

The network, whose first meeting was held in China in 2014, aims to enhance informal cross-border cooperation between agencies responsible for investigations and prosecutions of corruption, bribery, money laundering and illicit trade, and the identification and return of the proceeds of those crimes.

The Anti-Corruption and Transparency Working Groups Pathfinder Dialogue IV was also held on Saturday. Corruption as a driver of illegal logging and the use of anti-corruption activities by customs offices dealing with the forest trade were the main topics discussed.

The dialogue will resume on Aug 20, with focus on anti-corruption in wildlife trafficking and ways to detect and disrupt wildlife trafficking using anti-money laundering and asset confiscation techniques, protocols and good practices of effective international cooperation and mutual legal assistance.  VNS
HA NOI  Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and a high-ranking delegation paid an official visit to Thailand from August 17-19 at the invitation of Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand Prayut Chan-o-cha. During the visit, the two sides issued a joint statement. Following is the full text of the joint statement:

1. His Excellency Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and his wife paid an official visit to Thailand from August 17-19, 2017 at the invitation of His Excellency General (Ret.) Prayut Chan-ocha, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand.

2. Prime Minister Phucs delegation included His Excellency Mai Tien Dung, Minister  Chairman of the Government Office; His Excellency Mr. Tran Tuan Anh, Minister of Industry and Trade; His Excellency Mr. Chu Ngoc Anh, Minister of Science and Technology; His Excellency Mr. Nguyen Xuan Cuong, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development; His Excellency Mr. Truong Minh Tuan, Minister of Information and Communications, His Excellency Mr. Le Minh Hung, Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam, as well as other distinguished representatives from various ministries and agencies.

3. During the visit, Prime Minister Phuc was accorded a ceremonial welcome and had a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Prayut, who hosted dinner in Prime Minister Phucs honour. Prime Minister Phuc paid courtesy calls on President of Legislative Committee; President of Privy Council General Prem Tinsulanonda and met with Chairman of Thailand  Vietnam Friendship Association, Mr. Prachuab Chaiyasan; CEO of leading Thai companies, and attended the opening ceremony of the Vietnamese Week in Thailand exhibition, held to promote Vietnamese products in Thailand. In Nakhorn Phanom, Prime Minister Phuc and his delegation visited President Ho Chi Minhs Memorial Site, met with Vietnamese communities and attended the Meeting on Economic Connectivity, held to strengthen the investment and connectivity in Northeastern of Thailand.

4. The two Prime Ministers witnessed the signing of the following Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) and agreements: (i) Agreement between the Government of the Kingdom of Thailand and the Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on Cooperation on Science, Technology and Innovation; (ii) MOU between the Ministry of Commerce of Thailand and the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam on Economic and Trade Cooperation; (iii) MOU between the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society of the Kingdom of Thailand and the Ministry of Information and Communications of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on Cooperation in the Field of Posts, Telecommunications, Information and Digital Technology; (iv) MOU on Cooperation between the State Bank of Vietnam and the Bank of Thailand; (v) MOU on the Establishment of Sister Cities between the Province of Trat and the Peoples Committee of Ca Mau Province; (vi) Agreement on Legal Fees between the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam and EGAT International Company Limited; (vii) MOU between Vietnam Oil and Gas Group and the Siam Cement Public Company Limited; (viii) MOU between PetroVietnam Ca Mau Fertilizer JSC, PetroVietnam Fertilizer and Chemicals Corporation, Binh Son Refining and Petro Chemicals Company Limited and SCG Chemicals Company Limited; (ix) MOU between SCIC Investment Company Limited and Kasikorn Bank Public Company Limited; (x) Corporation on Bac Lieu/Ca Mau Wind Power Project 700 MV between Super Energy Group Company Limited and Cong Ly Limited Company.

Advancing Thailand  Vietnam Strategic Partnership

5. Both Prime Ministers held wide-ranging discussions on bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest. Prime Minister Prayut and Prime Minister Phuc reviewed and expressed great satisfaction with the development of bilateral relations. The two Prime Ministers welcomed the substantial progress the two countries have made according to the Plan of Action Implementing the Thailand  Vietnam Strategic Partnership (2014  2018), and agreed to expand and deepen their cooperation in advancing their strategic partnership.

6. Both parties emphasized their commitment and determination to strengthen their bilateral relationship based on mutual respect, mutual understanding and mutual benefit at all levels and in all areas.

7. The two Prime Ministers appreciated the regular exchanges of high-level visits and continued cooperation through the existing bilateral mechanisms, and agreed on tentative schedules for the organisation of the 4th Joint Cabinet Retreat (JCR) in early 2018, preceded by the 3rd Joint Commission on Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC), the 3rd Foreign Ministers Retreat (FMR), and the 3rd Joint Trade Committee (JTC). They also welcomed the successful outcome of the 9th Joint Working Group on Political and Security Cooperation (JWG on PSC) recently held during 16  19 July 2017 and other bilateral mechanisms.

Strengthening Cooperation for Peace and Security

8. Both sides highly appreciate the fruitful outcome of bilateral defence cooperation over the years, and reaffirmed the commitment to further promote cooperation through maintaining exchange of high-level visits, Dialogue on Defence Policy, young officers interaction, training, exchange of defence intelligence. The two sides also agreed to hold regular consultation and close coordination in the multilateral issues, particularly in the framework of ASEAN and between ASEAN with other partners.

9. The two Prime Ministers exchanged views on global and regional security. They reaffirmed their commitment to enhance defence cooperation, intelligence information sharing, and training courses, and agreed to intensify bilateral efforts, cooperation and coordination at all levels to combat transnational crimes, in particular trafficking in narcotic drugs, trafficking in persons, illegal migration, arms smuggling, terrorism and cybercrime.

10. The two sides emphasized the need to effectively implement the existing agreements/MOUs and maintain the frequency meeting of related security cooperation mechanisms. Both sides agreed to continue the close collaboration in ASEAN frameworks such as AMMTC/SOMTC, ASOD, ASEANAPOL, INTERPOL.

11. In that light, the two sides agreed to negotiate Extradition Treaty and the Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters. Both sides expressed the willingness to implement the 2010 Treaty between Thailand and Vietnam on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons.

12. Both sides reaffirmed their commitments not to allow any individual or organization to use the territory of one country to conduct activities against the other.

13. The Prime Ministers reaffirmed the importance of strengthening cooperation and sharing of experiences in order to prevent and suppress illegal, unreported, unregulated (IUU) fishing in their respective countries, including exchanging information on maritime security. In this regard, both sides also commended the ongoing joint Navy patrol, the recent nomination of the Point of Contact (POC) between Thailand Maritime Enforcing Coordination Center (THAI- MECC) and Vietnams Coast Guard, as well as the cooperation between agencies through existing bilateral mechanisms, including the Joint Working Group to cooperate to address the illegal fishing matters. The Prime Minister of Thailand expressed firm support for Vietnams recent initiative in preventing and suppressing illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The Prime Minister of Vietnam welcomed Thailands assistance in sharing Thailands experience of the combat against IUU fishing with Vietnam.

14. The two Prime Ministers welcomed enhanced cooperation between Vietnam coastguard and Thai-MECC and agreed to finalize the MOU on Agriculture Cooperation and the MOU on establishment of hotline communication on fisheries at sea between the two countries. They encouraged line agencies to fully utilise the existing mechanisms / hotlines, and to expedite the negotiation and looked forward to the conclusion of the MOU on setting the hotline between the Inter  Ministerial Working Group 689 of Vietnam and the Thai Working Group on Combating IUU Fishing of Thailand.

Strengthening cooperation in the legal and judicial field

15. Both sides reaffirmed their commitments to further promoting cooperation in the legal and judicial field in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Justice of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Ministry of Justice of the Kingdom of Thailand signed in Ha Noi on 23rd March 2015 and expedited negotiation and conclusion of the Agreement on mutual judicial assistance in civil matters between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Kingdom of Thailand.

Expanding and Strengthening Economic Cooperation

16. Both Prime Ministers expressed appreciation for the growing trade and investment ties between Thailand and Vietnam. They reiterated their commitment towards the bilateral trade target of 20 billion USD by 2020. The two leaders agreed to task agencies concerned to work closely to ensure that the target goal would be achieved, taking into account Vietnams and Thailands markets growth potential.

17. The two leaders commended the friendly coordination between the private sectors of both countries on the export of rice. Both sides agreed that it is important to facilitate the two-way trade, as well as to strengthen trade promotion between the two countries.

18. The Thai side expressed appreciation for Vietnams recent granting of import permits for Thai longans and lychees and looked forward to the granting of import permits for Thai rambutans and mangoes in the near future. The Vietnamese side also expressed appreciation for the granting of import permits for lychees, longans, and mangoes from Vietnam by the Thai side in 2016. The Thai side informed the Vietnamese side that Vietnams recent additional request for import permits for rambutans, pineapples, custard apples, star apples and pomeloes is under positive consideration of the Thai side.

19. The two Prime Ministers expressed appreciation for Thai private sectors initiatives to share experiences in product branding and development for Vietnamese local products and handicrafts. Both sides recognized the benefits of establishing one stop export service centres, and therefore are willing to share lessons learned and best practices as gestures of mutual support.

20. The two Prime Ministers commended the active and extensive connection between Thai and Vietnamese private sectors, especially in creating and nurturing the business networks of the start-ups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the young entrepreneurs between both countries, which will contribute to the stronger economic growth of both countries. The Thai side welcomed more Vietnamese investment into Thailand.

21. Both sides agreed to promote and strengthen cooperation in the area of trade through frequent exchange of information and experiences under bilateral, regional and multilateral trade frameworks.

Consolidating and Advancing Investment

22. The two Prime Ministers highly appreciated the potential of both countries as strategic partners to prosper together. Both sides reaffirmed the willingness to link bilateral trade to bilateral investment, particularly the sectors emphasizing Vietnams and Thailands strengths as an important hub for the sub-regional production and supply chain.

23. The Thai side reaffirmed the determination to further support the substantial investment of Thai private sector, particularly in fields fundamental to Vietnams economic growth, such as, industrial estate development, energy, construction materials, and banking, tourism, garments and textiles, chemical manufacture, petrochemicals, agricultural and food processing, electronics and automotive components. The Thai side also reiterated the importance of Vietnam as an essential manufacturing base for Thai businesses in the region and the rest of the world. Both Prime Ministers agreed, in this regard, to assign their agencies concerned to continue to facilitate greater flows of investment in these areas, as well as to resolve any impeding factors.

24. The two leaders expressed appreciation that the Thai private sectors have demonstrated the long-term vision and determination to develop a business model with corporate social responsibility to the Vietnamese local communities, particularly in contributing to the improvement of infrastructure, health and education of local communities in Vietnam.

Enhancing Labour Cooperation

25. The two sides discussed further enhancing of bilateral labour cooperation. The two sides agreed to work closely to facilitate the import of Vietnamese workers in construction and fishery in accordance to the Memorandum of Understanding on the Employment of Vietnamese Workers and the Agreement of Employment of Vietnamese Workers signed in July 2016 and took note of Vietnams request that the Thai side will receive Vietnamese workers in services sector and factories

Extending Greater Connectivity

26. The two leaders emphasized the potential of a well-linked Mekong sub-region as the hub that connects mainland South East Asia to the rest of Asia and the world. The two Prime Ministers expressed their determination to intensify cooperation in promoting multi-modal transportation linkages, including land, sea and air, between the two countries and within the Mekong sub-region. Both Prime Ministers agreed to expedite the development of the scheduled bus service connecting Thailand  Laos PDR  Vietnam via Road 9 and Road 12, as well as the development of Coastal Shipping connecting Thailand  Cambodia  Vietnam. Both leaders agreed to encourage the private sectors to urgently work together to find a business model which will benefit all parties concerned. The Vietnamese side will host the second tripartite working group meeting to develop coastal shipping routes in the third quarter of 2017.

27. On air connectivity, both leaders welcomed new flight route connecting Thailand and Vietnam, namely, the Quang Binh  Chiang Mai route.

Strengthening people to people links:

28. The Two Prime Ministers took note with appreciation that cooperation in the field of culture and people to people links has been broadly intensified. In order to enhance the role of this area, the two sides agreed to successfully implement the Joint Action Program on Tourism Cooperation in the period of 2017-2018; fully support the roles and activities of the Thailand  Vietnam and the Vietnam  Thailand Friendship Associations and encouraged further establishment of sister cities between provinces of the two countries. The two Prime Ministers welcomed enhanced interactions between the two peoples.

Reinvigorating Technical Cooperation for Sustainable Development

29. The two Prime Ministers appreciated the close cooperation between the two countries in areas of technical cooperation and development. Both Prime Ministers welcomed further cooperation on the teaching of Thai and Vietnamese languages, including teaching Thai and Vietnamese at educational institutions in respective countries. The Thai side reaffirmed Thailands willingness to host the 11th Thailand and Vietnam Technical Cooperation Meeting this year.

30. Both leaders emphasized the importance of working towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with the Thai side expressing readiness to share its best practices and experiences with Vietnam, in particular the localizing SDGs by beginning at the community level, engaging all stakeholders and forging and promoting partnership for SDGs based on the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP for SDGs Partnership) which is the initiative launched by Thailand in its chairmanship of G77 in 2016.

31. Both sides agreed to enhance cooperation on science and technology on the basis of the signed Agreement between the Government of Vietnam and the Government of Thailand on Cooperation on Science, Technology and Innovation.

Engaging the Region and the World

32. The two Prime Ministers exchanged frank and candid views on regional issues of common interest. They shared their visions and commitment towards enhancing the two countries bilateral cooperation in international fora, with a particular emphasis on strengthening cooperation in various Mekong sub-regional frameworks, ACMECS, ASEAN, APEC and the UN. Noting the 50th Anniversary of ASEAN in 2017, both Prime Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining and promoting ASEANs centrality in the regional architecture that is inclusive and effective. The two Prime Ministers expressed their support of ASEANs Community building efforts and its strategic goals in the regional and global landscape. Prime Minister Prayut also reaffirmed Thailands commitment to support Vietnams 2017 APEC Chairmanship and looked forward to attending the APEC Summit held in Da Nang in November 2017.

33. The two Prime Ministers emphasized the importance of effective management of the Mekong River as well as its sustainable use as an important venue towards a balanced approach between economic benefits and environmental preservation while ensuring the well-being of its peoples.

34. Recognizing the economic potential of the sub-region, the two Prime Ministers welcomed Thailands proposed ACMECS Master Plan as a new working guideline towards a comprehensive connectivity of the sub-region. In this regard, the Thai side also proposed in principle the Joint Development Strategy, which is a bilateral mapping of the future economic cooperation between Thailand and Vietnam complimentary to the ACMECS Master Plan, which Thailand will further present to Vietnam.

35. The two Prime Ministers reaffirmed the importance of maintaining peace, security and stability, as well as safety and freedom of navigation in and over-flight above the South China Sea/East Sea, which are in the interest of all countries within and outside the region, as it is a fundamental condition for growth, development and prosperity. Both Prime Ministers emphasized the need for all parties to ensure the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) in its entirety; to build, maintain and enhance mutual trust and confidence; to respect the principles of no use of force and the exercise of self-restraint; and to resolve their differences and disputes through peaceful means, in accordance with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The two Prime Ministers also reaffirmed their support for the ASEAN - Chinas early conclusion of the Code of Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea (COC). Both leaders shared the view that the ultimate goal should be for the South China Sea to be a sea of peace, stability and sustainable development.-VNS
HA NOI  The spread of dengue fever has begun showing signs of slowing down in Ha Noi, which recorded a huge number of patients over the past few months, according to the Ha Noi Department of Health.

Ha Noi was second nation-wide after HCM City in terms of the number of infections, reported the department at a meeting with the Ministry of Health on Thursday.

It added that from January 1 to August 16, the capital city recorded dengue in 17,027 patients, seven of whom died.

Last week, the city recorded 3,440 new cases of dengue fever, seven less than the previous week, meaning that the spread of the dengue fever showed signs of a slowdown, according to the departments Deputy Director Hoang uc Hanh.

The outbreak has struck 12 districts in Ha Noi, namely ong a, Hoang Mai, Hai Ba Trung, Thanh Xuan, Ha ong, Cau Giay, Thanh Tri, Ba inh, Nam Tu Liem, Thanh Oai, Thuong Tin and Hoan Kiem.

Hanh said these districts had been placed on red alert for dengue fever. About 92 per cent of dengue patients are from these areas.

As it had been raining often in Ha Noi, it was difficult to use measures to control the disease, Hanh said.

From now until the end of August, the city plans to conduct a large-scale anti-mosquito spraying campaign, focusing on crowded areas such as markets, schools, construction sites, abandoned plots and houses. Residents will be informed before the activity is undertaken.

In areas with a lot of traffic, large spraying machines will be used at night, while small sprayers will be used at households in the daytime. Ha Noi has been supplied with 30 small spraying machines and 300 litres of chemicals for the campaign.

Tran ac Phu, head of the ministrys preventive medicine department, said the country had recorded 90,626 dengue cases since the beginning of 2017, a year-on-year rise of 67.8 per cent, including 24 fatalities.

At the meeting, Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien ordered more chemical spraying to kill mosquito larvae, especially at hospitals, schools and construction sites. She also instructed that special training sessions on treating dengue in adults and children be conducted for health workers.

Tien asked the preventive medicine department, the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology and the National Institute of Malariology Parasitology and Entomology to start more training courses on epidemiology for medical stations at grassroot levels.

Dengue fever is a viral infection transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito. There is no specific treatment for dengue.

Patients who develop a fever of 39-40 degree Celsius lasting for two to seven days and exhibit symptoms such as headache and rashes should visit the hospital for diagnosis and treatment.  VNS
The location of the Cai Lay Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) toll station on National Highway No 1 was appropriate, according to Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Ngoc ong. Photo zing.vn

HA NOI  The location of the Cai Lay Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) toll station on National Highway No 1 was appropriate, according to Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Ngoc ong.

The official made the declaration at a feisty meeting on Thursday, which featured pointed questions from local media on the toll station in Tien Giang Province.

The toll station was temporarily suspended from operation on Tuesday due to strong opposition from drivers on August 13 and 14, only two weeks after it opened on August 1 with fees set at VN35,000 ($1.5) to VN180,000 ($7.8), depending on the vehicle.

Drivers complained that the location of the toll station was inappropriate. The station is located on National Highway No 1 but collects fees for a 12-km bypass of the Cai Lay Town and some drivers only travel on the highway not the bypass.

To protest the fees on August 13, drivers used small notes to pay the fees, causing traffic jams for hours at the toll station, reported Giao thong (Transport) online newspaper.

Speaking at the meeting, ong said the toll stations location belonged to a project with two components. The first component was to improve the quality of a 26.4-km section of National Highway No 1. The second component was to construct the 12-km bypass of Cai Lay Town.

During the approval process of the project, the ministry received approval from the provincial Peoples Committee, the provincial Peoples Council, the provincial delegation of National Assembly deputies and the Ministry of Finance for the location of the toll station, he said.

Nguyen Van Huyen, General Director of the Directorate for Roads of Viet Nam, said the ministry had to combine the two components into a project to ensure the feasibility of the project, as no investor would pay for the bypass as a separate project.

Additionally, road maintenance fees currently being collected from road users were not enough to maintain national highways, he said.

About VN10 trillion ($440 million) is collected for the road maintenance fund each year, while about VN23 trillion ($1.01 billion) is needed to maintain the national highway system, according to Huyen.

If the location of the toll station is not set here, the project would still be on paper, he said.

Reduce fees

In response to the strong opposition of drivers, the ministry on Wednesday worked with the provincial administration and decided to reduce fees by half for vehicles of transport companies in Phu Nhuan, My Thanh Nam, Binh Phu and Phu An communes in Cai Lay District from September 10. Other vehicles in the four communes will be exempt from the fees.

Therefore, the question becomes how long the payback period for the project will take, with period originally scheduled to be about six years.

Nguyen Danh Duy, head of the ministrys Public-Private Partnership Department, said the payback period would be re-calculated based on the number of vehicles using the station.

If the fees were reduced, the payback period was estimated at 12-14 years, he added.

The period would be adjusted every two years after the ministry re-checked the number of vehicles passing through the station, he said.

Still dissatisfaction

Nguyen Van Thanh, chairman of the Viet Nam Automobile Transportation Association said the project also improved the quality of the 26.4-km section of the National Highway No 1, so they established the toll station on the national highway instead of the bypass.

But its inappropriate, he said.

A BOT project meant the road was newly built, but the investor only upgraded a section and built another road then collected under the BOT project, causing the anger of road users, he said.

Furthermore, the fees were believed to be too high for a two-lane road just running 12km, at VN35,000 ($1.5) to VN180,000 ($7.8), while a 40km stretch on the Trung Luong-HCM City Highway with six lanes only costs VN40,000 ($1.7).

Thanh said road users still wanted the ministry to move the toll station to the bypass. VNS
HA NOI  Dr Nguyen Thi Chinh, a leading researcher in mushroom cultivation and fibrous tissue production, has a laboratory in her own house.

Equipped with all kind of machines  grinder, blender, dryer, packaging machine, as well as fermenting pots and scaffolds, Chinh said the private laboratory helps facilitate her research process.

Back when I was working in universities, our research laboratories were so small they could only be used for students and interns, she said.

I didnt have much equipment at first, but then I used the money earned from selling products from my research to buy new ones.

The most important thing is that I have a laboratory at hand to use whenever I want, since mushroom experiments can require attention at any time of the day.

Alongside the Governments million-dollar support to public laboratories at institutions and universities over the last decade, private and foreign enterprises have also been working to develop their own research establishments.

These private laboratories have come to play an important role in scientists research and development process and serve practical production purposes. A number of established scientists have claimed that they would not have achieved certain successes if it had not been for state-of-the-art research equipment and facilities provided by these laboratories.

Not only have scientists been taking advantage of private laboratories, farmers in different localities have also caught up with the trend. One example is farmers in a Lat City in the Central Highlands province of Lam ong, whove produced sunflower, carnation, potato and banana seeds using tissue culture in their own laboratories.

Although its not cheap to build, owning a private laboratory has high economy efficiency since it allows us to generate our own seeds, said farmer Le Van Hai at the citys Thai Phien Flower Market.

We can also control plant diseases and eliminate weak seeds to meet the markets demands, he said.

The province has about 50 tissue culture laboratories that produce an average of 30 million vegetable and flower seeds per year for production and high-tech research, said Nguyen Van Son, director of the provinces agricultural department. Most of them are private-owned, he added.

The demand for standardised testing and calibration laboratories is higher than ever since enterprises are required to meet certain requirements in order to compete in global markets, said Nguyen Huu Thien, chairman of the Viet Nam Association of Testing Laboratories (VINALAB).

However, it is a challenging task to take advantage of existing laboratories in the country, since it requires a lot of collaboration among different national and international organisations and laboratories to upgrade these to international standards, according to Thien.

With the current state of finances, neither equipping these laboratories with state-of-the-art facilities nor importing million-dollar equipment are feasible in the short run, and their operations are stagnating as a result.

A May 2017 decision by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) to grant financial autonomy to laboratories was a welcome move, Thien said, explaining that it would lessen financial burden on the Government and enables scientists to establish their own laboratories to meet global market demands.  VNS
HCM CITY Eliminating illegal timber from supply chains and the global timber trade requires the use of best practices and tools that can precisely identify illegal products, experts said at a two-day workshop held during the third APEC Senior Officials Meeting (SOM-3), which began yesterday in HCM City.

Dr Nguyen Van Ha, deputy director general of Viet Nam Administration of Forestry under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, said that stronger anti-smuggling activities conducted by local customs departments would be the most effective measure to prevent the illegal timber trade.

He said that Vietnamese customs offices had improved their risk management systems by recording information on enterprises that violate regulations on the trade of timber.

The General Department of Vietnam Customs has classified high-risk enterprises and individuals in both timber import and export, he added.

It has also stepped up the exchange of specialised information and customs intelligence with international agencies for investigation, verification and analysis of hotspots for anti-smuggling of timber and wildlife.

Over the last decade, Viet Nams timber processing industry has made significant contributions to the national economy, gaining a strong position in the global timber and furniture market, he said.

Timber and timber products are among the biggest exports of Viet Nam, with export turnover of US$7.2 billion in 2016, contributing to national economic growth, creating jobs, improving livelihoods and generating income for local people and communities, Ha said.

Made-in-Viet Nam timber and wood products are available in more than 90 countries and territories, meeting strict standards and technical requirements of importing countries, especially for legal timber and timber products, he added.

The Voluntary Partnership Agreement on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade between Viet Nam and the EU, with negotiations concluded in May, shows that the Vietnamese government and enterprises are committed to fighting illegal logging and illegal timber use and trade, according to Ha.

As an economy that both imports and exports timber and timber products, the Government attaches great importance to prevention of illegal timber trade, Ha said.

Dr o Van Ban, vice director of the Research Institute of the Forestry Industry, told Viet Nam News that the diversity of timber made it difficult to distinguish the different types of wood by sight.

He said that officials from customs and forest protection departments in the country would strengthen the application of IT to set up reference data and store photos of timber samples so that regulated and prohibited wood could be easily differentiated.

Though officials have received training on timber identification, he said they still needed to learn how to identify types of timber and wood more rapidly and precisely.

Speaking at the workshop, Jennifer Prescott, assistant US trade representative for environment and natural resources, said the trading of illegal wood products not only had a devastating effect on biodiversity but negatively affected the price of legal wood products and the legal, sustainable management of forests.

APEC Economies account for around 53 per cent of the worlds forests, 60 per cent of global production of timber products, and 80 per cent of global trade in timber products.

In 2016, the global export turnover of timber reached US$127 billion, increasing by 7.9 per cent compared to 2012, according to the International Trade Council.

The global export turnover of furniture reached $233 billion in 2016, an increase of 10.8 per cent against 2012; $131 billion in import turnover of timber; and $221 billion in import turnover of furniture in 2016.

However, illegal timber trade accounted for 10 to 30 per cent of global timber trade, with an annual value of $100 billion-$300 billion. VNS
HCM CITY  Widespread usage of electric vehicles would help reduce dependence on fossil fuels and build low-carbon societies in the Asia-Pacific region, APEC officials said.

The officials were participating in two workshops held at the third APEC Senior Officials Meeting (SOM 3) in HCM City on August 19.

Adopting priority standards for electric vehicles among the region is vitally important, they said.

Baek-Haeng Lee of the Korea Automotive Technology Institute in South Korea, speaking on the sidelines of the workshop, told Viet Nam News: South Korea uses the Power Line Communication Protocol (PLC), the priority standard for promoting widespread usage of electric vehicles in the region."

Pham Anh Tuan, deputy director general of the heavy industry department under Viet Nams Ministry of Industry and Trade, said the country would create standards related to electric vehicles in the near future.

It takes a long time to conduct surveys on the potential of electric vehicle usage, because vehicles using traditional petrol have been used in the country for hundreds of years, he said.

However, Viet Nam would eventually have to use electric vehicles, he said, adding that the countrys auto industry strategy to 2025 gives priority to environmentally-friendly vehicles.

Appropriate infrastructure for the use of electric vehicles would also be built in the future, he added.

Vu Tan Cong, an expert at SOPEC (Saigon-Stuttgart Operational Project Excellence Consulting), specialising in project management for small- and medium-sized companies in the manufacturing industry, said that electric vehicles were mostly being used at areas in tourism parks in Viet Nam.

These vehicles are not used widely in Viet Nam because of high prices. They cannot run for a long distance and their spent batteries and accumulators are difficult to re-use because there is no technology for this in the country, Cong said.

"Hybrid vehicles that use both traditional petrol and electricity are one option in Viet Nam," he said, adding that the country should develop financial incentives for production and consumption of these vehicles.

Several foreign companies that want to invest in electric-car industry were waiting for such policies, Cong said.

New registrations of electric cars hit a global record in 2016, with over 750,000 sales, according to the International Energy Agencys global electric vehicles outlook 2017.

Last year, the global electric-car stock surpassed 2 million vehicles, after crossing the 1 million threshold in 2015.

In 2015, APEC endorsed a roadmap for electric vehicles, including adoption of international standards.

Last year, APEC also held workshops on electric-vehicle usage at its conference in Manila. VNS
CAN THO  Food loss and waste are key challenges to global food security, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, experts said at a capacity-building workshop on a sustainable APEC food system held in Can Tho on Aug 19.

Tran Kim Long, director general of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Developments international co-operation department, said the impact of climate change, the lack of infrastructure for agriculture, and poor post-harvest practices in developing economies were the main causes of food loss and waste.

Dr. Su-San Chang, director general of the Pingtung Agricultural Biotechnology Park of the Council of Agriculture of Chinese Taipei, said that with an increasing population, rapid urbanisation and climate change, food security could no longer rely on improved food production alone.

"The fact is that we are producing food that is lost and wasted along the supply chain," she said.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates that around 1.3 billion tonnes or one-third of the food produced globally for human consumption has either been lost or wasted each year since 2011, while more than 800 million people still suffer from hunger.

Dr Xifeng Gong, interim lead shepherd for the APEC Agricultural Technological Cooperation Working Group, said that global food security would be seriously undermined if the food security of Asia-Pacific was undermined. Asia has the largest number of 526 million hungry people across all regions (around 65 per cent of the worlds total).

All of the previous APEC Food Security Ministerial Meetings Declarations included the reduction of food loss and waste as a long-term priority, according to Gong.

All available resources from the public and private sectors of APEC economies should be used in a suitable way to develop policy recommendations and solutions on reducing post-harvest food loss and waste in the entire supply chain," Gong said.

Gong spoke highly of the APEC Multi-Year Project on "Strengthening Public-Private Partnership to Reduce Food Losses in the Supply Chain" implemented by Chinese Taipei, saying it provided good ways for solving food loss and waste.

In 2013, the project began organising a series of workshops with topics focused on food crops (2013), vegetables and fruits (2014), fishery and livestock products (2015), and retailers and consumer waste (2016).

Through the workshops, participants exchanged experiences and insights on food loss and waste reduction in agricultural sectors and sought to build technical and policy capabilities across APEC economies.

They also discussed creating a stable regulatory framework to encourage investments in innovative solutions to achieve sustainable food-loss reduction.

This year, the project will reach its final phase by synthesising all previous progress and information policy recommendations and action plans. VNS
HCM CITY  Issues related to competition policy and its meaning in free trade agreements (FTAs) as well as economic partnerships agreements (EPAs) were the main topics discussed at the first working day of the APECs Committee on Trade and Investment (CTI).

The event is within the third Senior Official Meeting (SOM 3) and related meetings which are taking place in HCM City.

Around 100 delegates from 21 APEC- member economies attended the workshop, where experts and lawyers spoke about the benefits of establishing an amended chapter on competition in FTAs and EPAs and its impact on domestic economies based on empirical research.

Marie Sherylyn D Aquia, chair of the CTI, said: There is a strong and complementary relationship between trade and competition policies. This is due to their similarity in objectives. Both trade and competition policies seek to enhance welfare by providing for more efficient allocation of resources, whether it is lowering trade barriers or promoting competition.

New, comprehensive economic or trade agreements now feature specific provisions or entire chapters to competition-related matters, she added.

Satoshi Ogawa, a lawyer specialising in competition issues in the OECD competition division, said: Now as never before, it is important to include competition provisions in FTAs and EPAs in the globalised economy.

As international cooperation is needed to fight anti-competitive conduct beyond national borders, these provisions would benefit competition authorities and the business community, according to the lawyer..

Meeting participants also discussed challenges facing each economy in negotiating the chapter on competition.

Competition laws and competition authorities are still new in some of the APEC economies. APEC is engaging a lot in the completion field. They are making guidelines and database in order to share competition information among APEC members, said Hiroshi Kuro, senior deputy director of the FTA/EPA Negotiations Economic Partnership at the Investment Policy Division of the Economic Affairs Bureau at Japans Ministry of Foreign Affairs

APEC has an important role in promoting the competition chapter, he said.

CTI, established in November 1993 under the APEC Trade and Investment Framework, provides a forum for APECs 21 member economies to discuss trade and policy issues. VNS
People know the phrase the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, without realizing that is true for government as well. We know that income redistribution programs like Medicare involve government taking from one group and giving it to another. But the same happens, albeit at a smaller scale, when government builds infrastructure such as a bridge over a pristine river valley.

The intent  the giveth  is to provide a public good, something necessary for society that would not be furnished by private markets. But the taketh away is that even though society as a whole gains, particular individuals and specific groups may be made worse off while others reap windfalls.

This is exemplified by the recent opening of a bridge across the St. Croix River about 15 miles east of my house. This connects Minnesota and Wisconsin. Debated for at least 30 years, the $600 million structure leaps the valley downriver from the town of Stillwater, whose scenic downtown for years endured jams of cars waiting to cross an 86-year-old two lane bridge over the river. At this level of outlay, it is a pretty major project. But similar effect occur on smaller government infrastructure projects, just at a different scale.

When contemplating a major undertaking like this, government much consider how much the proposed structure will cost society as a whole vs. what the value of all benefits will be.

Engineers are good at estimating the cash outlays. Yes, there can be cost overruns, particularly when, for example, soil or rock for foundations is not exactly what tests had indicated. But civil engineering is a pretty exact science. And a cable-stayed bridge is not a new-generation aircraft carrier.

Quantifying even the most direct benefits is a bit harder. New bridges are built to facilitate the movement of goods and people. So one can measure drive times over the old bridge and estimate what they would be with the new bridge in place. One can add up the fuel saved, reduced wear and tear on vehicles and infrastructure. More knotty is adding up the value of regained productivity from shorter commute times. This takes a few more assumptions than gasoline saved because the opportunity cost of hours of human life varies between individuals and is inherently ambiguous. It is done often enough, however, that there are accepted metrics.

Construction costs are known when the bridge is done, but travel cost savings stretch many decades into the future. The number of vehicles using the bridge probably will grow, perhaps dramatically. Past experience tells us, however, that before-the-fact estimates of transportation use are often wildly off once a few decades pass.

And then there are the potential changes to development and demographics.

The very presence of the bridge changes where population growth will occur. So in this case, it becomes not just a matter of counting people currently commuting between Wisconsin and Minnesota and assuming that this population would grow the same with or without a new bridge. Much easier transportation will motivate much more housing development than otherwise. It will motivate more commercial development. Estimating just how much will occur, however, and when, isnt easy.

But one can certainly estimate ranges and then do sensitivity analyses looking at how costs and benefits vary under many different plausible outcomes.

Once beyond the direct costs and benefits and into indirect or external ones, things get even murkier. Plunking $600 million worth of concrete and steel smack dab across one of our most beautiful rivers certainly has external costs on the environment. This is even before considering noise, exhaust and other negatives from tens of thousands of vehicles daily.

This has been the most contentious issue and one that held up construction of the bridge for decades. The St. Croix long has been designated a Federal Wild and Scenic river. As such, development within a zone that affects the river and sight lines from its surface is strictly limited. Yet at the same time, the 1965 federal act establishing this preservation system never was intended to create impenetrable barriers hundreds of miles long to all future transportation development.

This is an issue on which informed people of good will can still disagree. After years of discussion, some still think it wrong, others right.

But again, this is particularly knotty. If construction kills rainbow trout or mussels, there are accepted procedures for valuing these. But what is the social cost or benefits of an altered landscape? While some people are outraged by what they see as the desecration of a wilderness, some see a beautiful work of engineering art, perhaps not approaching famous spans like Switzerlands Salginatobel or the new Millau Viaduct France, but positive nevertheless. Others just shrug their shoulders. What is the net cost to society? Can it be put in dollars? Is that even an appropriate question?

New highways and bridges always affect economic activity, although much more in terms of where it occurs rather than the total amount produced. Gas stations and convenience stores near the new highway see business burgeon. The values of the businesses go up. Sales at similar businesses now economically marooned by closing the old route dry up and the value of the properties slump. The net change may well be positive, but while the government action increases the income or net worth of some, it decreases it for others. Losers cannot get compensation for their ruined business because what happened was not a legal taking  in the Constitutional sense  as it would be for owners of land used for actual construction. And winners have a windfall.

For this particular project, faster, cheaper commutes to the Twin Cities make the Wisconsin side of the river a more desirable place to live. So the market values of existing housing and developable land rise. Expectations trigger this even before construction begins.

With more housing available in a different state, but close to major Minnesota employers, far western metro suburbs are marginally less attractive. Effects are small, but there is slightly less construction in the western suburbs than their might have been if the St. Croix had remained a barrier. Even on the Wisconsin side there are minute changes. Fewer commuters funnel down to the existing I94 bridges, so some streets in towns on that route see less traffic and are better places to have a house, but worse ones to have a business. There are fewer customers getting a quick espresso in the morning or picking up milk and bread on the way home. And kids who have to cross a busy street to get to school are slightly safer. But these effects are reversed for counterparts along the highway that the new bridge fees onto.

Pulling even a few thousand cars off existing bridges reduces congestion by a tad for people already driving in along that axis. Minnesotans wanting to enter the freeway from our east suburbs, find waits shorter. But people who historically used the highway the new bridge feeds into were accustomed to little traffic. Now they must look for gaps to merge into.

Such myriad minor adjustments take place over multiple counties. They are so small and diffuse that few people see cause and effect.

But it was always such as development changed. Prairie towns boomed when a railroad passed through while bypassed ones withered. Famously kitschy diners and motels along old Route 66 across the American plains became nostalgic casualties of the interstate highway system. In the southwest corner of the state where I grew up, we have seen a decades-long process of bypassing Highway 60, our most important state highway, around towns instead of down their main streets. This hurt some businesses and helped others. It drove the value of some land up and that of other down. Even on a single main street, some store owners rued the loss of business from less traffic while another saw more shoppers who welcomed less traffic and easier parking.

Government acts. Some win and some lose as a result. But on the whole, government provision of key infrastructure has benefited our nations economy. The Erie Canal, an early example of a public-private partnership, gave a cheaper outlet to products of agriculture and commerce from thousands of square miles. Whigs like Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln were right about the need for public improvements. Transcontinental railroads, highly subsidized by government, opened even more opportunities, as did the interstate highways of the 50s and 60s.

I think that we have been underinvesting in infrastructure and living by depreciating out the investments of our ancestors. Some politicians give lip-service agreement. But we cannot raise a 23-year-old federal gas tax, oh no. That would hurt the economy.
Nobody expects more from us than we do Ferguson Enterprises is expanding operations in the Waterloo Distribution Center. We are seeking experienced forklift and industrial equipment operators to join our 2nd and 3rd Shift Teams.  Duties include order picking and handling of product using stand-up order picker/reach truck  NEW STARTING WAGE of $16.00/hour, advancing to $17.00 in 60 days and $17.50 at 6 months  Shift schedules begin at 3pm or 11pm Monday-Friday  Successful candidates will possess a strong warehousing background and thrive in a fast-paced environment  Incentive bonus opportunities on a quarterly basis with top performance  Full benefits package available after 30 days including PTO, medical, dental, vision, disability and life options.  401(k) Retirement Fund with company match  Post-offer criminal background check & drug screen are required.  View full job details and apply online at www.ferguson.com/careers, search Experienced Professionals using keyword Waterloo. The Company is an equal opportunity employer as well as a government contractor that shall abide by the requirements of 41 CFR 60-300.5(a), which prohibits discrimination against qualified protected Veterans and the requirements of 41 CFR 60-741.5(A), which prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals on the basis of disability.
WATERLOO  An early Saturday morning shooting sent a man to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Police and Waterloo Fire Rescue responded at 2:03 a.m. to a shooting at 1211 W. Mullan Ave., near the intersection of West Mullan and Belmont avenues. Officers found a male gunshot victim. He was transported by Waterloo Fire and Rescue to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries, police said in a news release.

Amy Czuba was watching the situation from the window of a neighboring house after being alerted by another area resident.

My neighbor guy called Hey, whats going on next to your house? maybe a little after 2 in the morning, said Czuba, noting a man was being taken out on a stretcher when she went to look. She also reported hearing a possible popping sound while still in bed and said her husband later saw a woman leave with police.

No names have been released. The investigation continues.
MASON CITY -- A Waterloo woman received two years of probation after harassing an worker at a gas station, threatening the worker with knives.

Emily Elizabeth Hoveland, 20, entered the Yes Way convenience store on North Carolina Avenue and 12th Street Northeast after 7 p.m. May 14 carrying two knives.

Hoveland told an employee that she was going to kill her.

Hoveland had no legitimate reason to threaten (the worker), the criminal complaint stated.

Hoveland pleaded guilty to first-degree harassment and was granted a deferred judgment with two years probation as well as a $625 suspended fine.
City of Paducah inviting citizens to get involved through boards and commissions
By WestKyStar & WKCTC Aug. 19, 2017 | 03:17 PM | PADUCAH, KY



Classes are listed as follows.

Paducah School of Art Offerings

Introduction to Watercolor

September 2, 9:30 am - 12:30 pm

PSAD 2D and Graphic Design Building, 905 Harrison Street, Room 205

Age: Adults

Instructor: Anita Rodriguez-Fitch, PSAD Adjunct Instructor"

Cost: $43

Always wanted to paint in watercolor? Here's your chance to enjoy and explore this versatile painting medium. Students will learn traditional watercolor basics, as well as more experimental techniques.

Supply list for students: Additional estimated $25 estimated student supplies to be purchased locally. Full list of supplies found at ws.kctcs.edu/westkentucky, click on Paducah School of Art & Design, Introduction to Watercolor.



Introduction to Wheel Throwing and Working with Clay

September 2, 9, 16, 23, 9:30 am - noon

Ceramics/Small Metals Building, 919 Madison Street, Lower Town

Age: Adults

Instructor: TBD

Cost: $119 (includes $10 fee for studio supplies and firing of the pieces)

Students in this introductory class will learn the basics of throwing forms on the potter's wheel. Finished works will be Raku-fired, an exciting and dramatic technique in which red-hot ceramics are placed in containers of combustible materials, creating beautiful surface effects. From start to finish, this is a fun-filled course that can be habit forming. Additional cost of $12 - $24 for clay according to use.



Intermediate and Advanced Weaving NEW

September 9, 9:30 am - 3 pm

PSAD 2D and Graphic Design Building, 905 Harrison Street, Room 205

Age: Adults

Instructor: TBD

Cost: $109 (includes $10 fee for studio supplies)

This project-based workshop focuses on how to prepare the loom and provides students time to create their own scarves, runners or wall hangings. The class meets on one Saturday and provides students access to the looms for the following three weeks to complete their projects. Student supply cost will depend upon choice of materials with which to work.



Digital Painting

September 9, 16, 23, 9:30 am - noon

PSAD 2D and Graphic Design Building, 905 Harrison Street, Room 111

Age: Adults

Instructor: JP Rhea

$109 (includes $10 for studio supplies)

This class covers the basics of Adobe Photoshop and the Wacom Intuos 4 Tablets to create digital paintings and illustrations. Participants will also create custom brushes and color swatches in Photoshop and learn how to customize and become familiar with the Wacom tablet and pressure sensitive pen as an alternative to a traditional computer mouse when making digital art.



Beekeeping Offering

Beekeeping Course 2

Honeybee Husbandry - A continuance of "Keeping Honeybees, Beginning the Process"

September 5, 12, 19, and 26, 6 - 8 p.m.

Emerging Technology Center, RM-140

Age: Adults

Instructor: Kent Williams

Cost: $100

This course picks up where Course 1 left off. Topics in this course will include: Choosing the type of honeybees for your operation; knowing the enemy Part 1; the need to feed; developing and maintaining a sustainable honeybee business and more. There will be an opportunity to visit Williams' beekeeping business and take part in a "hands-on" lesson in beekeeping. All participation is voluntary, and protective gear will be available if needed. Course meets four consecutive Tuesday evenings.



Culinary Offerings

Italian Night featuring Tri-Stuffed Ravioli

September 7, 6 pm

Anderson Technical Building Culinary Kitchen and Bistro

Age: Adults

Instructor: Anita Granier

Cost: $45

Once participants master the simple technique of making ravioli, they can choose numerous food options for the stuffing. Starting with homemade pasta sheets, students will learn to stuff ravioli with three different stuffing and sauces. Menu: Basic Sweet Italian Sausage with creamy vino sauce, Ground Beef and Spinach with marinara sauce, and Sweet Potatoes with brown butter sauce. The side dish will be Southern Italy's famous Arugula, Parmigianino & Prosciutto Salad. Italian bread will be served with herb butter and olive oil, and the students' Italian meal will conclude with easy almond paste cookies.



Go Wild! Cookies NEW

September 7, 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Emerging Technology Center Cyber Cafe

Age: Adults

Instructor: Linda Mayes Cost: $28.50

Students will learn how to make beautiful cookies with giraffe, zebra, and leopard patterns with buttercream icing. Participants can take their decorated cookies home to share with your friends and family. Approximate additional cost of supplies $17.50. Supply list is on the website when registering - ws.kctcs.edu/westkentucky, click on Culinary Classes, Go Wild! Cookies.



Cake Decorating - Course 1 Building Buttercream Skills

September 11 and October 2, 6 - 8 pm

Emerging Technology Center Cyber Cafe

Age: Adults

Instructor: Linda Mayes

Cost: $69

Learn how to decorate cakes and sweet treats with basic buttercream techniques and six simple-to-pipe flowers that transform ordinary cakes into extraordinary results. Linda Mayes, Certified Wilton Method Instructor, will help participants pipe classic buttercream decorating techniques to create modern and traditional cake designs. Fee includes student kit and guide. A list of optional supplies (approximately $40) will be provided the first night of class. For lesson plans, visit ws.kctcs.edu/westkentucky, click on Cake Decorating.



Appetizers for Entertaining

September 14, 6 pm

Anderson Technical Building Culinary Kitchen and Bistro

Age: Adults

Instructor: Anita Granier

Cost: $45

Let's learn how to make four exquisite and easy appetizers that will please any crowd. Menu: Bruschetta, a tasty and tangy topping on toasted French baguette slices; Muffaletta Sandwich, a New Orleans specialty sandwich; Stuffed Bread with creole shrimp; and a Spinach and Artichoke Bake. These hors d'oeuvers can be made for simple house parties, dinners and special events.



Wilton Drizzle, Dip and Mold with Candy Melts

September 14, 6 - 8 pm

Emerging Technology Center Cyber Cafe

Age: Adults

Instructor: Linda Mayes

Cost: $28.50

In this introductory class, discover the magic of candy making with Wilton's complete line of Candy Melts and tools! Learn all the tips and tricks needed to make your own candy treats, including dipping, drizzling and molding; plus so much more. Recommended for all skill levels. This is a demonstration-style class, no supplies necessary.



Preregistration is required for all classes and early registration is encouraged. The registration deadline is seven days prior to class starting date. Classes may be cancelled due to lack of enrollment. Register online at ws.kctcs.edu/westkentucky or by calling 270-534-3335.



For more information about the Community Education Catalog or upcoming offerings, contact Tina Carver at tina.carver@kctcs.edu or 270-534-3821.\



West Kentucky Community and Technical College kicks off September with a variety of community education classes including learning about beekeeping, develop creative culinary and artistic skills and more.
Advertisement

By West Kentucky Star Staff

Aug. 19, 2017 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Aug. 19, 2017 | 08:31 AM | PADUCAH, KY

The early eclipse weather forecast looks best in the West and least in the East, with patchy clouds muddling up the picture in between.



The forecast as of Saturday shows Oregon and Idaho as most promising for those out West to have clear sky views, while South Carolina is the most likely to find the sun and moon blocked by clouds.



The National Weather Service also is optimistic about good viewing from St. Louis to Nashville. Paducah's forecast for Monday is for a clear, mostly sunny sky and a high of around 90 degrees, leaving the I-24 corridor along with Oregon and Idaho as the best in the nation for eclipse viewing.



Meteorologist Mike Musher says overall about half the nation is likely to get favorable eclipse viewing weather.



One private meteorologist and eclipse-chaser fears heartbreaking weather in Wyoming where clouds could hide the eclipse with tantalizing clear skies just off in the distance. Clouds make it difficult to see the fiery ring around the blotted out sun.



______



The Associated Press contributed to this report.






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MINOT -- The Ward County State's Attorney's Office argues that the state's new Marsy's Law protecting victim rights gives Judge Gary Lee authority to bar convicted murderer Richie Wilder Jr. from having any contact with his two children by the woman he murdered.

However, his defense attorney has objected to the state's interpretation.

Wilder was sentenced in May to life in prison without parole for the November 2015 murder of his ex-wife, Angila Wilder. He is challenging as illegal Lee's order that he have no contact ever again with his 12-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son by Angila Wilder.

"While North Dakota's sentencing chapter does not provide for a no contact order in conjunction with an executed sentence," wrote Ward County Deputy State's Attorney Kelly Dillon in a document filed with the district court on Aug. 8. "The State submits that 'Marsy's Law' does ... A 'victim' includes the children of a deceased victim ... A victim has the right to be reasonably protected from the accused."

Dillon wrote that Wilder murdered the children's mother to remove her from their lives. Richie Wilder Jr. and Angila Wilder had a contentious relationship and had fought over custody of the children.

Raissa Carpenter, Wilder's defense attorney, wrote in a response filed Aug. 15 that Lee's order is illegal because it is not in the state sentencing statute and it denies Wilder due process. No one has exercised the children's rights under Marsy's Law and there had not been a no contact order in effect barring Richie Wilder Jr. from contact with the children, she wrote.

Carpenter also argues that Marsy's Law was passed after Wilder committed the murder and applying the no contact provision would be illegal. Courts have ruled that it is unconstitutional to apply a law retroactively.

Both children were staying with their father and their stepmother, Cynthia Wilder, on the night of the murder. They are now living out of state with their maternal grandmother.

Cynthia Wilder has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder for allegedly helping Richie Wilder Jr. plan the murder and cleaning up afterwards.
[contentcards url=http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2831724]

It is regrettable that the law on sanctions against Russia has come into effect in the United States. Its very title  Countering Americas 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.

The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed the Russian position on US actions, including this bill, in its statement on July 28. We have also already demonstrated that we are not going to leave unanswered hostile actions, including the expulsion of our diplomats by the US authorities and the seizure of diplomatic property. Naturally, we also reserve the right to other countermeasures.

It is high time the American fans of sanctions, which have plunged the United States into Russophobic hysteria, got rid of their illusions and realised that no threats or attempts to exert pressure will compel Russia to change its course or sacrifice its national interests.

Trading barbs is not our choice. We are open for cooperation with the United States in the spheres where we consider it useful for ourselves and international security, including settlement of regional conflicts. However, productive cooperation is only possible if Washington politicians overcome their delusions and stop perceiving the world around them through the prism of American exceptionalism that is distorting reality.

http://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2831724
In Costa Rica, we dont get many chances to chase birds. While we could chase a number of local, rare residents, looking for super tough species like Pheasant Cuckoo and Tawny-faced Quail is more akin to searching and lurking in appropriate habitat and just hoping to get lucky. The same goes for other challenging resident birds like the Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo, Speckled Mourner, and Gray-headed Piprites. Nope, not making those names up although they are encountered so infrequently, they almost seem more like creations of an imaginative mind than actual birds. Most times, because they dont usually stick to one spot, you cant really twitch the super rare residents and since they live in Costa Rica all year long, Im not so sure if they fall into the twitchable category anyways.

No matter where in the world we bird, it seems like the ones we twitch are the birds that arent supposed to be there. They take the form of a White-winged Tern that got lost somewhere over the Atlantic and ended up in Pennsylvania. They are the Desert Wheatears and Siberian Thrushes that abandon all reason and fly to Britain (maybe they heard about the UK Birdfair?). These are the birds that are very much unexpected, and regarding Costa Rica, I am sure seriously unexpected species like Red-necked Stint and American Pipit do pay a visit, there just arent enough birders combing the countryside to find them. Well, that, and ironically, probably because there is too much habitat for them to hide in. Other than a Hudsonian Godwit that left for destinations further north and outside of Costa Rica while we watched it, the closest I have come to finding a twitchable bird in this birdy country was a dream I had of seeing a Loggerhead Shrike in Guanacaste. The open, dry habitat was perfect for it and the experience was so real, it was almost painful to wake up but alas, no Loggerhead Shrike, just a vivid dream of a migrant bird that could make a mega appearance in Costa Rica.

Given our lack of twitchable birds, lately, birders in Costa Rica have been especially pleased to be graced with the presence of a major, honest to goodness twitch. Although the Aplomado Falcon is on the list, its not resident and there are few records, most of which seem to pertain to juveniles that wander into the country at this time of year. Those few records also usually come from Guanacaste where there is more than enough wide open habitat for this Falco species to frequent and become subsequently lost in (along with that shrike from my dreams). However, even if a trio of Aplomados and shrikes flew down to Costa Rica, chancing on them would still be unlikely because there is just too much inaccessible land where they can occur. In fact, right now, in all likelihood, there probably are a few Aplomados up that way hunting in some far off fields never visited by birders. Luckily, the one that was twitched by many birders last weekend (moi included!) decided to play fair and live it up in an easily accessible area of localized habitat.

Happy birders looking at an Aplomado Falcon. The guy on the right is Sergio Arias, check out his Costa Rica Birding Hotspot Stand at Birdfair.

Instead of freaking out the doves in farm fields up north, our bird flew over San Jose to make house just outside Cartago, one of the main cities in Costa Rica! Unlike San Jose, the inter-montane valley where Cartago is located has a more humid environment including open areas with marshes and fields of sedge. Although some similar habitats may have been locally found in San Jose before drainage and urbanization took place more than a century ago, the unique sedge dominated habitats were never as extensive as those that occur in Cartago. Sadly, much of that remaining rare habitat in Cartago has also been drained and built upon, the last largest remnant occurring in an industrial and farming area known as Coris. This is where the young and adventurous Aplomado stopped at least a month ago and found the hunting to be good enough to survive to this day.

Good habitat for a wandering Aplomado Falcon and locally endangered Sedge Wrens.

One of the several resident White-tailed Kites came close enough for shots, the Aplomado was sadly much too far off for pictures.

When we saw it, the bird used its long, narrow wings to casually zip low over the ground as it flew from one distant perch to the next in true Falco fashion. Given the ground it covered in a matter of seconds, it was easy to see how this species could visit Costa Rica in the morning and just fly back to Nicaragua or onward to Panama that same afternoon. It was big, built for speed, and on the move. Like so many other twitches, we did have to wait for the bird for an hour or two but it did eventually show and at least twenty of us had the chance to admire it through scopes on a sunny Sunday morning. I hope it catches enough doves and whatever else it needs to survive until another Aplomado of the opposite sex is adventurous enough to look for territory around Cartago. In fact, there were rumors that a second falcon was indeed in the area. Until then, it will still be a treat to watch the local Sedge Wren subspecies (likely a separate species from the ones in the USA and Canada), Lesser Goldfinches, and Tropical Mockingbirds while waiting for a fantastic Aplomado Falcon flyby.

One of the many Tropical Mockingbirds at the site.

No twitch ever becomes possible if someone isnt there to find and report the bird first. Along those lines, we can thank Daniel Martinez for first reporting the bird while doing bird surveys in Coris, and Ernesto Carman of GetYourBirds! for re-finding the bird after a few tries, subsequently reporting it, and organizing a trip to see it. Speaking of Ernesto, I should also mention that he has also organized a Cerulean Warbler count for the first days of September. If you happen to be in Costa Rica at that time, this is an excellent, fun way to see Ceruleans during migration as they share the tropical forests with things like puffbirds, Great Green Macaw, antbirds, and lots of other wonderful, tropical birdiness. Hope to see you there!

These twitching birders will probably be counting Cerulean Warblers in two weeks time.
MINOT  A 23-year-old airman at Minot Air Force Base will serve up to a year in jail and be required to register as a sex offender for luring a minor by computer.

Christopher David Schroeder fell for a law enforcement sting on Dec. 11, 2016 and thought he was meeting a 16-year-old girl for sex.

Schroeder cried in court on Thursday, Aug. 17, apologized for his actions and said he will never do anything like it again. He is aware that he may lose his planned future career with the Air Force because of his actions.

Ward County Assistant State's Attorney Ashlei Neufeld had asked Judge Stacy Louser to sentence Schroeder to five years in prison, with a requirement that he serve three years. She said the pre-sentence investigation showed that Schroeder had minimized the offense and she believed he is likely to reoffend. The investigator found he had a low to moderate risk of reoffense.

Schroeder's attorney, Ashley Flagstad, said the state's sentencing recommendation was outrageous, particularly because other defendants have received far lower sentences in cases where there were actual victims.

Louser said she was puzzled by the state's sentencing recommendation, considering the low sentences in other cases Flagstad cited. Louser also said luring a minor by computer is very serious and there was the potential that a real victim might have been harmed. Schroeder's status in the Air Force meant he had a position of public trust. But Schroeder also has no prior criminal record.

Louser sentenced Schroeder to three years, with a requirement that he serve one year, and three years of supervised probation. He also must complete a sex offender treatment program and register as a sex offender.

According to a probable cause affidavit filed with the court, Sgt. Jason Kraft of the Ward County Sheriff's Department, responded to an online ad on Craigslist posted by a man who said he was looking for a "threescore or hook up." Kraft messaged Schroeder and asked if he was serious. In his second response to the poster, Kraft, posing as the fictitious girl, claimed to be 16. Schroeder responded that he was 22.

Schroeder and the officer posing as the girl then exchanged photographs. Kraft sent Schroeder a picture of a female sheriff's deputy that was taken when she was 16. Schroeder sent a picture of himself standing in front of a mirror without a shirt.

The two exchanged sexually explicit messages and arranged to meet in the parking lot of the North Hill Bowling Alley. Schroeder was driving his wife's car.

Schroeder told the sheriff's office that he came to meet the 16-year-old to tell her that she should not be on Craigslist meeting people. Since he works for the Minot Air Force Base Security Forces, Schroeder claimed that he wanted to do a "reverse bust."
Aug 18, 2017 | By Tess

A group of engineers from the University of Antwerp in Belgium have put their skills towards good with the invention of a 3D printed humanoid robot that can translate speech into sign language. The inspirational bot is called Project Aslan, which stands for Antwerps Sign Language Actuating Node.

Project Aslan was started in 2014 by a team of three engineering masters students: Guy Fierens, Stijn Huys, and Jasper Slaets. The inspiration for the project came from the realization that there is a lack of sign language translators, especially in Belgium, where there is a need for not only French interpreters but also Flemish-speaking ones.

I was talking to friends about the shortage of sign language interpreters in Belgium, especially in Flanders for the Flemish sign language, explained Huys. We wanted to do something about it. I also wanted to work on robotics for my masters, so we combined the two.

Fast forward three years, and the three students (as well as many others) have come a long way with their sign language interpreting robot, in part thanks to 3D printing technologies. As the students explain, they chose to use 3D printing, as well as easily obtainable and affordable components, in order to keep Project Aslan accessible.

The research project, which is being sponsored by European Institute of Otorhinolaryngology, currently consists of a 3D printed robotic arm with articulated fingers controlled by dedicated software. When the user types text into the software, the robotic hand translates the text into sign language.

The robotic arm is connected to a local network which enables users from anywhere in the world to input messages that the hand can then spell out in sign language. The local network also allows the robot to look for new updates in sign languages.

3D printing was used extensively in the prototyping of the robotic hand, as the first prototype reportedly consisted of 25 3D printed parts, as well as numerous servo motors, motor controllers, an Arduino Due, and more. The printed parts were made on a standard desktop 3D printer using PLA filament, and the bot reportedly took 10 hours to assemble once printing was done.

With the first iteration of the robotic hand complete, the Antwerp researchers are passing their knowledge on to the next generation of masters students, who will continue to work on the project in new and innovative ways.

Possible directions for the robot hand include developing a two-arm setup, adding an expressive face to the robot, and exploring whether a webcam could be used to make the robot smarter. As the researchers explain, sign language requires movements and expressions from not only hands, but also shoulders and the face, so a webcam could potentially be integrated in order to teach a more developed robot the nuances of facial expressions and shoulder movement.

Ultimately, the researchers are not aiming to automate the profession of sign language interpretation, but to offer a potential and accessible solution in cases where no translator is available. As the project advances, the research team says it plans to make its designs for Aslan open source so that anyone can build the 3D printed sign language robot.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Dmitri Levitin at Literary Review:

A historical anniversary can be something of a false god. Convinced  rightly or wrongly  of the reading publics numerical obsession, publishers race to churn out their own definitive accounts of the event being commemorated. This year has been particularly notable for this, witnessing as it has not only the centenary of the Russian Revolution, but also the quincentenary of the event that supposedly began the Reformation: 31 October will mark the anniversary of Martin Luther nailing to the door of the church attached to Wittenberg Castle his ninety-five theses against papal teaching on indulgences.

Or, at least, so we are told. One of the central claims of Peter Marshalls lovely 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation is that this event probably never happened. In claiming this, he is following a well-trodden path, as he readily admits: the German Catholic historian Erwin Iserloh already suggested in the early 1960s that the historical evidence for the theses-posting (the German, Thesenanschlag, conveys far better the force of the supposed event), which allegedly occurred on All Saints Eve 1517, was very dubious. But Marshall also has a new story to tell, one that is concerned with anniversaries and is often far more interesting than the many repetitive accounts of Luther and the Reformation that have appeared this year. That is the story of how the Thesenanschlaggradually came to assume such a central role in European and American cultural memory, generating the modern idea of the Reformation.

more here.
Cynthia Haven in The Book Haven:

A month ago, I received a package from Berlin with a note from Ryan Ruby, author of The Zero and the One. Our point of connection was the French theorist Rene Girard: In a pivotal scene, one character discusses an interpretation of Dostoevskys Demons in terms that were largely influenced by Girards reading of that book in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel. According to the book jacket, Rubys novel about a friendship at Oxford that takes a dark turn, and considers the power of dangerous ideas. From the book itself:

From the earliest days of our friendship, Zach and I sought out philosophers whose names would never have appeared on the reading lists we received before the beginning of each term. To our tutors, such thinkers did not merit serious consideration. Our tutors were training us to weigh evidence, parse logic, and refuse counter-examples; they encouraged us to but more stock in the rule than the exception and to put our trust in modest truths that could be easily verified and plainly expressed. Whereas the philosophers who interested us were the ones who would step right to the edge of the abyss  and jump to conclusions; the ones who wagered their sanity when they spun the wheel of thought; the ones, in short, who wrote in blood. In counter-intuitiveness we saw profundity and in obfuscation, poetry. With wide eyes, we plucked paperback after paperback from the shelves at Reservoir, the used bookshop opposite the entrance to Christ Church Meadow, our own personal Nag Hammadi, hunting for insights into the hermetic nature of the universe and ourselves.

I used to frequent that bookshop, though my visits were too brief to consider the place a hotbed of a dangerous ideas. And Im not sure that Renes ideas can be considered dangerous ones  well see what you think next spring when my Evolution of Desire: A Life of Rene Girard is out with Michigan State University Press. But Hans Abendroth?

More here.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.  Missouri utility regulators on Wednesday rejected a proposed high-voltage power line to carry wind power across the Midwest to eastern states, delivering a significant setback to developers of one of the nation's longest transmission lines.

The decision marked the second time in a little over two years that the Missouri Public Service Commission has denied a request from Clean Line Energy Partners to build its power line through the state after a lengthy review process.

The 780-mile-long line would run from wind farms in western Kansas through Missouri and Illinois to Indiana, where it would connect with a power grid for eastern states. All the other states along its route already have granted approval to the $2.3 billion project.

Most members of Missouri's regulatory panel said they, too, wanted to approve the high-profile project but felt compelled to vote against it because of a recent state appeals court ruling. The judges in that case said utilities must first get the consent of counties to string a power line across roads before state approval can be granted. Clean Line lacks approval from several Missouri counties where its line is opposed by local residents.

It's not clear whether Missouri's decision will kill the project.

The Houston-based wind energy company could appeal the denial in court. It could try to win support from counties and apply again to Missouri regulators. Or it could attempt to circumvent Missouri by seeking federal approval to build the line through the state, as it did for an Oklahoma-to-Tennessee power line after Arkansas regulators ruled against it in 2011.

Clean Line executives said Wednesday that they were weighing their options for the Grain Belt Express power line, though they acknowledged that the "legal and regulatory conundrum" could add many months or years to the project if they decide to keep trying.

"We absolutely want to do the project," said Mark Lawlor, development director for Grain Belt Express. But he added: "Unfortunately, the message that we're getting from Missouri is that investments of these kind might be better spent in other places."

The rejected power line highlights one of the largest challenges for renewable energy developers in the U.S. Although converting wind and sun into electricity is increasingly affordable, it can be hard to get the regulatory and legal approval needed to transmit the power from remote areas where it's produced to the places where it's most needed.

Other large-scale renewable energy projects in the Midwest, South and West also have faced denials or delays in transmission line approvals from federal and state regulators and courts.

Opponents of the Grain Belt Express power line rejoiced Wednesday, even though the fight could continue.

"They're done at this point. We won. They can't build the line," said Paul Agathen, an attorney for the Missouri Landowners Alliance. "So it's up to them as to what steps, if any, they take."

Missouri regulators initially rejected the project in July 2015, while determining it had little benefit for Missouri consumers and citing the burden on landowners in its path. Since then, Clean Line retooled its proposal and struck deals to provide renewable energy to dozens of Missouri municipal utilities that serve hundreds of thousands of customers. The company also expanded its landowner protections.

Four of the five members of the Missouri Public Service Commission said Wednesday that they now believe the project is needed, economically feasible and beneficial to the public  and would have approved it were it not for the March appeals court ruling making local permission a prerequisite.

"It was in the public interest to approve the line," said Missouri Public Service Commission Chairman Daniel Hall. "Unfortunately, because of the structure of this commission and because of the legal system in this state, we were unable to act."

Lawlor said the four commissioners' belief that the project was worthwhile but not approvable under state law "makes for an interesting argument" if Clean Line decides to instead seek federal permission to proceed.
Hospices offer care and support to individuals with a terminal illness who have a prognosis of six months or less. Hospices focus on palliative care to relieve pain and on symptom management. They also provide grief and loss counseling and other support to families and caregivers.

Patients and their families can search Hospice Compare by the name of the service they are considering or by using their own zip code to see the array of services nearby. Most hospice care is delivered at a patients home, but Medicare also covers care in an inpatient hospice facility.

The website will help empower them in a time of vulnerability as they look for information necessary to make important decisions about hospice care for loved ones, said Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which developed the tool. A transparent website for such data is a requirement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Fridays report by the consumer watchdog agency is the first state-by-state look at the size and scope of the student debt impact on older borrowers, according to coauthor and CFPB student loan ombudsman Seth Frotman.

Older borrowers are taking on substantial amounts of debt into retirement, and the true impact is nearly everywhere in terms of growth of debt, delinquencies and sheer number of borrowers, Frotman said. It raises real questions and concerns about the impact on their retirement security.

In January, the CFPB reported that people age 60 and older had amassed nearly $67 billion in student loan debt, with the average amount owed being $23,500  nearly double the average a decade earlier. The bulk of the loans were used to pay for childrens or grandchildrens education, underscoring how seniors are increasingly shouldering sharply rising college tuition for family members. (The overall number of older student debt holders surged 385 percent from 2005 to 2017, from 700,000 to 3.4 million.)

These numbers have revived fresh concerns among consumer advocacy groups that older consumers may be struggling to repay student loans while living on fixed incomes. Most older adults dont know what their expenses are in retirement, said Maggie Flowers, associate director for economic security at the National Council on Aging. Everyone wants to be able to support loved ones, but we encourage people to think long and hard about whether theyre able to shoulder that burden.

Under most circumstances, student-related loan debt cannot be erased under bankruptcy protection. And Social Security payments can be garnished to cover federally backed student loan payments, forcing seniors to survive on a small portion of monthly benefit checks and cut back on other expenses, such as medical and food costs.

Frotman said older consumers need to be better informed about their fiscal responsibility when they cosign student loans. Quite often we hear from older borrowers that it was never made clear to them that they were essentially co-borrowers, he said. Many thought they were merely acting as references. Weve seen tens of thousands of borrowers pushed into poverty or further into poverty because of student loan debt.

States with the largest overall student loan debt held by older borrowers:

California: $11.3 billion, up 62 percent since 2012

Florida: $7.1 billion, up 68 percent

Pennsylvania: $6.8 billion, up 107 percent

Texas: $6.76 billion, up 75 percent

Georgia: $3.3 billion, up 76 percent

Source: CFPB
Jefferson cruises to 11AAA state title over Harrisburg in 2nd year

Head coach Vince Benedetto asks his team the same question after every game: "Can we play better?" But Saturday, "it doesn't matter because we're champions."
Sanatan Sanstha has alleged that the Andhshraddha Nirmulan Samiti activists who are shrouding behind the rationalism and shouting hoarse Jawab Do all over the State just to create pressure on the investigation of killing of Narendra Dabholkar are maintaining studied silence over the scams perpetrated by their trust. The outfit said only ANiS should reply what happened to the huge money donated to them by the people only by keeping faith in Dabholkar. In this connection, one more major scam has come to the light involving ANiS Trust.

Abhay Vartak spokesperson of Sanatan Sanstha said, A progressive thinker in Pune Prof. G.P. Pradhan had merged the entire property of his Vasudha Manovikas Pratishthan in the Trust of Maharashtra Andhshraddha Nirmulan Samiti. Dr. Dabholkar had given the statement accordingly under his own signature in 2012. However, the ANiS Trust has not shown this property anywhere in its assets. Where is such a huge property donated by a great personality? Who has usurped such a large property by not recording it in the ANiS Trust?

Did the killing of Dabholkar take place out of the dispute created over usurping the property, the trace of which is still a mystery? Why is ANiS not making efforts to ensure that the punishment is meted out to Khandelwal-Nagori under whose possession of the gun used to kill Dabholkar was found? What can be the purpose behind this? To find the real killers or to harass seekers of Sanatan Sanstha? We are appealing ANiS to reply i.e. Jawab Do to all these questions, added Vartak.

H.H. Sunil Chincholkar said, ANiS always insisted on examining the working of dharma. Then, why are they refusing the demand for examining the working of their Trust? When Dabholkar was alive, he used to say that he is ever ready for inquiry into his working; why are his successors scared of the similar inquiry?,

Anand Dave said, The so-called progressive elements create uproar about suppressing the voice in the country under freedom of expressions. They say the battle of ideology should be fought only with ideology. However, when we ask for permission to agitate for expressing our opinions, it is rejected. Does this mean that freedom of expression is reserved only for the progressives? The Police administration suppress Hindus even today, which is against the principles of democracy. Vijay Gawade said that all devout Hindu organisations backed Sanatan Sanstha for fighting injustice done to them.
We were the first to report last month that the CDC was informing state health departments of a new wave of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) cases starting this summer, and we again put forward our idea that the environment, probably in the form of pesticides but whatever the case something besides a microbe, was involved. (Some of our readers will suspect vaccines, which is also certainly plausible.) AFM is basically medical code for WTF?, since it does not describe an infection but a condition. It's like calling poliomyelitis infantile paralysis, the term it went by before anyone figure out what was going on.

Sofia had been hospitalized and gotten an IV antibiotic in the same arm that became paralyzed, which is similar to the provocation polio caused by needle sticks that allowed the virus to travel, through a process called reversal axonal transport, to the anterior horn cells at the top of the spinal column that control movement. (It was upon hearing about this phenomenon while we worked on our 2010 book The Age of Autism that Mark and I looked deeper at polio. It seemed to mimic a process we were investigating involving the combination of syphilis and mercury treatment triggering the worst form of that disease, general paralysis of the insane. Note paralysis.)

Now it pays to be humble in the face of a new illness. There was a lot going on in this cluster of early cases, which spread from California and Colorado to Illinois and across the country before seeming to fade out last year (its back now on a scary cycle that also recalls the periodicity of polio). Some of those patients two years ago tested positive for EV-68, a virus in the same enterovirus family as polio, but others didnt, and a conclusive link between the infection and the neurological damage couldn't be made in any case.

So when this new outbreak of polio-like paralysis among children arose in California, we looked into it. We interviewed the mother of a child, Sofia Jarvis, who developed a paralyzed arm, and we came up with a possible pesticide connection. Heres a screen grab from a story Mark and I wrote in April 2014 .

Here at AOA, which focuses on autism and other environmental, man-made threats to childrens health, we first called out this issue as urgent in early 2014 because it lined up eerily with work Mark Blaxill and I had done about the original paralysis-inducing epidemics of poliomyelitis. In 2011, we first proposed a new theory for those outbreaks  suggesting the poliovirus combined with novel manmade toxins, most notably the pesticide lead arsenate, to kick off the Age of Polio. The ideas is simple: Toxin plus microbe = polio outbreaks. Without the toxin, polio is a minor, often unnoticed infection. With it, the virus can gain access to the nervous system and cause polio's dreaded effects.

The alarm bells are ringing louder over the increasing number of cases of sudden paralysis among children in the United States. But the predictable focus on germs by disease hunters is obscuring what surely must be a strong environmental component.

NOTE: Many years ago, I planted raspberries next to our house. The birds ate every single berry, so we abandoned the effort. Now I have a wild patch that is bursting forth with juicy red berries and zero effort on my part. That's life! As I was picking a few for breakfast, I remembered this Weekly Wrap from our own Dan Olmsted. Dan and Mark Blaxill's book is coming out later this summer. I hope you'll reserve a copy today as a thank you to Dan for his brilliant work on behalf of our kids and the truth. DENIAL: How Refusing to Face the Facts about Our Autism Epidemic Hurts Children, Families, and Our Future. By Dan Olmsted

It's the same old story: The mainstream  in medicine, in big media, in the government  seems resistant to the point of oblivion to the idea that the environment, especially manmade chemicals and medical interventions, especially ones they create and promote, could have anything to do with human health. It is after all the Centers for Disease Control that takes the lead and tracks the numbers in these things, and we know from close experience  autism  that they cant (or wont) get their mind around the idea of environmentally induced epidemics, especially not when they get money from epidemic-deniers and make their living studying the creepy-crawly end of the disease-causing spectrum. The idea that some dumb manmade chemical like a pesticide (or thimerosal) could tip the body's exquisite but delicate balance into a new epidemic of illness just does not compute. They seem to forget that something is new here; new means novel, and novel implies either some mutating or new virus, or a toxin that wasn't there before in the way it is now.

So when EV-68 starts to look dubious as the cause, they widen their aperture just enough to fit in every other germ known to mankind (but not manmade chemicals like lead arsenate or DDT or the new generation that appears to be killing bees wholesale, and maybe bats, and maybe now children). That reliable CDC downspout The Huffington Post (which after years of being friendly to the vaccine-autism concept got bought up and out by AOL and now Verizon and promptly shut up) reported this week under the headline A Mysterious Neurological Condition Is Paralyzing Children:

One alarming complication is that AFM appears to be triggered by common viruses. Oh, so now its viruses, plural. Experts arent sure what causes AFM, as scientists havent been able to consistently isolate a germ in a patients spinal fluid that could explain what triggered the condition.



A germ  it must be a germ. That is the box outside of which we will not get as long as those inside the germ paradigm are running the show. And since they cant find a germ it must be any number of germs, none of which, as far as I know, has been implicated in any way but hey, lets toss em out there: They have found that it appears to be triggered by a variety of diseases, including viral infections like West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis virus, the virus that causes polio and those that can cause the common cold, pneumonia, bladder infection or gastroenteritis.

Well theres a greasy nothingburger of causation gibberish if Ive ever tasted one. First of all why weren't these things triggering mayhem five years ago? We have a truly scary and rising epidemic of childhood paralysis under way and the CDC has no idea whats happening. Hey, it could be EV-68, or any other viral infection like West Nile, or Japanese encephalitis, or polio, or the common cold, or a bladder infection, or a stomach bug. Anything the CDC is in charge of figuring it out, and nothing its not.

The HuffPo story is written by someone passingly familiar with medical issues, someone obviously not suited to push this story forward rather than stenographically repeat the CDC, containing half-somnambulant statements like this:

Its important to note that despite the spike in case reports, the condition is still exceedingly rare; less than one in one million people in America will experience it. And how in the heck do they know that less than one million people are going to experience this thing? The rate right now might be one in one million, but it is increasing, you dodoheads! Thats what dangerous diseases can do! And it is paralyzing kids. Quit worrying about the flu and start worrying about some new polio-like thing that is leaving children paralyzed for life from the nose down, and killing others outright.

There's always a chipper quality to these things. The LA Times made it into a mother's quest for answers, which is wonderful but needs a lot of help and not just cheerleading; HuffPo offered this: "Complicating matters is that doctors arent sure how to treat a child once acute flaccid myelitis is present." How do you sit at your laptop and write soulless dreck like that? The reality that a paralytic and sometimes fatal disease cannot be treated at all is not a complication, people! It's a nightmare.

Im sticking with the pesticide idea, in part because it certainly hasnt been looked at but most of all because of of our work on polio and our reporting on raspberries. Raspberries? In the recent Washington State outbreak, two children were from Whatcom County. Look it up  the place is an agricultural heartland stretching clear accord the northern tier of that state. According to Bellingham.org:

With 140 miles of marine shoreline and 100,000 acres of highly productive farmland, Bellingham and Whatcom County, Washington are a fresh food haven stretching deliciously between the Salish Sea and snow-capped Mount Baker, near the U.S.  Canada border.

Farm production in Whatcom County ranks in the top three percent of all counties in the United States. Whatcom County is also the nations largest producer of red raspberries, growing 60 percent of the U.S. crop, first in the nation for milk production per cow, and first out of 39 Washington state counties in overall dairy production.

Being the nations largest producer of red raspberries gives me a hill because it reminds me of the story we ran more than two years ago now  see the raspberry photo above. Little Sofia ate raspberries the morning she started getting sick. Her mother told the doctors about it. But since Sofia didnt have botulism, they discounted any connection. End of story, until this new one: The outbreak is at least partly in raspberry country, and the child who died lived a dozen miles or so from Lynden, Washington, home of the Northwest Raspberry Festival every July.

Its not that raspberries cause paralysis or that these two facts prove causation. But it makes me want to keep looking. That small round buckyball sphere is just perfect for conveying more than its share of toxic agricultural chemical per mouthful. If you were to pick an advance warning system that our food might be awash in manmade impurities creating a terrifying new disease, a humble little raspberry might be an ideal contrivance. It has more surface area than Norway has shoreline and it is damnably hard to keep sterile. We wrote in 2014:

Pesticide residue seems to us like a prime suspect. Fruit is notoriously difficult to grow organically and without pesticides,' Jeff Moyer, farm director at the Rodale Institute, an organic research institution, is quoted as saying on the institutes Web site. According to the institute, Because most fruits have soft skins, the pesticides that are used to kill those bugs (and the molds and fungi that also love fruit) get into the flesh and into your mouth, and no amount of peeling or washing can remove them.

And you cant peel a raspberry.

--

Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism.
FARGO -- A Fargo pro-white activist now says he has a specific date and place in mind for a rally to advance pro-white issues.

Peter Tefft, 30, of Fargo, is considering the evening of Saturday, Oct. 14, for the rally he hopes to hold in the public square between the Fargo Public Library and the Civic Center downtown.

He said Friday he expects a crowd of around 200 to 300 people.

Tefft attended the Unite the Right rally that got out of hand last weekend in Charlottesville, Va.

Last Saturday, a driver with alleged Nazi sympathies drove into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Heather Heyer was struck and killed, and 19 others were injured.

President Donald Trump insisted there was blame "on both sides" -- with a crowd of counter-protesters and throngs of white nationalists objecting to the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in a park there.

Tefft said he doesnt identify with Nazis, white supremacists or the alt-right movement, but that hes interested in advancing causes that benefit whites.

We want to show people were not anti-anything, were just pro-white, he said.

Deputy Fargo Police Chief Joe Anderson said Tefft hasnt contacted the department about the event, as far as he knows.

Tefft said he plans to do so next week.

Anyone wishing to hold a special event in Fargo that requires a street closing must fill out a permit request and submit it to Fargo Police no later than 45 days prior to the event.

According to the permit application, the city requires certain events to obtain insurance prior to approval, including those using city streets where large numbers of participants are expected.

Tefft said theres concern about violence for anyone who hosts a large event, but that it can be managed.

He said the groups hes working with to plan the event have a method of vetting people for the type of character they wish to have represented at the event.

We have message boards not accessible to the public that well use to organize it, Tefft said.

From those, participants will get a verification message they can show to gain access to a gated area at the event.

Tefft hopes to invite comedian Sam Hyde to be the events keynote speaker. Hyde also attended the rally in Charlottesville.

Hyde had a show last year called Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace on the cable network Adult Swim. It was not renewed over claims it promoted racism and sexism.

Tefft said the focus of the rally in Fargo will likely be the opioid addiction crisis, which he says has killed a disproportionate number of white people.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, opioid overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2015. The Kaiser Family Foundation said of those deaths in the U.S., 82 percent were people described as white, non-Hispanic.
Representatives from Bridgestone Tires and North Augusta Chamber of Commerce pose with state legislators. From left, Adam Barfoot, Terra Carroll, Sen. Tom Young, Chris Barden, Monica Key, Vergil Norrod, Kevin Toole, Sen. Shane Massey and Rep. Bill Hixon.
With livestock producers sorely in need of hay for their animals in drought-stricken areas of North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, the North Dakota Department of Agriculture is looking for hay donations and truckers to move the hay.

Already 840 livestock producers have applied on the website for hay from whats being called the Hay Lottery.

With the huge number of applications, the department has decided to do a lottery. Each producer selected in the lottery will get a semi-load of hay in the lottery on Sept. 1.

Until then, Michelle Mielke of NDDA said they are in need of truckers to help move hay that has been donated and also of more donations.

She said 30 semi-load donations are waiting at farms in the region to be hauled to a central location site near North Dakota State University.

Mielke was excited on Friday, Aug. 18, because five or six semi loads were being hauled to Fargo from producers in Michigan who have donated to the cause.

The hay lottery was organized by NDDA and the NDSU Agricultural Experiment Station.

Ag departments in South Dakota and Montana will have their own lotteries, but Mielke said the application process is going through the NDDA website.

To apply, livestock producers must have at least 25 animals and be in the heavier drought-stricken areas.

To apply, more information is available at www.nd.gov/ndda.

For those willing to donate hay or help with the trucking, they can call NDDA at 701-328-4764 or 1-844-642-4752 to get information about delivery to the collection site near the NDSU campus.
August 19, 2017

We wrote here last month that US-Russian coordination on Syria could be a catalyst for a new alignment that brings Turkey closer to Syria and Iran, while testing the limits and extent of Moscows influence among the regional players.

Amberin Zaman, reporting this week on the unprecedented visit to Ankara of Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, Irans chief of general staff, writes that as the United States and Russia seek ways to end the conflict and  as Iran and Turkey see things  cut deals behind their backs, Tehran and Ankara seem eager to project unity.

Anton Mardasov adds that Moscow is seeking to maximize its leverage in Syria, including relative to Tehran. Russia is currently opting for agreements beyond the peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan  that is, behind Irans back, Mardasov writes. Examples include the de-escalation zone in southwest Syria that Russia negotiated with the United States in Amman, Jordan, as well as de-escalation zones in eastern Ghouta and northern Homs, both of which were negotiated in Cairo.

Since eastern Aleppo was seized, Russia has definitely increased its sway over the region. Russia turned the tide of war and helped the regime survive. However, over the war years, Tehran has gained momentum and built up a multilayer presence in Syria that includes local Shiite militants, Mardasov explains. These groups include Syrian units, offshoots of the Lebanese National Ideological Resistance in Syria and Syrian Islamic Resistance groups (sometimes called Iraqi Hezbollah), the units of the Local Defense Forces in Aleppo and the National Defense Forces, comprising Alawites, Sunnis and other Syrians backed by Iranian military advisers and partially or fully funded by Iran. New Iranian cultural centers and Shiite propaganda among the locals are Tehrans soft-power instruments. This strategy heightens ethnic and sectarian tensions in the region, which helps spread [Islamic State] and [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] propaganda.

One potential flashpoint is on the Syrian-Israeli border. An Israeli-Russian accord allowing the Israeli air force considerable latitude in targeting Hezbollah in Syria emerged as the first counterbalance, which undoubtedly raised Tehrans ire, Mardasov notes.

Last month, this column asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would enforce Syrian red lines against Iran. And this week, in an almost mirror image of Irans concerns about US-Russian planning for Syria, Ben Caspit reports that Netanyahus support for a new law allowing him to declare war without government or Cabinet authorization is a response to concerns that Israel may be sold out by Washington and Moscow.

It is not clear if the Knesset would authorize such a law, Caspit writes, but the effect on the region of this publication is crystal clear: An Israeli attack on Iranian or Hezbollah infrastructures in Lebanon or in Syria would mean all-out, open war between the sides. Netanyahu wants to have sole authority to approve such an assault. This is another development in the war of nerves that has been waged in the area for some time. To many international observers, this is reminiscent of Israels threat regarding Iranian nuclear activity that led to intensification of the international sanctions imposed on Iran and, ultimately, to the nuclear agreement itself.

A second flashpoint is, of course, Idlib. Mardasov writes, The rise of [al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] in rebel-controlled Idlib province and the use of delaying tactics in the negotiations play into the hands of Damascus and Tehran, which need a protracted military campaign to regain losses. They blame opposition groups for their ostensible loyalty to al-Qaeda. The Syrian governments offensive to retake Idlib is a negative scenario for Russia and Turkey. Rebel forces will apparently rally to fight the common enemy. New coalitions will emerge among the moderate and radical opposition. Ultimately, the process will strengthen al-Qaeda's position in Syria and trigger a new humanitarian and refugee crisis. Obviously, under such circumstances, the advancing troops will also suffer heavy casualties. That's why Damascus and Iran will try to drag Russia into this new round of war. Should the situation escalate, the Kremlin would tolerate the deployment of Turkish troops.

A third flashpoint revolves around those areas in northern Syria where Turkey seeks to expand its influence and prevent the expansion of Syrian Kurdish control. Ankara accuses the Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) of links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which both the United States and Turkey consider a terrorist organization. Metin Gurcan reports that Turkey has been working to rebuild the 772-square-mile (2,000-square-kilometer) Jarablus/al-Rai/al-Bab triangle" with "ambitious and costly reconstruction projects" that "suggest comprehensive society-building." Fehim Tastekin, in assessing Syrian Kurdish options and strategy, cites Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans Aug. 2 statement: We are determined to expand the dagger we stabbed into their project of forming a terror entity in Syria. Very soon we will take new and important steps in this direction.

Turkeys preoccupation with beating back Syrian Kurdish control in northern Syria could open the door to some type of accommodation with Damascus. As we reported earlier this year, there may be some lessons learned from Manbij for threading the needle on the roles and interest of Turkey, the YPG, Syria, Russia and the United States. Amberin Zaman explains, Ankara is keeping up threats to invade Afrin, the mainly Kurdish enclave across its border that is administered by the YPG and its political allies. Afrin is cut off from the rest of the contiguous YPG-run territories that are effectively under US protection, and Turkey is determined that it remains so. A Western diplomat told Al-Monitor on strict condition of anonymity that Turkey would be willing to make peace with Assad in a heartbeat if he would help it crush the YPG. Thus Iran, which is bent on keeping Assad in power, scents an opportunity. So does Russia, which has been pressing Turkey to take firmer action against al-Qaeda-linked militants who control Idlib and according to YPG officials has been dangling Afrin as a bargaining chip.

Despite the emergence of differences between Iranian and Russian interests in Syria, it might be premature or misleading to envision an acrimonious rivalry or divorce. Both Moscow and Tehran back the Syrian government and, as Mardasov notes, Moscows strategy directly depends on the permanent presence of numerous pro-Iranian forces controlling different parts of the front line.

US sanctions legislation may have also dampened Russian President Vladimir Putins expectations for engagement with the Donald Trump administration. As we wrote here last month, a new regional realignment including Turkey and Iran would test Putin, who welcomes and needs a US partnership to stabilize Syria, but whose leverage with Damascus, Tehran and Ankara could be weakened, rather than strengthened, by closer ties with the United States.  If no sanctions relief is forthcoming [from the United States], Putin will have little interest in carrying Trumps water at the expense of his regional ties. Russia might therefore undertake an outwardly passive and inwardly supportive role that allows the regional parties to take the initiative against the Syrian Kurds or others. Moscow might see that as the winning hand. For the United States, the Russian card should be played carefully, with full appreciation that Tehran, Ankara and Damascus will all have their say.

Iraqi Kurds may delay referendum



As we have written in recent columns, the proposed Iraqi Kurdish referendum on independence, scheduled for Sept. 25, has revealed the limits of regional and international support for Erbil and has shaken the partnership between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Turkey.

The pressure on Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani to postpone the referendum has intensified in recent days. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned on Aug. 16 that the referendum could lead to civil war. The next day, Gen. Joseph Votel, commander of US Central Command, reiterated US opposition to the referendum in a meeting with Barzani in Erbil.

The pressure may be forcing a rethink in Erbil. After meetings in Baghdad on Aug. 17 between a KRG delegation and Iraqi government officials, Iraqi Kurdish sources have signaled that Barzani might consider postponing the referendum for a short time, until after the Iraqi elections in April 2018, if a new referendum date is guaranteed in writing and under UN supervision.
More than 2,300 women received bids during the culmination of the University of Alabama's sorority recruitment week, as this year's Bid Day saw a large crowd on a sweltering Saturday at the Capstone.



Of the 2,589 women who attended the first round of events for fall 2017 formal recruitment at UA, 90 percent (2,338 women) received bids from the 16 Panhellenic sororities that participated in recruitment, according to the university.



This year's number did not see the school's largest-ever class for the first time in years, following 2016's record-breaking pledge class of 2,488.



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70 years of Bid Day!

Look back through seven decades' worth of Alabama Bid Day photos, dating all the way back to the 1940s.



See last year's Bid Day gallery.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a United Methodist leader urged him to prioritize racial equity and justice in the investigation of the protests a week ago in Charlottesville, Va., that resulted in violence.

On Aug. 12, a "Unite the Right" march in Charlottesville led to a confrontation with counterprotesters. A car plowed into the counterprotesters, killing a young woman, Heather Heyer, 32.

The Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe, General Secretary for the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, wrote an open letter to Sessions noting that he is also a United Methodist.

Dear Mr. Attorney General,

From one southern United Methodist to another, I implore you to prayerfully and actively work to protect the civil rights of all people, especially people of color and religious minorities. Your position requires it, and our faith demands it.

As the general secretary of the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church, I am responsible for advocating for the implementation of the Social Principles and other policy statements of the Church to which we belong.

These Social Principles state, "Racism, manifested as sin, plagues and hinders our relationship with Christ, inasmuch as it is antithetical to the gospel itself" (2016 Book of Discipline, Social Principles P162.A). The spiritual and systemic manifestations of racism tear at the heart of our faith and our society. Racism is not only the expression of hate, but it is the perpetuation of economic injustice, enactment of discriminatory housing and education policies, implementation of unjust policing practices, infringements on voting rights and more.

Your position as the attorney general of the United States is responsible for addressing these injustices and upholding the civil rights of all people in the United States. Your call to public service requires an explicit commitment to eliminating racism.

I call upon you to more justly uphold the protections and rights of people of color and religious minorities than what we have seen in your seven-month tenure at the Department of Justice. In addition to the blatant culture of hate and bigotry manifesting across the nation, recent events at the Department of Justice have alarmed many civil rights advocates, especially those within faith communities.

In your work engaging with civil rights and encountering the sin of racism, I appeal to you to be faithful to your United Methodist baptismal vows:

To renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin.

To accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.

I understand that you have opened a civil rights investigation into the tragedy that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia this weekend when white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK terrorized people standing for justice and peace, and attacked a city that did not invite them. In this civil rights investigation - and in the entirety of the work of the Department of Justice - I urge you to prioritize racial equity and justice. To do anything less would be a disservice to the office that you hold, and an affront to our shared faith in Christ.

I will be praying for you and this country,

The Rev. Dr. Susan Henry-Crowe

General Secretary, General Board of Church and Society

The United Methodist Church
A Homewood police officer shot and killed a man early Saturday morning after a struggle in which the officer was shocked with his own Taser.

Homewood police spokesperson Sgt. John Carr said the officer "was forced to defend himself."

The officer suffered minor injuries, he said, and was treated and released from Brookwood Medical Center.

The incident occurred at around 1 a.m. at the Extended Stay America Hotel on State Farm Parkway in Homewood.

Carr said incident began when the officer stopped to speak with a man he saw while patrolling the parking lot of the hotel. The suspect "got into a struggle with the officer," he said.

During the struggle, the suspect was able to grab the officer's Taser and use it on the officer. The officer then shot the suspect, Carr said.

First aid was rendered at the scene, he said. The suspect was transported to UAB Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The suspect's name is being withheld pending notification of family.

The State Bureau of Investigation is now investigating the shooting at the request for the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office and Homewood police.
The newly-created Alabama law that imposes a $25,000 fine for tampering with a historical monument or statue on public property actually fails to do just that, according to a state lawmaker.

State Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, said there is no application of a $25,000 fine to monuments or statues that are more than 40 years old. Instead, England said, it only applies to markers that are 20 to 40 years old.

That law was the subject of a lawsuit filed Wednesday by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall against the city of Birmingham and Mayor William Bell.

England is serving his third term in the legislature and is also an associate city attorney for the city of Tuscaloosa.

"It's amazing that the bill was specifically designed to protect the oldest, and consequently or allegedly, the most important," England said Friday in an interview with AL.com. "But it's actually the most ineffective in doing it.

"It's more effective in protecting monuments that are 20 to 40 years old than in the ones they were trying to protect."

England said the law is clear that it's illegal to tamper with historical markers more than 40 years old. But there is no punishment spelled out if such illegal activity takes place. And there is no process to seek a waiver to tamper with a historical marker that's more than 40 years old, he said.

The AGs lawsuit, which asks for the city of Birmingham to be fined $25,000 each day the barriers remain, came after Bell ordered a plywood barrier be erected at the base of a Confederate monument in Linn Park.

The monument, dedicated in 1905, would fall into the category of a historical marker on public property that's more than 40 years old.

England said that in the bill passed by the legislature earlier this year and signed into law by Gov. Kay Ivey, it breaks down historical markers into two categories - one for markers more than 40 years old, the other for markers 20 to 40 years old.

Of markers more than 40 years old, the law states in Section 3, subsection (a): "No architecturally significant building, memorial building, memorial street, or monument which is located on public property and has been so situated for 40 or more years may be relocated, removed, altered, renamed or otherwise disturbed."

Of markers 20 to 40 years old, the law states in Section 3, subsection (b): "No architecturally significant building, memorial building, memorial street, or monument which is located on public property and has been so situated for 40 or more years may be relocated, removed, altered, renamed or otherwise disturbed except as provided in Section 6."

England said that makes it clear that for markers more than 40 years old, there is no waiver process available to remove or disturb the markers because Section 3, subsection (a) makes no reference to Section 6. That is the section of the law that describes the waiver process.

Such a reference to Section 6 is made for markers 20 to 40 years old.

The only reference in the law to the $25,000 is in Section 6, subsection (2)(d). According to subsection (2)(d), the fine is imposed only for failing to receive a waiver or not seeking a waiver.

Read the full law below

"In reading the bill, you go through the entire thing, it says you cannot touch monuments over 40 years old," England said. "There is no judicial review for the decision. There is no penalty if you violate it. It just says you can't do it. It puts you in the position of, 'Well, what happens if I do?'"

Asked specifically if, in his opinion, that the $25,000 fine does not apply to markers more than 40 years old, England said, "It does not. At all. There is no waiver provision for 40 year old monuments. You just can't do it. Period."

England gave his thoughts on the monument bill in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

"I have said it before and I will say it again," he said in the post. "The Alabama Memorial Preservation Act is a bad law for many reasons. The spirit of the law is horrible. However, on a basic fundamental level, it was poorly drafted, it is impractical and without a penalty it is essentially unenforceable when it comes to monuments over 40 years old. Soon, legally, we are about to find out just how bad the law is."

Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017 by pgattis7719 on Scribd
FARGO -- U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., honored the work of the U.S. Postal Service on Friday, including the efforts of two mail carriers who went above and beyond to help elderly customers in need.

Heitkamp presented the Postmaster General Hero Award to Josh Hefta, a rural carrier in Minto, N.D., and Meredith Gozdal, a rural carrier in Drayton, N.D.

In early January, Hefta was delivering mail to 94-year-old Alice Paschke, a regular customer who usually met him at the door, when he heard her calling for help from inside her home. Hefta broke down the door to assist Paschke, who had fallen 20 hours earlier and was unable to reach the phone.

Paschke has since recovered and is doing well, and her son regularly checks in with Hefta to keep him updated.

As Hefta accepted his award, his two young sons listened to Heitkamp tell them what a hero their dad is.

Its just an honor, Hefta said.

Gozdal was doing her regular route when she noticed that the mail of an elderly resident had piled up. Concerned, Gozdal called the house and checked the garage but didnt receive a response. She eventually called the police to do a welfare check, and officers found the resident unresponsive when they entered the house.

The resident was rushed to the hospital, and thankfully survived due to Gozdals diligence.

Serving as a mail carrier in a rural community is about more than a job. Its about a relationship with those they serve. Both Mr. Hefta and Ms. Gozdal are wonderful examples of that, Heitkamp said.

Along with honoring Gozdal and Hefta, Sen. Heitkamp swore in two new postmasters for the West Fargo, N.D., post office and presented eight awards to North Dakota mail carriers for their dedication to improving customer service at the U.S. Postal Office.
Arab Electric Cooperative employee John "Jack" Willis is accused of embezzling more than $2.9 million from the utility company.

Federal prosecutors are seeking a forfeiture of Willis' property for the amount of the alleged embezzlement, according to papers filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Alabama.

Willis is set to be arraigned on the embezzlement charge on Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Huntsville.

WAFF reported that Willis, a longtime member services supervisor, was placed on unpaid leave on March 6 due to irregularities found in a TVA rate and credit audit.

Willis, who had worked at the co-op since 1988, worked in collections and handled customer complaints.
The Southern Poverty Law Center warned of "taking further appropriate action" against the Alabama Public Charter School Commission if it grants approval for an organization to run a statewide charter school operation for jailed youth.

In a letter to the commission dated Thursday, the SPLC said neither Teens' Path to Success nor its contractor, Pinnacle Schools, has the experience to run such an operation for a "vulnerable population." Teens' Path to Success is appealing to the commission after it was denied approval in May by the Athens School Board.

Teens' Path for Success wants to educate youth up to 21 years old to finish high school. The proposal would serve 550 jailed youth at a cost of $10,000 per student, and is modeled after a similar program in Athens City Schools.

The commission is seeking more information from Teens' Path to Success, including a response to a review by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers that found the group failed to meet the association's standard for financial planning. The commission first heard Teens' Path to Success' appeal last month, with a follow-up hearing set for Monday. It gave conditional approval that depends on the group's response to the financial concerns.

The SPLC said it has an interest in the hearing because of its work with detained children. It in part cited an AL.com report of a Huntsville school board meeting where the board said Pinnacle was invoicing the school system an amount "in the neighborhood of seven figures" above its contract.

"The SPLC believes all children deserve a high-quality education. Teens' Path to Success, however, is not qualified to provide that. TPS has no experience operating a statewide program, especially tailored to the specific needs of youth who are in custody," SPLC spokeswoman Elizabeth Johnson wrote in an email. "Education is one of the most critical tools available to put these youth on a path toward success. Alabama can't afford to waste state resources on an inexperienced, unqualified provider like TPS."

The commission, whose chairman said last month that it would not "rubber-stamp" the charter school plan, needs to rule that the proposal fits five criteria - including evidence of a "thorough and high quality" charter school program, in order to grant the appeal.

Teens' Path to Success doesn't meet three of the criteria, the SPLC argued.

"Should the commission choose to grant the appeal, in violation of Alabama [law], SPLC will consider taking further appropriate action to protect the rights of Alabama's most vulnerable children," the group wrote in its letter to the commission.
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- A police officer in Florida died from his injuries Saturday, a day after his colleague was killed when a suspect fired at them during a scuffle while they were on patrol. The suspect was later arrested at a bar.

Sgt. Sam Howard died Saturday afternoon at a hospital where he had been taken following Friday night's attack in Kissimmee, Florida, located south of the theme park hub of Orlando.

Officer Matthew Baxter died Friday night, a short time after authorities say he was shot by 45-year-old Everett Miller.

Miller faces a charge of first-degree murder for the killing of Baxter. Authorities hadn't yet said what charges he could face for Howard's death.

During a patrol late Friday of a neighborhood with a history of drug activity, Baxter was "checking out" three people, including Miller, when the officer got into a scuffle with Miller. Howard, his sergeant, responded as backup, said Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell.

The officers didn't have an opportunity to return fire. They weren't wearing body cameras.

Sheriff's deputies with a neighboring law enforcement agency later tracked Miller down to a bar and approached him. Miller started reaching toward his waistband when the deputies tackled and subdued him, O'Dell said.

They found a handgun and revolver on him.

"They were extremely brave and heroic actions taken by the deputies," O'Dell said.

The police chief said Miller was taken to jail wearing Baxter's handcuffs.

Authorities originally said they believed there were four suspects, but the chief said Saturday that no other arrests are anticipated.

Miller, 45, was a Marine veteran and was recently involuntarily committed for a mental evaluation by the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. The early stages of the investigation shows that Miller had made threats to law enforcement on Facebook, O'Dell said.

Baxter, 27, had been with the Kissimmee Police Department for three years. He was married to another Kissimmee police officer and they have four children.

Howard, 36, has served with the Kissimmee Police Department for 10 years. He and his wife have one child, O'Dell said.

"They are two wonderful men, family men," O'Dell said. "They are two committed to doing it the right way."

Separately, two other officers were injured late Friday in Jacksonville, Florida, after police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where the mother of his child, their 19-month-old toddler, the woman's mother and a family friend were thought to be in danger. One of the officers was shot in both hands and the other was shot in the stomach.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said Saturday that officers Michael Fox and Kevin Jarrell are in stable condition following Friday night's confrontation with an armed Derrick Brabham, who was killed by the officers.

In Pennsylvania, two state troopers were shot and a suspect killed outside a small-town store south of Pittsburgh on Friday night.

President Trump tweeted early Saturday that his thoughts and prayers were with the Kissimmee Police Department. "We are with you!" he said.

My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!#LESM  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

Florida Gov. Rick Scott tweeted he was heartbroken by the news of Baxter's death and was praying for a quick recovery for Howard.
Tropical Storm Harvey lost its title on Saturday night and has been downgraded to a tropical wave.

The National Hurricane Center said Harvey, the eighth named storm of 2017 in the Atlantic, fell victim to wind shear and looks more like an open wave than a tropical storm.

A Hurricane Hunter reconnaissance confirmed that diagnosis later Saturday, unable to find a closed center of circulation in the system.

The hurricane center said regeneration was unlikely in the short term and said it was issuing the last advisory on the storm.

As of the final advisory, at 10 p.m. CDT Saturday, the remnants of Harvey were located about 765 miles east of the Nicaragua-Honduras border and were moving to the west at 22 mph.

The system had winds of 35 mph.

What's left of Harvey is expected to stay on a westward path for the next few days, the hurricane center said, and will move across the eastern and central Caribbean over the weekend.

Forecasters cautioned those in the central and western Caribbean, northern Nicaragua, northern Honduras, Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico to keep an eye on Harvey.

The hurricane center said the wind shear that did Harvey in is expected to diminish in a day or two, but the storm is not expected to regenerate in the near future because it is moving so fast, and because of dry air in its vicinity.

Forecasters noted, however, that regeneration might be possible if Harvey's remnants emerge over the Bay of Campeche.

There are two tropical waves in the Atlantic in addition to Harvey on Saturday afternoon.

The first, Invest 92L, is about 250 miles east-northeast of the northern Leeward Islands as of 1 p.m. CDT and is moving to the west-northwest at about 20 mph.

This wave will be one for Florida to keep an eye on, because its forecast track puts it close to South Florida in a few days.

The question is, will it be anything to worry about?

It was still a disorganized system as of Saturday afternoon, and the atmosphere in the area is forecast to be only marginally conducive for it to get its act together in the next few days. the hurricane center said.

It has only a 30 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression over the next five days. The hurricane center did mention, however, that conditions may become more favorable for it to develop once it nears the Bahamas.

A second tropical wave farther to the east has a 10 percent chance of development but is expected to eventually recurve and turn out to sea.
Unity Rally at Linn Park

About 200 people gathered in Linn Park for a Unity Rally where the Confederate Memorial is to be covered from view. (Joe Songer | jsonger@al.com).

Brynn Welch, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Hi, there. I'm the woman you've seen next to headlines on this site recently. You know, the one resting her praying head against her son's beautiful brown face. I want to be clear about something: I love this picture of my little family. It captures a moment when a pastor was offering one of the most inspiring prayers I've ever heard, a prayer I will repeat often in the weeks and months to come, I'm sure. I also loved this event.

We moved here just last year, in no small part because I was tired of seeing giant Confederate flags everywhere we went in our previous city and thinking about what message that conveyed to my son. But I walked around that event, thinking about the messages that gathering was sending him, and I felt like we were home.

I first saw the photo when I checked al.com for election results. I was distracted from those results by the bizarre experience of seeing my own face. I get it, the reason my little family is the perfect thumbnail image for a headline that reads "This is what Bama looks like." It captures what so many of us want so desperately to see: white and black joining together in love and equality, hoping for a better future for our kids. But if my family's image can serve as the very picture of racial equality, something is wrong.

So while we're doing some national soul searching, let's ask ourselves this: how likely is it you'd see this image but with the skin colors of mother and child reversed? Or, perhaps a black father holding his young white daughter? After all, what we don't see can shape our worldviews just as powerfully as the images we do see.

This wonderful picture of my family as the thumbnail for a story about the beauty and strength in diversity was made possible by an adoption system that has serious racial problems. Several of the agencies I interviewed during the process would not work with single parents unless the child being placed is African-American. Then, standards relax and single parents are fine.

Many agencies have fee structures based on the race of the child. Years ago, NPR ran a story asking people to write six words about race or culture, and one person wrote "Black babies cost less to adopt." The commodification of children is disgusting; from a historical perspective, the commodification of black children is chilling.

There is absolutely no universe in which I'd change anything about my family. But I do have serious objections to the system that built it.

Reconciling my views of the system with my views of my family is a lifetime project, but I can tell you this: this moment between mother and son is not a picture of black and white joining together in love and equality, hoping for a better future for our kids. At least, that's not all it is. It's the image of a nice white lady who navigated her considerable privilege through a system that perpetuates the very problems and attitudes being protested, and who was - thanks to that same considerable privilege - totally unprepared for navigating what came next.

This stuff runs deep. And it's complicated. I love this picture, and I love my family. Of course I do. But a picture can hide 1000 words just as easily as it can say them.

b
From Lebanons civil war to ISILs takeover of Mosul and Aleppo, how has war photography changed over the years?

War photography has evolved since Lebanons 1975-1990 civil war, influenced by the advent of new technologies and the internet. Yet many of the ethical questions from that era remain relevant today, including when to put the camera down and how to properly assess the dangers of the job.

Three Lebanese war photographers  Aline Manoukian, Patrick Baz and George Azar  spoke with Al Jazeera about their own experiences covering conflicts, and about what factors have shaped the profession in recent decades.

The accidental war photographer

I started to be a war photographer by mistake, Aline Manoukian says, noting that she was in her early 20s when she returned home to Lebanon after studying the history of photography in the United States.

No one took me seriously at the beginning, even if I was taking the same risks as the men, says Manoukian, noting that she was the first female war photographer in Lebanon.

She recalls landing her first photographic scoop in 1984 in the Beirut neighbourhood of Ras al-Nabaa, at a time when it was under lockdown, completely surrounded by snipers.

Manoukian did not know these details when an acquaintance asked whether she would like to take photos of aid workers distributing bread in Beirut. She agreed, and the next day she found herself inside a Red Cross ambulance, snapping photos as the vehicle avoided shells raining down from all directions.

When she took her pictures to the local newspaper, the editors looked at her in shock: How did you manage to get in? they asked, according to Manoukians recollection. No one has access to that area now!

From then on, she was officially commissioned to cover the civil war.

Decades later, Manoukian, now a mother herself, acknowledges the anguish her parents would have faced upon learning that she was entering the line of fire to cover the war. Phone lines often went down, so transmitting her photos out of the country could take hours.

Manoukian eventually went on to become the bureau chief for Reuters, receiving wide acclaim for her photographs. But in 1989, she opted to leave Lebanon for Paris, vowing never to shoot another war again. Having witnessed too many scenes of violence and death, she felt that nothing moved her any more.

I had a few close calls, she says. Once, I witnessed a surprise execution right next to me. I had the persons blood all over my face.

WATCH: Omran Daqneesh and the limits of war photography

The emotional toll such events took on Manoukian is clear. Today, she takes medication to help deal with her anxiety, although she was never specifically diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Manoukians desensitisation to violence hit her especially hard after she travelled to Armenia in 1989 to photograph survivors of the great earthquake that hit the country a year earlier. People were complaining about their living conditions in make-shift houses and she felt unable to empathise with them.

I needed a big dose of tragedy to feel anything, she says. I have never [taken] drugs. But its as if you offer a drug addict, who has been doing heroin all his life, a joint. And you think, What do I do with this?'

Asked to cover the conflict in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, she refused. I felt as if I had my feet in cement, she says. I could not go to cover another war.

Addicted to the craft

I had always wanted to be where the action happened; I never felt I had a mission, says French-Lebanese photographer Patrick Baz. I just wanted to take pictures and tell a story. I had a news addiction.

Just 12 when Lebanons war erupted, Baz started working as a war photographer in his late teens.

Lebanon became his training ground. Photographing the Israeli invasion in 1982, he remembers the difficulty in covering a conflict that was unfolding in his own country. It was very difficult because I had to be neutral in a country  my country  which was being occupied, Baz says.

Starting as a freelance photographer in Lebanon, he went on to cover numerous other regional conflicts for the news agency AFP, from the first Intifada in Palestine, to the Gulf War, to the conflict in Libya and many others.

When I arrived in Sarajevo, I was shocked. It was freezing cold, the fighting and snipers were everywhere; this was war, Baz recalls.

I was used to the Lebanese way of doing war. You know you fight, yes, but then you would take a break, you would go to the mountains, and later you would come back, he jokes.

Because he was French-Lebanese, Baz says that some of his colleagues and members of the local community questioned his neutrality, a claim he rejects. Baz also believes that being a war photographer is a most egoistic profession; whether you are a man or a woman, you should be single, as it is too difficult to leave a family behind when heading out on a new mission.

Baz describes his years as a war photographer with a troubling analogy: Its a drug. You want it again and again. I was like [French comic-book character] Obelix  I fell into it as a kid and I became addicted.

In 2014, he was supposed to cover the war in Gaza, but in the end he realised he could not go. His body and his mind had finally had enough, and he realised he was struggling with PTSD.

Although he has since gone through therapy, Baz says that he has lost all interest in war, and does not even want to look at war stories any more. Today, he works for AFPs corporate department.

Over all the years, some of Bazs strongest feelings have been on shooting funerals: There were times when I refused to shoot on these occasions. It seemed an invasion of privacy to me.

Combining art and technology

When George Azar, an American of Lebanese descent, arrived in Beirut in 1981, his childhood memories of summer visits to the country were shattered.

When I returned to Lebanon as an adult, what I witnessed resembled a scene from Mad Max  a world of chaos where everyone had a gun, Azar says. If you had a gun, you had authority. It was a crazy world, but overlaid over a beautiful city and places I was attached to.

As he describes in the documentary Beirut Photographer, Azar travelled to Lebanon to counter what he felt was a media bias in how the conflict was being covered by the US media. Setting him apart from other foreign correspondents was his determination to live in Beirut for several years during the war, as opposed to colleagues who parachuted in and out of the country and the conflict.

Azar long knew he wanted to be a journalist. The first car bomb he went to shoot revealed to him the true scope of the conflict. I thought I would see an exploded vehicle, he recalls. When I arrived, I saw the entire block had been torn apart.

Thinking back to his early work, he believes that the content was able to compensate for his lack of technical expertise. His career soared as he covered several conflicts, working as a photojournalist and documentary filmmaker and winning numerous awards. Today, he is back in Lebanon, where he teaches at the American University of Beirut.

The motivation for being a war photographer during Lebanons civil war was never economic, he recalls.

You do it [war photography] because it is important to you, he says, recalling numerous close calls during the conflict, including being abducted six times and nearly executed.

Unlike some colleagues who describe the 1980s as the golden age for war photographers, Azar has a different perspective. There were fewer war photographers during that time, except for at certain peak moments, and the remuneration was no better or worse than it is today, he says.

He describes photography as a combination of art and technology, with the two elements intimately intertwined.

Azar also recalls debating whether it was right to record a video of an incident that unfolded during the 2006 Gaza war.

When my driver did not show up for work one morning in November 2006, I rushed to his village after hearing it had been hit by Israeli artillery fire. When I arrived, I found him sitting on the doorstep of this house in pools of his familys blood. I was faced with the moral question of whether or not to film. After comforting him a bit, I chose to film the event, so that it would not go unrecorded, for the sake of history, Azar says.

READ MORE: Armed with a camera  Confessions of a war photographer

A changing profession

For Manoukian, what has changed radically since Lebanons civil war is a growing awareness of the impact pictures have in shaping public opinion. Taking a photo in the 1980s remained more abstract, she says, while images today have become increasingly important tools of influence, and photojournalists have become even bigger targets.

If they dont want you there, they shoot you, Manoukian says.

American war photographer Kate Brooks agrees, noting that the job has become far more dangerous than ever before. The risk of kidnapping and the different types of weapons used at the front line make it extremely high-risk.

Social networks, such as Facebook, have also emerged as a way to check on a photographers views and neutrality, Baz notes: Today, every single photo editor in the world knows every photographer in Syria because of the social networks.

War photography is far more dangerous than ever before. The risk of kidnapping and the different types of weapons used at the frontline make it extremely high-risk. by Kate Brooks, war photographer

Equipment has also evolved, with more highly sophisticated lenses and camera sensors  and when photojournalists want to avoid calling attention to themselves, they can use something as discreet as an iPhone to take photos of publishable quality.

To Azar, the situation in a warzone is much bigger than any one individual: People overestimate your ability to affect it, but there are times when you have to act, he says.

A recent image of a little boy sitting in an ambulance in Aleppo sparked public criticism, even though rescue workers were present outside the frame, Manoukian says.

People who criticise these situations do not realise what its like to be in a war situation, she says. Each one does his job the best they can, and each one has a role. Of course you help before taking pictures there if you need to.

Brooks, who photographed the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Kabul in 2011, says that she found herself unable to take pictures as she was busy helping the wounded, who needed urgent medical attention.





Gabriel Chaim, a Brazilian photographer and filmmaker who specialises in covering conflicts, recalls spending seven months on the front lines in Mosul, Iraq. He often dropped his camera to focus on helping fleeing civilians, he says.

Each picture I post that shows the reality on the ground, and that makes a person question the reason for their existence when looking at the shot, motivates me to continue, Chaim says. However, he pays a price for this, as he is frequently away from his family, missing important milestones in his childrens growth.

With regard to gender stereotypes in war photography, Manoukian says the situation still needs improvement, but there are definite advantages to being a woman in situations of conflict: Were generally considered less threatening, more apolitical and grossly underestimated  not to mention we can access the world of women.

In a rapidly changing media landscape where amateur photographers abound, Azar and others stress the importance of having a good photo editor who can evaluate the quality of the images being presented. Meanwhile, the risks and ethical dilemmas inherent in the profession continue to grow alongside the importance of photography as a means of documenting conflict zones around the world.
After losing Mosul and vast territories in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is probably hoping to move to Afghanistan.

It has substantially increased its attacks in the past two years and recruited hundreds of additional supporters. It is targeting mainly the Shias and the Hazara minority and in parts joining forces with the Taliban thereby changing the dynamics of the war in Afghanistan. By doing so, it is provoking Iran and possibly Russia to get involved. The Persian-speaking Shia Hazara, estimated to make up about nine percent of Afghanistans population, have close ties to Iran.

ISIL (also known as ISIS) could take advantage of another lost American war and another failing state, as it did in Iraq. Afghanistans complex set of security and political problems are providing the armed group the chaos conditions that it needs to prosper.





In its latest attack on a village in the northern province of Sar-e Pul, described as a war crime by the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, government officials said ISIL joined forces with the Taliban in the brutal killing of more than 50 civilians, mainly Shia Hazaras.

Only one week earlier the twin attacks claimed by ISIL on the Iraqi embassy in Kabul and the Shia mosque in the western city of Herat, with over 120 casualties, appeared carefully chosen to take revenge against both Iraqi and Iranian forces for the loss of its stronghold, Mosul.

These were the tail end of six attacks this year targeting Shia mosques. Four of the attacks occurred in Herat and ISIL claimed responsibility for two. In 2016, there were four separate attacks against Shia mosques and ISIL claimed responsibility for two. In July last year, ISILs twin explosions tore through a demonstration by the Shia Hazara minority in Kabul killing at least 80 people and wounding more than 230.

READ MORE: Who are the Hazaras?

ISIL seems intentionally to target Irans interests in Afghanistan: Shia mosques, the Hazara minority, and the city of Herat -with a large population of Tajiks- have all received the bulk of Irans financial and political support. Iran has spent millions of dollars in aid and reconstruction projects building a 400km highway and a major railway linking Herat to Irans Khorasan province. Most of the work has been carried out by Khatam ul Anbya Construction which is the economic arm of Irans Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC). These transport links have greatly enhanced trade, especially for Iran.

Given his strong partnership with the US, President Ghani would never willingly invite Russia or Iran for military cooperation as, for example, Iraq and Syria did. by

Herat is located at the heart of the 1,000km border between the two countries, which share a rich historical and literary heritage. Iran values this heritage beyond its push to influence politics in Afghanistan. Moreover, Iran regards itself as the custodian of Shia rights around the world, and would not take ISIL attacks lightly especially since they follow the twin attacks in Iran two months ago after which Iran arrested several suspected ISIL operatives. Last week, Iran announced that it arrested further 27 suspected ISIL members.

Irans strong condemnation of ISIL attacks in Afghanistan came with an offer of collective security guarantee. The national security chief, Ali Shamkhani, said Tehran would expand regional cooperation especially with the Afghan government to jointly confront this dangerous threat.

In April, when Shamkhani met the Afghan national security adviser, Hanif Atmar, he condemned the attempts by certain regional states to upset security in Afghanistan as part of a broader scheme to dispatch the defeated terrorists from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan. His reference can only be to Saudi Arabia, which as a staunch ally of Pakistan, has reportedly been funding Taliban through private or covert channels.

So, Iran regards these advances in the context of the Iran-Saudi regional rivalries and Sunni advances against Shias, while rejecting reports that it is funding the Taliban.

Equally concerned is Russia about the 2,000km border Central Asian republics have with Afghanistan. Russia is aware that since its military operations in Syria, thousands of ISIL fighters are regrouping in Afghanistan to take revenge. According to intelligence by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), ISILs activity in Afghanistan has grown by one-third this year compared with 2016, with around 1,000 Central Asian operatives working along the border areas.

OPINION: ISIL wont get very far in Afghanistan  for now

In February, the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed the necessity of strengthening military-technical cooperation with Kabul. Zamir Kabulov, the Russian presidents special envoy to Afghanistan warned that if the situation on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan deteriorates capabilities of the CSTO may be used under a due appeal of the Tajik side.

In April, Russia proposed an international conference on Afghanistan inviting all neighbours including Iran, Pakistan and India but US government did not attend citing Russian military assistance to Taliban. Russia rejected the claim.

The meeting in mid-April between the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, for improving mutual military understanding also came to nothing after the US imposed sanctions on Russia.

Given his strong partnership with the US, President Ghani would never willingly invite Russia or Iran for military cooperation as, for example, Iraq and Syria did. Yet, he is aware that the US administration is paralysed by its own internal squabbles over Afghanistan.

Moreover, President Ghani is himself facing arguably the most difficult time of his leadership with internal challenges from three former strongmen demanding security reforms, his own National Unity Government in disarray, and civil society accusing him of inaction. That is to say nothing of the ongoing corruption, unemployment, war fatigue, and a nation traumatised by the highest ever number of civilian casualties.

President Ghanis legitimacy has not as yet been eroded. Nevertheless, the danger signs are there of a failing or fragile state that would provide suitable ground for the regrouping of ISIL and Taliban.





The argument that Taliban would not allow ISIL to gain ground in Afghanistan is increasingly invalidated by facts on the ground. The more likely scenario is that more Taliban commanders would follow the example of Sher Mohammad Ghazanfar in Sar-e Pul, and pledge allegiance to ISIL. There are no strict ideological distinctions between them so they build bridges when it helps them both, said one Afghan security source who cited three other joint operations.

The US and NATO chief command, General John W Nicholson warned Pentagon in December that political instability in Afghanistan would have two outcomes: the convergence of terrorist groups in Afghanistan, and the malign influence of Pakistan, Iran and Russia.

The first outcome is already unfolding: Taliban controls more than one-third of Afghanistan and is seriously challenging another third. ISIL seems increasingly unstoppable. There are no plausible indications that either the Afghan or the international forces in their present state can stop their convergence in Afghanistan.

That leaves the second Nicholson outcome; an outcome that may complicate matters in Afghanistan to the point of no return.

That is why Afghanistan must choose a third option and that is the option of leaving open the channels of diplomatic and military consultations with Russia and Iran to avoid their retaliatory covert action.

Time is running out.

Massoumeh Torfeh is the former director of strategic communication at the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and is currently a research associate at the London School of Economics and Political Science, specialising in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Parents of a 39-year-old Jordanian soldier who killed three US military trainers seek to have him exonerated.

Relatives of a Jordanian soldier convicted of killing three American military trainers last year are vouching for his innocence, demanding that his murder conviction be overturned.

Members of the Huwaitat tribe accuse the Jordanian government of covering up the truth and say officials are hiding details that should exonerate Maarik al-Tawaiha.

The 39-year-old was convicted in June of killing of three American Special Forces officers  Matthew C Lewellen, 27, Kevin J McEnroe, 30, and James F Moriarty, 27.

The three were part of a CIA programme training members of Syrian opposition groups in Jordan when they were killed at King Faisal Airbase at al-Jafr, in southern Jordan, on November 4.

Sayel Abu Tayeh, a leader of the Huwaitat tribe and a royal court adviser on tribal affairs, said in a statement early this week that Tawaiha followed the rules of engagement as he believed the base was under attack by unknown assailants.

The CIA used the King Faisal Airbase to train Syrian fighters battling the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Tawaiha familys version of events that led to the shooting of the Americans is sharply in contrast with the official account of the incident.

Abu Tayeh, a close relative of Tawaiha, accused key figures in the Jordanian government of a cover-up and of using his relative as a scapegoat in order to deflect American pressure and cover their own security failure.

What happened on that day was a mix-up that led to the tragic shooting, he said.

We are saddened that Americans were killed in that incident, but Maarik was no murderer.

Al Jazeera could not confirm many of Abu Tayehs claims regarding the current or former Jordanian government officials.

But Al Jazeera has obtained several Jordanian court documents, including Tawaihas own statement and those of witnesses.

Those witnesses said they heard a gunshot being fired, without specifying by who or from where, which triggered the chain of events that later followed.

They also described a battle between the soldiers defending the bases gate and unknown assailants riding in cars approaching the base and shooting at it.

Surviving US soldiers account

A fourth American soldier, whose name is withheld, was with the three slain soldiers.

He survived the attack described a different version of events in a New York Times report last July.

Gunshots erupted from a guard post, inciting a shoot-out that killed three Americans, the lone American survivor said.

We kept yelling in English and Arabic, saying we were friends. And he kept shooting, he said. Eventually, we realised it wasnt an accident.

The Jordanian military and the FBI released a five-minute video last July that shows the convoy of cars driven by the Americans, stopped at the gate, waiting to be let in when the gun battle erupted.

It also shows the American soldiers jumping out of their cars while firing their guns, hiding behind concert barriers, and later waving their hands up in the air to stop the attack.

The video showed Tawaiha charging towards them with his assault rifle trying to kill them.

Father of slain US soldier speaks

However, James R Moriarty, the father of slain soldier James F Moriarty, told Al Jazeera that he understands Tawaiha familys insistence on his innocence because they were fed the wrong information by the Jordanian government.

On November 4, Reuters news agency quoted an unnamed Jordanian military source saying: Three US military trainers were shot dead in Jordan when their car failed to stop at the gate of a military base and was fired on by Jordanian security forces.

The Jordanian government later changed its story several times.

But this does not change the fact that the three American soldiers were killed in cold blood by Maarik, said Moriarty.

He said his son clearly communicated that he was not a threat and even talked to Tawaiha during the shooting, identifying himself as a friend and that they were Americans.

Maarik shot and killed Lewellen and McEnroe at very close range from his position inside the concrete shack.

My son was deliberately murdered, he said.

He also blamed the other Jordanian soldiers at the bases gate for doing nothing to stop the firing.

The US Army report investigating the incident noted that the American soldiers followed procedure as they approached the base.

Multiple attempts to reach Mohamad al-Momani, the Jordan government spokesman, for an official response to the Tawaiha familys accusations were unsuccessful.

The US embassy in Jordan said the trial confirmed that the deceased US service members followed all established procedures when accessing the base the day of the incident, as we have noted before.

We are reassured to see the perpetrator brought to justice, it said.

Tawaihas mother has released a video accusing the government of using her son as a scapegoat.

She said her son was a thorough professional and a loyal soldier who never harboured any extremist beliefs that might have led him to kill the US soldiers.

She has appealed to Jordans King Abdullah to help release her innocent son.

COURT DOCUMENT BEARING MAARIK AL-TAWAIHAS TESTIMONY TO JORDAN INVESTIGATORS, OBTAINED BY AL JAZEERA:

Two days before the incident, a shooting took place inside the training centre [inside the base] after which we were instructed to respond to any source of firing or shooting without having to wait for orders.

On the day of the incidence, [He was present inside the concrete shack at the entrance of the base in order to charge the battery of his radio according to witnesses testimony] I heard a shooting, and immediately I loaded my gun and started firing from the window of the shack at the direction of the source of fire.

I did not have any intention to harm or kill anyone; I was defending my colleagues and the base. Even when I was firing my gun, I was not aiming at any particular person. I was following the rules of engagement, which was to respond to fire with fire. Then, I was surprised by a man wearing civilian clothes pointing his gun at me and shooting me three times.

I fell to the ground while the firing was still going on. My colleagues participated in the shooting using their rifles and machine guns in defense of the gate of the base. We did not know why the persons who were coming to the base were shooting at its gate.

Before the incident, neither me nor any of my colleagues had any misunderstanding with the American side. I do not know the reason why they started shooting at the bases gate and the guards.

The situation [during the shootout] did not tolerate any waiting since the circumstances required us to respond to the source of fire at the minute we hear it.

I do not hold any unpatriotic thoughts, I am not connected to any [terrorist] group and no one pushed to fire my gun at any person. My only motivation was to apply the rules of engagement as instructed.

Follow Ali Younes on Twitter at @ali_reports
Tropical Storm Harvey swept across Barbados leaving some minor wind damage and extensive but short-lived flooding. Some 115mm of rain was caught at Grantley Adams airport in the dark hours of Friday morning and Speightstown, in the northwest of the island, seems to have been particularly badly affected by the flooding.

The winds have never been more than 65km/h as measured by satellite and the reports from Barbados do not suggest anything stronger. This caused some minor wind damage and flights between Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago were suspended for a while.

Barbados can often see the edges of hurricanes but is rarely hit. The last damaging hit was in October 2010 when Hurricane Tomas caused $8.5m worth of damage but fortunately no deaths. Prior to that the only direct hit recorded was in 1980 when 500 homes were destroyed by Hurricane Allen but again, no deaths were reported.

This years apparently favoured cyclone route from the Windward Isles westwards towards Nicaragua is in use again. Although Harvey is not expected to become a hurricane it will bring torrential downpours with it and has the potential to throw heavy rain at the ABC islands off the coast of Venezuela.

The name Harvey has been used six times since Atlantic tropical cyclones were first named, having first been used in 1981. Names are reused unless the damage caused by the associated tropical cyclone was devastating. Katrina will not be used again.
GRAND FORKS -- A spokesman for the University of North Dakota apologized to the Grand Forks newspaper after reviewing footage of a UND police officer ejecting its reporters from a public university property.

Peter Johnson, UNDs top public affairs official, delivered an apology in person to two reporters at the newspapers downtown offices on Tuesday. Journalists Andrew Haffner and Andrew Hazzard were covering an Aug. 9 visit by Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, to UNDs Energy and Environmental Research Center when a UND officer asked them to cross the street and leave the property.

After looking at the body-cam footage, its clear to me, as I suspected, that the reporters should not have been asked to leave the university property, Johnson said on Thursday. I thought it was unfortunate that it went that way, and I apologized on behalf of the university for that.

UND President Mark Kennedy is aware of the ejection, Johnson said, and shares the same opinion of the events.

I think that particular situation was not the way that UND Police Chief Eric Plummer nor I would have handled that, Johnson said. I think we had a police officer who meant well, who was trying to do his job the way he perhaps understood it, but ultimately what happened should not have happened.

The incident was captured by a body camera worn by UND Police Officer Joe Citta. The video shows Citta speaking with reporters outside the front entrance of the EERC building. He refuses to give his first name when asked.

Youre on private property right now, he tells reporters. He concedes, when asked, that all three are standing on UND property.

OK, a reporter responds. Which is owned by the state.

This is private property, Citta says.

But its owned by the University of North Dakota.

Footage shows a pause, during which Citta apparently speaks into his radio before resuming the conversation.

Cross the street, OK? This is private property -- 

This is UND property, or private property?

Stop arguing with me and cross the street now. OK? Go.

Johnson said the property is state-owned and public, but that sections of the EERC are not publicly accessible where proprietary or potentially dangerous research is conducted. UND Police Chief Eric Plummer said that, per conversations with federal security officials, the building was considered entirely restricted on that day -- including the buildings lobby, which is normally publicly accessible.

Plummer said reporters should not have been told the building was private property, but rather restricted access, and they should have been allowed to remain near the doorway to the building.

Asked if Citta was disciplined following the incident, Plummer said he was counseled and added that he does not comment on disciplinary matters. Plummer said he discussed the event at a Monday training meeting of UND police officers.

The body camera footage begins as a reporter concludes a conversation with a person off-camera. Plummer said the camera footage begins at this point because Citta is about to engage in an enforcement action, for which UND Police policy requires the cameras are turned on.

Which would be consistent with policy, Plummer said.

An official with the EERC did not return a request for comment on Thursday afternoon.

Korrie Wenzel, publisher of the Grand Forks newspaper, said he appreciates the apology.

But the fact still remains that our reporters were kept from doing their job, and that's bothersome, he said. A little more training or planning in advance could have been very helpful. It sounds to me that the officer assumed he knew the procedure when he really didn't. That's dangerous. He should have known the procedure before he reacted.
Interior minister says cell behind attacks that killed more than a dozen people in Catalonia is fully dismantled.

The cell behind the deadly attacks in Spain that left at least 14 dead has been completely dismantled, according to Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido, as police continued a manhunt for one remaining suspect.

The cell is believed to have consisted of at least 12 young men, many of them Moroccan.

Spain will maintain its security alert at four, one notch below the maximum level, which would signal an attack was imminent, Zoido said on Saturday.

We are going to redirect our efforts and will adapt these to every place or area that needs special protection, Zoido told a news conference.





He said that the government would reinforce security in crowded areas and tourist hotspots.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, known as ISIS) group has claimed the attacks, which occurred on Thursday and Friday in the northeastern region of Catalonia.

Authorities said the attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils were related and the work of a large cell that had been plotting for a long time from Alcanar, 200km from Barcelona.

Three Moroccans and one Spaniard are in police custody.

Spanish police on Saturday expanded a manhunt for one of the main suspects, 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaquoub.

READ MORE: Barcelona and Cambrils attacks  What, where and when?

Early in the day, police searched two buses in northwest Catalonia in the hunt for any remaining members of the cell. Nothing was found in the searches in Girona and Garrigas, police said on Twitter.

Across the Pyrenees, French police carried out extra border checks on people coming from Spain.

Officials also announced a series of controlled explosions on Saturday in Alcanar, where the attacks were planned from a rented house, which was destroyed in a blast on Wednesday.

Authorities had initially written off the incident as a household gas accident.

They now believe the explosion, which killed at least one person and injured one of the people currently in custody, actually prevented a far deadlier attack, possibly a vehicle bomb.

The blast forced the suspects to use more rudimentary vehicles instead, police said.

In a tweet on Saturday, Catalan police urged Alcanar residents not to be alarmed by the controlled explosions.

Police in Catalonia said three of the suspects shot dead in Cambrils were Moroccan nationals, identifying them as Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24.

Moussas brother Driss was one of the four arrested.

In Morocco, their father Said said he was in shock and completely devastated by the news.

Moussa had been studying normally at school while Driss worked honestly, he told the AFP news agency.

I hope they will say hes innocent []. I dont want to lose my two sons.

The dead and wounded in the two attacks came from 34 countries.

The Catalan interior ministry said 59 people were still in hospital, including 15 in critical condition.
Around 15,000 decry racism and neo-Nazis, forcing free-speech event attended by a few conservatives to end abruptly.

More than 10,000 demonstrators chanting anti-Nazi slogans forced a small group of conservatives to cut short a free speech rally in Boston, in a repudiation of racism a week after deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville.

About 25 conservative rally-goers gathered on Saturday at Boston Common park, but abruptly left about 90 minutes after the event started.

Al Jazeeras Shihab Rattansi, reporting from Boston, said thousands jeered as the group was escorted out the park by police officers.

OPINION: Charlottesville is America everywhere

According to reports, an estimated 15,000 people showed up at the counterprotest.

They chanted anti-Nazi and anti-fascism slogans, and waved signs that said: Love your neighbor, Resist fascism and Hate never made US great.

Others carried a large banner that read: SMASH WHITE SUPREMACY.

One of the planned speakers of the free speech rally was quoted by AP news agency as saying the conservatives event fell apart.

A number of far-right activists had been asked to speak at the event, but some dropped out, according to local media.

Far-right groups often use the guise of free speech to incite hatred.

Police had deployed 500 officers  some in uniform, others undercover  to keep the two groups apart.

Many had feared violence after an August 12 rally in Charlottesville turned deadly. Then, a white supremacist rammed through crowds of people, killing 32-year-old anti-racist protester Heather Heyer and injuring dozens.

Spewing hate

The Boston Free Speech Coalition, which organised the event, said it has nothing to do with racism and is not affiliated with the Charlottesville rally organisers.

Samson Racioppi, a Libertarian Party congressional candidate from the US state of Massachusetts, was slated to speak on the free speech stage.

He told WCVB-TV he did not realise how unplanned of an event it was going to be.

Earlier, he said that when free speech is suppressed, the only recourse extremists will have remaining is [sic] terrorism and violence.

Kyle Chapman, who described himself on Facebook as a proud American nationalist, had also announced his attendance.

Mayor Marty Walsh had pointed out that some of those invited to speak spew hate.

Saturdays showdown was mostly peaceful, and after demonstrators dispersed, a picnic atmosphere took over with stragglers tossing beach balls, banging on bongo drums and playing reggae music.

I came out today to show support for the black community and for all minority communities, said Rockeem Robinson, 21, a youth worker from Cambridge.

He said he was not concerned about his personal safety because he felt more support on his side.

Katie Griffiths, 48, a social worker also from Cambridge, who works with members of poor and minority communities, said she finds the hate and violence happening very scary.

I see poor people and people of colour being scapegoated, she said. Unlearned lessons can be repeated.





Events were also planned around the country, in cities including Atlanta, Dallas and New Orleans.

Social media users celebrated developments in Boston as a feat against rising racism and hate crimes in the United States.

However, President Donald Trump berated counterprotesters, accusing them of being anti-police agitators.

Trump, whose response to white-supremacist-led violence in Charlottesville has been heavily criticised, tweeted: Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you.

The president later tweeted: I want to applaud the many protesters in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!

It was unclear which set of protesters Trump was referring to.

Here are some reactions and images of the event posted to social media:

The hate speech rally in Boston has about 100 white supremacists and TWENTY THOUSAND peaceful protestorspic.twitter.com/bjaRqVWN4Q  Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) August 19, 2017

https://twitter.com/john__rosevear/status/898989768473800704

Props to the woman who carried this in Boston. Wanted to give it a signal boost on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/lxliNL0dEo  Kristi Winters  Biden-Harris (@KWintie) August 19, 2017

if the Alt Right had any sense, they would have cancelled the Boston rally. Instead, they finally get to see how hated they really are.  New York City Antifa (@NYCAntifa) August 19, 2017

https://twitter.com/iskandrah/status/898969377583837185

Happy to report that there were thousands and thousands of "very fine people" rallying in Boston today and they were ALL ON ONE SIDE  Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) August 19, 2017

45 minutes into the planned rally and the 'Free Speech' protestors are leaving. well done, #Boston pic.twitter.com/jNePGtqPew  Jamie Church (@jlchurch) August 19, 2017

There's a group of witches counter-protesting the Boston alt-right rally and I'm ready to become Supreme and lead a KC chapter of this coven pic.twitter.com/jiJscjoZpc  Patt with two T's (@PatsHoppedUp) August 19, 2017

https://twitter.com/MissDuffyAFA/status/898992229540388864
Many celebrate departure of controversial far-right figure but others warn of influence he could still have on Trump.

Steve Bannons career at the White House has ended seven months after his appointment as US President Donald Trumps chief strategist.

The former banker turned editor at far-right website Breitbart was seen as a key influence on the president, having led his successful election campaign in 2016.

His comments on Muslims, anti-establishment views and his alleged ties to white supremacists made him a controversial figure across the US political spectrum, including within Trumps Republican party.

As US outlets reported news of his departure, many of his critics on social media celebrated. But others questioned what influence Bannon may continue to have on the president and whether being removed from the shackles of formal government would actually work to his benefit.

Ain't it satisfyin' to see Bannon's vision for a Trump presidency starin' down the barrel of a 30% approval ratin'? Good times.  Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) August 19, 2017

https://twitter.com/Alex_Thomas_01/status/898595404333424640

Senior Democrat Nancy Pelosi said the move would make little difference, as Trump himself had what she described as a long record of racism.

Steve Bannons exit does not erase [Trumps] long record of lifting up racist viewpoints and advancing repulsive policies, she wrote on Twitter.

The problem was never just Steve Bannon. It was and always will be Donald Trump. https://t.co/cTBqwdwZUW  Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 18, 2017

While left-leaning senator, Bernie Sanders, said: The problem was never just Steve Bannon. It was and always will be Donald Trump.

Several senior Trump administration figures have been forced out of the White House in recent weeks and months, including his chief of staff, Reince Priebus; his former press secretary, Sean Spicer; and communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who was in the job just for 10 days.

However, there are doubts as to whether Bannons departure was as involuntary as some of those dismissals.

Bannon: now Im about to go back, knowing what I know Ive got my hands back on my weapons." https://t.co/STo61YBqfn  Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org (@froomkin) August 19, 2017

He reportedly told the Weekly Standard that he had always intended to resign a year from his start date and return to Breitbart.

trump trolls are saying that Steve Bannon meant to go to BreitBart. #BannonFired #BannonGone. They will spin all loses as wins. Always. pic.twitter.com/6MfeIt94Ut  shelly  (@LFreenor) August 18, 2017

Trump has courted widespread anger in the US and internationally over his response to the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.

He blamed both sides for the violence and also said there were nice people on each side.

The comments spurred a renewed effort on social media to demand he distance himself from white supremacists and force out those with ties to the far right.
Dozens missing and houses destroyed in northeast Tora village after heavy rain triggered mudslide earlier this week.

At least 200 people have been killed in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo after a landslide swept through a fishing village on the banks of Lake Albert in Ituri province, officials said.

Abdallah Pene Mbaka, governor of Ituri province, told AP news agency on Saturday that the estimate is based on missing people and homes affected in the Tora village.

He said 50 houses were destroyed from Wednesdays landslide.

The governor called on the international community for emergency assistance with rescue and recovery efforts.

READ MORE: The Atlantic to Kinshasa  A journey on the River Congo

Pacifique Keta, deputy governor of Ituri province, confirmed to Al Jazeera on Friday that at least 60 bodies had been buried so far.

Rescue efforts have been affected because of inclement weather at the catastrophe zone.

There are many people submerged whom we were unable to save, Keta told Reuters news agency on Friday. The rescue is very complicated because there are mountains everywhere, which makes it very difficult to have access.

A UN humanitarian team, aid agencies and provincial delegations are assessing the damage on the ground.

The affected village is located between a mountainous area and Lake Albert.

READ MORE: Sierra Leone mudslide survivors describe shock, anger

Many parts of West and Central Africa are vulnerable to landslides because land is heavily deforested and communities crowd into steep hillsides.

Congo is in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, with about 7.7 million people on the verge of starvation, according to UN food agencies.

The disaster comes after more than 400 people were killed by a massive mudslide in Sierra Leone on Monday.

In May 2010, a mudslide swept over the eastern Congo village of Kibiriga and killed 19 people. Bodies of 27 others were never recovered.

In February 2002, about 50 people were found dead after a wave of mud and rocks hit the eastern town of Uvira, submerging about 150 homes.
Israeli border police shot and killed a Palestinian teenager who they allege wielded a knife at them at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the 17-year-old had been killed on Saturday, but did not elaborate on the circumstances of the death.

A photo of the Palestinian, named by local sources as Qutayba Ziad Zahran from the Tulkarm governorate, later circulated on social media.

The Palestinian allegedly approached a group of Israeli paramilitary policemen stationed at the Zatara checkpoint on Saturday, holding what appeared to be a bag, an Israeli police spokeswoman said.

READ MORE: West Bank villagers decry collective punishment

The teenager accosted a soldier, and other troops then fired fatal shots at him, the spokeswoman claimed.

Israels public radio said a guard was a hurt in friendly fire.

A witness told the Bethlehem-based Maan News Agency that a large number of Israeli soldiers arrived at the scene and closed the checkpoint, denying passage to Palestinians in either direction.

Maan reported that a social media post believed to be a will by the teenager circulated online after his death, in which he claimed to be a martyr.

Almost 300 Palestinians killed

More than 294 Palestinians or Palestinian citizens of Israel and 47 Israelis have been killed since October 2015, when a wave of unrest broke out.

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 raids on the Gaza Strip.

The violence had greatly subsided in recent months, but tension around the highly sensitive al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem saw a spike in July.

Palestinians want to establish an independent state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

The last round of peace talks broke down in 2014.
Lawyers for the Kenyan opposition filed a petition with the Supreme Court challenging President Kenyattas re-election.

Lawyers representing the Kenyan opposition coalition National Super Alliance filed a petition on Friday with the Supreme Court challenging President Uhuru Kenyattas re-election, beating a midnight deadline.

A statement from the groups presidential candidate, Raila Odinga, and his running mate, Kalonzo Musyoka, said they turned to the high court because of alleged irregularities in the August 8 presidential vote.

Those included, among others, numerous instances when their ticket was denied votes and others in which their competitor  had undeserved votes added to his total, the statement read.

Odinga has rejected the electoral commissions results which say Kenyatta won by roughly 1.4 million votes, with 54% of the vote.

OPINION: Was the Kenyan election either free or fair?

Odinga claims, without providing proof, that hackers used the identity of a slain election official to manipulate the result in Kenyattas favour.

The commission has said there was a hacking attempt but it failed, and election observers say they saw no signs of interference with the vote.

At first, the opposition said a court challenge was not an option. But earlier this week Odinga made it clear they had changed their minds, saying, This is just the beginning. We will not accept and move on.





The Supreme Court has 14 days to rule on the challenge.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga believes he has been cheated for the third time in a row.

Following the disputed 2007 election  which Odinga lost to Mwai Kibaki  politically motivated tribal violence resulted in 1,100 deaths.

When Odinga was declared the loser to Kenyatta in 2013, he took his complaints to the Supreme Court and lost.

Dozens of opposition supporters gathered at the Supreme Court building throughout the day on Friday, waving placards.

Police said they prevented demonstrators from entering the building. Nairobi police chief Japheth Koome said authorities want to ensure the court is secure.

The opposition says 100 people were killed in violence during the election, while police gave a death toll of 10 for Nairobi.

International observers from the European Union and the Carter Center, among others, have called the election result credible.

While praising the conduct of polling day itself, election observers have raised concerns over the transmission and tallying or results with some pointing to discrepancies in numbers and the absence of original polling station tally sheets.
The Lebanese army has launched an offensive against an ISIL enclave straddling the northeast border with Syria.

Simultaneously, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group, and the Syrian army have announced on Saturday an assault from the Syria side of the border in the western Qalamoun mountain range.

The Lebanese army is targeting positions of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, known as ISIS) group, near the town of Ras Baalbek, with rockets, artillery and helicopters, a Lebanese security source.

READ MORE: Arsal  Hezbollah, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham agree on ceasefire

It is the last part of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier under ISIL control.

In the name of Lebanon, in the name of kidnapped Lebanese soldiers, in the name of martyrs of the army, I announce that [this] operation  has started, said army chief General Joseph Aoun.

The spokesman for the Lebanese army, Brigadier-General Ali Kanso, said the offensive did not start today.

We have been planning the attacks for over two weeks now, Kanso said, speaking from the headquarters of the defence ministry.





Our mission is to clear the border areas all the way to the Syrian borders.

Kanso said the advantage the army has against ISIL is the lack of air cover or tanks, but warned that ISIL fighters had good snipers and they know the area very well.

The Lebanese army said it is not coordinating its military operations with the Syrian army.

This is is the final area of the border between Lebanon and Syria which the Lebanese army says is still vulnerable to attacks by armed groups, Al Jazeeras Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Beirut, said.

They are hoping to push these armed groups out and that Lebanon will essentially secure its border completely, something which they havent been able to do since the start of the Syrian conflict.

He said the area for the last few weeks had also been the site of a major military offensive which pushed out Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun was following the army operation, called Jroud Dawn.

Jroud refers to the barren, mountainous border area between Lebanon and Syria.

Last month, Hezbollah forced fighters belonging to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and other Syrian opposition groups to leave nearby border strongholds in a joint operation with the Syrian army.

ISIL pocket

The Lebanese army, a major recipient of US military aid, did not take part in the July operation, but it has been gearing up to target the ISIL pocket in the same mountainous region.

A military source said about 500 ISIL fighters are holed up in the enclave.

Lebanese politicians said ISIL controls an area of about 300sq km between the two countries, around half of which is in Lebanon.

The area stretches from the Lebanese town of Arsal and villages of Ras Baalbek and Qaa, to the outskirts of Syrias Qalamoun region and parts of the western Syrian town of Qusayr, which Hezbollah captured in 2013.

Meanwhile, Mamoun Abu-Nowar, a military expert and retired Jordanian Air Force general, told Al Jazeera that the Syrian government forces and Hezbollah already have the upper hand over ISIL fighters.

Its a very tough battle. The terrain is quite difficult. Its a battle over who controlls the mountains, the hill tops and passages in between, Nowar said.

But definitely ISIL would be wiped out from that area.
Dissident ex-prosecutor leaves Venezuela saying she feared for her life after her dismissal by pro-Maduro assembly.

Venezuelas deposed chief prosecutor and her husband have fled the country after she was dismissed by a controversial new legislative super-body.

Luisa Ortega Diaz and German Ferrer arrived in Bogota on Friday afternoon aboard a private plane travelling from Aruba, Colombian migration authorities said in a statement.

Ortega, 59, broke with socialist President Nicolas Maduro in late March and became a vocal critic of his government, eventually going into hiding after her dismissal earlier this month.

Ortega told Reuters news agency that she feared the government would deprive me my life.

READ MORE: Malaria infections spreading in crisis-ridden Venezuela

It was not clear whether the couple were seeking asylum in Colombia.

On Thursday, the government-stacked Supreme Tribunal ordered Ferrer, a legislator, placed under arrest, a day after Ortegas replacement, Tarek Saab, accused him of corruption.

Saab said Ferrer ran a $6m extortion ring under Ortegas watch.

Ferrer denied the accusations and critics believe the charges are politically motivated.

Fear of reprisal

In June, the Supreme Tribunal banned Ortega from leaving the country, ordered her bank accounts frozen, and put her on trial for alleged professional malpractice.

Earlier on Friday, Ortega surfaced briefly from hiding to address by phone a gathering of Latin Americas prosecutors in Mexico.





Ortega told the regions prosecutors that Maduro removed her in order to stop a probe linking him and his inner circle to nearly $100m in bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

The company last year admitted in a plea agreement with the US Department of Justice to paying bribes to officials throughout Latin America in exchange for lucrative contracts.

Ortega denounced the government takeover of the prosecutors offices and said many of her colleagues have faced persecution.

Many have had to leave the country for fear of reprisal and for their lives, she said.

Ortega first spoke out against Maduro in late March following a Supreme Tribunal decision to nullify the opposition-controlled congress, the National Assembly.

She denounced the decision as a rupture of the constitutional order.

The decision was later reversed amid widespread international criticism, but prompted a protest movement that has left more than 120 dead.

READ MORE: New Venezuela prosecutor vows to jail protest leaders

Earlier on Friday, the newly elected Constituent Assembly approved a decree giving it the authority to pass legislation, virtually nullifying the powers of the National Assembly.

The move prompted further international condemnation from the dozens of countries that have already criticised the creation of the all-powerful assembly as an undemocratic power grab by Maduro.

Assembly delegates pledged to go after opposition politicians.

We will teach them a historic lesson, said the Constitutional Assembly president, Delcy Rodriguez.
Aid groups applaud Maltese government, saying snub sends a clear message against the politics of hate and extremism.

Malta has said a vessel carrying anti-migrant and anti-refugee activists was not welcome, allegedly denying the boat from docking on its shore.

Far-right members of the Defend Europe group, who were aboard the C-Star vessel, said they were denied port access and a request for water to be sent out to the vessel, according to a statement on the groups Facebook page.

A government spokesman said the boat had not asked to dock in Malta, but indicated that such a request would have been rejected.

They wanted to purchase services from here. There was never any kind of emergency, the spokesman told AFP news agency.

INTERACTIVE: The ongoing human tragedy in the Mediterranean

The spokesman also said that the boat was not welcome in Malta and that the island-state disagrees with all that [the boat] stands for.

Europe and Malta stand for solidarity and respect for human dignity, he told DPA news agency.

Clear message against hate

The snub was welcomed by local NGOs, who said in a joint statement that it sent a clear message against the politics of hate and extremism.

The C-Star received similar cold-shoulder treatment from ports in Greece, Italy and Tunisia during its short-lived mission, which it ended on Thursday evening.

In the groups statement on Saturday, it accused Maltas government of supporting human trafficking and obeying international migration supporters, adding that it was a historic disgrace.

It launched a petition to call on Maltese government to allow the C-Star vessel to dock.

While the group said their month-long mission was successful, its crew was never able to act on its threats to take any distressed migrant and refugee boats it came across back to Libya  a move humanitarian organisations had warned would be in breach of international law.

READ MORE: UN urges Europe to help Italy with refugee tragedy

The C-Star crew comprised 25 members of the Identitarian Movement, a pan-European conglomerate of activists who rally against Muslims and refugees.

The movement can be traced back to France in 2002 when the far-right Bloc Identitaire party established a youth wing.

Defend Europe said it had received more than $115,000 donations for its work.

More than 118,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Spain by boat via the Mediterranean Sea this year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

More than 2,400 people have died at sea in 2017, the IOM also said.

Last week, a German aid group said it was suspending its refugee rescue operations in the Mediterranean over security concerns after Libya barred foreign vessels from a stretch of water off its coast.

Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials, MSF) also said it was halting the use of its largest boat in the area because of an increasingly hostile environment for life-saving rescue operations.
Finnish police say they are investigating knife attacks that left two dead as crimes related to terrorism.

Finnish police say they are investigating a knife attack that left two people dead in the western city of Turku as a terrorist killing.

Security forces shot and wounded the knife-wielding suspect on Friday, arresting him minutes after a stabbing spree at a market square in Turku.

The act had been investigated as murder, but during the night we received additional information which indicates that the criminal offences are now terrorist killings, an official statement said on Saturday.

The suspect was identified as an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen, but police did not release his name.

He is being treated in hospital in intensive care for a gunshot wound to the thigh.

The National Bureau of Investigation, which is heading the probe, said those killed in the attack were Finnish citizens, while the wounded include one Italian national and two Swedes.

A total of eight people were wounded, the police said.

READ MORE: Timeline  Deadly attacks in Europe

Alexis Kouros, the editor-in-chief of Helsinki Times, told Al Jazeera that such attacks were rare in Finland.

However, the Finnish public had been expecting one because of a rise in deadly attacks in other European cities in recent years, he said.

People are calm. There is not much speculation, he said. Somehow, this was expected because it has happened everywhere.

There were questions about the attackers motives, Kouros said, noting that Finland has not been involved in military actions or wars in other countries.

However, some Finnish immigrants have left the country to fight in the Middle East with the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL, known as ISIS) group, he added.

In a separate development, officials raided a flat in Turku overnight on Friday and arrested five others.

We are investigating the role of these five other people, but we are not sure yet if they had anything to do with (the attack), Markus Laine, a police superintendent, told the AFP news agency on Saturday.

We will interrogate them, after that we can tell you more. But they had been in contact with the main suspect.

Officials said it was likely the suspect acted alone, but added they were looking for other possible perpetrators.

Finland raised its emergency readiness across the country after the stabbing, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.

In June, Finlands intelligence and security agency Supo raised the countrys terror threat level by a notch, from low to elevated, the second notch on a four-tier scale.

It said at the time that it saw an increased risk of an attack by the ISIL group.
Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- One of the longest-serving members of the Trump administration is a 28-year-old who had no political experience before the 2016 presidential campaign.



Starting with the administration as director of strategic communications, Hope Hicks has been a regular presence in the White House and is seen as one of the members of the inner circle of Trump's top advisers.



She began her career in public relations, entering the larger Trump orbit when she worked with the Trump Organization and specifically Ivanka Trump's fashion line.



In April 2015, two months before Donald Trump announced his presidential bid, Hicks was featured on the style blog of Ivanka Trump's fashion line. The post featured Hicks, who was then working as the Trump Organization's director of communications, in a light teal shift dress from the line and described how her "typical workday could include a major meeting, an all-day event or even an out-of-state trip."



Hicks and Trump's eldest daughter appear to have maintained a good relationship, as Ivanka Trump tweeted a congratulatory message to Hicks when she was included on Forbes' "30 Under 30" list in January.

"Congrats to my brilliant, kind & wickedly funny friend Hope Hicks on being named to the @Forbes #30Under30 list!" she tweeted.

Congrats to my brilliant, kind & wickedly funny friend Hope Hicks on being named to the @Forbes #30Under30 list! https://t.co/s3YO9Eq83Z  Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) January 4, 2017

Hicks has previously worked as a model and she was featured on the cover of one of the novels in the "Gossip Girl" book series.



The Greenwich, Connecticut, native earned an English degree from Southern Methodist University.



Now, she is the youngest person to ever lead the White House communications team.



That marks the latest promotion during her time as part of the Trump political team. She served as a spokesperson for the campaign after Trump announced that he was running for president, and when he won, she was named director of strategic communications.



She was named interim White House communications director on Aug. 16.



The official White House statement announcing her role said that she would be working with press secretary Sarah Sanders and the communications team, and that the announcement of a permanent communications director will be made "at the appropriate time."



In spite of dealing directly with national media for about two years, she rarely speaks out publicly herself.



One example of such reluctance came in June 2016. She was contacted by a reporter for GQ magazine who wanted to do a profile article on her, and while Hicks would not be interviewed for the piece, she allowed then-candidate Trump to speak to the reporter about her.



"Hope's been involved from the beginning, and she has been absolutely terrific," Trump said in the GQ interview.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
"The federal government told us they'd like us to have the same policy, and then what happens, they turn around and grant an exception to their own policy. Thankfully, our voices were heard this time."

 Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Mark Fox, after the federal government halted oil drilling near the Van Hook Resort boat ramp.

q q q

"For the first time, starting in June, we are now in an environment where we have adequate pipeline capacity. There is technically enough pipeline to move all of the production."

 Justin Kringstad, director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority.

q q q

"We want to see the ending of waste of these very valuable resources."

 Three Affiliated Tribes Chairman Mark Fox, on increased flaring on the reservation.

q q q

"I love it because it gets families that want to participate involved and this ensures there are projects that are age appropriate."

 United Way Community Impact Manager Nicole Peske, on getting families involved through specific projects in United Ways Day of Caring.

q q q

"The big question is going to be what kind of corn are we going to grow in North Dakota? There's still much to be determined right now."

 Dale Inry, executive director of the North Dakota Corn Growers Association.

q q q

"We don't have the supply that Chicago does, but we have the addiction."

 Bismarck Police Detective Tyler Welk, on opioids being used in the area.

q q q

"It is definitely here. It's the most deadly trend I've seen in my 14 years in police work."

 Bismarck Police Sgt. Mike Bolme, discussing the opioid epidemic.

q q q

"What we're going through right now, both with low commodity prices and bad weather especially out here is what I call, we're stress-testing this farm bill. When we wrote the farm bill, we had great crops and great prices. So now we're going to find out if this works."

 Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.

q q q

"How did (the occupants) walk away from it? At 3 o'clock in the morning, you wake up and you've got a car sitting in your front lawn."

 Kent Fitzgerald, after a vehicle crashed into his Bismarck home early Sunday morning.

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"One hundred years ago, men from our tribes willingly chose to enter the military. They didn't have to do that; it was prior to the time when all Native people were granted U.S. citizenship. But they stepped up, and we owe it to them to remember."

 Leander "Russ" McDonald, president of United Tribes Technical College. The school is trying to verify the names of about 356 Native American men who served in World War I.

q q q

"I think a lot of the plan is staying the same. We still are going to be able to work on the priorities and, I think, make good progress."

 Krista Fremming, director of the chronic disease division at the state Health Department, on how the department will replace BreatheND.
Refugees face harsh conditions as they are stopped by authorities while trying to flee at the height summer, NGO says.

Thousands of Iraqis continued to stream into the countrys Kurdish region, as government forces prepare for a ground offensive in a northern area controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, known as ISIS) group.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said on Saturday that refugees near the northern city of Tal Afar were faced with harsh conditions, and were stopped by authorities in east of Mosul and Kurdish areas as they tried to flee the fighting.

Its very hard for them to move through, Melany Markham, a spokesman of the humanitarian group, told Al Jazeera, adding that one transit site was already at full capacity, and could not take more refugees.

She said that temperatures in the height of summer of between 45 and 50 degrees Celcius make journeys even more challenging.

IN PICTURES: The final push to retake Mosul from ISIL

Markham said that while their transit site in Hammam al-Alil is full, other camps such as in Khazar, west of the Kurdish city of Erbil, could accommodate up to 40,000 refugees.

Tal Afar and the surrounding area are among the last pockets of ISIL-held territory in Iraq, after victory was declared in Mosul, the countrys second-largest city.

Tal Afar is west of Mosul and about 150km east of the Syrian border, sitting along a major road that was a key ISIL supply route.

Coalition air raids have started targeting ISIL fighters in the city, just one month after securing victory in Mosul, but the ground invasion is yet to start.

Al Jazeeras Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from the Khazar camp, said that an estimated 50,000 people have fled the areas surrounding Tal Afar since April, and at least 50,000 more could flee in the coming days and weeks.

That number is in addition to the estimated one million refugees who have fled Mosul.

Ready enough for Tal Afar

In 2014, before ISIL took control of the city, Tal Afar had a population of around 200,000.

On Friday, senior US military leaders said a ground assault by Iraqi forces on the ISIL-held city would be unfolding relatively soon.

I cant say that we replaced every single damaged or broken vehicle or rifle or machine gun, said Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the top US commander in Iraq. But, he said: Theyll be ready enough.





The upcoming fight follows weeks of Iraq regrouping troops and repairing equipment and weapons after recapturing Mosul in July.

Mosul took a heavy toll on Iraqi forces, with as many as 1,400 troops killed and more than 7,000 wounded.

Iraqi military leaders said Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has approved their combat plans.

The fight will involve a broad spectrum of forces, including the Iraqi army, counterterrorism troops, police and a group of mainly Shia, Iranian-backed militias.

The fight will start in the next few days, Iraqi Brigadier General Yahia Rasool told reporters.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said officials believe there are between 1,400 and 1,600 ISIL fighters in the Tal Afar area, many, foreign fighters.

Rasool said the various Iraqi forces have already largely encircled Tal Afar.

I dont think it will be tougher than the battle of Mosul, taking into consideration the experience we got in Mosul, he said.
Series of emails reveal Yousef al-Otaiba criticised kingdom as he attempted to influence policy in Riyadh.

The United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, berated Saudi Arabias leadership, a series of emails leaked by a computer hacking group reveal.

In a 2008 email chain with his wife Abeer Shoukry, published by the Middle East Eye news website on Friday, Otaiba described the kingdoms leaders as f****ing coo coo.

Global Leaks leaked the correspondence; the company is not to be confused with the Milan-based software company GlobalLeaks.

Otaibas profane message is in reference to a decision by the Saudi government in 2008 to ban the sale of red roses on Valentines Day.

READ MORE: Hackers leak emails from UAE ambassador to US

The emails reflect a plan by Abu Dhabi to paint Saudi Arabia as a dysfunctional and religiously conservative country, whose best hope for reform was Mohammed bin Salman, the newly appointed crown prince.

The correspondence makes a case for bin Salman over his cousin and former crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef.

Influencing the Saudi throne

One document from Otaiba revealed that it was time for the Emiratis to get the most results we can ever get out of Saudi.

Another email to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman said that the UAE saw bin Salman as a favourable change within Saudi Arabia.

READ MORE: Cyberattack against Qatar puts fake news in focus

An exchange with David Petraeus, former CIA director and commander of coalition forces in Iraq, saw Otaiba suggest that bin Salman is more engaged in day-to-day issues, while dismissing the man he later replaced, Mohammed bin Nayef, as being off his game.





In a major reshuffle in late June, Saudi Arabias King Salman appointed his son, bin Salman, as his heir, removing his nephew bin Nayef.

David Hearst, Middle East Eye editor and author of the article, said UAE leaders see the current crown prince, bin Salman, as their man in Riyadh.

Because bin Nayef had a very good record and a very good reputation in Washington, one of the aims was to sow the seeds of doubt, he told Al Jazeera from London.

READ MORE: FBI helping Qatar in QNA hacking investigation

He explained that Abu Dhabi was attempting to make opportunity of a US retreat from the Middle East and influence the Saudi throne

That is incidentally why Otaiba spent so much trouble putting the knife in bin Nayef for quite sometime before he actually got sacked as the crown prince, Hearst said.

Washingtons charming man

Otaiba is a well-known figure in US national security circles, described by some as the most charming man in Washington.

He has participated in Pentagon strategy meetings at the invitation of defence officials.

The latest leak comes after hackers released the first series of emails from the inbox of the UAE envoy in early June.

Those emails showed that the Emirati ambassador played a role in a campaign to downgrade the image and importance of Qatar as a regional and global power.

The emails also showed collusion with journalists who have published articles accusing Qatar and Kuwait of supporting terrorism.

The release of those leaked emails came a week after a cyberattack on Qatars official news agency, during which fake remarks critical of US foreign policy were posted and attributed to the Qatari emir.

Two days after the initial release of emails, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE and Egypt cut all diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar for supporting terrorism. Qatar denies the allegations.
Harare authorities say state-owned S African Airways planes were halted for failing to comply with civil aviation rules.

Zimbabwe has blocked flights by South Africas government-owned airline amid tensions over allegations that Zimbabwes first lady assaulted a young model in Johannesburg.

A South African Airways flight was not allowed to take off from Zimbabwes Harare airport for a trip to Johannesburg on Saturday.

Another flight from Johannesburg to Harare was also cancelled.

Authorities in Zimbabwe said the planes were blocked for failing to comply with civil aviation rules.

The move follows the grounding of an Air Zimbabwe flight at Johannesburgs main international airport on Friday.

Both countries said they imposed restrictions because the planes did not have a foreign operators permit.

WATCH: Listening Post  Mugabes media mastery (10:03)

A South African Airways spokesman said officials had asked to see certain documents that had not been requested in two decades.

Allegations against Grace Mugabe





The tit-for-tat between the two countries comes as Zimbabwes first lady, Grace Mugabe, faces allegations of assaulting a young South African female model at a luxury hotel in Johannesburg.

Twenty-year-old Gabriella Engels has accused Grace Mugabe of barging into a hotel room where Engels was waiting to meet one of Mugabes sons on Sunday and whipping her with an extension cord.

South African police issued a red alert on Friday at the countrys borders to prevent Mugabe from fleeing undetected.

Her whereabouts were not known on Friday, but South African police minister Fikile Mbalula said she remained in the country.

The 52-year-old, who has not yet been charged, has asked for diplomatic immunity in the case.

Lawyers for Engels have threatened to go to court if immunity is granted.

It is not clear whether Mugabe entered South Africa on a personal or diplomatic passport.

South Africas government said it had not yet decided whether to grant the request for diplomatic immunity.

No one is above the law

Political analyst Ayesha Kajee said the first ladys arrest could lead to a political falling out.

Those countries that have traditionally been supportive of Zimbabwe would lambast South Africa for arresting Mrs Mugabe and prosecuting her, Kajee told Al Jazeera.

A statement by South African Airways on Saturday did not mention the allegations against Zimbabwes first lady.

WATCH: Mugabes wife  He could run for election as a corpse (2:26)

The case has overshadowed a two-day regional summit in the South African capital of Pretoria, which is being attended by Zimbabwes President Robert Mugabe.

Outside the summit, some protested against Mugabe on Saturday, saying she should be prosecuted.

Arrest Grace, please. Grace is a disgrace, some chanted.

No one is above the law, Milton Bangamuseve, an activist, told Al Jazeera.

The law of the country must reign supreme. If she is guilty she must be sentenced like any other citizen.










English News Another golden decade depicted at the BRICS Seminar on Governance

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 19 Aout 2017



The BRICS mechanism is growing into a key driver of global governance system, Shen Yi, director of the Center for BRICS Studies at Fudan University, told the Peoples Daily, adding that the BRICS members are now vital engine of world economy.

By Zhang Huizhong from Peoples Daily The BRICS Seminar on Governance opened in southeast China on 17 August, during which over 160 representatives from BRICS members - -Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- as well as other developing nations brainstormed ideas on how to usher BRICS cooperation into another golden decade.

The two-day Seminar, themed with "Openness, Inclusiveness, Mutual Benefits and Win-Win: Working Together to Build a Community of Shared Future for Mankind", served as an important supporting event of the ninth BRICS Summit to be held early next month.

The academics, consultants and business leaders, during the meeting held in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, contributed their wisdom on how to enrich the outcomes of the upcoming summit.

The meeting also passed a Quanzhou consensus that encourages the signatories to prioritize development, launch mutually beneficial cooperation, engage in global governance in an active manner and learn more from other civilizations.

The representatives agreed that an intensified exchange of state governance experience will endow the BRICS members with a better prospect.

The great vision mapped out by Chinese President Xi Jinping on global governance could make unique contribution to the win-win cooperation of the entire world, Robert Lawrance Kuhn, chairman of the US-based Kuhn Foundation, said when commenting on Chinas new governance ideas.

He believed that the Chinese experience can play a big weight as the world is now working on a way to transform the current global governance system.

Xis ideas, including improving the publics well-being by eliminating poverty, are down-to-earth, hailed Director of the China-Brazil Center for Research and Business Ronnie Lins.

BRICS countries, confronted by similar challenges, also share similar development goals, Lins said, suggesting that Chinas experience on state governance can serve as an important reference for other bloc members.

Edith Phaswana, senior lecturer at South Africa-headquartered Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, told the Peoples Daily that she appreciates the development path chosen by China, adding that China realized its growth after picking a suitable road. This is also Phaswanas first Chinese trip.

Impressed on Chinas development accomplishments, she advised that the emerging markets and developing economies can learn a lot from Chinas governance experience and apply that to their own growth path.

The lecturer furthered that some nations tried to copy the trajectory of developed nations, but the ill-suited remedy blocked their way ahead.

The participants also placed high expectations on the forthcoming summit. The BRICS cooperation has expanded its ground rapidly in the past 10 years, said Swaran Singh, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

He suggested closer cultural exchanges in the future, so that the public will have a stronger sense of belonging.

The BRICS mechanism is growing into a key driver of global governance system, Shen Yi, director of the Center for BRICS Studies at Fudan University, told the Peoples Daily, adding that the BRICS members are now vital engine of world economy.

He elaborated that BRICS cooperation not only provides new solutions to global economic governance and the proceedings into a broader structure of global governance, but also reflects the understanding of emerging and developing economies on building a more equal-footed new order of global governance that can bring the mankind into sustainable development.

Phaswana is bullish on the future of BRICS mechanism, explaining that BRICS cooperation not only reaches its member states, but also drives the common prosperity of other emerging and developing nations in the region. It acts as a platform on which other nations can share and learn advanced experience, she added.



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)










REACTION Bengaluru, India: Smart Trump should help gullible ally Modi to tackle Sino-Pak combine at Doklam and in Kashmir

Alwihda Info | Par Hem Raj Jain - 19 Aout 2017



Smart Trump should help gullible ally Modi to tackle Sino-Pak combine at Doklam and in Kashmir

Dear Editor



Sub:- (i)- Smart Prez Trump after roping in gullible PM Modi as ally on SCS dispute should guide India to tackle Sino-Pak combine (ii)- India at Doklam against all international laws (iii)- USA should ask India to contain China by handing-over Indo-China border settlement to UNJC and by withdrawing from Doklam and then retrieve PoK (iv)- Present Hindutva dispensation dangerously alienating Muslim Kashmiris to buttress claim of theocratic Pakistan over Kashmir (v)- As long as PoK remains with Pakistan entire J&K is a disputed territory hence need for Article 35 A / 370



----- India intervened as third party (on the invitation of Bhutan allegedly under a friendship treaty) at Doklam in the dispute between China and Bhutan and it has led to the threat issued by China that it will also intervene as third party (on the invitation of Pakistan under a friendship treaty) in Kashmir in a dispute between India and Pakistan. Given the intransigent nature and communal bent of mind of present Modi regime in India (which is more communal than earlier Indian regimes), the combine of Pakistan and China are smelling blood as India is dangerously trapped at Doklam and in Kashmir.



When July, 2016 judgment of International Tribunal over South China Sea (SCS) was not obeyed by China it was the responsibility of UN promoters the UN Permanent Members (UNSC) to get it implemented and it was none of the business of India to unnecessarily get involved in this matter by getting it obliquely mentioned in joint statement of Trump-Modi during June 2017 visit of PM Modi to USA. This has incensed China and which trapped India at Doklam by making India to remain at Doklam in violation of every international law so that China can intervene in Kashmir in order to keep India at its proper place by helping its ally Pakistan to snatch Kashmir from India militarily (with Chines military support).



India is against every international law while being at Dokalm because:-



(i)- India says that it has gone on the invitation of Bhutan at Doklam under friendship treaty which obliges India to be responsible for the defense of Bhutan. But the status of Bhutan as somewhat protectorate of India is not correct as relevant Article 2 of Indo-Bhutan Treaty of 1949 which reads as [The Government of India undertakes to exercise no interference in the internal administration of Bhutan. On its part the Government of Bhutan agrees to be guided by the advice of the Government of India in regard to its external relations] has been changed into Article 2 of Indo-Bhutan Treaty of 2007 which reads as [In keeping with the abiding ties of close friendship and cooperation between Bhutan and India, the Government of the Kingdom of Bhutan and the Government of the Republic of India shall cooperate closely with each other on issues relating to their national interests. Neither Government shall allow the use of its territory for activities harmful to the national security and interest of the other]



(ii)- In response to Indias claim that under Indo-China Treaty of 2012 the status-quo of tri-junction point cannot be disturbed, China has said that China has not breached this treaty as this treaty is about tri-junction point and not about lines and areas and China has not disturbed the tri-junction point and India has not contradicted this claim of China.



(iii)- India claim that  If China comes at Doklam then it will endanger security of India as it will bring China closer to chicken-neck (the silliguri corridor) - is legally untenable because there are many chicken-necks all over the world and security of one nation cannot challenge the sovereignty of other nation. Rather every nation has to manage its defense commensurate with geographical realty.



In view of the above India rather should have advised UN member Bhutan to approach United Nations when China entered unilaterally & high-handedly at Doklam which is a disputed territory between China and Bhutan. But now India being at Doklam has changed the situation dangerously. Even if India and China show some wisdom and try to avoid Indo-China war, Pakistan will not allow it. Theocratic Pakistan in the present situation finds golden opportunity to snatch from so-called secular India the territory of at-least Muslim Kashmir (if not non-Muslim areas of Jammu and Ladakh) for which Pakistan has fought many wars and for which, as per media reports, Islam has laid down the lives of ~ one hundred thousand Jihadis.



Though the record of India about secularism is not as unblemished as one would like it to be but still India is a democracy of ~ 1.3 Billion people and constitutionally secular that too in this part of Asia. Hence in the interest of global war against terrorism the USA should go all out to avoid any advantage in Kashmir to militant Jihadis and Jihadi / terrorism supporting nation Pakistan vis-a-vis secular India. This can be done only when Hindu majority India (A)- Stops taking away special status granted under Article 370 / 35 A from J&K till PoK is retrieved (B)- Practices genuine secularism by retrieves Muslim PoK and (C )- Motivates Muslim Kashmiris to raise demand for retrieve of PoK from Muslim Pakistan.



Unless dispute is resolved in any disputed territory mostly permanent-residents (natives) can live and others can live in a way which does not change the demography of that disputed territory (especially about voting rights). India was partitioned on the basis of religion. Even today India and Pakistan both are mired in communalism (India subtly and Pakistan grossly / crudely). For Kashmiris (for showing their secular credentials) merely parroting is not enough that  despite being Muslim majority State (in the backdrop of two nation theory which partitioned India) the State of J&K opted for Hindu majority India.



Rather Kashmiri Muslims should keep their religion separate and instead in-tune with genuine secularism should start thinking about solving the Kashmir problem (due to which mainly hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris are bleeding and weeping including their women, children and old people) so that Kashmir problem can be solved by Kashmiri Muslims by demanding from government of India the retrieve of PoK from Muslim Pakistan as explained below:-

http://www.pakistanchristianpost.com/detail.php?articleid=2979



Of-course before retrieving PoK India will have to neutralize military threat from China by handing-over Indo-China border settlement to UN Judicial Commission (UNJC) as this border dispute is a legal dispute and which can easily be settled by UNJC (unlike Indias dispute with Pakistan which is a political dispute over J&K). India can easily make China to accept UNJC because China, as permanent veto wielding UN member, is much more under legal obligation to settle its dispute with neighbors.



It is hoped that smart Prez Trump (after roping in gullible PM Modi as ally on SCS dispute) will guide India not only to tackle the military threat from Sino-Pak combine but also to resolve gory and chronic Kashmir problem (in consonance with global war against radical-Islamist-terrorism)



Regards



Hem Raj Jain



(Author of Betrayal of Americanism)



Bengaluru, India







Dans la meme rubrique : < > Tchad : mise au point de l'ex-Inspecteur general d'Etat sur les reformes des vehicules administratifs Mahamat Ahmad Alhabo : "je ne suis pas un cancre !" Tchad : Succes Masra reagit a la demission de Moustapha Masri des Transformateurs Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)
On Europe Day, 9 May 2017, the European Union launched a re-edition of the book Legends of Liberia. Since the copy Number 1 was offered symbolically to H.E. President Johnson Sirleaf, this book sponsored by the European Development Fund and illustrated for the first time, has been on a journey across the nation. Originally compiled []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric...










English News Op-ed: BRICS mechanism opens up new prospects for South-South cooperation

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 19 Aout 2017



The upcoming BRICS Summit in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen in September, as an innovative exploration of the BRICS plus model, will inject more confidence into South-South cooperation.

By Zhong Sheng from Peoples Daily The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) launched its Africa Regional Center in Johannesburg on Thursday, with South African President Jacob Zuma presiding over the proceedings.



Zuma hailed the launch as a historic moment that underlined the BRICS commitment to the development of the African continent. As the first-ever branch of the NDB in Africa, the center will help the bank better proceed and reserve projects on the continent.



The NDB is an important organ of the BRICS mechanism. According to the World Bank, developing countries need $1 trillion for infrastructure construction but traditional multilateral development banks can provide only 40 percent of the funding needed.



How to break the fundraising bottleneck faced by emerging markets and developing countries and promote inclusive and sustainable development? BRICS countries have chosen to consolidate and build a community of shared interests.



As a multilateral development organization built entirely by emerging markets, the NDB shoulders the heavy responsibility of strengthening the partnership of common development and boosting common prosperity for developing countries.



The NDB was first proposed in 2012 and proved its viability in 2013. In 2014, an agreement was signed on the bank.



In 2015, the bank officially opened, and in 2016 it announced the first batch of loan projects and issued the first green financial bond. The achievements it has made to date demonstrate strong execution and also strongly refute the doubts and naysayers from Western countries about the bloc.



The NDB facilitates the common development of BRICS member countries. In 2016 alone, the bank ratified seven projects for five member countries with a total value of $1.5 billion, most of which is in the green energy and transportation sectors.



This year, the bank is expected to approve 10 to 15 loan projects with a total value of $2.5-$3 billion. In the next five years, the bank plans to allocate two-thirds of its loans to boost infrastructure construction.



The history of development of emerging markets represented by China has displayed the significance of sustainable development. Infrastructure construction, which supports sustainable development, matters a lot to BRICS countries and explains why the NDB hopes to put more resources into the sector,  said NDB president Kundapur Vaman Kamath.



The NDB injects new impetus into the BRICS-led South-South cooperation. The cooperation mechanism among BRICS countries has set an example for emerging markets and developing countries and has become an important platform for South-South cooperation in the 21st century.



The BRICS cooperation with the spirit of openness has not only expanded the space and range of cooperation, but also brought new development opportunities for developing countries and promoted the steady operation of South-South cooperation.



Currently, the NDB is working to extend its loan services to other emerging markets and developing countries. The launch of the Africa Regional Center will greatly propel infrastructure construction and narrow the deficit in development for African countries.



The upcoming BRICS Summit in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen in September, as an innovative exploration of the BRICS plus model, will inject more confidence into South-South cooperation.



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)
 AFP Omits Israeli Victims In List of Car Ramming Attacks | Main

August 18, 2017

Palestinian Dictator Abbas Congratulates North Korean Dictator Jong-Un

Associated Press (AP) photo



Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently congratulated and praised President Kim Jong-Un of North Korea. The AP account of the incident was reported in a few Websites but essentially ignored by American television and print media. The Times of Israel using the AP report that referred to the Palestinian official news outlet Wafa as a source, said:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday [Aug. 15, 2017] congratulated North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un on the occasion of his countrys Liberation day  The Korean people offered the most precious sacrifices for their freedom and dignity. [] Abbas expressed his appreciation for North Koreas firm solidarity in support of the rights [of the Palestinian] people and its just struggle to end the occupation and establish our independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.



The PA president also expressed wishes for Kims health and happiness, for North Korean prosperity and for the historic relationship between Palestine and North Korea to further develop.

Abbas message, made no mention of North Korean continuing nuclear weaponry threats against the United States and its allies.

Abbas and Jong-Un are birds of a feather  both are dictators. The North Korean dictators brutal perpetual regime allows no opposition, including reportedly ordering the recent assassination of the dictators half-brother Kim Jong Nam, and the public execution of his uncle General Jang Song-thaek in 2013 on charges of corruption.

Meanwhile, in 2017, Abbas is in his twelfth year of a four-year term having called off every election for president of the PA since his original one in 2005.

The Abbas dictatorship repeatedly endorses violence against its Jewish neighbors. For example, a few years ago, Abbas set the release of murderers as a precondition for negotiations. When Israel complied, Abbas welcomed these killers home, including praising as a hero, Issa Abd Rabbo, who had murdered two Israeli university students who were hiking.

Palestinians are continuously incited to hatred and violence against Jews by Palestinian communications media, in mosques and schools. Sometimes it's the Palestinian leadership very publicly doing the inciting. For example, on Sept. 16, 2015, responding to an unfounded rumor, Abbas on Palestinian Television, declared, "We won't allow Jews with their filthy feet to defile our Al-Aqsa mosque we bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem"

Previously, during the Arafat dictatorship, according to Abu Daoud, the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre which left 11 Israeli athletes murdered, Abbas provided the funding for the operation.

What to take from all this? For one thing, U.S. news outlets have generally failed to cover news exposing the true nature of West Bank Palestinian leadership.

Posted by MK at August 18, 2017 05:26 PM

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If President Trump called out each right-wing bigot that invaded Charlottesville, it would not be enough. Some obsessive Trump antagonist standing behind the arc of Klieg lights while holding a microphone would find that somehow, somewhere, he had left out something.

If there is anything we can agree on, say liberal pundits, it is that fascism is evil, and Trump should have rushed to condemn them after the vehicular assault on demonstrators.

James Fields, the alleged perpetrator of the vehicular assault in Charleston, is identified as a white nationalist but belonged to no group. Moreover, he seems to be mentally ill.

The Army discharged Fields after a few months in a manner that bespeaks mental problems -- but lets not raise that issue. It will prevent us from feeling sanctimonious about condemning the right.

We most certainly would not want to put Fields in the same category as Major Nidal Hassan, He committed that act of workplace violence at Fort Hood, slaughtering fellow soldiers while shouting Allahu Akbar.

When former attorney general Eric Holder jumped into the discussion of the Charlottesville vehicular killing, calling it terrorism, he was summarily mocked for his contrasting depiction of Hassan as merely a perpetrator of workplace violence. The hypocrisy was palpable.

Of course, nearly everyone wants Trump to condemn only the right. Far be it for us to examine the politics of the left.

If we think of fascism as a system of authoritarian rule, the suppression of basic liberties, a belief system organized around hatred for the other and the inevitability and glory of war (or violence) as a solution to political problems, there were a lot of candidates for the label in the streets of Charlottesville. Some of them were most definitely from the left.

If we can all agree that fascists should be condemned, lets not stop with the neo-Nazis and white nationalists, lets demand that the President condemn all the fascists.

The American Jewish Committee has called on President Trump to condemn the far-right groups in Charlottesville. Let us disabuse them of the idea that only the far right is anti-Semitic. One thing nearly every one of the major groups in the street shared is their antipathy toward Jews.

Yet the AJC depicted the events in Charleston as a conflict between the voices of hate and those who chose to stop hate in its tracks. We wonder if the AJC bothers to read the news or just dreams up this material. Since when are Black Lives Matter and Antifa concerned about stopping hate, especially hatred against Jews?

While progressive Jews were being warriors for social justice and the causes of others, the far left and their Muslim allies were building intersectionality, whose very foundation is anti-Semitism. Intersectionality singles out the worlds only Jewish state as a source of oppression and the denial of human rights. Not only is the characterization mindless, but every Muslim state busy stoning gays and female rape victims is given a pass.

Thats why Jews and Jewish symbols were bluewashed from Chicagos Dyke March and Jews were found to be of insufficient virtue to participate in the citys Slut Walk.

Jews should have seen the signs. They were much earlier ostracized from Occupy Wall Street.

Black Lives Matter has embraced every anti-Semitic trope found in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement against Israel. BLMs anti-Semitic founding document could have been penned by Hamas.

BLMs offshoot the Dreamer Defenders received the Potemkin Village tour of Jerusalem and came back spewing every asinine accusation about Israeli apartheid and oppression. Its a wonder their tour guide provided by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (the people who created airline hijacking) did not show them pictures of Israelis drawing blood from Palestinian children to make matzos.

The Antifa thrives on violence and wreaks havoc wherever it gathers. Violence is its calling card, raising the question of whether the high on violence is as much a motivation for protesting as are the political issues. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who covered Charlottesville for the New York Times, spontaneously tweeted about Antifas violence and hate. Subsequently, she corrected her tweet. It obviously departed from the acceptable leftist narrative.

The chaos in Charlottesville is about two groups of fascists taunting each other in the public square and fighting it out.

Whether one is a greater threat to civilization than the other is a question for debate, but let us not indulge the silly fantasy of Charlottesville being a conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil.

President Trump was correct in condemning all the violence in Charlottesville, and no matter what he did, there are those who would ineluctably find fault with his words.
To everything there is a season, a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. The wisdom of Ecclesiastes is being illustrated in different forms in the United States and in South Korea. In one country, it is a time to plant, and in the other, it is a time to consider whether to pluck up that which is planted. In both countries, political views and moral principles intersect in remembrance of things past. In both countries, the historical experience of slavery has led to expressions and actions of wisdom and folly.

In the United States, the events in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Va., and earlier the massacre in Charleston, S.C. in June 2015, resulted in violent protests and the removal of a statue, built in 1924, of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, as well as acts of vandalism and destruction of property. Inevitably, the actions have pointed out the need for Americans to examine the proper responses to the past history of the country, especially slavery, and to the adherence to symbols honoring the way of life in the American South in the past and even today.

Robert E. Lee is a hero to many Americans, but not to many others. The Civil War, which cost 600,000 lives and the destruction of cities, was lost by the Confederacy. Did the South fight a "noble struggle"? At the core of the issue is the question of appropriateness of the destruction and removal of those controversial symbols, many built in the 1950s days of segregation, in schools, transport, and public places. They embrace statues; monuments; names of streets, parks, bridges, lakes, and schools; the Confederate Flag with its red background and blue cross; and official state holidays. This is a formidable issue: by one estimate, the symbols in the country amount to 1,503. Of these, 718 are statues and monuments, while 109 are public schools named for prominent figures of the Confederacy, including Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.

No one is likely to suggest the return of slavery in the American South, nor is any major figure in American politics associated with the infamous KKK. But controversial problems arise. First, are the history and culture of the South, or the heritage of white Southerners, being erased by the removal of what some consider physical symbols of discrimination? Is it desirable to eliminate the reminder or honoring of the past, including slavery and the maintenance of slave labor? Secondly, is the Confederate flag a racist symbol, since it has been used not only by the Ku Klux Klan, but also over state capitols and city halls, political institutions that may have resisted attempts at desegregation and implementation of civil rights?

Some regard the flag as a symbol of Southern pride; other see it as racist. Noticeably, Nikki Haley, now U.S. ambassador to the U.N., when governor of South Carolina, ordered the removal of the flag from the state house in Columbia.

Paradoxically, the flag was never the national flag of the Confederate States of America (CSA). But the flag was used by George Wallace, then governor of Alabama, to call for "segregation forever." Can it be seen today as a symbol of the honor of the region?

A crucial problem exists for the U.S. as a whole. In the country, calls for the removal of monuments and the names of prominent figures in American life have been controversial because of objections to the political opinions of those making the calls. Already, Woodrow Wilson; John Calhoun; and Roger B. Taney, pro-slavery chief justice of the Supreme Court, have been rejected on trial. At what point will this erasure of individuals stop?

Construction of monuments rather than their destruction is now shown in South Korea. Like the issue in the U.S., the problem is dealing with the memories of slavery. This is the issue of "comfort women," which has made for differences between South Korea and Japan since the end of World War II. The euphemism refers to women who were used by the Japanese Imperial Army during the war as sex slaves, as forced prostitutes. The women were forced to work in front-line brothels. The exact numbers are disputed, but some suggest 200,000. They were drawn from many countries, but a considerable number, again in one estimate 51%, came from Korea.

About three quarters of the comfort women died, some committed suicide, and many of the surviving women were left infertile. Japan inflicted great suffering and sorrow on the women and protected its soldiers from venereal disease by giving condoms to the military.

Some Japanese, particularly Nippon Kaigi, a nationalist organization with which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is affiliated as an adviser, deny that war crimes such as sexual slavery were committed. Indeed, not until 1993 did a high Japanese government official admit the existence of the official brothels. In 2015, Abe did offer his "most sincere apologies and remorse" to all former comfort women, and he gave a sum to a fund to help victims. But groups supporting the women thought this was inadequate.

Some deals have been made. In 1965, when diplomatic ties between the two countries were restored, Japan gave a relatively small aid sum and low-interest loan package, allowing the Korean government to spend on development. But since the early 1990s, the small number of comfort women still alive and friends have staged regular protests outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul. In December 2011 until December 2016, a bronze life-sized statue of a young Korean woman in Korean-style dress was put up outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul and other places. Another one was built outside the Japanese consulate in the city of Busan.

The newest development is the erection of plastic statues of women in the front seat of buses in Seoul, an action supported by the mayor of Seoul. The Japanese are critical, arguing that the statues contravene the spirit of their December 2015 agreement that was supposed to settle the comfort women issue "finally and irreversibly."

Though Japan did finally apologize, it insists it has no further legal responsibility, but can only make humanitarian gestures on behalf of the women. Like protesters in the U.S., the Japanese leaders are most incensed by statues that are reminders of the past, which they want removed.

The new Korean president, Moon Jae-in, is reviewing the situation. One plan is to make August 14, the anniversary of Korean independence from Japan, a national day of remembrance. In the U.S. the removal of statues is linked to the writing or erasure of history. In Korea, the day of remembrance, together with building of the new statues, is an attempt to make sure that history is not rewritten.
In his response to last Saturday's horrific events in Charlottesville, President Trump became the first Republican politician to stand up to the bullying tactics the corporate press uses to enforce its delusional narrative about political hatred and violence in America. Most of the sympathetic commentary has rightly praised him for refusing to minimize Antifa's role and, by extension, calling attention the wave of left-wing violence over the past year that the corporate press has gone out of its way to keep hidden. Many have also pointed out that Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe and local officials appear to have intentionally pushed the peaceably assembled "Unite the Right" marchers into the Antifa mob, and that McAuliffe and local Democratic Party officials who let armed and masked men roam the streets of Charlottesville deserve most of the blame and ought to be prosecuted, punished, and ruined for their despicable designs.

The rest of the sympathetic commentary has mostly focused on the president's brave defense of the legitimacy of monuments to the Confederate dead and his pointing out that the logical conclusion of demolishing and removing them will be the denigration of our nation's founders. But there's been mostly silence concerning his remark that not all the "Unite to Right" protesters were vile people who deserved what they got, regardless of how illegal and repulsive the mechanism of delivery was. Those supporting the president have largely been content with granting the corporate media's assumption that the legally assembled marchers were all white supremacist Nazi yahoos and only insisting that their Antifa opponents were no better. This is not without reason, since discussing whether any of the Unite the Right protesters might have legitimate concerns beyond the destruction of historical monuments takes us well outside the Overton window of current acceptable public discourse.

But the president's remarks did move that window a fair bit away from corporate media-propagated delusions and toward reality, and perhaps the rest of us can now move it a bit farther.

Some of the marchers' dress unquestionably showed a glorification of Nazism. My German Jewish paternal grandparents were killed by the Nazis; if what I was told as a child is accurate, they were forced to dig their own graves and then machine-gunned into them. My father managed to escape by staying a little ahead of the German army as it marched eastward. He wound up in Moscow, where he met my Russian Jewish mother. Hitler had no more love for the Slavic part of my mother's heritage than he did for the Semitic one. He called the Slavic people "a mass of born slaves," and the Nazis intentionally starved over 3 million Russian prisoners of war to death.

Those Nazi-worshipers at the "Unite the Right" rally shouldn't be allowed the delusion that the pathetic loser they idolize, whose greatest contribution to history is a nuclear-armed Jewish state, was in any way a champion of white folks. Nor should we accept their delusions and call them "Nazis." They are sorry fools who are as taken in by Hollywood's stock choice of villains as their Antifa counterparts, and who respond by cosplaying as Nazis. Despite what Hollywood teaches, the ideology they worship was particular to Germany and was destroyed in WWII, and they are no more real Nazis than a psychopath who files his teeth and wears a black cape is a real vampire. If he's dangerous, of course the law must take him down. But we don't dignify and feed his pathetic delusions by yielding to them.

Pathetic Nazi cosplayers were, by all the available evidence, few and far between among those protesting the destruction of monuments commemorating the Confederate Civil War dead. But, though only a minority were worshipers of a failed 20th-century German ideology built by one of history's greatest losers, I do believe that all were there to do more than protest the destruction of historically significant monuments. They were also protesting to promote the forbidden idea that there's nothing wrong with white Christian Americans advocating for their group or being proud of their heritage.

If I wanted to form another Jewish advocacy group to add to the many already existing ones, no one would bat an eye. And this is true even though Jews have substantially more political and economic power, given our proportion of the population, than white Christians could ever hope to attain. If a couple of Asians wanted to form an Asian advocacy group, that would be perfectly acceptable as well, even though, as a group, they too are socioeconomically better off than white Christians. Jews and Asians are also generally successful enough to be insulated from the negative effects of affirmative action and the importation of cheap third-world labor.

White middle- and lower-class Christians bear the brunt of globalism's destruction of the American working middle class. As a result, deaths from alcohol and drug poisoning, suicide, and alcoholic liver disease have risen dramatically for them. Leading scholars on both the right and the left proclaim that white Americans are in crisis, and, though they don't typically add the "Christian" qualifier, it's understood that the population is almost exclusively of Christian descent. Many of them had ancestors here long before my parents were admitted as refugees, and many had fathers and grandfathers who helped defeat the real-life Nazis who killed my grandparents. Yet they alone among all the ethnic groups in America are automatically branded as "repellent racists" if they make any attempts to organize to protect or enlarge their slice of the pie or even suggest that it might just possibly be okay to express pride in their heritage. When moderate and reasonable advocacy gets shouted down and falsely branded as hateful, all that's left is the sort of outlandish but nonviolent ideas of Richard Spencer and the much more outlandish and violent ones of Nazi cosplayers.

One way to normalize abhorrent ideas is to present them as normal. But another more insidious way is to silence reasonable concerns by conflating them with abhorrent ones so that the space for normal people to express their reasonable concerns is eliminated, and the only ideas and leaders left to follow are extremist. Tucker Carlson is right that rampant identity politics cuts against the idea of our being a single nation united by the bonds of citizenry. But I'm sure he's not foolish enough to think the identity politics permitted as a matter of course to everyone except white Christians has any hope of disappearing anytime soon. And he's certainly right that extremist white identity politics is the natural and expected reaction if all reasonable means white Christians have for addressing legitimate concerns are automatically branded hateful and extreme.

It's both appalling and self-destructive for sensible people to buy into the idea that all the marchers who suffered a government-planned assault in Charlottesville are repellent racists and yahoos for wanting to defend and show pride in their own in the same way every other ethnic group in America can and, indeed, is encouraged to. If the crisis in their community isn't enough to justify allowing them the same space to organize and be proud that every other subdivision of American citizens has and shows no willingness to abandon, what happened to them in Charlottesville, which everyone knows wouldn't have conceivably been allowed to happen to any other group, is more than enough justification for doing so. For people worried about Richard Spencer's extreme and impossible ideas, and the far worse hateful ideas of Nazi cosplayers, the surest way to increase their following is to continue to stigmatize reasonable concerns and maliciously and hysterically brand all attempts to address them, no matter how reasonable and peaceful, as hateful.

Michael Thau has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton. He works as a freelance ghostwriter and content marketer and blogs at A Clearer Picture. He can be reached there or at thauwordsmith@gmail.com.
Is anything and everything related to the Confederacy be wiped from the face of the earth? Doing so, these radicals risk losing sight of American history.

True, there were some Confederates who were virulent racists. Nathan Bedford Forrest, an untutored cavalry genius and perhaps the best cavalry leader of the war, was a former slave trader. He was so lost to hatred that he massacred black Union soldiers hed captured at Fort Pillow. After the war, he founded the KKK. Anybody who still honors Forrest for his exceptional war-fighting ability is either psychotic or ignorant.

However, there were other Confederates who cared nothing for slavery, including General Robert E. Lee, the focus of the Charlottesville brouhaha. At the start of the war, President Lincoln  clearly no friend of slavery  offered Lee  the pre-eminent soldier of his generation  the command of the entire Union Army. Lee, who in early 1861 had opposed the creation of the Confederacy, graciously refused his Presidents request, not because he supported slavery  he didnt  but because he would not fight against his home state. He told Presidential advisor Francis P. Blair:

I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the south I would sacrifice them all to the Union [here, Lee did not mean human sacrifice, but instead freedom for those four million slaves]. But how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state?

Late in the war, Lee strongly advocated to Jefferson Davis  as well as to individual slave-holders  that slaves should be freed on the condition that they enlist in and fight for the Confederacy.

Lee and his immediate family opposed slavery. His wife and mother-in-law were active in a pre-war Christian Southern movement to liberate slaves, relocating them to Liberia. Lees wife and daughter set up an illegal school for slaves at Arlington Plantation, teaching them to read the bible. On December 27, 1856, Lee wrote to his wife Mary Anna Lee:

 In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages.

In 1862, Lee freed the remainder of the familys slaves, many of whom were direct descendents of slaves owned by the adopted grandson of President George Washington.

Despite this, it would be inaccurate to view Lee as an active abolitionist. Like many Christian Southerners of his class and station, he felt slavery was a moral wrong, one that God would sort out in His own time. Lee had other priorities. Yet despite his willingness to free his familys slaves, as well as to free and enlist slaves into his Army, and despite his post-war support of civil rights for blacks, far-left radical racists still want to banish Lee from America.

Where does this hijacking of American history take us?

Statue of a Confederate soldier toppled by a mob in Durham, NC

The far-right racist Nazis and Klukkers want to enshrine their spiritual father, Nathan Bedford Forrest as a hero for his undoubted gifts as a cavalry leader  as well as for founding the KKK. Fortunately, no matter how many violent rallies they hold, this will never happen. They will not succeed.

However, the far-left racists from Black Lives Matter have enough media credibility to push for more dramatic changes, and theyve already begun to succeed. Having triumphed over Confederate heroes and symbols, they are now targeting our twelve slaveholding Presidents. Those Presidents whose honors are  or will soon be  on the chopping block include:

George Washington, who in his will freed all his slaves

Thomas Jefferson, who actively opposed slavery and freed some slaves in his will

James Madison, who did not free his slaves or actively oppose slavery

James Monroe actively opposed slavery and supported the creation of Liberia, a homeland in Africa for freed slaves  its capital, Monrovia, is named for him

Andrew Jackson, who owned slaves and may have been a slave trader, never freed any slaves

Martin Van Burens father owned six slaves. The President owned one slave, Tom who escaped to the north, and  after Tom was caught  Van Buren insisted he remain free. Politically, Van Buren opposed the expansion of slavery to western territories

William Henry Harrison inherited several slaves and lobbied to extend slavery to Indiana  this was opposed by slave-holding President Thomas Jefferson

John Tyler considered slavery evil, but he owned slaves and did not free them

James K. Polk owned slaves  his will would have freed them, but Lincoln ended slavery before Polks will could be executed

Zachary Taylor owned slaves but resisted the expansion of slavery into the territories  he may have been poisoned by slavery advocates

Andrew Johnson owned a few slaves and successfully pushed Lincoln to exempt Tennessee from the Emancipation Proclamation

Ulysses S. Grants wife inherited a few slaves, and Grant owned one slave for two years  yet despite crushing financial need, Grant freed that one slave in 1859. During the war, he enlisted slaves into his army and paid them for their service; after the war, he pushed for civil rights for former slaves, and for American Indians

Using the far-left Black Lives Matter movements flawed logic, our nations capital  along with one of our states  will have to change their names. The monument built to honor our first President will have to be torn down. Yes, President Washington despised slavery and wrote often of his desire to abolish it, but obviously, that isnt enough. Joining President Washingtons dethroning will have to be President Jefferson. Will we have to abandon the Declaration of Independence, which he wrote? Clearly, Monticello must be torn down, while the University of Virginia in Charlottesville will have to renounce its founder. Ultimately, all twelve slave-owning Presidents will find their statues ripped down, their names banished from public property, and their real merits lost to history.

While nobody with any sense can find any logic in the far-right racist groups like the Nazis or the Klukkers, Black Lives Matters media power  and the fear many have of being labeled a racist for opposing them, will continue to give haters on the far left the power to rewrite American history.

Ned Barnett is, among other things, an historian whos appeared on nine History Channel programs. He has extensively studied the American Civil War and its leaders, and he has worked for civil rights for blacks. A native of Ohio, he believes ancestors fought with a Pennsylvania regiment of coal miners to help free the slaves.
It was a bad day for American law enforcement yesterday. Six policemen in two states were shot  four in Florida and two in Pennsylvania  with the shootings of two policemen in Kissimmee, Florida being described by authorities as an "ambush."

Officer Matthew Baxter and Sgt. Sam Howard were responding to a suspicious activity call Friday night in Kissimmee. Within minutes, both were shot. Baxter died of his wounds, and Howard is in "grave, critical condition."

CNN:

Police arrested three people following the shooting, and are searching for a fourth person. "At this time, we have a strong suspect in custody that we are interviewing," O'Dell said. Following the news of the shooting, President Donald Trump tweeted his condolences. "My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!" the President said. Florida Gov. Rick Scott described Baxter as a husband, a father and a hero. "Heartbroken to hear loss of @kissimmeepolice officer Matthew Baxter. Praying for a quick recovery for officer in critical condition," Scott.

For the record, this is the M.O. of previous police ambushes. The suspect is reported as a "suspicious person," and when the police arrive to investigate, they're gunned down.

Although three suspects are in custody, authorities have yet to identify the race of the killers. Somehow, you have to believe that if they were white supremacists, it would be all over the national news.

Elsewhere, two police officers were shot in Jacksonville, Fla. confronting a suicidal man. Two other officers were shot in Fayette County, Pennsylvania.

NBC News:

In Jacksonville, police officers were responding to a call about an attempted suicide at a house. Gunfire was heard from outside the property as officers arrived, Jacksonville Sheriffs Office Director of Patrol and Enforcement Mike Bruno told NBC News. Before officers even entered the house, the suspect began shooting at them through the doorway and there was an exchange of gunfire in which two officers were struck, one of them in the stomach, Bruno said. The suspect is dead and its not yet known if body cameras were worn or activated. In Pennsylvania, two troopers were shot and a suspect killed after an incident near a store on West Church Street, Fairchance, Fayette County, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Melinda Bondarenka said in a statement. One of the troopers was life-flighted from the scene to a hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia and the other was taken to a hospital via ambulance, NBC station WPXI reported. Both were stable and alert, Bondarenka said.

The probable ambush of cops in Kissimmee reminds us that hate is not confined to one race or one ideology and that police are the ones on the front lines actually doing battle with the haters. Almost lost in the narrative about the violence in Charlottesville is that two police officers lost their lives when their helicopter crashed. They have become an afterthought to the main stage drama of racists, Nazis, and Antifa warring in the streets of an American city.

Between the violent haters and us stands the "Thin Blue Line" of dedicated men and women in law enforcement. Theirs is a thankless, dangerous job, made more so by those who wish to kill them to make a political statement. It doesn't matter what color the police officers are  both Kissimmee officers were black. They were targets of violent extremists who wish to make their jobs impossible to carry out.

No doubt, there are many police officers and sheriffs' deputies going to work today wondering if they will be next.
An internal civil war is tearing at the fabric of Fox News. The events of the past week have brought the long simmering conflict closer to the surface. The legitimacy and viability of President Trump are under constant assault in the mainstream media as never before  and that is saying something. Fox News Channel executives, staff, and on-air talent are taking sides. The future direction of the right-of-center, fair and balanced Fox News approach to presenting the news may well be in serious doubt.

One week ago in Charlottesville, Virginia, a melee that involved Nazis, the Alt-Right, Antifa, and anarchists resulted in the death of one woman, with at least 20 more people injured. The whole country seems to be taking sides or at least trying to understand what really happened that led to such a violent confrontation over the future of Civil War statues and monuments on public land. Most mainstream news organizations are siding with the left-wing narrative and blaming President Trump for his unconventional reaction to the events at Charlottesville. They are also largely absolving the anarchist and Antifa participants of any responsibility for the violence that took place.

Fox News still has its defenders of Trump. But they are increasingly being outnumbered by other hosts, contributors, and guests on the channel. Newsweek, an anti-Trump publication, put it this way in its August 17 story "Fox News Can't Stop Literally Crying About Donald Trump's Worst Week Yet":

It's been a bizarre week for the folks at Fox News[.] ... For many of the network's personalities, it's been one of the most challenging weeks since Trump took office  and the tears have been steadily streaming on live television for its millions of viewers nationwide.

A Trail of Tears

On Thursday, August 17, during a live discussion of the Charlottesville rally five days earlier, Fox News anchor and host Melissa Francis, according to Newsweek, was having a hard time:

"I am so uncomfortable having this conversation," Francis said, bursting into tears. "I know what's in my heart, and I know that I don't think anyone is different, better or worse based on the color of their skin. But I feel like there is nothing any of us can say right now without being judged."



Melissa Francis.

As Newsweek described the moment:

The tears arrived after Francis's fellow anchors, Juan Williams and Marie Harf [Harf is in fact a contributor, not an anchor], both rejected her support for the president's statements[.] ... Francis was then comforted by Harris Faulkner, a black female anchor for the network's show Outnumbered, who said "there have been a lot of tears on our network, and across the country and around the world."

There was more crying when Abby Huntsman, filling in as a Fox & Friends weekday co-host on Wednesday morning, was discussing the controversy over Confederate statues and the president's reaction to Charlottesville with two black guests. Newsweek provided the transcript:

"It's beyond a monument. This is about hatred. This is about white supremacy," Democratic contributor Wendy Osefo said Wednesday. "There are good people on both sides of this debate." Huntsman responded, seemingly attempting to pivot away from an emotional conversation. But when she leaned on her Republican pundit Gianno Caldwell for support, she was met with more disdain for the president's behavior  and more tears. "I come today with a very heavy heart," Caldwell said, wiping away tears. "Last night, I couldn't sleep at all because president Trump, our president, has literally betrayed the conscience of our country." "No" Huntsman interjected, trailing off.



L. to R.: Wendy Osefo, Abby Huntsman, and Gianno Caldwell, Fox & Friends, August 16, 2017.

The Daily Beast also took note of the segment:

By the end of the segment, Caldwell was openly weeping, wiping tears from his eyes as Osefo nodded along in support and started to tear up herself. Hunstman had no idea what she had walked into and no concept of how to handle it.

Some Fox hosts, anchors, contributors, and guests have attempted to defend Trump  or, like Huntsman, tried without much success to stake out a middle ground  without opening themselves to charges of racism or being Nazi sympathizers or apologists. Others have put aside their objectivity and ventured into unabashed opinion journalism. The most prominent example was Fox News Specialist co-host Eboni K. Williams. On Monday, Williams delivered a four-minute-long monologue that strongly criticized President Trump. The following day, she reported that she had received email "death threats" because of her commentary, and that became a major story that lasted for the next several days. Also on Monday's Specialists, co-host Kat Timpf said, "I have too much eye makeup on right now to be crying. It's disgusting."

Meanwhile, reliable conservative prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity took a more measured approach to the escalating criticisms of Trump that characterized most of the coverage in the rest of the mainstream media and at Fox as well. Unlike all of the prime-time hosts at CNN, who covered few other stories as the week went on, including downplaying the terrorist attack in Barcelona on Thursday, Carlson and Hannity took time to report other important news of the week. Carlson, Hannity, and several of the hosts on The Five also pointed out that Trump's critics were often misrepresenting what the POTUS had actually said about Charlottesville.

One of the Murdoch Boys Adds His Voice



James Murdoch.

James Murdoch, 21st Century Fox's new CEO, is one of the "Murdoch Boys"  the two sons of Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch who are moving into positions of power at the global media conglomerate their father built over six decades. As the week after Charlottesville was drawing to a close, James Murdoch went on the record deploring Trump and appearing to criticize his own news channel for some of its pro-Trump coverage. The Murdochs' own publication, The Wall Street Journal, broke the story on Friday: "Trump Criticized by James Murdoch: 'There Are No Good Nazis'  Head of 21st Century Fox joins growing dissent at president's response to Charlottesville violence." The vehicle for James Murdoch's critique was a personal note he emailed to friends and colleagues on Thursday.

What we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people. I can't even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists.

The New York Times quickly published the entire text of Murdoch's email in addition to another article that labeled the missive a "rebuke" of Trump. The WSJ noted that Murdoch's communication was a kind of shot across the bow aimed at Fox News:

Many commentators on Fox News, a unit of 21st Century Fox, have been supportive of President Trump's handling of Charlottesville and Mr. Murdoch's note was seen by some there as a criticism of its coverage, a person close to the situation said.

These latest examples of disequilibrium or disunity at Fox News  which likely mimic what is going on in the country at large  appear within a context of mounting challenges for the channel. On August 17, a number of headlines blared like this one in Variety: "MSNBC Ranks as No. 1 Cable Network in Total Viewers for First Time Ever." That news no doubt did not improve James Murdoch's mood.

Variety:

MSNBC ranked as the number one network across all of cable in total viewers for the first time in its history, according to Nielsen data. For Wednesday, Aug. 16, MSNBC averaged 1.52 million viewers for the total day across all of cable, edging out second place Fox News, who averaged 1.5 million. CNN ranked fourth among all cable networks for the day with 1.13 million total viewers. Nickelodeon was third with 1.17 million. However, in the key adults 25-54 demographic, CNN was number one among the cable news networks for the total day, averaging 381,000 viewers in that measure. Fox News was second in the demo for total day with 353,000 viewers, and MSNBC was third with 343,000.

Fox News did come in second to MSNBC and CNN depending on the audience metric, so the ratings picture could have been worse  except when you consider that one year ago, and for the fifteen years before that, Fox News almost always won the ratings in both total viewers and the preferred demographic by wide margins, sometimes with higher numbers than both CNN and MSNBC combined.

Fox's immediate remedy is to shuffle its schedule starting around Labor Day, when it is expected that the underperforming program The Five will return to its 5 P.M. E.T. time period, freeing up 9 P.M. for Hannity and 10 P.M. for, presumably, a new show starring Laura Ingraham. However, with the growing influence on Fox News of the liberal Murdoch Boys, and their equally left-leaning wives, it is unclear how long the new execs at 21st Century Fox will tolerate Hannity  and Tucker Carlson  in prime time. If President Trump's popularity continues to decline and if the Deep State's moves to impeach the president succeed in gaining momentum, all bets are off.

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 latest website is AltMedNews.net.
I think it is time we had a national conversation on political violence and its advocacy, and I thank the Democrats of Missouri for giving us that opportunity.

You may already know about Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who tweeted, "I hope Trump is assassinated."

She quickly deleted it, but there were already screen-grabs:

Missouri senator Claire McCaskill, who must face voters next year and is scared witless, wasted no time calling for her resignation.

I condemn it. It's outrageous. And she should resign.

She was joined by other Democrat office-holders whose districts are even slightly competitive and party officials in calling for her resignation.

Bless her heart, Senator Chappelle-Nadal is standing firm. With 94.172% of the vote in her last election, she is as close to bulletproof as a politician can get. She was tear-gassed when she was among the protesters in the Ferguson riots, in the heart of her district, and is no stranger to outrageous tweets, having launched an F-bomb at Governor Jay Nixon during the troubles. She hasn't even deleted it as of the time of this writing.

She even has an online group of supporters, "I stand with Maria," complete with logo and charming picture.

We, as constituents and community members and people who feel the same frustration with our current political landscape stand with Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal. We know that there is a huge difference between saying that someone hopes Donald Trump is assassinated and someone calling for his assassination. We call on Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal to NOT resign. "Out of anger and frustration, I said something that could have been reframed. And I refuse to shy away from the hypocrisy and chaos our country is enduring under Trump." - Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal

We have a procedure for handling accused miscreant lawmakers, and it is called impeachment. If Senator Chappelle-Nadal stands firm, the constitutional process of the Great State of Missouri can unfold before our eyes in all its majesty and gravity. She will stand trial and have a chance to defend herself, as her supporters surely would prefer. The Missouri State Senate can justify the title of "deliberative body" if it openly considers the legitimacy of her expression and goes on the record as to what it will tolerate. It could be quite illuminating for the nation for Democrats and Republicans to take a position on their standards for impeachment.
The conventional wisdom holds that August is not usually a very busy month in politics. Most Western parliaments are on leave, and most politicians take advantage of the opportunity to go on holiday.

Well, that does not seem to have been the case this year. On August 12, a delegation of American senators took advantage of this August to go to Tirana and meet the No. 1 enemy of the Iranian theocracy, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, who leads the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the mullah regime's most significant opposition group.

The U.S. delegation was composed of Senator Roy Blunt (vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and member of the Appropriations, Commerce, Science and Transportation, Rules and Administration, Joint Committee on the Library, and Select Intelligence Committees), Senator John Cornyn (a member of the Judiciary, Intelligence, and Finance Committees), and Senator Thom Tillis (member of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Armed Services, Judiciary, Veterans Affairs Committees, plus the Special Committee on Aging).

Mrs. Rajavi had been received by many opponents of the Iranian regime in Tirana. Senator Roy Blunt welcomed the transfer of these opponents from Baghdad to Tirana, which took place in September 2016 and stressed that this relocation was a victory for the Iranian opposition.

During the meeting, Mrs. Rajavi described the agonizing situation of the religious dictatorship in Iran, pointing out that despite the efforts of the regime's lobbies in Western capitals, the latter is crumbling, and a change of power is close at hand. Contrary to the propaganda of these lobbies, the demise of this dictatorship will bring peace and stability in the Middle East, the patroness of the most important coalition of Iranian opposition affirmed.

Mrs. Rajavi also stressed the importance of excluding the Iranian Revolutionary Guards from combat scenes in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, as well as prosecuting the leaders and perpetrators of the massacres of Iranian political prisoners in 1988. Many of these leaders are in high decision-making positions in Tehran.

Last April, Senator John McCain also traveled to Tirana to meet with Iranian opponents and with Rajavi, their leader. The leader of the Senate Armed Service Committee is, as we know, one of the most influential politicians in Middle Eastern politics in the United States.

The message of this parade of U.S. politicians of great influence in Tirana to meet the charismatic leader of the Iranian opposition signals that one must take seriously the warnings of the Trump administration in its change of U.S. policy with respect to Iran.

Last June, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for a change of regime in Iran. The first American diplomat announced that his administration was "working to support elements inside Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of this government." He added, "These elements are there, certainly as we know."

These meetings of American officials with opposition leaders have not been common since the emergence of the Islamic Republic. The various U.S. administrations that have followed have tried to expand the dialogue with the leaders of Tehran. So this is a change in the balance of power in Iran itself. In May, the People's Mojahedin Networks in Iran defeated the supreme leader's tricky campaign to bring his close collaborator, Ebrahim Raisi, to the post of president of the republic.

A large movement in favor of justice for the victims of the massacres of 1988 was mobilized by these networks to prevent this shaman from succeeding. This was one of the manifestations of these "elements inside Iran" that Tillerson spoke of. This change is also perceived in Tehran, which is now crying conspiracy. Could a tsunami be imminent?

Hassan Mahmoudi is a human rights advocate, specializing in political and economic issues relating to Iran and the Middle East. @hassan_mahmou1
What a pathetic bit of mob lunacy we have this summer in the attacks on Southern Civil War monuments. In my hometown, they are even defacing a statue of a civilian gentleman on a show horse, meant to celebrate equestrian sports. All white guys on horses must go, apparently, no matter what.

Now, I have no personal brief for the Confederacy  my people were the awesome Midwestern Germans who elected Lincoln and marched with Grant to victory. Yet, knowing American history, I find doubly disgusting the oft repeated and utterly false argument that the hundreds of Southern monuments erected in the decades after the war are somehow the work of the Ku Klux Klan  to intimidate uppity negroes. A few, like Liberty Place Monument in New Orleans, have an obvious racist motive, but only a few.

Almost all the monuments were instead put up by the genteel United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). Little old lady Electras worked for decades in sewing circles to raise money to fund memorials to their daddies  pure works of familial love and loyalty, nothing more. Even the kooks at Southern Poverty Law Center can't identify a race-hatred incident involving the UDC. The worst thing usually said about the UDC is that a lot of their publications are heavily sugarcoated.

The Southern monuments they left us brought needed catharsis to many who lost and suffered through the Civil War  just as Maya Lin's Memorial is supposed to have given Vietnam veterans closure. By emphasizing the heroism and sacrifice of the rebels, but not defending the indefensible, they played a great role in reconciling the South to the nation. Lincoln's idea of "charity for all, malice toward none" was surely well realized in the basic soldierly honors these memorials afforded.

A lot of the monument-wreckers even concede that they are the work of the UDC ladies and that they helped in the work of national reconciliation. Yet they still must go because, well, these are Confederates  yuck! Even the monuments on the battlefields. Presumably, future visitors to Gettysburg will just be left to wonder whom Gen. Meade was fighting. Martians, Orcs, Darth Vader?

Civil wars are the worst of all wars. Ask anybody from China, Russia, or Biafra. Four hundred years later, Germany in many ways still hadn't gotten beyond the Thirty Years' War. Yet we Americans recovered from ours in a relatively short time, a chastened but better people for it.

White Southerners, as Lincoln pointed out in his epic Peoria Speech, were no more responsible than the rest of the country for the existence of slavery. But they certainly suffered the most in the Civil War and then were made to do what no other people in the world at that time would have allowed: accept millions of people from another race into their society on an equal basis. The wonder is not that the Jim Crow period was so ugly, but that it wasn't much worse. One way or another, awkwardly as ever, our country got put back together, the way the Founders hoped.

Just 80 years after the conflict, the very grandchildren of Stonewall Jackson's legions were there in the worst of the fighting at Omaha Beach, winning the most crucial contest of World War II  "the champions who helped free a continent," as Reagan would say. America simply could not have won WWII, or done much of anything in the 20th century, if the divisions of the 19th century had not been allowed to heal. Conceding that small portion of honor to the rebel soldiers' courage, if not their cause, went a long way in making that happen.

Mitch Landrieu, in his Taliban-style takedown of the Lee statute in New Orleans, said he couldn't think of any positive lesson the monument might hold for a black fifth-grade schoolgirl. Mitch being a crazed narcissist, I am sure he couldn't. He lives in the moment. It's all about him, and history is bunk.

Yet there is a great lesson for any American who would look for it. And that is that there is such a thing as a worthy opponent. We can recognize the courage and nobility of a person like Robert E. Lee and the terrible choice he had to make  between his oath to the United States and love for his friends and neighbors  even if we find that decision disappointing. The real Lee had more than his share of faults; Grant was justifiably exasperated that he wouldn't fight the tide of Reconstruction violence, like brave Longstreet and Mahone. Yet Lee's inspiring qualities to previous generations are undeniable. Even Ken Burns's 1990 Civil War series was a near hagiography of the man.

Of course, the whole concept of a "worthy opponent" is anathema for the modern social justice warrior. The idea that civilization is a noble but messy process, made by humans doing great things while making mistakes, is too hard to understand. One can only hope this season of madness runs its course in short order. And if, by chance, some lunatic erects an Al Sharpton Monument, we conservatives, in the spirit of Lincoln and reconciliation, will be happy to leave it be.

Frank Friday is an attorney in Louisville, Ky.
President Trump came out last Saturday and decried racism, violence, and bigotry on all sides in the wake of the violence of Charlottesville. Somehow, that was bad. Reporters, including those at my hometown paper, the Springfield, Ill. State Journal-Register, act as though believe that the violent, extreme far-left group "Antifa" must never be mentioned at all. That's because they wouldn't want the public to learn who they are.

Then, on Monday, President Trump specifically said the KKK and neo-Nazis were terrible, and that still wasn't good enough for a lot of the reporters, because he was still getting trashed continuously.

On Tuesday, he again repeated that racists, bigots, and violent protesters caused the problems in Charlottesville, and from the response I saw, it would be impossible not to think this was a false statement, and that Trump was the devil.

Problem is, they're going to go after him no matter what he says or does. He throws them what they want, and it just doesn't matter.

The issue, of course, was the taking down of the Robert E. Lee statue, and Trump clearly was stating that there were good people on both sides of that issue. Not once has Trump ever stated or implied that neo-Nazis, Klansmen, racists, or bigots are good. For the SJ-R, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and others to say he did is disingenuous at best. Trump tweeted that Graham lied when he said that, and that tweet was true.

Polls show that a majority of Americans, including blacks and Latinos, support keeping the statues up. It shows that the more than 60% of the people who favor keeping the statues up are not racists who support the KKK and Neo-Nazis, all of whom are minor splinter groups comprising obviously despicable human beings. This is the view of Trump, and it matches the sentiment of the majority of the American people.

This should put the matter to rest, but it doesn't. Yet at the same time, we see a double standard when the political leaders of the left find themselves in the hot seat.

A black man who wanted to kill white people and police killed five police officers in Dallas in July of 2016. He was influenced greatly by Black Lives Matter. President Obama and Hillary Clinton both made minor statements condemning the shooter, but they also brought up cops as if they were also at fault for these vicious racist murders. Where was the condemnation by SJ-R, other reporters, and politicians of Obama's and Clinton's ilk for incorrectly blaming both sides and not specifically naming Black Lives Matter? In this case, the five cops killed were not in any way involved with any controversial killings, while in Charlottesville, Antifa was protesting and fighting. Why didn't reporters call on Democrats to censure Obama and Clinton for blaming cops along with the racist killer?

Black Lives Matter got its legs after the justified killing of a black criminal by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The truth was known early on, but the media and the Obama Justice Department allowed the anger in the black community to foment with the fictional "hands up, don't shoot" narrative. I do not recall the media asking Obama to go out and call out the violent protests by Black Lives Matter, where some encouraged the killing of police.

Antifa and other far-left, violent extremist groups travel around the U.S and the world protesting capitalism and the Western way of life. (Who funds them?) As with Obama, they want to remake America. The fact that most of the media give them free rein shows that they support their message.

Trump has continually been targeted by the media and protest groups as long as he has been running. It really doesn't matter what he says or does. It fits into Saul Alinsky's rules for Radicals #13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." And: "Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions."

The target today is Trump, but no one should be so naive as to believe that if he goes down, they won't just double down on whoever else is against their agenda.

Left-wing reporters throughout the United States are calling on Republicans to censure and run away from Trump. One has to be extremely stupid or naive to believe that these reporters will ever support the Republicans who run away from Trump. The reporters are against Trump and his agenda, and it is actually the agenda that is the target. These reporters, almost in lockstep, supported Hillary or Bernie, and they always will, no matter what they say or do.

In Illinois, Governor Bruce Rauner did not support Trump in the election, and he has continually run away from him even after he was elected. Has this brought cooperation from Michael Madigan, the speaker of the Illinois House? Sen. Dick Durbin? Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, or other Democrats and reporters? It clearly has not. Rauner could condemn Trump every day, and that won't cause Democrats to support him. Rauner gave in on a 33% tax increase, and that also didn't raise his approval rating.

Democrats are trying to target Trump, and the more Republicans they can get to also target Trump, the easier their job is. It is amazing how many Republicans there are who believe that if they bend over, they will get adulation.

It would be easier to take one of the DJ-R's scathing editorials on Trump if they were ever 20 percent as hard on Obama or Hillary.

Maybe the SJ-R and others could condemn Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe for clearly lying to gin up anger and fear when he said there were weapons stashed throughout Charlottesville. The police actually found none. This has been labeled a misunderstanding instead of a lie by the Richmond newspapers.

It shows that Democrats are allowed to lie with impunity as long as their agenda is OK.
Color me skeptical about Steve Bannon's exit being a disaster for the Republican base and its grassroots agenda that supports Donald Trump.

Bannon's exit brings a certain ruefulness, given his talents during the presidential campaign. He was defiant, unconventional, riding the wave of where the public was, and very, very, victorious. The apoplectic rage he threw the left into was enough to make you like the man right there.

But there's a difference between the talents of those with campaign skills and those with executive skills. Bannon's success came from his campaign talents, not his executive ones. Campaign geniuses are similar to successful Hollywood types in that their lives revolve around "gigs," and they finish one and move to the next height. They are entrepreneurial, willing to challenge conventions, bold, shameless, and successful. Executive types, by contrast, are those people who are the engines of getting things done, working with the system that is there as it interlocks with many parts, making it work to support the aims of leader.

Did Bannon really perform well in such an executive role? He was in a White House desk job with the title "chief strategist," not out on the frontlines as he had been in the past. He did have actual executive experience, but it was at the highly entrepreneurial disruptor media site Breitbart News, not exactly a copy of the history-laden White House. He also had experience as a naval officer, but at best, he was an entrepreneurial executive, not a necessary swamp thing who could manipulate the establishment effectively. He also had a famously bloated staff, which couldn't have helped in any speed of execution.

And so what he did wasn't all that impressive toward helping Trump get things done.

Bannon was known for his effort to check immigration from those coming from terrorist-infested countries, which later became known as "the Muslim ban." That didn't succeed at all, as judge after judge, usurping authority, managed to grind it to a halt. The intention was great, the execution not so much. The bottom line is, it didn't advance the Trump agenda; it just made Trump look like a failure at getting things done.

Bannon also was the author of various anti-China moves that will halt trade and raise prices for consumers, and some of those moves are still coming up. Is this really the best thing for America? I am skeptical on this front, too, because the Trump team still has not told us well what it expects that free trade should be, and it will have to come to terms with the fact that free trade can be a blessing, as all presidents eventually do. This isn't even a very exciting issue, which probably means these anti-China moves won't impress Trump.

Another thing we know about Bannon is his propensity for going to the edge. He has associates with the Alt-Right who have come too close to very extremist white nationalist groups, who are now the focus of a media feeding frenzy that, again, President Trump is not winning on. I don't want to sort these people out; I know that Bannon is no racist and no Nazi sympathizer, as the left disgustingly paints him. But his past support of nationalism isn't helping Trump shake the impression that he's soft on these groups. Bannon hasn't been able to help on this front, and in reality, intentionally or not, he does the opposite. The bottom line here again is, is Bannon helping Trump successfully execute his agenda with this baggage? I am going to say not.

The media do suggest that with Bannon's exit, Sebastian Gorka will go. I am inclined to hope that is not the case, because Gorka really is effective as a detailed spokesman for the Trump administration on foreign policy matters. He does perform in the role he has and does it well. There is no reason to think his views are exactly the same as Bannon's. News reports say he's spoken off kilter and displeased Chief of Staff General John Kelly, but there is no reason he can't be steered in the direction the executive talent wishes to go.

What does Trump want? It seems he highly prizes competence and clout. He wants a White House that really is effective and "the best" at getting the job done. He is a man of action, after all. That's why Trump's been amassing generals such as Kelly and H.R. McMaster for the top spots in the White House. They are swampers but not the worst ones, and they seem to have sufficient comity with Trump, who needs them. They don't have personalities or even views like Trump's, but they do keep a sense of control, which frees Trump up to be himself instead of on the defensive.

Bannon never was able to assume that kind of role. The media insisted he wielded great power, but it was hardly true, given that what he attempted to accomplish wasn't really successful, and he often turned out to be a liability for Trump.

Good man, misplaced talent. He is likely to be more effective on the outside and may do great things to advance the Trump agenda once he has a free hand to be his own man again and wield his entrepreneurial skills. As for Trump, it seems he is going for the men and women with the temperament to enact results. That's not a disaster for the republic.
With public monuments and statues being torn down at a breakneck pace, there is one group of Americans who have remained relatively silent about this erasure of history. What makes their silence problematic is that they are actually paid to preserve our history.

I'm talking about historical preservationists, museum curators, and public artists  all of whom usually have a say in whether a piece of public art like a monument or statue stays up or comes down.

The New York Times interviewed several members of this group and found that many believe that the actions taken by cities and towns to take down Confederate statues and monuments were too fast and that there should at least be a debate about the removal of this public art.

Mark Bradford, the renowned Los Angeles artist, says Confederate statues should not be removed unless they are replaced by educational plaques that explain why they were taken away. For Robin Kirk, a co-director of Duke University's Human Rights Center, the rapid expunging of the statues currently underway needs to be "slower and more deliberative." And Lonnie G. Bunch III, the director the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, proposes that the dismantled statues be grouped together and contextualized, so people understand what they stood for. In state after state this week, artists, museum curators, and historic preservationists found themselves grappling with lightning-fast upheaval in a cultural realm  American monuments  where they usually have input and change typically unfolds with care. Many said that even though they fiercely oppose President Trump and his defense of Confederate statues, they saw the removal of the monuments as precipitous and argued that the widening effort to eliminate them could have troubling implications for artistic expression. "I am loath to erase history," Mr. Bunch said. "For me it's less about whether they come down or not, and more about what the debate is stimulating."

Mr. Bunch should realize there is no debate. Anyone who questions the actions of those who wish to erase history is branded as a racist and fascist sympathizer. It's an effective means to shut people up who might object.

"While I am personally in favor of these sculptures' going away, I think it's important to understand that many of these artists did not have a political motivation," Ms. Robbins added. "They had an aesthetic motivation." Several people in the art world said there is an important distinction to be made between private artworks and public monuments. Unlike artwork made by individual artists, many of the Confederate monuments were supported by city or state governments  sometimes including tax dollars  and placed on public land, suggesting official approval of what the statues stand for. "The Confederate monuments are meant to convey a message that we value the history of oppression," said Adrienne Edwards, the Walker's visual arts curator at large. ... "These are statues on pedestals, and when you place something on a pedestal you're putting something in a position to worship it," Mr. David said. "To create a kind of hero worship around the Confederacy and to support state sanctioned white supremacy, it's appropriate to re-examine them and to change their context." But others argue that removing a statue from its place of origin diminishes the power of its historical significance. "The meanings and the history that we are able to draw from them in a different site, especially a sort of sanitized site like a museum, are not going to be the same," said Michele H. Bogart, a professor at Stony Brook University. "That is a historical loss." And there are those who warn against rashly removing public art without thoughtful and thorough public discussion. Ms. Kirk of Duke suggested that people in Durham, N.C.  where one statue was pulled down and another was defaced  could brainstorm about monuments that might be substituted for those that were removed.

Calls to blow up Mount Rushmore and remove the Jefferson and Washington Memorials seem ridiculous now. But how about in five or ten years? If this rampage against public art and history continues, the forces of ignorance will only get stronger and harder to resist. So far, they have been extremely effective in silencing those who object to the removal of the statues, equating them with the white supremacists who are most closely associated with saving the monuments. That's why it's extremely important that the preservationist community step forward to call a halt to this arbitrary and emotional process of wiping history. Their personal feelings aside, it's time for them to start pointing out what we lose when these statues come down rather than being part of the virtue-signaling from those looking to destroy the culture.
Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

As gym-bunny bloggers aspire towards big bums and fashion popularises black body shapes, will ethnic-minority women remember how to love their bodies once the trend is over?

Icant remember when I stopped hearing the phrase Does my bum look big in this? But the question makes my skin crawl. I think of that weird scene in Bridget Joness Diary where her (very small) bum slides down towards the camera on a firemans pole.

Vogue established in 2014 that big bums were back in fashion, while in 2015 the Guardian asked if big lips were the new bushy brow. What isnt often mentioned is how these trends are intimately tied to black peoples bodies, like my own.

Although, like most feminists Im sure, I dont believe that body parts should be seen as fashionable or unfashionable commodities, I know that part of the reason Ive become more accepting of my own body shape is because its become societally desirable. In the past eight years, between the ages of 15 and 23, Ive gone from painstakingly attempting to hide my large bum in oversized skater skirts to proudly celebrating a good big booty twerk.

Big bums are now what all the gym-bunny bloggers are working towards with their gains. And Ive not even had to try. It felt gratifying, to a degree: theres no denying its been to the detriment of other womens body shapes. And although my blackness is not a fad, and the black body comes in many shapes and sizes despite the stereotype of us having big bums and lips, this is a massive step up from the historic, animalistic portrayal of us as grotesque thanks to our natural shape.

Only last week the Pirelli calendar was revealed to feature an all-black castincluding Whoopi Goldberg, Naomi Campbell, RuPaul and more underground black British influencers, like activist-model Adwoa Aboah and illustrator-model King Owusu. Any girl, whether she is black or Chinese or Indian, they should be able to have their own fairytale, the Guardian was told about the Alice in Wonderland-inspired shoot.

How I feel now as a curvy black woman seems to be a sweet glimpse of how white people have felt for decades

Representation is so important to your sense of self-worth, and the internal calmness Im feeling in terms of my identity as a curvy black woman seems to be a sweet glimpse of how white people have felt for decades. As model Thando Hopa says, all minorities deserve to see positive depictions of themselves, your mental health suffers if you dont. As a study released in May by Leeds Beckett University revealed, black women are rarely featured in mainstream womens magazines, with the researchers claiming that our lack of representation increases our body dissatisfaction, reproducing racism by virtue of bodily exclusion.

White people never really go out of fashion, and we have had to watch as theyve popularised our aesthetic traits; from Kylie Jenners enhanced pout to Kim Kardashians large, glazed, internet-breaking derriere on the cover of Papermagazine. Edward Enninful, who styled the Pirelli shoot, may now be the first black, gay editor of British Vogue, but the rest of the industry is still woefully lacking in ethnic minority staff members and the way fashion journalists talk about diversity can be disgustingly obtuse. Make sure weve got at least one Asian, Ive overheard a colleague saying. My jaw dropped open like that surprised cat meme.

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Even so, I cant help wondering how skinny, flat-chested women, all the rage during the heroin chic era of the 90s, are feeling now. Are they more dissatisfied with their bodies since theyve moved away from being ideal? All it takes is one snooty casting director to decide your fashion moment is over. Racial trends move at a slower pace than the length of trouser hems, but I do worry that it will be a struggle to remember how to love my body as the traits associated with blackness fall from grace.

White people still rule the roost in commercial terms, but luckily, unlike when I was growing up, there is now a vast support network of grassroots black-led creative organisations. Even if things stop moving forward, my black peers will still push our voice, faces, even our bums, into the spotlight. Meanwhile, conversations questioning the capitalism that forces women into caring so much about the way our genes have knitted us up as people need to continue.

Eva Wiseman is away

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Missouris Ferguson-Florissant superintendent has been arrested on charges that he used a credit card belonging to his former North Carolina district without authorization, according to news reports.

Joseph Davis left the Washington County school system in Plymouth, N.C., in 2015 to lead the Ferguson-Florissant school district, just outside of St. Louis. He is accused of using Washington Countys credit card on Jan. 15 this year to rent a room at Hotel Club Quarters and a Hertz car, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch . Davis faces two counts of obtaining property by false pretense, the paper said.

Daviss attorney lawyer said his client emphatically denies the charges against him and was quite surprised by the allegations. Davis returned his Washington County credit card when he left the district or before he left, the attorney, Paul DAgrosa, said.

Education Week has reached out to Davis, but had not had a response as of this posting.

The Ferguson-Florissant district said in a Facebook post that Davis was taken into custody on Wednesday, but did not specify the nature of the allegations against the superintendent.

Dr. Davis requested to be placed on leave to concentrate his efforts on getting this matter cleared, so he can return to leading the school district as quickly as possible, the Ferguson-Florissant district said. Deputy superintendent Larry Larrew will serve as interim superintendent.

Our focus is on providing a great education for our students, Ron Chabot, the board president, said in the post. Our hope is that Dr. Davis will return to lead the district.

Davis has been with the Ferguson-Florissant school district since July 2015.

In January 2016, North Carolina State Auditor Beth Wood released an independent audit of spending in Washington County during Davis tenure. According to the report, Davis had misspent or failed to provide receipts for thousands of dollars in expenditures. He spent more than $94,000 during 33-months without first getting approval from the school board. Some of the money included federal funds, including $9,025 of federal Title I funds he spent on inflatable bounce houses for six events, according to the audit.

At the time the audit was released, the Associated Press quoted Davis as saying that he had no reservations about his spending in Washington County.

Education Week spoke with Davis shortly after his arrival in Ferguson about his plans to help move the district and community forward after the shooting death of Michael Brown, whose death sparked national protests against police shootings.

Joseph Davis, superintendent of the Ferguson-Florissant School District, visits a classroom in the district in 2015, shortly after assuming duties in the district.

--Sid Hastings for Education Week-File
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Support from the principal is important for retention of all teachersbut for minority teachers working in schools where few other teachers look like them, it appears to be critical.

Thats the upshot of a new study from economics professors Steven Bednar and Dora Gicheva, which was recently published in the journal Education Finance and Policy .

Were interested in this because there are theories from sociology that say that workers are happier when theyre part of a group of other workers that are similar to them, said Bednar, an assistant professor of economics at Elon University. The study showed that administrators can help bridge this gap of being part of a different group of teachers.

The researchers looked at data from four cycles of the federal Schools and Staffing Survey. (The most recent results from the redesign of that survey , not included in this study, were released earlier this week.) Bednar and Gicheva, an assistant professor in the department of economics at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, focused on whether teachers stayed at their schools or left. They divided teachers into two groups: those in high-minority schools, where 15 percent or more teachers were minorities, and those in low-minority schools, where 10 percent or fewer teachers were minorities.

In the survey, teachers were asked to rate how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the following statements regarding administrative support:



The school administrations behavior toward the staff is supportive and encouraging.

My principal enforces school rules for student conduct and backs me up when I need it.

The principal knows what kind of school he or she wants and has communicated it to the staff.

In this school, staff members are recognized for a job well done.

Administrative support is associated with lower mobility for all groups, the report says, but matters the most for minority teachers at schools with relatively few other non-white teachers.

The link was more pronounced for novice teachers in low-minority schools than for experienced ones. Our idea is that when youre a new teacher, thats when youre forming these social networks within a school, Bednar said. If youve been a teacher for 15 years, the administration probably plays a smaller role because youre more established.

And the loss of a minority teacher in a low-minority school can have quite an impact: There tends to be more minority students per minority teacher in these schools, the study shows.

The study has several limitations, Bednar acknowledged. The data are self-reported, so they only capture perceived, rather than actual, administrative support. And the survey didnt ask specifically how administrators provided that support, which would be really helpful for policy, he said.

The study also doesnt say anything about the teachers effectivenessi.e., whether its better for students academically if they stay. However, prior research has shown that there are positive effects on achievement, attendance, and motivation when students have teachers who are demographically similar to themselves.

Overall, though, the results indicate that workplace support is essential in maintaining or growing minority representation in relatively less-diverse organizations, the study says.

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The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follet's are two lenghthy novels about a fictional medieval English town called Kingsbridge. When I read them years ago I became immersed in a world of conflict, betrayal, and scheming. In a way, the novels are like Game of Thrones (at least the TV series; I have not read the books) without magic. I did expect Follet to write a third book about Kingsbridge, but he did. and it's coming on September 12. It's called A Column of Fire. They sent me an advance copy, so as soon as I finish the book I'm currently reading (Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters)

This third book in the bestselling Kingsbridge series introduces readers to a world of spies and secret agents in the sixteenth century, the time of Queen Elizabeth I. Set during one of the most turbulent and revolutionary times in history, this novel is one of Follett's most exciting and ambitious works yet, appealing to both long-time fans of the Kingsbridge series as well as readers new to Follett. A Column of Fire begins in 1558 where the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral look down on a city torn apart by religious conflict. As power in England shifts precariously between Catholics and Protestants, high principles clash bloodily with friendship, loyalty, and love. It's the perfect epic, escapist read for the fall, after Game of Thrones leaves airwaves, transporting the reader to another century with its own heroes and villains. The real enemies then, as now, are not the rival religions. The true battle pitches those who believe in tolerance and compromise against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else.

The publisher gave me this interview with Follett:

Were you excited about returning to Kingsbridge?

You bet. We've watched the place grow from an Anglo-Norman settlement to a thriving

medieval town, and now we see it at the start of the English Renaissance. Kingsbridge is

England in miniature.

Where did the idea for A Column of Fire come from?

I read somewhere that Queen Elizabeth I started the first English secret service. That

intrigued me, and I read several books about spies and secret agents in the 16th century. I felt sure this could be the basis of an exciting novel.

Why did you choose to call the book A Column of Fire?

It's biblical, like The Pillars of the Earth. Spies are sometimes referred to as a Fifth Column. And a lot of people were burned at the stake in the 16th century.

We know that A Column of Fire is about spies and secret agents in the 16th century, what are the other themes surrounding the book?

Most of my recent books are about people struggling for freedom in one form or another:

Welsh coal miners, Russian factory workers, Jews, African Americans. This is about religious

freedom.

How do these themes relate to your own life?

I've always hated people who assume they have authority over me. This made my schooldays

a challenge, obviously. A bully makes me angry. I empathize with fictional characters who

fight against tyranny.

strong>What sort of research did you do for A Column of Fire?

There's nobody left to interview, of course. As usual, most of my information comes from

history books. I also visited houses and castles built in this period. I looked at 16th century

clothing in the London Museum, and I went several times to the National Portrait Gallery to

study the faces of Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, Francis Drake and many others.

Did you visit the locations of the key events in A Column of Fire?

Scotland for Loch Leven, the prison from which Mary Queen of Scots escaped; Belgium for

Antwerp, then the banking centre of the western world; Spain for Seville, the richest city in

Spain; Paris because it was the headquarters of those who conspired to assassinate Queen

Elizabeth.

Plenty of historians have written about this era. Who among them do you particularly

like or respect?

Robert Hutchinson has written well about espionage at this time. Geoffrey Parker is the

authority on the long and bloody war in the Netherlands. Perhaps the most useful book was

Conyers Read's three-volume biography Mr Secretary Walsingham, about the man who was the Elizabethan equivalent of "M" in the James Bond stories.

Are any of your fictional characters based on real people?

Not really. I might give a villain the hair style of someone I dislike, and of course the female

heroes all have something in them of Barbara, my wife; but my fictional characters are never

portraits of real people.

A Column of Fire has a number of real historical characters, including several heads of state. Who did you particularly admire?

Three great 16th century leaders understood the need for religious tolerance, and

interestingly they were all women: our Queen Elizabeth I; Caterina dei Medici, who was

queen of France and then Queen Mother; and Marguerite de Parme, governor of the

Netherlands. In an age of relentless bigotry, each of them tried to persuade people of rival

religions to live in peace. For that they were hated. Their efforts were only partly successful.

Each of them was undermined: Elizabeth by repeated plots to assassinate her, Caterina by the

ruthless Guise family, and Marguerite by her half-brother King Felipe II of Spain. I admire

their idealism, courage and persistence in the face of bloodthirsty opposition.

What are you most proud of in your career?

It was a pretty good achievement to write a novel about the rather unpromising subject of

building a cathedral in the Middle Ages and turning it into an international No.1. We've sold

about twenty-six-million copies of The Pillars of the Earth. That's pretty good for a book a lot

of people thought would be too dull.

How long did it take you to write?

The whole thing took three years and three months. After two years I only had about 200

pages, and I felt this was a crisis. And as a novelist the only thing you can do if you want to

write faster is work more hours. So I started to work Saturdays and then Sundays as well. The

difficulty is simply that you've got to keep on making up more and more stuff about the same

people. If you write 100,000 words of a thriller, then it's finished. But after 100,000 words of

The Pillars of the Earth that's like that much. [He holds open first quarter of the book.] I had

all that to go. [He holds open the final three-quarters.] That was the great difficulty.

Some writers live in dread of their books being turned into films or TV series. Have

you enjoyed the experience?

Seeing good actors giving good performances, bringing to life characters I've invented and

speaking some of the lines I've written is a huge thrill. When it all goes well it's great. When

it goes badly you cringe when you see what's on the screen, but you have to take that risk.

I'm pleased and proud that some of my stories have made good film and TV. It confirms the

strength of the story that it can be transformed from one medium to another. And I'm also

pleased that my stories have been turned into a stage musical, several board games, and a

computer game.

What's next?

I'm working on a new story, but I'm not yet ready to talk about itsorry!
RPG's Harsh Goenka tweets: 'Post demonetisation, old 'sikkas' not working. 'Vishal' change in #Infosys'.

Vishal Sikka on Friday informed Infosys employees in an email about his resignation as CEO and managing director. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: As an action-packed day unfolded at Infosys with the abrupt exit of CEO Vishal Sikka, amused twitteratis exhibited their witty sides with hilarious digs and puns around an otherwise acrimonious corporate drama.

At the same time, corporate bigwigs like Anand Mahindra took to Twitter to lend support to the 'iconic' company. "Crises are like a furnace that forges more durable steel. Infy is iconic & will always have people cheering for it. I certainly will..," he said.

Harsh Goenka, Chairman of RPG Enterprises, had a funny take on the exit when he tweeted, "Post demonetisation, old 'sikkas' not working. 'Vishal' change in #Infosys. Old guard wins".

On a more serious note, he said, "We live in times when wisdom is often lost amidst hubris. Time to question role of founding members when they've passed the baton #Infosys."

That said, there were umpteen jokes and pictures that seemed to capture the lighter side of the entire episode. One twitterati (@secret_saanta) posted a still from an old black and white movie that showed five people pointing a gun, with the caption "Infosys founders whenever Vishal Sikka tried to take independent decisions".

Another one (@sidin) shared a joke on a imaginary conversation between founders NR Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani (also former Aadhaar chairman). The make belief conversation has Murthy saying that a new CEO needs to be found, to which Nilekani replies "no problem, I have everybody's contact details".

Darshan Mehta, who has nearly 17,000 followers, tweeted "Ek Sikka ki Keemat kya aap jano Murthy sahab...ek hi din mein 25 hazar crore uda diya", in an apparent reference to the erosion seen on Friday in the market cap of Infosys, one of India's most valuable companies.
The incident came to light when the local sarpanch Seva Ram spotted trenches dug up near the cow shelter to bury the dead cows.

The BJP leader, however, attributed the mass death of cows to the collapse of a wall in the shelter. (Representational image)

Bhopal: A local BJP leader in Chhattisgarhs Durg district was on Friday arrested following death of at least 200 cows allegedly due to starvation in the cow shelter run by him. Deaths of 30 cows due to starvation have so far been confirmed officially.

According to the police, villagers have reported deaths of at least 200 cows due to hunger and lack of medical treatment in the cow shelter run by the local BJP leader Harish Verma who is also the Jamul Nagar Nigam vice-president in Durg district, a couple of days ago.

He was arrested on Friday evening after being booked under sections of 4 and 6 of Chhattisgarh Agriculture Cattle Preservation Act- 2004 and section 11 of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 and section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) of Indian Penal Code, police said.

The incident came to light when the local sarpanch Seva Ram spotted trenches dug up near the cow shelter to bury the dead cows. Prima facie it appears the cows died due to lack of fodder. Post mortem of 27 dead cows have been done in the last two days, veterinary officials said on Friday. The BJP leader, however, attributed the mass death of cows to the collapse of a wall in the shelter.

The police was also investigating into the reports that the skin and bones of the dead cows were sold to the traders dealing with them, sources disclosed to this newspaper. The cow shelter has been run by the BJP leader for the last seven years. CM Raman Singh ordered a probe.
Singh was addressing a programme in Lucknow titled 'Sankalp se Siddhi - New India Movement (2017-2022) Naye Bharat kaa nirmaan'.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh assured countrymen that adoption of the 'new India' policy will help the government solve issues like terrorism, naxalism and Northeast insurgency by 2022. (Photo: PTI)

Lucknow: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday asserted that by 2022, a solution would be found to the Kashmir problem as also other problems like terrorism, naxalism and Northeast insurgency.

"There are a lot of problems -- terrorism, naxalism, Kashmir problem. Much is not needed to be said about these problems. But I can assure you this much that by 2022, we have pledged to create a 'new India'...So a solution will be found to all these problems before 2022. We want to assure the countrymen on this," he said.

Singh was addressing a programme in Lucknow titled 'Sankalp se Siddhi - New India Movement (2017-2022) Naye Bharat kaa nirmaan'.

On the occasion, he administered oath to the gathering for making India 'Swachh' (clean), poverty-free, corruption-free, terror-free, communalism-free and casteism-free.

"If people could take (Quit India) pledge in 1942 and get freedom in 1947, then why is it so that after 70 years of Independence, India is not that self-reliant which it should had been? I would congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking a pledge to create a 'new India' before the country celebrates its 75th year of freedom," he said.

He said Mahatma Gandhi understood the importance of cleanliness and had made it a campaign but it is Modi who gave it the shape of a mass movement.

Read: Muslims realise terror a bid to defame Islam, says Rajnath Singh

"For 85 long years after the first war of Independence in 1857, India understood the country's power and kept on gathering it. In 1942, the entire nation stood united when Mahatma Gandhi and said 'British should Quit India' and gave the clarion call of 'do or die'. ... It was the result of this pledge which bore fruits five years later," Singh said.

He said if in five years after launch of Quit India movement, India could achieve Independence, "then why can't we make a 'new India' after taking pledge in 2017 and realising it in 2022?"

He said Pandavas also had achieved victory in Mahabharata because of their pledge and resolution.

"This (new India) will be an India where there will be no poverty or illiteracy, every person will have a house, no one will die of shortage of medicine. On the global stage, India will emerge as a powerful nation. Talking about corruption, the Home Minister said, "In the first meeting of the Union Cabinet, we took a pledge to fight corruption. Our pledge was to change power and system."

Referring to GST which was rolled out on July 1, he said, "Many of our friends are having problems but after a few months, all will praise GST. We passed GST with the pledge of 'one-nation, one-tax."

Singh also said, BJP does not indulge in politics of government formation but does so for nation building and development."
The 3-yr-old died in his mother's lap while he was being taken home on foot after being treated at Jharkhand's Sadar hospital.

The shocking incident took place on Friday. (Photo: ANI)

Gumla (Jharkhand): A three-year-old toddler died in his mother's lap while he was being taken home on foot after being treated at the Sadar hospital in Jharkhand's Gumla district.

The shocking incident took place on Friday.

The hospital authorities allegedly refused to provide Sarita Oraon, a widow, with an ambulance to return to her home which was 40 km from the hospital.
Voicing similar views, another grand old party leader Shobha Oza stated that UP CM is making such assertions just to hide his wrongdoings.

New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday lashed out at Yogi Adityanath over his statement that Gorakhpur should not be allowed to be made a 'picnic spot', citing that the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister should be careful with his words.

Congress leader Girija Vyas said, "Such language or statement should not be used for Rahul Gandhi. His visit is a genuine one and comes out of concern. Nothing can be more unfortunate than this ruthless statement over the Congress. Our party has always been sensitive and will continue to be. Adityanath should be careful with his words or else should take them back."

Resonating similar views, another grand old party leader Shobha Oza stated that Adityanath is making such assertions just to hide his wrongdoings.

"Yogi Adityanath is making such statements just to hide his wrongdoings and cover up on all the dirty politics that the saffron party is into. He was in the hospital for more than 2.5 hours. Should I ask him what was he doing for so long? Also despite staying there, can he give a report on all the developments and improvement that has taken place? So far, the BJP government has not done anything in this matter," he said.

Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who visited Gorakhpur along with party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi said, "In spite of being five-time MP from Gorakhpur, he (Adityanath) did nothing for the hospital."

This statement comes after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, earlier on Saturday, launched a scathing attack on the Opposition, saying that it should not be allowed to make the tragedy-struck place a 'picnic spot'.

"The 'shehzaada' sitting in Lucknow and the 'yuvraj' sitting in Delhi don't know the importance of cleanliness. We must not allow them to make Gorakhpur a picnic spot," Chief Minister Yogi said, while addressing a public rally in Gorakhpur's Andhiyari Bagh locality, ahead of Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's visit to the city.

Adityanath also targeted an attack on the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for ruining institutions in Uttar Pradesh for selfish motives.

Read: Gorakhpur not a picnic spot: Yogi tells Delhi 'yuvraj' Rahul Gandhi

"The governments in last 12-15 years ruined the institutions in UP for selfish motives by institutionalising corruption and also kept people deprived of facilities," he stated.

The Chief Minister launched a 'Swachh Uttar Pradesh, Swasth Uttar Pradesh' campaign and broomed a street in Gorakhpur clean.

He also appealed the public to maintain cleanliness in their locality to fight encephalitis.

"I started the movement against Encephalitis, at least 20 years back. Prevention is better than cure and it starts with sanitation. The common people have to involve themselves in the cleanliness drive. We will start the abhiyan from Gorakhpur itself," he added.

Read: 30 children die of encephalitis in last 48 hours at UP hospital

On Friday, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav demanded a high level Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the death of at least 30 kids who died in 48 hours at Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College's Nehru Hospital in Gorakhpur. Addressing the media in New Delhi, Yadav accused the Yogi Adityanath-led government of being hand-in-gloves with the CBI.

The former chief minister also said that people of Uttar Pradesh have understood the reality of the party and would not be fooled by BJP's false promises.

Meanwhile, the Allahabad High Court has pulled up the Uttar Pradesh Government and has asked to specify the cause of deaths of multitudes of children that took place in Gorakhpur's BRD Medical College.
External affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Vietnams foreign ministry had rejected the report, calling it incorrect.

India and Russia jointly produce the BrahMos missile and the former earlier held discussions with Vietnam for supply of the BrahMos missile. (Photo: AP)

New Delhi: The government on Saturday said that the reports of India selling the lethal anti-ship cruise missiles, BrahMos, to Vietnam were incorrect. External affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Vietnams foreign ministry had rejected the report, calling it incorrect. It is not correct... that is what I am trying to say. The person who was quoted... the ministry (Vietnam) has already rejected, and they are saying that the news item out and running is incorrect, he said.

India and Russia jointly produce the BrahMos missile and the former earlier held discussions with Vietnam for supply of the BrahMos missile. However, while there was no clear denial of the report by Vietnams foreign ministry in the public domain, the country said the comprehensive India-Vietnam strategic partnership was growing in many fields, including economics, trade, investment, culture, education, security and defence.

The bilateral security and defence ties have been making practical contribution to peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and the world, at large, the Vietnamese spokesperson said, adding that Vietnam pursued a national defence policy of peace and of self-defence.

The spokesperson also added that procurement of defence equipment by Vietnam is consistent with the policy of peace and self-defence and is the normal practice in the national defence. We will forward your question to the relevant agency.

There was no comment available from the defence ministry on the issue. In February, minister of state for defence Subhash Bhamre, while replying to a question in Lok Sabha on whether the government had any plans to sell Akash and BrahMos missile to Vietnam, had said: India and Vietnam share a strategic partnership. Defence cooperation, including supply of defence equipment, is an important aspect of this partnershipBoth countries have held discussions on range of issues in this regard, he had said in a written reply.

Vietnam, which is involved in a territorial dispute with China, is keen to get it hands on the supersonic missiles that can be fired on land, water and under water.
In July, Nitish Kumar had stepped down as Bihar Chief Minister and snapped the Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress.

Security has been beefed up outside Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's residence where JD(U) National Executive meet is underway after demonstration by Sharad Yadav and RJD supporters. (Photo: PTI)

Patna: Nitish Kumar led Janata Dal (United) passed a resolution to join National Democratic Alliance in the party's National Executive meeting on Saturday.

Meanwhile, security has been beefed up outside Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's residence where JD(U) National Executive meet is underway after demonstration by Sharad Yadav and RJD supporters.

In July, Nitish Kumar had stepped down as Bihar Chief Minister and snapped the Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress. The next day, Nitish took oath as the chief minister with NDA led BJP's support.

Nitish ended his two-year-old grand alliance with the RJD and Congress, citing a call of conscience over corruption charges slapped against his former deputy and Lalu Prasad Yadavs son Tejaswi Yadav.

Read: War of posters: JD(U) factions claim publicity before Sharad, Nitish's meets

Lalu, his wife Rabri Devi and Tejaswi are central to a CBI inquiry into the land-for-hotels deal when Lalu was the Union railways minister.

Nitish had nearly a decade long alliance with the NDA before he split in 2013 as soon as Narendra Modi was announced as the face of the BJP campaign for the 2014 general elections.

After the JD(U) was reduced to two seats in the 2014 general polls, Nitish teamed up with Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Congress and the alliance made the NDA taste its first big defeat in the 2015 state polls.

Nitish has since campaigned in Uttar Pradesh calling for a Sangh Mukt Bharat and a Sharab Mukht Samaj. After the Grand Alliance had formed, he had called out the BJP for playing the politics of dividing be it in the name of caste or religion.
The BJP president reminded the activists that the party has become a political force to reckon with due to hard work of its leaders.

Bhopal: BJP president Amit Shah has said his party has not come to power for mere 5 or 10 years, but at least 50 years and called upon workers to strengthen the party and take it to every part of the country.

Shah also said that though the BJP appears to be at its peak with a majority government at the Centre and 1,387 MLAs in states, the workers feel the party has still a long way to go.

"Today, we have a majority government at the Centre with 330 MPs, and also have 1,387 MLAs in different states. The party appears to be at its peak, but dedicated workers feel we have a long way ahead," a BJP release on Saturday quoted Shah as saying at a meeting with partymen.

"We have not come to power for 5-10 years, but at least 50 years. We should move forward with a conviction that in 40-50 years we have to bring major changes in the country through the medium of power," Shah said.

He was addressing the Madhya Pradesh BJP's core group members, office-bearers, MPs, MLAs and district chiefs, among others, at the party headquarters here on Friday.

Shah arrived on Friday on a three-day visit to Madhya Pradesh for meetings with the BJP workers and office-bearers besides participating in various programmes as part of his 110-day nationwide tour.

The BJP president reminded the activists that the party has become a political force to reckon with due to hard work, dedication and sacrifice of its leaders over the years.

"Today the BJP has become a party of 10-12 crore members because of many stalwarts who have dedicated their lives in building and strengthening the organisation," said

Shah, according to the release.

"We have to ensure no place in the country is left where we don't have our flag. For this, we have to strengthen the organisation further," Shah said.

"Character is the basis of our foundation," he said, and called upon the BJP workers to ensure the party is present in every (polling) booth, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kamrup to Kutch.
New book reveals Victorian bedroom trend called karezza could be key to better sex and intimacy.

Practice encourages both men and women to abstain from orgasm during sex in order to allow partners to enjoy longer and for more intense periods of sexual energy (Photo: Pixabay)

While relationship experts are always claiming new ways to make sex for exciting for couples, there are a few who claim that when it comes to passion, perhaps the Victorians had it right.

Mike Lousada and Louise Mazanti, in a new book have revealed that a bedroom trend called karezza, from the 19th century could be the key to better sex and intimacy.

The practice encourages both men and women to abstain from orgasm during sex in order to allow partners to enjoy longer and for more intense periods of sexual energy.

Coined by Dr Alice Bunker Stockholm in 1896 she was the fifth woman to become a doctor in the United States.

Rather than focusing on physical desires karezza, derived from the Italian carezza which means caress, encourages couples to focus on intimacy involving eye gazing and light touching.

The practice was highly controversial during the Victorian era.

Now Lousada and Manzatu, authors of real Sex, claim that by implementing the practice of karezza in their own sex lives, modern-day couples can learn to appreciate 'subtle sensations' that often go unnoticed

Speaking to Metro, they said that the point of the exercise was to move away from friction-based sex and to create and awareness of more subtle but equally pleasurable sensations.

Karezza is often considered to be a natural alternative to Viagra and possibly a cure for sexual dysfunction, or lack of desire, in women.
The party students held a protest at Kalina campus on Friday over the delay.

Mumbai: Terming education minister Vinod Tawdes stand over the delay in declaration of final year results of Mumbai University (MU) as mental harassment, Yuva Sena chief Aaditya Thackeray on Friday demanded his resignation. He also accused the company that was given the contract of online paper assessment of corruption and suggested the appointment of an IAS/IPS officer in place of the Vice-Chancellor (VC) of MU.

Criticising Mr Tawde and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis over results mess, he also said they got time after election campaigns to meet the Governor on Friday. It has been three months, and the results are yet to be declared. Who is director of the online company that has been awarded the contract for the online paper assessment? Looking at the situation of the university, the results will be declared only in September, he added.

Reacting to the Tawdes statement that he saved students academic year, Mr Thackeray said, a mental harassment case should be filed against the minister. How can the minister speak something irresponsibly like that he has saved students academic year. Mr Thackeray even pointed out to the promise made by the government to declare results on July 31 and missing the deadline of August 5 too. Many students from the middle class background are preparing to go abroad for higher education. They have booked their tickets, received visas but have not got their results. They are in such a mess, he added.

Suggesting that the VCs resignation alone cannot solve the problem, he asked the government to appoint IAS/IPS officer for the post of VC. I have also demanded a judicial probe into the entire chaos. The students are suffering badly in this. The earlier government was better than this, he said. The Yuva Sena chief is also going to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The party students held a protest at Kalina campus on Friday over the delay.
The SSS has expelled Sadabhau Khot from the party and now want him expelled from state cabinet as well.

Mumbai: After expelling MoS (agriculture) Sadabhau Khot, who was its lone representative in the state cabinet, from the party, the Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana (SSS) has issued an ultimatum to the BJP on removing him from the council of ministers. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is not willing to remove Mr Khot from the council of ministers and has instead offered the SSS another ministry.

The SSS chief and Member of Parliament Raju Shetti wrote to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, saying: Mr Khot has nothing to do with our party now. He must be expelled from the council of ministers. The tussle between Mr Shetti and Mr Khot is believed to have resulted in the latters expulsion from the party.

Senior minister Chandrakant Patil rejected Mr Shettis demand on Friday, saying: Mr Khot is a minister from the CMs quota. He is doing good work so there is no need to change him now, said Mr Patil in Kolhapur. Mr Patil further said that if Mr Shetti wants BJP can give his party one more ministerial berth. Mr Shetti needs to ask for that. We are ready. He is our alliance partner.

Even Mr Khot called Mr Shettis demand unreasonable. I have become MLC and minister from BJP quota. So there is no logic in demanding my removal from the cabinet as I am not member of Mr Shettis party, he said. He also challenged Mr Shetti to contest Lok Sabha election outside his constituency. He will get to know his popularity if he leaves Hatkanangale, said Mr Khot.

The SSS has been a strong organisation in western Maharashtra and had challenged the Nationalist Congress Partys hegemony in the region. But after joining hands with the BJP, fractions in the party came to the fore. Mr Khot, an ambitious leader, who is now trying to project himself as farmers leader in the region and the BJP too is trying to encash on his popularity. Observers believe this new fraction in the strong farmers outfit, would make regions politics more multicornered.
Cong MLA Nitesh Rane tweeted an image of his father with Narayan Rane is our party.

Mumbai: Congress MLA Nitesh Ranes tweet Narayan Rane is our party along with Narayan Rane's photo has fuelled speculation that he is also all set to join the BJP along with his father. The reports about Narayan Rane joining BJP were at its peak in the last few days. However, there is no official confirmation from Rane's camp and BJP about the development.

Nitesh is a MLA from Konkan region while his brother Nilesh lost Lok Sabha 2014 from the same region. Senior Rane also lost Assembly polls 2014 from Konkan. He also contested an Assembly by-election from Bandra, which he lost again. Now, he is a member of the legislative council from the party.

The sources in the BJP said that Narayan Rane is keen to join BJP and preliminary talks were held with party president Amit Shah. However, the Congress leader has certain demands while joining the BJP, which have not yet been agreed to, the sources added.

A close aide to Narayan Rane said that the BJP is not giving any reaction on the demands made by him. They should first clarify their stand. The Congress leader cannot join the party like an ordinary worker, the aide said. Senior Congress leader and former minister Narayan Rane met his key supporters in Sindhudurg on Thursday and allegedly told them to be ready to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) soon, the sources in Congress said.

The Congress, which is already in doldrums, will lose a powerful leader from the state, particularly Konkan. Mr Narayan Rane left the Shiv Sena to join the Congress in 2005. His inclusion in the Congress helped the party strengthen its position in Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg districts of Konkan.
Even in a state like Bihar where it lost the election, it has managed to form the govt demonstrating the clever art of politics.

When the BJP won the 2014 Lok Sabha elections by getting absolute majority of its own, the question of the possibility of a united Opposition, or a formidable Opposition party against the BJP in 2019 was hardly being discussed. The reason was obvious as many analysts believed that the Congress may have performed badly in 2014, but it would soon be on the revival path. However, this question has become extremely relevant today in the light of political events that have unfolded in the last three years.

First the ability to win Assembly elections has been firmly demonstrated by the BJP in various states. During last three years, the BJP has managed to defeat the Congress convincingly, even in the states where the Congress had been in power for many years namely Haryana, Assam and Maharashtra. The BJP has expanded beyond the Hindi heartland, managed to form government in the north-eastern states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur and Jammu & Kashmir in the North. It also continued its winning spree in the Hindi heartland by defeating the Samajwadi Party-Congress combine in Uttar Pradesh. Even in a state like Bihar where it lost the election, it has managed to form the government demonstrating the clever art of politics. Leaders like Nitish Kumar, who was projected as the face of the joint Opposition against Prime Minister Narendra Modi has joined the NDA. Equally noteworthy is the declaration of National Conference leader Omar Abdullah that the Opposition should start preparing for the 2024 Lok Sabha election as no party can defeat the BJP in 2019.

The 2014 General election results were insufficient to answer the question of whether there will be a formidable Opposition to the BJP in 2019, but political developments post-2014 provides a clear answer to that question.

Going by the current political mood, there is hardly any possibility of a challenge for the BJP in 2019 and results of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections are almost a foregone conclusion. At least, as of now, there is no indication of political climate of the country taking a complete U-turn in the next two of years before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

There is hardly any sign that the BJPs support base  which it managed to develop during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections  has weakened. On the contrary, it has only expanded. The expansion of the BJP is far and wide. Before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP was the ruling party only in five states, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Goa and Gujarat while a coalition partner with Akali Dal in Punjab. At the moment, the BJP has managed to form the government on its own in 13 states. Besides the states where it was in power before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, it has managed to add the list the states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur. Though the BJP in alliance with Akali Dal lost elections in Punjab, it managed to form the government in Bihar with the JD(U), in Andhra Pradesh with the TDP and in Jammu and Kashmir with the PDP.

The BJPs electoral base has expanded significantly since 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, of the total 4,120 Assembly seats, the BJP had won 887 seats and polled 18.2 per cent votes. At the moment, the BJP has in its bag 1,346 Assembly seats and its vote share has expanded to 25.3 per cent  a significant increase during the last three years.

It is also important to note that the BJP not only managed to increase its support base in the Hindi heartland but was able to establish new territories, mainly in the Northeast. The vote share of BJP has increased from 8.1 per cent in the north-eastern states in 2014 to about 23.7 per cent at present. In UP, the partys vote share increased from 27.4 per cent to 38.2 per cent while in the West its vote share increased from 26.8 per cent to 34.6 per cent. All these clearly indicates a significant presence of the BJP in the current national politics.

Another major factor is the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that has remained intact. Studies conducted by the CSDS during last few years clearly indicate a sizeable proportion of Indians wanting him to see as countrys Prime Minister even after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. There may have been some hope after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that Rahul Gandhi may be able to emerge as the alternative to Mr Modi in due course of time, but within three years the hope seems to have turned into a distant dream for the Congress.

Sensing that Mr Gandhi may not be the best match for Mr Modis popularity, there has been a search for a face amongst other Opposition parties. In this Mr Kumars name was on top of the lis, but after the recent political turnaround in Bihar even that possibility has disappeared.

At times, name of Jayalalithaa was floated as a face of the Opposition but after her death the AIADMK itself is in trouble. Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik is getting old and would be lucky to save his own state in the next Assembly elections due in 2019.

The firebrand West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee may be popular in her own stat, but it is difficult to imagine that the Left may be willing to accept her as a face of the joint Opposition.

And will the Congress be willing to accept her as the leader of the Opposition? The NCP leader Sharad Pawar, whos name as prospective PM candidate floats now and then is too old to lead the battle against Mr Modi.

The RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav is debarred from contesting elections and does not have a clean image. Thus, the list ends with no ideal Opposition leader worthy of tackling the Modi juggernaut. The answer is clear, there is hardly any contest to the BJP and to Narendra Modi in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The satellite will "support critical space communication into the mid-2020s," NASA said in a statement.

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, with NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-M aboard, in a NASA handout photo obtained on August 18, 2017. (Photo: AFP)

NASA on Friday launched the latest in a series of satellites aimed at ensuring astronauts at the International Space Station can communicate with Earth.

The $408 million Boeing-made Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-M) soared into space atop an Atlas V rocket that launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 8:29 am (1229 GMT).

The satellite will "support critical space communication into the mid-2020s," NASA said

NASA on Friday launched the latest in a series of satellites aimed at ensuring astronauts at the International Space Station can communicate with Earth.

The $408 million Boeing-made Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-M) soared into space atop an Atlas V rocket that launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 8:29 am (1229 GMT).

The satellite will "support critical space communication into the mid-2020s," NASA said in a statement.

The satellite will facilitate space-to-ground communication for NASA's low-Earth orbit operations, "ensuring scientists, engineers and control room staff can readily access data for missions like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station."

TDRS-M is the last of 13 such satellites that have been launched since 1983.

An antenna on the satellite was damaged last month at a processing facility in Titusville, Florida. The satellite was repaired, but the mishap set the launch back by about two weeks.

The satellite will facilitate space-to-ground communication for NASA's low-Earth orbit operations, "ensuring scientists, engineers and control room staff can readily access data for missions like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station."

TDRS-M is the last of 13 such satellites that have been launched since 1983.

An antenna on the satellite was damaged last month at a processing facility in Titusville, Florida. The satellite was repaired, but the mishap set the launch back by about two weeks.
Noting that art is about inclusion and the humanities include a vibrant free press, the members alleged that Trump had attacked both.

People fly into the air as a vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. (Photo: AP)

Washington: The members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), an advisory committee to the White House on cultural issues, have resigned citing the controversial comments made by US President Donald Trump about the racist violence in Virginia.

In a letter dated yesterday, and signed by 16 of 17 committee members including two Indian-Americans Jhumpa Lahiri and Kal Penn, Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change has also been cited as a reason for their resignation.

"Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too," said members of the presidential advisory committee who resigned on Friday.

Trump had commented about last weekend's "Unite the Right" gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has blamed "many sides" for the demonstrations that left an anti-racism activist dead.

All the members who resigned were appointed by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama.

The White House in a statement said Trump had already decided not to renew the executive order for the PCAH, which expires later this year.

"While the committee has done good work in the past, in its current form it simply is not a responsible way to spend American tax dollars. The PCAH merely redirects funding from the federal cultural agencies that answer directly to the President, Congress and taxpayers. These cultural agencies do tremendous work and they will continue to engage in these important projects," it said.

In its letter, members of the presidential committee said reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following Trump's "support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville."

"The false equivalencies you push cannot stand," said the letter released to the press.

"Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background, or identity is un-American. We have fought slavery, segregation, and internment. We must learn from our rich and often painful history," the members said in the letter.

Noting that art is about inclusion and the humanities include a vibrant free press, the members alleged that Trump had attacked both.

"You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding. The administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Act, and attacked our brave trans service members. You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country," they said.

Underscoring the importance of open and free dialogue, the members said the actions and words of the president are pushing further away from the freedoms they are entitled to.

"This does not unify the nation we all love. We know the importance of open and free dialogue through our work in the cultural diplomacy realm, most recently with the first-ever US Government arts and culture delegation to Cuba, a country without the same First Amendment protections we enjoy here. Your words and actions push us all further away from the freedoms we are guaranteed.

"Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions. We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic," the members wrote in the letter.

Earlier this week, two business advisory councils were disbanded as members left in protest.

Among others who resigned were Paula Boggs, Chuck Close, Richard Cohen, Fred Goldring, Howard L Gottlieb, Vicki Kennedy, Anne Luzzatto, Thom Mayne, Eric Ortner, Ken Solomon, Caroline Taylor, Jill Cooper Udall, Andrew Weinstein, George Wolfe and John Lloyd Young.
The August 21 to 31 exercises involve computer simulations designed to prepare for the unthinkable: war with nuclear-capable N Korea.

The wargames, details of which are a closely guarded secret, simulate military conflict with the isolated country. (Photo: AFP)

Seoul: In air conditioned bunkers and at military bases across South Korea, it is with keyboards - not tanks - that South Korean and the US forces will launch military exercises on Monday, denounced by North Korea as a rehearsal for war.

The August 21 to August 31 exercises involve computer simulations designed to prepare for the unthinkable: war with nuclear-capable North Korea.

The wargames, details of which are a closely guarded secret, simulate military conflict with the isolated country. The US describes them as defensive in nature, a term North Korean state media has dismissed as a deceptive mask.

The drills deal with all the steps involved in a war, of course, towards victory, said Moon Seong-mook, a retired South Korean brigadier who regularly participated in the drills until the mid-2000s.

Far from the dusty firing ranges just south of the heavily fortified border with North Korea, US and South Korean troops hunch over laptops and screens wearing earphones and camouflaged combat uniforms, according to photos of past UFG drills on the United States Forces Korea website.

The US military describes the software behind the drills as state-of-the-art wargaming computer simulations. There will be no field training during the exercise, according to US Forces Korea.

As part of the exercises, imagery from military satellites orbiting above the Korean peninsula, is at times used to peer deep into North Korea, said a former South Korean government official who declined to be identified.

Banks of monitors and computer graphics create simulated battlefields, complete with troop movements, according to Park Yong-han, a military expert formerly with the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analysis.

You can expand a certain area to see what troops are in what sort of status and where they will move, said Park.

In the case of North Korea, we cant see everything in real time but the military deduces the locations of North Korean troops, including the leadership during the exercise.

That focus on the North Korean leadership is what particularly infuriates Pyongyang, experts say.

We cannot stand the fact the enemy tries to form schemes to assassinate our leadership, North Koreas state news agency, KCNA, said in July.

We will follow to the ends of the earth those who dare try to harm our core.

Commando raid

North Koreas rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching the US mainland has fuelled a surge in tension.

US President Donald Trump warned that North Korea would face fire and fury if it threatened the United States. The North responded by threatening to fire missiles towards the US Pacific island territory of Guam.

The North later said it was holding off firing towards Guam, while it waited to see what the United States would do next.

Called Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), the joint drills have their roots in a 1968 raid on South Koreas Blue House presidential complex, when Unit 124 of the North Korean army secretly entered South Korea and unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate the then president, Park Chung-hee.

The United States had been conducting regular command and control drills in the years following the 1950-53 Korean War, but combined exercises with the South Korean military following the failed raid, in which all but two of the North Korean commandos were killed.

The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea. Many of them will be joining thousands of South Korean forces in the exercise.

Other South Korean allies are also joining this year with troops from Australia, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand taking part.

Its to prepare if something big were to occur and we needed to protect ROK, a U.S. military spokeswoman, Michelle Thomas, said, referring to South Korea by the initials of its official name, the Republic of Korea.

North and South Korea are still technically at war with the North after the Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

China, North Koreas main ally and trading partner, has urged the United States and South Korea to scrap the drills and so has Russia. The United States has not backed down.

My advice to our leadership is that we not dial back our exercises, said Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff on Thursday in Beijing.

The exercises are very important to maintaining the ability of the alliance to defend itself.
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The plea says that Kulsoom Nawaz concealed facts in her nomination papers.

Islamabad: Pakistan Awami Tehrik (PAT) on Friday filed a plea in the election tribunal challenging the Election Commission of Pakistans approval of Kulsoom Nawazs nomination papers.

The wife of former premier Nawaz Sharif is preparing to contest NA-120 byelection after her husband was disqualified by Supreme Court.

The plea says that Kulsoom Nawaz concealed facts in her nomination papers. However, they were approved by the returning officer (RO) while ignoring those details.
The apex court is likely to take up Sharif's review petition early next month after judges return from vacation.

Lahore: Ousted Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his two sons on Friday failed to appear before the top anti-graft body, which wanted to interrogate them over money laundering and corruption charges revealed by the Panama Papers.

On July 28, a five-member Supreme Court bench disqualified Sharif from continuing in his office for possessing a work permit at the firm of his son in the UAE.

The court also ordered the NAB to investigate money laundering and other corruption charges against Sharif, his children, son-in-law Safdar and federal finance minister Ishaq Dar, a relative of Sharif, in light of the report of the Joint Investigation Team.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) following a Supreme Court order had issued summons to Sharif and his sons  Hussain and Hasan  to interrogate them at its Lahore office over their offshore properties revealed last year by the Panama Papers leak.

A 10-member NAB team had reached Lahore from Rawalpindi to record the statements of the Sharifs, but they did not turn up before the office closed at 3 pm local time, a NAB official said.

Sharif and his sons were supposed to join the investigation today here in Lahore office, but we are informed by the office of Sharif that he is not coming. No reason was given, the official said. He said the NAB would issue second summons to them in two weeks. A leader close to the Sharif family denied receiving any summons. Sharif and his sons had not yet received the NAB summons. Sharif will only decide whether or not to appear before the NAB after receiving the summons, Senator Pervaiz Rashid said.

However, another PML-N party leader said Sharif has decided not to join the investigation. He said Sharif will join the probe only after the SC decides his review petition against the courts verdict that disqualified him.

One of the three applications Sharif filed in the Supreme Court calls for staying further implementation of the judgement till a decision on the review petition is taken.

The apex court is likely to take up Sharif's review petition early next month after judges return from vacation.

Sharif has expressed serious concerns on the NAB investigation, saying it was unprecedented for a SC judge to supervise NAB proceedings against him and his family members to get a desired result.
Police have not yet identified who drove the white van that sped into crowds on the busy Las Ramblas avenue in central Barcelona.

An injured person is carried in Barcelona, Spain, after a white van jumped the sidewalk in the historic Las Ramblas district, crashing into a summer crowd of residents and tourists and injuring several people. (Photo: AP)

Barcelona: Spanish police on Saturday released the names of three Moroccans suspected of deadly terror attacks and who were shot dead overnight by security forces in the seaside resort of Cambrils.

Catalonia's regional police identified them as Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24. Police said they were searching for a fourth suspect, Younes Abouyaaqoub, aged 22.

Police Friday stepped up their investigation into the twin vehicle attacks in Spain that left 14 dead and over 100 more injured in a bustling tourist area of Barcelona and the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils.

The attacks claimed victims and wounded from three dozen countries.

Of the 12 people police suspect of involvement in the attacks, five were shot dead by security forces in Cambrils and another four have been arrested, said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police during a television interview late Friday.

The three remaining suspects have been identified but have not been detained, he added.

Police suspect two of them may have died in a blast at a house in Alcanar, about 200 kilometres south of Barcelona, where the group is believed to have been preparing explosive devices.

Officers have found "the remains of two different people, we are working to prove that they are two of these three people who have been identified," said Trapero.

Police have not yet identified who drove the white van that sped into crowds on the busy Las Ramblas avenue in central Barcelona, leaving 13 people there dead, he added.

Earlier on Friday Trapero said the group was preparing "one or several attacks in Barcelona" with explosive devices but after the blast at the house in Alcanar they moved quickly to commit "more rudimentary" attacks.
Details of the investigation are sparse but police said the Barcelona suspect driver may have been among the five killed.

People flee from the scene after a white van jumped the sidewalk in the historic Las Ramblas district of Barcelona. (Photo: AP)

Barcelona: Suspects in Spain's twin terror attacks had been planning an even bigger assault than the deadly car rampages they carried out, police said Friday, as distressing details emerged of families torn apart in the horror.

A 35-year-old Italian man was among 14 killed, mowed down in front of his wife and young children in Barcelona when a driver rammed his van through crowds on the busy Las Ramblas boulevard on Thursday, before fleeing on foot.

Police said they shot dead five "suspected terrorists" who had knocked pedestrians down in the Catalan seaside resort of Cambrils in a second attack in the early hours of Friday, and arrested four others as Spain reeled from the deadly violence.

Details of the investigation are sparse but police said the Barcelona suspect driver may have been among the five killed.

And according to the daily La Vanguardia newspaper in Barcelona, officers were still on the hunt for four other suspects thought to be involved with the cell that devised the terror project claimed by the Islamic State group.

- Bigger plans -

In what has been a complex, fast-moving investigation, police revealed the suspects had been planning something larger.

"They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona, and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope," said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police.

He was referring to a blast in a house in the town of Alcanar, about 200 kilometres (140 miles) south of Barcelona, Wednesday evening, which police said killed one person.

Initially treated as a random gas blast, police later linked it to the Barcelona assault, believing occupants of the house were preparing an explosive device inside and slipped up. It remains unclear what the target was.

Police removed dozens of gas canisters from the house, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Trapero said that after this the suspects quickly went on to commit "more rudimentary" attacks. These involved the vehicles ploughing into pedestrians in Barcelona and Cambrils.

The Cambrils suspects had an axe and knives in the car as well as fake explosive belts stuck to their bodies, said police.

- High 'level of coordination' -

Both Spanish attacks followed the same modus operandi. Drivers deliberately targeted pedestrians with their vehicles, the latest in a series of such assaults in Europe.

The Mediterranean resort of Nice in France was particularly hard hit on July 14, 2016, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd, killing 86 people.

Otso Iho of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre said the Spanish assaults, which stretched out over two different cities, appeared to be "a much higher level of coordination than has been typically present in previous attacks."

It is also believed to be the first time IS has claimed an attack in Spain.

In a poignant moment Friday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, King Felipe VI and the president of Catalonia -- where both attacks took place -- held a minute of silence in Barcelona. It was followed by the crowd applauding and shouting "not afraid".

But in a sign of the tensions sparked by the attacks, about 20 far-right militants tried to protest at the march. Some held up signs reading "No More Mosques" or "Refugees not welcome anymore".

Scuffles broke out between the far-right militants and the march participants.

- Relatives separated -

Details started to emerge Friday on the identity of victims, as did tragic stories of families ripped apart.

Witnesses in Barcelona described how the van pushed through the crowd, leaving bodies strewn along the boulevard as people fled for their lives, screaming in panic.

"We were on the city tour bus, we were 20 feet from the accident when it happened," said Alex Luque, a 19-year-old student from New York.

"We heard the van and the impact with people and then we saw people running."

Then just eight hours later attackers struck in the early hours of Friday in the seaside resort of Cambrils. An Audi A3 car rammed into pedestrians, injuring six civilians and a police officer. One civilian, a woman, later died of her injuries.

The police shot dead the five attackers. They also said they had arrested four suspects -- three Moroccans and a Spaniard.

There were some three dozen nationalities among the dead and injured, from countries including Algeria, Australia, China, France, Ireland, Peru and Venezuela, according to Spain's civil protection agency.

Families posted messages on Facebook looking for lost relatives including one heartbreaking appeal for a missing seven-year-old boy, Julian Alessandro Cadman.

- Memories of Madrid 2004 -

Spain, the world's third most popular tourism destination, had until now been spared in the recent wave of extremist attacks that have rocked nearby France, Belgium and Germany.

It had even seen a surge in tourists as visitors fled other restive sunshine destinations such as Tunisia and Egypt. But it is no stranger to jihadist attacks.

In March 2004, it was hit by what is still Europe's deadliest, when bombs on commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people in an attack claimed by Al Qaeda-inspired extremists.

Spain has also had to deal with a decades-long campaign of violence waged by Basque separatist group ETA, which only declared a ceasefire in 2011.
'Those people crossing the border right now are under the responsibility of the Saudi authorities for their security,' official said.

Qatar said it had received the demands on June 22 with just 10 days to meet them, which would mean they would have until Sunday to comply. (Photo: AFP)

Doha: Qatar expressed concern about the safety of its citizens in Saudi Arabia following the reopening of the countries border enabling Qataris to attend the annual Haj pilgrimage in Mecca.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said during a visit to Norway that Saudi authorities had yet to respond to queries from the Qatari Ministry of Islamic Affairs regarding the security of Qatari citizens during Haj.

The level of tension between the two nations, the language and the tone of the Saudi media spreading hatred against Qatari people represents a great concern for us, he told a news conference.

Those people crossing the border right now are under the responsibility of the Saudi authorities for their security and safety, he said, adding that more than 100 citizens had crossed since the border was reopened.
The Undersecretary for Internal Affairs has asked States to identify and expel refugees. Thousands of people have fled from Myanmar to avoid persecutions, rapes, summary executions. "India knows what they should do. It would be shameful to abandon them to their destiny. "

New Delhi (AsiaNews) - Human rights activists are appealing to the government of India to respect international law and not deport the approximately 40,000 Rohingya Muslims present in their territory. The alarm was launched this week by some humanitarian organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who expressed concern over recent statements by Kiren Rijiju, Undersecretary for Internal Affairs. Speaking to Parliament, he said the government has asked the state authorities to identify and expel Rohingya, the ethnic minority of Bangladesh but mainly resident in Myanmar. If this is the case, complain activists, they will be exposed to serious forms of discrimination and violence.

In recent years, thousands of Rohingya have crossed the frontier seeking shelter in India. For the most part, the community lives in Myanmar, but the authorities do not recognize their citizenship. Its members - about a million exponents - live in refugee camps scattered across parts of the Burmese country, where they have been victims of violence for months. The Rohingya population speaks of summary executions, arbitrary arrests, rapes, homes torched in the context of a government campaign renamed the "clearing operation".

Meenakshi Ganguly, director of South Asia's Human Rights Watch, said: "The Indian authorities must abide by international obligations and not repatriate the Rohingya to Myanmar in a forced manner. They must first assess their claim to be considered as refugees in an honest way. "

Even though there are no exact figures, Undersecretary Rijiju said that the number of Muslim migrants has increased in recent years and has talked about some 40,000 people living illegally in the territory of the Union. The largest wave occurred after the military campaign launched in October 2016 as a reaction to an armed attack on rebels against the soldiers.

Raghu Menon, representative of Amnesty International India, said: "Labelling Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers as illegal migrants does not take into account the reasons why they have been forced to flee their homes and the serious risks they would incur if they were expelled in a way forced". "The Indian authorities - he concluded - are well aware of the violations of human rights that Rohingya would face in Myanmar. It would be shameful to abandon them to their destiny. "
by Vladimir Rozanskij

The theme is a meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, not in Moscow, but in some holy place of the Christian East, or in Bari. An international conference on the future of Ukraine and Crimea. Commitment to Christians and Peace in the Middle East.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - From August 21st to August 24th, Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin will be in Moscow with an intense program that was announced yesterday. This is the third visit of a Pope's "prime minister" after that of Card. Casaroli in 1990 and Card. Sodano in 1999. In fact, many senior Vatican officials have travelled to Russia in the past for the extraordinary consideration that Rome has always had for the largest orthodox country in eastern Europe.

The "state" visits of the cardinals resume after a long pause, due to the many misunderstandings between the Catholic Church and Russia at the beginning of the millennium. In fact, diplomatic relations, which were restored in 1990, after almost a century, were never interrupted, despite cold fronts and distrust, and were remarkably revived after the historic meeting in Cuba between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill in February 2016.

In 1990 Casaroli inaugurated the Vatican nunciature, then in a service apartment, and today housed in the former residence of the Turkish ambassador. The great protagonist of Vatican Ostpolitik set up one of his closest collaborators in Moscow, Cardinal Francesco Colasuonno, already nuncio to Poland and all the countries of the east, and finally a nuncio in Italy.

Colasuonno remained in the Russian capital from 1990 to 1994, in a short time restoring the structures of the Catholic Church in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. His successor, nuncio John Bukowski, in turn belonging to the historic "Casaroli Special Team", doubled the number Russian bishops 'seats, bringing them to four (Moscow, Saratov, Novosibirsk and Irkutsk) and joining them to the present-held Catholic bishopric held by the German bishop of Saratov, Msgr. Klemens Pickel. At the end of Bukowski's mandate in 1999, Cardinal Sodano was able to admire the reconstruction of Catholic structures, re-opening the majestic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in the center of Moscow, where the Curia is currently headed by Archbishop Paolo Pezzi. It was the seal of the spiralling "religious rebirth" of the 1990s, of which the cathedral was one of the most striking symbols: it had been transformed into a factory and offices, with a center for the School of Atheism, and was reconquered with patient determination by the Catholics, mostly Polish. In 1995, led by the Italian prelate, Msgr. Bernardo Antonini, the seminarians together with the faithful managed to break through the barriers and recover the whole building, after years of praying at the entrance, even at the 20 subzero. Where the militant atheism was taught, for a period of time, theology lessons were held for lay people.

Sodano's visit marked the greatest distance between Catholics and Orthodox, which saw in the early successes as a form of invasive "proselytism." Already since 1997 the parliament had approved a new law on religious freedom, which set limits on all confessions, exalting the Orthodox "State Church". Yeltsin, now in full decline, had not had the power to oppose, and ran aground of Putin's new nationalist and confessional politics, who became prime minister in 1999, and year after president. In that context, Sodan's visit, on the one hand, took place in an euphoric climate of Catholic pride, on the other hand in a rather embarrassed atmosphere, for Orthodox distrust. In those years, on the Vatican's side, every effort was made to organize the visit of Pope John Paul II to Russia, initially Yeltsyn enthusiastically gave his assent, but the opposition of the Patriarchate made every effort.

Shortly thereafter, in January 2000, a new apostolic nuncio was appointed, Msgr. Giorgio Zur, president of the Vatican Diplomatic Academy. His decision in 2002 to elevate Catholic apostolic administrations to the rank of diocese was the classic last drop: the Orthodox Church found it to be a serious confrontation, and a shining example of the Vatican's proselytical intentions in Russia. From that point on relations were frozen. When in 2004 Cardinal Kasper returned to the Patriarch the icon of the Virgin of Kazan, which the pope wanted to deliver personally, he felt that it was a kind of returning the rings from ex-fiancees

The new nuncio Antonio Mennini, in office from 2002 to 2010, had to restore Ostpolitik's more prudent line, surrendering to Russians on every Catholic project in the country. In this way, the situation was slowly restored, especially after the election of Patriarch of Moscow in 2009 of Metropolitan Kirill (Gundjaev), a historic friend of Catholics and Jesuits. The meeting in Cuba was the seal of Menninis diplomacy and of the Secretary of State of Card. Bertone, where Parolin long worked as a Substitute. The contribution of the nuncio Msgr. Jurkovic, successor to Mennini, was decisive. He had worked as secretary in the first nunciature in 1990, and after the Cuban triumph was promoted to a representative of the Holy See at the UN in Geneva.

The new nuncio, Msgr. Celestino Migliore, one of the most active protagonists of Vatican diplomacy in the last decade, will accompany Cardinal Parolin on his trip. The re-established climate of mutual trust will help to deal with issues of Catholic status in Russia, though it is unlikely that the Pope's visit to Russia will be re-proposed, which would not be very welcome to the clergy and to the local population. It is easier for Parolin to address to an invitation to Patriarch Kirill to meet the pope again in Catholic land, perhaps in Bari at the remains of the beloved Saint Nicholas, or even in Rome.

The Secretary of State will focus on major international issues, starting with the thorny issue of Ukraine, where Greek-Catholic Orthodox Christians oppose Greek Catholics, protagonists of the changes in Ukraine, resulting in the conflict that led to the annexation of the Crimea to Russia and of the Russian "masked invasion" in the Donbass. It is likely that Parolin will support an international conference that rediscovers the status of these territories by ending the conflict and the "war of sanctions".

The other great topic of the talks will certainly be the situation in Syria and the Middle East, where the Holy See moderately supports the Russian positions for a definitive defeat of the ISIS, and the independence of the territories from the protectorates of the superpowers. Certainly, the cardinal will relaunch humanitarian aid programs for refugees of war and for the protection of persecuted Christians, already in concert with the Orthodox Church: this is the most effective consequence of the Cuban encounter. And who knows , maybe the Pope and the Patriarchs will meet tomorrow at some holy place of the ancient Christian East, evoking the ancient fathers of the Church of Antioch and Jerusalem.
Red Cross and Red Crescent: "One of the worst regional humanitarian crises in recent years." More than a third of Bangladesh and Nepal are flooded. Floods hit nearly 11 million people in four northern Indian states. Tens of thousands of displaced people. There are growing concerns about food shortages and illnesses due to contamination of drinking water.

New Delhi (AsiaNews / Agencies) - More than 16 million people across South Asia have been affected by seasonal flooding. Floods in Nepal, Bangladesh and India have killed about 500 people and the toll is expected to worsen.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) declares that the current one is becoming one of the worst regional humanitarian crises in recent years. There are growing concerns about food shortages and illnesses due to contamination of drinking water.

Martin Faller, deputy regional director of IRF, says more than a third of Bangladesh and Nepal are flooded, while floods hit nearly 11 million people in four northern Indian states. Tens of thousands are displaced.

Bangladesh, where floods have already reached record levels, fears the waters full of Indian rivers will reach the country in the coming days. The Nepalese Red Cross states that the crops have been lost, as the floods have devastated the agricultural lands of the south.
Contact Californian columnist Lois Henry at 661-395-7373 or lhenry@bakersfield.com. Her work appears on Sundays and Wednesdays; the views expressed are her own.
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In the wake of the violence in Virginia, leaders in St. Petersburg came together Friday night at Mt. Zion Primitive Baptist Church for a town hall meeting titled "From Charlottesville to St. Petersburg." It was a conversation about race.

Common conclusion: "It can happen anywhere"

Meeting organized by NAACP St. Pete President Maria Scruggs

Congressman Charlie Crist, Mayor Rick Kriseman in attendance



The conversation started with leaders being asked if they think something like what happened in Charlottesville could happen in St. Petersburg. The common thread with all of their answers was that it can happen anywhere.

Congressman Charlie Crist attended the event, and he said this talk about race is important right now.

What happened last weekend in Charlottesville is deplorable, it's un-containable, it's just heartbreaking. So I think it's always good to have an honest discussion, Crist said.

Thats why NAACP President Maria Scruggs says she organized the meeting. She said the community and leaders need to be proactive.

What we typically find ourselves doing is waiting until something happens -- we react, we have a march, we have a vigil and then we go back to business as usual," Scruggs said. "So this is really about beginning an honest dialogue, taking the gloves off."



Mayor Rick Kriseman agreed and added its a conversation that cant be avoided right now.

We need to continue having dialogue over the issue of racism and discrimination. The minute we stop talking about it is the minute it continues to rear its ugly head, he said.

Pinellas County School Board member Joanne Lentinl offered a prospective from an educator, saying this conversation is vital to our country, especially children.

Our country seems to be in a terrible shift, and I think education has a big part in creating a more ... a better environment for our children, because that's where it really starts, she said.



Some who attended the meeting were passionate sharing their experiences and how they think leaders can help.

Scruggs said the NAACP is hoping to keep this discussion going. They also hope this conversation will help start a dialogue in workplaces, government agencies and communities across the county and across the country.
A Citrus Hills family woke up on the morning of Aug. 18 to find a racist statement spray-painted in large red letters across the entire side of their home.

Dayna, James White among few black families in their neighborhood

No clues yet, no suspects

Family has lived in neighborhood for 3 years



"It was appalling. It was literally disgusting," said homeowner Dayna White, 51. "It took us for quite a surprise."

White said they're one of the few black families who live in the neighborhood and they won't be intimidated.



"Next time we'll be waiting because you never rest when something like that's done," she said. "You just think it takes a whole lot of nerve for a person to walk up on your property and put something like that in words and that's our bedroom."

Citrus County Sheriff Mike Prendergast said this action will not be tolerated.

"We take this type of crime very seriously," he said. "We will utilize all available resources to bring this case to a resolution."

Deputies said they did not find any clues during a canvas of the neighborhood and hope the public will assist with tips.

Joe Adams, who lives a few streets away, said he was appalled to see the racist graffiti in the neighborhood.

"I was infuriated. This is uncalled for. Whoever did this, they're cowards," he said. "I hope they would catch the people who did this."



The White family moved to the neighborhood three years ago from Kuwait. James White, 48, was working there as a government contractor.


Business owners in Lakelands Midtown corridor near Parker Street call the area a breeding ground for the homeless.

Lakeland hires consultant to study homeless population

Business owners near shelter tired of influx of homeless

It's where Talbot House Ministries provides 400 meals a day including breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the organization houses more than 100 people every night in its emergency shelter. It also has a free health clinic, a program dedicated to helping people overcome drug addiction, a shelter for the working homeless, and an employment program.

Let me be clear, the people who are loitering on the streets here in the front of the Talbot House are not people in program. Theyre people who are hungry, whove come to eat or theyve stayed overnight in the emergency shelter and because theyre homeless, they have no place to go during the day. They stay close to where they can get food and shelter during the day, explained the organizations Executive Director Dr. Brenda Reddout.

But the constant influx of the homeless in the area is problematic for business owner Frank Kendrick, whose property is across the street.

I came out and there was a guy here. He had his shirt off. He had a water bottle and he was taking a bath right here on our patio where the employees take their lunch breaks, said Kendrick.

Kendrick said there's been plenty of occasions where he's called the police a couple times a week.

People defecating on the building, urinating around the building, prostitution, literally acts of prostitution right in conspicuous views of your building. Weve had women literally like butt naked walking the streets, Kendrick explained.

The city is spending $80,000 on consultant Florida Housing Coalition to study the homeless population and its impact on public services.

Unfortunately youre not going to make homelessness go away, explained city spokesman Kevin Cook. This is an issue facing every community in the United States. Were looking at a better way to manage the homeless situation.

Kendrick is glad to hear that.

What my hopes would be is that they would, this consultant rise to 30,000 feet and take a look at geographically I think one of things is maybe seeing if we can get some of the health service providers, human service providers in some other neighborhoods. Or maybe kind of spread them out instead of being so concentrated in one area, said Kendrick.

The Parker Street area is also a place where the city has bought land and re-developed this property.

Were always looking at ways to enhance our downtown. The corridor through Midtown is really if you will the pathway to downtown so of course wed like to have new businesses and have the area cleaned up, Cook explained.

Talbot House leaders said the organization doesnt have plans to relocate. Its executive director said even if it did, itd still need to be near downtown due to the close proximity to public transportation and services like the hospital.

We need to come together as a community. Not as a committee and a consultant but as a community and discuss how do we make housing more affordable. How do we give people a chance with jobs that we wouldnt take a chance on before because of something in their background? said Dr. Reddout.

Cook said the consultant will meet with the homeless care providers at the end of August. The city expects the consultant to release a strategic plan by June of 2018. 
Many people around the world turned to social media when news of the terror attack in Spain broke out. Now people are reaching out to help those effected and mourn for the lives that were lost.

ISIS claims responsibility for 2 attacks in Spain

Facebook has turned on its safety check

There are several videos of people running emergency vehicles speeding by and chaos as one person describes it after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack in the Las Ramblas area in Barcelona where those 13 people were killed and more than 100 people injured from a van that drove into a crowd.

Authorities said there were two vehicle attacks  as well as an explosion earlier this week elsewhere in Catalonia  that are connected and the work of a large terrorist group. Three people were arrested, but the driver of the van used in the Barcelona attack remained at large and the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of the latest European rampage claimed by ISIS.

Authorities were still reeling from Thursdays Barcelona attack when police in the popular seaside town of Cambrils, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) to the south, fatally shot five people near the towns boardwalk who had plowed into a group of tourists and locals with their blue Audi 3. Six people, including a police officer, were injured, though it wasnt clear how badly.

Catalonias interior minister, Joaquim Forn, told Onda Cero radio that the five suspects killed in a subsequent shootout with police were wearing fake bomb belts.

The terrorist group ISIS claimed responsibility, saying in a statement on its Aamaq news agency that the attack was carried out by soldiers of the Islamic State in response to the extremist groups calls for followers to target countries participating in the coalition trying to drive it from Syria and Iraq.

The President of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont posted this on Twitter.

Our thoughts are with the victims of the horrible attack in #Barcelona. Terror will not defeat our society and values. Freedom will prevail.  Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) August 17, 2017

President Donald Trump also took to Twitter to condemn the attack.

The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough & strong, we love you!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017

The safety check on Facebook was activated so people around the world can see if their family or friends are safe.

There is also a fairly new feature where you can see who in that area needs help and who is offering help.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Sgt. Richard "Sam" Howard died Saturday afternoon after being gravely wounded Friday during a shooting that also took the life of Officer Matthew Baxter, according to the Kissimmee Police Department.

Howard, 36, was shot along with Baxter during an encounter with Everett Glenn Miller and two others along Palmway and Cypress streets, Kissimmee's Police Chief Jeff O'Dell said during a press conference Saturday morning.

Howard, a 10-year veteran of the department, was married with one child. Howard was also Baxter's supervisor.

Miller, 45, is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Baxter, a three-year veteran of the force who was married to another Kissimmee police officer and a father of four. Miller has also been charged with resisting arrest without violence and carrying a concealed weapon.

Currently, Miller has not been charged in Howard's death.

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There is no manhunt for another suspect. O'Dell clarified police were searching for a witness who came to them during the night. O'Dell said that they are searching for video of the shooting and other witnesses.

O'Dell described the incident as it happened Friday night:

At about 9:27 p.m., the 27-year-old Baxter and Sgt. Sam Howard, who came later as a backup, came to Palmway and Cypress streets, an area known for drug activity, and encountered three people, one of them being Miller.

"(There) may have been some type of a scuffle ensued, ultimately ending in the shooting, taking Officer Baxter's life," O'Dell said, adding that the officers weren't able to return fire.

Howard was gravely wounded and there's "not much hope he will survive this," O'Dell said Saturday morning.

The two officers were taken to Osceola Regional Medical Center, where Baxter died on Friday night.

A body-camera-wearing program has started this week, and more devices will be delivered to the Kissimmee Police Department in the next few weeks. Baxter and Howard weren't wearing body cameras Friday night, O'Dell said.

At around 11:30 p.m., Osceola County Sheriff's Office detectives encountered Miller at Roscoe's Bar & Packaging and tackled him to the ground after Miller reached for his waistband, O'Dell said. A 9mm handgun and a .22-caliber revolver were found on Miller's person. O'Dell said it is to be determined if one of the guns was used in the shootings.

The police chief said Miller is a Marine veteran. At this time, no other charges are being filed. Miller was taken into custody and transported to the Osceola County Jail in Baxter's handcuffs.

"We don't get to stop for a minute and cry for somebody that we lost or mourn for a hero. ... The men and women of law enforcement are required to continue working and bring this individual to justice," O'Dell said.

Through SunTrust Bank, an account has been setup by the city for those who want to donate to the families of Howard and Baxter, according to the police department.

The account will be titled City of Kissimmee  Officer Matthew Baxter and Sergeant Sam Howard.

People can start making donations to any SunTrust Bank starting Monday, Aug. 21.

Chief O'Dell: This is a tough time in law enforcement. I would ask that you pray for the men and women of law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/MEp056LfSm  Kissimmee Police (@kissimmeepolice) August 19, 2017

An outpouring of support came through Twitter during the overnight.

My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!#LESM  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

O'Dell said he has not received a phone call from the White House, but he thanked fellow law enforcement officers from various agencies who came out and helped with the shooting.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina tweeted his thoughts and prayers minutes before we confirmed what happened:

Sending our thoughts and prayers to @kissimmeepolice  Chief John Mina (@ChiefJohnMina) August 19, 2017

Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs asked Floridians to keep the officers' families in their thoughts.

Heartbreaking loss of two of Kissimmee's finest officers. Please join in prayers for families, friends, and law enforcement.  Mayor Teresa Jacobs (@Mayor_Jacobs) August 19, 2017

U.S. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio stated that there needs to be focus on people targeting police officers across the country.

We ask for prayers for them. We need more focus on targeting of officers across the country.They protect us, we need to protect them 2/2  Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 19, 2017

A law enforcement procession for Kissimmee police's officers tonight. 1 dead, 1 in grave condition. https://t.co/IKzUslc2Fw pic.twitter.com/hAcmcEHRvG  News 13 (@MyNews13) August 19, 2017

At Osceola Medical Regional Center, law enforcement officers showed their love and support by driving their patrol vehicles in a processional in front of the hospital on Friday night.

On the police department's Facebook page, Beth Hoffman offered her condolences.

"My heart is breaking for your department and the families of Officer Baxter and Officer Howard. I'm so sorry we live in this kind of world right now and I'm so so grateful that you continue to do go work even in this dark hour. God bless you all and keep you safe," she wrote.

The Kissimmee shooting brought back memories of the manhunt for Markeith Loyd, who was accused of shooting and killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend Sade Dixon in December of 2016. Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton happened upon Loyd in January of this year, where they exchanged gun fire and Loyd shot and killed her, according to law enforcement officials.

Orange County Sheriff's Deputy 1st Class Norman Lewis was killed in the manhunt for Loyd when his motorcycle collided with another vehicle.

Nine days later, Loyd was caught.

Attorney General Pam Bondi offered words of comfort to the Kissimmee Police Department, as well as the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, which saw two deputies shot on Friday night as well. She said the shooting of law enforcement will not be allowed.

"This horrific violence against law enforcement will not be tolerated, and as Attorney General I will continue to ensure those who commit violence against our law enforcement officers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," she stated in a press release.

Jacksonville officers shot

The Jacksonville officers were shot in the Westside, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said.

"If you are inclined to do so, say a prayer for our two #JSO officers that have been shot," the Sheriff's Office said on Twitter.

One officer is in critical condition, and the other is stable. One officer was shot in both hands, and the other was shot in the stomach, the Sheriff's Office said. Both were struck by high-powered rifle rounds, the agency said.



The suspect shot by the officers died at a hospital.

O'Dell was asked to comment on the Jacksonville shootings and he said that everyone needs to come together and the community and law enforcement needs to work together to get criminals off the streets.
So Far, Oregon Coast Eclipse Traffic Hasn't Happened - Yet

Published 08/19/2017 at 3:23 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff

(Newport, Oregon)  The latest updates from Lincoln County officials on the central Oregon coast indicate the big eclipse rush has not happened yet. Things are suspiciously quiet in the beach towns where the path of totality will wander through on Monday morning. As of 2 p.m., anyway.

According to Casey Miller, spokesman for the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners:

Traffic in and around Lincoln County continues to be light. At this time ODOT indicates there are no delays for traveling to and around Lincoln County.

Expectations are for traffic increase Sunday and Monday, he said.

Current information on traffic conditions around the state should visit the Oregon Department of Transportations: Tripcheck - http://TripCheck.com. Oregon Coast Beach Connection also has a traffic conditions update section for the coast which funnels a variety of up-to-the-minute ODOT information onto one page.

TripCheck Mobile is a separate web site formatted specifically for low-bandwidth users. You may access the site at http://m.tripcheck.com or http://www.tripcheck.com/mobile and, by dialing 511

Other Reports from Lincoln County:

Lodging: still some vacancies for the eclipse. See these here.

MEDICAL. Samaritan Health Services clinics along the central Oregon Coast and the Mid-Willamette Valley will offer extended hours for walk-in care from Friday, Aug. 18 through Tuesday, Aug. 22. See the hospital link here.



EYE SAFETY. Make sure your glasses are ISO certified. https://eclipse.aas.org/eyesafety/iso-certification). Eclipse glasses are available throughout the County. No shortages reported. Check out this video online with your family. National Geographic Solar Eclipse 101 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrLRbkOwKs

FUEL. Oregon Department of Energy reports fuel trucks are making daily deliveries around the clock. Even if a station runs out of fuel, its a temporary situation.

211. Oregons 211 information line is the best source of information for questions regarding Eclipse issues. Resident and visitors are encouraged to call 211 or visit 211info.org for information. Oregon Coast Hotels for this weekend - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours



























More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging.....

More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining.....

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The following hospital and health system credit rating and outlook changes and affirmations took place in the last week, beginning with the most recent.

1. Fitch assigns 'A+' rating to Southern Illinois Healthcare's bonds

Fitch Ratings assigned its "A+" rating to Carbondale-based Southern Illinois Healthcare's proposed $68 million series 2017C refunding bonds to be issued by the Illinois Finance Authority.



2. Fitch affirms 'BBB+' rating on King's Daughters' Health's bonds

Fitch Ratings affirmed its "BBB+" rating on Madison, Ind.-based King's Daughters' Health's series 2010 revenue bonds, affecting $93.8 million of debt.

3. Moody's downgrades rating to 'B3' on East Jefferson General Hospital

Moody's Investors Service downgraded Metairie, La.-based East Jefferson General Hospital's debt rating to "B3" from "Ba3," affecting $152 million of outstanding debt.

4. Moody's affirms 'A2' rating on Blanchard Valley Regional Health Center

Moody's Investors Service affirmed the "A2" rating on Findlay, Ohio-based Blanchard Valley Regional Health Center's series 2011A bonds.

5. Moody's affirms 'Aa2' rating on Mayo Clinic's bonds

Moody's Investors Service affirmed its "Aa2," "Aa2/NR" and "Aa2/VMIG 1" ratings on Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic's bonds, affecting $2.3 billion of rated debt.

6. S&P revises Eastern Maine Healthcare System's outlook to negative

S&P Global Ratings affirmed its "BBB" rating on Brewer-based Eastern Maine Healthcare System's series 2016A and series 2013 bonds, affecting $313.4 million of debt.

7. Fitch assigns 'A-' rating to Marshfield Clinic Health System's bonds

Fitch Ratings assigned its "A-" rating to $3.08 million series 2017B and series 2017C revenue bonds issued by the Wisconsin Health and Educational Facilities Authority on behalf of Marshfield (Wis.) Clinic Health System.

8. Moody's, S&P give Atlantic Health System highest health system rating in New Jersey

Morristown, N.J.-based Atlantic Health System has the highest rating from Moody's Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings among health systems in New Jersey.

9. Fitch affirms 'A-' rating on Baptist Health Care's revenue bonds

Fitch Ratings affirmed its "A-" rating on Pensacola, Fla.-based Baptist Health Care's series 2010A revenue bonds, affecting $141 million of outstanding debt.

10. Moody's assigns 'Baa1' to Catholic Memorial Hospital

Moody's Investors Service assigned its "Baa1" rating to Manchester, N.H.-based Catholic Medical Center's proposed $56 million series 2017 revenue bonds.
Many states are pursuing various Medicaid alternative payment models; however, often APMs' affect on cost of care and health outcomes remains unclear, Deloitte reported in a recent policy brief.

For the analysis, the New York City-based consulting firm's Center for Health Solutions examined 30 state and federal reports evaluating 45 APM programs across 28 states.



Here are five takeaways from the brief.



1. Many APM initiatives include Medicaid's patient-centered medical home model. Last year, 29 states served some beneficiaries under a PCMH model, with 13 states eyeing similar programs or expansion of their programs this year. In addition, 32 Medicaid Health Homes models operated in 21 states and Washington, D.C., as of May 2017.



2. However, Deloitte notes cost control and health outcome findings from the models "have been mixed, with some older initiatives such as North Carolina's PCMH saving money over time and some newer initiatives such as Ohio's specialty Health Home increasing costs despite improving care in the short term." Ohio's specialty Health Home program for beneficiaries with serious mental illness was linked to a monthly $561 per-member increase in Medicaid program costs despite improvements in care coordination and patient satisfaction.



3. Deloitte also evaluated Medicaid's Episode of Care Payments, which only three states  Arkansas, Ohio and Tennessee  implemented in 2016. At the time, Connecticut, New York, Oklahoma and South Carolina were contemplating implementing the bundled payments. Arkansas in particular achieved some positive outcomes through its multipayer bundled payment initiatives, as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder EOC payments increased the average number of behavioral health visits and decreased ADHD patients' treatment costs by 15 percent, the report states.

4. Ten states implemented Medicaid ACOs as of June 2017, with at least 13 other states pursuing the APM. Deloitte found early results from Oregon and Colorado show ACOs can decrease unnecessary healthcare use and lower costs, but their effect on quality remains unclear.



5. As potential results from Medicaid APMs can rest on how much providers' revenue derives from Medicaid, Deloitte said alignment with other payers may be necessary to incentivize providers to participate in APMs. In addition, researchers said, "Medicaid models may need to evolve to incorporate more financial risk and increase participants' meaningful use of EHRs to qualify as advanced APMs under [the Medicaid Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act]. This may require new or additional investment in technology and data analytics tools."
Though Congressional attempts to repeal and replace the ACA have stalled for the moment, former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius believes President Donald Trump's administration is still trying to sabotage the ACA, according to KCUR.

Ms. Sebelius, who served under the Obama administration, acknowledges the ACA has flaws, but thinks the Trump administration is not taking steps to address those flaws to encourage poor results. For example, Congress blocked funding to help insurance companies offset the costs of covering patients with pre-existing conditions. Ms. Sebelius also believes current HHS Secretary Tom Price, MD, has taken steps to undermine the ACA. She cites the administration's refusal to guarantee cost-sharing reduction subsidies and their greatly diminished advertising budget for ACA enrollment as additional evidence of this sabotage.

"Ironically, the Republican Congress did not repeal and replace, but the administration led by Tom Price at HHS  who is a vociferous opponent of the ACA  has a lot of tools to really cut off the legs of the law," she said.

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Business / International

by Staff Reporter

JOHANNESBURG - The South African Airways (SAA) says it's taken a decision to cancel all flights between South Africa and Zimbabwe for Saturday.Earlier, Flight SA 025 to Johannesburg was prevented from leaving Harare International Airport.The SAA says it was taken by surprise when it was told that it's required to produce a foreign operator's permit by the Zimbabwean authorities, despite operating in the country for over two decades.The national carrier says it hopes to resume normal operations by Sunday, adding that negotiations with Zimbabwean authorities are underway.SAA spokesperson Tlali Tlali said, "We are awaiting the decision by the Zimbabwean authorities to give us clearance to be able to operate. SAA apologises to its passengers and customers for the inconvenience that has been caused by this incident and the matter is receiving required and urgent attention in order to be resolved as quickly as possible."
Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital officials said the institution will pay as much as $90 million in voluntary retirement offers to employees to avoid additional staff reductions, according to the Boston Business Journal.

The hospital initially offered voluntary retirement offers to 1,600 of its 18,000 employees in April. However, A Brigham and Women's spokesperson confirmed to Becker's Hospital Review the hospital reduced the number of offers to 1,200 employees. The spokesperson said Aug. 21 the 1,600 figure was adjusted to exclude physicians and grant-funded researchers, bringing the total number of voluntary retirement offers to 1,200.

Those eligible for the offers included employees over 60 years of age employed at the facility for more than two years. The offer was not made available to physicians or researchers.

Approximately 800 of the 1,200 individuals accepted the offer, a spokesperson told Becker's Aug. 21.

"Any further reduction in force will be limited and targeted to areas that have been identified through a workflow redesign process," the spokesperson continued. "The departures will begin Sept. 30 and will proceed based on the business needs of the organization, ensuring we have the appropriate level of staff to provide the best care to our patients."

Peter Markell, executive vice president of administration and finance, CFO and treasurer of Boston-based Partners HealthCare  which owns Brigham and Women's  told the Boston Business Journal Aug. 18 the offers will cost the hospital between $80 million and $90 million in total. The benefits associated with the voluntary retirement program will begin offering savings in fiscal year 2018, the report states.

Editor's note: This article was updated Aug. 21 to include additional information from Brigham and Women's.
Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed an executive directive Tuesday establishing a special opioid council to bolster Michigan's response to the opioid crisis.

Here are three things to know.

1.The Council on Opioid and Prescription Drug Enforcement aims to develop relationships with local, state and federal agencies tasked with enforcing laws and regulations designed to curb opioid addiction and overdoses.

2. The council will meet monthly to discuss trends and pertinent information regarding illicit opioid use across Michigan.

3. The group will also share information with the Michigan Prescription Drug and Opioid Abuse Commission.

"We must ensure all partners are working together effectively if we are going to combat this epidemic and protect all Michiganders," Mr. Snyder said. "This council will open up the lines of communication and allow for a better use of resources while working to reduce opioid abuse and prevent addiction from occurring in the first place."

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CDC: Drug overdose deaths among adolescents highest for opioids

The most cost effective way to treat opioid dependence in the ED

Cincinnati targets 3 opioid distributors in lawsuit
Brighton, U.K.-based Destiny Pharma aims to generate $12.9 million in new equity to develop drugs to fight antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in hospitals, according to Reuters.

The biotech company plans to generate the funds by tapping the alternative investment market on the London Stock Exchange . The company's XF-73 drug candidate is reportedly effective against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. After 55 repeated exposures to the drug in a clinical trial, MRSA did not develop additional resistance to XF-73.

"The drugs are differentiated from traditional antibiotics and antibacterial drug approaches in that their mechanism of action targets bacterial cell membranes, killing bacteria very rapidly," Bill Love, PhD, founder and current chief scientific officer for Destiny, told Reuters. "Due to that mechanism of action in trials and studies, we've seen no emergence of bacterial resistance to excess drug action."

The drug could potentially eliminate or significantly reduce the presence of MRSA bacteria  which is colonized in about a third of people's noses  prior to surgical procedures to reduce the risk of post-surgical infections.

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WHO calls for donor support to address Somalia's measles outbreak

Study: Antibiotics disrupt gut microbiome, inhibit body's immune response

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The chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland has pledged to help tackle a lack of diversity in British boardrooms by combating a "too white and too male" culture.

Ross McEwan said the bank, 72% owned by the taxpayer, has made strides in promoting women into senior roles but admitted it still has work to do in ethnic diversity.

"We've set ourselves the target of having initially 30% of our top 700 executives as females by the end of 2020.

"We actually reached that target last year, so have changed the target to make it more difficult.

"Ethnicity, I think, is a big issue for this organisation.

"We need to be reflecting the types of people our customers are.

"Too white and too male is something that we're now starting to concentrate on.

"I think it's beyond the male and female and I think there are a lot of other areas that we should be thinking about as well," Mr McEwan told BBC Radio Scotland.

His comments come in the same week data from Green Park showed 58% of FTSE 100 boardrooms still have no ethnic minority representation.

It follows the Government-backed Parker Review, which found "disproportionately" low levels of diversity across UK boardrooms.

The review, which was released in November last year, subsequently recommended one director of colour be appointed to each FTSE 100 company by 2021, and to each FTSE 250 board by 2024.

Similar recommendations on gender-based recruitment were made by the Davies review in 2015, saying women should make up a third of every FTSE 100 boardroom by 2020.

Mr McEwan added that RBS is working with interest groups to make changes and will publish statistics on gender pay in September.

"Really what you look at, job for job with the experience, are the people being paid the same?

"That's what I'm interested in and that's what we review on an annual basis.

"Are people doing the same job getting the same pay, as opposed to how many females have I got in more clerically oriented roles versus people in management?"

He said the bank now wants 30% female representation in every part of the business, particularly in areas such as NatWest markets, where it has "been pretty male dominated".

"Now we've said we want 30% in every part, which overall will give us 40% by 2020, that's what we're targeting," the chief executive added.
Fresh reductions to hospital budgets are looming - despite the DUP securing an extra 50m for health in its hung Parliament deal with the Tories.

Plans will next week be revealed to axe 70m from health trust funding.

Sinn Fein and the DUP blamed each other for the cuts.

DUP MLA Christopher Stalford said: "This is the latest impact that will be felt by the public of Sinn Fein's refusal to form an Executive.

"Everyone is agreed that our healthcare system needs major reform and there is cross-party agreement on the process to deliver that.

"However, Sinn Fein's Stormont abstentionism is blocking this reform and is hurting the public.

"The DUP secured extra funding for Northern Ireland following the agreement with the Conservative Party at Westminster. We want to see those funds benefiting the people of Northern Ireland as soon as possible."

But Sinn Fein's health spokesman Pat Sheehan said the pressures on the health budget were a direct result of Tory cuts, which had seen more than 1bn slashed from Northern Ireland's block grant by successive Conservative administrations.

Mr Sheehan added: "The DUP have, of course, given their unconditional support for these austerity policies as a result of their deal to prop up Theresa May's government.

"However, if the DUP are serious about establishing an Executive to get on with delivering public services like health and education, then that can be done providing it is on a sustainable, credible basis by implementing agreements and having rights and integrity at its core." The DUP-Tory deal involved a 1bn package for Northern Ireland. This included 300m for health, some 50m of which was to tackle "immediate pressures".

But the package has been held up by the ongoing stalemate over restoring the Stormont Executive.

A Department of Health spokeswoman yesterday said: "The health and social care system is required to deliver an annual balanced financial plan in the 2017/18 financial year.

"Therefore, trusts have been tasked by the department to develop draft plans to deliver their share of a total of 70m of savings in 2017/18. The department has advised the trusts to consult on their savings proposals in line with the department's policy guidance on public consultations.

"The public will have their opportunity to comment on the draft savings proposals during the consultation period."

All five of Northern Ireland's health trusts will hold public meetings next week to discuss the proposed 70m cuts.

The meetings will take place in the Ulster Hospital; Knockbracken Healthcare Park; Craigavon Hospital; Antrim Hospital, and Altnagelvin Hospital on Thursday.

The party leaders have been briefed about the meetings. The SDLP said further health cuts would have a detrimental impact on patients.

The party's health spokesman Mark H Durkan said: "The crisis in GP services, the failure to make new cancer screening tests available, acute pressure on waiting lists - these issues need strategic ministerial leadership to advance the health service transformation plan."

Ulster Unionist health spokesman Roy Beggs said: "There are immediate pressures and if there was an Executive formed we would have access to extra funding to help alleviate them.

"We need a Health Minister in place to deliver on both Transforming Your Care and the Bengoa recommendations - failure to do so is letting down our front line staff and patients."

Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry said: "Clearly the money allocated to health for this year has been insufficient to meet growing costs.

"The process of reforming the health system under the Bengoa report is stalled. The political deadlock means we don't have an Executive to address these pressures.

"It is now important that the head of the Civil Service, and the Health and Finance Departments, engage with the Secretary of State to see if underspends could be identified in other areas of public service and this money go to health."
A judge launched a broadside against former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during a sitting of Londonderry Magistrate's Court yesterday.

District Judge Barney McElholm blasted provision for people with mental health difficulties as "a disgrace", adding that it was "a legacy of Thatcher and an ideological drive to dismantle mental health services".

The comments came as the judge dealt with a case involving Naomi Graham (34), of Ballyoan House in Derry, who admitted two charges of assaulting police on June 17 this year.

The court heard police were called to an address where the owner asked for Graham to be removed from the premises.

Police did so but she became aggressive and hit one officer on the shin and bit another.

Defence barrister Eoghain Devlin said there was "a total lack of appropriate care" in the community for people like Graham. He said there should be an option for dealing with someone like Graham through the health service, but it seemed the court was "the last stop for people with appalling mental health difficulties".

The barrister said the question had to be asked what could be done to stop people harming themselves and the community.

He added that prison simply did not seem to be the appropriate answer.

Judge McElholm said it was a legacy of Thatcher.

He said there was "absolutely no provision for mental health facilities and it was left to the criminal justice system, which was a very poor reflection on our society".

He added: "The criminal justice system is simply not equipped to deal with people like this. There is a hopeless deficiency in legislation and it seems all politicians do is jump up and down and complain we don't sentence people to long enough and when they are told that will entail another prison being built they say we are sentencing too many".

The judge imposed a sentence of 12 months probation.
Lady Eleanor Brown, whose marriage in 1988 to a man 45 years her senior made headlines in Northern Ireland, has died.

Lady Eleanor, who suffered throughout her life from a muscular disorder, died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 56, according to her death notice. She was buried yesterday.

She was a young doctor when she met Sir Thomas Brown, the former head of the Eastern Health Board in Belfast, on a study tour in Italy.

They met at a concert in St Mark's Square in Venice and Sir Thomas later recalled that as they chatted they realised they had many interests in common.

On return to Northern Ireland Sir Thomas made the romantic gesture of leaving a bunch of primroses tied to Eleanor's front door accompanied by an unsigned note.

Their friendship developed and in 1988 they married, he at the age of 72 and she at 27, and went to live at his home, Westgate in Portaferry.

Sir Thomas died in 2003 and Lady Eleanor was later to recall fond memories of their 15-year marriage. "I think I learned to be a diplomat," she said, adding that Sir Thomas, who had been a solicitor, learned to cook after getting married and she particularly remembered his chicken curry dishes.

The couple loved travelling, going as far as Uzbekistan on their trips through Europe and Asia.

William Odling-Smee, a former surgeon at the Royal Victoria and Mater Hospitals in Belfast, said Lady Eleanor's disability, which she had from birth, had limited her medical career.

She was originally his houseman when training and later worked in haematology. After her marriage she became a community paediatrician in the Children's Centre at the new Downe Hospital in Downpatrick.

She recalled that her love of medicine was partly because her mother had been a nurse but also because, as a child, she had spent quite long periods in hospital and loved reciting long medical terms.

Mr Odling-Smee, who as a non-stipendiary Church of Ireland minister, officiated at Sir Thomas and Lady Eleanor's marriage and also at Sir Thomas's funeral, said Lady Eleanor did not let her disability hinder her work with many charities.

"It was absolutely wonderful that she was able to do so much in spite of this fairly severe disability," he said.

Among the charities she was involved with was Muscular Dystrophy, the NI Medical Legal Society, and the Ulster Arts Historical Society.

Another organisation close to her heart was the Exploris Aquarium in Portaferry, which was threatened with closure at one stage when the local council expressed concerns about its running cost. She was one of the leaders of a campaign to ensure the aquarium remained open, reminding councillors it was an important part of the local tourism jigsaw bringing in 100,000 visitors a year to the area.

She was also a member of the Belfast Civic Trust, which presses for the retention of the city's Victorian and Edwardian architecture and organises walking and bus tours around Belfast's built heritage.

Other interests included the Ulster Orchestra and Opera NI.

Mr Odling-Smee said that after her husband's death Lady Eleanor came back to live in Belfast's Malone area, where she was strongly involved with the Church of St John the Evangelist, where her funeral took place yesterday. She was later buried at Ballymanish Cemetery in Portaferry.

She is survived by her mother Joan Thompson and sisters Carrie and Jackie.
News / Africa

by Moyo Roy

Following reports that the 20-year-old South African model who suffered head injures after an alleged attack by Zimbabwe's first lady Grace Mugabe, Gabriella Engels, refused to accept a bribe, some Zimbabweans on social media have suggested that she made a mistake.A prominent Zimbabwean journalist Nqaba Matshazi has suggested on Twitter that Engels "should have taken the money, this was inevitable honestly".The tweet received over 20 responses most of which supporting Matshazi's suggestion.Read responses to Matshazi's tweet below:
A dog missing from Lurgan for almost three weeks has been found safe and well.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, the Millie's owner Lisa McCord said that they had adopted the dog about a week and a half before she went missing, and that she had earlier lived on a farm in Kildare where she was neglected.

Since arriving back on Friday, Ms McCord said that Millie has already put on four ounces, and been to the vet twice.

A Facebook page set up to coordinate the search for Millie, a Bichon Frise rescue dog, was liked by more than 2,500 people with regular sightings of the animal being reported.

Finally tracked down after 18 days, Ms McCord told the page's followers: "To say we are over the moon is an understatement."

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Ms McCord extended thanks to everyone that had helped in the search and explained that the animal was finally returned home after being spotted by a girl out horseriding.

The news of Millie's return was welcomed by local police, with PSNI Craigavon describing Millie as "the biggest fugitive Lurgan may ever have had".
'Government officials have said the risk of Britain or continental Europe-based firms using Irish business counterparts to avoid tariffs can be managed effectively'

Manufacturers from Britain could rush to establish bases in Northern Ireland to avoid customs tariffs post-Brexit, a lobby group has claimed.

The UK Government has proposed smaller firms involved in localised cross-border trade with the Republic should be exempted from the responsibilities.

Manufacturing Northern Ireland said 99% of the businesses it represents had been given no idea how the suggested arrangements after March 2019 could work.

"Essentially it means that NI firms would be within the customs union whilst also being outside of the customs union as part of the UK. It could lead to a rush of Great Britain manufacturers wanting to come and set up in Northern Ireland to avoid customs requirements, but equally it could see Irish firms using Northern Ireland as a back-door to the UK market, so trade could be distorted," it said.

Government officials have said the risk of Britain or continental Europe-based firms using Irish business counterparts to avoid tariffs can be managed effectively.
A 23-year-old prison officer was last night being quizzed by detectives at Musgrave PSNI station

A warder and two women have been arrested on suspicion of smuggling drugs into Northern Ireland's largest jail.

The swoop came yesterday when detectives working with the Northern Ireland Prison Service seized a quantity of drugs and associated paraphernalia as part of an investigation into trafficking of prohibited items into Maghaberry.

A 23-year-old prison officer was last night being quizzed by detectives at Musgrave PSNI station.

The warder was arrested on suspicion of a number of criminal charges.

They include suspicion of conveyancing prohibited articles into a prison, misconduct in public office, possession of criminal property, and being concerned in the supply of class A and B drugs.

The two women arrested are aged 55 and 26.

They are being questioned over conspiracy to convey prohibited articles into a prison, possession with intent to supply class A and B drugs, and possession of class A and B drugs after searches of properties in Lisburn and Dungannon.

Detective Chief Inspector Brian Foster vowed to continue the clampdown on drugs in prisons.

"This operation is a good example of how collaborative working can disrupt crime and also demonstrates our commitment to keeping people safe by removing harmful drugs from society," he said.

"We will continue to work closely with the Prison Service to clamp down on the trafficking of illicit drugs into prisons."

Prison Service chief Ronnie Armour added: "I welcome the result of today's joint operation with the PSNI. Removing dangerous drugs from Maghaberry will help to keep staff and prisoners safe. I would commend everyone involved."

Last year the Belfast Telegraph revealed large numbers of drugs seizures at Northern Ireland's jails following Freedom of Information Act requests.

Between April and September 2016, there had been 215 seizures of drugs and drug-related paraphernalia at Hydebank Wood - a prison with just 156 inmates.

At Maghaberry, where around 1,000 prisoners are held, there were 137 seizures between April and September this year, and at Magilligan, where 500 are held, there were 125 seizures.
Chief Constable George Hamilton has apologised to the families of those killed in the Omagh bomb over the PSNI's non-attendance at a commemoration event.

The event at the Omagh bomb memorial took place last Sunday and it is understood that it was the first time in the 19 years since the attack that the PSNI had not been represented.

Speaking to the Belfast News Letter Micheal Gallagher, whose son Aiden was among the 29 killed, said that it was a "great regret" that the PSNI had not attended the event.

He also said that he hoped the non-attendance by the PSNI was not down to the legal action that has been launched by relatives of Omagh bomb victims against Chief Constable George Hamilton.

As part of the action the families are seeking damages for what they claim were failings in the investigation that allowed the killers to escape justice.

In his statement, Chief Constable George Hamilton said: "I have the utmost respect for the Omagh families and would never seek to cause offence or be dismissive of their grief and pain and if the PSNIs non-attendance at the event seems disrespectful, I apologise for that.

"It is unfortunate that there appears to have been some confusion around invitations. I can confirm that local district police have received formal invitations to the event in the past but no formal invitation was received this year. I can also confirm that other stakeholders within government did receive a formal invitation this year.

"PSNI not being represented at the event is not connected with, or in response to, the writ issued against me by Mr Gallagher and some of the Omagh families. That matter will be dealt with in due course through legal process."
Courage isn't always confined to a battlefield.

Sometimes it can come in the form of a mother quietly holding her family together after the crushing loss of a husband.

Former DUP MLA Brenda Hale spent last Sunday remembering the good times with her husband Mark - the limericks and poems he used to write, their late night conversations about life and death and how two teenagers in love grew to a family of four with the birth of their two girls.

It was eight years to the day that the British Army Captain lost his life in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, the 48-year-old Hillsborough woman launched her book I Married a Soldier, a tale of heroism, love and loss, grief and isolation, but also of faith, hope and sheer determination to take on the Ministry of Defence in the midst of a crippling grief.

Brenda had been with Mark for 22 years when he died. She met her husband-to-be when she was just 16 years old - however, her parents did not approve.

"I met mark in Bangor, my home town," she says.

"I was 16 and he was 17. He had been posted from Bournemouth to Northern Ireland as a boy soldier. My parents always warned me to never darken the door with a soldier, that nice girls didn't go out with soldiers. I kept our relationship a secret from my parents.

"Mark was sent to Berlin and we lived through letters for two years. When he came back we got married. Four days later he was sent to the Falkland Islands. I was 19 years old.

"We lived in England, away from my family. I was so in love with this guy, it didn't matter where we were."

Mark served six tours of duty in Northern Ireland before being deployed to Iraq, then Afghanistan in 2009.

"We were both aware that this could be the end for us and we talked about what would happen if he didn't come back from Afghanistan," she said.

"He used to write limericks and poems. On the day he left for Afghanistan, he gave me a card and told me not to open it until he was gone. He had written me a poem. In it he said he would always love us and that we have to go on, because we had a life to lead. I knew then that he was saying goodbye to me."

Mark was stationed in Helmand Province. He always phoned at bedtime to say prayers with his girls and always emailed every morning. But on August 13, 2009, Brenda checked her email in the morning and there was nothing.

"I hid my anxiety from the girls and took them to their various activities," she said.

"I came home and sent Mark an email telling him I hoped that he was okay and that I loved him very much. Then I heard a knock at the door. I immediately knew who it was. The army notification officers asked me if I was the wife of Captain Mark James Hale. They brought me into the living room and said very matter of factly that he had been killed. I didn't cry, I didn't scream. I began to shake uncontrollably."

Mark was killed in Helmand Province. His unit had been providing security for a meeting of Afghan leaders and searching a mosque for ammunition, when a soldier triggered an improvised explosive device.

A second explosion followed and Captain Hale was wounded as he tried to help the casualties. He later died of his injuries.

"Telling my girls that their daddy was gone was awful. My friend drove me to Banbridge to pick up our oldest daughter, Tori. When she saw that I wasn't driving, that I was in the back seat and I was upset, she knew," she said.

"She started screaming in the middle of main street 'Not my daddy, not my daddy'. I grabbed her and got her into the back seat of the car. My sister had picked up our youngest daughter, Alex, who was just seven. She was telling my sister that she had made her daddy a keyring at her school summer scheme. When they carried her in I had to tell her her daddy had been very badly hurt so Jesus just brought him straight to Heaven. She just said 'What about his keyring, mummy?' and 'He won't see my new shoes'. It just broke my heart."

Brenda says the weeks after Mark's passing went by in a blur and that she was consumed with a crushing grief that she is only now emerging from.

"I was brought very quickly to reality when the army turned up to tell me they hadn't found Mark's insurance forms and his will. Everything went to probate and I was left penniless. The opportunity to be allowed to start to grieve was stolen from me."

Brenda said DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson came to her a few weeks after her husband's funeral and offered her help. A gesture, she says, that led her on a path to politics.

"He came to my house and asked me how I was doing. I just broke down and said I had no money and I was going to lose my home. He said he would help us."

Brenda says she has written her book to highlight the issues faced by army families but also to keep Mark's memory alive for her girls.

Brenda's book, I Married a Soldier, is available on Amazon.
A British man injured while helping victims of a suspected terror attack in Finland has said: I am not a hero.

Two Finnish women were killed and seven people, including Hassan Zubier, were wounded in the knife rampage in the city of Turku, 90 miles west of the capital, Helsinki.

Mr Zubier, who is reportedly a Kent-born paramedic now living in Sweden, told Swedish newspaper the Expressen he was stabbed as he tried to help others, including a woman who died in his arms. But he told the BBC: I am not a hero. I did what I was trained for. I did my best and more.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spokeswoman said: Our staff have offered support to a British man following an incident in Finland.

Four Finns, an Italian and a Swede were also injured in the attack, which Finlands Security Intelligence Service said was a likely terror act.

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Police said the suspect, an 18-year-old Moroccan asylum-seeker, who was shot by officers and arrested, appeared to have targeted women.

Four other Moroccans have been arrested.

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Pekka Hiltunen said the Security Intelligence Service was investigating the suspects connections to the Islamic State group, since IS has previously encouraged this kind of behaviour.

The suspect had yet to be questioned, while four others  also Moroccans living in Turku who know him  were detained on suspicion of involvement.

The dead from the apparent indiscriminate attack on Friday are Finnish citizens.

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Police said the suspect, whose name has not been released, was subdued with a shot in the thigh and that he is in hospital under guard.

Investigators say he came to Finland in early 2016 seeking asylum.

Three of those wounded were still in intensive care. Four remain in hospital and four have been released. The youngest victim was 15, the oldest 67, police said.

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A man visiting from Sweden said he was stabbed in the arm and tried to help another victim who died.

I tried to stop the violent bleeding from her throat  The woman was so badly injured that she died in my arms, Hassan Zubier told the Expressen tabloid.

Tabloid Ilta-Sanomat said one of the dead was a woman belonging to the local chapter of Jehovahs Witnesses who was handing out leaflets at a central Turku square.

A spokesman for the religious group told the tabloid they believed the woman was randomly attacked.

Flowers and candles were placed on a square in Turku, and Finnish flags flew at half-mast across the country.

We need to stick together now, hate is not to be answered by hate, Prime Minister Juha Sipila said in a tweet.

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, wrote on Twitter that Europeans stand with #Turku and called it another cowardly terrorist attack on innocents.
The Health Secretary said he disagreed with Professor Hawking (David Mirzoeff/PA)

Jeremy Hunt has reject Professor Stephen Hawkings allegation that he abused scientific research to justify the creation of a seven-day NHS.

The world-renowned scientist, a lifelong Labour supporter, renewed his attack on the Health Secretary for cherry-picking favourable evidence while suppressing contradictory research in order to suit his argument.

The 75-year-old, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1962, said he would not be here today if it were not for the service and accused the Conservatives of putting the NHS in crisis.

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The Health Secretary relied on research that showed higher death rates at weekends when setting out his argument for a seven-day service, although the studies were not universally accepted by the scientific community.

In tweets Mr Hunt said: Stephen Hawking is brilliant physicist but wrong on lack of evidence 4 weekend effect. 2015 Fremantle study most comprehensive ever  And whatever entrenched opposition, no responsible health sec could ignore it if you want NHS 2 be safest health service in world as I do.

Prof Hawking, who is director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, warned that Mr Hunts actions were harmful at a time when public support for science is more important than ever.

He wrote: Hunt had cherry-picked research to justify his argument. For a scientist, cherry-picking evidence is unacceptable.

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When public figures abuse scientific argument, citing some studies but suppressing others to justify policies they want to implement for other reasons, it debases scientific culture.

One consequence of this sort of behaviour is that it leads ordinary people to not trust science at a time when scientific research and progress are more important than ever.

Mr Hunt used his drive to create a seven-day NHS as one of the main reasons for reforming junior doctors contracts  which led to the biggest walkout of doctors in NHS history.

Warning we cannot lose the NHS, the scientist attacked Tory policies such as the public sector pay cap, the new contract and removing the student nurse bursary.
Britain could strike post-Brexit free trade deals without the approval of the Scottish and Welsh governments (Jane Barlow/PA)

Britain could strike post-Brexit free trade deals without the approval of the Scottish and Welsh governments under proposals circulated among Cabinet ministers by International Trade Secretary Liam Fox.

Dr Fox has written to colleagues setting out four options for devolved governments role in negotiating free trade agreements after the UK leaves the European Union, a Whitehall source confirmed.

One of them includes making trade a reserved matter for the UK Government, although at the other end of the spectrum is a proposal that a common position should be agreed with devolved governments before striking a deal.

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Any move to freeze out devolved governments is likely to be strongly opposed in Edinburgh and Cardiff.

The Government has not taken a decision on which option it prefers.

However The Times claimed Dr Fox favours denying Scotland and Wales a veto, and Tories worried about the anti-Brexit Scottish National Party scuppering any free trade deals could back him.

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Genetically modified (GM) foods  which are legal for cultivation in England and the United States but banned in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  is one potential flashpoint in trade talks.

The Government is set to publish a trade white paper in autumn, ahead of a Trade Bill.

A Department for International Trade spokesman said: We have been very clear that we want a trade policy that is inclusive and transparent and which represents the whole of the United Kingdom.

We will not be giving a running commentary on possible future trade policy.

Plaid Cymru said any move to freeze out Wales would be disgraceful.

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Welsh treasury spokesman, Jonathan Edwards MP, said: If the UK leaves the customs union enabling it to strike trade deals, it is vital that no trade deal is signed without the endorsement of the Welsh Government.

Otherwise the British government could expose key Welsh economic sectors and our public services, effectively supplanting the devolved settlement.

Within the customs union, member states and sub national governments, like Wallonia in Belgium, can veto trade deals.

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It would be disgraceful if in post-Brexit UK, national governments within the British state are not able to defend their economic interests from Westminster politicians.

The Trade Secretary would do well to remember that people in Wales have voted twice in binding referendums to empower our National Assembly.
News / Local

by Staff Reporter

The government has declared 21 February a public holiday in honour of President Robert Mugabe who was born on the 21st of February in 1924.The announcement was made by Home Affairs Minister Dr Ignatius Chombo at a press conference in Harare.Also in attendance at the press conference is Minister of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Patrick Zhuwao, Information, Media and Broadcasting Services Minister Dr Christopher Mushohwe, Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Minister Joseph Made, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Deputy Minister Anastancia Ndlovu, and Webster Shamu.The day will be called Robert Gabriel Mugabe National Youth Day.More to follow
The family of a Swedish journalist missing since she boarded a home-built submarine near Copenhagen said they fear "the worst has happened".

The parents and brother of 30-year-old Kim Wall said "there is nothing we wish more than to have her back alive", but added that the chances of this are "extremely small".

The family told The Associated Press in an email that Ms Wall had worked in many dangerous places as a journalist, but it was unimaginable that "something could happen... just a few miles from the childhood home".

"There is nothing we would like more than to than for Kim to turn up alive, but we have to admit that the chance of that happening is extremely small," they wrote.

Danish submarine owner Peter Madsen is being held on preliminary manslaughter charges over Ms Wall's disappearance after she went on a trip with him on his UC3 Nautilus sub before it sank last week. Madsen has denied any wrongdoing.
Lt Gen Stephen Townsend, pictured speaking with an Iraqi officer in February, said there will be an assault on the IS-held area of Tal Afar (AP Photo/ Ali Abdul Hassan, File)

Iraqi forces are ready for their next major campaign against Islamic State extremists after the tough nine-month battle to retake the city of Mosul, senior US military leaders have said.

Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the top US commander in Iraq, said he sees the Iraqi assault on the IS-held area of Tal Afar "unfolding relatively soon".

The upcoming fight follows weeks of the Iraqis regrouping troops and repairing equipment and weapons after recapturing Mosul in July.

"I can't say that we replaced every single damaged or broken vehicle or rifle or machine gun," said Lt Gen Townsend, whose forces are aiding the Iraqi military.

But he insisted: "They'll be ready enough."

Tal Afar and the surrounding area is among the last pockets of IS-held territory in Iraq after victory was declared in Mosul, the country's second-largest city.

Tal Afar is west of Mosul and about 90 miles east of the Syrian border. It sits along a major road that was a key IS supply route.

Mosul took a heavy toll on Iraqi forces. As many as 1,400 troops were killed and more than 7,000 wounded, and the Iraqi military has proceeded methodically since its biggest success to date.

Just three years ago, its soldiers were chased by the Islamic State group from much of the battlefield.

"The last days of Mosul looked like Iwo Jima to me," Lt Gen Townsend told a small group of reporters.

"In the end, it took bulldozers ploughing ISIS fighters under the rubble," he recalled, using multiple different acronyms for the extremist group.

"Iraqi infantry men advanced beside the bulldozers, shooting and throwing grenades at Daesh fighters popping up out of the rubble."

Iraqi Humvees emerged shot up, their glass spider-webbed with bullet marks and shrapnel, their weapons worn out or even destroyed.

In the weeks since, much of the Iraqis' equipment has been repaired or replaced, said General Joseph Votel, America's top Middle East commander who spent the last few days in Iraq.

"I think they are ready," he told reporters.

The key priority, he said, is ensuring the Iraqis maintain momentum and have a good battle plan, and that the US-led coalition is prepared to support them.

Gen Votel has met Iraqi military and political leaders in Baghdad and Kurdish Peshmerga leaders in Irbil, in northern Iraq.

He was ensuring US military advisory teams are with the right local units to provide the best support, intelligence gathering, surveillance and advice.

Iraqi military leaders said Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has approved their combat plans.

The fight will involve a broad spectrum of forces, including the Iraqi Army, counterterrorism troops, police and a group of mainly Shiite, Iranian-backed militias.

It will start "in the next few days," Iraqi Brigadier General Yahia Rasool told reporters.

He said officials believe there are between 1,400 and 1,600 IS militants in the Tal Afar area. Many are foreign fighters, he said.

Brig Gen Rasool said the various Iraqi forces already have largely encircled Tal Afar.

"I don't think it will be tougher than the battle of Mosul, taking into consideration the experience we got in Mosul," he said

Lt Gen Townsend said the fight for Tal Afar will be a "microcosm" of Mosul, with parts easier and others equally difficult.

"It's smaller and there are fewer bad guys," he said.

"But for the Iraqi security force member or policeman or infantry man or special forces soldier who's attacking, it won't be easier.

"He's going to be facing a determined ISIS fighter dug into Tal Afar, determined to fight to the death."

AP
The Lebanese army intends to clear IS militants from its frontier with Syria (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Lebanon's US-backed army has launched its biggest military operation yet against Islamic State militants with a foothold along the border with Syria.

The long-awaited campaign aims to defeat the militants in their last enclave and put an end to a terror threat that has loomed over the country for years.

The Lebanese Hezbollah group and the Syrian army announced a simultaneous offensive to clear IS militants from the Syrian side of the border, in the western Qalamoun mountain range.

Hezbollah has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria since 2013.

Lebanese president Michel Aoun telephoned field commanders from the Defence Ministry where he was monitoring operations.

According to TV broadcasts, he said: "You will not disappoint us. Our hearts and minds are with you."

Operations commenced before dawn, with the military striking IS positions in the eastern border areas with Syria, Brigadier General Ali Qanso said.

He warned of a difficult battle ahead. The barren hills in eastern Lebanon will leave infantry exposed to IS snipers, and the militants are expected to mine the area on a vast scale.

A group of IS militants, including a self-styled "emir" or local commander, surrendered to the advancing Hezbollah and Syrian forces by midday, according to Hezbollah's Central Military Media outlet, run jointly with the Syrian military.

Lebanese authorities insist they are not coordinating with Mr Assad's government and Mr Qanso said the army was not even coordinating with Hezbollah.

That would spare Washington the potential embarrassment of appearing to be allied with a group it classifies as a terror organisation.

The US is a key patron of the Lebanese army and top brass from the Pentagon visited Lebanon in the run-up to the operation.

Nevertheless, Hezbollah ministers hold key portfolios in the Lebanese government, and the country is now accustomed to seeing the militant group run operations in parallel with the army.

The presence of extremists in the border area has brought suffering to neighbouring towns and villages, from shelling to kidnappings for ransom.

Car bombs made in the area and sent to other parts of the country, including the Lebanese capital, Beirut, have killed scores of people.

The army has accumulated steady successes against the militants in the past year, slowly clawing back territory, including strategic hills retaken in the past week.

Lebanon has seen sectarian infighting and random car bombings, particularly in 2014, when militants linked to al Qaida and IS overran the border region, kidnapping Lebanese soldiers.

Qanso said the army had no new information about the whereabouts of the soldiers kidnapped by IS militants.

Lebanese politicians say IS controls an area of about 300 sq km (115 square miles) between Syria and Lebanon, around half of which is in Lebanon.

About 600 jihadists, including snipers, are holed up in the Lebanese portion of the enclave, according to Mr Qanso.

They are armed with guided rockets, anti-armour rockets, mortars, and other heavy, medium, and light weaponry.

The area stretches from the Lebanese town of Arsal, and Christian villages of Ras Baalbek and Qaa, to the outskirts of Syria's Qalamoun region and parts of the western Syrian town of Qusair, which Hezbollah captured in 2013.

AP
Andrew Warren, right, in court for a hearing in San Francisco, as it emerged that stabbing victim Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau had drugs in his system (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

An Oxford University employee accused of killing a 26-year-old hair stylist has been extradited to Chicago.

Somerville College senior treasury assistant Andrew Warren arrived in Chicago just before midnight on Friday local time from California.

He and 43-year-old Wyndham Lathem, a former Northwestern University professor, face charges of first-degree murder over the death last month of Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, a Michigan native who had been working in Chicago.

The authorities say Mr Cornell-Duranleau suffered more than 40 stab wounds to his upper body during the attack in Lathem's high-rise Chicago apartment.

Lathem and Warren, 56, surrendered peacefully to police in northern California on August 4 after an eight-day nationwide manhunt.

Investigators say Lathem had a personal relationship with Mr Cornell-Duranleau.

Warren, who police said had been reported missing from the UK days before the attack and was not on Oxford business, says on Facebook he lives in Swindon.

The findings of a post-mortem were released earlier on Friday, and showed that Mr Cornell-Duranleau had methamphetamine in his system when he was killed.

AP
Luisa Ortega fled to Colombia with her husband German Ferrer, a day after Venezuela's Supreme Court ordered his arrest (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)

Venezuela's ousted chief prosecutor has fled to Colombia with her husband a day after the Supreme Court ordered his arrest.

Colombian migration authorities confirmed on Friday evening that Luisa Ortega Diaz and German Ferrer landed in Bogota aboard a private plane from Aruba.

The couple have long been aligned with Venezuela's socialist government but recently broke with President Nicolas Maduro and have become two of his most outspoken critics.

The Supreme Court ordered Mr Ferrer's arrest on Thursday, accusing him of being part of a 4.6 million extortion ring.

He denied the accusations and many believe they are politically motivated.

In June, the Supreme Court barred Ms Ortega Diaz from leaving the country and ordered her bank accounts frozen as part of its investigation into a complaint filed by a pro-government MP that accused her of acting as an opposition leader and requested a probe into her "mental insanity".

Univision reported on Friday that the couple fled in a speed boat to Aruba, which lies a short distance to the northern coast of Venezuela.

The authorities have not yet confirmed how she arrived at the Caribbean island.

No immediate details were provided on whether the couple are seeking asylum in Colombia, with officials only confirming that Ms Ortega Diaz had completed the "corresponding migration process".

The couple's whereabouts had been unknown for several days, but earlier on Friday Ms Ortega Diaz surfaced online, addressing a gathering of Latin America's prosecutors in Pueblo, Mexico.

She told the region's prosecutors that Mr Maduro removed her in order to stop a probe linking him and his inner circle to nearly 77 million million in bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

Odebrecht officials have admitted to paying around 77 million in bribes to Venezuelan officials in exchange for contacts.

AP
Zimbabwe has blocked flights by South Africa's government-owned airline amid tensions over allegations that Zimbabwe's first lady assaulted a young model.

South Africa's government said it had not yet decided to grant the Zimbabwe government's request for diplomatic immunity for Grace Mugabe.

She has not commented on the allegations.

Local media reported that Mrs Mugabe was expected to attend a regional summit with 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe in South Africa's capital, Pretoria.

It would be her first public appearance since the alleged assault in a luxury Johannesburg hotel on Sunday night.

Gabriella Engels, 20, has claimed that Mrs Mugabe whipped her with an extension cord, cutting her forehead.

Her lawyers have threatened to go to court if immunity is granted.

Foreign ministry spokesman Nelson Kgwete said South Africa was still considering the request. "Decision yet to be made," he said in a text message.

South African police have issued a "red alert" at borders to ensure Mrs Mugabe does not leave undetected.

Police also say their investigation is complete but needs a government decision on the immunity appeal.

South African Airways said Zimbabwe had placed restrictions on its operations, affecting its flights between the neighbouring countries.

It said its flight from Zimbabwe's capital to Johannesburg was unable to take off as scheduled on Saturday morning. Another flight from Johannesburg to Harare has been cancelled.

South African Airways said Zimbabwean authorities were demanding a "foreign operators permit".

It said it has been flying to and from Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and the permit was never required until Saturday morning.

Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe chief executive David Chawota did not specify the "issues" requiring attention. "The South Africans know what should be done in terms of processes," he said.

The scandal over Mrs Mugabe is a sensitive issue for South Africa as it weighs the possible diplomatic fallout from Zimbabwe if it acts against the first lady and the likely outrage at home if it grants immunity and allows her to leave.

Some demonstrators protested on Saturday in Pretoria against Mr Mugabe and his wife, saying she should be prosecuted.

It is not clear whether Mrs Mugabe entered South Africa on a personal or diplomatic passport.

Zimbabwe's state-owned newspaper reported last weekend that she was in South Africa for medical care.

But she told police after the alleged assault that she was scheduled to attend the summit with her husband.

AP
News / Local

by Stephen Jakes

Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association has said the once off budget consultation y the city of Bulawayo is meaningless to the residents.Around August and September every year, local authorities in Zimbabwe roll-out budget consultative meetings, ostensibly to give residents an opportunity to have a say in issues relating to public resource management.The meetings share information on budget revenues and expenditure with residents and provide platforms for residents to input into the policies and decisions of local authorities. All this is critical for improved local governance and development according to numerous academics, scholars and proponents of participatory governance.Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association information manager Zibusiso Dube said while acknowledging the importance of budget consultative meetings, this article argues that local authorities in the country should be doing more, especially when it comes to provision of information on local authority affairs."This comes from observations that sometimes the quality of discussions at budget consultative meetings is weak because residents have no access to any information prior to the routinized budget meetings. This has led to poor attendance at these meetings as residents feel that they are meaningless. Meaningful participatory practice should be based on institutionalised information sharing and citizen engagement that takes place on a continuous basis throughout the public resource management system, as opposed to the current scenario where engagements take place through once-off meetings, often to meet stipulations by the Ministry of Local Government," he said."Indeed, one of the major impediments to effective service delivery in Zimbabwean local authorities, and the cause of mistrust between residents and council bureaucrats is lack of adequate access to information and absence of engagement between the two parties. Lack of information is also responsible for rampant corruption at both the local and national spheres as asymmetries in information have rendered citizens unable to hold officials accountable."Dube said unless it is realised that information availability and citizen engagement are an important component of ensuring transparency and accountability in the operations of public bodies such as local authorities, residents will continue receiving sub-standard services while development projects at the local level fail to achieve the desired goals."It is high time efforts are made to ensure that dissemination of information and engagement between local authorities and residents become part and parcel of the operations of the former as part of a broader goal of promoting participatory governance and ultimately improving provision of public services. It should be spelt out, unequivocally, that box-ticking engagements concentrated only in August and September do not make the cut," said Dube."As a starting point, it would be useful for us to realise that residents have a right to receive information relating to the affairs of their local authorities and to have a say in decision making. It is everyone's right to access information and participate in development discourses because this empowers citizens and equips them to take charge of their destinies and, make informed political choices that have a bearing on their livelihoods. For instance, residents should have access to the budgets, plans, financial reports and policies of the local authority and input in development of such documents as this ensures that development initiatives meet the needs of the people."He said a major impediment towards institutionalisation of proactive provision of information and spaces for interaction with residents is that the government of Zimbabwe has historically been averse to citizen engagement, social accountability and transparency. Instead, the government has established draconian laws that inhibit access to information, transparency and social accountability."These laws have included the Official Secrets Act (OSA), the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and the inappropriately named Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA). But thankfully, the people driven constitution that came into being in 2013 contains numerous provisions promoting access to information, transparency and social accountability. Indeed it can be argued that local authorities should improve how they engage with residents and share information with them in the spirit of the 2013 constitution. This requires a more holistic approach that goes beyond holding once-off budget consultations," he said."This is not to say that local authorities should be holding meetings throughout the year as that may be expensive, time consuming and even undesirable for most residents. Notwithstanding the digital divide, the internet, social media and other new communication tools provide means by which engagement and sharing of information can take place. For instance, the City of Bulawayo, often regarded as a pacesetter in Zimbabwean local governance, already has a call centre, functional website and facebook page while it is also one of the local authorities piloting the U-Report system to engage with residents."Dube said however. it has itself been lacking because while it is using innovative approaches, it has still failed to share the key documents such as detailed budgets, financial reports, annual reports and policy documents that would enable citizens to participate more effectively in local governance issues."Nonetheless, it is clear that holistic approaches to citizen engagement in local governance coupled with use of new internet based communication tools can improve engagement between local authorities and residents," he said.
The Bangladesh Supreme Court voided a constitutional amendment that would have empowered the parliament to impeach high court judges.

A power struggle is under way between two branches of Bangladeshs government after the nations high court voided a constitutional amendment that would have allowed parliament to remove Supreme Court judges.

Leaders of the ruling political coalition, the Awami League, set the stage for a showdown on Sept. 17, 2014, when lawmakers passed the 16th Amendment, empowering the parliament to impeach Supreme Court judges if allegations of incapability or misconduct are proven.

In its unanimous 799-page ruling on July 3, the Supreme Court said giving that power to the legislature or to the executive branch would hamper the basic structure of the constitution requiring equal separation of powers among the three branches of government.

In that case Lord Actons observation, All powers tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely will come to play, Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha wrote in the ruling, referring to the 19th-century British politician.

The threat of impeachment proceedings would subject judges to exploitation by politicians, Sinha said.

Such a proceeding should be run by judges, not politicians, he said.

During a news conference later this month, Law Minister Anisul Huq said Sinhas comments belittled Sheikh Majibur Rahman, the nations founder and first president, when the chief justice said that no nation, no country is made of or by one person  we must keep ourselves free from this suicidal ambition.

Huq said Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation under Rahmans leadership.

The judge, he said, also made irrelevant comments and objectionable statements about parliament.

Ruling party leaders supported Huqs comments and demanded Sinhas resignation.

Huq, along with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Awami Leagues general secretary Obaidul Quader and Attorney General Mahbubey Alam, met President Abdul Hamid on Wednesday and discussed the courts ruling, officials said.

There were no official statements released regarding the meeting.

The previous Sunday, the law minister told reporters the government would examine whether Supreme Court judges committed any misconduct related to the ruling.

There is no doubt that the countrys history has been distorted in the observation made in the verdict, Huq told BenarNews.

Bangladesh established its constitution on Dec. 16, 1972. It provided a parliamentary form of government and conferred power on the parliament to amend the constitution through a two-third majority. Since that time, according to political observers, amendments have been used to serve the interests of the countrys ruler or the ruling party.

Not a matter of negotiation

Former Law Minister Shaffique Ahmed has criticized the actions and remarks made by ruling party leaders as unbecoming and unfortunate.

They can file review petitions against the verdict. They can even submit a petition seeking to expunge some remarks made in the judgment. But the remarks being made against the chief justice and the judgment is not acceptable, Ahmed told BenarNews.

Asked about possible solutions to mend the conflict, Monjil Morshed, one of the lawyers who petitioned the court to issue a ruling, said, It is a court verdict, not a matter of negotiation. The politicians will have to understand this reality. They will have to accept the verdict and stop doing politics over it.

They can seek review of the judgment, he said. But the court should be kept above all kinds of pressures.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) welcomed the verdict and attacked the ruling party government for exerting pressure on the Supreme Court to change it.

It seems that the ruling party is trying to create a violent situation to retain power, BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told the Daily Star on Thursday.

A.B.M. Khairul Haque, a former chief justice and current chief of the Bangladesh Law Commission, told a news conference on Wednesday the Supreme Courts ruling was preconceived, motivated and replete with irrelevant remarks.

It seems, Bangladesh is going to be a judges republic, he said, explaining that the high court description of parliament as immature also revealed the immaturity of the judges.

But Sinha, the chief justice under the spotlight for writing the verdict, on Thursday urged everyone not to play any political game over the ruling.

We welcome constructive criticisms, he said. But the judges would not fall into any trap laid by the government or the opposition.
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News / National

by Staff Reporter

PARLIAMENTARIANS from Buhera - which is an entirely communal district - have lauded Government for intensifying rural electrification, saying the programme was ameliorating economic and social emancipation of previously marginalised communities.In separate interviews on the sidelines of commissioning of the Chirozva Electrification Project recently, the legislators concurred that availability of electricity in rural areas will halt rural to urban migration and facilitate employment creation in the district. Buhera Central MP Ronald Muderedzwa said this will improve the living standards in rural communities."This is going to uplift the living standards of people in the rural areas. It brings about balanced development of rural and urban areas. If electricity is brought to the rural areas, it will enhance creation of job opportunities like welding among youths. The number of youths migrating to towns in search of jobs has been worrying, so this (electrification) is going to play a critical role in discouraging rural-urban migration," said Muderedzwa.Buhera South legislator Joseph Chinotimba said the Ministry of Energy and Power Development led by Dr Samuel Undenge should continue empowering marginalised rural communities."This is a monumental achievement and we are very grateful. We never imagined electricity being available in this part of the district. The development will make it easier for villagers in Buhera South to have electricity in their homes. What Government is doing through the Rural Electrification Fund (REF) is fantastic, and all Government ministries should emulate such initiatives as this will scale our country to dizzy heights. What has happened at Chirozva Business Centre is excellent," said Chinotimba.Buhera West MP Oliver Mandipaka said people in rural areas have a right to be connected to electricity to broaden their livelihoods."This is the kind of development that people in rural communities want. What REF is doing instils people's confidence in Government. It makes them realise that Government has them in mind by implementing its policies at grassroots level. If Government continues to do this, people will continue to be happy. The electrification shows that Government is not theoretical but practical in the implementation of its policies. This is an example of what an efficient Government should to its people," he said.In Buhera, the Rural Electrification Fund has covered Murambinda A, St Alban's, Nyamasanga and Chirozva primary schools, Murambinda B and St Alban's secondary schools as well as Mudawose Clinic and Chirozva Business Centre.Institutions such as Bhegedhe primary and secondary schools, Nechikowa primary and secondary schools, Tapedzwa Primary and Mudanda Secondary schools, St Benard's and Mudanda clinics, Chimuvhuri and Mudanda Agritex offices, Vhiriri Ministry of Health offices and Zenda Chitaitai group scheme are set to be switched on early next year.In Manicaland, the fund has so far electrified 1 657 institutions, of which 218 are in Buhera. The fund recently completed work on the Rural Energy Masterplan, which once adopted, will become the national plan for the provision of modern energy to all rural areas in Zimbabwe.
Hailed as an economic boon for a struggling city, the rapidly progressing revitalization and gentrification of Detroit neighborhoods has had the unintended consequence of leaving many longtime residents feeling left behind and without ready access to food stores and other essential businesses.

But BGSU junior Kyle Jumper-Smith has not forgotten about his hometown. Inspired by those who have given generously to him, this summer he organized the second Project Feed Thy Neighbor for his neighborhood, the Cass Corridor. It was a day of empowerment providing food, fellowship and positivity. This years event fed 422 people through the help of many donors and 76 volunteers who manned grills, served food, greeted attendees and managed the lines.

It wasnt just about giving out food but also about uplifting people, said Jumper-Smith, an inclusive early childhood education major and former Student Leadership Assistant (SLA) in the Center for Leadership . We challenged our volunteers to reach out to talk with people about what was going on and give each person a positive message of empowerment and a hug. We wanted to create a loving space.

This was a great experience to see the BGSU community collaborate with other students from other institutions and promote positivity and love in a community that is being abandoned due to new business ventures, he said. We also had people from Michigan State University, Kentucky State University, Grand Valley State University, Morehouse College and my alma mater, Lewis Cass Technical High School.

He dedicated the event to his late grandmother. She would have wanted me to do something like this, he said.

Im in the Presidents Leadership Academy and Im a Thompson Scholar, Jumper-Smith said. During the summer program leading up to our first year in college, my cohort was shown a news special about a couple from Detroit, Robert and Ellen Thompson, who presented their employees bonuses for their hard work and dedication to their family-owned asphalt company after they sold their holdings in Thompson-McCully to a company in Ireland. I was so inspired by them and their vision and I got to meet them at homecoming my first two years here. I also heard about all the other projects that they have contributed to the city of Detroit through their Thompson Education Fund.

The Thompsons are major benefactors of BGSU, having provided support for the 2001 renovation of the student union (now the Bowen-Thompson Student Union) and for the Presidents Leadership Academy (PLA), which draws many students from the Detroit area.

Jumper-Smith said the PLA teaches servant leadership and giving back to your community, as the Thompsons have done.

I was given the best and most generous gift that was ever given to me  four years of college for free  and I am so honored and appreciative. So my first year I was thinking about what I could do, he said.

He and his high school classmates and friends had been disturbed seeing people in their neighborhood going without food after a lot of the stores in the Cass Corridor area were slowly closing business, which meant that reasonably priced food was becoming limited in the area. There are no affordable grocery stores in the area now, and the only grocery store that is within walking distance is a Whole Foods Market on Mack Avenue, which would make purchasing a months worth of groceries harder on most individuals in the area due to their higher prices.

Jumper-Smith noted that, with the new and improved business ventures and revitalization of downtown Detroit, jobs and food security should spill over into the surrounding communities, but so far they have seen none of that. Also, local shelters have planned to relocate to other locations in the city, which limits resources to those in the Cass Corridor tremendously, he said.

He saw a model for help in the former Black Panther Partys Service to the People programs that had provided nutritious, high-quality food to families in neglected neighborhoods. He and his closest friends organized the first Feed Thy Neighbor event in 2016 for his 20th birthday, and it was a success. This year Im 21 so I thought, OK, I have to make it even bigger.

Kyle has just always been very passionate about the way he views Detroit and going home, said Shaunda Brown, a 2014 alumna and now second-year graduate student in the College Student Personnel http://www.bgsu.edu/education-and-human-development/department-of-higher-education-and-student-affairs.html program who was the graduate adviser to the Black Student Union (BSU) when Jumper-Smith was vice president of the organization. Theres all this rhetoric around Once you leave, dont come back, but hes always been so charismatic and so passionate about where he came from.

Jumper-Smith said Brown has been an important mentor to him, always affirming his plans and then encouraging him to take them even further. She pushes students to do amazing things in the community, he said. Shes led me to do meaningful things in my leadership.

He used his newfound leadership skills to manage the event, carefully thinking through all the details. His focus in high school had been journalism and media, and he called upon his good communication skills to spread the word.

Targeting Millennials (people ages 18-25), he used social media to invite them to participate through volunteering and donating money, food and supplies. He found sponsors willing to lend a grill, chairs or other items. He utilized online sign-up and donation applications and an electronic record-keeping software to assign tasks and keep track of progress. He encouraged volunteers to be thoughtful and respectful in the use of photos and social media during the event so as not to make neighbors feel uncomfortable. And he asked that they end any interaction with a hug and a positive message.

People were energized, and the response was even greater than he and his co-organizers had hoped. A friend from Atlanta surprised me by driving up the night before. He said, Well, I was here for the first one so I thought Id better be here for this one, Jumper-Smith said, smiling.

Colleagues from the PLA and Undergraduate Student Government, where Jumper-Smith is the former vice president and current director for diversity affairs, pitched in. Other members of the BSU, including President Angelica Euseary (also a PLA member) and Vice President Zarina Cornelius, helped out, as did administrator Juantez Bates, a fellow PLA and SLA member and former BSU president. Zeta Phi Beta sorority members served the food. Rashard Thomas, a good friend from Cass Corridor and current PLA scholar and SMART mentor, served as photographer.

Even with all their planning, Jumper-Smith said, I was very nervous about its impact on the community and how it would be received. I hoped people would see it as a loving space and not something we were imposing on them. But all my fears were proven wrong and it was a great day.

Euseary, who grew up near Cass Corridor and attended middle school with Jumper-Smith, said, It was a really nice event. Id done community service in the area before, but this had more of a family feeling. It was a different vibe and it was nice to be creating these memories.

Something as basic as talking to homeless people like theyre people, she said, was an important part of the days spirit of loving-kindness.

Although she seemed doubtful that neighborhoods in the wake of gentrification could affect its relentless progression, Forming these bonds and relationships as a whole is the only way we can ever make a difference, she said. We want to show there are people who care about them and want to help.

Back in Bowling Green, Jumper-Smith regularly participates in community service during the school year, with his PLA classmates. His favorite activities are Literacy in the Park and Feed My Starving Children, events that nourish the mind and the body.

He would love to see Feed Thy Neighbor become a monthly event instead of once a year, possibly sponsored by a nonprofit organization. Id also like to see it come to Toledo neighborhoods and be organized by BGSU students. Its another way for you to grow within your community.
#Loeries2017: Marketing Leadership and Innovation Award 2017 goes to KFC's Mike Middleton

It was announced at the Loerie Awards this evening that Mike Middleton, KFC Africa CMO, is the well-deserved recipient of this year's Marketing Leadership and Innovation Award, which serves to recognise his contribution to the marketing and advertising industry over the duration of his career.

Mike Middleton on stage accepting his award.Gallo Images/Alistair Nicoll He believes he was chosen for pushing for breakthrough and innovative creativity that connects with consumers and drives positive business results. For fostering healthy partnerships with my agencies where we respect each other and like each other, but also feel safe to have difficult conversations all in the name of delivering breakthrough creative solutions. Middleton joined Unilever in 1996, followed by SABMiller in 2004, then Cadbury in 2006, after which he became the marketing director responsible for managing the European Biscuits Portfolio at Mondelez Europe before returning to join KFC Africa. I interviewed Middleton to find out why he returned to South Africa, and what receiving this prestigious accolade means to him and for KFC. First of all, congratulations! First of all, congratulations!

Thank you. I must admit that Im very honoured and humbled in receiving this award. There are so many great marketers in South Africa, so its extra special that Ive been recognised as marketer of the year.

Where would you say your specific areas of expertise lie? Where would you say your specific areas of expertise lie?

My specific areas of expertise are brand strategy and positioning, being customer-centric, having an ability to identify an excellent creative idea and building healthy relationships with my agency partners.

What do you enjoy most about your career? What do you enjoy most about your career?

The part of my career that I love the most is the creative process. I love working with creative minds. I find them eccentric, off beat, flambouyant whilst being stimulating, engaging and energising. I could happily live in a creative agency. In fact if I was going to be buried I would choose to buried in a creative agency.

Why did you decide to come back to SA? Why did you decide to come back to SA?

I love South Africa. Its such a diverse, interesting and passionate country. Everyone has an opinion about everything and isnt scared to express it. Id rather live in our chaos than in grey monotony. Also, South Africa is a world in one and there arent many countries where you get to market to so many diversely different consumer groups across all income levels. Its a marketing utopia.

Comment on the client/agency relationship between KFC and Ogilvy. Comment on the client/agency relationship between KFC and Ogilvy.

Ogilvy is an amazing agency. Ive been fortunate enough to work with them for the duration of my career across the various brands that Ive worked on. The KFC/Ogilvy partnership goes back probably 45 years and is based on mutual respect and healthy tension. We both want the best creative to connect with consumers and keep KFC relevant and constantly push each other to achieve just this.

How does your experience at Cadbury compare to that at KFC? Do you apply the same formula or is it completely different? How does your experience at Cadbury compare to that at KFC? Do you apply the same formula or is it completely different?

In many respects it's the same; putting consumers first and unlocking insights that ensure a long lasting love affair between brand and consumer. The big difference is that the quick service restaurant business is faster paced. You have direct access to stores and feedback is instant, so you dont wait a couple of months to determine whether a new product launch or consumer promotion is working; you will know within two or three weeks and can amend your plans accordingly. You also dont have two listing periods in the year that you are constantly working towards, so it is far more agile and in the moment, which keeps you on your toes!

How do you ensure KFC stands out in a saturated market of not just fast food, but chicken specialty restaurants, as last year both KFC and Nandos did well? How do you ensure KFC stands out in a saturated market of not just fast food, but chicken specialty restaurants, as last year both KFC and Nandos did well?

By immersing ourselves in our consumers' world and understanding how best to connect with them, weve moved away from a 'push' strategy of bombarding them with messages hoping that if they hear a message often enough it will make them behave the way we want them to, to a 'pull' strategy where they choose to engage with us because we are interesting, relevant and distinctive.

Im so lucky to have worked with such amazing people over the years, in both the creative agencies that Ive worked with and the companies Ive worked for, that have played a huge role in mentoring and developing me to become the marketer that I am today. I am eternally indebted to all these people for teaching me all that I know and for having a lot of patience along the way.
How do you convince your colleagues in government to embrace citizen needs first and deliver excellent customer service and experience to citizens, meeting service delivery needs and solving their problems? This was the question posed by Phakiso Tlali, director of customer experience in the Gauteng government, South Africa's most populous province and the economic hub of Southern Africa.

Phakiso Tlali

It is this citizen-first programme of giving citizens a positive customer experience and addressing their needs directly and providing the mechanisms to listen to complaints, that has won Gautengs Office of the Premier, the Omni-channel Champion Award at the customer experience awards held at the 6th Customer Experience Management Africa Summit in Cape Town this week.

The award was for delivery of services across all channels and the winners were lauded for fully understanding their customers, their preferred channels, and the stages its customers are on the customer journey. The organisations overall message is experienced through every interaction that the customer has with the brand, regardless of channel, department, area of the business, and so on.

Service delivery challenge

Service delivery is one of South Africas biggest challenges, from local to provincial to national government. The Gauteng provincial governments programme has seen 3,800 community development workers deployed to each house across Gautengs 580 wards to find out about the most pressing service delivery needs, and then mapping these needs across the province to ensure that implementation can take place.

In an engaging presentation at #CEMAfrica2017, Tlali first sketched a scenario of protests about service delivery, with burning tyres blocking streets and chanting protestors. An all too familiar image in South Africas densely populated townships which house the poorest of the poor.

How do we convince our colleagues to embrace citizen needs first? It is a lonely journey. Everyone is on top, we have fridges and televisions in our offices. But underneath, it is melting People dont want to drive into the city centre (of Johannesburg) because of this, he recounted, showing images of violent service delivery protests.

But, as Tlali emphasised, the African Union Commission Agenda 2063 declares that all African governments must create an Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law. A continent where institutions are at the service of its people

This dovetails with South Africas NDP vision 2030, where the emphasis is on harnessing the energy and experience of citizens by means of a bottom up approach in the form of public accountability.

The problem, Tlali said, is that there is a disjuncture between the communication of community grievances and the states ability to address them.

The triggers of citizen value fall into the domain of:

Being able to provide the minimum of basic services to the poorest households: water, sanitation, electricity, social security wages.

Broadening economic participation: empowerment of youth, women, poor and unemployed.

Fighting social ills: building a social movement against drugs; eradicating violence against women and children; creating clean, healthy, liveable environments, the greening of communities.

In order to respond to the needs of citizens, Tlali said government teams had to look at value based planning in order to deliver on the customer experience:

People: self-directed teams, values based leadership. Processes: values based planning scenarios, decentralised decision making and communications systems. Technology: investment in scalable information systems.

It is about accountability The ability to have all these business processes coming together, decentralising government systems, empowering people who are not empowered. How do we as customer experience champions in government change this? What measures are you going to use? What IT applications are we going to use to generate all of this?

Tlali outlined the Gauteng Premiers service delivery programme, called Ntirhisano (working together), which hopes to provide a government that works with communities to find innovative and sustainable solutions, leading to improved and more equitable socio-economic development.

We have embarked on a journey of defining who we are, what we want to do, on the basis of the needs of the community.

The optimal use of resources is promoted to effect a qualitative shift in how peoples needs are identified, responded to and resolved. Local partnerships are strengthened and local resources mobilised to address socio-economic needs.

Implementation is a work in progress, Tlali explained. Our mega-service delivery programme and components were to put call centres together and decentralise centres of excellence within local communities that are responsible to serve the needs of the people, where people can go in and complain about service delivery, and that people within those offices are empowered to deal with solutions.

The Premier then goes out into those communities once a month to engage with them and talk about service delivery.

Tlali said with this model, the Gauteng government had managed to overcome many service delivery challenges and deliver on key promises with the key components of the Ntirhisano model, including a public liaison hotline and integrated rapid response system; war room machinery; and outreach programme.

We took organic community structures and combined them with ward based structures and then gave them the technology to record service delivery problems. We are mapping and looking at solutions across Gauteng corridors. We can tell, for example, on the West Rand of Gauteng, that the greatest need is water or electricity. That alone creates insight that informs planning by government.

Tlali said Gauteng has asked its citizens what they need and been able to show where resources have been channelled to those in greatest need  including showing where idealised plans were not realised.

We have embarked on a journey of defining who we are, what we want to do, on the basis of the needs of the community, and incrementally do the little things that make people enjoy quality of life, he concluded.
News / National

by Staff Reporter

Police have launched a massive manhunt for three businesspeople on allegations of externalising over $7,3 million to Botswana this year.The investigation is part of stern efforts to deal with the current liquidity and cash crisis.The three are Delny Deanna Ashley (41), Farid Shahadat (45) and Ryan Gregory Joseph (29).National police spokesperson Chief Superintendent Paul Nyathi said the three were wanted for contravening Section 8(1) paragraph (b) of the Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Act, Chapter 9:24."During the period between 14 January 2017 to 7 April 2017, the suspect Delny Deanna Ashley Davies, on her own personal capacity and through other couriers who are all Zimbabwean passport holders crossed into Botswana with large amounts of cash and deposited a total of $5 819 106, R500 100, EUR39 500 into her three foreign accounts, namely Stanbic Bank (South African Rand) account number 9060001687994, Stanbic Bank (Euro) account number 9060002320067 and Stanbic Bank (United States dollar) account number 9060001680000 and 9060002620435, without the approval of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe," he said.Chief Supt Nyathi said during the period between February 23 and April 11 this year, Shahadat, who is the director of a gold mining and milling company, Yakuts Marketing (Pvt) Ltd in Bulawayo, with the help of other couriers, crossed into Botswana with large amounts of money.They deposited a total of $1 197 080 into his three foreign bank accounts - Stanbic Bank account number 906 000 257 2465, Stanbic Bank (906 000 257 2504) and Capital Bank (000 370 300 8498) - without the approval of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe."On 12 and 13 April 2017, Ryan Gregory Joseph deposited a total of $331 700 into his personal foreign Stanbic Bank Account number 906 000 162 9595 in Botswana without the approval of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe."The three suspects externalised a total amount of $7 347 886," Chief Supt Nyathi said.He said their whereabouts were still not known and he appealed to anyone with information that might assist with investigations to contact Chief Superintendent Nyamupaguma on 0716 800 105 or 0712 412 034, CID Commercial Crimes Division northern region on (04) 771 994 or the national complaints desk on (04) 703631."The last known address for Davies is number 23 Kendemere Road, Morningside in Bulawayo, for Shahadat is number 4 Baxendale Avenue, Khumalo in Bulawayo and for Joseph is Number 78 Annold Way, Burnside, Bulawayo," Chief Supt Nyathi said.The latest development comes after Cabinet recently directed Government officials to take corruption, illicit financial flows and underground foreign exchange dealings head-on, as part of stern efforts to deal with the current liquidity and cash crisis.This comes after reports that Zimbabwe's foreign currency shortages were worsening due to massive capital flight, amid indications corporates and business tycoons have externalised $3 billion between 2015 and June 2017 mainly to Botswana, Mauritius and the Far East.
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PR Newswire

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19, 2017

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dubbed "world renowned" in 2009 by AOL's celebrity news for his work on criminal and missing persons cases, best-selling author of The Rational Psychic and extrasensory expert Jack Rourke was the go-to guy when CNN wanted a spiritual perspective on the passing of superstar Michael Jackson. Recently, however, Mr. Rourke has turned his keen awareness toward more pressing matters  Russia.

In June 2017 Jack was interviewed by Russia's state run REN TV. In this two-part interview, Jack was featured as the top psychic in the United States. Now, Jack is no stranger to the media. CBS television featured him as the real-life version of the fictional psychic detective at the center of their hit drama The Mentalist. Jack also profiled the Casey Anthony murder case on FOX's now-defunct Ricki Lake reboot. What makes this Russian interview with psychic Jack so unique though is both the timing and what he said.

During the Ren TV shoot, Jack was prompted to predict something positive about Russia that would take place in August 2017. Instead, he paused. Again, he was encouraged to say something flattering about Putin. Or comment on the pending good fortune of the Russian people. Still, Jack delayed. Finally, after a rather long and pregnant pause, Jack said something perhaps a bit shocking. He predicted Russia would intervene in the ongoing tensions between America and the rogue nation North Korea in a way the American government would not like.

Before part one of Rourke's interview even aired it appeared his prediction had already come true. On July 4, 2017, Reuters issued a report titled "Russia and China tell North Korea, U.S. and South Korea to embrace de-escalation plan." Russia did indeed intervene with North Korea much to the chagrin of the U.S. and its allies. Mr. Rourke discussed this fact a full two weeks before the Reuters story broke. Was this a coincidence? More importantly, is it appropriate for a psychic to speak on world events such as this? Is it possible Mr. Rourke used clairvoyance with the intention of both warning America and perhaps tempting the Kremlin into action?

Getting an interview with Jack Rourke is not easy. For this story, a series of emails were exchanged with his office. Ultimately, requests for interviews were denied. Could Jack Rourke be the one psychic who shuns the spotlight? It turns out Rourke is notorious for turning away media requests. He turned down a 2013 interview with CBS Local naming the best psychic and mediums in Los Angeles. He declined an invitation to appear on Good Day Australia when they requested he make on-air predictions about Hollywood celebrities. He again refused to discuss celebrities on NBC's Trisha show in 2013. And in a 2009 interview on a popular syndicated morning radio show, after continually denying rumors linking him to the intelligence community, Jack exited the interview unannounced. So unlike sensitives who trade in celebrity gossip and the sentimentality associated with allegedly talking to the dead, Rourke has instead quietly carved out a career earnestly trying to help those who seek him out. But now it seems he has used his influence in a way perhaps no other modern psychic has. Why?

Just hours after this story was scrapped due to the elusive psychic's refusal to participate, a mysterious telephone call came from an anonymous source. It was Rourke. He was cautious yet amiable and rather charismatic. An interview was scheduled for a few days later at a luxury Hotel in Los Angeles.

You're a hard man to get a hold of.

JR: Am I? Well, I'm just cautious about being misrepresented. Frankly, there's a lot of unhealthy and egotistical nonsense out there about what ESP is. There's even more spiritually dangerous misinformation in the public sphere concerning what it means to be psychic. I don't want to encourage or inadvertently contribute to these misperceptions. I describe a lot of these things in my book The Rational Psychic.

Tell me then, what's it like being a professional psychic?

JR: Every day is Halloween. There are ghosts and goblins haunting my every step.

You're joking but I imagine your life is not normal?

JR: At the beginning of my career I worked a lot with people who thought they or their homes were haunted. My business has changed since then. What's normal though? One only needs to read the headlines to learn societal norms are constantly challenged these days. Kidding aside, I deal with people and their practical concerns in spiritual and hopefully meaningful ways. My methodology is unconventional, yes. However, there's really nothing spooky about what I do at all. There have always been shamans and spiritual advisers in one form or another serving mankind going back to when we as a species were living off the land.

But being a psychic, it is weird, you admit that?

JR: Being psychic as a vocation is weird in that it's uncommon. But my business is run in a very conventional way. There's not a lot of high strangeness. At the end of the day, my work is fundamentally about loving people so that they can spiritually find meaning and purpose within. I help clients discover that their circumstances, no matter what, are workable.

There are a lot of very smart people who say extrasensory perception is a hoax.

JR: Well, in some instances those experts would be correct. However, what I've noticed is that many who seek to invalidate ESP don't really understand what it is they're trying to disprove. They construct experiments that cannot succeed. There's also often an agenda. A lot of fear and disdain that fuels rationalizations that minimize positive results. I'm no longer concerned with such things though. I've come to understand ESP as a natural function of consciousness that shows itself in both paranormal and completely ordinary ways. It's the illogical beliefs and exotic personalities often associated with ESP that deserve scrutiny in my view.

What makes you so sure ESP is real?

JR: At this point, repeated undeniable personal experience. But my favorite quote that speaks to the validity of ESP comes from the book The Reality of ESP by Dr. Russel Tarq. In that book, UC Davis statistics professor Jessica Utts, who was commissioned by the CIA to review 20 years of classified remote viewing research concluded, "The SRI data (Strategic Research Institute depicting the existence of ESP) is stronger than the FDA experimental evidence showing that aspirin prevents heart attacks.

Wow.

JR: Yep

So, speaking of the CIA

As if by divine intervention a waiter brings our order. After the interruption, Jack deftly changes the subject. I redirect him.

I heard a radio interview some years back addressing a rumor you have links to the intelligence community. Care to comment?

JR: No.

Seems odd that a major Hollywood movie studio would hire you as an expert on psychic spies to help promote the feature film PUSH if you had no familiarity with the subject.

JR: I have clients in various professions. For many, it's surprising that educated high-functioning people use services like mine but they do. That's all I have to say about that.

You had a platform to speak directly to the Russian people. Why did you predict Russian involvement in North Korea in a way the American government would not like?

JR: It's what I saw. I was just being honest. I first discovered my mind is attuned to geopolitical events when I predicted the invasion of Georgia by the Russian Army for the Associated Press.

But right now, given the political climate, why say something so controversial?

JR: Well, I didn't think it controversial. I'll admit, there was a moment when I was worried about how what I clairvoyantly saw would be received. But I was literally seeing information that indicated a nuclear conflict in the very near future. I was frightened. If I'm honest though, I was very concerned about sharing such information. The reason I spoke so frankly was I thought maybe, at the risk of sounding self-important, I thought maybe I could do some good. Truthfully, I thought no one would care what I had to say anyway.

Weren't you making an assertion by speaking directly to the Russian people on their state-run Media?

JR: Does it matter if my speaking up helps avoid armed conflict?

Good point. You're opening an office in New York City?

JR: Yes, for years I've worked with clients across North America as well as Europe and South Africa. So, having a footprint in New York closer to those time zones makes sense. I'm excited.

Do you have any predictions for me?

JR: Yes. You will live a long and happy life.

Sounds like a dream.

JR: A beautiful dream we all deserve.

For more information about Jack Rourke visit: www.jackrourke.net

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SOURCE Jack Rourke
News / National

by Staff Reporter

A research by an international HIV and AIDS awareness think tank, has revealed child marriages are still a problem in Zimbabwe and stigmatisation attitude among school going children, prompting stakeholders to call for an awareness campaign to educate people on the dangers of the social ills.A research by Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit at the University of Cape Town South Africa has shown that 33 percent of children in the country are getting married under the legal age of 18 while 42 percent of grade six pupils believe their peers diagnosed with HIV and AIDS should stop coming to school.Speaking to ZBC News on the sidelines of celebrations to mark 15 years of their activities on sexual abuse and gender based violence in the country in Matobo district, country coordinator for Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative (REPSSI), Mrs Sibusisiwe Marunda told ZBC News that her organisation has partnered with government and some development partners to launch a massive awareness drive in communities.The choice of having the celebrations in Matabeleland South Province was ideal as the area is one of the HIV and AIDS hotspots due to distant relationships as most men leave their wives in search of employment in neighboring countries, notes Matobo acting District Administrator Mr Obey Chaputsa.Results from the World Health Organisation and Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHs) show that the HIV prevalence rate in the country declined from 18 percent to 14 percent over the past 10 years due to a number of intervention measures, but the number of child marriages is worrisome.
Opinion / Columnist

Nomazulu Thata is Co-founder and Director for Ntombi-Langa Charity and a mother. This article and the contents of it are purely her personal opinion.

Many signs tell it all that Dr. Grace is in a panic mode. Her options to remain in Zimbabwe after the imminent death of her husband in Zimbabwe are very frightening to comprehend; she is rightfully scared about what will happen to her and her children when the man called Mugabe decided to call it a day. Grace has made many enemies not only in her party and government but in the country as a whole. If she is smart, apparently she is, will have sensed the danger of staying in Zimbabwe after Mugabe. Buying a posh houses in the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg is an indication or preparations in the event of the death of the Ruler: Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Grace Mugabe and her children are not safe in South Africa after that criminal action she has just done to Gabrielle Engels.Painfully too Zimbabwe will never be safe place for her either: whoever takes over from Mugabe, the opposition or Lacoste. The party of Zanu PF is not happy with grace, the Army is not happy with Grace, the ordinary people are not happy about Grace. With Grace Mugabe it's just equal parts pick panic! Panic mode is in first gear!Her stage-managed rallies must have given her a false impression that millions of Zimbabwean like her and want her to be the next leader of Zimbabwe. Those freebees she distributed in rallies, she genuinely thinks that they give her extension to still remain in the Statehouse for other donkey years. Does she know that those men and women and children were frog-matched to her rallies? Who loves to listen to Grace's utterances at rallies, some of which are deeply insulting and shameful to listen to: there will be traditional chiefs and school-children present in her rallies: she will be coughing vomit-language to scare the young, poor and the hungry?It has dawned on her somehow: She has realized she can never be President of Zimbabwe even if her husband- President gave her the post; they are many sections in the Zanu PF party and government who will never allow Dr. Grace to reign over them. Unknowingly or stupidly, Grace has allowed herself to be pepped up to think she can take over the reigns of his hubby, some bedroom arrangement will see her President and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Armed forces and the Police.The two sons of Grace Mugabe are revenging the good life they are living. They see poverty around them smelling, while they live in the expectations of plenty. They see how families struggle to get their children some good education so that the family is removed from poverty: but them, they enjoy the best education the world can give them. They see street children scavenging foods in bins, some die in the streets; bodies are collected by police for cremations. They see children dying of curable diseases. They see mothers detained in hospitals because they failed to pay hospital fees. They see on Television children picking up maize dropped from abnormal vehicles and delivery trucks, children picking the maize to go and cook mangai/maize-gwadla. On the other hand, the Mugabe boys are in the bubble enjoying life like no other.They hear their mother kicking and screaming in political rallies, they would rather they did not hear the insults that come out of the mouth of their mother. They would rather they keep the picture of their beautiful mother in their chest. They wish she is a good and beautiful mother. But she showers them goodies; her being a good mother is confirmed by token love. It's spoken at home that their mother can actually be the next Head of State in Zimbabwe, this makes them happy, and they are assured of ever existing bubble: will revenge further to the full.They read headlines in newspapers: Mrs. Dzamara pleading with the government to at least give her the dead body of her husband if he is dead to give closure to their loss. They read about the Gugurahundi atrocities hounding their father: he cannot leave office: the main architect of genocide in the 1980s before the two boys were born. They wonder if it's true that it's indeed their father who was the main perpetrator of genocide. They see their father and their mother unmoved about genocide that took place in Zimbabwe.They try to look into the dictionary: what does genocide mean! To their utter disgust they understand for once the gravity and the horror of genocide. No child can stand this fact, done by their father, earthly creator! Their lives start to scream inside them, but they cannot quantify or qualify their screaming. The sub-consciousness will not allow it to open up and say the reasons of their screaming, it protect them instead to continue to enjoy the bubble as it lasts.There is so much at home to live for in this luxurious leafy Statehouse of Harare, a life seemingly without end. There is everything they wish for AND THEY SHALL NOT WANT: instant gratification comes from mama and papa in such a measure unimaginable in Harare but only in Hollywood children in California. They very often holiday in the Far East in posh hotels and rented homes. It is a continuous and unending life holding those silver spoons; everything they want is delivered to them on their bedroom doors the next day.It has been a circus-kind of life ever since they were born. With 15 billion dollars missing in our treasury coffers, they can afford to live those standards forever. The houses bought in South Africa by Grace Mugabe are a "Plan B" just in case she cannot live in Zimbabwe; she will relocate to South Africa and continue to live her luxurious life just as it was in the Zimbabwe State House.The only element missing in Mugabe home is a warm house, a loving mama and papa, a mother who gives her children warmth and love and not sweets and biscuits, fanta and coca-cola to lullaby them to sleep. There is a lot that these young boys cannot digest consciously: the youthfulness in them together with the sub-consciousness assists the boys to find warmth elsewhere if the warmth they crave for does not exist at home. Papa is now too old to comprehend what is actually happening at home. Mama is not knowledgeable about child-care and the need for warmth in the home: never to replace it with expensive objects and items.How do two very young and very youthful boys comprehend the difference in age between mama and papa? While mama is beautifully young and very attractive, papa on the other hand is a bag of old bones; NO LONGER ATTRACTIVE LOOKING AT HIM: His whole self is all heaped in a rocking chair; rocking as a sign he is still alive. The day the rocking chair stops rocking is the time they know papa has gone, wherever, revenge will go on as usual.If the social media is to be believed the Mugabe boy was caught with drugs in Dubai, the father went to quell the execution. Why would they repeat drug consumption after having survived execution! The young Mugabes lived in a posh multi-million flat in Dubai: lived large. Because these young boys are revenging this life of luxury born with it, they do not see the danger of consuming drugs. They do not even realize that they are embarrassing mama and papa. The video that was shown on social media: young Mugabes living large in posh hotel in South Africa: any parent in this world would have been brought to tears. We parents do not laugh at such: the Shona wisdom will tell you that: Mugoni we pwere nde asina pwere yacho.To compare these young boys with success stories we hear about men and women who made strides from abject poverty homes to success: just to name two; Strive Masiyiwa, Nkosana Moyo and many more, why did these boys miss such stories of successful role models in Zimbabwe itself to emulate from them. The reason could be that they know those men and women: they find such stories not applicable and never to emulate them children of the first family. Alone their father Robert Mugabe comes from very humble background. The way of life of these boys: luxurious lives are deeply internalized: only revenge remains; to live it to the full as they do not know how the future looks like, they are not mindful of it either. They never learnt to see beyond their father as President and his imminent death. As a matter of fact the father could easily have been the grandfather to them all.What remains in these boys or young men is revenge, revenge, and revenge! The mother who is supposed to mother 14 million children in Zimbabwe is openly failing to give the two boys a warm home, her warm heart so that the boys do not find warmth in drugs, alcohol and sex. Her brutal attack on a helpless young girl of 20 years: Gabrielle Engels is a clear sign of desperation and anxiety. She does not know what day and night will bring her and her children if South Africa will be no-go-area for her. She will never survive in South Africa, she will be lynched, at worst; the children are in absolute danger in South Africa than in Zimbabwe. Those houses she is buying will be white elephants in the future. Vato mumaka izvozvi!Recently, I was talking to a family friend in Scotland: Dr. Clifford Chigaru. He comes from a large family of high achievers. He is a surgeon by profession for many years. He reminded me of the time in his life when he was named: umfana we mbhida by the neighbourhood! It simply means that he sold his mother's vegetables to get school fees for him ever to go to Thegwane Mission, one of the best secondary schools in Rhodesia back them. I wonder if these Mugabe boys would believe his life's story if they saw him surgically operating patients at an operation theatre hospital in Scotland. Instead of listening to him they would rather they revenge further. That is their tool: the weapon left in their disposal just to revenge the lives their parents exposed them. Ngatitambei nezvimwe: chitupa hachiwachkwi! Ne Mnwana haawachkwi!------
Opinion / Columnist

At least one month before the July 2013 elections SADC leaders KNEW with certainty that Zanu PF had already won the elections and warned Tsvangirai and his MDC friends accordingly."If you go into elections next month, you are going to lose; the elections are done!" SADC leaders warned at the regional group summit in Maputo in June 2013, according to Dr Ibbo Mandaza who was there.As we know MDC leaders paid no heed and contested the July 2013 elections which Mugabe and Zanu PF, as SADC leaders had predicted, went on to blatant rig and win with a landslide! SADC leaders are not magicians gazing in crystal balls to predict the future. The evidence that Zanu PF was rigging the elections there for all to see; the GNU had failed to get even one democratic reform implemented and Zanu PF's vote rigging juggernaut was going through its usual paces, the elections result could not be anything else but a Zanu PF landslide victory.SADC had witness Zanu PF's vote rigging antics in the past elections but more graphically in the 2008 elections which is why the regional grouping had asked the GNU to implement a raft of democratic reforms designed to stop the vote rigging. SADC leaders were aware that MDC, the GNU partner tasked to implement the reforms, had failed to get even one reform implemented. With not even one reform in place SADC leaders could see, as clear as day, Zanu PF's vote rigging plans and how they were being methodically implemented.To ensure a Zanu PF electoral victory the regime had to deny the opposition supporters the vote by making it very difficult for them to register as voters; make sure many of these who do register are not entered in the voters' roll; many those who do make it on the voters' roll are denied the vote because their details are posted in the wrong constituent roll than the one they expected; etc.; etc.Meanwhile the regime would do everything to maximize its own vote by ensuring its supporters are given every opportunity to register to vote; many were allowed to register multiple times, to boast the voters' roll numbers, and many were allowed to vote multiple times; etc.; etc.Naturally, Zanu PF did not want its voters' roll and all the other vote rigging shenanigans known and the regimes has used two ways to achieve its objective:1) Deliberate delay everything so that there is a mad dash towards the end, the blitzkrieg, so no one will have the time to scrutinize anything. Before people can catch their breath the elections will be over, Zanu PF declared the winner with a landslide and all the incriminating evidence gathered up and destroyed.2) Where the regime has a legal obligation to share information, such as releasing the voters' roll at least one month before voting day, the regime has stubbornly refused to do so.Not even one democratic reform was implemented since the July 2013 and there is all the evidence already that the Zanu PF vote rigging juggernaut, well-oiled with billions of dollars looted from Marange and Chiadzwa diamonds, has already gone through its gears; it is already into overdrive. The regime is dragging its feet, deliberately delaying things, ready for the blitzkrieg!The regime was criticized by the AU Election Observer team, for example, for failing to release the 2013 voters' roll as demanded by the constitution. One would think the regime would be quick off the mark; no chance of that.The regime has taken three and half years to endless bickering and theatricals to decide who will purchase the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits, who would be on the shortlist of possible suppliers of the kits, etc., etc. Whilst the nation had expected the new voters' roll to be ready for verifying and trial runs, at least one year before the elections; it is shocking that voter registration has not even started. Everything is being deliberately held back for the blitzkrieg!Zanu PF will never ever allow the release of verifiable 2018 voters' roll, by Polling Station, one month before voting day, as is required by law. The voters roll is the smoking gun of the regime's many rigging shenanigans.So, with less than a year to go before next year's elections one can say with certainty, just as SADC leaders had done before the 2013 elections, that Zanu PF have already won the elections."If the people of Zimbabwe go into elections next year, they are, once again, going to lose; the elections are done!" To paraphrase SADC leaders' warning to MDC leaders in 2013.It was very foolish of Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to ignore SADC leaders' warning and contest the flawed July 2013 elections. Many Zimbabweans were not aware of SADC leaders' warning not to contest the elections with no reforms back in June 2013 but not this time; the majority of Zimbabweans now know the folly of contesting flawed elections.There is no point in anyone participating in the voter education, voter registration, attending political rallies and any other political activity because nothing we do will change the pre-determined election result  Mugabe winning the presidency and Zanu PF winning 2/3 majority in both houses. All our political activism now will only help to give the set result political credibility.There is no point in Zimbabweans complaining of Zanu PF rigging elections after participating in the elections, we know that with no democratic reforms in place Zanu PF will rig the elections, guaranteed. SADC leaders warned that Zanu PF would rig the 2013 elections in advance and we know the same will happen in next year's elections. The only logical thing to do is to refuse to take part in an election process we know in advance is flawed. It is better to refuse to take any part in a flawed process than to do so and give the process credibility!
Opinion / Columnist

Without even one democratic reform in place there is nothing to stop Zanu PF rigging next year's elections. The party will rig the vote just as readily as it rigged the July 2013 elections."If you go into elections, you are going to lose; the elections are done!" SADC leaders warned MDC leaders in June 2013, as a month before the July election.This time, SADC leaders might just as well be warning every Zimbabwean out there, with a bit of working grey stuff between their ears, of the folly of contesting next year's elections with no reforms in place. Like it or not the 2018 elections too "are done"!"The proliferation of political parties on the Zimbabwean political landscape may appear to be a demonstration of democratic space on the Zanu PF chocked political scene, but far from it," writes Mazviwanza Shiri, in Zimeye."It is certainly going to expunge the opposition's chances of dislodging the Zanu PF regime from its deep rooted tentacles of power. Zanu PF must be watching with zeal and glee, the disoriented and fragmented efforts of their opponents and smile all the way to an electoral triumph in 2018."Zanu PF first watched with "zeal and glee" Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends sitting there, throughout the five years of the GNU, like rabbits caught in the headlights and did nothing to implement the democratic reforms designed to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections. President Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies were very pleased to see MDC disregard SADC leaders' warning not to contest the 2013 elections with no reforms.The regime is thrilled to bits to see that the opposition camp has still learned nothing from the past and they are once again going to contest next year's election in total disregard of their own "No reform, no election!" resolutions! Who would not be rubbing their hands with "zeal and glee" when you have fools for opponents!Even if the opposition parties were all to unite to form one MDC Alliance or whatever; without reforms Zanu PF will still win next year's election. The key to dislodging Zanu PF from power is to stop the regime rigging the vote by implementing the democratic reforms.People like Shiri, here, are cherry-picking; they accept Zanu PF has been rigging elections but to further their argument of a united opposition (in this case), voter mobilisation, etc. as the key to dislodge Zanu PF from power. They pretend Zimbabwean elections are free and fair and the opposition will win the elections if they do not split the opposition vote.Shiri is making a mountain out of a mole-hill with all this talk of "proliferation of political parties". Most of the 50 or so political parties have no more than a handful of followers beyond their immediate family and friends. Take Welshman Ncube and Simba Makoni, for example, they have contested the presidential race in the past; they have failed to garner more than 10% of the vote.If we accepted the assumption that the 2013 elections were free, fair and credible; President Mugabe got 62% of the vote and, even if the opposition had fielded one candidate, Tsvangirai would have got 38% and still lost!As long as Zanu PF has the licence to rig the vote, the party will see to it that it wins the presidency and then the 2/3 majority, minimum, in parliament and in the senate.We have elections next year and the instinctive reaction is to participate, call for the opposition to unite, go the extra mile to make sure one registers to vote and then vote, etc. Of course, we have done all things before and still Zanu PF was gone on to win the elections with a landslide. After 37 years of rigged elections, reason tells us that there is something fundamental wrong here and we KNOW what it is too - Zanu PF rigs elections.By the time you, me and povo out there cast our vote  if we are even given a chance to do so  the result of the election is already known, "the elections are done" as SADC leaders would put it. So, all our effort going through all the torturous process of registering to vote, attending rallies, etc. are all a waste of time.Of course, it is madness to keep participating in an election process when one knows fully well that the process is flawed, illegal and the result is already pre-determined. But, of course, there are some insane people out there who, even after 37 years of rigged elections, will still want to participate hoping again hope that the result will be different. To them participating is the instinctive reaction as the primordial flight or fight; no amount of reason and logic can stop them participating.In this case participating in these flawed elections is not just an act of madness but, worse still, a mindless act of hara-kiri because by participating people are giving the flawed and illegal process the modicum of credibility.When the election result come out with the usual Zanu PF landslide victory it is comforting to the blissfully ignorant and naive to blame "proliferation of political parties" for the defeat! Trust me, there is no comfort to be had from burying one's head in the sand; not when one knew all along that contesting flawed elections for umpteenth time is a damn foolish thing to do!
Gardai are pursuing 300 lines of enquiry following the murder of a 30-year-old man and a mother of six in Ballymun in Dublin.

The incident happened at Balbutcher Drive on Wednesday. Gardai have recovered a second weapon in their investigation into the double murder.

Antoinette Corbally, 48, was shot several times at the front of her mother's home on Balbutcher Drive as the intended target, her convicted gunman brother Derek Devoy, fled the scene.

The second victim was Clinton Shannon, a locksmith from Swords, Dublin, and a friend of Derek Devoy's. He was hit by a number of bullets as he sat in a car on the street outside the property.

It is understood the weapons located by gardai - a handgun and a submachine gun - were located in one of two partially burnt-out vehicles. Gardai are particularly interested in the movements of the cars.

A large Garda presence remains in place in Ballymun, and armed patrols have been deployed.

Chief Superintendent Lorraine Wheatley described the victims as innocent and said officers were investigating more than 300 lines of inquiry since the broad daylight attack.

She thanked the local community in Ballymun for their support in the aftermath of the incident.

And she said: "I believe that there's lots of other information out there that may assist with this investigation.

"An innocent young man and a mother-of-six have been killed and we are appealing for the community to come forward."

Chief Superintendent Lorraine Wheatley and Detective Superintendent Colm Fox speaking to the media outside Ballymun Garda station in Dublin. Picture: PA

Detectives are trying to trace the movements of two cars used in the attack - a silver Opel Zafira with 08 LS 3101 registration plates, and a black Volkswagen Golf GTI with 06 LH 3466 registration plates.

A handgun and an automatic weapon, understood to be a machine gun, were used in the killings.

The front of Ms Corbally's house was riddled with bullets.

Gardai said additional armed patrols have been operating in the Ballymun area amid fears of retaliation for the murders.

"If people have any information on the intent to commit more crimes we would like them to come forward," Chief Supt Wheatley added.

Derek Devoy, known by the nickname Bottler, is believed to have been the target of the shooting and was released from jail in 2015.

He has convictions for a drive-by shooting in Ballymun, more than 10 years ago, and armed robbery.

His sister is not the first in the family to face a gangland onslaught.

His brother Mickey was shot dead and his body dumped in a lane in Tallaght, Dublin, in early 2014 after he had been freed from prison.

It is understood the brothers have been embroiled in long-running feuds over several years which have been linked to drug dealing, debts and personal disputes with rivals.

The latest incident was not being linked to the bloody gang war involving the Kinahan and Hutch crime gangs, which has seen more than 10 murders in Ireland and overseas in recent years.`

Anyone with information can contact the Garda confidential helpline on 1800 666 111.
Update 9.20pm: A second police officer has died the day after he and a colleague were shot during a scuffle with a suspect in Florida.

The Kissimmee Police Department said Sgt Sam Howard died on Saturday from his injuries.

His colleague, Officer Matthew Baxter, died Friday night after the attack in a neighbourhood of Kissimmee.

Police Chief Jeff O'Dell said Saturday that Everett Miller was arrested several hours after the shootings late on Friday.

During a patrol of the area south of Orlando's theme park hub, Mr Baxter and Mr Howard got into a scuffle with Miller, who shot them, the police chief said.

The officers did not have an opportunity to return fire.

Sheriff's deputies with a neighbouring law enforcement agency later found Miller in a bar and approached him.

Miller started reaching towards his waistband when the deputies tackled and subdued him, Mr O'Dell said.

They found a handgun and revolver on him. "They were extremely brave and heroic actions taken by the deputies," Mr O'Dell said.

Separately, other two officers were injured late on Friday in Jacksonville, Florida.

Police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where three other people were thought to be in danger.

One of the officers was shot in both hands and the other in the stomach.

AP

Update 3.45pm: A man has been charged after a police officer was shot dead in Florida and his partner gravely injured on the same night two other officers were shot elsewhere in the state.

A suspect over the fatal shooting was arrested several hours after the attack in a bar, authorities said.

Everett Miller faces a charge of first-degree murder over the killing of Officer Matthew Baxter and could face other charges over the wounding of Officer Sam Howard, said Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell.

Separately, another two officers were injured late on Friday in Jacksonville, Florida.

Police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where three other people were thought to be in danger.

One of the officers was shot in both hands and the other in the stomach.

During a patrol of the area south of Orlando's theme park hub late on Friday, Mr Baxter and Mr Howard got into a scuffle with Miller, who shot them, the police chief said.

The officers did not have an opportunity to return fire.

Sheriff's deputies with a neighbouring law enforcement agency later found Miller in a bar and approached him.

Miller started reaching towards his waistband when the deputies tackled and subdued him, Mr O'Dell said.

They found a handgun and revolver on him.

"They were extremely brave and heroic actions taken by the deputies," Mr O'Dell said.

The police chief said Miller would be taken to jail wearing the fallen officer's handcuffs.

Authorities originally said they believed there were four suspects, but the chief said no other arrests are anticipated.

Separately, other two officers were injured late on Friday in Jacksonville, Florida.

Police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where three other people were thought to be in danger.

One of the officers was shot in both hands and the other in the stomach.

AP

Earlier: Florida's governor has said he is "heartbroken to hear of the loss" of a police officer in Kissimmee, in the centre of the state.

Rick Scott said another two officers who were shot in the northern city of Jacksonville were "in danger".

The Kissimmee police department said the two officers were shot in the central Palmway and Cypress area, but did not immediately disclose further details.

Kissimmee's police chief said one police officer was killed and another injured in the shooting, with three suspects in custody and one being sought.

Jeff O'Dell said at a news conference on Saturday morning that officers Sam Howard and Matthew Baxter were checking people in an area of Kissimmee known for drug activity when they were shot.

They did not have an opportunity to return fire.

He said Mr Baxter died later in a hospital, and Mr Howard was in a serious condition in hospital.

Kissimmee is about 23 miles south of Orlando.
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant, v. LEON CARTER, Defendant - Appellee. No. 16-16829 Decided: August 18, 2017

Before MARTIN, JORDAN, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

Leon Carter, who pled guilty to one count of illegal firearm possession, appeals his classification as an armed career criminal under the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C.  924(e). The government, maintaining that Mr. Carter was correctly classified as an armed career criminal, appeals Mr. Carter's 96-month sentence on the ground that the district court lacked a legal basis to impose a sentence below ACCA's 180-month mandatory minimum.

Because neither party objected to the adverse district court decision now being appealed, we review for plain error. See, e.g., United States v. Raad, 406 F.3d 1322, 1323 (11th Cir. 2005). Following a review of the record and the parties' briefs, we conclude that the district court did not plainly err in classifying Mr. Carter as an armed career criminal, but that it committed plain error when it imposed a sentence below the ACCA statutory minimum.

I

Plain error occurs where (1) there is an error; (2) that is plain or obvious; (3) affecting the defendant's substantial rights in that it was prejudicial and not harmless; and (4) that seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public reputation of the judicial proceedings. United States v. Hall, 314 F.3d 565, 566 (11th Cir. 2002). [W]here the explicit language of a statute or rule does not specifically resolve an issue, there can be no plain error where there is no precedent from the Supreme Court or this Court directly resolving it. United States v. Lejarde-Rada, 319 F.3d 1288, 1291 (11th Cir. 2003).

II

Mr. Carter contends that the district court plainly erred by classifying him as an armed career criminal. Because he pled guilty to a federal firearms offense, Mr. Carter qualifies as an armed career criminal if he has three previous convictions  for a violent felony or a serious drug offense, or both, committed on occasions different from one another. 18 U.S.C.  924(e)(1). He argues that his prior Georgia convictionsincluding for aggravated assault, sale of a controlled substance, and conspiracy to distribute a controlled substancedo not count as ACCA predicate offenses. Mr. Carter, however, has not cited any Supreme Court or Eleventh Circuit cases holding that his prior Georgia convictions do not qualify as ACCA predicate offenses, and we are not aware of any such decisions. See Br. of Leon Carter at 2131. He therefore cannot establish that the district court committed plain error. See Lejarde-Rada, 319 F.3d at 1291.

III

The government argues that the district court plainly erred in sentencing Mr. Carter below the 180-month mandatory minimum prescribed by ACCA. Mr. Carter concedes that, if he qualifies as an armed career criminal, his 96-month sentence constitutes plain error. See Br. of Leon Carter at 13. Because we have already decided that his classification as an armed career criminal does not constitute plain error, this should be the end of the inquiry. Mr. Carter, however, urges us not to exercise our discretion under plain-error review to correct his sentence on the ground that various countervailing factors, id. at 14, demonstrate that the district court's error does not seriously affect[ ] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of the judicial proceedings. Hall, 314 F.3d at 566.

But our precedent says just the opposite. In United States v. Clark, 274 F.3d 1325, 132526, 1328 (11th Cir. 2001), the defendant was convicted of an offense that carried a statutory minimum sentence of 240 months' imprisonment, but the district court imposed a 150-month sentence. The government appealed, arguing that the district court erred in imposing a sentence below the statutory minimum without a legal basis (such as when the government files a substantial assistance motion or the defendant qualifies for safety valve relief under 18 U.S.C.  3553(f)).

We reviewed the sentence for plain error because the government had failed to object to the sentence at the district court, and concluded that the district court's imposition of a sentence that is less than two-thirds of the statutorily-required minimum constituted plain error. Clark, 274 F.3d at 1329. In reaching this conclusion, we explained that the sentence imposed, which we described as an extraordinary downward departure from the mandatory minimum, show[ed] a disregard for governing law, diminishe[d] the fairness of the criminal sentencing scheme by allowing disparate sentences to be imposed on similarly-situated defendants, and undermine[d] the integrity and public reputation of the judicial system. Id. Similarly, we have also vacated and remanded for re-sentencing where a defendant's sentence exceeded the statutory maximum, on the ground that the imposition of such a sentence constitutes plain error and affects the defendant's substantial rights as well as the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of the judicial proceedings. See, e.g., United States v. Sanchez, 586 F.3d 918, 930 (11th Cir. 2009).

Mr. Carter's sentence, which stands at nearly half the statutorily-required minimum, presents the same systemic problems to the fairness and integrity of the judicial proceedings as the sentence in Clark. Our decision in Clark therefore forecloses Mr. Carter's argument that the fourth prong of the plain-error analysis favors discretionary refusal on our part to correct his sentence. See also United States v. Castaing-Sosa, 530 F.3d 1358, 1361 (11th Cir. 2008) (reversing, under de novo review, a sentence that was only two-thirds the mandatory minimum). Accordingly, we vacate Mr. Carter's sentence and remand this case to the district court for re-sentencing.

AFFIRMED IN PART, AND VACATED AND REMANDED IN PART.

PER CURIAM:
Update 2.45pm:The Spanish government has said it will reinforce security at tourist hotspots across the country.

However, it said the terror cell responsible for attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils has been dismantled and that there is no immediate threat. A manhunt for one suspect is ongoing.

The country's Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said: We all came to an agreement that the terror cell has been dismantled, given the deaths of some of the suspects and the arrests that have taken place already.

Meanwhile, French authorities are boosting border checks on people arriving from Spain.

On Friday it emerged another suspect Moussa Oukabir, who is thought to have rented the van, was among five men shot dead as they launched a second attack in the coastal town of Cambrils.

The teenager, said to be 17 or 18 years old, is suspected of using his brother's documents to hire the vehicle that ploughed through pedestrians in the tourist hotspot on Thursday evening.

He reportedly died along with Said Aallaa, 19, and Mohamed Hychami, 24, who were part of a group that mounted a similar attack in Cambrils that left one woman dead and six people injured.

The identities of the other two dead jihadists are yet to be confirmed by police.

Four men, aged 21, 27, 28 and 34, who were arrested in connection with the attack remain in custody.

Three are Moroccan and one Spanish, and police said none of them was previously known to the security services for terror-related reasons.

Moussa Oukabir's older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reported to be one of those detained.

Earlier:

Spanish police hunting for the driver of the van used in the Barcelona attack are focusing their efforts on a 22-year-old Moroccan national, according to reports.

Younes Abouyaaqoub is said to be at the centre of the investigation into the massacre on Las Ramblas that left 13 dead and at nearly 130 injured.

According to Spanish newspaper El Pais, police in Catalonia said they were searching for the man, who is understood to be a key member of a jihadist cell.

On Friday it emerged that another suspect Moussa Oukabir, who is thought to have rented the van, was among five men shot dead as they launched a second attack in the coastal town of Cambrils.

The teenager, said to be 17 or 18 years old, is suspected of using his brother's documents to hire the vehicle that ploughed through pedestrians in the tourist hotspot on Thursday evening.

He reportedly died along with Said Aallaa, 19, and Mohamed Hychami, 24, who were part of a group that mounted a similar attack in Cambrils that left one woman dead and six people injured.

The identities of the other two dead jihadists are yet to be confirmed by police.

Four men, aged 21, 27, 28 and 34, who were arrested in connection with the attack remain in custody.

Three are Moroccan and one Spanish, and police said none of them was previously known to the security services for terror-related reasons.

Moussa Oukabir's older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reported to be one of those detained.

Some 34 nationalities were among almost 130 people wounded in the attacks in Las Ramblas and in Cambrils, which lies around 70 miles to the south west.

Local authorities have identified six of the victims of the Barcelona attack as an Italian, one Portuguese, three Spanish and one Spanish-Argentine.

The victim of the second assault in Cambrils has been identified as a Spanish woman.

Relatives of a UK-born, dual nationality seven-year-old boy who became separated from his mother during the Barcelona attack are continuing to appeal for information.

The father and grandmother of Julian Alessandro Cadman are travelling to Spain from Australia as the wait for news continues, family member Debbie Cadman said.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull urged his compatriots to pray for the youngster.

"There's a little Australian boy whose mother was badly injured and he is lost, he's missing in Barcelona," Mr Turnbull said.

Four Australians were injured in the attack, the country's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said one Canadian was killed and four injured during the attacks.

He said: "We join Spain and countries around the world in grieving the senseless loss of so many innocent people.

"We must stand firm against the spread of hate and intolerance in all its forms. These violent acts that seek to divide us will only strengthen our resolve."

Authorities said 59 people injured in the attacks were still in hospital on Friday night, with 15 in a critical condition and 25 in a serious condition.

It comes after police revealed the terrorists behind the rampage were preparing bigger attacks, with a suspected gas explosion on Wednesday at a house in Alcanar believed to have robbed the killers of materials to use in larger-scale operations.

Reports from Spain had earlier suggested the terror cell may have been planning an attack using gas canisters.

Catalan regional police official Josep Lluis Trapero told reporters on Friday: "We think they were preparing at least one or more attacks in Barcelona.

"The explosion in Alcanar at least avoided some of the material they were counting on to carry out even bigger attacks than the ones that happened.

"Because of that the attack in Barcelona and the one in Cambrils were carried out in a bit more rudimentary way than the one they had initially planned."

Police are also looking for a white Kangoo vehicle which is believed to have been rented by the suspects and could have crossed the border into France, according to French media.

The attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils took place around eight hours apart on Thursday afternoon and in the early hours of Friday.

In an echo of the London Bridge attack in June, Catalonia president Carles Puigdemont said the five terrorists in the Cambrils car were wearing fake suicide belts when they were stopped.

Police revealed that an axe and knives were also found in the vehicle, with one of the latter used to wound one person in the face before the terrorists were gunned down.

Barcelona came to a halt at noon on Friday as a minute's silence was observed in the Placa Catalunya, close to the scene of the attack, followed by applause for the victims.
The terrorists behind deadly attacks in Spain that killed 14 people were preparing bigger atrocities than those they carried out, police said.

As a fourth arrest was made in connection with the deadly vehicle assaults in Barcelona and Cambrils, authorities revealed that a suspected gas explosion on Wednesday robbed the killers of materials to use in larger-scale operations.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said a child with dual British nationality was believed to be among those unaccounted for, after a grandfather made a desperate online plea for information about his young grandson's whereabouts following the van attack in the Catalan capital.

Some 34 nationalities were among almost 130 people wounded in the attacks in Barcelona's popular Las Ramblas shopping area on Thursday and in Cambrils, a seaside town 70 miles to the south west, early on Friday.

Catalan regional police official Josep Lluis Trapero told reporters on Friday that Wednesday's blast at a house in Alcanar, a further 55 miles down the coast, meant the attacks were more "rudimentary" than planned.

Reports from Spain had earlier suggested the terror cell may have been planning an attack using gas canisters.

He said: "We are working on the hypothesis that these attacks were being prepared for a while around this private home in Alcanar.

"We think they were preparing at least one or more attacks in Barcelona.

"The explosion in Alcanar at least avoided some of the material they were counting on to carry out even bigger attacks than the ones that happened.

"Because of that the attack in Barcelona and the one in Cambrils were carried out in a bit more rudimentary way than the one they had initially planned."

He added that one of the five terrorists killed by police during the terror attack in Cambrils may have been the driver of the van which killed 13 people in Barcelona.

Four men are in custody, aged 21, 27, 28 and 34. Three are Moroccan and one Spanish, and police said none of them were previously known to the security services for terror-related reasons.

Meanwhile, the grandfather of seven-year-old Julian Alessandro Cadman made a plea for information about the boy, who became separated from his mother during the attack in Barcelona.

Tony Cadman, whose Facebook profile says he lives in Sydney and is from Gillingham, Dorset, posted a photograph of Julian, writing: "My grandson, Julian Alessandro Cadman is missing. Please like and share."

Speaking later from Chequers, Mrs May said: "The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Spain in confronting and dealing with the evil of terrorism, and I have offered any assistance we can provide.

"Sadly I must tell you that we do believe that a number of British nationals were caught up in the attack and we are urgently looking into reports of a child believed missing, who is a British dual national."

The attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, some 70 miles south-west of the city on the Mediterranean coast, took place around eight hours apart on Thursday afternoon and in the early hours of Friday.

In a chilling echo of the London Bridge attack in June, Catalonia president Carles Puigdemont said the five terrorists in the Cambrils car were wearing fake suicide belts when they were stopped.

Police revealed that an axe and knives were also found in the vehicle, with one of the latter used to wound one person in the face before the terrorists were gunned down.

Barcelona, a hugely popular tourist destination, came to a halt at noon on Friday (11am BST) as a minute's silence was observed in the Placa Catalunya, close to the scene of the attack.

Led by King Felipe and PM Mariano Rajoy, the silence was followed by applause for the victims.

King Felipe of Spain, second from right, and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, third from right, arrive for a minute of silence in memory of the terrorist attacks victims in Las Ramblas, Barcelona.

Three days of mourning have been declared by the government of Catalonia.

The Queen sent a message of sympathy to King Filipe of Spain, saying: "It is deeply upsetting when innocent people are put at risk in this way when going about their daily lives."

Mossos, Catalonia's police force, said on Friday evening that it was continuing to work to identify the driver of the vehicle in Barcelona.

Spanish police were said to be hunting for four men in connection with the attacks, including Moussa Oukabir, who is suspected of using his brother's documents to rent the van which ploughed through pedestrians.

But a union official for Spain's Civil Guard told the Associated Press that police had confirmed Oukabir was one of five suspected terrorists killed in Cambrils.

Moussa Oukabir.

His older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reported to be one of those arrested following the attack.

According to French media, police are also looking for a white Kangoo vehicle which is believed to have been rented by the suspects and could have crossed the border into France.

Local authorities said they have identified six of the victims of the Barcelona attack. One is Italian, one is Portuguese, three are Spanish and one is Spanish-Argentine.

The victim of the second attack in Cambrils on Friday morning has been identified as a Spanish woman.
Zimbabwe has blocked flights by South Africa's government-owned airline amid tensions over allegations that Zimbabwe's first lady assaulted a young model.

South Africa's government said it had not yet decided to grant the Zimbabwe government's request for diplomatic immunity for Grace Mugabe.

She has not commented on the allegations.

Local media reported that Mrs Mugabe was expected to attend a regional summit with 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe in South Africa's capital, Pretoria.

It would be her first public appearance since the alleged assault in a luxury Johannesburg hotel on Sunday night.

Gabriella Engels, 20, has claimed that Mrs Mugabe whipped her with an extension cord, cutting her forehead.

Her lawyers have threatened to go to court if immunity is granted.

Foreign ministry spokesman Nelson Kgwete said South Africa was still considering the request. "Decision yet to be made," he said in a text message.

South African police have issued a "red alert" at borders to ensure Mrs Mugabe does not leave undetected.

Police also say their investigation is complete but needs a government decision on the immunity appeal.

South African Airways said Zimbabwe had placed restrictions on its operations, affecting its flights between the neighbouring countries.

It said its flight from Zimbabwe's capital to Johannesburg was unable to take off as scheduled on Saturday morning. Another flight from Johannesburg to Harare has been cancelled.

South African Airways said Zimbabwean authorities were demanding a "foreign operators permit".

It said it has been flying to and from Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and the permit was never required until Saturday morning.

Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe chief executive David Chawota did not specify the "issues" requiring attention. "The South Africans know what should be done in terms of processes," he said.

The scandal over Mrs Mugabe is a sensitive issue for South Africa as it weighs the possible diplomatic fallout from Zimbabwe if it acts against the first lady and the likely outrage at home if it grants immunity and allows her to leave.

Some demonstrators protested on Saturday in Pretoria against Mr Mugabe and his wife, saying she should be prosecuted.

It is not clear whether Mrs Mugabe entered South Africa on a personal or diplomatic passport. Zimbabwe's state-owned newspaper reported last weekend that she was in South Africa for medical care.

But she told police after the alleged assault that she was scheduled to attend the summit with her husband.

- AP
That, fortunately, is so. Society is facing the undeniable physical fact that not all people are born fully male or female and even that differences in gender identity can be very real. Despite that, those who are different will always face extra problems.

Kimberly Le Lievre opened with the words, "Gender and sexuality are no longer binary and rigid concepts like they once were" ("Four Canberrans on what it's like being gender and sexually diverse", Sunday CT, online, August 13).

Changing the legal meaning of a word will not remove problems, bigotry or homophobia. For instance, would a girl be obliged to disclose the lack of ovaries before marriage? Would it be homophobic to collect demographic, social, legal and medical matters statistics on the sexually diverse?

Not even the sexually diverse can agree on the difference. Is it LGBTI or LGBTIQ? Does T stand for trans-sexual or transvestite? Is bisexual used in the medical or the lay sense? As the French say, "Viva la difference", be it of fact, taste or opinion.

Gary J. Wilson, Macgregor

The availability of the contraceptive pill in the late 1960s and 1970s allowed heterosexual baby boomers to throw off the religious-inspired sexual repression that had shackled their parents' generation. Most of us flouted the religious constraint against "sex out of wedlock" (even Tony Abbott), many of us "lived in sin" and some of us even "committed adultery".

Yet gay men continued to be persecuted in Australia just for being gay. On June 24, 1978, participants in the first Sydney Gay Mardi Gras parade were arrested and bashed by NSW police officers. And up until the early '90s gay men risked being prosecuted and imprisoned for "unnatural sexual acts" simply for engaging in consensual sex. Although most baby boomers adopted a "live and let live" philosophy in relation to consensual heterosexual practices, it has taken us longer than it should have to become politically attuned to the injustices that the LGBTI community has suffered. Conservative members of the Coalition government are hoping that a significant proportion of baby boomers have morphed into clones of their straitlaced parents and, therefore, won't support marriage equality in the voluntary postal survey. Given that many baby boomers would know (and have some feelings of empathy and compassion) for at least one LGBTI relative, friend, work colleague or acquaintance who deserves marriage equality, i.e. exactly the same statutory right to marry under the Marriage Act as heterosexual couples, I'm hoping that conservative government members have badly misread my generation.
Humble honey could be the cure to slowing the spread of superbugs and antibiotic resistance.

With drug-resistant infections expected to kill an estimated 10 million people by 2050, scientists across the globe are working to tackle the problem and among their ranks, Sydney scientist Nural Cokcetin has something to buzz about.

As bacteria continue to evolve and fight off antibiotics, Dr Cokcetin's lab studies have conclusively found bacteria and some superbugs are unable to resist the medicinal properties of honey.

"It's so exciting that honey has been around for thousands of years and the bacteria still have not learned ways to become resistant to it," she said after presenting her findings at the University of Technology Sydney during Science Week.
With much fanfare, the May budget announced a relaxation of the rules on superannuation contributions that would allow downsizing retirees to place up to $300,000 each in super irrespective of their ages and current super balance.

In announcing the change, Treasurer Scott Morrison said, "the measure reduces a barrier to downsizing for older people  It may also enable more effective use of housing stock  freeing up larger homes for younger, growing families."

Downsizing to a unit can reduce the cost of maintaining a house and garden. Credit:James Brickwood

There is no doubt that there comes a time when moving from the long-held family home comes to front of mind. When I was in private practice I continually heard, "There are now just the two of us rattling around in a house that has become far too big for us since the kids left. And the increasing maintenance costs are really eating into our savings."

So, the motivation is there, but if like most Australians they receive a part age pension, they will be reluctant to move because the tighter assets test means they could lose up to $7800 a year for each $100,000 converted to financial investments.
Australia's largest wind farm will be built to the north of the Bunya Mountains, about 250 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, after final details were confirmed last week.

The Queensland Government approved the project in March 2017, but it has been enlarged to boost the number of turbines from 115 to 123 huge turbines.

How wind turbine near Bunya Mountains would appear in 2019.

Each wind turbine has a diameter as wide as two Boeing 777 jets.

They will be visible from the northern, elevated section of the national park, although not from the walking trails, a report for the co-ordinator general says.
United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. WILBUR SENAT, a/k/a Wilby Wilbur Senat, Appellant No. 16-2535 Decided: August 17, 2017

Before: McKEE, AMBRO, and RESTREPO, Circuit Judges

OPINION*

Wilbur Senat appeals his convictions for sex trafficking involving a child in violation of 18 U.S.C.  1591(a) and transportation of a minor to engage in prostitution in violation of 18 U.S.C.  2423(a). Senat argues that the District Court erred by (1) prohibiting cross-examination of the minor victim regarding her previous sexual encounters, (2) admitting evidence of other crimes Senat and others had committed, and (3) admitting a bus schedule into evidence without proper authentication. We reject each argument and affirm the convictions.

I.

The facts of this case are both detailed and disturbing, and we will not repeat them all here. The broad strokes of the events that led to the conviction of Wilbur Senat for child trafficking and transportation are as follows. Senat coerced or lured fifteen-year-old girl S.C. from her home in Haverstraw, New York, where she lived with her aunt and uncle. After Senat threatened S.C.'s family, she consented to travel with Senat to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, via New Jersey. In Philadelphia, Senat kept S.C. in a house with no electricity or running water, where Senat and his co-defendant forced S.C. to have sex for money. When she was uncooperative, she was beaten and chained to a pole in the basement. Eventually, another pimp, Samuel Verrier (or Dre), took S.C. and forced her to strip and have sex for money for several weeks. Police found S.C. when she was arrested in Bordentown, New Jersey, with Verrier and another pimp.

Senat was subsequently arrested and ultimately found guilty of trafficking and transportation and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. He appeals.

II.

Senat first argues that the District Court violated his Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause rights when he was prohibited from cross-examining minor victim S.C. regarding two prior allegations of rape. This argument is waived, and, alternatively, it fails on the merits.

Senat argues that in the past, S.C. falsely alleged that four individuals raped her: her father; Alex Alsope; Armante Smith; and an individual named Davante. The Court permitted cross as to two of those allegations (those against S.C.'s father and Alex Alsope) because S.C. admitted the allegations were false, and the government waived any objection. Regarding the latter two allegations, however, S.C. maintained that the allegations were true. Defense counsel responded that she was just concerned about the lies and thereafter did not pursue a Rule 412 hearing. In short, Senat agreed to the ruling he now challenges on appeal. His argument is therefore waived.

Moreover, even if it had been preserved, Senat could not establish plain error. The Confrontation Clause does not limit a district court's wide latitude  to impose reasonable limits on such cross-examination, including limits based on harassment, prejudice, confusion of the issues, the witness' safety, or interrogation that is repetitive or only marginally relevant. Here, evidence of S.C.'s allegations of rape would have had little probative value. Moreover, the District Court did allow Senat to disclose that S.C. had previously lied about being rapedevidence that supported his defense. Accordingly, the District Court committed no error in exercising its discretion to exclude evidence of S.C.'s unrelated sexual behavior pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 412.

Senat next argues that the District Court committed plain error under Rule 404(b) by admitting evidence of his and other pimps' prior crimes. We consider each in turn.

Senat argues that it was plain error to permit S.C. to testify about an incident in which she thought she heard Senat shoot another person. S.C. specifically testified that she was in a van with Senat and his friends when the van parked and Senat got out of the car. S.C. then heard two gunshots, and Senat ran back to the van. S.C. also testified that Senat told her later that she had seen and heard something she wasn't supposed to hear or see and that if S.C. didn't leave for Philadelphia with him he would hurt her and her family. Senat argues that there was no purpose in admitting this evidence and the evidence was not relevant to an issue in the trial. We disagree.

While Rule 404(b) prohibits the admission of evidence of a crime, wrong, or other act in order to show the character of the defendant, relevant evidence with a proper evidentiary purpose may be admitted. If uncharged misconduct directly proves the charged offense, it is not evidence of some other crime under Rule 404(b). Here, the fact that S.C. heard gunshots that she thought Senat fired, coupled with Senat's subsequent threats, demonstrate how Senat was able to maintain[ ] S.C. for the purpose of commercial sex under 18 U.S.C.  1591(a). Therefore, the Court did not commit plain error in allowing the admission of this evidence.

Senat also argues that, under Rule 404(b) and Rule 403, the District Court improperly admitted S.C.'s testimony that after she was taken from Senat, other pimps forced her to strip and have sex for money before police returned her to her family. We again disagree.

As we have explained, the purpose of Rule 404(b) is simply to keep from the jury evidence that the defendant is prone to commit crimes or is otherwise a bad person. Because other pimps' actions do not adversely reflect on Senat's character, Rule 404(b) is not implicated here. In fact, defense counsel used evidence of Verrier's actions to portray him as the only real pimp in this case, contrasting him with Senat, whom defense counsel portrayed as simply S.C.'s ticket out of Haverstraw to run away from her strict aunt and uncle.

Nor did the Court commit plain error by failing to exclude the evidence under Rule 403 balancing. Criminal actions of other pimps are minimally prejudicial to Senat, and the testimony was relevant to why she was arrested and why she initially lied to the police. As we have explained, when a trial court is not given the opportunity to exercise its discretion in striking the [Rule 403] balance, we will seldom find plain error. This case is no exception.

Finally, Senat argues that the District Court erred when it admitted a Greyhound bus schedule into evidence to establish the route S.C. and Senat's bus took to get from New York to Philadelphia. He contends that the bus schedule was not properly authenticated because it was introduced through a government expert who had no personal knowledge of the bus route. Senat claims the witness was therefore not qualified to testify regarding this issue.

This argument is frivolous. Rule 902(11) provides that records of a regularly conducted activity that meet the requirements of the business record exception in Rule 803(6) may be authenticated by way of a certificate from the records custodian. Bus schedules are obviously records of a regularly conducted business activity under Rule 803. Whether the bus actually followed the route on the schedule goes to the weight, not the admissibility, of the evidence. Therefore, the bus schedule was properly admitted with a certification under Rule 902(11), and it was not necessary that the witness introducing the document otherwise authenticate it.

III.

For the reasons set forth above, we affirm the judgment of the District Court.

FOOTNOTES

. The District Court had jurisdiction pursuant to 18 U.S.C.  3231. We have appellate jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C.  1291.

. App. 9091.

. See United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 733 (1993) ( [W]aiver is the intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right.  (quoting Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464 (1938)).

. Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(b).

. United States v. JohnBaptiste, 747 F.3d 186, 211 (3d Cir. 2014) (quoting United States v. Mussare, 405 F.3d 161, 169 (3d Cir. 2005)).

. See United States v. Tail, 459 F.3d 854, 86061 (8th Cir. 2006) (affirming the district court's exclusion of a sexual abuse victim's prior rape allegations that were not demonstrably false because they had only limited probative value).

. Id. at 861.

. App. 112.

. Appellant's Br. 26.

. Fed. R. Evid. 404(b).

. United States v. Green, 617 F.3d 233, 249 (3d Cir. 2010).

. Id.

. Although we ultimately agree that this evidence was relevant to showing threats and coercion, we think it is just barely beyond the reach of Rule 404(b). Given other evidence that was admitted to show the nature of the relationship between S.C. and Senat, the District Court would have been well advised to bar evidence of this incident. Nevertheless, given our standard of review, we cannot conclude that it was plain error to allow it into evidence.

. Appellant's Br. 25.

. Green, 617 F.3d at 249 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted).

. App. 57, 572.

. See Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 189 (1997) ( People who hear a story interrupted by gaps of abstraction may be puzzled at the missing chapters, and jurors asked to rest a momentous decision on the story's truth can feel put upon at being asked to take responsibility knowing that more could be said than they have heard.).

. United States v. Gatto, 995 F.2d 449, 457 (3d Cir. 1993).

. Specifically, the bus schedule was evidence that Senat and S.C.'s bus was routed through New Jersey, where the case was brought. App. 425. Because the introduction of the schedule was objected to at trial, our review of the District Court's interpretation of the Federal Rules of Evidence is plenary. United States v. Browne, 834 F.3d 403, 408 (3d Cir. 2016).

. Appellant's Br. 33.

. Appellant's Br. 2930.

. Fed. R. Evid. 902(11).

. We also note that Senat likely waived any argument that the record does not meet the elements of Rule 803 based on defense counsel's characterization of her objection at trial. App. 422 (I understand it's a business record. My objection was that I just didn't think this was the appropriate person to be asking these question[s].).

. See United States v. Catabran, 836 F.2d 453, 458 (9th Cir. 1988) (Any question as to the accuracy of the [records]  would have affected only the weight of the [records], not their admissibility.).

McKEE, Circuit Judge.
Car ownership in Brisbane is predicted to decline as inner-city residents favour pay-as-you-drive schemes over the expenses associated with purchasing and keeping a car.

RACQ head of technical and safety policy Steve Spalding has predicted a "Netflix for cars", where memberships allow drivers to use cars when they want without having to own one, would grow in popularity in Brisbane in the future.

On-street car parking in suburbs such as Teneriffe is in short supply. Credit:Michelle Smith

"It's important residents have multiple transport options that suit them, and car sharing schemes can be a part of that," Mr Spalding said.

"A lot of people, particularly those who live and work in or close to the city, don't need a car every day, so a 'pay when you drive' option may well be suitable for them."
Building cladding that coats about 13 per cent of Logan Hospital has failed initial combustion tests and will be subject to further analysis, the Queensland government has confirmed.

Housing and Public Works Minister Mick de Brenni confirmed the cladding was not up to scratch on Saturday, after Audit Taskforce assessments completed at the University of Queensland could not confirm the level of fire retardation.

The State Government has confirmed parts of the cladding used at Logan Hospital have failed initial tests at the University of Queensland. Credit:Facebook

"The initial results indicate that all the materials demonstrated some degree of fire retardation or capacity to self-extinguish, however each product was capable of ignition," he said.

"Independent fire engineers have been engaged by the taskforce to analyse the initial findings and determine what measures should be taken next."
Women are flying interstate to obtain abortions because of Queensland's restrictive laws.

University of Queensland School of Law professor Heather Douglas said abortion was in the Queensland criminal code, but was allowed when a doctor believed a woman's physical or mental health was in serious danger.

Women are flying interstate to access abortions, a UQ law professor says.

"So it's actually quite narrow, it doesn't cover the kind of considerations like, for example, foetal abnormality," she said.

Professor Douglas said abortion was "radical" in Queensland and some women had difficulty gaining access.
Humans could have lived and thrived in inhospitable conditions in south Asia 20,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Research conducted on the Indonesian island of Sumatra showed signs of modern human life between 63,000 to 73,000 years ago and an ability to survive challenging rainforest conditions.

The cave had animal remains from types of ape which could only survive in rainforest conditions - suggesting to researchers the area was covered by rainforest at the time. Credit:Penny Stephens

Griffith University academic Julien Louyes said humans living in a rainforest was thought not to be possible until the last few thousand years.

"Sourcing enough carbohydrates and proteins in dense canopy forests requires sophisticated hunting technology and knowledge that the first humans out of Africa would not have possessed," Dr Louyes said.
A project to get 3500 container trucks off the roads each day has been revived following a three-year freeze on the cash while the state government negotiated leasing the Port of Melbourne.

The port-rail shuttle project has had $58 million in federal and state money set aside for it since 2014, but the money has remained untouched.

Melbourne has the busiest port in Australia. Credit:Jessica Shapiro

Now with planning for the West Gate Tunnel in full swing  a project that will see an increase of up to 7000 trucks per day in some inner-western suburbs  the government is kick-starting the plan to transfer container freight from trucks to trains.

It also comes as new port owner the Lonsdale Consortium predicts the port could grow to handle between 12 and 15 million containers a year, up from 2.6 million.
If the 1400 workers at Emerson Electric's headquarters in St Louis, Missouri choose to head out and watch the solar eclipse at work on Monday US time, they'll get a pair of company-issued ISO-certified glasses and some detailed guidelines to follow.

"You must walk to your viewing location without looking at the sky," the manufacturing company will tell its employees in a bulletted instruction sheet.

A full moon rises above the 5th Century B.C. Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounio, south of Athens. Credit:AP

Then, "turn your back to the sun, bend over, and then put on your solar eclipse glasses." When it's over, reverse the instructions and "walk back into the building without looking up at the sky."

Such careful precautions are just one way businesses are grappling with what's sure to be a major disruption in many workplaces come Monday. The first solar eclipse to cross the continental United States in nearly a century comes at an especially inopportune time for many employers.
Washington: US President Donald Trump fired chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday, the White House announced, ending the turbulent tenure of a rabble-rousing conservative media entrepreneur and political activist who was a darling of Trump's base.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."

A source familiar with the decision, which had been under consideration for a while, said Bannon had been given an opportunity to depart on his own terms.
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. MARIA GLORIA ORTIZ-LICONA, Petitioner v. JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS, III, U. S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent No. 16-60268 Decided: August 17, 2017

Before JOLLY, OWEN, and HAYNES, Circuit Judges.

Maria Gloria Ortiz-Licona, a native and citizen of Honduras, has filed a petition for review of the order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) affirming the denial of her application for withholding of removal. Ortiz-Licona contends that she demonstrated past persecution and a clear probability of future persecution based on the cumulative effects of her ex-husband's mistreatment of her. She also challenges the determination of the BIA that any persecution would not be on account of her membership in a particular social group.

Although Ortiz-Licona testified that her ex-husband engaged in verbal and psychological abuse and mistreated her with respect to the marital home, the record does not compel the conclusion that his conduct rose to the extreme level required to constitute persecution. See Tesfamichael v. Gonzales, 469 F.3d 109, 116 (5th Cir. 2006); Eduard v. Ashcroft, 379 F.3d 182, 188 (5th Cir. 2004).

Substantial evidence also supports the BIA's determination with respect to the likelihood of future persecution. Ortiz-Licona did not present evidence of any specific threat by her ex-husband should she return to Honduras. Additionally, after her ex-husband's abusive conduct began, she lived in Honduras for about 10 years without suffering harm rising to the level of persecution. Her children and other family members also continue to live in Honduras without harm amounting to persecution. See Tesfamichael, 469 F.3d at 116; Eduard, 379 F.3d at 188.

The BIA's determination that Ortiz-Licona failed to make the requisite showing regarding persecution is supported by substantial evidence. We therefore need not reach her argument regarding membership in a particular social group.

The petition for review is DENIED.

PER CURIAM:*
Bucks County schools help Give a Christmas reach local families in need

In its 64-year history, the Give-a-Christmas drive has raised $5.26 million to help thousands of families at the holiday season.
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...
August 16, 2017

CAIRO  Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi started his tour in Africa Aug. 14 and is scheduled to visit four countries, including Chad, Gabon, Rwanda and Tanzania. The visit comes after Cairo failed to persuade the African countries to take a stance against Qatar during the African Summit in Addis Ababa July 4 as part of its efforts to step up its measures against Qatar on the international arena through the United Nations.

Cairo is currently increasing its diplomatic talks in Africa to convince the African states to stand up against Qatar. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met with his Algerian counterpart, Abdelkader Messahel, in Cairo Aug. 2, and the two exchanged opinions about the Qatar crisis and discussed the latest developments of the Libyan stalemate. Shoukry then left Cairo on the same day to Khartoum to hold bilateral deliberations with Sudans Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour, and the Qatari crisis topped their agenda.

On the sidelines of the African Summit, Shoukry met with several African presidents to persuade them to lean toward Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain by boycotting Qatar. The president of Guinea, Alpha Conde, who is the current head of the African Union, gave the opening speech at the summit in which he called on all African countries to unify their stances on the Gulf crisis and end it peacefully.

Most African countries have strong relations with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, especially Sudan and Eritrea, both of which are part of the Saudi-led coalition against Yemen. The two (Sudan and Eritrea) announced impartiality in the Gulf crisis  a stance that most African states also took. Only a few states like Senegal, Djibouti, Comoros, Mauritania and Gabon backed Saudi Arabia by severing ties with Qatar, withdrawing their ambassadors and reducing diplomatic representation in Qatar.

Media reports indicated that Algeria clashed the most with Egypt in the latters attempts to reach an African stance against Qatar during the African Summit. According to the same reports, most African leaders who attended the summit in Ethiopia agreed that the Gulf crisis is a purely Gulf matter that nobody should meddle with.

Shoukry announced during a joint press conference with the Algerian foreign minister on Aug. 2 that in all his meetings he lays out the developments of the Qatari crisis, Egypts struggles in fighting terrorism and the importance of the international community addressing terrorism. He noted that he would bring up this issue with transparency during his visit to Sudan on that same day.

Ever since the outbreak of the Gulf crisis, Egyptian media outlets have doubted Sudans impartiality. The doubts multiplied after Sudan reacted to Al Jazeera's complaint about the statements of Sudanese Minister of Information Ahmed Bilal Osman on July 12. Osman had said that the channel wants to topple the regime in Egypt. In the wake of the statements, the Sudanese parliament summoned Osman for questioning and asked him to officially apologize to the channel.

Osman indeed apologized to Al Jazeera at a time when shutting down the channel topped the list of demands of the four states boycotting Qatar to end the dispute. On June 24, Qatar received the list of demands from Kuwait, which is brokering reconciliation between the disputing parties.

Hani Raslan, the head of the Sudan and Nile Basin Studies Unit at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor that he views Sudans claim of neutrality on the Qatari crisis as "fake. He argued that Khartoum puts forward this appearance to maximize its gains from all parties, while maintaining Saudi Arabias support to lift the sanctions imposed on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashirs regime.

He added, Many signs prove that Sudan is on Qatars side in the crisis. Why else would the Sudanese parliament and regime react as they did to Osmans statements that aimed at warming up to Egypt, and force him to apologize and embarrass himself by denying these statements, recorded as they were?

Raslan added that Bashir did not attend the Nile Basin States Summit that was held June 22 following the decision to boycott Qatar to settle the points of dispute in the Entebbe Agreement. He noted that Bashirs absence perfectly fits into the puzzle of the Sudanese stance that is using water as a political pressure card on Egypt on the one hand and as support for its own strategy in allying with Ethiopia, Qatar and Turkey on the other.

Raslan argued that although Sudan objected to the Entebbe Agreement in 2010, it does not want to be on the same team as Egypt to solve the [current Nile] crisis.

In 2010, Egypt and Sudan took a unified stance by opposing the Entebbe Agreement signed between six of the Nile Basin countries in 2010. The agreement does not acknowledge the historical quotas of Sudan and Egypt in the Nile waters, as per the 1929 and 1959 agreements, and it does not bind the upstream countries to prior notification of downstream countries when building dams to lock in and store water that naturally flows from the river.

Tarek el-Khouly, the secretary of the foreign affairs committee in the Egyptian parliament, told Al-Monitor, The Sudanese regime is clearly implicated in a deal with Qatar. It is unlikely that Sudan will play a supportive role of Egypt and the Gulf countries in Africa to escalate measures against Qatar.

Khouly explained, It seems Qatari financial support is behind each crisis that Sudan stirs with Egypt. Qatar supports Bashirs regime in escalating crises between Sudan and Egypt, such as the Halayeb Shalatin crisis, the inaccurate accusations that Cairo supports Sudanese secessionists and Khartoums recent opposing opinion to Cairos in the negotiations of the Nile Basin crises.

Khouly added that Qatar is supporting Ethiopia in building the Renaissance Dam, and in return, Sudan is taking unjustified stances against Egypt on the Nile water issue.

The Arab nations that cut ties with Doha claim they have proof of Qatars involvement in supporting terrorism  a claim Doha denies  and Khouly argues Bashirs regime does not sing a much different tune. Didnt Bashirs regime welcome al-Qaedas leaders in the past, and isnt it supporting Muslim Brotherhood figures? he added.

Khouly concluded by saying, It is time to exercise hard diplomacy on Sudan.

Sudanese political analyst and writer Abdul Wahed Ibrahim told Al-Monitor, Qatar and Bashirs regime go way back, and they are connected through the Muslim Brotherhood. He noted that Sudans real stance regarding the Qatari crisis was reflected in the internal opinions of the Popular Congress Party and the Just Peace Forum party, which Bashirs uncle spearheads. The two parties called for backing Qatar in its brawl with the Gulf.

Ibrahim said, The Sudanese media have taken it too far in tarnishing Egypts image because Egypt has not been firm in its stance against Bashirs regime.

For his part, Khoulys belief for the need to use hard diplomacy with Sudan introduced a new notion for Egyptian-Sudanese relations. However, Egypt's diplomats are still trying their best to win Sudan over in the Qatari crisis and in Nile Basin negotiations, despite the rising tensions between both countries.

Cairo has been careful to avoid escalating its official rhetoric against Sudan despite the rising tensions with Bashirs regime. This is not only to ensure good neighborly ties and fulfill its regional economic integration program, but also to ensure that Sudan does not become an enemy, even if the two do not see eye to eye in the Arab region and Africa.
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. MELISSA QUINTANILLA, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. DUSTIN RAY NICHOLS, also known as Dustin Nichols Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. JANE CERVANTEZ, also known as Jane Cervantes Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. JUSTIN ANDERSON, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. MARTI GAIL MCPHERSON, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant Cross-Appellee v. MICHAEL SCOTT COOKSEY, Defendant - Appellee Cross-Appellant UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. TAVICHE MARQUISE GRIMES, also known as Tavichie Mequise Grimes, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. JAMES WALTER LEE, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. TRAY WILLIAMS, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. ELIZABETH ANN PARADA, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. DODIONNE GAY WATSON, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. KENNETH MORRISON, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. LEE EDWARD WILLIAMS, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. JOSE ARON SOTELO, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. LATOYA LATRICE GOLDEN, also known as Toya, Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. DAVID WAYNE FRAZIER, JR., also known as David Frazier, Jr., Defendant - Appellee UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellant v. CHARLES EARL THOMAS, Defendant - Appellee No. 16-50677 Decided: August 16, 2017

Before DAVIS, GRAVES, and COSTA, Circuit Judges.

Before the Court are seventeen consolidated criminal appeals presenting essentially the same question of law: whether each defendant is entitled to a two-level reduction to offense level under Amendment 782 to the United States Sentencing Guidelines, which permits such a reduction for sentences based on the drug quantity under U.S.S.G.  2D1.1, when the original sentence in each case was calculated starting from the higher guideline range for career offenders under U.S.S.G.  4B1.1. As explained further below, 18 U.S.C.  3582(c)(2) authorizes a district court to modify a sentence in the case of a defendant who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission  Because we hold that the sentences in these appeals were not based on  2D1.1's drug quantity range but rather on  4B1.1's higher career offender guideline range, the district court was without authority as a matter of law to modify the sentences, and the judgments of the district court must be REVERSED.

I. Background

Not only do all seventeen appeals present the same issue of law, but the relevant facts and applicable law are the same in all material respects. The relevant facts are as follows: Each defendant was convicted of a drug crime, which resulted in a guideline range under  2D1.1 based on the drug quantity. Each defendant also qualified as a career offender, resulting in a guideline range under  4B1.1 based on that status. In each case, the  4B1.1 career offender guideline range was higher than the  2D1.1 drug quantity range.

Under  4B1.1(b), if the offense level for a career offender from the table in this [career offender] subsection is greater than the offense level otherwise applicable, the offense level from the table in this subsection shall apply. Thus, the higher  4B1.1 guideline range was the required starting range for each defendant. The district court at each original sentencing in fact applied the higher  4B1.1 guideline range. From that range, the district court applied various reductions that are not at issue in these cases. The final sentence was typically somewhere between the starting  4B1.1 range and the lower  2D1.1 range, though in some cases the final sentence, after all appropriate reductions, was within or even lower than the original  2D1.1 range. Of course, if the court had started at the  2D1.1 range and applied all of those reductions, the sentence would have been lower still.

After the original sentencings, the Sentencing Commission enacted Amendment 782, effective November 1, 2014 and retroactive to earlier sentences, which amended  2D1.1 to allow a two-level reduction to offense level based on the drug quantity. The amendment affects  2D1.1 and a few other minor sections tied to  2D1.1, but it does not change  4B1.1 in any way. In Amendment 782's Reason for Amendment section, the Sentencing Commission stated that existing statutory enhancements, such as those available under 18 U.S.C.  924(c), and guideline enhancements for offenders who possess firearms, use violence, have an aggravating role in the offense, or are repeat or career offenders, ensure that the most dangerous or serious offenders will continue to receive appropriately severe sentences.

Under 18 U.S.C.  3582(c)(2), a district court has authority to modify a sentence in the case of a defendant who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission  Under U.S.S.G.  1B1.10(a)(1):

In a case in which a defendant is serving a term of imprisonment, and the guideline range applicable to that defendant has subsequently been lowered as a result of an amendment to the Guidelines Manual listed in subsection (d) below [NB: subsection (d) includes Amendment 782], the court may reduce the defendant's term of imprisonment as provided by 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2). As required by 18 U.S.C. 3582(c)(2), any such reduction in the defendant's term of imprisonment shall be consistent with this policy statement.5

Each of the defendants applied for and received a two-level reduction under Amendment 782. In its virtually identical orders granting the defendants' motions to reduce the sentence, the district court:

[found] that Movant [was] eligible for a reduction of his sentence under 18 U.S.C.  3582(c)(2) because his original sentence was based on the amended guideline  2D1.1  See  3582(c)(2); see also [Freeman v. United States, 131 S. Ct. 2685, 2695 (2011)] (allowing a  3582(c)(2) reduction with a Rule 11(c)(1)(C) plea agreement if agreed sentence was based on the guidelines)

In the instant case, Movant's sentence was based on the drug guideline range.  Just like when the parties to an 11(c)(1)(C) binding plea agreement may choose a downward departure tied to a drug guideline range, a judge may depart to a sentence otherwise tied to the initial drug guideline range. The sentence would still be based on the drug guideline range under Freeman.

The district court also cited United States v. Jackson, 678 F.3d 442, 445 (6th Cir. 2012), for the proposition that a sentence is based on  2D1.1 if the district court clearly considered the lower drug quantity guidelines in downwardly departing from a higher applicable guideline range. Using this definition, the district court not only found that each defendant's sentence was based on the  2D1.1 drug quantity range, but that each defendant was in fact entitled to a two-level reduction.

The government timely appealed each case on the ground that each defendant's original sentence was based on the career offender guideline range in  4B1.1, not the lower drug quantity guideline range in  2D1.1.

II. Jurisdiction and Standard of Review

We have appellate jurisdiction to review the district court's sentence modification under 18 U.S.C.  3731. [W]e review the decision whether to reduce a sentence under  3582(c)(2) for abuse of discretion, its interpretation of the guidelines de novo, and its findings of fact for clear error.  A district court abuses its discretion if it bases its decision on an error of law or a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence. 

III. Analysis

The crux of the issue is whether each defendant's original sentence was based on the drug quantity guideline range under  2D1.1 or based on the career offender guideline range under  4B1.1. Stated differently, the question under  1B1.10(a)(1) in each case is whether the guideline range applicable to that defendant has subsequently been lowered. Amendment 782 lowered only the  2D1.1 drug quantity guideline range, so if the  2D1.1 guideline range was not applicable to [a] defendant, then that defendant cannot receive a reduction under  1B1.10 or  3582(c)(2).

The government argues that the district court based its decision on inapposite legal authorities. Specifically, it argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Freeman is irrelevant because Freeman concerned a plea agreement under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(c)(1)(C), which is not at issue in any of these sentences. The government also correctly observes that the Fifth Circuit's decision in Henderson, supra, and the Sixth Circuit's decision in Jackson, supra, cited by the district court, are factually inapposite to the cases before us and do not provide authority for finding that the defendants' original sentences here were based on  2D1.1's drug quantity guideline range when they were subject to a higher  4B1.1 career offender guideline range.

Furthermore, the government points out that the Fifth Circuit has already held, in United States v. Valdez, 615 F. App'x 191, 192 (5th Cir. 2015), that a defendant may not obtain a reduction under Amendment 782 if his or her sentence was calculated from the higher career offender guideline range under  4B1.1. The government notes that the unpublished opinion in Valdez is consistent with the Fifth Circuit's treatment of a previous amendment concerning the crack cocaine guidelines in United States v. Anderson, 591 F.3d 789 (5th Cir. 2009). The Anderson rule is consistent with the result reached by other circuits on both Amendment 782 and similar previous amendments. Indeed, there is even more authority than the government cited. At least four more unpublished Fifth Circuit opinions have concluded that a defendant is not entitled to a sentence reduction under Amendment 782 if that defendant was sentenced as a career offender under  4B1.1. There are no cases reaching the district court's contrary result.

Indeed, the Fifth Circuit strengthened the Anderson rule even further in United States v. Banks, 770 F.3d 346 (5th Cir. 2014), making it clear now that to determine under  1B1.10 what is the guideline range applicable to that defendant, we look only to the highest guideline range applicable at the time he or she seeks resentencing, even if another range was higher at the time of the original sentencing.

In Banks, the defendant's drug quantity guideline range under  2D1.1 (38/VI) was higher than his career offender guideline range under  4B1.1 (37/VI), so he was originally sentenced under  2D1.1. A few years later, in 2008, he sought a two-level reduction based on the crack cocaine guidelines amendments under  2D1.1. The district court granted the reduction under  2D1.1, but because his  2D1.1 range was now lower than his  4B1.1 range, the court recalculated his sentence starting with the  4B1.1 range as his base guideline range, still in effect giving him a one-level reduction.

The defendant later sought another reduction under Amendment 750, which had once again changed the drug quantity calculation under  2D1.1, but the Fifth Circuit rejected the reduction on the ground that the sentence he was currently serving, i.e., the one in effect after the 2008 resentencing, was not based on  2D1.1 but was based on  4B1.1even though the defendant's original sentence had been based on the then-higher  2D1.1 drug quantity guideline range. A recent unpublished Fifth Circuit opinion applied the Banks rule to preclude an Amendment 782 reduction under similar facts.

The consolidated appeals here are far simpler. There is no question that the career offender guideline range under  4B1.1 was higher than the drug quantity guideline range under  2D1.1, so under the Anderson/Banks rule, we must conclude that all 17 sentences were based on  4B1.1 and not on  2D1.1, i.e., that under  1B1.10(a)(1) the guideline range applicable to that defendant was the career offender range under  4B1.1. Because Amendment 782 did not lower the guideline range under  4B1.1, none of the defendants is entitled to a sentence reduction under  1B1.10(a)(1) or  3582(c)(2). Consequently, the district court lacked the authority as a matter of law to modify the defendants' sentences under  3582(c)(2), and it therefore abused its discretion by granting the reductions.

For their part, the defendants attempt to sidestep the outcome required by the above cases by claiming Congress intended sentence reductions to be broader under  3582(c)(2) than the Sentencing Commission suggested under  1B1.10(a)(1), i.e., that  3582(c)(2)'s language (based on a sentencing range that has subsequently been lowered by the Sentencing Commission) is broader than  1B1.10(a)(1)'s language (guideline range applicable to that defendant has subsequently been lowered as a result of an amendment to the Guidelines Manual). The defendants argue that  3582(c)(2)'s use of based on is broad enough to include the district court's reasoning that a sentence is based on  2D1.1 even if the  2D1.1 drug quantity guideline range was lower than the  4B1.1 career offender guideline range. This argument is foreclosed by the Anderson/Banks rule, however.

The only remaining question is the cross-appeal of defendant Michael Scott Cooksey in United States v. Cooksey, No. 16-50689. Cooksey pleaded guilty to two counts: (1) conspiring to possess five grams or more of methamphetamine with the intent to distribute it, and (2) possessing and concealing counterfeit U.S. currency. His offense level was calculated by breaking the counts down into two separate groups: the drug count and the counterfeit-obligations count. Because of the grouping rules,  2D1.1's drug quantity range provided the base offense level for both counts. The drug count resulted in an offense level of 26, while the counterfeit-obligations count, resulting in an offense level of 9, was disregarded. However, these were dwarfed by the career offender guideline range under  4B1.1, which established a base offense level of 34.

The district court reduced Cooksey's drug count sentence as it did with all the other defendants, but it did not reduce his sentence on the counterfeit-obligations count and did not explain why. Cooksey has filed a cross-appeal arguing that he is entitled to a reduction on his counterfeit-obligations sentence under  2D1.1 as well. Cooksey is not entitled to relief on his cross-claim for the same reason his sentence reduction should be reversed under the above analysis. Cooksey's sentence was based on his career offender status under  4B1.1, so he was not entitled to a reduction on either count under Amendment 782.

IV. Conclusion

The district court's judgments in all seventeen consolidated cases are REVERSED, and the sentences in effect before the district court's reduction are hereby reinstated. As a matter of law, the district court was without authority to modify any of the sentences under Amendment 782.

FOOTNOTES

. One of them, United States v. Cooksey, No. 16-50689, also presents one small additional issue, discussed at the end of this opinion.

. In United States v. Grimes, No. 16-50690, the defendant's  2D1.1 range was 130-162 months, and the  4B1.1 range was 262-327 months, but the final sentence after substantial reductions was 151 months, within the original  2D1.1 range. In United States v. Parada, No. 16-50700, United States v. Morrison, No. 16-50705, United States v. Sotelo, No. 16-50707, and United States v. Golden, No. 15-50709, the final sentence, after all reductions, was lower than the  2D1.1 range.

. U.S.S.G. App. C, Amendment 782 (2014).

. Id. (emphasis added).

. U.S.S.G.  1B1.10(a)(1) (emphasis added).

. United States v. Evans, 587 F.3d 667, 672 (5th Cir. 2009) (citations omitted).

. United States v. Henderson, 636 F.3d 713, 717 (5th Cir. 2011) (quoting United States v. Smith, 417 F.3d 483, 48687 (5th Cir. 2005)).

. See United States v. Thomas, 775 F.3d 982, 983 (8th Cir. 2014) (per curiam), United States v. Hall, 628 Fed. App'x 681, 683 (11th Cir. 2016) (unpublished), United States v. Banyi, 637 Fed. App'x 532 (10th Cir. 2016) (unpublished), United States v. Fritz, 621 Fed. App'x 196 (4th Cir. 2015) (per curiam), United States v. Steel, 609 Fed. App'x 851, 856 (6th Cir. 2015) (unpublished).

. See United States v. Caraballo, 552 F.3d 6, 10 (1st Cir. 2008); United States v. Mock, 612 F.3d 133, 138 (2d Cir. 2010); United States v. Mateo, 560 F.3d 152, 154-55 (3d Cir. 2009); United States v. Munn, 595 F.3d 183, 187 (4th Cir. 2010); United States v. Webb, 760 F.3d 513, 519 (6th Cir. 2014); United States v. Forman, 553 F.3d 585, 589 (7th Cir. 2009); United States v. Tingle, 524 F.3d 839 (8th Cir. 2008); United States v. Wesson, 583 F.3d 728, 731 (9th Cir. 2009); United States v. Sharkey, 543 F.3d 1236, 1239 (10th Cir. 2008); United States v. Moore, 541 F.3d 1323, 1327-30 (11th Cir. 2008); and United States v. Berry, 618 F.3d 13, 17-18 (D.C. Cir. 2010).

. See United States v. Estrada, 672 F. App'x 476, 477 (5th Cir. 2017) (The district court correctly determined that Estrada was not eligible for relief under  3582(c)(2) because he was sentenced under the career offender provision in U.S.S.G.  4B1.1, and Amendment 782 to  2D1.1(c) did not have the effect of lowering his offense level or guidelines range.), United States v. Ruiz, 669 F. App'x 222 (5th Cir. 2016) (The record confirms that Ruiz was not eligible for a  3582(c)(2) sentence reduction under Amendment 782 because, as a career offender pursuant to  4B1.1, he was not sentenced based on a guidelines range that was subsequently lowered by Amendment 782. (citing Anderson, supra)), United States v. Saldivar, 633 F. App'x 242 (5th Cir. 2016) (The record reflects that Saldivar was not eligible for a  3582(c)(2) sentence reduction under Amendment 782 because, as a career offender pursuant to U.S.S.G.  4B1.1, she was not sentenced based on a guidelines range that was subsequently lowered by the Sentencing Commission.), and United States v. Yett, 669 F. App'x 273 (5th Cir. 2016) (Thus, the record confirms that Yett was not eligible for a  3582(c)(2) sentence reduction under Amendment 782 because, as he was sentenced as a career offender pursuant to  4B1.1, his sentence is not based on a guidelines range that was subsequently lowered by Amendment 782.).

. 770 F.3d at 347.

. Id. at 347-48.

. Id.

. Id. at 348-49.

. See United States v. Jackson, 667 F. App'x 869 (5th Cir. 2016) (Nevertheless, that Jackson's offense level has been reduced, alone, does not entitle him to a sentence reduction under  3582(c)(2). Although Amendment 782 would reduce Jackson's  2D1.1 offense level, the court's determining it would use Jackson's career-offender offense level of 34, under  4B1.1(b), because it is higher than that produced by  2D1.1 following the amendment, was proper. (citation to Banks omitted)).

PER CURIAM:
Paper mills in the country are finding it difficult to tap the growth potential, which is in tune with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, due to import of cheaper paper from ASEAN countries, said Saurabh Bangur, president, Indian Paper Manufacturers Association (IPMA) and vice chairman of West Coast Paper. The industry in India has not been expanding capacity for the past 12 months or more, owing to this challenge."As per Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS) data, imports from this region have risen at a CAGR of more than 40 per cent during the past three years. The month-on-month rise in ASEAN imports has had a negative impact on the minds of Indian entrepreneurs and the paper trade," Bangur said.

The capacity of Indian mills had reached saturation point almost one and a half years ago, and is currently working at 100 per cent. Now, whatever growth happening in the sector in tandem with the GDP growth rate, is being taken care of by the import.
Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) has said that it has commenced soil remediation on a trial basis at its former thermometer factory site in Kodaikanal, where it has been facing protest from non-government organisations for alleged mercury contamination.
Infosys on Saturday announced that it would buy back shares of up to Rs 13,000 crore, or 4.92 per cent, from investors at Rs 1,150 per share. The buyback price is a 24.5 per cent premium over Fridays closing price of Rs 923.
The South African operations of Lakshmi Mittals global steel empire, Arcelor-Mittal SA (AMSA), has announced that it may have to retrench staff as part of restructuring plans amid growing losses.
Three US law firms have begun preparations to file class action lawsuits on behalf of unnamed shareholders who, they said, suffered losses on account of the resignation of Vishal Sikka as CEO.
The Usha Martin board, in its meeting on Saturday, decided not to opt for fresh capital infusion in the company following the directives of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).
Infosys first non-founder chief executive Vishal Sikka on Friday resigned from his role as CEO and managing director after three years at the helm. His exit followed a battle between the board and the founders for months. U B Pravin Rao was appointed the interim CEO & MD of the company.
Amid the and the recent Pangong skirmish, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat will pay a three-day visit to Ladakh, beginning on Sunday, to review the security scenario in eastern Ladakh.

During the visit, he will take stock of the security preparedness along the border with China besides, discussing key operational matters with top commanders.

The visit comes days after Indian and Chinese boat patrols clashed at the Pangong Lake in Ladakh, even as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) declined the Indian invitation to participate in ceremonial border meetings on the occasion of India's 71st Independence Day.

This was the first time since 2005 that the PLA has declined to meet with their Indian counterpart.

Indian and Chinese boat patrols clashed with each other at Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh on Tuesday, at 7:30 am near the Finger-6 part of the 135-km long lake, one-third of which is in Indian control and the rest under Chinese control.

It was earlier reported that the brief standoff led to jostling and exchange of blows between soldiers of the two armies; but, no shots were fired though.

However, during a press briefing here on Friday, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Raveesh Kumar, while confirming the Pangong skirmish, said, that he does not affirm if there was stone pelting or use of rods during the incident.
Two AIMIM corporators were suspended amid a ruckus after they refused to stand up when 'Vande Mataram' was sung at the start of the day's proceedings in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation on Saturday.

Protesting against this, ruling Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party corporators rushed to the well of the house and raised loud slogans against the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) duo who remained seated when the song was being rendered.

#WATCH:Ruckus in Aurangabad municipal corp's meeting by BJP & Shiv Sena after 2 MIM corporators didn't rise for 'Vande Mataram' #Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/Mpp75XkMBx  ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

This quickly degenerated into a slanging match between the ruling and the Opposition corporators with fisticuffs, yanking off of microphones from tables, breaking fans and damaging under furniture and fittings in the assembly hall.

Some of the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance corporators strongly objected as the AIMIM corporators remained seated during 'Vande Mataram' and raised slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', and "If you want to live in this country, you will have to sing 'Vande Mataram'," and flung their shawls around in the hall.

Amid the continuing fracas, AMC Mayor Bhagwandas Ghadamode (BJP) adjourned the proceedings twice and announced the suspension of the two AIMIM corporators for a day, before adjourning the house for the day.

AIMIM MLA Imtiaz Jaleel said there is no law mandating people must stand up during the singing of 'Vande Mataram', though it is a tradition that is respected.

"However, we are very clear that whenever 'Vande Mataram' is rendered we must stand up," Jaleel said, adding he would seeks details of the incidents in the AMC house from his party corporators.

The AIMIM is the largest Opposition party with 25 corporators while the ruling Shiv Sena has 29 and the BJP 22. The other Opposition parties include eight from the Congress, three of the Nationalist Congress Party and 24 independents/others in the 113-member AMC house.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ex rel. BRIAN WALL, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. CIRCLE C CONSTRUCTION, LLC, Defendant-Appellant. No. 16-6169 Decided: August 18, 2017

Before: BATCHELDER, ROGERS, and KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judges. COUNSEL ARGUED: Timothy W. Burrow, BURROW & CRAVENS, P.C., Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Melissa N. Patterson, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Timothy W. Burrow, BURROW & CRAVENS, P.C., Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant. Melissa N. Patterson, Charles W. Scarborough, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellee.

OPINION

This case is before us for a third time. The defendant, Circle C Construction, is a family-owned general contractor that built 42 warehouses for the United States Army in Kentucky and Tennessee. In the course of building all those warehouses, over a period of seven years, a subcontractor, Phase Tech, paid two of its electricians about $9,900 less than the wages mandated by the Davis-Bacon Act. That underpayment rendered false a number of compliance statements that Circle C submitted to the government along with its invoices. As a result, the government thereafter pursued Circle C for nearly a decade of litigation, demanding not merely $9,900Phase Tech itself had paid $15,000 up front to settle that underpaymentbut rather $1.66 million, of which $554,000 was purportedly actual damages for the $9,900 underpayment. The government's theory in support of that demand was that all of Phase Tech's electrical work, in all of the warehouses, was tainted by the $9,900 underpaymentand therefore worthless. The problem with that theory, we wrote in the last appeal, was that, in all of these warehouses, the government turns on the lights every day. United States ex rel. Wall v. Circle C Constr., LLC, 813 F.3d 616, 617 (6th Cir. 2016). We therefore reversed a $763,000 judgment in favor of the government and remanded for entry of an award of $14,748less than 1% of the government's demand.

Over the past decade, Circle C paid its attorneys an estimated $468,704 to defend against the government's claim. In Circle C's view, Congress has contemplated situations like this one: a 1996 amendment to the Equal Access to Justice Act provides that, if a court awards damages to the federal government, but the government's original demand for damages was both substantially in excess of the judgment finally obtained and unreasonable when compared with such judgment, then (subject to two exceptions) the court must award to the [defendant] the fees and other expenses related to defending against the excessive demand. 28 U.S.C.  2412(d)(1)(D).

Accordingly, on remand after the last appeal, Circle C moved under  2412(d)(1)(D) for recovery of its attorneys' fees in this litigation. But the district court denied the motion. Citing only legislative historyand indeed without first identifying any ambiguity in the words of the provision at issue, contrary to Supreme Court precedent, see, e.g., Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Allapattah Servs., Inc., 545 U.S. 546, 567-68 (2005)the district court chose to put aside the mathematical disparity between the damages demand [and] the eventual award[.] Op. at 4. The court did so even though the actual words of the statute ([a] demand by the United States  substantially in excess of the judgment finally obtained) specifically directed the court to consider that disparity. And otherwise the district court reasoned that the government's theory in support of its demand was not unreasonable simply because the court itself had twice accepted that theory. Op. at 3-4. Circle C then brought this appeal.

We review the district court's denial of Circle C's motion for an abuse of discretion. See Minor v. Comm'r of Soc. Sec., 826 F.3d 878, 882 (6th Cir. 2016). The relevant statutory scheme is straightforward. Title 31 U.S.C.  3730(g) provides, [i]n civil actions brought under this section by the United States, the provisions of section 2412(d) of title 28 shall apply. This case is undisputedly an action brought under  3730 by the United Stateswhich means that  2412(d)(1)(D) (the fee-shifting section cited in Circle C's motion) shall apply here.

Yet the government ventures to argue that  2412(d)(1)(D) does not apply. Section 3730(g) is entitled, Fees and expenses to prevailing defendant. Circle C technically was not a prevailing defendant, because on remand the district court entered a judgment in favor of the government (albeit in an amount that was less than 1% of the amount the government initially sought). The government thus contends that  2412(d)(1)(D) does not apply, because that section authorizes awards to non-prevailing defendants (in cases where, among other things, the government's demand was unreasonable). But that argument overlooks a basic principle of statutory construction, namely that a provision's title cannot limit the plain meaning of the text. Penn. Dep't of Corr. v. Yeskey, 524 U.S. 206, 212 (1998) (citation omitted). And here the text of  3730(g) could hardly be plainer: that subsection says that, in circumstances undisputedly present here, the provisions of  2412(d) of title 28 shall applywhich means that all of those provisions apply, including  2412(d)(1)(D).

Thus we turn to  2412(d)(1)(D), which provides in relevant part:

If, in a civil action brought by the United States  the demand by the United States is substantially in excess of the judgment finally obtained by the United States and is unreasonable when compared with such judgment, under the facts and circumstances of the case, the court shall award to the party the fees and other expenses related to defending against the excessive demand, unless the party has committed a willful violation of law or otherwise acted in bad faith, or special circumstances make an award unjust.

Under this subsection, the party seeking fees bears the burden of proving (i) that the government's demand was substantially in excess of the award obtained by the judgment and (ii) that the government's demand was unreasonable compared to that judgment. See United States v. One 1997 Toyota Land Cruiser, 248 F.3d 899, 906 (9th Cir. 2001). Here, the government demanded $553,807.71 in purported actual damages, trebled to about $1.66 million. See 31 U.S.C.  3729(a)(1)(G). And the judgment finally obtained by the United States was $14,748. To say that the government's demand was substantially in excess of the judgment, therefore, only understates matters.

That leaves the question whether the government's demand was unreasonable as that term is used in  2412(d)(1)(D). Neither this circuit nor, so far as we can tell, any other has specifically interpreted the term unreasonable as used in that provision. But that term is hardly abstruse. As a matter of ordinary usage, unreasonable means not governed by reason or exceeding reasonable limits; immoderate[.] The American Heritage Dictionary 1957 (3d ed. 1994). And meanwhile there is a well-developed body of law concerning a similar inquiry under a related provision: namely, whether the government's position was substantially justified under  2412(d)(1)(A). On that point, our court (along with numerous others) has held that [t]he question of substantial justification is essentially one of reasonableness[.] United States v. 0.376 Acres of Land, 838 F.2d 819, 827 (6th Cir. 1988) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also, e.g., Foley Constr. Co. v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng'rs, 716 F.2d 1202, 1204 (8th Cir. 1983) (gathering cases). Thus, the inquiry under both provisions turns on reasonableness. We therefore look to the caselaw interpreting substantially justified under  2412(d)(1)(A) to determine whether the government's demand was unreasonable under  2412(d)(1)(D).

The Supreme Court has held that, to be substantially justified under  2412(d)(1)(A), the government's position of course must be more than merely undeserving of sanctions for frivolousness[.] Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 566 (1988). To meet that standard, rather, the government's position must be justified to a degree that could satisfy a reasonable person. Id. at 565.

The question, then, is whether the government's demand for $1.66 million as compensation for Phase Tech's $9,900 underpayment of its electricians, in a project spanning seven years, was justified to that degree. The short answer to that question, as we said in the last appeal, is that the damages the government sought to recover in this case were fairyland rather than actual. Wall, 813 F.3d at 618.

A longer answer begins with the observation that actual damages are a simple concept, familiar to any first-year student in law school. In the context of this case, actual damages are simply the difference in value between what the government bargained for and what the government received. Id. at 617 (citing U.S. ex rel. Roby v. Boeing Co., 302 F.3d 637, 646 (6th Cir. 2002)). And here those damages were easy to calculate. [T]he government bargained for two things: the buildings, and the payment of Davis-Bacon wages. It got the buildings but not quite all of the wages. The shortfall was $9,916. That amount [was] the government's actual damages. Id.

The government therefore faces strong headwindsboth common-sense and legalin asserting that its demand for roughly $554,000 in actual damages, and $1.66 million overall, was reasonable nonetheless. The government's theory, as noted above, was that all of Phase Tech's electrical work was tainted by the $9,900 underpayment and therefore valueless to the government. As a matter of common sense, however, the government in fact benefits from that work every minute of every day. And legally, as we explained last time, the underpayment is easy to remedy with money damages. Id. at 618. True, goods or services can be legally worthless to the government if, for example, they are dangerous to use, id., or the damages from the contractor's breach are not calculable in terms of market value. Id. at 619 (Rogers, J., concurring). But for reasons we have already explained, see id. at 617-18, those conditions are absent hereindeed, obviously absent. Thus, on this record, a reasonable person could not accept the government's argument that Phase Tech's electrical work was worthless.

The district court, as noted above, held that the government's theory was reasonable simply because the court itself had twice accepted the theory. But the fact that one other court agreed or disagreed with the Government does not establish whether its position was substantially justified. Pierce, 487 U.S. at 569. True, a string of successes in advocating a position might indicate the position is reasonable; but that is hardly what the government presents to us here. Id. Thus, in this case as in most cases, what matters is the actual merits of the Government's litigating position. Id. The district court said nothing about those merits in denying Circle C's motion. And we have said enough about them already. The government's demand for $1.66 million as compensation for Phase Tech's $9,900 underpayment was unreasonable within the meaning of  2412(d)(1)(D).

That means Circle C was entitled to a fee award unless it committed a willful violation of law or otherwise acted in bad faith, or special circumstances make an award unjust. 28 U.S.C.  2412(d)(1)(D). The district court did not reach this issue because it mistakenly thought that the government's demand was reasonable. Yet we choose to reach the issue because the parties have briefed it, the merits are clear, and this litigation has already persisted for nearly ten years. See Carrier Corp. v. Outokumpu Oyj, 673 F.3d 430, 446 (6th Cir. 2012).

We begin with the burden of proof. Typically, when a statute articulates a general rule, the burden of proving an exception rests with the party invoking it. See N.L.R.B. v. Kentucky River Cmty. Care, Inc., 532 U.S. 706, 711 (2001). Here, under  2412(d)(1)(D), when a party establishes that the government's demand was both excessive and unreasonable, the district court shall award fees to the defendant unless certain exceptions (e.g., bad faith or special circumstances) apply. 28 U.S.C.  2412(d)(1)(D). Thus, the burden of proving bad faith or special circumstances under  2412(d)(1)(D) rests with the government. See id.

As to these exceptions, the government first argues that Circle C acted in bad faith. The Act does not define bad faith, but it is a common term of art. The sixth edition of Black's Law Dictionarythe one in effect at the time  2412(d)(1)(D) was enacteddefines bad faith as not prompted by an honest mistake as to one's rights or duties, but by some interested or sinister motive. Black's Law Dictionary 139 (6th ed. 1990). That definition nicely captures the term, and we adopt it here.

The government has not shown that the conduct giving rise to Circle C's $14,748 of liability in this case was driven by a sinister motive rather than the result of an honest mistake. Unlike many cases under the False Claims Act, this case did not involve a large-scale, systematic effort to defraud the government. Compare, e.g., United States v. Rogan, 517 F.3d 449, 451 (7th Cir. 2008). Instead, Circle C submitted compliance statements that were inaccurate as to $9,900 of particulars in a project costing more than $20 million. Moreover, one of Circle C's co-owners, John Cates, testified that Phase Tech gave Circle C a set price for each building, which obscured the amount that Phase Tech paid each electrician. And both of Circle C's owners, Frances and John Cates, testified that they submitted the certifications on the honest belief that they were true. The government cites no evidence that shows otherwise.

Instead, the government contends that, [b]y definition, a defendant who has been found liable under the False Claims Act has knowingly made or caused false or fraudulent claims' on public money. Government Br. at 34 (quoting 31 U.S.C.  3729(a)). Under the False Claims Act, however, knowingly is itself a term of art, which refers to three mental states: actual knowledge, deliberate ignorance, or reckless disregard. 31 U.S.C.  3729(b)(1)(A). The district court found that Circle C was recklessthe least culpable of these statesas to whether its compliance reports were accurate regarding the wages paid to Phase Tech's electricians (actually, on this record, just two of them). But recklessness is a less stringent standard than bad faith [.] United States v. Wallace, 964 F.2d 1214, 1219 (D.C. Cir. 1992); see also Red Carpet Studios Div. of Source Advantage, Ltd. v. Sater, 465 F.3d 642, 646 (6th Cir. 2006) (citing Wallace for the same proposition). And on this record we see no reason to depart from that rule.

The government also argues that this case presents two circumstances that are special enough to make an award unjust. 28 U.S.C.  2412(d)(1)(D). Firstin reference to the government's theory that all of Phase Tech's electrical work was worthlessthe government says that, in applying  2412(d)(1)(D), we should leave room to allow the government to present novel but credible interpretations of law. See generally United States v. Winchester Mun. Utils., 944 F.2d 301, 306 (6th Cir. 1991). We have no quarrel with that proposition generally, but here the government's theory was not credible because it was unreasonable within the meaning of  2412(d)(1)(D).

Secondand finallythe government warns that a fee award in this case would have a chilling effect on its efforts to vigorously enforce the False Claims Act. Gov't Br. at 13-14, 37. One should hope so. In this case the government made a demand for damages a hundredfold greater than what it was entitled to, and then pressed that demand over nearly a decade of litigation, all based on a theory that as applied here was nearly frivolous. The consequences for Circle C included nearly a half-million dollars in attorneys' fees. Section 2412(d)(1)(D) makes clear that the government must bear its share of those consequences as well.

* * *

The district court abused its discretion when it denied Circle C's motion. We reverse the district court's June 17, 2016 Order and remand the case for an award to Circle C of the fees and other expenses related to defending against the [government's] excessive demand, 28 U.S.C.  2412(d)(1)(D), including, to the extent appropriate, fees incurred during this appeal and on remand.

DISSENT

The majority accepts that the Government does not owe fees if its position was substantially justified. That standard permits the Government to take reasonable litigating positions. See Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 566 (1988); Glenn v. Commissioner of Soc. Sec., 763 F.3d 494, 498 (6th Cir. 2014). It is a matter of judgment, however, whether the Government's litigating position in this case was reasonable. Here the Government had already prevailed on its taint theory of damages before the two district courts that considered this suit, and it was also able to point to a line of cases where something like that theory had prevailed before this and other courts, see, e.g., U.S. ex rel. Compton v. Midwest Specialties, Inc., 142 F.3d 296, 304 (6th Cir. 1998); United States v. Mackby, 339 F.3d 1013, 101819 (9th Cir. 2003); United States v. Rogan, 517 F.3d 449, 453 (7th Cir. 2008). While it is true that we ultimately rejected the analogy to those cases in the context of this case, that rejection does not mean that those analogies were not supported by law and fact or not justified to a degree that could satisfy a reasonable person, as required under the EAJA, Glenn, 763 F.3d at 49899 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Pierce, 487 U.S. at 565). Under abuse of discretion review, where substantial deference is accorded to the judgment of the trial court, Imwalle v. Reliance Med. Prods., 515 F.3d 531, 551 (6th Cir. 2008), the district court's denial of fees should be affirmed.

KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge.

KETHLEDGE, J., delivered the opinion of the court in which BATCHELDER, J., joined. ROGERS, J. (pg. 7), filed a separate dissenting opinion.
A few years ago, a picture from the Indian hinterland went viral. It showed two Indian men standing in front of a liquor shop. On its top  a longish horizontal stretch  was written, Sarkaari Thandi Beer Ki Dukaan (Government Shop For Cold Beer). However, below that descriptor in Hindi, and just above the shops door was written, in big bold letters, Child Beer. Its easy to understand why that picture was widely shared. It is funny and, at the same time, oddly reveals the idiosyncrasies of small-town India: a part of the country thats still wrapping its head around the beast that is modernity. In subsequent months though, that picture  and its several variants  became shorthand of sorts to depict, demystify and even deride the other India. After a point, it stopped being funny.
The rising burden and the ever-changing landscape of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in the country has emphasised the need for technological advancements in treatments. Continuous and sustained R&D has led to medical breakthroughs and management of cases that were once considered inoperable. Now, we have better technologies bringing precision and accuracy in the existing treatment modalities.
West Bengal Chief Minister on Saturday said "super dictatorship" is going on in the country but opposition parties have come on a platform and there will be a change in 2019.

"Super dictatorship is going on (in the country). If somebody says anything, they (the Centre) will send the ED, or CBI or IT to their homes. All are scared of that," Banerjee said criticising the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, at an interactive session hosted by a news channel here.

"How will the opposition be powerful? Everybody is scared," she said.

To a question why she was always the first target of attack by the Centre, she said she was happy to be so. "I feel I am a hero not zero".

Banerjee said, "What I can sustain, others cannot. I can digest because I am from the grassroots and I am a fighter and I will fight the battle throughout my life".

"However, the opposition parties have come on a platform and there will be change (at the Centre) in 2019.

"We are waiting for the change ... No front has been formed as yet, but the opposition parties have come on a platform and have started working. Wait for six months. Things will be clear," she said at the interaction 'Rising Bengal 2017' here.

"All will not speak so soon. Otherwise, (central) agencies will be unleashed against them," she added.

Asked to comment on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar quitting the Grand Alliance with RJD and Congress in Bihar, Banerjee said "You are thinking about one Nitish Kumar but I am thinking about 100 Sharad Yadavs, 100 Lalu Prasads, 100 Akhilesh Yadavs".

Blaming the Centre for hampering the country's economy and disturbing industries by introducing demonetisation, Banerjee said "They (the Centre) threaten everybody. Everyday they disturb the industry. Just look how many industrialists have left the country after the GST and demonetisation.

"What they had said before demonetisation nothing has happened. The country has to face so much of loss because of demonetisation. The economic condition of the country has deteriorated because of it. People do not know how much money has been deposited with the RBI after demonetisation".

She wondered how BJP president Amit Shah could hold meeting with a Union minister. "Who is the prime minister? Narendra Modi or Amit Shah?" she asked without naming the minister.

Banerjee showered praise on former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. "He is also a BJP man - but he was very balanced and impartial. We worked under him and never faced any problem.

"But why are we facing problems today? I do not want to blame the prime minister but his party should take care. Why is his party creating problems for everyone?



"Why are they showing us the agencies every day? Why will they tell me what I will eat, wear, which school I should go to or which religion I support? Or how the schools will celebrate Independence Day," she said, adding, it was Bengal which was at the forefront of the freedom movement and "Now it has to learn how to celebrate Independence Day?"



She also alleged that education was being saffronised in the country.

Questioned about the recent deaths of children in a Gorakhpur hospital, Banerjee said "What has happened there was not good".

"They (BJP) can deliver speeches but they cannot deliver the goods," she added.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has written a letter to Spanish President Mariano Rajoy Brey condemning the terror attack in Barcelona. He has said that India is willing to work with Spain to defeat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.

The full text of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Letter:

"I am deeply shocked and saddened by the barbaric terrorist attack in Barcelona yesterday and condemn it in strongest terms.

On behalf of the people of India and on my own behalf, I offer heartfelt condolences for the lives lost in this heinous and cowardly act and wish speedy recovery for those injured.

Terrorism has become a global menace threatening the entire humanity. Perpetrators of terror have been most ruthless in unleashing violence. Those who stand on the side of peace cannot allow these forces to endanger our cherished values of democracy and freedom.

India fully supports Your Excellency's Government in effectively responding to such attacks. We also stand ready to work with Spain to develop a strong global response to defeat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.

I once again express my deep sense of solidarity with and support to the people and Government of Spain in this tragic hour.

Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration."

As many as 13 people were killed on Thursday in the popular tourist destination Las Ramblas when a van mowed down dozens of people in the heart of Barcelona.

Another woman, Ana Maria Suarez, was killed when a group of five attackers then drove into pedestrians in the town of Cambrils.

The 13 people killed and dozens wounded in two separate attacks were from 34 different countries, including France, Germany, China, Australia and Peru, Spanish emergency services announced on Friday.

The Spanish Police killed five terror suspects in the coastal city of Cambrils.
Seventy years ago this week, India and Pakistan became independent from the British Empire. The celebrations were cut short as the partition on religious lines ripped the subcontinent apart. Partition changed millions of lives, and the shape of the world, forever.
The President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind met the Presidents Press Wing officers and staff at Rashtrapati Bhavan today (August 19, 2017). This is the second in a series of meetings that the President of India has called to acquaint himself with the Presidents staff. In the first batch, he had met the Presidents Military Wing officers and staff at Rashtrapati Bhavan on August 5, 2017.

The Press Secretary to the President, Shri Ashok Malik introduced the Press Wing of Rashtrapati Bhavan to the President, comprising Deputy Press Secretary, Smt. Shamima Siddiqui, Message Section, Library, Photo Section, Multi Media Studio, Reference & Clipping Cell and the Government of India Printing Press.
Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) & Parliamentary Affairs, Shri Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi today said here that the Central Government had completed all the entire process related to Haj 2017 well in time to ensure best facilities to Haj pilgrims.

Shri Naqvi flagged off the first batch of 300 Haj pilgrims from Mumbai at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport here today.

Shri Naqvi congratulated to Haj pilgrims and extended best wishes to them for their pilgrimage. A total of 5600 Haj pilgrims are going to Haj this year from Mumbai.

Shri Naqvi said that Haj 2017 has been completely successful till date as the Central Government had completed preparations for Haj this year well before in time to ensure smooth pilgrimage.

Shri Naqvi said that new Haj Policy 2018 will be finalised very soon and Haj from next year will be organised according to this new Haj policy. The new Haj policy is aimed at making Haj process transparent and smooth.

Shri Naqvi also said that reviving the option of sending Haj pilgrims through sea route also is part of the new Haj policy. Sending pilgrims through ships will help cut down travel expenses by nearly half as compared to airfares. It will be a revolutionary, pro-poor, pilgrim-friendly decision. The practice of ferrying Haj pilgrims between Mumbai and Jeddah by waterways was stopped from 1995.

Shri Naqvi said that another advantage with ships available these days is they are modern and well-equipped to ferry 4,000 to 5,000 persons at a time. They can cover the 2,300-odd nautical miles one-side distance between Mumbai and Jeddah within just two-three days. Earlier, the old ships used to take 12 to 15 days to cover this distance.

Haj 2017 started with departure of Haj pilgrims from various embarkation points across the country on 24th July. Saudi Arabia has increased annual Haj quota of India by 34,005. After significant increase in Indias Haj quota by Saudi Arabia Government, a total of 1,70,025 people have been going to Haj pilgrimage this year from India out of which 1,25,025 pilgrims are going through Haj Committee of India while 45,000 people are going through Private Tour Operators from 21 embarkation points.

During first phase of Haj 2017, about 85,000 Haj pilgrims have gone to Saudi Arabia. In the first phase, Haj pilgrims went from embarkation points in Delhi, Gaya, Goa, Gauhati, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mangalore, Srinagar and Varanasi.

In the second phase, Haj pilgrims will go from Bangalore, Bhopal, Ranchi, Nagpur, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Cochin, Chennai, Aurangabad, Ahmedabad and Indore. The second phase will end on 26thAugust.
Uma bharti reviews flood Situation in the Country will visit up and Bihar next week

Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Sushri Uma Bharti took a high level meeting to review the flood situation in the country and the actions being taken at the national level in New Delhi today. The officers briefed her about the flood situation in various parts of the country and the pro-active actions taken by the concerned organisations under the Ministry in mitigating the effect of floods.

The Minister was briefed that Central Water Commission (CWC) had taken pro-active steps during the floods by way of issuing around 3200 flood forecasts to all concerned user agencies which have been extremely beneficial to the district administration in timely evacuation and saving of lives of millions of people. Further, Ministry has issued seven specific district-wise advisories on anticipated floods and dam-wise advisories for water release wherever applicable to facilitate early NDRF/SDRF deployment and operation of reservoir gates. Another significant step taken by the Ministry, s ince June 2017 is that t hree day advance flood advisories based on rainfall-runoff model have been made available for all the 19 river basins online, for the benefit of all stakeholders.

The Minister directed that all the concerned organizations under the Ministry shall extend all possible help to the flood affected people. She directed that CWC, GFCC and Brahmaputra Board, in consultation with the related Central Ministries and State Governments, shall undertake an exercise to identify and map reaches vulnerable to erosion and landslide along the banks of the rivers and suggest possible remedial measures

Sushri Bharti emphasized that long-term solution to mitigate flood and droughts lies in the interlinking of rivers along with building of large storages. She said Ministry has obtained all clearances for Ken-Betwa Link Project in MP and UP. The Minister was pleased to state that Uttar Pradesh Government has conveyed its support to Ken Betwa river interlinking project and the response of Madhya Pradesh Government is expected to be received soon. The Government of India is eager to implement this first river interlinking project for the benefit of the people of Bundhelkhand region.

The DPR of Damanganga -Pinjal link and Par-Tapi-Narmada interlinking projects are in advanced stage. Further, the Kosi Mechi link and Kosi-Ghagra link envisaged in the Himalayan region would greatly attenuate high flood intensity in the Ganga Basin.

The Minister said Government of India is having continuous dialogue with the Government of Nepal at various levels to mitigate devastation caused by the flood from the rivers coming from Nepal through planning of various storage dams jointly viz. Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project on river Sarada; Sapta Kosi High dam Project and Sun Kosi Storage-cum- Diversion scheme are proposed in the Sapta Kosi Basin. I n Brahmaputra Basin, a Committee of the Ministry has assessed storage requirements of 9.2 BCM in Siang, 0.6 BCM in Dibang, 1.61 BCM in Lohit and 1.91 BCM in Subansiri sub Basins. A proposal for construction of single-stage Siang Upper Multipurpose Storage is under active consideration of the Ministry.
With tensions at an all-time high between the United States and North Korea, the New York Times headlined a recent digital newsletter with Lies Your High School History Teacher Told You About Nukes. The basic point was to debunk the theory of mutually assured destruction that is often used to explain why the Cold War remained cold and did not result in a nuclear holocaust.
The prospects for maintaining insolvent airline or its existing route network as a coherent whole appeared to be receding after officials warned that the airline was not viable and that a straight takeover would raise competition concerns.

A takeover of as a whole to keep it operating would not be possible, German deputy economy minister Matthias Machnig said on Saturday, pouring cold water on one airline investor's approach.

"The model of as an independent airline has failed," he told German radio stationrbb InfoRadio on Saturday.

Germany's Hans Rudolf Woehrl, who made a name for himself when he bought German airline Deutsche BA from British Airways for 1 euro, threw his hat in the ring for Air Berlin on Friday and said he wanted to keep it flying after buying it.

Separately, the head of Germany's advisory Monopoly Commission said that allowing Germany's flag carrier Lufthansa to take over Air Berlin's route network would render large numbers of German domestic routes uncompetitive.

Monopoly Commission President told Die Welt newspaper in an interview that while the increased market share for Lufthansa would be welcome, "it would not be persuasive if this were achieved by dispensing with competition on German routes."

His remarks appear to be at odds with the views of German federal transport minister Alexander Dobrindt, who has called for the creation of a German airline "national champion" - a turn of phrase which Die Welt said had also set alarm bells ringing in Brussels.

Talks on carving up Air Berlin, which said on Tuesday it was filing for insolvency, started on Friday, with Lufthansa getting the first meetings ahead of other potential bidders.

Earlier in the week, a source familiar with the matter said easyJet was among those in talks, and Thomas Cook's German airline Condor said it was ready to play "an active role" in Air Berlin's restructuring.

Deputy Economy Minister Machnig said it would take several investors to offer Air Berlin and its employees a long-term future, reiterating that Lufthansa would not be the only buyer of the carrier's assets.

He dismissed a complaint by Ryanair over the handling of the insolvency process, which its Chief Executive Michael O'Leary describes as a "conspiracy", saying O'Leary was welcome to play a role in Air Berlin's restructuring.

"I am entirely willing to discuss the matter," Machnig said.
United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. VIRGINIA E. MOURNING, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. TERNES PACKAGING, INDIANA, INC., Defendant-Appellee. No. 16-1650 Decided: August 18, 2017

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and RIPPLE and SYKES, Circuit Judges.

Virginia Ginger Mourning appeals the grant of summary judgment for her former employer, Ternes PackagingIndiana, Inc., on her claims that Ternes fired her because she is a woman, in violation of her rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C.  2000e-2, and because she took medical leave that was protected under the Family and Medical Leave Act, 29 U.S.C.  2615. Mourning challenges the district court's determinations that she failed to submit evidence establishing a prima facie case for either claim or showing that Ternes's reasons for her discharge were pretextual. We agree with the district court's conclusions and affirm the judgment.

Mourning worked for Ternes PackagingIndiana, Inc., from 1997 until the company fired her in 2013. Ternes is wholly-owned by Howard Ternes Packaging Company (Howard Ternes); both firms provide supply chain man-agement solutions to customers. Ternes has only one cli-entAllison Transmission, Inc.for which it provides bun-dled services, including clerical support  [,] material con-trol, administrative services for orders, secretarial, shipping, and traffic [support]. At all times relevant to Mourning's case, Ternes was run by a general manager, Eric Frey, who reported to Howard Ternes's director of sales, Carrie Brown. Since 1999, Mourning managed the Order Administration division. In that role she oversaw 10 employees. Mourning reported directly to Frey throughout her tenure.

In February 2013, Frey granted Mourning's request for leave under the Family Medical Leave Act to treat her encephalopathy (a treatable brain disease that, she contends, resulted from various medications she took). Mourning returned to work less than two months later. But on March 20, 2013, while Mourning was still on medical leave, eight of her ten subordinates jointly submitted to Frey an internal complaint against her. The employees complained that Mourning intimidated and publicly humiliated them, acted unpredictably, and generally micro-managed her team. One of the order administrators filed two additional internal complaints related to episodes in which she felt publicly humiliated by Mourning.

Before the March 20 submission, Mourning had never been the subject of a written complaint, nor had she ever been disciplined. In each of her annual evaluations, aside from the first after her promotion to manager in 1999, Frey had rated Mourning's performance as above exceptional, even as re-cently as her last evaluation in May 2012.

Upon her return from medical leave, Frey showed Mourning her subordinates' complaint, and Mourning responded with a written rebuttal and her own internal complaint against the staff. She carbon-copied Howard Ternes's vice president of finance, thereby alerting the parent company to her subordinates' complaint against her. Around that same time, Brown (Frey's supervisor, from Howard Ternes) visited Ternes for a routine visit, during which Frey brought up the subordinates' complaint and told Brown that the department didn't want [Mourning] to come back. Brown then met with a director at Allison Transmission who worked directly with Mourning, and this director told her that Mourning's performance was not up to his standards, particularly because Mourning was not using some data systemsa concern that he had previously discussed with Frey.

These developments prompted Howard Ternes to initiate an investigation into Mourning's performance. It ultimately concluded that she had exhibited unprofessional conduct to-ward direct reports and had fail[ed] to satisfy customer expectations. Both Brown and Michael Dergis, Howard Ternes's chief operating officer, reviewed information about Mourning's performance; this feedback had come from past and present order administrators, Frey, and Allison Transmission.

In early April, Dergis and Brown fired Frey and then Mourning. Frey was fired for his failure to timely inform Ternes Headquarters of the March 20 employee complaint against Mourning and failure to hold Mourning accountable for her unprofessional conduct and poor performance. Mourning was fired based on Dergis's and Brown's conclu-sion that Mourning's performance had resulted in neither her order administrators nor her customers wanting to work with her.  Ternes promoted another female order admin-istrator to take over Mourning's position. The next month Mourning sued Ternes for discriminating against her based on her sex in violation of Title VII and for retaliating against her for taking medical leave in violation of the FMLA. Exten-sive discovery ensued.

The district court ultimately granted summary judgment on Mourning's Title VII and FMLA claims. Regarding her Title VII claim, the court concluded that she had failed to point to any direct evidence of sex discrimination and that she had not established a claim under the indirect method, see McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792 (1973), because she did not produce evidence from which it could be inferred that (1) she was meeting Ternes's legitimate expectations, (2) she was similarly situated to a more favorably treated employee, or (3) Ternes's reason for firing her was pretextual. As for her FMLA claim, the court concluded that she could not establish a prima facie case of retaliation because she did not present evidence that would allow a finder of fact to conclude that she was meeting Ternes's legitimate expectations at the time she was fired, nor did she identify a similarly situated employee who did not request FMLA leave.

Six months after the district court entered its judgment, we issued our opinion in Ortiz v. Werner Enter., Inc., 834 F.3d 760, 765 (7th Cir. 2016), explaining that in employment discrimination cases, district courts must stop separating direct from indirect evidence and proceeding as if they were subject to different legal standards. We clarified that the ulti-mate question in an employment discrimination case is whether the evidence would permit a reasonable factfinder to conclude that the plaintiff's race, ethnicity, sex, religion, or other proscribed factor caused the discharge or other adverse employment action. Id. at 765; see also Williams v. Office of the Chief Judge of Cook Cnty. Ill., 839 F.3d 617, 626 (7th Cir. 2016); Cole v. Bd. of Trs. of N. Ill. Univ., 838 F.3d 888, 899900 (7th Cir. 2016), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 1614 (2017). Our decision in Ortiz did not disturb the burden-shifting framework, however, see 834 F.3d at 766, and so to the extent Mourning wants to take advantage of it, she retains the initial burden of establishing a prima facie case of discrimination, see McDonnell Douglas Corp., 411 U.S. at 80203.

Mourning has not carried that burden for her Title VII claim, as she has not presented evidence that would permit a reasonable factfinder to conclude that she was fired because of her sex. We note that although Mourning's appellate brief tracks the McDonnell-Douglas framework, it does not focus on trying to show that Dergis and Brown acted against her because she is a woman. She appears to rest her sex discrimination claim on a comparison to Walter Fish, the former materials manager at Ternes. Fish, she argues, worked in a similar managerial position, acted more egregiously than she did, yet was given additional chances to improve his performance, and later was allowed to resign instead of being fired. For Fish to be an adequate comparator, however, Mourning would need to show that he was treated more favorably than she was by the same decisionmaker, i.e., Howard Ternes. See Zayas v. Rockford Mem'l Hosp., 740 F.3d 1154, 1158 (7th Cir. 2014). But Mourning does not mention whether the complaints raised by subordinates against Fish were ever brought to the attention of Howard Ternes, and the current materials manager testi-fied that she did not think so.

Mourning's inability to establish a prima facie case of sex discrimination dooms her claim, but we add that her argu-ments about pretext are also unconvincing. Mourning contends that the reason for her discharge must have been pretextual because the accusations in her subordinates' internal complaint and the assessment of her work provided by Allison Transmission were, in her view, false. But Mourning's focus on the veracity of the complaints by her subordinates and Allison Transmission is misplaced. To show pretext, Mourning must establish both that a phony reason (not just an un-founded one) was given for her discharge, Hill v. Tangherlini, 724 F.3d 965, 968 (7th Cir. 2013); Ineichen v. Ameritech, 410 F.3d 956, 961 (7th Cir. 2005), and that the phony reason was given by an actual decisionmaker, see Hnin v. TOA (USA), LLC, 751 F.3d 499, 506 (7th Cir. 2014); Hill, 724 F.3d at 968here, Howard Ternes as represented by Dergis and Brown. (This raises another problem with her case: she may not have sued the proper defendant. The only defendant she named was Ternes but it was Howard Ternes, the parent corporation, that fired her. Given our other conclusions, we need not pursue this wrinkle further.) Mourning does not contend that Dergis and Brown knew that the allegations against her were false, nor does she point to evidence from which it can be inferred that they fired her because she is a woman.

Regarding Mourning's FMLA claim, we ask, following Ortiz, whether the record contains sufficient evidence to permit a reasonable factfinder to conclude that Howard Ternes fired her in retaliation for taking FMLA leave. See Lord v. High Voltage Software, Inc., 839 F.3d 556, 563 (7th Cir. 2016) (clarify-ing the standard for a retaliation claim under Title VII, post-Ortiz), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 1115 (2017); Ortiz, 834 F.3d at 765. She has not directed us to any evidence in the record that would permit a factfinder to decide in her favor. Mourning could not identify anyone in the office who she believed had an issue with her taking leave or with her medical condition, and she offers no evidence that Howard Ternes retaliated against her based on her medical leave.

AFFIRMED.

PER CURIAM.
At 5.55 pm on Thursday, James Murdoch sent an email to a list of blind-copied recipients offering a striking repudiation of President Trump and a pledge to donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League. He addressed the note to friends, stating in the first line that he was writing it in a personal capacity, as a concerned citizen and a father.
Spain kept the terrorist alert unchanged at the second-highest level after police broke up the group that carried out two attacks this week that killed 14 civilians and injured scores of .
United States President Donald Trump wants to cut off all military aid to Pakistan as he thinks that the Washington is being ripped off by Islamabad.

According to Foreign Policy report, US is considering to increase troop levels up to 15,000 in Afghanistan as part of the new strategy, which also would change the US relationship with Pakistan significantly.

The report quoted a White House official as saying that "the President thinks we're being ripped off by Pakistan. The president wants to cut off all military aid to Pakistan. That's part of the strategy".

The report further said the Pentagon has already frozen support to Islamabad under the coalition support fund, which provides payments to Pakistan for supporting counterterrorism operations.

This move is being considered due to Pakistan's constant support to insurgent group Taliban. However, US wants to ensure the survival of the Afghan government by ending the war in the country by negotiating with the Taliban.

This move is triggered by Pakistan's insufficient actions against the Haqqani network, an insurgent group based in Afghanistan, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said.

Currently, around 8,400 US soldiers are deployed in Afghanistan.

Terming Afghanistan issue as 'a mess' that he took over from the previous administration; Trump had said that his administration is getting close to a decision on an updated strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis had also hinted that President Trump is "very close" to making a decision on the strategy.

"We're sharpening each one of the options so you can see the pluses and minuses of each one so that there's no longer any new data you're going to get. Now [he can] just make the decision," Mattis said.

Earlier, reports had emerged that the US administration may consider outsourcing the war management in Afghanistan to a private firm.

(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.)
Despite its (relatively) low body count and primitive execution, Thursdays terrorist attack in Barcelona shocked many local and international onlookers. The Islamic State (IS) group was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, in which a van was deliberately driven into pedestrians on Barcelonas famed Las Ramblas strip. At least 13 people are dead, and around 100 have been left injured.
is weighing his options on formulating a new US strategy in South Asia with the focus on Afghanistan, the White House has said, after the President held a key meeting with his national security team.

Trump would take a final decision on this at an appropriate time, the White House said, without divulging the details of the meeting during which Trump was briefed by his national security team.

"Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders. Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan," Trump tweeted after the meeting at the presidential retreat at Camp David, a picturesque resort in Maryland.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the President was briefed extensively by his national security team on a new strategy to protect America's interests in South Asia.

"The President is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time," Sanders said in a statement after



Besides the National Security Adviser Lt Gen H R McMaster, the meeting was attended by Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, and President's top Adviser on South Asia Lisa Curtis.

Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, attended the meeting through a secure video conference.

The administration has said its Afghanistan strategy will be determined by a review of its approach to the broader region, including Pakistan and India.

Meanwhile, Senator Lindsay Graham, in a statement, urged the US President not to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

"If we were to pull all our troops from Afghanistan it would be a disaster for our national security interests and set the stage for another 9/11 on American soil," Graham said.

Graham hoped that Trump, unlike his predecessor, will not put US military in a bad spot in Afghanistan.

"He should give them the tools and support they need to confront the rising terror threats in Afghanistan. Today, our diplomatic efforts are non-existent in Afghanistan and the same is true in neighbouring Pakistan," Graham said.
Baloch Republican Party activist Abdul Bugti has urged Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg to cancel her meeting with Pakistan's former military dictator Pervez Musharraf.

"We appeal and request Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg to cancel her meeting with the ex dictator (Pervez Musharraf)," Bugti said.

He said Musharraf is a war criminal, who is absconding from the courts of his own country on serious charges of treason, murder and assassination of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

Bugti also called Musharraf as 'butcher of Balochistan', who killed thousands of civilians during his rule including Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

"We want to make it clear that Musharraf is not a peace maker or messenger of peace , he is an ex brutal dictator, butcher of Balochistan, who killed thousands of civilians during his military dictatorship including father of nation shaheed Nawas Akbar Khan Bugti, who was assassinated by Pakistan army in military operation on 26 of august, 2006," Bugti said.

He also alleged that Musharraf has no regrets and remorse of what he did to the Baloch people.

Bugti said Baloch people staged a protest over extending invite to Musharraf as a speaker at the 'Dialogue for Peace' event organised by Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

He added that the Baloch activist also recorded their protest with the Nobel Peace Centre, which then explained that the event was not organised by them but by a Pakistani NGO, which had invited Musharraf.

Earlier, Musharraf was heckled by Baloch activists at the 'Dialogue for Peace' event organised by Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

The event was cancelled midway after the Baloch activists staged a protest over extending invite to Musharraf as a speaker.

The Baloch activists labelled Musharraf as 'Butcher of Balochistan' and 'Butcher of Baloch' during the event.

Baloch Republican Party spokesman Sher Mohammad Bugti tweeted after the event was cancelled, "More Nobel Peace Center cancels the event midway when Baloch activists protested against Musharraf being invited as a speaker. Well done."

In a series of tweets, Baloch leader Brahumdagh Bugti, the founder and leader (in exile) of the Baloch Republican Party, also raised an objection to extending an invitation to former military dictator Musharraf to participate in a talk on peace.

Bugti tweeted, "We strongly protest inviting military dictator Musharraf for talking on peace. He is a war criminal not a peacemaker.

In another tweet,Bugti mentioned,"Musharraf has been invited by the organisation Dialogue for peace, who hosted tonights event. Our museum is open for all visitors."

On Twitter, Bugti requested Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg to cancel the meeting with "a war criminal and a court absconder," Musharraf.

"We request PM @erna_solberg to cancel meeting with Musharraf, a war criminal, ex-dictator & court absconder on murder case of my grandfather," Bugti tweeted.

The Balochistan Republican Party leader also accused Musharraf of killing his grandfather Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in a military raid on 26 August 2006.

"Musharraf killed my grandfather & 1000s of Baloch civilians. Ask people of #Balochistan about his contribution for 'peace,' "he tweeted.

Musharraf has been facing a slew of cases, including the high treason trial since 2013 and he was barred from leaving the country in 2014 by the government.

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The Balochistan High Court in November 2016 had issued a bailable arrest warrant against former Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in connection with the murder of former Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in a military operation in 2006.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The prime suspect in Barcelona attack Moussa Oukabir has been shot dead by police in the nearby seaside town of Cambrils, reports Express.

The twin attacks in the Catalan capital were a reaction to air strikes in Syria, ISIS claimed, despite Spaniards refusing to take part in air bombing campaigns in 2015.

Hours after the Barcelona attack, a lone police officer shot dead four of the five suspects who were in a car that was driven into pedestrians in Cambrils.

Earlier, the police force for Spain's Catalonia region confirmed that four suspects were shot dead, and a fifth, who was wounded and arrested, has died during the anti-terror operation in the resort town of Cambrils and the explosive belts they were carrying have been detonated by the force's bomb squad.

Six by-standers were wounded, one critically and another seriously. A police officer was also lightly injured in the counter-terror operation.

One of the suspects involved in the Barcelona attack was found dead in a car three kilometers from where police officers tried to stop him by firing at the vehicle he was in.

Two suspects, one from Morocco, one from the Spanish enclave of Melilla, were arrested in connection with the Barcelona attack, Catalan Police Chief Josep Lluis Trapero said.

At least 14 people were killed and more than 100 were injured on Thursday when a van crashed into a crowd that regularly throng Barcelona's Las Ramblas boulevard, a destination popular with tourists.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A manhunt is underway across Europe to find the main suspect, the driver of the white Renault Kangoo van that was involved in the terror attack on Las Ramblas in the heart of Barcelona, amid fears that he may have crossed into France.

Investigators have said that the Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks are closely linked as that was hatched in a house that the plotters had used as a bomb factory, Telegraph reported.

An explosion at a house in Alcanar, which is about 125 miles southwest of Barcelona took place before the Las Ramblas attack. Police currently believe the Barcelona and Cambrils incidents were planned in Alcanar - linking all three events.

Catalan police chief Josep Lluis Trapero said that explosives were found in the Alcanar property and that police "are working on the hypothesis that these attacks were being prepared in that house."

Around 13 people were killed and 100 injured in three terror-related incidents in Catalonia, Spain, including attack in Barcelona.Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22-year old Moroccan national, is believed to be the driver of the white van involved in the attack on Thursday afternoon, but was not among those shot dead by security forces later that night,according to Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Security officials believe the attacks on Barcelona and Cambrils were the work of a terror cell of at least 12 people, who may have been inspired by the London Bridge outrage in June.

The driver is feared to be still at large after plotting the Barcelona terrorist attacks and police and security services were hunting for the remaining members of a Moroccan-born terror cell, amid fears that they could be preparing further attacks at popular tourist areas, Telegraph reported.

Police in Catalonia said they were searching for Abouyaaqoub,living in the Spanish town of Ripoll.

Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, King Felipe VI and Carles Puigdemont, the president of Catalonia - where both attacks took place - held a minute of silence in Barcelona.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Saturday lashed out at Yogi Adityanath over his statement that Gorakhpur should not be allowed to be made a 'picnic spot', citing that the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister should be careful with his words.

Speaking to ANI, Congress leader Girija Vyas said, "Such language or statement should not be used for Rahul Gandhi. His visit is a genuine one and comes out of concern. Nothing can be more unfortunate than this ruthless statement over the Congress. Our party has always been sensitive and will continue to be. Adityanath should be careful with his words or else should take them back."

Resonating similar views, another grand old party leader Shobha Oza stated that even after Adityanath is making such assertions just to hide his wrongdoings.

"Yogi Adityanath is making such statements just to hide his wrongdoings and cover up on all the dirty politics that the saffron party is into. He was in the hospital for more than 2.5 hours. Should I ask him what was he doing for so long? Also despite staying there, can he give a report on all the development and improvement that has taken place? So far, the BJP government has not done anything on this matter," he said.

This statement comes after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, earlier in the day, launched a scathing attack on the Opposition, saying that it should not be allowed to make the tragedy-struck place a 'picnic spot'.

"The 'shehzaada' sitting in Lucknow and the 'yuvraj' sitting in Delhi don't know the importance of cleanliness. We must not allow them to make Gorakhpur a picnic spot," Chief Minister Yogi said, while addressing a public rally in Gorakhpur's Andhiyari Bagh locality, ahead of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's visit to the city.

Adityanath also targetted an attack on the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for ruining institutions in Uttar Pradesh for selfish motives.

"The governments in last 12-15 years ruined the institutions in UP for selfish motives by institutionalising corruption and kept people deprived of facilities," he stated.

The Chief Minister launched a 'Swachh Uttar Pradesh, Swasth Uttar Pradesh' campaign and broomed a street in Gorakhpur clean.

He also appealed the public to maintain cleanliness in their locality to fight encephalitis.

"I started the movement against Encephalitis, at least 20 years back. Prevention is better than cure and it starts with sanitation. The common people have to involve themselve in the cleanliness drive. We will start the abhiyan from Gorakhpur itself," he added.

Yesterday, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav demanded a high level Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the death of at least 30 kids died in 48 hours at Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College's Nehru Hospital in Gorakhpur.

Addressing the media here, Yadav accused the Yogi Adityanath-led government of being hand-in-gloves with the CBI.

The former chief minister also said that people of Uttar Pradesh have understood the reality of the party and would not be fooled by BJP's false promises.

Meanwhile, the Allahabad High Court has pulled up the Uttar Pradesh Government and has asked to specify the cause of deaths of multitudes of children that took place in Gorakhpur's BRD Medical College.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) leader Bimal Gurung has written to Home Minister Rajnath Singh regarding an FIR filed against him on suspicion of the deadly bomb blast in Darjeeling, on Friday.

Condemning the attacks and writing about the FIR Gurung said, "Last night, ie 18th of August, a blast of unknown nature occurred in Darjeeling town, and before anyone can even come to terms with the nature of the blast, the Darjeeling police have rushed in to file an FIR against the GJM President Mr Bimal Gurung and other GJM leaders."

The letter further said the GJM is wondering as to how it is possible that an FIR be filed this early, in such a serious matter, while the investigations have not yet begun.

"In filing the FIR this early, without proper investigations, the Bengal government has revealed their own hidden agenda of entrapping the GJM leadership on another series of trumped up charges," Gurung wrote.

He further said that the blast site is situated right next to the Darjeeling Sadar Police station, and currently heavy police force has been deployed in the entire Darjeeling region.

"So how is it possible that the police wouldn't or didn't see someone planting a bomb in the middle of the night, so close to their own premise? It is either a case of gross incompetence on their part, or a case of fake blast planted by state agents to frame the GJM leadership," the GJM leader wrote.

He further said that the West Bengal government has repeatedly tried to paint GJM's movement as "anti national" and adding, "Earlier Mamata Banerjee accused us of being hands in gloves with the insurgents from North East, when we asked her to provide proof of the same, she simply couldn't, as she didn't have any proof to give."

He also alleged that Mamata Banerjee later said that the Gorkhaland movement is being supported by China, and the Nepal Maoists, saying that, "Once again the entire Gorkhaland Movement Coordination Committee (and not just the GJM) asked for proof, and once again the Bengal government failed to provide any proof. We therefore suspect that this blast is the handy work of the Bengal government to bring disrepute to the Gorkhaland cause and our leaders, and to portray our movement as being anti- ."

He also added that since the blast is a security issue, they kindly request the Home Minister to constitute a High Level Enquiry Committee immediately, to be comprised of Investigative Agency (NIA), with a Supreme Court judge monitoring the entire investigations, so as to ensure fairness of the investigations.

"Sir, being a part of the NDA alliance and also loyal subjects of India, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has always believed in demanding our rights peacefully and in a democratic and constitutional manner. Thus this brazen attempt at criminalizing the GJM leadership has caused great anguish to the entire Gorkha population living across India," he said.

The GJM leader further requested that an enquiry be constituted at the earliest, and adding that justice and fairness be provided to the Gorkha's.

"More importantly, I also request you to expedite the talks on Gorkhaland issue, so that a permanent resolution to our issues in the form of a Gorkhaland state is arrived at the earliest," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Betsy Gibson, new member sponsor; Linda Lee, new member; District Governor Alexander-Davis; and Todd Gaither, HP Club president District 6780 Governor - Deborah Alexander-Davis Todd Gaither, HP Club president; District Governor Alexander-Davis; and Gale Williams, HP Club vice president Danielle Bobo, Youth Services caseworker with Partnership for Families, Children and Adults, with one of the toiletry items bags. Previous Next

Rotary District 6780 Governor spoke at the Rotary Club of Chattanooga Hamilton Place this week. Deborah Alexander-Davis addressed the club, discussed upcoming events, and thanked the club for donating over $399,000 to the Rotary Foundation. Ms. Alexander-Davis also provided insights and encouragement regarding the Rotary's focus.

Rotary is dedicated to six areas of focus to build international relationships, improve lives, create a better world to support our peace effort, and end polio forever.

Those six areas of focus are 1) Promoting Peace, 2) Fighting Disease, 3) Providing Clean Water, 4) Saving Mother's and Children, 5) Supporting Education, and 6) Growing Local Economies. During the meeting, a new member, Linda Lee, was initiated and welcomed into the club."The Rotary Club of Chattanooga Hamilton Place gives back to our community monthly with a service project. This month, the service project was collecting and delivering toiletry items, which we call the Soap and Shampoo project . The items were delivered to the Partnership for Families, Children and Adults. The Soap and Shampoo Project has supported several agencies within our Chattanooga community," officials said.
Amid the ongoing controversy over the Gorakhpur tragedy, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday launched a scathing attack on the Opposition, saying that it should not be allowed to make the tragedy-struck place a 'picnic spot'.

"The 'shehzaada' sitting in Lucknow and the 'yuvraj' sitting in Delhi don't know the importance of cleanliness. We must not allow them to make Gorakhpur a picnic spot," Chief Minister Yogi said, while addressing a public rally in Gorakhpur's Andhiyari Bagh locality, ahead of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's visit to the city.

Adityanath also targetted an attack on the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for ruining institutions in Uttar Pradesh for selfish motives.

"The governments in last 12-15 years ruined the institutions in UP for selfish motives by institutionalising corruption and kept people deprived of facilities," he stated.

The Chief Minister launched a 'Swachh Uttar Pradesh, Swasth Uttar Pradesh' campaign and broomed a street in Gorakhpur clean.

He also appealed the public to maintain cleanliness in their locality to fight encephalitis.

"I started the movement against Encephalitis, at least 20 years back. Prevention is better than cure and it starts with sanitation. The common people have to involve themselve in the cleanliness drive. We will start the abhiyan from Gorakhpur itself," he added.

Yesterday, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav demanded a high level Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the death of at least 30 kids died in 48 hours at Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College's Nehru Hospital in Gorakhpur.

Addressing the media here, Yadav accused the Yogi Adityanath-led government of being hand-in-gloves with the CBI.

The former chief minister also said that people of Uttar Pradesh have understood the reality of the party and would not be fooled by BJP's false promises.

Meanwhile, the Allahabad High Court has pulled up the Uttar Pradesh Government and has asked to specify the cause of deaths of multitudes of children that took place in Gorakhpur's BRD Medical College.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress party on Saturday took a dig at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath over the Gorakhpur hospital tragedy, saying that despite being five-time MP from Gorakhpur he did nothing for the hospital.

Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who visited Gorakhpur along with party vice-president Rahul Gandhi told the media, "In spite of being five-time MP from Gorakhpur, he (Adityanath) did nothing for the hospital."

Earlier in the day, Rahul met the family of children, who died in Gorakhpur's BRD medical college's hospital.

Around 71 children lost their lives in the BRD hospital since August 7 due to various causes including encephalitis.

Ahead of Rahul's Gorakhpur visit, Adityanath launched a scathing attack at the former, saying that the tragedy-struck place should not be allowed to be made a 'picnic spot'.

"The 'shehzaada' sitting in Lucknow and the 'yuvraj' sitting in Delhi don't know the importance of cleanliness. We must not allow them to make Gorakhpur a picnic spot," Chief Minister Yogi said, while addressing a public rally in Gorakhpur's Andhiyari Bagh locality.
The 'Dialogue for Peace' event organised by Nobel Peace Center in Oslo has been cancelled midway after the Baloch activists staged a protest over extending invite to Pakistan's former military dictator Pervez Musharraf as a speaker.

Baloch Republican Party spokesman Sher Mohammad Bugti? tweeted after the event was cancelled, "More Nobel Peace Center cancels the event midway when Baloch activists protested against Musharraf being invited as a speaker. Well done."

In a series of tweets, Baloch leader Brahumdagh Bugti, the founder and leader (in exile) of the Baloch Republican Party, also raised an objection to extending an invitation to former military dictator Musharraf to participate in a talk on peace.

Bugti tweeted, "We strongly protest inviting military dictator Musharraf for talking on peace. He is a war criminal not a peacemaker.

In another tweet,Bugti mentioned,"Musharraf has been invited by the organisation Dialogue for peace, who hosted tonights event. Our museum is open for all visitors."

On Twitter, Bugti requested Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg to cancel the meeting with "a war criminal and a court absconder," Musharraf.

"We request PM @erna_solberg to cancel meeting with Musharraf, a war criminal, ex-dictator & court absconder on murder case of my grandfather," Bugti tweeted.

The Balochistan Republican Party leader also accused Musharraf of killing his grandfather Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in a military raid on 26 August 2006.

"Musharraf killed my grandfather & 1000s of Baloch civilians. Ask people of #Balochistan about his contribution for 'peace,' "he tweeted.

Musharraf has been facing a slew of cases, including the high treason trial since 2013 and he was barred from leaving the country in 2014 by the government.

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.The Balochistan High Court in November 2016 had issued a bailable arrest warrant against former Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in connection with the murder of former Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in a military operation in 2006.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of New India, as he paid a visit to Gorakhpur to meet the grieving families of the Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College Hospital tragedy's victims.

"It is not only an incident in Uttar Pradesh; rather it is a tragedy. This incident is a sign of the situation of healthcare system in India. Things don't work like this. Modi Ji speaks about new India. We don't want this kind of new India. We want a new India where a poor can take his/her child for treatment and return back happily," he said, while addressing media after meeting the victims' families.

Rahul also said that he earlier informed Prime Minister Modi about the lack of facilities in the hospital and asked Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to take proper action, instead of covering it up.

"It is clear that this government has tragedy in it. I earlier told Modi Ji that this hospital needs money. There are many problems in the hospital. But no action is being taken. It is clear that this incident has taken place due to lack of oxygen. The Chief Minister should take action, instead of covering up," he said.

Yesterday, former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav demanded a high level Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the death of at least 30 kids died in 48 hours at BRD Medical College's Nehru Hospital in Gorakhpur.

Addressing the media, Yadav accused the Yogi Adityanath-led government of being hand-in-gloves with the CBI.

The former chief minister also said that people of Uttar Pradesh have understood the reality of the party and would not be fooled by BJP's false promises.

Meanwhile, the Allahabad High Court has pulled up the Uttar Pradesh Government and has asked to specify the cause of deaths of multitudes of children that took place in Gorakhpur's BRD Medical College.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Vijnana Bharati's JNU chapter commenced with a Dr Vikram Sarabhai Memorial lecture, celebrating the National Remote Sensing Day in the university's School of Environmental Sciences (SES).

Dr Shibendu S. Ray, Director, Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre, A. Jayakumar, Secretary General, Vijnana Bharti, JNU rector Professor S.C. Garkoti and Dean Professor S. Mukherjee were key speakers at the occasion.

The programme was attended by academicians and researchers from different disciplines across the university and other nearby institutions/universities.

In his introductory remarks, Garkoti said that the impact of chemicals fertilizers on productivity of crop could be estimated by our modellers, who can play a significant role by telling us about future crop production in any particular area (like Gangetic plain) through remote sensing. Scientists across the globe are fascinated with Indian skill which helps in choosing the right crop so that fertility of soil remains optimal.

Jayakumar explained the importance of environmental as a discipline being an admixture of four dimensions of that is physical, chemical, biological and mathematical.

While, laying stress on the need to inculcate the qualities and high patriotic values of Dr Sarabhai to establish India as a developed nation on globe, he stressed on the importance of indigenous technology, ancient scientific heritages of Vedas for betterment of Indian people and society.

He urged scientists and youths to find the solution of the problems at local and socially accepted.

Ray delivered a talk on 'space technology for agriculture.' He touched upon various dimensions that space technology is currently being utilized in agriculture sectors improving the lives of farmers in India.

He coherently described how the space technology are being used in various government policies like increasing the total seed sown area for increasing crop productivity like shifting towards horticultures crops, easier grievance redress of farmers in settling claim dispute under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana.

He mentioned various success stories of Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Orissa etc, where technology has substantially improved the lives of farmer community. Conglomeration of various mandis via e-Nam app has improved the income of ordinary farmers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A rescue operation into saving a bull trapped in a 10-feet deep dig is underway in Kanpur.

The incident took place in Halsey Road, one of the most crowded place in Kanpur, allegedly due to the negligence of the Kanpur Municipal Corporation and power department.

Reportedly, the Fire Department and two teams of the Municipal Corporation are now engaged in the rescue operation.

Further details are awaited.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A cancellation report was filed by the the Vigilance Bureau in the court of Sessions Judge Gurbir Singh here.

The state vigilance bureau had registered the FIR in March 2007.

Amarinder and others had been charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code relating to criminal breach of trust (409), cheating (420), forgery (465), forgery of valuable security (467), forgery for purpose of cheating (468), and using as genuine a forged document (471), criminal conspiracy (120-B) besides under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Maharashtra Police on Saturday registered a case against a woman after she allegedly stabbed her fifty-two year old husband to death over reported family disputes.

The deceased has been identified as Appayya Chenanda.

According to the police reports, the accused has also sustained injuries and admitted to Shatabdi hospital in Mumbai's Kandivali area.

The complaint against the accused has been lodged by her own son Ganapati Chenanda.

A case under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has been registered.

An investigation is underway.

Further reports are awaited.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) founder Altaf Hussain held talks with US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher and the Khan of Kalat, Mir Dawood Jan, at the MQM's London Secretariat and reportedly discussed alleged rights abuses being committed by the Pakistan Army on people in Balochistan.

All three agreed to "work together for the common cause".

The MQM leader reportedly apprised Congressman Rohrabacher of "arrests, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and acts of mistreatment" of Baloch people by security forces, the Dawn quoted a press release, as saying on the party's website.

Rohrabacher, a supporter of Free Balochistan cause and a known anti-Pakistan US Congressman, has pledged to raise these issues in the U.S. Congress and at other appropriate forums, the press release said.

In a statement, the MQM said that Altaf had briefed the US lawmaker from California about alleged human rights violations and arrests of MQM workers in Karachi. The meeting lasted for four hours and members of MQM's Rabita Committee attended the meeting.

The Khan of Kalat and Hussain also agreed to "work together" for the rights of the Mohajir community and the Baloch people.

All three agreed to continue holding such meetings in the near future "work together for the common cause".The MQM said it had been agreed that all "like-minded" people will work together in future and increase coordination.

Earlier in July, a US Congressional panel titled "Pakistan: Friend or foe?" - where Rohrabacher also spoke - had come close to challenging Pakistan's existence as a state.

Self-exiled Baloch leader, the Khan of Kalat, Mir Suleman Dawood, is continuing the "struggle for the rights of Balochistan and its people" from abroad.

The Khan of Kalat had left the country in 2007 on the recommendations of a 'grand Baloch Jirga' after developing serious differences with the state following the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) and Parliamentary Affairs, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi flagged off the first batch of 300 Haj pilgrims from Mumbai at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport here today.

Naqvi said that the Central Government had completed all the entire process related to Haj 2017 well in time and has ensured best facilities to Haj pilgrims flagged off the first batch of 300 Haj pilgrims from Mumbai at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport here today.

He also congratulated the Haj pilgrims and extended his best wishes to them for their pilgrimage.

A total of about 5600 Haj pilgrims from Mumbai are going this year.

Naqvi said that new Haj Policy 2018 will be finalized very soon and from next year Haj will be organised according to the new policy.

The new Haj policy is aimed at making it a transparent and smooth process.

Naqvi also said that reviving the option of sending Haj pilgrims through sea route also is part of the new policy.

Sending pilgrims through ships will help cut down travel expenses by nearly half as compared to airfares.

The practice of ferrying Haj pilgrims between Mumbai and Jeddah by waterways was stopped from 1995.

The Union Minister also said that another advantage with ships available these days is they are modern and well-equipped to ferry 4,000 to 5,000 persons at a time.

"They can cover the 2,300-odd nautical miles one-side distance between Mumbai and Jeddah within just two-three days. Earlier, the old ships used to take 12 to 15 days to cover this distance," he said.

Haj 2017 started with departure of Haj pilgrims from various embarkation points across the country on 24th July.

Saudi Arabia has increased annual Haj quota of India by Rs. 34,005.

After significant increase in India's Haj quota by Saudi Arabia Government, a total of 1,70,025 people have been going to Haj pilgrimage this year from India out of which 1,25,025 pilgrims are going through Haj Committee of India while 45,000 people are going through Private Tour Operators from 21 embarkation points.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Two International Automotive Components (IAC) Group employees dropped by Sale Creek Middle High School Friday to deliver solar eclipse glasses and Moon Pies to every student in the school.IAC Group is an automotive supplier with a plant in Dayton.Human Resources Manager Jim Barrie and HR Assistant Kadie Bodden packaged the glasses and Moon Pies together, and then handed them out to each student as they headed to lunch.IAC Group decided to get the glasses for everyone working at the Dayton plant (around 550 employees).The idea just grew from there, said Ms. Bodden.The Moon Pies were included because a solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves between the sun and Earth, blocking the sunlight and casting a shadow onto Earth."Now the SCMHS students have a snack cake as big as the moon to enjoy while waiting for the Earths moon to cast its shadow on Monday afternoon," officials said.Mr. Barrie and Ms. Bodden handed out the packets first to the high school students as they headed to lunch. About an hour later, they handed out the packets to every middle school student as well.Sale Creek is one of the communities falling within the path of totality for Mondays eclipse. Residents will experience full totality for around two minutes shortly after 2:30 p.m.
Pakistan's former military dictator Pervez Musharraf was heckled by Baloch activists at the 'Dialogue for Peace' event organised by the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

The event was cancelled midway after the Baloch activists staged a protest over extending invite to Musharraf as a speaker.

The Baloch activists labelled Musharraf as 'Butcher of Balochistan' and 'Butcher of Baloch' during the event.

Baloch Republican Party spokesman Sher Mohammad Bugti tweeted after the event was cancelled, "More Nobel Peace Center cancels the event midway when Baloch activists protested against Musharraf being invited as a speaker. Well done."

In a series of tweets, Baloch leader Brahumdagh Bugti, the founder and leader (in exile) of the Baloch Republican Party, also raised an objection to extending an invitation to former military dictator Musharraf to participate in a talk on peace.

Bugti tweeted, "We strongly protest inviting military dictator Musharraf for talking on peace. He is a war criminal not a peacemaker.

In another tweet,Bugti mentioned,"Musharraf has been invited by the organisation Dialogue for peace, who hosted tonights event. Our museum is open for all visitors."

On Twitter, Bugti requested Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg to cancel the meeting with "a war criminal and a court absconder," Musharraf.

"We request PM @erna_solberg to cancel meeting with Musharraf, a war criminal, ex-dictator & court absconder on murder case of my grandfather," Bugti tweeted.

The Balochistan Republican Party leader also accused Musharraf of killing his grandfather Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in a military raid on 26 August 2006.

"Musharraf killed my grandfather & 1000s of Baloch civilians. Ask people of #Balochistan about his contribution for 'peace,' "he tweeted.

Musharraf has been facing a slew of cases, including the high treason trial since 2013 and he was barred from leaving the country in 2014 by the government.

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The Balochistan High Court in November 2016 had issued a bailable arrest warrant against former Musharraf in connection with the murder of former Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in a military operation in 2006.

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Baloch Republican Party activist Abdul Bugti has branded Pakistan's former military dictator Pervez Musharraf as the 'butcher' of Balochistan, who killed thousands of civilians during his rule including Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

"We want to make it clear that Musharraf is not a peace maker or messenger of peace , he is an ex brutal dictator, butcher of Balochistan, who killed thousands of civilians during his military dictatorship including father of nation shaheed Nawas Akbar Khan Bugti, who was assassinated by Pakistan army in military operation on 26 of august, 2006," Bugti said.

He also alleged that Musharraf has no regrets and remorse of what he did to the Baloch people.

Bugti said Baloch people staged a protest over extending invite to Musharraf as a speaker at the 'Dialogue for Peace' event organised by Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

He added that the Baloch activists also recorded their protest with the Nobel Peace Centre which then explained that the event was not organised by them but by a Pakistani NGO, which had invited Musharraf.

Earlier, Musharraf was heckled by Baloch activists at the 'Dialogue for Peace' event organised by Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

The event was cancelled midway after the Baloch activists staged a protest over extending invite to Musharraf as a speaker.

The Baloch activists labelled Musharraf as 'Butcher of Balochistan' and 'Butcher of Baloch' during the event.

Baloch Republican Party spokesman Sher Mohammad Bugti tweeted after the event was cancelled, "More Nobel Peace Center cancels the event midway when Baloch activists protested against Musharraf being invited as a speaker. Well done."

In a series of tweets, Baloch leader Brahumdagh Bugti, the founder and leader (in exile) of the Baloch Republican Party, also raised an objection to extending an invitation to former military dictator Musharraf to participate in a talk on peace.

Bugti tweeted, "We strongly protest inviting military dictator Musharraf for talking on peace. He is a war criminal not a peacemaker.

In another tweet,Bugti mentioned,"Musharraf has been invited by the organisation Dialogue for peace, who hosted tonights event. Our museum is open for all visitors."

On Twitter, Bugti requested Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg to cancel the meeting with "a war criminal and a court absconder," Musharraf.

"We request PM @erna_solberg to cancel meeting with Musharraf, a war criminal, ex-dictator & court absconder on murder case of my grandfather," Bugti tweeted.

The Balochistan Republican Party leader also accused Musharraf of killing his grandfather Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in a military raid on 26 August 2006.

"Musharraf killed my grandfather & 1000s of Baloch civilians. Ask people of #Balochistan about his contribution for 'peace,' "he tweeted.

Musharraf has been facing a slew of cases, including the high treason trial since 2013 and he was barred from leaving the country in 2014 by the government.

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.The Balochistan High Court in November 2016 had issued a bailable arrest warrant against former Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in connection with the murder of former Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in a military operation in 2006.

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Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh on Saturday said that the Conference (NC) has no issues with the settlement of foreigners, but raises hue and cry over the settlement of Indian nationals every time.

"There has to be a discussion on Article 35 (A) in the Legislative Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir. But on the issue of settlement, let this be a larger discussion. Let the discussion start from the settlement of the foreigners who have, for the last 10-15 years, settled here without any reason. Incidentally, it was the Conference-Congress Government at that time. What is the stand of this political party, which maintains selective silence on the settlement of Rohingyas, Burmese and Bangladesh nationals, but raises hue and cry over the settlement of Indian nationals? That means it is malafide intention," Singh told ANI.

He added that the Conference might have thought that the settlement of these foreigners would add to their vote banks.

National Conference president Omar Abdullah, earlier on Friday, sought a special session of Jammu and Kashmir Legislature before August 29, to frame up an appropriate response to counter the narrative with regard to tampering or repealing of the Article 35A of the Constitution.

Abdullah expressed grave concern over the reported unsatisfactory response of the Union and the State governments in putting up a strong case before the apex court in safeguard of the Article 35A.

The NC chief hoped that "the people of Jammu and Kashmir will rise above party politics and fight every overt or covert attempts to trample the Article 35A, which is regional neutral, religious neutral and ethnic neutral".

He said abrogation of this proviso is detrimental to every segment of society in Jammu and Kashmir.

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Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari on Saturday returned to the country after over three months of medical leave from the United Kingdom for an undisclosed "health challenge".

The 74-year-old left for London on May 7 and landed back at the international airport in the capital, Abuja today.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, has functioned as the Acting President in Buhari's absence.

"President Buhari is expected to speak to Nigerians in a broadcast by 7am on Monday. He thanks all Nigerians who have prayed ceaselessly for his recovery and well-being since the beginning of the health challenge." his office said.

Buhari's four-year term ends in 2019.

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The trouble seems to not be getting over for Roman Polanski.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Roman Polanski's decades-old rape case won't be dismissed despite a plea from his victim, a California judge ruled Friday.

Earlier this year, Samantha Geimer told the court she has been serving a 40-year sentence and asked for the case to be thrown out as an act of mercy to her and her family. She was only 13-year-old and Polanski was convicted of sexually assaulting in the late '70s.

Judge Scott Gordon allowed Geimer to testify in June and felt really sympathetic to her statements but he is not convinced that dismissing the case against the 'Pianist' helmer is in the advancement of justice.

In the statement, he wrote, "The statement of the victim in this matter is strong evidence of the actual and very real impact that sexual assault has on the survivor of sexual assault."

Adding, "In this case Ms. Geimer was a victim of serious crimes committed by the Defendant when she was thirteen years old. Her statement is dramatic evidence of the long-lasting and traumatic effect these crimes, and Defendant's refusal to obey court orders and appear for sentencing, is having on her life."

While Gordon acknowledged that a judge can dismiss such a case upon his own motion, but he said that the court cannot dismiss such a case "merely because it would be in the victim's best interest."

He also noted that Polanski's counsel in 2008 asked the court to dismiss the case on its own motion and that request was denied by Judge Peter Espinoza.

Gordon shared that the fundamental evidence in the case has not changed, since the decision has come.

In the ruling, he stated, "The defendant continues to stand in a position that is at the core of the fugitive dis-entitlement doctrine. The only thing that has changed in the posture of this case is that the defendant, through counsel, continues to extend his ad hominem attacks to each judicial officer assigned to the matter and those attacks by counsel become more inappropriate with each subsequent pleading filed by the Defendant."

Braun, in a Friday filing, suggested two potential paths toward resolution. Neither Polanski nor Braun seek to justify the director's conduct in 1977 that led to the case, but they question "the honesty and integrity of some members of the criminal justice system" and hope the current court "has the wisdom and competence to resolve this ancient case."

Adding, "Mr. Polanski has been arrested three times on this case including [in] Los Angeles, Switzerland, and Poland. Because he does not owe any additional custody time to the court, there would be no purpose in an additional arrest other than to assert personal jurisdiction."

Geimer also replied on the ruling and issued a statement, which read, "I did not expect the case to be dismissed, but hoped that a sentence of time served could be arranged either by sentencing in absentia or, by appearance by Mr. Polanski on the promise of such sentence. For those who are infuriated by my desire to see this matter finally put to rest, misconduct revealed or not, I can only say your callous disregard shows who you are. Those who have no sympathy for the anguish of myself or my family care not for victims of sexual assault."

She concluded by saying, "Victims are not a commodity to be used to pursue their own agendas. I have braced for this, but still it's a heavy blow on my hopes, I will push on despite my tears and disappointment."

For the uninitiated, Geimer was the 13-year-old girl Polanski was convicted of sexually assaulting in the late '70s. The Rosemary's Baby director fled and says it's because the judge who was handling his case decades ago promised him he'd serve 90 days of psychiatric evaluation, but instead was going to sentence him to 50 years in prison.

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Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi lashed out at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath over his 'picnic spot' comment on Saturday and said that the Uttar Pradesh Government has made a joke of the deaths of over 70 children at the Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical Hospital in Gorakhpur.

"I completely agree with the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister that the hospital is not a picnic spot, but is a place where children died. It is a place of virtual murder and the state government has failed to answer for the situation," he said.

"It is such a serious situation and the Uttar Pradesh Government and the Chief Minister has made a joke of such kind of situation. They have insulted the deaths of children which is highly objectionable," he added.

Earlier in the day, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath hit out at Rahul Gandhi over his Gorakhpur visit, saying the "yuvraj (prince) sitting in Delhi" cannot be permitted to make Gorakhpur "a picnic spot".

Over 70 children have died at BRD hospital in the past week as it allegedly ran out of medical supplies because of unpaid bills, triggering anger across the country.

Reportedly, the head of the hospital's Anesthesia department has been primarily held responsible for the crisis.

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Delhi's Patiala House Court on Saturday pulled up the Delhi police for delaying the de-sealing of the hotel suite in which Sunanda Pushkar was found dead.

They have also asked the Police as to why has it taken two months to inform the hotel that they would need more time.

On other hand, the Leela hotel told the court that Police had sent a letter to the hotel, the other day that Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) will have to visit the hotel again on September 1 to collect further evidence, and hence the room can't be de sealed yet.

Courts of Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma, has taken note of Police submission that the CFSL expert team will have to visit the Leela hotel on September 1 and collect evidence.

The lawyer representing Leela Hotel told the court that the room has been sealed since 2015, and no evidence has been collected so far.

Court asked for further report on September 4.

Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, was found dead at a suite in a five star hotel in South Delhi on the night of January 17, 2014.

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A woman in Rajasthan's Bhilwara has chosen to end her seven-year-long marriage rather than face daily ignominy of defecating in the open.

The woman had filed a divorce petition in the court as the husband failed to build a toilet despite repeated assurances.

The court also accepted the divorce plea as it considered the woman's dignity to be abated.

Speaking to ANI, advocate Rajesh Sharma said, "The woman had filed a divorce petition on October 20, 2015 in the family court. The woman in her petition said that she was married in the year 2011. Since then, after repeated assurances, her husband failed to build a toilet and has been forcing her to defecate in the open."

After hearing the two sides of the story, the Family Court Judge, Rajendra Kumar Sharma, recently granted divorce petition in favour of the woman.

The judge further commented that, as a married woman, her demands were rational and mandatory for her.

"Defecating in the open is a reality for lakhs of people in India's rural areas, and the women, in particular, have to bear the brunt of insults and much more as they relieve themselves in the open, mostly after dark," he added.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, on Saturday visited areas in Eastern Uttar Pradesh that have been affected by floods.

Speaking to ANI, Adityanath said that relief and help will be provided to all the people.

"If the hand pumps are working then we will put chlorine tablets in it. We have deployed teams that will continuously check the health of the people," Yogi said on the relief that will be provided to the people.

He further said that medicines and other important items will also be provided to the people.

The Chief Minister said, "People whose homes have been completely broken, we will make sure they are built back up," further saying that, "the crops that have been destroyed, we will do a survey and provide necessary help."

Adityanath further said that all the electricity bills will be forgiven and aid will be provided.

"Both the State and the Central government are with the people. More than two dozen villages have become the victim of this flood," he said.

Thanking the Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team, Chief Minister Yogi said that he is grateful and would like to thank the team of NDRF that have done a "brilliant job" at this level.

Talking about the situation in the state, Yogi said, "10 to 15 feet of water is filled inside the village. Really glad that there was no death, people saved themselves and NDRF was there for all the help."

He added that his people are collecting the data on the damage done and soon will work on rectifying the same.

The eastern UP districts adjoining Nepal have been bombarded by continual rains and discharge of water in rivers with the district administration seeking help of Army in relief and rescue operations.

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Mizpah Congregation welcomes its 20th ordained rabbi, Rabbi Craig Lewis.

We are excited to welcome Rabbi Lewis to Chattanooga! said Henry Schulson, president of the congregation. Rabbi Lewis has served congregations in Mattoon, Illinois, Muncie, Indiana, Wyoming, Ohio, Irvine, California and most recently Lincoln, Nebraska. He served on the boards of Hillel, Hildegard Center for the Arts, Nebraska Interfaith Power and Light, and the Jewish Federation of Lincoln.

Rabbi Lewis was selected in part because he is committed to Jewish education and family involvement. Chattanoogas Jewish children benefit from a combined community religious school, joining students from Conservative and Reform congregations. The newly titled Machanooga (literally, Camp Nooga) meets on Sundays at Mizpah Congregation this school year, with Hebrew language education continuing Wednesday afternoons. Additional classes being taught by the Rabbi includes Introduction to Judaism, Current Events Discussions and Mussar: Sacred teachings with modern ethical application. These classes will be offered to the public. One of the hallmarks of Rabbi Lewis rabbinate is interfaith outreach. We have a sacred obligation to help bring peace among all peoples. To do that, we must get to know one another, to accept and celebrate our differences, as we build bridges of understandings. Those are ways of pleasantness and true paths of peace.

Rabbi Lewis grew up in Prairie Village, Ks., and attended the University of Kansas, where he earned a BS in Business Administration with a concentration in French. He then attended LEcole Superieure de Commerce in Clermont-Ferrand, France where he earned a masters degree in Management. His decision to seek the rabbinate took Rabbi Lewis to Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem and Cincinnati, Ohio. Rabbi Lewis earned a master of arts in Hebrew Letters on his way to receiving rabbinic ordination.



Joining Rabbi Lewis in Chattanooga are his wife Jennifer and their son Eden. Jennifer is the interim director of AVA, the Association for Visual Arts in Chattanooga.

Rabbi Lewis succeeds Rabbi Teri Appleby, who guided Mizpah for one year as an interim, following the departure of Rabbi Bill Tepper who served for eight years.
A total of 17,000 Iraqi displaced people have returned to their homes in the eastern part of Mosul in the past two months, government officials said.

Iraq's Minister of Displacement and Migration Jassim al-Jaaf said on Saturday that some 17,000 people returned to their homes in the districts of al-Hamdaniya, Bashiqa, Bartella and Nimrud, all east of Mosul, Efe news agency reported.

"Most of the basic services have been restored in the eastern part of Mosul, where 90 per cent of the neighbourhoods already have electricity, compared with only 30 to 40 per cent of areas in the western part," Hussam al-Din al-Abar, a council member of Nineveh, said.

Al-Jaaf pointed out that although such figures of IDPs returning to Mosul were not very significant compared with those who were forced to leave their homes; it was a "good start" to encourage the ministry to offer aid to increase the number of citizens returning home.

The International Organization for Migration said on July 14 that clashes between the armed forces and extremists forced more than one million people to flee their homes during the nearly nine-month offensive, which led to liberating the Iraqi city in July.

A large number of IDPs, who fled fighting in the western part of Mosul, are currently in the eastern sector of the Iraqi city, which was the main bastion of the Islamic State terrorist group in the Arab county since June 2014.

--IANS

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A 24-year-old woman died here on Saturday after she was allegedly set on fire by her husband and in-laws, police said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Vijay Kumar said the woman was admitted to the Safdarjung Hospital here on Friday with burn injuries and she died on Saturday.

Kumar said the deceased Parvinder Kaur, 24, had told police while she was at the hospital that she was set on fire by her husband and in-laws.

On Friday, police received a phone call about the incident at a house in Vikas Puri in west Delhi.

Police said that there was a smell of kerosene in the house and some burnt clothes, one broken matchbox, two burnt matchsticks and one women's sandals were found among other articles from the spot.

"Statement of the victim was recorded at Safdarjung Hospital in which she alleged that she went to her husband's house to bring her son's clothes around 9.30 a.m. (on Friday). At that time, she was set on fire by her husband and in-laws," Kumar said.

He said the police were informed by the hospital authorities on Saturday that Kaur has died.

--IANS

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As his production "Happy Bhag Jayegi" clocked one year since its release, filmmaker Aanand L. Rai announced plans to revisit the story for a sequel.

Mudassar Aziz, who directed the first part, says he will try to bring the sequel titled "Happy Bhag Jayegi Returns" with honesty.

"Happy Bhag Jayegi", featuring Diana Penty, Ali Fazal and Abhay Deol, was released on August 18 last year. The romantic comedy narrated the story of a girl named Happy, who runs away from her wedding and reaches Pakistan by mistake.

"Wish a very happy 'HAPPY's anniversary Mudassar Aziz! And it's time to return. Happy days are here again. #1yearofhappybhagjayegi," Rai tweeted.

Aziz also posted: "And fasten your seatbelts again! Aanand L Rai is bringing 'Happy Bhag Jayegi Returns'. Humbled by all your wishes and love at #1YearOfHappyBhagJayegi... Will bring 'Happy Bhag Jayegi Returns' to you all with as much honesty."

In an earlier interview to IANS, Diana had said that it would be interesting to see the story move forward. "That (sequel) would be great. There is so much that you can do with the story. It (a sequel) will be very interesting," she had said.

--IANS

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As many as 70 Taliban militants were killed and scores injured after Afghan aircraft dropped bombs on a militant convoy in Kandahar province, an official said on Saturday.

The incident took place late Friday night when the Taliban fighters equipped with military vehicles planned to take control of Nish, Shah WaliKot and Khakriz districts of the province, a police official was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

At least 70 insurgents were killed and several were wounded in the attack.

More than 15 militants' vehicles and motorbikes were also destroyed during the raid, the official said.

Meanwhile, the Taliban outfit disputed the report as baseless, saying only six civilians were killed in an air raid on parts of Kariz district.

--IANS

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Asserting that the government was committed to empower minorities with dignity, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Saturday urged people to be cautious of hostile forces trying to disturb an atmosphere of trust and development.

"We have to remain cautious against these elements. Every section/community of the country is feeling a sense of trust and development under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi," the Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs said at a function here.

Naqvi said these forces were trying to disturb the atmosphere by creating a "fabricated atmosphere of insecurity".

He said the government's agenda was empowerment without appeasement, inclusive growth, and antyodaya.

"Sabka saath, sabka vikas (cooperation of all, development of all) is our basic agenda. There is no place for any discrimination against any religion, caste and community in this agenda," Naqvi said.

"Like all others, minorities are safe and secure in India," the Minister said.

"The minorities, Dalits, farmers, women and every other section, have played an equal role in nation-building. India's beauty is in our cultural heritage and social harmony. But some elements want to disturb this fabric. We all need to come together to defeat such elements. The Modi government will not allow any destructive agenda to dominate our developmental narrative."

Naqvi also accused certain opposition parties and their allies of trying to give a "communal colour to criminal incidents".

But they fail to understand that their acts will only provide a cover for persons involved in such incidents, the Minister said.

Saying that India was much ahead of other democratic countries in ensuring freedom of expression to its people, Naqvi cautioned that in the name of such freedom one should not do anything that helps elements inimical to national interests.

He said those unable to digest the developmental works carried out by the Modi government had become disappointed and desperate since they failed to find even a single logical issue against it.

"In their desperation, they are misusing religion as well as community and caste issues for narrow political interests. Earlier, these people raised the issue of so-called intolerance and launched 'award wapsi' (return of awards) campaign. Now, they are trying to disturb peace through political propaganda by raising the baseless issue of a sense of insecurity among members of a particular community," Naqvi added.

--IANS

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The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Saturday alleged that BJP leaders have been delaying the work on the Rani Jhansi Flyover here, to shoot up project costs to get more commission.

AAP leader Dilip Pandey, addressing the media, said that the project was started in 1998 and added that "even though the project is not even half complete, the cost has shot up from Rs 70 crore to Rs 700 crore".

AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj said that the project is being executed jointly by the Railways and the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), both working under the BJP.

"The delay is not by chance, but it's by design, it's intentional," Pandey said.

The AAP leader said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders want to delay the project so that the project cost would increase and more kick backs would reach their pockets.

Referring to the new BJP MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) leaders, Pandey said: "Just collection agents have changed and the corruption is going on more than before."

The AAP leader said that even the High Court had asked to fix a deadline for completion of the project.

Pandey said this is not the first time and the BJP has done this in the past too.

The leader added that the MCD has been asking the Delhi government for more funds from time to time and the Union Development Ministry sanctioned Rs 85 crore in 2016, without even asking the reason for the project's delay.

Bharadwaj said that payment has been made for a part of the project that is yet to be completed.

"The LG (Lieutenant Governor) office should say how the payment was made as he was monitoring the project," he added.

--IANS

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To mark completion of 40 years of superstar Chiranjeevi's film career, his fans have organised blood donation events in India, the United States and the Middle East.

Ravanam Swami Naidu, founder president of Akhila Bharata Chiranjeevi Yuvatha, organized 400 blood donation events across India and reached out to the global community to conduct similar activities.

Vijay Repalle organised 40 blood donation events in the US in association with American Progressive Telugu Association (APTA), local American and Telugu organizations and with the help of 'Blood Brothers of Mega Star Chiranjeevi'.

According to reports from recipient medical institutions, more than 1068 people have been beneficiaries of this massive drive. In the following weeks, another 20 such events have been planned and nearly 400 people have already pledged their support and willingness to donate blood, said a statement here on Saturday.

Chiranjeevi's actor son Ram Charan said conducting 400 camps in India, 40 in the US and 14 in the Middle East was inspiring. He described the organisers as 'blood brothers' of Chiranjeevi.

Repalle said the events conducted so far in 22 different states in the US, more than 356 blood donors participated.

Redcross representative Tommy Cole expressed his happiness about exceeding the target of the drive.

Repalle also expressed gratitude to Swami Naidu and Charan for noticing and recognizing the exceptional achievements and ingenuity of the efforts put forth by fans and APTA.

--IANS

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A bomb blast occurred in the heart of West Bengal's hill town of Darjeeling damaging a few shops early on Saturday, following which police booked three top GJM leaders including its chief Bimal Gurung under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

No injuries were reported in the incident that caused panic among locals. The GJM denied its involvement.

"There was a bomb blast in Darjeeling's motor stand area at 12.10 a.m. No one got injured as the place was empty at the time of the blast. We are investigating the incident," Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Kumar Chaturvedi told IANS.

The blast took place on the 69th day of the indefinite shutdown called by the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM), which has demand a separate Gorkhaland state be carved out of the north Bengal hills.

According to sources, a number of shops and the road in front of the motor stand area have been damaged.

Fire tenders, police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel rushed to the spot after the blast. Police have been deployed in the area.

No individual or organisation has so far taken responsibility of the blast, but the police said top GJM leaders like Gurung, Prakash Gurung and Pavin Subba were prima facie suspects.

In the afternoon, police filed an FIR against these three leaders and "others" and started a case at the Darjeeling Sadar police station.

"Regarding the bomblast at Darjeeling motorstand on Saturday, case has been started against Bimal Gurung, Prakash Gurung, Praveen Subba and others," a police officer said.

The sections applies include 120B (Punishment of criminal conspiracy), 121 /121A/122 of IPC (relating to waging or intending to intention of waging war against the government), as also sections 16/17/18/18A/18B of UAPA (that deal with terrorism and organising of terrorist camps as also recruiting people for the same).

Cases under some sections of the West Bengal Maintenance of Public Order and Prevention of Damage to Public Property have also been slapped against the accused.

GJM chief Gurung, in a statement, termed the blast as "the handiwork" of those opposed to Gorkhaland and demanded an "unbiased investigation" by a high level enquiry committee comprising National Investigation Agency officials under the supervision of the Supreme Court.

"Gorkha Janmukti Morcha condemns and protests against the bomb blast. The blast, we believe, was the handiwork of those who do not want Gorkhaland state to be formed. This was a planned move aimed at bringing disrepute to the movement and the demand for Gorkhaland.

"The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha demands that a probe be initiated, at the earliest, by a high level enquiry committee, comprising of NIA officials under the supervision of the Supreme Court of India, so that an unbiased investigations can be carried out into this heinous attempt to bring disrepute to the Gorkhaland movement and the leaders associated with it, and wilful attempts at causing unrest in peaceful Darjeeling."

He wondered how the blast could take place as the entire Darjeeling region has been "fortified and turned into a garrison of sorts" and that it occurred only 200 metres from the police station.

"GJM will never support any undemocratic means, and we condemn this attempt at breaching peace in the hills. We request everyone not to be misled and not to be scared, and to maintain peace in the hills," the statement added.

--IANS

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Following a series of comments US President made over the violence in Charlottesville, tech leaders have resigned en masse from the President's tech advisory board as a mark of protest.

According to a report in Politico on Friday, more than half of the members of the 15-person Digital Economy Board of Advisors have quit.

It was during the administration of former President Barack Obama last year that the board was set up to guide the federal government on the digital economy.

"It is the responsibility of leaders to take action and lift up each and every American. Our leaders must unequivocally denounce bigotry, racism, sexism, hate, and violence," Mitchell Baker, executive chairman, Mozilla, was quoted as saying.

Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith also quit the panel on Friday, with a spokesperson saying: "Effective today, Brad is no longer a member of the group".

Trump had blamed "both sides" for the deadly violence at the white supremacist rally.

In a show of defiance, Trump told reporters in Manhattan that there were "two sides to a story" just a day after he had belatedly condemned racist hate groups for the mayhem at the "Unite the Right" rally in Virginia, the Washington Post reported.

He equated the white supremacists on one side with the "alt-left" on the other side and said that "alt-left" groups were "very, very violent" when they sought to confront the white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups that had gathered in Charlottesville.

In their resignation letters, tech leaders did not name Trump directly but hinted that the move was in protest to his remarks on Charlottesville violence.

"There must never be equivocation in denouncing hate, bigotry, violence and racism," Baird said.

Other confirmed resignations so far include president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Karen Bartleson; Sonia Katyal, a professor of law at the University of California; CEO of the Markle Foundation Zoe Baird; Greg Becker, CEO of Silicon Valley Bank; Oisin Hanrahan, CEO of Handy; and Corey Thomas, CEO of Rapid7.

For Trump, the mass resignation of the top tech leaders is troubling as he has been cultivating a pro-business image with them. Trump has also held several top level meetings with tech honchos since he assumed power.

Earlier, CEOs of Intel, Merck and Under Armour also resigned from the US President's Manufacturing Council created by Trump, because of the noncommittal way he responded to the racist attack in Charlottesville.

Breaking their silence over the violence at a white supremacist rally in the US, Microsoft's Indian-born CEO Satya Nadella, Apple's Tim Cook and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg also condemned the incident as "horrific" and a "disgrace" to the nation.
The Punjab Vigilance Bureau on Saturday moved a closure report in a local court in the Ludhiana City Centre scam, in which Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and his son Raninder Singh were among the accused.

After the Vigilance Bureau filed the cancellation report before District and Sessions Judge Gurbir Singh, the court fixed September 2 for the next hearing in the case, in which Amarinder Singh's son-in-law Raminder Singh and others were allegedly involved.

Defence counsel Trilok Singh Sood told reporters that the District Attorney, who appeared for the prosecution, filed the closure report.

The case pertains to Amarinder Singh's previous stint as Chief Minister from 2002 to 2007.

Amarinder Singh and his then Local Bodies Minister Jagjit Singh, since deceased, were named along with others in the case for allegedly causing monetary loss to the state by awarding the contract for the multi-million mega project to a New Delhi-based construction company.

The bureau registered the case in March 2007 and subsequently filed a charge sheet in December 2007. Interestingly, charges were not framed against any of the accused so far.

Two of the 35 persons booked in the case have since died.

--IANS

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11/12/2022

The Chattanooga Mocs volleyball team secured its 10th conference victory of the season behind a 3-0 (25-18, 25-15, 25-20) sweep over The Citadel in the regular season finale during Southern Conference ... more
Indian democracy is under threat from "pseudo-nationalism" and "right-wing fanaticism masquerading as nationalism", a column published in Renovacao, a Goa Church periodical, has said.

"Quo Vadis India?" by Father Savio Fernandes in the latest edition of the pastoral bulletin of the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman, also bemoans efforts to make India a Hindu Rashtra by 2020 and rues the "political rhetoric" which is triggering hate crimes against dalits and members of the minority community.

"Competition for political and economic power has encouraged pseudo-nationalism, which uses religion as a tool to gain acceptance," Fernandes said in the column.

He heads the Council for Social Justice and Peace, the social arm of Goa's influential Roman Catholic Church, which is the religious and spiritual leader of more than 26 per cent of the state's Catholic population.

"This is an important turning point in India's politics, because after being dominated for several decades by Left-leaning policies, the political space is now being rapidly cornered by Right-wing fanaticism masquerading as anationalism'.

"From the much talked about pluralism and diversity being the hallmark of the Indian nation, there are attempts to impose one culture, one religion, one language ideology - a Hindu Rashtra by 2020 which marks the 75th anniversary of our nation's independence," the column stated

The contents of another column written by F.E. Noronha and published in the same Church magazine, which likened contemporary India to Nazi Germany, had gone viral on Friday.

The magazine's contents have triggered interest in Goa, where Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is contesting the Panaji by-poll on August 23.

Noronha's article also indirectly exhorts voters of Panaji to not vote for Parrikar by arguing, that ballots should not be cast in favour of those who "show no sign of distinct backbone or character and evidently agree with the nationwide fascism".

Although Parrikar refrained from commenting on the allegation, he said that there were "contradictions" in the article.

Fernandes' column however makes a broad critique of the political and social discourse in the country, claiming that efforts were being made to instill fear among Dalits and minorities.

"Of late, the political rhetoric amply demonstrates the rise of such thinking which spills over into hate crimes against the Dalits and minority communities to instill a sense of fear and bully opposing views into a corner," his article said.

The constitution, the Catholic priest says, is under threat from "right-wing" ideology, which coincides with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ascent to power.

"With the political climate change after the year 2014, the very guiding purpose and principles spelt in the preamble of the Indian constitution - Democratic, Secular, Socialist and Republic - appear to be under the worse threat for the first time after independence."

This is not the first time, that the Church in Goa has made serious accusations against the functioning of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Goa as well as in other parts of the country.

"Christians and Muslims are especially targets of demonisation through false propaganda. Muslims are portrayed as terrorists and loyal to Pakistan while Christians are portrayed as being agents of Portugal and anti-nationals and seeking to convert members of other religious communities through fraud/ inducement," a statement issued by Fernandes' Council for Social Justice and Peace had said in July.

--IANS

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Actress Poorna says she didn't have any qualms about shaving her head for the sake of her character in upcoming Tamil film "Kodi Veeran".

She is confident the role will earn her recognition.

"I'm getting to do something different and I'm sure the role will be very well received. It will get good recognition, and that's exactly why I didn't mind shaving my head," Poorna told IANS.

She clarified she didn't accept the role to prove a point.

"I accepted the role only after I realised the potential of my character. It's not the kind of role all actresses would do and that excited me the most," she said.

She has pinned high hopes on the film, which has been directed by Muthiah.

The film, shot entirely in Madurai, features Sasikumar in the lead.

--IANS

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Rabat, Aug 19 (IANS/MAP) Ethiopia will host an international conference on maternal and child health on August 24 and 25 under the theme "Overcoming critical obstacles to maternal and child survival".

Initiated jointly by Ethiopia and India, the conference aims to "celebrate" progress to date, share best practices and identify key milestones for achieving the sustainable development goals set out in the Global Strategy for Health of women, children and adolescents (2016-2030), according to an official statement.

The Ethiopian government "strongly believes that the efforts and resources invested to mitigate the major critical hurdles need to be strengthened," Health Minister Yifru Berhan said on Friday.

"We must celebrate our success, we also need a new vision, new targets and new borders," said Berhan, stressing that "it is an honour for the government of Ethiopia" to host the conference to discuss key critical challenges to maternal and child health.

The conference will be a good opportunity for Ethiopia to inform the world about its achievements in reducing maternal and infant mortality, said the Minister.

The infant mortality rate in Ethiopia had decreased significantly from 97 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 48 in 2016. The under-five mortality rate had decreased significantly from 166 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000 to 67 in 2016, according to figures from the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey 2016.

More than 500 participants from 25 countries were expected to attend the conference, supported by partner organisations including USAID, Unicef, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, NGOs and the private sector.

--IANS/MAP

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Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday met a few of the families who lost their children in the Gorakhpur hospital tragedy to express sympathies and said it was a "government-made tragedy" since the deaths occurred due to lack of oxygen.

"I met the bereaved families. All of them told me that their children died due to lack of oxygen. It is very clear that it is a government-made tragedy," Gandhi said in a tweet.

More than 60 children had died at Baba Raghav Das Medical College last week, allegedly due to disruption in the supply of oxygen to the institution over unpaid dues to the supplier company.

"It is absolutely clear that this (tragedy) is due to negligence. Instead of trying to cover up, Chief Minister (Yogi Adityanath) and the government should take action in the matter," the Congress leader said in another tweet.

Extending his condolences, he told the families that the Congress supported them in their hour of crisis.

"Modi ji (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) talks about 'new India'. We do not want such new India. We need India where the poor can return to their home happily, after treatment of their children," Gandhi said.

"I had gone to this hospital earlier. Addressing reporters, I had requested Modi ji that this hospital needs money, but no action has been taken."

Accompanied by Congress General Secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee chief Raj Babbar, former Union Minister R.P.N. Singh and legislator Aradhana Mishra, Gandhi landed at the Gorakhpur airport and drove straight to the house of Brahmdev Yadav at Baghagada village and spoke to the family which lost seven-day-old twins.

He was briefed on the tragedy and asked about the reason behind the deaths of over 60 children in five days between August 7 and 12.

The Congress leaders assured Yadav they will try and get him a job.

Raj Babbar dubbed the Bharatiya Janata Party's state government as a "total failure" and said it had lost the right to rule.

After this, Rahul Gandhi went to the house of Nitesh Shukla in Malanv village and was scheduled to visit Rama Shankar in Basauli Khurd village and Jitendra at Khatauna village.

Azad said Yogi Adityanath was a five-time MP from Gorakhpur but did nothing.

Rahul Gandhi did not speak to the media and said he would say whatever he has to later in the day when he wraps up the visit after visiting the BRD Medical College.

--IANS

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Hundreds of home buyers of Amrapali Group on Saturday held a candlelight march in Noida demanding action against the builder who has failed to deliver their homes years after the promised deadline.

Shouting slogans against the realty firm, the protesters held a march from Apeejay School in Sector 16-A to Sector 18 in Noida.

One of the home buyers of Amrapali's Dream Valley project, K.K. Kaushal, said there has been no response from the builder or the government despite their protest entering the eighth day.

"A simultaneous hunger strike is also going on since last Saturday and yet we have not been given any assurance. Till we are assured that our investment is safe, we will continue our protest," he said.

The protesters included buyers of Amrapali projects, including Dream Valley, Verona Heights and Centurian Park.

A large number of home buyers of Jaypee, Amrapali and some other projects have been holding hunger strike protests in Noida outside the corporate offices of the builders.

The buyers have not got possession of their flats, payment for which was made by them in 2010.

--IANS

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A "cow mask" photography series uploaded on Instagram by 24-year-old photographer Sujatro Ghosh recently took the Internet by storm.

Shot entirely on a mobile phone, the series features a woman wearing a cow mask posing at different iconic landmarks in India.

Ghosh said he wanted to highlight "women's safety is a more serious concern than cow vigilantism", using the mask as a metaphor.

Mounting it in an art gallery would have restricted its reach. "I never wanted to showcase my photography within four walls," Ghosh, who now has more than 25,000 followers on social media, told IANS.

"There is no doubt that Instagram has helped me to reach out to a much larger audience, making my project successful," he added.

It is not just Ghosh, but many other artists who are opting for Instagram to convey their stories -- whether it's raising awareness about contemporary social issues or glorifying the beauty of Indian Railways.

Gone are the days when photographers would wait to get a date at a gallery to showcase their magic; now it's all on the social media.

The presence of stalwarts like Raghu Rai, Dayanita Singh, Pablo Bartholomew and many others on social media platforms, embracing this sharing, shows how Instagram is gradually becoming a public gallery.

"With renowned photographers joining Instagram, it shows how they have taken the medium seriously. It is not just a pastime any more," noted Shanu Babar, administrator of "Window Seat Project", a crowd-sourced community page.

With over 22,000 followers, the pictures on the community page and their catchy captions would convince you to start travelling by train once again.

For Mumbai-based photojournalist Anushree Fadnavis, who is working with the Indus Images, Instagram is not about uploading just photographs or getting more likes.

It is about capturing the visual world that narrates the stories of commoners.

"You don't need a DSLR; all you need is a tale to tell. Even mobile clicks are great. And Instagram is just that platform where even an amateur could show off talent," commented Fadnavis, who has more than 96,000 followers.

Her photographs, mostly shot on her mobile phone, focus on capturing the travels on Mumbai's local trains, especially in the women's compartment.

Whether it's a transgender whom she has befriended or a daily commuter uncomfortable at getting photographed, Fadnavis finds a story in every single woman who boards the city's lifeline.

"It's a way for me to connect to people," says Fadnavis. "There resides a mini Mumbai within the local trains. So many faces, so many hopes and dreams in those eyes."

After their success on the social media platform, these photographers are now on a new high as global recognition beckons them. They described how their projects are reaching beyond borders.

Ghosh said that after his cow mask series went viral, he has been approached by an art gallery in Italy to showcase the photographs.

"Had I not put them up on Instagram, art galleries from other nations would have never known about them. My work was seen and appreciated by people the world over. Social media brings all under one roof," Ghosh noted.

Fadnavis too, has been invited to a number of exhibitions post her popularity on Instagram.

"Not just exposure, the platform has opened doors for me and for so many others," Babar said.

"For a serious photographer, an Instagram account is his professional profile. I make sure that I put up quality content on a regular basis," Babar noted.

Seeing the craze for photography, Instagram too has taken steps to further inspire budding talent, as well as the professionals in the field.

It is helping people build relationship through shared experiences. One good example of this is the World Wide Insta Meet or #WWIM.

"Inspired by our community, Instagram announces two weekends every year dedicated to Instagrammers meeting each other in person," said Tara Bedi, Community Partnerships and Programs for Instagram in India.

Although Instagram is turning into a gallery sans boundaries for photographers, the option of too many filters often ruins the charm of original images.

Showkat Shafi, a photo-journalist associated with the Al Jazeera network, believes that over-editing eats away the soul of a photograph.

"Mobile phone cameras have turned everyone into a self-proclaimed photo editor. Photography is an art and should be treated like one.

"Treating it like science with editing apps ruins it. Flaws shouldn't be edited. Instead they should be celebrated with skilled photography," Shafi told IANS.

So, on this World Photography Day it is time to test your love for that art. Just shoot and upload on Instagram.

(Somrita Ghosh can be contacted at somrita.g@ians.in)

--IANS

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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday said that US President Donald Trump is slow to condemn racism in the US.

"Quick to insult Islam but hesitant to condemn racist terror at home," Zarif said on Twitter. "Terror in name of race or religion is plain terror & represents neither," he said in another tweet.

The remarks by Zarif followed Trump's mixed response to the deadly attack at a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend when a car was driven into counter-protesters, killing a woman.

Trump faced criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for his response to the violence. He condemned violence by "many sides", but stopped short of explicitly condemning the far-right.

--IANS

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The Iraqi forces killed 66 Islamic State (IS) militants, including suicide bombers,near the city of Mosul in Iraq, defence officials said.

The troops, backed by the army's gunships, conducted an operation against the militants in Attshana mountain range west of Mosul. The Iraqi army killed 66 militants, many of whom were wearing explosive belts, the Iraqi Defence Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The extremist militants were preparing to move to Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, to carry out attacks against the civilians and the security forces in the city, Xinhua news agency cited the statement as saying.

On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi officially declared the liberation of Mosul from IS after nearly nine months of fierce fighting to dislodge the extremist militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq.

The Iraqi forces, including the predominantly Shiite Hashd Shaabi units and Sunni tribal fighters, took new positions near the town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, to free the town and nearby areas from IS militants.

The Iraqi forces still have to wage more offensives to drive out IS militants from their redoubts in eastern bank of Shirqat, Hawijah in southwestern Kirkuk and the adjacent sprawling rugged areas in eastern Salahudin province, in addition to the remaining IS strongholds in the border towns with Syria in western Anbar province.

--IANS

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Italy was on security alert on Saturday in the wake of Spain's double terror attacks that left at least 14 people dead, including three Italian nationals.

Embassies, airports, churches and tourist destinations are among the possible targets and were under police and Army surveillance in Italy after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks in the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Cambrils, which also injured about 126 people of 34 different nationalities, Xinhua news agency reported.

Thirteen people were killed on Thursday in the popular Las Ramblas area of Barcelona when a white van zigzagged at high speed down the busy avenue thronged with tourists, knocking down pedestrians.

On Friday morning, the 14th victim, a woman, was stabbed when five terrorists jumped out of a car and began attacking people at random on the seaside promenade in Cambrils, a town south of Barcelona.

Spanish police gunned down all five attackers. The woman died in a hospital later on Friday. Six others were also injured in the attack.

As Italian officials held strategy meetings and leaders issued messages of condolences to Spain and to the victims' families, experts analysed the attacks.

Author and journalist Zouhir Louassini, a visiting professor from Granada University in Spain, said: "Spain and the Catalonia region are a hot zone, as shown by an increase in the arrests of terrorist cells there in the past three to four years."

Louassini added that the IS has reached a "level of madness" in its rhetoric, proving it is in trouble following its defeat on the ground in its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul.

"They have reached a point where they are urging people to do anything at all, to kill by any means, even a knife," Louassini said, even as news emerged on Friday of two deadly knife attacks in the Finnish city of Turku and the other in the German city of Wuppertal.

The third knife stabbing took place in the Russian city of Surgut on Saturday.

Italy's Air Force General Leonardo Tricarico (retd), who is now the president of the Intelligence Culture and Strategic Analysis (ICSA) Foundation, said that Europe will remain at risk as long as its leaders don't cooperate to fight fundamentalist terrorism together.

Since 2011, at least 30,000 foreign fighters reached Iraq and Syria from over 100 countries, of which one-fifth came from Western Europe, the Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) said in an August 4 report.

--IANS

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The Kerala government will focus more on promoting young and budding entrepreneurs with policy and other necessary support, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Saturday.

Interacting with students at the Innovation Entrepreneurship Development Centres (IEDC) Summit 2017, billed as India's largest such event for young student entrepreneurs, he encouraged them to set their sights on innovation and excellence.

"Students have exhibited a number of prototypes as part of the event, which prove their ability. I am sure you can go beyond this. The state government has always been a staunch supporter of the startup ecosystem and will give you full-fledged support henceforth," the Chief Minister said.

He launched a startup venture to help ambulances stuck in traffic.

Traffitizer-Emergency Response System (T-ERS) is a centralised Internet of Things (IoT)-based system, with artificial intelligence at different levels, that enables automatic switching of traffic lights to green for ambulances to pass through.

Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan appreciated the state government and the Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) in nurturing the startup ecosystem in the southern state.

State IT Secretary M. Sivasankar said there were a number of schemes in the pipeline for supporting the startup ecosystem.

Scott O'Brien, CEO and co-founder Humense, a Sydney-based company specialising in Virtual, Mixed Reality and Augmented Reality, delivered the felicitation speech.

Google India Vice President Rajan Anandan said: "Gone are the days when India lagged in technology. India's startup companies are making big revolutions across the world."

--IANS

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The congregation of Hixson Presbyterian Church (PCA), is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and moved into its new worship facility off Hixson Pike at 1450 Jackson Mill Road (next to Stonewall Farms).

The church was previously located at 1005 Gadd Road.

With 300 members, the church now has about 15 acres to continue growing its membership and expanding its facilities.

Sunday School for all ages begins at 9:30 a.m. The church's main Sunday service begins at 10:45 a.m. Robert Johnson is the senior pastor.
Days after clashing with the BJP-led central government over the format for celebrating independence Day in educational institutions, West Bengal's Mamata Baneerjee regime is again on a collision course with the centre over observance of Teachers Day on September 5.

At the core of the dispute is a circular sent by Union Ministry of Human Resources Development to the states recommending a structured format that promotes Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet scheme "Swachh Bharat Mission" across the nation through the programmes to be organised in the schools on Teachers' Day.

The Trinamool Congress state government, which has emerged as one of the staunchest critics of the Modi government, on Saturday made it clear that it was in no mood to abide by the "recommendations".

Describing the circular as "laughable", state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said: "We on our part have sent circulars to all schools in advance to observe Teachers' Day with due reverence and solemnity. All educational institutions will observe the day."

The HRD Ministry circular refers to the recommendations as "suggested" by Modi to engage schools children in the "Swachh Bharat Mission" through national level essays and painting competitions.

"The honourable prime minister has suggested to promote the message of 'Swachhta' on a massive scale and engage smart, young minds in the Swachh Bharat Mission through national level essay and painting competitions organised across all schools on occasion of Teachers Day.

"This initiative would ensure a structured participation of the school children, youth in the programme and bring in fresh ideas, energy and enthusiasm to the mission," says the circular.

The painting completion would be for students from class 1 to 5 and the essay competition for students in two categories - one for class 6 to class 8 and other for class 9 to class 12.

The circular proposes that the theme of the essay competition should be "What will I do to make India clean", and that for the painting competition "Clean India of my dreams".

The circular recommends that every school "strongly encourage all students to participate in the essay and painting competition" and calls for giving awards to the best essays at the village, district and national levels.

"I don't know why they have sent this circular. Do they feel we don't know how to observe the day?" asked Chatterjee, while categorically stating that the schools would organise programmes on their own, just as they have been doing for years on that day.

Perhaps as a counter to the BJP led government's move, the Trinamool dispensation in the state has decided to hold a central programme in the city where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would launch a scheme for distribution of schools bags and exercise books to students.

Teachers of schools, colleges and universities would be honoured with certificates and medals during the programme.

Ahead of Independence Day earlier this week, a similar circular from the MHRD had become a bone of contention between the Modi and Banerjee governments.

The union ministry had issued the circular to all state Education Secretaries specifying "additional activities" to be undertaken by schools under the Sarva Shiksha Mission to celebrate Independence Day in a "befitting manner".

It asked every school to arrange a "Sankalp programme" from August 9 to August 30 and organise an oath-taking ceremony where all teachers and students would have to take a vow to rid the country of the five problems of poverty, corruption, terrorism, communalism and casteism by 2022, when the nation would be celebrating 75 years of freedom.

The state government responded by issuing a directive to all District Project Officers in-charge of the Sarva Shikha Mission in the state, virtually negating the Union ministry circular and asking the schools to "Stop all preparations" for celebrating the day in the format prescribed the the MHRD.

--IANS

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Borussia Monchengladbach have re-signed striker Raul Bobadilla from Augsburg on a two-year deal.

"Raul is well known in Monchengladbach. He was away but he came home. Over the last few weeks, we have been thinking about our squad and have realized that there is demand for action. In recent years, Raul has consistently proven his qualities," Monchengladbach sporting director Max Eberl said on Friday.

The 30-year-old striker knows Monchengladbach very well as he played here between 2009 and 2012 to make 59 appearances, providing eight goals and 12 assists, reports Xinhua news agency.

After short spells at Young Boys Bern and FC Basel, Bobadilla returned to the Bundesliga in 2013 after signing a contract with FC Augsburg, where he played four years to score 21 goals in 94 competitive games.

"I am very happy to be back. There are still a few known faces here. I am here and very delighted that Monchengladbach gave me the chance to return," Bobadilla told the club's official home page.

Monchengladbach will clash with Cologne in the first round in Bundesliga on August 20.

--IANS

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North Korea on Saturday urged several Latin American countries not to break ties with it and criticised a recent petition by Washington asking them not to have any relations with Pyongyang.

During a recent visit to Santiago, US Vice President Mike Pence had openly urged Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Peru to break all diplomatic and trade ties with North Korea.

A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said such coercive behaviour from the US showed extreme arrogance and egotism, state-owned KCNA agency reported.

According to the spokesperson, it showed Washington's intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign states and was a violation of international law.

The North Korean official further said that the Kim Jong-un regime would continue to improve relations with different countries based on the principles of friendship, self-sufficiency and peace, Efe news reported.

The spokesperson also urged the four nations to reject Washington's petition claiming that all countries will become victims of US intervention in domestic policy if they comply with or tacitly approve of the recent UN Security Council sanctions pushed by the US.

On August 5, the UN imposed the most severe sanctions to date on North Korea for its recent intercontinental ballistic missile launches.

--IANS

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Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui says he feels he is presently the highest paid actor in Bollywood in terms of acting.

In an appearance in "Aap Ki Adalat", to be telecast on India TV on Saturday, the critically acclaimed actor, known for portraying complex characters with ease, said: "I am the highest paid actor in industry as far as acting is concerned. I did not have to ask. They (filmmakers) themselves started paying me this."

The actor, popular for films like "Gangs Of Wasseypur", "The Lunchbox" and "Raman Raghav 2.0", wonders why the Indian film industry is obsessed with Hollywood.

"I do not know why there is an inferiority complex among us... Everybody here wants to work in Hollywood and become big. I can't understand why we have this complex. When we watch films from a powerful country, we feel somewhat inferior. We think our films are not up to their level, but at present, we should feel proud of our films. We are making films with very good content here."

Nawazuddin will next be seen in "Babumoshai Bandookbaaz", in which he has some intimate scenes with actress Bidita Bag.

Earlier, actress Chitrangada Singh was a part of the movie, but she had walked out it.

Commenting on that, Nawazuddin said: "She left when half of the shooting was over. Actually our director (Kushan Nandy) wanted some more kissing scenes, and she said, 'Enough is enough, I won't be able to do any more scenes, and left'."

He said he felt "uncomfortable" initially while doing kissing scenes, but became used to it.

Narrating an incident with Huma Qureshi during the shoot of "Gangs of Wasseypur", he said: "We had to do a romantic scene, and she started addressing me as Nawaz bhai. I went to the director Anurag Kashyap and said, 'She is calling me bhai, how can I do the scene?'"

--IANS

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A state funeral was held in Karachi on Saturday for Ruth Pfau, a German doctor and nun who dedicated her life to eradicating leprosy in Pakistan and earned international acclaim as the country's "Mother Teresa".

Pfau passed away earlier this month at the age of 87 in Karachi. She had dedicated more than 50 years of her life to fighting leprosy in Pakistan, which earned her the name "Light to the Lepers".

She was the founder of the National Leprosy Control Programme in Pakistan and Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre (MALC), the News International reported.

She was laid to rest after a funeral service at St Patrick's Cathedral in Karachi, where the coffin was draped in the Pakistani flag and covered with rose petals. A gun-salute was also offered during the funeral proceedings.

Pfau was later buried in Gora Qabristan, Karachi's oldest graveyard.

President Mamnoon Hussain, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, Governor Muhammad Zubair, Chief of Army Staff Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman and Deputy Chief of Naval Staff (Operations) Vice Admiral Zafar Mahmood Abbasi attended the funeral ceremony. Several officials from the German Consulate in Karachi were also present.

The Sindh Chief Minister ordered the renaming of Karachi's Civil Hospital after Pfau following the funeral. "Dr Pfau was a symbol of pride for this province and for all of Pakistan," he said.

Pfau studied medicine in Germany in the 1950s and was later sent to India by her order, the Daughters of the Heart of Mary. But a visa problem kept her in Karachi, where she went on to live for 57 years.

Due to her efforts, Pakistan became one of the first countries in Asia to be declared free of leprosy in 1966. She set up 150 clinics across the country which treated tens of thousands of people.

In recognition of her work, the Pakistani government awarded Pfau the nation's second highest civilian honour, Hilal-i-Imtiaz, in 1979.

In 1989, she was presented with the Hilal-i-Pakistan, the country's highest civilian honour.

--IANS

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Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has vowed to "go to war" with President Donald Trump's opponents in the media and on the Capitol Hill after he was fired from his job.

Bannon was fired on Friday and just hours after his ouster, Breitbart News announced that he was back as executive chairman of the ultra-conservative website. The former Trump adviser left Breitbart in 2016 to join Trump's presidential campaign, the Washington Post reported.

Breitbart itself carried the headline: "Populist Hero" Stephen K. Bannon Returns Home to Breitbart.

After his sacking, Bannon said that he feels "jacked up" and is preparing for a fight for the agenda that won Trump the election. "I've got my hands back on my weapons," he said, "it's Bannon the Barbarian."

"I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There's no doubt. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now I'm about to go back, knowing what I know, and we're about to rev that machine up."

The 63-year-old helped shape the "America First" campaign message but has been accused of voicing anti-Semitic and white supremacist views.

Inside the embattled White House, the former chief strategist frequently tangled with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and other presidential advisers over trade and foreign policy.

He is the latest high-profile figure to be removed from the White House team after the ouster of Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Press Secretary Sean Spicer and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

According to reports, Trump was under renewed pressure to sack Bannon following the violence at a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend, when a car was driven into counter-protesters, killing a woman.

But Bannon told the Weekly Standard magazine that he had informed Chief of Staff John Kelly and Trump on August 7 that he would announce his resignation on August 14. The tumult over the violence in Charlottesville postponed the announcement, he said.

Bannon said that he doesn't expect Trump's presidency will be the same now that he's out of the White House. "The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over," Bannon told the Weekly Standard.

"We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It'll be something else."

He added: "In many ways I think I can be more effective fighting from the outside for the agenda President Trump ran on. And anyone who stands in our way, we will go to war with."

One Breitbart headline drew a comparison between Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former California Governor, who is not viewed positively among the conservative base.

"With Steve Bannon gone, Trump risks becoming Arnold Schwarzenegger 2.0," the Breitbart headline read.

--IANS

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Queen Elizabeth II offered her condolences to the King of Spain in the wake of two deadly terror attacks that unfolded a day before, leaving 14 civilians and five suspects dead, as well as more than 100 injured.

Buckingham Palace, the official London residence of the Queen, shared her message on Friday in which she expressed condolences on behalf of herself and husband to King Felipe VI and Spanish citizens on the loss of lives in the attacks, Efe news reported.

"Prince Philip and I send our sincere condolences to Your Majesty, and the people of Spain, following the terrible terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils which killed and seriously injured many," said the Queen.

She added that it was "deeply upsetting when innocent people are put at risk in this way when going about their daily lives".

"Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have lost loved ones and the people who are recovering in hospital," the statement said.

The Britain's Foreign Office said it was working to help British citizens affected by the attacks.

"We are currently assisting a small number of British people affected and are working to find out if any more need our help," the office said in a statement, assuring that additional staff had been deployed to help authorities in Spain.

Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Mark Rowley said in a statement that British authorities were "liaising closely with the Spanish authorities and await further updates regarding the nationalities of the deceased and injured."

--IANS

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The Syrian army and the Lebanese Hezbollah group on Saturday launched an offensive against the Islamic State (IS) militants in the Qalamoun region, in tandem with an operation by the Lebanese army on the Lebanese side of the border against the IS, the military said.

Dubbed "If You Return We Will Return", the operation aims to clear the badlands of the Qalamoun region in Syria, just a couple of weeks after both allies dislodged the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front from the region and the adjacent Juroud Arsal barrens on the Lebanese side of the border, Xinhua news agency quoted a military official as saying.

The cross-border battle was anticipated after the defeat of Nusra in the border areas in both Syria and Lebanon.

In the last battle against Nusra, the Syrian army and Hezbollah were fighting on the Syrian side of the border, and other Hezbollah fighters were battling on the Lebanese side of the frontier.

At the time, the Lebanese army was not engaged in the fight but took defensive positions in case of any attempt by the Nusra militants to carry out counter attacks.

In this battle against the IS, Hezbollah and the Syrian army are fighting in Syria, while the Lebanese army is fighting the group in Lebanon.

Lebanese officials said there was no coordination between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah or the Syrian army.

The army in Lebanon will have to liberate around 120 sq km from the IS, while the Syrian army and Hezbollah are fighting to defeat the group in 150 sq km of border terrain.

The source said the Syrian army and Hezbollah were advancing in the badlands of Qalamoun against the IS, mainly in the barrens of Jarajir and Qara.

The source said the IS militants started surrendering after the advance of the army and Hezbollah in Zamrani area of Qalamoun.

Also, the Lebanese army was reportedly advancing in Ras Baalbek area on the Lebanese side of the border.

--IANS

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Actor Taaha Shah, who will soon be seen as the lead in Anupam Kher's "Ranchi Diaries", spent some quality time with children at NGO Smile Foundation's centre in Dharavi here. He spoke about the importance of education and overall personality development.

Taaha also taught them a few dance steps and emphasised on the need for self-defence when he met the children on Friday.

"We had an absolute blast as I love kids and gel along very well with them. It was a fun afternoon and I showed them some dance moves and played a guitar as well.

"These kids are so bright and full of energy. I'd also like to applaud Smile Foundation for their initiative 'She Can Fly' where the girls have been propelled to excel in all field and to get equal opportunities," the "Baar Baar Dekho" actor told IANS.

On the work front, "Ranchi Diaries", which is produced by veteran actor Anupam Kher, is slated to release on October 5.

--IANS

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Known for working with a riot of colours and psychedelic prints to produce quirky designs loved all around, ace designer Manish Arora says it is the time when India should not be separated from the world in terms of fashion as the customer has become global.

"I actually like to make everything one now because there is no need to separate India," Arora told IANS in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) Winter/Festive 2017.

Adding about his global plan for brand Manish Arora, he said: "India is no more a market where you have to separate it because the customer is as global as in China or Middle East or Europe. It's the right time to include India in the part of a global plan."

The designer, who at the age of 43 was conferred the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, France's highest civilian award, is one of the celebrated names internationally and has successfully completed 10 years of showcasing in Paris.

Arora's international presence started with his successful debut at the London Fashion Week in September 2005. He later showed his creative prowess at platforms in Hong Kong and Miami.

In 2007, he showcased for the first time in Paris Fashion Week, eventually becoming a member of the distinguished French Federation of Pret-a-Porter in the same year.

Arora feels India is no longer an understated country in terms of fashion sense, and this is the reason why he has showcased his Paris collection on the LFW runway.

"The collection that I have showed here (at LFW) was from my last show in Paris. Even if we are celebrating our 10 years in Paris, the one way was of showing the line was to have my lines from past 10 years, but I said that why can't we show what we did in Paris because now India or the generation who is coming for LFW is kind of ready to see relevant new things.

"They know a lot. They are in touch with what's happening right now, so we chose to show the collection which is CosmicLove," he said.

The celebrated Indian couturier marks the 10th anniversary of his colourful Paris collection by presenting 'CosmicLove' at the fashion week.

His show, Etihad Airways Presents Manish Arora, took the audience on a visual journey spanning the tribes of Africa and the outer reaches of the universe.

About India as a market, Arora says that the current generation in India is very out and about in terms of fashion.

"They are travelling, they have internet. When I was there, we didn't have Google, we didn't know what to search on, we didn't know what is happening worldwide, but now you can't trick people.

"They know what's happening and the best way is to come back with what is currently going globally," he said.

"Besides that, I think Indians also know what they want to do, which is quite new and interesting.

"A 22-year-old guy or girl know what looks good on them. They know the style, they have the character and they want to make statement in their own way and that is something that we have to tap on right now," he added.

About his 10 years in Paris, he still feels that he has just started.

"I am just beginning and I hope there are many 10 years to go ahead," Arora said, adding that he is coming up with a perfume line.

(The writer's trip is at the invitation of LFW organisers. Nivedita can be contacted at nivedita.s@ians.in)

--IANS

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Two officials have been placed under investigation following a fatal landslide at an open-pit coal mine in north China's Shanxi Province.

The total number of fatalities rose to eight as four more bodies were recovered Thursday. The accident occurred at around 3 p.m. on Aug. 11 at Lyuxin coal mine in Heshun County, but the coal mine company denied the casualties until its head turned himself in to police Tuesday, confessing that about 10 people were buried in the accident.

At least one person remains missing, but the exact number of people buried is not yet known.

Zhang Ruiqing, the county coal administration head, and Yao Jiangbo, head of the county bureau of land and resources, are both being investigated for suspected "violation of laws and regulations." Zhang has been removed from his post.

Lyuxin coal mine, under Shanxi Coal Transportation and Sales Group Co., Ltd., has an annual coal capacity of 2 million tonnes.
Turkish-born German writer Dogan Akhanli was arrested in the Spanish city of Granada on Saturday by police fulfilling an international arrest warrant issued by Interpol in response to a request by authorities in Turkey.

A police spokesman told Efe news that the arrest took place in the morning at a hotel in the city centre where Akhanli was staying.

The writer was then driven to the police headquarters for the region of Eastern Andalusia and was to be interviewed by a judge in the next few hours, the police official added, without specifying the motive for the arrest cited in the warrant.

After the 1980 coup d'etat in Turkey, Akhanli went into hiding and was a political prisoner in a Turkish military jail between 1985 and 1987. He was accused of armed robbery at an exchange office in 1989.

He fled Turkey in 1991 and settled in Germany.

In August 2010, Akhanli returned to Turkey to visit his dying father, but was arrested at the airport and thrown into prison for four months. But he managed to leave Turkey and returned to Germany after a campaign by civil rights activists and Turkish and German intellectuals.

--IANS

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A judge in Los Angeles has refused to dismiss a rape case against French-Polish film director Roman Polanski, which has been ongoing since the 1970s.

The judge's decision on Friday came after the alleged victim, Samantha Geimer, had appealed in June for the case to be dismissed so that she could move on, reports Efe news.

However, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon denied her request saying he could not dismiss the case "merely because it would be in the victim's best interest".

"Her statement is dramatic evidence of the long-lasting and traumatic effect these crimes, and defendant's refusal to obey court orders and appear for sentencing, is having on her life," Gordon said.

The judge added that it was in the society's interest to ensure justice, which would only be possible if the case against Polanski continued.

Geimer had said that 40 years had passed and urged for the case to be put to rest "as an act of mercy" towards her and her family.

In 1977, Polanski, who was then 43, had allegedly drugged a 13-year-old Geimer and forced her to have sexual relations with him after a photo session.

Polanski pleaded guilty to the charge of unlawful sex with a minor and spent 42 days in prison, however when out on bail and fearing having to serve a more severe sentence, the filmmaker fled the US towards the end of 1978.

In February, Polanski had presented a series of legal documents to be able to return to the country and close the case, as long as he was guaranteed he would not have to spend any more time behind bars.

For decades, the filmmaker's movements have been restricted over fears of extradition to the US.

In another case similar to that of Geimer, a woman came out in public claiming Polanski had sexually abused her in 1973 when she was 16.

Moreover, in 2010 actress Charlotte Lewis said the filmmaker had sexually abused her in 1982 when she was 16.

--IANS

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Previous laws were only partly effective in resolving the problems of insolvency and bankruptcy in the corporate world and one would have to wait to judge the effectiveness of the current mechanism to deal with the issue, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday.

"Earlier, if companies were to go for insolvency, they got stuck in courts indefinitely. The SICA merely provided an 'iron curtain' against debtors, otherwise it was an absolute failure and could achieve very little of the purpose for which it was created," Jaitley said.

The Debts Recovery Tribunal (DRT) was somewhat faster, but not as effective as envisaged, while the Sick Industrial Companies Act (SICA) failed and the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act (SARFAESI) served a limited purpose since being a creditor inherently put one at a disadvantage under it, he said.

The Minister said while the Reserve Bank Of India's (RBI) previous efforts to tackle insolvency met with "some success", eventually it was still tough for creditors to change the defaulting debtors.

Jaitley was addressing a 'National Conference on Insolvency and Bankruptcy: Changing Paradigm', organised by the Ministry of Corporate Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India.

He urged the debtors to make sure the debt is serviced under the insolvency mechanism though the ultimate objective is not liquidation but resolution of assets.

"The cumulative effect of the amended laws is loud and clear that the debtors will have to make sure that debts are serviced. There needs to be an alternative mechanism by which businesses can be saved. The ultimate objective is not liquidation but save the businesses by bringing in new entrepreneurs or with existing partners and save valuable assets," he said.

The Minister said while more time is needed to understand the efficacy of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), it must be ensured that the timelines given by the NCLT are adhered to.

It will facilitate a better understanding of the intricacies of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016, sharing of the experiences gained during the initial nine months and also discussion on the challenges that need to be overcome.

"The institution of resolution professionals has to remain detached and avoid possible conflict of interest. An effective supervision mechanism is required and the powers of resolution mechanism needed to be clearly defined," he said.

The IBC, a key economic reform, provides the much-needed unified legal framework to resolve insolvency and afford a faster and efficient exit framework for corporates.

Through its time-bound processes, the IBC aims to provide greater certainty around the bankruptcy process and bring the Indian statutory regime on par with some of the most legally advanced jurisdictions in the world.

Since the Insolvency and Bankruptcy code has been implemented a few months back, this has changed the debtor and creditor relationship, the Finance Minister noted.

"A legislation is a skeletal structure, the flesh and blood is provided by judicial interpretation. The new legislation should see that effective functioning of a company does not come to a standstill. Debtors will have to make sure that debts are serviced. For endless years, we lived in a system that protected debtors and allowed assets to rust," he said.

The conference was also addressed by RBI Governor Urjit Patel and Securities and Exchange Board of India Chairman Ajay Tyagi.

Patel said that the enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code in 2016 is a watershed towards improving the"credit culture in the country".

"The Insolvency and Bankruptcy code, in essence, provides for a single-window time-bound process for resolution of an asset with emphasis on promotion of entrepreneurship, maximisation of assets and balances the interest of all stakeholders," the RBI Governor said.

In his address, Sebi Chairman Ajay Tyagi said that the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code is an important piece of legislation in recent times with clearly defined roles for professionals and quasi judicial bodies.

--IANS

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This is a true story. I am revisiting it with a purpose: So that it collides head on with the nation's 70th anniversary celebrations. Absolute, undiluted joy on this occasion would require total amnesia of that which accompanied independence: Partition. With some of us, these celebrations will always be tempered with Keats' great dictum:

"Ay, in the very temple of delight

Veil'd melancholy has her sovran shrine"

Yes, that story, spread over India, Pakistan and the US. Before I share the story with you, let me first spell out the dramatis personae to simplify the narrative.

When the feudal order was breaking down, my family in Mustafabad near Rae Bareli produced two ideological streams. My father came from a line of staid Congressmen. His elder brother, Wasi Naqvi, was the first Congress MLA from Rae Bareli. My earliest memory of political activity in these 70 years is of Feroz Gandhi weaving his parliamentary seat around my uncle's assembly constituency. This was the seat Indira Gandhi inherited, then Rajiv Gandhi and so on.

My mother's family was more literary and, after the intellectual fashion of those days, of a more leftist bent. Her only brother Saiyid Mohammad Mehdi, our dearest "Mamujan", caught the eye of P.C. Joshi, General Secretary of the CPI, who was then stitching together Indian Peoples Theatre and the Progressive Writers Association. Joshi whisked Mamujan away to Mumbai to share a commune with Sardar Jafri, Kaifi Azmi, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Krishen Chander and a host of others.

Mamujan's younger daughter, Shireen, with a degree from JNU, could not ignore her mother's entreaties and married a cousin, Abbas, a gentleman to boot, settled in Dubai but, alas, of Pakistani parentage. The conditions for the marriage were clear: They would live in a neutral country, not in Pakistan. Shireen obstinately held on to her Indian passport.

Like her father, Shireen is a reader (a book in two days) and taught in a school. Abbas stuck to investment banking.

Their eldest daughter Mariam studied cinema in Canada, fell in love with a Haitian filmmaker and settled in Canada. She was confident that her Indian passport, on which she had travelled to India numerous times, would be part of the record even if she acquired her husband's nationality.

She had goofed. She had not taken into account the dark shadow that would always hover over her head: Her father's Pakistani nationality. That fact scratches out her Indianness. This is just a minor consequence of what the leaders of India, Pakistan and Great Britain accomplished 70 years ago. But Shireen had to prepare for worse.

When she was in the family way again, her husband had taken a transfer to the Cayman Islands. For Shireen this was a Godsend in a most unexpected way. In the ninth month of her pregnancy, she would cross over to Florida for greater gynaecological care. This is precisely what Shireen did. So, not only was little Rabab born in a world class hospital, she was doubly blessed on another score. She was born with a priceless document: The American passport. So far so good, until God revealed his enigmatic side: Rabab was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, immobile, comprehensively challenged, condemned to move only on a wheelchair.

Shireen and Rabab were able to travel to Delhi, Lucknow, Kanpur, and Mustafabad once or twice a year until collapse of the global economy in 2008 affected Shireen's mobility. Frequent travel between Dubai and Delhi became too expensive.

When sorrows come they come in battalions. At 30, Rabab is a big, heavy girl. With tears in her eyes, her Bangladeshi nanny told Shireen that Rabab was too heavy for her to change her clothes, bathe, seat on a wheelchair and be put to bed.

Shireen and Abbas began to share these chores until the next installment of bad news. Shireen was diagnosed with leukemia.

She now faces an existential choice. Her support structure -- sister, uncles, cousins, nieces are all in India. She already has an apartment next door to our daughters, her adoring nieces.

Shireen, of course, has an Indian passport and can come and go as she pleases. The problem is with Rabab's long term visa because it is impossible to cart her back and forth, pointlessly, on a short term visa which, incidentally, is not assured either. One would have thought she can sail in with her American passport. But that is not the case. Her father's nationality trumps all other considerations. Look, she is on a wheel chair. Doesn't matter. She is comprehensively challenged. That does not qualify her for an Indian visa. The system is telling an invalid child that her father is her curse.

Lest you begin to chastise the present government for Rabab's woes, do pause for a moment. The BJP regime came in day before yesterday. Stringent, sometimes inexplicable, laws were put in place by successive Congress governments.

The document that Mariam was handed by the Indian High Commission in Ottawa (when she applied for OCI card some years ago) takes one's breath away: "As per the MHA's OCI ruling, no person who, or either of whose parents or grandparents or great grandparents is or has been a citizen of Pakistan, Bangladesh at any time or such other country as the Central government may, by notification in the official gazette, specify, shall be eligible for registration as an overseas citizen of India cardholder. In view of the existing OCI rules, you are not entitled for grant of OCI card facility because one of your parents is of Pakistani origin." That Mariam was born in India and, before her marriage, travelled extensively on an Indian passport is of no consequence.

I realise more than most people that these are abnormal times. In fact my career as a foreign correspondent would have been impossible without unstinted help, on a personal basis, from friends in the foreign office and in other parts of government. Additionally, visas for friends and relatives, on both sides of the border, were there for the asking. My friends were a strand in the vast mosaic that kept the nation's sanity. Thanks to them, visiting relatives from Pakistan envied us for the friends we had. "Bhaiyya, can we buy land here?" It all seems so distant in time.

My mother, an eternal optimist, a great favourite of Shireen and Abbas, indeed our entire universe, died three years ago, firm in her belief that sooner or later mists will lift and peace will descend. She would recite the following couplet with wistfulness in the eyes:

"Bada maza us milap mein hai,

Jo sulah ho jaae, jung ho kar?

(There is great pleasure in that harmony

Which descends after a big quarrel.)

Would my mother have been able to sustain that optimism given the state of play on this, our 70th birthday?

(Saeed Naqvi is a commentator on political and diplomatic affairs. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com <mailto:saeednaqvi@hotmail.com>)

--IANS

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Earlier this week, we celebrated 70th anniversary of Independence  and also commemorated a darker and more sobering chapter of Indian history: Partition. One of the biggest events in South Asia, at least in the 20th century, there is no uniform narrative of this tectonic maelstrom that directly or indirectly affected the lives of almost everyone in the subcontinent, and continues to do so. In popular memory, it is a tale of loss and sectarian violence of a proportion almost beyond imagination. Yet, its representation in of West Bengal has been woefully insufficient. Besides Ritwik Ghataks trilogy (Meghe Dhaka Tara, 1960; Komal Gandhar, 1961; and Subarnarekha, 1965) and Chinnamul (1950), there are few one can recall.

The popularity of Srijit Mukerjis Rajkahini (2015)  remade this year as the rather insipid Begum Jaan in Hindi  refocused the discussion on Partition and its representation in . Refugee camps are non-existent. The rootless have faded away to oblivion. Their poverty, struggle and desperate attempts to stay afloat dont inspire screenplays... The trauma of displacement is a subject everyone knows about... but no one revisits on screen, Mukherji told The Times of India (January 12, 2017). It is no better across the border in Bangladesh, where the bloody Mukti Juddho of 1971 seems to concern filmmakers more than 1947. Dhaka-based academic Afsan Chowdhury writes, In Bangladesh, 1947 is a distant memory, erased by the bloody 1971 liberation war against Pakistan. (Haunted by unification: A Bangladeshi view of partition, Al Jazeera, 16 August 2017).

On the other hand, the Partition of Punjab has been represented widely in Bombay cinema  both popular and niche. Rachel Dwyer has made a useful list for The Wire (Partition in Hindi Cinema: Violence, Loss and Remembrance, 10 August 2017), so I shall not repeat it here. The reason she attributes to the persistence of Partition in the imagination is that the Radcliffe Line bifurcated not only Punjab but also the film industry. Many members of the film industry were themselves from the other side of the border who migrated from Lahore to Bombay, including leading figures such as the Anand brothers, B.R. Chopra and Yash Chopra among many others. The migration in the opposite direction included Noor Jehan and Saadat Hasan Manto. There were also migrations from Calcutta, including Bimal Roy and Hrishikesh Mukherjee, perhaps due to the creation of the eastern border, she writes.

In Bengali cinema, however, besides Ghataks films, there is hardly any representation of the plight of the Partition refugees. And, only one  Subarnarekha  touches on the subject of the Dalits and the fate they suffered because of the cartographic cosmetic surgery. This is strange because, post-Independence Bengali literature is filled with narratives of refugees, millions of whom poured into the state at least till the 1971 war, and into Calcutta (now Kolkata), affecting every aspect of life, from culinary practices to urban infrastructure. One possible reason is that refugees, usually from the upper caste, who monopolised settlements in and around Calcutta, found themselves assimilated into the cultural milieu of the state. Their interest in the plight of their lower-caste brethren  low to begin with  disappeared soon.

But Ghatak was a sympathetic observer of their plight. In his film, it is caste prejudice  coupled with crushing poverty  that sets the stage for the tragedy of all the characters. Ishwar (Abhi Bhattacharya), a refugee from East Pakistan, sensitive to music, idealistic, has no qualms in adopting Abhiram (Satindra Bhattacharya)  the son of a lower-caste bagdi widow  into his home. But when his sister, Sita (Madhabi Mukherjee), falls in love with the boy, he is unable to accept their marriage.

Abhirams mother, played by redoubtable Gita Dey, appears in two scenes only, both depicting two significant incidents in the history of Bengali Dalit refugees. In the first one, she is denied entry into refugee camp where Ishwar and Sita have taken shelter  purportedly because she is from Dhaka and this camp is populated mostly by people from Pabna. The real reason, of course, is her caste, as becomes evident immediately afterwards. She is abducted by the goons of the land owner of the camp  many of which were set up on plot forcibly occupied by refugees  and no one comes to her rescue. In the other scene, a little later in the film, she gets off a train and dies at the station platform of the town where Ishwar, Sita and Abhiram live. Abhiram sees her and recognises her, revealing his caste and leading to the later incidents in the film. The train, however, is a significant symbol  it is bound for Dandakaranya.

Namasudras were faced with the full coercive might of the Nehruvian state to ensure their removal from West Bengal: the imprisonment of prominent leaders, police brutality, sexual violence, the withholding of doles and allowances to induce the willingness to leave, dispersal of protestors beyond city limits to prevent their recombination, forced evacuations on trains beyond the borders of the state, writes Dwaipayan Sen (How the Dalits of Bengal Became the Worst Victims of Partition, The Wire, 10 August 2017). The Dandakaranya forest in Chhattisgarh was a popular send-off destination  and there were many others, in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Andaman and Nicobar Island. Manoranjan Byapari, a Bengali Dalit writer, recounts in Memoirs of Chandal Jeevan: An Underdogs Story, how former West Bengal chief minister and towering communist leader Jyoti Basu visited such a camp in Bhillai on January 25, 1975, and promised the lower-caste refugees that they would be taken back to West Bengal if the Leftists were voted to power.

Yet, those who trusted these hollow promises encountered the police brutalities of 1979 in Marichjhapi  one of the first examples of Communist Party of India (Marxist)s brutal suppression of any form of dissent or opposition. Amitav Ghoshs The Hungry Tide (2004) features the incident in some detail, but the bhadralok novelist dealt with his pet project of climate change and happily skirted the incident of caste violence. It was supposed to be adapted into a film, starring Abhishek Bachchan, Rahul Bose and Zuleika Robinson, according to a 2006 report by India Today. Nothing seems to have come of it  much like the lost, silent voices of Dalits in .
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president on Saturday raised questions on the working style of the party units in Madhya Pradesh and expressed his ire over the lack of grassroots level organisation in the state.

According to sources, Shah in a meeting on Saturday reviewed the working of the convenors of the state morcha and coordinators of various cells.

Shah said with barely a few months left for the state assembly polls, it is essential that the party builds itself at the grassroots.

Sources said Shah asked the office-bearers of various morchas to focus on the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) and conduct programmes at places where the party is weak.

As per information, the party's various units released the list of appointments of their office bearers a day before Shah's visit.

Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) president Abhilash Pandey told the media that the meeting was positive, adding the youth in the party were asked to strengthen the organisation and work for the nation.

Shah is to chair a meeting of the party's core group later during which he would interact with the former MPs and MLAs.

On the first day of his visit on Friday, Shah took the feedback of the state government and organisation in various meetings at the party office here. He asked the party cadres to put forth their views openly and without any apprehension.
Even as principal opposition (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav is attempting to corner the Uttar Pradesh government over its purported failures on health and law and order issues, he is battling trouble in his own backyard.
Bangladesh coastguards today turned back a boat carrying 31 Rohingya Muslim refugees escaping renewed army activity in their neighbouring Myanmar homeland, an official said.

The push-back came after at least 500 Rohingya fled their villages in Myanmar's Rakhine state, crossing the border to take shelter in refugee camps and hills in Bangladesh's southeastern Cox's Bazar district.

A coastguard patrol boat found the boat on the Naf river, which acts as a border between Bangladesh and Myanmar, as it tried to enter Cox's Bazar early in the morning.

The refugees included women and children who said they were victims of violence, coast guard spokesman Sheikh Fakhr Uddin said quoting the escapees.

"We found two injured among 18 men, along with nine women and four children. But we had to send them back," Uddin told AFP.

The latest influx follows a months-long bloody military crackdown on the mainly Muslim minority in Myanmar that led tens of thousands to flee across the border. The United Nations has said the violence may amount to ethnic cleansing.

"We have beefed up our patrol on the Naf as (Myanmar) army is gathering in the bordering villages, which may prompt them (Rohingya) to try coming to Bangladesh," Uddin said.

Dhaka estimates that nearly 400,000 Rohingya refugees are living in squalid refugee camps and makeshift settlements in Cox's Bazar, which borders Rakhine.

Their numbers swelled last October when more than 70,000 Rohingya villagers began arriving, bringing stories of systematic rape, murder and arson at the hands of Myanmar soldiers.

Last week, the UN special rapporteur Yanghee Lee voiced alarm at reports that a Myanmar army battalion had flown into Rakhine to help local authorities boost security in the region.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long faced criticism for its treatment of the more than one million Rohingya who live in Rakhine, who are seen as interlopers from Bangladesh, denied citizenship and access to basic rights.

But they are also increasingly unwelcome in Muslim- majority Bangladesh, where police often blame them for crimes such as drug trafficking.

Dhaka has floated the idea of relocating tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote, flood-prone island off its coast, despite opposition from rights groups.

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As suspense mounted over merger of the two rival AIADMK factions, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami and rebel leader O Panneerselvam today expressed confidence it will happen soon with the latter saying a positive result was expected in "a day or two."



Palaniswami, who is in Tiruvarur to take part in AIADMK founder M G Ramachandran's centenary celebrations, said he was confident that "both the factions would merge soon".

Panneerselvam, a former chief minister and leader of AIADMK Puratchi Thalaivi Amma faction, earlier in the day said in Chennai that the merger talks were going on smoothly and a positive result was expected in "a day or two."



As the warring factions headed for a merger, the T T V Dhinakaran faction warned the chief minister that he would be replaced if his activities did not go down well with the party.

The chief minister said difference of opinion between the two factions had emerged earlier and that they were now being addressed through discussions.

"I am happy to inform that both the factions will merge soon," he told reporters at Tiruvarur in Thanjavur district.

Responding to a query on whether MLAs of Panneerselvam faction would get a berth in the cabinet, Palaniswami merely said, "discussions are going on."



"(AIADMK Supremo and former Chief Minister) Puratchi Thalaivi Amma (Jayalalithaa who is fondly called as Amma) has been guarding the party as her own eyelid. She has given various schemes and projects for the benefit of the people," he said.

Panneerselvam, who is scheduled to leave for Madurai tomorrow to attend a meeting, said a positive result was expected in "a day or two."



"Talks are going on smoothly. A positive result is expected in a day or two," he told reporters in Chennai.

The much expected merger between the two factions last night had failed to come off following reported divergent views among the members of the OPS faction.

This included the demand of certain members for a CBI inquiry into former chief minister J Jayalalithaa's death as against the announcement of an inquiry commission to be headed by a retired High Court judge.

Meanwhile, Dhinakaran, the sidelined AIADMK deputy general secretary, held deliberations with his supporters at his residencein Chennai.

A Dhinakaran loyalist Palaniappan, a former minister and an MLA, warned Palaniswami that he would be replaced as chief minister if his activities did not go down well with the party.

Talking to reporters after attending the meeting convened by Dhinakaran, Palaniappan said, "Our (AIADMK) rule is like a bus journey. We appointed the driver (O Panneerselvam) to take the bus (AIADMK rule) to the intended destination enabling the passengers to reach safe and secure."



"Since, his (Pannerselvam) activities did not go down well with the party, we replaced him with Palaniswami (as the chief minister). But, if his (Palaniswami) activities did not go well (while leading the party), we will definitely take action to replace him," Palaniappan said.

Yesterday, Dhinakaran who had travelled to Bengaluru to greet party general secretary V K Sasikala on the occasion of her birthday, downplayed the merger of the AIADMK factions, saying it would not have any longevity and that it was not a 'setback' to him.

Following the speculation of an imminent merger of the two factions, several AIADMK MLAs and supporters of both the groups had congregated last night at the burial place of Jayalalithaa at the Marina beach here.

However, merger talks remained inconclusive leading to a delay in the rival factions coming together.

Police personnel were deployed in a large number at the memorial with members of the public who wanted to offer their respects to Jayalalithaa being prevented from entering the burial site.

Two special wreaths were also kept ready apparently to enable Palaniswami and Panneerselvam to offer their respects at the burial site.

After it became clear that the merger talks would be deferred, the wreaths were removed and the public was allowed to enter the burial site later.

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Prominent businessman and chairman of the Rainbow group Dhiren Rawani was shot dead by his nephew at Bhowra near here, police said today.

A senior police officer said Rawani was shot dead by his nephew Kunal Rawani near his parent's house at Bhowra about 30 km from here last night.

Rawani, who lived in Dhanbad had gone his parents house for celebrating Mansa Puja. He was talking with his neighbours when Kunal Rawani came on a bike and pumped two bullets on him. He was immediately rushed to Central Hospital of Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) Dhanbad where doctors declared him dead, the police said.

Rainbow Group has a chain of business in different states including Jharkhand, Bihar and Bengal. Beside real estate, Rainbow Group has hotels in many places.

Kunal after killing Dhiren Rawani tried to escape from spot but local people caught him and thrashed him badly, the police said.

He was rescued by police in a critical condition and taken to Patliputra Medical College Hospital (PMCH) where doctors declared him brought dead.

Kunal is the son of Dhiren Rawani's cousin Shankar Rawani.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Dhanbad, Manoj Ratan Chothe said Dhiren Rawani was killed by his cousin's son. Property dispute is said to be reason behind murder.

However, police are investigating the matter from all angles, the officer added.

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Combo photo shows the working process in a court room of the Internet court in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Aug. 18, 2017. The court, first of its kind in China, specializing in handling Internet-related cases, opened Friday to cater to the increasing number of online trade disputes and copyright lawsuits. The cases handled by the court will be tried online. [Photo/Xinhua]

China's first court specializing in handling Internet-related cases opened Friday in the e-commerce hub of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, to cater to the increasing number of online disputes.

The Hangzhou Internet Court heard its first case regarding a copyright infringement between an online writer and internet giant Netease on its opening day.

Sitting in front of their computers in Hangzhou and Beijing, the agents representing the plaintiff and the defendant communicated with the judge online. The trial lasted about 20 minutes.

"The Internet court breaks geographic boundaries and greatly saves time in traditional hearings," said Wang Jiangqiao, vice president of the court.

The court mainly handles civil cases such as contract disputes involving online shopping, service and small loans, copyright and infringement lawsuits, domain name dispute, Internet defaming and some administrative lawsuits.

It will also handle certain cases assigned by superior courts.

By registering on court's website, plaintiffs can file lawsuits and pay legal costs. The cases handled by the court will be tried online. The process is quicker, and plaintiffs and defendants can have their disputes handled while at home and at much lower cost.

"The hearing of an Internet-related case often lasts at least two days and each side has to spend thousands of yuan to travel to the court," said Zhang Sijia, a lawyer.

"We are involved in cases all over the country and the costs are too high to attend every lawsuit. Sometimes even if we win the case, we lose a huge amount of money in the process. It will significantly lower our costs if we can have them done online," said Yang Wei, vice president of Netease.

The opening of the court is along with the fast growing internet users and the consequent online disputes in China.

According to the latest report from the China Internet Network Information Center, China had about 751 million Internet users and 724 million mobile Internet users as of the end of June.

As China pushes its Internet Plus and innovation strategies, the Internet is playing an increasingly important role in the country's economic transformation. China is home to a number of Internet giants such as Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent.

The income of China's top 100 Internet companies rose 46.8 percent year-on-year to 1.1 trillion yuan (about 164 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016, latest official data showed.

It was the first time the total has surpassed one trillion yuan, according to calculations by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Internet Society of China.

But the country is also seeing a surge in cyber disputes as more people go online to shop, publish their works and manage finance.

In 2015, the Zhejiang provincial higher people's court initiated a pilot online court program at three district courts in Hangzhou to handle online trade, copyright and financial services disputes.

So far, a total of 15 courts in Zhejiang have joined the program and dealt with nearly 23,000 cases.

"With more cases accepted, we found it hard to judge a case according to traditional lawsuit regulations," said Li Shaoping, deputy head of Supreme People's Court.

The Internet court was therefore outlined at the 36th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform in June as the latest effort to deepen judical reform through lifting the efficiency of justice, improving the hearing procedures of Internet-related cases and promoting the sound development of the Internet industry.

The new court allows both sides to submit evidence in real time and is connected with big data to help judges make decisions.

"For example, the system can present the judge with similar cases as references in the course of the proceeding," said Wang. "The judge can also check the transaction history at any time when dealing with cases involving online transaction disputes."

"By setting up the Internet court, we hope to establish a professional platform to deal with Internet-related cases with new concepts and specially-designed regulations," Li said.

Zhou Hanhua, law researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the Internet court involved the use of information technology in judicial procedures and process transformation.

The reform should try to let everyone feel justice in each case, he added.
A leadership candidate for the UK's anti-immigrant far-right party has come up with a radical plan to cut "unnecessary population" in the UK by "incentivising" some migrants, including from India, to return to the country of their origin.

John Rees-Evans, a candidate to lead the UK Independence Party (UKIP), made a specific reference to Indians and Tanzanians in relation to a so-called"fast track export- import scheme" of offering up to 9,000 pounds to certain Commonwealth migrants to leave the UK.

"It's not going to be draconian. It's not going to be fascist. I'm not interested in using eugenics or any evil things like that, and yet I would be pushing for negative net migration towards one million a year," Rees-Evans is heard saying in a speech filmed during a meeting in Greater Manchester earlier this month and first published by the 'Daily Mirror'.

He suggested that the UK government's foreign aid budget should be cut from more than 13 billion pounds a year to 1 billion pounds, with 12.3 billion pounds then spent on incentivising British citizens with dual citizenship to leave the country, citing British Indians and Tanzanians, whom he said could set up their own businesses.

Curiously, while he referred to Indians as an example of migrants who can be offered such an option, India does not offer dual nationality to its citizens.

Rees-Evans later defended the plan on his Facebook page, saying the fee would incentivise people to set up businesses overseas.

He claimed: "I am being accused of wanting to send people of a particular country, or countries, abroad. This is absolutely not the case.

"The net effect would be a reduction in Britain's population of up to several hundred thousands persons annually, as well as forging prolific and valuable import-free trading relationships that will create jobs in the exporting country, while reducing the cost of living to British residents."



Under his scheme, the UK citizens who decided to move back to Britain within seven years would repay the "financial award".

Rees-Evans' UKIP rivals have condemned the comments, made on August 2.

Peter Whittle, a London Assembly member and frontrunner to lead the party, said the remarks were "utterly and entirely wrong".

Rees-Evans is among 11 candidates trying to become UKIP's sixth leader in two years since Nigel Farage stepped down.

The last UKIP leader, Paul Nuttall, resigned after winning just 1.8 per cent of the vote in the June General Election.

Voting opens on September 1, with the results to be announced at UKIP's annual conference at the end of next month.

Other controversial candidates in the fray include Anne Marie Waters, a vocal anti-Muslim campaigner.

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BJP president Amit Shah today said India was on the way to become "Vishwa Guru" (guide of world) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership.

"Whenever the country's history is written, the (history of) Modi period would be written in golden letters because of the steps taken by him for people's welfare," he here.

Shah was speaking at a function to release 'Narendra se Narendra', a book written by BJP leader Kailash Narayan Sarang.

Swami Vivekanand, whose birth name was also Narendra, had predicted that India would become Vishwa Guru in the 21st century, and it is coming true under Narendra Modi's leadership, he said.

"World over people started looking at India with respect (after Modi came to power) and that is not an honour for Modi or the BJP, but for 125 crore Indians," he said.

When Modi took over in 2014, there was an atmosphere of despair in the country and a policy paralysis because of the then prime minister "who remained quiet", the BJP national president said, adding that the situation has drastically changed.

"India is on the way to become Vishwa Guru now," he said.

"I met Modi (for the first time) in 1982. He is someone who always thinks of welfare of the country and its people," Shah said.

Earlier in the day, the saffron leader met some religious leaders, including Bhayyu Maharaj at the chief minister's residence here. He also held several meetings with BJP office-bearers.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office says the Israeli leader will travel to Russia on Wednesday to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

Netanyahu's office said late yesterday that the meeting would take place in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, and the two would discuss "the latest developments in the region."



Israel and Russia have established a special mechanism to prevent friction between their air forces in Syria.

Russia is active in Syria providing support to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Israel has tried to stay out of the fighting in the neighbouring country. But its air force frequently strikes what Israel says are weapons shipments directed toward Hezbollah, an anti-Israel militant group that is backing Assad's forces.

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As expected, the JD(U) faction led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today decided to be part of the NDA, returning to the BJP-led alliance four years after it snapped the 17-year-old ties with the saffron party.

The decision to return to the NDA fold was taken in a resolution approved at a meeting of the national executive of the JD(U) here chaired by Kumar, who is the party president.

"The national executive meeting of JD(U) chaired by party president Nitish Kumar approved a resolution to become part of NDA," its principal general secretary K C Tyagi said.

The JD(U) has two MPs in the Lok Sabha and 10 in Rajya Sabha. While the two in Lok Sabha are with Kumar, three of its Rajya Sabha MPs--Sharad Yadav, Ali Anwar Ansari and M P Veerendra Kumar of Kerala--are opposed to him. The ruling alliance comprised 32 parties before JD(U) decided to join it.

In a dramatic development on July 26, Nitish Kumar resigned as chief minister dumping the RJD and Congress to stitch a new alliance with BJP and was sworn in as the CM for the sixth time the next day.

BJP president Amit Shah welcomed the decision of the JD(U) headed by Nitish Kumar to join the NDA and said it heralded a "new era of development" in Bihar.

"I welcome the JD(U) decision of joining NDA, as this will not only strengthen the NDA but will also begin a new era of development and growth in Bihar," Shah said.

Shah had last week invited the JD(U) to join the NDA at a meeting with Nitish Kumar.

"BJP president Amit Shah during a meeting with our party president Nitish Kumar had recently urged him to bring JD(U) into NDA. The national executive committee approved it and now we have become part of NDA," Tyagi, who was flanked by senior party leaders R C P Singh, Harbansh and Pawan Varma among others, told a conference.

The national executive also put its seal of approval on the decision of JD(U)'s Bihar unit to walk out of the Grand Alliance and join hands with BJP to form the government in Bihar.

The decision to return to the NDA fold came a little after four years when Kumar had driven JD(U) to walk out of NDA on June 16, 2013 over Narendra Modi being made the prime ministerial candidate.

The party's two factions headed by Kumar and Sharad Yadav held parallel meetings in Patna during the day. The group under its president (Kumar) categorically denied that there was any split and said that the "overwhelming majority" of its members is with them.

The Kumar faction, however, avoided cracking the whip against Sharad Yadav, who is charting a different path, till August 27 to see if he participates in the RJD rally at Patna.

"We will wait till August 27 to see if Sharad Yadavji crosses the Lakshman rekha and stands with Lalu Prasad, who is considered the Badshah of corruption in the country," Tyagi said.

Yadav skipped the national executive meeting and attended 'Jan Adalat' a parallel programme with suspended JD(U) MP Ali Anwar Ansari and others promising to continue with the Grand Alliance with RJD and Congress.

Tyagi categorically denied any split in JD(U) and said 16 out of 20 state unit presidents of the party, all its 71 MLAs and 30 MLCs in Bihar and all office bearers of its committees appointed earlier by Kumar with the consent of Yadav were present in the national executive meeting and became part of the decision. "So how can there be split in JD(U)?"



He justified Bihar JD(U)'s proposal to part company with the Grand Alliance over graft charge against the then deputy chief minister Tejaswi Prasad Yadav, who is the son of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad.

"If the decision was not taken on time, this alliance could also have met the same fate as that UPA II under Manmohan Singh, who himself was not in corrupt practises but could not check the corrupt practises of its partners," Tyagi said.

He referred to the "clean political image" of Nitish Kumar, who, he said, had resigned from ministerial posts four times in the past to keep morality in politics.

Tyagi, who has long association with Sharad Yadav spanning for over five decades, expressed unhappiness over his decision to oppose the party line and be on the side of Lalu Prasad.

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Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao has been selected for the Agriculture Leadership Award 2017,instituted by the Indian Council of Food and Agriculture.

A committee headed by eminent agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan has recommended Rao's name, a release from Rao's office said.

The award will be presented on September 5 in New Delhi, it said.

"Rao has been selected for the award for his "innovative and yeoman services rendered for the welfare of farmers and farm sector," the release added.

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Australia's Nick Kyrgios humbled new world number one Rafael Nadal 6-2, 7-5, winning twice in one day to reach the WTA and ATP Cincinnati Masters semi- finals.

On a day when defending champion Karolina Pliskova won twice in one day for the third time this season to tighten her grip on the world number one ranking, Kyrgios stole the show by overpowering the 15-time Grand Slam champion after each had won earlier.

The 22-year-old from Canberra was up a double break in 10 minutes, seizing the chance to make a between-the-legs showoff shot on his way to a 4-0 lead, drawing boos from the crowd.

Kyrgios, ranked 23rd, took the first set in 25 minutes, dropping only three points on his serve while taking seven- of-eight points off the 31-year-old Spaniard's second serves.

Nadal netted a forehand to surrender a break and a 3-2 lead to Kyrgios in the second set. The Aussie served for the match in the 10th game but double faulted on his third match point and Nadal had new life, screaming, "Come On."



But Kyrgios broke again to lead 6-5 and this time end matters with his 10th ace after 80 minutes, improving to 2-2 all-time against Nadal and booking a Saturday semi-final against Spain's David Ferrer.

Bulgaria's 11th-ranked Grigor Dimitrov plays American John Isner in the other semi-final.

Nadal took only 6-of-20 second serve points and won only five off the Aussie's first serve.

Earlier, Kyrgios defeated Croatia's Ivo Karlovic 4-6, 7-6 (8/6), 6-3 and Nadal downed compatriot Albert Ramos-Vinolas 7 -6 (7/1), 6-2.

Kyrgios, who matched his best ATP Masters runs from Miami the past two years, seeks his fourth career title after 2016 trophies at Marseille, Atlanta and Tokyo.

And he served notice for the US Open, where he has never reached the fourth round. The year's last Grand Slam event starts August 28.

Pliskova, fighting to hold off Romania's Simona Halep atop the rankings, first ousted Italian qualifier Camila Giorgi 6-3, 4-6, 6-0 in one of five matches postponed from Thursday due to rain.

With only two hours between matches, the 25-year-old Czech defeated Denmark's fifth-ranked Caroline Wozniacki 6-2, 6-4 to book a Saturday semi-final against Wimbledon champion Garbine Muguruza.

"I feel pretty good," Pliskova said. "I recover well, so definitely I will be ready for tomorrow."



Second-ranked Halep eliminated British seventh seed Johanna Konta 6-4, 7-6 (7/1) to book a semi-final date with US wildcard Sloane Stephens.

"Whatever comes I will just take it," said Pliskova. "Even if I would be second coming to the US Open, it's still better than I was last year. So no pressure about being world number one."



Pliskova's two-in-one effort, matching feats on her way to Eastbourne and Doha titles, means Halep must capture the crown to swipe the top spot in Monday's rankings.

"Not always is it going this way," Pliskova said of her twin wins. "It's just lucky that I always won both of them."



- All my support to Barcelona -



===============================



Nadal, who won his 10th French Open title in June, was assured of moving into the top ranking on Monday for the first time since July 2014 when Roger Federer withdrew from Cincinnati with a back injury.

Nadal and Ramos-Vinolas wore black ribbons on their shirts in memory of victims of the terror attack Thursday in Barcelona.

"What happened yesterday in Barcelona was, of course, terrible. Everyone is very, very sad. I don't have words to say, because when these kind of things happen, is difficult," Nadal said.

"All my support to Barcelona and especially to the people that are suffering a lot, for all the families of the victims. Just keep going and sorry for everything."



Drawing on a camera lens after the final match, Kyrgios wrote "Barcelona" and drew a heart.

Sixth-ranked Spaniard Muguruza, wearing a black ribbon on her visor, ousted Russian eighth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-2, 5-7, 7-5 in a matchup of two-time Grand Slam winners.

Ferrer upset Austria's eighth-ranked Dominic Thiem 6-3, 6-3 while Isner fired 25 aces in beating American wildcard Jared Donaldson 7-6 (7/4), 7-5 and Dimitrov downed Japan's Yuichi Sugita 6-2, 6-1.

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The Lebanese army announced today the start of an offensive against the (IS) group close to the Syrian border in the east of the country, where jihadists have been operating for several years.

"In the name of Lebanon, in the name of kidnapped Lebanese soldiers, in the name of martyrs of the army, I announce that (this) operation.... Has started," said army chief General Joseph Aoun.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Pakistani prisoner lodged at the Warangal Central Jail here was today released from the prison.

Arshad Muhammad was handed over to Habits police personnel of Hyderabad by jail superintendent M Sampath.

According to Sampath, though Arshad's term ended in August last year and the Indian government permitted him to go back to his country, he could not return as the Pakistani government did not respond to his case which delayed the documentation process.

Arshad then appealed to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to help him to go-back to his country, and it took one year for him to receive the clearances.

53-year-old Arshad was sent to jail in 2009 after he was found guilty of treason and spying for Pakistan.

He served sentence at the Chentalguda prison and was later shifted to Warangal Central Prison due to security reasons.

His jail term had ended on August 16, 2016, but he did not get the required permission from Pakistan, said the jail official.

Sampath said, "The Ministry of Home Affairs has issued orders asking the Police to hand him over at the Wagah Border.

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Some 500 far-right extremists marched today in Berlin in honour of the 30th anniversary of the death of top Nazi Rudolf Hess - and they were separated by hundreds of heavily armed police from an equal number of counter- demonstrators.

Berlin police spokesman Carsten Mueller told The Associated Press that authorities have imposed a number of restrictions today's march in the Spandau district to ensure it passes peacefully.

Police have told organisers they can march, but they're not allowed to glorify Hess, who died at Spandau prison. The neo-Nazis are allowed to bring banners: but only one for every 50 participants.

Such restrictions are common in Germany and rooted in the experience of the pre-war Weimar Republic, when opposing political groups would try to forcibly interrupt their rivals' rallies, resulting in frequent bloody street violence.

The exact rules differ according to the circumstances, but police in Germany say they generally try to balance protesters' rights to free speech and free assembly against the rights of counter-demonstrators and residents.

The rules mean that shields, helmets and batons carried by far-right and Neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville last weekend wouldn't be allowed in Germany.

Openly anti-Semitic chants would prompt German police to intervene, although efforts would be made to detain specific individuals rather than to stop an entire rally, police say. Left-wing groups expect about 1,000 people to attend the counter-protests.

Hess, who received a life sentence at the Nuremberg trials for his role in planning World War II, died on August 17, 1987. Allied authorities ruled his death a suicide, but Nazi sympathisers have long claimed that he was killed and organise annual marches in his honour.

The marches used to take place in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where Hess was buried until authorities removed his remains.

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A police team was on Sunday attacked by a mob of over 100 persons in Godhra when it tried to rescue a large number of cows which were allegedly being taken for slaughter.

The police had to lob 18 rounds of teargas shells after the mob attacked them, Godhra Deputy SP V K Nai said.

"When the police team reached the ground where the cattle were kept, they were attacked by the mob with stones. To disperse the crowd, police team lobbed 18 teargas shells. Nobody was injured," he said.

The security forces had carried out an extensive combing operation upon receiving information that the cattle were brought here for slaughtering.

The police found that a large number of cattle were tied at a place on the ground. When they tried to untie the animals and take them into their custody, the officers were attacked, Nai said.

"We seized 49 cattle from the spot and took them to cow shelter," he said.

Further investigation is being carried out in this connection with an FIR registered at B division police station, the official said.

Slaughter of cow and its progeny is banned in Gujarat, which through its recently amended Gujarat Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, 2017, has envisaged punishment of up to life term and Rs 5 lakh fine for cow slaughtering.
 Flash

The number of people killed in Thursday's double terror attacks rose to 15, as Spanish people demonstrated defiance and condolences by leaders of the world poured in on Friday.

Police officers ask people to leave Plaza Catalonia following a terrorist attack in central Barcelona, Spain, on Aug. 17, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

Thirteen people were killed Thursday afternoon in the popular Las Ramblas area of Barcelona when a white van zigzagged at high speed down the busy avenue thronged with tourists, knocking down pedestrians.

On Thursday night, the 14th victim, a woman, was stabbed and later died at hospital on Friday, when five people jumped out of a car and began attacking people at random on the seaside promenade in Cambrils, a town south of Barcelona. Spanish police shot all five attackers dead.

Death toll climbs to 15 with driver still at large

"A woman injured yesterday in Cambrils attack has died. 14 citizens died yesterday in #Barcelona and Cambrils terrorist attacks," Catalan emergency services tweeted Friday.

Suspects of Cambrils terrorists carried an ax and knives and wore belts with false explosives attached to the body, the Catalan police, Mossos d'Esquadra, said on Twitter Friday.

The van driver involved in the Barcelona attack was still at large, but a manhunt after the two attacks led to the arrests of four people, including three Moroccans and one Spaniard, according to local police.

Local police authority is considering the possibility that one of five terrorists shot in Cambrils was also involved in the Barcelona attacker, according to local media.

Catalan emergency services also said the number of the injured has risen to 130 in the double terror attacks.

A provisional assessment showed that the victims of the double attacks are of 34 nationalities, the service posted on its Twitter account.

Chinese president, premier send condolences to Spanish counterparts

Shortly after the Barcelona attacks, leaders form the world, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, expressed extended condolences to their Spanish counterparts and condemned the deadly terrorist attacks.

In his message to Spanish King Felipe VI, Xi said he is shocked to learn the terror attack in Barcelona that has caused heavy casualties.

On behalf of the Chinese government and people and in his own name, Xi mourned the dead and expressed heartfelt sympathy to the bereaved families and the injured.

"China is firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and stands ready to work with the international community, including Spain, to strengthen anti-terror cooperation so as to jointly safeguard regional and world peace and stability," the Chinese president said.

In a message of condolences, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, on behalf of the Chinese government, mourned the dead, extended heartfelt sympathy to the bereaved families and hoped for rapid recovery of the injured.

China firmly supports Spain in its efforts to fight terrorism and safeguard national security, and is willing to work with all nations, including Spain, to make joint contributions to world peace and security, said the Chinese premier.

Working together and as a team

Spanish Prime Minister on Friday called governmental bodies to "work together" and "as a team" against terrorism and in chasing terrorists who made the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks.

"That they know that the help of the government will always have it," he told officials.

On Friday, thousands of people gathered in downtown Barcelona to show their defiance to terrorism.

People held a minute's silence on Friday midday at Placa Catalunya, close to Las Ramblas. The crowd chanted "no tinc por", meaning "I am not afraid" in Catalan, and applauded for around two minutes.

The gathering was attended by Spanish King Felipe VI, Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, and other political leaders from Spain's main political parties, as well as Catalan leaders and Barcelona's Mayor Ada Colau.

Madrid also held a minute of silence at the Congress of Deputies building.

Meanwhile, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) on Friday strongly condemned the double attacks, and expressed solidarity with the families of victims and wounded.

The new WTTC president and CEO, Gloria Guevara, expressed her sadness over these cruel attacks in Spain and said that her heart is with the "victims, their friends and families."

The organization has offered full support of the world tourism and travel sector to all those affected -- the two Catalan destinations, Spanish society and the country -- in these "difficult times", said Guevara.
Spanish police expanded a manhunt today for a Moroccan national believed to be one of the perpetrators of twin terror attacks in Barcelona and another seaside resort that killed 14 and wounded around 100.

With the country in shock after the carnage which saw two men deliberately ploughing vehicles into crowds of pedestrians, Madrid mulled raising the terror alert to the maximum in the world's third tourism destination.

With investigators working round the clock to identify the network behind the bloodshed, police said they were hunting for 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub without confirming reports he was the driver who ploughed a van into pedestrians in Barcelona on Thursday.

Thirteen people died at the scene and scores more were injured in scenes of horror witnessed by terrified friends and relatives, with locals and tourists laying flowers, candles and teddies in their memory.

Investigators meanwhile were working furiously to unravel the terror cell of at least 12 young men - some of them teenagers - behind the Barcelona rampage and a second ramming attack with a car in the seaside town of Cambrils.

One woman was killed and six other people wounded, with police killing five "suspected terrorists" who were in the car and arresting four others.

The Barcelona attack was claimed by the Islamic State group.

Police have also identified another three suspects linked to the attacks, two of whom are thought to have died in a blast on Wednesday night as they tried to make explosives at a house in Alcanar, a town some 200 kilometres (140 miles) south of Barcelona.

As the hunt for Abouyaaqoub gathers pace, Spanish police tipped off their French counterparts about a white van linked to the attacks that may have crossed the border, a French police source told AFP.

Police in Catalonia said three of the suspects shot dead in Cambrils were Moroccan nationals, identifying them as Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24.

Moussa's brother Driss is one of the four arrested.

Back in Morocco, their father Said was in shock, with tears in his eyes when he was told of the while at a wedding, surrounded by relatives.

"We're under shock, completely devastated," he told AFP, saying Moussa had been studying "normally" at school while Driss worked "honestly."



"I hope they will say he's innocent... I don't want to lose my two sons."



Police said they believed the suspects were planning a much larger attack, possibly a vehicle bomb, with the use of gas canisters.

But they appear to have made mistakes, accidentally detonating Wednesday's explosion.

Security forces removed dozens of gas canisters from the house in Alcanar, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

"They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona, and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope," said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police.

Both attacks followed the same modus operandi with drivers deliberately targeting pedestrians in the latest in a series of such assaults in Europe.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Miscreants pelted stones at the Dehradun-Delhi Shatabdi Express near Muzaffarnagar railway station here, damaging some window panes.

No one was injured in the incident which occurred yesterday after the train crossed the railway station, according to railway protection force.

The police has registered a case against unidentified people.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Telangana government has announced a slew of sops, including capital subsidy, to boost the textiles and apparels sector in the state.

The sops are part of the Telangana Textile and Apparel Incentive Scheme 2017 announced by the TRS government with an aim to attract investments and generate job opportunities for the local population.

According to a government order (GO) issued last night, the capital and operational incentives for the textiles and apparels industry will be applicable for both new as well as existing units for the next five years.

"The incentives proposed hereunder shall be operative for a period of five years from the date of notification and will cover all new and existing units.

"While the government is keen to encourage industry with the primary objective of attracting investments and generating employment opportunities for the local population, it is hereby clarified that it expects the industry to provide a fair and decent wage to the workforce," the GO said.

The government said units not adequately compensating the workers will face action.

"If it is brought to the notice of the government that the workers are not being adequately compensated, or are exploited, then it shall have the right to terminate the approvals granted and recover the monetary value of the incentives accorded till then," the GO said.

It said VAT/CST/SGST reimbursement is available for tax collected on end product/intermediates within the entire value chain (from cotton to garment and made ups) to the extent of 100 per cent for a period of seven years from the date of commencement of commercial production. Or up to realisation of 100 per cent fixed capital investment the eligible fixed capital investment, whichever is earlier.

Existing units which undergo expansion/modernisation/ diversification will be entitled to get similar benefits under this clause, it added.

A capital subsidy of 25 per cent will be provided for conventional textile units and 35 per cent for technical ones involved in production of medical textiles, geotextiles, agrotextiles and protective clothing, among others.

For units established with an investment of Rs 200 crore or above or providing more than 1,000 jobs, the incentives will further be customised, the GO said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Puducherry Chief Minister V.Narayanasamy todaypaid tributes to former AICC General Secretary and veteran Congress leader G K Moopanar on his 86th birth anniversary today.

Welfare Minister M Kandasamy, ruling Congress legislators, freedom fighters and Congress workers were among those who paid floral tributes at Moopanar's statue.

PCC leader and PWD Minister A Namassivayam paid tributes to the late leader at the premises of the PCC office here.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Donald Trump is weighing his options on formulating a new US strategy in South Asia with the focus on Afghanistan, the White House has said, after the President held a key meeting with his national security team.

Trump would take a final decision on this at an appropriate time, the White House said, without divulging the details of the meeting.

"The President is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement after Trump was briefed by his national security team at the presidential retreat at Camp David, a picturesque presidential resort in Maryland.

Besides the National Security Adviser Lt Gen H R McMaster, the meeting was attended by Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of national Intelligence Daniel Coats, and President's top Adviser on South Asia Lisa Curtis.

Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, attended the meeting through a secured video conference.

The administration has said its Afghanistan strategy will be determined by a review of its approach to the broader region, including Pakistan and India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The US and South Korea would begin a 10-day-long annual military exercise next week, the Pentagon said today amid the continued provocative behaviour from North Korea.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drill is a computer simulated defencive exercise designed to enhance readiness, protect the region and maintain stability on the Korean peninsula, the Pentagon said.

Out of the 17,500 US service members who are going to participate, about 3,000 coming from off-peninsula for the exercise that will start on August 21 and end on August 31.

In addition to South Korea and US forces, UN Command forces from seven sending states including Australia, Canada, Columbia, Denmark, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the UK will participate in this annual exercise.

In addition, Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission observers will monitor the exercise to ensure it is in compliance with the Armistice Agreement for the Restoration of the South Korean State (1953), it said.

"These exercises also highlight the longstanding military partnership, commitment and enduring friendship between the two nations, and help to ensure peace and security on the peninsula, and reaffirm US commitment to the alliance," the Pentagon added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Xi Jinping today congratulated a research team on conducting China's second scientific expedition to the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, which also included sections of the route of the USD 50 billion China- Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The expedition, led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), will analyse the impact of environmental change on social development and provide suggestion for the building of a national park in the area.

When the expedition began in June this year, a report in the state-run Xinhua agency had said it also included China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and a pass linking South Asia.

CPEC passes through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) over which India has conveyed its protests to China. The area covers the Karakoram mountain range, including parts of the Siachen glacier.

In a letter to the team, Xi expressed his appreciation and greetings to scientists, young students and support staff who carried out the comprehensive scientific expedition to the plateau.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is an important ecological safety barrier and strategic resource reserve base, Xinhua agency reported today, quoting Xi's letter.

He said that the team should focus on problems related to carrying capacity of the resources and the environment, disaster risk, green development on the plateau and ecological environmental protection.

Vice Premier Liu Yandong read the letter at a ceremony in Lhasa, capital of Tibet Autonomous Region.

The last expedition of similar scale in Tibet, regarded as roof of the world with extremely rare fragile ecological system, was conducted in the 1970s.

This time, the expedition will last five to 10 years. The CAS has taken more than 100 scientists.

They will divided into four groups and make a comprehensive survey of the plateau glaciers, climate change, biodiversity and ecological changes, Yao Tandong, an academician with the CAS had said in June.

"Great changes have taken place in the plateau's resources and environment since the first scientific expedition. We need further research to find out ways to cope with these changes," said Yao, director of the CAS Institute of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research.

China's first comprehensive scientific expedition to the Tibet plateau began in the 1970s and covered more than 50 disciplines including geologic structure, prehistoric life, geophysics, climate, zoology and botany.

"The scientists reported major discoveries and filled many gaps in plateau research," Yao said. The new round of research, he said, will focus on changes.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Infosys board today approved a share buyback program of up to Rs 13,000 crore. The buyback price of Rs 1,150 per share is nearly 25 per cent higher than Friday's closing of Rs 923.10 apiece.

The company has also set up seven-member committee comprising key members like Co-chairman Ravi Venkatesan, Executive Vice-chairman Vishal Sikka, interim CEO and MD UB Pravin Rao, among others to oversee the process of the buyback offer.

The buyback offer approved by the board will comprise up to 11.3 crore equity shares or 4.92 per cent paid-up equity share capital, Infosys said in a regulatory filing.

The process timeline and other details will be announced in due course, Infosys said, adding that the buyback is subject to approval of the shareholders by way of a special resolution.



Infosys Secretary AGS Manikanta earlier this week had made an announcement saying, "The board of directors of Infosys Limited will consider a proposal for buyback of equity shares of the company at its meeting to be held on August 19, 2017." Share buybacks usually improve earnings per share and return surplus cash to shareholders.

WHY IS INFOSYS GOING FOR SHARE BUYBACK?

Earlier in April, Infosys had announced that it would pay up to Rs 13,000 crore to shareholders during the current financial year through dividend and/or share buyback. In its announcement it said: "The board has identified an amount of up to Rs 13,000 crore to be paid out to shareholders during financial year 2018, in such a manner (including by way of dividend and/or share buyback), to be decided by the board, subject to applicable laws and requisite approvals, if any."

Infosys' buyback decision has come in the back of massive investors' pressure who wanted the company to utilise its cash reserves of USD 6 billion either through share buyback or generous dividend. The pressure had grown further after other tech companies such as Cognizant and TCS announced their mega buyback offers worth USD 3.4 billion and Rs 16,000 crore, respectively, to return surplus cash to shareholders. HCL Technologies has also approved a buyback of up to 3.50 crore shares worth Rs 3,500 crore.

WHAT IS SHARE BUYBACK?

Share buyback means re-purchase of shares by a company to reduce the number of shares trading in the market. Market experts believe that it usually shows the confidence of promoters in the future of the company. There are a number of reasons why companies go for buybacks. Companies go for buyback in cases where they want to reward investors, increase promoter holding, reduce public float and check the falling stock price, reduce volatility and build investor confidence.

MODES OF SHARE BUYBACK

Some common buyback routes companies take are tender offer and open market purchase. In tender offer, the company makes an offer to buy a certain number of shares at a specific price directly from shareholders. Share buyback ensures all shareholders are treated equally, however small they are. In open market purchase, the company decides to acquire a certain number of shares. It fixes a price cap and can buy for any price up to that. Most companies prefer the open market route. The biggest difference between the two -tender offer and open market purchase- is that the price in the tender route is fixed.

DECLINE IN SHAREHOLDERS' HOLDING VALUE

Infosys shareholders have seen the value of their holdings fall about 20 per cent over the past 12 months. The entire Indian IT sector is facing challenges but the fall in the IT sector has been just 11 per cent. The biggest reason for the poor investor interest - apart from the challenges that IT sector is facing - was the apparent lack of confidence shown by founder-promoters in the management.

CHALLENGES AHEAD OF INFOSYS

Infosys has been struggling to grow even in high single digits as the global IT services market sees a tectonic shift from IT outsourcing to digital, cloud, artificial intelligence and automation. Then there is the opposition to outsourcing of jobs in big markets such as the US and the UK that is forcing the players to increase spending for hiring more locals. Infosys thinks that Vishal Sikka's goal of USD 20 billion revenue and USD 80,000 revenue per employee by 2020 will have to be postponed. Infosys has also seen a number of high-profile exits of late even as its bets on innovation and higher-value offerings are yet to pay off.



FIGHT AT INFOSYS

The turn of events at Infosys in the last two days has been dramatic with Vishal Sikka announcing his resignation and the Infosys board putting the blame squarely on Narayana Murthy for Sikka's exit. Despite Sikka'a resignation, the fight between the management and the founders may not be over anytime soon.

The board has blamed Murthy for carrying out a campaign against Sikka. Murthy has responded to the allegations. "I am extremely anguished by the allegations, tone and tenor of the statements. I voluntarily left the board in 2014 and am not seeking any money, position for children or power. My concern primarily was the deteriorating standard of corporate governance which I have repeatedly brought to the notice of the Infosys board," Murthy said in a statement. He further added: "Several shareholders who have read the whistle-blower report have told me that it is hard to believe a report produced by a set of lawyers hired by a set of accused, giving a clean chit to the accused, and the accused refusing to disclose why they got the clean chit!"

It all started with Infosys' decision to pay hefty severance pay to two of its employees. That irked the many former board members, including Mohandas Pai. Infosys had paid a package of Rs. 17.38 crore to ex-CFO Rajiv Bansal's severance. Pai said: "CFOs (in past) have left the company and they have not got any separation. There is no case for a special treatment for anybody. And the management cannot be generous with shareholder money because it's not their money. It's a serious lapse which should be looked into by the board."

The founders were also angry over massive pay hike to top Infosys officials, including CEO and MD Sikka. Infosys founders N R Narayana Murthy, Kris Gopalakrishnan and Nandan Nilekani had written to the board expressing their concerns over pay hike to Sikka. Mohandas Pai had said a CEO's pay should be linked to his performance, achievement of the annual plan and increase in shareholder value.



It was reported that Sikka drew an annual pay package - during 2015-16 - of a whopping Rs 49 crore which was much higher than his counterparts in other Indian IT companies. While the then TCS chief N. Chandrasekaran was paid a pay packet of Rs 25.6 crore by the Tata Group for 2015-16, Wipro CEO Abidali Neemuchwala's annual pay was Rs 12 crore.



(With input from agencies)






The GST Implementation Committee has extended the last date for payment of the GST for another five days. Taxayers can now pay their GST and file their returns by August 25.



The decision was taken after several tax payers and the tax practitioners have requested for few more days to file their GST Return for the month of July, based on the fact that it is the first time they will be doing so. Earlier, August 20 was assigned as the last date for payment of taxes and filing GST Return for the month of July in Form 3B.

Moreover, flood-hit states of Eastern and North-Eastern India states have also pleaded to extend the last date for filing of GST Returns. Jammu and Kashmir has also requested for extension in GST Return deadline because of late passing of their GST Ordinance. Some technical glitches are also experienced by Some taxpayers have also faced some technical glitches in the in tyhe eleventh hour of filing their GST Return.



Ministry 0f Fiannce has specified that for tax payers who do not wish to claim transitional credit in TRANS1 this month, the deadline for filing GST return will be 25th August 2017. On the other hand, taxpayers who want to fill up TRANS1 form for the month of July can file their returns by 28th August 2017, as announced earlier.

The Ministry has also urged tax payers to file their return well before the deadlines to avoid any technical glitches or last moment difficulty.
 Flash

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson called on the United States and Japan to stop making incorrect remarks on the Diaoyu Islands and the South China Sea on Friday.

Media reported that the United States and Japan on Thursday reaffirmed that Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan security treaty applies to China's Diaoyu Islands and expressed grave concerns about the situation in the South China Sea.

In response, spokesperson Hua Chunying said China's position on the Diaoyu Islands and the South China Sea remains consistent and clear, and the Chinese government and its people have unswerving determination and will to safeguard its territorial sovereignty.

The U.S.-Japan security treaty is a product of the Cold War, which should not be used as an excuse for Japan's illegal claims and to harm China's territorial sovereignty and related rights, she said.

Currently, the situation in the South China Sea is stable, she said, and dialogue and coordination between China and ASEAN countries have enjoyed positive progress.

Hua said the United States and Japan, which are not parties in the South China Sea issue, should respect the efforts made by countries in the region to peacefully resolve the issue through coordination and negotiation.

"China calls on the United States and Japan to do more that is conducive to regional peace and stability," the spokesperson said.
Courtesy of the Cache County Jail

LOGAN  A judge has sentenced Dakota Q. Knight to 90-days in jail, for forcing a woman to have sex with him at a fraternity party three years ago. The 22-year-old Logan man was taken by deputies into custody, as his fiance tried to give him a hug and kiss goodbye.

Knight was sentenced in 1st District Court Friday morning after previously accepting a plea deal. As part of the agreement in June, he entered an Alford Plea to a charge of sexual battery, a class A misdemeanor, reduced from a first-degree felony charge of forcible sodomy.

According to prosecutors, Knight and the victim were at a fraternity party on October 17, 2014. While the two were alone, Knight allegedly forced the victim to have oral sex with him. Later he admitted to the assault during a recorded telephone conversation with the woman.

During Fridays sentencing the victim told the court how Knight had hurt her soul. She described how she dropped out of Utah State University after the assault because of feelings of guilt. I am standing here to prove that I am not a weak victim, she said.

Knight would not look at the woman while she spoke to Judge Kevin Allen. He later said he apologized for any inconveniences or difficulties he has caused in her life.

The case had been delayed several times after a private investigator, hired by the defense, retired suddenly and moved out of state. The Alford plea is an admission of guilt by the defendant who proclaims he is innocent of the crime, and admits that prosecutors have enough evidence to prove that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The plea also prevented the victim from having to testify during a trial.

Judge Allen ordered Knight to be immediately taken into custody. He also sentenced him to perform 40-hours of community service and complete sex offender therapy.

Knight was a student at USU and member of the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity at the time of the crime.

<hr /><p style=text-align: center;>will@cvradio.com
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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying (Photo source: fmprc.gov.cn)

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Friday that the Japanese ambassador to India should not wag his tongue too freely on the standoff between China and India in the Dong Lang (Doklam) area.

Spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a routine press briefing that there is no territorial dispute in that area and that the nature of the incident is that Indian troops illegally crossed the already delimited Sikkim section of the China-India boundary into Chinese territory.

Japanese Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu said in an interview with Indian media that Doklam is disputed territory between China and Bhutan and no country should use force to change its status.

It is better not to make irresponsible remarks before making clear the facts, Hua said, stressing that it is India, not China, that is trying to create trouble and change the status quo.

She reiterated that the premise and basis for meaningful dialogue between China and India is that India immediately and unconditionally withdraws all troops and equipment that have encroached into Chinese territory.
Friday, August 18, 2017 at 8:21PM

Google announced at I/O that it was adding support for more streaming services as well as opening its Spotify support not just to Premium subscribers but those with free accounts, too. The latter is rolling out as Google adds support for those free users of the streaming service. To add your account, just head to the Home app and go to the Music section. Youll find Spotify there. Just enter your login information and then youll be able to play music via voice commands. Heres a complete list of the voice commands you can use.

Source: Android Police
The Suburban Land Agency has applied for an exemption from having to do an environmental impact assessment, despite the presence of endangered and vulnerable plants and animals, including the pink-tailed worm lizard. The project also involves the relocation of two critical critical 132kV lines that supply power to large areas of Canberra, which is one of the triggers that usually forces an environmental assessment.
Your digital subscription includes access to content from all our websites in your region. Access unlimited news content and The Canberra Times app. Premium subscribers also enjoy interactive puzzles and access to the digital version of our print edition - Today's Paper.
SAMSUNG GALAXY SALE AS LOW AS $3 per month AUGUST 1027 No trade-in required. $ 3.00 $ 14. 12 $ 19.60 per month per month per month Postpaid Plan, credit approval and 30-month Retail Installment Contract required. Things we want you to know: Postpaid Plan and credit approval required. A $25 Activation Fee applies. A Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee (currently $2.02) applies; this is not a tax or government required charge. Additional fees (including Device Connection Charges), taxes, terms, conditions and coverage areas may apply and vary by plan, service and phone. Offers valid at participating locations only and cannot be combined. See store or uscellular.com for details. Smartphone Sale: Available to new lines and upgrades. Pricing valid on all Smartphones of standard memory size with 30-month Retail Installment Contract. Monthly pricing varies by device. Limitations and exclusions apply. Ask an associate for more details. Kansas Customers: In areas in which U.S. Cellular receives support from the Federal Universal Service Fund, all reasonable requests for service must be met. Unresolved questions concerning services avail ability can be directed to the Kansas Corporation Commission Office of Public Affairs and Consumer Protection at 1-800-662-0027. Limited-time offer. Trademarks and trade names are the property of their respective owners. 2017 U.S. Cellular
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 ...
TOWN OF ANSON  Animated discussion of President Donald J. Trumps current polices  healthcare, immigration reform and trade  was had at the Wisconsin Farmers Union gathering at Kamp Kenwood in the town of Anson Thursday.

The discussion was led by a guest: Roger Johnson, president of the bipartisan National Farmers Union.

Johnson explained how reforming U.S. immigration law may have devastating effect on Midwest farmers  but that Trumps policies on trade may help them out.

Trump trade

Johnson said Thursday that although he doesnt have a stance on Trumps rhetoric or tax policy, he thinks the current Presidents trade stance might ring true with farmers.

Interestingly, from a policy standpoint, the Farmers Union lines up with this administrations trade positions. More closely than weve lined up with any other administration for yearsweve said its a mistake to continue to run these enormous trade deficits, Johnson said. That is arguably the issue Trump won on.

Johnsons stance on agriculture company consolidation also seemed to strike a chord with the audience. This is where the industry seems to be heading, he said Thursday. Its a problem. Theres no competition left in the marketplace.

The farm industry has seen agriculture giants such as Monsanto, Syngenta and Dupont merge, driving costs higher. Chemical companies Dupont and Dow reaffirmed in June that their plans for an August 2017 merger are well under way. Monsanto shareholders approved a merger with agrochemical company Bayer in December 2016; that merger is expected to complete by the end of 2017, according to a Bayer press release from April 2017.

You pay more for the stuff you buy, you have fewer choices and we have a system that is less efficient at the end of the day, Johnson said. Producers lose. The monopolist wins.

Immigration reform

key issue

George Polzin, who owns and operates a dairy farm of Red Holsteins in the Anson area, spoke about the need for a comprehensive health care bill, and how a repeal of the Affordable Care Act would affect his family.

Polzins wife works off the farm to get health insurance. Thats very common in agriculture, Polzin said Thursday. One spouse probably has to work off the farm just to get insurance through a company.

The family used to buy their own insurance, Polzin said, but the cost was well over $1,000 each month.

He said the worry over immigration reform affects more fruit and vegetable producers than dairy farmers, but that hes felt the loss of workers over and over. Workers come here with a three-month visa, and it doesnt do dairy any good. Dairy isnt a three-month business. Its seven days a week. The immigration programs, as they are, are not set up to accommodate that type of work.

Polzin speaks highly of the Latino and Hispanic workers hes employed, and said he advocates for better immigration programs  ones that allow foreign students and young adults to come to the Midwest to learn about the industry.

Regardless of what people think, agriculture is still important, he said. People still kind of like to eat. Thats the way I look at it.
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The potential 2018 field of Democratic candidates for governor continues to grow, with three more announcing their presence in recent days.

Kurt Kober, 39, a political newcomer and businessman from Sheboygan, said that hes considering a governor bid.

Michele Doolan, a small business owner from Cross Plains, also recently signaled plans to run.

Both have taken the initial step of filing with the state Ethics Commission to create a campaign committee.

Former state lawmaker Kelda Helen Roys of Madison also said shes considering a run, in an interview with The Capital Times.

Kober said hes a retail strategy director with The Clorox Company and board member of the Sheboygan Public Education Foundation.

Kober said he began to think about running for office after the 2016 election, the results of which he dubbed a wake-up call. He said his past political involvement includes being a former College Democrats of Wisconsin president and volunteering for the 2008 Barack Obama campaign.

Kober said he plans to make a final decision in coming months about whether to run. If he does, Kober said his campaign would be about preparing Wisconsin for technological and economic change.

I am looking to lean into what the future looks like, Kober said. Thats a different kind of conversation than what weve been hearing so far.

Doolan, 43, a political newcomer and hair salon owner, is president of the Park Elementary PTO in Cross Plains. She said shes running to bridge what she described as a disconnect between regular people and their elected officials.

I have no agenda other than I really want to make a difference, Doolan said.

Roys, 38, told The Capital Times that Democrats must articulate a positive vision for the future of our state to appeal to Democrats and those who feel they arent a part of the political process.

State Rep. Dana Wachs of Eau Claire, Milwaukee-area businessman Andy Gronik and Barneveld political newcomer Bob Harlow have said theyre officially seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.

Other Democrats who have registered campaign committees but havent formalized a run include state Superintendent Tony Evers, state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, former state Rep. Brett Hulsey and political activist Mike McCabe.

Madison Mayor Paul Soglin also has said hes considering a Democratic run.
Five months after its reveal at the Geneva Motor Show, the new Ferrari 812 Superfast is making its way to dealers and eagerly awaiting customers around the world. And the latest market where the new twelve-cylinder supercar has arrived in Australia.



The models Australiasian debut took place at The Meat Market in Melbourne  which may only be fair considering that both the eight- and twelve-cylinder versions of the GTC4 Lusso were presented in Sydney. Instead of the typical red, the 812 was also presented in a striking new matte grey finish called Grigio Caldo Opaco.

A further evolution of the F12 Berlinetta, the new 812 Superfast is the most powerful production model Ferrari has ever made. Its 6.5-liter V12 produces a massive 789 horsepower and 530 lb-ft of torque to reach 62 miles per hour from a standstill in 2.9 seconds and top out at over 221 mph.

Down Under, the 812 Superfast carries a list price of about $610k. Thats in Australian dollars, which works out to about $480k in US funds, compared to the $315k American customers have to pay.

Thats all rather academic, though, as Australias allocation is reportedly all sold out for the next seven or eight years, by which time it will have likely been replaced. (The F12 was produced for less than six years.)

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Photo: Google Street View

A Kamloops RCMP officer was injured during an arrest, Thursday.

Cpl. Jodi Shelkie said the officer attended the 400 block of Tranquille Road about 3:45 p.m. to arrest a 23-year-old woman on an outstanding warrant for breach of probation.

When the officer attempted to make the arrest, "the woman allegedly punched the officer numerous times in the head. In order to subdue the suspect, the officer deployed a conducted energy weapon and subsequently regained control, said Shelkie.

Other officers arrived to assist, and the woman was taken into custody, without further incident. The female suspect was uninjured.

The woman remains in custody, with additional charges being considered.
Photo: Twitter Premier John Horgan received an honorary black belt at a taekwondo demonstration outside the legislature.

Premier John Horgan is denouncing hate speech ahead of a rally in Vancouver this weekend.

In a statement, Horgan says the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va., was horrifying but the reality is that hate groups also organize and operate in Canada.

He says he supports those planning to attend anti-racism events on Saturday to counter what the statement describes as a rally by "hate groups."

The city said Thursday officials will monitor events closely to ensure laws aren't violated.

Horgan says hatred has no place in the province and those confronted by hate have a responsibility to take action.

He says he hopes those attending anti-racism rallies have a peaceful and safe demonstration.

"When we are confronted by hate, we all have a responsibility to take action," Horgan says. "We will continue to stand up for the values shared by the vast majority of British Columbians: equality, inclusiveness and unity."
Photo: Contributed

A Lower Mainland man is without a prized possession, after a classic car was stolen from his garage.

Colin Franklin, 72, had his 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible stolen, which he estimated is worth $85,000. He had owned the vehicle for just under a month.

A neighbour's security camera shows it was likely taken just after 5 a.m. on Aug. 11.

Franklin, who lives near Morgan Creek in Surrey, was informed by RCMP that it's likely the thieves plan to ship the vehicle overseas.

"I don't need the money, quite honestly ... I just need the car," Franklin told CTV.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: RCMP

Kelowna traffic cops busted more than two dozen distracted drivers or drivers not wearing seat belts on Thursday.

Officers issued 25 violation tickets in just 90 minutes on Springfield Road.

Most of those were for use of an electronic device while driving. The remainder were for failing to wear seat belts.

That doesn't even take into account speeders. And there were numerous other vehicles police were unable to stop because all the team members were already tied up with other vehicles.

One distracted driver was noted to have five previous convictions for using an electronic device while driving.

The fine for using an electronic device while driving remains at $368, says Cpl. Tania Carroll. By taking your attention off of the roadway for even just a moment, you greatly increase the chance of being involved in a collision.
Photo: Trina Jarnbrant A wildfire burning off Highway 97C, photo taken 4:50 pm

UPDATE 9:48 a.m.

The Trepanier Bench fire is in the mop up stage.

Melanie Morin, fire information officer, said crews held the fire at 0.2 of a hectare.

"We have three firefighters on scene and they will be continuing to do mop up throughout the day," she said, adding the cause of the fire is undetermined, but investigators are on scene.

Morin said crews hit the fire fast and hard, keeping the flames from spreading

UPDATE 6:30 p.m.

The B.C. Wildfire Service has taken quick control of the blaze.

It is now being held, according to spokesperson Jody Lucius.

That terminology indicates that the fire is not likely to spread beyond its boundaries under current conditions.

ORIGINAL 5:30 p.m.

The B.C. Wildfire Service is responding to a small wildfire off the Coquihalla Connector, near the Trepanier Rd. exit.

The fire is estimated to be 0.3 hectares in size, and is being fought by nine firefighters with air support.

Winds are lower than expected, meaning fire activity is not very aggressive at the moment, according to a B.C. Wildfire spokesperson.

Structures are nearby, but are not threatened.

Castanet will update with more information as it becomes available.

Send you photos and video to [email protected]
Photo: The Canadian Press FILE - In this June 28, 2017 file photo, Venezuela's chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega speaks during a press conference in Caracas, Venezuela. The ousted chief prosecutor fled to Colombia with her husband German Ferrer, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, a day after the Supreme Court ordered his arrest. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)

Venezuela's ousted chief prosecutor and her husband  two of President Nicolas Maduro's most outspoken critics  fled the country and landed Friday afternoon in Colombia, authorities said.

Luisa Ortega Diaz and German Ferrer arrived in Bogota aboard a private plane travelling from Aruba, Colombian Migration authorities said.

No immediate details were provided on whether the couple is seeking asylum, with officials only confirming that Ortega had completed the "corresponding migration process."

Ortega and Ferrer have long been aligned with Venezuela's ruling socialist party but recently broke with Maduro, publicly denouncing his push to convene a constitutional assembly that was installed in early August and is now governing with virtually unlimited rule.

One of the assembly's first acts was to remove Ortega and appoint one of Maduro's key allies, Tarek William Saab, as the nation's new top law enforcement officer.

On Thursday, the government-stacked Supreme Court ordered Ferrer under arrest, a day after Saab accused him of orchestrating a $6 million extortion ring that allegedly occurred under Ortega's watch.

Ferrer denied the accusations and many believe they are politically motivated.

In June, the Supreme Court barred Ortega from leaving the country and ordered her bank accounts frozen as part of its investigation into a complaint filed by a pro-government lawmaker that accused her of acting as an opposition leader and requested a probe into her "mental insanity."

Univision reported Friday that Ortega and Ferrer fled in a speed boat to Aruba, which lies a short distance to the northern coast of Venezuela.

Authorities have not yet confirmed how she arrived to the Caribbean island.

The couple's whereabouts had been unknown for several days, but earlier Friday Ortega surfaced online, addressing a gathering of Latin America's prosecutors in Pueblo, Mexico.

Ortega told the region's prosecutors that Maduro removed her in order to stop a probe linking him and his inner circle to nearly $100 million in bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

Odebrecht officials have admitted to paying almost $100 million in bribes to Venezuelan officials in exchange for contacts.
Photo: CTV Vancouver A father made a heroic swim to save his sons after sinking in Howe Sound

Three men are lucky to be alive after capsizing in Howe Sound on Thursday afternoon, and getting no help from others in the area.

Michael Forstved, was crabbing with his father, David, and brother, Jonathan, in a 14-foot aluminum boat when they began to take on water.

I see the back of the boat start to go under water and then my dad says 'time to grab the life jackets, we're going to go in, 23 year-old Michael told CTV Vancouver.

While the men had safety gear on board, they had no flares to signal for help, although they say they went down in 2.5 seconds and they would have been little help.

The trio held onto the overturned vessel and blew on their life jackets whistles, screaming for help trying in vain to get the attention of other mariners in the area.

David eventually swam two hours to shore, then climbed a cliff to the Sea to Sky Highway, where he tried to flag down motorists while dripping in his life jacket. No one stopped.

At this point the kids, all I could envision is theyre in the water. Every second counts. Theyve been in there too long, David told CTV.

He eventually ran to Porteau Cove and was able to call for help.

Meanwhile, his sons had made their own attempt at the shore and were spotted by two paddleboarders, who let them rest until rescuers arrived. Search and rescue credit the mens life jackets with saving their lives.

The men remain rattled by the lack of help they received by other boaters at sea while they were going down.

There were numerous boats all around, easily within earshot, David told CTV.

with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Contributed

The environmental arm of NAFTA is demanding Canada explain what it is doing to stop oilsands tailings ponds from leaking into Alberta waterways.

The request comes in a decision by the commission which oversees the North American Agreement on Environmental Co-operation, a parallel agreement to NAFTA signed by Canada, the United States and Mexico.

Canada has until Sept. 28 to officially respond to allegations it is failing to enforce the Fisheries Act by allowing contaminants from the ponds to leak into water without forcing the companies involved to fix the problem.

The complaint was made in June by Canada's Environmental Defence group and the Natural Resources Defense Council based in the United States.

Environmental Defence executive director Tim Gray says studies have suggested as much as 11 million litres of tailings water containing substances like benzene, arsenic and cyanide leaks into the Athabasca River every day.

A spokeswoman for Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said the government will work with the commission to respond to the request and expects this to be resolved soon.

"Our government takes the protection of water very seriously," Marie-Pascale Des Rosiers said in an e-mail.

"We are proud of our world-class, joint oilsands monitoring system we have with the government of Alberta."

NAFTA's environment annex allows non-governmental organizations and citizens of the three countries to submit complaints alleging their government is failing to enforce its environmental laws and regulations.

The commission has 30 days to decide if a complaint warrants a response from the government involved.

The request for a response from Canada means the commission found the complaint was submitted by legitimate organizations which offered science-based evidence for their complaints and that it was intended to promote enforcement of environmental law rather than simply harass industry.

Gray said the commission's request for a response is a sign that the complaint appears legitimate, so far.

"They're saying, based on the evidence presented to them and their legal review, it looks like the Canadian government isn't enforcing the Fisheries Act and they want to know what the Canadian government thinks about that," he said.
WASHINGTON  Last weekend in Charlottesville, a driver mowed down peaceful protesters and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer. The act was reminiscent of recent terrorist attacks across Europe committed in the name of the Islamic State, which has urged followers to use vehicles to kill enemies.

As far as we know, the alleged killer in Charlottesville didnt get instructions from the Islamic State. As far as we know, he didnt even receive marching orders from any of the neo-Nazi groups with which he sympathized.

But he also didnt need to turn to either of these factions for inspiration. He could just have easily have gotten the idea from a Republican state legislature.

This year, Republican lawmakers in at least six states have proposed bills designed to protect drivers who strike protesters. The first bill was introduced in North Dakota in January, and similar bills have since come under consideration in North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Texas and Rhode Island.

They were joined by other states trying to discourage protests  typically relating to Black Lives Matter, the Dakota Access Pipeline or other left-leaning causes  that sometimes obstruct traffic.

The North Dakota bill would shield drivers from civil and criminal liability. The bills sponsor, state Rep. Keith Kempenich, perversely suggested that shielding drivers who kill protesters was a necessary anti-terrorism measure.

Protesters who blocked cars were committing an intentional act of intimidation  the definition of terrorism, he told the Los Angeles Times.

Right-wing websites and at least one well-known conservative commentator more gleefully advocated running over protesters, including by sharing a viral video montage titled Heres a Reel of Cars Plowing Through Protesters Trying to Block the Road.

I wonder: Did the Republican politicians and pundits who backed these measures believe too few protesters were getting hit by cars?

If not, what did they think would happen when they encouraged drivers to use their vehicles as a weapon against the public?

Because thats exactly what these bills do.

The bills all include language about how drivers who injure or kill protesters must have done so unintentionally or while exercising due care if they wish to be spared liability. (Hitting protesters intentionally, as the Charlottesville driver appears to have done, could still make one subject to civil and criminal liability.) Even so, the foreseeable effect of passing laws like these would be to change the calculus for any frustrated driver considering whether to plow through a crowd of protesters.

Economists tend to think about decisions in terms of expected costs and benefits. By lowering the expected costs to the driver, these proposed laws would tilt the balance in favor of hitting people.

And not just any people. Protesters specifically.

In five of the six states where bills were introduced, the legislation would shield drivers who hit protesters or demonstrators only. Drivers who kill pedestrians who are not out exercising their First Amendment rights would still be subject to the usual criminal and civil liabilities.

In other words, the purpose of these proposals was to make acts of protest, and acts of protest alone, more lethal.

So far none of these bills has made it into law.

Already, though, white supremacists have latched on to the rhetoric behind these bills to excuse Heyers death. In Vice News Tonights chilling Charlottesville documentary, neo-Nazi Christopher Cantwell said her murder was more than justified because the driver was provoked by stupid animals who attacked and then couldnt just get out of the way because they werent paying attention.

Surely the whataboutists will claim the lefts angry resistance rhetoric encouraged someone to attempt to murder Republican legislators. To be clear, that act was also evil. There is, however, no comparison between mean words and changing the law to indemnify people who kill others in a highly specific way.

As Ive previously argued, theres plenty of blame to dump on President Trump for emboldening white supremacists and for encouraging violence against peaceful protesters. But to treat him as an aberration in encouraging violence against protesters  in particular, liberals and people of color  is flat wrong.

The moral rot in the Republican Party runs deep.

Maybe the state legislators who introduced these bills are malevolent, and maybe theyre just morons. In politics, I tend to err on the side of the latter explanation. Either way, they advocated reckless bills whose foreseeable consequence would be increased vehicular killings.

These politicians are not fit to serve the public, in any level of government.

Residents of North Dakota, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Texas and Rhode Island: Look these goons up and vote them out.
Photo: CTV

Lebanon's U.S.-backed army has announced the start of a military offensive to clear Islamic State group militants from the frontier with Syria.

Saturday's announcement came at the same time as the Lebanese Hezbollah group and the Syrian army announced a similar offensive to clear IS militants from the Syrian side of the border, in the western Qalamoun mountain range.

The long-awaited campaign will involve co-operation between the two sides  although Lebanese authorities insist they are not co-ordinating with Syrian President Bashar Assad's government.

The announcement was made by the Lebanese commander Joseph Aoun on Twitter and the Central Military Media outlet.
Photo: CRD

The Cariboo Regional District issued another pair of evacuation orders late Friday night, in connection to the Kleena Kleene wildfire burning about 200 kilometres west of Williams Lake.

Residents north of Kleena Kleene are being advised to drive west along Highway 20 to Bella Coola, while those in Tatla Lake are being sent east to Prince George.

Due to immediate danger, members of the RCMP or other groups will be expediting this action, a news release reads.

The 9,000 hectare wildfire is being fought by 62 firefighters, 26 pieces of heavy equipment and air support. The fire, and the nearby Colwell Lake, has been growing to the east and north, fueled by high winds, which are expected to continue into Saturday.
Photo: File photo According to Environment Canada, the smoke index is rated at five, or moderate risk today.

The smoke is back.

After a couple days of relatively clear skies, Okanagan residents woke up to smoky skies once again Saturday.

According to Environment Canada, the smoke index is rated at five, or moderate risk today. Kamloops is expected to hit an air quality rating of seven, which is high risk.

The good news is, the air quality rating is expected to drop down to three for the Okanagan on Sunday.

People are advised to avoid strenuous outdoor activities. If anyone is experiencing any of the following symptoms, contact your health care provider: difficulty in breathing, chest pain or discomfort, and sudden onset of cough or irritation of airways.

Exposure is particularly a concern for infants, the elderly and those who have underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, and lung or heart disease.

Members of the public who are sensitive to the effects of smoke are asked to monitor their symptoms and, if necessary, take steps to reduce their exposure to smoke.
Photo: Contributed

More residents in the Cariboo region can breath a little easier after officials lifted an evacuation alert.

The Cariboo Regional District, XatAAll-CmetAm First Nations, Williams Lake Indian Band and Esdilagh First Nation have lifted evacuation alerts for many communities on the east side of the Fraser River.

These communities are now open for regular business, vulnerable populations can return to the community and economic activity can fully resume now that the alerts have been lifted.

Evacuation alerts are lifted for the following areas:

Some CRD areas east of the Fraser River;

WLIB areas including: Williams Lake 1 (Sugar Cane), Carpenter Mountain 15, Tillion 4, Chimney Creek 5, San Jose 6, Asahal Lake 2 and Five Mile 3;

XatAAll  CmetAm areas including: Soda Creek IR #1 and IR #2 (Deep Creek); and

Esdilagh areas including: Alexandria 1, Alexandria 1A, Hay Ranch 2 and Alexandria 12.



See an overview map online.

Some areas east and west of the Fraser River remain on evacuation order or alert.
Photo: Twitter This 'bridge' was found in Abbotsford.

Const. Pat Kelly of the Abbotsford Police Department bike squad made an unusual find earlier this week.

It was not a vast criminal empire, but it is the talk of the town.

While on pedal patrol, Kelly came across a bridge made of shopping carts, mattresses, pallets, sheets of plywood and a variety of other materials.

The ingenuity amazes me, Kelly wrote on his Twitter account that included a picture of the bridge that crosses a small stream.
Driving around Lake Hallie once again, you see signs that say Lake Hallie Welcomes You. They were taken down for a while due to a dispute with the Wisconsin DOT, but that appears to be resolved. Lake Hallie has its own ballfields, its own police department, and its own street department. It has a public works department, a fire department and an ever-expanding water system.

Hallie Peace Memorial Park is being refurbished; pickle ball courts are being put in at the old Gower School site. The weekend of Sept. 9 and 10 will feature a food-tasting event, combined with a Harley-Davidson and Eagles Club block party. Prairie View Cemetery, also in Lake Hallie, has long been a fixture of the town/village. The post office has ruled Lake Hallie, WI 54729 is a valid address. The village of Lake Hallie will be 15 years old in February 2018 and the town of Hallie is 103 years old.

Yes things are going pretty well out here in Lake Hallie, so pray tell why do people still think they live in Eau Claire or Chippewa Falls when they live in the village of Lake Hallie? Well some of it is pretty easy. Some businesses still stay Located on highway 53 between Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls. In fact they are located on Business Highway 312 in the village of Lake Hallie.

Obituaries of some folks say Eau Claire or Chippewa Falls when they have lived in the town of Hallie then village of Lake Hallie almost all of their lives. An example was Mr. Karl Holbrook of Lake Hallie. I know many, many, people, myself included, hold very fond memories of him.

His gentle demeanor and his outgoing personality will be missed. In the paper, his memorial service is listed like this: There will be a Celebration of his life on Saturday August 5, 2017, at the St Louis Parish Hall in Washburn, Wisconsin, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and then again on Saturday September 30, 2017, at 9324 27th Avenue in Eau Claire (Village of Lake Hallie) from noon to 4 p.m. on his beloved Mighty Chip.

Mr. Holbrook knew where he lived. I would see him at the town of Hallie then Lake Hallie board meetings. We would talk of his love of the Chippewa River, but we also spoke of the need to be watchful, as when the Chippewa rose from winter melt-off or a heavy rain, his house was prone to flooding. We laughed that 27th Avenue was not always known as 27th Avenue; it was Orwell Drive first.

I am grateful that if you Google Mr. Holbrooks address, it comes up both ways, both Eau Claire and Lake Hallie, for an added bonus, it also comes up if you type in Chippewa Falls. What should happen is that the post office changes the addresses to conform to the boundaries of the village of Lake Hallie.

Are you connected to where you live? Are you part of a hometown? In fact, lets do one better. What is your hometown? I left Marshfield 47 years ago, yet I still think of it as my hometown. Does that make me fonder of Marshfield than Lake Hallie? In some ways, yes.

Would the owners of Gordys Market be working so hard right now to keep a business going if they were not so closely related to Chippewa Falls? I doubt it. If the Schafer family were from someplace else they would have shrugged off the entire issue and moved on. They are loyal to the community.

The village of Lake Hallie was almost the village of Blue Mills. Lake Hallie was almost the city of Chippewa Falls. Lake Hallie was almost the city of Eau Claire, but it has become none of those places. Lake Hallie has its own identity and is its own community.

Community is often defined in two ways: a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common, or a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests and goals. I believe Lake Hallie has them all.
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Al Sharpton just may be right about the need to remove offensive statues from the American public way.

I'd been somewhat torn on the idea of erasing history by tearing down statues, even Civil War Confederate statues, since destroying public imagery and iconography isn't the kind of thing Americans do.

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Actually, it's the kind of thing that ISIS does.

But Sharpton, the noted race hustler, helped me see things in a different way.

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Usually, I don't listen to him. But he was interviewed on the Charlie Rose program and talked compellingly about the need to remove statues of white men of the South who fought in the Civil War for a South that wanted to keep slavery.

He said, rightly, that such statues are offensive to many African-Americans.

But he also said that such images should be removed, perhaps taken to private museums.

Sharpton also added that public funding of other offensive reminders of America's racist past, including the Jefferson Memorial, should stop.

"When you look at the fact that public monuments are supported by public funds, you are asking me to subsidize the insult of my family," Sharpton said. "And I would repeat that the public should not be paying to uphold somebody who had that kind of background.  We're talking about, here, an open display of bigotry announced, and over and over again."

Thomas Jefferson, founding father, is the author of the Declaration of Independence, widely considered to be the most eloquent appeal for human liberty that has ever been written.

But Jefferson was also a slave owner who repeatedly raped one of them. That's history.

As an African-American, Sharpton believes that using federal tax dollars to subsidize the Jefferson Memorial is wrong. And even though the flames of Cultural Revolution are burning hot, you can understand this.

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History is important, but history can also be quite offensive.

But there's one thing wrong with Sharpton. It's not that he goes too far. It's that he doesn't go far enough.

Because if he and others of the Cultural Revolution were being intellectually honest, they'd demand that along with racist statues, something else would be toppled.

And this, too, represents much of America's racist history:

The Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party historically is the party of slavery. The Democratic Party is the party of Jim Crow laws. The Democratic Party fought civil rights for a century.

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And so by rights  or at least by the standards established by the Cultural Revolutionaries of today's American left  we should ban the Democratic Party.

Not only get rid of it in the present, but strike its very name from the history books, and topple all Democratic statues of leaders who benefited, prospered and became wealthy by cleaving to the party. And shame Democrats until they confess the truth of it.

The Democratic Party's military arm in the South was the KKK. The Democratic Party opposed the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, making the former slaves citizens of the United States and giving them the vote.

If the new Cultural Revolution was serious, wouldn't it also demand that the Democratic Party be put in a museum somewhere, away from decent people, along with those Confederate statues?

We could put Democrats in exhibits, behind glass, watching white political bosses chomp cigars and pass out goodies for votes, as minorities were relegated, as they are today, to failing schools and lost educational opportunity and neighborhoods that have become killing fields for the young and old.

And in great museums, the Democrats could be studied, safely, without endangering the sensibilities of the children.

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We might even peer down on an animatronic Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, once a leader of the KKK. And with him, prominent animatronic Democrats who, just a few short years ago, said wonderful, moving things about Byrd after his funeral.

That's how it is with history. You can't say the Democratic Party wasn't the slavery party. It's historical fact.

Just as it is also historical fact that the Republican Party was the party of abolitionists.

I mentioned this to a Democrat who was all for the removal of Confederate statues in the South, and I told him I wasn't all that opposed, either.

He thought I was being sarcastic. But when I reminded him that his party was the slavery party, the KKK party, the anti-civil rights party from the 1860s to the 1960s, and should be put into a museum, he made a sour face.

"You're really taking this satire too far," he said. "The Democratic Party isn't a statue. It's an institution."

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If the Cultural Revolutionaries want to topple statues, they can be my guest. They're so inflamed lately  and if you don't believe it, just read the papers  that if you dare disagree with them, you run the risk of being denounced by their high priests as a bigot or as someone without moral character.

My guess is that most Americans are afraid of social punishment. So, the offensive statues will go, and then perhaps offensive iconography, offensive images, offensive books.

One book comes to mind. Let me quote a passage from it.

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."

George Orwell. "1984."

Listen to "The Chicago Way" podcast  with John Kass and Jeff Carlin  at http://wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway.

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jskass@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @John_Kass
Chicago police officer Marco Proano was arraigned on charges in connection with his shooting into a carful of teenagers. (Anthony Souffle/Chicago Tribune )

With his handgun drawn and cocked sideways, Chicago police Officer Marco Proano charged up to a stolen car filled with black teenagers during a traffic stop nearly four years ago.

As the Toyota Avalon reversed quickly away from him, Proano steadied the gun with both hands and fired 16 bullets into the car, wounding two of the teens.

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Proano's actions during the December 2013 incident  captured in a police dashboard camera video  will take center stage in a federal courtroom Monday as the 11-year veteran officer faces civil rights charges alleging he used unreasonable force.

The trial, which gets underway with jury selection, marks the first time in at least 15 yearsa Chicago police officer is facing federal criminal charges stemming from an on-duty shooting.

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Proano, who says he fired at the Toyota to protect a passenger being dragged by the car, is the first Chicago police officer to be tried on criminal use-of-force charges since the U.S. Department of Justice issued a scathing report in January finding that for decades the Police Department routinely violated the civil rights of citizens, particularly those of color.

The case highlights the national debate over police use of force that first erupted with the shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., three years ago. Critics say officers who use deadly force often act with impunity because they have little fear of repercussions, while police unions and others defend cops as confronted with split-second decisions in sometimes dangerous situations.

How Proano's trial plays out could provide a preview of defense tactics in the pending case of Officer Jason Van Dyke, charged with first-degree murder in the October 2014 shooting death of African-American teen Laquan McDonald that was also captured on dashcam video.

Both Proano and Van Dyke are represented by the same criminal defense attorney, Daniel Herbert. In each case, Herbert has argued vehemently that his client acted well within the use-of-force guidelines set by the Police Department.

While the two cases are unfolding in different venues  Van Dyke awaits trial in Cook County Criminal Court  the outcomes likely will both hinge on a jury's interpretation of dashcam video that Herbert will argue does not tell the entire story.

Herbert declined to be interviewed for this story.

Proano, 42, has been suspended without pay since shortly after he was indicted last September on two counts of deprivation of rights under the color of law. He's been involved in two other shootings in his career, including the fatal shooting of an African-American teen outside a dance party in 2011.

Feared for passenger

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Proano and his partner were patrolling in their Far South Side district in the early evening of Dec. 22, 2013, when a call came over the police radio that two officers had boxed in a possibly stolen Toyota containing several teenagers near 95th and LaSalle streets, court records show.

The nearly three-minute video footage  taken by a camera mounted on another squad car  showed Proano walking quickly toward the Toyota within seconds of arriving at the scene with his gun pointed sideways in his left hand.

Proano can be seen backing away briefly as the car goes into reverse, away from the officer. He then raises his gun with both hands and opens fire as he walks toward the car, the video shows. Proano hit an 18-year-old in the shoulder and a passenger in the thigh and foot, according to court records.

Proano told investigators he fired into the car because he feared for his safety as well as the well-being of one of the passengers, whom he said was being dragged backward by the reversing vehicle, records show.

The Independent Police Review Authority was leaning toward clearing Proano in the shooting but agreed to take another look after FBI agents reviewed the officer's statements and raised a red flag, according to federal prosecutors.

In a May 2016 reinterview with IPRA investigators, Proano repeated his original assertion that he was looking out for the safety of the passenger when he opened fire at the car.

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"I emptied my clip," Proano said, according to IPRA records. "The teenage boy that was being dragged ... I didn't want for him to be killed, or get pinned, or dragged under the car or anything like that."

Jaquon Grant, the teenager who stole the Toyota, told the FBI in an interview last year his friend, Delton Banks, was driving that night when they were stopped by police. Banks took off running, while Grant tried to bail out of the car but got his leg trapped by the door of the police squad car that had pinned them in.

As officers yelled for him to get back in the car, Grant shouted to another passenger, Delquantis Bates, "Get that car off my leg!" according to the FBI interview. Bates then moved from the back seat to the front and backed the Toyota up by pushing on the gas pedal with his hands. That's when Proano began shooting, Grant said.

Grant told the FBI he heard Bates tell Proano as he was being removed from the Toyota, "You shot me, bitch."

Proano responded, "Shut the (expletive) up. I should have killed your black ass," according to Grant's FBI statement.

A lawsuit brought by the wounded teens was settled by the city for $360,000.

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Grant and Delquantis Bates ended up in juvenile court for the stolen car. During one court appearance, Grant told the FBI, they saw Proano make a shooting gesture at Bates with his hand.

'Defies logic'

The shooting became a public flashpoint amid the Laquan McDonald scandal in 2015 after Cook County Judge Andrew Berman, who heard a criminal case involving one of the teens, released the dashcam video to The Chicago Reporter after he retired.

Since the incident, the Police Department changed its policy on the use of deadly force to prohibit officers from shooting at or into a moving vehicle when it "is the only force used" against the officer or another person.

Herbert, meanwhile, has said the shooting was justified by department training as well as state law that allows an officer to use deadly force if he believes "someone may cause death or great bodily harm to somebody else."

In its August 2016 findings recommending Proano's firing, IPRA found the officer's explanation for the shooting "defies logic," not only because he fired in the direction of the person he was allegedly protecting but also because Proano kept firing at the car even after it had changed direction, rolled slowly across the street and crashed into a light pole.

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Proano's statements to IPRA are inadmissible at his criminal trial. But prosecutors are expected to show jurors the tactical response report that Proano filled out that night documenting why he said he opened fire, and several of Proano's colleagues at the scene are expected to testify.

Also on the prosecution witness list is former Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Patrick Camden, who at the scene that night said the driver reversed toward officers who were approaching the car and then drove forward, dragging the passenger in the back seat. An officer, "worried about the safety of the individual trying to get out of the car," opened fire, Camden said.

In a sign of the complications of the case, both sides believe that Chicago police training supports their view of Proano's actions.

Prosecutors intend to call Chicago police Sgt. Larry Snelling to testify about the training given to officers and recruits, including that officers are instructed not to hold their guns on a slant unless they're in close quarters. Officers are also trained not to shoot at moving vehicles unless they're trying to prevent great bodily harm for themselves or another person, prosecutors said.

Andrea Hyfantis, an attorney with the Police Department, is also expected to testify that recruits are trained to assess situations and determine if too great a risk exists to innocent bystanders even when the use of force is justified.

Shooting found unjustified

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Proano, a native of Ecuador, joined the Police Department in 2006 and, was assigned as a beat cop in the Gresham Police District after graduating from the police academy.

During a four-year period ending in mid-December 2014, he was the subject of nine citizen complaints, including allegations of illegal searches and excessive force, according to available department records.

In August 2010, Proano shot and wounded a 20-year-old woman in the 700 block of West 91st Street, according to a Tribune database of police shootings from 2010 to 2015.

Less than a year later, in July 2011, Proano fatally shot 19-year-old Niko Husbandat close range during a struggle as police tried to break up an unruly dance party on the South Side.

Proano testified that he'd fired only after Husband pulled a gun. An autopsy report showed that Husband had been shot three times in the chest. The first two shots came from about two feet away, but the third shot was a "contact" wound  an indication from burn marks on the skin that Proano had pressed his gun directly against Husband's chest before pulling the trigger, the autopsy found.

The trajectory of that bullet suggested Husband was already on the ground when it was fired.

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Proano was not only cleared by the city's much-maligned police oversight agency but also awarded a department commendation for valor, records show.

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In November 2015, a Cook County jury found Husband's shooting unjustified, awarding his mother $3.5 million in damages, but a judge overturned the verdict based on a legal problem with the jury's decision. That ruling is being appealed.

Federal prosecutors have said they don't intend to raise Proano's previous shootings in their case in chief but left open the possibility for such testimony under certain circumstances, including if Proano offered evidence "erroneously suggesting that he has never before used deadly force as an officer," court records show.

Chicago Tribune's Jeremy Gorner contributed.

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When the moon passes between Earth and the sun Monday, enveloping parts of the United States in darkness, the rare cosmic spectacle will be hard to ignore.

In what American astronomers are considering the celestial event of the century, the moon will cast a 70-mile-wide shadow from Oregon to South Carolina in the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse since 1918. Communities in the path of totality, like Carbondale in southern Illinois, will briefly view the black disk over the sun surrounded by a pearlescent light known as the corona. For about 2  minutes, darkness will descend in the middle of the afternoon, and the stars and four planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter) will be visible.

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At least 145,000 people are expected to travel to the totality area in 18 southern Illinois counties, state officials say. The entire North American continent will witness at least a partial eclipse, including Chicago. This is the closest the city has been to the path of totality in 92 years.

With 87 percent of the sun's surface expected to be covered over Chicago, the city's skies will darken a few shades and the temperature will drop a few degrees. Astronomers say the partial eclipse will be more akin to a cloud obstructing sunlight, rather than the full-bodied experience of a total eclipse.

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"The difference is night and day," said Kris McCall, director of the Cernan Earth and Space Center at Triton College in River Grove. "There are many analogies, of which I can't claim all originality, but they say the difference between a partial and total is like the difference between looking at a picture of ice cream and eating ice cream; smelling barbecue and eating barbecue; or, I guess a Chicago-centric example would be playing in the World Series and winning the World Series.

"I've been looking forward intently toward this for 26 years, since 1991," she continued, the year the last total solar eclipse in the U.S. occurred, in Hawaii.

Despite the tempered expectations for a partial eclipse, the buzz around Chicago has remained high, with a suite of institutions hosting eclipse viewing parties for an event that will surely be a first for many. The eclipse is supposed to be its fullest at 1:19 p.m. The last total solar eclipse over the mainland of the U.S. occurred in 1979.

Adler Planetarium is expected to attract 10,000 people to watch the eclipse in a block party-style event in its parking lot and even more at a second, remote location at Daley Plaza. Cernan could see as many as 1,000 visitors for its watch party.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 52 Thousands gather at Daley Plaza during the solar eclipse in Chicago Aug. 21, 2017. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

The city's tourism arm, Choose Chicago, is promoting viewing by land, air and water. Several boat tours will offer unobstructed viewing on Lake Michigan, and 360 Chicago will have a midday dance party on the 94th floor of the John Hancock building.

Cody Dirks, a Northwestern University graduate student, held an eclipse talk for Astronomy on Tap Chicago last week at Begyle Brewing in North Center. The series of informal astronomy presentations at bars around the Chicago area is hosted by astronomers from Northwestern University and University of Chicago. The presentation attracted a hearty crowd of 100, most of whom were planning to watch from Chicago or travel to southern Illinois or Missouri for totality.

"The main difference is in totality it is completely dark during the day," Dirks said. "Animals and birds will react. There will be a 10-15 degree drop and all sorts of physical effects."

As anticipation grows, experts warn people not to forget to take precautions to protect their eyes during viewing.

Because it's never safe to look directly into the sun with the naked eye, spectators will need solar viewing glasses to watch the evolution of the solar eclipse to avoid vision damage or blindness. Those in the path of totality can watch the eclipse without glasses during the two minutes the sun is completely blocked. However, people who will see only a partial eclipse will need to keep their glasses on during the entire event.

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Those looking for glasses at the last minute may be hard-pressed to find them, as giveaways were scooped up immediately, and stores and online sites were selling out.

Chicago Public Library branches partnered with Adler Planetarium to give away eclipse glasses last Monday. At 9 a.m., people were lined up outside Sulzer Regional Library, which gave away its stock in nine minutes. The Budlong Woods and Chinatown branches depleted their inventories even faster.

At the end of the week, libraries had given away more than 15,000 pairs and were keeping a small reserve for visitors who attend the day of the eclipse.

The Wrightwood-Ashburn branch will be one of 23 city library locations hosting viewing parties, with appropriately-themed treats including Eclipse gum, Starburst candy and moon pies, according to branch manager Veyshon Edmond. One man who wanted to pick up glasses was looking forward to telling his first grandchild about the experience and relating her recent birth to the celestial event, Edmond said. The library had run out of glasses, but she encouraged the man to return Monday.

"Our children and patrons are having fun and they don't even know they're learning," Edmond said. "It's a monumental task to open that door and expose them to science. But I love it. It's my passion."

In Carbondale, 330 miles south of Chicago, eclipse-centric visitors can cruise through the Crossroads Astronomy, Science and Technology Expo at the SIU Arena on Sunday and Monday. Also on Monday, SIU has sold out Eclipse Day at 15,000-seat Saluki Stadium, where Planetary Radio's Mat Kaplan will host the Marching Salukis and the scoreboard will broadcast live eclipse video until electric lighting is doused at 1:10 p.m.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 8 Volunteers set up a booth with information about the legacy of R. Buckminster Fullers geodesic dome at an eclipse-related marketplace in downtown Carbondale on Aug. 18, 2017. ( Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune )

A few steps outside the stadium, NASA will host a 4 -hour live "Eclipse Megacast" that NASA TV, local stations and national networks will pick up.

History shows that even though scientists can accurately predict the timing and location of eclipses, it's still up to Mother Nature whether anyone will have a chance to view it. Monday's partial eclipse in Chicago will be the most the sun has been covered here since Jan. 24, 1925, when 95 percent of the sun was blocked out. Then, cloudy skies and smoke left U. of C. astronomy professors devastated in Chicago and Iron Mountain, Mich., which was in the path of totality.

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"Not even a glimpse of the sun was seen, and mournfully Profs. Frank A. Ross and Oliver J. Lee standing by the $500,000 instruments, which were worthless without something to picture, were forced to term the expedition a complete failure," a 1925 Tribune story on the Iron Mountain venture read.

According to the National Weather Service , Chicago will see around a 20 percent chance of rain and more than 50 percent cloud cover during the eclipse. In Carbondale, the forecast is mostly sunny, but there is a chance of showers after the height of the eclipse.

Demian Flores, 8, of Chicago, is fascinated with the giant eclipse glasses on Daley Plaza, where 9,000 freebies were handed out Aug. 17, 2017. His mother tried to get some glasses but they were gone by the time they got there. ( Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune )

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Though total solar eclipses typically occur in the same area only about every 100 years or so, Carbondale will be treated to a second one in 2024. But experts warn against skipping Monday's eclipse in favor of the event seven years away, because that one will occur in the typically rainy month of April.

With that in mind, Dirks, the Northwestern graduate student who will travel to Bloomsdale, Mo., for the eclipse, said he hopes no matter where people are, they take a moment and join the millions across the continent who are watching.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime event for the region," Dirks said. "So I hope even if people don't make plans, they realize what's going on and take a minute to step outside and take a minute to watch.

"I've heard from other astronomers and people who work within the astronomy community, and the way people talk about it is as a transcendent experience. It's one of those things where you can look up and, for a few minutes, just be in awe."

Chicago Tribune's Ted Gregory contributed.

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Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, 26, left, was found dead July 27, 2017, in a high-rise apartment belonging to Wyndham Lathem, center, a Northwestern University professor. Lathem and Andrew Warren, an employee at Oxford University, face charges of first-degree murder. (Family and police photos)

A 26-year-old man who was slain in the downtown apartment of a Northwestern University professor last month had methamphetamine in his system and was stabbed dozens of times, an autopsy report shows.

The Cook County medical examiner's office released those findings in the death of Trenton Cornell-Duranleau as the two suspects in his gruesome slaying were expected to return Friday night to Cook County to face first-degree murder charges. Both surrendered two weeks ago in California after allegedly spending eight days on the run.

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The two  Wyndham Lathem, 43, a Northwestern microbiologist who was fired after fleeing the state, and Andrew Warren, 56, a British national who worked at Oxford University in England  waived extradition during court hearings in the Bay Area.

Authorities have offered little information about what may have led to the brutal attack, but a Chicago police spokesman said Lathem had some sort of relationship with Cornell-Duranleau and the two had "some type of falling-out." Sources have said they were dating.

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The autopsy results showed Cornell-Duranleau was stabbed 47 times to his back, chest, shoulder and abdomen. He was stabbed and cut additional times to his arms, chin, neck, hands and wrists.

A toxicology examination found methamphetamine, a highly addictive recreational drug; amphetamine, a mood-altering drug sometimes used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; and a limited amount of alcohol in his system, according to the autopsy report.

Cornell-Duranleau was found in his underwear partly lying against a bedroom door of Lathem's 10th-floor apartment in the 500 block of North State Street, the report said.

A "fully intact" knife covered in blood was recovered on a kitchen counter, and a knife handle was found in a garbage can in the kitchen, according to the report.

Police believe the July 27 killing took place about 5 a.m., but authorities didn't learn of the stabbing until an anonymous caller reached the front desk of the apartment building about 8:30 p.m. and warned of a possible crime in Lathem's residence.

The two suspects fled on a cross-country odyssey, according to authorities. On the same day of the killing, investigators believe, one of the suspects made a $1,000 donation in Cornell-Duranleau's name at a library in Lake Geneva, Wis.

Lathem later sent a video message to family and friends apologizing for "his involvement" in the slaying, police have said.

Both surrendered to authorities in California on Aug. 4  Lathem in Oakland and Warren in San Francisco.

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Warren had flown into Chicago on his first trip to the United States just three days before the killing. He has been suspended from his payroll job at Somerville College, part of the Oxford system.

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An attorney for Lathem has said his client would plead not guilty to the charges.

Officials in Alameda County, Calif., said Lathem was released from the Santa Rita Jail on Friday. Officials from the San Francisco County Jail said Friday that Warren was no longer in their custody. Chicago police said late Friday that both were in their custody.

Chicago police had previously said that an "extradition team" that included detectives had traveled to the Bay Area area earlier this week to bring the two back to Chicago.

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Suspects Andrew Warren, left, and Wyndham Lathem have been formally charged with first-degree murder in the July 26 stabbing homicide at 540 N. State St. (Chicago Police Department)

A former Northwestern University professor and a man who worked for Oxford University in England are scheduled to appear in court Sunday afternoon to face charges in the downtown slaying of a 26-year-old man, according to police.

Wyndham Lathem, 43, and Andrew Warren, 56, have officially been charged with first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Trenton Cornell-Duranleau, said Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi on Saturday afternoon.

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They were expected to appear for a bond hearing Sunday afternoon at the Leighton Criminal Court Building.

Prior to their hearing, a press conference will be held at Chicago Police headquarters, 3510 S. Michigan Ave., at 11:45 a.m., Guglielmi said.

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The two were brought to Area Central police headquarters, 5101 S. Wentworth Ave., late Friday night where detectives continued to question them. They were fingerprinted, processed and new booking photos were taken, police said.

Police believe the July 27 killing took place about 5 a.m., but authorities didn't learn of the stabbing until an anonymous caller reached the front desk of the apartment building about 8:30 p.m. that day. The caller warned of a possible crime in Lathem's residence.

Cornell-Duranleau was found lying against a bedroom door of Lathem's 10th-floor apartment in the 500 block of North State Street, according to police and an autopsy report. He had been been stabbed 47 times in his back, chest, shoulder and abdomen. He was stabbed and cut additional times to his arms, chin, neck, hands and wrists.

The two suspects went on a cross-country odyssey the eight days following Cornell-Duranleau's death. They surrendered about two weeks ago to authorities in California after they were charged in the man's death.

It is still unclear what led to the attack. Lathem did know and have some sort of relationship with Cornell-Duranleau, according to police. The two apparently had "some type of falling-out."

Northwestern fired Lathem after he fled from police. He had worked at the university as an associate professor of microbiology.

Check back for updates.
Chicago police released a photo of a man believed to have been involved in a shooting Aug. 17, 2017, in a Red Line train at the Jackson station in the Loop. (Chicago Police Department)

Chicago police are seeking information about a man who is believed to have been involved in a shooting that wounded a man Thursday at the CTA Jackson station in the Loop.

Early Saturday, police released a surveillance photo of a man wanted in the shooting. He is seen wearing a navy sweatshirt, dark pants and white shoes. He was also believed to have been holding a bag.

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He is described as a black man believed to be 20 to 25 years old who is 5-foot-9 to 5-foot-11 and weighs about 150 to 175 pounds, according to a news release from police.

About 7:45 p.m. Thursday, two groups of people were involved in an altercation several blocks from the station located in the 200 block of South State Street.

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Just as a northbound train pulled into the Jackson station, a man opened fire at another man in what police believe was a targeted attack, according to Chicago police.

The victim, a 24-year-old man, tried to get on the train to get away from the shooter, police said.

He was shot in the arm and the ankle. His condition was stabilized at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Ted Pertzborn, a graphics designer who works in Willis Tower, had noticed a group of about a dozen or more young people yelling as they sprinted toward the station's platform. Pertzborn was getting into the mostly empty train when a group of young people ran down into the station and began yelling at another group. A man started "having words with the victim inside the train," he said.

Another rider tried to stop the men and put his hands on the chests of both men. Then Pertzborn heard the shooting.

"I saw his right arm go up and saw a muzzle flash," he said. "I heard boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom, boom. About five or six shots. It was a big gun."

Anyone with information about the man in the photo is asked to contact Chicago police at 312-747-8380.
Gov. Bruce Rauner speaks at the Governor's Day rally on Aug. 16, 2017, at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

SPRINGFIELD  Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed several bills Friday, including a measure backed by Democratic Comptroller Susana Mendoza aimed at providing more transparency about spending in state agencies.

Other bills Rauner rejected would let Lake County voters decide if the county board chairman should be elected at-large, establish a state-run workers' compensation insurance company, and allow those who care for the disabled to work overtime. The vetoes were issued late Friday afternoon, a time when many people have turned their attention to the weekend and the moves are bound to attract less attention.

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Rauner's veto of the state spending transparency bill represents his latest dust-up with Mendoza, who is in charge of the state's pocketbook.

The measure required agencies under Rauner's control to make monthly reports about the amount of bills that have yet to be submitted to her office for payment. It also required agencies to estimate the amount of interest penalties the state may be responsible for because Illinois is so far behind in paying bills.

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Rauner argued agencies already have to report that data once a year, and said the tougher standards would be time-consuming. The governor said the effort was an attempt by Mendoza to "micromanage executive agencies."

Mendoza called on lawmakers to override Rauner's veto, saying it would help lawmakers have more accurate information when making budget decisions.

"Rather than accuse responsible elected officials of trying to 'micromanage' state agencies, the governor should start managing his agencies' budgets and honestly disclosing their debts," Mendoza said.

As for asking voters in Lake County if they wanted to elect their county board chairman, Rauner said the measure would be an "inappropriate interference in the operation of local affairs."

The proposal would have put the question on the 2018 ballot. If the referendum passed, the first election for board chairman would have been in 2020. Currently, Lake board members choose among themselves who should serve as chairman. Cook, DuPage, Will, Kane and McHenry counties already allow for a countywide election for board chair.

Rauner also vetoed a measure that would have undone limits on overtime paid to in-home care providers for people with disabilities. Rauner and the providers, represented by SEIU Healthcare Illinois, have been locked in a years-long back-and-forth over the governor's attempts to cut the program's costs and the union's efforts to raise the wages of the programs' providers.

Rauner already vetoed an overtime bill for home health workers earlier this year. Last year, he vetoed a bill aimed at increasing the minimum wage for those workers. The union and other advocates for the home health workers say Illinois already is suffering from a shortage of in-home care providers because of inadequate pay.

The bill that Rauner vetoed Friday would have allowed in-home care providers to work at least 15 hours of overtime per week. In his veto message, Rauner noted that his administration's new policy allows for up to five hours of overtime without the need for approval. The policy, he said in his veto message, "safeguards individual providers from being unnecessarily overworked and ensures that residents requiring long hours of care will have more than one person who understands their needs and who is capable of caring for them."

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Another measure vetoed by Rauner would create a state-run workers' compensation insurance company. Democrats passed the measure in response to Rauner's call for an overhaul of the program in an effort to cut costs for employers.

Rauner said the bill "does nothing to address the actual cost drivers and broken aspects of our workers' compensation system." He wants tougher standards for workers to prove an injury happened on the job, and lower fees for doctors, hospitals and pharmacies.

Of the bills Rauner did approve, one would require schools to provide feminine hygiene products in bathrooms for free. Supporters say it's a public health issue that will prevent students from missing class.

He also signed into law a bill that will ban employers from requiring low-wage employees from signing noncompete agreements that would prevent them from moving on to new jobs. Rauner said lawmakers should consider expanding the measure.

"Freedom to work whenever and for whomever one chooses is a fundamental American right," Rauner said in a signing statement. "It is also an important component of economic growth and a necessary component of reducing poverty."

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It was 1934 and fascism was on the march not only in Europe but in America. People who admired Adolf Hitler, who had taken power in Germany, formed Nazi organizations in the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union, represented by lawyers who were Jewish, faced an existential question: Should the freedoms it stood for since its founding in 1920 apply even to racist groups that would like nothing more than to strip them away?

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Ultimately, after much internal dissent, the ACLU decided: Yes, the principles were what mattered most. The ACLU would stand up for the free-speech rights of Nazis.

"We do not choose our clients," the ACLU's board of directors wrote in an October 1934 pamphlet called "Shall We Defend Free Speech for Nazis In America?" "Lawless authorities denying their rights choose them for us. To those who support suppressing propaganda they hate, we ask  where do you draw the line?"

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Once again, the ACLU is wrestling with how to respond to a far-right movement in the U.S. whose rising visibility is prompting concerns from elected officials and activists.

In response to the deadly violence at a rally in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend, the ACLU's three California affiliates released a statement Wednesday declaring that "white supremacist violence is not free speech."

The national organization said Thursday that it would not represent white supremacist groups that want to demonstrate with guns. That stance is a new interpretation of the ACLU's official position that reasonable gun regulation does not violate the 2nd Amendment.

Officials in Charlottesville had initially denied organizers of the "Unite the Right" rally a permit to hold the event at the site of a Robert E. Lee statue. But the ACLU filed a lawsuit defending protesters' rights to gather there. The rally ended with one woman killed and dozens of people injured as neo-Nazis and other far-right groups that had come armed with shields, helmets and even guns clashed violently with counter-protesters.

Now, with more far-right events scheduled in California, the state's ACLU affiliates are warning that there are limits to what they will defend.

"We review each request for help on a case-by-case basis, but take the clear position that the 1st Amendment does not protect people who incite or engage in violence," said the statement, which was signed by the executive directors of the ACLU affiliates of Southern California, Northern California, and of San Diego and Imperial Counties.

"If white supremacists march into our towns armed to the teeth and with the intent to harm people, they are not engaging in activity protected by the United States Constitution," the statement continued. "The 1st Amendment should never be used as a shield or sword to justify violence."

That statement drew some criticism from former ACLU board member Samuel Walker, a history professor at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, who supports the ACLU's historical stance on far-right groups. He called the remarks "irresponsible."

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"How is the 1st Amendment being a shield for violence?" he said. "They need to be clear on that, and this statement is not clear."

Ahilan Arulanantham, the legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, said it was not the organization's perspective on civil liberties that had changed, but the nature of the far-right groups themselves  a willingness to come to events ready for violence.

"The factual context here is shifting, given the extent to which the particular marches we're seeing in this historical moment are armed," Arulanantham said.

For decades, the ACLU has defended the speech rights of far-right groups like neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan on the principle that if those groups' rights are not upheld, the government will try to restrict the free-speech rights of other groups as well.

Most famously, the ACLU successfully defended the rights of neo-Nazis to march in the Chicago suburb of Skokie in 1978, which was home to many Holocaust survivors.

But the ACLU's stance was costly. The group's membership and donations  which had soared during the Nixon administration  declined sharply after the Skokie case, with thousands of supporters abandoning the group. A left-wing civil liberties counterpart, the National Lawyers Guild, accused the ACLU of "poisonous evenhandedness."

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National Socialist Party of America leader Frank Collin holds a press conference officially announcing the cancellation of his group's march in heavily-Jewish Skokie in 1978, which was defended successfully by the ACLU. Collin would instead march in Chicago's Marquette Park, symbolically where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was once attacked by a racist mob, and downtown. (Quentin Dodt / Chicago Tribune)

The group has seen its membership and its donations soar under the Trump administration as left-leaning Americans embrace the organization as a bulwark against the administration.

But some emerging factions of the left do not share the ACLU's values on free speech and assembly. Surveys have shown that young people are more likely than older Americans to support a government ban on hate speech, which is constitutionally protected.

Leftists who call themselves "anti-facists" and in many cases endorse illegal violence, viewing it as a morally just tactic to prevent neo-Nazis from gathering publicly, have also seen their numbers grow since Trump's election, which was supported by far-right groups.

The ACLU's decision this month to file a 1st Amendment lawsuit on behalf of right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos  whose rhetoric about immigrants and minorities has made him a target of violent protests  prompted a high-profile ACLU attorney to publicly object.

"Though his ability to speak is protected by the 1st Amendment, I don't believe in protecting principle for the sake of principle in all cases," wrote Chase Strangio, who stressed he was speaking in a private capacity. "His actions have consequences for people that I care about and for me."

The outcry from the ACLU's California affiliates prompted the group's national leader, Anthony D. Romero, to respond with a statement of his own.

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"We agree with every word in the statement from our colleagues in California," Romero said. "The 1st Amendment absolutely does not protect white supremacists seeking to incite or engage in violence. We condemn the views of white supremacists, and fight against them every day."

But, Romero added: "At the same time, we believe that even odious hate speech, with which we vehemently disagree, garners the protection of the 1st Amendment when expressed non-violently. We make decisions on whom we'll represent and in what context on a case-by-case basis. The horrible events in Charlottesville last weekend will certainly inform those decisions going forward."

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Rosa Parks is escorted by E.D. Nixon, former president of the Alabama NAACP, upon arrival at the courthouse in Montgomery on March 19, 1956, for the trial related to a bus boycott. Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died in 2005. (Gene Herrick / AP file photo)

During the civil rights movement and an intense struggle over desegregation in the United States, some political leaders would chide "extremists" on both sides.

In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower preached patience without complacency in complying with the Supreme Court decision that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

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"He never accommodated himself to the Supreme Court's 1954 decision that school segregation was unconstitutional," columnist Richard Cohen wrote for The Washington Post in 1990. "If anything, he seemed to sympathize much more with whites who were trying to keep their schools segregated than with blacks who wanted nothing more than a better education. Ike criticized 'extremists' on both sides, as if racism and equality were somehow the same. If such thinking is somewhat short of racist, it also has to be somewhat short of 'great.'"

When President Donald Trump spoke Tuesday about the weekend violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, it was a reminder that false equivalence is not new.

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"I've condemned neo-Nazis," Trump said at a news conference about national infrastructure. "I've condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee."

"There was a group on this side  you can call them the left, you've just called them the left  that came violently attacking the other group," he added. "I think there's blame on both sides."

Kevin M. Kruse, a history professor at Princeton University, said Eisenhower and other politicians blamed "extremists" on both sides of the segregation struggle  those two sides being the NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan; in other words, he said, comparing those calling for immediate integration with those vowing to resist it at all costs.

"I think it shows that this sort of false equivalence that Trump's been engaging in with Charlottesville is something we've seen before  and we've seen it before in almost this exact context," he said in a phone interview. "It's not identical in that those people in the '50s when they were talking about extremists on both sides, they were talking about NAACP activists asking that the South to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling of Brown v. Board of Education on the one hand and they equated that with Klan extremists and terrorists on the other hand. Whereas today, what Trump tried to do was say, 'Look, you've got the Klan but you've also got a few violent people in the anti-fascist movement and that's the totality of what the other side represents.'"

Kruse tweeted out old newspaper clippings with headlines declaring, "La. Governor Raps Both 'Extremists'" and "Integration Extremists on Both Sides Urged by School Head to Keep Quiet."

"The false equivalence was so widespread it became the standard for both national parties' leaders -- (Republican) Dwight Eisenhower and (Democrat) Adlai Stevenson," Kruse wrote on Twitter.

It was no doubt a different time then.

State and local laws that enforced racial segregation were still in effect in many parts of the country, leading to widespread protests for equal rights. Many people in the South still supported segregation, and states were grappling with how to integrate public schools that had been segregated for a long time.

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Civil rights advocates leading that charge, including Martin Luther King Jr., and the NAACP, were branded "outside agitators" at the same time that "people in the KKK or in the segregated South engaged in extremist behaviors that cost the lives of people who were simply trying to assert their constitutional and legal rights," said Theodore M. Shaw, director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Shaw added in an email that segregationists at the time were not "compelled to argue moral equivalency with those arguing for civil rights. They were openly and unapologetically racist, and they felt no need to defensively argue morality on their part.

"It is only now, when racism is widely considered to be immoral, that racists argue moral equivalency in opposition to civil rights advocates," he said.

Shaw called the civil rights era "an uphill struggle" for the country but said that Eisenhower was "pushed to move forward and be on the right side of history."

"Donald Trump and what he said yesterday is regressive  it's looking backward, it's taking us back," he said Wednesday in a phone interview.

"This is extraordinary in ways that I think it's difficult for most Americans, as shocked as people of good will are, to really comprehend," he said. "This is someone who occupies the White House, who has no moral bottom when it comes to racism, and who has in many ways encouraged hatred and bigotry in his quest for power."

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James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, said that even though there is a history of leaders making false equivalences, Eisenhower's cannot be compared to Trump's.

"Eisenhower was not making an equivalency that indicated whatsoever any disinclination on his part to condemn neo-Nazis or to compare neo-Nazis with Americans who were protesting against Nazis," he said.

"Trump's speech," he added, "indicates the dangers of not confronting honestly an important and disgraceful component of the American past: Slavery itself and the attempt to create a separate nation that Mississippi's declaration of secession identified as 'thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.'"
A Missouri lawmaker started the day by making a comment on Facebook that would soon lead to calls for her resignation and even catch the attention of the Secret Service.

Two days after President Donald Trump once again blamed "both sides" for violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Democratic state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal went on her personal Facebook page Thursday morning to vent.

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"I put up a statement saying, 'I really hate Trump. He's causing trauma and nightmares.' That was my original post," she told the Kansas City Star.

The Facebook post received many responses, Chappelle-Nadal said, and to one she replied, "I hope Trump is assassinated!"

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She would later explain that she didn't actually wish harm to come to Trump but wrote it out of frustration.

"I didn't mean what I put up. Absolutely not," Chappelle-Nadal told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "It was in response to the concerns that I am hearing from residents of St. Louis."

"There are people who are afraid of white supremacists," she added. "There are people who are having nightmares. There are people who are afraid of going out in the streets. It's worse than even Ferguson."

Though she quickly deleted the comment, an image of the statement would soon circulate online.

Much like when comedian Kathy Griffin released a video and photo of her holding a mask made in the image of Trump's bloody severed head, a backlash soon came, much of it from other Democrats in the state.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., released a statement condemning the remark and saying Chappelle-Nadal should resign.

Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., said that, "(C)alling for the assassination of the President is a federal crime. ... (She is) an embarrassment to our state," according to the Post-Dispatch.

Calls for her resignation came from Republican Gov. Eric Greitens and Missouri's Democratic Party chairman, Stephen Webber, while a statement by Senate Minority Leader Gina Walsh said that, "There is too much rancor and hate in today's political discourse, and Sen. Chappelle-Nadal should be ashamed of herself for adding her voice to this toxic environment."

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The Secret Service said it is "looking into the comments," adding that all threats made against the president, vice president and other protected persons are investigated, whether the threats are direct, implied or made in passing, according to the Associated Press.

Chappelle-Nadal, who joined the state Senate in 2010, told the AP that while she should not have posted the comment, she was expressing her right to free speech.

Trump's comments about Charlottesville "make it easier for racists to be racists," she told the Star. "As long as I have a voice, I'm going to talk about the damage (Trump) is creating in this nation."

She has also refused calls to resign from her fellow Democrats, with whom she has clashed in the past.

Chappelle-Nadal had likened those looking to hand control of the St. Louis police force from the state to local authorities to "house slaves," according to the Post Dispatch. In 2014, she criticized the response of former Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon to unrest in Ferguson, at one point tweeting the governor, "I want a public apology for the Missouri Hwy Patrol excessively tear gassing a Senator & her constituents for 3 hrs 1st night!"

Chappelle-Nadal did not immediate respond to requests for comment.

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She was, however, active on Twitter on Thursday evening, retweeting those who supported her and then reiterating that she would not resign.

"I am not resigning. When POC are respected by this WH & they are willing to do real work, I'll sit down with them. People are traumatized!
A Marine veteran has been arrested in Friday's shooting death of a Kissimmee Police officer, and there is "not much hope" a second officer he's accused of shooting will survive, Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell said this morning.

Police arrested 45-year-old Everett Glenn Miller Saturday morning on charges of first-degree murder, resisting arrest and carrying a concealed weapon, according to the Osceola County Jail.

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Officer Matthew Baxter was killed and Sgt. Richard "Sam" Howard was shot and is in grave condition, O'Dell said. The uniformed officers were investigating three suspicious people in the area of Palmway and Cypress streets about 9:30 p.m. Five minutes later, dispatchers received the first call reporting the officers had been shot.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 25 Kissimmee Police Sgt. Matt Koski scrubs blood off the road where two officers were shot Friday night. "I just don't want to see this every time I drive by," Koski said (Krista Torralva / Orlando Sentinel)

The officers did not have time to return fire. O'Dell said "it looked like they were surprised" by the gunfire.

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Miller fled to Roscoe's Bar at 2344 N. Orange Blossom Trail, where Osceola County Sheriff's Office detectives found him about 11:30 p.m. When the officers approached him, Miller reached for his waistband  but a fast-acting deputy tackled him to the ground and arrested him, O'Dell said.

"Extremely brave and heroic actions by the deputy, there were other people in the vicinity," O'Dell said. "They went hands-on, tackled him to the ground and secured him [and] located a a 9mm and .22 revolver on his person."

The Sheriff's Office recently took Miller into custody under Florida's Baker Act, which allows involuntary commitment of people in mental health crises.

Baxter, 27, was married to a fellow Kissimmee Police officer and had four young children, O'Dell said. Howard, 36, has one child.

"They are both wonderful men, family men. They are both very committed to the community," O'Dell said. "They were the epitome of what you ask for in law enforcement officers."

Everett Glenn Miller (Kissimmee Police Department)

Baxter and Howard were wearing body armor underneath their uniforms when they were shot, O'Dell said. Howard is a 10-year veteran of the department and Baxter had been with the Kissimmee department for three years.

As of 9 a.m. Saturday, Howard remained in critical condition; O'Dell said there was "not much hope that he will survive this."

O'Dell said officers plan to put Baxter's handcuffs on Miller when they take him to the Osceola County Jail Saturday.

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O'Dell said he did not expect to make any additional arrests.

Sgt. Richard "Sam" Howard (Kissimmee Police Department)

"This is a tough time for each and every one of us," O'Dell said.

O'Dell said the news is especially difficult for members of his agency, as they must press forward while suffering the loss of a coworker and friend.

"We do not get to stop and cry for someone we've lost or mourn our hero," O'Dell said. "At the time we go through it, the men and women of law enforcement are required to continue working and bring this individual to justice."

O'Dell said the community needs to work with law enforcement. Social media posts showed Miller threatening law enforcement, O'Dell said, "but we never got a call on that.''

Osceola County Commissioner Fred Hawkins Jr. said he couldn't believe the news.

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"It's just awful. We're praying for the families of these officers and for the whole KPD family," he said.

Officer Matthew Baxter (Kissimmee Police Department)

The last officer killed on the job was shot in 1983.

Carlos Santiago, 37, was driving with his wife and daughter back from dinner Friday night when they saw dozens of patrol cars speed past them on Orange Blossom Trail.

"They were just flying," he said. "It was pretty obvious something bad had happened."

The area where the shooting happened is McLaren Circle, which has historically been plagued by crime. O'Dell said Howard and Baxter were doing proactive police work there because it is known for drug sales. In 2008, law enforcement led a crackdown on drugs and violence that "ravaged the McLaren Circle area," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Officers arrested 19 people during that operation, and witnesses in subsequent court cases testified crime was so rampant that mobile businesses such as FedEx, UPS, pizza delivery and taxi services "refused to enter the area to provide services to residents." Even the U.S. Postal Service stopped its route through the neighborhood for a time.

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"It's fairly well known as not a great area. It's pretty rundown compared to the rest of the city and it's known for having more crime," Santiago said.

Kissimmee Police Chief Jeffrey O'Dell provides an update early Saturday morning about a shooting that killed one officer Friday night and gravely injured another. (Charles King)

While the media waited for O'Dell to address the public in front of the emergency entrance at Osceola Regional Medical Center on Friday night, two women were being escorted out of the building by two police officers. They were both crying and huddled before they saw the lights and cameras outside and dashed back into the building.

At least four Osceola deputies were stationed by the south entrance to the hospital, wearing body armor and carrying heavy guns, standing next to their patrol cars.

Alexis Nieves, 27, was driving to see a friend when she got stopped at a red light on Orange Blossom Trail and U.S. Highway 192.

She saw a few cop cars then dozens started arriving to the intersection. She looked to her left and saw an officer with a long gun, the she saw a person being loaded into an ambulance. There were helicopters circling the in the area.

Matthew Baxter swears in as a Kissimmee police officer Aug. 5, 2014. (City of Kissimmee)

Emergency crews were doing CPR and trying to resuscitate the person. Nieves didn't know it was an officer who had been shot.

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"I just started crying," she said. "I didn't know what to think. It's so sad."

Nieves said she saw said more than 80 law enforcement vehicles flooding the area, along with fire trucks and EMS vehicles.

"I was in the middle of it all and couldn't believe what was happening," she said. "I called my friend in tears. I've never seen anything like that."

Messages of support flowed in from across the country.

On its Twitter account, the Orlando Police Department said, "Please keep @kissimmeepolice in your prayers tonight."

The Orange County Sheriff's Office also offered its own message of comfort, saying, "Our solidarity is with @kissimmeepolice as they deal with this tragic loss."

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Officer Matthew Baxter poses with a family in a photo from Jun. 29, 2017. (Kissimmee Police Department)

Even President Donald Trump sent thoughts and prayers to the Kissimmee Police.

O'Dell praised other police agencies, including the Osceola and Orange sheriff's offices and Orlando Police Department, for their help.

"Everyone came to the scene without being asked," Odell said.

Kissimmee Police has more than 100 officers. O'Dell took over the department in August 2016.

Two Jacksonville police officers were also shot on the Westside of Jacksonville, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Two Pennsylvania Troopers were also reported shot late Friday.

My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!#LESM  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

It has also been a dangerous year for law enforcement in Central Florida. Lt. Debra Clayton, a 17-year veteran of the Orlando Police Department, was killed in a gunfight in the Wal-Mart parking lot while attempting to arrest Markeith Loyd, a suspect in the murder of his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon. Loyd was later captured after a nine-day manhunt.

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Orange County Sheriff's Deputy Norman Lewis, a motorcycle officer, was also killed that day during the pursuit for Loyd.

Earlier reports Friday night from official sources indicated that two officers had died.

Staff Writers Bianca Padro Ocasio, Christal Hayes, Krista Torralva and Gal Tziperman Lotan contributed to this report.

cdoornbos@orlandosentinel.com, 407-650-6931 or @CaitlinDoornbos

Read more about this story in our e-edition at OrlandoSentinel.com/late or on our website.

[ Interactive map: Every homicide in Central Florida  ]
The end of Stephen Bannon's stormy White House tenure frees the investment banker-turned-populist-messenger to expand his reach as a potent force in the media landscape, giving him an elevated platform for the nationalist movement he has long championed.

Bannon will do so in conjunction with the wealthy Mercer family, conservative mega-donors who served as his patrons in an array of enterprises before he joined the Trump campaign.

The former chief strategist for President Donald Trump is returning as executive chairman of the Mercer-backed Breitbart News, the pugilistic conservative website he helped guide before joining Trump's campaign last August, the company announced.

Hours after his departure was confirmed Friday by the White House, Bannon was already back in charge at the website, chairing the evening editorial meeting.

"The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today," Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow said in release with the headline "'Populist Hero' Stephen K. Bannon Returns Home to Breitbart."

Associates said Bannon may also partner on a new venture with the Mercers - potentially another news organization. Bannon declined to comment.

But in an interview with the Weekly Standard, Bannon said he feels "jacked up."

"Now I'm free," he said. "I've got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, 'it's Bannon the Barbarian.' I am definitely going to crush the opposition."

A rapid return to the media puts the former Hollywood producer and news executive back on familiar ground, allowing him to unspool his views about the threats of globalization and radical Islam, unconstrained by politics or protocol.

"Now he is unencumbered to go do what he thinks," said Scot Vorse, a friend of 35 years and former business colleague.

"I am pretty confident that Steve's job and goal will not change: to make President Trump's campaign mission come true," he added. "We will see whether or not Steve is more helpful inside or outside."

Bannon is exiting the White House a much more prominent figure than a year ago - heralded on the right as a leading anti-elite insurgent and pilloried by critics as a purveyor of an "America First" philosophy that has inspired white supremacists.

"Look, he's a force to be reckoned with," said Pat Caddell, a veteran Democratic pollster who has worked with Bannon. "He's willing to engage in the political combat, and so I expect he'll be doing that. His sense of history and the moment are very powerful. He will be in the fight, for sure."

Before he burst onto the national stage, Bannon sought to shape the country's political landscape through a series of provocative media projects, some of them financed by the Mercers, who he met through the late conservative entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart.

Bannon directed and produced documentaries such as "Generation Zero," an examination of the global economic crisis and "Battle for America," which hammered an "arrogant, and ever-expanding central government." His film "Clinton Cash," financed by the Mercers, argued that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was a captive of wealthy interests. And under his leadership, Breitbart News emerged as the voice of the disaffected right.

"I think he really wants to change the world," said Julia Jones, who was Bannon's screenwriting partner for 16 years.

Jones said she could envision Bannon setting up his own cable news network, one that he would position to challenge Fox News, which she said he complained to her was too liberal.

"It would give him a much larger platform than Breitbart," she said.

Whether Bannon will use his megaphone to promote the Trump administration - or to slam it - remains to be seen. Inside the embattled White House, the chief strategist frequently tangled with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and other presidential advisers over trade and foreign policy. His primary allegiance, friends said, is to the people who put Trump into office.

"He views his role as the protector of the movement of the working-class coalition that elected Trump," said a person close to him, who requested anonymity to describe private conversations.

Bannon is not angry with Trump personally, the person added, but is "certainly disappointed in the way the White House is going. There's a sense it's drifting toward the moderate, mushy middle."

Caddell said he does not expect Bannon will critique Trump personally. "There is a fundamental loyalty there," he said, adding that Bannon's focus will be on the establishment forces that he believes are leading the president astray.

Still, there are already signs that some Bannon allies are gearing up for battle. On Friday, Breitbart jabbed at the White House over Bannon's departure, with senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak tweeting "#WAR." He warned that losing the White House chief strategist "may turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Trump administration, the moment Donald Trump became Arnold Schwarzenegger," referring to the former California governor and movie star.

Neither Pollak nor other senior Breitbart executives responded to requests for comment.

Beyond Breitbart, Bannon's next moves are also expected to involve Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who collaborated with Bannon on at least five ventures before he joined the Trump campaign. Along with his role at Breitbart, Bannon served as vice president and secretary of the Mercer-funded Cambridge Analytica, a data science company that worked for Trump's campaign.

He and hedge fund executive Robert Mercer huddled earlier this week to discuss future plans, according to someone familiar with the meeting.

"They have a very strong working relationship together and I would be shocked if we don't hear of a major initiative involving Steve and the Mercers in the next 30 and 60 days," said a person familiar with the family's views, who requested anonymity to describe the thinking of the famously private donors. "They don't walk in lockstep in terms of their views, but they like the fact that Steve gets results and they think money put into ventures he's involved in is money well spent."

Bannon earned at least $917,000 in 2016, drawing at least $545,000 of that from four Mercer-backed ventures, according to a personal financial disclosure he filed in late March.

At the time, he estimated that his assets were worth between $11.8 million and $53.8 million. Among his holdings: three rental properties and a strategic consulting firm he said was worth between $5 million and $25 million. The filing also showed that Bannon had significant cash reserves, reporting at least $1.1 million in three different U.S. bank accounts.

The Post's Robert Costa and David Weigel contributed to this report.
The Balbo Monument (located near Soldier Field and Gold Star Families Park And Memorial) in Chicago on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. The monument was a gift to Chicago from Mussolini. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Erecting a monument is like getting a tattoo: Indulging sentiments that may not last, with consequences that do. Decades ago, many Southern (and a few non-Southern) cities adorned their landscapes with statues of Confederate generals and rebel soldiers. Many of those locales are now reconsidering the meaning and value of these memorials, which are seen by many as symbols of white supremacy and black oppression. But Chicago has some tangible historical tributes of its own that are equally hard to justify.

They honor an aviator named Italo Balbo, who commanded the Italian air force when it landed a squad of seaplanes on Lake Michigan during the 1933-34 World's Fair. In a short-sighted gesture of gratitude, Mayor Ed Kelly changed the name of 7th Street to Balbo Drive. The following year, the city put up a 2,000-year-old stone pillar, a gift from the Italian government, outside Soldier Field.

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What's wrong with those symbols? Almost everything. Balbo was a major protege of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who allied with Adolf Hitler in World War II. The inscription on the monument describes it as a gift from "Fascist Italy with the sponsorship of Benito Mussolini" presented "in the 11th year of the Fascist Era." That era came to an end thanks to the U.S. troops who landed in Italy in 1943 in a campaign that left some 300,000 American and British soldiers dead or wounded.

If someone were to propose a monument paying tribute to the glories of Fascism today, the idea would be universally mocked and vilified. The Tribune has been on record for years in favor of changing the street name. But the Balbo memorials have survived, partly because most Chicagoans are unaware of their significance, partly because they were prized by many Italian-Americans here, and partly because of simple inertia.

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Ald. Ed Burke, 14th, and Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, think the gesture has lasted too long. Next month, they plan to introduce a measure to remove the column and rename the street. Villegas says he doesn't think it's right to "honor those folks who don't deserve it." Given the historic nature of the pillar, the Italian government might like to have it back for its archeological value  or the Greek government might stake a claim of its own, inasmuch as the it may have originally been taken from there.

There are plenty of Italians and Italian-Americans whose names would be a far better fit for the east-west avenue. One is St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, who founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and for whom a major Chicago public housing complex, since demolished, was named. Another is Enrico Fermi. He won the Nobel Prize in physics before escaping Mussolini's Italy for America, where he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, built the first nuclear reactor and worked on the original atomic bomb project. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who became one of the nation's most respected and influential Catholic prelates while serving as archbishop of Chicago from 1982 till his death in 1996, would also be more than worthy. And there is always Ron Santo.

Putting up a monument and naming a street for an Italian Fascist may have made sense at the time, but those decisions are way overdue for correction. Chicago can do better.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.

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A parolee from Aurora denied murder charges against him in connection to a June shooting, which left a 34-year-old man dead on Grove Street.

Anthony Medina, 24, pleaded not guilty to multiple murder counts, as well as charges of armed violence and being an armed habitual criminal, during a Friday hearing before Kane County Judge David Kliment. A grand jury indicted Medina in July. He remains in Kane County Jail on $3 million bail.

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Authorities allege Medina and another man walked up to Rodolfo Rocha Jr. as he stood with friends outside a Grove Street home in the early morning hours of June 10. Medina and the man pulled out handguns and opened fire. Rocha suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to police. A second man was wounded in the shooting, court records state.

Medina, who was arrested about an hour later, is accused of personally firing the gun that killed Rocha, the indictment states.

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Medina had been paroled from prison about six months prior to the shooting. Court and state prison records indicate Medina has served multiple stints in prison on a variety of weapons-related charges since 2012.

Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News
Developers intend to build Transitional Care of Aurora at New York Street and Station Boulevard. (Steve Lord / The Beacon-News )

The Aurora City Council is set to vote on a final plan for a 50,582-square-foot, 60-bed transitional care facility on the far East Side of Aurora.

Aldermen will consider the plan for IH Fox Valley Owner, LLC, which plans to build the facility, called Transitional Care of Aurora, on the north side of New York Street, west of Station Boulevard, in the Plaza on New York subdivision, across the street from the Fox Valley Mall.

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The plan is on the council's consent agenda for the full meeting at 6 p.m. Aug. 22 in the council chambers, City Hall, 44 E. Downer Place.

The facility would be run by the same company that runs Transitional Care of Arlington Heights, which is about twice the size of the proposed facility in Aurora. The company also has plans for facilities in Lisle and Mundelein.

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The City Council approved the preliminary plan almost a year ago, in September 2016. Officials from the company said then that the care facility is something kind of new on the market, a place offering rehabilitative services in a non-nursing home setting.

Officials said it would bring in 80 high-paying health care jobs.

Alderman approved the concept of the facility after studying what traffic impact it might have on the area, and on New York Street, the busy main east-west thoroughfare into and through Aurora.

The area was first proposed for development in 2005, but market conditions delayed that. Originally designed as five commercial lots, the transitional care center would be on two lots and portions of two other lots, which are being combined into two larger lots. The last lot still is reserved for commercial development at a future point.

Officials for the development argued that the transitional care facility would generate less traffic than what was originally planned for the site when it was going to be completely commercial.

There was some concern about ambulances coming and going, but officials said it would generate fewer emergency calls than the nearby residential areas of Plaza on New York. Most of the time, the calls would not need ambulances to use their sirens at night.

In addition to approving the final plan, aldermen are expected to eliminate a right-in, right-out access point to the facility from New York Street. When they approved the preliminary plan last year, it was approved with two access points onto Gabrielle Lane, the first street to the north of New York.

Officials thought the access to New York was unnecessary, and would only cause traffic problems on New York. At the time, some nearby residents complained that it would put too much traffic onto Gabrielle Lane.

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slord@tribpub.com
If released from the Kendall County jail, an Oswego man charged with setting fire to his own home would not be allowed to return there.

Court records show that Brandon Ramsey, 25, is barred from entering the property on the 200 block of Dorchester Court as a condition of bond, which is set at $100,000 with 10 percent to apply.

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Ramsey was charged with felony residential arson following an investigation by Oswego police and the Oswego Fire Protection District. Police originally said they responded to his home at 7:10 p.m. Aug. 1 for a domestic dispute, arriving to find the place on fire. Ramsey is accused of intentionally setting fire to the residence, according to a news release from the Oswego Police Department.

One other resident was present at the time of the fire, said Oswego police spokeswoman Cathy Nevara, describing the building as a "residential home." Ramsey, the only person reportedly injured, was transported to a local hospital for unspecified non-life-threatening injuries, according to police.

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A Kendall County judge issued a warrant and Oswego detectives arrested Ramsey after his release from the hospital Monday, police said.

Charging documents state Ramsey "knowingly partially damaged the dwelling place" where two other people also lived. They could not be reached.

Ramsey, who remains in the jail, is scheduled to appear in court Monday before Kendall County Judge Timothy J. McCann, according to court records.

Court records state Ramsey is a 2010 Oswego High School graduate and has worked full-time driving for Uber for 10 months.

No private attorneys had been entered as of Friday. The county public defender's office said they had not been appointed to the case, and that Ramsey is supposed to have an attorney by Aug. 21.

hleone@tribpub.com

Twitter @hannahmleone
Harvey Fire Department firefighters battle a blaze on July 14, 2017. The city neglected to pay enough money to the firefighter's pension fund over the last decade, contributing only 17 percent of the amount needed to sustain it, a court ruled in a scathing opinion. (Warren Skalski / Chicago Tribune)

In an unprecedented ruling, an appellate court declared the city of Harvey so severely neglected its firefighters' pension fund that it was on the verge of insolvency  meaning there might not be any money for retirees or firefighters on the job there today.

The ruling comes as local firefighters complain of equipment in disrepair and manpower cuts. And it follows another embarrassing ruling in which a Cook County judge took away control of Harvey's water finances from leaders of the scandal-plagued and debt-ridden south suburb.

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In a scathing opinion filed earlier this month, the 1st District Appellate Court found that for nearly a decade, the city neglected to pay enough money to keep the pension fund solvent, leaving it in danger of running dry in as little as five years. Indeed, the court found that over that period, the city contributed only 17 percent of the amount needed to sustain the pension fund.

"Harvey has set up a collision course over a period of many years where the beneficiaries of their firefighters' Pension Fund are being paid substantially out of the money that the firefighters have themselves contributed to the Pension Fund and the money the Pension Fund earns from investments" the court wrote. "In essence, Harvey is robbing Peter to pay Paul, but what happens when Peter retires?"

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It is the first time a court has declared a pension fund to be "on the verge of default or bankruptcy," the ruling said, meaning that the fund now has the right to be funded under a little-known clause in the state constitution.

"The constitution only protects your right to receive the benefit," said attorney Jeff Goodloe, who represents the fund. "It doesn't control funding, except under the rare circumstance where a court determines that the pension fund is under imminent threat of default or bankruptcy."

The opinion echoed many of the findings of a Tribune series, which outlined years of questionable deals that enriched the city's former comptroller, illegal borrowing that led to federal sanctions and a hotel-redevelopment deal that left city taxpayers on the hook for tens of millions in borrowed money with nothing to show for it.

"Am I optimistic that it will bring about any change? It's hard to be optimistic about the city of Harvey," Goodloe said. "It's the consummate example of government inefficiency."

But Goodloe said the courts have given the fund tools to force the city to uphold its responsibilities to pensioners.

"The bottom line is that now that we have these court orders in place, it's like the sword that hangs over (the city) and forces them to do what they're supposed to do."

The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 2010 by the city's firefighter pension board asserting that since 2005 the city had failed to make the required contributions to the fund in violation of an earlier funding dispute settlement. In 2015, the trial court held the city liable for more than $15 million in damages, and issued an injunction requiring it to insert a pension fund line-item in its annual tax levy, prompting the appeal.

In a separate, concurring opinion, Justice Bertina Lampkin noted that as of May 2015 there were just 47 active members of the Fire Department, while the pension fund was supporting 67 retirees or beneficiaries.

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"In 2014, the Pension Fund paid approximately $157,000 a month to the beneficiaries while contributions from the active firefighters were approximately only $25,000," she wrote, noting the pension fund's financial consultant found that between 2005 and 2013, the pension needed nearly $12 million in funding from the city but instead received just $1.4 million. Meanwhile, over that same time, the fund was required to pay nearly $14 million in benefits.

While the court noted other municipalities have severely underfunded pensions, it called Harvey the "perfect example."

The appeals court ruling cited the "precarious" financial shape of the pension fund, "the constant declarations by Harvey that it has not contributed to (its) poor financial condition, and the continued lack of financial responsibility shown by Harvey over a significant period of time."

Harvey spokesman Sean Howard said that over the past two years, the city has contributed more than $3.5 million to the fund from property tax revenue, but declined to speak further about the court's action.

But Goodloe said Harvey continues to seek the removal of the injunction.

"Why are they fighting to remove the one thing that ensures they uphold their obligation to fund the pensions?" he said.

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If the pension went bankrupt, the city would have to pay the benefits, Goodloe said, but "frankly, my clients are terrified, because they know if the money runs out, the city's not going to pay. That's it. It's over."

Some retirees also remain skeptical.

"I don't see any revenue streams to support what they've got," said Steve Ciecierski, 58, a 30-year department veteran who now lives in Las Vegas, after retiring as a captain. "They can't pay their vendors. You think they're going to worry about some retired firefighter that lives 1,200 miles away?"

"I don't want to see anyone go to jail, but what am I going to do if my pension dries up?" said Ciecierski, who receives about $5,300 a month. "What are these guys who are working now going to do if their pension's gone before they retire?"

The court ruling came a few days before the firefighters union filed suit asking a judge to force the city to abide by an arbitrator's findings that the city owed firefighters more than $1 million in back pay after it reduced the number of employees per shift from 10 to seven in 2015.

Bill Canavan, a 28-year department veteran and president of Local 471 Harvey Firemen's Association, said the staffing cuts were just another example of the city's neglect.

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"There have been times in the last couple of years when we've been down to one engine," Canavan said. "We used to run four engines and a truck. The city either doesn't have the money to fix it or they're not prioritizing the engines to be fixed. We're like a clown car, putting guys in one engine and then the rest in a pickup truck."

Howard did not comment on the union's lawsuit.

And last month, a Cook County judge ordered a receiver to take control of the city's water fund after finding that Harvey repeatedly violated court orders and a consent decree to repay tens of millions for water purchased from the city of Chicago. Those funds, which should have been used to pay off the debt to Chicago, were instead diverted to other accounts and used to cover other expenses, including payroll, the judge found.

mwalberg@chicagotribune.com

jmahr@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @mattwalberg1

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Twitter @joemahr
Congressman Bill Foster will host a forum Wednesday on the science of opioid addiction and strategies to help stop overdose deaths.

"Addiction is a medical disease and the use of opiates has a significant effect on the brain," Foster said in a news release.

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The forum will be at the Will County office building, 302 N. Chicago St., Joliet.

Foster will bring in experts in the fields of addiction and treatment, brain science and addiction, and responsible prescription use.

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Dr. Kathleen Burke, Will County's director of substance use initiatives, will talk about addiction, treatment and programs available in the county. Dr. Alex Vargas will discuss the scientific effects of opioids on the brain, and Dr. Jennifer Byrd will cover responsible practices for prescribing opioids.

According to Foster, they have been "on the front lines of this issue for some time."

"The more information we have about opioids and addiction, the more prepared we are to find a real solution to this epidemic," he said.

Since 2013, opioid overdose deaths in Illinois increased 44 percent  to more than 2,000 reported in 2016, according to the news release.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

The Will County coroner's office reported 37 opioid-related overdose fatalities so far this year, half of which included fentanyl, a more potent heroin substitute. In 2016, there were 78 such deaths in the county.

While county officials have trained police and first responders to use naloxone, an opioid antidote, and launched Safe Passage programs in which addicts can go to police departments to get help, County Executive Larry Walsh said in the release, "there is still much work to be done."

"We are thankful for the support of Congressman Foster in support of this issue," he said.

"As County Executive Walsh has said many times, it will take all of us working together to find a solution to this epidemic," Foster said in the release.

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More information about this forum is at Foster's Joliet office at 815-280-5876.

slafferty@tribpub.com

Twitter @SusanLaff
Stempek receives DAISY Award

COLUMBUS -- Staci Stempek, a registered nurse with the maternal child health department at Columbus Community Hospital since 2011, was recently presented with the DAISY Award.

Stempek has delivered compassionate, quality care to each patient she attends to as mentioned in the DAISY Award nomination that was received by Columbus Community Hospital. This award is an international program that rewards and celebrates the extraordinary clinical skill and compassionate care given by nurses every day. Columbus Community Hospital recognizes one of its nurses with this special honor quarterly.

Stempek received a certificate of recognition, DAISY Award pin and handcarved stone sculpture entitled A Healers Touch.

Bellwood FD gets CPR device

BELLWOOD -- The Bellwood Fire Department recently acquired a new Physio-Control LUCAS 3 Chest Compression System.

The LUCAS 3 is a mechanical chest compression system that provides compressions at a rate and depth that are consistent with current American Heart Association guidelines. The device works by providing continuous high-quality chest compressions to save a cardiac arrest patients brain, heart and vital organs. The LUCAS 3 is portable and can be operated with either a battery or AC current.

This new system will allow personnel to focus on other critical patient care as its working on the patient receiving compressions, or administer compressions where manual CPR may be dangerous.

ADM donates to Big Pals-Little Pals

COLUMBUS -- Archer Daniels Midland Company recently donated $3,500 to Big Pals-Little Pals.

The donation will be used for special events and awards for the Big and Little Pals. Big Pals-Little Pals is a mentoring organization that matches adult volunteers with children ages 6-19 from single-parent homes in order to provide them with an adult friend and role model. There are currently 17 children waiting for a Big Pal.

For more information, contact Big Pals-Little Pals at 402-563-1081 or visit bigpals.org. This donation was given through ADM Cares.
The 11th annual Hummingbird Fest, which is free, starts at 9 a.m. Saturday at Sagawau Environmental Learning Center in Lemont. (Chicago Tribune Media Group)

They can fly up to 30 miles per hour, have an average heart rate of more than 1,200 beats per minute, and feed five to eight times per hour.

The hummingbird is being celebrated at Sagawau Environmental Learning Center in Lemont on Saturday.

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The 11th annual Hummingbird Fest, which is free, starts at 9 a.m.

"Hummingbirds to a lot of people are mysterious, and when we have a festival like this not only can we celebrate them, but also dispel some myths and help people understand them better, which in turn will help preserve them," said Laura Brown, assistant director of Sagawau.

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The festival will "celebrate the beauty of the amazing birds," and will have "activities, viewing and demos of how the birds are banded for tracking and research purposes," according to center's website.

During the beginning of the event, attendees will be able to watch the birds get banded, which is done for tracking and research. Vern Kleen, who is one of the two hummingbird banders licensed in Illinois, will be completing the task, according to Brown.

"He catches them and puts bands around their feet and releases them. He'll be banding the hummingbirds from nine until noon," Brown said.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

"They go into the feeder where a trap is set. Once they go into the feeder, they capture the hummingbird," Brown said. From there, they get banded.

The day will also be filled with activities revolving around the bird.

"When people arrive, we have a migration game, that people can play and basically visit different stations that would be different stops around their migration route," Brown said.

"They start at the first station which is called Yuky, which is our name for the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico," Brown said. "Then they fly over the ocean and land in Alabama. From there they fly up to different stations in Tennessee, then the Shawnee national forest in Illinois, and then make it up here to Sagawau."

This time of year is peak hummingbird season, according to Brown.

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Generally, the event gets over 500 attendees.

"It's heavily visited. We usually get around 600, sometimes more, depending on the weather. Last year, we got rained out," Brown said.
Activist Ed Hanson leads a crowd of supporters in chants prior to the start of a rally in Elgin on Aug. 18, 2017. (

With chants of "No hate, no KKK, no fascist USA" and "The alt-right is all wrong," demonstrators in Elgin on Friday said they would not tolerate hate groups or violence.

In a quickly-organized rally, dozens of residents and local officials gathered outside Elgin City Hall to condemn white nationalists, hate groups, racism, antisemitism, and call for solutions in the wake of last week's Charlottesville protests.

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"The events Saturday and throughout this week have clearly demonstrated the unmasking of racism, antisemitism and hatred that exists in our nation," said Danise Habun, a commissioner of Elgin's Human Relations Commission. "Less than 100 years ago, the KKK was active in Elgin. Thank God changes have taken place in Elgin over time."

"Racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, homophobia and hatred are not welcome here in our city," he said.

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Several local officials spoke or attended Friday's rally, including Elgin Mayor Dave Kaptain, Police Chief Jeff Swoboda, School District U46 CEO Tony Sanders and State Rep. Anna Moeller.

Just before the rally, several Elgin-area faith leaders gathered in a prayer circle, visible to everyone else in attendance. During the rally, Rabbi Margaret Frisch Klein and Pastor Jeff Mikyska paired up for the most moving moment of the afternoon as they offered joint prayers. Issues with the audio system forced the two to step away from the podium, asking the dozens nearby to get even closer.

Faith leaders, including associate pastor Paige Wolfanger of the First Congregatonal Church of Dundee (center), pray before a rally outside city hall in Elgin on Friday. Wolfanger holds a sign that reads, "I'm here, I'm gay, I fight the KKK!" (Rafael Guerrero / The Courier-News )

They spoke of their friendship, which developed originally because their respective places of worship are next to each other on Division Street  Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and Congregation Kneseth Israel. They have since grown closer, with Mikyska saying he would welcome Frisch Klein and her congregation to their church in an emergency.

Mikyska said so many people have used their Christian faith to rationalize hatred or violence throughout history. To believe their skin color made them better than another is not a Christian value, he said.

"There is nothing Christian about white supremacy, there is nothing Christian about antisemitism," he said.

Rep. Moeller shared about her grandfather, a Jewish immigrant who left Germany during the height of the Hitler regime. He believed it would get better, but it didn't, Moeller said.

She condemned President Trump's controversial statements post-Charlottesville, but urged hateful rhetoric to not "paralyze" or "divide" or risk a continued status quo. She told those in attendance to continue fighting for equality in a number of arenas, such as race, gender, economic status, immigration, voting, health care, criminal justice reform, and public education funding.

Elgin Community College sociology professor and former U46 board member Joyce Fountain said growing up black in the U.S. was "tough," and worried about her grandchild's future as America still grapples with racial inequality.

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"It is your system, you're still in power, you're still in authority, it is up to you to change the system," she told the majority-white audience.

"I am concerned about our babies," continued Fountain, referring to children everywhere. She urged school districts like U46, parents and guardians everywhere to raise their children right and help them appreciate the diversity of those inside and outside their lives.

The City of Elgin's Human Relations commission organized Friday's rally.

People hold up signs denouncing racism, bigotry, antisemitism, and hateful rhetoric during a rally in Elgin on Friday. (Rafael Guerrero / The Courier-News )

raguerrero@tribpub.com
South Elgin Police Officer Timothy Rothenbach will be spending more time with dog Delilah and wife Linda after he retires from his job Aug. 25. (Mike Danahey / The Courier-News)

After a quarter century on the job, South Elgin Police Officer Timothy Rothenbach will be retiring Aug. 25.

"It's been 25 years, and I am ready for the next chapter," Rothenbach, 55, said of why he's retiring.

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Rothenbach said he came to his law enforcement career choice during his 11 years in the U.S. Marine Corps.

"I had a taste of police work while serving in Hawaii," Rothenbach said. "It was something different, and in the back of my mind I had been thinking about going into law enforcement."

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So, after the Marines, Rothenbach said he returned to the Elgin area and took the tests required for becoming an officer in South Elgin, Elgin and another town. After hearing from South Elgin, he heard from Elgin, but decided to stick with South Elgin. He trained at a police academy in Springfield.

During his career, Rothenbach said he served as a detective for a two-year stint. Across the years, he saw all sorts of cases, including typical traffic stops, a drunken teen driver stuck in a snowbank, recovering a headless body from the Fox River, drug busts, occasional murders and bombs being defused.

Rothenbach also said he was one of the first in the state to arrest someone on hate crime charges.

"That involved one of our local clowns and happened at a Pizza Hut," Rothenbach recalled.

According to Courier-News reports, in October 1995, Kenneth Rokicki of St. Charles created a disturbance at the restaurant by calling a 20-year-old waiter slurs related to what Rokicki assumed was the waiter's sexual orientation. Rokicki demanded another pizza after the waiter cut the one served to Rokicki.

After being given a full refund for his pizza and being asked several times to leave the restaurant, Rokicki threatened the employee, and other workers had to hold the restaurant door shut so Rokicki could not get back in, according to court documents.

Rokicki then went to the South Elgin Police Department to file a complaint, according to police reports. The complaint backfired when a further investigation found Rokicki incited the incident.

Prosecutors said Rokicki's behavior was a clear violation of the law, which is intended to punish those who use words or deeds to slur others based on their race, religion or sexual orientation. Rokicki was found guilty of committing a hate crime, a class IV felony, by 16th Circuit Judge James Doyle in January 1998.

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The case made criminal and hate-crime law related textbooks.

Rothenbach said the use of heroin has becoming an issue in South Elgin in recent times, as it has across the nation. He's responded to a couple calls involving overdoses in the last couple years, himself.

During Rothenbach's career, the village has grown in size and population. In 1992, according to US Census Bureau statistics, South Elgin had 8,145 residents and now has more than 22,000 residents.

Rokicki said his day shifts now are 12-hours long, and his schedule involves working 84 hours over a 2-week period. He patrols two different parts of town for six hours while on duty.

"Switching like this you get to know the streets and become aware of what's going on across the town instead of in just one part," Rothenbach said.

A positive change has been technology available to assist police in doing their jobs.

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"The equipment is better by leaps and bounds," Rothenbach said.

Overall, Rothenbach said he enjoys helping people and the camaraderie of the department. What he's seeing more of compared to when he started is a sense of entitlement among people, particularly teens and young adults, he encounters on cases, incidents and traffic stops.

"When you talk to their parents, you can see where they get it." Rothenbach said.

Rothenberg's wife, Linda, said her husband is a person who does things by the book and who is respected and admired by her four children. Retirement will mean a good deal less stress for her husband, she said, and she is glad he won't have to face what can police work can bring.

"I'm happy for him," Linda Rothenbach said.

On the horizon, the couple will be doing a good deal of babysitting for two-month-old granddaughter, Selena Rose, at their Elgin home, they said.

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"And he'll be visiting the nearby Home Depot a lot," Linda Rothenbach said.

When asked about Rothenbach and his upcoming retirement South Elgin Deputy Police Chief Randy Endean jokingly said, "Who?"

Endean noted he joined the department a year after Rothenbach, and he worked with Rothenbach from the get-go.

"I learned that he's a pretty good cook," Endean said. "I know he still believes in doing the job well and in putting in the effort. And he is the senior patrolman for the department," Endean said.

mdanahey@tribpub.com
Iain Bady, 12, speaks to the Evanston City Council on Aug. 14, while his father, Robert Bady, stands behind him at the podium. ( Genevieve Bookwalter/Pioneer Press )

An Evanston 12-year-old was arrested, put in a police wagon and taken to the police station after officers saw him riding on the back of a bicycle that went through a red light, the boy's father said.

"I realize and recognize we need police. But why are we arresting a 12-year old?" said Robert Bady, whose son, Iain, 12, was arrested in downtown Evanston after riding on the back pegs of his friend's BMX bike July 14.

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Bady spoke at the Evanston City Council meeting Aug. 14, telling aldermen he was upset his son, who is African-American, faced such serious consequences over something so minor.

"What did he do that was so egregious?" asked Bady.

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He ran for 8th Ward alderman in April, losing to the longtime incumbent by only 13 votes, according to election results from the Cook County Clerk's office.

Bady wondered what, other than race, could have prompted officers to arrest the boy instead of talking to him or taking him to his parents' home.

The episode began, according to Iain Bady, after he and another friend got on the back pegs and handlebars, respectively, of a third friend's bicycle for a ride from Burger King to Starbucks downtown.

"I do realize now that was a poor decision. I did not know it would get me arrested," Iain Bady said.

The friend controlling the bicycle "drove straight into traffic against the light, making two cars slam on the brakes and honk at us," Iain Bady acknowledged.

The police followed Iain Bady into Starbucks, he said, and arrested him. They did not arrest the boy who was controlling the bike, he said.

Officers told Bady he could not call his sister, who was also downtown, but instead told him he would be taken to the station, where his parents would need to pick him up, he said.

Evanston Police Commander Joseph Dugan confirmed that the boy had been arrested and said the episode was under investigation. He declined to comment further except to say that the officers who arrested Iain Bady were not put on leave during the investigation.

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Police declined to immediately provide a copy of the police report. Documents provided by Bady state that his son was issued a citation/summons for "bicycles obstructing traffic."

"Iain Bady was taken into protective custody after behaving dangerously on a bicycle," the police report Bady provided reads. "He was taken to (the) Evanston Police Department for his safety."

According to the department's Conditions of Formal Station Adjustment, Bady was referred to juvenile court. Additional direction included, "don't ride bikes recklessly in traffic."

Bady said he now needs to retain an attorney.

"I'm not saying my son wasn't doing anything wrong by riding on the back of a bike across the street," Bady said. But, he added, a better strategy would have been for the officers to talk to the kids.

"My son wasn't kicking, he wasn't shooting, he wasn't spitting on an officer. He was just standing" when officers approached him at Starbucks, Bady said. He noted that his son did not talk back to police, was not shoplifting or hanging out with kids who do.

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"Make an apology and say you're sorry ... Sorry goes a long way," he said.

After the meeting, Bady called his reaction to the arrest a "slow boil," with him gradually becoming more upset as it sunk in what had happened.

"Evanston is not the most liveable city for me," Bady said. "He was just downtown being a kid."

Ald. Peter Braithwaite, 2nd Ward, extended his sympathies to the Bady family.

"I could not imagine in my worst nightmares having to deal with these circumstances," Braithwaite said. "Under no circumstances does this begin to live up to Evanston standards."

Ald. Cicely Fleming, 9th Ward, also shared her support for the Badys.

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"I hold our police department to a very high standard," Fleming said. "I am committed to making sure we do a full investigation, which does ideally include an apology for the behavior that was displayed to your son."

Bady said his reasoning in coming before the City Council was to draw attention to the different set of circumstances an African-American child might face when encountering police.

"I just want you to realize, and the city to realize, what a hazard it is to be a black male," Bady said.

gbookwalter@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GenevieveBook
Gov. Bruce Rauner came to Lake County on Friday, his third visit since the July floods, to announce that officials from the state and federal government would be doing flood assessments over the weekend. (Frank Abderholden / News-Sun)

Gov. Bruce Rauner joined local officials Friday at Meyer's Bayview Terrace subdivision on Pistakee Lake to announce a push for more flood damage assessments, while federal and state emergency management agency officials were planning to spend the weekend going door-to-door checking with homeowners.

Rauner's visit Friday to Fox Lake marked the governor's third trip to Lake County since the July flooding, including previous stops in Gurnee and a Round Lake Park elementary school.

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"We're here for a single reason, to start the recovery process and get people the resources they need," Rauner said, while announcing that federal and state officials would be in town over the weekend.

Representatives from the federal Small Business Administration also were there.

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Rauner said 300 homes in Lake County sustained near catastrophic damages, while another 3,000 homes were significantly impacted by the flooding. Several officials said the state's overall financial damage from last month's flooding  including Lake, McHenry, Kane and northern Cook County  should tally enough to trigger federal help from the SBA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"I'm hopeful," Illinois Emergency Management Agency director James Joseph said.

The threshold for government and business flood damage is set at $18.2 million, Rauner said.

"We don't have that yet, but the preliminary survey says we may have enough," Rauner said.

Damages such as what occurred at three schools in the Round Lake area, which totaled more than over $3 million, and damages to Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, which had to move people out of its new hospital after a power failure caused by flooding, can only be counted if the damage was not covered by insurance, officials said. Both the schools and the hospital have said they had insurance, so only deductibles can count toward the total damage, officials said.

Federal Emergency Management Agency officials go door-to-door Friday in the Meyer's Bayview Terrace subdivision off Route 12 on the south side of Fox Lake. Heather Wilinski, part of the FEMA assessment team, takes a picture of an electrical outlet that had been under water. The residents were not home. (Frank Abderholden / News-Sun)

"Please quantify your damage and get it documented," Rauner said. "We need your help."

Joseph said the state is still validating damages, and the process took longer because of the amount of time it took for flood waters to subside.

"We do believe we'll qualify, but we need accurate information to give to the federal government," Joseph said.

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Lake County Board Chairman Aaron Lawlor said in that the 2013 flood the county had no problem meeting the government/business threshold, but not the individual threshold. This time it's the opposite, he said.

"We had a lot of homes that were damaged by the flash flooding," Lawlor said.

Fox Lake Mayor Donny Schmit said the village spent $400,000 in manpower and materials to help residents fight the flood.

"We get $3 million in sales tax and as you can see that takes a chunk out of it. We won't know the full impact on the businesses until we can compare the sales tax this year compared to last year," he said, adding that would indicate how much business was lost because of flooding.

After the governor left, officials started going door-to-door in the subdivision asking residents about flood damage.

"I'm going through stuff," said Steve Frech of Palatine who has a summer home in the subdivision. He told visiting officials that about half the people he knows are "weekenders."

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Frech said he didn't get water in his house, but it filled up his crawlspace and he had about a foot in the garage.

"I was lucky," he said, recounting to officials how his one neighbor, who was not home, had to tear out cabinets and lots of drywall because water got into the house.

"I have flood insurance, but there's a $5,000 deductible. I'm not sure I'm going to make that call," he said.

"This was pretty much the equivalent of 2013," he said of the last record flood on the Fox River Chain O'Lakes.

fabderholden@tribpub.com

Twitter @abderholden
Students at Naperville North and Central high schools will wear special glasses Monday to watch the solar eclipse in assemblies being held in their schools respective sports stadiums. (Scott G Winterton / AP )

Some Naperville schools are using Monday's eclipse as a teachable moment since the last total solar eclipse visible in the United States happened in 1979, way before any of today's students were born.

In Naperville, residents will experience a partial eclipse at 1:19 p.m. when the moon will block about 90 percent of the sun. Downstate the entire disk of the sun is to be covered by the moon.

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Schoolwide events are planned at Naperville District 203's two high schools but how the solar phenomena is viewed at the elementary and junior high schools is being left to the discretion of the principals and teachers.

Michelle Fregoso, District 203's director of communications, said district officials have worked closely with eye-care professionals to ensure safety protocols and procedures are in place. Permission slips went out to the parents of students at schools where outdoor viewing events are planned, she said.

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The solar event will be live-streamed for students who don't have parental permission and for children in younger grade levels who are apt to look straight at the sun without eye protection.

Naperville Central's eclipse programming will start during morning announcements with a five-minute video explaining the science, history, safety and why this eclipse is so special, science teacher Katherine Seguino said.

As the eclipse viewing time gets closer, Naperville Central students will be move to the stadium, where they'll listen to a musical play list created for the occasion and watch the eclipse through filtered glasses.

Seguino said teachers also are encouraged to tie the eclipse into their curriculum for the day.

A similar all-school assembly is planned concurrently in the stadium at Naperville North.

The school's student government purchased eclipse glasses for all high school students. They'll be distributed before students head outdoors.

Besides the assembly, Naperville Central independent study students taught by Seguino are setting up an experiment to measure cosmic ray activity during the eclipse.

The students built a special apparatus to aim the muon neutrino detectors correctly.

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Seguino said the device will be placed on the school's roof early in the morning so it can monitor cosmic rays before, during and after the solar event. Data collected will be uploaded and shared with an international data bank at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia.

Because students in Indian Prairie District 204 don't start school until Thursday, no events are planned, not even at the Waubonsie Valley High School Planetarium, district officials said.

Planetarium Director Stephanie Rybka will be more than 300 miles away, watching the eclipse from ground zero in Southern Illinois.

"As most of you know, I have travel plans to be in the path of totality on Aug. 21 to experience this phenomena for the first time," Rybka said in a message she sent two weeks ago.

Her trip south was planned more than a year ago.

The Waubonsie astronomy and biology teacher said she is staying outside of Carbondale to avoid the congestion that is expected in that community.

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Updates on her adventure will be posted to Facebook at WVHSPlanetarium and Twitter @WVHSPlanetarium.

subaker@tribpub.com

Twitter @SBakerSun1
Preservationists had their chance

Recent articles about the status of old Nichols Library illustrate yet again what is wrong in this country. We look at our federal and state governments and wonder why they are in gridlock. Nobody is willing to compromise.

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Is it any surprise we are seeing the same thing happen in Naperville?

Old Nichols Library sat around for years, and nobody cared about it, much less enough to seek landmark status for it.

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So along comes a developer who proposes a compromise solution: develop the property but retain its external appearance.

Now, after the developer has invested a lot of money into this project, there is an uproar to preserve the building.

Where were you people when the library building was for sale? Are you now going to buy back this property from the developer? Or are you going to pay for the inevitable lawsuit the developer will bring when you try to grab the property for landmark preservation? Are you going to do this with my taxpayer money? I hope not.

Preservationists had their chance and blew it. Now they want to try again. Sorry, it's too late. We have a good compromise solution. Like most compromises, not everyone gets their way. But it is far better than the alternative of paying a lot of money to get the building back, paying a lot of money to restore the building and paying a lot of money to maintain the building in the future.

Ray Schomas, Naperville

Library is special, but not a gem

I read with interest Joni Hirsch Blackman's article comparing the old Nichols Library with Chicago's Reliance Building. The latter Burnham and Root structure is a highlight of many architectural history books. With its terra cotta facade and Chicago-style windows, it was one of the first structural steel high-rise structures after the Chicago Fire.

When I began working in Chicago in the 1970s, I was disappointed to find its upper floors vacant and a "1940s commercial" facade replacing the original facade for the first two floors. In 1970, the Reliance Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was not till decades later in the 1990s that I was pleased to read of its planned restoration as it would then join the ranks of its neighbors Marshall Fields and Carson Pirie Scott.

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To compare this gem with the old Nichol's Library is a stretch, as is the suggestion that our mayor should be a champion of the library building's proposed restoration. The old Nichols Library with its architecturally disappointing mid-century addition is not an architectural gem but rather a sentimental memory for those who have long lived in Naperville.

It's the library where my children first learned about the world of books. In that respect, it is special. Whatever the City Council decides, some will be happy and some will be sad. I hope none are angry.

Don Russell, Naperville

Make library a landmark with purpose

What to do with the old Nichols Library? It is an important part of Naperville's history and looks to be solidly constructed and an architecturally interesting building.

It needs to be landmarked and put to some useful purpose such as a museum or taken over by the Park District for programs, maybe art, dance studios, day care or other programs or offices.

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Other possibilities are commercial development lawyers, architects, real estate agents and dentists.

Thomas Cechner, Lockport

It's time for Naperville to honor the past

In regard to the old Nichols Library in Naperville, it could be reused as a genealogical library. Genealogical libraries like the Newberry in Chicago, Allen County Library in Fort Wayne, Ind., and the Wisconsin Historical Society Library in Madison are popular sites that draw genealogists from a wide area.

With Naperville's many amenities, it could be an asset to the city. Societies like the Fox Valley Genealogical Society, the DuPage Genealogical Society, Naper Settlement and others would probably come on to help. This library could be an adjunct of the Naperville library system or Naper Settlement. To alleviate confusion with the other library, it could be called the Joseph Naper Historical Center.

Demolition and throwing up another ugly, high-density, ticky-tacky slab of concrete downtown to satisfy greedy developers is pathetic. Why doesn't Naperville try to protect its past traditions? Try actual planned growth, instead of turning the city over to developers. We are already losing period homes to McMansions. It's time to honor the past.

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Jeffrey Crowell, Naperville

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For eight days, Lake County Sheriff John Buncich occupied a seat at the defense table in the U.S. Federal Court for the Northern District of Indiana.

Flanked by his two defense attorneys, Buncich listened intently to his former chief of police, tow operators, FBI and IRS agents, a co-worker, a Carmelite nun and a mental health worker. Buncich took notes, passed messages to his attorneys and quietly spoke to them through the proceedings of his criminal trial.

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On Thursday, Buncich, 71, assumed a new position in the courtroom: the witness stand.

In a criminal case, the defendant does not have to take the stand, said Joseph Hoffmann, a law professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law  it's a choice.

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In his testimony, Buncich sought to tell the jurors just how tow operations work and describe how he only did legitimate campaign fundraising, but legal experts say the decision to step onto the witness stand has its benefits and risks.

The defense may choose to put a defendant on the stand if the persons seem like an unusual defendant with no criminal history, Hoffmann said.

"One reason they might do it is they have someone who is in an unusual position, someone who is an upstanding citizen who is suddenly charged with a crime," Hoffmann said. "Why would this person suddenly commit a crime when they haven't in the past?"

While a defendant could make for a bad witness, others could be beneficial, such as someone who is persuasive or sympathetic to a jury, he said. Hypothetically, an abused wife who lashes out at an abusive husband and is charged could draw sympathy from the jury, Hoffmann said.

In some cases, it's the defendant himself who wants to take the stand, Hoffmann said, despite what attorneys may recommend.

"At the end, the lawyer cannot prevent the defendant from taking the stand," Hoffmann said. "It's the defendant's choice because they're the one on trial."

On the stand, Buncich insisted he never offered tow jobs in exchange for campaign contributions, and discussed how territory was changed.

Defense attorney Larry Rogers asked the sheriff if any of the tow operators had to pay to get on the list when Buncich took office in 2011.

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"Absolutely not," Buncich said.

Did they pay anyone else, Rogers asked.

"No, sir," Buncich said.

Rogers asked Buncich if he ever did anything that would have benefited either William "Willie" Szarmach, of C.S.A. Towing in Lake Station, or Scott Jurgensen, of Samson's Towing in Merrilliville.

"No," Buncich said.

A document prepared by Buncich and one of his defense attorneys showed the percentage each tow company got of jobs from 2012 to 2016.

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The percentages of towing jobs that Szarmach and Jurgensen received remained level, according to that analysis. From 2012-16, Jurgensen got between 8 percent and 9 percent of the tow jobs, according to documents presented in court, and Szarmach ranged from 8 percent to 14 percent during those five years.

After nearly a day and a half of being questioned by his defense attorney, Buncich was turned over to Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Benson for questioning.

Benson questioned some of Buncich's practices, such as listing cash contributions as anonymous or accepting money while working in his county office. Buncich stood by his choices, saying there was no wrongdoing.

Hoffmann said when defendants open themselves up to prosecutors, it can create problems or risk bringing up information that might not have been introduced at trial otherwise.

"Probably the main reason why a criminal defendant chooses not to take the stand is because if they become a witness in their own trial, they open up the question of their credibility," Hoffmann said.

Hoffmann said most people who are accused of wrongdoing are guilty of either that crime or something similar, but that's not to say every defendant is guilty. Buncich has maintained his innocence since his indictment.

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Hoffmann said the question is, "Are they going to be persuasive in trying to tell the jury that they didn't do it?"

Throughout Friday, Benson peppered Buncich with questions about his fundraising habits.

Given the sheriff's ethical obligations, Benson asked if he saw a problem with the people he supervised going to sell campaign fundraiser tickets to county vendors.

Buncich said he only had a problem if those people are on duty.

"It's no different than any other office in Lake County," Buncich said. "Every elected official in Lake County does it."

Benson asked if Buncich had a problem directing people to go out and try to solicit those vendors.

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"I do not," Buncich said.

At a criminal trial, attorneys and a defendant have to make a decision about whether to question the accused. Just as that is a choice, the defense doesn't even have to present a case, Hoffmann said, and simply just make opening and closing arguments.

"Your starting position is, let's make the prosecution prove this case under reasonable doubt, and let's not give them any help," Hoffmann said. "The burden is completely on the prosecution."

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A passerby stops to take a picture of the statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas Stonewall Jackson at the West Virginia State Capitol Complex on Wednesday in Charleston, W.Va. At a protest on Aug. 13, around 200 people gathered on the State Capitol complex asking the statue be removed in light of the recent tragedy in Charlottesville, Va. (Ty Wright / Getty Images )

As statues and monuments to Confederate soldiers and generals across the country are being removed, or could be, debate about the practice is ratcheting up.

In the art and history communities, experts are considering whether removing sculptures that may be viewed as public art addresses the more difficult and longstanding issues surrounding race in the United States.

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"It is a hot topic," said Christopher Young, associate history professor at Indiana University Northwest in Gary. "I think that when the statues are conceived, created and erected, they reflect the society or the group that conceives it, pays for it and erects it."

Communities across the country have either decided, or are considering proposals, to remove Confederate memorials following the deadly protests regarding the proposed removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlotteseville, Va., that left one woman dead and injured others.

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President Donald Trump has called Confederate memorials, most of them actually erected decades after the Civil War, "beautiful statues" that reflect "our nation's history and culture."

Such monuments, Young said, are typically paid for through private donations, a community organization or wealthy benefactor and then donated back to the community, at which time they become public pieces.

The response to those monuments, Young said, offers a similar reflection of that point in time.

"The response either reflects the community or a particular group in that community," he said.

Such statues, including those commemorating the Civil War, are often put up decades after the fighting was done.

Workers strap down the monument dedicated to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney on a flatbed truck after it was removed from outside the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Md., early Friday. ( Jose Luis Magana/AP )

"They want the future to remember what they thought was good," Young said, adding the statues are typically large, heavy and thought to be sturdy, "guaranteeing that they'll remain. Of course, that's not always the case."

While such statues are garnering opposition now, that's likely not something new, he said. "Maybe people were offended by the statues but didn't feel like they had a voice" to oppose them at the time, he said.

Those voices are no longer silent, and Young said art always has the potential to offend and often becomes a flashpoint that has meaning for people.

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Even whether such statues should be considered art is up for debate.

Aimee Tomasek, chair of Valparaiso University's art department, said she agreed with Trevor Schoonmaker, chief curator of Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, N.C., on that perspective, and offered a quote from him from a few days ago:

"You can argue that any sculpture is art in some way, but it's a loose argument. I don't know that these statues are worthy of preservation as art objects so much as historical objects  made to preserve a lost cause, a lost war. They weren't made with great artistic intent, but with political intent. And intent matters in this case."

Calling the statues art and arguing they should remain in place for that reason is "really stretching the argument along," said Liz Wuerffel, associate art professor at VU.

Whether the statues are art or not doesn't matter to Wuerffel, who is more interested in whom the statues are of, why they were put up, and the intended impact.

"I think those are good questions no matter what," she said. "In this case, it seems to be about continuing a legacy of white supremacy."

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There are many legitimate responses to the statues, including moving them to museums or other locations, or putting up additional plaques or monuments to provide more clarity, "and taking them down is one of them," Wuerffel said.

Two people in the arts community in Northwest Indiana declined to comment for this story, given the controversial nature of the topic, though one woman said opinion on public art changes over time, and yesterday's heroes are often today's villains.

Monuments of Robert E. Lee represent a war, and the public understanding of that war is often rooted in slavery versus anti-slavery, Wuerffel said.

"In this case, we are reminding people of white supremacy, so we should remove them," or put up additional information to provide historical context, she said, adding that casting Civil War generals as heroes through statuary is problematic.

Young, however, thinks it should be up to a community to decide what to do with its Civil War monuments.

The issues of race from the Civil War are back on the radar, he said, and the monuments built so people wouldn't forget the Confederate leaders of the war are now getting more notice.

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"It's an interesting issue and it gets into history and memory, and maybe it hasn't all fallen into history because it is still very raw for people," he said.

Taking down the statues, Wuerffel said, is removing symbols, but policies and practices have to change as well.

"That's where the hard work is," she said, adding as an artist, she sees all sides of the issue.

Almost three years ago, an art installation of life-size sculptures on the VU campus meant to represent unity and connections despite differences had the opposite effect.

"Borders," a collection of 11 sculptures made of cast iron and aluminum, was an exhibit by Icelandic artist Steinunn Thorarinsdottir. A group of anonymous students wrote a letter to the Torch, VU's student newspaper, to say the statues didn't highlight cultural diversity but polarization between Caucasians, represented by the silver statues, and other races, represented by the bronze statues.

Students put plastic bags on the heads of some of the sculptures, and used rubber bands to put signs that say "I Can't Breathe" and "Black Lives Matter" on others. None of the statues was damaged, and university officials allowed both the statues and the signs of protest to remain.

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The artist's point at the time, Wuerffel said, was to instill conversation, and the reaction to the artwork was a reflection of the time, which included racial struggles with police across the country.

Those statues, she said, are different from those put up to remember the Confederacy.

"Civil War Confederate soldiers and generals are being put up by white Southerners who want to keep reminding the public of this time," she said. "I think when it comes to public art, it's in a public space and the public gets to react.

"The vast majority is saying, 'We realize these are unacceptable.'"

The Associated Press contributed.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Becky Manis, executive director of the Challenger Learning Center in Hammond, shows off a pair of solar eclipse viewing glasses it received from NASA. (Meredith Colias / Post-Tribune )

For almost five months since the Hammond's Challenger Learning Center received its stock of solar glasses, Becky Manis estimated only 10 pairs were sold.

Last week, it sold 3,000. It is now out of them.

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"I've never seen anything like this," said Manis, the center's executive director since 2011. "Nobody bought any, then all of a sudden, it's crazy."

Manis, who first was hired there in 1999, said interest in Monday's eclipse is among the highest she has seen in an astrological event. She will travel to South Carolina to view a total eclipse where the sun is 100 percent blocked.

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With millions nationwide expected to view the solar eclipse, viewing glasses are in short supply in Northwest Indiana.

By Friday, local retailers and gas stations including Best Buy, Toys 'R Us, Pilot Flying J and Casey's General Store said they had sold out of the glasses.

Expect four hours of pageantry, from the time the sun begins to be eclipsed by the moon near Lincoln City, Ore., until the time the moon's shadow vanishes near Charleston, S.C. NASA will emcee the whole show, via TV and internet from that coastal city.

Sure, full solar eclipses happen every one to three years, when the moon positions itself between the sun and Earth. But these take-your-breath-away eclipses usually occur in the middle of the ocean somewhere, or near the sparsely populated top or bottom of the world. In two years, Chile, Argentina and the empty South Pacific will share top billing.

The United States is in the bull's-eye this time.

It will be the first total solar eclipse in 99 years to cross coast-to-coast and the first to pass through any part of the lower 48 states in 38 years.

As interest peaks, area school districts have taken different approaches to handling eye safety.

At Lake Central High School, students will be provided solar glasses to view the eclipse until 1:45 p.m., Principal Sean Begley said. School officials are expecting about 2,700 of the school's 3,200 students to participate.

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Preventing permanent retina damage has been a concern from parents, he said.

Lake Central has screened safety videos, sent permission slips home and bought 3,400 pairs of glasses from Thousand Oaks Optical with a grant from the Lake Central Education Association.

"We've been planning this since last year," he said.

Begley noted in a letter to parents that the glasses were bought from a company approved by the American Astronomical Society.

Earlier this month, school officials at a suburban Chicago high school canceled plans for 1,900 students to view the eclipse after it bought potentially faulty glasses through an online service.

Begley said he expected some students might even be headed to the totality path. The school had considered organizing a trip but was worried it wouldn't be worth the cost if there was bad weather.

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Freelance reporter Carole Carlson and The Associated Press contributed.

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Twitter @meredithcolias
As I began college, I attended a large assembly of new students. I remember the speaker at the time saying, Look to your right, and look to your left. Each of those persons will not be here in four years. In other words, two of the three people who were starting would not finish. I assume at the time it was supposed to be a motivating factor, and, for me, it was. But, those words also point to a problem about what college is, whether it has been oversold, and what other good options exist outside the college experience. Its time to ask the question: Is college worth it?

Lets look at both sides of the question. As studies document, in the long term, college education creates the conditions for higher levels of attainment (measured by earnings). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, holders of four-year bachelor degrees earn over $1 million more in their lifetimes than do high school graduates. Moreover, college, when fully engaged, provides a great gift: the opportunity to gain knowledge about higher things and probe deeper meanings  including the wisdom of the ages, the nobility of the arts and the reservoir of scientific understanding  in order to better oneself and the world. All of this is good. Clearly, college has the potential to enhance the human experience and effectively position a person for advancement.

Now, lets look at another answer to the question. College is not the be-all and end-all of human existence, as some would have you believe. In fact, it is now a place where many students become frustrated, waste time, waste money and confront an ideological environment that can be hostile. A place of enormous promise, but, increasingly, a place where its exorbitant and soaring cost might not justify the potential earning benefits of particular degrees. A place where isolation and loneliness can be real. Where pressures mount amid human unraveling.

On the price equation, underwriting the cost of education through student loans has placed enormous debts on recent graduates, some of whom have limited means to pay those debts back. At $1.3 trillion, student loan debt is now the second-highest category of consumer debt, surpassing auto loan and credit card debt. The average student from the Class of 2016 owes around $37,000 in loans. Over 2 million borrowers have student loan debt above $100,000. The student loan default rate sits at 11.2 percent. This is why I often caution young students to not exceed a standard car loan in terms of indebtedness.

Today, positive changes in vocational education, along with innovative partnerships with paid apprentice programs, are creating extraordinary options for young people. With a trade focus beginning in high school (combined with community college), in-demand trades like welding, machine operation and electromechanical tech can earn a person $30,000 to $50,000 right out of school. A dedicated person can quickly evolve to be a master craftsman, making $60,000 to $80,000 a year. The top craftsmen make over $100,000 a year. All right here in Nebraska.

In its ideal form, education, not just college, should be about wonder. That means, at its core, advanced education should engender an authentic commitment to the whole person, and a daily renewal and alignment of the will, the mind, and the imagination to that which humbly serves all of humanity.

So, to answer the question  Is college worth it?  it depends. For some, the revived and noble idea of becoming an American craftsman, or working in other service fields, is a great pathway that comes with the reward of knowing how to make things. For others, a four-year college is an appropriate investment in intellectual and self formation. Over time, I obtained three degrees. As my family often teased me, Jeffrey would study for a blood test.
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.




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.
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Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli Friday met with Saudi Arabian Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid al-Falih in Beijing, agreeing to advance industrial capacity and investment cooperation.

Zhang will visit Saudi Arabia next week and co-chair the second meeting of a high-level steering committee for coordinating bilateral cooperation between China and Saudi Arabia with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

China-Saudi Arabia relations have entered a fast lane of full development, said Zhang.

China supports Saudi Arabia's efforts to safeguard stability and security and is willing to implement a list of major cooperative projects in industrial capacity and investment under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, he said.

China supports Saudi Arabia to diversify its economy, said Zhang.

"I expect to visit Saudi Arabia next week and discuss with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman policy coordination and alignment of development strategies between the two sides," he said.

Al-Falih said Saudi Arabia cherishes the traditional friendship with China and is ready to make full use of the high-level steering committee to promote the docking of the Belt and Road Initiative with the "Saudi Vision 2030" growth strategy, so as to bring more benefits to people of the two countries.
Construction workers clean a newly completed property project in Qingdao, Shandong province. [Photo by Yu Fangping/China Daily]

China's buoyant property market showed further signs of cooling down, according to official data which were released on Friday.

Data published by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that the pace of price growth of new homes in 15 key cities across China continued to slow in July, and second and third-tier cities showed a clear decline in price growth.

Liu Jianwei, senior statistician at the NBS, said that looking at the overall picture, home prices in first-tier cities were stable, while price growth in lower-tier cities slowed down obviously in July.

"Home price growth in the 15 key cities narrowed by somewhere between 0.8 and 4.9 percentage points year-on-year," Liu said, interpreting the NBS research which monitors home prices in 70 cities on a monthly basis.

On a month-on-month examination, 10 of the 15 key cities experienced new home prices dropping, or maintained prices at the same level as that in June. Five cities experienced slight growth, at no more than 0.4 percent month-on-month, Liu added.

On average, in first-tier cities new home prices were at the same level in July as in June, and pre-owned home prices dropped some 0.1 percent month-on-month. In second-tier cities, new home prices rose some 0.4 percent month-on-month in July, slower than the 0.6 percent record in June.

In third-tier cities, new home prices rose 0.6 percent month-on-month in Julyversus the 0.9 percent record growth in June. Pre-owned home prices rose 0.4 percent, against the 0.7 percent record gain in June.

BeijingChina's biggest residential property marketexperienced home price declines for two consecutive months, the first time for the capital in the past 12 months.

Transaction volumes also went down in some key cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. For example, 7,158 units in pre-owned residential properties in Beijing were transacted in July, a 20 percent month-on-month decrease and 70 percent year-on-year decline, and the lowest level in the past 36 months.

"Summer is often the slack season for property transactions, so this seasonal factor also contributed to the lower transactions", said Zhang Dawei, an analyst with Centaline Property in Beijing.

"But if transactions continue to drop, average prices are likely to drop too," Zhang added.

Yan Yuejin, research director with E-house China R&D, said that transaction volumes would gradually impact the overall price trend.

"More cities are likely to experience average price declines in the last months of the year," he said.
China's securities regulator has refused 46 A-share initial public offering applications this year, exceeding the total amount for the previous four years, a move to promote the reform of the registration-based IPO system and guarantee steady development of the stock market.

The 46 vetoes represent 13.6 percent of the 338 Chinese IPO applications reviewed through Aug 15 by China Securities Regulatory Commission, according to data from Wind, an information service provider.

The veto rate for each year from 2013 to 2016 was no higher than 7 percent.

For example, Zhuhai Topsun Electronic Technology Co, a supplier of flexible circuit boards, was not approved for listing because of questions about its connected transactions and high gross margin. Tibet New Boom Co, a chain enterprise operating its major business in home decoration, was asked to make clear whether its downward figures would have an impact on its ability to sustain profits.

"China's securities regulator is paying more attention to the authenticity and compliance of IPO documents as well as lowering the threshold of IPO applications, which are the two main reasons for the increasing number of and higher veto rate," said Dong Dengxin, a finance professor at Wuhan University of Science and Technology.

Dong said the moves by the China Securities Regulatory Commission are important for maintaining a regular pace of IPOs and promoting the reform of the registration-based IPO system.

"With more companies applying for IPOs and higher requirements on information disclosure, Chinese stock market will cultivate more excellent listed enterprises," Dong said.

Li Shuguang, a law professor at China University of Political Science and Law specializing in the securities market, said the Chinese government will be especially careful to maintain financial stability before the 19th National Congress of the CPC, which is one reason for stricter IPO examination and approval processes.

"China's securities regulator may also be experimenting (with) new regulations as the Securities Law being revised adds more content on information disclosure," Li said.

Wind data also showed that one third of the refused IPO applications were from companies with annual net profit lower than 30 million yuan ($4.48 million).

Dong said the regulator prefers companies with higher net profits because it can guarantee the interests of investors. But in the future, qualified companies with lower profits or even those with losses should be allowed to go public in the Chinese stock market.

The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges saw a surge of IPOs in the first half of 2017 as the securities regulator stepped up the pace of the approval process to clear the long queue of companies waiting to get listed.

There were 246 companies listed on the Chinese A-share market in the first half, raising 125.5 billion yuan, up by 336 percent year-on-year, according to accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
BEIJING  For almost 30 years, Dong Qiaofeng has sold tahini, an essential for many cold Chinese dishes, noodles and hot pot, at Beijing's Sanyuanli Market.

Until recently, her home-made sesame oil and tahini were the only things she sold, then she realized many of her customers were foreigners, with different tastes and expectations.

Now, her booth, only about 18 square meters, is filled with hundreds of seasonings from France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Thailand.

The home-made sesame oil and tahini now lurk under the cashier's desk, for special customers only.

"Few buy them except my regulars. I would have been destitute had I not caught on to the new trend," she said.

Luxuries no more

Located in the embassy district of Chaoyang, Sanyuanli Market is a place where you can hear 100 languages in a single day. Foreigners from everywhere from Norway to Zimbabwe, from Bolivia to Fiji, congregate there in search of a taste of home; perhaps just one simple ingredient for a signature dish that they can't find anywhere else, perhaps for giant halibut or organic suckling pig.

Since China first opened its doors, albeit just a crack in the late 1970s, the portal has grown wider and wider and imported goods have flooded in as much as Chinese products have streamed out.

An Yuwei, 21, has bought cream, cheese and some baking parchment at the market. A university junior, she fell in love with baking during a summer vacation and heads to the market almost every week with her mother.

"Here, we can find almost anything we need," she said.

Imported products were a luxury in China forty years ago. Finding them was difficult: Paying for them was next to impossible.

The Beijing Friendship Store was just about the only place that sold imported goods, but it was not about maple syrup or turmeric. It was more like motorcycles and televisions from Japan, or whisky from Scotland.

Premier Zhou Enlai was instrumental in setting up the store in 1964 to cater to the demands of foreign guests, and only holders of foreign passports were even allowed into the store until 1990.

Back then, according to Wang Bingzhi, current Party chief of the store, instead of the Chinese yuan, the store only accepted foreign exchange certificates (FEC) - paper notes bought with foreign currency through banks.

"During the planned economy when resources were limited, we were obliged to meet our foreign guests' needs first, to show the friendliness of our country," he said.

Wang said even when Chinese people managed to find a way into the store, very few of them had the wherewithal to afford such alien opulence.

"A 12-inch black-and-white Sanyo television set was sold for 500 yuan in FEC in the early 1980s," he recalled.

The annual per capita disposable income in urban China was only 477 yuan in 1980. As a comparison, the average US per capita income at that time was around $12,000. Not only that, but for a Chinese citizen to obtain FECs they had to pay 50 percent to 80 percent over the odds on the black market.

The biggest market in the world

Things have changed a little since then. China has turned into the world's second largest economy and the largest market. What was a "luxury" has become a commonplace, even a necessity.

Supermarkets, shopping centers and online shopping platforms overflow with foreign goods. With their ubiquitous smartphones, Chinese people can import items ranging from automobiles to apricots while they take the subway home and have them delivered to their doorstep a few days - or even hours - later.

This summer alone, over 3,300 metric tons of fruit from North America, including blueberries and cherries, passed through Zhengzhou airport in central China's Henan province. The airport has round-the-clock customs clearance for fruit, which is then distributed across the country.

Cargo trains have been running between China and European cities since 2011. Earlier this year, the 4,000th such train crossed the border.

Initially seen as an efficient way of delivering Chinese goods to the marketplace, last year more than 50 percent trains returned loaded with previously unheard of delights such as baby formula from the Netherlands, cosmetics from Austria and Spanish wine.

The China e-commerce research center said e-commerce imports rose by a third to 1.2 trillion yuan in 2016. The amount is expected to exceed 1.8 trillion yuan this year, according to Cao Lei, director of the center.

Despite the online shopping boom, a Sanyuanli Market manager Cui Zhongxin is confident about the market's future.

"Our products are better supervised with inspectors patrolling the aisles every day. Vendors accept mobile payments, take orders online and have goods delivered to the customers' door," he said.
The economic risk of "moving from real to virtual" has been preliminarily contained in China, according to the country's banking regulator.

"Like taking hold of the nose of an ox, we grasped the main problems in the banking sector, namely the interbank, wealth management and off-balance-sheet businesses," said Xiao Yuanqi, head of the prudential regulation bureau of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, at a media briefing on Friday.

"In the last few years, these businesses grew fast and even wild, lacking restraint. And the problem of money idling was most prominent in these fields, rather than having the money flowing into the real economy," he said.

Banking regulators have launched a series of efforts to restore orders in the chaos since the end of March. As a result, business operation of the banking industry is becoming more standardized, with a gradual reduction of non-standard activities.

In the first half of 2017, the size of interbank business shrank for the first time since 2010. As of the end of the second quarter, the balance of assets and liabilities of the interbank business both dropped by 1.8 trillion yuan ($270 billion), compared with the balance at the beginning of this year, a decrease of 5.6 percent and 2.3 percent respectively.

The balance of wealth management products also reduced by 1.9 trillion yuan since the beginning of rectification, with its year-on-year growth rate dropping to single digit as of June 30, according to the CBRC.

"We hope that the rectification efforts will give the most evident and direct support to the real economy while making the least adverse impact on it," Xiao said. "That's why we focused on the interbank, wealth management and off-balance-sheet businesses."

China's top officials highlighted the importance of the financial sector to the real economy at the National Financial Work Conference in July, reiterating that prevention and control of financial risks is essential for systemic health.

To better implement the decision, Xiao said the CBRC will add and revise about 20 regulations this year to fill up regulatory deficiencies after conducting thorough investigations and research, as well as communicating repeatedly with relevant government departments and industry players.
China's giant personal computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd posted a quarterly loss on Fridayblaming higher costs and sluggish sales in the personal computer and smartphone market.

The $72 million slide into the red for the three months ended June was its first quarterly loss since September 2015, and compared with a profit of $173 million for the same period last year.

The company said supply constraints for key components in the sector, as well as cost increases, would continue to bring short-term challenges in its business environment.

Lenovo recently lost its position as the world's biggest PC maker, as its rivals HP Inc and Dell Inc launched new models to win back customers. The Beijing-based company said in a statement that its revenue for the period was just over $10 billion, which was virtually unchanged year-on-year.

Revenue from its PC and smart device business group, which accounts for almost 70 percent of Lenovo's total income, came in at $7 billion, for flat year-over-year growth.

Its PC business in the June quarter recorded share gains in Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America, and shipped 12.4 million units worldwide, down 6 percent year-on-year. In its home market of China, Lenovo enjoyed an almost 36 percent market share.

According to a report by market consultancy IDC, in the first quarter Lenovo accounted for 20.4 percent of the world's PC market while HP had 21.8 percent share in terms of PC shipments.

Lenovo is betting on Moto and Lenovo-branded smartphones to revive its mobile unit, but remains outside the top five in its home market, IDC said. Sales in the mobile division saw a 2 percent year-on-year gain to $1.7 billion.

Its data center business group reported year-on-year revenue growth in Western Europe and North America of 11 percent and 8 percent respectively.

Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing is making efforts to rejuvenate its core PC business. The company has invited Liu Jun, its former executive vice-president to take charge of its biggest business sector, and has joined hands with e-commerce giant JD.com in a bid to sell 80 billion yuan ($12 billion) worth of consumer electronics within three years.

Lenovo also announced a $1.2 billion investment in AI research and development, and is pursuing smart solutions and partnerships in the manufacturing, healthcare and transportation sectors.

"Lenovo faces fierce competition in the global PC market as consumers turn to smartphones and tablets, which led to a decline in purchasing demand," said Jason Low, a tech industry analyst at Canalys.
JOHANNESBURG  South Africa's Absa bank and China Development Bank (CDB) on Friday announced the conclusion of a $100 million Special Facility Agreement to fund small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Africa.

Absa is a subsidiary of the Barclays Africa Group. The money will benefit Barclays bank's existing and prospective SME clients across the continent. The $100 million will address the current funding needs, and may be increased in the future to assist with new funding opportunities within Barclays's operations, both banks said on Friday.

"We are glad to partner with CDB on this landmark transaction, which also echoes the 2017 BRICS theme of Stronger Partnership for a Brighter Future," said Craig Bond, head of partnerships, joint ventures and strategic alliances at Barclays Africa Group Limited.

The funding is expected to assist the African SMEs who face funding shortages. SMEs on the continent have the potential to boost economic growth and create employment.
ZHENGZHOU  Cotton yarn futures, the first commodity futures contracts launched in China since 2016, have entered trading on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange (ZCE) in central China's Henan province Friday.

Fluctuations in cotton yarn prices have a direct impact on the profit and cost of upstream and downstream firms in the textile industry, which is a pillar industry of the national economy. The new futures contract will help investors mitigate risks of price volatility by obligating them to buy or sell cotton yarn at a predetermined price at a specific time.

Cotton yarn futures, as well as cotton futures and PTA futures, have formed a relatively complete futures system for textile raw materials, demonstrating a step forward for ZCE to build a global textile products futures trading and pricing center, said Chen Huaping, director of the ZCE.

The ZCE has launched 17 types of futures and one variety of options, covering agriculture, energy, chemical engineering and building materials.
BANGKOK  China and Thailand are working together to sign two contracts of the first phase of Thailand-China railway project in September to begin the construction work of the first section in October, Chinese Embassy in Bangkok said in a statement Saturday.

According to the statement, the two countries concluded negotiations of the contract of design work of the first phase of Thailand-China railway project and agreed on the price in the supervision contract during the 20th meeting of Joint Committee on Railway Cooperation between Thailand and China.

"It is a new significant progress that the project made after being approved by Thai cabinet and Thailand's National Legislative Assembly," the statement said.

It also mentioned that both sides had been required to accelerate their work to make it possible for the two sides to sign the two contracts in September and to begin the construction work of the first section in October.

The construction of first phase, or the 253 kilometers railway from Bangkok to Nakhon Ratchasima, will start gradually from the first 3.5 km section, the second 11 km section, the third 119 km section and finally the fourth 119 km section.

The railway project will also be further extended from Nakhon Ratchasima to Nong Khai on Thai-Lao border, which is called the second phase.

"The preparation work for the second phase of the project will start soon," the embassy said.

China and Thailand have held meetings of Joint Committee on Railway Cooperation for 20 times over the past two years, the statement said both sides have overcome many difficulties and solved many problems.

Chinese side will be responsible for the design work and supervision, which will incorporate many Thai engineers and architects while the Thais will be responsible for construction work. The project will also use Thai equipments and materials as much as possible.

Once finished, the project will be the first standard gauge high speed railway of the Thailand and the railway, according to the statement, "will improve Thailand's transport system, enforce its role as the transport hub in the region, boost economic growth in the country, especially its northeastern part, contribute to the Eastern Economic Corridor project and benefit other countries along the railway."
Ongoing support from health group sought for new services

Premier Li Keqiang meets with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday in Beijing. Tedros, elected to the position in May, said he was impressed with the healthcare reforms in China. WU ZHIYI/CHINA DAILY

Premier Li Keqiang called on Friday for ongoing support from the World Health Organization as China accelerates its effort to improve its delivery of basic healthcare and medical services.

The premier sought the support when speaking with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia, who is paying his first visit to Beijing. Tedros, who holds a PhD in community health, was elected the eighth WHO director-general for a five-year term in Geneva at the 70th World Health Assembly in May.

Li offered Tedros "a warm welcome" to China and congratulated him on his assumption of the office.

"You are the first African director-general in the almost 70-year history of the WHO. I think this is of high significance for enhancing healthcare for developing countries and improving health conditions of mankind."

Challenges of global healthcare go beyond national boundaries, Li said, as healthcare can benefit all people around the world. The Chinese government actively supports the work of the WHO and would like to strengthen cooperation with the organization as it relates to the Belt and Road Initiative, he said.

The premier said the country has been promoting the "Healthy China" campaign, deepening systematic reforms in medicine and healthcare and striving to provide its people with basic medical and healthcare services.

"I still remember your speech when you visited Ethiopia and the African Union. Thank you so much for your support. And I have a Chinese name now," said Tedros, whose Chinese name is Tan Desai.

The director-general said he was amazed by China's massive, rapid and high-quality healthcare and medicine reform.

Such transformations can be learned by other countries, he said.

Tedros noted the WHO appreciates contributions the Chinese government has made in promoting global healthcare and responding to major public health emergencies, including the Ebola epidemic and H1N1 influenza outbreaks.

The WHO is open to bringing strategic cooperation with China to a higher level and achieving better development of global healthcare, he said.

Li, who also has headed the leading group of deepening healthcare system reform for the State Council since 2013, has had many interactions with WHO officials. On July 28, he met with the former WHO director-general, Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, eight months after their meeting in Shanghai during the Ninth Global Conference on Health Promotion.

During that conference, Li pledged that China will continue its participation in a campaign promoting health and that it will provide healthcare aid to other developing countries.
As some provinces introduce or draft new regulations to provide leave to the only child of families to take care of ailing parents, doubts have emerged on the fairness of, and ability to implement, such regulations.

In recent weeks, provincial laws have been introduced or are being drafted in several regions nationwide. These require an employer to give at least three days' leave per year to an only child for taking care of sick parents who are older than 60.

On March 1, Fujian province included such a requirement in its Protection Act for Elderly People's Legal Rights. It allows an only child to have a maximum of 10 days, with wages paid, to take care of parents who have been hospitalized.

Similar regulations were introduced into the draft of the act in Hubei province in May, in Sichuan province in June and in Chongqing municipality in July. In the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, a similar regulation will be enacted on Sept 1.

The regulations of each province differ on the number of days allowed for leave. In Sichuan, a minimum of three days is specified, while in Henan the maximum is 20 days.

"But there is still a question of whether such regulations can be successfully implemented, especially in some privately owned companies," said Professor Qiu Zeqi, director of the Center for Sociological Research and Development Studies of Peking University.

Some who are not the only child of their family see the new regulations as unfair and say the requirements are not the solution to the problem of an aging society.

Jia Biao, 33, works in Beijing, but his parents live in Tai'an, Shandong province. His younger sister now lives in New Zealand and comes back to China just once a year.

Jia's 61-year-old father broke an arm and was hospitalized two weeks ago. Jia begged his boss for a week off and took care of his father in Tai'an. He said he was paid no wages for that week.

"The new regulation was issued with very good intentions. But it only gives privilege to the only child, which is unfair," Jia said.

Additionally, he said the age limit of sick parentsolder than 60is unreasonable. "Age should not be a standard to decide whether the parent needs care or not," he said, adding that it should depend on the parent's condition.

Many young people in China face a situation similar to Jia's. They seek a better life in big cities, leaving their parents in their hometown. But once the elderly become ill, they face the problem of getting their children to return to care for them.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China has nearly 231 million people older than 60, accounting for 16.7 percent of its total population. It is estimated that the country will have about 400 million people older than 60 by 2035.

Li Mingshun, deputy director of the China Law Society's Institute of Marriage and Family Law, said: "Maybe it still needs to be revised, but the new regulation is a good try. Evaluating how it has been practiced after a period of time will help the government to decide whether it can be written into national laws."
The United States and Japan should act with caution regarding the South China Sea issue, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman urged on Friday, emphasizing China's resolve to defend its territory.

Spokeswoman Hua Chunying commented after the US and Japan issued a joint statement expressing "serious concerns" on the issue. The two countries released the statement after Japan's foreign and defense ministers met in Washington on Thursday with the US secretaries of state and defense.

Hua said the US and Japan are not parties concerned with the South China Sea issue. "They should have been cautious with their words and actions and respected efforts the regional countries have made to resolve the disputes."

The situation in the South China Sea is becoming stable and has improved, with talks between China and countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations making progress, Hua said.

China and ASEAN countries this month adopted the Framework of a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea at the China-ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Manila.

The statement also touched on China's Diaoyu Islands by reconfirming that Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty applies to the islands.

"The so-called treaty is a product of the Cold War era, which should not be used to endorse Japan's illegal claims, and must not violate China's territorial integrity and relevant rights," Hua said.

Hua, who expressed China's "serious concern" over the statement, added, "China's position on the Diaoyu Islands and the South China Sea issue is consistent and clear. The Chinese government and people stand unswervingly in their resolve and will to safeguard their territorial sovereignty."

Hua urged the US and Japan to adopt a responsible attitude and to do more for regional peace and stability.
A light show was held in Kunming on Aug 18 to encourage more people to get out and about and enjoy night time in the city for the next two months. One thousand families turned up for a treasure hunt during the ceremony to switch on the lights for the first time. From now on, the lights will be turned on at 8 pm each day. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
A child at the exhibition. [Photo by Zhu Xingxin/China Daily]

An exhibition titled Strength of a Nation: Photography Exhibition for the Success of the 19th National Congress opened at the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Beijing on Aug 19 to wish for success at the upcoming 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Ninety photographs showcase the major achievements that China has made in recent years, including high speed railways, domestic passenger aircraft C919, domestic aircraft carriers, drones, mobile payments and bike sharing.

The event is hosted by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and China Photographers Association and organized by Chinese Photography magazine.

Visitors can see the exhibition for free until Aug 30.
A worker hangs ornaments at the Ming Dynasty City Wall Ruins Park under a blue sky in Beijing in March, 2017. LIU PING/CHINA DAILY

Every year, more than 4 million people around the world die prematurely from breathing dirty air. In China alone, the number of deaths attributable to air pollution exceeds 1 million a year. That figure may not come as a surprise, as we are routinely treated to images in the media of thick, sooty smog enveloping Beijing, Shanghai and other Chinese cities. But the United States' air kills, tooand it gets a lot less attention.

A 2013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimated that poor air quality accounts for 200,000 early deaths in the US each year, more than the number killed by car crashes and diabetes. Yet while China is aggressively tackling its air pollution problem, the US is rolling back air-quality protections in the name of economic growthan ill-conceived strategy that will have a devastating impact on human health.

Research over the past 20 years has tied PM2.5(airborne particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns) to a range of adverse health outcomes, including asthma, acute bronchitis, lung cancer, heart attacks and cardio-respiratory diseases. We know, too, where most PM2.5 comes from: power plants, heavy industry and motor vehicles.

Knowing the killer pollutant and its sources, the US Environmental Protection Agency, under the 1990 Clean Air Act, issued new standards to reduce PM2.5 levels. The EPA estimates that between 1990 and 2015, the national concentration of particulate matter fell by 37 percent and that in 2010, some 160,000 premature deaths were averted as a result of the regulations. In short, despite a considerable number of deaths still linked to dirty air, the US had, until this year, been heading in the right direction.

Now, however, US President Donald Trump has promised to create "unbelievable prosperity" by discarding regulations intended to reduce toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants, lowering or eliminating fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, and dismantling the EPA. He has also vowed to repeal limits on fracking, open up more public lands to coal mining, and expand oil and gas production in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans.

Let's assume, for a moment, that such measures would actually produce prosperity for the entire country, and not just for the fossil fuel industry. What price, as a country, is the US willing to pay? How many early deaths per year are too many?

There are alternatives that don't require a zero-sum tradeoff between economic growth and human health. And, ironically, one place to look for inspiration is China.

Holding up China as a model to emulate might seem absurd. After all, its PM2.5 levels are considerably higher than in the US, and consumption of fossil fuels, especially coal, is far greater. But Chinese policymakers are taking vigorous steps to reverse course, free the country from its dependence on fossil fuels and create a future-oriented economy powered by clean energy and green technology.

Today, China is the world's largest investor in renewable energy, with outlays in 2015 totaling $103 billion, more than double US spending of $44 billion. Of the planet's 8.1 million jobs in renewable energy, 3.5 million are in China, whereas fewer than 1 million are in the US. Convinced that clean energy is good for both the environment and the economy, China has committed $367 billion through 2020 to the development of renewable power sourceswhich is expected to generate 13 million jobs.

And to rein in pollutants from motor vehicles, the Chinese government has made adoption of electric vehicles a high priority, setting a target of 5 million on the country's roads by 2020. To promote sales, buyers are exempted from sales and excise taxes ($6,000-$10,000 per vehicle). And, anticipating the eventual replacement of conventional motor vehicles globally, the authorities are providing generous subsidies for domestic manufacturing.

In contrast, the Trump administration is trying to turn back the clock, by betting on the resuscitation of a dyingand deadlyfossil fuel industry. Describing a transition to electric vehicles as a job killer, Trump has advocated ending federal subsidies that encourage domestic development, manufacture, and purchase, such as the $7,500 federal tax credit for consumers.

China's dependence on fossil fuels has left it in a deep environmental hole, but its leaders are determined to climb out. The US, on the other hand, is literally digging its own grave. With as many as 200,000 Americans dying prematurely every year, economic hubris must not be allowed to trump the search for solutionswherever they may be found.

The author is a professor of history at Smith College, Massachusetts. His latest book, Environmental Pollution in China: What Everyone Needs to Know, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Project Syndicate
One summer morning in July Saihanba National Forest was immersed in mist. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

The mid-summer morning is shrouded in white, every mountain crevice filled with this milky mist that overflows from plateau lakes clearly too shallow to hold it all.

I am in Saihanba, China's largest national forest, to see and learn about the epic, often tragic, effort that has gone into transforming this once desolate expanse into hectare upon hectare of lush green forest. But before I can even contemplate that task the sheer majesty of the place sweeps me off my feet.

At Seven-Star Lakes, located in the central-west of the forest and whose name refers to seven small patches of water in the area, I let that beauty and the flower-perfumed cool morning air seep deep into me.

I have been here since 5.40 am, about 40 minutes after sunrise, and millions of golden beams penetrate the mist before bouncing on the lake surface. The interplay between the light, water and the mist is a wonder to behold and is ever-changing, resulting in multiple layers of color floating above the surface of the lakes.

For me, who had spent seven hours the previous day traveling from Beijing to this paradise in Hebei province, the view more than compensates the fatigue and car sickness I had endured. All around are young people waving cameras.
Yongxing Lake, which is situated to the west of Chengkan, is regarded as auspicious for Chengkan Village. [Photo by Zhang Guochun/China Daily]

Chengkan village has a special layout. It is in the form of eight trigrams derived from Yijing, a set of books dating back about 2,000 years that are often referred to in fortune-telling and feng shui.

The village, at the foot of Huangshan Mountain in Huangshan in East China's Anhui province, is an innovative combination of buildings and natural elements, such as water.

Thanks to its planners' use of Yijing theories, it has been known as "the first village south of the Yangtze River" since the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

An S-shaped river runs through Chengkan, separating the eight trigrams, and the river is artificially split into a number of small canals that pass every house so all of the 2,000 villagers get water from the river.

All the canals merge into a lake called Yongxing at the other end of the village.

The villagers say there used to be a timetable and rules on water use before the village had running water.

Earlier, the water was used for drinking before 8 am, and for washing and laundry later.
From left: Hong Kong-based Drama Gallery's Deadline; Drama Need Girl. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The fourth International Women's Festival kicked off in Beijing last Friday. The brainchild of Beijing-based theater director Li Zi, the biennial event made its debut in 2011.

Four theatrical works will be staged from August 16 to September 10 in Beijing, all focused on female themes.

This year, the festival opened with the Hong Kong-based Drama Gallery's Deadline, which was inspired by the true story of Etan Patz, a boy who was abducted and killed in New York in 1979. Directed by Benny Yu and written by playwright Yu Hon-ting, the drama premiered in Hong Kong in 2012.

Theater du Pif, another theater company from Hong Kong, is staging two works, Dance Me to the End of Love and 4.48 Psychosis.

Dance Me to the End of Love combines theater and dance with music by the Canadian musician and poet Leonard Cohen. It will be performed by the theater's artistic director and founder Chan Lai-chu. Drawing inspiration from Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha, it tells the story of a prince named Siddhartha, who conquers his fear and searches for the meaning of life. The show will end on Aug 19 at the Star Theater in Beijing.

Later, the company will stage 4.48 Psychosis, a play by British playwright Sarah Kane (1971-99), which is about depression. The playwright suffered from severe depression and killed herself in 1999 after writing this play.

Mala Scena Theatre from Croatia will stage the drama Needle Girl on Sept 9 and 10, directed by Ivica Simic, the artistic director of the theater.

Li, who completed her master's degree in direction and theater production at the National Academy of Chinese Theater Arts in 2009, says that the festival resulted from her desire to give back something to her mother and other Chinese women.

"I was looking at a family photo album. I had looked through it before, but I never looked at it carefully. This time, in every photo, I could see my mother's eyes were sparkling, and I realized that she was anticipating the future just like any young person," says Li.

As she looked at more pictures of her mothergetting married, giving birth to her and getting oldit made her think about how a woman experiences life juggling a family and career, her mother was an as she became an architecture teacher.

"For more female directors and playwrights to have their voices heard, and women in the audience be inspired by their works, that's what we aim for," says Li.

According to Li, the previous festival in 2015 had an audience of 50,000, and she anticipates the same this year.
Braised beef cheek and prime beef tenderloin presented by Waldorf Astoria Beijing's French-style restaurant Brasserie 1893. [Photo provided to China Daily]

What do you call someone who samples four major beef courses at one meal sitting? A gourmet or a glutton? I will happily go along with the former, having relished exactly that at the Waldorf Astoria Beijing recently.

The five-star downtown hotel, known for its impeccable service and its vibrant soul, is eager for its dining experience to be seen as one that is "consummate without being extremely costly", to quote Benoit Chargy, the hotel's executive chef.

That's true, at least two days of a week. Beef Tuesday and Lobster Wednesday, a special dining program offered in parallel by the hotel's two restaurants, the Frenchstyle Brasserie 1893 and the Chinese-style Zijin Mansion, provide diners with sumptuous food at 268 yuan ($40) per person.

For sophisticated diners this is a real bargain. For unsophisticated ones with a more modest budget it is an opportunity to indulge taste buds and learn a culinary lesson or two.

For a single meal you usually have to choose between the two restaurants, but since we are there to sample the food, all four main beef coursestwo from eachbecome inevitable.

The first one to make a grand entry, after starters including zucchini salad and beef carpaccioyes, before beef there is beefis braised beef cheek. (Just smile and don't think too deeply.)
WASHINGTON -- The White House said Friday Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon will leave his job.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," she added.

Conflicting reports have emerged regarding the details of Bannon's departure, some reports said Bannon had submitted his resignation on Aug. 7, while other reports indicated Bannon had been fired by President Donald Trump.

Controversy surrounding Bannon's role in the White House have been mounting in recent months, and was heightened after a race-related clash in Charlottesville over the weekend resulted in three deaths.

When asked about whether Bannon's position in the White House was secure Tuesday, Trump said "we'll see what happens."

Trump was reportedly furious with Bannon after he contradicted the president's view on several issues including U.S.-China trade ties in an unusual interview Wednesday with The American Prospect.

"He apparently was sidelined by Trump in the past few months and he has many opponents both in and outside of the Trump administration, so he was probably just venting his frustration by making eye-catching news," Zhiqun Zhu, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Bucknell University told Xinhua on Thursday. "In fact, he is not sure whether he can keep his job at this point."

"Bannon grossly misreads U.S.-China relations and Trump's policy towards Asia. I do not think his words about 'economic war with China' represents Trump's policy," said Zhu.

Bannon is the latest heavyweight to leave the Trump administration, after National Security advisor Michael Flynn, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Press Secretary Sean Spicer, two Communications Director Dubke and Scaramucci, and FBI Director James Comey have stepped down.

Analysts believe Bannon's departure is expected to create big ripples inside the Trump administration as this may indicate a separation between government policies and nationalistic ideas Bannon advocates.

Allies of Bannon in the administration are also expected to follow Bannon's exit, according to local reports.

Bannon, former head of right-wing media Breitbart, was recruited by Trump during the campaign, and played a major role in developing domestic and international policies for the Trump administration.
The United States government has formally launched a probe into China's intellectual property policies and practices just four days after President Donald Trump asked his top trade official to decide if an investigation was necessary.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer initiated the investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, according to a statement posted on the USTR website on Friday.

"On Monday, President Trump instructed me to look into Chinese laws, policies, and practices which may be harming American intellectual property rights, innovation, or technology development," Lighthizer said in the statement.

"After consulting with stakeholders and other government agencies, I have determined that these critical issues merit a thorough investigation. I notified the President that today I am beginning an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974,"

The announcement came on the same day as the departure of Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon was announced. Both Bannon and Lighthizer were regarded as hawks on China trade. Bannon had described China and the US as being in an "economic war" in an interview earlier this week.

China has warned the US that it will take all necessary and appropriate measures to protect its commercial and trade interests if the US government wrongly accuses China of alleged theft of US technology and intellectual property.

The US should cherish the currently sound Sino-US trade relationship and economic cooperation, it said. Any unilateral practices of trade protectionism from the US are doomed to damage the bilateral economic and trade relations and corporate interests on both sides, according to a statement from the ministry.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday that "any member of the WTO should observe its rules in taking trade measures," a view expressed by China's Ministry of Commerce 10 days earlier.

"Given the increasingly converging China-US interests and the close-knit pattern of the two countries being mutually dependent, there will be no future or winner but only losers in a trade war," Hua warned.

Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, described the use of Section 301 as dusting off an outdated US trade law that allows the US president to unilaterally impose tariffs on another country.

Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974 was used most by the Reagan administration, when the current USTR Robert Lighthizer served as deputy USTR.

Bown believes such a solution may only make matters worse. He believes the use of an ill-advised and obsolete US trade law is likely to shift attention away from China's actions toward Trump's own policies.

The US government has conducted 122 such Section 301 investigations between 1974 and today, but only one new one since 2001.

Bown noted that US trading partners have become increasingly unhappy with such an "aggressively unilateral" US approach, with the US government acting as police force, prosecutor, jury and judge.

He believes a decision to trigger a Section 301 today is problematic because it would provide additional fuel to the already simmering argument that the Trump administration is undoing the American commitment to rules-based trade and decades of work to establish international cooperation.

He said a Trump decision to operate outside of the rules will spur China to follow suit.

The fallout from Trump's rogue use of yet another outdated US trade law would be considerable," Bown wrote in an article posted on Peterson's website last week.
MOSCOW - At least eight people were injured in a stabbing attack by an unidentified knife-wielding man in the Russian city of Surgut on Saturday, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

The attacker stabbed pedestrians while moving along the city's main streets at about 11:20 am local time, leaving eight people injured with wounds of varying degrees, the committee said in a statement.

All the victims have been hospitalized.

According to the committee, the attacker was killed by security forces, who had immediately arrived at the scene.

Investigators and criminologists are currently working at the scene, and a criminal case has been launched, the statement said.
Following an array of flights to Phoenix from all manner of airports, the Astronomy Magazine 2017 Eclipse Tour kicked off, northward bound, headed for numerous national parks and historic astronomical sites en route to viewing the Great American Eclipse in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Monday the 21st. On our first big day of activities, Monday, August 14, we headed north from Scottsdale to Sedona, Arizona, where we saw the beautiful red sandstone rocks that make this town a tourist mecca. We did not, however, encounter a single alien, detect any vortices, or feel any mystical powers being emitted by minerals. The natural science of the area, with the sandstone showing erosion from 200 million years of weathering, was enough to entrance us all.

We then headed north to Flagstaff, Arizona, where we had a royal reception at Lowell Observatory. Greeted by Lowells Director Jeff Hall, Deputy Director for Science Michael West, and astronomer Brian Skiff, we then had a magnificent tour of Lowells historic facilities, so celebrated for Mars and Pluto. Brian was kind enough to give our group a thorough tour and explanation of the famous 24-inch Clark refractor, used by Percival Lowell to study Mars, and employed by V. M. Slipher to detect the first redshifts of galaxies and also to discover the interstellar medium, using his famous spectrograph.

We also enjoyed a fine tour of other telescopes on Mars Hill, saw Lowells tomb, and marveled at the dome of the 13-inch Pluto Camera, the instrument used by Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto in 1930.

By days end, we made it all the way to Lake Powell, near Page, Arizona, close to the Arizona/Utah border.

What an opening day!
People bring memorial candles and flowers to the Turku Market Square for the victims of Friday's stabbings in Turku, Finland, Aug 19, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

TURKU, Finland - Finnish police said Saturday the suspect who mounted the multiple stabbings in Turku, southwestern Finland, on Friday was a Moroccan citizen.

Police said they are investigating two murders and eight attempted murders involved in the case and suspecting there is intent of terrorism.

The suspect, an 18-year-old man, is in intensive care at the Turku University Hospital, said the police.

Two people were killed and eight others wounded when he stabbed people at two squares in Turku on Friday afternoon.

The police said those killed were two Finnish nationals, with one Italian and two Swedes among the injured.

At a press conference on Friday evening, the police said they could not identify the nationality of the attacker and would not call the incident a terrorist attack.

Witnesses told local media that they heard the attacker shouting "Allah" while committing the violence, but police could not confirm the claim.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri (R) shakes hands with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, after a joint press conference at the Presidential Country House, in Olivos city, 15km from Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Aug 17, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

BUENOS AIRES - World Bank President Jim Yong Kim on Thursday praised China's anti-poverty measures which have successfully lifted "hundreds of millions" of people out of poverty.

Beijing "responded to the new realities" of the times to tailor effective policies, said Kim, who arrived in Buenos Aires for a two-day visit to meet with Argentine President Mauricio Macri over his development and economic reform agenda.

"Since 1990, nearly 1.1 billion people around the world have come out of poverty. Hundreds of millions of them come from China, a country that responded to the new realities of the market and promoted growth," said Kim at a joint press conference after meeting with Macri at the presidential residence outside the capital.

Over the past 30 years, China has implemented reforms and opened up its economy, and lifted in the process 700 million people out of poverty, a figure that represents more than 70 percent of the global reduction in poverty, according to an annual report on poverty reduction of China in 2016 published by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the State Council.

China's poverty rate was at 10.2 percent in 2012 and dropped to 4.5 percent by 2016. Since 2013, 55.64 million Chinese have climbed out of poverty, the report said.

The Chinese authority aims to eradicate poverty in the countryside by 2020.

During their meeting, Kim and Macri discussed the upcoming Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), to be hosted by Buenos Aires in December, and also the presidency of G20 in 2018, which Argentina will take over on Dec 1.

"Argentina is moving in a promising direction. It has launched difficult reforms to stabilize the economy, opened Argentina to the world and increased transparency, among other things," Kim said.

"These reforms are building the foundations that will help greater investment and job creation in a sustainable way," said Kim, forecasting the South American country "will grow 2.7 percent this year, significant progress, especially considering last year's contraction."
A large crowd of people gathers ahead of the Boston Free Speech Rally in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., August 19, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

BOSTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of police officers were positioned around a Boston park where a group plans to hold a "Free Speech" rally with right-wing speakers on Saturday, a week after a woman was killed at a Virginia white-supremacist protest.

Thousands of counter-protesters who believe the event could become a platform for racist propaganda were gathering about 2 miles (3.2 km) away with plans to march on the rally.

Streets around Boston Common were lightly trafficked early on Saturday, while some 500 police officers placed barricades to prevent vehicles from entering the park, the nation's oldest. To keep the two groups separate, they also built a cordon around the site of the rally.

Last weekend's violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one woman was killed in a car rampage after bloody street battles, ratcheted up racial tensions already inflamed by white supremacist groups marching more openly in rallies across the United States.

White nationalists had converged in the Southern university city to defend a statue of Robert E. Lee, who led the pro-slavery Confederacy's army during the Civil War, which ended in 1865.

A growing number of U.S. political leaders have called for the removal of statues honoring the Confederacy, with civil rights activists charging that they promote racism. Advocates of the statues contend they are a reminder of their heritage.

Duke University removed a Lee statue from the entrance of a chapel on its Durham, North Carolina campus, officials said on Saturday.

Organizers of Saturday's rally in Boston have denounced the white supremacist message and violence of Charlottesville and said their event would be peaceful.

"The point of this is to have political speech from across the spectrum, conservative, libertarian, centrist," said Chris Hood, an 18-year-old Boston resident who stood among a crowd of a few dozen people who planned to join the Free Speech rally. "This is not about Nazis. If there were Nazis here, I'd be protesting against them."

Last weekend's violence sparked the biggest domestic crisis yet for U.S. President Donald Trump, who provoked ire across the political spectrum for not immediately condemning white nationalists and for praising "very fine people" on both sides of the fight.

Beyond the Boston rally and counter-march, protests are also expected on Saturday in Texas, with the Houston chapter of Black Lives Matter holding a rally to remove a "Spirit of the Confederacy" monument from a park and civil rights activists in Dallas planning a rally against white supremacy.

Boston authorities also planned to put roadblocks in place to avert car attacks like the deadly one carried out in Charlottesville by a man said to have neo-Nazi sympathies against counter-protesters and a similar spate of attacks by Islamist extremists in Europe, most recently Barcelona.

COUNTER-PROTESTERS REJECT PLEA

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh had asked counter-protesters to avoid Boston Common, saying their presence would draw more attention to the far-right activists. He joined the crowd of thousands of counter-protesters assembling in Boston's historically black Roxbury neighborhood early on Saturday.

"These signs and the message so far this morning is all about love and peace," Walsh told reporters. "That's a good message."

Monica Cannon, an organizer of the "Fight White Supremacy" march, said it was a necessary move.

"Ignoring a problem has never solved it," Cannon said in a phone interview. "We cannot continue to ignore racism."

The Free Speech rally's scheduled speakers include Kyle Chapman, a California activist who was arrested at a Berkeley rally earlier this year that turned violent, and Joe Biggs, formerly of the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars.

Ron Villareale, a 71-year-old military veteran, stood by on the Boston Common wearing a tricornered hat and other garb common in 18th-century colonial times.

"We have too many extremists in this country," Villareale said. "If you don't agree with someone, ignore them."
XIAMEN - China Post issued a stamp on Saturday to commemorate the BRICS Summit in Xiamen of east China's Fujian province.

The stamp bears logo of the summit as well as the letters "BRICS" and "2017 China". It also shows the scenic Gulangyu island, which was included into the UNESCO list last month, as well as other iconic sites of Xiamen like Xiamen University.

"It shows the features of Xiamen," said Zhang Zhijun with the Xiamen branch of China Post. "With the sea we would like to imply that the summit is a new starting point for the countries to sail into a bright future."

Philatelist can buy eight-stamp sheets or individual stamps. The small sheet is made of silk, with a panorama picture of Gulangyu island by a local photographer Zhu Qingfu.

Price of one stamp is 1.2 yuan (about 18 cents).

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will meet in Xiamen in early September for the 9th BRICS Summit.

China previously has also issued stamps for the G20 Hangzhou Summit and the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.
Our second day of the Astronomy Magazine Eclipse Tour 2017 commenced on Lake Powell, in northern Arizona, near the Arizona/Utah border. Our trip, northward bound, consists of 89 people on three buses, headed for eclipse day at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Monday the 21st. We are partners with Aram Kaprielian and his TravelQuest International crew, a great team of travel experts. We will meet a southbound group at Jackson Hole and have around 200 people at our eclipse site. The magazine is also partnering with TravelQuest on a tour in Nashville, and also a West Coast tour that will view the eclipse from Oregon.

Our group enjoyed a cruise on Lake Powell on the morning of Tuesday the 15th. It was the only day thus far on which we had cloud cover. The boat carried us through a magnificent canyon, along the red sandstone that makes this area so spectacular  almost martian! Unfortunately, we saw the aftermath of an apparent tragedy. Park Service divers and police were looking for a body in one area of the lake, and the word was that as many as three young folks had perished the day before by diving off a cliff into the lake, far below. This serves as a solemn reminder to be safe in all things you do. Nature can be a dangerous place.

Nearby stands the impressive Glen Canyon Dam, which creates Lake Powell and stores water for many southwestern cities, as well as generating hydroelectric power.

We then left Lake Powell and the spectacular resort where we had stayed. The target was now Navajo Bridge, Arizona, where a modern bridge spans the Colorado River beside an original 1929 bridge, the first to span the river close to where the Grand Canyon originates. Standing at Navajo Bridge and taking my own pictures, I was reminded of photos my dad and his parents took where they crossed the old bridge in the 1930s.

We then sped off to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, where we stayed the night in somewhat rustic, but also charming, cabins operated by the National Park Service. It was quite an adventure. And best of all, not to mention the breathatking dinner overlooking the canyon and sunset views, we had a fantastic night of dark sky viewing from the North Rim. This trip was rapidly transforming into a magical dream!
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Image: Cliff Owen / AP

The Charlottesville street where a driver rammed a car into a crowd of demonstrators.

Theyre angry and sad and scared.

About a dozen Christian leaders shared their reactions to Charlottesville on a Friday conference call organized by Civilitas Group president Doug Birdsall.

We want to hear of the pain and anger from African American leaders, and we want to hear the resolve and commitment from white leaders, stated Birdsall, past leader of the Lausanne Movement and the American Bible Society, in an explanatory email. We also want to hear the pain and anger from white leaders, and the resolve, commitment, and vision of African American leaders.

The call came amid public condemnations of white supremacy and racism issued by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the World Evangelical Alliance. Racism should not only be addressed after tragic events, but regularly in our communities of faith, stated the NAE. Churches in the United States can lead the way in combatting attitudes and systems that perpetuate racism.

The greatest crisis revealed by the election and post-election reality we live in is the exposure of the white American churchs participation in and identification with racism, stated Fuller Seminary president Mark Labberton in advance of the call. That this has been historically true is an unlamented fact, and that it is and will define our future seems to me unquestionable.

Disillusionment with the church and Christian faith has many elements, he stated, but this fundamental inconsistency to demonstrate we are living out the faith we proclaim must be high on the list of causes.

I feel the frustration of Moses, said Mark Whitlock, executive director of the Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement at the University of Southern California and an African Methodist Episcopal pastor, during the call. I want to slap the rock.

I think everyone was angered by what was going on, Claude Alexander, senior pastor at The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, told the group, which included Wheaton College president Philip Ryken, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church pastor John Ortberg, and Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) president Shirley Hoogstra.

Whats especially frustrating, said Alexander [a CT board member], is that some saw this coming  during the electoral process of 2016. In his view, President Donald Trumps appointment of chief strategist Steve Bannonwho was fired by Trump on Fridaylegitimized the radical views of white supremacists. Charlottesville was a culmination, a coming-out party.

Whitlock shared a recent anedcote: We had a young white man come into our church yesterday at 7 oclock in the afternoon, dressed in black clothes, and said, You all are the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Why are you here in our community?

He explained that his community is less than two percent African American, and he is seeing black children being taunted and grade-schoolers having to ask what the letters KKK stand for. Were now having these conversations that weve never had before, he said.

As Seattle Pacific University professor Brenda Salter-McNeil prepared to preach at her church last Sunday, she saw a young white male visitor take a seat right in front of her pulpit.

I was afraid to stand up in the pulpit for the first time in my life, she said. Her colleagues were also concerned; they sat by the young man and agreed on a plan of action should he act aggressively toward her.

Salter-McNeil is looking for such solidarity and protection from the evangelical church at large.

There are some of us now who are not just concerned; we are literally afraid of whatever has been emboldened and unleashed in this country, she said. I need my friends and my colleagues who care to not minimize that, and to begin strategizing about what they do to stand in solidarity and to protect other people and to make sure that congregations arent afraid to worship on Sunday morning.

I am hurt and I am angry, said Cynthia Hale, senior pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Georgia. I am frustrated with the white evangelical church.

The white church has buried the crisis, and therefore done no formation around it, said Fullers Labberton. As a result, the white church doesnt know how to answer questions about solidarity or protecting those who are vulnerable, he said.

The white church has never really asked the question about courage, Labberton said. Those are questions that people of color have had to ask always. The white church has tended to say, Were not interested in courage. Were interested in comfort. And thats what the white church has been built around, and it in part contributes to why this is such a crisis. Its a fundamental paradigm shift to awaken a church that was established in comfort to become a church that is committed to courage.

Such courage is not the absence of fear, Hale said. Courage is the ability to press on in spite of our fears.

The group tossed around possible ideas for pressing on, including meeting with Trump or Vice President Mike Pence, writing to the presidents religious advisers, or urging Christian educators to address individual and systemic racism.

I need something tangible, Salter-McNeil told the group.

Whitlock agreed: Im hoping  theres something we can agree on that is more than a kumbaya.

This is a time to listen, to lament, and to pray, wrote Birdsall. Planning and action will follow.

I believe that our African American friends in Christ need to hear a clear voice for words of encouragement, he wrote, to provide a context for working together, to provide for accountability, and to provide context for celebrating progress in a growing movement to drive out hate with love.

In times of national tragedy and crisis, evangelical Christians turn to the Word of God for direction, stated the NAE. God created human beings in his image, and thus all people share in divine dignity (Genesis 1:26). No race or ethnicity is greater or more valuable than another. Evangelicals believe that the good news of Jesus Christ has the power to break down racial and ethnic barriers (Ephesians 2:14-18).

The NAE noted that evangelicalism within the United States is a diverse movement, with evangelical beliefs being held by 44 percent of African Americans, 30 percent of Hispanics, 29 percent of whites, and 17 percent of people from other ethnicities according to LifeWay Research.
home World USCIRF lists Italy among of top 10 worst nations with blasphemy laws

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has listed Italy among the top 10 worst-scoring nations with blasphemy laws.

Italy has been ranked at number seven in USCIRF's report on blasphemy laws around the world because of its legislation protecting the Roman Catholic Church.

Article 403 of Italy's criminal code states that offending adherents of Catholicism carry a punishment of up to two years imprisonment, while those who insult a minister of the Catholic Church can be subjected to a prison sentence of one to three years.

The report, released on Wednesday, found that 71 of the world's 195 countries have blasphemy laws, with penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment and death.

Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Qatar were listed in the report as the top five worst-scoring countries due to blasphemy laws aimed at protecting the state religion of Islam.

"Advocates for blasphemy laws may argue that they are needed in order to protect religious freedom, but these laws do no such thing. Blasphemy laws are wrong in principle, and they often invite abuse and lead to assaults, murders, and mob attacks. Wherever they exist, they should be repealed," said USCIRF Chairman Daniel Mark.

Christians and other religious minorities have fallen victim to such blasphemy laws in countries like Pakistan, where mere accusations can result in discrimination, beatings, abuse and sometimes even death.

In April, Mashal Khan, a university student, was beaten to death by a mob after he was accused of having committed blasphemy during a heated debate about religion with other students.

In June, Ishfaq Masih, a 23-year-old father who runs a repair shop in Lahore, was arrested on charges of blasphemy after he was accused by a Muslim man of insulting the Islamic prophet, Muhammad. The blasphemy allegation came after he asked the Muslim man for payment for a bicycle that he had repaired the previous week.

In Iran, those who are accused of insulting the Islamic faith are threatened with execution. The rise of Christianity in the country, especially among youths, have prompted Islamic seminary officials to call on the government to "stop the spread" of the faith.

According to USCIRF, 86 percent of nations with blasphemy laws threatens offenders with imprisonment. The commission noted in its report that most of the blasphemy laws that it studied were "vaguely worded," and failed to specify intent as part of the violation.

"Though implementation varies, countries from Switzerland to Sudan persist in outlawing expression of views deemed 'blasphemous,'" Mark said.

"Some countries, including Canada, have such laws but do not actively enforce them. We call upon those countries to set an example for the others and repeal their blasphemy laws. And we call upon all countries to repeal any such laws and to free those detained or convicted for blasphemy," he added.
Flight attendants at Mesa Airlines, including about 400 working on United Express flights in Houston, struck a deal with management on Friday that would offer pay five times greater than the deal union members voted down about a year ago.

The new tentative agreement would also increase 401(k) matching for many union members, offer greater per diem for food expenses when traveling and provide a host of other perks.

"It has been a long time coming," said Heather Stevenson, union president for Mesa, "and this tentative agreement versus our current contract has many great things for our flight attendants that we weren't able to get before in negotiations."

The announcement follows five years of fraught labor negotiations. Flight attendants voted down a previous tentative agreement about a year ago, and they authorized a strike if mediation efforts were to reach an impasse.

The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA is recommending union members approve the agreement when voting in September. Stevenson called the agreement "dramatically better" than the one flight attendants voted down.

And it addresses one of the union's biggest concerns with their current contract: Mesa flight attendant wages compared with other regional airlines. Stevenson previously said that Mesa flight attendants make between $13,000 and $36,000 a year, with most salaries on the lower end of that range. That's 15 percent to 20 percent less than flight attendants at other regional airlines, she said.

Jonathan Ornstein, chairman and CEO of Mesa, said that the airline was constrained by long-term agreements signed with United Airlines and American Airlines. Mesa was also affected by recent legislation that boosted the flying time pilots are required to have before they can be hired in commercial aviation. This has increased total compensation for first officers by close to 200 percent, Ornstein said.

He was happy that both sides "worked together cooperatively and productively" to reach Friday's deal, and he praised the company's flight attendants for receiving high customer satisfaction scores from United and American.

Phoenix-based Mesa Airlines operates as American Eagle from hubs in Phoenix and Dallas-Fort Worth and as United Express from Washington Dulles and Houston. It has about 1,100 flight attendants, with Houston its largest base. United Airlines declined to comment.

"We think it was worth the wait in the sense that it's a deal that works for the flight attendants, we hope, and works for the company," Ornstein said Friday.

Mesa's pilots ratified their own four-year contract in July. If the flight attendants follow suit, Mesa will have new contracts for both of its union-represented labor groups.

"We have plans moving forward for the company, and getting this settled is an important part of our plan going forward," he said.
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Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner has joined more than 200 mayors across the country by signing a a pledge fight extremism and hate in response to violence during protests in Charlotesville.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Anti-Defamation League announced a joint action plan that would promote equality and justice, holding mayors accountable to speak out against hate in their respective cities, according to a press release issued from the Anti-Defamation League.

By committing to the plan, mayors would have to punish violence that is bias-motivated, promote community activities that celebrate cultural and ethnic diversity, enforce civil rights and hate crime laws and encourage education in schools and on police forces about anti-bias and anti-hate.

MAKING A STATEMENT: Major charities canceling events at Trump's Mar-a-Lago after Charlottesville response

Turner tweeted on Saturday, acknowledging his involvement in the plan, stating he pledges to "to fight extremism, bigotry & promote fundamental principles of justice/equality that define America."

"What happened in Charlottesville last weekend reminds us all that violent hate and racism are very much alive in America in 2017," said Tom Cochran, CEO and Executive Director of the U.S. Conference of Mayor. "For decades, America's mayors have taken a strong position in support of civil rights and in opposition to racism and discrimination of all kinds."

The plan is a part of ADL's new initiative Alliance Against Hate that works with public and private sectors to combat hate. The United States Conference of Mayors is a non-partisan organization with cities that hold populations larger than 30,000.

READ MORE: Cornyn says Trump missed 'opportunity' to unite after Charlottesville melee

Turner also announced earlier this week that pieces in the city's public art collection related to the Confederacy would be reviewed. This comes on the heels of an online petition created to remove Spirit of the Confederacy from Sam Houston Park. The petition has more than 2,600 signatures as of Saturday afternoon.

A Martin Luther King statue and Christopher Columbus statue were also vandalized this week.

The tension began with a deadly protest last week in Charlottesville, Virginia where a car plowed into a crowd of people killing one woman and injuring nearly three dozen.

A protest is planned Saturday afternoon at the Spirit of Confederacy statue in Sam Houston Park. Black Lives Matter activists announced a "Destroy the Confederacy!" event, but other counter-protesters are expected to show.

"We must be the voices of reason that stand up and come forth in these dark moments," Turner tweeted on Wednesday.
Monday

Learn About Federal Contracting: Webinar hosted by the SBA. 10-11 a.m. Registration: www.sba.gov/tx/houston.

Tuesday

Small-business Insurance, Legal Entitites and Fair Labor Standards Act: Hosted by SCORE. 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., United Way Community Resource Center, 50 Waugh. Information: www.scorehouston.org.

Increase Your Close Ratio to Shorten Your Sales Cycle: 9 a.m.-noon, UH Bauer College SBDC, 2302 Fannin, Suite 200. Cost: $39. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu.

Data Protection for Your Business: 9 a.m.-4 p.m., UH Bauer College SBDC, 2302 Fannin, Suite 200. Cost: $19. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu.

Small Business Meetup: Hosted by the SBA. 4:30 p.m., Cafe Express, 5311 FM 1960. Registration: www.sba.gov/tx/houston.

Wednesday

Making Business Plans Easy: Hosted by SCORE. 9 a.m.-noon, Palm Center, 5330 Griggs. Information: www.scorehouston.org.

Breakfast with Beth - Internet Marketing Q&A: 7-9:30 a.m., UH Bauer College SBDC, 2302 Fannin, Suite 200. Cost: $10. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu.

Starting Your Business: Conducted in Spanish. 9 a.m.-noon, UH Bauer College SBDC, 2302 Fannin, Suite 200. Cost: Free. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu.

Tools for Starting or Growing a Business - Franchising for Veterans: Webinar hosted by the SBA. 9:30-10:30 a.m. Registration: www.sba.gov/tx/houston. x: Webinar hosted by the SBA. 9:30-10:30 a.m. Registration: www.sba.gov/tx/houston.

Enhancing Your Federal Procurement Marketing: Webinar hosted by the SBA. 10-11 a.m. Registration: www.sba.gov/tx/houston.

Thursday

Grow Your Business Online: 10 a.m.-1 p.m., UH Bauer College SBDC, 2302 Fannin, Suite 200. Cost: $39. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu.

Employment 101 - The Art of Negotations: 4-6 p.m., Houston/Galveston Women's Business Center, 9800 Northwest Freeway, No. 120. Cost: Free. Registration: www.facebook.com/HoustonGalvestonWBC.

Friday

Funding Sources: Hosted by SCORE. 1-3 p.m., Northwest Branch Library, 11355 Regency Green Drive. Information: www.scorehouston.org.

Making Sense of the Numbers: 9 a.m.-noon, UH Bauer College SBDC, 2302 Fannin, Suite 200. Cost: $25. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu.

QuickBooks Online: 9 a.m.-1 p.m., UH Bauer College SBDC, 2302 Fannin, Suite 200. Cost: $79. Information: www.sbdc.uh.edu.

Saturday

Income Tax Myths and Facts: Hosted by SCORE. 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Houston Community College-Alief/Hayes Campus, 2811 Hayes Road. Information: www.scorehouston.org.
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A man visiting from China was mauled by two dogs on a suburban street in Cy-Fair and is now on life-support at a Houston-area hospital, said a neighbor who witnessed part of the attack.

The victim, whose last name is Yao, is in the ICU and is on a waitlist for an ocular surgeon who can repair damage to his eye. He suffered lacerations to his face, neck and body according to a gofundme.com page started by another neighbor, Sean Patrick Flanery, who is using his Hollywood notoriety to try to raise money for the victim.

"We're trying to facilitate his needs as quickly as possible," said Flanery in his appeal on behalf of the family.

Now Playing: A man visiting from China was mauled by two dogs on a suburban street in Cy-Fair and is now on life-support at a Houston-area hospital, said a neighbor who witnessed part of the attack. The victim, whose last name is Yao, is in the ICU and is on a waitlist for an ocular surgeon who can repair damage to his eye. He suffered lacerations to his face, neck and body according to a gofundme.com page started by another neighbor, Sean Patrick Flanery, who is using his Hollywood notoriety to try to raise money for the victim. Video: Sean Patrick Flanery Video: JW Player

Yao was found motionless in a ditch near his daughter and son-in-law's home with two Cane Corso-breed dogs standing near him, said Erik Leffler, a neighbor who responded to the scene.

"I saw the female dog grab him by the shoulder and throw him around like a ragdoll," he said. "He was moaning in pain and his throat was ripped open."

Leffler and his wife, Courtney had rushed to the ditch with their firearms when another neighbor honked their car horn and they went outside to see what was happening.

"They asked me if I had a gun and started yelling, 'They're killing him! They're killing him!" he said.

The couple, weapons in hand, walked up on the dogs sitting near the man.

"My wife fires one shot into ground, they both jump back 10 ft.," he said. "I took my shot at the female, hit her in the hip, went to shoot the male because he was starting to run. At this point it's getting too far, I couldn't get a shot that I was sure wouldn't hurt anyone else."

After the shots were fired, the dogs managed to run back to the home of their owner and into the backyard, said Leffler.

He belives they somehow got out of thier kennels because once Harris County Sheriff's Office deputies arrived and pulled into the owner's driveway, the animals started to make a run for the gate. But officers quickly shut it, and were not able to get anyone to respond when they intially used their speakers to command the owners to come out of the house, said Leffler.

A few hours later, said Leffler, deputies called him to come back to the scene after already giving their statements as the owners had arrived back home.

He isn't sure, but has heard from other neighbors that the owner has put down both dogs.

He said that there are two other documented complaints against the dogs with animal control or Harris County Sheriff's Office, both in 2015. County officers could not immediately be reached to verify facts of the case at the time of this story.

Leffler said some neighbors have tried to insinuate that he shot the animals without just cause, although he has been able to explain to most of them what he saw.

"When I got there, there was no decision to be made. The decision was already made when I got there and saw what happened," said Leffler.

"They were here to witness the birth of their second grandchild and he's not going to get to see that, period. He's going to be in the ICU," he said.
A pilot was forced to make an emergency landing Friday in a Montgomery County pasture, according to local television reports.

The pilot was the only one on board when the plane reportedly began to spin, KTRK reported. He was able to land safely near FM 2854 at Texas 105.
The third day of our Astronomy Magazine Eclipse Tour 2017 commenced with waking up on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Within the National Park, we had breakfast and watched the Sun rise over the canyon, before walking out along the rim and photographing the splendor we could see everywhere. Our group, one of several touring with the magazine and TravelQuest tours, consisted of 89 people on three buses, moving steadily northward toward eclipse day in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The Grand Canyon is indeed a big hole, as people say. But it is incredibly beautiful and inspiring to see, and we thought about the ages of things quite a lot here. The lowest levels of the Canyon date to almost 2 billion years, some 1/7th of the age of the entire universe. Overall, Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and our Sun and solar system 4.6 billion years old. Our star was born in a cluster of suns that has been torn apart by the galactic tide, gravitational forces acting on us as we orbit the center of the Milky Way. The galaxy itself is some 8 to 9 billion years old and is comprised of many smaller galaxies that came together, just as in the future, the Andromeda Galaxy will merge with us, some 4 to 5 billion years from now. And the universe itself, of course, is 13.8 billion years old.

Leaving the Grand Canyon, we went to a park that many of us on the tour had not seen before, Zion National Park in southern Utah. It was a fantastic experience exploring Zion, hiking for the afternoon in the hot Sun and taking a long tram ride deep into the canyon to explore areas that display the red sandstone and meandering creeks and rivers in pristine scenes of nature.

What a way to get read for natures biggest spectacle, this coming Monday.
When King's BierHaus came to the Heights this spring after years of success at its Pearland spot, hungry urbanites ate up the schnitzel and downed German-style beer with gusto.

And the warm welcome from the community is being rewarded with a summer of kolache pop-ups and a trip to Munich, Germany for two lucky customers to attend Salvatore fest, a beer festival, in 2018.
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As 40,000 protesters poured into the streets across the country in Boston, a more sedate rally played out in Houston with several hundred protesters squared off downtown over a controversial Confederate monument in Sam Houston Park.

More than 400 socialists, liberals and Black Lives Matter activists showed up to demand the monument's removal, while a few dozen counter-protesters  some carrying Confederate flags  showed up in opposition. In between, scores of baton-wielding police corralled crowds with barricades and officers on horseback.

No arrests or altercations were reported, though several protesters became sick from the heat, police said.

One man protesting Confederate statues showed up wearing a faux KKK robe made from a sheet. A lifelong Houstonian brought along a "Resist" sheet cake, referencing a recent Tina Fey skit on "Saturday Night Live." A few on both sides carried guns.

For nearly three hours, left-leaning protesters gave speeches, chanted and cheered while their counterparts across the barricades shouted and waved flags.

While the park's Confederate statue, the Spirit of the Confederacy, was at the center of the event, protesters said it's only a symbol of greater racial tension.

"It's deeper than statues," said Ashton Woods, Black Lives Matters organizer. "The statue is a symbolic gesture on both sides. It was erected to intimidate people who look like me."

Bayou City History: Confederate statue once symbolized Houston's attitude toward Southern cause

Houston's black leaders, such as Sylvester Turner, are forced to work "in the shadow of a Confederate statue," he noted.

Counter-protesters lamented what they called an effort to obliterate the past.

"I don't like what happened, but you can't keep going back and trying to erase history," said Michael Gowling, who supports the statue that sits in a quiet area of the downtown park.

But Tony Wilson, an activist with Houston Socialist Movement, was adamant that's not what's happening.

"We're not trying to erase history, but I believe those monuments are symbols of oppression and they should come down."

Protesters weren't allowed inside Sam Houston Park, which had been closed to the public for a wedding.

The bride and groom, a Brit and a Texan, had planned the ceremony for 3 p.m., but the protest forced them to wed two hours earlier.

Women in heels and men in summer suits snuck out of the park just before 2 p.m. to be whisked around the barricades in police vans.

"At least no one interrupted," said Philip Birdwood, the bride's brother.

While hundreds of neo-Nazis and white supremacists had rallied in Charlottesville, VA, there were practically none to be seen in Houston's searing Saturday afternoon heat.

From Gray Matters: Houston, we need to talk about those Confederate statues

More than a dozen men and women with long guns, body armor and fatigues showed up to support security at the event.

"We're here to support our law enforcement officers," said Laura Lee, a woman with the group. "So they know we have their backs."

She likened the prospect of removing Confederate-celebrating statues with a slippery slope that would lead to removing statues or plaques celebrating the history of Founding Fathers like George Washington.

"As painful as it is, it's not going to change what happened," she said.

When one man wearing a T-shirt with a swastika arrived at the protest by skateboard, the rifle-wielding counter-protesters immediately surrounded him until police could shoo him away.

Brad, a 37-year-old from Spring Branch who was among the counter-protesters who wouldn't give their full names, spent much of the protest draped in the Texas flag. He said Confederate General Robert E. Lee been a benevolent slave owner who educated his slaves, and incorrectly asserted that Abraham Lincoln had also owned slaves.

"The real statues that need to be torn down are the Union statues (of Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant)," he said. "We have checks and balances. Lincoln is the only president to overstep his boundaries and murder his own people. He's more like Hitler."

Another counterprotester identified himself as "General Lee"  but said he was descended from relatives who had fought for the Union Army.

History's dilemma: Don't remove Houston's Confederate statues. Put them in context.

"They want to tear down an angel," he said, his voice muffled by a yellow "Don't Tread on Me" bandanna he wore across his face to hid his identity. "That doesn't seem right to me."

The warring rallies cap off a racially fraught week in Houston and across the country.

Last Saturday, 32-year-old Heather Heyer died after a reported Nazi sympathizer allegedly plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters opposing a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Afterward, the president drew harsh criticism for a statement placing blame on "many sides." He later came out to denounce the KKK and neo-Nazis but walked back his comments the following day when the said white nationalist protesters included "some very fine people."

The chaos in Charlottesville sparked renewed interest nationwide in whether Confederate statues should be taken down.

Two days after the Virginia violence, activists tore down a Confederate statue, and this week activists in Houston started circulating a petition calling for the removal of Bayou City monuments to the Confederacy.

Vandals also doused Bell Park's Christopher Columbus statue with red paint and tossed white paint over a Martin Luther King Jr. statue in the Sunnyside community.

"We typically see things like this once or twice a year, but I'm expecting we're going to see this happen a lot more often in the next couple of weeks," restorer Bob Pringle said as his crew cleaned the Bell Park statue. "It's unfortunate. This is not the kind of work you enjoy."

Demarco Emmons, from Houston, supported removing the statue, which he considers a representation of a false historical narrative. Any symbol that glorifies the era, he said, fails to consider minorities who suffered.

"It celebrates a very negative institution," he said.

Staff writer Katherine Blunt contributed to this report.
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The Midland County Sheriff's Office is searching for a missing 4-year-old in West Texas, according to an Amber Alert issued Friday.

Caleb Tondre was last seen wearing a lime green Gap shirt, khaki pants and red Jordan shoes. The sheriff's office is also looking for Christopher Tondre, 36, who was last seen in Midland, in connection with the abduction.
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Houston police are beefing up security downtown Saturday for a planned Black Lives Matter gathering at which Chief Art Acevedo said he expects counter-protesters to appear.

Acevedo said he anticipates no problems at the 3 p.m. gathering, which organizers have dubbed "Destroy the Confederacy."

The event is set for 3 p.m. in front of a 100-year-old statue named the Spirit of the Confederacy at Sam Houston Park. An online petition to remove the monument garnered nearly 2,500 signatures as of Friday.

"We have an indication that folks with a different perspective might show up, and the bottom line is we will have sufficient resources at the event to ensure that anyone who shows up, with whatever point of view they have, they can exercise their rights in a safe environment," the chief said at a Friday press conference.

There will be some "minimal" road closures around the event, he added.

Mayor Sylvester Turner said he believes HPD is well prepared for all manner of protests.

"I simply would ask people to be on their best behavior," the mayor said. "People can express themselves, but they can do it in a very civil and orderly manner.

"Let's be very careful that we don't allow what's taking place in the national discourse to flow down into the city of Houston, where we're doing something where we're hurting the city of Houston, hurting our image and what we stand for."

Controversy over the statue emerged this week with an online petition and residents calling on the city to remove the statue, which features a winged angel holding a sword and palm branch. The statue was installed in the park in 1908.

Protesters are expected to gather around the statue, which is in a quiet area of the park near a duck pond. Counter-protesters have indicated they, too, will rally at the site.
AUSTIN - State lawmakers agreed to spend $40 million on school district programs for children with dyslexia and autism, but the Legislature botched the fine print in drafting the final version of the bill, and special education advocates worry the result could cut that check in half.

After lawmakers spent much of the last year working to address shortcomings in the state's special education system, the governor Wednesday signed a bill to give $20 million in grants to prop up model programs for students with autism and $20 million in grants for students with dyslexia. But the wording in the bill could be construed in such a way that only $10 million would be distributed for programs focusing on each disability, potentially shrinking the program that advocates say is already too small.

"It may only reach half the students that we originally envisioned," said Steven Aleman, policy specialist with Disability Rights Texas, an advocacy group.

The law bars the state from issuing grants for the two parallel programs until the 2018-19 school year and are limited to $10 million in grants a year for each.

But here's the problem: the final wording of the law restricts the funding to the 2018-19 biennium, meaning the law only allows grant spending in the second year before the rest of the funding disappears.

"We're working it out," said Lauren Callahan, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency, which is in charge of carrying out the law and acknowledged the legal conundrum. "It is our intention to spend the $20 million on dyslexia and the $20 million on autism. That is our intention."

Whether and how the TEA will work around the particulars of the law are unknown. The agency has the better part of a year to write rules outlining how the grant program will work before it commences.

The bill was the last to pass in this summer's special session, in which Gov. Greg Abbott challenged the Legislature to approve bills on 20 of his priority issues in 30 days. The to-do list consisted mostly of red meat Republican primary issues like curtailing health insurance coverage for abortions to passing a bathroom bill restricting which restrooms transgender people can use. Several other issues involved education, like addressing school funding and allowing special needs students to attend private schools using public dollars.

For more than a decade, Texas denied tens of thousands of students from special needs services. A 2016 Houston Chronicle investigation found the state set an arbitrary limit on the number of students who could receive special education services, setting the cap at 8.5 percent, far below the near national average of 13 percent.

Texas' special education enrollment rate plummeted to the worst in the country, spurring an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education, which is expected to publish a report of its findings by September.

The Senate tried to capitalize on the plight of families who have children struggling to get special education services in their schools during the regular session by narrowing its attempt to pass a school voucher program to students with special needs. That proposal failed to gain traction in the regular session and the special session, which ended this week.

House Public Education Chairman Dan Huberty, who has a son with dyslexia, instead offered a slate of reforms to the state's school funding formula. Among other changes, he proposed creating a new weight in the formula used to divvy out almost $650 in state funding for each student with dyslexia.

The Republican from Humble also proposed a five-year autism grant program to invest in and learn from campuses that specialize in teaching students with autism in order to identify and replicate best practices across the state.

In the 2015-16 school year, about 141,000 Texas public school students were identified as dyslexic and more than 47,500 students as autistic.

The Senate added Huberty's autism program to a paired down school finance bill late at night on the second to last day of the special legislative session after what had become months of negotiations which had turned into a stalemate. Led By Senate Education Committee Chairman Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, the chamber created a two-year autism grant program and an identical dyslexia grant program in seeking a compromise.

The late changes then had to be written into the legislation, and that's where the problem arose. Language cutting the program from five years to two years without changing other details in the bill created much of the conundrum, limiting the state spending to the last year of the 2018-19 biennium.

Coupled with several other major education issues -- such as addressing benefits for retiring teachers and bailing out small schools losing money from the expiration of an antiquated tax break program and unable to break the stalemate -- the House reluctantly agreed to the Senate's version the next day, and adjourned minutes later, essentially ending the special session.

Calls to Huberty and Taylor were not returned Thursday.

Rep. Diego Bernal, a San Antonio Democrat and vice chair of the Public Education Committee, was frustrated both with the error in the bill and the Senate's decision to change the direction of it.

"The dyslexia weight was supposed to get to every student in the state and not only did the Senate refuse to add it into the system, into the formula, but it looks like they also made it so only a very few students benefit from it. That wasn't the intent at all."
On Astronomy Magazines 2017 National Parks of the West Tour, Northbound, 89 of us are working our way toward Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the total eclipse. Weve toured several national parks and enjoyed the spectacle of Lowell Observatorys treasures. On Friday, August 18, we enjoyed some of the historic and cultural treasures of Salt Lake City, Utah.

First came a trip to the Great Salt Lake, an amazing natural wonder, where we saw the salty water (now very low in drought status), microscopic shrimp that call the lake home, and a huge copper mine nearby that supplies much of the United Statess copper needs.

We then enjoyed a full tour of Utahs Capitol, seeing the House and Senate chambers, the rotunda, many statues and paintings, and the architecture that is majestic.

And then we headed to the most famous building in the city, the Salt Lake Temple (Mormon Temple). The amazing and unusual history of this church, of course, dominates the citys history, from the tale of Joseph Smith to Brigham Young to the modern era. We also went into the Salt Lake Tabernacle (Mormon Tabernacle) to hear a truly amazing organ recital.

And what did I do with good, reliable wifi, and, finally, a little time to myself in the afternoon? Write and post blogs, of course!

Now to dinner, and tomorrow we head north into Idaho, drawing closer to our time under the Moons shadow. More soon.
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San Antonio police arrested an 18-year-old woman Thursday night who is accused of sexually assaulting a 4-year-old boy.

The woman, Esmeralda Medellin, allegedly committed the sexual assault on March 28, while she was babysitting the child, according to an arrest affidavit.

The child told his mother Medellin made him perform a sexual act on her, authorities said.

RELATED: Massive Houston sex sting, prostitution bust leads to 250+ arrests

The mother called police while Medellin was still in the home, according to the affidavit.

Medellin and the child were both taken to the hospital for a sexual assault examination after police arrived, officials said.

Officers then took Medellin to police headquarters, where she gave a voluntary statement denying the allegations. She was released after her statement, according to the affidavit.

RELATED: Teen driver leaving work from North Star Mall strikes, kills woman with pickup truck, police say

When detectives received the results of the examinations on Aug. 16, the boy's DNA was found on Medellin's breast, according to the affidavit. Male DNA was also found on her genitals, but the sample was not sufficient enough to make a positive comparison.

Police arrested Medellin on suspicion of aggravated sexual assault after the test results. She remained in Bexar County Jail Friday on a $75,000 bond.

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The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
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Copiii cu nevoi speciale din Stefan Voda au conditii de reabilitare mai bune, datorita UE si Fundatiei Soros Moldova
PHILADELPHIA  Police on Friday arrested a man suspected of spray-painting the words black power on the statue of a former Philadelphia mayor and police commissioner that critics say should come down.

The vandalism comes after calls from some activists and politicians to tear down the statue of Frank Rizzo in the aftermath of a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, sparked by the planned removal of a Confederate statue.

Police arent releasing the name of the man arrested until formal charges are filed.

Philadelphia has struggled to reconcile the legacy of Rizzo, who served as mayor from 1972 to 1980 and died in 1991. His fans remember him as a devoted public servant unafraid to speak his mind. His detractors saw his police force as corrupt and brutal and said Rizzo alienated minorities both as police commissioner and mayor.

On Monday, Democratic Councilwoman Helen Gym tweeted that the Rizzo statue should be removed, and Democratic Mayor Jim Kenney said Tuesday its the right time for a conversation about the statue.

While the mayor doesnt personally like the statue, his opinion isnt the only one that counts, his spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said Friday. She said the city must first seek public input on the statue and go from there.

Asa Khalif, a Black Lives Matter activist, said Friday his group is hoping politicians will move it, and has no issue with it being re-installed on private property.

If they dont have the courage to remove this racially charged and hateful statue, then the people will take it down themselves, he said.

He said his group is giving the city until the end of September to reach a conclusion.

The only conversation we should be having is about the date and time when it will be removed, he said.

A TV news reporter captured video of a man spray-painting the words on the statue overnight, and later images on social media showed two women covering the graffiti with a towel. By early Friday, workers had power-washed it away.

The bronze statue, unveiled in 1999, depicts a waving Rizzo descending the steps of a government building. It was donated to the city.

A man from Maplewood, New Jersey, was charged on Wednesday with disorderly conduct for throwing eggs at the statue.

Calls to remove the statue arent new. A year ago, an anti-police brutality group launched an online petition to take it down.

Erica Mines, of the Philly Coalition for REAL Justice that started the earlier petition, said Friday she is thankful that there is a national conversation happening around statues and monuments that represent white supremacy and oppression. But she sees removing the Rizzo statue as one small step in fighting against what she calls historic oppression in Philadelphia.

There are dueling petitions calling for keeping or removing the statue.

Rizzos 74-year-old son, former City Councilman Frank Rizzo Jr., said this week his father defended all law-abiding Philadelphians, regardless of race.

He loved this city, he said.

He told The Philadelphia Inquirer many former police officers contacted him with their concerns the statue was at risk.

A police spokesman said Friday the department cant discuss whether there were any plans to have police protection around the statue.
EUCLID, Ohio -- Police are looking for a man who robbed a Walgreens at gunpoint Thursday night.

No one was hurt during the robbery that happened about 9 p.m. at the Euclid Avenue location between East 204th Street and Dille Road, according to a news release from Euclid police.

Witnesses reported the man had a silver revolver and demanded money from the cashier, the release says.

He grabbed "handfuls of cash" from the cash register, ran out of the store and headed northbound on Dille Road, the release says.

Witnesses said the man is missing several front teeth, possibly walks with a limp and has a light beard.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Euclid Police Detective Bureau at 216-289-8505.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A 44-year-old woman's death has been ruled a homicide after her body was found Sunday night, police say.

Police were called to a home about 11 p.m. on West 147th Street just south of Coe Avenue on a report of an unresponsive woman, Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said.

Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's office lists Aileen Rosado as a woman who died at that address.

The woman was found on the floor in a bedroom and pronounced dead at the scene, she said. She was taken to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office where investigators learned Friday that she died from asphyxiation, police said.

Officers learned she had a history of medical issues and had no signs of trauma, police said.

No arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- One person is dead and four others are hurt after an early-morning shooting outside a bar on Cleveland's east side, Cleveland police said.

The shooting happened about 1 a.m. Saturday outside Freck's Lounge on Superior Avenue near East 112th Street, Cleveland police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said.

Witnesses called police to report that a fight broke out and several shots were fired.

Several people fired shots, Ciaccia said.

Officers recovered several bullet casings from different guns and towed three vehicles as part of the investigation.

The victims were taken to University Hospitals and one was pronounced dead, she said. The injuries of the other shooting victims do not appear to be life threatening, she said.

No arrests have been made in the ongoing investigation.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Saturday's crime and courts comments section.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich jeopardized more than $200 million annually in local government revenue with his June veto of an important bipartisan legislative fix to the budget. The money includes $18 million a year for the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority and $30 million for Cuyahoga County.

On Tuesday, the Ohio Senate should do what Ohio's House did July 6: Override that veto.

At issue: Under pressure from federal Medicaid officials, Ohio will no longer apply sales tax to Medicaid managed care organizations. Kasich aides obtained federal clearance during Barack Obama's administration to replace the sales tax with a franchise fee on health insuring corporations. But counties and transit authorities don't charge the fee, so they can't make up for their lost sales tax revenue.

State Sen. Matt Dolan, a Chagrin Falls Republican, and other legislators amended the budget to require Kasich's administration to ask federal permission for Ohio to increase the franchise fee to produce about $207 million a year for counties and transit authorities.

Kasich item-vetoed that. But on July 6, the House overrode his veto 87-10. Next week, Ohio's Senate should do the same. Kasich's budgets have squeezed local governments' finances plenty already; enough is enough.

Kasich has robustly criticized President Donald Trump. There's evidently concern that asking to recraft the franchise fee might tempt Trump's administration to blow up the fee deal altogether. But if Trump aides seek payback, it's just as likely they'd favor a plan fashioned by General Assembly Republicans who want to defy Kasich - which is what senators, on this issue, should do Tuesday.

About our editorials: Editorials express the view of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer -- the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization.

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A doctor claimed the Carlisle resident did not understand the risk.

The 24-year-old man suffered severe eye damage after looking at the sun directly during a solar eclipse through a pinhole in a piece of cardboard.

There were warnings all over the media in the days leading up to the July 20, 1963, event that burned out the central part of the retina of the mans left eye.

Suggestions were made urging people to view the suns image only as a projection on another piece of cardboard, but the burn victim took a different approach.

One doctor said most people played it safe and watched the eclipse on television rather than risk eye injury, The Evening Sentinel reported on July 23. Another specialist said several of his patients admitted they sneaked a quick look but it apparently was not enough to cause damage.

Devil ... Turk ... Comet

For 150 years, Carlisle newspapers have documented the occasional cosmic dance when the path of the moon blots out the sun turning day into night over the continental US.

With a total eclipse expected Monday, The Sentinel looks back on the history of this coverage as stored on microfilm at the Cumberland County Historical Society.

The eclipse of Aug. 7, 1869, was expected to cover a belt about 140 miles wide with its peak in central Iowa and southern Illinois.

It is in the region of totality that this phenomenon will assume that impressive  almost startling character that has made almost every total eclipse a matter of dread from the remotest antiquity, The Carlisle Herald reported. In days when they were inexplicable, they [eclipses] exerted political influence not far below that of the Devil, the Turk and the Comet.

That year Professor Charles F. Himes of Dickinson College participated in an expedition to Iowa to study the solar eclipse. He was part of a team of 15 experts transported there in a special train car to set up observation posts at Burlington, Ottumwa and Mount Pleasant.

The day has been everything that could be desired for observation, Himes wrote in a telegram to the New York Tribune that was reprinted by The Herald. The clouds in the morning were succeeded by a perfectly clear sky.

While one group investigated the heat of the suns corona, another team focused on the usual astronomical observations. A total of 79 photographs were taken.

Shadow-bands

Fast forward to Jan. 24, 1925, when employees and businessmen throughout Carlisle hurried from their offices shortly after 9 a.m. to gaze up at a total eclipse that came directly over Pennsylvania.

Atmospheric conditions here were perfect and people generally were able to get a clear view of the eclipse using only a piece of smoked glass, The Evening Sentinel reported. A group of students at the college headed by Dr. J. Fred Mohler viewed the sight through a specially constructed telescope. Today smoked glass is not the recommended way to view an eclipse.

In 1925, Mohler was head of the physics department at Dickinson College. He said on Jan. 23 the eclipse would reach a totality of 98 percent by 9:10 a.m. on Jan. 24. The sun will be so nearly covered by the moons shadow that only a tiny circle of light will be visible around the edge at the maximum period, the professor told the newspaper.

Seven years later, on Aug. 31, 1932, a total solar eclipse actually brought some relief from a record summer heat wave in Carlisle and other parts of the Northeast. But it was short-lived.

Coming on what was believed at the time the hottest afternoon of the summer the spectacle offered welcome excuse to relax from tasks at hand, The Sentinel reported on Sept. 1.When temperature records were checked it was discovered the mercury dropped six degrees during the interval the bulk of the suns rays were intercepted by the moon. But when the sun emerged again the temperature shot upward to 100 degrees to equal the years high mark.

The Sentinel on Aug. 30, 1932, ran a preview story that said the moon would obscure about 90 percent of the sun starting at 3:21 p.m. the following day.

The moon moving eastward at about 1800 miles per hour will cut across the path of the sun in such a manner that a slightly tilted, bright crescent will appear at the side of the moon, The Sentinel reported.

Here there will be plenty of daylight during the period of greatest obscurity, although the suns light will be noticeably dimmed and changed in hue, the story reads. In addition Carlisle may see shadow-bands on the earth and on buildings facing the sun. These are flickering bands alternately light and shadow.

Celestial show

School districts across Cumberland County have modified their schedule to optimize safety. Officials are worried students may accidentally look at the sun during the eclipse this coming Monday.

In 1963, a total solar eclipse prompted organizers to postpone the Little League Tournament game between the North Middleton League All-Stars and the Newville All-Stars.

The Sentinel ran a news story on July 18, 1963, that included a diagram outlining the steps to take to make a sun scope out of a cardboard box.

Less than seven years, on March 7, 1970, a strange darkness settled over Carlisle just after 12 p.m. It was not a total eclipse for Cumberland County but it still made a huge impression.

The newspaper reported that astronomers from 14 countries used every precious second to train their instruments on the eclipse to record observations that would take months to decipher.

It was the start of a celestial show for millions on the North American continent who would see varying degrees of partial eclipse  or the total blackout as it swept its narrow path up the eastern seaboard from Florida to Virginia and then on to Nantucket Island, The Sentinel reported.
Instead of fearing that artificial intelligence (A.I.) will replace us, we should be excited about how A.I. will help us.

In a perfect future, our A.I. virtual assistant will know what we're doing, where we're going and  most importantly  what we're saying. They'll know lots of other things, too. And when they sense we need help, they'll whisper suggestions, ideas or facts into our ears, essentially giving us real-time knowledge as we go about our day.

As you're walking from a parking garage to your meeting, your virtual assistant should give you turn-by-turn walking directions without you having to ask. As you shake hands before the meeting, your virtual assistant should remind you (without anyone else hearing), that you met the person four years ago at a conference. During the meeting, it should listen for potential questions and supply the answer.

When it hears, "Let's meet up on this in October," it should remind you that you'll be away on business in October -- so you can suggest November.

This future is delayed by two facts. The first is that virtual assistants and A.I. aren't that good yet. And the second is that the public isn't ready to be "spied on" all day by the companies that make virtual assistants.

The good news is that progress is being made on both fronts by Google and Facebook.

[ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ]

Google's suggestion A.I.

Google this week rolled out a Chrome web browser version of its Allo messaging app.

Each Allo account is tied to a specific phone number, and the smartphone using that number must validate the browser version with an on-screen QR code to enable its use. At the moment, only Android phones can validate, with Google promising an iPhone version shortly. (Go here to enable the web version.)

The browser version simply provides an interface for Allo on the phone. If your phone dies, goes offline or if you uninstall the mobile app, the browser version becomes unavailable. You can be logged into just one browser session at a time.

Google Allo on smartphones, and now on the web, lets Google Assistant listen to your conversations and make suggestions.

In some respects, Allo is an ordinary modern chat app. It offers "stickers," for example. But Allo also uses two forms of "suggestion" A.I.

Google's "Smart Reply," which uses neural nets to guess at the reply you might choose, works in both Allo and Google Inbox. Smart Reply pays attention to what's being said, and offers relevant suggestions - in this case, of course, suggestions about how to reply.

The Google Assistant, which is a virtual assistant platform, is also available via Allo. You can type commands and queries just as you would speak them to a Google Home device. The Home also runs Google Assistant, as does Google's own Pixel line of Android smartphones. The web version of Allo represents the first availability of Google Assistant on the web. Unfortunately, the web version of Assistant does not support third-party app integration.

The single most interesting aspect of Google Assistant in Allo (and the new desktop browser version) is that Assistant "pays attention" to chat conversations, and occasionally suggests things. For example, if you start talking about pizza, it might suggest a nearby pizza joint.

Placing "suggestion" A.I. into a typed chat context simultaneously helps Google develop the technology to make it better, but also eases privacy concerns. Typed chats feel more private and formal than, say, something that listens to actual conversations and makes suggestions based on what it hears.

Google isn't the only company offering "suggestion" A.I.

Facebook's 'suggestion' A.I.

Facebook Messenger has a newish feature called M Suggestions.

Most news reports and even Facebook announcements confuse "M," which is an unreleased A.I. virtual assistant experiment project, with "M Suggestions," which is a feature of Facebook Messenger that has been released in most English- and Spanish-speaking countries.

To clarify, M is more of an umbrella project for Facebook to figure out how A.I. could enhance or augment social interaction at massive scale.

If you visit the help page for M and click on the "How can I use M" link, it will probably tell you "M isn't currently available in your area. When it is, you'll be notified in the Messenger app." Only a tiny number of select users participate in the M experiment. Facebook M is not generally available in any country.

Everyone who uses Facebook Messenger in the U.S., UK, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Spain and Mexico does not automatically get access to M, but they do get access to M Suggestions.

Unlike the M experiment, M Suggestions is a "shipping" feature of Facebook Messenger, released in those countries and in two languages - English and Spanish.

M Suggestions can urge you to save Messenger conversations or remind you to wish somebody a "Happy Birthday" when it's their birthday.

Those preemptive suggestions are based on data. Others are based on the conversation you're having. For example, if you say, "Want to call me?," M Suggestions will offer to place the call. M Suggestions can also offer to send money, share locations, coordinate meetings, conduct a poll or call a Lyft or Uber - all based on the conversation.

The latest news is that M Suggestions also offers music suggestions via Spotify when you're talking about music.

M Suggestions "eavesdrops" on the chat (it's all text, so it's not technically "listening"). However, credible reports by Bloomberg earlier this month indicate Facebook is working on at least two Amazon Echo-like virtual assistant appliance products that would presumably run Facebook M Suggestions. In that case, it could actually listen to conversations, then interject with spoken computer voice. (This, of course, is conjecture on top of rumor. But it's easy to imagine a Facebook home appliance you talk through, where you say: "Call Steve," to which the device answers: "OK, calling Steve. Don't forget to wish Steve a happy birthday!")

One rumored version of a Facebook appliance has a screen, which could display suggestions quietly while you talk via audio or video.

As a social-networking company, Facebook focuses both the larger M experiment, and also M Suggestions, on greasing the wheels of social interaction. It's not about knowledge or productivity, but communication.

Three suggestions for suggestion A.I.

Amazon now makes several versions of its Echo line of virtual assistant appliances. Google's Home appliance now functions as a telephone. Apple's HomePad appliance ships in December. Facebook is rumored to be working on at least two such appliances.

By the end of the year, virtual assistant appliances will be without question a "mainstream" product category.

Now we need three changes.

First, we need business versions of these appliances that replace office telephones, an idea I detailed in May.

Second, we need "suggestions" to be part of these devices. That would mean they would listen not just for the trigger "keywords," but would listen all the time to everything, and chime in opportunistically with suggestions. For the business appliances, these should appear silently on screen, and have access to calendar, contacts and other user data. They should also have good APIs so corporate application data could be accessed as well.

And third, "suggestion" A.I. needs to be part of our smartphone virtual assistants as well. Wireless earbuds should be the hardware interface for constant interaction with virtual assistants that, yes, offer suggestions based on our contexts and conversations.

I know, I know. Privacy. But privacy concerns shouldn't be a deal-breaker. We should demand from the creators of these "suggestion"-capable A.I. virtual assistant strong assurances of data privacy. That's both possible and necessary.

The benefits of A.I. "suggestions" will enhance everything about our lives, including our business interactions.

Google and Facebook are on the right track. We just need a lot more of it.
Mount Holly Springs will seek the expertise of a Harrisburg civil engineering firm in the effort to update its 41-year-old subdivision and land development ordinance.

Borough council this week granted planning commission members permission to approach the firm of Herbert, Rowland & Grubic Inc. for information on their services and fees.

The plan may be to hire HRG to advise the borough on the update of Chapter 5 of the land development ordinance, which pertains to design requirements for such improvements as roads, sidewalks, storm water drainage, public water and sanitary sewer.

This review of Chapter 5 will take about two months to complete, said Pam Still, a borough council woman and liaison to the planning commission and zoning hearing board. She said Mount Holly will get advice from the Cumberland County planning officer on what to ask of HRG to keep down the costs.

The county will provide the borough with a model ordinance it can use to update the current ordinance, which dates from 1976, Still said. Commission members have already gone through all the ordinance books looking for regulations that reference the 1976 ordinance.

Merle Barclay, planning commission secretary, said the county ordinance is a template from which Mount Holly can draw language that pertains to its needs and conditions.

That is our starting point, he said. We are going to look at what they have and what we may want to incorporate. It will be anything specific to us. We may not need everything.

We need approval to use HRG, said Still before asking council if it was appropriate to approach the engineering firm. She said it may be as simple as HRG engineers filling in design specification numbers or carrying over some of the specifications already spelled out in the 1976 ordinance.

Council President James Collins II believes there may be some cost savings because HRG has probably done similar work for other municipalities over the years.
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It's nearing the end of August and for many of us, it really doesnt feel like summer has even started in Cornwall yet.

We remember our long six week summer holidays spent enjoying Cornwalls amazing coast in brilliant sunshine, but those days have felt like a very distant memory this August.

While this summer may not exactly be proving one to remember  its not too late to leave the mizzle and moody skies behind and head for warmer climates, sunshine or just a bit of a break.

We checked out Cornwall Airports flight list to see where you could grab a bargain flight to this summer and we even found a few travel destinations for under 50.

Under 50

Faro

Head out to the sunny Algarve in the south of Portugal where you can enjoy sunshine and warm temperatures up to 29 degrees at this time of year.

The beautiful region on the coast has a lot to offer from Mediterranean beaches, to a nearby national park. It is also much quieter than many of the destinations across Portugal with small traditional villages.

Many of the two-and-a-half hour flights to Faro can be picked up from Newquay for less than 50 per person.

If you fly out for a two-week trip on August 29, flights will cost 33.29 per person, though they will creep up to 67.99 for the return.

Leaving your holiday until mid-September, just after most schools have returned could also save you a pretty penny, with flights from just 38.69 to Faro on September 12 and return flights on September 26 from 44.99.

Frankfurt Hahn

Its not a tropical paradise by any stretch of the imagination  in fact its not even that much warmer than Cornwall at the moment.

But bargain flights to Frankfurt Hahn in Germany could offer you the perfect summer holiday.

The region is quaint, pretty and surrounded by stunning forests  so if you prefer an active trip to lazing on a sunny beach, miles of breath-taking bike rides, pretty woodland walks or a cheeky relaxing wine tour could be the perfect alternative.

The airport for the region is located right in the heart of Rhineland-Palatine, which is known as Romantic Germany. It has pretty rivers, scenic views and even fairytale castles.

The temperature is current at around 23 degrees.

If you leave Cornwall on August 24 you can fly to the heart of Hunsruck for 43.99 and returning two weeks later on September 7 will cost you just 14.99.

Cork

Head to The Rebel City for a bit of a different summer escape.

The beautiful city is full of Irish charm, walk down the cobbled streets, learn about its interesting history and marvel at stunning architecture.

And if youre stuck for things to do, you can always visit the magnificent Blarney Castle or kiss The Stone.

Temperatures arent soaring at the moment, with highs of around 18 degrees, but they are comparable to temperatures in Cornwall, which at the time of writing this, are currently 17 degrees.

You can head to for a city break this summer 36.99, leaving on September 2 and returning two weeks later on September 16 for 32.99.

Under 100

Alicante

With beautiful beaches and crystal clear waters, Alicante on Costa Blanca in Spain is the perfect summer getaway for some September sunshine.

Currently the temperature in the stunning resort is 31 degrees and it will stay around that temperature for the next few weeks, proving the perfect place to head for some heat.

Alicante has something to suit everyone, it is steeped in history with its old architecture and narrow streets, it has golden sand beaches on the Mediterranean coast and it has a good night life scene.

If you head out to the beautiful region on August 30, you can grab a flight from Newquay for 79.99 per person, with return flights two weeks later on September 13, for 44.99.

Under 150

The Isles of Scilly

(Image: Dan Hooper)

OK maybe this is cheating because technically, it is part of Cornwall.

But when we think of lazy summer days whiling away the team on stretches of white sand next to clear seas, theres no better destination that springs to mind than our own neighbours in the Isles of Scilly.

Flights are quick, taking you from Newquay to St Marys in just 30 minutes, but prices are a little higher.

If you head out to the beautiful cluster of islands on August 26, returning two weeks later on September 9, flights will cost 114 per person each way.

While it might not be the best tropical getaway, according to The MET office, the Isles of Scilly is currently enjoying warmer temperatures  and even a little bit of sunshine  with highs of around 20 degrees.
CORNWALL, Ontario  CoTiCon grown significantly from its humble beginnings in 2014, having recently collaborated with Cornwall Food Fest and Beyond 21.

Hosted in Lamoureux Park, cosplayers had the opportunity to take part in contests, games, and a walkabout through the downtown core.

Montreal-based, pair, TSKUKI No StarDust say theyve been doing competitive cosplay for over three years now.

Usually when we choose a character to cosplay, its because we really like them and identify with them, they said. We have day jobs, so some costumes can take us months to make.

Event organizer, Annie DeRochie says that the partnership with Food Fest has been a breeze.

Theyre really easy to work with, said DeRochie. And they like what we do because it brings in even more interest to their cause.

As far as DeRochie is concerned, the partnership will continue next year, as well. With planning starting almost immediately after the costumes come off this year, DeRochie says that its important to know what to expect.

It would be a very catastrophic event if I didnt plan ahead, laughed DeRochie.

Dressed as Marin from the Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening, DeRochie said that running an event called for something light and airy.

Unfortunately, I couldnt wear any of my bigger costumes today, said said. But people are here enjoying themselves, so I cant complain.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Beginning this month, information about busing for the upcoming school year is just a click or a phone call away, for parents and students in Eastern Ontario.

Student Transportation of Eastern Ontario (STEO) is the transportation consortium for the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario (CDSBEO) and the Upper Canada District School Board (UCDSB). STEOs Acting GM/CAO Janet Murray explains, STEOs website is a resource through which parents and students can access their unique transportation information, including their pick-up time and location and the name of their bus company. Parents and students are invited to visit the STEO website at www.steo.ca. Parents can then click on the Find My Bus Stop icon and fill in the required fields to access individual busing information, such as pick-up location and time.

The site also offers information on school eligibility, a portal for parents, bus delays and cancellations, bus company information, bell times and frequently asked questions. In addition, STEOs safety and student program information are regularly updated in order to provide helpful resources for families.

STEO makes it even easier for parents and students to check on transportation information by maintaining a special busing hotline during this busy time. The number 1-855-441-1589 is active from August 14th to September 15th, 2017 with extended hours of service to ensure that your student transportation questions are answered.STEO wishes all of its families safe and happy travels.
CHAMBERSBURG  A Pennsylvania man has been sentenced to jail after police say he tried to frame his estranged wife for his own murder.

Public Opinion reports (http://bit.ly/2uXm6rr) 30-year-old Christian Koelsch has been sentenced to a maximum of 23 months after he pleaded guilty to false reports Wednesday.

Police say Koelsch was posing as his wife when he created a Craigslist advertisement requesting someone to help her take care of her ex-husband. Documents show Koelsch wrote in the advertisement that he beat and abused her.

He has been ordered not to have contact with his ex-wife and complete domestic violence therapy.
Cloud News

Nimble CRM, Startup That Bulks Up G Suite And Office 365 With Social And CRM Data, Launches Channel

Joseph Tsidulko

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Nimble CRM, a startup that's rethinking how cloud-based business tools should enhance the relationship between small businesses and their customers, launched a channel program Wednesday to align with more solution providers in the Microsoft and Google channels.

The software developer based in Santa Monica, Calif., is recruiting partners looking to boost the capabilities of Microsoft Office 365 and Google G Suite by seeding those popular productivity suites with data from social media sites and leading CRM platforms, said Jon Ferrara, Nimble's founder and CEO.

Office 365 and G Suite have become "the operating system of a business," said Ferrara, who played a pioneering role in the development of CRM technology through his previous venture, GoldMine Software.

[Related: Microsoft Soft-Launches SaaS Marketplace Connecting ISVs Directly To Its Channel]

To prepare his company to support a formal channel, Ferrara hired Kevin Turner to be his director of strategic partner development. Turner founded Boss Systems, a leading GoldMine VAR back in the heyday of that groundbreaking vendor; a later channel venture, Model Metric, was acquired by Salesforce.

Nimble's offering culls data from productivity tools such as email, calendars and contact lists, then integrates data from social platforms like LinkedIn and sales and marketing platforms like Salesforce to put comprehensive customer profiles in front of users.

It's an easy add-on for partners who want to enhance their Office 365 and G Suite practices, Ferrara said, one that many solution providers could benefit from using internally before training customers.

"We have a team of people and programs that will help the VAR modernize their own sales and marketing tools, and then start doing it for the customers themselves," he said.

Ferrara said he sees "many VARs using Autotask or ConnectWise and not using modern software."

Nimble CRM, which started selling its offering back in 2013, already has 100 partners through an informal channel.

"Now is the time we're ready to invest in the resources, scale what we're doing, and also invest in our new partners for their success," he said.

Ferrara points to GoldMine, which swelled to more than 5,000 partners, as an example of a software vendor that didn't in any way compete with VARs, but instead saw those partners as an extension of its own business.

"It's one thing to sign someone up," he said, "and another thing to work hand-in-hand with them to help them grow their business."

Trials sold through Nimble's website all become leads for VARs to convert, he said.

Nimble's channel program was introduced at the Microsoft Inspire conference in Washington, D.C. The startup recently became a Microsoft Gold Certified ISV.

At the Microsoft partner conference, Nimble also unveiled a new freemium feature for Office 365 called Smart Contacts. The app, which also works through Outlook desktop and iOS, synchronizes emails, calendars and contacts with a team relationship manager enhanced by social and business profiles.

Van Murray is CEO of NeoCloud, a solution provider based in Raleigh, N.C., that's added Nimble's solution to its Office 365 practice.

The add-on "helps us create more value for our customers, differentiates us from our competitors and increases profitability," Murray told CRN.

"Nimble is our Trojan horse into businesses to connect with decision-makers and make Office 365 sticky in customer accounts," he said.
Lightweight Laptops

While Apple hasn't been paying as much attention to the MacBook Air as its other Macs, the trailblazing lightweight laptop is still getting updates. The latest came in June. Meanwhile, Lenovo is continuing its blitz of highly portable laptops in the Yoga series. Among the most recent offerings in the 2-in-1 series is the Yoga 720. Which of the two lightweight laptops is the best fit for you? In the following slides, the CRN Test Center compares Lenovo's Yoga 720 vs. the Apple MacBook Air on specs and price.
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Whole Foods Market doesn't sell just chickens. It sells shoppers on the idea of chickens raised and treated better than prevailing standards: no antibiotics, no hormones, no cages. Not the sort of chicken you can get anywhere.

But thanks in no small part to a food-quality revolution that Whole Foods helped cultivate over the past decade, standards for much of the poultry sold at American supermarkets are shifting. The gulf has narrowed-and sometimes has even closed-between what's sold at Whole Foods and what's produced by industrial food giants such as Perdue Farms and sold at lower-cost supermarkets.

Now that Amazon.com Inc. has moved to acquire Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, it remains to be seen what the online-shopping giant will do with the grocery chain that arguably did more than any business to bring the fussy foodie focus on provenance into the mainstream. The more widespread availability of products meeting Whole Foods standards can even be seen as part of what made the company vulnerable to a takeover bid.

The biggest difference between the store-brand chickens at Whole Foods and what's for sale at another supermarket is, in many cases, the sticker price itself.

A shopper on a recent visit could pay $2.49 per pound for antibiotic-free thighs with a Whole Foods label touting "no added solutions or injections." Perdue's Harvestland-branded poultry-no antibiotics, air-chilled-cost just $1.99 per pound at an unremarkable Key Food supermarket just a few blocks away. The similarities don't stop there: In this case, the chicken under the 365 Everyday Value store-brand label at Whole Foods was raised by a Perdue farmer and slaughtered in the same Perdue plant as its Harvestland cousin, although a shopper likely wouldn't be aware of that fact.

Not all 365-branded chicken comes from Perdue, and aside from an establishment number printed on the package, there is no way to determine where a product originated. Yet the price disparity for poultry of nearly indistinguishable origins can be pronounced. A whole bird under the 365 store brand at the same Whole Foods: $4.09 per pound. At Key Food, the Perdue Harvestland whole chicken: $1.99 per pound. (The quirks of grocery pricing can lead to unexpected results: Whole Foods store-brand drumsticks produced by Perdue rang up at 20 cents less per pound than Perdue's Harvestland version.)

"What used to be more unique" to natural food retailers "has now become really par for the course, certainly among your larger chains and your progressive grocers," says David Sprinkle, researcher director at Packaged Facts, a market-research firm. "When other chains, including bigger chains, started doing natural and organic, well, then suddenly Whole Foods was competing with Kroger, Wegmans, Costco."

Several big poultry producers have acquired or formed partnerships with brands carried by Whole Foods; in some cases these companies have developed lines that accord with the practices used by Whole Foods. Perdue, for instance, acquired the no-antibiotics Coleman Natural Foods in 2011 and has since converted 95 percent of its poultry operations to antibiotic-free production. Poultry sold to Whole Foods is segregated from the rest of its lines.

Other standards that Whole Foods helped champion are becoming, well, standard. A practice such as air-chilling the chickens after slaughter-a step favored by chefs over a water bath-is used on Perdue poultry sold at Whole Foods and elsewhere. Other practices have been longtime standards. The use of synthetic hormones is not approved for U.S. poultry production, meaning that all chicken sold in supermarkets eligible for the hormone-free designation and broiler chickens are almost never raised in cages.

The same dynamic has also played out with beef. Open Prairie Natural Angus, a brand sold at Whole Foods, is produced by Tyson Foods Inc. from cattle raised without antibiotics or added hormones. Meyer Natural Angus, a brand sold at Whole Foods in accordance with the supermarket chain's meat-sourcing standards, is processed in a plant owned by Cargill. Both of these brands can be found in meat departments at lower-priced retailers such as Target and Walmart-owned Jet.com.

After the announcement of Amazon's deal to buy Whole Foods, the grocery chain said in a letter to its customers that it was still going to "deliver the highest quality, delicious natural and organic products that you've come to love and trust." A few days later, Whole Foods Chief Executive John Mackey said he had been assured that Amazon wouldn't introduce a substandard brand with his store's name on it.

"We will want Whole Foods to keep doing what it does best, including working with small farms and producers to bring the best natural and organic foods to customers," an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg via email. But an Amazon-owned Whole Foods would almost certainly expand in the already cutthroat U.S. grocery business, creating new urgency for the supermarket chain to source meat and poultry, and industrial-scale producers can handle that output more easily than the small farmers who helped build the Whole Foods image.

At the moment, however, what sets Whole Foods apart-besides higher prices-is the way it communicates to shoppers about its animal welfare standards. Signs and labels in the meat department describe a five-step rating developed with the nonprofit Global Animal Partnership (GAP). To qualify at Step 1, the baseline for inclusion in a Whole Foods meat department, means any product must prohibit antibiotics and hormones and follow a "no cages, no crates, no crowding" credo. Farmers and ranchers raising the animals are also expected to be audited for compliance every 15 months.

The 365-branded poultry at Whole Foods is often rated Step 2, since GAP doesn't certify chickens at a lower level. Some of the requirements to earn that designation represent real improvements over industry standards-and some do not.

A Step 2 barn, for instance, must have one type of "enrichment" for every thousand square feet. What exactly is a chicken enrichment? "Something that encourages expression of natural behavior" such as "foraging, playing, or exercise," says Anne Malleau, GAP's executive director and global meat coordinator at Whole Foods. A farmer who provided a sufficient number of ramps for his chickens to climb would qualify. Even though many shoppers might envision their Whole Foods chickens roaming outdoors, such a perk isn't required until Step 3.

Many shoppers are in the dark about what these claims really mean, even as Whole Foods adorns its meat department with information about its food certification. Research conducted by Packaged Facts this year found that about 21 percent of shoppers at natural-food supermarkets akin to Whole Foods either didn't know or had only a general idea of what it meant to advertise a product as "hormone/steroid free."

Part of this confusion might stem from the fact that the standards promoted by GAP and Whole Foods are now becoming more widely embraced in the U.S. In June 2016, Perdue announced new animal welfare standards that included adding windows to 200 barns and a study of chicken-enrichment activities. So far, a Perdue spokesman said in an email, enrichments such as perches and hay bales are in 13.5 percent of the company's barns. Last month the company committed to raising enough GAP-certified chickens to meet customer demand.

And no matter if a bird's destiny is underneath a Whole Foods 365 label or Perdue's own Harvestland brand, in many cases the slaughtering and processing happens in the same facility, which can be identified by the establishment number printed on the packaging. That means the same methods used to produce GAP-approved poultry for Whole Foods now extend well beyond what's sold at Whole Foods.

At a Whole Foods with a meat counter, there will be a range of beef options behind the case clearly marked as local or grass-fed. As with poultry, the products are all GAP-certified and follow the five-step rating system that requires a minimum of space per animal, pasture access, and a prohibition on branding. And, much like the poultry, customers at the meat counter would be unlikely to know that brand-free beef under the glass may come from two companies whose products are available through lower-cost vendors: Meyer Natural Angus and Open Prairie.

Both producers adhere to the required standards, even if shoppers are not aware of the connection to major beef companies. Meyer Natural Angus is processed in a Cargill plant in Colorado; Open Prairie is a Tyson brand. It's more difficult to reliably compare beef prices at Whole Foods and other grocers because there are so many different cuts and availability can vary by location.

Meyer operates by sourcing GAP-certified animals and having them processed at a Cargill facility for a fee, then shipping to Whole Foods distribution centers. The company's use of Cargill facilities is not abnormal, according to industry experts, and segregation practices are strictly monitored by representatives of both companies and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"Because of the consolidation of the industry," says Gregory Bloom, executive director of the Colorado Beef Council, "it's hard not to go through the bigger processors."

Meyer uses the facility one a day a week, says Warren Mirtsching, senior vice president for food safety at Meyer Natural Foods, and processes a minimum of about 800 heads of cattle in that time. The process remains unchanged even when it's not GAP-certified cattle getting slaughtered. "Lines are running at the same speed," Mirtsching says. "Same equipment, same employees."

Whole Foods points to the extra level of audits that are guaranteed with any product purchased at its stores, rigorous enough that industry insiders sometimes complain that working with Whole Foods means jumping through extra hoops. "I'm really proud of the process to become a Whole Foods market supplier," says Theo Weening, global meat coordinator and buyer at Whole Foods.

There's something else Whole Foods believes it offers: peace of mind. Sure, shoppers at Whole Foods can select-and pay extra for-a pasture-raised chicken or grass-fed steak from a local rancher. But even the least-expensive option will meet a basic promise of quality and transparency. "All products meet the same minimum standards. You don't have to read the labels," Weening says. In other stores, however, "the customer really has to search."

Perhaps this is what resonates with the core customers at Whole Foods. Regardless of minor differences in provenance for some meat and poultry, the organic-food grocer has built its brand on the promise of healthful food and higher-quality products. The company has the ability to "leverage quite a bit of consumer trust," says Billy Roberts, a senior food and drink analyst at Mintel, a market intelligence agency.

Research conducted by Mintel found that the second-most purchased category of items from natural grocers is fresh meat, including poultry and seafood. "There is a trust halo there," says Diana Smith, the associate director of retail and apparel at Mintel. "Consumers are going in and shopping for these items because they do trust them."

Still, other retailers now offer very similar products, sometimes at a much lower price. This may, at least in part, explain why Whole Foods keeps adding rules, such as its March 2016 requirement that suppliers switch chicken breeds over the next eight years to those that grow more slowly and have fewer health problems.

For companies like Perdue, Cargill, and Tyson, diversifying into the higher welfare category makes business sense. The big meat and poultry companies are devoting much heavier portions of production to these generally more expensive products as consumer demand rises and large retail and restaurant customers, including McDonald's, ask for them, says Dewey Warner, a food and nutrition researcher at Euromonitor International. Plus, he notes, products such as antibiotic-free or organic chicken "command higher prices" at a time when record meat and poultry supplies in the U.S. are curbing commodity prices.

Weening, the Whole Foods meat buyer, recognizes that as his company has demanded better products, it's often the bigger, more widely available companies that have risen to supply them. "If you asked me 10 years ago, 'Will you ever have a lot of Perdue chicken in your stores,' I would have said, 'No, probably not,' " he says. But, he adds, this only furthers the mission: "First it starts with Whole Foods, and then it changes the way animals are raised across the world."

Whole Foods seems to be succeeding by that measure. While that might mean the company is fostering the growth of its own competition, one group is certain to benefit from more widely available products that meet higher standards: meat-eating grocery shoppers.

-With assistance by Shruti Singh.
ANSONIA  A man has died of injuries from a Saturday accident involving a tow motor, police said.

Mazhar Khan, of Bridgeport, died on Sunday as a result of injuries he suffered in the incident, police said Monday morning.

The incident is still under investigation by the Ansonia Police Department and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Like a forklift, a tow motor is a powered industrial truck used to lift and move materials over short distances.

Around 8:45 a.m. Saturday, Ansonia police responded to North Prospect Street Extension for an accident that involved a tow motor. Police said the first officer at the scene found an overturned tow motor and a 47-year-old man with a severe head wound.

The man found at the scene was also believed to have been in cardiac arrest, police said.

The man was working for a subcontractor for Lowes Home Improvement to deliver wood when the tow motor overturned , police said.
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A morning of fishing turned fatal Saturday for a group of men from New York.

Two bodies were pulled from the Long Island Sound by the Fairfield Police Marine Unit around 4 p.m., police Chief Gary McNamara said. They were identified by family members as Jose Cruz, 40, and Victor Paulino, 32, both of Bruce Avenue in Yonkers, N.Y.

Emergency responders were able to rescue another member of their group. A fourth man with them did not require assistance. The medical examiner was contacted late Saturday afternoon, McNamara said, to officially determine what killed the other two men.

Emotionally, this is a life-altering experience, McNamara said.

McNamara said the four men, all from Yonkers, went to Penfield Reef together to go fishing. But shortly before 8 a.m., things took a bad turn. One of the men was fishing from the beach, McNamara said, and the other three were fishing from the water when they were swept out.

Fairfield police received a call of fishermen in need of assistance, and the Coast Guard, based in New Haven, said it was immediately alerted. The Fairfield Fire Department quickly rescued one of the men that had been swept out, McNamara said. He said the man was initially unconscious when he was pulled from the water, but emergency responders were able to revive him.

The towns fire department took the lead on the search and rescue, McNamara said, and rescue units went into recovery mode around 2 p.m. Emergency responders included dive teams from Fairfield, Bridgeport, Westport, Stratford, and Milford along with the Coast Guard.

McNamara said the Fairfield Police Marine Unit went out during low tide before the sun went down.

They were the ones that recovered the bodies, he said. And now were working with the families to comfort them.

There were two other fishermen in the area of the four men from Yonkers at the time of the incident, but McNamara said they did not know the men and did not go fishing with them.
Editor's note - Joseph Bickell developed a following across Missouri through through three failed statewide political campaigns which drew media coverage due to his unique appearance and extreme views. During at least two of those campaigns he passed through Southeast Missouri attempting to drum up votes and interest in the causes he held dear.

Not many people around Missouri were as accomplished at what they set their mind to as Chief Wana Dubie. He devoted his life to being a perpetual thorn in the side of the man, and as an activist, he stood above all others in terms of tenacity and devotion.

Wana Dubie, born Joseph Bickell, was a transplant to the Show-Me State from Flint, Michigan. As a youth, the budding activist had his first brush with the law at 18 years old when the state changed its legal drinking age to 21. In protest, he stole a truck of beer and held it hostage.

It was also around that time The Chief smoked his first cannabis upon being told George Washington grew the herb. The simple act began a lifelong love affair of man and plant which flowered into the legend of today.

Wana Dubie beat around the country for years living the hippie life, working odd jobs and stirring up trouble. By the early 1990s he ended up in Cooper Hill, a small town outside Jefferson City in Osage County. It was there he took his most militant stand for legalization. The Chief declared publically he would plant cannabis seeds as an act of civil disobedience. He called it the Cooper Hill Pot Party. Weeks later, after the buds were grown and harvested, The Chief was arrested and thrown in jail.

The government sentenced Wana Dubie to five years in Algoa State Prison, and The Chief made sure officials regretted every second he was there. He still holds the unofficial record for most complaints filed in one day at more than 250 (theyre legally required to answer each one). He also refused to cut his hair. He got tattooed. Danced in protest. And when his beard grew to two inches, Wana Dubie was told to cut half off. He showed up the next day with one cheek shaved clean and the other with a two-inch beard.

The Chief also refused all offers of parole because he knew hed fail any drug tests while on probation. He served every day of his original sentence.

After being released to a halfway house, The Chief was briefly incarcerated again after escaping to go to a Rainbow Gathering, and then making a run to the Mexican border.

Once things settled down, The Chief made his home in Dent County and took his battle to the ballot box. In 2006 he ran for Missouri state representative. In 2008 it was governor. In 2016 he gained his greatest acclaim in receiving more than 30,000 votes as part of his Dubie vs. Blunt campaign to unseat Senator Roy Blunt. The AP wire picked up the story, and The Chiefs grin was republished coast to coast.

In his opinion, however, that wasnt his greatest victory of the year. That came upon the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado when Wana Dubie finally got a doobie of legal weed and fired it up. In that moment, there were no cops, or judgements, or any more strife for the aging hippie. Thereafter, The Chief climbed down from the mountain and quietly declared victory. He died at peace Thursday.

One day, if The Chief is correct, cannabis will be legalized across the United States. What then do we make of this man and his life? Was anything gained by taking his freedom and pursuit of happiness?

In a different time Joseph Bickell may have been anything, but in the times he lived, he chose to be Chief Wana Dubie.
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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.
A few years ago, after an hour working out in the gym, I headed off for my favourite treat. Standing in line for my double-helping bacon sandwich oozing with melted butter and brown sauce, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

It was Ronnie, one of the trainers at my gym. He said: Before you stuff that in your mouth, look at the size of the backsides of people ahead of you in that queue.

Cruel, perhaps, but honest. Because as a personal trainer he knows the basic fact about fatties.

Experts all talk about an obesity epidemic as if people who fill their faces suffer from some illness over which they have no control

Theyre overweight because they eat too much and exercise too little.

Yet experts all talk about an obesity epidemic as if people who fill their faces suffer from some illness over which they have no control. And now our nanny state is stepping in with its latest cure.

Yesterday, we learned it is determined to force food manufacturers to make burgers and pizza portions smaller, reduce the size of crisp packets and lower the fat and sugar content of unhealthy foods.

What infantilising nonsense. Its going to put up the cost of food for all of us as manufacturers comply. And its going to do nothing to stop people guzzling. Its greed that makes you fat. Not ignorance about the dangers of junk food.

Like all normal-sized people, I have to work hard to stay trim. Everyone knows endless burgers and crisps, washed down with litres of fizzy drink, are bad for you. But fatties lack the willpower to stop eating.

Reduce the burger size and the Billy Bunters after instant gratification will just order two, with extra chips.

We are among the lardiest in Europe. Two-thirds of adults and one-third of 11-year-olds are overweight, leading to heart attacks, strokes, cancer and diabetes.

But this initiative suggests the fatties waddling about our streets are the Governments fault  theyre all victims, as though those giant sausage rolls automatically fly off the hot plate and into their open mouths.

Like all normal-sized people, I have to work hard to stay trim. Everyone knows endless burgers and crisps, washed down with litres of fizzy drink, are bad for you

Or theyre obese because theyre poor, and everyone else is to blame for cramming them full of junk food and takeaways.

Until we hold families and individuals, parents and children, accountable, waistlines will continue to strain at their belts. We dont need more laws to ram home the harsh truth about gluttony  just common sense and strength of character.

A member of the congregation at Dianas funeral service in Westminster Abbey says that the Queen showed her disapproval of Earl Spencers vitriolic speech by not applauding. What nonsense.

The Queen doesnt have to be the head of the Church of England to know its incredibly bad form to clap in church.

The guilt that haunts Camilla

After weeks of poignant memories leading up to the 20th anniversary of Dianas death, a poll showed two-thirds of Britons do not want Camilla to be Queen.

Thats before two more documentaries: Diana: The Day Britain Cried on ITV and Diana, 7 Days on BBC.

Prince William reveals he and Harry only managed the walk behind her coffin because it felt she was almost walking along beside us. Camilla must feel a bit that way, still haunted by the woman whose marriage she destroyed.

Whats the betting these two programmes set back the Duchesss ambitions by another two decades?

The new series of Channel 4s Child Genius has been marked by tears, tantrums, bitching and accusations of cheating . . . and thats just the parents.

These wont be so much helicopter mums and dads, hovering protectively over their offspring, but Hoover parents  sucking the very childhood out of them.

Top Gun is now top tum

Sad to see Tom Cruise, who prides himself on doing his own stunts, has broken two bones leaping from a roof in his next Mission: Impossible movie.

Sad to see Tom Cruise, who prides himself on doing his own stunts, has broken two bones leaping from a roof in his next Mission: Impossible movie

But how hilarious those pictures of him performing the stunt were, his flabby cheeks puffed out in exertion (top).

It must truly be mission impossible for technicians who do body-retouching on the film to turn this ageing Top Gun midget back into a superhero.

Before it became the anthem for survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing, Dont Look Back In Anger was a 1995 hit for Oasis.

Now Noel Gallagher is to perform it at the Arenas re-opening next month  without brother Liam. What a shame the feuding pair cant practise what they preach.

I've put a claws clause in my will for my cat Ted. Whoever offers him a loving home gets a hefty sum.

Opportunists need not apply, only those wholl cherish him  because the money increases for every year he lives.

There's no place to hide for Heidi

Promoting her latest lingerie collection, Heidi Klum says: Sexy is about keeping it simple and letting your natural beauty show.

That explains why, even at 44, her inhibitions arent all shes shedding.

Promoting her latest lingerie collection, Heidi Klum says: Sexy is about keeping it simple and letting your natural beauty show'

Like a Duracell bunny, Anne Robinson just keeps on going. Presenting a dating show at 72, she reveals shes looking for Mr Right on Tinder. He has to be rich, successful and at least a decade younger than her.

Good for our Anne! Money and glamour  those are her weakest links.

Well done David Beckham after slaving in secret for six days to build a Lego Disney Princess Castle for daughter Harper.

He then posted his achievement to his 39 million Instagram fans.

It would be even more fun if, like most dads, Becks had toiled for his child without boasting about it to the whole world.

The PC brigade is upset by The Archers storyline in which Oxford student Phoebe has a fling with a promiscuous Latvian fruit picker.

She has to have tests for pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. If I were Latvian, Id be offended, too.

There are plenty of Oxbridge men she could have picked up an STD from  during Freshers week.

No wonder Daniel Craig was reluctant to step back into his role as James Bond, despite a 100 million pay packet.

No wonder Daniel Craig was reluctant to step back into his role as James Bond, despite a 100 million pay packet

Its been more than a decade since the 49-year-old squeezed his once magnificent body into those blue budgie smugglers in Casino Royale.

Given the pictures of him recently, hell need a torso toner  man speak for high-waisted Spanx  to cut it in his tux.

Shocking betrayal in our care homes

Sheila Morris is an 84-year-old stricken with Parkinsons disease. When she needed round-the-clock care, her family decided she would have to go into a 5,000-a-month nursing home.

But her worried son Clive installed a spy camera in her room. What he discovered was shocking.

He alleges she was violently sick one night and left unattended for six hours. He claims she was given dangerous food and suffered eight urinary-tract infections.

WESTMINSTER WARS.. Strictly insiders reveal they invited Diane Abbott on the show. She declined. What a missed opportunity  she could have followed in the footsteps of Ann Widdecombe and gone on to panto. After all, Diane, its behind you . . . your political career, that is. The Houses of Parliament are infested with rats. MPs complain theyve seen a dastardly small but poisonous creature scurrying around their offices. I thought Speaker Bercow was on holiday. The sisterhood is upset after Alex Salmond made a stupid sexual joke in his comedy show about how he couldnt tempt female politicians to, er, perform with him. One was that over-stuffed little haggis Nicola Sturgeon  no, I simply cant bear to think about it . . . Advertisement

This weeks Mail Investigations Unit revelations of endemic abuse, with four in ten care homes failing inspections, are devastating for those of us with parents in care.

The day we took Mum into a care home  packing her precious mementoes, including pictures of her parents, children and grandchildren, none of whom she could remember due to Alzheimers  was one of the most heartbreaking of my life. Sadly, it was the only option.

But when our loved ones are treated badly, we children feel utterly powerless and betrayed.
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A photographer has paid a breathtaking tribute to exotic animals rescued from the black market or formerly kept as pets clandestinely.

Natasha Wilson, based in LA and Phoenix, dedicated a photo series to wild life sanctuary Animal Tracks, which operates out of Santa Clarita in California.

The animals rescued by Animal Tracks, which include a wolf, a kangaroo and an alligator, cannot be returned to their natural habitat and this rely on the facility for survival.

Beauty: A photographer has paid a breathtaking tribute to exotic animals, some of whom were formerly kept as pets. One of them is this snake named Erminator, whose owners didn't realize he would get so big

Stories: The animals reside at Animal Tracks, a sanctuary in Santa Clarita, California. They include this pair of cockatoos, both of which were previously owned as pets until their owners stopped being able to take care of them

Past: Honey Bear and Luna, two kinkajous, appear in photographer Natasha Wlison's series. Luna once lived in Minnesota, where she was attacked by her mother, while Honey Bear previously lived at another facility in Florida

Awareness: With her pictures, Natasha wants to bring awareness to the sanctuary and its activities. The facility rescude Quillamenia, a porcupine who was a surplus animal at another organization in the past

Natasha's photo series, titled Where The Wild Things Are, grew out of her desire to raise awareness for Animal Tracks and its activities.

'I have seen no greater team care for and love these animals, and because of that, I strongly want to help in anyway I can,' the photographer wrote on her Facebook page.

In her images, the sanctuary's animals can be seen interacting with models in colorful settings.

The models wear elegant gowns made out of stunning fabrics, and their arresting make-up complements the backgrounds in mesmerizing ways.

Rescued: Chomper, meanwhile, is a 7-year-old alligator who was confiscated from his owners after they kept him in their bathtub. He is one of the animals immortalized by Natasha in a colorful setting

Lives: Female monkey Squirt came from the film industry, while Marci previously had an owner who moved from Arizona to California and thus was no longer allowed to have a monkey as a pet

Injured: Luke, a seven-year-old monkey, had a private owner but lost all of the fingers on his right hand after a fight with another monkey. He is now among the animals who live at Animal Tracks

Peers: Krissy, a female baboon, also came from the movie industry. She ended up at Animal Tracks when her former owner noticed other baboons sometimes picked on her and decided to find her a happier home

Traveler: This four-year-old armadillo named Frank The Tank had owners in San Diego before coming to the sanctuary

New home: These members of the cavy family, who are about two years old, belong to the same family as guinea pigs. They previously had owners in Arizona and are now in the care of Animal Tracks

Home! Marley, one of seven monkey residents at the sanctuary, is the brother of Marci, who is featured in another photo. Both of them came to the facility after their owner moved from Arizona to California

Hurt: This Laughing Kookaburra named Bam-Bam lost a quarter of the bottom part of his beak after being attacked by another bird and now needs the facility to keep his beak short so that he can eat and drink

However, the real stars of the photos are the animals, which take center stage.

Among them is a five-year-old female red kangaroo named Bella Roo, who was previously owned by people who did not have permission to keep her, Natasha explained on Facebook.

Also included is a wolf/dog hybrid named Scout, who previously was used in the movie industry. However, when it emerged Scout had a spine condition, staffers realized he needed another home, and Scout ended up at Animal Tracks.

Chomper, meanwhile, is a 7-year-old alligator who was confiscated from his owners after they kept him in their bathtub.

The still young alligator is currently 2.5 feet long, but once he reaches his adult size, he is expected to grow up to 14 feet while weighing 800 pounds.

Animal Tracks has also become home to Little Bear, a three-year-old male skunk whose mother was killed as a nuisance animal after being fed by humans and becoming dependent on them.

The tiny mammals is now used to teach people in Southern California how to properly interact with his species.

Fury: This ferret is one of five at Animal Tracks. Some of them previously lived in shelters, while others were owned illegally

Cuddling: Cheshire, a Bengal Cat, had several owners, and ended up at Animal Tracks after adopting certain behaviors such as shredding fabrics and attacking other pets

New leaf: This wolf/dog hybrid named Scout was previously part of the movie industry. However, when it emerged Scout had a spine condition, staffers realized he needed another home

Care: Five-year-old female red kangaroo Bella Roo was previously owned by people who did not have permission to keep her

Background: This African Serval named Monzo, 11, was confiscated from owners who were keeping him illegally
Britain has kept its place as the teenage motherhood capital of Europe despite plunging rates of pregnancy among young women.

The countrys unenviable reputation for teenage births has remained unchallenged even after historic falls in pregnancy over the past decade.

While on the Continent many teenage pregnancies end in abortion, in Britain girls from poorer homes tend to keep their babies.

The countrys unenviable reputation for teenage births has remained unchallenged even after historic falls in pregnancy over the past decade

A round-up of numbers of women who had their first child before 20 showed that more than 16,000 British girls gave birth in 2015, a third more than those in the second highest western European nation, France.

As a share of all births, the percentage of first births to teen mothers was higher in Britain than in any western European country, with five former Communist states showing higher levels.

The data, from the EUs Eurostat agency, casts doubt on the success of Government campaigns such as Tony Blairs Teenage Pregnancy Strategy.

Teen pregnancy rates in England and Wales have halved since 2008, over years in which teenage habits have been changed by social media, long-term contraception and the morning-after pill.

Births have also fallen steeply, as middle-class girls opt for university and careers.

There were 16,622 first births to women aged between 15 and 19 in Britain in 2015  down from 17,500 in 2014 and 19,679 in 2013.

This compares with 12,059 first births among 15 to 19-year-olds in France in 2015 and 10,813 in Germany.

The share of all first births for under-20s was 5.4 per cent in England, the same level as Lithuania, and below Hungary, Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria.

The level was below 4 per cent in France and 3 per cent in Germany.

The most recent teen pregnancy figures for England and Wales showed that only 21 girls in every 1,000 aged between 15 and 17 became pregnant in 2015, half the 42 in 1,000 recorded in 2007.

However, abortions are more common in the rest of Europe and working-class British girls are more likely to keep their babies.

Experts said attempts to prevent teen pregnancies by providing sex education, contraception and abortions have failed.

Patricia Morgan, author of The State And The Family, said: We have heard for decades that more sex education would put an end to unwanted teenage pregnancy.

From these figures, it seems that sex education is not as successful as people think.
Women who take HRT to control the often debilitating symptoms of menopause could slash their risk of a stroke by switching to a skin-patch form of treatment.

A new study, based on almost a million women, tracked them for more than 15 years. It found that while those taking hormone tablets had an increased risk of stroke, those who had transdermal preparations  either a sticking plaster-like patch or a gel rubbed into the skin  had no higher risk than those who did not have HRT at all.

It may be that when medication is absorbed through the skin directly entering the bloodstream without having to be processed by the liver  the risk of blood clots is reduced.

Those taking hormone tablets had an increased risk of stroke, those who had transdermal preparations  either a sticking plaster-like patch or a gel rubbed into the skin  had no higher risk than those who did not have HRT at all

HRT, or hormone replacement therapy, is a treatment used to ease symptoms of the menopause, including sleep problems, weight gain, mood swings and hot flushes.

It works by topping up or replacing low levels of the female sex hormone oestrogen, and sometimes progesterone.

Low oestrogen levels can lead to a number of physical and emotional symptoms, estimated to affect eight out of ten women and can last on average for seven years, with one in three women experiencing long-term symptoms beyond that.

HRT may also protect against the development of osteoporosis and heart disease.

For many years, it was seen as a wonder drug for women and was taken by millions. But uptake declined dramatically after a major 2002 study suggested links with increased risk of breast cancer and stroke.

In recent years there has been an NHS drive to encourage more women to accept treatment after subsequent studies suggested many were suffering debilitating menopause symptoms but were too afraid to take HRT.

In the new study reported in the journal Stroke, researchers aimed to assess the risk associated with different ways of delivering the hormones.

HRT tablets with the combined oestrogen/progestin pill, were associated with an increase of 29 per cent compared to women who had never used hormone therapy

The Copenhagen University research involved 980,000 women aged 51 to 70 who were monitored for 16 years.

In total, just over a third of women in the study used hormone therapy which was found to be associated with a 16 per cent raised risk of ischemic stroke, caused by clots.

When the data was further analysed, HRT tablets with the combined oestrogen/progestin pill, were associated with an increase of 29 per cent compared to women who had never used hormone therapy.

Transdermal delivery through the skin with a patch or rub-on gel was not associated with a risk of stroke, and in some cases a lower risk of stroke compared to non-users of HRT.

We found an increased risk of stroke, based on ischemic stroke, with oral hormone therapies, and we found no risk of stroke with transdermal application, stated the researchers.

Haitham Hamoda, a consultant gynaecologist who leads the menopause service at Kings College Hospital in London and is a member of the British Menopause Societys Medical Advisory Council, says that overall the results are good news for women, but added: The slight increase in risk of stroke with oral HRT intake is mostly noted in woman over 60.

The results suggest transdermal delivery bypasses the liver, and this is why it may not have an effect on blood coagulation.
Bradley Passell, 27, developed arthritis in his right elbow after fracturing it aged just seven in a playground accident

Arthritis sufferers are finding relief from elbow pain and immobility thanks to a titanium implant that meshes with the arm bones. Doctors hope the devices ability to grow with the bone will extend the implants life  avoiding repeated operations for younger patients.

Until now, elbow joint implants have been held in place with a fast-drying surgical cement. But a British surgeon is pioneering a cement-free implant that allows the bone to grow into it and adhere to it over time.

Sometimes called a press-fit implant, they are commonly used in knee and hip joint replacement procedures. However, only one or two patients each year in the UK are given elbow implants that use the same technology.

One of the first  and youngest  British patients to benefit has described how the procedure ended 20 years of elbow pain.

Bradley Passell, 27, developed arthritis in his right elbow after fracturing it aged just seven in a playground accident.

Bradley, from Woking, Surrey, now a trainee accountant, said: The pain made me miserable from the moment I woke up. I was at my wits end until this operation. Now, finally, I can live a normal life.

Currently, about 800 people annually in the UK undergo total elbow replacements. Its a small number compared to the thousands who suffer arthritis in the joint. The standard operation involves the damaged part of the elbow joint being removed and replaced by an artificial one consisting of a hinge attached to two metal stems.

The stems fit into the cavity inside the humerus, the arm bone that runs from the shoulder, and the ulna, the bone in the forearm, which meet at the elbow.

The surgeon cores out the inside of these two bones, allowing the 3in stems to slot in.

Acrylic cement, similar to the type dentists use to fix teeth, is used to hold it in place.

However, over time bones can change shape, causing the cement around the implant to loosen. This is often seen in older patients who also suffer from the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis.

If an artificial elbow does become loose, it poses a problem for repeating operations as there is usually only a small amount of bone left to use. This has led to a new approach to securing artificial elbows using press-fit implants.

In the same way as a cemented implant is fitted, the surgeon initially makes a 6in incision to the back of the elbow. After the triceps muscle is moved aside, the joint is gently dislocated.

The ends of both arm bones are then trimmed and hollowed out.

The stems of the new titanium alloy implant have a rough, porous surface which is coated with a layer of the same mineral found in normal bone. This means the patients bone cells recognise it as a safe place for new tissue to grow. The newly formed bone then holds the implant in place.

The operation, done under general anaesthetic, takes about two hours  about the same as using cement. The patient usually leaves hospital after 48 hours.

The uncemented implant can take three months to fully heal, compared to six week for standard cemented implants, but surgeons hope the long-term advantages regarding stability outweigh the slower recovery time.

A research paper on the technique was published this month in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery. The study, carried out at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, followed 19 patients who had cementless elbow replacements over a five-year period from 2007. More than 90 per cent of patients reported satisfaction with the outcomes and there was no sign on X-rays of loosening or infection.

Among only two elbow surgeons in the UK known to be currently using this new method is Simon Lambert, an orthopaedic surgeon at the Spire Bushey Hospital, Watford. He has now carried out four cementless procedures, and believes younger and more active patients, who generally have a higher bone density, might benefit.

He is now offering the procedure to carefully selected patients.

Their results will help with an ongoing study that could lead to it being the standard way to do most total elbow replacements. In another study, published in 2014, follow-up X-rays revealed that two implants showed signs of weakening at the intermeshed area between bone and prosthesis, and researchers cautioned: Long-term results are needed to assess the lifespan of this design.

However Mr Lambert said: If we can prove that these replacements are safe in young people, who in general make more demands on their elbows than elderly patients, we might start to use it more frequently in older people too.

Mr Passell initially had screws inserted to stabilise his childhood elbow fracture, but the joint became arthritic after he injured it again. By his 20s he was suffering severe daily pain and relying on powerful morphine patches.

Over the years he had further procedures, including reconstructing a ligament to stabilise his elbow. But it was unsuccessful.

Towards the end of 2016, Mr Lambert suggested the new type of implant. Now Mr Passell is pain-free and has resumed his old life, including swimming again.

Mr Passell, who lives with his partner Lianne, said: I can do everything I want. I know at some point in the future I may need the bearings inside the implant replaced, but otherwise Im hoping to have no more elbow problems.
The Big Family Cooking Showdown

Tuesday, BBC2

Rating:

Trust Me

Tuesday, BBC1

Rating:

Is The Big Family Cooking Showdown the new Bake Off? Or is next years Britains Best Cook (BBC), fronted by Mary Berry and Claudia Winkleman, going to be the new Bake Off? Or is the old Bake Off, starting soon on Channel 4, the new Bake Off? (Have you seen the trailer? Do we mind baked goods puking their fillings?) Or might none of them be the new Bake Off? The old Bake Off, after all, didnt set out to be Bake Off and didnt know it was Bake Off until it became Bake Off. It was a show about Victoria sponges and brandy snaps, for Gods sake! It may even be that the new Bake Off also wont know its Bake Off until it becomes Bake Off, and it may even have nothing to do with cooking. But the search will continue, needless to say.

Zoe Ball and previous Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain. Each week, three members of one family are pitted against three members of another family to celebrate, we were told, home cooking and food from the heart

The Big Family Cooking Showdown is certainly Bake Off-y. A barn instead of a marquee, true, but the decor is twee, it has two presenters (Zoe Ball and previous Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain), two judges (Rosemary Shrager and Giorgio Locatelli), three competitive rounds and plenty of what I have named Food Jeopardy, which you have to have, along with that soaring music, or it would just be dinner. Will Bettys risotto be done in time? Will Oscars sauce be lumpy? Each week, three members of one family are pitted against three members of another family to celebrate, we were told, home cooking and food from the heart as opposed to, one presumes, food from the knee, which is often dry.

First up were the Charles family  Betty: so bossy!  and the Marks Family, starring Torun, the 86-year-old grandmother who has been married three times, has a younger boyfriend, and back-chatted everyone. (Quite fun but she must be exhausting.) The first round was Under a Tenner, then it was over to their own homes, where they had the judges for dinner, which was neat, because who doesnt long to know where the people on these programmes might actually live? Finally, it was the Impress Your Neighbours round. (Or, in other words, the Showstopper Challenge.) The food was fairly incredible. That risotto! That pasta! This is the sort of home cooking that is restaurant cooking, but done at home.

Zoe and Nadiya have yet to find their feet. They often looked at a loss as to what to say, and resorted to either hugging the families or each other. Meanwhile, Locatelli has obviously been trained in The Paul Hollywood Stare, while Shrager has yet to bring much to the party. Its all perfectly watchable but it doesnt do what Bake Off did so brilliantly, which is throw back at us the image of ourselves we want to see. We are a nation, Bake Off said, of stately homes and dewy cowslips and white tents and village fairs and the kind of Carry On humour that is good even when its bad, which it often is. We are a nation, it said, of inclusiveness and generosity and co-operation. Bake Off didnt set out to do this. It just did. And The Big Family Cooking Showdown does not. You can hug all you like, but a hug will never usurp a terrible pun.

Trust Me is the psychological thriller in which Jodie Whittaker, soon to be The Doctor, plays a bogus doctor, although the doctor most required here is a doctor of plot holes who could quickly sew them up before weve been given time to throw stuff at the screen. Quickly, doctor, plot hole over here! Coming, coming!

Whittaker plays Cath Hardacre, a caring nurse who is suspended after blowing the whistle on neglect at the Sheffield hospital where she works, proceeds to steal the identity of a doctor emigrating to New Zealand and gets a job in an A&E department in Edinburgh. Quite a casual interview for that job, with no security checks, no following up of references Plot Hole Doctor, where were you?

But even if you did buy all that  and the fact she reads from a textbook on the job; and the fact that she appears to have left no digital footprint  there is the plot hole of personality. Cath, as wed seen, was a devoted and conscientious ward sister who worried for her patients, but now she was willing to put patients in danger? And now shes willing to embark on new friendships, as well as a relationship with Doctor Dishy McDishy, based on a lie? Can someone turn from honest to dishonest on the turn of a sixpence? (Also, did we ever find out how that reporter knew where she was? Or did he just turn up?)

This isnt to say Whittaker is bad. On the contrary, she is the only reason to watch. She brings warmth to someone who would otherwise be a monster. You can sense the terror that lies beneath Caths calm surface. But it is plainly all ridiculous. And just so were clear: its not the new Bake Off either.
The headline to an article published on 30 June stated incorrectly that nerve gas was found to have been used by Bashar al-Assad in the attack on Khan Sheikhun. In fact, the OPCW investigation merely concluded that nerve gas was used, and the findings are to be taken up by a joint United Nations-OPCW panel to determine whether Syrian government forces were behind the attack, as was made clear in the text of the article.

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The Dark Tower Cert: 12A 1hr 35mins

Rating:

It is not often that Im tempted to give up on a film after less than 15 seconds but for The Dark Tower I was seriously considering making an exception. Would have saved time too.

As the first scene-setting caption spread dismally across the screen, I could feel my spirits plummet. A tower stands at the centre of the universe, it portentously explained, protecting us from darkness. Of course it does. The second was no better. Something about the only thing that could bring down this tower being a childs mind.

Cue footage of frightened children being frogmarched into a sinister ziggurat, strapped to chairs and having helmets and electrode-like things attached to their heads. Someone (Ill wager a baddie) throws a switch, the children writhe and suddenly a beam of powerful light arcs into the sky, presumably heading for the aforementioned dark tower. Kerpow! Direct hit. 1-0 to the baddies.

Even this target audience wil be disappointed with the way an eight-book series by Stephen King can be reduced to 95 minutes of over-acted, effects-dependent, derivative tosh like this

Yes, its fantasy time again, although judging by the tender years of the young lad who turns out to be our hero, less of the popular young adult variety, more the early teen or pre-teen type. But even this target audience will surely be disappointed with the way an eight-book series by the prolific Stephen King can be reduced to 95 minutes of over-acted, effects-dependent, derivative tosh like this.

Clearly struggling with a screenplay written by committee (four writers are credited, including Akiva Goldsman, who directed and co-wrote the similarly disappointing A New York Winters Tale) the hitherto well-regarded Danish director Nikolaj Arcel introduces us to a world of portals, house-demons and a strange quality called shine.

But, despite a modest talent for evoking paranoia and generating tension, his execution is so clumsy that a film that clearly had aspirations to be another Inception ends up making that George Clooney dud, Tomorrowland, look good.

Jake (Tom Taylor) has trouble growing up. He is haunted by nightmares of dark towers, a man dressed in black and someone who looks like an old-fashioned gunslinger out of the Wild West

It begins  structurally, if not strictly chronologically  on Earth, or Keystone Earth, as it is known in the strange multiverse we are being asked to believe in.

It is here, in New York, that Jake (Tom Taylor) is having trouble growing up  hating his stepfather, isolated at school and, most of all, haunted by nightmares of dark towers, a man dressed in black and someone who looks like an old-fashioned gunslinger out of the Wild West.

His mother and stepfather think the drawings he makes of his visions are signs of mental illness but, as they spill into his waking hours too, Jake is not so sure. Then a house hes drawn from his dreams turns out to be real  in Brooklyn, in fact  and were off. Goodness, you dont think a portal awaits, do you?

McConaughey, above, as 'The Man in Black' who as well as having been given brown hair appears to have had his faced polished to a strange, lineless perfection

The only things awaiting Jake on the other side of the portal are an over-acting Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey  an actor notoriously reluctant to under-sell any part. In both cases, the bass tones of their voices have been turned up almost comically high.

More inadvertent comedy awaits as we discover more about them. For while the former is playing a character who really is known as the gunslinger and the latter is a possessor of powerful, god-like magics who is known  somewhat unimaginatively  as The Man In Black, their real names turn out to be Roland Deschain and Walter ODim. Dont know about you but I love the fact that the battle between good and evil, indeed the very future of the universe, comes down to Roland v Walter.

Of the two stars, Elba escapes with a little more dignity than McConaughey, who as well as having been given brown hair appears to have had his faced polished to a strange, lineless perfection. But then if you were the possessor of all-powerful magics I suppose that might be high on your to do list.

In a film in which echoes of The Matrix are never far away, its disappointing to discover that the storys resolution comes down to guns, lots of guns. But then doesnt it always?

The boiled-down story theyve been given to work with is not only conspicuously short of meaningful female characters but so thin that its no wonder they struggle. Basically, it comes down to wicked Walter trying to harness Jakes shine to take down the tower, and Jake  and an initially reluctant Roland  trying to stop him.

In a film in which echoes of The Matrix are never far away, its disappointing to discover that the storys resolution comes down to guns, lots of guns. But then doesnt it always? Its also unedifying  particularly in the dangerous world we live in today  to see an 11- or 12-year-old boy being taught how to fire a gun and endlessly rehearse a mantra that ends with the line I kill with my heart.

I should have given up at the beginning.





SECOND SCREEN

The Hitman's Bodyguard (15)

Rating:

The Odyssey (PG)

Rating:

Everything, Everything (12A)

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Final Portrait (15)

Rating:

An Inconvenient Truth (PG)

Rating:

Somewhere along the creative line, the decision was apparently taken to turn The Hitmans Bodyguard (15) from an out-and-out action thriller to a comedy thriller and, boy, doesnt it show, particularly in the first third of this extraordinarily uneven production.

One minute a ruthless Belorussian despot is calmly executing a mother and child while a small war breaks out on the streets of Manchester, and the next, Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L Jackson are bantering away and having a high old time debating the meaning of the word plethora. The result is very odd  like a not altogether happy cross between London Has Fallen and In Bruges.

What saves it is the undoubted screen chemistry between Reynolds and Jackson, the former playing a down-on-his-luck, London-based executive protection specialist (i.e. a bodyguard) and the latter a former hitman who has struck a deal to give evidence against said despot (Gary Oldman) at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The only problem is getting him there.

What saves it is the undoubted screen chemistry between Reynolds and Jackson, the former playing a London-based executive protection specialist and the latter a former hitman

With echoes of 2 Guns, the 2013 comedy thriller that employed Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg to similar effect, the result is an over-long and excessively violent picture that slightly falls foul of our newly reduced appetite for seeing murderous mayhem on the streets of Europe (both London and Amsterdam feature large). Nevertheless, thanks to Reynolds and Jackson, and a foul-mouthed cameo from Salma Hayek, it does raise a smile or three.

A more reliable pleasure, particularly for anyone who did their growing up in the Seventies, is The Odyssey (PG), a French biopic charting the life and times of the great underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau, already parodied by Wes Anderson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

But this straight version is no punch-pulling hagiography. Along the beautifully shot and very nicely acted way, Cousteau is portrayed as a self-obsessed egotist who regularly cheated on his wife. Even his trademark red woollen hat is exposed as a cynical device to boost television ratings.

But for all these human weaknesses  or perhaps because of them  it is a fascinating and compelling story that serves as a powerful reminder of Cousteaus infectious enthusiasm for life underwater. Lambert Wilson and Audrey Tautou are both excellent as Cousteau and his spirited but long-suffering wife, Simone. The ageing process is beautifully handled  both of them and their vessel, Calypso  and I guarantee British audiences will come out knowing more about the great but flawed man than they did going in.

Along the beautifully shot and very nicely acted way, Cousteau is portrayed as a self-obsessed egotist who regularly cheated on his wife

Everything, Everything (12A) is the latest instalment in the popular genre that can only be described as the dying teenager. This one is about Maddy (Amandla Stenberg) who suffers from severe combined immunodeficiency that leaves her vulnerable to infection. Its why shes spent her entire 18 years behind an airlock in her doctor mothers architect-designed house.

And then handsome Olly  he of the floppy hair and lazy smile  moves in next door, and her life changes forever.

The film is sentimental and, given their ages, strangely chaste, but it does serve up one or two genuinely sweet moments before being undone by a melodramatic late twist that borders on the absurd.

Maddy (Amandla Stenberg, above left,) stars in the latest instalment in the popular genre that can only be described as the dying teenager

Final Portrait (15) is the latest directorial foray of that fine actor turned occasional-film-maker Stanley Tucci. As youd expect, he draws top-notch performances from his cast, particularly Geoffrey Rush who is a shuffling, grunting, explosively foul-mouthed joy as the artist and sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

But hes let down by his own thin and repetitive screenplay, which begins in Paris in 1964 with a preppy young American writer (Armie Hammer) sitting for what would be the Swiss artists final portrait. Rather like the sittings, the film just goes on and on and on.

Eleven years ago the former Presidential candidate Al Gore caused a stir with his climate change polemic, An Inconvenient Truth. Hell struggle to make anything like the same impact with An Inconvenient Sequel (PG), which suffers from a surfeit of Gore, a lack of objectivity and a notable tardiness in making it to the big screen.
Breaking The Chain

The Historic Dockyard, Chatham Until September 3

Rating:

It cant have been too much fun living in south-east England in the 1660s. First came the Great Plague (of 1665); then the Great Fire of London (in 1666); and finally, a humiliating defeat by the Dutch, at the Battle of Medway (in 1667). The last of these is now the subject of a fine exhibition at The Historic Dockyard in Kent.

If youre a little sketchy on the battles details, dont feel ashamed. As a rule, English losses arent remembered to the same extent as English victories, and our historians dont even agree on a name for this one (sometimes also called The Raid on Chatham).

It was the product of long-standing tensions with the Dutch over control of lucrative maritime trade routes. In 1664, their settlement of New Amsterdam in America had been captured by English frigates and renamed New York.

Portrait of Lieutenant- Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, by Ferdinand Bol. Unsurprisingly, few English paintings of the battle exist

The Plague and Fire, however, would leave Englands finances in ruins and Charles II unable to invest in his Navy or even pay his seamen. Sensing weakness, the Dutch sailed daringly up the River Medway and destroyed the English fleet moored at Chatham dockyard.

The show has some super exhibits, including the handwritten thoughts of diarist John Evelyn, who witnessed the battle from a nearby hill (and lambasted Charles IIs advisers for unaccountable negligence in not setting out our fleet in due time).

Theres also an intricate model of Royal Charles, the Navys triple-decker flagship, which the Dutch captured and towed home across the North Sea.

LEFT: HMS Britannia In Two Positions (1689-1702), by Isaac Sailmaker. RIGHT: de Ruyters flagship vessel, The Seven Provinces (1665-1707), by Willem van de Velde

Unsurprisingly, few English paintings of the battle exist, but many Dutch ones (by the likes of Willem Schellinks) appear, most memorably of their fleet breaking a defensive iron chain that the English had stretched across the Medway  an act that gives this exhibition its title. (Breaking The Chain forms part of a summer-long commemoration of the battles 350th anniversary around Chatham, with further details at visitmedway.org/whats-on.)

The curators suggest that defeat prompted the English to overhaul their entire Navy, which in turn resulted in the global sea supremacy of the coming centuries.

The Burning Of Sheerness (1667), unknown artist. The curators suggest that defeat prompted the English to overhaul their entire Navy

Quite a bold claim, it must be said  but even if its only partially true, the Battle of Medway surely deserves a place in our history books.

See this exhibition soon  dont miss the boat.

ALSO WORTH SEEING

Royal Gifts

State Rooms, Buckingham Palace Until October 1

Rating:

They range from the most exquisite metalwork pieces to portraits of the Queen of varying quality; from a fossilised dinosaur bone to thrones made from beads. These are some of the royal gifts in this summers exhibition at Buckingham Palace.

More than 200 presents given to the Queen by people and countries over her reign are on show, alongside written details of what the Queen has done with gifts of kangaroos, jaguars and beavers.

The wild diversity of cultures across the world comes across loud and clear in this exhibition in the magnificent state rooms, whose grandeur  and the paintings from the Royal Collection they contain  is worth the entrance fee alone.

More than 200 presents given to the Queen are on show at Buckingham Palace including a portrait of the Queen in banana leaves from Rwanda (left) and vases from Uzbekistan (right)

An adjunct to the exhibition is a fascinating tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, in which the desk from her sitting room at Kensington Palace is adorned with some of her possessions, selected by Princes William and Harry.

Look out for her box of cassettes  Diana Ross and Elton John feature particularly prominently.

Dominic Connolly
Ross Kemp, 53, played Grant Mitchell in EastEnders from 1990-99. Since then hes made his name as an intrepid reporter and presenter of shows such as Ross Kemp On Gangs and Extreme World. He is married to lawyer Renee OBrien and has two sons.

What is your earliest childhood memory?

Being on holiday in Margate when I was about three years old and eating an ice cream on the pier. It melted within seconds.

What sort of a child were you?

I grew up in Essex. My father was a police detective, my mother a hairdresser. I wasnt an outstanding student by any stretch. The one thing I was good at was drama.

Ross Kemp married to lawyer Renee OBrien and has two sons

What is your guilty pleasure?

I am absolutely addicted to Game Of Thrones and I would love to be in it.

What about the nudity?

I am fine in that department.

Whats the worst thing youve experienced?

Doing the show Extreme World. I have seen children hit with shrapnel and bullets and die. Ive met albino kids who have been dragged out of their huts and had their limbs cut off.

Tell us a secret about yourself

I have secretly got a full head of hair and I shave it. Ha! I wish I had. I suppose it would be that I have this real hard man image but I am not tough.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?

All of it. I have to exercise twice as hard to keep in shape. Also, my ears are still growing and hair has started to sprout out of them. When was the last time you cried? It was when my two-year-old son said, Dad, I dont want you to leave. I was going off to film the latest series of Extreme World. He wouldnt let me go.

Whats the best piece of advice youve ever had?

To never take yourself seriously. Whats one skill every man or woman should have? To not be afraid of change. For years I couldnt see myself leaving EastEnders. It was addictive. I became obsessive about it. I lived and breathed it and couldnt have long-term relationships because of it.

Whats the worst thing anyone has said?

A famous movie star once turned around to me and said, I would rather go to prison than be in a soap and shortly after that I had him up against the wall and he throttled me.

What is your most treasured possession?

It has to be my golden retriever Bruno. I love taking him for a walk on a Sunday. Ill then have a couple of glasses of red wine and, if the rugby is on, he will settle down at my feet. All that happens between getting things thrown at me by my son, going Dada, Dada, Dada!

What are you scared of?

I am really scared of snakes and when I was in Afghanistan, the crew would put them in my sleeping bag to wind me up.

Who would be your dream dinner date?

Theresa May. She is also my local MP [in Maidenhead]. Before the election I went round 17 constituencies and found out that it was as much about Brexit as it was about austerity. If you have got four million children living in poverty in the UK, there is something seriously wrong with the way this country is being governed.

Whats the worst pain youve experienced?

I had the most horrendous stomach pains when we were filming in Madagascar. In the rainforests, there is nowhere to hide if you get ill. I had a horseshoe shape of about 40 people all looking at me while I went to the toilet and when I eventually got up they gave me a round of applause.

What law would you change if you could?

It would be to overturn the cuts to our emergency services. I am the son of a police officer and you cant cut 6,000 police officers and not expect repercussions. We should be proud of these institutions.

What is your most unappealing habit?

I am perfect. Ask my wife, she would definitely agree with you.

Ross Kemp: Extreme World is available on Sky On Demand and NOW TV
Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall

399 Edgware Road, London NW9

Rating:

Bang Bang Oriental is an Asian food hall in Colindale, a far off and, for all I knew, fantastical suburb that feels closer to Lilliput than it does to London. Now, Ive just about grasped that the Uxbridge Road meanders west, all the way to Uxbridge. No flies on me. But who knew the Edgware Road went up to, well, Edgware? Were a long way from Kansas. Hell, were a long way from Shepherds Bush. There be dragons, warned my wife before I set out on the hard voyage north. Before wishing me godspeed and holding me tight for what may be the final time.

Seating, lots of slatted blonde wood, is communal and rather than seeming bleakly utilitarian (as many of these places can be), Bang Bang is clean, bright and sensibly shipshape

Roast duck (left). Pork chilli buns (right)

Stir-fried rice noodle (left). Mince pork dumpling (right)

Still, armed with pemmican, sea biscuits and a barrel of salt pork, I marched for lands unknown. And many, many moons later (an hour stuck in a fulminous fury of lower Edgware Road traffic, another half spent battling through the Northern Line hordes), I arrive. And there are indeed dragons. A golden one. Although rather than a fire-belching mythical monster, this burnished beast is a cavernous Chinese restaurant that takes up the whole ground floor of a sleekly modern, self-consciously angular building more suited to Blade Runner than Barnet. Lots of corporate glass gleams proudly in the weak summer sun, providing mildly thrilling relief from the otherwise unremarkable concrete ennui.

We pass by The Golden Dragon on our way upstairs to Bang Bang Oriental proper, 30 or so small booths arranged around the edges of a vast, cavernous room.

Theres a smattering of Cantonese Chinese (which is hardly surprising, seeing the place is owned by the Royal China group, a bunch who know their dim sum and roasted meat), with a soupcon of Sichuan and a mouthful of Hakka. Plus Vietnamese, Thai, Malaysian, Indian and Japanese too. Seating, lots of slatted blonde wood, is communal and rather than seeming bleakly utilitarian (as many of these places can be), Bang Bang is clean, bright and sensibly shipshape.

Its just past noon, only a few weeks since the Grand Opening, and the place already has the sizzling soul of the true hawker hall. The low hum of hungry intent, the appetite-sharpening clatter of plastic chopstick on plastic plate. So off we set, on a sort of edible safari around Asia. You order, pay, and are given a plastic disc that flashes and vibrates when your orders ready. Tranquil it aint.

Thai first, from Thai Silk, splendid and spicy pork rice with a fried egg, lusty with fish sauce and chillies, just as it should be. And a decent som tam, too, sharp with a restrained kick, although it lacks the saline chew of dried prawns.

Bzzzzzz. My disc comes alive. Grubs up, and I rush across the floor to pick up more spice, this time hot, numbing and Sichuan, at Uncle Chilli. Theyre only doing skewers, but the beef tripe is finely cut, lacy and surprisingly delicate. Floating alongside wonderfully rubbery fish balls and fatty brisket in an authentically filthy, bosky chilli broth. By the end my tongue burns, while my lips tingle and gleam with spicy oil. I go back for another spoonful of pork rice and bzzzzzz Up I get again, striding towards Tibbs Frankie to collect chilli paneer, wrapped in flaky paratha. A taste of the sub-continent, with an admirable freshness and zing. Well worth the walk.

Not everything impresses. Fat, slippery noodles from Hong Kong-based LongJi are fine, if a little uninspiring. They cry out for the char of the wok. I order pork and bitter greens dumpling from Xi, and while the filling is succulent and nicely ferric, the pastry is far too thick. And grilled eel from Japanese Ichiban tastes muddy and is overcooked, one bite being quite enough.

We eat, as ever, until we can take no more. And theres still much left to try. Ramen Samurai Ryau has run out of stock. Literally. While Sukaria, with its Hakka Chinese, closes before I can order.

Barbecue pork with rice. A Chinese restaurant full of Chinese doesnt always guarantee good tucker. I speak from bitter experience

Prices are attractively low, and you can feast for 15. The punters are mainly Asian, which many say is a good sign. Hmm. A Chinese restaurant full of Chinese doesnt always guarantee good tucker. I speak from bitter experience.

But while Bang Bang is no match for the smoky, steamy, visceral thrills of the Singapore or Bangkok food courts (nothing, to be honest, is), its cheap, cheerful and often pretty damned good. Lucky Colindale. Were it a few thousand miles nearer to Shepherds Bush, Id get to know it well. Next time Im Arctic-bound, Ill stop by.

Lunch for two: 30

What Tom ate this week

Friday

Spanakopita, cured anchovies, tomato salad with feta, plus lashings of rose for lunch in the Corfu shade. Then steak and whole red mullet, grilled over coals, for dinner.

Saturday

Back to Melbourne, via Dubai. Very average pizza at some dreary place in Athens airport. Then good kofte on Emirates, then...

Sunday

Potato curry, naan and a chicken schnitzel sandwich on Quantas. Thirty-four hours from door to door. Late dinner of Portuguese Devil chicken curry and roti at Hawker House.

Monday

Lunch at Saigon Sally. Fried chicken ribs, grilled quail, Tamarind crabs and pulled pork bahn mi. Then to Supernormal for dinner. Pickles, Sichuan Shredded chicken salad, New England lobster rolls and raw boba with pickled fennel and chilli.
It may be the smallest gesture, such as giving someone a smile or donating to a food bank, but the ripple effect can change lives, says Jaime Thurston. Try it  and spread the love.

'Lots of good people working together can achieve amazing things', says Jaime Thurston

'Urgently need rugs. That was the message that started everything. I was searching online for second-hand furniture when I came across this plea. It was a wanted ad placed by a woman who sounded desperate. I emailed her and was heartbroken by what I learnt. She needed the rugs to cover her broken floor so that her young children wouldnt cut their feet. She was a single mum who had fled a horrifying domestic situation and was starting all over again with nothing.

I wanted to help her and was sure that others would want to help, too. So I spread the word among friends and family, and household goods started pouring in. I delivered everything one afternoon  piles of bedding, furniture, kitchenware, clothing and toys. I will never forget the look on her face when she opened the door. This was a woman in need of kindness, and strangers had made her feel loved when she needed it most.

Saying sorry does more than simply remedy a mistake; it builds a connection

I wanted to do more. I wanted to do this every week  and so 52 Lives was born. Each week we choose someone, somewhere in the world, in need of help, share their story on our website and social media pages, post what they need and our supporters offer help. Its based on the premise that people are good and want to help one another  and that lots of good people working together can achieve amazing things.

52 Lives helps anyone, from anywhere, with anything  from buying teeth for a man in Alabama to building a sensory shed in South London for a toddler who is losing her sight. We made video messages for a young boy being bullied, and sent a little girl and her grandmother on a holiday after the death of the childs mother.

The philosophy goes deeper than simply supplying goods or services. The people we help all say the same: that it wasnt the things that changed their life, it was the kindness from complete strangers. This human connection is what changes lives. Not just for the person receiving it but also the person giving. Heres how you can spread some kindness

'This human connection is what changes lives', says Jaime Thurston

MAKE KIND COMMENTS

The people we care about the most are often the ones we forget to be kind to; we know theyll love us anyway and forgive any grumpiness. But one simple sentence can change everything. You have the power with every comment you make, every day, to lift those around you  and yourself in the process. Dont underestimate the effect of a few kind words

 Tell your boss that he or she inspires you.

 Tell your child you appreciate how hard they try.

 Tell your childs teacher they make coming to school fun.

 Tell your friends you love spending time with them.

 Tell your parents how much their support means to you.

 Tell your brother or sister you feel lucky to have them.

 Tell your partner they are the love of your life.

SHARE YOUR FOOD

Next time you go shopping, buy an extra item at the supermarket and donate it to your local food bank. Thousands of people rely on donations to feed their families. Feeding a hungry person is more than kindness; its basic humanity.

I lie to my son. I tell him Ive eaten during the day when I havent, says Jenny, a single mum with disabilities who relies on food banks to survive. I barely have any money for food after bills and rent so when he gets home from college, I just say I dont need to eat. Without the food bank I dont know what I would do. I hope that one day Ill be able to pay back peoples kindness.

DO SOMETHING FOR NOTHING

Sometimes what people need is assistance rather than goods. Spread some kindness by donating a skill. We all have something to offer. Donating in this way serves a dual purpose of fulfilling a practical need and making someone feel supported. Everyone has the power to do something for nothing. If everyone, in every city, did one thing for nothing, we could change the world, says Josh Coombes, a hairdresser who founded a movement called Do Something For Nothing after he began giving free haircuts to homeless people.

You could:

 Bake a cake for someone.

 Mow a lawn.

 Offer to help with filling in a form.

 Mend someones clothes.

 Help someone with their tax return.

 Share your skill  teach someone what you know so they can pass on the kindness.

SMILE

Theres no such thing as a small act of kindness; even a tiny gesture has a ripple effect. We dont think of smiling as giving something to someone, but it is probably the simplest yet most powerful thing we can do to spread kindness and happiness. It lifts moods  and its contagious!

GIVE A GIFT TO A LOCAL SCHOOL

We often see children coming to school without proper shoes. When 52 Lives collected shoes and gift vouchers for our disadvantaged families, the response was, for many parents, overwhelming, says Hannah, a schoolteacher from Southwest London. They were truly touched at the kindness from complete strangers. Some of the children had their feet measured for the first time, and shoes that fitted correctly and were comfortable. Contact your local school and ask how you can donate a book, toy, school shoes or a gift card for uniforms. Many schools have welfare officers who know which families might be in need of help.

PAY FOR SOMEONES JOURNEY

When youre out in the world and spot someone struggling, see if you can help them on their way. Are they grappling to find change for the bus, or re-tapping a travel card thats not working? Step forward and offer help when you can. Something as simple as paying for someones journey has the potential to turn around their whole day. Altruism fosters a sense of connection. When we give something to someone, they feel closer to us, and we also feel closer to them.

APOLOGISE

Everyone has bad days and sometimes we take it out on people we dont even know. If in a moment of frustration or tiredness you find yourself doing this, be courageous and go back and apologise. Ive returned to banks, shops and cafes lots of times to say sorry to people I was rude to, and it made both me and the person I apologised to feel so much better. Saying sorry does more than simply remedy a past mistake; it builds a connection by showing vulnerability and honesty.

SPEAK UP

If you see someone being mistreated at work, in school or in your social group, speak up, let them know theyre not alone, or tell someone who can help. Irish statesman Edmund Burkes comment still rings true: when good people do nothing, evil triumphs. Dont do nothing. Be strong for those who cant be, and be a voice for those who need it.

BE PRESENT

Multitasking has become the norm for many of us. Its tempting to keep one eye on the TV or the phone while youre spending time with someone, which tells them theyre not important, not deserving of your attention.

BE KIND TO YOURSELF

Looking after ourselves is key to kindness because when we feel good we emit that positivity to others. When we neglect ourselves, life seems like a struggle and our negative feelings influence how we interact with those around us. Nurture yourself by doing what you love  whether thats having a warm bath, enjoying a day in the sunshine or listening to music  and retain your reserves not only for yourself but also for others.

CHANGE A LIFE WITH GADGETS

When you upgrade your technology, use your outdated models to help change lives and build futures. Vision therapists can use your old iPad to help people who are losing their sight, and schools can make use of them to help children with learning difficulties. So before you tuck away your old but still usable IT equipment in a drawer, contact schools or vision therapists in your area to ask if they can put it to good use.

GIVE ENCOURAGEMENT

Your words can nourish peoples ideas and help them become something amazing. If we look for faults we will always find them, but positivity is the best way to help someone succeed. Encouragement can inspire people to dream, to believe in themselves and to take action towards their goals. Be kind. Choose to be an encourager rather than a critic and you will unleash more creativity, resourcefulness and happiness than you can imagine.

HUG WITH HEART

When you hug someone, make it count. Hug with love  and often. I call them hugs with heart; all in, chests together, arms wrapped tightly all the way around. Thats what my children give me for my birthday. But try not to save your hugs with heart for special occasions. With one powerful embrace, you can help someone you care about feel amazing, and it has the added benefit of simultaneously helping you to feel good.

PAY FOR TWO

If you can afford a little bit extra, consider paying for two things instead of one as you go about your day. Some cafes run a suspended coffee scheme, where you can buy food or drinks for people in need to reclaim later. And if the cafe or outlet doesnt do this, your enquiry may prompt them to start. Or pay for two field trips at your childs school in case a family cant afford it, or pay for someones cinema ticket and wish them a happy day.

One morning, just before Christmas in 2012, a coffee shop in Canada became famous for a chain of kindness at its drive-through window. A customer paid for her order and the bill for the stranger in the car behind. That customer decided to do the same for the car behind them This continued for the next 227 customers in a kindness spree that lasted three hours. Kindness creates kindness!

BE HAPPY FOR PEOPLES HAPPINESS

When something good happens to someone you know, celebrate their success. Sometimes when another person is happy about something or their lives change in a positive way, feelings of envy can creep in and taint our behaviour. Their win is not your loss; its an opportunity for the selfless celebration of someone elses joy. If you ever find it hard to feel happy for someone, see it as a chance to be kind to yourself as well as to them. Ask yourself:

 What do I have to be grateful for? (Gratitude is a powerful antidote to envy.)

 What could I do to be kind to this person?

 Am I bigger than envy?

 Is there anything I could do in my own life to bring me more happiness?

 Does this persons happiness diminish mine?

TAKE THE INITIATIVE

People who need help can be shy about asking for it  maybe they think that the world is against them or they dont want to be a burden. If you think someone could do with some help, take the initiative. Offer to carry a pram up the stairs, take a meal to someone undergoing chemo, carry someones tray if they have their hands full. It doesnt matter if they decline. A kind offer is never wasted.

Jaime Thurston
Forget scouring internet forums for advice. Parents in the know are turning to apps  and even using their mummy (and daddy) crises to create their own social networks, says Laura Silverman

Mush mums Katie Massie-Taylor (left) and Sarah Hesz

THE PROBLEM My child needs a playmate

THE SOLUTION Mush, the app that helps you organise play dates

Former marketing director Sarah Hesz, 34, and City worker Katie Massie-Taylor, 33, met in a rainy playground in East Sheen 18 months ago, each with a newborn strapped to their front and a toddler clinging to a leg. Since becoming mums, they had struggled to find friends with children of a similar age outside their NCT groups, so they launched Mush in April 2016. Mums create a profile and are matched with others based on their location and the age of their children. By logging in through your Facebook account, you can see whether you have any friends in common and whose children are free to play. The app has 140,000 users  muddy puddle play dates are very popular.

Classlist creators Susan Burton (left) and Clare Wright

THE PROBLEM When is the school trip?

THE SOLUTION Classlist, the virtual school gate

Susan Burton, 50, and Clare Wright, 46, lived jet-setting lives in India and Brazil with their families. But when the expats and former management consultants finally settled in Oxfordshire a few years ago, they struggled to keep up with what was going on at their childrens schools.

Susan, whose children are now ten, 14 and 16, and Clare, whose children are nine, 12 and 14, started Classlist in 2014. The app enables parents to go to a virtual school gate and chat to other parents in their childs class. They can ask whether their child really doesnt have any homework, find out about trips and swap photos of end-of-term concerts. Theres also a school-run share map to help parents organise lifts. More than 720 schools in the UK have signed up.

Bubble duo Ari Last (left) and Adrian Murdock

THE PROBLEM My babysitter has let me down

THE SOLUTION Bubble, the app that lists local sitters

Friends Ari Last, 32, and Adrian Murdock, 43, met when they were working at online betting company Betfair and bonded when they became dads four years ago. The sudden loss of independence and spontaneity was the hardest thing to come to terms with after having a child, says Ari. Adrian and I each found it hard to book a babysitter and get out of the house, especially at short notice, and we realised that we werent alone.

In July 2016 they launched Bubble, an app that enables parents to scroll through profiles of local babysitters, see if friends or connections through nursery or school recommend them, then make a booking. It now has more than 4,500 users. Weve found that parents no longer book sitters just for going out on a Saturday night, says Ari. Some book them for 7am at the weekends so that they can have a lie-in.

Michelle Kennedy devised Peanut and co-founded dating app Bumble

THE PROBLEM I need an adult conversation!

THE SOLUTION Peanut, the app that matches like-minded mums

When Michelle Kennedy, 34, had her son three years ago, she felt incredibly lonely. I had lots of friends, but they werent new mums, says Michelle, a lawyer and founding member of the dating app Bumble. My friends introduced me to mums they knew, but meeting up was awkward because the only thing we had in common was that wed had a baby. I then felt even more isolated. I hadnt lost my identity just because I was a mum. I wanted to meet like-minded people.

Michelle, who lives in Hampstead, North London, devised Peanut last February. The app matches mums with similar interests, from speaking Spanish to drinking wine. They can then wave at each other in the same way as someone might like a potential suitor on a dating app. Mums can also create group chats and are encouraged to host get-togethers.

Hoops co-creator Max Jennings

THE PROBLEM My children are bored

THE SOLUTION Hoop, the child-friendly listings app

Two years ago Max Jennings, now 37, schlepped his two-year-old daughter across London to an arts and crafts class that he was convinced she would love. When I got there, I felt let down because it was aimed at older children. The listing had been out of date. I thought it was crazy that there wasnt an easier way to find suitable activities for kids, he says.

Max decided to create Hoop with his brother Duncan, 34, and a couple of friends (they had previously set up the money-saving website vouchercodes.co.uk). The app, which launched in February last year, lists more than 20,000 events and activities across the country, from classical concerts for babies to cookery classes, showing results based on where the users live and the age of their children. More than 200,000 families have downloaded the app.

Shilpa Bhandarkar with their children

THE PROBLEM I cant keep up with my childs social life

THE SOLUTION Coo, the virtual diary

Shilpa Bhandarkar, 38, once forgot to give her daughter 1 for a charity cupcake sale. Amit Rai, 37, once forgot to take his son to a classmates birthday party. Both children forgave them, but friends Shilpa and Amit realised that it was a miracle they didnt forget things like that more often. They both had another child and demanding jobs  Shilpa worked at a law firm, Amit worked in tech  and calculated that parents of two young children have to keep track of an average 574 dates a year.

Shilpa and Amit, whose children are now four and seven, launched Coo in July 2016. They describe it as WhatsApp meets Google Calendar, allowing parents to enter events into a diary and change the settings so that only certain parents see them, as well as enabling chats. Coo has several thousand users  Jools Oliver, wife of Jamie and mother of five children, is a fan  with most parents accessing the app five times a day.
On Saturday, I drove to London to have dinner with the girls. It was my friend Ms birthday, and she had invited me and a couple of other girlfriends  a psychic turned actress and a chef who is developing a plant-based menu for a hotel; I immediately started referring to her as the plant eater  to her house in Notting Hill for a girly night in.

That is probably the most normal paragraph Ive written in nine years. I asked David if I could stay with him, as I hate hotels. Also, I wanted to bring the puppies with me. Of course. As soon as I arrived, I took them to the park opposite and, apart from scattering an open-air yoga class, they behaved impeccably. Its such a shame he wont sort out his flat as the location is perfect: two miles from Central London, next to a really safe park. We only had one cross word when I asked him how he could sit playing computer games all day when his kitchen floor needs washing. But I washed it yesterday! he said. And I bought four new pillows!

He gave me a lift to Notting Hill, and we pulled up outside Ms perfect little mews house off Portobello Road. He offered to pick me up later, too, so I said, What, like my dad? No! he said. Like your husband! Once inside, I asked M what she thought of him and she said, I didnt really notice. I was too busy cuddling Mini and Gracie.

My friend Dawn was already there and she had brought me a carrier bag of designer clothes she had snuffled out in charity shops: a Helmut Lang draped top, a Missoni sweater and a pinstriped blazer by MaxMara, which I immediately put on. You will bounce back, Dawn told me kindly. She added that a friend of hers had interviewed a famous British film director for a newspaper and hed told her how much he loves Liz Jones; I read her column every Sunday. So Dawn had managed to get my screenplay to him. Hes reading it as we speak. I dont dare get my hopes up, but for a moment a nugget of hope: that news is like an unopened envelope in my inbox from The National Lottery with the header, We have news about your ticket. I would cherish the nugget for a few weeks, until I discovered Ive won two pounds.

M regaled us with stories about all the famous people she knows, and how one editor at Vogue would turn up at Matches and demand free clothes. No one ever dared ask her to write about them or shoot them. Not one of the celebrities she told us about was happy, despite the success and the money. One of the most beautiful British movie stars she knows is a tight knot of insecurity. A family man is terrified his affair will surface. A film star never gets chatted up by men. Another has it in her contract she must remain plus size. Thats no way to live.

I still wake and, in those first few seconds, my brain scrabbles around to latch on to what I should be worried about. I still expect awful things to happen every day. Mostly, they do. Take last Wednesday. I popped into a cafe and idly reached for a glossy magazine on my table. I stared at the cover photo: a gorgeous rustic table, vases of flowers, an ancient flagstone floor. How lovely. Lucky them. I read the cover line: Dream discovery: a couples perfect property in Low Row, Swaledale.

M regaled us with stories about all the famous people she knows

And then the penny dropped. It was my kitchen. My house. The one I was forced to sell, at a huge, devastating loss. The buyers dropped their offer by 11,000 two weeks after we were due to exchange. The tax man forced me to accept. And yet, six months later, here is my home in a glossy, having undergone a complete renovation, a house now stuffed with a French vitrine, a large ornate mirror, a French butchers block, Belgian cupboard and Hungarian milking stools as bedside tables, a Kudu light and exquisite handmade lampshades, and a view through the floor-to-ceiling windows of wild flowers rising steeply and a waterfall cascading down  it is paradise.

The new owner, who still lives in Suffolk, says, We walked through the door and literally cried. We decided we would sell our souls to buy the house. It feels as though thats exactly what they did. And Im now the one who is literally crying.
With its blue and white palette and pared-down style, interiors entrepreneur Kristina Lindhes Stockholm home is a love letter to New England

THE FAMILY Creative director of international lifestyle brand Lexington, Kristina Lindhe lives with her husband Tommy, the brands co-founder, in a two-storey villa in Bromma, a suburb just outside Stockholm.

'Ornas villa, says Kristina, letting the words sit there for a moment before describing her Swedish homes traditional Scandinavian style. Originally built in 1929, its architecture is informed by the timber residences of the cool, almost arctic, regions of the north; however its interiors draw influence from further afield and across the pond  the East Coast of the United States.

Kristinas look mixes white linens with navy stripes and bold checks with warm woods. Its classic with a contemporary twist, much like the Lexington brand, she explains. Auction-house gems such as pewter plates are beautifully complemented by flea-market treasures, but Kristina doesnt overdo it: I dont like too many pieces in a room  no one wants to live in an exhibition.

In the living room, Kristina wanted to create not only a functional space but also one in which to relax with family and friends. I change cushions and throws every season, adding coastal-inspired pieces and shades of blue to create a light atmosphere in summer and chunky-knit accessories in deeper shades for winter. The cushions are all from Lexington. For a similar sofa try Sofa.com

The Lexington brand is named after a small town just outside Boston in Massachusetts  the heart of New England. Kristinas travels around the region inspired her design choices and led to the conception of Lexington. I loved the relaxed style of the cedarwood houses  it all struck a chord with me.

And Kristina saw a gap in the market. At the time, the Lexington sense of understated luxury had been taken up by a few leading fashion labels but not by the interiors world. I saw an opportunity to build an international brand from the design perspective and style that I love.

'The kitchen needed a lot of work when we moved in; it took a few years to renovate, says Kristina. The tiles are from Swedish company Room. For similar, try Victorian Plumbing (victorianplumbing.co.uk)

Kristinas passion for her house gave her the drive to get things right for her range. For me, the bedroom is the most important room in the house; it is where I relax, therefore our bedlinen had to be perfect, she says. Lexington bedding is made from shirt fabrics: If you can imagine the perfect shirt, newly washed and crisp, you can understand the feeling. Sourcing the right fabrics and manufacturers was a long process, but, says Kristina, It was worth it. Lexington stands for quality, and that is something that we would never compromise.

Renovating a house and building an international company at the same time was probably not a good idea, she adds with a laugh. I painted the walls white to let the light in, then added textiles, updating covers and throws with each season to refresh the style. But she was determined not to be overstated. Style does not demand big actions; it is about the little things. Every detail is considered and has to have a purpose.

For more information about Lexington, visit lexingtoncompany.com

I like to keep it calm and the colour palette pared back, says Kristina about her dining room. I love table settings for that reason; it gives me the freedom to choose colours and create themes for different occasions. For a similar table, try Lombok (lombok.co.uk)

In the living room traditional Swedish dala horses decorate the white cabinet and add a splash of colour. For a similar chair, try Ercol (ercol.com)

Music is one of my passions, despite only playing the piano at Christmas, Kristina says. There is something beautiful about having such a grand instrument in your home

As Lexington is a global brand, Kristina and her husband often work away from home, so in the master bedroom she has created a collage wall of all the people I care about. The velvet bedcover and cushions are from Lexington

Kristina opted for striped wallpaper in the guest room. The leather armchair was bought at auction and the cushion is from Lexington

During winter Kristina likes to brighten the rooms with flowers. Her book, Living With Lexington, is a coffee-table staple. Im so proud of the Lexington journey and the book took years to compile
This delicious spiced dessert is the perfect celebration cake, dinner-party dessert or scrumptious treat. Serve it with a spoonful of Greek yoghurt, ideally to someone you love!

SERVES 6-8

180g ground almonds

250g coconut palm sugar

 tsp Himalayan pink salt

80g unsalted butter, chilled

1 organic free-range egg

125g organic Greek yoghurt, plus extra to serve

 tsp ground cinnamon

 tsp ground nutmeg

 tsp ground cardamom

2 tbsp shelled pistachios, roughly chopped

2 tbsp edible rose petals, to garnish (not essential, but beautiful)

 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4.

 Grease the sides of an 18cm springform cake tin and line the base with parchment paper.

 Mix the ground almonds, palm sugar and salt in a bowl to combine evenly. Add the chilled butter and rub with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.

 Spoon half the mixture into the prepared tin and press down firmly to cover the base evenly, as if you were making a cheesecake.

 Add the egg, yoghurt and spices to the remaining mixture and beat with a wooden spoon until smooth and creamy. Pour this mixture over the prepared base and sprinkle the chopped pistachios around the edge of the cake.

 Bake until golden brown and just set, approximately 30 minutes.

 Allow to cool completely in the tin on a wire rack, before removing from the tin and transferring to a serving plate.

 Sprinkle with rose petals (if using) and serve with an extra dollop of Greek yoghurt on the side.
It's well known that the Green Revolution in Punjab in the mid- 1960s singularly contributed to make India self-sufficient in food, by ringing in a quantum jump in foodgrain - wheat and rice - production and productivity.

But how did it all happen?

Unpublished proceedings from a panel discussion - 'Green Revolution, National Food Security and Natural Resources' - at the Ludhiana's Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) reveal that besides a significant amount of foresight and advance preparation, there were a fortuitous set of circumstances under which things fell into place.

Authored by PAU's incumbent Director of Research, Prof Navtej Singh Bains, a widely acknowledged wheat breeder, the document quotes GS Kalkat, who was in the 'thick of things' as the deputy director of Punjab's agriculture department during the early years of the Green Revolution.

ndian Sikh Farmers plant paddy cuttings in a field on the outskirts of Amritsar in the northwestern state of Punjab on June 19, 2009 (file pic)

During Partition in August 1947, in Indian or East Punjab a mere four lakh hectares of the total 47 lakh acres of cultivable farmland was irrigated.

The state had just 1,973 tubewells of which only 325 had electricity connections (the rest were diesel motor-driven), and there were just 1,392 tractors available to till the land. Total wheat and rice production was a measly 11.3 lakh tonnes.

Key to the success of the Green Revolution, the panelists say, was the implementation of land-consolidation under the watch of the then chief minister Pratap Singh Kairon and Giani Kartar Singh, a minister in Kairon's cabinet.

A farmer in jubilant mood on the occasion of Baisakhi festival, on April 13, 2017 in Patiala

Also, although the Bhakra-Nangal project was completed in 1963, Sutlej water from Bhakra was available for use in southern Punjab districts as early as in 1957.

And around the time Norman Borlaug led the way in bringing the new dwarf, input responsive Mexican wheats to India in the mid-1960s, Punjab was perhaps the only state in the country that was in a position to take advantage.

Consider this: PAU, which eventually proved critical in adapting the new wheat varieties to local conditions, had been established in 1962; Markfed, the state's marketing body, the Punjab Mandi Board, the Land Development & Reclamation Corporation and Punjab Agro Industries Corporation were also set up by 1965-66.

In addition, the (central) Agricultural Prices Commission was established in 1965, and FCI (Food Corporation of India) opened in 1964 and began procurement of wheat in the summer of 1965.

Indian farmer Lakhwinder Singh carries a bundle of fodder for his cattle in a field beside the India-Pakistan border (file pic)

In 1966, India imported 18,000 tonnes of dwarf wheat seed by ship from Mexico and Punjab was the only state that seized the initiative in transporting its share from the port by road on trucks rather than by train, to ensure timely arrival.

And before the seeds landed in the state, the department of prisons was asked to get prisoners to stitch adequate numbers of cloth bags to distribute seeds to farmers in 10-kg lots.

An Indian farmer sprays insecticide onto crops in a paddy field on the outskirts of Amritsar

Also anticipating the increased requirement of fertilisers (1 kg to 35 kg per hectare) for the new wheat variety, the Punjab government picked up most of the fertiliser that was imported via Kandla Port in 1966.

Other states were nowhere near prepared to make the transition to the new varieties and so had little use for the fertiliser.

That same year, Kalkat says, Punjab farmers were provided credit, tubewell connections and diesel pump sets at their doorsteps.

Indian labourers pick golden marguerite, or yellow chamomile, flowers in a field on the outskirts of Amritsar

As the then chairman of the Mandi Board, he sanctioned `4 crore to the state electricity board so it waived the Rs 5,000 fee to pull power lines to a tubewell on a farm. With little local experience of digging tubewells, the Kairon government arranged for training 250 diggers who then headed 250 teams to dig new tubewells.

The state also purchased 90,000 diesel pump sets from leading manufacturers. Ahead of the sowing of the winter wheat crop in 1966, agricultural scientists at PAU worked in tandem with agriculture department staff and farmers to develop 'the new package of practices' to manage the crop.

All this, by 1968, made for a record harvest of wheat. This, Kalkat recalled at the panel discussion, also caused an acute shortage of storage space for the bumper crop, so school students across Punjab were given an early summer vacation so that their classrooms could be used as wheat warehouses.

The early successes with wheat were in time replicated with dwarf paddy varieties as well as other crops including maize.

Indian farmers inspect their paddy crops damaged after heavy rains at village Jatta Kheran

Indian farmers use a combine to harvest wheat on the outskirts of Amritsar
Union minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that he wants the controversial practice of triple talaq to be abolished as it infringes upon the right to equality of women and puts them at a severe disadvantage.

Naqvi was speaking at the first edition Mail Today's Femail Summit, a conclave dedicated to the women of the nation. The triple talaq is a Sharia law practice which allows men to end a marriage, simply by saying 'talaq' to their wives three times in succession.

While many Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia have outlawed the custom for years, India - home to the world's third-largest Muslim population - continues to allow it.

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that he wants the controversial practice of triple talaq to be abolished

The Supreme Court is hearing a batch of petitions opposing triple talaq, after women complained that they had been divorced via Facebook and WhatsApp.

Child marriage was abolished. Even then naysayers cried 'religion in danger'... They said it must not be abolished as it was part of established tradition dating back to hundreds of years, but it happened Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi

'I am not a talaq specialist. I have never done talaq and I don't intend to do it ever,' Naqvi said in a light-hearted way to begin with, coming to the more serious aspects of the instant divorce custom that the Narendra Modi government has promised to do away with, an attitude that has caused consternation among the more conservative sections of Muslim society and the clerics in particular.

Several political observers have pointed out that the BJP garnered a massive chunk of votes from Muslim women that, among other things, accounted for its sweeping majority in the UP assembly polls this year.

'Our Constitution guarantees gender equality and a sweeping equality for all: high and low, man and woman. This right to equality must be held sacrosanct for all and all must respect it. This nation runs on a constitution, not on shariat or any other religious textbook. This practice is inhuman, unconstitutional and is a social evil,' Naqvi said.

Triple Talaq infringes upon the right to equality of women and puts them at a severe disadvantage

The senior minister of the Modi council, who has held several party positions too in the past, put forth before the audience a kind of 'secular' argument in favour of the abolition of this 'social evil' as he called it.

'This country has not seen socio-religious reforms for the first time. Child marriage was abolished. Even then naysayers had cried 'religion in danger' and that it was tinkering with the religious sentiments of the people.

'They said it must not be abolished as it was part of established tradition dating back to hundreds of years, but it happened. Similarly, when sati was abolished, a section said it was an attack on religious sentiments of people. A big campaign too was launched against the move, but it was made illegal. In the same way, triple talaq too must be abolished and a positive step should be taken towards social reform.'

The Supreme Court is hearing a batch of petitions opposing triple talaq, after women complained that they had been divorced via Facebook and WhatsApp

The national Law Commission last year sought public views on whether to abolish the custom, triggering a debate between politicians and religious leaders.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), a non-governmental body which oversees the application of Muslim personal law, has resisted any ban on triple talaq while arguing that this is a religious matter and not for the courts.

Naqvi also made a strong pitch for reservation for women in educational institutions.

Activists of Joint Movement Committee protest on the issue of 'Triple Talaq' in New Delhi

'We are in the process of opening nearly 100 schools on the lines of 'Navodaya Vidyalayas' across the nation for minorities where 50 per cent of the seats would be reserved for girls.

'Of all the scholarships given by my ministry, we have reserved 40 per cent for the girl child. We have ensured that all skilling programmes that we run, through NGOs or as government enterprise, have at least 40 per cent of participation from women.

There are schemes in which minorities have 75 per cent job reservation and we have ensured that 50 per cent of these go to women.' Talking about the skilling initiatives of the ministry, Naqvi said the motto was Madad Hamari, Manzil Aapki (our help, your ambition).

'In the past three years we have tried for bringing about empowerment without appeasement as he Narendra Modi government is committed to bring happiness and prosperity for everyone who is poor.

'The next motto is Education, Employment and Empowerment. This is what we are doing and intend to further do for mainstreaming the minorities in India.'
India is considering an American anti-missile 'umbrella' to protect the Delhi region from enemy rockets, drones and aircraft.

Seeking to provide protection to dignitaries, including the President and Prime Minister, India is looking into the system, as part of the Delhi Area Defence project.

'The National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System (NASAMS) is being considered for the Delhi Area Defence project to provide aerial protection to the capital from airborne threats,' government sources told Mail Today.

The capital may get US anti-missile umbrella

The programme is being undertaken as the threat from incoming enemy missiles, drones and aircraft is perceived to be on the rise, because of their increasing use by organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

US defence officials have given presentations to the Air Force and other concerned agencies, and the proposal is now being considered by the government.

The same anti-missile system is used by the Americans to guard their national capital region in Washington DC and has been in deployment there since 2005.

Officials are considering installing the NASAMS air defence system to protect the Delhi region from enemy rockets, drones and aircraft

The Indian Air Force has been using missile systems originating from Russia to help protect the national capital, as well as important assets.

The Americans claim the NASAMS as being a state-of-the-art air defence system that can maximise the ability of the users to quickly identify, engage and destroy enemy aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles or emerging cruise missile threats.

'It is owned by seven countries and has been integrated into the US national capital region's air defence system since 2005.

'In addition to the US, it is in service in Norway, Finland, Spain and the Netherlands,' said the firm which manufactures the missile system for the US government.

Indian army soldiers take up position on the perimeter of an airforce base in Pathankot on January 3, 2016, during an operation to 'sanitise' the base following an attack by gunmen

Government sources said this programme would be running simultaneously with the indigenous Ballistic Missile Defence shield project, under which protection would be provided to key cities such as Delhi and Mumbai from incoming ballistic missiles.

Under the DRDO project, the plan is to take down long range ballistic missiles coming in from up to 2,000 km, at heights of 30 to 120 kilometres.

In the past few years, India has been taking significant steps to improve its air defence capabilities as a number of new mechanisms to take on hostile aerial action have been introduced and many more new systems will be added in the near future.

India recently started inducting the long-delayed `20,000 crore SPYDER missile systems into the Air Force and some of the systems have already been deployed on the western frontier to thwart any misadventure from the Pakistan side.

India has also signed a deal worth `17,000-crore for medium-range-surface-to-air-missile (MRSAM) system with Israel to equip the Army Air Defence Corps to take out enemy planes and drones at ranges of up to 70 kilometres in the air.

The DRDO has also started a programme to develop a quick-reaction surface-to-air missile system to enable the armed forces to bolster air defence capabilities in both the western and eastern sectors.

Indian agencies are considering the NASAMS at a time when defence ties between India and the US are on a high and New Delhi has contracted for military hardware worth over `75,000 crore in the last one decade.

The Indian Air Force has acquired various systems from the US including the C-17 Globemaster heavylift aircraft, C-130J Super Hercules Special Operations planes, Apache attack choppers and the Chinook heavy-lift helicopters in the last seven to eight years.

The Navy has also acquired 12 P-8 anti-submarine warfare and surveillance aircraft from the US for looking after its vast maritime zone and replace its Russian Tupolev spy planes.
A 24-year-old woman has died of horrific injuries after 80 per cent of her body was allegedly burnt by her husband and his relatives.

The victim, Parvindar Kaur, was admitted to Safdarjung Hospital on Saturday, after her husband and in-laws set her on fire in an upscale Vikaspuri locality in Delhi, but she later succumbed to her injuries.

However, before she tragically died, brave Parvindar managed to give a statement to the police, in her final moments.

Parvindar Kaur, who was set on fire, and died as a result of burns to 80 per cent of her body

Vijay Kumar, DCP of West Delhi, said: 'We managed to record the statement of the victim during the last minutes of her life.

'She alleged that she went to her husband's house to bring her son's clothes on Friday, at 9.30 in the morning.

'As soon as she reached [the home], three-to-four male members of the family held her and pinned her to the floor.

'They poured kerosene on her and set her on fire.'

Kaur married Gurucharan Singh in 2012, at the age of 19.

But, after her father-in-law died, Gurucharan's uncle, Rawel Singh, the head of the family, used to victimise her over dowry.

The 24 year old managed to speak to the police before her tragic death

Singh allegedly wanted to take over the property of Gurucharan Singh and believed that Kaur could be a threat to his plans, the police said.

'Kaur's in-laws always abused her over trivial issues while the actual motive was to acquire the entire property.

'They also demanded dowry from her family, despite cash, jewellery and other valuables being given to them at the time of marriage,' said Sandeep Singh, a relative of Kaur.

The hospital tried to save the mother, but she was too seriously injured

Kaur's husband spends most of his time outside Delhi for business, and thus Rawel used to handle her son's school expenses.

Meanwhile, the police have arrested Kaur's husband and her in-laws, and charged them with murder and conspiracy.

'We have arrested Kaur's husband Gurucharan Singh, Rawel Singh and Prabhjot Singh under various charges of conspiracy and murder, while the hunt is on to nab other culprits,' the DCP said.
Hundreds of kilograms of plastic bags have been seized in raids, despite warnings against their manufacture and use.

The south Delhi Municipal Corporation said it had collected over a lakh rupees and seized 400kg of polythene bags over the last couple of days during raids upon the markets.

This comes despite the National Green Tribunal's ban on polythene bags less than 50 microns of thickness in the capital.

The rising tide of plastic

Also, in another raid, North Delhi Municipal Corporation claims to have seized 416kg of plastic bags.

However, no figures were available from the East Delhi municipal corporation.

The NGT order of August 10 gave MCDs and the Delhi government a window-period of seven days to generate awareness and start fining bulk manufacturers, distributors, retailers and the public `5,000 for using thin plastic bags.

The bags pose a risk to cattle in the street

The deadline came to an end on Thursday and the urban local bodies produced a report in the green court on Friday.

The Chief Secretary, MMKutty, convened a meeting with MCD senior staff on Wednesday, to set out a plan for implementing the court order.

All three civic agencies have sent instructions to their 12 Zonal Deputy Commissioners (ZDCs) to have their supervisory and junior sanitation staff to 'enforce the ban and challan people'.

Cows lumber through the dirt, trying to bite through polythene covers hoping to munch on rotten vegetables or kitchen refuse

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior official in South MCD told Mail Today that they have given out 140 challans worth `5,000 and managed to curb the use of plastic bags in open markets such as Yusuf Sarai, Saket and Malviya Nagar.

The North civic body raided four wholesale bazaars  Khurshid Market in Sadar area, Azadpur Mandi, Paharganj and Shastri Nagar  and seized 416 kg of plastic.

'The maximum quantity seized so far is 250kg from the Civil Lines zone,' said a north MCD official.

It was particularly with the blitz upon Khurshid Market  which has over 30 shops selling plastic carry bags only and caters to the needs of shopkeepers in almost half of Delhi  MCD babus feel they have achieved some success.

In the process, many cows ingest the entire package plastic bags, rotten food and garbage

Deepak Hastir, additional commissioner of DEMS (Department of Environment Management Services), North MCD, said: 'We have already issued advertisements in leading newspapers on the NGT orders.

'These are also known as 'constrictive notices' which means that we can fine anybody who is carrying a poly bag of less than 50 microns thickness, regardless of whether he read the advertisement or not.'

At the same time, the corporations have accepted that their manpower would fall short in carrying out the exercise on their own.

'With each ZDC having barely a few hundred staff persons at his or her disposal, we cannot search each and every galli-mohalla of Delhi.

'The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) must execute its duty to shut big and small factories manufacturing thin poly bags which are spread across areas like Bawana and Narela Industrial Area and Basai Darapur,' he said.

Footage emerged in May, 2017, of a snake that swallowed an empty plastic bottle, and struggled to spit it out

Stunned villagers watched as the snake gradually regurgitated the plastic bottle

The snake was finally successful

National Green Tribunal has ruled against use of plastic bags in the past as well.

In July, the tribunal criticised the Delhi government over rampant use of plastic in the national capital, despite the 2016 ban.

The Union government, too, imposed a similar ban last year, but nothing has worked so far.
Critics have often described Rahul Gandhi as the 'reluctant prince' who has been the de facto number two for a long time, wielding power, but shying away from responsibility.

But the Amethi MP, who is likely to take up the party's top job following internal elections in October, launched his sharpest attack on the RSS this week at an opposition parties' meeting in the capital led by rebel JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav.

Central to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's scheme of things in the run-up to the 2019 parliamentary polls will be stepping up attacks on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh instead of locking horns with Prime Minister Narendra Modi or the BJP.

New Delhi: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi

Faced with Modi's unflinching support base, the Gandhi family scion has decided to shift focus on to the RSS and drum up support for his party by juxtaposing its ideological differences with the saffron body.

'The RSS knows that its ideology cannot win elections in this country. So they are trying to install their own people one by one in all the institutions,' Rahul alleged.

He added: 'Be it the press, the bureaucracy, the judiciary: people of RSS ideology are being appointed in every institution

'The Constitution provides for 'One Man One Vote' but the ultimate aim of the RSS is to destroy this and modify the Constitution. The RSS did not salute the tricolour till it came to power.'

Rahul Gandhi speaks during the 'Kisan Akrosh Rally ' at Banswara in Rajasthan on July 19, 2017

The Congress leader ratcheted up the rhetoric at a time when his party has suffered a series of bruising electoral losses and defections.

'There are two ways to look at one's country. This country belongs to me or I belong to it.

'That is the difference between us and RSS, who think this country belongs to them,' he said.

Indian Congress party's vice president and leader Rahul Gandhi shakes hands with local party workers during a public meeting, on September 15, 2016

While the charges drew strong reactions from senior BJP and RSS leaders, who snubbed Rahul for being 'ignorant' and claimed that the organisation was as much a part of the freedom struggle, the Congress top brass is impressed with the new strategy and is poised to keep up the war of words.

'Why give Modi undue credit? It is the RSS that has propped him up... he is just a byproduct.'

'How else can it be explained that despite Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh's far better electoral performance, Modi was handpicked for the PM's post?

'It is no longer about Modi but whether this country can have RSS ideology in its daily governance,' All India Congress Committee general secretary CP Joshi said.

'The RSS has been around since 1925 and till 1947 what was their role in the freedom struggle?

'Historically while the Constitution provided for parliamentary democracy, the RSS was always sparring to capture political power.

'Now that it is in a position of power it is trying to rewrite history and change everything. BJP became relevant after Modi came in,' Joshi added.

'It is now a direct clash of ideologies between the Congress and RSS.'

Senior party functionaries said a full campaign strategy will be drawn up after the Congress internal elections in October.

'There is a lot of resentment among people against the RSS ideology and their radical way of working. By taking on Modi or the BJP, we will be diluting the entire debate.

'It is mainly Rahul Gandhi's idea to take the RSS head on and once he takes complete charge of the party, the marked shift in the party's strategy for 2019 will start showing,' said a senior Congress functionary.

The party has also started celebrating birth and death anniversaries of freedom fighters and leaders of the Indian National Congress in an effort to bring out the party's 'glorious past' and to underscore its contribution to the freedom struggle.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday attacked Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over his visit in Gorakhpur, saying the 'yuvraj (prince) sitting in Delhi' cannot turn the area into 'a picnic spot'.

Gandhi hit back at the CM after meeting family members of dozens of children who died at a state-run hospital allegedly due to lack of oxygen, and described the deaths as government-made tragedy.

The chief minister should not try to cover up the matter, he said.

Uttar Pradesh state chief minister Yogi Adityanath in Allahabad on June 3, 2017

Yogi, who inaugurated a cleanliness campaign in the district to tackle the deadly encephalitis outbreak in the wake of the deaths at the BRD hospital in Gorakhpur, also targeted Samajwadi Party chief and former CM Akhilesh Yadav.

'I feel the shehzada sitting in Lucknow... yuvraj sitting in Delhi will not know the importance of this cleanliness campaign.

'They will come here to make it a picnic spot, we cannot permit it,' he said, launching the Swachch Uttar Pradesh  Swasthya Uttar Pradesh campaign.

'If someone gives an open challenge to the self-respect of the people of Gorakhpur and eastern UP ... they will themselves come forward to fight such dreaded diseases through their awareness.'

The CM also accused the previous governments of depriving the people of the state of basic facilities for their vested interests.

Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath after casting his vote at the Vice Presidential Election, at Parliament House, on August 5, 2017 in New Delhi

Stressing that more than treatment of encephalitis, checking its spread was important for which cleanliness and potable water were necessary, Yogi said his government is working in this regard.

The chief minister, who has represented Gorakhpur in the Lok Sabha five times, will also tour encephalitis and flood-affected areas.

The Congress has targeted the Adityanath government over the deaths following allegations that the over 70 children who were critically ill succumbed due to oxygen shortage.

The party returned the CM's fire, saying the eastern UP town was not a picnic spot but a spot of virtual murder.

'The chief minister should not try to cover up (the matter) and action should be taken against the guilty.

This is my message,' Rahul said. 'I have come to this hospital earlier too and told Prime Minister Narendra Modi through the media that this hospital needs money as there are too many shortages, but no action was taken.'
Thinking about heating and energy bills may feel odd during the warm summer months but savvy households should act now ahead of price rises this autumn.

This month, British Gas  which earlier this year bragged of its winter price freeze  became the last of the Big Six energy providers to announce hikes. The average dual-fuel bill for a standard tariff with the firm is set to rise by 7.3 per cent from September 15.

Mark Todd, of comparison website Energyhelpline, says: The British Gas price freeze has melted in the summer sunshine with prices going up 76 a year on average from the middle of next month. If you are one of the unlucky ones, you need to switch.

Cold comfort: British Gas has abandoned its price freeze

The price rise has prompted an independent review  due to report in October  into how the Government can meet climate change targets while keeping costs down for households. But do not wait until then in the hope of an official price cap.

Here are five ways to start your own price freeze and curb gas and electricity bills.

SWITCH ENERGY PROVIDER

More than one in four households fails to hunt for the best energy deal. This is despite the significant savings to be made by a simple switch. According to credit checking firm Experian nearly half of bill payers feel it is too much effort, while 41 per cent fear disruption. But such apathy simply lines the suppliers pockets.

From next month, customers on a standard tariff with British Gas face an average annual bill of 1,120  when they could pay less than 850 a year if they moved to a cheaper tariff.

Stephen Murray, at comparison website MoneySupermarket, says: Summer is a time when many people take their eye off energy bills, but British Gas customers will feel it when big winter bills come through and they are paying hundreds more than those who moved away.

It is not just British Gas customers who need to take note. Anyone approaching the end of a cheap fixed-rate energy deal with any provider, should act now. Those who stay put will be moved on to their suppliers expensive standard rates.

Murray adds: Eighteen popular tariffs end in August. If you do not take action and secure another fixed rate before your end date, your bills could rise by almost 200 a year.

Switching is straightforward. There is no break in supply and no engineers are involved. Ben Wilson, from comparison website Gocompare, says: Switching is free unless your existing tariff has a cancellation charge or exit fee. You usually only find these on fixed-rate tariffs, and you do not have to pay a fee if you switch within 42 days of your existing tariff coming to an end.

Websites such as Gocompare, MoneySupermarket and Energy- helpline can help you find a better deal.

BE MORE ENERGY-EFFICIENT

There are many ways to reduce the energy you use, most of which require little effort, according to the Energy Saving Trust:

Only boil as much water as you need in the kettle to save 7 a year.

Swap old inefficient light bulbs for modern LED ones (costing up to 10) and save 35 a year.

Dry clothes outside  rather than in a tumble drier  to save 30 a year.

Install draught-proofing on windows and doors to save 25 a year. A professional may charge 200, but you will pay a fraction of that if you apply your DIY skills.

Other forms of insulation are more costly, but can pay off in the long term. If you do not already have it, loft insulation costs 300 to install in a three-bedroom semi-detached house, and could save 135 a year.

Cavity wall insulation costs 480 for a typical three-bedroom semi, and could save 150 a year.

A-rated double glazing in a single-glazed home will cost about 4,000 for a three-bedroom semi, and might save 75 a year.

If you are struggling to heat your home, it is worth checking whether you are eligible for any Government support to install energy-saving measures. Call the Energy Saving Advice Service on 0300 123 1234.

The lightbulb moments saving us 400 a year Savings: Michael and Cheryl Newman with twins Emily and James, and Jessica Michael Newman is a dedicated switcher, and estimates that he saves up to 300 a year by changing provider each time a cheap deal comes to an end. Michael and his wife, Cheryl, both in their 40s, live in Nottingham with their twins, James and Emily, and younger daughter Jessica. He says: I use a comparison website to find the cheapest deals and then go to a cashback website, such as Topcashback. If one of the cheapest tariffs appears there with an offer of 50 cashback, that seals the deal. The self-employed property landlord also strives to make his family home as energy-efficient as possible. The Newmans have installed both cavity wall insulation and loft insulation in their home. He says: I think this saves us another 100 a year  plus you can really feel the difference in the winter months. We also use energy-saving lightbulbs and I am diligent about the whole family turning lights off when they leave a room  and that they switch gadgets off standby.

INSTALL A SMART METER

The Government wants every home to have a smart meter by 2020. Installation is paid for by your energy supplier and bills should be more precise and let householders monitor energy usage more easily and adapt their behaviour in response. Estimates suggest they can save 15 a year on electricity and 10 on gas.

But the initiative has been plagued by controversy. Todd says: The rollout has been mismanaged with the Government forcing suppliers to spend billions on smart meters that go dumb when customers switch supplier.

'The cost of building and maintaining the IT infrastructure to support the meters is far higher than estimated. In the end it will be the consumer paying the price.

Power: Francesca Hayden-Sims can turn down her heating via her mobile phone when not at home

There are other devices that help households save money. Nest and Hive offer smart heating controls to let you see what the temperature is in your home and control your heating from afar on a phone app.

The Nest Learning Thermostat (which costs 279, including installation), learns household habits and can adapt to weather conditions, so heats a home cost-effectively.

Nest says this can shave 16 per cent off energy bills. Other such devices include Tado and Heat Genius.

Francesca Hayden-Sims reckons she saves 120 a year by controlling her heating through her Nest thermostat.

The 31-year-old operations manager for Canon lives in a four-bedroom house in Brentwood, Essex, with her husband, Dario, 41, and their two dogs.

With Nest, Francesca can turn on the central heating from her mobile.

She says: This makes my life easier. I can adjust the heating when I am at work or on the way home from a night out, so I am never left in the cold. I can even operate it when I am away on holiday. As the device is linked to my homes lighting, I can also switch lights on and off remotely.

Francesca gets a monthly report on her energy-saving efforts.

KEEP YOUR BOILER IN TIP-TOP FORM

Many households switch to a smart thermostat when they replace an old boiler with a modern combi version, as the additional cost may be just 60.

If you have no plans to replace your boiler, ensure it still has an annual service, so it operates safely and efficiently. You should allow 100 for this.

Ben Wilson at Gocompare says: A well-maintained boiler costs less to run, so you recoup some of the cost  plus a repair is often expensive.

By law, landlords must have a tenants boiler checked at least once a year. Late summer is a good time, as plumbers are less busy and you can ensure there are no problems before cold weather kicks in.

Regular checks: If you have no plans to replace your boiler, ensure it still has an annual service

Use a Gas Safe registered engineer  see Gassaferegister.co.uk.

Wilson adds: You can buy specialist home emergency cover from firms such as Homeserve  as well as the energy companies themselves. Premiums range from 2 to 20 a month, depending on the level cover you want. The newer the boiler, the cheaper the premium.

But check your home insurance policy first. One in five include some form of home emergency cover as standard and others offer it as a cheap add-on.

Wilson says: You might be able to call on it in the case of a boiler breakdown.

You might be better off putting aside money each month to cover the cost of a potential breakdown.

PICK RENEWABLE ENERGY

Joining the renewable energy revolution does not come cheap but may save a fortune in the long run.

Costs should fall as the Government intends to make it easier for households to generate power.

Many people already generate their own electricity. Domestic users benefit from feed-in tariffs which pay for energy exported to the National Grid, so they may end up in credit on an electricity bill.

Gadgets: Teslas Powerwall, which stores surplus electricity, are becoming available for ordinary consumers

Roof-mounted solar panels often do not need planning permission, unless you live in a listed building or conservation area.

Panel and installation costs have nearly halved in recent years to between 5,000 and 8,000 in total for a system expected to last 25 years, according to Which?

But the feed-in tariff has also fallen fast since it was introduced in 2010. Install solar panels now on an average home, and it would take 21 years to recoup the cost, with a profit of 650 after 25 years.

What happens when the sun does not shine? Doug Clayton from solar installer UK Solar Generation, says: A solar photovoltaic system will generate electricity on a cloudy day but is obviously most effective on a bright sunny day. The energy can be stored in a battery during the day, further reducing your bills when the sun has gone in.

Products such as Teslas Powerwall, which stores surplus electricity, are becoming available for ordinary consumers and the Government has just announced plans to invest 426million in battery technology. It says this could save consumers 40billion by 2050.

Ikea is about to start selling battery storage in addition to solar panels. Visit ikea.co.uk/solar.

The same technology can be used to store electricity from wind turbines. A big drawback is turbines can cost upwards of 20,000. Check with your local authority if you need planning permission.
It is not just beachside bag snatchers that holidaymakers need to worry about  much bigger losses come from pickpocketing companies and scammers trying to overcharge you from the moment you book a trip abroad.

Banks, airlines and car hire firms have become increasingly creative when it comes to hidden fees and sneaky tricks designed to rip off travellers.

The Mail on Sunday highlights the most common travel scams  and how to avoid them.

Holiday scams: The number of British tourists hit by booking scams rose by 19% last year

Booking scams

The number of British tourists hit by booking scams rose by 19 per cent last year, according to fraud prevention organisation Action Fraud. In 2016, there were 5,826 reported cases, with holidaymakers losing 7.2million in total, an average of 1,236 per booking. The most common scams involve fraudsters setting up bogus accommodation websites, hacking into legitimate accounts and posting fake adverts online.

How to fight back

Be wary of any deal that looks too tempting  such as a bargain price for a luxury property in a popular destination during the peak period  and thoroughly check out any travel agent you use. Dealing with a member of the Association of British Travel Agents gives you extra protection.

If using Airbnb or a similar rentals website, make payments only through the websites payment system. Be wary of a host asking you to make a bank transfer to them to save on fees  this can be a sign of a fraudulent listing and you could lose your money and your holiday.

Copycat websites

Whether you need a new passport, a European Health Insurance Card or a visa to enter a country, there are copycat websites waiting to rip you off. These operations may not be illegal but they charge an inflated fee for something that is cheaper or free if obtained via the official channels.

For example, esta-registration.co.uk charges 32.40 for the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (Esta) required to enter the US. But an Esta costs just $14 (10.80) from the official website.

How to fight back

Use only official websites. For a US Esta go to esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta. An Australian tourist visa can be obtained free at border.gov.au. Order a free EHIC card at nhs.uk (tap EHIC into the search box).

Budget airlines fees

Low-cost airlines have long been criticised for hidden costs  and are constantly dreaming up ways to lighten travellers wallets. The latest ruses include separating families who do not fork out extra for seat reservations and levying an unfavourable exchange rate if your flight is priced in euros but you pay in pounds.

Research by travel comparison website Kayak has found that some airlines even charge more for reserving a seat than the cost of the flight. For instance, its research found a flight available on Ryanair for 7.49 on which a passenger would need to pay 15 for a seat with extra legroom.

Low-cost airlines like Ryanair are constantly dreaming up ways to lighten travellers wallets

How to fight back

Pay for fares in the local currency if you are abroad, check in and print your boarding pass at home, only take carry-on luggage, be happy to sit anywhere on the plane  even apart from family  and take a packed lunch.

Airport extras

Just getting to the departure gate can cost you money at some airports. Airport parking is exorbitant if you pay on the day. Luggage trolleys cost 2 at Luton and Bristol airports, and 1 at Birmingham and Gatwick.

Luton Airport and several others also charge for the clear plastic bags needed to take liquids through security.

How to fight back

Book parking in advance to save up to 60 per cent. Take suitcases with wheels or easy-to-carry backpacks. Reuse plastic bags from past flights. Stock up on free ones.

Travel-sized toiletries

If you fly with just hand luggage, any liquids you take with you will be limited to 100ml, so toiletries are now available in small volumes that will clear airport security  but they will cost you dear. For example, Boots sells a 95ml travel bottle of Listerine mouthwash for 1.25  or 1.32 per 100ml. But a litre costs 6.50, or 65p per 100ml.

How to fight back

Hold on to any empty bottles with a maximum 100ml volume and decant liquids from larger bottles at home before you travel.

Car hire: Some firms make money overcharging customers for minor damage

Car hire cons

Booking a hire care typically comes with an excess of 1,000 or more, though this can be reduced to zero with an excess waiver policy. But buying this cover at the rental desk can more than double your hire bill.

Another way unscrupulous car hire firms make money is to overcharge customers for minor damage. Europcar is currently being investigated by Trading Standards over claims that it systematically overbilled customers by up to 30 million over several years.

How to fight back

Buy a standalone excess waiver policy before you set off. For example, iCarhireinsurance.com sells excess policies covering Europe from 2.99 a day or 37.99 a year. It suggests this saves 120 on policies sold at rental desks. The key to avoiding rip off repair charges is to ensure you are not billed in the first place. When you hire a car, spend a few minutes taking photos of it at the start and end of the hire period to provide a lasting record of its condition. This should stop potential disputes.

Foreign spending

Airport kiosks offer the worst deals on currency exchange. Sainsburys Bank, for example, claims its exchange rates are an average of 11 per cent better than typical rates offered for euros at airports, and 10 per cent better than the average rates for US dollars.

How to fight back

Arrange currency in advance from a high street exchange and get it sent to your house or pick it up from your local exchange bureau. Find a good deal at travelmoneymax.com.

Pack plastic designed for use abroad. Halifaxs Clarity credit card, for example, is free to use overseas, as is the debit card from app-based Starling Bank.

Revolut is a prepaid card which you top up in advance. It uses the more competitive interbank exchange rate for most currencies. It makes no charge for spending abroad  though free cash withdrawals are capped at 200 a month.

Always opt to pay in the local currency. If you pay in sterling, the bank or shop will apply its own unfavourable exchange rate. This trap costs British holidaymakers about 500 million every year.

Private clinics

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has seen an increase in the number of ill or injured travellers deliberately sent to private clinics by hotels and taxi drivers, in return for a referral payment. Many of these private clinics charge extortionate rates for simple treatments, with some withholding treatment until they are paid.

How to fight back

Insist on being taken to a state healthcare facility where you can use your EHIC (in Europe) or might benefit from a reciprocal healthcare agreement (such as in Australia). Always buy comprehensive travel insurance  and check if cover includes treatment in private clinics or else you may end up footing the bill yourself.
The internet of things  where devices ranging from mobile phones and high-tech cars to fridges and smart energy meters are connected and can communicate with each other  is already changing the way people live.

In the not too distant future we may all be chauffeured by driverless cars and routinely booking a holiday or turning on the kitchen kettle from the car dashboard.

The financial winners will be manufacturers that can keep up with demand for the gadgets and software making this connected world run smoothly  and investors who spot the firms with potential.

Connected: Jake Robbins likes technology firms working behind the scenes and shuns big four dubbed FANGs - Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google

Jake Robbins, who runs Premier Global Alpha Growth fund, is already profiting by picking the strong players in this modern-day industrial revolution.

The fund, which he has run since 2011, has about 25 per cent exposure to connected technology, most of which is directly invested in high tech businesses, and a few per cent in industrial firms that sell to the tech players. This chunk of the portfolio has helped the fund grow 110 per cent in five years, outshining its global sector rivals.

He avoids high-profile brands, such as the FANGs  Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google  whose share valuations have run ahead, and opts instead for firms working behind the scenes.

He says: We invest in those that make components. There are no household names. Among them are semiconductor makers such as Skyworks, Broadcom and Qorvo. They make sensors, filters and amplifiers that help devices broadcast and receive signals.

Robbins says: As connected devices become more complicated, especially with driverless cars on the horizon, the number of components required will go up. The growth path is strong for these firms. Some of his selections have already seen impressive growth.

Investment strategy: The fund has about 25 per cent exposure to connected technology

He says: In the past five years Broadcom, for one, has grown almost fivefold in value. He will not sell this holding yet as he is confident there is plenty more growth to be secured.

He also backs broader infrastructure technology through holdings in Japans CKD, and Nexteer, spun out from US manufacturer General Motors a few years ago. So while he avoids electric car poster boy Tesla, the fund should benefit from the drive towards electric vehicles.

He says: CKD produces machines that make lithium batteries for electric vehicles and Nexteer produces components that include autonomous driving systems.

He stretches his investment net globally, with Silicon Valley and Far East manufacturers prominent. He says: Global connectivity is not only changing things in the West but in emerging markets, where they can leapfrog old infrastructure and go straight to new technology.

Jason Hollands of investment adviser Tilney says Robbins strategy has worked to date. He says: Unlike most global funds, which are heavily focused on Western developed markets, this fund has a big slug in Asia  which has performed well this year. It is also invested in Japan and some emerging markets.

Though the portfolio is fairly concentrated at around 52 stocks, the risk of an individual share flopping is mitigated by avoiding excessive concentration. The largest position, Visa, only makes up 2.3 per cent of the portfolio.

Visa is one of many financial firms that make up a large slice of the fund  but many of the most effective are lesser-known brands.
In 1881, Tommy Clarke fitted out the worlds first electrically lit public building, the Savoy Theatre in Central London. Eight years later, the young entrepreneur opened a shop, T Clarke, in Knightsbridge and the firm has been operating under the same name ever since.

Not only has the name remained the same, but the company is still a pioneer in the electrical sector, with a reputation for innovation and reliability.

Over the past 128 years, T Clarke has electrified the Tower of London, the Royal Palaces, the Cabinet War Rooms, the first buildings in Canary Wharf, the Shard and both London Olympic Games, immediately after the Second World War and five years ago.

Switched on: T Clarke installed the electrics at the Savoy Theatre

Even today, the companys customers include some of the best known buildings and businesses in the UK, such as Selfridges on Oxford Street, where the firm is involved in an extensive upgrade of the stores ageing electrics.

Despite the companys illustrious history and longstanding reputation for high quality work, the shares are undervalued compared with their listed peers. Priced at 76p, they deserve to go higher over the coming months and years.

The firm is run by Mark Lawrence. Now 48, he joined 31 years ago as an electrical apprentice and has been there ever since.

The group prides itself on the longevity of its workforce, recruiting young people, training them and promoting them through the ranks. Today there are 1,400 staff, including more than 150 apprentices, most of whom are expected to stay for many years.

The approach was once typical of British companies. Today, it is a rarity, but it does make a difference. Staff feel loyal, they work hard and the longer they are there, the more knowledgeable they become. There is a strong culture within the company and people feel proud of what they do and where they work. Staff and managers also develop relationships with key customers, encouraging repeat orders.

Today, around 90 per cent of business comes from existing relationships with either the end customer or big contractors. This gives the company a certain resilience and helps to cement its reputation as a solid and trustworthy operator.

Big show: T Clarke installed the electrics at the 2012 Olympic Games

Recent results underline the benefits of the T Clarke way. In the six months to June 30, revenues rose 17 per cent to 143million, profits were 8 per cent ahead at 2.5million and the interim dividend was 20 per cent higher at 0.6p. Importantly, the forward order book rose by 23 per cent to 392million. This is the highest recorded amount in T Clarkes history and presages well for the future.

This month the company also bought Eton Associates, which specialises in sophisticated building control systems for large offices.

The businesses have known each other for a while and the deal is expected to boost T Clarkes profits from 2018.

Analysts forecast profits of 6.5million for this year, rising to 7million in 2018. A dividend of 3.5p is pencilled in for 2017, moving to 3.7p next year, so the shares are on an attractive yield of more than 4.5 per cent.

T Clarke divides its business into four regions  Scotland, the North, Central and South West, and London and the South East, the largest contributor to the business.

In the first six months of this year, London and the South East did particularly well, with strong growth and a large order book including work associated with the 600million extension of the Westfield shopping mall in West London.

Scotland and the North made decent progress but Central and the South West was hit by projects being delayed and customers taking too long to pay bills.

Looking ahead, however, the group is opening a new site in Birmingham to support growth and is hopeful that prospects will improve across the region.

Some large investors have expressed concerns about the impact of Brexit-related uncertainty on T Clarke. The company itself, however, remains optimistic. Not only is the order book stronger than ever, but conversations with clients have been encouraging.

Electrical work plays an increasing role in almost every commercial building and retail outlet. There are more computers, mobile phones and other electronic devices than ever before and electronic systems are used for everything from security to temperature control.

T Clarke is also involved in cutting-edge technology, such as systems that use facial recognition to let employees enter a building and move around it and can even predict where staff are likely to go once they arrive at work.

Midas verdict: T Clarke has been in business since Queen Victoria was on the throne. The group was innovative back then and it remains so to this day. At 76p, the shares seem too cheap and the dividend is a further attraction. Buy.
Green deal

Australian investment bank Macquarie has completed its purchase of the formerly government-owned Green Investment Bank for 2.3bn.

Bosses pledged the fund will remain a leading investor in green infrastructure in the UK and Europe.

Macquarie has completed its purchase of the formerly government-owned Green Investment Bank for 2.3bn

Staying put

Richard Howson, who stepped down as chief executive of construction services group Carillion last month after shares plunged nearly 60 per cent following 845m write-down, will work out his one-year notice as chief operating officer.

Float plans

British biotech firm Destiny Pharma is to list on Londons junior stock market as it seeks 10m to develop treatments for superbugs.

The Brighton-based company wants to plough the cash into drugs that target bacterial infections in hospitals that are resistant against antibiotics.

Boss quits

Vishal Sikka, the chief executive of Indian tech firm Infosys, has resigned, blaming distractions amid a long-running row with the firms founders.

Chinese computer maker Lenovo has posted its first quarterly loss

Electric dreams

South Korean car maker Hyundai is planning a major shift towards electric cars. It will launch an electric sedan under its Genesis brand with a range of 310 miles per charge.

Audit role

Sausage maker Cranswick has appointed Pricewaterhouse Coopers as its auditor following Ernst & Youngs resignation.

PC pain

Chinese computer maker Lenovo has posted its first quarterly loss  56m during the second quarter, compared to 134m profit during the same period last year  in almost two years and warned of higher costs due to shortages of components such as memory chips.

Sale sorted

Consumer giant Reckitt Benckiser has sold its food arm, which makes Frenchs mustard and Franks Hot Sauce, to US food company McCormick for 3.3bn.
Booming demand for whisky, salmon and beer around the world has helped UK food and drink exports reach a record high.

Around 10.2bn worth of UK food and drink was exported during the first half of the year  the highest first-half export value on record.

The biggest market was Ireland, followed by France and the US. Exports to South Korea grew 77 per cent, fuelled by a growing taste there for British beer.

Booming demand for whisky, salmon and beer around the world has helped UK food and drink exports reach a record high

The fall in the pound after last years Brexit vote has helped make British goods more competitive  but is also pushing up costs. Salmon exports grew the most  24 per cent by volume  bringing in 407.9m.

Whisky was the most valuable export at 1.8bn, although by volume exports dropped 1 per cent. Beer was the third most valuable export at 313.3m, although by volume dropped 2.2 per cent.

Stronger growth (9 per cent) was reported to EU countries than outside the EU (7.6pc). But the Chinese market grew 35.3 per cent to 274.3m.
Geezer: Charlie Mullins is certainly not a shy, retiring type

Plumbers dont tend to be shy and retiring types. Most like a chat and a chance to put the world to rights and  oh yes please, darlin  they wont say no to a cuppa.

And Charlie Mullins is certainly no different.

Bold and brash with a hard-to-miss Rod Stewart-style bouffant, this self-made Cockney geezer is not one of lifes shrinking violets.

His fortune is put at 75m, and, it is fair to say, Mullins likes to wear that considerable wealth on his sleeve.

He once claimed to spend 300,000 a year on holidays, and keeps not one but two villas on the Costa del Sol.

Home is a 5m penthouse in London, with a pair of Bentleys  one bearing the number plate CH4RLIE  parked in the garage. A new split SUV Bentayga, Im told, is currently on its way.

He wears garish suits cut, naturellement, on Savile Row. He favours clunking watches by Patek Philippe or Cartier and his pinky is adorned with a giant gold signet ring marked with the letter C.

Loadsamoney!

Mullins is the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, whose reassuringly expensive fleet of London-based de-cloggers have tended to the faulty pipes of Dames Helen Mirren and Joan Collins, as well as Sir Richard Branson.

Cheeky Charlie wanted to be a plumber from the age of nine. Growing up on the insalubrious Rockingham Estate in Elephant and Castle, money was scarce chez Mullins. His dad worked in a factory spraying toy cars while his mum part-timed as a barmaid.

Success: Mullins is the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, a favourite with London's A-list celebrities

But the local plumber seemed to have it sorted. He had a motorbike, a nice home and wore fancy clobber. When Mullins began bunking out of school to help him out, his new mentor reassured him: Do this job, youll earn loads of money and never be out of work.

He dropped out of school at 15 (I should have left at 14) and started work as an apprentice, earning just 19-a-week, supplementing it by working in a pub at weekends and doing a night cleaning job.

In 1979, having established himself around South West London, he set up Pimlico Plumbers out of an estate agents basement. Realising plumbers had a bad rap, he created a company with polite, punctual staff with transparent rates.

Appearance has always been crucial. Pimlico Plumbers are kitted out in identical uniforms (blue with a dash of red) and drive shiny new vans. Smoking on the job is banned, as are ponytails, tattoos and facial piercing.

There have been a couple of hairy moments, namely the early 1990s recession, but the companys been on the up and up ever since. Today, Pimlico has around 250 tradesmen and an annual turnover of 35m.

Self-belief: Mullins believes Margaret Thatcher inspired him to succeed

Mullins says he never pays himself less than 1m a year and his plumbers earn between 90,000 and 180,000. Their employment status is a thorny issue at present, though more on that in a moment.

Politics plays a big part in Mullins life. He credits his success to Margaret Thatcher, whom he says gave the working class belief in themselves. He was on friendly terms with the previous government (Dave and George).

But relations with the current regime are cooler. He was an avid Remainer, and will have irritated some Tories by funding Gina Millers High Court case against the Government over Brexit.

Hes embroiled in a long-running legal dispute of his own at the moment with former employee Gary Smith, who successfully argued that he was not, as the company insists, an independent contractor, but a worker, entitled to such rights as sick pay and holiday pay.

Mullins has won the right to challenge this in the Supreme Court in what looks set to be a landmark ruling.

Despite his fondness for publicity, hes yet to discuss his divorce from wife of 40 years, Lynn.

They split several years ago, and the settlement is said to have cost Mullins 12m. Still, plenty more left in the cookie jar, which he fully intends to pass on to their four grown-up children, all of whom work at the firm.

Hes since remarried Julie, 45, who works as Pimlicos operations manager. Where did they marry? Vegas of course. In case you hadnt noticed, bling bling Charlie Mullins doesnt do bog standard.
Former Uber boss Travis Kalanick has branded efforts to oust him from his companys board a public and personal attack.

The 40-year-old hit back at Benchmark, the venture capital firm that was an early investor in Uber, after it launched a legal bid to remove him as a director.

Kalanick accused his critics of plotting against him when he was battling a series of scandals as chief executive of the taxi firm.

Former Uber boss Travis Kalanick has branded efforts to oust him from his companys board a public and personal attack

His lawyers claimed Benchmark pushed him to resign less than two weeks after his mothers funeral.

Benchmark executed its plan at the most shameful of times: immediately after Kalanick experienced a horrible personal tragedy, they said.

They also allege Benchmark threatened to launch a public campaign against Kalanick if he refused to step aside.

They have called on courts to dismiss the firms lawsuit against the Uber founder, who quit as chief executive in June.

Meanwhile, Benchmark accuses Kalanick of withholding important information from the board as he negotiated new rules that allowed him to appoint three extra members  of which he is now one. Kalanicks lawyers dismissed this as a fabrication.

Benchmark could not be reached for comment.
'Furious': Parfetts boss Steve Parfett believes the CMA probe badly missed the point

Competition investigators have been attacked for failing to adequately tackle Tescos proposed takeover of wholesale giant Booker.

There have been warnings that the merger could destabilise the whole food retail sector.

Steve Parfett, chairman of the 300million Parfetts wholesale business, said the deal should have set alarm bells ringing at the Competition & Markets Authority and reignited concerns about Tescos vast power.

He said the takeover would not only be bad news for wholesalers, but could also be a massive problem for suppliers including household names such as Heinz.

Parfett said the watchdogs statement on the Tesco-Booker tie-up issued earlier this month had left him furious because he believes the planned investigation had badly missed the point.

Tescos proposed acquisition of Booker  which sells goods wholesale to convenience stores and is a rival to Parfetts  will add 5billion sales to the 56billion giant which is already twice the size of its nearest rivals Sainsburys and Asda.

The battle for control of the 40,000-strong convenience store market by the Big Four supermarkets  Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons  has reached fever pitch this year as the food giants seek new ways to increase scale. That includes striking lucrative wholesale agreements to sell food to convenience chains.

The CMA listed five key points of concern, the first of which was a lessening of competition between stores owned by Tesco and Booker. But Parfett said the possible remedies Tesco could offer to ease through the merger in response to the three primary concerns would be trivial.

Alarm: Critics say Tescos takeover of Bookers may destabilise the industry

He went on to point out that the CMAs fifth and final point  the potential negative impact of an increase in buyer power  could cause chaos for major suppliers as well as for Bookers wholesale rivals.

Yet remarkably the watchdog said it does not regard this as a primary concern.

Parfett said: I believe the CMA has badly missed the point and Im disappointed that their understanding of the market is that poor.

I accept the main points they have highlighted are classic competition issues, but I believe theyre not very significant in this case.The main issue is the failure of repeated competition investigations to deal with abuse of power by the Big Four grocery multiples.

Previous inquiries concluded there was a massive and unjustified price differential between what wholesalers buy at and what the multiple retailers buy at  and that was never addressed.

Supplier: Booker sells goods wholesale to convenience stores and is a rival to Parfetts

Convenience store supply group Nisa has previously warned the deal could cause enormous pain for the industry. Other wholesalers, including Bestway, have also signalled their deep concern. One in every seven pounds spent at retailers goes into Tescos tills, a position of strength which Parfett said should be a serious concern for consumer protection groups.

Parfett, whose firm was turned into an employee-owned company in 2008, explained: The Big Four supermarkets have such power. For example, my organisation could buy a full 40-foot articulated lorry load of baked beans. And yet the price I pay will be significantly  probably in the order of 12 to 14 per cent  higher than the supermarkets will pay simply because of the threat that they will remove brands from their shelves if their demands are not met.

At the moment, Booker has a cost price advantage [from being the biggest wholesaler] of half a per cent or 1 per cent. But Tesco cost prices will, on day one, be available to Booker and they will have an enormous price advantage over the rest of the wholesale sector.

He said he expected Tesco, which has already identified cost synergies of 200million from the merger, to initially take the bulk of that as profit.

I think [Booker boss Charles] Wilson is too canny to pass on the price advantage immediately, he said. They will pass on some of the price advantage and some of it will go towards Tesco profit. But as memories fade over objections to the Tesco deal the effect will become stronger and stronger.

ComplaintL Wholesaler Steve Parfett says the price he must pay for a lorry load of baked beans is up to 14% higher than giant supermarket chains like Tesco pay using their superior buying power

Earlier this month Morrisons snatched a 2billion wholesale supply contract with convenience store and newsagent group McColls from previous supplier Nisa.

Nisa and another wholesaler Palmer & Harvey have also been identified as potential bid targets by supermarket groups including Sainsburys.

Parfett said concerns should not be limited to wholesalers.

It will create some tremendous problems for the wholesale market. It will also cause some huge headaches for major grocer suppliers because at the moment they get a much better price for their goods from the wholesalers than they do from multiple retailers.

The wholesale market subsidises the multiple retailers. They get back some of the loss of profit from the prices they give big supermarkets in the prices they charge us.

Tesco said: This merger has always been about growth, and we remain convinced that it will bring benefits for independent retailers, caterers, small businesses, suppliers, consumers, and colleagues.
Air fares could rise across Europe following the collapse of German low-cost carrier Air Berlin, airline executives have warned.

Air Berlin, which had seen passenger numbers fall by nearly a million in a year, has filed for insolvency, but is being propped up by German Chancellor Angela Merkels government, which has provided it with a 150million (136million) bridging loan.

It is in talks with the countrys largest airline, Lufthansa, for the sale of the bulk of its assets, along with other airlines understood to include easyJet and Thomas Cook subsidiary Condor for the remainder. Lufthansa said it hoped to secure an agreement by the end of September.

Collapsed: Air Berlin has filed for insolvency, but is being propped up by Angela Merkel

Europes biggest low-cost carrier, Ryanair, has complained to regulators that the loan and talks amount to a carve up that will stifle competition and raise prices both in Germany and across Europe.

Ryanair said: The German government is supporting this Lufthansa-led monopoly with 150 million of state aid so that Lufthansa can acquire Air Berlin without its debts and drive air fares even higher than they already are.

However, airline investors have said they welcome greater consolidation. One leading investor said: Anything that reduces capacity will put up prices and that is a very good thing indeed for the industry.

'The low fuel price has kept European airlines in business when they should have gone out of business ages ago.

Jochen Schnadt, chief commercial officer for British carrier bmi regional, said: We have still not had the consolidation in the European airline market that has already taken place in the US and which has led to a healthier market in the long run.
A fast-growing website that provides a virtual shop window for 300 small British companies is opening a technology centre in Lisbon to sidestep problems created by Brexit.

Trouva  founded in London by Mandeep Singh and Alex Loizou  believes a foothold in Portugal will be the best way of ensuring it will be able to carry on recruiting experts from across the EU.

Singh said his company already had staff from around the world with the majority of non-British employees hailing from France, Germany and the United States.

Andrea Bates, founder of Future and Found, uses Trouva to sell its variety of contemporary design and homewares items from its boutique in Tufnell Park.

Its really about having a cross-border team and attracting the best people, he said. Having the space in Lisbon just makes it easier.

He said it is impossible to say exactly how Brexit will affect the recruitment of Continental IT specialists for jobs in the UK.

No one really knows, he said. Not knowing what is going to happen means its sensible to have other options.

This gives us a great base in Europe come what may over the next few years.

Singh added: Were one of the five fastest-growing tech businesses in the UK.

Trouva offers a platform to a variety of boutique enterprises including London company Good and Proper Tea, which sells blends of artisan tea and accessories.
Donald Trump is 'studying and considering his options' for a new approach to Afghanistan and the broader South Asia region, the White House said Friday after the president huddled with his top national security aides at Camp David.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a brief statement saying Trump had been briefed extensively on a new strategy to "protect America's interests" in the region. She did not specifically mention Afghanistan.

'The president is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time,' she said.

President Donald Trump walks across the tarmac before boarding Air Force One at Hagerstown Regional Airport on August 18, 2017

President Donald Trump returns a salute upon his arrival at Hagerstown Regional Airport en route to nearby Camp David

The administration has struggled for months to formulate a new approach to the war. But stepping up the fight in a way that advances peace prospects may be even more difficult, in part because the Taliban has been gaining ground and shown no interest in peace negotiations.

Trump met at the presidential retreat in nearby Maryland with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, top intelligence agency officials and other top military and diplomatic aides. Mattis said earlier this week the administration was 'very close' to finalizing a new approach.

The meeting participants did not include Steve Bannon, the Trump strategist who has clashed with other members of the national security team over how to proceed in Afghanistan. His resignation was announced at midday Friday.

Also excluded: Gen. Joseph Votel, the Central Command chief who is responsible for U.S. military operations in the greater Middle East, including Afghanistan.

Votel told reporters traveling with him in the region this week that Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Joint Chiefs chairman, represent him in the White House-led Afghanistan strategy review. Votel said he has not talked directly to Trump as part of the months-long review.

By retreating to the seclusion of Camp David in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains, Trump was taking an opportunity to regroup after a politically bruising week of criticism of his response to the deadly protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.

President Donald Trump, right, boards Marine One helicopter, followed by members of his staff at Hagerstown Regional Airport

Solutions for Afghanistan, the longest war in American history, eluded the Obama administration and haven't come easily to Trump, who said almost nothing about the conflict during his presidential campaign.

Since taking office, he has considered options ranging from walking away from the war to sending in additional troops. Abandoning Afghanistan is seen as unlikely in light of U.S. concerns about countering terrorism.

In remarks at the State Department on Thursday, Mattis told reporters the Camp David talks 'will move this toward a decision.'

'We are coming very close to a decision, and I anticipate it in the very near future,' he added.

Months ago the Pentagon settled on a plan to send about 3,800 additional troops to strengthen the Afghan army, which is stuck in what some call a deteriorating situation with the Taliban insurgency.

Within in the White House, questions persist about the wisdom of investing further resources in the war. Even if the administration decides to add more troops, it's unclear whether they could get there quickly enough to make a difference in the current Afghan fighting season, which winds down in autumn.

The administration has said its Afghanistan strategy will be informed by a review of its approach to the broader region, including Pakistan and India.

The Taliban have long used Pakistan as a sanctuary, complicating efforts to defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan and stabilize the country. The region includes other actors who pose political problems for Washington, including Iran, which has influence in western Afghanistan.

The outlook is clouded by the Afghan government's struggle to halt Taliban advances on its own. The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has said the Taliban hold sway in almost half the country.

Defense Secretary James Mattis listens during a news conference with Japanese officials on Thursday, August 17, 2017, at the State Department in Washington

Government forces also are battling an Islamic State affiliate that has carved out a foothold mostly in the east. Trump has vowed to crush ISIS, so its expansion in Afghanistan poses an additional challenge with no immediate solution.

Just this week, a U.S. soldier was killed and nearly a dozen were wounded in combat with ISIS fighters.

The U.S. has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan. Their primary roles are to train and advise Afghan forces and to hunt down and kill members of al-Qaida and other extremist groups.

Trump has expressed frustration at the prolonged fighting in Afghanistan. Earlier this summer he raised the idea of firing the top U.S. commander there, Gen. John Nicholson.

Asked this week if Trump has confidence in Nicholson, Mattis demurred. 'Ask the president,' he answered.

Trump is 'looking at all aspects' of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan 'as he must in his responsibilities as the commander in chief,' Mattis said.

Nicholson was not participating in Friday's talks at Camp David.

Lawmakers in Congress also are frustrated by the war and the prolonged debate within the administration on how to break the stalemate.

Last week, Republican Sen. John McCain declared that 'America is adrift in Afghanistan.' He proposed a war strategy that would expand the U.S. counterterrorism effort and provide greater support to Afghan security forces.

McCain said bluntly: 'We are losing in Afghanistan, and time is of the essence if we intend to turn the tide.'
Eclipse events: Jefferson Baptist Church, 15002 Jefferson Highway 99E SE, invites the public to a series of presentations in connection with the total solar eclipse.

Presentations will start at 7 p.m. today with "The Influence of the Sun and Moon on the Earth." Presentations on Sunday will include "Genesis and the Sun and the Moon" at 9 a.m., which will repeat at 11:30 a.m.; "Mount St. Helens, the Grand Canyon and the Genesis Flood" at 10:15 a.m.; and "The Greater Light to Rule the Day" at 6 p.m.

The presentations will feature a physicist and a minister from the Institute for Creation Research.

On Monday, an eclipse viewing party with speakers is set for 8:30 a.m. to noon.

Information and registration are available at www.icr.org/events.

Meditation: A Daoist meditation group will meet at 9 a.m. Sunday at the First Alternative Natural Foods Co-op north store, 2855 NW Grant Ave. in Corvallis.

The event will feature Daoist Quiet Sitting meditation, also known as "Guarding the One." Basic instruction provided; no experience necessary.

Sermon series continues: At its 9:30 a.m. Sunday service, First United Methodist Church, 1165 NW Monroe Ave., Corvallis, will continue its sermon series, "Church Words."

This week the congregation will reflect on the word "prayer."

Vacation Bible School: Trinity Baptist Church, 72 E. Elmore St. in Lebanon, will hold its Vacation Bible School, "Galactic Starveyors: Searching the Visible, Discovering the Invisible," Sunday through Wednesday.

VBS is open those who have completed kindergarten through fifth grade. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to noon Sunday, 9 a.m. to noon Monday, and 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday and Wednesday. The event will include Bible teaching on the universe and how it was created, music, crafts, recreation and snacks.

Monday morning, chairs and eclipse glasses will be provided for up to 100 people. Parents are asked to attend with their children to witness the eclipse. School lunch will be served to those who attend the whole morning.

Baha'i devotional gathering: The Divine Trust: Our Oneness is set for 10 a.m. Sunday at 5006 SW Hollyhock Circle in Corvallis.

The principle of the Oneness of Mankind, the pivot around which all the teachings of Baha'u'llah revolve, is no mere outburst of emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its message is applicable to the individual, but it truly concerns itself primarily with the nature of those essential relationships that must bind all the states and nations as members of one human family. If we were to realize that oneness, we would see a change fundamentally different from, and infinitely superior to, what the world has already conceived.

All are welcome to join in readings and conversation.

Becoming Catholic: A "Come and See" event will take place at 7 p.m. Sept. 6 at St. Mary's Catholic Church, 501 NW 25th St., Corvallis.

Those attending can learn about the possibility of becoming Catholic, and meet others who also are interested. The program will continue to meet at 7 p.m. on subsequent Wednesdays.
The only surviving seven photos from the 1854 solar eclipse emerged as Americans are gearing up for the celestial event that will span the entire nation on Monday August 21.

The 163-year-old photos were taken on May 26, 1854 by two photographers, the Langenheim brothers.

William and Frederick Langenheim took eight sequential photographs of the first total eclipse of the sun visible in North America since the invention of photography in 1939. The eighth missing photo is believed to be completely black, capturing the total eclipse.

Though the historic photographs were revealed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they won't be on display to the public. They will be kept safely in storage to protect their delicate nature.

The only surviving photos of the 1854 solar eclipse were revealed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York

The images were taken by brothers William and Frederick Langenheim

The photographs were taken using very several of the smallest cameras that capture the least amount of light

The images are notably small with four of them measuring 2 13/16 x 2 5/16 in and three at 1 1/4 x 1 in

Frederick Langenheim (left) and brother William (right) were born in Germany and immigrated to the US. They opened a daguerreotype studio in Philadelphia

The brothers took eight images though only seven survived. The eighth is believed to be completely black, capturing the total eclipse

The images are known as daguerreotypes, taken by an early photographic process using an iodine-sensitized silvered plate and mercury vapor.

They are extremely small with four of them measuring at two inches. Three of the photos exceptionally so, with measurements less than an inch.

The photographs have a three-dimensional quality because of the effect produced by the daguerreotype. They are sitting on a mirror and reflected back to you, something 'quite magical', as Jeff Rosenheim, curator of the Met's department of photographs, described.

To capture these incredible images, the Langenheim brothers had to use the smallest cameras available that required the least amount of light.

Rosenheim believes the brothers used eight wooden cameras of different sizes to capture the event. Because the eclipse occurred so quickly, it would have been nearly impossible to capture all of the stages using only one camera.

Rosenheim told Observer that he considers the brothers as 'among the first successful photographers in every capacity in the country'.

The men were born in Germany and immigrated to the US. The Langenheim brothers were photographic pioneers, opening a daguerreotype studio in Philadelphia.

And though these photos are more than 150 years old, the methods these men implemented are still used today in time-lapse photography.

The first ever photo of a solar eclipse is believed to have been taken in 1851 by Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski in Prussia

The last time the US saw a total solar eclipse was in 1979

Photo shows children gazing through paper as to not damage their eyes while looking at the solar eclipse in 1979

Only a small silver edge of the sun is shown behind the moon in this 88 per cent eclipse from 1979

Photographers are shown getting ready to capture the total eclipse in 1979

Though these images were the first taken in the US, they weren't the first ever taken of a solar eclipse. The earliest known photo is believed to have been taken in Prussia by Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski on July 28, 1851 using the same method.

The last time the US saw the moon pass through the sun in a total eclipse was in 1979.

38 years later the moon will block all or part of the sun for about three hours from beginning to end. The sun will be completely covered for about two minutes and 40seconds.

It's widely known not to look directly into the eclipse. But this year NASA has given the okay for stargazers to snap photos of the event with their smartphone, though the images may not be as crisp as the first ones taken more than 100 years ago.
A fire has ravaged three houses near Wollongong on the NSW south coast, with strong winds causing havoc for firefighters.

Crews battled the blaze at Lawrence Hargrave Drive in Coalcliff, between Sydney and Wollongong, which spread rapidly as a result of strong winds.

NSW Fire and Rescue Superintendent Adam Dewberry told Daily Mail Australia that the fire started about 7.30pm on Friday and took about 90 minutes to be extinguished.

Scroll down for video

A fire ravaged up to three houses near Wollongong, New South Wales on Friday night

Firefighter took about 90 minutes to extinguish the fire on Friday night no thanks to the winds

Three homes were completely destroyed as a result of the fire which happened at 7.30pm

'The fire fighters had a hard time putting out the fire because of the strong winds,' he said.

He also said that fire crew stayed at the scene overnight to ensure that if re-ignition were to reoccur, it would have been put out early.

Mr Dewberry said there were no injuries reported, while the cause of the fire is still being investigated.

New South Wales fire crew had a hard time containing the blaze no thanks to strong winds
The Islamic State group wasted absolutely no time in boasting of its 'triumph' on Thursday evening.

With the dead, the dying and injured still scattered across Las Ramblas, and thousands of people in lockdown in bars, cafes and restaurants in fear for their lives, it announced via social media that its 'soldiers' were responsible for the carnage in Barcelona, and another attempted atrocity in the coastal town of Cambrils.

It is a grim modus operandi we've become used to.

In the immediate aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing in which 22 people died, and the attacks on Westminster (five deaths) and London Bridge and Borough Market (eight), IS was busy trumpeting its role.

As its brutal grip over large areas of Syria and Iraq is being demolished, the group is determined to show it is still in the terror business and able to inspire far-flung sympathisers.

Profile and propaganda have always marked out IS. Its members see themselves as the modern, edgy re-incarnation of the dusty, cave-dwelling old men of Al Qaeda  a new breed, the hipsters of the terror-sphere.

That's part of its appeal and why an early trickle of recruits turned into tens of thousands of Muslims  men and women, mainly young but from an array of national, ethnic, social and educational backgrounds.

Scroll down for video.

Channel 4's new drama, The State,airs over four consecutive nights starting tomorrow. It follows four young Britons who leave home for the Syrian town of Raqqa, Islamic State's 'capital', and explores their differing experiences of daily life there

A scene from episode one Sam Otto as Jalal (left) and Ryan McKen as Ziyaad (right)

Shavani Seth stars as Ushna in director, Peter Kosminsky's The State on Channel Four

They flocked to what they saw as a new country, ruled by truly Islamic laws, carved from the ruins of Syria which would spread out across the Middle East. And about 850 of those who went to Syria are from the UK.

They weren't just going to fight, they were going to provide the new human infrastructure of a state  the teachers, doctors and engineers. That was their vision, their version.

However, what the rest of the world saw were the stomach-churning films that IS produced to Hollywood standards of camera work, soundtrack and graphics to portray their horrific but brilliantly choreographed mass-beheadings, torture and enslavement of those who didn't share their beliefs.

Many of those enthusiastic migrants to IS have now been killed. Plenty of the survivors are now desperate to come home, to cities and villages across Britain, as well as to another 50 countries from which they were recruited.

Will they return miserable and disillusioned, wanting a quiet return to their old lives, having witnessed first-hand how IS perverted the true nature of Islam?

Or are they a threat, still dedicated to the cause and ready to ram lorries into crowds, bomb pop concerts or blow themselves up to show their ongoing rage at what they see as a debauched Western society governed by unholy man-made laws?

Does the sinister upsurge in attacks this year in Britain, France and now Spain mean that we just can't take the risk, and all returnees must be locked up as terrorists?

It is a problem that Western governments and intelligence agencies are only beginning to grapple with.

So Channel 4's much-heralded new drama, The State, which airs over four consecutive nights, starting tomorrow, is timely.

It follows four young Britons who leave home for the Syrian town of Raqqa, Islamic State's 'capital', and explores their differing experiences of daily life there.

Ony Uhiara as Shakira (left) and Nana Agyeman-Bediako as Isaac in episode one of The Sate

Fiction, yes, but all based on fact and extensive research according to the writer and director, Peter Kosminsky, who says he wanted to 'humanise' those who signed up and give an insight into their motives.

Kosminsky makes beautifully crafted films for cinema and TV: from the 2015 multi-award-winning adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Tudor masterwork Wolf Hall to his recreation of real events in The Government Inspector, telling the story of the Iraq 'dodgy dossier' and the mysterious death of government weapons expert, Dr David Kelly. In The State, Kosminsky gives us Shakira, an intelligent, assertive doctor and devoted single parent to her nine-year-old Isaac.

Shakira speaks fluent Arabic, has an in-depth knowledge of Islamic law and religious practice, and decides her talents are best served if she and her son go to help build the new Caliphate (an area under the control of a Muslim ruler).

We learn nothing of Shakira's background, only that she's a British-born black Londoner. Whether she's a convert to Islam or not is never made clear. Indeed, we're not told much about the backgrounds of any of the key characters  which I think is one of the main failings in this drama.

We learn a little more about Jalal. He's a 'hafiz', meaning he's memorised the 80,000 words of the Quran. He goes to Syria to find out how his brother died there, travelling with his friend Ziyaad. Both are London lads from British-Pakistani backgrounds.

The fourth character is teenager Ushna, who has been radicalised on the internet and goes to fulfil what she sees as her religious duty in Raqqa.

Because we see nothing of the quartet's lives pre-Raqqa, it's hard as a viewer to understand what really led them there. Yes, there are tiny clues buried as the series progresses, but they are easily missed.

When Jalal's father turns up in Raqqa, to beg him to return home, he tells him in a tear-sodden speech that he and his wife came to Britain so their children could be born and benefit from life here  not to lose two sons in a foreign conflict. But beyond this there is little to properly put the lives of the protagonists in context, to understand them as Kosminsky wants us to.

What is not spelled out, as I know from my own research over 20 years, is the all-too-common backstory of those who have joined IS; the British-born second generation Muslims who have grown up in relatively non-religious homes, with the emphasis on education, good jobs and fitting into a new culture.

Many of these youngsters struggled to find their own identity and experienced racism. This, coupled with a limited grasp of Islam, meant they were easy prey for radical preachers, who could fill them with a hate-filled ideology and send them off to kill unbelievers.

Jalal and Ziyaad join two other battle-hardened Britons already in Raqqa. We see them larking about in the swimming pool and describing elements of life in Raqqa as 'sick  teen-speak for 'really cool'  before shots of them making stilted speeches to a camera ahead of conducting executions.

That is Kosminsky's nod to the so-called 'Beatles', the four Britons, including 'Jihadi John', who were 'stars' of IS propaganda videos that glorified in the torture and beheading of Western hostages.

In fact, Kosminsky has been so rigorous in his search for authenticity that many scenes were horribly familiar to me. They were virtually identical to the IS videos I'd spent months watching in 2014 and 2015 while making a documentary on the lives of some of those who'd joined Islamic State from Australia and Southeast Asia.

That was the heyday of the terror group. There was a joyous camaraderie among the recruits as IS captured more and more territory. Taking selfies, blogging and featuring in set-piece propaganda films was all part of their routine.

The scene in The State where new recruits practise rescuing an injured colleague, belly-crawling through the dirt, while live rounds are fired either side of them is an accurate recreation of a widely watched IS video.

So, too, are the scenes where IS fighters hand out sweets to local kids and clearly terrified adults are interviewed about how 'welcome' Islamic State is in their town.

The trucks churning up the desert, with the black banner of IS flying above the mounted machine guns. The orange-clad prisoners kneeling in front of a masked executioner brandishing a serrated knife.

All of these were carefully staged scenarios filmed by IS as an influential part of their internet recruitment process.

In The State, the characters are indeed humanised. However, this is to such a degree that there's a danger some vulnerable youngsters, already half-blinded by propaganda, don't see the difference between what's freely available online and a drama on TV, where men become warriors for their faith and women fulfil their destiny by bearing children for husbands then martyred in battle.

We already know that the real-life counterparts have indeed been powerful role models.

Shakira, the doctor in The State, is in many ways similar to a real-life doctor I tracked for my documentary, who blogged anonymously under the name Shams, which is Arabic for sun.

And what a ray of IS sunshine she was, posting a potent mix of soap opera, travel guide and extremist rhetoric. In Raqqa, she married a Moroccan fighter  cue soppy love poems and flowers on her blog. Then he went missing in action and she posted a scan of their unborn child. Hundreds of young women messaged their support, eager to know what happened next and yearning to follow her to Syria.

She told them about the wonderful life they could have, with free houses and food.

In the documentary we revealed Shams to be a Malaysian woman, Shameem Banu. I spent time with her family, who were devastated at her actions and equally fearful about her dying in Syria or returning to be locked up for life in Malaysia. Shams is now silent. Alive or dead, I don't know.

There are no happy endings for the young Britons in The State, but then you wouldn't expect that, of course.

What I as a viewer really needed to know  and what the drama failed to tell me  is what was so awful about life here in the UK that they would give up everything for a one-way ticket to Syria. For me, Kosminsky's drama, while brilliantly acted and powerfully made, failed to illuminate the motives of the characters. This is despite the 18 months of meticulous research that went into writing it.

Delving deeper could have helped viewers put the actions of those who responded to the call of IS into context.

This is important because every terrorist attack increases the need to understand the warped rationale of the Britons and other nationalities who have joined Islamic State in real life, and of those who have stayed at home, cheering the blood-soaked images from Barcelona.

Because it is only by understanding this that we can begin to unpick it and prevent others from taking the same path  and also properly assess the threat posed by those coming home.

Today Islamic State is waning  but it is certainly a long way from being defeated.

Its heartland is shrinking and the supply of new recruits is drying up. But the attacks in Britain and Europe by sympathisers, and possibly returnees from Syria, will almost certainly continue. They may even intensify for a while, like the thrashings of a dying beast. The huge danger is reviving the beast by boosting its popularity.

Islamic State feeds off Islamophobia. The more it convinces its dwindling band of followers that Muslims are hated and persecuted around the world, so every beheading and bombing is justified payback, the longer they'll sustain some support. The more outrage in the West their followers can stir up with fresh atrocities, the happier the recruiters will be.

Which is why the current political climate is so dangerous.

Voicing hatred of 'the other', whoever that happens to be, is no longer solely the preserve of the extremists of Islamic State but feeds into the rhetoric of mainstream politicians.

The State was a desperately needed opportunity to defuse some of that rage through greater understanding on all sides. But the fleeting glimpse Kosminsky gave us of what was driving his characters and why simply wasn't enough.

Presenting four young Brits as thoughtful, caring humans who are also members of Islamic State  despite charting some of their disillusionment  allows both sides to confirm existing prejudices.

And that just feeds the beast.
Families are being hit with extra charges for meals, milk and nappies at nurseries under the strain of a new childcare scheme.

Providers say they have also had to raise fees because they are not being paid enough to offer 30 free hours of childcare a week  which is being introduced next month.

It means parents with younger children, who are not yet eligible for the scheme, and those who need more than 30 hours of care per week, face bigger bills. Families have also been told they may have to pay for basics such as meals and nappies to help keep costs down for nurseries.

Families are being hit with extra charges for meals, milk and nappies at nurseries under the strain of a new childcare scheme

Childcare providers say they are under pressure after being forced to raise from 15 to 30 the weekly number of free hours for working parents with children aged three and four in England.

Nurseries and childminders say the Government is not providing them with enough funding to offer the scheme.

And, as the Daily Mail revealed earlier this week, the scheme has fallen into chaos over the introduction of a computer system.

Trouble at HMRC is adding to the confusion. Delays and mistakes mean many parents are still waiting for a code from the taxman to give to their nursery. Without it, the provider cannot claim funding for the free hours.

Some families have also been unable to access their new tax-free accounts and have been late paying fees as a result.

For the scheme, each local authority pays a different hourly rate, but nurseries say it can be as much as 1 an hour less than what they would usually charge parents. Figures show that of the 85 per cent of nurseries planning to offer places to parents claiming the free 30 hours, 60 per cent can do so only if they charge extra for meals and activities.

More than half also plan to restrict the number of places for these parents to as little as one or two, according to the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA).

Others may reduce the hours on offer to parents each day. Many nurseries are also planning to hike their hourly rate for parents who do have to pay.

Four in five nurseries plan to increase their fees this year, anticipating rises of 4.5 per cent.

'WRONG TO CALL IT FREE' Fiona Browns elder son Seth has just turned three, so she is eligible for the free hours. With her one-year-old Zachariah due to start nursery, the scheme would help keep costs down. But she has discovered the nursery near her home in Essex is offering the free hours only 9am-12pm and 1pm-4pm. Parents will have to pay separately for hours outside these times. The rate for these hours has risen from 5.50 to 6.50. Lecturer Mrs Brown, 37, who writes a blog called The Mummy Consultancy, said: You see free advertised everywhere but its a myth  they are nearly impossible to get. She said it was not the nurserys fault they arent getting enough money but that it was wrong to call the hours free. Fiona Browns elder son Seth has just turned three, so she is eligible for the free hours Advertisement

At Playsteps Nursery in Swindon, manager Jo Morris said she had to double the monthly fee she charges for basics including meals, snacks, milk, nappies, cream and Calpol.

For parents who send their children to nursery from 9am to 4.30pm three days a week there will now be a 67-a-month charge. Those who go from 8am to 6pm two days a week will pay 63 a month. She said: 'We are not being greedy, we are not profiteering, we are trying to survive. Without charging for additional services we wouldn't be able to offer 30 hours because the money we get from the Government doesn't cover our costs.'

Miss Morris said she charges an average of 5.25 an hour but gets only 4.70 from the local authority.

Helen Gration, of Yorkshire Montessori Nursery Company, adds an extra charge of 1 per hour. She said: 'The level of care we give is not cheap and so there have to be additional charges. Our business isn't sustainable otherwise.

'To call these hours free is wrong. That was a vote winner, now it's time to get realistic.'

Nurseries are allowed to charge extra fees for additional services. But these fees cannot be a condition of a child taking a place.

Purnima Tanuku, of the NDNA, said: 'Childcare providers simply can't afford to deliver free childcare at the pocket money prices being offered. These hours are not free  they should be called funded or subsidised.'

Robert Goodwill, minister for children and families, insisted the scheme was being delivered with 'great success', adding: 'We have always been clear that our 30 hours funding is expected to cover the cost of delivering free childcare.'
Naz Shah, MP for Bradford West, is a rising star of the Labour Party. She has been in Parliament for only a little over two years, but has already served on the influential House of Commons Home Affairs Committee and was appointed aide to shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

A promising political career surely beckons for the 43-year-old mother of three.

Miss Shah, a British-born Muslim, earned yet more brownie points with the Labour leadership this week when she attacked fellow Labour MP Sarah Champion  an outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn  for writing in The Sun newspaper that Britain had a problem with Pakistani men targeting vulnerable white girls.

Naz Shah, MP for Bradford West, has been in Parliament for only a little over two years, but has already served on the influential House of Commons Home Affairs Committee and was appointed aide to shadow chancellor John McDonnell

These comments, in the eyes of Miss Shah, were nothing more than blanket, racialised loaded statements which stigmatised the Pakistani community.

The article, she said, published in the wake of the latest Asian sex grooming scandal in Newcastle, was irresponsible and was setting a dangerous precedent.

Miss Shah didnt stop there.

She penned an open letter condemning the papers coverage of the grooming controversy, including a column drawing on Sarah Champions remarks.

Miss Shahs stand was singled out for praise by Jeremy Corbyn. He posted her letter on his Facebook page, accusing The Sun, and by implication Sarah Champion herself, of using Nazi-like terminology about a minority community.

Pleased to see the unequivocal support from @jeremycorbyn, a clearly delighted Miss Shah announced on social media on Tuesday night.

Miss Shah attacked fellow Labour MP Sarah Champion (pictured)  an outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn  for writing in The Sun newspaper that Britain had a problem with Pakistani men targeting vulnerable white girls. She was later forced to leave the shadow cabinet

Less than 24 hours later, Miss Shah received another boost. Ms Champion, a much-respected MP who has campaigned for years about child grooming in her Rotherham seat, left the shadow cabinet.

She had been given an ultimatum by the Labour leader to resign or be sacked. She quit.

Surely there are very few people, apart from the bullies and bigots on the Left, who dont believe that Ms Champion was hounded out of office for defying political correctness to speak honestly about child sexual exploitation, not just in her own constituency but in cities across the country.

The fact Ms Champion was viewed as a traitor by Corbynistas for taking part in what turned out to be a failed coup against Corbyn last summer must have made her brutal exit all the sweeter; some have suggested it may have even been the real motive for getting rid of her.

Miss Shah made the news in April last year, after becoming embroiled in the anti-Semitism row that continues to haunt Labour

Either way, behind her humiliating departure is another story that tells us much about Labour under Corbyn, and even more about rising star Naz Shah. For Miss Shah has faced allegations of racism herself.

She made the news in April last year, after becoming embroiled in the anti-Semitism row that continues to haunt Labour.

A solution to the Middle East conflict, she declared on Facebook, is to relocate Israel into the United States, adding that transportation costs will be less than three years of defence spending... problem solved. The inflammatory outburst was accompanied by a map of America with a small section representing Israel shaded in.

Miss Shah later apologised in a statement to the Commons: I accept and understand that the words I used caused upset and hurt to the Jewish community, and I deeply regret that.

She was then stripped of the Labour whip pending an investigation.

Her suspension was lifted three months later and, like many other party members who have been accused of anti-Semitism, she was welcomed back to the Labour benches with open arms.

One doubts if Sarah Champion will be so lucky.

The role Miss Shah played in her demise has provoked a furious backlash on social media. Ohhh the rank hypocrisy, wrote one Facebook user. You should be ashamed of yourself, was the verdict of another. For her outburst on Facebook was by no means the only time Miss Shah has revealed her hand on the question of Israel.

Before she became an MP, Miss Shah was an active member of Bradford Boycott, a group that calls for action against organisations that support apartheid Israel.

During a protest at a McDonalds restaurant three years ago, members of Bradford Boycott chanted Allahu Akbar (God is great)  one of the most commonly used Islamic phrases that is uttered during prayer and also by some jihadists.

Miss Shah herself played dead with two of her children to portray Palestinian victims of the Middle East conflict.

Those who have followed her career closely may also recall her interview with The Times shortly before she stood for parliament in the 2015 general election, when, like Sarah Champion, she openly condemned targeted sexual abuse of white girls by members of certain ethnic communities. One of the journalists who met Miss Shah wrote: She is not afraid to point the finger of blame at Pakistani men for grooming girls for sexual abuse.

Miss Shah is then quoted directly: They got away with it, but theyre not going to get away with it any more, she declared.

Where, in that revealing paragraph, is there anything that contradicts what Sarah Champion wrote in The Sun?

This disclosure will not come as a surprise to everyone; allegations of hypocrisy, ruthless behaviour and controversy run through Miss Shahs rise from the back streets of Bradford to Westminster.

It is a narrative that contrasts dramatically with her public image as a champion of the less fortunate.

Miss Shah portrayed herself as the voice of the underdog during the 2015 election, when she saw off the Respect Partys George Galloway.

He had taken Bradford West from Labour in a 2012 by-election that he dubbed the Bradford Spring, with a 10,000 majority.

Miss Shah turned that around  winning 19,977 votes to Galloways 8,557  a victory that earned a rapturous reception at a meeting of the parliamentary party. Central to Miss Shahs election strategy was the inspiring account of how she had overcome her own harrowing background.

Her journey battling grinding poverty, and other shocking obstacles undoubtedly struck a chord with the public.

When she was six years old, Miss Shah revealed, her father ran off with a neighbours daughter who had just turned 16.

His abandonment, she said, resulted in her moving 14 times in two years, each house more squalid than the last.

At 12, she was sent to Pakistan where she was forced into an arranged marriage aged 15.

She returned to Britain three years later and separated from her husband.

Yet aspects of her account have been challenged by her own family. Some of her claims are very hurtful, her uncle, Zaf Shah, told us.

In particular, relatives we spoke to cannot remember Miss Shah moving 14 times and were at pains to point out that she, her mother and siblings were taken in by Miss Shahs paternal grandfather.

Nazs granddad provided for them for up to two years, says a cousin.

It does not disprove Miss Shahs version of events, but her grandfathers role during those traumatic early years doesnt appear to have been touched upon.

Then there is Miss Shahs mother, Zoora, a woman she describes as her rock, an almost saintly figure who, she says, was raped, beaten and pimped by an abusive partner for more than a decade.

Ground down by helplessness and hopelessness, according to her daughter, Zoora eventually snapped. In 1993, at Leeds Crown Court, she was convicted of murdering her married lover (a drug dealer called Mohammed Azam) by poisoning him at a family gathering  not, it emerged, because she was being abused, but out of sheer greed to steal his house.

Zoora Shah, the court heard, had already made several unsuccessful attempts to obtain the property, where she lived with the children but which was in Azams name, by forging legal documents.

Previously, she had even hired a hitman  with whom she was having an affair  to kill him.

Zoora, who chose not to give evidence, was jailed for life.

In 1998, the case came before the Court of Appeal, where Zoora, then 49, spoke for the first time about the abuse that had driven her to murder. She said she did not disclose this at her trial because she did not wish to bring shame on her family. Three Appeal Court judges did not believe her.

They said in their ruling that the whole theme of the appellants [Zooras] evidence was that for years she was subjected to physical and sexual abuse . . . yet no one seems to have noticed a single suspicious bruise [other than one black eye] . . . by her own admission, she has lied repeatedly in the past . . . her way of life had been such that there might not have been much honour left to salvage.

In 2000, Jack Straw, who was then Home Secretary, reduced Zoora Shahs tariff, and in 2006 she was released after 14 years in jail. It is not uncommon for life-terms to be commuted in this way.

The website of the Southall Black Sisters, a group that supports victims of domestic violence in the Asian and Afro-Caribbean community, has claimed that the countrys most senior judge at the time, Lord Chief Justice Lord Bingham, belatedly accepted that she [Shah] was suffering from some kind of depressive illness . . . and suffered some kind of abuse.

The Home Office was unable to confirm this, and Lord Bingham has since died.

When we contacted the Southall Black Sisters, they issued a brief statement saying the quotes are taken more or less verbatim from a letter that Lord Bingham had sent to Jack Straw.

Interestingly, the extract on the website is similar to one of a feminist scholar who had been asked to produce an alternative feminist judgment of the evidence presented to the Court of Appeal.

There is one more apparent discrepancy. Miss Shah says the reason she was sent to Pakistan in 1985 was because of the persistent interest shown to her by the abusive Mohammed Azam.

Maybe the dates have got blurred with the passage of time but, according to newspaper reports, Azam had begun a ten-year stretch for drug offences in 1984.

At 25, Miss Shah, who once worked in a laundry and a crisp factory, returned to college, enabling her to embark on a career as an NHS commissioner. After leaving the NHS, she set up an all-female gym in Bradford in 2012. Mother-of-two Salma Kokab, in her early 50s, worked under her.

Miss Kokab, who suffers a painful condition which causes arthritis, did not receive a penny in wages for five months. Eventually, she was forced to go to court and Miss Shah was ordered to pay her more than 27,000, including legal fees.

This week, after Sarah Champion (pictured) was forced to resign from the shadow cabinet, Equality and Human Rights Commission chief executive Rebecca Hilsenrath said it was wrong for her to have been hounded for speaking candidly about child exploitation

For someone who has become an MP, a champion of womens rights, I think the way I was treated was unacceptable, said Miss Kokab, who finally got her money shortly before Miss Shah was unveiled as the Labour candidate for Bradford West in 2015.

The murky world of Bradford politics has been well documented down the years.

During the election campaign, Miss Shah was questioned about the problem of clan politics in the city. The phenomenon, known colloquially as the biradari, has its origins in the ancient caste system.

Biradari powerbrokers have used bonds of kinship and other traditional allegiances to deliver bloc votes, usually for Labour, at the ballot box.

In the past, Muslim women say they have experienced misogyny and intimidation not to stand in elections, not just in Bradford, but in other places with large Asian populations.

Politics, Miss Shah insisted, should never involve individuals telling you which way to vote in your own home . . . In Bradford West, I hope we can be inclusive.

In private, however, Miss Shah was secretly recorded boasting that, even though she is a woman, she could exploit the biradari system to her own advantage.

Voters in Bradford West vote the way they get told to vote, she told an associate shortly before her inclusion on the shortlist of candidates to fight the seat for Labour.

A transcript of the conversation has been passed to this newspaper. At the very least, the episode lays Naz Shah open to accusations of hypocrisy.

A list of questions raised in this article was emailed to Miss Shahs parliamentary aide yesterday morning. As we went to press, we had not received a response.

This week, after Sarah Champion was forced to resign from the shadow cabinet, Equality and Human Rights Commission chief executive Rebecca Hilsenrath said it was wrong for her to have been hounded for speaking candidly about child exploitation because of an over-sensitivity about language which had resulted in a climate that had led to the neglect, for so long, of the victims of these terrible crimes.

How utterly galling, but entirely in keeping with the world we now live in, that the MP who did most to challenge that pernicious culture has been publicly vilified, while the MP who contributed to it has been lauded by the party that always claims the moral high ground.
Wayne Lotter, pictured, had dedicated his life to saving elephants. He put at least 300 poachers behind bars

A conservationist who was the scourge of elephant poachers has been shot dead in a suspected contract killing by ivory smugglers.

South African-born former ranger Wayne Lotter, 51, dedicated his life to saving elephants and was credited with putting at least 300 poachers behind bars.

But his high-profile role in protecting endangered wildlife in Tanzania led to numerous death threats against himself and his family.

On Wednesday he landed at the airport of the capital Dar es Salaam and was being driven to his hotel when his car was forced off the road and into a ditch.

Two gunmen got out and shot him repeatedly in the head and body then stole his laptop which is believed to contain sensitive information about poachers.

Police say the fact that luggage and his wallet was left behind suggests that robbery was not a motive and that a price could have been put on his head.

The married father-of-two daughters pioneered an intelligence-led anti-poaching effort that saw over three thousand arrests and hundreds jailed for up to 20 years.

Mr Lotter was the director and co-founder of the PAMS Foundation to save elephants. It set up an anti-poaching unit that has arrested more than 2,000 poachers and ivory traffickers since 2012 and has a conviction rate of 80 per cent with sentences of up to 20 years commonplace.

They included the so-called Ivory Queen - aka Yang Feng Glan - a Chinese woman who is accused of running a 2million ivory trafficking ring in a case that is ongoing.

South African-born former ranger Wayne Lotter, pictured, pioneered an intelligence-led anti-poaching effort that saw over three thousand arrests and hundreds jailed for up to 20 years

Death threats began after arrest levels soared, thousands of weapons and vehicles were seized and king-pins of the operation were locked up.

UN Messenger of Peace Jane Goodall said yesterday: Waynes anti-poaching efforts made a big difference in the fight to save Tanzanias elephants for the illegal ivory trade.

His courage in the face of stiff opposition and personal threats, his determination to keep on fighting, has inspired many and encouraged them also to keep fighting for wildlife.

If this cowardly shooting was an attempt to bring the work of the PAMS Foundation to an end it will fail. Those who have been inspired by Wayne will fight on.

He will be sadly missed by so many. My heart goes out to Krissie [Clark, PAMS co-founder], his family, and all who have been privileged to know and work with him.

A vehicle drives past the crime scene marking the spot where conservationist Wayne Lotter, pictured, was shot and killed in Dar es Salaam. He helped arrest thousands of poachers

When he began he had to battle against high level government interference and the courts turning a blind eye as they saw the rights of an individual over wildlife.

He involved local communities and proved the tourist economy could be massively boosted if the elephants and the wildlife were protected and won them over.

Mr Lotter said in a recent documentary on the NTSCIU called The Ivory Game that he believed its work had helped to reduce poaching rates in Tanzania by 50 per cent.

Between 2009 and 2014 Tanzania lost 60 percent of its elephants reducing from 109,00 to 43,000 but the efforts of the NTSCIU thanks to Mr Lotter has seen the tide turn.

Lotter, Vice President of the International Ranger Federation, was respected worldwide for his conservation work and its community is shattered by his death.

A PAMS Foundation statement said: He had over two decades of experience in conservation and can be credited as the driving force behind ending the unscrupulous slaughter of Tanzanias elephants

Wayne devoted his life to Africas wildlife from working as a ranger in his native South Africa as a young man to leading the charge against poaching in Tanzania.

He cared deeply about the people and animals that populate this world.

Waynes charm, brilliance and eccentric sense of humour gave him the unique ability to make those around him constantly laugh and smile.

He died bravely fighting for the cause he was most passionate about he said.

Waynes wife Inge, a beekeeper, posted a picture of them together on her Facebook page with the message: Forever in my heart. I will always love you and treasure the years we had together. Till we meet again, my Love.

They have two daughters Tamsin, who works for the wildlife charity Elephants Alive, and Cara Jayne who is a wildlife photographer.

Ecologist Malcom Ryen said of his friend: This is one of the darkest days in the conservation world and his loss could deeply hit the fight against poaching in Africa.

Andrea Crosta, Executive Director of the Elephant Action League, said: We lost one of the best conservationists in Africa and a good friend in Wayne.

Thousands of elephants in Tanzania and elsewhere owe him their life she said.
The dramatic moment a man was arrested after scaling an apartment block in what appeared to be a desperate bid to evade police has been caught on camera.

Police were called to an apartment block in Waterloo, near Sydneys CBD after a fight allegedly broke out between two men just before 3am on Saturday.

A 52-year-old man was found at the scene being assisted by NSW Ambulance, according to police.

A man has been arrested after dramatic scenes saw him drop from a balcony in attempt to escape alleged fight

Video footage shows a 25-year-old man climbing from the second-floor balcony to a first floor unit before dropping to the ground and attempting to leave the scene.

The video shows the man wrestling with police until he was eventually capsicum sprayed and tackled to the ground.

Both men were arrested and taken to Redfern Police Station. Police believe the incident was a domestic-violence related assault.
With boats arriving daily, the number of people crossing the western Mediterranean to reach its shores has more than trebled this year. Pictured: Migrants in Tarifa, Spain

The flow of migrants entering Spain from North Africa could become a big emergency, the UNs migration agency warned yesterday.

With boats arriving daily, the number of people crossing the western Mediterranean to reach its shores has more than trebled this year.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) fears the crisis could become as bad as that which overwhelmed Greece two years ago.

On Wednesday alone almost 600 people were rescued by Spanish coastguards after attempting to cross from Morocco on 15 vessels, including toy paddleboats and a jetski.

Earlier this month, the UN revealed that 8,385 migrants had been recorded entering Spain between January 1 and August 9, compared to just 2,476 in the same period in 2016.

People smugglers are increasingly heading for beaches in the provinces of Malaga and Cadiz  where a boat carrying dozens of African migrants was pictured arriving in front of bemused holidaymakers last week.

The IOM has warned that Spain could overtake Greece, which has seen 12,725 arrivals this year, in the number of migrants arriving by sea.

Spokesman Joel Millman said yesterday that field staff were warning that Spain was now going through something like what Greece saw in the beginning of 2015 or Italy even earlier.

The vessels heading to Spain are much smaller and carry fewer migrants than those crossing to Italy from Libya, or previously from Turkey to Greece, but they are now arriving daily, he said.

Obviously if this grows at the rate its growing it could be a big emergency, said Mr Millman.

The number of migrants arriving in Spain still pales in comparison with the number of people hitting the shores of Italy.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) fears the crisis could become as bad as that which overwhelmed Greece two years ago

So far this year 119,069 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea, with more than 80 per cent landing in Italy and the rest divided between Greece, Cyprus and Spain, the IOM said.

Most head north, with a large proportion aiming to reach the UK. Around 2,000 who built a shantytown close to the Eurostar railway hub in Paris were dispersed by riot police yesterday.

Most of those in the camp, which was built on a traffic island, were Afghans trying to get to Calais, and then on to Britain.

The number of migrants in Paris has risen significantly since the destruction of the Jungle camp in Calais last year, when around 8,000 people were sent to other parts of France.
There may still be another 128 shopping days until Christmas but that hasn't stopped Tesco from selling tubs of festive chocolate.

For 5 boxes have been spotted piled high in supermarkets across Britain.

Mother-of-two Rose O'Keefe, 34, took a photo of Miniature Heroes tubs at her local store in Sevenoaks, Kent. Christmas Quality Street and Roses boxes are also on sale.

Mother-of-two Rose O'Keefe, 34, took a photo of Miniature Heroes tubs at her local store in Sevenoaks, Kent. Christmas Quality Street(file pic) and Roses boxes are also on sale

In a post on Tesco's Facebook page, Mrs O'Keefe wrote: 'As much as I love Christmas and chocolate, surely this is far too early.

'We have Halloween and bonfire night first and not forgetting the children aren't even back at school yet!'

A Tesco spokesman said: 'We know some customers like to buy products associated with Christmas earlier in the year, so we're stocking a limited range in some stores.'

Customers at Tesco in Chelmsford, Essex have also spotted the chocolates on sale and dozens more have complained on Twitter.

A Tesco spokesman said: 'We know some customers like to buy products associated with Christmas earlier in the year, so we're stocking a limited range in some stores'

Joanne Anderson said: 'I see Tesco has declared it the start of the festive season already. It's TOO SOON for tubs of Christmas chocolates. FFS.

'Bah humbug.'

Mark Hardie said: 'With Christmas cards and tins of chocolates already on sale, I may have to dig out last year's bumper @RadioTimes as well!'

Megan Jefferson said she is 'so excited' after spotting the chocolates, but George Stephenson doesn't share the sentiment, adding: 'Tesco you have sunk to new lows.'
Mark Leishman was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order by the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace in 2010

What on earth is going on behind the scenes at the royal palaces? Following the departures of a string of key officials, I can reveal that Prince Charles and Camilla are to lose their right-hand man.

Mark Leishman, who has been at the side of the heir to the throne since 2003, has dramatically quit. A Clarence House spokesman confirms: Mark Leishman has left the household after a period of more than 14 years.

The Princes private secretary, whose motto is: If you cant stand the pressure go home and start a stamp collection  a reference to his own childhood hobby  is the grandson of Lord Reith, the first director-general of the BBC.

The 55-year-old is married to Fiona Nairn, ex-wife of top chef Nick Nairn, and is pictured being made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order by Charles at Buckingham Palace in 2010.

When Leishman was poached from the BBC, where he was head of public policy, one newspaper headline read: Can this man save Prince Charles?

A royal source says Leishman wanted to move on to new opportunities, but his departure comes at a time of great turmoil for the Firm.

First to announce his resignation was the Queens right-hand man, Sir Christopher Geidt.

He was followed by Her Majestys assistant private secretary, Samantha Cohen. The Duchess of Cambridges private secretary, Rebecca Deacon, and the Keeper of the Privy Purse, Sir Alan Reid, are also clearing their desks.

Prince Harrys private secretary, Edward Lane Fox, is said to be considering his options.

The shake-up comes as the Queen, 91, and Prince Philip, 96, step back from frontline duties, leaving younger royals to take up the slack  or Operation Handover, as it is said to be known.

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Chatsworth House doubled as Pemberley in the Pride & Prejudice film starring Keira Knightley. But now the Duke and Duchess of Devonshires ancestral seat has a less savoury claim to fame.

Its farm shop has recalled nine pate and rillette products this week, due to concerns over the manufacturers procedures to control Clostridium botulinum bacteria.

Botulinum toxins cause a serious form of food poisoning called botulism, which can prove fatal.

A Chatsworth spokesman says: These products will not return to sale until we are confident . . . [they] are safe to eat.
Five people were arrested Thursday in Scio and Albany after the Linn Interagency Narcotics Enforcement task force served search warrants.

The narcotics team worked with Linn County Regional SWAT to serve two warrants, which resulted in the seizure of currency, methamphetamine, heroin, pills and hallucinogens.

According to Lt. Jerry Drum of Linn Interagency Narcotics Enforcement, agents served the first warrant about 7:05 a.m. in the 38000 block of West Scio Road, Scio.

Jessica Ann Harris, 38, of Scio was arrested on two counts of unlawful delivery of methamphetamine and unlawful possession of methamphetamine. David Joshua Wall, 22, of Scio and Kenneth Ray Rush, 64, of Salem were arrested on outstanding warrants.

Teams went next to the 2200 block of Waverly Drive Southeast in Albany. There, Brenda Kay Holland, 47, of Albany was arrested for unlawful delivery of heroin, unlawful possession of heroin and unlawful possession of methamphetamine. Terry Lee Bowman, 39, of Lebanon was arrested on a charge of felon in possession of body armor. A 13-year-old was taken into protective custody.
There's a new twist in a standoff between an 82-year-old widow in Florida who refused to sell her townhome and the giant developer that constructed a timeshare resort around her vacant, two-story building anyway.

In order to get a county permit for tenants to move into the new timeshare units, the company needs the widow, Julieta Corredor's, signature - and she's not giving it.

That prompted the parent company of Westgate Resorts to sue Orange County, Florida, this month, demanding that the county issue the occupancy permit anyway.

Tough lady. Julieta Corredor says she feels she's being bullied by Westgate

David vs Goliath? Construction of a timeshare resort goes on around the townhouse of Julieta Corredor in Orlando, Fla.

The timeshare giant's lawsuit is the latest development in the ongoing fight between Corredor and Westgate Resorts.

Corredor was the last owner in her condominium development, and refused to sell to Westgate so it could build the new timeshare complex in the heart of Orlando's tourist district.

The company tweaked its plans, but moved forward, building a seven-story, multimillion-dollar edifice within feet of the Corredor townhome.

The 82-year-old woman's townhome was damaged when a contractor for the timeshare company was clearing the site for the construction of Westgate's timeshare complex.

No one now lives in the property, which was used as a vacation home by the South Florida-based Corredor family. The home, which Westgate said the family has not used in more than a decade, has now been deemed uninhabitable because of the damage.

Orange County officials have told Westgate their contractor needs a demolition permit for the unpermitted work done on Corredor's building before it will grant the occupancy permit for one building and a building permit for the second building in the timeshare complex.

Corredor's home suffered major damage by construction going on at the site making it uninhabitable

Main man: Westgate Resorts is owned by billionaire David Siegel (above with wife Jackie in May 2015)

That requires the signature of Corredor, who has so far steadfastly refused all of the company's offers to buy out her unit.

'The fact that Westgate apparently undertook demolition without proper permitting from Orange County, substantially damaging Mrs. Corredor's condominium in the process and rendering it uninhabitable, is one of the big reasons that we're in this mess,' said Corredor's attorney, Brent Siegel.

County spokeswoman Doreen Overstreet said the county wouldn't comment due to the pending litigation. Corredor and her sons weren't named as defendants in the lawsuit, although their fight with Westgate looms large over the complaint.

In emails filed with the court, a lawyer for Westgate complained that the county's decision not to issue the occupancy permit is costing Westgate 'tens of thousands of dollars every day.'

The lawsuit said the company has passed all final inspections and that the county has 'a clear legal ministerial duty' to issue the occupancy permit.

The county also told Westgate it needs to make repairs to the Corredor home in order to get the permit, and that also requires Corredor's signature.

That's something she is willing to sign off on, provided she gets all the details on the proposed repairs, her attorney said.

Officials at the timeshare company said they've offered to rebuild the Corredors' unit at the same or a new location and provide $50,000 in furnishings.

They've presented an offer of a $150,000 cash buy-out, and they've said they're willing to offer a comparable, newly-renovated unit in a different building. The Corredors have repeatedly said 'no.'

That amount is far more than the $69,000 her neighbors were given for their condos on average, but also a bit less than the $154,000 she paid for the property when she purchased it back in the early 1980s.

The Corredors have said that their case is a matter of principle on property rights and that they feel bullied by Westgate. The complex being built is a $24million development.

Westgate is owned by David Siegel who has been named in the suits as well.

The Corredors have two lawsuits pending against Westgate. There have been no steps toward settlement talks since the beginning of the year, Siegel said.
Author, ex-politician and feminist critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali has waded into the burqa debate sparked by Pauline Hanson's Senate stunt.

The Somali-born scholar - who once wore the burqa herself - says the debate over the controversial head-covering is about the equality of women.

While also calling Ms Hanson's behaviour unparliamentary, she says the issue goes beyond the security point the Queensland senator was trying to make.

Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali (pictured) has waded into the burqa debate, saying it is about equality of women

Her statements come after One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson (pictured) wore a burqa during Senate Question Time

Hirsi Ali says she is against the burqa and other Islamic veils (pictured), calling the idea that women should wear them 'evil sexism'

'Expecting half of humanity to go around covered in black sacks is just evil sexism,' she wrote in The Australian.

'We should no more want to see it [the burqa] imported into Australia than we should want to see wife-beating legalised.'

Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch politician, says there are two main arguments used in favour of women wearing the burqa.

The first is religious, she says, and girls are indoctrinated into being modest and covering themselves up in line with religious teachings.

Hirsi Ali (pictured) wore the burqa as a teenager and suffered female genital mutilation as a child

Ms Hanson (pictured, wearing an Islamic full-face covering) has called for the garment to be banned

The second is political and is backed with oil money from wealthy Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia who also fund Islamic extremism, she says.

Regardless of which reason is given for wearing the burqa, Hirsi Ali says she remains unconvinced.

'Whether they are used to uphold the modesty doctrine demanded in sharia lite or are symbols of the hardcore sharia in political Islam, the burka and other veils represent for me an affirmation of women as chattel,' she wrote.

Hirsi Ali used to wear the burqa herself as a teenager due to a desire to display her religious devotion and modesty, and suffered female genital mutilation as a child.

'Whether they are used to uphold the modesty doctrine demanded in sharia lite or are symbols of the hardcore sharia in political Islam, the burka and other veils (pictured) represent for me an affirmation of women as chattel,' Hirsi Ali wrote

'We should no more want to see it [the burqa] imported into Australia than we should want to see wife-beating legalised,' said Hirsi Ali (pictured)

Ms Hanson caused an uproar on Thursday when she entered the Australian Senate wearing a black burqa.

She said she wore the Islamic garment to trigger a debate on banning 'oppressive' full-face covering for security reasons.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Senator Hanson said the burqa 'presented barriers to assimilation'.

She said the Islamic dress 'disadvantaged women from finding employment, was causing issues inside our justice system, presented a clear security threat and had no place in modern Western society.'

Ms Hanson says Islamic dress (pictured) 'disadvantaged women from finding employment, was causing issues inside our justice system, presented a clear security threat and had no place in modern Western society'

Hirsi Ali says women in places like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan (pictured) wear full-face covering for either religious or political reasons

Her move prompted an emotional response from Attorney-General George Brandis, who called her behaviour 'appalling.'

'We all know that you are not an adherent of the Islamic faith. I would caution and counsel you with respect to be very, very careful of the offence you may do to the religious sensibilities of other Australians,' he said.

Hirsi Ali cancelled an Australian speaking tour in April 2017 due to security concerns after being criticised by Australian Muslims who called her 'Islamophobic.'

'I just want to point my finger at all the places in the world today where Islamic law is applied and how women are treated and I want to say to these women, "shame on you",' she said to her detractors at the time.
Sturgeon and Turkish author Elif Shafak

Nicola Sturgeon admitted yesterday that she dislikes the name of her party because she is uncomfortable at being branded a 'nationalist'.

Despite her lifelong mission for Scottish independence, the country's First Minister said she was unhappy at being linked to other nationalist movements.

If she could return to before the Scottish National Party was formed, she would remove the 'negative' word from its name, she added.

In a wide-ranging discussion with the Turkish author Elif Shafak at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the party leader also claimed that 'being surrounded by middle-aged men' in her earlier days in politics affected the way she dressed and behaved.

She said the dominance of men had made her more aggressive and adversarial, traits which she believed were responsible for her reputation as a 'nippy sweetie'.

Miss Shafak had told the audience the word nationalism has 'a very negative meaning' because she has seen 'how ugly it can get'.

Responding, Miss Sturgeon said: 'The word is difficult. If I could turn the clock back  what, 90 years  to the establishment of my party and choose its name all over again, I wouldn't choose the name it has got just now.

'People say why don't you change its name now? Well, that would be far too complicated. Because what those of us who do support Scottish independence are all about could not be further removed from some of what you would recognise as nationalism in other parts of the world.'

She claimed that the pro-independence movement in Scotland has 'a civic, open, inclusive view of the world that is so far removed from what you would rightly fear'.

She added: 'One of the great motivators for those of us who support Scottish independence is wanting to have a bigger voice in the world  it's about being outward looking and internationalist, not inward looking and insular. So the word is hugely problematic sometimes.'

A Scottish Conservative spokesman said: 'The SNP's problem with nationalism isn't the name, it's the whole attitude of the party. Coming up with a more cuddly name wouldn't change a jot.

'At heart, it would still be a movement seeking to break up Britain at all costs, and Nicola Sturgeon knows it.'
A controversial activist who was hit with backlash over an Anzac Day post has opened up about being labelled Australia's 'most publicly hated Muslim'.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied said she felt 'betrayed by my country' following the reaction, which resulted in her receiving death threats and being forced to move house.

The 26-year-old has been 'recovering' following the incident, with PR companies telling her no one will employ her while she is so controversial, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Yassmin Abdel-Magied (pictured) said she felt 'betrayed by my country' following the reaction to her ANZAC Day post, which resulted in her receiving death threats and being forced to move house

The furore was sparked on ANZAC day after she took to Facebook to post the message 'LEST. WE. FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)'

Despite removing the post and issuing an apology, it sparked an escalating series of events that Ms Abdel-Magied said left her feeling isolated.

'I love Australia, I'm super patriotic. Yet I feel like I've been duped, like I've been sold this false sense of belonging,' she said.

The youth activist, who said she had been 'trying to connect with the spirit of the day', also revealed that the situation had affected her job prospects.

'Before Anzac Day I was knocking back corporate gigs left, right and centre, but now the only ones that are coming in are from overseas,' she said.

On Wednesday Ms Abdel-Magied also lost her spot on the board of the Council of Australian-Arab Relations.

The furore was sparked when she took to Facebook to post the message 'LEST. WE. FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine)'

Despite removing the post and issuing an apology it sparked an escalating series of events, which Ms Abdel-Magied said left her feeling isolated

The mechanical engineers departure was announced in a press release from Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop however no reason was given behind the departure.

A month after making the infamous post Ms Abdel-Magied's 'Australia Wide' program on the ABC was scrapped as part of the broadcaster's $50 million cuts.

The ABC had reportedly stood by her following the controversial comments and at the time said the choice to axe the show had nothing to do with her actions.

'This decision has been under consideration for some time and was not to do with any controversy over presenter Yassmin Abdel-Magied,' an ABC spokeswoman told The Age.

'Yassmin was aware the program was under review, and we are discussing with her future opportunities at the ABC.'

And although she left her former employer Shell 'on good terms' after they declined her bid for a second year's absence, she was reportedly later referred to as a 'rolled-gold liability,' according to the Australian Financial Review.

On Wednesday Ms Abdel-Magied also lost her spot on the board of the Council of Australian-Arab Relations, with no reason given as to her departure

Ms Abdel-Magied's comment came after her 'Australia Wide' program on the ABC was scrapped as part of the broadcaster's $50 million cuts in May

The 2015 Young Queenslander of the Year revealed in a speech at the Sydney Writers Festival that she had also received harsh criticism over the post from a number of politicians.

'I posted an apology very quickly afterwards, but one of our senior cabinet members said 'Well Yassmin is un-Australian for saying this',' she said.

George Christensen, the Member for Dawson, was among those who hit out at Ms Abdel-Magied following her post, taking to Twitter to suggest she leave the country.

'Yasmin should no longer on the public broadcaster's tax-funded payroll. Self-deportation should also be considered,' he wrote.

Ms Abdel-Magied announced last month that she was leaving Australia and moving to London as part of the 'Aussie rite of passage'.

The announcement divided users on social media, with some calling it the 'best news of 2017' while others were more supportive, stating: 'Good on you. Go where the work and inspiration takes you.'
A counter-terrorism strategy document will be given to Australian businesses and councils, outlining ways to prevent vehicle attacks similar to those seen in Barcelona and Nice, reports say.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is set to unveil the publicly available plan on Saturday, The Australian reports.

The plan will provide a do-it-yourself toolkit on installing bollards, and other methods of mitigating a hostile vehicle attack to businesses, councils and private operators.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (pictured) will unveil the publicly available plan on Saturday

About up to 20 concrete slabs were being introduced into Martin Place in Sydney in June

Sports grounds, shopping centres and city streets will all be covered by the crowded-places plan.

The documents comes after more than a dozen people were killed in the Spanish city of Barcelona when terrorists used a van to run down pedestrians on the Las Ramblas thoroughfare.

The document which was at the request of the Prime Minister will be prepared by the Australian New Zealand Counter Terrorism Committee.

The publication reports that the counter-terrorism strategy document would detail proper advice on how businesses can react towards the threat of a terrorist attack.

The document offers simple advice on how to counter such threats and would be made public with police being a phone call away in offering more detailed advice privately, the newspaper reports.

Daily Mail Australia recently reported that 140 new concrete bollards were installed throughout Melbourne's CBD in a bid to prevent future terrorist attacks.

A colourful cover is seen on one of the bollards outside Southern Cross station in Melbourne

The concrete blocks were placed on busy streets overnight in June, five months after a car was allegedly driven into crowds in the Bourke Street Mall, killing six people.

Roads lining Federation Square, Flinders Street Station and other central sites in Melbourne have been lined with heavy, cement barriers since then.

While, in Sydney, a similar approach was taken by the city's Lord Mayor Clover Moore who decided to erect 20 concrete barriers in Martin Place.

A dozen people were killed in the Spanish city of Barcelona when terrorists used a van to run down pedestrians on the Las Ramblas thoroughfare

People help injured persons after a van ploughed into the crowd, killing at least 13 people and injuring around 100 others on the Rambla in Barcelona

A driver deliberately rammed a van into a crowd on Barcelona's most popular street killing at least 13 people before fleeing to a nearby bar, police said
The 'unknown Confederate soldiers' is being erected next to the Dry Creek RV Park located about 50 miles south of Montgomery in Crenshaw County, Alabama on August 27. Pictured is another Confederate statue in Alabama

As cities across the country take down statues of Confederate generals, a group in Alabama is preparing to erect a new monument to the Civil War near a RV park.

The 'unknown Confederate soldiers' is being erected next to the Dry Creek RV Park located about 50 miles south of Montgomery in Crenshaw County, Alabama on August 27.

'The public's invited. Anyone who wants to can come to celebrate the unveiling of another monument to Confederate soldiers,' said Jimmy Hill, commander of the Alabama division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, to AL.com.

There will be a public ceremony to unveil the monument at 2pm on that day.

While the memorial is located on private land it is owned by David Coggins - who is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and operates the RV park - and will be open to the public.

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According to Sons of Confederate Veterans' Jimmy Hill, the date of the unveiling was scheduled five months ago even though it was just advertised on Sunday

While the memorial is located on private land owned by David Coggins - who is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and operates the RV park - it is open to the public

'He's putting it up [to memorialize] soldiers who came out of Crenshaw County or surrounding counties who never came home,' Hill said of the memorial dedicated in 2015.

'He had the marker made over in Georgia for the unknown Confederate soldiers. It won't be as elaborate as the unknown soldier's tomb in Arlington.'

According to Hill, the date of the unveiling was scheduled five months ago even though he just put up an event on the website of the Alabama division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans on Sunday.

Little is known about the physical description of the monument, but Hill said it was partially installed. The park features cannons, lights, markers, a monument to a Confederate unit from Crenshaw County and a flag pole that flies the Confederate flag

He asserts that it is merely coincidence that the event is planned for two weeks after violent protest erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia between white nationalist and minority civil right groups.

Little is known about the physical description of the monument, but Hill said it was partially installed.

The park already features cannons, lights, markers, a monument to a Confederate unit from Crenshaw County and a flag pole that flies the Confederate flag - which the group filmed putting up on YouTube.

'Everything is lit up at night and [Goggins] keeps adding stuff to it. Eventually, he wants to do a reenactment of a battle - a skirmish - that happened there in Crenshaw County,' Hill said.

'It's been a dream for him to make the park better and better.'




Robert Mugabe's wife has been granted diplomatic immunity by South Africa after she allegedly attacked a model in a luxury Johannesburg hotel, a security source has said.

The ruling would mean that Zimbabwe's first lady, Grace Mugabe, would be allowed to return to her home country and avoid prosecution.

She is accused of whipping 20-year-old Gabriella Engels with an electric extension cable on Sunday evening as the model partied with Mrs Mugabe's sons.

South African police had put border posts on 'red alert' to prevent Mrs Mugabe fleeing and indicated she would receive no special treatment in the case.

Grace Mugabe has been granted diplomatic immunity by South Africa, a security source has said

But a security source, however, said immunity had now been granted. The source also said Grace Mugabe had failed to turn up at a Johannesburg court hearing on Tuesday, as agreed with police, because of concerns she could be attacked.

The case is a diplomatic nightmare for South Africa.

The decision would likely cause outrage in the country with one Afrikaans rights group saying any such ruling would be illegal and a 'disgrace'.

South Africa has a difficult relationship with its northern neighbour. It is home to an estimated three million Zimbabwean exiles who regard President Robert Mugabe as a dictator who has ruined what was once one of Africa's most promising democracies.

But although he is also widely reviled in the West, Mugabe is still seen by many Africans as the continent's elder statesman and a hero of its anti-colonial struggles.

On Friday a senior government source, who did not wish to be named, said there was 'no way' the leader's wife would be arrested because of the diplomatic fallout that would ensue from Zimbabwe.

The 93-year old president, who was scheduled to visit Pretoria this week, arrived two days early in the city to help resolve his wife's legal problems.

The government source accepted the view widely held by legal experts that Mrs Mugabe was not entitled to immunity because she was in South Africa for medical treatment and added that it is expected the issue would be challenged in court.

Mrs Mugabe is accused of whipping Gabriella Engels (pictured) with an electric extension cable

But the source said that if Mrs Mugabe was prosecuted, other countries in southern Africa, that supported South Africa's ruling ANC party in the long struggle against apartheid, would see it as a betrayal.

'There would obviously be implications for our relations with Zimbabwe. Sadly the other countries in the region are watching us and how we are going to act,' the source said. 'What is likely to happen is that she will be allowed to go back home, and then we announce that we've granted diplomatic immunity and wait for somebody to challenge us.'

Reuters contacted South Africa's foreign ministry but a spokesman declined to comment on the matter.

Miss Engels's mother Debbie, who released photographs of her daughter with gashes to her head requiring 14 stitches, said it would be 'very sad' if Mrs Mugabe was allowed to leave.

Zimbabwe's president is said to be in South Africa to try to resolve the issue

However, she said her daughter's legal team - which includes Gerrie Nel, the prosecutor who secured a murder conviction against Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius - would counter such a move.

'Gerrie Nel and the team have contingency plans,' she told Reuters, without elaborating. 'They will run with it.'

Afriforum, an Afrikaans rights group that Nel joined in January after quitting as a state prosecutor, hit out at alleged plans to grant Mrs Mugabe immunity.

Chief executive Kallie Kriel said: 'The government has two responsibilities: one, to protect its own citizens and two, to act according to the law. And the granting of diplomatic immunity would transgress the law.'

Harare has made no official comment on the saga and requests for comment from Zimbabwean government officials have gone unanswered. The South African government has restricted all official comment to the police ministry.

The Engels incident is not the first time Grace Mugabe - who is lauded in official Zimbabwean media as 'Mother of the Nation' - has been in legal hot water.

In 2009, a newspaper photographer in Hong Kong said Grace and her bodyguard had assaulted him. Police said the incident was reported but no charges were brought.
Immediately after white nationalist Richard Spencer sat down with ANTIFA member Lacy MacAuley, their meeting was off to a rocky start.

As MacAuley challenged Spencer on beliefs she said equated to 'policies of genocide', Spencer's main retort was that ANTIFA members smelled bad.

'I could smell the ANTIFA activists from yards away,' he claims during the tense clip, filmed for ABC's 20/20.

'The foul stench of never bathing.'

MacAuley refused to shake Spencer's hand when they first met and said she would not condemn the notorious moment Spencer was punched on Inauguration Day.

Richard Spencer sat down with ANTIFA member Lacy MacAuley, and she made her feelings for him clear from the start when she refused to shake his hand

As MacAuley challenged Spencer on beliefs she said equated to 'policies of genocide', Spencer's main retort was that he could smell ANTIFA members 'from yards away'

'A punch in the face is a punch in the face,' ABC anchor Tom Llamas, who was moderating the meeting, tells her.

'Genocide is genocide,' she retorts. 'I'm sorry but I don't think anyone has sympathy for people who are actually advocating policies of genocide.'

'I'm not,' Spencer interjects.

'You would like a white homeland,' MacAuley shoots back. 'And to me, that says genocide.'

'People are going to suffer, people are going to die. I have no respect for that mentality.'

'I don't want anyone to die,' Spencer says.

But even as Spencer blamed ANTIFA for violence that has broken out between the groups, he proudly claimed the white nationalists would punch back harder.

MacAuley also said she would not condemn the notorious moment Spencer was punched on Inauguration Day

ABC anchor Tom Llamas told MacAuley that a 'punch in the face is a punch in the face', in reference to the clip, but she shot back: 'Genocide is genocide'

'We're never going to win by unilaterally disarming ourselves,' he said.

'We're going to win when they know if they punch us, we're going to punch them back so hard they never knew what was coming.'

It was a statement that confused Llamas, who pointed out that 'winning' to the white nationalists essentially meant America would become a 'white nation'.

'Isn't that, excuse me for using the phrase, a BS argument,' Llamas interjects.

'Because the goal is an all-white homeland. That is the goal. How do you do that within the laws in the United States?'

'This is a big ideal for the future,' Spencer replies.

But the reality of the violence the white nationalist and Nazi movement could bring to America became apparent last Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia.

As Spencer claimed most of the violence was caused by ANTIFA, he then boldly claimed that the white supremacists would punch back so hard 'they never knew what was coming'

Racist violence erupted in the quiet college town as white supremacists clashed with counter-protesters that left one woman dead.

Hundreds of people gathered for a peaceful candlelight vigil and march just four days after the horrific demonstration.

Mourners were heard singing 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic', 'This Land Is Your Land', and other songs during the emotional vigil paying tribute to Heather Heyer.

The 32-year-old paralegal died last Saturday after she was struck by a car driven by accused white supremacist James Fields while she was protesting the rally.

Fields, a 20-year-old Ohio man, has been charged with her murder.

The huge crowd marched along the same path that white supremacists took on Friday with Tiki torches on the University of Virginia Campus in Charlottesville.

White supremacists stormed Charlottesville, Virginia on Friday night in what would kick off a day of horrifying violence in the quiet college down

Hundreds of people gathered for a peaceful candlelight vigil and march just four days after the horrific demonstration, which left one woman dead

Heyer was among the hundreds of protesters who had gathered Saturday in Charlottesville to decry what was believed to be the largest gathering of white supremacists in a decade - including neo-Nazis, skinheads and Ku Klux Klan members.

They descended on the city for a rally prompted by the city's decision to remove a Confederate monument of General Robert E. Lee.

James Fields Jr, 20, was charged with second-degree murder after ramming his car into a crowd of counter-protestors

Chaos and violence erupted before the event even began, with counter-demonstrators and rally-goers clashing in the streets.

Authorities forced the crowd to disperse, and groups then began roaming through town.

Counter-protesters had converged for a march along a downtown street when suddenly a Dodge Challenger barreled into them, hurling people into the air. Video shows the car reversing and hitting more people.

Police said 20-year-old Fields took dead aim at the counter-protesters with his car, slamming into them.

The Ohio native was arrested a short time later and appeared in court by video monitor from the Albemarle Charlottesville regional jail on Monday.

The judge charged him with one count of murder, for the death of Heyer and three counts of malicious wounding, as well as one charge of hit and run.

'Fractured America: Extremism in the Streets' airs on '20/20' Friday, August 18 on ABC.
Anne Dodge (right), 55, and her daughter Jennifer Dodge (left), 30, were both arrested this week in Sarasota, Florida

A mother and daughter have been accused of running an unlicensed erotic massage parlor of the carport of their suburban home.

Anne Marie Dodge, 55, and her daughter Jennifer Lynn Dodge, 30, were both arrested this week in Sarasota, Florida in an undercover sting targeting the alleged brothel operation.

Undercover cops acting on a tip responded to ads posted on Backpage.com by the two women.

'I am a beautiful, talented, licensed massage therapist whom God uses to bring his healing energy to you and bring you to a whole new level of ecstasy. I specialize in deep tissue, healing, energy massage,' read one of the ads for Anne, according to police.

Mugshots: Mom Anne Dodge (left) was charged with license violations. Daughter Jennifer Dodge (right) was charged with prostitution

Anne Dodge (left and right) billed herself as 'a beautiful, talented, licensed massage therapist whom God uses to bring his healing energy to you and bring you to a whole new level of ecstasy, police said

Anne Dodge was arrested on Wednesday, after police said she gave an undercover agent a massage without a license.

The mother has spoken out though, telling WFLA that she is a licensed massage therapist as well as a religious minister who performs 'laying of hands'.

A police raid on the residence Wednesday found massage tables, lotions, oils and a towel steamer.

On Thursday, daughter Jennifer Dodge was arrested separately, after police said she offered an undercover sexual favors for $200, as opposed to the $120 price tag on a simple massage.

'There was a carport on the right side of the house and it almost was like they enclosed part of the porch and that's where the massage and prostitution was taking place,' Officer Jessica Sullivan of the Sarasota Police Department said in a televised news conference.

Police said that the mom and daughter ran their illicit operation out of the carport of this home

Police said that Jennifer (left and right) offered sexual favors to an undercover for $200. She has three prior convictions for prostitution

Shocked neighbors said that they saw five to ten cars visit the residence per day, describing most of them as older white gentlemen.

Anne Dodge was charged with two felony counts of unlicensed practice of a health care profession and two misdemeanor counts of operating a massage parlor without a license.

Jennifer Dodge was charged with one felony count of prostitution.

She has three prior convictions for prostitution, according to court records.

Bother women are now free, mom on a $4,000 bond and daughter on $1,500 bond.
A man convicted of the worst mass killing in Orange County history was spared the death penalty after a judge found serious misconduct by prosecutors had violated his rights to a fair trial.

Scott Dekraai, 47, could potentially be sentenced to life in prison for killing eight people in a 2011 shooting spree at Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, California, if he gets a successful appeal.

'If this case had been prosecuted from the outset by the Orange County District Attorney within the most fundamental parameters of prosecutorial propriety, this defendant would likely be living alongside other convicted killers on California's Death Row,' Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals said in a 19-page ruling.

Scott Dekraai, 47, could potentially be sentenced to life in prison for killing eight people in a 2011 at Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, California, if he gets an appeal

The former tugboat worker pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder in May 2014 and should have been eligible for death penalty.

But the judge took the case away from Orange County prosecutors in 2015 after accusations surfaced that a jailhouse informant was improperly used to secure a confession from him.

Litigation has stalled the case - now headed by the California Attorney General's Office - due to scandal regarding the use of informants in the OC jail.

The former tugboat worker pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder in May 2014 and should have been eligible for death penalty

The judge took the case from OC prosecutors in 2015 after accusations surfaced that a jailhouse informant was used to secure a confession from him. Litigation has stalled the case - now headed by the California Attorney General's Office - due to scandal regarding the use of informants in the OC jail

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said he was disappointed with the ruling in a written statement.

'Whether some members of the Orange County Sheriff's Department failed to produce tangential information in a timely manner has nothing to do with what Dekraai did and the fact that Dekraai deserves the death penalty,' Rackauckas said to Reuters.

The Orange County Sheriff Department added: 'Scott Dekraai executed and confessed to the deadliest shooting in the history of Orange County, long before he was booked into the Orange County Jail.'

The man had been locked in a custody battle with ex-wife Michelle Fournier when he opened fired on Salon Meritage carrying three guns. Fournier, along with six others, were killed inside the shop. Dekraai would fatally shoot David Caouette, 64, who was outside in a sport's utility vehicle

California's Deputy Attorney General Michael Murphy said that the office hadn't decided whether or not to appeal.

The man had been locked in a custody battle with ex-wife Michelle Fournier when he opened fired on Salon Meritage carrying three guns.

Fournier, along with six others, were killed inside the shop. Dekraai would fatally shoot David Caouette, 64, who was outside in a sport's utility vehicle.

The shooter was detained blocks away from the scene.
If a person does harm to themselves, to others, or to the planet in any way, we followers of Jesus would call that sin. Sin can be intentional, like bullying a classmate, or it can be an act of ignorance  like using Roundup weed killer not realizing its toxic to the planet. It can be a relatively minor action, like using a nonrecyclable plastic straw, or it can be an act of great significance  like joining a terrorist movement.

If you were to name all kinds of harmful actions and place them on a continuum, from those that were least harmful to those that were hugely destructive, there would come some point along the way where you would find it appropriate to begin using the word "evil" to describe the action. There might be some variations among us about where that begins, but I think we would all find that the word evil becomes appropriate to use in describing systemic, organized or institutional acts of destruction or hate. We would most likely not say its evil to cheat on a spelling test. We would probably agree that the institution of slavery was and is evil  harm on a hugely destructive, organized scale.

Evil, described this way, can emerge in many forms. It can rise from business practices, government policies, social movements; it can even take shape through troubled family systems. We can find ourselves knowingly or unknowingly complicit simply because of the circumstances of our lives, especially in the United States  a most privileged country. While most of us dont wish to cause harm in this world, it takes tremendous work to recognize and address organized evils because often we have become intrinsically part of the problem. Evil can create such an intertangled web of policies, practices and attitudes; clarity succumbs to confusion. Still, I think all of us are aware of an array of injustices that harm many people and seem to be securely housed into our culture in systematic ways.

Right now many of us are deeply concerned about an evil in our country that has recently made itself known with horrifying clarity. Through social media and word of mouth, the white supremacy and antisemitic home terrorist movement has stepped out of the shadows. This movement is organized! While marching with torches, beating up people, throwing bottles of urine, shouting hate and driving a car into an innocent crowd may not appear to be an organized effort, it is nevertheless a concerted attempt to cause harm and create fear  especially among our neighbors who are Jewish, Muslim or people of color. A mob mentality gives people anonymity and thus permission to behave as they might never do by themselves. The hatred and the boldness to act with malice grows exponentially.

It is essential for us recognize and name this evil among us. People of goodwill, we must respond.

It will take significant and committed community effort to harness or dismantle this hate movement in our land.

The hope I can offer from my perspective comes through Jesus. He stood up to the evil, oppressive systems of his day. He stood with those who were most threatened and vulnerable. He spoke out. He gathered people of goodwill around him to form a movement that grew exponentially  a movement based on love, which, by the way, is not some wimpy, sentimental thing. It is action that works for justice, offers kindness to anyone, and risks being in harms way for the common good.

It is time to stand up, stand with, speak out and gather as people of goodwill.
Flights are running as usual on the weekend following devastating gale-force winds hammering the New South Wales coastline on Friday.

Friday's turbulent weather left hundreds of flights cancelled at Sydney Airport as winds as strong as 100km/h ripped through the city, leaving a trail of destruction.

Flights from Sydney Airport are on time despite travellers being told there is extensive track work on overhead wires, due to the damaging winds, on the Eastern Suburbs and Illawarra line.

Scroll down for videos

Sydney will face the brunt of blistering gales for the second day running as wind speeds top 100km/h across NSW

Friday's turbulent weather left hundreds of flights cancelled at Sydney Airport as winds as strong as 100km/h ripped through the city leaving a trail of destruction behind

NSW SES attended a staggering 898 call outs, with hundreds of reports of falling trees and damaged roofs

Australia's east coast will be subject to another 24 hours of wild winds, with the Bureau of Meteorology warning dangerous surf conditions and waves over six metres.

The Byron Coast, Coffs Coast, Macquarie Coast, Hunter Coast, Sydney Coast, Eden Coast, Illawarra Coast and Batemans Coast will all be hit by the powerful waves and could face serious coastal erosion.

The NSW SES will also be anticipating another hectic day after having their work cut out on Friday - attending a staggering 898 call outs, with hundreds of reports of fallen trees and damaged roofs.

The turbulent winter weather shows no sign of easing up for Melbourne, with the Victoria capital set to be drenched by rain over the weekend.

Further inland in the alpine regions, there can be more snow expected with at least 20 centimetres to fall over Saturday.

Parts of Victoria will also be on the receiving end of a battering from strong winds with gale warnings issued for the East Gippsland coastline.

Flights are running on time at Sydney Airport on Saturday (Stock Image)

Sydney Airport came to a complete standstill as Qantas and Virgin were among airlines to cancel flights to and from Melbourne on Friday night

Passenger chaos ensued as flights were either delayed or cancelled leaving travellers stranded at Sydney Airport on Friday

FORECAST: WEATHER RIGHT ACROSS AUSTRALIA SYDNEY Saturday : Max 16, Min 9, windy Sunday : Max 17, Min 7, sunny Monday : Max 18, Min 8, cloudy Tuesday : Max 21, Min 9, sunny Wednesday : Max 21, Min 9, possible shower BRISBANE: Saturday : Max 21, Min 10, windy Sunday : Max 22, Min 10, sunny Monday : Max 23, Min 9, mostly sunny Tuesday : Max 27, Min 11, mostly sunny Wednesday : Max 27, Min 11, sunny ADELAIDE Saturday : Max 15, Min 7, mostly sunny Sunday : Max 16, Min 7, late shower Monday : Max 17, Min 10, possible shower Tuesday : Max 16, Min 10, possible shower Wednesday : Max 16, Min 10, possible shower DARWIN Saturday : Max 33, Min 21, sunny Sunday : Max 33, Min 20, sunny Monday: Max 33, Min 20, sunny Tuesday : Max 33, Min 20, sunny Wednesday : Max 33, Min 20, sunny MELBOURNE Saturday: Max 13, Min 6, clearing shower Sunday : Max 14, Min 4, sunny Monday : Max 12, Min 7, showers Tuesday : Max 15, Min 6, showers Wednesday : Max 15, Min 7, showers CANBERRA Saturday : Max 11, Min -1, frost then sunny Sunday : Max 13, Min -4, frost then sunny Monday : Max 10, Min -1, rain developing Tuesday : Max 16, Min -1, frost then sunny Wednesday : Max 15, Min -1, possible shower PERTH Saturday : Max 17, Min 10, clearing shower Sunday : Max 18, Min 9, clearing shower Monday : Max 18, Min 8, possible shower Tuesday : Max 19, Min 9, possible shower Wednesday : Max 21, Min 9, sunny HOBART Saturday : Max 11, Min 2, mostly sunny Sunday : Max 13, Min 3, mostly sunny Monday : Max 13, Min 4, cloudy Tuesday : Max 14, Min 4, possible shower Wednesday : Max 12, Min 4, showers Advertisement

Beachgoers across NSW witnessed choppy waters as surfers across the East Coastare warned of huge waves up to six metres on Saturday

Ausgrid confirmed there was more than 43,000 homes out across Sydney's south

Sydney Airport appeared empty on Friday as over 100 flights suffered from the strong weather conditions as experts warn Sydneysiders to expect more of the same on Saturday

Canberra continues to wake up to frosty mornings, with the capital struggling through freezing temperatures with a minimum of -4C on Sunday.

Among the damage on Friday was a wall panel from the Clarence Street entrance to Wynyard Station which was ripped off during the strong gusts, hitting one man and woman who were left with minor injuries, according to Nine News.

Ausgrid confirmed that more than 43,000 homes were without power at around midday on Friday.

In a statement, Ausgrid thanked customers for their patience and said extra crews were being brought in for the repairs to continue into the night.

Sydney Airport came to a complete standstill as Qantas and Virgin were among airlines to cancel flights to and from Melbourne on Friday night.

'We've cancelled around 40 flights today due to the winds in Sydney, around half of those are Melbourne to Sydney flights,' a Qantas spokesman told The Age.

Tigerair and Jetstar were also badly hit as only one runway was operational for large parts of the day, as passengers on Saturday are warned to expect more of the same.

Melbourne can expect torrential downpours over the weekend, which will follow through into next week to continue a turbulent winter

Winds shattered glass buildings in Sydney CBD on Friday with substantial damage caused to a range of buildings

The New South Wales SES has been inundated with more 800 calls from the Illawarra and Sydney Metro area alone

Ausgrid confirmed more than 43,000 homes were without power at around midday on Friday

One Instagram video revealed residents cowering below as panels from a car park roof flew off in Sydney causing considerable damage

Social media was predictably awash with images and videos from Friday's storm, with one video emerging of the SES working on a building after the roof collapsed from a residential building on Crown Street in Wollongong.

Another revealed residents cowering below as panels from a car park roof flew off in Sydney causing considerable damage.

Among Sydneysiders taking to the internet to post pictures of devastation, one Instagram user managed to see the funny side of the storm and posed alongside a lamp post appearing to hold on for dear life.

Sydney traffic was also sent into a tailspin with heavy winds causing train track work near the Harbour Bridge and major power outages.

Heavy cross winds worsened train line issues on the northern routes causing chaos on the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Friday afternoon.

'Passengers travelling on the T1 North Shore, Northern & Western Line are advised to allow plenty of additional travel time after urgent infrastructure repairs caused by strong winds near Milsons Point earlier,' a Sydney Trains service update read.

With similar weather due on Saturday, Sydney residents are warned to expect delays across all forms of transport.

Cross winds have caused train delays wreaking havoc with traffic on the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Friday

Travellers are facing commuting chaos at Sydney Airport as gale force winds batter the area resulting in major delays

Hundreds of flights have been affected with the gale-force winds and Saturday's predicted weather suggests more of the same is to come

Passengers are being advised to check with their individual airlines to confirm the extent of delays and cancellations
Eight days after the inauguration, President Donald Trump stood in the Oval Office, inside his new home.

He was flanked by Vice President Mike Pence, as well as Reince Priebus, Michael Flynn, Sean Spicer, and Steve Bannon.

Less than seven months later, on the heels of Trump firing Bannon after a wave of public backlash for his Charlottesville remarks, Pence is the last man standing.

And that point has been made clear in a photo taken January 28 that reveals the incredible turnover of the White House staff.

A picture of the Oval Office on January 28 has gone viral after it was revealed that, of the five members of Trump's White House staff, only Pence - who cannot be fired - was left standing

And on Friday, as yet another man got the boot, Trump changed his Twitter cover photo to this image with top members of his cabinet, as well as Pence, as if to signal a new start

The picture illustrates how the Oval Office turned into Trump's own version of The Apprentice.

And if this was a reality show - instead of the highest office of the US government - then Michael Flynn would come in dead last.

The national security adviser served less than a month on the job when he resigned on February 13.

It would be one of the first scandals to hit the Trump administration as it was revealed Flynn had called Russian ambassador Ambassador Sergey Kislyak regarding American sanctions just weeks before Trump's inauguration.

Flynn had initially said he never had such conversations with Kislyak. It was a claim that was later repeated by Pence - who then said he had been misled by Flynn.

Spicer would be next on the chopping block, quitting after five months that saw him hide in bushes and become one of Melissa McCarthy's most famous SNL parodies.

The press secretary resigned in protest after Trump hired Anthony Scaramucci to take on the role of White House Communications Director.

Trump's right hand man and chief strategist Steve Bannon was ousted from the White House dramatically on Friday just after midday

He follows the ousting of former chief of staff Reince Priebus (left) and the resignation of White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci (right)

Former press secretary Sean Spicer resigned in protest after Trump hired Scaramucci

Retired Marine General John Kelly, Trump's new chief of staff, has now overseen the departure of Anthony Scaramucci and Steve Bannon after the firing of Reince Priebus

Scaramucci was meant to replace Mike Dubke, who had resigned in three months after replacing Jason Miller, the president's first choice - and first resignation.

Trump would lose the Mooch as well when he resigned after 11 days and a New Yorker interview that will surely go down in history.

But even before Scaramucci's resignation, it was Reince Priebus - long suspected of leaking stories to the press - who would hear the words 'You're fired'.

Trump tweeted the news that Priebus, his former chief of staff, was out as both men still sat together on Air Force One on July 28.

It was then that Trump revealed Priebus had been replaced by General John Kelly.

Throughout all the chaos of the last month, it was chief strategist Steve Bannon that seemed untouchable.

But then hundreds of Nazis and white supremacists stormed Charlottesville, Virginia, and everything changed.

Trump has spent the last week increasingly under fire for claiming that 'many sides' were to blame for the violence that left one woman dead in the quiet college town.

Trump tweeted a new picture of him and his cabinet on Friday to celebrate the signing of the Global War on Terrorism War Memorial Act

The act will establish a National Global War on Terrorism Memorial on Federal land in the District of Columbia

It took two days for Trump to outwardly condemn white supremacist parties like the KKK, and even then he walked back on his own words in a bizarre press conference.

Many believed Bannon, known for his nationalist agenda, was helping pull the controversial strings behind the scenes.

But it would be Kelly, the newest addition to Trump's Oval Office, that would finally show Bannon the door.

It was revealed on Friday that Bannon had been forced out of the administration - and running right back to Breitbart.

A senior administration official told DailyMail.com that Kelly made the decision and secured Trump's approval.

The White House's official line is that it was a mutual decision that involved Bannon himself.

'White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day,' a statement from press secretary Sarah Sanders read on Friday.

Trump also shared this image of himself waving from Air Force One after the trip to Camp David following the chaotic week that has seen his popularity plummet

On the same day, Trump tweeted a new picture of him and his cabinet to celebrate the signing of the Global War on Terrorism War Memorial Act.

The picture shows Trump staring dead-on at the camera, flanked by the likes of Pence as well as cabinet members such as Defense Secretary James Mattis, embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Unlike with positions like press secretary or chief of staff, their positions require confirmation by the Senate.

While Trump can fire both cabinet members and White House staff, Pence can only be removed from office by impeachment or a high crime conviction.

Although Trump is clearly looking toward a fresh start, a number of positions in the president's office still remains empty.

Of the 587 key executive branch positions requiring Senate confirmation, only 117 have been confirmed.

As of August 3, Trump had half as many confirmed appointees as Barack Obama, George W Bush, or Bill Clinton did at the same time while they were in office.

There still remain 364 positions that have yet to even receive a nominee.
The total solar eclipse set to happen in two days will offer a mesmerizing experiences for Americans across the nation and will mark a first for the digital era.

And while a total solar eclipse isn't rare, this particular one on August 21 has a uncommon coast-to-coast path across the country and is slated to inspire a new age of thinking among youth called 'Generation Eclipse'.

The path of totality - between 60 and 70 miles wide path where the eclipse will be visible - will be personally viewed by millions and even more will stream it online, or through social media.

The solar eclipse may bring about a new wave of thought from the 'Generation Eclipse' or those born around 2010

A partial eclipse - where the sun will be blocked by the moon - can be seen by Americans all across the country.

Totality is said to be transformative as people are said to emote when exposed to the cosmos.

Total solar eclipses were sparse in the United States for the 20th century, with three happening over a 30 year period in the early 1900s. The more recent two were hard to see due to inclement weather or having not reached landfall.

The path of totality - between 60 and 70 miles wide path where the eclipse will be visible - will be personally viewed by millions

By 2099, six widely visible total solar eclipses will be viewable. Smaller portions of the country will get total solar eclipses four other times.

For children born around 2010, the prospect of seeing eight total eclipses on American soil before they were to reach 70 would be impressive. The events would also be ones that could help unify the country.

'When was the last time we really had a big national shared event that wasn't a tragedy?' David Baron, science reporter and author of 'American Eclipse,' said to Oregon Live.

'Awe-inspiring sights encourage empathy and generosity and group cohesion ... and total eclipses always do that.'

This wouldn't be the first of such occurrence in the nation's history. In 1878, one such eclipse crossed over the west south into the Gulf of Mexico. It was also the year the nation was split over the election of President Rutherford B. Hayes and that summer Congress also held hearings over voter fraud allegations.

By 2099, six widely visible total solar eclipses will be viewable

Children alive during all of these are thought to become the new scientist and astronauts, inspired by the cosmos

And while the eclipse didn't do much to ease tension, it is believed that this could do more.

Total totality was seen possibly by 2.1million people in 1878, and the addition of streaming will make this one of the most viewed eclipses in history.

Oregon and Illinois are the only states that fall along the totality path to have voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Total totality was seen possibly by 2.1million people in 1878, and the addition of streaming will make this one of the most viewed eclipses in history

And with people from all walks of life scheduled to see the eclipse, it is sure to bring about peace and cooperation.

'I don't want to exaggerate, obviously the moon's shadow is not suddenly going to get red and blue America to hold hands and move along, but I do think it will help,' Baron said.

'It just reminds us that we are these miniscule little beings on a piece of rock floating on a rock in outer space, so we better get along.'

Retired NASA astronomer Fred Espenak has seen seen 27 solar eclipses in his lifetime and has logged more than an hour of accumulated time in totality.

He's anticipated the eclipse for decades, having made maps up until the year 3000.

'Maybe (the eclipse) will inspire some kid, some new genius to get into science,' Espenak said. 'It will be just the nudge some new Einstein needs.'

Espenak saw his first partial eclipse when he was 12, then witnesses a total one at 18. The 65-year-old would site these as being the motivation to pursue a career in astronomy and an eventual title of 'Mr. Eclipse.'

'Seeing a total eclipse - the beauty of it, the awe of it, the humbling of it - seeing how tiny we are, it really puts a lot of things into perspective,' Espenak said.

'I think these days people use the word 'awesome' to mean cool or neat, but I think the word 'awesome' was inspired by seeing a total eclipse. That is awesome. Everything else pales in comparison.'
The family of a Hollywood assistant who drowned in Bora Bora has sued movie producer Joel Silver in connection with her death.

Silver's personal assistant Carmel Musgrove was 28 when she drowned in French Polynesia while celebrating the honeymoon of Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux in August of 2015.

Now Musgrove's family is suing Silver, 65, his production company and several of its employees, claiming that one of them plied the woman with cocaine and marijuana before her death.

According to documents filed on Friday in Los Angeles Court and reviewed by DailyMail.com, Silver chartered a private jet to Bora Bora for $82,698, bringing family members and colleagues along for the luxury honeymoon celebration at the Four Seasons Resort.

Jimmy Kimmel and his wife, molly McNearney, Jason Bateman, Aniston's former Friends co-star Courteney Cox, and Chelsea Handler were among the stars soaking up the sun in Bora Bora.

Joel Silver's personal assistant Carmel Musgrove was 28 when she drowned in French Polynesia in August of 2015

Silver (above) chartered a private jet to Bora Bora for $82,698, bringing family members and colleagues along for the honeymoon celebration for Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux

Musgrove and the honeymoon entourage were on Bora Bora (pictured) when she died

Also in attendance was Silver Pictures employee Martin Herold, a co-defendant whom the complaint alleges had an on-and-off sexual relationship with Musgrove.

On August 18, 2015, Musgrove went on a fishing trip with the Silver family from 9am to 2pm and consumed alcohol, and then joined them for a lunch where she consumed further alcohol, according to the suit.

Musgrove had first become acquainted with Silver after joining Silver Pictures as an intern. She was made his assistant after six months, and had worked for him for three years at the time of her death.

The evening of the 18th, after a dinner with the defendants where more alcohol was consumed, the suit claims that Musgrove and Martin exchanged flirtatious messages by email.

The two then met and consumed cocaine and marijuana together in his suite, the suit claims, with Herold telling police she left around 11pm.

There are no indications the two had sex at that time, and Musgrove was likely on her menstrual cycle, according to the complaint.

The last person to see Musgrove alive was a Four Seasons staffer who brought a pack of matches to her own room shortly after midnight, noting that she stuck her head out from behind the door without opening it all the way.

Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux (pictured together) married in the summer of 2015. Their honeymoon celebration at the Four Seasons Bora Bora was marred by Musgrove's death

An email sent at 7.04am on August 19 is the last sign that Musgrove was alive, if it was sent by her. Strangely, her Instagram password was later changed by an unknown person shortly after she was confirmed dead.

As the day of the 19th went on, her absence was noted, until Joel Silver called upon the hotel staff to enter her room around 6.30pm on August 19 and check on her, the complaint said.

There was a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, but it was empty, and Silver later recalled the bay window being wide open, according to the court documents.

A police search of the room found two wine glasses by the bar, evidence of marijuana and cocaine use, her wet swimsuit on the floor and the bed made.

A search of the hotel proved fruitless until, in the early morning hours of August 20, Musgrove's naked body was found on the shore about 500 yards from her bungalow.

The medical examiner found that Musgrove drowned as a result of five combined factors: overconsumption of alcohol, consumption of cocaine, fatigue caused by overwork, heat stroke after the fishing trip and a midnight swim during unfavorable weather conditions.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants conduct contributed to the first four of those factors.

The defendants could not be reached for comment late Friday evening.
Two employees of elite universities charged in the fatal stabbing of a 26-year-old hair stylist were extradited to Chicago early Saturday to face charges of first-degree murder in the brutal killing.

Chicago police escorted fired Northwestern University professor Wyndham Lathem, 43, and Oxford University financial officer Andrew Warren, 56, from Northern California, where they surrendered peacefully on August 4 after an eight-day, nationwide manhunt.

Detectives questioned the men Saturday and they could appear in court as early as Sunday.

The men are accused of killing Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, a Michigan native who had been living in Chicago, last month in Lathem's high-rise Chicago condo.

Chicago police escorted fired Northwestern University professor Wyndham Lathem (left), 43, and Oxford University financial officer Andrew Warren (right), 56. They arrived in Chicago early Saturday morning to face charges of first-degree murder in killing of a 26-year-old hair stylist

The men are accused of killing Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau (pictured), a Michigan native who had been living in Chicago, last month in Lathem's high-rise Chicago condo

Chicago police said Cornell-Duranleau suffered 47 stab wounds, as well as 'mutilations,' to his upper body.

The stab wounds were located on his back, chest, shoulder and abdomen, with additional cuts on his arms, chin, neck, hands and wrists.

Authorities said the attack was so violent the blade of the knife they believe was used was broken.

A source told the Chicago Sun Times: 'The victim was savagely killed. The crime scene was covered in blood. The body was mutilated. His genitals were cut, mutilated.'

They found Cornell-Duranleau's body around 8.30pm on July 27 after the building's front desk received an anonymous call that a crime had occurred on the 10th floor.

He was discovered laying in his underwear partly lying against a bedroom door. He had been dead more than 12 hours. By then, authorities said Lathem and Warren had fled the city.

According to autopsy results released Friday by the Cook County medical examiner's office, Cornell-Duranleau had methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death.

Police said Lathem and Cornell-Duranleau, who moved to Chicago from the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area about a year ago, had a personal relationship, though they have not described the nature of it or a motive for the attack.

Police said Lathem (pictured on Saturday) and Cornell-Duranleau, who moved to Chicago from the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area about a year ago, had a personal relationship, though they have not described the nature of it or a motive for the attack

Chicago police said Cornell-Duranleau suffered 47 stab wounds, including 'mutilations,' to his upper body. The stab wounds were located on his back, chest, shoulder and abdomen. Warren is pictured arriving in Chicago early Saturday morning

It's unclear what the relationship was between Lathem, Cornell-Duranleau and Warren, who's British. He arrived in Chicago on his first trip to the US three days before the killing, after being reported missing in Great Britain.

Warren was suspended from his payroll job at Somerville College, which is a part of the Oxford system.

He left his home on July 24 to fly to the US without telling his family or long-term boyfriend.

Lathem, a microbiologist who's been on Northwestern's faculty since 2007 but was not teaching at the time of the attack, was terminated by the university for fleeing from police when there was an arrest warrant out for him.

He had been refused clearance by French authorities to work at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The Paris institute, which studies the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, had approved Lathem's application to work there but it was later revoked when the French government rejected his working clearance.

The institute's spokeswoman Aurelie Perthuison said in a statement that the French government would not divulge the reason behind Lathem's rejected security clearance.

Lathem had reportedly already begun making arrangements to move his Chicago-based microbiology lab to Paris.

Investigators said the day after the crime was committed Lathem and Warren drove about 80 miles northwest of Chicago to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

After the brutal killing, one of the men made a $1,000 donation to a local library in Cornell-Duranleau's name. Lake Geneva authorities said the man making the donation didn't give his name. Lathem (left) and Warren (right) may appear in court as early as Sunday

They found Cornell-Duranleau's body on July 27 after the building's front desk received an anonymous call that a crime had occurred on the 10th floor (pictured)

One of the men made a $1,000 donation to a local library in Cornell-Duranleau's name. Lake Geneva authorities said the man making the donation didn't give his name.

At another point after the killing, Lathem sent a video to friends and relatives apologizing for his involvement in the crime, which he called the 'biggest mistake of my life'.

The video raised concern among investigators that Lathem might kill himself.

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 last week saying the family does not know Warren or Lathem.

'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,' Cornell's statement said.

Both Lathem and Warren surrendered to authorities in California on August 4. Lathem surrendered in Oakland and Warren in San Francisco.

Lathem and Warren both appeared in court in California last week, where they agreed to return to Illinois to face charges.

An attorney for Lathem, Kenneth H. Wine, called him a 'gentle soul' and said 'what he is accused of is totally contrary to the way he has lived his entire life'. Wine said Lathem intends to plead not guilty to the charges.

Warren was represented by a public defender during a brief appearance in a San Francisco court. She said he is 'presumed innocent,' but declined to comment further.
A Rose Bay property has been touted as the next multi-million dollar mansion to take out the national house price title.

The 4,000 square metre site in Rose Bay is believed to include two residences, a swimming pool and exquisite views through to the Sydney Harbour Bridge, according to Domain.

Agents were reportedly jostling to sign the home at 754 New South Head Road, with Ken Jacobs from Christie's International managing negotiations on it.

A Rose Bay property has been touted as the next multi-million dollar mansion to take out the national house price title

Mr Jacobs confirmed to Daily Mail Australia on Saturday that the property was yet to be formerly offered and so no details could be released.

'I am in discussions with the family about the way forward and am sorry I cannot provide further comment,' he said.

The property is believed to have already garnered interest from potential buyers with 'unsolicited interest and offers'.

In addition to its location the beachfront property also reportedly boasts five separate titles, according to Domain.

Adrienne Dan, the wife of renowned neurosurgeon Noel Dan, is the owner of the property after purchasing it for $1.03 million in 1983 according to records obtained by the real estate site.

While a 986 square metre property at the address was previously sold in July 2011 for $8,975,000 according to Realestate.com.

The 4,000 square metre site at 754 New South Head Road is believed to include two residences, a swimming pool and exquisite views through to the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Agents had been jostling to list the property, with Ken Jacobs confirming to Daily Mail Australia that the property was yet to be formerly offered

It comes just months after the historic Point Piper estate called 'Elaine' was sold for more than $70 million by Mr Jacobs.

Australian billionaire Scott Farquar, 37, snapped up the property alongside his wife Kim Jackson, with the pair saying they were looking forward to raising their own family at the iconic home.

The Seven Shillings Beach mansion was built in 1863 and was retained in the Fairfax family for 126 years.

Mr Jacobs also sold the property that held the previous number one house price record, James Packer's Vauclause mansion La Mer.
After a chaotic day in the White House, it seems all Donald Trump Jr wanted was a friend.

Or is that...a 'fried'?

Donald Trump's eldest son once again became Twitter's punching bag late Friday night after a bizarre tweet with a glaring typo.

'The most interesting measure of a fried is the difference between their personal texts to you and their FB posts,' he wrote.

It took more than 30 minutes before the businessman recognized his mistake and corrected 'fried' to 'friend'.

Donald Trump's eldest son once again became Twitter's punching bag late Friday night after he posted a bizarre tweet with a glaring typo about 'true friends' - spelling it 'fried' instead

It took more than 30 minutes before the businessman recognized his mistake and corrected 'fried' to 'friend'

Twitter immediately piled on Trump Jr, cracking jokes over both the vagueness of the tweet and the typo.

'Are you 14 years old?' one user jokingly asked, as another piled on, 'a 14 year old emo at that'.

'Friend? Fried? Fraud? Fiend? You can pick,' shot back user Chris Parry.

'The best thing about this is, Junior actually thinks this tweet is so insightful that he went to the trouble of fixing his typo,' another added.

Trump Jr's tweet came just hours after former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was fired by John Kelly, Trump's former Chief of Staff.

But Trump Jr's tweet may have been related to recent reports that he would be the focus of special counselor Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation.

Some speculated that the tweet was referring to former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was ousted from the White House dramatically on Friday

But Trump Jr's tweet may have been related to recent reports that he would be the focus of special counselor Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation

A source told Buzzfeed that Mueller and his team were turning their attention to a meeting Trump Jr held with a Russian lawyer who promised intel on Hillary Clinton.

Trump Jr admitted last month that he was hoping to obtain compromising information when he met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 9.

He received an email that read promised 'official documents and information' to the Trump campaign that would 'incriminate Hillary Clinton' and 'would be very useful to your father', clearly referring to Trump.

Trump Jr replied: 'If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer.'

The meeting occurred on June 9 of 2016 and was attended by Trump Jr, his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Others predicted that Trump Jr was referring to Mitt Romney, who lashed out at Trump on Friday and demanded he apologize for his Charlottesville remarks

Romney took to Facebook to demand that Trump 'take remedial action in the extreme'

Trump Jr claimed he did not receive any pertinent information regarding Clinton, but a source said Mueller is trying to determine what exactly he found out that day.

Mueller and his team are also examining Trump Jr's statements regarding the meeting, which changed multiple times.

Others predicted that Trump Jr was referring to Mitt Romney, who lashed out at Trump on Friday and demanded he apologize for his Charlottesville remarks.

Trump has come under fire throughout the week after claiming 'many sides' were responsible for the violence that broke out in the Virginia college town.

Romney took to Facebook on Friday to demand that Trump 'take remedial action in the extreme'.

'He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize,' the failed 2012 GOP presidential candidate wrote.

'State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville.'
One police officer was killed and five others were shot during a blood bath that stretched across the East Coast on Friday night.

Officer Matthew Baxter, a three-year veteran, was killed while Sergeant Sam Howard was severely injured in Kissimmee, Florida.

Two other officers were shot two hours away in Jacksonville and another two cops were shot in Fairchance, Pennsylvania.

Kissimmee Police Department Chief Jeffrey O'Dell said Howard, who has been on the force for 10 years, was in 'grave critical condition' and his prognosis 'does not look good'.

Kissimmee Police Officer Matthew Baxter (center) was shot and killed in the Florida town on an unusually violent night that saw another five police officers get shot in three different US cities

Fellow Kissimmee officer Sam Howard (pictured) was severely injured during the ambush

Another Kissimmee officer was shot, as well as two other officers in nearby Jacksonville

Two state troopers were also shot in Fairchance, Pennsylvania (pictured) on the same night

O'Dell suggested that the two officers were ambushed and did not return fire. He believes there was only one shooter.

Three out of four suspects believed to be involved in the shooting are currently in custody, O'Dell told NBC Miami. One remains at large.

O'Dell said during a press conference that there is no danger to the public.

He also revealed that Baxter was a father of three young children and had been married to another Kissimmee police officer.

O'Dell said Howard was also a father.

President Donald Trump was quick to comment on the shooting, tweeting that his thoughts and prayers were with 'Kissimmee Police and their loved ones'.

'We are with you!' he added, including the hashtag #LESM.

Florida Governor Rick Scott also tweeted that he was 'heartbroken' to hear of the officer's death.

President Donald Trump was quick to comment on the Kissimmee shooting on Friday night

Florida Governor Rick Scott also tweeted that he was 'heartbroken' to hear of Baxter's death and said he was 'praying' for the other Florida cops who had been hospitalized

'Tonight we lost a brave officer - Matthew Baxter. Husband/father/hero. Praying for @kissimmeepolice,' he wrote in another tweet.

Of the two officers shot during a separate incident in Jacksonville around 11pm. One is in stable condition and another is in critical condition.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said the officers were dispatched for an attempted suicide call.

When officers approached the scene, gunfire could be heard inside the home. The officers then entered the residence.

According to authorities, the suspect was armed with a high powered rifle. The suspect shot through the home's front door toward the officers.

Kissimmee Police Department Chief Jeffrey O'Dell (pictured) said Howard, who has been on the force for 10 years, was in 'grave critical condition' and his prognosis 'does not look good'

O'Dell suggested that the two officers were ambushed and did not return fire. He believes there was only one shooter. Two officers stand guard outside the Osceola Regional Medical Center in Kissimmee

Three out of four suspects believed to be involved in the shooting are currently in custody, O'Dell said. One remains at large. A law enforcement officer stands guard outside Osceola Regional Medical Center in Kissimmee after the two officers were shot

One officer was injured in both hands, while the other was injured in the stomach.

The officers exchanged gunfire and struck the unidentified suspect, who was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Scott also tweeted that he was 'praying' for the two Jacksonville officers.

'Just learned of two @JSOPIO in danger tonight  we stand with ALL law enforcement in Florida,' he added in a separate tweet.

One officer is reported to be in critical condition, while the other is in stable condition.

In a third shooting, two Pennsylvania State Troopers are stable and expected to survive, according to ABC News.

The officers were shot Friday night in Fairchance, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.

It was revealed that the suspect is deceased, Pennsylvania State Police spokeswoman Melinda Bondarenka told the site.

Bondarenka said one of the troopers was flown from the scene to Morgantown Hospital and the other transported by ambulance to Uniontown Hospital.

At least one of the officers had injuries that were 'not life threatening'.
Seven people, including a toddler, have been injured with one woman in a serious condition after a car ploughed into pedestrians on a busy street in Sydney's northern suburbs.

The male driver is believed to have suffered a medical episode when he crashed.

He slammed into the footpath out the front of a restaurant on Victoria Avenue in Chatswood on Saturday afternoon.

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Seven people have been injured by a car that ploughed into shoppers at a busy intersection after the driver suffered a medical episode

NSW police were called to the intersection of Anderson Street and Victoria Avenue about 3.45pm on Saturday at Chatswood, a major business and residential district in Sydney

Six people were taken to Royal North Shore Hospital, with a 22-year-old woman in a serious condition.

Witness Adam Young told the Daily Telegraph the driver seemed to 'miss the intersection' before veering onto the path.

'He was travelling pretty slow and then all you could hear were these screams,' he said.

'It looked like he'd passed out at the wheel.'

'CareFlight's specialist doctor and critical care paramedic ran to the scene, pushing their way through crowds to reach the most seriously injured pedestrian, a woman in her 20s,' CareFlight said in a statement.

A 16-month-old girl is one of the injured but is in a stable condition, a Northern Sydney Local Health District spokeswoman told AAP.

The incident was not a deliberate act and the male driver remains at the scene assisting officers, police said in a statement.

It is unclear what the medical event is at this stage.

The crash was not a deliberate act, and police believed the man might have suffered a medical episode
The ABC has refuted a Jewish leader's claims it ran a story which intentionally didn't include Israel.

The image of the map aired on ABC News on Thursday night and labelled all surrounding countries but excluded Israel.

Australian Jewish leader Avi Yemini spotted Israel was missing and claimed the nation had deliberately been left off the map.

But ABC News Australia has now denied the accusation and said the graphic showed countries where laws allowing rapists to escape punishment if they married their victim had either been repealed or where campaigners were working to get the laws abolished.

The ABC has refuted a Jewish leader's claims it ran a story which intentionally didn't include Israel

Australian Jewish leader Avi Yemini spotted Israel was missing and claimed the nation had deliberately been left off the map

On Sunday an ABC News Australia spokeswoman explained that the story was about the repealing of a law in Lebanon that allowed rapists to escape punishment if they married their victims.

'The map showed countries where this law had already been repealed (in blue) and countries where campaigners were actively trying to have it repealed (in yellow).

'Our understanding is that this law does not exist in Israel, and never has, so it was not shown on the map.'

Mr Yemini claims the exclusion was to 'appeal to the Jew-hating crowd,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

In a post on Facebook, the Israeli activist uploaded a photo of the map as it appeared on television screens.

'Last night ABC wiped Israel off their map. They're literally doing the Islamists dirty work for them,' he wrote to his near 80,000 followers.

In just over 24 hours the post gathered more than 800 reactions and was commented on by almost 100 people.

Mr Yemini told Daily Mail there is no place in Australian society 'to question or deny Israel's right to exist.'

Mr Yemini believes the exclusion was to 'appeal to the Jew-hating crowd,' he told Daily Mail Australia

The pro-Israel figure believes it was a deliberate act to suit the ABC's current viewers and a ploy to attract more.

'The time has come for the ABC to stop its constant attacks on one of our closest allies and the only real democracy in the Middle East, Israel.

'This is yet another great example of why we should defund the ABC immediately,' he said.
LEBANON  People who responded to a community survey about the Lebanon Community School District generally support their schools, but don't know as much about the district as a whole.

They also said they believe the superintendent protects the welfare and safety of students and staff, but aren't convinced he models self-awareness, transparency and ethical behavior.

Hess said he'll use the results to help set goals for the coming school year. In response to people who said they lack confidence, he replied: "I hope I can earn back their trust and support in the year to come."

The district collected 725 responses to its first "360" survey in all, representing 19 percent of the people who received a survey invitation.

Renee Sessler, board development specialist with the Oregon School Boards Association, presented results at the Aug. 10 meeting of the Lebanon School Board.

The information will be used to help set goals for the coming school year, and as a baseline for comparison when the district creates its next survey next spring.

Surveys were emailed in May to three separate groups: staff members, parents and community residents. All parents and staff received a survey invitation, while residents were asked to sign up to receive copies.

Each group was asked to rate statements about schools, the district and the superintendent using one of six descriptions: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree or not applicable.

Complete results of the survey can be found on the home page of the Lebanon Community School District's website, lebanon.k12.or.us.

Most people who took the survey responded favorably to questions about individual schools and teachers, agreeing staff members are qualified, schools are safe and district facilities support student learning.

They were less certain about whether the district provides effective communication  community responses in particular disagreed that communication is effective  and mostly split on whether Superintendent Rob Hess promotes continuous and sustainable improvement.

Staff and residents gave Hess relatively good marks for visibility, with 47 and 46 percent respectively agreeing or strongly agreeing he is visible in schools and the community. Most parents  44 percent  were neutral.

All three groups were more skeptical when it came to the question about whether he "models principles of self-awareness, reflective practice, transparency and ethical behavior." Just 26 percent of parents, 25 percent of staff and 32 percent of community respondents agreed.

Most parents  about 42 percent  marked "neutral" on the statement.

Approximately 30 percent of parents said they weren't aware of the school district's mission, nor of the school board's policies and practices. About 12 percent of staff members said the same.

Board members and Hess spoke briefly about the survey at the Aug. 10 meeting. Both said they'd particularly like to work harder on communication, both to improve results on communication in general and so more people in the district understand policies, practices and the district's mission.

Hess said he was pleased with overall participation and "predominately positive" responses. He said he will set goals on communication, visibility and innovation to improve student outcomes.

"I am looking forward to tracking growth in survey responses in the spring of 2018," he said.
Professor Stephen Hawking has attacked the Conservatives over their handling of the NHS and accused Jeremy Hunt of 'abusing' science to justify policies.

Twitter users mocked the Health Secretary for trying to 'school' Prof Hawking, after Mr Hunt tweeted the world renowned scientists was 'wrong'.

Prof Hawking, a lifelong Labour supporter, said Tory policies such as the public sector pay cap, imposing a new contract on junior doctors, and removing the student nurse bursary has put the NHS in crisis.

He said the health service was being pulled in different directions by multinational corporations driven by profiting from NHS privatisation and the public, which favours a publicly funded health service.

Prof Stephen Hawking (left) said Tory policies such as the public sector pay cap, imposing a new contract on junior doctors, and removing the student nurse bursary has put the NHS in crisis. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (right) would later respond on Twitter

Writing in The Guardian, Prof Hawking said: 'Failures in the system of privatised social care for disabled and elderly people have placed an additional burden on the NHS'

The 75-year-old, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1962, said he 'would not be here today if it were not for the service' and stressed 'we cannot lose' the NHS.

Writing in The Guardian, he went on: 'The NHS is in a crisis, and one that has been created by political decisions.

'These political decisions include underfunding and cuts, privatising services, the public sector pay cap, the new contract imposed on junior doctors, and removal of the student nurses' bursary.

'Political decisions such as these cause reductions in care quality, longer waiting lists, anxiety for patients and staff, and dangerous staff shortages.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt took to Twitter to respond to Prof Hawking's attack on the Tory Party.

Mr Hunt has cited studies showing higher death rates at weekends when setting out his argument for a seven-day health service

'Failures in the system of privatised social care for disabled and elderly people have placed an additional burden on the NHS.'

Prof Hawking, who is director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, renewed criticism of Mr Hunt for 'cherry-picking' scientific research into the so-called 'weekend effect'.

The Health Secretary used his drive to create a seven-day NHS as one of the main reasons for reforming junior doctors' contracts - which led to the biggest walkout of doctors in NHS history.

Mr Hunt has cited studies showing higher death rates at weekends when setting out his argument for a seven-day health service.

Mr Hunt hit out at Mr Hawking's comments a second time and denied that the Government was trying to implement a US-style health insurance system

But Prof Hawking accused him of suppressing contradictory research to suit his argument.

He wrote: 'Hunt had cherry-picked research to justify his argument. For a scientist, cherry-picking evidence is unacceptable.

'When public figures abuse scientific argument, citing some studies but suppressing others to justify policies they want to implement for other reasons, it debases scientific culture.

'One consequence of this sort of behaviour is that it leads ordinary people to not trust science at a time when scientific research and progress are more important than ever.'

Mr Hunt responded to Prof Hawking's criticism on Twitter.

He wrote: 'Stephen Hawking is brilliant physicist but wrong on lack of evidence 4 weekend effect. 2015 Fremantle study most comprehensive ever ... And whatever entrenched opposition, no responsible health sec could ignore it if you want NHS 2 be safest health service in world as I do.'

Prof Hawking wrote: 'When public figures abuse scientific argument, citing some studies but suppressing others to justify policies they want to implement for other reasons, it debases scientific culture'. Mr Hunt is pictured at the NHS Confederation Conference at Liverpool Area and Convention Centre in June

Mr Hunt later added: 'The most pernicious falsehood from Stephen Hawking is idea govt wants US-style insurance system. Is it 2 much to ask him to look at evidence?' the Health Secretary said.

'NHS under Cons has seen more money, more docs and more nurses than ever in history.Those with private med insurance DOWN 9.4% since 2009!'

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and former Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron voiced their support for Mr Hawking's argument.

Mr Corbyn told broadcasters in north Wales: 'If Stephen Hawking is saying that our NHS is under threat and in danger and in crisis then I think we need to listen very, very carefully with what he has to say.

'I admire Stephen and I agree absolutely with what he said.'

Mr Farron said: 'A renowned scientist such as Stephen Hawking questioning your evidence might normally be cause to think again, but sadly it looks as though Jeremy Hunt has joined the chorus of those who have had enough of experts.'
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The terrorists who killed 14 people and wounded over a hundred in Catalonia had originally planned to drive three vans packed with explosives into iconic parts of Barcelona including the Sagrada Familia cathedral, it has been reported.

Had their butane-filled gas containers not accidentally detonated the night before the atrocities on Thursday, the 12-person terror cell would have used them to maximise deaths in the tourist hotspots of the Spanish city, local media suggest.

They intended to explode one van in Las Ramblas, a second by the world-famous Sagrada Familia cathedral and the last in the port area of the city, El Espanol has claimed.

To detonate the gas, they intended to use the same TATP explosives - also known as the 'Mother of Satan' - that were blown up in the 7/7 bombings in London.

The cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the most visited attractions in Europe.

Architect Antonio Gaudi began construction in 1882 and, despite him dying in 1926, it is still officially incomplete.

In 2010 it was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI as a minor basilica.

It has been reported that the terrorist intended to explode one van in Las Ramblas, a second by the world-famous Sagrada Familia cathedral (pictured) and the last in the port area of the city

Gas canisters which contained deadly butane gas were recovered from a home in Alcanar, 60 miles south of Barcelona, and were seen outside the address today

The hired van (pictured), registered to rental company Telefurgo, rammed into scores of holidaymakers and their children before police swooped. It is believed the suspected jihadist plot originally included the use of a large truck and explosives designed to maximise the death toll

Police revealed on Thursday night that the explosion less than 24 hours earlier was linked to the plot, and documents found at the scene contains details of the attack

Investigators believe a 12-strong terror cell planned to detonate the highly-explosive gas, using plastic explosive TATP - which was also found at the site - in its attack on the Catalan city's tourist district.

But less than 24 hours before the atrocity, one member was killed in an accidental blast. Police have said there may still be another body buried in the rubble of the house in Alcanar, which is more than 120 miles south of Barcelona.

More than 20 butane gas canisters were found intact in the wreckage, as well as Acetone peroxide (TATP) - nicknamed 'Mother of Satan' because of the high number of accidental explosions it causes.

The discovery supports claims by Spanish police that the gang planned to murder hundreds in a terrorist 'spectacular'.

Spain's King Felipe VI and his wife Queen Letizia have paid a visit to staff at the Mar de Barcelona hospital to thank them for their work in the wake of the terror atrocities

The royals were also visiting victims of the devastating attacks. It comes on the day a Spanish newspaper reported that the terrorists originally intended to detonate bombs - including outside Barcelona's Sagrada Familia cathedral - to maximise deaths

Security experts also believe the gang wanted to hire a large truck like the one used to devastating effect in the Nice atrocity two years ago, but they were unable to get permits so had to settle with smaller vans. Pictured: King Felipe VI meets a Catalonia police officer

Had the explosion not happened, a police chief said, Thursday's attack would have had 'bigger scope'.

Last night Catalonia's police force tweeted: 'We are working to determine if remains at Alcanar are a second corpse/We are working to determine if biological traces from Alcanar are human.'

Security experts believe the gang wanted to hire a large truck like the one used to devastating effect in the Nice atrocity two years ago, but they were unable to get permits so had to settle with smaller vans.

Security experts believe the gang wanted to hire a large truck like the one used to devastating effect in the Nice atrocity two years ago, but they were unable to get permits so had to settle with smaller vans

A police officer walks past large numbers of gas canisters outside the address in Alcanar where a member of the terror cell died in the explosion ahead of Thursday's atrocity in Barcelona

Barcelona's port area (pictured) may have been another target for the terror cell, it has been reported. It has been claimed they were planning to drive a van packed with gas canisters into the most popular parts of the Catalan city

One person linked to the atrocity has been arrested at the scene of the explosion, authorities confirmed on Thursday night.

Police confirmed on Friday afternoon that the suspects had been planning to use explosives in the mass killing.

Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police said: 'They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona, and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope.'

Initially treated as a random gas blast, police later linked to the explosion to the Barcelona assault, believing occupants of the house were preparing an explosive device inside and slipped up.

Trapero said that after this, the suspects allegedly quickly went on to commit 'more rudimentary' attacks. These involved the vehicles ploughing into pedestrians in Barcelona and Cambrils.

The Cambrils suspects had an axe and knives in the car as well as fake explosive belts stuck to their bodies, said police.

Thirteen people were killed and more than 100 wounded when a van was driven into walkers on the busy Las Ramblas street in Barcelona.

It has also been claimed that a cell of 12 people may have been involved in the attacks on Barcelona and Cambrils - and that they were planning to use gas canisters to kill victims

Pictured: A man lying on the street in Barcelona after the van ploughed into pedestrians along Las Ramblas

Moussa Oukabir, 18, who lives in Barcelona, has been named as a suspect in the attack after reportedly stealing his brother's documents

Driss Oukabir (pictured) has been arrested by police, according to local media reports. The Guardia Civil previously said the van used in the attack was rented by Oukabir in the town of Santa Perpetua de la Mogada

Pictured: A man sits on the pavement with his head in his hands after the tragic attack, now being treated as a terrorist incident

In a second attack eight hours later, a car rammed into people in Cambrils - about 75 miles south of Barcelona - and wounded six people before the five attackers were shot.

But the New York Times has been told that the terror plot originally involved the use of a large truck and explosives.

A counter-terror expert told the paper: 'Part of the plan was they tried to rent a larger truck, but they didn't have the right permit.'

As a consequence, they ended up renting much smaller vehicles - including the white Fiat van photographed with a crumpled bonnet after the devastating slaughter in Las Ramblas.

Pictured: Armed policemen arrive in a cordoned-off area after a van ploughed into a crowd in Barcelona

At least 13 people have been killed and dozens injured after a van ploughed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, Barcelona's busiest tourist area. Police are still hunting two armed men who have escaped and are believed to be hiding in a nearby restaurant

Police are today hunting for Europe's most wanted man Moussa Oukabir, an 18-year-old Moroccan-born teenager believed to have been the driver during the Barcelona attack.

He fled on foot and it is unclear if he joined the Cambrils attack eight hours later.

His brother Driss Oukabir's ID was used to rent up to three vans including the one in the attack, but he has handed himself into police and denied any involvement.

Investigators believe the Barcelona atrocity is linked to an explosion at a home 70 miles away in Alcanar which happened 24 hours earlier.

Horrifying images of the aftermath show an elderly couple were among the injured after the van ploughed into pedestrians on the busy Barcelona street

Two suspects were arrested yesterday evening, a Moroccan and a Spanish national, but neither of them was at the wheel of the van. Four suspects have been arrested in total.

In Barcelona, officials warn the death toll is likely to rise, with at least 10 people critically injured in yesterday afternoon's atrocity in the heart of the city's tourist district.

In the aftermath of the attack police circulated an image of Driss Oukabir, a 28-year-old Catalan resident of Moroccan origin, saying he had rented out a second van thought to be intended as a getaway vehicle - where his documents were found.

But police sources said Oukabir later handed himself in at a police station in Ripoll, 65 miles north of Barcelona, claiming his brother had stolen his documents.

There were harrowing scenes in Barcelona after the van was driven into pedestrians in Las Ramblas in the heart of the city

Hundreds of people can be seen in Barcelona city centre after the horrifying incident

His brother is named Moussa Oukabir, 18, who lives in Barcelona, El Pais reports.

Disturbing comments posted on social network Kiwi by an account carrying Moussa Oukabir's name and photograph makes reference to killing all infidels.

Horrifying pictures and video from the scene of the Las Ramblas attack show armed police and paramedics rushing around the busy promenade in the centre of the city, as victims lie hurt in the street.

Video has emerged seeming to show a police officer lying on the ground injured in Sant Just Desvern, on the outskirts of Barcelona, after a Ford Focus drove through a roadblock.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing people running away and screaming after the terror attack happened.

Steve Garrett was in a nearby market and sheltered in a bakery with several others after streams of people ran inside.

He told the BBC: 'A very large number of people ran into the market area in a big kind of way, lots of screaming, lots of shouting.

'The security guards immediately responded. We ran into the bakery with four or five other people and ran straight upstairs and hunkered down whilst an enormous wave of people went through the market.

'Obviously coming from England it was reminding me a great deal of what happened in London, so we were very concerned about what might be going on next.'
Some 500 far-right extremists marched in honor of the 30th anniversary of the death of top Nazi Rudolf Hess.

The Berlin march was separated by hundreds of heavily armed police from an equal number of counter-demonstrators.

Berlin police spokesman Carsten Mueller said authorities imposed a number of restrictions on Saturday's march in the Spandau district to ensure it passes peacefully.

Far-right extremists gather to commemorate the death of Adolf Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess

Neo-Nazi sympathisers were told they could march but not glorify Hess

Police told organisers they can march, but were not allowed to glorify Hess, who was Adolf Hitler's deputy and died in Spandau prison in 1987.

The neo-Nazis are allowed to bring banners: but only one for every 50 participants.

Such restrictions are common in Germany and rooted in the experience of the pre-war Weimar Republic, when opposing political groups would try to forcibly interrupt their rivals' rallies, resulting in frequent bloody street violence.

The neo-Nazis are allowed to bring banners: but only one for every 50 participants

The Berlin march was separated by hundreds of heavily armed police from an equal number of counter-demonstrators

The exact rules differ according to the circumstances, but police in Germany say they generally try to balance protesters' rights to free speech and free assembly against the rights of counter-demonstrators and residents.

The rules mean that shields, helmets and batons carried by far-right and Neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville last weekend wouldn't be allowed in Germany.

Openly anti-Semitic chants would prompt German police to intervene, although efforts would be made to detain specific individuals rather than to stop an entire rally, police said.

Left-wing groups expect about 1,000 people to attend the counter-protests.

Shields, helmets and batons carried by far-right and Neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville last weekend are not allowed in Germany

Some 500 far-right extremists marched in honor of the 30th anniversary of the death of top Nazi Rudolf Hess

Hess, who received a life sentence at the Nuremberg trials for his role in planning World War II, died on August 17, 1987.

Allied authorities ruled his death a suicide, but Nazi sympathizers have long claimed that he was killed and organise annual marches in his honour.

The marches used to take place in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where Hess was buried until authorities removed his remains.
Passengers on board a holiday jet flying from Spain to Birmingham have told how it was shadowed by a French fighter plane for up to 15 minutes.

Passenger Sarah Hatfield, who spotted the unusual sight while travelling back to the UK from Malaga with husband Ian and their 13-year-old daughter Emily, said she felt she could 'read the writing on its tail fin'.

She said: 'Someone spotted the French jet and told the cabin crew, who I presume told the Jet2 pilots.

Passengers on board a holiday jet flying from Spain to Birmingham have told how it was shadowed by a French fighter plane

Passenger Sarah Hatfield spotted the unusual sight while travelling back to the UK from Malaga (file photo) with husband Ian and their 13-year-old daughter Emily

'The air stewardess then announced there was nothing to worry about. Ian was terrified and it didn't help that loads of other passengers came by us to look out at it.'

Low-cost carrier Jet2 said it was awaiting confirmation from French aviation officials as to why Flight LS1204 was apparently tracked by the French air force on Friday afternoon.

Mrs Hatfield, from Quarry Bank, near Dudley, said of the fighter jet: 'It was so close I could read the writing on its tail fin.'

The bank worker, whose daughter took several photos of the French warplane, added: 'The feeling on board was a mixture of excitement at seeing the fighter so close up and terror as to if we were about to get shot down.'

A spokesperson for Jet2 said: 'We are awaiting clarification from the French air traffic authorities, as to why a military aircraft was apparently tracking our aircraft'.
This is the terrifying moment a mother found a 10ft long python hiding under her son's bed after it killed the family cat.

Thanapoom Lekyen, 42, said the serpent slithered into her home through a window last Thursday night in Chachoengsao, Thailand.

She found the dead kitten outside below the window ledge before running from the room in terror when she saw shiny scales under the mattress.

Sssneaky: Thanapoom Lekyen, 42, said the serpent (pictured) would have bitten her son if he had not been in her room when the snake slid through their window in Chachoengsao

Her son Nong, 13, who normally sleeps in the room, had fallen asleep in her bedroom the evening before - which she said saved him from almost certainly being bitten by the snake.

Hair-raising footage shows the angry snake biting the animal handler after rescuers arrived to help remove it from its hiding place.

Nattapon Boonmee from the Chachoengsao Voluntary Rescue spent 15 minutes using a pole and lasso to catch the snake before it bit his hand as he battled to subdue it outside the room.

Terror: She found the dead kitten outside below the window ledge before running from the room in fear when she saw shiny scales under the mattress

He said: 'The snake was average size but very, very aggressive. My hand was bleeding from where it bit me just a little bit.

'A more powerful bite and an attack from a (snake) like this would be very, very dangerous.'

Rescuers eventually put the snake inside a canvas bag and released it back into the wild unharmed.

Hair-raising: Footage shows the angry snake biting Nattapon Boonmee, the animal handler, after rescuers arrived to help remove it from its hiding place

Ms Lekyen said: 'I woke up in the morning and saw the dead cat outside with bite marks on it.

'Then I knew there was a problem and I shivered and my stomach was feeling sick. I was scared. I looked in my son's bedroom and screamed when I saw something moving under the bed.

'I think about what might have happened and cry.'

Mr Boonmee from the Chachoengsao Voluntary Rescue spent 15 minutes using a pole and lasso to catch the snake before it bit his hand as he battled to subdue it outside the room

He said: 'The snake was average size but very aggressive. My hand was bleeding from where it bit me. 'A more powerful bite and an attack from a (snake) like this would be very dangerous'

She added that Nong must have had a 'guardian angel' watching over him.

He fell asleep with her and she decided to let him stay in that room instead of going to his normal room.

Ms Lekyen said: 'The snake came in through his window. If he was sleeping in the bed, he's only small and it could have killed him.'

Professional expert snake handlers lassoed the snake in order to release it back into the wild
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The SMASH! Sydney Manga and Anime Show has hit Sydney with the biggest names in Japanese cosplay and animation.

The show is an annual Japanese popular culture event that started in 2007.

It was the first Australian anime convention to host a Japanese anime director and feature a maid cafe.

SMASH! was founded by Katie Huang, an artist and illustrator living and working in Sydney.

Each year the convention features two mascots- a boy named Cyrus and a girl named Skadi. The mascots were designed in 2007 by artist Sai Nitivoranant.

Western Sydney resident Vinh Nguyen is a regular attendee at the event.

'I'm looking forward to meeting all the different cosplay on the day - a lot of artists are very creative with what they do,' he told the Blacktown Sun prior to Saturday.

'I'd encourage anyone to come along if they are a fan of any type of pop culture.'

SMASH! Sydney Manga and Anime Show is a Japanese pop-culture convention that is devoted to artists, creators and fans alike

The SMASH! Sydney Manga and Anime Show has hit Sydney with the biggest names in Japanese cosplay and animation

Michelle Zhang dressed as D.Va from Overwatch attends the Smash! Anime and Manga Japanese pop culture convention

Yuriko Kim dressed as Riko Sakurauchi from Love Live Sunshine attends the Smash! Anime and Manga Japanese pop culture convention in Sydney

SMASH Inc aims to create an open and affordable avenue that serves as a meeting point for fans with an emphasis on art, creativity and community involvement

The show is an annual Japanese popular culture event that started in 2007.

With high caliber guests, exciting activities such as cosplay, panels, games, and an extensive Vendors and Artist Market, SMASH! gives fans the chance to enjoy unique experiences and celebrate their fandom in a social environment

Matthew Cumming dressed as Shakespeare from Fate Grand Order, attends the Smash! Anime and Manga Japanese pop culture convention in Sydney

Grace Chen dressed as Jack the Ripper from Fate Grand Order attends the Smash! Anime and Manga Japanese pop culture convention in Sydney

Shimaba Kokoro dressed as Nero attends the Smash! Anime and Manga Japanese pop culture convention in Sydney
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King Felipe VI and his wife Queen Letizia comforted victims of the Barcelona terror attack in hospital today as it was revealed the death toll had risen to at least 14.

The King and Queen shook hand with doctors and nurses in the Mar de Barcelona hospital and spoke to some of the 130 people who were injured in Thursday's atrocity on the Las Ramblas boulevard.

The couple have been leading the country in mourning and King Felipe led a minutes silence in the Placa Catalunya yesterday, close to the scene of the attack.

At least 14 people were killed and some 130 others injured when attackers ploughed into pedestrians on a promenade in the tourist area on Thursday evening.

The so-called 'Islamic State' (IS) has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona outrage and another attack in Cambrils yesterday, which resulted in one person dying and seven people being injured after five men wearing fake suicide belts drove an Audi A3 into crowds on the seafront.

King Felipe VI and his wife Queen Letizia comforted victims of the Barcelona terror attack in hospital today, as it was revealed the death toll had risen to at least 14

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia are seen speaking to one family in which two children and their father were recovering from wounds received

The Queen shared a sweet moment with the young girl in a wheelchair by pressing her forehead close to hers during the visit

The Queen shook the man's hand as he lay in his hospital bed recovering from his injuries. The King meanwhile spoke to his daughter

She was also very affectionate with the girl's brother. The Queen is seen here touching a his cheek as he lay in his hospital bed

The King shook a child's hand as the Queen watched on earlier. The Spanish Minister of Health Dolors Montserrat followed closely behind

Hundreds of Spaniards crowded to see the royals as they paid tribute in Barcelona to the victims of the van attack

The terrorists had originally planned to drive three vans packed with explosives into iconic parts of Barcelona including the Sagrada Familia cathedral, it has been reported

Had their butane-filled gas containers not accidentally detonated the night before the atrocities on Thursday, the 12-person terror cell would have used them to maximise deaths

Three days of mourning have been declared by the government of Catalonia in the wake of the terrifying attack

The terrorists had originally planned to drive three vans packed with explosives into iconic parts of Barcelona including the Sagrada Familia cathedral, it has been reported.

Had their butane-filled gas containers not accidentally detonated the night before the atrocities on Thursday, the 12-person terror cell would have used them to maximise deaths in the tourist hotspots of the Spanish city, local media suggest.

They intended to explode one van in Las Ramblas, a second by the world-famous Sagrada Familia cathedral and the last in the port area of the city, El Espanol has claimed.

The cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the most visited attractions in Europe.

Architect Antonio Gaudi began construction in 1882 and, despite him dying in 1926, it is still officially incomplete.

In 2010 it was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI as a minor basilica.

The Royals and Dolors Montserrat (L) are seen arriving to the Mar de Barcelona hospital earlier this afternoon

King Felipe VI was spotted shaking hands with a Catalonian Police officer during his visit. Catalonia's emergency services say by Saturday, 54 people remained in the hospital, with 12 of them in critical condition, from both attacks

The King and Queen shook hand with doctors and nurses in the Mar de Barcelona hospital and spoke to some of the 130 people who were injured in Thursday's atrocity on the Las Ramblas boulevard

At least 14 people were killed and some 130 others injured when attackers ploughed into pedestrians on a promenade. Pictured are the hospital staff who looked pleased to meet the royals

Afterwards, the King, Queen and the Spanish Minister of Health all had a meeting with hospital staff about the atrocities

The couple have been leading the country in mourning and King Felipe led a minutes silence in the Placa Catalunya yesterday, close to the scene of the attack

Barcelona, a hugely popular tourist destination, came to a halt at noon on Friday (11am BST) as a minutes silence was observed in the Placa Catalunya, close to the scene of the attack

Led by King Felipe and Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy the silence was then followed by applause for the victims

Players of Juventus and Cagliari observe a minute of silence during the Italian Serie A soccer match between Juventus and Cagliari at the Allianz Stadium in Turin

Barcelona, a hugely popular tourist destination, came to a halt at noon on Friday (11am BST) as a minutes silence was observed in the Placa Catalunya, close to the scene of the attack.

Led by King Felipe and Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy the silence was then followed by applause for the victims.

Three days of mourning have been declared by the government of Catalonia.

Catalonia's emergency services have said that as of today 54 people remained in the hospital, 12 of them in critical condition, from both attacks.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the attacks, including one Spanish and one Moroccan national, one of whom was detained at the scene on Las Ramblas on Thursday.

Driss Oukabir, 28, a Moroccan national living in Ripoll, 65 miles north of Barcelona, also handed himself into police on Friday.

This rented van brought terror to the streets of Europe when it was driven at speed down a busy street in central Barcelona, killing 14 including a three-year-old boy

A man lying on the street in Barcelona after the van ploughed into pedestrians along Las Ramblas

British tourist Harry Athwal rushed to help a young child who was lying injured on the pavement immediately after Thursday's horrific terror attack in Barcelona

Pictured is the van used in the attack being taken away by police.

This is the Audi A3 used by a gang of five jihadis in suicide belts who ploughed into crowds in the seaside town of Cambrils

Seven people, including a policeman, were injured in Cambrils after the killers attacked. Pictured are police taping off the scene

He claims he is not connected and that his identity documents had been stolen by his younger brother Moussa Oukabir, 18, who was one of the men shot dead in Cambrils on Friday. His family told the MailOnline they are 'completely distraught' by his death.

A sixth person died earlier in the week in what police initially believed to have been a gas explosion in Alcanar, 120 miles south of Barcelona.

But officials said police were now working on the theory the explosion was connected to the Cambrils and Barcelona terror attacks.

Separately, another man was found dead in a Ford Focus on Thursday. Police say he was a Spanish national who was killed as the terrorists tried to hijack his vehicle.

Of the 14 victims of the terror attack, eight have been named so far by officials.

They include Canadian grandfather Ian Moore Wilson, American Jared Tucker, 42, Italians Bruno Gulotta, 35, and Luca Russo, 25, a Belgian Elke Vanbockrijck, 44, Spaniards Fransisco Lopez Rodriguez, 57, Pepita Codina, 75, and Ana Maria Suarez, 61.

Moussa Oukabir, 17, who was shot dead by police in Cambrils after exiting a car that had been driven into pedestrians in the area

Moussa posted about hatred for non-Muslims on social media. It is believed he used an ID belonging to his older brother Driss Oukabir, 28, (right) to rent the van used in the attack

How the Barcelona attack unfolded: Map shows the route the terrorist took as he ploughed into scores of holidaymakers

A three-year-old boy, believed to be Mr Rodriguez' grand-nephew, also died and is the youngest victim in the attack. He was walking with his mother, grandmother, sister and aunt - who was injured trying to save him.

Mr Wilson was killed after being hit by the van that crashed through Las Ramblas in Barcelona. His wife of 53 years - Valerie - was also wounded in the attack.

Mr Wilson was described by his daughter, Fiona, as a 'compassionate, generous, adventurous' man who was 'always game for a lively debate' and a 'good book'.

Mr Tucker, from Walnut Creek, California, died after leaving his wife Heidi Nunes, 40, momentarily before the Barcelona attack happened.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed the death of one American and said 'we are still in the process of confirming the deaths and injuries of others' without giving further details.

Daniel Tucker told The Daily News of New York that his son Jared's body was identified by his wife at the morgue on Friday.

American Jared Tucker, 42, (right) died during the attack. He is pictured with his wife Heidi Nunes, 40. They were in Barcelona for their honeymoon. They are pictured here moments before the attack

Spanish authorities say 57-year-old Francisco Lopez Rodriguez (pictured on Las Ramblas moments before the attack) died on the spot after being hit by ISIS terrorists. He was earlier reported as missing

Elke Vanbockrijck, 44, from Belgium, has been identified as being among the dead. Authorities said she was on holiday with her husband and sons when she was run down and killed

He said of the attack, which ISIS has claimed responsibility for: 'It's just something we really just don't understand.'

Mr Tucker Ms Nunes, were visiting Barcelona for their first wedding anniversary. He and his father worked together installing swimming pools. The elder Tucker told the newspaper that 'everybody loved him'.

Mr Gulotta, a computer salesman from Legnano, in northern Italy, was crushed to death in Barcelona as he walked along holding his six-year-old son's hand.

His wife, Martina, said he died kneeling down to shield their son and seven-month-old daughter from the van, according to boss Pino Bruno, who claimed to have spoken with her.

His seven-month-old daughter 'will never know her dad' the family said in an online statement that praised his kindness and described him as a 'generous and heartfelt person'.

Mr Russo was in the city along with his fiancee, named by Italian media as Marta Scomazzon, who is thought to have suffered a fractured collarbone.

Luca Russo, 25, an engineer from Venice, in Italy, was also confirmed among the dead. He was on holiday at the time of the attack alongside Marta Scomazzon, who is believed to be his fiancee

Left: Italian Bruno Gulotta, 35, the father of two young children, was crushed to death on Las Ramblas in Barcelona on Thursday. Right: Ian Moore Wilson was killed in the Barcelona attack. He is pictured with his wife Valerie.

Julian Cadman, seven, who was born in Kent but living in Sydney at the time of the terror attack, is missing

Meanwhile Belgian authorities named Mrs Vanbockrijck, from Tongeren, as among the dead, saying she was on holiday with her husband and sons at the time.

Arnould Partoens, president of the KFC Heur Tongeren football team, said Mrs Vanbockrijck was at the club 'nearly every day,' ferrying her 10- and 14-year-old boys back and forth to training and matches. He described her as very committed, often speaking her mind about the boys' and their teams' performances.

'She was not negative. She was always positive,' he said in a phone interview. He said the team would hold one minute of silence before every match and training session this weekend.

Partoens said the family was on vacation in Barcelona. The boys and their father, a policeman, were unhurt, he said. 'The mother was in the wrong moment and the wrong place,' he said.

Spanish authorities said Mr Rodriguez, who was pictured on Las Ramblas moments before the attack, died on the spot after being hit by the terrorist's van. He was earlier reported as missing.

Ms Suarez was the sole fatality of the attack in the seaside resort of Cambrils. Originally from Zaragoza, north-east Spain, she was with her husband and sister, who were both injured in the attack. The Spanish royal familys Twitter account confirmed her death, offering their thoughts to her family.

Police are searching for seven-year-old Julian Cadman, who was born in Kent but moved to Australia three years ago, as the boy's mother, Jom, is in a serious condition in hospital.

His father, Andrew, has flown from Sydney to Spain to help in the search for his missing son, without knowing whether the boy is dead or alive.
An anti-same-sex marriage letter dropped across a Sydney suburb has offended equality advocates.

Human rights campaigner Sally Rugg posted an image of the pamphlet to Twitter.

'Some of the marriage equality "respectful debate" in the letterboxes of Hurstville this morning,' she captioned the photo.

The A4 leaflet, riddled with grammar errors, is written on one side in Chinese and on the other in English and urges Australians to vote 'NO' to same-sex marriage legislation.

Human rights campaigner Sally Rugg posted an image of the offensive pamphlet to Twitter (pictured)

The anti-same-sex marriage letter dropped across a Sydney suburb offended equality advocates

'Homosexuality is a curse of death in terminating the family line and without decedents,' the flyer states.

'The sexual behaviour of a*** sex among some homosexuals is one of the main source of HIV/AIDS transmission.

'Homosexuality is a tragedy of a family, a grave to the family bloodline, a curse of family sonlessness!'

The letter goes on to explain the passing of the law would be a potential safety risk for women, outlining a number of convoluted ideas, including that should the law be passed there would be 'no separate public toilets' for men and women.

The A4 leaflet, riddled with grammar errors, is written on one side in Chinese and on the other in English and urges Australians to vote ''NO'' to same-sex marriage legislation

Many Twitter users were quick to slam the post with one person citing: 'What vile drongos'.

Another said the group had been door knocking.

One person said: 'If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say they're straight men that only take issue with gay men because lesbian porn is hot.'

A woman under the name 'Sweet lil old lady' wrote: 'I can't believe this garbage. Admittedly I only got as far as the 'no segregated public toilets' before I started frothing at the mouth.'

Others said they felt sick.

The postal plebiscite has been confirmed after the Senate rejected the same-sex marriage vote for a second time.

The Australian public will be able to formally voice their support for the issue later this year through the postal vote. It is non-compulsory and non-binding, and is expected to cost up to $122 million.
Antonio Williams, 25, has been charged

A man has been arrested in connection with the gruesome murders of his sister and cousins - all under the age of 10 - who were found dead inside a Maryland home.

Antonio Williams, 25, was taken into custody by local police late on Friday night and cops say he has confessed to the killings.

Williams lives on Brooke Jane Drive, which is the same street as the home the three little girls were found dead in that morning in Clinton, Maryland.

He had been left at the home to look after the girls - his sister, six-year-old Nadira Withers, and cousins nine-year-old Ariana Decree and six-year-old Ajayah Decree - by his mother, Andrena Kelley.

The cousins were from Newark, New Jersey and are the daughters of the suspects mothers cousin.

The bodies were reportedly found by Kelley who then called the police. The victims were suffering from stab wounds and pronounced dead on the scene.

Williams has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder. Cops say he has confessed to stabbing and killing his relatives.

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Prince George's County police are investigating the deaths of three juveniles, aged five to nine, who were found dead in a house by a relative early on Friday morning

Antonio Williams, 25, was arrested in connection with the murder of the three girls. He lives on the same street that the bodies were found

Video courtesy of WJLA

Two of the victims were from Newark and were on vacation in Maryland, according to sources speaking to RLS Metro Breaking News.

'We are now in the midst of a major investigation into what happened to these children and who killed them,' police department spokeswoman Jennifer Donelan said. 'We have not determined who the person responsible is yet,' she said.

Firefighters arrived and pronounced the children dead.

In a news conference with reporters police described the scene inside the home as 'gruesome'.

'This is one of the the most difficult scenes that our officers arrived on,' Donelan said, adding that the neighborhood where the children were found was quiet.

State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks, said: 'We are absolutely heartbroken and we are so absolutely devastated.'

'We are now in the midst of a major investigation into what happened to these children and who killed them,' police department spokeswoman Jennifer Donelan said (pictured)

Antonio Williams, 25, was taken into custody by local police late on Friday night

Relatives of the victims are being contacted and counseling has even been offered to officers who responded and found the bodies.

An extensive investigation is underway.

Another press conference is expected at 11am on Saturday.
A man who stayed by Julian Cadman's mother's side after she was mowed down in the Barcelona terror attack has revealed how she begged for information about her missing son.

Pharmacist Fouad Bakkali comforted injured Jumarie 'Jom' Cadman on the floor of his Las Ramblas pharmacy.

'I was with the mother, the Australian mother, until the doctor came,' Mr Bakkali told The Daily Telegraph.

'I was at her side helping her, telling her, "be calm, don't worry."'

'She was asking all the time about her little boy. She asked me "where is my son". She told me he was seven years old.'

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Julian is believed to have been wearing a white collared shirt, aviator sunglasses and a printed cap when he was last seen just hours before the shocking terror attack

Family and friends are sharing increasingly desperate pleas for information on the location of Julian Cadman, 7, who is missing in Barcelona following a terror attack which killed 14

Mr Bakkali said he was working behind the counter in the pharmacy when he heard a loud bang, before people started running for cover in his shop.

He said Ms Cadman appeared to be suffering two broken legs and had a large head wound.

He waited with her until paramedics arrived.

Julian Cadman, who was born in Kent in the UK but moved to Sydney three years ago, was pictured smiling hours before he was tragically separated from his mother during the Las Ramblas chaos that left 14 people dead.

Spanish police have refuted reports the little boy had been found in a hospital.

Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported the seven-year-old was found in a hospital, but authorities have denied that claim, the BBC reports.

The youngster became separated from his mother during the attack. She is now in a serious condition in a Barcelona hospital, suffering serious injuries and reportedly in a coma

Julian was in Barcelona with his mother for a wedding.

Mr Turnbull addressed the tragic search for the seven-year-old at a Liberal Conference on Saturday asking all Australians to say a prayer for the 'little Australian boy'.

'In this attack we have seen Australians injured and there is a little Australian boy, whose mother was badly injured and is in hospital and he is lost. He is missing in Barcelona,' Mr Turnbull said.

'I think we should all in our quiet moments say a prayer for that little boy. All of us as parents know the anguish his father and his whole family is going through as they rush to seek to find him in Barcelona.'

Family and friends said they were 'beside themselves' and were reaching out on Facebook.

'If you know anyone in that area that you can share this with, please do so,' Julian's godfather, Colin Baxter, wrote on Facebook.

Julian's father Andrew is flying from Sydney to Spain to try and find his son

Andrew Cadman's boss, Scott, told 2GB that the devastaed father had no idea his wife and child were in any danger before arriving at work about 6am on Friday and listening to the news. When he failed to make contact with them, he began to panic.

'He's on his way to the airport at the moment, but we found out about an hour later his son was with her and he's missing, and we haven't heard anything since,' he said on Saturday.

'He's flying to Spain at the moment not knowing if his son is dead or alive.'

The man continued to say Mr Cadman was 'absolutely beside himself', and 'can't do much more than sort of put one foot in front of another at the moment'.

Julian's aunty Norma Canaveral, who he calls 'granny', says she is just waiting for news on the whereabouts of the seven-year-old

Julian's aunt Maricar Querimit Estera shared her concerns via social media, asking followers to 'Pray for my nephew who still missing in [the] Barcelona attack'.

'Your family are waiting for you,' she added in what appeared to be a direct plea to Julian.

The boy, who is a student at St Bernadette's Primary in Lalor Park, is last believed to have been wearing a white collared shirt, aviator sunglasses and a printed cap.

Norma Canaveral, who is Jom's aunt  but is called 'granny' by Julian - told MailOnline: 'We are so worried. I am just waiting for news, hoping for good news.'

The 66-year-old, from London, added: 'I don't know what to say. His mother is in the hospital, she's OK, but she became separated from Julian and we don't know where he is. All we can do is wait.

'Julian's a really sweet boy. He loves to dance, he's a lovely, bubbly boy.'

British Prime Minister Theresa May has also announced the UK will join the search, telling reporters they were 'urgently looking into' reports a dual citizen was missing.

Four Australians were injured in the attack, including Mrs Cadman, Sydney bank worker Suria Intan, who works at the Commonwealth Bank in Lidcombe, and two Victorian men who were hit by the attacker's van.

Ms Intan, who grew up in Indonesia, and had been travelling through Europe with three friends, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Suria Intan, a bank worker from Sydney, has been seriously injured in the terror attack

Ms Intan was due home this weekend, but is now lying in a Barcelona hospital bed with serious injuries.

The two Victorian men from Melbourne's west - both of whom were hit by the attacker's car - have been discharged after receiving treatment.

The mother of a friend travelling with the two men told 3AW it was not until her son checked into his hotel that he was told his companions were 'involved in a terrorist attack, they are injured'.

On Friday afternoon, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said eight Australians in total were caught up in the horror that unfolded on Thursday - the four who were injured, three who have required consular support and the one unaccounted for.

'We are concerned, but we are working closely with authorities to determine the whereabouts of the one Australian unaccounted for,' Ms Bishop told reporters in Melbourne on Friday.

Ms Intan had been travelling through Europe with friends and was due home this weekend

An Australian tourist is missing in Barcelona after the terror attack and four were injured

Eight Australians have been affected by the Barcelona terrorist attack - including one who was hit by the van, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said



Mr Turnbull said Australia stood in 'absolute resolute solidarity' with Spain in the battle against Islamist terrorism.

'This is a global battle against terrorism,' Mr Turnbull told reporters in Canberra on Friday.

Meanwhile, a young Australian woman spoke of how she cheated death for the third time this year.

Julia Monaco, 26, from Melbourne, was in a shopping mall with a friend when a van plowed into pedestrians in the Las Ramblas district of Barcelona on Thursday.

It was her third brush with terrorism since she began travelling around Europe three months ago but she told 3AW's Neil Mitchell that she won't let it stop her from seeing the world.

In June, she was put in a lockdown on the London Underground while out with friends when terrorists plowed into people on London Bridge before going on a knife rampage in nearby Borough Market.

Days later, she was in Notre Dame in Paris when a police officer was stabbed outside the famous cathedral.

Julia Monaco was in a shopping mall with a friend when a van plowed into pedestrians in the Las Ramblas district of Barcelona on Thursday

'I don't feel like I want to go home,' she told Neil Mitchell on Friday morning.

'I feel like I want to stay here and not let them  whoever they may be  win.

'I'm going to see what I came here to see.'

Ms Monaco and her friends Alana Reader and Julia Rocca, also from Melbourne, were in the store on Placa de Catalyuna when they saw people outside running for their lives.

The doors were locked and she spoke of how she watched terrified pedestrians banging on the windows trying to get inside from the street.

'In a split second it all kind of changed and everyone just started running and panicking and running for their lives and crying and screaming and we were forced back into the store, told to get away from the windows and to get low on the ground,' she told Nine.

It was her third brush with terrorism since she began travelling around Europe three months ago. Pictured from left, Julia Rocca, Steph Lamb, Julia Monaco and Alana Reader on holiday in Rome

Ms Monaco said those inside huddled at the back of an Urban Outfitters store and were told to lie face-down on the floor and away from the windows.

When they were finally allowed to leave, they had to walk back to their hostel and avoid the numerous streets that had been closed by police.

'You just have to keep going. I'm sure though tomorrow morning my mum will say 'come home', but I don't think I've been scared out of travelling,' she added.

Melbourne man Michael Christou was about 300m from the initial scene of the Las Ramblas carnage and was also nearby when eight people including two Australians were killed in the London Bridge van attack in June.

'I think it's following me but you kind of come over here (to Europe) and you expect it to happen but you don't let it stop you from doing what you want to do.'

Australian Adam James and his wife, who was pushed over and suffered minor injuries as they ran from the scene, were in Istanbul last year when a police bus was blown up in a terror attack.

'It's happened again. It's a very real thing,' he said.

People react and stand around in the Las Ramblas area in Barcelona, Spain as police investigate a damaged van, believed to be the one used in the terror attack

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said 16 people were killed in the attack and at least 100 injured

Las Ramblas, a street of stalls and shops that cuts through the center of Barcelona, is one of the city's top tourist destinations. People walk down a wide, pedestrian path in the center of the street while cars can travel on either side.

Police immediately cordoned off the city's broad avenue and ordered stores and nearby Metro and train stations to close.

Other witnesses also described horrific scenes and fearful crowds in the aftermath of the van attack, which has been claimed by the Islamic State.

MFB Commander Graeme O'Sullivan was one of the first responders at Melbourne's Bourke Street tragedy in January.

He and his wife saw the latest carnage unfold from the rooftop of their Barcelona hotel.

'We were up on the sixth floor roof terrace, just the pool area, enjoying a few drinks,' he told Nine.

'We could clearly hear thuds as the vehicle was running into people, and then a short time after that, obviously, several very loud sickening screams from the people involved down at street level.'

Mr O'Sullivan said the similarity to the Bourke Street Mall event was chilling.

'Bourke Street wasn't terrorism and this appears to be, but the result is still the same,' he told Melbourne radio 3AW.

Forensic policemen arrive in the cordoned off area after a van plowed into the crowd

Spain has been on a security alert one step below the maximum since June 2015 following attacks elsewhere in Europe and Africa



Keith Fleming, and American living in Barcelona, said he was watching television in his building on a side street just off Las Ramblas when he heard a noise and went out to the balcony to investigate.

He says he saw 'women and children just running and they looked terrified.'

Mr Fleming heard a bang, possibly from someone rolling down a store shutter, as more people raced by.

He said armed police arrived and pushed everyone a full block down the street.

Australian witnesses described the attack as reminiscent of the Bourke Strert Mall rampage in January (above)

The attack in the northeastern Spanish city was the country's deadliest since 2004, when al-Qaeda-inspired bombers killed 192 people in coordinated attacks on Madrid's commuter trains.

Spain has been on a security alert one step below the maximum since June 2015 following attacks elsewhere in Europe and Africa.

Cars, trucks and vans have been the weapon of choice in multiple extremist attacks in Europe in the last year.

The most deadly was the driver of a tractor-trailer who targeted Bastille Day revelers in the southern French city of Nice in July 2016, killing 86 people.

In December 2016, 12 people died after a driver used a hijacked trick to drive into a Christmas market in Berlin.

There have been multiple attacks this year in London, where a man in a rented SUV plowed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four people before he ran onto the grounds of Parliament and stabbed an unarmed police officer to death in March.

Four other men drove onto the sidewalk of London Bridge, unleashing a rampage with knives that killed eight people in June.

Another man also drove into pedestrians leaving a north London mosque later in June.
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President Donald Trump has praised a crowd of up to 40,000 anti-fascist protesters who marched through the streets of Boston in protest against right-wing activists hosting a 'free speech' rally on Saturday.

Some of the counter-protesters clashed with police after the largely peaceful march through the city had ended when the handful of activists who attended the free speech rally left.

President Trump tweeted: 'I want to applaud the many protesters in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!

'Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before!'

Trump quickly deleted two tweets that misspelled the word heal as 'heel' and an hour earlier he had tweeted to condemn 'anti-police agitators'.

But the president's tone was mostly conciliatory after a week of outrage over his response to the violence in Charlottesville last weekend.

Out of the thousands in attendance, 33 people were arrested following bottles of urine and rocks being thrown at police and when some burned a Confederate flag and pounded on the sides of a police vehicle at Boston Common.

Although city officials had asked counter-protesters to stay away, saying their presence would draw more attention to the far-right activists, the group was later commended for standing up to hate and bigotry during the largely peaceful day.

President Trump has applauded thousands of anti-fascist protesters who marched through the city streets of Boston to make their way towards a right-wing 'free speech' rally on Saturday afternoon

Only a handful of rally attendees could be spotted against the swarm of the estimated 40,000 counter-protesters who chanted loudly and waved signs denouncing white nationalism at Boston Common (pictured)

The rally comes just one week after the violent 'Unite the Right' rally in Virginia which left one woman dead and dozens more injured. Pictured: An anti-fascist protester moves away from a burning Confederate flag outside of Boston Common

President Trump was quick to respond to this week's demonstration and tweeted out: 'Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you'

However, Trump later added: 'I want to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!'

Boston braced itself for what could have been a violent day with at least 500 police officers to man the streets to keep the peace between thousands of tense people

Boston had braced itself with hundreds of police officers to ensure that the day didn't have the same deadly outcome of the Charlottesville protests last week.

However, opponents of the right-wing took over the rally, chanting anti-Nazi slogans and waving signs condemning white nationalism, in order to stand against what they thought could have turned into a platform for racist propaganda.

The small right-wing group who came for the rally huddled in a circle at the park as barricades fenced them off from the thousands upon thousands of counter-protesters who came to drown out their event.

Around an hour after the rally's start time of noon, the few dozen who came for the free speech event left their enclosed area as police helped escort the planned speakers from the park.

After the event was cut short, with the anti-fascist protesters outnumbering the right-wing attendees 1,000 to one, some counter-protesters 'who came to cause problems' squared off against riot police.

Police Commissioner William Evans said that out of the 33 arrests police made, most were for disorderly conduct, with some for assault and battery during scuffles between police and protesters.

Tensions arose when police escorted the right-wing rally participants away from Boston Common and counter-protesters

Police move toward a counter-protester (right) after the wind-down of a 'free speech' rally in Boston on Saturday

A group of counter-protesters raise their arms as they stand in the streets of Boston following the wind-down of a rally

Police Commissioner William Evans (pictured) said that out of the 33 arrests police made, most were for disorderly conduct, with some for assault and battery during scuffles between police and protesters

Boston thought it could be a violent day and sent at least 500 police officers to man the streets to keep the peace between thousands of tense people.

The police hoped to deter violence at the 'free speech' rally, which had right-wing speakers, by closing streets to avert car attacks like the deadly one carried out last week.

Boston also outlawed weapons of any kind - including sticks used to hold signs - in the protest area and ordered food vendors out of Boston Common, the nation's oldest park.

However, tensions began to arise around 12:30pm, when a group of boisterous counter-protesters were filmed chasing a man with a Trump campaign banner and cap, shouting and swearing at him.

Other counter-protesters intervened and helped the man safely over a fence to where the conservative rally was to be staged.

A black-clad counter-protester also grabbed an American flag out of an elderly woman's hands, and she stumbled and fell to the ground.

Some members of the Antifa group spoke out, including member Shane Terry, 22, who says she covers her face so that 'Nazis can't find me on social media'.

There are uniformed officers from all over the state along with Boston firefighters from the rapid response team standing among the crowd.

Joe Fusco, 43, from New Hampshire says the entire event is ludicrous. 'Aren't we still the United States? So the counter protests are to stop the protest? Doesn't make sense.'

Some counter-protesters did throw bottles of urine, rocks and other 'hurtful projectiles' at police, resulting in 33 arrests by the end of the day on Saturday.

Protesters face off with riot police escorting conservative activists after they cut short their planned 'free speech' rally

Police in riot helmets stand in the way of counter-protesters, as a man in an Antifa shirt records the standoff

Counterprotesters stand in front of riot police armed with batons near a 'free speech' rally staged by conservative activists

The event was officially over before 2pm, but some remained on the streets and began to square off against riot police

A man wearing a T-shirt bearing the name of President Donald Trump, right, argues with a counter-protester after being hit by a flying plastic bottle of water near a 'free speech' rally staged by conservative activists

The small right-wing group huddled in a circle at the park as barricades fenced them off from the thousands of counter-protesters who came to drown out their event. Around 1pm, the few dozen rally attendees left the park

An estimated crowd of up to 40,000 people march towards the Boston Commons to protest the Boston Free Speech Rally

Counter-protesters from Black Lives Matter and other groups denounced racism and anti-Semitism while they marched from the city's Roxbury neighborhood to the Common

Despite the police presence, minor scuffles and arguments broke out among the opposing groups shortly after noon

Antifa member Shane Terry, 22, (center wearing glasses) says she covers her face so that 'Nazis can't find me on social media'

Some counterprotesters dressed entirely in black and wore bandannas over their faces. They chanted anti-Nazi and anti-fascism slogans, and waved signs that said: 'Make Nazis Afraid Again,' 'Love your neighbor,' 'Resist fascism' and 'Hate never made U.S. great.'

Others carried a large banner that read: 'SMASH WHITE SUPREMACY.'

'I came out today to show support for the black community and for all minority communities,' said Rockeem Robinson, 21, a youth counselor from Cambridge.

He said he wasn't concerned about his personal safety because he felt more support on his side.

Katie Griffiths, 48, a social worker also from Cambridge, who works with members of poor and minority communities, said she finds the hate and violence happening 'very scary.'

A group of protesters carry a sign referring to members of a left-leaning group at the 'free speech' rally

The thousands upon thousands of counter-protesters came armed with signs that they proudly held up as they marched

Thousands of counter-protesters gathered on Malcolm X Blvd. in Roxbury to march through the streets until they reached Boston Common, around two miles away

Chris Hood, an 18-year-old Boston resident, said: 'The point of this is to have political speech from across the spectrum, conservative, libertarian, centrist.

'This is not about Nazis. If there were Nazis here, I'd be protesting against them.'

John Medlar, one of the rally's organizers, maintained that his event was not just a right-wing gathering but a forum for all views and opinions.

The 23-year-old said to The Boston Globe: 'We want to bring together people from across the political spectrum for people to listen to.

'We want people to come away with good arguments, thinking maybe, 'Hey that's interesting, I hadn't considered that before.'

'We want to do is show people that we can listen to each other, that we can bring reasonable opinions together without resorting to violence.'

Police Commissioner William Evans said hundreds of officers - some in uniform, others undercover - would be deployed to keep the two groups apart.

The right-wing group was guarded from the counter-protesters, with uniformed police standing nearby and barricades separating them from the chanting crowd.

Boston's Democratic mayor, Marty Walsh, and Massachusetts' Republican governor, Charlie Baker, both warned that extremist unrest wouldn't be tolerated in this city famed as the cradle of American liberty.

Only a few dozen people who planned to join the 'free speech' rally could be seen at the event, huddled together at the park

The 'free speech' rally's scheduled speakers included Kyle Chapman, a California activist who was arrested at a Berkeley rally earlier this year that turned violent, and Joe Biggs, formerly of the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars

The rally comes just one week after the violent 'Unite the Right' rally in Virginia which left one woman dead and dozens more injured. Pictured: A counter-protester waving a sign that reads: 'Stop pretending your racism is patriotism'

The counter-protesters came chanting anti-Nazi slogans and waving signs condemning white nationalism, in order to stand against what they thought could turn into a platform for racist propaganda at the rally

Counter-protesters vastly outnumbered the expected attendees of the 'free speech' rally. Pictured: Trump supporters

Walsh had asked counter-protesters to avoid Boston Common, saying their presence would draw more attention to the far-right activists.

'We're urging everyone to stay away,' Walsh said.

But Monica Cannon, an organizer of the 'Fight White Supremacy' march, rejected that call.

'Ignoring a problem has never solved it,' Cannon said in a phone interview. 'We cannot continue to ignore racism, ignore white supremacism, ignore neo-Nazis and pretend it's not a problem.'

Despite his own warning, Walsh greeted counter-protesters outside Reggie Lewis Center in the city's Roxbury neighborhood before they stampeded the rally.

Although rally organizers stressed they weren't associated with any alt-right or white supremacist groups, thousands turned up in fear that white nationalists might show up in Boston anyways

Boston outlawed weapons of any kind - including sticks used to hold signs - in the protest area and ordered food vendors out of Boston Common, the nation's oldest park

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh (pictured) has pleaded for counter-protesters to stay away, saying their presence would draw more attention to the far-right activists. Walsh is seen speaking with a counter-protester

Organizers of the 'Free Speech' rally denounced the violence and racist chants of the Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' protest.

'We are a coalition of libertarians, progressives, conservatives, and independents and we welcome all individuals and organizations from any political affiliations that are willing to peaceably engage in open dialogue about the threats to, and importance of, free speech and civil liberties,' the group said on Facebook.

The event's scheduled speakers include Kyle Chapman, a California activist who was arrested at a Berkeley rally earlier this year that turned violent, and Joe Biggs, formerly of the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars.

Still, opponents feared that white nationalists would show up in Boston anyway, raising the specter of ugly confrontations in the first potentially large and racially charged gathering in a major U.S. city since Charlottesville.

Last weekend's violence sparked the biggest domestic crisis yet for President Trump, who provoked ire across the political spectrum for not immediately condemning white nationalists and for praising 'very fine people' on both sides of the fight

Last week, dozens were hurt in brutal brawls between opposing groups and a woman was killed and others injured when a white nationalist allegedly drove his car into a crowd (pictured)

Heather Heyer, 32, was killed last Saturday when she was run over by a Dodge Challenger. She was a counter-protester at the Unite the Right rally. Pictured: A man in Boston holding up a sign of Heyer that proclaims her as an American hero

Walsh said the city would do whatever is necessary to head off violence initiated by either side. 'If anyone gets out of control - at all - it will be shut down,' he said. 'We will not tolerate any misbehavior, violence or vandalism whatsoever,' said Evans, Boston's top cop

Boston braced itself for what could have been a violent day with at least 500 police officers to man the streets to keep the peace between thousands of tense people

Counterprotesters from Black Lives Matter and other groups denouncing racism and anti-Semitism planned to march from the city's Roxbury neighborhood to the Common, and another group planned to rally on the steps of the Statehouse overlooking the sprawling park.

The permit issued for Saturday's noon to 2pm event on Boston Common came with severe restrictions, including a ban on backpacks, sticks and anything that could be used as a weapon.

The Boston Free Speech Coalition, which organized the event, said on Facebook that it's not affiliated with the Charlottesville rally organizers in any way.

'We are not associated with any alt-right or white supremacist groups,' it said this week, insisting: 'We are strictly about free speech.'

Walsh said the city would do whatever is necessary to head off violence initiated by either side. 'If anyone gets out of control - at all - it will be shut down,' he said.

'We will not tolerate any misbehavior, violence or vandalism whatsoever,' said Evans, Boston's top cop.

A counter demonstrator uses a lighted spray can against a white nationalist demonstrator at the entrance to Lee Park last Saturday in Charlottesville (pictured)

White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' clash with counter-protesters at the violent Virginia rally last week (pictured)

The Boston event (pictured) drew thousands of counter-protesters in wake of the deadly and unruly alt-right protesters who brought national attention in Charlottesville last week

The event winded down around 2pm, an hour after the few dozen of the Boston rally attendees had given up their post and left

Dating to 1634, Boston Common is the nation's oldest city park. The leafy downtown park is popular with locals and tourists and has been the scene of numerous rallies and protests for centuries.

A growing number of U.S. political leaders have called for statues honoring the Confederacy to be taken down, with civil rights activists charging that they promote racism.

Advocates of the statues contend they are a reminder of their heritage.

Last weekend's violence sparked the biggest domestic crisis yet for U.S. President Donald Trump, who provoked ire across the political spectrum for not immediately condemning white nationalists and for praising 'very fine people' on both sides of the fight.

Beyond the Boston rally and counter-march, protests were held on Saturday in Texas, with the Houston chapter of Black Lives Matter holding a rally to remove a 'Spirit of the Confederacy' monument from a park and civil rights activists in Dallas had a rally against white supremacy.

Removing Confederate-themed or era statues has recently gained momentum in the aftermath of Charlottesville.

The Unite the Right rally last week, which brought the clashes, was in protest against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Britain could strike post-Brexit free trade deals without the approval of the Scottish and Welsh governments under proposals circulated among Cabinet ministers by International Trade Secretary Liam Fox.

Dr Fox has written to colleagues setting out four options for devolved governments' role in negotiating free trade agreements after the UK leaves the European Union, a Whitehall source confirmed.

One of them includes making trade a reserved matter for the UK Government, although at the other end of the spectrum is a proposal that a common position should be agreed with devolved governments before striking a deal.

Britain could strike post-Brexit free trade deals without the approval of the Scottish and Welsh governments under proposals by International Trade Secretary Liam Fox (pictured)

Any move to freeze out devolved governments is likely to be strongly opposed in Edinburgh and Cardiff.

The Government has not taken a decision on which option it prefers.

However The Times claimed Dr Fox favours denying Scotland and Wales a veto, and Tories worried about the anti-Brexit Scottish National Party scuppering any free trade deals could back him.

Genetically modified (GM) foods - which are legal for cultivation in England and the United States but banned in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - is one potential flashpoint in trade talks.

The Government is set to publish a trade white paper in Autumn, ahead of a Trade Bill.

A Department for International Trade spokesman said: 'We have been very clear that we want a trade policy that is inclusive and transparent and which represents the whole of the United Kingdom.

'We will not be giving a running commentary on possible future trade policy'.

Plaid Cymru said any move to freeze out Wales would be 'disgraceful'.

Dr Fox (right) has written to colleagues setting out four options for devolved governments' role in negotiating free trade agreements after the UK leaves the European Union

Welsh treasury spokesman, Jonathan Edwards MP, said: 'If the UK leaves the customs union enabling it to strike trade deals, it is vital that no trade deal is signed without the endorsement of the Welsh Government.

'Otherwise the British government could expose key Welsh economic sectors and our public services, effectively supplanting the devolved settlement.

'Within the customs union, member states and sub national governments, like Wallonia in Belgium, can veto trade deals.

'It would be disgraceful if in post-Brexit UK, national governments within the British state are not able to defend their economic interests from Westminster politicians.

'The Trade Secretary would do well to remember that people in Wales have voted twice in binding referendums to empower our National Assembly.'
A thousand tourists hold their breath as a giant killer whale leaps skyward, the sun gleaming off its smooth back.

As if auditioning for a Disney movie, the two-and-a-half ton leviathan performs an elegant backflip before landing with a thunderous splash.

It's a Thursday afternoon, but SeaWorld in San Diego, California, is packed with visitors, many of them British, all drawn by the undisputed star attractions: ten huge killer whales performing two shows daily.

SeaWorld in San Diego, California, where three orcas have died this year. A whistleblower has lifted the lid

Who would not be moved by such a magnificent spectacle of nature?

And yet who would not be disturbed by the accounts now emerging of how these intelligent creatures are imprisoned away from public view, ridden with disease, and separated from their family members in what one former SeaWorld trainer last night described as a 'house of horrors'?

It is once the sun-burnt crowds have drifted away that SeaWorld's killer whales, or orcas, are herded off to backstage pools where, with little room to dive, they swim listlessly in circles, often banging their heads against the concrete sides in boredom or frustration.

Or worse, as last week's death of disease-ravaged Kasatka made clear. 'Euthanised' after falling incurably sick in her artificial environment, she is the third SeaWorld killer whale to die this year alone.

And this, in the outspoken words of Kasatka's former trainer, is 'a disgrace to humanity'.

John Hargrove, a SeaWorld expert turned whistleblower, is in tears as he describes the orca's fate to The Mail on Sunday.

'What continues to go on in parks like SeaWorld is an abomination,' he says.

'They claim captive orcas help educate people, and for years I bought into it. But Kasatka lived in misery, in barbaric and horrific conditions, and died in agony. She lived out her days in a house of horrors  and I was complicit in selling the lie to the public.'

Hargrove has already played a central part in Blackfish, an award-winning documentary which gained near cult status after its release in 2013, and caused SeaWorld's shares and attendance figures to plummet.

Viewers were shaken by one horrific scene in which Kasatka is shown dragging trainer Ken Peters to the bottom of a tank in 2006, nearly drowning him.

Terror in the pool... when the orcas turn on the handlers While crowds marvel at the apparently tame nature of the orcas at SeaWorld, the creatures can turn on their handlers. In 2006, Kasatka took the feet of trainer Ken Peters in her jaws and took him to the bottom of the pool before releasing him. He suffered a broken foot and puncture wounds. Then in 2010, trainer Dawn Brancheau, right, had her spinal cord severed in a fatal attack by an orca called Tilikum. Advertisement

SeaWorld lambasted the film, calling it 'inaccurate and misleading'.

Yet it has helped drive a growing international movement to ban the captivity of whales and dolphins, and Hargrove, for one, is unshakeable in his convictions.

'In the wild, these magnificent creatures live to 80, 100 years old,' he continues. 'I have to speak out because if it stops just one person paying to go to a park where orcas are tortured to perform circus tricks, then Kasatka's death won't have been in vain.'

While capturing wild orcas has been banned by many Western countries, including the US, Russia and China continue to hunt and trap them.

Globally, 50 million people visit marine parks with captive orcas.

Thanks to films such as Blackfish, SeaWorld and other aquatic parks have been forced to change  although the message that 'cuddly' cetaceans are not pets is yet to reach the wider public, as shown by the needless death of a baby dolphin in Spain last week.

New legislation in California means mothers and calves can no longer be separated and captive breeding has ended.

SeaWorld, which also has parks in Orlando, Florida, and San Antonio, Texas, owns 21 orcas and attracts 10 million visitors each year, including thousands from the UK.

They pay up to 75 to watch the killer whales pirouette to music and 'beach' themselves on the concrete sides of the pool.

In January, an orca called Tilikum, notorious for killing his female trainer, died after a long battle with a lung infection.

Then last month, Kyara, a three-month-old orca that was born under the park's now-defunct breeding programme, died from pneumonia.

Now it has been announced that Kasatka, too, was put down last Tuesday. At 41, she was half the age she might have lived to in the ocean.

'In the wild, orcas rarely show aggression towards humans. But I lost count of the attacks I witnessed and suffered first-hand,' Hargrove says.

'I've been butted against the side of the pool, grabbed by my torso and dragged down. I'm amazed I'm still alive.'

Kasatka, too, had become violent in captivity, as the Blackfish film demonstrated.

'She was one of the most dangerous animals I met,' continues Hargrove, who suffered broken ribs, fingers, toes and facial fractures during his time as a trainer.

'These animals are trapped, frustrated, unhappy. Of course they take it out on humans they come into contact with. Being in a tank for years on end wrecks them mentally.'

Hargrove, 43, worked for SeaWorld for 14 years until quitting in 2012. He had been friends with Dawn Brancheau, the female trainer killed by Tilikum after he grabbed her ponytail and dragged her to her death in 2010.

Trainers were banned from the water after that. Hargrove claims that many of the attacks are laughed off as play by park officials, or not reported at all.

Stop the selfies, says man who tried to save dolphin A British man who tried to rescue a terrified baby dolphin after tourists pulled it from the sea in Spain to take selfies has issued a plea to tourists not to pose with the mammals if they see them in distress. Alex Lawson was unable to save the four-week-old female calf that became stranded in shallow water off the resort of Mojacar after separating from its mother and pod. This case highlights that there needs to be more education for the public on what is the correct action to take if a live dolphin comes close to the shore, said Mr Lawson. The public should not take selfies, or interact with the animal if it is ill and needs medical attention. These dolphins may be unwell so they shouldnt be touched. Mr Lawson, who volunteers for charity Equinac, which rescues wildlife, was responsible for recovering the calfs body. A post-mortem examination is due to be carried out to establish why the dolphin died. Advertisement

'They tried to explain Dawn's death away as a simple misunderstanding, as horseplay. Dawn had her scalp ripped off. Her spinal cord was severed. Her left arm was ripped off.'

Perhaps it is little wonder. Blackfish exposed how the whales were forced to perform thanks to training techniques including food deprivation, and how their calves were forcibly removed and shipped to other parks (in the wild, orca families stick together for life).

'They chew the metal bars separating the enclosures, they grind their teeth on the concrete sides of their holding pens,' says an emotional Hargrove.

'Pin-holes develop in the teeth and stuff gets stuck in there, causing infections. We used to drill the teeth down, using no anaesthetic, to clean the mess out.

'Their eyes close, their jaws quiver. It's obviously painful.'

SeaWorld has vehemently denied charges of cruelty and put out its own moving statement last week on the death of its star attraction.

Trainer Kristi Burtis was quoted as saying: 'Today, I lost a member of my family. I am grateful for the special time we had together and for the difference she has made for wild orcas by all we have learned from her.'

While SeaWorld officially attributed Kasatka's death to lung disease, Hargrove believes it was caused by fungal and bacterial infections brought on by years of being force-fed antibiotics.

'Orcas in captivity are constantly sick. They get daily doses of antibiotics and other drugs. Eventually their immune system breaks down. By the end she had lesions on her face, like an AIDS patient. SeaWorld will never release the autopsy but the internal wounds will be far worse.

'She suffered unbearably so that kids could watch her do tricks and SeaWorld could get richer.

'People always ask me why I didn't quit sooner but it's like being in a cult. I loved the animals  I bought into the mantra that we were educating people about these magnificent creatures by allowing millions of kids and their parents to see them up close.

'I believed we were helping the species by the breeding-in-captivity programme. In reality, Kasatka was a corporate asset worth millions of dollars to a company which only cared about her ability to perform and generate cash.'

Hargrove adds: 'Even as I started seeing the daily reality of the pain and suffering these animals go through, I stuck with it. How could I leave Kasatka? But in the end I knew I had to speak out. It's too late to save Kasatka but if we can end this horrific practice of keeping orcas in captivity, I will be able to die in peace.'

In 2006, Kasatka took the feet of trainer Ken Peters in her jaws and took him to the bottom of the pool before releasing him

While SeaWorld admitted in its statement last week that Kasatka had been 'chronically ill' since 2008, Hargrove says the company chose to increase her burden further, artificially inseminating her in 2011.

She was also one of SeaWorld's most successful breeders, giving birth to Takara in 1991, Nakai in 2001, Kalia in 2004, and Makani in 2013.

Ha also points out that the hot southern states of America were thousands of miles from home for Kasatka, who was captured off the coast of Iceland in 1978.

Hargrove recalls the death of two whales from mosquito-borne diseases  encephalitis and West Nile disease.

'This is because they were wallowing motionless near the surface of their pools, something which doesn't happen in nature,' he says. 'Wild orcas are constantly on the move and not exposed to mosquitoes, which are limited to coastal areas.'

He is haunted by the anguish he believes Kasatka felt when her first-born calf Takara was forcibly removed from her.

'Takara was dragged off and taken to the Texas park. Kasatka was bereft. She vocalised her pain and swam around her pool violently.

'Years after they were separated we played Takara's vocal sounds to her mother and Kasatka went nuts. She never forgave or forgot.'

Today, Hargrove treasures a picture of himself with Kasatka but can barely bring himself to look at it: 'I'm beaming. It was back before I realised how wrong it all is. I feel guilt every day that I let her down.

'Now she's dead. My only comfort in her death is she is no longer being exploited. Finally she is at peace.'

Last night SeaWorld said: 'These allegations are the same distortions and mischaracterisations that have been made and discredited over the years. No one is more dedicated to the health and wellbeing of our animals than the expert veterinarians and animal care staff working with this family of killer whales every day.

'Our animal care programmes and policies are stringently regulated by US federal laws. The US Department of Agriculture has oversight of SeaWorld. Our park is inspected annually, often multiple times a year.

'We pass these inspections, maintaining the highest quality standards. The Association of Zoos and Aquariums said SeaWorld is meeting or exceeding the highest standard of animal care and welfare of any zoological organisation in the world.'

Additional reporting: Peter Sheridan
A deal offered by discount supermarket chain Lidl over August Bank Holiday weekend has gone viral.

The shop is selling its own brand Allini Prosecco for 20 a case, which works out at just 3.33 a bottle.

But the discount will only last two days, on August 26 and 27.

On its website, Lidl describes the flavour of the wine (pictured) as a 'fresh, pear-scented fruit' and claim it is 'highly moreish'

'School holiday survival kit': Last year supermarket sales of the Italian white wine leapt by 34 per cent to 356million, and we drank an amazing 40million litres of the stuff

The bubbly usually costs 5.79 a bottle.

On its website, Lidl describes the wine as a 'fresh, pear-scented fruit and highly moreish'.

The tasting notes go on to say: 'Very versatile, either on its own or with food.

'This has the clean, pear drop aromas characteristic of good Prosecco and is light, crisp and fresh on the palate.

'A little drier than some Proseccos and very moreish.'

Fans of the Italian bubbly have flocked to social media to celebrate the offer, with one thankful mother hailing the deal a 'school holiday survival kit'.

Another Twitter user said the discount was 'the only reason I'm looking forward to the Bank Holiday weekend'.

A third added: 'Bargain of the century'.

Sweet deal: Lidl's bubbly usually costs 5.79 a bottle, meaning fizz fans are saving 50 per cent

Brits are drinking more Prosecco than ever before - and there's no sign that our love affair with the Italian sparkling wine is ever going to end.

Last year supermarket sales leapt by 34 per cent to 356million, and we drank an amazing 40million litres of the stuff.

But it's not just the drink itself we cant get enough of. Shops and online stores are increasingly filled with Prosecco paraphernalia  everything from alcohol-filled foods to bubbly-themed clothes and homeware.
Duke University has removed a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee days after it was vandalized.

The university said it removed the carved limestone likeness early Saturday morning from Duke Chapel amid a national debate about monuments to the Confederacy.

A statue of Lee was at the heart of a violent protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly a week ago.

The empty plinth where a statue of Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee once stood after it was removed at Duke University

Damage done to the face of a statue of Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee is seen at Duke University's Duke Chapel in Durham, North Carolina

University President Vincent Price said in a letter to the campus community that he consulted with faculty, staff, students and alumni about the decision to remove the statue.

'I took this course of action to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university,' wrote Price.

Officials discovered early Thursday that the statue's face had been damaged by vandalism.

Lee was among 10 historical figures depicted at the chapel.

On Monday in downtown Durham, a bronze Confederate statue was torn down by demonstrators.

Authorities said they arrested eight people in connection with the toppling of the monument during the protest, according to CBS News.

The undamaged statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at the entrance to Duke Chapel in Durham, North Carolina

Counter protesters march against a potential white supremacists rally on August 18, 2017 in Durham, North Carolina

Protesters celebrate after bringing down a statue of a confederate 'The Boys Who Wore The Gray' statue

A group of Duke University Divinity School students participate in a prayer vigil in front of Duke University's Duke Chapel

On Friday, hundreds of protesters in Durham participated in a demonstration against racism, with many heading to the site where the statue was removed.

A number of other monuments commemorating Confederate figures throughout North Carolina have also been vandalized in the wake of the deadly protest in Charlottesville last Saturday.

Calls to remove a statue commemorating Confederate soldiers at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill have also been voiced.

A state law passed in 2015, however, bars authorities from removing public monuments dedicated to the Confederacy.

Duke is a private institution and is outside the scope of the law.
It was supposed to be an adventure in Europe for two Melbourne friends who had known each other since primary school.

Instead Robert Bogdanovski and Anthony Colombini were caught at the centre of the Las Ramblas terror attack in Barcelona attempting to escape the path of a van moving towards them mowing down anything in its way.

'The driver swerved and collected Robert and then dragged Anthony down the street,' Robert's mum Vesna Bogdanovski told the Herald Sun.

Robert Bogdanovski and Anthony Colombini (pictured) were caught at the centre of the Las Ramblas terror attack

The trip was supposed to be an adventure in Europe for two Melbourne friends who had known each other since primary school

Now Ms Bogdanovski is thanking God her son was able to get out alive.

The pair saw the van as it approached them at 80 km/hr as they walked down the thoroughfare however had no time to react.

Robert's feet were crushed but he was able to get up and begin searching for his best mate.

He found Anthony and the pair hid away in a nearby shop as the menacing driver continued on his rampage for half a kilometre before escaping.

Both of the men in their mid-20s were able to walk away with minor injuries.

'Robert called his dad and I in the morning and the conversation felt so fast, I didn't get a chance to really talk to him, I was simply told he was OK and had severe feet bruising,' Ms Bogdanovski told the Herald Sun.

The pair saw the van as it approached them at 80 km/hr as they walked down the thoroughfare however had no time to react and were ran down

Only one week ago the duo were expressing their excitement for their impending travels, not knowing the fate before them.

After having spent some time in Ibiza the lads then headed off to Barcelona where they were caught in the shocking tragedy.

Robert is now deciding whether he will continue on the five-week journey he had planned.

Anthony's family have left Australia to be by his side.

'At least for now he's not coming home,' Ms Bogdanovski said. 'I can't wait for him to be back here out of harm's way.'
UK's security minister has warned terror attacks on the West could rise as ISIS loses more territory Iraq and Syria.

Ben Wallace said Europe is under 'constant attack' from terror groups and the UK is under increased threat because jihadis are unable to join ISIS overseas.

It follows a series of devastating attacks across Europe in 2017 which culminated in the Las Ramblas rampage two days ago, when a jihadi ploughed a van through crowds of people in Barcelona, killing 13.

UK's security minister has warned terror attacks on the West could rise as ISIS loses more territory Iraq and Syria. Pictured: aftermath of Barcelona attack

'I think the threat is still increasing, partly driven by the fact Isis is collapsing in Syria and people are either unable to get out there to fight for ISIS,' Mr Wallace told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He added: 'So they look to do something at home... also because people have come back and tried to inspire people with their stories and tales of the caliphate.

'I think those two things mean that the threat is to some extent increasing.'

ISIS lost Mosul, its final stronghold in Iraq, to local forces last month and an international coalition is putting pressure on its de-facto capital of Raqqa, in Syria.

ISIS-linked terror attacks on Europe this year include the Manchester Arena suicide bombing in which 22 were killed, the London Bridge massacre in which eight died and an incident on the Champs-Elysees, Paris, in which two officers were shot dead.

Mr Wallace went on to promote the government's anti-terrorism programme Prevent, which aims to stop radicalisation buy building links with faith leaders, teachers and doctors.

ISIS lost Mosul, its final stronghold in Iraq, to local forces last month and an international coalition is putting pressure on its de-facto capital of Raqqa, in Syria

'If we're going to stop these people who use everyday items such as vehicles and kitchen knives to murder people on our streets, we are going to have to all engage together with Prevent and we are having real success when we do that,' he said.

'We must offer an alternative and help people be protected from that [radicalisation].'

He went on to disagree with the police lead for Prevent who said the programme - which is currently voluntary - should be made compulsory.
A second police office has died Saturday, a day after his colleague was killed when a scuffle with a former Marine turned deadly Friday night in Florida.

Former marine, Everett Miller, 45, was arrested Friday night at a local bar in connection to the shooting deaths of the two Kissimmee police officers. Officer Matthew Baxter, 27, died Friday a short time after he was shot.

Sgt Sam Howard, 36, was fighting for his life Saturday, but ultimately succumbed to his injuries Saturday afternoon.

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Kissimmee Police Officer Matthew Baxter, 27, (left) died from his injuries and Sgt. Sam Howard, 36, (right) was critically wounded in the attack, and died Saturday afternoon.

Everett Miller, 45, was arrested after he allegedly shot and killed one officer and wounded another on Friday night in Kissimmee, Florida

The officers got into an altercation with Miller as they were on patrol in Kissimmee, in an area with a history of drug activity, according to authorities.

Police Chief Jeff O'Dell said Saturday that Everett Miller was arrested several hours after the shootings late on Friday.

During a patrol of the area south of Orlando's theme park hub, Baxter and Howard got into a scuffle with Miller, who shot them, the police chief said.

The officers did not have an opportunity to return fire.

Miller faces a charge of first-degree murder for killing Baxter, additional charges are expected in Howard's death.

Florida Governor Rick Scott flexed his executive power on Saturday by removing state attorney Aramis Ayala of the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida, from the case.

Ayala has previously refused to consider the death penalty in other first-degree murder cases.

Scott said Saturday: 'I am using my executive authority to reassign this case to State Attorney Brad King to ensure the victims of last night's attack and their families receive the justice they deserve.'

Ayala is in litigation with the governor as he's reassigned 24 of her first-degree murder cases.

Police Chief Jeff O'Dell suggested that the two officers were ambushed and did not return fire. Pictured: Two officers stand guard outside the Osceola Regional Medical Center in Kissimmee where Officer Howard died on Saturday afternoon

Baxter (center) was shot and killed in the Florida town on an unusually violent night that saw another five police officers get shot in three different US cities

In March, Ayala said she would not seek the death penalty in a high profile case of Markeith Loyd, who was accused of shooting and killing an officer, as well as his pregnant girlfriend in Orlando, according to CNN.

Miller was recently involuntarily committed for a mental evaluation by the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. He also made threats to law enforcement officials on Facebook, police said.

During a patrol late Friday of a neighborhood with a history of drug activity, Baxter was 'checking out' three people, including Miller, when the officer got into a scuffle with Miller.

Howard, his sergeant, responded as backup but the officers didn't have an opportunity to return fire, the police chief said.

The officers were not wearing body cameras.

Sheriff's deputies with a neighboring law enforcement agency later tracked Miller down to a bar and approached him.

Miller started reaching toward his waistband when the deputies tackled and subdued him, Chief O'Dell said. They found a handgun and revolver on him.

The police chief said Miller was taken to jail wearing the fallen officer's handcuffs.

Authorities originally said they believed there were four suspects, but the chief said Saturday that no other arrests are anticipated.

Fellow Kissimmee officer Sam Howard (pictured) was severely injured during the ambush and died from his injuries on Saturday afternoon

Two other officers were shot Friday night in nearby Jacksonville

Baxter had been with the Kissimmee Police Department for three years. He was married to another Kissimmee police officer and they have four children.

Howard has served with the Kissimmee Police Department for 10 years. He and his wife have one child, O'Dell said.

'They are two wonderful men, family men,' O'Dell said. 'They are two committed to doing it the right way.'

President Donald Trump was quick to comment on the shooting, tweeting that his thoughts and prayers were with 'Kissimmee Police and their loved ones'.

'We are with you!' he added, including the hashtag #LESM.

Florida Governor Rick Scott also tweeted that he was 'heartbroken' to hear of the officer's death.

'Tonight we lost a brave officer - Matthew Baxter. Husband/father/hero. Praying for @kissimmeepolice,' he wrote in another tweet.

President Donald Trump was quick to comment on the Kissimmee shooting on Friday night

Florida Governor Rick Scott also tweeted that he was 'heartbroken' to hear of Baxter's death and said he was 'praying' for the other Florida cops who had been hospitalized

Separately, another two officers were injured late on Friday in Jacksonville, Florida, after police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where three other people were thought to be in danger.

One of the officers was shot in both hands and the other was shot in the stomach.

Officers had approached the scene and gunfire could be heard inside the home. The officers then entered the residence.

According to authorities, the suspect was armed with a high powered rifle. The suspect shot through the home's front door toward the officers.

In a third shooting, two Pennsylvania State Troopers are stable and expected to survive. The officers were shot Friday night in Fairchance about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.

It was revealed that the suspect is deceased, Pennsylvania State Police spokeswoman Melinda Bondarenka told the site.

Bondarenka said one of the troopers was flown from the scene to Morgantown Hospital and the other transported by ambulance to Uniontown Hospital.
Facebook has banned the Facebook and Instagram accounts of a white nationalist who attended the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended in deadly violence.

Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja said the profile pages of Christopher Cantwell have been removed as well as a page connected to his podcast.

Cantwell was featured in a Vice News documentary about the rally and its aftermath, which led to him being banned on the social media site.

In the documentary, Cantwell condoned the alt-right's use of violence and took aim at US President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka.

He said: 'I'm here to spread ideas, talk, in the hopes that somebody more capable will come along... somebody like Donald Trump who does not give his daughter to a Jew.'

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Facebook has banned the Facebook and Instagram accounts of white nationalist, Christopher Cantwell, who attended the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ended in deadly violence

Facebook spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja said the profile pages of Cantwell (center) have been removed as well as a page connected to his podcast

Cantwell went on to say his 'ideal leader' would be 'a lot more racist than Donald Trump'.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, has also removed at least eight pages connected to the white nationalist movement over what Budhraja says were violations on the company's polices on hate speech and organizations.

Cantwell, of Keene, New Hampshire, was listed on rally flyers and labeled an extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The 36-year-old is a former information technology worker who moved to New Hampshire from New York in 2012.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday that the social media site would not tolerate hateful and extreme views

Cantwell describes himself as a white nationalist and said he voted for President Donald Trump. He has a podcast called Radical Agenda and blog that promote his views.

His podcast's website has a pop-up that says Cantwell is 'often banned from Facebook'.

Cantwell said Facebook shut down his account in an attempt to silence him for his views.

He also said his PayPal account had been closed. The company wouldn't confirm that because it has a policy of not commenting on the status of accounts.

'I'm not surprised by almost any of this because the whole thing we are complaining about here is that we are trying to express our views, and everybody is going through extraordinary lengths to make sure we are not heard,' Cantwell said in a phone interview.

'Frankly, whatever you think of my views, that is very scary to me,' he said. 'Facebook and Instagram is one thing but not being able to participate in the financial system because of your political opinions is something that, you know, people should worry about in America.'

On Wednesday, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media site would not tolerate hateful and extreme views.

'We aren't born hating each other. We aren't born with such extreme views. We may not be able to solve every problem, but we all have a responsibility to do what we can.

'It's important that Facebook is a place where people with different views can share their ideas. Debate is part of a healthy society.

'But when someone tries to silence others or attacks them based on who they are or what they believe, that hurts us all and is unacceptable,' Zuckerberg wrote.

'There is no place for hate in our community. That's why we've always taken down any post that promotes or celebrates hate crimes or acts of terrorism -- including what happened in Charlottesville,' he said.

'There is no place for hate in our community. That's why we've always taken down any post that promotes or celebrates hate crimes or acts of terrorism -- including what happened in Charlottesville,' Zuckerberg wrote

Facebook banned Cantwell (center) from its site after he was featured in the Vice documentary and OKCupid followed suit

Protester, Heather Heyer, 32, was killed during the rally after suspected driver, James Alex Fields Jr, rammed into a crowd of anti-fascists last weekend.

Fields, 20, was charged with second-degree murder in connection with her death.

'With the potential for more rallies, we're watching the situation closely and will take down threats of physical harm. We won't always be perfect, but you have my commitment that we'll keep working to make Facebook a place where everyone can feel safe,' Zuckerberg added.

Facebook banned Cantwell from its site after he was featured in the Vice documentary and OKCupid followed suit.

The online dating site announced the decision on Twitter, saying: 'There is no room for hate in a place where you're looking for love.'

The site also asked users to report anyone who appears to be involved in a hate group.

CEO Elie Seidman gave a statement to Gizmodo saying: 'OKCupid has zero tolerance for racism.

'We make a lot of decisions every day that are tough. Banning Christopher Cantwell was not one of them.'
A secret tunnel out of John Ibrahim's Sydney mansion was allegedly found by police during recent raids.

The Kings Cross nightclub identity's Dover Heights home was searched by dozens of federal police officers on August 8 and the tunnel, believed to begin in the double garage, leads to a park behind the property and is disguised by shrubs, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Following the raids, which targeted an alleged worldwide drug operation, rumours of the passageway began to circulate.

A secret tunnel out of John Ibrahim's Sydney luxury mansion was allegedly found by police during raids at the property

Officers spent hours painstakingly combing the multi-million dollar waterfront home - perched on a clifftop in Sydney's Dover Heights

Following the raids, which targeted an alleged worldwide drug operation, rumours of the tunnel at Ibrahim's home began to circulate. Ibrahim wasn't charged over the raids.

Ibrahim wasn't charged after the raids, however his brothers Michael and Fadi were arrested in Dubai.

Ibrahim's son, Daniel, and his 27-year-old girlfriend, Sarah Budge, were also arrested and released on Bail in Sydney last week.

An inside source has confirmed to The Daily Telegraph a tunnel at the property exists and was built in 2007 when Ibrahim installed a pool. It was suggested the passageway doubles up as a quick 'escape route' for guests and gives access to the pool's filters.

The exit of the alleged tunnel is disguised in a concrete wall covered by vines, and only has two hinges showing.

To access from the outside, one must veer from a public coastal path into bushes, The Daily Telegraph reports.

In his book The Last King of the X, Ibrahim makes reference to a potential passageway beneath his home which helps him avoid attention.

'The police and the media are all over my s***, and I have to use different ways to leave my house and make phone calls because the surveillance is constant,' an extract reads.

The alleged tunnel is believed to begin in the property's double garage and end in a nearby park

To access the alleged tunnel from the outside, one has to veer from a public coastal path into overgrown bushes. Pictured: AFP police raiding Ibrahim's property

An inside source has confirmed to The Daily Telegraph a tunnel at the property exists and was built in 2007 when Ibrahim installed a pool (pictured) on the plot

The nightlife identity's Dover Heights home was raided by federal police officers on August 8

There is no mention of the tunnel in paperwork for extensive renovations Ibrahim has submitted to the council for approval on several occasions.

A council spokeswoman said the council had no information of a tunnel at the Ibrahim property, while a spokesman for the AFP refused to comment.

The exit of the alleged secret tunnel ends in a cliff-side public park. Pictured: John Ibrahim's mansion

AFP officers during the raid at Ibrahim's property. The entrance to the tunnel is covered by overgrown vines
A former Liberal MP who was dumped after an infamous sexting scandal which earned him the nickname 'Peter the Plonker' has announced his return to politics.

Peter Dowling, 56, on Saturday announced he will run for his old seat of Redlands in Queensland at the next state election as an independent candidate.

Mr Dowling came under fire in 2013 after sending explicit images and text messages to his then-mistress.

Former Liberal MP Peter Dowling who was dumped after sexting pictures to his mistress showing him with his penis in a glass of red wine has announced his return to politics

Mr Dowling came under fire in 2013 after sending explicit images and text messages to his then mistress (pictured)

One of the images showed his penis in a glass of red wine, earning him his unflattering nickname.

'It was one of the biggest scandals in the history of Queensland politics,' he told The Courier Mail.

'It was a salacious story from an angry woman. It went around the world.

'We have to learn from our mistakes. Now, I want to step again.'

Mr Dowling was disendorsed by his local branch members three years ago.

His wife Helen initially stood by him, but the pair separated a year ago.

Mr Dowling said he had been encouraged to run by friends and business figures in who believed their electorate had been neglected by current government.

His wife Helen (right) initially stood by him, but the pair separated a year ago
A homeless man who was living on a park bench was given lunch and paid work by a group of roofers.

The man, known only as John, was sleeping in a park in London near where roofer JayJay Murray had just started working.

On Tuesday Mr Murray took to Facebook to share the heartwarming story of how John started working with the group and his extraordinary post soon went viral.

John (pictured left and right) was sleeping rough in London near where a group of roofers had just started working. The men offered him lunch and paid work

On Tuesday Mr Murray took to Facebook to share the heartwarming story of how John started working with the group

He said the men bought John lunch and then asked him to come back the next day for some work.

'We brought him a cup of tea early in the morning and offered him to come and help the next day,' wrote Mr Murray.

'He was first on site and worked non stop, I have never seen anyone so happy to be at work!'

Mr Murray added that John offered to work for just 15, which he said would 'get him through the week'.

But after a 'whip around' the men sent John away with 70 and a potential offer for more work.

John offered to work for just 15, which he said would 'get him through the week'. But the roofers bought John a Burger King and gave him 70 for a days work

When leaving, Mr Murray said John told the group: 'Thanks brothers, its the most love I've ever had'.

'His gratitude was a real eye opener,' said the roofer. 'Nobody willing to work should be living on the streets.'

Mr Murray's Facebook post has received more than 20,000 reactions since it was shared on August 15.

One reader said: 'Makes my heart feel good to hear these stories. Wish there were many more of them.'

Another added: 'If only there were more lovely people like you guys. The world would be a better place.'
John McCain's daughter Meghan announced Friday that her father completed his first stage of radiation and chemotherapy for a brain tumor he was diagnosed with last month.

In the tweet, the Arizona Senator's daughter praised her dad for toughing out the treatments in order to help treat his aggressive form of cancer, glioblastoma.

'My father completed first round radiation/chemo. His resilience and strength is incredible. Fight goes on, here's to small wins. #f-ckcancer,' Meghan wrote to her Twitter page.

John McCain successfully completed his first round of radiation and chemotherapy for a brain tumor

John McCain's daughter Meghan announced the news Friday afternoon on Twitter

The Senator also took to social media later in the day to send his gratitude to the hospital staff who aided him throughout the trying process.

Mayo Clinic Hospital - Phoenix staff said they successfully removed a blood clot above his left eye as well as the complete tumor that was detected through brain scans in July.

'Thank you to the wonderful team @MayoClinic,' McCain wrote Friday evening. 'We appreciate everything you do!'

Meghan said her father's 'resilience and strength' through the process has been 'incredible'

The Senator received news of his cancer just days prior to his decision to cast a vote against the 'skinny repeal' of ObamaCare

McCain, 80, received the cancer news just days prior to his decision to cast a vote against the 'skinny repeal' of ObamaCare.

In a public statement, McCain suggested he did not believe the repeal would 'actually reform' the health care system or ensure coverage for individuals.

'While the amendment would have repealed some of ObamaCare's most burdensome regulations, it offered no replacement to actually reform our health care system and deliver affordable, quality health care to our citizens,' McCain said.
A 19-month-old boy has died in Austria after being left in a hot car by his 17-year-old mother and her boyfriend, police said on Thursday.

Not wanting to wake him after a long car journey, the couple - who have not been named - left the child asleep while they went upstairs for a nap in the western town of Nenzing in Vorarlberg.

Later the boyfriend rushed down to the car, which was in a secluded spot, and found the child's lifeless body, state police said.

A 19-month-old boy has died in the Austrian town of Nenzing in Vorarlberg (pictured) after being left in a hot car by his 17-year-old mother and her boyfriend, police said on Thursday

Temperatures at the time were around 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).

'An autopsy... in Innsbruck established the cause of death as heat stroke,' a statement said.

The couple are now receiving counselling.

Tragically this is not the first time a child has died after being left in a hot car.

Temperatures at the time were around 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) (Stock image)

In May, a seven-month old baby girl died after being left in a hot car for 'several hours' in the village of Dundrum, County Tipperary.

In June, two children died after their left mother them in a car in Texas.
Savage street fighting had been raging for several hours after far-Right agitators, many prepared for battle and backed by gun-toting militia, invaded the laid-back college town of Charlottesville. The day became bloodier and nastier.

A state of emergency was imposed. Then a car driven by a young extremist powered into anti-racist protesters and reversed away at speed, leaving one woman dead and 19 people wounded.

As the crowds melted away, bellicose far-Right leaders returned to bases around their nation to celebrate what they proclaimed as a major victory. Despite the death of an innocent woman, these demagogues declared it 'an absolutely stunning success'. Deluded extremists even see it as a stepping stone on the path to another civil war over race.

Dark force: Jeff Schoep, 'commander' of the National Socialist Movement, at a protest on the lawn of the US Capitol in Washington D.C.

I spent last week talking to some of these repellent characters. All insist they are not racist, blame others for the violence in Charlottesville  such as the mayor, who is Jewish  and say they are simply standing up for ordinary people. Veteran Ku Klux Klan leader Thomas Robb claimed Charlottesville showed white nationalism was on the rise and blamed all the trouble on 'anti-white terrorists'.

'It was a huge moral victory in terms of the show of force,' said Richard Spencer, a key speaker at last weekend's Unite the Right rally.

Jeff Schoep, anti-Semitic 'commander' of the National Socialist Movement who was in Charlottesville, said that despite what he called a 'car accident', the disruptive event had empowered disparate white nationalist groups across America.

'This is the start of something. Now the Right is united,' said Schoep. 'I think a white ethno-state would be a good thing.

'It was like when you had Martin Luther King marching for the rights of blacks. We were basically peaceful but if we are attacked we are going to fight,' he said.

'Next time we will bring in bats.'

Few would agree the hardcore agitators went to Charlottesville with peaceful intent after the city decided to remove the statue of a Confederate general in a park. They sought to inflame national debate over historic artefacts and the legacy of slavery. It was the boldest show of force by violent white supremacists in generations with chilling scenes of flaming torches, KKK insignia, swastikas, anti-Semitic slogans and menacing gun-toting militia. Many protesters wore protective gear and carried shields, staves and pepper spray.

Flash point: Protesters against the Unite the Right rally are thrown into the air as a vehicle is driven at them

Schoep even tweeted: 'Self defence is beautiful. I knocked out an antifa [anti-fascist] scumbag who attacked us in Charlottesville. Laid him out in the street :)'

Yet it led to a response from President Donald Trump that flirted with these modern fascists, which finally forced some conservative supporters to question his fitness to lead their divided country.

This prompts big issues: who are these malevolent racists, how serious a concern are they for America  and, perhaps most alarmingly have nasty fringe forces been fired up by a president who preaches much of their hardline nationalist rhetoric? There are 917 hate groups in the US, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks such organisations. It saw a rise to near-historic levels in this number since Donald Trump's election.

They include traditional far-Right groups such as the KKK  infamous for its robes, cross-burnings and lynchings  along with a motley collection of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, southern separatists, skinheads and libertarian 'patriot' movements. These groups have been boosted by recent emergence of the so-called 'alt Right', led by Spencer and tending to be younger, urban, better educated and smarter at using the internet to recruit, organise and spark outrage.

Another key 'alt-Right' figure is Augustus Invictus, who has encouraged followers to arm themselves for a new civil war, challenged the Holocaust and ended speeches with the words 'Hail Death'. He says he is running for the Senate as a Republican. Robb, a Christian pastor who rebranded the KKK as The Knights Party in a bid to move closer to the mainstream, alleged the Charlottesville marchers were just decent white people with 'love for their heritage, their history and for their families'. Rachel Pendergraft, his daughter and the party spokeswoman, admitted 'some of our people' marched in with flags.

The Knights Party's Rachel Prendergraft

'Everything is inflammatory to some people,' she said.

'I find signs saying we're going to kill you pretty inflammatory.'

Yet the sensitivity of the statue issue should not be understated. The capital of the slave-holding confederacy was in Virginia  a tobacco-growing state that saw scores of racist lynchings, often involving groups involved in the protests. Jason Kessler was local organiser of the protests who previously tried to unseat the city's only black councillor. He told me he was in hiding after receiving death threats and said he was 'angry' at the city's failure to protect marchers.

But let them talk and bigotry starts to spew. Kessler complained about 'disproportionate influence of Jews in elites of government and power' and said he feared white people might soon need a separate nation. He also used false facts about Britain to shore up his arguments, claiming 'native people' were dying out in England, British Muslims voted only for other Muslims and that London Mayor Sadiq Khan 'got elected through this foreign invasion'.

Kessler outrageously compared himself to non-violent icons such as King. He said he would sue Charlottesville for impeding free speech in a case he claimed would be comparable to civil rights landmarks of the 1960s. Similarly Schoep, a convicted petty crook who heads perhaps the country's biggest neo-Nazi group, started by complaining of being pelted by 'communists' with urine on the protest and ended up praising Adolf Hitler's policies.

He refused to discuss 'the so-called Holocaust' but then went on an anti-Semitic rant, concluding that Jewish people should not be allowed in government. Schoep claimed his country faced risks of civil war and ethnic cleansing. 'You have all the racial groups pushed together and a lot of us don't get along.

'Look at what happened in former Yugoslavia. We feel this may be a possibility here in the US.'

James Alex Fields (far Left), driver of the fatal car crash, stands behind white activists posing in Emancipation Park before the start of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesvill

A group of white activists clash with others at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville

Tom Metzger is another notorious far-Right figure who founded Neo-Nazi organisation White Ayran Resistance and declares: 'We are racist and we don't beat around the bush.' He claimed civil war on multi-racial lines was 'inevitable a free-for-all similar to Syria.'

In a bid for more appeal, Schoep's group stopped wearing Nazi-style brown shirts nine years ago in favour of black 'battledress uniform' and then, following Trump's election, replaced swastikas with the Odal rune, a less obvious fascist symbol.

'The masses believe exactly as we do but have steered clear of us due to our use of the swastika,' wrote Schoep on his party website. Their views are risible, their fancy dress ridiculous. Rebranding and the 'Unite the Right' rally shows how hate-filled fanatics are joining forces to claim spurious white victimhood, fight diversity, exploit free speech and stir up cultural struggles.

The internet, with its swirling conspiracy theories and potential for secrecy, has given them new energy and appeal for younger supporters  what the founder of the far-Right The Daily Stormer website called 'a reboot of the white nationalist movement'. And as seen in Charlottesville, they can pose a significant threat of civil disorder  especially with their savvy use of internet provocation and the rise of determined opponents who will use direct action and violence to stymie their activities. So do they get too much attention given their minority appeal? None of the far-Right leaders would tell me their membership figures but even the KKK  which had millions of members in its 1920s peak  is estimated to have only 3,000 adherents nationwide.

Yet despite their small numbers white supremacists are believed to be the biggest source of extremist-related violence in the US and they are often linked to criminal activities, according to the respected Anti-Defamation League. An FBI report blamed them for 49 killings in 29 attacks between 2000 and 2016. Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African-American churchgoers two years ago, was inspired by a group whose leader talks about 'racial genocide' against whites.

Metzger's group has been linked to a mail bombing and the beating to death of an Ethiopian student, which led to a multi-million dollar fine for deliberate incitement of skinhead violence. He did not go to Charlottesville, saying it was stupid to announce such events in advance. 'I would do it the opposite way. I would seek out the opposition's meeting places, rallies and their homes and pay them a visit. At our own opportune time.'

One of Metzger's lieutenants was British-born Tony McAleer, who spent 15 years as a far-Right activist and admits to attacking opponents and gay men. Today he chairs Life After Hate, which fights extremism and encourages other militants to quit. He said the far-Right was very dangerous and growing in popularity, especially with a surge of alt-Right activity on campuses. 'They have a disdain for the skinheads but are just as angry, except much of their violence is online.'

McAleer said many recruits found a sense of acceptance and belonging inside the groups, just as he did after a difficult childhood  and that Life After Hate had seen a tenfold increase in approaches from alarmed families and friends over the past 18 months.

Neo-Nazis, white supremecists and other alt-right factions scuffled with counter-demonstrators near Emancipation Park in downtown Charlottesville

A woman wears red and holds a flag with a Swastika on it during the Unite the Right rally

And in this astonishing statistic lies the cause of such concern over Trump's latest bout of bizarre behaviour: the fear he is stoking up far-Right racism and dangerous nationalism with his crude populism. First he blamed 'many sides' for chaos in Charlottesville. Then he read a statement condemning neo-Nazis as 'repugnant to everything we hold dear' before reverting the next day to blaming both sides and attacking 'very violent' groups on the Left. He even insisted people bearing flaming torches, shouting 'Sieg Heil' and chanting slogans such as 'Jews will not replace us' were simply 'protesting very quietly' over a statue's removal.

White supremacists were thrilled by Trump's refusal to explicitly condemn them while backing preservation of Confederate icons. 'I really appreciated his remarks this week,' said Pendergraft, spokeswoman for The Knights Party.

She complains about how immigration over the past half-century has eroded their 'white Western civilisation'  and having been in Britain filming a documentary  sees common cause with a Brexit vote she claimed to be anger over 'mass mobilisation of non-white people who are for the most part against Christianity.'

The president, remember, has been openly racist and won KKK endorsement. 'I'm a fan of Donald Trump,' said Robb. 'I don't think he is a white nationalist but he has promoted policies we've wanted for years on the economy and building a wall.'

Clearly Trump is playing to his core constituency of voters angry with the liberal establishment. But he is also playing with fire given the divisions and dark forces in his country, exposed in such stark light by those fatal events in Charlottesville.

British fascists celebrate US rally death

Far-right groups in Britain have celebrated the death of a protester in Charlottesville in horrific online messages.

One post on Twitter reads: A good day for White Resistance. #Charlottesville alongside a photo of Adolf Hitler giving the Nazi salute.

The White Resistance group, which has 14,000 Twitter followers, also posted an image of a white man raising his middle finger as he drives a Dodge Challenger  the same car James Fields is accused of driving to run down and kill Heather Heyer at the Unite the Right rally in Virginia.

The appearance of the vile messages raises disturbing questions over why web giants have shut down far-Right hate groups in the US but have failed to do the same in Britain.

In comments posted on the Facebook page of anti-Islam group Britain First, supporters responded to a video of migrants blocking a road in Italy by suggesting they should be run over. Squish them flat! said one. Another far-Right group called the Pie N Mash Squad displayed an emblem showing a demonstrator being run down by a car, with the slogan Smash Cultural Marxism.

Another message linking to footage of the carnage in Charlottesville said: Oh dear. Never mind.

The Pie N Mash Squad blog is hosted by WordPress which last week banned the website of a fascist organisation heavily implicated in the violence at Charlottesville called Vanguard America.

Last night a spokeswoman for Twitter said: The Twitter rules prohibit violent threats, harassment, hateful conduct, and multiple account abuse, and we will take action on accounts violating those policies.

A Facebook spokesman said: Facebook does not allow hate speech, praise of terrorist acts or hate crimes of any kind and we are actively removing any posts that glorify the horrendous act committed in Charlottesville.

WordPress did not respond to request for comments.
A shopper has been injured after he was allegedly hit on the head by masonry that fell from a Marks & Spencer store.

The hurt man has been taken to hospital after the incident which occurred on a busy thoroughfare in Liverpool this afternoon.

It is believed that a small piece of masonry had come loose from a turret on the corner of the building before striking the shopper.

The Marks & Spencer in Church Street, Liverpool, where a man was struck by falling masonry

Authorities have been called to the scene but have said that it is not being treated as a police matter, according to the Liverpool Echo.

The incident took place on the city's pedestrianised Church Street, which is popular with shoppers.

The Marks & Spencer store was closed for a short while but has since been reopened though the main entrance remains cordoned off in case any further debris falls down.

A Liverpool Council spokesman told the Echo: 'The area has been cordoned off as a precautionary measure.

'Workmen are standing by to carry out an inspection and any necessary repairs.'
A Brooklyn man was stabbed to death by a stranger as he walked home alongside his wife on Friday.

George Carroll, 42, had just left dinner with his wife, Christina Romero Carroll, around 9.30pm when they came across a group of people.

They were walking down Monitor Street in Greenpoint near the group who were hanging out around an SUV, Carroll's wife told NBC 4.

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George Carroll (pictured), 42, of Brooklyn, was stabbed to death by a stranger as he walked home alongside his wife on Friday

Carroll had just left dinner with his wife, Christina Romero Carroll, around 9.30pm when they came across a group of people hanging out around an SUV. Police said the incident took place near Msgr. McGoldrick Park (pictured) in Brooklyn

Romero Carroll said one of the men looked at her husband and spoke to him. She said the man then chased her husband, stabbed him and took off in the SUV. Photos of the scene showed yellow police tape surrounding a bloody sidewalk

One of the men looked at her husband and spoke to him.

'It's basically "what are you looking at?" That was it,' Romero Carroll recalled. 'And my husband, he's a Texan, he's like "I'm...looking."'

She said the man then chased her husband, stabbed him, and took off in the SUV. Carroll was taken to Woodhull Hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said.

Authorities said the incident took place near Msgr. McGoldrick Park in Brooklyn.

Photos of the scene showed yellow police tape surrounding a bloody sidewalk.

Carroll was a writer and actor who was originally from Texas, his wife said. He moved to New York in 2001 and they recently moved from East New York to Greenpoint because they thought it would be safer, his wife told NBC.

Romero Carroll set up a GoFundMe account shortly after her husband's murder to help with funeral expenses.

'I'm asking for your help because I'd like to respect my husband's wishes for his wake and burial,' she wrote.

No arrests have been made in the incident and police have not provided a description of the man.

Police are asking anyone with information about the murder to submit tips to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), visiting www.nypdcrimestoppers.com, or texting 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577.
Hopes faded for a seven-year-old British boy lost in the Barcelona terror attack when his father arrived in the city this evening and was taken to a morgue.

Julian Cadman was separated from his mother Jumarie when a terrorist rammed a van into pedestrians on Las Ramblas killing 13 on Thursday.

His father Andrew, a 42-year-old cabinet maker, was reportedly taken to the forensic institute, which includes a mortuary, when he arrived from his home in Sydney, Australia.

Police have not confirmed Julian's condition but earlier tweeted: 'Neither were we searching nor have we found any lost child in the Barcelona attack. All the victims and injured have been located.'

Hopes faded for a seven-year-old British boy (right with his mother) lost in the Barcelona terror attack when his father arrived in the city this evening and was taken to a forensic centre. Pictured left: A friend or relative being escorted by police to the forensic institute

Hopes fade: Julian Cadman was separated from his mother Jumarie when a van rammed into pedestrians on Las Ramblas killing 13 on Thursday

Police on Sunday said Julian has still not been formally identified.

A spokesman for the Mossos d'Esquadra police force said: 'There has not yet been a legally valid identification.

'We are scrupulously following the protocol of the National Court in Madrid which is overseeing the investigation.

'Our primary concern is giving full and proper support to the victims and their families.'

Mrs Cadman - who is from the Philippines and known as Jom - is recovering in hospital with broken legs. She is pictured with her son

The spokesman said they are still working to identify bodies and living victims following last Thursday's massacre.

The force would not comment on whether Julian was believed to be alive or dead.

Social media appeals for information on the youngster were taken down yesterday.

Mrs Cadman - who is from the Philippines and known as Jom - is recovering in hospital with broken legs after being hit by the van driven by an ISIS jihadi. She was in the city with her son for her niece's wedding.

Australian Mr Cadman, who flew overnight for 22 hours, landed in Barcelona airport this afternoon and was immediately met by Australian consular officials who took him to the justice centre in the city.

A car which had picked him up at the airport was seen arriving at the centre soon afterwards.

The centre includes a mortuary where the bodies of victims of crimes are stored to allow post mortems and forensic examinations to take place.

He is believed to have stayed at the centre for an hour before being driven to the Vell d'Hebron Hospital to visit his wife under police escort.

Five relatives and friends of Mrs Cadman were at her bedside. A hospital official said: 'It is a hard moment for them at this time. They are very upset.'

He confirmed that Mrs Cadman had undergone surgery and was now receiving care in a surgery recovery unit.

Earlier today a man who stayed by Mrs Cadaman's side after she was injured in the attack revealed how she begged for information about her missing son.

Pharmacist Fouad Bakkali comforted her on the floor of his Las Ramblas pharmacy where he harboured 50 terrified tourists.

Julian is believed to have been wearing a white collared shirt, aviator sunglasses and a printed cap when he was last seen just hours before the shocking terror attack

The aftermath of the Las Ramblas attack is seen in an aerial view for the first time in this exclusive picture, taken by Briton John Ward from his balcony, just minutes after the terror atrocity. The picture shows: (1) An injured pedestrian being attended to. (2) A body amid the scattered papers of a news-stand. (3) A casualty wrapped in an emergency foil blanket. (4) Medics tending a badly injured person next to the clearly damaged terrorists' van. (5) Another covered body; (6) A victim caught up in the horror

He told her to keep calm but, suffering two broken legs, she repeatedly asked him 'where's my son?'.

British-Australian Julian, who was born in Kent in the UK but moved to Sydney three years ago, was pictured smiling hours before he was tragically separated from his mother during the chaos.

Spanish newspaper El Mundo today reported the seven-year-old was found in a hospital, but the Spanish police and British Foreign Office said he was still unaccounted for.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull addressed the tragic search for the seven-year-old at a Liberal Conference on Saturday asking all Australians to say a prayer for the 'little Australian boy'.

The youngster became separated from his mother during the attack. She is now in a serious condition in a Barcelona hospital, suffering serious injuries

Police have not confirmed Julian's condition but earlier tweeted: 'Neither were we searching nor have we found any lost child in the Barcelona attack. All the victims and injured have been located.'

Social media appeals for information on the youngster were taken down yesterday

'In this attack we have seen Australians injured and there is a little Australian boy, whose mother was badly injured and is in hospital and he is lost. He is missing in Barcelona,' Mr Turnbull said.

'I think we should all in our quiet moments say a prayer for that little boy. All of us as parents know the anguish his father and his whole family is going through as they rush to seek to find him in Barcelona.'

Family and friends said they were 'beside themselves' and were reaching out on Facebook.

Mourners pay respects at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the victims on Barcelona's historic Las Ramblas promenade

Mourners light candles at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the victims

A scene on Las Ramblas two days after the horrific terror attack which killed 13 on Thursday

Tributes: Police immediately cordoned off the city's broad avenue and ordered stores and nearby Metro and train stations to close after the attack

This is the van that the jihadi drove into the pedestrians on Las Ramblas killing 13

'If you know anyone in that area that you can share this with, please do so,' Julian's godfather, Colin Baxter, wrote on the site.

Andrew Cadman's boss, Scott, told 2GB that the devastated father had no idea his wife and child were in any danger before arriving at work about 6am on Friday and listening to the news. When he failed to make contact with them, he began to panic.

'He's on his way to the airport at the moment, but we found out about an hour later his son was with her and he's missing, and we haven't heard anything since,' he said on Saturday.

'He's flying to Spain at the moment not knowing if his son is dead or alive.'

The man continued to say Mr Cadman was 'absolutely beside himself', and 'can't do much more than sort of put one foot in front of another at the moment'.

Julian's aunt Maricar Querimit Estera shared her concerns via social media, asking followers to 'Pray for my nephew who still missing in [the] Barcelona attack'.

'Your family are waiting for you,' she added in what appeared to be a direct plea to Julian.

MASSIVE MANHUNT FOR MURDEROUS WHITE Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22 A massive manhunt was under way across Europe last night for the man suspected of driving the white van that killed 13 and injured more than 130 people in the Barcelona attack. Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, is thought to be the only member still on the run of a 12-strong Islamic State cell believed to be behind the attacks at Las Ramblas and Cambrils. Officers have released a mugshot of him. Josep Lluis Trapero, chief of the Mossos d'Esquadra police force in Barcelona, said they did not believe the driver of the van had linked up with the rest of the cell in Cambrils after the massacre. La Vanguardia newspaper reported that he may have slipped into the Liceu station, then taken the Metro to Maria Cristina. Detectives are investigating whether Abouyaaqoub carjacked driver Pau Perez, fatally stabbed him, and then stole his Ford Focus. The car was driven through a police checkpoint at Sant Just Desvern on Thursday evening, injuring a sergeant. Officers opened fire on the vehicle, and Perez's body was found inside. Abouyaaqoub is believed to have fled on foot. Moroccan Abouyaaqoub lives in the town of Ripoll, 65 miles north of Barcelona where Moussa Oukabir, who was shot by police in Cambrils, also lived. Advertisement

The boy, who is a student at St Bernadette's Primary in Lalor Park, is last believed to have been wearing a white collared shirt, aviator sunglasses and a printed cap.

Norma Canaveral, who is Jom's aunt  but is called 'granny' by Julian - told MailOnline: 'We are so worried. I am just waiting for news, hoping for good news.'

The 66-year-old, from London, added: 'I don't know what to say. His mother is in the hospital, she's OK, but she became separated from Julian and we don't know where he is. All we can do is wait.

'Julian's a really sweet boy. He loves to dance, he's a lovely, bubbly boy.'

Las Ramblas, a street of stalls and shops that cuts through the center of Barcelona, is one of the city's top tourist destinations. People walk down a wide, pedestrian path in the center of the street while cars can travel on either side.

Police immediately cordoned off the city's broad avenue and ordered stores and nearby Metro and train stations to close.

Other witnesses also described horrific scenes and fearful crowds in the aftermath of the van attack, which has been claimed by the Islamic State.

Julian's aunty Norma Canaveral, who he calls 'granny', says she is just waiting for news on the whereabouts of the seven-year-old

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said 13 people were killed in the attack and at least 100 injured

MFB Commander Graeme O'Sullivan was one of the first responders at Melbourne's Bourke Street tragedy in January.

He and his wife saw the latest carnage unfold from the rooftop of their Barcelona hotel.

'We were up on the sixth floor roof terrace, just the pool area, enjoying a few drinks,' he told Nine.

'We could clearly hear thuds as the vehicle was running into people, and then a short time after that, obviously, several very loud sickening screams from the people involved down at street level.'

Mr O'Sullivan said the similarity to the Bourke Street Mall event was chilling.

'Bourke Street wasn't terrorism and this appears to be, but the result is still the same,' he told Melbourne radio 3AW.

Forensic policemen arrive in the cordoned off area after a van plowed into the crowd

The attack in the northeastern Spanish city was the country's deadliest since 2004, when al-Qaeda-inspired bombers killed 192 people in coordinated attacks on Madrid's commuter trains.

Spain has been on a security alert one step below the maximum since June 2015 following attacks elsewhere in Europe and Africa.

Cars, trucks and vans have been the weapon of choice in multiple extremist attacks in Europe in the last year.

The most deadly was the driver of a tractor-trailer who targeted Bastille Day revelers in the southern French city of Nice in July 2016, killing 86 people.

In December 2016, 12 people died after a driver used a hijacked truck to drive into a Christmas market in Berlin.

There have been multiple attacks this year in London, where a man in a rented SUV plowed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four people before he ran onto the grounds of Parliament and stabbed an unarmed police officer to death in March.

Four other men drove onto the sidewalk of London Bridge, unleashing a rampage with knives that killed eight people in June.

Another man also drove into pedestrians leaving a north London mosque later in June.
President Donald Trump expressed his gratitude to newly ousted Steve Bannon on social media Saturday, less than 24 hours after the senior White House adviser was fired from the administration.

'I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton - it was great! Thanks S,' Trump wrote to his Twitter feed.

Trump's chief political strategist departs just shy of seven months into the administration.

President Donald Trump sent his appreciation for Steve Bannon in a tweet less than 24 hours after being fired from the administration

Bannon has already returned to lead Brietbart News, a position he held before leaving last year to help the Trump campaign

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement on Friday: 'White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steves last day.'

'We are grateful for his service and wish him the best,' she said.

Bannon's exit is the latest in a string of high-profile departures from the White House, which includes former chief of staff Reince Priebus and ex-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, among others.

The administration has also seen former National Security Director Michael Flynn depart in January, and Anthony Scaramucci, White House Communications Director, sacked in late July.

The Brietbart News editor did not leave in a whimper, however, telling The Weekly Standard shortly after his dismissal that he's finally 'free' to 'crush the opposition.'

'I've got my hands back on my weapons,' Bannon, 63, told the publication. 'Someone said, "it's Bannon the Barbarian." I am definitely going to crush the opposition.'

US President Donald Trump disembarks from Air Force One upon arrival at Morristown Municipal Airport in Morristown, New Jersey

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was fired from his position on July 28

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, resigned on July 21 after serving the President less than six months

Media reports suggest that the 'opposition' consist of senior economic adviser Gary Cohn, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and National Security Adviser HR McMaster, officials Bannon views as moderating forces in the West Wing steering the President away from a nationalist agenda.

Utterances of Bannon's imminent ouster swirled around Washington for weeks before Friday, with aides in the White House suggesting Bannon's toxic rapport with McMaster and Cohn was leading to his imminent dismissal.

According to The New York Times, Bannon's caustic disposition didn't help either. He who would frequently clash with other senior aides on issues over trade, the war in Afghanistan, taxes, immigration and the role of government.

The Times also reported that Trump had grown weary of Bannon over the past several months, believing that he was a source of leaking in the White House and angry that he was promoting his image in the media.

By Friday night, Bannon was back at an editorial board meeting at Brietbart News, assuming his prior position as head of the company before leaving last year to help Trump run his presidential campaign.
Claims: Former prime minister Edward Heath

The police chief in charge of an investigation into paedophile claims concerning former Prime Minister Edward Heath is to send his findings to the woman leading the national child sex-abuse inquiry.

Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Mike Veale has already had talks with the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), chaired by Professor Alexis Jay.

Wiltshire Police has rejected calls for Mr Veale to resign over his handling of Operation Conifer, which has investigated allegations against Sir Edward, who died in 2005.

The row flared again last week after Mr Veale announced the investigation was expected to end in the autumn. Conservative MPs claim the 2 million cost of the two-year probe is an idiotic waste of money based on flimsy evidence.

But Mr Veale  who has said privately that he believes the paedophile claims against Heath are 120 per cent genuine  shows no sign of backing down. A Wiltshire Police spokesman said last week talks on the outcome of the Heath inquiry had already been held with Professor Jays team.

He said: We have briefed IICSA and we will make available to them our report such that they can consider it relative to the terms of reference of the public inquiry.

The spokesman also hit back at calls for Mr Veale to resign saying he had a duty to investigate allegations, regardless of whether the alleged offender is living or deceased.

More than 30 people are understood to have made claims of sexual abuse by Sir Edward. The investigation was set up after the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Barcelona's chief rabbi has urged Jews to move to Israel after warning that Europe has been 'lost' because of the threat from radical Islam.

At least 14 people were killed and some 130 others injured when attackers ploughed into pedestrians on a promenade in the tourist area on Thursday evening.

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona outrage and another attack in Cambrils yesterday, which resulted in one person dying and seven people being injured after five men wearing fake suicide belts drove an Audi A3 into crowds on the seafront.

Western Europe has been a regular target for jihadists over the last few years. And Barcelona's chief rabbi Meir Bar-Hen told his congregation to move to Israel to flee terror.

Barcelona's chief rabbi Meir Bar-Hen told his congregation to move to Israel to flee terror

This rented van brought terror to the streets of Europe when it was driven at speed down a busy street in central Barcelona, killing 14 including a three-year-old boy

A man lying on the street in Barcelona after the van ploughed into pedestrians along Las Ramblas

In an interview with Jewish news agency JTA, he said: 'I tell my congregants: Don't think we're here for good, and I encourage them to buy property in Israel'

'This place is lost. Don't repeat the mistake of Algerian Jews, of Venezuelan Jews. Better (get out) early than late. Europe is lost.'

The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain did not to share Bar-Hen's pessimistic outlook. The organization issued a statement Thursday, saying: 'Spanish Jews trust the State Security Corps that work daily to prevent radical fanatics and Islamists from sowing chaos and pain in our cities.'

The group also urged politicians to 'deal intelligently and determinedly with the struggle against fanaticism and in favor of freedom and democracy.'

The terrorists had originally planned to drive three vans packed with explosives into iconic parts of Barcelona including the Sagrada Familia cathedral, it has been reported.

Had their butane-filled gas containers not accidentally detonated the night before the atrocities on Thursday, the 12-person terror cell would have used them to maximise deaths in the tourist hotspots of the Spanish city, local media suggest.

British tourist Harry Athwal rushed to help a young child who was lying injured on the pavement immediately after Thursday's horrific terror attack in Barcelona

Pictured is the van used in the attack being taken away by police.

Seven people, including a policeman, were injured in Cambrils after the killers attacked. Pictured are police taping off the scene

They intended to explode one van in Las Ramblas, a second by the world-famous Sagrada Familia cathedral and the last in the port area of the city, El Espanol has claimed.

The cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is one of the most visited attractions in Europe.

Architect Antonio Gaudi began construction in 1882 and, despite him dying in 1926, it is still officially incomplete.

In 2010 it was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI as a minor basilica.

How the Barcelona attack unfolded: Map shows the route the terrorist took as he ploughed into scores of holidaymakers

Hundreds crowded to see the royals as they paid tribute in Barcelona to the victims of the van attack

Barcelona, a hugely popular tourist destination, came to a halt at noon on Friday (11am BST) as a minutes silence was observed in the Placa Catalunya, close to the scene of the attack.

Led by King Felipe and Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy the silence was then followed by applause for the victims.

Three days of mourning have been declared by the government of Catalonia.

Catalonia's emergency services have said that as of today 54 people remained in the hospital, 12 of them in critical condition, from both attacks.
Like father like son, the famous saying goes, and on Saturday even Donald Trump proved he wasn't immune to the proverb.

Trump repeated a glaring typo twice in a tweet about a free speech rally in Boston, just a day after son Donald Trump Jr got criticized for his own spelling mistake.

The president took to Twitter to comment on the 15,000 anti-fascist protesters who marched through the streets to protest against right-wing activists on Saturday.

'Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heel, & we will heel, & be stronger than ever before!' he wrote.

Donald Trump repeated a glaring typo twice in a tweet about a free speech rally in Boston, just a day after son Donald Trump Jr got criticized for his own misspelling.

The president took to Twitter to comment on the 15,000 anti-fascist protesters who marched through the streets to protest against right-wing activists on Saturday

It took Trump nearly 10 minutes to correct his misspelling of 'heal', much to the delight of the Twittersphere

It took Trump nearly 10 minutes to correct his misspelling of 'heal', much to the delight of the Twittersphere.

The president finally corrected his tweet around 4.30pm on Saturday, writing: 'Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before!'

Trump also wrote that he wanted to applaud the 'many protestors' who were 'speaking out against bigotry and hate'.

'Our country will soon come together as one!' he tweeted.

Trump's new tweet was not missed by his followers, who were quick to pile on the president for his typo.

'Third times a charm,' joked user Jack Dunlop.

'Well done. You learned how spell heal. It's a big day today,' added Matt Haig.

'You act and spell like a five-year-old,' another user added.

Trump also wrote that he wanted to applaud the 'many protestors' who were 'speaking out against bigotry and hate'

Thousands of anti-fascist protesters who marched through the city streets of Boston to make their way towards a right-wing 'free speech' rally on Saturday afternoon

The rally comes just one week after the violent 'Unite the Right' rally in Virginia which left one woman dead and dozens more injured. Pictured: An anti-fascist protester moves away from a burning Confederate flag outside of Boston Common

Many also couldn't help but notice that Trump was suddenly supporting the protesters just hours after calling them 'anti-police agitators'.

'Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston,' he wrote at 12.22pm on Saturday. 'Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you.'

Mark Harris joked that one of Trump's staff members had been frantically helping him understand both the importance of the Boston counter-protesters and good spelling.

'Sincere thanks to whoever ran into the crapper to explain the value of protest to the president, then ran in again to explain spelling, the writer joked on Twitter.

Trump's typo comes just hours after his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, tweeted abotu a friend - and accidentally spelled it' fried'.

Trump Jr once again becamen Twitter's punching bag late Friday night after a bizarre tweet with a glaring typo.

'The most interesting measure of a fried is the difference between their personal texts to you and their FB posts,' he wrote.

It took more than 30 minutes before the businessman recognized his mistake and corrected 'fried' to 'friend'.

Donald Trump's eldest son once again became Twitter's punching bag late Friday night after he posted a bizarre tweet with a glaring typo about 'true friends' - spelling it 'fried' instead

It took more than 30 minutes before the businessman recognized his mistake and corrected 'fried' to 'friend'

Twitter immediately piled on Trump Jr, cracking jokes over both the vagueness of the tweet and the typo.

'Are you 14 years old?' one user jokingly asked, as another piled on, 'a 14 year old emo at that'.

'Friend? Fried? Fraud? Fiend? You can pick,' shot back user Chris Parry.

'The best thing about this is, Junior actually thinks this tweet is so insightful that he went to the trouble of fixing his typo,' another added.

Trump Jr's tweet came just hours after former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was fired by John Kelly, Trump's former Chief of Staff.

But Trump Jr's tweet may have been related to recent reports that he would be the focus of special counselor Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation.

Some speculated that the tweet was referring to former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was ousted from the White House dramatically on Friday

But Trump Jr's tweet may have been related to recent reports that he would be the focus of special counselor Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation

A source told Buzzfeed that Mueller and his team were turning their attention to a meeting Trump Jr held with a Russian lawyer who promised intel on Hillary Clinton.

Trump Jr admitted last month that he was hoping to obtain compromising information when he met with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya on June 9.

He received an email that read promised 'official documents and information' to the Trump campaign that would 'incriminate Hillary Clinton' and 'would be very useful to your father', clearly referring to Trump.

Trump Jr replied: 'If it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer.'

The meeting occurred on June 9 of 2016 and was attended by Trump Jr, his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Others predicted that Trump Jr was referring to Mitt Romney, who lashed out at Trump on Friday and demanded he apologize for his Charlottesville remarks

Romney took to Facebook to demand that Trump 'take remedial action in the extreme'

Trump Jr claimed he did not receive any pertinent information regarding Clinton, but a source said Mueller is trying to determine what exactly he found out that day.

Mueller and his team are also examining Trump Jr's statements regarding the meeting, which changed multiple times.

Others predicted that Trump Jr was referring to Mitt Romney, who lashed out at Trump on Friday and demanded he apologize for his Charlottesville remarks.

Trump has come under fire throughout the week after claiming 'many sides' were responsible for the violence that broke out in the Virginia college town.

Romney took to Facebook on Friday to demand that Trump 'take remedial action in the extreme'.

'He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize,' the failed 2012 GOP presidential candidate wrote.

'State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville.'
Eleven holders of top honours are being stripped of their awards for bringing the system into disrepute, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The biggest single instance of honours being forfeited in modern times includes a former aide to David Cameron losing his OBE after being convicted for downloading indecent images of children.

Among the others are a vet with an MBE who was convicted of animal cruelty, and a servant of the Queen jailed for taking bribes for Buckingham Palace contracts.

Philippa Rodale received an MBE for services to veterinary medicine in 2007. But in 2015 she was arrested on animal cruelty charges after an RSPCA investigation. She was found guilty and fined for ignoring a dog with a broken back for ten days. She was attempting a homeopathic cure and didnt take an x-ray. She was struck off as a vet for life.

Craig Burrows was awarded an MBE in 2004 for charity work as a missionary priest in the Philippines. He was forced to return to Britain in 2015 to answer allegations of sex abuse from the 1980s. He was found guilty of assaulting two young girls staying with him and his then wife for five years. He claimed the charges were invented by his wife, whom he later divorced.

Patrick Rock was a Conservative activist and Parliamentary candidate from the late 1970s onwards. He was given an OBE for political service in 1992. In 2011 David Cameron brought him into No 10 as Deputy Director of Policy. He was charged with making indecent images of children in 2014. He received a two-year conditional discharge in June last year.

The mass forfeiture raises further concerns about the honours system and the need for thorough checks on those given official awards. Veteran Labour MP Paul Flynn last night called the entire system dishonoured.

There have been widespread calls for tycoon Sir Philip Green to be stripped of his knighthood after he sold department store chain BHS with a pensions deficit of 571 million, but the Government has resisted the demands.

Previous casualties include entertainer Rolf Harris, who lost his CBE after being convicted of indecent assault on teenage girls, and Anthony Blunt, the Queens art expert who was stripped of his knighthood in 1979 after he admitted being a Soviet spy.

The decision to strip the 11 of their awards was made by the Honours Forfeiture Committee, which is made up of senior Government mandarins and lawyers. The Queen then gives her approval. There is no right of appeal.

The news will not have been a surprise for many on the list, with some having spent time in prison and others still serving sentences.

Patrick Rock, who was a policy chief for David Cameron when he was Prime Minister, was given a two-year conditional discharge last summer after being found guilty of five counts of downloading indecent images of young girls.

The damning reasons for annulments usually emerge long after the honours had been given. But shockingly, Falklands veteran Adrian Stone was awarded an MBE a month after being charged for sex assaults on children. He was later jailed.

Ex-headmaster, Stanley Poots, received his MBE in 2011 for services to education. It was later discovered he was siphoning money from his school. He received an 18-month suspended prison sentence in March 2016.

The RAF chef Robert Constable was awarded an MBE for long service in 1975. Last September it emerged he had assaulted four schoolgirls over more than 20 years. He admitted 23 charges. He was jailed for 13 and a half years.

RAF chef Robert Constable was stripped of an MBE for long service. Last year he was jailed after he admitted assaulting schoolgirls.

The roll call of disgrace also includes Ronald Harper, a former property manager to the Queen  he was found to be skimming money from contracts. Mr Harper was made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order  given at the discretion of the Queen  in 2004.

Former headmaster Stanley Poots, who received an MBE in 2011 after being praised for running a primary school in Northern Ireland, was later found to be siphoning funds.

Philippa Rodale, a vet given an MBE for services to animal medicine, lost her award almost two years after leaving a dog with a broken back to die.

The Queens deputy property manager Ronald Harper was made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order in 2004. Found guilty last year of taking more than 100,000 in bribes to award contracts and jailed for five years.

The Staff Sergeant, Adrian Stone, who had fought in the Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan and Bosnia, received an MBE in 2012, just a month after being charged with sexually assaulting a child on a military base. He was jailed for 40 months

Craig Burrows was awarded an MBE in 2004 for charity work in the Philippines while working as a missionary priest. He was later found guilty of assaulting two young girls. Another churchman lost his OBE after being forced into retirement following allegations of abuse.

Mr Flynn, the MP for Newport West, said: The honours system does some good for the unsung heroes, but cases like this show it is an embarrassment.

The system is dishonoured and we are best starting again. Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda and author of the book Entitled, a critical history of the British aristocracy, said: It seems that people get honours for political service, and not for more important services to their community.

Our attachment to the British Empire in our awards is very strange and its odd to give people these things in the modern era. Other countries have managed to update themselves but Britain has not. The whole system needs reshaping.

The Cabinet Office declined to comment.
The wife of Jared Tucker, the American who died in Thursday's Barcelona attack has spoken out about the death of her husband.

Heidi Nunes-Tucker, 40, spoke with NBC News in an interview that aired Saturday about the loss of her husband in her first television interview since Jared's death, which happened while they were celebrating their one year anniversary in Spain.

'I'd found my person: truly the love of my life. That was obvious to anybody that knew us or saw us,' she told NBC.

'And I don't know that you find that again, and I don't know that I want to.'

Jared, 43, a resident of Lafayette, California, is a father to three teenage daughters and a stepson. Heidi said he was the love of her life and she's not sure how she will recover.

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Heidi Nunes-Tucker, 40, (pictured) spoke out about the loss of her husband in her first television appearance since Jared Tucker's death in the Barcelona terror attack Thursday

Heidi and Jared, 43, had been toasting their year of marriage at a street cafe in the Las Ramblas district just moments before the attack

The couple were on their first trip to Europe one year after they had been married. In her first television interview, Heidi said Jared was the love of her life and she's not sure if she'll be able to recover from his death

'What am I going to do?' she asked. 'Jared and I always said - I mean, we only were married for a year.

'I'm 40,' she said with a chuckle. 'We're kind of old and we've both been pretty independent for all this time and so, it's not a matter of not being able to be independent, but I don't want to do that without him.'

She added: 'I don't want to wake up without him next to me, and I don't want to watch TV without him... All of it is just going to be a lot more empty.'

Heidi and Jared had been toasting their year of marriage at a street cafe in the Las Ramblas district just moments before the terror attack in Barcelona on Thursday.

The couple had decided to do a little shopping afterward at the nearby souvenir huts when he told her he was going to leave to find a restroom.

Minutes later, Heidi realized something was horribly wrong when she noticed her surroundings.

'No more than  thirty seconds to a minute after he left, all mayhem broke out and people were screaming and crying and running,' she told NBC.

Heidi said: 'I don't want to wake up without him next to me, and I don't want to watch TV without him... All of it is just going to be a lot more empty'

A vehicle plowed into a crowd of pedestrians on the city's famous Las Ramblas boulevard in Barcelona, Spain, on August 17, 2017

Terrorists responsible killed 14 people and wounded over a hundred in the Catalonia district after a van plowed through crowds traveling up to 60 mph

Terrorists responsible killed 14 people and wounded over a hundred in the Catalonia district after a van plowed through crowds traveling at a rate of up to 60 mph.

ISIS has since accounted for the act of terrorism, which closely mimics the attacks in London, Berlin, Stockholm and Nice.

The 17-year-old Moroccan man operating the vehicle, Moussa Oukabir, was shot dead by police in Cambrils Friday following the event.

Heidi also spoke with ABC 7 in a phone interview,

'I got shoved into the souvenir kiosk and was able to kind of duck into there with a small group of people,' she said.

Heidi and a group a people she was hiding with were evacuating by police to a safer area.

Jared was the only American fatality in the attack. He was not initially listed as a victim in the hospitals nearby the scene of the attack. He was pronounced dead on Friday, when he and Heidi had planned to jet back home

'We had no idea what was going on,' she added. 'So trying to figure out what was happening, trying to get back to the main road.'

Heidi grew concerned when she hadn't heard from her husband all day.

'I was looking for Jared the whole time. I kept wanting to go back to the main road (because I thought) that's where he would have been.'

Jared was the only American fatality in the attack. He was not initially listed as a victim in the hospitals nearby the scene of the attack.

He was pronounced dead on Friday, when he and Heidi had planned to jet back home from their first trip to Europe.

'It's hard not to be angry,' Heidi said in the NBC interview.

'It's confusing why anybody would want to hurt anybody like that. Why would you want to hurt strangers? Why would you want to hurt anybody?

'I'm a mom and I'm a teacher and things that are truly important to me  and to Jared  was teaching our children to be kind, to treat mankind the way that you want to be treated, to be tolerant of people that are different than you.

'So I cant understand,' she added. 'I dont understand why anybody would do that.'

A GoFundMe page has been set up by a relative of Jared's to help the family with funeral expenses.
John McCain was out and about on Saturday, on a hike with former independent Senator Joe Lieberman and South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

'The three amigos together again!' McCain tweeted from the outing in Cornville, Arizona, just one day after he completed his first stage of radiation and chemotherapy for a brain tumor.

McCain's daughter Megan joined the trio on the hike, posing with them in one photo posted on Twitter.

John McCain (center) was out and about on Saturday, on a hike with former independent Senator Joe Lieberman (right) and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham (left)

McCain's daughter Megan joined the trio on the hike, posing with them in one photo

McCain (left) and Lieberman pose together in a stream for a gag shot excluding Graham

On Friday, the Arizona Senator's daughter praised her dad for toughing out the treatments in order to help treat his aggressive form of cancer, glioblastoma.

'My father completed first round radiation/chemo. His resilience and strength is incredible. Fight goes on, here's to small wins. #f-ckcancer,' Meghan wrote to her Twitter page.

The Senator also took to social media later in the day to send his gratitude to the hospital staff who aided him throughout the trying process.

Mayo Clinic Hospital - Phoenix staff said they successfully removed a blood clot above his left eye as well as the complete tumor that was detected through brain scans in July.

'Thank you to the wonderful team @MayoClinic,' McCain wrote Friday evening. 'We appreciate everything you do!'

John McCain successfully completed his first round of radiation and chemotherapy for a brain tumor

John McCain's daughter Meghan announced the news Friday afternoon on Twitter

Meghan said her father's 'resilience and strength' through the process has been 'incredible'

McCain, 80, received the cancer news just days prior to his decision to cast a vote against the 'skinny repeal' of ObamaCare.

In a public statement, McCain suggested he did not believe the repeal would 'actually reform' the health care system or ensure coverage for individuals.

'While the amendment would have repealed some of ObamaCare's most burdensome regulations, it offered no replacement to actually reform our health care system and deliver affordable, quality health care to our citizens,' McCain said.
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The Barcelona terrorists were plotting a far bigger atrocity  targeting hundreds of innocent victims  using a deadly homemade explosive known as the 'Mother of Satan', it emerged last night.

The 12-strong Islamic State cell intended to carry out horrific truck or van bombings at the Sagrada Familia basilica  Barcelona's most famous landmark  and the city docks as well as Las Ramblas.

But a massive accidental blast on Wednesday destroyed their bomb factory in Alcanar, 120 miles south of Barcelona, killing at least one of the terrorists and throwing their plans into chaos.

Instead they launched a relatively low-tech attack using a van that killed 13 people and injured more than 130 on the packed Las Ramblas promenade in Barcelona on Thursday before a later attack in the early hours of Friday in the resort town of Cambrils.

Investigators sifting through the rubble in Alcanar yesterday found butane gas canisters  as well as traces of the deadly but unstable homemade explosive tri-acetone tri-peroxide, or TATP, which is about 80 per cent as strong as TNT.

Known as 'Mother of Satan', TATP was used in the Tube and bus bombers in London in July 2005 and the May attack this year at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. It was also used in the November 2015 Paris atrocity and the March 2016 Brussels bombings.

TATP is easy to make from over-the-counter items available in any pharmacy, but it is notoriously difficult to control.

Tributes: Police immediately cordoned off the city's broad avenue and ordered stores and nearby Metro and train stations to close after the attack

It is harder to detect than traditional explosives and was taken on to an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami by failed British 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid in 2001.

His plot was thwarted when a flight attendant spotted him trying to light a fuse to the explosives in his shoes and other passengers subdued him.

One reason TATP is difficult to detect is because it does not contain nitrogen, a key component of homemade 'fertiliser' bombs that security scanners are now adept at finding.

One expert described making TATP as being 'as easy as baking a cake'. However, another added: 'But it's easy to blow yourself up while you make it.'

More than 20 butane gas canisters were found intact in the Alcanar wreckage. They would have provided a powerful accelerant following any initial terror attack using TATP.

Major Josep Lluis Trapero, head of Catalonia police, said: 'The terrorists were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope.'

Security experts believe the gang, now unable to use the explosives as planned, decided to hire a lorry like the one used to devastating effect in the Nice atrocity two years ago, when 86 people were killed and more than 400 injured.

Mourners light candles at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the victims

But the Barcelona terrorists were forced to change to a smaller van after they were refused permission to rent a heavy vehicle because they did not have the correct driver's licence.

One expert warned last night of a wave of copycat killings in the wake of the Barcelona and Cambrils attacks.

On Friday, a knifeman stabbed two people to death in the streets of Turku, Finland. The teenage suspect is Moroccan, just like the Barcelona terrorists. Two people were in a serious condition and several wounded after a similar attack in Russia yesterday.

Raffaello Pantucci, a terrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute, said: 'The biggest worry now is that when you get an attack, you get a spate of copycat attacks in other cities and countries straight away, like stabbings. We've seen events in Finland and Russia this weekend. So how do you prepare for these kind of attacks?

Stills from video shot by British tourist Fitzroy Davies show chaos as the terrorist, left, taunts police then, right, is targeted by marksmen who take him down from just feet away

'Also, there is now renewed fears that the North Africa region has become a major hub for terrorists. Intelligence experts have feared that for a while but now there is renewed interest in this area as politicians are taking an interest in it. That area is problematic as there are ungoverned spaces there, and also there are governments that seem to be unable to control the terror threats in their countries.'

A British explosives expert said last night that hundreds of tourists would have been killed in Barcelona had the jihadis been able to detonate their huge homemade bomb as originally planned.

Colonel Hamish de Bretton- Gordon, who commanded the British Army's specialist chemical and nuclear warfare regiment, described the fact that the terrorists' plans were thwarted as a 'huge stroke of luck'.

Col de Bretton-Gordon said: 'The house [at Alcanar] was razed to the ground by the blast, which gives us an indication of its power.

The aftermath of the Las Ramblas attack is seen in an aerial view for the first time in this exclusive picture, taken by Briton John Ward from his balcony, just minutes after the terror atrocity. The picture shows: (1) An injured pedestrian being attended to. (2) A body amid the scattered papers of a news-stand. (3) A casualty wrapped in an emergency foil blanket. (4) Medics tending a badly injured person next to the clearly damaged terrorists van. (5) Another covered body; (6) A victim caught up in the horror

Living in fear... Now the barriers go up: Concrete barriers were being put up at resorts across Spain last night. Our picture shows blocks on the promenade at Cambrils, where five terrorists were shot dead

'Had this incident not occurred, the terrorists would in all likelihood gone through with their bid to set off around 20 gas cylinders in the centre of Barcelona.

'That would have caused a huge blast, with possibly hundreds killed and wounded by its force and the dissemination of shrapnel from the exploding cylinders and the vehicles used to transport them. For that to go off in a crowded area would have been truly horrific.

'Thankfully, how this sequence of events played out proves the jihadis are still lacking the expertise to do what they'd like to.

'They've also shown their hand and the security services should gain some vital intelligence.

'Just how they got hold of the TATP plastic explosive is unclear. Personally I doubt they had the skill to make it  more likely they purchased it illegally or stole it in Spain. It could have been smuggled back from the Middle East but the explosive has a limited shelf-life and is rather unstable to transport over long distances.'

'I saw the Cambrils knifeman die in a hail of 15 bullets': British judo star is hit in the left foot by a stray shot as he sees terrorist gunned down

By Andrew Young in Cambrils and Michael Powell in London

Winston Gordon, 40, who has competed for Team GB in three Olympic Games, was hit in the left foot by a stray shot as marksmen gunned down the knife-wielding fanatic

A British judo star has described the dramatic moment he saw armed police bring down a marauding terrorist with a hail of 15 bullets right in front of shocked holidaymakers.

Winston Gordon, 40, who has competed for Team GB in three Olympic Games, was hit in the left foot by a stray shot as marksmen gunned down the knife-wielding fanatic.

Last night Mr Gordon told how the terrorist  wearing what appeared to be an explosive vest over his orange shirt, but which was later discovered to be fake  mocked officers.

Mr Gordon was having a drink at 1am at a Cambrils bar when five terrorists struck, driving an Audi A3 car into a police patrol.

Four were shot at the scene but a fifth escaped and ran 200 yards ran towards the bar.

Recalling the moment, Mr Gordon said: The cops pulled up in front of him and told him to stand still.

But he was still moving and they fired some shots. The guy started moving up and down again. Then there were more shots fired. He went down, but then he got back up. The police told him, Stop, Stop and they fired again.

That was when Mr Roberts was injured.

Something ricocheted and hit my leg. I felt it straight away. It was like something just flew past my leg and cut me. It was just like I had been slashed. The terrifying confrontation in the early hours of Friday at the Spanish seaside town came hours after the atrocity in Barcelona.

Another British holidaymaker, Paige Baty, told how she saw an officer flying through the air after being struck by the Audi as it hit a kerb and flipped over.

As she and other panic-stricken tourists ran for their lives, the attackers clambered from the overturned car and slashed passers-by with knives before a hero policeman brought four of them down in a hail of bullets.

The fifth attacker stabbed seven people, one of whom died, before he was shot dead outside the bar where Mr Gordon was with friends.

The incident was filmed on a smartphone by Mr Gordons friend Fitzroy Davies. It shows the terrorist defiantly taunting police marksmen before he is felled by ten shots. He gets back to his feet before being finished off in a further hail of bullets.

Police said a 61-year-old Spanish woman was stabbed to death while six others, including a female police officer, were injured.

Miss Baty, 24, from Doncaster, told The Mail on Sunday she was 20 yards from the Audi when it mounted the pedestrianised street and rammed the police officer.

Mourners pay respects at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the victims on Barcelona's historic Las Ramblas promenade

The nightclub manager, who was on the last night of her holiday with boyfriend Matthew Haynes, 26, said: We were standing about 20 yards away when the black car sped forwards and knocked over a police officer. I saw the policeman fly through the air.

I was frozen with fear but Matt shouted Run! Everyone around us started running and screaming  it was absolute chaos. I thought we were going to die. It was petrifying.

She and Mr Haynes ran to the marina jetty and dived into a boat to hide. The couple lay there for 90 minutes, shaking with fear and listening to gunfire unsure whether the shots were being fired by police or marauding terrorists.

Miss Baty added: There were loads of really loud gunshots. I thought a gunman had got out of the car and was shooting at people. All I could think was my mum and dad were going to have to get our bodies flown home. I thought we were going to die, the terrorists would catch us hiding and kill us.

We kept as silent and still as possible. We were looking into each others eyes. I thought we are going to die and Im not going to speak to my mum and say goodbye.
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Perus Andean plateau is a place of stark majesty, where golden plains are backed by snow-capped peaks, where skittish vicuna camelids graze, and precipitous Inca farming terraces stretch into the distant hills.

It is also the dramatic backdrop for a journey on South Americas first luxury sleeper train, 16 liveried carriages that rattle through the Altiplano  or High Plains  at a leisurely 20 mph.

The Belmond Andean Explorer launched in May and rumbles between the former Inca capital Cusco and the colonial city of Arequipa, calling at Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world.

All aboard: The Belmond Andean Explorer boasts 16 liveried carriages that trundle through the Altiplano at a leisurely 20mph

It passes some of Perus most breathtaking sights  as the locomotive climbs to a heady 14,000 ft.

An onboard nurse, and oxygen tanks in each of the 25 cabins, are as much a part of the Belmond offering as pisco sours  the zesty cocktail made with Perus national drink, pisco (a kind of brandy)  afternoon tea and three-course meals. This is high altitude in high style.

My journey begins after a day roaming Perus second city Arequipa. At nightfall, I make my way to the tiny restored train station to be greeted by a band, a glass of bubbly and the genial train manager, Javier.

Its a two-night train journey to Cusco, a trip that is also offered in reverse, along with a one-night option between Lake Titicaca and the former Inca capital. The other seven nights are spent in well located Belmond hotels.

The Andean Explorer originally chugged through the Australian coast as the Great South Pacific Express.

Belmond shipped the carriages to Peru where they were given a makeover, keeping original touches such as the wooden parquet floors in the bathrooms and the brass luggage racks.

Top of the planet: The train's route takes in some of Perus most breathtaking sights as the locomotive climbs to a heady altitude of 14,000 ft - including Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake on the planet

The train is light and bright, decorated in creamy hues, with Peruvian touches in the form of bright textiles and historic photographs of Machu Picchu and Cusco.

My double cabin has ivory wood panelling, soft grey throws and crisp white sheets.

There are two restaurant cars, an elegant bar  with baby grand piano  and, from next year, there will be a spa carriage, so you can be pampered and pummelled as you roll along.

My favourite spot is the observation carriage at the back of the train. Half of it is open so you can snap away at the scenery. The other half is the trains second bar.

After a fitful first nights sleep on the moving train, I awake to find the mountainous scenery has been replaced by bustling Puno, the biggest city on Lake Titicaca. Women carry piles of Peruvian textiles and men wobble along the road on bicycles next to my window.

The following morning, there are looming snowy peaks and women in indigenous dress bent double to check on potatoes theyve laid out overnight to freeze and dehydrate, a staple that lasts the harsh winters.

By night, I hold my breath as the train squeezes through another city. Market traders lift produce from the tracks to let it pass before continuing.

A glimpse of the past, firmly moored in the present: The train is light and bright, decorated in creamy hues, with Peruvian touches in the form of bright textiles and historic photographs of Machu Picchu and Cusco

We have plenty of chances to explore. On our first morning, we pull up alongside the shores of Titicaca and zip across on speedboats to visit the floating islands made entirely of totora reeds. Here the indigenous Uru people welcome us into their homes.

An hour away, on the (solid) island of Taquile, locals tell us how they value a man by the quality of his knitting. He may only choose a partner when he can create huge, colourful hats so tightly woven that they can hold water.

Strolling around the sun-baked island, you could almost be in the Mediterranean instead of 12,500ft above sea level.

Back on the train, staff are on hand with cold towels and refreshing juices. Our evenings are spent tucking in to three-course dinners featuring alpaca tortellini and sweet rice pudding with purple corn custard. I even discover a taste for Tacama, a crisp Peruvian sauvignon blanc.

The second night on the train is (blissfully) stationary. Ideal for the early start to visit the Inca ruins of Raqchi, 77 miles from Cusco.

One magnificent red adobe structure  the only remaining wall of the Temple of Wiracocha  still towers at more than 60ft high.

The final stretch of track to Cusco is my favourite. Sunshine illuminates remote farmsteads, locals till the fields, steep green mountainsides are lined with furrows from Inca times. An excited child spots us and waves, a dog chases down the tracks.

Having a window on a world almost unchanged for centuries, and watching it all slip by, pisco sour in hand, really is the only way to travel.
They were the world's first lesbian Bachelor couple who split in February after a whirlwind and high profile romance.

And Tiffany Scanlon has lifted the lid on her breakup with Megan Marx,claiming she 'hooked up' with one of her male exes following their split.

In a candid piece for Mamamia, Tiffany described the alleged incident as 'probably the most disrespectful and hurtful thing that could happen'.

However in a statement to Daily Mail Australia on Saturday, Megan strongly denied Tiffany's claims she 'hooked up' with one of her male exes.

'To me that was probably the most disrespectful and hurtful thing': Tiffany Scanlon says Megan Marx 'hooked up with one of her ex boyfriends' after their split

Tiffany said her breakup with Megan had been eye-opening in more ways in one, not least because of the media scrutiny that surrounded their surprise same sex relationship.

But worst of all was finding out Megan had 'hooked up' with one of her male exes, Tiffany claimed.

'Finding out that one of the risks you run in dating a woman after always dating men is that two of your exs [sic] can hook up,' Tiffany wrote.

Media scrutiny: Tiffany said her breakup with Megan had been eye-opening in more ways in one

Allegation: Worst of all was finding out Megan had 'hooked up' with one of her male exes, Tiffany claimed

'To me that was probably the most disrespectful and hurtful thing that could happen and absolutely decimates any chance of a future friendship with the ex, but I wont go into that. '

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Tiffany for further comment and clarification.

Tiffany also lifted the lid on the three month bout of depression she suffered following her split from Megan.

Reached out: Daily Mail Australia has contacted both Tiffany and Megan for further comment and clarification

Mental health battle: Tiffany also lifted the lid on the three month bout of depression she suffered following her split from Megan

'After overcoming the episode of depression, the past three months has been all about personal growth. Tuning out the rest of the world and tuning into my intuition for guidance and for what truly makes me happy,' she explained.

Tiffany and Megan met while competing for Richie Strahan's affections on The Bachelor in 2016.

The pair became fast friends and later fell in love on a trip to Bali in June and confirmed they were a couple in September after months of speculation.

Still single: Since her split from Megan Tiffany has not revealed she is dating anyone

The busty blonde pair were named Maxim's couple of the year in 2016 and moved to Bali in January to start their own business, however, their relationship fizzled out soon afterwards.

Since their split neither has gone public with any new romances but Megan has documented her use of dating apps on social media.

Meanwhile this week reports surfaced that Bachelor winner Alex Nation had split from Richie and 'found love with a woman', Maegan Luxa.
She's the busy actress and mother who divides her time between Australia and the US

And Teresa Palmer was well and truly in motherhood mode on Friday when she shared a photo of her wrangling her brood - Bodhi Rain, three, Forest Sage, seven months and step-son Isaac, nine, on a chilly Sydney night.

The photo showed the familial foursome, minus husband Mark Webber who took the adorable photo, huddling close and braving the chilly Sydney weather.

Keeping warm: Teresa Palmer was well and truly in motherhood mode on Friday when she shared a photo of her wrangling her brood - Bodhi Rain, three, Forest Sage, seven months and step-son Isaac, nine

Teresa, wrapped in an Australian towel, cradled a sleeping Forest in her arms while Bodhi hid behind a bunch of towels as he sat in a pram.

Isaac, meanwhile, was sporting a broad grin similar to his step-mum's as he grabbed onto her hand for extra warmth.

Aside from the towels draped around her shoulders, Teresa wore a pair of form fitting leggings and a pair of white sneakers.

The photo showed the familial foursome, minus husband Mark Webber who took the adorable photo, huddling close and braving the chilly Sydney weather

Teresa and gang had just set foot back in Australia when the photo was taken and despite being 'overly tired' she looked overjoyed to be in Sydney.

'Sometimes all it takes after a day of travel chaos and an unexpected stopover with 3 overly tired kids, is some dollar store bough touristy towels, some gale-force winds adventuring, a s**tload of patience and finally everybody's laughing (or sleeping),' she captioned the post.

'Woah, you make it look so easy,' one follower noted while another chimed in with: 'Your positive thinking is great. You made the best of every situation.'

Teresa and gang had just set foot back in Australia when the photo was taken and despite being 'overly tired' she looked overjoyed to be in Sydney

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia recently, Teresa said that despite dividing her time between Los Angeles and Australia, she still calls Australia home.

'We have a home there. We split our time between America and Adelaide. I love it, it's familiar, it's my home,' she said.

The Lights Out star continued: 'My family is there. The kids have a school up in the Adelaide hills. It's just our comfort place, we go there to recharge'.

Teresa and Mark's love first blossomed on Twitter and the pair began writing emailing each other while on opposite sides of the US.

They eventually married in an intimate ceremony in Mexico in 2013 before welcoming Bodhi and Forrest into the world in 2014 and 2016 respectively. She is also stepmother to Mark's son Isaac who he shares with actress Frankie Shaw.
Johnny Ruffo's manager Claire McLennan thanked fans for their support after he recently revealed he was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer.

In a statement to Daily Mail Australia, the CMC Talent agent said the former Home And Away actor, 29, and his family are grateful for the support from his followers and well wishers.

'Johnny is staying positive through this battle and has the amazing support of his family, friends and of course all of you (his fans).'

Staying strong: In a statement to Daily Mail Australia Johnny Ruffo's manager Claire McLennan has thanked fans to 'keep him in your thoughts and prayers' after he revealed he was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer

'Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers,' she added.

Speaking to Yahoo7 Be Friday, Claire said that Johnny is with his family at the moment.

'He's gotten so much support from everyone and it's just been lovely - there are still good people in this world.'

Claire went on to explain the former X-Factor contestant is, 'trying to 'keep positive' in the 'awful situation'.

She said: 'It's scary and frightening this one. Especially for anyone going through this.'

Support: Claire said 'Johnny is staying positive through this battle and has the amazing support of his family, friends and of course all of you (his fans)'

Family time: She went on to explain the former X-Factor contestant is, 'trying to 'keep positive' in the 'awful situation'

Last Thursday, Johnny took to Instagram to reveal he was starting 'aggressive' treatment for brain cancer.

'It was a bit of a shock and I've got an interesting journey ahead and a bit of a battle,' the actor wrote.

'I am starting aggressive treatment for the next few months to fight the diagnosis of brain cancer. Please stay positive for me and I'll try to update you guys on my progress.'

The X-Factor Australia star told Daily Mail Australia that he went to hospital on the Sunday, with a migraine, before being rushed into surgery.

She added: 'It's scary and frightening this one. Especially for anyone going through this'

Reaching out: Claire is the latest in a large group stars and personalities who have reached out and including Taylor Henderson

Since the shock announcement, Australian stars and personalities who have reached out and sent their well wishes to former Home and Away star after he revealed he has brain cancer.

'We're all here for you. I can't believe what I'm reading mate,' former X-Factor Australia star Taylor wrote on Thursday evening.

'It's just not sinking in. We're all here for you Johnny and without a doubt... we're all praying for you. Look after yourself big fella!'

Miranda Kerr's mother, Therese, meanwhile commented: 'Sending you so much love and healing energy, gorgeous soul!'
Elisabeth Moss responded to a comment about Scientology on Tuesday, and it did not go over well with fans.

The Golden Globe winning actress, who currently plays Offred in the hit show The Handmaid's Tale, surprised followers by responding to a fan's question about Scientology on Instagram.

The exchange occurred in the comment section of a picture the 35-year-old former Mad Men star posted on Tuesday.

Rare: Elisabeth Moss, 35, surprised followers by responding to a fan's question about Scientology on Instagram

In the snap, the blonde beauty poses for the camera in a white and navy blue sailor-style dress which sported a large bow at the neck. She appears to be on a rooftop somewhere in LA.

'Last Handmaids Tale season 1 event until the Emmys,' gushed the actress 'thank you for coming out everyone last night, your love and support of the show means more to us than I'll ever be able to express in words. Truly. And now we get to go work on bringing you season 2!!! Which by the way is going to blow your minds...'

While the post initially garnered positive words, Instagram user @moeleybanks decided to ask a question which compared Gilead, the authoritarian state depicted in the Handmaid's Tale, to Scientology.

'Love this adaptation so much. Question though, does it make you think twice about scientology?' asked @moeleybanks. 'Gilead and Scientology both believe that all outside sources (aka news) are wrong and evil it's just very interesting.'

Passionate: While Elisabeth usually avoids talking about her religion, apparently she couldn't help but respond to the question

Critical success: Elisabeth currently plays Offred in the hit show The Handmaid's Tale

While Elisabeth usually avoids talking about her religion, apparently she couldn't help but respond to the question.

'@Moeleybanks That's actually not true at all about Scientology,' declared the actress.

'Religious freedom and tolerance and understanding the truth and equals rights for every race, religion and creed are extremely important to me. The most important things to me probably. And so Gilead and THT hit me on a very personal level. Thanks for the interesting question!'

Other commentors were not as gracious however, and many seized on the opportunity to air their grievances about Elisabeth's association with the controversial faith.

Accomplished: Elisabeth won a Golden Globe for her work in Top Of The Lake (seen here with co-star Nicole Kidman)

@wijodo posed the question 'were you able to channel all the rage and anger you had towards Serena Joy and Gilead for ripping your family apart by thinking of all of the families Scientology has ripped apart?'

@kimchantal84 added 'So beautiful and I love the HMT! I can appreciate what drew you too this role. However, I also wonder if there are aspects to Scientology that are harmful to people of less privilege? It is hard to deny at this point.'

Of course Elisabeth's membership in the Church has come under fire before, such as when King of Queens star Leah Remini 47, told the Hollywood Reporter that her friendship with younger actress was now strained after Leah left the organization.

'Elisabeth Moss believes that she can't talk to me,' Remini, 47, told the publication on August 9. 'There's a thing in Scientology called 'acceptable truth.' It means you only say what's acceptable to the public. But she believes that I'm an antisocial personality  because I've spoke out against Scientology. So she isn't allowed to talk to me. And me knowing that, I wouldn't put her in the awkward position.'
She recently suffered a mild concussion on the set of Isn't It Romantic.

And after bouncing back, Rebel Wilson appears to be leaving the stunts to the experts.

On Friday, the 37-year-old actress took to Instagram to give credit to her stand-in and stunt double.

'Thanks for kicking a** and sweating with me!' Actress Rebel Wilson took to Instagram to give credit to her stand-in Anastasia and stunt double Meredith for their work on the set of her upcoming romantic comedy Isn't It Romantic

She captioned her post: 'Love to my stand-in Anastasia & stunt-y Meredith! Kicking ass and sweating with me on Isn't It Romantic x.'

Fans of the actress shared their excitement for the film, which is set for release on Valentines Day, 2019.

Meanwhile a follower praised her for acknowledging and appreciating her stand-in and stunt double on her social media.

'How fantastic you recognize them for their work! First time I have ever seen this,' they said.

The 37-year-old actress captioned her post 'Love to my stand-in Anastasia & stunt-y Meredith! Kicking ass and sweating with me on Isn't It Romantic x' (pictured with her stunt double on set in Queens, New York)

Another wrote: 'Ah! So cute! I love your posts about your team!! So great!'

She revealed on her Instagram that she was rushed to hospital suffering a mild concussion following a fall.

'Started the day with a fall that led to a mild concussion... yet somehow looking not bad at 7pm', she wrote.

'First time I have ever seen this': A follower praised her for acknowledging and appreciating her stand-in and stunt double on her social media in the film. They said 'How fantastic you recognize them for their work!'

'Thank you to everyone on Long Island who helped me today in the emergency room & ambulance x,' Rebel added.

In the film, she stars opposite heartthrob Liam Hemsworth and Pitch Perfect co-star Adam DeVine in the romantic comedy, set in New York.

Isn't It Romantic follows Rebel's character Natalie - a woman who has become jaded about love, but finds herself trapped in a romantic comedy.
Kourtney Kardashian showed off a bit of her enviably trim midriff as she stepped out in Calabasas on Friday in a slinky black sleeveless top.

Strips of lacy fabric sloped down from the straps, over her cleavage and to the neckline, and she'd matched the top with black cat-eye sunglasses.

The 38-year-old mother-of-three had slicked her hair back and wound it into a ponytail, letting a casually-slung-on white jacket slide off her shoulders.

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On the go: Kourtney Kardashian showed off a bit of her enviably trim midriff as she stepped out in Calabasas on Friday in a slinky black sleeveless top

Her high-waisted sky blue jeans were faded and featured tears over the knees, and she'd folded up the hems above the ankle, providing a full view of her black stilettos.

Kourtney posted an Instagram photo that day of her sitting in an ornate alfresco setting, elaborate lanterns behind her and massive floral-patterned pillars nearby.

She herself was sitting at a white-clothed table as a man in a white dress shirt and black trousers reached over, about to place a small plate in front of the reality star.

Smoldering: Strips of lacy fabric sloped down from the straps, over her cleavage and to the neckline, and she'd matched the top with black cat-eye sunglasses

Summery: The 38-year-old mother-of-three had slicked her hair back and wound it into a ponytail, letting a casually-slung-on white jacket slide off her shoulders

The firstborn child of Kris Jenner wrote: 'green tea with almond milk and honey, please,' in the caption to the photo, which follows several photos she's uploaded reminiscing about an Egyptian holiday she's enjoyed with her beau Younes Bendjima.

Algerian-born Younes happens to be only 23 years old, and was spotted with 18-year-old Sofia Richie - daughter of Lionel - this week in Los Angeles, where the pair of them sat smiling together at a table and hugged before parting ways in a parking lot.

Kourtney's got three children by her on-and-off paramour Scott Disick, her firstborn Mason's 2009 birth having been immortalized on Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

Step lively: Her high-waisted sky blue jeans were faded and featured tears over the knees, and she'd folded up the hems above the ankle, providing a full view of her black stilettos

The co-parents welcomed their now four-year-old daughter Penelope into the world in 2012, and Kourtney gave birth to her youngest child, a son called Reign, in 2014.

Kourtney and Scott, who'd been introduced in 2006 by Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis in Mexico, last ended their romantic relationship in July of 2015.

As she holidayed in Cannes with Younes recently, Scott infamously was also seen in the South Of France with a string of women including Bella Thorne and Chloe Bartoli.
She recently spent a well deserved vacation in Greece with her fiance DJ Ruckus, and stopped by Sydney to strut the catwalks.

And on Friday, Shanina Shaik headed back to New York for work.

Taking to Instagram, the 26-year-old looked refreshed despite all her jet setting as she posed braless in a mirror selfie.

Feeling Nippy? On Friday, Shanina Shaik greeted her Instagram fans to a braless morning bathroom selfie

'Goodmorning bathroom selfie #newyork,' she wrote.

Shanina flaunted her toned, tanned and taut torso in a white cropped singlet and opted for no bra.

She paired her ensemble with figure hugging denim jeans than showcased her lean and toned legs.

Toned: Shanina flaunted her taut torso in a white cropped singlet and opted for no bra

Stunner: Recently revealing she'd been working on her skincare regimen, the stunner flaunted her fresh and luminious no-makeup face

Pouting with the duck face, the Victoria's Secret model also had one eye shut for the picture.

Recently revealing she'd been working on her skincare regimen, the stunner flaunted her fresh and luminious no-makeup face.

Shanina was also seen using the Kim Kardashain promoted lumee case on her phone.

Natural beauty:Earlier in the week, Shanina was seen lavishly holidaying in Mykonos, Greece

Earlier in the week, Shanina was seen lavishly holidaying in Mykonos, Greece.

Taking to Instagram, the stunner was spotted in a purple striped dress with matching uniquely shaped sunglasses.

'Bad B**ch with a suntan,' she captioned.
The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is a dream gig for aspiring models.

And on Friday, Abby Champion gave it her all at an audition for the lingerie brand at their 2017 runway auditions in New York City.

The 5ft11in stunner, whose boyfriend is Patrick Schwarzenegger, strut her stuff outside of the audition as she held on to her portfolio.

Hopeful: Model Abby Champion attended the 2017 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show casting call in New York City on Friday

The leggy 20-year-old appeared to be getting some pre-audition practice, pounding the NYC sidewalk in a pair of short black boots.

Abby sported a sheer black bodysuit with a pair of tiny denim shorts over it as her blonde locks caught wind and made her look every bit the supermodel.

After the audition, she posted, 'So happy today along with a photo of herself to Instagram, to which her 23-year-old boyfriend commented: 'Go ahead now baby.'

Runway ready: The leggy 20-year-old clutched her portfolio as she walked the NYC streets

Experienced: Champion has posted many bikini and lingerie-clad modelling photos on Instagram

It is yet to be announced if Champion has been chosen as a model for the yearly spectacle, which usually films in late November and airs on CBS in December.

If chosen, she has shown that she already has plenty of experience posing in lingerie and bikini sets, as seen on her Instagram.

Abby was seen auditioning to be part of 2016's show, though she didn't get the gig, she did land an ad campaign for the brand's VS Pink line.

Casual cool: She sported a sheer black bodysuit with Daisy Dukes and black boots for the gig

Hire me: Abby proudly shows off this black two-piece in an Instagram photo from May 12

Abby and Patrick are often seen enjoying lunch dates and spend a lot of time working out together so they keep in tip-top shape.

They have taken their relationship to the next level, with Abby already joining in on the Schwarzenegger's family holidays as she jetted off to Mexico with them last year.

Patrick is the third of four children the Terminator star Arnold, 69, shares with estranged wife Maria Shriver, 61.

Natural beauty: The blue-eyed stunner wore minimal makeup for the important audition

Green with envy: Champion is signed to Next Model Management and showed her company some love in this June 8 post

As for his career, Patrick is taking a leaf out of his dad's book as he starred in two movies this year.

Go North hit cinemas in January and his latest film Midnight Sun will be released later in July.

For Midnight Sun, Patrick slips into the role of a man who falls in love with a sheltered teen, played by Bella Thorne, who has a rare disease and the couple embark on a summer romance.

Young love: She and boyfriend Patrick Schwarzenegger have been dating since early 2016
Action-movie actor Sonny Landham, who starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Eighties cult classic Predator, has died aged 76.

The actor, who also starred in 48 Hrs, was known for his brawny physique, gruff voice and daring stunts.

His sister, Dawn Boehler, said the actor died from heart failure at a hospital in Kentucky, U.S, on Thursday.

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Cult classic: Action-movie actor Sonny Landham, who starred alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Eighties cult classic Predator, has died aged 76

The star also played a bit part in Walter Hill's 1979 street-gang thriller 'The Warriors' before the director cast him as the trigger-happy criminal Billy Bear in 1982's '48 Hrs.'

Sonny, who had Native American roots, was best known for playing the tracker Billy Sole in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film 'Predator.'

He entered the movie business after working in pornography in the 1970s and later attempted a political career.

The star had a son, William, and daughter, Priscilla who he leaves behind.

In his hey day: The star also played a bit part in Walter Hill's 1979 street-gang thriller 'The Warriors' before the director cast him as the trigger-happy criminal Billy Bear in 1982's '48 Hrs'

Starring in the classic sci-fi flick, Predators, Sonny battled against an alien prowling the earth hunting humans for sport alongside Arnie and Rocky franchise star Carl Weathers.

In one scene, he drew blood from his own chest with a machete in an act of machismo - famously revealing afterwards that he wagered Arnold $100 he would really cut himself for the shoot.

The film was so successful is spawned two sequels; Predator 2 in 1990 and Predators some twenty years later.

Plus a further two spin-offs with the Alien franchise; Alien vs Predator and Alien vs Predator: Requiem. While a new film The Predator is set for release next year.

Fans of the famous film flocked to Twitter to express their condolences, with one fan saying: 'Rest In Peace to Billy from PREDATOR who was great!'

And another adding: 'RIP Billy Landham - Rock Heaven like your rocked the jungles of Val Verde.'
She attended the opening night of Hamilton on Wednesday.

And three days later, Paris Jackson stepped out with a friend for a casual lunch at Joan's On Third in Studio City.

The 19-year-old sported a colorful T-shirt with ripped jeans and no makeup for her afternoon outing.

Paris Jackson stepped out with a friend for a casual lunch at Joan's On Third in Studio City on Friday

The model and her friend were spotted heading to and from the popular lunch spot.

Paris donned a sun emblazoned T-shirt, adding distressed boyfriend jeans.

The daughter of Micheal Jackson hit the pavement in Converse sneakers.

The actress chose to go makeup free and opted to leave her short locks loose.

Smiling ear to ear: The 19-year-old sported a colorful T-shirt with ripped jeans and no makeup for her afternoon outing

Good day: The model and her gal pal were spotted heading to and from the popular lunch spot

On Wednesday, Paris joined A-listers at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood for the opening night of Hamilton.

Stars like Jessica Alba, Kate Beckinsale, Jimmy Kimmel, Eva Longoria and Halle Berry were also in attendance.

Paris kept it casual in a khaki patterned dress and sandals for the award winning musical.

On Wednesday, Paris joined A-listers at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood for the opening night of Hamilton.

Giddy: Paris kept it casual in a khaki patterned dress and sandals for the award winning musical; pictured on Wednesday outside the theater

On Sunday, Paris Jackson stunned on the blue carpet for the Teen Choice Awards.

The brunette beauty wowed in a Zimmerman floral frock that featured a pretty pattern and a pleated skirt.

She chose understated makeup - brown eye shadow and nude lipstick.

Wow: On Sunday, Paris Jackson stunned on the blue carpet for the Teen Choice Awards
She is newly-single after reportedly splitting from long-term beau Gary Salter.

So Vanessa White is undoubtedly keen to focus on new pastures, which is perfect after her alleged signing to the forthcoming series I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!

Sources tell MailOnline the 27-year-old Saturdays star is 'up for the challenge' after whipping herself into fantastic shape - making her a perfect fit for the legendary 'jungle shower'.

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Stunner: Vanessa White is undoubtedly keen to focus on new pastures, which is perfect after her alleged signing to the forthcoming series I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here as sources tell The Sun he is the latest sign-up

'Vanessa has a lot of offers coming through as she's looking so great and her solo music is impressive and still a big focus for her.

'She's up for the challenge of doing the show as she's now single and it would be such a great way of showcasing her personality to the public since she's usually so low key. Plus she's constantly training so her bikini body would look insane on TV.'

Vanessa has had a busy time of late, working on solo material and moving on from her six-year relationship with boyfriend Gary Salter.

Stunner: The 27-year-old Saturdays star is said to be a 'an exciting signing' for ITV bosses, who are known to pepper the show with stunning additions who often catch the eye under the legendary 'jungle shower'

Stunners: A source told The Sun: 'Vanessa is a stunning girl from a massive girl band so shes an exciting first signing for Im A Celebrity. Shes still focusing on her music career but is up for the challenge since being newly single' (pictured second right with The Saturdays in 2010)

An insider close to the pop star told The Sun: 'Vanessa is a stunning girl from a massive girl band so shes an exciting first signing for Im A Celebrity. Shes still focusing on her music career but is up for the challenge since being newly single.'

Stars to sizzle in the jungle include Katie Price, Vicky Pattison, Ferne McCann, Stacey Solomon, Amy Willerton and most memorably Myleene Klass.

The 39-year-old former pop star made 'the jungle shower' the stuff of legend after she famously showed off her stunning figure in a tiny white bikini.

After Vanessa launched her solo career, news of the split hit, when insiders insisted they remain 'good friends' after the break-up - which had been brought on by conflicting working schedules, with Vanessa releasing new music.

A source told MailOnline that she had ended things amicably with her beau, revealing: 'It was a hard decision for them to make, but they agreed it would be the best thing to do.'

The pair had first got together in 2011 after being introduced by friends at a party, when The Saturdays star was just 21.

Hitting out: After the stunner launched her solo career, news of the split hit, when insiders insisted they remain 'good friends' after the break-up - which had been brought on by conflicting working schedules, with Vanessa releasing new music

Having a laugh: Stars to sizzle in the jungle include Katie Price, Vicky Pattison, Ferne McCann, (pictured) Stacey Solomon, Amy Willerton and most memorably Myleene Klass

Iconic: The 39-year-old former pop star made 'the jungle shower' the stuff of legend after she famously showed off her stunning figure in a tiny white bikini

Her appearance comes hot-on-the-heels of news her bandmate Mollie King's signing to Strictly Come Dancing. Mollie is the latest in a long line of glamorous musicians to have entered the show during its 14 series run so far.

A show insider told The Sun: 'Mollie is all signed up and will be this year's Strictly babe.'

They continued: 'She's a talented performer because of all her experience with The Saturdays and her solo career - so she's someone who is very likely to make it to the final rounds.'
Megan Marx has criticised the show that put her on the map.

In a scathing blog post Friday, the former Bachelor star sided with a number of social media users who believed the show 'sl*t-shamed' two contestants.

'This particular episode shows that sl*t-shaming is only a representation of our wider culture,' she wrote, following former topless waitress Leah Costa's eviction.

Scathing! In a scathing blog post Friday, former Bachelor star Megan Marx sided with a number of social media users who believed the show 'sl*t-shamed' two contestants

The former contestant, who shared a brief relationship with cast mate Tiffany Scanlon after show wrapped, admitted she hadn't seen the new season yet.

'(But) one girl was sent home partly due to her history working as a topless entertainer,' she said.

Since the episode aired, Megan said she's been 'inundated with memes and comments,' making fun of Leah and Simone Ormesher's former profession.

Slammed: 'This particular episode shows that sl*t-shaming is only a representation of our wider culture,' she wrote, following former topless waitress Leah Costa's eviction

'Sl*t-shaming is a very powerful tool': '(The comments) clearly make fun of a woman who from what I understand, is very comfortable with her body and with her past,' she added

'(The comments) clearly make fun of a woman who from what I understand, is very comfortable with her body and with her past,' she added.

'Sl*t-shaming is a very powerful tool,' the socialite insisted.

'In "reality" group environments, women are viewed as competitive, malicious and backstabbing; and men are viewed as having mateship, and good humour.'

'Men, can you see the disparity?': 'In group environments, women are viewed as competitive, malicious and backstabbing; and men are viewed as having mateship, and good humour'

Opening-up about her religious upbringing, Megan said that when puberty approached, she experienced 'repressive, antiquated gendered rules.'

'Men, can you see the disparity?' She asked.

'When it comes to sex, a future/ current partners consensual engagement in sex/ sexual behaviour in the past is none of your business, and vice versa.'

Escape! In conclusion, the reality star asked: 'lets escape this gender-based double standard and stop with the sl*t-shaming'

In conclusion, the reality star asked: 'lets escape this gender-based double standard and stop with the sl*t-shaming.'

In a statement this week, The Bachelor's production company claimed: 'Matty explained to Leah that he did not send her home based on her background...'

'...But because of her general behaviour with the other Bachelorettes, ensuing drama in the house, and because he could not see a future relationship developing between them.'
He spent last weekend celebrating his birthday on a private island with his wife Elsa Pataky, 41, and some friends.

And on Saturday, Chris Hemsworth was back to the grind, shooting an exclusive commercial for pay TV giants, Foxtel.

Spotted at Sydney's Castlecrag, the 34-year-old was dressed in casual clothes as he waited for the director to start the scene.

Back to work: On Saturday, Chris Hemsworth was spotted shooting an exclusive commercial for pay TV giants, Foxtel

Chris wore a plain navy blue t-shirt with a grey coloured cardigan over the top.

Standing on a footpath, the Thor actor teamed his look with a black pair of pants.

The star was also seen in closed laced-up footwear for the shoot.

Casual: Chris wore a plain navy blue t-shirt with a grey coloured cardigan over the top

Bonding: In another picture, the former Home And Away star was seen chatting to a rugged up crew member while standing at the boot of a heavily packed car

In another shot, Chris was seen waiting around with camera and crew members.

Sporting a scuffed beard and effortlessly styled hair, Chris looked calm as he waited his time.

In another picture, the former Home And Away star was seen chatting to a rugged up staff member while standing at the boot of a heavily packed car.

Birthday boy! Last weekend, Chris and Elsa jetted to Orpheus Island to celebrate his 34th birthday

Last weekend, Chris and Elsa jetted to Orpheus Island to celebrate his 34th birthday.

Taking to Instagram, the actor shared a collection of photos from his short but lavish adventure, declaring it was one the best weekends in his life.

The pictures showed the Byron Bay residents partake in activities such as snorkeling rock climbing and stand-up paddle boarding while showing off the stunning picturesque landscape.
She just recently finished a shoot that saw her don some very risque cowboy-themed lingerie.

But on Friday Adriana Lima looked downright conservative as she and boyfriend Metin Hara arrived at JFK airport in New York.

The 36-year-old mother of two kept things quite low-key thanks to her long white sweater, which fell past her waist.

Basic: On Friday Adriana Lima looked downright conservative as she and boyfriend Metin Hara arrived at JFK airport in New York

A pair of black sport leggings did offer up an impression of the Victoria's Secret Angel's sculpted gams.

Black sneakers with white soles finished off her demure outfit.

Curiously, the garb seems to be the stunner's normal travel uniform, as she was spotted at LAX wearing the exact same ensemble earlier in the week.

Though she was surrounded by luggage, it seems the Brazilian stunner could've done with a bag of her own, as she instead had to carry her phone, wallet and another item in her left hand.

Flattering: A pair of black sport leggings did offer up an impression of the Victoria's Secret Angel's sculpted gams

Fresh: Her brunette locks were tightly pulled back into a messy bun, while eye-liner, subtle blush and pale rose lipstick ensured the model was glowing after her flight

She hung a pair of aviator sunglasses off the front of her shirt, and a black choker rounded out her selection of accessories.

Her brunette locks were tightly pulled back into a messy bun, while eye-liner, subtle blush and pale rose lipstick ensured the model was glowing after her flight.

Boyfriend Metin Hara seemed to take his style cues from his fashionable significant other, as he also kept things sartorially simple.

Nothing fancy: Boyfriend Metin Hara seemed to take his style cues from his fashionable significant other, as he also kept things sartorially simple

The sometime healer wore a black Adidas zip up over a black shirt on top, and some grey jeans below.

He also wore black and white sneakers, very similar to Adriana's.

The model was first spotted enjoying a romantic yacht excursion with her Turkish writer beau Metin in his home country last month.

Seeing double! Curiously, the garb seems to be the stunner's normal travel uniform, as she was spotted at LAX wearing the exact same ensemble earlier in the week

Speaking of their romance, Metin told the Daily Sabah newspaper: 'I met Adriana in Istanbul on June 11.'

'We realized that we have feelings for each other. Both of us are still getting to know one another.'

Adriana's new romance follows her split with New England Patriots star Julian Edelman, 31, in February, earlier this year, after seven months of dating.
The death of Deadpool 2 stunt woman Joi 'SJ' Harris was a freak, low-speed accident according to a new report.

Details of an investigation report by WorkSafeBC were released by Deadline on Friday as it suggests that the stunt may not have been that difficult.

The document says: 'A temporary worksite had been setup to record a film scene for a movie production. The site had been cordoned off from general public and traffic by the Vancouver Police Department.

Tragic accident: The death of Deadpool 2 stunt woman Joi 'SJ' Harris was a freak, low-speed accident according to an investigation report by WorkSafeBC was released by Deadline on Friday

'The worker had been rehearsing a stunt scene that involved driving a motorcycle, Dictate 939 Hyperstrada, out of the open doors of a building, across a concrete pad and down a ramp that had been built over three stairs and coming to a stop on the stair landing.'

It goes on to say that during the initial shooting of the scene Harris continued driving beyond the planned stopping spot on the stairway landing and continued to drive down a second ramp which was built over the bottom stairs and across the road.

It concluded: 'The motorcycle struck the concrete sidewalk curb, the worker was thrown off the motorcycle and propelled through a plate glass window of a building.'

Sad: Pictured is a police officer photographing the motorcycle after the incident occured during filming in Vancouver, British Columbia on Monday

The Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia (WorkSafeBC) is the equivalent of the US government's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

This comes just a day after actress Zazie Beetz paid tribute to stuntwoman Joi 'SJ' Harris after she died in a tragic motorcycle accident on the set of Deadpool 2 on Monday.

The actress, 26, has broken her silence to mourn the loss of the stunt double and send her friends and family 'peace and healing'.

In a handwritten letter posted on Instagram on Wednesday, Zazie wrote: 'On Monday we tragically lost one of our own - Joi SJ Harris. My heart has been breaking the past two days and I have been searching what to say or do.

'My heart has been breaking': This comes after actress Zazie Beetz paid tribute to the stuntwoman after she died in a tragic motorcycle accident on the set of Deadpool 2

'I know that what I feel is nothing compared to what her loved ones, friends + family, are feeling.

'My heart and my love goes out to her and them all. The cast and crew send peace, healing, and their deepest condolences.'

Joi was dressed as Zazie's character Domino when she lost control of her powerful Ducati motorcycle on the set in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Monday.

She had previously successfully completed the stunt, but on the final, and fatal run, something went wrong and she was catapulted off the bike, crashing through a plate glass window at Shaw Tower.

Pouring her heart out: The actress, 26, has broken her silence to mourn the loss of the stunt double and send her friends and family 'peace and healing'

A professional motorbike racer from New York, she was on her first movie as a stunt double and was not wearing a crash helmet.

In the 911 call recording dispatchers can be heard discussing the accident, saying Harris hit a curb before being thrown through the air and 'hasn't been moving' since.

The call audio emerged as one witness told Deadline that Harris had not been wearing a helmet during the crash because the character she was portraying, Domino, was not supposed to be wearing one.

Haunting Facebook posts also revealed Harris's final excited messages to friends when she arrived in Vancouver on Saturday to start shooting her first movie.

Ryan Reynolds, who plays Deadpool, also paid tribute to Joi on social media on Monday.

Scene: In the 911 call recording dispatchers can be heard discussing the accident, saying Harris hit a curb before being thrown through the air and 'hasn't been moving' since

'Today, we tragically lost a member of our crew while filming Deadpool,' the actor, 40, wrote.

'Were heartbroken, shocked, devastated but recognize nothing can come close to the grief and inexplicable pain her family and loved ones must feel in this moment.

'My heart pours out to them - along with each and every person she touched in this world.'

Filming resumed on the movie on Wednesday with the cast and crew observing a moment of silence.

Reynolds looked pale and disheveled as he sported his iconic red and black superhero suit.
The beautiful fiancee of The Bachelor's Tim Robards graced the latest cover of Cosmopolitan Bride.

And as Anna Heinrich continues to plan her upcoming nuptials, she took to Instagram with a sneaky post reminding fans of her bridal shoot for the magazine.

On Saturday, the 30-year-old posted a picture in front of a magazine stand, where she had cheekily re-arranged her cover to a more prominent position.

'How it should be': Anna Heinrich cheekily re-arranges her cover of Cosmopolitan Bride at the shops... as she for wedding gowns in exclusive fashion shoot

Bride-to-be! Anna became engaged to her Bachelor beau Tim Robards in May after meeting on the matchmaking series four years ago

Anna placed the gorgeous cover in front of rival magazines, writing: 're-arranging things... How it should be.'

The issue features an exclusive eight-page fashion shoot, as it documents the reality star shopping for her wedding gown.

The blonde lawyer previously gushed about the cover on social media: 'I'M A BRIDE.... well, almost! ;) To be asked to shoot the cover of was such an amazing honour.'

Bride to be! In the latest issue of Cosmopolitan Bride, Anna Heinrich stuns on the cover and in an exclusive eight-page fashion shoot, as the magazine documents her shopping for her wedding gown

'I'd never tried on a wedding dress before, so this was such a special moment for me. If there are any bride-to-be's out there, I hope you love it, and pick up a copy,' she added.

Inside the exclusive fashion shoot, Anna is pictured wearing an array of glamorous gowns, including a a long-sleeved chiffon number and a ballerina-inspired gown with full chiffon tulle and long sleeved bodice.

Anna and Tim met four years ago on the set of Australia's inaugural season of The Bachelor, with Tim recently proposing to Anna during a holiday in May.

Planning ahead: Anna has been busy planning her upcoming nuptials

Anna debuted her impressive diamond sparkler on her social media page by uploading a photo of bikini-clad self beaming alongside her man as they floated in a boat.

In May last year, Anna and Tim took their relationship to the next level by purchasing an investment property worth $630,000 in the eastern suburbs of Brisbane together.

Meanwhile, the pair have been living comfortably in Sydney's affluent suburb of Bondi since 2014, when Anna moved into Tim's swanky beach-side apartment.

Read more on Anna's wedding gowns in this July's issue of Cosmopolitan Brides
Roxy Jacenko has been busy all week preparing for her daughter's sixth birthday bash.

And the 37-year-old PR maven stepped away from the party planning to visit the Joh Bailey hair salon in Double Bay to have her hair styled ahead of the Saturday night event.

After having her do tended to, she sauntered her way across the street holding down the skirt of her slinky, black wrap, maxi dress that featured a high split.

In flight! Roxy Jacenko had to stop strong winds from blowing her black, wrap dress up and exposing her toned legs

Channeling Marilyn Monroe? Roxy's wardrobe malfunction brought to mind Marilyn Monroe in the film Seven Year Itch

Strong winds forced the publicist to hold down the skirt down to stop from exposing further up her toned legs, and perhaps her underwear.

Roxy's wardrobe malfunction brought to mind the infamous 'subway grate' scene in Seven Year Itch, which shows Hollywood Icon Marilyn Monroe struggling to hold down her dress in a gust of air.

The PR maven's hair already looked styled albeit a little tussled, her large blonde waves laying across her shoulders.

She also looked freshly tanned, her skin a bright, glowing bronzed tone all over.

Marilyn moment! Strong winds forced the publicist to hold down the skirt down

Stylish: The PR maven's hair already looked styled albeit a little tussled, her large blonde waves laying across her shoulders

The frock's neckline was cut low in a cross wrap style, and clung to the beauty's ample bust, as well as revealing a glimpse of her tanned, slimmed chest.

Roxy held in her hand a wallet, and keys with a large, fluffy key ring attached.

She completed her casual look with a pair of large sunglasses, black flip flops and appeared to be in quite a hurry.

Glowing: She also looked freshly tanned, her skin a bright, glowing bronzed tone all over

Styled up! The frock's neckline was cut low in a cross wrap style, and clung to the beauty's ample bust, as well as revealing a glimpse of her tanned, slimmed chest

The owner of Sweaty Betty PR has been in party planner mode for Pixie's sixth birthday.

It will be the second celebration, as on Wednesday Pixie had a smaller, intimate family celebration.

Pixie was also treated to a special birthday breakfast with her father Oliver Curtis and brother Hunter, with several giant balloons, flowers and a huge pile of presents.
She welcomed daughter Luna with husband John Legend in April of 2016.

And on Friday, Chrissy Teigen brought her 16-month-old to a Becca Cosmetics event in Malibu, California.

The 31-year-old held her daughter in her hands as she flashed her legs in the playful Boomerang video.

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Cheeky: Chrissy Teigen held her daughter Luna in her hands as she flashed her leg in the playful Boomerang video

The model looked gorgeous in an asymmetrical striped purple and white dress with a denim jacket.

Chrissy added nude strappy heels and also chunky earrings.

The mother of one style her locks sleek with just a touch of makeup.

While inside the venue, Chrissy asked her daughter to do 'daddy's eyes' - which she did by giving a serious expression.

Absolutely adorable: While inside the venue, Chrissy asked her daughter to do 'daddy's eyes' - which she did by giving a serious expression

Looking good: The model looked gorgeous in an asymmetrical striped purple and white dress with a denim jacket

Luna looked absolutely adorable in her pineapple emblazoned top.

John was also on hand at the event, as was Chrissy's mom Vilailuck Teigen.

Chrissy added a Snapchat filter, which digitally adds antennas, ears and a nose to both of their faces.

She filmed her daughter as she enjoyed spinach chips, which ended up all over her.

What a pretty baby! Chrissy added a Snapchat filter, which digitally adds antennas, ears and a nose to both of their faces

Enjoying a healthy treat: She filmed her daughter as she enjoyed spinach chips, which ended up all over her face

Enjoying the day: John was also on hand at the event, as was Chrissy's mom Vilailuck Teigen

Earlier this month, she enjoyed a family holiday in Venice with John Legend and Luna.

During their Italy trip, Chrissy had her 'entire cleavage hanging out' while posing in the Piazza San Marco.

The TV personality revealed the reason for of her recent wardrobe malfunction was Luna, who 'broke both of my buttons' and 'ripped them off and threw them to the side,' she told People.

Chrissy added that she felt 'like I haven't gotten the chance to explain. Kids don't care.'

No big deal: During their Italy trip, Chrissy had her 'entire cleavage hanging out' while posing in the Piazza San Marco

The star said she laughed it off because 'you never know what you're getting into' when you have kids.

She wanted to explain why just in case 'anyone sees a photo floating around of me with my entire cleavage hanging out, sitting in the middle of a square in Venice.'

The model spoke to the website at the INTERMIX & A.L.C. On Duty collection launch last week.
They kept fans guessing for weeks until they finally confirmed their breakup in March.

But now things are getting heated between the former Bachelor lesbian couple, with Megan Marx strongly denying Tiffany Scanlon's allegations she 'hooked up with one of her male ex-boyfriends'.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Megan said: 'If this was her worst break up ever, she needs to stop dragging it out by publicly commenting and writing about it.'

'No I did not hook up with any of her exes': Megan Marx DENIES Tiffany Scanlon's claim and slams her for 'dragging out' their break up 'by publicly commenting and writing about it'

In a candid piece for Mamamia this week, Tiffany claimed Megan 'hooked up' with one of her male exes following their split.

Tiffany described the alleged incident as 'probably the most disrespectful and hurtful thing that could happen'.

But Megan has strongly refuted the allegations, telling Daily Mail Australia she wished the website didn't have to write about 'this boring s**t'.

Not true: Megan has strongly denied the allegations, telling Daily Mail Australia she wished the website didn't have to write about 'this boring s**t'

'I just want everyone to move on as I have': Megan added that she wanted Tiffany to stop talking about their breakup

'If this was her worst break up ever, she needs to stop dragging it out by publicly commenting and writing about it,' Megan said.

'No I did not hook up with any of her exes, and if she had enough social intellect she'd talk to me about her qualms instead of using news sites to do it for her.

'I just want everyone to move on as I have.'

She also slammed Tiffany for speaking to the media about reports Alex Nation had 'left Richie Strahan for another woman', as it was 'no one's business but Alex's'.

'To me that was probably the most disrespectful and hurtful thing': Tiffany Scanlon says Megan Marx 'hooked up with one of her ex boyfriends' after their split - a claim denied by Megan

Meanwhile in her Mamamia blog post Tiffany said her breakup with Megan had been eye-opening in more ways in one, not least because of the media scrutiny that surrounded their surprise same sex relationship.

But worst of all was finding out Megan had allegedly 'hooked up' with one of her male exes, Tiffany claimed.

'Finding out that one of the risks you run in dating a woman after always dating men is that two of your exs [sic] can hook up,' Tiffany wrote.

Media scrutiny: Tiffany said her breakup with Megan had been eye-opening in more ways in one

Allegation: Worst of all was finding out Megan had 'hooked up' with one of her male exes, Tiffany claimed

'To me that was probably the most disrespectful and hurtful thing that could happen and absolutely decimates any chance of a future friendship with the ex, but I wont go into that. '

Daily Mail Australia contacted Tiffany on Friday for further comment and clarification.

Tiffany also lifted the lid on the three month bout of depression she suffered following her split from Megan.

Mental health battle: Tiffany also lifted the lid on the three month bout of depression she suffered following her split from Megan

'After overcoming the episode of depression, the past three months has been all about personal growth. Tuning out the rest of the world and tuning into my intuition for guidance and for what truly makes me happy,' she explained.

Tiffany and Megan met while competing for Richie Strahan's affections on The Bachelor in 2016.

The pair became fast friends and later fell in love on a trip to Bali in June and confirmed they were a couple in September after months of speculation.

Still single: Since her split from Megan Tiffany has not revealed she is dating anyone

The busty blonde pair were named Maxim's couple of the year in 2016 and moved to Bali in January to start their own business, however, their relationship fizzled out soon afterwards.

Since their split neither has gone public with any new romances but Megan has documented her use of dating apps on social media.

Meanwhile this week reports surfaced that Bachelor winner Alex Nation had split from Richie and 'found love with a woman', Maegan Luxa.
With an internationally recognizable lingerie brand, a blossoming relationship and a rapidly growing interior design business, Michelle Mone has good reason to be cheerful.

But her undeniable success has brought with it an inevitable cross-section of opinions, and the straight-talking Scottish entrepreneur and Tory Peer has hit back at those who openly criticize her wealth, status and political leanings.

Speaking to MailOnline as exciting new venture Michelle Mone Interiors gains traction, Lady Mone, 45, offered a withering response.

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Candid: Undeniable success has brought with it an inevitable cross-section of opinions, and straight-talking Scottish entrepreneur and Tory Peer Michelle Mone has hit back at those who openly criticize her wealth, status and political leanings

To be honest everyone has their own opinion, she said. I think maybe sometimes the backlash Ive had has been due to the Scottish referendum and SNP supporters, and thats never going to go away.

But I myself know Im a good family person, Im a good charitable person, and as long as my friends know who I am then the rest can quite frankly do one. I actually, really dont care. I dont lose any sleep at night - I'm not affected by them at all.'

She added: 'At the end of the day its just jealousy, and jealousy is an illness. Its a horrible thing to have.'

Hitting out: Speaking to MailOnline as exciting new venture Michelle Mone Interiors gains traction, Lady Mone, 45, offered a characteristically withering response.

Born and raised in Glasgows impoverished East End, Lady Mone left school at 15 before working her way to fame and considerable fortune with the launch of her hugely popular Ultimo lingerie brand in 1999.

And she claims the strong work ethic that helped guide her away from her humble childhood surroundings is often a contributory factor to the criticism she receives.

'The only thing I would say to them is Ive got what Ive got by working exceptionally hard and taking massive risks, putting my house up four times to the bank and everything else,' she said. 'Luckily I have made it now, and if people dont like that then thats just tough.

New venture: Michelle Mone Interiors is her first collaboration with partner Doug Barrowman, 52, an Isle Of Man based venture capitalist whose personal fortune is estimated at over 1 billion

'I grew up in areas where you were always told your life was over before it started. Ive shown people that it doesnt matter where youre from or what education you have. If youre determined enough, that will show you the way to make it.'

Past success has served as a broad platform for latest venture Michelle Mone Interiors, a bespoke design practice with lucrative commissions across London, Dubai and St. Barts.

The business is Lady Mone's first collaboration with partner Doug Barrowman, 52, an Isle Of Man based venture capitalist whose personal fortune is estimated at over 1 billion.

Away from interiors the couple will soon announce plans for a sprawling 250 million development - the details of which remain a closely guarded secret.

Delighted: The entrepreneur moved into father-of-four Barrowman's sprawling mansion, which boasts its own fitness studio, spa and personal helipad, earlier this year - and she couldn't be happier

Settled: 'Weve got so much in common,' she said. 'We grew up three miles apart from one another. Hes worked so hard to get to where hes got to and were very much in love'

'Ive done three homes and Im just really passionate about it and my partners really passionate, so I thought wed get a good team together,' she explained.

'Weve done homes in Mayfair, Chelsea, the Isle of Man and now Dubai. Weve just been given our first commission  a 20 million home in Belgravia. And weve got the big announcement. Were creating the ultimate home for these clients and its really exciting.'

The entrepreneur moved into father-of-four Barrowman's sprawling mansion, which boasts its own fitness studio, spa and personal helipad, earlier this year - and she couldn't be happier.

Ambitious: Born and raised in Glasgows impoverished East End, Lady Mone left school at 15 before working her way to fame and considerable fortune

Talented: Michelle's strong work ethic that helped guide her away from her humble childhood surroundings is often a contributory factor to the criticism she receives

Successful: Past success has served as a broad platform for latest venture Michelle Mone Interiors, a bespoke design practice with lucrative commissions across London, Dubai and St. Barts

'Weve got so much in common,' she said. 'We grew up three miles apart from one another. Hes worked so hard to get to where hes got to and were very much in love.

'Doug tells me every day that well be together for the rest of our lives. Its just lovely, and its lovely having so much in common. We basically live together now, and we do everything together.'

Between them the couple have seven children, and Lady Mone believes their devotion to family life and shared passion for business is ultimately what makes the relationship a success.

'I think because Im an entrepreneur and hes an entrepreneur weve hit it off,' she explained. 'When we get back from the office theres so much to talk about, and its not just chit chat.

'We have great conversation. He makes me laugh, I make him laugh  I dont know how, but I do  and we just have so much fun together.

'Were both really into our families, and weve become a family, which is lovely.'
Ant McPartlin has reportedly moved his mother, Christine, into his London home to help with his recovery following his stint in rehab for drug abuse and depression.

The beloved TV presenter, 41, is said to have made the decision after his wife Lisa returned to work on Strictly Come Dancing, where she is a make-up artist.

It comes after the I'm Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! host admitted that his mother was pleased with the difference in him after he sought recovery from his addiction to pain killers, following a botched knee operation.

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No on quite like mum! Ant McPartlin, 41, has reportedly moved his mother, Christine, into his London home to help with his recovery following his stint in rehab for drug abuse and depression

Speaking about his recovery to The Sun on Sunday recently, Ant said of Christine: 'She's happy to have me back. People do notice the difference in you when you're down and depressed.

'She noticed it. She said she's really happy to have her old son back, which is nice to hear.'

MailOnline has contacted Ant's representative for comment.

Ant also hinted that things were still rocky with wife Lisa, as he admitted he had 'put her through hell with mood swings and depression'.

Proud: It comes after the I'm Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! host admitted that his mother was pleased with the difference in him after he sought recovery from his addiction to pain killers, following a botched knee operation

Opening up about the impact his addiction had on his marriage, he confessed: 'I'm very sorry about the effect it has on partners. This kind of stuff puts a strain on any marriage.'

With the couple's inability to conceive also being a contributing factor to his depression, Ant went on to admit the pair had 'struggled' in their marriage over the last few years - but that Lisa has been helping him every step of the way.

Meanwhile, the mother of his close friend and longtime co-host Declan Donnelly, Anne, recently weighed in on Ant's personal battle.

Back to work: The beloved TV presenter, 41, is said to have made the decision after his wife Lisa returned to work on Strictly Come Dancing, where she is a make-up artist

Happier times: Speaking of his wife, who he married in 2006 (above), he recently said: 'I'm very sorry about the effect it has on partners. This kind of stuff puts strains on any marriage'

Having labelled Ant as 'like a son' in the past, she revealed that she didn't realise he was suffering until she 'read about it'.

Speaking to North News and Pictures about her son's best friend and co-host, she revealed: 'When I found out about what he had been going through I was quite upset that he had been in that much pain.'

Clearly emotional about his suffering, Anne continued: 'We didn't know how he was doing until we read about it.

'He has done so well, and we are all so proud of him. We are all so happy with the news. I'm really proud of Ant,' she concluded.

'I was upset that he had been in that much pain': Declan Donnelly's mum Anne (L) recently weighed in on Ant's battle with depression and drug addiction (Ant's mum R)
He's the lauded US director who gave life to Arnold Schwarzenegger's iconic Terminator character.

And James Cameron has revealed that he is looking to make a return to the franchise after the US rights revert back to him in 2019.

Speaking to news.com.au recently James said that he was interested in 'overseeing' a new three film arc in the franchise.

Hasta la vista, baby: James Cameron has revealed that he is looking to make a return to the Terminator franchise after the US rights revert back to the director in 2019

'I am in discussions with David Ellison, who is the current rights holder globally fot the Terminator franchise and the rights in the US market revert to me under US copyright law in a year and a half so he and i are talking about what we can do,' the Avatar director revealed.

'Right now we are leaning toward doing a three-film arc and reinventing it,' he added.

James, who stepped away from the films after Terminator 2, admitted that he was less than impressed with the three films that followed - Rise Of The Machines, Salvation and Genisys - adding that he stayed positive for his 'mate' Arnold.

A welcome return: Speaking to news.com.au recently James said that he was interested in 'overseeing' a new three film arc in the franchise

'I was supportive at the time in each case for Arnold's sake because he is a close friend,' he said.

'He has been a mate of mine since 33 years ago so I was always supportive and never too negative. But they didn't work for me for various reasons.'

While it was unclear if James would be directing the proposed trilogy, he revealed that Arnold would be involved 'to some extent'as the director was interested in exploring new characters.

Not happy: James, who stepped away from the films after Terminator 2, admitted that he was less than impressed with the three films that followed adding that he stayed positive for his 'mate' Arnold

James' first two Terminator films catapulted the director to the top of the action tree and made a global star of Arnold.

The second film Judgement Day was a critical and commercial success taking a whopping $31 million on its US opening weekend.

James stepped away from the franchise after the second film with subsequent iterations helmed by Jonathan Mostow, McG and Alan Taylor respectively.
His father is a keen motorcyclist, having even taken to the open roads of America on his Triumph for a free-spirited camping trip earlier this year.

And Brooklyn Beckham has hinted he is keen to follow in his dad David's footsteps after sharing a cryptic snap of a vintage Kawasaki motorbike on his Instagram page on Saturday.

Fans instantly flocked to the comments section to ask if the 18-year-old had recently splurged out on the new ride, after he cryptically captioned the shot: 'Oh my.'

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Motorcy-cool: Brooklyn Beckham has hinted he is keen to follow in his dad David's footsteps after sharing a cryptic snap of a vintage Kawasaki motorbike on his Instagram page on Saturday

The teen already has a track record for mimicking his dad's style, recently sharing his penchant for tattoos by undergoing his seventh inking, which ironically read 'Mama's boy'.

And it looks like the photographer is already setting his sights on an impressive set of new wheels like his dad's.

Or perhaps Brooklyn is hinting at a possible new gift, given that his mother Victoria recently expressed her joy at his phenomenal A-level results.

On your bike! Fans instantly flocked to the comments section to ask if the 18-year-old had recently splurged out on the new ride, after he cryptically captioned the shot: 'Oh my'

He is now set to enroll in the distinguished Parsons School of Design.

Sharing her elation at her son's academic success earlier this week, she posted a photo of her pride and joy enjoying a celebratory cuddle with his mum.

She captioned the snap: 'We are all so proud of you Brooklyn. Amazing A level results and off to college. We love you so much and will miss you. #yesiamcrying #emotional.'

Daddy cool! It looks like the photographer is already setting his sights on an impressive set of new wheels like his dad, who has a penchant for custom-made vehicles

Any takers? Perhaps Brooklyn was hinting at a possible new gift, given that his mother Victoria recently expressed her joy at his phenomenal A-level results

Opening up about spending the next four years in the Big Apple, while his parents continue to be based in West London with their younger children Romeo, 14, Cruz, 12, and Harper, six, he recently admitted to GQ: 'I'm nervous, and my mum's upset about me leaving.

'But it's really exciting. I kind of live in the moment. I don't think people in New York will annoy me, and I feel like when I go there, I'll meet lifelong friends.'

He also joked that he is often left red-faced when Victoria encourages him to use his budding photography skills at her launches.

He enthused: 'She says "Go take pictures of the models!" and I'm a bit shy. So I kind of have to get the first two out of the way, and then I'm used to it.'
He refused to commit to one girl on Love Island, and flirted up a storm with several of the beauties.

But it appears that Theo Campbell, 25, has finally found someone to tame his Lothario ways - as he was spotted looking cosy with Riah Read on Saturday.

Riah, who is the ex-girlfriend of TOWIE heartthrob Pete Wicks, dressed to impress in a plunging bodysuit which ensured that all eyes were on her ample assets.

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Tamed? Love Island's Theo Campbell, 25, was spotted looking cosy with Riah Read on Saturday. Riah is the ex-girlfriend of TOWIE heartthrob Pete Wicks

Theo looked like the cat that got the cream as he grinned, holding Riah's hand as he sauntered down the road.

The handsome athlete clad his muscular legs in a pair of light wash jeans and a tight beige T-shirt, and kept a low profile with a cap pulled over his face.

Riah also turned up the heat with her choice of skintight white skinny jeans, which gave prominence to her slim, tone legs, which she further elongated with a pair of platform heels.

Dressing to impress: Riah ensured that all eyes were on her in a plunging leotard top, which put her ample assets fully on display

Riah is a well-known glamour model, who hails from Birmingham. She rose to fame on social media thanks to her pouty selfies and seductive shots.

She dated Pete Wicks briefly at the beginning of 2016, when a steamy video clip emerged of the brunette beauty performing a striptease emerged on adult websites.

The pair remain friends, although this was said to have ruffled the feathers of Pete's on/off flame Megan Mckenna, who was reportedly jealous of Riah's friendship with her man.

Glamorous: Riah also turned up the heat with her choice of skintight white skinny jeans, which gave prominence to her slim, tone legs, which she further elongated with a pair of platform heels

Meanwhile, Theo became known as the man that made a move on Tyla Carr when she was still coupled up with Jonny Mitchell.

The confident athlete, who specialises in the 400m sprint, was voted out of Love Island early - but still managed to ruffle feathers outside the villa.

He once again annoyed Jonny when he swept in on Chyna Ellis, after Jonny had taken the blonde to Budapest and subsequently dumped her.

Making waves: Riah is a well-known glamour model, who hails from Birmingham. She rose to fame on social media thanks to her pouty selfies and seductive shots




She has spent the past month in and out of hospital with an arm injury.

And after finally being able to take off her cast this week, Lisa Wilkinson is more grateful than ever for her good health.

The 57-year-old told The Daily Telegraph she would be using her new ambassador role for Nutra-Life to campaign for better research into women's health issues.

'The older I get the more I am realising that good health is the key to having a great life': Lisa Wilkinson, 57, begins campaign for more research into female illness

The veteran journalist revealed that as the years went by she appreciated being free from illness more and more.

'Im becoming more and more grateful for my good health and the older I get the more I am realising that good health is the key to having a great life,' Lisa said.

'We cant always control our health but anything you can do to make your health better means you get to live a better looking day each day.'

Grateful: The veteran journalist revealed that as the years went by she appreciated being illness free more and more

'We only just recently found out that heart disease is the number one biggest killer of women in Australia': Lisa hoped to raise awareness of the need for better research into how certain health issues effect women

Lisa hoped to raise awareness of the need for better research into how certain health issues effect women, with study in some areas only focusing on men.

'We only just recently found out that heart disease is the number one biggest killer of women in Australia as the stats until now were only on men,' she explained.

Meanwhile Lisa had her fair share of run-ins with doctors over the past few weeks after she was forced to cut her European holiday short and return to Australia for medical treatment.

Unlucky: Lisa was forced to cut her European holiday short and return to Australia for medical treatment

Ouch: The Today host slipped on wet floor inside her Amalfi Coast hotel room last month, breaking two bones in her arm

The Today host slipped on wet floor inside her Amalfi Coast hotel room last month, breaking two bones in her arm.

She flew back to Australia to have surgery on her arm and returned to the Today desk only one day later than scheduled.

On Monday Lisa took to Instagram to rejoice that she had finally been able to remove her cast.

'Hallelujah! The heavy fibreglass cast is off,' she wrote. 'A pretty skinny forearm and sore puffy wrist in a splint remains, but oh the relief!!!'
No doubt the recent death of a beloved crew member was weighing heavily on his mind.

But Ryan Reynolds had to plough along on nonetheless on the set of Deadpool 2 on Friday.

The 40-year-old, who is a producer as well as the star, arrived to check on production in downtown Vancouver before filming scenes.

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Suiting up: Ryan Reynolds was spotted on the Vancouver set of Deadpool 2 on Friday

The actor turned up in casual attire of jeans and brown suede boots, with a matching brown suede jacket over a white tee.

He was engrossed in his phone as he ticked off his to-do list, before finally moving to the opposite side of the camera.

He then slipped on the Merc with a Mouth's red and black costume, leaving off the mask.

The scenes appeared to be unusually peaceful for the Marvel antihero, as he was packing none of his usual arsenal of weapons.

Unarmed: The scenes appeared to be unusually peaceful for the Marvel antihero, as he was packing none of his usual arsenal of weapons

Civvies: The actor turned up in casual attire of jeans and brown suede boots, with a matching brown suede jacket over a white tee.

On Monday, stuntwoman Joi was dressed as Zazie's character Domino when she lost control of her powerful Ducati motorcycle on the set in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Details of an investigation report by WorkSafeBC, released by Deadline on Friday, revealed it was a 'freak, low-speed accident.'

'The worker had been rehearsing a stunt scene that involved driving a motorcycle, Dictate 939 Hyperstrada, out of the open doors of a building, across a concrete pad and down a ramp that had been built over three stairs and coming to a stop on the stair landing,' it read.

It goes on to say that during the initial shooting of the scene Harris continued driving beyond the planned stopping spot on the stairway landing and continued to drive down a second ramp which was built over the bottom stairs and across the road.

It concluded: 'The motorcycle struck the concrete sidewalk curb, the worker was thrown off the motorcycle and propelled through a plate glass window of a building.'
He and estranged wife Angelina Jolie were recently ordered to pay a whopping $662,000 bill after they allegedly failed to credit the work of their lighting designer.

And Brad Pitt appeared to feel the blow as he was pictured looking a little downcast while on set of his upcoming movie, Ad Astra, on Friday.

The 53-year-old star was pictured in a military uniform as he filmed scenes for the sci-fi at Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles.

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Hard at work: Brad Pitt was pictured donning an army uniform while filming scenes for his upcoming movie, Ad Astra, at Union Station in Downton Los Angeles on Friday

The actor appeared to be in high spirits as he flashed a handsome smile while descending down some steps between takes.

The Fury star plays Army Corps engineer Roy McBride in the movie, who is on a mission to find his father after he left earth in search of alien life 20 years ago.

His hunt soon takes him on an exciting journey across the galaxy.

Latest role: The Fury star plays Army Corps engineer Roy McBride in the movie, who is on a mission to find his father after he left earth in search of alien life 20 years ago

The flick boasts an impressive cast, with Hollywood veterans Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones being among the bill.

Ruth Negga, who starred alongside Brad in World War Z, will also star.

The actor also looked incredibly lean in his hunky get-up, having recently admitted to losing weight after turning his back on alcohol following his stint in rehab earlier this year.

The star claimed to have gone cold turkey from alcohol and now sticks to sipping on cranberry juice and carbonated water during an interview GQ.

Feeling the benefits! Brad recently admitted to losing weight after turning his back on alcohol following his stint in rehab earlier this year

He admitted his drinking had been a problem and that his parenting style needed amending.

The movie star confessed to entering therapy and has also been seen turning to art for healing, holing up in an LA studio to make sculptures.

Meanwhile, Brad and Angelina have been forced to pay 565,000 euros to French designer Odile Soudant after she took legal action against them for allegedly failing to credit her work on their French home in Provence.

She claimed they drove her company towards financial ruin by failing to honor bills for a huge lighting project on the Chateau Miraval estate.

Lighting dispute: Brad and estranged wife Angelina Jolie [shown in November 2015 in LA] have been ordered by a French court to pay a lighting designer 565,000 Euros ($662,000 US)

French chateau: The Hollywood couple's Chateau Miraval is shown in a 2008 photo

A source told DailyMail.com, however, that she was already paid in full. 'The courts never said that she was paid. She was actually paid in full,' said the insider.

On Friday, Brad's spokesperson released a statement to DailyMail.com, which read: 'We respect the Court's decision resolving this long running, standard dispute regarding commercial issues and payment of invoices.

'This ruling does not address any copyright issues involving [lighting] designs developed by Brad.'

The Paris court of appeal in April ordered Brad and Angelina's Chateau Miraval company to pay the sum to the designer, which included 60,000 Euros ($70,270 US) for damaging her reputation.

The legal ruling was only reported in French news outlet Liberation on Wednesday.
She's the Australian who took over Hollywood with hits like The Hours, Cold Mountain, and Dogville.

But now Nicole Kidman could be heading home with her own 'compelling piece of drama' on Foxtel.

Foxtel's director of television Brian Walsh told the Daily Telegraph that they're in 'advanced discussions' with the actress about the project.

In demand: Nicole Kidman is in talks with Australia's Foxtel to star in her own drama series

'It's an idea that she brought to us and she's passionate about it and has acknowledged there is some great storytelling to be told on television,' he revealed.

After her film career started dwindling, Nicole was able to reinvent herself thanks to roles on the small screen.

The beauty received great acclaim thanks to her role as Celeste Wright on HBO's Big Little Lies.

'It's an idea that she brought to us and she's passionate about it and has acknowledged there is some great storytelling to be told on television,' said Foxtel's director of television Brian Walsh

She's now starring in BBC Two's Top of the Lake: China Girl.

Ahead of the premiere episode, the show's star Elisabeth Moss has praised Nicole, who has joined the acclaimed season.

Speaking to BW Magazine on Saturday, Elisabeth stated: 'I had one of those moments on set when I had to remind myself to be professional, and not be like 'Oh my God, it's Nicole Kidman!''

Small screen: After her film career started dwindling, Nicole was able to reinvent herself thanks to the small screen

Elisabeth reprises her role as Detective Robin Griffin in the new season, titled Top of The Lake: China Girl, while Nicole appears on the television show for the first time.

'She's lovely,' Elisabeth said of Nicole in the publication.

'She came in really passionate and enthusiastic and wanting to do a great job.'
BIO CHRIS HANI

South Africa's top court on Friday blocked the release from jail of Polish immigrant Janusz Walus who shot dead anti-apartheid hero Chris Hani in 1993.

Walus, 64, has served 24 years of a life sentence for the murder, which took South Africa to the brink of race war as negotiations to end apartheid entered their final phase.

The Supreme Court upheld an appeal by the government to overturn last year's High Court decision to free Walus on parole.

Walus killed Hani, a popular leader of the Communist Party, one year before South Africa's first multi-racial elections.

His accomplice, Clive Derby-Lewis, who supplied the gun, was released in 2015 on medical parole after serving 22 years in jail. He died of lung cancer last year, aged 80.

Walus immigrated to South Africa from then-communist Poland in 1981.

One of South Africa's most notorious apartheid murderers, Eugene de Kock, was granted parole in January 2015 after 20 years in jail.
A statue of 19th century Supreme Court justice Roger Taney is covered with a protest flag in this file photo. The statue of Taney, who was the author of a 1857 ruling that blacks were not entitled to US citizenship, was removed overnight

A statue of a former Supreme Court justice who ruled in the 19th century that blacks were not entitled to US citizenship was removed overnight from the grounds of the Maryland State House.

The removal of the statue of Roger Taney, who served on the nation's highest court from 1836-1864, is the latest fallout from last weekend's violence at a rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A 32-year-old woman was killed and 19 other people injured when an Ohio man suspected of being a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville.

Taney was the author of the 1957 Dred Scott ruling that African-Americans, whether slaves or free, were not eligible to be US citizens.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, ordered the removal of Taney's statue from the lawn of the Maryland State House in the state capital, Annapolis.

"As I said at my inauguration, Maryland has always been a state of middle temperament, which is a guiding principle of our administration," Hogan said in a statement.

"While we cannot hide from our history -- nor should we -- the time has come to make clear the difference between properly acknowledging our past and glorifying the darkest chapters of our history," Hogan said.

"With that in mind, I believe removing the Justice Roger B. Taney statue from the State House grounds is the right thing to do."

Reporters from The Baltimore Sun who witnessed the removal said it happened between midnight and 2:00 am.

The statue was lifted by a crane off its stone base and carted away on a flatbed truck to the Maryland State Archives storage facility, they said.

Earlier this week, a statue of Taney was removed in Baltimore, Maryland's largest city, along with several Confederate monuments.

The rally in Charlottesville which ended violently on Saturday was called by white nationalist groups to protest plans to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a public park.

President Donald Trump on Thursday condemned the mounting campaign to remove monuments to the pro-slavery Confederacy, saying US culture and history were being "ripped apart."

Trump has come under fire from Republicans and Democrats alike, however, for saying that the white nationalists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville were equally to blame for the violence on Saturday.
Only eclipse glasses that have a certification with "ISO 12312-2 international standard" are safe for use, according to NASA

Everyone who plans to look skyward when the solar eclipse sweeps across the United States on Monday should have the proper protective eyewear, or risk lasting blind spots, experts warn.

Regular sunglasses will not do, the US space agency says.

Only eclipse glasses that have a certification with "ISO 12312-2 international standard" are safe for use, according to NASA.

Other options are number 14 welder's glass, or making a pinhole projector that allows a user to project the image of the Sun on paper or cardboard.

But with the Great American Eclipse's shadow set to envelop the entire nation, educating more than 300 million people in its path is a tall order.

Already, the US Fire Administration is warning of scams, such as counterfeit glasses being promoted as suitable for an eclipse when they are not.

And of the handful of US wholesalers that make legitimate eclipse glasses, some sold out well over a week ahead of the event.

- Dangers are real -

"The dangers of looking at the Sun are real and serious," said Vincent Jerome Giovinazzo, director of ophthalmology at Staten Island University Hospital, Northwell Health.

"The damage can really be permanent and right smack in the center of their vision."

Many may recall a childhood experiment of using a magnifying glass to focus sunlight on a leaf or a sheet of paper and set it on fire.

"The same thing can happen to your eyes," said Giovinazzo.

Jules Winokur, an ophthalmologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, has seen the damage in patients who stared at the Sun.

"They get a kind of macular degeneration where they are burning into their retina and they can lose vision and it can be permanent," he told AFP.

"You can be left with a scar from where you were staring at the Sun and that can be right in the center of your vision."

Most people don't want to look at the Sun because it hurt. But during an eclipse, the pain and discomfort are not there.

"It is actually not as uncomfortable to stare at the Sun but the damaging effects are the same," Winokur explained.

"And what you can do is you can burn your macula the same shape of whatever crescent the Sun is showing. You wouldn't necessarily feel uncomfortable."

There is one exception to the rule of not staring directly at an eclipse.

Those in the path of totality, where the Sun is completely blocked by the Moon, can take off their protective eyewear for the short period of time when the sky is completely dark and no circles of sunlight are visible around the Moon.

In the United States, this 70-mile (113-kilometer) wide path of totality will pass briefly through 14 states.

- Other options -

Other options are available for those unable to buy eclipse eyewear.

According to NASA, more than 6,800 libraries across nationwide are distributing safety-certified glasses.

The old-school way of watching via a pinhole projector is also inexpensive and easy to do.

"With this method, sunlight streams through a small hole -- such as a pencil hole in a piece of paper, or even the space between your fingers -- onto a makeshift screen, such as a piece of paper or the ground," NASA said on its website.

"It's important to only watch the screen, not the Sun. Never look at the Sun through the pinhole -- it is not safe."

For those interested in seeing the eclipse from afar, or from places that may be clouded out, the US space agency is planning a live broadcast on August 21 starting at 1600 GMT on https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's wife, Grace, pictured in 2013, is facing possible assault charges in South Africa

Zimbabwe's first lady Grace Mugabe failed to appear Saturday at a summit in South Africa attended by her husband, an event overshadowed by her effort to obtain diplomatic immunity over assault allegations.

The wife of President Robert Mugabe has not been seen since being accused of attacking a 20-year-old model with a electrical extension cord last weekend in a Johannesburg hotel where the couple's two sons were staying.

The case has become a media spectacle, with protesters gathered outside the summit, some brandishing placards that read "Grace, disgrace."

The alleged assault is a political headache for South Africa and Zimbabwe, close neighbours with deep economic and historical ties.

The matter also appears to have spilled into aviation, with South African Airways abruptly announcing that it was halting flights to and from Zimbabwe in a decision that followed flights being cancelled overnight after a dispute over permits, officials said.

Police had said Grace Mugabe was expected at the two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting that opened with a "first spouses programme".

But the 52-year-old wife of Zimbabwe's leader was not among the first ladies in reserved seating at the foot of the platform where several heads of state spoke. Her husband, 93, in a black suit and beige scarf, was among eight regional leaders present.

- Police on high alert -

Neither South Africa's foreign ministry or the police said where the Zimbabwean first lady was, after it emerged that two aircraft were barred from leaving Johannesburg and Harare.

One was owned by Air Zimbabwe, the company regularly used by President Mugabe, and one by South African Airways (SAA).

The first flight could not take off Friday night from Johannesburg International Airport because the airline lacked an "international permit to operate", according to South Africa's civil aviation authority.

The same regulation affected South African Airlines, whose flight SA25 was supposed to leave Harare on Saturday at 7:00 am (0500 GMT), but was grounded before being cancelled.

"In more than 20 years of operations in Zimbabwe, this is the first time we have been asked for this document," SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali told AFP.

After an "emergency meeting" late Saturday, however, the transportation ministry said both Air Zimbabwe and SAA had submitted the required documents, potentially signalling a resumption of flights.

The regional summit's closing ceremony on Sunday was also scheduled to include partners of the heads of state for its 15 member nations.

Mugabe's wife has claimed diplomatic immunity after allegedly assaulting Gabriella Engels nearly a week ago.

Grace Mugabe, the wife of Zimbabwe's longtime leader, is seeking diplomatic immunity over an alleged assault in South Africa

South African police have said they are on high alert to prevent her leaving the country, with an arrest warrant also reportedly being considered.

"We are awaiting the outcome of the request," a police spokesman said, referring to Mugabe's effort to obtain diplomatic immunity.

Engels, who has filed a case of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, appeared at a press conference on Thursday, wearing a large plaster on her forehead.

- Disputed immunity -

Lawyers who have taken Engels's case told reporters she was offered cash to make the incident "go away" but she is determined to press charges against the Zimbabwean first lady.

Willie Spies, one of her lawyers, said that if diplomatic immunity was granted they would consider bringing an injunction in court.

South African model Gabriella Engels has accused Grace Mugabe of attacking her with an electrical extension cord in a Johannesburg hotel

Grace Mugabe was in South Africa reportedly to have her ankle treated following a minor accident last month.

Her husband flew to the country late Wednesday, the day after his wife failed to attend an agreed meeting with South African police over the alleged assault.

Zimbabwean officials have declined to comment on the allegations against the first lady or her immunity claim.

Grace and Robert Mugabe's two sons Robert Jr and Chatunga live in Johannesburg, where they have a reputation for partying.

Grace Mugabe regularly speaks at rallies in Zimbabwe and is seen as a potential successor to her increasingly frail husband.
Nick Kyrgios of Australia serves to Rafael Nadal of Spain during their Western and Southern Open quarter-final match, at the Linder Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio, on August 18, 2017

Australia's Nick Kyrgios blasted new world number one Rafael Nadal 6-2, 7-5 on Friday, winning twice in one day to reach the WTA and ATP Cincinnati Masters semi-finals.

As defending champion Karolina Pliskova won twice in one day for the third time this season to tighten her grip on the world number one ranking, Kyrgios stole the show by overpowering the 15-time Grand Slam champion after each had won earlier.

"A kid playing Nadal on center court, that's where your best has to come out," Kyrgios said. "Performance like today, I'm seeing progress."

Kyrgios, ranked 23rd, faces Spain's David Ferrer for a finals berth. Bulgaria's 11th-ranked Grigor Dimitrov plays American John Isner in Saturday's other semi-final.

Karolina Pliskova of Czech Republic returns a shot to Natalia Vikhlyantseva of Russia during the Western & Southern Open, at the Linder Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio, on August 16, 2017

Nadal, who won his 10th French Open title in June, was assured of moving into the top ranking on Monday for the first time since July 2014 when Roger Federer withdrew from Cincinnati with a back injury.

Kyrgios was up a double break in 10 minutes, seizing the chance to make a between-the-legs showoff shot on his way to a 4-0 lead, drawing boos from the crowd.

"I was just doing it for a gag," Kyrgios said. "I just felt like doing it. My friends who were watching were laughing so they liked it I guess."

He took the first set in 25 minutes, dropping only three points on his serve, then broke Nadal in the fifth game of the second set. The Aussie served for the match in the 10th game but double faulted on his third match point and Nadal broke back.

"I had the match on my racket and tightened up," Kyrgios said.

Rafael Nadal of Spain acknowledes the crowd after his win over compatriot Albert Ramos-Vinolas in their Western & Southern Open 3rd round match, at the Lindner Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio, on August 18, 2017

But the 22-year-old broke again to lead 6-5 and this time end matters with his 10th ace after 80 minutes, improving to 2-2 all-time against the 31-year-old Spaniard.

"I started the match very low and I played a very bad game in the second set when he break me," Nadal said. "I was able to get some points and get back in the match but then I played a terrible game. It was a bad match for me. Congrats to him."

- 'No excuses' for Nadal -

Nadal took only 6-of-20 second serve points and won only five off his foe's first serve.

"No excuses. Nothing at all," Nadal said. "If I don't play well I can't win against a player like Nick."

Simona Halep of Romania returns a shot to Johanna Konta of Britain during their Western and Southern Open quarter-final match, at the Linder Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio, on August 18, 2017

Earlier, Kyrgios defeated Croatia's Ivo Karlovic 4-6, 7-6 (8/6), 6-3 and Nadal downed compatriot Albert Ramos-Vinolas 7-6 (7/1), 6-2 in rain-postponed matches.

Kyrgios, who matched his best ATP Masters runs from Miami the past two years, seeks his fourth career title after 2016 trophies at Marseille, Atlanta and Tokyo.

And he served notice for the US Open, where he has never reached the fourth round. The year's last Grand Slam starts August 28.

Ferrer upset Austria's eighth-ranked Dominic Thiem 6-3, 6-3 while Isner fired 25 aces in beating American wildcard Jared Donaldson 7-6 (7/4), 7-5 and Dimitrov downed Japan's Yuichi Sugita 6-2, 6-1.

- Pliskova, Halep seek No. 1 -

Pliskova, fighting to hold off Romania's Simona Halep atop the rankings, first ousted Italian qualifier Camila Giorgi 6-3, 4-6, 6-0 in a rain-postponed match.

With only two hours between matches, the 25-year-old Czech defeated Denmark's fifth-ranked Caroline Wozniacki 6-2, 6-4 to book a Saturday semi-final against Wimbledon champion Garbine Muguruza.

"I feel pretty good," Pliskova said. "I recover well, so definitely I will be ready."

Second-ranked Halep eliminated British seventh seed Johanna Konta 6-4, 7-6 (7/1) to book a semi-final date with US wildcard Sloane Stephens.

"I played the best match so far," Halep said. "I could move well. So I feel the rhythm. It's back. So I'm positive again."

Pliskova's two-in-one effort, matching feats on her way to Eastbourne and Doha titles, means Halep must capture the crown to swipe the top spot in Monday's rankings.

"Whatever comes I will just take it," said Pliskova. "Even if I would be second coming to the US Open, it's still better than I was last year. So no pressure about being world number one."

Sixth-ranked Spaniard Muguruza ousted Russian eighth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-2, 5-7, 7-5.
Total solar eclipse enthusiasts gather in Madras, Oregon -- the rural central and eastern part of the state is hosting dozens of festivals to help manage the crowds, as a million visitors are expected to the region for Monday's natural phenomena

Eclipse-chasers are a dedicated crew of scientists who travel the globe to catch a few moments in eerie darkness, and even after seeing dozens of eclipses, they say they can't get enough.

Also known as "umbraphiles," these self-described addicts live their lives in pursuit of the intense experience of falling under the Moon's shadow.

"The sudden onset of twilight was so surreal and so electrifying," recalled Fred Espenak of the first total solar eclipse he saw in the United States back in 1970.

"It is such an incredible, sensory-overload kind of event," he told AFP.

Once it was over, he said he "immediately started thinking about future eclipses."

Espenak, now 65, is a retired NASA astrophysicist who goes by the moniker "Mr. Eclipse."

He has been to 27 eclipses, and seen 20 of them -- cloudy weather interfered with the rest.

Each one is unique, he says -- the way the twilight falls in the middle of the day, casting shadows on the Earth; hearing birds return to their nests; feeling the temperature suddenly drop.

The most memorable, he says, was an eclipse he traveled to in India in 1995 with about 35 other people.

One of the women in the group became overwhelmed -- she said she'd waited 25 years to see an eclipse, and wept over how it had gone by so fast, lasting just 41 seconds.

"We stayed in contact," Espenak said. "And to make a long story short, we got married."

When the so-called Great American Eclipse marches across the country on Monday, Espenak plans to be in Wyoming, operating 17 different cameras.

His advice for first-time eclipse-watchers?

"Don't do what I do. Don't take any pictures. Just watch it and enjoy it. There is so much to see," he said.

- World record-holder -

Most people who see an eclipse will experience just a minute or two of darkness, but in 1973, Donald Liebenberg set a world record when he rode the Concorde jet and chased an eclipse at supersonic speed.

From the cabin of the aircraft at an altitude of 60,000 feet (18,200 meters), his view of totality -- when the Moon's shadow completely blocks the sunlight -- lasted 74 minutes.

"The corona is so brilliant especially when you are above most of the water vapor and the other scattered light problems in lower altitudes," he said, recalling the deep purple sky.

Now 85, Liebenberg has spent more than two and a half hours of his life in totality, longer than anyone else on the planet.

He has traveled to Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa and Zambia, among other places, and seen 26 eclipses so far.

"Looking forward to the 27th," said Liebenberg, an adjunct professor at Clemson University in South Carolina.

"This one is special in the sense that it will occur over my house. I will be in my driveway instead of traveling thousands of miles."

- Frequent flyer -

Glenn Schneider, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, saw his first total eclipse when he was 14, and recalls a sensation of being frozen in time.

"I realized that this was the start of something that had changed my life, that I was going to have to see the next one. And the next one," he said.

"It almost sounds like it is an addictive phenomenon and it is. You should warn people of that."

Total solar eclipses happen on average about every 16 months somewhere on Earth.

Schneider has missed only a handful.

He still laments "the one that got away" -- an eclipse he missed in 1985 that brushed the coast of Antarctica.

But he has managed to get himself in the Moon's umbral shadow 33 times so far.

"I save my frequent flyer miles for eclipses," he said.

And now, the time between eclipses is "sort of a mundane reality," he said.

He has plans for every future eclipse, including one at sunrise over New York in May 2079 when he would be 123 years old.

"I don't think I am going to make it but I've left information for my daughter for her to go and see it," he said.

For Schneider, it's not just the view, or the scientific interest he has in the phenomenon.

"We are talking about a very visceral, emotional connection," he said.

"You really get a sense of celestial mechanics in action."

Espenak agreed.

To experience an eclipse "gives you a sense of perspective that you don't get any other way," he said.

"How insignificant we are compared to the whole system. How inconsequential some of the struggles we have with politics and the nonsense going on in our daily lives," he added.

"When the grand scheme of the solar system is played out in front of us, it's a humbling experience."
Grandmaster chess player Garry Kasparov had not been expected to win the Rapid and Blitz tournament in St. Louis, Missouri

Russian chess legend Garry Kasparov concluded his keenly awaited comeback Friday, ending a week of games in which he showed flashes of his legendary prowess but ended up eighth out of 10 players.

The 15-time world champ temporarily came out of 12 years of retirement to take on a much younger generation of masters at the Rapid and Blitz tournament in St. Louis, Missouri.

In this format featuring faster-paced chess than in traditional games, Kasparov played inconsistently.

He won just a few games against the other nine players, who included four of the world's top 10. The winner of the tournament was Levon Aronian, of Armenia.

After retiring from chess in 2005, Kasparov turned to politics and joined the opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In his peak he was known as "the Beast of Baku" -- a reference to the capital of his native Azerbaijan -- because of his very aggressive playing style focusing on wins over settling for a draw.

Kasparov was not expected to win this tournament.

Experts predicted the Russian would face stiff competition from the younger stars, especially after more than a decade away from the pro chess circuit.

"I expected a better performance from Kasparov," French grandmaster Sylvain Ravot told AFP.

Ravot said Kasparov actually dominated a number of games but played too slowly through much of the tournament.

"The explanation for that is his lack of confidence," said Ravot.
Prostitutes are seen waiting for customers at a bar in a Thai border town of Sungai Kolok

A South Korean man accused of duping over 20 Thai women into forced prostitution in his home country has been arrested in Bangkok, an officer said on Saturday.

Kim Hyoung Joon, 39, is believed to be part of a transnational gang funnelling Thai women into the sex trade in South Korea, and his arrest follows efforts by Bangkok and Seoul to dismantle the group.

Thai police said Joon promised women jobs as masseuses in South Korea.

But upon their arrival they were instead forced into sex work by pimps who seized their passports and blocked any attempts at escape.

"More than 20 women have been lured by this gang over the past two to three years," said Songsak Raksaksakul, the deputy director of Thailand's Department of Special Investigations (DSI).

"Most of the victims are between 25 and 40 years old," he added. "Pimps monitored them all the time."

Joon was arrested at his Bangkok apartment on Thursday and charged with human trafficking.

Thai and South Korean authorities are coordinating to track down a woman who they believe was Joon's Thai accomplice and has fled to a neighbouring country.

In February, South Korean police arrested eight other suspects and rescued several Thai victims.

Thailand is a notorious source, destination and transit hub for human trafficking operations that shift vulnerable women, men and children into sex work and other forms of forced labour.

In May, US authorities charged 21 people, including 10 Thai nationals, for running an international criminal enterprise that trafficked hundreds of Thai women into brothels across America.
Hezbollah fighters giving a guided tour near the Lebanese-Syrian border on July 26, 2017 raise a Lebanese flag showing pictures of soldiers killed fighting jihadists

Lebanese troops on Saturday launched an offensive against the Islamic State group on the country's eastern border with Syria, seeking to drive the jihadists from a long-time stronghold.

The operation came as IS faces multiple military attacks on territory it controls in both Syria and neighbouring Iraq, where it lost the city of Mosul in July.

Militants have long been active in mountainous eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria, where a bloody civil war has raged since 2011.

In 2014, jihadists invaded the border town of Arsal, capturing 30 Lebanese soldiers and police. Security forces in the region have since come under regular attack.

"In the name of Lebanon, in the name of kidnapped Lebanese soldiers, in the name of martyrs of the army, I announce that operation 'Dawn of Jurud' has started," army chief General Joseph Aoun said Saturday.

He was referring to two mountainous border areas -- Jurud Ras Baalbek and Jurud al-Qaa -- where IS has been active.

"The army is confronting the Daesh terrorists to chase them out and recover territory," army spokesman General Ali Qanso said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

He said the campaign was "one of the most difficult battles waged by the Lebanese army," but added: "We have no fear of Daesh."

Kanso said the army believed there were around 600 IS fighters in the two areas, controlling some 120 square kilometres (46 square miles) of territory.

"For the first time, the army has made such use of its air capabilities," he said, to target jihadist hidden in a region full of mountains and cave hideouts.

The army's operation comes after Lebanon's powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah launched its own campaign against jihadists in another border area south of where the military is now operating.

Lebanese army spokesman Ali Kanso gestures during a news conference at the Ministry of Defense in Beirut on August 19, 2017

The group's six-day offensive against IS and Al-Qaeda's former affiliate in the Jurud Arsal area ended with a ceasefire.

The agreement saw around 8,000 refugees and jihadists transported to a jihadist-held area of northwestern Syria in return for the release of five captured Hezbollah fighters.

The evacuations were completed on Monday.

- Simultaneous operations -

Hezbollah is deeply embroiled in the civil war that has raged in neighbouring Syria since 2011, fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The group said Saturday it had launched a simultaneous operation against IS from the Syrian side of the border, but Lebanon's army spokesman denied there was any coordination.

Nine Lebanese soldiers captured in Arsal in 2014 are believed to remain in the hands of IS jihadists.

Four were executed by their captors while a fifth died of his wounds. Sixteen were released in a prisoner swap in December 2015.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed earlier this month to clear the whole border area of jihadists, saying it was in the interests of both Lebanon and Syria.

His powerful group is the one Lebanese party that did not turn over its weapons after the 1975-1990 civil war, and its arsenal remains a source of division in Lebanon.

The last major battle fought by Lebanon's army was the 2007 fight against jihadists in the Palestinian Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.

The three-month battle left more than 400 dead, including 168 soldiers and 220 jihadists.

Lebanon, a country of some four million people, hosts more than a million Syrian refugees, whose presence has caused tensions over limited resources.

Syria's conflict has killed more than 330,000 people and displaced millions since it erupted in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

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The Ghazal children, Syrian refugees, sit on the steps outside their home in Jordan's Irbid on August 9, 2017

Struggling to make ends meet, Syrian refugee Umm Iman and her family spent years moving from house to house in Jordan. Now, they have finally found a place to settle.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, an NGO, is paying Jordanian landowners grants to help them build or renovate housing.

In exchange, the landlords offer free housing to Syrian refugees for a specified period.

"We used to have to move house every month for various reasons," Umm Iman told AFP.

In contrast to the high rents and dilapidated buildings of previous lodgings, Umm Iman, 29, said her new home is "clean, spacious and comfortable".

She shares the apartment in the northern city of Irbid, near the Syrian border, with her husband and their four daughters, her sister-in-law and her children.

It is one of 6,000 homes made available to Syrian refugees in Jordan through the NRC programme.

Syrian refugee Mohamed Ghazal opens the door of a home in Irbid, Jordan, where his family is being housed under a programme run by a Norwegian NGO, on August 9, 2017

Around 25,000 refugees are accommodated for free or very low rents, depending on their level of need.

Umm Iman's family fled Syria in 2012, finding shelter in a refugee camp in northern Jordan before leaving to settle elsewhere at their own expense.

"Our situation was really bad," her husband Mohammad Ghazal said.

The places they could afford "were unhealthy, cramped and some were falling down. Once, the roof of one of the houses collapsed on us," he said.

"We were faced with a hard choice: either return to the refugee camp or return to Syria. This project saved us."

- Living in poverty -

The United Nations says it has registered more than 650,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan, but the kingdom says more than 1.4 million Syrians are on its territory.

Syrian refugee Umm Iman sits with one of her children at an apartment home where they are being housed by a local landlord in collaboration with the Norwegian Refugee Council, on August 9, 2017

More than 80 percent of them are living under the poverty line, according to UN figures.

Located in a residential neighbourhood surrounded by trees, the apartment opens onto a main street and is part of a building with eight apartments, each with two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a toilet.

The family is living in it for free on a contract that expires in March 2018.

The apartment is owned by Mustafa Shatwani, a retired Jordanian engineer who said the NRC programme benefits both parties.

The NGO has covered 25 percent of the costs of the apartments he owns, where he now hosts several Syrian families.

"The costs of construction are high in Jordan," he said. "If I don't rent out my place, I can't get the money back."

Rodrigo Melo, who runs the programme for the NRC, said it is allocated between $3 million and $5 million every year and benefits the local economy.

Launched in 2014, it now has 10,000 Syrians on its waiting list.

Families assessed as "vulnerable" pay no rent, while others pay a small sum.

A general view taken on August 9, 2017, shows a building in the northern Jordanian town of Irbid where Syrian refugees are being housed under a programme run by a Norwegian NGO working in collaboration with local property owners

NRC, backed by the UN and international donors, also offers work opportunities to refugees, often in the construction sector.

It "encourages human interaction and preserves the dignity of the Syrians," he said.

Ghazal's niece Aya, seven, said she was "very happy" in the new home.

"It's bigger and nicer than the other place we lived, and I have lots of Syrian friends here," she said.
Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari, shown in December last year

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari returned home on Saturday after spending more than 100 days in London receiving treatment for an undisclosed illness.

His plane touched down around 4:35 pm (1535 GMT) at the international airport in Abuja, an AFP correspondent said.

Wearing a black caftan with a cap to match, the 74-year-old left the aircraft unaided and was met by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and other senior government officials, including ministers, security chiefs and state governors.

He took a salute to the military guard of honour before he was driven in a convoy to the presidential villa.

An enthusiastic crowd of supporters were at the airport and lined the roads to welcome Buhari back.

He is set to address Nigerians on Monday morning, the presidency said.

The president left for the British capital on May 7 with his prolonged absence causing tensions back home, where calls have grown for him to either return or resign.

Buhari, a retired general who headed a military regime in the 1980s, has been dogged by speculation about his health since June last year when he first went to London for treatment of what his aides said was a persistent ear infection.

He then spent nearly two months in London in January and February and said on his return in early March that he had "never been so ill".

In July, members of the ruling party and the opposition went to see him in London and even took pictures in an attempt to douse public anxiety.

The health of Nigeria's leaders has been a sensitive issue since the 2010 death in office of president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua after months of treatment abroad.

Buhari's main opponents in the 2015 election that brought him to power claimed he had prostate cancer. He denied it.

Since August 7, there has been a series of protests in Abuja demanding that Buhari return or quit if he is incapacitated.

The rallies turned violent on Tuesday when mainly ethnic Hausa traders pelted protesters with stones, prompting them to abandon their daily vigils.

Deji Adeyanju, one of the protest organisers, told AFP on Saturday he was excited at the news of Buhari's return.

"We are happy that the president is coming back today because we have been vindicated," he said.

Buhari shown with a Get Well card, surrounded by aides in London on August 12

"We organised the rallies to make him come back so that he can continue to carry out the mandate on which he was elected in 2015."

Adeyanju said a planned protest in Lagos on Monday has now been cancelled.

"There is no more demonstration as the president has acceded to our demand," he said, warning however that protesters would "maintain close vigilance" of the government and urging Buhari to tackle rising insecurity, including the Boko Haram insurgency and militancy in the Niger delta.

"More importantly, the president has to end mass poverty in the land and the fight against corruption has to be given a push," he added.

Dapo Thomas, a politics lecturer at Lagos university, said Buhari's return would boost the central government's clout.

"Every policy, every decision, every project will now have a stamp of authority and legitimacy," he said, adding that the anti-graft campaign would also be stepped up.

"Buhari's selling point is his integrity. He is very passionate about eradicating corruption from Nigeria and I think his return will re-invigorate the campaign," he said.

Buhari has been struggling to rid Nigeria of the endemic corruption that has blighted its development and helped tip the country into recession.

High-profile members of the previous government have been arrested on corruption charges, sparking accusations of a political witch hunt -- claims the current administration denies.
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels gather inside their camp, as thousands of its members and residents arrive for a rally in support of the peace in 2014

The Philippines' largest Muslim militant group has launched a deadly offensive against a splinter faction that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, police said Saturday.

The fighting between the two groups began about two weeks ago in the marshy farmlands around the southern town of Datu Salibo on Mindanao island, regional police spokeswoman Tara Leah Cuyco said.

Clashes between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and its offshoot, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), took place on Friday and Saturday, with six fighters from the original group killed.

"The MILF is trying to force the BIFF out of the area. They do not want any trouble," Chief Inspector Cuyco told AFP.

A MILF guerrilla leader told a video journalist working for AFP on Saturday: "We do not want them here. It's an order from the higher-ups."

The MILF, which has more than 10,000 fighters, has waged a decades-long guerrilla war, first for independence and later autonomy for the large Islamic minority in the south of the largely Catholic Asian nation.

It signed a peace treaty with the Philippine government in 2014 and is observing a ceasefire with the Philippine government while waiting for the passage of a proposed law that would grant self-rule to the Muslim areas of the Mindanao region.

Senior MILF leaders have warned President Rodrigo Duterte to deliver on government commitments under the peace accord, chiefly the autonomy law, or risk frustrating MILF members and causing them to defect to the BIFF and other pro-IS groups.

The BIFF, said by the military to have a few hundred armed fighters, has been among several small armed groups in Mindanao that have pledged alliance to the IS.

The fighting comes as the military fought a near three-month battle in Marawi, a Muslim city 100 kilometres (62 miles) to the north.

The fighting in Marawi is being led by two other Muslim rebel factions, the Maute group and the Abu Sayyaf.

The Marawi battle has left 573 militants and 128 soldiers and police dead, along with at least 45 civilians, according to an official tally.

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US National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence (L to R) were among those attending Friday's talks at Camp David

US President Donald Trump tweeted early Saturday that "many decisions" had been made in a meeting with his top military advisers, including on the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The Trump administration, wary of international involvements but eager for progress in the grueling Afghan war, has been weighing a range of options. It had originally promised a new plan by mid-July.

On Saturday, Trump tweeted about the meeting a day earlier at the presidential retreat in Maryland, saying: "Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders. Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan."

It was unclear how far-ranging those decisions might be, or when they would be announced.

But Trump is said to be dissatisfied by initial proposals to add a few thousand more troops in the country, and advisers were studying an expanded strategy for the broader South Asian region, including Pakistan.

There are now about 8,400 US and 5,000 NATO troops supporting Afghanistan's security forces in the fight against Taliban and other militants. But the situation has remained as deadly as ever, with more than 2,500 Afghan police and troops killed from January 1 to May 8.
Smoke rises over Ain al-Hilweh, Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, near the southern port of Sidon, during clashes between Palestinian security forces and Islamist fighters on August 19, 2017

Palestinian security forces on Saturday battled radical Islamist gunmen in Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp near the southern port of Sidon, for the third consecutive day.

The clashes first broke out Thursday when gunmen from the small Islamist Badr group opened fire on a position of Palestinian security forces inside Ain al-Hilweh camp, a Palestinian source said.

Two people were killed in that fighting.

An AFP reporter said the clashes eased on Friday before intensifying again on Saturday, forcing dozens of families to flee the camp and seek shelter in Sidon mosques.

The sound of fierce gunfire and rocket fire could be heard outside the camp as black smoke billowed over Ain al-Hilweh, said the reporter.

The fighting shook the Al-Tiri district a few metres (yards) away from a Lebanese army position.

By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army does not enter Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, leaving the factions themselves to handle security.

The Islamist group is linked to Bilal Badr, a militant wanted in connection with "terrorism" who has refused to surrender, according to a Lebanese security official.

In April, his supporters also clashed intermittently for a week with Palestinian security forces, in violence that left nine dead and more than 50 wounded.

A joint Palestinian security force, comprising members of the key Fatah and Hamas factions, has for months strived to rein in Badr fighters.

Ain al-Hilweh -- the most densely populated Palestinian camp in Lebanon -- is home to some 61,000 Palestinians, including 6,000 who have fled the war in neighbouring Syria.

Several armed factions including extremist groups have a foothold in the camp which has been plagued for years by intermittent clashes.
Police officers detain the Moroccan suspect who was shot in the leg, in the Finnish city of Turku after a stabbing spree that left two people dead.

Finnish police said Saturday that a Moroccan asylum seeker deliberately targeted women in a stabbing spree that left two dead and is being investigated as the country's first terror attack.

Police shot and wounded the knife-wielding suspect, detaining him minutes after Friday's rampage at a busy market square in Turku, southwestern Finland.

Eight other people were injured, among them six women, police said.

Finland raised its emergency readiness after the attack, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.

"We think that the attacker especially targeted women, and the men were wounded after coming to their defence," superintendent Christa Granroth of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation told reporters.

Four Moroccan citizens were arrested in a Turku apartment and refugee reception centre overnight. They have links to the suspect, but police have not yet established whether they were connected to Friday's attack.

The stabbings were initially probed as murders but further information received meant "the offences now include murders with terrorist intent," police said in a statement.

Officers identified the main suspect as a 18-year-old Moroccan citizen who arrived in Finland in early 2016 and sought asylum. His name was not disclosed, nor his motive known.

"We tried to talk with the attacker in hospital but he didn't want to speak," Granroth said.

The suspect is being treated for a gunshot wound to the thigh.

Media reports said his asylum request had been rejected but police would not confirm this, saying only that his case had been processed by migration authorities.

Police said they were examining whether the suspect had any link to the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for twin terror attacks in Spain on Thursday and early Friday.

"Whether or not there is a connection to IS will be one of the main focuses of the investigation," Finnish intelligence agency SUPO director Antti Pelttari told reporters.

- Barcelona link? -

Police said they had issued an international arrest warrant for another person outside Finland, who is believed to be dangerous.

Police were also probing whether there was a link to the vehicle attacks in Barcelona and another Spanish seaside resort that killed 14 people and wounded around 100 others.

Most of the suspects in those attacks were also Moroccan citizens. "Of course this is something we are going to investigate," Granroth said.

Among the eight injured in Turku were an Italian national, a Swede and a Briton. The rest were Finns.

In June, SUPO raised Finland's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second on a four-tier scale.

It said at the time that it saw an increased risk of an attack committed by IS, noting that foreign fighters from Finland had "gained significant positions within IS in particular and have an extensive network of relations in the organisation."

The agency said it was closely watching around 350 individuals -- an increase of 80 percent since 2012.

Experts were cautious about drawing any links between the attack and Islamist extremism.

"But if it is related, this is pretty much a continuation of the easy-to-use blatant attacks that Europe has seen," terrorism researcher Leena Malkki from the University of Helsinki told public broadcaster YLE.

- Flags at half-mast -

Flags flew at half-mast across Finland on Saturday.

A demonstration in memory of the victims was held at the market square where the attack took place, organised by Iraqis, Turks and Syrians.

An anti-immigration group, Finland First, also demonstrated at the scene, but police kept apart the two groups, who numbered around 300. No violence was reported.

On Sunday, a minute of silence will be held at 0700 GMT.

Finland, with 5.5 million inhabitants, saw a record 32,500 migrants seek asylum in 2015.

That number fell to around 10,000 last year, after Finland, like its Nordic neighbours, tried to discourage asylum seekers by tightening rules and reducing social benefits.
Men wait beside empty graves for the coffins of mudslide victims at Waterloo cemetery, near Freetown

The death toll from a mudslide and flooding that struck Sierra Leone's capital Freetown has reached 441, the government said on Saturday.

"Four hundred and forty-one corpses (were) buried as at yesterday," the deputy minister of information and communication, Cornelius Deveaux, told AFP, adding that the number of missing was "still being calculated."

A tally of deaths, issued on Friday by the Red Cross, had stood at more than 400, with around 600 others listed as missing.

At Connaught Hospital, morgue worker Mohamed Sinneh Kamara gave a slightly higher toll than the minister's.

"We buried 50 more bodies on Friday. We have so far buried 450 corpses," he told AFP. "Most of the bodies were found decomposed and families were not allowed to identify (them)."

He added: "We're receiving calls from disaster-hit communities every three to four hours about a corpse found in a drainage or under a collapsed building."

Three more bodies were found in a search for survivors in the Regent district, where the side of a hill collapsed, the emergency services said.

The disaster struck on Monday after Freetown, home to 1.2 million people and the capital of one of the world's poorest countries, had been pounded for three days by torrential rain.

According to the charity Save the Children, the disaster killed 122 children and left 123 orphaned.

The Red Cross has issued an emergency funding appeal. Britain, the former colonial power in Sierra Leone, has pledged 5 million ($6.45 million, 5.45 million euros), while China has pledged $1 million (850,000 euros) and Togo $500,000.

Water-borne diseases such as cholera and malaria are a major fear.

"This is a potential health hazard. That's why we need to continue the operations to ensure that we remove as much dead bodies as possible," said Colonel Abu Bakarr Sidique Bah of the Sierra Leone armed forces.

But the search for victims has been arduous, especially in the Regent neighbourhood.

"It is actually thousands of tonnes of rubble that have fallen... (down) the hill... And the inclement weather, the rain, has also made it very difficult for equipment to move within the affected area," he said.

Flooding is an annual menace in Sierra Leone, where ramshackle homes are regularly swept away by seasonal rains. In 2015, floods killed 10 people and left thousands homeless.
Thousands of counter-demonstrators converged on Boston Saturday in protest at a planned 'Free Speech Rally' involving white nationalists

Thousands of anti-racism demonstrators flooded the streets of Boston Saturday, dwarfing a gathering of white nationalists in the city and triggering scuffles with police but avoiding the serious violence that marred a similar event a week earlier in Virginia.

A so-called "free speech" rally by far-right groups had been scheduled to run until 2 pm (1800 GMT), but a half-hour before that police escorted its participants -- whose numbers appeared to be in the dozens -- to safety past the throng of anti-racism protesters.

Aerial photos showed the latter group filling one of Boston's main streets for several blocks, in a huge outpouring of anti-racist sentiment in this strongly Democratic northeastern city.

While Boston saw no repeat of the violence that erupted last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, isolated scuffles between police and protesters prompted Trump to weigh in, with a tweet intoning against the "many anti-police agitators in Boston."

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans estimated that around 40,000 people turned out for the marches.

"We did have people who came here to cause problems, but overall, I thought the men and women of our department and all the other agencies who helped us performed really well," Evans said at a press conference.

The police chief said there were a total of 27 arrests, mostly for assault and battery against the police and disorderly conduct. He credited a police unit specially trained for crowd control for maintaining order, and keeping the two sets of protesters apart.

"I thought they did a good job of moving that crowd," Evans said. "Sometimes it doesn't look pretty, but that's what they're trained for."

Saturday's demonstration was held at a time of anguished national debate over racial relations, which was fanned when President Donald Trump defended some participants in last week's white nationalist and neo-Nazi rally in Virginia as "very fine people."

As protesters began departing central Boston without major incident, the president followed up on his first tweet with a more positive tone.

"I want to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate," he wrote on Twitter.

"Our country will soon come together as one!"

- 'Racists out!' -

Thousands of counter-protesters had convened in two groups before the main rally, chanting "No Nazis, no KKK, no fascists in the USA!" One man held a sign that read, "Stop pretending your racism is patriotism," and a woman's sign said, "Muslims welcome, racists out."

"It's time to do something," said Katie Zipps, who traveled from Malden, north of Boston, for the counter-demonstrations, organized by an amalgam of mostly left-leaning groups.

"We are out here to add an extra body to add to the numbers of those who resist."

Some local restaurants promised to donate their proceeds from Saturday's business to left-leaning groups, and others refused to serve the white nationalists, with one posting a sign that said, "Hope you Nazis packed a lunch."

Authorities in Boston had protectively ordered a strict ban on weapons in the rally area, and ordered garbage trucks and concrete barriers placed around the venue to prevent vehicles from entering.

Protesters demonstrating Anti-racism protestors marching against a white nationalist rally in Boston faced off with riot police who deployed to keep the two sides apart

According to an AFP photographer at the scene, police used anti-riot gear and batons to prevent protesters from reaching the venue of the white nationalist rally -- leading some to accuse police of defending "Nazis."

Crowds booed or harassed "free speech" demonstrators as they walked to or from the venue, while Boston police tweeted that rocks had been thrown at its officers.

A young woman was killed last weekend when an avowed white supremacist rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters in Charlottesville -- and President Trump's muted response to the violence has plunged his embattled administration deeper into disarray.

Despite the skirmishes Saturday, Walsh -- clearly relieved that the protests concluded with no injuries or even substantial property damage reported in Boston -- had words of praise at day's end for the city's police, and even for the protesters.

"I want to thank all the people that came out today," the Democratic mayor said at the press conference.

"I want to thank all the people that came out to share that message of love, not hate. To fight back on racism. To fight back on anti-Semitism. To fight back on the white supremists that were coming to our city -- the Nazis coming to our city," he said.
The Palestinian, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers expressed support Saturday for US Middle East peace efforts at a Cairo meeting ahead of a White House delegation visit to the region.

Egypt's foreign ministry had said earlier this week the three would meet to coordinate ahead of the visit by the US delegation that includes presidential adviser Jared Kushner.

On Saturday, the ministers said in a joint statement they "appreciated the American role to achieve peace" between the Israelis and Palestinians.

They "look forward to the US administration intensifying its efforts in the coming period".

Talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been at a standstill since the failure of US mediation in the spring of 2014.

US President Donald Trump, who visited Israel and the occupied West Bank in May, has said he believes he can mediate a final peace agreement that has eluded his predecessors.
Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain attended the state funeral service at St Patrick's Cathedral in the city, where hundreds of people gathered to pay their respects

Ruth Pfau, a German nun who devoted her life to combatting leprosy in Pakistan, was buried with full state honours on Saturday, in an unprecedented service for a foreign Christian in the Muslim-majority country.

Pfau, who died at the age of 87 on August 10 was known locally as Pakistan's Mother Teresa. She came to the southern port city of Karachi in 1960 and spent half a century taking care of some of the country's sickest and poorest people.

She was the founder of Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre in Karachi, where she was being cared for at the time of her death after a short illness.

Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain attended the state funeral service at St Patrick's Cathedral in the city, where hundreds of people gathered to pay their respects.

The casket, draped in the national flag, was carried by army personnel and Marie Adelaide staff and given a 19-gun salute.

Pfau, who died at the age of 87 on August 10 was known locally as Pakistan's Mother Teresa

"The entire Pakistani nation pays homage to Dr Pfau's extraordinary work. She will always be fondly remembered. We have lost a national hero," Pakistan's foreign office spokesman Nafees Zakaria Saturday said in a statement.

Working with the government, Pfau expanded leprosy treatment centres in more than 150 cities and towns across Pakistan, training doctors, treating thousands of victims and helping establish a national programme to bring the disease under control.

She was honoured by the state with the country's two highest civilian awards, the Hilal-e-Imtiaz and the Hilal-e-Pakistan.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi earlier expressed his sadness at her death, saying "she may have been born in Germany, but her heart was always in Pakistan".

It was after the horrors of World War II in her native Germany that Pfau decided to dedicate her life to serving humanity, becoming a doctor and joining the Daughters of the Heart of Mary order, founded during the French Revolution.

Not required to take the veil or live in seclusion, she ended up in Pakistan by chance. En route to work in India, visa complications forced her to break the journey in Karachi, where she visited a lepers' colony.

Pfau was also praised for her work in helping victims of devastating flooding in 2010, which left millions of people homeless across swathes of the country.
ABERDEEN, Wash. (AP) - One-hundred-fifty baskets of pink petunias hang from the light posts all over this city, watered regularly by residents trying to make their community feel alive again. A local artist spends his afternoons high in a bucket truck, painting a block-long mural of a girl blowing bubbles, each circle the scene of an imagined, hopeful future.

But in the present, vacant buildings dominate blocks. A van, stuffed so full of blankets and boxes they are spilling from the windows, pulls to the curb outside Stacie Blodgett's antiques shop.

"Look inside of it," she says. "I bet you he's living in it."

Robert LaCount, a recovering addict, stands outside an old church he is fixing up as a community center in Hoquiam, Wash., Monday, June 12, 2017. For years, LaCount cycled in and out of jail and it did nothing to stop the addiction. He didn't care if he lived or died; he endangered his own children, spent Christmases in missions, until one day it occurred to him that his life had been so empty no one would care enough to claim his body from the morgue when he died. He got clean nine years ago, and now runs a sober housing program where he fields 10 calls a day that he has to say no to because there's so much need and so few resources. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Around the corner, a crowded tent city of the desperate and addicted has taken over the riverbank, makeshift memorials to too many dead too young jutting up from the mud.

America, when viewed through the bars on Blodgett's windows, looks a lot less great than it used to be. So she answered Donald Trump's call to the country's forgotten corners. Thousands of her neighbors did, too, and her county, once among the most reliably Democratic in the nation, swung Republican in a presidential election for the first time in 90 years.

"People were like, 'This guy's going to be it. He's going to change everything, make it better again,'" she says.

Blodgett stands at the computer on her counter and scrolls through the news. Every day it's something else: New details in the Russia campaign investigation, shake-ups at the White House, turmoil over Trump's response to race-fueled riots. His administration's failed plans to remake the health care system may or may not cost millions their coverage, and there's a lack of clarity over how exactly he intends to eradicate a spiraling drug crisis that now claims 142 lives each day - a growing number of them here, in Grays Harbor County.

Many here agree that the thrashing and churning in Washington looks trivial when viewed from this place 3,000 miles away that so many residents have been trying so hard to save. Some maintain confidence that Trump will rise above the chaos to deliver on his pledge to resurrect the American dream. Others fear new depths of hopelessness if he fails.

Across the country, Trump disproportionately claimed communities where lifetimes contracted as the working class crumbled. Penn State sociologist Shannon Monnat spent last fall plotting places on a map experiencing a rise in "deaths of despair" - from drugs, alcohol and suicide wrought by the decimation of jobs that used to bring dignity. The map of Trump's victory mirrors hers documenting death, from New England through the Rust Belt all the way here, to the rural coast of Washington, a county of 71,000 so out-of-the-way some say it feels like the end of the earth.

The logging economy collapsed decades ago, and Grays Harbor sank into despair. Suicides increased, addiction took hold. The rate at which people here die from drugs and alcohol has quadrupled.

Blodgett is confronted every day with her neighbors' suffering. They come to her shop to pawn jewelry to pay for medication. They come looking for things stolen from them. They come and tell her food stamps won't cover the dog food.

She keeps kibble behind the register.

Now they come to discuss Trump, and their differing degrees of faith that he will make good on his promise to fix the rotting blue-collar economy that brought this despair to their doorstep.

"Has he done anything good yet?" she asks. "Has he?"

Robert LaCount is a recovering addict who runs a sober housing program where he fields 10 calls a day for help that he has to say no to because there's so much need and so few resources.

Trump got his vote, but LaCount worries about his push to undo the Affordable Care Act. LaCount relies on insurance through the law, and says those trapped in addiction have little chance to get out of it without health coverage. But it's hard to tell what news is real and what's blown out of proportion, he says, frustrated by what he sees as obstruction of the president's ideas.

People in big cities, rooting for Trump's failure, don't have nearly as much on the line as he sees here.

"We're banking on him," he says.

LaCount traded his motorcycle for $30,000 worth of woodworking tools to teach people the skills they'll need for the jobs Trump promised to create. He's scraping paint from a run-down church with dreams of building a community center. He considers his old building a metaphor for his community - good bones, a good soul, a working organ that plays beautiful music.

"It's been sitting empty and it's tired," he says. "It needs to get back to life."

The county's population is stagnating and aging, as many young and able move away. Just 15 percent of those left behind have college degrees. A quarter of children grow up poor. People here die on average three years younger than those in the rest of the state.

Karolyn Holden, director of the public health department, was so happy on the day President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, she cried. It's an imperfect program with premiums and deductibles rising for some, she says. But thousands here received coverage; the uninsured dropped from 18 percent in 2012 to 9 in 2014.

She reads about the whirl of proposals Republicans have offered to topple it and believes the consequences of an unstable system will be most painful in counties like hers. For two terrifying weeks this summer, no insurer filed to provide coverage for the county through the exchange next year, threatening to leave thousands without an option.

If Trump's promise of better days doesn't come to fruition, the problems already so palpable here might dig in even deeper, Holden says, breeding "more cynicism, more hopelessness, more rage."

"Anytime you have people feeling hopeless, it means more drugs or alcohol or gambling - all those things we do to numb ourselves."

In her store, Blodgett ticks off the headlines that make her wish she could take back her vote: Trump hired rich people and family members, while proposing less money for programs to help the disabled, feed the elderly, provide health care for the poor. Her brother had a stroke and is in a nursing home, paid for by Medicaid. She has pre-existing conditions, and she's terrified about what could happen to them both.

She supported Trump because he promised to look after the underdogs, and her community is full of them.

But, she says now: "As soon as he gets in there, it's like to hell with you people."

___

AP multimedia journalist Martha Irvine and data journalist Angeliki Kastanis contributed to this report.

___

Read more in the series: https://apnews.com/tag/TrumpCountry

Robert LaCount, a recovering addict who voted for Donald Trump, sits for a photo in the old church he is fixing up as a community center in Hoquiam, Wash., Monday, June 12, 2017. He considers his old building an analogy for his county _ good bones, a good soul, a working organ that plays beautiful music. It just needs a lot of help. "It's been sitting empty and it's tired," he says. "It needs to get back to life." He's pinned his hopes on Trump. "We're banking on him." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Logs are piled at a lumber yard in Aberdeen, Wash., Monday, June 12, 2017. The timber economy started to slip in the 1960s, slowly at first. Then the federal government in 1990 limited the level of logging in an attempt to save an endangered owl, the ships stopped coming and the river that used to drive the economy now sits still. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Stacie Blodgett, who voted for Donald Trump, works in her antique and pawn shop in Aberdeen, Wash., Tuesday, June 13, 2017. "Has he done anything good yet?" she asks. "Has he?" She hopes Trump understands the stakes in places like this, with little room left for error from Washington, D.C. There, he is tweeting insults about senators and CNN. Here, her neighbors have been reduced to living in cars. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Dilapidated storefronts stand along baskets of pink petunias that hang from light posts all over town, watered regularly by residents trying to make their city feel alive again in Aberdeen, Wash., Friday, June 16, 2017. Six months into Trump's presidency, his supporters in this county, battered by drugs and death, maintain differing degrees of faith that he will make good on his promise to fix the rotting working class economy at the root of this plague on their doorstep. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

The Rev. Sarah Monroe reveals a tattoo decorated with the initials of those in her community who died young, in Aberdeen, Wash., Tuesday, June 13, 2017. Monroe has already held seven funerals this year. She tallies the names of the dead on a tattoo that winds around her bicep: AB, dead at 23; ZV, at 24. Now she has a new one to add: Shawn Vann Schreck, dead at 42. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Forrest Wood, 24, injects heroin into this arm under a bridge along the Wishkah River at Kurt Cobain Memorial Park in Aberdeen, Wash., Tuesday, June 13, 2017. Wood grew up here, watching drugs take hold of his relatives, and he swore to himself that he would get out of this place, maybe spend his days in the woods as a park ranger. But he started taking opioid painkillers as a teenager, and before he knew it he was shooting heroin, a familiar first chapter in the story of American addiction. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Forrest Wood, 24, pauses after injecting heroin into this arm under a bridge along the Wishkah River at Kurt Cobain Memorial Park in Aberdeen, Wash., Tuesday, June 13, 2017. He's tried to quit; the drug only delays the sickness and shame that set in when he doesn't shoot up. "I'm trying to get myself to feel like I have some sort of purpose," he said. "I just want to be happy, that's all." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Chris Burkett deposits old needles for new ones at a needle exchange program run by the Grays Harbor County Public Health and Social Services Department in Aberdeen, Wash., Wednesday June 14, 2017. Grays Harbor County public health department last year collected 750,000 needles at its syringe exchange designed to stem the tide of disease, an incredible number for a small town, but still down from more than 900,000 the year before. They attribute that improvement to the methadone clinic that helps nearly 500 people stay off drugs. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

A man shouts across the Wishkah River while incoherently talking to himself at Kurt Cobain Memorial Park in Aberdeen, Wash., Tuesday, June 13, 2017. Grays Harbor County lands near the top of all the lists no place wants to be on: drugs, alcohol, early death, child abuse, runaway rates of welfare that pull some out of poverty but trap others in a cycle of dependency. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

A message reading "CALL DETOX" is written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror of a motel room in Aberdeen, Wash., Tuesday, June 13, 2017. Grays Harbor County public health department last year collected 750,000 needles at its syringe exchange designed to stem the tide of disease, an incredible number for a small town, but still down from more than 900,000 the year before. They attribute that improvement to the methadone clinic that helps nearly 500 people stay off drugs. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

A man walks in front of a dilapidated motel in a rundown section of Aberdeen, Wash., Tuesday, June 13, 2017. The county's population is shrinking, growing sicker, growing poorer as many young and able move away. Just 15 percent of those left behind have college degrees. A quarter of children grow up poor. There is a critical shortage of doctors because it's hard to practice medicine in poor, rural places. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Staci Hadley, left, and boyfriend Deric Hensler, embrace during a portrait while stopping by a needle exchange program in Aberdeen, Wash., Wednesday June 14, 2017. "It's crazy how things can spiral out of control. Not too long ago, a year ago, we had credit cards and bank accounts, jobs, a house," said Hadley. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Staci Hadley, right, and boyfriend Deric Hensler rearrange their personal items out of their car which they are living out of in Aberdeen, Wash., Wednesday June 14, 2017. The couple had gotten clean on a methadone program, moved into a nice apartment and started building a better life. Then Hensler lost his job, his insurance and couldn't get methadone anymore. Now they're back on drugs and living in their car and they're trying to figure out a safe place to park and sleep for the night. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Staci Hadley, left, and boyfriend Deric Hensler, hidden, sleep in their car overnight in a parking lot outside the methadone clinic before it opens where they get treated for their drug addiction in Hoquiam, Wash., Thursday June 15, 2017. "Not too long ago we were thinking 'oh how the mighty have fallen'," said Hadley. The two used to have jobs, bank accounts, credit cards, a house before Hensler lost his job and insurance to cover methadone treatments. "I know we're kind of messed out right now," added Hadley. "But this is not my life." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Aberdeen, Wash., is seen along the Chehalis River Friday, June 16, 2017. Aberdeen was built as a boom town at the turn of the 20th century. Its spectacular landscape, the Chehalis River carves through tree-topped hills to the harbor, offered ships easy access to the Pacific Ocean. Millionaire lumber barons built mansions on the hills. There were restaurants and theaters and traffic that backed up as the drawbridge leading into town seesawed up and down for ship after ship packed with logs and lumber. Now that drawbridge pretty much stays put. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Misty Micheau Bushnell looks over the memorial marking the spot where her boyfriend Shawn Vann Schreck died two days before in a homeless encampment where they live along the river in Aberdeen, Wash., Wednesday June 14, 2017. Bushnell, said his death shook her so much she thinks she's ready to move away, someplace inside, and she hopes her methamphetamine addiction won't follow her there. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

A mourner lights a candle at the memorial marking the spot where Shawn Vann Schreck died two days before in a homeless encampment where he lived along the river in Aberdeen, Wash., Wednesday June 14, 2017. On Aberdeen's banks, residents of the homeless encampment pulled driftwood from the water to construct a cross, 8 feet tall, to honor their latest loss: Vann Schreck, 42, who died slowly from heart and lung ailments made worse by infrequent medical care and longtime addiction. A generation ago, people like him went to work in the mills and bought tidy houses in nice neighborhoods, says the Rev. Sarah Monroe, a street minister here. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Scott Stevens collects wood from the shore to light a fire in a homeless encampment where he lives along the river in Aberdeen, Wash., Wednesday June 14, 2017. Grays Harbor County lands near the top of all the lists no place wants to be on: drugs, alcohol, early death, child abuse, runaway rates of welfare that pull some out of poverty but trap others in a cycle of dependency. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Colin Czichas plays piano while waiting to drive a friend to work who lives in a homeless encampment along the river in Aberdeen, Wash., Wednesday June 14, 2017. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Aaron Scott, left, prays during a service conducted by Rev. Sarah Monroe, right, at Chaplains on the Harbor church in Westport, Wash., Thursday, June 15, 2017. "I don't think our politicians know how high the stakes are here, and after so many years have gone by with our situation still as devastated as it is, I don't know if they care," Monroe says. "I'm not sure how much worse it can get, and at the same time I'm afraid to see how much worse it can get." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Tarryn Vick takes her dose of methadone where she is being treated for drug addiction at the Evergreen Treatment Services clinic in Hoquiam, Wash., Thursday, June 15, 2017. Grays Harbor County public health department last year collected 750,000 needles at its syringe exchange designed to stem the tide of disease, an incredible number for a small town, but still down from more than 900,000 the year before. They attribute that improvement to the methadone clinic that helps nearly 500 people stay off drugs. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Robert LaCount, a recovering addict who voted for Trump, stands outside one of the halfway homes he setup for recovering addicts in Aberdeen, Wash., Friday, June 16, 2017. He hopes Trump's plan to Make America Great Again, harkening back to a bygone era, doesn't mean going back to a darker day, the War on Drugs, when addicts were locked away and couldn't get help unless they had money. For evidence that it didn't work, LaCount says, "just look around." They sleep in the doorways of abandoned buildings downtown. They live in tents and trucks and under tarps in the brush on the riverbank at the edge of downtown. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Robert LaCount, a recovering addict, shows a young woman's funeral program in Hoquiam, Wash., on Monday, June 12, 2017. He walked her down the aisle at her wedding and eight months later carried the casket at her funeral. The mother of three had been addicted to heroin, recovered, relapsed and hanged herself. "It's too sad," says LaCount, himself a recovering addict. "But it happens all the time." (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Verna MacDonald, 87, right, who is on Medicare, sits for a free meal put on for the community at Chaplains on the Harbor church in Westport, Wash., Thursday, June 15, 2017. The county's population is shrinking, growing sicker, growing poorer as many young and able move away. Just 15 percent of those left behind have college degrees. A quarter of children grow up poor. There is a critical shortage of doctors because it's hard to practice medicine in poor, rural places. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Aberdeen, Wash., stands in the background as Pete Rasmussen, 58, walks over a bridge to return home Friday, June 16, 2017. The former logger who has been out of work for over a year needs hip surgery and worries a new Washington healthcare law could strip his benefits. "I want to get it done before they do anymore changes," said Rasmussen. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

A logging truck drives through Aberdeen, Wash., Friday, June 16, 2017. Aberdeen was built as a boom town at the turn of the 20th century. Its spectacular landscape, the Chehalis River carves through tree-topped hills to the harbor, offered ships easy access to the Pacific Ocean. Millionaire lumber barons built mansions on the hills. There were restaurants and theaters and traffic that backed up as the drawbridge leading into town seesawed up and down for ship after ship packed with logs and lumber. Now that drawbridge pretty much stays put. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Artist Douglas Orr paints a mural on a building in Aberdeen, Wash., Friday, June 16, 2017. Orr has been painting a block-long mural of a little girl blowing bubbles, each circle the scene of an imagined, hopeful future. Nearby hangs one of the baskets of pink petunias that decorate light posts all over town, watered regularly by residents trying to make their city feel alive again. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Trump ousts Bannon, his influential, divisive strategist

WASHINGTON (AP) - Steve Bannon, the blunt-spoken and divisive strategist who rose from Donald Trump's conservative campaign to a top White House post, was pushed out by the president Friday, capping a turbulent seven months marked by the departure of much of Trump's original senior staff.

A favorite in the farther-right portions of the Republican Party, Bannon had pushed Trump to follow through on some of his most contentious campaign promises, including his travel ban for some foreigners and his decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement. He returned Friday to Breitbart News, which he led before joining Trump's campaign, as executive chairman and chaired its evening editorial meeting, the news site announced.

Barely more than a half-year in, Trump now has forced out his hardline national security adviser, his chief of staff, his press secretary (whose last day will be Aug. 31) and two communications directors - in addition to the FBI director he inherited from Barack Obama.

Bannon's departure is especially significant since he was viewed by many as Trump's connection to his base of most-committed voters and the protector of the disruptive, conservative agenda that propelled the celebrity businessman to the White House.

"It's a tough pill to swallow if Steve is gone because you have a Republican West Wing that's filled with generals and Democrats," said former campaign strategist Sam Nunberg, shortly before the news of Bannon's departure broke. "It would feel like the twilight zone."

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Soothing the nation? Trump struggles like no other president

WASHINGTON (AP) - For Susan Bro, mother of the woman killed at a rally organized by white supremacists, the president of the United States can offer no healing words.

She says the White House repeatedly tried to reach out to her on Wednesday, the day of Heather Heyer's funeral. But she's since watched President Donald Trump lay blame for the Charlottesville violence on "both sides."

"You can't wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying 'I'm sorry,'" she said in a television interview on Friday.

In moments like this, of national crisis or tragedy, presidents typically shed their political skin, at least briefly. They use the broad appeal of the presidency to unite and soothe, urging citizens to remember their humanity, their common bonds as Americans.

George W. Bush famously climbed atop a pile of rubble in New York City to speak through a bullhorn after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Barack Obama sang "Amazing Grace" during the eulogy for a black pastor killed in a racially motivated shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.

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Icahn steps down as unofficial Trump adviser

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump has lost another informal adviser from the business world: billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who gave the White House guidance on its deregulation efforts.

Icahn said in a letter to Trump released Friday that he is stepping down to prevent "partisan bickering" about his unofficial role that Democrats suggested could benefit him financially. Trump lost a pair of business advisory councils on Wednesday over his inability to condemn the role white supremacists played in violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.

But Icahn - who made his name and fortune as a corporate raider in the 1980s - indicated that his resignation was due to criticism regarding the appearance of possible ethical conflicts.

"I never had access to nonpublic information or profited from my position, nor do I believe that my role presented conflicts of interest," Icahn wrote.

He added that, out of an abundance of caution, he had limited his input to broad matters of policy about the oil-refining industry. Icahn controls a sizable stake in refiner CVR Energy. As an unofficial adviser, Icahn wasn't required to submit financial records to the Office of Government Ethics to address any conflicts of interest.

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Spanish plan for carnage started with botched explosion

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - A cell of at least nine extremists meticulously plotted to combine vehicles and explosives in a direct hit on tourists, and managed to carry off most of their deadly plan, killing 14 people, authorities said Friday. Police in Spain and France pressed a manhunt for any remaining members of the group, which Islamic State claimed as its own.

Only flawed bomb construction avoided a more devastating attack, authorities said after taking a closer look at a blast Wednesday evening in the town of Alcanar that was first written off as a household gas explosion. At least one person was killed and several injured in the home where police said the deadly plan took shape.

Eighteen hours later, a rented van veered into Barcelona's crowded Las Ramblas promenade, swerving along the walkway Thursday and killing 13 people. A surveillance video from inside a museum, which captured images of the van, showed it speeding down the promenade, barely missing a person with a stroller while others scattered.

Armed with an ax, knives and false explosives belts, attackers then drove a second vehicle to the boardwalk in the resort town of Cambrils early Friday, fatally injuring one person. Five of those attackers were shot to death, among them 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, according to a Spanish police union official, confirming Spanish news reports.

Oukabir's name was first on a document listing four suspects sought in the attacks, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation. The Barcelona-based La Vanguardia newspaper, Spanish national broadcaster RTVE and other outlets cited police sources as saying he was the driver of the van in Barcelona.

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Cities seek creative ways to prevent car or van attacks

PARIS (AP) - From Barcelona to Times Square and beyond, extremists have used vehicles as deadly weapons with alarming frequency in recent years, whether to promote jihad, get attention or express despair.

In response, ugly concrete blocks as well as more aesthetic deterrents are sprouting up in front of landmarks and ordinary public places around the world. Security experts say such barriers would have minimized the fatal damage wreaked on Spain this week - yet warn that as long as motor vehicles exist, some risks will always remain.

While cars and trucks have been used for scattered violence for generations, the last 13 months have seen nearly a dozen vehicle-ramming attacks in Europe and the U.S., as well as car bombings in the Mideast and beyond. Here are some ways cities and governments are countering the threat:

THE BASIC BOLLARD - AND HOW TO IMPROVE IT

Whether a post dug into a sidewalk or an unwieldy hunk of concrete, bollards are the most common anti-car shield. Impact engineers study the ideal height and shape of such barriers to resist damage from various vehicles. Intelligence agencies are increasingly working with manufacturers on optimal bollard design.

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Dashcam video shows white cop punching black man during stop

CLEVELAND (AP) - A dashcam video of a traffic stop that led to a white police officer with a history of disciplinary issues repeatedly punching a black man and hitting his head on pavement appears to show a different sequence of events than police had originally described.

The initial statement from police in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid said Richard Hubbard III, who was pulled over on suspicion of having a suspended driver's license, had refused Officer Michael Amiott's orders to "face away" after getting out of his car Aug. 12 and then began resisting. But the video obtained this week in a public records request appears to show Amiott not giving Hubbard a chance to comply, Hubbard's attorney said Friday.

"Your own two eyes and common sense can lead to only one reasonable conclusion as to the propriety of the level of force used for a basic traffic stop and whether or not my client had a chance to comply," attorney Christopher McNeal said.

The dashcam video shows Amiott opening the car door and Hubbard getting out. Within a second of Amiott ordering him to "face away," the video shows the officer grabbing Hubbard's arms and wrestling him to the ground in the middle of a street as Hubbard's girlfriend jumps out of the car and rushes over.

The video shows Amiott bashing Hubbard's head against the pavement several times and then punching him in the head more than a dozen times as Hubbard tries to defend himself.

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A look at US-S. Korea war games and how North might respond

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. The war games set to begin Monday may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given President Donald Trump's "fire and fury" threats and Pyongyang's as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam.

Will the allies keep it low-key, or focus on projecting strength? An examination of this year's drills and how the North might respond to them:

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THE WAR GAMES

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills will be the first joint military exercise between the allies since North Korea successfully flight-tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and threatened to bracket Guam with intermediate range ballistic missile fire in August.

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Trump studying options for new approach to Afghan war

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump is "studying and considering his options" for a new approach to Afghanistan and the broader South Asia region, the White House said Friday after the president huddled with his top national security aides at Camp David.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a brief statement saying Trump had been briefed extensively on a new strategy to "protect America's interests" in the region. She did not specifically mention Afghanistan.

"The president is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time," she said.

The administration has struggled for months to formulate a new approach to the war. But stepping up the fight in a way that advances peace prospects may be even more difficult, in part because the Taliban has been gaining ground and shown no interest in peace negotiations.

Trump met at the presidential retreat in nearby Maryland with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, top intelligence agency officials and other top military and diplomatic aides. Mattis said earlier this week the administration was "very close" to finalizing a new approach.

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Trump won places drowning in despair. Can he save them?

ABERDEEN, Wash. (AP) - One-hundred-fifty baskets of pink petunias hang from the light posts all over this city, watered regularly by residents trying to make their community feel alive again. A local artist spends his afternoons high in a bucket truck, painting a block-long mural of a little girl blowing bubbles, each circle the scene of an imagined, hopeful future.

But in the present, vacant buildings dominate blocks. A van, stuffed so full of blankets and boxes they are spilling from the windows, pulls to the curb outside Stacie Blodgett's antiques shop.

"Look inside of it," she says. "I bet you he's living in it."

Around the corner, a crowded tent city of the desperate and addicted has taken over the riverbank, makeshift memorials to too many dead too young jutting up intermittently from the mud.

America, when viewed through the bars on Blodgett's windows, looks a lot less great than it used to be. So she answered Donald Trump's call to the country's forgotten corners. Thousands of her neighbors did, too, and her county, once among the most reliably Democratic in the nation, swung Republican in a presidential election for the first time in 90 years.

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Judge refuses to end Roman Polanski sex assault case

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A Los Angeles judge on Friday denied the impassioned plea of Roman Polanski's victim to end a four-decade-old sexual assault case against the fugitive director.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon ruled that Polanski must return to California if he expects to resolve charges of sexually abusing a teen. The Oscar winner fled the country on the eve of sentencing in 1978.

Gordon's ruling follows a fervent request by Samantha Geimer to end a "40-year sentence" she says was imposed on both perpetrator and victim. It was issued on Polanski's 84th birthday and blamed the director for the fact that the case was still alive.

"Her statement is dramatic evidence of the long-lasting and traumatic effect these crimes, and defendant's refusal to obey court orders and appear for sentencing, is having on her life," Gordon wrote.

Harland Braun, Polanski's attorney, said the ruling came after the judge asked for proposals on how to resolve the case. Braun's proposals include several that previously were rejected by the court.
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:

1. MANHUNT ON FOR DRIVER IN BARCELONA ATTACK

Spain's second largest city is reeling after a van plows into pedestrians in a terror attack that kills at least 13 people and injures over 100.

A man pushing a woman in a wheelchair stops to speak to a an armed policeman on the spot where terrorists were shot by police in Cambrils, Spain, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017. Spanish police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack that killed at least 13, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

2. TRUMP DECRIES CRITICS OF HIS COMMENTS ON RACIAL VIOLENCE

The president finds himself under siege while fanning the controversy over race and politics toward a full-fledged national conflagration.

3. WHAT'S GROWING ALONGSIDE NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM

Economic markets blossom and a consumer culture takes root in the isolated country.

4. 'CONSIDER THIS YOUR WAKE-UP CALL'

Sue Riseling, a campus law enforcement expert, says more colleges should prepare for white supremacist rallies like the one that started at the University of Virginia and turned violent.

5. SKIPPER OF NAVY SHIP INVOLVED IN COLLISION TO LOSE COMMAND

Cmdr. Bryce Benson is being relieved as the USS Fitzgerald's captain after an investigation found poor seamanship contributed to the collision between the destroyer and a commercial ship.

6. DEATH TOLL RISES ABOVE 400 IN SIERRA LEONE MUDSLIDES

Some 600 others remain missing as people search through tons of mud and debris amid the remains of mangled buildings.

7. WHO'S GATHERING TO STUDY GERRYMANDERING

Some of the brightest minds in math attend a conference at Tufts University to lend their expertise to help courts identify voting maps that are drawn unfairly.

8. IRAQI CITIES MAY FACE DECADES OF WORK TO CLEAR UNEXPLODED BOMBS

The top U.S. commander in Iraq says the American military will help contractors and other officials locate unexploded bombs dropped by the coalition.

9. WHEN GRAND TETON PARK WILL ESCAPE YELLOWSTONE'S SHADOW

Grand Teton is directly in the path of Monday's total solar eclipse and is expecting its busiest day ever - outshining its world-renowned neighbor, Yellowstone.

10. WHERE FALL FOLIAGE FORECAST IS BRIGHT

A year after drought and gypsy moths muted autumn colors, New England expects to rebound with a vibrant leaf-peeping season.

FILE - In this June 18, 2017, file photo, damaged USS Fitzgerald is docked at the U.S. Naval base in Yokosuka, southwest of Tokyo, after colliding with Philippine-flagged container ship ACX Crystal off Japan. The Navy said the commanding officer of a warship that lost seven sailors in the collision will be relieved of command, and nearly a dozen other sailors face punishment. Adm. William Moran, the No. 2 Navy officer, told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017, that the actions are to be taken shortly, although the Navy's investigation into how and why the USS Fitzgerald collided with the container ship in June has not yet been completed. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, File)
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - The Latest on developments related to a violent white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

Charlottesville police have added charges against the man authorities say drove his car into a group of counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally.

People march in the streets of Durham protesting against a possible march by the Ku Klux Klan, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Durham, N.C. Hundreds of anti-racist demonstrators gathered in a North Carolina city in response to rumors of a white supremacist march. The sheriff had issued a statement that he was investigating the rumors, but no gathering of white supremacists was apparent by midafternoon. However, officers blocked streets and businesses closed. (AP Photo/Jonathan Drew)

Police said Friday that they'd charged James Alex Fields Jr. with five additional felony charges - two counts of malicious wounding and three counts of aggravated malicious wounding.

Fields, 20, is accused of ramming his car into a crowd of counterprotesters Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. He's already been charged with second-degree murder and other charges.

Police said Friday that some of the people injured in the incident suffered serious and permanent injuries.

Police also said they continue to investigate the "egregious assault" of DeAndre Harris. Viral photos and video show several men beating Harris with poles and sticks.

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5:15 p.m.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has signed an executive order temporarily banning any public demonstrations at a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond.

McAuliffe signed the order Friday, saying it was necessary after a deadly white nationalist rally over a Lee statue in Charlottesville.

The Lee monument in Richmond is in the middle of a traffic circle on Monument Avenue, an iconic boulevard with several other Confederate statues. McAuliffe said allowing any large demonstration there would "create a safety hazard in the current circumstances." The city was once the capital of the Confederacy.

Earlier this week a group supporting the preservation of Confederate monuments in Richmond canceled its plans to hold a rally next month because of the potential for violence.

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3 p.m.

The mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, is calling on the governor to convene an emergency meeting of state lawmakers to allow the city to remove the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Mayor Mike Signer's statement comes nearly a week after white supremacists descended on the city for a rally and clashed with counter protesters. One woman was killed on Saturday when a car plowed into a crowd of counter protesters.

News media outlets report that Signer says the attack turned the monuments from "equestrian statues into lightning rods." He says the city must respond "by denying the Nazis and the KKK and the so-called alt-right the twisted totem they seek."

Signer also wants lawmakers to pass legislation that would allow communities to bar people from carrying open or concealed weapons in public events "reasonably deemed to pose a potential security threat."

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2:45 p.m.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors says more than 250 of its members have signed on to a compact designed to combat hate, extremism and bigotry.

The mayors announced the compact Friday on a conference call with the Anti-Defamation League, which is a partner in the effort.

The compact lists 10 components, including rejecting white supremacism and extremism, celebrating diversity, and ensuring public safety while protecting free speech.

During the call, Republican Mayor Shane Bemis of Gresham, Oregon, said the compact was needed because President Donald Trump failed to "exhibit moral clarity" when he blamed both sides for the violence last weekend in Charlottesville during clashes between white nationalists and counter protesters.

Columbia, South Carolina, Mayor Steve Benjamin cited the need "to create stronger cultures of kindness."

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2:45 p.m.

The City of Manassas, Virginia, is canceling an upcoming Civil War Weekend, citing a desire not to exacerbate recent tension over Civil War monuments.

In a statement Friday, the city said that "recent events have ignited passions in this country surrounding the Civil War and the symbols representing it."

As a result, the city said it is canceling its Civil War Weekend planned for Aug. 25-27 out of concern for the safety of residents, visitors and re-enactors.

Manassas spokeswoman Patty Prince said the city has hosted the weekend since 2011, when it was launched in connection with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. She said the weekend is one of the smaller events on the city's tourism calendar.

The Manassas area was host to two major Civil War battles.

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1:30 p.m.

Hundreds of anti-racist demonstrators are marching through the streets of a North Carolina city in response to rumors of a white supremacist march.

The sheriff had issued a statement that he was investigating the rumors, but no gathering of white supremacists was apparent in the streets of Durham by midafternoon Friday. However, officers blocked streets and businesses closed.

Hundreds of others gathered downtown with signs such as "Black Lives Matter" and "We Will Not Be Intimidated." They marched for several blocks and then held an impromptu rally in front of where a Confederate statue was toppled Monday. On Friday, protesters altered an inscription on the statue's base that had read "In memory of the boys who wore the gray" with the phrase "Death to the Klan."

The protest was largely peaceful, but two white men and some protesters engaged in a shouting match, and then the men entered a government building.

Willis Brown, who is black, said he came out to support racial unity. He said protesters are "trying to live in harmony."

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Noon

Four people have been charged with trying to rip away a plaque honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from its place of honor in a North Carolina city.

Asheville police said the arrests came after officers found a group of protesters around the plaque on the city's main downtown plaza about 8 a.m. Friday. Photos show people using crowbars and an electric hand drill to yank away the top-right corner of the metal plaque from a granite boulder. The vandals failed to separate the rest of the plaque.

Police say the four Asheville residents charged with damage to real property are 27-year-old Nicole Townsend, 45-year-old Amy Cantrell, 30-year-old Hillary Brown and 34-year-old Adrienne Sigmon. Asheville Police spokeswoman Christina Hallingse said she did not know if any of them had obtained a lawyer.

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Noon

Hundreds of mourners have arrived for the funeral of a Virginia state trooper who died in a helicopter crash after monitoring a white nationalist protest in Charlottesville.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe and others who gathered at St. Paul's Baptist Church in Richmond on Friday praised Trooper-Pilot Berke Bates as a devoted family man and proud police officer. McAuliffe told colorful stories of Bates from his time spent on the governor's protective unit.

Authorities say Bates was a passenger in a helicopter providing video to police of activities in downtown Charlottesville last Saturday before it broke off to lend support to a motorcade for the governor.

Bates had recently gotten his pilot's license so that he could apply to work for the department's aviation unit. He joined the unit only last month.

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10:15 a.m.

The mayor of the Virginia city rocked by a deadly white nationalist rally over a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee has canceled a scheduled news conference about the monument's future.

Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer's office said Friday that he would no longer be making a previously scheduled "major announcement" about the Lee statue. Signer's office said the mayor would hold public events in the future to discuss public safety and the "legacy of Heather Heyer," the woman who was killed after a car rammed into a group of people protesting against white supremacists last Saturday. Signer's office said Friday morning that the governor would release a statement later in the day.

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9:30 a.m.

Crime novelist and Charlottesville, Virginia-area resident John Grisham is condemning the white nationalists who descended upon the city for a rally that turned deadly.

Grisham writes in a column published by Time that the neo-Nazis, skinheads, Ku Klux Klan members and others came to Charlottesville last Saturday to "provoke violence and get attention."

Grisham says the city has proved that "silence is not an option" in the "face of intimidation and hate."

Grisham says that Charlottesville's streets are quiet again and physical wounds are healing, but "emotional wounds will take longer."

One woman was killed and 19 were injured on Saturday when a car plowed into a crowd of people who gathered to condemn what is believed to be the largest gathering of white nationalists in a decade.

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9 a.m.

Faculty members at a college in South Carolina want their president to repudiate a Confederate flag event planned at the school in October.

The Post and Courier of Charleston reported the history department at the College of Charleston has asked school president Glenn McConnell to ban events planned by the South Carolina Secessionist Party on campus.

McConnell is a former state Senate leader and lieutenant governor who formerly owned a Confederate memorabilia shop.

The South Carolina Secessionist Party plans to display Confederate battle flags on campus Oct. 28.

McConnell has mostly avoided discussing the Civil War since becoming college president in 2014. A college spokesman said McConnell had no comment.

The faculty said the event is designed to intimidate students, staff and faculty. Secessionist Party founder James Bessenger denies that.

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Information from: The Post and Courier, http://www.postandcourier.com

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8:30 a.m.

As cities across the country tear down statues of Confederate leaders, a new Confederate monument is slated to be unveiled in Alabama.

Jimmy Hill is commander of the Alabama division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He tells AL.com that the memorial to "unknown Confederate soldiers" will be unveiled at 2 p.m. on Aug. 27 in a Confederate memorial park about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Montgomery in an unincorporated area of Crenshaw County. He says the unveiling is open to the public.

Dedicated in May 2015, the memorial park is open to the public, though it's located on private land owned by Sons of Confederate Veterans member David Coggins.

Hill says the date of the unveiling was selected five months ago.

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8 a.m.

The mother of a woman who was killed while protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, says she won't talk to President Donald Trump because of comments he made after her daughter's death.

Speaking Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Susan Bro said she initially missed the first few calls to her from the White House. But she now says she won't talk to the president after a news conference in which Trump equated violence by white supremacists at the rally with violence by those protesting the rally.

Bro's daughter, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, was killed and 19 others were injured when a driver rammed a car into a crowd of demonstrators last Saturday. An Ohio man, James Alex Fields Jr., has been arrested and charged with murder and other offenses.

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Associated Press writers Jonathan Drew in Durham, North Carolina; Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia.

People march in the streets protesting against a possible march by the Ku Klux Klan, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Durham, N.C. Hundreds of anti-racist demonstrators gathered in a North Carolina city in response to rumors of a white supremacist march. The sheriff had issued a statement that he was investigating the rumors, but no gathering of white supremacists was apparent by midafternoon. However, officers blocked streets and businesses closed. (AP Photo/Jonathan Drew)

Protesters take to the the street in response to rumors of a white supremacist march on Friday, Aug. 18, 2017 in Durham, N.C. The sheriff had issued a statement that he was investigating the rumors, but no gathering of white supremacists was apparent by midafternoon. However, officers blocked streets and businesses closed. (Bernard Thomas/The Herald-Sun via AP)

Isaiah Moore, right, argues with counter demonstrators about race relations during a rally in Coolidge Park on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Organizers said that the purpose of the demonstration, held in response to Saturday's rally by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., was to declare resistance against Nazism. (Doug Strickland/Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP)

Jennifer Vik, Yvonne Thrash and Sheila Thrash hold signs during a rally at T.B. Butler Fountain Plaza in Tyler, Texas, on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Around 75 people attended the rally to discuss ways the community could unify. The rally was held in response to a white nationalist rally held in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend. (Chelsea Purgahn/Tyler Morning Telegraph via AP)

Robert Castello, owner of the Dixie General Store, discusses his dislike of neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan in Chulafinee, Ala., on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Castello and other supporters of Southern heritage fear that extremists are hurting their cause with protests like the rally that turned deadly in Charlottesville, Virginia. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)

Patrick Kellogg wears an American flag jacket during a rally in Coolidge Park on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Organizers said that the purpose of the demonstration, held in response to Saturday's rally by white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., was to declare resistance against Nazism. (Doug Strickland/Chattanooga Times Free Press via AP)

Protesters take to the the street in response to rumors of a white supremacist march on Friday, Aug. 18, 2017 in Durham, N.C. The sheriff had issued a statement that he was investigating the rumors, but no gathering of white supremacists was apparent by midafternoon. However, officers blocked streets and businesses closed. (Bernard Thomas/The Herald-Sun via AP)

Protesters take to the the street in response to rumors of a white supremacist march on Friday, Aug. 18, 2017 in Durham, N.C. The sheriff had issued a statement that he was investigating the rumors, but no gathering of white supremacists was apparent by midafternoon. However, officers blocked streets and businesses closed. (Bernard Thomas/The Herald-Sun via AP)

Protesters take to the the street in response to rumors of a white supremacist march on Friday, Aug. 18, 2017 in Durham, N.C. The sheriff had issued a statement that he was investigating the rumors, but no gathering of white supremacists was apparent by midafternoon. However, officers blocked streets and businesses closed. (Bernard Thomas/The Herald-Sun via AP)

Protesters take to the the street in response to rumors of a white supremacist march on Friday, Aug. 18, 2017 in Durham, N.C. The sheriff had issued a statement that he was investigating the rumors, but no gathering of white supremacists was apparent by midafternoon. However, officers blocked streets and businesses closed. (Bernard Thomas/The Herald-Sun via AP)

A note and flowers are left at the site where Heather Heyer was killed in Charlottesville, Va., Friday, Aug. 18, 2017. Heyer was struck by a car while protesting a white nationalist rally on Saturday Aug.,12. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

Lily Holtz, 9, of Ashburn, Va, places flowers, as her brother Alexander, 7, and mother, Gracia, look on while they visit the site where Heather Heyer was killed in Charlottesville, Va., Friday, Aug. 18, 2017. Heyer was struck by a car while protesting a white nationalist rally on Saturday Aug.,12. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
MIAMI (AP) - Hunters have killed 500 Burmese pythons during an elimination program in the Florida Everglades.

Officials who are overseeing the program tell local news outlets that Miami snake hunter Jason Leon killed the 500th python - a 7-foot (2-meter) snake - Thursday morning. It was his second kill since the Python Elimination Program began March 25.

The South Florida Water Management District hired hunters to remove the voracious snakes from the Everglades. Researchers say the snakes are decimating populations of native mammals and pose a threat to the Everglades restoration efforts.

The hunters are independent contractors who are paid $8.10 an hour to track and kill pythons. They earn a $50 bonus for pythons that measure up to 4 feet (1 meter) and $25 for each additional foot.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - A gas explosion initially misconstrued as a domestic accident led to two days of bloodshed and a manhunt in Spain, authorities have said. Here is how the attacks unfolded:

Wednesday, Aug. 16:

11:20 p.m. An explosion rocks a home in Alcanar. Authorities believe at first that it is simply a home gas explosion but later realize that the building is packed with butane canisters. One person was killed.

A man reads a newspaper displaying photographs of the terrorist attack in Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Spain, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017. Spanish police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack that killed at least 13, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

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Thursday, Aug. 17:

5:30 p.m. A white van veers onto Barcelona's Las Ramblas promenade and mows down pedestrians, zig-zagging down the crowded strip. Thirteen people died.

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Friday, Aug. 18:

1:15 a.m. Police in the popular seaside resort of Cambrils fatally shot five people near the boardwalk who had plowed into a group of tourists and locals with their blue Audi 3. Catalonia's interior minister said they wore fake bomb belts. One woman died of her injuries.
NEW YORK (AP) - Things may look bleak for Democrats these days, but Michael Moore thinks he knows how they can get back on top.

"Humor is the non-violent weapon by which we're going to help turn this around," said the Academy Award-winning director of "Bowling for Columbine" who is currently starring in his one-man Broadway show.

"If you use your sense of humor and your wit to go against what's going on, it can be devastating and it can reach a lot of people."

The Academy Award-winner, Michael Moore, staring in the one-man show "The Terms of My Surrender," pose for a portrait Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017, at the Belasco Theatre in New York. Moore's show frequently targets President Donald Trump and his administration. (AP Photo/Michael Noble Jr.)

Moore has been doing his part in the anti-Donald Trump movement by ridiculing the president, part of what he calls "an unofficial army of comedy out there that is working to bring him down."

He cites comedians like Amy Schumer, Chris Rock, Alec Baldwin and Stephen Colbert and notes that Melissa McCarthy, in her "Saturday Night Live" sketches, played a role in the stepping down of Sean Spicer, Trump's oft-beleaguered press secretary. "I knew Spicer was gone the second after that first sketch was over," he said Thursday.

Moore has been taking his unhappiness to the streets and promises more. Earlier this week, he led the audience of his show "The Terms of My Surrender" in a protest to Trump's reaction to the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Hundreds rallied outside Trump Tower, including celebrities Mark Ruffalo, Olivia Wilde, Tom Sturridge and Zoe Kazan.

While Moore's nightly 90-minute onstage tirade puts his disdain for the president front and center, he also tackles other hot-button topics, such as the Flint water crisis and race relations. Moore tweaks each performance to address the headlines of the day and plans a dozen upcoming stunts with the audience.

"I'm blessed that I have this forum every night by which to construct a piece of theater and use the events of that day in the show. I'm very lucky to be able to do that," he said. "It's not your typical Broadway experience."

Moore directed and produced "Fahrenheit 9/11," a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush, and "Sicko," which examines health care in the United States. His films have also explored school shootings and the loss of the middle class.

With Republicans currently in control of the House, Senate, and White House, Moore said Democrats may be in "bad shape" but they still can fight against the man in the Oval Office.

"We can come at him like a swarm of bees - take him to court on everything we can take him to court on. Melissa McCarthy and Alec Baldwin - do your thing. I'll do my thing," he said. "We are without power but we are not powerless."

But Moore, who correctly predicted that Trump would beat Hillary Clinton last November, doesn't believe Trump will be forced to cut short his presidency.

"There's no end of Trump. Quit calling him the 'Teflon president.' Teflon implies he's in the pan. He's never been in the pan. He's not going in the pan. And he's not leaving on his own accord and the Republicans aren't going to impeach him. So we got a problem."

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Online: http://michaelmooreonbroadway.com

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - When crowds in downtown Barcelona fell silent for one minute Friday to honor the victims of the terrorist attack in the city, one thing was conspicuously absent: any reference to Catalan's burgeoning independence drive.

As the separatist movement has gathered momentum in recent years and builds to an Oct. 1 referendum that the central government in Madrid argues is illegal, the Catalan flag has become a common sight in Barcelona, the capital of the wealthy region. The red-and-yellow flag with the blue star symbolizes its long-desired independence from Spain.

When the silent tribute began in the Placa Catalunya (Catalonia Square) and a few people raised both Spanish and Catalan flags, jeers rang out. People shouted, "Fuera la bandera!" - "Get rid of the flag!"

King Felipe of Spain, center, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, center left, and Catalonia regional President Carles Puigdemont, center right, observe a minute of silence in memory of the terrorist attacks victims in Las Ramblas, Barcelona, Spain, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017. Spanish police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack that killed at least 13, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

It was a poignant moment of unity for Barcelona and for Spain. There was a feeling of standing together after Thursday's deadly van rampage in the city's famous Las Ramblas district.

"We're here for the victims and to protest what happened," said Anna Esquerdo, a Barcelona store assistant. "This is not about anyone's politics."

The political friction seemed to melt away as authorities swiftly reacted.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy flew in from Madrid to consult about the security operation alongside Carles Puigdemont, president of the regional government, and Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona. The latter two are fierce supporters of the secession that Rajoy adamantly refuses.

In an editorial Friday, the daily newspaper El Pais urged officials to set aside their political squabbling and, specifically, their breakaway efforts.

"An attack on this scale must be a wake-up call that brings back to reality Catalan political forces, which, from the regional government to the regional parliament and pro-independence groups, have turned the specter of secession into the one and only issue on the Catalan political agenda in recent years," the editorial said.

But Puigdemont sternly rejected such notions. Asked in an interview with radio station Onda Cero whether the attack had changed his political goals, he replied that terrorism "has nothing to do with" the drive for independence.

Fighting terrorism is a common, global effort, whatever people's political preferences, he said.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) - Triplets born prematurely just five days before a deadly tornado slammed Joplin, Missouri, have started school.

The Joplin Globe reports that the sisters arrived eight weeks early and weighing a combined 6 pounds before the tornado struck in May 2011, killing 161 people.

Addison, Reagan and Lauren Harper had health problems that forced them to remain in the hospital long after their birth. Their family's home was among those destroyed in the tornado. One of the triplets had multiple surgeries for congenital heart disease and has a pacemaker.

From left, Jayme Harper leads her triplets, Lauren, Regan and Addison into the cafeteria on their first day of school on Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017 at Jefferson Elementary in Joplin, Mo. The Triplets born just five days before a deadly tornado slammed Joplin in 2011 have started school. (Laurie Sisk/The Joplin Globe via AP)

But on Thursday, the giggling 6-year-olds piled out of their mother's minivan wearing matching T-shirts that read "Hello, Kindergarten." Their mother, Jayme Harper, says the strength of the girls "amazes" her. She says she is "kind of envious of them because of how strong they are."

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Information from: The Joplin (Mo.) Globe, http://www.joplinglobe.com
NEW YORK (AP) - Police say the rapper Meek Mill has been arrested on a charge of reckless endangerment for riding an illegal dirt bike through New York City streets.

The 30-year-old rapper was arrested late Thursday. His real name is Robert Rihmeek Williams.

The Daily News reports (http://nydn.us/2uNj2SA ) that Mill was seen on Instagram popping wheelies on the dirt bike Wednesday night.

According to Instagram posts by fans, Mill turned on his livestream when police detained him the next day based on the social media posts.

The dirt bike photos could no longer be found on Mill's Instagram account by late Thursday.

Mill's lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said Mill was being singled out because of his celebrity.

Tacopina said that if Mill's name had been John Smith, "he wouldn't even have been arrested."

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Information from: Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) - A right-wing organizer faces a charge of illegal possession of a baton he was seen swinging at counter-protesters during a chaotic rally for President Donald Trump in Berkeley, California earlier this year.

The Alameda County district attorney filed the felony charge against 41-year-old Kyle Chapman on Wednesday. Prosecutors say if convicted, Chapman faces a lengthy prison sentence under California's three-strikes law because it would be his third felony conviction.

Chapman describes himself in social media as a "proud American nationalist" and "ardent Trump supporter." He is scheduled to speak at rallies in Boston this weekend and in San Francisco later this month.

Chapman did not respond to a message sent Friday. In a message on Facebook he called the allegations "trumped up bogus charges."

Hundreds of protesters clashed during the March 4 rally.
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is blasting his one-time supporter and classical music maestro Gustavo Dudamel.

Maduro in a televised appearance Friday said the Los Angeles Philharmonic's musical director had been deceived by Venezuela's enemies into betraying the socialist government that had for years supported the world-famous El Sistema musical education program.

Dudamel for years toured with El Sistema ensembles and even appeared alongside Maduro in 2014 amid a wave of anti-government unrest to survey plans for a concert hall to be built in his name.

FILE - In this Jan. 1, 2017 file photo, maestro Gustavo Dudamel of Venezuela conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra during the traditional New Year's Concert at the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a televised appearance Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, said the musical director had been deceived by Venezuela's enemies into betraying the socialist government that had for years generously supported the world-famous El Sistema musical education program. Dudamel for years toured with El Sistema ensembles and even appeared alongside Maduro in 2014 amid a wave of anti-government unrest to survey plans for a concert hall to be built in his name. But he publicly broke with the government in May after a member of El Sistema was killed in another wave of protests. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak, File)

But he publicly broke with the government in May after a member of El Sistema was killed in another wave of protests.

Maduro's rebuke comes as Dudamel is scheduled next month to lead the National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in a four-city U.S. tour.
Colleges grappling with balancing free speech, campus safety

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - When Carl Valentine dropped off his daughter at the University of Virginia, he had some important advice for the college freshman: Don't forget that you are a minority.

"She has to be vigilant of that and be concerned about that, always know her surroundings, just be cautious, just be extremely cautious," said Valentine, 57, who is African-American. A retired military officer, he now works at the Defense Department.

As classes begin at colleges and universities across the country, some parents are questioning if their children will be safe on campus in the wake of last weekend's violent white nationalist protest here. School administrators, meanwhile, are grappling with how to balance students' physical safety with free speech.

Friday was move-in day at the University of Virginia, and students and their parents unloaded cars and carried suitcases, blankets, lamps, fans and other belongings into freshmen dormitories. Student volunteers, wearing orange university T-shirts, distributed water bottles and led freshmen on short tours of the university grounds.

But along with the usual moving-in scene, there were signs of the tragic events of last weekend, when white nationalists staged a nighttime march through campus holding torches and shouting racist slogans. Things got worse the following day, when a man said to harbor admiration for Nazis drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring 19 others.

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'Free speech rally' cut short after massive counterprotest

BOSTON (AP) - Thousands of demonstrators chanting anti-Nazi slogans converged Saturday on downtown Boston in a boisterous repudiation of white nationalism, dwarfing a small group of conservatives who cut short their planned "free speech rally" a week after a gathering of hate groups led to bloodshed in Virginia.

Counterprotesters marched through the city to historic Boston Common, where many gathered near a bandstand abandoned early by conservatives who had planned to deliver a series of speeches. Police vans later escorted the conservatives out of the area, and angry counterprotesters scuffled with armed officers trying to maintain order.

Members of the Black Lives Matter movement later protested on the Common, where a Confederate flag was burned and protesters pounded on the sides of a police vehicle.

Later Saturday afternoon, Boston's police department tweeted that protesters were throwing bottles, urine and rocks at them and asked people publicly to refrain from doing so. About 10 minutes before that, President Donald Trump had complimented Boston police, tweeting: "Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you."

He also complimented Boston's Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh.

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Duke University removes damaged Robert E. Lee statue

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - Duke University removed a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee early Saturday after it was vandalized amid a national debate about monuments to the Confederacy.

The university said it removed the carved limestone likeness before dawn from the entryway to Duke Chapel, where it stood among 10 historical figures. Officials discovered early Thursday that the statue's face had been gouged and scarred and that part of the nose is missing.

Another statue of Lee, the top Confederate general during the Civil War, was the focus of the violent protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly a week ago.

Duke University president Vincent Price said in a letter to the campus community that he consulted with faculty, staff, students and alumni before deciding to remove the statue.

"I took this course of action to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university," Price said in the letter.

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Spain investigates missing imam, mysterious explosion

RIPOLL, Spain (AP) - A missing imam and a house that exploded days ago became the focus Saturday of the investigation into an extremist cell responsible for two deadly attacks in Barcelona and a nearby resort, as authorities narrowed in on who radicalized a group of young men in northeastern Spain.

Investigators searched the home of Abdelbaki Es Satty, an imam who in June abruptly quit working at a mosque in the town of Ripoll, the home of the Islamic radicals behind the attacks that killed 14 people and wounded over 120 in the last few days. Police were trying to determine whether Es Satty was killed in a botched bomb-making operation on Wednesday, the eve of the Barcelona bloodshed.

His former mosque has denounced the deadly attacks and weeping relatives marched into a Ripoll square on Saturday, tearfully denying any knowledge of the radical plans of their sons and brothers. At least one of the suspects is still on the run, and his younger brother has disappeared, as has the younger brother of one of the five attackers slain Friday by police.

Catalan police said a manhunt was centered on Younes Abouyaaquoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan suspected of driving the van that plowed into a packed Barcelona promenade Thursday, killing 13 people and injuring 120. Another attack early Friday killed one person and wounded five in the resort of Cambrils.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for both.

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GOP doubts and anxieties about Trump burst into the open

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's racially fraught comments about a deadly neo-Nazi rally have thrust into the open some Republicans' deeply held doubts about his competency and temperament, in an extraordinary public airing of worries and grievances about a sitting president by his own party.

Behind the high-profile denunciations voiced this week by GOP senators once considered Trump allies, scores of other, influential Republicans began to express grave concerns about the state of the Trump presidency. In interviews with Associated Press reporters across nine states, 25 Republican politicians, party officials, advisers and donors expressed worries about whether Trump has the self-discipline and capability to govern successfully.

Eric Cantor, the former House majority leader from Virginia, said Republicans signaled this week that Trump's handling of the Charlottesville protests was "beyond just a distraction."

"It was a turning point in terms of Republicans being able to say, we're not even going to get close to that," Cantor said.

Chip Lake, a Georgia-based GOP operative who did not vote for Trump in the general election, raised the prospect of the president leaving office before his term is up.

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Pence on message, despite Trump's troubles at home

WASHINGTON (AP) - The day after President Donald Trump sparred with reporters on live television over assigning blame for violence at a white supremacist rally, White House aides were stunned, advisers were whispering their frustrations, business allies were cutting public ties with the White House and Trump was out of sight.

But Vice President Mike Pence was on message.

At a press conference 5,000 miles away in Santiago, Chile, Pence offered a robust defense of the president, while neither endorsing nor denouncing his words.

"What happened in Charlottesville was a tragedy, and the president has been clear on this tragedy and so have I," Pence said Wednesday in response to a reporter's question during a weeklong trip to Latin America. "I spoke at length about this heart-breaking situation on Sunday night in Colombia, and I stand with the president, and I stand by those words."

Time and again, with cool reserve, unquestionable loyalty and unflappable message discipline, Pence has defended Trump and downplayed his troubles of the moment, all while appearing mindful of the political perils of becoming a chief spokesman for the unpopular president. While he never fails to stand by his boss, he also does not repeat Trump's more bombastic statements. He is a master of the dodge, at keeping a safe distance, at making Trump's most shocking comments sound more reasoned. After seven months on the job, Pence has mastered the art of managing the Trump outburst.

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Trump to skip Kennedy Center Honors awards program

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) - Acknowledging that he has become a "political distraction," President Donald Trump has decided to skip the festivities surrounding the annual Kennedy Center Honors arts awards later this year, the White House announced Saturday amid the continuing fallout over Trump's stance on last weekend's white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Kennedy Center said it respected Trump's decision and the show will go on.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump reached their decision Friday, a White House official said, the same day that the entire membership of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities resigned in protest over Trump's remarks about Charlottesville. The official was not authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations and insisted on anonymity to comment.

Trump has blamed "both sides" for the Aug. 12 violence that left an anti-racism activist dead.

Presidents traditionally host a light-hearted and oftentimes humorous gathering for the honorees at the White House before the awards ceremony at the performing arts center. Trump will not hold that reception this year, and he and the first lady will not attend the gala.

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Suspect in killings of 2 Fla. officers arrested at bar

KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) - A police officer in Florida died from his injuries Saturday, a day after his colleague was killed when a suspect fired at them during a scuffle while they were on patrol. The suspect was later arrested at a bar.

Sgt. Sam Howard died Saturday afternoon at a hospital where he had been taken following Friday night's attack in Kissimmee, Florida, located south of the theme park hub of Orlando.

Officer Matthew Baxter died Friday night, a short time after authorities say he was shot by 45-year-old Everett Miller.

Miller faces a charge of first-degree murder for the killing of Baxter. Authorities hadn't yet said what charges he could face for Howard's death.

During a patrol late Friday of a neighborhood with a history of drug activity, Baxter was "checking out" three people, including Miller, when the officer got into a scuffle with Miller. Howard, his sergeant, responded as backup, said Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell.

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Trump Phoenix rally to highlight feisty feud with senator

PHOENIX (AP) - When President Donald Trump takes the stage this week at a rally in Arizona, the state's junior senator will be nowhere to be seen. But Trump is likely to save some choice words for Sen. Jeff Flake.

The senator is currently in an escalating feud with the president - a spat that illustrates the upside-down world of Republican politics heading into the 2018 elections. Flake is a Republican incumbent who is beloved by many high-ranking party officials and he is trying to hold onto a seat that the party needs to keep control of Congress. Meanwhile, the president from his own party is actively campaigning against him and Flake is returning the punches.

The dynamic highlights the ongoing turmoil in the GOP over how to closely to align with a deeply unpopular president who still retains a devoted base of supporters - voters candidates like Flake will need to win.

Flake, who published a book last month questioning Trump's conservative values, says he mainly backs the president. But he's shown he's willing to slam his party's leader despite knowing the president will hit back - and hard.

That happened this past week, when the president called Flake "weak" in a tweet and touted his primary opponent, former state Sen. Kelli Ward.

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Trump dumps Bannon, who returns to conservative website

WASHINGTON (AP) - Steve Bannon, the blunt-spoken and divisive strategist who went from Donald Trump's victorious campaign to a top White House post, has been pushed out by the president, capping a turbulent seven months that witnessed the departure of much of Trump's original senior staff.

A favorite on the farther-right flank of the Republican Party, Bannon had pressed Trump to follow through on contentious campaign promises, such as banning travel from some predominantly Muslim countries and pulling out of the Paris climate agreement. Bannon left the White House on Friday and immediately returned as executive chairman to Breitbart News, which he led before joining Trump's campaign. The news site said Bannon presided at its Friday evening editorial meeting.

Trump has not spoken publicly about his latest personnel decision, but he tweeted praise for Bannon's return to the conservative news outlet.

"Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at @BreitbartNews ... maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition!" Trump said Saturday in one of two tweets. He also thanked Bannon for serving.

"He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton - it was great! Thanks S," the president said.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The Latest on wildfires in the West (all times local):

5:50 p.m.

Residents of about 440 homes near the central Oregon town of Sisters have been told to evacuate because of a nearly 11-square-mile (28-square-kilometer) wildfire in the Deschutes National Forest.

Susie Heisey, a public information officer with Central Oregon Dispatch, says residents in several other homes in the region have been warned to be ready to evacuate if needed.

So far fire crews have not been able to contain any part of the wildfire, which is burning in the so-called "zone of totality" for Monday's solar eclipse. The region is considered a top eclipse-viewing location, but heavy smoke and the rapidly growing fire has prompted officials to close nearby campsites, recreational areas and roads.

The McKenzie Pass Highway 242 has been closed between Highway 126 and Sisters.

Heisey says the closures will likely have a big impact on people traveling through the region for the eclipse.

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11:59 a.m.

A wildfire has destroyed two homes in Montana after jumping control lines.

Missoula County officials said Friday the homes were among 750 that had been evacuated earlier.

Some outbuildings also burned Thursday night.

Firefighters were bracing for another difficult day of high temperatures, gusty winds and low humidity.

The fire was started by lightning in mid-July and blew up Wednesday night.

It has burned nearly 30 square miles (76 square kilometers) of forest land southwest of Lolo. Evacuations were in effect along the U.S. Highway 93 and U.S. Highway 12 corridors.

Other wildfires were burning in Oregon and California.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. The war games set to begin Monday may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given President Donald Trump's "fire and fury" threats and Pyongyang's as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam.

Will the allies keep it low-key, or focus on projecting strength? An examination of this year's drills and how the North might respond to them:

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FILE - In this March 12, 2016 file photo, Marines of the U.S., left, and South Korea wearing blue headbands on their helmets, take positions after landing on a beach during the joint military combined amphibious exercise, called Ssangyong, part of the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle military exercises, in Pohang, South Korea. America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. The war games set to begin Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given President Donald Trump's "fire and fury" threats and Pyongyang's as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam. (Kim Jun-bum/Yonhap via AP, File)

THE WAR GAMES

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills, which will run through Aug. 31, will be the first large-scale military exercise between the allies since North Korea successfully flight-tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and threatened to bracket Guam with intermediate range ballistic missile fire earlier this month.

Despite some calls to postpone or drastically modify drills to ease the hostility on the Korean Peninsula, U.S. and South Korean military officials say that the long-scheduled exercises will go ahead as planned.

The drills, which began in the 1970s and will involve 17,500 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers this year, consist mainly of computer simulations aimed at honing joint-decision making and planning and improving command operations.

About 25,000 U.S. service members joined last year's UFG drills. An official from U.S. Forces Korea, who didn't want to be named citing office rules, said that the number of participating American troops can marginally change depending on how training events are designed and that the lower number this year doesn't represent an effort to downsize the drills.

The United States and South Korea also hold larger war games in the spring, called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, which involve live-fire exercises and training with tanks, aircraft and warships.

There's media speculation that the allies might try to keep this year's drills low-key by not dispatching long-range bombers and other U.S. strategic assets to the region. But that possibility worries some, who say it would send the wrong message to both North Korea and the South, where there are fears that the North's advancing nuclear capabilities may eventually undermine a decades-long alliance with the United States.

"If anything, the joint exercises must be strengthened," Cheon Seongwhun, who served as a national security adviser to former conservative South Korean President Park Geun-hye, said in an interview.

Impoverished North Korea hates the drills in part because it must frequently respond with its own expensive displays of military might.

During last year's drills, the North successfully test-fired for the first time a submarine-launched ballistic missile ruler Kim Jong Un then praised as the "success of all successes." Shortly after the drills, the North carried out its fifth and biggest nuclear test, which it claimed was of a "standardized" warhead that could fit on a variety of its rockets.

During this year's war games in March, North Korea launched four extended-range Scud missiles into the sea in what it described as a rehearsal for striking U.S. military bases in Japan.

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MISSILE THREATS

It's almost certain that this year's drills will trigger some kind of reaction from North Korea. The question is how strong it will be.

Some experts say North Korea is mainly focused on the bigger picture of testing its bargaining power against the United States with its new long-range missiles and likely has no interest in letting things get too tense during the drills.

If this is right, expect the usual propaganda belligerence in state media or low-level provocations like artillery and short-range missile drills. Or perhaps the North could conduct its first submarine-launched ballistic missile test since last August, which, if successful, would allow it to demonstrate serious military capability without posing an immediate direct threat to the United States.

"North Korea has already flight-tested ICBMs twice this year and will probably take a wait-and-see approach to assess the impact of stronger pressure from the United States and China and maybe even seek an opportunity for talks, rather than quickly move forward with another test," said Moon Seong Mook, a former South Korean military official and current senior analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.

But others think the North might use the drills as an excuse to conduct another ICBM test or maybe even act on its threat to lob missiles into the waters near Guam.

"North Korea is probably looking at all the cards it has to maximize pressure against the United States, and the drills provide a good opportunity to do it," Cheon said.

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WORRIES ABOUT THE FUTURE

There are calls in both the United States and South Korea for the allies to pause or downsize the joint military exercises to reduce strain and potentially persuade North Korea into talks to freeze its nuclear program.

David Wright, a U.S. analyst from the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an emailed statement that the United States should "postpone or significantly restructure" the exercises to reduce the risk of military confrontation.

"Smart military planning means ensuring that exercises do not enflame an already tense situation," Wright said.

South Korea's Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper said in an Aug. 11 editorial that the allies could gain a bargaining chip in efforts to persuade the North into meaningful nuclear talks by halting or scaling down the joint drills.

"The U.S.-South Korean drills aren't a sacred realm," the newspaper said, referring to the time that Washington and Seoul agreed to cancel their large-scale Team Spirit drills in the early 1990s to induce the North to join denuclearization talks.

These arguments might not win over South Korean conservatives whose main fear is that a fully functional ICBM in Pyongyang would eventually force the United States to consider a peace treaty with the North and also the removal of the tens of thousands of American soldiers stationed in South Korea.

While expressing a desire to reach out to the North, South Korea's liberal President Moon Jae-in has also ordered his military officials to schedule talks with the United States to increase the warhead limits on South Korean missiles, and his prime minister said recently that the country should also consider acquiring nuclear-powered submarines to better cope with North Korean threats.

Some conservatives want more strength, however, and are calling for the United States to bring back the tactical nuclear weapons that were withdrawn from the South in the 1990s.

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Follow Kim Tong-hyung on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@KimTongHyung

FILE - In this March 30, 2015, file photo, Marines of South Korea, right and the U.S aim their weapons near amphibious assault vehicles during the U.S.-South Korea joint landing military exercises as a part of the annual joint military exercise Foal Eagle between South Korea and the United States in Pohang, South Korea. America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. The war games set to begin Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given President Donald Trump's "fire and fury" threats and Pyongyang's as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

FILE- In this Aug. 24, 2016, file photo, South Korean army soldiers conduct an anti-terror drill as part of Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea. America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. The war games set to begin Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given President Donald Trump's "fire and fury" threats and Pyongyang's as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

FILE- In this Aug. 10, 2017, file photo, a man watches a television screen showing U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea. America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. The war games set to begin Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given Trump's "fire and fury" threats and Pyongyang's as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

FILE- In this Aug. 18, 2010, file photo, South Koreans wearing gas masks escape from a mock smoke attack during an anti-terror exercise carried out as part of Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, against possible attacks from North Korea in Seoul, South Korea. The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills set to begin Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 will be the first joint military exercise between the allies since North Korea successfully flight-tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and threatened to bracket Guam with intermediate range ballistic missile fire in August. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 24, 2016, file photo, U.S. Army soldiers move during the annual U.S. South Korea Ulchi-Freedom Guardian military exercises in Paju, South Korea, near the border with North Korea. America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. The war games set to begin Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given U.S. President Donald Trump's "fire and fury" threats and Pyongyang's as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)

FILE- In this Aug. 24, 2016 file photo, people pass by a TV news program showing a file footage of North Korea's ballistic missile that the North claimed to have launched from underwater, at Seoul Railway station in Seoul, South Korea. America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. Some experts say North Korea is mainly focused on the bigger picture of testing its bargaining power against the United States with its new long-range missiles and likely has no interest in letting things get too tense during the drills. The letters read: "North Korea fired a missile during UFG, Ulchi Freedom Guardian." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
CHICAGO (AP) - Autopsy results show a man slain last month in a Northwestern University professor's high-rise Chicago condo had methamphetamine in his system at the time.

The Cook County medical examiner's office released the findings in Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau's death on Friday. The 26-year-old hairstylist's body was found July 27. He suffered more than 40 stab wounds.

The since-fired Northwestern microbiologist, Wyndham Lathem, and Oxford University financial officer Andrew Warren are charged in Cornell-Duranleau's death.

Authorities have said the attack on Cornell-Duranleau, a Michigan native who had been working in Chicago, was so brutal that the blade of the knife investigators believe was used to stab him was broken.

Investigators say Lathem had a personal relationship with Cornell-Duranleau.

Lathem and Warren surrendered to California authorities Aug. 4 after an eight-day manhunt.
GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) - Federal officials say two alleged members of the MS-13 gang have been arrested in New Jersey.

The FBI announced Friday that fugitives Jose Manuel Romero-Parada and Willians Ernesto Lovos-Ayala were apprehended in Galloway Township.

Romero-Parada, formerly of Indianapolis, was one of 15 people recently indicted in Ohio for allegedly conspiring to extort and launder money for MS-13, an El-Salvador-based gang consisting chiefly of immigrants or descendants of immigrants from Central America.

Romero-Parada's also wanted in El Salvador on kidnapping related charges. He's being held at the federal detention center in Philadelphia pending extradition to Ohio.

Lovos-Ayala is wanted for first degree murder for a 2015 Virginia slaying. He's being held in the Atlantic City Jail pending extradition to Virginia.

It wasn't known if they are represented by lawyers.
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) - The Latest on police officers shot in Florida (all times local):

11:50 a.m.

Authorities say two officers who were shot in north Florida have a long journey to recovery.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said Saturday that officers Michael Fox and Kevin Jarrell are in stable condition following Friday night's confrontation with an armed man who was killed by the officers.

Williams said at a news conference that the suspect, Derrick Brabham, was making threats inside a home with the mother of his child, their 19-month-old baby, the woman's mother and a family friend. None of them were injured.

After officers arrived at the home, they heard gunfire from inside and decided to enter the house.

The sheriff says Brabham opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle as they entered the house.

Separately, in central Florida, a Kissimmee police officer was killed and his sergeant wounded following a scuffle with a suspect.

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9:10 a.m.

Authorities in Florida say a suspect has been arrested in the fatal shooting of a police officer and the grave wounding of another officer.

Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell said Saturday that Everett Miller was arrested several hours after the shootings late Friday in this city south of Orlando.

He faces a first-degree murder charge.

Authorities originally said they believed there were four suspects, but the chief said no other arrests are anticipated.

O'Dell says Officer Matthew Baxter was fatally shot and Officer Sam Howard was wounded during a scuffle with Miller while on patrol.

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8:30 a.m.

President Trump says his thoughts and prayers are with a police department in Florida where one officer was fatally shot and another was gravely wounded.

Trump tweeted early Saturday to the Kissimmee Police Department, "We are with you!"

Florida Gov. Rick Scott tweeted he was heartbroken by the news of Officer Matthew Baxter's death late Friday in central Florida, and he was praying for a quick recovery for Officer Sam Howard.

Separately, two officers were shot and wounded in the north Florida city of Jacksonville late Friday.

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2:55 a.m.

Authorities say two officers who were shot and wounded had responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home in the northern Florida city of Jacksonville where three other people were thought to be in danger inside.

Sheriff's Office Director Mike Bruno says a team of officers heard gunshots inside and feared "an active shooter situation" so they approached the house. He says the suspect then came out firing a high-powered rifle. He was shot and killed, and two of the police officers were wounded in that exchange of fire.

Bruno says the three other people in the house were safe.

One of the officers was shot in both hands, and the other shot in the stomach.

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1:22 a.m.

Police say one police officer was shot and killed and another was gravely injured by gunfire while checking suspicious people in central Florida. Three suspects are in custody and a fourth is being sought.

Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell said at a news conference early Saturday morning that officers Sam Howard and Matthew Baxter were checking people in an area of Kissimmee known for drug activity when they were shot. They did not have an opportunity to return fire.

O'Dell says Baxter, a three-year veteran of the department, died later in a hospital and Howard, a 10-year-veteran, was in serious condition.

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12:50 a.m.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott said on his official Twitter account that he is "Heartbroken to hear of the loss" of two police officers in in Kissimmee, in central Florida.

The Kissimmee Police Department said the two officers were shot in a downtown area, but did not immediately disclose further details. The department said the police chief would give a briefing later in the night.

Scott also said that two police officers who had been shot in the northern city of Jacksonville were "in danger."

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12:15 a.m.

Authorities in northern Florida say two police officers have been shot in Jacksonsville.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said on its official Twitter site that two police officers were shot in the west side of the city.

No further details were available. The Twitter feed said: *"We will update as soon as we can."

o

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11:30 p.m.

Florida authorities say two Kissimmee police officers have been shot.

The Kissimmee Police Department says via its official Twitter site Friday night that the officers were shot in the area of Palmway and Cypress.

No further information was immediately available.

Kissimmee is about 23 miles (37.01 kilometers) south of Orlando.
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) - Others tried without much success, and now the job of keeping President Donald Trump on message has fallen to Hope Hicks, a young aide who entered his orbit not knowing the ride would eventually take her to the pinnacle of Washington politics.

Word of Hicks' promotion to interim communications director - the 28-year-old was already in charge of "strategic" communications - landed this week just as the White House confronted one of its biggest messaging challenges.

After Trump went off script and blamed "both sides" for deadly violence between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, the blowback was sharp and swift.

In this photo taken June 30, 2017, Hope Hicks arrives on Air Force One at Morristown Municipal Airport, in Morristown, N.J., en route to Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.. Hicks is traveling with President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and their son Barron Trump. After four people tackled the assignment with limited success, the job of keeping President Donald Trump on message has now fallen to Hicks, a young former public relations aide and political neophyte who entered his orbit not knowing the ride would eventually take her into the cutthroat world of Washington politics. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Members of Congress in both parties urged the president to forcefully denounce the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who marched through the college town. Some openly questioned his competence and moral leadership.

Business luminaries whom Trump enjoyed inviting to the White House fled advisory boards they had agreed to serve on, while uniformed leaders of the armed services denounced racism and hatred without naming their commander in chief.

Repairing the breach, or at least keeping it from growing, is among the most immediate tasks facing Hicks.

She succeeds Anthony Scaramucci, the flamboyant New York businessman, whose 11-day tenure as White House communications director ended after the publication of his expletive-filled tirade to a reporter.

"Hope is a terrific person and will do a great job. Wishing her the best," Scaramucci tweeted after the White House announced Hicks' promotion. The Greenwich, Connecticut, native will help shape and steer Trump's messaging until someone who wants the assignment permanently comes aboard.

Those who have worked with the shy, former teen model describe her as trustworthy.

"Hope is wise beyond her years and is someone I trust to always be there for the president," said Brad Parscale, the digital director of Trump's presidential campaign who, like Hicks, was one of Trump's few original campaign members. "I have been disappointed in seeing so many use President Trump as an opportunity to maximize their own self-interest."

Hicks avoids the spotlight, unlike colleagues who got under Trump's skin by letting their profiles rise.

Hicks has long served as a gatekeeper to Trump and plays the role from her desk near the Oval Office. As it was during the campaign, media requests to interview the president go through Hicks, who was the only aide in the Oval Office when Trump sharply criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a recent New York Times interview. She does not appear on TV.

Parscale said Hicks is dedicated to Trump's broader aims.

"His campaign was about millions of Americans across this country who have been left behind," Parscale said, adding that Hicks understands that and "truly wants to see President Trump succeed."

A former Ralph Lauren fashion model and public relations pro who worked for Trump's daughter Ivanka, Hicks had no political background when she signed on for the celebrity businessman's fledgling campaign in 2015. Soon, she became a one-woman communications shop for an unconventional candidate who attracted unprecedented media attention.

Hicks approved interview requests, often tapped out tweets that Trump dictated and remained at his side as he barnstormed the country.

She followed her parents, Paul and Caye Hicks, into the public relations business. After graduating in 2010 from Southern Methodist University with a degree in English, Hicks moved to New York and worked with Hiltzik Strategies, which has also worked for Hillary Clinton - as did her father. Paul Hicks used to do communications for the NFL, and is now managing director at a firm in Washington.

In 2014, the daughter joined the Trump Organization to help promote Ivanka's merchandise. Trump shifted her to the campaign a year later.

Hicks attracted considerable media attention by herself, but largely eschewed face-to-face interactions with reporters. She preferred to limit her contacts with journalists to telephone and email.

"She's always on the phone talking to reporters, trying to get the reporters to straighten out their dishonest stories," Trump said as a postelection rally in Alabama in December.

Don't look for Hicks to try to curb Trump's tweeting, as others have suggested.

"You can own the news cycle with one tweet and I think that speaks to both the power of his presence and personality, but also his message, and his ability to captivate," she said in a brief video for Forbes magazine's "30 Under 30" series. Hicks is not on Twitter.

In Mobile, Alabama, during the transition, Trump cajoled her to say a few words to tens of thousands of supporters who turned out for the "Thank You" rally after the election.

"Where is Hope? Where is Hope? Hope, get up here, Hope. Hope, get up here," Trump said, adding that she's a "tremendously talented person."

"She's a little shy, but that's OK because she is really, really talented," Trump added, before beseeching her to "say a couple of words."

Hicks said nine. "Hi. Merry Christmas everyone, and thank you, Donald Trump."

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Associated Press writers Jonathan Lemire in New York and Julie Bykowicz in Washington contributed to this report.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

In this photo taken April 5, 2017, Hope Hicks, right, stands with Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway at the colonnade of the White House in Washington. After four people tackled the assignment with limited success, the job of keeping President Donald Trump on message has now fallen to Hicks, a young former public relations aide and political neophyte who entered his orbit not knowing the ride would eventually take her into the cutthroat world of Washington politics. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - The Latest on the Spain attacks (all times local):

11:30 p.m.

Police in the southern French city of Nimes have arrested a man unlawfully carrying a pistol into a train station, but say he is not linked to the attacks in Barcelona.

French police officers check vehicles at the border crossing between Spain and France in Dantcharia, southwestern France, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. French police are carrying out extra border checks on people arriving from Spain as authorities search for a fugitive suspect in the Barcelona attacks. (AP Photo/Bob Edme)

After an evacuation and police operation at the train station Saturday night, the historic city quickly returned to normal, with police returning to their posts.

A national police spokesman said the operation began when a passenger alerted police to a man with a weapon. Police quickly found and arrested him, said the spokesman, who was not authorized to be publicly named.

The spokesman said the man has no apparent connection to Thursday's attacks around Barcelona, about 380 kilometers southwest of Nimes. French authorities increased checks of its border with Spain after the attacks, and one suspect is believed at large.

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10:50 p.m.

Catalan regional police say they are mounting major road blocks throughout the northeastern region, warning people they may encounter traffic jams on different roads.

Police in the region are searching for at least one vehicle attack suspect believed to be on the run.

The force Friday said there was extra security at Montilivi football stadium in the city of Gerona, north of Barcelona, where local team Girona played Atletico de Madrid. A minute's silence was observed before the match started.

Security is also expected to be tightened for FC Barcelona's match Sunday evening against Betis in the city's 100,000-seat Camp Nou stadium.

10:35 p.m.

French authorities say a police operation is underway at a train station near the Spanish border and all passengers have been evacuated.

A national police official said the operation began Saturday night after passengers reported seeing armed individuals in the Nimes train station. The official described it as a "verification" operation and said no shots had been fired.

Another security official said police are working to verify whether the activity had any link to the attacks Thursday around Barcelona.

The officials, who were not authorized to be publicly named, said no one has been reported hurt in the operation.

The Tour of Spain cycling race kicked off from Nimes earlier Saturday under heavy security.

French authorities stepped up controls on the border with Spain after the Barcelona attacks. One suspect is believed on the run.

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9 p.m.

More than 20 people, including small children, have created a human tower among the crowds visiting the attack site on Barcelona's Las Ramblas promenade in homage to the victims.

The performance Saturday was greeted by strong applause when a young child with a protective helmet on climbed over his colleagues to reach the top of the multi-level tower.

Building human towers, or castells, are a very popular cultural event in many town festivals in Catalonia and date back to the 18th century.

Teams compete to build the tallest and most complex towers. A castell is considered successful when it is built and taken apart without anyone falling.

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8:30 p.m.

Spain's king and queen have paid a somber visit to the Las Ramblas attack site in Barcelona, placing a wreath and two candles on the ground in memory of the victims.

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia were accompanied Saturday by Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont and Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau. As he left, the king shook hands with bystanders. Shouts of "Long live the king!" and others for Spain, Catalonia and Barcelona could be heard.

Earlier, the royal couple met with victims hospitalized after Thursday's van attack - including one family in which two children and their father were recovering - and spoke with the medical staff at Barcelona's Hospital del Mar.

Catalonia's emergency services said by Saturday night, 53 attack victims remained in the hospital, with 13 of them in critical condition.

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7:25 p.m.

The families of a group of young men in northern Spain who are attack suspects are denouncing terrorism.

The families from Ripoll, where the entire Islamic State cell behind the deadly attacks in Barcelona and a seaside town is believed to have originated, arrived in a group Saturday in the town's central square. Mothers and sisters tearfully insisted they did not know what had happened to their sons and brothers.

Police on Saturday searched the home of a missing imam who is believed to have been the group's ideological leader. The imam hasn't been seen in Ripoll since June, according to the mosque where he abruptly quit his job.

An official with knowledge of the investigation said authorities are looking into whether the imam was killed Wednesday in a botched bomb-making operation in a house south of Barcelona.

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5:40 p.m.

A police official in Spain says an imam whose home was searched as part of the investigation into two deadly vehicle attacks is believed to be the radicalizing force behind the cell of young men - and is now thought to have died in an explosion linked to the attacks.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal details of the new suspicions surrounding imam Abdelbaki Es Satty. Officials in Es Satty's former mosque in the northern town of Ripoll, which he left abruptly in June, on Saturday denounced the attacks in Barcelona and a nearby seaside town.

The mosque president, Ali Yassine, said Es Satty told him he wanted to return to Morocco for three months and hasn't seen him since. The police official says Es Satty is believed to have died in an explosion Wednesday that destroyed a house south of Barcelona.

The two vehicle attacks in Spain left 14 dead and over 120 wounded. Possible suspects whose names have emerged so far in the investigation are all from Ripoll.

- By Joseph Wilson, Alex Oller and Lori Hinnant

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5:10 p.m.

The Muslim community in the northern Spanish town of Ripoll has condemned the two deadly vehicle attacks that have been blamed on some local Moroccans.

In a notice posted on a Ripoll mosque Saturday, the Annour Islamic Community of Ripoll said it wanted to offer its sympathy to the families of the victims and its solidarity with Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain.

It said: "Faced with this criminal act, the Annour Islamic Community of Ripoll reiterates its complete commitment to the fight against any form of terrorism, and we hope that those responsible for this attack are arrested and taken before a judge as soon as possible."

Most of the main suspects in the twin attacks were Moroccans from Ripoll. The attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils left 14 people dead and over 120 injured.

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4:25 p.m.

Catalan emergency services say they have identified seven of the 14 people killed in the attacks in Barcelona and the nearby seaside town of Cambrils.

Of the 13 dead from the Barcelona attack, officials have identified four Spaniards, two Portuguese and one Italian. Family members or government officials also say an American man, another Italian man and a woman from Belgium were also killed there.

The one fatality from the attack in Cambrils was a Spanish woman.

The emergency service says Saturday that 54 people remained in the hospital, 12 of them in critical condition. They say 78 people have been released after being treated.

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3:45 p.m.

Excavation work is continuing at a house south of Barcelona where, according to Spanish police, members of an Islamic extremist cell plotted their attacks.

The deputy mayor of Alcanar, Jordi Bort, says police are trying to determine if any explosives were still in the house, and to secure them through controlled explosions.

The house was effectively destroyed on Wednesday during an accidental explosion. Authorities had initially dismissed the blast as a household gas accident, but now say it appears to be related to the plans for an even more deadly attack involving gas or explosives.

One person was killed during the Wednesday blast. Bort says police are also looking to determine if human remains found at the site belong to a second victim. Bort says so far positive identification hasn't been possible because DNA results haven't come in yet.

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3:30 p.m.

Muslims in the hometown of suspects arrested over last week's attacks in Spain have expressed their condolences to the victims.

In a note posted Saturday on the door of the mosque in Ripoll, a quiet, upscale town of 10,000 about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Barcelona, the community said it condemned the attack.

It said "The Annour Islamic Community of Ripoll expresses its strongest condemnation and rejection of the terrorist attack committed on Thursday in Barcelona.

"Catalan Muslims express their sympathy for the families of the victims, wishing for the complete recovery of the injured, and offering their solidarity with the people of Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain.

"Faced with this criminal act, the Annour Islamic Community of Ripoll reiterates its complete commitment to the fight against any form of terrorism, and we hope that those responsible for this attack are arrested and taken before a judge as soon as possible."

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2:55 p.m.

Spain's king and queen have visited the victims of the van attack in Barcelona who are recovering in local hospitals.

A video posted on the Royal House Twitter account shows King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia visiting patients and speaking with the medical staff of Barcelona's Hospital del Mar.

The royal couple visited one family in which two children and their father were recovering from wounds received when a van plowed down the city's main pedestrian promenade, killing 13 people and injuring 120 on Thursday.

A separate car attack a few hours later in the nearby coastal town of Cambrils killed one person and injured five early Friday.

Catalonia's emergency services say by Saturday, 54 people remained in the hospital, with 12 of them in critical condition, from both attacks.

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2:15 p.m.

Catalan police are confirming that the manhunt underway for any remaining members of the Islamic extremist cell is focusing on Younes Abouyaaquoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan.

Police spokesman Albert Oliva says police have carried out nine searches of apartments in Ripoll, the northern Catalan town where Abouyaaquoub and other suspects lived.

Oliva said Saturday: "We can confirm that the manhunt is on for the person" identified in the media. Spanish media have named Abouyaaquoub as the presumed ringleader of the cell and driver of the van that plowed into pedestrians in Barcelona.

Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido has declared that the cell was effectively broken after five members were killed, four were in detention and as many as two were killed in a previous explosion. That leaves only one remaining member: Abouyaaquoub.

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2:00 p.m.

Italy's foreign ministry is confirming a third Italian was killed in the dual attacks in Spain.

The ministry said in a statement Saturday that Carmen Lopardo, 80, was killed in the "vile terrorist attack in Barcelona."

News reports said Lopardo had immigrated to Argentina in 1950 and was visiting Barcelona.

Two other Italians were among the 14 dead: Bruno Gulotta, 35, and Luca Russo, 25.

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1:45 p.m.

A small group of Muslims have gathered at Barcelona's Las Ramblas promenade to insist they aren't terrorists in the wake of the twin vehicle attacks that killed 14 people and injured dozens.

The protest by about 100 members of Barcelona's Muslim community was held at the Canaletas Fountain at the top of the promenade.

They shouted "We are not terrorists" and "Islam is peace."

Catalan's Moroccan community, in particular, has been in the spotlight after the four main suspects in the attacks claimed Moroccan roots.

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1:30 p.m.

Portugal's prime minister says a 20-year-old woman from Lisbon is among those killed in the Barcelona attacks.

The woman, whose 74-year-old grandmother was also killed in Thursday's attack on Las Ramblas, had initially been considered missing but Prime Minister Antonio Costa confirmed her death in a statement to reporters Saturday.

Portuguese media reported that the two were in Barcelona to celebrate the grandmother's birthday. Their names were not released.

The two Portuguese women are among 14 people killed in car attacks on Barcelona and the town of Cambrils, as part of what authorities call a terrorist plot claimed by the Islamic State group.

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1:15 p.m.

Spanish authorities have decided to maintain the country's terrorist threat rating at level 4, declaring that no new attacks were imminent.

Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido says Saturday that the country would nevertheless reinforce security for events that draw large crowds and popular tourist sites.

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11:45 a.m.

French police are carrying out extra border checks on people arriving from Spain as authorities search for a fugitive suspect in the Barcelona attacks.

No arrests had been made by Saturday morning, according to a French security official, who described the checks along the normally open border as routine whenever neighboring countries signal a potential risk.

Another French security official said Spanish authorities flagged a Kangoo utility vehicle believed to have been rented in Spain by a suspect in Thursday's attacks and that may have crossed the nearby border into France.

Both officials were not authorized to be publicly named.

At multiple border posts in the winding roads crossing the western Pyrenees on Saturday, gendarmes stopped certain vehicles to check drivers' IDs and the contents of their cars. They targeted primarily vans, trucks and utility vehicles.

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10 a.m.

Catalan police say they are carrying out controlled explosions in the town where an extremist cell plotted the attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort.

In a tweet Saturday, police urged residents of Alcanar not to be alarmed by the detonations in the town, where they believe the extremists rented a house used to prepare their attacks.

The house was destroyed by an apparently accidental explosion on Wednesday. Police believe the blast actually prevented a far more deadlier attack using explosives, forcing the extremists to use more "rudimentary" vehicles instead.

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9:30 a.m.

Representatives from the Spanish and Catalan government are meeting to determine the terrorist threat level for the country and its Catalan region, after Barcelona and the southern resort town of Cambrils were hit with terrorist attacks.

Following the Thursday afternoon and early Friday morning attacks that killed 14 people and wounded more than a hundred, Spain's threat level is now four on a scale that goes to five, a ranking that would warrant military deployments.

Authorities say the attacks were the work of a large terrorist cell that had been plotting for a long time from a house in Alcanar, 200 kilometers (124 miles) down the coast from Barcelona.

Senior police official Josep Lluis Trapero said that an apparently accidental butane gas explosion at the house, which killed one person, likely prevented the suspects from carrying out a far deadlier attack.

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9:15 a.m.

The Philippines government says a child missing after a vehicle plowed into pedestrians in Barcelona is the 7-year-old son of a Filipino woman who had been living in Australia.

The Philippines' Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Sarah Arriola said in a statement on Saturday that the 43-year-old Filipino woman was seriously injured in Thursday's attack. She had been based in Australia for the past three or four years.

Arriola says the woman and her son were in Barcelona to attend the wedding of a cousin from the Philippines.

Arriola says the woman's British husband is en route to Barcelona to help find his son. Arriola says the boy was separated from his mother during the attack.

Australia's prime minister has urged people to pray for the child.

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5:15 a.m.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has asked people to pray for a young Australian boy who is missing after a vehicle attack on a popular Barcelona promenade that killed 13 people.

Turnbull said Saturday that the boy's mother was badly injured and is in a hospital following Friday's attack at the Las Ramblas promenade. Turnbull says the boy's family is searching for him. He did not release the boy's name.

Turnbull says: "All of us as parents know the anguish his father is going through, and his whole family is going through, as they rush to seek to find him in Barcelona."

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says four Australians were injured in the attack.

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2:35 a.m.

Police in Catalonia say they have searched two buses in their hunt for violent extremists believed responsible for a pair of deadly attacks in the northwestern region of Spain.

Police say on their Twitter feed that they searched the buses in Girona and Garrigas, towns in the northwest of Catalonia, but the operation yielded nothing of importance. They provided no further information.

Authorities launched a manhunt for members of what they believe to be a Catalonia-based extremist group after 14 people were killed and more than 100 injured in attacks in Barcelona on Thursday and in Cambrils, south of Barcelona, on Friday.

Officials say at least one suspect is still at large.

Police say they have identified the five people, presumed to be the attackers, shot to death by police in the Cambrils incident but gave no details.

Four people have been arrested as part of the investigation.

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12:50 a.m.

Surveillance video from inside a Barcelona museum captured images of the van used in the fatal attack on pedestrians speeding down the Las Ramblas promenade where 13 people were killed and many more were wounded.

The video shows a person with a stroller just barely getting out of the white van's way and other people on the walkway scattering as it barreled down the walkway.

The footage was shot Thursday from a security camera inside the Erotic Museum of Barcelona on an upper floor that pointed toward a window with a view of the promenade.

Museum goers who apparently either heard the van or people outside just after it went by are seen in the images gathering near the window and looking outside.

Authorities said the assailants after striking in Barcelona drove a second vehicle to the resort town of Cambrils and fatally injured one person early Friday morning.

Police shot five of those attackers dead.

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12:10 a.m. Saturday

President Donald Trump has personally offered his condolences to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy after Thursday's deadly van attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.

The White House says Trump pledged to support Spanish authorities in their investigation and in bringing the perpetrators to justice.

Trump initially offered supportive words to Spain in a tweet Thursday after a van plowed through pedestrians in Barcelona. Thirteen people were killed. The State Department says at least one American was killed and one was injured in that attack.

One person was killed in a separate van attack in Cambrils, Spain

Castellers or human towers performance at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the van attack victims in Las Ramblas promenade, Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage.(AP Photo/Santi Palacios)

Spain's Princess Letizia speaks with one of the victims of the van attacks at a hospital in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (Spanish Royal Palace, Pool Photo via AP)

A man looks at flags, messages and candles placed after a van attack that killed at least 13, in central Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

A couple looks at flags, messages and candles placed after van attack that killed at least 13, in central Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

A man lays down next to messages and candles placed after a van attack that killed at least 13, in central Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

A couple looks at flags, messages and candles placed after van attack that killed at least 13, in central Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

French police officers check vehicles at the border crossing between Spain and France in Dantcharia, southwestern France, Saturday, Aug.19, 2017. French police are carrying out extra border checks on people arriving from Spain as authorities search for a fugitive suspect in the Barcelona attacks. (AP Photo/Bob Edme)

A man looks at flags, messages and candles placed after van attack that killed at least 13, in central Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Catalunya regional police officers patrol the Barceloneta beach front in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

A mattress lies on the floor in an apartment where neighbours said an Imam lived after the police raided and searched the flat in Ripoll, north of Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

This is an undated handout photo of Moussa Oukabir that was sourced from social media on Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed their search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage. 17-year-old Oukabir was named on the list of suspects and his brother Driss reported his documents stolen to police in Ripoll. Ripoll's mayor confirmed the documents were found in one of the vehicles used in the attacks. (Social Media via AP)

This is an undated handout photo sourced from social media of 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaquoub. Authorities in Spain and France pressed their search Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017 for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage. One of the main suspects in the attacks, Younes Abouyaaquoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan, was believed to be at large. His name figures on a police list of four main suspects sought in the attack. All the suspects on the list hail from Ripoll, a quiet, upscale town of 10,000 about 100 kilomaters north of Barcelona. (Social Media via AP)

A French flag flies at half-staff for the victims of the Spain attacks on the Grand Palais in Paris, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu)

EDS NOTE : SPANISH LAW REQUIRES THAT THE FACES OF MINORS ARE MASKED IN PUBLICATIONS WITHIN SPAIN. Spain's Princess Letizia speaks with one of the victims of the van attacks at a hospital in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (Spanish Royal Palace, Pool Photo via AP)

EDS NOTE : SPANISH LAW REQUIRES THAT THE FACES OF MINORS ARE MASKED IN PUBLICATIONS WITHIN SPAIN. Spain's Princess Letizia speaks with one of the victims of the van attacks at a hospital in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (Spanish Royal Palace, Pool Photo via AP)

EDS NOTE : SPANISH LAW REQUIRES THAT THE FACES OF MINORS ARE MASKED IN PUBLICATIONS WITHIN SPAIN. Spain's King Felipe speaks to one of the victims of the van attacks at a hospital in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (Spanish Royal Palace, Pool Photo via AP)

EDS NOTE : SPANISH LAW REQUIRES THAT THE FACES OF MINORS ARE MASKED IN PUBLICATIONS WITHIN SPAIN. Spain's Princess Letizia speaks with one of the victims of the van attacks at a hospital in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (Spanish Royal Palace, Pool Photo via AP)

EDS NOTE : SPANISH LAW REQUIRES THAT THE FACES OF MINORS ARE MASKED IN PUBLICATIONS WITHIN SPAIN. Spain's Princess Letizia speaks with one of the victims of the van attacks at a hospital in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (Spanish Royal Palace, Pool Photo via AP)

Spain's King Felipe, accompanied by Princess Letizia meets hospital staff before visiting some of the victims of the van attacks in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Catalunya regional police officers patrol the Barceloneta beach front in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Police on Friday shot and killed five people carrying bomb belts who were connected to the Barcelona van attack, as the manhunt intensified for the perpetrators of Europe's latest rampage claimed by the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Spain's King Felipe,center, places a candle with Barcelona's Mayor Ada Colau, left, Catalonia regional President Carles Puigdemont, 2nd left,Queen Letizia, centre right and Deputy Premier Soraya Saenz de Santamaria at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the van attack victims in Las Ramblas promenade, Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage.(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Spain's King Felipe,center, stands with Barcelona's Mayor Ada Colau, left, Catalonia regional President Carles Puigdemont, 2nd left,Queen Letizia, centre right and Deputy Premier Soraya Saenz de Santamaria at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the van attack victims in Las Ramblas promenade, Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage.(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Players stand for a minute of silence for the victims of the recent Barcelona attacks prior the German Bundesliga soccer match between FC Schalke 04 and RB Leipzig at the Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, Aug. 19, 2017. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Spain's King Felipe, Queen Letizia lay a wreath of flowers at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the van attack victims in Las Ramblas promenade, Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage.(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Spain's King Felipe, centre, stands with Queen Letizia and Catalonia regional President Carles Puigdemont, centre left at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the van attack victims in Las Ramblas promenade, Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage.(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

A muslim worshipper prays in a mosque in Ripoll, north of Barcelona, Spain, Saturday Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Robes belonging to Muslim worshippers hang on a shelf in a mosque in Ripoll, north of Barcelona, Spain, Saturday Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Flowers, messages and candles lie at a memorial tribute to the van attack victims in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

People stand by a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the van attack victims in Las Ramblas promenade in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage. in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

People gather around a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the van attack victims in Barcelona , Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

The teams stand on the pitch during a minute of silence for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Spain, prior to the German Bundesliga soccer match between Hertha BSC Berlin and VfB Stuttgart in Berlin , Germany, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. (Maurizio Gambarini/dpa via AP)

People take photos as Spain's King Felipe and Queen Letizia paying respect at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the van attack victims in Las Ramblas promenade, Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage.(AP Photo/Santi Palacios)

People hold signs reading in Catalan: "Not in my name" as families of young men believed responsible for the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils gather along with members of the local Muslim community to denounce terrorism and show their grief in Ripoll, north of Barcelona, Spain, Saturday Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
BEIRUT (AP) - Activists say a car bomb has killed two people in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad's government.

The pro-government Latakia News Network Facebook page says the car bomb was detonated at a checkpoint Saturday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported the attack.

The government has sought to present the country as slowly returning to normalcy after six years of war. It held a premier trade fair in the capital, Damascus, last week for the first time since 2011.

But fighting is still underway in several parts of the country, and the attack in Latakia, which has been firmly under government control throughout the conflict, highlighted the lingering instability.
LONDON (AP) - Budget carrier Jet2 says it has asked French aviation officials for clarification as to why a flight from Spain to Britain was apparently tracked by military aircraft.

Passengers on flight LS1204 from Malaga to Birmingham say they saw the military plane shadowing the aircraft for about 15 minutes Friday.

The airline says in a statement Saturday that it was "awaiting clarification from the French air traffic authorities, as to why a military aircraft was apparently tracking our aircraft."

One passenger, Sarah Hatfield from Quarry Bank in the West Midlands of England, says the fighter jet "was so close I could read the writing on its tail fin."
FAIRCHANCE, Pa. (AP) - A Pennsylvania state trooper was critically injured when he was shot by a suspect in a robbery investigation before officers returned fire killing the shooter, state police said Saturday.

A second trooper also was shot by the suspect Friday night outside a grocery store in Fairchance. The officer was treated at a hospital and released, authorities said.

The suspect was identified as 26-year-old Clarence Belsar III. District Attorney Richard Bower said Belsar had a felony criminal record that included a requirement he report as a sex offender.

Authorities said the troopers had arranged a meeting via Facebook with a person selling a video game console they suspected had been taken in a string of robberies in Uniontown and Waynesburg. They said the officers met Belsar outside the Stop 'n Save in Fairchance, about 52 miles (84 kilometers) south of Pittsburgh, and identified themselves as police officers.

Police said the suspect began to walk way and ignored the officers' commands to stop before a struggle ensued as the troopers tried to arrest him. Belsar pulled a .38 caliber revolver from his waistband and fired a shot that injured one trooper in the hand and struck the other in the abdomen, police said. Both troopers then returned fire, killing Belsar, authorities said.

State police Capt. Joseph Ruggery said at a news conference Saturday that the trooper who was critically injured remained hospitalized at Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia, but is expected to recover. "His prognosis is good," Ruggery said.

He also thanked people who were on the scene for their "selflessness and bravery" in trying to help the officers.

"It should be noted that multiple witnesses were present in the immediate vicinity and several disregarded their own personal safety to approach the wounded troopers and attempt to render first aid to them," Ruggery said.

The officers' names were not released. They will be on administrative duty, pending the outcome of the district attorney's investigation. According to Ruggery, witnesses said they heard the troopers identifying themselves as police officers and giving Belsar repeated commands.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - When Carl Valentine dropped off his daughter at the University of Virginia, he had some important advice for the college freshman: Don't forget that you are a minority.

"She has to be vigilant of that and be concerned about that, always know her surroundings, just be cautious, just be extremely cautious," said Valentine, 57, who is African-American. A retired military officer, he now works at the Defense Department.

As classes begin at colleges and universities across the country, some parents are questioning if their children will be safe on campus in the wake of last weekend's violent white nationalist protest here. School administrators, meanwhile, are grappling with how to balance students' physical safety with free speech.

Weston Gobar, 21, a fourth year student and president of the Black Student Alliance at the University of Virginia, poses for a portrait, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., a week after a white nationalist rally took place on campus. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Friday was move-in day at the University of Virginia, and students and their parents unloaded cars and carried suitcases, blankets, lamps, fans and other belongings into freshmen dormitories. Student volunteers, wearing orange university T-shirts, distributed water bottles and led freshmen on short tours of the university grounds.

But along with the usual moving-in scene, there were signs of the tragic events of last weekend, when white nationalists staged a nighttime march through campus holding torches and shouting racist slogans. Things got worse the following day, when a man said to harbor admiration for Nazis drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring 19 others.

Flags flew at half-staff outside the university's Rotunda, and a nearby statue of founder Thomas Jefferson was stained with wax from a candlelight vigil by thousands of students and city residents in a bid to unite and heal. Some student dormitories had signs on doors reading, "No Home for Hate Here."

In an address to students and families on Friday, UVA President Teresa Sullivan welcomed "every person of every race, every gender, every national origin, every religious belief, every orientation and every other human variation." Afterward, parents asked university administrators tough questions about the gun policy on campus, white supremacists and the likelihood of similar violence in the future.

For Valentine, of Yorktown, Virginia, the unrest brought back painful memories of when, as a young boy, he couldn't enter government buildings or movie theaters through the front door because of racial discrimination. "We've come a long way, but still a long way to go for equality," he said.

His daughter Malia Valentine, an 18-year-old pre-med student, is more optimistic.

"It was scary what happened, but I think that we as a community will stand together in unity and we'll be fine," she said.

Christopher Dodd, 18, said he was shocked by the violence and initially wondered if it would be safe at UVA.

"Wow, I am going to be in this place, it looks like a war zone," Dodd, a cheerful redhead, remembered thinking. "But I do think that we are going to be all right, there is nothing they can do to intimidate us. I am not going to let them control my time here."

Others feel less confident.

Weston Gobar, president of the Black Student Alliance at UVA, says he'll warn incoming black students not to take their safety for granted. "The message is to work through it and to recognize that the world isn't safe, that white supremacy is real, that we have to find ways to deal with that," he said.

Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education, said colleges are reassessing their safety procedures. "The possibility of violence will now be seen as much more real than it was a week ago and every institution has to be much more careful."

Such work is already under way at UVA.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sullivan said the university will be revamping its emergency protocols, increasing the number of security officers patrolling the grounds and hiring an outside safety consultant.

"This isn't a matter where we are going to spare expense," Sullivan said.

Hartle said some universities may end up making the uneasy decision to limit protests and rallies on campus and not to invite controversial speakers if they are likely to create protests. "There is an overarching priority to protect the physical safety of students and the campus community," he said.

Student body presidents from over 120 schools in 34 states and Washington, D.C., signed a statement denouncing the Charlottesville violence and saying college campuses should be safe spaces free of violence and hate.

Jordan Jomsky, a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley, said his parents had advice he plans to follow: "They told me to stay safe, and don't go to protests."

"I wish people would just leave this place alone. It's become this epicenter. We're just here to study," said Jomsky, an 18-year-old from a Los Angeles suburb.

The school has become a target of far-right speakers and nationalist groups because of its reputation as a liberal bastion. In September, former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro is scheduled to speak on campus. Right-wing firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos has vowed to return for a "Free Speech Week" in response to violent protests that shut down his planned appearance last February.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ told incoming freshmen last week that Berkeley's Free Speech Movement in the 1960s was a product of liberals and conservatives working together to win the right to hold political protests on campus.

"Particularly now, it is critical for the Berkeley community to protect this right; it is who we are," Christ said. "That protection involves not just defending your right to speak, or the right of those you agree with, but also defending the right to speak by those you disagree with. Even of those whose views you find abhorrent."

"We respond to hate speech with more speech," Christ said to loud applause.

At the same time, though, she said, there's also an obligation to keep the campus safe. "We now know we have to have a far higher number of police officers ready," she said.

Concerns for safety are compounded for international students, many of whom have spent months reading headlines about the tense U.S. political situation and arrived wondering if their accents or the color of their skin will make them targets.

"It was scary taking the risk of coming here," said Turkish international student Naz Dundar.

Dundar, 18, who considered going to university in Canada but felt relief after attending orientation at Berkeley. "So far, no one hated me for being not American."

She plans to stay away from protests. "Especially as a person of another race - I don't want to get stoned," she said.

______

Gecker reported from Berkeley, California. Associated Press writers Sally Ho in Nevada and Kantele Franko in Ohio contributed to this report.

___

This story has been corrected to say that the daughter's name is Malia not Emilia.

Student Council President Sarah Kenny poses for a portrait by her room on the Lawn of the University of Virginia campus, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., a week after a white nationalist rally took place on campus. Kenny is among the students who have since posted signs on their rooms denouncing hatred. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Malia Valentine, 18, of Yorktown, Va., left, moves her things into her new dormitory with her mother Michelle Valentine and father Carl Valentine, during move-in for first year students at the University of Virginia, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., a week after a white nationalist rally took place on campus. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Students walks past a quote in chalk credited to Nelson Mandela at the University of Virginia, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., a week after a white nationalist rally took place on campus. The quote says "No one is born hating another person...people must learn to hate." (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

First year students tour the University of Virginia, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., a week after a white nationalist rally took place on campus. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ smiles during a press conference on the university's campus Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. Christ says the university is committed to protecting free speech, and is allowing former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro to visit and speak on campus, despite concerns about violent protests. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

A statue of Thomas Jefferson overlooks the grounds of the University of Virginia, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., a week after a white nationalist rally took place on campus. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

A family takes photographs during first year move-in day while on the Lawn of the University of Virginia, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., a week after a white nationalist rally took place on there. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Malia Valentine, 18, of Yorktown, Va., left, and her father Carl Valentine, gather her items during move-in for first year students at the University of Virginia, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., a week after a white nationalist rally took place on campus. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Scott Lee, 28, left, a graduate student, Cheng Yang, 27, a post doctorate, and Max Puthongkham, 25, a graduate student, attend a welcome party for the Chemistry department at the University of Virginia, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va., a week after a white nationalist rally took place on campus. Yang is concerned about what happened and is now reconsidering his plans for his family to remain in Charlottesville. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
CHICAGO (AP) - The Latest on the extradition of a Northwestern University professor Wyndham Lathem and Oxford University staffer Andrew Warren (all times local):

10 a.m.

Two employees of elite universities charged in the fatal stabbing of a 26-year-old hair stylist have been returned to Chicago to face charges of first-degree murder in the brutal killing.

Chicago police escorted fired Northwestern University professor Wyndham Lathem and Oxford University financial officer Andrew Warren from Northern California, where they surrendered on Aug. 4 after an eight-day, nationwide manhunt. Detectives were questioning the men Saturday. They could appear in court as early as Sunday.

The men are accused of killing Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau last month in Lathem's high-rise Chicago condo. The Michigan native had been living in Chicago.

Chicago police have said Cornell-Duranleau suffered more than 40 stab wounds to his upper body

___

12:53 a.m.

A Northwestern University professor accused with another man in the brutal stabbing death of a 26-year-old hair stylist has returned to Chicago from California to face murder charges.

Chicago police escorted 43-year-old Wyndham Lathem to Chicago early Saturday.

He and 56-year-old Oxford University financial officer Andrew Warren are charged with first-degree murder in the death of Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, a Michigan native who had been working in Chicago. Authorities say Cornell-Duranleau suffered more than 40 stab wounds to his upper body during the July attack in Lathem's high-rise Chicago condo.

Lahtem and Warren surrendered peacefully to police in California on Aug. 4 after an eight-day manhunt.

Investigators say Lathem, who was fired after the killing, had a personal relationship with Cornell-Duranleau.

___

12:03 a.m.

An Oxford University employee accused of killing a 26-year-old hair stylist has been extradited to Chicago.

Oxford University financial officer Andrew Warren arrived in Chicago just before midnight Friday from California.

He and 43-year-old Wyndham Lathem, a former Northwestern University professor, face charges of first-degree murder for the death last month of Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, a Michigan native who had been working in Chicago.

Authorities say Cornell-Duranleau suffered more than 40 stab wounds to his upper body during the attack in Lathem's high-rise Chicago condo.

Lathem and Warren, 56, surrendered peacefully to police in northern California on Aug. 4 after an eight-day, nationwide manhunt.

Investigators say Lathem had a personal relationship with Cornell-Duranleau.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California lawmakers are preparing to return to Sacramento after a monthlong break.

They return Monday with a busy agenda that includes tackling the state's housing crisis and deciding whether to make California a statewide sanctuary for people living illegally in the U.S.

They'll also debate how to divvy up money from California's cap and trade law, a climate change initiative they extended last month, and whether to change the system of cash bail for defendants awaiting trial.

Four weeks of legislative activity remain before lawmakers go home for the year. They'll return in January for the rest of the current two-year session.




NPR's Fresh Air has a fascinating piece on Wednesday that sought to shone some light on how the Trump Regime is accomplishing quite a bit while everyone is paying attention to the clown tripping all over himself in the center ring. The guest was NY Times journalist Eric Lipton and he's been reporting on how the Trump Regime has brought in lobbyists to help destroy the regulations that have protected the public from the very industries that those lobbyists were working for-- and no doubt will again. The whole show in worth listening to and it's embedded above.





Lipton began by explaining how the Trumpists quickly changed the rules governing lobbyists in government. "[T]he Obama administration explicitly banned lobbyists from going to work in agencies that they had in the prior two years lobbied. And Trump removed that explicit restriction and has allowed quite a number of lobbyists to come into agencies to regulate the same sectors that they just a few months ago had been trying to influence... Trump eliminated the prohibition on lobbyists coming in, but he kept the two-year ban in participating in the same matter. And so then the question becomes, well, how are they enforcing this two-year ban because there are now dozens of lobbyists and lawyers who represented private industry who have been placed into the Trump administration in the same sectors that they had worked in for the private industries. But the question is, you know, how are we looking and knowing whether or not they are then working on essentially their former clients to-do lists but now with the power of the government agency that they're running?





"During the Obama administration, there was an agreement that anytime anyone was given a waiver, that waiver would be either posted on the White House website or shared with the Office of Government Ethics and made public. So we as reporters could look and see, well, this, you know, man or woman is working in the same area that they had previously been paid to represent. But we would know the conditions upon which they could do that and why they had been granted such a waiver. Then when the Trump administration started, they initially were refusing to make those waivers public despite the fact that we were asking for them. And it became the subject of a pretty intense fight. And ultimately, they made some of them public, but they don't continue to post them.









"...One of the more prominent ones is Michael Catanzaro, who was a lobbyist for Devon Energy and also for an electric utility that operates some of the largest coal-burning power plants in the United States. And so he was lobbying on things like trying to block a rule that the EPA had passed that was going to limit methane emissions from oil and gas drilling sites across the United States. Methane is many times more potent as a climate change component than CO2. And methane also-- when you release methane, you're often also releasing volatile organic chemicals, which are... you know, can be carcinogens and cause other health consequences. So the EPA was trying to regulate methane emissions. And Michael Catanzaro was working for Devon Energy to try to kill that rule. So he then goes into the White House. And he also had previously been representing the largest-- one of the largest coal-burning utilities in the United States. And he had been fighting the Clean Power Plan, which was trying to force coal-burning power plants to reduce their CO2 emissions. And so once he gets to the White House, among the things that he does is he helps write an executive order that essentially instructs the federal agencies to terminate the Clean Power Plan and the methane rule. And so he is essentially continuing the work that he'd been doing on behalf of his private-sector clients. But he's now doing it as one of the most powerful, you know, policy people in the United States. And so you wonder, how is that possible? So we were aware of Michael Catanzaro's shift. And I then went and interviewed a number of industry lobbyists who were lobbying the White House to try to get those rules repealed because they hated it. And now all of a sudden, they've got their former, you know, colleague and, you know, compatriot who is essentially helping run the show. And I said, have you talked to Michael Catanzaro since he went into the White House? And they said, yes. And I said, how is this possible? I thought there was this two-year ban on participating in a particular matter that you had represented a client on. And so we-- and then I asked the White House, well, can I see his waiver because he must have been granted a waiver. And they would not give it to me.





"After I wrote that story, the Office of Government Ethics said, you know what? This is an impossible situation. How can we have an ethics program if there - if we can't see the waivers? So the head of the Office of Government Ethics did what he called a data request, and he made a request of every federal agency. And he asked every federal agency for copies of any waivers that had been issued through April. And as a result of that request-- and there was a bit of a fight where initially the White House indicated that it may not comply with the request. But ultimately the White House complied. And there you go. On the day of the deadline, they-- the White House issues a list of waivers that had been issued, and there's Michael Catanzaro. And he was in fact-- had been granted a waiver to participate in the same matters that he had previously been paid to represent.





..."There's a guy at the Department of Transportation Security Administration. And in this case, I don't know the extent to which he has participated in the same manner. But he was working for a company that was trying to sell the Transportation Security Administration new equipment that would do security screenings. And that company had just gotten its agreement from TSA, the airport screening agency, to do kind of actual testing in its laboratory to see whether or not this equipment was worth buying and spending, you know, potentially tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to install in airports in the United States. And then the same gentleman, Chad Wolf, then became the chief of staff at TSA, which would-- you know, as the chief of staff, you're involved in issues across the agency. And you know, if you're going to be making a major change in the way that you inspect carry-on baggage to look for explosives and then potentially commit to buying, you know, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in new equipment, you know, the chief of staff of the agency is going to be involved. So he is now the former lobbyist for the, you know-- explosive detection equipment is now the chief of staff overseeing, you know, various things at the Transportation Security Administration.





"There's a woman that is working in the Environmental Protection Agency who had worked for the chemical industry. And it was lobbying to try to limit the-- kind of the strength of a law intended to regulate toxic chemicals. Now she's at the EPA, helping establish the rules that will regulate the same chemicals and the same companies that she just previously had represented. And so I mean literally there are dozens of people who have made this shift from being the regulated to the regulators, and so-- at a pace that I have going back to George W. Bush and being in Washington and covering administrations that I have not seen before."

We asked two of the sharpest attorneys running for Congress this cycle, Dan Canon in Indiana and Sam Jammal in California. Dan's running for the 9th district seat held by a rubber stamp backbencher, Trey Hollingsworth. He told us that Trump's systemic dismantling of regulatory protections "is consistent not only with the unashamed corruption on display in this administration, but also the unchecked dismantling of the federal government we've seen over the last 7 months. The executive branch wants to make government into a private corporation, free from the fetters of ethical rules, public transparency, and the democratic process. And Congress isn't doing anything to hold these oligarchs accountable."





Sam Jammal, an Orange County candidate for a seat held by an entrenched top ally of Paul Ryan and the Trump Regime-- Ed Royce-- is concerned with the way the Trump Regime is perverting the role of the federal government on behalf of powerful special interests. "We need a government that works for us," he told us, "not one filled with individuals looking to turn around and make a quick buck or so biased towards one powerful interest. Regulatory capture is one of the biggest problems we face in government that no one discusses. Its an even bigger problem now with Trump and his revolving door of special interests running our government. But this has been going on for a while. The result is that we have policy decisions focused solely on the interests of the most powerful incumbents, which hurts innovation, competition and ultimately the rest of us. Everyone-- regardless of political leanings-- should be concerned. I saw this firsthand as thousands of solar jobs were lost due to regulatory capture in state public utilities commissions.





"The best way to avoid regulatory capture and the revolving door are clear rules and oversight. First, we shouldn't make it so easy for special interest representatives-- it's not just lobbyists-- being in positions to influence policy on their former employers. There must be transparency and some waiver process in order to at least require a case be made for the hire. Additionally, there should be a longer ban on returning to lobby or participate in policy roles within the regulated industry. This will remove the profit motive to write policies to open doors for the next job. Lastly, we need congressional oversight. Congress stopped holding oversight hearings years ago, which leads to powerful interests shaping policy when there are bad actors like Trump, but also leaves our government vulnerable to only favoring the loudest voices and usual suspects since no one is paying attention."
LIMA, Peru (AP) - Getting fresh water to Peru's desert capital is no easy task.

Lima relies on a vast network of concrete tunnels to transport water originating in lakes in the Andes mountains to the bone-dry coastal city some 125 miles (200 kilometers) away.

By the time it arrives, it is so contaminated it must pass through four treatment plants that filter out potentially dangerous microorganisms.

In this Friday, Aug. 17, 2017 photo, a herd of llamas runs on a path alongside the Marcapomacocha Lagoon, Peru, in the heights of the Andes where the rain falls for 5 consecutive months. Residents in the city of Lima rely on a vast network of concrete tunnels to transport water originating in lakes within the Andes mountains to the bone-dry capital some 200 kilometers (125 miles) away. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Despite the complexities involved in keeping the taps flowing, authorities say water consumption in Lima ranks among the highest in the Andes region.

"There is no culture of conservation," said Yolanda Andia, a chemical engineer with state water company Sedapal. "It's pitiful."

In the richest parts of Lima, residents use 447 liters a day, nearly five times what is recommended by the World Health Organization. Overall, average daily usage is 250 liters for the city.

That compares with 168 in Colombia's capital, Bogota; 220 in Quito, Ecuador; and 200 in Santiago, Chile.

Authorities believe the high consumption stems partly from unawareness of the lengths officials must go to to ensure an abundant supply of clean water.

With a population of 9.1 million, Lima is the world's second-largest city located in desert terrain - second only to Cairo.

"Our work is hard," Andia said. "And even though in Lima it almost never rains, people don't know we get water from the lakes of the Andes."

In this Friday, Aug. 17, 2017 photo, workers and engineers walk on a platform at the Antacoto Dam in Marcapomacocha Lagoon, in Peru. The Peruvian capital sits in a desert where it rarely rains. In order for its inhabitants to have potable water, this liquid must cover about 200 kilometers, (125 miles) before arriving in Lima: it originates in a set of concrete lagoons and dams located in the Peruvian Andes. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

This Friday, Aug. 17, 2017 photo shows a trans-Andean tunnel channeling water from the Marcapomacocha Lagoon, Peru. The lagoon water lowers with force and passes through four hydroelectric plants that produce energy for the Peruvian capital. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

In this Friday, Aug. 17, 2017 photo, a dog walks alongside the Rio Rimac, in Lima, Peru. According to the national water authority, water that arrives via the Rimac, diverted from the Andean slopes, is contaminated by waste from abandoned mines, fecal coliforms, and garbage, so must be treated, resulting in an annual expenditure greater than $3 million dollars. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

In this Friday, Aug. 17, 2017 photo, a water treatment worker gathers garbage inside SEDAPAL, the state water supply company in Lima, Peru. According to the national water authority, the once crystalline water encounters mine waste, fecal bacteria and garbage along its route to the capital via the Rio Rimac, arriving with as much as 700 points of contamination. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

In this Friday, Aug. 17, 2017 photo, water is treated inside SEDAPAL, the state water supply company, in Lima, Peru. Residents in the city of Lima rely on a vast network of concrete tunnels to transport water originating within the Andes mountains to the bone-dry capital some 200 kilometers (125 miles) away. By the time it arrives it is so contaminated it must pass through four treatments plants to filter out any potentially dangerous microorganisms. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)
DALLAS (AP) - Karen Stipes always believed her missing mother was "Mountain Jane Doe," buried unidentified in a paupers' cemetery deep in the woods outside Harlan, Kentucky. But without proof, it took nearly half a century and the development of DNA technology for forensic scientists at the University of North Texas to confirm her intuition.

Police didn't know who Sonja Kaye Blair-Adams was when a man picking flowers on a trail found her body stabbed multiple times in 1969. It remained a mystery to the locals until advances in forensic science prompted renewed efforts to identify the body and resume the hunt for her killer. While police have yet to solve the killing, Stipes said the restoration of her mother's identity has provided at least some closure.

But now the same Texas lab that handled Blair-Adams' DNA has had to stop testing samples like hers that come from outside the state due to a lack of funding, meaning family members of missing and unidentified people are waiting longer for their cases to be solved.

DNA testing equipment is left on a work mat at the Center for Human Identification research and development lab at the University of North Texas on Monday, July 31, 2017, in Fort Worth, Texas. The university's case lab, which tests DNA for missing people and unidentified dead, has temporarily stopped accepting cases outside Texas after the National Institute of Justice opted not to offer millions of dollars in grants for DNA technology to identify missing people. (AP Photo/Jaime Dunaway)

"Everyone deserves to have their unidentified found," Stipes said. "I feel my mother was disrespected being unidentified for so long. There wasn't DNA testing in 1969 when my mother died, but it's 2017. I think it has gotten overlooked."

For years, law enforcement looking for a breakthrough in a cold case could count on sending samples of unknown bodies to the Center for Human Identification at the University of North Texas. The lab is a world leader in mitochondrial DNA testing from decomposing and partial remains and provided testing for missing and unidentified people at no cost to investigators.

But this year the National Institute of Justice decided not to offer millions of dollars in grants for DNA technology to identify missing people and instead reallocated that money to programs that help state and local governments audit and track backlogged rape kits. The U.S. agency also introduced new grants to help medical examiners and coroner's offices meet accreditation standards and recruit forensic pathologists.

Agency officials said the university will receive supplemental funding in the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1, but the drop in casework has brought new attention to the lab's value and the importance of DNA in solving missing persons cases.

"There was a lot of public tension," said Todd Matthews, a spokesman for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System at the university. "These are precious resources, and we can't take for granted something we don't know will continue."

The lab's funding situation isn't unique. The National Institute of Justice is the only federal agency that provides grants for labs analyzing DNA to identify the missing. Without those resources, investigators are left with fewer options for critical testing. Detectives have had to bust their budgets on expensive testing at private labs or submit remains to lengthy queues at local FBI labs. Others have stored their samples and suspended investigations until testing can resume.

"I've been sending letters and making phone calls to the NIJ on UNT's behalf. This is an absolute priority," said Sgt. Jason Moran, a detective with the Cook County, Illinois, sheriff's office. "It's hard to work if you don't know the identity of the victim."

Investigators say the university has become a crucial resource in the work to identify the 100,000 missing persons and 40,000 sets of unidentified remains across the United States. Over the past two decades, the lab has identified victims of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Last year, the lab received up to 4,000 out-of-state samples, which comprised half of all DNA testing in the country, lab director Bruce Budowle said.

But the U.S. also has a huge backlog of untested rape kits. The national nonprofit End the Backlog estimates that there are more than 185,000 in the 38 states for which data is available. Reducing that number has drawn approximately $131 million in federal funding for the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative.

"We had to make a tough decision to fund other programs," said Gerry LaPorte, director of the Office of Investigative and Forensic Sciences at the National Institute of Justice. "It was very difficult because there are so many needs in the community."

Even without the influx of funding, the University of North Texas has continued to work cases, including testing of the state's backlogged rape kits. The lab has also had success reducing its own backlog. Last month, it helped the Cook County sheriff's office solve a 40-year mystery by identifying a victim of Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

"If we keep doing quality work, people will want us to be around," Budowle said. "This is a national lab, and that's a good investment. We're optimistic at this point that everything will be addressed. Hopefully sooner rather than later."

___

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Ph.D. candidate Frank Wendt runs a test to detect pieces of DNA that are important for metabolizing drugs at the University of North Texas Center for Human Identification research and development lab on Monday, July 31, 2017, in Fort Worth, Texas. The university's case lab, which tests DNA for missing people and unidentified dead, has temporarily stopped accepting out-of-state samples after the National Institute of Justice opted not to offer millions of dollars in grants for DNA technology to identify missing people. (AP Photo/Jaime Dunaway)

In this Monday, July 31, 2017, photo, University of North Texas professor Bruce Budowle sits in the Center for Human Identification research and development lab in Fort Worth, Texas. The university's case lab, which Budowle directs, performs half the DNA testing for missing and unidentified people in the country. (AP Photo/Jaime Dunaway)

Lab manager Jonathan King, right, and postdoctoral student Miko Takahashi, left, prepare to run a DNA test at the Center for Human Identification research and development lab at the University of North Texas on Monday, July 31, 2017, in Fort Worth, Texas. The university's case lab, which tests DNA for missing people and unidentified dead, has temporarily stopped accepting samples outside Texas after the National Institute of Justice opted not to offer millions of dollars in grants for DNA technology to identify missing people. (AP Photo/Jaime Dunaway)

Ph.D. candidate Frank Wendt prepares to run a DNA test at the Center for Human Identification research and development lab at the University of North Texas on Monday, July 31, 2017, in Fort Worth, Texas. The university's case lab, which tests DNA for missing people and unidentified dead, has temporarily stopped accepting out-of-state samples after the National Institute of Justice opted not to offer millions of dollars in grants for DNA technology to identify missing people. (AP Photo/Jaime Dunaway)
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) - The Latest on Nigeria president's return after three months of medical treatment in London (all times local):

4:55 p.m.

Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has returned to the country after more than three months in London for medical treatment. His plane has landed in the capital, Abuja.

Supporters have lined the road to the airport, singing. Buhari's long absence, his second this year, had created uncertainty in Africa's most populous country amid some calls for his replacement.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has been acting president, was on hand at the airport for Buhari's return.

Nigeria's government has never said what exactly has been ailing the 74-year-old leader.

___

10:30 a.m.

Nigeria's government says President Muhammadu Buhari will return to the country today after more than three months in London for medical treatment.

A statement Saturday from the office of the presidency says Buhari will address the nation in a broadcast Monday morning.

The government of Africa's most populous nation has never said what exactly has been ailing the 74-year-old leader. He also spent seven weeks in London for treatment earlier this this year and said he had never been so sick in his life.

Saturday's statement merely calls it a "health challenge."

Buhari's long absences have led some to call for his replacement and for the military to remind its personnel to remain loyal.

Nigeria's ongoing challenges include the deadly Boko Haram insurgency and a weak economy.
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Venezuela's congress met Saturday in defiance of what opposition leaders consider an autocratic push by allies of President Nicolas Maduro to usurp the legislature's powers.

Brian Naranjo, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, was among a group of foreign diplomats from countries including Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom who attended Saturday's special session to express solidarity with the increasingly cornered lawmakers.

Venezuela's ongoing political standoff took another dramatic turn Friday after the pro-government constitutional assembly approved a decree taking over congress' powers to pass legislation of vital importance to the crisis-wracked nation.

Members of the diplomatic corp, left , listen as lawmakers applaud during a session of Venezuela's National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Venezuela's pro-government constitutional assembly took over the powers of the opposition-led congress Friday, dramatically escalating a standoff between President Nicolas Maduro and his political foes.(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Lawmakers and several foreign governments decried the move as an attempt to dissolve congress, although Maduro's supporters insist lawmakers can continue to meet and have appealed for an agreement so the two bodies can coexist. Freddy Guevara, congress' vice president, compared the offer to that of a kidnapper allowing his captives to use the bathroom and said lawmakers would only be removed by force.

"They will have to kick us out with bullets," said Guevara, who tore up a copy of the edict while presiding over the special session. "But we will continue to defend this space the Venezuelan people gave us as long as we have the will and the means to do so."

Government opponents had warned that the all-powerful constitutional assembly would move to squash dissent following an election for its members last month that was boycotted by the opposition and criticized by many foreign governments as an illegitimate power grab.

In recent days Venezuelans have watched as a steady parade of top officials, including Maduro, kneeled before the assembly charged with rewriting the 1999 constitution and recognized it as the country's supreme authority.

But when leaders of congress were summoned to do the same on Friday they refused, saying they consider it a betrayal of the 14 million voters who took part in 2015 parliamentary elections that gave Maduro's critics their first toehold on power in almost two decades of socialist rule.

Guevara accused the government of being desperate to circumvent congress so it can raise badly needed cash by selling off what's left of Venezuela's vast oil and mineral wealth to allies like Russia and China.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to slap Venezuela with strong economic sanctions, and even if Washington doesn't follow through many economists believe a default on the nation's international bonds looks increasingly unavoidable.

At Saturday's session lawmakers announced they would open a probe into who was responsible for attempting to "dissolve" congress.

Brian Naranjo, US Deputy Chief of Mission, center front, and diplomatic the corp members attend a session of Venezuela's National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Venezuela's pro-government constitutional assembly took over the powers of the opposition-led congress Friday, dramatically escalating a standoff between President Nicolas Maduro and his political foes.(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Brian Naranjo, U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission, left, speaks with his Japanese counterpart Toshiyuki Susuki prior a meeting with the board members of Venezuelan National Assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Venezuela's pro-government constitutional assembly took over the powers of the opposition-led congress Friday, dramatically escalating a standoff between President Nicolas Maduro and his political foes.(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The day after President Donald Trump sparred with reporters on live television over assigning blame for violence at a white supremacist rally, White House aides were stunned, advisers were whispering their frustrations, business allies were cutting public ties with the White House and Trump was out of sight.

But Vice President Mike Pence was on message.

At a press conference 5,000 miles away in Santiago, Chile, Pence offered a robust defense of the president, while neither endorsing nor denouncing his words.

In this Aug. 16, 2017 photo, Vice President Mike Pence takes part in a joint statement with the Chilean president at La Moneda government palace, in Santiago, Chile. The day after President Donald Trump sparred with reporters on live television over assigning blame for violence at a white supremacist rally, White House aides were stunned, advisers were whispering their frustrations, business allies were cutting public ties with the White House and Trump was out of sight. But Vice President Mike Pence was on message. At a press conference 5,000 miles away in Santiago, Chile, Pence offered a robust defense of the president, while neither endorsing nor denouncing his words. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

"What happened in Charlottesville was a tragedy, and the president has been clear on this tragedy and so have I," Pence said Wednesday in response to a reporter's question during a weeklong trip to Latin America. "I spoke at length about this heart-breaking situation on Sunday night in Colombia, and I stand with the president, and I stand by those words."

Time and again, with cool reserve, unquestionable loyalty and unflappability message discipline, Pence has defended Trump and downplayed his troubles of the moment, all while appearing mindful of the political perils of becoming a chief spokesman for the unpopular president. While he never fails to stand by his boss, he also does not repeat Trump's more bombastic statements. He is a master of the dodge, at keeping a safe distance, at making Trump's most shocking comments sound more reasoned. After seven months on the job, Pence has mastered the art of managing the Trump outburst.

On the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Pence was Trump's loyal defender, but he did not endorse his view that both hate groups and counter-protesters were to blame. Nor did he weigh in on the loaded subject of whether removing Conference monuments was an attack on "culture."

In the immediate aftermath of last weekend's violence, as Trump was under fire for not specifically calling out the white supremacists and racists who descended on Charlottesville, Pence simply spoke the words Trump hadn't.

"Yesterday, President Trump clearly and unambiguously condemned the bigotry, violence, and hatred which took place on the streets of Charlottesville," Pence said last Sunday, calling out white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the KKK by name.

The careful positioning comes as Democrats are monitoring Pence closely, with the assumption that he is likely to run for president as soon as 2020, if Trump does not pursue a second term. Pence's team appears to be deeply concerned about suggestions that Pence is preparing a campaign, reacting furiously to a New York Times article that reported that multiple Pence advisers had suggested to party donors that the former Indiana governor might decide to run in 2020 if Trump did not seek re-election - an assumption that nearly everyone in Washington had long made.

Pence, according to several aides, sees his role as a simple one: helping to amplify the president's message and serving, in the words of one, as the president's "wingman." Pence and Trump share a close, personal relationship, forged over a brutal campaign, and speak to each other multiple times a day.

But those aides also do not paint a picture of Pence as the kind of influential adviser who tries to push Trump in one direction or the other. Asked whether Pence openly shares his opinions privately with Trump, one aide explained that Pence gives his opinions when he's asked for them.

When it comes to his frequent forays on the world stage, Pence sees himself as a messenger, coming to personally explain the president's statements, free from media distortions, they said. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss Trump and Pence's private relationship.

In practice, Pence's role as he's traveled across Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America, has emerged as that of a rose-colored filter, a Trump translator quietly reassuring anxious foreign leaders that the president's statements about NATO, nuclear weapons or military action in Venezuela are not quite what they seem.

While Trump spent the past week managing his troubles, Pence was busy delivering speeches, meeting with world leaders, and glad-handing embassy staffers. Pence often seemed to be traveling in an alternate reality - one in which a staid, conventional politician is in charge.

Pence does not shy away from referencing Trump in his interactions with world leaders, quoting him extensively in his remarks. But Pence also works to blunt Trump's rough rhetoric.

Days after Trump threatened a potential "military option" to halt Venezuela's collapse, alarming allies in the region, Pence noted repeatedly that, while "all options" were on the table, the U.S. wanted to work with them to find a "peaceable solution."

At stop after stop, Pence told business and government leaders that Trump's protectionist rhetoric on trade and "America first" philosophy wasn't really what it sounded like: "America first does not mean America alone," he said.

Still, Pence was careful to make his alliances clear. Asked Tuesday about squabbling in the West Wing, Pence thanked a reporter for her question before launching into an enthusiastic defense of Trump.

"What the world has seen under President Donald Trump is an American president who is once again embracing our historic role as leader of the free world without apology," he said, adding: "In a very real sense, I believe that President Trump has restored the credibility of American power by being willing to take American values and American interests onto the world stage. "
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - A New Zealand brewery has canned a planned advertising campaign featuring disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong.

Lion Breweries flew Armstrong to New Zealand last year to film the campaign for its Steinlager Pure brand.

The brewery's external relations manager, Genevieve O'Halloran, told New Zealand media on Saturday the campaign would not go ahead.

O'Halloran said "we had originally considered using Armstrong to tell a cautionary tale about how much you stand to lose when you don't keep it pure. That said, we listened carefully to what people had to say, and decided not to use him in any capacity."

Lion faced severe criticism over its choice of Armstrong as a spokesman.

Seven-time Tour de France champion Armstrong was stripped of all his titles in 2012 after admitting to doping.
SEATTLE (AP) - Officials say a juvenile gray whale has been freed after being stranded on a remote beach in Washington state.

NOAA Fisheries said Saturday that workers freed the 24-foot (7.3-meter) whale during high tide Friday by digging a trench and using a shore-anchored pulley system that was attached to a harness placed on the animal.

Officials say the system turned the whale seaward in Olympic National Park and after some uncertain moments, it started swimming.

Experts say the whale that was likely stranded Tuesday remained alert and tried to free itself several times during previous high tides.

They say the whale is 1 to 2 years old and in fair condition.

Several gray whales have been seen feeding in the vicinity of the site.
JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office says the Israeli leader will travel to Russia on Wednesday to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

Netanyahu's office said late Saturday that the meeting would take place in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, and the two would discuss "the latest developments in the region."

Israel and Russia have established a special mechanism to prevent friction between their air forces in Syria.

Russia is active in Syria providing support to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Israel has tried to stay out of the fighting in the neighboring country. But its air force frequently strikes what Israel says are weapons shipments directed toward Hezbollah, an anti-Israel militant group that is backing Assad's forces.
A shipwreck that has laid off the Kent coast for more than 250 years is helping shed new light on international trade on the high seas, including the lucrative and endemic smuggling that went with it.

The Dutch East India Company vessel Rooswijk sank on the treacherous Goodwin Sands in 1740, with the loss of an estimated 250 lives, just a day after leaving the Netherlands bound for what is now Jakarta in Indonesia.

She was packed with an official cargo of silver bullion and coins with which to buy spices and Oriental porcelain that were in demand in the upper echelons of Enlightenment Europe.

But an Anglo-Dutch team excavating the wooden wreck six miles off the Channel coast has discovered items that shed a light on the untold stories of those aboard, including their efforts to get rich on the quiet by buying their own illicit luxuries.

They smuggled out their own silver cargo, ranging from a handful of coins secreted on the bodies of simple deckhands to the larger-scale rogue trading carried out by the ships captain, Daniel Ronzieres.

Project leader Martijn Manders, from the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, which is working with Historic England on the excavation, told the Press Association: There was a shortage of silver and that shortage of silver was in the place where they could buy precious materials to sell in Europe again.

Pewter spoons found during the excavation works (Lauren Hurley/PA)

Suddenly these few coins of silver were worth almost twice as much because they had transported them to the Indies. So it was quite lucrative.

Everyone would smuggle silver; it was the simple sailor who smuggled coins in his belt, in his shoe, to the East Indies.

But it was also the captain as well, who even had an office in Amsterdam and people were coming to the office and handing over money for him to bring to the Indies so they could earn more money from those silver coins.

Musket balls found during the excavation works on the Rooswijk (Lauren Hurley/PA)

The ship, which lies on and under the seabed 26 metres down, is being excavated because it is at risk from the currents and shifting sands.

An excavation in 2005 recovered lots of silver and more coinage has been found this time, along with irregularly shaped pieces of eight  weights of silver hacked off an ingot.

They have also found items including as-yet unopened chests, leather shoes, glass bottles and pewter jugs.

Conservation team members Elisabeth Kuiber and Eric Nordgren with finds including a spoon (Lauren Hurley/PA)

They are being desalinated, a process like that carried out on the Tudor warship Mary Rose, at a facility by the harbour in Ramsgate, Kent, which will be opened to the public for the first time on Saturday August 19.

Rooswijk was owned by what is known in Dutch as the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), which had a state monopoly on spice importation from the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia.

It lost some 250 ships over the years it was in operation, of which just a third have been located.
Forty years after blasting off, Earths most distant ambassadors  the twin Voyager spacecraft  are still going.

This Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of Nasas launch of Voyager 2, now almost 11 billion miles distant.

What a long, strange trip its been! Check out mission highlights from the first 40 years https://t.co/ADsLgjcuwa #Voyager40 pic.twitter.com/tBmo5q5WxE  NASA Voyager (@NASAVoyager) July 31, 2017

It left Cape Canaveral, Florida, on August 20 1977 to explore Jupiter and Saturn.

Voyager 1 followed a few weeks later and is now ahead of Voyager 2.

It is humanitys farthest spacecraft at 13 billion miles away and is the worlds only craft to reach interstellar space.

Voyager 2 mission director Dick Laeser (Lennox McLendon/AP)

Each spacecraft carries a phonograph record containing messages from Earth.

Nasa is marking the anniversary on social media.
Im often asked where to take children fishing in our area with good access and a place where they kids have a chance to catch fish as well as play and have a good time. The best bet in our area is Angel Lake.

This high elevation lake is a naturally occurring glacially carved cirque that has had its level raised by a small dam. At almost 8,400 feet of elevation, it is one of the higher elevation lakes in the country that can be accessed by a black top road. It is also one of the prettiest lakes in all of Nevada.

This lake has naturally reproducing brook trout as well as stocked rainbow and tiger trout. This summer, NDOWs Gallagher Fish Hatchery has stocked Angel Lake with thousands of 8 to 10 inch fish. Fish food at this high elevation lake is not very plentiful, so the trout are pretty much always on the prowl for food.

Shore access is good and if the fishing isnt, the youngsters can play and splash in the cool clear water near the dam, while the more serious anglers can fish the rest of the lake. If the family is up to it, Smith Lake is a moderate hour hike from the USFS parking lot at the upper campground and has 10 to 12 inch cutthroat trout.

To top it off, with the higher elevation of the lake, the air temperatures are often 10 degrees cooler than the lowlands where most of us live. So the next time you want to take the family fishing, consider Angel Lake, just about an hours drive from Elko.

Just like last week, there is little change in the fishing forecast from last week, so dont expect to see major changes at most area waters.

Wildhorse

With surface water temperatures well above 70 degrees, trout fishing is slowing down and anglers are having their best luck early in the morning before it gets too hot or by fishing in deeper water. Fishing has been productive for boaters who are fishing between 16 and 18 feet deep. Fishing from shore in the canyon that leads to the dam where the water gets deep quickly has also been productive. Bait fishermen should use the usual worms or PowerBait for trout. Fly rodders should be trying hares ears, PTs, damselfly nymphs, damsel adults, mayflies and wooly buggers. The campground and fish cleaning station are open and on a first come first served basis.

There is road construction on SR-225 between milepost 37 and Lone Mountain Station. During the week drivers can expect up to a 30 minute delays, though on the weekends this shouldnt be a problem. Construction is expected to continue to the end of August.

South Fork Reservoir

The surface water temperatures have climbed into the mid to high 70s and trout fishing has slowed considerably due to this. Even boaters dont seem to be having a lot of luck for trout. The trout being caught are averaging between 13 and 17 inches with an occasional 20 inch fish. If fishing from a boat, use a deep diving presentation to get your terminal tackle to between 15 and 20 feet deep for trout. Some trout are being caught in the river above the reservoir using hopper patterns. Black bass are moving into vegetation at the south end of the lake and onto structure along shorelines. Some smallmouth and largemouth bass have moved into the river above the causeway. There are special regulations in the river including single barbless hooks, so make sure to read the fishing proclamation for this water before fishing here. Mayflies and damselflies are hatching, so flies such as pheasant tail nymphs, gold ribbed hares ears, pale morning duns, blue winged olives (BWOs) and other mayfly as well as damselfly imitations should be used. Damselflies should be fished near vegetation and mayflies may be fished on more open water. There is road construction south of the state park headquarters so those wanting to access the west side of the lake will need to go in through Twin Bridges. Expect this to continue into October.

Jiggs/Zunino Reservoir

Shore fishermen dont appear to be faring as well as boaters or float tube anglers as the edges are getting weedy and the fish are hanging in the deeper cooler water in the middle of the reservoir. Remember this is a wakeless water so go slow if you are in a boat with a motor. It is difficult to launch much more than a small rowboat or car topper due to water and shore conditions. Small spinners, PowerBait or worms should all work. While fly rodders should be using hares ears, small nymphs and wooly buggers. Please return any black bass or blue gill back to the lake to help with rebuilding the warm water fishery here.

Wilson Reservoir

Wilson has the best water quality of the larger reservoirs in eastern Nevada with little algae growth though the water temperatures are hitting the mid 70s in the afternoon. Trout were averaging 12 to 15 inches in the lake. Expect similar conditions to South Fork and anglers should use the same presentations. The usual PowerBait or worms work well. Gold, green and yellow, or black and yellow spinners are working. Fly fishermen should be using chironomids, mayfly nymphs and emergers, damselfly nymphs/dries or black crystal buggers for best results. Lots of small bass are being caught, but not a lot of keeper sized. .

Ruby Lake NWR

Bass fishing for keeper sized bass is good. With water levels up the bass are spread out more so anglers need to move until they find them. Dark plastic four to six inch grubs with sparkles in them seem to be the presentation of choice. Colors include blue, dark red, dark green, purple and motor oil. Fishing in the ditch for trout is fair. Fly rodders should try the usual assortment of nymphs under an indicator as well as wooly, seal and crystal buggers. Scuds, midges, and small Blue Winged Olives are all worth a try. Of course the usual small hares ears, PTs, copper Johns and buggers are all staples in the ditch. Spin fishermen should try small minnow imitators and gold spinners. The collection ditch is artificial lures and flies only and no wading is allowed. Boats can still be easily launched at both the main boat ramp and at Narciss as the water level in the south marsh is good. The road was graded a couple of weeks ago, but is already washboarded.

Jakes Creek/Boies Reservoir

The weeds have come on and shore anglers are finding it difficult to catch fish from shore. Trout fishing has been fair, while bass fishing has been good. However, right at dusk, the trout bite seems to turn on. Bass fishing is also good, especially in the evenings with anglers reporting a large number of 6 to 8 inch fish with keeper bass being caught about every fifth fish. Dark soft plastics in blue or black with sparkles were working for bass. Worms and PowerBait are popular here as are black or olive woolly buggers, prince nymphs, PTs and hares ears.

Cold Creek Reservoir

Fishing is slow to fair for trout and fair to good for bass. There continues to be a mayfly hatch so BWOs, PMDs, hares ears, Adams and Griffiths gnats are all worth a try for fly fishermen. The water level is still good with some of the willows in the water providing cover for bass, so fish for bass near the willows.

Cave Lake

No change here. Fishing has been good for 10 to 12 inch fish using worms or cheese baits under a bobber. Small spinners in black and gold or green and gold have been effective. For fly rodders: hares ears, pheasant tail nymphs, prince nymphs, small crystal buggers and Cave Lake specials are all good flies. Mayflies and damselflies are also hatching, so fish these imitations.

Comins Lake

Water quality at Comins is in good shape and anglers are catching fish from both shore and boats, though boat and float tube anglers are having better luck. The usual PowerBait and worms should work, while small spinners and minnow imitations can be productive. Fly fishermen should be switching to damselfly and mayfly patterns in addition to the usual assortment of chironomid patterns and buggers. Please return any black bass back to the lake while the bass fishery rebuilds.

Illipah

While the water level is low, the lake isnt losing any more water and the inflow appears to be keeping up with evaporation. Just like the rest of the eastern Nevada reservoirs, the trout fishing has slowed as they move into the deeper cooler water. The usual worms, PowerBait or mealworms should all work. Small spinners and spoons should be good for spin fishermen. The usual black and olive wooly buggers, small chironomids, hares ears and pheasant tail nymphs are good starting points for fly rodders. The trick is to get any of the presentations deep into the water column.

Angel Lake

The water level has dropped a bit so there is more shoreline for fishing. Bait anglers have seen fishing slow as trout are keying on aquatic insects. Fly rodders have had success using small elk hair caddis, hopper or stimulator with an olive or peacock soft hackle dropper below though any dropper fly with green or peacock herl will work. Small spinners and rooster tails should also be effective, just give them enough time to sink to the level the fish are at. Spin anglers can put a fly behind a bobber for casting and have better luck that way.

Alpine lakes

Fishing is good to excellent at the higher elevations as trout take advantage of the short growing season. The same presentations and techniques that work at Angel all work well up here. Remember the further you get from the trailhead, there is less fishing pressure therefore the better the fishing is. All of the lakes are accessible.

Streams

Area streams are at or near normal flows making for good fishing. Not only that, but hoppers are out and this is the time of year to hit our creeks for some great dry fly action. Just be on the lookout for snakes. Lamoille Creek is finally flowing at a normal 15 cfs as of this past Thursday. Streams in northern Elko County are flowing close to normal with the Bruneau at 22 cfs and the West Fork of the Jarbidge at 7 cfs and they are fishing well. The East Fork of the Owyhee was flowing at 63 cfs near Mountain City. Creeks in central Nevada are flowing at normal or slightly below normal flows for this time of year and many such as Steptoe, Cleve and Ward Creeks are fishable. Fishing in Steptoe Creek has been fair to good, while fishing in Cleve Creek has been slow to fair. No report on Ward.
Cambrils, the Spanish coastal town which was the scene of a second terror attack in the country, was also where the operational leader of the 9/11 atrocity met with one of the al Qaida planners.

Egyptian-born Mohamed Atta, 33, the pilot of the first airliner the terrorists crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York, drove to the town from Madrid after picking up Ramzi bin al-Shibh, according to various sources.

Bin al-Shibh was allegedly originally selected by al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden to be one of the September 11 hijackers and was later accused by the US authorities of making a martyr video in preparation for the attack.

A police officer walks near an overturned car at the spot where terrorists were intercepted by police in Cambrils

But he was unable to obtain a US visa and instead helped to find flight schools for the hijackers in the US and arrange financial transactions in support of the September 11 operation.

He met Atta, who studied in Hamburg, Germany, in the 1990s and learned to fly in Florida, at Reus airport near Tarragona in July 2001 and they drove together to Cambrils, where they are believed to have stayed for a night in a local hotel.

They then moved on to an unknown location where they are believed to have spent several days planning the 9/11 attack.

Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni who reportedly met Atta while they were studying in Germany, was arrested in 2002 in Pakistan and taken to Guantanamo Bay, where he is being held by the US authorities, accused of being a key facilitator for the September 11 attacks.
An arsonist who torched an historic Tudor mansion, causing 5 million worth of damage, has been jailed for four and a half years  after being caught by a single match.

Shop worker Jeremy Taylor, 28, set fire to newspapers he stuffed around drainpipes and doors at Grade II listed Wythenshawe Hall, a 16th century timber-framed manor house.

Taylor was high on cannabis and alcohol and feeling sorry for himself at the time, Manchester Crown Court heard.

Jeremy Taylor

After setting five separate fires at the building, which had survived for five centuries, he set off for home nearby and left it to burn in the early hours of March 15 last year.

The flames spread through the entrance hall and upwards onto the first and second floors and out through the roof, destroying the bell tower.

The bill to taxpayers for repairing the damage and restoration is estimated to be up to 5.2 million.

Rope rescue practice for @manchesterfire from our scaffolding on site @WythenshaweHall a project for @NWCH2 pic.twitter.com/CggIXZac75  Conlon Construction (@_CONLON_) May 19, 2017

After the flames were out two days later, fire and police investigators found three matches  and DNA on one of them matched Taylor to the crime scene.

The defendant, who lived near the hall in Wythenshawe with his family, suffered a storm of abuse from locals after his arrest.

The hall, dating back to 1540, was gifted to the city of Manchester in 1926 by a philanthropist to be used solely for the public good. It was staffed by volunteers and used to teach local schoolchildren about their history and heritage.

Taylor smiled and waved to his partner in the public gallery as he was jailed for four-and-a-half years after admitting arson at an earlier hearing.
Andy Murray will travel to New York later on Friday to step up his US Open preparations.

The Scot, who will lose his number one ranking to Rafael Nadal on Monday, has not played since his Wimbledon quarter-final loss to Sam Querrey.

He has been dealing with a hip injury and has missed recent events in Montreal and Cincinnati as a result.

Andy Murray lost his place at the top of the world rankings this week to Rafa Nadal (Gareth Fuller/PA)

The plan has always been for Murray to play at Flushing Meadows and it is understood he is flying to America ahead of the weekend, but it remains to be seen how his hip holds up amid heavy practice.

Last week, when pulling out of Cincinnati, the 30-year-old said: Im continuing to work hard on the court with the aim of being in New York.

The tournament, which Murray won in 2012, starts next weekend.
The terror cell responsible for attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils has been dismantled, but a manhunt for one suspect is continuing, Spanish authorities have said.

At a press conference on Saturday Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said police have broken the terrorist cell from Barcelona  after he said five members were shot dead, four were in custody and as many as two were killed in an explosion.

He said no new attacks were imminent, that they will be maintaining the countrys terrorist threat alert at level four, and security at popular events and tourist sites around the country will be reinforced.

Catalan Police spokesman Albert Oliva confirmed a search is under way for any remaining members of the Islamic extremist cell, with the search focused on Younes Abouyaaqoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan.

Abouyaaqoub has been named in Spanish media as the suspected driver of the van which was used in the massacre on Las Ramblas that left 13 dead and nearly 130 injured.

Fears were continuing to grow over the fate of seven-year-old Julian Cadman, understood to be a dual British-Australian national, who became separated from his mother during the Barcelona attack.

Younes Abouyaaquoub

Speaking after the family made an initial plea for help to find the missing boy, Prime Minister Theresa May said a child with dual British nationality was believed to be among those unaccounted for.

Julians father and grandmother are believed to have arrived in Spain on Saturday after travelling from Australia.

Some 34 nationalities were among those wounded in the attacks in Las Ramblas and in Cambrils, which lies around 70 miles to the south west.

Catalan authorities said they have identified eight victims of the attack in Barcelona as an Italian, two Portuguese, three Spanish, one Spanish-Argentine and an American.

King Felipe

The victim of the second assault in Cambrils has been identified as a Spanish woman.

Family members or government officials have said another two Italians, a Belgian and a Canadian are also amongst the dead following the attack in Barcelona.

In the wake of the twin attacks Spains King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia visited the victims of the atrocity and spoke to medical staff at Barcelonas Hospital del Mar.

The royal couple then laid a wreath on Las Ramblas promenade, among a growing number of candles and floral tributes.

Princess Letizia

On Friday it emerged another suspect, Moussa Oukabir, who is thought to have rented the van, was among five men shot dead as they launched a second attack in the coastal town of Cambrils.

The teenager, said to be 17 or 18 years old, is suspected of using his brothers documents to hire the vehicle that ploughed through pedestrians in the tourist hotspot on Thursday evening.

He reportedly died along with Said Aallaa, 19, and Mohamed Hychami, 24, who were part of a group that mounted a similar attack in Cambrils that left one woman dead and six people injured.

The identities of the other two dead attackers are yet to be confirmed by police.

The attack took place on Las Ramblas (Santi Palacios/AP)

Four men, aged 21, 27, 28 and 34, who were arrested in connection with the attack remain in custody.

Three are Moroccan and one Spanish, and police said none of them was previously known to the security services for terror-related reasons.

Moussa Oukabirs older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reported to be one of those detained.

Driss Oukabir

Authorities said 53 people injured in the attacks were still in hospital on Saturday, with 13 in a critical condition and 22 in a serious condition.

Police said the terrorists behind the rampage were preparing bigger attacks, with a suspected gas explosion on Wednesday at a house in Alcanar believed to have robbed the killers of materials to use in larger-scale operations.

Spain terror attacks key locations mapped

On Saturday police carried out controlled explosions in Alcanar, and also raided the house of an imam believed to be the radicalising force behind the cell, the Associated Press reported.

Police are also looking for a white Kangoo vehicle which is believed to have been rented by the suspects and could have crossed the border into France, according to French media.

Julian Alessandro Cadman

In an echo of the London Bridge attack in June, Catalonia regional president Carles Puigdemont said the five terrorists in the Cambrils car were wearing fake suicide belts when they were stopped.

Police said that an axe and knives were also found in the vehicle, with one of the latter used to wound one person in the face before the terrorists were gunned down.
The United States completed a sweep of the afternoon fourball matches to move into a dominant position over Europe in the Solheim Cup after the opening days play in Des Moines.

Catriona Matthew, a late addition to the team, had helped Europe get off to a strong start in the morning as they led 2 1/2 to 1 1/2 after the foursomes. But the pendulum swung sharply in the United States favour in the afternoon as they took a 5 1/2-2 1/2 lead.

It was a first ever fourball sweep for the Americans, who are looking to retain the cup after their victory in Germany two years ago.

Cristie Kerr, left, and Lexi Thompson

Incredible performances from all the #SolheimCup2017 athletes. U-S-A All the Way! Let's keep this up all weekend. SolheimCup2017 https://t.co/7MNUSQXBFx  Solheim Cup Team USA  (@SolheimCupUSA) August 19, 2017

It wasnt the afternoon we had wished for, but the players fought very hard, European captain Annika Sorenstram said on the tournament website.

I must say the US team played very well. They made a lot of birdies. They made a lot of putts. And we just didnt have the same flow. So overall, just still feel pretty happy how we had the setup. And like I said, the girls fought to the end.

Lizette Salas  who took the United States only full point in the morning alongside tournament debutant Danielle Kang  teamed up with another rookie, Angel Yin, for a convincing 6&5 win over Carlota Ciganda and Caroline Masson, while Kang partnered Michelle Wie in a 3&1 win over Madelene Sagstrom and Jodi Ewart Shadoff.

#TeamEurope take a 2.5 - 1.5 lead after the morning Foursomes pairings #SolheimCup2017  pic.twitter.com/ExfsEz3PV7  Ladies European Tour (@LETgolf) August 18, 2017

Salas and Yin had set the tone, with Salas recording three straight birdies to take the first three holes, and they won on back-to-back par fives to end the contest in 13 holes.

Brittany Lincicome and Brittany Lang beat Masson and Florentyna Parker 3&2, while Stacy Lewis and Gerina Piller beat Charley Hull and Georgia Hall 2&1.

That changed the mood considerably after Europe had made the better start on Friday morning.
A British man injured while helping victims of a suspected terror attack in Finland has said: I am not a hero.

Two Finnish women were killed and seven people, including Hassan Zubier, were wounded in the knife rampage in the city of Turku, 90 miles west of the capital, Helsinki.

Mr Zubier, who is reportedly a Kent-born paramedic now living in Sweden, told Swedish newspaper the Expressen he was stabbed as he tried to help others, including a woman who died in his arms. But he told the BBC: I am not a hero. I did what I was trained for. I did my best and more.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spokeswoman said: Our staff have offered support to a British man following an incident in Finland.

Four Finns, an Italian and a Swede were also injured in the attack, which Finlands Security Intelligence Service said was a likely terror act.

Finland stabbings location map

Police said the suspect, an 18-year-old Moroccan asylum-seeker, who was shot by officers and arrested, appeared to have targeted women.

Four other Moroccans have been arrested.

Floral tributes

Pekka Hiltunen said the Security Intelligence Service was investigating the suspects connections to the Islamic State group, since IS has previously encouraged this kind of behaviour.

The suspect had yet to be questioned, while four others  also Moroccans living in Turku who know him  were detained on suspicion of involvement.

The dead from the apparent indiscriminate attack on Friday are Finnish citizens.

We have been in touch with the British National and offered consular support https://t.co/Gbo4v3QQgL  UK in Finland  (@ukinfinland) August 19, 2017

Police said the suspect, whose name has not been released, was subdued with a shot in the thigh and that he is in hospital under guard.

Investigators say he came to Finland in early 2016 seeking asylum.

Three of those wounded were still in intensive care. Four remain in hospital and four have been released. The youngest victim was 15, the oldest 67, police said.

Turku Hospital

A man visiting from Sweden said he was stabbed in the arm and tried to help another victim who died.

I tried to stop the violent bleeding from her throat  The woman was so badly injured that she died in my arms, Hassan Zubier told the Expressen tabloid.

Tabloid Ilta-Sanomat said one of the dead was a woman belonging to the local chapter of Jehovahs Witnesses who was handing out leaflets at a central Turku square.

A spokesman for the religious group told the tabloid they believed the woman was randomly attacked.

Flowers and candles were placed on a square in Turku, and Finnish flags flew at half-mast across the country.

We need to stick together now, hate is not to be answered by hate, Prime Minister Juha Sipila said in a tweet.

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, wrote on Twitter that Europeans stand with #Turku and called it another cowardly terrorist attack on innocents.
Manchester United signalled their Premier League title intent by claiming another convincing 4-0 victory at Swansea.

Eric Baillys first United goal on the stroke of half-time set them on their way before Romelu Lukaku, Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial blitzed Swansea in the final 10 minutes.

After last weekends 4-0 season-opener against West Ham this was another powerful message sent out by Jose Mourinhos side.

What they said

We were competitive for long periods of the game. Up until the second goal the difference was a set-play and generally the shape was good. I made some offensive changes because I dont want to be a coach happy to lose 1-0 at home but we ended up playing to their strengths and they punished us.

The word that describes the team now is confident. I dont want to see it but, if it happens, I want to see the team losing and see the way we emotionally react to it. At the moment everything is going in our favour. Its not always motorway - you find difficult roads and roadworks.

Tweet of the match

Statement !!!  David May (@DavidMay04) August 19, 2017

Star man  Nemanja Matic

Nemanja Matic

It is no coincidence that United have kept clean sheets in their two Premier League games. The Serbian midfielder was an effective shield in front of the back four again and got United moving forward. Just why on earth was he allowed to leave Chelsea?

Talking point

...then @PaulPogba got in on the act - he's scored in four of his last five competitive games for #MUFC... pic.twitter.com/3xMeoMGo3F  Manchester United (@ManUtd) August 19, 2017

Should Paul Pogba have stayed on the pitch following his 30th-minute challenge on Martin Olsson? Pogba had been booked only four minutes earlier for felling Tom Carroll in a similar challenge. Referee Jonathan Moss had a strong word with the France midfielder, but did not dish out a second yellow card  and Pogba;s late goal rubbed salt into Swansea wounds.

Stat of the day

Phil Jones and Paul Pogba both struck the crossbar - the latter before Eric Bailly poked home the rebound - so Manchester United have now hit the woodwork 22 times in the Premier League since the start of last season. Only Tottenham (23) have hit it more.

Player ratings

Lukasz Fabianski 7, Kyle Naughton 5, Federico Fernandez 6, Kyle Bartley 6, Alfie Mawson 6, Martin Olsson 6, Roque Mesa 6, Tom Carroll 6, Leroy Fer 5, Jordan Ayew 6, Tammy Abraham 6.Luciano Narsingh (for Mesa, 66 mins) 5, Wayne Routledge (for Bartley, 66 mins) 5, Oli McBurnie (for Abraham, 83 mins) 5.

David de Gea 7, Antonio Valencia 7, Eric Bailly 7, Phil Jones 7, Daley Blind 7, Nemanja Matic 8, Paul Pogba 7, Henrikh Mkhitaryan 7, Juan Mata 6, Marcus Rashford 6, Romelu Lukaku 7.Marouane Fellaini (for Mata, 73 mins) 6, Anthony Martial (for Rashford, 73 mins) 7, Ander Herrera (for Mkhitaryan, 85 mins) 6.

Whos up next?

Manchester United and Leicester players

MK Dons v Swansea (Carabao Cup, August 22)

Manchester United v Leicester (Premier League, August 26)
Passengers on board a holiday jet flying from Spain to Birmingham have told how it was shadowed by a French fighter plane for up to 15 minutes.

Low-cost carrier Jet2 said it was awaiting confirmation from French aviation officials as to why Flight LS1204 was apparently tracked by the French air force on Friday afternoon.

Passenger Sarah Hatfield, who was travelling back to the UK from Malaga with husband Ian and their 13-year-old daughter Emily, said: Someone spotted the French jet and told the cabin crew, who I presume told the Jet2 pilots.

Jet2 was awaiting confirmation from French aviation officials as to why Flight LS1204 was apparently tracked on Friday afternoon (Emily Hatfield/PA)

The air stewardess then announced there was nothing to worry about. Ian was terrified and it didnt help that loads of other passengers came by us to look out at it.

Mrs Hatfield, from Quarry Bank, near Dudley, said of the fighter jet: It was so close I could read the writing on its tail fin.

The bank worker, whose daughter took several photos of the French warplane, added: The feeling on board was a mixture of excitement at seeing the fighter so close up and terror as to if we were about to get shot down.

A spokesperson for Jet2 said: We are awaiting clarification from the French air traffic authorities, as to why a military aircraft was apparently tracking our aircraft.
Thousands of demonstrators chanting anti-Nazi slogans converged on central Boston, dwarfing a small group of conservatives who cut short their Free Speech rally in a boisterous repudiation of white nationalism a week after racially-tinged bloodshed in Virginia.

An estimated 15,000 counter-protesters marched through the city to historic Boston Common, where many gathered near a bandstand abandoned early by conservatives who had planned to deliver a series of speeches.

Police vans later escorted the conservatives out of the area, and angry counter-protesters scuffled with armed officers trying to maintain order.

REMINDER: Signs are allowed at today's rally. Signs attached or affixed to sticks are not. Please leave the sticks & stones at home. pic.twitter.com/GD6OK4taEC  Boston Police Dept. (@bostonpolice) August 19, 2017

Police Commissioner William Evans said Friday that 500 officers, some in uniform, others undercover, were deployed to keep the two groups apart on Saturday.

Bostons Democratic mayor, Marty Walsh, and Massachusetts Republican governor, Charlie Baker, both warned that extremist unrest would not be tolerated in the city famed as the cradle of American liberty.

Organisers of the event, billed as a Free Speech rally, have publicly distanced themselves from the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and others who fomented violence in Charlottesville on August 12.

Boston Free Speech rally

A woman was killed at that Unite The Right rally, and scores of others were injured, when a car ploughed into counter-demonstrators.

But opponents feared that white nationalists might show up in Boston anyway, raising the spectre of ugly confrontations in the first potentially large and racially charged gathering in a major US city since Charlottesville.

Events are planned around the country, in cities including Atlanta, Dallas and New Orleans.

We will not tolerate violence or property damage of any kind. If you'll be at the Common today, read our advisory: https://t.co/wFiZX0YA9R  Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) August 19, 2017

Some counter-protesters dressed entirely in black and wore scarves over their faces.

They chanted anti-Nazi and anti-fascism slogans, and waved signs that said Resist Fascism and Hate Never Made US Great. Others carried a large banner that read Smash White Supremacy.

TV cameras showed a group of boisterous counter-protesters on the Common chasing a man with a Trump campaign banner and cap, shouting and swearing at him.

Counter-protesters at the rally on Boston Common

But other counter-protesters intervened and helped the man safely over a fence into the area where the conservative rally was to be staged.

Black-clad counter-protesters also grabbed an American flag out of an elderly womans hands, and she stumbled and fell to the ground.

The permit issued for the rally on Boston Common came with severe restrictions, including a ban on backpacks, sticks and anything that could be used as a weapon.

Police monitor the rally in Boston

The Boston Free Speech Coalition, which organised the event, said it has nothing to do with white nationalism or racism and its group is not affiliated with the Charlottesville rally organisers in any way.

We are strictly about free speech, the group said on its Facebook page. We denounce the politics of supremacy and violence.
Antonio Conte has suggested he would like to lead Chelsea into the new Stamford Bridge.

The 48-year-old led Chelsea to the Premier League title in his first season in charge last term.

He signed improved terms to the initial three-year deal he agreed on taking up the job, but not an extension. His contract still expires in June 2019.

Antonio Conte would like to lead Chelsea into the new Stamford Bridge

Conte insists he is committed to Chelsea, who have planning permission to rebuild Stamford Bridge but are yet to make a final decision whether to proceed.

If the Italian were to still be in charge it would defy Chelseas managerial turnover, which pre-dates Roman Abramovichs 14-year ownership. Not since John Neal in 1981 to 1985 has a Blues boss enjoyed four calendar years in charge.

I want to break this bad record. I must be positive, Conte said. When you start a job with a new club, I hope to stay in this club for many years.

This could be a fantastic challenge for me and also for the club, to stay together and also to play with this team in a new stadium.

Antonio Conte insists that hard work is the key as the Blues prepare for Tottenham...



More  https://t.co/7Qbd48fC5w pic.twitter.com/L4gO7ZCBzU  Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) August 14, 2017

Honestly, the new stadium will be great, but I love a lot Stamford Bridge, also to play in the stadium. I feel Stamford Bridge is like my house.

If Chelsea do opt to rebuild Stamford Bridge they will probably need to temporarily relocate, with Wembley the most likely destination.

The national stadium is Tottenhams temporary home this season and Spurs host the Blues in their first Premier League home game there on Sunday.

Tottenham have two wins in 10 games since Wembley reopened after a rebuild in 2007. Chelsea won the FA Cup semi-final between the teams in April.

Progress continues on the stadium development site as we remove the South Stand truss. #SpursNewStadium pic.twitter.com/gPncKrbbIS  Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) July 19, 2017

Conte recognises the challenges of moving home, as he helped his former club Juventus transfer from the Stadio delle Alpi to their current home.

For sure its not the same when you play not in your stadium. Its different, Conte added.

But if you want to have another good step to improve the club, you must have this type of situation.
Hopefully you will be able to view the solar eclipse that is scheduled for Monday morning, August 21. It will start approximately at 9 a.m. when the Moon begins to enter the disc of the Sun. You wont be able to see the Moon because there is no illumination on the side facing the Earth. All solar eclipses require the Moon to be in the New phase before they begin.

The moons shadow will travel from the West Coast to the East Coast of the United States with only a narrow zone, called the path of totality, experiencing a total solar eclipse. In this path, the moon will block out the sun completely for less than three minutes, so being in the path at the correct time is extremely important.

The totality path will cut diagonally across the entire United States starting at the edge of Oregon at 10:17 a.m., continuing through Idaho, hitting Casper, Wyoming at 11:43 (Mountain Time) and crossing Route 80 near the border with Nebraska 12 minutes later. The shadow will progress through the heartland all the way to Charleston, South Carolina, taking a little more than an hour for the complete journey.

Here in Elko we will see a partial eclipse starting at 9:09 a.m. with the maximum occurring about 10:27 a.m. If you want to see the full total eclipse you will have to travel 25 miles above Boise. Remember, the path of totality will be 60 to 70 miles wide and the closer to the center you position yourself the longer the time of darkness.

The eclipse will last longest near Carbondale, Illinois, being two minutes and 44 seconds. The last time a total solar eclipse swept the whole width of the U.S. was in 1918. This one also came in over Oregon and made a lower dash for Florida.

If you miss the August 21 eclipse youll have to wait seven years to see another one in the continental United States. This one, doing a tight curving route on April 8, 2024 will cross from Texas, up through the Midwest, head almost directly over Indianapolis, Cleveland and Buffalo finally exiting the country over Maine.

For those looking for the absolute next eclipse on Earth, there will be one in 2019 but you will have to travel to the South Pacific to view it.

Sometimes the path of totality even goes directly over the poles. The last eclipse viewed from the North Pole area was on March 20, 2015 and passed right over the pole itself. The last total solar eclipse viewed from the South Pole area was on November 23, 2003.

The history of eclipses is quite interesting. Surviving records have shown that the Babylonians were able to predict solar eclipses as early as 2500 BC. This was a pretty good feat without a computer or hand calculator. In China, solar eclipses were thought to be associated with the health and success of the emperor, and failing to predict one meant putting him in danger.

Legend has it that two court astronomers, Hsi and Ho, were executed for failing to predict a solar eclipse that occurred on October 22, 2134 BC. Some say this is the oldest solar eclipse ever recorded in human history.

Aside from trying to predict the future, eclipses give scientists the opportunity to study an outer part of the Sun called the corona. Normally this region is impossible to see due to the extreme brilliance of the Sun itself but when it is blocked out by the Moon, measurements on size, temperature, and composition can be made.

In fact, it was during a solar eclipse that the element helium was discovered when the French astronomer Jules Janssen examined the spectrum of the corona during a total solar eclipse on August 16, 1868. Seeing lines never observed before in his spectroscope he correctly deduced that they were caused by a new element unknown on Earth. Because of this helium is named after the Greek word for the Sun: Helios.

In 1919 a test of Einsteins General Theory of Relativity was made during a solar eclipse. You may recall in this theory Einstein predicted the massive gravity of the Sun could actually bend a path of light if it was close enough to the edge. To accurately test this idea, astronomers would have to study the positions of background stars close to the Suns disc. Since the Sun is so bright, this would normally be impossible to do.

But following a suggestion by British scientist Arthur Eddington to make the measurements during an eclipse, the British Royal Astronomical Society organized expeditions to the island of Principe, off the west coast of Africa, to view an upcoming eclipse. Photographs taken during totality indicated that stars in the Hyades cluster indeed displayed a shift in apparent position due to the gravitational space warp effect of exactly the magnitude predicted by Einstein. This promoted him to become the most famous scientist in the world at that time. In fact, many scientists have undertaken experiments during total eclipses.

In one of his first jaunts out West, 31- yearold Thomas Edison visited Wyoming Territory in 1878 to observe the upcoming eclipse. He brought with him a device he called a tasimeter. With this optical pyrometer Edison was going to measure the temperature of the corona of the Sun. Unfortunately, the experiment failed because his meter was too sensitive for the extremes in temperature brought about during the event. After a week of fishing he returned home to continue his streak of inventions.

For those traveling to the totality path, you may want to look for the rare phenomena that occurs only during an eclipse. This is when the Moon is exactly centered over the Sun and an illumination around the edge of the Moon called Bailys Beads occurs.

As the moon grazes by the Sun the protruding lunar mountains allow breaks of sunlight to shine through in some places, and not in others. The name is in honor of Francis Baily who provided an exact explanation of the phenomenon in 1836. Look especially for the diamond ring effect when only one bead is left.

Remember, it is not safe to view Bailys beads or the diamond ring effect without proper eye protection because in both cases the photosphere of the Sun is still visible.
By Steve Holland and Jonathan Landay

HAGERSTOWN, Md./WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump reviewed an array of options for a strategy on Afghanistan with his top national security aides, but made no decision on whether he would commit more troops to America's longest war.

Friday's meeting was the latest in a series of high-level discussions on Afghanistan and a broader security strategy for the South Asia region that has been bogged down by internal differences.

Trump was briefed extensively "on a new strategy to protect America's interests in South Asia", White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters, after the meeting at the Camp David Maryland retreat.

"The president is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time," Sanders said.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster and other top national security officials went into the meeting backing a modest increase in troops. At a mid-July meeting, they had thrown their weight behind 3,000 to 5,000 additional U.S. and coalition soldiers.

"Anti-globalists," who were led by Steve Bannon before he was fired on Friday as Trump's chief strategist, backed withdrawing U.S. forces, U.S. officials said.

Other options which were to be discussed included keeping the status quo of some 8,400 U.S. troops, a modest hike, or a small reduction that would focus on counter-terrorism operations enhanced by drone strikes and intelligence-gathering, they said.

A U.S. official said that during a trip to Afghanistan earlier this year, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that the United States would have a sustained commitment to Afghanistan.

More than 15 years since the United States invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Islamist Taliban government for giving al Qaeda a sanctuary where it plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, there is no sign to an end in fighting.

U.S. intelligence agencies assessed in May that the conditions in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through next year, even with a modest increase in military assistance from America and its allies. Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican and advocate of a stronger U.S. role in Afghanistan, urged Trump in a statement to "listen to his generals. At the end of the day, Afghanistan is about American homeland security - not building empires."

PAKISTAN FACTOR

The Camp David discussions have also been complicated by differences over taking a harder line on Pakistan for failing to close Afghan Taliban sanctuaries and arrest Afghan extremist leaders. U.S. officials say the Afghan Taliban are supported by elements of Pakistans military and top intelligence agency, a charge Islamabad denies.

Under one proposal, the United States would begin a review of whether to designate Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism unless it pursues senior leaders of the Afghan Taliban and the allied Haqqani network, considered the most lethal Afghan extremist group, U.S. officials said.

Such a designation would trigger harsh U.S. sanctions, including a ban on arms sales and an end to U.S. economic assistance.

Finalizing a regional security strategy has been held up by Trump's frustration with a lack of options for defeating the Taliban and ending the longest foreign conflict in U.S. history.

At the meeting in mid-July, Trump said Mattis and Marine General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, should consider firing Army General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, for not winning the war.

The delay for a decision left an opening for Erik Prince, the founder of the former Blackwater military contracting firm and the brother of Trumps education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to propose replacing U.S. forces in Afghanistan with mercenaries.

The plan made its way into the White House, according to a senior administration official.

There is no indication, however, that the proposal - promoted by Prince in media interviews - garnered serious attention and it was not among the options prepared for consideration at Camp David, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

McMaster, Mattis, Dunford and retired Marine General John Kelly, the presidents chief of staff, are opposed to this plan, according to U.S. officials.

It was not known whether Prince's proposal was brought up at the meeting.

With Afghan security forces struggling to prevent Taliban advances and the countrys political leadership all but paralyzed by infighting, Nicholson in February requested thousands of additional U.S. troops to bolster U.S. military trainers, advisers and special forces.

U.S. military and intelligence officials are concerned that a Taliban victory would allow al Qaeda and Islamic States regional affiliate to establish bases in Afghanistan from which to plot attacks against the United States and its allies.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jonathan Landay; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali and John Walcott in Washington; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Alistair Bell)
By Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Prak Chan Thul

PHNOM PENH, Aug 19 (Reuters) - No sooner had the 11-storey apartment building in Phnom Penh's affluent Tuol Kouk district been finished than dozens of young Chinese men and women moved in loaded with desks and laptops, said neighbours.

"I thought they were moving an office in," said Eng Somnang, 20, who owns a noodle soup shop directly opposite and watched them arrive early this month.

Police in the Cambodian capital accuse them of doing exactly that: setting up a criminal call centre with more than 200 Chinese nationals to carry out a telephone and internet scam on victims in China.

Police raided the building on Wednesday to stop what they said was the latest operation of a type that has duped people out of billions of dollars - with scammers operating from countries that have good internet access and relaxed visa rules.

From a balcony of the building in Phnom Penh, some of the suspects told Reuters they had not been given food and police were not allowing them to leave.

One of the suspects, Fang, 30, from China, said she came to Cambodia on a tourist visa. She said there were more than 200 people inside the building but declined to answer questions about what they had been doing there.

Police said they had arrested 225 Chinese nationals, 25 of them women, on suspicion of using internet voice calls for an extortion scheme. They will be sent to China to face justice, police investigators said.

Since 2011, Cambodia has deported 800 people from mainland China and Taiwan, arrested on suspicion of telecoms scams.

Neighbours in Tuol Kouk, dotted with large villas, described the occupants of the building as quiet. They said it had been rented out to tenants for $25,000 a month. The owner was not available to comment.

WARY

The occupants kept to themselves, venturing out only at night to get food, neighbours said.

"They were mostly men, some women. Maybe 20, 23 years old. Young," said Eng Somnang. "When people delivered food to them they were not allowed inside."

In the past, Chinese fraud suspects have often entered Cambodia on tourist visas, said Uk Haisela, chief of investigation at Cambodia's immigration department.

The victims of the scammers were often civil servants and retired officials from mainland China, he said.

One of the suspected telephone fraudsters who Uk Haisela interrogated said he made up to $70,000 per week.

Uk Haisela said victims ere sometimes blackmailed and the suspects used Cambodia because it was easy to stay in the country and internet speeds were fast.

Cambodia was able to track the gangs with help from China, he said.

"China sends IP addresses to us ... Once we make arrests, we report to the Chinese embassy," Uk Haisela told Reuters.

China's Foreign Ministry said there had always been close cooperation with Cambodia.

"China appreciates Cambodia's cooperation with China on jointly cracking down on telecoms fraud and other cross-border crime," it said in a statement.

The scams have become a headache for both China and Taiwan, bringing cooperation between them, but also objections from Taiwan because of the deportation of suspects from the self-ruled island to face trial on the mainland.

Suspected scammers have been arrested elsewhere in Asia and Asia.

This month, 77 Chinese fraud suspects were sent to China from Fiji. More than 150 were detained in Indonesia over a scam that police said had netted about $450 million.

Scammers choose countries where they think law enforcement is weak and governments are unlikely to see them as a priority, said Lennon Chang, a criminologist and expert in telecoms fraud at Monash University in Melbourne.

"We might be able to call them criminal nomads," he told Reuters, saying they moved every couple of weeks.

The fraudsters sometimes posed as officials and tricked people into disclosing bank account details, he said.

"The leaders are not easy to discover. All are young kids. Even if the crime syndicates are discovered and dissolved, the leaders will be able to start a new group in a short period of time." (Additional reporting by Yimou Lee in BANGKOK and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Matthew Tostevin and Robert Birsel)
BEIRUT, Aug 19 (Reuters) - The Lebanese army said it was not coordinating with Hezbollah or the Syrian army in an operation it launched on Saturday against Islamic State militants at the northeastern frontier with Syria.

In a televised news conference, an army spokesman said the operation would continue until the army recovered control of Lebanese territory up to the border with Syria.

The Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah declared its own assault against Islamic State militants from the Syrian side of the border on Saturday, in collaboration with the Syrian army. (Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Richard Pullin)
KARACHI, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Pakistani soldiers on Saturday carried the flag-draped coffin of German-born Catholic nun Ruth Pfau to a state funeral where she was honoured after devoting her life to eradicating leprosy in the country.

Widely known as Pakistan's Mother Teresa, Pfau died last week in the southern city of Karachi at age 87. She is to be buried in her adopted homeland.

Mourners paid their last respects as Pfau's coffin was carried to the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre that she founded before being taken on to St. Patrick's Cathedral for the official service.

Pfau had been living in Pakistan since 1960, and her leprosy centre in Karachi was Pakistan's first hospital dedicated to treating the disease. She later opened treatment centres across the country.

"It is a big loss to this hospital and to humanity. It is very hard to find a person like her in today's era," said Yasmeen Morris, a staff member at the centre.

"She led a very simple life and she loved humanity."

In 1996, the World Health Organisation declared that leprosy had been controlled in Pakistan, which led Pfau to the more challenging task of eliminating the disease.

Last year, the number of patients under treatment for leprosy fell to 531 from over 19,000 in the 1980s. (Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Richard Pullin)
Aug 19 (Reuters) - Hundreds of former workers of Freeport Indonesia clashed with security forces near the company's mines in the eastern province of Papua on Saturday and three workers were injured, company and union officials said.

The Indonesian unit of U.S. mining giant Freeport McMoran Inc. has been embroiled in a labour dispute since May, when around 5,000 workers went on strike to protest against mass layoffs.

Following export restrictions related to a permit dispute, Freeport furloughed some 3,000 workers in Indonesia earlier this year, which prompted a strike and high levels of absenteeism.

Freeport later deemed that approximately 3,000 full-time and 1,000 contract employees who were absent had "voluntarily resigned".

Police on Saturday fired warning shots in the air to disperse the crowd of ex-workers who were demanding their jobs back, blocking roads and setting trucks on fire.

Union official Tri Puspital said police then fired into the crowd, injuring three people. Papua's police chief Boy Rafli Amar declined to comment.

A spokesman for the company said the protests have not had an impact on operations, although employee access to worksites was being affected.

"Some of our employee convoys have been cancelled and we will not be scheduling further convoys until the situation is conducive again. We have urged our workers to avoid this area until further notice," said Freeport Indonesia spokesman Riza Pratama.

The company is a major source of employment and livelihoods in the impoverished eastern-most province of Indonesia. (Reporting Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Wilda Asmarini. Additional reporting by Sam Wanda in TIMIKA, Indonesia Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Toby Chopra and Richard Balmforth)
BERLIN, Aug 19 (Reuters) - German-Turkish author Dogan Akhanli was arrested in Spain on Saturday after Turkey issued an Interpol warrant for the writer, a critic of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Der Spiegel magazine reported.

The arrest of the German national was part of a "targeted hunt against critics of the Turkish government living abroad in Europe," Akhanli's lawyer Ilias Uyar told the magazine.

Ties between Ankara and Berlin have been increasingly strained in the aftermath of last year's failed coup in Turkey as Turkish authorities have sacked or suspended 150,000 people and detained more than 50,000, including other German nationals.

Spanish police arrested Akhanli on Saturday in the city of Granada, Der Spiegel reported. Any country can issue an Interpol "red notice", but extradition by Spain would only follow if Ankara could convince Spanish courts it had a real case against him.

Akhanli, detained in the 1980s and 1990s in Turkey for opposition activities, including running a leftist newspaper, fled Turkey in 1991 and has lived and worked in the German city of Cologne since 1995.

On Friday, Erdogan urged the three million or so people of Turkish background living in Germany to "teach a lesson" to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats in September's general election by voting against her. That drew stinging rebukes from across the German political spectrum.

Calls to the German foreign ministry regarding the arrest of Akhanli were not immediately returned. (Reporting By Thomas Escritt; Editing by Andrew Bolton)
SANTIAGO, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Eighteen semi trucks used to transport food were set on fire in a parking lot in the southern Chilean city of Temuco on Saturday, local authorities said.

The incident appeared to be intentional and the governor of the region of Araucania, Nora Barrientos, told local radio that evidence gathered at the scene linked the fires to Weichan Auka Mapu, a resistance group formed by the indigenous Mapuche.

Weichan Auka Mapu has previously claimed responsibility for arson attacks in southern Chile, where it wants to regain land lost during Chile's nineteenth century expansion southward into Mapuche-held territory.

Barrientos said authorities were investigating and evaluating legal actions.

(Reporting By Fabian Andres Cambero; Writing By Mitra Taj; Editing by Mary Milliken)
By David Ljunggren

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) - The three trade officials leading the North American Free Trade Agreement negotiations are veterans in their field who will be able to resist political pressure for major rapid changes as the pace of talks intensifies, trade and legal experts say.

U.S., Canadian and Mexican negotiators opened talks this week on updating NAFTA, which U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to scrap unless it helps to shrink the U.S. trade deficit and bolster American jobs.

Yet it would be hard to find men less likely to make radical changes than John Melle of the United States, Steve Verheul of Canada and Kenneth Smith of Mexico, the three nations' chief negotiators.

Melle, Verheul and Smith, who have decades of experience between them, come from a world where negotiations can take years to conclude, with months of bargaining over single clauses.

"These are orthodox trade law negotiators...none of these guys is going to be freelancing," said Laura Dawson, director of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson's Canada Institute, who has worked closely with Melle and who knows Smith.

Delegates say they expect the talks to intensify when officials reconvene in Mexico in September.

The talks on NAFTA - which came into force at the start of 1994 - are particularly complex. Officials are sitting at 28 different tables and sensitive topics include American demands on procurement, rules of origin and measures designed to cut a big trade deficit with Mexico.

One option for Mexico and Canada would be to reject some U.S. proposals, forcing Melle to tell the White House he had reached an impasse.

"Then they either have to leave the negotiations or dial back their demands," said Dawson.

Verheul, who spent the better part of a decade negotiating a free trade deal between Canada and the European Union, said on Monday that talks had a life of their own.

"I've predicted the end of negotiations many times and I have usually been wrong," he told Canadian legislators.

Melle has in the past publicly expressed his support for the original version of NAFTA, which Smith helped negotiate.

Mexico and the United States want the talks to be wrapped up by the end of the year. But Canadian officials dismiss the idea NAFTA can be revamped quickly and say it would take least two years to push through the changes that Trump wants, even if Canada and Mexico agreed to them.

Trump looks increasingly beleaguered amid a series of controversies and whether he could afford politically to scrap NAFTA is in some doubt, especially since U.S. businesses and industry groups are already becoming more vocal in their defense of the pact.

One of the most vocal NAFTA opponents inside the Trump administration, chief strategist Steve Bannon, lost his job on Friday. Another skeptic, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, is still in place.

As candidate and then president, Trump has repeatedly described NAFTA as "a disaster" that hurt U.S. manufacturing by encouraging firms to relocate plants and hundreds of thousands to jobs to Mexico, where costs are cheaper. Experts, though, blame increasing automation for some of the lost jobs.

Most of the officials negotiating know each other and work according to a set of longstanding rules on how trade talks should be run, said a source close to the talks.

"The trade world is small, it has been beneficial to career officials from the three countries that have an acquired knowledge," said the source.

Melle joined USTR in 1988 at a time when the agency was completing bilateral trade negotiations with Canada.

Robert Holleyman, who worked with Melle as a former deputy U.S. Trade Representative during the Obama administration, called him a top-notch negotiator who has seen every type of tactic over a nearly 30-year career at the agency.

Verheul bonded with Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland over the EU free trade deal and she regularly praises him in public.

People who have worked with Verheul stress his ability to remain calm under pressure.

"Steve is world class ... I never once saw him lose his composure or lose that poker face he's so famous for," said former Canadian cabinet minister Gerry Ritz. (Additional reporting by Anthony Esposito, Lesley Wroughton and David Lawder in Washington; editing by Diane Craft)
The South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) yesterday admitted it had only signed a Letter of Intent with the government as part of the process of handing over the Neville Fernando Teaching Hospital (NFTH) .

SAITM Registrar Husni Hussain told Daily Mirror that the Health Ministry was now operating the NFTH. The SAITM, the Ministry of Health and the Bank of Ceylon (BoC) have signed a Letter of Intent in this respect. Legal proceedings are still underway with regard to the final agreement which is due to be signed soon, she said.

She said the process was being conducted based on the instructions of the government and added that the approval of the Attorney General was mandatory for the agreement to be signed.

Asked whether the Letter of Intent could be revoked by any party, she said that it could not be done as it was in compliance with the law.

She said that the SAITM had undertaken to settle the loan taken by the NFTH from the BoC. (Kalathma Jayawardhane)
The Department of Adult and Higher Education (DAHE) in Bhutan has issued a circular asking Bhutanese medical students in Sri Lanka to return home should the on-going strike continue beyond October this year.

Sri Lankan media reports state that the Government Medical Officers Association and other groups including the Inter University Students Federation have been protesting, questioning the educational and medical standards of the only private medical university in Sri Lanka, South Asian Institute of Technology and Management (SAITM).

The strike, which is also against the privatisation of education, has been on for about six months. The strike has disrupted classes for 120 Bhutanese medical students studying in Universities of Colombo, Kelaniya and Peradeniya in Sri Lanka

More than 70 students have returned to Bhutan while others are still in Sri Lanka waiting for the strike to end.

DAHEs circular of August 16 states that all medical students of the three universities should prepare for departure by early November if the strike does not end by October this year. The students will then have to wait in Bhutan until the situation in Sri Lanka improves or some alternative arrangement is made, the circular stated.

Senior Program Officer with the Scholarship and Student Support Division, Dolay Tshering, said, there is no point staying idle in Sri Lanka if the strike continues. In coordination with the national referral hospital and Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Sciences of Bhutan, DAHE is working on a proposal to have the senior students attached to hospitals so that they continue to learn.

The circular also advises students whose visas are due for renewal in October and November to renew their residence visa. Arrangements will be made for the renewal of visa for other students if the classes resume in respective universities.

The circular also states that all payments for the medical students would be suspended while the students wait in Bhutan and would resume when the classes resume.

A final year medical student in Sri Lanka said that most of the students are returning to Bhutan after receiving the official letter stating that their stipend would be cut off. We are disappointed by the fact that the students who were supposed to be cream of the country are now a bunch of unemployed youth.

A third year student from the University of Kelaniya said that without the stipend, there is no way to pay for their rented accommodations. If we come in November and if the strike ends in December then, we have to come back again which would be a waste of money on air tickets. Its hard especially for the private students. The student said that the circular does not state any solutions to address the students dilemma.

She said the third and fourth year students of Kelaniya have not taken their examinations, for which the students are doing researches and preparing for the examination. Most of them have to sit for the examination as soon as the strike ends.(kuenselonline)
SPRING CREEK  Spring Creek homeowners might get more letters about compliance from the Spring Creek Association Committee of Architecture after its September review of properties.

The COA recently amended its rules and regulations and upgraded its computer system to quickly process property reviews.

The property reviews allow the COA to contact residents who need to work on fixing violations such as mowing weeds, removing inoperative or unlicensed vehicles, removing trash, storing tool, repairing exteriors and fencing and completing other maintenance work.

Maintenance and property uses are defined in the COAs rules and regulations packet, which describes property owners guidelines, ranging from garages and outdoor lighting to domestic animals and livestock.

The master Declaration of Reservations, written in 1971, was meant to govern the association, said Diane Parker, COA chairwoman. The Rules and Regulations break down points individually.

This year, additions, changes and amendments were approved in April  the first revision in four years.

The new rules and regulations are being used for property reviews, along with a three-letter notification process that was approved in 2014.

Residents are given 15 days after the first notice, 10 days after the second, and five days after the third notice, to contact the COA secretary or bring the violation into compliance.

If there is no response after the third letter, a property owner is requested to attend a COA regular meeting. At that point, the property owner will have a $200 fine imposed and a $25 fee for each month the property remains in violation. Further, the matter could be approved for legal action by the SCA Board of Directors.

The reason for the enforcement comes down to appearance, keeping the property cleaned up and tidy, said DAnn Dunlap, COA secretary, which means more than 5,000 properties must be evaluated annually by a committee of volunteers that includes four members of the COA and the secretary.

Were very unique in the fact we are a rural homeowners association, the second largest in the United States, Dunlap said.

One challenge for the COA is contacting property owners about their violation, which can only be done by a letter, email or phone call  but not in person.

The only time we go on someones property is if we are invited, Parker said.

Contacting the office after the first notice is preferred, added Parker, who wants residents to call and set up a timeframe or plan for correcting the issue instead of ignoring the letter.

We work with people as long as we keep seeing progress. It would not come before the committee, Parker said, it would stay in the secretarys hands as long as they make contact.

Recently, the association and COA implemented Neighbor to Neighbor, a program of volunteers who assist low-income, disabled, veterans, or elderly residents with correcting violations.

Amie Shields, incoming COA secretary, said applications are at the SCA office, and the program is looking for volunteers and donations of materials.

Terry Lister, former SCA director for Tract 200, Vista Grande, said he believed property owners must have their lots cleaned up for the benefit of neighbors and to maintain property values.

It affects the value of your lot, Lister said. Were there to be neighbors and not be a nuisance.

At its monthly meeting in July, the COA had 38 property or nuisance violations on the agenda for possible action. Out of those actions, 32 of them were for inoperative vehicles. The August agenda had 54 items with 34 violations for vehicles  the violation the COA sees most.

Everybody has one, or they have 10 or 20, Dunlap said. They may have projects or hobbies, which is fine, [but] it has to be contained.

Parker said there are still some residents who are unaware of the rules and regulations, copies of which can be picked up at the SCA office or downloaded from the website. Some do not realize that although they are moving into the county, property owners are subjected to the rules of the HOA.

If you have questions, if you feel your notice is in error, call the office, Dunlap said.
President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremeisnghe should work towards cancelling civic rights of all the corrupt persons including the ministers in the present government, Deputy Minister Ranjan Ramanayake said yesterday.

Deputy Minister Ramanayake said both president and Prime Minister should follow the example of their predecessor late Prime Minister S W R D Bandaranaike who tool a way the civic rights of some of his own ministers. Late Prime Minister Bandaranaike took away the civic rights of several Ministers thorough Walter Talagodapitiya Commission and this government should also do the same, he said.

 It was only the government of Late Mr Bandaranaike which took proper action against the corrupt as none of the preceding governments including the government of Late J R Jayewardene, Premadasa, Chandrika Kumaratunga or former President Mahinda Rajapaksa take effective action on corruption, he added. (Yohan Perera)
Norwegian Research Vessel Dr Fridtjof Nansen' will assist Sri Lanka to conduct a stock assessment of marine resources next year, a statement said yesterday.

In a statement, the Norwegian embassy said the planning seminar is taking place in Colombo for the New Norwegian Research vessel to come to Sri Lankan waters in 2018 to carry out a survey on the marine resources. This is part of the technical and institutional cooperation on Fisheries between Norway and Sri Lanka, which was endorsed by the top level political authorities of the two countries.

The aim of the planned survey is to know the current status of marine resources including fish stocks and to investigate stocks of unexploited/ underutilized fishery resources on the continental shelf and slope. The last stock assessment for Sri Lanka has been carried out by the previous Dr. Fridtjof Nansen in 1978 to 1980.

"The new marine research vessel RV Dr Fridtjof Nansen is owned by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and is jointly operated by the Institute of Marine Research of Norway, and Food and Agriculture organization to help developing countries improve their fisheries management," the statement said.

The Norwegian Ambassador Thorbjrn Gaustadsther addressing a distinguished gathering at an event to recognize the finalization of the planing schedules for the Vessels arrival to the Bay of Bengal said the new research vessel would make it possible to significantly step up Norway's assistance for ecosystem-based marine management in developing countries. He said this was part of the new Ocean strategy of Norway and Norway considers this as creating partnerships for the oceans as it enhances sharing knowledge both across industries and across international borders.
Does President Donald Trump (aka Fire and Fury) know what a nuclear war would be like? I ask the question because President Roland Reagan confessed he did not until he decided to look at some movies (once an actor, he was a cinema man), like On the Beach that depicted a nuclear war. The exercise changed his thinking and he became an anti-nuclear weapons militant. Together with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev they cut their nuclear stockpiles sharply. They also came near an agreement to destroy all their nuclear weapons.



The blasts at the end of the Second World War in Hiroshima and Nagasaki can now be repeated hundreds of thousand times. The remains would not just be the broken arches of the Caesars, the abandoned viaducts and moss-covered temples of the Incas, the desolation of one of the pulsating hearts of Europe, Dresden, but millions of square miles of uninhabitable desolation and a suffering which would incorporate more agony than the sum of past history. It would be a time when the living would envy the dead and it would be a world which might well have destroyed the legacy of law, order and love that successive generations have handed over the centuries to one another.

The mayor of Nagasaki recalled his memory of the American nuclear attack: Nagasaki became a city of death where not even the insects could be heard. After a while, countless men, women and children began to gather for a drink of water at the river. Their hair and clothing scorched and their burnt skin hanging in sheets like rags. Begging for help they died one after the other in the water or in heaps on the banks.



The chief of the Manhattan project that developed the first American nuclear test, Robert Oppenheimer, wrote, At that moment there flashed through my mind a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita, the holy book of Hindus, I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds. Arundhati Roy, the Booker prize-winning Indian novelist, wrote after the first Indian nuclear test in 1968, If there is a nuclear war our foes will not be Pakistan, China nor America nor even each other. Our foes will be the earth itself. Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become fire. The wind will spread the flames. When everything there is to burn has burnt and the fires die, smoke will rise and shut out the sun. The earth will be enveloped in darkness, there will be no day- only interminable night.



General George Lee Butler summed up his view of deterrence as head of the US Strategic Command (the man who is responsible for putting into effect a presidents order to begin a nuclear attack): Here was an intellectual riddle of the most intricate kind- a puzzle to which there seemed to be no solutions. The wonderful title of Herman Khans book, Thinking the Unthinkable, captured the dilemma perfectly: that it is unthinkable to imagine the wholesale slaughter of societies, yet at the same time it appears necessary to do so, in the hope that you hit upon some formulation that will preclude the act; but in the process you may wind up amassing forces that engender the very outcome you hope to avoid. Perfect invulnerability would spell perfect vulnerability for your opponent, which of course he cannot accept. Consequently any balance struck is extremely unstable.



What Butler has demonstrated is that although deterrence in the Cold War days was the aim, the competitive nuclear arms race effectively turned the doctrine of deterrence on its head. It became a circle that could never be squared. By conveying to the enemy the ability to retaliate massively when attacked your forces are in a state of alert that from the enemys point of view looks like you are preparing for a pre-emptive first strike. So he had better get his strike in first.



North Korea at the moment does not have enough nuclear warheads- around 60 at present- to make a first strike successful. But over the years it can build enough to make one and to obliterate a good part of the US. The Chinese have a nuclear deterrent but with only around 260 missiles. That, China feels, is enough to do the job.

Threatening North Korea is counterproductive. It will just drive it to step on the gas.



Negotiating a freeze is the only way out. North Korea must freeze its nuclear program. But that means the US has to do its part: no more military exercises, no more overflights and a withdrawal of its anti-missile batteries. In fact they dont work very well and are just a provocation both to North Korea and China. Without Chinas help there will be no settlement.



The writer has worked as a foreign affairs columnist and commentator for the International Herald Tribune/New York Times for 17 years.
Sri Lanka has convinced the global community that it was not necessary to hold an international probe on war crimes alleged to have been committed by the armed forces personnel during the final phase of the humanitarian operation, Foreign Affairs Minister Tilak Marapana said yesterday.

He said the government however, would consider the participation of foreign judges or lawyers as observers in a domestic inquiry,

Foreign Affairs Minister Marapana PC, assumed duties at his office at the old Senate Building last morning amid religious observances by four main religions.

The minister who is also a former Attorney General and a Defence Minister said Sri Lanka's Constitution and its judicial system did not permit foreign judges for prosecution or inquiry and this has been accepted by the global community.

"There is no threat of an international inquiry on Sri Lanka anymore," he said. We have told them that foreign judges or lawyers may attend any domestic probe as observers and this has happened in the past as well."

The minister said in a case was filed in the 1990s against former UNP MP Jayalath Jayawardana on a salary matter, he complained to the International Parliamentary Union (IPU) in Geneva saying his parliamentary privileges had been violated. He said the IPU sent an Indian judge as an observer to the judicial inquiry held here and added that he had studied the Geneva Resolution on Sri Lanka, co-sponsored by Sri Lanka and the US and said he had found no serious effect on the country.

"The UN has given Sri Lanka ample time to set up a domestic mechanism to address the issues that had been raised in the resolution and they are satisfied that we are dedicated and capable of meeting those objectives. They are watching us to ensure that we are moving in the right direction," he said

Responding to a question asked by Daily Mirror, the minister said ample time was necessary to set up a judicial mechanism for a domestic inquiry and in some countries it had taken 20 to 30 years to finalize a domestic inquiry on charges of violating the International Humanitarian Law, (IHL).

"What is more important is that the International Community and agencies are of the view that Sri Lankan government is safeguarding human rights and there is judicial freedom, media freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Cabinet ministers are questioned by presidential commissions and therefore they are aware that Sri Lanka is on the right path, the minister said.

When asked by a journalist about the alleged manhandling of a minor employee by Police Chief Pujitha Jayasundara, the minister said it was an unfortunate incident that should not have happened.

However, a departmental head has the right to question an employee but it was the manner of questioning that raised concerns. However, it is up to the relevant authorities like the Police Commission to conduct an inquiry on the issue and act appropriately, the minister said. (Sandun A Jayasekera)
Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has slammed President Donald Trump for hesitating to speak up against racism following the violence at white nationalists rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trump, who reached the White House with the backing of white nationalists blamed both sides for the violence in Charlottesville.

Romney took to Facebook late on Friday and asked Trump to "apologise" for defending the people involved in the Neo-Nazi rally from earlier in the week.

Here's the full text of the Facebook post:

I will dispense for now from the discussion of the moral character of the president's Charlottesville statements. Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn.

His apologists strain to explain that he didn't mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.

The leaders of our branches of military service have spoken immediately and forcefully, repudiating the implications of the president's words. Why? In part because the morale and commitment of our forces--made up and sustained by men and women of all races could be in the balance. Our allies around the world are stunned and our enemies celebrate; America's ability to help secure a peaceful and prosperous world is diminished. And who would want to come to the aid of a country they perceive as racist if ever the need were to arise, as it did after 9/11?

In homes across the nation, children are asking their parents what this means. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims are as much a part of America as whites and Protestants. But today they wonder. Where might this lead? To bitterness and tears, or perhaps to anger and violence?

The potential consequences are severe in the extreme. Accordingly, the president must take remedial action in the extreme. He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize.

State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville. Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat  and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute.

And once and for all, he must definitively repudiate the support of David Duke and his ilk and call for every American to banish racists and haters from any and every association.
Power transition puts geopolitical equations in a flux and needs delicate handling to avoid war. As China challenges US supremacy, its recent actions speak of it brooking no peer as it attempts parity. But this goes against the grain of history where unchallenged unipolarity has not been the norm for long.

Smaller nations acquiesce to the strong or form alliances but there comes an inevitable cyclic downturn, new power centres appear and history continues. The ongoing two-month-old standoff at Doklam, where Indian and Chinese soldiers are eyeball to eyeball, and the recent "stone throwing" at Pangong Tso in Eastern Ladakh need to be viewed through this power prism.

Aggression

Thucydides, the Athenian General who took part-in and wrote the famous tome on the 5BC Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, has spawned many recent analyses on what American historian Graham Allison calls the "Thucydides Trap." These talk of a rising China challenging an existing power America that may cause either to fall into the T-trap.

A similar situation prevails between India and China  only that China thinks it is already a power, like the Spartans, and India is the rising one a la the Athenians. The actions, however, are reversed at Doklam  a rising India wants status quo at the border but the one that has risen higher (China) has adopted a threatening stance.

Calm and composed public statements, but resolute holding action on the ground, have marked Indias posture while Chinas belligerence and provocative and undiplomatic utterances (calling Indias foreign minister a liar) require deeper analysis.

Have the Chinese reacted uncharacteristically or is this their "new normal?" Japan arrested a Chinese trawler captain for illegal fishing and collision with a Japanese ship in 2010 resulting in stoppage of export of rare minerals for Japanese software industry; the Captain was released.

Remember their aggressive media blitzkrieg in 2016 before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ruled in favour of the Philippines in the South China Sea dispute and thereafter their outright rejection of the award?

And the visit of the Dalai Lama to Mongolia in November 2016 so incensed the Chinese that they imposed crippling trade taxes on that land locked nation; the Mongolians assured them that this would not happen again.

Dominance

And now Vietnam has capitulated to Chinese threats, by stopping oil exploration in the South China Sea.

To understand Chinese belligerence vis-a-vis India at Doklam, arguments have been advanced citing the approaching Communist Party Congress in November and the necessity of President Xi Jinping to appear "tough" and resolute; analysts, however, have missed the greater game of escalation dominance being played as part of a continuum of Chinese efforts to enhance deterrence through disproportionate actions against opposing nations.

Ballistic

Only, this time it has come across a "delinquent" India that has opposed its signature Belt and Road Initiative and not budged from Doklam, hurting this attempted coercive makeover. Thats where the T-trap comes in.

Back in 5BC, the rise of Athens caused an outpouring of nationalistic fervour, where to advise prudence and caution was to cast oneself as anti-national and a coward; it pushed its leadership to a disastrous 27-year war against the established power Sparta that brought misery to both the nations.

Is the situation replaying, this time in China, where the press has gone ballistic with officials issuing threats and the Global Times accusing the Indian government of "being reckless" and warning Indian soldiers with "expulsion in two weeks?

India, like any sovereign nation, has non-negotiable national interests. It, like any rising nation, considers having a zone of influence; it is not Chinas universe alone and its leadership must realise that falling into the T-trap would be disastrous for both. Actually, the reputational loss for China would be much greater since it is attempting to become a world statesman.

Would "Doklam" spiral out and not stay localised, is impossible to forecast  but for sure, the famous Thucydides dialogue, In the real world, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must, does not apply to India. India has its options and Chinese leadership must ensure that honour and interests do not become deviant intoxicants in its decision making.
$200M research facility completed in Idaho

BOISE, Idaho (AP)  An Idaho tech companys chief executive officer says the companys new facility in Boise will allow it to expand its research and development.

The Idaho Statesman reported Wednesday that Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra called the facility the largest semiconductor research center for memory technology in the Western Hemisphere.

The facility will design memory products to help drive cars, improve cloud data-processing and possibly even cure cancer.

It is 100,000 square feet and connects with existing research and development buildings.

Construction of the four-story, $200 million plant began in October 2015 and ended in July.

Micro plans to bring the products designed at the new facility into the market within the next five to 10 years.

Anglers record-setting trout deemed invalid

SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  An Idaho man who caught a record-setting trout in Utah has been told his fish does not qualify for the record anymore because he caught it without a valid fishing license.

Sidney Cellan caught the 57-pound, 48-inch lake trout in June at the Flaming Gorge Reservoir.

The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources told Cellan the fish was the states largest catch-and-release trout in history. Wildlife officials, however, now say they made an honest mistake in crowning Cellans trout since his fishing license expired a few days before the catch.

Cellan released the fish, so it is still in the reservoir for another angler to catch.

The record trout of 46.5 inches by Ray Johnson in 1998 stands, again.

Man mauled by police dog gets $17,500

RENO (AP)  A Nevada man who says two deputies used excessive force and violated his civil rights by siccing a police dog on him has been awarded $17,500 in an excessive force lawsuit.

The Reno Gazette-Journal reported earlier this week that Eugenio Corona sued the Washoe County deputies in July, claiming they sicced the dog on him after he had already surrendered.

Deputy District Attorney Keith Munro says Washoe County offered to settle the case rather than go to trial in an effort to save taxpayer dollars.

The lawsuit stemmed from a police chase in January when the deputies attempted to arrest Corona on a federal warrant.

Corona led the deputies on a high-speed chase before he crashed, got out of the vehicle and kneeled with his hands on his head.
Mental health services offered

Several local organizations are providing mental health services to community members in the wake of last weekends events.

If you are in mental health crisis:

 Call Region Ten at (434) 972-1800, or dial 911.

Otherwise, for access to individual and group counseling:

 A comprehensive referral source for affordable mental health services is available through the Community Mental Health and Wellness Coalition. (434) 227-0641; HelpHappensHere.org.

 Resilient Charlottesville, a group of local mental health agencies and therapists, is offering free drop-in counseling at Jefferson-Madison Library Central Branch, starting Saturday and continuing through next week. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; child care is available. jmrlblog.com.

 The Womens Initiative has free walk-in clinics for women three days a week and support groups throughout the week. 1101 E. High St. and 233 Fourth St. NW. (434) 872-0047; thewomensinitiative.org.

 On Our Own, a peer support recovery center for people dealing with mental health challenges, offers support groups throughout the week at 123 Fourth St. NW. (434) 979-2440; onourowncville.org.

 Additional community counseling resources are available via Teresa Pasquale-Mateus, LCSW, at (908) 797-5996.

CFD donation warning issued

The Charlottesville Fire Department said Friday that it is not collecting donations for the department over the phone.

The announcement came in response to multiple reports from residents who said they have received calls seeking donations to the department in the wake of Aug. 12.

No city department will ever seek such donations, city spokeswoman Miriam Dickler said in a news release.

Should people wish to contribute to a fund in response to Aug. 12, the city is encouraging them to contact the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation at cacfonline.org.

UVa alum Fey talks about events on SNL

Tiny Fey returned to Saturday Night Live to discuss the violence surrounding the white nationalist rally at and near the University of Virginia, her alma mater, The Associated Press reported.

Fey sported a UVa sweatshirt Thursday on Weekend Update: Summer Edition.

She said it broke her heart to see these evil forces descend on Charlottesville.

Fey also criticized President Donald Trump for blaming both sides for the violence. Nazis are always bad. I dont care what you say, she said.

She noted that another white nationalist rally is planned for Saturday in New York and joked that she hopes neo-Nazis in the city get the ham salad kicked out of them by a bunch of drag queens.

Dred Scott ruling authors statue removed

A statue of the U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African-Americans was removed from the grounds of the Maryland State House early Friday, according to The Associated Press.

The statue of Roger B. Taney was lifted away by a crane at about 2 a.m. It was lowered into a truck and driven away to storage.

Three of the four voting members of the State House Trust voted by email Wednesday to move the statue, erected in 1872.

Foxs James Murdoch slams Trumps response

The CEO of 21st Century Fox denounced racism and terrorists while expressing concern over President Donald Trumps reaction to the deadly violence surrounding a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

James Murdoch also told friends in a personal email that he and his wife, Kathryn, will donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, The Associated Press reported.

Murdoch writes that the events in Charlottesville last weekend and Trumps response concern all of us as Americans and free people.

I cant even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis. Or Klansmen, or terrorists, Murdoch added. Democrats, Republicans, and others must all agree on this, and it compromises nothing for them to do so.

Murdoch is the son of 21st Century Foxs co-executive chairman, Rupert Murdoch, a Trump ally who The New York Times reported recently dined with the president at the White House. The email was first reported by the Times.

In Germany, neo-Nazis allowed to march

Police in Berlin have given far-right extremists permission to hold a 500-person-strong rally commemorating the death of Adolf Hitlers deputy Rudolf Hess in the citys western district of Spandau.

But theres a catch. According to The Associated Press, police have told organizers they can march, but theyre not allowed to glorify Hess, who died at Spandau prison 30 years ago. The neo-Nazis are allowed to bring banners: but only one for every 50 participants. And military music is strictly forbidden, unless a court overturns that rule before Saturdays march.
Families waited in traffic on Alderman Road and carried luggage and containers into University of Virginia residence halls Friday morning, the first day of move-in weekend. On the surface of the baking pavement, chalked messages directed families to student-living spaces and offered encouragement.

Some of the messages contrasted what neo-Nazis and white nationalists expressed during a torchlight march on the university Grounds the night before Aug. 12s deadly political rally in downtown Charlottesville.

The chalk messages reflected the spirit of a candlelight march that community members held Wednesday evening to unite the city and take back the university.

When they go low, we go high, said a chalk message quoting former first lady Michelle Obama. A quote from the Dalai Lama said, Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.

Another message, the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., written in blue, yellow, purple and white: Our lives begin to end when we become silent on the things that matter.

Although many of the families were focused on the experience of settling their offspring into the college community, the messages were reminders of what took place last weekend, when a young woman and two police officers died in incidents that followed the Unite the Right rally.

It created an extra layer of anxiety for me as a parent knowing I was going to drop my kid off a week later, but it feels like the community has pulled together and sort of has everything together, said Suzanne Abbot, mother of first-year student Gunther Abbot.

Im not feeling weird about it or scared, she said.

I was proud of the counter-protesters, to be honest with you  not the violence, though, or the guys in the conflict. But there were thousands of people here to say we dont like this in our town, including an awful lot of UVa students, said Larry Angel, who, with other family members, was dropping off his daughter Savannah.

Ive never been concerned about Charlottesville or UVa, he said. This is a great town.

Wearing a T-shirt that read Hoos Against Hate, while helping families move their children into the dorms, UVa Class of 2003 graduate Meghan Waters said last weekend was devastating for the community.

It came as a huge shock because our community has always been welcoming of different cultures and religions, said Waters, who majored in African and African-American studies. Its always been a melting pot here.

She added: I believe in our university and its progress. Were standing strong.

Several new students showed little sign of distress about the recent events.

Asked why he chose to enroll at UVa, Gunther Abbot proudly said that its the best school in the state, hands down.

I knew this was something that didnt represent the school or Charlottesville, said Sarah Kiscaden, of Richmond. It could have happened anywhere.

Originally from Chicago, Kiscadens mother said political rallies, even ones involving neo-Nazis, have happened in her hometown before.

I think the school did a great job of communicating with incoming students and parents to allay any kind of anxieties, Mary Kiscaden said.

Even though the university has suffered from waves of bad press from numerous incidents in recent years  including the killings of Yeardley Love, Morgan Harrington and Hannah Graham and scandals such as the UVa boards attempt to remove President Teresa A. Sullivan, an explosive and later debunked Rolling Stone article and controversial Alcoholic Beverage Control arrests  Sarah Kiscaden said it never deterred her from applying to UVa.

It wasnt a factor that I considered when I was applying, she said.

Sabrina Hortons daughter (who didnt give her name), who is planning to study nursing, said she considered some of the controversies before deciding to enroll at the university.

My parents have been very sure to educate me on how to be safe and be as careful as I possibly can, Hortons daughter said. Life can be dangerous.

According to a university spokesperson, the school is unaware of any first-year or new transfer students who have canceled their enrollment because of recent events. The university has reported it had a record high of 36,781 applications for 3,725 spots in this years first-year class.

After leaving the admissions office with her 15-year-old daughter Friday afternoon, Robyn Sanborn, of New Hampshire, said she hopes her daughter will enroll at UVa two years from now.

Although she also was saddened by last weekends events, Sanborne, a 1991 graduate of UVas McIntire School of Commerce, said she still believes the universitys reputation is unparalleled.

Payton, her daughter, said UVa wasnt her first choice, but it was in her top three. She also said the recent events and past scandals and tragedies that have affected the university havent changed her view of UVa.

Specifically regarding the violent white supremacist rally Aug. 12, she said, I just think it can happen anywhere. And it doesnt have to do specifically with the school. It came from out of town, and its going to affect you no matter where you are in the country.

I think UVa is really well-rounded, Robyn Sanborn said. I think it offers a lot for anyone who has academic or social goals.

Its just got so much to offer across the board. They have some of the top schools in the country. For a public school to offer that, I think thats pretty amazing.
Ferguson, Orlando, Charlottesville  when a community is splashed across the national news with images of violence, its up to the community itself to work to repair its new violent reputation, say business leaders who have been there.

Its not the kind of list you want to make. What matters is how the community decides to react to it, said Joe Reagan, president of the St. Louis Regional Chamber of Commerce, whose service area includes Ferguson, Missouri, the site of rioting and race-related violence in August 2014.

Like Ferguson in 2014 and Orlando in 2016, following the massacre of 49 people at a gay nightclub, Charlottesville has been for more than a week the centerpiece of cable and broadcast news networks and other media outlets across the country and the world.

Videos of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Antifa and other counter-protesters attacking each other with clubs, fists, riot shields and pepper spray were replayed for days, but the most horrific visual was that of a car careening into a group of counter-protesters in downtown Charlottesville.

Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in the attack and 19 others were injured.

Five weeks prior to the violence, members of a North Carolina chapter of the Ku Klux Klan demonstrated in Charlottesville, a protest that ended with police using tear gas to disperse the large crowd of counter-protesters who remained after the Klan left.

Timothy Hulbert, president of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the areas newfound association with violence and racism already has affected its reputation.

There was a group in Richmond that canceled its event regarding Confederate statues, saying, look what happened in Charlottesville. They were afraid it would happen there, he said. Our community was hijacked. Our reputation was hijacked, and not hijacked by actions of our community, but hijacked by outsiders. This is unchartered waters for us in terms of taking back our community identity.

Those waters are currently being navigated by other locations.

In Ferguson and St. Louis, there are long-standing issues of racial and economic disparity that needed to be addressed, Reagan said. The events here showed the deep chasms and gaps that have existed for a very long time.

Reagan said the greater St. Louis community had a choice: It could ignore Ferguson, a predominately minority suburb, or it could address the issues of racial and economic disparity that led to the violence.

The eyes of the world were on us and they are still on us as we try to move forward, Reagan said. This is a chance to say, What do we do next? We had to sit down and decide, as a community, how we were going to address it.

***

Reagan said there were two events in Ferguson that blended into one in the national medias representation of the unrest.

There were demonstrators seeking positive change in the community and saw civil disobedience as a means for demonstrating for a positive change, he said. There were those who chose to use the unrest to do criminal activity and those who wanted to create difficulties. The challenge is to see the whole community and try to make positive changes.

For Ferguson, it meant convening a 16-member commission to study the causes of the unrest and to recommend ways to create social change through wide-ranging and unflinching study of the social and economic conditions that impede progress, equality and safety in the St. Louis region.

We believe that if we attempt to skirt the difficult truths, if we try to avoid talking about race, if we stop talking about Ferguson, as many in the region would like us to, then we cannot move forward, the commission stated in a preamble to its report. Progress is rarely simple, and it rarely goes in a straight line. But we are convinced that progress in the St. Louis region runs through Ferguson and every issue that the phrase Ferguson now conjures.

Reagan said the commission and the chamber needed to decide how to adapt to their regions new status as a buzzword for violence.

There was a need to choose how to embrace the new reality and what to do about it, Reagan said. It was about understanding that Ferguson is St. Louis and St. Louis is Ferguson.

The commission, the area governments and the chamber initiated a series of efforts to clean up the court systems, address racial economic disparity and promote local businesses.

Things are happening now that wouldnt have happened before, Reagan said, noting that the region has seen its highest job creation numbers in a decade and has become an entrepreneurial hotspot. The reality is we needed to change together.

***

Hulbert said Charlottesvilles first step should be unifying the community against the Nazi and supremacist ideology with which the community is now associated.

We want to bring the community together and we dont want the Nazis to come back. We want them to go away and never come back. Were going to work this out. A film on the chamber website is not going to do it, he said.

An interviewer asked me how this will affect businesses here and I said, Who cares? Thats all down the road, he said The most important thing is our community. Our primary concern is taking back our town from the outlanders that were here. There is a big difference between a guy yelling and wearing a swastika and a guy yelling at the guy yelling and wearing a swastika.

Hulbert said hes received many emails, some from potential tourists, worried about future outbreaks of violence, and others berating the city for voting to remove statues, rename parks and creating the problem.

One of the first steps is for everyone in the community to tell friends and family about the Charlottesville they know, he said. It starts there.

***

The new reputation isnt scaring every tourist away, however.

I was planning on coming into Charlottesville in October on my way to Florida for the winter and I plan on coming, anyway, said Chris F., a 69-year-old New England woman. She asked that her full name not be used because of internet trolls and her traveling alone.

I was in the car listening to [National Public Radio] and they were talking about the impact on the town and how it might affect tourism, she said. Ive never been to Charlottesville, but I dont believe [the rally violence] represents the whole town.

Chris said she plans to pay her respects to Heyer and two Virginia State Police troopers who died when their helicopter crashed in Albemarle County after the rallys end.

I live in a place where I never lock the doors. In fact, I lost my keys a couple of years ago so I cant lock my door, but Im not afraid to go to Charlottesville, she said. I think a lot of this will blow over. I dont think people will stay away for long, if at all.
Updated at 7:39 p.m.

In lieu of a previously planned news conference, Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer instead issued a statement Friday afternoon, calling on Gov. Terry McAuliffe to convene an emergency meeting of the General Assembly to allow the city to remove its polarizing statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee. In response, McAuliffe called the request redundant.

In the statement, Signer asked McAuliffe to convene the emergency session in the wake of Aug. 12s deadly car crash, which occurred in the aftermath of a failed white nationalist rally that day. The crash killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer, injured 19 others and sent shockwaves throughout the nation.

With the terrorist attack, these monuments were transformed from equestrian statues into lightning rods, Signer wrote. We can, and we must, respond by denying the Nazis and the KKK and the so-called alt-right the twisted totem they seek. And so for the sake of public safety, public reassurance, to magnify Heathers voice, and to repudiate the pure evil that visited us here, I am calling today for the removal of these Confederate statues from downtown Charlottesville, referring also to the citys statue of Gen. Thomas Stonewall Jackson.

Hours after the mayors statement was released, a spokesman for McAuliffe said in an email that the governor believes Signers request for a special session is redundant, because the matter is currently the subject of a lawsuit from local residents, the Virginia chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a group called The Monument Fund. The City Council voted to remove the statue earlier this year, but a city judge issued an injunction in early May that blocks the removal for six months while the litigation remains active.

As of this time, Mayor Signer and the city of Charlottesville have yet to make any formal request of the governor regarding a special session, said Brian Coy, a spokesman for McAuliffe. The governor hopes the court will rule in the citys favor soon and encourages Mayor Signer to focus on that important litigation rather than a redundant emergency session.

When asked if Signer already had spoken with McAuliffe about his call for a special session, a city official said the mayor had a productive conversation with McAuliffe on Friday morning in which the governor was apprised of Signers forthcoming remarks.

As we wait for that legal process to conclude, the governor will continue to focus on learning from these events in Charlottesville and addressing the systemic racism and inequality that led to the extremism we all witnessed on Saturday, Coy said Friday afternoon.

The response from the Governors office came just ahead of an announcement that McAuliffe had signed an executive order temporarily halting demonstrations at the Lee Monument in Richmond. McAuliffe said that in light of the events of Aug. 12, the suspension was necessary to give state and local officials breathing room to make thoughtful and informed decisions on managing the new reality of the potential for civil unrest.

Signer voted in favor of keeping the statue in place when the City Council made its controversial February decision to have it removed, but his newfound drive to have it removed was joined by Genevieve Keller, a member of Charlottesville Historic Resources Committee and the citys Planning Commission.

Keller previously had supported the contextualization of the statue, but said in an email to other members of the Historic Resources Committee that it would be difficult to maintain that stance given the current political situation created by the Aug. 12 rally.

This is a difficult decision for me to make professionally, but I do not see another way forward for Charlottesville at this time, Keller wrote.

In his written statement, Signer also called on the General Assembly to enact legislation that would allow localities to ban the open or concealed carry of weapons in public events that are reasonably deemed to pose a potential security threat.

In a new age of domestic terrorism, we need to re-examine the balance that we strike between public safety and violent protests, Signer said. While I am friends with many gun-owners and am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, that right, like all constitutional rights, comes with limits.

In conjunction with that request, Signer said he would work with city staff to launch a comprehensive review of our permitting process to give the city the maximum ability to prioritize public safety in such situations. He specifically noted that the City Council attempted to relocate the Aug. 12 rally to McIntire Park, which he said could have better accommodate[d] crowds of protesters and counter-protesters. That move was blocked by a lawsuit filed by rally organizer Jason Kessler and backed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the Albemarle County-based Rutherford Institute. A federal judge ruled in Kesslers favor the night before the rally, forcing the city to allow the rally to occur in Emancipation Park downtown, Signer said.

Signer said the city would take a look at limiting the size of future events and explore updating the current legal standard for credible threats of violence with a new approach that can address the threat of intentional creation of mayhem before it happens  particularly when its fomented through social media and shadow networks.

Given these developments, it is clear that government needs new tools under the First Amendment to protect the public from such intentional mayhem, Signer wrote. The meaning of the Constitution has changed over time, and governments have always needed to strike a balance between free speech and public safety.

Signer added that the city would consult with leading First Amendment scholars in the pursuit of such efforts.

He went on to say that the city would take concrete steps to memorialize the name and legacy of Heyer, the anti-racist protester who lost her life in the crash Aug. 12.

Many good options may surface from our creative and loving community, and we should consider them all seriously, including whether Emancipation Park could include Heathers memory in some fashion, Signer wrote. However we ultimately decide to remember Heather, it should be in a way that tells the truth of what happened in our city  before, during and after Aug. 12, 2017  and that should, again, magnify her voice.

Signer closed his statement with the announcement that the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation had launched the Heal Charlottesville Fund, an initiative to provide immediate assistance and stabilization to residents, dialogues on reconciliation and programs for restoration and healing. Donations can be made through cacfonline.org.

Updated 4:46 p.m.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe's office responded to Mayor Mike Signer's call for a special session of the General Assembly to remove Charlottesville's Gen. Robert E. Lee statue calling it "redundant" due to a pending court case.

The release said the Governor "hopes the court will rule in the city's favor."

In lieu of a previously planned press conference, Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer instead issued a news release on Friday afternoon calling on Gov. Terry McAuliffe to convene an emergency meeting of the General Assembly to allow the city to remove the polarizing statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

In the message, Signer asks McAuliffe to convene the emergency meeting in the wake of Saturdays deadly car crash, which occurred in the aftermath of a failed white nationalist rally. The crash killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer, injured 19 others and sent shockwaves through the nation.

With the terrorist attack, these monuments were transformed from equestrian statues into lightning rods, Signer wrote. We can, and we must, respond by denying the Nazis and the KKK and the so-called alt-right the twisted totem they seek. And so for the sake of public safety, public reassurance, to magnify Heathers voice, and to repudiate the pure evil that visited us here, I am calling today for the removal of these Confederate statues from downtown Charlottesville.

Signer also called on the General Assembly to enact legislation that would allow localities to ban the open or concealed carry of weapons in public events that are reasonably deemed to pose a potential security threat.

In a new age of domestic terrorism, we need to re-examine the balance that we strike between public safety and violent protests, Signer said. While I am friends with many gun-owners and am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, that right, like all Constitutional rights, comes with limits.

McAuliffe has not yet released a statement in response to Signers requests.
Why is an inter-religious marriage raising concerns of ISIS links? Encapsulated in a single sentence, the notion appears downright bizarre. The Kerala High Court's ruling, which nullified an inter-faith marriage between Akhila Ashokan (Hadiya, she had already converted to Islam by this time) and Shafin Jahan, has raised pressing questions about judicial interventions in personal choices. Akhila, on her part, is determined to keep her new faith, practicing her religion at her family home, to which she has been confined. Indian society is defined by its diversity and inter-faith marriages are commonplace. On the other hand, forced conversion has been given credence by the SC, which has ordered an NIA probe into the case. Where does the fight against terror end and moral policing begin?

Akhila, confined but keeping her faith?

The tranquility of T.V. Puram, a small, scenic village in Kerala's Kottayam district, has been shrouded by an atmosphere of political uncertainty. The tension centres around Fadhiya House, where 24-year-old Akhila Ashokan, or Hadiya, currently lives with her parents. The lone lensman who winds his way through the narrow streets towards Fadhiya House finds himself face-to-face with two armed policemen, part of Ashokan's rigorous security detail. The Kerala High Court's highly controversial judgement that nullified Ashokan's marriage to 27-year-old Shafin Jehan, on the grounds of an appeal filed by her father, battered the communal harmony of the state, with critics lining up to question the validity of the court ruling in what is widely deemed a personal choice.

The place remains surrounded in mystery, even to the most curious local. "Police personnel are giving Akhila maximum security in keeping with the High Court order and also to assuage her parents' apprehensions," District police chief N. Ramachandra told Deccan Chronicle. At least 37 police officials guard her residence, providing the family with round-the-clock surveillance. Akhila, or Hadiya, continues to practice Islam at her house, much to the ire of her parents. "Why does my mother stop me when I perform namaaz," she demanded. Her father, ex serviceman K.M. Ashokan, however, has cause for relief. The Supreme Court order, which has directed an NIA probe into the matter under the supervision of retired Justice R. Raveendran, "comes as a breather," he said. "We believe everything will be crystal clear after the investigation. Since the court is monitoring it directly, nobody else can intervene," he said.

The order was passed by a bench comprising Chief Justice J.S, Khehar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud on Wednesday, on the basis of a petition filed by Shafin Jehan, challenging the Kerala High Court's order, which annulled the marriage between Shafin and Akhila, calling it a "sham." The Kerala High Court judgement, however, was based on K.M. Ashokan's claims that her daughter was "forcefully converted" to Islam and that "there are plans to recruit her to the extremist outfit, ISIS.

The small flat in T.V. Puram has been Akhila's home for the last two months, ever since the HC ruling, which called for her to be shifted from her college hostel in Salem, back to her family house in Kottayam. Mr. Ashokan, who says that a lot of women are facing a similar plight, alleged, in a conversation with DC, that Akhila was converted to Islam on the basis of persuasion from Abubacker, the father of one of her classmates in college, where she was studying Homeopathy medicine.

However, the circumstances in which Akhila is being detained have invited the wrath of human rights activists. Right-wing author and activist Rahul Easwar, who visited the house earlier this week, expressed similar concerns, saying, "I have requested the police to allow her an outing on occasion, even if that means accompanying her to a movie or for a walk. These are not human conditions." The State Human Rights Commission's acting president, P. Mohandas has said that that Akhila is undergoing immense human rights violation at her house."

The Kerala High Court's stance that surprised many, appears to allow legal intervention in personal choices, backed by that of the Supreme Court's ruling, has only lent credence to widespread calls of "love jihad," a prevailingly right wing sentiment that has caused ire across the nation.
IOC and the state govt agreed to revised terms at the meeting called at the behest of Pradhan.

New Delhi: Odisha government, which had withdrawn tax incentives to the Rs 34,555-crore Paradip refinery of IOC, has agreed to restore some of the tax breaks including a Rs 700-crore per annum of interest-free loan, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Saturday.

The breakthrough came after Pradhan met Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here on Friday.

"It is agreed that state government will give Rs 700 crore per annum interest-free loan for 15 years; earlier state head agreed to provide total deferment of VAT," Pradhan said in a twitter post.

Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and the state government agreed to the revised terms at the meeting called at the behest of Pradhan.

The Odisha government had on February 22 written to IOC, its single-biggest investor, saying it is withdrawing the promised 11-year deferment on payment of sales tax on Paradip refinery products sold in the state. The withdrawal was to cost Rs 2,000 crore to IOC this year and will progressively increase every year as more petrol, diesel and petrochemicals are sold within the state.

The company dragged the state government to court for walking back on its commitment and has not paid VAT on products sold in the state since commissioning of the refinery last year.

The agreement on interest-free loan for 15 years would give additional revenue to the state, Pradhan said.

"This would give a substantial amount of additional #revenue (Around Rs 1,500 crore per year) to the state of Odisha. ParadipRefinery," he said in another tweet.

"This is a historic day for people of Odisha; dwellers of the state have got their dues without spoiling the industrial atmosphere of the state," he added.

Sources said, in the latest agreement reached, the viability gap funding for Paradip refinery project will be revised to Rs 700 crore per annum payable in four equal instalments in each quarter in the form of interest-free loan for 15 years starting from financial year 2016-17. IOC will deposit applicable VAT or GST on products sold.

Odisha government will pay the viability gap fund in the form of interest-free loan in each quarter. The repayment of the amount will start in 16th year for each instalment, they said.

VAT collected and not paid in 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017 -18 will be deposited by IOC immediately. Odisha government will provide interest-fee loan to IOC for 2016-17 and 3 quarters of current year by December 2017 or January 2018 and every quarter thereafter.

Sources said the state government has also agreed to waive interest/penalty for the VAT withheld by IOC. A joint petition will be filed in the Orissa High Court, Cuttack informing about the agreement, they said.
The company would seek shareholders' approval for re- appointment of Gaurang Shetty.

New Delhi: Full service carrier Jet Airways on Friday said it would hold its annual general meeting on September 11.

The company would seek shareholders' approval for re- appointment of Gaurang Shetty as whole time director and Anita Goyal as director, as per the notice of the annual general meeting. The meeting would be held on September 11.

Among others, adoption of audited financial statements for the financial year ended March 2017 as well as reports of directors and auditors would be put up before the shareholders.

Shares of Jet Airways declined nearly 2 per cent to close at Rs 579.95 on the BSE.
Vishal Sikka on Friday informed Infosys employees in an email about his resignation as CEO and managing director. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: As an action-packed day unfolded at Infosys with the abrupt exit of CEO Vishal Sikka, amused twitteratis exhibited their witty sides with hilarious digs and puns around an otherwise acrimonious corporate drama.

At the same time, corporate bigwigs like Anand Mahindra took to Twitter to lend support to the 'iconic' company. "Crises are like a furnace that forges more durable steel. Infy is iconic & will always have people cheering for it. I certainly will..," he said.

Harsh Goenka, Chairman of RPG Enterprises, had a funny take on the exit when he tweeted, "Post demonetisation, old 'sikkas' not working. 'Vishal' change in #Infosys. Old guard wins".

On a more serious note, he said, "We live in times when wisdom is often lost amidst hubris. Time to question role of founding members when they've passed the baton #Infosys."

That said, there were umpteen jokes and pictures that seemed to capture the lighter side of the entire episode. One twitterati (@secret_saanta) posted a still from an old black and white movie that showed five people pointing a gun, with the caption "Infosys founders whenever Vishal Sikka tried to take independent decisions".

Another one (@sidin) shared a joke on a imaginary conversation between founders NR Narayana Murthy and Nandan Nilekani (also former Aadhaar chairman). The make belief conversation has Murthy saying that a new CEO needs to be found, to which Nilekani replies "no problem, I have everybody's contact details".

Darshan Mehta, who has nearly 17,000 followers, tweeted "Ek Sikka ki Keemat kya aap jano Murthy sahab...ek hi din mein 25 hazar crore uda diya", in an apparent reference to the erosion seen on Friday in the market cap of Infosys, one of India's most valuable companies.
New Delhi: Stress is perhaps a given when you are the CEO of a multi-billion dollar technology firm. But "continued assaults" of "baseless" allegations are certainly not what Vishal Sikka signed up for when he joined Infosys

three years ago.

Sikka was welcomed into the troubled-Infosys with much fanfare, becoming the company's first non-founder CEO in 2014. He was taking over from S D Shibulal at a time when rivals were racing ahead and the company was losing manpower at a steady pace, along with its precious 'bellwether' tag.

His entry was also keenly followed as he took over the reins of the over three decade-old company, ending an era of promoter-led leadership. And the ride promised to be a bumpy one. However, controversies just kept getting added to the equation. Sikka had the blessings of the co-founders, including NR

Narayana Murthy, when he had stepped into Infosys.

Three years hence, Murthy turned out to be his nemesis and the very reason for Sikka's sudden exit from the USD 10-billion IT giant. At the time of Sikka's appointment, Murthy waxed eloquent about his "illustrious track record" and value system that made Sikka an "ideal choice" for Infosys.

Sikka had the task cut out right in the beginning. He had the responsibility of reinvigorating the company that was facing mass exodus of employees and losing out to rivals.

The former SAP board member is credited with ushering in automation and artificial intelligence, technologies that have now become buzzwords in the IT services industry.

He took a number of steps, including gifting iPhones to woo top performers, and pushed up Infosys' financial metrics in signs of a turnaround. The ambitious Sikka also threw a challenge to Infoscions, urging them to help scale up Infosys revenues to USD 20 billion by year 2020.

He was also clear that Infosys will not acquire companies of "yesterday". The Bengaluru-based firm has made a slew of acquisitions and investments in the last three years with the prominent ones being Skava, Noah Consulting and Panaya.

However, the USD 200-million Panaya deal stirred a hornet's nest with anonymous whistleblower complaints being sent to market regulators that alleged that senior executives may have benefited from the transaction. For Infosys, it was a double-whammy. Like its peers, the company battled external challenges like visa clampdown in the US and Brexit.

A different kind of crisis was unfolding internally as founders regularly took potshots at the senior leadership for what they dubbed as corporate governance lapses. Infosys continued to be in news for the most part of the year as comments and counter-comments kept investors, employees and clients on their toes.

Matters came to a head in the last few weeks where the "continued assaults" of "baseless" allegations reached a crescendo, growing more personal. This ultimately culminated in Sikka's sudden resignation, a day before the crucial meeting where the board will consider a buyback offer of as much as Rs 13,000 crore.

Over the next few months as Infosys searches for its next CEO, Sikka will draw a token salary of USD 1, a far cry from the earlier USD 11 million package.

While Sikka still does not have a major assignment lined up, he said he will probably take some time off and go surfing.

Spending more time with his loved ones is also on the list for the 50-year Stanford University passout. Sikka probably speaks for all high-profile executives and the stressful lives when he says, "I've been away from home

far too often and far too long."
Mumbai/Bengaluru: The dramatic departure of Vishal Sikka as chief executive of Infosys, following a months-long public battle with the tech giant's founders, has left the company with another messy problem: how to find someone willing to replace him.

With the boardroom row still simmering, the pressure will be on to do that fast.

The company's last CEO hunt in 2014 was a major challenge. Mr Sikka, the eventual choice who was plucked from a top job at SAP, was the first chief appointed from outside the group of founders. His brief was to turn around a faltering business.

Three sources familiar with internal discussions three years ago said they expected an even tougher challenge now.

"It was extremely hard to find an external candidate last time, and the spat is going to make the job even more difficult now," said one of the sources.

"I think there is very little chance there will be an external candidate."

The new boss will be taking on a company in better shape than it was in 2014: Mr Sikka has led efforts to diversify Infosys away from basic IT outsourcing services into more lucrative new areas, like cloud, automation and artificial intelligence.

Infosys' share price surged 22 per cent between Aug. 1, 2014, when Mr Sikka took office and Thursday, outperforming the broader Nifty IT index, which gained 6.3 per cent in the period.

But his successor will also join during one of the most turbulent patches ever for the $150 billion Indian IT services sector. The industry is facing squeezed margins, Brexit question marks over European businesses, and uncertainty in the United States, thanks to visa policy changes.

Infosys' chairman, R Seshasayee, told reporters the company would not look for a major change in culture or strategy and was confident it could still attract talent.

"There may be some people who get excited by these kinds of challenging situations," said a senior Infosys source. "But anyone who is comfortable and doing well will think long and hard before taking this job."

The company has not publicly identified potential successors, though the interim chief executive Pravin Rao, CFO Ranganath D Mavinakere, deputy COO Ravi Kumar S and Mohit Joshi, the head of banking, financial and insurance services, are among the top internal candidates, according to the company source.

Staying on

In an unusual move, the board of India's No. 2 IT services company accepted Mr Sikka's resignation, but named him executive vice chairman until a replacement was found. Mr Rao reports to him.

The board also blamed Narayana Murthy - one of the company's co-founders, a heavyweight in Indian business and one of the most vocal critics of the board - for the exit and for undermining his efforts to transform Infosys.

That leaves any successor likely to continue to face a board at odds with powerful minority shareholders: the men who created the company and transformed outsourcing four decades ago.

Infosys and its founder executives, led by Mr Murthy, have been at odds since February. Sore points include increases in Mr Sikka's salary, what they argue was the overpriced acquisition of the Israeli automation firm Panaya and severance packages offered to some executives.

While the board has consistently backed Mr Sikka publicly, some shareholders like Avinash Vazirani of Jupiter Asset Management say directors have not done enough to build investor confidence.

"I think the question is whether the board enjoys the support of the investors and shareholders," Vazirani said on an investor call on Friday.

"There has clearly been a failure on the part of the board to get the company in the situation where it is now."

Infosys' co-chair, Ravi Venkatesan, told investors on Friday the board would seek to settle the dispute before making permanent changes at the top.

"We will have to find ways to put this decisively to bed, so that by the time we have a couple of viable candidates, there is more stability," he said.

Yet the abrupt departure of the man seen as an innovator in the global software industry has raised fresh questions over Indian corporate governance practices.

India will be the battleground for many such corporate tussles as companies transition from founder- and owner-led companies to entities run by professional CEOs and boards, said Shriram Subramanian of InGovern, a shareholder advocacy group.

The public row at Infosys is reminiscent of Cyrus Mistry's unceremonious ouster in November as boss of Tata Group: another professional chief executive exiting over differences with a key shareholder - in that case, the Tata family patriarch, Ratan Tata.

"A belligerent attitude towards the founders of an iconic company will keep friction levels high and the search for an external CEO tough," Ankur Rudra, an analyst with CLSA, warned in a note.
New Delhi: The Ministry of Finance on Friday released a clarification regarding the number of taxpayers that have been added after demonetization.

Asserting that various news reports have appeared in the media regarding "inconsistency" in the estimates of the number of taxpayers added after demonetization, the Ministry issued a clarification in a statement.

The following statements released by the Ministry said that media has commented that the following figures have been given at different forums by different authorities:

- The Prime Minister mentioned in his Independence Day speech that additional 56 lakh people filed Personal Income Tax Returns from 1st April to 5th August, 2017. Last year for the same period, the figure was 22 lakh.

- The Economic Survey Vol.2 released on August 12, 2017 mentions that 5.4 lakh new taxpayers were added post demonetization.

- On May 17, 2017, the Finance Minister stated that 91 lakh taxpayers have been added to the tax net as a result of action taken by the Income Tax Department.

- In reply to Unstarred Question No 2017 in Rajya Sabha on 01.08.2017, it was stated that 33 lakh new taxpayers have been added to the tax net post demonetization.

The Ministry further said that it has "clarified" that there is no inconsistency in the data provided by the Government.

They have since sent a detailed clarification on each of the above numbers:

 The Prime Minister's speech referred to the increase in number of e-filed Personal Income Tax Returns (ITRs) filed from 1st April, 2017 to 5th August, 2017 over the ITRs filed in corresponding period of earlier years. The data maintained by the IT Department shows that during 1st April, 2017 to 5th August, 2017, 2.79 crore e-returns of Individual taxpayers were received as against 2.23 crore e-returns received during 1st April, 2016 to 5th August, 2016. Thus, the additional ITRs received in 2017 works out to be 56 lakh. During the same period of 2015, 2.00 crore e-returns were received, meaning thereby, that in 2016, only 22 lakh (rounded off)) additional e-returns were received by the due date of filing. This data has already been put in public domain by CBDT's Press Release dated 7th August, 2017.

 The analysis given in Table-6 on page 22 of the Economic Survey (Vol.2) is based on the data for the period of 9th November to 31st March of 2016-17 and corresponding periods of last two financial years. Moreover, the growth in the number of taxpayers discussed in the Economic Survey is based on the number of new taxpayers assuming the previous year's growth rate as the reference growth rate. On the other hand, the growth of Individual return-filers referred to in PM's speech is with respect to new as well as old taxpayers. Thus, the data used in Economic Survey is different from data referred to in PM's speech in respect of the period of filing as well as the type of taxpayers and the two are not comparable.

 The statement of the Finance Minister regarding addition of 91 lakh taxpayers to the tax-base referred to the total number of new returns filed during the entire financial year 2016-17 and therefore, it is neither comparable to the data in PM's speech nor with the data in Economic Survey (different period and different type of taxpayers).

 The reply to Unstarred Question No. 2017 in Rajya Sabha on 01.08.2017 mentioned that during 09.11.2016 to 31.03.2017 the number of ITRs filed was 1.96 crore as against 1.63 crore filed during the corresponding period of last financial year (2015-16). Therefore, number of additional returns filed during this period works out to be 33 lakh. However, this data cannot be compared with the other data mentioned above. The data referred to in Economic Survey is with regard to new taxpayers or first-time return filers only whereas the data provided in the Rajya sabha Question was in respect of all returns filed.

"From the 1st of April to 5th August, 2017, 2.79 crore returns have been filed by Individual taxpayers as against 2.23 crore returns filed during corresponding period of last year," the statement said, adding that the number is expected to rise significantly as many more taxpayers are still to file their returns.
The idea of delivering court summonses to litigants by postal department or post was first mooted in 2012. (Photo: PTI)

Mumbai: In a bid to free the police force from the burden of delivering court summonses to litigants, the Department of Post, Maharashtra Circle, has shown

readiness to take over the responsibility.

The department made a submission in this regard to the Bombay High Court authorities last month after having several rounds of meetings with all the stakeholders, a senior postal department official said.

"We have expressed our readiness and preparedness to discharge this job (of delivering court summonses). It is up to the honourable High Court to give us further instructions on the matter," he said.

If the proposal gets implemented, then the Bombay HC would become the third court to do so after the Delhi and Odisha High Courts, he said. The idea of delivering court summonses to litigants by the postal department was first mooted in 2012. After this, there were several rounds of meetings between police, court and the department officials.

"It it gets implemented, the burden on an already stressed police force will reduce to a great extent and free them for policing duties," said the official.

Only policemen are allowed to personally deliver summonses to the people concerned.

"Based on the requirement and resources, we will give preliminary orientation to postmasters on how to deliver court summonses. We can also come up with especially designed envelops to deliver these documents," the official added.

The Bombay HC, in September last year, asked the state government to amend laws to provide for serving warrants and summonses to accused and witnesses through registered post in addition to the existing procedure followed by the police machinery.

The ruling, delivered while hearing a PIL, sought to expedite the process of delivering pending summonses and warrants in cheque bounce cases.
Recently, the government allowed Chinese companies to invest in irrigation and infrastructure projects in the state.

Hyderabad: While the swadeshi sentiment is making big noise in the country to ban products from China, investments from Beijing are most sought after in Telangana and AP.

Chinese companies dominate the IT and ITeS sectors and the telecom, electronic, power and pharma segments in the state.

Recently, the government allowed Chinese companies to invest in irrigation and infrastructure projects in the state.

The state government is also planning to place an order with Chinese companies to make the 125-foot statue of Dr BR Ambedkar, citing their expertise in the field. Similarly, the order for the worlds second tallest statue of saint philosopher Ramanuja in Shamshabad may also go to Chinese companies.

Kadiam Srihari, deputy CM, had led a delegation to China in February this year to meet sculptors and Chinese firms for the installation of Dr B.R. Ambedkars statue. G.Jagadish Reddy, SC development minister who was part of the delegation, said, Several tall statues in India were made and installed by Chinese firms. We have referred the matter to the CM, who will take a final call.

The Ramanujacharya Trust, headed by construction giant My Homes J. Rameswara Rao, has already asked a Chinese firm to make a 216-foot tall statue of Ramanuja. Indias expertise in making bronze statues is limited. China is famous for it. It will be shipped and assembled at the site near Shamshabad, Mr Rameswara Rao said.

Experts said that banning Chinese plastic items, crackers, rakhis, etc will not make much of a difference as long as big ticket investments are allotted to the Chinese companies.

The Telangana unit of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM), which is affiliated to the RSS, on Friday demanded the Centre and state governments to ban Chinese goods with immediate effect. It urged the Centre to pass an Act on the lines of the Buy American Goods Act to shun Chinese goods.

Some state governments, including Telangana government, are holding business meetings to attract Chinese investments. The Telangana CM led a delegation to China last year, seeking Chinese investments. We strongly oppose this, said P. Srikanth, state convenor of the SJM.

The CM met representatives of more than 90 companies in China and addressed 65 companies in Shanghai. Many major mobile phone units in Hyderabad have inked MoUs with Chinese firms for supplying components.

The latest to go to the Chinese shores are irrigation projects. The state government has invited Chinese infrastructure company Gezhoba to construct irrigation projects in the state. Furthermore, Chinas Leo Group has promised to invest Rs 1,000 crore to manufacture heavy duty pumps in Telangana.

The MoUs signed between Celkon and Makeno to invest $20 million in Hyderabad to set up mobile phone and LED TV units have already fructified. Andhra Pradesh also is not lagging behind when it comes to Chinese investments.

In May 2015, GMR Infrastructure signed an agreement with Guizhou International Investment Corporation (GIIC), a consortium of three Chinese manufacturing companies, for establishing an industrial park with a proposed investment of $500 million in its Kakinada SEZ project.

The home grown infrastructure company also collaborated with Chinese companies in its Hyderabad International Airport project.

In April 2016, Sichuan province in China signed a MoU with AP for mutual co-operation.
Mumbai: Actor Esha Gupta has responded to the criticism for posting a few bold pictures on social media, saying she fails to understand as to why there is so much scrutiny on what a celebrity does.

Esha posted a couple of pictures on Instagram and was slut-shamed, with some people calling her photographs "vulgar".

"There are a few people who are confident about their manhood, they are not challenged. Men, otherwise, mostly get really bothered if women are strong, if a woman is standing up for herself and is speaking up her mind. It happens in the West too," Esha told PTI in an interview.

"What bothers me is why are people more concerned about my pictures and not what is happening around the world. There is a lot happening in the world and one needs to speak up."

The actor said she was not perturbed by the negative feedback on her pictures but felt "sad" about the people's mentality.

"The world is going down, our country especially. It has such a colourful and wonderful history, even then there are these few handful of people... When I saw the comments on pictures, I had a great laugh about it. It is sad because it shows your mentality.

"When celebrities don't speak up, people say actors are sissy, when we do people will say something else. What do we do then? If things bother me, I'll talk about it."

Esha is currently gearing up for the release of 'Baadshaho', which stars Ajay Devgn, Emraan Hashmi and Ileana D'Cruz.

Directed by Milan Luthria, it is scheduled to release on September 1.
It is safe to say that the Tamil film industry has always welcomed new talents with open arms. Director Kalyaan S, who participated in Naalaiya Iyakkanur Season 2, is making his debut with Gulebagavali, which stars Prabhudheva and Hansika in the lead roles.

Kalyaan, in a brief chat with DC, opens up about the film, Prabhudhevas various looks, and on what he has in store for the audience. The debutant is all praise for his hero Prabhudheva. When I finished writing the script, I approached Prabhudheva sir, who was very excited to see the film on screen. Id just give him an overview of what the scene is, and hed develop it in his own style. Without him, I dont think the film would have been possible, he shares.

Elaborating more about the film, he says, Gulebagavali will chronicle events starting from 1947 to present year. So, Prabhudheva sir will have different getups. We have completed the talkie portions and are currently shooting a song sequence in a lavish set.

The director also adds that they will be shooting the fight sequences in a grand manner too. We had spent a chunk of money in erecting huge sets for the songs. Likewise, the action blocks will be something to watch out for. We have roped in Peter Hein for the stunt sequences, he reveals. Kalyaan concludes saying that the team is planning to release the film for Diwali 2017.
Bengaluru: Age is just a number when it comes to art. 15-year-old Malini Narayan is proof of that. The youngest actor in Tartuffe, a play that made its debut at the French Theatre Festival held at Alliance Francaise on Sunday, her personality, much like her work, is a stark contrast to her years.

She started doing theatre almost six years ago, she says. I started out when I was nine I think. I cant remember why What could a fourth grader possibly have to say anyway, she asks with a laugh. It became much clearer as I grew older, however It helped me articulate. I can communicate things that bother me, that I really want to say, without being boring, she says. The play is a classical piece from the 1600s and is one of the most famous theatrical comedies by French playwright Moliere.

An 11th standard student from Mallya Aditi International School, she was selected for Tartuffe, even though she was five years younger than the minimum age limit. I found a flyer and it was an open call for actors. It said you had to be between 20 years and 50 years, but I went ahead with it anyway. I think my love for French and theatre both took lead. Needless to say, I didnt hear from them at first but I finally did and I was in it! she recalls happily. There were about 200 actors who were auditioned for the play. The other members of the cast are professional actors. This is her first big breakthrough.

Narayan's character in the play is quite the damsel in distress. She plays the part of Mariane, who is the daughter of Orgon, one of the central characters of the plot. She is betrothed to the man she loves, Valre, a young romantic lead, but her father, under the influence of the antagonist Tartuffe, won't let the lovers unite. Sitting in her half-done hair and make-up, she says, It was hard for me to play her because that is so not who I am. It was a challenge I didn't think it would be, but it was in fact exciting, she says, her eyes lighting up at the thought. She did a bit of method acting to get into the shoes of the character. After I got wind of that (the character), I would keep quiet about things that I would otherwise be vocal about. They were small issues with my parents or at home. I wouldn't roll my eyes. I would be quiet and honestly, it was eye-opening! To think that this is how some of us live, to think they are not given a choice reminded me of how privileged I am, says the actor who identifies herself as a feminist.

The young actor requests the audience to look deeper into the story than just focussing on the techniques. People don't usually pay attention to these quiet themes. The play has layers of nuances comedy, it is historical and all that but this. I really want the audience to notice how relevant these issues are,she says, sounding wise beyond her years, "but most of all, I hope people come! she says before getting back to her final rehearsals with the crew.

The second show of the play will be staged on Sunday at 7.30 pm at Alliance Francaise, Vasanth Nagar.
Chronic gum inflammation, known as periodontitis, is associated with an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (Photo: Pixabay)

Chronic gum inflammation, known as periodontitis, is associated with an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, researchers from Taiwan report.

Chronic periodontitis, a leading cause of tooth loss, is also associated with increases in markers of inflammation throughout the body. Some recent studies have suggested that chronic periodontitis might contribute to a decline in thinking ability, the authors note in Alzheimer's Research and Therapy.

Dr. Yu-Chao Changs team from Chung Shan Medical University in Taichung City used data from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database to examine whether patients age 50 or older with chronic periodontitis had an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

They found no overall link between periodontitis and Alzheimer's, but people who had the chronic gum inflammation for 10 or more years were 70 percent more likely than people without periodontitis to develop Alzheimer's disease.

The link between long-term periodontitis and Alzheimer's was present even after researchers adjusted for other factors that might influence the development of Alzheimer's, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and urban environment.

"Our findings support the notion that infectious diseases associated with low-grade inflammation, such as chronic periodontitis, may play a substantial role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease," the study team concludes.

"These findings highlight the need to prevent progression of periodontal disease and promote healthcare services at the national level," they add.

"In fact, it is believed that the association between periodontitis and Alzheimers disease may be bi-directional, said Dr. Yago Leira Feijoo from Universidad de Santiago de Compostela in Spain who wasnt involved in the study. Currently, with the scientific evidence that is available, we cannot be sure if the risk factor is either periodontal disease or Alzheimers disease, Leira Feijoo said by email.

Because periodontitis is a preventable and treatable disease, periodontal patients should be aware of the potential risks of gum infection and the systemic impact that could have, he added.

Dr. Ingar Olsen from University of Oslo in Norway, who also wasnt involved in the study, told Reuters Health, Dental care of old people should not be neglected.

Brush your teeth carefully to prevent development of periodontitis," Olsen added.

Dr. Chang did not respond to a request for comments.
Research that was conducted at Los Angeles found that when compares to brain scans; the eye test was just as successful at spotting the amount of plaque build-up in their brains (Photo: Pixabay)

A new study claims that they have created an eye test that could spot Alzheimers disease two decades before the symptoms emerge.

The research that was conducted at Los Angeles found that when compares to brain scans; the eye test was just as successful at spotting the amount of plaque build-up in their brains.

Experts say the finding is one of the biggest breakthroughs in Alzheimer's research to date, offering the first sign of a cost-effective and non-invasive test.

Speaking about it, the studys lead author Dr Maya Koronyo-Hamaoui, a neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai said that the retina may serve as a reliable source for Alzheimers disease diagnosis.

Until a decade back, the only way to officially diagnose someone with Alzheimers was to analyse their brain posthumously.

However, recent years have seen doctors using positron emission tomography (PET) scans of brains of living people to identify markers of the disease.

But the technology is expensive and Dr Maya and her team set out to identify a more cost-effective and less invasive technique.

A research associate in the Department of Neurosurgery, Yosef Koronyo said that another key finding from the study was the discovery of amyloid plaques in previously overlooked peripheral regions of the retina.

He said the plaque amount in the retina correlated with plaque amount in specific areas of the brain.

According to Koronyo, they now know exactly where to look to find signs of Alzheimers disease as early as possible.

Dr Keith L. Black, chair of Cedars-Sinai's Department of Neurosurgery who co-led the study, said the findings offer hope for early detection.
Positive, supportive interactions between sleep partners could help people with sleep apnea adhere to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy, suggests a small study.

Couples who focused on the benefits for both the patient and the sleep partner were more likely to use the CPAP machines, the study authors report in the journal Sleep Health, online July 25.

Poor adherence to CPAP remains the major impediment to effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnea, lead study author Lichuan Ye of Northeastern University in Boston told Reuters Health.

Spouses can make a significant difference in their partners health behaviors, she said by email.

Obstructive sleep apnea, which causes breathing to stop and start during sleep - often accompanied by loud gasping or snoring - affects more than 20 million Americans, according to the American Sleep Apnea Association. CPAP machines are the most common treatment for OSA but are often seen as bothersome and unattractive.

About 6 in 10 adults sleep with a partner, according to the National Sleep Foundation, and more than one-fourth of married or cohabitating couples say their relationships are adversely affected by sleep problems.

Ye and colleagues interviewed 20 couples to understand how obstructive sleep apnea affects their relationships and CPAP use. The interviews focused on the consequences, challenges, questions and advice that couples had about using CPAP. About two-thirds of the couples said they slept in the same bed consistently, and one-quarter said they seldom shared a bed since CPAP use started. On average, the machine was used five hours per night.

The research team found that partners often helped their spouses identify sleep problems and go through diagnosis and treatment. The patients said that if not for their partner, they would have never known they had a problem or would have thought it wasnt that bad.

It often took repeated discussions and several years before patients made an appointment to seek help, however. Partners said they were concerned about their own sleep, as well as the patients health.

Love is blind at first; then, over time, you get tired, and you have kids, one partner said. So every moment I can sleep is extremely important.

Although couples expressed anxiety about using the cumbersome machine at first, those who focused on a sense of we when it came to CPAP use were the most successful. They learned about sleep apnea and CPAP treatment together. They were better able to have deep sleep, less worry, less irritability and more energy, as well as greater intimacy and better communication.

Several patients said they wouldnt use a CPAP unless their partner expressed a concern, and partners often offered help by setting up the machine, adjusting the mask and helping with maintenance. Verbal encouragement, such as reminders, compliments and open acceptance of their partners appearance while using the machine, helped as well.

The couples said they wish they had started CPAP treatment sooner and that being patient with each other while starting the long-term treatment and adjusting to a new routine were key pieces of advice.

I found it particularly interesting that some patients reported using CPAP for their partners benefit, and on the flip side, partners were uncomfortable with this, said Faith Luyster of the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, who wasn't involved in the study.

Communication is really the key to making a smooth transition into using CPAP, she told Reuters Health by email. Couples need to talk about their concerns about the patient starting CPAP, strategize together, and be respectful and supportive of each other.

Future studies should also investigate how much spouse involvement and which aspects play a vital role in CPAP adherence, said Dr. Salma Batool-Anwar of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who wasn't involved in the research.

Sleeping seven to eight hours on a nightly basis is vital for overall health, Batool-Anwar told Reuters Health by email. Patients should listen to their bed partners complaints about their sleep as early screening, diagnosis, and treatment of sleep apnea can improve sleep-related quality-of-life.
Experts from Duke University in the US, who conducted the study say that preferring different brands can affect happiness in relationships as well. (Photo: Pixabay)

A new research has revealed that while guzzling on a drink your partner likes may seem trivial, it can actually spell doom for a relationship.

Experts have discovered that partners who do not hold much sway in a relationship feel stuck with their partners choice of brands.

So even they do not like drinking a particular brand of aerated drink, they are stuck consuming it because that is what the dominant partner puts in the fridge. Researchers say, this in turn, makes them unhappy in love.

Experts from Duke University in the US, who conducted the study, say that preferring different brands can affect happiness in relationships as well.

Gavin Fitzsimons, who is the lead author of the study, said that happiness in a relationship has to do less with common backgrounds, religion or education and has to do more with the notion of brand compatibility.

Co-author Danielle Brick added that while it wont break a couple up, it leads to the more timid partner becoming less happy.

Fitzsimons recommends one finds out if they are compatible with their brand choices before getting into a relationship.
A clean luxury holiday sounds like an oxymoron! A holiday in itself is seems like an indulgence, in countries where poverty and hunger are every day events. On top of that if it is a luxury holiday, then the indulgence climbs to Himalayan proportions. This is also evident when we see some of the luxury resorts with large bath tubs and rain showers enticing guests to consume resources more than they should. In fact talking about water, a UNEP study says that guests at resorts and hotels consume 7 to 9 times more water than residents of the area! So when it comes to 'luxury', 'indulgence' seems to be a twin brother.

Increasingly, guests are becoming aware of larger issues surrounding sustainability, climate change and environmental impact and are demanding 'less' for 'more'. There is mounting evidence that guests are willing to pay more for zen style resorts and rooms. Where they are greedy about is for 'experiences' that they will gain from these zen spaces. 'Experiential luxury' seems to be the demand will rule the future. In other words, offer a room with 90 inch LED TV's, Persian carpets, Italian marble, champagne and caviar, and you will find guests yawning, as they have all this and more in their homes. Offer them an experience that they can never get in their homes and watch them sit up with childlike excitement. Throw in a genuine concern that your resort is sensitive to Mother Earth with evidence of a sustainability policy with detailed execution in place, and you have a winner on your hands. I speak from experience of starting and running a 100% eco resort called Our Native Village in Bangalore for more than a decade.

I can say with conviction that guests appreciate a holiday destination which is sustainability minded. This helps remove the guilt of travel and indulgence to an extent. Most aware guests, and this number is growing rapidly in the information age that we live in, know that they are contributing to global warming by burning fossil fuels when they travel, that result in greenhouse gas emissions leading to extreme climate events. But whenever guests are given an option of a low carbon mode of accommodation or a zero-carbon mode of transport, they are thrilled.

So imagine a yachting holiday without the smell of diesel fumes. Imagine travelling to an island resort on a motor boat without the guilt of burning diesel. Maldives as an example has more than 170 luxury yachts and hundreds of motor boats that run on diesel. The over 500 resorts, hotels and guests houses all depend on motor boats to ferry guests, food and goods to their premises and back. Maldives consumes more than 2.5 million barrels of crude oil, and you can be sure that a lot of this is used by motor boats. Is it possible for boats to not burn fossil fuels?

Enter the solar-powered Soel Yacht SoelCat 12. A proof that it is possible to run boats without fossil fuels. The solar-powered Soel Yacht SoelCat 12 was designed by architect Joep Koster and business partner Czap. With its two 60 kWh lithium-ion batteries, the total battery capacity is 120 kWh. That means the SoelCat 12 can operate for 6 hours at 8 knots, with a maximum speed of 14 knots. Direct sun prolongs the duration to 7.5 hours. A "break-even speed" of 6 knots stretches the capacity to 24 hours, including at night (when there is no energy harvest from the solar array). Vehicle to Grid (V2G) and Vehicle to Home (V2H) technology are intelligently built-in feature, which turn your water vessel into a mobile power station able to power homes up to 15kVA. After cruising all day long on a sunny lake or sea, the SoelCat 12 can deliver power for up to 5 households in the evening, even in the most remote of places. You connect and manage your solar energy SoelCat 12 through your smart device (iPhone, iPad, Android, etc.) on the craft's guest Wi-Fi.

Diesel powered yachts and boats will soon be shunned by travellers as they opt for clean travel with minimum impact on the planet. The demand for clean luxury has started. Do you want to listen?
Two of those who brokered the marriage deal are relatives of the teenager and had conned the mother of the teenager into believing that her daughter would be happy and secure in the marriage. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: The Falaknuma police detained three brokers, who had allegedly facilitated the marriage of a 16-year-old girl with a 65-year-old Omani national three months ago, for questioning.

Two of those who brokered the marriage deal are relatives of the teenager and had conned the mother of the teenager into believing that her daughter would be happy and secure in the marriage. The marriage between the two was performed at a local lodge in the Chandrayangutta area. The girl was later sent to Oman in July to join her husband on a visit visa.

The brokers had also arranged an Aadhaar card and other documents required by the girl for obtaining a passport. The teenager after reaching Muscat phoned her mother in a few days and complained that she was being ill treated and abused by the Omani national.

The woman, Ms Sayeeda, then approached the Falaknuma police and narrated the incident following which the police registered a case. When the woman called up the Omani, he told her that he had paid Rs 5 lakh to the brokers for arranging the marriage.

Falaknuma detective inspector Murali Krishna said that they are investigating the case and questioning a few suspects.

Who are suspected to be involved in the case. "So far no one has been arrested. Investigation in the case is going on", the inspector said.
Hyderabad: Krishna River Management Board member-secretary Sameer Chatterjee on Friday issued a fresh order, allotting 6.5 tmc ft water to Andhra Pradesh and 1.5 tmc ft to Telangana state from the Nagarjunasagar dam to meet the drinking water needs of Hyderabad.

Though the three-member technical committee could not meet on Friday as scheduled, Mr Chatterjee, after obtaining letters from engineer-in-chief of both the states on their drinking water requirement, took a decision and made the allotments.

Accordingly, the water level at Srisailam dam, that was 785 ft on Friday, will drop to 775 ft and 3 tmc ft of water from dam will be released downstream to NS dam through operation of the sluice gates.

Mr Chatterjee also ordered depleting NS Dam level from existing 504.6 ft to 502 ft. All put together, 8 tmc ft of water will be available for utilisation.

The order also said that any further releases below 775 ft at Srisailam will be decided as and when requirements are indented.

Meanwhile, Telangana officials are up in arms against the KRMB member-secretary for allotting more water to AP and denying the same quantity to TS, despite a complaint from TS about excess utilisation by AP. Nagarjunasagar dam chief engineer S. Suneel, to whom KRMB served the release order, is consulting the TS government whether to implement the orders or not.
BJP national president Amit Shah with Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and state president Nand Kumar Singh Chouhan during his three-day visit to the state, in Bhopal on Friday. (Photo; PTI)

Bhopal: Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah has said his party has not come to power for mere 5 or 10 years, but at least 50 years and called upon workers to strengthen the party and take it to every part of the country.

Shah also said that though the BJP appears to be at its peak with a majority government at the Centre and 1,387 MLAs in states the workers feel the party has still a long way to go.

"Today, we have a majority government at the Centre with 330 MPs, and also have 1,387 MLAs in different states. The party appears to be at its peak, but dedicated workers feel we have a long way ahead," a BJP release on Saturday quoted Shah as saying at a meeting with partymen.

"We have not come to power for 5-10 years, but at least 50 years. We should move forward with a conviction that in 40-50 years we have to bring major changes in the country through the medium of power," Shah said.

He was addressing the Madhya Pradesh BJP's core group members, office-bearers, MPs, MLAs and district chiefs, among others, at the party headquarters in Bhopal on Friday.

Shah arrived on Friday on a three-day visit to Madhya Pradesh for meetings with the BJP workers and office-bearers besides participating in various programmes as part of his 110-day nationwide tour.

The BJP president reminded the activists that the party has become a political force to reckon with due to hard work, dedication and sacrifice of its leaders over the years.

Today the BJP has become a party of 10-12 crore members because of many stalwarts who have dedicated their lives in building and strengthening the organisation, said Shah, according to the release.

"We have to ensure no place in the country is left where we don't have our flag. For this, we have to strengthen the organisation further," Shah said.

"Character is the basis of our foundation," he said, and called upon the BJP workers to ensure the party is present in every (polling) booth, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kamrup to Kutch.
A woman, child and a man with their belongings were seen holding hands while trying to get to the other side for safety. (Screengrab)

Patna: The floods in Bihar have been causing havoc. In yet another shocking incident in the eastern state, a mother and child died when the bridge they were crossing collapsed due to the raging flood water.

The bridge connects two villages.

A woman, child and a man with their belongings were seen holding hands while trying to get to the other side for safety.

While the man accompanying them appeared to be pulled to safety by fellow villagers, it is reported that the mother and child, shown in the video, were swept to their death after the bridge collapsed.

Another family had successfully crossed just moments earlier and crowds were seen congregating on both the sides as the evacuation was underway.

But as the family were just inches from safety, the concrete gave way beneath them and they fell into the fast flowing river in Bihar, which borders Nepal.

The bridge was the only route across the river Kosi and the video shows families taking turns to run across the rapidly deteriorating bridge as the heavy waters surged below and undercut its foundation.

Purportedly in the wake of floods in Bihar, Deccan Chronicle does not hold the authenticity of the video.
Gorakhpur: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday hit out at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi over his planned visit in Gorakhpur saying the "yuvraj (prince) sitting in Delhi" cannot be permitted to make Gorakhpur "a picnic spot".

The chief minister, who inaugurated a cleanliness campaign in the district to tackle the deadly encephalitis outbreak in the wake of death of 72 children at the BRD hospital in Gorakhpur, also targeted Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.

"I feel that the shehzada sitting in Lucknow ..yuvraj sitting in Delhi will not know the importance of this cleanliness campaign. They will come here to make it a picnic spot, we cannot permit it," he said, attacking Gandhi who is scheduled to meet the families of the victims and visit the BRD hospital on Saturday.

"If someone gives an open challenge to the self respect of the people of Gorakhpur and eastern UP ...they will themselves come forward to fight such dreaded diseases through their awareness," Adityanath stressed launching the 'Swachch Uttar Pradesh - Swasthya Uttar Pradesh campaign' in Gorakhpur.

Voicing hope that the campaign will be successful in checking encephalitis, he accused the previous governments of depriving the people of the state of basic facilities for their vested interests.

Stressing that more than treatment of encephalitis, checking its spread was important for which cleanliness and potable water were necessary, the chief minister said his government was working in this regard.

The chief minister, who has represented Gorakhpur in the Lok Sabha five times, will also tour encephalitis and flood-affected areas.

The Congress has targeted the Aditynath Government over the deaths following allegations that the children who were critically ill succumbed due to oxygen shortage.
Hyderabad: The visit of US Presidents daughter Ivanka for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at HiTec City may delay the Rs 50-crore project to white-top the ISB road in financial district.

While the summit would be held 4 km away from the under construction road, it is being speculated that the government doesnt want to put up a poor show when delegates visit the software park at Nanakramguda.

Work is underway to white-top three kilometres of the six-km stretch and has been delayed by three months.

Senior traffic police officials said that work on the stretch would be halted in the last week of August and work would not be taken up on the other half of the road. With the monsoon and GES around the corner it has been decided that work on the other half would commence only after a while, said Traffic, DCP, A.R. Srinivas.

Mr Vinod Kumar, TS Industrial Infrastructure Corporation zonal manager, said the delay had nothing to do with the GES. The contractor has been doing a haphazard job and we dont want the construction to be affected by rain. Unless the work is completely done on one half, we wouldnt proceed, he said.

Officials have promised to deliver the three-km white-topped stretch by August 31. Drainage work alongside the road is slated to take more time.

The news has been received with mixed emotions by road users. It is a good decision as we will get the time to improve alternative routes before resuming work. Public pressure has made an impact, said Mr Uma Mahesh, a commuter.

White topping was going to be the highlight of the GES. But from the very start the project was poorly planned, without public participation. Now it has been proved that without developing alternative routes nothing can be done, said Mr Ramanjeet Singh.
Yadav launched a veiled attack at JD(U) faction led by Nitish Kumar and said he contributed in forming the party and now he was being asked to leave it. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

Patna: Rebel Janata Dal United (JD (U)) leader Sharad Yadav on Saturday launched a veiled attack at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for forging an alliance with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and said the promise of grand alliance was for five years.

Yadav, who was sacked as JD (U)'s Rajya Sabha leader said that JD (U) is his party and that the grand alliance remains intact.

"We promised to continue this alliance for at least five years. The public gave us opportunity. The manifesto is our commitment for five years. The people of Bihar vested faith in us. I am not happy with alliance breaking," he said during Jan Adalat programme in Patna.

Yadav launched a veiled attack at JD(U) faction led by Nitish Kumar and said he contributed in forming the party and now he was being asked to leave it.

"I formed the party and some people are telling me that this is not my home. People are raising questions over my intention. I went to attend JD (U)'s national executive committee meeting but they didn't allow me to participate and said that I don't belong to their party," he added.

Yadav, who is miffed with Nitish Kumar for severing ties with grand alliance and joining hands with the BJP, had earlier called for a convention 'Sanjhi Virasat Bachao' in Delhi on Thursday with an aim to safeguard the "composite culture" of India.

Earlier on Saturday, the JD (U) passed a resolution to join the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) during the party's national executive meeting chaired by leader and Nitish Kumar.

The political move that makes the ruling party in Bihar officially an ally of the NDA at the Centre comes weeks after Nitish broke ties with the Grand Alliance parties - Congress and the RJD - in the state and re-formed the government in alliance with the BJP.
Srinagar: An activist of Jammu and Kashmirs ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was shot dead by suspected militants in southern Anantnag district on Saturday.

The police officials said that gunmen barged into the house of the victim Muhammad Ishaq Parray at Ugjan, Diyalgam of Anantnag and shot him from point blank range. He was rushed to Anantnags district hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival.

50-year-old Parray owned a saw mill in the area and was associated with the PDP for past several years. After the incident, the security forces searched the area for assailants but could find them, the officials said.
CHENNAI: Contending that there was no justification in issuance of Look Out Notice against him by CBI, Karti Chidambaram on Friday told the Supreme Court that there was no question of him leaving the country to evade investigations. I have deep roots in society in India. I am a citizen of India. My daughter, wife, parents, aged mother in law and other family members are all based in India. In addition, I have property and assets in India. There is no question of leaving the country to evade investigation, Karti said in his short counter affidavit in the Supreme Court.

Maintaining that he had no UBS Bank Account and that he was not in charge of or possess any direct or indirect interest in any Swiss company, Karti said he has made complete disclosures of all my assets and income without fail every year. The repeated harassment by the investigating authorities has been a serious infringement of my rights guaranteed by Article 19 and 21 of the Constitution. In these circumstances, even though I have cooperated with the investigating agencies to present a distorted picture that I had never cooperated in the past is incorrect, he said in the affidavit.

Citing that he had and his father had the benefit of having educated abroad, he said as a father he always wanted his daughter to pursue studies at Cambridge University in the UK. I may also add that my present visit to the United Kingdom was in connection with the admission of my daughter to the University of Cambridge, he said.
The apex court directed NIA to probe conversion and marriage of a Hindu woman to a Muslim man in Kerala. (Representational Image)

New Delhi: The NIA on Friday registered an FIR in connection with the conversion and marriage of a Hindu woman to a Muslim man in Kerala, on the directive of the Supreme Court.

In a statement, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said in compliance with the August 16 order of the Supreme Court, the FIR related to Kerala's Perinthalmanna police station in Mallapuram district has been re-registered by the probe agency for investigation.

The Supreme Court had on Wednesday asked NIA to probe the case of conversion and marriage of a Hindu woman to a Muslim man, as the agency claimed it was not an isolated incident but a "pattern" emerging in Kerala.

The Kerala High Court had annulled the marriage, terming it as an instance of "love jihad".

The apex court directed NIA to probe the incident under the supervision of a retired apex court judge, Justice R V Raveendran.

The top court observed that like in the 'Blue Whale' - an internet game which allegedly give series of tasks to players with a final challenge requiring him or her to commit suicide, it was now easy to persuade someone to perform a particular task.

"This will not be an Special Investigation Team (SIT). The NIA shall carry out the probe under the supervision of retired judge Justice R V Raveendaran," a bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar and D Y Chandrachud had said.

The bench said it wanted the probe to be fair and the NIA, being an independent agency outside the state of Kerala, can conduct the probe in an impartial manner and have a different point of view.

"Before forming any opinion or arriving at a conclusion, we would like to consider the NIA's probe report, inputs from the Kerala Police and talk with the woman," it said.

The bench directed the NIA to submit its final investigation report in the court to enable it to arrive at any conclusion in the matter.

The woman, a Hindu, had converted to Islam and later married Jahan. It was alleged that the woman was recruited by Islamic State's mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge.

Ashokan K M, the father of the woman, had alleged that there was a "well-oiled systematic mechanism" for conversion and Islamic radicalisation.

The high court, while declaring the marriage "null and void", had described the case as an instance of "love jihad" and ordered the state police to conduct probe into such cases.
Patna: In a major political development, Nitish Kumar led Janata Dal (United) passed a resolution to join National Democratic Alliance in the party's National Executive meeting on Saturday.

Meanwhile, security has been beefed up outside Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's residence where JD(U) National Executive meet is underway after demonstration by Sharad Yadav and RJD supporters.

On July 26, Nitish Kumar had stepped down as the chief minister of Bihar and snapped the Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress.

The very next day, Nitish took oath as the chief minister with the NDA-led BJP's support.

Nitish ended his two-year grand alliance with the RJD and Congress, citing a call of conscience over corruption charges slapped against his former deputy and Lalu Prasad Yadavs son Tejaswi Yadav. Lalu, his wife Rabri Devi and Tejaswi are central to a CBI inquiry into the land-for-hotels deal when Lalu was the Union railways minister.

Nitish had nearly a decade long alliance with the NDA before he split in 2013 as soon as Narendra Modi was announced the face of the BJP campaign for the 2014 general elections.

After the JD(U) was reduced to two seats in the 2014 general polls, Nitish teamed up with Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Congress and the alliance made the NDA taste its first big defeat in the 2015 state polls.

Nitish has since campaigned in Uttar Pradesh calling for a Sangh Mukt Bharat and a Sharab Mukht Samaj. After the grand alliance had formed, he had called out the BJP for playing the politics of dividing be it in the name of caste or religion.
New Delhi: Rebel JD(U) leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sharad Yadav is expected to give a miss to the rally of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on August 27 in Patna, sources said.

A leader close to Sharad Yadav said attending the rally could be seen as giving up party membership voluntarily.

This will give an opportunity to the JD(U) Whip in Rajya Sabha to seek Mr Yadav's disqualification from the House, he said.

If Mr Yadav is disqualified from the Rajya Sabha, the numbers of the Opposition parties will dwindle and the seat will positively go to the NDA kitty, he said.

Lalu Yadav is organising the BJP hatao desh bachao rally to expose the betrayal by Nitish Kumar, after the JD(U) chief and Bihar chief minister dumped the Grand Alliance and formed a government with the NDA.

Hitting out at the proposed rally, Bihar deputy chief minister and BJP leader Sushil Modi said, This rally should actually be called Benami sampatti banchao rally.

Parties with serious corruption charges against them have joined hands to make the rally successful, he said. The JD(U) has virtually split after the JD(U) forged an alliance with the NDA in Bihar.
AIADMK Puratchi Thalaivi Amma Faction leader and former Chief Minister O Panneerselvam arriving at his official residence at Greenways Road as part of merger talks with party supporters in Chennai on Friday. (Photo: PTI)

Chennai: Talks on the merger of the two All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) factions are going on smoothly and a positive result is expected in a day or two, former chief minister O Panneerselvam said on Saturday.

He was speaking after leaders of the AIADMK (Puratchi Thalaivi Amma) faction led by him met in Chennai for informal discussions on the merger issue following last night's inconclusive patch-up bid, and to chart out their future course of action.

Panneerselvam, who is scheduled to leave for Madurai on Sunday to attend a meeting there, was expected to elicit the opinion of the faction leaders in Chennai to arrive at any firm view on the merger issue.

The talks are going on smoothly. A positive result is expected in a day or two, he said.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister K Palanisamy has left for Tiruvarur in Thanjavur district to take part in the MGR centenary function.

The much expected merger on Friday night had failed to come off following reported divergent views among the members of the OPS faction.

This included the demand of certain members for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's death as against the announcement of an inquiry commission to be headed by a retired High Court judge.

There were also reports of hard bargaining on party and cabinet posts by Palanisamy-led AIADMK (Amma) faction and the OPS group.

Meanwhile, sidelined AIADMK deputy general secretary TTV Dhinakaran held deliberations with supporters at his residence in Chennai.

Dhinakaran, who spoke to reporters on Friday after meeting his aunt and party general secretary VK Sasikala at a Bengaluru jail on her birthday on Friday, had downplayed the expected merger of the AIADMK factions saying it would not have any longevity and that it was not a 'setback' to him.

Amid speculation of an imminent merger of the two factions, several AIADMK MLAs of both the groups had congregated at the mausoleum of Jayalalithaa at the Marina beach in Chennai.

Police personnel were deployed in a large number at the memorial with members of the public who wanted to offer their respects to Jayalalithaa fondly called as "Amma" (Mother) being prevented from entering the burial site.

Two special wreaths were also kept ready apparently to enable Palanisamy and Panneerselvam to offer their respects at the burial site.

After it became clear that the merger talks would be deferred, the wreaths were removed and public was allowed to enter the burial site later.
Chennai: Taking note of the non-revision of property tax for more than 18 years in the city, resulting in a loss of more than Rs 1,500 crore and postponement of local body elections, the Madras high court has said the commissioner of Chennai corporation has to take a decision regarding the revision of property tax at the earliest to avoid continued loss to the corporation.

Justice N. Kirubakaran directed the commissioner of Chennai corporation and secretary, municipal administration and water supply department, to inform the court on August 21, as to when the revision of property tax in Chennai city municipal corporation would be made, failing which this court will be constrained to summon these officials. Passing further interim orders on a petition from K. Kulasekaran, the judge said the existing demand (in 2004) was Rs 264.92 crore and if general revision had been carried out in the year 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014, the additional tentative demand would have been Rs 1,841.48 crore. It is clear that the loss would be more than Rs 1,500 crore due to non-revision of property tax, because of failure of the elected representatives of the corporation of Chennai of the successive councils. Moreover, for the past two decades, the city of Chennai has developed a large extent and many IT companies, multinational companies and multi storied buildings have come up. If those properties are assessed tax, it would definitely fetch more than Rs 2,000 crore, whereas the present demand is only Rs 264.92 crore, the judge pointed out.

The judge said it was stated by the corporation of Chennai that the revision of property tax was a policy decision which requires approval from the corporation council. Citing the absence of council, the commissioner cannot postpone the revision of property tax endlessly causing huge revenue loss to the corporation which is responsible for providing better facilities, infrastructures to the residents of Chennai city, especially in vast extended areas, the judge added. The judge said the powers were vested in the commissioner of Chennai corporation to discharge the functions of the corporation. Therefore, the commissioner of Chennai corporation was statutorily bound to do all acts which were ordinarily discharged by the Council, the judge added and posted to August 21, further hearing of the case.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh assured countrymen that adoption of the 'new India' policy will help the government solve issues like terrorism, naxalism and Northeast insurgency by 2022. (Photo: PTI)

Lucknow: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday asserted that by 2022, a solution would be found to the Kashmir problem as also other problems like terrorism, naxalism and North East insurgency.

"There are a lot of problems - terrorism, naxalism, Kashmir problem. Much is not needed to be said about these problems. But I can assure you this much that by 2022, we have pledged to create a 'new India'...So a solution will be found to all these problems before 2022. We want to assure the countrymen on this," he said.

Singh was addressing a programme in Lucknow titled 'Sankalp se Siddhi - New India Movement (2017-2022) Naye Bharat kaa nirmaan'.

On the occasion, he administered oath to the gathering for making India 'Swachh' (clean), poverty-free, corruption-free, terror-free, communalism-free and casteism-free.

"If people could take (Quit India) pledge in 1942 and get freedom in 1947, then why is it so that after 70 years of Independence, India is not that self-reliant which it should had been? I would congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking a pledge to create a 'new India' before the country celebrates its 75th year of freedom," he said.

He said Mahatma Gandhi understood the importance of cleanliness and had made it a campaign but it is Modi who gave it the shape of a mass movement.

"For 85 long years after the first war of Independence in 1857, India understood the country's power and kept on gathering it. In 1942, the entire nation stood united when Mahatma Gandhi and said 'British should Quit India' and gave the clarion call of 'do or die'. ... It was the result of this pledge which bore fruits five years later," Singh said.

He said if in five years after launch of Quit India movement, India could achieve Independence, "then why can't we make a 'new India' after taking pledge in 2017 and realising it in 2022?"

He said Pandavas also had achieved victory in Mahabharata because of their pledge and resolution.

"This (new India) will be an India where there will be no poverty or illiteracy, every person will have a house, no one will die of shortage of medicine. On the global stage, India will emerge as a powerful nation. Talking about corruption, the Home Minister said, "In the first meeting of the Union Cabinet, we took a pledge to fight corruption. Our pledge was to change power and system."

Referring to GST which was rolled out on July 1, he said, "Many of our friends are having problems but after a few months, all will praise GST. We passed GST with the pledge of 'one-nation, one-tax."

Singh also said, BJP does not indulge in politics of government formation but does so for nation building and development."
BENGALURU: BJP state president and former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, who was summoned by the Anti-Corruption Bureau to appear before it for his questioning in the denotification case related to B. Shivarama Karanth Layout, did not turn up before the investigating agency on Saturday.

Instead, two advocates representing Mr Yeddyurappa met the ACB officials and reportedly requested them to give 10 days to their client. Sources in the ACB said that the advocates submitted a letter to the officials on behalf of Mr Yeddyurappa, seeking time.

They have stated that the case is almost 10 years old and Mr Yeddyurappa was summoned on a very short notice. Mr Yeddyurappa will need a few more days to gather details of the case as he has to get the documents related to the case by applying through RTI. However, there was no official information from ACB officials to the advocates about the next date on which Mr Yeddyurappa will be called for inquiry, a source said.

Further, as Mr Yeddyurappa has moved the Karnataka High Court in connection with the case, it is learnt that the ACB officials will wait for a few more days before proceeding further.

Bureau denies allegations

Denying allegations by Basavarajendra that he was allegedly threatened by two DySPs of the Anti-Corruption Bureau to make a statement against former chief minister B. S. Yeddyurappa in the alleged illegal denotification case, ACB chief, DGP M.N. Reddi, has termed the allegations as a feeble attempt to build false defence.

Mr Reddi said, The letter has been released by a key accused (Basavarajendra). who had issued illegal endorsements of 'Denotification', while working in the BDA. He was called for enquiry by the ACB officers on August 10. He appeared before the Investigation Officer. In case of 164 CrPc, the Magistrate asks the accused repeatedly whether the statement he wishes to make is voluntary or not. Therefore allegation of 'forcing an accused to give a voluntary statement before a Magistrate', is a contradiction in terms. And even if he was feeling threatened then why he did not approach the higher rank officers to lodge a complaint, Mr Reddi questioned.

He stated, He has issued this letter after a gap of 9 days that too after receiving a police notice as an accused along with other accused. It's a feeble attempt to build false defence. However if he has any grievance, we will look into it.
Police sources said most of them were students of Presidency and Theyagaraya colleges and they were creating a ruckus inside the bus.

Chennai: There is never an end to the bus menace in the city. Bus route numbers may seem routine enough to the public, but students tend to give the plying of buses a different meaning by adopting the routes they use to get to college. Cops had to find an unusual punishment to teach one set of Bus Route students a lesson after the harassed driver brought the bus straight into the station.

The student offenders were made to sit down on the footpath and write imposition before they were allowed to go home after a period of detention like in school and college. Two separate incidents involving students of city colleges kept the police on their toes on Saturday as college goers continued to pose a menace inside MTC buses over bus route rivalry. In one of the incidents, the driver of the bus plying towards Tiruvottiyur, sensing an impending clash inside the bus, drove it straight into the Tondiarpet police station.

Police sources said most of them were students of Presidency and Theyagaraya colleges and they were creating a ruckus inside the bus. Police personnel made the students sit outside the police station and write imposition saying that they wouldnt indulge in public nuisance and later let them off with a warning.

Police in MKB Nagar had to deal with a greater menace as the clash among students spilled onto the streets, much to the chagrin of the public.

Police said that a group of students jumped off the MTC bus (route no.592) plying between Vallalar Nagar and Periyapalayam, when it stopped at the Sharma Nagar bus terminus near Vyasarpadi.

Wielding knives and wooden logs, the students, started chasing a rival group in broad daylight. In retaliation, a group of students pelted stones at the MTC bus, leaving the windshield broken. MKB Nagar police rushed to the scene on information and conducted enquiries.

They have launched a hunt for the students. We have conducted enquiries with the bus staff and members of the public. Footages from CCTV cameras are being collected, a police officer said.
Mr. Aleem Khan further said, Spending on marriage has become some sort of competition these days. This has to be checked. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: A city based organisation, Socio Reforms Society, is banking on Muslim women to bring down overspending during weddings. The society organised a seminar, How to Accomplish Zero Budget, Easy Islamic Marriages, on Saturday in the city.

We feel women can bring about a change in society by dissuading their families from going for unnecessary expenditures during marriages. Currently, many people opt for heavy spending beyond their means, said Aleem Khan Falki, president of the society. He said similar seminars were organised for men earlier. The organisation is betting big on women to have a change in the attitude.

Women scholars from the community addressed the participants, who attended the seminar at Tolichowki.

Ms Raziya Khanum, a scholar, said, You can get money from various sources. But you have to repay it after the marriage, putting the family into trouble. Many of the unnecessary functions related to marriage can be done away with, she noted.

Quoting Islamic scriptures, the scholars narrated simple marriage function of many important religious figures.

Mr. Aleem Khan further said, Spending on marriage has become some sort of competition these days. This has to be checked.
Hyderabad: The state government has rejected the request of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Bhanwar Lal to pay incharge allowance. Mr Bhanwar Lal in a letter to TS government had stated that he was working as incharge CEO in the state, and had to be paid the allowance.

After state bifurcation, the Centre allotted Mr Bhanwar Lal to the AP government, and asked him to look after TS affairs as well; he has been CEO for both states ever since.

In the government scheme of things, officials given full additional charge of another department are paid 20 per cent of the salary as allowance.

Mr Bhanwar Lal draws a monthly salary of about Rs 2.25 lakh. The allowance would work out to Rs 45,000 a month.

Mr Bhanwar Lal has been incharge CEO of the state since bifurcation; going by his claim, he would need to be paid Rs 16 lakh by the TS government.

Rejecting his request, the TS government said Mr Bhanwar Lal was not an employee of the Telangana state government. A non-employee could not be paid the allowance.
A victim is being taken away for treatment as rescue operations continue at the accident site where coaches of the Puri-Haridwar Utkal Express train were derailed. (Photo: PTI)

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government was in a state of total confusion about the facts related to the train accident in Muzaffarnagar on Saturday.

In an official release, the DGP office stated that the number of deaths was 23 while the number of injured persons was 400. Minutes later, the DGP sent another release claiming hat the number of injured persons had gone down to 40. The home secretary, meanwhile, said that the number of injured persons was 81.

There was confusion about the number of bogies that had derailed. Officials in the police department and the home department oscillated between six, eight and 10 bogies.

Railway officials conveniently said that all facts would be briefed by the railway ministry since Delhi is closer to the accident site than Lucknow.

Meanwhile, ambulances were summoned from Muzaffarnagar and Meerut to ferry the patients to hospitals and all hospitals in the adjoining districts were immediately put on high alert.

UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath gave his condolences on the deaths and directed all officials to ensure proper treatment of the injured passengers. The CM directed two ministers, Suresh Khanna and Satish Mahana, to reach the site of derailment and supervise rescue operations.

Railway officials set up helpline numbers for people inquiring about their relatives who were travelling in the train.

Meanwhile, railway minister Suresh Prabhu ordered an inquiry into the derailment. He said he was personally monitoring the situation and strict action will be taken in case of any lapse.

He also announced Rs 3.5 lakh ex-gratia for those who lost their lives, Rs 50,000 for the seriously injured and Rs 25,000 for those who received minor injuries.
The Old Pension Scheme is more beneficial in the short term while the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) seems to work better in the long term under certain conditions. (Photo: File/DC) (Representational image)

Hyderabad: Over 3.5 lakh state government employees have threatened to go on leave en masse on September 1 demanding scrapping of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS). Employees want the state government to restore the Old Pension Scheme. Various employees associations have been holding agitation programmes against the CPS since February this year.

With no response from the state government, they have threatened to boycott duties on September 1.

All those who were appointed after September 1, 2004, are covered under the CPS. Out of the total 3.50 lakh employees in Telangana, about 1.10 lakh are covered under the CPS.

Though majority of the 2.40 lakh employees are covered under the OPS, they have extended support to 1.10 lakh employees fighting against CPS.

We already went on 19 days strike during the past 13 years. Still there is no response from consecutive governments. We organised 10-day agitation programmes at Jantar Mantar in Delhi to press our demand in March this year. We also organised a huge rally before Parliament in March. Despite all this, neither the Centre nor the state government has responded positively on our demand. We are left with no option but to boycott duties on September 1 to bring pressure on government, said K. Ravinder Reddy, president, TNGOs Association and chairman of Telangana Employees JAC.
Telangana Udyogual Sangham has also extended support to the strike. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: Over 3.5 lakh state government employees have threatened go on leave en masse on September 1 demanding scrapping of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS). Telangana Udyogual Sangham has also extended support to the strike.

The financial condition of Telangana government is good. There is no need to continue 1.10 lakh employees in the CPS while the majority are covered under the OPS.

Employees and their families covered under the CPS are facing hardships in claiming pensions. Savings are put to market risks by investing in stock markets and mutual funds, said A. Padma Chary, president, TUS.

Teachers associations such as PRTU, UTF etc have also extended support to the strike.
Hyderabad: The state government is actively considering establishing a third aerospace park in the state, industries minister K.T. Rama Rao said on Saturday. He said the two aerospace parks in Shamshabad and Adibatla had been completely developed, and were occupied.

He was speaking after inaugurating the largest production facility of Nucon Aerospace in Adibatla on city outskirts. Mr Rao said the government was focu-sed on making Hyde-rabad a defence and aerospace hub. A de-fence fair will be organised in the city, he said.

The government was in talks with Cranfield University, England, to establish an aviation university here. Nucon is a leading manufacturers of high precision control systems for marine, ground and aerospace industries. It has provided comprehensive solutions to prestigious clients like Isro, DRDO, HAL and BDL.
Samanullah, a netizen tweeted, Even Sardar Patels Rs 3,000 crore statue is reportedly fabricated in China. At least can we not do that? Whats the use of Make in India programme?

Hyderabad: A war of words has erupted on Twitter over the Indo-China stand off in Doklam and on the demand for banning Chinese products in India.

Leaders and netizens are active on Twitter to air their views. Hyderabad MP and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi tweeted, The Chinese army is in Doklam. They are throwing stones in Ladakh, occupied PoK building CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) and OBOR (One Belt One Road project) and the Modi government places trust in Chinese ship.

Owaisi was responding to a tweet by mediaperson Suhasini Haidar. When asked how Petrochina was given a contract to ship oil from the US to India, the minister says despite the border stand off, China is keen to do business.

Samanullah, a netizen tweeted, Even Sardar Patels Rs 3,000 crore statue is reportedly fabricated in China. At least can we not do that? Whats the use of Make in India programme?
Kochi: The state government will focus more strongly on promoting young and budding entrepreneurs with policies and other necessary support, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said on Saturday. Interacting with students at the IEDC Summit 2017, he urged them to set their sights on innovation and excellence. The students have exhibited a number of prototypes as part of the event which proves their ability. The state government has always been a staunch supporter of the startup ecosystem and will give them full-fledged support henceforth, he said.

Pinarayi also launched a startup venture, Traffitizer  a novel solution to help ambulances stuck in traffic. Traffitizer- Emergency Response System (T-ERS) is a Centralized Internet of Things based system, with artificial intelligence at different levels, enabling automatic switching of traffic lights to green for ambulances to pass through. Addressing a series of panel discussions held as part of the summit , a group of entrepreneurs said success of a startup does not depend on geography, language or the universality of the product or services.

The discussants included Varun Chandran of Corporate 360, a company operating from a small village, John Kuriakose, founder of DentCare Dental Labs, James Joseph of Jackfruit 365 and Shruti Chaturvedi, founder of Chaipaani. Corporate 360 is set up in a small village in Pathanapuram. It is a big misconception that business happens only in IT parks. Place is not at all a factor for the success of the company, said Varun.

John Kuriakose said passion is the main ingredient needed for creating a success story. I came from a humble background, where it was tough to earn a days meal. I started learning about the dental care industry when I was working in a dispensary. And the passion to learn about the it drew me to start the business, he said. The summit held by Kerala Startup mission is rated as one of the largest student entrepreneur events in the country.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President Dr G Parameshwar said no decision has been taken regarding giving tickets to the seven suspended Janata Dal (Secular) legislators who are joining the party 'unconditionally'.

Talking to reporters here on Friday, he said the Assembly polls were far away and the pros and cons would be discussed at the time of distributing tickets after seeking the opinion of the defeated Congress candidates in the seven Assembly constituencies in 2013 elections. "If the situation warrants we will take these JD(S) legislators into confidence (in case they are denied tickets). Ultimately, the aim is to bring back our party to power and that is possible if winnable candidates are given tickets".

Chamarajapet JD(S) legislator Zameer Ahmed Khan had claimed that AICC Vice-President Rahul Gandhi had promised tickets to all seven legislators who would be joining the Congress party in December.

Asked about reported opposition from Congress Floor Leader in Lok Sabha M Mallikarjun Kharge to giving the ticket to Bhima Naik, Akhanda Srinivasamurthy and Iqbal Ansari, Dr Parameshwar denied that any discussion was held on distribution of tickets. "I am not aware of what Mr Kharge said but all seven JD(S) legislators are joining the party without imposing any conditions".

Training his guns on the BJP for accusing the state government of being corrupt, he demanded that BJP leaders release documents to prove the cases of corruption. The Congress had released documents to prove the alleged involvement of BJP chief Yeddyurappa in corruption. This rule is applicable to them too".
BJP state president B.S. Yeddyurappa and senior leaders of the party R. Ashok, Shobha Karandlaje and others were detained during their protest against state government at Freedom Park in Bengaluru on Friday. (Photo: SHASHIDHAR B.)

Bengaluru: With the battle for the ballot getting more intense in the run-up to the 2018 state polls, BJP state president, B.S.Yeddyurappa on Friday accused Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of using the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to file false cases against him and stop him from taking on his government on issues of corruption.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is using the ACB to file cases against me. The government has reopened 10 -year -old denotification cases against me, but I will not run away. Like other Chief Ministers, I too denotified land to protect the properties of the poor. I am not afraid of these cases and will continue to fight the Congress government," he declared, addressing a massive Bengaluru Chalo rally orgainsed by the city unit of the BJP here against corruption in the Siddaramaiah government.

Demanding the resignation of Ministers D.K. Shivakumar and Ramesh Jarkiholi, who were recently raided by the Income Tax Department, Mr Yeddyurappa warned the chief minister that once the BJP comes to power , he would send him to jail. Calling the Siddaramaiah government the most corrupt in the country, he said the BJP would hold frequent rallies against it in future.

Senior BJP leader and Udupi Chikamagaluru MP, Shobha Karandlaje, in her address, claimed the Congress government was threatening to file cases against her on power purchase deals made during her tenure as Energy Minister in the state. "But I am not afraid of these cases, There were no illegalities in the purchase of power during my tenure. It was done through global tenders and I have not bought power from my uncle or relatives. Don't drag my name unnecessarily into a power purchase scam," she warned, also demanding the resignation of Mr Shivakumar and Mr Jarkiholi.

Earlier, speaking to reporters Mr Yeddyurappa claimed that revival of the denotification cases against him was politically motivated. I have faith in the judiciary and will fight the cases legally, "he said.

Former Deputy Chief Minister, R Ashok , who was present, said the party would stand by Mr Yeddyurappa and claimed that the people too were with him.

Fridays rally was bigger than any other organized by the BJP in the state over the last four years. Having received an earful from party national president, Amit Shah during his three- day visit to Bengaluru for failing to be an effective opposition in the state, the party made sure that thousands of party workers from all the city Assembly constituencies participated along with nearly all the top party leaders of the state. Senior leader, Muralidhar Rao, who is in charge of the partys affairs in Karnataka was also present.

The BJP leaders ,who took out the rally from Freedom Park to the Gandhi statue on M G Road, courted arrest by trying to barge into the Vidhana Soudha.

BSY may not appear before ACB today

Though the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials have issued notice to BJP State President and former CM B.S. Yeddyurappa in connection with the two FIRs registered against him in land denotification case, it is most likely that he wont appear before the investigating officers on Saturday.

The ACB issued a notice to Yeddyurappa on Thursday asking him to appear for questioning regarding land denotification cases. However, sources that most VVIPs dont appear after the first notice.

We have issued the notice but VVIPs want to buy time as much as possible, said an official source, adding that there was no confirmation about Mr Yeddyurappas appearing until late on Friday.

As per procedure, ACB officials issue three notices to any accused and when they dont appear, the only option left will be to move court. It all depends on the IO on how to proceed in such cases when the accused does not appear after notices being issued. Generally, notice will be served thrice and if they wont turn up, the IO will submit to the court that it is essential to take the accused into custody and interrogate him, as he is not cooperating with the investigations. Then, the court would issue warrant, following which the accused will be arrested and taken into custody for questioning, another official said.
Bihar Chief Minister and National President of JD(U) Nitish Kumar addressing the party's national executive committee during a meeting in Patna on Saturday. (Photo: PTI)

Patna: A month after Nitish Kumar formed a government in Bihar with the support of the BJP, the JD(U) passed a resolution to join the NDA during the partys national executive meeting.

The decision also paves way for the JD(U) to become a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modis Cabinet.

BJP president Amit Shah had asked us to join NDA. We have passed the resolution and from today onwards we are part of it, its principal general secretary K.C. Tyagi told reporters after the meeting on Saturday.

Mr Kumar had snapped ties with the saffron party in 2013, walking out of the NDA on grounds that Narendra Modi was declared as Prime Ministerial candidate by the BJP.

But after being badly bruised in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, he sank all his political differences and joined hands with his arch-rival Lalu Yadav and returned as the Chief Minister of Bihar for the third consecutive term by defeating the BJP in 2015 Assembly elections.

However, his decision to break the 20-month-old alliance with the RJD and the Congress has resulted in splitting his party JD(U). Senior JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav was the first to revolt against the decision followed by another senior party leader Ali Anwar.

Reacting to the development Mr Yadav, who had called a separate meeting of rebel leaders in Patna, said, I have nothing against any individual but its the people of the state who are feeling betrayed.

After the meeting, Mr Kumar, who is also the party chief, targeted Mr Yadav and questioned why he hadnt stopped the party from splitting in 2013.

He was the party president of the JD(U) when we decided to split from the NDA in 2013. Why he didnt stop us then, Mr Nitish Kumar said while addressing party leaders in Patna.

Continuing his attack on his rivals, Mr Kumar said that those who say that the JD(U) has no mass base are misinformed, any party JD(U) sides with wins during elections.

Though the meeting ended without any action against Mr Yadav, Mr Tyagi gave hints that decision against him can be taken after the RJDs August 27 rally.

He will cross the Laxman Rekha if he attends RJDs rally on August 27. So far the party has not taken any action against him because of his seniority and long association with the JD(U), he added.

Mr Tyagi also categorically denied that there was any split within the JD(U) following differences with senior leader Sharad Yadav.

He said talks of division in the party are not true as 16 of 19 state committees are still with us only our Kerala unit stayed away from the meeting.
Speaking at a seminar in New Delhi this April in the presence of former president Pranab Mukherjee, the chief justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar held forth on the binding force of pledges in an election manifesto, a topic with which the subject of the seminar  electoral issues and economic reforms  bore an inextricable connection. The judge lamented, No consequence occurs whether promises are fulfilled or not Even our legal system provides for no consequences for political parties if promises made in the manifesto are not fulfilled. The citizenry forgets and the election manifesto becomes a mere piece of paper... Caste issues are projected to ensure a majority in each constituency. Implementing his plea for legal sanction against broken electoral promises poses a problem, however, and one hopes Chief Justice Khehar can bring to bear his legal erudition into this issue. Political manifestos attracted public notice in England in the 19th century when political warfare was at its peak and political parties battled over their respective electoral mandates or lack thereof. Sir William Ivor Jennings, a noted authority, analysed the debate in his book, Cabinet Government.

A government exists only because it has secured a majority at an election, but it secures that majority by appealing to the electorate to support a policy. The electorate expects that the policy will be carried to fruition. It does not expect that radical changes will be made unless they were part of the party policy or are consequences of that policy. The government must, of course, meet emergencies if and when they arise, but, emergencies apart, major developments of policy should not be entered upon without approval of the electorate. Yet, (T)here may indeed be circumstances in which it is the duty of the government to ignore its lack of mandate and even to act counter to the mandate which it has received. National interest or an emergency might force a government to act contrary to the election manifesto on which it was voted to power. Two English rulings by judges of eminence are relevant. They concern local bodies, but the principles apply to legislatures as well.

In the Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council election of 1976, its control passed from Labour to the Conservatives. Labour was for abolishing grammar schools. The Conservatives were for preserving them and claimed a mandate for it since it was an issue in the polls. Evidently, London did not sympathise with Tameside and sought to overrule it. The House of Lords set aside the centres view. It failed to take into account that Tameside Council was entitled  indeed in a sense bound  to carry out the policy on which it was elected. Another judge held that the Conservatives could claim to have obtained a mandate in the same way as a party which has won a general election can claim to have a mandate to carry out its manifesto. In 1983, the issue before the House of Lords was whether Transport for London ought, to be run as a tax-financed service or on commercial lines. The lords ruled that members of the Greater London Council, while performing the collective duty of the GLC, must not treat themselves as irrevocably bound to carry out pre-announced policies contained in election manifestos even though, by that time, changes of circumstances have occurred that were unforeseen when those policies were announced and would add significantly to the disadvantages that would result from carrying them out.

Another judge said, It is, of course, entirely appropriate for a council, the majority of whose members have been elected after setting out a particular policy in their election manifesto, to take into account, and give considerable weight to, that circumstance when exercising their discretion in relation to that policy after they have been elected. It is, however, entirely wrong for such a majority to regard themselves as bound to exercise their discretion in relation to that policy in accordance with their election promises. The GLCs decision was held to be bad in law precisely because its members felt themselves bound by the manifesto.

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Plastic bags are banned in 17 states and union territories. In the capital, however, it has taken the National Green Tribunal to crack the whip on the government to ensure that the ban, announced last year, is enforced. The NGT had prohibited the use of all forms of disposable plastic in the entire city, specially at hotels, restaurants and for public and private functions, while asking the Delhi government to take appropriate steps against storage, sale and use of such material from January 1 this year. Plastics above 50 microns in thickness were permissible. It had also said that an environment compensation of Rs 10,000 would be imposed on vegetable vendors and slaughter houses for throwing garbage in public places.

Last month too, NGT criticised the rampant use of plastic in the national capital despite the. The Union government last year also imposed a similar ban. But nothing worked due to various reasons, mostly due to the resistance from the powerful plastic bag makers lobby and confusion among the bureaucrats on how to prevent use of plastic bags by retailers and consumers. The latest order however leaves little room for complacency. The babus have now been directed to chart out an action plan and present it to the tribunal in order to escape its wrath. NDMC babus have been first off the block by starting a drive against the use of plastic bags that are less than 50 microns, in their jurisdiction.

Mixing it up, Modi style

The Modi government continues to defy the old conventions of the bureaucracy, specially when it comes to the operational turf of the various services. Mostly this has adversely affected the IAS, who for decades have guarded their space zealously, preventing officials from other services to enter their sacred domain. But Mr Modi is no stickler for haloed conventions, rather more of an iconoclast, as many have noticed since 2014. The appointment of 22 joint secretaries, approved by the Appointments Committee of Cabinet recently, are in line with Mr Modis view that traditional turfs should not come in the way of good governance. He also clearly believes in providing equal career opportunities for non-IAS services. So in an otherwise routine appointment announcement, observers noted with interest the names of two babus in the list. IPS officers Satinder Pal Singh and Anil Kumar Agarwal have been appointed as joint secretary, ministry of shipping, and department of industrial policy and promotion respectively, previously preserves of their IAS peers.
Raj Babbar, Uttar Pradesh Congress president, is not in an enviable position at the moment. He is heading a party whose fortunes have hit rock bottom and chances of revival seem bleak right now. But Mr Babbar is spearheading an unrelenting campaign against the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh and the death of 30 children due to lack of oxygen in Gorakhpur, seems to have given the much-needed oxygen to the Congress. In an interview with Amita Verma, Mr Babbar candidly spoke about the issue, his party, its future and also the strategy for bringing the Congress back to the political centrestage. Excerpts:

The Congress is running a campaign on the Gorakhpur tragedy. Is this an attempt to cash in on the incident?

For the Congress, the death of children without oxygen is an issue and not a political campaign. We are protesting against the arrogance of power where the entire government is not even willing to admit that there were lapses. No one is directly blaming Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for what happened but, at least, someone must take moral responsibility. Do they realise that when children die, it is actually the future of the country that is dying? This is a serious issue and the Congress realises the sensitivity of the matter. Sadly, the BJP does not.

Has the Congress in UP already slipped into the election mode? The flurry of activity in the party makes it seem so.

There is no election round the corner. We have just learnt from our mistakes. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi discussed the issue with PCC chiefs and everyone decided that the party must connect with the common man. We are not in government, but we can always reach out to the poorest of the poor and that is what we have started doing. This is not aimed at any election. Even the Lok Sabha elections are about two years away. This time, we are building up our own strengths and not banking on others weaknesses.

In Uttar Pradesh, you have been touring extensively since the past few weeks. What is the purpose of your tours?

We have started a Haq Maango campaign. I am going into the districts and villages where I interact with different groups of people  farmers, students, employees, traders, etc. There is no formal programme, no stage and no speeches. More than talking to these people, I try to listen to their problems. They raise questions and so do I. We want to reassure the people that the Congress is ready to listen to them. We may not be able to solve their problems since we are not in power, but we can still raise issues with them. We hope this will get us acceptance at the village, block and district level and also mobilise our party workers.

What has been your feedback after these meetings?

It is shocking to learn that the government is more concerned about its symbolism than it is about addressing real issues. In several villages, cows are emerging as a major problem for farmers. This may sound shocking but it is true.

After the crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses and the incidents of cow vigilantism, people have started abandoning cows once they stop giving milks. These cows run amok in the fields and destroy crops. The farmers said that they cannot even protest because the gau rakshaks will get to them. I have got recordings of what the farmers said. The new generation in farmer families is at crossroads  there are no jobs and no avenues for them. They are migrating to cities yet they remain jobless.

It seems that you are single-handedly going ahead with this programme. What is the response from the people?

No, I am trying to involve the entire PCC in this. I have requested our seven MLAs and two MLCs to remain present at the UPCC office and meet party workers who come with problems. It is not necessary that only the PCC president should deal with everything. I have asked even the PCC leaders to start moving out of Lucknow. People are happy that someone is willing to listen to them.

When you took over as UPCC chief last year, your own party leaders did not take you seriously. They thought you were a star, who was not familiar with the nitty-gritty of politics and would leave soon. Suddenly they seem to be taking you seriously now.

(Laughs) I have tried to convince everyone that main yahan tikne aaya hoon, basne nahin (I have come to stay but not stay on forever). I treat all party workers as my colleagues and I am certainly not their boss. I have always been passionately involved in what I do  earlier it was films and now politics. I followed my director in films and now my leader in politics. I will never exceed my brief and my colleagues have nothing to fear.

The alliance with the Samajwadi Party has caused a lot of heartburn among your party workers. They want to know what will be the Congress stand for 2019 polls?

I cannot say anything on this because the Lok Sabha election is a national election and the decision will be taken by the party leadership keeping national issues in mind. My efforts will be to increase our presence in the 80 seats and strengthen our footprint.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, with NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-M aboard, in a NASA handout photo obtained on August 18, 2017. (Photo: AFP)

NASA has launched the latest in a series of satellites aimed at ensuring astronauts at the International Space Station can communicate with Earth.

The $408 million Boeing-made Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS-M) soared into space atop an Atlas V rocket that launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida at 8:29 am (1229 GMT).

The satellite will "support critical space communication into the mid-2020s," NASA said in a statement.

The satellite will facilitate space-to-ground communication for NASA's low-Earth orbit operations, "ensuring scientists, engineers and control room staff can readily access data for missions like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station."

TDRS-M is the last of 13 such satellites that have been launched since 1983.

An antenna on the satellite was damaged last month at a processing facility in Titusville, Florida. The satellite was repaired, but the mishap set the launch back by about two weeks.

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Android O is touching down to Earth with the total solar eclipse, reads a tagline on Android page.

On the day when a total solar eclipse will sweep the United States, Google will be unveiling the latest Android operating system, Android O, through a livestreaming event from the New York City at 2:40 pm ET, reads a post on an Android page.

The teaser on the page shows a running clock for the announcement along with a tagline: Android O is touching down to Earth with the total solar eclipse, bringing some super (sweet) new powers!

Android O will be Google's Android version 8.0 after Android Nougat. Revealed in March, the operating system is currently at its fourth developer preview, yet without a codename.

To date, Google hasnt officially disclosed what the O in Android O stands for, while many believe it could be Oreo. In fact, in a file caught by Android Police, Google accidentally revealed that the version will be named Oreo. However, it will only be confirmed on August 21.

Photo: Android Police

The latest developer build of Android 8.0 brings a lot of bug fixes and a host of improvements for enhancing the stability.

The version is first expected to roll out on Googles own devices such as Pixel and Nexus and later on to other Android-run device including Samsung and Nokia.

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Samsung is recalling thousands of batteries from its Galaxy Note 4 handset fearing safety risks it may cause just days before when it is set to launch Galaxy Note 8.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued the recall noticing that the batteries fitted in the 2014 Galaxy Note model have a tendency to overheat and poses risks of burns and fire hazards, reported CNET.

The South Korean tech giant is recalling about 10,200 Galaxy Note 4's batteries. The firm recalled millions of Galaxy Note 7 devices last year following reports over battery explosion during and after charging.

Samsungs announcement about another Galaxy Note handsets' battery recall has raised concerns about the upcoming Galaxy Note 8 device, scheduled to be launch on August 23 in an event in New York.

However, unlike the Galaxy Note 7 debacle, Samsung claims that the problem was only found in refurbished Galaxy Note 4 models repaired by FedEx Supply Chain through an AT&T insurance programme. It said the affected batteries found in Note 4 models, distributed between December 2016 and April 2017 under the scheme, arent genuine Samsung product but could be counterfeits.

"FedEx Supply Chain has recalled a batch of lithium batteries that were installed in mobile devices," Samsung told in a statement to CNET, "As some of the batteries may be counterfeit. We are closely engaged with our customer to make sure all of these lithium batteries are safely and quickly returned, and will replace those lithium batteries free of charge for consumers."

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Washington: US President Donald Trump on Friday said the world must use "whatever means necessary" to stop "radical Islamic terrorism," after twin attacks in Spain killed at least 14 people.

The Islamic State propaganda agency Amaq claimed one of its "soldiers" carried out a van rampage on a crowded street in Barcelona, though the suspect was still at large. Thirteen people were killed.

A second similar attack took place early Friday in the Spanish seaside resort of Cambrils. One of six civilians injured later died. Police killed the five attackers in a gun battle.

"Radical Islamic Terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary! The courts must give us back our protective rights. Have to be tough!" Trump said in one of his signature early morning tweet storms.

The Republican billionaire leader blamed "Obstructionist Democrats" for complicating security in the United States.

"They use the courts and associated delay at all times. Must stop!" he said, in a possible reference to the stalling in federal courts of the full implementation of his controversial travel ban on nationals from six mainly Muslim countries.

"Homeland Security and law enforcement are on alert & closely watching for any sign of trouble. Our borders are far tougher than ever before!"

On Thursday, Trump courted controversy in the wake of the Barcelona van attack when he appeared to endorse the idea of mass executions for Islamist extremists.

As justification, he alluded to a widely debunked account of summary punishment by a US general in the Philippines in the early 1900s.
The nationalists had gathered to protest plans by the city of Charlottesville to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. (Photo: AP)

Washington: The members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), an advisory committee to the White House on cultural issues, have resigned citing the controversial comments made by US President Donald Trump about the racist violence in Virginia.

In a letter dated on Friday, and signed by 16 of 17 committee members including two Indian-Americans Jhumpa Lahiri and Kal Penn, Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change has also been cited as a reason for their resignation.

"Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too," said members of the presidential advisory committee who resigned on Friday.

Trump had commented about last weekend's "Unite the Right" gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has blamed "many sides" for the demonstrations that left an anti-racism activist dead.

All the members who resigned were appointed by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama.

The White House in a statement said Trump had already decided not to renew the executive order for the PCAH, which expires later this year.

"While the committee has done good work in the past, in its current form it simply is not a responsible way to spend American tax dollars. The PCAH merely redirects funding from the federal cultural agencies that answer directly to the President, Congress and taxpayers. These cultural agencies do tremendous work and they will continue to engage in these important projects," it said.

In its letter, members of the presidential committee said reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following Trump's "support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville."

"The false equivalencies you push cannot stand," said the letter released to the press.

"Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background, or identity is un-American. We have fought slavery, segregation, and internment. We must learn from our rich and often painful history," the members said in the letter.

Noting that art is about inclusion and the humanities include a vibrant free press, the members alleged that Trump had attacked both.

"You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding. The administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Act, and attacked our brave trans service members. You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country," they said.

Underscoring the importance of open and free dialogue, the members said the actions and words of the president are pushing further away from the freedoms they are entitled to.

"This does not unify the nation we all love. We know the importance of open and free dialogue through our work in the cultural diplomacy realm, most recently with the first-ever US Government arts and culture delegation to Cuba, a country without the same First Amendment protections we enjoy here. Your words and actions push us all further away from the freedoms we are guaranteed.

"Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions. We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic," the members wrote in the letter.

Earlier this week, two business advisory councils were disbanded as members left in protest.

Among others who resigned were Paula Boggs, Chuck Close, Richard Cohen, Fred Goldring, Howard L Gottlieb, Vicki Kennedy, Anne Luzzatto, Thom Mayne, Eric Ortner, Ken Solomon, Caroline Taylor, Jill Cooper Udall, Andrew Weinstein, George Wolfe and John Lloyd Young.
Washington: An actor-turned-politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger on Saturday took a dig at United States President Donald Trumps remark on both sides to be blamed following the violence in Charlottesville.

The Terminator actor, often seen vocal towards President Trump and his polices, said lets terminate hate in a video message, posted on Twitter by California-based ATTN, which sends a direct message to Trump and white nationalists.

The statement in video message reads, If you choose to march with a flag that symbolises the slaughter of millions of people, there are not two sides to that. The only way to beat the loud, angry voices of hate is to meet them with louder, more reasonable voices.

Schwarzenegger, former California governor, using a bobblehead doll of Trump, said the president has a moral responsibility to send an unequivocal message that you wont stand for hate and racism.

Be it Meryl Streep or Robert De Niro, Mark Ruffalo or JK Rowling and Olivia Wilde, as well as Schwarzenegger, all have never shied off from speaking against Trump.

Knowing for changing stances of his own statement, Trump last week had indirectly supported the violence in Charlottesville. Hours after the violence in his first response on Twitter, Trump blamed many sides for the violence that claimed three lives.

Making veiled attack on so-called white nationalists group, like neo-Nazis and KKK, Schwarzenegger said These ghosts you idolise spent the rest of their lives living in shame and right now, theyre resting in hell.

Post Charlottesville violent clashes, Arnold Schwarzenegger had donated $100,000 to an anti-hate organisation.

The action hero also posted a picture on Instagram wearing t-shirt in his classic Terminator role sporting the same words.
The wargames, details of which are a closely guarded secret, simulate military conflict with the isolated country. (Photo: AFP)

Seoul: In air conditioned bunkers and at military bases across South Korea, it is with keyboards - not tanks - that South Korean and the US forces will launch military exercises on Monday, denounced by North Korea as a rehearsal for war.

The August 21 to August 31 exercises involve computer simulations designed to prepare for the unthinkable: war with nuclear-capable North Korea.

The wargames, details of which are a closely guarded secret, simulate military conflict with the isolated country. The US describes them as defensive in nature, a term North Korean state media has dismissed as a deceptive mask.

The drills deal with all the steps involved in a war, of course, towards victory, said Moon Seong-mook, a retired South Korean brigadier who regularly participated in the drills until the mid-2000s.

Far from the dusty firing ranges just south of the heavily fortified border with North Korea, US and South Korean troops hunch over laptops and screens wearing earphones and camouflaged combat uniforms, according to photos of past UFG drills on the United States Forces Korea website.

The US military describes the software behind the drills as state-of-the-art wargaming computer simulations. There will be no field training during the exercise, according to US Forces Korea.

As part of the exercises, imagery from military satellites orbiting above the Korean peninsula, is at times used to peer deep into North Korea, said a former South Korean government official who declined to be identified.

Banks of monitors and computer graphics create simulated battlefields, complete with troop movements, according to Park Yong-han, a military expert formerly with the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analysis.

You can expand a certain area to see what troops are in what sort of status and where they will move, said Park.

In the case of North Korea, we cant see everything in real time but the military deduces the locations of North Korean troops, including the leadership during the exercise.

That focus on the North Korean leadership is what particularly infuriates Pyongyang, experts say.

We cannot stand the fact the enemy tries to form schemes to assassinate our leadership, North Koreas state news agency, KCNA, said in July.

We will follow to the ends of the earth those who dare try to harm our core.

Commando raid

North Koreas rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching the US mainland has fuelled a surge in tension.

US President Donald Trump warned that North Korea would face fire and fury if it threatened the United States. The North responded by threatening to fire missiles towards the US Pacific island territory of Guam.

The North later said it was holding off firing towards Guam, while it waited to see what the United States would do next.

Called Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), the joint drills have their roots in a 1968 raid on South Koreas Blue House presidential complex, when Unit 124 of the North Korean army secretly entered South Korea and unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate the then president, Park Chung-hee.

The United States had been conducting regular command and control drills in the years following the 1950-53 Korean War, but combined exercises with the South Korean military following the failed raid, in which all but two of the North Korean commandos were killed.

The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea. Many of them will be joining thousands of South Korean forces in the exercise.

Other South Korean allies are also joining this year with troops from Australia, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand taking part.

Its to prepare if something big were to occur and we needed to protect ROK, a U.S. military spokeswoman, Michelle Thomas, said, referring to South Korea by the initials of its official name, the Republic of Korea.

North and South Korea are still technically at war with the North after the Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

China, North Koreas main ally and trading partner, has urged the United States and South Korea to scrap the drills and so has Russia. The United States has not backed down.

My advice to our leadership is that we not dial back our exercises, said Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff on Thursday in Beijing.

The exercises are very important to maintaining the ability of the alliance to defend itself.
Police officers stand next to the van involved on an attack in Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday. (Photo: AP)

Barcelona: Suspects in Spain's twin terror attacks had been planning an even bigger assault than the deadly car rampages they carried out, police said Friday, as distressing details emerged of families torn apart in the horror.

A 35-year-old Italian man was among 14 killed, mowed down in front of his wife and young children in Barcelona when a driver rammed his van through crowds on the busy Las Ramblas boulevard on Thursday, before fleeing on foot.

Police said they shot dead five "suspected terrorists" who had knocked pedestrians down in the Catalan seaside resort of Cambrils in a second attack in the early hours of Friday, and arrested four others as Spain reeled from the deadly violence.

Details of the investigation are sparse but police said the Barcelona suspect driver may have been among the five killed.

And according to the daily La Vanguardia newspaper in Barcelona, officers were still on the hunt for four other suspects thought to be involved with the cell that devised the terror project claimed by the Islamic State group.

- Bigger plans -

In what has been a complex, fast-moving investigation, police revealed the suspects had been planning something larger.

"They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona, and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope," said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police.

He was referring to a blast in a house in the town of Alcanar, about 200 kilometres (140 miles) south of Barcelona, Wednesday evening, which police said killed one person.

Initially treated as a random gas blast, police later linked it to the Barcelona assault, believing occupants of the house were preparing an explosive device inside and slipped up. It remains unclear what the target was.

Police removed dozens of gas canisters from the house, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Trapero said that after this the suspects quickly went on to commit "more rudimentary" attacks. These involved the vehicles ploughing into pedestrians in Barcelona and Cambrils.

The Cambrils suspects had an axe and knives in the car as well as fake explosive belts stuck to their bodies, said police.

- High 'level of coordination' -

Both Spanish attacks followed the same modus operandi. Drivers deliberately targeted pedestrians with their vehicles, the latest in a series of such assaults in Europe.

The Mediterranean resort of Nice in France was particularly hard hit on July 14, 2016, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd, killing 86 people.

Otso Iho of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre said the Spanish assaults, which stretched out over two different cities, appeared to be "a much higher level of coordination than has been typically present in previous attacks."

It is also believed to be the first time IS has claimed an attack in Spain.

In a poignant moment Friday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, King Felipe VI and the president of Catalonia -- where both attacks took place -- held a minute of silence in Barcelona. It was followed by the crowd applauding and shouting "not afraid".

But in a sign of the tensions sparked by the attacks, about 20 far-right militants tried to protest at the march. Some held up signs reading "No More Mosques" or "Refugees not welcome anymore".

Scuffles broke out between the far-right militants and the march participants.

- Relatives separated -

Details started to emerge Friday on the identity of victims, as did tragic stories of families ripped apart.

Witnesses in Barcelona described how the van pushed through the crowd, leaving bodies strewn along the boulevard as people fled for their lives, screaming in panic.

"We were on the city tour bus, we were 20 feet from the accident when it happened," said Alex Luque, a 19-year-old student from New York.

"We heard the van and the impact with people and then we saw people running."

Then just eight hours later attackers struck in the early hours of Friday in the seaside resort of Cambrils. An Audi A3 car rammed into pedestrians, injuring six civilians and a police officer. One civilian, a woman, later died of her injuries.

The police shot dead the five attackers. They also said they had arrested four suspects -- three Moroccans and a Spaniard.

There were some three dozen nationalities among the dead and injured, from countries including Algeria, Australia, China, France, Ireland, Peru and Venezuela, according to Spain's civil protection agency.

Families posted messages on Facebook looking for lost relatives including one heartbreaking appeal for a missing seven-year-old boy, Julian Alessandro Cadman.

- Memories of Madrid 2004 -

Spain, the world's third most popular tourism destination, had until now been spared in the recent wave of extremist attacks that have rocked nearby France, Belgium and Germany.

It had even seen a surge in tourists as visitors fled other restive sunshine destinations such as Tunisia and Egypt. But it is no stranger to jihadist attacks.

In March 2004, it was hit by what is still Europe's deadliest, when bombs on commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people in an attack claimed by Al Qaeda-inspired extremists.

Spain has also had to deal with a decades-long campaign of violence waged by Basque separatist group ETA, which only declared a ceasefire in 2011.
The stabbing spree comes with Europe on high alert a day after drivers slammed vehicles into pedestrians in two attacks in Spain (Representational image)

Two people were killed and six were injured in a stabbing spree in the Finnish city of Turku on Friday, police said, after officers shot one suspect and warned several others could still be at large.

There are eight victims in the stabbing. Two dead and six injured, Turku police tweeted after the assault in a market square. Police shot one suspect in the legs and arrested him. Security forces wrote on Twitter that police were looking for other possible perpetrators.

They ask the population to leave and avoid central Turku, the tweet added. The motive of the suspect or suspects was not immediately known.

The stabbing spree comes with Europe on high alert a day after drivers slammed vehicles into pedestrians in two attacks in Spain, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 100 others. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack.

In Turku, images of a body covered in a white blanket at the scene of the stabbing was published on some online news sites, including the local daily Turun Sanomat.

I saw an old woman, I tried to help her. She was bleeding all over her body, Wali Hashi, who witnessed the attack, said. She was wounded to her neck with the knife... I took her aside.

Another witness, who did not want to give his name, told public television YLE: A young woman screamed really loudly at one corner of the square. We saw a man on the square, with a knife in his hand and he was waving it.
Curiously, while he referred to Indians as an example of migrants who can be offered such an option, India does not offer dual nationality to its citizens (Representational Image)

A leadership candidate for the UKs anti-immigrant far-right party has come up with a radical plan to cut unnecessary population in the UK by incentivising some migrants, including from India, to return to the country of their origin.

John Rees-Evans, a candidate to lead the UK Independence Party, made a specific reference to Indians and Tanzanians in relation to a so-called fast track export-import scheme of offering up to 9,000 to certain Commonwealth migrants to leave the UK. Its not going to be draconian. Its not going to be fascist. Im not interested in using eugenics or any evil things like that, and yet I would be pushing for negative net migration towards one million a year, he is heard saying in a speech filmed during a meeting earlier this month and first published by the Daily Mirror.

He suggested the UK governments foreign aid budget be cut from more than 13 billion a year to 1 billion, with 12.3 billion then spent on incentivising British citizens with dual citizenship to leave the country, citing British Indians and Tanzanians, whom he said could set up their own businesses.

Curiously, while he referred to Indians as an example of migrants who can be offered such an option, India does not offer dual nationality to its citizens.
The clip surfaced after a recent move by Hurriyat leaders to downplay fears of the growing influence of the ISIS in the Valley. (Photo: File)

Beirut: Militants of the Islamic State group carried out a deadly attack in the Spanish seaside resort of Cambrils, the jihadist organisation's propaganda outlet Amaq said on Saturday.

"Attacks by the soldiers of the Caliphate in Spain... led to the deaths and wounding of more than 120 people from the states of the Crusader alliance," it said in a statement on its Telegram account.

It said its fighters "ran over several Crusaders with a truck in the coastal town of Cambrils."

Eight hours after a deadly attack on Thursday afternoon that left 13 people dead in Barcelona, an Audi A3 car rammed into pedestrians in Cambrils, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Barcelona.

Police killed the five attackers, some of whom were wearing explosive belts.

Six civilians and a police officer were wounded in the attack and one woman later died of her wounds, authorities said.

IS, which once controlled a self-declared "caliphate" across large parts of Iraq and Syria, has suffered major losses in recent months.

It has called for attacks against states taking part in the US-led coalition fighting against it.
US President Donald Trump's embattled chief strategist Steve Bannon today left his position, a top White House official said, without elaborating whether he was fired, or resigned.



Bannon, 63, who played a key role in the electoral victory of Trump last year, became the fourth high-profile White House official to have left the Trump administration in recent weeks.



The other three being White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci.



Over the past few days, there had been an increasing demand from Trump's political opponents, Democrats, in particular, to fire all those from the White House who is believed to be close to right-wing nationalists.



Leading such a demand was Indian-American Congresswoman from Washington State Pramila Jayapal.



The sudden departure of Bannon, a former editor of right- wing Breitbart news website, from the White House was celebrated by Democratic leaders and civil rights activists, who described this as a welcome step and demanded that Trump fire other right-wing nationalists within the White House.



"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.



"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," Sanders said, thus bringing down the curtains on Bannon, who played a key role in electoral victory of Trump last year.



The White House announcement comes three days after Trump said of Bannon, "I like him, he's a good man." He also said that press treats him "very unfairly."



The move was welcomed by Democratic leaders, civil rights activist and members of the diplomatic and think-tank community.



"Steve Bannon's firing is welcome news, but it doesn't disguise where President Trump himself stands on white supremacists and the bigoted beliefs they advance," Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said.



"President Trump's growing record of repulsive statements is matched by his repulsive policies. Personnel changes are worthless so long as President Trump continues to advance policies that disgrace our cherished American values.



"The Trump administration must not only purge itself of the remaining white supremacists on staff, but abandon the bigoted ideology that clearly governs its decisions," Pelosi said.



Jayapal declared this as a victory.



"This major victory was only possible because citizen- activists like you across the country raised our voices together," she said.



"On Tuesday, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal filed a resolution demanding Trump fire staff who have supported white supremacists. And today Bannon is out. Pramila's resolution played a key role in putting pressure on Bannon and the White House to respond after Charlottesville," her office said.



Former top American diplomat Nicholas Burns described this as a good news.



"He (Bannon) is wrong on immigration/refugees; Islam; trade+US role as global power. But Trump shares all his views," he tweeted.



House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley said Bannon should have never been given the honour of working in the White House and serving the Office of the President of the US.



"His past work and strong ties to the white nationalist movement are a direct assault on our American values.



"But, let's be clear, his departure does not absolve President Trump of his actions. The Oval Office has become the epicenter of support for neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and domestic terrorists. President Trump must apologise for standing up for hate and must immediately reverse course on his anti-immigrant and anti-American policies," Crowley said.
Spanish police today released the names of three Moroccans suspected of deadly terror attacks and who were shot dead overnight by security forces in the seaside resort of Cambrils.



Catalonia's regional police identified them as Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24. Police said they were searching for a fourth suspect, Younes Abouyaaqoub, aged 22.



Police yesterday stepped up their investigation into the twin vehicle attacks in Spain that left 14 dead and over 100 more injured in a bustling tourist area of Barcelona and the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils.



The attacks claimed victims and wounded from three dozen countries.



Of the 12 people police suspect of involvement in the attacks, five were shot dead by security forces in Cambrils and another four have been arrested, said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police during a television interview late Friday.



The three remaining suspects have been identified but have not been detained, he added.



Police suspect two of them may have died in a blast at a house in Alcanar, about 200 kilometres south of Barcelona, where the group is believed to have been preparing explosive devices.



Officers have found "the remains of two different people, we are working to prove that they are two of these three people who have been identified," said Trapero.



Police have not yet identified who drove the white van that sped into crowds on the busy Las Ramblas avenue in central Barcelona, leaving 13 people there dead, he added.



Earlier yesterday Trapero said the group was preparing "one or several attacks in Barcelona" with explosive devices but after the blast at the house in Alcanar, they moved quickly to commit "more rudimentary" attacks.


A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off Fiji today, US seismologists said, but it was considerably deep and there were no reports of damage or injury.



The offshore quake hit at 3:00 pm (0200 GMT) and was centred around 287 kilometres (178 miles) east of Suva, at a depth of 538 kilometres, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.



The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not immediately issue any warnings.



The quake occurred in the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a region of frequent seismic activity due to collisions between continental plates.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the ultimate aim of the new insolvency law is to preserve assets of firms which have not been able to service their debt rather than liquidating them.



"The intent of the Code is not the liquidation of assets but to preserve their value, either through existing promoters or through bringing in new promoters or partners," Jaitley said while addressing a summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry

(CII) in Mumbai.



However, in case the debtor fails to service his debt on time, he has to make way for somebody else, Jaitley added.



Stating that the insolvency and bankruptcy code (IBC) has reversed the relationship between debtor and creditor, Jaitley said the old regime by which the creditor would get tired chasing the debtor and end up getting nothing, is now over. "For years, we lived in a system which allowed debtors to allow their assets to be rusted," Jaitley recalled.



He further assured that special efforts are being made to ensure that the infrastructure requirements of various institutions under the IBC are in consonance with the requirements of this particular law. "Now that the law is put in place and the competent authority National Company Law Tribunal has been constituted, we are making special efforts to make sure that the infrastructure is strengthened and brought in consonance with the requirements of this particular law," Jaitley said.



Over a period of time, we have to see, what improvements in the law are required to make sure that the purpose for which it has been created is subserved, Jaitley added.






The widow of late Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo has resurfaced in an online video, weeks after her friends raised concerns about her fate at the hands of the authorities.

Liu Xia was last seen in government-released images of her dissident husband's sea burial on July 15, and China has been under international pressure to free her and let her travel abroad.



Liu Xia, 56, has been under de facto house arrest since her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, despite having never been charged with a crime.



"I am recovering in a province outside of Beijing. I ask you to give me time to mourn," said Liu in the minute-long video posted yesterday on YouTube, a website blocked in Communist-ruled China.



Dressed in a black t-shirt and black trousers, Liu Xia was sitting on a sofa next to a coffee table while holding a lit cigarette.



"I will see you one day in top form. While Xiaobo was sick, he also looked at life and death with some distance, so I also have to readjust. I will be with you again when my situation generally improves," she said.



The name of the film-maker, the place and date of filming, were not specified, but it would be unusual for the video to be released without the knowledge of the authorities. Plainclothes security agents guard Liu Xia's Beijing apartment.



"It is certain that she was forced by the authorities to make this video," Hu Jia, a Chinese dissident and friend of the couple, told AFP.



"How can anyone who does not even enjoy freedom express her will freely?"



Ye Du, another dissident close to Liu's wife added: "She said that to protect her family, because the current situation is that even her family can not get in touch with her."



Liu Xia's lawyer, who has filed a complaint to the United Nations, has accused the Chinese government of her "enforced disappearance".



But the local 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 lawyers.



Beijing has arrested a string of critics, activists and human rights lawyers as part of a campaign to tighten controls on civil society that began in 2012 when President Xi Jinping took power.



This latest incident comes as the ruling Communist Party prepares for a congress later this year that is expected to cement Xi's position as the most powerful Chinese leader in a generation.



William Nee, a China researcher at Amnesty International in Hong Kong said he thinks Liu Xia will remain under house arrest ahead of the event in the autumn.



"I think they will most likely continue to put her under illegal house arrest and control her movements," he said.



"Especially because the 19th Party Congress is coming up and historically, the government doesn't want any political issues to dominate the news in the months before."



Beijing has already faced a global backlash over its treatment of Liu Xiaobo, who became the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in custody since German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky in 1938.



Following his terminal cancer diagnosis, Liu requested to receive treatment abroad -- a wish that friends believe was in reality for his wife's sake -- but the government refused to release him.



A veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Liu was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 2009 for "subversion" after pushing for democratic reforms.



He died aged 61 while still in custody at a Chinese hospital on July 13, after losing his battle with liver cancer.



His death triggered rage and frustration among the dissident community and an outpouring of grief in semi- autonomous Hong Kong, where pro-democracy forces also contend with an increasingly assertive Beijing.
Finnish police said today that after new information a stabbing spree that left two people dead was now considered a terrorist attack, identifying the suspect as an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen.



Police shot and wounded the knife-wielding suspect on Friday, arresting him minutes after an afternoon stabbing rampage at a busy market square in Turku in southwestern Finland.



"The incidents were initially investigated as murders, but in light of further information received during the night, the offences include now murders with terrorist intent and their attempts," police said in a statement.



The suspect's "identity is known to the police. He is an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen," police said, providing no other details about him.



The number of injured in the attack rose from six to eight and included an Italian national and two Swedes, police said. The other victims were Finns.



Five people were also arrested in a Turku apartment overnight. "There was a raid and we have now six suspects in custody, the main suspect and five others," detective superintendent Markus Laine of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) told AFP.



"We are investigating the role of these five other people but we are not sure yet if they had anything to do with (the attack)... We will interrogate them, after that we can tell you more. But they had been in contact with the main suspect," Laine said.



In June, Finland's intelligence and security agency Supo raised the country's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second notch on a four-tier scale.



It said at the time it saw an increased risk of an attack committed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

The agency said it was keeping a particularly close eye on around 350 individuals, an increase of 80 percent since 2012.



"Finland's profile within the radical Islamist propaganda has become stronger. Finland is considered as a Western country and a part of the anti-IS coalition, and propaganda is produced in the Finnish language and directed against Finland. The propaganda incites attacks in Finland," Supo wrote.



It was not yet known whether the Turku attack was related to extremist Islamist circles.



"But if it is related, this is pretty much a continuation of the easy-to-use blatant attacks that Europe has seen," terrorism researcher Leena Malkki from the University of Helsinki told public broadcaster YLE.



Some of the suspects in the twin vehicle attacks in Spain on Thursday that killed 14 people and wounded around 100 others were also Moroccan citizens, but Malkki said there was as yet no reason to believe there was a connection between the Turku and Barcelona attacks.



"The fact that a person is from Morocco is not yet a clue" of a link between the attacks, she said.



"Many European countries are talking about the radicalisation of young Moroccan people."



Media reports in Finland said police believed the suspect had picked his victims at random, but the NBI's Laine could not confirm that.



Police have said it was likely the suspect acted alone, but on Friday indicated they were looking for "other possible perpetrators."



Police have said they are collaborating with the Finnish Immigration Service and international authorities in their investigation.



The suspect is meanwhile being treated in hospital in intensive care for a gunshot wound to the thigh.

The motive for the attack was not yet known.



"We haven't yet interrogated the main suspect because of his medical condition," Laine said.



Police also said they had impounded a white Fiat Ducato van suspected of being tied to Friday's stabbing, but provided no other information about how it was linked.



In yesterday's attack, bystanders rushed to the scene to help the victims fend off the attacker. At least one of them was stabbed when aiding another person.



According to public broadcaster YLE, five of the injured were to be released from hospital on Saturday.

The interior ministry has ordered flags to fly at half- mast across Finland in honour of the victims.



Immediately after the attack, the Nordic country raised its emergency readiness nationwide, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.



Today, a demonstration in memory of the victims was to be held at the Turku market square where the attack took place, organised by Iraqis and Syrians.



Yesterday evening, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto attended a vigil in the Turku Cathedral in honour of the victims.



Suspect an asylum seeker, targeted women: police



The Moroccan man suspected of killing two people and injuring eight others in a stabbing attack in Finland was an asylum seeker who targeted women in his attack, police said today.



"We think that the attacker especially targeted women, and the men were wounded after coming to the defence of the women," superintendent Christa Granroth of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation told reporters.



Two women were killed in yesterday's attack, and eight other people were injured. Among the eight were six women and two men, police said.



"One man was injured trying to help a victim and one man tried to stop the attacker," Granroth said.



Police identified the suspect only as an 18-year-old Moroccan national who had arrived in Finland in early 2016 and who had sought asylum.
Ousted White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon today said the Trump presidency that the right-wing conservatives helped make a reality is "over" and the president would now be "moderated" by the Republicans.



Bannon, who headed the controversial right-wing website 'Breitbart News' before joining the Trump administration, also denied that he was fired from the key position.



Hours after he left the White House, 63-year-old Bannon returned to Breitbart News as its executive chairman and also chaired the company's evening editorial meeting yesterday.



"The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over," he told the conservative outlet Weekly Standard.



"We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It'll be something else. And there'll be all kinds of fights, and there'll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over," said Bannon, who is generally perceived as the driving force behind Trump's "nationalist" ideology.



Bannon says that his departure was voluntary, and that he had planned it to coincide with the one-year anniversary of his joining the Trump campaign as chief executive, on August 14, 2016.



"On August 7, I talked to [Chief of Staff John] Kelly and to the President, and I told them that my resignation would be effective the following Monday, on 14th," he said.



The former White House chief strategist said that the fight is just the beginning.



"I feel jacked up. Now I'm free. I've got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, 'it's Bannon the Barbarian.' I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There's no doubt..." he said.



Bannon predicted that Trump would now be moderated by the Republicans. "I think they're going to try to moderate him."



"I think that...his (Trump's) actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you're going to see a lot of constraints on that. It will be much more conventional," Bannon said.



Buoyed by Bannon's return, Breitbart News CEO and President Larry Solov said: "Breitbart's pace of global expansion will only accelerate with Steve back. The sky's the limit."



Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow said, "the populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today and the magazine gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda."



White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders in a brief statement did not explain the reasons for Bannon's departure.



"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," Sanders said.
Supporters of rival JD(U) factions headed by Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav clashed outside the residence of the Bihar chief minister here today, police said.



Riding two-wheelers without helmets, Yadav's supporters were escorting him from the airport to the S K Memorial Hall, the venue of their Jan Adalat programme, when they stopped outside the chief minister's residence on the way and shouted slogans.



The clashes took place when some of them carrying sticks and belts tried to enter Nitish Kumar's 1, Anne Marg residence -- opposite the Raj Bhavan.



Soon, Kumar's supporters, who had gathered there for JD(U) National Executive Committee meeting came out and chased away Yadav's supporters, police said.



Yadav, who was in the car with suspended JD(U) MP Ali Anwar, refused to comment on the incident and told reporters, "I will speak at the programme."



Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj who reached the chief minister's house on hearing of the trouble, told reporters that a probe would be conducted and the guilty would be punished.



"We will watch CCTV cameras and try to identify those behind the violence and act against them," the SSP said.



Asked about security arrangements and why Yadav was allowed to take that route, the SSP said the concerns would be part of the probe.



Parallel meetings were held here by the rival JD(U) factions headed by Kumar and Yadav.



While the JD(U) national executive committee met at the chief minister's residence, the rival camp held its Jan Adalat in S K Memorial Hall.



Yadav, Ali Anwar and suspended former Bihar minister Ramai Ram were prominent figures at the Jan Adalat programme.



The two JD(U) leaders fell out after Nitish Kumar broke the Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress in Bihar and joined hands with the BJP.
A knife attacker stabbed eight people on the street in Russia's far northern city of Surgut before being shot by police, investigators said today.



The male attacker "carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds to eight" while "moving along central streets of the city" at around 11:20 am (local time) said Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes.



It said that armed police then arrived and used their weapons on the attacker and "liquidated" him.



The incident took place in a city some 2,100 kilometres northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.



Two of those stabbed are in a serious condition while five more are in a stable condition, the government of the Khanty-Mansi region said in a statement, calling the attacker so far "unidentified."



It called for calm over the incident, saying that "in the interests of public calm and also of the investigation, citizens and media are recommended to use reliable information in assessing the situation until all the circumstances are established."
The global investor rights law firm, Rosen Law Firm, along with two other US law firms Bronstein, Gewirtz and Grossman and Pomerantz Law Firm will be investigating potential securities claims on behalf of shareholders of Infosys, following the exit of Vishal Sikka as CEO & MD of the company.



Rosen Law Firm claimed that the investigation is resulting from allegations that Infosys may have issued materially misleading business information to the investing public.



While Bronstein, Gewirtz and Grossman said that the investigation concerns whether Infosys and certain of its officers and/or directors have complied with federal securities laws.



According to reports, Rosen Law Firm is also preparing a class-action lawsuit to recover losses suffered by Infosys investors.



On Friday, Infosys announced the resignation of its Chief Executive Officer, Vishal Sikka. Sikkas resignation comes amid criticism by Infosys founders of decisions by Infosys board, including executive compensation and severance payouts. Sikkas resignation letter stated, Over the last many months and quarters, we have all been besieged by false, baseless, malicious and increasingly personal attacksThis continuous drumbeat of distractions and negativityinhibits our ability to make positive change and stay focused on value creation.



As a result of Sikka's resignation, shares of Infosys fell sharply by 9.6% during intraday trading on August 18, 2017.






Two corporators of the Owaisi brothers-led All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) were on Saturday suspended from the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) after they refused to stand during the recitation of Vande Mataram.



The corporators of the MIM also clashed with their counterparts of the Shiv Sena. Reports reaching Mumbai and television footage showed the corporators clashing with each other during the general body meeting. The House also saw adjournments over the issue.



The MIM is quite strong in the AMC. If one looks at the strength - Shiv Sena has 29, followed by MIM 25, BJP 22, Congress 8, NCP 3 and Independents/Others 24.



MIM legislator Imtiaz Jaleel said he would definitely seek information from the two corporators. "We are very clear....Vande Mataram is optional, you have to right to sing or not sing. However, one thing we have made it clear is that whenever Vande Mataram is sung, you must stand," he said, adding that it was said that such an incident took place.



Four-term Lok Sabha member from Shiv Sena, Chandrakant Khaire, said that insult to Vande Mataram would not be tolerated. "Our stand is very clear....is desh me rehna hoga toh Vande Mataram bolna padega (you would have to say Vande Mataram if you want to stay in this country)...we are soldiers of late Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray," he said.








Had Tejashwi Yadav resigned on his own, his stature would have increased. But some people become arrogant with the poll victory, said Nitish. Slamming Lalu, Nitish said the RJD chief used an incarcerated person (without naming Md Shahabuddin) to make disparaging remarks about me. I was termed as a Chief Minister due to circumstances... and that I have no political base.



The JD (U), however, refrained from taking any disciplinary action, Sharad Yadav. Sharad ji a senior member. He is free to air his grievances at the party forum. But if he attends Lalus proposed rally on August 27, he will be crossing Laxman rekha, and may then eventually invite disciplinary action, said JD (U) secretary general KC Tyagi. He added that 16 out of 20 state units were with Nitish.



On the other hand, Sharad held a parallel meet at SK Memorial Hall here on Saturday. Prominent among those who attended his Jan Adalat were Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar and former minister Ramai Ram.



SUPPORTERS CLASH:

Earlier, in the day, few supporters of Sharad Yadav clashed with JD (U) workers at the entrance gate of CMs official residence 1, Aney Marg, the venue of JD (U) national executive meet. We are identifying the hooligans through CCTV cameras. No guilty will be spared, said Senior SP (SSP) of Patna, Manu Maharaj.







Janata Dal (United) president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday dared rebel Rajya Sabha MP and former party chief Sharad Yadav to split the JD (U). Launching a blistering attack during the national executive committee meeting here in the State Capital, Nitish reminded Sharad how he persuaded George Fernandes, the then JD (U) president, to send him (Sharad) to Rajya Sabha when he lost the Lok Sabha polls in 2004.We have 71 MLAs, 30 MLCs, besides two MPs in the Lok Sabha. Sharad ji, if you have guts and courage, please try to split the party. Not one MLA or MLC is with you. And the one MP who is with you (in reference to rebel Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar), please remind him that he went to the Upper House with the support of BJP MLAs in 2012. If you dare to split the party, you will lose even your membership because you know you dont have the two-thirds majority to effect a split, Nitish dared Sharad in an uncharacteristic tone.Earlier in the day, the JD (U) passed a resolution saying that the party was joining the BJP-led NDA as it was not possible to run the Grand Alliance Government in the company of the RJD and the Congress. The 2015 Assembly poll mandate was for the rule of law and good governance. It was not meant to indulge in corrupt practices and make benami property, Nitish launched his diatribe in an oblique reference to Lalu and his sons.
BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday welcomed Nitish Kumar led JDU's decision to join the NDA and said that it will unleash "a new era of development" in the state that will be crucial to approach its "mission 350" in the 2019 elections.



The JDU at its national executive meeting in Patna took a formal decision to join the NDA, a homecoming after four years when Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had quit the coalition to object the BJP's decision to project Narendra Modi as the prime ministerial candidate.



"I welcome the JD(U) decision of joining NDA, as this will not only strengthen the NDA but will also begin a new era of development and growth in Bihar," Shah said.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to reward the JDU by giving its Bihar ally a share in council of ministers that has space due to existing vacancies in defence, environment, urban development ministries which arose after Manohar Parikkar became Goa chief minister, Anil Dave's death and M Venkaiah Naidu's elevation as vice president of India. Modi is believed to be also considering a reshuffle of the cabinet as well.



The BJP leaders believe that JDU shaking hands also fits into Modi and Shah's backward politics which the party had effectively implemented in Uttar Pradesh after learning lessons from its Bihar debacle when Kumar was in the opposition camp.


Terming the deaths of scores of children at a state-run hospital here as a "government made tragedy", Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi said today that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath should not try to cover up the matter.



"All those whom I met told me that oxygen shortage led to the death of their children. Many families were given ambu bags (a manual resuscitator) and they pumped it for hours...It is very clear that it government-made tragedy," Gandhi said.



The government should take action in the matter and not try to cover it up, he said.



It is absolutely clear that oxygen shortage and laxity were the reasons behind the tragedy, he told reporters after meeting family members of the victims.



"The chief minister should not try to cover up (the matter) and action should be taken against the guilty. This is my message," the Congress vice-president asserted.



Gandhi said that he had visited the BRD medical college and hospital here earlier as well and had told Prime Minister Narendra Modi through the media that it needs funds as there were too many shortages. But no action was taken, he rued.



There have been scores of encephalitis related child deaths in the BRD medical college hospital in recent days triggering a nation-wide outrage.



"Modiji speaks of a new India. This kind of new India we do not want. We want hospitals where poor people can take their children (for treatment) and come back happily," Gandhi said.



He complimented the media for raising the issue. "...I want to thank them for this (highlighting the issue)...it is not a matter concerning Uttar Pradesh but is a national tragedy. It is indicative of the health care of the country," he said.



Earlier in the day, Adityanath also had hit out at the Congress vice-president over his visit here, saying the 'yuvraj' (prince) sitting in Delhi cannot make Gorakhpur 'a picnic spot'.



Adityanath, who launched a cleanliness campaign in the district to tackle the deadly encephalitis outbreak in the wake of death of 71 children at the BRD hospital here, also hit out at his predecessor and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.



"I feel that the shehzada sitting in Lucknow ..'yuvraj' sitting in Delhi will not know the importance of this cleanliness campaign. They will come here to make it a picnic spot, we cannot permit it," the chief minister said taking a jibe at Gandhi, before the Congress leader's visit to Gorakhpur to meet the families of the victims.



Other opposition parties, the SP and the BSP have also been attacking the Adityanath government over the hospital deaths.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host his Nepalese counterpart Sher Bahadur Deuba next week, as India plans a series of engagements with neighbouring South Asian nations amid escalating tension with China.



Deuba will arrive in New Delhi on Wednesday to commence his five-day visit to India. This is a first official visit to India after taking over as Prime Minister of Nepal on June 7 last. Apart from meeting Modi, Nepalese Prime Minister will also call on President Ram Nath Kovind, sources told the DH.



He will also visit Bodh Gaya in Bihar and the Tirupati Balaji Temple in Andhra Pradesh.



New Delhi has also lined up a series of engagements with other South Asian neighbours. Prime Minister will visit Naypyidaw next month to meet Myanmar's President Htin Kyaw and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will visit Dhaka to meet her Bangladesh counterpart Abul Hassan Mahmud Ali. She will also call on Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.



Swaraj last week visited Kathmandu to attend the meeting of the foreign ministers of Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). Apart from calling on Deuba and Nepalese President Bidhya Devi Bhandari, she also had bilateral meetings Bhutanese Foreign Minister Damcho Dorjee and Sri Lanka's State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Vasantha Senanayeke, on the sideline of the BIMSTEC meet.



New Delhi's engagements with the neighbouring country is aimed at sending out a message to Beijing at a time when India's strained relations with China worsened further due to the face-off between soldiers of the two countries at Doklam Plateau in western Bhutan.



China has been trying to spread its tentacles in South Asia, taking it beyond its all-weather friend and India's arch-rival Pakistan. Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives are among the South Asian nations, which have been a theatre of competition between India and China for geopolitical influence.



Modi reached out to Nepalese Prime Minister even before his arrival in New Delhi. He called Deuba on Friday to convey condolences at the loss of lives due to recent widespread flood in Nepal. Prime Minister also offered Rupees 250 million as assistance to help Nepalese Government provide relief and rehabilitation to flood-hit people of the country.



The two Prime Ministers will next week discuss India's assistance to several development projects in Nepal in addition to the reconstruction of infrastructure devastated by April 2015 earthquake in the neighbouring country, sources told the DH.




Congress on Saturday hit back at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for resorting to cheap politicking by referring to the Gorakhpur Medical College, where several children have died, as a picnic spot.



He has insulted the sacred memory of those helpless and poor children who died by reducing the debate to such cheap politicking as a picnic spot, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters here.



Adityanath had taken a jibe at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's visit to Gorakhpur saying the prince sitting in Delhi cannot make the city a picnic spot.



Singhvi said the chief minister was 100% right when he said that Gorakhpur was not a picnic spot. Gorakhpur has been turned into a murderous spot by utter negligence, lack of accountability and total callousness, he said pointing out that the Gorakhpur was the chief minister's Parliamentary constituency.



I will leave it to the people of India to judge whether, in his anxiety to score a political point against Rahul Gandhi, the chief minister has not reduced this serious, terrible, tragic episode to a farce, the Congress spokesperson said.



Rahul was on a visit to Gorakhpur on Saturday to meet the family members of the children who died at the BRD Medical College Hospital, apparently due to lack of adequate oxygen.



Congress sources said Rahul avoided a visit to the hospital as it would have inconvenienced the patients.






The Jammu and Kashmir Police has decided to enhance the special welfare, for the next of kin of cops who die in service, from Rs 12 lakh to Rs 15 lakh.



The decision to this effect was taken at the 13th Central Police Welfare meeting chaired by Director General of Police S P Vaid at the police headquarters here.



"It was decided that the special welfare will be increased from Rs 12 lakh to Rs 15 lakh payable to the next of kin of the police personnel in the event of his or her death while in service," a police spokesman said.



It was also decided that the 'retirement gift' be enhanced from Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000.



"For Special Police Officers (SPOs), the special relief in the event of death has been increased from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 2.50 lakh," he added.



Vaid said it was because of the support from the government that the ration money was doubled and the ex-gratia relief to the martyrs was increased to Rs 20 lakh.



He said the proposal to remove the pay anomaly in different grades have been submitted to the government and also a proposal with regard to rank promotion of the constables and the non-gazetted officers (up to inspectors) has been sent to the government.



The DGP said the police headquarter is actively considering more facilities for the guards and officers.



Referring to the Police Public Schools, he said these schools are being strengthened and more infrastructure is being provided and augmented.
The Islamic State group today claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in Spain and stabbings in Russia, in statements carried by the jihadists' propaganda agency.



"Attacks by the soldiers of the caliphate in Spain... led to the deaths and wounding of more than 120 people from the states of the Crusader alliance," Amaq said in a statement on its Telegram account.



IS said its fighters "ran over several Crusaders with a truck in the coastal town of Cambrils".



Eight hours after a deadly van attack on Thursday afternoon that left 13 people dead in Barcelona, an Audi A3 car rammed into pedestrians in Cambrils, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Barcelona.



Police killed the five attackers, some of whom were wearing fake explosive belts. Six civilians and a police officer were wounded in the second attack and one woman later died of her wounds, Spanish authorities said.



Amaq later also claimed an attack by a knifeman in Russia's far north who wounded seven people on Saturday before being shot dead.



"The executor of the stabbing operation in the city of Surgut in Russia is a soldier of the Islamic State," Amaq said.



IS, which once controlled a self-declared "caliphate" across large parts of Iraq and Syria, has suffered major military losses in both Arab states this year.



It has called for attacks against Western and other states taking part in the US-led coalition fighting against it, as well as on Russia which has sided with the Damascus regime in battling the jihadists.
A short video went viral in social media on Thursday apparently with footage of Indian and Chinese soldiers pelting stones at each other and engaging in fisticuffs near Pang Gong Tso lake in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir.



The video apparently shows Chinese and Indian soldiers pelting stones at each other on the shore of the Pang Gong Tso lake. Neither the Government of India in New Delhi nor the Government of China in Beijing so far confirmed the authenticity of the video. Some of the soldiers are also seen engaging in fisticuffs.



It surfaced in social media even as Indian Army Chief General Bipin Rawat is set to review the security scenario along the Line of Actual Control  the de-facto border between India and China  in Ladakh on Sunday. President Ram Nath Kovind will also visit Ladakh later this month.



The video went viral on social media a day after New Delhi for the first time officially confirmed that an incident had taken place on the shore of Pang Gong Tso Lake on August 15. Raveesh Kumar, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, confirmed the incident while briefing journalists in New Delhi on Friday.



He did not elaborate on the nature or extent of the incident, but media reports earlier suggested that the soldiers of Indian Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police on Tuesday foiled an attempt by Chinese People's Liberation Army personnel to transgress into the territory of India near Pang Gong Tso lake.





We feel that such incidents are not in the interests of either side. We should maintain peace and tranquillity, said Kumar. He also said that the incident near Pang Gong Tso lake was subsequently discussed by the commanders of Indian Army and Chinese PLA during a flag meeting at Chushul.The LAC passes through the Pang Gong lake, although China and India have differences on the alignment of the imaginary line. India accuses China of illegally occupying a section of the lake, which has Tibet on its eastern end. The lake witnessed the conflict between soldiers of India and China during the 1962 war. It still remains a sensitive point on the disputed boundary between the two nations.The Chinese PLA personnel on boats often cross the LAC and intrude into territory claimed by India. The August 15 incident on the shore of Pang Gong Tso lake took place amid the continuing face-off between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Doklam Plateau in western Bhutan.
The toll in Bihar floods rose to 202 on Saturday as the situation worsened affecting around 1.21 crore people across 18 districts.



The toll was 153 on Friday and the number of affected people stood at 1.08 crore in 17 districts.



Samastipur was included in the list of flood-affected districts on Saturday, taking the number of inundated districts to 18.



Araria district accounted for 42 deaths, followed by Sitamarhi (31), West Champaran (29), Supaul (13), Madhubani (12), Kisanganj (11), East Champaran (11), Darbhanga (10), Purnea (9), Madhepura (9), Katihar (7), Sheohar (4), Gopalganj (4), Saharsa (4), Khagaria (3), Saran (2) and Muzaffarpur (1), the Disaster Management Department said.



A total of 4.22 lakh people have been shifted to 1,336 relief camps in different parts of the state.



The MeT office said Patna, Gaya, Bhagalpur and Purnea are likely to witness generally cloudy sky with the possibility of rain or thundershower on Sunday.



Chief Minister and JD(U) president Nitish Kumar, in his address at an open session in the evening, appealed to party workers to continue with their relief efforts.



A total of 28 National Disaster Response Force teams comprising 1,152 personnel with 118 boats are involved in rescue and relief operations.



Also, 16 teams of the State Disaster Response Force comprising 446 personnel are helping people in the flood-hit areas with 92 boats. The army deployed 2,228 personnel who are assisting in relief and rescue operations with 280 boats.



As many as 1,879 community kitchens are catering to 3.72 lakh people in several flood-hit areas, the department added.



PTI
Kannada actor Sanjjanaa Galrani is among many investors said to be duped by Prasiddhi Chit Funds Pvt Ltd in Malleswaram.



The company is accused of duping investors of Rs 1.3 crore. Sanjjanaa alone is said to have been cheated of Rs 28 lakh. Based on her complaint, the Malleswaram police registered an FIR against the owner of the chit fund on Saturday. Police believe the amount could go up.



Sanjjanaa stated that she had been investing a sum every month in the chit fund for the past several years. The company's staff stopped collecting the money in June. The actor sent her staff to make enquiries and was shocked to learn that the company's office was locked and that its owner, identified as Mahesh, was missing. Numerous other people, too, have lost their hard-earned money, she said in the complaint.



A case of cheating has been registered.



DH News Service




A new stormwater drain (SWD) will be built near the Shantinagar BMTC bus depot at a cost of Rs 15 crore to make way for rainwater to drain out and avoid waterlogging in the locality.



The present SWD cannot sustain the amount of water if it rains like last week, said Bangalore Development Minister K J George, during his inspection in the rain-affected areas on Saturday morning.



A portion of the retaining wall of the SWD collapsed during the heavy downpour, which led to waterlogging in the nearby houses. Residents and workers of BMTC complained that it was not a new problem and sought a permanent solution from the minister.



The entire area was flooded and all the equipment inside the bus depot were damaged. The BMTC bus depot has incurred huge losses due to this, since it is in a low-lying area. It is best to build a separate SWD to divert the flow of water, said George. The silt in the existing SWD will be removed and the depth will be increased to avoid overflow of water, he added.



BBMP commissioner N Manjunatha Prasad said a topography survey will be conducted to know how to implement the plan. A senior official of BMTC said even though there was a plan to build a new SWD for the past 10 years, it was not implemented.



K M Nagaraj, director of BMTC, said, The minister has asked for an estimate to build the SWD. It may come to about Rs 15 crore. We will file an estimate after conducting a survey.



DH News Service
Citizens at the interactive session came out with many workable solutions to reduce traffic problems.



Citizens asked the police to address students at colleges regularly to create awareness about consequences of wheelie and reckless riding.



Some suggested having drunk driving checks points right in front of pubs and bars so that road users dont dare to commit the offence.



Prakash, a participant, said: Ban all penalties for overspeeding. Keep offenders in police custody for five hours. Offenders will learn a lesson and never dare to speed.



Arthur Solomon, a resident of Hanumanthnagar, made a workable suggestion. Make it mandatory for IT professionals to travel by a public transport once a week.



EP Menon, director, India Development Foundation, suggested police coordinate with BMTC and KSRTC and train drivers.



Suresh Babu from Basavanagudi requested the police to synchronise wireless systems at junctions so that ambulances get a smooth passage.



One of the suggestions was to have a mandatory number, on the lines of IMEI number of mobile handsets, to vehicles. Junctions should be equipped with sensors which retrieve the number. The retrieved data should be sent to vehicle owners mobile number.



After the session, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) R Hithendra, DCPs Abhishek Goyal, Shivakumar and Sarah Fatimah spoke to participants and assured steps would be taken immediately to solve problems.



The officers said they would send subordinate staff to areas facing problems for a study and act based on recommendations. New technology is being adopted by the traffic police. There are many old signals that lack timer facility. Traffic police are upgrading about 100 signals with timers, he said.



Referring to congestion in Hebbal, Hithendra stated: About 24,000 vehicles pass through the flyover at Hebbal. Having an alternative route to Kempegowda International Airport will surely reduce congestion.



He acknowledged that the city did not have proper pedestrian crossing facilities.



Bengaluru has the dubious distinction of having the most unfriendly pedestrian crossing facilities in the country. About 70% of victims in road accidents in the city are pedestrians, he said.


Four female PhD students from Kerala have filed police complaints against the coordinator of CSIR Fourth Paradigm Institute (CSIR-4PI) in the city, accusing him of sexually harassing them.



The Marathahalli police registered four FIRs under section (354A) of the IPC against 49-year-old principal scientist Imtiyaz Ahmed Parvez on Friday. Police questioned him and took his statement before releasing him on bail the same day.



Other faculty members were also questioned and their statements were taken, police sources said. The institute is located on NAL Belur Campus, Wind Tunnel Road, east Bengaluru.



The women, aged between 27 and 31, had approached V S Ugrappa, the chairman of the Expert Committee on Prevention of Sexual Violence against Women and Children, on August 18, which happened to be Parvezs 49th birthday.



The women have been pursuing PhD in environmental science, earthquake and other natural calamities, and physics for the past three years. Parvez was their coordinator. They alleged that he had been sexually harassing them for the past one year.



In one instance, a student was not given marks cards of a few exams as she spurned his sexual advances. The women alleged that he would call them individually into his chamber, stare at them and try to touch them inappropriately.



The women said that since Parvez heads the institute, he has wide contacts in other research institutes across the country. They feared that even if they complete the PhD, securing a position in any research institute will become difficult for them.



The women also wrote to the Prime Ministers Office since the institute comes under the Union ministry of science and technology. But neither did the PMO respond nor did the government take any action.



They then approached the former chief secretary of Karnataka, J Alexander, as the family of one of them, knows him.



Alexander called up Ugrappa and apprised him of the matter. Ugrappa informed the Bengaluru Police Commissioner T Suneel Kumar who, in turn, ordered the jurisdictional DCP (Whitefield) Abdul Ahad to look into the complaints.



Police sources said CSIR-4PI did not form an internal complaints committee as per the Vishakha guidelines that stipulate that half of the members should be women and at least one member should be an outsider. Parvez himself formed the committee and concluded that the womens complaints were false, fabricated and baseless, the sources said.



When DH contacted Parvez, he refused to comment, saying he is a Central government employee and is barred from speaking to the media.



A source in CSIR-4PI, however, said that a committee was formed under one Dr Mudgal and it found that the womens allegations were false.



DH News Service






Ordering a high-level probe on the derailment of Puri-Haridwar Utkal Express at Khatauli near Muzaffarnagar, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said on Saturday that strict action will be taken against the guilty.



In a series of tweets, Prabhu said he has deputed Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha and other top officials to help with rescue and relief operations.



Asked if there could be a terror angle to the tragedy, railway officials said they are considering all possible motives and causes.



The minister further said medical vans from Delhi and Saharanpur and an accident relief train from Ambala have been dispatched to the spot. He also said he is personally monitoring the situation.



Prabhu has also requested Health Minister JP Nadda to provide swift medical assistance to those injured in the accident.




Amid rising concern over the online phenomenon Blue Whale Challenge, the state government has stepped in to warn people about the challenge which targets vulnerable children, urging them to cause self-harm and commit suicide.



Minister for Women and Child Development Umashree said in a circular on Saturday that the department would take up a massive awareness campaign about the perils of the challenge. The circular takes note of media reports from across the country about children who took part in the challenge and harmed themselves.



All available media will be used to reach out to parents and children to warn them, the circular said. The department will also hold campaigns in schools and colleges.



The Karnataka State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) is working with its counterpart in Kerala to bring out an order on the Blue Whale Challenge. Chairperson of the commission, Kripa Amar Alva said the order would be issued by Tuesday.



Simultaneously, several schools and associations have already taken or are contemplating their own measures.



In Delhi Public Schools, a circular has been issued to parents asking them to monitor their childrens Internet usage. It is advisable to speak to children about the perils lurking in the cyber world and enforce the need to abstain from social media platforms that would only bring about intellectual degradation and damage, the circular reads. Counsellors in schools will also conduct interactive sessions for students on the dangers of the internet.



The Associated Managements of Private Unaided English-medium Schools in Karnataka (KAMS) will issue a similar circular next week. General secretary Shashi Kumar D said that they would issue instructions to schools and parents once they get details on the online challenge.
Forest department officials of Male Mahadeshwara Wildlife Sanctuary arrested a man from Tamil Nadu on Saturday for smuggling sandalwood.



The accused has been identified as Syed Noor of Talakavadi in Erode district. The accused was transporting 15 kg of sandalwood in a car.



According to the officials, a few smugglers, who are under judicial custody, had Noors contact numbers and based on the information provided by them, the officials trapped Noor, the prime accused.



Deputy Conservator of Forests (DCF) M Malatipriya told DH that the department had suspected Noor of being involved in smuggling. Following a tip off, we conducted a raid and trapped him, she said.


The Congress on Saturday hit back at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for resorting to cheap politicking by referring to Gorakpur as a picnic spot.



He (Adityanath) has insulted the sacred memories of those helpless and poor children who died, by reducing the debate to such cheap politicking, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters here.



Adityanath had taken a jibe at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhis visit to Gorakhpur saying the prince sitting in Delhi cannot make Gorakhpur a picnic spot.



Singhvi said the chief minister was 100% right when he said that Gorakhpur was not a picnic spot. Gorakhpur has been turned into a murderous spot by utter negligence, lack of accountability and total callousness, he said, pointing out that Gorakhpur was the chief ministers parliamentary constituency.



I will leave it to the people of the country to judge whether, in his anxiety to score a political point against Rahul, the chief minister has reduced this serious, terrible, tragic episode to a farce, the Congress spokesperson said.



Rahul was on a visit to Gorakhpur on Saturday to meet the family members of the children who died in the BRD Medical College Hospital, apparently due to lack of adequate oxygen.



The Congress sources said Rahul avoided a visit to the hospital as it would have inconvenienced the patients.



DH News Service


Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) president Nitish Kumar on Saturday dared rebel Rajya Sabha MP and former party chief Sharad Yadav to split the JD(U).



Launching a blistering attack during the national executive committee meeting here, Nitish reminded Sharad how he persuaded George Fernandes, the then JD(U) president, to send him (Sharad) to the Rajya Sabha when he lost the Lok Sabha polls in 2004.



We have 71 MLAs, 30 MLCs, besides two MPs in the Lok Sabha. Sharadji, if you have guts and courage, please try to split the party. Not one MLA or MLC is with you. And the one MP who is with you (in reference to rebel MP Ali Anwar), please remind him that he went to the Upper House with the support of BJP MLAs in 2012. If you dare to split the party, you will lose even your membership because you know you dont have the two-thirds majority to effect a split, said Nitish.



Earlier in the day, the JD(U) passed a resolution saying that the party was joining the BJP-led NDA as it was not possible to run the grand alliance government in the company of the RJD and the Congress.



The 2015 Assembly poll mandate was for the rule of law and good governance. It was not meant to indulge in corrupt practices and make benami property, Nitish said.






A scuffle broke out in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) when corporators of the ruling Shiv Sena-BJP combine clashed with the members of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).



Two members of the Owaisi brothers-led AIMIM reportedly refused to stand up during the recitation of Vande Mataram.



They were suspended by Mayor Bapu Ghadamode after the incident. Reports reaching Mumbai and television footage showed the corporators clashing with each other during the general body meeting.



The House also saw adjournments over the issue. The Shiv Sena and BJP corporators raised slogans like Bharat Mata ki Jai and Vande Mataram.



The AIMIM is quite strong in the AMC. If one looks at the strength, Shiv Sena has 29, followed by AIMIM 25, BJP 22, Congress 8, NCP 3 and Independents/Others 24.






A court here on Saturday sentenced five persons to 20 years in jail for kidnapping and raping two sisters in 2014.



Additional sessions court judge Ram Kumar Singla handed down the sentence and imposed a fine of Rs one lakh each on the suspects.

They would undergo an additional two-year sentence if they do not pay the fine.

The two girls, from Dala village in the district, went for a morning walk on March 10, 2014, when five youths in a car kidnapped them and took them to an unknown place where they were gang-raped.

The accused - Parveen Kumar, Mukesh Kumar, Lakhwinder Singh, Rinku and Rakesh Kumar, all residents of Gurdaspur - were arrested and a case under IPC sections 376, 363, 366 and 120 was registered against them. PTI
Riding pillion on a two-wheeler with her dupatta (shawl) covering her face, Puducherry Lt Governor Kiran Bedi travelled incognito to assess safety of women in the Union Territory after dusk.



In a WhatsApp message to media persons after a night round of the city on Friday, Bedi said, Felt that Puducherry is safe for women even at night.



Bedi, however, said that she would suggest a few measures which need to be taken by the police to enhance security.



The former IPS officer usually cycles to neighbouring areas of the Union Territory during her weekend visits to meet people of the town and address the issues concerning them.




With the exit of Vishal Sikka as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Infosys on Friday, after months of a verbal duel with the promoter shareholders, the focus has now shifted to finding his successor.



Among the probable candidates, U B Pravin Rao, who has been appointed interim CEO, is likely to emerge a strong contender for the top post.



If selected as the permanent CEO and MD, 55-year-old Mysuru-born and Bengaluru-educated Rao will become the third Kannadiga to occupy the top post at the countrys second largest IT services company.



Rao, an engineering graduate from a middle class family, who joined Infosys in 1986, is the front runner because of his illustrious track record spanning three decades in various roles and loyalty to both promoter shareholders and the board, said an analyst.



The board will have to keep him at the helm as he is in good terms with founder promoters and he also knows the culture of the company very well. Besides his soft spoken and quiet manner, Raos delivery and operations expertise will make him an ideal candidate for the drivers seat, the analyst said.








A man, who eloped with former Udupi MLA Raghupathi Bhat's wife would face no further investigation into charges of adultery or driving her to commit suicide. He, however, would face trial of offences of cheating, forgery etc for allegedly projecting himself and the deceased as husband and wife.



Athul Rao was accused of having enticed 32-year-old Padmapriya, wife of former legislator Raghupathi Bhat from her marital home on June 11, 2008. On a complaint filed by the then MLA's mother Saraswathi, the police traced her to a flat in Delhi. By the time family members arrived here to take her back, the woman was found hanging.



Acting on a plea by Rao, the Supreme Court set aside a Karnataka High Court's order of September 16, 2014. A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and A M Khanwilkar restored the trial court's order that had found no justification to direct further investigation. The HC committed manifest error in interfering with the discretionary order passed by the trial court, it said.



The high court had then allowed a petition by Bhat and directed for further investigation against accused Rao with regard to offences under Sections 306 (abetment of suicide), 497 (adultery) and 498 (enticing or taking away or detaining with criminal intent a married woman) of the IPC. Though the trial court had rejected the plea, it said if any evidence comes up during the trial of the same offences, appropriate charges would be framed against the accused.



What is significant to note is that the high court has not overturned the satisfaction recorded by the trial court that two charge sheets filed by the investigating agency in connection with the same incident were founded on statements of 76 witnesses. Further, charge sheets have been filed after thorough investigation of the allegations made by the complainant from all angles and charges have also been framed. The case has been set down for trial, the bench said.



The apex court, however, directed the Udupi court to conclude trial expeditiously  preferably within six months  as the case has been pending since 2008.
By Sean Mowbray

17 August 2017

(Mongabay)  Tigers and orangutans are the well-known faces of the palm oil crisis. But the enigmatic clouded leopard is equally threatened and almost unknown in comparison. Conservationists are looking at ways to make palm oil plantations work for it, rather than against it.

We know very little about what [clouded leopards] eat, their social structure, their ecology, how much time they spend in trees we know very, very little, Ewan Macdonald, of Oxford Universitys Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (CRU), told Mongabay. He studied the species for his PhD but has yet to see it in the wild, apart from through his camera trap images.

Its what can be called a small, big cat says Anthony Giordano, founder and director of S.P.E.C.I.E.S., and has been largely overlooked by both the public and conservationists in comparison to some of its more famous counterparts like tigers or snow leopards. When you think of a secretive species its quite normal to think of snow leopards, but I think we know more about them than we know about clouded leopards.All this secrecy brings about a sense of deja-vu when talking to those who study clouded leopards, as a we just dont know response is common. This is not a reflection of the skills of these biologists; rather, its testament to the evasive prowess of this elusive and secretive jungle cat.We know so little about clouded leopards that only in 2006 did scientists discover that there are in fact two distinct species. Neofelis nebulosa is found on the Southeast Asian mainland up to China and as far west as the Himalayan foothills of Nepal. Neofelis diarti, or the Sunda clouded leopard, is found only on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, at the heart of palm oil territory. Both species are listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN across their ranges.What we do know about the clouded leopard is that palm oil development is posing a serious threat to its survival in the wild. Clouded leopard habitat falls within three of the worlds top palm oil producing countries: Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The Sunda clouded leopard is particularly threatened by the industry as both Sumatra and Borneo have seen much of their lowland forests cleared for tree monocultures like oil palm plantations.Over the past 40 years Borneo has lost over one third of its forest cover to logging, fires and plantations, continually shrinking the Sundas habitat. At current rates of deforestation, the island will lose an additional six million hectares of forest by 2020, according to WWF.Today the islands forests are dissected by around 8 million hectares of oil palm plantations, estimated at just under half of the worlds total palm oil production area. [more]
By Milton Leal

31 July 2017

(Dialogo Chino)  In the middle of northern Brazils Amazon jungle, digging equipment rasps at the bottom of a giant iron ore mine.

Here in the municipality of Canaa dos Carajas in the Serra dos Carajas in Brazils Para state, some 1,600 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, Chinese engineers keep watch over a fleet of stackers, reclaimers, and other large scale equipment in the adjacent ore processing plant that will eventually produce 90 million tonnes of the metal annually.

A train with 330 cars waits to be loaded up before travelling approximately 600 miles to a cargo ship that will sail for 40 days from the port of Ponta da Madeira in Sao Luis in the neighbouring state of Maranhao, delivering 400,000 tonnes of iron ore to Chinese ports such as Dalian, Caofeidian, Rizhao, and Qingdao.

Once there, factories will transform it into cranes, drilling equipment, and smartphones, many of which will then travel back to Brazil to be used in its construction, energy, and retail sectors.

Economic ties with China have provided Brazil with a surge in jobs, profit for mega-mining companies such as the worlds largest iron ore producer, Vale, its shareholders, and service providers, and a positive trade balance with its main trading partner. []

However, operations such as the S11D mine in Canaa dos Carajas which serve the Chinese market continue to massively outweigh other new projects in value-added or manufacturing sectors.

Large scale iron ore mining has drawbacks for the environment and rural communities, too: enormous holes in Amazonian soil that will never fully close, silted and contaminated rivers, destroyed caves and natural ponds, the impending disappearance of Monogereion carajensis, Parapiqueria cavalcantei, Ipomoea cavalcantei, and other endemic fauna from the area, and agrarian conflict.

Furthermore, in a bid to increase economic output, the Brazilian government is rolling back laws protecting biodiversity and indigenous peoples from big extractive and infrastructure projects.

Earlier this year, Brazils federal government cut the size of a conservation unit in Para by 1.2 million hectares to allow a railway to be constructed and to open new possibilities for mining operations. The governments far-reaching but unpopular austerity programme also includes slashing the federal budget for environmental protection by 43 per cent.

Alfredo Sirkis, the executive secretary of the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change, recently told thinktank Observatorio do Clima (Climate Observatory) that cuts would profoundly impact deforestation and, consequently, Brazils ability to meet climate targets made under the Paris Agreement on climate change. []

Para depends on China for around 35 per cent of its total exports. Of its exports to China, iron ore extracted from within the states borders  an area around five times the size of the UK  accounts for 80 per cent. The increased production at S11D  Vale expects to export 90 million tonnes by 2020  will make Para the biggest iron ore-producing state in Brazil.

The S11D mine is in an ecosystem called a canga or metallophile savannah, tropical forest that sits on a consolidated rock formation consisting mostly of iron. But these rich metal deposits form the basis of an ecosystem that is also very vulnerable.

An ecosystem of this type in the middle of the forest creates an evolutionary situation conducive to the emergence of endemic species, caves, and lagoons, which need to be preserved, explains Frederico Martins, head of the Carajas National Forest where the project is located.

At least 40 botanical species are only found in this place. If mining takes place across the savannah we are going to eliminate an entire ecosystem, adds Martins, who is also an environmental analyst for the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBIO), the federal agency responsible for environmental monitoring of the area. []

This voracious mining is not just very predatory for the ecosystem, it is economically predatory to the nation. In the long run, it is disastrous, says Martins, adding somewhat rhetorically: Are we going to destroy everything and sell it to China at a bargain price so we can have Chinese smartphones? Is this what the Brazilian government wants? [more]
By JoAnna Wendel 11 August 2017 (Eos)  In a real clash of fire and ice, a massive wildfire in southern Greenland has captured the worlds attention.At the end of July, a couple of NASA satellites detected hot spots in Greenland that indicated fire, said Mark Ruminski, a team leader for a hazard mapping system of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But fires are unexpected in Greenland, so he and his team thought it might be an error in the data.Then a civilian pilot snapped pictures of a wildfire near Sisimiut, the second-largest city in Greenland. When clouds cleared a few days later, NASAs Landsat 8 satellite and the European Space Agencys Sentinel-2 satellites captured photos of the largest of the fires from high above.Although ice covers nearly all of Greenland, fires do occasionally break out on the ice sheets margins. Hearing of the new sightings, Stef Lhermitte, a geoscientist who specializes in remote sensing at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, reviewed the past 17 years of data from NASAs Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite and threw together a quick analysis on Twitter to help give context to the situation.

Mark Parrington, an atmospheric chemist who works with the European Unions Copernicus Earth observation program, also tweeted an analysis of carbon dioxide emissions that indicates spikes of fire activity in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

No Fuel, No Fire

Although the current fires cause remains a mystery, peat from thawed permafrost could be its fuel, said Jessica McCarty, a geographer at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, who specializes in geospatial analysis of wildfires.Permafrost, or permanently frozen soil, lies under multiple meters of an active soil layer that thaws seasonally. But in certain areas, when ice within the thawing permafrost layer melts, it can expose peat, a material that forms after decomposing plants get smashed down for centuries.The peat is made up of organic matter, most notably carbon, McCarty said. Given how readily it burns, she added, its almost like one giant charcoal briquette.McCarty suspects the fires fuel is peat for several reasons. First, the fire isnt moving, like it would in a forest (not that there are any trees to speak of in this region of Greenland, she noted). In addition, the fires smoke is white, indicating damp fuel, like freshly thawed permafrost.If the fire is being fueled by thawed permafrost, there may be underlying climate change implications, McCarty continued. The climate change [connection] is that there would be no fires here in Greenland if there were no fuel, and the only way that theres fuel is if the permafrost is [thawed].Personally, this is very disturbing to me, McCarty said, because the fire indicates significant permafrost degradation sooner than [scientists] thought it would happen. Researchers project significant permafrost loss in Greenland by the end of the century. Not 2017, she said.

Permafrost Thaw

In 2011, scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks modeled the fate of Greenlands permafrost under a changing climate. Researchers study permafrost because of its potential to thaw and subsequently release carbonin the form of methane and carbon dioxideinto the atmosphere. Permafrost makes up about 80% of Greenlands land thats not perpetually buried under ice.The researchers wanted to know how much climate change would contribute to permafrost degradation, which is the decrease in the thickness of the permanently frozen soil. Their models revealed that by the end of the century, parts of Greenland could warm 1.99C and that the active top layer of soil could extend downward an additional 44 centimeters, meaning that there would be less ice locking in carbon.Most of the terrestrial [ice-free] portion of Greenland is at risk of permafrost degradation, wrote Vladimir Romanovsky, a permafrost researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a coauthor on the research. Especially in southern Greenland, where the fire currently burns, permafrost degradation has already begun, Romanovsky told Eos.

Natural Versus Unnatural

Southern Greenland is already warmer than the northern region naturally, Romanovsky said, so its permafrost is more vulnerable to begin with. Because the Little Ice Age ended in the past 150200 years, some warming, and thus degradation, is natural.Other factors contributing to permafrost degradation include glacial meltwater and human activities like constructing roads and buildings. Rising temperatures from the past 2030 years of anthropogenic climate changehave probably contributed as well. And when the ice in the ancient soils melts, it can expose peat to drier conditionsa perfect recipe for fire, Romanovsky said.Then, in a feedback loop, fire itself will add to the problem and accelerate [thawing] of permafrost, he continued, which will cause more ice in the permafrost to melt and drain away and lead to further drying.
18 August 2017 (UN)  Warning about escalating suffering in Yemens man-made catastrophe, senior United Nations officials today addressed the Security Council, calling on the international community to push for a political solution to the more than two-year-old conflict.

Death looms for Yemenis by air, land and sea, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed told the 15-member Council in New York.

Reiterating one of the key points from Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Relief Coordinator, Stephen OBrien, who addressed the Council just moment earlier, Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed said that that diseases and epidemics are at unprecedented levels in Yemen.

Those who survived cholera will continue to suffer the consequences of political cholera that infects Yemen and continues to obstruct the road towards peace, added Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

He noted that while the international community is united in its support of a peaceful solution, certain parties to the conflict take advantage of internal divisions and focus on personal interests.

What is missing at this point is for the parties to the conflict, without any delays, excuses or procrastination, to demonstrate their intention to end the war and put the national interest above any personal gains, the UN envoy said.Every day spent without serious action means more destruction and death, he said, as well as the spread of terrorist groups  such as the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula  and uncontrolled migration through the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, where more than 41 migrants died in early August after being forced to abandon their boats and jump.Before the conflict, Yemen had been making progress, with fewer people hungry and rising school enrolment, Mr. OBrien said in his statement.All of his has not been sharply reversed, he said, noting that 17 million Yemenis are hungry, nearly 7 million facing famine, and about 16 million lack access to water or sanitation.Mr. OBrien highlighted several key challenges, including a funding shortage  the $2.3 billion Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan is only 39 per cent funded.He also underscored the interference to movement of critical commercial and humanitarian supplies and staff.De facto authorities in Sanaa or local officials in areas under their control block, delay or otherwise interfere with humanitarian action, said Mr. OBrien.The humanitarian official urged the international community to ensure that all ports are open to civilian, including to commercial traffic.He called for those Governments and individuals with influence to influence the fighting parties to respect the international humanitarian and human rights law and to strengthen accountability.With 1.2 million public employees not paid regularly for months, he also urged that civil servant salaries be paid so that the basic services in the country do not collapse.This human tragedy is deliberate and wanton  it is political and, with will and with courage which are both in short supply, it is stoppable, he said, reiterating the UNs ongoing calls for a political solution to the conflict.
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A restaurant has created a culinary masterpiece to commemorate 40 years since the death of Elvis Presley.

The king of Rock and Roll left behind a massive world-wide fan base following his death on August 16, 1977, at the age of 42.

His hits including Suspicious Minds, A Little Less Conversation and Love Me Tender. The entertainer left his mark on the music industry and his work is still admired today.

The Custom House in Barnstaple, North Devon has created a beast of a burger to mark four decades of the anniversary of Elvis' death.

Devon Live reporter Nicole Travers-Wakeford donned her blue suede shoes to meet with Matt Spencer, owner of The Custom House to find out what makes the Dead Elvis burger.

(Image: Rob Tibbles)

The beef burger is topped with fried banana, smooth peanut butter, bacon, Monterey Jack cheese and salads.

Matt said: "Apparently it was Elvis' favourite burger combination.

"There is an urban legend that he was eating a burger like this when he died.

"In America and all over the world it is quite common to have sweet and savoury together, however it isn't all that common in the UK.

"When you put the salty bacon with the sweet banana and the smooth peanut butter it just works well."

Matt has also taste tested the concoction describing it as a "great combination".

This isn't the only quirky dish at the restaurant. Matt and his staff brainstorm with a beer in hand to come up with new special burgers regularly.

When the highly acclaimed 50 Shades of Grey series hit the big screen The Custom House created a 15 shades of bacon burger.

This monster of a meal consisted of smoked and unsmoked bacon, Italian sausage, turkey bacon, prosciutto, pancetta and sausage patty.

If that wasn't enough, there was also bacon infused cream cheese, and bacon dusted chips.

Other specials over the years included burgers topped with generous helpings of meat loaf and even lasagna.

Matt said: "September's special will be the Charlie Don't Surf burger. This is a quote from the film Apocalypse Now.

"That came about after a few beers. We said it would be a cool thing to do.

"It will have Vietnamese crispy pork, barbecue source and American sharp cheddar."

After chef had carefully stacked the ingredients for the Dead Elvis burger we had to give it a try.

The thought of banana and peanut butter with savoury meat sounds like a rather odd combination. But oddly, it works.

You definitely need to go to The Custom House hungry because the portion sizes are generous.

No doubt Matt and his team will get their creative juices flowing ready for some more themed surprises this year.
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A 50-year-old man has been arrested after a report that people were being threatened with a samurai sword.

The man was held by police after they were called to an address near Hope Cove, a small village on the South Hams coast near Kingsbridge.

Police at KIngsbridge said in a statement officers were called in the early hours of Saturday after a report a man was allegedly threatening residents with a sword.

A spokesman said: "Local officers attended and a 50 year old man was arrested and taken to Torquay Police Station."

The man was later charged with two counts of assault, drink-driving, possession of an offensive weapon and resisting arrest.

He was remanded in custody pending a court appearance.

Newton Abbot Patrol tweeted that a response unit was more than 26 miles away from the incident when the report came in.

The tweet said: "Report of a male with a sword and we are over 26 miles away! Huge patch we cover!"

The tweet included a photograph of the distance recorded on a sat-nav device.

In 2008 a new law came into force banning the sale, making, hiring or importing of samurai swords in England and Wales, following their use in a series of attacks including on a councillor who was killed in the office of Cheltenham MP Nigel Jones eight years earlier. The MP survived injuries suffered in the attack.

The curved samurai sword is a part of Japan's history, but cheap reproductions became increasingly available and used in crime, leading to the ban.
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A man was rescued after falling five metres into the River Tavy on Saturday afternoon.

The 51-year-old was taken to hospital with head injuries after fire crews hauled him from the river near Pixon Lane in Tavistock.

He was treated by paramedics at the scene before going to hospital by ambulance shortly after 2pm.

A fire service spokesman said: "Two fire crews and the specialist rescue vehicle from Camelshead attended a report that a male had fallen into the water.

"The crews arrived on scene and confirmed that a 51-year-old male suffering from head injuries had fallen approximately five metres from a pathway into the river.

"The man was rescued using a short extension ladder and line rescue equipment. The paramedics treated him at the scene before he was taken to hospital by ambulance."
Using a watermark is a common practice to make sure an image created or clicked by someone is not used without the prior permission of the creator. This is a standard practice which prevents the images from being used without proper licensing, however, it is not as robust as previously thought. Google has recently presented and published a research titled, Making Visible Watermarks More Effective which portrays how watermarks can easily be removed using AI and how to circumvent this problem.

Image credits: Google research

One may think that removing a watermark from an image entirely would be quite hard, however, given ample amount of images with a similar watermark, an AI can quite easily analyse the watermarks lines and curves and implement an algorithm accordingly to remove it. Google has published their research with the intent of exposing this vulnerability and also patching it effectively.

The research admits that the usage of thin lines and shadows makes removal of a watermark difficult albeit given a single image. Using the same watermark over a span of images, reveals the consistent manner being used to apply it. Utilizing this characteristic, a multi-image optimization problem is employed to find the watermarks decomposition in the image and use this to segregate the watermark (foreground) from a clean subset of the rest of the images (background). Thus, any image containing an analyzed watermark can be rid free of it. Even changing the position or opacity of the watermark has no effect. This spells bad news for stock image providers and curators but Google has also described a method of circumventing this problem.

Gif credits: Google reasearch

To sidestep the problem of effective watermark removal, Google employs a technique called Warping. As the vulnerability being exploited by Google is based on the consistency of watermarks, to counter the problem, inconsistencies are introduced while layering the watermarks onto an image. Warping a watermark slightly will cause problems in detecting them and substantially hinder the working of a watermark removing algorithm. This is due to the fact that the algorithm removing the watermark will also need to estimate the warp field being applied to the watermarks for that image which is quite a difficult task.

Image credits: Google research

The research remarks that many other types of randomizations can be used to make watermark removal less effective, however, warping is one of the easiest methods to employ. The research concludes by saying that there is no guarantee that such randomized methods will not be bypassed in the near future, however, randomization will make removal of watermarks more effective.
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The artwork of local student Rintik Setiawan is being featured in the 2018 Alabama Farm-City calendar, which is now available for pre-order.

Setiawan, a student at Admiral Moorer Middle School in Eufaula, won second place in the fourth-sixth grade poster contest during the Farm City Week contest.

Each month on the calendar, you will see a new scene illustrating the importance of agriculture to this state as seen through the eyes of, as artwork by 14 Alabama students in grades ranging from Kindergarten to sixth grade, is shown depicting the 2016 Farm City theme - Agriculture: Stewards of a Healthy Planet. The calendar will also include first place essays and a link to the first place multimedia presentation based on the theme.

Students work hard every year to earn recognition as a state winner in the Farm-City poster, essay and multimedia contests, said Jeff Helms, Alabama Farm-City Committee chairman. This calendar is a lasting way to promote the creative ways they show the importance of farming.

Calendars are now available for pre-order and are $1.25 each, with a minimum order of 10 calendars. To order calendars, go to http://tinyurl.com/FarmCity18. You may also place an order by emailing Paul Culver at pculver@alfains.com.. The deadline for orders is Aug. 31.

Farm-City week is celebrated annually starting the Friday before Thanksgiving. Students are encouraged to participate in county poster, essay and multimedia contests for a chance to move on to the state competition. For more information, visit AlabamaFarmCity.org .
On the 14th of August, a left wing mob supported by the Democratic governor pulled down and smashed a century old memorial to the Confederate soldier in Durham, North Carolina. For days now the liberal media and Democratic Party have refused to acknowledge the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and its ally the anarchist AntiFa, as sharing blame with the Alt-Right for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. These organizations, BLM and AntiFa, are the storm troopers of the Democratis Party.

A vote for a Democrat is a vote for anarchy, lawlessness, mob rule, violence, and dictatorship. If the Democratic Party ever gains power in this country again, you can rest assured that your rights as an individual will be subject to the whims of an extremist, left-wing, fascist government. Remember this when you go to the polls. Your very freedom depends on keeping the Democratic Party out of power in this country.

The Democratic Party has shown without any reservation it is not beneath using the tactics used in 1930s Germany to gain control of your lives.

Larry Brown

Fort Rucker
There are some disturbing events happening now in our country. I really do not understand all the hate and bigotry. I guess it comes from fear and insecurity.

I remember when I was a child, in the old courthouse there were two water fountains side by side in the hallway. One had a sign labeled Colored and one had a sign that said White. We have come a long way since then.

Yesterday I got word that the woman who cared for my mother for the last three years of her life had died. I cried. I loved her for the care she gave and for the wonderful woman she was. She was black. I am white. God bless her.

I remember Gov. Jim Folsom. He was a giant of a man both physically and morally. He ruined his political career by standing up for what he believed. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled on Brown vs. the Board of Education and called for the desegregation of public schools. Gov. Folsom asked the legislature to get moving on it because it was mandated by the federal government and was going happen, so we as a state must comply.

His political career was finished. Remember this is 1954 in Alabama. He took a stand for what he thought was right. I shall always respect him and remember him for one thing he said. A reporter asked him why he took that position. He said, "When I was 18, I worked in the engine room of a ship, shoveling coal into the furnaces. I worked with men of every color of skin. That is when I found out that a man is a man no matter the color of his skin."

Robert Rush

Panama City Beach
Recently the mayor of New Orleans removed a statue of a Civil War general, amid protests. Now the mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, has announced plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. (Editors note: this letter pre-dates the unrest in Charlottesville).

The removal of these statues will not erase the history of four years of war between the North and the South. This internal conflict cost the lives of thousands of brave soldiers on both sides. There are those who see only slavery as the root cause of the war when, in fact, it was not.

The generals who led both the forces of the Confederate armies and the Union armies were, for the most part, learned men who believed in their cause. While there appears to be no effort to remove the statues of the northern generals at this time, I believe that it is a mistake to remove statues of just the generals on the losing side, for in doing so will not rewrite history.

If removal is allowed to continue, then what next? The total removal of all symbols at Gettysburg?

William W. Watkins Jr.

Ashford
While others frantically search last minute for glasses to safely view Mondays solar eclipse, Chris Wood has been in eclipse mode for more than year.

Maybe two years, Wood said.

Local residents will join the astronomical crowds expected to visit communities within the path of totality stretching across portions of 14 states from Oregon to South Carolina.

The rest of us will have to settle for a partial solar eclipse.

Mondays event is the first time since 1918 that a total solar eclipse will be seen from one side on the continental U.S. to another. While the eclipse will take a couple of hours from start to finish, totality only lasts a few minutes.

Crowd predictions vary from state to state, ranging from a few hundred thousand to a few million.

Wood has been an astronomy buff since he was a kid and has been making plans to see Mondays total solar eclipse since a 2014 partial solar eclipse.

This will be the first total one Ive seen, Wood said. Ive seen three partials.

Atlanta will serve as Woods staging area. From there, he will determine which direction is the best way to go based on the weather forecasts. Then, he and wife Meredith will head out with equipment that includes a solar telescope with built-in filters, a solar blanket for better viewing through the telescope lens and, of course, safety glasses. Clemson, South Carolina, and Nashville are among the locations Wood is considering.

Its one of those things where you wait for so long to do something and then because of the weather you have no idea what direction you need to go in, Wood said. You can file me under the eclipse-chaser category. I dont have a spot. It will be fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants because I could set up and prepare for a spot and it could cloud over and be cloudy for the rest of the thing.

Todd Norris of Pansey booked a reservation in May in Helen, Georgia. Its a mini-vacation he booked as a surprise for his wife, April. The couple has never visited Helen but after looking at a NASA eclipse map, Norris decided it was time for them to visit the mountain town that looks like a Bavarian village.

Norris said they plan to watch the eclipse with safety glasses.

I would say that Im more of the astronomy buff, Norris said. I really like anything that involves our universe. My wife actually got me my first telescope for Christmas this past year. Just being able to look out beyond from where we are and know that theres so many other things that are out there is pretty amazing.

Some eclipse plans made by Dothan residents have not gone as smoothly.

Don and Janet Richardson booked a hotel room in Anderson, South Carolina, to watch Mondays eclipse. But the hotel canceled the reservation last week for someone with a higher priority, Don Richardson said.

Anderson is right in the middle of the total eclipse, so it would be an ideal viewing place, he said.

The Richardsons said they contacted the hotel chains national office but were referred back to the Anderson property.

Ive been around a pretty long time, but Ive never seen a total eclipse, Don Richardson said. Its kind of a bucket list thing  Ive never seen one and I wanted to, and this one would have been within driving distance.

Hotels in the path of totality have increased room rates as demand skyrocketed, according to news reports. Some hotels were booked up months in advance.

Like many of her neighbors in Highlands, North Carolina, Sheila Gallira Bryson is expecting out-of-town company for the eclipse. The Dothan native said shes heard estimates that put the number of expected visitors for the eclipse from 10,000 to 30,000.

Were a very small town  its a town of like 5,000 year-round, she said of Highlands. We are a resort area so we do grow to like 20-25,000 during the summer time. But who knows? Weve never had this to happen, so were treating it as though its like July 4, which is a very busy time.

Bryson and her husband, Jim, own a grocery store in Highlands. They had to plan in advance to keep the store stocked as vendors will not be making deliveries on Monday. The town of Highlands has spent the past year making plans for everything from keeping emergency services well-staffed to having enough portable toilets.

I hope all this planning will pay off, Bryson said. They have been planning for a long time and I think the town has done an excellent job with an unknown  Hopefully the town has planned enough.

Despite the possibility of crazy traffic congestion and crowds, Bryson said theres an excitement in the air.

Of course, TV is saying its one of those once-in-a-lifetime things, and you need to see it, she said. Im excited. I just hope the weather behaves.
Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Uong Chu Luu (R) welcomes Secretary General of the Mongolian Parliament Office Tsend Tsolmon. (Photo: daibieunhandan.vn)



Luu made the statement during his reception in Hanoi on August 18th for Secretary General of the Mongolian Parliament Office Tsend Tsolmon, who has been on a five-day working visit to Vietnam.

He highlighted that achievements in bilateral relations in the past six decades will lay foundation for the two sides to promote cooperation in a more practical and effective manner.

The leader hoped that the two countries will maintain high-level meetings and visits to enhance friendship and mutual understanding between the Vietnamese and Mongolian peoples, increase political trust and expand cooperation.

Vietnam and Mongolia should coordinate closely in issues of common concern and support each other at regional and international forums, he said.

For his part, Tsend Tsolmon expressed his delight at the positive development and close coordination between the two countries in the past years.

He wished that the National Assembly Office of Vietnam and the Mongolian Parliament Secretariat will strengthen cooperation, focusing on sharing experience, application of information and technology as well as communications for parliamentary activities./.
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


Native Americans protest Enbridges Line 5 in shadow of the Mackinac Bridge

Under the Straits of Mackinac, just west of our iconic Mackinac Bridge, there is a set of two pipelines known as Line 5 which are owned by the Enbridge oil company. They were built in 1953, making them 64 years old this year, and before the Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act. If that law had been in place in 1953, it would have required it to go through a permitting process that would have ensured that they were built in such a way as to protect the Great Lakes, one of the most valuable reserves of fresh water in the world. In fact, had the law been in place then, the pipelines may not have been allowed at all.

Heres where the pipelines run:

For years, activists from around the state have been calling for the pipeline to be shut down. As David Holtz, the Chair of the Michigan Sierra Club points out, recent studies done on the safety and viability of Line 5 have been completely compromised due to conflicts of interest by groups involved in their creation:

A $756,000 Line 5 study lies abandoned by state officials who say they were counting on it to make a strong case against Enbridges claims its 64-year-old pipelines present little risk to the Great Lakes. The risk assessment analysischild of a state process and midwifed with oil industry money and influenceis now orphaned. Its twin sistera state alternatives study riddled with errors, omissions and biasis on life support. Recall that we were told a year ago these studies would give the state what it needed to make a decision about Line 5s future. It now appears that any decision about Line 5 may be months if not years away. Meanwhile, concerns grow about the pipelines condition. Moreover, since problems with both studies are linked to ties with Enbridge one wonders if it wasnt Enbridges plan all along to sabotage them. Delay is Enbridges friend. The Canadian pipeline transport giants $1.5 billion in earnings the first six months of this year include many millions from Line 5 oil being carried across the Straits through Michigan to refineries in Sarnia, Ontario. Its no accident that Enbridges strongest Line 5 support outside the oil industry comes from Canadian energy and government officials.

Although this should be a non-partisan debate, Republicans have been largely silent and even went so far as to introduce legislation last year that would shield oil companies from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Thankfully, that legislation never became law.

When Dan Wyant left his job as the head of Michigans Department of Environmental Quality in shame after his handling of the Flint Water Crisis, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder replaced him with an executive from the oil industry, Heidi Grether. This is how seriously Republicans take this issue.

Now that our Attorney General, Bill Schuette, is running for governor, he has suddenly taken an interest in this situation. Its an easy position to take. Imagine if the line ruptured in the heart of winter when the Straits are buried under several feet of solid ice with the powerful currents of the Straits of Mackinac spreading it far and wide. Denny Green from Clean Water Action spells it out:

Between 2005 and 2013, Enbridge spilled or released nearly 92,000 barrels of hydrocarbon products like crude oil and natural gas around the country. Between 1996 and 2013, the number of reportable spills  thats any spill large enough for Enbridge to formally notify a regulatory agency  leaks and releases went from 54 to 117 (more than double). In the summer of 2014, Enbridges Line 5 was found in violation of the spacing requirements of its 1953 easement, due to missing support structures. In fact, an Enbridge pipeline failure is responsible for one of the worst and most expensive oil spills in U.S., in July of 2010  Line 6b, another outdated structure from the 1960s (but still newer than Line 5) ruptured near a tributary of Michigans Kalamazoo River, spilling about 1 million gallons of tar sands crude. The spill devastated sensitive eco-systems and residents of the nearby communities, and cost about $1 billion in cleanup. (Now remember, Line 5 carries 23 million gallons a daynearly one million gallons an hour!)

The group Flow for the Love of Water has more:

University of Michigan studies call the Mackinac Straits the worst possible place for a Great Lakes oil spill, which could pollute up to 720 miles of shoreline along Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Enbridges data reveal that sections of Line 5 in the Mackinac Straits are cracked and dented, and a segment on land near the Straits has lost 26% of its original wall thickness. Under the best conditions, only 30% of an oil spill would be recovered. 1.5 million jobs are directly tied in some way to the Great Lakes, generating more than $62 billion in wages.

However, although Schuette has mouthed the words about shutting down Line 5, he has done nothing to make that happen even though he is our states top law enforcement official.

It is time for Schuettes inaction to come to an end. If hes going to run on this issue, he needs to do more than talk about it.

There are two things you can do to help make this happen.

First, contact AG Schuettes office with a simple message: SHUT DOWN LINE 5 NOW!

His phone number is 517-373-1110.

Second, join activists on Labor Day when they participate in the annual Mackinac Bridge Walk. Here are details from the group Oil and Water Dont Mix:

Join Oil & Water Dont Mix at this years annual Labor Day Bridge Walk. Youll be walking the Mackinac Bridge just four miles east of the risky submerged Enbridge Line 5 oil pipelines. There are two opportunities to get involved to show your support for shutting down Line 5. #1  Walk the Bridge

Join thousands as we walk as a group across the bridge wearing blue shirts. Any blue shirt will do. We encourage you to purchase a blue Oil & Water Dont Mix shirt here (all designs available in blue  allow time for shipping). We are planning on meeting just east of the toll booths on the St. Ignace (north) side of the bridge and departing for our walk at 9:00 am. Please dont be late! RSVP below to let us know youre coming. If youve walked the bridge before on Labor Day, this year the bridge authority is making a change you need to know about (more info here). The bridge will be closed to all vehicle traffic (except buses transporting walkers) from 6:30 am until Noon. Get more information about the bridge walk here. BIG NOTE: Because of this change, no walkers will be allowed to start walking after 10:00 am. #2  Pass Out I Walked the Bridge Stickers

I walked the bridge stickerWe are looking for several people to join us at the south end of the bridge to hand out stickers to all walkers. Please sign up for a shift below. Walkers will start at 7:00 am and it takes about 90 minutes to make the crossing. Please sign up for a shift below. It would be great if you could wear your blue Oil & Water Dont Mix shirt. Well have a few available for purchase when you arrive, but we encourage you to purchase your shirt online early as there are no guarantees well have your size. Sign up for a shift HERE! Well meet just south of the finish line and will respectfully pass out stickers without blocking foot traffic. Invite others! Lets show everyone involved that we wont put up with these oil pipelines in the Great Lakes!

As one speaker put it at an event I attended in 2015, There are only two outcomes to this situation. One is that we shut this pipeline down NOW before a catastrophe occurs. The other is that a catastrophe WILL occur because its only a matter of time.

Do your part. Call Schuettes office. Write letters to the editor. Education your friends and family and coworkers. Spread the word and make sure EVERYONE is as outraged about this situation as you are. Its incredibly important.
Microsoft has released its long-awaited cloud-based bug detection tool, previously code-named Project Springfield. The Windows version became generally available, and a new Linux version became available as a preview last week.

The tool, Microsoft Security Risk Detection, uses artificial intelligence to hunt down security vulnerabilities in software that is about to be released.

Microsoft Security Risk Detection will help developers do fuzz testing, said David Molnar, the Microsoft researcher in charge of the group that developed the tool. Fuzz testing normally is done using outside consultants to test new software. Its purpose is to make sure vulnerabilities can be weeded out before the product goes into wide release to avoid the necessity of patching them on the back end.

The service uses artificial intelligence to ask particular what if questions about new software, focusing on critical areas that might be vulnerable to attack by bad actors.

Microsoft first released a test version of the service last year. Docusign, a firm that specializes in automated electronic signatures, is one of the companies that volunteered to try it out.

The tool helped Docusign weed out bugs in its software and almost never returned false positives, according to John Heasman, senior director of software security at the company.

The low rate of false positives is very important, he said, because companies typically have to spend a lot of time tracking down false positives, which uses time that otherwise could be devoted to investigating legitimate threats.

In-House Technology

Microsoft has been using Sage, a key component of the service, since the mid-2000s to test versions of Windows, Office and other products. Several product teams at the company use the service as part of the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle.

Microsoft plans to offer the tool for sale later this summer through Microsoft Services.

Prevent Defense

The release is meaningful, according to Dustin Childs, communications director for the zero day initiative at Trend Micro, who noted that the service gives developers access to security testing they otherwise might not use.

Bugs are much easier to detect during software development, he told LinuxInsider, so enhanced testing prior to release could prevent security problems down the road.

Whether companies embrace the service depends largely on how many false positives they get, Childs said. Another important issue will be the trust issue between developers and Microsoft, which could depend on how much information is shared with the developers and how much is retained by Microsoft.

From Microsofts perspective, the gain is twofold, said Childs. The service will help Microsoft create a safer ecosystem running a series of Windows applications, and allow the company to show off its cloud computing and AI capabilities. The service also will introduce Azure to a large community of potential customers.

Security is something that everyone wants, but few are willing to shell out the money for it, observed Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

IT managers often stick with the security solutions they are familiar with and upgrade with budgetary cycles, he told LinuxInsider.

The industry rarely works together to resolve security issues, McGregor said.

True IT security requires hardware and software to be effective, he pointed out.

However, Microsofts solution takes security to a new level by combining AI and cloud resources, said McGregor. It continuously leverages a wide range of information and reacts to new threats faster than traditional solutions.

Its not clear how much success Microsoft will have with this new service, he said, but every IT manager should be looking to AI for improved security.
Christian makes Grand Tour debut in Vuelta



Mark Christian (third from left) alongside his Aqua Blue Sport teammates for the Vuelta a Espana

Manx cyclist Mark Christian will make his debut in a Grand Tour event today as the Vuelta a Espana gets underway.

The 26-year-old has been included in Aqua Blue Sport's roster for the final Grand Tour race of the year.

The Vuelta gets underway with a team time trial in Nimes in France this afternoon, and will head through Andorra before arriving in Spain on Tuesday, finishing in Madrid on September 101th.

Christian, who won a bronze medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, finished 45th in the Vuelta a Burgos in Spain earlier this month.
I've been on Free for mobile phone for ages, and just switched to the Freebox at the beginning of this year. As you say, they have excellent prices and I've had no problems with their service. I frankly like the fact that you can handle almost everything online rather than having to call and fumble with the language (French and techie stuff) on the phone. Free was the "disruptor" in the system several years ago when they got started, and we have them to thank for the reduction in prices and extension of services in the mobile phone and Internet market here in France.



But just a word about the customer service - nearly every Internet provider here in France contracts out their "in person" customer service, so it varies according to who the subcontractor is in your area. My husband did subcontracting for SFR for a number of years and anyone who got him assigned to their call got excellent assistance and follow-through. We still occasionally run into one of his "calls" in the marche here and they are more than happy to see him and thank him for his help. However, he had no control over how long it may have taken to be dispatched to a call - he just got the assignments online each day based on the times he signaled that he was available. As far as I can tell, most of the Internet "box" providers have similar arrangements with contractors in the area.

Cheers,

Bev
Visas arrived via FedEx today, woo-hoo! Making final travel plans and arrangements now.



I have one nagging question, which I have not been able to resolve, and would like your input for the simple solution, if there is one. Regarding blu-ray players and discs, my wife and I would like to bring and watch some of our discs, blu-ray and dvd. I originally thought I might be able to bring our blu-ray player with us and connect it to a television, but I get the impression that will not work. Are there stores in France - we'll be in Montpellier - where I can buy a zone-free (or all-zone) blu-ray player for less than a king's ransom? We're staying in a place that does not allow us to receive mail; I don't know about receiving packages, so I don't know if mail order is an option.



I don't want to invest in a lot of transformers or other equipment. I just want a simple and inexpensive solution, if one exists. All help appreciated.
PJSC Ternopil Dairy Plant, a large Ukrainian milk processing enterprise (the Molokiya brand), plans to invest UAH 100 million in expanding its production facilities in the next three years.

The press service of the company told Interfax-Ukraine UAH 80 million of total investment will be spent on building a milk powder facility. It is expected that the construction will last at least two years. The plan for 2017 is to carry out preparatory work before the construction of the workshop.

In addition, the plant plans to invest at least UAH 20 million in expanding the capacity for production of fresh dairy products and butter.

"These investments are not external, these are the funds from the enterprise's profit, depreciation charges and credit funds," the press service noted.

The company plans by the end of 2017 to expand its milk processing capacity by 20%, in particular increase the capacity for production of fresh dairy products by 30% compared with last year.

Ternopil Dairy Plant exports casein and butter to Poland, Germany, Holland, Latvia, the United States, Georgia, and Morocco. It estimates its share of the Ukrainian market in the category of sour-milk products, butter and curd at about 5%.
The Institute for Womens Health warned patients that hackers may have stolen some of their personal information or credit or debit card data, the physicians group said Thursday.

The San Antonio OBGYN practice said a so-called keylogger virus was installed on its network on June 5. The virus was discovered July 6 and the company took action to remove it from the majority of all network computers and terminal servers by July 11, 2017, resolving it completely by July 13, 2017, it said in a statement.

The company didnt disclose how many patients might have been affected.

A keylogger virus can be the equivalent of digital surveillance, revealing every click and touch, according to virus protection company McAfee.

Cybercriminals use keyloggers to steal passwords or financial information as you type it into your computer. That information can then be used to steal your money or identity, warned McAfee in a 2013 blog post.

If a patient paid for services with a credit or debit card from June 5, 2017 through July 11, 2017, some of their credit or debit information may have been captured, the company said. Other types of information found to be affected generally include the following: names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security Numbers, scheduling notes, current procedural technology and other billing codes, and any other information that may have been keyed (typed) into the IFWH system during this time period.

Patient Portal information was not accessed at any point, IFWH added.

The company sent letters to patients who could have been affected and is offering them identity theft protection services through ID Experts.

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MyIDCare services include: Twelve months of credit monitoring, a $1,000,000 insurance reimbursement policy, exclusive educational materials and fully managed ID theft recovery services, the company said.

IFWH said it also notified both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Health and Human Services.

A variety of security measures were in place before this incident, including network filtering and security monitoring, firewalls, antivirus software and password protection, the doctors office said. After the incident, IFWH implemented additional safeguards to improve data security on its web server infrastructure and reduce the risk of exploitation. IFWH continues to assess its security systems and work with the appropriate law enforcement agencies to prevent future breaches.

SEhlinger@express-news.net

Twitter: @samehlinger
It was all smiles, laughter and heartfelt thanks to family from a class of 11 veterans who graduated Friday from a new education program in San Antonio that teaches veterans the skills needed to land an information technology job.

Retired Army Gen. John Campbell gave a nontraditional graduation speech that required audience participation. He made the crew of 10 men and one woman stand in a line and give one word to describe their experience going through the NS2 Serves program: excited, said the first. Change, said another. Opportunity, challenge and success, were all mentioned.

The 12-week program  a sort of boot camp that walks veterans through everything from developing corporate communication skills to working in big data analytics  is helpful to some veterans facing the hurdle of reintegrating back into civilian life. Its a full-time, highly technical whirlwind of a course designed to help the veterans earn an official SAP software certification. That will make them marketable  not only to SAP National Security Services Inc., called SAP NS2, but to other companies such as Accenture Federal Services, which has offices in San Antonio.

The courses are focused on the product capabilities of our core big data analytics product HANA, and then some of the visualization tools that go along with that, said President and CEO of SAP NS2 Mark Testoni, who established the program.

SAP NS2 provides software and services to national security and critical infrastructure customers. One of the main SAP products the company uses is a data analytics platform it calls HANA.

When we started this company a few years ago we were looking for a way to give back, and we actually tried to hire  we put out three entry level positions to hire folks, veterans, that may not have had the opportunity that some have, maybe didnt have college degrees, had skills that werent easily translatable, a variety of reasons, Testoni said. And we really had a hard time, struggling, finding post-9/11 vets for these positions.

Later, he came across an SAP training program being offered in Dubai, and found a solution: modeling a training program for veterans after that successful one.

The instruction is one piece of it, but the jobs is the most important, Testoni said. Now the graduates have credentials that allow them to then compete for positions in companies that do implementation work around these products, and big data analytics.

The course is open to post-9/11 U.S. military service veterans, reservists and Gold Star spouses who meet certain eligibility requirements, according to the NS2 Serves website. The course is offered at no cost to veterans through the NS2 Serves nonprofit.

The program began in 2014, and there were seven classes before this one. But this is the first course to be offered outside of the Washington, D.C., metro area, and the first in the Alamo City. Through a partnership with Accenture Federal Services, Testoni said, we identified a need to maybe do one in San Antonio.

Accenture was a partner financially, and in providing the office facilities for the San Antonio program, Testoni said.

Were taking great military skills, he said, and layering technical skills on top.

When one of the students in the program left the Army after 20 years of service, he tried to find a job in his field. But though Ryan Brockett had a bachelors and a masters degree, it wasnt enough.

What I realized very quickly as I was searching for jobs is that a lot of them required some sort of IT background, Brockett said. And I didnt have any IT background. And so I kind of just decided to be a stay at home dad while I looked for work.

While he came from technical work in the Army, advising how to protect soldiers and equipment from weapons of mass destruction, he said there werent many places to apply that knowledge outside of the service. He then decided to use that time after retiring to be with his children, he said. Until one day, his mother-in-law heard about the NS2 Serves program on Fox News.

My mother-in-law happened to see Mark on Fox News, and about him talking about the program, and she told me about it, Brockett said. I looked into it and said sure, why not? Lets see where this goes.

Testoni says the program is not just about giving people new skills, but about finding them a job.

Really the whole purpose of this is try to get at veterans who might not have the college degree, or might not have the great skill sets that are translatable to the private sector, he said, and give them an opportunity to not only be trained in a high-tech skill set, something typically around big data analytics, but the job isnt finished until we find them, or give them opportunities for employment.

All of the people that have graduated so far from the program have had a job opportunity, he said. Testoni estimated about 10 percent come to work with SAP NS2, but there are many companies that have hired, Accenture is one of the major ones. CSRA, Deloitte, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin have hired a few. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has hired some.

That class is pretty much employed within 45 to 90 days after they graduate, he said.

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Our world is just a sea of digitized data today, think of all the things that we do online that we couldnt have dreamed of 20 years ago, theres a lot of information created out of this, Testoni said. So what these folks  what Tiffany and Ryan, and many others have learned is how to help make sense of all the information so businesses can run better, so they can better meet their customer needs.

The class was really demanding and required a lot of outside study time, Brockett said, but he got a lot of support within the program.

What made all this bearable was our fellow classmates, he said. I dont know if its just because were all veterans, or if because we were all thrown into this situation by choice, but we all came together fairly quickly.

After 21 years in the Army, Tiffany Galindo retired in December and was considering going back to school. She had planned to go back in the fall when she heard about the program in San Antonio.

I had no formal IT background, no IT degree, said Galindo, who graduated Friday. I just retired from the U.S. Army with a career in aviation.

She had served as a helicopter mechanic, then became a Black Hawk crew member, she said. Her last position was first sergeant, she said.

I thought to myself: oh my goodness, what did I get myself into? she said of her first day of class. This is not going to be easy.

But shes now thinking about taking additional courses.

Now that I know I have a foundation in IT, what could be an additional class or additional training I could compound onto this to make myself maybe a little bit more marketable? she said.

SEhlinger@express-news.net

Twitter: @samehlinger
AUSTIN  Taking aim at House Speaker Joe Straus, Rep. Eric Johnson said Friday that no study committee is needed to remove a Confederate plaque near his Capitol office that denies that slavery led to Texas succession, only a history book and a crowbar.

So far, Straus is the only member of the board that oversees the Texas Capitol grounds who has even indicated a desire to review the accuracy of signs and monuments on the complex, amid a push by Johnson to remove all Confederate imagery in the wake of deadly protests in Charlottesville.

Johnson, D-Dallas, contends that this kind of review could take years, and he said previous efforts, including one after the racially motivated mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, resulted with no meetings ever taking place.

With all due respect to Speaker Straus, weve been down this road before, and it has gotten us nowhere, he said. A spokesman for Straus, R-San Antonio, did not immediately return a request for comment.

Johnson wrote a letter to the State Preservation Board this week calling for the removal of all Confederate imagery on the Capitol grounds, in addition to the plaque.

At least half of the six members who govern the board, however, are opposed to removing monuments and say the state should learn from its past, instead of trying to bury it.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who chairs the board, condemned the violence in Virginia but said that tearing down monuments wont erase our nations past, and it doesnt advance our nations future.

But in a written response released late Friday, Rod Walsh, the board's executive director, assured Johnson that the board has initiated a review of the plaque and applicable state law.

Texas is one of several states considering removal of Confederate imagery after the racially driven protests in Charlottesville, which left one woman dead and dozens more injured.

Several rallies and counter-rallies are in the works; a rally set to take place in Austin to promote the true Confederate heritage has been delayed until Sept. 23 after discussion with the citys police, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

AMorris@express-news.net
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Six Flags Over Texas will remove the Confederate States of America flag from its lineup, and fly only the U.S. flag, the company said Friday morning following backlash earlier this week.

Media outlets first reported Thursday the park would not remove its Confederate flag after a week of intense national conversation regarding what the country should do with its Confederate monuments and memorabilia in the wake of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The company flipped its decision Friday morning, saying they strive to make people happy and to create a fun, thrilling and safe family-friendly experience for our guests.

We always choose to focus on celebrating the things that unite us versus those that divide us. As such, we have changed the flag displays in our parks to feature American flags, the park said in a statement.

The Grand Prairie company started with the Arlington park that opened in 1961 and has since grown to feature 18 theme and water parks across the nation, according to its website.

When Texas oilman Angus Wynne opened the Arlington park, it featured six themed areas tied to the six countries flags that have flown over Texas during its history: Spain (1519-1821), France (1685-1690), Mexico (1821-1836), Republic of Texas (1836-1845), Confederate States of America (1861-1865), and United States (1845-1861; 1865-present), according to its website and Sharon Parker, manager for communications. The six flags  including the Confederacys first official flag, the Stars and Bars  have flown over the park since its opening.

Other than the Arlington park, only Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio and Six Flags Over Georgia flew all six flags. Those parks will now only fly the American flag as well.

Although the park will be flying only one flag, it wont be changing its name.

Yes, of course we are keeping our name  we are Six Flags! said Sandra Daniels, vice president of corporate communications, adding that no plaque or sign would be put up explaining the flag change.

We think our guests will appreciate us flying the American flag and view it as a positive, she said.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5

Houston Chronicle Staff Writer Fernando Alfonso III and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram contributed to this report.
San Antonians took to social media Thursday and Friday after the San Antonio Express-News reported that former Mayor Ivy Taylor had filed a claim for unemployment benefits from the city through the Texas Workforce Commission following her loss in the June mayoral runoff.

While dedicated devotees stood up for Taylor or even questioned the necessity of the article, others condemned Taylors actions as unethical.

According to the report, Taylor was contacted by the city after she filed the claim and was advised to withdraw it, else it would be rejected. Taylor then attempted to do so, but the Texas Workforce Commission wouldnt allow the claim to be withdrawn.

The Unemployment Compensation Act in the states Labor Code states elected officials do not qualify for unemployment benefits.

What! So disappointing of IVY! Facebook user Bea Oviedo exclaimed in response to the news.

Others, such as Ed Moody and Beatrice Biseno Carreon, simply stated Unbelievable or Wow.

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Still others defended Taylor.

I dont see the big deal. If she doesnt qualify, fine. But shes unemployed and thats what those benefits are there for, wrote Facebook user Jordana Torrez-McCammon.

Ben Mundy commented, Ivy was a quality steward and I thought a good mayor. She lost the election. Thats fine. But she was a city staffer before. Not a wealthy person. If she was denied her unemployment benefits, thats the decision of the state but she has every right to apply.

Some commenters felt the article was unnecessary and questioned Express-News reporter Josh Baughs reasoning for writing it.

Really man? Why write this unless your only point is to embarrass the lady this aint journalism, wrote a Twitter user with the handle @romasfinest05.

Baugh tweeted back, stating, This is not about embarrassing anyone. Its about transparency in government and the leaders we hold to a higher standard.
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A truck driver charged in an immigrant smuggling venture that turned deadly has been moved out of the same facility that houses more than 20 survivors who are going to testify against him.

James Matthew Bradley Jr., 61, was removed from the privately run Central Texas Detention Facility on Aug. 8, and was booked into the Guadalupe County Jail the same day, according to public filings.

Bradley appeared in federal court Friday for a status conference, two days after he was indicted in the case on five new charges, including transporting immigrants resulting in death and conspiracy to do so. He could face life in prison, and even the death penalty if local federal prosecutors make that recommendation  though that is a lengthy process that requires the approval of the U.S. attorney general.

RELATED: Driver of big rig containing dead immigrants faces more charges

At the hearing, Senior U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra granted a joint motion by prosecutors and Bradleys lawyers requesting that depositions for some of the material witnesses be moved from next week until early September. The judge noted it will come within the 45-day limit allowed to detain material witnesses.

Bradley was arrested July 23 after 39 immigrants being smuggled from Laredo were found inside a sweltering trailer at a Southwest Side Walmart. Eight immigrants were dead at the scene, and the rest were hospitalized. Two more later died, and since then all but two have been released from hospitals. Of those, 22 adults are being held as material witnesses by prosecutors.

My main concern is also that the material witnesses are treated humanely and fairly, Ezra said. Theyve been through quite an ordeal already.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christina Playton told the judge that her office shares his concerns and is working with U.S. marshals, the witnesses court-appointed lawyer, Mike McCrum, and the Mexican Consulate to make sure they are OK.

They are all located at GEO together, Playton said. We are working with the marshals, their lawyer and the Mexican Consulate to make sure that if they have any need, that it is being met.

Bradley, who had been previously dressed in a blue jail jumpsuit, was wearing an orange jumpsuit Friday.

RELATED: 13 immigrants found in sweltering truck being held at material witnesses

His lawyers have said he will plead not guilty at the appropriate time. Arraignment is expected later this month.
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The email to Councilman Cruz Shaw arrived on July 11, about a week after news broke that Shaw and Councilman Roberto Trevino were attempting to remove and relocate the Confederate Civil War Monument in downtown Travis Park.

Dont (sic) you dare make any moves to remove statues that have stood for 100 years, it warned. WE will remove your ass asap if you make any attempts to do so.  We will make sure you regret it if you try to do this!

A month later, with the nation in crisis following a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, triggered by that citys plan to remove a statue memorializing Robert E. Lee, both councilmen continue to receive threatening notes, some laced with racial epithets.

Theyve forwarded a number of them to the San Antonio Police Department, including a letter Shaw received this week calling the Confederate soldier of the Travis Park monument our heroe (sic) and calling Shaw the n-word. A separate letter to Trevino  written in the same handwriting, also mispelling hero in the same way  called the councilman Mex.

Both letters ended with a demand: Dont mess with our history.

Like the militia members who showed up at City Hall on Wednesday armed with assault rifles, the threatening messages were meant to intimidate, Shaw said on Friday.

Its not an attempt to dialogue or have a discussion about differences of opinion, he told me. Its more about, this is what I believe, and Im going to scare you into believing what I believe.

Shaw isnt scared.

No threats or intimidation tactics will deter me from doing what is right, he said. I am not fearful of the words of a few, as I am focused on ensuring San Antonio is accepting and welcoming of all.

Trevinos office also forwarded to police threatening Facebook comments, including one by a local man who wrote, Shoot to kill all BLM (Black Lives Matter) terrorist (sic) on site (sic).

Michael Ariens, a constitutional law professor at St. Marys University, said the councilmen were smart to alert police to the troubling messages. But he noted that it takes specific threats to specific people for such speech to rise to a level of criminality.

Neither vulgar nor vile speech directed at individuals may be suppressed by the government, Ariens said. It remains constitutionally protected speech.

Trevino said hes aware the effort to remove the monument has caused out-of-control frustration.

Were seeing the vitriol is at an all-time high, he told me. My goal is to make sure that we keep the peace here in San Antonio.

To that end, Trevino is in the process of forming a neighborhood safety forum to educate residents on how to respond if they are approached or attacked by hate groups.

Its important to the city to not let intimidation or scare tactics get in the way of progress and the policy that were trying to implement, Trevino said. Its also important to recognize that while we might feel a certain way, we should recognize that some in the community might be fearful, too. So thats why we want to do a forum and assure folks were thinking of everyone, not just ourselves.

About two weeks ago, Trevino met with Jeffrey Addicott, a law professor at St. Marys University, to discuss the plan to remove the monument. He said that conversation was an example of constructive dialogue.

His stance is the Civil War was not fought over slavery, Trevino said. We disagree there. Secondly, his biggest fear is that the monument will be destroyed.  We had a good conversation. We just disagree. And I think thats what conversations should be.

Addicott declined to comment on Friday. Since that meeting, the law professor was censured by the university for comments he made at a Saturday rally in Travis Park.

This is not about racism, Addicott said at the rally, defending the statue. And if any of you are racist in here, please see me afterwards. Id love to beat the living daylights out of you.

Those comments crossed a line with St. Marys President Thomas Mengler, who released a statement on Thursday calling Addicotts comments deeply troubling and asserting that while the university supports free speech, it does not support or defend hateful and violent speech.

The effort to remove the monument will continue to stir up both as it moves toward a council vote.

BChasnoff@express-news.net
The construction of a high-pressure gas pipeline bypassing the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) has begun in Ukraine.

"The construction of a high-pressure supply gas pipeline from Ocheretyne to Avdiyivka has begun: pipe route marking has been carried out, contractors have begun construction and installation works and the first pipe supplies will begin shortly," Donetsk regional military and civil administration head Pavlo Zhebrivsky wrote on his Facebook page.

The value of the project is about UAH 58 million, with the Avdiyivka coke plant, part of Metinvest Group, allocating part of the sum, he said.

"Upon completion of construction we will be able to supply gas to Avdiyivka and another seven neighboring populated localities (Krasnohorivka, Lastochkyne, Orlivka, Tonenke, Vodiane, Pervomaiske and Netailove) from the territory controlled by Ukraine," he said.

The final decision on building a gas pipeline was made on June 7 amid an emergency, when the gas pipeline was damaged in shelling attacks and Avdiyivka and the surrounding area were left without gas, Zhebrivsky said.

As reported, about 22,000 local residents were affected.
GREENVILLE, Pa.  The Pennsylvania dairy family that lost their herd of 120 Holstein dairy cattle in a barn fire Aug. 2 continues to recover, although the future of their milking operation is still being decided.

The Miklos family, of Mercer County, Pennsylvania, is still adding up the damage and trying to figure out what theyll do with the rest of this years hay harvest.

Tammy Miklos told Farm and Dairy Aug. 14 that they are still baling hay and planning to put as much as 4,000-5,000 bales in a second barn, located at a second farm. They lost between 14,000-16,000 square bales in the fire, along with their entire dairy herd of 120-plus Holstein cattle.

They also lost multiple pieces of farm equipment, including two tractors, a skid loader, an elevator, spreader, feed grinder and two silage wagons. She also said six of seven roofs at the main farm will need to be replaced because of damage from the fire or its heat.

The extent of the damage prompted some Farm and Dairy readers to ask about sending donations, and the address for those wishing to donate is 1163 Darien Road, Greenville, Pa. 16125. Checks should be made payable to Rick and Tammy Miklos, or to the farms name, Amazing Grace Dairy. Tammy Miklos said they are not actively seeking funding, but they appreciate peoples desire to help.

One of her horses, a Quarter Horse stallion, came down with bronchitis, but she expects him to be OK. Saddles and other tack were destroyed. About 22 head of steers in a separate barn were unharmed.

She said her insurance company determined the cause to be lightning-related. A storm passed through the area the same night as the fire, and there were signs of lightning damage, including some blackness behind one of the electrical boxes.

She was not sure if a bolt of lightning hit the barn directly, but there definitely appeared to be a power surge, followed by a power outage.

Assessing the damage

The total damage figure is still being calculated. She was told the cost to rebuild the original barn, a tie-stall setup that dates back to at least the 1960s, would be $800,000. The Miklos had renovated the barn various times and had a new electrical system installed, with temperature control and air ventilation.

Although tie-stall barns are less common today, the Miklos liked that setup because they said it resulted in gentler, cleaner cows that could be led around the barn as needed. Their herd was a past Dairy of Distinction recipient.

Tammy said she could have released 45-50 head of cows in one minute, or the whole herd in about three minutes, but on the night of the fire, the heat was so intense the family couldnt even enter the barn.

She again thanked the first responders, as well as the outpouring of neighbors, friends and family, and people who dont even know us. Its kept us going.

Related Content
MANHATTAN, Kan.  U.S. pork producers are transitioning away from using individual gestation crates and instead housing gilts and sows in groups.

But the change poses challenges, including the ability to monitor feed consumption for each animal.

To remedy that, producers have started using electronic sow feeding systems (ESF) in their farms.

Even when sows or gilts are kept together in large groups, ESF systems allow animals to move into individual feeding stations one at a time.

Once a sow enters a station, the gate locks behind her and she is identified electronically by a transponder in her ear tag. The computer-controlled feeder dispenses the specific amount of feed allotted for that animal.

The sow may leave at any time, ending the dispensing of feed and unlocking the entrance for the next sow.

Training pigs

Kansas State University researchers along with K-State graduate students Lori Thomas and Carine Vier conducted studies at a cooperator swine operation using ESFs to look at feed efficiency by stage of gestation and to examine the importance of training gilts and sows to use such systems before they are bred and begin gestation.

The studies followed 300 gilts and 550 sows.

To our knowledge, no one has ever looked at gestation feed efficiency by stage of gestation, and we thought it would help with determining nutrient requirements and feeding recommendations, said K-State animal science professor Bob Goodband.

As the swine industry transitions to group housing, computerized feeding programs will offer opportunities to really fine tune gestation feeding programs for sows.

In one of the studies, gilts spent 10 weeks in pre-training, two weeks in training, then moved into post-training when the animals were bred and moved into gestation.

The cooperator farm had six ESF feeding stations per pen. The researchers were looking at patterns of feed intake and growth of animals.

Training the gilts to use this system is important to meet their nutritional needs after theyve been inseminated and go through gestation in the ESF pens, said Goodband, who is a nutrition specialist with K-State Research and Extension.

Feed efficiency

The cooperator farm had implemented a fairly simple feeding program for determining the amount of feed to provide gestating sows and it worked well, he added.

In the study, gilts received 4.4 pounds of feed per day and sows received 5 pounds. Once gilts and sows finished at a feeding station, they walked through an alley and over a scale where each animal was weighed.

One thing that surprised the researchers was that the sows and gilts did not eat their full feed allotment or gain much weight in the first 10 days in the pen.

After the first 10 days, each sow and gilt generally consumed her whole ration.

We found significant changes in average daily weight gain following the initial 10 days in the pen. Thereafter, females were consistently eating and gaining for the remainder of gestation, said Thomas, the graduate student in charge of the study.

Our results, I think, share a very important message that even with a good training program, gilts and sows appear to struggle within those first few days of introduction into the gestation pen. It doesnt take long before they become adjusted and are up to full feed but it is important for producers to be aware of this.

Nutrition

Thomas said, the main questions they hope to answer is, Will these changes in initial feed intake affect subsequent reproductive performance?'

The team plans to study nutrient requirements during gestation in the spring.

The ESF system provides a model to determine the rate at which a sow adds lean muscle and fat that can be tied back into a nutrition program, said Goodband.

There is a lot of excitement on the data that has been generated and will continue to be generated from this system and many other similar systems, he added.

Improving our knowledge of the pregnant sow and how to properly meet her nutrient requirements in gestation, have her enter into the farrowing house ready to farrow and successfully nurse a vigorous litter of piglets is a goal we hope to achieve.
Target Corporation has announced that it has agreed to acquire Grand Junction, a transportation technology company, to improve and expand Targets delivery capabilities. The acquisition will also accelerate Targets investments and ongoing efforts to transform its supply chain. Grand Junctions software manages local delivery throughout North America.

San Francisco-based Grand Junctions software platform is used by retailers, distributors and third-party logistics providers to manage local deliveries through a network of more than 700 carriers. Currently, Grand Junction is working with Target on its same-day delivery pilot at the Target store in New Yorks Tribeca neighbourhood. Upon deal close, Grand Junctions employees will become Target team members.

Grand Junctions technology and algorithms will help Target deliver to guests faster and more efficiently, said Arthur Valdez, executive vice president, chief supply chain and logistics officer, Target. This acquisition is part of Targets ongoing efforts to strengthen Targets supply chain to provide greater speed, reliability and convenience for guests.

Target Corporation has announced that it has agreed to acquire Grand Junction, a transportation technology company, to improve and expand Target's delivery capabilities. The acquisition will also accelerate Target's investments and ongoing efforts to transform its supply chain. Grand Junction's software manages local delivery throughout North America.#

Target is seizing a tremendous opportunity to leverage local delivery as a retail differentiator, said Rob Howard, Grand Junctions founder and CEO. We are thrilled about helping to pursue this opportunity, and to join Target at this unprecedented time in retail.

Howard will become the vice president of technology at Target after the acquisition. (KD)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Representatives of GESS Ukraine, the Ukrainian division of U.S. Green Energy Sustainable Solution - GESS International  have shown their interest in Kherson combined heat and power plant (CHPP), Deputy Head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) Yuriy Nikitin has said after a meeting with them.

The parties discussed the conditions of the sale, the prices and possibility of restructuring debts of the plant. The plant's debt has reached almost $4 million.

"After three failures [to sell the plant] in the previous years we want to put the CHPP up to sale The announcement of the tender is preliminarily scheduled for October 2017," Nikitin said.

He said that the fund has drawn up the conditions of the sale. A government working group is to discuss them and then the Cabinet of Ministers is to approve them.

He said that the fund would do its best to conduct transparent privatization of the plant and the fund is ready to consider any acceptable offers, in particular, the involvement of Kherson CHPP in a project to develop alternative energy.

"The company wants to make a privatization project. No project participant, including the CHPP and consumers, should lose, on the contrary, they should earn," the SPF said, citing a representative of GESS Ukraine Shaun Edward Lee.

He said that the company has three business projects in Kherson region.

Nikitin also told Interfax-Ukraine that there is an interest to Mykolaiv CHPP. The auction to sell the plant was failure this week, but there were two preliminary bids. However, the deposit guarantee was not confirmed.

He said that Kryvy Rih and Severodonetsk CHPPs are being prepared for sale.

"There is Odesa CHPP, but we have bankruptcy there," Nikitin said.
Archroma, a global leader in colour and specialty chemicals, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mehran University of Engineering & Technology (MUET), Jamshoro, Pakistan. The MoU entails cooperation for a five-year period and will explore projects on basic indigenous textile dyes at MUET towards smart methodologies in processing of textile dyes.Under the partnership, the students of MUET will get access to the hands-on training programmes at Archroma Centre of Excellence at Karachi.

Archroma, a global leader in colour and specialty chemicals, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Mehran University of Engineering & Technology (MUET), Jamshoro, Pakistan. The MoU entails cooperation for a five-year period and will explore projects on basic indigenous textile dyes at MUET towards smart methodologies in processing of textile dyes.#

The MoU was officially signed at a ceremony in Jamshoro by Prof Dr. Mohammad Aslam Uqaili, vice chancellor of MUET and Mujtaba Rahim, CEO, Archroma Pakistan.Speaking at the occasion, Mujtaba Rahim said: We, at Archroma, believe in continuous improvement and challenging the status quo leading to enhance sustainability especially in preserving nature and creating value for our stakeholders. Through this initiative of mutual cooperation, we will be able to share latest knowledge and technical developments with the research team of MUET, and strengthen scholarly collaboration between MUET and Archroma.This partnership is going to have far-reaching impact in research projects which will bear highly positive results for MUET and Archroma. Our academic team is very enthusiastic on the mutual collaboration and look forward to interesting research outcomes. Industrial liaison of students will create confidence and the training, internships and working sessions will benefit them in their career development, Uqaili commented. (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Cotton prices dropped in the Brazilian market in the first fortnight of August. The average price during the first 15 days was 2.4379 BRL per pound, which was the lowest since January 2016 when price touched 2.5096 BRL per pound, Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics (Cepea) said in its fortnightly report for August 1-15, 2017.

Cotton prices dropped in the Brazilian market in the first fortnight of August. The average price during the first 15 days was 2.4379 BRL per pound, which was the lowest since January 2016 when price touched 2.5096 BRL per pound, Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics (Cepea) said in its fortnightly report for August 1-15, 2017.#

In view of sharp price drops in international markets (ICE Futures and CotLookA) in the first fifteen days of the month, some sellers focused on the domestic market, increasing supply and speeding up the pace of trades in the Brazilian market on some days.

Cotton prices dropped in the Brazilian market in the first fortnight of August. The average price during the first 15 days was 2.4379 BRL per pound, which was the lowest since January 2016 when price touched 2.5096 BRL per pound, Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics (Cepea) said in its fortnightly report for August 1-15, 2017.#

Most processors, on the other hand, preferred to work with the cotton previously purchased, searching only for small batches in the spot market and, thus, pressing down quotes, the report said.

Cotton prices dropped in the Brazilian market in the first fortnight of August. The average price during the first 15 days was 2.4379 BRL per pound, which was the lowest since January 2016 when price touched 2.5096 BRL per pound, Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics (Cepea) said in its fortnightly report for August 1-15, 2017.#

The CEPEA/ESALQ Index, 8-day payment terms, for cotton type 41-4, delivered in Sao Paulo, dropped 1.01 per cent between July 31 and August 15, closing at 2.4416 BRL ($0.7687) per pound on August 15.

Cotton prices dropped in the Brazilian market in the first fortnight of August. The average price during the first 15 days was 2.4379 BRL per pound, which was the lowest since January 2016 when price touched 2.5096 BRL per pound, Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics (Cepea) said in its fortnightly report for August 1-15, 2017.#

Meanwhile cotton exports from Brazil totaled 19.3 thousand tons in July, registering an increase of 37.9 per cent over the previous month, according to Secex. During the same month, Brazil imported only 920.5 tons of cotton, showing a drop of 67.1 per cent compared to previous months imports of 2.8 thousand tons.

Cotton prices dropped in the Brazilian market in the first fortnight of August. The average price during the first 15 days was 2.4379 BRL per pound, which was the lowest since January 2016 when price touched 2.5096 BRL per pound, Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics (Cepea) said in its fortnightly report for August 1-15, 2017.#

The National Company for Food Supply (Conab) has upwardly revised the 2016-17 Brazilian crop estimate to 1.523 million tons, up 18.2 per cent compared to previous seasons production. The volume of cotton is expected to be higher despite the 1.7 per cent decrease in the area sown. This is due to increase in productivity, which may be 1,622 kilos per hectare, up 20.1 per cent compared to the 2015-16 crop.

Cotton prices dropped in the Brazilian market in the first fortnight of August. The average price during the first 15 days was 2.4379 BRL per pound, which was the lowest since January 2016 when price touched 2.5096 BRL per pound, Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics (Cepea) said in its fortnightly report for August 1-15, 2017.#

According to Conab, Mato Grosso, the main cotton producing state in Brazil, is expected to increase its cotton output by 15 per cent in 2016-17, totaling 1.013 million tons. Productivity may also increase by 10.1 per cent compared to the previous season, at 1,614 kilos per hectare. According to Conab, drier weather has favoured harvesting and, until late July, 20 per cent of the area is supposed to have been harvested. Around 60 per cent of the volume produced in the state has already been traded. (RKS)

Cotton prices dropped in the Brazilian market in the first fortnight of August. The average price during the first 15 days was 2.4379 BRL per pound, which was the lowest since January 2016 when price touched 2.5096 BRL per pound, Center for Advanced Studies on Applied Economics (Cepea) said in its fortnightly report for August 1-15, 2017.#

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / August 18, 2017 / Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Envision Healthcare Corporation ('Envision' or the 'Company') (NYSE: EVHC) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Middle District of Tennessee, and docketed under 17-cv-01112, is on behalf of a class consisting of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired Envision securities, seeking to recover compensable damages caused by defendants' violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

If you are a shareholder who purchased Envision securities between March 2, 2015 and July 21, 2017, both dates inclusive, you have until October 3, 2017 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Envision Healthcare Corporation provides health care services. The Hospital offers surgery, pharmacy, medical imaging, emergency care, and other related health care services. Envision Healthcare serves patients in the United States. At all relevant times, EmCare Holdings, Inc. ('EmCare') has been one of the Company's primary operating subsidiaries.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company's business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) EmCare routinely arranged for patients who sought treatment at in-network facilities to be treated by out-of-network physicians; (ii) EmCare accordingly billed these patients at higher rates than if the patients had received treatment from in-network physicians; (iii) the Company's statements attributing EmCare's Class Period growth to other factors were therefore false and/or misleading; (iv) Envision's EmCare revenues were likely to be unsustainable after the foregoing conduct came to light; and (v) as a result of the foregoing, Envision's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On July 24, 2017, The New York Times reported that hospitals associated with Envision's subsidiary EmCare were disproportionately likely to engage in "surprise billing," in which patients who sought treatment at in-network facilities were treated by out-of-network physicians and subsequently billed at higher rates.

On this news, Envision's share price fell $2.33, or 3.72%, to close at $60.28 on July 24, 2017.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP
NEW ORLEANS, LA--(Marketwired - August 18, 2017) - Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF") and KSF partner, the former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until October 16, 2017 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against ZTO Express (Cayman), Inc. (NYSE: ZTO), if they purchased the Company's American Depositary Shares ("ADSs") pursuant to its October 27, 2016 initial public offering ("IPO"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

What You May Do

If you purchased ADSs of ZTO and would like to discuss your legal rights and how this case might affect you and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or via email (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com), or visit http://ksfcounsel.com/cases/nyse-zto/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action, you must petition the Court by October 16, 2017.

About the Lawsuit

ZTO and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information in its Registration Statement filed in connection with its IPO, violating federal securities laws.

On October 27, 2016, ZTO conducted its IPO having previously filed its Registration Statement with the SEC. However, ZTO failed to disclose adverse material facts in its Statement involving the Company's use of its "network partner" businesses for low-margin shipping services, which businesses were not maintained on its books, and which caused ZTO's profit margins to be inflated.

Since the IPO, the price of ZTO's shares has fallen significantly.

About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

KSF, whose partners include the former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is a law firm focused on securities, antitrust and consumer class actions, along with merger & acquisition and breach of fiduciary litigation against publicly traded companies on behalf of shareholders. The firm has offices in New York, California and Louisiana.

To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com.

Contact:



Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC

Lewis Kahn, Managing Partner

lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com

1-877-515-1850

206 Covington St.

Madisonville, LA 70447
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.
BUENOS AIRES (dpa-AFX) - The Argentinean Minister of Agroindustry, Ricardo Buryaile, confirmed that the South American country would once again export soybean oil to China. Buryaile heads an Argentinean delegation sent to China this week. The news brought relief to the biofuels sector only a few days after the United States has imposed a 61% tariff on Argentinean biodiesel imports. Soybean oil is used, among other things, to produce biodiesel. 'This great achievement allows us to increase our value-added exports and recover, after two years of work, a market in constant growth,' said the minister. This decision is part of the commitment made by presidents Xi Jinping and Mauricio Macri during a meeting in May aimed at balancing the bilateral trade balance. 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.
Channing Tatum is all set to star in the cinematic adaptation of Bloodlines: The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI, and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty, a novel by Melissa Del Bosque.

Tatum is jointly producing the film along with Michael De Luca, according to Variety. Luca's Michael De Luca Productions and Tatum's Free Association production company will come together to helm the film, touted to be a cartel drama, as per the same report.

The story of the novel revolves around two FBI agents, Scott Lawson and Alma Perez, while they try to get to the bottom of a drug cartel, which operates in tandem with the horse racing circle of Texas. Lawson is a new recruit who just observes and maintains a journal about the drug mafia until he is assigned to work under Perez, the experienced one.

Jonathan Herman will adapt the screenplay for the film. No director is yet attached to the project. Tatum was last seen in the 2017 film Logan Lucky. The film was a hesit comedy, directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Rebecca Blunt.

The actor will now be seen in the upcoming comedy spy film titled Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

 With inputs from PTI.
After spending five years of his career on the Baahubali franchise, actor Prabhas has now joined the upcoming multi-lingual action film Saaho.

"He has finally joined the sets of Saaho from today. He will shoot non-stop for the next three weeks. He is quite excited because he is returning to a film set after a long gap and will get to shoot for something different in a long time," a source from the film's unit told IANS.

Directed by Sujeeth, the project also marks the Telugu debut of Shraddha Kapoor.

Neil Nitin Mukesh is playing the antagonist in this Rs 150 crore action extravaganza, which will be simultaneously shot in Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam as well. However, he is not the only 'bad-guy' in the film. He will be joined by Chunky Pandey and Jackie Shroff, and together, they will play a villainous trio in the film, reports Mid-day.

According to the report, Saaho will feature three grey characters played by these actors, all of whom incidentally hail from Bollywood. While Shroff's character will only have shades of grey, Pandey's character is likely to be outright dark. Neil will be playing a techie, reports suggest.

Speaking about this, Shroff told Mid-day, "I am happy to be a part of Saaho with Prabhas, who is one of the biggest actors in India at the moment. It's wonderful to know that he trusts me and thinks I can pull off this kind of a role. I have seen both the Baahubalis and loved them. They reminded me of my childhood."

According to Sujeeth, a large chunk of the film's budget will be spent on action.

"The scale on which it is being made, a major budget will be spent on some extravagant action scenes. Although it will be a commercial outing, we are attempting something new and I would like to keep that as a surprise element," Sujeeth told IANS.

International stuntman Kenny Bates, known for his work on films such as Die Hard and Transformers, has been brought on board. "Kenny will be supervising the action scenes. We have already finalised locations in Abu Dhabi and some places in Europe where shooting will be done extensively," he said.

(With inputs from IANS)
Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Artem Sytnyk has said that the NABU feels pressure over the investigation into the formula for calculating the coal tariff Rotterdam+ conducted by the bureau detectives.

"We are working oligarchs too. For example, we are investigating into a case against top managers of Zaporizhia Titanium and Magnesium Combine and see that Firtash [Ukrainian businessman, the owner of DF Group Dmytro Firtash] took it actually for $1. Of course, it is early to raise the issue of Firtash' responsibility, but we are investigating into the case. The major part of the case is in court. When we look at the Odesa Port-Side Plant, we see the interests of Firtash there. If we are investigating into Ukrnafta and PrivatBank, we see the interests of Kolomoisky [Ukrainian businessman, the co-owner of Privat Group Ihor Kolomoisky]. If we investigate into the Rotterdam+ scheme, this concerns the interests of Akhemtov [Ukrainian businessman, the owner of SCM Group Rinat Akhmetov]. All these cases exist, but the huge pressure is seen, especially for Rotterdam+. Actually, all our petitions are stopped by court. We have the full blocking of the investigation," Sytnyk said in an interview with the Den newspaper published on Friday.

He said that the same situation is in the case against top managers of Zaporizhia Titanium and Magnesium Combine.

"First the case was in Pechersky District court of Kyiv for six months. Then it was sent to Zaporizhia. Then nine months passed, and there is no progress," he said.
Washington: United States president Donald Trump on Friday called for strong measures to combat "radical Islamic terrorism," a day after twin terror attacks killed 14 people and injured around 100 others in Spain.

A van driver on Thursday ploughed into pedestrians on Barcelona's most popular street in broad daylight, killing at least 14 people.

The Islamic State terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Police later shot dead five suspects after a second vehicle attack in the coastal town of Cambrils, around 130 kilometres from Barcelona.

"Radical Islamic terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary! The courts must give us back our protective rights. Have to be tough!" Trump said in a tweet.

Radical Islamic Terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary! The courts must give us back our protective rights. Have to be tough!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2017

In another tweet, Trump said the US security forces and law enforcement agencies were on guard and were monitoring the situation. "Homeland Security and law enforcement are on alert & closely watching for any sign of trouble. Our borders are far tougher than ever before!" he said.

Homeland Security and law enforcement are on alert & closely watching for any sign of trouble. Our borders are far tougher than ever before!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2017

Trump accused the Opposition Democratic party of being "obstructionists" and compromising with security of the country.

"The Obstructionist Democrats make Security for our country very difficult. They use the courts and associated delay at all times. Must stop!" he tweeted.
We are living in an India where pathways to justice are sometimes ignored because judges, Members of Parliament, and other stakeholders are increasingly interpreting laws in a strict, pedantic manner.

Earlier this month, a 19-year-old transperson was gangraped in Pune, but the perpetrators of this crime were let out on bail by a court order that stated that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860 has no mention of the third gender and hence, its hands were tied. In a report by Pune Mirror, the victim of this egregious human rights violation expressed her deep disappointment: After the judgment, I have lost all faith in the judiciary. The country is not willing to look us in the eye and accept us. Even the law has chosen not to support us. We dont want to appeal further because we know that the archaic laws will continue to break us emotionally, physically and mentally. While the transgender community condemned the heinousness of this crime, the country remained unfazed.

In 2014, the transgender community was elated as the Supreme Court, in NALSA v Union of India, recognised transgender individuals as the 'third gender' category and all basic human rights as well as full moral citizenship would be accorded to them under the law of the land. In the judgment, Justices KS Radhakrishnan and AK Sikri broke down the longstanding hetero-normative gender constructs of man and woman and introduced to the rest of the country, a spectrum of gender identities. The individuals of the third gender had the right to personal identity, autonomy, and self-determination in India.

However, there was no concrete action by the legislature or the executive to honour the judgment in substantive law. There were two legislative bills that were introduced  one was a private member Bill titled the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014 by MLA Tiruchi Siva in the Rajya Sabha and the other was introduced by the central government and was titled the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016. The former bill embodied the NALSA verdict in its entirety, while the central government bill was a heavily diluted form of the verdict; in fact, the latter bill was ambiguous on the right of self-determination of transgender identity  something that was fundamental to the NALSA judgment. The bills were to be taken up at the Winter Session of the Parliament last year, but were not considered for discussion and debate.

On 17 August, the Madras High Court, presided by Justice N Kirubakaran, directed the central government to expedite the passing of Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014. The court allowed a writ petition by a transman who pleaded that the state educational authorities be directed to make changes in his school and college certificates, so that his chosen gender is reflected. Moreover, Justice Kirubakaran, in a brilliant move, suo motu impleaded the Centre, Health and Family Welfare Department Secretary, union secretary of Social Justice and Empowerment and Secretary, Ministry of Law and Justice departments as party-respondents in the petition. Additionally, he also issued a notice to the assistant solicitor general whether there was a possibility to consider transpeople as a separate special category of individuals for affirmative action around education, employment and social protection.

The Centre, however, does not agree, and has been reluctant to even afford to the transgender community the basic human rights for companionship and marriage. It has been clear since the NALSA verdict that the government has not considered aligning basic legislations with the judgment  for instance, making amendments to the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act, 2005 to include transpersons as victims of violence or inserting a clause within the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and Special Marriage Act, 1954 to indicate that the trans community also has the right to choose partners for marriage. Without such alignment of laws, the rights of third gender has no application, and will remain a principle in judicial theory.

Last month, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment, in its report on Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, had remarked: Transgender persons remain at risk of criminalisation under Section 377. The bill must at the very least recognise the rights of transgender persons to partnership and marriage. But the government wants to steer clear of any changes to the status of transgenders vis-a-vis the penal code as the issue of section 377 is sub-judice. The Supreme Court is presently hearing curative petitions against a previous judgment that reinstated section 377 after overturning an order of the Delhi High Court that had decriminalised it for consenting adults of the same sex.

Section 377 talks about punishment for carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or an animal, and since there is no explicit mention of third gender, the 19-year-old rape survivor from Pune receives no justice and her perpetrators walk scot-free. All because a technicality in the legislation has not been addressed. The rape survivor has been doubly victimised because neither the courts, nor the government is ready to address the issue and identify the nuances of the situation. Simply put, there is no willingness to apply judicial or legislative creativity to provide relief to the victim.

The government has waited far too long to provide procedural mechanisms for the third gender. The injustices against the community continue to multiply even in the face of the NALSA judgment. The most rational thing to do, at this point, would be to effectively pass a law for the transgender community and then work towards their representation in public offices so that their voices are no longer silenced.
Darjeeling: A bomb ripped through the heart of West Bengal's hill town of Darjeeling damaging a few shops early on Sunday, police said. No injuries were reported in the incident that caused panic among locals.

"There was a bomb blast in Darjeeling's motor stand area post midnight. No one got injured as the place was empty at the time of the blast. We are investigating the incident," Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Kumar Chaturvedi told IANS.

The blast took place on the 69th day of the indefinite shutdown called by the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM), which has demand a separate Gorkhaland state be carved out of the north Bengal hills.

According to sources, a number of shops and the road in front of the motor stand area have been damaged.

Fire tenders, police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel rushed to the spot after the blast. The police have been deployed in the area. No individual or organisation has so far taken responsibility of the blast.
tech2 News Staff

The CBSE board has issued a circular (PDF) that sets standards and guidelines for the creation of a safe environment in which students can use information technology.

Stating that students might fall prey to cyber bullying, fraud or something even more serious, the circular makes it obligatory for schools to control and monitor the use of electronic devices by students. The steps outlined in the circular are designed to promote a safe and secure educational environment and to discourage students from actions detrimental to themselves.

The circular advises schools to take several measures to achieve the above goals. Primarily, schools will be required to educate students on the safe and effective use of the internet and to install firewalls and other such monitoring mechanisms to control internet access.

The circular even recommends that a digital surveillance system be deployed and that children only be allowed to use the internet in highly-visible areas of the school. Students must only be allowed access to websites that are appropriate for their age-group, suggests the board.

Other guidelines recommend that disciplinary action be taken against students who attempt to bypass filters, compliance with relevant copyright laws, using licensed software, etc.

The circular also refers to the safety of school children in school buses and recommends that a basic mobile phone be made available in every bus. This phone should not have access to the internet or data storage facilities.

As per the circular, students must not be allowed to carry electronic communication devices without prior permission from school authorities. Any violation of the rules will lead to disciplinary action from the CBSE.

The timing of the issuance of this circular to the heads of educational institutions could be related to the Blue Whale phenomenon, where several suicides have been attributed to the online game.
New Delhi: A new narrative is being scripted which places maximum premium on winning elections "at all costs to the total exclusion of ethical considerations," Election Commissioner OP Rawat has said, criticising the "creeping new normal of political morality."

"In this narrative, poaching of legislators is extolled as smart political management; strategic introduction of money for allurement, tough-minded use of state machinery for intimidation etc are all commended as resourcefulness," he said.

Rawat said that under the new narrative, "the winner can commit no sin" and "a defector crossing over to the ruling camp stands cleansed of all the guilt as also possible criminality."

Addressing an event in New Delhi, he said it was this "creeping new normal of political morality" that should be the target for "exemplary action" by all political parties, politicians, media, civil society organisations, constitutional authorities and all those having faith in democratic polity for "a better election, a better tomorrow."

Underlining that "democracy thrives when elections are free, fair and transparent", he said, "However, it appears to a cynical common man that we have been scripting a narrative that places maximum premium on winning at all costs to the total exclusion of ethical considerations."

His remarks came just days after the political drama in Gujarat during the Rajya Sabha elections. The EC had invalidated votes of two Congress MLAs for violating secrecy norms during voting.

The election commissioner, while speaking at a consultation on electoral and political reforms, also expressed his fears on "policy capture", where a winning

candidate would help his political donors by taking decisions favourable to them while being in office.

He said although money was necessary for political parties and candidates, experience had shown that there was a "real and present risk" that some parties and candidates, once in office, would be more responsive to the interests of a particular group of donors rather than to wider public interest.

"Policy capture occurs when the interests of a narrow group dominate those of other stakeholders to the benefit of that narrow group," Rawat said.

He reiterated the commission's objections to the Electoral Bonds introduced by the government, saying it might lead to the use of black money in electoral politics.

Rawat said the recent amendments in election and income tax laws make it clear that any donation received by a political party through an electoral bond had been taken out of the ambit of reporting in the Contribution Report which political parties have to submit to the EC.

He said the implications of this step could be retrograde as far as transparency was concerned.

"Furthermore, where contributions received through Electoral Bonds are not reported, a perusal of contribution reports will not make it clear whether the party in question has taken any donations in violation of Section 29B of the Representation of People Act, which prohibits political parties from taking donations from government companies and foreign sources," he added.

He also said the poll panel had expressed apprehension that the abolition of the relevant provisions of the Companies Act of removing a cap of 7.5 per cent of profit for political donations could lead to money laundering by setting up of shell companies for diverting funds for donations to parties.

Rawat also said that the Election Commission was formulating a social media policy to address the issue of public relations firms being used by parties to shape public opinion online.

"It has come to the notice of the commission that paid operators run by PR firms are being actively deployed to shape public opinion online," he said

With increasing spread of mobile internet technology, the influence of social media was also increasing and it was high time that it was recognised as media and its content was monitored, he added.

"I'm happy to state that the ECI is formulating its social media policy and we are hopeful that it is likely to address such issues," he added.
Panaji: Indian democracy is under threat from "pseudo-nationalism" and "Right-wing fanaticism masquerading as nationalism", a column published in Renovacao, a Goa Church periodical, has said.

"Quo Vadis India?" by Father Savio Fernandes in the latest edition of the pastoral bulletin of the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman, also bemoans efforts to make India a "Hindu Rashtra" by 2020 and rues the "political rhetoric" which is triggering hate crimes against Dalits and members of the minority community.

"Competition for political and economic power has encouraged pseudo-nationalism, which uses religion as a tool to gain acceptance," Fernandes said in the column.

He heads the Council for Social Justice and Peace, the social arm of Goa's influential Roman Catholic Church, which is the religious and spiritual leader of more than 26 per cent of the state's Catholic population.

"This is an important turning point in India's politics, because after being dominated for several decades by Left-leaning policies, the political space is now being rapidly cornered by Right-wing fanaticism masquerading as anationalism'.

"From the much talked about pluralism and diversity being the hallmark of the Indian nation, there are attempts to impose one culture, one religion, one language ideology - a Hindu Rashtra by 2022 which marks the 75th anniversary of our nation's independence," the column stated.

The contents of another column written by FE Noronha and published in the same Church magazine, which likened contemporary India to Nazi Germany, had gone viral on Friday.

The magazine's contents have triggered interest in Goa, where Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar is contesting the Panaji by-poll on 23 August.

Noronha's article also indirectly exhorts voters of Panaji to not vote for Parrikar by arguing, that ballots should not be cast in favour of those who "show no sign of distinct backbone or character and evidently agree with the nationwide fascism".

Although Parrikar refrained from commenting on the allegation, he said that there were "contradictions" in the article.

Fernandes' column however makes a broad critique of the political and social discourse in the country, claiming that efforts were being made to instill fear among Dalits and minorities.

"Of late, the political rhetoric amply demonstrates the rise of such thinking which spills over into hate crimes against the Dalits and minority communities to instill a sense of fear and bully opposing views into a corner," his article said.

The constitution, the Catholic priest says, is under threat from "Right-wing" ideology, which coincides with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ascent to power.

"With the political climate change after the year 2014, the very guiding purpose and principles spelt in the preamble of the Indian constitution - Democratic, Secular, Socialist and Republic - appear to be under the worse threat for the first time after independence."

This is not the first time, that the Church in Goa has made serious accusations against the functioning of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Goa as well as in other parts of the country.

"Christians and Muslims are especially targets of demonisation through false propaganda. Muslims are portrayed as terrorists and loyal to Pakistan while Christians are portrayed as being agents of Portugal and anti-nationals and seeking to convert members of other religious communities through fraud/ inducement," a statement issued by Fernandes' Council for Social Justice and Peace had said in July.
Lucknow: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday met some bereaved families of children who died at the Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College last week and expressed his sympathies.

Extending his condolences, he told the families that the Congress party was with them in this hour of crisis.

Accompanied by party General Secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad, Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) chief Raj Babbar, former Union minister RPN Singh and legislator Aradhana Mishra, soon after landing at the Gorakhpur airport, the Gandhi scion drove to the house of Brahmdev Yadav at Baghagada village and spoke to the family which lost seven-day-old twins in the tragedy.

He took details of the tragedy and tried to verify what according to the parents was the reason behind the deaths of over 60 children in a short span of five days, between 7-12 August.

The Congress leaders also assured Yadav that they will try and get him a job.

Raj Babbar accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state of being a total failure and said it had lost the right to rule.

After this, Rahul Gandhi went to the house of Nitesh Shukla in Malanv village and is later scheduled to go to the house of Rama Shankar in Basauli Khurd village and then to the house of Jitendra at Khatauna village.

Ghulam Nabi Azad said that "Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath was an MP from Gorakhpur for a straight five times but he did nothing".

Gandhi did not speak to the media and said that he will say whatever he has to later in the day when he wraps up the visit after visiting the BRD medical college.
Gorakhpur: The tale of two villages near Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College in Gorakhpur paints contrasting pictures about the potency of Encephalitis, which has claimed lives of thousands of children in the region over the past few years.

While BRD Medical College is in the middle of a controversy over the death of over 70 children within a few days, Japanese Encephalitis and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) have killed about 25,000 children in eastern Uttar Pradesh since 1978. According to independent figures, the death toll is twice as much.

In Manbela village, which is only two kilometres away from the medical college, people will tell you that every house has seen an Encephalitis-related death. According to official figures available with Firstpost, more than 12 children from the village have succumbed to the disease since 2011.

In the same period, Holiya village, 23 kilometres away from BRD Medical College, saw three children dying of Encephalitis. In fact, village head Vijay Yadav told Firstpost that not a single child in the village died in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

A visit to both the villages explained the stark difference between them better than the death toll could. While a lack of hygiene and prevalence of puddles in Manbela made it apparent why the mosquito-borne disease was so prevalent there, Holiya seemed to be in a different world altogether, thanks to conscious efforts by its people to maintain hygiene.

Holiya is in Kushinagar district, near its border with Gorakhpur. Fogging was done to prevent mosquito breeding and vaccination takes place regularly in the village. People realise the importance of drinking clean water and the perils of open defecation. No pig farms are allowed in the village limits.

While people in Manbela respond after Encephalitis strikes, the villagers in Holiya follow the wisdom of prevention being better than cure.

Dr RN Singh, who runs a private clinic in Gorakhpur, had adopted Holiya in 2010 with an objective of containing the disease. He started with creating awareness among the villagers about preventive measures. The same year, Yadav said Dr Singh started getting toilets built in the village using his personal savings. Back then, the doctor tried to provide one toilet for every 10 households. Now, about 60 percent houses have a toilet. Yadav said Dr Singh also educated them about the importance of drinking clean water and got a hand pump installed in the village.

Simple but effective

The efficacy of these measures was evident as not a single child from the village fell prey to Encephalitis for three years in a row, from 2011 to 2013. The number of school-going children in the village of 8,000+ is about 2,000, according to Yadav.

"I did not do any wonder or miracle, but I created awareness," Dr Singh told Firstpost.

He highlighted that mosquitoes are responsible for Encephalitis and cleanliness is the only way to control this disease. He said Holiya is a case in point that cleanliness can indeed check the dreaded disease.

In his clinic in Gorakhpur, called Shankar Clinic, Dr Singh attends to Encephalitis cases. He has been working for four decades and is the chief campaigner of National Encephalitis Eradication Programme. He said the unrelenting nature of the disease in the region, killing hundreds of children every year, left him perturbed, which is why he set about tackling the disease with awareness and the support of some well-wishers.

Manbela's mess

No sooner than this correspondent reached Manbela that he saw faeces of humans and animals by the roadside and puddles of water all around, ideal breeding space for mosquitoes. Lack of hygiene stuck out like a sore thumb.

Ram Ujagi, 53, an unemployed man and a father who lost his three-year-old son to AES in 2013, said he wants to leave this village as nobody is coming forward to help them despite many children succumbing to the deadly disease.

"Children have been dying in Manbela and will keep dying," he said, adding that a poor person's life meant nothing to the government.

He said neither fogging nor any cleanliness drive has taken place in their village for years. A fellow villager, Irfan Khan, 32, said Encephalitis has been a problem in the region for 37 years.

"A mother gets prepared for the death of her child when fever strikes," he said.

Khan opined that if the cleanliness drive of Holiya was replicated in their village, their situation would have been better.

Councillor of Manbela ward Mohammad Quddusi, when contacted over phone, asked this correspondent to talk to the district magistrate regarding the issue. Reportedly, Quddusi has not been in the village since the news of death of 30 children in BRD Medical College broke out on 10 August.

Gorakhpur district magistrate Rajiv Rautela told Firstpost he has heard about how Holiya village has tackled Encephalitis and he is in touch with the people concerned to undertake a cleanliness drive and fogging in all the villages.

Former principal of BRD Medical College Dr YD Singh said the government should have adopted the Holiya model already as it is effective and costs a zilch. He said these are poor and illiterate people and need to know that cleanliness is the key to controlling it. He said the government had accepted the proposal long ago but was yet to act on it.

Model village deteriorating

While Holiya has set an example for other villages, thanks to the intervention of Dr Singh, the situation in the village has been deteriorating slowly. Former head of the village Virendra Singh said that while Dr Singh showed them how to prevent the disease, nobody from the government followed it up. He said while the village would be clean when the doctor started creating awareness, the situation today is different.

The incumbent village head, Yadav, seconded that. He said the government is all talk and no action and has left the villagers to suffer. He asked how much a pradhan could do.

(Saurabh Sharma is a Lucknow-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters. He tweets @saurabhsherry.)
New Delhi: A senior office-bearer of the IIMC Alumni Association on Friday resigned from the body, alleging "systematic saffronisation" of the state-run media institute, which has courted controversies in the recent past.

Arunoday Prakash, the vice-president of the association, has quit, its general secretary Mihir Ranjan confirmed.

The association, founded in 2004, has 12 chapters across the country. It organises 'connections', the annual get-together of the alumni on the campus.

"The association is not really working for the interests of the future students. It is silent on the ongoing happenings," Prakash said.

What is the point of having a body with thousands of members that does not even speak out when the institute is being "systematically saffronised"? he asked.

Prakash, who is the media advisor to Delhi Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, said he was feeling "suffocated" as the alumni forum was not taking any stand on the recent developments, including the decision to impose Central Civil Services Conduct Rules on the faculty.

Ranjan said the issue of Prakash's resignation will be taken up in the forum's next central committee meeting.

Eight of 11 faculty members of Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), New Delhi had last month written to the secretary, Information and Broadcasting Ministry, who is also Chairperson of the institution, accusing its Director General (DG) KG Suresh of "targeting and defaming" them.

Suresh had reacted to the allegations, saying many of these faculty members were into "activism" and their "tantrums" could be described as "theatre of the absurd".

The institution is currently celebrating its 53rd Foundation Day.
As if the recent incidents of molestation at a Delhi five-star hotel, stalking of a journalist in Mumbai and the Chandigarh stalking case weren't enough, another shocking case of violence against women has surfaced from Indore.

ANI reports that at a gym in Indore, a man punched and kicked a woman after she complained about his behaviour during a workout.

In the video from Thursday, the woman can be seen speaking behind the man in a sleeveless shirt, following which he looks enraged and punches her. She is seen holding her face and slumping on some gym equipment when the man goes on to kick her on her left knee as well. Other gym members finally intervene and restrain the man before further damage can be done. Here is the CCTV footage of the shocking assault:

#WATCH Man punches & kicks a woman at a gym in #Indore after she complained about his behavior during workout #MadhyaPradesh pic.twitter.com/eFQWUrMlbz  ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

ANI added that a case of assault and molestation has been registered against the culprit. Deputy Superintendent of Police Shashikant Kankane said that the police are further investigating the matter.

According to India Today, the accused, Puneet Malviya, is a resident of Mandsaur district. The report quoting the gym trainer Ranit Sonane said that the accused escaped following the incident. The police are in look out of the accused.
Evidence of removing coal from Ukraine uncontrolled areas could be reason for filing claims to intl courts

Deputy Minister for Temporary Occupied Territories and Internally Displaced Persons Heorhiy Tuka has said that if there is evidence of shipping coal from the Ukrainian temporarily uncontrolled areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions to Russia, this could be a reason for filing lawsuits to international courts.

"These events are not in line with international requirements. If we have a chance of receiving photos of high resolution, including photos of crossing the state border and if these facts are recorded, this is a reason for filing claims We do not have facts, only statements in media," he told reporters on Saturday in Kyiv.

He said that each deposit, in particular, coal deposits, has their own specifics.

"It is impossible to present coal extracted in Donbas as coal extracted, for example, in Kemerovo," Tuka said.

He also said that any foreign economic transactions meeting international requirements are to be carried out with permits.

"If goods do not have permits, this is smuggling. If it is coal extracted on the Ukraine temporarily uncontrolled area, this could be war crimes that would be evidence of plundering of natural resources of Ukraine," he said.

Tuka said that law enforcement agencies are to tackle these facts.
A group of militants killed a PDP worker near his residence in Anantnag district of Kashmir on Saturday, officials said.

J&K: A PDP worker identified as Mohd Ishaq shot dead by unknown gunman in Anantnag, more details awaited.  ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

Militants barged into the house of Mohammad Ishaq Parray in Dialgam area of Anantnag and fired at him from close range, according to a police officer.

Parray, a worker of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was shot at by the militants outside his house at Dialgam in Anantnag district, a police official said.

According to Brighter Kashmir, Parray sustained serious bullet wounds and was shifted to a hospital near by, but doctors declared him brought dead on arrival.

To capture the militants, a joint team containing the army, Special Operations Group (SOG) and CRPF launched a man hunt immediately after the incident.

The Indian Express reported that earlier in 2017 three members of PDP were shot, out of these only one person survived. PDP district president Abdul Gani Dar, 64, was killed on 25 April. Dar was attacked "when three unidentified militants intercepted his vehicle and shot him dead in Pulwama," the report adds.

With inputs from agencies
Hyderabad: The Kerala government is yet to submit an inquiry report sought by the Centre on alleged religious conversions taking place in Malappuram district, Union Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir said.

"There is a big centre...that centre is in Malappuram district (in Kerala)," the minister said alleging, "Conversions take place there. In a month, about 1,000 people

are converted. There is a report that Hindus and Christians are made Muslims."

"I went there in May. I had a meeting with DG, ... Chief Secretary. I told them, what is this centre that 1,000 (people) are converted in a month. On what basis? Do they take advantage of poverty, give warnings, talk about employment. What do they do? Find out. The matter is coming out," Ahir told PTI.

The minister was responding to a query on the NIA indicating a "pattern" vis-a-vis issue of 'love jihad' in the Supreme Court while dealing with the matter.

Ahir, however, did not comment on the issue, noting that it is sub-judice.

The minister was in Hyderabad to attend programmes organised by the Telangana unit of the BJP on Friday.

"The state government (in LDF-ruled Kerala) has not yet sent any report after inquiring the issue though I had asked for it," the minister said.

"Now, the NIA (National Investigation Agency) has been entrusted with the inquiry. Whatever is there, it will come out after the inquiry. But, even after we have written, the government has not sent its inquiry report," Ahir said.
New Delhi: The external affairs ministry on Friday said it has not received any communication from Pakistan about the launch of a consultation process by it to nominate an ad-hoc judge for the Kulbhushan Jadhav case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

"We have seen reports in the media about the issue. We have not been informed officially about this process by relevant authorities," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar told reporters, replying to a question on the issue.

According to a Pakistani media report, Islamabad has begun consultations over the nomination of an ad-hoc judge for the Jadhav case and that an ex-attorney general and a former Jordanian premier have emerged as the top contenders.

India had moved the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the death penalty handed down to Jadhav by a Pakistani military court. The ICJ had on 18 May restrained Pakistan from executing the death sentence.

During the tenure of ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif, former Supreme Court judge Khalilur Rehman Ramday was approached, but he declined the nomination, the report by Express Tribune said.

Sources were quoted by the daily as saying that the Attorney General for Pakistan's (AGP) office has recommended the names of senior lawyer Makhdoom Ali Khan and former Jordanian prime minister Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh to the Prime Minister's Office.

Khasawneh served as an ICJ judge for over a decade, while Khan, a former Attorney General who is seen as the favourite for the job, also has experience in international arbitration cases, having represented eight different countries in international courts.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had indicated that his government may bring in a legal framework under which doctors will have to prescribe generic medicines, which are cheaper than equivalent branded drugs, to patients. Modi had said his government brought in a health policy after 15 years and capped the prices of medicines and stents, which angered some pharmaceutical companies. According to the newly proposed draft national pharmaceutical policy, the government plans to cap trade margins to make drugs cheaper, replace brand names with names of salts or generic drugs, clamp down on unfair marketing practices and give a boost to local manufacturing to reduce dependence on imports.

One aspect that is critical to this policy, pharma experts feel, is the boost that it is going to give to generic medicines. As stated in the draft policy: Institutions receiving supplies directly from manufacturers distributors or retailers will also be covered under the trade margin reforms. In its effort to promote generic medicines, the draft proposes public procurement and dispensing of medicines will be of generic drugs in salt names.

Rajiv Gulati, former president, Global Pharmaceuticals Business, Ranbaxy, told Firstpost that the key challenge to generics has always been that the quality varies.

Globally, brands survive as long as patents last. In developed countries such as USA, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe, there are no brands after patent expiration, and retailers are free to dispense products of any pharmaceutical company that they desire. The key element here is that all the generics are of acceptable quality and fully bio-equivalent to the patented product. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory authorities do their bit to ensure that quality. Hence, brands and generics become substitutable, both legally and emotionally. This is what we need to establish in India, says Gulati, who is a member of the Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance and the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India.

India is an out-of-pocket country unlike the US, Europe, Canada and Australia, where insurance policies or governments pay for the medicines. Here, he points out, a proliferation of brands results in consumers from different economic strata pay the same price for a better brand, which is basically just a better packaging of the same salt.

One big concern about generics is that power of discretion will shift from the physician to the retailers. The retailers might then make oversized profits, while consumers will continue to shell out a high price. Such a scenario has played out in countries like France and Australia, where retailers have the power to influence.

It is significant to note here that central and state governments are expanding Jan Aushadhi stores in large numbers to ensure that consumers can buy reasonably priced medicines. Also, competition is a great leveller. I wont be surprised if retailers begin offering prices less than Jan Aushadhi. Additionally, the advent of online pharmacies is bringing a significant amount of transparency to the advantage of consumers,Gulati explained.

If generic medicines become a reality, it will help retailers streamline their inventory. Today, there are more than a thousand brands of the single molecule Atorvastatin. A good retailer easily carries 10-12 brands of any fast-selling molecule. If reduced to one SKU (stock-keeping unit) per molecule, working capital, storage, labour cost and man-power cost will also reduce. Theoretically, this can make retailers more financially viable, enabling them to offer better prices to remain competitive.

The negative impact of emptying this pipeline can be severe on the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Switching to one brand one retailer situation might lead to reduction in primary sales, even as tertiary sales increase. The biggest deterrent to implementation remains shortage of pharmacists in the country. For instance, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, there are 20,000 pharmacists for 72,000 retail pharmacies.

Bijon Kumar Misra, Founder, Partnership for Safe Medicines India initiative and consumer policy expert told Firstpost that price control alone cannot ensure accessibility. A new umbrella of social security must be opened and offered to those who die every year of rare and chronic diseases, he added. For instance, on 16 August, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) capped the price of various models of knee implants, reducing the cost of knee replacement and revision surgeries, after the prime minister's 2017 Independence Day declaration to reduce prices.

Dont prescribe a price, prescribe a standard because a simple slash in price will undermine the patients safety. My contention is that if the patient is unable to access a medicine or a method of treatment, the government should procure it a lower price and then enable the patient to access it, explained Misra, whose initiative aims to serve as a coalition of organisations and individuals seeking to protect consumers from spurious or contraband medicines in the country.

The new draft, he feels, looks good in the first reading. The challenge will be to implement it in the shortest possible time. The government is now talking about tracing and tracking the supply chain. There should be proper portals and robust data procuring systems, he added.

The draft states that e-prescriptions will be operationalised, whereby the prescriptions will be computerised and the medicine name will be picked up from a drop-down menu of salt names.

Sources in the health ministry revealed that e-pharmacy will soon be regularised after the government held a closed-door meeting with members of the All India Druggists and Chemists Association on 18 August. The government is convinced that modern technology will be an enabler to improve accessibility to save medicines in the country and is looking at amending the existing Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940.

The Act was framed at a time when e-retail did not exist. We need to foster an environment where tech based distribution systems can thrive. There must be a robust tracing and tracking system to identify the medicine before it reaches the consumer. We should be able to find out which drug was sold online without a prescription and in what quantity. Critical trends in self-medication and anti-microbial resistance will also become available to the health ministry, the source stated.

But what about medication in villages, where doctors and patients do not have consistent access to the internet, asked Arun Khanna, chairman and managing director of Uth Healthcare Ltd, a pharmaceutical marketing company. In rural areas, there should be training programs for chemists in understanding prescriptions based on salts. A nationwide chemist training programme will be now necessary, he said.

I am in the industry for 44 years and looking at the new draft policy, I can say that the step is not wrong. What we need is a reinforced commitment towards quality in the domestic market. Prescribing salts instead of medicines means there needs to be greater awareness about chemicals and salts in the people as well as the chemists, he believed. Khanna added that generic medicines could surely work in a country like India, which has been able to scale down the price of drugs  ranging from Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) to finished products  from Rs 100 to Rs 10. India is now a key supplier to emerging markets and Africa. In India, the cost of cervical cancer vaccine is Rs 2,000. The same vaccine will cost around Rs 16,000 in the US and the UK.

Doctors also believe that the theory that generic drugs cannot be quality controlled is pathetic and mostly in the interest of large corporations. For instance, the price of the injectable iron ampule come down from Rs 156 to Rs 18 because doctors realised that lakhs of ampules need to be ordered for women suffering from anaemia.

Five years ago, when we scaled up the use of the medicine, the next step was to bring down the cost because that was the only limiting factor. Because of our emphasis on the drug, 15 players in the market recognised the value of the product, competition was generated and the prices fell, said Hema Divakar, former president of FOGSI (Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India).

The draft policy also laid down several other policy prescriptions that include enhancing quality standards, keeping a check on unfair trade practices, faster approvals, giving a fillip to indigenous manufacturing and encouraging research and development. To explain the urgent necessity of the implementation of such a policy, experts pointed to the National Drug Survey (2014-2016), conducted by the National Institute of Biologicals. These were some of its shocking findings:

Out of the 47,012 samples tested, 13 samples were found to be spurious and 1,850 samples were found to be NSQ (Not of Standard Quality). Therefore, the estimated percentage of NSQ drugs in India was 3.16 percent, while spurious drugs amounted to 0.0245 percent. A total 1,011 samples out of the 33,656 samples tested from retail outlets were found to be NSQ and 8 samples were found to be spurious. The estimated percentage of NSQ formulations from retail outlets in India was three percent and was not expected to be more than 3.19 percent (the upper 95 percent confidence limit), and the estimated percentage of spurious drugs from retail outlets is 0.0237 percent. State wise, NSQ percentage estimates for Retail outlets varied from zero to 8.82 percent (with the exception of Lakshadweep); Three States/Union Territories  Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Goa  had zero percent NSQ. Fourteen States/UTs had NSQ percentage below the national average of three percent for retail outlets. Eighteen States had NSQ percentage above the national average of 3 percent for retail outlets.

The total number of non-compliance out of all tests of all samples from retail outlets was 1,251. Out of 69 tests performed on these samples, they failed in 28 tests, of which, Dissolution and Assay accounted for 56.4 percent of the non-compliance. Total 839 samples out of the 8,369 samples tested from government sources were found to be NSQ and five samples were found to be spurious. The estimated percentage of NSQ formulations from government sources in India was 10.02 percent and the 95 percent confidence interval for the same is 9.38 percent to 10.68 percent and the estimated percentage of spurious drugs from government sources is 0.0597 percent. State wise, NSQ percentage estimates varied from 0 to 17.39 percent with the exception of Sikkim. Four Union Territories  Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu and Lakshadweep  had zero percent NSQ. Eighteen States and Union Territories had NSQ percentage below national average of 10.02 percent.
Jaipur: Rebel BJP MLA in Rajasthan Ghanshyam Tiwari on Saturday opposed the Vasundhara Raje government's decision to raise OBC reservation from 21 to 26 percent for granting five percent reservation to Gujjars and four other castes, saying it would be struck down by the court.

He said that if the proposed bill is challenged and struck down by the court like the previous SBC reservation bill, all the castes under the OBC would suffer.

"The bill which the government is going to introduce for increasing OBC quota to grant reservation to Gujjars and other castes will exceed the 50 percent legal ceiling. It may be struck down by the court and if this happens, all the castes getting OBC reservation will suffer," he said.

Tiwari said that the government should also take initiatives to provide reservation to economically backward people of the upper caste.

The government has assured the Gujjar leaders that the OBC quota will be split after increasing it to 26 percent to grant them 5 percent reservation.

A bill to this effect will be introduced in the upcoming Monsoon session for which a consensus was arrived at on Thursday night at a meeting of the cabinet subcommittee with the Gujjar delegation.

The total reservation in the state stands at 49 percent at present and this is set to once again crossed the 50 percent legal ceiling. In May this year, the state government had issued a notification to re-include five castes of Gujjar/Gurjar, Banjara/Baldia/Labana, Gadia-Lohar/Gadalia, Raika/Rebari and Gadaria (Gaadri), in the OBC list.

These castes were first included in the OBC list in 1994.

The castes were re-included in OBC after state High Court in December last year struck down the Special Backward Class (SBC) Reservation Act, 2015, which provided special backward class status to these five castes.

Tiwari has been criticising Raje and the BJP leadership after show cause notices were served on him by the party's national disciplinary committee in May last.

The notices were sent after the BJP MLA alleged that the Rajasthan unit of the saffron party had become a place for the "mafia and sycophants" while the dedicated, loyal and qualified people were being "sidelined".

He had also called Raje the "queen of indiscipline".
New Delhi: The CBI has moved an application for conducting lie detector tests on those arrested in connection with the sensational rape and killing of a minor girl in Kotkhai area of Shimla in Himachal Pradesh.

The CBI sources said the agency wanted to conduct polygraph tests on the accused as their statements were inconsistent.

The accused, including Ashish Chauhan, the first one to be arrested in the case, would be subjected to the test after attaining their consent, they said.

According to the law, the test is conducted only after getting an approval from an individual. In case, an accused declines to give permission, it goes against him or her in the court of law.

Meanwhile, the agency has examined over 100 people in connection with the rape and killing that triggered massive public outrage against the state government, the sources said.

Among those quizzed by the central probe agency were kin of some influential officials of the state government, they said.

The case was handed over to the CBI by the Himachal Pradesh High Court on 19 July on the state government's plea amid public outburst against the state police. The CBI filed two FIRs on 22 July.

The 16-year-old girl had gone missing after school hours on 4 July from Haliala forest in Kotkhai area of Shimla district.

Her naked body was found in the forest on 6 July and the post-mortem report confirmed rape.

The DGP constituted the SIT headed by an officer of IG rank which arrested six persons. One of the accused was killed in police custody in Kotkhai Police Station.

The CBI had also registered the case of custodial death of one of the suspects who was a Nepalese citizen, it said.
New Delhi: A forensic team would visit the suite in a five-star hotel where Congress leader Shashi Tharoor's wife Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in 2014, to collect further evidence, a Delhi court was informed on Saturday.

The information about the proposed visit by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) team was disclosed to the court by the hotel management which has sought its de-sealing of the suite here as Pushkar had died under mysterious circumstances.

Metropolitan magistrate Dharmender Singh also pulled up Delhi Police for delaying the de-sealing of the suite while referring to an order passed on 21 July by his predecessor asking it to de-seal the occupied premises within four weeks.

The advocate, appearing for the hotel, said it had received a letter on Friday from the police saying that the CFSL team would visit again the suite on 1 September. "Why did you take two months to inform the hotel that you will need more time," the court asked the police. The court, however, allowed police plea seeking one more opportunity for filing of the compliance report in the court regarding de-sealing of the suite.

It directed the agency to file the report on 4 September. The court had on 21 July ordered de-sealing of the suite within four weeks, saying the hotel could not be put to unending hardship due to laxity on part of the police.

The court had, however, said the probe agency would be at liberty to visit the suite before filing of the compliance report in the court regarding de-sealing of the suite. The police was also allowed to take out the articles lying inside the suite with due care for the purpose of investigation.

The court noted that no offence was found on part of the hotel and no police official had visited the suite for over a year. The police had said in its earlier status report that it was not able to reach a definitive conclusion so far regarding cause of Pushkar's death.

The hotel had submitted before the court that locking of the suite was creating sanitary and cleanliness issues for it. The hotel had claimed that due to the sealing of the suite, which costs between Rs 55,000 and Rs 61,000 a night, it had suffered a loss of over Rs 50 lakh in the last three years.

It claimed that a number of times, police and forensic teams had visited the suite and it was no longer required to be kept sealed. "The hotel continues to suffer loss with each passing day. The continuous sealing of the suite is also affecting the use of other rooms/suites on the same floor," it had said.

Pushkar was found dead in the suite of the south Delhi hotel on the night of 17 January, 2014. The suite was sealed on that night itself for investigation. An FIR was registered by Delhi Police on 1 January, 2015 against unknown persons under IPC section 302 (murder).
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday assured the family of a Pakistani child to give him a visa for his medical treatment in India.

Swaraj's response came after one of the family members of the child requested her to grant a visa to the child, saying the child needs treatment for bone marrow.

"Yes, we will give him visa. @IndiainPakistan," Swaraj said in a tweet.

Earlier, one Lata Sunil said the child needs bone marrow treatment in India and requested Swaraj to give him a visa on medical ground.

On the occasion of Independence Day, the external affairs minister had announced that India will provide medical visas to all bona fide Pakistan patients.
Two AIMIM corporators were suspended amid a ruckus after they refused to stand up when 'Vande Mataram' was sung at the start of the day's proceedings in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation on Saturday.

Protesting against this, ruling Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party corporators rushed to the well of the house and raised loud slogans against the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) duo who remained seated when the song was being rendered.

This quickly degenerated into a slanging match between the ruling and the Opposition corporators with fisticuffs, yanking off of microphones from tables, breaking fans and damaging under furniture and fittings in the assembly hall.

Some of the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance corporators strongly objected as the AIMIM corporators remained seated during 'Vande Mataram' and raised slogans of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', and "If you want to live in this country, you will have to sing 'Vande Mataram'," and flung their shawls around in the hall.

Amid the continuing fracas, AMC Mayor Bhagwandas Ghadamode (BJP) adjourned the proceedings twice and announced the suspension of the two AIMIM corporators for a day, before adjourning the house for the day.

AIMIM MLA Imtiaz Jaleel said there is no law mandating people must stand up during the singing of 'Vande Mataram', though it is a tradition that is respected.

"However, we are very clear that whenever 'Vande Mataram' is rendered we must stand up," Jaleel said, adding he would seeks details of the incidents in the AMC house from his party corporators.

The AIMIM is the largest Opposition party with 25 corporators while the ruling Shiv Sena has 29 and the BJP 22. The other Opposition parties include eight from the Congress, three of the Nationalist Congress Party and 24 independents/others in the 113-member AMC house.
Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Friday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take the defence ministry "seriously" as the country is "staring at a war with China" and facing terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

"The environment in the country today is such that on one hand we are staring at a war with China and on the other, infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan does not stop," Thackeray told reporters.

"The prime minister should take a stand the defence ministry should be taken seriously and cannot be played with," he said. Thackeray, whose party is a constituent of the Modi government, was apparently referring to the fact that there is no full-time defence minister as the charge is with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

The defence portfolio was with Manohar Parrikar before he moved to Goa as the chief minister in March.

"The Goa chief minister is going to contest a byelection.

Thursday, I read his statement that if he loses, he will once again take up defence ministry. If the ministry is being treated lightly, anarchy will prevail across the country," he said.

"Whether he (Parrikar) wins or loses is immaterial," Thackeray said, asking the prime minister to take the defence ministry "seriously".

Taking a dig at Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, he said, "While Fadnavis feels that there will be lawlessness if the government gives a complete loan waiver, in reality, if a losing chief minister (referring to Parrikar) goes to Delhi, there will be anarchy across the country."

The Sena supremo further demanded that the government reveals the names of all farmers, who benefitted from the government's loan waiver scheme. "The government, in its enthusiasm, may declare more names of farmers being benefitted than total population of the state. Just so that this does not happen, the names of all beneficiaries should be declared in the legislative assembly," he said.

He added that Shivsainiks will personally visit those farmers and verify the government's claims.

Earlier, Sena MP Sanjay Raut slammed Parrikar and said it seemed that the Goa chief minister was afraid of losing the polls and people may reject him.

"This is a democracy. If your people do not choose you and you lose, then go and sit at your home. You say, I will go to the Centre and be the defence minister again after losing.

Is the defence ministry of the country a game?" he questioned. He pointed out that there is no full-time defence minister in the country. Parrikar had resigned as the defence minister after the Goa assembly polls and was sworn in as the chief minister on 14 March.
National joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy will hire Lazard Freres SAS (France) that advised the restructuring of Ukraine's state debt to help in the possible sale of Naftogaz's assets in Egypt.

Naftogaz said in an announcement in the ProZorro e-procurement system that the cost of Lazard services is $1.25 million, which is $200,000 less than the expected cost.

Naftogaz said that twice the company announced tenders to select an advisor (on March 31 and May 17), but only Lazard submitted a bid for the tenders. The negotiation procedure applied afterwards.

The advisor shall analyze and consult on the potential basis for sale of rights and liabilities under concession agreements, select the best time for the deal, propose measures to maximize investment value of the assets and make up a list potential investors and options for their involvement.

The service is to be provided by December 31, 2018.
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday directed senior ministers, Suresh Rana and Satish Mahana, to rush to the train accident site in Muzaffarnagar.

He also spoke with the Muzaffarnagar District Magistrate and instructed him to ensure all possible relief to affected people, an official spokesperson said.

Hospitals have been instructed to provide free treatment to the injured passengers, the spokesperson said.

He said four NDRF teams were also being rushed there, three from Ghaziabad and one from Delhi.

Besides, 35 ambulances, bread, butter, 1,000 food packets, additional private and state-run buses were being arranged, he said.

Volunteers were being mobilized from adjoining Meerut, the spokesperson said.

Medical colleges, district hospitals and a large number of private hospitals were being prepared to receive patients, he said.
The All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) has swept the West Bengal civic polls by winning 140 of the 148 wards.

The six wards that BJP won was a big surprise, as with it the party has emerged as the principal Opposition.

But the worst thing to happen was that with the Left and Congress. Both parties, who had ruled the state at one point, scored big zeroes.

It finally seems to be an end for both the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Congress in West Bengal politics.

Once known as the 'red bastion', today, West Bengal has virtually become 'Left-free' (Baam-mukto) despite the fact that the Left had ruled the state for long 34 years. Right from Assembly elections to panchayat polls, the Left had dominated West Bengal prior to 2011 when it was ousted by TMC.

However, as a face saver, the Forward Bloc, an ally of the Left Front, managed to win a single ward.

That TMC swept the municipal election ahead of the crucial 2018 Panchayat election in the state wasnt a big surprise as the ruling party had demonstrated its prowess in the 2016 Assembly election in which the Mamata Banerjee-led party bagged 211 seats out of 294 (total 295 seats) it had contested. Despite forming an alliance, Congress won 44 while the Left Front a meagre 32.

Even after facing a heavy defeat in the 2011 Bengal election and completely getting routed in 2016, the Left has failed to learn any lesson. The grassroots connect that the Left had always claimed and was proud of, is completely missing now. At least, the latest civic bodies' election result speaks so.

As for Congress, the party is out of the race in West Bengal because 1977 was the last time when West Bengal had a Congress chief minister in Siddhartha Shankar Ray. The CPM-led Left Front ruled the state for the next 34 years. But instead of reviving itself, Congress continued to decline. Even the Left-Congress alliance during the 2016 Assembly polls have proved proved disastrous for both.

According to political analysts, over the past year, BJP has managed to turn adversity into advantage. The saffron party had won three seats on its own in 2016. This is its highest tally of seats in West Bengal since 1952 when its predecessor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, won nine seats. Steadily, the BJP has been making inroads into the grassroots of Bengal. Congress and even the CPM party workers have shifted their allegiance to BJP. The trend is quite similar to Kerala for instance, where a large number of CPM workers shifted to RSS and then BJP.

"BJP is eating into the space of Left and Congress. Their voters' base is steadily increasing especially in this part of Bengal," said Partha Pratim Choudhury from Jalpaiguri. The BJP has won four wards in Jalpaiguri district in North Bengal.

The latest result has baffled analysts as well as they have failed to explain how could a party, how a party which led the state for three decades could end up with not a single win.

Recently, the CPM failed to send its sole nominee from West Bengal to Rajya Sabha due to lack of numbers. TMC, meanwhile, succeeded in getting all its six members elected to the upper house of the Parliament.

Now, ahead of the 2018 Panchayat election in Bengal, it's time for the Left to undergo a serious introspection and rectify itself, or else it wont take time for new-age voters to send the 'pro-poor, pro-people, party of the proletariats' to oblivion, not only in Bengal, but elsewhere as well.
Right from the beginning of our conversation, Kabeer Shakya, founder of Indias first Buddhist rock band Dhamma Wings is very direct about not wanting to be called the country's first 'Dalit' rock band, and rightly so. Not only is the practice of addressing them as Dalits subliminally discriminatory, it is also against the very motto of the group  to end casteism by producing music replete with the teachings of Gautam Buddha and Dr BR Ambedkar. Excerpts from a conversation:

How was the band formed?

We officially launched the band in 2011. After graduating in computer science, I started Dhamma Wings. Just like me, all the band members are from Mumbai. I found my drummers first and they eventually introduced me to other musicians and that is precisely how the band came about.

The lyrics of your songs hark back to the teachings of Gautam Buddha and BR Ambedkar. Was that what you had set out to do initially?

I was in Bodhgaya as a practising monk for three months. Buddhism encourages you to do that. I came to know the real history of India during my time there, including the influence of Pali literature on our culture. I started digging more and more and that is when I came across most of the information that I propagate now. Initially, I was greatly impressed by Buddhas preachings.

I came back to Mumbai and after forming Dhamma Wings, I started reading Baba Saheb (Ambedkar) and that is when the plight of the people from the lower castes came to my notice. That is when we started integrating Ambedkars teachings into our songs. Therefore, we do not play together just for the heck of it. We come together and create music with a message, a message we firmly believe in.

Do you see a difference in the response of the audiences now from when you started out?

Definitely. There is a vast difference. When I first started out, I used to take my guitar and go off to the slums to play music for people there. Obviously, I did not get the kind of support I required, which is only natural for an up and coming artist. Acceptance is a gradual process. I would say that primarily, Facebook and YouTube were instrumental in making the band as popular as it is today. The academe, in particular, started embracing our music. They were the first ones to recognise that our songs were meant to be heard, specially by the youth of the nation. In fact, we now put up regular performances at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and were even honoured by the the institution for our music, with a mission of course. It was a very proud moment for us.

Apart from the academe, what has the reaction of the other sections which might not be as enlightened as the former, been like?

Frankly speaking, the younger generation is praising our music. The lyrics are leaving an equal impact on them, if not more. Earlier, Ambedkarite songs used to be very critical of Hinduism. Words were used as a tool to agitate the masses because that was also the need of the hour, then. However, today, people are well-aware of the circumstances and do not need to be provoked to react against social injustices. Therefore, we dont name and blame anyone in our melodies because we believe that the past should be treated as the past and the present is what matters. Our message to the newer generation is that do not let these social evils prevail now. Set course for the future.

Was there a defining moment in which you felt that your efforts were yielding results?

There are many such incidents, but one stands out. I was attending a rally in the city and had met Rajram Patil, a prominent Koli leader. (Kolis are the aboriginals of Maharashtra and are languishing in a pitiable condition at the moment). Mr. Patil shared the communitys plight with me. Due to lack of opportunities, the artists of the community were unable to highlight their social issues through art. Therefore, I composed a couple of tracks to make them aware of what lies ahead and what they can make of it. This was one defining incident that captured the essence of our larger objective.

Here is Dhamma Wings' most popular song, 'Jay Bhim Se':
Gorakhpur: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday hit out at Rahul Gandhi over his planned visit to Gorakhpur saying the "yuvraj (prince) sitting in Delhi" cannot be permitted to make Gorakhpur "a picnic spot".

The chief minister, who inaugurated a cleanliness campaign in the district to tackle the deadly encephalitis outbreak in the wake of death of 71 children at the BRD hospital in Gorakhpur, also targeted Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.

"I feel that the shehzada sitting in Lucknow ...yuvraj sitting in Delhi will not know the importance of this cleanliness campaign. They will come here to make it a picnic spot, we cannot permit it," he said, attacking Gandhi who is scheduled to meet the families of the victims and visit the BRD hospital on Wednesday.

"If someone gives an open challenge to the self respect of the people of Gorakhpur and eastern Uttar Pradesh ...they will themselves come forward to fight such dreaded diseases through their awareness," Adityanath stressed launching the 'Swachch Uttar Pradesh - Swasthya Uttar Pradesh campaign' here.

Voicing hope that the campaign will be successful in checking encephalitis, he accused the previous governments of depriving the people of the state of basic facilities for their vested interests.

Stressing that more than treatment of encephalitis, checking its spread was important for which cleanliness and potable water were necessary, the chief minister said his government was working in this regard.

The chief minister, who has represented Gorakhpur in the Lok Sabha five times, will also tour encephalitis and flood-affected areas.

The Congress has targeted the Aditynath Government over the deaths following allegations that the children who were critically ill succumbed due to oxygen shortage.
Bhopal: BJP president Amit Shah on Friday said not a single corruption charge has been levelled against the Narendra Modi government in the last three years, in contrast to the previous Congress-led UPA administration which saw "scams amounting to Rs 12 lakh crore".

Praising the NDA government for taking "bold" decisions like demonetisation of high values notes and the GST rollout, he said the BJP-led coalition's governance mantra is development of the people of the country.

"The BJP government believes in development of the people. The Modi government's 60 percent time (term) is already over, but not a single corruption charge has been levelled against it by the Opposition," Shah said.

The BJP chief, who arrived in Bhopal on Friday for a three-day visit of Madhya Pradesh, was addressing a meeting of intellectuals.

The newly-elected Rajya Sabha MP said the Manmohan Singh government's tenure was marred by a string of scams. "The UPA government saw scams amounting to Rs 12 lakh crore," he claimed.

He said the UPA government had "lowered" the status of the prime minister and his office, but the ruling NDA has restored the dignity of the top post.

All UPA ministers used to consider themselves "above the prime minister", but this has changed under the current dispensation, the BJP chief said.

"The present prime minister has restored the glory of the post and is taking decisions that are good for the people," he said.

Praising "bold" decisions like demonetisation and the rollout of Goods and Services Tax (GST), he said these steps are good for the people. No other government had the courage to take such hard decisions in the interest of the people.

The BJP is committed to development and the states where it has formed governments have seen fast-paced growth, Shah said and cited the examples of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh which were earlier called BIMARU (laggards).

Referring to Bihar, Shah said when the BJP was in power there in alliance with the JD(U), it had seen progress but the state lagged behind when the saffron outfit was no more part of the ruling alliance.

Now, Bihar will again walk on the path of development, he said, referring to the BJP becoming a part of the Nitish Kumar government. Shah lashed out at the Congress for its "family-oriented" politics and alleged that the party had failed to develop the country in 67 years of its rule.

Praising the BJP, Shah said it was the only party in the country which has been founded on certain principles and was upholding them wherever and whenever in power.

It is the largest party in the world and is committed to development of the last man of the society, he asserted.

Shah praised the Modi government for launching welfare schemes like Jan Dhan (aimed at financial inclusion) and Ujjwala (providing LPG connections to BPL families).

Till now, more than 2.80 crore LPG connections have been released for the beneficiaries under the Ujjwala scheme, the BJP chief said.

Shah contested Congress leader Ajay Singh's claim that the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh received more funds under the UPA government than the NDA regime.

Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, has made the claim in a letter addressed to the BJP.

The NDA government has given over Rs 5 lakh crore to Madhya Pradesh for different schemes, Shah said.

In the last three years, the Modi government has launched 106 schemes for welfare of the poor and other disadvantaged sections of the society, he said.

Earlier, on his arrival in the morning from New Delhi, the BJP president was accorded a warm welcome at the airport by the party leaders led by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Shah later unveiled a statue of Deendayal Upadhyaya, a top Jan Sangh leader and the party's ideologue, near the city's Lal Ghati square.

A large number of BJP workers, many of them sporting saffron turbans, led Shah's entourage to the state party office.

Enroute to the party office, he paid floral tributes to Raja Bhoj, a medieval-era king from the Paramara dynasty, Dalit icon BR Ambedkar and Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

Soon after arrival at the party office, Shah chaired a series of meetings with the party leaders and ministers. He had lunch at the house of state minister Narottam Mishra and interacted informally with senior journalists.

The visit is part of the BJP chief's 110-day nationwide tour to strengthen and expand the party's support base ahead of the 2019 general elections.

The Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP is in power for over a decade, are due in end-2018. Shah also released a book, Marching with a Billion, Analysing Narendra Modi's Government At Midterm, authored by noted journalist Uday Mahurkar.
Bhopal: BJP president Amit Shah has said his party has not come to power for mere 5 or 10 years, but at least 50 years, and called upon workers to strengthen the party and take it to every part of the country.

Shah also said that though the BJP appears to be at its peak with a majority government at the Centre and 1,387 MLAs in states, the workers feel the party has still a long way to go.

"Today, we have a majority government at the Centre with 330 MPs, and also have 1,387 MLAs in different states. The party appears to be at its peak, but dedicated workers feel we have a long way ahead," a BJP release on Saturday quoted Shah as saying at a party meeting.

"We have not come to power for 5-10 years, but at least 50 years. We should move forward with a conviction that in 40-50 years we have to bring major changes in the country through the medium of power," Shah said.

He was addressing the Madhya Pradesh BJP's core group members, office-bearers, MPs, MLAs and district chiefs, among others, at the party headquarters in Bhopal on Friday.

Shah arrived on Friday on a three-day visit to Madhya Pradesh for meetings with the BJP workers and office-bearers besides participating in various programmes as part of his 110-day nationwide tour.

The BJP president reminded the activists that the party has become a political force to reckon with due to hard work, dedication and sacrifice of its leaders over the years.

Today the BJP has become a party of 10-12 crore members because of many stalwarts who have dedicated their lives in building and strengthening the organisation, Shah said, according to the release.

"We have to ensure no place in the country is left where we don't have our flag. For this, we have to strengthen the organisation further," Shah said.

"Character is the basis of our foundation," he said, and called upon the BJP workers to ensure the party is present in every (polling) booth, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kamrup to Kutch.
Michael Douglas: You are a man who wants to live.

Om Puri: Most certainly. Absolutely. Yes.

Unlike Om Puri's character in The Ghost and the Darkness, a film on the monstrous man-eating tigers of Tsavo, Arvind Kejriwal does not have a gun pointing to his head. Yet, political exigency, threat to existence and fear of fading into oblivion have made Kejriwal look exactly what Douglas said: A man who wants to live.

And he is showing signs of it.

To begin with, Kejriwal has gone into what was once famously called Manmohan Singh mode. Unlike his pre-Punjab avatar who had an opinion on everything, a soundbyte for every occasion, Kejriwal has gone, so much so that it seems the surgery on his tongue has had a delayed side-effect.

The problem with opening your mouth too often is that it closes both the ears and the mind. It is also, psychologists argue, a sign of immaturity and emotional intelligence. Those who talk much, it is believed, are insecure and try to hide what they lack through a surfeit of words.

Kejriwal fell into this trap early in his political life. For some reason  think ambition  his politics turned into an obsession with contributing views on issues of national and national importance and throwing poisoned barbs at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is evident from his fate, marginalisation in opposition politics and disappearance from serious public discourse that by talking too much and too often, Kejriwal lost his gravitas and political equity.

So, the first change we are observing in Kejriwal is the delayed-but-hopefully-timely reluctance to speak. Since he lost Punjab, Kejriwal has barely been heard or seen in public. The Kejriwal of yore would have been shouting from rooftops about India's standoff in Doklam, death of children in Gorakhpur and many other issues that routinely get dissected on TV. But, Kejriwal didn't speak much even when his own government was under threat when it was attacked by Kapil Mishra and his sponsors behind the veil. Also, unlike the past when he seemed to have been advised by someone to take Modi's name a million times a day for therapeutic effects on the soul, Kejriwal has avoided the M word.

The other visible  and welcome  change in Kejriwal is that he is finally concentrating on what he was elected to do in the first place -- work for the people of Delhi. Gone, finally, is his obsession with national politics, the dreams of expanding in Punjab, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana and Rajasthan.

That Kejriwal is keen to start from the scratch, make a fresh beginning and fight for reclaiming his past is evident in his evolving fight with private schools in Delhi accused of overcharging parents. On Friday, in his first press meeting in months  a change from his dozen soundbytes a day strategy  Kejriwal warned schools that he might be forced to take them over if they do not refund money extorted from students on the pretext of paying more to teachers.

"The schools will not be allowed to loot students like they used to do under previous governments due to political collusion. But if they dont implement we will take them over as a last resort. I hope we dont have to take over. Today, we intend to send out a message to the managements of those schools to implement the recommendations, he said. His warning came two days after the Delhi government told the high court that it is contemplating takeover of private schools if they do not refund the excess fees and violate the recommendations of the Justice Anil Dev Singh panel.

Private schools across India  just like private hospitals  have been overcharging for years now. It is a practice that affects almost every household in India, primarily because of lack of strict regulations and a huge gap in demand and supply. In many states, successive governments have made attempts to regulate fees charged by private schools. But, success has been limited.

Kejriwal's literal return to schools is, this, a good administrative and political decision. He knows that if the Delhi government succeeds in reining-in private schools, regulate their fee structures, his fight would find many willing recruits because of its universal appeal. It would also re-establish his credentials as a person fighting for the aam aadmi.

The problem with Kejriwal's pre-Punjab strategy was that its focus was the pursuit of goals -- set for Kejriwal, by himself. For instance, when he talked of graft, he did not focus on the corruption that affects the lives of the masses -- like the exorbitant school fees and organised loot by private hospitals. Instead, he railed against politicians and corporates, not realising that attacking them made little sense unless he struck at the root of corruption. Thus, in spite of his claims of being an anti-corruption crusader, Kejriwal achieved nothing, except the wrath of opponents and loss of his own credibility and appeal.

Hopefully, Kejriwal has realised his mistake and begun afresh by taking up the cause of the aam aadmi and speaking only for the benefit of his electorate. If he continues on this path of penitence, the voter may perhaps give him another lifeline.

For, Kejriwal, absolutely, most certainly looks like a man willing to live.
Patna: A day after Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar recommended a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the Rs 1,000-crore Srijan scam in Bhagalpur district, his ally BJP on Friday suspended a senior party leader for his alleged involvement in it.

Vipin Sharma, vice-president of party Kisan Morcha, has been suspended as his name surfaced in the scam, party spokesperson Prem Ranjan Patel said .

Police said that Sharma, who is absconding, will be arrested soon. They said he was closely associated with NGO Srijan, which was behind the scam, and his wife is director of a cooperative bank run by Srijan.

Police officials said Sharma was a vendor in Bhagalpur and then ran a pavement shop but progressed after coming in contact with Srijan founder Manorama Devi. Soon he joined the BJP and developed close relationship with most of the top state leaders including former Union Minister Shahnawaz Hussain, Union Minister Giriraj Singh, MP Ashwani Choudbey and others.

He is said to have property in Delhi, Dehradun, Bengaluru, Patna, Deogarh, Bhagalpur and other places.

After days of investigations, a Special Investigation Team of Bihar Police's Economic Offence Unit said at least Rs 1,000 crore was diverted from bank accounts of different departments including Mukhyamantri Shahari Vikas Yojna in Bhagalpur district.

So far, eight people, including Prem Kumar, an aide of the Bhagalpur District Magistrate, have been arrested in connection with the scam.
Bhopal: BJP President Amit Shah on Saturday raised questions on the working style of party units in Madhya Pradesh and expressed his ire over lack of grassroots level organisation in the state.

According to sources, Shah in a meeting on Saturday reviewed the working of the convenors of the state morcha and coordinators of various cells.

Shah said with barely a few months left for the state assembly polls, it is essential that the party builds itself at the grassroots.

Sources said Shah asked the office-bearers of various morchas to focus on the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) and conduct programmes at places where the party is weak.

As per information, the party's various units released the list of appointments of their office bearers a day before Shah's visit.

BJYM President Abhilash Pandey told the media that the meeting was positive, adding the youth in the party were asked to strengthen the organisation and work for the nation.

Shah is to chair a meeting of the party's core group later during which he would interact with the former MPs and MLAs.

On the first day of his visit on Friday, Shah took the feedback of the state government and organisation in various meetings at the party office here. He asked the party cadres to put forth their views openly and without any apprehension.
Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said on Friday that a "super dictatorship" is going on in the country but opposition parties have come on a platform and there will be change in 2019.

"Super dictatorship is going on (in the country). If somebody says anything, they (the Centre) will send the ED, or CBI or IT to their homes. All are scared of that," Mamata said criticising the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, at an interactive session hosted by a news channel in Kolkata.

"How will the opposition be powerful? Everybody is scared," she said.

To a question why she was always the first target of attack by the Centre, she said she was happy to be so. "I feel I am a hero not zero".

Mamata said, "What I can sustain, others cannot. I can digest because I am from the grassroots and I am a fighter and I will fight the battle throughout my life".

"However, the opposition parties have come on a platform and there will be change (at the Centre) in 2019.

"We are waiting for the change ... No front has been formed as yet, but the opposition parties have come on a platform and have started working. Wait for six months. Things will be clear," she said at the interaction 'Rising Bengal 2017' in Kolkata.

"All will not speak so soon. Otherwise, (central) agencies will be unleashed against them," she added.

Asked to comment on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar quitting the Grand Alliance with RJD and Congress in Bihar, Mamata said "You are thinking about one Nitish Kumar but I am thinking about 100 Sharad Yadavs, 100 Lalu Prasads, 100 Akhilesh Yadavs".

Blaming the Centre for hampering the country's economy and disturbing industries by introducing demonetisation, Mamata said "They (the Centre) threaten everybody. Everyday they disturb the industry. Just look how many industrialists have left the country after the GST and demonetisation.

"What they had said before demonetisation nothing has happened. The country has to face so much of loss because of demonetisation. The economic condition of the country has deteriorated because of it. People do not know how much money has been deposited with the RBI after demonetisation".

She wondered how BJP president Amit Shah could hold meeting with a Union minister. "Who is the prime minister? Narendra Modi or Amit Shah?" she asked without naming the minister.

Mamata showered praise on former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. "He is also a BJP man - but he was very balanced and impartial. We worked under him and never faced any problem.

"But why are we facing problems today? I do not want to blame the prime minister but his party should take care. Why is his party creating problems for everyone?

"Why they are showing us the agencies everyday? Why will they tell me what I will eat, wear, which school I should go to or which religion I support? Or how the schools will celebrate Independence Day," she said, adding, it was Bengal which was at the forefront of the freedom movement and "Now it has to learn how to celebrate Independence Day?"

She also alleged that education was being saffronised in the country.

Questioned about the recent deaths of children in a Gorakhpur hospital, Mamata said "What has happened there was not good".

"They (BJP) can deliver speeches but they cannot deliver the goods," she added.
Russia may accuse Ukrainians of preparing terrorist attacks in its territory, targeting ATO veterans. The reason is to provoke an escalation of the conflict in Donbas, Ukraine's SBU Security Service head Vasyl Hrytsak has said.

Hrytsak at a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday said Ukrainian citizens and former ATO participants could be targeted.

The SBU chief called on ATO veterans and Ukrainians who work in Russia to be vigilant.
On 15 August when RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat chose a nondescript school in Palakkad in north Kerala to raise the National Tricolour, in normal circumstances it should have gathered a little or perhaps no attention at all.

But thanks to the Left governments intense hawkishness to ensure that no ground is conceded in this frantic political one-upmanship, that has played out in the state in the recent months between the ruling CPM and the BJP-RSS combine, the RSS chief managed to pull off a grand coup and even put the national news spotlight back on Kerala.

Bhagwat not only hogged the limelight as the RSS strongman who could do what he wanted at the only remaining bastion of the Left forces in the country apart from Tripura, but also held a victim card across his chest for having faced the wrath of a district administration perceived by many as trying to throttle a citizen from raising the tricolor owing to his different ideological allegiance.

The Sangh Parivar which does not need lessons to encash in such situations was quick to respond.

"We condemn such brazen attempts by the CPM led government in Kerala to deny the basic citizen rights of celebrating the Independence Day and their continuous attempts to poison the state of Kerala with divisive politics," said Manmohan Vaidya, the All India prachar pramukh of the RSS in a statement.

Understandably the RSS was twisting the issue to its advantage and with the state government utterly confused, as many political pundits call, on how to tackle the situation, the Sangh Parivar ended up scoring some brownie points.

"The CPM, as usual, has once again played into the hands of the Sangh Parivar. Mohan Bhagwat coming to school to hoist a flag would have made little news in Kerala. But CPM has made him a hero now. Wherever you need to tackle a situation wisely with political acumen the CPM has been found wanting," political commentator and activist NM Pearson told Firstpost.

But the party has a completely different take on this. MA Baby, a Polit Bureau member is one of its tallest leaders in the state says that though opposing Bhagwat was a well thought of strategy by the party, it purposely played safe by not going the whole hog in the matter.

"See the RSS has a clear agenda to unleash violence and their chiefs open infringement on the state governments authority was provoking such a situation. So if he was prevented from hoisting the flag he would have created a hue and cry that it is an atrocity by the Left government which would have become a license for more violence. But the government saw through this game plan," said Baby.

Senior journalists also agree that the Left in Kerala which is already walking a tightrope was left with no option but to finally not opt for any stringent measure against Bhagwat.

"Already the situation in Kerala had been very precarious with violence on the streets between both the political parties. Imagine a situation where a case is registered against Bhagwat or even physically stop him at the venue. It would have been a catastrophe for the state," said senior journalist Sunnykutty Abraham.

Even when one gets the feeling that the government may have been right in not going for the kill, the big question that still remains is what prompted the state to go for such a preemptive misadventure using the district collector if at all it had no plans to go all the way.

The school authorities too are making it very clear that they had let the district administration know about the RSS chiefs visit at least 10 days in advance. They also point out that when the entire itinerary was passed onto the superintendent of police and the Bhagwats tour diary was submitted to the district collector, why was no opposition raised at that point in time.

"Everyone was aware of his visit well in advance. If you come with an order at 11.30 in the night preceding the function what do you expect the school to do? Are you saying we should have stopped him on the morning of 15 August? This is a well-planned political game played right from the Chief Minister's Office," Kailas Mani, managing committee member of the school told Firstpost.

Is polarisation the key factor?

A political game it certainly was and the CPM was well within its rights to play it to the maximum as all governments in power do. But a closer analysis of it all gives us the bigger picture.

The government certainly did not want to take it beyond a point and vitiate the already volatile political situation. But certainly, Bhagwat had to be opposed, even if it meant symbolic.

"See opposing Bhagwat was to send a signal to the Muslim vote bank but then any action beyond that will only alienate the majority Hindus. That is why in spite of Bhagwat openly flouting the order of the district magistrate, the government did not have the will to arrest him after having set the entire process in motion in the first place," said social activist CR Neelakandan.

Political pundits also feel that this confusion of the CPM is a fall out of the intense churning that is taking place across Keralas political landscape.

The political demography in the state show that throughout the last 60 years since its formation while majority of the 55 percentage strong Hindu vote bank had stood with the communists at the ballot box, the 27 percentage of Muslims and 18 percentage Christians had predominantly been divided between both the fronts with the latter going mostly with UDF.

But psephologists and political researchers like Sajad Ibrahim, an assistant professor at the Kerala University say there has been a shift in this, since the last Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. It is certainly a gradual one, if not tectonic.

They warn of a clear consolidation of the Hindu vote bank at least at the upper caste level. This combined with the BJPs inclusion of Vellapally Natesans BDJS which represent a large section of Ezahavas, the largest community in the state, has enabled the NDA it to make considerable in roads in terms of vote share in some crucial areas in the state.

"Although it is too early to say we are certainly seeing a trend of Hindu vote bank consolidation. Perhaps after the 2019 Lok Sabha and the next Assembly elections we can say for sure. But this is why the CPM feels the need to project a pro-Muslim image, especially as a counter in Kerala to the BJPs growing stature in the country. At the same time they refuse to go the whole hog on many such issues just to keep the Hindus in good spirit," said Ibrahim.

The assistant professor also reiterates that CPMs double game was clearly evident not just in the Bhagwat issue but also otherwise the party had been trying a minority appeasement model that does not go to the extent of antagonising the Hindus.

The BJP, on the other hand, claims there certainly is a consolidation of the Hindu vote bank which the CPM is trying to desperately stop.

"The CPM is certainly putting their feet in two boats. On one side they hope to appease the Muslims by opposing us and on other hand paint the BJP and RSS as villains and extremists at every instant so as to stop the consolidation of the Hindu vote bank which they are scared of," said BJP state spokesperson MS Kumar.

But analysts also point out that such appeasement politics the CPM is playing here and at the national level is also helping the BJP in Kerala slowly gain an upper hand.

"If you look closely at the issue, it is the CPM declared policy to even go soft on divisive forces to appease the Muslim community. They did that in JNU and by reaching out to the Hurriyat. But they are also not realising that this is consolidating the Hindu vote for the BJP," says veteran journalist KVS Haridas.

BJP and the Church find common ground

The new-found love between the BJP and the Church in Kerala is also worrying the CPM to no end. That a few months ago when Amit Shah visited Kerala as part of setting the agenda for 2019, his meeting with the bishops cutting across denominations was indication enough that the ice was indeed melting.

What Shah achieved was something which even Atal Bihari Vajpayee at his heights of popularity as the prime minister could not do. Compared to Vajpayees meeting with a few fathers of individual churches which hardly carried any significance, here was a BJP leader getting the entire top brass of Keralas Christian clergy around one table.

That it happened at the height of the beef ban controversy which was continuously being stoked up in the state by the Left, shows that the Church indeed thinks that the relation has significance beyond all such issues.

"See the Christians in Kerala are always pro-development. That is why they never stood with the communists. Now they think that Narendra Modi is the man who can offer them an all inclusive development. So it was only natural for them to move towards us," says Alphons Kannanthanam, a Catholic and a member of the BJP Executive Council.

Certain issues prevailing in the state have also brought the BJP and the church closer. At least a section of the Church believes that a concerted campaign is underway to convert Christian girls to Islam and take them to Syria.

That a Christian girl Merin had reportedly gone to Syria after converting to Islam along with the 21 others who left the state had then rung the alarm bells for the Church.

Last month a Christian Helpline was formed in association with former members of BJPs Minority Morcha after taking inputs from the Hindu Helpline an organisation that supposedly fights coerced conversions among Hindus.

"See officially the Church has not made any such stand but if the believers are worried then we can't fault them for it and if someone comes with the idea of protecting the girls from this menace why not support them?" asks Jimmy Poochakatt, spokesperson for Syro Malabar Church.

It is this new bonhomie that has got the CPM certainly worried because they are well aware that if ever the BJP hopes to make a considerable impact in the electoral process in the state, it cannot be achieved without the Christian votes.

"There is an elite class inside the Christian community that looks at the BJP to fulfill their aspirations no doubt. But how far it will make a difference at the ballot box is difficult to say now," said Ibrahim.

The political scenario in Kerala for sure seems to be churning like never before. The 2019 general elections would hold the first signs of a definite change in the voting pattern if at all it happens. Till then an intense political one-upmanship between the CPM and BJP-RSS combine will be the order of the day.
New Delhi: A day after BJP president Amit Shah set a target of 350-plus seats for the party in the next Lok Sabha elections, a meeting of chief ministers and deputy chief ministers of party-ruled states has been convened on August 21 to discuss the further strategy to achieve the target.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are likely to address the meet, informed sources said.

The sources said that the meeting would be in continuation to the party's Mission 350-plus for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, which was set during Shah's meeting with party officials and union ministers on Thursday.

Sources in the BJP said that during the hour-long meeting on Thursday at the party office, Shah gave special focus on coastal states like Odisha, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal for achieving the target.

The BJP sources also said that that during the day-long meeting Modi and Shah would take stock of situation of implementation of central schemes in the states.
Patna: The Janata Dal (United) faction led by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar joined the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Saturday at the former's national executive meeting in Patna.

"A resolution that the JD(U) will join the BJP-led NDA was unanimously approved in the meeting," a senior party leader said.

According to the leader, JD(U) general secretary KC Tyagi moved the resolution, which was approved by all invited members.

However, a formal announcement in this regard has not been made.

"KC Tyagi will announce it formally at a press meet after the meeting is over," the party leader told IANS.

The meeting began at the official residence of Nitish Kumar, who is also the JD(U) president.

Most of the JD(U) leaders, including 70 party MLAs, two Lok Sabha MPs and seven Rajya Sabha MPs also participated.

It is a major decision in the party after Nitish Kumar last month dumped the RJD-Congress and joined hands with the BJP to form a new government in Bihar.

The JD(U) now has two factions: one led by Nitish Kumar and the other by senior party leader and former party president Sharad Yadav.
Reuters

President Donald Trump said on Friday he was elevating the status of the Pentagon's US Cyber Command to help spur development of cyber weapons to deter attacks and punish intruders.

In a statement, Trump said the unit would be ranked at the level of Unified Combatant Command focused on cyberspace operations.

Cyber Command's elevation reflects a push to strengthen US capabilities to interfere with the military programs of adversaries such as North Koreas nuclear and missile development and Islamic State's ability to recruit, inspire and direct attacks, three US intelligence officials said this month, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Cyber Command had been subordinate to the US Strategic Command, which is also responsible for military space operations, nuclear weapons and missile defense.

Once elevated, Cyber Command would have the same status as US Strategic Command and eight other unified commands that control US military forces and are composed of personnel from multiple branches of the armed services.

The Pentagon did not specify how long the elevation process would take.

Current and former officials said a leading candidate to head US Cyber Command was Army Lt. Gen. William Mayville, currently director of the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

Trump also said the defense secretary was also considering separating the US Cyber Command from the National Security Agency (NSA). Cyber Command's mission is to shut down and, when ordered, counter cyber attacks. The NSA's role is to gather intelligence and generally favors monitoring enemies' cyber activities.

Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, both strong voices on security matters, praised the move and said it would boost the command's abilities.

Still, McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said more steps were needed to meet the nation's cyber security challenges.

"We must develop a clear policy and strategy for deterring and responding to cyber threats. We must also develop an integrated, whole-of-government approach to protect and defend the United States from cyberattacks," he said in a statement.

The new combatant command will improve US capabilities to punish foreign cyberattacks and discourage attempts to disrupt critical US infrastructure such as financial networks, electric grids, and medical systems. It will establish a cyber version of the nuclear doctrine of mutual assured destruction between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the three US officials said

The US is more vulnerable to cyber intrusions than its most capable adversaries, including China, Russia, and North Korea, because its economy is more dependent on the internet, two of the officials said. As other nations improve their communications networks, their vulnerability will grow, they added.
Kunal Khullar

Nokia is back in business, Android style. We saw the first wave of new Nokia-branded smartphones loaded with Android OS this MWC (Mobile World Congress). HMD Global, the company that officially has the Nokia branding license, has finally brought the three new smartphones to India, which will be available in the coming weeks.

While the Nokia 3 and Nokia 5 will be available online as well as offline, the most attractive out of the bunch is the new Nokia 6, which will be an Amazon.in exclusive. The sub-Rs 15,000 smartphone offers a decent hardware and a solid looking design. Here is a quick look at the device.

Build and design

Nokia was known to build one of the toughest phones around and that puts a lot of pressure on the company. The new age of smartphones come with more delicate parts and while it's still possible to build a tough smartphone, it comes at the expense of design. So what's Nokia done with its new smartphones?

The Nokia 6 seems to offers solid build quality. HMD Global said that the Nokia 6 uses a single block of 6000-series aluminum and, well, it shows. It feels like a slab of metal and has slightly sharp edges, which might disappoint some. The overall finish is premium though, and I think the company has done a good job in the design department. It fits well in the hand too, I just wish it was a bit smaller.

The layout of the antenna bands is similar to how Apple placed them on the iPhone 7, curved around the top and bottom edges. The camera module, along with the LED flash, is stacked vertically and raised from the main body.

At the front is the 2.5D curved glass which adds a nice finish to the 5.5-inch display sitting under it. The handset has a capacitive home button just below the display, which also houses the fingerprint scanner. Two backlit Android navigation keys sit on either side. Right above the display are the earpiece, light sensors and the front facing camera.

The frame in the middle is all metal as well and houses the volume and power buttons on the right side, the 3.5 mm audio jack is on the top, the SIM card tray is on the left and the speaker and microUSB port are at the bottom.

Considering the huge number of metal-clad smartphones in this price range, the Nokia 6 definitely has a distinguishing factor thanks to its design. Of course that is my opinion, and it might not appeal to everyone.

Display

The Nokia 6 features a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 1920x1080 and a pixel density of 403 ppi. As mentioned above, the display is covered with a 2.5D curved Gorilla Glass 3 for added protection. The display looks good and colors also seemed to be vibrant. In terms of sharpness, I think a Full HD resolution on a 5.5-inch screen is perfectly fine. While the viewing angles seemed to be in tune, I am not very sure about how well it can perform under direct sunlight, though the company says it has an anti-glare coating and up to 450 nits of brightness.

Chipset, Storage and RAM

This is where the handset could fall. Today, it's all about 'specifications versus price.' The Nokia 6 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC with an X6 LTE modem, an octa-core 1.4 GHz processor and Adreno 505 GPU. This is paired with 3 GB of RAM along with 32 GB of internal storage. This storage can be further expanded using a microSD card of up to 128 GB. At its price, the specifications are quite underwhelming. If you are purely looking for the best performing hardware, then there are better options on the market.

The Snapdragon 430 is not a very powerful platform, but that might translate into better battery life. Whether Nokia hit the right balance of battery life and performance, however, remains to be seen.

OS and software

HMD Global is banking a lot upon the OS. As a part of the official partnership with Google, all the Nokia smartphones, including the Nokia 6, will get the latest updates on time. Currently, you get Android 7.1.1 Nougat on the Nokia 6, which is nice to see. Also, it is being offered in clean stock format. Spot on! You might however get Amazon apps built-in as a part of Nokia's exclusive retail partnership.

The OS felt smooth to me during the few minutes of usage. Apps opened smoothly and scrolling also felt good. The UI is similar to what it is on the Pixel smartphones with the app drawer simply sliding from the bottom up. The smartphone also features Dolby Atmos support, offering a rich audio experience.

If the company can live up-to its promise of pushing updates including security patches on time, it could leverage this as there are hardly any Android OEMs that provide updates on time.

Camera

Considering how Nokia pioneered the camera department before fading from the market, I had high hopes (ahem, Carl Zeiss) that it would capitalize on this feature. Sadly, that isn't the case. The Nokia 6 comes with a 16 MP rear camera with an f/2.0 aperture, phase detection autofocus and a dual-LED flash. As for the front camera, you get an 8 MP camera with an f/2.0 aperture lens.

The quality is just about average. While it can capture good details, some of the images turned out to have soft corners. Colors are a bit subdued and pictures seem to lack punch and feel a bit flat. Even the HDR mode doesn't make a huge difference. The front camera also has a similar story, with average and flat images.

The cameras are not bad per say, but there's nothing extraordinary about them. I'll have more information once I spend time with the device.

Battery and connectivity

These are also pretty standard on the device. There is a 3,000 mAh battery with support for fast charging. There is no confirmation if it will be bundled with a high-capacity charger. The company didn't mention much about the battery life and I expect it to last a day at most. Of course, I need to test it properly.

Connectivity options offered on the Nokia 6 include 4G LTE with VoLTE support, dual-SIM card support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM Radio, GPS/A-GPS/GLONASS, a 3.5 mm audio jack and microUSB 2.0 with OTG support.

Verdict and price

HMD Global is banking upon some factors which may or may not work for the company. Firstly, it hopes to pull customers through the Nokia brand name, which you have to admit, still has value. There is no doubt that there is still respect for Nokia and a huge customer base will definitely trust the name.

Secondly, the company is offering a large retail and service network across India, which is crucial for selling as well as for after sales support. It already has 400 exclusive distributors and over 80,000 retail locations. Lastly, the part I am a bit skeptical about, is the experience of using the device. Yes, it's a good phone, but is it the best option for its price?

At Rs 14,999, the Nokia 6 is positioned in a very competitive bracket. At the same price, one can go for a Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 which offers a much more powerful platform. Even the Moto G5 Plus or the Coolpad Cool 1 are very strong competitors.

I think the only two features that really impressed me were the design, and the fact that this is a 'Nokia' device. There is still some proper testing left to actually come to a verdict on whether this is a worthy phone or not. Personally, I think this is a good start for the return of Nokia, but there is scope for improvement. It is definitely going to face some tough competition in the market, however.
Reuters

U.S. self-driving car startup NuTonomy and southeast Asian ride services partner Grab hope to turn a test pilot in Singapore into a paid, commercial service as soon as the second quarter of next year, NuTonomy Chief Executive Karl Iagnemma said on Friday.

Ride services companies are expected to be one of the most important markets for self-driving cars, especially in early years of adoption, when the cost of the technology will likely rule out mass adoption.

Several companies including Alphabet Inc's Waymo and Uber Technologies Inc are testing self-driving cars at various locations around the world.

NuTonomy plans to charge riders for the service in Singapore, albeit still with a human driver ready to take over if needed, as is done today in most tests.

Software firm NuTonomy, which works with several car companies including Renault SA, had said it planned to launch commercial service next year, without being more specific on timing. Iagnemma in an interview said he hoped paid self-driving rides would start in the second quarter, although it could be the third or fourth.

NuTonomy also plans to launch a test service with U.S. ride service firm Lyft in Boston later this year.

Last year, Uber Technologies Inc on Thursday removed its self-driving test cars from California and put them on trucks bound for Arizona, shuttering the autonomous vehicle project in its home state after a week-long battle with regulators.
tech2 News Staff

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8, Samsung's upcoming flagship, might be available for pre-order from 24 August. According to a tweet by leakster Evan Blass, the company will allow buyers to pre-orders the device one day after the launch of the smartphone. The smartphone is expected to be launched on 23 August and will be shipped by 15 September to European consumers.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is expected to be available globally by the end of September 2017.

Blass also mentioned that the pre-ordering options will include two sets of accessories from Samsung. One box is expected to pack a 256 GB card and a wireless charger whereas another box for pre-order will pack Samsung's 360 camera.

CORRECTION: the options are as follows 1. 256GB card + wireless charger

2. 360 cam Sorry for the confusion. https://t.co/Db42n4kVCf  Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 19, 2017

Samsung is also reported to be providing pre-order gifts to European customers. According to Blass, Samsung will provide the DeX dock as a gift to all those who pre-order the device. The DeX dock helps in using the smartphone as a computer.

(The pre-order gift in Europe is a DeX dock.) https://t.co/Db42n43kKH  Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 18, 2017

According to previous reports, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 will feature a 6.4-inch bezel-less display with dual cameras on the rear of the phone. The smartphone is expected to come with 6 GB RAM, a Snapdragon 835 with an Adreno 540 GPU or an Exynos 8895 with a Mali G71 GPU, 64 GB of internal storage and Android 7.1.1.

Other features of Samsung Galaxy Note 8 includes wireless charging support and a 3,300 mAh battery. The smartphone is expected to be available in eight color variants that includes midnight black, arctic silver, orchid gray/violet, coral blue, dark blue, deep sea blue, pink and gold.
Washington: US President Donald Trump pledged the full support of the United States in investigating the attacks in Spain's Barcelona and Cambrils and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

According to a White House statement released on Friday, Trump made the pledge in a phone call with Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Trump told Rajoy that the US was prepared to render "whatever assistance" Spanish authorities need as they pursue their investigation into the attacks in Barcelona and the nearby seaside town of Cambrils, Efe news reported.

During their call, Trump also extended his condolences to the victims and families of the attacks.

The two leaders spoke shortly after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that a US citizen was among the 13 people killed on Thursday when terrorists drove a van into a throng of pedestrians in Barcelona's Las Ramblas district.

Another American suffered minor injuries in the attack, according to State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.

Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to condemn the attack and urge Spaniards to "be tough & strong" in the face of terrorism.

The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough & strong, we love you!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017

Islamic State issued a claim of responsibility for the violence in Barcelona.

Trump and Rajoy first met in person in May, during the NATO summit in Brussels. The two men saw each other again last month at the G20 gathering in Hamburg.
Barcelona: Spanish police released the names of three Moroccans suspected of deadly terror attacks and who were shot dead overnight by security forces in the seaside resort of Cambrils.

Catalonia's regional police identified them as Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24. Police said they were searching for a fourth suspect, Younes Abouyaaqoub, aged 22.

Police on Friday stepped up their investigation into the twin vehicle attacks in Spain that left 14 dead and over 100 more injured in a bustling tourist area of Barcelona and the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils.

The attacks claimed victims and wounded from three dozen countries.

Of the 12 people police suspect of involvement in the attacks, five were shot dead by security forces in Cambrils and another four have been arrested, said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police during a television interview late Friday.

The three remaining suspects have been identified but have not been detained, he added.

Police suspect two of them may have died in a blast at a house in Alcanar, about 200 kilometres south of Barcelona, where the group is believed to have been preparing explosive devices.

Officers have found "the remains of two different people, we are working to prove that they are two of these three people who have been identified," said Trapero.

Police have not yet identified who drove the white van that sped into crowds on the busy Las Ramblas avenue in central Barcelona, leaving 13 people there dead, he added.

On Friday, Trapero said the group was preparing "one or several attacks in Barcelona" with explosive devices but after the blast at the house in Alcanar they moved quickly to commit "more rudimentary" attacks.
United Nations: The UN Security Council observed a minute of silence in honour of the victims of the terror attacks in Spain's Catalonia region, the media reported.

"On behalf of the members of the Security Council, I should like to condemn in the strongest terms the unconscionable terrorist attack in Barcelona, Spain, which targeted innocent civilians," Egypt's UN ambassador Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta, the council president, said on Friday.

The minute of silence was observed at the start of an open session on the war in Yemen, Efe news reported.

A van on Thursday afternoon smashed into dozens of pedestrians on Barcelona's famed Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100 before the driver fled on foot, while a separate vehicle attack and stabbing early Friday targeting pedestrians in the nearby seaside town of Cambrils left one woman dead and injured five others.

Police killed all five suspected terrorists responsible for that second attack, which they said was believed to be linked to the Barcelona van rampage.

The Islamic State terrorist group on Thursday claimed responsibility for the Ramblas attack, while investigators are looking for Moussa Oukabir, a 17-year-old Moroccan national, as the suspected driver of the van.

Four suspects linked to the attacks have been arrested.
The Delegation of the European Union (EU) to Ukraine has welcomed the decision of the Ukrainian government to take steps in reforming the civil service and insists on full transparency of the recruitment.

"This decision represents the first real step to create a modern public administration in Ukraine. An efficient and less bureaucratic civil service is important for sectoral reforms and providing better services to Ukrainian citizens It is important that the recruitment is fully transparent and merit-based," the EU Delegation wrote on its official Facebook page on Friday.

The EU Delegation said that the new approach foresees the reorganisation of ten pilot ministries and creating new Directorate-Generals. Their role will be to work on making the reforms a reality and implement the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

In addition, the EU supports a full and comprehensive public administration reform and welcomes the commitment of the government, and in particular the personal leadership of Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to create an efficient and citizen-friendly public administration for the benefit of Ukrainian citizens.

"The EU provides dedicated assistance of more than 100 million for public administration reform conditional upon fulfilling specific requirements essential for the reform to succeed between 2017-2020," the EU Delegation said.

As reported, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on Friday approved the establishment of directorates within its ten ministries and the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers as part of the public administration reform.
Athens: A 22-year-old Belgian woman has been arrested in Greece on charges of extremism under a Europol arrest warrant, the coastguard and reports said on Saturday.

"A 22-year-old foreign national has been arrested over suspected links to terrorist activity," a coastguard spokeswoman told AFP.

"She is being held on the island of Corfu."

Authorities declined to identify the suspect's nationality but state agency ANA said she was a Belgian apparently of Moroccan origin.

It was not immediately clear when the warrant was issued or whether it was linked to any particular incident.

"We do not know which case this is linked to," the spokeswoman said.

The woman had travelled by ferry from Italy to the Greek port of Igoumenitsa, ANA said.

She was arrested late Friday on Corfu after Italian authorities alerted their Greek counterparts, the agency said.
Richmond: The mayor of Charlottesville has called for an emergency meeting of state lawmakers to confirm the city's right to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee, a request that was swiftly rejected by the state's governor.

Mayor Mike Signer said recent clashes over race and the Confederacy had turned "equestrian statues into lightning rods" and urged Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe to convene a special session of the General Assembly.

Signer's statement came nearly a week after white supremacists descended on the city and violently clashed with counter protesters. One woman was killed on Saturday when a car plowed into a crowd of people there to condemn what is believed to be the largest gathering of white supremacists in a decade.

"We can, and we must, respond by denying the Nazis and the KKK and the so-called alt-right the twisted totem they seek," Signer said in a statement.

Charlottesville's plans to remove the statue are in the midst of a legal challenge. A law passed in 1998 forbids local governments from removing or damaging war monuments, but there remains legal ambiguity about whether that applies to statues erected before the law was passed.

McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy said the governor won't call a special session while the issue is being decided in court.

"The governor hopes the court will rule in the city's favour soon and encourages Mayor Signer to focus on that important litigation rather than a redundant emergency session," Coy said.

Also on Friday, the mother of a woman who was killed while protesting the rally said that she won't talk to President Donald Trump because of comments he made after her daughter's death.

Speaking on ABC's "Good Morning America," Susan Bro said she initially missed the first few calls to her from the White House. But she said "now I will not" talk to the president after a news conference in which Trump equated violence by white supremacists at the rally with violence by those protesting the rally.

Bro's daughter, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, was killed and 19 others were injured when the driver rammed a car into a crowd of demonstrators. An Ohio man, James Alex Fields Junior, has been arrested and charged with murder and other offences.

In the hours afterward, Trump drew criticism when he addressed the violence in broad strokes, saying he condemned "in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides." Pressured by advisers, the president had softened his words on the dispute on Monday but returned to his combative stance on Tuesday, insisting during an unexpected and contentious news conference at Trump Tower that "both sides" were to blame.

"You can't wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying 'I'm sorry,'" Bro said of the president. She also advised Trump to "think before you speak".
Tehran: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday said that US President Donald Trump is slow to condemn racism in the US.

"Quick to insult Islam but hesitant to condemn racist terror at home," Zarif said on Twitter. "Terror in name of race or religion is plain terror & represents neither," he said in another tweet.

The remarks by Zarif followed Trump's mixed response to the deadly attack at a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend when a car was driven into counter-protesters, killing a woman.

Trump faced criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for his response to the violence. He condemned violence by "many sides", but stopped short of explicitly condemning the far-right.
Turku: The Moroccan man suspected of killing two people and injuring eight others in a stabbing attack in Finland was an asylum seeker who targeted women in his attack, police said on Saturday.

"We think that the attacker especially targeted women, and the men were wounded after coming to the defence of the women," superintendent Christa Granroth of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation told reporters.

Two women were killed in Friday's attack, and eight other people were injured. Among the eight were six women and two men, police said.

"One man was injured trying to help a victim and one man tried to stop the attacker," Granroth said.

Police shot and wounded the knife-wielding suspect, arresting him minutes after an afternoon stabbing rampage at a busy market square in Turku in southwestern Finland.

"The incidents were initially investigated as murders, but in light of further information received during the night, the offences include now murders with terrorist intent and their attempts," police said in a statement.

Police identified him only as an 18-year-old Moroccan national who had arrived in Finland in early 2016 and who had sought asylum.

Moroccans in Barcelona, Turku

It was not yet known whether the Turku attack was related to extremist Islamist circles.

"But if it is related, this is pretty much a continuation of the easy-to-use blatant attacks that Europe has seen," terrorism researcher Leena Malkki from the University of Helsinki told public broadcaster YLE.

Some of the suspects in the twin vehicle attacks in Spain on Thursday that killed 14 people and wounded around 100 others were also Moroccan citizens, but Malkki said there was as yet no reason to believe there was a connection between the Turku and Barcelona attacks.

"The fact that a person is from Morocco is not yet a clue" of a link between the attacks, she said.

"Many European countries are talking about the radicalisation of young Moroccan people," she added.

Media reports in Finland said police believed the suspect had picked his victims at random, but the NBI's Laine could not confirm that.

Police have said it was likely the suspect acted alone, but on Friday indicated they were looking for "other possible perpetrators."
Turku: Finnish police arrested five people in a Turku apartment overnight in their investigation into a stabbing rampage that left two people dead, they said Saturday.

Police shot and wounded a knife-wielding suspect on Friday, arresting him minutes after an afternoon stabbing spree at a Turku market square. Police on Saturday raised the number of injured in the attack from six to eight.

"There was a raid and we have now six suspects in custody, the main suspect and five others," detective superintendent Markus Laine of the National Bureau of investigation told AFP.

"We are investigating the role of these five other people but we are not sure yet if they had anything to do with (the attack)... We will interrogate them, after that we can tell you more. But they had been in contact with the main suspect," Laine said.

Police have not confirmed the identity of the suspect, but Laine said investigators were "pretty sure" they knew who he was.

Police have so far only described him as "a young man of foreign origin", providing no other details except to say they were collaborating with the Finnish Immigration Service.

The suspect is being treated in hospital in intensive care for a gunshot wound to the thigh.

The motive for the attack was not yet known, and police have refused to confirm if it was terror-related.

"We haven't yet interrogated the main suspect because of his medical condition," Laine said.

Media reports in Finland said police believed the suspect had picked his victims at random, but Laine could not confirm that.

Police have said it was likely the suspect acted alone, but added they were looking for "other possible perpetrators."

Central Turku was swiftly cordoned off after the attack, which occurred just after 4:00 pm, although the area was reopened several hours later.

Finland also raised its emergency readiness across the country after the stabbing, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.

In June, Finland's intelligence and security agency Supo raised the country's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second notch on a four-tier scale.

It said at the time it saw an increased risk of an attack committed by the the so-called Islamic State group.
New Delhi: Nearly 600 people have died and millions have been affected by monsoon floods in South Asia, officials said on Saturday, as relief and rescue operations continued.

Indian authorities sought military help in two districts of northern Uttar Pradesh state after heavy rains left hundreds of villages marooned.

As many as 33 out of 75 districts in the state are reeling from floods that have left 55 people dead.

"We have sought army's help to reach out to the affected people," TP Gupta, a senior official from the state's diaster management authority, told AFP.

Nearly 1,00,000 people have been moved to shelters, with authorities estimating another two million have been hit by the deluge.

In Bihar, the death toll reached 153.

Nearly 4,00,000 people have sought shelter in relief camps and an estimated 10 million have been affected by one of the state's worst floods since 2008.

Anirudh Kumar, the state's top disaster management agency official, said more than 5,000 emergency workers including 2,000 soldiers were supporting relief and rescue operations.

"Nearly 1,300 shelters have been opened to accommodate the affected people," Kumar told AFP.

Both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh border Nepal, which was hit by floods at the weekend and where the death toll is 123. At least 20 percent of the population is affected.

Further east, at least 60 people have died in floods that hit Assam state a second time in less than four months and nearly 4,25,000 remain in relief camps.

Authorities in West Bengal state said the flood waters were receding after a lull in the rains, with 52 deaths reported. More than a million people have been affected.

At least 100 people have died in neighbouring Bangladesh with close to six million affected by the floods.

Every year, hundreds die in landslides and floods during the annual monsoon season that hits India's southern tip in early June and sweeps across the South Asia region for four months.

A massive landslide in India's Himachal Pradesh state swept two passenger buses off a hillside, killing 46 people on Sunday.

Eight others, including two soldiers, were killed in Uttarakhand state in landslides on Monday.
Florida: One police officer was shot and killed and another gravely injured by gunfire while checking suspicious people in the central Florida city of Kissimmee, police said early Saturday.

Three suspects were in custody and a fourth was being sought.

Elsewhere in Florida, two police officers were shot and injured when responding to shots fired in Jacksonville.

Kissimmee police officers Sam Howard and Matthew Baxter were checking suspicious people in an area of the city known for drug activity when they were shot, Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell said at a news conference. They did not have an opportunity to return fire.

"They were surprised," O'Dell said. When asked whether they were ambushed, he said, "It's too early to tell, but it's leading that way."

Baxter, a three-year veteran of the department, died later in a hospital and Howard, a 10-year veteran, was in serious condition, O'Dell said. Both had families, he said.

The officers were checking three suspects when a fourth suspect opened fire. Three of the suspects were arrested, and officers were searching for a fourth.

Broadcaster WFTV showed aerial footage of police cars with lights flashing swarmed at a housing complex as the search continued in Kissimmee, a city just south of the theme park hub of Orlando.

In the northern Florida city of Jacksonville, two police officers were shot and wounded while responding to reports of a shooter in an apartment, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said.

Florida Governor Rick Scott sent Tweets about the four officers, saying "we stand with ALL law enforcement in Florida."

UPDATE: Heartbroken to hear loss of @kissimmeepolice officer Matthew Baxter. Praying for a quick recovery for officer in critical condition. https://t.co/BYhUFOe1CJ  Rick Scott (@FLGovScott) August 19, 2017

When O'Dell held his brief news conference outside the hospital where the two fallen Kissimee officers had been taken, reports already had surfaced of two more officers shot in Jacksonville to the north.

"It's a tough time for law enforcement," O'Dell said of those reports. "It's getting tough to do the job."
Baghdad: Senior US military leaders said Saturday that Iraqi forces are largely set for their next major campaign against Islamic State extremists after closing out the wrenching nine-month battle to retake the city of Mosul.

Lt Gen Stephen Townsend, the top US commander in Iraq, said he sees the Iraqi assault on the Islamic State-held area of Tal Afar "unfolding relatively soon."

The upcoming fight follows weeks of Iraq regrouping troops and repairing equipment and weapons after recapturing Mosul in July.

"I can't say that we replaced every single damaged or broken vehicle or rifle or machine gun," said Townsend, whose forces are aiding the Iraqi military. But, he insisted: "They'll be ready enough."

Tal Afar and the surrounding area is among the last pockets of Islamic State-held territory in Iraq after victory was declared in Mosul, the country's second-largest city. Tal Afar is west of Mosul and about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of the Syrian border. It sits along a major road that was a key Islamic State supply route.

Mosul took a heavy toll on Iraqi forces. As many as 1,400 troops were killed and more than 7,000 wounded, and the Iraqi military has proceeded methodically since its biggest success to date. Just three years ago, its soldiers were chased by the Islamic state group from much of the battlefield.

"The last days of Mosul looked like Iwo Jima to me," Townsend told a small group of reporters.

"In the end, it took bulldozers plowing Islamic State fighters under the rubble," he recalled, using multiple different acronyms for the extremist group. "Iraqi infantry men advanced beside the bulldozers, shooting and throwing grenades at Daesh fighters popping up out of the rubble."

Iraiqi Humvees emerged shot up, their glass spider-webbed with bullet marks and shrapnel, their weapons worn out or even destroyed.

In the weeks since, much of the Iraqis' equipment has been repaired or replaced, said Gen. Joseph Votel, America's top Middle East commander who spent the last few days in Iraq.

"I think they are ready," Votel told reporters Friday, echoing Townsend. The key priority, he said, is ensuring the Iraqis maintain momentum and have a good battle plan, and that the US-led coalition is prepared to support them.

Votel met with Iraqi military and political leaders in Baghdad and with Kurdish Peshmerga leaders in Irbil, in northern Iraq. He was ensuring US military advisory teams are with the right local units to provide the best support, intelligence gathering, surveillance and advice.

Iraqi military leaders said Prime Minister Haider al- Abadi has approved their combat plans. The fight will involve a broad spectrum of forces, including the Iraqi Army, counterterrorism troops, police and a group of mainly Shiite, Iranian-backed militias.

The fight will start "in the next few days," Iraqi Brig. Gen. Yahia Rasool told reporters. Speaking through an interpreter, he said officials believe there are between 1,400 and 1,600 Islamic State militants in the Tal Afar area. Many are foreign fighters, he said.

Rasool said the various Iraqi forces already have largely encircled Tal Afar.

"I don't think it will be tougher than the battle of Mosul, taking into consideration the experience we got in Mosul," he said.
Karachi: Ruth Katherina Martha Pfau, a German physician and nun known as "Pakistan's Mother Teresa" was on Saturday accorded a full state funeral, a first for a Christian woman in the Muslim-majority country.

Pfau, 87, died on 10 August after spending 57 years to working to eradicate leprosy, tuberculosis and other diseases in Pakistan.

Pfau, born in Leipzig, in 1929, arrived in Karachi in 1960 en route to India and volunteered at a local leprosy colony.

While in Karachi, she became depressed at the state of the care given to patients whose hands and feet she said had become "nutritional supplement for the rats," according to the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre's (MALC) website.

She decided to stay in Pakistan as a health care worker and established the first Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre in Karachi.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had earlier announced a state funeral for Dr Pfau, saying: "The entire nation is indebted to Ruth Pfau for her selflessness and unmatched services for eradication of leprosy."

Pakistani military personnel carried the casket containing Dr Pfau's body into St Patrick's Cathedral in Karachi's Saddar area.

Her casket, draped in the national flag of Pakistan, was given a 19-gun salute, with contingents of all three armed forces present on the occasion.

After her final rites were performed, the coffin was taken to Gora Qabaristan, Karachi's oldest graveyard, where she was laid to rest.

The burial ceremony was attended by many dignitaries including President Mamnoon Hussain, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, Sindh Governor Muhammad Zubair, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

The Foreign Office said in a statement that Dr Pfau made Pakistan her home and was a proud Pakistani.

"The entire Pakistani nation pays homage to Dr Pfau's extraordinary work. She will always be fondly remembered. We have lost a national hero. May she rest in eternal peace," the statement said.

This was the second state funeral to have taken place in Pakistan in past 29 years, with the last one accorded to late philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi last year.

The prayers service for Dr Pfau was attended by hundreds of people including staff members of the Marie Adelaide centre who wept as the last rites were performed.

Sindh Chief Minister Shah later announced that the state owned and run Civil Hospital in Karachi will be renamed the Dr Ruth Pfau hospital in honour of the late German national who was given Pakistani citizenship in 1988.

Dr Pfau was also awarded several civil awards for her services for leprosy patients and due to her efforts the World Health Organisation declared Pakistan a leprosy free country in 1996.

She also provided training to doctors to tackle the disease and helped Pakistan establish a national programme for bringing this disease under control.

Her organisation now runs 157 leprosy control centers, with more than 800 staff members, according to MALC.
Moscow: A man stabbed seven people on the street in Russia's far north Saturday before being shot dead by police but investigators said that his motive was most likely not terrorism.

The incident took place on Saturday morning in the city of Surgut, where the man "carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds", said Russia's Investigative Committee which probes major crimes.

It said armed police called to the scene had "liquidated" the attacker.

Regional officials said seven people were taken to hospital, with the figure confirmed by investigators, who lowered an earlier toll of eight wounded.

The Investigative Committee said it had established the man's identity, saying he was a local resident born in 1994, and that they were looking into "his possible psychiatric disorders".

But the regional interior ministry told Interfax news agency that the theory that the incident was "a terrorist (attack) is not the main one."

Regional police said officers fired warning shots at the scene before firing at the suspect who was wearing a balaclava.

YouTube footage shown on Russia's Ren TV television showed a black-clad man lying on a pedestrian walkway with a policeman kneeling on his back as sirens wail.

Two of wounded are in serious condition while five more are stable, a regional government statement said.

The city lies some 2,100 kilometres (1,330 miles) northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.
The Ukrainian presidential press service confirmed on Saturday that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is going to hold negotiations on August 24 with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, who will pay a visit to Kyiv to attend celebratory events on the occasion of Ukraine's Independence Day.

"The first visit of the U.S. defense secretary to Ukraine in the past ten years will take place in accordance with preliminary arrangements with the U.S. side reached during the president's visit to the United States this June," it said.

The Pentagon's website said on August 18 that Mattis would visit Kyiv. "During these engagements, the secretary will reassure our Ukrainian partners that the U.S. remains firmly committed to the goal of restoring Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as strengthening the strategic defense partnership between our two countries," it said.

In addition, Mattis' upcoming meeting with Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak was announced.
A knife attacker stabbed eight people on the street in Russia's far northern city of Surgut before being shot by police, AFP quoted investigators as saying on Saturday.

The attacker "carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds to eight," Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes said, adding that armed police then "liquidated" the attacker.

The incident took place in a city some 2,100 kilometres northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.

Two of those stabbed are in a serious condition while five more are in a stable condition, the government of the Khanty-Mansi region said in a statement, calling the attacker so far "unidentified."

Police called for calm over the incident, saying that "in the interests of public calm and also of the investigation, citizens and media are recommended to use reliable information in assessing the situation until all the circumstances are established."

The attack came just a day after a similar incident took place in neighbouring Finland.

On Friday, a knife-wielding man went on a stabbing spree that left two people dead in Turku. Police shot and wounded the suspect on Friday, arresting him minutes after an afternoon stabbing spree at a Turku market square. Finnish police then arrested five people in a Turku apartment overnight in their investigation into the matter. Police on Saturday raised the number of injured in the attack from six to eight.

"There was a raid and we have now six suspects in custody, the main suspect and five others," detective superintendent Markus Laine of the National Bureau of investigation told AFP.

"We are investigating the role of these five other people but we are not sure yet if they had anything to do with (the attack)... We will interrogate them, after that we can tell you more. But they had been in contact with the main suspect," Laine said.

Police have not confirmed the identity of the suspect, but Laine said investigators were "pretty sure" they knew who he was.



With inputs from agencies
Washington: Six United States police officers were shot in one night in the states of Florida and Pennsylvania, one fatally, prompting President Donald Trump to tweet his support for the slain officer's department early Saturday.

In the central Florida city of Kissimmee  close to the Walt Disney World Resort and other amusement parks  Officer Matthew Baxter was killed and Sergeant Sam Howard was left in "grave critical condition and the prognosis does not look good," police chief Jeff O'Dell said at a news conference early on Saturday.

The officers had been checking on suspicious people in an area known for drug activity around 9.30 pm on Friday (0130 GMT on Saturday). Five minutes later, authorities received a call that officers had been shot.

First responders found the officers "gravely wounded" in the road, O'Dell said.

"My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!" Trump, a staunch supporter of US law enforcement, tweeted early Saturday.

My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!#LESM  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

In the northern Florida city of Jacksonville, sheriff's officers responding to an attempted suicide call late Friday were confronted by a suspect firing a high-powered rifle, Director Mike Bruno told a news conference.

Two officers were shot in the exchange of gunfire, one hit in both hands and the other in the stomach, Bruno said. The suspect was killed.

And two Pennsylvania state troopers were shot Friday night, the agency said.

"Two state troopers shot and [the] suspect is deceased," Pennsylvania State Police spokeswoman Melinda Bondarenka told ABC News. "We are not releasing any more details at this time."

Both troopers are expected to survive, ABC said of the shooting in the community of Fairchance, about 97 kilometers south of Pittsburgh.
Beirut: "Soldiers" of the Islamic State group carried out a deadly attack in the Spanish seaside resort of Cambrils, the jihadist organisation's propaganda outlet Amaq said on Saturday.

"Attacks by the soldiers of the Caliphate in Spain... led to the deaths and wounding of more than 120 people from the states of the Crusader alliance," it said in a statement on its Telegram account.

It said its fighters "ran over several Crusaders with a truck in the coastal town of Cambrils."

Eight hours after a deadly attack on Thursday afternoon that left 13 people dead in Barcelona, an Audi A3 car rammed into pedestrians in Cambrils, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Barcelona.

Police killed the five attackers, some of whom were wearing explosive belts.

Six civilians and a police officer were wounded in the attack and one woman later died of her wounds, authorities said.

Islamic State, which once controlled a self-declared "caliphate" across large parts of Iraq and Syria, has suffered major losses in recent months.

It has called for attacks against states taking part in the US-led coalition fighting against it.
Beirut: The Lebanese army launched an offensive on Saturday against an Islamic State enclave on the northeast border with Syria as the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah announced an assault on the militants from the Syrian side of the frontier.

The Lebanese army operation got underway at 5 am (02.00 GMT), targeting Islamic State positions near the town of Ras Baalbek with rockets, artillery and helicopters, a Lebanese security source said. The area is the last part of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier under insurgent control.

The operation by Hezbollah and the Syrian army targeted the area across the border in the western Qalamoun region of Syria.

A Hezbollah statement said the group was meeting its pledge to "remove the terrorist threat at the borders of the nation" and was fighting "side by side" with the Syrian army. It made no mention of the Lebanese army operation.

The army said it was not coordinating the assault with Hezbollah or the Syrian army.

Any joint operation between the Lebanese army on the one hand, and Hezbollah and the Syrian army on the other would be politically sensitive in Lebanon and could jeopardize the sizeable US military aid the country receives.

Washington classifies the Iran-backed Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

"There is no coordination, not with Hezbollah or the Syrian army," General Ali Kanso said in a televised news conference, adding that the army had started to tighten a siege of IS in the area two weeks ago.

"It's the most difficult battle so far waged by the Lebanese army against terrorist groups - the nature of the terrain and the enemy," he said, characterizing the 600 Islamic State fighters in the area as 600 "suicide bombers".

In a recent speech, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Lebanese army would attack Islamic State from its side of the border, while Hezbollah and the Syrian army would simultaneously assault from the other side.

A commander in the military alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad said that "naturally" there was coordination between the operations.

Ties with Damascus

Last month, Hezbollah forced Nusra Front militants and Syrian rebels to leave nearby border strongholds in a joint operation with the Syrian army.

The Lebanese army did not take part in the July operation, but it has been gearing up to assault the Islamic State pocket in the same mountainous region.

Footage broadcast by Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV showed the group's fighters armed with assault rifles climbing a steep hill in the western Qalamoun.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun was following the army operation, called "Jroud Dawn". "Jroud" refers to the barren, mountainous border area between Lebanon and Syria.

Hezbollah has provided critical military support to President Bashar al-Assad during Syria's six-year-long war. Its Lebanese critics oppose Hezbollah's role in the Syrian war.

Northeastern Lebanon was the scene of one of the worst spillovers of Syria's war into Lebanon in 2014, when Islamic State and Nusra Front militants attacked the town of Arsal.

The fate of nine Lebanese soldiers taken captive by Islamic State in 2014 remains unknown.

Shiite Hezbollah and its allies have been pressing the Lebanese state to normalise relations with Damascus, challenging Lebanon's official policy of neutrality towards the conflict next door.

US president Donald Trump called Hezbollah "a menace" to Lebanon and the region during a meeting with Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri in Washington last month, and promised continued US support for the Lebanese army.
Washington: United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told staff in an email - seen by Reuters on Friday - that everyone must stand up and condemn hate, as President Donald Trump faces a backlash for his response to violence at a protest by white nationalists.

Trump blamed both sides for clashes in the southern college town of Charlottesville in Virginia last weekend, where white nationalists were protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee. A woman was killed when a suspected white nationalist plowed his car into a crowd.

"Those who march spewing hate are few, but loud. We must denounce them at every turn, and make them feel like they are on an island and isolate them the same way they wish to isolate others," wrote Haley, a member of Trump's cabinet, in the email sent Thursday to staff at the United States mission to the United Nations.

Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, said the "horrible acts" seen in Charlottesville "took me back to sad days dealing with the Charleston tragedy in 2015."

Haley attracted national attention when she secured the removal of the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's capitol grounds after a white supremacist killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston.

"People aren't born with hate. We all have a responsibility to stand up and condemn it," Haley wrote in the email to staff, which did not refer to Trump.

"While we should respect diversity of viewpoints, it is incumbent on us to challenge hate with the values we cherish. And it is incumbent on us to never, ever countenance violence as we do so," she said.

Trump has alienated Republicans, corporate leaders and United States allies, rattled markets and prompted speculation about possible White House resignations with his comments since the violence in Charlottesville.

On Monday, Trump bowed to political pressure and denounced neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan by name, but on Tuesday he again inflamed tensions by insisting counter-protesters were also to blame and that there were "very fine people" among both groups.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and several top United States military officers have since broadly condemned racism.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in a Twitter post on Tuesday said that racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia were "poisoning our societies," adding, "We must stand up against them. Every time. Everywhere."
U.S. Special Rep for Ukraine Volker to meet with Russian rep in Minsk on Monday

A meeting of the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine with the Russian representative on Russian-Ukrainian relations will take place in Minsk on Monday, the U.S. State Department has said.

"United States Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker will travel to Minsk, Belarus, where he will meet with a representative of the Russian government to discuss Russian-Ukrainian relations on August 21," the U.S. Foreign Ministry said in a press release on Friday.

In addition, in Kyiv, on August 23, he, along with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, will hold meetings with high-ranking Ukrainian officials "to discuss the next steps in the line of diplomatic contacts."
It may still be hot as blazes outside, but Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ready to leave summer behind at the world's most visited theme-park resort. Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party kicks off next weekend. Aug. 25 will be the first of 34 nights between now and the start of November that finds the Magic Kingdom closing early for day guests, reopening at 7 p.m. for visitors paying at least $74 a night for five hours of rides, themed shows, and trick-or-treat stations.

Halloween in August doesn't have the same kind of ring as Christmas in July, but it's still an early jump for costumed revelry, even for a media giant that's been known to stretch the holiday time line. Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party rolled out during the first weekend in September last year, and now it's starting a week earlier, adding two more nights and increasing its ticket prices by a couple of bucks.

Treat or treat

Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party isn't the only fall event being pushed into August for the first time. Epcot International Food & Wine Festival is returning on Aug. 31, stretching its record 62-day run last year into a 75-day party of gourmet delicacies, globetrotter libations, and daily concerts. Epcot's foodie fest began in mid-September last year.

It's safe to say that Disney's throwing in the towel on summer this season. With area schools already in session, the peak summer travel season has already come to an end. However, for a summer of high hopes that began with the Memorial Day weekend debut of Pandora -- The World of Avatar at Disney's Animal Kingdom to rave reviews and gargantuan crowds, it seems as if summer's ending on a bit of a whimper. Disney World also closed a pair of attractions last weekend to make way for future attractions.

Summer has been a bust at Disney, with some industry watchers suggesting that an uptick in attendance at Disney's Animal Kingdom came at the expense of the resort's three other parks. One of the more shocking nuggets in Disney's fiscal third-quarter report was that it experienced fewer occupied room nights despite the favorable timing of the Easter holiday. If June was a dud in the afterglow of May's Avatar-themed expansion, it's easy to see why Disney's pushing the hard-ticket Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party and the adult-attracting Food & Wine Festival earlier into the current quarter.

Disney World needs an early seasonal boost. With Disney stock now at levels last seen in late 2016, it's safe to say that shareholders can use the early arrival of its two big fall events.

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In 2016, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit policy institute, examined 2015 data to gauge the impact Social Security income has on our nation's seniors and determined that without it some 22 million people, 15 million of whom are seniors, would be considered poor. Social Security is truly important in allowing our nation's senior citizens to make ends meet; 61% of them rely on Social Security for at least half of their monthly income.

Social Security is coming to a crossroads

Yet, this crucial program is on a slippery slope toward disaster, and a lot of people, including lawmakers in Washington, know it. Demographic changes that include the ongoing retirement of baby boomers, the steady lengthening of life expectancies, and the rich notably outliving the poor -- and collecting a larger Social Security check in the process -- have weighed on America's most important social program.

According to the 2017 report from the Social Security Board of Trustees, $3 trillion in asset reserves is expected to start being depleted in 2022, leading to its total exhaustion by 2034. The trustees forecast a further $12.5 trillion budgetary shortfall between 2034 and 2091. When the excess cash is officially gone, Social Security benefits may need to be slashed by up to 23% to preserve payouts through the year 2091.

President Donald Trump pledged during and after his campaign not to touch Social Security, which was a big reason why seniors turned out in favor of Trump during the campaign. Trump instead plans to utilize tax reform, via cuts in corporate and individual tax rates, as a means to boost U.S. GDP growth, expand wages, and generate more payroll tax revenue for Social Security. In 2016, payroll tax revenue accounted for 87.3% of the $957.5 billion collected.

Trump may have to break his Social Security promise

But could Trump break his promise not to touch Social Security? If the Republicans' 126-page congressional budget resolution, released in July, is anything to go by, we could see Social Security reforms triggered sooner than later.

As pointed out by The Senior Citizens League, budget resolutions are not laws, but they do set forth a blueprint of legislation that lawmakers tend to follow, providing the American public with some guidelines of what to expect from Congress.

In particular, the Republicans' budget resolution for the 2018 fiscal year devoted a section to policy statements on Social Security (Sec. 516, pages 102-107, for those interested). The first two pages discuss the apparent problems with the program, then the concept of a "reform trigger" is introduced:

In other words, point one above suggests that Social Security reform legislation should already be triggered. Remember, there's an estimated $12.5 trillion deficit that needs to be dealt with between 2034 and 2091.

In the 2017 Board of Trustees report, the actuarial deficit for the next 75 years rose by 17 basis points from the 2016 report, to 2.83%. This suggests that a 2.83% increase to Social Security's payroll tax, which currently sits at 12.4% for earned income between $0.01 and $127,200, would need to be passed along to workers and businesses in order to completely eliminate the expected $12.5 trillion budgetary shortfall. But as Trump has noted, direct changes to Social Security are off the table in his mind.

Yet, according to the budget resolutions from the GOP, Trump would be compelled to present legitimate solutions to fix Social Security to the House and the Senate, both of which are under Republican control for the time being.

It's worth pointing out that the resolution embraces bipartisan cooperation and expediency in passing legislation. However, in light of the partisanship that exists in Congress today, across-the-aisle efforts are highly unlikely. The language also calls for protections of low-income and disabled folks, as well as those who lean on Social Security heavily during retirement, during the reform process.

This isn't the first time Republicans have hinted at Social Security reforms. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested a few months ago that if Congress were to take up Social Security reforms, the president may have no choice but to consider signing them should a consensus be reached.

Reforms are needed, but they should be bipartisan

It's pretty evident from the trustees' data that Social Security reforms are needed, yet it's been 34 years since any truly major legislation regarding Social Security has been passed. With a 17-year timeline until possible benefit cuts, something needs to be done.

On Capitol Hill, a lack of ideas isn't the issue. We've witnessed dozens of solutions proposed that would, in many cases, eliminate the $12.5 trillion budget shortfall over the next 75 years. The primary issue is that the core fixes for Republicans and Democrats are at opposite ends of the spectrum, yet both resolve the budgetary shortfall. In effect, neither party will remotely consider working with the other (as outlined in the budget resolution above).

Democrats want to approach fixing Social Security by raising additional tax revenue from high earners. Earned income above $127,200, as of 2017, isn't subject to the payroll tax. Democrats want to adjust this such that the payroll tax is reinstituted on earned income above $250,000 or $400,000, as an example. This would add fresh income to the program.

On the other hand, Republicans want to adjust Social Security for increased longevity. They plan to do this by increasing the full retirement age, or the age at which people become eligible for 100% of their benefits. The full retirement age is on track to hit 67 years by 2022 for those born in 1960 or later, but the GOP would like to see it gradually raised to 68, 69, or 70 years, requiring seniors to work longer and wait to claim Social Security, or accept a steep reduction in benefits by claiming early.

Combined, these core proposals would work to resolve Social Security's long-term issues. But can Republicans and Democrats play nice in Washington? That remains to be seen.

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On August 9, the Supreme Court of Ukraine opened a proceeding to review the decision of the High Administrative Court of Ukraine, which denied Ukrainian citizen Vadym Hladun and the NGO 'Independent Bar' in considering a lawsuit into repealing President Poroshenko's decree banning Russian social networks in Ukraine.

"Open the proceedings into the case on the lawsuit of Person 1 [Hladun] and the NGO 'Independent Bar' to President of Ukraine Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko on recognizing partially illegal and repealing the decree to be reviewed by the Supreme Court of Ukraine of the Ukrainian High Administrative Court's decision dated June 29, 2017," the decision of Judge Oleksandr Prokopenko, which is posted in the Unified State Register of Judicial Decisions, reads.

The judge also ruled to request the case from the Supreme Court of Ukraine.

Ukraine's Supreme Court handed back their claim to Hladun and 'Independent Bar' against the president on July 29.

As reported, on June 14, the Supreme Court of Ukraine refused to satisfy the claim of the Ukrainian citizen, a student of the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Mykyta Yevstifeyev, to Poroshenko about recognizing as unauthorized the decree prohibiting Russian social networks and a number of other Internet websites in Ukraine.

The judicial panel of the Ukrainian Supreme Court refused to recognize a number of the presidential decrees as illegal and ineffective dated May 15 on the enactment of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council dated April 28, 2017 "On the application of personal special economic and other restrictive measures (sanctions)."

The Ukrainian president's decree imposing sanctions on the social networking sites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, and also the companies Mail.ru, Yandex and their services took effect on Wednesday. User access to all Yandex and Mail.ru services has been banned for three years.
As White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon hits the road, becoming the latest high-level Trump official to depart in what has been a tumultuous few weeks, the administrationas key tax reform architects remain hard at work.

aSince (Treasuury) Secretary (Steven) Mnuchin and NEC (National Economic Council) Director (Gary) Cohn presented the presidentas guiding principles for tax reform at the end of April, the entire administration has been engaged in deliberate, coordinated outreach with the Hill, conservative groups, and industry leaders to ensure a united front in this upcoming policy push,a an administration official tells FOX Business following Bannonas departure.

The White House on Friday confirmed that Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, officially was leaving after rampant speculation swirled over his future following his in-depth interview earlier this week with a liberal magazine and reports of his frequent sparring with other senior officials in the administration.

aWhite House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steveas last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best,a an administration official said in a statement.

Earlier this month, well before the rash of White House shakeups, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, discussed the ongoing push for comprehensive tax reform across party lines. aIt is going to take Democrats and Republicans getting together putting aside their stupid differences and saying look, this one time letas do this for our country, letas do this for our American citizens, letas do this for our economy,a he said during an interview on FOXas Sunday Morning Futures.

For several months, the administration has been doubling down on tax reform engaging with over 200 members of both the House and Senate on both sides of the aisle. Officials also are talking with tax advocate groups including Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Tax Reform to name a few, as well as business leaders from AT&T (NYSE:T) and the Business Roundtable, an organization of CEOs, who collectively have 15 million employees and generate more than $6 trillion in annual revenues.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon (NYSE:JPM), BRTas current chairman, has been a vocal proponent of tax reform and recently lamented about loopholes hurting the U.S. economy. aWeave been driving capital and bringing it overseas, which is why this $2 trillion sitting overseas (has been) benefiting all these other countries,a he said during the companyas earnings call last month.

VIDEO: Sen. Orrin Hatch on Tax Reform

The U.S. corporate tax rate at 35% is among the highest in the world of developed nations. Hatch indicated the rate could fall to between 20%-25% amid a tax overhaul.

Still, many CEOs turned against Trump this week, quitting his business advisory councils over what they viewed as his weak handling of the violence in Charlottesville last weekend and his contentious comments that followed on Tuesday. Merck CEO (NYSE:MRK) Ken Frazier, General Electric Chairman (NYSE:GE) Jeff Immelt and Under Armour CEO (NYSE:UA) Kevin Plank are a handful of the executives that resigned.

And on Friday, billionaire Carl Icahn became the latest executive to abdicate his position, tweeting: aToday, with President Trumpas blessing, I ceased to act as special advisor to the President on issues relating to regulatory reform. informal role as special advisor to the president on issues relating to regulatory reform.a

2/2 Here is a copy of the letter that I delivered to President Trump confirming this decision. https://t.co/ng9FJyRxlp  Carl Icahn (@Carl_C_Icahn) August 18, 2017

While Bannonas ouster is not directly connected to tax reform, some investors say it may indirectly help.

aMaybe we can actually focus on getting some of this legislation through, thatas the perception out there,a said Kadina Group president Gary B. Smith during an appearance on FOX Business Networkas Cavuto Coast to Coast on Friday.

Suzanne OaHalloran is Managing Editor of FOXBusiness.com and a graduate of Boston College. Follow her on @suzohalloran
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.
Ashley Devonna, a beauty and lifestyle video blogger, decided to get breast augmentation surgery on Friday, and invited her thousands of Instagram followers along.

The Texas-based vlogger live streamed the procedure with the consent of her plastic surgeon, Dr. Farah Khan.

FITNESS BLOGGER'S POWERFUL PHOTOS PROVE PEOPLE DON'T LOOK PERFECT ALL THE TIME

Devonna said, It was always my intention to share this. I had no idea that it would gain this much traction. But this just gets it to more people, so that it can educate, so that it can get to those who are intrigued and who are interested, KTVT reported.

Khan, a Board Certified Plastic Surgeon in Dallas, agreed to live stream Devonnas breast implants, telling Pix 11 that she understands it isnt necessarily for everyone, but that this is right for her patient.

Its a new experience, Dr. Khan said in the interview. If youve ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes in an operating room this is kind of your opportunity.

Of the experience, Devonna feels her YouTube and Instagram fans  of which she has a combined more than 284,000 followers  deserve to see the process of her 24-hour recovery breast augmentation surgery.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

You get to see the real side of people, Devonna says of social media. Im very open with my audience.

Nowadays we live our lives on social media, said Dr. Khan, and I think especially the younger generation, thats how they communicate and they want to be open with their friends, their family, their followers.
The violence and tragic death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Va., is but the latest manifestation of a sad departure from our nations ability to settle our differences by talking instead of fighting.

A proposed action  taking down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee  sparked protests and counter-protests in Charlottesville that devolved into violence, followed by excuses for violence.

Sadly, we seem to live in a time when pride in Americas past, and patience with one another, is no longer in vogue. Gone is pride in staying calm, demonstrating maturity, using words to resolve differences, and caring to see where we are on the nations timeline.

To many, the past  the real and hard-won history of our country  no longer matters. What has happened to our ability to talk  to speak face to face, as equals? Far too many people have apparently given up on reason, persuasion and talk.

How utterly ironic. Talk is, after all, America's genius. The First Amendment was not a fiction or clever creation, but deliberate codification of a widely accepted liberty  a way of life among Americans.

By the 1830s, the French sociologist and author Alexis de Tocqueville stood in awe of Americans  distinguishing us from the world for our unusual patience, and our uncanny ability to resolve personal and social problems through "the uncomfortable face to face"  hard conversations, town meetings, soapbox oration and social movement. In short, our belief in words.

The positives were huge. Words replaced throwing dissenters in prison, regional and local rebellions, escalating confrontations by gun, sword, knife and fist. Words also proved the only lasting way to change minds.

Even at the height of the Civil War  when fighting raged over slavery and economic divisions  Abraham Lincoln made firm, confident recourse to words.

It was Lincoln who  with gritty ties to common life, humility and trust in America's founding principles  called on all Americans to look around and appreciate the uniqueness of our freedoms and the Union.

Even at that time, Lincoln maintained faith in the power of words to fill huge gaps in understanding, tamp down wild emotions, bind deep wounds, convey hope in the face of violence, and make us listen for the guidance of "our better angels."

Where has that American genius gone? It was with us when Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan used plain words to calm rippling labor unrest.

It was with us when Robert Kennedy stood on a pick-up truck in seething Indianapolis, the night Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Kennedy pleaded to avert violence and succeeded  expressing conviction, heart and faith. With words, he sought peace within, racial harmony without. That night, as other cities burned, Indianapolis did not. Words.

America is the greatest democracy on Earth. We give our people the freedom to advocate competing ideas, rather than crushing dissent. As a result, competing ideas are perpetually tested, debated and reformulated. In the end, the best ideas usually win out and our nation is the better for it.

Now we seem willing to throw it all away, drawn by contempt by some on the left for history and reason, and contempt by some on the far right for enduring inequities. Too many of us have no time or tolerance for other views, confident that we are always right.

To some degree, with heavy hearts, the Founding Fathers and our great presidents of the past would not recognize our great nation if they could return. They would look at our escalating divisions as selfish, our recourse to provocation and violence as lazy and dangerous, our disrespect for history and impatience as childish  and ominous.

We must never forget that words count. They must, so long as we resolve to stay America. They have the power to change hearts  so long as we have patience to listen, and have respect for history and for each other.

There is a reason America is the freest country humankind has ever made workable. A big part is respect for words.

Our duty is not to tear down our history or each other, nor to fixate on humanitys imperfections. Our duty is not to fight with our fellow Americans, inflame passions, resurrect old battles or precipitate internal divisions. And we certainly must not make excuses for violence.

Instead, our duty is to learn what each generation, short of the last few, has known  that patience and trust in words are Americas genius, the origin of world respect for our democracy and respect for ourselves.

There is no genius, justice, redemption or lasting satisfaction in base acts of avoidable violence  only dishonor, discord, escalating division, and ultimate defeat. That is true no matter what your ideology or political party.

Americans have enough to worry about from without: North Korea, Iran, terrorists, radical ideologies, China, Russia and other disbelievers in democracy.

As in the subdued days following Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks  and in prior times of high national tension  we must learn to stand as one people, think again as one people, and listen to each other. We must practice and believe in the sincerity of words spoken. We must relearn our genius and how to solve problems by talking.
Americans have once again been subjected to a dishonest, one-sided elite media frenzy.

In what is becoming an all too common occurrence, the media covers an event, distorts it, and then builds on its own distortion, condemning anyone who refuses to blindly accept their falsehoods.

All of this is done in a tone of hysteria, designed to both distract us from the serious problems the Left can't solve and to isolate conservatives on emotionally hateful grounds.

Let me be clear: The conflict in Charlottesville last Saturday was terrible. An American was killed in an act of domestic terrorism by a hateful fanatic. Every American should condemn neo-Nazis, the KKK, and racism in all its hateful forms.

However, for leftwing fanatics and the elite media, bringing the country together and refusing to tolerate any group or individual that promotes racism and violence is not enough.

Instead, they believe that we should support eliminating large parts of American history.

If a person defends a historic monument or statue, the Left and the elite media immediately claim it is a sign of racism, anti-Semitism, and any other harsh emotional condemnation they can throw.

Never mind the words of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a Republican who was the first African American woman to serve as Secretary of State and who witnessed the atrocities of racism first-hand when members of the KKK bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, killing one of her close friends and three other young girls.

When asked earlier this year about removing Confederate memorials, Rice said, "When you start wiping out your history, sanitizing your history to make you feel better, it's a bad thing."

However, engaging in rational debates about this issue is impossible in this media frenzy because only the Left's views are tolerated.

Consider Bill Kristol's vicious attack on Tucker Carlson earlier this week.

During the opening monologue of his Fox News show, Carlson raised concern about discrediting every historical figure who was a slave owner, saying that in doing so, we risk undermining our founding documents. In response, Kristol tweeted, They started by rationalizing Trump. They ended by rationalizing slavery. Kristol then went on to infer that Carlson was anti-Semitic.

This is a perfect example of the current hysteria. Carlson was raising a valid question about whether it is reasonable to start whitewashing our history and denigrating every American historical figure who owned slaves. Do Kristol and others in the elite media think that we should tear down the monuments of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom owned slaves?

The surprising thing about Kristols unexpected attack on Carlson was that Carlson had worked under Kristol for years at the Weekly Standard. According to Carlson, I knew him well. He was a genuinely smart guy. Hes a good boss, too. He was humane and fair-minded. He was the kind of person I never would imagine would write something that nasty and dishonest about an enemy much less an old friend. What happened?

But Kristols rash tweetstorm against Carlson is exactly the kind of impulsive reaction the frenzy produces.

However, the media will soon learn that the clear majority of Americans repudiate this kind of hysteria.

A recent poll conducted by NPR, PBS News Hour, and the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion indicated that 62 percent of voters nationally think monuments of Confederate leaders should remain up as historical symbols, while only 28 percent of those polled said they should be removed because they are offensive and 10 percent of people were unsure.

Commenting on the poll in his Lunchtime Politics newsletter, political analyst Ron Faucheux went into further detail on the Marist poll, noting that 44% of Democrats, 86% of Republicans, and 61% of independents say the monuments should remain as historical symbols. By region: 53% in the Northeast, 61% in the Midwest, 66% in the South, and 61% in the West say the statues should remain. Also, 67% of Caucasians, 44% of African Americans, and 65% of Latinos say the statues should remain.

So, in the Left's and elite media's view are 44 percent of African Americans secretly racist since they accept the historic role of old statues?

Of course not.

This is just further proof of the dishonest, hysteria-driven smear campaign being run by the Left and the elite media.

But dont be fooled. The Left is not motivated by their desire to defend morality. Their actions are fueled by their desperation to focus our attention on symbolic emotional fights to detract from their failed policies.

The day after the tragedy in Charlottesville, six people were shot and killed in Chicago and five more have been killed since. In Baltimore, eight people have died of gunshot wounds in the past week. And on Thursday, at least 13 were killed and approximately 120 wounded in an ISIS terrorist attack in Barcelona, Spain.

The fanatics of the Left have no answers for these problems.

All they can do is attempt to arouse hysteria by focusing the debate on symbolic issues.

However, if the Left and the media continue their hysteria, fanaticism, and attacks on America, it could pose a serious threat to our nation and our future.

It is therefore time the rest of us defended America as aggressively as the Left attacks it.
On Monday, millions of Americans will be celebrating the solar eclipse. But throughout most of human history, an eclipse was something to fear. The gods were angry, and who knew what would happen next?

The earliest recorded solar eclipse was in China in 2137 B.C. The people got scared, believing a dragon was trying to devour the sun. They banged drums and shot arrows to chase it away.

The sun came back, so apparently the strategy worked. But things didnt work out so well imperial astronomers Hsi and Ho. In fact, the Emperor was so angry they didnt warn him of the event that he had them beheaded.

Another one of the earliest recorded solar eclipses comes from Mesopotamian records in 1375 BC (though there is some dispute over the date). It was in Ugarit, a city in Northern Syria. Historians of the time noted the sun was put to shame.

Sometimes people saw a solar eclipse as a warning, and changed their ways.

According to Greek historian Herodotus, the Medes and the Lydians had been fighting a war for six years. Then, in the midst of a battle (which modern historians date to 585 B.C.), the sun went dark. The warriors knew an omen when they saw one, and immediately declared a truce.

Scripture mentions a number of eclipses. Perhaps the most famous is when Jesus was crucified. As Luke 23:44-45 puts it: ...there was a darkness over all the earth [...] And the sun was darkened. Some have claimed this comes from an eclipse that occurred in 29 A.D.

Skipping ahead over a thousand years, people still saw eclipses as dangerous omens. In 1133 A.D., the day after King Henry I left England, there was a total solar eclipse. He later died in France, and the event has since been called King Henrys Eclipse. (At least in England. Other countries that saw it thought it was about them.)

Eventually, science started to figure out just what an eclipse was. They werent the wrath of the gods, they were predictable events based on the principles of physics.

And as superstitions died out, scientific understanding grew. Observing eclipses added to our understanding of the universe. For instance, Sir Arthur Eddington observed the bending of light by the Suns gravity during a solar eclipse in May of 1919. This confirmed Albert Einsteins theory of general relativity, making him world famous.

Eclipses were also used by artists throughout history, in paintings, poems and stories. One of the most well-known fictional uses of a solar eclipse comes from Mark Twains A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthurs Court.

In it, the title character Hank Morgan finds himself back in medieval England, where he is sentenced to die at the stake. But being filled with Yankee ingenuity, he puts to good use the knowledge that a solar eclipse will occur that day.

He threatens the people gathered that he will blot out the sun. And sure enough it happens. They start begging him to restore it, and when he obliges, they make him the Bosssecond in command only after the king.

So enjoy this Mondays solar eclipse. Unlike millions who lived before you, youve got nothing to fear. (Unless you stare at it. Dont do that.)
The White House wants to strengthen America's anti-terrorism defenses. So it's calling on a new set of special agents: veterinarians.

Veterinarians don't come to mind when most people think of national security. But they play a vital role in protecting the U.S. food supply from bioterror attacks. If terrorists engineered plagues to wipe out crops, or weaponized animal-borne diseases like avian flu, they could cause untold human and economic suffering.

A recent Department of Agriculture report warns that America remains vulnerable to such attacks. To prevent them, President Trump just signed a bill giving additional powers and resources to the Department of Homeland Security. Recognizing that "animal, plant and human health are inextricably linked," DHS plans to train more public-health veterinarians and build a $1 billion lab to research animal-borne diseases.

That's a wise move. For decades, veterinarians have worked -- often behind the scenes -- to contain deadly animal-borne diseases. Training more veterinarians would save lives and safeguard the economy.

Three-quarters of newly emerging human diseases can be traced back to animals. Veterinarians have an impressive track record of identifying and mitigating these zoonotic diseases.

Consider Tracy McNamara -- the veterinary pathologist who identified the first case of West Nile Virus in the Western Hemisphere.

Back in 1999, several older New Yorkers passed away unexpectedly. Meanwhile, many wild New York City birds died, as well as birds at the Bronx Zoo where Dr. McNamara worked. After analyzing the humans' blood samples, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the cause of death to be a fairly well-known brain infection called St. Louis encephalitis, which can spread from birds to mosquitos to humans. Case closed.

But McNamara thought differently. She noticed that the dying birds didn't show any signs of encephalitis. She started investigating and sampling the dead birds. Testing the samples at federal laboratories revealed that the disease was actually West Nile.

Other examples abound.

In 2012, University of California veterinary experts in Bolivia discovered that a deadly type of mosquito-borne yellow fever was behind the death of five howler monkeys. They alerted the Bolivian government, which immediately launched a campaign to vaccinate locals and control the mosquitos. Thanks to this quick response, no humans were infected.

Right now, in Illinois, veterinarians and other researchers are studying an outbreak of Seoul virus -- a disease transmitted by rats that can severely damage humans' kidneys.

Veterinarians don't just protect us against diseases carried by wildlife. Every time Americans safely chomp down on a cheeseburger, they can thank the veterinarians who monitor food supply systems, track potential threats, and develop safety protocols.

A group of Iowa veterinarians, for example, is currently testing ways to monitor how medications metabolize through pigs' bodies to ensure their meat is safe for human consumption. Another group of experts found that scanning cows' retinas can help identify mad cow disease nearly an entire year before they manifest clinical signs.

The Trump administration realizes how crucial veterinarians are in the public sector. In April, Dr. Sonny Perdue, the first veterinarian to serve in a Cabinet, was sworn in as secretary of the Department of Agriculture.

Despite the importance and increasing prominence of public health veterinarians, there are not enough of them to meet demand. The Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service has an 11 percent vacancy rate for veterinarians -- even though common food-borne illnesses are becoming more prevalent. Between 2013 and 2016, food safety inspectors recorded a 21 percent increase in STEC, a dangerous Shiga toxin producing form of E. coli bacteria found in contaminated meat. STEC alone causes 3,600 hospitalizations and 30 deaths annually in the United States.

The shortage exists, in part, because most veterinarians pursue careers in small-animal practice. Two-thirds of veterinarians exclusively treat dogs, cats, and other pets. Just seven percent work mostly with livestock.

So it's not enough to merely train more veterinarians. Leaders in the field must also encourage aspiring veterinarians to pursue public health roles.

Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine in St. Kitts and Nevis, where I teach public health, is doing just that. We're collaborating with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health -- one of the world's premiere public health institutions -- to enhance veterinarians' public health knowledge. As early as this year, Johns Hopkins students will be able to travel to the Caribbean for field projects, while our veterinary students will have the chance to pursue a Master of Public Health at The Bloomberg School.

Veterinarians are the behind-the-scenes protectors of America's food supply. But unless veterinary schools steer more graduates into public health roles, our country will become increasingly vulnerable to bioterror attacks and epidemics.
Jury selection gets under way next Tuesday in the bribery trial of New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez. It sets in motion a swirl of speculation about a shift in the balance of Senate power less than a month after Republicans fell one vote short of repealing Obamacare, with the surprise "NO" vote of brain cancer-stricken Sen. John McCain.



Menendez is accused of using his Senate seat to help the financial interests of a friend, Dr. Salomon Melgen, who allegedly returned the favor with almost a million dollars in gifts and campaign contributions. Menendez has repeatedly said he's innocent. After his indictment on April 2, 2015, he told reporters, "these allegations are false, and I am confident they will be proven false, and I look forward to doing so in court.



On the same day, his high-powered attorney, Abbe Lowell, reminded reporters of the Department of Justice's track record in winning political bribery convictions.

"As we have seen in so many cases, from former (Department of Housing and Urban Development) Secretary in 1999, to Sen. Ted Stevens in 2007, and two years ago in the case of Sen. John Edwards, prosecutors at the Justice Department often get it wrong," Lowell said. "These charges are the latest mistakes," he said.

JUDGE: DEMOCRAT BOB MENENDEZ MUST FACE CORRUPTION CHARGE IN COURT

But even if he is found guilty, a bribery conviction would not force Menendez out of the Senate.

He would have to voluntarily step down or be expelled by a two-third's majority in the Senate. Even if all Republicans voted for expulsion, they would still need 15 Democratic votes, an unlikely outcome given Democrats propensity to oppose virtually all of President Trump's agenda.



New Jersey's governor would be responsible for appointing Menendezs successor. But the gubernatorial election to replace Republican Chris Christie is only months away, and Menendez could agree to leave after New Jersey's next governor takes office.

"They're going to elect a new governor and the Democratic candidate is heavily favored in that race," says David Byler of Real Clear Politics.



Further bolstering Menendez's chances, since he was indicted, the Supreme Court unanimously threw out the bribery conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, setting an even higher bar for future political bribery convictions.




Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Friday banned public demonstrations at a statue to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond -- for the time being.

McAuliffe signed an executive order saying it was necessary after the white nationalist rally over a Lee statue in Charlottesville turned deadly over the weekend.

"In the aftermath of this tragedy, several groups have requested permits to hold similar-styled events at the Lee Monument in Richmond. State and local officials need to get ahead of this problem, so that we have the proper legal protections in place to allow for peaceful demonstrations, but without putting citizens and property at risk," McAuliffe said.

"Let me be clear, this executive order has nothing to do with infringing upon first amendment rights. This is a temporary suspension, issued with the singular purpose of creating failsafe regulations to preserve the health and well-being of our citizens and ensuring that nothing like what occurred in Charlottesville happens again," the governor added.

The Lee monument in Richmond is in the middle of a traffic circle on Monument Avenue, an iconic boulevard with several other Confederate statues. The city was once the capital of the Confederacy.

Earlier this week a group supporting the preservation of Confederate monuments in Richmond canceled its plans to hold a rally next month because of the potential for violence.

Fox News' Jenny Buchholz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Trump hinted Saturday that he and top U.S. generals have agreed on a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, after huddling Friday at the presidential Camp David retreat.

"Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders," Trump tweeted. "Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan."

Since taking office, Trump has considered several options for Afghanistan, from sending in additional troops to walking away from the war, an unlikely move considering U.S. concerns about thwarting Islamic terrorism.

Solutions for Afghanistan, which include ending the longest war in American history, eluded the Obama administration and haven't come easily to Trump.

The challenge is largely how to step up the fight against terrorism in a way that advances peace prospects -- in large part because the Taliban has been gaining ground and shows no interest in peace negotiations.

Trump met at the presidential retreat, in nearby western Maryland, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, top intelligence agency officials and other top military and diplomatic aides.

Mattis said earlier this week the administration was "very close" to finalizing a new approach and that the talks in the Catoctin Mountains will help the president and his team move toward a decision.

"We are coming very close, he said. And I anticipate (a decision) in the very near future.

Gen. Joseph Votel, the Central Command chief who is responsible for U.S. military operations in the greater Middle East, was not part of the meetings.

Votel said Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Joint Chiefs chairman, represent him in the White House-led Afghanistan strategy review.

He also said he has not talked directly to Trump as part of the months-long review.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a brief statement earlier this week saying Trump had been briefed extensively on a new strategy to protect America's interests in the region. But she did not specifically mention Afghanistan.

The U.S. has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan. Their primary roles are to train and advise Afghan forces and to hunt down and kill members of Al Qaeda and other extremist groups.

Months ago, the Pentagon settled on a plan to send about 3,800 additional troops to strengthen the Afghan army, which is stuck in what some call a deteriorating situation with the Taliban insurgency.

Within the White House, questions persist about the wisdom of investing further resources in the war. Even if the administration decides to add more troops, it's unclear whether they could get there quickly enough to make a difference in the current Afghan fighting season, which winds down in autumn.

The administration has said its Afghanistan strategy will be informed by a review of its approach to the broader region, including Pakistan and India. The Taliban have long used Pakistan as a sanctuary, complicating efforts to defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan and stabilize the country.

The region includes other actors who pose political problems for Washington, including Iran, which has influence in western Afghanistan.

The outlook is clouded by the Afghan government's struggle to halt Taliban advances on its own. The U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction has said the Taliban hold sway in almost half the country.

Government forces also are battling an Islamic State affiliate that has carved out a foothold, mostly in the east. Trump has vowed to crush IS, so its expansion in Afghanistan poses an additional challenge with no obvious solution. Just this week, a U.S. soldier was killed and nearly a dozen wounded in combat with IS fighters.

Trump has expressed frustration at the prolonged fighting in Afghanistan. Earlier this summer he raised the idea of firing the top U.S. commander there, Gen. John Nicholson.

Asked this week if Trump has confidence in Nicholson, Mattis demurred. "Ask the president," he answered.

Trump is "looking at all aspects" of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan "as he must in his responsibilities as the commander in chief," Mattis said.

Nicholson also was not participating in Friday's talks at Camp David.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ukrainian Channel 5 TV has reported that pretrial confinement for Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada member Borys Rozenblat has been extended until October 17.

"MP Rozenblat is obliged to wear an electronic bracelet and is not able to leave premises proscribed by the court without the permission of prosecutors," the report says.

Rozenblat is a suspect in the so-called "amber case."

As reported, in June, Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine Artem Sytnyk reported a scheme of illegal amber mining, in which MP Rozenblat and MP Maksym Poliakov of the People's Front faction were involved. The amount of received bribes exceeded UAH 300,000.

On June 21, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko requested the parliament should give its consent to prosecution, detention and arrest of these two parliamentarians.

On July 12, 2017, the Verkhovna Rada conceded to prosecution of Poliakov and Rozenblat, but voted against their detention and arrest.

The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office requested UAH 10 million bail as a preventive measure for Rozenblat.

On July 18, Kyiv's Solomiansky District Court chose a pretrial restriction for Rozenblat in the form of a UAH 7 million bail and an obligation to wear an electronic tracking bracelet, not to leave Kyiv and Zhytomyr without notice and to hand over all his foreign passports.

Rozenblat told media on July 24 that his family had posted the required bail amount.
President Trumps increasing divide with congressional Republicans is expected to take center stage when he campaigns next week in Arizona, where outspoken Trump critic and GOP Sen. Jeff Flake is seeking re-election.

Flakes opposition to Trump has increased in recent months, which has prompted the president to back a primary challenger to the first-term senator.

Great to see that Dr. Kelli Ward is running against Flake Jeff Flake, who is WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate," Trump tweeted Thursday. He's toxic!

The feud is part of a larger divide in which Trump is largely upset with GOP senators for failing to pass ObamaCare repeal-and-replace legislation, denying him a major legislative victory.

Trump is scheduled to campaign and hold a rally Tuesday in Phoenix.

Other GOP senators including Bob Corker of Tennessee, Dean Heller of Nevada and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also have publically criticized Trump and as a result have become a target of his ire.

On Thursday, Flake, in a New York Times editorial, criticized the presidents immigration policy, although he didnt specifically name Trump.

Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the same day delivered perhaps the strongest rebuke from congressional Republicans.

Trump has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful, Corker said, after Trump argued that both sides were responsible for the violence at a rally last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., that was organized by white supremacists and at which a counter-protester was killed.

McConnell, days earlier suggested publically that Trump had excessive expectations about swift passage of a repeal-and-replace measure, which prompted the president to chastise McConnell for failing to get the final votes in Congress.

Couldn't get it done, Trump tweeted earlier this week.

Flake, who also published a book last month questioning Trump's conservative values, says he mainly backs the president.

But he's shown he's willing to slam his party's leader despite knowing the president will hit back -- and hard.

Such spats illustrate the upside-down world of Republican politics heading into the 2018 elections.

Flake is loved by many high-ranking party officials and he is trying to hold onto a seat that the party needs to keep control of Congress, while Trump is actively campaigning against him.

The dynamic highlights the ongoing turmoil in the GOP over how closely to align with a president who remains unpopular with the general electorate but who still retains a devoted base of supporters, whom candidates like Flake will need to win.

Flake also said after Trumps widely panned response to violence in Virginia that Republicans cannot claim to be the party of Lincoln if we equivocate in condemning white supremacy."

Flake's colleague, Arizona Sen. John McCain, defended him, saying in a tweet that Flake is "a principled legislator & always does what's right for the people of #AZ. Our state needs his leadership now more than ever."

Trump then announced he was heading to the senators' home turf on Tuesday to rally his fans in Phoenix.

Flake's moves come with some risk in a state with a devoted base of Trump supporters. Still, a look at McCain's 2016 re-election bid can give him some solace.

McCain won his own primary election against Ward last year by more than 11 percentage points, and went on to beat the Democrat in the general election by 13 points, even after he broke with Trump in the month before the election and refused to vote for him.

Trump, meanwhile, won Arizona by fewer than 4 percentage points, a reminder of the state's moderate tilt.

Still, Trump got nearly 150,000 more votes than Flake did when he ran in 2012, a reminder of Trump's power to draw in new voters.

Republicans debating a break from the president must also be ready to weather a break from some of his voters.

Flake has been trying to walk a careful line. He's voted with Trump on important issues, but has been more willing than most GOP lawmakers to criticize him and did not endorse him last year.

"I think what Arizona expects of a senator is someone who will work with a president when he's right and oppose him when they think he's wrong," Flake told The Associated Press in an Aug. 10 interview. "That's what I'm doing and that's what I've done whether we've had a Republican president or a Democratic president."

Flake brushed aside criticism from Trump and declined to discuss Ward's campaign and emerging national profile, saying "I'll leave her to her campaign. I'll work mine."

Ward, a physician who drew only 39 percent of the vote in a primary fight against McCain last year, is seen as a longshot by top Arizona Republicans.

She hurt herself last month by urging McCain to step down following his brain cancer diagnosis and suggesting she should be considered to replace him.

Flake said at the time he was "dumbstruck" by her comments.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The clock is ticking for the eagerly anticipated Great American eclipse that will make its way across the U.S. Monday. This is what to expect.

The eclipse, which is the first to the cross the entire country coast-to-coast in almost 100 years, is expected to take about an hour and 40 minutes to makes its journey across the U.S. The total solar eclipse will start near Lincoln City, Oregon at 1:15 p.m. EDT, and totality will end at 2:48 p.m. EDT near Charleston, S.C.

Totality will last for about two-and-a-half minutes as the moon casts its shadow on the Earth, cutting roughly 70-mile path from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic.

TOP FIVE WORST SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT SOLAR ECLIPSES

Mostly clear skies beckoned along much of the route, according to the National Weather Service.

Excitement is mounting ahead of the historic event. Oregon, for example, has already experienced traffic issues as eclipse viewers flood to parts of the state. Almost 1 million people are expected to visit the state to see the eclipse, according to the Oregon Department of Transportation.

TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE DANGERS: WILL I GO BLIND IF I STARE AT THE SUN?

Elsewhere in the U.S., both inside and outside the zone of totality, people are preparing for the rare event.

Seton Hall University Assistant Professor of Physics Jose Lopez will be attending a campus viewing party.

I'll be outside in the middle of the campus with my daughter, students, colleagues, and many members of our University and local community using Solar Telescopes and authentic eclipse glasses, he explained, via email. We'll of course only experience a partial solar eclipse in the NY/NJ metro area, but it's the first such event over the Continental US since 1918. Not too many folks left that experienced that last solar eclipse 99 years ago. So, like many folks I'm looking forward to this special cosmic event!

The eclipse, however, poses potential dangers. Experts are warning eclipse watchers about the risks to vision posed by the rare event, and have highlighted the importance of effective eye protection.

WHAT CAUSES A TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE?

NASA has also issued a solar eclipse safety warning. The only safe way to look directly at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed Sun is through special-purpose solar filters, such as eclipse glasses or hand-held solar viewers, it said, in its solar eclipse safety guidelines. Homemade filters or ordinary sunglasses, even very dark ones, are not safe for looking at the Sun.

Nonetheless, doctors are bracing for a spike in E.R. visits related to the event.

Scientists across the country are also preparing to study the eclipse. A team of NASA-funded scientists, for example, will be chasing the solar eclipse across America in a pair of retrofitted WB-57F jets. Scientists will use twin telescopes mounted on the noses of the research planes to capture crystalclear images of the Suns corona, or its outer atmosphere.

AMERICA PREPARES FOR THE SOLAR ECLIPSE

Other projects include an effort to figure out the Suns exact size, and research into how the eclipse changes atmospheric conditions.

Seton Hall Professor Lopez told Fox News that science has also given us extensive knowledge of when and there eclipses will happen. Through the gained knowledge of physics, in particular the sub-field of Newtonian or classical mechanics, we're capable of making very accurate calculations of the exact times when solar eclipses will happen and the terrestrial locations of where total solar eclipses will occur, he said. It impresses me immensely that [the] Universe has a repeating and cyclical nature that we've figured out.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
This is a rush transcript from "The Story," August 17, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARTHA MACCALLUM, "THE STORY" HOST: Breaking tonight, we have a brand-new video of the aftermath in Barcelona, Spain. As the hunt is ongoing for the driver of the van who is now considered to be the most wanted man in Europe. He plunged his vehicle into a crowd of hundreds, mowing down and killing 13 individuals. He injured at least 100. He's now believed to be on the run, and out there somewhere in the middle of the night in Barcelona. Good evening, everybody. I'm Martha MacCallum. And this is "The Story."

We now also know that there were two explosions that appear to have happened at homes where bombs or bomb making could have gone awry yesterday, and then again today. This is the first visual that we have now of the aftermath -- we're waiting for a video which you're going to see in a moment as well. So, in between those two explosions, the now all-too- familiar and jarring path of a van that plows into human beings throughout enjoying a beautiful early evening in Barcelona just hours ago. ISIS now saying that these are their killers. Trace Gallagher has been covering this all day, watching it with all of us here at Fox News. And there have been quite a few moving parts in this story. Trace, what's the latest?

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, the early information, Martha, coming from authorities in Spain was not only confusing, it was often delivered in three languages. And for most of the day, we were told that the driver of the van that sped down La Rambla trying to kill as many people as possible was in custody. Well, now as you just said, we know that the driver is still on the run; apparently disappearing into the crowd during the mayhem after the attack.

There are two suspects who are in custody, but neither of them was arrested at the scene in Barcelona. Instead, one was arrested in the town of Ripoll, where the van was apparently rented. The second suspect was arrested in Alcanar, the site of the two deadly explosions -- one of them was last night, the other is tonight. Investigators were on the scene of both of those trying to link together the pieces. Police believe the explosions are somehow linked to the attack on La Rambla, though, it is very unclear exactly how. And police do acknowledge, the two suspects in custody may be a part of a bigger cell.

Meantime in Spain's Catalonia region, a man who tried to run down police at a traffic blockade, who was shot and killed, was initially linked to the van attack in Barcelona, but now police say that there is no connection. And to confuse matters more, police also released the name and picture of a man that they thought was the driver of the van in La Rambla, but that man reportedly walked into a Barcelona police station identifying himself saying that his I.D. had been stolen.

ISIS has now claimed responsibility, releasing a statement saying that the attack was carried out by soldiers of the Islamic State, targeting countries trying to drive ISIS out of Iraq and Syria. Today's bloodshed was Spain's deadliest attack since 2004 when al-Qaeda killed 192 people in coordinated bombings on Madrid's commuter trains. Martha.

MACCALLUM: Trace, thank you very much. Trace will be with us throughout the evening tonight, covering this breaking news story. Our next guest is in Barcelona. She was having lunch with a friend on La Rambla at the moment that this attack happened. She started to see people running for their lives. Police quickly ordered everybody to get inside wherever they could. The restaurant that she into pulled down the metal shutters, and she recorded this video from inside. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALANA FEARON, SURVIVOR: We do not know what is happening. And one of the waiters showed us footage of what apparently happened just a couple of hundred meters away, and we are absolutely horrified. All we could see where the bodies. Like we're totally frightened. It's so scary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: That was the view from where she was. Alana Fearon is from Ireland and was wrapping up a holiday in Spain before heading back home, and she joins us now. Alana, it has been an unbelievable day for you. Talk to us about what you were feeling at that moment when you made the recording.

FEARON: Yes. Obviously, it was a bit of a surreal situation to be in, because we were just caught up in panic but we did not know why or what was happening, and so we were just really scared. And then, there was like a small gap in the shutter and I could see outside from where I had taken -- it's like it was just like a ghost town, but there were police everywhere, and cordoned, blue flashing lights and all you could hear was the ambulance.

After about 45 or 50 minutes, the shutter went up, and was outside for about 20 minutes or so not being able to move anywhere. And the next thing, we're told to get back inside and the shutter went down again. And all that we knew was apparently there were two gunmen, and that there was a possible hostage situation. So, we got back into the restaurant and the shutters went down again, and then we really started to panic. And we're supposed to be going home. We didn't know what was going on. And we're surrounded by sirens and just pandemonium.

MACCALLUM: Yes. Alana, thank you. We're glad that you're OK. And we watched your video and the story of seeing people in the van go by with guns hanging out the door. This is obviously the kind of thing that we've all witnessed. But to actually be living through it and to be realized in real time that this is happening to you, must be so terrifying. We thank you very much for sharing your story with us tonight. We hope you get back to Ireland safe and sound soon.

FEARON: Thank you.

MACCALLUM: So, if you look back to May the First, the State Department issued a warning to all Americans about summer travel in Europe. It said this, "extremists continue to focus on tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets, shopping malls. U.S. citizens should exercise additional vigilance in these and similar locations, in particular during the upcoming summer travel season when large crowds may be common." It went on to say, that terrorists would likely use vehicles as "ramming devices." And so tonight, here we are with death and destruction in the beautiful city of Barcelona.

I'm joined now by Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a CIA Trained Intelligence Operative and a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research; and Mia Bloom is a Terrorism Expert and Author of "Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror." Mia, let me start with you. You say that you came across some interesting things on social media; looking at ISIS with regard to this attack today.

MIA BLOOM, TERRORISM EXPERT AND AUTHOR: Well, right away when there's an attack, the first thing that I do is I see what is ISIS saying about it. And so, we saw that ISIS made a claim of responsibility on that semi- official channel Amaq, almost right away. It didn't wait a day or two days as we've seen in some of the previous attacks. But the other thing was, very interesting, that in previous issues of their magazine, Rumiya, and then even more recently in June, they have been circulating videos of how to do these kinds of attacks precisely to try to inspire individuals to get in the car and ram civilians, and in order to cause mass casualty attacks. So, they have been trying to inspire these attacks. They put it in their Rumiya magazine. They put instructions, how to, on their platforms -- on their encrypted platforms. So, this is directly out of the ISIS playbook.

MACCALLUM: Tony, what do you think about this attack today?

LT. COL. TONY SHAFFER, TRAINED INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE AT THE CIA AND SENIOR FELLOW AT THE LONDON CENTER FOR POLICY RESEARCH: Look, this is horrific as it gets, and then was forecast by the State Department and some news outlets I've not been able to verify this independently, it reported C.I. gave Spain, in this location, a specific warning, and I'm not surprised by that. Mike Pompeo has doubled increase the pace of CIA's game quite a bit. And to the point of what we're just talking about, social media, this is a pattern that we need to start looking at more seriously.

We saw this Ansar al-Sharia on the attack in Benghazi. We saw this before the eagles of death metal attack against the ban in Paris. And clearly, if social media issues something, we must be paying a great attention to. And let me say this also about the fact that, you know, I got a lot of questions in the network about can we get ahead of us? Well, we can. We have to study how they do things online. We have to go back to the old fashion methodology of espionage, getting people on the inside.

We've had people like, Chelsea Manning, Bradley Manning, whatever you want to call him, and others who have actually compromised our capability to do technical collections. So, we have to go back to the old-fashioned methodology. And social media is one of those areas that we can actually study a lot of their patterns, and try to get ahead of what they're doing based on the fact that they're starting to not only telegraphed things, but I think there are ways of seeing what they're going to do.

MACCALLUM: So true. Mia, it looks like they may have been building bombs in at least two locations. And time and time again, you know, you have the rows of flowers that come out the following day and everything across Twitter, the solidarity movement with these different beautiful cities that have been attacked and people have lost their lives. And yet, you know, we start to find out that the people were on social media, that they were looking things up, that they were doing internet searches. So, we have all this surveillance, and yet, we can't seem to get ahead.

BLOOM: Well, it's also very difficult added to the fact that many of the platforms that I do my research on are not open API. In the sense that, it's not something that you could google. It's not something -- you have to actually be on these encrypted platforms in these very limited chat rooms. And so, I agree with Mr. Shaffer, you do have to do the traditional intelligence gathering, but you have to do so almost undercover on the social platforms.

SHAFFER: I agree with you. I couldn't agree more.

MACCALLUM: But isn't that happening? I mean, I would assume that the, you know, our Intel agencies have the same kind of access that you do to these places, is there, you know, protections that are in place that we need to rethink?

BLOOM: There is. And part because --

SHAFFER: Well, Martha --

BLOOM: Sorry, go ahead, Mr. Schafer?

SHAFFER: No, you're right. You were going right down the path. No, we can't get as much access as she does, based on a number of restrictions. This is something I actually met with and briefed Senior Pentagon Leadership on last year. I brought in a group of experts who outlined how we're failing in this area. So, what she can do as a citizen does not match what we should be able to do.

MACCALLUM: How can that be? I mean, people at home here -- that's crazy.

SHAFFER: Artificial restrictions and culture. It is totally crazy. But she's looking in the right place, clearly.

MACCALLUM: That is stunning.

BLOOM: And in part, I have to agree. One of the challenges has been, you know, in order for me to do what I do, I speak eight languages. I'm doing this in a number of different languages. And though I'm following very strict ethical requirements, when I've talked to different agencies, they can't do what I'm doing.

SHAFFER: Precisely. Precisely.

BLOOM: They've told me it's too expensive, it's too time-consuming. We don't have the linguistic capabilities of people to be able to get in, read the stuff in these languages, and translate it and get it to us fast enough.

MACCALLUM: Unbelievable.

SHAFFER: So, she's qualified. She does her job. But we have the failure of leadership in DNCI to do the hard work to invest in people like her to get the job done. That's how sad it is.

MACCALLUM: That's a wake-up call.

SHAFFER: That should be.

MACCALLUM: Thank you very much to both of you. Good to see you.

SHAFFER: Thank you.

MACCALLUM: So, coming up next, the CIA may have known a bit about this terror plot for months, and we now know that ISIS has wanted to strike Spain for years. Why is that? Why Spain? And what does this particular attack tell us about what may be next? Dr. Robert Pape had studies thousands of ISIS videos and came across one just today that specifically warned about this. Raising the question about why our intelligence folks start to seeing that? Marc Thiessen studied the vehicular attacks like this one that has rocked Europe of late for years and he knows what is going on here as well, both are coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This latest attack, the worst terror attack on Spanish soil since the 2004 Madrid train bombings. It shows us again that radical Islamic terrorism is one of the greatest threats we face today. ISIS has taken credit for this barbaric attack, but whoever is responsible should know that the United States of America together with our allies will find and punish those responsible and to drive the evil of radical Islamic terror from the face of the Earth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: So, we're just getting our first look at that. That came in moments ago. Vice President Mike Pence, obviously, sending a very strong message to Barcelona attackers. Spanish media reports at the CIA warned them that La Rambla, in particular, this beautiful, you know, sort of pedestrian and car area with lots of shops lining and cafes in the middle of Barcelona, they warned them that this could happen. And that's warning, according to the Spanish reports, came in about two months ago. So, if that is true, the intelligence was certainly and sadly quite accurate.

ISIS did claim responsibility quickly, as Mia Bloom was just saying about a couple of hours after this. There have been post calling for attacks on Spanish tourist hot spots as well and saying, "We will recover our land from the invaders." Spain was a Muslim country for 700 years; ending in the 15th Century, and it is part of their spoken mission to take it back. Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge joins me now from Washington, she has been talking to her intelligence sources all day on this, and she's here with the latest. Good evening, Catherine.

CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CHIEF INTELLIGENCE CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Martha. Tonight, the Spanish authorities are connecting the attack in Barcelona within an explosion last night in a town, 90 miles away, of what may be a bomb making factory. The police telling reporters that two suspects directly connected to the attack are now in custody, but not the driver of the white van. Meantime, a counterterrorism source tells Fox that the mounting evidence is consistent with the small cell and more complex plots rather than the lone actor.

This hour, Fox News has told, the intelligence agencies are reviewing that the terror watch list in databases to see if the suspects identified by Spanish authorities, including (INAUDIBLE) here, were known to Homeland Security, the National Counterterrorism Center, the nation's help threat analysis, the FBI, as well as others. And whether these suspects were blocked from entering the U.S. because of their suspected terror ties. Spain is part of the visa waiver program.

Almost immediately, ISIS' social media accounts celebrated the attack in Barcelona. These accounts are known in counterterrorism circles as fan boys, not leadership accounts. But not long after the Amaq news agency, the official mouthpiece for ISIS claimed responsibility. But it's not clear whether the individuals were inspired by ISIS, they were directed by ISIS, or the claim is simply opportunistic.

Spain, as you mentioned, has not really been traditionally part of the ISIS online conversation. But in July, and ISIS-affiliated telegram account mentions Barcelona specifically, and our contact says it was since flagged to law enforcement. As you also mentioned, the Barcelona newspaper reports that the CIA warned the Spanish counterparts in recent months about ISIS plots targeting the city, and specifically this area which is very much like Times Square in New York or the Champs-Elysees in Paris, which has also been targeted by ISIS terrorist, Martha.

MACCALLUM: Catherine, thank you very much.

HERRIDGE: You're welcome.

MACCALLUM: So, here now with more: Marc Thiessen, American Enterprise Institute Scholar who has studied vehicular attacks for years, he is also a Fox News Contributor; and Dr. Robert Pape, who is Director of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism, both experts in the field, and good to see you both tonight. Thank you for being here.

MARC THIESSEN, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR AND SCHOLAR OF AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: Good to see you, Martha.

DR. ROBERT PAPE, DIRECTOR, CHICAGO PROJECT ON SECURITY AND TERRORISM: Thanks for having me.

MACCALLUM: Dr. Pape, let me start with you. You have studied -- you and your team have a database that studies the behavior of every suicide bomber that you contract. So, we're trying to put together the pieces of who is involved here, but what can you glean from it so far?

PAPE: Well, we also have a database of 1400 ISIS videos -- the complete set of ISIS videos -- over the last three years. And studying particularly the ISIS videos. really gives us insight as to what's been happening. So, particularly since the fall of Mosul, ISIS has been calling over and over for individuals inside of the countries that are bombing or otherwise directing military activity against ISIS to attack those countries, rather than to leave those countries and travel to Syria.

In the past, if we look at the videos, when we look the recruitment appeals, what you see is a very different pattern. They did, sometimes, call for individuals to attack in those countries, but many of their videos were calling for travelers, people to leave. In the last few months since Mosul fell, you're seeing a dramatic shift in the video propaganda which is the heart of ISIS' threat to the west.

MACCALLUM: I just want to point out, I'm going to get to Marc Thiessen in just a moment. We are just learning: Spanish police are telling us that there is an operation that is ongoing at this hour outside of Barcelona. We also have, you know, so far, to our understanding, the story has changed quite a bit throughout the day that the van driver, the person who actually plowed these human beings down in cold blood, is out there somewhere. So, we're going to keep a very close tab --

PAPE: Well, and if I could --

MACCALLUM: Go ahead.

PAPE: And if I could just add, this would not be weird. What we also have done is studied the networks of the cells that have been plotting, particularly in the United States and Europe, and what we see are networks. We see networks of friends, networks of relatives, and undoubtedly, this is one of the things driving the authorities in Spain to be looking for connections.

MACCALLUM: Yes. And you know, Marc, you have studied this in depth as well. And this -- the guy who we originally thought did this was walked into the police and said that his brother took the papers in the car. Your thoughts on all this?

THIESSEN: Sure. Well, I mean, what's really important about what the doctor is saying is that we have to listen to the words of the enemy because the enemy often tells us what they're going to do. The fact is, seven years ago, al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula published a magazine called Inspire, in which they published an article called "The Ultimate Mowing Machine," which urged Jihadists to use a pick up the truck as a mowing machine, not to mow grass but to mow down the enemies of Allah. And they've laid out in great detail how to carry out these vehicular attacks. And what's happened since then, is they've carried out these attacks in Nice, Berlin, London, Stockholm, Ohio State University, and now in Barcelona that killed over a hundred people, and injured hundreds more.

Now, why is that sourcing really important? Because just this month, the latest issue of Inspire just came out, and it urges them to carry out attacks on trains in the United States and in Europe. They have a list in the magazine of train routes in the United States. The number one target listed in here is the Acela Corridor between Washington, New York, in D.C. And they have an 18-page guide in there to how to build a derailment device-- to derail a high-speed train. So, we have seen that the enemy tells us what they're planning to do. And we need to take the words of the enemy seriously, because we've seen vehicular attacks have followed this pattern, and now it's going to be trains.

MACCALLUM: And in that material, it says that they should put the devices on the tracks not long before the train comes across because they do check the tracks from time to time. So, you know, they don't have a whole lot else to do, Dr. Pape. This is what they spend their time doing: tracking the movements of these sorts of things and figuring out when the right moment is to plant something there. We need to be very vigilant.

PAPE: We need to be very vigilant, and we need to realize that they practice, they review in detail past attacks to make better and improved attacks into the future. These are not first rate -- just amateurs who are getting lucky here or there. These are individuals who are practicing, and then they're putting on the web what they have learned from their best practices. And actually, the content is really at the heart, as Marc is saying. And it's difficult to get a grip on because let's say those 1400 ISIS videos, that's over 300 solid hours of content, which is why it took us the research team of 25 people at the University of Chicago to find out what's in there.

MACCALLUM: And hopefully, it will help to lead to uncovering some of the plots. And we need to pay very close attention to this train plot, because as you both point out, they do, generally, exactly what they say they're going to do. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Great to have both of you with us tonight.

THIESSEN: Thank you.

PAPE: Thank you.

MACCALLUM: So, coming up next, the shocking video showing a boatload of migrants unloading onto the shores in Spain, while everybody is out there on holiday. And can you imagine this happening? You know, you're at the beach, and suddenly people are rushing across the beach in black, heading into the hills? We're going to talk about what this means. Rahim Kassam says, this is contributing to the terror epidemic that is crippling Europe; he's back with us tonight, coming up next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I heard screams of people to my left, and when I looked up, I saw the white van and it must've been doing some 100 kilometers, 80-100 kilometers an hour down a pedestrian sort of walk way just sort of knocking people over at a high speed

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMY MCCABE, BARCELONA RESIDENT: Oh, my God! They've got someone on the street. They have someone on the street. There are live five police officers on top of one guy. Everybody is running out their windows. The ten police officers running towards them. They have on the ground. They're all on top of him. I can see that, you know, hitting him. They're all piling on top of him. This is crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: Obviously, this is ongoing and nerves are on edge. That was a little bit earlier today. Shepard Smith was speaking to a woman who was a witness on the street there, and we're watching this story that I mentioned to you moments ago, which is breaking news about an ongoing operation about an hour and a half outside of Barcelona. The Spanish police reportedly conducting that operation. We don't know whether or not they're -- think that they may be on to someone else who's involved with this, or perhaps the man who was driving that van. But they're telling residents that they need to lock themselves inside their homes as this unfolds. And we're waiting for any video that comes in of that operation. As soon as we get that, we'll certainly put it up and show it to you as we continue to take a look at what's happening tonight. So still on the run in terms of the main culprit here as far as we can tell. But of course, Spain is a country that is seeing skyrocketing numbers of migrants literally storming the country's beaches, and that is not a metaphor. I mean, here's the boat arriving. People out on holiday on the beach, wondering what the heck is going on, essentially. Our next guest says that this is part of the reason he believes that Europe is suffering the spate of terror attacks. But first we're going to go to Trace Gallagher with the latest on the numbers in this growing crisis in Europe. Good evening again, Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS: You know, Martha, you look at that video and considering that from early yesterday morning until early this morning, Spain's maritime rescue service, the equivalent of our coast guard, rescued more than 600 migrants, including 35 children in the Strait of Gibraltar, that the waterway that separates Spain from Morocco. Several more migrants were also picked up further east of the Mediterranean. All told, it was the highest single day recovery effort in over three years. Officials say that the migrants were rescued in 15 vessels, the majority of which were nothing more than cheap toy paddle boats without motors. I mean, they're not exactly seaworthy.

So far this year, more than 9000 migrants have reached Spain by sea. That's three times as many as last year. And the U.N. refugee agency says the country simply cannot handle it. Citing a shortage of police, interpreters, and accommodations. And the problem is compounded because there's an increase of women and children becoming victims of human trafficking. And because of the rising in migration, Spain could soon overtake Greece as the second most popular destination for migrants in Europe. The number one destination remains Italy, which has seen over 100,000 arrivals from Libya this year alone.

But Italy saw a 57 percent drop in arrival from June to July. Meaning migrants are going elsewhere like Spain. Experts say increased patrol by the Libyan coast guard, bad weather, the unrest in Libya, may be reasons why more people are attempting to reach Spain instead. Now, the death rates among migrants are also rising dramatically. A recent study show that of the 113,000 migrants that attempted to enter Europe, so far this year, more than 2,300 died at sea, 119 of those deaths by trying to reach Spain. Martha.

MACCALLUM: Trace, thank you very much. Raheem Kassam is the Breitbart News London, editor-in-chief, and the author of the new book No Go Zone, how sharia law is coming to a neighborhood near you. Raheem, welcome back to the program. You know you hear and you look at those pictures, and you hear about the thousands of people who are coming across to these -- you know, basically low-hanging fruit countries that are right across from the Middle East and Northern Africa, the easiest places to get to. It's a combination of tragedy and desperation for so many families, but also some percentage of danger presented here.

RAHEEM KASSAM, BREITBART NEWS LONDON EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Yeah, absolutely. And it's incredible isn't it if you look at the number of people who are suffering as a results of the human traffickers themselves. And these shorty little boats that they put them on in the sea and many are dying and suffering as a result of that illegal trade of people, coming from Turkey and coming from parts of North Africa as well. And you would just think that we would have some semblance of introspection over this. Maybe we don't allow these boats to come over. Maybe we don't start rescuing people who have been human traffic there and bringing them into Europe, because it only encourages. It's the pull factor, only encourages those human traffickers to carry on that illegal trade.

You know Australia had the same problem. What their solution was to turn the boats back. You may not land illegally in Australia, and then claim citizenship and all the rights of residents. And actually their problems ceased. And Europe hasn't gotten to grips with that yet. And it's not obviously just that problem that we're talking about. Barcelona today, I guarantee you -- I mean the guy that we know, this comes from Ceuta, and the other guy from Melilla, these are two Spanish enclaves in the north of Africa, these are areas which are hotly under dispute, and areas in which thousands of migrants, literally every week, are storming the gates to these areas and trying to race their way into Europe. You see it in that video that you just showed.

MACCALLUM: You know, in so many cases, though, we have seen that it's homegrown terrorism. You know, maybe second generation, young men who have grown up in England or grown up in France, disgruntled for whatever reason, and find and identifying factor with these groups. You've studied what you call these no-go zones in so many of these cities. And it's likely that there are areas perhaps like this where these people who perpetrated this today came from?

KASSAM: Well, we know that's Barcelona had some neighborhoods like this. And not too far away from where the attack happened. So it is completely possible. We do not want to jump to conclusions like some other people out there do very, very quickly. But we'll wait and see, but there is a high likelihood of this. And I haven't just study them, I've lived them. I lived in London most of my life, and I've seen these places come to fruition. I've traveled to Sweden. I've travelled to Brussels, to the northern -- suburbs, and I saw what was going on in these neighborhoods.

How second-generation immigrants who grew up in Muslim families, people like me, people with my name, with my complexion, that look like me, were being taken in by radical fundamentalist Islam, and having their minds poisoned and going out and doing things like this. And I know what the conveyor belt looks like. I know how people get there. The problem is, you know, I can scream about it until I'm blue in the face, but unless we have real policy solutions aimed at this anti-ghettoization, and anti- segregation, and stop putting people in these migrants ghettos, then we're just going to keep seeing this sort of stuff.

MACCALLUM: Raheem, thank you very much. Great to see you again. Raheem Kassam of Breitbart in London. So tonight, more on the devastating terror attacks that we watch unfold today in Barcelona. So shocking and so sad. And perhaps the most well-known interrogator in the world, Dr. James Mitchell is here on how he worked to prevent terrorism like what we saw today, and why he says car attacks of this kind are here to stay, and perhaps we need to get used to it. Straight ahead.

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MACCALLUM: All right. Breaking news just coming in from the police in Spain, we are getting information about an event that is unfolding right now, which is either potentially another attack, or perhaps, part of the investigation that is ongoing from the earlier attack. And as we've seen throughout the course of the day, this information comes in as we've said in three languages, essentially. Cambrils, which is about 70 miles outside of Barcelona, is where this is taking place. So we're getting a little -- what we can tell you is that the police there have told people that they need to avoid going out into the street, that they should lock themselves in their homes in Cambrils, which I've said is about 70 miles outside of Barcelona.

You can see the other locations where we have seen activity today with these bomb explosions, Ripoll, and also Alcanar, which is also been on the radar. But right now there is ongoing police action in the town of Cambrils. And we will continue to keep you posted and bring you images as we get them in. But obviously, that is breaking news as we speak. An incident that is being worked at this hour. My next guest says it was only a matter of time before Islamist turns to vehicular attacks. And he should know since he has spent more time with terrorists than most Americans ever will.

Joining me now, Dr. James Mitchell, the psychologist known for personally interrogating top al-Qaeda operatives, he's also the author of Enhanced Interrogation, inside the minds and motives of the Islamic terrorists trying to destroy America. Doctor, good to have you with us, once again on The Story tonight. Obviously, we book you to talk about the case that just settled that you were involved in. But it really weaves in with everything that we're talking about. Tell me your reaction to this particular ongoing operation and what happened in Barcelona today.

JAMES MITCHELL, PSYCHOLOGIST: I think it's a horrible tragedy. It's a horrible tragedy brought about by people who have adopted the most hateful aspects of this radical Islamic ideology. And have absolutely no regard for innocent life. None whatsoever. I think they need to be hunted down, and I know people say brought to justice, but I think America should focus on finding them and killing them.

MACCALLUM: You were involved in the interrogation and coming up with the enhanced interrogation techniques that were used on many of the top lieutenants, if I can call them that, who were involved in the 9/11 attacks, and during the war on terror shortly after 9/11. Three of those individuals -- this is video just coming in of this operation. We're going to keep an eye on it. This is live at 1:33 AM in Barcelona, Spain. So you believe very much that those tactics were useful and that they were effective. That case settled involving three individuals. But when you look at the ongoing fight here, doctor, how does all of that inform your feeling on it?

MITCHELL: My feelings on the fight? Well, I think one of the things that are involved with these folks is excessive political correctness. You know, our -- and I admire our religious freedom. I don't think we should turn our backs on it. But one of the things that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told me was that our religious freedom actually acts as a cloaking device that allows them to move into our neighborhoods to set up these enclaves to put in place the precursors of radicalization and these terror attacks. To put in the support networks long before any laws are broken. And that -- our concerns about privacy, and surveillance, and political correctness, all contribute to that. He views that as a gift from Allah. A gift from his god, that allows them to operate in our midst without being challenged. And that's one of the things that we're seeing.

You know he told me in 2004, 2005, that low-tech, lone wolf, or small network attacks were likely to be the wave of the future, because it was so difficult to mount, and so expensive to mount these mask catastrophic attacks, that you could bring western -- to their needs. Because remember, they're not targeting the military. They're not targeting our financial system. They're targeting the minds of citizens in Europe and the United States. And what they hope to do is to make us so frightened that when they ratchet up sharia law in our midst, like your last guest was alluding to, that when they ratchet that up, we'll be so scared, we'll be so weary, we'll be so tired, that in the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we will expose our neck to them so that they can slaughter us.

MACCALLUM: Wow. Doctor, thank you very much. We just saw how easy it is. We saw the van being taken away on the back of a truck. And all he had to do was rent a van for the day, and that was the entire preparation that was likely needed in this attack. Doctor, thank you very much. Good to see you again.

MITCHELL: Glad to be on, thank you.

MACCALLUM: Thank you. So we'll keep you updated on the manhunt that is underway in Barcelona, and also the ongoing operation that's happening about 70 miles outside of Barcelona. We're going to continue to watch this big story that is making news. Also news here at home tonight, the fight surrounding confederate monuments in the United States. This is not going away because there are number of demonstrations that are plan for the coming week that we're watching quite closely. Tony Perkins and Juan Williams join me on that, coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACCALLUM: So breaking news in Spain at this hour, as an operation is underway in the city of Cambrils, which we now located on the map, it's between Barcelona and Alcanar, about 70 miles outside of Barcelona. Police operation there for a possible terrorist attack. And the police warning everyone there, if you are there, avoid going out, stay put, lock yourself in your home, and that is the latest warning for the people who are no doubt terrified in that town at this hour, 1:00, at little after 1:00, 1:30 in the morning in Spain. So we're going to keep a close eye on that.

In the meantime, we also want to talk about these statues issue that recognize the civil war, so why is there a 2017 battle over war that was fought in the 1800s? Statues are disappearing in the dark of night. Some are being tumbled by citizens taking the situation into their own hands. These confrontations though are really just beginning. Richmond, Virginia, Florida, are just among the places where we know by watching some of these groups online, they're planning new demonstrations over the course of the coming weeks. Today, the president tweeted this, sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E. lee, Stonewall Jackson, who's next? Washington, Jefferson? So foolish, he writes.

Meanwhile, Cory Booker, senator from New Jersey, pushing to have all the confederate statues removed from the capital. There are several that are there. Nancy Pelosi is on board on that, as are others. Here now, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Juan Williams, cohost of The Five. Gentlemen, welcome. Always good to see you. Juan, let me start with you. Your reaction to the president statement there today?

JUAN WILLIAMS, THE FIVE CO-HOST: Well, I just think it's one-sided. I guess he understand somehow that it excites some part of his political base. People who see him as non-P.C. But in reality, you know, to me, this is not about some dwelling an effort to revise history. This is about an effort to take down monuments, monuments are for the living. And at the moment, they have become symbols that excite hatred and division in our society. And so I think in terms of moral leadership and clarity you would say, you know, this is too much. This is exciting the neo-Nazis, the white supremacist, they're using it as recruiting tools, as evidence that they are under attack, and -- resentment in their rank.

I think that there is a moment here where you can say, this is part of our history. Maybe it belongs, as we saw in South Carolina, Nikki Haley now the U.N. ambassador said let's move the flag into a museum. We certainly teach the history of the civil war in our schools. These monuments for the most parts were erected not in the immediate aftermath of the civil war, but really in the early part of the 20th century when the KKK was on the move.

MACCALLUM: Let's look at some numbers here. I want to put up some polls of how people feel about this, and I want to get Tony Perkins to weigh in, 62 percent say that they would like them to remain, these monuments as a historic symbol, 27 percent say they should be removed, 11 percent are unsure. With regards to how the president handled it all, 52 percent say President Trump response was not strong enough on this, and 27 percent say it was, 21 percent say that they are unsure. Tony Perkins, welcome, again. Your thoughts and your reaction to all of this?

TONY PERKINS, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL PRESIDENT: Well, Martha, I respect Juan's feelings and the others -- but I think, for a moment, let's pause, let's look at what's happening in Barcelona. And it's not unrelated to this. I think it's a very dangerous time, very dangerous world. And as a former law enforcement officer, one that worked in antiterrorism, this is a dangerous time for us if we're a divided nation. And clearly, what we have seen in the last five days is that we're a divided nation. And I think what we have to do, we have to address this issue from a standpoint of, hey, we've got to quit shouting over each other and start talking to each other. And I think we need to take a pause.

Feelings are high on both sides of this. And I don't think we're going to accomplish anything by just raising the volume. I've called on the president to ask for the nation to come for a day of prayer and reconciliation. That -- hit the pause button, let the emotions go down, think through this, look to God who is the one who gives value to each and every human life regardless of their color, regardless of where they came from, because this is a dangerous time for America. And we cannot succeed if we're a divided nation.

MACCALLUM: Well put. I think a day of prayer is something that most people -- Juan, do you think that's a good idea?

WILLIAMS: I love it. You know, that's something Tony and I can shake hands on right now. The idea of people talking and healing is at the forefront of my mind, because I just don't like all the hostility and division. We're Americans. And Tony and I are both Christians, but I mean we're Americans. And I think the idea of somehow finding a way to communicate rather than playing culture wars would be ideal.

MACCALLUM: Yeah. And I don't think anybody cares what these neo-Nazis feel about the statues. I think the rest of us need to decide the best route forward. Tony Perkins, thank you so much. Juan Williams, good to see you as well.

WILLIAMS: Likewise.

MACCALLUM: We'll take a quick break here. We'll be right back with more of "The Story."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACCALLUM: Stay tuned, we've got continuing breaking coverage of the ongoing operation and the terror attack in Barcelona, all night, right here on Fox News. That's "The Story" for tonight. Tucker Carlson is up next.

END

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ICE has arrested the driver of a tractor-trailer and a passenger Wednesday, after they were found with 23 illegal immigrants and 256 pounds of marijuana in the truck.

The arrests were made on Interstate 10 near the city limits by ICEs Homeland Security Investigations unit.

There were 18 adult males and two unaccompanied boys in the trailer; there were also two women and another man in the sleeper cabin. Three of the immigrants were from Guatemala and 20 were from Mexico. The immigrants are in federal custody pending disposition of the immigration cases, according to ICE.

In addition to the immigrants, agents also found 256 pounds of marijuana in the sleeper cabin.

The driver, Comothial Harper, 44 of Bainbridge, Ga., was arrested and charged with transporting illegal aliens for financial gain, investigators said. They added that the passenger, Gerardo Aguilar-Roque, 35, was arrested and charged with possession with intent to distribute marijuana.

Despite there being no ventilation system, the immigrants all appeared to be in good health inside the trailer. According to court documents, agents with the El Paso Border Enforcement Security Task Force found the immigrants in the trailer hiding behind commercial boxes.

The people inside the trailer had a long trip ahead of them, and nothing assures us they would have arrived at their destination alive, said Waldemar Rodriguez, special agent in charge of HSI El Paso in a statement. HSI and its law enforcement partners will continue to work tirelessly to dismantle human smuggling networks operating on the border.

KFOX reported agents found the truck because of a traffic violation and outstanding warrant. Harper was paid anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 to smuggle the immigrants, according to KFOX.
A suspect in the fatal shooting of a police officer in Florida and the grave wounding of another officer was arrested several hours after the attack in a bar, authorities said Saturday.

Everett Miller faces a charge of first-degree murder for the killing of Officer Matthew Baxter and could face other charges for the wounding of Officer Sam Howard, said Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell at a news conference Saturday.

During a patrol of the neighborhood south of Orlando's theme park hub late Friday, the officers got into a scuffle with Miller, who shot them, the police chief said.

The officers didn't have an opportunity to return fire.

Sheriff's deputies with a neighboring law enforcement agency later tracked Miller down to a bar and approached him. Miller started reaching toward his waistband when the deputies tackled and subdued him, O'Dell said.

The found a handgun and revolver on him.

"They were extremely brave and heroic actions taken by the deputies," O'Dell said.

The police chief said Miller would be taken to jail wearing the fallen officer's handcuffs.

Authorities originally said they believed there were four suspects, but the chief said Saturday that no other arrests are anticipated.

Separately, other two officers were injured late Friday in Jacksonville, Florida, after police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where three other people were thought to be in danger. One of the officers was shot in both hands and the other was shot in the stomach.
Three people were in custody Friday night, including a strong suspect, after one police officer was fatally shot and another suffered grave injuries in Kissimmee, Fla., south of Orlando.

At a press briefing, Police Chief Jeff ODell said police Officer Matthew Baxter succumbed to his wounds, and Officer Sam Howard was in critical condition, but the prognosis does not look good, ODell said.

Initial reports said both officers had died.

The two officers were in the area of Palmway and Cypress, checking out a report of a suspicious person at approximately 9:27 p.m. Soon afterward, a 9-1-1 call came in, saying the officers had been shot, ODell said.

The area is known for high drug activity, the chief said.

ODell said the officers did not return fire, and it appears they were surprised.

When asked by reporters if the officers were ambushed, ODell said, Its too early to tell, but it's leading that way.

Only one of the suspects was believed to have been armed, the chief said.

Both officers are husbands, and have children. Baxter is married to another Kissimmee police officer.

President Donald Trump took to Twitter to express his condolences.

Also on Friday night, two police officers were shot in Jacksonville, Fla., and two state troopers were shot in Pennsylvania.

A unit of four to five Jacksonville police officers responded to an attempted suicide call late Friday evening. As officers approached the house, the suspect started shooting through a doorway, seriously injuring two officers, Jacksonville police said at a media briefing.

The suspect was shot, and later died at a hospital, police tweeted.

In Pennsylvania, both state troopers were in stable condition and the suspect was killed, authorities said. A press briefing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Saturday.

The shootings are not related, authorities said.
Three young girls were stabbed to death as they slept together in a bed and police have charged the older brother of one of the girls who was babysitting them with the murders, Maryland police said Saturday.

Prince George's County Deputy Chief Sammy Patel called the slayings in a house in Clinton "one of the most difficult scenes" that the department's officers have encountered.

Prince Georges County police in suburban Washington said Antonio Williams, 25, of Clinton, confessed to the murders, Fox 5 DC reported Saturday.

He has been charged with murder in the deaths of his Nadiara Janae Withers, 6, Ariana Elizabeth DeCree, 9, and Ajayah Royale DeCree, 6.

Williams is the brother of Nadiara. Ariana and Ajayah were sisters from Newark, N.J., who were visiting Nadiara for the summer. Their mother was the cousin of Nadiaras mother, Andrena Kelley.

Police announced Williams had been taken into custody around 11 p.m. Friday.

They said Saturday they didnt know why Williams killed the children.

Detectives are working to establish a motive in this case, a police spokesman said.

Kelley found the girls when she returned home early Friday after working overnight, NBC4 DC reported.

Police said a 2-year-old girl in the home was not harmed, the station reported.

Williams was jailed without bail.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sixty illegal immigrants who were comingled within a tractor holding produce were rescued by Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol Agents on Saturday.

Agents referred a tractor trailer driver to secondary inspection after a dog alerted officials to the people who were laying on and within pallets of broccoli.

The trailer's doors were secured with a padlock and the subjects had no means of escape. The trailer's temperature was 49 degrees Fahrenheit.

Medical attention was offered to the rescued aliens but all declined, officials said. They were transported to the Falfurrias Border Patrol Station and processed. The group consisted of 22 Guatemalans, 17 Mexicans, 13 Salvadorans and eight Hondurans.

The driver, a Guatemalan national, was arrested and is pending federal charges for alien smuggling.

Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol urges immigrants against entrusting smugglers and warns against the dangers of crossing illegally into the U.S. through dangerous environmental conditions.

"Criminal activity like this will also lead to serious consequences for truck drivers who engage in smuggling," said RGV Sector Chief Patrol Agent Manuel Padilla Jr in a statement.
An 18-year-old woman who was babysitting a 4-year-old boy has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting the child, say police in San Antonio, Texas.

An arrest affidavit says Esmeralda Medellin allegedly molested the child in March, but denied the allegations after the child told his mother what happened, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

Police took the babysitter and child to a hospital for an examination, then brought the babysitter to police headquarters for questioning, the newspaper reported.

After hospital test results arrived, police on Thursday arrested Medellin on suspicion of aggravated sexual assault, the newspaper reported.

Barber masturbated, police say

Also on Thursday, a barber in Spring, Texas, was arrested after a mother claimed he masturbated while cutting her childrens hair, the paper reported.

Jeremiah Siqueido, 32, was charged with indecency after the mother told deputies Siqueido repeatedly went into a back room during the haircuts.

In one instance, the mother caught him masturbating while looking out at the children, according to the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable's Office.

Man blamed girl, police say

Meanwhile, San Antonio police arrested a 74-year-old man, charging him with inappropriately touching a girl whose age was not specified.

Jesus Salgado told police the girl was to blame, alleging she had continuously come onto him, an affidavit stated, according to the Express-News.

Click here for more from the San Antonio Express-News.
Prosecutors dropped a gun charge against a Chicago man implicated in the 2014 beating of an off-duty police sergeant after the case unraveled amid questions about the actions of the sergeant and two other officers who were with him.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Cook County prosecutors released Joseph Baskins from jail, saying they couldn't prove their case stemming from an October 2014 confrontation in a parking garage. Records show that the three officers, who declined to speak with reporters, gave authorities varying accounts of what happened.

Chicago police initially portrayed the incident as a robbery, with Baskins as the culprit and Sgt. Patrick Gilmore, who suffered brain damage, as the victim. A spokeswoman for State's Attorney Kim Foxx's office wouldn't say why it took the office nearly three years to drop the charges.

The altercation between the officers and Baskin began in an elevator and spilled out onto a deck. Baskins, who is African-American, says the officers, all white, never identified themselves as police and made racial slurs. He also says he took Gilmore's gun to keep himself or someone else from getting shot.

"Everybody thought they were just a bunch of racist white guys," Baskins told the Sun-Times.

Records show that Gilmore said he confronted Baskin because he smelled marijuana. Gilmore said he approached Baskins' group, flashing his badge and his gun, and was immediately jumped.

The then-28-year-old Baskin, his fiance, family and friends had parked in the garage on their way to a wedding at City Hall. Gilmore and the other officers, Michael R. Kelly and Marc Jarocki, were heading to their car after meeting with city attorneys about a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing them of having conducted an illegal search.

At the time Baskins was charged, prosecutors said "words were exchanged," and a brawl ensued in which Baskins allegedly hit Gilmore repeatedly before taking off with Gilmore's gun. A police report accused Baskins of committing aggravated battery on Gilmore. However, prosecutors charged Baskins only with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon for taking Gilmore's gun.

Baskins, who admits to being a former street gang member, says he ended up losing his home and eventually his fiance after the incident.

According to police interviews with the two city attorneys who had met with the three officers earlier that day to prepare their defense against misconduct allegations in the unrelated lawsuit, Gilmore and his partners came back to the law department after the fight smelling of alcohol.

Kelly, 42, and Jarocki, 36, have been stripped of their police powers pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation. Gilmore is on disability leave.

___

Information from: Chicago Sun-Times, http://chicago.suntimes.com/
A 25-year-old U.S. citizen has been charged with using a drone to smuggle more than 13 pounds of methamphetamine from Mexico, an unusually large seizure for what is still a novel technique for bringing illegal drugs into the United States, authorities said Friday.

Jorge Edwin Rivera told authorities that he used drones to smuggle drugs five or six times since March, typically delivering them to an accomplice at a nearby gas station in San Diego, according to a statement of probable cause. He said he was to be paid $1,000 for the attempt that ended in his arrest.

3 ARRESTED AFTER DRONE DROPS CELLPHONE, DRUGS TO PRISON YARD

Border Patrol agents in San Diego allegedly saw the drone in flight on Aug. 8 and tracked it to Rivera about 2,000 yards from the Mexico border. Authorities say agents found Rivera with the methamphetamine in a lunch box and a 2-foot drone hidden in a nearby bush.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in a recent annual report that drones are not often used to smuggle drugs from Mexico because they can only carry small loads, though it said they may become more common. In 2015, two people pleaded guilty to dropping 28 pounds of heroin from a drone in the border town of Calexico, Calif. That same year Border Patrol agents in San Luis, Ariz., spotted a drone dropping bundles with 30 pounds of marijuana.

US MILITARY CAN SHOOT DOWN TRESPASSING CONSUMER DRONES, PENTAGON SAYS

Alana Robinson, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, said drones haven't appealed to smugglers because their noise attracts attention and battery life is short. Also, payloads pale compared to other transportation methods, like hidden vehicle compartments, boats or tunnels.

As technology addresses those shortcomings, Robinson expects drones to become more attractive to smugglers. The biggest advantage for them is that the drone operator can stay far from where the drugs are dropped, making it less likely to get caught.

"The Border Patrol is very aware of the potential and are always listening and looking for drones," Robinson said.

Benjamin Davis, Rivera's attorney, declined to comment. Rivera is being held without bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 7.
A second Florida police officer died Saturday after he and a colleague were shot while scuffling with a suspect.

The Kissimmee Police Department issued a statement late Saturday afternoon saying Sgt. Richard "Sam" Howard had died of his injuries. His colleague, Officer Matthew Baxter, died Friday night.

Everett Glen Miller, 45, has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Baxter, Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff ODell said earlier Saturday at a news conference.

ODell said it does not appear that Miller, a Marine veteran, has an extensive criminal history but authorities are still investigating.

TOTAL OF 6 POLICE OFFICERS SHOT IN FLORIDA, PENNSYLVANIA

The two officers were in the Palmway and Cypress area of Kissimmee checking out a report of a suspicious person at approximately 9:27 p.m. Soon afterward, a 911 call came in, saying the officers had been shot, ODell said.

The officers did not return fire, and it appears they were surprised, the police chief said, adding that authorities are still talking to witnesses to determine the timeline of events.

Sheriff's deputies with a neighboring law enforcement agency later tracked Miller down to a bar and approached him. Miller started reaching toward his waistband when the deputies tackled and subdued him, O'Dell said.

"They were extremely brave and heroic actions were taken by the deputies," O'Dell said.

The police chief said Miller would be taken to jail wearing the fallen officer's handcuffs.

Authorities originally said they believed there were four suspects, but ODell said no others arrests were anticipated.

POLICE OFFICER SHOT IN NEW YORK CITY RESPONDING TO CALL

"We've got to come together as a nation and get our community involved," O'Dell said of the police shooting.

Both officers are husbands and have children. Baxter was married to another Kissimmee police officer.

ODell said he has been in contact with Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi. President Donald Trump tweeted early Friday: My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you! 

Also on Friday night, two police officers were shot in Jacksonville, Fla., and two state troopers were shot in Pennsylvania. The shootings are not related, authorities said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An Indiana teen has been charged as an adult after prosecutors say she was high on opiates when she crashed her car into a house at 107 mph, killing an 8-year-old girl and her older sister inside.

Alia Sierra, 17, appeared in court Friday on ten felony counts, including reckless homicide, causing death while operating a motor vehicle with a controlled substance in the blood and criminal recklessness.

The July 12 crash in Clinton County killed Callie Fullerton, 8 and Haleigh Fullerton, 17.

Their mother Bridget Fullerton was also injured but is recovering.

Sierra and four other youths in the car  ages 12 to 17  were treated at the hospital after the crash, WISH-TV reported.

You do everything that you can to keep your child safe, prosecutor Christine Smith said Friday, according to Fox 59 Indianapolis. Your child is at home, they are in the living room, you know where they are and what they are doing and then within a matter of seconds, they are done. There is nothing that can bring that back for the family.

Sierra was behind the wheel of a 2007 Honda Accord.

One of the kids in the Honda urged Sierra to slow down before the crash, the station reported.

Another said Sierra told them her car was the beast and talked about how fast it could go. He said he kept asking Sierra to let him out.

WTHR-TV told Bridget Fullerton that Sierra was being tried as an adult.

"It's still not bringing the girls back, she told the station. That is what we want more than anything, some justice. She should have to you know serve her I mean she was wrong.

The station reported Callie and her sister were snuggling, watching TV when they were killed.
Dallas police have increased security measures in preparation for a Saturday evening rally against hate in front of the City Hall.

Watch towers, flood lights and surveillance cameras were being installed as part of the security plan, Fox 4 Dallas reports. Police, who will also be monitoring social media for any signs of counterprotesters, said in a Facebook post that they will allow attendees to assembly peacefully but will arrest anyone who breaks the law.

The Dallas Police Department will not interfere with a lawful and peaceful assembly of any individuals or groups expressing their first amendment rights, the post said. The Dallas Police Department will take enforcement action if any type of criminal offense is committed against any person or property.

The safety of our officers and citizens is the primary concern as individuals or groups gather to express their first amendment rights, the post added.

Organizers expect several thousand people cat the two-hour Dallas against White Supremacy rally, which begins at 7:30 p.m., Fox 4 reported.

The rally will include a vigil for Heather Heyer, the Virginia woman who was killed after last weekends violent clashes in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists gathered to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway expects the event to be safe but says police are ready for anything, the station reported.

We are prepared to allow the rights of protests and demonstrations, he said. But we are prepared to shut it down.

One of the scheduled speakers at the rally told the station he doesnt believe there will be any problems.

I think here in Dallas we can have disagreements, said Skyler Thiot, who is with a group called Downtown Residents against Confederate Glorification. We can talk about it. We can talk it through. And I think people on both sides will keep it civil.

Police also set up barricades around a confederate statute in Pioneer Cemetery Park, just a few hundred feet away from City Hall, the station reported. Dallas, like other cities, has been wrestling with what to do with such statues.

Click here for more from Fox 4 Dallas.
Wreckage from the USS Indianapolis, which sank 72 years ago after being torpedoed during World War II, was found in the Philippine Sea by the expedition crew of billionaire Paul Allen.

The Indianapolis was hit by the Japanese on July 30, 1945 and sank in only 12 minutes, leading to the greatest single loss of life at sea in the Navy's history. Of 1,196 crew aboard the ship, only 317 survived.

The men who didn't go down with the ship faced dehydration, saltwater poisoning and shark-infested waters.

"To be able to honor the brave men of the USS Indianapolis and their families through the discovery of a ship that played such a significant role during World War II is truly humbling," Allen said in a statement.

Prior to being attacked, the Indianapolis had delivered components of one of the two nuclear weapons that were later dropped on Japan.

"For more than two decades I've been working with survivors. To a man, they have longed for the day when their ship would be found, solving their final mystery," Captain William Toti, retired, spokesperson for the survivors of the USS Indianapolis told PaulAllen.com.

Previous Allen-led expeditions have resulted in the discovery of the Japanese battleship Musashi and the Italian WWII destroyer Artigliere.

The 16-person team on Allen's ship will continue to survey the full site and will conduct a live tour of the wreckage in the coming weeks.

Movie fans may recall that the Indianapolis was the ship about which fictional Capt. Quint (Robert Shaw) tells a harrowing tale in the 1975 film Jaws.

So, 1,100 men went in the water, 316 men come out, he says. The sharks took the rest.
Conservative activists cut short a planned rally in Boston on Saturday as thousands of counterprotesters chanted anti-Nazi slogans and waved signs condemning white nationalism.

The Boston Police Department announced on Twitter that the event, billed as a Free Speech Rally, had ended around 1:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon saying demonstrators had left the [Boston] Common.

The tweet came just a few hours after dozens of rallygoers gathered at the historic Boston Common and were met with thousands of counterprotesters who had marched peacefully through downtown Boston.

Boston Police Department Commissioner William Evans said in late afternoon there had been 27 arrests, most for disorderly conduct, along with a few for assaulting police officers.

He added there were few injuries and no significant property damage.

Organizers of the rally had publicly distanced themselves from the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and others whose Unite the Right march in Charlottesville turned deadly Aug. Only a few dozen conservatives turned out to the Boston rally, in stark contrast to the approximately 40,000 people who showed up to protest against racism and bigotry.

In an early afternoon tweet, President Trump praised the work of local law enforcement.

Reports said about 10 people were arrested during the demonstrations.

Bostons demonstrations were mostly peaceful, however there were some confrontation between protesters including when a person dressed in all black grabbed an American flag out of an elderly womans hands, pulling her for several feet before she stumbled and feel to the ground.

There were some confrontations amid the counterprotesters and conservative rally participants in Boston as they marched from the city's Roxbury neighborhood to Boston Common, where the rally was being held.

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said Friday that 500 officers -- some in uniform, others undercover -- were deployed to keep the peace Saturday.

BOSTON HOPES TO KEEP PEACE AT 'FREE SPEECH RALLY'

The permit issued for the rally on Boston Common came with severe restrictions, including a ban on backpacks, sticks and anything that could be used as a weapon. The permit is for 100 people, though an organizer has said he expected up to 1,000 people to attend.

The Boston Free Speech Coalition, which organized the event, said it has nothing to do with white nationalism or racism and its group is not affiliated with the Charlottesville rally organizers in any way.

"We are strictly about free speech," the group said on its Facebook page. "... we will not be offering our platform to racism or bigotry. We denounce the politics of supremacy and violence."

But the mayor pointed out that some of those invited to speak "spew hate." Kyle Chapman, who described himself on Facebook as a "proud American nationalist," said he will attend.

Events are planned around the country, in cities including Atlanta, Dallas and New Orleans.

Dating to 1634, Boston Common is the nation's oldest city park. The leafy downtown park is popular with locals and tourists and has been the scene of numerous rallies and protests for centuries.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A city in Virginia has canceled its upcoming Civil War reenactment weekend Friday amid the growing tensions over memorials of the Confederacy and events that unfolded in Charlottesville, Va., a week ago.

Manassas city officials canceled the event, which had been set for Aug. 25 to Aug. 27, for the safety of our residents, visitors and reenactors, a statement from the officials read, according to FOX5DC.

"Recent events have ignited passions in this country surrounding the Civil War and the symbols representing it. The City of Manassas is saddened by these events and abhors the violence happening around the country," the statement read.

DUKE REMOVES ROBERT E. LEE STATUE, DAYS AFTER IT WAS VANDALIZED

Last weekend, a woman, Heather Heyer, 32, was killed after a vehicle rammed into a crowd of people protesting white nationalists in Charlottesville. The man suspected of driving his car into the crowd, James Alex Fields Jr., 20, has been charged with second-degree murder among other charges.

Counterprotesters were demonstrating against the white nationalists who were demonstrating against the removal of a Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee statue from a park in Charlottesville.

CHARLOTTESVILLE SUSPECT FACES 5 ADDITIONAL FELONY CHARGES

Following the incident, a Lee statue was removed from Duke University after it was vandalized Thursday. Protesters in Durham, N.C., toppled a statue of a Confederate soldier Monday during a rally against racism. The city of Baltimore announced this week that they have removed four Confederate statues.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe urged cities to remove statues but said the decision to take them down should be left to local officials.

Two Civil War battles were fought in the city of Manassas.
Thousands of Raqqa residents are trying to get out of the Islamic State's so-called capital in Syria, but their hell is far from over once they've escaped the war-ravished remnants of the city.

Fox News has learned that at least 6,000 people are currently wedged in the Arisha displacement camp in the Hassakeh governorate  some 30 miles from Raqqa city  in what was once an oil refinery, and still teeming with toxic waste.

It is heavily polluted with oil, and people there have no choice but the bathe and drink from this water tainted with oil, Ingy Sedky, a Damascus-based spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told Fox News. And then getting sick  diarrhea, skin diseases  and there is absolutely no medical care.

To make matters worse, Sedky noted, there is no sewer system and no functioning toilets on-site. Temperatures during the day can soar upwards of a blistering 120 degrees, igniting scores of heatstroke cases. As a short-term solution to mitigate some of these issues, the ICRC has distributed as many water bottles as possible. But its not practical or affordable to keep doing that for much longer.

The water pumping stations in the area need to be entirely rehabilitated, she observed.

Earlier this month, Sedky and a team from the ICRC and Syrian Arab Red Crescent returned from their first visit to the Raqqa governorate since ISIS took over four years ago, to assess the humanitarian needs of those who had escaped the conflicts in Raqqa and the nearby Deir Ezzor city, which has also long been besieged by ISIS.

Those now living in Arisha, which was set up by local NGOs two months ago, live in nothing short of inhumane conditions where even a soiled, used mattress is a luxury.

People keep arriving daily, and there is a waiting list of a week to ten days just to get a dirty mattress to sleep on, Sedky said. Some sleep in cars.

Medical care is said to be so scarce that even the basics are next to impossible to come by.

One man we met had a fresh burn and there wasnt even a bandage for him to prevent further inflammation, Sedky continued. Each day is a matter of life or death.

BATTLE TO FREE RAQQA PUTS COALITION UP AGAINST BOOBY-TRAPS, CAR BOMBS AND MINES

An estimated 50 percent of those stuffed into the oil refinery-turned-makeshift-camp are children, with at least ten percent unaccompanied because their parents died in the fighting. Their future is anyones guess.

The journey to get outside of Raqqa continues to be akin to hell. Smugglers charge some $5,000 just to transport desperate civilians 1,600 feet across the river, where some never make it to the other side. Most arrive at the various camps scattered in the area, including Arisha, with nothing but the clothes on their back  but grateful to have survived the squandering summer expedition along the mine-riddled region.

ISIS GUNNED DOWN PREGNANT WOMEN, BABIES, FORMER NAVY SEAL RECALLS

And the fate of tens of thousands trapped inside the besieged city is largely unknown.

The main supply routes have been cut off  prompting massive food shortages  as U.S.-backed forces prepare their final assault to drive the militants out. The electricity supply has been out of action for three months, and the water system has been heavily damaged from the aerial bombardment, igniting yet another illness epidemic.

They are going to the Euphrates to fetch water, and that is untreated, Ingy added. We are very worried about the outcome of this.
Human remains recently found in Aruba during the latest search for clues in the disappearance of American student Natalee Holloway 12 years ago has many asking if her family might finally find closure.

It could be her remains, the definitive thing would be doing the DNA tests, Dr. Michael Baden, former New York City chief medical examiner, told Fox News on Friday. Baden said initial analysis would have told forensics experts whether the remains match in terms of gender, age group, height, and weight, while the further DNA tests would confirm identity.

And if the remains prove to be those of Holloway, who was 18 when she disappeared, they could give indications of how she died  and whether she was murdered. Assuming its human, Baden said of the remains, we would know immediately. It [also] depends on which bones they have.

The latest quest by Holloways father, Dave, and private investigator T.J. Ward is chronicled in a series titled The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway, on the Oxygen channel premiering Saturday.

Natalee was an all-American kid, her father said. Straight A student. Very pretty girl. Had her life and goals already planned out. She was going to go to the University of Alabama with a scholarship You know, her goal was to be a pediatrician and theres no doubt in my mind that if this havent happened in Aruba, wed be calling her Dr. Holloway And in a blink of an eye, all those hopes and dreams were gone forever.

Information leading to the recently discovered remains first came from an informant named Gabriel, who befriended the former roommate of Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch man Natalee was last seen with outside a bar before her disappearance. Van der Sloot, now 30, currently is serving a 28-year sentence in a Peruvian jail for killing business student Stephany Flores  five years to the day after Natalees disappearance.

According to the informant, van der Sloot attempted to kiss Natalee after her drink was spiked with date rape drug GHB. But when Natalee began to foam at the mouth, he panicked, and she fatally choked on her vomit. Van der Sloot then allegedly placed Natalees folded corpse in a burlap sack, Gabriel said, and buried her in an Aruban park, using a cactus plant to cover his tracks.

Van der Sloot allegedly confessed to his friend in confidence. They lived together for several months and during those months, Joran shared a lot of information with him that is not public knowledge.  And thats one of the reasons we pursued this, David Holloway said.

International law expert Rahul Manchanda told Fox News that if the remains are indeed Holloways, prosecutors in Aruba would probably re-file charges against van der Sloot.

Peru could theoretically consent to an extradition of Joran van der Sloot to face trial in either Aruba or the United States, but this would be a diplomatic matter with the U.S. State Department probably winning out since Natalee Holloway was a U.S. citizen, Manchanda said. But since the crime took place in Aruba, the USA would be hard pressed to bring him to the USA, unless both Aruba and Peru consent, which they probably would in order to maintain good diplomatic relations with the U.S.

He added, Either way, the Aruban government looks thoroughly compromised and corrupt, so it would not take a whole lot of arm twisting to transfer the case to the U.S., most likely Miami, Florida or even in Natalees home state of Alabama, assuming no objections from Peru or Aruba.

Manchanda said van der Sloot could also face charges in his home nation of the Netherlands. He said, The option of conducting a review on the basis of a proven violation of the European Convention on Human Rights has been broadened, Joran could theoretically face the proverbial music in the E.U. as well.

Fox News' Elizabeth Llorente contributed to this report.
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America's annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. The war games set to begin Monday may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given President Donald Trump's "fire and fury" threats and Pyongyang's as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam.

Will the allies keep it low-key, or focus on projecting strength? An examination of this year's drills and how the North might respond to them:

___

THE WAR GAMES

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills will be the first joint military exercise between the allies since North Korea successfully flight-tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and threatened to bracket Guam with intermediate range ballistic missile fire in August.

Despite some calls to postpone or drastically modify drills to ease the hostility on the Korean Peninsula, U.S. and South Korean military officials say that the long-scheduled exercises will go ahead as planned.

The drills, which began in the 1970s and involved 25,000 American and 50,000 South Korean soldiers last year, consist mainly of computer simulations aimed at honing joint-decision making and planning and improving command operations. The United States and South Korea also hold larger war games in the spring, called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, which involve live-fire exercises and training with tanks, aircraft and warships.

There's media speculation that the allies might try to keep this year's drills low-key by not dispatching long-range bombers and other U.S. strategic assets to the region. But that possibility worries some, who say it would send the wrong message to both North Korea and the South, where there are fears that the North's advancing nuclear capabilities may eventually undermine a decades-long alliance with the United States.

"If anything, the joint exercises must be strengthened," Cheon Seongwhun, who served as a national security adviser to former conservative South Korean President Park Geun-hye, said in an interview.

Impoverished North Korea hates the drills in part because it must frequently respond with its own expensive displays of military might.

During last year's drills, the North successfully test-fired for the first time a submarine-launched ballistic missile ruler Kim Jong Un then praised as the "success of all successes." Shortly after the drills, the North carried out its fifth and biggest nuclear test, which it claimed was of a "standardized" warhead that could fit on a variety of its rockets.

During this year's war games in March, North Korea launched four extended-range Scud missiles into the sea in what it described as a rehearsal for striking U.S. military bases in Japan.

___

MISSILE THREATS

It's almost certain that this year's drills will trigger some kind of reaction from North Korea. The question is how strong it will be.

Some experts say North Korea is mainly focused on the bigger picture of testing its bargaining power against the United States with its new long-range missiles and likely has no interest in letting things get too tense during the drills.

If this is right, expect the usual propaganda belligerence in state media or low-level provocations like artillery and short-range missile drills.

"North Korea has already flight-tested ICBMs twice this year and will probably take a wait-and-see approach to assess the impact of stronger pressure from the United States and China and maybe even seek an opportunity for talks, rather than quickly move forward with another test," said Moon Seong Mook, a former South Korean military official and current senior analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.

But the North might use the drills as an excuse to conduct another ICBM test or maybe even act on its threat to lob missiles into the waters near Guam.

"North Korea is probably looking at all the cards it has to maximize pressure against the United States, and the drills provide a good opportunity to do it," Cheon said.

___

WORRIES ABOUT THE FUTURE

There are calls in both the United States and South Korea for the allies to pause or downsize the joint military exercises to reduce strain and potentially persuade North Korea into talks to freeze its nuclear program.

David Wright, a U.S. analyst from the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an emailed statement that the United States should "postpone or significantly restructure" the exercises to reduce the risk of military confrontation.

"Smart military planning means ensuring that exercises do not enflame an already tense situation," Wright said.

South Korea's Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper said in an Aug. 11 editorial that the allies could gain a bargaining chip in efforts to persuade the North into meaningful nuclear talks by halting or scaling down the joint drills.

"The U.S.-South Korean drills aren't a sacred realm," the newspaper said, referring to the time that Washington and Seoul agreed to cancel their large-scale Team Spirit drills in the early 1990s to induce the North to join denuclearization talks.

These arguments might not win over South Korean conservatives whose main fear is that a fully functional ICBM in Pyongyang would eventually force the United States to consider a peace treaty with the North and also the removal of the tens of thousands of American soldiers stationed in South Korea.

While expressing a desire to reach out to the North, South Korea's liberal President Moon Jae-in has also ordered his military officials to schedule talks with the United States to increase the warhead limits on South Korean missiles, and his prime minister said recently that the country should also consider acquiring nuclear-powered submarines to better cope with North Korean threats.

Some conservatives want more strength, however, and are calling for the United States to bring back the tactical nuclear weapons that were withdrawn from the South in the 1990s.
Venezuela's ousted chief prosecutor has fled to Colombia with her husband a day after the Supreme Court ordered his arrest.

Colombian migration authorities confirmed Friday evening that Luisa Ortega Diaz and German Ferrer landed in Bogota aboard a private plane from Aruba.

Ortega and Ferrer have long been aligned with Venezuela's socialist government but recently broke with President Nicolas Maduro. Both have become two of the president's most outspoken critics.

The Supreme Court ordered Ferrer's arrest on Thursday, accusing him of being part of a $6 million extortion ring.
Spanish authorities announced Saturday that the suspected driver of the van that rammed into a crowd of pedestrians in Barcelona Thursday -- killing at least 14 people -- remains on the loose.

Authorities believe Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22, a Moroccan native, was believed to still be at large and was the driver of the van that carried out the vehicle attack in a Barcelona street filled with tourists and shoppers. They also believe the suspect was part of a radicalized terrorist cell that may have been headed by a missing imam.

Authorities said they shifted their focus to Moroccan imam Abdelbaki Es Satty, whom they believe died on the eve of the Barcelona attack.

Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido has declared that the cell was effectively broken after five members were killed, four were in detention and as many as two were killed in a previous explosion. He said there was no new imminent threat of an attack.

The manhunt spanned Spain and southern France, with Spanish police searching nine homes in the northeastern town of Ripoll, where most of the suspects lived, and two buses in northwest Catalonia. Across the Pyrenees, French police carried out extra border checks on people coming from Spain.

HEARTBREAK FOR FAMILY OF AMERICAN KILLED IN SPAIN WHILE CELEBRATING ANNIVERSARY

Police also announced a series of controlled explosions Saturday in the town of Alcanar, south of Barcelona, where the carnage had been planned in a rental house destroyed a day before the attacks by an apparently accidental blast. Authorities had initially written off the Wednesday night incident as a household gas accident, but took another look on Friday and returned on Saturday.

Police initially believed only one person was killed in the blast but said on Saturday that tests were underway to determine if human remains found at the house on Friday were from a second victim.

Police searched Es Satty's home on Friday, but the imam was not there. The president of the mosque where he preached, Ali Yassine, said he has not seen him since June, when he had announced that he was returning to Morocco for three months.

In the attacks that began Thursday afternoon, a white van swerved onto Barcelona's historic Las Ramblas pedestrian promenade, killing 14 people, including one American citizen, and injuring more than 100 as it plowed down unsuspecting tourists and locals. A few hours later, five extremists began mowing down people along the boardwalk in the seaside resort of Cambrils.

One woman died and five others were injured before police shot and killed all five attackers. One Spanish officer killed four of the suspects himself.

Authorities said the two attacks were related and the work of a large terrorist cell that had been plotting for a long time.

CIA WARNED BARCELONA ABOUT TERROR THREAT, REPORT SAYS

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack and said the perpetrators were soldiers of the Islamic State, the terrorist organizations propaganda agency said. On Saturday, ISIS released a new statement also claiming responsibility for the attack in Cambrils.

Spanish authorities had not yet drawn any direct links between ISIS extremists and the suspects in the Spanish attacks.

Police announced that four people were currently in custody and three suspects, including Abouyaaquoub, are on the loose. All the suspects hail from Ripoll, a quiet, upscale town of 10,000 about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Barcelona.

A French security official also confirmed Spanish police are looking for a Kangoo utility vehicle rented by suspects in the Barcelona attacks that may have crossed into France.

Spanish hospital officials updated the status of the injured victims of the Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks Saturday, saying 12 people from the Barcelona attack remain in critical condition while one person remains in serious condition from the Cambrils attack. The rest of the injuries are slightly less serious. King Felipe and Queen Leticia traveled to Barcelona's hospital to visit the injured victims of the attack.

Spanish authorities confirmed they are maintaining the countrys current terrorist threat alert at level 4.

Europol, the European Unions law enforcement agency, said on Saturday that they were investigating if Fridays knife attack in Finland that left two people dead and seven others wounded had any ties to the deadly vehicle attacks in Spain.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
German police said a truck carrying 22 tons of Nutella, Kinder Surprise eggs and Valparaiso chocolate fruit pearls was stolen last weekend and asked the public for their help in locating the chocolate thieves.

Martin Ahlich, a police spokesperson, said the refrigerated truck container was stolen in the Hesse town of Neustadt on either Aug. 12 or Aug. 13. Police have not released a motive for the robbery.

MERKEL SAYS SHE WONT AVOID EASTERN GERMANY DESPITE HECKLERS

Its not even clear if they were after the sweets or after the trailer  at this point we dont know what their motive was, Ahlich told CBS.

The chocolate was worth an estimated $59,000 to $82,000.

Neustadt Police urged citizens to alert authorities if they are offered the treats.

Anyone offered large quantities of chocolate via unconventional channels should report it to the police immediately, the Neustadt police said in a statement.

ERDOGAN URGES GERMAN-TURKS TO PUNISH MAINSTREAM PARTIES

This is not the first time Germany has been affected by chocolate thieves. Last week in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, police said they were looking for a person who allegedly left 53 grams of stolen chocolate in the town of Bad Oldesloe, according to The Telegraph.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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The Latest on assault allegations against Zimbabwe's first lady (all times local):

1:40 p.m.

A South African Airways flight bound for Johannesburg has been prevented from leaving Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe chief executive David Chawota is not specifying the "issues" requiring attention before the plane is allowed to leave. He says "the South Africans know what should be done."

The cause of the delay is not clear. It comes as South Africa weighs Zimbabwe's request for diplomatic immunity for its first lady, who has been accused of assaulting a young model in Johannesburg.

South African Airways says in a statement it is awaiting a decision by Zimbabwean authorities. It says it is treating the matter as "urgent."

___

12: 30 p.m.

Zimbabwe's first lady is expected to make her first public appearance today since being accused of assaulting a young model at a luxury hotel in South Africa.

Local media are reporting that Grace Mugabe is expected to attend a regional summit Saturday with her husband in South Africa's capital, Pretoria. President Robert Mugabe is attending the Southern African Development Community's leaders' conference.

South African authorities are weighing a request by Zimbabwe's government for diplomatic immunity for the first lady, who has not commented.

Some demonstrators are protesting in Pretoria against the 93-year-old Mugabe and his wife, saying she should be prosecuted.

South African police have issued a "red alert" at the country's borders to ensure Grace Mugabe doesn't leave undetected, and are confident she remains in the country.
It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of Katherine Irene Richardson. Born in Leanerdtown, Md. on Dec.29, 1938 and departed on July 08, 2017. She is preceeded in her passing by her husband, Rex B. Richardson; her parents, Robert W. hall and Katherine V. Ellis; two siblings, Robert L. Hall and Mary Winship. She is survived by her four siblings, Betty Ann Wonders, Patsy Rhodes, Jean Nelson, and James Green Jr. Also surviving are her two daughters; Rexella Shipman and Linda Finn; five grandchildren, Detria, Barney, Mary, Shannon, and Jackie. Thirteen great-grandchildren and 1 great-great-grandson. She was a long time resident of Spotsylvania, Va. before retiring to Jacksonville, Fla. She loved gambling, playing games, and entertaining family and friends. Above all she loved and lived for her grand-babies. She was loved by all and will be greatly missed. A celebration of her life will be held in King George in October 2017, before her ashes are placed at her mother's gravesite.
MARYLAND SENATOR Ben Cardin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has had enough with Secretary of State Rex Tillersons mismanagement. On Tuesday, he sent a blistering letter:

More than six months into the administration, a majority of positions requiring Senate confirmation86 out of 131remain not just unfilled, but without even a nominee. There are no Assistant Secretary nominees for the Middle East or Asia at a time of daunting new challenges from Russia, ISIS and China. There is no nominee to serve as our Ambassador to South Korea, even as we confront a deteriorating situation with North Korea. There is no Assistant Secretary nominee for Africa, which faces unprecedented humanitarian challenges.

At the same time, there are frequent reports about reshuffling and downsizing of key offices. There have also been reports that the Policy Planning office will see a considerable increase in size, indicative of a change in function and role ahead of any proposal on reorganization itself. 

The absence of assistant secretaries means no one is at the helm to direct policy and set priorities toward which thousands of the State Departments public servants can contribute their expertise in implementing on behalf of the American people. So long as the Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security remains vacant, there will be no one charged with overseeing embassy security, leaving us vulnerable in an area that the Departments Inspector General cited as the number one priority, and one that this administration had repeatedly highlighted as an issue of utmost importance. It also leaves an uncertain path forward for implementing the Benghazi Accountability Review Board recommendations.

The notion that one can run a giant organization out of a senior staff office is something an oil executive might think up; in government, its a disaster. Cutting out thousands of professional diplomats deprives one of not only expertise but also bandwidth (try managing two or three major crises with only a couple of dozen key players). Its a recipe for leaks, sabotage and foot-dragging from those cut out of the policy-making function.

Former secretary of state George P. Shultz (probably the most respected and effective secretary of state in the past 30-plus years) has a saying: If you want me in on the landing, then include me on the takeoff. In other words, you better have everyone you need to buy in or at least participate in the development of policies so that when you hit turbulence, they are invested in finding solutions, not bailing out and pointing fingers.

Cardin also blasted the secretary for the proposed decimation of the State Department budget. Under the presidents proposal, Embassy Security, Construction and Maintenance would be cut by 62 percent, and Diplomatic and Consular Programs would be cut by 14 percent, he said. The combined funding for bureaus that lead planning and implementation of diplomatic security-related activities, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, would decline by approximately 13 percent relative to the FY2017 enacted level.

For all intents and purposes, it looks as though Tillerson is trying to miniaturize the staff, budget and mission of his department, thereby crippling our soft power capacity.

Cardin sent Tillerson a list of questions with a response deadline of Aug. 30. They included such basic queries as: How are you ensuring that the current vacancies are not harming the Departments ability to carry out its mission? and How does the Department plan to address all current security responsibilities worldwide when facing such a large budget shortfall compared to the last fiscal year?

Cardin is not alone in expressing frustration and concern about a dysfunctional State Department. Members of both parties and outside foreign policy gurus are gobsmacked that there should be such paralysis and confusion seven months into an administration during a time of such upheaval and danger caused by multiple state and non-state actors.

Tillerson and the administration are doing immense and possibly permanent damage. The loss of staff, expertise, institutional memory and consistency will mean less proactive diplomacy, more crises and more mistakes. It may take years to recover from the Tillerson train wreck.

Its not clear whether Tillerson is deliberately hobbling his department or whether he is inadvertentlythrough incompetence, poor judgment and lack of understanding of the government and diplomacyleading to the same result.

In either case, the State Department is in deep trouble, which means the United States is as well.

Jennifer Rubin writes for The Washington Post.
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Club celebrates successful sale

Our Altrusa Club of Corvallis had a successful jewelry sale on May 6!

We would like to thank the following businesses for allowing us to have jewelry collection boxes available for the public to donate items: Blackledge Furniture, Coldwell Valley Brokers, Fitness Over 50, Northern Star and three Citizens Bank sites. We also appreciate Olufson Design staff members for their time appraising fine jewelry pieces and purchasing some pieces.

And last but not least, we would like to thank all people who donated jewelry and bought jewelry at the sale. All of our proceeds go to Altrusa service projects such as the Career Closet, literacy, Habitat for Humanity, College Hill High School, scholarships, the Educational Opportunities Program at Oregon State University, and international programs at the Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center and abroad.

Mary Lou McLocklin

Corvallis

Thanks to Oregon Food Bank

Philomath Community Services would like to thank the Oregon Food Bank for its Network Support Grant of $5,000 to help make HVAC upgrades to our facility at 360 S. Ninth St. in Philomath.

These improvements will allow us to better control the temperatures in our facility, providing improved food storage conditions and energy conservation. Philomath Community Services partners, through our Food Bank and Gleaner programs, with Linn Benton Food Share, the Oregon Food Bank and the Feeding America Network, to provide food in the Philomath area for those in need.

The work was completed by Northwest Mechanical in Albany. We appreciate their in-kind contribution as well. Thank you.

Van Hunsaker, president

Philomath Community Services

Meals on Wheels: More than meals

Meals on Wheels delivers hot and nutritious meals to older adults and people with disabilities.

In fact, its one of the most recognizable services for older adults and people with disabilities in Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties.

But its more than a meal. The safety check that accompanies each meal delivery helps to reduce falls, trips to the hospital or premature institutionalization. It also ensures that, in the case of an emergency or problem, medics will be called, families will be notified and our seniors will not be forgotten.

To the hundreds of volunteers across the region who make Meals on Wheels possible: You are critical to the success of the Meals on Wheels program. From serving in the kitchen to driving home-delivered routes, you notice when something is amiss in the routines of our neighbors. You are that safety check and early intervention to potentially critical medical events. We couldnt do what we do without you. Thank you!

Catherine Skiens, chair

Senior Meals Advisory Committee

Crescent Valley aids Old Mill

Every year, 24 seniors at Crescent Valley High School pair up and compete to raise money for local nonprofits.

Old Mill Center for Children and Families is one of the nonprofits, and every year we are awed and humbled by the dedication, commitment and hard work of the Mr./Ms. CV participants.

This year, over $12,500 was raised for Old Mill Center by the students of Mr./Ms. CV! We are so impressed by these bright young people, and thankful to have their hard work benefiting the children and families served by our programs. The difference they are making in our community is amazing!

Kate Caldwell, development manager

Old Mill Center for Children and Families

School thanks party donors

The Cheldelin Middle School Parent Organization would like to thank the Corvallis businesses that donated to our Eighth Grade Promotion Celebration.

We appreciated the pizzas from Woodstock's, 2 Stones, DeMaggio's, Little Caesars and American Dream. Our students enjoyed winning prizes donated by Mod Pod; Yogurt Extreme; Jamba Juice; Chipotle; 2 Stones; Burgerville; Bed, Bath & Beyond; and Francescos Gelato.

Your support is much appreciated. Thank you for making the end of the year special for Cheldelins 185 eighth-grade students!

Sharon Rackham King

Corvallis

Adams in Motion completes 9th year

Adams In Motion is a break-time run/walk program at Adams Elementary School.

We just completed our ninth year in which kids run/walk laps on our 0.2-mile path during the morning break. With each 10-mile "milestone," participants collect ribbons, medals, T-shirts and improved fitness! We also had two all-school events, the Autumn Amble and the Spring Run, when the whole school community covered 2017 meters. This year, students at Adams ran or walked over 3,500 miles on the AIM track.

Of course, we receive lots of support, starting with committed parent volunteers and a contribution from the Adams Parent Teacher organization. We were awarded a grant from the Road Runners Club of America "Kids Run The Nation" fund. Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center and PT Northwest donated employee badge clips to hold the students' punch cards. Dutch Bros. Coffee provided "Not-So-Hot Chocolate" coupons for our Friendship Run.

Girls on the Run gave us water bottles for the winners of the Classroom Challenge. Heart of the Valley Runners lent us equipment for both all-school run/walk events. Buena Vista Arbor Care delivered 40 yards of bark chips at a reduced rate, and those amazing parent volunteers helped spread it over our track. This wide range of support has us looking forward to our 10th year.

Gerhard Behrens

Adams Elementary School

Thanks for help after fall

A huge thank you to you, the sweet, kind young lady who, while driving the opposite direction on Walnut of my walking on July 1, saw me bobble and then fall, and turned around to come help me.

Your compassion and concern warm my heart. I was so stunned, I'm not even certain that I thanked you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Wish our world had more people like you in it.

Patty Vitkus

Corvallis

To send Good Words

Items for the Good Words column are published to recognize good deeds and charitable events. No promotions or advertising, please. Include the senders name, address and a daytime telephone number for verification or in case of questions.

Good Words items longer than 150 words may be edited. We prefer that items be sent electronically to news@gazettetimes.com or to news@dhonline.com, but can be mailed to the Gazette-Times, attention Good Words, P.O. Box 368, Corvallis, OR 97339-0368. Written copies can be dropped off between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. at our office at 1837 NW Circle Blvd. Please label them Good Words.

Good Words are published Saturday on a space-available basis, generally in the order in which they are received.
It is thoroughly amazing that we are even having this conversation in this day, and in this age. We have been challenged now by the white nationalists, the KKK, the alt-right, and a smattering of Confederate sympathizers. We are promised to have more. Breitbarts plan to insert itself into the center of American politics is slip-sliding along quite nicely. Avowed and outspoken nationalists are working in the White House. Steve Miller. Sebastian Gorka. Michael Anton. Donald Trump has equated hatemongers with those who would oppose them. Donald Trump has exposed himself for what he is deep in his dark heart.

In the name of change, in the spirit of anyone but Hilary, in the dream of MAGA, in the myth of American exceptionalism, in the expectation of economic growth, we have cut a deal with the devil, and payment is coming due.

It is not as though we havent been warned  abundantly  in the near past. We were warned and we failed to listen. Or worse, we knowingly chose NOT to heed the warning. In our recent visit to Hungary, Austria, Denmark and Germany, each and every person who spoke of our national situation expressed no sympathy whatsoever. But each did express empathy with a comment that, We know what you are now experiencing.

Now comes our test as a people.

Michael Beachley

Corvallis (Aug. 16)
Climate Camp in Bonn : Alternative Summit in Bonn gets off to a very wet start

Following the persistent rain on Friday, the tents of the youth Climate Camp on the grass at Poppelsdorfer Allee were more or less under water. There were fewer participants than anticipated.

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We hope that numbers will increase over the next few days, says Miran Mahmod, one of the spokespersons for the Climate Camp which is being supported by many other political groups such as the youth group of the Verdi trade union (Verdi-Jugend) and the Left Party. The Camp is running until Thursday and invites the public to take part in events and discussions about the environment. We would like to draw attention to the dangers of increased global warming and the grievances about fighting for environmental protection, explains Mahmod.

The reason behind the Climate Camp is the World Climate Conference COP23 which is taking place in Bonn in November. The Bonn youth movement, which according to Mahmod arose from an education strike organised by students and school pupils, views the COP extremely critically: We criticise the fact that the climate summit is a closed event and that so far only empty promises have been made, says Mahmod. Therefore, it is urgently necessary to give everybody the chance to take part in the debate about environmental protection. The Climate Camp in Bonn should provide time and space for this over the seven days.

Concerts and sport

In addition to the content work there must be a fun factor: concerts and sport events will also be held on the lawn. Tents provide accommodation and there are biological toilets and mobile showers to keep everyone clean. The Stadtwerke (public utilities) will provide the water and electricity will come from generators. Local residents will also be supporting us by letting us use their electricity, says Mahmod. And meals will be cooked together: on Friday evening the camp made Turkish lentil soup with pitta bread.

Mahmod says it is well known that one of the participants at the camp is a member of the Bonn Verdi-Jugend who is being investigated on suspicion of breaking the peace at the G20 summit in Hamburg. Of course we have spoken about it, but the accusations are untrue, says Mahmod, who also took part in the demonstrations in Hamburg. All the Bonn protestors were demonstrating peacefully there.
Summer series : Historic Monschau in the Eifel

A discovery tour of the medieval sights in Monschau is just one of the highlights on offer in this little town in the Eifel close to the Belgian border. The town centre is full of pretty, timbered houses with red and green window shutters and stone houses from medieval times, surrounded by beautiful scenery of the hillsides and slate cottages.

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Visitors can enjoy strolling through the romantic cobbled streets along the river, tasting the local sweet delicacies or the famous mustard and visiting the many historic buildings and museums as well as hiking the trails in the surrounding nature parks.

How to get there: Monschau is best reached by car on the B 258. The historical town centre is pedestrianised and the car parks on the edge of the town are only a short walk from the centre. A day ticket costs seven euros with a reduction for overnight visitors. Public transport is not so easy and the bus station is located further out of the town. Visitors coming from Bonn would need to travel by train through Cologne and Aachen (approx. 3 hours) and then catch a bus.

Food & Drink

The Lutticher Hof located on Stadtstrae, directly opposite the tourist information is recommended. Guests can enjoy simple cuisine on the patio by the river Rur with a view of the fortified 13th century Haller tower. A particular specialty to Monschau is the Dutchen: sweet sponge cones usually eaten with ice cream and cream. These can be found for example at Cafe Kaulard on the historical market square.

In past times the Felsenkeller brewery (now a museum) produced the Monschauer Pils Felsquell and the darker, slightly cloudy Zwickelbier. The Zwickelbier can still be tasted in the adjoining restaurant. There is an alternative if you are driving: the Bierteller (beer plate) is served with a selection of cheese, sausage, vegetables and homemade Zwickelbierbread. And of course, the original Monschauer mustard. The restaurant patio offers diners a wonderful view.

Unique in Europe

One of the attractions in Monschau is the only one of its kind in Europe  an oak wood, self-supporting spiral staircase over three levels in the Roten Haus der Tuchmacher (Weavers red house). This noble building was built directly on the riverfront in 1752 by the weaver and merchant Johann Heinrich Scheibler. The original late baroque building and the picture lined walls of the study are not to be missed. The entrance corridor offers an optical illusion  its plastered walls have been painted with layers of oil paints to look like magnificent marble. The house is open to visitors from Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 4pm on the hour (except at 1pm). Entrance costs four Euros for adults, free for under 18s.

For children

The adventure museum Lernort Natur is a popular childrens attraction where they can not only learn about animals and how they live but also touch, stroke and pick them up. Visitors can also see a working bee hive as well as a red ant colony. Tours can be arranged on demand. There are special tours for disabled, blind and deaf visitors.

Accommodation

Hotel Horchem in one of the oldest buildings in the town. As well as standard and comfort rooms, there is an appartment in the neighbouring building for two to four people. The hotel is located on the market place opposite the Roten Haus der Tuchmacher. Only minutes away from the castle Moschauer Burg.

Wet Weather

There are five wet weather excursion tips in one: directly adjacent to the Lernort Natur musuem there is a glass hut, a sand sculpture exhibition, a handicraft market and a model railway. These five attractions are located in one building complex so visitors do not need to get wet.
kacylee at 19-08-2017 05:26 PM (5 years ago) (f)

It is excitement and fanfare at the Presidential villa, Abuja as President Muhammadu Buhari is billed to return from London today.

The Presidential Villa Abuja and citizens are excited with the news that President Muhammadu Buhari is finally coming back to the country from London.

It is excitement and fanfare at the Presidential villa, Abuja as President Muhammadu Buhari is billed to return from London today.The Presidential Villa Abuja and citizens are excited with the news that President Muhammadu Buhari is finally coming back to the country from London.

While the Villa is agog with activities as staff and security personnel are making last minute preparations to receive Buhari and Nigerians have taken to social media to express their excitement.



The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Buhari, who has been on medical vacation in the United Kingdom for the past 100 days is expected to arrive the Nnandi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja at 3.00 p.m.



NAN reports that other itinerary members of staff in the Presidency are also on standby, while security vehicles and personnel attached to the Presidents convoy had since left for the airport to receive the president.



NAN also observed that members of the Presidential Guards Brigade were seen moving toward the airport after conducting rehearsal at the Arcade in Abuja.



The President, whose absence sparked-off protests both in Nigeria and London with some asking for his resumption or resignation, is expected to make a national broadcast to Nigerians on Aug. 21 at 7a.m.





Waiting for the president: Chief of Staff and another official waiting to receive the president



Buhari left Nigeria on May 7, for the second round of his medical treatment in London after receiving 82 rescued Chibok school girls who were abducted by the Boko Haram sect in 2014.



While in London, Buhari received a number of visitors, including Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who first hinted Nigerians about the Presidents recovery.



Other visitors are leaders of the All Progressives Congress, state governors, Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara.



Pastor Enoch Adeboye, leader of the Redeemed Christian Church of God also visited the President.



The news of his return has triggered a lot of comments in the social media with Nigerians thanking God for sparing the life of Buhari.



The Facebook wall of Adesina has been agog with comments on his posting on the return of Buhari.



Apparently referring to some opposition members who have been wishing deaths for Buhar, Mr. Omokpo Celestine Odior,commented:  I dont know how Christians would be wishing another dead or severely ill. Are they not preparing to go to Church tomorrow again now? Such hypocrisy stopped me from going to Church forthwith.



Convoy of cars leaving Presidential Villa to receive President Muhammadu Buhari



And is been over a year that I have stopped congregating with unbelievers in Church clothing.



Mr. Larry Legacy Tugbi said: Good news. The corrupt and the corrupt and sympathizers cannot be happy today.



Mr. Olayinka Oladosu said:  Glory be to God for the progress, the Lord that started this will complete it.



Yemisi Fadairo said  To God alone be the glory while Mr. Emeka Chibueze Darlington, said Baba oyoyo. Our God is good may he grant our father our president the man I love so much safe trip back home. Oh what a mighty God we serve am so happy. Welcome back the Hero of our time.



Glory be to God. Let not the fake protesters for his return gloat that their agitations forced his return. The Lord shall sanitize Aso Villa ahead of his return.



All images of Dagon in the Villa shall be consumed by fire ahead of your return Mr President. Only the Ark of covenant shall be celebrated in the Villa, Mr. Yomi Idowu, posted.



`Mr. Seni Olagbaju decided to mock some of those high personalities who wished Buhari dead.



We people of good will should let FFK, Fayose and the likes know about this wonderful development & to inform them that our GOD is greater than their gods. Our President is coming back!

While the Villa is agog with activities as staff and security personnel are making last minute preparations to receive Buhari and Nigerians have taken to social media to express their excitement.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Buhari, who has been on medical vacation in the United Kingdom for the past 100 days is expected to arrive the Nnandi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja at 3.00 p.m.NAN reports that other itinerary members of staff in the Presidency are also on standby, while security vehicles and personnel attached to the Presidents convoy had since left for the airport to receive the president.NAN also observed that members of the Presidential Guards Brigade were seen moving toward the airport after conducting rehearsal at the Arcade in Abuja.The President, whose absence sparked-off protests both in Nigeria and London with some asking for his resumption or resignation, is expected to make a national broadcast to Nigerians on Aug. 21 at 7a.m.Buhari left Nigeria on May 7, for the second round of his medical treatment in London after receiving 82 rescued Chibok school girls who were abducted by the Boko Haram sect in 2014.While in London, Buhari received a number of visitors, including Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who first hinted Nigerians about the Presidents recovery.Other visitors are leaders of the All Progressives Congress, state governors, Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, Senate President Bukola Saraki and Speaker Yakubu Dogara.Pastor Enoch Adeboye, leader of the Redeemed Christian Church of God also visited the President.The news of his return has triggered a lot of comments in the social media with Nigerians thanking God for sparing the life of Buhari.The Facebook wall of Adesina has been agog with comments on his posting on the return of Buhari.Apparently referring to some opposition members who have been wishing deaths for Buhar, Mr. Omokpo Celestine Odior,commented:  I dont know how Christians would be wishing another dead or severely ill. Are they not preparing to go to Church tomorrow again now? Such hypocrisy stopped me from going to Church forthwith.And is been over a year that I have stopped congregating with unbelievers in Church clothing.Mr. Larry Legacy Tugbi said: Good news. The corrupt and the corrupt and sympathizers cannot be happy today.Mr. Olayinka Oladosu said:  Glory be to God for the progress, the Lord that started this will complete it.Yemisi Fadairo said  To God alone be the glory while Mr. Emeka Chibueze Darlington, said Baba oyoyo. Our God is good may he grant our father our president the man I love so much safe trip back home. Oh what a mighty God we serve am so happy. Welcome back the Hero of our time.Glory be to God. Let not the fake protesters for his return gloat that their agitations forced his return. The Lord shall sanitize Aso Villa ahead of his return.All images of Dagon in the Villa shall be consumed by fire ahead of your return Mr President. Only the Ark of covenant shall be celebrated in the Villa, Mr. Yomi Idowu, posted.`Mr. Seni Olagbaju decided to mock some of those high personalities who wished Buhari dead.We people of good will should let FFK, Fayose and the likes know about this wonderful development & to inform them that our GOD is greater than their gods. Our President is coming back!

Post Reply I have been reporting for several years now and I am very interested in visual news reportage with strong inclusion of photos and video multimedia. Posted: at 19-08-2017 05:26 PM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero
WATCH Moment President Buhari Arrived Nigeria From His Medical Vacation After 100 Days In London

kacylee at 19-08-2017 05:38 PM (5 years ago) (f)

President Buharis plane landed at the Presidential Wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. 4.36pm.

President Buharis plane landed at the Presidential Wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja. 4.36pm.

The Presidents Jet, Eagle One touched down at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport at about 4:38 PM on Saturday.



The presidential jet had left the United Kingdom at 10:27 AM.



On hand to receive the President are the Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, members of the Federal Executive Council and the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno.



Others are the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari; governors of Imo and Bauchi states  Rochas Okorocha and Mohammed Abubakar, as well as the presidential aides among others.



President Buhari has been away from the country for 103 days on medical vacation in London.



The President left the country on May 7, after handing over to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.



The special adviser on media and publicity to the president, Mr Femi Adeshina, said President Buhari would address Nigerians on Monday, August 21.

President @MBuhari arrives from his medical vacation in the United Kingdom.

: @BayoOmoboriowo pic.twitter.com/Ry4IXYn7AM  Presidency Nigeria (@NGRPresident) August 19, 2017

President @MBuhari departs the Presidential Wing of Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, for the Presidential Villa pic.twitter.com/BwtnZErvq2  Presidency Nigeria (@NGRPresident) August 19, 2017 The Presidents Jet, Eagle One touched down at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport at about 4:38 PM on Saturday.The presidential jet had left the United Kingdom at 10:27 AM.On hand to receive the President are the Acting President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, members of the Federal Executive Council and the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno.Others are the Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari; governors of Imo and Bauchi states  Rochas Okorocha and Mohammed Abubakar, as well as the presidential aides among others.President Buhari has been away from the country for 103 days on medical vacation in London.The President left the country on May 7, after handing over to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.The special adviser on media and publicity to the president, Mr Femi Adeshina, said President Buhari would address Nigerians on Monday, August 21.

Post Reply I have been reporting for several years now and I am very interested in visual news reportage with strong inclusion of photos and video multimedia. Posted: at 19-08-2017 05:38 PM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero

Mykie010 at 19-08-2017 05:53 PM (5 years ago)

(m) I am not interested... I want to hear what he will say on Monday,maybe he will be throwing d towel on Monday. Posted: at 19-08-2017 05:53 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac I am not interested... I want to hear what he will say on Monday,maybe he will be throwing d towel on Monday. Reply

maizaxx at 19-08-2017 05:56 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Is Fayose aware of the President's return? Since he was among those who said the President is dead.

So is it the ghost of the President or the President himself. Posted: at 19-08-2017 05:56 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Is Fayose aware of the President's return? Since he was among those who said the President is dead.So is it the ghost of the President or the President himself. Reply

abcdqwer at 19-08-2017 06:23 PM (5 years ago)

(m) I hope he won't go back soon Posted: at 19-08-2017 06:23 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming I hope he won't go back soon Reply

ficull at 19-08-2017 06:27 PM (5 years ago)

(m) ...... but Fayoshe told us the man was dead. Posted: at 19-08-2017 06:27 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac ...... but Fayoshe told us the man was dead. Reply

tuscanT at 19-08-2017 06:41 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Abeg make una help me locate or get the phone number of that pastor way talk say God tell em say Buhari is not coming to Nigeria alive. Prize is awating who ever provide the contact!! Nigeria pastor prophecy is time for ur all to start thinking Posted: at 19-08-2017 06:41 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming Abeg make una help me locate or get the phone number of that pastor way talk say God tell em say Buhari is not coming to Nigeria alive. Prize is awating who ever provide the contact!! Nigeria pastor prophecy is time for ur all to start thinking Reply

WhaleDog at 19-08-2017 07:04 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Where r those who were saying they hiding somethjng from them ! Since Buhari borrowed una money wey come make him dey hide. Some people will not take time to analyze situation before coming to abnormal conclusion .Awon omo Eranko omo Biafra Spare me Posted: at 19-08-2017 07:04 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Where r those who were saying they hiding somethjng from them ! Since Buhari borrowed una money wey come make him dey hide. Some people will not take time to analyze situation before coming to abnormal conclusion .Awon omo Eranko omo Biafra Reply

tegonwa at 19-08-2017 07:36 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Welcome Back.Nawaa O! Posted: at 19-08-2017 07:36 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Welcome Back.Nawaa O! Reply

freethinker at 19-08-2017 07:41 PM (5 years ago)

(m) WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT IT, ZOO Posted: at 19-08-2017 07:41 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT IT, ZOO Reply

victorstic1 at 19-08-2017 07:41 PM (5 years ago)

(m) SHAME ON FAYOSE ,KANU AND FAKE PASTOR Posted: at 19-08-2017 07:41 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac SHAME ON FAYOSE ,KANU AND FAKE PASTOR Reply

pricklong at 19-08-2017 07:48 PM (5 years ago)

(m) POWER IS VERY SWEET BUHARI SEATING IN A COVOUR PEOPLE ARE RUNING AFTER THE VEHICLE Posted: at 19-08-2017 07:48 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac POWER IS VERY SWEET BUHARI SEATING IN A COVOUR PEOPLE ARE RUNING AFTER THE VEHICLE Reply

pricklong at 19-08-2017 07:48 PM (5 years ago)

(m) POWER IS VERY SWEET BUHARI SEATING IN A COVOUR PEOPLE ARE RUNING AFTER THE VEHICLE Posted: at 19-08-2017 07:48 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac POWER IS VERY SWEET BUHARI SEATING IN A COVOUR PEOPLE ARE RUNING AFTER THE VEHICLE Reply

HUMANresurce at 19-08-2017 08:04 PM (5 years ago)

(m) phyuk BUHARI AND ALL HIS SUPPORTERS.. Posted: at 19-08-2017 08:04 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming phyuk BUHARI AND ALL HIS SUPPORTERS.. Reply

Abogado at 19-08-2017 11:05 PM (5 years ago)

(m) WORKING CORPS Posted: at 19-08-2017 11:05 PM (5 years ago) | Upcoming WORKING CORPS Reply

Patrioti at 20-08-2017 12:26 AM (5 years ago)

(m) Buhari coming back to Nigeria does not mean that the Ghost of Youth Corpers his utterances in 2011 election sent to their early grave will Stop attacking him neither the spirit of those 150 IPOB he order their killing in Aba while praying will stop hunting him. Buhari's case of good health is simple. He have to confess all his sins and renounce his religion and be converted to Christianity. That is one of the same condition his Boko Haram brothers gavel to GEJ so I return it by to him. Posted: at 20-08-2017 12:26 AM (5 years ago) | Upcoming Buhari coming back to Nigeria does not mean that the Ghost of Youth Corpers his utterances in 2011 election sent to their early grave will Stop attacking him neither the spirit of those 150 IPOB he order their killing in Aba while praying will stop hunting him. Buhari's case of good health is simple. He have to confess all his sins and renounce his religion and be converted to Christianity. That is one of the same condition his Boko Haram brothers gavel to GEJ so I return it by to him. Reply

gogoman at 20-08-2017 09:56 AM (5 years ago)

(m) BUHARI OF LIFE!! SHAME ON THE HATERS, UNA THINK SAY HE GO DIE... LOSER!! Posted: at 20-08-2017 09:56 AM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero BUHARI OF LIFE!! SHAME ON THE HATERS, UNA THINK SAY HE GO DIE... LOSER!! Reply

Starnixx at 20-08-2017 12:01 PM (5 years ago)

(m) jass men done finish am oo see as him lin Posted: at 20-08-2017 12:01 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac jass men done finish am oo see as him lin Reply

Starnixx at 20-08-2017 12:02 PM (5 years ago)

(m) jass men done finish am oo see as him lin Posted: at 20-08-2017 12:02 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac jass men done finish am oo see as him lin Reply

Otikadinje at 20-08-2017 01:45 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Baba welcome back, God will strengthen you. Oscardeejay Posted: at 20-08-2017 01:45 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Baba welcome back, God will strengthen you. Reply
Iran Denies Appeal Of U.S. Student Imprisoned On Spying Charges

RFE/RL August 18, 2017

Iranian authorities have denied the appeal of a Princeton University researcher who was convicted of spying for the United States and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the university said on August 17.

Xiyue Wang, a U.S. citizen and doctoral candidate specializing in Eurasian history, was conducting research for his dissertation in Iran last year when he was detained by Iranian authorities and accused of "spying under the cover of research." His family and the university strongly deny the charges.

"He traveled to Iran solely to study Farsi (Persian) and to examine historical documents from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He described his research plans in advance to the Iranian authorities and the libraries and archives he planned to visit, and he only sought access to materials that he needed for his dissertation," the university said.

The university said Iran's charge that Princeton had sent Wang to "infiltrate" the country and that Wang had "connections to intelligence agencies" is "completely false."

"He was not connected to any government or intelligence agencies," the university said. "We are distressed that his appeal was denied, and that he remains unjustly imprisoned."

Trump Warning

News of Wang's detention in Iran and his 10-year sentence first came out last month. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a hard line against Iran and has warned against "unjustly" imprisoning Americans.

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

A State Department official on August 17 repeated the U.S. demand "for the immediate release of all U.S. citizens unjustly detained in Iran so they can return to their families."

Iran did not immediately respond or comment on the Wang case.

"I am devastated that my husband's appeal has been denied, and that he continues to be unjustly imprisoned in Iran on groundless accusations of espionage and collaboration with a hostile government against the Iranian state," Wang's wife, Hua Qu, said. "Our young son and I have not seen Xiyue in more than a year, and we miss him very much."

Qu, who is a Chinese citizen, said she worries about Wang's health while he is held in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, sometimes in solitary confinement.

"We hope the Iranian officials can release him immediately so he can resume his studies at home and so that our family will be together again," she said.

With reporting by Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-denies-appeal- us-princeton-university-researcher-want-spying- charge-evin-prison/28683221.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-293-17 August 17, 2017

Joint Statement of the Security Consultative Committee

Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Dana W. White provided the following readout:

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, met with their Japanese counterparts, Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera and Foreign Minister Taro Kono, at the State Department today.

This was the first meeting of the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee (SCC) under the Trump Administration, and also the first meeting of Secretary Mattis with the newly appointed Defense Minister.

The group discussed the regional strategic environment, as well as security and defense cooperation, and other Alliance issues.

The text of the following statement was released by the Governments of the United States of America and Japan.

Begin Text:

I. Overview

The U.S.-Japan Alliance ("the Alliance") is the cornerstone of the Asia-Pacific region's peace, prosperity, and freedom. This dynamic partnership is also increasingly important in promoting values shared by both nations, including freedom, democracy, peace, human rights, free and fair markets, and the rule of law. The Ministers renewed their resolve to uphold the rules-based international order amid the challenging security environment.

Today the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee ("SCC") charted a path forward for the Alliance in addressing the ongoing and emerging threats that pose a challenge to regional peace and security, based on the Joint Statement by the leaders of both countries on February 10, 2017. The SCC reaffirmed its commitment to implement the 2015 Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation and to pursue further ways to strengthen the Alliance. The Ministers also reaffirmed the Alliance's commitment to the security of Japan through the full range of capabilities, including U.S. nuclear forces.

II. The Regional Strategic Environment

The Ministers condemned in the strongest terms North Korea's recurring provocations and development of nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, which have entered a new phase, and pose an increasing threat to regional and international peace and stability. The Ministers committed to bolster the capabilities of the Alliance to deter and respond to these threats. They also concurred on continuing to pressure North Korea, in cooperation with other countries, to compel it to take concrete actions to end its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and to achieve the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The Ministers called on the international community to comprehensively and thoroughly implement the United Nations Security Council resolutions including the newly adopted Resolution 2371. The Ministers strongly encourage China to take decisive measures to urge North Korea to change its course of action. The Ministers called on North Korea to end its systematic human rights violations and to immediately release all foreign nationals held in North Korea, including Japanese abductees and U.S. citizens.

The Ministers expressed continuing concerns about the security environment in the East China Sea. They also recalled the situation in early August 2016. The Ministers reaffirmed the importance of working together to safeguard the peace and stability of the East China Sea and reconfirmed that Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands and that the United States and Japan oppose any unilateral action that seeks to undermine Japan's administration of these islands.

The Ministers expressed serious concern about the situation in the South China Sea and reaffirmed their opposition to unilateral coercive actions by claimants, including the reclamation and militarization of disputed features, that alter the status quo and increase tensions. They reiterated the importance of the peaceful settlement of maritime disputes through full respect for legal and diplomatic processes, including arbitration. They also emphasized the importance of compliance with the international law of the sea, as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, including respect for freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful uses of the sea. In this regard, the Ministers recalled the award rendered by the Arbitral Tribunal on July 12, 2016. The Ministers acknowledged the adoption of the framework of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) and look forward to the conclusion of a meaningful, effective and legally binding COC. The Ministers underlined the significance of continued engagement in the South China Sea, including through respective activities to support freedom of navigation, bilateral and multilateral training and exercises, and coordinated capacity building assistance.

III. Strengthening Security and Defense Cooperation

(1) Alliance Responses

The Ministers confirmed their shared intent to develop specific measures and actions to further strengthen the U.S.-Japan Alliance, including through reviewing roles, missions, and capabilities, to ensure seamless Alliance responses across a full spectrum of situations amid an increasingly challenging regional security environment. To that end, Japan intends to expand its role in the Alliance and augment its defense capabilities, with an eye on the next planning period for its Mid-Term Defense Program. The United States remains committed to deploying its most advanced capabilities to Japan. To expedite work already underway in this regard, the Ministers gave the following guidance to their staffs:

 Accelerate implementation of the 2015 Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation and pursue additional types of cooperation under Japan's Legislation for Peace and Security; and,

 Explore new and expanded activities in various areas, such as Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), training and exercises, research and development, capacity building, and the joint/shared use of facilities.

(2) Implementation of the 2015 Guidelines for U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation

The Ministers reaffirmed the two Governments' unwavering commitment to continue implementation of the 2015 Guidelines. The Ministers welcomed important steps within the Alliance to operationalize mutual asset protection and to bring into force the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) as milestones in enhancing bilateral defense cooperation. The Ministers noted the successful use of the Alliance Coordination Mechanism (ACM) to respond to regional events. The Ministers reaffirmed the critical role that U.S. extended deterrence plays in ensuring the security of Japan as well as the peace and stability of the Asia-Pacific region, and they expressed their intention to deepen engagement on this subject through the Extended Deterrence Dialogue. They also confirmed their shared commitment to enhance and accelerate cooperation in such areas as bilateral planning, air and missile defense, non-combatant evacuation operations, defense equipment and technology cooperation, intelligence cooperation and information security. The Ministers affirmed their desire to expand bilateral cooperation in space, particularly in resiliency, Space Situational Awareness, hosted payloads and satellite communications. They called for deepening consultations in a timely manner on Alliance responses to serious cyber incidents, underscoring the critical importance of further enhancing Allied deterrence and defense.

IV. Trilateral and Multilateral Cooperation

The Ministers highlighted ongoing Alliance efforts to advance trilateral and multilateral security and defense cooperation with other partners in the region, notably the Republic of Korea, Australia, India and Southeast Asian countries. The Ministers underscored the importance of cooperating to promote a rules-based international order, taking note of the United States' continued commitment to maintain a strong presence in the region and Japan's initiatives demonstrated by its "Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy."

Regarding cooperation with the Republic of Korea, the Ministers emphasized the need to enhance information-sharing and expand trilateral exercises, including missile warning, anti-submarine warfare, and maritime interdiction operations exercises.

Regarding cooperation with Southeast Asian nations, the Ministers affirmed their intention to further enhance capacity building programs and defense equipment and technology transfers in areas including maritime security, defense institution building, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR). Recognizing the importance of upholding the maritime order in the region, the Ministers confirmed their shared commitment to launch a whole-of-government dialogue on maritime security capacity building, which would incorporate existing efforts in this regard.

V. The U.S. Force Presence in Japan

(1) Realignment of U.S. Forces in Japan

The Ministers, in view of maintaining a robust U.S. force presence in Japan, reaffirmed the two Governments' commitment to implement the existing arrangements for the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan, which aim to maintain operational and deterrent capability in an increasingly severe security environment, while also mitigating the impact on local communities and enhancing support from local communities for the presence and operations of U.S. forces in Japan.

As an essential element of this effort, the Ministers welcomed the resumption of Futenma Replacement Facility (FRF) construction and reconfirmed that the plan to construct the FRF at the Camp Schwab-Henokosaki area and adjacent waters is the only solution that addresses operational, political, financial, and strategic concerns and avoids the continued use of Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Futenma. The Ministers reaffirmed the two Governments' unwavering commitment to the plan and underscored their strong determination to achieve its completion as soon as possible and the long-desired return of MCAS Futenma to Japan. In this context, the Ministers called for the steady implementation of the construction plan, noting the adverse impact of further delays on the ability of the Alliance to provide for peace and security.

The Ministers welcomed the return of a major portion of the Northern Training Area in 2016, the single largest land return in Okinawa since 1972. They noted progress on the land returns that were announced in December 2015 and called for further implementation of those returns. The Ministers also reaffirmed the importance of steady implementation of the Consolidation Plan for Facilities and Areas in Okinawa and their commitment to update the plan as soon as possible.

The Ministers also welcomed progress in the relocation of a total of approximately 9,000 U.S. Marine Corps personnel, along with their associated dependents, from Okinawa to locations outside of Japan, including Guam. They confirmed the steady implementation of the Guam International Agreement.

The Ministers welcomed Japan's commitment to make utmost efforts to secure a permanent field carrier landing practice facility as soon as possible.

The Ministers confirmed their intent to continue to promote aviation training relocation, including tilt-rotor/rotary wing training relocation, which has helped to mitigate the impact of training activity on Okinawa.

(2) Host Nation Support (HNS)

The Ministers welcomed the entry into force of the current Special Measures Agreement (SMA) in April 2016, which serves as a pillar of the Alliance and a symbol of Japan's enduring support for the U.S. military presence in Japan. The Ministers confirmed that the overall level of HNS is to be maintained roughly at the Japan Fiscal Year 2015 level. The Ministers reaffirmed that the Facilities Improvement Program (FIP) funding in the current SMA period is to be no less than a budget of 20.6 billion yen per year.

(3) Other Issues

The Ministers reaffirmed the two Governments would promote joint/shared use to enhance interoperability and deterrence, build stronger relationships with local communities, and strengthen the Self-Defense Forces' force posture, including in Japan's southwestern islands.

The Ministers reiterated their determination to address issues related to the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) through mutual consultations. The Ministers welcomed the entry into force of supplementary agreements regarding environmental stewardship and the civilian component, and they stressed the importance of steadily implementing these agreements. The Ministers acknowledged the United States' enhanced training and orientation processes for personnel with SOFA status.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1282045/

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VP-16 Participates in Romanian Navy Day

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170817-17

Release Date: 8/17/2017 2:55:00 PM

By Lt. Michael Reindl and Lt j.g. Nicholas Senecal, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet Public Affairs

CONSTANTA, Romania (NNS) -- A P-8A Poseidon from Maritime Patrol Squadron (VP) 16 arrived in Constanta, Romania, Aug. 14, 2017, in support of a Romanian Navy Day celebration.

The "War Eagles" of VP-16 provided tours of the P-8A maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft to their Romanian counterparts and also conducted a fly over on Aug. 15 for a crowd of more than 12,000 spectators gathered to wish the Romanian Navy a happy birthday.

"It was a fantastic opportunity for my crew to meet with Romanian Gen. Nicolae Ciuca, chief of general staff, Romanian Vice Adm. Alexandru Mirsu, chief of navy, Rear Adm. Caniel Capatina, fleet commander, and their staff to discuss the U.S. commitment to our NATO allies in the region, specifically our interoperability with Romanian forces," explained Lt. Michael Reindl, VP-16 tactical coordinator. "Further, it was a complete pleasure seeing the enthusiasm that the Romanian midshipmen had for their ASW (anti-submarine warfare) training program."

The presence of VP-16 in Constanta for Romanian Navy Day demonstrates the shared commitment between the nations to promote safety and stability within the region. The P-8A from VP-16 is one of seven P-8As operating throughout the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations, adding enhanced, long-range ASW, anti-surface warfare, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities to support our allies and partners in the region.

Quick Facts:

- This is the first time VP-16 has brought the P-8A Poseidon aircraft to Romania for the Navy Day Celebration.

- The "War Eagles" of VP-16 are based out of Jacksonville, Florida, and is forward-deployed to Naval Air Station Sigonella, Italy, operating in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations.

- U.S. 6th Fleet, headquartered in Naples, Italy, conducts the full spectrum of joint and naval operation in order to advance U.S. national interests and enhance security and stability in Europe and Africa.

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US Navy Commissions First-of-Class Expeditionary Sea Base, USS Lewis B. Puller

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170817-23

Release Date: 8/17/2017 4:17:00 PM

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kevin Steinberg, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command Public Affairs

MANAMA, Bahrain (NNS) -- The U.S. Navy converted USNS Lewis B. Puller (T-ESB 3) to a U.S. naval warship, commissioning the Expeditionary Sea Base, USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3) during a ceremony at Khalifa bin Salman Port in Al Hidd, Bahrain, Aug. 17.

Puller is the first U.S. ship to be commissioned outside the United States. With its commissioning, the U.S. Navy adds yet another warship towards its goal of having a larger, more capable force. The ship's reclassification provides U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and U.S. 5th Fleet greater flexibility to better meet regional challenges.

Vice Adm. Donegan, commander of Naval Forces Central Command said, "The Puller isn't just another ship, but a revolutionary concept; a ship that provides us a key platform that will provide continuity to a variety of operations," he continued saying, "Named after the most decorated Marine in American history, the USS Lewis B. Puller will provide greater operational flexibility to 5th Fleet, forward-deployed as the first ship built specifically for the purpose of serving as an expeditionary sea base. As such, it will augment our amphibious forces, not replace them, mine countermeasure forces and provide an expeditionary sea base for maritime security operations throughout the region."

The need for new solutions to new problems in the 5th Fleet area of operations continues to grow and Donegan recognized the challenge.

"As the security environment becomes faster paced, more complex and increasingly competitive, with the ever-growing and evolving challenge of asymmetric threats from state and non-state actors alike, the Navy has a growing need to station more diverse and capable warships around the globe. Commissioning this expeditionary sea base, the USS Lewis B. Puller, will allow the Navy and Marine Corps team to meet the threats in the region head on," said Donegan.

Puller's namesake, Lt. Gen. Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller, was the most decorated Marine in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. He is one of only two men, and the only Marine, to be awarded five Navy Crosses. He fought in Haiti and Nicaragua, as well as several key battles in World War II and the Korean War.

"For the most part, [Puller] spent much of his time in the Pacific," said Lt. Gen. Dave Beydler, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Central Command. "Why was he there? Because that is where the fight was ... I would argue that if he lived in our era, he would have spent a majority of his time in this region, the CENTCOM [area of responsibility]. I'm glad to have Chesty Puller back where the fight is."

Capt. Adan G. Cruz is the USS Puller's first commanding officer. Per naval tradition, Cruz read his orders before addressing those in attendance.

"It is really an honor to be part of a team and part of a crew with great Sailors and great civilian mariners," said Cruz.

Puller's crew of nearly 150 Sailors and civilian mariners work in concert with one another as did those on the ship's predecessor, USS Ponce (AFSB-(I) 15) to extend U.S. Naval Forces Central Command's maritime reach in 5th Fleet by supporting a wide variety of missions including counter-piracy operations, maritime security operations, humanitarian aid, disaster relief and crisis response operations.

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Navy Releases USS Fitzgerald Supplemental Line of Duty Investigation

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170817-24

Release Date: 8/17/2017 6:34:00 PM

From Navy Office of Information

WASHINGTON (NNS) -- The Navy has completed and released a supplement to its line of duty investigation of the USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) collision off the coast of Japan June 17.

The line of duty investigation supplement is available at www.secnav.navy.mil/foia/readingroom/HotTopics/USS%20Fitzgerald/Supplemental%20Inquiry%20USS%20Fitzgerald.pdf

This report specifically reviews the crew's damage control activities, the nature and extent of injuries to the crew and efforts to provide medical care to the most critically injured personnel, along with details regarding assistance provided by other vessels, diving activities and the ship's return to port in Yokosuka.

The supplement provides details and accounts of actions taken following the collision and reports:

* Through their swift and in many cases heroic actions, members of the crew saved lives.

* After the collision, Sailors responded to the myriad damage control scenarios occurring throughout the ship. Flooding, structural damage and reports of white smoke stressed the damage control organization; at the same time, efforts to restore power, propulsion, steering and navigation continued.

* No damage control efforts would have prevented Berthing 2 from flooding completely within the first two minutes following the collision.

The initial line of duty investigation was limited in scope to establishing a line of duty determination for the three injured and seven deceased Sailors. It is separate from ongoing investigations into the collision between Fitzgerald and ACX Crystal. The line of duty investigation supplement is one of three Navy investigations into the collision and is meant to provide detail of what occurred following the collision.

Each of the injuries and deaths occurred in the line of duty and none was due to any member's own misconduct.

Related photos and videos are available for download at the links below:

1. Photos of the seven Sailors killed aboard USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62):

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Customer-delivery/DDG62/170619+USS+Fitzgerald+Casualties.zip

2. Video (interviews and b-roll) of fleet level support to the crew of USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) after collision:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Customer-delivery/DDG62/US+Navy+Support+to+USS+Fitzgerald+Sailors.zip

3. Video of statement from Vice Admiral Joseph P. Aucoin, U.S. 7th Fleet commander, regarding USS Fitzgerald's return to Fleet Activities (FLEACT) Yokosuka after collision:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Customer-delivery/DDG62/US+Navy+video+Statement+VADM+Aucoin.zip

4. Video of USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) returning to Fleet Activities (FLEACT) Yokosuka following collision:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Customer-delivery/DDG62/US+Navy+video+USS+Fitzgerald+Yokosuka+Japan.zip

5. Photos of USS Fitzgerald returning to Fleet Activities (FLEACT) Yokosuka after the collision:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Customer-delivery/DDG62/USNavy+Handout+USS+Fitzgerald.zip

6. Video of USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) moving into Dry Dock 4 at Fleet Activities (FLEACT) Yokosuka to continue repairs and assess damage from its June 17 collision:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/Customer-delivery/DDG62/USS+Fitzgerald+enters+dry-dock+170711.zip

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7th Fleet Announces USS Fitzgerald Accountability Determinations

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170817-25

Release Date: 8/17/2017 11:34:00 PM

By U.S. 7th Fleet Public Affairs

YOKOSUKA, Japan (NNS) -- The commanding officer, executive officer and command master chief of the guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) were relieved of their duties by Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, Commander, 7th Fleet Aug, 18.

Additionally, a number of officer and enlisted watch standers were held accountable.

The determinations were made following a thorough review of the facts and circumstances leading up to the June 17 collision between Fitzgerald and the merchant vessel ACX Crystal.

The collision was avoidable and both ships demonstrated poor seamanship. Within Fitzgerald, flawed watch stander teamwork and inadequate leadership contributed to the collision that claimed the lives of seven Fitzgerald Sailors, injured three more and damaged both ships.

With absolute accountability for the safe navigation of Fitzgerald, Cmdr. Bryce Benson was relieved due to a loss of confidence in his ability to lead. He had previously been temporarily relieved of his duties due to medical reasons from injuries sustained during the collision. Benson is being reassigned to Naval District Washington at the Washington Navy Yard, where he will have access to medical facilities in the area.

Inadequate leadership by the executive officer, Cmdr. Sean Babbitt, and command master chief, Master Chief Petty Officer Brice Baldwin, contributed to the lack of watch stander preparedness and readiness that was evident in the events leading up to the collision.

Several junior officers were relieved of their duties due to poor seamanship and flawed teamwork as bridge and combat information center watch standers. Additional administrative actions were taken against members of both watch teams.

Cmdr. Garret Miller will assume command from Fitzgerald's acting commanding officer, Cmdr. John "Jack" Fay sometime mid-to-late-August.

It was also evident from this review that the entire Fitzgerald crew demonstrated real toughness that night. Following the collision these Sailors responded with urgency, determination and creativity to save their ship. Their rigorous damage control efforts and dauntless fighting in the immediate wake of the accident prevented further loss of life.

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Officials Release Details of Latest Counter-ISIS Strikes in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Aug. 18, 2017  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 27 strikes consisting of 40 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 22 strikes consisting of 24 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Abu Kamal, three strikes destroyed three ISIS oil stills, two pieces of oil equipment and a weapons cache.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, a strike destroyed an ISIS headquarters and an ISIS media center.

-- Near Raqqa, 18 strikes engaged 12 ISIS tactical units and destroyed 29 fighting positions, three ISIS communication lines and two logistics nodes.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted five strikes consisting of 16 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Beiji, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed two vehicles, a supply cache and a staging area.

-- Near Tal Afar, four strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit; destroyed a front-end loader, an ISIS-held building and a mortar system; and suppressed a mortar team.

Previous Strikes

Additionally, 33 strikes consisting of 47 engagements were conducted in Syria and Iraq on Aug. 15-16 that closed within the last 24 hours.

-- On Aug. 15, near Raqqa, Syria, four strikes engaged three ISIS tactical units and destroyed four fighting positions and a mortar system.

-- On Aug. 16, near Abu Kamal, Syria, a strike destroyed an ISIS media center.

-- On Aug. 16, near Shadaddi, Syria, two strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a command-and-control node, a fighting position and an ISIS communication line.

-- On Aug. 16, near Raqqa, Syria, 23 strikes engaged 16 ISIS tactical units and destroyed 18 fighting positions, eight command-and-control nodes, two tunnels, two heavy machine guns, an ISIS unmanned aerial system, an anti-aircraft artillery system and an ISIS line of communication.

-- On Aug. 16, near Tal Afar, Iraq, three strikes destroyed 32 improvised explosive devices, 17 ISIS fighting positions, two tunnels and an artillery system and damaged three bridges.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect.

For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

The task force does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

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Aviation Soldiers usher in a new era of warfare

By Capt. Stephen JamesAugust 18, 2017

AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq -- The air mission briefing began promptly at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq. The Soldier in charge of the briefing, Spc. Eleazar Gonzalez, provided updates on the operating environment and flight schedules, and coordinated with other sections to cover maintenance and weather. The meeting ended with Gonzalez quizzing his fellow MQ-1C "Gray Eagle" operators on vital knowledge relating to the unmanned aerial system they operate.

With the advent of new technology, junior leaders in the U.S. Army experience larger strategic impact and handle more responsibility than ever before. Nowhere is this more prevalent than the 29th Combat Aviation Brigade's Company D, 10th Aviation Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, which uses the Gray Eagle unmanned aerial system in support of Operation Inherent Resolve and Operation Spartan Shield.

"We have specialists and sergeants fulfilling the same crew obligations as warrant officers and commissioned officers in manned aviation units," said Capt. Joshua Heiner, the commander of D Company. "It is definitely empowerment at the junior levels."

Besides handling briefing duties that are normally handled by more senior ranks, Soldiers in D Company. also have the responsibility to remotely operate the multi-million dollar Gray Eagle as a two-Soldier team, fulfilling roles as aircraft commanders or payload operators.

"The aircraft commander is in charge of the flight and is responsible for the safety of the bird and all of its equipment," said Sgt. Manuel Dominguez, a Gray Eagle aircraft commander with over 600 flight hours.

The Gray Eagle operators provide reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition for Operation Inherent Resolve, the campaign to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

"The value of our company is that we offer commanders on the ground a long-endurance, armed platform that can build situational awareness and develop targets, then provide a precision strike capability if the situation warrants," said Heiner.

The ability provides a strategic impact due to higher-level units that rely on the intelligence gathered by the Gray Eagle's payload operator.

"We provide full-motion video to higher echelons," said Sgt. Blake Harrell, an aircraft commander who currently holds the company strike record.

The D Company call sign is "Slayer," because the Gray Eagle operators also provide offensive strike capabilities in the fight against ISIS in Iraq.

"We have 20-year-old aircraft commanders responsible for putting ordnance on target in support of ground forces," said Heiner. "They are doing an exceptional job at it."

The UAS operators on numerous occasions identified targets for other strike platforms, specifically the AH-64E Apache from the 4th Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment and the U.S. Air Force.

From reconnaissance to strikes, the amount of responsibility on the Soldiers of D Company is daunting, but they work through their training and their initiative to achieve their high rate of success.

"We handle one step at a time -- we use checklist discipline, training and we trust our leadership and the standardization office," said Harrell. "We become great at multitasking and prioritizing."

The Gray Eagle provides a wide array of support to the Coalition and partner forces, but overlooking the smallest details can keep the unmanned system out of the fight. Fortunately the maintainers of D Company remain focused on keeping the birds in the air.

"There is no place for complacency in aviation," said Spc. Tyler Lewis, an unmanned aircraft system repairer.

Although the aircraft commanders bear the ultimate responsibility for the Gray Eagle when it is on flying missions, the maintenance Soldiers of D Company have the essential task of keeping the unmanned system in fighting shape.

"We keep up our readiness, keep the Gray Eagle mission capable," said Spc. William Lindmeier, an unmanned aircraft system repairer.

The maintenance, also completed by junior Soldiers, has already exceeded the current fleet-wide standard of 50% Soldier, 50% civilian contract maintenance.

"We do 90% of the maintenance," said Lindmeier.

The 90% Soldier maintenance standard is the Army's long-term goal and has already been realized through the efforts of D Company Soldiers.

Throughout the deployment, D Company's maintenance team had to handle numerous responsibilities in order to maintain the advanced unmanned aerial systems.

"We were juggling landing birds with post-flight preventative maintenance on top of our weekly maintenance," said Spc. Draven King, an unmanned aircraft system repairer.

Through the efforts of the UAS maintainers, D Company's Gray Eagle operators were able to fly over 2,000 hours for two months in a row, which is the most flight hours recorded by any Gray Eagle unit.

Evidenced by their record of success, the UAS maintainers will continue to work together to keep the Gray Eagles operational and in the fight.

"We have great team cohesion that contributes directly to our success," said Winkler.

Adding to the complexity of D Company's mission is the fact that the company itself is split between two locations, Kuwait and Iraq, and completes two distinct missions.

In Kuwait, D Company Soldiers support Operation Spartan Shield by conducting training flights and cross-training with other units and maritime missions, said Heiner.

Reconnaissance and surveillance training are viewed as opportunities for the Soldiers of D Company to sharpen their skills, said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ryan Moore, a platoon leader and operations officer from D Company.

D Company is set to continue supporting operations throughout the U.S. Army Central area of operations by providing reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition and an offensive strike capability until later this fall when the unit will return to Fort Drum, N.Y.

The 29th Combat Aviation Brigade, an Army National Guard Brigade, will integrate another Gray Eagle company and continue to provide UAS support to Operation Inherent Resolve and Operation Spartan Shield for the remainder of the year.

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Norway's Coast Guard has seized Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise and arrested 35 members of its crew after protesters violated the safety zone around a drilling rig in the Barents Sea, online newspaper The Independent Barents Observer reported Friday.

Protesting the drilling at the Korpfjell field on Thursday, Greenpeace activists entered the 500-meter safety zone around the rig Songa Enabler with kayaks and a floating globe with signatures from people all over the world demanding an end to the ongoing drilling.

Korpfjell field is the northernmost oil-drilling area ever set up in the Barents Sea, located at 74 degrees north, some 415 km from mainland Norway, the report said.

The police ordered the protesters to leave the security zone, saying Norwegian state-owned oil company Statoil had permission to drill in the area and the protest activities violated the Petroleum Act.

When Greenpeace refused to leave, the police requested the Coast Guard to take action. Shortly afterwards, crew members from the Coast Guard boarded Greenpeace's vessel the Arctic Sunrise, arrested its crew, and took control of the ship.

The Arctic Sunrise is expected to be at Tromso port late Friday evening or early Saturday morning.

Truls Gulowsen, head of Greenpeace Norway, disputed the Coast Guard's right to board the ship and order it to be removed, and urged Norwegian authorities to be more worried about climate change.

"The Norwegian coast guard doesn't have the right to board or remove our ship. Protest at sea is an internationally recognized lawful use of the sea, related to the freedom of navigation," he said.

"The Norwegian government seems more interested in protecting the reckless Arctic oil drilling operation carried out by state-owned Statoil, than listening to the concerns voiced by people from all over the world and protecting the right to protest against the opening of a new, aggressive oil frontier in the Arctic," Gulowsen said.

"This is a violation of Norway's duty under its own Constitution and its commitments under the Paris Agreement," he added.

This is not the first time the Arctic Sunrise has been boarded and arrested for protesting oil drilling in the Arctic area. In September 2013, the Russian Coast Guard boarded and took over the vessel after activists tried to board a Russian oil platform in the Pechora Sea, the southeastern part of the Barents Sea.
U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-296-17 August 18, 2017

Exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian 2017

The Republic of Korea and United States Combined Forces Command will begin the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise on Aug. 21 and will be continued through  Aug. 31, 2017. UFG is computer simulated defensive exercise designed to enhance readiness, protect the region and maintain stability on the Korean peninsula. There will be approximately 17,500 total U.S. service members participating, with approximately 3,000 coming from off-peninsula. U.S. forces will join ROK military forces from major ROK units representing all services, as well as ROK government participants. In addition to the ROK and U.S. forces, UN Command forces from seven sending states, including Australia, Canada, Columbia, Denmark, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, will participate in this UFG. In addition, Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission observers will monitor the exercise to ensure it is in compliance with the Armistice Agreement for the Restoration of the South Korean State (1953). Training exercises like UFG are carried out in the spirit of the Oct. 1, 1953, ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty and in accordance with the Armistice. These exercises also highlight the longstanding military partnership, commitment and enduring friendship between the two nations, help to ensure peace and security on the peninsula, and reaffirm U.S. commitment to the Alliance.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1282786/

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USS San Diego Arrives In Phuket, Thailand

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170818-05

Release Date: 8/18/2017 9:52:00 AM

By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Justin Schoenberger

PHUKET, THAILAND (NNS) -- The amphibious transport dock ship USS San Diego (LPD 22) arrived in Phuket, Thailand as part of a routine visit during San Diego's deployment and for the crew to have an opportunity to experience Phuket, Aug. 17.

After recently completing a successful visit to Cam Ranh International Port, the crew has been looking forward to their next stop in a country that has been a longstanding friend and ally to the U.S. Navy.

"There's a lot of Sailors and Marines [aboard] that are excited to pull into this great liberty port," said Capt. Pete Collins, commanding officer of San Diego. "We all understand that we are here to make an impression but also to enjoy our time in Phuket experiencing a different culture than what most of us are used to."

Sailors and Marines aboard the San Diego will have the chance to participate in recreational activities in Phuket and surrounding areas to include snorkeling excursions, Phuket's most admired monasteries, private boat tours around caves and lagoons, and speedboat tours.

"There's a lot that Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) has to offer during our visit to Phuket," said Aviation Support Equipment Technician 3rd Class Angus Moss, a Sailor aboard San Diego. "I had such a great experience with the MWR trips in Cam Ranh International Port. I can't wait to pull into Phuket to take advantage of all of it."

San Diego, capable of carrying Marines and their equipment, has been at sea conducting training in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region over the past several weeks since departing its homeport of San Diego in early July. After stopping in Phuket, San Diego will continue training and operations with allies and partners in the U.S. 7th Fleet.

Commissioned in 2012, San Diego is the sixth ship in the San Antonio-class of amphibious landing transport dock ships. Designed as a multi-mission amphibious warship, these ships are able to support a broad range of expeditionary operations. The ship's namesake comes from the city of San Diego which has a long mutal history with the U.S. Navy and is the fourth vessel to bear the name.

San Diego, part America Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), is currently operating in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region to strengthen partnerships and serve as a ready-response force for any type of contingency.

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Russian-Indian military drills not against China: Russian FM

People's Daily Online

(People's Daily Online) 15:47, August 18, 2017

Russia's Foreign Ministry on Thursday denounced speculation that its upcoming military drills with India are targeted at China, adding that Russia has brilliant relations with China.

"Russia does not carry out military exercises or other cooperative events that may lead to worsening relations of a country we maintain multilateral ties with," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova was quoted as saying by Xinhua News Agency on Thursday.

Zakharova also expressed confidence that China and India can resolve their border tensions, adding that attempts to distort the situation can only be viewed as a provocation.

The remarks were made at a time when a two-month standoff casts a shadow on Sino-Indian relations. According to Indian media outlets, the joint war game from Oct. 19 to 29 will take place in three locations in Russia, including the country's Far East, a sensitive spot that borders China.

Other than the joint drills, India plans to buy over $10 billion worth of weapons from Russia. According to Defense News, India may purchase Russia's S-400 air defense system, four Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates, and 200 Kamov 226T light utility helicopters, which will significantly boost India's military power.

Ermankov, director of the Center for Military and Political Studies from Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, told Xinhua that the military drills are held regularly and is not directed against any third country.

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Boko Haram pushing refugees from one hell into another: NRC

Iran Press TV

Fri Aug 18, 2017 2:40PM

Boko Haram terrorists have stepped up attacks on vulnerable people including those living in camps in northeastern Nigeria pushing the displaced from "one hell into another," a leading international aid agency says.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Friday that the terrorists were looking for softer targets, including camps hosting the displaced, following the intensification of offensive by the Nigerian military against the militants.

Latest data from the NRC showed that civilians were affected by violence on about 200 occasions last month  three times more than the total for June.

It also indicated that at least 32 attacks were carried out on camps and sites for those uprooted by the conflict since July.

"Camps sheltering innocent families fleeing war should be places of refuge but instead they are turning into death traps," the head of programs for NRC in Nigeria, Ernest Mutanga, said in a statement.

o

"Armed groups in this conflict are pushing people from one hell into another," he added.

Terrorists have killed and injured dozens of civilians in recent months in a spate of attacks on camps and areas sheltering the displaced that bore the hallmarks of Boko Haram.

Eight years of militancy by Boko Haram has so far killed more than 20,000 people and forced more than 2.7 million to flee their homes.

Last year, the Nigerian army seized large swathes of territory from the terrorists; however, the militants have struck back with renewed zeal since June and killed at least 170 people and weakened the army's control in the northeast.

Many aid agencies, including the NRC, have been forced to temporarily suspend their aid work in Maidiguri, the capital of Borno state, due to threats from Boko Haram.

"We are worried that if these attacks continue, a very bad situation will grow even worse when it comes to aid access and delivery," Jackie Okao, protection and advocacy adviser at the NRC in Nigeria, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

The United Nations' World Food Program (WFP) says about 5.2 million people are expected to need food aid by the end of this month - an increase of 500,000 from the start of 2017 - in a region threatened with famine.

According to aid agencies, the situation could be far worse with many areas cut off from help due to the threat of Boko Haram and the arrival of the rainy season restricting access.

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Philippines: Daesh-linked militants kill 5 Muslims

Iran Press TV

Fri Aug 18, 2017 1:29PM

Militants linked to the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in the Philippines have killed several Muslim fighters from a former rebel group that signed a peace agreement and is now helping the government fight extremists.

Police Senior Superintendent Agustin Tello said five fighters from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) died in their latest clash with the militants on Friday.

The Daesh-linked militants belonged to the Bangsamoro extremist group, which had tried to launch a bomb attack in Datu Salibo town in the southern province of Maguindanao, according to reports.

The MILF, which signed a 2014 Muslim autonomy accord with the government and has been touted as a government ally in its fight against extremism, has been battling a pro-Daesh group faction of the militant group since early this month.

Security officials say terrorist groups in the region have pledged allegiance to Daesh in order to increase their military influence in Muslim-populated areas in Southeast Asia.

Governments across Southeast Asia have been on high alert since terrorists from local militant groups, which have pledged allegiance to Daesh, overran the southern Philippine city of Marawi about three months ago.

Security forces in Indonesia and Malaysia have been on the watch for extremist militant cells.

The Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, which is financed by certain Persian Gulf Arab states led by Saudi Arabia and is mainly concentrated in Iraq and Syria, has been taking heavy blows from government forces and is on its last legs, searching for safe havens to flee.

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Lebanon army tightens grip on Daesh near Syria

Iran Press TV

Fri Aug 18, 2017 10:2AM

Lebanon's army has recaptured more areas from the Daesh Takfiri terror group in a northwestern area bordering Syria.

The advance was announced by the army on Thursday in and around the Ras Baalbek village in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

The Lebanese army is expected soon to assault the Daesh pocket in the area.

Over the past days, the Lebanese army has been targeting the Daesh hideouts along the Syrian border.

The operation began after the Hezbollah resistance movement forced militant concentrations, and the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terror group, formerly known as al-Qaeda's Syria offshoot or al-Nusra Front, out of the border area last month.

On July 29, Hezbollah commanders said the group had successfully concluded a week-long military offensive against al-Nusra on the outskirts of Arsal. The operation killed about 150 terrorists

The triumph was followed by departure from the area of another terror outfit named Saraya Ahl al-Sham, which has left Daesh in a more vulnerable position.

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Japan, US agree to increase military cooperation

Iran Press TV

Fri Aug 18, 2017 5:2AM

Japan and the United States have agreed to increase their military cooperation in an attempt to counter the perceived threat from North Korea, officials have announced.

The agreement came during a meeting to discuss North Korea between Japan's Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera and Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Kono and their American counterparts, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in Washington, DC, on Thursday.

Japanese Defense Minister Onodera said after the meeting, "For this threat of North Korea, at this meeting, we agreed to increase the pressure and to strengthen the alliance capability."

"In light of the threat of North Korea, the four of us confirmed the importance of the unwavering US commitment to extended deterrence," he added.

A joint statement issued after the meeting said, "The United States remains committed to deploying its most advanced capabilities to Japan," and that, "Japan intends to expand its role in the alliance and augment its defense capabilities."

According to the statement, the four ministers called on the international community to "comprehensively and thoroughly implement" UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea so as to force it to change course.

The United States and its allies in East Asia have ratcheted up their rhetoric against North Korea in the recent weeks following repeated North Korean missile tests. Tensions particularly increased with mutual threats of a military attack between Washington and Pyongyang.

Last week, US President Donald Trump threatened North Korea with American "fire and fury," and later doubled down on his threat, saying the military option against North Korea was "locked and loaded." North Korea reacted by preparing a plan to fire missiles at an area near the American Pacific territory of Guam, which is about 3,200 kilometers from the North Korean capital.

While North Korea later "postponed" that missile strike, the exchange of threats with the US significantly raised fears of an imminent war on the Korean Peninsula.

Japan and South Korea, which are North Korea's regional adversaries, took precautionary measures to defend themselves against potential missile strikes.

Japan and the US also launched joint live-fire drills on a northern Japanese island last week. More than 2,000 US Marines plus some 1,500 Japanese troops are participating in the 18-day maneuvers, which kicked off in the Eniwa area on Hokkaido Island.

Drills with South Korea 'to go ahead'

Meanwhile, the US has also planned joint drills with South Korea.

Those drills have drawn criticism from China and North Korea, which have called for the plan to be shelved.

But Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that the exercises with South Korea would go ahead according to plan.

The drill, known as Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, will be conducted in South Korea. Much of it involves computer-based simulations.

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Trump To Discuss Afghanistan Strategy With His National Security Team

RFE/RL August 18, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump is due to meet with his national security team at the Camp David presidential retreat north of Washington on August 18 to discuss U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on August 17 that, after months of debate, the Trump administration has almost reached a decision on a new approach for fighting the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan, which is the longest in American history.

In remarks at the State Department, Mattis told reporters the talks "will move this toward a decision." He gave no hint of what the strategy would look like, but said it would take shape "in the very near future."

In June, Trump gave Mattis the authority to set U.S. troop levels.

Media reports say Mattis has recommended an increase of up to 4,000 troops to help strengthen the Afghan Army, but nothing has as yet been approved by Trump.

Mattis is reportedly urging Trump to address the Afghan war as part of a broader strategy for the region, particularly including Pakistan, where some Afghan militant groups have established bases near the border.

Western media outlets have reported that in July, Trump expressed frustration with progress in the war against Taliban militants and told Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford that they should consider firing General John Nicholson, the top U.S. Army commander in Afghanistan.

Citing officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, media reports also said Trump argued that the United States should demand a share of Afghanistan's estimated $1 trillion in mineral wealth in exchange for U.S. assistance to the Afghan government.

Reports said that Trump complained that the Chinese are profiting from mining operations in Afghanistan while the United States bears the cost of the war.

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, a U.S.-led invasion drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. But since the exit of most NATO troops in 2014, Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government has lost ground to the Taliban insurgency.

A U.S. report found earlier this year that the Taliban controls or contests control of about 40 percent of the country. Furthermore, Afghan security forces are facing the increasing presence of the extremist group Islamic State in the country.

Since peaking at about 100,000 troops in 2010-2011, the U.S. force has diminished. The United States currently maintains 8,400 troops in Afghanistan -- a cap set last year by then-President Barack Obama.

However, there are at least another 2,000 U.S. troops -- mostly special forces -- assigned to fight militant groups such as the Taliban and Islamic State.

About 5,000 non-U.S. NATO forces are still in the country.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-trump- mattis-afghanistan-strategy/28684002.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Not Scaling Back: At Least 75,000 Troops to Join Annual Seoul, US War Games

Sputnik News

22:00 18.08.2017(updated 00:25 19.08.2017)

South Korea and the US will conduct joint military drills at a similar level to last year's exercises, Seoul's military said Friday, contradicting rumblings that they may limit maneuvers so as to not rile North Korea.

Set to begin Monday and complete August 31, Pyongyang views movements like the Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) exercises as dress rehearsals for invading the communist nation.

Yonhap News Agency quoted a South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff official telling a press briefing, that "This year's military drills will be similar in size to those conducted last year."

An official with the South's Ministry of National Defense said the two militaries have not considered changing the size of the drills.

Some 50,000 South Korean service members took part in last year's UFG exercise, which brought about 25,000 US troops, including roughly 2,500 personnel from the US Pacific Command and the mainland.

There will be additional troops participating from Canada, Denmark, Australia, Colombia, the UK, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

Provocative language has been in the air between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the US, with US President Donald Trump trading threats with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Tensions escalated in July after Pyongyang conducted two intercontinental ballistic (ICBM) missile tests and claimed the projectiles are capable of reaching the US mainland and carrying a nuclear weapon, an assessment some regional and Western analysts concur with.

Earlier this month, the DPRK said it would develop a plan to launch four ballistic missiles at Guam and present it to Kim by mid-August, but the leader backed off the plan Tuesday after US officials began encouraging diplomatic talks and eased off warmongering rhetoric.

Kim said after he "examined the plan for a long time" and "discussed" it with commanding officers Monday, he would continue to watch Washington's actions before making the "important" decision to respond to the US' "extremely dangerous reckless actions" on the Korean Peninsula.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency also quoted Kim on Monday warning Washington about the upcoming drills.

If "the planned firepower demonstration is carried out as the US is going more reckless, it will be the most delightful historic moment when the Hwasong artillerymen will wring the windpipes of the Yankees and point daggers at their necks, underlining the need to be always ready for launching into action anytime our Party decides."

The Hwasong 14 is North Korea's alleged ICBM.

There are a number of high-profile weapons systems present in the US territory, including the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and strategic bombers.

The Pentagon released a statement saying, "UFG is computer simulated defensive exercise designed to enhance readiness, protect the region and maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula."

 Sputnik

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Israel Attacked Convoys Supplying Arms to Hezbollah Nearly 100 Times in 5 Years

Sputnik News

03:57 18.08.2017

Israel has carried out almost a hundred of attacks against convoys that delivered arms to the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and other anti-Israel forces over the last five years, local media reported Thursday, citing a former Israeli military commander.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  According to the Haaretz newspaper, Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, former commander of the Israel Air Force, for the first time provided the number of attacks on arms convoys for Hezbollah, saying that it is approaching to triple digits. The newspaper specified that Israeli top officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, earlier admitted such attacks, but were reluctant to give the numbers.

"An action could be an isolated thing, small and pinpointed, or it could be an intense week involving a great many elements. Happily, this goes on under the radar There is another thing that I believe is very significant We had the good sense not to drag the State of Israel into wars," Eshel told the newspaper.

Eshel reportedly noted that this strategy allowed not only to destroy arms designated against Israel, but also to avoid involvement in any military confrontations.

"Escalation to war is trivial in the Middle East It is no great trick to be a bull in a china shop. When Israel has a vested interest, it acts irrespective of the risks," Eshel said, as quoted by the newspaper.

Hezbollah, considered by Israel as a terrorist organization, was established in the 1980s in Lebanon.

 Sputnik

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Russian Communist Party Slams Seattle Lenin Statue Plan

Published 18 August 2017 Telesur

Lawmaker says its removal would be a manifestation of the anti-Soviet, anti-Communist and anti-Russian sentiments prevalent in the United States. In response to a call by Seattle authorities to take down a statue of the late revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian Communist Party has condemned the proposal.

The war of monuments is under way, but there are a lot of Lenin monuments all over the Earth. We denounce vandalism because different monuments must exist, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Sergey Obukhov, stated, reported RT. I understand that the mayor of Seattle is doing this to please the kind of leftists whose activities, I would say, included the organization of clashes in Seattle, he added.

Russian Communist Party MP Dmitry Novikov said the plans to remove the statue are yet another manifestation of the anti-Soviet, anti-Communist and anti-Russian sentiments prevalent in the United States.

If the mayor of Seattle tries to connect the campaign against Confederate monuments and the campaign against Lenins statue it looks rather strange, because Lenin was in strong opposition to all forms of slavery and all forms of social violence. He was for justice and personal freedom, he had created a party that was steadily fighting against the absolute monarchy in our country, Novikov pressed. This cannot be called anything else but an attempt to remain in some political trend, the Russian lawmaker added.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray called for the statues removal on Thursday, arguing that it represents historic injustices as well as being a symbol of hate, racism and violence equivalent to that of Confederate statues, which he also wants taken down.

The 5-meter-high bronze statue of Lenin installed in the Washington city is privately owned, where the owner bought it from Slovakian authorities in the early 1990s. It is currently on display, the owner told reporters, because he is trying to sell it. Shortly before Mayor Murrays call to have it removed, protesters staged a demonstration near the monument, holding posters that read Lenin is Hitler and Tear it down.

The protest was in response to last weekends rally by far-right groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, where city authorities had ordered the removal of the monument to Confederate commander Robert E. Lee. That rally saw counter-protests, which resulted in a major standoff that killed one counter-protester and injured several others.

State Senator Reuven Carlyle also weighed in on the debate surrounding the Seattle Lenin statue. Reflecting on his familys history, where his relatives had left Poland in 1924 after attacks on Jewish villages, the official called the statue of Lenin a testament to the defeat of a murderous, painful regime.

https://www.rt.com/news/400274-toppling-monuments-historic-incidents/

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Marking World Humanitarian Day, UN urges protection for civilians in armed conflict

18 August 2017  Civilians in conflict are not a target, top United Nations officials today stressed at a special event marking World Humanitarian Day, which honours aid workers and pays homage to those killed in service, while also drawing attention to the millions of people today living in war zones.

"For the millions of people caught in conflict, struggling to find food, water, and safe shelter; who have been driven from their homes with little hope of return; whose schools have been bombed; and who await life-saving medical care  we cannot afford to fail," Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, urging each person and country to stand in solidarity with civilians in conflict.

Standing at Headquarters in New York alongside UN aid workers and staff who lost colleagues in war zones, the Secretary-General lent his support to the #NotATarget," campaign, which highlights the need to protect civilians caught in conflict, including humanitarian and medical workers.

Joining Mr. Guterres to mark World Humanitarian Day, which is officially commemorated on 19 August, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien spoke of the challenges faced by aid workers around the word.

"Last year, 288 aid workers were targeted in 158 attacks. In the past three months alone, relief workers have been shelled and shot at, kidnapped and killed in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria," he said. "This is blatantly unacceptable."

Earlier in the week, the UN and partners launched the #NotATarget petition urging global leaders do more to ensure the rules of war are upheld and civilians are protected in armed conflicts.

With more than 10,500 signatures, the petitioners demand that world leaders do more to protect people trapped in conflicts, with a particular focus on those living in urban areas, children, targets of sexual violence, forcibly displaced people, humanitarian workers and health workers.

The petition will be presented to the Secretary-General during the high-level General Assembly, which opens on 12 September this year.

The UN General Assembly designated 19 August as World Humanitarian Day in 2008, selecting the date to coincide with the anniversary of the deadly 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.

Originally coined by Medecins Sans Frontieres in 2015, the #NotATarget hashtag is being used in the World Humanitarian Day digital campaign this year to call for action on behalf of all civilians trapped in conflicts.

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Yemen's 'man-made catastrophe' is ravaging country, senior UN officials tell Security Council

18 August 2017  Warning about escalating suffering in Yemen's man-made catastrophe, senior United Nations officials today addressed the Security Council, calling on the international community to push for a political solution to the more than two-year-old conflict.

"Death looms for Yemenis by air, land and sea," Special Envoy of the Secretary-General to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed told the 15-member Council in New York.

Reiterating one of the key points from Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Relief Coordinator, Stephen O'Brien, who addressed the Council just moment earlier, Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed said that that diseases and epidemics are at unprecedented levels in Yemen.

"Those who survived cholera will continue to suffer the consequences of 'political cholera' that infects Yemen and continues to obstruct the road towards peace," added Mr. Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

He noted that while the international community is united in its support of a peaceful solution, certain parties to the conflict take advantage of internal divisions and focus on personal interests.

"What is missing at this point is for the parties to the conflict, without any delays, excuses or procrastination, to demonstrate their intention to end the war and put the national interest above ay personal gains," the UN envoy said.

Every day spent without serious action means more destruction and death, he said, as well as the spread of terrorist groups  such as the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula  and "uncontrolled migration" through the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, where more than 41 migrants died in early August after being forced to abandon their boats and jump.

Before the conflict, Yemen had been making progress, with fewer people hungry and rising school enrolment, Mr. O'Brien said in his statement.

"All of his has not been sharply reversed," he said, noting that 17 million Yemenis are hungry, nearly 7 million facing famine, and about 16 million lack access to water or sanitation.

Mr. O'Brien highlighted several key challenges, including a funding shortage  the $2.3 billion Yemen Humanitarian Response Plan is only 39 per cent funded.

He also underscored the interference to movement of critical commercial and humanitarian supplies and staff.

"De facto authorities in Sana'a or local officials in areas under their control block, delay or otherwise interfere with humanitarian action," said Mr. O'Brien.

The humanitarian official urged the international community to ensure that all ports are open to civilian, including to commercial traffic.

He called for those Governments and individuals with influence to influence the fighting parties to respect the international humanitarian and human rights law and to strengthen accountability.

With 1.2 million public employees not paid regularly for months, he also urged that civil servant salaries be paid so that the basic services in the country do not collapse.

"This human tragedy is deliberate and wanton  it is political and, with will and with courage which are both in short supply, it is stoppable," he said, reiterating the UN's ongoing calls for a political solution to the conflict.

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US Defense Chief to Visit Jordan, Turkey, Ukraine

By Jeff Seldin August 18, 2017

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will travel to Jordan, Turkey and Ukraine next week for talks with the leaders of all three nations.

Pentagon officials said Friday that Mattis aims to reaffirm Washington's commitments to each of the countries.

Mattis will begin his trip by meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah as well as top defense officials. Jordan has been a key partner in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State terror group.

From Jordan, Mattis will head to Turkey for meetings with top officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"Secretary Mattis will emphasize the steadfast commitment of the United States to Turkey as a NATO ally and strategic partner, seek to collaborate on efforts to advance regional stability, and look for ways to help Turkey address its legitimate security concerns  including the fight against the PKK," the Pentagon said in a statement.

The PKK, also known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, has been leading an insurgency against the Turkish government since 1984. It is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. and many European nations.

In Kyiv, Mattis is expected to meet with Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak and President Petro Poroshenko.

His visit comes amid reports the Trump administration is considering providing lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed separatists.

"During these engagements, the secretary will reassure our Ukrainian partners that the U.S. remains firmly committed to the goal of restoring Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the Pentagon statement said.

The visits to Jordan and Ukraine will be Mattis' first as defense secretary.

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Top US General Commits to Work With Tokyo to Strengthen Missile Defense

By Carla Babb August 18, 2017

The top U.S. general and his Japanese counterpart have agreed to work together to strengthen missile defenses for Japan, as Tokyo announced that they will introduce the land-based Aegis Ashore system for additional protection against the North Korean missile threat.

General Joe Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a small group of reporters in Tokyo that his meetings with Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reaffirmed the "extraordinarily healthy military-to-military relationship" between Japan and the United States.

"I think this is probably about as important a place that I could be  in the wake of recent activity by Kim Jong Un, making sure our allies have no confusion at all about where we are in our overall policy [and] where we are with regards to the military dimension of that policy," Dunford said Friday.

Dunford was visiting Japan after talks with Chinese and South Korean leaders in Beijing and Seoul earlier in the week. He said he offered Abe some of the perspectives picked up during his time in China, while also focusing on the challenge of North Korea and the trilateral efforts that the U.S., Japanese and South Korean militaries needed to deal with the threat.

"I think it's important that allies and friends have complete transparency, so I wanted him to know the nature of my conversations in China," Dunford explained.

New defense system

The Aegis Ashore will provide an additional land-based missile defense system on the archipelago nation.

Japan's current ballistic missile defense system uses Aegis warships equipped with Standard Missile-3 interceptors that are used to stop missiles in the outer atmosphere. If those SM-3 interceptors miss, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 surface-to-air guided interceptor missiles can be launched from Japan to defend against missile attacks.

The U.S. is bound by treaty to defend Japan from outside attacks against the allied country.

Japan's Defense Ministry says it will seek funding in the next fiscal year to cover system-design costs, after expediting the decision to deploy the Aegis Ashore amid the latest series of ballistic missile launches by Pyongyang. North Korea test-launched two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July, each of which landed in Japan's exclusive economic zone.

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Trump Dismisses Strategist Bannon

By Steve Herman August 18, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday dismissed his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who from the beginning of the six-month-old tumultuous administration has been his most controversial adviser.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."

Bannon, who is credited with helping Trump get elected on his "America First" and "Make America Great Again" slogans, had clashed for months with other powerful West Wing figures.

Bannon, according to The New York Times, insisted the parting of ways was his idea and that he submitted his resignation to the president 11 days ago in preparation for an announcement at the start of this week. The announcement was delayed, however, in the wake of the violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Opposing factions

The West Wing of the White House, from the first day of the Trump administration, has been plagued by fighting between two camps.

Bannon led the faction that embraced Trump's populist and isolationist messaging. That pitted the former executive chairman of the far-right but influential Breitbart News against a more traditional cadre of Republicans who wanted to focus on improving the U.S. economy and boosting America's strength overseas  a group that Bannon derided as the "globalists."

Trump, not seen as ideological, let the two opposing factions battle it out.

"The Bannon wing has had significant policy successes but also was associated with President Trump's greater policy failures and communications missteps," Duke University political science professor Peter Feaver said.

Traders at the New York Stock Exchange loudly cheered the news of Bannon's dismissal, and stock prices on the exchange immediately rebounded.

Bannon was parodied on satirical American TV programs as a puppetmaster controlling Trump, or even as a towering Grim Reaper, the personification of death.

Criticism, praise

For many Democrats, Bannon was viewed as the one swaying Trump to his worst instincts.

"Bannon finally gone. Now he can march w/ the whole crowd: neo-Nazis, white supremacists, Klan while knowing it will still find favor in Oval" Office, tweeted U.S. Representative Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat, minutes after the top official's ouster was announced.

Trump, on Tuesday, had praised Bannon as "a good person," saying the strategist was not racist.

"The anti-globalist wing of the Republican Party will most certainly view Bannon's firing as a betrayal by Trump," political strategist Evan Siegfried predicted.

"I would not be surprised to see Breitbart ramp up attacks on White House officials like Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, General [H.R.] McMaster and, perhaps, even the president himself," said Seigfried, author of the book GOP GPS: How to Find the Millennials and Urban Voters the Republican Party Needs to Survive.

Cohn is the president's chief economic adviser; Powell is the deputy national security adviser for strategy; McMaster is the national security adviser.

"The GOP civil war is about to get much louder," Seigfried told VOA.

Bannon, a former investment banker, is widely expected to return to Breitbart News.

"If he goes back to Breitbart, he will have a very large megaphone that will amplify his voice," Feaver, a former National Security Council special adviser for strategic planning and institutional reform, told VOA. "But it is much harder to influence policy from the outside than it is from the inside. And when you're outside criticizing the administration, it sounds like your criticizing President Trump, and President Trump doesn't respond well to that."

Travel ban architect

Bannon was a key architect of the administration's travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority nations.

In an interview published Wednesday in The American Prospect magazine, Bannon cheered Trump's widely criticized remarks on the Charlottesville violence as a political plus for the president. He argued the president's response was enmeshing Democrats in identity politics, making it easier for the White House to pursue economic nationalism.

However, with the exception of the far right, there has been unanimous criticism of Trump's defense of white nationalists rallying against removal of a Confederate statue as a disaster for the administration and a possible inflection point that could cripple his presidency.

During the interview, Bannon said the United States was in an economic war with China and called for the country to be "maniacally focused on that."

He also said that "there is no military solution" to the nuclear crisis with North Korea.

That comment prompted a repudiation the following day from Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Bannon's effacing of Trump's own threats to Pyongyang may have been the final act of insubordination for both Chief of Staff Kelly, who is a former Marine Corps general, and the president himself.

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PUBLIC RELEASE: 18-AUG-2017

Yemen's Saudi-led coalition is responsible for the 'worst cholera outbreak in the world'

QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

The cholera outbreak in Yemen is overwhelmingly affecting rebel-controlled areas due to Saudi-led airstrikes and blockades, according to a letter by researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), published in The Lancet Global Health.

Their new analysis finds that eight out of ten of Yemen's cholera deaths occur in rebel-controlled areas.

The researchers combined WHO's latest cholera data with data that mapped areas of government and rebel control, and found that the cholera outbreak disproportionately affects areas controlled by Houthi rebels.

They found that 77.7 per cent of cholera cases (339,061 of 436,625) and 80.7 per cent of deaths from cholera (1,545 of 1,915) occurred in Houthi-controlled governorates, compared to 15.4 per cent of cases and 10.4 per cent of deaths in government-controlled governorates.

1.8 per cent of the population in Houthi-controlled areas have contracted cholera, compared to 1.0 per cent in government-controlled areas. 0.46 per cent of those who contracted cholera died in Houthi-controlled areas, compared to 0.30 per cent in government-controlled areas.

Jonathan Kennedy, Andrew Harmer and David McCoy from QMUL write: "Both sides have been accused of disregarding the wellbeing of civilians and breaching international humanitarian law. But the government and Saudi-led coalition that supports it command far greater resources. As a result, Houthi-controlled areas have been disproportionately affected by the conflict, which has created conditions conducive to the spread of cholera.

"Saudi-led airstrikes have destroyed vital infrastructure, including hospitals and public water systems, hit civilian areas, and displaced people into crowded and insanitary conditions. A Saudi-enforced blockade of imports has caused shortages of, among other things, food, medical supplies, fuel and chlorine, and restricted humanitarian access.

"As the Saudi-led coalition has played a key role in the collapse of health, water, and sanitation systems in rebel-controlled areas, it is bizarre that UNICEF recently published a press release welcoming Saudi Arabian 'generosity' after the Kingdom donated US$67 million to the cholera response in Yemen."

Jonathan Kennedy from QMUL added: "Saudi Arabia is an ally of the UK and USA. American and British companies supply Saudi Arabia with huge amounts of military equipment and their armed forces provide logistical support and intelligence. This backing has made the Saudi-led airstrikes and blockade possible, and therefore the UK and USA have played a crucial role in creating conditions conducive to the spread of cholera."

In June 2017, UNICEF and WHO released a statement declaring that Yemen is "facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world". While they acknowledged the outbreak was caused by the civil war that began in 2015, they did not suggest that one party is more responsible than another or that one side is more affected by the outbreak, stating "cholera has spread to almost every governorate".

The new analysis is published as the UN marks World Humanitarian Day, a yearly tribute to aid workers, and aimed to rally support for people affected by crises around the world. Yemen has been described as the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time.

###

For more information, please contact:

Joel Winston

Public Relations Manager - Medicine and Dentistry

Queen Mary University of London

Tel: +44 (0)207 882 7943

Mobile: +44 (0)7970 096 188

j.winston@qmul.ac.uk

Notes to the editor

* Cholera is a bacterial infection that is spread by water that contains contaminated faeces. It can be easily prevented where people have access to clean water and sanitation, and it can be easily treated with antibiotics and oral rehydration therapy.

* Letter: 'The political determinants of the cholera outbreak in Yemen'. Jonathan Kennedy, Andrew Harmer and David McCoy. The Lancet Global Health. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(17)30332-7

The article can be found here after embargo lifts: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(17)30332-7/fulltext?elsca1=tlxpr

About Queen Mary University of London

Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) is one of the UK's leading universities, and one of the largest institutions in the University of London, with 21,187 students from more than 155 countries.

A member of the Russell Group, we work across the humanities and social sciences, medicine and dentistry, and science and engineering, with inspirational teaching directly informed by our research. In the most recent national assessment of the quality of research, we were placed ninth in the UK (REF 2014).

As well as our main site at Mile End - which is home to one of the largest self-contained residential campuses in London - we have campuses at Whitechapel, Charterhouse Square, and West Smithfield dedicated to the study of medicine, and a base for legal studies at Lincoln's Inn Fields.

We have a rich history in London with roots in Europe's first public hospital, St Barts; England's first medical school, The London; one of the first colleges to provide higher education to women, Westfield College; and the Victorian philanthropic project, the People's Palace at Mile End.

Today, as well as retaining these close connections to our local community, we are known for our international collaborations in both teaching and research.

QMUL has an annual turnover of 350m, a research income worth 125m (2014/15), and generates employment and output worth 700m to the UK economy each year.

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US B-1B Strategic Bomber Test Fires First Long Range Anti-Ship Missile

Sputnik News

00:01 19.08.2017(updated 00:14 19.08.2017)

A US B-1B Lancer successfully tested a Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) in Southern California on Wednesday, the US Navy said in a Friday release. The LRASM a stealthy cruise missile that will replace the service's present anti-ship mainstay, the Harpoon missile.

Other uses for Lockheed Martin's 1,000-pound projectile include competing with Raytheon's Tomahawk cruise missile for services needing ground-launched weapons as well as giving the Joint Strike Missile, designed jointly by Raytheon and Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, a run for its money. The JSM was designed with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters in mind, hence the similarity in nomenclature, implying that F-35s globally may eventually carry the LRASM.

In May, an F/A-18 Super Hornet test-fired an LRASM, the National Interest reported. The first launch from a heavier B-1B this week marked a new milestone.

The Congressional Research Service explains that LRASM "provides a long-range, conventional air-to-surface, autonomous, precision-guided, standoff cruise missile able to attack a variety of fixed or re-locatable targets."

The missile conducted rather sophisticated maneuvers while cruising along its flight path. According to the US Navy, Wednesday's test run featured the missile "using inputs from the onboard multimodal sensor" to signal to the weapon to drop its flying altitude as it moved closer to its target. The missile is equipped with a "datalink to provide updates as the missile approaches the target area," CRS notes.

"Today marks a significant step towards providing the operational community with a leap in critical surface warfare capability by next year," said Capt. Todd Huber, LRASM program director, said.

The weapon "dovetails with the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region and may prove invaluable in any maritime conflict as potential adversaries continue to equip their naval vessels with highly advanced weapons systems," the Congressional Research Service noted in a 2014 research brief.

 Sputnik

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US, South Korea Gear Up for War Games, Threatening Pyongyang

19 August 2017 Telesur

The exercises will "further drive the situation on the Korean Peninsula into a catastrophe," North Korea says. The United States is set to launch its annual joint military exercises with South Korea Monday, a move that threatens North Korea, or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, DPRK, as it denounced the exercises as a "rehearsal for war."

The U.S.-South Korean exercise, called Ulchi-Freedom Guardian, will be the first large-scale military exercise between the allies since the DPRK successfully tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and threatened to fire intermediate range ballistic missiles close to Guam earlier this month.

The Aug. 21-31 exercises will involve 17,500 U.S. troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers. The U.S. military describes the simulation software behind the drills as "state-of-the-art wargaming computer simulations" aimed at honing joint decision-making, planning and improving command operations. DPRK media outlet Korean Central News Agency, KCNA, warned in a brief statement that the exercises would "further drive the situation on the Korean Peninsula into a catastrophe."

Even though no one wants it, the war cant be stopped with any kind of force if flame sparks due to a minor incident, it said. The problem is that if the Second Korean War occurs, it will only be turned into a nuclear war.

Washington began ratcheting up threats against the DPRK after it achieved rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. U.S. President Donald Trump warned that the DPRK would face "fire and fury" if it threatened the United States. In response, the DPRK threatened to fire missiles towards the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam. The DPRK later said it was holding off the plan, while it waited to see what Washington would do next.

There are calls in both the United States and South Korea to pause or downsize the joint military exercises to reduce current tensions. Some hope it will potentially curb conflict with Pyongyang.

David Wright, a U.S. analyst from the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an emailed statement that the United States should postpone or significantly restructure the exercises to reduce the risk of military confrontation. Smart military planning means ensuring that exercises do not inflame an already tense situation, Wright said.

Russia and China, the DPRK's main ally and trading partner, have also urged the United States and South Korea to scrap the drills. However, Washington has not backed down. "My advice to our leadership is that we not dial back our exercises," said Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff on Thursday in Beijing. "The exercises are very important to maintaining the ability of the alliance to defend itself."

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Nigerian president to return from medical vacation

Xinhua | 2017-08-19

LAGOS, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will arrive in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, on Saturday, after receiving medical attention in London, a statement from the presidency said.

Presidential spokesperson Femi Adesina said the Nigerian leader is expected to speak to citizens in a broadcast by 7 a.m. Monday.

The president left the country on May 7 after handing over power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has functioned as acting president since then.

The Nigerian leader received the latest medical attention two months after his return from a similar medical vacation, the same day he received 82 Chibok Girls freed by Boko Haram.

While in London, Buhari was visited by a number of Nigerian officials, beginning with the vice-president, who first hinted Nigerians about the president's massive recovery.

Buhari had also told his visitors that there was tremendous improvement in his health, but he has learned to obey doctor's orders, rather than be the one issuing the orders.

"I feel I could go home, but the doctors are in charge. I've now learned to obey orders, rather than be obeyed," he told his visiting media team.

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(Photo/ycwb.com)

Postpartum care centers, an emerging industry in China, are now experiencing rapid expansion thanks to the country's comprehensive implementation of the universal two-child policy as well as a the current baby boom among couples born during 1980s and 1990s.

The services of these postpartum care centers are generally divided into two - one for mothers and the other for babies. Prices normally range from approximately 20,000 to hundreds of thousands of RMB. However, the big price gap does not suggest a sharp difference in service content.

These postpartum care centers, though charging high prices, are still in great demand in many Chinese cities. However, as an emerging industry, they have not yet been systematically regulated and monitored by the authorities.

A large proportion of postpartum care centers are registered as household management companies, an investigation by ycwb.com found. But the operations of business places where food and accommodation are provided for puerperae do not obviously fall into the category of household management.

An insider said related departments should establish monitoring systems for the industry.

"As an emerging market, it has bright prospects," said obstetrician, Liu Yanpin, from a hospital in Dongguan, southern China's Guangdong province. But she added that related departments must enhance supervision of the industry, especially fire safety and sanitation.

Many postpartum care center owners have been bragging about their medical background, food served, postnatal recovery or baby care services. A postpartum care center in Shenzhen claimed all of its employees once worked in medical institutions. "Our staff have all been certificated as nurses," it said.

However, Shenzhen Municipality Health and Family Planning Commission responded by stating that postpartum care centers are not medical establishments, and are not under the commission's supervision.

According to a postpartum care center in Zhuhai, the emergence of the industry in fact originated from social demand. With the implementation of the two-child policy, many couples have decided to have a second child.

Now supply on the market is falling short of demand, and over 60 percent of customers are planning to have their second child. Some customers have to make appointment at least half a year in advance of their due date of delivery.
DoD Initiates Process to Elevate U.S. Cyber Command to Unified Combatant Command

By Jim Garamone and Lisa Ferdinando DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2017  At the direction of the president, the Defense Department today initiated the process to elevate U.S. Cyber Command to a unified combatant command.

"This new unified combatant command will strengthen our cyberspace operations and create more opportunities to improve our nation's defense," President Donald J. Trump said in a written statement.

The elevation of the command demonstrates the increased U.S. resolve against cyberspace threats and will help reassure allies and partners and deter adversaries, the statement said. The elevation also will help to streamline command and control of time-sensitive cyberspace operations by consolidating them under a single commander with authorities commensurate with the importance of those operations and will ensure that critical cyberspace operations are adequately funded, the statement said.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is examining the possibility of separating U.S. Cyber Command from the National Security Agency, and is to announce his recommendations at a later date.

Growing Mission

The decision to elevate U.S. Cyber Command is consistent with Mattis' recommendation and the requirements of the fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, Kenneth P. Rapuano, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security, told reporters at the Pentagon today.

"The decision is a welcome and necessary one that ensures that the nation is best positioned to address the increasing threats in cyberspace," he added.

Cybercom's elevation from its previous subunified command status demonstrates the growing centrality of cyberspace to U.S. national security, Rapuano said, adding that the move signals the U.S. resolve to "embrace the changing nature of warfare and maintain U.S. military superiority across all domains and phases of conflict."

Cybercom was established in 2009 in response to a clear need to match and exceed enemies seeking to use the cyber realm to attack the United States and its allies. The command is based at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, with the National Security Agency. Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers is the commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency director. The president has directed Mattis to recommend a commander for U.S. Cyber Command, and Rogers for now remains in the dual-hatted role, Rapuano said.

More Strategic Role

Since its establishment, Cybercom has grown significantly, consistent with DoD's cyber strategy and reflective of major increases in investments in capabilities and infrastructure, Rapuano said. The command reached full operational capability Oct. 31, 2010, but it is still growing and evolving. The command is concentrating on building its Cyber Mission Force, which should be complete by the end of fiscal year 2018, he said.

The force is expected to consist of almost 6,200 personnel organized into 133 teams. All of the teams have already reached initial operational capability, and many are actively conducting operations. The force incorporates reserve component personnel and leverages key cyber talent from the civilian sector.

"This decision means that Cyber Command will play an even more strategic role in synchronizing cyber forces and training, conducting and coordinating military cyberspace operations, and advocating for and prioritizing cyber investments within the department," Rapuano said.

Cybercom already has been performing many responsibilities of a unified combatant command. The elevation also raises the stature of the commander of Cyber Command to a peer level with the other unified combatant command commanders, allowing the Cybercom commander to report directly to the secretary of defense, Rapuano pointed out.

The new command will be the central point of contact for resources for the department's operations in the cyber domain and will serve to synchronize cyber forces under a single manager. The commander will also ensure U.S. forces will be interoperable.

"This decision is a significant step in the department's continued efforts to build its cyber capabilities, enabling Cyber Command to provide real, meaningful capabilities as a command on par with the other geographic and functional combat commands," Rapuano said.

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Newly activated Guard unit to bolster Army Cyber forces

By Joe Lacdan, Army News Service August 18, 2017

FORT GEORGE G. MEADE, Md. -- The newly formed, full-time Army National Guard cyber unit, Task Force Echo, activated under control of Army Cyber this week. The event marked the largest mobilization of reserve-component forces for a cyber unit in support of U.S. Cyber Command.

TF Echo consists of 138 National Guard members from seven states and highlights the total Army's capability and focus to support cyber operations and carry out defense of the Army network.

"This is truly an important formation as we take a look at what we anticipate will be a total force mission," said Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, commander of Army Cyber Command during a transition-of-authority ceremony Tuesday morning. "The Soldiers of the 169th Cyber Protection Team and Task Force Echo will bring unique and diverse talents to this increasingly complex phase."

The Guard recruited Soldiers from California, Georgia, Michigan, Indiana, Utah, Ohio and Virginia for their skills and experience in systems and cybersecurity. The Soldiers were mobilized for 400 days and will be integrated into the Maryland National Guard during their active duty.

The TF Echo Soldiers are drawn from a wide palette of civilian sector skillsets that include experience in government cybersecurity to expertise in information technology. The Soldiers range in rank from junior enlisted to warrant officers and field grade officers. TF Echo will provide critical support for U.S. Cyber Command to carry out cyberspace operations against adversaries.

TF Echo takes over and dramatically expands the role originally pioneered by 169th Cyber Protection Team: to engineer, operate and maintain critical network infrastructure.

"This is a large and concerted effort to gather forces from a wider area," said Col. Adam Volant, Task Force Echo commander.

Since the first National Guard members first began arriving in April, they have participated in training so secretive their commander could not delve into specifics. The Soldiers of TF Echo first mobilized through Fort Bragg, North Carolina, before arriving at Fort Meade. Members of the 169th Cyber Protection Team spent four months training TF Echo members before the 169th's Soldiers returned to their home units. Volant said the collection of Soldiers brings closer an initiative Army leaders have been pushing for.

"It would be emblematic of what we've talked about for a long time, but is really difficult to achieve: this idea of total force," Volant said. "We are military trained, but we also bring an abundant amount of experience from the private sector, from government (and) from academia. The Soldiers in my formation are really information technology professionals. They work for major defense companies. They work for the government. They work for all the major brands that do technology and cyber. We're drawing upon those sets of experiences in bringing them into a military environment to weigh upon the problems presented here."

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Joshua Adams served as a senior principal engineer for a software communications company before coming aboard TF Echo and has 15 years of experience in the Signal Corps. First Lt. Margo Adams acts as a quality engineer at a major aerospace defense company when not on active duty. Another TF Echo member, Capt. Steve Whipkey, has nine years of information technology experience and currently works as a senior security specialist for an electric utility company in Washington, D.C.

Volant said the Guard faced great difficulty in finding the right Soldiers with the necessary credentials, experience and training. A meticulous screening process was used to select the Soldiers for TF Echo.

"Our Soldiers come from a professional arena in which they understand cyber at some level or certainly understand IT," Volant said. "But the reality is, in a military cyber defensive or cyberspace operations -- (it's) much different. It's not something that they're going to see in their regular job. So they get an exposure and a professional opportunity to develop those skills and learn new things I think are extremely valuable."

About 40 private industry companies had representatives in attendance during Tuesday's change-of-authority ceremony, Volant said. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Army National Guard director Lt. Gen. Timothy Kadavy, and adjutant general of Virginia Maj. Gen. Timothy Williams also attended.

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

Colonel Rob Manning, Director, Defense Press Office; Kenneth P. Rapuano, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security August 18, 2017

Department of Defense Off-Camera Press Briefing on Elevation of Cyber Command

COLONEL ROB MANNING: Good morning and thanks for coming. I am COL Rob Manning, director of press operations here at the Department of Defense.

As you may be aware, this morning the President announced his decision to elevate U.S.

Cyber Command to a Unified Combatant Command. This decision reflects the agility of the Department of Defense to address the changing character of threats in today's global security environment  specifically in the cyber domain.

Today's gaggle will focus only on the importance and impact of the President's decision to elevate CYBER Command to a Unified Combatant Command; which will strengthen our cyberspace operations and create more opportunities to improve our Nation's defense.

It's my honor to introduce the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security, Mr. Ken Rapuano. He has extensive experience in the areas of national security and homeland security. His bio is located on defense.gov.

He will begin with brief opening comments and then take a few questions. We are limited on time this morning, so thanks in advance for your understanding. With that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Rapuano.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY KENNETH RAPUANO: Great. Thanks, Colonel Manning, and good morning to all of you.

Today, the president announced his decision to elevate U.S. Cyber Command as a unified combatant command. His decision is consistent with the Secretary of Defense's recommendation and the requirements of the National Defense Authorization Act of F.Y. 2017.

The decision is a welcome and necessary one that ensures that the nation is best positioned to address the increasing threats in cyberspace. It reflects two factors: first, the maturity of Cyber Command itself, and second, the Department of Defense's long-term commitment to cyberspace as a warfighting domain.

The elevation from its previous sub-unified command status also demonstrates the growing centrality of cyberspace to U.S. national security and signals our resolve to embrace the changing nature of warfare and maintain U.S. military superiority across all domains and phases of conflict.

Since its establishment in 2009, Cyber Command has grown significantly, consistent with the Department of Defense's cyber strategy. This growth and maturation are reflective of major increases in investments in capabilities and infrastructure, and of the focused efforts to build out the cyber mission force, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of F.Y. 2018.

The decision means that Cyber Command will play an even more strategic role in synchronizing cyber forces and training, conducting and coordinating military cyberspace operations, and advocating for and prioritizing cyber investments within the department.

It will also raise the stature of the commander of Cyber Command to a peer level with the other combatant commanders, allowing him to report directly to the Secretary of Defense.

This decision is a significant step in the department's continued efforts to build its cyber capabilities, enabling Cyber Command to provide real, meaningful capabilities as a command on par with the other geographic and functional combatant commands.

For now, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command will also remain director of the National Security Agency. Any decision to split the dual-hat leadership structure in the future would first ensure the continued synergy and the advancement of each organization's mission, consistent with Section 1642 of the F.Y. '17 NDAA.

And now, I'll open it up to your questions.

COL. MANNING: And we'll go with Reuters first.

Q: Would you explain, maybe, in layman's terms, if there have been an increase in authorities for Cyber Command with the elevation? And, secondly, why wasn't the split simultaneous with the elevation? Why the delay?

COL. MANNING: And please identify your name and -- state your name and media outlet, as well.

Q: Idrees from Reuters.

SEC. RAPUANO: And the second question was?

Q: Why wasn't the split made as well? Why just the elevation? I mean, what's the reasoning for that?

SEC. RAPUANO: So, to your first question on the authorities, what -- what the elevation from a sub-unified to a combatant -- unified combatant command does is it consolidates the authorities in terms of the direct synchronization of resources, training, as well as the operational planning and execution. It's particularly relevant for unique, time-sensitive operations.

Q: And then, the splitting?

SEC. RAPUANO: The splitting -- the decision on the split, as I noted in my statement, is -- is essentially that we need to meet the requirements of Section 1642, which stipulates, essentially, that the mission capabilities of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency cannot be negatively impacted by the separation.

COL. MANNING: Jamie McIntyre, Washington Examiner?

Q: Yes, just to follow up, because I'm -- so just explain in simple terms. So who is the U.S. cyber commander now? It's the same person who's the NSA --

SEC. RAPUANO: Admiral Rogers is what we call the dual-hatted cyber commander, which is --

Q: Is that a four-star position now?

SEC. RAPUANO: -- yes. It is a four star.

Q: And so -- so, in the -- in the future, there'll be a separate four-star cyber commander --

SEC. RAPUANO: That's correct.

Q: -- but that hasn't happened yet?

SEC. RAPUANO: That's correct.

Q: I just wanted to be clear about it. Sorry about that. Okay~.

Q: Tom Watkins, AFP. Sorry if you've already explained this, but could you just -- for me, I'm -- I didn't quite understand. What is the ongoing role of the NSA in this -- in this new command? So is it -- is it subservient to NSA? Is it still part of NSA?

SEC. RAPUANO: So -- so the dual-hat command of Cyber Command and NSA will continue after the nomination and confirmation of the commander of the new unified Cyber Command. It will continue until that point at which the secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff determine that the conditions of Section 1642 of the 2017 NDAA have been met.

And, essentially, those are to ensure that the mission capabilities of both organizations, after separation, will -- will not be negatively impacted.

Q: And how long will it take for that separation to be achieved?

SEC. RAPUANO: Well, the separation decision has not been made yet, and that's going to be based, again, when the -- when -- on when the secretary and the chairman come to the conclusion that -- that the conditions have been met.

Q: So, there's no timeline for when -- (inaudible)?

SEC. RAPUANO: There's not an explicit timeline for that, correct.

Q: Thanks. Patrick Tucker from Defense One. Just to clarify, Mike Rogers will, now, continue to be head of both, then he'll go and be the head of NSA, and there's going to be a nomination for a new officer to be head of Cyber Command? Or Mike Rogers, eventually, after the split, will stay the head of Cyber Command and there'll be a nomination for a person to head NSA?

SEC. RAPUANO: So here's how it will work. In -- the president has directed the Secretary of Defense to recommend a flag or general officer as the nominee for the president's decision, to be confirmed by the Senate. Upon confirmation by the Senate, that will be the new unified combatant commander.

The decision on that individual is with the secretary right now and has not been made yet. That individual will be the -- will be the dual-hatted commander, at the outset, of Cyber Command and NSA.

At that point at which, in the future, the secretary and the chairman have come to the conclusion that the criteria have been met with regard to the separation of the dual hat, meaning individual commanders for each -- Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, only at that point, when they've come to the conclusion that certified that the conditions of Section 1642 have been met, will that happen -- or would that happen.

Q: There's no timeline on the actual nomination?

SEC. RAPUANO: There is not a timeline on separation, and there is not an explicit timeline on the nomination, except the president has already directed the Secretary of Defense to provide him a recommendation on the nominee.

(CROSSTALK)

COL. MANNING: We're going to go to Lucas Tomlinson from Fox. And then, Courtney, you're next.

Q: How does this change prevent Russia from hacking U.S. elections? (Laughter.)

SEC. RAPUANO: So this change is not a response to any individual incident. It really is based on a decision that was made at the establishment of the sub-unified command of Cyber Command, back in 2009, that this is a new sphere of warfare. And we've seen a steady increase and escalation in cyber incidents around the world.

What the elevation does, again, is it brings the commander of Cyber Command to a peer level with the other unified combatant commands. You have greater unity of effort and unity of command.

So I think all of you are -- who are familiar with the combatant command structure appreciate the significance of moving from a sub-unified to a unified command.

COL. MANNING: Courtney, NBC.

Q: I think it might be fair to say that none of us understand the leadership, (inaudible). So can -- can you just -- is -- is Mike Rogers -- he's staying on until someone new is -- is nominated and confirmed? Is he out now?

SEC. RAPUANO: No, Mike -- Admiral Rogers has the total confidence of Secretary Mattis. He is the commander the sub-unified command.

Q: So there's a new four-star being nominated to take over CYBERCOM, Mike Rogers stays on as the head of NSA, then? No?

SEC. RAPUANO: The decision -- the decision on who the secretary will recommend to the president as the commander of the new unified command has not been made yet.

Q: So it could be Mike Rogers that's nominated to be the new unified command, and then somebody else would come in and take NSA?

SEC. RAPUANO: Again, the separation has not occurred, in terms of the dual hat. The dual hat will continue after confirmation -- nomination and confirmation of the new commander of Cyber Command.

So it will remain a dual-hatted command. The commander will be commander Cyber Command as well as an NSA until a decision is made with regard to separating the dual hat arrangement.

Q: Okay. And I still don't quite understand how, if they're saying, as a -- so now, is -- CYBERCOM, being a sub-unified command, means that it is now elevated above NSA in the pecking order.

But NSA is a -- I don't -- I don't -- I don't understand the -- how everything is falling, now, because NSA is part of the I.C., right? So CYBERCOM is a -- is a unified command, now -- effective immediately, right? Is it, like, effective today?

(CROSSTALK)

SEC. RAPUANO: So it goes -- it goes into effect upon nomination and confirmation of the commander of the unified command.

Q: Upon confirmation.

SEC. RAPUANO: Confirmation, that's correct -- upon confirmation. And the dual hat will remain -- and -- and NSA, as a combat support agency, as you know, is -- is different from a combatant command. And the reporting structure for NSA will remain the same, in terms of, in the intelligence community, reporting to the -- the DNI.

Q: I guess the part that I don't -- I still don't understand is, how is it, if you're elevating CYBERCOM to a combatant command -- how is it that they are not split?

Like, I -- I guess I don't -- I don't understand -- I -- the -- where everything is falling just -- and maybe everyone understands. If you do, then I'll just shut up, but --

SEC. RAPUANO: So, the command structure essentially stays the same, with the exception of you're elevating the level of Cyber Command in the sense of now it -- now it's a unified command. It's at the peer level with all of the other functional combatant commands. And the dual-hat command of NSA remains as well.

Q: What happens to Admiral Rogers? What happens to Admiral Rogers?

Q: It sounds like you're saying he's canned. The president has asked for a new nomination for someone to replace him in both roles.

SEC. RAPUANO: The president has simply asked for the secretary's recommendation on a nomination. The decision on who that individual will be has not been made. It could be anyone --

Q: But that means --

SEC. RAPUANO: -- at the general or flag officer level.

Q: And it could -- and it could be Admiral Rogers?

(CROSSTALK)

SEC. RAPUANO: Hold on, hold on. Let's ask questions in order, please.

Q: So it could be Rogers, and he could be re-nominated and then have to go through confirmation, and then he would take over CYBERCOM?

SEC. RAPUANO: That's correct. If it -- if it were -- if it were the current commander of the sub-unified command, that individual would need to be confirmed as the commander of the unified command.

COL. MANNING: Thank you, Courtney.

Q: Thank you.

Q: So, this -- this study period for possible separation is -- I understand that that's a 60-day review. Is that accurate?

SEC. RAPUANO: No, it's -- there -- there isn't a limitation on the duration of the assessment. That will be an ongoing process in which the secretary will confer with the chairman as to if and when those conditions in 1642 have been met.

Q: Okay, but the -- but the -- but you want this done by F.Y. 2018. So essentially this could be going on for a year or more before the two are separated?

SEC. RAPUANO: There's not a time limit.

Q: There's not a time limit. Okay. What -- what's bringing this about? Is it because the 133 teams are -- are ready to go, or --

SEC. RAPUANO: The 133 teams will be -- will reach -- will be fully complete, as I note in my statement, by the end of F.Y. '18.

What this does represent is just the natural next step. Cyber Command, as a sub-unified command, has reached the level of maturation and capability where it -- the next natural step is to elevate it to a unified command, again, to enhance the unity of command and unity of effort in our efforts in the cyber sphere.

COL. MANNING: So we've got time for a few more questions. We're going to go with Mr. Bob Burns.

Q: Thank you, sir.

Just a clarification to make sure I understood correctly one of the things you said on this topic of leadership of the new command. Did you say that until the new commander of the unified command is confirmed by the Senate, the elevation will not happen, it will remain a sub-unified command?

SEC. RAPUANO: The elevation will not be fully effected until the nomination and confirmation of the commander of the new unified command.

Q: So nothing really changes today or tomorrow then?

SEC. RAPUANO: Well, the process starts -- starts today with the president's decision, and it will be effected in terms of the unified command upon the nomination and confirmation of the unified -- the new unified commander.

Q: Thank you.

COL. MANNING: Nancy Yousef, Wall Street Journal.

Q: Thank you. You said the process starts today. Does that mean the process under review? I think -- what I'm having a hard time understanding is you said that this was a natural next step. And my question is, what would have been the cost of not making this change until all the things that were required in this Section 1642 had been sorted out? Why do you need to make this step rather than wait until all the issues related to this are sorted out? What is the benefit?

SEC. RAPUANO: Well, the separation and elevation are two very distinctly different issues. The elevation is the stature of the command and the ability to operate in a more unified effort with -- with focus.

The separation question -- the dual-hat status was -- was always designed to be a temporary decision, in the sense that, at the outset, when the sub-unified command was established, there were the unique levels of expertise and experience within NSA for -- which it was critical for the sub-unified command of Cyber Command to leverage.

So that has been a very symbiotic relationship, but there will come a point where they should, and will, be separated. The issue of focus is just to ensure that that decision is not made until it is clear and there is confidence that those two -- neither of those two commands will have negative mission impact by virtue of the -- of the separation.

Q: I guess what I'm asking is, doesn't it cloud it more to actually have this elevation when that question hasn't been answered about whether it has a negative impact? I mean, you already have an impact by elevating. So that's what I'm having a hard time understanding.

(CROSSTALK)

SEC. RAPUANO: Okay. Elevation -- the elevation does not change the structure and process of -- of the dual-hat status.

Q: (Inaudible) give Cyber Command more say with, for example, (CENTCOM ?) or --

(CROSSTALK)

SEC. RAPUANO: Correct. Correct. It elevates the stature of Cyber Command. It doesn't negate, or any -- in any other way undermine, the NSA component of that dual command status.

COL. MANNING: Okay. Appreciate your interest in this announcement. Louis Martinez, ABC, you have the final question.

Q: Yes, sir.

There had been some discussion about making the NSA director a civilian position. How will that be affected by this, and is that -- (off mic)?

SEC. RAPUANO: That's a decision that has -- has not been made. So it may be under consideration, but -- but that's not -- that's not a decision, at least from my awareness --

Q: Currently, no?

(CROSSTALK)

SEC. RAPUANO -- it's not part of this. That's correct.

COL. MANNING: Mr. Rapuano, thanks again for your time and your expertise.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming today. I've got one announcement for you as we farewell Mr. Rapuano.

SEC. RAPUANO: Thank you. My pleasure.

COL. MANNING: Absolutely.

If you have any additional questions, Ms. Heather Babb is the desk officer, and she can take your queries.



(CROSSTALK)

COL. MANNING: Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Okay, again, I appreciate your patience, today, with our special topic gaggle.

And, on this Friday -- or Friday afternoon, now, I've got an update I'd like to share with you on the secretary's upcoming travel to the Middle East and Europe.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis will depart on Saturday, August 19th, -- tomorrow, to reaffirm the enduring U.S. commitment to strategic partnerships in the Middle East and Europe.

Secretary Mattis will begin his engagements in Jordan on Monday, August 21st, meeting with His Majesty King Abdullah II and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The secretary will express U.S. appreciation for Jordanian efforts to combat ISIS and reaffirm U.S. commitment to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jordan in facing regional and global challenges. This is the secretary's first trip to Jordan during his tenure.

On Wednesday, August 23, Secretary Mattis visits Turkey to meet with the minister of national defense, the minister of foreign affairs and President Erdogan.

Secretary Mattis will emphasize the steadfast commitment of the United States to Turkey as a NATO ally and strategic partner, seek to collaborate on efforts to advance regional stability and look for ways to help Turkey address its legitimate security concerns, including the fight against the PKK.

The secretary concludes his trip on Thursday, August 24th, with his first visit as secretary of defense to Kiev, Ukraine. There, he will meet with the minister of defense and President Poroshenko.

During these engagements, the secretary will reassure our Ukrainian partners that the U.S. remains firmly committed to the goal of restoring Ukraine sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as strengthening the strategic defense partnerships between our two countries.

Again, and you'll see a release on this trip. If it hasn't gone out already, it will go out shortly.

Again, I appreciate you coming today. I hope you have a great and safe weekend

https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1283518/

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Spanish Police Make 4th Arrest Following Terror Attacks

By VOA News August 18, 2017

Catalan police have arrested a fourth man in connection with two terrorist attacks in the Barcelona region Thursday that left at least 14 people dead and dozens more injured.

Police announced the arrest on Twitter Friday, but gave no further details.

Police said they are still searching for the brother of one of the men already in police custody, but they do not know whether he was the driver of the van.

"We are looking for Moussa Oukabir, but for the moment we don't know whether he was the driver of the van," police announced.

The man's brother, Driss Oukabir, was arrested Thursday about 100 kilometers north of Barcelona, in the town of Ripoll.

The mayhem began Thursday in Barcelona when a terrorist used a van to run over innocent pedestrians on Las Ramblas boulevard, killing 14 people and injuring 100 others.

The van driver escaped on foot and is still being sought. Police arrested two people Thursday  a Moroccan and a Spaniard  but it was not immediately clear how they are connected with the attack. A third person was arrested Friday in the northern Catalan town of Ripoll, Catalonia Interior Minister Joaquim Forn said.

In a similar attack hours later in Cambrils, a resort south of Barcelona, an automobile careened into pedestrians and a police vehicle. Police killed the five attackers, who they said also carried explosive belts, which were later found to be fake. One woman died Friday from injuries in that attack. Five other civilians and a police officer were injured.

Forn said Friday the Cambrils attack "follows the same trail" as the attack in Barcelona, he added, "There is a connection," without giving further details.

"They are assassins, criminals who won't terrorize us. All of Spain is Barcelona," Spain's royal family said in statement.

Police believe the attacks also are connected to an explosion Wednesday in a house in Catalonia that killed one person. Authorities suspect the people in the house were building an explosive device to be used in a terrorist attack.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the deadly Barcelona rampage.

Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy called the van attack "jihadist terrorism."

"Today, the fight against terrorism is the principal priority for free and open societies like ours. It is a global threat and the response has to be global," Rajoy told reporters.

Thousands observed a minute of silence Friday in Barcelona's main square for the victims of the two vehicular attacks.

Spain's king and prime minister attended the observance at Barcelona's Placa de Catalunya. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also declared three days of national mourning.

Victims from across Europe, US

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Friday that 26 French citizens were among those injured in Barcelona. He said 11 are in serious condition. French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb, however, said in a radio interview that "the number of those who have been seriously injured may perhaps be even higher at around 17."

Le Drian said in a statement that he will be in Barcelona on Friday "to visit the French victims of this cowardly act and affirm France's support to the Spanish people and authorities."

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed that at least one American citizen was killed in the attacks, though he noted that Washington is "still confirming the deaths and injuries."

"We offer our thoughts and prayers to their families," Tillerson said.

The State Department later confirmed that another American was injured in the attack, but did not release personal details.

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said two Italians were killed in the van attack.

"Italy remembers Bruno Gulotta and Luca Russo and gathers tight around their families. Freedom will conquer the barbarianism of terrorism," he said.

World leaders pledge unity, resolve

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Twitter the U.S. "will do whatever is necessary to help" Spain, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned, "Terrorists around the world should know, the United States and our allies are resolved to find you and bring you to justice."

US Officials Condemn Barcelona Van Attack, Offer Assistance to Spain

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking in Berlin, said "These murderous attacks have once again showed us the total hatred of humanity with which Islamist terrorism acts." She said, "We will not allow these murderers to make us depart from our path, from our way of life."

French President Emmanuel Macron said his thoughts were with the victims of the attack, and that France remains "united and determined." In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was dark Thursday night to pay tribute to the victims.

Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said he was "horrified by reports from Barcelona."

Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen said Europe has "again been attacked by terror."

"So long as the terrorists underestimate the spirit of the societies they seek to undermine, they will lose," Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said about Barcelona.

The yellow and red colors of the Spanish flag lit up Tel Aviv's City Hall Thursday night, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the civilized world must fight terrorism together and defeat it.

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US Affirms Readiness to Defend Itself, Allies Against N. Korea

By Nike Ching August 17, 2017

U.S. officials said the United States remains unwavering in its commitment to Asian allies in the wake of threats from North Korea, while indicating diplomacy "has to be backed by a strong military consequence."

During a visit to Japan, the top U.S. general restated Washington's "ironclad commitment" to the security of its closest ally in Asia.

Joseph Dunford, Charmain of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Japan's Chief of Staff of Self-Defense Forces, Admiral Katsutoshi Kawano Friday "I think we made it clear to North Korea and anyone else in the region that an attack on one is an attack on both of us."

"And that's very, very important for deterrence," said Dunford, who visited South Korea and China before arriving in Japan.

Also Friday, Dunford said during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo that the military level of the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Japan was "rock-solid."

At that meeting Abe once again expressed his appreciation to U.S. President Donald Trump for stating all options were "on the table" in regard to North Korean hostility.

Tokyo remains on alert as fears about North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons programs have increased in recent weeks, after Pyongyang threatened to fire missiles towards the Pacific U.S. territory of Guam, which would have flown over Japan.

Talks in Washington

In U.S.-Japan defense and diplomatic talks in Washington Thursday, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Washington would take immediate and specific actions to take down any missile launched by North Korea toward the territory of the U.S. or its allies.

Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in "two-plus-two" meetings with Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera and Foreign Minister Taro Kono, reaffirmed Washington's commitment to protecting Tokyo as Pyongyang intensifies its threats.

"Together, we will deter and, if necessary, defeat any threat. Any initiation of hostilities will be met with an effective and overwhelming response. Our two nations will demonstrate the strength of our alliance by continuing those bilateral activities and by enhancing cooperation with the Republic of Korea," said Mattis.

Military option 'prudent'

As the top U.S. diplomat, Tillerson said Washington would continue diplomatic efforts "first and foremost," but "it is only prudent" that military action remains a choice.

"Obviously, any diplomatic effort in any situation where you have this level of threat that we're confronted with  a threat of proportions that none of us like to contemplate  has to be backed by a strong military consequence if North Korea chooses wrongly," Tillerson said.

The meetings came amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula after North Korea threatened to fire missiles into the waters close to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. The missiles would have to fly over Japan to reach their target, worrying Tokyo that warheads or missile debris could fall on its territory.

On Wednesday, two Japanese F-15 jet fighters conducted air maneuvers with two U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers over the southwestern part of the Korean Peninsula. The exercise was meant to improve interoperability and bolster combat skills, Japan's Air Self Defense Force said in a news release.

Japan's Kono said talks with Pyongyang would not be possible until it stopped its nuclear provocation.

"There's no sense to dialogue for the sake of dialogue," Kono said via a translator, adding that "the international community will continue to apply maximum pressure to North Korea."

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North Korea to UN: Nuclear program non-negotiable

Iran Press TV

Fri Aug 18, 2017 12:20AM

North Korea has informed the United Nations that its nuclear program is not negotiable as long as the United States continues its "hostile policy and nuclear threat" toward Pyongyang.

The North's Deputy UN Ambassador Kim In-ryong conveyed the message during a phone conversation with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the North Korean mission to the UN said in a statement on Thursday.

"As long as the US hostile policy and nuclear threat continue, the DPRK... will never place its self-defensive nuclear deterrence on the negotiation table or flinch an inch from the road chosen by itself, the road of bolstering up the state nuclear force," Kim told Guterres.

Alarmed by Washington and Pyongyang's aggravating war of words over the latter's ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs, Guterres (pictured below) said Wednesday that it was time to "dial down rhetoric and dial up diplomacy."

Last week, US President Donald Trump claimed that his country was ready to rain "fire and fury" on North Korea, a message experts said was pointing to a possible preemptive nuclear attack by the US in future.

A day later, the American leader doubled down on his threat, saying a military option against North Korea was "locked and loaded."

North to make US 'pay dearly'

In his conversation with the UN chief, Kim made it clear that any military action by the US will be met with a harsh response by North Koreans.

"The DPRK will make the US pay dearly for all the heinous crime it commits against the state and people of this country," Kim said, according to the North Korea UN mission.

The North Korean official also said his country was ready to retaliate America's pressure on the North's economy and other fields.

"As the US launched full-scale provocation against the DPRK across all fields of politics, economy and military, nothing can alter the will and resolve of the army and people of the DPRK to respond by taking resolute retaliatory measures," Kim said.

Earlier this month, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a US-drafted resolution that imposed new sanctions on Pyongyang, slashing its $3 billion annual export revenue by about a third.

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Russia, China Warn U.S. Against Military Conflict With North Korea

RFE/RL August 18, 2017

Russia joined with China on August 17 in urging the United States not to take military action against North Korea, saying the escalating threats of war being traded between Washington and Pyongyang could reach the "point of no return."

The separate statements from Moscow and Beijing came as U.S. military leaders said once again that they have prepared military "options" if negotiations over eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons program fail.

"There are strong military consequences if [North Korea} initiates hostilities," U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said after holding security talks with Japanese ministers in Washington on August 17.

Mattis's statement echoed U.S. President Donald Trump's warning last week that North Korea would face "fire and fury" if it threatens the United States, prompting Pyongyang to say it was considering firing ballistic missiles at the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

The exchange of rhetoric has raised alarms in Moscow and Beijing.

"Any attempt to resolve the problem over the Korean Peninsula by force will lead to a massive tragedy and enormous loss of life," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a news briefing in Moscow on August 17.

There is no alternative to a peaceful settlement, she said.

Dialogue And Consultations

A similar message was voiced in Beijing, where the vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission, Fan Changlong, met with U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford on the Korean situation on August 17.

Fan told the U.S. general that China believes the only effective way to resolve the standoff with Pyongyang is through talks, China's Defense Ministry said.

"China believes that dialogue and consultations are the only effective avenue to resolve the peninsula issue, and that military means cannot become an option," the ministry quoted Fan as saying.

A critical juncture lies ahead on August 21, when the United States and South Korea are due to start annual military drills involving tens of thousands of U.S. and South Korean soldiers.

North Korea has viewed the exercises as preparations for an invasion, and China has urged the United States to scrap the drills in exchange for North Korea halting its tests of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

But Dunford ruled that out on August 17.

"My advice to our leadership is that we not dial back our exercises. The exercises are very important to maintaining the ability of the alliance to defend itself," Dunford said..

"As long as the threat in North Korea exists, we need to maintain a high state of readiness to respond to that threat," he said.

North Korea on August 17 also ruled out suspending its weapons tests.

"As long as the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threat continue, [Pyongyang] will never place its self-defensive nuclear deterrence on the negotiation table," North Korea's United Nations Ambassador Ja Song Nam told UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a telephone conversation, according to North Korea's UN mission.

Russia's dramatic warning against military conflict appeared to echo a statement made this week by Trump's chief political strategist Steve Bannon, who unlike Trump's other advisers said taking military action is not a realistic option for the United States in Korea.

"Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us," Bannon said in an interview with American Prospect magazine.

With reporting by AP, AFP, dpa, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia- china-warn-us-against-military-conflict- north-korea/28683316.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Amid Protests, China Enforces Tougher Sanctions Against North Korea

By Joyce Huang August 18, 2017

Seafood importers in northeastern China took to the streets as they watched frozen product melt in trucks blocked from crossing the country's border with North Korea, after Beijing began enforcing a new round of economic sanctions.

In spite of the public outcry at home, calls from abroad are urging China to play a bigger role in sanctioning Pyongyang amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula.

But analysts say Beijing does not want to become a target of retaliation and lacks influence in North Korea - despite its longstanding ties with the isolated country.

Outcry from seafood importers

China issued a notice Tuesday evening to stop imports of iron, lead, coal and seafood from Pyongyang, effective the next day.

That caught seafood importers in Jilin province off guard, causing them to rush truckloads of frozen seafood from Pyongyang before midnight.

A video clip from Chinese social media showed that a bridge along the border was jam-packed with dozens of truck containers stuffed with crabs, shrimp and squid, which were melting and risked being spoiled within those final hours.

Images online further showed that a protest ensued.

Traders in the small city of Hunchun, where North Korean imports had long underpinned a thriving business, held out banners demanding compensation for their losses  signs that China has acted on the U.N. resolution to toughen up against Pyongyang.

"There's nothing we can do but await words from the government," said Lang Yulin, sales vice president of a local trader. "Our company has suffered more than 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) in losses 4 million yuan losses from frozen product and another 6 million yuan in investment losses," he said, adding that 70 percent of company sales used to come from North Korean seafood.

China's leadership role

Analysts in Beijing say China deserves credit for paying a price to enforce tougher sanctions that have, they say, to some extent forced Pyongyang to call off this week's plan to launch missiles toward Guam.

And they say that while China has demonstrated its leadership, its proposal of "double suspension"  a halt to Pyongyang's nuclear development and U.S.-South Korea military drills  has failed to garner support from the relevant countries.

"China is pushing for a certain [level of] compromise. This is leadership [although] China's leadership role is not welcomed by both North Korea and the U.S.," said Shen Dingli, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University.

The professor lauded China for being more pragmatic than Pyongyang and Washington, both of which he said have gone from one extreme to the other with no middle ground.

The U.S. has long accused Beijing of doing too little to curb its nuclear-armed neighbor, whose recent advance in testing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland has sent shockwaves around the world.

Declining influence

In face of growing calls for China to contain North Korea, many observers in Beijing argue the world may have overestimated China's influence over Kim Jong Un, leader of the North.

"In recent years, Sino-North Korea relations have deteriorated over many issues and hit a new low. It's getting more and more difficult for the Chinese government to influence the North," said Cai Jian of Fudan University.

"What we [China] can do now is to work as a go-between, urging self-restraint from both parties," he added.

Zhao Tong, a fellow researcher with CarnegieTsinghua Center for Global Policy, agreed, saying China cannot afford to get too entangled in the mess triggered by the U.S. to invite retaliation from Kim.

Possible retaliation

"If China takes the initiative in exerting economic pressures that threaten the fate of the North Korea regime, it is highly likely that Pyongyang will turn hostile against China as it is toward the U.S.," Zhao said.

"Pyongyang is likely to use its nuclear and missile capabilities to threaten China once the North's regime feels insecure and begins to see China as a threat," he said.

The researcher added that Kim is quick in stamping out any potential rivalry from within that he suspects may collaborate with foreign powers, including China, to topple him, as evidenced by his ruthless execution of his own uncle and other officials believed to be pro-Beijing.

Crisis far from over

Both Cai and Zhao warned the Korean peninsula crisis is far from over, as the planned U.S.-South Korea war games next week may give Kim another excuse to resume his missile tests.

While holding the U.S. responsible for the crisis, China is, however, beginning to see Pyongyang as a liability, according to Sun Zhe, a professor of international studies at Tsinghua University.

If the crisis gets out of control, China can't avoid its share of consequences, which include a possible flood of North Korean refugees - reasons that it cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.

However, the professor said China hasn't yet adjusted its policy toward Pyongyang for fear of tilting the strategic balance of power in the region.

"As a result of traditional inclination, China isn't ready to give up its longstanding ties with Pyongyang," Sun said. "That combines with many other complexities, including China's concerns over the [deployment of] Terminal High Altitude Area Defense [in South Korea] and mounting pressures from the U.S. Hence, China's policy toward Pyongyang hasn't factored in its growing anxiety, discontent and complaints about the North as a result of its considerations to maintain a strategic balance," he added.

Brian Kopczynski contributed to this report.

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India to Buy $75 million Ukrainian Engines for Russia Made Frigates

Sputnik News

10:49 18.08.2017(updated 12:25 18.08.2017)

After Crimea fallout, Russia and Ukraine suspended all defense ties which rendered the under-construction Admiral Grigorovich class frigates of limited operational use to Russian Navy until they were re-engined with Russian alternative which is expected to be ready only by 2020.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  India's defense acquisition council has sanctioned$75 million for acquiring M7N.1E gas turbine engines from Ukraine for powering the two Grigorovich class frigates that are expected to soon arrive in India from Russia. India had agreed to purchase the two frigates Admiral Butakov and Admiral Istomin as part of a $4billion order for four Russian frigates. As per the deal signed in 2016, two other Grigorovich class frigates would be constructed at the facility of Goa Shipyard Limited in India.

Admiral Butakov and Admiral Istomin almost fully built at Russia's Yantar Shipyard at Kaliningrad were originally designed to be fitted with Ukraine built gas turbine engines but after the Crimean fallout, Russia stopped importing the engines from Ukraine, rendering the fleet of little use for the Russian Navy. Russia and India then agreed to utilize the frigates for the Indian Navy which was already operating its predecessor, the Talwar class frigates.

India struck a separate agreement with Ukraine which offered to directly export the M7N.1E gas turbine plant to India after much discussion in 2016. It has also been agreed upon that a subsequent deal would be struck for acquiring similar engines for the other two frigates that are to be built at the Goa shipyard.

 Sputnik

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India Begins Major Overhauling of Country's Coastal Security

Sputnik News

10:11 18.08.2017

With a coastline of more than 7500 kilometers, India aims to equip its coast guards with 175 ships & 110 aircraft in next five years.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  After a delay of more than a decade to fill the gaps in coastal security, India has finally expedited the process to add more ships, aircraft, and high-speed interceptor boats to Indian Coast Guard, the country's smallest armed force.

On Thursday, private defense firm Larsen & Toubro (L&T) delivered two more high-speed interceptor Ships (C-433 and C-434) to Indian Coast Guard near Chennai, seven months ahead of contractual schedule. The boats are part of a $200 million deal under which the company has to deliver 54 interceptors.

"Made of aluminum alloy hull with waterjet propulsion, these ships have a speed of over 45 knots with excellent maneuverability and are ideally suited for the high interception," L&T said in a statement.

Last week, Indian Coast Guard had commissioned the fifth in the series of 105-meter offshore patrol vessel (OPV)  'ICGS Shaurya' which is fitted with new age communication & radar system. Designed by state owned Goa Shipyard Limited, the ship is capable of carrying one twin engine light helicopter and five high-speed boats. The range of the vessel is 6500 knots.

Larsen & Toubro (L&T) is construction another seven OPVs for Indian Coast Guard. The first delivery is expected by end of next month.

Presently the Indian Coast Guard operates a fleet of 60 ships and 19 Chetak & Dhruv advanced light helicopters. The government has approved $4.7 billion funds for upgrading the current strength to 175 ships & 110 aircraft in next five years. It is expected that large part of the contracts shall go to private players.

 Sputnik

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20,000 Hashd Sha'abi fighters to take part in Tal Afar operation: Spokesman

Iran Press TV

Fri Aug 18, 2017 4:34PM

Spokesman for the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) says thousands of pro-government fighters are going to participate in the upcoming operation to retake the northern city of Tal Afar from the Daesh Takfiri terrorists.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Lebanon-based Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network on Friday, Ahmed al-Asadi said 20,000 volunteer forces, commonly known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha'abi, will take part in the forthcoming battle for Tal Afar, located 63 kilometers west of Mosul.

He added that Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, is going to set the zero hour to start the operation.

"We have information about the presence of foreigners within Daesh ranks in Tal Afar, but we do not know their identity," Asadi pointed out.

He noted that the operation to liberate Tal Afar will not take long, but rather several weeks.

Asadi went on to say that Hashd al-Sha'abi is formed on a national basis, and includes people from all walks of the Iraqi society.

Two thirds of Iraqi legislators have recognized Hashd al-Sha'abi as an official force, he stressed.

On August 14, Lieutenant Faraj Hamed of Hashd al-Sha'abi said Abbas Brigade, Ali Akbar Brigade, Badr Organization, Imam Ali Brigade, Imam Hussein Brigade, and Hezbollah Battalions would participate in the fight to dislodge the Daesh terrorist group from Tal Afar.

Speaking at a youth meeting on July 29, Abadi said Hashd al-Sha'abi fighters would take part in the offensive to win back Tal Afar.

He said the army and security commanders had devised a plan to dislodge Daesh from Tal Afar, which required the participation of security personnel as well as Hashd al-Sha'abi and tribal fighters.

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Kirkuk governor refuses to lower Kurdish flag despite court ruling

Iran Press TV

Fri Aug 18, 2017 2:57PM

The governor of Iraq's northern oil-rich province of Kirkuk has declined to lower the flag of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) fluttering over public places in the face of a court ruling to replace the flag with the national Iraqi one.

"There is no constitutional article banning the raising of the Kurdish flag as long as the Iraqi one is raised," Najmiddin Karim said in statement, English-language online newspaper Iraqi News reported.

"The Baghdad government has abandoned Kirkuk, and does not provide any services to its citizens. It does not view the province as part of Iraq," Karim alleged in the statement.

"I am confident that the referendum will end successfully, and that the majority of Kurdistan people will vote for independence," he added.

The statement came after an administrative court in Kirkuk ruled on Thursday to lower the Kurdish flag, reversing a controversial decision by Karim late March to raise it alongside the Iraqi one above government institutions.

Karim is a staunch supporter of a plan by Iraq's Kurdistan region to hold an independence referendum late next month.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the state-run TRT Haber television news network on Wednesday that the vote will lead to "civil war" in Iraq.

Hoshyar Zebari, a close adviser to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani, told Reuters on August 12 that Kurdish authorities were determined to hold the referendum on September 25 irrespective of all objections.

Zebari's remarks came only two days after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asked Barzani in a phone call to delay the referendum.

"On the issue of the postponement of the referendum, the president (Barzani) stated that the people of the Kurdistan region would expect guarantees and alternatives for their future," a statement issued on Friday by the KRG presidency read after Tillerson's call.

In June, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi described as untimely the decision by Barzani to hold the referendum.

"We have a constitution that we've voted on, we have a federal parliament and a federal governmentThe referendum at this time is not opportune," Abadi said on June 13.

Iran has also expressed opposition to the "unilateral" scheme, underlining the importance of maintaining the integrity and stability of Iraq and insisting that the Kurdistan region is part of the majority Arab state.

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Jailed Russian Ex-Intelligence Officer Kvachkov Receives Additional Sentence

RFE/RL August 18, 2017

A former Russian intelligence officer who is serving a prison term for an alleged attempt to overthrow the government, has been handed an additional prison term for incitement to hatred.

The Volga Region Military Court in Samara on August 18 found Vladimir Kvachkov guilty of inciting hatred and sentenced him the same day.

Kvachkov, who still had to serve a remainder of 16 months from his previous eight-year prison conviction, will now have to spend 24 more months in custody. His lawyers say they will appeal the court's ruling.

Investigators say Kvachkov during his incarceration managed to smuggle a video recording outside the penitentiary, which was posted on the Internet in 2015. In the video, he called on "an unlimited number of people" to overthrow the government, the court said.

After the video appeared on the Internet, an investigation was launched, and Kvachkov was charged with publicly inciting to terrorism. During the trial, on August 4, the judge changed the charge to incitement to hatred.

Kvachkov was arrested in December 2010 and charged with forming a terrorist group that planned to overthrow the government. He denied the charges.

Kvachikov was convicted on those charges and sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2013. The term was later cut to eight years.

Earlier in 2005, Kvachkov was arrested for alleged planning to murder former Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais. He was acquitted on that charge twice, in 2008 and 2010.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-kvachkov- additional-sentence/28684057.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Russia plans to scale back military spending - but not rearmament

Sputnik News

August 18, 2017 NIKOLAI LITOVKIN

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that in 2018 the country will decrease its military budget but said the pace of rearmament will remain the same. The economic crisis and sanctions have taken their toll on Russia. Like in recent years, the countrys budget has been slashed and military spending has been cut.

This autumn well have to work out a budget law for next year. It includes military budget cuts, yet it will have no effect on the rearmament of our army and navy, President Vladimir Putin said. It was the same story in 2016, when the Russian government tightened its belt and rolled back military spending by 160 billion rubles (around $2,7 billion).

Ruslan Pukhov, CEO at Centre for Strategic Analyses and Technologies, says the move is not at all surprising. He added that the Russian public should not be worried about decreased army funding or the countrys defence capabilities. As it stands, the pace of military rearmament hasnt slowed: Ground, air, and naval forces are still set to receive new hi-tech weapons systems as scheduled. However, Pukhov says that if the recession continues, the military will suffer 10 to 15 years from now.

The biggest part of the Defense Ministrys budget ($48 billion, nearly four percent of the countrys GDP) is being spent on new generation military systems. These include fighter jets, bombers, tanks, submarines, and battleships. Russias forces will receive more than 22.5 trillion rubles (around $370 bln) by 2022.

However, some experts believe that the budget will be balanced out by postponing certain planned military developments. Some shipments and scientific work will be delayed by the government. For example, right now Russia doesnt need to invest tons of money in the development of the Barguzin rail-based missile system with new era intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). So this work may be postponed for a couple of years, Izvestia newspaper analyst Dmitry Safonov told RBTH.

He also believes the government will postpone investment in the development of the PAK DA, a new era strategic bomber. As with the Barguzin, there are currently other systems that can do the job at a satisfactory level. This is a complicated long-term project. Russia doesnt plan to wage wars or be involved in conflicts where it will need flying monsters able to drop 30 tons of missiles and bombs on the heads of its enemies. Modern strategic aviation with the Tu-160, Tu-22M3, and Tu-95 perfectly fulfills the countrys duties during operations against Islamic State terrorists, Safonov added.

Meanwhile, experts agree that work on some nuclear missile programs will never be delayed or under-financed as they are of primary importance. Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shougy said earlier this year that the Russian military industry is working 24/7 to create the new Sarmat ICBM. The rocket - code name RS-28 - weighs 100 tons and has a payload of 10 tons. The first missiles will be delivered to the countrys Strategic Missile Troops after 2020 and will replace the R-24V Voevoda, which is today considered the heaviest and most threatening strategic missile in the world (it weighs 211 tons with a payload of nine tons).

As Safonov believes, the new missile will be a cornerstone of Russias nuclear deterrence policy as it will be able to fly 17,000 km and carry 15 multiple reentry vehicles, each with a yield of between 150 and 300 kilotons. This will be the key to preventing major conflicts and protecting the nation in the future, he told RBTH.

https://www.rbth.com/defence/2017/08/18/russia-plans-to-scale-back-military-spending-but-not-rearmament_824682

 Sputnik

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Civilian Deaths Surge in Raqqa as IS Tactics Slow US-backed Advances

By Rikar Hussein, Nisan Ahmado August 17, 2017

As U.S.-backed forces continue to make slow progress in their offensive to oust Islamic State (IS) from its self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa, thousands of civilians who are trapped in the city face an increasing danger of getting caught in crossfire, rights organizations and local activists warn.

Officials from the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) say their battle against IS has entered a fierce and grueling phase in the densely populated neighborhoods of the city, as the terrorist group tries various tactics to keep its stronghold.

"This fight has become a matter of life and death for both sides," Mustafa Bali, a spokesperson for the SDF, told VOA.

Bali said IS militants are increasingly using suicide car bombs, snipers, drones and tunnels to hinder SDF advances.

"But what distinguishes the operation for Raqqa from all other cities is the degree to which IS thugs use civilians as human shields," he said.

He added that IS has forced civilians to remain in their homes so coalition forces avoid airstrikes in those areas.

Despite IS tactics, the SDF was able to advance slightly from the southeast of the city, Bali said. As the forces marched forward, SDF's special units rescued nearly 250 civilians early Thursday.

Claims of civilians killed in airstrikes

Meanwhile, rights organizations and activists continue to express concerns about the rising death tolls among civilians in the besieged city.

Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Wednesday said an escalated shelling of Raqqa by the U.S.-led coalition warplanes since Monday has left nearly 60 residents dead, including 30 children and women.

The group said it expects the death toll to rise as recovery units continue to find missing bodies under the rubble.

Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, told reporters on Wednesday that coalition jets have conducted more than 200 airstrikes against IS positions in Raqqa this week alone. He did not directly comment on the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights' findings.

Speaking with reporters during a phone briefing from Baghdad, Dillon talked about the stiff resistance the SDF forces are facing from about 2,500 IS fighters who still hold about 45 percent of the city.

He added that the jihadist group has centralized much of its operations and many of its fighters in densely populated areas and high-rise buildings, including the city's main hospital, in an effort to slow down the ongoing siege.

"They have fortified the complex, created tunnels for access, and are hiding among women and children who have nowhere else to go," Dillon said.

The United Nations estimates there are still nearly 25,000 civilians trapped inside the city. The agency has called upon the U.S.-led coalition and the SDF to increase their efforts to open safe corridors for the remaining civilians to flee.

"The worst place probably today in Syria is the part of Raqqa that is still held by the so-called Islamic state," Jan Egeland, the U.N.'s humanitarian adviser for Syria, told reporters on Thursday.

IS landmines

Hussam Eesa, a founder of the anti-IS monitoring group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, told VOA that many residents who escape airstrikes and IS snipers fall victim to the landmines planted by IS.

Eesa said about 350,000 residents have managed to escape the city, making it to nearby towns and villages under SDF control. But he said they continue to suffer from lack of basic services.

"The SDF areas are safer off course," Eesa said. "But there is a lack of aid and increased restriction on civilian movement in refugee camps."

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Syrian conflict nearing its end: Adviser to President Assad

Iran Press TV

Fri Aug 18, 2017 1:12PM

The political and media adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says the six-year militancy in her country is nearly over as foreign states cut their backing for Takfiri terrorist groups, vowing that government troops would fight against any "illegitimate" forces, whether Turkish or American.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Lebanon-based Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network on Friday, Bouthaina Shaaban said the inauguration of Damascus International Fair and regional participation proves a "U-turn was achieved" in the foreign-sponsored crisis.

She added the war has reached its "penultimate stage" as foreign powers that backed militant outfits are changing their policies.

"The exhibition is a defeat for their project, but it does not mean that we have won the war completely. We are just at the beginning of the road towards reconstruction and rebuilding Syria," Shaaban commented.

The senior Syrian official later criticized Turkey for sponsoring terrorists, arguing that Ankara government says one thing but does another.

Shaaban accused Turkey of playing with all parties in order to win a major regional role through destruction of Syria.

"The presence of Turkish troops is an attack that we will address in a timely manner," she said, adding that Damascus rejects Ankara's role in de-escalation zones as Ankara tries to legitimize its presence.

"Just as we defeated terrorism, we will fight any illegitimate presence on our land, whether it's the United States or Turkey," Shaaban said.

Shaaban stressed that the United States will not be able to implement any plan to partition Syria.

The remarks came on the same day that Syria's official news agency SANA reported that army troops, backed by allied fighters from popular defense groups, have made territorial gains against Daesh extremists in the western-central province of Hama, and almost entirely surrounded them in Uqayribat town.

Syrian soldiers and their allies also engaged in fierce clashes with Daesh militants in the Tal al-Sawaneh district, killing and injuring scores of them.

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 until then.

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US plans decades-long military presence in northern Syria: Militia group

Iran Press TV

Fri Aug 18, 2017 4:57AM

A US-backed militia group in northern Syria says American forces plan to remain in the Arab state "for decades to come" after the fall of Daesh, adding that Washington is not providing support to anti-Damascus militants "for free."

In a Thursday report by Reuters, Talal Silo, the spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of militias dominated by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), said the SDF believes that Washington has "strategic interests here after the end of Daesh."

"They have a strategy policy for decades to come. There will be military, economic and political agreements in the long term between the leadership of the northern areas (of Syria)... and the US administration," Silo said.

The Kurdish-dominated SDF holds 400-kilometer (250-mile) stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border. The US has deployed forces at several locations in northern Syria, providing support to the SDF with air strikes, artillery and special forces on the ground.

The SDF is involved in an operation against Daesh terrorists in Raqqah Province.

In July, the head of the YPG said the US had established seven military bases in northern Syria, including a major air base near the border town of Kobani.

"They (recently) referred to the possibility of securing an area to prepare for a military airport. These are the beginnings  they are not giving support just to leave. America is not providing all this support for free," Silo said.

He suggested that the US could turn northern Syria into a new base for its forces in the region, adding, "Maybe there could be an alternative to their [Incirlik] base in Turkey."

Turkey has been on a collision course with the US in Syria, with Ankara sharply criticizing Washington over its support for the YPG, which it views as a terror organization linked to the homegrown Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Ties between the NATO powers have further soared in recent months after US-backed YPG militants made a series of gains against Daesh at the Turkish doorstep.

Ankara has warned that the US partnership with Kurdish militants in Raqqah will pave the way for "other terror organizations" in the region to strengthen their positions.

Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman, refused to provide a timeline for the US presence in northern Syria, saying, "The Department of Defense does not discuss timelines for future operations. However we remain committed to the destruction of ISIS (Daesh) and preventing its return."

Meanwhile, there are concerns within the SDF that the US may not provide enough support to their forces and civil councils which control northeast Syria.

"We are constantly asking them (the US) for clear, public political support," Silo said. "At the moment there are no meetings being held for a real discussion of Syria's future. There are initiatives for developing political support for our forces, but we hope this will be bigger," he added.

The SDF offensive is backed by US-led airstrikes, which have claimed hundreds of civilian lives in Raqqah over the past months. Besides its role in Raqqah, Washington has, since 2014, been leading an alliance of mainly NATO states in what is called a military campaign against Daesh.

On Wednesday, the Syrian government called on the UN to put an end to the US-led coalition's crimes against Syrians in their so-called mission against Daesh.

Damascus also accused the US-led coalition of using guided bombs and internationally-banned white phosphorus munitions in flagrant violation of international law and human rights principles.

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Syria calls on UN Security Council to stop US-led crimes against civilians

Iran Press TV

Thu Aug 17, 2017 4:51PM

Damascus has urged the United Nations to take on its responsibilities concerning the establishment of international peace and security to put an end to the crimes against Syrians by the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters sent to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and rotating President of the UN Security Council Amr Abdellatif Aboulatta on Thursday, pointed to the loss of 17 civilian lives in US-led aerial attacks against residential neighborhoods in Raqqah on August 16.

The airstrikes also injured many people, including children and women, and damaged civilian infrastructure, the letters added.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry also accused the US-led coalition of using guided bombs and internationally-banned white phosphorus munitions in flagrant violation of international law and human rights principles.

The letters further called upon the members of the US-led coalition to immediately dissolve the military contingent as it had been formed outside the UN framework and without permission from the Syrian government.

Earlier on Thursday, Syria's official news agency, SANA, reported that the US-led military aircraft had bombarded residential buildings in the city of al-Jala, located along the Euphrates River and south of the eastern city of Dayr al-Zawr, as well as the towns of At-Tayana, al-Zabari, Boqruss and Subaikhan.

The report added that six people, including three children, were killed in the attacks, noting that the airstrikes also destroyed a number of houses, public properties and civilian infrastructure in the targeted areas.

The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.

The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying Daesh.

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Syrian Hmeymim Group Ready to Partake in Local Reconciliation Committees

Sputnik News

18:26 18.08.2017(updated 18:51 18.08.2017)

Official representative of the Hmeymim group, which unites Syria's internal opposition forces, Mais Krydee called proposition of Russia to establish local reconciliation committees in Syria "new step toward reconciliation in Syria."

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Hmeymim group, which unites Syria's internal opposition forces, stands ready to field its candidates for local reconciliation committees if invited to do so, official representative of the group Mais Krydee told Sputnik on Friday.

On Thursday, the Russian reconciliation center in Syria proposed that local reconciliation committees be established in the country's de-escalation zones, and that these groups be comprised of members of both government and armed opposition.

"I think it is important as a new step toward reconciliation in Syria. We are supporting the process. We will be ready to take part in these committees if invited," Krydee said.

Samir Aita, a member of the Syrian Democratic Forum opposition party, told Sputnik that his party welcomed the idea of establishing local reconciliation committees as long as these bodies comprised "independent and respected" members of both government and opposition, who could help create conditions for the political settlement.

"Local de-escalations can stop locally the war for a while. But they cannot alone put the country on the path of turning the page of war and rebuilding peace and trust at the country level. The proposal to bring nationally trusted, independent and respected personalities, especially from the opposition, as mediators, could help ending the war, creating the conditions for a political solution," Aita said.

Aita noted that carrying out this plan would present a real challenge.

In May, Iran, Russia and Turkey, the three guarantor states of the Syrian ceasefire regime, signed a memorandum on the establishment of four de-escalation zones at the Syrian settlement talks in Astana. As of today, the guarantor states have managed to reach agreements with opposition groups on creating three zones, with the third agreed upon in late July. The consultations on the fourth safe zone in the Idlib province are ongoing.

Syria has been engulfed in a civil war for over six years with the government troops fighting against numerous opposition factions as well as terrorist groups such as the Daesh and the Jabhat Fatah al Sham, both outlawed in Russia.

 Sputnik

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More than 350,000 children vaccinated against polio in hard to reach areas of Syria - UN

18 August 2017  A United Nations polio vaccination campaign in Syria has provided protection to more than 355,000 children under age five in two governorates, where violence has made access especially difficult.

In response to a recent outbreak of vaccine-derived polio in the country, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners have completed the first round of a vaccination campaign in the Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa governorates.

"UNICEF applauds local partners and health workers for their extraordinary efforts and commitment to vaccinate children against this crippling illness," said Fran Equiza, UNICEF Representative in Syria in a statement.

"No child should have to live with the devastating effects of polio," she added.

This is the second polio outbreak to hit Syria since the start of the conflict in 2011. The continued violence has devastated its health infrastructure and severely disrupted routine immunization services, particularly in Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa.

Prior to the crisis, Syria was polio-free, with an immunization rate over 80 per cent. National vaccination coverage is now just over 40 per cent.

"As of 18 August 2017, 33 children under the age of five have been paralyzed," said Elizabeth Hoff, WHO Representative in Syria.

"The detection of the circulating vaccine derived polio virus type 2 cases demonstrates that disease surveillance systems are functional in Syria," she continued. "Our priority now is to achieve the highest possible polio immunization coverage to stop the circulation of virus."

To vaccinate every child in need, UNICEF ran an outreach campaign and provided the vaccines and essential cold chain equipment. WHO has trained more than 1,000 field volunteers, transported the vaccines to the conflict-affected area, and funded the implementation of the campaign.

UNICEF and WHO said they will continue engaging with local partners and health personnel in Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor Governorates to protect all children from polio.

Both agencies also call on all parties to the conflict to allow vaccinators full access to children in need.

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Turkish Forces Kill Almost 60 PKK Fighters Within Past Week

Sputnik News

13:06 18.08.2017(updated 13:07 18.08.2017)

Turkish security forces have killed 58 fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), banned in Turkey, within the past seven days, local media reported on Friday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The PKK fighters were killed during counterterrorism operations conducted in the country's southeastern provinces of Sirnak and Hakkari, the Anadolu news agency reported, citing a statement from the Defense Ministry.

The operations also left seven Turkish soldiers killed and 12 more injured. Eight PKK sites have been reportedly destroyed.

The security forces managed to seize firearms and ammunition including anti-aircraft rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and a sniper rifle. The servicemen also found 2,500 kilograms (over 5,500 pounds) of ammonium nitrate used for making explosives.

Tensions between Ankara and the Kurds escalated in July 2015 when a ceasefire between Turkey and the PKK collapsed over a series of terror attacks allegedly committed by PKK members. The Turkish forces are involved in anti-PKK raids across the country.

 Sputnik

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U.S. Defense Chief To Visit Ukraine Amid Ongoing Standoff With Russia

RFE/RL August 18, 2017

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will travel to Ukraine next week to meet with President Petro Poroshenko and Ukraine's defense chief, a visit Kyiv has said could involve the signing of new defense agreements.

The Pentagon said on August 18 that Mattis's visit will be the last leg of a three-country tour that will also include Jordan and NATO ally Turkey.

Officials said Mattis will leave for Jordan on August 21, arrive in Turkey on August 23, and conclude his trip with the stop in Ukraine on August 24.

In Kyiv, the Pentagon chief's talks with Poroshenko and Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak will likely center on the country's standoff with Russia, whose 2014 seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and backing of separatists in the east of the country have led to U.S. and EU sanctions targeting Moscow.

Russia denies backing the separatists despite substantial evidence of such support.

A Pentagon statement said Mattis will reassure Kyiv that the United States is "firmly committed to the goal of restoring Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

U.S. media reported on August 6 that the Pentagon had recommended sending a package of lethal defensive military aid to Ukraine worth about $50 million.

The weapons package would reportedly include Javelin shoulder-launched antitank missiles, which Kyiv has long sought to defend against Russian-made armored vehicles operating in rebel-held areas.

U.S. President Donald Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, had resisted calls in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere to send such weapons over fears that the move would invite escalation from Russia.

A Pentagon official would not confirm the reports but told NBC television that "we haven't ruled anything out."

In addition, agreements were announced during Poroshenko's June 20 visit to Washington to allow Kyiv to buy additional military equipment from the United States and play a role in manufacturing such equipment, although the details had not been finalized.

At the time, Poroshenko said Mattis would likely visit Ukraine in the coming months to formally sign the agreements.

The new U.S. special envoy for efforts to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Kurt Volker, told Current Time TV last month that the Trump administration was considering sending Kyiv weapons to help government forces defend themselves against the Russia-backed separatists.

Volker told the Russian-language network, which is run by RFE/RL in cooperation with Voice of America, in a July 25 interview that he did not think arming Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons would "provoke Russia to do more than they are already doing."

Separately, Mattis told reporters the U.S. administration was near a decision on a new strategy for fighting the war in Afghanistan.

Mattis and his security team were scheduled to meet on August 18 at Camp David with Trump to discuss the 16-year-old war to drive the Taliban and other militants out of Afghanistan and stabilize the government in Kabul.

With reporting by AP and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-us -mattis-to-visit/28684453.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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CHATHAM  The back gate to Chatham Hall usually remains locked, but the normally peaceful fields off of Chalk Level Road were the gathering point for law enforcement officers while searching in the sweltering humidity for an escaped inmate from the Pittsylvania County Jail.

Officers of the human and canine variety spent Friday searching the woods behind Chatham Hall for James Herron Jones, 38, accused of escaping from the Pittsylvania County Jail in downtown Chatham while unloading a truck as part of his duties working in the jail kitchen at 6:36 a.m.

Jones escaped wearing jail-issued white clothing, said investigator Devin Taylor.

Authorities described Jones as 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs roughly 180 pounds.

There was an armed guard on one side of the vehicle and inmate Jones ran from the enclosed area in the back of the jail, Sheriff Mike Taylor said during an afternoon press conference.

Law enforcement was notified of the escape, and dispatchers used the reverse-911 system to call everyone in Chatham to inform them about the situation.

Jones was spotted at least twice Friday morning, Taylor said, and K-9 units picked up a strong trail, in the woods at the private school Chatham Hall.

There were several other sightings throughout town that officers either could not confirm or their K-9s could not find a trail.

At 5 p.m., Sheriff Taylor held a news conference with local media while officers returned to their search for Jones.

Investigators and deputies have been out interviewing family members and anyone we think may have some reference to where Mr. Jones may be holed up, and encouraging him to turn himself in, the sheriff said.

The Pittsylvania County Sheriffs Office was aided by Halifax County, Henry County, Campbell County, the town of Chatham and the Virginia State Police. The commonwealths attorney also helped throughout the day.

Cierra Fitzgerald, head of security with Chatham Hall, said authorities used all-terrain vehicles to criss-cross the schools 362 acres of woodland walking trails and equestrian stables.

Police arrived at the school around 7 a.m., and scoured the grounds until roughly 3 p.m. under a baking sun that swelled temperatures to 93 degrees.

Chatham Hall Rector Suzanne Walker Buck was seen bringing coolers filled with ice and water to officers decked in bulletproof vests and pant cuffs tucked into combat boots.

Students do not begin arriving at Chatham Hall until Tuesday, but Buck said that staff was asked to keep an eye out for the escaped inmate while staff not already on campus were told to stay home.

School security swept and secured all of the main buildings on campus.

Buck said that Jones did not have a known connection to Chatham Hall.

Chatham Elementary, which is a two-mile drive from where police gathered, did not go into a lockdown, but did have a sheriffs deputy outside the school on watch.

Administrative Assistant Debbie Haymore explained that all doors around the school are locked from the inside, and you have to be buzzed in to get into the school.

Sheriff Taylor explained that law enforcement planned to scale back the search after people returned home from work, so officers could be ready to respond in case area residents found anything amiss at home such as a break-in or a car missing.

The search would continue in full force Saturday morning, Taylor said.

He would not call Jones harmless.

Hes an inmate. Hes made bad judgments before. If someone sees him, or is [suspicious], that they not approach him, that they call us so we can respond, the sheriff said.

Jones, of Dry Fork, was indicted on July 28 for a third offense of domestic assault and battery, online court records show.

He was arrested Aug. 9 and is scheduled for a hearing in Pittsylvania County Circuit Court on Tuesday. A trial is set for Sept. 27.

Previous charges included abduction and statutory burglary in 2011.

Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Jones is asked to contact the Pittsylvania County Sheriffs Office at (434) 432-7931. The Pittsylvania County Crime Stoppers has offered up to a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Jones.

Residents can call (800) 791-0044 or email sar@pittgov.org.
10:20 p.m. update:

Inmate James Herron Jones, who escaped from the Pittsyvlania County Jail on Friday morning has been captured.

Original story:

Despite several potential sightings in the Chatham area, inmate James Herron Jones is still on the run after authorities said he escaped from the Pittsylvania County Jail on Friday morning.

Between 11 p.m. Friday and 3 a.m. Saturday law enforcement searched an area of Chatham without success, according to a news release from Devin Taylor, an investigator with the Pittsylvania County Sheriffs Office. Around 9 a.m. Saturday, a white man was spotted walking along Snake Path Road, but it was not Jones.

Law enforcement officers are continuing the search that began early Friday morning after Jones, 38, escaped from the jail while unloading a truck as part of his duties working in the jail kitchen at 6:36 a.m. The Pittsylvania County Sheriffs Office was aided by authorities from Halifax County, Henry County, Campbell County, the town of Chatham and the Virginia State Police.

The Pittsylvania County Crime Stoppers has offered up to a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Jones.

Authorities described Jones as 5 feet 7 inches tall and said he weighs roughly 180 pounds. He escaped wearing jail-issued white clothing.

Family and friends have been interviewed, and the search is continuing, Pittsylvania County Sheriff Mike Taylor said in a text message to the Register & Bee at about 3 p.m. Saturday.

The sheriffs office is warning residents that if anyone provides help to the escaped inmate, they will be held accountable for their actions, investigator Taylor wrote in the news release.

Anyone who may have spoken to Jones since his escape is also encouraged to contact the Sheriffs Office, by withholding information you could be held accountable as well, Taylor stated.

Jones, of Dry Fork, was indicted on July 28 for a third offense of domestic assault and battery, online court records show.

He was arrested Aug. 9 and is scheduled for a hearing in Pittsylvania County Circuit Court on Tuesday. A trial is set for Sept. 27.

Previous charges included abduction and statutory burglary in 2011.

Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Jones is asked to contact the Pittsylvania County Sheriffs Office at (434) 432-7931.

Residents can call (800) 791-0044 or email sar@pittgov.org.
To the editor:

President Trump keeps making fools of the experts. The first bunch, back in 2015, said there was no way he was really going to run for president. The second bunch just knew that he didnt stand a chance against the smartest woman in the world, and we know how that story ended.

The latest bunch are foreign policy experts, who told us that China and Russia would veto any serious United Nations sanctions on North Korea and their god-plated madman with the unfortunate hair and the big mouth. Yet neither did, although the U.N. resolution called for some pretty stiff sanctions, including export bans for coal, iron, iron ore, seafood, lead and lead ore and stopping foreign investment in North Korea.

We find ourselves in the present situation thanks to former President Bill Clintons incompetence when he made a deal with them 20-some years ago. Said Bill Clinton: This agreement will help achieve a longstanding and vital American objective; an end to the threat of nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula. It did no such thing, of course. Trump, appearing on Meet the Press in 1999, predicted that the result of that agreement would lead to exactly the situation we face today, North Korea armed with nuclear weapons and ICBMs to deliver them. And they call Trump a novice.

How did Trump make fools of the experts yet again? It was little noticed by the main stream media, who are still concentrating their firepower on RussiaRussiaRussia, but Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin are playing very important roles in negotiations. Trump is the first president to fully appreciate and apply economic leverage when working on defense matters. A new trade deal with China may be more favorable to them if they help to rein in the North Koreans. Russias economy depends largely on energy exports, and they use that as leverage against European countries, threatening to cut their supplies if they get too vocal about Crimea, for instance. No problem, says Trump, well sell you some natural gas. It was in the financial interest of both countries to go along with the sanctions. Brilliant move.

It remains to be seen how this situation will shake out in the end, but Trump has proven, to those paying attention, that he is not as clueless about foreign policy as the left would have us believe. Were going to need a steady hand in a few years when Barack Obamas deal with Iran turns out like Clintons deal with North Korea, as it surely will. Trump wasnt exaggerating when he talked about lousy deals during the campaign.

ROBERT HUDSON

Pelham, N.C.
VANCOUVER, Aug. 17, 2017 - Discovery Metals Corp. ("Discovery Metals" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE:DSV.H) is pleased to announce that it has closed its previously announced change of business transaction (the "Transaction") and has been reclassified as a Tier 2 Mining Issuer on the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange").The principal transaction completed by Discovery Metals was the entering into of a mineral exploration and option agreement (the "Puerto Rico Option Agreement") dated April 7, 2017, with Jesus Miguel Hernandez Garza and Juan Reynaldo Elizondo Falcon (together, the "Vendors"), providing an option (the "Option") to acquire certain mineral concessions (the "Puerto Rico Concessions") located in Ocampo, Coahuila, Mexico, forming part of the Puerto Rico mining-metallurgical project (the "Puerto Rico Property").Pursuant to the terms of the Puerto Rico Option Agreement, Discovery Metals may exercise the Option and acquire the Puerto Rico Property from the Vendors, on making the following payments to the Vendors:a) a cash payment of US$300,000, which has been paid by the Company on Closing;b) the issuance of an aggregate of 500,000 common shares, which have been issued on Closing;c) an additional cash payment of US$300,000 and the issuance of a further 500,000 common shares upon the receipt of all necessary permits and approvals to conduct drilling activities on the Puerto Rico Mineral Concessions from the applicable authorities (the "Drilling Approvals");d) the issuance of four tranches of 500,000 common shares on each anniversary of the closing of the Transaction, with the first issuance occurring on the second anniversary of Closing; ande) the issuance of additional common shares (the "Additional Consideration Shares"), representing 30% (the "Thirty Percent Interest") of the Company's then issued and outstanding share capital, taking into account any common shares already issued to the Vendors.In the event that the market value of the Thirty Percent Interest is less than US$10,000,000 at the time of issuance, the Company will issue further common shares to the Vendors such that the common shares of the Company issued the Vendors, in aggregate, have a market value of US$10,000,000, subject to a maximum aggregate ownership interest by the Vendors of 35%. Any amount in excess of the 35% share threshold will be paid to the Vendors in cash, to an aggregate value of US$10,000,000.In the event the Company has any material assets in addition to the Puerto Rico Property, at the time of the issuance of the Additional Consideration Shares, the number of the Additional Consideration Shares issuable to the Vendors will be reduced to represent 30% of the market value of only the Puerto Rico Property, as determined by an independent third-party valuation. In the event that greater than 90 million Additional Consideration Shares are issuable, such share issuance will be subject to the further approval of the Exchange.In order to exercise the Option, the Company is required to complete exploration expenditures of not less than US$12,500,000 (the "Expenditures") on the Puerto Rico Property within five years of receipt of the Drilling Approvals. The Company must complete not less than US$2,000,000 of these Expenditures within the first twelve (12) months after receipt of the Drilling Approvals.All cash consideration paid by the Company to the Vendors shall be credited towards the Expenditures. At any time, the Company may pay any remaining amount of the Expenditures directly to the Vendors, and issue any remaining consideration as outline above, in order to accelerate the acquisition of the Puerto Rico Property pursuant to the Option.For further information on the Puerto Rico Property please see the Technical Report dated June 12, 2017, prepared by SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc., which is available on SEDAR.In addition, the Company has entered into the mineral exploration and option agreements described below.Discovery Metals entered into a mineral exploration and option agreement (the "Renata Option Agreement") dated April 20, 2017, also with the Vendors, providing an option to acquire a certain mineral concession (the "Renata Concession") also located in Ocampo, Coahuila, Mexico comprising the Renata mining-metallurgical project (the "Renata Property").Pursuant to the terms of the Renata Option Agreement, the Company may exercise the option and acquire the Renata Property on the following terms:a) an aggregate cash payment of US$100,000 to the Vendors three months from Closing; andb) the Company incurring exploration expenditures on the Renata Property of not less than US$2,000,000 within three years of the latter of the Closing and the entering into by the Company of any required land occupation or lease agreements on the subject lands.An additional US$100,000 payment will be due if the Company has not made a decision to keep or return the Renata Concession to the Vendors within two years.During the term of the Renata Option Agreement, the Company may negotiate the sale and transfer of the Renata Concession to an arm's length party, before or after making the required exploration expenditures and acquiring the Renata Property. In the event of a sale, the Vendors shall receive the first US$3,000,000 of sale proceeds, and the balance of consideration shall be split equally between the Company and the Vendors, net of any exploration expenditures already incurred.For further information on the Renata Concession see the Company's news release dated May 1, 2017.The Company entered into four additional mineral exploration and option agreements (the "Additional Option Agreements") dated May 15, 2017, with the Vendors, providing options to acquire certain additional mineral concessions (the "Additional Mineral Concessions") located in the state of Coahuila, Mexico. The Additional Mineral Concessions include the Monclova Concessions, the La Minerva Concessions, the Santa Rosa Concessions and the Jemi/Rare Earth Concessions.Pursuant to the terms of the Additional Option Agreements, the Company may exercise its option and acquire the underlying concessions that are subject to each additional Option Agreement on the following terms:a) the Company incurring exploration expenditures of not less than US$2,000,000 per Additional Option Agreement within five years; andb) the issuance to the Vendors of an aggregated 1,000,000 common shares in respect to three of the Additional Option Agreements, and the issuance of 2,000,000 common shares in respect of the Additional Option Agreement governing the Monclova Property.In addition, the Company has agreed to pay back taxes on the Monclova Concessions of approximately US$48,000, and to make a cash payment to the Vendors of US$70,000 with respect to the La Minerva Concessions.For further information on the Additional Mineral Concessions see the Company's new release dated June 1, 2017.The Company entered into an additional mineral exploration and option agreement (the "La Kika Agreement") dated June 7, 2017, with the Vendors, providing option to acquire the La Kika mineral concession located in the state of Coahuila, Mexico.Pursuant to the terms of the La Kika Agreement, the Company may exercise its option and acquire the underlying La Kika concession on the following terms:a) Reimbursing USD$45,000 to the Vendors on Closing;b) the Company incurring exploration expenditures of not less than US$2,000,000 within five years, half of which is a firm expenditure commitment; andc) the issuance to the Vendors of an aggregated 1,000,000 common shares.In addition, the Company has agreed to pay the Vendors a royalty on the first 450,000 tonnes of ore extracted by the Company from the La Kika concession. The royalty will equal 30% of the operating profits in the event that the Company undertakes direct shipping operations, or a 2% net smelter return otherwise.For further information on the La Kika Concession see the Company's news release dated June 14, 2017.The Company will be the operator under all of the agreements described above and is required to pay all mining duties to maintain the underlying concessions in good standing.The Company will pay finders fees to David Caldwell, John (Daniel) Harmening and Humberto Rafael Pacheco (the "Finders") in connection with the efforts of the Finders in introducing the Company to the Vendors and the projects described above. The Finders are at arm's length to the Company. The Company has agreed to pay the following finders fees:a) on closing, a fee of 209,500 common shares;b) an additional 25,000 common shares on each of the four tranches of share issuances to the Vendors, pursuant to the Puerto Rico Option Agreement, on the second through fifth anniversaries of the Closing; andc) a number of common shares equal to 5% of any additional common shares issued by the Company on exercise of any of the mineral exploration and option agreements as described above.On issuance, all common shares will be subject to a hold period of four months plus one day.On completion of the Transaction, the previously issued 31,237,000 Subscription Receipts of the Company, which were issued at a price of $0.50 for each Subscription Receipt, each converted into one unit of the Company for no additional consideration. Each unit consists of one common share and one share purchase warrant, with each share purchase warrant entitling the holder to acquire one additional common share at a price of $1.00 per share for a period of 24 months. The Company paid fees of $335,425 and issued 366,200 units to certain finders who introduced subscribers to the private placement. In addition, finders received 1,244,460 finders warrants exercisable at $0.60 per share for 18 months. The securities issued in connection with the financing have hold periods expiring between November 15 and November 20, 2017.The gross proceeds of $15,618,500 will be used to fund the Company's proposed phase one exploration program on the Company's flagship Puerto Rico Property. The balance of the proceeds will be used to fund preliminary exploration work on the other properties described above and for general working capital purposes.The Board of Directors and management team of the Company have been reconstituted to include the following individuals:- President, Chief Executive Officer and DirectorMr. Singh is a mining executive with over 17 years of experience in corporate development, capital markets, project development, engineering and operations. In his last role, he was Vice-President of Engineering & Project Development, and Vice-President of Business Development for Mexican gold producer Timmins Gold, (now Alio Gold Inc. ("Alio Gold")) where he also served as the company's Qualified Person. During his five-year tenure with Timmins Gold, Taj was responsible for overseeing the capital markets and mergers and acquisitions strategies of the company, leading the execution of numerous merger and acquisition transactions, including the acquisition of Newstrike Capital Inc. (Ana Paula Project), the acquisition of the Caballo Blanco Project and the acquisition of the El Sauzal process plant from Goldcorp Inc. Most recently Mr. Singh oversaw the completion of the Pre-Feasibility Study for the Ana Paula Project, the primary growth project for Alio Gold. Mr. Singh also has experience with Macquarie Capital Markets as a sell-side gold analyst, with Inco Limited and Vale Limited in operations and is the author of US and European patents in the field of base metal processing. Currently he also serves as an independent director of GT Gold Corp. Mr. Singh is a Professional Engineer (P.Eng), a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA), and holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Metallurgical) from the University of Toronto and a Master of Engineering (Metallurgical) from McMaster University.- Chief Financial OfficerMr. Zajcew has over 10 years experience as a Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary for a number of TSX, TSXV and CSE listed exploration companies. From 2005 to 2015 he was CFO for Ryan Gold Corp. and Corona Gold Corporation until these companies, along with Eagle Hill Exploration Corp., were acquired by Oban Mining Corp. to form what is now known as Osisko Mining Inc. He was also CFO for a number of other companies such as Odyssey Resources Limited, Cogitore Resources Inc. and AgriMarine Holdings Inc. Mr. Zajcew received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of Toronto in 1998. He has been a CFA charterholder since 2001.- Chairman of the BoardPrior to his retirement in December 2014, Mr. John was President and Chief Executive Officer of Dundee Resources Limited, a private resource-focused investment company, and Managing Director and a Portfolio Manager with Goodman Investment Counsel, where he was responsible for managing resource and precious metals focused mutual funds and flow-through limited partnerships. Mr. John is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of Corona Gold Corporation and Ryan Gold Corp. He is also a lead director of Osisko Mining Inc., formerly Oban Mining Corp., a director of Dundee Precious Metals Inc. and a former director of several other public companies. He has been involved with the resource investment industry since 1992 and has worked as an investment banker, buy-side mining analyst, sell-side mining analyst and portfolio manager. Mr. John graduated from the Camborne School of Mines in 1980 with a B. Sc (Hons) in mining engineering and has extensive industry experience working as a mining engineer for Strathcona Mineral Services Ltd., Nanisivik Mines Ltd. and Eldorado Nuclear Limited. He also received a Master of Business Administration from the University of Toronto in 1992.- DirectorDr. O'Dea has played leadership roles in founding, financing and building numerous mining companies, creating over $3 billion in shareholder value. As Co-Founder, CEO and Director, he grew Fronteer Gold from start-up to its sale in 2011 to Newmont Mining, which included the spin-out of Pilot Gold. Dr. O'Dea also co-founded and served as CEO and Director of Aurora Energy which was sold to Paladin in 2011. He co-founded True North Nickel, which was sold to Royal Nickel in 2014, and most recently co-founded and served as Executive Chairman of True Gold Mining, which built the Karma Gold Mine in Burkina Faso. True Gold was sold to Endeavour Mining in 2016. He is the founder of Oxygen Capital, and currently serves as Chairman of Pilot Gold and as Director of Pure Gold Mining and NexGen Energy. He has received numerous business and industry awards, including the Globe and Mail's Top 40 Under 40, winner of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2014 Pacific mining and metals category, and the AMEBC's Murray Pezim Award for perseverance and success in financing mineral exploration.- DirectorMr. Garza holds a degree in Industrial Engineering from the University Regiomontana located in Monterrey Nuevo Leon, Mexico, and holds a Masters degree in Environment and administration. He is a principal of Revi Minerals S.A. de C.V., a company dedicated to open pit mining of coal and zinc deposits in Mexico. He has also been involved in the mining of gravel, fluorite and barite in Mexico and has held positions in state and municipal governments where he maintains a number of key government relationships. He is a former geologist with Freeport McMoran at the Puerto Rico Project, where he also held the title of Manager of Social Management. Mr. Garza is a resident of the local Ejido which owns surface rights around the Puerto Rico Project.- DirectorMr. Vizquerra is currently Executive Vice President of Strategic Development & Director at Osisko Mining. For over four years, Mr. Vizquerra served as the President & CEO of Oban Mining Corp. ("Oban"), where he led the successful change of business strategy that resulted in Oban's acquisition of Corona Gold, Eagle Hill Exploration Corp. and Ryan Gold to form what is now Osisko Mining. Mr. Vizquerra previously worked as Head of Business Development for Compania de Minas Buenaventura, prior to which he worked as production and exploration geologist at the Red Lake gold mine. He is currently a board member of Alio Gold Inc. Mr. Vizquerra holds a M.Sc. from Queens University in MINEX, and is a Qualified Person (AIGP).The Company wishes to thank Scott Ackerman, David Nelson, Doug McFaul and Brent Ackerman, who have resigned as directors and officers of the Company, for their past services.On Closing, the Company has a total of 64,982,699 common shares issued and outstanding, including an aggregate of 9,450,000 shares which are subject to escrow and will be released over 36 months. Any additional shares issued to Jesus Miguel Hernandez Garza will be subject to escrow. On Closing, the Company has also issued an aggregate of 3,300,000 stock options to directors, officers, employees and consultants of the Company, exercisable at a price of $0.60 per share for a period of five years.For further information on the Transaction, please see the Company's Filing Statement dated July 31, 2017, which is available on SEDAR.Trading in the common shares of Discovery Metals is expected to resume at the open of the market on Monday, August 21, 2017 under the new symbol "DSV".On Behalf of the Board of Directors of: DISCOVERY METALS CORP.Taj Singh, M.Eng, P.Eng, CPAPresident, Executive Officer and DirectorDiscovery Metals Corp.Email: taj.singh@dsvmetals.comWebsite: www.dsvmetals.comInvestors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the disclosure document 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 securities 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.This news release may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements within, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such statements will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under the applicable laws.Discovery Metals is focused on discovering and advancing high grade polymetallic deposits in a recently assembled land package of approximately 300,000 hectares over a large and historic mining district in northern Coahuila State, Mexico. The portfolio of seven key properties, all with shallow high-grade silver-zinc-lead mineralization, is situated in a world class Carbonate Replacement Deposit (CRD) belt that stretches from SE Arizona to central Mexico. The land holdings contain numerous historical direct-ship ore workings with over 4,000 m of underground development. No modern exploration or exploration drill testing has been carried out on the properties.Taj Singhtaj.singh@dsvmetals.comwww.dsvmetals.com
(Chinanews.com/Provided by Jilin Provincial Department of Forestry)

Thanks to years of efforts to boost the population of wild animals, the number of wild Siberian tigers returning to their original habitats in northeast China has been on the rise in recent years.

Siberian tigers are one of the world's most endangered species and predominantly live in northeast China and eastern Russia.

(Chinanews.com/Provided by Jilin Provincial Department of Forestry)

Jilin province was the first place in the country to ban illegal poaching of wild animals in 1996. According to the provincial forestry department, a total of 1,836 administrative cases involving wild animals have been reported and over 20,000 private firearms have been confiscated since the ban was enacted. Many of the local farmers who used to live on hunting have become guardians of the tigers.

In 1988, the province kicked off a project to protect natural forest resources. In 2015, the province banned tree-cutting for commercial use in state-owned forests. Thanks to the efforts, the province has witnessed a rise in the population of wild Siberian tigers.

(Chinanews.com/Provided by Jilin Provincial Department of Forestry)

Footprints of wild Siberian tigers were discovered in Jilin province in recent years, according to local forestry authorities.

According to statistics from the provincial forestry department, there are 27 Siberian tigers and 42 wild leopards living in the province.

(Chinanews.com/Provided by Jilin Provincial Department of Forestry)

(Chinanews.com/Provided by Jilin Provincial Department of Forestry)
In an effort to foster a new generation of apps that use ultra-fast connections to bolster municipal government, Austin, Texas, is hosting its first GigaTECHs App Competition, an event for which it has now released a list of 11 finalists.

Two winners from this field will get seed funding following a final pitch to judges on Thursday, Aug. 31, with the amount of distributed cash totaling $38,000. The reward will mark the culmination of an event that started in early June at the ATX Hack for Change day of civic hacking, with a total of 26 entries. Developers were asked to focus their work on local transportation, education, clean energy, health and public safety.

Austins competition is part of a nationwide initiative thats being led by US Ignite, a nonprofit organization out of Washington, D.C., that strives to spur next-generation apps that would be foundational elements for smart communities powered by ultra-fast, programmable fiber and wireless networks.

We wanted to really be as inclusive and broad as possible with our ideas, with our teams and with our app ideas, said Charles Purma, an IT project manager with Austin. We didnt really want to dictate from the citys perspective or from US Ignites perspective. We wanted to give some broad ideas, but really it was driven by the community.

Purma also said that the city was initially hoping for 10 applicants and was thrilled to get 26 solid entries, all of which have the potential for improving the lives of not just Austinites, but of residents of other cities that will share the apps. Following the competition, the two winning teams are expected to use the seed money to build out prototypes. The award money will be broken down into chunks, distributed once the developers hit certain progress targets. To this end, the teams will establish timelines for deliverables. In addition to cash, the city plans to give the winners expertise.

We really want to set up our teams for success, so theyll have some design and user research folks at their disposal, Purma said.

The finalists are:

The finalists apps are wide ranging and roundly impressive in their ambition and scope. One of note is the Just-in-time VR Training for Ambus EMS Personnel , which takes a bit of explaining.

As unfortunate as it is, most major population centers at one time will face a large-scale emergency event with potential for many causalities, and when they do, emergency responders are often brought in from nearby jurisdictions to render aid. In Central Texas, this is done along with a massive vehicle, a combination of a bus and an ambulance aptly called an ambus.

With this in mind, once a year officials generally use a presentation via PowerPoint to train paramedics and others who use the ambus. While the optimal solution would be training through sustained exposure to the actual equipment, this isnt always an option. So, one tech company is building a VR platform that would allow responders to train within the ambus from anywhere.

The idea is that with this app, these responders would be able to familiarize themselves all over again with the ambus the day of an event for which they are needed by using virtual reality, possibly even by using their mobile devices while they speed toward an incident site. Through virtual reality, the app can even go so far as to simulate situations like hurricanes with high winds or school violence with active shooters.

Its one thing to look at a PowerPoint or walk through the ambus without any kind of stress situation going on to learn where all the equipment is, said Grayson Lawrence, an associate professor of communication design at Texas State University who is a member of the team developing it. Its another thing if we can put them under increasingly stressful situations in a virtual environment. We can train them in a more realistic way.

Lawrence said that even if his teams app doesnt win the competition, the process of competing has been beneficial, because the city has facilitated interactions between the developers and the people who would use it in the field, which has helped them hone what they are working on. While the app could be ready for testing in two to nine months, the team says that in order to ultimately make it viable, theyll need commercial interest from a large private company, which is more likely to take place with support from Austin.

Basically, the app competition is a mutually beneficially relationship for the participants who get access to the citys resources and for the city, which due to the nature of government is not able to focus as much as would be ideal on new ideas and innovation.

Were operational folks, said Ted Lehr, an IT data architect with the city of Austin. In terms of thinking outside the box and trying to do something edgy, the city, you could say, doesnt have the mission to do that.

But an apps competition can help the city reach out to academia and the private sector, both of which do.
Government is always being asked to do more with less  less money, less staff, just all around less  and that makes the idea of artificial intelligence (AI) a pretty attractive row to hoe. If a piece of technology could reduce staff workload or walk citizens through a routine process or form, you could effectively multiply a workforce without ever actually adding new people.But for every good idea, there are caveats, limitations, pitfalls and the desire to push the envelope. While innovating anything in tech is generally a good thing, when it comes to AI in government, there is fine line to walk between improving a process and potentially making it more convoluted.Outside of a few key government functions, a new white paper from the Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation finds that AI could actually increase the burden of government and muddy-up the functions it is so desperately trying to improve.Hila Mehr, a Center for Technology and Democracy fellow, explained that there are five key government problems that AI might be able to assist with reasonably: resource allocation, large data sets, expert shortages, predictable scenarios, and procedural and diverse data.And governments have already started moving into these areas. In Arkansas and North Carolina , chatbots are helping the state connect with its citizens through Facebook. In Utah and Mississippi , Amazon Alexa skills have been introduced to better connect constituents to the information and services they need.Unlike Hollywood representations of AI in film, Mehr said, the real applications for artificial intelligence in a government organization are generally far from sexy. The administrative aspects of governing are where tools like this will excel.Where it comes to things like expert shortages, she said she sees AI as a means to support existing staff. In a situation where doctors are struggling to meet the needs of all of their patients, AI could act as a research tool. The same is true of lawyers dealing with thousands of pages of case law. AI could be used as a research assistant.If youre talking about government offices that are limited in staff and experts," Mehr said, "thats where AI trained on niche issues could come in.But, she warned, AI is not without its problems, namely making sure that it is not furthering human bias written in during the programming process and played out through the data it is fed. Rather than rely on AI to make critical decisions, she argues that any algorithms and decisions made for or as a result of AI should retain a human component.We cant rely on them to make decisions, so we need that check, the way we have checks in our democracy, we need to have checks on these systems as well, and thats where the human group or panel of individuals comes in, Mehr said. The way that these systems are trained, you cant always know why they are making the decision they are making, which is why its important to not let that be the final decision because it can be a black box depending on how it is trained and you want to make sure that it is not running on its own.But past the fear that the technology might disproportionately impact certain citizens or might somehow complicate the larger process, there is the somewhat legitimate fear that the implementation of AI will mean lost jobs. Mehr said its a thought that even she has had.On the employee side, I think a lot of people view this, rightly so, as something that could replace them," she added. "I worry about that in my own career, but I know that it is even worse for people who might have administrative roles. But I think early studies have shown that youre using AI to help people in their work so that they are spending less time doing repetitive tasks and more time doing the actual work that requires a human touch.In both her white paper and on the phone, Mehr is careful to advise against going whole hog into AI with the expectation that it can replace costly personnel. Instead she advocates for the technology as a tool to build and supplement the team that already exists.As for where the technology could run affront of human jobs, Mehr advises that government organizations and businesses alike start considering labor practices in advance.Inevitably, it will replace some jobs, she said. People need to be looking at fair labor practices now, so that they can anticipate these changes to the market and be prepared for them.With any blossoming technology, there are barriers to entry and hurdles that must be overcome before a useful tool is in the hands of those best fit to use it. And as with anything, money and resources present a significant challenge  but Mehr said large amounts of data are also needed to get AI, especially learning systems, off the ground successfully.If you are talking about simple automation or [answering] a basic set of questions, it shouldnt take that long. If you are talking about really training an AI system with machine learning, you need a big data set, a very big data set, and you need to train it, not just feed the system data and then its ready to go, she said. The biggest barriers are time and resources, both in the sense of data and trained individuals to do that work.
Never released

Legal challenge

(TNS) -- After refusing for nearly six weeks to say whether a study on the taxpayer costs of implementing federal identification requirements that will affect domestic air travel will be made public, state transportation officials now say it could be released.The change in the agency's stance came two days after the Reading Eagle emailed more than 100 state lawmakers asking about the study.PennDOT is required to submit a Real ID cost study to the General Assembly by next Friday. It is the department's second such analysis in a decade.Passed following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Real ID establishes federal security standards for state driver's licenses and ID cards.The first cost estimate was conducted in 2008, before the Legislature opted out of Real ID, in part, over the costs of the federal mandate. After PennDOT mounted a legal challenge to keep the 2008 feasibility study from being released following a directive from the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records that the agency do so, the Eagle asked officials if the current study would be made public.The agency had been coy about whether it would publicly release the new report."Whether the report is shared after its submission is at the discretion of the department and Legislature, subject to applicable legal and policy considerations," Alexis Campbell, a PennDOT spokeswoman, said in a July 6 email to the Eagle.Under the state's Right-to-Know Law, records are presumed public in Pennsylvania.After the Eagle forwarded Campbell's email to 103 lawmakers on Aug. 14, asking how her response met the Right-to-Know Law's "presumption of openness" and whether they were comfortable with PennDOT's handling of public records, the agency tweaked its language in an apparent position change.Responding to a separate question, Campbell wrote the Eagle in an Aug. 16 email: "Regarding the report due on August 25, since it will be submitted to the General Assembly, its public release is at their discretion. Generally, reports of this nature are made available to the public via the Legislature. The department has no issue with this report's release as it is (an) external document by nature of the legislation."Right-to-Know experts and lawmakers the Eagle spoke to say PennDOT should release both reports on what has become a pressing public issue, as the Legislature looks to become Real ID compliant."Even if the exemption did apply, they could still give it to you," Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, said of the 2008 report.PennDOT maintains the earlier study is exempt from the Right-to-Know Law and has refused to release it even though the Office of Open records in May determined it was a public record.State Rep. Jerry Knowles, a Schuylkill County Republican who also represents part of Berks County, called PennDOT's position disturbing."The bureaucrats don't run the show," Knowles said. "The elected officials do."At least one lawmaker - state Rep. Mark M. Gillen - is pressing PennDOT to release the agency's earlier report."Not only should the 2008 study be released but any subsequent feasibility studies on this significant issue requiring contemporary public debate," the Robeson Township Republican said.On Tuesday, Gillen sent a letter to PennDOT Secretary Leslie S. Richards asking she explain the agency's continued stonewalling.Campbell, who said PennDOT is reviewing the letter, had no further comment."I think the aroma of this is foul, and it creates unnecessary suspicion," Gillen said.Real ID has been a real headache for lawmakers.For years, Pennsylvania enjoyed federal extensions giving the commonwealth time to comply with Real ID despite passing a misguided law in 2012 prohibiting participation.Pennsylvania is one of about a dozen states that blocked participation by state statute. Without a Real ID, Pennsylvanians will be unable to fly domestically or enter federal facilities and military bases.When the federal extensions abruptly ended last fall, lawmakers were left scrambling to hastily repeal the state's nonparticipation law. The new law - signed by the governor in May - also created a two-tiered system that allows Pennsylvanians to opt in or out of Real ID.Because the enhanced driver's license is likely to cost more and the intent of the new law is not to have those with standard-issued licenses bear the cost of Real ID, lawmakers tasked PennDOT with identifying those extra compliance costs.The last time PennDOT identified these costs was in 2008.According to fiscal notes provided to lawmakers weighing the opt-out vote in 2012, PennDOT estimated taxpayers would pay - over nine years - $141 million in startup costs and $39 million annually in operational expenses.Actual costs from comparable, participating Real ID states show much lower expenditures.Although the Legislature relied on these figures when voting overwhelmingly to bar participation in Real ID five years ago, PennDOT apparently did not release its 2008 feasibility study to lawmakers either.On June 23, in an earlier email thread, the Eagle contacted 99 state lawmakers, none of whom recalled seeing the 2008 PennDOT report."The (House) Appropriations Committee does not have a copy of this report," John O'Brien, communications director for the committee, said of PennDOT's 2008 study.Although PennDOT was reluctant to say if the current cost study will be released when completed, O'Brien said the law Gov. Tom Wolf signed earlier this year requires a public report.In January, when Pennsylvanians first became aware of the implications of Real ID noncompliance, the Eagle requested under the state's Right-to-Know Law a copy of PennDOT's 2008 feasibility study examining the costs of implementing the federal law.PennDOT denied the request, saying the 2008 study was predecisional and therefore exempt from disclosure.The Eagle appealed the decision to the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records.After conducting a review of the 2008 study, the Office of Open Records sided with the newspaper.Noting that the state's public access law places the burden on agencies to demonstrate a record is exempt, Jill S. Wolfe, the appeals officer, wrote: "While the study may have been used to consider options regarding the implementation of REAL ID, the OOR has conducted an in-camera review of the study, and those deliberations are not contained within the study. Rather, the study contains the underlying factual bases (sic) for the deliberations, but not the deliberations themselves."Wolfe further said PennDOT did not meet the burden of proof and instructed the agency to provide a copy of the study within 30 days.Rather than do so, PennDOT filed a legal challenge.On July 27, the Eagle withdrew from the lawsuit."After reviewing our case, we believed the legal battle with PennDOT would not result in a decision that would help others gain access to information," Editor Harry Deitz said. "We believe our resources are best used in cases that would have a broader impact."The legal dispute, however, has left lawmakers scratching their heads and the governor's office compelled to defend the agency."Somebody tells me feasibility study, by my experience of the term, I would expect it to be open to the public," said state Rep. Dan Miller, an Allegheny County Democrat.State Sen. Judy Schwank agreed."I am totally flummoxed by this," the Ruscombmanor Township Democrat said. "I don't understand why the information can't be made available."Despite criticism of PennDOT's 2008 estimate, widely described as inflated, J.J. Abbott, the governor's spokesman, said Wolf remained confident in the agency's ability to get Real ID up and running."The cost study you're referencing was done in 2008 and two administrations ago," Abbott said in an email to the Eagle. "I can't speak to how they came to those estimates or the veracity of them at the time."
(TNS) -- The passenger jet began descending below the 500-foot level toward San Francisco International Airports runway 28R when the pilot saw an alarming sight: An apparent drone passing just 20 feet directly below the planes nose.The pilot landed the plane safely without needing to take evasive action, according to a newly released Federal Aviation Administration report. But the Jan. 23 incident, one of at least 27 pilot-reported drone sightings so far this year near Bay Area airports, highlights the growing problem drones pose to airports.Although the FAA and airports are examining the use of emerging technologies to detect or take down drones, theres not much they can do right now except educate drone pilots to fly safely or send law enforcement officers to try to find the offender.But its difficult for aviation officials to determine that what the pilots saw was a drone, much less provide information such as size and type that would lead police back to the operator.Were concerned about every drone sighting, regardless of the details, said SFO spokesman Doug Yakel. The reports only capture what the pilots said they observed and are not corroborated by any other source of data. We evaluate these reports collectively to identify trends and patterns of reporting activity.According to the FAAs latest report , more than 400 sightings of unmanned aircraft were reported to airport towers nationwide from January through March. About 1,200 sightings were reported in 2015 and 1,800 in 2016, according to FAA spokesman Ian Gregor.The reports mainly come from aircraft pilots, although some are from private citizens on the ground. Some pilots reported drones that were so far away that they posed no immediate danger to the aircraft, but were still close enough to the 5-mile restricted airspace around airports or far above the 400-foot height limit for drones.A Feb. 3 drone sighting, one of three reported in the first three months of this year to Oakland International Airport, concerned a device flying about 1,000 feet over the Oakland Coliseum.And, as The Chronicle reported July 23, pilots of two jets reported a drone hovering 3,500 feet over Hunters Point.This year, 11 sightings have been reported to San Francisco International, almost equaling the 13 during all of last year. None has caused problems or delays for passenger flights, including the close call Jan. 23, Yakel said.In that incident, the pilot reported the plane was descending toward runway 28-right about 6:35 p.m. when he saw a drone passing below the nose of the aircraft, the FAA report said.At Mineta San Jose International, one of nine sightings reported in the first quarter came March 12, when the pilot of a passenger jet approaching the airport at 5,000 feet said a circle-shaped drone with four blades came within about 100 feet. No evasive action was taken, and the incident was relayed to the Santa Clara County sheriffs office, the FAA report said.Aviation officials and drone experts say its difficult to determine whether the sighting is of a drone or another object. One pilots report filed to SFO described a drone flying a half-mile away as gold and red and shiny.Drone sightings are bound to rise as sales soar. The FAA expects the number of drones to increase in the U.S. from 2.5 million in 2016 to 7 million in 2020.A 2015 study by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York found that only one-third of reported drone sightings near airports could be considered serious incidents. The rest of the reports had inconclusive details, or suggested the object was too far from the aircraft to pose an immediate threat, said Dan Gettinger, the centers co-director.Most often, the pilots reporting drones are taking off or landing. These pilots are doing a lot of things at the same time, and theyre not always able to report with absolute certainty that the things they saw are drones, Gettinger said.In 2016, a British Airways jet initially thought to have hit a drone in flight actually hit a plastic bag, according to Gettinger.Ultimately, its difficult to understand the scope of the problem even today, he said. Its not clear how serious of an issue it is even though we see all these reports.A study last year by the European Aviation Safety Agency, which found that too little is known about the likelihood and consequences to predict what would happen if and when a plane hits a drone midair.But analysts say the burgeoning industry, including hobbyists, photographers, racers and potentially package shippers, could come crashing down if theres a tragic incident involving a drone and plane.All its going to take is one major fatality and the downside for the industry at large will be incalculable, said Chris Carr, a drone law expert and partner at the law firm Baker Botts in San Francisco.SFO has tried to streamline its reporting system so that when a pilot reports a drone, the information gets to a local law enforcement agency as soon as possible, Yakel said.Part of what were trying to achieve is to be able to identify and locate the drone operator, he said.But thats difficult because the flight paths leading to and from the airport stretch for miles, over many cities, counties and the bay. Dispatching police to one location to find a single drone operator can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.FAA laws prohibit shooting a drone out of the air because it might cause more harm if it fell to the ground, although the U.S. Department of Defense recently authorized the military to shoot down drones over bases.SFO is trying to map drone flights to determine whether there are patterns that will help find illegal operators. It also is examining various tech options for tracking and detecting drones, Yakel said.For example, San Francisco drone-tracking company Dedrone offers technology to track the unique communication signatures for individual drone models. But Yakel said the airport is still far from deciding what type of technology to use. One option is training its current systems, like radar and security cameras, to find drones.NASA researchers in Langley, Va., recently developed an electronic GPS system that can force a drone to the ground before penetrating a designated zone. SFO has an electronic fence around its physical property to track the movements of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, but installing a similar electronic fence covering flight paths would be difficult, Yakel said.Still, Yakel said, we want to understand whats available.The FAA, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, which represents commercial drone operators, and the Academy of Model Aeronautics, which represents hobbyists, have launched a campaign called Know Before You Fly to educate drone pilots.We believe most people want to fly safely and care about safety, the FAAs Gregor said in an email. But many, if not most, drone users have little to no prior aviation experience and might not know what operating safely entails. Drone operators have to understand that as soon as they start flying outside, they are pilots with the responsibility to operate safely, just like pilots of manned aircraft.
(Xinhua) 10:50, August 19, 2017

BARCELONA, Aug. 18 -- Three Chinese nationals were injured on Thursday in Barcelona's terrorist attack, official sources confirmed on Friday.

One person from China's Hong Kong will leave Spainthis afternoon on a Qatar Airways flight from El Prat airport, after being accompanied by a staff member from China's Consulate General in Barcelona.

Two people from China's Taiwan remained in hospital where they were visited by staff members from China's Consulate General.

On Thursday afternoon, a van mowed down people at the famous street Las Ramblas in Barcelona, killing 13 people and injured more than 100 others.

Hours later, Catalan police gunned down five alleged terrorists, armed with ax and knives, who drove over several people in Cambrils. A woman died of injuries later in hospital.

Victims are from 34 different nationalities and were taken to 15 different hospitals in Barcelona and its surrounding cities.
Delphi Automotive signed a commercial partnership agreement with Innoviz Technologies , an Israel-based company developing LiDAR technology for the mass commercialization of autonomous vehicles. Innovizs proprietary LiDAR sensing solutions will be integrated into Delphis systems to provide automakers with a comprehensive portfolio of autonomous driving technologies.

Innoviz LiDAR technology utilizes a solid-state design to provide longer-range scanning performance and superior object detection and accuracy capabilities. Long range LiDAR is critical for enabling Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous vehicles to travel at high speeds, as these vehicles will need to identify objects at far distances and in great detail in order to operate safely.

Along with radar and vision technology, LiDAR is an essential component to Delphis automated driving perception suite. Innoviz is developing a product that provides a high performance intelligent sensing solution to help advance automated driving technology. Glen De Vos, Delphi Automotive senior vice president and chief technology officer

To further support the commercial partnership, Delphi has also made a minority investment in Innoviz.
(Xinhua) 10:53, August 19, 2017

BEIJING, Aug. 18 -- Amanda Tan showed her mettle on Friday as the Singaporean fought off a late challenge from Thailand's Saranporn Langkulgasettrin to capture the BridgeCC CLPGA Beijing Heritage title in a play-off for her maiden pro win.

After starting the back nine at Beijing Orient Tianxing Country Club with a birdie blitz where she picked up five strokes over the first six holes for a three shot lead, the teenager (67) could only hang on as Saranporn closed with three straight birdies to force the extra session as Tan made a bogey six at the last for a two-shot swing.

In the play-off, the 18-year-old Tan quickly ended it with a birdie on the final hole as Saranporn misread her putt and could only muster par. The victory was worth RMB30,000.

"I feel excited and happy. It has been a long time since I have won, not only as a pro but as an amateur as well. This is my first time I have won an event. It gives me lots of confidence. I'm ready for the next event. I really want to share this good news with my parents."

Tan, who turned pro in February, credited her strong putting for the win and her iron play for being able to get close to the holes. She admitted to feeling pressure on the final hole of regulation and missing her putt.

"In the play-off I didn't think too much about being the champion. Saranporn had won two titles already and had more experience than I do, so maybe she deserved the title. I just focused on my shots."

Saranporn, winner of the Wuhan and Zhuhai legs this year, said she felt great about her game after struggling with her putting. She lamented making bogey at holes 11 and 13 and missing a birdie putt at the 15th hole.

"But then I made three straight birdies. Amanda thought my score was better than hers so at the last she putted too strongly because she thought she would only have the chance for the play-off," said the 17-year-old Phuket native. "No pressure, but struggling with my putts. Amanda's putts were really good today. On the back nine she made five birdies over six holes. She was really good today. I didn't feel sad."

Chinese amateur Wang Xinying (72) finished a distant third at six shots back, one stroke ahead of a group that included compatriots Wang Mengzhu (69) and Sui Xiang (69), Thais Wannasiri Sirisampant (67) and Tiranan Yoopan (71) and South Korean Park Jin-hee (66).

Bae In-ji carded a hole-in-one at the 156-yard 16th hole to help the South Korean to a 73 and equal-15th finish.

Beijing Orient Tianxing Country Club is a 6,270-yard, par-72 layout designed by TK Pen.

BridgeCC CLPGA Beijing Heritage third round leading scores (China unless stated; *denotes amateur; + Tan wins in first-hole play-off)

203 - Amanda Tan+ (Singapore) 67-69-67, Saranporn Langkulgasettrin (Thailand) 69-66-68

209 - Wang Xinying* 69-69-72

210 - Park Jin-hee (South Korea) 73-71-66, Wannasiri Sirisampant (Thailand) 74-69-67, Wang Mengzhu 71-70-69, Sui Xiang 68-73-69, Tiranan Yoopan (Thailand) 70-69-71

211 - Yan Panpan 72-71-68, Sun Jiaze* 71-70-70, Piyathida Ployumsri (Thailand) 66-73-72

212 - Michelle Ko (Malaysia) 72-72-68, Ye Liying 73-67-72, Titiya Plucksataporn (Thailand) 70-70-72

213 - Janya Morrakotpan (Thailand) 75-70-68, Bae In-ji (South Korea) 68-72-73

214 - Ji Yifan* 69-72-73

216 - Cai Danlin* 73-76-67, Du Mohan* 74-73-69, Liu Yiyi* 72-74-70, Cho A-ra (South Korea) 72-73-71, Wang Ziyi* 73-71-72
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GREENSBORO  The impact of the citys rising number of killings reaches far beyond the raw emotions of grieving families.

Its a community issue.

For the past 19 years, community activist Sherman Moore has fought to help stop violent crime in Greensboro. He attributes the increase in killings over the years to gang-related issues.

On Friday, Moore thought he was going to hear a gathering of the citys clergy talk about joining forces with the city. Instead, he said he only saw more finger-pointing from the clergy.

Moore said he has met with city officials, marched with them and hosted community events to draw attention to the problem. He has dedicated his life to stopping the violence in his hometown.

All he wants is help from one particular community.

I believe the churches could be doing more than pointing fingers at the city officials and police, Moore said Friday at a news conference hosted by local clergy members. Why do the churches finally want to come together now after there have been 29 murders in Greensboro?

Killings in Greensboro have left those in politics, law enforcement and the community searching for answers to the wave of violence. The city has already surpassed last years 21 slayings. Police dont want to see the city hit 39 this year, the all-time high reached in 2007.

The 2nd District  which encompasses the southeastern section of the city  has had 12 killings so far this year, more than any other area, police records show. There has been an increase in killings during the summer months, with six in July and five through Wednesday, according to police records.

Police have cleared 10 of this years homicides by arrests, said Susan Danielsen, a spokeswoman for the Greensboro Police Department.

Building relationships with the communities is one approach police are using to combat violent crime. Capt. Nathaniel Davis, the commander of the criminal investigations division, said police are also increasing patrols in areas most affected by violent crime.

The Rev. Cardes Brown of New Light Missionary Baptist Church often sees the results of that violence.

As the owner of Serenity Funeral Home & Cremations in the city, Brown coordinated the funerals of four of the 29 people killed so far this year: Charles Edward Smith Jr., Dexter Cornelius Brown, Dallas McClure and Richard Lamar Shearin.

The slain men represent more than a statistic to him.

They are reality checks.

When I look at some of those young people in their caskets, I dont just see their faces, Brown said. Sometimes I see my grandson laying there.

He questioned what the police were doing to deal with the surge in violent crimes. He said there is no way city officials and police can watch the number of killings increase and not find a way to reduce them.

Would it move you to act if it was black on white crime? Brown asked. Were talking about a city of 300,000 people. You can see that we have a crisis.

Police Chief Wayne Scott agrees that there is a major issue with the violent crime in the city. Its something he and his staff and the City Council have discussed at length.

In response to the increased violence, detectives have been shifted from the property crimes division to the violent crimes division, Scott said. Police are also working with the interfaith community and other community groups to address the issues, he added.

Scott said the problem is even bigger than it appears.

This nation is in the grip of two epidemics, opioids and violence, he said.

Better housing, a stronger economy with more jobs and a re-entry program for convicted felons could help in the fight against the violence, Scott said. In some of the killings this year, police found evidence that both the victim and the suspect had a criminal background. A program that educates felons and prepares them for the workforce may have changed their fates.

This tells me that there is a systemic issue we need to address, Scott said.

The three candidates running for mayor, including incumbent Mayor Nancy Vaughan, all see the citys homicide increase as a major issue.

Less meddling from City Council in police business could be a start in fixing the issue, candidate John Brown said. He said the council and Vaughan have told police how to do their jobs and shouldnt have.

Bringing in better jobs and more community policing could help lower tensions in the city, Brown said.

Vaughan said the increase in killings is extremely concerning and something city officials are looking into. Neighborhoods want to see an increased police presence in the community, and Vaughan said the city has the budget to recruit more officers.

The City Council recently approved pay raises for police officers and firefighters as a way to recruit candidates. Vaughan said she has also pondered the idea of a take-home car for officers as a way to entice people to apply for the job.

Mayoral candidate Diane Moffett said she believes that better interaction with residents and confronting community issues head-on would help.

Moffett said families are concerned about the killings and want more from the city and police. She said there should be a good relationship between the community and police.

Davis, the police captain, agrees.

The community has to help us but its not all their burden, he said. We have to build real relationships in these communities.

Police have been examining each case, looking for why have killings increased and why now?

One answer behind the motives could be drugs.

How can I look at these incidents and not look at that correlation? Davis asked.

State Rep. Amos Quick said more attention needs to be given to the issue of violence in Greensboro. Young people who witness these killings are affected psychologically and need help, he said.

Quick said he believes there is an economic and psychological component to fighting violent crime, and the city can no longer remain silent on those issues.

You have children who witness violence in their communities, he said. Violence, when only seen as a law enforcement issue, will only have a law enforcement response.

It must be treated as a public health matter, he said.

An increase in youth programs through churches might be an easier fix, suggested Moore, the community activist. The City Council and police have a role in solving the citys growing homicide rate, he said, but so does the community and so do the churches.

Moore said the churches should interact with the community more to get a better understanding of the issue and should create programs from there.

Why, on Sundays, are we paying tithes and not seeing that money being used for community programs?
GREENSBORO  Motorists will lose a short, but popular cut-through for northbound traffic as part of a car dealerships expansion plans that also will trigger the demise of two neighboring businesses.

City officials said they recently approved plans to close Martinsville Court, a diagonal link between Battleground Avenue and Martinsville Road, as part of a project enabling Rice Toyota to expand its parking lot along the northeastern side of Battlegrounds 2700 block.

The dealership did not return calls from a reporter Thursday and Friday seeking details of the expansion that also will include lots fronting on Battleground now occupied by a service station and a dry cleaner.

Although the closure of Martinsville Court will happen in the foreseeable future, its not clear exactly when because recent approval by the Greensboro City Council included a series of conditions that still have to be met, said Steve Galanti of the Greensboro Planning Department.

I dont know what the timing is going to be, Galanti said. Its all going to depend on Rice Toyota and how quickly they can buy those properties, design the parking lot and secure their permits before they can start construction.

But an employee at the gas station, Gaines Citgo, said in a telephone interview that the automotive shop will be closing for good next Friday.

Owner Ronnie Gaines does not plan to reopen in another location, said the employee who asked that his name not be disclosed.

Next door, veteran dry cleaner Mark Sugg said he expects to close down within about 30 days. He has operated Tops Cleaners at 2702 Battleground Ave., since 1984.

Sugg said he has yet to formally announce the impending closure of his business and is holding off until he can complete the sale of his property to the dealership and knows the timing for sure.

I have customers that have been coming here for 25 and 30 years. Ive told them, Sugg said. When I get a definite closing date (for the property sale), I will inform anybody else that I havent told.

He described the process of closing a business he has owned for so long as bittersweet, adding that he will make sure customers get their dry cleaned items returned  either at the shop before its shuttered or through other storage arrangements he plans to make for latecomers.

The Gaines family also is well known in local automotive circles, with Ronnie Gaines and several relatives having operated service stations in several other locations from Lawndale Drive to downtown.

The other business with direct access to Martinsville Court, New York Pizza Bar & Grill, will not be affected by Rice Toyotas expansion  except that the boundaries of its property will expand slightly to encompass part of the land now occupied by the doomed cut-through.

Galanti, the planning official, said that when the road is closed, the land under the pavement will no longer be city right-of-way and will revert to the private property owners on either side  each land owner expanding to the former roads center line on his or her side.

In many cases, a city government does not actually own the land beneath its streets, but maintains it as an easement that benefits both abutting property owners and the general public.

We arent giving property away. Were changing the persons ability to use that property, Galanti said, referring to land owners along Martinsville Court.

Despite the roads usefulness as a shortcut from Battleground to Martinsville Road, its proposed closure drew little notice or controversy as it moved through city government.

Nobody spoke in opposition either at the June 21 meeting of the city Planning Board where it was approved on a unanimous vote, or at the council meeting several weeks later where it likewise passed without a nay vote.

All five property owners with frontage or rear-lot access to Martinsville Court signed a petition in favor of the closure.

Once the road is closed, northbound Battleground motorists aiming for Martinsville Road still will be able to make the connection, simply by continuing along the 2700 block to the next traffic light and turning right on Martinsville Road.

Galanti said its not every day that city government agrees to abandon public right of way:

The closing of an open street is unusual  city staff, planning board and City Council review and consider each street closing based on the merits of each case.
GREENSBORO  Former police Chief David Wrays lawsuit against the city to pay his legal fees can continue, the N.C. Supreme Court has ruled.

Wray sued the city in 2009 to pay his more than $220,000 in legal fees at the time, bills he amassed defending himself against state and federal investigations. A Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the city had governmental immunity. Last year, the Court of Appeals reversed the trial courts dismissal, citing a 1980 city policy on paying legal bills of officers and employees.

The Supreme Court affirmed that decision in an opinion filed Friday.

Justice Robin Hudson wrote that Wrays complaint sufficiently presents allegations of a claim sounding in contract.

The City has consented to be sued to the extent of any such contract, she wrote. These allegations are adequate to raise a waiver of governmental immunity, and thus, to survive the Citys motion to dismiss.

According to Fridays ruling, in 2007 and 2008, respectively, two police officers sued Wray and others, as well as the city, seeking damages for various wrongs alleged to have been inflicted on them during plaintiffs tenure.

Subsequent lawsuits contended that under Wrays command, the department created a black book with pictures of 19 black officers for the purpose of framing, embarrassing and wrongfully investigating them.

Wray, though, said the book was part of an investigation into a sexual assault.

The city has since reached settlements with many of the officers involved in the original complaints.

Like the appeals court, the Supreme Court in its ruling gave no opinion on the merits of Wrays contract action, saying instead he should not be denied his day in court.

Justices Sam J. Ervin and Cheri Beasley dissented. Ervin wrote that Wray did not sufficiently allege the existence of a contractual relationship with the city, so governmental immunity should not be waived.

The case now returns to Superior Court.
When he was 19, my father was sent to Europe to fight the Nazis. He was wounded twice in France. He was knocked unconscious by shell concussion soon after he arrived, and later he received a Purple Heart when he was machine gunned in the leg as his platoon crossed a field bounded by hedgerows.

In total, he fought in Europe for a little more than two years, and although he never talked about it, Im sure he shot his share of Nazis.

My fathers dead now. He didnt live to see the current president of the United States (a draft dodger) declare that those who fight against Nazis are as bad, guilty and violent as the Nazis themselves. Thank God.

Christina Peterson

Greensboro
Food Lion stores across Rockingham County celebrated recent renovations on Aug. 2.

The renovations came as part of a regional effort to improve shopping experience in the greater Greensboro market.

The three Reidsville, two Eden and one Madison locations were among the 93 total stores renovated.

Food Lion has been a proud neighbor in the greater Greensboro community since 1968, and were excited to bring these improvements to our 93 stores in the area, said Food Lion President Meg Ham in a news release. Weve spent the past several months making significant investments in our stores, customers, associates and communities to create a new grocery shopping experience. Now, customers can easily find fresh, quality products at affordable prices to nourish our families, delivered with caring, friendly service every time they shop.

This year the company has invested $178 million into their stores in this region.

The investment includes remodeling, lowering prices, hiring additional associates and giving back to the community.

According the company, store checkouts have improved technology and larger display screens. Product assortment is expanded, deli items are pre-sliced daily, and a gluten-free section has been added. A Taste of Inspirations premium deli line is new, 100 percent USDA choice beef is ground fresh daily and steaks can be custom cut.

We are glad that Food Lion decided to reinvest in our community, said Mayor Jay Donecker of the Reidsville renovations. The grocery chain remains a strong presence here, and the three locations provide our residents with a lot of convenience.

Donecker along with Store Manager Billy Williams cut the ribbon during the celebration at the Food Lion within Belmont Square Shopping Center.

Food Lion at 1605 Way Street, 1130 Freeway Drive and 5200 U.S. 29 Business in Reidsville underwent interior renovations, and the latter also had a small delivery dock added. Other locations in Rockingham County include 205 E. Meadow Road and 824-E S. Van Buren Road in Eden, and 614 Burton St. in Madison.
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GREENWICH  YWCA Greenwich is poised to honor some of the communitys most notable and distinguished women next month with its annual Spirit of Greenwich awards.

The awards will be given Sept. 27 at Greenwich Country Club and will spotlight 10 Greenwich women who, according to the YWCA, have, through their significant volunteer work, vision, devotion and accomplishments have enriched the lives of many.

The agency noted the award recipients have together volunteered for more than 50 schools, churches and nonprofits in town and throughout Fairfield County.

The award was first given in 1993.

The 2017 winners are Kim Augustine, Jenny Adams Baldock, Vicki Craver, Cathy Dann, Eileen Grasso, Laura Holland Geffs, Lynn VK Hagerbrant, Wendy Stapleton Reyes, Heidi Brake Smith and Jill Weiner.

YWCA President and CEO Mary Lee Kiernan praised all of the recipients.

These women exemplify the core values of so many people in our community, and we are very proud to honor them, Kiernan said. Their commitment to philanthropic causes changes lives, and we are grateful for their service.

Augustine is being honored for her work with Kids in Crisis, the Breast Cancer Alliance, Brunswick School and the Convent of the Sacred Hearts Greenwich campus.

Baldock was elected chairman of the Greenwich Emergency Medical Services board of directors after 15 years of service there. A past president of the Greenwich Library Board of Trustees, she is also actively involved with the Boys and Girls Club of Greenwich and has been involved with Brunswick School.

Craver is the co-president of Impact Fairfield County, which she formed with Wendy Block to organize local women to provide large, transformational grants to local nonprofits. In existence for only two years, Impact has already given out $340,000 in grant funding. Block also is a trustee for Greenwich Country Day School.

Dunn is closely involved with Brunswick School and the Breast Cancer Alliance. She is on the alliances board, where she serves as treasurer, and is a past co-chairwoman of its annual benefit luncheon.

Dunn also is well known to YWCA Greenwich, where she is a past co-chairwoman of the annual Old Bags Luncheon, which raises money for domestic abuse services.

Grasso is heavily involved with St. Catherine of Siena Church in town, as well as with the Junior League of Greenwich, Stanwich School, Brunswick and Rye Country Day.

She is a co-chairwoman of Women of Vision, a volunteer ministry associated with World Vision, a Christian relief and development agency providing aid around the world to children and families.

Geffs, a past president of the Junior League of Greenwich, has also been involved with the American Red Cross and helped found the Greenwich Alliance for Education, which provides financial support to students and public schools to enhance existing programs and help provide students more opportunities to achieve.

She is also on the board of the Greenwich United Way and is a volunteer for Meals on Wheels, Reading Champions and Planned Parenthood.

Hagerbrant has been involved with both Brunswick and Greenwich Academy and has been a volunteer at First Presbyterian Church and the Greenwich Coalition to Combat Underage Drinking.

She has also given her time to the American Heart Association, Breast Cancer Alliance and the Alzheimers Association, where she helped organize the first Celebrating Hope benefit in Greenwich.

In 2010, she was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease and she is currently serving on the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinsons Research Patient Council while also starting a support network with more than 100 members called Shakers Anonymous.

Reyes, who co-founded the Greenwich International Film Festival, has a long background in volunteerism at Armstrong Courts preschool, Kids in Crisis, Americares, the YWCAs domestic abuse services and the Alzheimers Association.

She has founded an organization called Colombrilla, which helps Colombian families dealing with HIV/AIDS find permanent, sustainable solutions to get out of poverty.

Smith formed the Garrett B. Smith Foundation after the death of her son from cancer at age 4. She has raised money to help seriously ill children and funded fellowships at major hospitals around the country.

She has also been involved with Greenwich Library, Kids in Crisis, the Greenwich Tree Conservancy and Greenwich Center for the Arts, among other organizations.

Weiner has worked with Greenwich United Way, Impact Fairfield County, Greenwich Country Day School, Putnam Indian Field School and is deeply involved with the United Way. She was named a lifetime Sole Sister in 2017 for helping in the community and is on the Greenwich United Way board.

Full biographies for all of the winners are available online at www.ywcagreenwich.org/spirit, as well as the chance to buy tickets and find information about sponsorships for the event.

Kiernan called the event one of the most important YWCA Greenwich does each year because it celebrates the contributions of women to the community.

It helps further our mission of empowering women and girls, Kiernan said. It points out the central role that women and their contributions play in serving the community and providing the quality of life we enjoy here.

Tickets are available. Proceeds will support the free domestic abuse services YWCA Greenwich provides; scholarships for local kids to attend preschool, after-school, summer camp and aquatic programs offered by the YW; and free womens leadership and racial justice events.
PLA soldiers from army aviation forces stand ready to depart for Sudan at Beijing Capital International Airport, August 18, 2017. [Photo: China Plus]

Chinese armed forces have completed sending their first helicopter unit to the United Nations' peacekeeping missions.

The unit, which includes 140 people and four Mi-171 helicopters, is due to conduct aerial patrol and help transport personnel and cargo in the Darfur region in Sudan.

Chen De-hui, political commissar of the unit, says they are ready for operations in the African nation.

"We are fully prepared, in terms of mentality, physical conditions, military techniques, and our knowledge about international laws and regulations. At the moment, 41 people have arrived in Darfur to set up our camps and test on helicopters. Everything is ready over there. The helicopters are ready to fly," Chen said.

The remaining 99 people of the unit left China on Friday evening.

An army aviation force officer salutes to his soldiers as nearly 100 soldiers stand ready to depart for Sudan at Beijing Capital International Airport, August 18, 2017. [Photo: China Plus]

The Darfur region has been in a state of humanitarian emergency since 2003, due to conflicts between Sudanese government forces and the local indigenous population.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also head of the Chinese military, promised to send a helicopter unit to UN peacekeeping missions in Africa while attending a UN summit in New York in 2015.

China started participating in UN peacekeeping programs in the 1990s.

More than 2,800 Chinese military personnel are currently involved in peacekeeping missions in countries such as South Sudan, Lebanon and Mali.
The Fearless Angel Projects third annual luncheon takes place at Greenwich Country Club from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 13. Award-winning documentary filmmaker and TV producer Lara Stolman will serve as guest speaker at the three-course luncheon which will also feature a fashion show by Mary Jane Denzer and music by DJ April Larken. Scholarships will be awarded to families with children diagnosed with a developmental disorder or autism. TFAP serves families in Fairfield and Westchester Counties challenged by the economic struggle of raising a child on the autism spectrum. Tickets are from $25 to $1,500. For tickets and more info, visit www.thefearlessangelproject.com.

Scene...

La Cremaillere French restaurant is featured in an article in the September issue of Vanity Fair. The restaurant, owned by Robert Olivier Meyzen, has been a mainstay in the hamlet of Banksville, N.Y., since 1949 and a haven for celebrities including Bedford, N.Y., resident and actor Chevy Chase, Greenwich residents and TV personalities Regis and Joy Philbin, North Salem, N.Y., resident and band leader Paul Shaffer, Greenwich native and actress Glenn Close, music mogul and Bedford resident Clive Davis, Greenwich resident and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, Greenwich resident and music mogul Tommy Mottola, Katonah resident and domestic diva Martha Stewart as well as Mick Jagger and Gerry Hall in the 80s and Jackie Kennedy, to name a few. The restaurant is currently offering a summer tasting menu with a five-course meal at $47.50 per person.

Scene

Actor Daniel Craig, who lives in nearby Ulster County N.Y. with his wife, actress Rachael Weisz, will star as 007 in his fifth movie as James Bond after swearing off ever playing the role again in 2015. The 49-year-old actor was spotted working at The Equinox on Old Track Road in Greenwich last year.

Out there

Pathways Organizations annual fundraiser honoring Greenwich resident and Pathways co-chair Margie Warwick takes place on Sept. 9 on the 147 ft. private yacht The Atlantis at the Delamar in Greenwich. The event will feature dinner, music and a live auction. Pathways provides programs and homes for the mentally ill in Greenwich. For more info and tickets, contact Pathways at 203-869-5656.

Scene

MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski has sold her Bronxville, N.Y., home for more than $2 million. Brzezinski is engaged to New Canaan resident Joe Scarborough, her Morning Joe co-host, who wowed the crowd last week at The Cutting Room in New York City where he performed songs from his newly released album Welcome to the Monkey House.

Out there

Stamford Downtowns 2017 Summer Restaurant Weeks begins Monday and runs through Sept. 4. The two-week event will offer customers seasonal prix fixe lunch and dinner menus. Participating restaurants include Aria Restaurant. Bar Rosso, Bar Zepoli, Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bar, Gaucho Boteco Steakhouse, The Capital Grille, Capricio Cafe, Cask Republic, Cilantro Restaurant, Columbus Park Trattoria, Del Friscos Grille, EOS Greek Cuisine, The Fez, FISH Restaurant and Bar, Kashi Sushi Lounge at the Stamford Marriott, Quatro Pazzi, Remos Brick Oven Pizza, Villa Italia Ristorante and Bar and ZAZA Italian Gastrobar. For more info and details, visit http://stamford-downtown.com/events/summer-restuarant-weeks-2017.

Out there

Trumpeter Chris Botti will be performing with his band at The Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, Sunday at 8 p.m. For more info and tickets, call 203-438-5795, or visit https://tickets.ridgefieldplayhouse.org.

And thats all for now.

Later

Got a tip? Seen a celebrity? E-mail Susie Costaregni at thedish2@yahoo.com.
Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi at last weeks BBC America fan screening in NYC. Photo: Brad Barket/Getty Images

Brilliant Scottish actor Peter Capaldi is about to make his debut as the 12th incarnation of the namesake title character in the very long-running British show Doctor Who, which has its season premiere this weekend. Last week when the shows cast and writers were making the rounds, we had a moment to speak with Capaldi and Jenna Coleman, who plays continuing companion Clara Oswald. Grub also got a moment with venerated writer and producer Steven Moffat, and all three seemed absolutely delighted to hear that the shows fandom has now taken root in the Dutchess County town of Beacon in the form of a full-on Doctor Who restaurant, officially making two places in the state that have TARDIS-themed interior decor. At the Pandorica, even the tablecloths are Police Call Box blue.

Jenna Coleman smiled when we presented her with material from the Pandorica, which appears in the show as a subterranean prison beneath Stonehenge thats designed to ensnare (of course) the Doctor. Pandorica the restaurant, however, opened earlier this month and serves batter-fried corn dogs and Gallifryed potatoes. At times, there have been lines out the door, thanks to specialty programming like sold-out cosplay events.

Hey, theres a bar in Brooklyn, too, isnt there? Coleman asked, referencing the Way Station in Prospect Heights, where the entrance to the Doctors time machine transports you only to the bathroom. She flipped through photos of the TARDIS-meets-Van Gogh interior decor. This is brilliant, she said, in summary, adding she would order the fish fingers and custard.

Like Coleman, producer and writer Steven Moffat said he was firmly into the idea  he wrote the original episode on which its based, after all. Pandorica! This is great, he said looking through the photos. Fantastic! The Pandorica! I might have to go.

I might look conspicuous there, he said, alluding to the general hazards of helming one of the most revered sci-fi series of all time in the age of Comic-Con.

Finally, Capaldi was also into the fish fingers and custard, which actually switch out French toast sticks for cod. The Twelfth Doctor has no shortage of compliments for the place. Fantastic, he said. Thats brilliant. Fabulous. Thats great. Thats brilliant. Wow. Thats amazing. Thats great to know about. Good stuff. We must get there at some point!


Updated: Meanwhile, the tech giant has also outed a couple of videos for the device, teasing its dual camera as well as the S Pen. The videos - embedded below - were released on the company's official YouTube channel for South Korea.

Original story follows:

Someone at Samsung jumped the gun, it seems, as the South Korean company's yet-to-be-unveiled Galaxy Note8 smartphone made an appearance on its official website.

It's the 64GB storage variant that showed up, with the listing also revealing the device's model number, as well as some of the key features that the Note8 will offer.

However, shortly after the development was picked by mainstream tech media, the listing was taken down. If you try accessing that page now, you'll get a 'page not found error.'

Pretty much everything about the Galaxy Note8 is already known. It's set to be officially unveiled on August 23.

Via 1 2
Samsung has started rolling out updates to Bixby apps - including Bixby, Bixby PLM, Bixby Wakeup, Bixby Dictation and Bixby Global Action - in several markets around the world. Users from regions like the UK, South Africa, India, the Netherlands, and Germany are reporting about the updates.

So it's fair to assume that Bixby's global launch process has begun. However, it's worth mentioning that the company is yet to enable Bixby for most of these regions (a server-side change is pending, perhaps).

Fresh reports from Germany are suggesting that the dictation feature is working there.

The South Korean tech giant started rolling out Bixby Voice in the US last month, following an Early Access Program. Prior to that, the functionality was only available in South Korea.

Via
Samsung Galaxy Note8 US pre-orders to start on August 24, sales on September 15 [Updated]

Update: Looks like there was some freebies-related confusion on @evleak's end. As per the update provided by him, buyers will have the option of either going for a 256GB card + wireless charger or 360 cam.

CORRECTION: the options are as follows



1. 256GB card + wireless charger

2. 360 cam



Sorry for the confusion. https://t.co/Db42n4kVCf  Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 19, 2017

The leakster also revealed that for buyers in Europe, DeX dock will be the freebie.

(The pre-order gift in Europe is a DeX dock.) https://t.co/Db42n43kKH  Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 18, 2017

Original story follows:

Following rumors that the Samsung Galaxy Note8 will be available in the US a day after its unveiling, the usually reliable tipster @evleaks has confirmed August 24 as the date when pre-orders for the device will go live. Sales, on the other hand, he says will kick off as early as September 15.

Note8 pre-orders from Samsung (starting 8/24) come with a 256GB microSD card plus choice of convertible wireless charger or 360 cam.  Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 18, 2017

Moving on, the tweet also confirmed that the South Korean tech giant is including a couple of freebies with the phone: a 256GB microSD card and convertible wireless charger or 360 cam.

9/15  Evan Blass (@evleaks) August 18, 2017

In case you missed, the Galaxy Note8 recently made a guest appearance on Samsung's website. The firm also released a couple of new video teasers for the handset.

Source
Sport

Shoaib predicts blockbuster Pakistan-England T20 WC final

Pakistan were down and out right from the beginning. But now they have gathered the pace and made it to the final. I wish they extend their winning momentum and beat England in the final, said Shoaib, who was speaking on the sidelines of Bazm-e-Urdu, a cultural event which was held in collaboration with Sharjah International Book Festival (SIBF).
Published on 2017/08/18 | Source

Added new still for the upcoming Korean documentary "Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno" (2017)

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Directed by Jung Yoon-suk-I

Synopsis

The Bamseom Pirates from Korea make music appropriate to our sick society: a hundred songs in ten minutes, that kind of thing. This at times noisy, but also sparkling, activist and often humorous documentary reports on the resistance offered by these punk musicians to hypocritical, conservative money-grabbers and their often violent hold on society.

"Whereas other bands smash up expensive guitars, we use rubbish", says one of the members of controversial duo Bamseom Pirates while picking up an old printer lying amongst the junk in an abandoned university building. They prefer to play here rather than in Seoul's hip concert venues. With heavy irony, they announce their 'relaxing' music: a blast of noise called grindcore. They play bass and drums, but use also anything they can get their hands on to make music. Their angry punk attitude is aimed against the established order in South Korea. Many of their numbers have led to controversy and rows, which they warmly welcome.

In his debut "Non-Fiction Diary", filmmaker Jung Yoon-suk expanded an infamous real-life murder from the 1990s into an analysis of stumbling faith in progress in Korea. His second film starts as a noisy musical portrait, growing into a statement on youthful resistance against the capitalist powers that be.

Festival

IFFR | International Film Festival Rotterdam - Bright Future 2017

Release date in Korea : 2017/08/24
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Zhang Shupeng (R), a Chinese wingsuit pilot, prepares to fly from Kunpeng Peak in Tianmen Mountain National Park in Zhangjiajie City, Central Chinas Hunan Province, Aug. 17, 2017. Zhang launched himself off the peak, flew at 200 kilometers per hour down the mountain, and successfully hit a mobile target mounted on a car. Its said to be first challenge of its kind for a wingsuit flyer. (Photo: China News Service/Yan Yuan)
Hawai'i Free Press Current Articles | Archives Friday, August 19, 2022 Hawaii Statehood: Tiny 1959 opposition was anti-Japanese, not anti-American

By Andrew Walden @ 12:01 AM :: 54356 Views :: Hawaii History by Andrew Walden (Originally published August 21, 2009) Citing 50-year-old gossip as its source, The Honolulu Advertiser August 9 tries to convince readers that, the main opposition to statehood was posed by Native Hawaiians still stinging from the illegal overthrow of their monarchy and the subsequent annexation of Hawai'i by the United States, and by the territory's white elite, who feared that statehood might compromise their standing. In reality the miniscule 6% opposition to Statehood in 1959 was motivated by a fear of elections. Opponents preferred to continue with a Territorial government consisting of officials appointed by Washington rather than a State government elected by voters who were heavily Japanese-American and heavily tied to plantation labor. Opponents of Statehood were landed aristocracy fearful of being ruled by their employees. There is no continuity between the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, 20th century opposition to Statehood, and the modern Gramscian construct known as the Sovereignty Movement. Hawaiians embraced the United States in 1902 when Prince Jonah Kuhio, heir to Liliuokalani, abandoned Robert Wilcox Home Rule Party, joined the Republican Party and was elected Territorial delegate. In 1903 the Hawaiian-Republican territorial legislature passed its first pro-Statehood resolution. In 1919, Rep Kuhio presented the first Hawaii Statehood bill to Congress. The modern Sovereignty Movement is the product of the late 1960s-early 1970s campus Marxist upsurge. Its origins at Kalama Valley are directly tied to the activities of Vietnam-era radicals at UH Manoa. (This will be the subject of a future article.) Even the Advertiser is forced to admit that, there is no evidence of any organized attempt by Native Hawaiians to turn the tide of public opinion regarding statehood. In spite of this, the Advertisers August 9 article is misleadingly titled, Hawaiis move into Statehood traumatic for many Hawaiians. The entire so-called trauma is a post-1970 development. Advertiser writer Michael Tsai cites the 1949 testimony of Alice Kamokila Campbell before the US Senate as a rare example of the only public testimonies against statehood by someone of Native Hawaiian ancestry. Tsai falsely presents Campbells testimony as a counterpoint to the attitudes of the pro-Statehood 1940s and 1950s Hawaiians described as raised in ignorance by UH Hawaiian Studies Prof. Lilikala Kame`eleihiwa. Tsai even adulterates an out-of-context quote from Campbell to make it appear as if Campbells opposition to Statehood had something to do with the loss of Hawaiian land. As a Territory the Hawaii Territorial Governor and Territorial judges were appointed from Washington. If Hawaii achieved Statehood, the Governor would be elected locally and judges would be appointed by locally elected Governor and legislature. Worse yet, depending on how the state constitution was written, judges could even have been elected. Campbell was in no way speaking as a representative of Hawaiians traumatized by the overthrow of their Kingdom 50-plus years earlier. On the contrary, her testimony discusses how Hawaiians came to terms with becoming American. (Another excellent look at evolving Hawaiian attitudes, from the Kingdom, to the Republic, Territory, and State, comes in Bob Krauss 1994 book: Johnny Wilson, First Hawaiian Democrat.) She was speaking as a large Campbell estate landowner who was afraid of living under the rule of an elected State government controlled by plantation workers. She expressed her fears in numerous public statements over a period of at least 10 years. Her line was anti-Communist. She questioned the loyalty of the Japanese and Chinese in Hawaii. Campbells 1949 testimony even questioned the loyalty of AJA WW2 soldiers serving in the 442nd Infantry. Tsai adds the words Hawaiian land to produce this doctored, out-of-context 1949 Campbell quote: I naturally am jealous of (Hawaiian land) being in the hands of any alien influence. It took us quite a while to get used to being Americans  from a Hawaiian to an American  but I am very proud today of being an American. I dont want to be ashamed of being an American. But I think that in the last 10 years, I have lost a sense of balance here in Hawaii as to the future safety of my land. In context, here is what Campbell actually said: Mrs. Campbell. First I will give it to you from the standpoint of a Hawaiian, the land being the land of my people. I naturally am jealous of it being in the hands of any alien influence. It took us quite a while to get used to being Americansfrom a Hawaiian to an Americanbut I am very proud today of being an American. I dont want ever to feel that I am ashamed of being an American. But I think that in the past 10 years I have lost a sense of balance here in Hawaii as to the future safety of my land. This un-American influence has come into our country, and even in the report of the Governor you will see where he says one-third of the population are Japanese. If we are a State they would have the power to vote and they would use every exertion to see that every vote was counted, if we become a State. As it is now, I feel the confidence and I feel the sincerity of Congress, and know they are not going to forsake us. Now there are two things that I have been thinking of. What could make the average American in his own land afraid to speak? It is a very unnatural thing. First there is the purchasing power of the Chinese and the Japanese combination in this country. The outsider coming in says Oh no; the Chinese hate the Japs and the Japs hate the Chinese. Dont you believe it, Senator Cordon. The Chinese and Japanese are so tied up together in this community that if we ever went to war they would have a stranglehold on us. We cannot afford to talk. We cannot afford to talk to Russia, is what I claim today, because of that situation. Those for statehood come forward; those who are not for statehood wont make their statements showing where they stand. Who supplies our fish? The Japanese. Who do they sell to? The Chinese storeman. Who supplies our chicken and eggs? The Japanese. Who do they sell to? The ChineseChun Hoon, C. Q. Yee Hop. Who supplies our pork? This is a pork-eating country. The Japanese. Who do they sell to? C. Q. Yee Hop who is a wholesale man, and that combination goes on and on and on. I say Russia could afford to sayand I should take a chance as one born here in Hawaiito have Russia say, All right, you Chinese and Japanese, you come and fight for us. We will give you the Territory of Hawaii. Should I take these chances of giving my land up and permitting Russia for one minute to do it? We dont know where Russia stands. Russia does not want this Territory. Russia is out to get Europe. Congress knows that. I know it. I am not hiding it. If it was any other nationality I would have to say the same thing; that we must be careful. I dont want to have a Japanese judge tell me how to act in my own country, no more than you Americans over on the other side would want an Indian to overrule you, or a Negro, which are among your American people. Quoted in the Advertiser, UH Hawaiian Studies Chair Lilikala Kame`eleihiwa (who legally changed her name from Lilikala L. Dorton) alternately insults 1950s-era Hawaiians and on the other hand invents non-existent resistance. She tells the Advertiser that 1959 Hawaiians did not know we had any rights and were raised in ignorance. On the other hand, like so many other sovereignty activists, she claims her mother, as a Hawaiian she was scared to say no, and most of her friends were, too. So she, like them, didn't vote. It was her small way of protesting. In contrast to Kame`eleihiwas unverifiable claims, the contemporary account of the angry reaction Campbell's anti-Japanese sentiments received from her pro-Statehood Democratic colleagues shows vigorous pro-Statehood advocacy by ancestors of several of todays prominent Hawaiian leaders. After Campbell publicly made anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese remarks at an October 30, 1944 Democratic campaign rally, the Honolulu Advertiser November 2, 1944 reports that Hawaii Democratic Chair William H Heen and Democrat Senator David K Trask physically prevented Campbell from speaking at a Democratic campaign rally at Kamamalu park November 1. Campbell refused pressure to resign as Democratic National Committeewoman. Campbell told the Star-Bulletin November 2, 1944, they to put that other woman (Victoria Holt) in there. These names should be familiar as the grandfather of current OHA Vice-Chair Walter M. Heen, the grandfather of Mililani and Haunani Trask and a relative of Victoria Holt Takamine. But thats not all. Hawaiians rejected Campbells rhetoric. The Honolulu Record, December 29, 1949 describes results of the Kalawahine-Kewalo Hawaiian Homestead election as a slap at Alice Kamokila Campbell, recent appointee of Governor Stainback to the Hawaiian Homes Commission. Anti-Campbell election winners included some with familiar family names such as Albert K Stender, Mrs. Elizabeth H Stender, and Mrs. Helen Kanahele. This is what happens when a paper trail exists. Like UFO sightings, or claims that President Obama was born in Kenya, sovereignty activists stories about their parents opposition to Statehood are always unverifiableyet the Advertiser, August 9, elects to highlight several such stories. Sovereignty activists are fond of pointing to the 1897-98 anti-Annexation petitions signed by thousands of Hawaiians. But on February 24, 1954 a 250 lb. petition containing 120,000 Hawaii signatures in favor of Statehood was sent to Congress. This reporter wonders whose grandparents and parents signed that petition. Given the fact that the district including Molokai voted 97% for Statehood in 1959, and the vote was 94% for Statehood overall, many of the unverifiable claims by activists are simply not credible. Tsai argues that only 35 percent of all eligible voters backed Statehood in the 1959 referendum. The 1959 referendum turnout of 140,000 was then the highest turnout ever in a Hawaii election. To imply that this throws into doubt the broad support for Statehood in 1959 falsely presumes that many eligible voters who did not cast a ballot was against Statehood. In fact there were large spontaneous celebrations of Statehood throughout the islands and by Hawaiians on the mainland as well. Former Big Island Mayor Lorraine Inouye explains to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald: It was very exciting. There was just that excitement in the air. I went down to (Hilo) town, and that was pretty much a year before the tidal wave. People who had heard the news were honking their horns and kissing each other in celebration. Just a great, great feeling. I've lived through the territory days. We were very fortunate just to be part of the United States." In contrast to Tsais description, there is zero evidence that the 6% opposition in the 1959 referendum was based on trauma left over from the 1893 overthrow. Campbell's public opposition had to do with being a landed aristocrat fearful of facing a government elected by her employees and tenants. Even Kekuni Blaisdell and Chris Conybeares anti-Statehood propaganda site www.StatehoodHawaii.org points out, the district that registered the most no votes came from the more affluent and Caucasian dominated Diamond Head/Kahala district. (In Oahus 17th Dist, the vote was 8.3% against Statehood.) This result is completely in line with the fears expressed in Campbells 1949 anti-Japanese pro-Territory testimony. As for Campbell herself, on November 25, 1956 she wrote a letter to the editor of the Advertiser arguing that no more Congressional investigations of "communism" were needed in Hawaii. After the March 18, 1959 signing by President Eisenhower of the Hawaii Admission Act, she told reporters, I have always been opposed to statehood, but now it is here and many of my friends like it, I shall try to like it too." Tsai points out that, The only precinct to reject the invitation was Ni'ihau, the restricted island whose population is almost entirely Native Hawaiian. Given the results from Molokais heavily Hawaiian district, where only 75 people voted against Statehood, it cannot be claimed that the Niihau vote was a reflection of Hawaiian anti-American or pro-Monarchy sentiment. More likely it was a reflection of the same anti-Japanese attitudes expressed by Campbell. Niihau had been the site of a December, 1941 incident where a downed Japanese fighter pilot from the Pearl Harbor attack force was spontaneously aided by a Japanese-American employee of the Robinson family (owners of Niihau) in holding the entire islands population at gunpoint for two weeks. Niihauan Beni Kanahele, eventually freed the island by killing the pilot after being shot three times. He was immortalized in the song: They couldnt take Niihau no how. Such an incident may have caused Niihauans to share some of Campbells fears 18 years later. Their vote may also have reflected the attitude of the island's owners. Campbell explained her views in 1949: Mrs. Campbell. Why, any more than I should keep saying I am an American of Hawaiian ancestry. Who cares? Another American only wants to know Are you an American? I am an American period. My Hawaiian ancestry does not mean a thing. It is: What am I today? An American. I may be wrong, Senator, but I dont like having them ram down my throat all the time I am an American of Japanese ancestry,  trying to make me feel that they went away with the Four Hundred and Forty-second or the One Hundredth Battalionthey went away to fight for a foreign country because they were Japanese? No. Why dont they say We went away to fight for our country? It is always, Americans of Japanese ancestry. Why? Because they want the praise of the Japanesefighting for your country and my country. I cant see it. I am too much of an American. I am an American period. That is all I know. And that is why I may be a little bit bitter down here, when they try to ram down my throat Japanese. No one but those who were here in Hawaii, and lived in Hawaii, as I do, will ever forget December 7. Who was it that brought on that attack of December 7? The people who were here, right here in this country, whom I thought were loyal to my country. I thought they were Americans. They gave out the information to their own people in Japan. Blood is thicker than water. That is my contention. I cannot help it. I am basing a lot of these things on that. I am interested in the safety of Hawaii; in the safety of the people. It includes the Japanese too, but it is Hawaii first, last, and always in my heart, and I will fight and fight for that. Who wants Hawaii to be a State? They cater to the Japanese. Why? Because the Japanese vote is what everyone wants. Under the Hawaiian Kingdom and the Hawaii Republic, Asian laborers were brought to Hawaii under terms of indentured servitudesemi-slaveryto serve the profit needs of the Hawaiian and Haole landowners. Conditions on Hawaiis sugar plantations were often compared unfavorably to the treatment of black slaves in the antebellum US South. It was only with the adoption of American law under the 1900 Organic Act that semi-slavery was abolished in Hawaii. Sovereignty activist Kekuni Blaisdell describes the Act which abolished semi-slavery thusly: for us Kanaka, the subsequent 1900 U.S.-imposed Organic Act, spelled official U.S. domination, subjugation and exploitation. In 2008 the UH Manoa Ethnic Studies published a book of Trask-sister scribblings titled, Asian Settler Colonialism: From local governance to the habits of everyday life in Hawai`i. This writer is unable to find any other example of other cultural nationalist movements anywhere characterizing slaves, semi-slaves, or their descendants as colonial settlers. But perhaps the lesson is that the modern sovereignty activists are just as reactionary, and erratic as Alice Campbell. They both represent thin elite groups seeking to rule over and exploit the general public: Campbell, by virtue of her land ownership, in alliance with the US with Hawaii as a Territory -- The sovereignty movement, by virtue of their purportedly greater consciousness, in alliance with the US with Hawaiians as a Tribe. The more things change, the more they stay the same. ---30--- Newsreel footage of 1959 Statehood Celebrations Results of 1959 Statehood Referendum Honolulu Record V2 #23-24-25 has excerpts from Campbell's testimony: http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/volume2.html Book Kodomo Tame Ni has excerpts of Campbell testimony (pp 397-401): http://books.google.com/books?id=EYewUv20s7AC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false RELATED: Prince Kuhio: The bridge from Kingdom to State

Our American Triumph: Civil Rights and Hawaii Statehood

The Frank Marshall Davis Network in Hawaii

Akaka Bill Reading List

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Antonio Gramsci Reading List STATEMENTS OF Sen Alice Kamokila Campbell ***** Star-Bulletin 11-2-1944 Here Is Statement Sen. Campbell Tried To Give At Democratic Rally Mr. Chairman, guests of the Democratic Party, aloha: I am a holdover senator and national Democratic committeewoman for Hawaii. Yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon I was notified that I have been muzzled and forbidden to speak tonight on behalf of my party, so I will speak as a voter, a taxpayer, a Democrat who believes in the kind of democracy our men are fighting for on all battlefronts, and as a 100 per cent American. When I say I have worked and tried to gain for Hawaii 100 per cent Americanism, I speak from my heart. What I am to say tonight is still 100 per cent Americanism and I do not need anybody to apologize for any statements I have made or will make. In telling the truth unflatteringly, on October 30 at Lanakila park the Americans in Japanese and Chinese groups resented some of my statements and, as the expression goes, are up in arms. Why? I ask all real Americans, is this territory an integral part of Japan, China or America? It is high time we find out. A man or woman voting as an American does not need to be forced or bought; he votes or should vote for the candidate, in his estimation, who is best qualified for the position regardless of race color or creed. We are in war today as Americans fighting desperately for freedom and democracy and for that reason I owe my allegiance to America and everyone privileged to be born in this great country and not to one man political control or any particular group control. We have been fighting this bitter war for nearly three years to preserve whatthe four freedoms as our own great president Franklin Delano Roosevelt has reminded us, one of which is freedom of speech. I have been threatened that if I run for reelection two years hence they will kill me politically. What care I? I have gotten all the fun and headaches that go with local politics, and anyone who wants to succeed me is welcome to the job. Men, women and even children you owe it to God, your country and to yourselves to be fearless Americans, all American. Hawaii needs loyalty today and far into the futuregive her the kind of loyalty that only a real American knows. I thank you. Goodnight. ***** Statement of Mrs. Alice Kamokila Campbell Congressional Testimony, January 17, 1946 Mrs. Campbell. Now I dont know, Senator, just what you wanted to see me for. I am here to answer any questions. Senator Cordon. Mrs Campbell, I want your views on the advisability of the enactment by Congress of the pending bill granting statehood to the Territory of Hawaii. I have understood that you are opposed to passage of legislation at this time. I am interested in the reasons which bring you to that contention. Mrs. Campbell. First I will give it to you from the standpoint of a Hawaiian, the land being the land of my people. I naturally am jealous of it being in the hands of any alien influence. It took us quite a while to get used to being Americansfrom a Hawaiian to an Americanbut I am very proud today of being an American. I dont want ever to feel that I am ashamed of being an American. But I think that in the past 10 years I have lost a sense of balance here in Hawaii as to the future safety of my land. This un-American influence has come into our country, and even in the report of the Governor you will see where he says one-third of the population are Japanese. If we are a State they would have the power to vote and they would use every exertion to see that every vote was counted, if we become a State. As it is now, I feel the confidence and I feel the sincerity of Congress, and know they are not going to forsake us. Now there are two things that I have been thinking of. What could make the average American in his own land afraid to speak? It is a very unnatural thing. First there is the purchasing power of the Chinese and the Japanese combination in this country. The outsider coming in says Oh no; the Chinese hate the Japs and the Japs hate the Chinese. Dont you believe it, Senator Cordon. The Chinese and Japanese are so tied up together in this community that if we ever went to war they would have a stranglehold on us. We cannot afford to talk. We cannot afford to talk to Russia, is what I claim today, because of that situation. Those for statehood come forward; those who are not for statehood wont make their statements showing where they stand. Who supplies our fish? The Japanese. Who do they sell to? The Chinese storeman. Who supplies our chicken and eggs? The Japanese. Who do they sell to? The ChineseChun Hoon, C. Q. Yee Hop. Who supplies our pork? This is a pork-eating country. The Japanese. Who do they sell to? C. Q. Yee Hop who is a wholesale man, and that combination goes on and on and on. I say Russia could afford to sayand I should take a chance as one born here in Hawaiito have Russia say, All right, you Chinese and Japanese, you come and fight for us. We will give you the Territory of Hawaii. Should I take these chances of giving my land up and permitting Russia for one minute to do it? We dont know where Russia stands. Russia does not want this Territory. Russia is out to get Europe. Congress knows that. I know it. I am not hiding it. If it was any other nationality I would have to say the same thing; that we must be careful. I dont want to have a Japanese judge tell me how to act in my own country, no more than you Americans over on the other side would want an Indian to overrule you, or a Negro, which are among your American people. Senator Cordon. We have judges of both. Mrs Campbell. I know, but it is not racial prejudice with me. There is still a very bitter feeling; there is still a very great racial feeling there on the mainland, because when I went on a trip the Negroes were all put in one car; the Negroes were set aside, and yet they are Americans. The Japanese are not my people. The Chinese are not my people. The Caucasians, yes, and by adoption it makes me an American, and I am proud to be an American, and as an American I dont want to see an unhealthy condition here in these islands. It is an unhealthy condition. We are not safe when in an American country one-third of the population are Japanese. The Governor himself says that in his report, at which I was surprisedone third, in an American country. I cannot see it. I am too much an American, Senator, to see anything but Americans here. (following section not included in Kodomo No Tame Ni, but included in Honolulu record V2, No 24.) http://www.hawaii.edu/uhwo/clear/HonoluluRecord1/volume2.html Why has all this Communism come into our country? Senator Cordon. Has it? Mrs. Campbell. It has come in, and it is coming from the Japanese, because they cannot get enough land to live on. This is what started communism in Russia. We know that. It is the peasant having his own little holdings to live on and to take care of and who knew that that was his. Russia would not have had communism otherwise, nor been in the state of affairs it is there. Communism has come in, and I am afraid of what the situation will be in a couple of years when the Caucasiansthose who have come here to help out during wartimewhen they start going home, and they are going home fast, Senator, and they want to go home fast; they want to get out of this place. (This section included in Kodomo No Tame Ni, but not in Honolulu Record) Senator Cordon. Mrs Campbell, let me ask you for your judgment as to the extent to which the native-born American, and that is what he is, in the islands, of Japanese extraction, has foresworn the Government and the ways of his ancestors, and adopted those of his native country--America. Mrs. Campbell. Yes. Senator Cordon. What is your judgment as to whether he has done that or hasnt? Mrs. Campbell. I would say a lot of them, maybe a great majority, have taken on American ways. Why shouldnt they? Senator Cordon. Well, they should. Mrs. Campbell. They are American people. Senator Cordon. But I seek to determine whether they have. I dont mean as a cloak. Mrs. Campbell. No, no. Senator Cordon. Mrs. Campbell, I mean as an existing fact, in respect to their lives and beliefs. (This section included in both sources.) Mrs. Campbell. Is say a great manyin fairness to the Japanese, I say they have taken on the form of Americanism, and as to those, I am proud of them; but I say butbecause this is a great butwhy do they keep insisting and emphasizing to an American that they are of Japanese ancestry? Why dont they drop it? Isnt it enough to say that I am an American, and have us all understand that they are American period. But when they try to keep saying of Japanese ancestry; of Japanese ancestry, why do they do it? Why do they want to bring up the Japanese ancestry? Senator Cordon. Perhaps because my dad, who was born in England, til the date of his death loved roast beef. Mrs. Campbell. Why, any more than I should keep saying I am an American of Hawaiian ancestry. Who cares? Another American only wants to know Are you an American? I am an American period. My Hawaiian ancestry does not mean a thing. It is: What am I today? An American. I may be wrong, Senator, but I dont like having them ram down my throat all the time I am an American of Japanese ancestry,  trying to make me feel that they went away with the Four Hundred and Forty-second or the One Hundredth Battalionthey went away to fight for a foreign country because they were Japanese? No. Why dont they say We went away to fight for our country? It is always, Americans of Japanese ancestry. Why? Because they want the praise of the Japanesefighting for your country and my country. I cant see it. I am too much of an American. I am an American period. That is all I know. And that is why I may be a little bit bitter down here, when they try to ram down my throat Japanese. No one but those who were here in Hawaii, and lived in Hawaii, as I do, will ever forget December 7. Who was it that brought on that attack of December 7? The people who were here, right here in this country, whom I thought were loyal to my country. I thought they were Americans. They gave out the information to their own people in Japan. Blood is thicker than water. That is my contention. I cannot help it. I am basing a lot of these things on that. I am interested in the safety of Hawaii; in the safety of the people. It includes the Japanese too, but it is Hawaii first, last, and always in my heart, and I will fight and fight for that. Who wants Hawaii to be a State? They cater to the Japanese. Why? Because the Japanese vote is what everyone wants. (Honolulu Record concludes here, Kodomo No Tame Ni continues, possibly with ellipsis.) * * * Mrs. Campbell. That is the sad part about Hawaii today. There are many things that are not right. I was born here. It was through my interest as a representative family, and a member of a representative family of Hawaii, to watch the trend of the people that were permitted to come into this country, and I have watched it without prejudice. I have Japanese servants. I have a servant who has been with mea Japanese, an alienfor 42 years, and that woman is still with me. I dont hate her because she is an alien, because she is Japanese. No, I dont even suspect her, but it is not of the generation we have to watch. Senator Cordon. You mean the new? Mrs. Campbell. The new generation. They say they are the third and fourth generations. They are the first and second, if the truth were known, because the first generation to me is one that the alien parents; that is the first generation. You never hear of the issei; you hear of the nisei, which makes a generation in between; the nisei is the second generation. That is all you hear about, the nisei, the nisei, but no, it is the issei that I am after. They are misrepresenting them. (Balance of testimony not yet retrieved. This will be updated when the balance of testimony becomes available.)
KRP on Saturday announced that the rampage, which left two dead and eight injured, is currently being treated as a terror attack. The young man who was arrested only a few minutes after the incident was called in is suspected of two counts of murder committed with terrorist intent and eight counts of attempted murder committed with terrorist intent.

The National Bureau of Investigation (KRP) has made progress in its investigation into the stabbings that took place in Turku, South-west Finland, on Friday.

The suspect has been identified, but his identity has yet to be released. He is described as an 18-year-old Moroccan man.

The victims killed in the incident were both Finns, while the wounded included one Italian and two Swedes, according to a press release from KRP. Helsingin Sanomat reported earlier today that two of the victims remain in intensive care.

Helsingin Sanomat writes that the young man is believed to have first stabbed a woman and a man who rushed to her help at the Turku Market Square at 4.02pm on Friday. He then continued on foot to Kauppiaskatu and thereon to Maariankatu before stabbing several people at Puutori, a market square located a few hundred metres north of the Turku Market Square.

The suspect was arrested there after being shot in the thigh by the responding police officers at 4.05pm. Also he remains in hospital care.

Media reports also indicate that law enforcement authorities have conducted a number of operations in the aftermath of the suspected terror attack, bringing several people into custody in various parts of Finland, according to STT.

Helsingin Sanomat, for example, reported that the police conducted a house search in Varissuo, a residential district located less than ten kilometres east of the centre of Turku. The tenant of the house is believed to have been the owner of a van sought by the police after the attack, according to the newspaper.

KRP states in its press release that security authorities have raised their alertness and stepped up their presence in urban areas across Finland.

KRP is expected to disclose further details of the incident in a press conference at 2pm on Saturday. The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo), in turn, will hold a press conference at 3pm on Saturday.

CORRECTION: Supo is scheduled to hold a press conference at 3pm on Saturday, not at 3.30pm.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Roni Lehti  Lehtikuva
Frail Eva Sutton was attacked in her home in Bray

The Director of Public Prosecutions is appealing against the prison term handed down to a thug described as a "menace to society" after he terrorised an elderly couple in their home.

Carl Freeman (22) was last month handed a seven-year term, with three years suspended, after he and an accomplice viciously attacked William and Kathleen Crean in the early hours of the morning.

The couple suffered severe injuries, with Mr Crean (72) beaten with a hurley as his wife was pulled from her bed by the neck.

Ms Crean (65) is suffering from cancer and is forced to wear two bags to collect fluid from her kidneys, a court heard last month.

Freeman, described by a judge as a "menace to society", shouted "we want your f**king gold, silver and cash" at the Creans.

He and his accomplice also demanded the terrified couple hand over guns. There were no weapons in the house at the time.

The couple have since bought an Alsatian dog and carry personal alarms.

In a harrowing victim impact statement last month, Ms Crean detailed the events at their home in Killoughter, Co Wicklow, on March 12, 2015.

"I'm on a lot of medication, which should make me sleep, but I always wake up. The fact that he made me get out of bed really bothers me.

"I don't feel free any more. I am like a prisoner in my own home. I say to myself, 'they won't come back', but you never know.

"I have two bags draining my kidneys and I was so afraid that night."

Mr Crean has also detailed the security measures he has been forced to put in place.

Nervous

"Since the burglary, life has not been the same," he said.

"Everything changed. It has affected me and I am nervous. Someone came into my house to beat us up."

Freeman was caught by gardai after being spotted by an off-duty officer while travelling back from Dublin.

He was sentenced at Wicklow Circuit Court last month to seven years, with three suspended.

He had previously amassed more than 60 convictions for crimes including dangerous driving, endangerment and assault.

The Herald has now learned that the DPP has appealed against the sentence handed down to Freeman.

"It was clearly felt that the length of the sentence and the three years suspended did not fit the crime," a source said last night.

Freeman's accomplice is due to be sentenced later in the year.

The Creans' ordeal is one of a number of cases involving the elderly in recent weeks.

The family of 89-year-old Eva Sutton, from Bray, have told of the ordeal suffered by the pensioner at the hands of ruthless thugs.

Michael Cash (25), formerly of Ashlawn Park, Ballybrack, Co Dublin, was sentenced for false imprisonment, burglary and the serious assault of Ms Sutton at her home in Old Dublin Road, in the Co Wicklow town.

Cash, a father of one, was handed 10 years in prison with the final two years suspended.

His accomplice, Jamie O'Brien (23), received the same sentence .
RTE, which aims to shed 250 staff, has yet to reveal the details of its voluntary redundancy package.

But the national broadcaster insisted the terms will be less generous than the four to six weeks per year of service it offered those taking redundancy in 2011.

It is understood the severance terms at the organisation, part-funded by the licence fee, will still be more generous than those offered in recent times by other commercial semi-state companies and public sector employers.

A spokesperson said the terms of the severance scheme will be unveiled within weeks.

It is understood officials at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform warned the scheme might have a knock-on effect at other semi-State companies.

An RTE insider insisted that, although the department was entitled to give its opinion, it was up to the broadcaster to make a final decision on the package. Meanwhile, RTE has refused to release details of its gender pay gap because it could be "injurious" and "would not serve the public interest".

Breakdown

The broadcaster rejected a request by the Herald to publish details of its male and female staff's earnings in various pay brackets under Freedom of Information legislation.

However, RTE decided to bring forward the publication of what its highest-paid broadcasters were earning two years ago following recent controversy.

It has been under fire since Six One newsreader Sharon Ni Bheolain revealed she earns up to 80,000 less than her co-anchor Bryan Dobson, after the BBC published a detailed breakdown of its pay figures.

RTE journalist and chair of the NUJ's Dublin Broadcasting Branch, Emma O'Kelly, said her employer "should have nothing to fear" and release the information, which she also requested.
A Dublin shop worker was knocked unconscious and about 25,000 of merchandise stolen during a terrifying armed robbery in the capital.

The incident occurred at about 10.30pm on Thursday at the Spar shop on the Clogher Road in Crumlin, just 30 minutes after the store closed for business.

It is understood that the men punched the workers as they were locking up the store. They were armed with a suspected handgun and a knife.

Two workers in the premises were threatened at gunpoint before being physically assaulted by the two raiders.

During the assault, a member of staff was knocked unconscious after being struck on the head with a blunt instrument.

A source said last night that the victim suffered "considerable injuries" but it is expected to make a full recovery.

Pounced

"This member of staff got a particularly bad doing during the robbery," said the source.

"The two raiders pounced just as the workers were leaving the store after locking up."

The men eventually fled the store with approximately 25,000 of stock, which included large quantities of cigarettes and alcohol.

A garda spokesman confirmed that officers at Sundrive Road Garda Station are investigating the armed robbery.

"Both staff members received injuries and were taken to St James's Hospital," he said.

No arrests have been made in connection with the incident and a garda investigation is under way.

Gardai are examining CCTV footage captured during the incident and are appealing for witnesses to come forward.

The management of the store did not want to comment when approached by the Herald.

"As this matter is subject to a garda investigation, we are not in a position to comment," said a spokesperson on behalf of Spar.
President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has repeatedly underlined the importance of combating corruption within government bodies

The head of Egypt's Administrative Prosecution referred Saturday the former heads of the Egyptian Public Taxes and Customs authorities to disciplinary trial for squandering public funds amounting to around EGP 32 million.

The Administrative Prosecution has also ordered that the money be recovered and that the public prosecutor initiate an investigation as the basis of a criminal case.

A committee of the Ministry of Finance has been formed to investigate the financial violations of the two defendants, said Mohamed Samir, spokesperson of the Administrative Prosecution, in an official statement.

Investigations revealed that the first defendant, the former head of the Egyptian Public Taxes Authority, unlawfully received almost EGP 130,000 in the period between February 2010 and February 2011, the statement reads.

The second defendant, the former head of the Egyptian Customs Authority, embezzled public money to an amount of more than EGP 31 million in the period between July 2008 and January 2011.

The money was divided between the second defendant, former officials in the finance ministry, and others outside the Customs Authority.

President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has repeatedly underlined the importance of combating corruption within government bodies. In December, he hailed efforts by the Administrative Control Authority in this regard.

Egypt was ranked 108 of 176 countries in Transparency Internationals 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index.

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Security forces also destroyed several militant hideouts and eight motorcycles belonging to militants

Egypts armed forces arrested three militants and destroyed several hideouts and vehicles belonging to the militants in Central Sinai, a military statement said Saturday.

Security forces were able to discover and destroy several militant hideouts, eight motorcycles and a quarter-loaded cart carrying large quantities of materials used to manufacture improvised explosive devices, the army spokesman said in a statement.

The statement added that security forces arrested three militants and seized two cars carrying illegal drugs on one route leading to North Sinai.

Security forces have been battling an Islamist insurgency for several years in North Sinai. Militants have killed hundreds of security personnel while Egyptian troops have killed hundreds of militants during operations in the border region.

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Riding on a bus in the middle of the night through Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, its impressive, the sheer volume of traffic, hour after hour. Tanker trucks and semis and auto carriers, thousands of tons of goods moving to market, like a train of ants carrying leaves to their anthill. Out here, you dont see the American carnage referred to in the inaugural address back in January. Evidently, the speaker who portrayed the country as a beached whale and a victim of international conspiracies has now fixed the problems and were booming again. Good.

Im on this bus because Im living the dream of every 75-year-old American male to travel around with a band and put on shows. People imagine Im working hard so I get sympathy (poor old guy), even as Im having the time of my life. To be pitied for three weeks of sheer pleasure: Life doesnt get better than that.

I am a happy man, and I feel a love of country that I could work up into a really bad song, which the country doesnt need. We have about six very good patriotic songs, including America and The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the one about the rockets red glare, and thats enough.

This is freeway America, the land of strip malls and Wal-Mart and economy motels, not scenic postcard America, but I love its bounding vitality and good humor. In the Holiday Inn Express, we line up for the free breakfast of watery oatmeal and generic eggs and nondescript coffee, ignoring the yammer of TV news, and I take an empty seat at a long table and am drawn into a conversation with three women and two men, strangers to me, on classic topics: This Beautiful Summer & The Number of Persons I Know Whove Contracted Tick-Borne Disease, How Does One Correct The Bad Parenting of Ones Children, The Misery of Attending Ones Spouses Reunion, Hip Replacements I Have Known That Went Bad, Why (Name of Winter Paradise) Is Not What It Used To Be, and so on. The amiable complaints of my age group.

Im an old Democrat traveling through Republican territory, and I feel welcome. Geniality is all around. Nobody mentions You Know Who, the scowly man with projectile eyebrows whose last name sounds like someone dropped a fruitcake on the floor. A bad breakfast among strangers but everyones in a good mood or trying to be. I love this. This is America, a congenial country. Welcome, one and all. Respect the rules. Dont throw food. If you need to be crazy, go out in the woods.

Over in the Universe Cafe where righteous Democrats gather to eat organic eggs from cooperative chickens, I imagine that youd hear his name 20 times a minute, like a sump pump, but here, no. Democrats are forever wringing their hands about something they just read a book about, and then last weekend they got to talk about the parade of certified lunatics in Charlottesville protesting the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. As if that were something of lasting significance.

It is more than sad that we have a president whom lunatics look up to as a hero and who tried not to offend them in his statement of semi-condemnation on Saturday that he then, without apology, had to re-do on Monday. His cluelessness is a national embarrassment. And it was an ugly, ugly day.

But let us, good people, not grant significance to crazy people. This is a gang of freaks that social media gives the power to unite  in a nation of 323 million, you can Google the secret words and get 700 sociopaths to come to Charlottesville. This is not a meaningful phenomenon. You could also get 700 people who are getting messages from Lucifer through their dental fillings or 700 apocalyptic Episcopalians who know the world will end on Thursday.

The young Teutons who converged are actors in a fantasy, men who got kicked out of Civil War re-enactments for over-enthusiasm. Maybe we create a special place for them in a wilderness canyon out West where they could goosestep and Sieg Heil, express their whiteness, feel uber Alles, feast on knockwurst, light each others Pupser, the whole schmegeggy. Mr. Angry Eyebrows can chopper in and visit them there with his sidekick Mr. Mask. In 2020, assuming the White House allows an election, lets get a president who is civil and has a sense of humor. Now go enjoy your breakfast.
SERVICES

NEW GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH: Bristol, Tenn., 3055 West State St. Aug. 20, 10:30 a.m.: 12th Anniversary Celebration service, speaker Brother Scott Matthews, singing featuring The Rochesters, everyone welcome, 423-625-2938 or www.newgracebaptistchurch.org.

REVIVAL CENTER BAPTIST CHURCH: Bristol, Va., 19752 Benhams Rd. Aug. 20, 10 a.m.: Homecoming, special singing featuring the Edwards Family from Burnsville, North Carolina, Shepherds Call from Morristown, Tennessee, the Benton Family from Kingsport, Tennessee, lunch to follow service in Opal Smith Memorial Hall, everyone welcome.

CENTRAL BAPTIST CHURCH: Abingdon, Va., 24461 Mock Knob Rd. Aug. 20, 10:50 a.m.: Homecoming services, Message and special singing featuring Bro. Brandon Cairns, everyone welcome.

REVIVALS

CEDAR BAPTIST CHURCH: Marion, Va., 2832 Lee Hwy., Aug. 21-25, 7 p.m. nightly: Revival, guest speaker Rev. Derek Cowan, evangelist, everyone welcome, 276-783-5682.

SINGINGS

CLAY HILL BAPTIST CHURCH: Blountville, Tenn., 122 Hobbs Hollow Rd. Meets every third Saturday, 5 p.m.: Sullivan County Red Back Church Hymnal sing, everyone welcome, 423-323-4085.

HEAVENLY REST FREEWILL BAPTIST CHURCH: Bristol, Va., 16420 Black Hollow Rd. Aug. 19, 7 p.m.: Gospel singing featuring Faithful 2, everyone welcome, 713-498-1191.

ALVARADO BIBLE CHURCH: Abingdon, Va., 2106 Alvarado Rd. Aug. 20, 6 p.m.: Gospel singing featuring Faithful 2, everyone welcome, 713-498-1191.

COMMUNITY

LEE STREET COMMUNITY CENTER: Bristol, Va., 1 Mary Street. Aug. 19, 11 a.m.: Active Shooter Training, with Retired Police Officer Lt. Allen Slagle, sponsor by Bristol Area Ministerial Alliance, everyone welcome, 276-591-9105 or 423-366-1260.

MISSION FOR CHRIST: Bristol, Tenn., Applebees 425 Volunteer Pkwy. Aug 19, 8-10 a.m.: Fundraiser pancake breakfast with sausage, drinks, donation of $5, everyone welcome, 423-646-1957.

FIRST CHURCH OF GOD: Bristol, Tenn. 301 Georgia Avenue, corner Georgia Avenue & East State Street. Aug 19, Sept.16, 4:30-7 p.m.: State Street Fish Fry, fish, coleslaw, hushpuppies, fries, soup beans, drink, plus homemade desserts, dine with us so we can feed others. Cost $10 full fish dinner, $8 small fish dinner, rain or shine, 423-956-2720.

FIRST BROAD STREET UNITED METHODIST CHURCH: Kingsport, Tenn., 101 East Church Circle. To volunteer two hours any day Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.: Marlene Hudson, 423-817-8332. To help with food: Bob Smith, 423-246-3966. Clothing and other donations can be brought to Single Vision or taken to Shades of Grace.

FAIRVIEW UNITED METHODIST CHURCH: Jonesborough, Tenn., 878 Highway 81 North. Third Saturday each month, 7-10 a.m.: Country breakfast, bacon, fresh ground sausage, eggs, pancakes, gravy, biscuits and more. Donations welcome, located 5 miles from downtown Jonesborough going toward Fall Branch.

SHAKESVILLE CHURCH OF CHRIST: Bristol, Va., 262 Kingmill Pike: Connecting People with God, volunteers are needed to donate 2 hours a week, donate plastic grocery bags.

ST. THOMAS CHURCH: Abingdon, Va., 124 E. Main Street. Second Wednesday of each month, 6:45 p.m.: Taize service, everyone welcome, 276-628-3606.

YARD SALE

PENTECOSTAL CHURCH: Abingdon, Va., 17535 Jeb Stuart Highway off Exit 19 toward Damascus: Yard Sale, second Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.: Name brand childrens and maternity clothes, plus tons of good quality baby equipment. Proceeds benefit the Mayan malnourished children of Guatemala, and children in our orphanage and those in our orphans at home program. www.safehomesforchildren.org.

HOW TO SUBMIT

News and calendar items for the Religion section should be emailed only to features@bristolnews.com with Religion Calendar in the subject line or sent by mail to Religion Editor, Bristol Herald Courier, and P.O. Box 606, Bristol, VA 24203. Mailed items must be typewritten. Deadline is noon Monday. Please include the complete address of event location, name and telephone number of a contact person. If you have questions, contact Dorothy Hurt at 276-645-2556 or email dhurt@bristolnews.com. The service is free.
Egyptian authorities in the Delta governorate of Kafr El-Sheikh foiled on Saturday an attempt by 47 people to illegally migrate to Europe via the Mediterranean, state-run news agency MENA reported.

Police have arrested two suspected human traffickers believed to have organised the migration attempt.

The traffickers reportedly collected money from each of the migrants, both foreign and Egyptian, before they were to board a fishing boat for Europe.

The would-be migrants comprised 21 foreigners and 26 Egyptians.

In November, Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi ratified a law aimed at curbing irregular migration and cracking down on human trafficking along the country's northern Mediterranean coast, where thousands of migrants embark on dangerous boat journeys to Europe.

While the legislation does not punish the migrants themselves, it imposes jail terms on those convicted of human trafficking or acting as brokers or facilitators.

In September 2016, a boat carrying up to 450 people capsized off Egypt's northern coast. At least 202 bodies were recovered from the sea and 169 people were rescued.

In March, an Egyptian court handed jail terms to 56 people involved in the disaster.

In June 2016, around 320 migrants drowned off the Greek island of Crete after setting sail from Egypt.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 5,000 migrants are thought to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 2016, a record figure the organisation described as "a devastating milestone."

In recent years, thousands of migrants and refugees from a number of countries have attempted to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe, with an increasing number departing via smuggling boats from Egypt's northern coast.

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Maryland cross country: Hubs' Stine, Leopards girls each finish second

North Hagerstown sophomore Lauren Stine had the top performance by a Washington County athlete, placing second in the Class 3A girls race.
A Giza criminal court fined on Saturday former top auditor Hisham Geneina EGP 60,000 over libel charges against former justice minister Ahmed El-Zend as well as insulting state institutions, referring to the judiciary.

The charges were filed over Geneina's comments about alleged corruption in the judiciary in a 2015 interview published in the privately-owned Al-Tahrir newspaper.

Geneina, who headed Egypt's Central Auditing Authority, the state's main corruption watchdog, from 2012 until March 2016, was accused by the former head of the Judges Club of contempt of the judiciary and slandering a senior judge-turned-minister.

In the interview with Al-Tahrir, Geneina said that E-Zend was one of the worst choices for justice minister, and that he interferes in judicial cases and pressures judges to alter verdicts in appeals.

The court also fined the editor-in-chief of Al-Tahrir EGP 10,000 and two journalists at the same newspaper EGP 25,000 on the same charges as well as publishing false news.

Geneina was removed from his position by President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in March 2016 after accusations that he had misled the public by exaggerating corruption figures.

In December 2015, Geneina said that corruption had cost the country EGP 600 billion (approx. $67.6 billion) over a four-year period.

He was sentenced to a year in prison in July 2016 for spreading false news with the goal of harming public interest." The sentence was suspended by a Cairo appeals court in December.

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The foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan and Palestine said at a Cairo press conference on Saturday that is important that the delay in the peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be overcome.

The three foreign ministers asked that the international community create an atmosphere conducive for negotiations in accordance with international legitimacy.

The ministers expressed their appreciation for the American role played in pushing the peace process forward, stressing that the lack of a solution to the conflict is a main cause of instability in the region.

A declaration released on Saturday following the trilateral meeting read that the ministers discussed developments in occupied Palestine as well as how the lack of a peace deal is affecting the region.

The declaration also stressed that Israel should respect the legal and historic situation at Al-Aqsa Mosque and refrain from taking unilateral measures.

The meeting comes one month after violence broke out in occupied East Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israeli forces.

The three FMs met to coordinate the three nations' positions on the peace process ahead of the 72nd Regular Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York next month.

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NEWTON  The 128th Annual Soldiers Reunion Day and Parade was held Thursday where local residents, veterans and various members of local city councils gathered around the 1924 Courthouse in downtown Newton to celebrate.

The real reason we are here is to honor our returning soldiers from conflict, disabled veterans and those who died defending our country, Newton City Councilman John Stiver said.

Stiver spoke during the official program of the reunion that took place prior to the parade.

I am proud to live in Newton and be part of this celebration to honors those who have served us in the cause of freedom, Stiver said. May we always remember the sacrifices made to preserve our quality of life.

The chair of the Catawba County Commissioners, Randall Isenhower, echoed Stivers patriotic speech.

In a world that is increasingly unsettled, where so many of our traditions are challenged, where so many groups of people want to talk about our differences rather than our similarities, where we all really have the same hopes and aspirations for our families  it is so difficult to sit down and work things out  but we are here today, Isenhower said.

Isenhower said events like the Soldiers Reunion brings Catawba County residents closer together.

We are here where this community has been for 128 years, sharing our values and our traditions, Isenhower said. We are eager and honored to stand when our National Anthem is sung.

We are eager and honored to put our hands on our hearts and pledge, One nation, under God. We are eager and honored to celebrate our veterans.

Isenhower referenced the work of commissioners and the strategic plan that is in place for the county.

One thing we as Catawba County Commissioners are doing is a strategic plan and part of this plan is seeing who we are, what is our message and what is our DNA, Isenhower said. This, ladies and gentleman, is our DNA  coming together to honor this tradition and values for 128 years.

History in action

As part of the tradition, many people participate by dressing in traditional garb worn by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

Reenactors like Jeff Eades will march in the parade procession  no matter how hot the weather is.

I have been doing this at the parade for 20 years and re-enacting for 25 years, Eades said.

Thursdays temperature was increasingly warmer than earlier in the week, but this did not deter Eades and others from carrying out the 128-year tradition.

I have ancestors in Catawba County that have fought in the war and that is the main reason why I am here and plus being a history buff, Eades said. Its not like a movie  this is about real people you can go find in the graveyard.

Eades said attending events like the Soldiers Reunion gives him a chance to see old friends and meet new people.

Some of these guys that we march with, this is the only time you get to see them, Eades said. If you do see them out, you remember them from this.

You meet new people and get to talk to people.

Eades uniform reflects that of a member of the 49th North Carolina Infantry, where company members were recruited from Catawba, McDowell, Cleveland, Rutherford, Davidson, Rowan, Moore, Iredell, Mecklenburg, Gaston and Lincoln counties.

We have been to Georgia, Gettysburg several times, Tennessee, Maryland and Virginia of course, Eades said.

Aside from the traveling, Eades said re-enacting gives him a rush.

When there is no TV, radio or cars and the cook is cooked right there in front of you  you live it, Eades said. Your kids again playing cowboys and Indians.

Helping hands

A local veterans organization was present to raise money for homeless and needy veterans in the area.

The Hickory Chapter of the Disabled Army Veterans (DAV) Auxiliary was represented by Commander Jacob Shronce, Loran Glasco and James Matthews.

We are raising funds to supplement a dental program that is for homeless, needy and other veterans, Jacob Shronce said.

The Hickory DAV recently has started a program to further help area veterans with dental care, something that the Unifour Veterans Helping Veterans organization has been implementing.

The Unifour Veterans Helping Veterans holds an annual event called the Stand Down, where local veterans can attend to learn about resources made just for them and also have medical and dental care.

We give the money to Unifour Veterans Helping Veterans and they have it set up with (the Cooperative Christian Ministry) will have dentists come out and help these guys out, Shronce said. What we are trying to do is get some of them to do things for a little less of the cost, to give us a break, and we put a $500 cap on it.

This would be for caps, fill-ins and things like that.

Since the Stand Down is only held one day out of the year, Shronce and other members of the Hickory DAV saw a need for a dental program for local veterans.

Since this program started through a bunch of our members, we need to get this (information) out there, Loran Glasco said.

The Hickory DAV held a raffle during the Soldiers Reunion to raise funds for the program, which has caught the attention of other chapters in the state.

We figure that if its going to go statewide, then eventually it will go nationwide and we can be proud to say that it started right here in Hickory, Shronce said.

Safety at the parade

Before Reunion Day, many locals were hesitant to attend the event due to the recent events in Charlottesville, Va., and Durham.

The police department has been working with some other agencies today just to make sure that we have adequate law enforcement officers here to protect, Newton City Manager Todd Clark said. As I had said multiple times this week, our prime directive is to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public and of course that is what we want to do.

Clark said the extra law enforcement was merely a precaution.

With the events in Charlottesville and Durham, we are aware that there is a heightened sense of concern about monuments, confederate flags and those types of issues, Clark said. This is a precaution and we are working with other departments just to make sure that we have adequate law enforcement.

Because of the possibility of conflict, a few organizations pulled their floats out of the parade  one of which belonged to the Democratic party of Catawba County.

Due to the limited number of volunteers, the possibility of property damage during the parade procession and concerns over the safety of our veterans and volunteers, I have decided to cancel our participation in the Soldiers Reunion, Party Chairman Marcus Williams said via a Facebook post Thursday.

Clark knew of a church organization that also decided to cancel their participation as well.

That concern is there and I have received phone calls of people asking if they are going to be safe to come to the parade, Clark said. All I can say is that we have not had any incredible threats, no one has called to tell us they are organizing anything  we have no indication that anything is going to happen, except for rumors on social media.

There was only one known incident during the parade, where Karl Smith, of Morganton, discharged pepper spray in the direction of reenactors.

The incident occurred next to a Confederate monument in the square of the old Newton courthouse; the reenactors were facing away from the man before he was taken into custody.
Here is something you probably havent heard much lately, if at all, given the shocking news from Charlottesville and the disturbing reaction by President Trump.

Roughly 80 percent of Americans believe that Trump and his administration should do all they can to make the Affordable Care Act work while only 17 percent believe they should try to make the law fail so they can replace it.

The numbers come from a recent survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation that also found that even more than half of the supporters of President Trump want him to do what he can to make the law work.

That hasnt stopped Republican members of Congress from continuing to push for repeal of the ACA or to continue to misrepresent the bill they supported earlier this summer to allegedly replace it.

The Hickory Daily Record reported recently that North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry told a town hall meeting that he had done his part to repeal the health care law by voting for the legislation that narrowly passed the U.S. House.

The legislation that McHenry supported would leave 14 million more people without insurance coverage next year and 26 million more people uninsured in the next ten years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The House plan would also slash Medicaid spending by almost $900 billion in the next ten years, with $6 billion worth of cuts to North Carolinas Medicaid program that currently insures almost 2 million people, including 42 percent of children in the state and 21 percent of seniors and people with disabilities.

The Senate rejected the House plan and defeated several versions of its own replacement plan that would also dramatically increase the number of people without insurance across the country and in North Carolina.

The failure of the repeal efforts mean that for now the Affordable Care Act remains the law of the land and so does its most popular provisions, like banning insurance companies from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions, allowing children to stay on their parents plan until they are 26 and providing physicals and other preventive care for free.

But President Trump is now considering ending cost sharing reduction payments to insurance companies designed to keep deductibles and copayments reasonable for low and moderate-income families who buy insurance on the health care marketplace.

Trump has called these payments an insurance company bailout, but as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities explains, they are an essential part of the Affordable Care Act that help make sure that low income families can afford to buy insurance, which is the point of the health care law in the first place.

There are also reports that the Trump Administration will curtail efforts to encourage people to sign up for health care coverage when the enrollment period begins this fall. As the Kaiser Family Foundation reports the Administration has already diverted funds available to publicize and market the health care law and instead used to money for propaganda criticizing the ACA.

The ACA was based on a common sense assumption that whatever Administration was in power, it would do its job and follow the law and do all it can to help Americans access the health care it provides.

If President Trump does that, the law will work the way it was designed to. There are adjustments that need to be made to improve the ACA, especially with the marketplace, and there is some encouraging news that Republicans might be willing work with Democrats to make them, now that the radical repeal efforts have failed.

Wouldnt that be a refreshing change in Washington, if the two parties would work together to improve a health care law that is generally working well and popular with the American people?

It is long overdue.

Chris Fitzsimon is the founder and executive director of N.C. Policy Watch.
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Lebanons U.S.-backed military is gearing up for a long-awaited assault to dislodge hundreds of Islamic State (IS) militants from a remote corner near Syrian border, seeking to end a years-long threat posed to neighboring towns and villages by the extremists.

The campaign will involve cooperation with the militant group Hezbollah and the Syrian army on the other side of the border  although Lebanese authorities insist they are not coordinating with Syrian President Bashar Assads government.

But the assault could prove costly for the under-equipped military and risk activating IS sleeper cells in the country.

The tiny Mediterranean nation has been spared the wars and chaos that engulfed several countries in the region since the so-called Arab Spring uprisings erupted in 2011.

But it has not been able to evade threats to its security, including sectarian infighting and random car bombings, particularly in 2014, when militants linked to al-Qaeda and IS overran the border region, kidnapping Lebanese soldiers.

The years-long presence of extremists in the border area has brought suffering to neighboring towns and villages, from shelling, to kidnappings of villagers for ransom. Car bombs made in the area and sent to other parts of the country, including the Lebanese capital, Beirut, have killed scores of citizens.

Aided directly by the United States and Britain, the army has accumulated steady successes against the militants in the past year, slowly clawing back territory, including strategic hills retaken in the past week. Authorities say its time for an all-out assault.

The planned operation follows a six-day military offensive by the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah that forced al-Qaeda-linked fighters to flee the area on the outskirts of the town of Arsal, along with thousands of civilians.

In a clear distribution of roles, the army is now expected to launch the attack on IS.

In the past few days, the armys artillery shells and multiple rocket launchers have been pounding the mountainous areas on the Lebanon-Syria border where IS held positions, in preparation for the offensive.

Drones could be heard around the clock and residents of the eastern Bekaa Valley reported seeing army reinforcements arriving daily in the northeastern district of Hermel to join the battle.

The offensive from the Lebanese side of the border will be carried out by the Lebanese army, while Syrian troops and Hezbollah fighters will be working to clear the Syrian side of IS militants. Hezbollah has been fighting alongside Assads forces since 2013.

Experts say more than 3,000 troops, including elite special forces, are in the northeastern corner of Lebanon to take part in the offensive. The army will likely use weapons it received from the United States, including Cessna aircraft that discharge Hellfire missiles.

Keen to support the army rather than the better equipped Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the U.S. and Britain have supplied the military with helicopters, anti-tank missiles, artillery and radars, as well as training. The American Embassy says the U.S. has provided Lebanon with over $1.4 billion in security assistance since 2005.

But the fight is not expected to be quick or easy.

According to Lebanons Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk, there are about 400 IS fighters in the Lebanese area, and hundreds more on the Syrian side of the border.

It is not going to be a picnic, said Hisham Jaber, a retired army general who heads the Middle East Center for Studies and Political Research in Beirut. The Lebanese army will try to carry out the mission with the least possible losses.

Jaber said the battle may last several weeks. It is a rugged area and the organization (IS) is well armed and experienced.

There are also concerns the offensive may subject Lebanon to retaliatory attacks by militants, just as the country has started to enjoy a rebound in tourism.

A Lebanese security official said authorities are taking strict security measures to prevent any attack deep inside Lebanon by sleeper cells. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said authorities have detained several IS militants over the past weeks.

Lebanese politicians say IS controls an area of about 296 square kilometers (114 square miles) between the two countries, of which 141 square kilometers (54.5 square miles) are in Lebanon.

The area stretches from the badlands of the Lebanese town of Arsal and Christian villages of Ras Baalbek and Qaa, to the outskirts of Syrias Qalamoun region and parts of the western Syrian town of Qusair that Hezbollah captured in 2013.

In a televised speech last Friday, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said that once the Lebanese army launches its offensive from the Lebanese side, Hezbollah and the Syrian army will begin their attack from the Syrian side. He added that there has to be coordination between the Syrian and Lebanese armies in the battle.

Opening two fronts at the same time will speed up victory and reduce losses, Nasrallah said, adding that his fighters on the Lebanese side of the border are at the disposal of Lebanese troops if needed.

I tell Daesh that the Lebanese and Syrians will attack you from all sides and you will not be able to resist and will be defeated, he said, using an Arabic acronym for the extremist group.

If you decide to fight, you will end up either a prisoner or dead, Nasrallah added.

Some Lebanese politicians have been opposed to security coordination with the Syrian army. The Lebanese are sharply divided over Syrias civil war that has spilled to the tiny country of 4.5 million people. Lebanon is hosting some 1.2 million Syrian refugees.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri is opposed to Assad while his national unity Cabinet includes Hezbollah as well as other groups allied with the Syrian president.

Last week, Hariri told reporters that Lebanese authorities are ready to negotiate to discover the fate of nine Lebanese soldiers who were captured during the raid on Arsal by IS and al-Qaeda fighters in August 2014. Unlike their rivals in al-Qaida, IS is not known to negotiate prisoner exchanges.

The presence of Daesh will end in Lebanon, Hariri said, using the same Arabic acronym to refer to IS.

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A day after a picture of Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh lit up the internet, the rumoured couple was spotted on the streets of Mumbai.

According to an Indian Express report, the two were out for a dinner date, and as always, the paparazzi lapped it up.

While neither Deepika nor Ranveer has ever confirmed their relationship, situations such as this are very common. Ranveer even visited Deepika on the sets of her first Hollywood movie, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.

Only a day ago, an old picture in which the rumoured couple was seen getting cosy - it was a screengrab from a behind-the-scenes video of a photoshoot the two had done in 2015 - went viral. Several fans took to Twitter to share their favourite pictures of the two with the hashtag, DeepVeer.

In an earlier interview to Deccan Chronicle, Ranveer commented that Deepika was the best kisser ever. I think Deepika Padukone is the best kisser. Have you seen that Ang laga de re, mujhe rang laga de re (song from Goliyon Ki Rasleela: Ram Leela)? he said.

The two have played lovers on screen twice, in director Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Ram Leela and Bajirao Mastani. They will re-team with the filmmaker for a third time in Padmavati, which is currently in production.

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It is common knowledge among Bollywood fans that cine star Nawazuddin Siddiqui has risen from a small town in Western UP, struggling in Delhi and Mumbai, to finally become one of the most sought after actors in India.

However, not many know that Siddiqui struggled working as a security guard for a toy factory in Noida.

Diving back in nostalgia, Siddiqui revealed at an event in Greater Noida on Friday, Noida was where I got my first job as a security guard posted outside a toy factory. I had come from Muzaffarnagar before 1993.

Siddiqui was present at Sharda University in Greater Noida to promote his upcoming film Babumoshai Bandookbaaz. He was accompanied by starlets Bidita Bag and Shraddha Das to the universitys main campus where he welcomed with loud cheers from students.

Trying to remember his past, Siddiqui humbly accepted that he wasnt very keen on surviving his first job.

The owner of the toy factory on multiple occasions had caught me dozing off or relaxing outside the factory gate and reprimanded me for it. Soon, I left the job, said Siddiqui.

He remembered Noida in bits and pieces, claiming that city had not seen any high rise societies or malls back then.

Back then in my time, Noida was quite deserted. There were no malls or high rise societies. Only factories were setting up. I will always remember this city as the place where I landed up with my first job, said Siddiqui.

Siddiqui belongs to Budhana, a small town in Muzaffarnagar, West UP, where he enacted in several Ram Leela plays and later joined the National School of Drama in Delhi. In Mumbai, he had to face rejection until 2012, when he nabbed a major role in Gangs of Wasseypur. Today, he is confident that the film industry is more open to youngsters hailing from small towns.

There is no dearth of opportunity if one has the talent and dedication. There will be scores of opportunity waiting for you if you have the ability to grasp it.

Siddiqui recently posted a picture of his son dressed as Lord Krishna on the occasion of Janmashtmi. Last year, he faced protest from political leaders when he wished his desire to play a role in Ram Leela in his ancestral village. Reiterating the long history of secular culture and tradition of western UP, he says, I have grown up in an environment where we used to celebrate all festivals together. I had enacted in various Ram Leela shows. That is why I want my son to bear same qualities.

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Actor Aadar Jain, who is the son of legendary actor Raj Kapoors daughter Reema Jain, is ready to make his Bollywood debut. However, amid the raging nepotism debate, he says he doesnt feel he has been favoured by anyone in the industry.

Nepotism means favouritism towards relatives and Aditya Chopra is not my relative. I worked hard for the movie, I got it because I am talented and I proved my mettle as an actor. I do come from a film family and there is nothing wrong in being part of a film family. I am not a product of nepotism, otherwise I would have been launched by RK studios but thats not the case. I am proud of it and everyone in my family is proud of it, says Aadar, who is being launched by producer Aditya Chopra.

The actor, whose cousins Ranbir Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Karisma Kapoor are established actors in the film industry, is inspired by the work his family members have done.

 Its nice that my brothers and sisters are doing good work and it motivates me to do good work too. Everyone in my family has proved themselves. My grandfather Raj Kapoor was son of Prithviraj Kapoor and contributed to Indian cinema for 60 years. My uncle Rishi Kapoor has been in cinema for such a long time. Your hard work and talent will take you further and you will be judged by people no matter what, says the actor.

He hopes that people will appreciate his work too. People will change their opinion about me getting favoured if they know that I am good and that I have worked hard.

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At Infosys Ltd, the battle between the founders and the companys board has just gone nuclear.

In an unprecedented attack, the board of Infosys on Friday blamed founder NR Narayana Murthy, who has often referred to Infosys as his middle child, for his continuous assault and misguided campaign, and said this was the primary reason behind the abrupt exit of chief executive officer (CEO) Vishal Sikka. Murthy denied the allegation in a short, terse statement.

Mr. Murthys continuous assault, including this latest letter, is the primary reason that the CEO, Dr. Vishal Sikka, has resigned despite strong board support, said a statement by Infosys to stock exchanges on Friday. Mr. Murthys campaign against the board and the company has had the unfortunate effect to undermine the companys efforts to transform itself. The board has been engaged in a dialogue with the founder to resolve his concerns over the course of a year, trying earnestly to find feasible solutions within the boundaries of law and without compromising its independence. These dialogues have unfortunately not been successful.

Infosys co-chairman Ravi Venkatesan said later in an investor call that the company had no intention of asking Murthy to play a role in the governance of the companyreversing his and the companys earlier position of wanting to reach out to Murthy and offer him a formal role on the board, according to an interview to a TV channel last week.

The board has no intention to invite Mr Murthy to play a formal role in governance, Venkatesan candidly said on an investor call on Friday.

According to at least two people directly aware of the developments, the boards decision to issue the scathing statement on Murthy was not unanimous, but rather a majority decisiona clear sign that this tussle with the founder will test the unity of Infosyss board over the coming weeks and months.

Mint could not immediately verify which board members did not vote in favour of the statement.

This marks the first time in the companys 36-year history that the board of Infosys has strongly criticised any of its founders and is widely being seen as a point of no return for relations between Murthy and the board.

In a scathing six-page letter to the stock exchanges, Infosys pulled no punches and said that the board believed it should set the record straight on the false and misleading charges made by Murthy because the founders actions and demands are damaging the company.

The board declines to speculate about Mr. Murthys motive for carrying out this campaign, including the latest letter, said Infosys, referring to a letter that Murthy wrote to some of his advisers on 14 August.

Infosys even bluntly accused Murthys letter of containing factual inaccuracies, already-disproved rumours, and statements extracted out of context from his conversations with Board members.

We are concerned that this type of campaign runs the risk of confusing investors and undermining the Companys management efforts, said Infosys.

Murthy swiftly responded by saying he was extremely anguished by the allegations, tone and tenor of statements made by the board and that it was below his dignity to respond to baseless insinuations.

He later released a copy of the 14 August letter which is an extended version of another letter he sent some of his advisers on 9 August, and which was first cited by Mint in an article on Thursday night.

Experts believe that this tussle between the two warring camps could intensify in the coming weeks.

I am saddened in the manner in which Infosys put out the press release blaming Murthy. I expect more changes at the board as misalignment of views will intensify between founders and board because of Infosys blaming Murthy in the press release, said Shriram Subramanian, founder and managing director of proxy firm InGovern Research.

A Mumbai-based analyst at a foreign brokerage firm said, Now the board is blaming Murthy for the entire mess. But it was Ravi Venkatesan who until last week was quoted in the media, saying he is open to the idea of Murthy joining them at the board.

I believe going forward it will test the resolve of not just the board but even large institutional shareholders as founders will not take it quietly. Clearly, it is the start of another round of bickering, said the analyst on condition of anonymity.

Murthy has publicly lambasted Infosys over the course of the past six-seven months for lapses in corporate governance. In his 9 August and 14 August mails, he criticized the board for failing to uphold the companys famed governance standards and not creating checks and balances required in any well-run company.

He has in the past questioned the $200 million purchase of Panaya and generous severance payments made to former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal (part of which was stopped later) and to former general counsel David Kennedy.

A belligerent attitude towards the founders of an iconic company will keep friction levels high and make the search for an external CEO tough, wrote Ankur Rudra, an analyst at CLSA, in a note on Friday.

Murthy made it clear that he has no intention of backing down.

I will reply to these allegations (by the Infosys board) in the right manner and in the right forum and at the appropriate time, Murthy said in his statement.
Indias second-biggest IT firm Infosys said on Saturday it will buy back shares worth up to Rs 130 billion ($2 billion), a day after Vishal Sikka resigned as chief executive after a long-running feud with the companys founders.

The board of Bengaluru-headquartered Infosys approved the repurchase of 113 million shares at Rs 1,150 apiece, the company said in a stock exchange filing, returning cash to investors at a substantial premium to Fridays closing price of Rs 1,020.85.

The announcement of the companys first-ever buyback will offer some respite to Infosys shareholders, who saw a near 10% fall in the value of their holdings on Friday after Sikkas surprise exit.

Sikka, the first non-founder chief executive of the company, announced his sudden resignation following a protracted war of words with Narayana Murthy.

The move is also likely to calm some former executives who had been clamouring for a buyback as a row between the founders and the current management of Infosys over alleged corporate governance lapses at the company spilled into the public domain.

Infosys had said in April it intended to return $2 billion to shareholders before March 2018 while also announcing the appointment of an independent director as co-chairman, both moves largely seen as attempts to calm the founders.
For a man who joined Infosys in 1986 at a monthly salary of Rs 1,200 and spent the better part of the last two-and-a-half decades in several operational roles, UB Pravin Raos rise within the company over the past three years has been nothing short of meteoric.

In a company like Infosys that over the past two decades has made flashy newspaper headlines for several high-profile executive departures, Rao represents a somewhat rare breed of good old-fashioned delivery and operations manager.

According to several colleagues, fortune has rewarded him for his dogged perseverance.

An Infosys veteran of over three decades, Rao has managed to outlast every one of his more illustrious peers and colleagues such as Phaneesh Murthy, Mohandas Pai, Subhash Dhar, Ashok Vemuri and BG Srinivas and achieved what none of them ever managed to dobecome the CEO (ok, interim CEO) arguably Indias most high-profile IT company.

Raos turning point at Infosys came in December 2013, when then-chairman and the companys iconic founder NR Narayana Murthy was orchestrating a massive shake-up inside Infosys as part of his turnaround efforts, which then led to the exits of potential CEO candidates such as Ashok Vemuri, V Balakrishnan and, later in early 2014, BG Srinivas.

From being the head of just one of the companys several businesses, Rao was swiftly thrust into the role of joint President, with a seat on the board. All of this took place in less than a month.

He then became COO after Murthy left the company in June 2014 and Vishal Sikka became the CEO. Now he finds himself in the hot seat.

According to colleagues of Rao and it was his mentor Murthy who orchestrated his rise. Murthy recognised that Rao deserved a larger role in the scheme of things and quickly promoted him.

For a man who largely avoids the spotlight and prefers to operate quietly, Rao found himself in the middle of a controversy that was not of his own making when the board decided to raise his salary earlier this yearand ironically attracted the ire of his mentor, Murthy.

For a man who has seen Infosys go through several ups and downs over the course of his three-decade career, Rao now faces the biggest test of his tenure at Infosys at the twilight of his career.
The team probing the death of several neonates at Gorakhpurs BRD Medical College has reportedly run into stonewalling tactics by hospital authorities in its quest to access documents related with oxygen supply.

Some of the doctors and para medical staff also allegedly avoided facing the team which visited the hospital on Thursday.

Only some of the complainants their recorded statement before the team comprising Uttar Pradesh health secretary Alok Kumar, finance secretary Mukesh Mittal and medical superintendent of Lucknows Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI) Dr Hem Chandra.

The team met BRD principal Dr PK Singh, superintendent in-charge AK Srivastava and a few other doctors posted at the paediatric ward.

The hospital authorities are yet to provide us all the documents demanded by our team, confirmed a team member while talking to HT on Friday.

If the supply is centralized, it has to be controlled by a central gas pipeline at a given pressure. Oxygen cylinders placed along bedside are used only if that pressure is disturbed. We have asked them about time at which the supply pressure was disturbed or broken, said the team member, not willing to be named.

The probe team is also looking for answers as to why the oxygen cylinders placed at the bedside were not used.

We are also yet to get satisfactory answer to the vital question that whether there was oxygen in the cylinders and who was responsible for managing all these activities, he said.

Read more: Nine more children die in Gorakhpurs BRD Medical College, toll at 105

The probe team has also sought details of the man who issued death certificate to the first child who died on August 9.

It could lead us to the person who didnt raise an alarm about supply of oxygen getting disrupted, he said while admitting that officials at BRD Medical College failed to extend full cooperation to the probe team.

He, however, denied any pressure on the team.

We have been given a free hand to probe every aspect. Prima facie it looks like a mix of both human error and flaws in the system that led to a massive tragedy, he said.

The team is expected to submit its report on August 20.

Earlier, another probe team constituted by the Gorakhpur district magistrate had also scanned the oxygen supply record and found that no stock and log registers were maintained.

The DM-appointed probe team had blamed the in-charge for oxygen supply Dr Satish and chief pharmacist Gajanan Jaiswal for anomalies.

It had also detected overwriting in the stock and log book.

The district officials had also failed to present the stock register since March. When asked how the medical college made payments if stock register was not maintained, the BRD college officials had refused to comment.

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The large number of infant deaths at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh has once again brought into the limelight, the appalling state of affairs in our health care system. But more specifically, it has focused attention on the low priority given to one of the most critical components of patient care  oxygen supply  at government hospitals.

Given the importance of oxygen in treating a wide variety of acute, critical and chronic conditions (and its use in surgery), hospitals not only need to maintain a constant and uninterrupted supply, but also ensure that patients get this life saving gas in correct concentration and pressure. Since even a slight slip-up could lead to serious complications and even death, oxygen management not only requires a fool-proof system of delivery and supply of the gas, but also proper procedures in place to ensure that hospitals order appropriate amounts and well in time. It also requires standard apparatus and procedure for maintenance of the system by qualified and trained technicians. Hospitals are also expected to have contingency plans to eliminate any interruption in supply.

Yet, going by the initial media reports, the hospital management in Gorakhpur ignored patient safety and put the lives of infants at risk by disregarding repeated warnings by the oxygen supplier that he would stop supply if the payment due to him was not made. From what the chief minister told a press conference last week, even after the government released the funds on August 5, there was a delay of six days in paying the supplier. This was sheer negligence and those responsible should be held accountable.

Having said that, I must point out that this is not the first time a government hospital has ignored patient safety in respect of oxygen supply and this is a matter of great concern. In May 2016, for example, two infants died at the Maharaja Yeshwant Rao hospital in Indore, because they were wrongly administered nitrous oxide instead of oxygen after surgery. Investigations by the hospital had shown a mix-up in the gas lines at the newly constructed pediatric unit.

Prior to that in September 2015, four women on ventilators at the ICU of Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital, Darbhanga, died on account of lack of oxygen supply. According to the superintendent of the hospital, this was caused by the oxygen supply attendant leaving the hospital before his reliever turned up and two more persons in-charge of oxygen supply also turning up late.

Earlier in December 2012, five patients on ventilators at the Sushruta Trauma Centre in North Delhi had died due to a break in the oxygen supply. Here again, shortage caused by delayed payment to the supplier, an untrained person in-charge of the oxygen supply system and the failure of the hospital staff to follow up on the sudden fall in oxygen pressure noticed the previous day were blamed for the tragedy.

Similarly in July that year, the nurses union of the Kochi Co-operative Medical College hospital had alleged that three patients in the ICU had died on account of shortage of oxygen. Even though two committees that probed the allegations discounted it, their investigations had shown gross deficiencies in the oxygen supply system in the hospital. Around the same time, Sri Venkateswara Ramnarain Ruia Government General Hospital in Tirupati had come under attack for the absence of trained and qualified technicians to ensure efficient and continuous supply of oxygen.

Its time the state and the central health departments called for independent audit of oxygen management in all government hospitals in the country and ensured that robust and foolproof medical gas pipeline systems are put in place to prevent oxygen-related traumas and deaths.

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When India woke up to the deaths of children at a hospital in Uttar Pradeshs Gorakhpur district last week, I remembered what an academic, who was then writing a paper on the uprising in Egypts Tahrir Square in 2011, told me: The signs of political ferment were all there in the years preceding the uprising  they were in newspaper reports and government documents. But nobody joined the dots  read the signs.

This  not reading the signs  holds true for the public health system in Gorakhpur. The immediate cause of the deaths could have been the oxygen shortage at the ward of the Baba Raghav Das Medical College (BRDMC) that had children suffering from encephalitis but the signs of a coming catastrophe were always there. According to National Family Health Survey, in August 2014, 567 children died in this hospital, in August 2015, 668 children died and in 2016, the toll was 587. Isnt it then surprising that no one raised an alarm despite so many deaths? However, the malaise in the public health structure is much deeper than what meets the eye is evident from fact that nine more deaths have been reported from BRDMC, taking the toll to 105 since the August 10 tragedy.

You may call me a pessimist, but this tragedy will soon vanish from public memory. The investigative reports by the health department and medical associations that came out after the first round of deaths will be lost in the mountain of files in government offices. The children will again be remembered when the next tragedy strikes.

Revamping the health sector is never an easy task, but it isnt impossible. I am not a public health expert but my friends who are in know of such things tell me that three steps are needed if UP  or for that matter any other state  want to improve the healthcare system and avoid such deaths. Over the years, BRDMC has been creaking under tremendous pressure; it has been taking in more patients than it is supposed to. This is because it caters not just to patients from Gorakhpur and its neighbouring districts but also from Bihar and Nepal. On any given day, reports said, about 200 to 250 encephalitis patients are treated at the hospital, and the mortality rate is 7% to 8%. Many of these children could not be saved because they were critical. What does this show? The public health system in the surrounding areas is so badly equipped and poorly staffed that there is no scope for early detection.

While setting up proper, well-equipped brick and mortar hospitals in the surrounding areas is an ongoing process, we must look at other possibilities. One such possibility could be to invest in telemedicine so that people dont have to travel long distances for detection. A telemedicine system can provide the rural population access to basic, specialty and super specialty consultations. It can turn out to be economical since people in rural areas lose wages when they have to travel to bigger hospitals in cities for diagnosis.

In 2015, the Centre had launched a pan-India health initiative called Sehat (Social Endeavour for Health and Telemedicine) in line with its Digital India vision. The initiative aims to connect 60,000 common service centres across the country and provide health care access to citizens irrespective of their geographical location. The roll-out has proved to be difficult due to absence of infrastructure, Internet connectivity and lack of sufficient medical personnel. But these problems  if there is the political will  are not insurmountable, especially since now the same party rules in Lucknow and Delhi.

Then there is Big Data. Considering that the basics health care requirements are not in place, this may sound too ambitious. But wouldnt it be stupidity to re-haul the system without leveraging the advantages that modern science and technology provide us? These days, I am told, Big Data is being used to predict epidemics, cure disease, improve quality of life and avoid preventable deaths. I was bit skeptical when I heard this considering the on-ground problems we have, but it seems India has started working on this in 2013.

At the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, part of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Anurag Agrawal, a 2014 Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize awardee, has been working on a project that streams health data from different areas to a central server in Delhi. Such data is gold, Agrawal told MINT in an interview. More than public health, it is about creating massive data sets that will give us a sense of whats going to happen in terms of recognising diseases in their early stages.

Last but not the least, governments have to invest in nursing colleges and medical schools to ensure that adequate number of health personnel enter the system every year and fill the gaps. Uttar Pradesh has only 25 medical colleges 10 government and 15 private. The situation is worse in nursing colleges, which are mostly private.

Thanks to unavailability of trained staff in State-run hospitals, people tend to throng to quacks: A Hindustan Times reporter found out that for residents of Ramnagar village, located 10 km north of Gorakhpurs BRDMC, quacks are the first port of call for many.

There are as many as 200 unregistered medical practitioners, commonly known as quacks or jhola chhap doctors, who are running thriving clinics in localities and villages near BRDMC. The presence of such jhola chhap doctors is indication enough that the system has collapsed, but it seems no one is reading the signs.

@chanakya

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A car bomb on Saturday hit the Syrian port city of Latakia with reports of injuries, the Lebanese Hezbollah group's al Manar television station and a monitor said.

The television station flashed that an explosive laden car caused the blast in the Tashreen district of the city that lies in the mountainous heartland of President Bashar al Assad's minority Alawite sect. It cited casualties but gave no details.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported an explosion in the city saying it was likely caused by a car blast and said there were several injuries, with some in critical condition.

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DEHRADUN: The Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant High Altitude Zoo has emerged as a major tourist attraction in Nainital which is otherwise popular among visitors for its beautiful lakes.

If one considers the increasing footfalls, the flow of visitors has brought more and more revenue in the last one decade. In 2007-08, 1.40 lakh tourists visited the zoo bringing revenue worth Rs 30 lakh. The footfall shot up to over 3 lakh in 2016-17, generating a whooping earning of Rs 1.37 crore. Entry fee alone accounted for this revenue collection.

Entry for kids below 5 years is free. For visitors in the age group of 5-12 years, the entry fee is Rs 20, while it is Rs 50 for those above 12 years. A total 44 people, including the park director, work for the management of the zoo .

The zoo is home to 233 wild animals, including 16 mammals and nine bird species, as per the official report submitted to the Central Zoo Authority this year. Royal Bengal Tiger, Himalayan Black Bear, Makhor (a large species of wild goat), Red Panda and Japanese macaque are among the top attractions of the zoo.

We are glad that the zoo has made a niche for itself despite the presence of popular lakes in Nainital. Apart from the variety of animals that we have, the zoo is located at an altitude of 2,020 m above sea level, Nainital divisional forest officer and zoo director Dharam Singh Meena told Hindustan Times.

A feature of this zoo is that many wildlife lovers have adopted its inmates. In fact, the status report of 2016-17 mentions 29 individuals and organisations have taken to adoption. Uttarakhand Forest Development Corporation (UFDC) adopted one tiger and two leopards, and footed the food and maintenance cost of Rs 4 lakh for one year. Through adoption, the park management generated Rs 6.55 lakh which is used for the upkeep of the animals.

Established in 1984 and opened to public in 1995, the zoo has added incorporated various segments, an artificial pond for fish and many more. The zoo is spread across 4.592 hectare with an additional residential area of 0.217 hectare and a transit rescue centre of 1.910 hectare.

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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Delhi has chosen a unique way to test its support base and popularity of northeast Delhi MP Manoj Tiwari, who is also the partys local units chief, on social media.

It is planning a day-long event  Facebook Friends Mahotsav  in which it will invite people across the country and abroad to show support for Tiwari.

A party functionary, who has been entrusted with the responsibility to finalise the plan, said this is an attempt to turn virtual support into real friendship and it will also help understand the expectation of youth from the party.

We are expecting around 25, 000 people at the event hence looking for a suitable venue keeping this number in mind. As per the plan, Tiwari will spend a complete day interacting with his Facebook friends. We are not putting any bar on numbers; it will be an open invitation to people. We are hoping that Facebook users from abroad will also attend the function, said Neelkant Bakshi, in-charge, media relations department, Delhi BJP.

Apart from around eight lakh followers and friends of Tiwari on social media sites, the Facebook page of the partys Delhi unit has more than 24 lakh followers.

The idea of organising Facebook Friend Mahotsav is conceived by Tiwari himself. He gets likes for his posts in thousands and lakhs everyday. His updates are shared by thousands. Therefore, he decided to check how many people can turn up if he invites them, said Bakshi.

The programme is likely to be held at Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium.

He further also said the party is also planning to give a memento to attendees. Nothing has been finalised yet but we may present a copy of our constitution to all invitees. The memento will make their presence memorable. We will also seek their suggestions to make our functioning better in future, he said.

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An infant died in a government hospital here due to alleged failure in oxygen supply, family members said on Saturday.

According to the family, the baby was born on Monday at the Rao Tula Ram Hospital. The infants condition deteoriated all of a sudden due to breathing issues.

Immediately after doctors were called to provide oxygen, it was discovered that the baby had already died.

A complaint has been filed with the Delhi Police.

Our baby had breathing issues. Doctors were called. But it was too late, the infants father Brijesh Kumar Singh, said alleging that the hospital lacks oxygen cylinders.

However, the hospital has denied the allegation. It said the cause of death was breathing issues.

The body has been sent for post-mortem.
The Delhi Police are probing if a recent suicide attempt by a 16-year-old boy in the national capital was linked to the Blue Whale Challenge, an Internet game that requires players to end their lives.

The teenager had jumped off the terrace of his residence in north Delhis Ashok Vihar on Wednesday afternoon, leaving his mobile phone, spectacles and a pair of bathroom slippers behind. Though these recoveries initially made us investigate the Blue Whale angle, subsequent findings did not support that theory, said deputy commissioner of police (north-west) Milind Dumbere.

The boy remains admitted to a city hospital in a critical state. As he was unfit to give a statement, police questioned his family and friends regarding the circumstances that led to the incident.

The victim had recently changed schools. The boy was still very much attached to friends in his previous educational institution, and  according to our investigations so far  he was finding it hard to cope with students in his new school, Dumbere said.

Though no injuries linking the act to the Blue Whale Challenge were found on the teenagers body, police said the possibility can be completely ruled out only after a thorough check of his mobile phone. The handset is password-protected, and we are yet to unlock it, the police officer said on Saturday, three days after the alleged suicide attempt.

The boys mother was at home when he jumped off the terrace. The matter came to light a few minutes later, when neighbours heard a sound and found the boy lying unconscious on the ground. The victim was rushed to a local hospital, from where he was referred to a bigger medical institute.

The boys father runs a dry fruit business in the city.

The Blue Whale Challenge, an online game that originated in Russia, requires players to undertake a number of agonising or painful tasks before eventually instructing them to commit suicide.
The Delhi government has nearly completed the process for forming district level vigilance committees that will keep watch on the ground and try and prevent any more deaths in the Capitals sewers.

The move comes after nine people were killed in the citys sewers in a span of one month in three separate incidents. The latest of these incidents took place on August 12 and claimed the lives of two brothers cleaning a sewage tank without safety gear at a mall in east Delhi.

Earlier, on August 6, three private sanitation workers had died inside a Delhi Jal Board-managed sewer line in Lajpat Nagar. Before that, four labourers suffocated to death while trying to clean a rainwater harvesting pit which had turned into a sewage-filled septic tank due to lack of maintenance in Ghitorni on July 16.

The vigilance committee will be headed by the district magistrate and will include two MLAs, police officials, deputy commissioner of municipal corporations and four social workers, among others. The notification regarding the committees will be issued in a day or two, water minister Rajendra Pal Gautam said.

Another committee, which will implement provisions of the Manual Scavenging Act, will also be formed for keeping an eye on the vigilance committees.

This panel will be headed by the chief minister and will include the MCD commissioners, police commissioner, representatives of different workers unions, a representative of Delhi Cantonment Board, of the New Delhi Municipal Council, four social workers and one Delhi Jal Board member. The approval for this too should be done by Monday or Tuesday, Gautam said.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has called an emergency meeting over sewage deaths. The meeting will be held on Tuesday and all Delhi Jal Board executive engineers and officials above them have been asked to attend it.

Manual scavenging was banned in the country in 1993. However, since 1994, more than 80 people have died in the drains and manholes of the Capital alone.

Section 7 of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, states that no person, local authority or any agency shall engage or employ, either directly or indirectly, any person for hazardous cleaning of a sewer or a septic tank.

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The post-2008 crash business world has taken a quantitative turn, focused on data driven and analytics led search for uncovering complex feedbacks that operate in the highly networked economy. The modern economy is a network of multiple markets that connects individuals, small businesses, banks, corporations and governments. Understanding the architecture of the network and how feedbacks operate between these entities has become imperative for businesses. Since consumer choice is both informed and shaped by peer networks, understanding how feedbacks operate in this network of opinions and a perception has become quite fundamental for business in this information age.

In a networked economy, with feedbacks running between entities at various levels, the methods and tools of mainstream economics and finance are of little use in understanding the complexities. The business world has recognised this failure and has taken to big data driven analytics in order to thrive in such a complex network.

With more businesses realising the power of analytics, the corporates are investing heavily in big data and driving the Quant revolution around the world. New cross-cutting business sectors have evolved. The fintech (financial technology) sector is one example, where it harnesses two domains, finance and information technology. Since the 2008 crash, the finance sector is moving towards new secure technologies, such as block chain, for their products. This is the fastest growing sector in the global finance industry and in the context of digitisation and the inevitable financialisation of the Indian economy, the fintech sector is expected to grow here also. Even in the traditional business sectors, like retail and wholesale, transportation, hospitality, etc., there is a move towards big-data and analytics.

In this scenario, there is a greater need for students with strong analytics and computing/IT skills. Science, engineering and technology students, with a post-graduate degree in economics and finance, can excel in this new environment. For instance, in the financial sector, be it in developing programme trading strategies for high-frequency trading, or for back-testing, or in product development, there is a growing demand for students with diverse skill set, such as economics/finance, analytics and computing.

Traditionally in the finance industry, science and tech students have performed quite well, be it in hedge funds or insurance companies or in investment banks. In fact, there exists a community of model vendors, who supply bespoke models in financial risk measurement and management. These model vendors backgrounds are typically in science and engineering/IT with strong coding and computing skills.

Outside of banking and finance, economics students usually make a career in policy think tanks, central banks, and international development agencies, among others. Some of these institutions have realised the shortcomings of the traditional approach to policy analysis and are moving towards more interdisciplinary approaches, which, in turn, have opened up opportunities for the science and tech students with a post-graduate degree in economics/finance.

In terms of post-graduate education, the science and technology students should look for interdisciplinary programmes in the frontier areas of international finance, financial analytics and computing, business analytics, fintech etc. that provide good grounding in economics, finance and the interface between the two.

The author is a lecturer in economics at the JE Cairnes School of Business and Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUI Galway) in Ireland. He is also visiting faculty at the Centre for Contemporary studies in the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.
The Centre plans to extend crores of rupees in financial assistance to 20 state-run and private educational facilities over the next five years in an effort to propel them into the list of top 100 institutions across the globe. Ten institutions from each category will be picked for the purpose.

Each institution will receive Rs 1,000 crore from the ministry of human resource development (HRD), higher education department secretary Kewal Kumar Sharma said in an address to students and faculty members during the 67th Foundation Day of IIT Kharagpur on Friday. Institutions will have to write to the ministry for availing the financial aid. You can ask for it too, he said.

The Modi government was intent on reforming the education sector, HRD minister Prakash Javadekar had said recently, adding that India will achieve international rankings in the next 10 years.

Sharma said the HRD ministry has also decided to give a monthly allowance of Rs 70,000 to every research fellow covered under the Prime Minister Research Fellowship programme. According to IIT Kharagpur students, research fellows currently receive around Rs 25,000 a month.

This is a very good scheme. It will help research projects and the nation in the long run, said IIT Kharagpur director Partha Pratim Chakrabarti. The institute will apply for the special grant and strive to achieve global ranking, he added.

Not a single Indian university had appeared in the top 100 list of the Times Higher Education (THE) World Reputation Rankings, released in June this year.
Confusion prevailed in the administrative section of the forest department after the deputy commissioner of Nuh on Friday ordered that an IAS officer to take over the post of divisional forest officer.

The letter by Mani Ram Sharma, DC, Nuh, stated, Ravinder Yadav, DFO, Nuh, is not taking proper interest in plantation programme and he never attended the meeting as well..for smooth working of the developmental schemes of the forest department Rahul Narwal IAS, assistant commissioner under training, Nuh will look after the work of divisional forest officer with immediate effect in public interest (sic).

The letter also mentioned that the additional chief secretary (ACS), forest and wildlife, SK Gulati had been called up by the deputy commissioner, Nuh for approval of the notice.

Gulati said, I will look into the matter and will take a decision after verifying facts. A copy of the order is with Hindustan Times.

However, the order, itself, created chaos in the forest department as the tops officials were of opinion that the notice is not a valid order.

We will file a PIL if the order is not withdrawn. There are rules and procedures in all departments. An IAS officer cannot be given charge of an IFS officer. This is an absurd order. The forest department was not even made aware of the situation before the decision was taken, RP Balwan, (retd) conservator of forest, South Haryana, said.

He also said that the state shall descend into administrative chaos abetted by administrative section.

Earlier, the forest officials of Gurgaon and Faridabad had alleged that the ACS had forced them to change the land use of an area and had also threatened them with dire consequences when they refused to follow his orders. Following this, the Indian Forest Service Association demanded disciplinary action against Gulati. The body has written a letter to the chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, urging his intervention in the matter.

In their letter to the association, the four forest officials said that the ACS forced them to issue permission for tree felling over 52 acres in the Aravallis in order to free up space for a housing project. They alleged that he even termed the land in question as non-forest.

More than 10,000 trees on the 52-acre plot at Sarai Khwaja village in Faridabad district were chopped.

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Kherki Daula toll plaza would be shifted beyond the NSG complex in Manesar and a large plot in Sehrawan has been identified for its relocation. However, a final call on the same will only be taken once there is some clarification on the status of the land.

Gurgaon deputy commissioner said that the feasibility of the land is being assessed and if found suitable, the ownership would be transferred to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) within 15 days.

Authorities, however, confirmed that the transfer of land to NHAI is being taken up on priority.

The entire process of finding the land for shifting the toll plaza is being coordinated by Gurgaon MP and union minister of state for planning, Rao Inderjit Singh. On Friday, Singh visited the expressway along with the deputy commissioner and NHAI officials to expedite the infrastructure projects and transfer of land for the plaza.

Land for the new toll plaza is being identified and feasibility is being assessed, as part of it falls in Manesar, Sehrawan and a portion belongs to the forest department as well. The transfer of land will be done at the earliest and a world class 42 lane plaza will come up here, Singh said, adding that the shift would be a great boost to Gurgaon-Manesar industrial and residential complex.

The NHAI, meanwhile has asked experts to develop plans for setting up a new toll plaza at the new site. Officials said that the new toll is most likely to come up at this spot and they will work on two to three different options. They said that once the land is allotted, work would be completed in 3-4 months.

The plot in question is located at Chainage 53.500 on the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway, towards Jaipur, and if approved, the new toll plaza would be located around 11.5km from the existing one, which is 42km milestone from the Delhi-Jaipur Expressway. There are plots available on both sides of the expressway at Sehrawan and they are owned by the gram panchayat.

We have set a deadline of 15 days for ourselves to find a plot for setting up the new toll plaza. The land at Sehrawan will be examined with regard to ownership and the rights of the forest department and other stakeholders will be looked into. Only then will the recommendation be made to the state government for transfer, Vinay Pratap Singh, deputy commissioner, Gurgaon, said.

NHAI officials said that they have sought 24 hectares of land to set up the new toll plaza. There is a government polytechnic college beyond the NSG headquarters in Manesar and from that college, the new toll plaza will be around 1,500 metres on the Jaipur side, Ashok Sharma, project director, Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, said.

Sharma also said that immediately before this land, there is a steep curve on the expressway which would also need to aligned. This is not a major issue and would be resolved. The new toll plaza would be equipped with the latest technology and ensure least waiting time for vehicles, said Sharma, adding that the new toll would be ready in 3-4 months.

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Director Patty Jenkins is in final talks to helm Wonder Woman. Jenkins is close to signing a deal with Warner Bros. to step back into the directors chair for the sequel to the summer hit, reports Deadline.

Patty Jenkins, director of Wonder Woman, strikes a pose at the 45th AFI Life Achievement Award Tribute to Diane Keaton, at Dolby Theatre. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

While Wonder Woman 2 was officially confirmed at the San Diego Comic-Con, Jenkins involvement beyond writing a treatment for the sequel was not confirmed until now.

Jenkins is in negotiations about her salary after Wonder Woman became a hit which is also the reason why the deal is getting delayed.

Typically, according to sources, a frosh director on a comic book movie gets $1.5M to $3M, while a director in the realm of Zack Snyder (who is helming DCs Justice League) received $10M against 10% cash break even for his second DC film Man of Steel. (Thats usually paid out as 20% during pre-production, 60% during production, 10% during post and 10% following), the Deadline reports continues.

Wonder Woman 2 is set for a December, 2019 release.

Geoff Johns is writing the screenplay for the film while Gal Gadot is set to return as Diana.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
Lebanese troops on Saturday launched an offensive against the Islamic State group on the country's eastern border with Syria, seeking to drive the jihadists from a long-time stronghold.

The operation came as IS faces multiple military attacks on territory it controls in both Syria and neighbouring Iraq, where it lost the city of Mosul in July.

Militants have long been active in mountainous eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria, where a bloody civil war has raged since 2011.

In 2014, jihadists invaded the border town of Arsal, capturing 30 Lebanese soldiers and police. Security forces in the region have since come under regular attack.

"In the name of Lebanon, in the name of kidnapped Lebanese soldiers, in the name of martyrs of the army, I announce that operation 'Dawn of Jurud' has started," army chief General Joseph Aoun said Saturday.

He was referring to two mountainous border areas -- Jurud Ras Baalbek and Jurud al-Qaa -- where IS has been active.

"The army is confronting the Daesh terrorists to chase them out and recover territory," army spokesman General Ali Qanso said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

He said the campaign was "one of the most difficult battles waged by the Lebanese army," but added: "We have no fear of Daesh."

Kanso said the army believed there were around 600 IS fighters in the two areas, controlling some 120 square kilometres (46 square miles) of territory.

"For the first time, the army has made such use of its air capabilities," he said, to target jihadist hidden in a region full of mountains and cave hideouts.

The army's operation comes after Lebanon's powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah launched its own campaign against jihadists in another border area south of where the military is now operating.

The group's six-day offensive against IS and Al-Qaeda's former affiliate in the Jurud Arsal area ended with a ceasefire.

The agreement saw around 8,000 refugees and jihadists transported to a jihadist-held area of northwestern Syria in return for the release of five captured Hezbollah fighters.

The evacuations were completed on Monday.

Hezbollah is deeply embroiled in the civil war that has raged in neighbouring Syria since 2011, fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The group said Saturday it had launched a simultaneous operation against IS from the Syrian side of the border, but Lebanon's army spokesman denied there was any coordination.

Nine Lebanese soldiers captured in Arsal in 2014 are believed to remain in the hands of IS jihadists.

Four were executed by their captors while a fifth died of his wounds. Sixteen were released in a prisoner swap in December 2015.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed earlier this month to clear the whole border area of jihadists, saying it was in the interests of both Lebanon and Syria.

His powerful group is the one Lebanese party that did not turn over its weapons after the 1975-1990 civil war, and its arsenal remains a source of division in Lebanon.

The last major battle fought by Lebanon's army was the 2007 fight against jihadists in the Palestinian Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.

The three-month battle left more than 400 dead, including 168 soldiers and 220 jihadists.

Lebanon, a country of some four million people, hosts more than a million Syrian refugees, whose presence has caused tensions over limited resources.

Syria's conflict has killed more than 330,000 people and displaced millions since it erupted in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

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Two key infrastructure projects, signalling Indias eagerness for economic cooperation with Nepal, are set to move forward during the visit of Nepals Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba to India next week, days after Beijing enhanced its financial assistance to the Himalayan country.

The visit comes amidst a border standoff between India and China in Doklam plateau in Bhutan, and the two Asian powers are seeking support from countries in the region.

According to Indian officials, a wide range of issues will be discussed when the visiting leader meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which will reflect Indias special relationship with Nepal in every aspect.

Infrastructure, LPG supply, hydropower, trade and connectivity are the major areas the two countries are focussing on, officials said.

An MoU for building a bridge over the Mechi river is expected during the visit. Indias national highways infrastructure development corporation limited has proposed to build a 0.675km long bridge that connects Bhadrapur in Nepal with Galgalia in Bihar. The estimated cost of the project is 140 crore.

Discussion on expediting the 5600-MW Pancheshwar multi-purpose power project is also likely to figure in these talks.

Indias Union water resources ministry will build the 30,000 crore dam on river Mahakali on the Indo-Nepal border. The project comprises a dam of 315m and two underground power houses. On the India side, the dam is located in Uttarakhand and the state will get 13% of the power generated.

Both countries had agreed on expediting the project in 2014 during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Nepal. Not much has happened since then... said a government official.
The Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College in Uttar Pradeshs Jhansi, the mainstay of Bundelkhand regions healthcare system, has a single vendor that supplies oxygen to the 700-bed hospital and does it mostly on credit.

The hospital owed Gauri Gas Private Limited Rs 36 lakh that included the unpaid bills from 2016 as well for the supplies it made this year. Authorities cleared the vendors bills up to June 2017 after they received funds from the state government on August 14.

The payments were made days after the death of nearly 70 children at Gorakhpurs Baba Raghav Das Medical College allegedly due to a disruption in oxygen supply because of unpaid bills, an incident which has triggered public outrage and a political storm with opposition parties attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in the state.

The contract of Gauri Gas expired in March this year and the process to float a fresh tender has not been started till date. But the company continues to supply oxygen cylinders to the medical college.

Imagine if this vendor backs out over delayed payment. The college has no back up in place, a former doctor said.

The college, which has the occupancy rate of 95% on normal days, maintains a reserve of oxygen cylinders that could last for eight to 10 hours at the most. And in case the fresh stock fails to arrive, it has a reserve of only 25 to 50 cylinders. The daily consumption of oxygen at the hospital ranges between 120 and 150 jumbo size cylinders.

Last year, the medical college received Rs 4 crore of the total Rs 6 crore earmarked for meeting its expenditure. The money was spent on buying medicines, injections, and chemicals and the hospital could not use the rest of the amount, which was roughly around Rs 2 crore.

That is the primary reason the vendor could not be paid on time. The payments were cleared when we received funds. We have cleared the bills up to June this year, college principal NS Sengar said.

He, however, said his college will not face the same situation that plagued Gorakhpurs BRD Hospital.

I am with this college for the last 18 years and I havent seen any problem like what happened in Gorakhpur arising here, he said.

Sengar, however, did not talk about the action he took immediately after the Gorakhpur deaths. He reportedly sent an SOS to the government for the payment of Rs 36 lakh to the vendor, which is yet to receive the money for supplies it made in July this year.

The medical college, which gets patients from seven districts in UP and even Madhya Pradesh, always struggles with fund crunch and lack of staff.

Sources said the equipment in the hospital is getting rusty in the absence of maintenance. The college is managing it with 50% less staff and funds. Almost no investment has been made to buy new equipment in years, they said.

You could say the entire medical college is running on jugaad, they added.

They were referring to the means of making do with improvised products from limited resources.

Patients and their families regularly complain about poor infrastructure and lack of basic materials such as gloves and even the basic of medicines. They also complained about the lack of hygiene on the campus and the wards.

We dont get anything other than the ointment from the hospital, Raghuveer Singh, who is attending to his nephew for the last 23 days in the hospital after he met with a road accident, said. You have to buy everything from outside, even items required in surgery. I bought the surgical gloves for the doctors, he added.

Chandra Shekhar brought his father to the hospital after he lost both his legs following a fall from a train and faced trouble immediately.

When we arrived here, we didnt get a stretcher. I had to search for it. Imagine how much time is wasted when you have a serious patient with you, the resident of Moth in Jalaun, said.

You know the Gorakhpur tragedy changed the scene a bit. We got clean bed sheets for the first time in months, he added.

The state of the affairs at the Jhani hospital only highlights the challenges faced by Indias underfunded and overburdened public health system, where successive governments have failed to address the acute shortage of doctors and infrastructure. The problems are compounded by cases of shoddy medical treatment.
A day after a special CBI court in Panchkula reserved its verdict in the rape trial of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim, alias MSG, for August 25, the police in Haryanas Sirsa, where the sect has its headquarters, held a security drill at the Police Lines on Friday to deal with any untoward incident in case of a verdict against the sect head.

Alerts have already been issued by Punjab and Haryana as the dera has following concentrated in the inter-state border districts of the two states, which have sought central forces from the Union home ministry. Police in Panchkula, Mohali and Chandigarh have cancelled leave of the staff. The case goes back 15 years, and the allegations are that the dera head sexually exploited at least two female followers.

On Friday, deputy superintendent of police (DSP), headquarters, Vijay Kumar asked a Peace Committee formed by the Sirsa district administration to hold talks with the dera authorities. Riot gear was also distributed among police personnel. The DSP said, We have called in eight companies of the Haryana police from adjoining districts Fatehabad, Hisar, Jind and Bhiwani. If required, we will call paramilitary forces too.

We have also started training our women police force accordingly, the DSP further said, adding, Intelligence agencies are keeping a close eye on Dera Sacha Sauda followers and giving minute-to-minute details. Meanwhile, superintendent of police (SP) Ashwin Shenvi, who was shifted from Sonepat to Sirsa, was to join duty by Friday evening. Ambala deputy commissioner Prabhjot Singh has also been transferred to Sirsa.

After the peace panel meet held by DSP Vijay at the sadar police station, he said, The committee comprises elders, mediapersons, officials from the administration, and teachers. The members have assured us that they will talk to the dera authorities and ask them to maintain law and order. Sources said a meeting of the district administration and police officials, chaired by additional deputy commissioner (ADC) Munish Nagpal, was also conducted at the mini-secretariat.

In Hisar, SP Manisha Chaudhary and DC Nikhil Gajraj also conducted a meeting with officials; and police forces carried out a drill at the police lines.

Will not tolerate anything against pita-ji

The dera head not only has criminal cases but has also has a festering run-in with Sikh radicals for having allegedly dressed up as the tenth Sikh master, Guru Gobind Singh, in 2007. (HT File )

On Thursday, thousands of dera followers had gathered near the Sirsa court complex, where Gurmeet Ram Rahim was supposed to appear before a CBI court through video-conferencing.

The dera head, however, did not appear before the court citing medical grounds. While talking to HT, a follower, on the condition of anonymity, said, The sentiments of the followers are hurt. We will not tolerate anything against our pita-ji (father), our guru-ji! However, we are sure nothing will happen to him, and justice will prevail. Another said, We are sure that maharaj-ji will get justice as all the charges of murder and rape levelled against him are baseless.

When contacted, dera spokesperson Aditya Insan said, Not even a single person from the dera management has issued any kind of directions to the followers.

The dera head not only has criminal cases but has also has a festering run-in with Sikh radicals for having allegedly dressed up as the tenth Sikh master, Guru Gobind Singh, in 2007 among other instances considered blasphemous by a section of Sikhs.
From Vishal Sikka resigning as Infosys MD and CEO to CBSE issuing internet usage guidelines to students from taking the Blue Whale Challenge, here are the top stories of the day.

AIADMK merger hits Sasikala roadblock, stalls formal announcement by EPS-OPS factions

Tamil Nadus ruling and rebel AIADMK factions reached an understanding on Friday but the formal announcement of a merger was scuttled by last-mile hiccups. Chief minister Edappadi Palanisami and his predecessor O Panneerselvam, popularly known as OPS, were to announce the unification at J Jayalalithaas memorial on Marina beach. But sources said the event was delayed as the rebels want the ruling faction to formally sack VK Sasikala, the jailed AIADMK general secretary. The AIADMK split after Sasikala took over the reins of the party in February, removed Panneerselvam from the chief ministers post, handpicked Palanisami as his replacement, and appointed nephew TTV Dinakaran as her deputy before going to jail for corruption. Read the story here.

Vishal Sikkas surprise resignation leaves a gaping hole and a power flux at Infosys

As Infosys Ltd searches for a successor to Vishal Sikka, who quit on Friday as its first non-founder chief executive, the company confronts the risk of more top-level departures, executives and analysts said. It is one of the three issues that Infosys needs to address even as its board scours the resumes of internal and external candidates who could potentially replace Sikka, according to two executives and two analysts. Now I worry for the California-based executives he (Sikka) brought on board  this will be a power shift back to Bangalore, and most of the guys Vishal brought on board will either jump ship or be pushed out very quickly, said Phil Fersht, chief executive officer (CEO) of US-based HfS Research, an outsourcing-research firm. Read the story here.

Nine more children die in Gorakhpurs BRD Medical College, toll at 105

Deaths of nine more children were reported from the Baba Raghav Das Medical College in the last 24 hours between Thursday and Friday, taking the toll to 105 since the August 10 tragedy. The deaths were confirmed by Dr PK Singh, the BRD Medical College, who briefed the media in his office. Among these nine deaths, five were reported from the neonatal ward, two from encephilitis ward and two from the general paediatric ward. Read the story here.

US president Trump fires Steve Bannon as White House chief strategist

President Donald Trump on Friday fired Stephen Bannon as his chief strategist in the latest high-level White House shake-up, removing a powerful and controversial figure known for far-right political views. Bannon was a force behind some of Trumps most contentious policies, including a travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority nations, and has fought with more moderate factions inside a White House riven with rivalries and back-stabbing. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steves last day, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Friday. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best. Read the story here.

Jhumpa Lahiri, Kal Penn among mass resignations from Trumps arts council over Charlottesville remarks

Two Indian Americans  actor Kal Penn and author Jhumpa Lahiri  are among 16 members of the US presidents committee on arts and humanities committee who resigned on Friday, protesting Donald Trumps remarks regarding the Charlottesville clashes last week. Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions, they wrote in a joint letter of resignation signed by all but one of the 17 committee members. Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too. Read the story here.

Deathnotes: Letters to Gorakhpurs Baba Raghav Das Medical College show how time was running out for children

Tragedy unfolded in chief minister Yogi Adityanaths Gorakhpur constituency after more than 30 children died within 48 hours last week allegedly owing to a disruption in the oxygen supply to the encephalitis ward at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College. The oxygen supplier to the medical college wrote 30 letters since February, reminding the hospital authorities and the Uttar Pradesh government about steadily mounting dues, which led to the supply falling short. Most of these letters elicited no response, and the firm  Pushpa Sales Private Limited  finally snapped supply that allegedly resulted in the death of at 23 children in 24 hours. So far 105 children have died. Read the story here.

Blue Whale effect? CBSE issues guidelines to schools for safe internet usage

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has issued a circular to all schools asking them to install effective firewalls, filtering and monitoring software mechanisms in all the computers and regularly review filtering and blocking policies and procedures. The decision was taken days after the government issued direction to internet majors to remove links of the deadly Blue Whale Challenge  an online game in which the final task requires the player to kill self. The circular Guidelines for Safe and Effective Use of Internet and Digital Technologies in Schools and School Buses has been issued to all the 18,000 affiliated schools across the country. Read the story here.

Delhi: Nigerian man jumps to death to evade arrest in Rs 20-crore drug bust

A Nigerian man fell from the fourth floor of a south Delhi building on Friday afternoon and died, apparently trying to evade arrest after a police team raided the house for narcotics. Police said 25 kilos of Ketamine, a drug believed to induce a trance effect, were found during a search. The seized contraband could fetch Rs 20 crore in the clandestine international drug market. Police said inquest proceedings were initiated for 40-year-old Cyprian Ama Ogbonnaya, a native of Nigeria. Read the story here.

EC wants social media policy to check code of conduct violations

The Election Commission is drafting a social media policy that will allow it to monitor content that transgresses the code of conduct and also checks the misuse of the medium for surrogate publicity. It has come to the ECs notice that some public relations firms are actively being deployed to shape public opinion online. With increasing use of mobile-internet technology, the influence of social media has also risen and it is high time that social medias content is monitored, election commissioner OP Rawat said on Thursday. Read the story here.

Rupert Murdochs son donates $1 million to anti-hate crime group in Trump rebuke

James Murdoch, the chief executive of 21st Century Fox whose father Rupert has been a Donald Trump ally, criticized the US presidents response to recent violence in Virginia and pledged to donate $1 million to countering hate. The unusual political intervention from an executive who has cultivated a more low-key persona than his father, was notable, coming from the top echelons of a media empire that includes Fox News. Trump is said to assiduously watch the news network, whose viewers include many of his staunchest supporters. The US president has come under blistering attack across the political spectrum for saying anti-racism protestors deserved equal blame for violence at a neo-Nazi and white supremacist rally that left one woman dead last Saturday. Read the story here.

No cover for Trump: Time, Economist, New Yorker open fire over white supremacy defence

If he looked at newsstands this week, US president Donald Trump would certainly not be happy. The covers of leading magazines such as the New Yorker, Economist and Time sharply criticised the president over his defence of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that ended in the murder of Heather Heyer. The Economists cover shows Donald Trump holding up a Ku Klux Klan hood as a megaphone. The accompanying editorial is equally scathing, calling Trump a politically inept, morally barren and temperamentally unfit for office. The cover of the New Yorker also makes a strong connection between Trump and white supremacy. Read the story here.

Alastair Cook 243 puts England on top vs West Indies in Pink Ball Test

James Anderson struck an early blow after Alastair Cook scored a superb 243 as England dominated the second day of the first Test against West Indies at Edgbaston on Friday. Cooks 10-hour knock led the hosts to a first-innings total of 514 for eight declared and Anderson had Kraigg Brathwaite caught by wicketkeeper Jonny Bairstow for nought before West Indies limped to 13 for one in reply at tea. Resuming on 348 for three in the first day-night test in England, Cook and Dawid Malan smoothly extended their fourth-wicket partnership to 162. Read the story here.
In the 33rd week of 2017, India reported its 30th incident of cow-related violence in the countrythe most in eight yearsin the West Chamaparan district of Bihar where seven Muslims were attacked by cow vigilantes for allegedly eating beef in their homes, the IndiaSpend database of such violence shows. So far we have recorded 75 incidents of bovine-related violence across India since 2010.

On Thursday, August 17, 2017, a mob of over 50 people gathered outside the house of Mohammad Shahabuddin in Dumra village, shouting slogans of Bharat Mata ki jai, the New Indian Express reported on August 18, 2017. The vigilantes, which included local members of the right-wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad group, reportedly accused Shahabuddin and his neighbours of killing a cow and consuming beef. The mob reportedly locked the Muslims in a room in Shahabuddins house and beat them up with wooden sticks. Four people were injured in the attack and hospitalised thereafter, the newspaper report said.

While no charges were filed against the attackers, the local police arrested seven Muslims for deliberately hurting the religious sentiments of the local majority community. Explaining why no action had been taken against the attackers, the police said: There has been no such complaint about the attack so far, the New Indian Express reported.

This is the second attack to take place in Bihar within a fortnight, and the third attack reported in the state this year. Prior to 2017, Bihar did not report a single attack for at least seven years since 2010the start point for the IndiaSpenddatabase of such violence.

Created through a collection and content analysis of reports in the English media, the shows that 97% (73 of 75) of such incidents were reported after Prime Minister Narendra Modis government came to power in May 2014. The data show that Muslims were the target of 56% (42 of 75) cases of violence centred on bovine issues over nearly eight years (2010 to 2017) and comprised 86% (24 of 28) killed in 75 incidents.

More than half or 53% of the cow-related violence40 of 75 caseswere from states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), when the attacks were reported, revealed our analysis of violence recorded until August 18, 2017.

The recent two cases of cow-related violence in Bihar are recorded under the Janata Dal (United) government. On July 27, 2017, the JD(U) entered into an alliance with the BJP.

(Saldanha is an assistant editor with IndiaSpend.)

(Indiaspend.org is a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit/FactChecker.in is fact-checking initiative, scrutinising for veracity and context statements made by individuals and organisations in public life.)
Amid the Doklam row and calls for banning cheap Chinese goods, the Centre is working towards tightening norms against cheap imports to protect domestic manufacturers.

Top sources in the government said data and inputs were being collected from different ministries that have seen a significant surge in imports from China.

The government is looking at ways to protect Indian manufacturers by introducing non-tariff barriers against imports, said a government official. Several government functionaries that HT spoke to indicated that there were three provisions that were being considered: Strict product standard norms for imports, new criterion for participating in tenders by public sector undertakings (PSU) and anti-dumping duty.

The matter is with the ministry of commerce and department of industrial policy and promotion, said a government official. If the proposals are accepted, then Chinese imports will have to pass product standard norms and certification in India.

Under the new rules, questions about raw material sourcing and technology used will be asked, said the official.

Foreign firms looking to participate in global tenders floated by PSUs will have to ensure that they have local manufacturing units with a presence in India for over 10 years and with Indians at the top management.

These local manufacturing units could be for spare parts of the actual product being imported and these companies will also have to show that they have created jobs for Indians, said another official. The new rules cannot be challenged under WTO norms as they will be implemented by PSUs and not by the Indian government directly.

An anti-dumping duty on modules for solar power plants is also being considered, the source cited above added.

Most of the European companies that export to India have been here for decades so will not be impacted very adversely by these norms.

Recent industry data shows that Chinese imports are highest in electronic items and renewable power sector. Organic chemicals and plastics are also high on list of items imported from China.

As the worlds second-largest mobile phone market, India has been a happy hunting ground for Chinese companies that have seen an engagement of close to $22 billion for China, shows a CII study. Chinese companies have also taken advantage of Indias renewable power requirement, with 90% of solar modules being imported from them.

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On receding mode, the floods in Assam killed three people on Saturday to take the toll in the second deluge this season to 63. The first wave of floods that ended mid-July had claimed 84 lives.

The Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) officials said 16 of the states 33 districts continue to remain affected. The number of affected districts was 20 on Friday and 25 on Thursday.

About 22.11 lakh people continue to remain affected in 1,791 villages, down from 26 lakh on Friday. Officials said almost 22,000 people left relief camps for their villages within the last 24 hours, leaving 68,014 flood-displaced people across 328 relief camps.

It has been shining for more than 48 hours now, but we have told relief and rescue personnel in the district to be on their toes because of forecast of rainfall, an ASDMA officer, declining to be quoted, said.

On Saturday, 1,486 people were evacuated by boats from flooded areas and taken to safer places. But three people  one each in Dhubri, Morigaon and Golaghat districts  could not be saved from drowning.

Their death took the flood death toll in Assam this year to 147. More than 65 others died because of rain-induced landslides and flash floods in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura.

ASDMA officials said the Brahmaputra continued to flow above the danger mark at two places  Neematighat in Jorhat district and Dhubri. The Dhansiri, Jia Bharali, Kopili and Beki rivers continued to flow above the danger level at one place each.

The water level at Kaziranga National Park fell by 13cm on Saturday, leaving 28% of the rhino habitat and 53 of the 125 anti-poaching camp areas inundated. Park officials said the deluge has since August 10 killed 227 animals, 16 of them rhinos. Hog deer topped the casualty chart with 187.

Meanwhile, Northeast Frontier Railway officials said the zones network still remain breached in Kishanganj, Katihar and Araria districts of Bihar but restoration work has started.

Engineering estimates say full connectivity cannot be restored before August 28. But a few steps have been taken to alleviate the problems of stranded passengers and for movement of goods, NFR spokesperson Pranav Jyoti Sharma said.

The steps include facilitating loading of goods at Kishanganj railway station for catering to northern West Bengal and the Northeast. The region is facing a scarcity of essentials due to disruption of railway service for more than a week now.

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With 49 more deaths reported in the last 24 hours, the toll in the unprecedented floods in Bihar jumped to 202 on Saturday, even as flood water spread to five more districts, enveloping a total of 20 out of the 38 districts of the state.

Lakhs of people marooned in severely hit districts of Araria, Purnia, Kishangang, Katihar, East & West Champaran and Sitamarhi had been evacuated but thousands more were reported to be out of reach of teams trying to evacuate them.

Officials said, the flood situation was likely to worsen further, as all the major rivers maintained a rising trend even as flash floods caused by torrential rains spread further to embrace newer districts, including Nalanda and Patna.

According to additional secretary, disaster management department (DMD), Anirudh Kumar, the catastrophe, which is considered to be unprecedented, has already claimed 202 human lives, with the maximum number of deaths reported from Araria (42), followed by Sitamarhi and West Champaran, where 31 and 29 lives, respectively, were lost.

Over 1.21 crore population has been affected by floods and the number was rising with each passing day. According to sources in the DMD, the actual number of people impacted could be 1.5 crore, as many villages lying between various embankments were yet to be accessed by the rescue teams.

The real picture would emerge only after flood waters recede, they said.

Kumar said altogether 6,25,788 people had been evacuated thus far and 4,22,106 of them had been accommodated in the relief camps.

Fifty one rescue teams comprising NDRF, SDRF and Army were working round the clock to evacuate the marooned population. If required, the number of the rescue teams would be increased, said the DMD official.

The NDRF, which has deployed 28 teams in various flood affected districts, evacuated 34,000 marooned people, and carried them to safer places. It also provided medical help to hapless patients through river ambulances. Apart from providing medical assistance, it transported doctors and paramedic staff to the flood hit villages.

The Army column and engineers task force (ETF) deployed in six districts  Katihar, Araria, Madhubani, Sitamarhi and East & West Champaran, rescued 1,200 people from submerged villages.

There may not be a respite from the floods in the next two-three days, as almost all the major rivers maintained a rising trend on Saturday. The Bagmati, Burhi Gandak, Kamla Balan, Punpun, Adhwara group of rivers, Mahananda and Ghaghra were flowing above the danger level, a central water commission release said.

In comparison to Friday, the discharge in the Kosi and Gandak on Saturday was heavier. As per the flood cell of the water resources department (WRD), the discharge in Kosi near the Birpur barrage was 1,77,135 cusec, whereas the discharge in the Gandak near Valmikinagar barrage was 1,47,500 cusec.

The Ganga was posing a threat to the state capital, flowing at 48.32 cm, just 28 cm below the danger mark. However, the silver lining was that the river maintained a steady trend on Saturday.

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The flood situation in Bihar seems to have worsened further, with the toll mounting to 153. Seven out of 11 major rivers, other than the Ganga, Burhi Gandak, Bhutahi Balan and Laloakeya, continued to flow above their danger levels affecting more than one crore in the state.

The floods, triggered by heavy rain in Nepal and northern parts of the state, spread to three more districts taking the number of blocks affected to 156 across 19 out of 38 districts of the state.

The toll due to the floods was 119 on Friday and the number of those hit by the disaster was pegged at 98 lakh. The only silver lining is that all flood protection embankments are safe as of now.

According to additional secretary of disaster management department Anirudh Kumar, maximum deaths were reported in Araria (30), followed by West Champaran (23), Sitamarhi (13), Kishanganj, Supaul and East Champaran (11 each), Madhepura and Purnia (9 each), Madhubani (8), Katihar (7), Darbhanga, Gopalganj and Saharsa (4 each), Khagaria and Sheohar (3 each), Saran (2) and Muzaffarpur (1).

Keeping a close watch on the situation, chief minister Nitish Kumar convened a high-level review meeting to direct road construction department to restore the Kishanganj-Araria road link before midnight so that relief and rescue operations could be carried out on a war footing in the worst affected Araria district.

He also asked RCD officials to seek help from the Border Road Organisation for the restoration and repair of damaged roads and bridges on a priority basis.

On an immediate basis, the chief minister said the disaster management department should carry out an intensive operation for airdropping food packets in Jokihat, Sikti, Kursakanta and Palasi areas of Araria district to provide succour to marooned families.

In view of the gravity of the situation in Purnia division, the principal secretary of agriculture department, Sudhir Kumar has been sent as special divisional commissioner to streamline relief operations.

DMD sources said that altogether 1,289 relief camps have been set up to accommodate 3,92,654 displaced people. A total of 4,64,610 persons have been evacuated from their habitat. Cattle deaths have also gone up to 27.

Twenty-eight teams of NDRF along with SDRF (16) and Army (7), with 280 boats at their disposal are conducting the relief operations. Two choppers have also been pressed into service in addition to 194 motorboats and 2305 country boats by the state government.

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The child deaths in Gorakhpur triggered a political spat on Saturday as chief minister Yogi Adityanath described visiting leaders to the hospital as picnickers, prompting Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi to counter that the tragedy was government-made.

Gandhi met families of children who died at Baba Raghav Das Medical College, the largest government hospital in five-term parliamentarian Adityanaths constituency before he became the Uttar Pradesh chief minister this March.

He was supposed to visit the hospital, which is in the news as more than 60 kids died since August 9 amid allegations of a shortage in oxygen supplementation after a private company withdrew supply of cylinders over a payment dispute.

But he didnt go after Adityanaths remarks.

I called off my visit  but I realised that CM Yogis visit there had caused a lot of trouble to the ailing kids. So I called off my visit in the interest of patients and children, Gandhi said.

Also, he said the deaths were a government-made tragedy resulting from an oxygen shortage.

The BJP-led government in Uttar Pradesh has denied the deaths were caused by an oxygen cut, saying Japanese encephalitis and paediatric diseases were responsible.

The government has instituted an inquiry and several opposition leaders have visited the hospital since the tragedy surfaced.

Adityanath, who is also the head priest of Gorakhnath mutt in Gorakhpur, has criticized his rivals for politicising the hospital deaths.

Yuvraj in Delhi and Shahzada in Lucknow cant understand the importance of cleanliness drive launched by the government, the chief minister said, launching a sanitation drive in the town.

For them, Gorakhpur is a picnic spot. I think we should not give permission to anyone to make a picnic trip to Gorakhpur.

Yuvraj and Shahzada, both meaning prince, are terms used by opponents to allude to Gandhi and Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, who is chief minister Adityanaths predecessor.

For his part, the Congress vice president took potshots at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modiji talks about a new India. Is this the new India? We dont want his new India. We want the India where people take their kids to hospitals and come out happy, he said.

Yogiji stop the cover-up, he added.

Among the families that Gandhi met during his visit was Brahmdev Yadav, resident of village on the outskirts of Gorakhpur. He lost his twins born on August 1.

Rahulji assured all possible help, including efforts to get me a job, he said.

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who was part of Gandhis team, accused Adityanath of doing nothing for the hospital despite being a five-time MP for Gorakhpur.

The chief minister blamed the previous Samajwadi government in UP for the tragedy.

Had they joined the cleanliness drive the deaths from vector and waterborne diseases could have been checked, he said.

Adityanath said he has been fighting for encephalitis-affected children for 20 years.
The Islamic State jihadist group on Saturday claimed responsibility after a man stabbed seven people on the street in a Russian city before being shot dead by police, despite investigators saying it was probably not a terrorist attack.

"The executor of the stabbing operation in the city of Surgut in Russia is a soldier of the Islamic State," IS propaganda outlet Amaq said in a statement, after the jihadists also claimed responsibility for twin attacks in Spain that left 14 dead.

The attack also comes a day after a stabbing spree in Finland, which left two people dead and eight others injured and is being investigated as a terrorist attack, although the assailant's motive is unknown.

Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said a man in Surgut had "carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds". It said armed police called to the scene "liquidated" the attacker following the stabbing on Saturday morning.

Regional officials said seven people were taken to hospital, with the figure confirmed by investigators, who lowered an earlier toll of eight wounded.

A spokesman for regional police had earlier downplayed the possibility of a terrorist incident, telling Interfax news agency that the theory that the incident was "a terrorist (attack) is not the main one".

The Investigative Committee said it had established the attacker's identity, saying he was a local resident born in 1994, and that they were looking into "his possible psychiatric disorders".

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny questioned the authorities' treatment of the incident, writing on Twitter: "Someone runs round with a knife and tries to kill as many people as possible. What is that, if not a terrorist attack?"

Investigators have opened a criminal probe into attempted murder, not terrorism, with the Investigative Committee's chief Alexander Bastrykin taking the case under his personal control.

Regional police said officers fired warning shots at the scene before firing at the suspect, who was wearing a balaclava.

YouTube footage shown on Russia's Ren TV television showed a black-clad man lying on a pedestrian walkway with a policeman kneeling on his back as sirens wail.

Unconfirmed reports from the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid and other media identified the attacker as 19-year-old Artur Gadzhiyev, saying that his father is known to authorities for involvement in radical religious organisations and comes from the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan in the North Caucasus.

Regional officials said four of those stabbed remained in a serious condition while another was stable in hospital. Two have already been discharged.

Russian television reported that the stabbing victims are aged between 27 and 77 and include two women.

State news agency TASS said the city's largest shopping centre was evacuated after the stabbings, citing its director, and police posted a video of the attack site, showing it to be a busy area with traffic and blocks of flats.

The city lies some 2,100 kilometres (1,330 miles) northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.

The region's governor was flying out to the city to hold a meeting with investigators, regional authorities said.

The regional government moved to curb panic in the city, insisting the "situation is under the control of the authorities" and calling for calm.

A group suspected of links to Al-Qaeda claimed an April attack on the Saint Petersburg metro that killed 15 people and has been blamed on a Russian suicide bomber born in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan.

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Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday termed deaths of more than 100 children at a Gorakhpur hospital a national tragedy caused by the Uttar Pradesh governments apathy.

The Congress leader was speaking to media at the eastern UP city after visiting the families of four children who died in the government-run Baba Raghav Das Medical College.

He visited the tragedy-struck four villages, despite a flood scare, on the outskirt of the city.

After the visit to villages and meeting the victims families, it is clear that the kids died because of lack of oxygen and neglect, Gandhi told the press conference.

He claimed people used artificial manual breathing unit (AMBU) bags to support respiration in ailing children as the oxygen supply was disrupted.

About 105 children admitted at the hospitals neonatal, encephalitis and general paediatric wards died over a week after the tragedy struck on August 9 at the hospital, which faced oxygen shortage over non-payment of dues.

The deaths sparked nationwide outrage. The National Human Rights Commission also recently issued a notice to the state government seeking a detailed report on the tragedy along with the steps taken for relief and rehabilitation of the affected families as well as action taken against the guilty officers within four weeks.

The Commission observed that the deaths amount to serious violation of right to life and health of the victims.

The BJP government in the state though admitted there was shortage of oxygen in the hospital, denied it caused the deaths.

It s clear that it was the UP government-made tragedy, the Congress vice president said, asking Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath to stop covering up the incident.

Chief minister should not cover it up. Rather it should get into action mode. Take action, he said.

Stating that the tragedy was an indicator of the prevailing health-care system in India, Gandhi also took a dig at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi-ji talks about new India. Is this the new India? We dont want his new India. We want an India where people take their kids to hospitals and come out from there being happy, he said.

The Congress leader, however, did not visit the hospital where the children died.

I called off my visit to the BRD Medical College as I realised that CM Yogis visit there had caused a lot of trouble to the ailing children. So I called off my visit in the interest of patients and children, he said.

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who accompanied Gandhi had earlier said: In spite of being five-time MP from Gorakhpur, he (Adityanath) did nothing for the hospital.

Gandhi first visited the house of Brahmdev Yadav at Baghaghada village near Gorakhpur city. Brahmdev lost his twins, who were born on August 1, on August 9 and 10 in the tragedy.

Shortly before his arrival at the village, there were reports of the Rapti river overflowing at Nausadh embankment barely 1.5 km from the village, situated in a low-lying area.

Gandhi visited the bereaved family, amid apprehension that floodwaters might enter the village, after his security staff surveyed the areas.

Earlier in the day, Adityanath had criticised the visit saying the tragedy-struck city should not be turned into a picnic spot. His comment drew criticism from the Congress, which called it unfortunate.

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The BJP, a partner in the ruling alliance with Peoples Democratic Party, on Friday expressed concern over repeated reminders from the ministry of home affairs to the state government on its directions about formulation of a strategy to deal with illegal settlement of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas in Jammu and Samba districts.

The BJP also regretted that the Group of Ministers (GoM) constituted by the state government has failed to formulate any policy to deport and deal with the illegal immigrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh.

BJP state spokesperson Virender Gupta said it is unfortunate that the GoM has not shown seriousness on the issue and that even though it held number of meetings but all of them turned out be inconclusive and unproductive.

Expressing doubts, Gupta said some elements in the erstwhile political establishment and the state administration have conspicuously assisted the illegal migrants to acquire ID proofs of the state (ration cards, Aadhaar cards).

Gupta pointed out that the state home ministry has the data about the number of illegal migrants, areas where they have settled, their activities and about the financial and other assistance they are getting from some of the NGOs and individuals.

He said that with the help of the information available with the state home department and the police department the GoM should have prepared a road map for the deportation of these illegal migrants from the state.

It may be stated here that the GoM has deputy chief minister Nirmal Kumar Singh as its chairman, health and medical education minister Bali Bhagat, rural development minister Abdul Haq Khan and consumer affairs and public distribution minister Choudhary Zulfikar as its members.

The BJP asked the GoM to immediately formulate a strategy on the available information for their deportation.

The people of Jammu region consider their settlement as a part of a conspiracy to change the demography of the region and also feel that these illegal immigrants are potential security risk, as they can play in the hands of separatists and pro-Pak elements to create disturbances in the region, he added.
A sub-inspector of Haryana Police has been suspended for allegedly failing to take note of a complaint filed by a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student, alleging that she was threatened with rape by a group locals near Bhardwaj Lake in Asola.

Sub-inspector Suresh Kumar has been suspended for not taking cognisance of the complaint by the woman and necessary action. We have zeroed in on some suspects and arrests are likely to be made soon, Surajkund police station in-charge Pankaj Kumar said.

In her complaint to the Vasant Kunj (North) police, the woman, who claimed to be a JNU student, had gone to Surajkund with six of her friends on August 15. While she was on a motorcycle with two of her friends, an inebriated man asked them to stop, she said in her complaint.

The man questioned them why they were roaming in the area till late in the night and raised aspersions on the womans character, the police said, adding the man then allegedly called his father and brother, and assaulted the woman and her friends. They also took her to a shed nearby where they threatened to rape her. In the mean time, the womans other friends arrived there and rescued her and her two friends, the police said.

The woman in her complaint said that she approached some Haryana police personnel who were there but they also raised doubts on her and took her to a police station and made her write an apology letter, they said.

VICTIM IN SHOCK

Almost four days after the incident, the students is said to be still under shock. She is still unwell. She was running fever, which could have been caused by mental trauma. She has to get counselling to be able to cope, said Mohit Pandey, the president of the JNU Students Union.

Earlier, Pandey and other JNU students asked Faridabad police to take strict action against the officers who refused to register her complaint, and also the accused. Pandey said that though the victim wanted to accompany the group to the police station, she was too unwell to go.

The Vasant Kunj police station in South Delhi have registered a zero FIR and the matter has been forwarded to Faridabad police, a police official said. The case was registered under Section 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint) 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty), 365 (kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine person), 511 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment), 506 (criminal intimidation), 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.
Dictatorship has given way to super dictatorship in the country, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee remarked at a function of a TV channel on Friday. Referring to Amit Shahs recent meeting with Uttar Pradesh ministers, Banerjee expressed surprise at the locus standi of a party chief meeting the cabinet. She, however, did not name the state.

Modi is the Prime Minister. But now we have Amit Shah meeting ministers. Super dictatorship prevails in the country, she said. Banerjee made it clear that the Prime Minister meeting ministers is understandable, but Shah had no business meeting them. I want to know who the Prime Minister is. Is Narendra Modi the Prime Minister or is it Amit Shah? she asked.

Why will they bulldoze me? Democracy is endangered. During the time of Atal Bihari Vajpayee we had no problem. Why is problem being created by the party for everyone now? remarked the Bengal chief minister, who has emerged as one of the most bitter critics of the BJP.

She also referred to the deaths of over 100 children in a government-run hospital in Gorakhpur and said that despite being a cash-strapped state, her government has improved healthcare in Bengal. Institutional delivery has risen from 65 per cent in 2011 to 92 per cent now. Infant mortality rate too has gone down to 26 every 1,000 births as opposed to 32 during the previous (Left Front) regime. If we can do it, why cant they (BJP-ruled government in UP) come up with such social welfare schemes? They have enough money.

She also took a dig at UP health minister Sidharth Nath Singh. There is a health minister who had come here and said Bhaag Mamata Bhaag. Where will he hide now? she remarked.

She refused to elaborate on the question of unity among the Opposition parties except saying that more parties will join the bandwagon. There is no platform yet but we are coming together. In the next six months more parties will join us. They are afraid to speak up over fear the Centre would let loose investigating agencies after them. Mamata also accused the Centre of saffronisation of education.
Lawmakers across party lines and from both Houses of Parliament treat Fridays casually  an analysis of attendance data since 2009 shows  with many of them choosing political engagements in their constituencies to legislation in New Delhi.

On July 25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi admonished MPs from his party at a BJP meeting for putting legislation at risk by not being present in the House at the time bills were taken up for discussion.

This year in the Rajya Sabha has seen the lowest attendance (62%) on Fridays since the UPA II came to power in 2009. The average for other days this year has been over 70% which is lower than the 2009-17 average of around 75%

Since 2009, attendance in the Lok Sabha has been under 66% on Fridays compared to an average of around 72% on other days of the week. Admitting a problem at hand, the government says going forward there will be more legislative business on Fridays to improve things. In the just concluded Monsoon session, it was able to get three important bills (the IIMs bill, the RTE amendment bill and the IIPE bill) passed on Fridays in the Lok Sabha where the NDA has a brute majority.

Experts say that the actual attendance figures for the second half of the day could be far lower because MPs are expected to sign in the attendance register just once a day and many do not sit through the entire days business.

Data from PRS legislative research  a think tank that closely watches Parliament -- shows that business in the Rajya Sabha collapsed thrice this year due to lack of quorum on a Friday forcing adjournment for the day.

On July 21, proceedings had to be stopped because when the Admiralty (Jurisdiction and Settlement of Maritime Claims) 2016 bill which had been passed by the Lok Sabha in March was being discussed for passage in the RS, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh pointed to the lack of quorum. There were only 22 MPs in the 250 member house. Though minister of state for parliamentary affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi rushed out to fetch members, he could only find one MP and the House was adjourned for the day.

Read more: A Rajya Sabha seat is wasted on members like Tendulkar and Rekha

A number of MPs HT spoke to admitted, on the condition of anonymity, that they leave for their constituencies by Friday afternoon to participate in political engagements.

Most members are interested in the Question Hour or Zero Hour when they can raise the issues of their constituencies. They have engagements lined up in the constituencies. Each parliamentary constituency has lakhs of people and as their representatives, the pressure on MPs to be with the people they represent is enormous, said Dr DV Gandhi, MP from Patiala.

Attendance on Fridays is low even in the US. It is only a few of us who are interested in private members bills are present in the House, BJD MP Baijayant Jay Panda told HT.

Fridays afternoons are set aside for private members bills which is an opportunity for MPs to steer legislation as individuals, experts say.

There is complete lack of awareness among MPs on the issue. They skip private members business because of this lack of awareness. Private members bills can influence government legislation, said TK Vishvanathan, former general secretary of the Lok Sabha.

Only 14 such bills have been passed since Independence and 13 of them were before 1970. On bills which are withdrawn by members, a minister assures the House that the government will study the concerns it raises. Friday is the only day an MP gets to act as an independent legislator, said Chakshu Roy of PRS. The institution of legislature has to create incentives for members to participate, the way they do in question hour.

In the Rajya Sabha, Friday mornings are useful. Zero Hour and Question Hour run well. The problem is the post-lunch session. The whole concept of Private Members Bills needs to be debated in the public domain, said Derek OBrien Trinamool Parliamentary party leader in RS. That can be a starting point to initiate reforms in Parliamentary procedure. Till that happens, I am afraid Friday attendance will continue to remain low. His party has had the lowest attendance in both Houses, PRS data shows. During the current Lok Sabha, TMC MPs had 65% attendance in the LS and 70% in the RS.

While admitting Friday absenteeism, is a mounting problem, Naqvi said his party is trying to ensure maximum attendance of its MPs after Modis rebuke for poor attendance. The minister ruled out changing the way attendance is marked or moving private members business to another day of the week. You have to trust the members. Each one represents about 20 lakh people, he said.

Read more: From Footwear to Finance: Here are all 13 bills passed in the 2017 monsoon session of Parliament

Private members bills are scheduled to be taken up till 5 pm on Fridays, we can have governments legislative business after that, Naqvi said.
The Janata Dal (United) led by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar embraced the National Democratic Alliance at the Centre on Saturday, widening fissures within the party as leaders opposed to the tie-up called the move a betrayal of voters.

The formal decision paved the way for the party to join Prime Minister Narendra Modis cabinet, four years after it walked out of the BJP-led NDA.

A resolution to rejoin the NDA was unanimously adopted at the partys national executive meeting at Kumars home.

The decision was taken following a request by BJP national president Amit Shah, said JD(U) spokesperson KC Tyagi.

But several leaders, including former party president Sharad Yadav, are unhappy with Kumars unilateral decision to break off from the alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress to patch up with the BJP on July 26.

The Yadav faction held a parallel meeting named Jan Adalat at SK Memorial hall in the state capital.

The partys founding member, who was removed as JD(U)s Rajya Sabha leader, said the party was his and that the grand alliance with the RJD and Congress in Bihar is intact.

We promised to continue this alliance for at least five years. The public gave us an opportunity  I am not happy with the alliance breaking, he said.

His group is understood to have plans to approach the Election Commission to stake claim to the partys arrow poll symbol.

I formed the party and some people are telling me that this is not my home. People are raising questions over my intention. I wanted to attend JD(U)s national executive but they didnt allow me to participate and said that I dont belong to their party, he said.

Yadavs remarks and action are seen as mutiny against Kumars leadership and he might be suspended from the partys primary membership if he attends an RJD rally on August 27.

Tyagi said the party does not plan to take any action against Yadav, at least for now.

But by deciding to attend the RJD rally, he will not only lose his stature and lifeline in the party but will also cross the Laxman rekha, he warned.

Also, he reaffirmed that the party in united and alleged that rumours were being spread about fissures.

Where is the split? Sixteen state presidents of the party attended the national executive meeting, despite the claim that the rival group had support in 14 out of 22 states where JD(U) has units. All 71 MLAs and 30 MLCs were there, so where is the split? he asked.

The scenario outside the venue of the meeting in Patna belied his words as party workers loyal to Yadav clashed with supporters of Kumar.

Tyagi refused comments on the possibilities of JD(U) joining the Modi ministry.

It is up to the Prime Minister and our president (Kumar) to take a decision on joining the Union cabinet, he said, adding that no post has been offered to the JD(U).

The party is likely to get two berths in the Modi ministry despite having only two members in the Lok Sabha.

It has seven parliamentarians in the Rajya Sabha after two members  Yadav and Ali Anwar  distanced themselves from the party.

The JD(U) executive ratified Kumars decision to walk away from the three-party grand alliance over corruption charges in the Lalu Prasad-led RJD.
His visiting card says he teaches at Oxford and is a recipient of the Order of British Empire (OBE), one of the top honours given by the queen. And his website says he is an India-born, award-winning British writer.

In reality, 27-year-old Avinash Patra is a two-bit fraudster from Odishas coastal Kendrapara district.

Police arrested him on Friday for duping pharmacy owner Umesh Agarwal of Rs 70 lakh in western Odishas Nuapara district.

Patra took the money between 2009 and 2013, promising big returns from Microsoft in the UK.

When the businessman pressed for his money, Patra gave Agarwal a letter with forged signatures of a senior IAS officer in September 2016.

The letter says Agarwal will get Rs 2.19 crore from JPMorgan Chase Bank of UK.

The forgery came to the polices notice after the IAS officer Bishnupada Sethi, who is the state rural development secretary and special relief commissioner, registered a complaint against Patra for forging his initials.

Police said Patra was taken into custody in Bhubaneswar. A letter pad and rubber stamp were seized from him.

Patra has the gift of the gab and is quite eloquent in convincing people about his fake British identity.

He befriended Agarwal during a visit to Nuapara and proposed the investment options.

The pharmacy owner was taken in by the words of an Oxford University professor and an author, police said.

Calling himself an OBE, he had suffixed the title before his name on his Twitter handle.

He even has his own website, www.avinashpatra.com, where he describes himself as an India-born British writer and winner of British Writer of the Year 2010 award, an officer said.

Investigation revealed Patra had had faked an invitation from Buckinhgam Palace for the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey in April 2011.

He took the local media for a ride flaunting the wedding invitation, saying he was a second-year graduation student in Indology in a New York university.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday visited the families of four children who died in the BRD Medical College tragedy.

Rahul visited these families in four villages despite a flood scare and chief minister Yogi Adityanath criticising the Congress leader and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav separate visits to Gorakhpur.

Rahul Gandhi assured all possible help and support to the families of the victims as he heard them out. Ahead of the visit, he reportedly told his security personnel that his motorcade should not have any ambulance and doctors. They should be deployed for the aid of encephalitis patients instead, he said.

As a result, the Congress vice-presidents convoy did not have any ambulance or physician.

Rahul first visited the house of Brahmdev Yadav at Baghaghada village on the outskirts of Gorakhpur city. Brahmdev lost his twins, who were born on August 1, on August 9 and 10 in the BRD Medical College tragedy.

Akhilesh Yadav too had visited Brahmdev on August 14.

Rahulji assured all possible help, including efforts to get me a job. He asked me to narrate the sequence of events at the BRD Medical College. I did that. Akhileshji gave me Rs 2 lakh as aid, said Brahmdev soon after Rahuls one-hour stay at his house.

Though Rahul did not speak to reporters, UP Congress chief Raj Babbar took the opportunity to hit back at chief minister Adityanath.

Questioning the intention of Rahuljis visit indicates that the chief minister has petty thinking and somewhere he is jittery about the visit. The Yogi government has failed, Babbar said.

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who visited Gorakhpur with Rahul, told reporters: In spite of being five-time MP from Gorakhpur, he (Adityanath) did nothing for the (BRD Medical College) hospital.

Shortly before Rahuls arrival at Baghaghada village, there were reports of the Rapti river overflowing at Nausadh embankment barely 1.5 km from the village, situated in a low-lying area.

Amid apprehension that floodwaters might reach the village, Rahuls security staff surveyed the areas nearby. Eventually, the Congress vice-president reached the village.

Later, he visited Nitish Shuklas house at Mallav village, Ramashakars house in Bisauli Khurd and Jitendras home at Khutauna village.

As Rahul left the first village, heavy rain lashed Gorakhpur, leading to cancellation of his visit to BRD Medical College scheduled at 4 pm. Instead, the Congress announced that Rahul will hold a press conference at 4 pm.

Earlier, chief minister Adityanath reached Gorakhpur two hours before Rahul. Launching a cleanliness drive, he lashed out at Rahul and Akhilesh without naming them, and accused them of treating Gorakhpur as a picnic spot.

Both opposition leaders have repeatedly demanded the CMs resignation over the deaths of more than 100 kids at the hospital allegedly because of oxygen shortage.

Yuvraj sitting in Delhi and shahzada in Lucknow cant understand the importance of cleanliness drive launched by the government, Adityanath said in a Dalit colony in Gorakhpur. For them (Akhilesh and Rahul), Gorakhpur is a picnic spot.

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On a day when dissenting JD (U) leader Sharad Yadav skipped the national executive meeting of the Nitish Kumar-led JD (U) and held a parallel Jan meet of his supporters, he found an immediate backer in RJD chief Lalu Prasad.

Within hours of the JD (U) executive endorsing a proposal for the party to join the BJP-led NDA, Prasad described the Sharad Yadav-led group as the real JD(U) and custodian of the JD (U)s poll symbol arrow.

Nitish Kumar has joined the BJP and he should now contest election on the lotus symbol of the saffron outfit. Sharad Yadavs party is the real JD (U) and the actual owner of the poll symbol of the party, Prasad said, hinting that factionalism within the JD (U) might lead to a split in the party.

For its part, Sharads group indicated that it would approach the Election Commission (EC) to claim the arrow symbol, which is claimed by the Nitish Kumar led official group.

To underscore Sharad groups claim to be the real JD(U), the RJD chief recalled how Yadav, the socialist veteran, was the founding member of the original Janata Dal and CM Nitish Kumars Samata Party, an outfit launched in 1994, had merged with it in 2003, to form the JD (U).

Claiming CM Nitish Kumar was now scared of Sharad, after he undertook a statewide tour to expose Kumar for joining hands with the BJP and betraying the peoples trust, Lalu said he had invited Sharad to participate in the RJDs anti-BJP rally in Patna on August 27.

He also said his son Tejashwi Prasad Yadavs state wide Janadesh Apman Yatra, in protest against Nitishs decision to quit the grand alliance (GA) and form a new government with the BJP, late last month, was getting spontaneous support of the people.

On the other hand, Sharad, backed by suspended JD(U) MP Ali Anwar, former minister Ramai Ram and JD (U) units in other states, has said that the Mahagathbandhan was alive I am the real JD (U) and still part of the GA. CM Kumars JD (U) is sarkari JD (U), which has joined hands with the BJP, he said.

Sharads supporters had put posters in the city, earlier this week, saying Mahagatbandhan jari hai, (GA is alive), to portray how Sharad was pitching in for larger unity among anti-BJP forces to take on the NDA.

Also, earlier this week, Sharad had organised the Sanjhi Virasat Bachao programme in New Delhi as an attempt to forge unity among opposition forces at the national level, including the Congress, to save Indias composite culture and diversity.

During the event, attended by top opposition leaders, Sharad had accused the BJP of tinkering with countrys secular fabric and diversity, by pushing its divisive agenda through its religion based politics.

Congress Bihar unit president Ashok Choudhary tried to play safe on Sharads meeting in Patna on Saturday, stating that it was a political event called by the socialist veteran. He, however, appeared to avoid taking sides between Sharad and Nitish.

Asked whether the Congress considered Sharad as part of the grand alliance, as being claimed by the latter, Choudhary said this was already clear as partys vice president Rahul Gandhi had attended Sharads meeting in New Delhi.

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Feroz Ahmad, 45, isnt sure if electricity has reached Paraspur, a nondescript hamlet of Bhartha village in Uttar Pradeshs Sitapur district.

When a crow dies and falls off the electric pole, we know there is some current in the wire, he says. Because, electricity doesnt come to our homes.

It is over a year since government workers set up poles and hang overhead wires under the Centres flagship rural electrification scheme, the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the programme will bring electricity to every village in the country by 2018, and every home by 2022.

Paraspur is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with Indias rural electrification programme, a grand scheme that guzzles thousands of crores of rupees annually but may not guarantee that power actually reaches the people. And when power actually comes, it is for a few hoursstate-run power distribution agencies generally target rural areas for load shedding to make up for the generation shortfall.

Poles, but no electricity (Paraspur hamlet, Bhartha Village, Sitapur District, UP) (Hindustan Times)

For all its ambition, the program is undercut by a difficult reality: infrastructure alone doesnt translate into energisation or access to electricity.

During the assembly election results in May, houses in Paraspur lit up with grid-powered electricity and that too for just two days, villagers say.

Sitapur is the worst district in the country in terms of household electrification coverage  just two in ten rural houses have an electricity connection, according to the 2015-16 National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the most recent official survey capturing household electrification in India.

But data from the GARV app  the central government mobile application which tracks household electrification in Indian villages show Bhartha as the only unelectrified village in the district as of April 2015.

Details in the definition

How can it be that only two in ten rural houses in the district have an electricity connection, yet every village in the entire district but one is electrified? The answer lies in how the government defines the terms village and electrified.

In government parlance, even if a villages ten percent of households and public places, such as schools and health centres, have access to power it is considered electrified.

Moreover, a village is divided into several hamlets or habitations. A possible explanation could be that while the village as a whole may be electrified the constituent hamlets may not be.

Bhartha is a case in point. The village is divided into three hamlets. Barring Paraspur, the other two have had electricity connection for over a decade, residents say.

Who stole the oil

Around 40 kilometres from Bhartha, lies Maheshpur, a village officially counted as electrified. In Misranpurwa, a hamlet in Maheshpur, eight connections were recently given to families below the poverty line, residents say.

At the entrance to the hamlet, a street lamp hangs from a recently-installed electricity pole. But five months since the electrical infrastructure was set up, the bulb has never been lit. The reason: just a day after the installation, the oil that would power the transformer went missing.

The contractor alleges that we (the villagers) stole the oil. He has even filed an FIR against anonymous people, says Kaushal Kishore Mishra, 42.

We didnt take out the oil. The contractor is responsible. Now we dont have money to fuel the transformer and so there is no electricity, he adds.

An exasperated Mishra points out that the village in electrified only on paper.

Data on the GARV app says 32 of the 42 households have electricityfar from the ground reality.

This raises questions about the trustworthiness of the household level data in GARV, touted as one of the most transparent governance projects of the Modi government.

GARV tells whether electrification has happened or not, which means whether a transformer has been set up in a village, wires have reached the households and an electricity connection has been provided, said Arvind Rajvedi, managing director of Madhyanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Ltd (MVVNL).

But if a transformer burns out or power is not distributed, Rajvedi says, thats a separate issue and is not reflected in the app data.

MVVNL is a government of UP undertaking and is responsible for supplying electricity in various districts of UP, including Sitapur and Bahraich. Officials update data for their area in the GARV app.

Governance challenge

Problems are not restricted to a single village or a district. In Bhakhrauli Mugespur village in Bahraich district, Rajendra Kumar Singh, 35, is furious. A 63KV transformer was approved in the budget and Rs 3.5 lakh allocated, Singh says.

But the contractor installed it in another village. The official in charge was contesting for zila panchayat elections and so he did them a favour, he says, as a dozen other villagers join in to express fear of speaking up and complain against the official.

Sarkaar nahi kar payegi yahan vidyutikaran. Yojna chalu karna aur implement karne me fark hota hai (The government cant electrify this village. There is a difference in announcing and implementing a scheme), says 24-year-old Ashish Kumar Singh.

A year-and-a-half-ago, in the neighbouring village Kothar, an electricity pole that powered most of the houses fell down during a windstorm. The villagers have gone without power ever since. The remains of the broken pole are still visible in a swampy ground near the village well.

Rajvedi says there is an all-India four digit toll-free number 1912 for power-related consumer complaints, but villagers remain unaware.

We dont know where to complain. No one here is educated enough and has no idea about the processes, says Ishtaq Ali, who, like most others, doesnt know his age and identifies himself as twenty-something. Residents of Kothar work as daily wage labourers, earning Rs 100 per day.

And here again, the official data fails to reflect the ground reality: 35 of the 59 households in the village are electrified, official data says. Villagers dispute this.

But even if the government and villagers agree on whether these villages are electrified, getting power to the households will be just the first step. Ensuring uninterrupted electricity is another challenge.

Bill shocks

Ramakant Pal, 35, of Haripur hamlet in Sitapur, refused to take power connection when government workers brought electricity poles a month ago.

Pal and his neighbours have heard discouraging stories from people Maheshpur, just a few kilometres to the east.

Wahan jab bill aata hai, tabhi pata chalta hai ki gaon me bijli hai (Only when the bill arrives, do they get to know their village has electricity), he says.

Villagers have their own stories to tell at Maheshpur, where 43 out of 63 households electricity connection, according to official data.

Radhe Shyams house is one of them, at least on paper. In reality, power has never reached his home, says his wife, who shies away from giving her name. She pulls out a pink plastic bag and takes out a dusty electric meter, covered with cobwebs and never used.

When the engineer came, we didnt have money to pay for installation, she says. So he left the meter and asked us to buy our own stuff for making the connections.

The family never did so, she says, but an electricity bill lands at their house every month. The latest one is dated July 7th.

House of Radhe Shyaam in Maheshpur, Sitapur. (Hindustan Times)

A few hundred meters from Radhey Shams house, down a narrow dirt road that winds through the village, Ramu Mishra, 40, does get power at his house.

But the bill amount is too high, he believes, given how little energy he uses. The bill is generally more than Rs two hundred per month, he says. Mishra has a relatively large house with a spacious verandah but there is hardly any electrical equipment: a couple of bulbs and one portable fan.

Several villagers in Maheshpur, like Mishra, have outstanding bills in amounts ranging from ten to thirty thousand rupees as they have not paid for months and years.

Fifty kilometres away, in Nioria Bank village, people share similar concerns. Mohammad Shabirs is the first house at the village entrance. He got his power connection for Rs 1,350 under a scheme two years ago. But he hasnt paid the bill yet. Its too much, he says.

Who will pay the outstanding electricity debt of Rs. 25-30,000? asks his neighbour Mohammad Israil, who runs a primary school for Muslim kids.

If we had money to pay this exaggerated bill amount, wouldnt we first fix our houses? Israil says, pointing to Shabirs kachha house, as others burst into laughter.

Shabir also rues the electricity timing.

We get power only around 9-10pm. The sun sets by 7 pm. We still have to use kerosene oil at the time we need electricity the most. By the time power arrives, we go to bed. Whats the point then? Shabir asks.

Najbun Misha, another resident, says she doesnt want the connection.

Had we been aware that the bill amount would be such, we wouldnt have taken the connection at all. The bill amounts to Rs 237 per month; we were told it would be Rs 50, she says, referring to the fixed monthly amount charged from households without a meter.

The idea of inflated bill amount is a misnomer, says Rajvedi, the MD of MVVNL.

People in urban areas as well have similar things to say, Rajvedi says, explaining that people dont realise where all electricity is being used or wasted. Meter readings can be an issue, but not a major one.

If the meter, an electronic device, is not working fine, it will behave erratically. But it wont be the case that the difference in the reading would be of the order of 10 to 25%, Vedi adds.

Adding fuel to fire

The bill amount is not the only frustrating thing about the power around here. Back in Maheshpur, Mishra says hes already paid two instalments of Rs 500, but the amount was not deducted from his most recent bill.

Rajvedi is aware of this problem. The billing system, even for rural areas, has been shifted from manual process to an online one. There is a possibility that the bill amount paid by some individuals when the manual system was still in place is not reflected in the new system. We set up camps at the office of districts chief development officer and junior engineer where this can be rectified. This is a one-time process. In future, everything will be online, which will eliminate the discrepancy.

Economics aside, Ashok Kumar in Misranpurwa village has a completely different concern: fire.

Mine is a kaccha house. What if a short circuit burns down my house? I cant take that risk. I dont want a connection. Raju Mishra in Maheshpur expresses similar fears.

Lalli, an old woman in Bhartha village, mistakenly confuses this reporter for a power official and requests that I cut her connection right away.

What if officials arrest me or my family for non-payment of the bill which may start arriving soon? she asks. What if the house is burnt down due to fire?

Her son interrupts and asks me to ignore her plea, and they get into an argument. In any case, its unlikely that fire will be an issue: the poles are here, but the hamlet doesnt have power.

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Finnish police are investigating Friday's knife attacks that killed two and wounded eight in the city of Turku as terrorism-related crimes, they said on Saturday.

The suspect arrested on Friday was an 18-year-old Moroccan, police said, adding that the two people killed were Finns and an Italian and two Swedish citizens were among the injured.

The attacks shocked the Nordic country where violent crime is relatively rare and which has been named as the world's safest place to visit by the World Economic Forum.

Following the attacks on Friday, police shot the suspected attacker in the leg and arrested him.

"Due to information received during the night, the Turku stabbings are now being investigated as murders with terrorist intent," the National Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

Security was reinforced nationwide with increased patrols and more surveillance in case more people were involved.

"First thing we heard was a young woman, screaming like crazy. I thought it's just kids having fun ... but then people started to move around and I saw a man with a knife in his hand, stabbing a woman," said Laura Laine, who was sitting in a cafe during one of the attacks.

"Then a person ran towards us shouting 'he has a knife', and everybody from the terrace ran inside. Next, a woman came in to the cafe. She was crying hysterically, down on her knees, saying someone's neck has been slashed open."

The police arrested a number of people during the night as part of their investigation.

Local media said the police raided an apartment in the eastern Turku suburb of Varissuo, which is home to a large immigrant population and located about 7 kilometers from the market square where the attack took place.

The arrested suspect had been in Finland for only a short time before the attack, Helsingin Sanomat newspaper reported. The police will hold a news conference at 1100 GMT.

Four of the wounded were still in hospital, three of them in intensive care, while the other injured persons would be sent home on Saturday, the hospital said.

Flags were at half mast on Saturday across the Nordic country whose Security Intelligence Service (SIS) raised the terrorism threat level in June to 'elevated' from 'low', saying it had become aware of terrorism-related plans in Finland.

Leaders of Turku's Iraqi and Syrian community condemned the attacks and said they would hold a rally of solidarity in the city's main square. An anti-immigration group was planning a demonstration in Helsinki.

The SIS has said anti-immigration groups have been on the rise in the country after it received about 32,500 asylum seekers during the migration crisis in 2015.

"Terrorists want to pit people against each other. We will not let this happen. Finnish society will not be defeated by fear or hatred," Interior Minister Paula Risikko said on Twitter.

On Thursday, a suspected Islamist militant drove a van into crowds in Barcelona, Spain, killing 13 people and wounding scores of others.

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Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath lashed out at his rivals on Saturday and accused them of making a picnic spot out of Gorakhpur where nearly 100 children have died in a state-run hospital this month, triggering nationwide criticism.

Adityanath hit out at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav without naming them as he launched a cleanliness drive to fight diseases in eastern UP, where thousands die because of water and vector-borne infections.

Both opposition leaders have repeatedly demanded the CMs resignation over the deaths of at least 30 children in 48 hours in Gorakhpurs Baba Raghav Das Medical College allegedly because of oxygen shortage.

Yuvraj sitting in Delhi and Shahzada in Lucknow cant understand the importance of cleanliness drive launched by the government, Adityanath said in a Dalit colony in Gorakhpur. For them (Akhikesh and Rahul), Gorakhpur is a picnic spot. Gandhi was on his way to Gorakhpur to meet the families of the dead children on Saturday.

Akhilesh announced a financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh to the kin of the deceased when he visited Gorakhpur on August 14.

I think we should not give permission to anyone to make a picnic trip to Gorakhpur, Adityanath said and blamed the previous Akhilesh-led state government for not joining the Swachch Bharat Mission. The drive is actually a massive campaign to check deaths caused due to vector and waterborne diseases, especially in east UP, he said.

Adityanath is facing a storm of criticism for the poor infrastructure at BRD hospital in Gorakhpur, which he represented for about two decades in Parliament, but has denied any responsibility. His government has admitted to an oxygen shortage but has attributed the deaths to encephalitis. But opponents point out that repeated letters by the oxygen supplier to the government and hospital authorities for clearance of payment were ignored over several months.

To counter the criticism, the state government launched a sanitation drive between August 19 to 25 on the lines of Swachh Bharat mission.

On Saturday, Adityanath claimed as Gorakhpur MP he fought for encephalitis-affected children for 20 years and had even appealed to the previous governments to undertake sanitation drives.

But the insensitive governments involved in corrupt practices didnt pay heed to my demands, he said while passing on the buck to the previous Akhilesh Yadav government for the tragedy.

Vectorborne JE (Japanese Encephalitis) and waterborne AES (Acute Encephalitis Syndrome) are two virus responsible for the death of children and more than cure, prevention is needed to tackle them effectively, he said.

Announcing that the sanitation drive has been launched in 38 districts, he said over 9.3 million children have already been vaccinated and the drive has started showing good results.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah said his party had not come to power for a mere five or 10 years, but at least for 50 years and called upon workers to strengthen the party and take it to every part of the country.

Shah also said though the BJP appeared to be at its peak with a majority government at the Centre and 1,387 MLAs in states, the workers felt the party had still a long way to go.

Today, we have a majority government at the Centre with 330 MPs, and also have 1,387 MLAs in different states. The party appears to be at its peak, but dedicated workers feel we have a long way ahead, a BJP release quoted Shah on Saturday as saying at a meeting with partymen.

We have not come to power for 5-10 years, but at least 50 years. We should move forward with a conviction that in 40-50 years we have to bring major changes in the country through the medium of power, Shah said.

He was addressing the Madhya Pradesh BJPs core group members, office-bearers, MPs, MLAs and district chiefs, among others, at the party headquarters here on Friday.

Shah arrived on Friday in Bhopal on a three-day visit to Madhya Pradesh for meetings with the BJP workers and office-bearers besides participating in various programmes as part of his 110-day nationwide tour.

The BJP president reminded the activists that the party has become a political force to reckon with due to hard work, dedication and sacrifice of its leaders over the years.

Today, the BJP has become a party of 10-12 crore members because of many stalwarts who have dedicated their lives in building and strengthening the organisation, said Shah, according to the release.

We have to ensure no place in the country is left where we dont have our flag. For this, we have to strengthen the organisation further, Shah said.

Character is the basis of our foundation, he said, and called upon the BJP workers to ensure the party is present in every (polling) booth, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kamrup to Kutch.
A mob in Jharkhand allegedly lynched a woman on Saturday on suspicion of her involvement in chopping off a local girls braid, the second such death this month because of a mass hysteria that has gripped north India.

Police said villagers in Sahibganj districts Radhanagar attacked a group of four beggars  including the woman and a nine-year-old boy  roughly a week after a local girls braid was cut. They pelted stones at the woman, said to be in her late 40s, and others on suspicion that they were involved in witchcraft. The boy is critically injured.

We have beefed up security in the area. For now, superstition seems to be the cause of the attack, we are still investigating, said Sahibganj superintendent of police P Murugan.

He said an eyewitness informed police, who spent an hour trying to control the mob. By the time the victims were rushed to the hospital, the woman was dead.

Earlier this month, a 60-year old Dalit woman was allegedly lynched in Agra after villagers thought she was out to cut the hair of sleeping women. This came after hundreds of reports of womens hair being mysteriously chopped off in Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab since June.

Women 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.

Such deaths are common in superstition-struck Jharkhand. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the state has witnessed the maximum incidences of witch-hunting in India in the past five years. Here, occultists and sorcerers often call the shots in the hinterland and over 15,000 women have fallen prey to superstition-triggered attacks by now in the state, say activists. The state registered 32 murders related to witch hunting, which was highest in the country in 2015, revealed NCRB data.

Police suspect many people are taking advantage of the mass hysteria around braid chopping to mask crimes. On Saturday, Jharkhand Police said an unidentified person chopped off a womans braid and threw her twin infants in a well to seek revenge and project the murder as a paranormal activity in Dumka district.

Thirty-year-old Sawanti Sahu, a resident of Shikaripara in Dumka, about 300 km from capital Ranchi, was possibly drugged before her hair was cut and her children were thrown in the well on Friday afternoon, police suspect.

Dumka superintendent of police Mayur Patel Kanhaiya Lal said that about three more such incidences were reported from parts of the district wherein womens braids were chopped off and they were brought to hospital by their family.

None of them were found genuinely ill. It was just the fear of a paranormal force that possibly made them fall unconscious, said Kanhaiya.

The investigation was on in Sawantis case and the culprits would be nabbed soon, he added.

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The flood situation in north Bengal improved on Saturday with water receding in several rivers and the region receiving less rain. This, however, did not end the plight of lakhs of people marooned in different parts of five districts. Train and bus services remained suspended. Scarcity of food and relief material led to agitation in many places. At Itahar in North Dinajpur district, angry villagers even looted relief material and a man was injured, allegedly by a rubber bullet fired by the police.

Read: North Bengal districts remain cut off as heavy rain and fuming rivers flood towns, railway tracks, highways

In Malda district, the grievance of flood-affected people turned into a political issue. Sanjay Sharma, a BJP councillor from Englishbazar municipality, alleged that BJP supporters were denied relief because of their political affiliation. Malda witnessed the worst calamity in recent years.

The Mahananda river has washed away many human settlements that came up along its banks over the years. (HT Photo)

More than 200 people in Ward 9 are going through extremely difficult times. But the Trinamool-run municipality is not providing them with relief material and shelter. This is nothing but political vendetta, alleged Sharma, who was elected from the ward. He even wrote a letter to Nihar Ranjan Ghosh, chairman of the civic body.

Read: 600 dead in floods across India, Centre says states sitting on relief funds

Ghosh neither accepted nor denied the charges. Any discrimination during distribution of relief material is undesirable. I have taken note of Sharmas complain. I am looking into it, Ghosh told HT.

At Itahar in North Dinajpur district, flood-hit people alleged that police fired rubber bullets at them when they were protesting against mismanagement in relief work and shortage of food. Bijoy Burman, a shopkeeper, was allegedly injured by a rubber bullet on Thursday evening.

Read: As rivers swell in Bengal, more cows, narcotics being smuggled into Bangladesh

District police superintendent Shyam Singh and Sanjay Seth, an orthopedic surgeon at Raigunj district hospital, made contradictory statements on the injury Burman suffered. While Singh claimed that police never opened fire at the crowd, Seth said Burmans wound was caused by a rubber bullet but he was out of danger.

People staged agitation in South Dinajpur and Malda districts as well. Villagers looted relief material at Chanchal in Malda on Friday.

State irrigation minister Rajib Banerjee said because of incessant rainfall in Bihar, water level in the Mahananda and Fulahar rivers has risen again. This is leading to inundation in areas that were earlier not affected although North Bengal received less rain in the last 48 hours, said the minister.
A quarrel between two teenagers was at the root of the blasphemous Facebook post on July 2 that triggered communal clashes in Bengals Baduria-Basirhat areas, leaving one dead, more than a dozen injured and scores of shops and houses vandalised, investigators have found.

Investigation has revealed that Suman (name changed), the 17-year-old boy from whose profile the morphed photo was posted on Facebook, did not post it in the first place.

A special team comprising officers from North 24 Parganas police and the special operation group of CID is investigating the case.

Suman had two profiles. The first was opened with the help of his one-time friend Prantik (name changed), who knew the password. Later, the two fell out and Prantik changed the password of Sumans profile. This forced Suman to open a new account. On July 2, Prantik posted the photo from Sumans first account and tagged the second account with it. The entire blame fell on Suman, an investigating officer told HT on condition of anonymity.

Both the minors were arrested and continue to be behind bars. The two had been friends since 2014 but fell out around May-June this year.

The communal flare-up that took place continued for almost a week. The police have so far arrested more than 100 people in connection with violence between July 3 and July 6.

Suman was arrested that very night but a mob set his house on fire the next day, apart from attacking the Baduria police station with the demand that he be handed over to them.

Read more: Basirhat clashes: Minor whose FB post triggered Bengal riots in jail against law

Prantik, who had left the area in the second week of July went to his brother-in-laws place in New Delhi. He was arrested on August 10 from a train at Asansol station while on his way back home.

Right from the time of his arrest, Suman maintained that he did not post the morphed picture. Later he named Prantik as a suspect. It took some time to ascertain if Prantik, indeed, could have had some role. In the meantime, Prantik left the area. Around August 8-9, he got a call from his school, asking him to appear for registration for the higher secondary exam. He was returning along with his elder sister and some other relatives. We picked him up when the train entered Asansol station, an investigating officer said.

Incidentally, the police treated both the minors as adults and produced them before a court, slapping against them charges of deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings, and for publishing obscene material, under various sections of the IT Act.

Prantik was born on June 16, 2000 and Suman on July 6 the same year.

Both of them passed the 10th standard exam this year and should have been tried by the Juvenile Justice Board. Suman was sent to a juvenile home in North 24 Parganas on August 5 after spending a month in jail.

When Prantik was produced before the court of additional chief judicial magistrate, Basirhat, on August 11, Bivas Chatterjee, the government pleader who specialises on cyber crime, told the court that Prantik was the main culprit and that the IP address from which the post was made on Facebook led to Prantiks mobile. The police have seized the phone.

Police sources, however, said that they are not giving Suman a clean chit and that he had some minor involvement, owing to which the case against him will be pursued in JJB.

Prantiks father, who runs a small grocery shop, told HT that Suman and his son were good friends and Suman used to visit their home.

My wife used to treat Suman like her own son but later Prantik and Suman had a quarrel. I am sure that Prantik is being framed. Besides, the police misled the court and produced him as an adult, he said.

Prantik was remanded to 14 days police custody and will be produced in court on August 25, when the familys lawyer plans to submit all documents to prove his age.

The police, in both cases, produced the minors in court as adults, said Brajendranath Roy, a lawyer associated with the right-wing group Hindu Samhati, which has extended all legal help to both the families. Roy had also drawn the courts attention over Sumans age.

Let them produce documents in court and prove that he is a minor. The court will act accordingly, North 24 Parganas superintendent of police C Sudhakar said, adding that the police have arrested more than 100 people in connection with rioting.

Police said the morphed photo in question existed on the internet since 2008 but the text was in English. Prantik allegedly got the English text replaced with Bangla. Police are also trying to verify if he took anyones help in editing the image.

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Picture this: You are sitting at the Residency in Lucknow and going through a history chapter on the First War of Indias Independence in 1857, along with other students, many of whom are differently-abled.

About the event During the heritage walk through the Residency, stories related to 1857 were narrated and students were sensitised on the compelling importance of an inclusive world. The children participated in heritage games and art activities. The organisers said such walks and tours would not just be limited to the architecture and history of monuments etc. They would also encapsulate a number of other teachings through narration of anecdotes, stories, experiences from experts etc.

The methodology was a reality for students of some city schools on Friday morning. ITIHAAS  a society working on Indian Traditions and Heritage Society  launched its first programme on inclusive heritage education in Uttar Pradesh, as India celebrated its 70 years of Independence this week.

This was the first such inclusive walk in Lucknow at the Residency. The event also marks 160 years since the First War of Independence in 1857, said Smita Vats, founder director, ITIHAAS.

Wheelchair-bound Poonam Rawal, a student of Jeewan Jyoti Special School, said: I had never been to the Residency in the past. This was my first educational outing What fun. I made new friends as students from other schools were also here.

During the heritage walk through the Residency, stories related to 1857 were narrated and students were sensitised on the compelling importance of an inclusive world. The children participated in heritage games and art activities.

Today, for the first time I felt normal, said a hearing impaired child.

Smita Vats said, In our 70th year of Independence, we as a country need to be a more compassionate society, the seeds of which are sowed very early in life. Shivani, director resource centre, ITIHAAS said, Inclusion in its true sense includes people who are diverse  physically, mentally, socially, economically and culturally.

The event was attended by 250 students and their mentors from 20 institutions like La Martiniere Girls College, St Francis School for hearing impaired, Study Hall, Jeevan Jyoti, DPS (Gomti Nagar), Army Public School (Topkhana), Karamat Girls Inter College, Adarsh Girls Training Institute, PYSSUM school for special needs and many others.

The organisers said such walks and tours would not just be limited to the architecture and history of monuments etc. They would also encapsulate a number of other teachings through narration of anecdotes, stories, experiences from experts etc, said Vats.

Lucknow can be a perfect lab of learning. At one place, children can learn a wide variety of subjects ranging from sociology, psychology, architecture, culinary arts, fashion, geography etc. Such practice would lead to inter-disciplinary learning and can be an interesting medium for children, said a teacher of a school.
The Lucknow district administration on Friday banned the sacrifice of camels on the occasion of Bakrid, pronouncing it as a prohibited animal.

District magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma said police and intelligence unit personnel will keep a tab on the sale and purchase of the humped animal, and ensure that not a single camel is sold in the state capital. He also directed intelligence units to keep an eye on groups of camels brought in from Rajasthan, and ensure that they are not sold within city limits.

Lucknow doesnt have a history of sacrificing camels on the occasion of Bakrid, and nowhere in the district administrations record is anything like this mentioned. Hence, it should be ensured that activities of this sort are not carried out within district limits, said Sharma.

During the weeks preceding Bakrid, many traders from Rajasthan travel through the district with camels meant for sale in East Uttar Pradesh. The police must ensure that these groups pass through Lucknow smoothly without selling a single animal, the district magistrate directed.
Safety concern No permit for boarding facilities, girls and boys being made to share rooms. With students crammed up in damp rooms located in a dingy double-storey building, stinking toilets, lack of open spaces and basic infrastructure, this private boarding school in Lucknows Bazarkhala is a school for namesake.

TWO FIRS LODGED Two separate FIRs related to sodomy, rape and causing death due to negligence have been registered. The first case was lodged by a Class 5 boys father, who alleged that his son was sodomised by a 13-year-old boy during his stay at the boarding school. The complainant also alleged that the boy fell ill after sexual harassment and died during treatment at KGMUs trauma centre on August 7. Another FIR was lodged by a mother of Class 4 girl, accusing senior boys of raping her daughter. In both the FIRs, the parents alleged that sexual harassment took place because the school administration allowed senior boys to reside with junior girls and boys in the same room.

The school came into the spotlight on Thursday when enraged over alleged incidents of sexual harassment of junior students by seniors, hundreds of people ransacked the premises of the school.

The school authorities at the private boarding school make all girls and boys, aged between 6 and 13 years, share rooms, which parents believe could be the reason for alleged cases of sexual harassment.

After being informed about the case by the police, Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA) Praveen Mani Tripathi inspected the school. Talking to HT, he said inspection revealed that the students were made to sit and live in very unhygienic conditions, exposing them to the risk of contracting diseases. As per the records, the school only has recognition to conduct classes till eighth standard. It doesnt have permission to run a boarding school. We have issued a notice to the school authority. Its recognition will be cancelled as basic norms have been violated, he said.

Inspector of Bazarkhala police station Sujeet Dubey said so far the probe revealed that 29 students, including three girls, are enrolled in the school being run by staff comprising just four persons---73-year-old owner-cum-manager Bal Govind, his 68-year-old wife, a teacher and a cook.

Dubey said the classes were conducted in four rooms on the ground floor while the remaining five-six rooms were used as residence for the students, the manager and his wife. As many as four-five students share one room.

However, following the allegations of sexual harassment, the school authorities have handed over most of the students to their families. The parents of three-four students are yet to arrive to take them home.

As per the records, the school only has recognition to run classes till eighth standard. It doesnt have permission to run a boarding school. We have issued a notice to the school authority. Its recognition will be cancelled as basic norms have been violated, --Basic Shiksha Adhikari (BSA) Praveen Mani Tripath

Police investigation

Inspector of Bazarkhala police station Sujeet Dubey said the girl has been sent for medical examination and further probe will be based on the basis of its findings. He further said the statements of the school authorities, staff and other children are yet to be recorded even as the manager claimed that the girl stopped coming to school since March.

Read more: School manager, boys booked for sexual harassment of juniors in Lucknow

In case of the boys death, medical records stated that he died due to high fever and low blood platelet count, the inspector said. The boys body was buried before registration of the FIR. He said legal experts are being consulted in the matter and if required the boys body will be exhumed for post-mortem examination. While no arrests have been made so far, the school staff has been told not to leave the city without police permission, added the inspector.
A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA celebrated his 44th birthday by giving helicopter rides to at least 100 poor children of his assembly constituency, Chail, in Kaushambi district on Friday.

Named Sapno Ki Udaan, the programme was aimed at inspiring the children to dream big, Sanjay Kumar Gupta, who is also a businessman, told reporters. He hired a chopper from a private firm and bore the expenses from his pocket, he said.

It was a novel experience for the children. They were all smiles as they reached the Bharwari ground in Chail for the ride.

The four-seater chopper made over 20 trips, each lasting at least five minutes and covering a short distance, an aide of the MLA said.

Gupta said the happiness on the childrens faces was the most precious gift for him.

The district administration and the education department officials selected the 100 poor children from government-run schools who distinguished themselves in studies.

Guddi, 10, Shyamu, 8, Babu, 9, and many other children were among the lucky ones who took a helicopter ride with the MLA and administrative officials. Within a few hours, all the 100 students had flown.

Manoj, 9, said: I had never thought that I would ride a helicopter.

Kamal, 8, said: It was a surprise when my teacher told me that I will ride a helicopter.

All MLAs should organise programmes like this one for children, said Prabha, 10.

For his part, the MLA said, Every child wishes to fly when he sees a helicopter and aircraft flying above his home. However, only a few can fulfill this dream. I was planning to give a surprise to the people of my constituency on my birthday. The idea came to me a few days back.

I took suggestions from administrative and education officials and instructed them to select the children. I was further inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chief minister Yogi Adityanath, President Ramnath Kovind and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya who belongs to Kaushambi, he added.

Despite being poor, all of them worked hard to realize their dreams, he observed.

BJP MLA from Chail Sanjay Kumar Gupta talking to children before their helicopter ride on Friday. (HT Photo)

I did not take any help from the district administration but used my salary and my own money to bear expenses of the chopper ride. The government gives so much salary to the MLAs that they can give chopper ride to children of their constituency every year, said the legislator.

After his maiden effort this year, he did not disclose whether he planned a similar gift for the children every year.
Movie logic will have you believe than when you love someone, you should shout it from the rooftops.

In India, however, fans of film stars now declare their love by shouting down on social media anyone with a less-than-savoury opinion of their screen idols.

Film critics have it especially tough. Every Friday brings a new film, a fresh review, and fans waiting to pounce on any analysis that is less than glowing praise. Even when praise is due, and duly given, there are flare-ups from followers of a rival star.

Audiences have often had disagreements with film reviews, says film critic Tanul Thakur. And theyre welcome. But over the past few years, the reactions have become more organised online.

Theyre personal, target women or members of ones family. And theyre replicated across thousands of accounts. Anyone whos appeared on screen has huge followings. These are people connected on Facebook and Twitter and phone networks. And 15 million fans is a big enough number to steamroll any individual, Thakur says.

He has had his share of trolling. His review of the Shah Rukh Khan-Anushka Sharma film Jab Harry Met Sejal, released this month, describes the film as crass and insensitive, shoddy, mirthless and regressive, clueless and tone deaf and an abomination  a 144-minute formulaic fest. And thats just the opening paragraph.

I was expecting a lot of hate to be flung my way, given that SRK has a huge fan base, and my review of Indu Sarkar the previous month got a barrage of responses calling me the usual Congressi-Secular-Libtard, he says. But it was nothing compared to what Dhanya Rajendran had to endure for calling the film out for what it was.

Rajendran had tweeted about Jab Harry comparing her dissatisfaction with the film to Sura, a 2010 film starring the Tamil actor Vijay. Fans of Vijay took offence, abusing her online.

Such attacks may appear like emotional outbursts of individual fans. But those on the receiving end have long noticed patterns  strings of phrases repeated by too many responders for it to be a coincidence; anonymous accounts that exist only to spew hate; posts that are synchronised and timed; and large groups of strangers all of whom reference personal details about the critic in their online attacks.

Whether they are ordinary fans or they are being unleashed on journalists by agencies of the film industry, the motive of all film trolls is to browbeat critics into making positive remarks about the star or film they are batting for, says film critic Anna MM Vetticad.

She has been viciously trolled for pointing out the failings of the film Baahubali, and more recently for her 1.5-star review of Akshay Kumars Toilet: Ek Prem Katha.

In recent years, constant attacks by trolls of the present ruling party have caused many political journalists to tread carefully while commenting on the government on social and mainstream media. The goal of film trolls is no different. I feel quite proud of my fellow film critics when I see that they have not similarly succumbed to online forces, she says.

South Indian cinema fans can be particularly touchy. Online wars between fan groups routinely escalate to take over timelines, it takes only a few hours before hashtags and counter hashtags start to trend.

Baradwaj Rangan, a National-Award-winning critic and member of the Film Critics Circle of India, says films in the south are especially rewarding of hardcore fans. In-jokes and dialogue are constructed for them to pick up on and filmmakers add references to previous films for keen viewers, he says. Perhaps this is the handshake, the breaking of the fourth wall, which makes fans willing to do things for their idols in return.

Otherwise, theres little reward. For a while now, Hollywood has offered extreme fans special merchandising, preferential treatment on publicity tours, even franchises, so fans build up hype on social networks in return.

Indian fandom is different. We tend to worship the star, rather than the character or the alternative universe of the films. Rangan likens it to religion, in which the believer is the upholder and defender against the infidel, particularly when the stars do little to discourage troll behaviour.

Still, a fan army attempting to snuff out dissent may seem counterproductive. If fans will defend everything, rather than demand something better, it lowers the bar for quality because the star is assured of adulation regardless, says Thakur.

But hes observed the tide changing. Trolls think little of critical opinion, but Salman Khans universally panned Tubelight didnt do well commercially, he says. The poor revenues for Jab Harry also show that a threshold is being reached. They cant use commercial success as a comeback when issues are raised about quality.

Vetticad recommends staying the course. We need to keep ourselves aware of the psychological games trolls play so that we continue not to be manipulated by them, she says.

For his part, Thakur does this with a simple mental autocorrect  every mention of Libtard becomes Good Job.

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The death toll from a mudslide and flooding that struck Sierra Leone's capital Freetown has reached 441, the government said on Saturday.

"Four hundred and forty-one corpses (were) buried as at yesterday," the deputy minister of information and communication, Cornelius Deveaux, told AFP, adding that the number of missing was "still being calculated."

A tally of deaths, issued on Friday by the Red Cross, stood at more than 400, with around 600 others listed as missing.

At Connaught Hospital, morgue worker Mohamed Sinneh Kamara gave a slightly higher toll than the minister's.

"We buried 50 more bodies on Friday. We have so far buried 450 corpses," he told AFP. "Most of the bodies were found decomposed and families were not allowed to identify (them)."

He added: "We're receiving calls from disaster-hit communities every three to four hours about a corpse found in a drainage or under a collapsed building."

Three more bodies were found in a search for survivors in the Regent district, where the side of a hill collapsed, the emergency services said.

The disaster struck on Monday after Freetown, home to 1.2 million people and the capital of one of the world's poorest countries, had been pounded for three days by torrential rain.

According to the charity Save the Children, the disaster killed 122 children and left 123 orphaned.

The Red Cross has issued an emergency funding appeal. Britain, the former colonial power in Sierra Leone, has pledged 5 million ($6.45 million, 5.45 million euros), while China has pledged $1 million (850,000 euros) and Togo $500,000.

Water-borne diseases such as cholera and malaria are a major fear.

Flooding is an annual menace in Sierra Leone, where ramshackle homes are regularly swept away by seasonal rains. In 2015, floods killed 10 people and left thousands homeless.

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Goldilocks & the Three Bears - A Ballet Musical When: Aug 19, 8 pm Where: St Andrews Auditorium, Bandra West Tickets: Rs 500 Call 2641-0926

While ballet is enjoying a renaissance abroad, Mumbai fans have had to make do with screenings and the occasional performance by an international troupe. There are few serious schools locally, few accredited teachers to offer lessons. And the punishing nature of the form means hardly any students continue dancing into adulthood.

Apeksha Bhattacharyya wants that to change. She founded the Mumbai-based Indian Academy of Russian Ballet (IARB) in October 2015, the only school for Russian-style ballet in Mumbai.

There are three major schools of ballet that academies across the world follow: the Italian school, the British school and the Russian school. The differences are so intricate that only experts can distinguish one school from another. But we chose the Russian school as it is the most updated with influences of both the British and the Italian school, she says.

Two years in, the academy has over 170 students, and will be staging their first major show, a musical.

Apeksha Bhattacharyya, founder of the Indian Academy of Russian Ballet, says they rejected stories such as Romeo and Juliet because they only have girls students so far. (Satish Bate / HT Photo)

Goldilocks & The Three Bears follows the familiar tale of a girl who finds the empty house of a family of bears (Papa Bears porridge is too hot, Mama Bears is too cold, Baby Bears is just right!). Some 95 students from the academy, aged four to 20, will perform. Theyve been preparing for the show for a year.

We initially considered stories like Snow White, Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet, says Bhattacharyya. But that caused some unique problems. We have only girl students till now, so stories with male roles are hard to perform. Some stories like Swan Lake also take more.

Bhattacharyya is excited by the response. We have already sold 800 tickets. It is very encouraging to see that there are so many people in the city who are interested in the performance. This event should make the form popular in the city, she says.

Among the performers, she says that ten-year-old Kiyara Munim, who is playing Goldilocks, is someone to watch out for. Many of our other students are very promising too, she says.

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At a time when relations between allies Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena have been increasingly choppy, senior BJP minister Arun Jaitley held out an olive branch, attributing the current narrative of nationalism and parivartan (change) to the ideology of Sena founder Bal Thackeray.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, however, reminded the BJP that it was his father, Bal Thackeray, who suggested that the two parties ally together, and that the Sena was with the BJP at a time when no one was willing to join forces with them.

The two leaders shared a stage on Saturday evening in Mumbai, speaking at the release of a compilation of a hundred interviews of Bal Thackeray in the Shiv Senas mouthpiece publication, Saamana.

Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar skipped the event citing poor health.

Jaitley, who holds the finance and defence portfolios in the Union government, said, I give a lot of importance to Bal Thackerays personality and the role he played in public life. What he kept saying all his life since the 1960s, is being accepted today. Bal Thackeray and people like him always put the country first. Today, this very parivartan (change) is being seen. Jaitley also praised Bal Thackeray as a gifted communicator, and drew a comparison between PM Narendra Modi and the Sena founder.

Jaitley said, Very few people have the capacity of directly communicating with people. If the media did not convey Bal Thackerays message correctly, he would directly speak to the people and built a mass of following. Since 2002, the media has widely criticised Modi too, but he managed to directly communicate with people.

Uddhav Thackeray attributed the establishment of a Hindutva agenda, which both the Sena and BJP share, to his father, Bal Thackeray with his Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain slogan. (Be proud and proclaim we are Hindus).

Disgruntled with the BJPs aggressive electoral strides in Maharashtra, Uddhav also taunted the BJP saying it was the Sena founder who brought about the alliance of the two parties.

He said, both parties have the same ideology. So, instead of dividing votes, let us come together. You look after Delhi, we will look after Maharashtra, Uddhav said.

The Sena-BJP alliance has been on shaky ground since 2014, when the BJP registered a massive victory in the Maharashtra assembly elections, turning tables and making the Sena its junior partner in the state government.

Since then, the Sena has been increasingly unhappy with the BJPs aggressive electoral ambitions in Maharashtra and has donned the role of an opposition within the government with an eye on contesting the 2019 assembly poll independently.

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A Mumbai constable was injured around 5.45 am on Saturday after a helmetless biker crashed into the barricade at a police checkpoint in Oshiwara.

Police said the man, Nitesh Chavan, 28, had been riding under the influence of alcohol. He was arrested.

Oshiwara police said Chavan works for a private firm. He was riding along Link Road from Bangur Nagar towards his Andheri residence. When he reached the Anand Nagar junction at Oshiwara, police constable Sanjay Shelar, signalled to him, asking him to halt.

Instead of halting, the biker sped up, trying to bypass the checkpoint. However, he ended up crashing into the barricade. He and Shelar were injured, said an officer from Oshiwara police station. The two were taken to Siddharth Hospital in Goregaon, treated and then discharged.

Police registered a case against Chavan under sections of the Indian Penal Code and Motor Vehicles Act for rash driving, endangering the life and personal safety of others and drink driving. Chavan was produced before a metropolitan court on Saturday and released on bail.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Eknath Khadse, who had to quit as Maharashtra revenue minister in June last year following allegations of wrongdoing in a land deal, may be headed for more trouble amid speculation of a political comeback ahead of the 2019 polls.

Activist Anjali Damania and two others filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Bureau, Pune, on Thursday seeking a probe into the sources of income of the Khadses under the Prevention of Corruption Act and specifically into transactions in the bank accounts of Eknath Khadse, his wife Mandakini Khadse, his daughter-in-law and BJP MP Raksha Khadse and daughter Sharda Chaudhari.

The complaint alleged that while Khadse claimed agriculture was his only source of income other than public office, there had been huge inflow of funds into his bank accounts. It listed five primary accounts of the family besides naming four companies to be investigated.

Why is Mrs Damania making allegations against me only for media consumption when she has already filed a petition in the court? These charges are completely false. I have no connection with any such company or companies. And, transferring money in my wifes account cannot be a crime, said Khadse. He said there were 27 defamation cases filed against the activist and her charges should not be taken seriously. The senior leader also claimed that there was a political conspiracy behind such allegations. Why is there no hue and cry by her against [ Shiv Sena senior and industries minister] Subhash Desai, who faces allegations of corruption that run into hundreds of crores whereas this [Bhosari] plot was worth Rs4 crore, Khadse asked.

Damanias complaint pointing out that in the first five months of 2016, Mandakini Khadses account with IDBI bank was credited with Rs3.84 crore, while Khadses account in the same bank was credited with Rs1.41 crore. The complaint seeks to link the Bhosari land deal with the bank transactions stating that Mandakini Khadses account got flush with funds in the month April 2016, which was used to pay the stamp duty and the registration on the Bhosari land on April 27, 2016. This included Rs50 lakh transfer from her husbands two accounts with IDBI and State Bank of India, and Rs 1.55 crore from a firm called Benchmark Buildcon.

The ministers family had paid stamp duty of Rs1.37 crore on the Bhosari plot and this can be tracked from Mandakini Khadses account. The plot was purchased for Rs3.75 crore even though the market value of the land was nearly Rs31 crore, the complaint said.

We have received the complaint and now senior officials will see if such a case can be considered, said PN Hasabnis, Superintendent of Police with the Pune ACB.

The former ministers claim that he was not aware of the transaction (of the land deal), was not part of it and that the property was purchased by other members of his family does not hold good, said the complaint. Khadse had claimed that he was not aware of his family purchasing the plot until the issue surfaced in the media.

The complaint has also sought probe in dealings between the Khadses and four firms, Angira Buildcon, Benchmark Buildcon, Muktai Fibres and Allied and Bhavnagar-Muktai GBS Pathsanstha. It further points out that Benchmark Buildcon, which had transferred money into the account of the Khadses had 41 shareholders, out which only five were from Maharashtra. They hold 13,700 shares in all. The remaining 4.56 lakh-odd shares are held by 36 companies from Kolkata, which is generally seen as the haven for shell companies.

The bank accounts need to be verified by the ACB to arrive at what the sources of Khadses income were and if they were legal. There is a clear link between the transactions and the purchase of the Bhosari plot. Such a probe into bank accounts is warranted as per section 13 of the Prevention of the Corruption Act, if the public servant cannot satisfactorily account for his resources, said Damania.

Damania has filed a petition in the High Court against Khadse over a slew of alleged irregularities including the sale of the Bhosari plot. It has not yet been admitted. The state government had constituted the one-man Dinkar Zoting Commission to probe this case. The Zoting Commission report was submitted in June this year but the state government has not yet made its findings public.

The ACB had filed a First Information Report against Khadse, his wife Mandakini, and son-in-law Girish Chaudhari in April this year and are investigating the Bhosari land deal case that cost Khadse his job. His wife and son-in-law Girish Chaudhari bought a hectare in Bhosari in Pune, which the industries department claimed was notified for industrial use with departments rights even registered in the land records. The industries department had notified but not acquired this land from the owner by paying him a compensation.

Khadse as revenue minister had convened a meeting with industries and revenue officials on April 12, 2016, to discuss this plot and had recommended compensation to the owner for this land as per the New Land Acquisition Law.

The land was purchased the same month by Khadses kin for Rs3.75 crore from the original owner, whereas the market value was around Rs31 crore. Instead of paying stamp duty of 5 per cent, Khadses family paid up stamp duty of nearly 36 per cent on April 27, when they registered the land deal.

The Pune based activist, who first exposed this matter, Hemant Gawande, alleged that the former minister was eyeing compensation from the government for this plot under the new Land Acquisition Law, which would have been in the range of Rs80 crore or more.

In his defence, Khadse had first claimed that the deal was not illegal as the industries department had failed to acquire the plot despite notifying it decades back. He had said the meeting with officials was held after the original owner of the plot made a complaint to him about not being paid compensation. He later told the Zoting Commission that he was not aware of this land deal until it came to light in the media.

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To involve citizens in addressing citys mounting waste management woes, the K/West ward (Andheri) administration of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations (BMC) launched a three-day Zero Garbage Fest at Juhu on Friday. On the first two days, around 2,000 people, including 1,000 students from 25 schools, visited the exhibition at Kishanchand Valecha Hall in JVPD Scheme.

The exhibition aims to inform participants about how, why, when and what aspects of waste management.

The BMC has of late intensified its awareness campaigns to deal with garbage, especially after the Bombay high court in May upheld the ban on new constructions in the city until it increased its capacity to process waste. The BMC in June also issued notices to more than 23,000 housing societies for not segregating their waste at source.

For the exhibition, the BMC has roped in 49 non-governmental organisations, agencies, service providers and housing societies that have expertise in waste management. They interact with residents, commercial institutions and students and inform them how to compost kitchen waste, segregate e-waste and recycle water

A BMC official said, People are coming from as far as Thane and Vashi. We have served notices to societies for violating solid waste management rules, but people need to understand the segregation and composting process from experts.

Four housing societies with model waste management units are also part of the exhibition. Srikant Parab, secretary of Shatdal CHS, lauded the BMCs efforts to motivate Andheri residents to manage waste.

The corporation should host regular interactions. Apart from this, there should be a BMC team that helps residents with installing composting units, said Parab.

Prashant Gaikwad, assistant municipal commissioner of K/West ward, said, Only seven bulk waste generators of the 700 that were issued notices have installed organic waste converters. We will start prosecuting societies and institutions that are not managing their waste.

Officials said more such events at local level will take place with suggestions from residents.
Securing a seat in first year junior colleges (FYJC) will now be akin to booking train tickets under the tatkal quota. The reason: the states school education department has decided that students will be allotted seats on a first-come, first-served basis from Monday.

This means if a college has a vacant seat, it will go to the one who applied first. The last five admission rounds  four scheduled and one special  the seats were allotted on a merit basis.

More than 3, 500 students, who were either not allotted any seats or did not take admission in the previous rounds, are yet to be admitted to colleges. Those who have already taken admissions cannot apply, even if they are unhappy with their seats.

According to a circular issued by the department on Saturday afternoon, students will be divided into three groups. Group 1 will have students who bagged between 80% and 100%, while group 2 is for those who scored between 60% and 100% marks. Group 3 is for students who have passed Class 10.

On Monday, students securing above 80% must fill part of their application form  in which they can list their college preferences  and submit it online between 10am and 5pm. The list of vacant seats will be uploaded on the admission website on Sunday.

Seats will be allocated to students who first submit their forms on Monday and Tuesday. Those who get a seat must approach the colleges  with a computer generated receipt  on the same day and book their seat. Similarly, students scoring above 60% must apply on August 23, and those with 35% and 59% can do so on August 26.

The new system of allocation is in accordance with a government resolution passed on January 7, stating that all FYJC admissions should be through a centralised process and if seats remain vacant, they must be filled on a first-come-first-served basis, said education officials.

Although the admissions are on a first-serve basis, they are not entirely haphazard. We have divided students into groups based on their scores, said BB Chavan, deputy director of education, Mumbai region.

However, college principals and students have objected to the new system, calling it unfair. It is important to conduct all admissions on a merit basis. In the new system, an applicant may lose out on a seat just because of an internet glitch, said Hemlata Bagla, in-charge, principal, KC College, Churchgate.

Another principal, Kavita Rege, Sathaye College, Vile Parle, said, If some students are admitted on merit and others are not, it is not a just system. Children need to earn a seat through their scores.

In contrast, activist Vaishali Bafna, working with NGO Syscom, who had filed a petition in the Bombay high court in 2015 to bring in transparency in the admission process, is in favour of the system. The government gave five chances for admissions but still many have not confirmed their seats, in some cases kids havent taken admission even if they are allotted their first preference. So there is no point in holding merit-based rounds anymore, said Bafna.

According to Bafna, admitting students through a centralised process is still better than allowing colleges to fill these seats at their own level. At least the seats are not being sold by colleges.

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Anti-narcotics cell (ANC) officials arrested two men and a woman from Mazagaon on Saturday for peddling drugs to school students.

Officials seized 171 grams of mephedrone (MD) worth Rs3.42 lakh from them.

Officials said they had received a complaint from one of the schools teachers 10 days ago. She said she had seen children dressed in school uniforms buying drugs in the area.Acting on the complaint, the cell conducted a special drive to crack down on drug peddlers in Mazagaon.

Officials nabbed Zakir Mansur Shaikh, 33, Nurnabi Shaikh, 40 and Paaki Bablu Shaikh, 26. The three are history sheeters and have cases of drug peddling registered against them. They have been remanded in police custody till August 24, said Shivdeep Lande, deputy commissioner of police, ANC. Police said they are investigating how many school students the accused targeted.

Officials are in the process of ascertaining where the drugs were bought from.
Its the same orange sofa, the same purple walls, the same dialogues, and even the same characters. Only its different.

Jay Zs video for his song Moonlight remakes an episode of iconic sitcom F.R.I.E.N.D.S with an all-Black cast and makes a bold statement on the role of racism in Hollywood and media.

The video -- directed by Master of None co-creator Alan Yang -- shows part of the F.R.I.E.N.D.S Season 3 episode The One Where No Ones Ready and plays with the video of the shows popular theme song Ill be there for you.

Before the song begins, Jerrod Carmichael who plays Ross walks out of the set to ask comedian comedian Hannibal Buress (playing himself) what he thinks of the show.

Buress scornfully responds: Garbage. It was terrible man... You did a good job of subverting good comedy. Will you do Black Full House next?

Then the set blurs as a cue for the song to begin:

We stuck in La La Land / Even when we win, we gon lose...

Cause their grass is greener / Cause they always rakin in mo

The over 7-minute video stars Issa Ray (Rachel) from HBOs popular comedy Insecure and The Carmichael Shows Lil Rel Howery (Joey) and Jerrod Carmichael (Ross). Lakeith Stanfield plays Chandles, Tiffany Haddish is Phoebe and Tessa Thompson is Monica. The short film, which is part of Jay Zs album 4:44, has more than two lakh hits on YouTube.

This isnt the first time Jay Z has spoken through his art against whitewashing in the industry. His music video The Story of OJ ran into controversy over allegedly anti-Semitic lyrics. The song begins with: Skin is / skin, is Skin black / my skin is black / My, black, my skin is yellow

Recently, several movies, including Aloha, Argo, Prince of Persia, were mocked for casting exclusively white actors. Ironically, Oscar-winner La La Land was also criticised for whitewashing the history of Jazz.

With inputs from PTI
A three-year- old child has died allegedly of swine flu, making him the first casualty in Gautam Budh Nagar due to the H1N1 influenza this year.

The child with high fever was admitted to Super Specialty Child PGI Hospital in Noida Sector 30 a week ago and he was diagnosed with swine flu.

On Wednesday, the child succumbed to the flu. We have sent our report to the district health department, said Dr DK Singh, chief medical superintendent, Super Specialty Child PGI Hospital.

The childs swine flu was confirmed by a report from National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC). We are looking into possible reason behind the death, Singh said.

In the wake of the death due to swine flu, the GB Nagar health department said it will inquire into reasons behind the casualty.

We received the report only yesterday about the casualty of the child, said Dr Anurag Bhargav, chief medical officer, GB Nagar.

Until now, Ghaziabad has registered two deaths due to swine flu and GB Nagar has registered one.

The count of positive cases of swine flu has also increased in Ghaziabad with five more cases of suspected samples being confirmed by NCDC in Delhi.

The total count of swine flu in Ghaziabad has reached 77. Apart from this, at least 20 patients from other districts have also been diagnosed with swine flu, said GK Mishra, district malaria officer, Ghaziabad health department.

In Gautam Budh Nagar, the count of swine flu has remained at 52.

Until now, we have not seen any increase from our earlier figure of 52 confirmed cases. We have again dispatched 16 more samples to the Delhi-based lab for test, said Dr Anurag Bhargav, chief medical officer, GB Nagar.

Swine flu is an infection caused by swine influenza virus that is endemic in pigs.

It is a highly contagious disease and can easily spread from a patient through saliva and mucus particles.

Dr Bhargav said, Diabetic people and those with kidney problems are more prone to swine flu. Patients should avoid going to crowded areas and should ideally maintain a distance from others to avoid spreading the infection.

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The land belonging to several villages in Ghaziabad and Hapur, acquired under the Delhi-Meerut Expressway (DME) project, are under the scanner as several complaints of alleged misuse of official position by government officials have surfaced.

The complaints allege that certain officials allegedly connived with private persons and purchased land in the name of their relatives to earn huge profits after the compensation amount was increased manifold during arbitration.

Taking cognizance of the complaints, divisional commissioner (Meerut) has ordered an inquiry and has directed the Ghaziabad district magistrate to submit a report within 15 days. Nearly 266 hectares, belonging to 18 villages in Ghaziabad, were acquired under the Delhi-Meerut Expressway project.

We have received several complaints that certain government officials, after the land acquisition notification, purchased land in the name of relatives and earned profits after the amount of compensation was increased during the arbitration stage. I have directed the Ghaziabad district magistrate to inquire and submit report within 15 days, said Dr Prabhat Kumar, divisional commissioner (Meerut).

In December, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone for the 74km expressway project and upgrading of the 22km Dasna-Hapur section of National Highway-24.

According to official sources in the Ghaziabad administration, the notification for land acquisition was issued in 2011 and nearly Rs 442 crore has been awarded as compensation so far for the land acquired. The award of compensation started in 2015-16.

The sources said the sale and purchase of land belonging to several villages Nahal, Dasna, Kushaliya and villages in Murad Nagar  is under the scanner.

The officials said the district magistrate has constituted a committee, comprising three senior district officials and will investigate the complaints.

It is alleged that certain officials connived with private persons and made profit after purchasing the land in name of their relatives. It is also alleged that the officials misused their position and divulged information about government policies to certain parties.

Until the first week of August, the Ghaziabad district administration has distributed nearly 1,909.1 crore as compensation. This includes the amount distributed under DME project, eastern peripheral expressway project and dedicated freight corridor projects.

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Following the unexplained death of their 10-year-old son at GD Goenka School in Indirpauram on August 1, parents of Arman Sehgal appeared before the inquiry officer and submitted their statement in writing. The Ghaziabad district magistrate had ordered a magisterial probe into the class 4 students death and the inquiry will end on August 22.

Arman died after a fall on the second floor corridor on August 1. Alleging negligence on the part of the school, his parents had filed an FIR for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and destruction of evidence against the school officials. The school officials claim it was an accident.

In their statements, his parents have primarily said Arman was not given medical aid or oxygen at school which could have saved his life. They also stated that three unidentified men barged into the post-mortem house and spoke to doctors while Armans autopsy was going on. They also claimed that they were threatened at gunpoint by unidentified men to settle the matter, said Rajesh Kumar Yadav, additional district magistrate (finance & revenue), the inquiry officer.

The official said Armans parents, Swati and Gulshan Sehgal, said that they were not shown the CCTV footage procured by the police from the school premises. They also the police were lax with the probe.

They said the police gave time to the school authorities to seek legal remedy. Sehgals have also said the post-mortem report indicates injuries to the base of the skull but did not indicate how the injury was sustained, Yadav said.

The official said three of Armans relatives also recorded their statements. He said he will now seek a report from the police and Priti Jaiswal, additional district magistrate (city), who conducted an inspection at the school soon after the incident.

Read I Ghaziabad student death: No arrest, parents to protest outside school

Jaiswal had found that the staff nurse was not available when Arman was brought to the medical room, besides finding a non-functional oxygen cylinder and a strip of expired medicine.

The school authorities have also moved the Allahabad high court which ordered that any coercive action be kept in abeyance till August 28.

After the report from the police and ADM (city), I will finish the inquiry and submit a report to the Ghaziabad district magistrate, Yadav said.

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A day after the collapse of an under-construction roof in Mayoor School in Noidas Sector 126, in which a construction worker was killed, the school authorities have agreed to pay a compensation of Rs 8.68 lakh to the kin of the dead man.

The decision was announced after district magistrate BN Singh took a strict view of the mishap and ordered a magisterial inquiry. The inquiry will probe the aspects of criminal negligence on the part of school authorities and contractors.

Thirty-year-old Sunil Kumar, a construction worker from Allahabad, died on Friday in the roof collapse. Kumar was buried under the construction rubble for over half an hour before he was rescued and rushed to a nearby hospital. He succumbed during treatment.

Labour supervisor Babu Khan said the identity of the deceased was established but they were not able to trace the kin of the victim. Police are also trying to trace the kin of the deceased to inform them about the accident and hand over the body to them.

Following the incident on Friday, Singh reprimanded school authorities and said, is this the way a school is run?, indicating that the Friday mishap could have proved dangerous for children as well.

Deputy labour commissioner BK Rai said as per the Employees Compensation Act, 1923, the school authorities are required to pay a compensation of Rs 8.68 lakh to the kin of the deceased.

Rai added, The school authorities have agreed to pay the compensation in the form of a cheque to the labour department, which will be given to the kin of the deceased.

As per the Act, Rai said, The onus is on the primary employer (the school in this case) to pay a compensation to the worker, whether employed on a permanent or a contract basis.

The victims family is also entitled to a compensation of Rs 50,000 under the governments building and other construction workers welfare board, he said.

Meanwhile at the accident site, the firemen on Saturday were still struggling to remove the rubble which has turned solid due to the presence of concrete sludge and iron mesh.

We had employed a crane and gas cutters to remove the debris, but have to be careful at the same time to ensure that the adjacent structure is not disturbed, a fireman said.

There were at least 24 construction workers at the site, of whom 14 sustained injuries in the roof collapse. The other workers are safe.However, the possibility of someone being trapped under the rubble cannot be ruled out, the fireman said.

Khan said, most of the workers who had received injuries have been extended treatment and are being discharged from the hospital.
The court of sessions judge Gurbir Singh in Ludhiana on Saturday granted conditional bail to actress Rakhi Sawant in a case of allegedly hurting sentiments of the Valmiki community. The judge also ordered her to appear before the trial court of judicial magistrate Vishav Gupta on or before August 25.

Sawant through her counsel had sought extension in time to appear before the court during the previous hearing in the case which the court has accepted now, thus granting extension till August 25.

During the August 7 hearing, the court of the judicial magistrate had issued fresh non-bailable arrest warrants against her after she failed to appear. Before that, on August 5, Sawant was granted conditional bail but she failed to appear in court subsequently. The court had ordered the police to arrest her by September 5.

A lawyer named Narinder Adiya had filed the case against Sawant in July last year under section 295 (hurting religious sentiments) of the IPC for her alleged derogatory comments on Maharishi Valmiki on television.
When the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) set up an office in Mohali in 1998, the IT exports from the tricity stood at a mere 7 crore, today they have jumped to an astronomical 3,800 crore. Industry insiders attribute this big leap to the software technology park, which is one of the largest in the country.

Set up to develop and promote exports pertaining to Information Technology (IT) trade in Tier 2 cities, the STPI has been both a mentor and regulator for the local IT entrepreneurs, providing them a host of services such as commercial internet connections, data centre hosting and other policy support required to connect with their offshore clients.

Know the institution: Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) was established and registered as an autonomous society under the Department of Information Technology in June, 1991, to develop and regulate IT exports in India. Its Mohali centre, which came up in 1998, was among the initial offices in tier-2 cities after the central government decided to boost IT exports from these cities. Its prime job since the days of its inception has been to help local IT companies get tax concession under STP schemes and certify their exports. With its new incubation facility in Phase 8B, Mohali, ready for use, it is now increasingly donning the role of a facilitator than a regulator. It will soon hold regular workshops and seminars in partnership with industry and experts to upgrade the skills of professionals working here besides helping the industry with market analysis and new areas of business. The companies registered with STPI no longer get income tax exemption but they can avail exemption of indirect taxes like central excise duty or customs on any purchase meant for their units expansion. Under the GST regime, they will also get refund.

Nearly 150 IT/ITES, mostly registered in Chandigarh and Mohali, are now developing products and offering services to their foreign clients through a vibrant workforce of over 35,000 IT graduates. The future, local STPI officials say, is very bright given that Mohali is building the right infrastructure.

Changing roles

Going down the memory lane, Ajay Prasad Shrivastava, the additional director heading the office here, said that barring a few companies, majority of the people had no idea about IT exports and the business opportunity they presented when they set up their office here. Internet connectivity was also an issue at that time. But we managed to overcome all such bottlenecks over the years thanks to the right approach of the local government authorities and business community, he said.

STPI is regions first commercial internet service provider that helped companies connect with their clients thousands of miles away. After the advent of other private internet service providers in the early 2000, it changed its role to that of a facilitator, helping the local industry in decoding central schemes and passing on tax benefits for their expansion.

RP Singh, CEO of home-grown company Seaasia, says though STPI is a certifying authority of their exports, it never played the role of a regulatory body unlike government departments, and that is the reason, business grew by leaps and bounds and has the potential to grow even further.

Shrivastava says the arrival of Quark Software in Mohali, inauguration of the Rajiv Gandhi IT Park and the periodic e-revolution seminars by STPI were some of the landmarks developments that gave a fillip to export business here.

Embarking on new journey

Well ensconced in its new headquarters at Phase 8B, STPI is gearing up for yet another change of role.

Shrivastava told HT that they are in touch with several industrial organisations and experts along with IT trade representatives to regularly hold seminars and workshops for the industry. He said IT trade in the tricity has reached a stage where it needs to focus on skill development of professionals working here besides exploring new trade opportunities abroad.

Although all companies in this trade are sensitive to these issues, sometimes individual efforts dont benefit the industry at large. Our role is to create a synergy between new market trends and industry so that everyone learns from each others experience, explained Shrivastava. Earlier, we had constraints of space but now we have a new state-of-the-art building that has auditoriums and enough space to hold such programmes and workshops regularly, he added.

STPIs swish new building is a stark contrast to any humdrum government facility. A hi-tech power efficient building, it has also created nearly 55,893 square feet of office space from third to sixth floor for start-ups. Many companies are already queuing up for the office space.

The second floor is dedicated to budding entrepreneurs who can get affordable office space under its plug-and-play scheme subject to approval from STPIs selection committee.

The internet connectivity and storage capacity of data are two major concerns of IT trade. The STPI has addressed both these issues efficiently in this building. Its first floor is dedicated to 160-rack data centre along with high speed internet connectivity to ensure ease of business for entrepreneurs.

We are a friendly office and provide all possible assistance to anyone who approaches us for setting up a new export unit. We even help them in filling up forms, claimed Shrivastava.

Future bright

If STPIs projection is to be believed, IT exports from the tricity can double in the next five to seven years and Mohali will earn a major share of the dividend due to the changing business dynamics.

One major reason for this buoyancy is the upcoming IT city (Sector 83 and 101) in Mohali, which is located in the vicinity of Chandigarh International Airport. Of the 46 companies allotted space here, many firms have already begun construction. Quarkcity, the first special economic zone for IT industry in Punjab, is going to add another building to its huge campus in Phase 8B to make office space for nearly 30 IT companies. STPIs own office can accommodate nearly a dozen IT companies.

Lauding the STPI for promoting IT in the region, Rakesh Kumar Verma, secretary, industries and commerce, Punjab government, said the software park officials not only understand the industry well, but also have the bandwidth to deal with all sorts of issues.

The STPI will also play a crucial in future as our upcoming industry policy puts a major thrust on developing IT and electronic trade, with Mohali as the focal point, said Verma, adding that the state government is very serious about IT and willing to help its stakeholders in any possible manner.

STPI officials say infrastructure logjam used to be a major problem in the tricity till a few years ago. This is not the case now. The international airport will prove to be a major game changer for IT industry here once it is connected directly to Europe and US, making it more convenient for foreign clients to land here, said Shrivastava.

Certification issue

After the end of income tax exemptions in 2011, several units stopped certifying their IT exports with STPI. Ajay Prasad Shrivastava, additional director heading STPI in Mohali, says such firms are flouting the rules. RBIs 2013 guidelines clearly state that banks cant allow remittance of foreign currency to IT export units if their exports (against which the foreign exchange is received) are not certified by the STPI office in their area, declared Shrivastava. But sources in the industry 5% to 10% of the existing units are flouting these norms.

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The chairman of Rs 200 crore Rainbow Group of companies, Dhirendra Rawani (45) was shot dead by his nephew Kunal Rawani late Friday evening over a suspected property dispute. Kunal was caught by locals who lynched him on the spot.

Rawani was walking with friends in a local bazaar when Kunal accosted him and shot at from close range on his chest.

He was rushed to Central Hospital in the city where the doctors declared him brought dead.

Kunal, son of the deceaseds cousin Shankar Rawani, was trapped while trying to escape from spot and beaten to death.

No arrests have been made yet.

Dhanbad senior superintendent of police (SSP), Manoj Ratan Chothe said Rawani used to shuttle between Dhanbad, where he ran hotels and other businesses, and Bhawra, where he had his ancestral property. On Friday, he had gone to Dhanbad to attend Mansa Puja.

Rawani is survived by his wife and two children.

Our officers had reached the spot immediately and rushed both the uncle and nephew to two different hospitals. Unfortunately, none of them survived, Chothe said.

The police found a magazine loaded with three live cartridges of 7.35mm bullets from the murder site and a used cartridge from Kunals pocket, the SSP said.

Rawani and his cousin Shankar shared common boundary at their native village but were engaged in a long dispute over property. Both sides had filed different cases over property dispute. The murder is suspected to be a fallout of the property dispute.

Shankar has been in jail for a year in connection with a fraud related to his chit fund companies. Kunal too was accused in this case but was absconding, police said.

Rawani, son of Gurudayal Rawani, a retired driver of BCCL, had begun his business venture on a humble note with an investment of around Rs 35,000 by setting a micro finance cooperative company in 2003-04.

Once he made huge profits, he invested in real estate and hotels in Jharkhand and other neighboring states. The present value of his business empire is estimated at over Rs 200 crores.

Rawanis business empire is spread across Bihar, West Bengal, MP, UP and Chhattisgarh with 66 branch offices divided in four zones. The group employs about 800 people. He was arrested in 2015 in connection with a fraud case, but he got bail same year. He had claimed that his was chit Fund Company but an administrative probe revealed that it was a credit cooperative society.

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Two television actors - Gagan Kang and Arjit Lavania - along with a spotboy, were killed in a road accident on Saturday.

Kang, who plays Lord Indra in the mythological serial Mahakali - Anth Hi Aarambh Hai on Colors, and his co-star, who plays Nandi, were in Fiat Linea when the accident took place, a Times of India report says. The spotboy was seated in the rear. They were returning to their Goregaon home from their studio in Umbergaon in Gujarat, the report continues.

Kang, who was driving, lost control of the vehicle at 11:15 am, and crashed into a stationary trailer.

Eye-witnesses said that the impact of the crash crushed the cars roof. The police detained the driver of the trailer, but found him to be innocent. His vehicle had been correctly parked on the side of the road.

Maharashtra: 3 people dead after a container hit a car on Mumbai- Ahmedabad highway near Palghar's Manor town. pic.twitter.com/JkXuNMzQCw  ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

The police said that Kang was found dead in the drivers seat, and that beer cans and snacks were scattered about in the car. It is being speculated that he was speeding.

A case of accidental death has been registered and the police are waiting for the autopsy to learn if the driver was drunk.

Our friends and MahaKaali actors Gagan Kang and Arijit Lavania (Indra and Nandi) met with a horrible car accident. They're no more...  Utkarsh Naithani (@utkarshnaithani) August 19, 2017

Really sad and disturbed to hear about our tv actors of Mahakali Gagan kang and arjit Lawania RIP. may god give strength to their families  Nitin Dhall (@directornitin) August 19, 2017

Shocking indeed! May the soul of Gagan Kang and Arjit Lavania rest in peace.  Payel (@payeldey12) August 19, 2017

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In the quiet of the night on Wednesday, Baltimore, a black-majority city in Maryland state, got rid of four statues of confederate figures, including one of Robert E Lee, the general who is enjoying new celebrity lately. The operation was carried out stealthily and swiftly to avoid a repeat of Charlottesville.

Also in Maryland, lawmakers have voted to take down a statue of Roger Brooks Taney, the countrys fifth Supreme Court chief justice, who delivered the majority opinion in the historic 1857 Dred Scott ruling that African Americans could never become citizens of the US. And New York City is scrubbing out all confederate names from its streets.

Confederate era statues, monuments and plaques are facing renewed scrutiny and are being removed or there are calls for their removal across America Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia and Massachusettsafter the Charlottesville clashes on Saturday claimed three lives, one of whom died when a car, with a white supremacist at the wheel, plowed through the counterprotestors; 19 others were injured.

It is fair to say that there is more attention on the issue now than there has been for many years, Ilya Somin, professor of Law at George Mason University who has written on the issue, told HT. There was also widespread debate about the Confederacy in the 1950s and 1960s (during the Civil Rights movement) and in the decades immediately following the Civil War.

And as before, there are those who have argued for the memorials to be left alone, as part of the countrys history and heritage, good, bad or ugly. President Donald Trump, whose election in November has unleashed a fresh wave of racial tensions and emboldened white hate groups, is among them, with the neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and the white supremacists.

Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!, the president wrote in multiple posts on Twitter on Thursday, adding, Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!

A statue of Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson, a well-known confederate general like Lee, was among the four taken down in Baltimore that night. But George Washington, the first president, and Thomas Jefferson, the third, are both safe, despite the presidents warning.

But others, and thats a steadily growing tribe, have argued for the need for the nation to confront its history. Calling for the removal of the statue of chief justice Taney, Marylands Republican governor Larry Hogan said in a statement, While we cannot hide from our historynor should wethe time has come to make clear the difference between properly acknowledging our past and glorifying the darkest chapters of our history.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups and other extremists, counted 1,503 confederate place names and other symbols in public places in 2015. That included 718 monuments and statues, 109 public schools named for Lee and other confederate icons; 80 counties and cities named for Confederates.

There are 10 US military bases named after confederates, including three of the largest military bases in the world  Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas, and Fort Benning in Georgia. Pentagon has refused to answer questions about plans to rename them in the wake of the new debate.

So where do you draw the line? How much can be undone? It is hard to figure out the exact place to draw the line. But I think, at the very least, governments should not continue to honour historical figures whose main claim to fame was perpetrating large-scale injustices, said Somin, citing the example of Eastern European countries that were justified in taking down monuments to communist rulers, and the Germans were right to take down Nazi monuments.

The last time Americans were confronted with the issue in a significant way was in the aftermath of the killing of nine African Americans at an iconic black church in South Carolina by white supremacist Dylann Roof in 2015. There were calls for removing a confederate flag from the grounds of the state governments offices in the capital city.
A World War II-era US government film warning of the dangers of racism and fascism has resurfaced on social media websites after clashes between white nationalists and counter protesters during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The film, first released by the US Department of War in the 1940s and titled Dont be a Sucker, begins with a man addressing a crowd on the importance of keeping jobs for the real Americans.

I see Negroes holding jobs that belong to you and me. If we allow this type of thing to go on, whats going to become of us real Americans? And I tell you friends, well never be able to call this country our own, until its a country without. Without what? Without negroes, without alien foreigners, without Catholics, without freemasons, the man shouts.

US President Donald Trumps in his inauguration speech in January this year had promised US would safeguard its interests and the administrations policies will remain dedicated to Buy American and Hire American.

A still from the film shows a man saying minorities are taking away Americans jobs.

The camera then shifts to a Hungarian refugee who pulls one of the spectators aside and warns him about the divisive propaganda of the Nazis in Germany and Europe, saying: I thought Nazis were crazy people, stupid fanatics. But unfortunately that was not so. Jews were savagely persecuted and six million were systematically killed by the Nazis till the end of the World War 2 in 1945.

I was born in Hungary, you are a Mason. These are minorities... Your right to belong to these minorities is a precious thing, the refugee says.

Dont be a Sucker was released by the US government in the 1940s.

The 17-minute video, posted on Twitter by Michael Oman-Reagan, an anthropologist and researcher in British Columbia, has been retweeted more than 1.6 lakh times and liked by over 2 lakh users, The Atlantic reports.

The cautionary tale -- of learning from one of the largest genocides in history -- also becomes relevant after violence in Charlottesville where white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan members and neo-Nazis came together in a Unite the Right march last week. A woman counter-protester was killed after a white nationalist plowed his car through a crowd in Virginia.

The refugee speaks to a spectator in this still from the film.

The US Presidents decision not to unequivocally denounce white nationalists has been widely criticised across the world. I think there is blame on both sides, Trump said in a press conference days after the incident.

While the clip from Dont be a Sucker seems relevant to todays America, an article in Vox points out that the film wasnt that effective. A 1951 study conducted on the impact of the movie showed that many Americans -- even after the end of the World War 2 -- didnt seriously believe propaganda similar to the Nazi agenda could be influential in the US, a Vox article says.
A leadership candidate for Britains anti-immigrant, far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP) has come up with a radical plan to cut unnecessary population in the UK by incentivising some migrants, including from India, to return to the country of their origin.

John Rees-Evans made a specific reference to Indians and Tanzanians in relation to a so-called fast track export- import scheme of offering up to 9,000 to certain Commonwealth migrants to leave the UK.

Its not going to be draconian. Its not going to be fascist. Im not interested in using eugenics or any evil things like that, and yet I would be pushing for negative net migration towards one million a year, Rees-Evans is heard saying in a speech filmed during a meeting in Greater Manchester earlier this month, in a story first published by the Daily Mirror.

He suggested that the UK governments foreign aid budget should be cut from more than 13 billion a year to 1 billion , with 12.3 billion then spent on incentivising British citizens with dual citizenship to leave the country, citing British Indians and Tanzanians, whom he said could set up their own businesses.

He referred to Indians as an example of migrants who can be offered such an option. However, India does not offer dual nationality to its citizens.

Rees-Evans later defended the plan on his Facebook page, saying the fee would incentivise people to set up businesses overseas.

He claimed: I am being accused of wanting to send people of a particular country, or countries, abroad. This is absolutely not the case.

The net effect would be a reduction in Britains population of up to several hundred thousands persons annually, as well as forging prolific and valuable import-free trading relationships that will create jobs in the exporting country, while reducing the cost of living to British residents.

Under his scheme, the UK citizens who decided to move back to Britain within seven years would repay the financial award.

Rees-Evans UKIP rivals have condemned the comments, made on August 2. Peter Whittle, a London Assembly member and frontrunner to lead the party, said the remarks were utterly and entirely wrong.
The Moroccan man suspected of killing two people and injuring eight others in a stabbing attack in Finland was an asylum seeker who targeted women in his attack, police said Saturday.

We think that the attacker especially targeted women, and the men were wounded after coming to the defence of the women, superintendent Christa Granroth of Finlands National Bureau of Investigation told reporters.

Two women were killed in Fridays attack, and eight other people were injured. Among the eight were six women and two men, police said.

One man was injured trying to help a victim and one man tried to stop the attacker, Granroth said.

Police shot and wounded the knife-wielding suspect, arresting him minutes after an afternoon stabbing rampage at a busy market square in Turku in southwestern Finland.

Police identified him only as an 18-year-old Moroccan national who had arrived in Finland in early 2016 and who had sought asylum.
In air conditioned bunkers and at military bases across South Korea, it is with keyboards - not tanks - that South Korean and the US forces will launch military exercises on Monday, denounced by North Korea as a rehearsal for war.

The August 21 to August 31 exercises involve computer simulations designed to prepare for the unthinkable: war with nuclear-capable North Korea.

The wargames, details of which are a closely guarded secret, simulate military conflict with the isolated country. The US describes them as defensive in nature, a term North Korean state media has dismissed as a deceptive mask.

The drills deal with all the steps involved in a war, of course, towards victory, said Moon Seong-mook, a retired South Korean brigadier who regularly participated in the drills until the mid-2000s.

Far from the dusty firing ranges just south of the heavily fortified border with North Korea, US and South Korean troops hunch over laptops and screens wearing earphones and camouflaged combat uniforms, according to photos of past UFG drills on the United States Forces Korea website.

The US military describes the software behind the drills as state-of-the-art wargaming computer simulations. There will be no field training during the exercise, according to US Forces Korea.

As part of the exercises, imagery from military satellites orbiting above the Korean peninsula, is at times used to peer deep into North Korea, said a former South Korean government official who declined to be identified.

Banks of monitors and computer graphics create simulated battlefields, complete with troop movements, according to Park Yong-han, a military expert formerly with the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analysis.

You can expand a certain area to see what troops are in what sort of status and where they will move, said Park.

In the case of North Korea, we cant see everything in real time but the military deduces the locations of North Korean troops, including the leadership during the exercise.

That focus on the North Korean leadership is what particularly infuriates Pyongyang, experts say.

We cannot stand the fact the enemy tries to form schemes to assassinate our leadership, North Koreas state news agency, KCNA, said in July.

We will follow to the ends of the earth those who dare try to harm our core.

Commando raid

North Koreas rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching the US mainland has fuelled a surge in tension.

US President Donald Trump warned that North Korea would face fire and fury if it threatened the United States. The North responded by threatening to fire missiles towards the US Pacific island territory of Guam.

The North later said it was holding off firing towards Guam, while it waited to see what the United States would do next.

Called Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), the joint drills have their roots in a 1968 raid on South Koreas Blue House presidential complex, when Unit 124 of the North Korean army secretly entered South Korea and unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate the then president, Park Chung-hee.

The United States had been conducting regular command and control drills in the years following the 1950-53 Korean War, but combined exercises with the South Korean military following the failed raid, in which all but two of the North Korean commandos were killed.

The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea. Many of them will be joining thousands of South Korean forces in the exercise.

Other South Korean allies are also joining this year with troops from Australia, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand taking part.

Its to prepare if something big were to occur and we needed to protect ROK, a U.S. military spokeswoman, Michelle Thomas, said, referring to South Korea by the initials of its official name, the Republic of Korea.

North and South Korea are still technically at war with the North after the Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.

China, North Koreas main ally and trading partner, has urged the United States and South Korea to scrap the drills and so has Russia.

The United States has not backed down.

My advice to our leadership is that we not dial back our exercises, said Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff on Thursday in Beijing.

The exercises are very important to maintaining the ability of the alliance to defend itself.
A knife attacker stabbed eight people on the street in Russias far northern city of Surgut before being shot by police, investigators said on Saturday. Islamic State claims responsibility for the attack.

The man carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds to eight while moving along central streets of the city at around 11:20 am local time (0620 GMT) said Russias Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes.

It said that armed police then arrived and used their weapons on the attacker and liquidated him.

The incident took place in a city some 2,100 kilometres northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.

Two of those stabbed are in a serious condition while five more are in a stable condition, the government of the Khanty-Mansi region said in a statement, calling the attacker so far unidentified.

It called for calm over the incident, saying that in the interests of public calm and also of the investigation, citizens and media are recommended to use reliable information in assessing the situation until all the circumstances are established.
The Lebanese army launched an offensive against an Islamic State enclave on the northeast border with Syria, a Lebanese security source said on Saturday, as Hezbollah and the Syrian army announced an assault from the Syrian side of the border.

The Lebanese army was targeting Islamic State positions near the town of Ras Baalbek with rockets, artillery and helicopters, the source said. The area is the last part of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier under insurgent control.

We started advancing at 5 am (0200 GMT), the Lebanese source said.

The operation by the Syrian army and Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Lebanese group, was targeting Islamic State militants in the western Qalamoun region of Syria, the Hezbollah-run al-Manar television station reported, an area across the frontier from Ras Baalbek.

Last month, Hezbollah forced Nusra Front militants and Syrian rebels to leave nearby border strongholds in a joint operation with the Syrian army.

The Lebanese army, a major recipient of US military aid, did not take part in the July operation, but it has been gearing up to assault the Islamic State pocket in the same mountainous region. A military source said around 500 IS fighters were holed up in the enclave.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun was following the army operation, called Jroud Dawn. Jroud refers to the barren, mountainous border area between Lebanon and Syria.

Lebanese security sources have previously said the army intends to fight Islamic State in Lebanese territory on its own, in response to suggestions Hezbollah or the Syrian army may help it.
From Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Mark Ruffalo to JK Rowling and Olivia Wilde, some celebrities have never refrained from speaking out against President Donald Trump and criticising his policies. Hollywood actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is one such person.

Following the white supremacist rally and race clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12 and Trumps statement that both sides were to be blamed, Schwarzenegger featured in a video, posted to Twitter by California-based ATTN, to send a direct message to the President and white nationalists.

The Terminator actor, using a bobblehead doll of Trump, said the president has a moral responsibility to send an unequivocal message that you wont stand for hate and racism.

It took Trump a few hours to tweet his first response to the clashes, calling for peace on Saturday. After a few more hours, he proceeded to blame many sides for the violence that claimed three lives.



Referring to this statement, Schwarzenegger said if you choose to march with a flag that symbolises the slaughter of millions of people, there are not two sides to that. The only way to beat the loud, angry voices of hate is to meet them with louder, more reasonable voices.



The former action film hero continued his video with a blunt message for white supremacists and neo-Nazis. These ghosts you idolise spent the rest of their lives living in shame and right now, theyre resting in hell.

He concluded the video by saying, Lets terminate hate. The actor, who served as a politician between 2003 and 2011, also posted a picture of himself on Instagram wearing a t-shirt in his classic Terminator role on Thursday, sporting the same words.

Following the violence in Charlottesville, Schwarzenegger donated $100,000 to an anti-hate organisation. Trump was upset with Schwarzenegger for not supporting him and even mocked the former California governors stint on the show The Apprentice.
Ousted from the post of White House chief strategist in yet another churn of personnel, Stephen Bannon told a conservative news publication on Friday that the Trump presidency we fought for, and won, is over.

Bannon, who headed the isolationist nationalist wing of the administration and was its key far-right figure, then went back to Breitbart News  a publication he had headed before joining the Trump campaign just a day over a year ago. He chaired the evening news meeting, a standard newsroom practice across the world, amid speculations if he will go after the President or those around him.

The far-right publication celebrated his return, terming him as a populist hero in an article that had editor-in-chief Alex Marlow saying: The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today. Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda.

#WAR, tweeted another Breitbart editor. Just the hashtag.

Bannon himself was more expansive in the interview with conservative publication The Weekly Standard. The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over, he said. We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. Itll be something else. And therell be all kinds of fights, and therell be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.

For now, he blamed the West Wing Democrats for the presidents failure to implement his programme. However, he named no one, mostly focussing his attack on moderate establishment Republicans by saying they were less than sincere about repealing and replacing legislations such as Obamacare.

Bannon said the Presidents ability to pursue his agenda  like economic nationalism and immigration  and his ability to get anything done  particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, its just gonna be that much harder with his exit.

The White House announced Bannons ouster earlier Friday, confirming speculation in the media. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steves last day, it said in a statement.

This was a unique exit, by mutual agreement. Bannon and those close to him have since told multiple publications that he originally intended to stay with Trump for a year, and that he had resigned on August 7, effective from August 14. But he had stayed on because of the Charlottesville clashes.

Bannon is the fourth senior-level official to leave the Trump White House in the last five weeks, following press secretary Sean Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus and communications director Anthony Scaramucci (who lasted just 11 days) in chronological order.

A former Goldman Sachs executive who immersed himself into politics after taking over Breitbart News, Bannons position in the White House had been a matter of speculation for months. For one, Trump had resented the notion that Bannon orchestrated his victory in the elections last November.

There was also an impression that Bannon was behind some of Trumps best-known populist actions, such as pulling America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Paris Agreement; deciding to renegotiate a three-nation trade with neighbours Mexico and Canada; and clamping the anti-Muslim travel ban.

Trump believed in those issues himself, probably more strongly than anyone else in his team, and had made those promises much before Bannon joined his campaign. This was something the President was forced to point out to counter the deification of Bannon, triggered in part by a TIME magazine cover. But Mr Bannon came on very late, Trump said in his typically rambling manner in the now-infamous news briefing at Trump Tower this week. You know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr Bannon came on very much later than that.

The issue had bothered him. Trump had issued Bannon a warning along a similar line earlier in the presidency, when reports surfaced of the chief strategist tangling with Jared Kushner  the Presidents son-in-law and senior advisor  in one of the many rounds of infighting that have defined this White House.

Bannon had led the camp called nationalists, who argued for an America First, nationalist and isolationist thrust to every policy. With Ivanka and Kushner among its members, it ranged against so-called globalists who favoured continued engagement with the world, such as the Paris Agreement.

Bannon might go after them and his other White House detractors, such as National Security Adviser HR McMaster, with whom he had disagreed over Afghanistan.

I feel jacked up, he told The Weekly Standard. Now Im free. Ive got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, Its Bannon the Barbarian. I am definitely going to crush the opposition. Theres no doubt. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now Im about to go back, knowing what I know, and were about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.

Previous exits

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn: A retired general who was an early Trump supporter, Flynn was the first to be ousted from the White House after he lied to the vice-president about his contacts with Russian officials. He left in February, after spending less than a month in office. But the President continued to say good things about him, and allegedly tried to end the FBI probe into his contacts with Russians.

Deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh: Her exit happened next, in March. Walsh left to lead an outside pro-Trump outfit to support the Presidents agenda. She was a close ally of then chief of staff Reince Preibus, going back to their stint at the Republican National Committee which Priebus had headed for years.

Communications director Michael Dubke: Brought in to shape the White Houses media strategy in March, Dubke left on reportedly amicable terms just three months later. The reasons, he said, were personal.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer: After a tumultuous six months in the position, Spicer quit last week after the president decided to bring Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier, aboard as communications director. Spicer and Priebus had both opposed Scaramuccis hiring, and managed to keep him out.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus: He had never managed to gain the full backing of the President, and had overseen a chaotic White House with no control over who saw, met or spoke to Trump  which happens to be the key responsibility of the chief of staff. His impending ouster was leaked by Scaramucci in an expletive-ridden rant to a reporter.

Communications director Anthony Scaramucci: Appointed in a sudden personnel reshuffle that led to Spicers ouster, Scaramucci was shunted from the White House after serving just 11 days in his new job. The reason was the same late-night rant in which he described Bannon as a self-serving man  only in more colourful language.
Two men convicted of terrorising Jewish communities in New Jersey, including firebombing two synagogues and throwing a Molotov cocktail into a rabbis home, were sentenced Friday to 35 years in prison.

Anthony Graziano and Indian-American Aakash Dalal were sentenced in court in Bergen County after they were convicted last year of terrorism charges.

Besides the firebombings, prosecutors say the men also spray painted anti-Semitic graffiti at two other synagogues.

This was the first case in which the states post-9/11 terrorism statute was used. It mandates a prison term of 30 years to life.

They were partners in hate. Partners in intimidation and ultimately in crime, assistant prosecutor Brian Sinclair said.

They faced up to life in prison in the case that was the first to employ a state anti-terrorism statute that requires at least 30 years in prison.

Their attack included the fire in the bedroom of a rabbis home in Rutherford. The rabbi, his wife, five children and his parents were sleeping at the time.

The way I chose to express myself with violence was wrong, Graziano said at the sentencing hearing while apologizing. The hatred I had for the Jewish faith was unacceptable. I hope the Jewish community can find peace after tragedy.

His mother apologised to the Jewish community and said he was brain-washed and taught to hate by Dalal. Dalal did not speak at Fridays sentencing.

Prosecutors also said Dalal pushed Graziano along during the hate spree. I dont trust you until you kill a Jew, Dalal wrote to Graziano in one chat message, prosecutors said.

Attorneys for the men argued for the minimum sentence, pointing out that they were only 19 years old when the attacks happened.

Hes not a young man who is bitter, said Grazianos attorney, Ian Silvera. He recognises that he made a huge mistake in his life ... to kill anyone was never his intention.

Dalals attorney said the 30-year prison sentence mandated by the law was excessive for someone who committed a crime at 19.
Spanish police expanded a manhunt Saturday for a Moroccan national believed to be one of the perpetrators of twin terror attacks in Barcelona and another seaside resort that killed 14 and wounded around 100.

With the country in shock after the carnage which saw two men deliberately ploughing vehicles into crowds of pedestrians, Madrid mulled raising the terror alert to the maximum in the worlds third tourism destination.

With investigators working round the clock to identify the network behind the bloodshed, police said they were hunting for 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub without confirming reports he was the driver who ploughed a van into pedestrians in Barcelona on Thursday.

Thirteen people died at the scene and scores more were injured in scenes of horror witnessed by terrified friends and relatives, with locals and tourists laying flowers, candles and teddies in their memory.

Investigators meanwhile were working furiously to unravel the terror cell of at least 12 young men -- some of them teenagers -- behind the Barcelona rampage and a second ramming attack with a car in the seaside town of Cambrils.

One woman was killed and six other people wounded, with police killing five suspected terrorists who were in the car and arresting four others.

The Barcelona attack was claimed by the Islamic State group.

Police have also identified another three suspects linked to the attacks, two of whom are thought to have died in a blast on Wednesday night as they tried to make explosives at a house in Alcanar, a town some 200 kilometres (140 miles) south of Barcelona.

As the hunt for Abouyaaqoub gathers pace, Spanish police tipped off their French counterparts about a white van linked to the attacks that may have crossed the border, a French police source told AFP.

Suspects father in shock

Police in Catalonia said three of the suspects shot dead in Cambrils were Moroccan nationals, identifying them as Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24.

Moussas brother Driss is one of the four arrested.

Back in Morocco, their father Said was in shock, with tears in his eyes when he was told of the news while at a wedding, surrounded by relatives.

Were under shock, completely devastated, he told AFP, saying Moussa had been studying normally at school while Driss worked honestly.

I hope they will say hes innocent... I dont want to lose my two sons.

Bigger plans

Police said they believed the suspects were planning a much larger attack, possibly a vehicle bomb, with the use of gas canisters.

But they appear to have made mistakes, accidentally detonating Wednesdays explosion.

Security forces removed dozens of gas canisters from the house in Alcanar, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona, and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope, said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonias police.

High level of coordination

Both attacks followed the same modus operandi with drivers deliberately targeting pedestrians in the latest in a series of such assaults in Europe.

In July 2016, 86 people were killed in the French resort of Nice when a man rammed a truck into a crowd. There have since been other deadly attacks using vehicles in Berlin, London and Paris.

Otso Iho of Janes Terrorism and Insurgency Centre said the Spanish assaults appeared to have a much higher level of coordination than has been typically present in previous attacks.

It is believed to be the first time IS has claimed an attack in Spain.

Terror threat level

Among the dead and injured were people from three dozen countries, including Algeria, Australia, China, France, Ireland, Peru and Venezuela, Spanish officials said.

The Catalan government said seven victims had been identified -- five Spanish nationals, an Italian and a Portuguese.

Fifty-nine people are still in hospital, including 15 in critical condition, the Catalan interior ministry said.

The Spanish government will decide on Saturday whether to raise the terror threat level from four to five -- the maximum -- at the height of the tourist season.

The tourism sector is crucial for Spains recovering economy, accounting for 11 percent of GDP.

Until now, Spain has been spared the recent wave of extremist attacks that have hit France, Belgium and Germany.

It has even seen a surge in tourists as visitors shun other restive sunshine destinations such as Tunisia and Egypt.

But it is no stranger to jihadist attacks.

In March 2004, it was hit by what remains Europes deadliest attack, when bombs on commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people in an attack claimed by Al Qaeda-inspired extremists.

Spain has also had to deal with a decades-long campaign of violence waged by Basque separatist group ETA, which only declared a ceasefire in 2011.
A small group of Muslims have gathered at Barcelonas Las Ramblas promenade to insist they arent terrorists in the wake of the twin vehicle attacks that killed 14 people and injured dozens.

The protest by about 100 members of Barcelonas Muslim community was held at the Canaletas Fountain at the top of the promenade.

They shouted We are not terrorists and Islam is peace.

Catalans Moroccan community, in particular, has been in the spotlight after the four main suspects in the attacks claimed Moroccan roots.
US President Donald Trump has said many decision were taken, including on Afghanistan at a meeting he had with top officials at a presidential retreat on Friday to review the administrations review of its South Asia policy.

The outcomes of the review  attended by secretary of state Rex Tillerson, defence secretary James Mattis, and top military and security aides  will have significant regional implications for India and Pakistan and beyond and are, thus, widely awaited around the world.

Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders. Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan, Trump tweeted after the meet.

Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders. Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

But he gave away no details, and there were no follow-ups from the White House, which had said on conclusion of the discussions that Trump was briefed extensively by his national security team on a new strategy to protect Americas interests in South Asia.

The President is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. However, she did not say or indicate if any decisions were taken.

The United States has around 8,400 troops in Afghanistan and the Trump administration had struggled for months with options ranging from a significant surge in the numbers to letting the present numbers stand and or get out of Afghanistan, ending the longest war America has ever fought.

There was a proposal some months ago from Pentagon to send an additional 3,800 troops. There was also a move to outsource the war to a private army run by military contractor Eric Prince, the founder of the controversial security company Blackwater. Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist, reportedly liked the idea, but national security adviser HR McMaster and other military leaders didnt.
This week, Chance The Rapper lent a helping hand to 17-year-old Heidi Hernandez, a Chicago student whos been battling sclerosing cholangitis since age 3. Chance was reached by Hernandez manager at Lou Malnatis Pizzeria, who requested help in getting Heidi tickets to see her favorite band Coldplay. Sure enough, the local emcee was able to score Hernandez and her boyfriend club seating at the bands Thursday night show in Chicago.

Hernandez has found solace in the music of Coldplay throughout her ongoing health issues. After being diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis at age 3, she received a liver transplant at age 9. However, the disease has returned in her new liver and she has also been diagnosed with hepatitis autoimmune. Doctors say she needs another transplant.

I got into a really bad depression where I wouldnt even be able to go to school. And I just started listening to [Coldplays] music and it made me feel a lot better, she told ABC News.

Attending the show was a great experience for Hernandez. It felt like everyone was being connected somehow because you enjoy the same music, she said. She also hopes that one day she can personally thank the members of the band for how theyve much theyve helped her.

According to ABC, Chance met with Hernandez at Lou Malnatis Pizzeria near Midway International Airport, where she has been working multiple days a week while attending high school.

Hernandez also offered some words on how to help people like her. Become an organ donator. You can always save a life. It may not be my life, but you can save so many lives with just one person, she said.

Chance The Rapper has been making an effort to give back to his city, particularly when it comes to the youth. He recently donated 30,000 backpacks to school kids as well as donating $1 million to Chicago Public Schools. He was presented with the Humanitarian Award at the 2017 BET Awards by former first lady and fellow Chicagoan Michelle Obama.With these passionate efforts, Chance is showing our young people that they matter, said Obama. Because of you, countless young people will grow up believing in themselves.

Chance The Rapper
BP recently began pumping natural gas from two major offshore projects, including the $2 billion Juniper development it operates off the Caribbean nation Trinidad and Tobago.

With the startup of the 10,250-ton Juniper platform and a joint venture off Western Australia, the British oil major has brought five of seven planned projects online this year, part of an effort to boost its natural gas output by about 800,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day by 2020.

"These new projects, with their lower development costs and higher margins, also further improve BP's resilience to the price movement," BP CEO Bob Dudley said in a statement.

The new production is part of Big Oil's bet on natural gas as the energy industry faces a future in which governments around the world crack down on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in an effort to slow climate change. Natural gas is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel, and many analysts believe it will serve as a transition fuel as nonpolluting energy sources are developed, improved and widely adopted.

The U.S. power industry's shift to natural gas from coal-fired plants, for example, is considered by energy analysts as the main reason that U.S. carbon dioxide emissions have declined over the past decade or so.

More Information Coming online in 2017 for BP: Juniper (Trinidad and Tobago) Trinidad Onshore Production (Trinidad and Tobago) Peresphone (Australia) West Nile Delta Taurus (Egypt) Khazzan Phase 1 (Oman) Zohr (Egypt) See More Collapse

The world's biggest oil companies, meanwhile, are increasing their exposure to natural gas. About half the portfolio of Royal Dutch Shell is natural gas, following its $50 billion acquisition last year of BG Group, a British exploration and production company.

"The largest contribution Shell can make to reducing emissions globally in the near term is to continue to grow the role of natural gas," Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said earlier this year.

Exxon Mobil took a similar approach to expanding its natural gas holdings a few years earlier when it paid $36 billlion for a Fort Worth-based gas company, XTO Energy. This summer, Exxon Mobil struck a deal with Summit Midstream Partners to build natural gas pipeline systems in the Delaware Basin, a section of the broader Permian Basin. Summit is spending $110 million to build a gathering system, a network of smaller pipelines that feed into larger arteries.

At the end of last year, BP moved the headquarters of its shale drilling unit from Houston to Denver, putting it closer to its holdings in the San Juan Basin, which stretches across Colorado and New Mexico and holds substantial gas reserves.

BP, which called the region "an important energy hub of the future," said test wells in the basin's Mancos Shale produced more gas than a typical well in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas and had the highest production rate in the San Juan Basin in 14 years.

In January, BP installed the Juniper platform - fabricated in Aransas Pass and Trinidad - 50 miles southeast of Trinidad, and in 360 feet of water above the Corallita and Lantana fields.

The platform, BP's 14th in the region, is expected to boost the company's natural gas production significantly, making it the largest project in Trinidad in several years.

The oil company said its partner, Woodside Energy, brought a natural gas joint venture project called the Persephone into production off Western Australia. The project, in which BP has a 16.7 percent stake, is expected to pump 48 million standard cubic feet of gas a day for the company.
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Houston-based Calpine Corp., one of the nation's largest power companies, has engineered a sale that will free it from the strictures of a public market as it and other traditional power companies are forced to change roles to make way for rising renewable energy and lower natural gas prices.

Calpine executives announced on Friday a much-anticipated sale to New Jersey private equity firm Energy Capital Partners, in a deal with an enterprise value of about $17 billion. Energy Capital and a group of investors will pay $15.25 a share in cash, or $5.6 billion, about a 50 percent premium to Calpine's share price before reports surfaced in May that the power company was considering putting itself up for sale. The investor group would also take on Calpine's more than $11 billion in debt.

The deal, which will take Calpine private, is expected to close early next year. It still must be approved by shareholders and Texas Public Utility Commission.

Calpine and analysts say the sale will likely mean little change for Calpine, which employs about 800 in Houston and is keeping its management and local headquarters, the company said. The company operates only natural gas plants, save for one geothermal facility in California and a solar farm in New Jersey. A spokesman for Calpine would not say if it will lay off employees or sell assets as a result of the deal.

"It's business as usual," company spokesman Brett Kerr said. "It is important to remember that this transaction is about the value of Calpine as it is run today - the people, assets and customers of Calpine, and operational savings is not the focus."

Energy Capital did not respond to a request for comment. Energy Capital's group of investors includes Access Industries, a New York-based holding company, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which invests in pension plans on behalf of the Canadian government.

By and large, investors responded enthusiastically to the deal. Calpine's stock jumped 11 percent Friday to close at $14.90.

But the sale is also good news for Calpine, analysts said, as the company has struggled in recent years in the face of persistently low electricity prices, a surge of renewable energy and the high costs of operating fossil fuel power plants. Calpine has sizable operations in Texas and California, where large amounts of cheap wind and solar power are coming into wholesale markets, driving down prices and squeezing profit margins. The company reported a second-quarter loss of $219 million, significantly larger than its $29 million loss in the second quarter of 2016.

While Calpine's deal with Energy Capital can't change the challenges of the power market, it will free Calpine from the demands of the public markets and quarterly earnings reports to adapt to the company's long-term plan of replacing coal-fired and nuclear power plants and sharing power markets with renewable energy, analysts say.

Natural gas plants are considered more flexible than coal or nuclear facilities, and able to more quickly ramp up or down as the intermittent power from renewable sources ebbs and flows.

"Ultimately, it's a good near-term option for shareholders, as there is continual uncertainty in the power market," said Andy Bischof, a senior equity analyst at the Chicago-based research firm Morningstar.

Calpine is not alone in its struggles with the market. NRG Energy, which recently reported a second-quarter loss of $642 million, said in July that it will sell up to $4 billion of its assets. Last month, the Houston company launched a round of layoffs across the country but would not disclose the number of job cuts.

Dynegy, another Houston company, is said to be in talks with Dallas-based Vistra Energy about a possible merger. Dynegy earlier this month reported a second-quarter loss of nearly $300 million.

Calpine, founded in California, moved its headquarters to Houston from San Jose in 2009, after emerging from bankruptcy in 2008. Calpine also owns the retail electricity provider Champion Energy Services, which it bought for $240 million in 2015.

Energy Capital Partners, which has offices on Louisiana in Houston, is a private equity firm that invests in power plants, pipelines, transmission and other energy assets.

The firm helped Dynegy finance its $3.3 billion acquisition of 17 U.S. power plants, including six in Texas, from French energy company Engie.

Dynegy last year bought out Energy Capital's stake in plants for $750 million. Energy Capital is also Dynegy's largest shareholder, with a 15 percent stake in the company, and analysts expect the private equity firm to adjust its presence on Dynegy's board to avoid any ownership conflicts once the deal with Calpine closes.
The El Paso City Council has joined a growing list of opponents of a proposed electric rate increase that, the city says, would disproportionately affect the rising number of rooftop solar customers in the far reaches of West Texas.

El Paso Electric, the investor-owned utility that serves the area and parts of New Mexico, has proposed a new rate structure that would separate thousands of rooftop solar panel owners into their own rate class. The proposal would also put additional charges on those customers' bills to help recoup losses resulting from less electricity moving through the company's power lines. El Paso has around 2,800 customers with rooftop solar, a small portion of its more than 276,000 residential customers.

This is the second time since 2015 that El Paso Electric has tried to separate rooftop solar customers into their own rate class. The last proposal was dropped after it was hotly contested by clean energy advocates.

The Public Utility Commission will begin hearings in the case on Monday, a process that could shape policy on electric rates for rooftop solar around the state. Rooftop solar is growing, including in Houston, where a handful of companies have entered the market, and utilities and retail electric companies in Texas are trying to adapt to a world where they compete with their own customers to deliver energy.

Utilities, in particular, will likely look to the PUC to determine their right to recover the costs of maintaining transmission lines that provide power to rooftop solar customers when the sun isn't shining.

El Paso Electric has proposed another rate increase in targeting solar panel users, and a chorus of opposition has again risen from environmentalists, elected officials and El Paso electric customers. This month, state Sen. Jose Rodriguez, D-El Paso, wrote a letter to the city claiming that the proposed rate structure "unfairly targets small-business and residential customers who install solar" and would nearly double their electricity rates, citing statistics from the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. Bills for customers without rooftop solar would rise by 9 percent, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez's letter against the rate increase spurred the El Paso City Council to take its opposition to the proposal a step further. On Aug. 8, facing an audience of residents wearing yellow shirts to show their support for solar power, the council passed a resolution that said the proposed increases would hinder the growth of the solar industry in the area.

"Let's call what's going on here what it is: El Paso Electric Co. wants to discriminate against solar power customers," said Cissy Lizarraga, a council member.

El Paso Electric says it loses between $800 and $1,000 on each customer with rooftop solar and the proposed rate changes would prevent non-solar customers from having to cover those losses to maintain the integrity of the transmission system.

"What we are trying to address is how do we collect on the investment and the infrastructure costs when a customer that has private solar is not paying their part," said George De La Torre, a spokesman for the utility.

El Paso expects the Public Utilities Commission to act on the rate proposal by year's end.
PAUL J. RICHARDS/Contributor

As negotiators entered their third day of talks to update the North American Free Trade Agreement, the top representative for Mexico's private sector said the nation needs to be prepared for all scenarios, including the possible end to the deal.

Most Mexican products exported to the U.S. would face a low average tariff of 2.5 percent and 5 percent if NAFTA were to disappear, said Moises Kalach, the trade head for the national business chamber known by its abbreviation, CCE. That would leave Mexico no worse off than Europe, China and Japan, who trade more than $1 trillion in total with the U.S. each year despite lacking a free-trade agreement, he said.
It took Pamela Adlon several years to get her FX comedy "Better Things" off the ground, partly because she was busy acting on such shows as "Louie" and "Californication," partly because she was raising three daughters as a single mom and partly because it took her awhile to understand that she needed to dig deep and tell her own story. (Binge-watching "Breaking Bad" didn't help, either.)

"Better Things," co-written with Louis C.K., premiered last fall, earning acclaim for the honest way it depicted the challenges of parenthood and the choppy waters of adolescence. It was pretty funny too.

Adlon earned an Emmy nomination as lead actress in a comedy, recognition that absolutely floored her.

"I've been working my whole life as an actor and to be recognized as an actor is just amazing," Adlon told The Times shortly after learning she was nominated.

"Nothing can top the way I feel in my heart and my spirit right now," she added. "Never in a million years did I feel something like this could happen to me."

The second season of "Better Things" debuts on FX Sept. 14, and Adlon will find out if she wins an Emmy on Sept. 17, when the awards are broadcast live on CBS.

Q: You were so anxious for people to see the show because you'd worked so hard on it. Was the reaction what you thought it would be?

A: Each step of the way was something that was so intimate and personal. I always tell young people, when I'm trying to encourage them, that you have certain windows in your life and you have to take advantage of it. You've got to jump through because they will shut on you.

Q: Do you feel like you're good at encouraging young people? Because it feels like that happened a couple of times in the show this past season, you giving advice to people.

A: My kids ... I think they take it in, you know? But they're not like, "Oh, tell me more, oh, wise Mommy." (Adlon leans forward, elbows on her knees) To be able to influence and be a positive role model to their friends and then other young people that I meet and just people ... it doesn't have to be kids. I like to encourage people. I like to be inspirational. I like to let people learn from things that have happened to me.

Q: It's interesting that it took you so long to be able to make that leap and use your own experiences (for a show).

A: Once I got my head out of my (rear) about, like, "This is my show and I'm going to be ..." It's becoming clearer to me all the time that it's about the experiences that I've had in my life, as a person, as a young girl, as an actor.

I've always been kind of a raconteur and a storyteller, but I'm not a comedian, a joke-teller, you know? So this is kind of the perfect place for me. And I also have said that I don't think that I ever could have done this if I hadn't done it exactly when I did it.

Q: The timing was perfect.

A: It was the exact right moment.

Q: As a parent of teenagers, what I loved from the first season was like, the last episode, you used that Laurie Anderson song ("O Superman") so well in that episode, where you're just showing just ...

A: Can you believe she gave me that song? I mean, for like nothing. I've got to send it to her because it means everything to me. And that sequence, it's like a ballet and that song just makes it so haunting and incredible.

Q: It gets across what I think gets across in other episodes too, just the crushing ...

A: Relentlessness.

Q: The relentlessness, it never stops, the work of being a parent. But then there's a hopefulness, I think, to your show too in that you do show the rewards.

A: You know, in the scene where I'm watching my daughter do ballet ... it makes me emotional because my kids are all older now. (Adlon wipes away tears) You know, when I'm smiling at her, it's because she's smiling at me and she's sharing that moment with me. And so it's so hard when you're a parent to share those pure moments with your kids.

(Still teary) Anyway. Sorry. Oh, my God. Are you Barbara Walters? What happened?

Q: Sorry.

A: I have a tissue. I'm Jewish, I carry tissues.
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WICHITA, Kan. - Theodoros Papadopoulos has painted images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and angels that cover the walls and ceilings of churches.

Those images are not decorations, he says. Rather, they are a way of "meeting with the divine."

"The icon has as its purpose to transport us into the realm of the spiritual experience, to go beyond the material world," said Papadopoulos, a professional iconographer from Greece.

Recently, rather than working on icons for a church in Greece, Papadopoulos has been in Kansas, sharing his knowledge through a workshop held at the Catholic Diocese of Wichita's Spiritual Life Center.

Glenn Gunnels looked closely at the canvas in front of him, then at the example of St. Michael the Archangel. Slowly, he painted a few lines - by the nose, on the forehead, around the lips - giving depth to Michael's face.

"I love the spirituality of the icons," Gunnels said. "They're supposed to be a window to the saint you're praying to."

More Information Byzantine Iconography Workshop Theodoros Papadopoulos offers one- and two-week, English-lanquage workshops in Greece and throughout Europe and the United States. His next workshop is Oct. 9-14 in Knock, Ireland. For information, visit theodoreicons.com See More Collapse

Gunnels and the other students in Papadopoulos' class spent nearly eight hours each day for an entire week working on a single image of Michael.

Sometimes they worked on blending different shades together to create Michael's skin. Sometimes they worked on the sharp, geometric shapes comprising his cloak.

In the end, each had an icon of Michael, his sorrowful face surrounded by a golden halo. Angels never smile in icons, Papadopoulos said, because they aren't human.

An icon is a religious image typically painted on a small wooden panel or the walls and ceiling of a church and used in the devotions of some Christians.

Papadopoulos paints in the style of Byzantine iconography and has created icons to cover the walls and ceilings of at least five churches.

Being an iconographer is not easy, Papadopoulos says. Without assistance, an iconographer can easily spend 15 years working on a single church.

Creating an icon is a deeply spiritual exercise, Papadopoulos said.

"According to the Orthodox church, an iconographer is a medium, and he delivers his mind and his body to the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit paints through him," he said.

Icons themselves are full of meaning, Papadopoulos told a group of people who gathered last week for a lecture.

Byzantine icons don't depict shadows caused by sunlight because they are meant to depict the illumination from God's kingdom, which is everywhere.

Geometric shapes are used in the clothing of saints, demonstrating a heavenly order. Sometimes an icon will depict multiple events that occurred at different times, allowable because God is outside of space and time.

Icons also have a lack of depth, welcoming the viewer to "become" the depth, Papadopoulos said. The halo depicted around saints and Christ is a symbol of holiness, and the saints are never shown with a halo in images that take place prior to Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit is said to have descended on Jesus' disciples.

When the Virgin Mary is portrayed, she must have three small stars on her head and shoulders, indicating that she was a virgin before, during and after her pregnancy.

Papadopoulos says he is self-taught. He originally painted as a hobby but became interested in icons and began to study them, becoming a professional iconographer about 24 years ago.

The first icon he painted was of Jesus Christ. The second was of John the Baptist.

Since the financial crisis hit Greece, Papadopoulos has been teaching his skills to others, with workshops around Europe and the United States.

Last year, Mary Grassel created an icon of "Our Lady of the Passion," Mary holding Jesus. That workshop was in Grassel's home state of Wisconsin.

When she heard Papadopoulos would be back in the United States, she decided to fly to Wichita to create another icon.

As she paints, she calls on the saint or other religious figure she's painting for assistance, she said.

"There's just something about them," Grassel said as she took a break from working on Michael's cloak early in the week.

"After you paint an icon, there's something about the eyes that you feel a real connection with who you're painting. You actually start to see into their souls."
"We will never travel again!" Those were the first words out of our mouths as my wife and I watched the fourth pregnancy test turn positive. (Yes, it took four tests to believe it.)

Coming as a complete surprise, joyous thoughts of raising a beautiful family together were far from our minds. Instead, we were grieving how our lives would drastically change. Having grown up traveling internationally and being the proud holder of a passport filled with more than 50 country stamps, I feared I'd never travel again.

Then our daughter was born. Statements that once seemed merely obligatory were true. I was in love. And as I held our little girl in my arms, a desire to show her the world emerged. I wanted this little girl I call daughter to experience different people and cultures, witness her parents live a fearless life and start to make memories from the very beginning of her own.

What we decided and then learned: Being new parents did not mean we couldn't travel.

The week we left the hospital as a family of three, we booked flights to Havana. Why Cuba? Having spent our entire lives being told we couldn't go, the moment we were told we could, we jumped at the chance. Bloggers say Cuba is one of the safest countries to travel with a baby, so why not test that theory? Just shy of her 12-week birthday, we boarded a flight to Havana for six days in the sun. (A huge sigh of relief, she slept on all flights and never made a peep. Breast-feeding her during takeoff and landing really did work.)

After almost a week of battling rubble and uneven Havana cobblestone streets with a stroller, Mom, Dad and Baby got the adventure we had hoped for. We watched the sunset over the Atlantic while walking along El Malecon. We enjoyed paella as musicians serenaded us in the European-style plazas. These were all things we'd do traveling before kids, but now we had memories etched into our family story. From the very beginning of her life, we could tell our daughter that we showed her the world, unbound by fear or conformity, and we have the photos to prove it.

And yes, not to mention, it will only get harder to travel as she grows.

Rather than retreating into our safe, controlled world, we want to take calculated risks to build character and spirit into our daughter. The key word in that sentence is "calculated." We don't want to put our daughter at risk, so we read blog after blog, article after article, about others taking babies to Cuba. What sealed the deal was an enthusiastic, "How fun! Please go and take her, too!" from our pediatrician. The only advice was to be mindful of the hot Cuban sun and breast-feed her often to avoid dehydration.

We found that Cuban culture already takes the sun into account, making it perfect for young families. We woke up with the sun peeking into our room and joined the rest of Havana in finding a fresh breakfast. Satisfied, we'd wander the narrow streets using the building shadows as a natural sunblock. After lunch, the city retreats inside to escape the height of the sun. Museums and coffee shops became our best friends and great feeding grounds. As the sun escaped into the night, our adventure continued outside for dinner and more exploring.

There's an old proverb that says, "When the sun rises, it rises for everyone." We don't want the sun to rise when our daughter is 3 years old; we want it to rise for her now. Each morning, she woke up with wide eyes ready to see a different world into which she was born. At 12 weeks old, we showed her that the world doesn't have to be an unsafe, small place to be afraid of; rather, it can be greeted with curiosity and wonder. (And she can brag to her friends about having a passport before any of them.)

Now onto our next adventure: Israel!

Travel tips for Cuba with a baby

1 Most airlines include the required Cuban health insurance with your ticket. Call the airline and ask it to issue your baby a physical ticket as proof of health insurance.

1 Your baby needs a visa. Order it beforehand and pick it up near the gate of your departure city at the airport. Americans can travel for one of only 12 reasons. Pick "People to people" as your reason. They didn't ask or check at either border control, but just in case, keep a copy of your itinerary to show you interacted with Cubans. If you stay at an Airbnb, interacting with your host counts.

1 American credit cards and ATM cards do not work in Cuba. There's an additional fee for exchanging U.S. dollars into Cuban CUC. To avoid the hassle, call your bank at least seven weeks in advance and take out money in euros. We budgeted $100 a day while in Havana.

1 If you pack the right things, you'll have a less stressful stay in Cuba. Traveling in April, we recommend taking for your baby:

ThinkBaby sunscreen

Diapers for six days (we brought 66)

Baby wipes

Ergobaby for exploring the beautiful streets of Havana

Light stroller and car seat (we got this one free from our neighborhood parents network)

Travel baby sleeper

10 summer outfits

One swaddle

Four burb rags

Baby soap

Baby thermometer

Night-light

Fully stocked diaper bag

Baby Tylenol

A NoseFrida

We didn't end up using or needing the baby insect repellent or mosquito net.

Other advice

Stay in Old Havana. You can walk to everything, and the streets are narrow, protecting your baby from the sun.

Men and women in Cuba love babies, proved by the fact that every person we interacted with paid attention to our baby. We could bump to the front of every line.

We checked two bags, which was a mistake. We were at the airport in Havana for an hour waiting for our luggage to come through on the belt. Once you have your bags, the money exchange is at departures rather than arrivals. Often there's a very long line. Factor in two to three hours at the airport before you're ready to head to your Airbnb or hotel.

Each morning, we'd put her in the Ergo. She'd fall asleep as Mom and Dad walked the historical streets of Old Havana. Go from street to street enjoying the vibrant street art, cheap mojitos and beautiful plazas.

Turn your Cuba visit into a technology-free vacation. WiFi is controlled by the government, and only a few parks and hotels have it. Once you find WiFi, you can log on only after purchasing a sometimes hard-to-find WiFi card. Once you log on, don't be surprised if the WiFi is one of these things: 1) slow 2) shuts down after a few minutes or 3) doesn't work at all. That said, do all your research beforehand while in the United States, including hours of operation of each place you want to visit. There were many times we walked for more than hour to an art gallery or restaurant only to find it closed.

The streets are very uneven and bumpy. This made taking a stroller a bit more difficult. We ended up using the Ergo for much of our stay. If you want to save space, leave the stroller at home but take the car seat, as you'll need it in the taxi to and from the airport.

Many Cuban taxis don't have seatbelts in the back. Factor in extra time and money to pay for a yellow taxi, which has seatbelts for each seat.

Lunch was no issue with our baby, but Cubans eat dinner late, right when our baby goes down for bed. Many restaurants didn't do takeout, so it took several tries before I was able to bring food back to our Airbnb. If you stay in Old Havana, a restaurant called Art Pub does takeout.
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The microphone crackled to life as several dozen left-leaning activists posted up outside Houston City Hall a week ago, just hours after a reported Nazi sympathizer at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., plowed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Those tensions have only grown throughout the week and could come to a head Saturday in Sam Houston Park near City Hall, where protesters calling for the removal of a Spirit of the Confederacy monument are expected to square off against their right-wing counterparts.

Organizers are warning protesters not to bring their children, and Houston police are expected to be out force.

"This is the biggest moment of protest in the last couple of decades and it doesn't seem like that's going to stop," said Brian Harrison, of Houston Socialist Alternative. "People have been drawn out in the streets to fight against hatred and bigotry."

GETTING READY: Houston police preparing for Saturday's 'Destroy the Confederacy' protest

The local protest scene has transformed in the months since President Trump took office. Historically, the Bayou City has not been a hub for protesters. It's not San Francisco or New York, not a hotspot where crowds of hundreds or thousands take to the streets on a regular basis.

In Houston, anything over 100 people is a good turnout. Or it was, until January. Then came the inauguration of an outspoken new president, one who espoused a tough law-and-order stance, skepticism toward global warming, a Muslim travel ban and an end to illegal immigration.

Since his election, Trump continues to energize his base with campaign-style rallies during which he talks boldly about new jobs, less government, fewer immigrants and a return of America's greatness as a nation.

But his rhetoric - and tweets - have energized the left across the nation and here in Houston, where large street demonstrations have not been common in years past.

The Women's March in January drew some 22,000 marchers snaking through downtown Houston, singing and chanting and wearing pink hats. In February, 1,000 demonstrators posted up outside the Super Bowl. Two months later, another 15,000 turned up for the Science March.

Suddenly, crowded demonstrations had become almost routine.

In June, hundreds of protesters, some carrying rifles, gathered at Hermann Park in an attempt to defend the honor of Sam Houston. Carrying Texas and Confederate flags, participants seemed concerned the park's Sam Houston statue might be removed since the historical figure owned slaves.

The conservative demonstrators turned out after a fake news report attributed to an alt-right group said on Facebook that liberals planned to turn out and demand the statue be removed. No liberal demonstrators ever showed up.

That will surely not be the case with Saturday's demonstration over a different statue, the Spirit of the Confederacy, scheduled to begin at 3 p.m.

"Even people that were dormant or lying under a rock are starting to come out and give their opinion," said Antonio Gonzales, with the Houston chapter of the Brown Berets de TejAztlan.

Sparking change

If history is any indicator, the Charlottesville tragedy, in which one protester was killed and more than dozen were hospitalized, could be the spark that ignites change, according to Jeremi Suri, a University of Texas at Austin professor of history and public affairs.

"There are a lot of people that already knew people in white supremacist groups, but they didn't think it was a problem  it was just weird," he said. "But once it becomes a problem, once you own it, you want to make it go away."

That's what happened in Charleston, when a white supremacist's deadly church shooting directly contributed to the removal of Confederate flags and statues, Suri said.

And it's what happened in 1995 when the Oklahoma City bombing sparked an overwhelming demand to amp up anti-terrorism laws and crack down on militias.

President Trump's tepid, equivocal response to white supremacist hate groups in the aftermath of Charlottesville could add more fuel to the smoldering fire of liberal discontent.

"It's kind of galvanized the whole country in ways that don't happen very often," said University of Houston history professor Robert Buzzanco. "You have people like Mitt Romney going off on Trump and it's created a legitimacy so people who wouldn't normally go out might go out. Trump is the best uniter and organizer that the left has had."

Shifting perspectives

Still, protesters are unsure.

"It's going to work both ways," said Johnathon Gasper of the People's New Black Panther Party. "You'll have people that'll come out and people that'll shy away because it's starting to get real."

Kandice Webber of BLM offered a similar response.

"I think there is some fear now," she said. "But honestly, those people that are afraid to show up post-Charlottesville weren't really showing up as much pre-Charlottesville."

Community organizer Sarah Syed said it may bring home the threat of violence to less marginalized demographics.

"It's now affecting groups of people in public that haven't been affected before," she said. "That is shifting the perspective."

Black Lives Matter organizer Ashton Woods was more blunt.

"While it's sad that a woman had to die, what's even worse is y'all got active off of the fact that a white woman died, but black people have been dying," he said Monday in a Facebook Live video.

"A lot of y'all are walking around saying this is not what this country is about but yes the [expletive] it is," he added in an interview.

Whether or not Charlottesville sparks more activism in other communities, Black Lives Matter will keep doing what they're doing, Woods said.

"Expect more of the same; we already have a template," he said. "They showed up in front of NAACP headquarters, we met them with a response. They showed up at the ADL; and we met them with a response."

Energizing activists

The Anti-Defamation League protest and counter-protest in October was an energetic showing from both sides.

The left-leaning coalition there outnumbered their right-wing counterparts, but now the violence in Charlottesville and Trump's response to it could boost the numbers of white supremacists and other far-right activists.

"I think it will energize them," said Victor Ibarra, the Latinos Inmigrantes Triunfadores organizer known for bashing a Trump pinata at Houston protests. "They will feel they are losing power."

Thousands of alt-right protesters are expected to turn out Saturday in nine cities across the country - including Austin - in what is billed as a free speech rally stemming from a controversial Google memo.

So-called alt-right groups have been coming out with increasing frequency at Houston-area protests, some waving Confederate flags and anti-Semitic signs as they oppose issues like immigration.

Historically, however, tragedies like Charlottesville are not a boon to the hate groups they're linked to, Suri said.

"The worst thing for one of these groups is when they have an event like this because it galvanizes action against them," he said.

Some protesters are confident it will do just that.

"This is part of a long-term movement in American politics," Harrison said. "I'm 36 years old. I've been involved in politics since I was a young teenager and what we've seen in the last eight months is the largest interest in protest I've seen."

Looking ahead

David Michael Smith, a longtime activist with the Houston Socialist Movement, described the recent attack as a "turning point."

"The tragedy of Charlottesville is a wake-up call for communists, revolutionary socialists and all genuinely progressive forces," he said.

The 62-year-old was among a handful of activists who came openly armed with an AK-47 to last Saturday's immigration protest, a rare move group leaders planned in July in response to a perceived uptick in white nationalist activity in the Houston area.

Charlottesville only solidified their plans to bring weaponry - and their determination to keep doing so in the future.

"I don't want to carry a weapon if I don't have to - we're not that kind of people," Smith said.

Some groups said they planned to be more mindful of their surroundings and crowd control efforts in the future. Others planned to be on high alert for infiltrators.

But Ibarra said he didn't expect to change anything about his protest strategy in the wake of Charlottesville.

"Maybe whenever the Nazis come up we'll ignore them," he said. "Yeah, I think that's what we're gonna do."
NAIROBI, Kenya - A leading wildlife conservationist, who pioneered new techniques to catch elephant poachers and ivory smugglers, was shot and killed in Tanzania on Wednesday.

Wayne Lotter, a 51-year-old South African, was in a taxi in Dar es Salaam when it was stopped by another vehicle. Two men opened the car door and one shot him.
Stephen Bannon, the embattled chief strategist who helped President Donald Trump win the 2016 election by embracing their shared nationalist impulses, departed the White House Friday after a turbulent tenure in which he shaped the fiery populism of the president's first seven months in office.

Bannon's exit, the latest in a string of high-profile West Wing shake-ups, came as Trump is under fire for saying that "both sides" were to blame for the deadly violence at a Virginia rally last week. Critics of Bannon accused the president of channeling his chief strategist when he equated white supremacists and neo-Nazis with the left-wing protesters who opposed them.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."

A caustic presence in a chaotic West Wing, Bannon frequently clashed with the president's other aides as they fought over trade, the war in Afghanistan, taxes, immigration and the role of government. In an interview this week, Bannon mocked his colleagues, including Gary D. Cohn, one of the president's chief economic advisers, saying they were "wetting themselves" out of a fear of radically changing trade policy.

'It'll be something else'

Trump had recently grown weary of Bannon, complaining to other advisers that he believed his chief strategist had been leaking information to reporters and was taking too much credit for the president's successes. The situation had become untenable, according to advisers close to Trump who were urging the president to remove Bannon - and, in turn, people close to Bannon had been urging him to step down - long before Friday.

Bannon's departure was met with widespread criticism from some conservative media outlets. Bannon immediately returned to Breitbart News, which during the campaign and early months of the Trump presidency served as a clearinghouse for attacks on Trump's adversaries.

Bannon told The Weekly Standard: "The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over. We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It'll be something else. And there'll be all kinds of fights, and there'll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over."

Bannon's removal is a victory for Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general whose mission is to impose discipline on White House personnel. Yet Bannon may still prove to be a confidant for the president, offering advice and counsel from the outside, much like other former advisers who still frequently consult with Trump.

Bannon, in particular, had formed a philosophical alliance with Trump and they shared an unlikely chemistry.

Bannon's many critics bore down after the violence in Charlottesville. Outraged over Trump's insistence that "both sides" were to blame for the violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally, leaving one woman dead, human rights activists demanded that the president fire nationalists working in the West Wing. That group of hard-right populists in the White House was led by Bannon.

On Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York, Trump refused to guarantee Bannon's job security but defended him as "not a racist" and "a friend."

"We'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon," Trump said.

Returns to website

Bannon's dismissal followed an Aug. 16 interview he initiated with a writer with whom he had never spoken, with the progressive publication The American Prospect. In it, Bannon mockingly played down the U.S. military threat to North Korea as nonsensical: "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us."

Of the far right, he said, "These guys are a collection of clowns," and he called it a "fringe element" of "losers."

"We gotta help crush it," he said in the interview, which people close to Bannon said he believed was off the record.

Privately, several White House officials said that Bannon appeared to be provoking Trump and that they did not see how the president could keep him on after the interview was published. Bannon had made clear to allies that he expected to be back soon at the right-wing website Breitbart.com that he had steered before joining Trump's campaign.
AUSTIN - A growing number of Texas lawmakers are calling for the removal of Confederate monuments, plaques and other memorials from the Capitol in the wake of racially charged protests in Charlottesville that left one woman dead and dozens injured.

Some legislators also are quietly planning a push to get rid of Confederate Heroes Day, an optional state holiday recognizing the birthday of Confederate Army Gen. Robert E. Lee.

But they know their fight will not be easy.

Already, Gov. Greg Abbott and some members of the board that oversees the Capitol grounds have voiced opposition to a call from Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas, to consider removing the symbols.

Those who support Johnson's cause, mainly Democrats, say they will work with him to see that the Confederate symbols are removed. But many are tempering their optimism, noting that similar efforts in the past have failed.

"All of us, members of color in particular, have brought this up ad nauseam," said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, who supports the current effort. "I am not saying it's impossible. You chip away at this, and you keep using incidents to change the thinking of people in the state and in this country."

Rod Welsh, executive director of the State Preservation Board, which oversees the Capitol grounds, said in a letter Friday to Johnson that the staff would review a plaque known as the Children of the Confederacy Creed.

"The State Preservation Board is aware of the evolving discussion concerning Confederate commemoration and is committed to thoughtful examination of this complex subject," Welsh wrote.

The state board estimates there are about a dozen Confederate symbols or memorials scattered around the Capitol.

They include a plaque near the rotunda that claims slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, a statue of Lee surrounded by Confederate fighters and the Confederate flag etched into the pillar of a memorial topped with a bronze figure of a Confederate soldier.

'We should be ashamed'

Johnson said he feels "insulted" when he sees the memorials at the Capitol.

The Children of the Confederacy Creed plaque, which is mounted just 40 steps from his office, reads, in part, "We ... pledge ourselves ... to study and teach the truth of history (one of the most important of which is, that the war between the states was not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery)."

Johnson asked for the board for an immediate removal of the plaque, noting that it is historically inaccurate.

"We should be ashamed, not proud, that Texas chose to commit treason against the United States in order to preserve, of all things, white supremacy," Johnson said. "I feel embarrassed because the rest of the world seems to realize this except for us, which is why these inaccurate and offensive monuments remain in our Capitol to this day."

Johnson's efforts comes as many city and state officials are responding to the unrest in Charlottesville by revamping attempts to remove Confederate statutes and memorials from public spaces.

Last weekend, white nationalists in the Virginia college town protested the planned removal of a Lee statue. The rally drew hundreds of counter-protesters, one of whom was killed when a car crashed into the crowd.

In Houston, some residents have called for a monument in a Houston park be taken down. The "Spirit of the Confederacy" features a bronze statue of a winged angel holding a sword and palm leaf. Mayor Sylvester Turner ordered city staff to assess Houston's public art.

In Baltimore, city officials removed Confederate symbols under the cover of darkness.

At the Texas Capitol, opponents of the removal effort are prepared to continue their defense.

"There are no Confederate monuments that are going to be removed from the Texas Capitol - not in the lifetime of someone alive now," said Jerry Patterson, a former state senator and land commissioner who opposes removal.

Abbott, denouncing racism and hate, said "tearing down monuments won't erase our nation's past, and it doesn't advance our nation's future."

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a member of the preservation board, said he does not tolerate racism, bigotry, hate or violence, but "that's one reason I believe that we should not attempt to re-write history by removing evidence of people or events that we can learn from."

A spokesman for House Speaker Joe Straus said in a written statement that Straus would like to see the board review the accuracy of signs and monuments around the Capitol. But Straus did not explicitly say he wants them removed.

Erasing history?

Lawmakers in Texas have long debated the appropriateness of the confederate symbols, but the shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C., prompted a push to remove them from the Capitol.

A group of five lawmakers, all Democrats, called for the creation of a task force to conduct a comprehensive review of Confederate symbols to determine if the monuments are "historically accurate." The lawmakers suggested the symbols often "espouse a whitewashed version of history."

They sent their letter to Abbott, Patrick and Straus but nothing came of the request.

Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, who signed the letter, said the recent violence in Charlottesville should make the Legislature reconsider removing the Confederate symbols. She calls them "repulsive."

"It is something that is long overdue," she said. "It doesn't represent true history."

But Patterson, the former land commissioner, said the symbols do represent history and that there is no political will in the Legislature to remove them.

"Nor should there be," he added. "If you are able to eliminate all of the Confederate monuments, who will they go after next?"

Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, told the Express-News that he plans to refile a bill in the 2019 legislative session that would block cities and counties from removing any historic monuments on public property.

"We have had a lot of support and the conversation is just beginning," Creighton said. "It's important for me to have a conversation about the importance of maintaining our Texas history and our heritage."

Holiday also questioned

Confederate Heroes Day is also drawing renewed attention.

The holiday is optional, meaning some state employees work while others do not. First declared a Texas holiday in 1931, the day recognizes Lee's birthday and occasionally lands on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

In 2015, after the Charleston attack, Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, authored a bill to change the name of the holiday to Civil War Remembrance Day. Her bill was inspired by a 13-year-old who proposed the new name,

Her bill failed to pass. In this year's regular session, Rep. Helen Giddings, D-Desoto, also tried to change the name - likewise without success - to Civil War Remembrance Day.

Johnson said the state should also do away with the holiday, calling it "ridiculous."

"There were no Confederate heroes," he said. "They were traitors, no matter why they joined the Confederate Army."

Despite the previous setbacks, Democrats pushing for the changes say they will not be deterred.

Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, plans to formally join Johnson's cause and will send a similar letter asking that the preservation board review, and potentially take down, the Confederate symbols.

"The longer we don't talk about this, the longer you are going to have these types of conflicts," Moody said. "I don't find there is any utility in being divisive."
Delayed voices

Regarding "We must link arms in pursuit of a loving nation" (Page A15, Thursday), the essay by these renown faith leaders was well written but late in coming. Where were their voices and pens during the presidential campaign when Donald Trump's hate, bigotry and crudeness were on full display in his speeches, rallies and debates? His cheering supporters almost always included white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the KKK with whom he displayed empathy.

It is well know that many in the clergy of this nation, especially evangelists, were instrumental in the success of the Trump campaign, encouraging their flocks to vote for him and appearing in his photo-ops (e.g., Franklin Graham). I will assume that none of the writers of this essay were among them. I just wish they had spoken up before the election!

Mark Turner, Houston

Inaccurate monuments

Regarding "Texas legislator wants symbols out of Capitol" (Page A6, Thursday), Gov. Greg Abbott has said that Confederate monuments on the state Capitol grounds can help us "learn from our history." He ignores that those monuments get basic facts about history wrong.

The Confederate Soldiers Monument, for example, has a plaque that vastly overstates the size of Union armies and understates Confederate troop numbers. The Children of the Confederacy Creed, displayed on a plaque outside an African American lawmaker's office, erroneously states that Confederates did not fight "to sustain slavery," even though Texas' declaration of its causes for secession emphasized the defense of slavery and said that it "should exist in all future time."

What lessons does the governor hope Texans will learn from factually inaccurate monuments that were never about teaching history in the first place? Erected at the height of Jim Crow, when only white Texans could vote or hold office, these memorials themselves distorted the past in order to teach myths that served white supremacy.

W. Caleb McDaniel,associate professor of historyRice University
A Nazi hit my friend with a car last Saturday.

When Natalie Romero, a Houstonian like me, regained consciousness in her Charlottesville, Va., hospital bed she was confused and delirious. We had to explain to her, as matter-of-factly as we could, what happened.

"Why was I hit?" she asked.

"Because you were counter-protesting at a white supremacy rally."

"I knew I would end up in a hospital one day."

"Will you protest again?"

"Of course," she calmly replied. She crossed her heart, praised the Lord and dozed off.

Romero is one of our own. Every year, 10 students from Houston are enrolled at the University of Virginia (UVA) through the Posse Foundation Scholarship, which provides funds and support for college. Like me, Natalie is one of the scholars.

Last Saturday, thousands of KKK members, neo-Nazis, white nationalists and members of the "alt-right" invaded our community for a rally. As a warm-up on Friday night, these groups also trampled through our university grounds with torches in their hands, screaming "blood and soil!", "Jews will not replace us!" and countless racial slurs. Some students responded by going straight to the historic rotunda designed by Thomas Jefferson, hoisting a banner around the Jefferson statue that read "UVA Students against White Supremacy." The invaders, torches in hand, surrounded them. But these students stood their ground.

The idea of defending Jefferson is fraught with contradiction for many UVA students. He owned slaves until his death and built our university on their backs. These slaves were buried in unmarked graves still visible from the windows of dormitories.

Yet student counter-protesters still chose to stand between the white supremacists and the statue. They recognize that UVA offers the opportunity to understand the sins of American history and draw lessons from it. Meanwhile, white supremacists have no interest in learning from the 1800s. They just want to return to the 1800s.

I, too, learned two lessons from last weekend.

Here is the first: The proposition that "all men are created equal" means more than just words. Thousands came to my campus in direct opposition to the belief in equality. It will not be the last time that people assemble under that banner of bigotry. Building and maintaining a society where "all men are created equal" is difficult, and democracy dies when its foundational phrases are forgotten.

One of the supremacists in the Saturday rally was so directly in opposition with the idea of human equality that he attempted mass murder with his vehicle. He is accused of killing one and injuring dozens, including our Natalie, seeing their lives as less worthy than his. Two police officers also died during the rally.

When pictures online revealed Natalie had been hit, I immediately called her.

She didn't pick up. Someone else, a stranger, had found her phone. He had discovered it in the dirt and returned it to me. After getting her phone, another Posse scholar and I went straight to the hospital, hoping to find her.

In those few minutes with her phone in my pocket, I learned a second lesson.

Hundreds of people were trying to get in touch with Natalie - text messages, phone calls, snapchats, emails and Facebook messages. Friends, family, teachers and strangers alike who saw pictures online or heard from word of mouth reached out. When we found Natalie in the hospital, several other people were already there. And soon, people were paying for family plane tickets, assembling GoFundMe pages and creating group chats to provide updates on her progress.

This is how democracy preserves itself. Not just through mass protests and powerful phrases, important as they are, but also through individual people supporting other people, unified in the conviction of human equality.

When the supremacists sieged our city, students ran to the UVA chapel to sing hymns, hold candles and read from scripture. Others huddled together in dorm rooms, arms intertwined, eyes glued to Twitter for information on their university community. And some stood, shoulder to shoulder, as counter protesters.

All these reactions shared one common thread: mutual love for each other, mutual belief in human equality and mutual faith in a better future. We were hugging at church, hugging in dorms, hugging around statues and hugging to wipe out hatred.

This is the second lesson: When hate and ugliness comes to town, love and faith are the greatest resistance.

Tameez is a student at the University of Virginia.
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The recent violence in Charlottesville by white supremacists is cause for concern not just for the United States but for the global community at large. Some have predicted that the next wave of terrorism may not come from religious extremists but from far-right and alt-right groups.

Such was also the case with the recent attack by a 48 year old white man who used his van to mow down Muslim worshippers outside of Finsbury Mosque on June 19.

Talking to reporters London's Mayor Sadiq Khan had stated, "Terrorism is terrorism...It doesn't matter whether you're inspired by a perverse force of Islam -- a perverse version of Islam -- or you're inspired by some other motives to try and terrorize others. The intention is the same."

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But President Donald Trump refused to categorically label the fatal incident in Charlottesville an act of "domestic terrorism." Instead he said, "You can call it terrorism; you can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want." In fact he even went on to defend some in crowds of those chanting racist slogans as "fine people" and placed blame on "both sides."

In response, Teresa May reiterated that there should be "...no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them."

Words do matter. In President Trump's recent speech in Warsaw, he called upon the West to defend itself from outsiders in the wake of increased immigration and terrorism. This rhetoric is not helpful. Anti-immigration sentiments and various misconceptions related to immigration are spreading with the rise of right wing and populist movements, some of them become increasingly extreme.

Now about a quarter of those referred to the counter-radicalization programs are of right wing ideology. The murder of MP Jo Cox by neo-Nazi Thomas Mair is a testament to this growing threat. It is not just as isolated case as an increasing number of MPs have gotten threats from members of the far-right.

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Even as a new Migration Museum has also opened up to encourage visitors to revisit the U.K's rich history of immigration, with the rise of white nationalism and policies such as Trump's travel ban, it those most vulnerable to ISIS's terror attacks that are hurt the most.

In a tragic reminder of this, the father of Fatemah Qaderyan, one of the talented Afghan girls part of a robotics team not allowed visas into the United States, was killed in Afghanistan by an ISIS bomb attack. Such policies do little for countering violent extremism.

Although anti-Immigration sentiments were one of the main reasons cited for those voting for Brexit, U.K's migrant crisis will not simply go away. Once outside the EU, Britain will still be bound by its international obligations. Brexit may even make matters worse as the UK may not be able to defer its refugees to other EU member states.

Britain has already taken a considerably low number of refugees as compared to other member states comparable to it in size. Germany has taken in over 1.1.million refugees. And despite populist fears Germany's security is stable. In 2015, according to Eurostat statistics, the UK "received around 38,800 asylum applications out of the total of 1,321,600 applications in the entire EU." U.K hence shares just about 2.9% of the burden of refugees whereas Germany has been responsible for 36% (476,510 applications), 13% by Hungary (177,135), 12% by Sweden (162,450), 6.6% by Austria (88,160), 6.3% by Italy (84,085) and 6% by France (75,750 applications)."

Also a considerable spike in immigrants coming to the U.K. occurred after Eastern European Countries entered into the EU in 2004. As of 2015 a large portion of immigrants up to 29% were Polish. A fall in wages occurred during the financial crisis in 2008 and perhaps is falsely attributed to immigrants taking over the jobs of British citizens.

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Analysts point to a "lump of labour fallacy" because immigrants also use goods and services and create more demand. Research has shown that the rise in immigration has not "significantly harmed the job and wage prospects of UK-born workers."
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Fitch Ratings has upgraded Greece's credit rating from CCC to B-, a one-notch improvement that still leaves the bonds issued by the crisis-battered country well below investment grade.

The ratings agency said Friday that the outlook of the Greek economy was positive and that it expected talks with the country's international creditors to be concluded "without creating instability."


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Predator star Sonny Landham has died aged 76.

Landham, who began his career in adult films, was known for his role as tracker Billy Sole in the 1987 film. He also appeared on TV for roles in Miami Vice and the A Team.

His sister, Dawn Boehler, said in a statement that the actor died from heart failure at a hospital in Kentucky.

Landhams early work in the 1970s included several X-rated films. After being cast in 1979 street-gang thriller The Warriors, however, he was type-cast as the tough guy in 1980s films including Action Jackson. He continued to appear in films through the 1990s.

In 2003 he ran a brief campaign for the governor of Kentucky, but was unable to secure the Republican Partys nomination.

Landham also ran for the Kentucky State Senate in 2004, and was nominated by Kentucky's Libertarian party to run for one of the state's seats in the US Senate. However, his comments on a political radio show caused the party to rescind his nomination a few days later.

Co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger took to Twitter to pay tribute.

"Sonny Landham was such a joy to work with on Predator - so talented, so fun to be around," he wrote. "We'll miss him. My thoughts are with his family."

The actor went into politics in later life, initially running in the Republican Party primary for Governor of Kentucky, but failed to win the nomination. He then re-entered as an independent candidate before withdrawing from the race and instead backing the Republican candidate.

Landham is survived by his son, William, and daughter Priscilla.
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Film director Roman Polanski will not be able to return to the US after a Los Angeles judge refused to dismiss a 1977 sexual assault.

Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon made his decision despite the appeals of victim, Samantha Geimer, to drop the case.

Judge Gordon said the court could not dismiss a case "merely because it would be in the victim's best interest".

Recommended Third woman accuses Roman Polanski of sexual assault on a minor

He added: "The defendant in this matter stands as a fugitive and refuses to comply with court orders."

Ms Geimer was assaulted 40 years ago by the Oscar-winning film director, who fled the US to France after become convinced a plea-bargain would be scrapped.

She went to Los Angeles Superior Court in June pleading for his case to be resolved, saying she had forgiven Polanski years ago and wanted the case put to rest "as an act of mercy to myself and my family."

Judge Gordon also rejected a request by Polanski's attorney, Harland Braun, to unseal testimony about the 1977 plea deal.

Braun had hoped to use the testimony to persuade European authorities to rescind the international arrest warrant against Polanski

Polanski, 84, has not returned to the US since 1977 for fear of arrest.

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A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. 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Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Controversy has inevitably followed the Polanski, who directed 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'The Pianist', around for decades.

Earlier this week, a third woman came forward to accuse him of sexually assaulting her in 1973.

The woman, identified as Robin, alleged she was "sexually victimised" by Polanski when she was 16-years-old.
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A beauty blogger has been criticised by two leading plastic surgeons in the UK after deciding to stream her breast augmentation live on Instagram.

Texas-based beauty blogger Ashley Devonna went under the knife for a breast augmentation on Friday and in true social media star style, the YouTube sensation chose to stream the entire operation online.

In a bid to connect more with her 220,000 followers on YouTube, Devonna says that the decision  which was approved by her plastic surgeon, Dr Farah Khan  gave her the opportunity to be honest and open with her fans.

Recommended Woman with rare cancer linked to breast implants sends warning

Im going to get a breast augmentation, but not just that, were going to stream it live on Dr. Khans Instagram page, she told her followers before the procedure.

And, while Dr Khan understands that this isnt for everyone, she insisted that was the right thing for her patient.

Its a new experience, she told Pix11.

Nowadays we live our lives on social media and I think especially the younger generation, thats how they communicate and they want to be open with their friends, their family, their followers.

However, the operation came under fire by other experts in the cosmetic industry.

As surgeons we use live streaming for training purposes all the time but something like this doesnt give the whole picture and the magnitude of the surgery and risks associated with implants, Consultant Plastic Surgeon and BAAPs Council Member Afshin Mesahebi told The Independent.

Unfortunately most of these patients are given freebies and surgeons are simply doing it for nothing more than marketing purposes.

Award-winning cosmetic doctor, Dr Esho, of the ESHO Clinic agreed, adding, For millennials, the main source of information today is social media platforms.

Tools like this can therefore be invaluable in delivering important information to these young individuals, but that information needs to be handled responsibly.

If it is presented in a form which shows the benefits as well as the risks, if it is informative in terms of educating the patient and those who are interested in the procedure, then it is a very useful tool.

However, if the individuals intention is to sensationalise and simply create a buzz for themselves, this is trivialising a serious procedure which can potentially put many people at risk.
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Eating anywhere outside of your home and restaurants requires transporting food  taking a packed lunch to work, or packaging up leftovers. We love tinfoil, and it has its place, but its not quite as sturdy or as trustworthy as a plastic counterpart. So think how revolutionary plastic containers were to easily carry food around with you, keeping it one place, and relatively intact.

When I was at primary school, my packed lunched consisted of sandwiches in one little box  often in those garish colours from the 1970s, browns, yellows and oranges  and other lunchtime snacks in little circular pots  cream bottoms with slightly faded primary coloured tops. Often the sandwich boxes were a little warped, but still sealed properly and kept everything inside. And at home, the chunkier tubs of those same 1970s colours were used to store leftovers from dinner.

I remember thinking why do we still have these, theyre so old, and they were. Theyre about 30 years old now and still going strong  albeit not used for my lunch.

The Tupperware brand was developed in 1946 by chemist Earl Tupper, from Massachusetts. He designed the first airtight containers to hold and store goods. It was a lightweight and non-breakable plastic  two essential criteria for transporting food.

Setting itself apart from its counter parts was the burping seal  named so for the noise it made from pushing the air out. A quite satisfactory sound that confirmed it was closed.

It was the introduction of the Wonderlier bowl  a rounded bottom bowl with a flat circular lid  in 1949 that really propelled the brand forwards as it became a must-have item, and came with a lifetime guarantee too.

Retro cheek: a Tupperware magazine advertisement from the Seventies with outrageous gender stereotyping (Flickr/twitchery) (Flickr/ twitchery)

But Tupperware didnt immediately find success, as at first, the products didnt sell well in shops: people didnt understand how to use these rather revolutionary new items and needed demonstrations.

What was once its downfall became its saviour, as the birth of the Tupperware party in the 1950s quite literally sealed its popularity. One woman, Brownie Wise, was so successful in her parties, she was became Earl Tuppers vice president and the official parties  Tupperware Parties Inc  were modelled on hers.

Spinning out: in the 1960s the Tupperware party was something of a phenomenon

The parties gave hosts an income and even resulted in a wide Tupperware effect, providing a number of women a with a career opportunity in the post-war world. The phenomenon became a symbol of American suburban life, and by the 1960s the parties has spread across the UK, as well as the rest of the world, from Argentina to Japan.

Food and drink news Show all 35 1 /35 Food and drink news Food and drink news Healthy living makes us more inclined to binge, research suggests Gluten-free breads, dairy-free milks and other plant-based products have been some of the most favoured foods in British supermarkets this year. However, while were busy filling our shopping trolleys with gluten-free goodness, were also jamming it with junk food and alcohol, new research suggests Getty/iStock Food and drink news Growing list of Vegan celebs Making the switch to veganism is a major lifestyle choice, one that many claim can improve energy levels, lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and clear up any skin issues. Beyonce, Natalie Portman and Jessica Chastain are among the growing list of Hollywood stars who have eschewed animal products from their diets in recent years. Theres also been an increasing number of professional athletes who have gone vegan, such as boxing champions Mike Tyson and David Haye, thus debunking the myth that following a plant-based diet will leave you feeling weak and malnourished. AFP/Getty/NARAS/iHeartMedia Food and drink news McDonald's has announced the launch of a new vegan burger on its menu in Germany This will mark the first time the German franchise of the fast food chain has offered a vegan burger to its customers. The Big Vegan TS burger consists of a patty made from soy and wheat. It is served in a classic sesame seed bun, and contains salad, tomato, pickles and red onion. McDonald's Germany Food and drink news Drinking too many protein shakes could lead to an increased risk of obesity and a reduced lifespan, a new study has claimed Researchers from the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre carried out an investigation to determine the impact excessive consumption of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) has on the body. BCAA supplements are often consumed in the form of powder, which is then added to water to make a shake. Published in journal Nature Metabolism, the study found that while BCAAs help to build muscle, they can also negatively impact an individual's temperament, cause weight gain and lead to a shortened lifespan Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Britain consumes more chocolate than any other country Most people love chocolate but it turns out no one does more than the Brits  with the average Brit found to have consumed 8.4 kg of chocolate in 2017, according to new data. Chocolate consumption around the world is on the rise, according to Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD), which found that in the past year alone, Easter chocolate production has risen by 23 per cent Food and drink news 'Easter eggs should be banned for children under four' Dr Becky Spelman, chief psychologist at Harley Streets Private Therapy Clinic, is calling for Easter eggs to be banned for consumption for children under the age of four, claiming that giving them the opportunity to binge on chocolate so young will give them an unhealthy relationship with food later on. "This is a nightmare situation for parents of this generation as they have no idea how to teach their children to delay their response to cravings, she said, explaining that too many young kids binge on these chocolates because their parents dont know how to stop them. "Once a child starts overeating behaviour at a young age its very hard to turn things around for them in terms of food and their eating habits moving forward, leading to obesity from at very young age," she added PA Food and drink news Pineapple overtakes avocado as the UK's fastest-selling fruit According to Tesco, pineapple has overtaken avocado as the UKs fastest-selling fruit, with sales increasing by 15 per cent in 2017. In comparison, avocado sales rose by just under 10 per cent last year. The popular supermarket says the surge in popularity comes as shoppers buying the versatile fruit are beginning to use it as a main ingredient in everything from curries and barbecues, to juices and cocktails Getty Food and drink news Marks & Spencers launches stoneless avocados Rather than the result of genetic modification, the avocados are formed by an unpollinated avocado blossom. The fruit develops without a seed which in turns stops the growth, creating a small, seedless fruit. Whats more, the skin is actually edible, unlike a regular avocado. The flesh is much like that of a normal avocado - smooth and creamy, pale in colour and rich in flavour M&S Food and drink news Office teabags contain 17 times more germs than a toilet seat, reveals study The average bacterial reading of an office teabag was 3,785, in comparison to only 220 for a toilet seat. Other pieces of kitchen equipment also stacked up highly in their findings, with the bacterial readings averaging at 2,483 on kettle handles, 1,746 on the rim of a used mug and 1,592 on a fridge door handle Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New study shows drinking more coffee leads to a longer life There is good news and a final hope for coffee addicts and lovers. You will now be able to drink coffee for longer as new study shows its can lead to a prolonged life. Scientists showed that those who drank between two and four cups of coffee a day had 18% lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers. PA Food and drink news Coke Zero is replaced with Coke Zero Sugar Coca-Cola is pulling the plug on its Coke Zero. The much loved drink will be replaced with a new improved taste. The move, backed with a 10 million campaign, is said to come from Coca-Cola supporting people to reduce their sugar intake. Coca-Cola want people make this move while not sacrificing sugary taste of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola Food and drink news Starbucks introduce new avocado spread The avocado craze has grown from hipster brunch restaurants to Starbucks. Starbucks have introduced their new avocado spread earlier this year and it has the internet in debate. Some argue that it not a spread but guacamole while others question if there is any avocado in there at all. When buying the new spread you can also buy an optional toasted bagel. It is a must try for all avocado connoisseurs. Starbucks Food and drink news New Mars chocolate bar The iconic British chocolate bar is about to get its partner in crime. The new bar, named Goodness Knows, will replace the gooey caramel goodness of the mars bar with oats. It is said to be more like a Florentine biscuit with a thin dark chocolate bottom. While being moderately healthy Mars says that is has good intentions. One pack has 154 calories and will sell for about 90p. Mars Food and drink news Wine prices could increase because of Brexit Wine lovers across the UK might soon have to shell out close to a quarter more for their favourite tipple after Brexit, as a weaker pound and sluggish economy takes its toll, a new study shows Rex Food and drink news Chocolate may be good for the heart A new study, published in the British Medical Journal: Heart, found that moderate chocolate intake can be positively associated with lessening the risk of the heart arrhythmia condition Atrial Fibrillation Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Brits throw away 1.4 million bananas each year British families are throwing away 1.4 million bananas that are perfectly good to eat every day at cost of 80m a year, new figures have shown PA/Armin Weigel Food and drink news Rosemary sales spike over exam time There has been a surge a surge in sales of the herb rosemary after a recent study found it helps improve memory. According to high street health food chain Holland & Barrett, sales of the herb have increased by 187 per cent compared to the same time last year Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Gluten-free diets 'not recommended' for people without coeliac disease Avoiding wheat, barley and rye in the belief that a gluten-free diet brings health benefits may do more harm than good, according to a team of US nutrition and medicine experts Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Starbucks launches two new coffee-based drinks Starbucks is launching two new coffee-based drinks in the UK, as it strives to tap into consumers growing appetite for healthy beverages. The Cold Brew Vanilla sweet cream and the Cappuccino Freddo, will both be available in stores throughout the UK from the start of May Twitter/@SbuxCountyHall Food and drink news Cadburys Dairy Milk Tiffin is making a permanent comeback after 80 years The Cadbury Dairy Milk Tiffin, first produced in 1937, is making a permanent comeback to the UK. The raisin and biscuit-filled chocolate bar is being launched after a successful trial last summer saw 3 million chocolate treats  at the cost of 1.49 for each 95g bar- purchased by nostalgic customers Cadburys Food and drink news Pizza restaurant makes worlds cheesiest 'Scottie's Pizza Parlor' in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Facebook/Scottie's Pizza Parlor Food and drink news A pizza joint in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Why not eating before a workout could be better for your health A study published in the American Journal of Physiology by researchers at the University of Bath found you might be likely to burn more fat if you have not eaten first Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New York restaurant named best in the world A New York restaurant where an average meal for two will cost $700 has been named the best in the world. Eleven Madison Park won the accolade for the first time after debuting on the list at number 50 in 2010. The restaurant was praised for a fun sense of fine-dining, blurring the line between the kitchen and the dining room Getty Images Food and drink news Why you crave bad food when youre tired Researchers at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago recently presented their results of a study looking into the effects of sleep deprivation upon high-calorific food consumption. Researchers found that those who were sleep-deprived had specifically enhanced brain activity to the food smells compared to when they had a good nights sleep Shutterstock Food and drink news Drinking wine engages more of your brain than solving maths problems Drinking wine is the ideal workout for your brain, engaging more parts of our grey matter than any other human behaviour, according to a leading neuroscientist. Dr Gordon Shepherd, from the Yale School of Medicine, said sniffing and analysing a wine before drinking it requires exquisite control of one of the biggest muscles in the body Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news British dessert eating surges after people ditch healthy eating in February : In heartening news for anyone feeling guilty about quitting their New Year diet, it seems lots of us have given in to our sweet tooths once again. New data from nationwide food-delivery service Deliveroo reveals there was a surge in Brits ordering desserts in February compared to the first month of 2017 Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news US congress debates definition of milk alternatives A new bill has been created that seeks to ban dairy alternatives from using the term milk. Titled the DAIRY PRIDE Act, the name is a tenuous acronym for defending against imitations and replacements of yogurt, milk, and cheese to promote regular intake of dairy every day. It argues that the dairy industry is struggling as a result of all the dairy-free alternatives on the market and the public are being duped too Getty Images Food and drink news Cadburys launches two new chocolate bars UK confectionary giant Cadbury has launched two new chocolate bars, hoping to lure those with a sweet tooth and perhaps help combat some of the challenges it faces from rising commodity prices and a post-Brexit slump in the value of the pound.The companys new products will be peanut butter and mint flavoured. They will be available in most major super markets as 120g bars, priced at 1.49, according to the company Cadburys Food and drink news You can now get a job as a professional chocolate eater The company responsible for some of your favourite chocolate brands  think Cadbury, Milks, Prince and Oreo  have officially announced an opening to join their team as a professional chocolate taster. The successful candidate will help them to test, perfect and launch new products all over the world. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news MSG additive used in Chinese food is actually good for you, scientist claims For years, weve been told MSG (the sodium salt of glutamic acid) - often associated with cheap Chinese takeaways - is awful for our health and to be avoided at all costs. But one scientist argues it should be used as a supersalt and encourages adding it to food. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Lettuce prices are rising Not only are lettuces becoming an increasingly rare commodity in supermarkets, but prices for the leafy vegetables seem to be rising too. According to the weekly report from the Governments Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a pair of Little Gem lettuces had an average market price of 0.86 in the week that ended on Friday, up from an average of 0.56 in the previous week  thats an almost 54 per cent increase. Getty Images Food and drink news Do-It-Yourself restaurant To encourage more people to cook and eat together, IKEA has launched The Dining Club in Shoreditch  a fully immersive Do-It-Yourself restaurant . Members of the public can book to host a brunch, lunch or dinner party for up to 20 friends and family. Supported by their very own sous chef and maitre de, the host and their guests will orchestrate an intimate dining experience where cooking together is celebrated and eating together is inspirational Mikael Buck / IKEA Food and drink news Ping Pong menu with a twist Gatwick Airport has teamed up with London dim sum restaurant Ping Pong to create a limited edition menu with a distinctly British twist; including a Full English Bao and Beef Wellington Puff, to celebrate the launch of the airports new route to Hong Kong Food and drink news Zizzi unveil the Maamgharita Unique pizza art has been created by Zizzi in celebration of the Queens 90th birthday. The pizza features the queen in an iconic pose illustrated with fresh and tasty Italian ingredients on a backdrop of the Union Jack Food and drink news Blue potatoes make a comeback Blue potatoes, once a staple part of British potato crops, are back on the menu thanks to a Cambridge scientist turned-organic farmer and Farmdrop, an online marketplace that lets people buy direct from local farms. Cambridge PhD graduate-turned farmer, Adrian Izzard has used traditional growing techniques at Wild Country Organics to produce the colourful spuds, packed with healthy cell-protecting anthocyanin, which had previously disappeared from UK plates when post-war farmers were pushed towards higher-yielding varieties

But as with anything, what goes up, must come down and in 2003, Tupperware parties ceased in the UK, continuing only in America, as well as shops stopping selling it too.

So unless youve got your mums much-loved hand-me-downs, youll have to look elsewhere for trusty non-leaking pots.

For me, thats now Sistema. Instead of just a sealing lid, these use chunky clip locks in bold colours and contrasting clear plastic containers. The soup holder has changed my lunches in winter for the better, as well as a little square pot with removable middle shelf that cleverly separates muesli and yogurt without leak. I think theyll stand the test of time  so perhaps one day my children will wonder why Im still using something thats so dated.
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Everything in moderation.

Its a common justification made for behaviours that may fall outside the realm of healthy. Whether its a drink or two or indulging in a favorite dessert, consuming small quantities, rather than abject abstinence, is a more palatable and acceptable option for most people.

The less-is-more approach may be sound when applied to many aspects of our frenzied daily lives, but when it comes to smoking, the same rationale cannot apply.

A new study that I conducted with other nursing and health services researchers has found that those who enjoy the occasional cigarette in social situations are risking their health just as much as the person who smokes a pack or more a day.

Ours is the first population health study to compare the blood pressure and cholesterol levels of people who self-identify as current versus social smokers.

To eliminate risks of cardiovascular disease, the only answer is not to ever start smoking or stop it completely. This needs to be a priority for health providers and policymakers.

A study of nearly 40,000 people conducted over a four-year period as part of The Ohio State Universitys Million Hearts educational program identified nonsmokers, current regular smokers and those who said they were social smokers, meaning they didnt have a cigarette every day. The social smokers in our study tended to be younger, male and were disproportionately Hispanic. Social smokers have been identified in previous studies as those who smoke in nightclubs and bars. Also, social smoking has been shown, in previous studies, to be associated on college campuses with alcohol consumption.

Our study defined a social smoker as an individual who does not smoke cigarettes on a daily basis but who smokes in certain social situations on a regular basis.

The researchers collected deidentified data from volunteers who completed Million Hearts cardiovascular screenings. After taking into account demographic and physical differences between the regular and social smokers, we found that there was virtually no difference in their risk of experiencing hypertension or high cholesterol, conditions that frequently lead to heart disease.

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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. 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The study did not measure outcomes on cancer, but we know that smoking has been linked to 30 different types of cancer.

I believe that this is one of the most important findings in tobacco-related health in years, and it brings to light an issue, like e-cigarettes and secondhand smoke, that we in the health care field must address with urgency. We now know that once people start opening packs of cigarettes, whether its for daily use or just to socialize at a party, theyre entering the same on-ramp toward serious health problems.

This knowledge carries significant ramifications for the medical profession and the way nurse practitioners, doctors, nurses and physician assistants communicate with patients. Its routine for clinicians to ask patients whether or not they are smokers during a checkup or exam. The social smokers will frequently respond negatively to that question because they dont think of themselves in those terms and, thus, a significant health threat goes undetected.

Given these findings, it makes more sense for clinicians to reframe their questions. For example, Do you ever use tobacco in social situations with friends or work colleagues? or When was the last time you had a cigarette or used tobacco?

High levels of bad cholesterol, the type measured in our study, and high blood pressure are risk factors for heart attack and stroke. Knowing that these health risks for occasional smokers are the same as those who light up frequently, clinicians must become more precise in collecting this information from their patients.

This study should also affect the advice that patients receive in the examination room. In terms of heart health, its simply not sufficient for clinicians to advise patients to cut back on their smoking.

The societal impact of this new study could be enormous. It concluded that more than one of every 10 Americans identifies as social smokers, compared to the 17 percent who smoke regularly. Extrapolate those numbers to the country as a whole and it means that millions of people are placing their heart health at risk by occasionally indulging in cigarettes. We cant ignore this problem.

Over the last few decades, the United States has done a commendable job in raising public awareness of the dangers of smoking and properly stigmatizing tobacco use as a pervasive and deadly health threat. Armed with this new knowledge regarding the dangers of social smoking, public health officials, anti-smoking advocates and the medical community need to focus their messaging on those who mistakenly believe the occasional cigarette leaves them exempt from the warnings directed toward heavier users. Moderation, in this case, is most definitely a vice from a health perspective, and a potentially life-shortening approach.

The Conversation
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The terror threat to Britain is increasing as Isis loses battles and territory in Syria and Iraq, the security minister has said.

Ben Wallace said extremist Britons and other Europeans are either unable to get out to the region to join Isis, or have come home and are trying to inspire homegrown fanatics to carry out attacks.

The terror group has already lost its base in Iraq, Mosul, and is facing an international coalition-backed offensive in Raqqa, Syria, which was described by former Prime Minister David Cameron as the head of the snake.

Mr Wallace told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: I think the threat is still increasing, partly driven by the fact Isis is collapsing in Syria and people are either unable to get out there to fight for Isis and so they look to do something at home, or also because people have come back and tried to inspire people with their stories and tales of the caliphate.

I think those two things mean that the threat is to some extent increasing.

Mr Wallace rejected suggestions that the Governments voluntary anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent, could be made compulsory.

It comes after Simon Cole, the police lead for Prevent, said there needs to be a debate about introducing an element of compulsion for certain groups, such as returnees from Syria.

Responding, Mr Wallace said Prevent is under review all the time and revealed plans to release more information about its operations to boost public understanding.

In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Show all 30 1 /30 In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian family arrives at a checkpoint, manned by pro-government forces, at the al-Hawoz street roundabout, after leaving Aleppo's eastern neighbourhoods Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian woman, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, reacts as she stands with her children in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-regime fighters, gesture as they drive past resident fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood , after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-regime fighters, gesture as they drive past residents fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian pro-regime fighter speaks with a child, as residents flee violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood. Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops AFP/Getty Images In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Smoke rises as seen from a governement-held area of Aleppo, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian soldiers targeting rebels-held areas in the eastern neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria. According to media reports, the army is now holding on 99 percent of Aleppois eastern neighborhoods EPA In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-government forces patrol Aleppo's eastern al-Salihin neighbourhood after troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian soldiers rest following the battle at al-Sheik Saeed neighborhood in Aleppo, Syria EPA In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian pro-government fighter walking past closed shops in the Bab al-Nasr district of Aleppo's Old City. Once renowned for its bustling souks, grand citadel and historic gates, Aleppo's Old City has been rendered virtually unrecognisable by some of the worst violence of Syria's war Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria The crucial battle for Aleppo entered its 'final phase' after Syrian rebels retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances. The retreat leaves opposition fighters confined to just a handful of neighbourhoods in southeast Aleppo, the largest of them Sukkari and Mashhad Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian civilans arrive at a checkpoint, manned by pro-government forces, at the al-Hawoz street roundabout, after leaving Aleppo's eastern neighbourhoods. Syria's government has retaken at least 85 percent of east Aleppo, which fell to rebels in 2012, since beginning its operation Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian civilians flee the Sukkari neighbourhood towards safer rebel-held areas in southeastern Aleppo Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrians celebrate in the government-held Mogambo neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, after rebel fighters retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrians celebrate in the government-held Mogambo neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, after rebel fighters retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances. The fall of Aleppo would be the worst rebel defeat since Syria's conflict began in 2011, and leave the government in control of the country's five major cities Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian refugee Aliya inside the tent where she lives with her husband and ten children in a camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian refugee women and children outside the entrance to their tents in the refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA Wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA Wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee woman outside the entrance to the tent where her family live, in the refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A vehicle drives past a mosque at night in Idlib, Syria. Picture taken with a long exposure Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Damaged buildings stand in the rebel-controlled town of Binnish in Idlib province, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria The night sky is seen through damaged windows in the rebel-controlled town of Binnish in Idlib province, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Damaged buildings stand in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province, Syria Reuters

But the security minister went on: Im not sure at the moment that compulsion is the right thing to do, I think the first thing to do is get everyone on board with it.

That includes people like the NUT and all these people that have campaigned against it. Theres no ifs and buts nowadays, if were going to stop these people who use everyday items such as vehicles and kitchen knives to murder people on our streets, we are going to have to all engage together with Prevent and we are having real success when we do that.

He added: I think its time for all of us to put a shoulder to the wheel on Prevent and move it along.

PA
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Nasa is planning to make oxygen from the atmosphere on Mars when its next robot arrives on the mysterious red planet in 2020.

Scientists will send microbial life - possibly algae or bacteria - on the 2020 Rover mission in a bid to create air fit for human consumption.

They aim to feed the microorganisms in Martian soil in the hope that they will pump out oxygen as a byproduct.

It could then be made available for breathing or used as rocket fuel to power return flights to Earth.

If the experiment is successful it will mark a major step towards making Mars habitable for human colonies in the future.

Mars's atmosphere contains just 0.13% oxygen, compared with 21% on Earth.

Nasa Acting Chief Administrator Robert Lightfoot told Futurism: "Mars 2020, has an experiment where we are going to try and actually generate oxygen out of the atmosphere on Mars, clearly thats for human capability down the road."

The US government department also has plans to build a magnetic shield around Mars and to install a nuclear reactor on the planet.

Space in perspective: this is how big the Earth really is compared to the other planets in our Solar System Show all 7 1 /7 Space in perspective: this is how big the Earth really is compared to the other planets in our Solar System Space in perspective: this is how big the Earth really is compared to the other planets in our Solar System Saturn "Jupiter holds the title for being the biggest planet in the solar system, but Saturn is no tiddler," says amateur astronomer John Brady, who made these composite images. Like shoulder pads (or a massive hat) those rings let it dress up and seem even bigger than it is - but you could still fit some 764 Earths inside the planet itself. Space in perspective: this is how big the Earth really is compared to the other planets in our Solar System Saturn's Rings The rings themselves are made up of billions of bits of ice and rock debris, ranging in size from tiny grains to mountain-sized chunks. There's a number of gaps in the rings, some of which are patrolled by moons sweep a clear path through the junk like bodyguards, while others -like the largest gap, the Cassini Division - are caused by gravitional resonances between debris and those same moons. Space in perspective: this is how big the Earth really is compared to the other planets in our Solar System Neutron Star There isn't actually a Neutron Star in our Solar System - but we should be thankful for that. It's only 20km across (shown here sitting on the North West coast of England) but has 1.5 times the mass of our Sun - just a teaspoon of the material would weigh more than a billion tonnes. They also spin incredibly fast - faster than a kitchen blender, rotating as quickly as 716 times a second. Space in perspective: this is how big the Earth really is compared to the other planets in our Solar System The Sun Here comes the Sun: it makes up 99.86 per cent of the Solar System's entire mass and puts out more energy in a single second than humans have ever produced in our entire history. All the planets are in fact just byproducts from the Sun's formation and when it goes, we go with it - though that won't be for another 7.6 billion years. Space in perspective: this is how big the Earth really is compared to the other planets in our Solar System Olympus Mons Some of Mars' geographical features dwarf those of Earth. Olympus Mons isn't just the biggest volcano on the planet, it's bigger than any in the Solar System and in this image dwarfs the state of Arizona. Planetary geologists think Mons' massive size is to do with the lack of active plate tectonics on Mars. This means that magma can continually erupt in the same spot without moving. It's so big that it's tough to know how to measure it, but it's generally agreed it's at least 22km high - nearly three times taller than Mount Everest. Space in perspective: this is how big the Earth really is compared to the other planets in our Solar System Mars And here's Mars itself against the same portion of North America. As Brady points out, this shows that you could fly half way around Mars in around eight hours - though of course you'd need an incredibly light plane as Mars' atmospher is only 1 per cent as thick as Earth's. "Earths rusty neighbour in the solar system is the second smallest of the planets, Mercury being smallest," says Brady. "The actual dry land mass of Mars is around the same as Earths, because although Mars is much smaller it doesnt of course have any seas." Space in perspective: this is how big the Earth really is compared to the other planets in our Solar System Jupiter Canada and the US combined are dwarfed on the surface of Jupiter - the biggest planet in the solar system, with a total mass greater than all the other planets and moons put together. "Jupiter is the king of the solar system," says Brady. "It's over 11 times the diameter of our planet, with lightning bolts up to 1,000 times more powerful than Earths, and wind speeds in the upper atmosphere that can reach 100 metres per second. This planet races around in just 10 hours compared to Earths 24, making it the fastest rotating planet in the solar system."

They hope to launch a lunar space station near the Moon that could act as a starting point for missions to the rest of the solar system.

Mr Lightfoot said it was a logical next step after the success of the International Space Station, adding: "When you look at our plans today [for getting to Mars], we use the International Space Station as much as we can."

South African-born American businessman Elon Musk has announced plans to colonise Mars and said an optimistic cost would be around $10billion per person.
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Scientists are working on strategies to prevent a supervolcano erupting which could have devastating effects on the worlds climate.

Nasa researchers believe that drilling into the base of one of the most dangerous supervolcanoes in the world, which is underneath Yellowstone National Park, could be the solution. High-pressure water jets would be pumped in to cool it down, releasing heat from the magma chamber and preventing it exploding.

However, drilling into a supervolcano has many potential dangers, says Brian Wilcox of Nasas Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology.

If you drill into the top of the magma chamber and try and cool it from there, this would be very risky, he told the BBC.

This could make the cap over the magma chamber more brittle and prone to fracture. And you might trigger the release of harmful volatile gases in the magma at the top of the chamber which would otherwise not be released.

Mr Wilcox said he believes the supervolcano threat is substantially greater than the asteroid or comet threat.

A supervolcano eruption could cause long-term effects to the planet, including worldwide starvation and the release of massive amounts of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. The United Nations estimated that global food reserves would last just 74 days.

The biggest fear for volcanologists is wind-blown ash. "People who live upwind from eruptions need to be concerned about the big ones," said Larry Mastin, a USGS volcanologist.

Large eruptions give rise to umbrella clouds that push ash upwind and potentially over half the continent, Mr Mastin said in a Live Science report.

Indyplus gallery: Yellowstone Show all 4 1 /4 Indyplus gallery: Yellowstone Indyplus gallery: Yellowstone yellowstone3.jpg AFP Indyplus gallery: Yellowstone yellowstone2.jpg AFP Indyplus gallery: Yellowstone 16-Sunset-Lake-AFP-Getty.jpg AFP/Getty Indyplus gallery: Yellowstone yellowstone-national-park.jpg Getty Images

Major eruptions happen on average once every 100,000 years. The most recent supervolcanic eruption on the planet occurred 27,000 years ago at Taupo located at the midpoint of New Zealand's north island.

The US Geological Surveys website states that Yellowstone will be eruption-free for centuries. However, Yellowstone explodes approximately on a 600,000 year cycle, says Mr Wilcox and it is about 600,000 years since it last exploded.

Nasas plan is to drill around 10km into Yellowstone and pump in water which would be slowly extracted. The cost of the project is in the region of 2.69bn. In future, a geothermal plant could be built, generating electric power.
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A stalker policewoman became obsessed with her friends husband and hacked into his social media accounts to ruin his marriage, a court heard.

Ashley Boyd, from Moodiesburn, Lanarkshire, gained access to Kevin OConnors Facebook and Twitter accounts and posted messages and slurs about his wife Rhona.

The 26-year-old also sent a series of messages to Mr OConnors friends and colleagues saying he was in an unhappy marriage and changed his relationship status to single.

Glasgow Sherrif Court was told that Mrs OConnor became friends with Boyd when they worked in Boots together, although by the end of 2013 the friendship had deteriorated, according to the Sun.

In 2014 while serving Mr OConnor in the shop, Boyd told him she knew his wife and suggested that a number of women in the shop fancied him.

She later quit Boots to join the police force in Scotland but signed up to the same gym as Mr OConnor, apparently knowing he would be there.

Andrew Beadsworth, the prosecutor for the case, said: Boyd was fixated upon Kevin OConnor.

Mr OConnor was concerned and angry. Efforts made by him to delete the Facebook account were unsuccessful because Boyd had changed the password, he added, according to the Daily Record.

The court was told Mr and Mrs OConnor were on holiday in 2016 when his sister got in contact to ask why his Facebook relationship status had been changed.

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. 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He also received a text from a colleague asking about a conversation she had with him about his unhappy marriage.

As Boyd started to come under suspicion, she managed to persuade a friend of hers to own up to hacking the social media accounts. This friend later confessed to the deception and revealed Boyds role in the incident.

Boyd pleaded guilty and admitted to engaging in a course of conduct which caused Rhona and Kevin OConnor fear and alarm by stalking.

She has been bailed and will be sentenced next month.
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A number of top brands have reportedly raised concerns about their adverts on Mumsnet after their marketing appeared next to "offensive" swear words posted by users.

Confused.com, National Trust and Italian fashion brand Bulgari are among the companies concerned by profanity on the popular internet forum, which is visited by millions of parents every month, according to the Times.

Banner ads for major firms have appeared on posts called "Is this w**ky?" and "I can't f**king do this anymore", which generated hundreds of comments.

One frustrated user in the latter post described their son's tantrums by saying: "Hes proceeded to just yell at me all f***ing morning. I am f***ing broken."

A National Trust spokesperson told the Times they had requested that their adverts were removed from posts containing swear words, while a representative from price comparison website Confused.com said they would take measures to prevent their ads appearing "on any page that is deemed offensive in any way".

The companies pay for advertising space on Mumsnet and a number of other sites through agencies who use software to target their specific consumers.

Parents vent their frustrations about issues ranging from potty training to internet safety on Mumsnet, who have said they are not "over prudish" about swearing.

The site, which makes money through advertising, sponsors and events, generated a turnover of 7.2million last year and has become one of the most influential internet forums in the UK since it was founded by Carrie Longton and Justine Roberts in 2000.

Ms Roberts said: "We haven't been contacted by any advertisers with any concerns about swearing on Mumsnet and we have no plans to change our policy on allowing swearing on our forums. Mumsnet is after all a site for grown ups which people visit to get advice, support and sometimes to let off a bit of steam."

The news that top brands were reportedly concerned about their ads due to swearing drew mixed reactions from Mumsnet users.

"F**k me, [Mumsnet HQ], is this true?" asked Paffle.

"Are people that bothered by swearing? Please tell me you're not going to ban swearing."

Impostersyndrome said: "I'm with the advertisers, I'm afraid. For a site that's meant to be full of women more intelligent than average, I'm astonished at how sweary it is. In no way does it reflect my reality at home or at work."

Other advertisers on the site include Marks & Spencer, TK Maxx and Asda.

A spokesperson at Confused.com said: We have measures in place to ensure our display adverts appear alongside appropriate content. We do not have plans to withdraw advertising from Mumsnet, but each webpage is considered on a case-by-case basis.
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The Government should consider abolishing all anti-terror laws as they are unnecessary in the fight against extremists, the barrister tasked with reviewing Britains terrorism legislation has said.

Speaking exclusively to The Independent before this week's attacks in Spain in which 14 people were killed in vehicle rammings in Barcelona and the nearby coastal town of Cambrils, Max Hill QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, argued potential jihadis can be stopped with existing general laws that are not always being used effectively to take threats off the streets.

His comments come after several terrorists launching attacks in the UK and Europe were revealed to be former petty criminals who had links to criminal gangs before being radicalised  a pattern which appears to apply to the Spanish attackers too.

Mr Hill said Britain has the laws we need to intervene, adding: We should review them and ensure they ensure remain fit for purpose, but we should have faith in our legal structures, rather than trying to create some kind of new situation where the ordinary rules are thrown out.

He will consider any new legislation recommended by the Home Offices ongoing review of its response to this years attacks but believes that Britain cannot legislate its way out of the threat from returning Isis fighters and home-grown extremists.

We should not legislate in haste, we should not use the mantra of something has to be done as an excuse for creating new laws, he added. We should make use of what we have.

That includes measures that can be used to aggravate conventional crimes like murder and possessing an offensive weapon to hand would-be terrorists longer sentences.

Soldiers were temporarily deployed to bolster police forces when the terror threat was raised to 'critical' following the Manchester attack (AFP/Getty)

He also expressed concern over the threat to civil liberties posed by some proposed anti-terror measures, warning laws aimed at tackling hate preachers could easily veer into the territory of thought crime.

Mr Hill, who took on the responsibility of examining the UKs counter-terror laws in March, has prosecuted in cases trialling members of the IRA, al-Qaeda, Isis and the 21 July 2005 bomb plot.

Having met with Muslim communities across England in the wake of the terror attacks in Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park earlier this year, he said there was confusion about the use of existing laws.

The vast majority of people interviewed by Mr Hill also expressed feelings of distrust and resentment towards the Governments Prevent counter-extremism programme, as well as the use of specific terror charges for some extremist killings and murder for others.

He said the sheer number of dedicated terrorism offences sometimes overlapped with conventional crime, while some have become outdated or expanded beyond their initial scope. In an ideal world we wouldn't have specific terror offences, Mr Hill continued, adding that he does not believe the existing acts will be swept away any time soon.

London Bridge Terror Attack Show all 16 1 /16 London Bridge Terror Attack London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police Officers outside the Barrowboy and Banker Public House on Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed Police talk to members of the public outside London Bridge Hospital as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Armed police on Borough High Street as police deal with a 'major incident' at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services near the scene of the incident Screengrab London Bridge Terror Attack People run down Borough High Street as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency services arrive at the scene near Borough market at London Bridge Carl Court/Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Emergency personnel on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police sniffer dogs on London Bridge as police are dealing with a "major incident" at London Bridge PA London Bridge Terror Attack A second helicopter lands on London Bridge as police are responding to three incidents in the capital, amid reports that a vehicle collided with pedestrians on London Bridge, Scotland Yard said. Officers are dealing with reports of stabbings in Borough Market, where armed officers attended and shots were fired. They are also at an incident in the Vauxhall area PA London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London REUTERS London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack A police officer escorts members of the public to safety at London Bridge Getty Images London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident on London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters London Bridge Terror Attack Police attend to an incident near London Bridge in London, Britain Reuters

I think the current Governments counter-terrorism strategy review will involve looking hard at the more effective use of non-terrorism legislation to meet precursor criminality  general criminal activity committed by individuals that should be stopped and prosecuted before they move into terrorism.

Mr Hill noted that some of the perpetrators of the four recent terror attacks to hit the UK were previously operating at a low level of criminality, adding: I think that people like that should be stopped wherever possible, indicted using whatever legislation, and brought to court.

David Videcette, a former Scotland Yard counter-terror detective, agreed, arguing that police should be using disruption techniques that are frequently applied to organised crime. The profile of religious extremists is changing, they are more criminal-based, he told The Independent. We need to be better  the counter-terror work needs to be more crime-focused.

Mr Videcette, who investigated the 2005 London bombings, said that security services have primacy in terror investigations and can sometimes block police from arresting suspects for conventional crimes. If intelligence identifies a terror suspect, weve got to do something about that and it doesnt matter what law we use to do it, he added.

Manchester bomber Salman Abedi had a criminal record for relatively minor offences (PA/GMP)

The Manchester Arena bomber, Salman Abedi, was known for his use of cannabis and links to local gangs, while Westminster attacker Khalid Masood was a convert with a string of criminal convictions.

Analysts have warned of an emerging crime-terror nexus seen in the deadliest attacks across Europe, where former criminals and gang members have been drawn into jihad by the promise of redemption and purpose, while Isis recruiters see them as valuable links to the underworld already pre-disposed to violence.

Mr Hill was speaking before the attacks in Spain, which have renewed focus on counter-terror operations and intelligence in Europe. A cell of around a dozen people is believed to have planned several deadly attacks using homemade explosives and gas canisters before an accidental explosion killed one plotter on Wednesday and rushed the rest into vehicle rammings in Barcelona and Cambrils.

Investigators said none of the suspects identified so far were known for extremism, despite a teenage boy writing that he wanted to kill all infidels on social media, while several had criminal records.

The attacks mirrored vehicle massacres across Europe and appeared to closely follow Isis' instructions to followers, while the Cambrils cell and a knife attacker shot dead by police in Russia on Saturday were wearing fake suicide vests in a technique possibly learned from the London Bridge attack.

Mr Hill said the game has been changing rapidly in terrorism since Isis declared its caliphate in 2014, prompting a mass exodus of hundreds of people from the UK, with just under half already having returned. He said returned jihadis and their families represent a heavy challenge for British law enforcement that must be met with all available measures, including prosecution, temporary exclusion orders, port stops and the revocation of citizenship for dual nationals.

According to Home Office figures, at least 850 jihadis travelled from the UK to Iraq and Syria and around half have returned and 15 per cent being killed, leaving an estimated 300 still alive.

None of us know what number will return, he added. I think there can be little doubt that the fall of Mosul will prove to have cost British lives among citizens that were fighting there under Isis, and as and when theres a final outcome in Raqqa I expect the same would happen.

The US estimates that 2,000 Isis fighters remain in the groups de-facto capital, formerly known to be the home of so many British militants that a district was dubbed Little Britain.

Smouldering ruins in Raqqa last month (Reuters) (REUTERS)

They most likely will die in Raqqa, said Brett McGurk, the American envoy to the US-led international coalition against Isis, as the city remains surrounded and under bombardment as the Syrian Democratic Forces advance.

British laws have been changed to allow for the prosecution of crimes committed in Syria and anyone found to have taken part in fighting or terror is likely to be jailed, but cases will be more complicated where there is a lack of proof or for women and children not directly involved in violence. The UK can also use temporary exclusion orders to prevent British terrorists from re-entering the country, strip citizenship from dual nationals and stop anyone under suspicion at ports and airports.

Mr Hill said criminal prosecution must be the first point of call for returned Isis members, in an open court where possible, and if there is insufficient evidence subjects must be monitored using the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act (TPims). They allow suspects to be tagged, forced to regularly report to police, prevented from travelling overseas, restricted from visiting certain areas and have their online activity and communications monitored.

The powers are strong but very resource-heavy, Mr Hill warned, suggesting that diluted measures could be imposed on a case-by-case basis. It isnt a case of prosecuting anyone whos proven to have been in Syria full stop, he said.

I think that people need to be reminded of the nuances and the fact that in a short space of time from the declaration of the caliphate in 2014 there was effective brainwashing, in many cases of vulnerable people including young people and women who were encouraged to go under every kind of false pretence.

In some cases, having gone out of a sense of naivety, those individuals have become not just extreme but directly or indirectly involved in violence, which means that on return the solution will have to be prosecution.

Youssef Zaghba, one of the London Bridge attackers, is among the terrorists who were prevented from travelling to Syria before launching attacks

As well as the threat of returning Isis fighters, there is rising concern over the possibility that extremists prevented from joining the terrorist group abroad will seek to take action on home soil instead. London Bridge attacker Youssef Zaghba, Normandy church attacker Abdel-Malik Petitjean and Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who shot a Canadian soldier dead outside the countrys war memorial, are among terrorists who attempted to travel to Syria, as is a 17-year-old girl accused of colluding with Isis to plot an attack in the UK.

Ben Wallace, the security minister, said he believed the terror threat against Britain was increasing amid military progress against Isis' territories in Syria and Iraq. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Saturday: Isis is collapsing in Syria and people are either unable to get out there to fight for Isis and so they look to do something at home, or also because people have come back and tried to inspire people with their stories and tales of the caliphate. I think those two things mean that the threat is to some extent increasing."

Some have called upon the Government to let jihadis leave the country on the provision they cannot return, rather than forcing them to remain in Britain.

But Mr Hill said the state has a responsibility to protect all British citizens, however abhorrent their views, as well as the countries where they wish to conduct violence. However tempting it is to think that by opening the borders and letting radical individuals out you are ridding yourself of a problem, in fact the opposite is true, he added.

The phenomenon of hate preachers has come under renewed focus following revelations that Anjem Choudarys banned al-Muhajiroun network was linked to both the London Bridge attack and a foiled plot by a group of terrorists who called themselves the Three Musketeers. London Bridge ringleader Khuram Butt was filmed for a documentary praying to an Islamist flag in a park in the capital alongside members of Choudary's proscribed group.

Anjem Choudary's group was linked to the London Bridge attack (EPA)

Choudary himself was jailed for five years and six months in September 2016 for inviting support for Isis.

Mr Hill said the issue needed to be dealt with using existing laws but cautioned against any new measures that would stray into the forbidden territory of creating thought crime. We must stay the right side of that line and the hate preacher debate comes fraught with risk that we will take a wrong turning," he said.

Such concerns have not publicly been shared by Theresa May, who has repeatedly claimed that repealing human rights laws would help the UK combat terror. Amid questions over security failures in the lead-up to the attacks in Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge, the Prime Minister said: I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.

And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.

Without specifically criticising the Prime Minister, Mr Hill stressed that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) enshrined freedoms that directly come from British law or espouse the same values weve held here since Magna Carta.

So Im not in favour of derogation from the ECHR and I certainly dont agree with those who say that a repeal of the Human Rights Act would allow a totally fresh approach to the application of the law, he added, saying he does not believe Brexit will have an effect on British law.

 Theresa May could change human rights laws in terror fight

We may not have a bill of rights but we have a rights-based society and that can only be a good thing, whether or not were part of Europe.

Mr Hill is cautious over Frances state of emergency, which allows arrest without charge and searches without warrant, and is also wary over moves like those taken by the German government to penalise technology firms that do not take down extremist content quickly enough.

Recommended Government cannot tackle terror with technology crackdown alone

He said that although Isis had generated a propaganda machine emerging which is far more sophisticated than any predecessor, governments should be looking at working with rather than against social networks and internet service providers to combat the threat.

We are seeing online platforms and messaging in multiple languages simultaneously, which is creating a radicalisation platform online and reduces the need of physical radicalisers, Mr Hill said. Weve moved into the era in very recent times where an individual of the right mindset or with the right vulnerability can self-radicalise by going online and accessing that material.

The Independent Reviewer sees his role primarily as maintaining the balance between national security and individual liberty. When we go through challenging times, which we have for the last five months, the natural inclination to legislate our way out of it is understandable but comes at a risk of interfering with that balance, he said.

I think we should remember that six significant terrorism plots were successfully disrupted in the same period that four got through, that police and all those working with them are undoubtedly doing everything they can to prevent the next plot and the one after that.
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Jeremy Hunt has launched a fresh attack on Stephen Hawking for suggesting the direction of change in the NHS was pushing it towards the US-style insurance system.

The Health Secretary issued an initial response on Twitter where he claimed Professor Hawking was wrong on lack of evidence for the weekend effect and then followed it up 17 hours later saying the scientist was spreading pernicious falsehoods.

The war of words broke out on when Prof Hawking, a lifelong Labour supporter, accused Mr Hunt of cherry-picking evidence while suppressing contradictory research in order to suit his argument.

He also suggested the NHS was under risk of privatisation in the hands of the Tories, comments which were supported by both Jeremy Corbyn and former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron.

Mr Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, took to Twitter to defend Prof Hawking, who he described as the brightest scientist in the world and thanked him for his input.

The brightest scientist in the world has been compelled to intervene due to the Conservatives failing our NHS. Thank you Professor Hawking, Mr Corbyn tweeted.

Mr Hunts Twitter outburst was spread over a 17 hour period during which the Health Secretary asked if it was too much for Prof Hawking to look at evidence.

The controversy comes as Prof Hawking said the NHS was being subjected to competing forces, with the public who want a taxpayer-funded free service on one side and multinational corporations on the other.

He wrote: In the US, where they are dominant in the healthcare system, these corporations make enormous profits, healthcare is not universal, and it is hugely more expensive for the outcomes patients receive than in the UK.

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. 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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. 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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. 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We see the balance of power in the UK is with private healthcare companies, and the direction of change is towards a US-style insurance system, he added.
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A compromise could be reached over changing the rules for a future Labour leadership contest, making it easier for a left-wing candidate to stand, the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said.

The rule change  dubbed the McDonnell amendment due to his two failed bids for the leadership in 2007 and 2010  would mean lowering the threshold of the number of nominations needed from parliamentary colleagues from 15 per cent to 5 per cent, essentially guaranteeing a left-wing figure a place on the ballot.

But while efforts were concentrated on the rule change among Labours left before the general election, Mr McDonnell now believes the heat is off after Jeremy Corbyn defied pundits and outperformed expectations in June.

For propaganda purposes people are calling it the McDonnell amendment, but Ive distanced myself from it all along: one, Im never standing for leader of the Labour Party, and two, it wasnt my idea in the first place, he told The Guardian.

The Shadow Chancellor continued: I think theres a demand for change in terms of the nomination procedure and in the usual Labour Party way, if it does get pushed by some, there will be a compromise around whats liveable. But the heat is off really: its not as critical for some people as it was in the past.

The nature of the PLP has changed, so theres less a sense of urgency in that sense. The atmospheres changed; people are thinking its better to have a range of candidates if theres a leadership at some time in the future, and whats wrong with that?

In the interview Mr McDonnell, a key ally of the Labour leader, added that Labour is working on the basis that the Government could collapse at any time due to the instability of Theresa Mays fragile supply and confidence agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

He said Labour needed to divide and demoralise the Conservatives, adding: People now understand what Jeremy Corbyn is as an individual. I think hes won peoples respect. I think hes grown in the job as well. People need to be absolutely clear where were taking the country.

 John McDonnell: 'We're ready to form a government.we are willing to serve the country'

His comments came as Mr Corbyn continues his whirlwind tour of marginal constituencies across the UK, in an effort to shore up support should Ms Mays Government collapse in the coming months and years.

On Saturday, the Labour leader visited the Conservative-held Aberconwy and Plaid Cymru-held Afron in north Wales. Aberconwy is held by Tory Guto Bebb with a slim majority of 635 votes, while Plaids Hywel Williams holds Arfon with an even tighter lead of 92 votes.

Ahead of the visits, Mr Corbyn said: We can win here and form the next government that will work for the many not the few.
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Jeremy Hunt has been ridiculed for claiming the world renowned scientist Professor Stephen Hawking is wrong about the scientific evidence behind NHS reform.

It comes as Professor Hawking attacked the Conservatives over their handling of the NHS and accused the Health Secretary of abusing and cherry-picking scientific research to justify his departments underfunding of the health service.

He suggested Mr Hunt had cited some studies but suppressed others to justify policies, including his drive to create a seven-day NHS as one of the main reasons for reforming junior doctors contracts  which led to the biggest walkout of doctors in NHS history.

The Health Secretary had previously relied on research that showed higher death rates at weekends when setting out his argument for a seven-day service, although the studies were not universally accepted by the scientific community.

While Mr Hunt said Professor Hawking is a brilliant physicist in his response on Twitter, he added: But wrong on lack of evidence for weekend effect. 2015 Fremantle study most comprehensive ever.

And whatever entrenched opposition, no responsible Health Secretary could ignore it if you want NHS to be [the] safest health service in the world as I do.

But health professionals seized on Mr Hunts response, ridiculing his assertion the professor was wrong in his analysis. Doctor Rachel Clarke posted on social media: "Memo to Hunt: next time you dispute ability of world's greatest physicist to appraise scientific data, probably best to get your facts straight."

Tim Farron, the former Liberal Democrat leader, said: "A renowned scientist such as Stephen Hawking questioning your evidence might normally be cause to think again, but sadly it looks as though Jeremy Hunt has joined the chorus of those who have enough of experts."

75-year-old Professor Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1962, said he would not be here today if it were not for the service and stressed we cannot lose the NHS.

Writing in The Guardian, he went on: The NHS is in a crisis, and one that has been created by political decisions.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (Getty Images)

These political decisions include underfunding and cuts, privatising services, the public sector pay cap, the new contract imposed on junior doctors, and removal of the student nurses' bursary. Political decisions such as these cause reductions in care quality, longer waiting lists, anxiety for patients and staff, and dangerous staff shortages.

Failures in the system of privatised social care for disabled and elderly people have placed an additional burden on the NHS.
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Millions of people in Ethiopia require immediate life-saving intervention after a severe drought and major flash floods have devastated livestock and crops, the United Nations has warned.

At least 7.8 million people have been receiving emergency food aid since April, up from 5.6 million at the start of the year, but a further 700,000 people in the countrys Somali region did not receive supplies due to resource constraints and they are now feared to be on the brink of starvation.

In July, there were 376,000 severely malnourished children under five and 3.6 million moderately malnourished children and women who were either pregnant or breastfeeding a child.

Oxfam warned that the international community  currently preoccupied with other issues such as Isis, Donald Trump and North Korea  must act urgently to prevent the crisis from turning into a catastrophe.

In a report, written with the Ethiopian government, the UNs Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned of deepening levels of malnutrition and critical water shortages in the drought-affected areas.

Some 228 districts, more than half the country, are now classed as hotspot priority one areas where people will die without help.

The number of districts requiring immediate life-saving intervention increased to levels not seen since the height of the El Nino drought impacts in 2016, the report said, referring to the natural weather system that increased the worlds average temperature last year, exacerbating the situation in Ethiopia.

The 19 per cent increase in priority one districts is largely due to the deepening drought conditions, which continue to deplete water and pasture sources, significantly impacting livestock body condition and milk production.

A child carrying a bag in a displaced persons camp due to Ethiopia's drought in Wender on 9 June 2017 (AFP/Getty Images)

Milk is the main source of food and income for the majority of households in the drought-affected areas.

About two million animals have died in the Somali region alone, according to the UNs Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

But, as some areas suffer from drought, others are experiencing severe flooding.

In Oromia region, four incidents of flash floods were reported in Adama, Arsi and East Shewa zones in the second week of July, destroying more than 50 houses and more than 800 hectares of fruit and vegetable crops, the report said.

In Afar region, a flooding incident on 20 July has affected 204 households and damaged one school and health centre in Megale [district].

The report warned a total of more than 1.5 million people were expected to be affected by flooding this summer with 500,000 likely to be forced to leave their homes.

There is also an ongoing outbreak of acute watery diarrhoea in six regions.

So far the international community has committed $382m towards an appeal for $948m of aid sought in January this year.

All humanitarian partners, including donors and recipient agencies, are encouraged to inform OCHA Ethiopia of cash and in-kind contributions, the report said.

Abdoul Karim Bah, the FAOs deputy representative in Ethiopia, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that it was crucial to provide aid between now and October when the rains are due to come.

If we dont act now, hunger and malnutrition will only get worse among (herding) communities, he said.

And Manish Kumar, Oxfams humanitarian programme manager in Ethiopia, told The Independent in a statement that yet another poor rainy season has pushed 700,000 more people to the verge of starvation in southern Ethiopia.

Somalia Drought Show all 2 1 /2 Somalia Drought Somalia Drought Zeinab looks after one of her nephews Reuters Somalia Drought Zeinab's sister Habiba, 29, sits with her children beside their shelter at a camp for internally displaced people from drought hit areas in Dollow, Somalia Reuters

A deadly mix of severe malnutrition coupled with acute watery diarrhoea puts thousands of lives at risk, particularly the elderly and children, he said.

People will have to wait until the next rains in October for any reprieve. Urgent action is needed to prevent this crisis from turning into a catastrophe.

Mr Kumar said the Ethiopian government was taking action to address the situation, but added that the scale of suffering is overwhelming and rising.

Of the $1.25bn needed to provide emergency aid, less than 40 per cent has been donated, he said.

The international community needs to step up its efforts so that people can get the help they urgently need now.

The UK has provided 30m to pay for food for 1.5 million people in the worst-affected areas. Last year, the UK funded emergency food for three million people. It is also trying to help Ethiopia improve its long-term resilience to drought as the climate changes.

Priti Patel, the UKs International Development Secretary, who visited the country last month, told The Independent in a statement that British taxpayers had led the way in providing a lifeline for millions of people, including in Ethiopia, who are at risk of starving to death as extreme hunger stalks East Africa.

However, while Britain leads, others must follow and I have lobbied the UN, other donor countries and the government of Ethiopia to act now and put funds into this emergency situation, she said.

We are showing our continued leadership by saving lives, providing food, water and medicine for those at imminent risk of dying from drought and conflict. Others who are funded by the UK, such as the UN, should do more.

It is in all our interests to act in order to secure stability, peace, security and prosperity in this part of Africa.
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Fear are mounting that up to 1,000 people could have died under the mud that ripped through Freetown, Sierra Leone, last week.

More than 450 victims are already confirmed to have died, after part of a mountain on the outskirts of the capital city caved in following heavy rain.

But it is believed the number of missing could exceed 600, and hopes are dimming for their chances of survival.

Rescue officials have warned that the chances of finding survivors "are getting smaller every day".

 Drone footage shows aftermath of Sierra Leone mudslide

Many bodies have been disfigured by the effects of the mudslide.

Everyone was mangled because all these boulders came down the hill, said Olivia Acland, a Freetown based photographer.

They smashed through peoples houses and theyre still discovering body parts. Theres heads and feet and hands. Its grizzly.

Describing the scene near Sugar Loaf Mountain, she added: Its crazy, theres this brown stain down the side of the mountain.

John James, spokesman for Unicef in Freetown, said bodies were still being recovered, some from the sea and others washed back into shore and among mangrove swamps.

Theres still high numbers of missingits safe to say some wont be found, Mr James said.

The number of corpses still unburied is a clear health hazard, he added.

Calculations are being done using satellite imagery and census figures in an attempt to gain a more accurate picture of the number people living in the affected areas.

The main priority for aid workers is now preventing an outbreak of cholera or other water-borne disease.

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. 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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. 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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

Sierra Leone suffered a severe cholera outbreak in 2012, when the disease infected at least 25,000 people and killed hundreds.

Freetowns water infrastructure also has been damaged by the mudslide.

Mass burials have already begun because of fears of an outbreak. Biohazard outfits used during the countrys devastating Ebola outbreak have again been deployed by healthcare workers.

But there are said to be insufficient supplies of cholera vaccines in the country, and emergency workers are trying to get more in.

And the threat of mudslides still lingers, as the rainy season continues.

The British government has donated 5m towards the relief effort.

Priti Patel, Secretary of State for International Development, said: This tragedy comes shortly after the Ebola crisis which Sierra Leone has worked so hard to recover from.

Britain was at the forefront in tackling that deadly disease and we remain shoulder to shoulder with Sierra Leone today after these devastating events.
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The death of an American student who was found drowned at a five-star resort in Mexico may have been caused by illegal alcohol, authorities have said.

Abbey Conner, from Wisconsin, was found face down in a swimming pool at Iberostar Paraiso del Mar resort and fell into a coma from which she never regained consciousness.

Her life support was turned off on 12 January and her medical records stated there was a lack of oxygen to the brain and cerebral inflammation. She was declared dead after being flown back to Florida.

The 20-year-old public relations student had been drinking at the lobby bar in the Iberostar Paraiso Maya, a bar that has now been shut down by authorities for selling bootled alcohol.

Mexican authorities seized nearly 38,000 litres of potentially harmful alcohol and closed two bars in the tourist destinations of Playa del Carmen and Cancun.

Ms Conners mother welcomed the news. There is obviously stuff going on that needs to be cleaned up and looked into further, she told Milwaukees Journal Sentinel. They need to investigate and interview employees. This makes sense. This needs to happen.

At the lobby bar at Iberostar Paraiso del Mar, insanitary conditions were found by authorities including a lack of disinfectant as well as alcohol past its expiry date.

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

We are continuing to work together with the secretary of tourism to ensure the health of the tourists in the region and the rest of the country, Alvaro Perez Vega, the commissioner of sanitation said.

He added that visitor safety was a number one priority at Cancun and Riviera Maya which were the most important tourist destinations in the country.

The Conner family suspected that their daughter could have been drugged or consumed tainted alcohol but the hotel has strongly denied the claims.

The mother, brother and stepfather of Conner told Good Morning America that they are bringing a lawsuit against Iberostar Hotels and Resorts for failure to cooperate with their investigation.

The problem of counterfeit or illicit alcohol is being tackled by the Mexican government. A report by Euromonitor International found that around 36 per cent of alcohol consumed in the country was illegal.
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A student who took part in the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville has said he is leaving Boston University because of the violent threats he has received since the event.

Its becoming very dangerous, Nicholas Fuentes told the Boston Globe.

Over the past week, the 18-year-old, who is originally from Illinois, said he had received 15 death threats over social media and also by email.

He blamed what he described as the socialist bias of US states for the animosity towards him.

Massachusetts, and Boston in particular, are among the most left-wing states and cities, he said. Probably anywhere I would go would be safer than Boston.

Mr Fuentes said his reason for attending the Charlottesville rally was to demonstrate against immigration, multiculturalism and post-modernism. At the protest, attended by neo-Nazis, there were chants of Jews will not replace us.

On the day of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, he posted on Facebook that a tidal wave of white identity is coming.

At the demonstration, 32-year-old civil rights activist Heather Heyer was killed when a car ploughed into a group of people protesting at the demonstration. Mr Fuentes has blamed her death on the normalisation of violence on the left.

In a Chicago Tribune report, the 18-year-old said he was not a racist and did not condone violence.

Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Show all 9 1 /9 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Protesters clash and several are injured White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared, August 12 2017 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Trump supporters at the protest A white nationalist demonstrator walks into Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville State police stand ready in riot gear Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Militia armed with assault rifles White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' with body armor and combat weapons evacuate comrades who were pepper sprayed after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared a unlawful gathering by Virginia State Police. Militia members marched through the city earlier in the day, armed with assault rifles. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' during the 'Unite the Right' rally 12 August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are protesting the removal of the statue from Emancipation Park in the city. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Racial tensions sparked the violence White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally Getty Violence on the streets of Charlottesville A car plows through protesters A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident resulted in multiple injuries, some life-threatening, and one death. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville President Donald Trump speaks about the ongoing situation in Charlottesville, Virginia from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He spoke about "loyalty" and "healing wounds" left by decades of racism.

Boston University confirmed that Mr Fuentes was no longer a student there.

Mr Fuentes said he planned to enrol at Auburn University in Alabama.

"I really like the architecture and some of the programmes there," he said. "I think I will happy there and I will be safe. It's solidly red territory."

On a conservative Alabama talk radio, the previous US president was implicit in the violence that erupted in Charlottesville.

I think Barack Obama is to blame. I think this country is more divided than it ever has been. I think almost all racism in world history can be tied back to liberalism, socialism, the idea everyone's supposed to have an equal outcome as opposed to equal opportunity, said Kerrick Whisenant on 101.1 FM Yellowhammer News, cited by Vox.

On his Facebook page, Mr Fuentes proclaimed his fervent support of President Donald Trump and his belief that multiculturalism is a cancer.

He has also called for journalists to be kicked out of the United States or hanged for what he believes are fake news reports.
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Six months have passed since Donald Trump entered the Oval Office.

His administration remains deeply understaffed. His legislative agenda is stymied. He has been active in issuing executive orders, but many are toothless, others are only in the early stages of undoing Obama policies and some are tied up in the courts. So far, Trumps leadership has mostly been defined by his rhetoric.

And his rhetoric, the conventional wisdom holds, could not be more different from his predecessors.

Barack Obama was, as President, eloquent. His language was sophisticated. He spoke in measured tones and advanced informed, reasoned dialogue.

Donald Trump is inarticulate and brusque. His language is simplistic. He dishes out invective. He shows so little regard for the facts that some say hes the exemplar of a bullshit artist. And he promotes a dialogue of the deaf.

The differences between Trumps and Obamas rhetorical styles seem stark. Yet, when we set aside the presidents speaking styles and looked more carefully at the specific words Trump employed in his first months in office, we were surprised to discover that, in certain ways, these two presidents are remarkably like each other and unlike their predecessors. Heres what we found  and why Obama and Trump have more in common than you would think.

Our analysis is based on Trumps more substantial speeches  which we somewhat arbitrarily define as those longer than 500 words  which were directed primarily at domestic audiences. We scraped from the website of the American Presidency Project all of Trumps campaign speeches and presidential addresses through July 1 that met these criteria. We ended up with 74 campaign speeches, representing more than 230,000 words, and 56 presidential addresses, which included more than 122,000 words. We compared these bodies of speech to each other and to a separate database of postwar presidential speech that one of us had collected, using these same criteria, for a recently published book.

We ran these speeches through a specialised computerised content analysis program called Diction. Diction contains 33 separate dictionaries tailored to political speech. It searches texts for the words contained in the designated dictionaries and then calculates the number of words from each dictionary that would be present in a typical 500-word sample.

On two key dimensions, Obama and Trump look similar  and stand in marked contrast to all other presidents.

First, their rhetoric is much more self-referential, meaning it uses more first-person pronouns. Obamas rhetoric is 69 percent more self-referential than the presidential average, and Trump exceeds Obama by another 20 percent.

Trump employs almost 50 percent more first-person pronouns than the second most heavily self-referential president after Obama, Gerald Ford. Trumps rhetoric is twice as self-referential as the postwar presidential average.

Second, both Trump and Obama rank very high on measures of tenacity. This dictionary includes a series of words such as must and need that call for action and that connote confidence and totality. Obamas rhetoric is around 45 percent more tenacious than the presidential average. Trumps rhetoric is a bit more tenacious than even Obamas. They are the only two presidents who substantially exceed the average.

Obama and Trumps rhetoric suggests that the prime mover of government is not separation of powers, political parties or the bureaucracy  but the will of the president. Its self-referentialism projects an image of strong leadership and of the president as the central pivot of action. Its tenacity expresses confidence that the president will triumph over the many obstacles in his way.

For all their differences, both Obama and Trump consistently presented themselves as the solution to the nations problems. Accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention, Trump assured Americans, Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. He regularly cited his own biography as the reason that Americans should trust him. The irony is that the predecessor who, on this dimension, most resembles Trump is the very one whom Trump cast as an utter failure and weak leader and as his chief foil. Obama too regularly invoked his unique personal story as the reason that Americans should place their faith in him. Minus Trumps boastfulness, Obama too portrayed himself as the key agent of national transformation: Im the one who brings change. It is my vision. It is my agenda, he told The Washington Post in January 2009. He saw other government officials as just good mechanics.

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 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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 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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

The computerised content analysis of presidential rhetoric sets out a pattern, it does not explain it. However, we believe it likely that Obama and Trump adopted the same rhetorical tack for the same reason: Audiences across the political spectrum have craved a strong leader who will overcome Washingtons paralysis and address the nations challenges.

Especially since 9/11, American politics has grown more partisan and polarized, even as Americans values have converged. That partisan divide has produced gridlock in the halls of power, and Congress has become a site of minority party obstruction. As a result, Americans have become frustrated with Congress, and their trust in government has plummeted. They have increasingly looked to the president to seize the initiative, conquer Washingtons dysfunction and persuade Congress to act.

In 2007, honesty mattered most to Americans in selecting the nations next president, with leadership/strength a distant second. In 2012, American voters said that shares my values was their top consideration in electing a president. By 2016, having a president who was a strong leader had easily taken the top spot, across voters of all parties, and was twice as important to them as it had been four years before.

Obama and Trumps self-referential and tenacious rhetoric  one might even call it authoritarian  seems designed to satisfy that demand for strong leadership centred in the presidency. It is not accidental that their rhetoric, as the linked charts show, also reflects a continued, long-term decline in cooperative and accomplishment language, as collaboration across party lines has been rare and as there have been few achievements. Ironically, satisfaction rhetoric has experienced a corresponding rise  perhaps because there has been less to celebrate and therefore more reason for presidents to proclaim that all is well.

Of course, some of this may be Donald Trumps inimitable rhetorical style. The figures above reveal that Trump the candidate was somewhat less self-referential and less tenacious than Trump the president has been. Perhaps he was simply restraining himself during the campaign. Once ensconced in the White House, he could become more himself. Trump the President may be Trump unleashed.

But the data suggest that Trump is also a manifestation  albeit an extreme manifestation  of our political age. Obamas self-centred, self-confident but soaring speeches gave way to his successors self-centred, overconfident and vain tweets. Karl Marx knew what he was talking about: History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Nevertheless, wed better get used to authoritarian rhetoric. It appears to be here to stay.

The Conversation
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A father drove his car over an opening drawbridge in a death-defying stunt to avoid plunging into the water below.

Terence Naphys was crossing New Jersey's Middle Thorofare Bridge with his family when its steel ramp began to lift beneath them.

Mr Naphys was reportedly already near the centre of the bridge and was forced to accelerate his Toyota RAV 4 to jump the 6ft gap out of fear the car would fall 65ft into the deep bay below.

The vehicle flew through the air and landed safety on the other side.

"It's scary what's going through your mind. We could have all landed in the water, Mr Naphys told NBC Philadelphia.

He added: "I will never ever drive that bridge or probably any drawbridge again."

No one was hurt but the vehicle sustained $10,000 (7,800) damage.

Mr Naphys was on holiday his wife Jacquelyn, daughter Kaity, 16, and her 16-year-old friend, when the incident happened. They had been travelling from Wildwoods to Cape May, which are connected by the bridge, to go for dinner on August 1.

An operator is thought to have been temporarily blinded by sun glare as he opened the drawbridge to let a fishing vessel pass.

The operator believed the family's car had already safely passed over.

The bridge's operator is thought to have been blinded by sunlight (Google Street View)

Mrs Naphys noticed the bridge lifting and alerted her husband.

It wasnt until we were at the very edge when I saw the bridge might be opening, she told the Courier-Post.

I wasnt nervous until we landed. Thats when we realised the bridge wasnt just a little bit open.

Cape May County Bridge Commission has launched an investigation into the incident.

The bridge was built in 1940 and needs as much as $200 million (155m) worth of repairs and renovations, according to officials.
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Actor Kal Penn launched a scathing attack on Donald Trump after the White House suggested the President had decided to disband the Committee on the Arts and Humanities before all of its members resigned over his response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Mr Penn, who plays a White House Press Secretary in the ABC series Designated Survivor, published a joint letter of resignation in response to Mr Trump's claim that "many sides" were responsible for the clashes that left one dead and dozens injured at a white supremacist rally on 12 August.

The statement, addressed to the President, said "the false equivalencies you push cannot stand" and criticised him for "your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville".

"Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background or identity is un-American," it added.

It was signed by Mr Penn and 15 other members of the Committee on the Arts and Humanities, which advises the White House on cultural issues.

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

The council was composed of former House star Mr Penn, best-selling author Jhumpa Lahiri, painter Chuck Close, lawyer and arts consultant to the Smithsonian Jill Cooper Udall among others.

Following their protest on Friday, the White House released a statement which said Mr Trump had already decided not to renew funding for the committee when it expires later this year.

"In its current form it simply is not a responsible way to spend American tax dollars," it read.

Mr Penn hit back at President Trump on Twitter and said: "You can't break up with us after we broke up with you."

The actor is a registered Democrat and served as Associate Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement while Barack Obama was president.

Mr Trump has maintained his view that "many sides" were to blame for fighting that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a counter-protester to neo-Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan, and other white supremacists.

The President's combative stance also triggered a mass exodus of CEOs from the White House's Manufacturing Council and the Strategy and Policy Forum, which were both disbanded on 16 August.

Mr Trump said: "Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both."

The resignations came during a turbulent period in the White House which has seen several senior figures forced out, including former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

First to go was former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who was fired in February after it emerged that he had lied about contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

He was followed by former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who resigned the post in June after having generated controversy with some of his statements to reporters.

After that came erstwhile Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, a representative of the Republican Party establishment who was ousted in July amid infighting between different factions in the administration.

Their exits were followed by short-lived Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, who survived for less than a fortnight; KT McFarland, who served as a deputy national security advisor; and Rich Higgins, a member of the National Security Council who was removed after penning a conspiratorial memo that warned of dark forces arrayed against Mr Trump.
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Steve Bannon was forced out of the White House after he labelled members of the white supremacist movement "clowns".

Mr Bannon downplayed the danger posed by Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi sympathisers and revealed his ambition to dominate anti-Trump groups focused on "race and identity" in an interview with left-wing magazine The American Prospect on Tuesday.

The Breitbart News boss's combative remarks came as Republicans and Democrats called for him to be removed from his post following Donald Trump's controversial response to the Charlottesville attacks which left one dead and dozens injured on 12 August.

Asked about racist elements of the far-right, Mr Bannon said: Ethno-nationalism, it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.

These guys are a collection of clowns.

He said of the Democrats: "The longer they talk about identity politics, I got em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.

Mr Bannon initiated the interview by calling The American Prospect days after Mr Trump declined to give assurances about the future of his role as chief strategist.

He appeared to be at odds with the President's stance on North Korea, claiming any threats of military action against Kim Jong-un's regime were unrealistic.

"Forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul dont die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I dont know what youre talking about, theres no military solution here, they got us," he said.

 Strategist Steve Bannon leaves Trump's turbulent White House

In his comments on China, Mr Bannon claimed he was moving people around the Trump administration to tackle what he described as an economic war with the Asian superpower.

"I'm changing out people at East Asian Defence; I'm getting hawks in," he added.

"I'm getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State. Thats a fight I fight every day here. Were still fighting.

Were at economic war with China. Its in all their literature. Theyre not shy about saying what theyre doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and its gonna be them if we go down this path."

The right-wing ideologue, who helped the president win support from the "alt-right" during his election campaign, subsequently claimed he did not realise his comments were "on the record".

Following his departure from the Oval Office on Friday, Mr Bannon said the Trump presidency was "over".

Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Show all 9 1 /9 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Protesters clash and several are injured White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared, August 12 2017 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Trump supporters at the protest A white nationalist demonstrator walks into Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville State police stand ready in riot gear Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Militia armed with assault rifles White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' with body armor and combat weapons evacuate comrades who were pepper sprayed after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared a unlawful gathering by Virginia State Police. Militia members marched through the city earlier in the day, armed with assault rifles. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' during the 'Unite the Right' rally 12 August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are protesting the removal of the statue from Emancipation Park in the city. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Racial tensions sparked the violence White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally Getty Violence on the streets of Charlottesville A car plows through protesters A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident resulted in multiple injuries, some life-threatening, and one death. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville President Donald Trump speaks about the ongoing situation in Charlottesville, Virginia from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He spoke about "loyalty" and "healing wounds" left by decades of racism.

The media mogul was considered a key influencer during Mr Trump's "America first" campaign and his early days in the White House, and was briefly awarded with a seat on the National Security Council's principals committee, the top interagency group overseeing national security.

Recommended Trump is alienating those who would stand between him and impeachment

His nationalist stances on issues like immigration, trade and society were reflected in Mr Trump's speeches and policies, and are widely seen as having drawn together the New York billionaire's support base after he joined the struggling campaign as chief executive last August.

But once in power he was forced to compete for influence with other advisers including members of Mr Trump's family.

Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, seen as being able to soften the President's tone and actions, both occupy official White House posts.

Mr Bannon failed to cling on to power during a turbulent period in the White House with a series of resignations and sackings at the highest level.

Mr Trump removed both Reince Priebus, his then chief of staff, and Anthony Scaramucci, briefly his communications director, in the space of four days.

Sean Spicer, who was Mr Trumps press secretary, resigned in apparent protest at Mr Scaramuccis appointment.
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A billionaire investor has quit as a special advisor to Donald Trump amid allegations that the recommendations he was giving could benefit his own fortune.

News of Carl Icahns decision to step down amid concerns about a possible conflict of interest - an accusation denied by Mr Icahn - were largely overshadowed by Mr Trumps firing of his special advisor Steve Bannon.

Yet, commentators pointed out the departure of Mr Icahn was the latest in a series of White House officials and outside advisors to the President to either resign or be sacked. In addition to the firing of former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Communications Director Anthony Scaramuuci and now Mr Bannon, Mr Trump has also seen the members of two business advisory councils quit, along with a group that advised him on arts and cultural issues.

 Heather Heyer's mother: I "will not" speak to Trump

Reuters said several Democratic politicians had claimed Mr Icahns guidance to the Trump administration created a conflict of interest with his businesses, including oil refining company CVR Energy Inc. Mr Icahn has denied any conflict of interest.

I chose to end this arrangement (with your blessing) because I did not want partisan bickering about my role to in any way cloud your administration, Mr Icahn wrote in a letter to Mr Trump that was released on his website.

Mr Icahn, who leads Icahn Enterprises LP, was an early and close ally of Mr Trump who was often praised by the Republican for his business acumen.

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. 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Mr Icahn was so sure Mr Trumps election last year would give a boost to stocks that he left the campaigns victory party to make a $1bn bet on the market, he told Reuters last year. The day after the election, stocks jumped.

Bloomberg News said Mr Icahn, drew criticism for pushing a change in US biofuel policy that would benefit the company. It said separate questions were raised last month regarding his role in regulatory decisions affecting American International Group Inc (AIG), an insurer in which he he holds a significant stake.

Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse sent a letter last month to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin asking if there was correspondences between the billionaire and officials about AIG. Mr Icahn had pushed for a break up of the insurer in order to help it escape its regulatory tag as too-big-to-fail, but eased his demands this year.

We write to seek assurances that Mr Icahn has not provided input on or received information on a pending decision regarding AIGs status, they wrote.

If he was not willing to admit he was a de facto special government employee, and follow the rules, then he had no place serving in government, said Norman Eisen, co-founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a former ethics lawyer for Barack Obama.

His short tenure, marred by serious conflicts allegations, was yet another black eye for an administration that has become notorious for violations of ethics and the rule of law.
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As the official start time of the contentious Free Speech Rally in Boston approached, the winner in the battle of words between organisers and counter-demonstrators had already been determined.

If hateful speech aimed at Jewish people or minorities was chanted at Boston Common park, it was not audible at one of the largest rallies being held just one week after the deadly demonstrations in Charleston, Virginia, where neo-Nazis marched bearing torches, and where one woman was killed.

Instead, an estimated 15,000 counter-protesters dominated the air with anti-Nazi and anti-fascist chants.

When it comes to free speech, there is strength in numbers. The small group of free speech demonstrators crowded in the stone veranda in the centre of the Boston Common park  a few dozen people separated from the thousands of counter-protesters by a heavy police force, barriers, and hundreds of feet of open grass  did not have it.

Recommended Protesters in New York rally against white supremacy

Shame! the crowd chanted at one free speech demonstrator, who later identified himself only as Joe, as he tried to gain access to an entry route patrolled by police that led to the veranda.

Nazi scum, f*** off, others chanted, telling the right-wing crowd inside the veranda to get out of Boston.

While Mr Trump tweeted that there were many anti-police agitators, conflict between counter-protesters and law enforcement was somewhat minimal in the early afternoon, then appeared to escalate somewhat after both sides had spent hours in the hot summer sun.

The Boston Police Department tweeted to ask that protesters stop throwing urine, bottles, rocks, and other projectiles at its officers.

Counter-protesters clash with Boston Police outside of the Boston Commons and the Boston Free Speech Rally in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., August 19, 2017 (Reuters)

Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! the President tweeted.

I want to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!

Mr Trump claimed the US had been divided for decades in another tweet that had to be reposted twice because of spelling errors that saw the President originally urge America to heel.

Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before! he eventually wrote.

In the week since a suspected white supremacist killed a woman in Charlottesville after a violent rally that pitted neo-Nazis, white supremacists and members of the Ku Klux Klan against counter-protesters including anti-fascist activists, America has grappled with its ugly history of racism and how that history fits into present day.

Mr Trump, who initially released a statement condemning bigotry and violence after Heather Heyer's death, later appeared to avoid condemning white supremacy during an impromptu press conference. Instead, he insisted that both sides in Charlottesville were to blame for violence.

 Donald Trump blames both sides for Charlottesville violence

That rollback of condemnation by the President has outraged both conservative and liberal voices in the US, with many making public statements condemning Nazis, fascism, and racist speech. But, with the violence in Charlottesville still fresh in the American psyche, officials in cities holding rallies this weekend were concerned that that anger would spread.

Show me the bodies. Show me the [white supremacists] who were ran over in Charlottesville James Tazelaar, 25, told The Independent. Mr Tazelaar had come to the rally with a black shield hed fashioned at home and adorned with anti-white supremacy messaging. I have no intention of starting violence. I brought a symbol of protection, not a symbol of aggression.

But "free speech" protester Joe, who faced down the chants of shame, said the rage he heard in those voices was unsettling and worrisome. He was worried for his life, and it did not matter how much sage counter-protesters burned, or how many messages of love they scrawled on cardboard.

We were, like, this close to getting killed, Joe told The Independent of the counter-protesters yelling at him and his companions after police had escorted him around the demonstration in the veranda to a side street. Police had not allowed him or his companions, one of whom was black, and another Latino, to join the demonstrators on the veranda

It was unclear why they were not allowed to join the rally when they showed up at noon, the official start time, but Joe and those with him blamed Mayor Marty Walsh, who had sent in 500 police officers and encouraged people not to show up fearing a repeat of Charlottesville.

Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Show all 9 1 /9 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Protesters clash and several are injured White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared, August 12 2017 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Trump supporters at the protest A white nationalist demonstrator walks into Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville State police stand ready in riot gear Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Militia armed with assault rifles White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' with body armor and combat weapons evacuate comrades who were pepper sprayed after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared a unlawful gathering by Virginia State Police. Militia members marched through the city earlier in the day, armed with assault rifles. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' during the 'Unite the Right' rally 12 August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are protesting the removal of the statue from Emancipation Park in the city. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Racial tensions sparked the violence White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally Getty Violence on the streets of Charlottesville A car plows through protesters A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident resulted in multiple injuries, some life-threatening, and one death. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville President Donald Trump speaks about the ongoing situation in Charlottesville, Virginia from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He spoke about "loyalty" and "healing wounds" left by decades of racism.

A further 200 police officers were reportedly on call.

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans told reporters there had been very little damage to property though some officers were hit by plastic bottles containing urine.

We did not want what happened in Virginia to happen here, he said.

He confirmed there were 27 arrests

The counter-protests overall appeared to be peaceful, even if there were tense moments that flirted with the line of violence. As a free speech rally-goer attempted to leave the park at one point, a group of counter-protesters followed the individual, throwing fruit and beverages. A police van was dispatched to pick up the individual  it was not clear if they had been arrested or if the police had responded for their safety. Those police vans could be seen sporadically responding to situations throughout the day.

Overall counter-protesters were peaceful and somewhat united. Chants of black lives matter permeated the park, and activists discussed the needs of their communities, including adequate child care, healthcare, and schools.

I want to stand on the side of justice, Julius Wayne Dudley, 72, said when asked why he had attended. Mr Dudley, who came from Georgia, said he had marched with Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s and was encouraged by the young counter-protests even if he was saddened that the simmering racism in America had resurfaced. It makes my heart feel like my life has been worth living.

Fifteen-year-old Tony, whose last name is being withheld by The Independent because he is a minor, said that the protests make him  whose family comes from Mexico and Guatemala  feel as though hes not alone in Mr Trumps America, which has seen a crackdown on immigrants.

Its good to know that the community is standing up for everyone, Tony said. Were not alone.
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Far-right demonstrators in Boston appeared to be greatly outnumbered by their opponents - perhaps as much as ten to one - as the city braced for two competing rallies.

The Mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, issued an appeal to the many thousands of people taking part in the two events to be peaceful and show respect.

I ask everyone to be peaceful today and respect our city. Love, not hate. We stand together against intolerance, said Mr Walsh. We will not tolerate violence or property damage of any kind.

The events were taking place a week after clashes at a white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in more than 20 people being injured and one young woman, Heather Heyer, being killed. A 20-year-old man has been charged with her murder.

The protests appeared to be overwhelmingly peaceful, although CNN said that police arrested eight anti-fascist protesters after briefly clashing with police.

Donald Trump has found himself under intense criticism for his slow response to the events in Virginia and his suggestion there was blame on many sides, rather than an unequivocal criticism of the neo-Nazis and racists who were present.

 Hundreds gather for Charlottesville vigil

In Boston, hundreds of police officers were positioned around a park where one group planned to hold a so-called Free Speech rally with right-wing speakers. Thousands of counter-protesters who believe the event could become a platform for racist propaganda, were gathering about two miles away with plans to march on the rally, according to the Associated Press.

Police officers placed barricades to prevent vehicles from entering the park, the nations oldest. To keep the two groups separate, they also built a cordon around the site of the rally.

Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Show all 9 1 /9 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Protesters clash and several are injured White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared, August 12 2017 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Trump supporters at the protest A white nationalist demonstrator walks into Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville State police stand ready in riot gear Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Militia armed with assault rifles White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' with body armor and combat weapons evacuate comrades who were pepper sprayed after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared a unlawful gathering by Virginia State Police. Militia members marched through the city earlier in the day, armed with assault rifles. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' during the 'Unite the Right' rally 12 August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are protesting the removal of the statue from Emancipation Park in the city. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Racial tensions sparked the violence White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally Getty Violence on the streets of Charlottesville A car plows through protesters A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident resulted in multiple injuries, some life-threatening, and one death. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville President Donald Trump speaks about the ongoing situation in Charlottesville, Virginia from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He spoke about "loyalty" and "healing wounds" left by decades of racism.

Organisers of Saturdays rally in Boston have denounced the white supremacist message and violence of Charlottesville and said their event would be peaceful.

The point of this is to have political speech from across the spectrum, conservative, libertarian, centrist, said Chris Hood, an 18-year-old Boston resident who stood among a crowd of a few dozen people who planned to join the Free Speech rally.

"This is not about Nazis. If there were Nazis here, Id be protesting against them.

In addition to the Boston rally and counter-march, protests were also expected in Texas, with the Houston chapter of Black Lives Matter holding a rally to remove a Spirit of the Confederacy monument from a park and civil rights activists in Dallas planning a rally against white supremacy.
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Donald Trump's presidency following the dismissal of Steve Bannon, an editor at far-right outlet Breitbart has said.

Joel Pollak, a senior editor at large at Breitbart News predicts Mr Trump's presidency will lose direction and the backing of his supporters after the firing of the far-right figurehead in the White House.

Mr Pollak, who said his publication will be going to "war" with the White House following the announcement of Mr Bannon's departure, warned that unless the US President upheld his campaign pledges that were so vigorously defended by his chief strategist, "his presidency will be a failure".

Speaking to Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Pollak said: "If Trump veers away from the agenda that he campaigned on and the white board of promises that was hanging in Steve Bannon's office then he will lose his base and he wil lose his direction and his presidency will be a failure.

"If Trump sticks to what he promised then yes he will deserve credit for fulfilling the hopes of his voters but people looking at other people that Trump brought into the administration....... Trump supporters would be looking at some of these appointments and wondering if these personnel would dictate future policy. In that confusion and doubt, Bannon was a reinsurance."

The Breitbart editor added that as long as Mr Bannon was in the White House, supporters of the Trump administration did not have to worry about "some of these other opponents".

Mr Pollak referred to White House advisors including Mr Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who he described as "somewhat conservative" but whose "political persuasions remained unknown".

Mr Bannon epitomised President Trump's anti-globalist "America First" agenda and he reportedly clashed with the President's son-in-law, who has been seen as adopting a so-called globalist approach to the US's role on the world stage.

For Breitbart News, Mr Bannon's departure represents a significant shift of power away from the anti-globalist agenda.

Throughout the interview, Mr Pollak repeatedly compared Mr Trump to Arnold Scharzenegger, the actor and former professional body-builder who was elected as a Republican governor in California.

He claimed Mr Scharzenegger had been elected on a platform of radical reforms but that "at the first signs of difficulty" he switched his political fortune to become "a very liberal governor, basically a democrat".

Mr Pollak admitted Mr Scharzenegger was re-elected following his change of direction but claimed this led to the destruction of his political party in California and warned Mr Trump could be heading towards a "Scharzenegger 2.0".

"It may boost his [Mr Trump] reelection chances, although I doubt it, but I think it will ultimately disappoint his base and it will abandon the mission for which he was elected 'to drain the swamp' as he put it," Mr Pollak added.

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

Now that Mr Bannon has left, the far-right nationalist seen as one of the most influential figures in the White House will return to Breitbart News as an executive chairman.

Explaining his tweet "#WAR", Mr Pollak said it had been the motto of Breitbart News since the website's foundation.

"It indicates to our readers that we are going to continue our relentless editorial push against the Hollywood cultural elite, against the Democratic establishment and the institutional left and against the Republican establishment inside the Beltway," he said.

Mr Bannon joined the Trump presidential campaign a year ago and remained in his post as White House advisor for seven contentious months.

He was seen as one of the main drivers of the Trump administration's populist agenda including the decision to leave the Paris Agreement and the repeated attacks on "fake news media".

Mr Bannon was an architect of Mr Trump's election victory and Mr Pollak claimed he was hired by the campaign team at a time when it "was expected to go down as a crashing defeat, bringing the rest of the party with him".

After Mr Trump's "improbable victory", Mr Pollak said Mr Bannon was "in the unique position to bring ideological focus to the Trump administration and he represented the thoughts and the wishes of the voter base" because of the overlap between Trump supporters and Breitbart News' audience.
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A team of special prosecutors appointed to examine the alleged link between Donald Trumps election campaign and Moscow are reportedly focusing their efforts on the Presidents son.

Donald Trump Jr met with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016 during the campaign.

The prosecutors, led by Robert Mueller, a former director of the FBI, are now trying to find out Mr Trump Jrs motives in attending the meeting, according to Buzzfeed News, which cited a source close to the investigation.

Ms Veselnitskaya is alleged to have links to the Russian government but has denied wielding any influence.

 Trump's FBI pick suggests Donald Trump Jr should have gone to agency over Russia meeting

Establishing the purpose of the meeting is key to determining if it was illegal.

The prosecutors reportedly want to know what information Mr Trump Jr received at the meeting, which he attended along with Presidential aide Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort, former campaign manager.

Music producer Rob Goldstone, who arranged the meeting, emailed Mr Trump Jr in June 2016.

He said Ms Veselnitskaya had "very high level and sensitive information" that concerned "Russia and its government's support for Mr Trump".

Mr Goldstone said it would incriminate Hillary.

Mr Trump Jr replied: if it's what you say I love it.

But he later claimed in June the meeting was a short introductory and received no information.

Receiving foreign help for a US presidential campaign is illegal.

Mr Trump Jr later said in a statement: 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."

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

The 16-strong prosecution team has made no public comment about their investigations.

Mr Manafort, a political strategist with links to Ukraine, is reportedly under further scrutiny from the prosecutors. His property was searched by the FBI in July in relation to the investigation.
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Donald Trump "is going to get us all killed," Michael Moore has warned.

The documentary filmmaker said he hoped "somebody in the Pentagon is protecting us" by withholding "the nuclear codes" from the President.

The award-winning director's new one-man stage show takes aim at Mr Trump and encourages audiences to turn resentment of the Republican into resistance.

The Terms of My Surrender has been running on Broadway this month amid global tension over threats of war traded by the US President and North Korea.

Recommended Michael Moore takes Broadway audience to Trump Tower protest by bus

"This guy's going to get us all killed. There's nobody in charge. This man has the nuclear codes," Mr Moore, 63, told Reuters Television.

Last week the filmaker bussed an audience from the New York's Belasco Theatre to Trump Tower in nearby Manhattan to protest against the President, who was staying at his high-rise home for first time since taking office in January.

Days earlier Mr Trump had threatened to unleash "fire and fury" on North Korea in response to threats from Pyongyang, raising fears of nuclear war.

Mr Moore said: "I'm hoping somebody in the Pentagon is protecting us. Like, whatever's in that nuclear briefcase it's just some girlfriend's phone number or something. I'm just hoping that it's not the real numbers because we're in desperate shape here."

 Donald Trump: I would like to de-nuke the world

The Fahrenheit 9/11 director is fierce critic of Mr Trump, who he accused of committing "a crime against humanity" by pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement.

But he said he had drawn strength from his stage show, which differs each night, despite its opening weeks coinciding with a deepening nuclear crisis and the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville.

"By the end of this run, 100,000 people would have seen the show. And each of them will tell 10 people things I said or did here tonight. That's a million people I've reached through a Broadway show," he said.

"Every night, when I leave here, I feel like my soul has been healed a little, that I have less despair, that I'm a little bit more hopeful that we're going to figure this out."

The Terms of My Surrender is scheduled to run at the Belasco Theatre until October 22.
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In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, right-wing groups have cancelled rallies around the country. But that hasnt stopped the counter-protesters from showing up.

In New York, dozens of people took part in a rally outside Googles corporate campus. Right-wing organisers had intended to protest there in defence of a Google employee who was fired after criticising the companys diversity policy. The protest organisers, however, cancelled the rally days before, citing alt left terrorist threats.

Instead, more than 50 demonstrators filled the streets outside Google on Saturday, carrying signs reading Racism is not patriotism and White nationalism is terrorism.

The protests were held following Donald Trump's comments about the violence in Charlottesville (Emily Shugerman)

Kia Niambi, one of the organisers, said the protest was motivated in part by the white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville the weekend before.

I know that people have a lot of the same mindset, but you think that no one else thinks like you," she explained.

So you need to create a platform that everyone can come together on, so that we can all speak out and make sure that people know that this is not ok, and that we are going to change it.

Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Show all 9 1 /9 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Protesters clash and several are injured White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared, August 12 2017 Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Trump supporters at the protest A white nationalist demonstrator walks into Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville State police stand ready in riot gear Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Militia armed with assault rifles White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' with body armor and combat weapons evacuate comrades who were pepper sprayed after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared a unlawful gathering by Virginia State Police. Militia members marched through the city earlier in the day, armed with assault rifles. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' during the 'Unite the Right' rally 12 August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are protesting the removal of the statue from Emancipation Park in the city. Getty Images Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Racial tensions sparked the violence White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally Getty Violence on the streets of Charlottesville A car plows through protesters A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident resulted in multiple injuries, some life-threatening, and one death. AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo Violence on the streets of Charlottesville President Donald Trump speaks about the ongoing situation in Charlottesville, Virginia from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He spoke about "loyalty" and "healing wounds" left by decades of racism.

She added that the message remained the same whether the right-wing protesters turned out or not.

Its not about them, she said. We still have a message that we want to put out there. And we need everyone to know that this is not going to fly.

The protest, organised by three young women of colour, drew a large, diverse crowd to Manhattans wealthy, Chelsea neighbourhood. One family travelled from the neighbouring borough of Queens with mother, father, and daughter in tow.

The mother, Angela Powers, said she had marched for civil rights in Queens in the 1960s.

I think its been a lot of years and not enough change since I was 25, she said, looking at her daughter, Danielle. Now I have a 25-year-old. I thought we would be further.

That was a common sentiment at the rally, where protesters chanted, among other things: No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.

The cheers were a stark contrast from those that had rang out in Charlottesville the week before, where tiki-torch bearing marchers chanted about blood and soil.

Herb Powers travelled from Queens to join the protest (Emily Shugerman)

Matthew Dominguez, a Brooklyn resident, said those very chants had shocked him into action today.

In this day and age, the mere fact that Im standing in New York City having to protest Nazis, the fact that I have to be protesting white supremacy  that there's even this feeling that this fringe group of white supremacists even matters  is so upsetting, he said.

Meanwhile, in Boston, conservative protesters were vastly outnumbered by counter-protesters at their "free speech" rally in Boston Common. According to police, between 15,000 and 20,000 counter-protesters turned out, compared to a few dozen rally participants.

President Donald Trump condemned the counter-protesters in a tweet, calling them "anti-police agitators". (He later appeared to backtrack, adding that "many" of the protesters were "speaking out against bigotry and hate".)

In New York, however, protesters extolled the need for peaceful protest.

"I feel like we all need to have a voice and say that what's going on isnt right," said Catherine, a Queens resident and DREAMer  the beneficiary of an Obama-era policy that allowed undocumented minors to stay in the country.

"If we dont [speak out] then its going to get worse, and we cant let it get worse," she added. "Thats what happened in Nazi Germany. People didnt have a voice, and look where that led them."
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Ousted White House strategist Steve Bannon has declared the Donald Trump presidency "over", following his departure from the billionaire's administration.

Mr Bannon, a right-wing ideologue who co-founded the Breitbart News website, pronounced himself "free" and said he now had "my hands back on my weapons" at the outlet.

He and Mr Trump's new chief of staff, John Kelly, agreed he would leave the White House on Friday. Mr Bannon said he had given his resignation earlier in the month, though it was also reported that Mr Trump had decided to let him go.

He told the Weekly Standard, a conservative opinion magazine: "The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.

"We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. Itll be something else. And therell be all kinds of fights, and therell be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over."

During Mr Trump's "America first" campaign and his early days in the Oval Office, Mr Bannon was considered a key influencer and was even awarded a place on the National Security Council's principals committee, the top interagency group overseeing national security  though he was later removed.

His nationalist stances on issues like immigration, trade and society were reflected in Mr Trump's speeches and policies, and are widely seen as having drawn together the New Yorker's support base after he joined the struggling campaign as chief executive last August.

But once in power, he was forced to compete for influence with other advisers including members of Mr Trump's family. Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner  seen as being able to soften the President's tone and actions  both occupy official White House posts.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr Bannon said he believed the Republican Party would now begin to impose a moderating influence on the President, despite his public clashes with senior figures like Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

He added: "The path forward on things like economic nationalism and immigration, and his ability to kind of move freely... I just think his ability to get anything done  particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, its just gonna be that much harder."

And he vowed to "crush the opposition"  liberals, the Washington and Republican "establishments"  by using the influence and reach of Breitbart.

He said: "I feel jacked up. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now Im about to go back, knowing what I know, and were about to rev that machine up."

Breitbart colleague Joel Pollak suggested the site would now go to "war" with the Trump White House following a perceived shift by the President away from the values the outlet espouses.

Mr Bannon's departure came after a liberal magazine published an interview in which he detailed his behind-the-scenes battles with opponents in the administration and appeared to contradict Mr Trump's public rhetoric on North Korea.

He told The American Prospect he was "fighting" internal opposition to his belief the US was locked in "an economic war with China".

He claimed officials at the Treasury and the National Economic Council were "wetting themselves" over his plans to address the fact that "they're crushing us". State and Defense Department staff felt similarly because they wanted China's help to rein in Pyongyang, he said.

Mr Trump has repeatedly and publicly threatened military action against North Korea if it continues to menace the US or its allies.

But Mr Bannon told the Prospect: "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul dont die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I dont know what youre talking about, theres no military solution here, they got us."
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Steve Bannon is out as Donald Trump's White House adviser. White House Press Secretary Hope Hicks issued a statement that said Cheif of Staff John Kelly and Mr Bannon had mutually agreed that 18 August would be the former Breitbart executive's final day.

Here are 5 reasons his departure has likely been in the making since Mr Trump took office.

He had a strained relationship with son-in-law-in-Chief Jared Kushner

When Mr Bannon was appointed as chief strategist, former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke told CNN Mr Trump's decision "excellent."

He also said Mr Bannon was "creating the ideological aspects of where were going" as a white supremacist movement. His former news organisation, Breitbart, also published several articles of people pushing an anti-Muslim agenda.

Mr Bannon has long been said to have prodded the President into not alienating white supremacists because they are an active part of the Trump base of support.

It goes beyond faith however. Mr Bannon ran what he referred to as the "platform for the alt-right" while Jared Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump are moderates who have contributed to Democratic candidates in the past.

Per the New York Times, Mr Bannon detested that fact and during a particular loud row he said to Mr Kushner: ""Heres the reason theres no middle ground: Youre a Democrat."

Mr Trump had said in the past to the New York Post: "Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will."

Anthony Scaramucci's comments may have pointed to a personal agenda

Mr Bannon, as early as 2013, has said he is a "Leninist" and that his main goal was to "destroy all of today's establishment". Whether he actually came into the White House four years later with that agenda is unclear, but reports have suggested he did have a personal agenda - in addition to a personal publicist - and despised "establishment" Republicans like former Chief of Staff Reince Preibus who came from directly from the GOP.

 Scaramucci to Colbert: 'If it were up to me, Bannon would be gone'

As Vanity Fair reported, each of the senior staffers has their own "brand" without a cohesive policy from an inconsistent President.

The short-lived Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci may have offered a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes agenda of Mr Bannon when he gave an expletive-laden interview to the New Yorker.

Im not Steve Bannon, Im not trying to suck my own c**k...Im not trying to build my own brand off the f**king strength of the President. Im here to serve the country," Mr Scaramucci vented to a reporter and probing him for the source of yet another leak from White House.

Mr Bannon has reportedly been the source of leaks on stories critical of National Security Adviser HR McMaster as well.

Newscorp CEO and longtime Trump ally Rupert Murdoch said he had to go

Mr Scaramucci was not the only one Mr Bannon had rubbed the wrong way. Mr Murdoch has known Mr Trump since the 1980s when the Australian CEO's New York Post regularly featured the young real estate magnate's exploits in its tabloid pages.

Mr Murdoch has "repeatedly urged" Mr Trump to fire Mr Bannon according to the New York Times. Given the President's regular viewing of Mr Murdoch's Fox News channel for positive reinforcement and a gauge of his base, the close relationship is one on which he depends.

Understanding the television base, Mr Murdoch may have encouraged the President to fall more into the "mainstream" of Republicans as Mr Scaramucci had said he wanted before his exit.

He may have been seen as stealing the spotlight from Mr Trump

The President once said Mr Bannon was a "decent guy" who "gets a bad rap" but that appears to have changed in recent months.

A senior official told Vanity Fair that Mr Bannon is "is very talented at making himself seem the hero of the conservatives who elected" the President.

The perception that he is responsible for the President's popularity is said to have "annoyed" Mr Trump after the strategist appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the words "the great manipulator" and in the magazine's story asking if he was "the second most powerful man" in the country.

Around the time of the magazine cover, Mr Bannon was removed from his brief tenure on the National Security Council, an appointment that was reportedly made without Mr Trump's knowledge early in his presidency.

Just ahead of Mr Bannon's exit, Mr Trump's favourability rating was at a historic low.

Mr Bannon set the stage for these tensions years ago

Despite the tensions in the West Wing, Mr Bannon had set the stage for his departure from the White House for years.

For years, Mr Bannon - through the Breitbart outlet and otherwise - has pushed for what many have characterised as an anti-Islam and misogynist message, playing host to controversial and polarising characters like Pamela Gellar and Milo Yiannopoulos.

Between being a "Leninist" that wants to "bring everything crashing down" and having a daughter who graduated from West Point and served in Iraq who he is "very proud of," Mr Bannon appears to be a unique character not seen in the larger Republican party.

In light of Charlottesville however, the President may not have been able - from a public relations standpoint - keep a man on senior staff that was so closely associated with the far right after all the scorn received for his responses to the incident.
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A 12-year-old girl was "brutally murdered" in her house after texting her mother to tell her there was someone knocking at the door.

Yhoana Arteaga was found bludgeoned to death in her family's mobile home with her clothing "in disarray", police said.

Detectives believe the killer may have been known to the girl, who was on crutches after being injured roller-skating the previous day, but they have few leads.

There was no evidence of forced entry to the trailer in Nashville, Tennessee.

"This is a horrible, brutal thing. Ive never seen anything this brutal in my entire career," said Sergeant David Kautzman, of Nashville Police Department.

Yhoana was last seen by her mother at 12.30pm on August 10. She was left at home alone and sent a text at 5.30pm saying someone was at the door.

She was found dead when her mother returned home from work with two of her other children at 6.45pm.

The girl had suffered blunt force trauma to her body, police spokesman Don Aaron told a press conference. She had not been shot or stabbed.

Despite police appeals investigators said they have "very limited" information to follow up, reported news channel WKRN.

She was brutally murdered, and if anyone has any information whatsoever that could help in this investigation, please contact us, Mr Aaron said.

"We believe there are persons in this community who have knowledge of a person who may be responsible for this.

"Please, for the familys sake, for the sake of this 12-year-old deceased girl, let us know."

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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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. 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He said the absence of signs of forced entry "would seem to indicate she would know the person responsible".

"We havent confirmed that yet, but its a good possibility, the spokesman added.

Officers have been questioning neighbours about any suspicious activity in the area. A detective said police had some persons of interest but declined to elaborate.

Yhoana's school, Liberty Collegiate Academy, paid tribute to the "treasured" seventh-grade pupil.

"Our hearts are broken as we mourn the loss," the school said on Facebook.

"Our thoughts are with Yhoanas family during this incredibly difficult time. Grief counsellors will be on site at Liberty next week to support teachers and students. We love you, Yhoana."
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The parents of a 10-year-old rape victim who has given birth have reportedly refused to see their daughters new-born baby.

The victim, who has not been named, has also not seen the baby who was admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit in India.

Reports suggest the parents told their child the large bump in her stomach was a stone in an attempt to protect her from the gravity of the situation after she had allegedly been raped by her uncle.

The 10-year-olds mother had cried several times. She cried last evening as well. In the morning, she was waiting anxiously with wet eyes, one of the members of the child welfare committee at the hospital told the Hindustan Times.

They did not want to listen to anything about the newborn, neither the gender nor the babys health status."

Her father apparently found it difficult to stay in the delivery room while his daughter gave birth.

He made several excuses to exit from the hospital for some time, as he was finding it difficult to face the situation. We provided him full support and told him that his daughter needs him the most, one of the counsellors at the hospital 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

After complaining of stomach pains, the girl told her mother that her uncle had raped her a half-dozen times when he visited the family home.

He was then arrested, and the parents, after finding out she was pregnant, petitioned the court for an abortion, the Indian Express reported.

This was denied after a district court in the city of Chandigarh, where they live, ruled she was too young and her pregnancy too advanced for an abortion.

The girl was 32 weeks pregnant when the court made its decision in a case that has shocked India and made headlines around the world.

The Supreme Court later upheld the ruling.
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Isis has claimed responsibility for a stabbing attack in Russia that injured eight people, the group's Amaq news agency has said.

A man was shot dead by police after knifing people apparently at random in the Siberian city of Surgut on Saturday morning.

Russian authorities earlier declined to comment on whether the incident was being treated as a terrorist attack and were said to be keeping an open mind about the attacker's motive.

The state-owned RIA Novosti agency said two people were in critical condition in hospital.

"A man was running along the main streets stabbing people", the TASS news agency reported. There were initially fears of a second attacker, but police later said he was acting alone.

Detectives were treating the stabbings, which happened at about 11.20am local time, as attempted murder.

Surgut, with a population of about 320,000, is an oil- and gas-producing centre 2,100km (1,300 miles) north-east of Moscow.

The stabbings came two days after 14 people were killed in Spain by terrorists who mowed down pedestrians in Barcelona and Cambrils in a van and a car.

Isis has claimed responsibility for both vehicle rampages, which also injured more than 100 people.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Spanish authorities announced they believed the cell behind the twin attacks had been "dismantled".

Meanwhile, police in Finland said a stabbing spree that left two people dead on Friday was being treated as a terror attack. No group has claimed responsibility for the knife rampage.

It is common for Isis to claim it is behind international terror attacks, even if they have been carried out by so-called lone wolves with no conclusive links to the group's members in Syria and Iraq.
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The Spanish government is to ramp up security at busy tourist sites across the country following this weeks attacks that left at least 13 people dead and more than 130 injured, it has said.

The countrys interior minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido, told a press conference on Saturday morning that areas judged to be potential terror targets  especially where large numbers of people gather  would be given special protection.

We are going to redirect our efforts and will adapt these to every place or area that needs special protection, Mr Zoido told reporters.

Recommended Barcelona attack fails to scare tourists away from La Rambla

People of 35 different nationalities are thought to have been injured in the van attack on La Rambla, one of Barcelonas most famous tourist hotspots  and authorities worry that terrorists could have eyes on the countrys crucial tourism industry.

On Friday and Saturday, there was an increased police presence in Barcelona, with visible patrols across the centre of the city. A specialist police firearms team was visible near La Rambla, with marked vans parked at strategic locations.

The overall security response has so far been somewhat hands-off, however, with traffic again allowed to flow freely on the non-pedestrianised section of the boulevard, which has twin traffic lanes either side of a large tiled walkway featuring cafes, artists, and market stalls.

The Spanish government has also clarified that it will not be raising its terror alert level to five, the highest level, and will be leaving it at four. Level five indicates that an attack is thought to be imminent and would mean the the presence of soldiers on the streets and at places such as train stations or shopping centres.

The Spanish interior minister gave a press conference on Saturday morning

The minister said that the threat level would stay at four in part because authorities believe the alleged terror cell behind the attacks on Barcelonas La Rambla and in the resort town of Cambrils on Thursday and Friday has been dismantled.

This is despite Catalonian police conducting an ongoing manhunt for 22-year old Moroccan national Younes Abouyaaqoub, the suspected driver of the van in Thursdays La Rambla massacre and the new centre of the police investigation.

Barcelona Attack Show all 30 1 /30 Barcelona Attack Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack Getty Images Barcelona Attack Tourists and locals walk along Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack People leave a fastfood with hands up as asked by policemen after a van ploughed into the crowd, killing two persons and injuring several others on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. A driver deliberately rammed a van into a crowd on Barcelona's most popular street on August 17, 2017 killing at least two people before fleeing to a nearby bar, police said. Officers in Spain's second-largest city said the ramming on Las Ramblas was a "terrorist attack" and a police source said one suspect had left the scene and was "holed up in a bar". The police source said they were hunting for a total of two suspects AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack Police officers tell members of the public to leave the scene in a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack REUTERS Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack People move from the scene after a van crashed into pedestrians near the Las Ramblas avenue Reuters Barcelona Attack A policeman stands next to an ambulance after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Reuters Barcelona Attack Firefighters stands outside an evacuated mall after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Policemen stand next to vehicles in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Plain-clothes policemen phone as they walk past police cars in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A policemen and a medical staff member stand past police cars and an ambulance in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A person is stretched out of a mall by medical staff members in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona said they were dealing with a "terrorist attack" after a vehicle ploughed into a crowd of pedestrians on the city's famous Las Ramblas boulevard on August 17, 2017. Police were clearing the area after the incident, which has left a number of people injured. AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Children, some in tears, are escorted down a road in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona say a white van has mounted a sidewalk, struck several people in the city's Las Ramblas district. AP Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers and emergency service workers move an injured man, after a van crashes into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers attend injured people after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack A police officer cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images

The decision not to raise the threat level was taken after a meeting of the the Bureau of Extraordinary Terrorist Threats, Mr Zoido said, which was attended by security officials.

The Spanish authorities may be considering the impact of a higher threat level to the countrys tourist industry  the second biggest in the world  during high season. Hoteliers in Barcelona approached by The Independent on Friday reported cancellations following the attack on La Rambla.
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Spanish police now believe the driver of the van that was used to kill 13 and injure more than 130 people in Barcelona on Thursday could still be on the run, local media reports.

A 22-year-old Moroccan national named Younes Abouyaaqoub is at the focus of a new manhunt following the massacre on Las Ramblas, where a van caused carnage by being driven through a crowded pedestrian area.

The street is now the site of extensive floral tributes and messages of solidarity from visitors from around the world, with tourists returning to the tree-lined boulevard and local business owners making a concerted effort to go back to work after the dark events of this week.

As the circumstances surrounding the planning of the attack started to become clear, five men were shot by police after a later attack in Cambrils, an hour and a half drive west of Barcelona, on Friday. Those killed included 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, who Spanish media previously identified as the driver the van.

Now Spanish newspaper El Pais says Catalonias police are searching for Mr Abouyaaqoub, believed to be a key member of a terror cell who they say planned the attack.

The police believe that explosions reported in the nearby down of Alcanar, two hours drive west of Barcelona, on Wednesday, may have been accidental blast at a bomb-making factory - depriving the alleged terror cell of material.

After the loss of their explosive material the terrorists defaulted to using more low tech methods - the van - to carry out the attack, police now believe.

Tributes laid on La Rambla attracted crowds (Jon Stone for The Independent)

As Barcelonans enter the weekend to take stock of events in their city, El Pais now says there is a growing belief that Mr Abouyaaqoub is the main suspect, after police chief Josep Trapero told local TV late on Friday that the younger Mr Oukabir was the suspect had less weight.

Investigators have floated the idea that the cell was building a large scale truck bomb built from gas canisters, and could have planned to carry out multiple attacks at the same time. The explosion on Wednesday ahead of the attack was reported in local media as a gas explosion at the time.

 Interior of house of suspected Barcelona van driver

Around 20 bottles of butane were discovered in the ruins of a house in Alcanar, which analysts said could have been loaded into a vehicle and blown up in a ramming attack.

The teenager Mr Oukabir is suspected of using his brother's documents to hire the white van that ploughed through pedestrians in the tourist hotspot on Thursday evening.

He reportedly died along with Said Aallaa, 19, and Mohamed Hychami, 24, who were part of a group that mounted a similar attack in Cambrils that left one woman dead and six people injured.

Four men, aged 21, 27, 28 and 34, who were arrested in connection with the attack remain in custody.

Barcelona Attack Show all 30 1 /30 Barcelona Attack Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack Getty Images Barcelona Attack Tourists and locals walk along Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack People leave a fastfood with hands up as asked by policemen after a van ploughed into the crowd, killing two persons and injuring several others on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. A driver deliberately rammed a van into a crowd on Barcelona's most popular street on August 17, 2017 killing at least two people before fleeing to a nearby bar, police said. Officers in Spain's second-largest city said the ramming on Las Ramblas was a "terrorist attack" and a police source said one suspect had left the scene and was "holed up in a bar". The police source said they were hunting for a total of two suspects AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack Police officers tell members of the public to leave the scene in a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack REUTERS Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack People move from the scene after a van crashed into pedestrians near the Las Ramblas avenue Reuters Barcelona Attack A policeman stands next to an ambulance after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Reuters Barcelona Attack Firefighters stands outside an evacuated mall after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Policemen stand next to vehicles in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Plain-clothes policemen phone as they walk past police cars in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A policemen and a medical staff member stand past police cars and an ambulance in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A person is stretched out of a mall by medical staff members in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona said they were dealing with a "terrorist attack" after a vehicle ploughed into a crowd of pedestrians on the city's famous Las Ramblas boulevard on August 17, 2017. Police were clearing the area after the incident, which has left a number of people injured. AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Children, some in tears, are escorted down a road in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona say a white van has mounted a sidewalk, struck several people in the city's Las Ramblas district. AP Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers and emergency service workers move an injured man, after a van crashes into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers attend injured people after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack A police officer cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images

Three are Moroccan and one Spanish. Police says none of those arrested was previously known to the security services for terror-related reasons.

The young Mr Oukabir's older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reported by local media to be one of those detained.

A second van found in the town of Vic in Catalonia, an hour's drive north of Barcelona, is also being investigated by police amid reports that the attackers had tried to hire a lorry, which was foiled when the driver failed to produce the necessary permit.
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A British man who was severely injured while defending victims of a knife attack in Finland that left two women dead has said he is not a hero.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Hassan Zubier, a paramedic born in Kent but who now lives in Sweden, told the BBC that he did what he was trained for.

The attack took place in the Market Square in the city of Turku on Friday and left two Finnish women dead and eight people wounded including an Italian national and two Swedes.

Police said the knifeman appeared to have chosen women as his targets, with six of the eight injured people being women, while the two men received their injuries as they attempted to intervene.

Three victims remain in intensive care. One of the injured women was with a baby.

Police shot and detained an 18-year-old suspect from Morocco, and four other Moroccans were detained by police following a raid on an apartment in Turku.

Mr Zubier who was on holiday in Turku, was stabbed in the neck, chest and back, and sustained serious wounds to his arm while trying to stop a woman bleeding to death.

 Fatal stabbings in Finland probed as murder with possible terror motive

His girlfriend was one of the women injured in the attack.

Speaking to Swedish newspaper Expressen, he said: We go to the square and suddenly hear screaming. I turn around. I see a guy [with] a knife in a woman lying on the ground.

I rushed to help her and I tried to stop the blood flow, while others gave her heart and lung assistance.

However, the womans injuries were so severe she died in Mr Zubiers arms.

My left hand is seriously injured. A nerve is injured, it is not certain that they can save the arm, he added.

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The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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. 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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. 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I am not a hero. I did what I was trained for. I did my best and no more, he told the BBC.

Police in Finland are now treating the attack as a terrorist incident.

In a statement, the police said: The act had been investigated as murder, but during the night we received additional information which indicates that the criminal offences are now terrorist killings.

Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila told journalists that Finland had now experienced its first terror attack.
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A series of stabbings in Finland that left two people dead is being treated as a terror attack, police have said.

The National Bureau of Investigation, which is heading the investigation, said on Saturday that those killed on Friday were Finnish citizens, while the wounded include a Briton, one Italian national and two Swedes.

It said: Due to information received during the night, the Turku stabbings are now being investigated as murders with terrorist intent.

Recommended Two dead and six injured after Finland knife attack

Police said they had identified the suspect, an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen, but did not release his name. He arrived in the country in 2016 as an asylum seeker, they said.

The suspected attacker killed two people and wounded eight in the city of Turku, about 90 miles west of the capital, Helsinki, on Friday afternoon, before police shot him in the leg and arrested him. He apparently targeted women.

Four other Moroccan citizens have been arrested over potential links to the attack.

Local media said the police raided an apartment in the eastern Turku suburb of Varissuo, which is home to a large immigrant population and located about 7km from the market square where the attack took place.

Authorities placed the city centre on lockdown and have reinforced security nationwide. People were allowed to return a few hours after the attack.

Witnesses reported seeing a man wielding a large knife and hearing gunshots and screams at the city centres Puutori market square. Some said they saw a lifeless body lying on the ground.

One of those stabbed was reported to be a woman pushing a buggy.

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

Flags were at half mast on Saturday across the Nordic country where violent crime is relatively rare.

Still, the Security Intelligence Service raised the terrorism threat level in June to elevated from low, saying it had become aware of terrorism-related plans in Finland.

The confirmation of motive means the Turku attack was the second terrorist assault in Europe in two days, following the massacre in Barcelona on Thursday evening and the linked incident in Cambrils a few hours later.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Some 500 far-right extremists began a march in Berlin on Saturday in honour of the 30th anniversary of the death of top Nazi Rudolf Hess.

About 500 counter-demonstrators gathered nearby the parade in the Spandau district, separated by hundreds of heavily armored police.

Berlin police spokesman Carsten Mueller told The Associated Press that authorities have imposed a number of restrictions on Saturday's march to ensure it passes peacefully.

Police have told organizers they can march, but they're not allowed to glorify Hess, who died at Spandau prison. The neo-Nazis are allowed to bring banners: but only one for every 50 participants.

Such restrictions are common in Germany and rooted in the experience of the pre-war Weimar Republic, when opposing political groups would try to forcibly interrupt their rivals' rallies, resulting in frequent bloody street violence.

The exact rules differ according to the circumstances, but police in Germany say they generally try to balance protesters' rights to free speech and free assembly against the rights of counter-demonstrators and residents.

The rules mean that shields, helmets and batons carried by far-right and Neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville last weekend wouldn't be allowed in Germany.

In pictures: Virginia shootings Show all 13 1 /13 In pictures: Virginia shootings In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings Flowers are seen at a memorial outside of the offices for WDBJ7 in Roanoke, Virginia Getty Images In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings The getaway car of suspected gunman Vester L. Flanagan sits on a flatbed tow truck before being towed away on highway I-66 in Fauquier County, Virginia Reuters In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings Sgt. Rick Garletts with the Virginia State Police speaks about using license plate recognition equipment to help identify suspect Vester Flanagan AP In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings Franklin County, Virginia sheriff, Bill Overton speaks to the press on in Moneta, Virginia Getty Images In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings Authorities block Virginia State Route 122 at Bridgewater Plaza, in Moneta, Virginia AP In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings The crime scene at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia Getty Images In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings The entrance at Bridgewater Plaza on Smith Mountain Lake in Moneta, Virginia Getty Images In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings Police work the crime scene at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia Getty Images In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings WDBJ7 News Anchor Kimberly McBroom reacts to shooting In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings Vester Lee Flanagan, known professionally as Bryce Williams In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings Journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward, who were killed after a gunman opened fire during a live broadcast in Virginia In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings Vester Flanagan's actions were broadcast live to television viewers In pictures: Virginia shootings Virginia shootings Reporter Alison Parker interviewing Vicki Gardner moments before the attack

Openly anti-Semitic chants would prompt German police to intervene, although efforts would be made to detain specific individuals rather than to stop an entire rally, police say.

Left-wing groups expect about 1,000 people to attend the counter-protests.

Hess, who received a life sentence at the Nuremberg trials for his role in planning World War II, died on Aug. 17, 1987. Allied authorities ruled his death a suicide, but Nazi sympathizers have long claimed that he was killed and organise annual marches in his honour.

The marches used to take place in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where Hess was buried until authorities removed his remains.

Associated Press
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A dispute has broken out between the Spanish government and the regional authorities in Catalonia over the investigation into the terror cell thought to have carried out the Barcelona van attack this week.

Spains interior minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said at a news conference on Saturday that the alleged cell responsible for the attacks had been dismantled and its members all arrested  but his local counterpart appeared to contradict him, suggesting more arrests could follow.

It comes as police continue to search for 22-year-old Moroccan national Younes Abouyaaqoub, who has become the focus of the investigation into the van attack after five of his alleged co-conspirators were shot dead by police on Friday.

Recommended Barcelona attack fails to scare tourists away from La Rambla

The cell has been fully dismantled in Barcelona, after examining the people who died, the people who were arrested and carrying out identity checks, Mr Zodio told a news conference on Saturday.

He also said the country would not raise its terror threat level the maximum on the scale  though he would send special protection to potential terror targets, including tourist hotspots.

But Joaquim Forn, the interior minister for the Catalan government, which crucially commands the Catalan police force leading the investigation, Mossos dEsquadra, appeared to suggest there were more arrests to be made.

We cant say the investigation is finished until we locate or detain all those who we think form part of this terror cell, he said at a separate briefing.

The Spanish media now says that on-the-run Abouyaaqoub is likely to have been the driver of the van that killed 13 and injured over 100 on Thursday. Moussa Oukabir, 17, who was previously identified as the driver, is thought to be among five men shot by police on Friday after a later attack in Cambrils, an hour and a half drive west of Barcelona, on Friday. Seven victims were injured in that attack, one of whom later died.

Oukabir reportedly died along with Said Aallaa, 19, and Mohamed Hychami, 24, who were part of the group that mounted the attack in Cambrils that left one woman dead and six people injured.

Four men, aged 21, 27, 28 and 34, who were arrested in connection with the attacks remain in custody. Three are Moroccan and one Spanish. Police say none of those arrested was previously known to the security services for terror-related reasons; Oukabirs older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reported by local media to be one of those detained.

Isis claimed responsibility for both attacks in a statement released on Saturday that attributed the atrocities to covert units of Islamic State soldiers. The groups statement however appeared to be riddled with fictions, including a reference to an extra attack on a bar using light weapons that did not take place. The statement referred to the victims as Jews and Crusaders  a term used to describe Christians and citizens of countries in the US-led coalition against Isis.

There was confusion on Saturday after Spanish media reported that a seven-year-old British-Australian boy caught up in the Barcelona attack had been found safe and well in the hospital. Catalan police later denied these reports, stating: Neither [are] we were searching [for], nor we have found any lost child in the Barcelona attack. All the victims and injured have been located.

La Rambla, where the first attack took place, is now the site of extensive floral tributes and messages of solidarity from visitors from around the world, with tourists returning to the tree-lined boulevard and local business owners making a concerted effort to go back to work after the dark events of this week.

Spains interior minister Juan Ignacio Zoido

Spanish newspaper El Pais says that police believe that explosions reported in the nearby down of Alcanar, two hours drive west of Barcelona, on Wednesday, may have been accidental blast at a bomb-making factory  depriving the alleged terror cell of material.

After the loss of their explosive material the terrorists defaulted to using more low tech methods  the van  to carry out the attack, it was reported.

Barcelona Attack Show all 30 1 /30 Barcelona Attack Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack Getty Images Barcelona Attack Tourists and locals walk along Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack People leave a fastfood with hands up as asked by policemen after a van ploughed into the crowd, killing two persons and injuring several others on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. A driver deliberately rammed a van into a crowd on Barcelona's most popular street on August 17, 2017 killing at least two people before fleeing to a nearby bar, police said. Officers in Spain's second-largest city said the ramming on Las Ramblas was a "terrorist attack" and a police source said one suspect had left the scene and was "holed up in a bar". The police source said they were hunting for a total of two suspects AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack Police officers tell members of the public to leave the scene in a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack REUTERS Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack People move from the scene after a van crashed into pedestrians near the Las Ramblas avenue Reuters Barcelona Attack A policeman stands next to an ambulance after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Reuters Barcelona Attack Firefighters stands outside an evacuated mall after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Policemen stand next to vehicles in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Plain-clothes policemen phone as they walk past police cars in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A policemen and a medical staff member stand past police cars and an ambulance in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A person is stretched out of a mall by medical staff members in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona said they were dealing with a "terrorist attack" after a vehicle ploughed into a crowd of pedestrians on the city's famous Las Ramblas boulevard on August 17, 2017. Police were clearing the area after the incident, which has left a number of people injured. AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Children, some in tears, are escorted down a road in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona say a white van has mounted a sidewalk, struck several people in the city's Las Ramblas district. AP Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers and emergency service workers move an injured man, after a van crashes into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers attend injured people after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack A police officer cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images

Investigators have floated the idea that the cell was building a large scale truck bomb built from gas canisters, and could have planned to carry out multiple attacks at the same time. The explosion on Wednesday ahead of the attack was at the time reported in local media as a gas explosion.

A second van found in the town of Vic in Catalonia, an hours drive north of Barcelona, is also being investigated by police amid reports that the attackers had tried to hire a lorry, which was foiled when the driver failed to produce the necessary permit.
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Reports that a seven-year-old British-Australian boy caught up in the Barcelona attack has been found alive are not true, Catalan Police have said.

Spanish newspaper El Pais had reported that Julian Cadman had been found in hospital, but Los Mossos d'Esquadra  the province's police force  said no child had been located, nor were they missing.

In a statement released on Saturday afternoon, the Catalan police force said: "Neither [are] we were searching [for], nor we have found any lost child in the Barcelona attack. All the victims and injured have been located."

The police said that victims' families had "communicative priority" for new information.

Theresa May said on Friday that the British government was urgently looking into reports of a child believed missing, who is a British dual national.

Tony Cadman, Julian's grandfather, had appealed for help and information about his grandson's whereabouts after the attack.

Mr Cadman had said Jom, Julian's mother, is in a serious but stable condition in hospital.
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Isis has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack in Cambrils, Spain, in an official communique.

It had already claimed the prior attack in Barcelona but put out an official statement later encompassing both atrocities, which police in Spain had been treating as linked.

It came as Spanish authorities announced they believed the cell behind the twin attacks in Cambrils and La Rambla, Barcelona, had been "dismantled".

Recommended Hero police officer shoots dead four of five terrorists in Cambrils

Police had been investigating a cell of between eight and 12 people after a van smashed into pedestrians in the Catalan city on Thursday afternoon, killing 13 and injuring about 100.

The driver fled the scene and later, in the early hours of Friday, a car ploughed into a crowd along the seafront road in Cambrils, about 60 miles away. Five terrorist suspects were shot deadfour by the same police officer.

One woman later died of her injuries, and several other people were injured.

Police believe the cell was planning an even more horrific attack, involving a lorry and explosive gas canisters, after a house explosion in Alcanar on Wednesday uncovered a stash of the containers.

The driver of the van used to kill more than a dozen people in La Rambla is thought still to be on the run. A 22-year-old Moroccan, Younes Abouyaaqoub, is the focus of a new manhunt.

The previous top suspect, 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, was one of those killed in Cambrils.

Barcelona Attack Show all 30 1 /30 Barcelona Attack Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack Getty Images Barcelona Attack Tourists and locals walk along Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack People leave a fastfood with hands up as asked by policemen after a van ploughed into the crowd, killing two persons and injuring several others on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. A driver deliberately rammed a van into a crowd on Barcelona's most popular street on August 17, 2017 killing at least two people before fleeing to a nearby bar, police said. Officers in Spain's second-largest city said the ramming on Las Ramblas was a "terrorist attack" and a police source said one suspect had left the scene and was "holed up in a bar". The police source said they were hunting for a total of two suspects AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack Police officers tell members of the public to leave the scene in a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack REUTERS Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack People move from the scene after a van crashed into pedestrians near the Las Ramblas avenue Reuters Barcelona Attack A policeman stands next to an ambulance after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Reuters Barcelona Attack Firefighters stands outside an evacuated mall after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Policemen stand next to vehicles in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Plain-clothes policemen phone as they walk past police cars in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A policemen and a medical staff member stand past police cars and an ambulance in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A person is stretched out of a mall by medical staff members in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona said they were dealing with a "terrorist attack" after a vehicle ploughed into a crowd of pedestrians on the city's famous Las Ramblas boulevard on August 17, 2017. Police were clearing the area after the incident, which has left a number of people injured. AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Children, some in tears, are escorted down a road in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona say a white van has mounted a sidewalk, struck several people in the city's Las Ramblas district. AP Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers and emergency service workers move an injured man, after a van crashes into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers attend injured people after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack A police officer cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images

Spain's interior minister, Juan Ignacio Zoido, said the country would maintain its security alert level at four, one notch below the maximum level which would signal an attack was imminent.

Mr Zoido added that the government would reinforce security in crowded areas and tourist hotspots.

"We are going to redirect our efforts and will adapt these to every place or area that needs special protection," he told a news conference on Saturday.

Mr Zoido also said Spanish authorities considered the cell behind the attacks had been fully dismantled.

Additional reporting by agencies
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A man on a delayed honeymoon was among the 13 people killed when a van ploughed through a popular pedestrian area in the Spanish city of Barcelona, his family has revealed.

Californian Jared Tucker, 43, and his wife had gone to Barcelona to celebrate their first anniversary in the form of a belated honeymoon.

Walking in the area of the famous Las Ramblas boulevard on Thursday, he had gone to find a restroom when he was struck down by the van, his wife Heidi Nunes Tucker told KGO television in San Francisco.

"Pray for Jared and his family, pray for Barcelona, but most importantly pray that we can some day rid ourselves of the hate that takes our loved ones before their time," Mr Tucker's family wrote in a statement posted on the Gofundme fundraising website.

Relatives started the fundraising effort to assist his family with living and educational expenses. Mr Tucker lived in East Bay suburbs of San Francisco and is also survived by three daughters, KGO reported.

Earlier in the day, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed that an American citizen had been killed, but gave no other details.

Recommended Barcelona attack fails to scare tourists away from La Rambla

The rampage through one of Spain's most popular tourist areas was the latest of a string of attacks across Europe in the past 13 months in which militants have used vehicles as weapons - a crude but deadly tactic that is near-impossible to prevent and has now killed nearly 130 people in France, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Spain.

Suspected jihadists have been behind the previous attacks. Islamic State said the perpetrators of the latest one had been responding to its call to target countries involved in a US-led coalition against the Sunni militant group.

Barcelona Attack Show all 30 1 /30 Barcelona Attack Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack Getty Images Barcelona Attack Tourists and locals walk along Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack Police officers patrol on Las Ramblas following yesterday's terrorist attack, on August 18, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and dozens injured when a van hit crowds in the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona on Thursday. Spanish police have also killed five suspected terrorists in the town of Cambrils to stop a second terrorist attack. Getty Images Barcelona Attack People leave a fastfood with hands up as asked by policemen after a van ploughed into the crowd, killing two persons and injuring several others on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. A driver deliberately rammed a van into a crowd on Barcelona's most popular street on August 17, 2017 killing at least two people before fleeing to a nearby bar, police said. Officers in Spain's second-largest city said the ramming on Las Ramblas was a "terrorist attack" and a police source said one suspect had left the scene and was "holed up in a bar". The police source said they were hunting for a total of two suspects AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack Police officers tell members of the public to leave the scene in a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack REUTERS Barcelona Attack AP Barcelona Attack People move from the scene after a van crashed into pedestrians near the Las Ramblas avenue Reuters Barcelona Attack A policeman stands next to an ambulance after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Reuters Barcelona Attack Firefighters stands outside an evacuated mall after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Policemen stand next to vehicles in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Plain-clothes policemen phone as they walk past police cars in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A policemen and a medical staff member stand past police cars and an ambulance in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack A person is stretched out of a mall by medical staff members in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona said they were dealing with a "terrorist attack" after a vehicle ploughed into a crowd of pedestrians on the city's famous Las Ramblas boulevard on August 17, 2017. Police were clearing the area after the incident, which has left a number of people injured. AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack Children, some in tears, are escorted down a road in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in Barcelona say a white van has mounted a sidewalk, struck several people in the city's Las Ramblas district. AP Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers and emergency service workers move an injured man, after a van crashes into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Mossos d'Esquadra Police officers attend injured people after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack Injured people react after a van crashed into pedestrians in Las Ramblas, downtown Barcelona, Spain, 17 August 2017. According to initial reports a van crashed into a crowd in Barcelona's famous Placa Catalunya square at Las Ramblas area injuring several. Local media report the van driver ran away, metro and train stations were closed. The number of people injured and the reasons behind the incident are not yet known. Official sources have not confirmed that the incident is a terrorist attack. EPA Barcelona Attack A police officer cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain, Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017. Police in the northern Spanish city of Barcelona say a white van has jumped the sidewalk in the city's historic Las Ramblas district, injuring several people. AP Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images Barcelona Attack AFP/Getty Images

The driver of the van may still be alive and at large, Spanish police said on Friday, denying earlier reports he had been killed. Five would-be attackers were shot dead by police in a seaside town.

Reuters
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Lebanon's US-backed army on Saturday announced the start of a long-awaited military campaign to clear Isis militants from a remote corner near the frontier with Syria, an offensive that seeks to end a years-old threat to neighbouring towns and villages.

The Lebanese Hezbollah group and the Syrian army announced a simultaneous offensive to clear Isis militants from the Syrian side of the border, in the western Qalamoun mountain range.

The campaign will involve cooperation between the two sides  although Lebanese authorities insist they are not coordinating with Syrian President Bashar Assad's government. Hezbollah has been fighting alongside Assad's forces since 2013.

The announcements were made Saturday by the Lebanese commander Joseph Aoun on Twitter, and the Central Military Media outlet, associated with the Syrian government.

The presence of extremists in the border area has brought suffering to neighbouring towns and villages, from shelling to kidnappings of villagers for ransom. Car bombs made in the area and sent to other parts of the country, including the Lebanese capital, Beirut, have killed scores of people.

The army has accumulated steady successes against the militants in the past year, slowly clawing back territory, including strategic hills retaken in the past week.

In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Show all 11 1 /11 In pictures: Isis' weapons factories In pictures: Isis' weapons factories A mortar round fin manufactured by Isis in Gogjali, Mosul, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Isis rocket components discovered in Gogjali, Mosul, Iraq in November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Isis mortars discovered near Karamlais, Iraq, in November 2016 CAR In pictures: Isis' weapons factories An Isis rocket launch frame in Qaraqosh, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories A memo from Isis' COSQC on quality control at a manufacturing facility in Gogjali, Mosul, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Electrically-operated initiators manufactured by Isis in forces Gogjali, Mosul, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Isis mortar tubes at a manufacturing facility in Karamlais, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories An Isis mortar production facility discovered in Gogjali, Mosul, in November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories An Isis weapons manufacturing facilities near Mosul in November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Stocks of French-manufactured Sorbitol, Latvian potassium nitrate and Lebanese sugar at an Isis weapons factory in Iraq Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories A destroyed Isis weapons facility in Qaraqosh, Iraq, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research

Lebanese President Michel Aoun (no relation to the Lebanese commander) arrived at the defence ministry early on Saturday to monitor the operation.

Lebanon has been spared the wars and chaos that engulfed several countries in the region since the Arab Spring uprisings erupted in 2011. But it has not been able to evade threats to its security, including sectarian infighting and random car bombings, particularly in 2014, when militants linked to al-Qaeda and Isis overran the border region, kidnapping Lebanese soldiers.

Lebanese politicians say Isis controls an area of about 115 square miles between the two countries, around half of which is in Lebanon. The area stretches from the Lebanese town of Arsal and Christian villages of Ras Baalbek and Qaa, to the outskirts of Syria's Qalamoun region and parts of the western Syrian town of Qusair, which Hezbollah captured in 2013.

AP
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The United Arab Emirates envoy to the US has reportedly ridiculed Saudi Arabias leadership in a number of leaked emails,

In one of the messages, reportedly stolen by hacking group GlobalLeaks, Yousef Otaiba wrote: That whole country is fuckin coo coo!

In another, sent to his Egyptian wife, Abeer Shoukry, the UAE ambassador mocked Saudi Arabias decision to ban red roses on Valentines Day.

In the email, purportedly written by Mr Otaiba, he wrote: Theyre just so stupid Im sure Red roses are now being sold on the black market for extortionately high prices. They shouldv banned heart-shaped chocolate as well.

The correspondence reveals that although Mr Otaiba believes the UAE has bad history with Saudi Arabia, their crown prince Mohammed bin Salman could lead to better relations and a time to get the most results we can ever get out of Saudi.

Previously, Mr Otaiba had written to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, saying that with MBS (Mohammed bin Salman), we see a genuine change. And thats why were excited. We finally see hope there and we need it to succeed.

In other emails, Mr Otaiba has hailed bin Salman as being on a mission to make the Saudi government more efficient.

The UAE ambassador is an influential player in world politics and has attended Pentagon strategy meetings.

He is incredibly savvy, a former White House aide told the Huffington Post.

He throws great social events. He understands how Washington works, how the Hill works, which a lot of these countries dont.

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 correspondence from Mr Otaibas email account was initially uncovered by the GlobalLeaks group, who approached Daily Beast. The hacking group claims to reveal how million of dollars were used to hurt reputation of American allies and cause policy change.

The UAE embassy confirmed that the Hotmail address matched the ambassadors, according to The Hill.

The identity of GlobalLeaks remains unknown although the Daily Beast noted that the email sent to them was from a free Russian email provider.
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Britain and the US have played a crucial role in creating conditions conducive to the catastrophic spread of cholera in Yemen, according to authors of a letter published in The Lancet.

An analysis by the researchers at Londons Queen Mary University, found that eight of ten of Yemens cholera deaths occur in rebel-controlled areas. Combining the latest data from the World Health Organisation and mapping that on to areas under government and revel control, the three researchers found the cholera outbreak was disproportionately affecting areas controlled by Houthi rebels.

The rebels are the target on a two-year military campaign by a by a Saudi Arabia-led coalition that has received logistical and political support from the UK and the US. British companies have continued to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia despite growing concern about civilian casualties.

Both sides have been accused of disregarding the wellbeing of civilians and breaching international humanitarian law. But the government and Saudi-led coalition that supports it command far greater resources, wrote researchers Jonathan Kennedy, Andrew Harmer and David McCoy.

As a result, Houthi-controlled areas have been disproportionately affected by the conflict, which has created conditions conducive to the spread of cholera."

They added: Saudi-led airstrikes have destroyed vital infrastructure, including hospitals and public water systems, hit civilian areas, and displaced people into crowded and insanitary conditions. A Saudi-enforced blockade of imports has caused shortages of, among other things, food, medical supplies, fuel and chlorine, and restricted humanitarian access.

 Yemen cholera epidemic: Worst in modern history at 360,000 cases and counting

Mr Kennedy said in an additional statement: Saudi Arabia is an ally of the UK and USA. American and British companies supply Saudi Arabia with huge amounts of military equipment and their armed forces provide logistical support and intelligence. This backing has made the Saudi-led airstrikes and blockade possible, and therefore the UK and USA have played a crucial role in creating conditions conducive to the spread of cholera.

In June, Unicef and the WHO released a statement saying that Yemen was facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world. Earlier this week, the WHO said more than half a million people in Yemen had been infected with cholera since the epidemic broke out in April, as the country struggled to cope with 5,000 new cases a day.

It said at least 1,975 people have now died from the acute diarrhoeal infection caused by ingestion of contaminated food or water. Last month, the organisation estimated that around half of cases and a quarter of the dead were children under the age of 15.

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

Last week, a draft UN report accused the Saudi military coalition of killing hundreds of children in Yemen.

The report, which has yet to be made public and could still be changed, said that 51 per cent of all child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year were the result of the Saudi-led military operation. It says the deaths were unacceptably high.

Saudi Arabia has insisted it is operating within international law.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade, which sought to stop the sale of British-made arms to Saudi Arabia, said: The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is among the worst in the world, and the bombardment is making it even worse. This couldn't have happened without the complicit support of governments like the UK, which have armed and supported Saudi forces every step of the way.

A spokesman for the UK Foreign Office said: We call on all parties to the conflict in Yemen to avoid any civilian casualties, particularly that of children, and to permit humanitarian access.
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International interest in wildlife conservation in Africa seems to wax and wane in line with outraged or triumphant news headlines. Whether gnashing its teeth over Cecil the Lion's son, or cheering on last week's public destruction of two tonnes of ivory in Central Park, the international community is having all the wrong debates. Should we tackle poaching by targeting demand? Do we need more armed soldiers? But these do not need to be the only options when it comes to protecting endangered species.

Contrary to the recent increase in stories around militarisation of conservation, wildlife parks are not war zones and citizens should not have to be in a battle with animals to gain access to land. The word engagement is often thrown around like a panacea. But it really does work. For example, at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy (MKWC), the only conservancy in the world that protects the critically endangered Mountain Bongo, engagement with the local community is our priority.

With headlines typically reserved for Cecil the Lion, you would be forgiven for not having heard of the Mountain Bongo. This rare and beautiful creature is only found in its natural habitat in Kenya, and there are just 100 or so left in the wild. Over the last 50 years their population has been devastated by unrestricted hunting, poaching, loss of habitat, illegal logging, introduced predators and diseases such as rinderpest.

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

Today 72 Bongos live at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy (MKWC) in a semi wild environment. It is here that MKWC runs the only mountain bongo-breeding programme of its kind in the world.

Success has been largely the result of an education programme which now forms part of the local school curriculum. The only real, long-term solution to wildlife conservation and preservation is education. Children must be taught from an early age about the importance of conservation and, more broadly, nurture a positive mind set towards the environment. Those adults which have not had the opportunity to experience our positive education programme have been recruited as staff and volunteers, and now help in monitoring the Bongos movements across the forest areas.

Our biggest lesson is that the greatest responsibility for conservation lies with our citizens. That means partnering with government agencies such as the National Bongo Taskforce, the Kenya Wildlife Service and the Kenya Forestry Service to ensure all parties have a stake in the Bongos future. It is human activity that has interfered with natural habitats, so we must acknowledge our part in the devastation of entire animal species. As our population grows, the search for timber, food and fuel has severely damaged our once pristine environment. Maintaining a balance between human needs and a sanctuary for wildlife is a mammoth task.

Knowledge and education on a local level is paramount. Our Education Centre at Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy teaches Kenyan youth about conserving their wildlife and environment. Today the facility is visited by over 10,000 students annually. The centre also operates an outreach programme to assist local schools with improving their environmental education.

The newest member of the Mountain Bongo community at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy (Donald Bunge)

The people we assist with their education and livelihood, or those we take on as interns to work with wildlife are the ones who disseminate positive knowledge about the benefits of working with the environment and not against it. Many of them then move on to jobs in related fields after graduation. Their work at the conservancy creates a lasting respect for wildlife and the environment. Most remain our lifelong supporters.

In a country like Kenya, where almost half the population lives in poverty, the promise of quick money from poaching and logging can be difficult to resist. Why should anyone care about the future of the Bongo, or indeed any other animal, if they are struggling to feed their own children? The long-term benefits of protecting our environment, which far outweigh the immediate gain from illicit activities, are hard to see.

But our work is slowly paying off. We are seeing steady progress in raising the population of the Mountain Bongo. In the last month, we were lucky enough to witness the successful birth of two healthy Bongo calves. Of course more work is needed, but we are confident we are on the right path.

A military solution to an environmental problem is not the way forward. If anything, it only serves to turn communities against our work. People must be given the opportunity to learn to love and respect their environment. In a recent interview, Vince Barkas, the head of Africas largest privately owned anti-poaching unit said, Working with communities and the actual poachers has saved more wildlife than any guard with a gun in the bush. We believe in this method, and have the results to show for it.

Donald is the Conservancy Manager at the Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy
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Let the dust settle for the finer details to emerge. Let the fog clear for the competing explanations to drip out.

In the midst of a midday drama, we know Steve Bannon is out of the White House and we know he is not going back. Some reports say he was fired, others that he quit two week ago.

But consider this: it may be that Donald Trump decided he should go, and that Bannon agreed to the decision, because they both knew his work in the West Wing was done.

Those who seek for clues in the alignments of the calendar, may be struck that it is a year and day since the 63-year-old former Breitbart editor joined Trumps flailing campaign and was asked to knock it into the shape. The man who once served in the Navy, made movies and worked as an investment banker, was introduced to the New York tycoon by Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of Robert Mercer, a hugely influential conservative donor and the head of data company Renaissance Technologies.

If Trump believed he could use Bannons influence and connections with the conservative right, Bannon realised he could use Trump as a means of pushing his own white nationalist agenda. After the Mercers' preferred candidate, Ted Cruz, dropped out of the presidential race, they threw their considerable resources behind Trump and Bannon.

 Strategist Steve Bannon leaves Trump's turbulent White House

In the seven months Bannon has occupied an office in the White House, the Trump administration has achieved remarkably little; there have been no landmark legislative achievements, no major bills passed. An undertaking to repeal and replace Obamacare was a humiliating failure, and even Trumps executive orders to crack down on immigrants and ban citizens from six Muslim-majority nations, have been held up by the courts.

But no-one can doubt the tone that Trump has set - bullish, stubborn, populist and unabashedly nationalist. When Trump declared during his Inauguration speech that from this moment on, its going to be America first, there was little surprise that Bannon was sitting behind him on the dais grinning. It was he, after all, along with fellow nationalist Stephen Miller, who wrote the words.

Reports from inside the White House said Trump clicked with Bannon in a way he did with few others. While he respected and listened to his daughter, Ivanka, and his son-in-law, Jared Kusher, it was Bannon who connected with Trump on a visceral level. Bannon loved it when Trump went head-to-head with the media, which he considered the opposition.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Yet in a White House riven by an usual number of factions and rivalries - one White House correspondent said she had identified at least six - Bannon was also an unpopular, confrontational presence in the eyes of many.

It is said he clashed with Trumps original Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, with Trump's daughter and son-in-law, who had little time for his crude nationalism, and with various other officials.

Last month, Trump appointed former general John Kelly as his new Chief of Staff. He was tasked with improving discipline. It may be that Bannon realised his special place within Trumps sphere was coming to an end. One report said he offered his resignation two weeks ago and that officials were waiting for the controversy over the violence in Charlottesville to abate before it was announced.

This week, it was clear Trump had decided it was time for him to go. Asked if he intended to fire his chief strategist, Trump responded: Well see what happens with Mr Bannon, but hes a good person, and I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly.

Bannon predicted he would last eight months in the White House and said he would work hard to complete as much of his mission as possible within that timeframe. In the end, his forecast was pretty accurate.

And if Bannons agenda was to establish a White House that may seem abhorrent to millions of people across America and around the world - but which delights Donald Trumps base of supporters - than his work there is done.
It was at the tender age of 13 that Joe Scahill hung up his schoolbag to begin working on the family's modest hill farm in Westport on the foothills of Croagh Patrick.

"Looking back it wasn't the smartest move I've ever made," laughs the Co Mayo man, who no doubt doesn't relish the thought of him and his wife Cathy's own children Lisa (18), Kate (16), Sean (14) and Joseph (12) bringing their school career to a close quite as early.

Yet when Joe began farming the family had a few cows and sheep and he had access to just 23 acres of owned land, including 17 acres of commonage.

It was the hard slog and determination that has now seen the established sheep producer farm over 400ac that caught the eye and impressed this year's judges to land the Zurich Farm Insurance Farming Independent Sheep Farmer of the Year award.

Expand Close Sheep Farmer of the year Joe Scahill on his farm in westport, Co. Mayo. Pic: Michael Mc Laughlin / Facebook

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Whatsapp Sheep Farmer of the year Joe Scahill on his farm in westport, Co. Mayo. Pic: Michael Mc Laughlin

"We bought a lot of the land we farm in bits and pieces," says Joe, who explains he was fortunate that the contracting business he set up with his brother provided them with steady employment over the years.

Now he farms over 400ac, including 100ac of improved and 300ac of hill land, after purchasing close to 300ac over the past three decades. They lease around 100ac of land.

"I still work off farm doing a good bit of contract work, seven or eight months of the year," he says, as he shears in partnership with his brother and also operates a contract sheep showering business.

His father Thomas, always known as Sonny, had kept a few sheep and that is what first got him into the business.

"As I got a bit older I joined up with the producer groups in the west - that is what inspired me to stay in the sheep job," explains Joe who now chairs the successful Mayo Mule and Greyface group.

"It is very important for younger fellows to join up as there is healthy competition - it is good for the whole thing and it drives you on."

Expand Close Mayo Blackface Breeders Group members Pat Chambers, John Joyce, advisor John Noonan and Stephen Lally at the Teagasc Mayo Breeding Sheep event on Joe Scahill's farm in Sandyhill, Wesport. Photo: Michael Mc Laughlin / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mayo Blackface Breeders Group members Pat Chambers, John Joyce, advisor John Noonan and Stephen Lally at the Teagasc Mayo Breeding Sheep event on Joe Scahill's farm in Sandyhill, Wesport. Photo: Michael Mc Laughlin

Looking out over the scenic landscape, their land is a mix of heather, blanket blog, upland grassland and some good quality lowlands.

After buying his first flock of 100 ewes in 1987 when he was 17 - without any herd number - he went on to build up the flock.

They now carry 600 Blackface Ewes, Lanark and Lanark Mayo Connemara crosses, with 400 crossed with Blue Leicester rams to produce Mayo Mules. The remaining 200 are mated to Blackface rams to produce hill replacements.

In addition, he purchases around 20 weanling cattle each year to sell off grass the following autumn.

Like many drystock farmers trying to juggle a workload off-farm, Joe feels the Mayo Mule cross is a good fit for part-time farmers.

"They are very trouble free, good to lamb on their own and super mothers. They suit a low labour system - lads working can put them in a field and let them lamb away. One of the main feedbacks is that they can produce a big crop and they are all sold. It is great to rear them and get them out of the gate quick - that is where they really seem to shine."

Expand Close Mayo Texel Cross Breeders Group members: Paul Coyne, Kilmaine; John Gibbons, Partry, and John Donnellan from Kilmaine. Photo: Michael Mc Laughlin / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mayo Texel Cross Breeders Group members: Paul Coyne, Kilmaine; John Gibbons, Partry, and John Donnellan from Kilmaine. Photo: Michael Mc Laughlin

The Mule and Greyface sheep are growing in popularity here - however he points out they still fall far behind the percentage in the UK flock. "The future is bright for them in a lot of farms," he says.

The lamb crops from well-bred Mule and Greyface ewes average 175pc to 200pc, with the ewe selectively bred for the specific purpose of becoming a top-class mother of prime meat lambs when crossed with continental sires.

Usually Joe would have around 280 ewe lambs on the ground, however, this year it is closer to 250, with around 350 Mule ram lambs.

"So far we have around 150 of the ram lambs killed - we'd usually be targeting a finished weight of about 19kg but this year we decided to move quicker," he says, adding they were sold to the factory at around 18kg at 5.50 and 5.30/kg. However, he said they were finished without meal and they may have lost out on a kilo of meat but the overall prices were better.

This year Joe has around 80 lambs currently grazing on the leafy catch crop Typhon to try and put weight on the lambs at less cost. "It makes sense from a labour point of view and a cost point of view - I haven't done the sums on it yet but I think it will be cheaper," he says.

He feels many farmers don't place enough emphasis on the quality of the ram. "He is half your flock and if you have to spend an extra 100, it is a small investment," he says.

Now he says you can buy a Bluefaced Leicester ram bred from a top ram in Scotland that might have cost 10,000 thanks to the introduction of AI in sheep. "The bloodlines are making a difference to our flock. The Blue Leicester rams we have now they'd be like night and day such is the difference in size, confirmation and general quality of the sheep," he said.

Around 12 years ago he began introducing the native Scottish Breed Lanark to his ewe lines. "I feel the introduction of that blood brought the biggest improvement in our own sheep," he says.

On the technical side, the flock ranks in the top 10pc of hill producers nationally in terms of litter size and gross margin.

Like many he feels it is hard to make a living out of hill farming but he was able to buy the other commonage shareholder's section of the land and fence it off to deliver better quality grass that could be rotated. In addition, they aim for a higher weaning rate of 1.5 compared with some other hill farms.

Also, the fencing means ewes can be outwintered on it with meal fed to them, without feeding the "neighbours sheep" as well, which is an issue on commonages.

Now Joe has the ewes scanned around the middle of February and leaves the singles outdoor to lamb while those carrying doubles are housed in the slatted and straw-bedded accommodation.

Otherwise Joe found that over the years those with doubles were losing lambs to the foxes.

"Some years we would have lost 30 or 40 lambs," he says.

At the moment the Mules are castrated, while the Blackfaced lambs are left entire as they grow into a heavier carcase.

He says the price point of lamb continues to be an issue for many shoppers.

"We as a rule get less than 5/kg for lamb but the average price is somewhere in the region of 16/kg, that is a big gap," he says, adding more needs to be done to encourage young people to eat lamb by using it in more convenience meals.

With the mammoth fire that raged through the Cloosh Valley still fresh in people's minds, Joe feels the hills simply aren't being maintained the same as in the past, with farmers now putting less sheep on the hills.

He said this was turning to heavy heather covers and drier grass as the years went by.

Now he says there is less talk from younger farmers of going into farming with little land available as farmers work well past retirement age.

He feels the new young farmer scheme and national reserve has distorted the land rental market as they rent land to get entitlements at "over the top" prices. He feels it may be time for a new early retirement scheme to help people hand over the farm. "Few farmers are able to pay into a pension for themselves. There is not enough of an income out of it," he says.

For Joe as a contract sheep shearer the price of wool has been a bugbear this year. The poor trade for wool saw lowland prices around 50-60c/kg, with scotch wool at 20c/kg.

"I'll probably sell it as it's only a nuisance around the place but all we'd get for it is a pittance," he says, adding he'd like to see it at least cover the cost of a shearer.

"Shearing is a hard job, a tough one and I think my days are probably numbered at it. You need to be very fit for it - it's a young man's game," he says.

Producer groups tapping into collective know-how

It's over three decades since Joe Scahill first joined the Mayo Mule and Greyface producers group. "I know I have learned from being in it - you learn a lot from the older farmers," he says.

"The beauty of being in a producer group is that you can put a number of sheep together for the sale that people are interested in," he says, adding the buyers there on the day know the spec of the animals. "We hold the premier sale on August 25 in Ballinrobe where there will be 3,000 on offer and you work to select the best of the mule rams for that.

"It gives you a market to work towards. Without that you are only out there trying to sell them on spec," he says, adding you see the same faces popping up at the sale over the past three decades as they continue to seek out the maternal breeding sheep.

He pointed out farmers come from all over the country for the premier sale.

For Teagasc advisor John Noonan the producer groups are a key outlet for farmers. John feels that is where Joe has excelled through his focus on increased output alongside bringing added value to the product.

Other groups attending the event on the Scahill farm included the Mayo Blackface group, South Mayo lamb producers, Hilltex and the Mayo Connemara Blackface Hill sheep society groups.
Former INM chairman and well known lawyer and business consultant James Osborne has died.

The former A&L Goodbody managing partner had followed a glittering legal career, going on to become among the country's most sought after non-executive directors, serving on the boards of numerous publicly listed and private companies. Mr Osborne died suddenly on Thursday. He was 68.

He is survived by his partner, Patricia Devine, the journalist and model, and their young daughter and by Mr Osborne's two adult children from an earlier marriage, and other family and friends.

Mr Osborne attended Campbell College, Belfast, and Trinity College Dublin before joining A&L Goodbody in 1973.

He opened the firm's New York office in 1979 and become managing partner in 1982 aged just 32, a post he held until 1994.

He subsequently worked as a consultant with A&L Goodbody in Dublin, where he retained an office, and has served as a director and chairman to a swathe of Irish companies - notably including Ryanair which he advised on its stock market flotation in London, New York, and Dublin before serving on the board for more than two decades.

While he was personable and good humoured, he was sought out by businesses for the quality and directness of his advice. He served on boards including Bank of Ireland, Golden Vale, Adare, Carrolls Holdings and was chairman of Centric Health, Monaghan Mushrooms and Easons.

He was a former chairman of the board of Independent News & Media (INM) but served less than a year in the role before being voted off the board - a high profile turn of events Mr Osborne greeted with characteristic humour.

Outside of business he was chairman of the Irish Heritage Trust and active in horse racing, sailing and in sport and his death will be felt by a wide circle of Irish life.
Ireland remains the Eurozone's largest centre for financial special purpose vehicles, data from the European Central Bank (ECB) showed yesterday, placing it far ahead of closest rival Luxembourg.

Such vehicles, many of which are shell companies set up to borrow or invest, had assets, chiefly loans and debt, of 391bn - bigger even than the Irish economy.

The data comes amid a debate in Ireland about its hosting of such conduits, pitting critics, who see a risk to the country's reputation, against those who want to keep them to help attract business from London after Brexit. The ECB data makes the sector in Ireland, as it stood at the end of June, two-thirds larger than in Luxembourg and bigger even than in Italy, one of Europe's largest economies.

Special purpose vehicles (SPVs) are part of Ireland's offering to financial firms looking to move from London ahead of Britain's departure from the EU.

Ireland already accounts for roughly a fifth of such activity in the Eurozone and its dominance of the sector has held steady compared with earlier such surveys.

The growth in the number of such companies has prompted criticism from Irish politicians, however, who fear they could damage the reputation of the country, which was nearly bankrupted by its own financial crash. Ireland hosted numerous such vehicles before the crash that were linked to banks hit in the turmoil.

Much of the debate centres on one common Irish structure, known as a Section 110 company, which cuts tax close to zero on financial deals by creating exemptions from withholding tax, otherwise automatically deducted from income.

The companies, which typically have no full-time staff, have been used perfectly legally by US property investors, aircraft leasing firms, European banks and Russian energy groups.

Registered as ordinary companies, some vehicles hold loans on, say, US property. They counterbalance interest payments received for those loans with the cost of loan notes they have taken to invest, arriving at tax of close to zero. Restrictions apply to Irish property.

"Dublin has been quite aggressive in promoting itself," said Constantin Gurdgiev, a professor of finance at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California. "Ireland is a platform for tax optimisation, but also for doing business. It has access to the European market."

Others are critical of the Government for allowing the structures and the Central Bank has increased surveillance of the sector. (Reuters)
A Gathering Storm will chart the events of 1588, when a number of Spanish Armada ships sank off the Sligo coast

In 1976, Seamus Heaney visited a bog in Donegal for a TV schools programme in which he described "the dark wound of a turf bank or the sturdy form of a turf stack" as "natural works of art".

Forty years later, the late poet's lyrical words still resonate with the people of Donegal and neighbouring Sligo, who revel in the rich cultural heritage of the landscape of the north-west.

And as National Heritage Week (August 19-27) begins today, Donegal Heritage Officer Joseph Gallagher points out the county has more events per head of population than any other.

What's more, the vast majority (104 out of 124) of scheduled events are being organised by local volunteers and community organisations.

"They're the real ambassadors," he says.

"Credit must go to the people who engage in these activities, and the communities that support them."

During the week, a number of historic homes will be open to the public, including the traditional farmhouse Teach John Mhici Ban in Carrigart, open daily from 11am to 6pm.

And today, from 10am-4pm, Dr Clive Symmons, co-author of 'The Disappearing Irish Cottage', will open the doors to his property, Bridie's Cottage in Roshine near Dunfanaghy, and will be on hand to talk and answer questions.

Heritage Week promises to be a lively one, but when it ends, the county's creative pursuits will continue to flourish with a number of projects focusing on the wellbeing of its people.

One of these, 'Lived Lives', uses art to break the silence surrounding suicide. Led by artist Dr Seamus McGuinness and psychiatrist Prof Kevin Malone, the exhibition was first shown in Letterkenny and now, with the support of Creative Ireland, it's being run in a number of other locations, making it accessible to people throughout the county.

"It's a demonstration of how the arts can help heal communities," says Donegal Creative Ireland co-ordinator Eileen Burgess.

"We run it in a very structured way, because you can't put on an exhibition like this without looking at the impact it may have on those whose lives have been directly affected by suicide. That's why we have bereavement counsellors present whenever it is shown, offering support to those who need it."

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In association with Jigsaw mental health service, the county's 13 libraries promote recommended books on bullying, anxiety, panic attacks and other mental health issues, as a kind of 'shelf-help' for young people.

And for the sheer joy of it, young readers can look forward to the biggest Wainfest Arts and Book Festival yet (October 7-15).

Having been scaled back in recent years due to lack of funding, this year's event is set for a welcome revival with an expanded programme that includes creative habitat workshops, readings, comedy, storytelling and other events inspired by the theme 'Unleashing the Magic'.

Of interest to an older audience is 'A Vanished World - the Landed Gentry of Donegal', a free exhibition exploring the Downton Abbey world of the 'Big House' in the years before the foundation of the State.

Taking place in Donegal County Museum (September 16-December 31), it contains never-before-seen documents, photographs and letters from landlords and ladies, tenants and workers.

"We look at the social whirl of those living lives of leisure, and the struggles of those who worked in the houses and farmed the land at a time of huge social change," says museum curator Judith McCarthy.

"The exhibition is a window into a world of its time, one that doesn't exist anymore."

Next door is Yeats County, synonymous not only with the two famous brothers, poet William Butler and artist Jack B, but with a thriving contemporary arts scene.

According to Sligo Creative Ireland co-ordinator Donal Tinney, the county has long since passed the point of critical mass of culture and creativity, and is now self-sustaining.

People flock to its galleries, theatres and museums, including the Hawk's Well, the Model, Blue Raincoat, Sligo Art Gallery and more. Then there are its famous festivals, not least the Yeats International Summer School and Sligo Festival of the Arts.

"One of the many great projects we've had recently was the spine-tingling insta llation 'Entirely Hollow Aside from the Dark' by Alan James Burns," says Mr Tinney.

"This psycho-acoustic performance took place at night in the Kesh Caves, with the audience walking through uneven terrain, while atmospheric sounds and spoken word created a unique, and quite unsettling, experience."

Upcoming highlights include 'A Gathering Storm', an international conference in association with Grange and Armada Development Association, at the Clayton Hotel Sligo (September 22-24).

This charts events of 1588, when a number of ships from the eponymous Spanish fleet sank off Sligo coast, with the loss of 1,100 lives. The conference features Irish and international speakers, with music, poetry, guided walks and visits to the wreck site at Streedagh.

The entire county is set to come alive on Culture Night (September 22) when the fun starts in the afternoon with a 'Big Street Play' experience at Rockwood Parade in Sligo town. Young and old are invited to come and play old-time favourite games like hopscotch, tug-o-war and skipping, accompanied by street rhymes and songs.

At PowWow in the Yeats Memorial Building, the poetry of Yeats and others will be translated into different languages and recited, while cafes will showcase the work of six local artists in a project called Cafe Culture.

From September to November, the 100th anniversary of the death of renowned historian and archaeologist WG Wood-Martin will be marked with a travelling exhibition celebrating his life and work.

"We're also proud to have been named Volunteering Capital 2017, and we'll have a very special closing event in December, showing how the designation enhanced our communities and encouraged creativity throughout the year," says Mr Tinney.
RTE has refused to release details of its gender pay gap because it could be "injurious" and "would not serve the public interest".

The station rejected a request by this newspaper to publish a breakdown of its male and female staff's earnings in various pay brackets under Freedom of Information legislation.

However, the station decided to bring forward the publication of what its highest paid broadcasters were earning two years ago recently following controversy.

It has been under fire since 'Six One' newsreader Sharon Ni Bheolain revealed she earns up to 80,000 less than her co-anchor Bryan Dobson, after the BBC published a detailed breakdown of its pay figures.

Education correspondent and chair of the NUJ's Dublin Broadcasting Branch Emma O'Kelly said her employer "should have nothing to fear" and release the information, which she also requested.

In a response to the Irish Independent's request, the head of statutory compliance, Dr Anne O'Connor, said: "I am sorry but I must refuse your request."

She said this was because an independent review is under way to "fully understand" if there are gender-related pay disparities.
A woman was forced by her "violent and abusive" husband to have an abortion in Manchester, the High Court heard.

Barrister Shannon Michael Haynes told the court the woman, who cannot be identified, was now under threat of deportation. She was seeking leave to challenge the legality of a decision of the Justice Minister refusing her permission to remain in Ireland.

Mr Haynes, who appeared with Una O'Brien, of Sinnott Solicitors, said the woman left her husband and obtained a divorce because of his abusive behaviour. Gardai twice had to be called to their home because of his violence towards her.

Mr Justice Paul McDermott heard that the woman came to Ireland on a tourist visa, before obtaining a study visa. Her status changed to spouse of an Irish citizen, when she wed.

Mr Haynes said the husband quickly became abusive and his wife became pregnant. He put extreme pressure on her to terminate the pregnancy.

"He had arranged everything from the flight ticket to the clinic procedure because I wanted to keep my baby and had categorically refused to have an abortion," the woman told Judge McDermott in a sworn statement. The woman said having an abortion was something she found difficult to talk about and was deeply ashamed.

She said her husband had continued to be hostile. Her father-in-law was abusive and often called her "a black bitch".

She returned to Mauritius to recover, and came back to Ireland later through the North.

She sought to renew her visa which was refused, and had failed in an appeal against the decision. She had met and was in a happy relationship with a new partner in Ireland.

The woman is seeking to quash the minister's refusal of her application for a change in her immigration status and his decision to deport her. She also seeks a declaration that it is unlawful to impose a requirement as to duration of joint residence on victims of domestic violence who were married to an Irish citizen. The judge said he would grant the woman leave to judicially review the refusals and the minister's deportation proposal, on which he placed a stay until the hearing of the judicial review in October.
Hero of Mollywood's first musical hit 'Thiramala' shares his Hollywood stint, directing Prem Nazir and more
A Leaving Cert student who underwent brain surgery after being diagnosed with a tumour has an inspiring message to other students who may be unhappy with their exam results.

Emma Dunnion (20) from Letterkenny, Co Donegal was diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was 16-years-old.

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The Leaving Cert student underwent brain surgery at Beaumont hospital and 95 per cent of her tumour was removed. While 5pc remains, the Donegal student said that there has been no new growth and that it is being monitored closely.

"I went through a really hard time and I got through it. So my advice to Leaving Cert students is that if I can get through a brain tumour, they can get can get through whatever their results are."

The inspiring teen said that "everything happens for a reason".

"If you're having a hard time now after getting your results, just go back and try again or try it another way. You can do it."

After undergoing brain surgery, Emma said she found it hard to remember everyday things.

"I used to hold my mum's hand crossing the road. I forgot basic things, never mind my Irish Leaving Cert essays. I found it really hard to get back into learning my languages at school so i went to an Adult Education Centre where I didn't have to do Irish for my Leaving Cert."

The Donegal student was delighted with her results and now hopes to study veterinary science at Letterkenny Institute of Technolgy.

"Regardless of their results, I think every Leaving Cert student should follow their dreams because life is too short.

"At St Luke's oncology centre in Dublin there were a lot of Donegal teenagers my age there receiving treatment. All of them who were there with me have passed away since.

"They were my friends. It was great to have people there who understood what I was going through and people I could talk to. None of my friends there are still alive.

"It really puts everything into perspective. Whatever your Leaving Cert results were this week, you can get through this."
The firearm recovered by gardai searching for missing man Trevor Deeley's remains was a handgun.

The weapon was found by officers in a three-acre site at Chapelizod in west Dublin on Tuesday evening.

Since its discovery, the weapon has been the subject of ballistic and forensic tests.

It emerged last night that the weapon had been wrapped in plastic and partially buried.

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It is still not known if the handgun was used in Trevor's suspected murder or when exactly the firearm dates from.

The weapon may have been dumped there by criminals who had no involvement in the alleged murder of Mr Deely.

Gardai have now spent almost a week digging at the search site in Chapelizod since they announced the search operation last Saturday.

On Thursday, it emerged that the Irish Aviation Authority and the Department of Justice have prohibited drones from flying over the Chapelizod woodland.

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Mr Deely, a Bank of Ireland employee, was last seen in the early hours of December 8, 2000, in the Haddington Road area of Dublin city centre.

The last known images of him were captured by a CCTV camera at the junction of Haddington Road and Baggot Street at 4.14am.

A man dressed in black, who gardai believe also spoke to Mr Deely outside his place of work minutes previously, can be seen following him in the direction of Haddington Road.

This footage was only made public earlier this year after a specialist unit, set up in Pearse Street garda station to review the case, secured improved CCTV images.

Earlier this week, it emerged that an informant came forward due to a guilty conscience and has alleged that a member of a dysfunctional crime family shot and buried the missing man.

The criminal told investigating detectives he had no interest in the 100,000 reward being offered for any significant information in relation to Mr Deely's disappearance, but instead said he cannot keep the information a secret any longer.

The alleged suspect, who can not be named for legal reasons, is a well-known criminal who has been involved in various forms of criminality over several decades.

This man and his associates were suspected of involvement in the drugs trade, particularly heroin, in the south inner-city and south Dublin area throughout the 1990s.

Trevor Deely's sister Michelle has described the difficult years following her brothers disappearance.

"The past 16 years have been a relentless nightmare," she said.

"We never gave up on Trevor. We knew he could not have disappeared into thin air and we owed it to Trevor to keep trying.

"If the position was reversed, Trevor would never have given up on us."

She added: "We are grateful to the public for all the information we have received to date but there are still some glaring gaps".
The former King of Spain, his female friend, a Spanish banker, a video uploaded to YouTube and a Co Westmeath village.

Unlikely components of any story - but it is for these reasons that the village of Clonmellon, located between Kells in Co Meath and Mullingar in Co Westmeath, has found itself at the centre of a major story in Spain.

The country's former King Juan Carlos (79) - who abdicated from the throne in 2014 - was a surprise visitor to Clonmellon at the end of July. He happily posed with locals for pictures at the re-opening of a local community centre.

Juan Carlos - father to King Felipe - was invited to the Co Westmeath village by Spanish businessman and former banker Allen de Jesus Sangines-Krause. Mr Krause has been resident in Clonmellon for some time and refurbished nearby Killua Castle in 2006.

He bought the former St John the Baptist Church in Clonmellon and refurbished it. It is now a community arts centre and was officially unveiled on July 22 at an event Juan Carlos attended.

However, interest in the visit piqued in his native Spain when video footage uploaded to YouTube from the event showed a woman standing close to him, whom Spanish press have identified as his former mistress.

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Media outlets in Spain have identified this woman as Marta Gaya (68) - a woman linked to Juan Carlos for more than two decades.

She was standing some distance away from the former monarch at the same event. The controversy has also propelled Clonmellon mum-of-two Marian Tighe into the headlines, as she was the person who recorded the video and uploaded it to YouTube, completely unaware of what she had just captured and the controversy that would ensue.

"The opening was on July 22 - and Mr Krause issued an open invitation to all the local people in Clonmellon," Ms Tighe told the Irish Independent.

She and her husband Michael decided to go along.

"I just went out of interest really, to see the building and the grounds. It was a lovely reception. Mr Krause said there was a special guest in attendance. Sure we had no idea who it was.

"Towards the end of the event, he introduced the former King of Spain to the surprise and delight of everyone there and he got applauded. He was a gentleman and was happy to pose for photographs.

"So I took some photographs and video.

"I put up the video on YouTube - it got a few hundred hits and I was delighted. I then re-edited the video and changed the headline saying King Juan Carlos was in it. Next thing, the views soared to 99,000.

"Then I spotted my own video on other platforms - and there were circles around the King and this woman whom they identified as his mistress.

"Sure I didn't have a clue who she was at the time - my video seems to have highlighted their relationship," a surprised Ms Tighe told the Irish Independent.

"I'm shocked at finding myself in the middle of this - I don't pry into other people's business and I had no other motivation when attending that reception other than seeing the new centre."

Indeed, her video footage is the first time the former king and Ms Gaya have been pictured publicly, despite being linked for more than two decades.

The footage was seized upon by a number of mainstream media outlets in Spain - including El Mundo, one of Spain's biggest-selling newspapers, being one of the many outlets to describe the woman as Ms Gaya.

Juan Carlos is married to wife Queen Sofia - the couple have two daughters and one son, King Felipe.

However, since his abdication, the couple are barely pictured together.

A book - 'Juan Carlos: The King of 5,000 Lovers' - published earlier this year, shone the spotlight on his friendships with other women outside his marriage.

Juan Carlos was crowned King in 1975 when Spanish dictator General Franco died. His popularity declined rapidly during the banking crisis when he was pictured going on safari in Africa while Spain was plunging into financial turmoil. He abdicated in 2014.
Norman Potot with his wife, Pearly Fernandez Potot and his two children Nathaniel Paul Potot (5) and Nailah Pearl Potot (9).

An Irish family who were injured in the Barcelona terror attack said they have been left traumatised after their holiday turned into a nightmare.

Norman Potot (45) from Ballsbridge, Dublin, was on holiday with his wife Pearly Fernandez Potot (39) and their two children Nailah Pearl Potot (9) and Nathaniel Paul Potot (5) when the tragedy occurred.

The family were on holiday to celebrate Nathaniel's fifth birthday when the van mounted the pavement in Las Ramblas.

"We were on Las Ramblas Raval, the main road, while looking for presents," Mr Potot told the Irish Independent from his hospital bed in Barcelona.

"There were hundreds of people around when suddenly a white van came running through us."

The father-of-two, who has been living in Ireland since 2007, was left with kidney injuries when the van struck him on the pavement.

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"The van hit me in my rib cage, I never heard any screaming, I only saw the white van coming through us very fast, hitting the little shop and me.

"It was scary. I don't know what happened next because I was unconscious."

Mr Potot's young family were not hit by the van, but they were injured after a stampede of people tried to flee the scene.

"The commotions of the people got them, especially my son, I think someone stood on his legs when he fell down.

"My wife and daughter were OK, they've got loads of bruises around their body," he said.

Blood

Mr Potot described the terrifying scenes when he regained consciousness.

"I could see policemen and people running and screaming, everyone was covered in blood, including me."

Due to the threat of more attacks, he added that the family were not immediately able to receive medical treatment.

"The policemen told us to hide in the basement of the restaurant because there might be gunmen or something. They told us they would call an ambulance when the coast was clear."

The shaken family are now recovering in hospital in Barcelona.

"We're OK, my son is in a recovery room, he just finished his operation due to a fractured leg.

"I'm under observation for 48 hours due to my kidney.

"My kids are traumatised, all of us are traumatised," he said.

Earlier Dr Emmanuel Fernandez, consul general of the embassy of the Philippines in Madrid, gave an update on the Irish citizens caught up in the incident.

Speaking on 'Morning Ireland' on RTE Radio One about the Potot family, he said: "The father and son are in hospital still. The boy has a knee injury and he may need an operation."

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney added: "In a way it's a miracle that more Irish people weren't involved, given that there are so many Irish people in Spain, Barcelona and Cambrils at this time of year."
An Irish woman and her husband have drowned in an apparent suicide pact in Egypt.

Local media reports say that the woman (60) and her Egyptian husband (43) were found dead at a villa in the Red Sea resort town of Hurghada this week.

Major General Hossam Kamal, director of the Red Sea Security, said they originally believed the couple had been murdered after discovering their bodies in a swimming pool.

However Maj Gen Kamal explained that there was nothing stolen from the villa or traces of any other people in the area.

The security services later found a video recorded by the couple where the pair of their intent to take their own lives.

Officers also discovered a fixed video camera on a stand in the middle of the swimming pool which had recorded the entire incident.

It is understood that the woman has both Irish and US citizenship and embassies from both countries are seeking to track down her family.

Her husband is described online as a computer programmer and is an Egyptian national.

Their bodies were taken to the morgue at Hurghada General Hospital.

According to Al Arabiya, the inspector of health issued a report declaring the cause of death as drowning.

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said: "We are aware of the case and are providing consular assistance."

Anyone affected by this issue can contact the Samaritans on 116 123
People react in the area where a van crashed into pedestrians at Las Ramblas in Barcelona on Thursday. Photo: Reuters

A young Irish woman told how her friend was almost run over by the van that wreaked terror in the centre of Barcelona.

Lauren Smyth (21), from Mullaghbawn, Co Armagh, is working in the city for the summer.

One friend witnessed the van driven by the terrorists swerving and ploughing into pedestrians, narrowly avoiding being hit himself as the driver swerved in the opposite direction.

Others were kept in a nearby restaurant by police for their own safety.

"I was luckily working on the beach promoting when I received a text from my friend who was promoting on Las Ramblas," she said. "We looked up and all the police were fleeing from the beach as that is where one of the stations is based. I ran back to my apartment and saw people screaming, shouting and running."

Aisling Rohan, from Baltray, Co Louth, is au pairing in the town of Corbera De Llobregat, 18km from Barcelona. As she headed into the city centre on Thursday, she found herself stranded in the aftermath.

"I was on the bus when I got an emergency alert, something to do with a car crash, at that stage there was no mention of terrorism," she said.

It was while on the metro she learned it was a terrorist attack.

"I was very nervous. It was chaotic, and very, very tense. I headed to the language school I study at, thinking it would be safe."

But the area had been evacuated and cordoned off, and Ms Rohan decided to try to make her way back out of the city.

As she stood waiting, policemen appeared, and told all passers-by in the area to put their hands on their head.

"It took a long time to get out of the city, we waited for the bus for about an hour and a half."

Another Irish resident in Barcelona Eoin Corcoran (32), from Cork, teaches English in the city and said that while the city was "sombre", life was going on as normal yesterday.

"I left the house about two hours ago, I live about 10 minutes from Las Ramblas. It feels like normal life. I went to the gym earlier, and there's lots of people around - it's what you have to do, I suppose. It is a bit more sombre, people are saying how sad they are," he said.
The heartbroken sister of a young man who died after taking party drug 'N Bomb' has said that drugs robbed her brother of his future.

Alex Ryan (18) died from a heart attack after taking a synthetic substance nicknamed N Bomb in January 2015 at a house party in Cork.

Five others were hospitalised after taking the powdered drug at the party.

Alex's sister Nicole (24) has spoken about how her family's dreams for him were snatched away when he died.

Nicole Ryan, from Millstreet in Cork, told Independent.ie: "Life hasn't been easy, I don't think it will get any easier, we'll just have to try and re-adjust but it'll be there every single day.

"He'll never graduate or get married or have a family, my children will never have an uncle and I'll never have nieces or nephews.

"It's simple things like that that people might take for granted that have been taken away from me."

Nicole has established Alex's Memory Of A Lifetime, where she visits secondary schools and youth clubs to share her story and provide information about drugs.

She said: "I started Alex's Adventure Of A Lifetime two months after he died, at the beginning I was petrified but I had to find a way of coping with his death.

"I used to not be able to talk about his death and I was trying to cope by burying my feelings but it would come out in different ways.

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Whatsapp Tributes have been pouring in for 18-year-old Alex Ryan, who lost his life after taking the psychoactive drug N-Bomb

"It was leading down to a destructive path really, I had been throwing into something I never thought I would experience.

"Then I thought even the most horrible of situations have a silver lining, I thought maybe if I went out to young people and shared my story they might change their mind about taking something.

"If my brother heard someone speaking like this he would have been more aware and more educated, he might have made a different choice that night," she continued.

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"I was petrified the first time but the reaction has been phenomenal, there are people who cry and see he's a real person.

"At the end of the day you can't stop everyone but you can give them information that can change their lives."

She continued to say: "It's part of Alex's legacy, he was an organ donor so he also prolonged and enhanced four people's lives.

"But it also keeps his memory alive, he wasn't just a guy who took a drug at a party, he was a lot more and something good can come from it."

Next month Nicole will travel to the UK to give a speech to Anyone's Child, a group who are fighting to change drug policies there, she is also hoping to expand the initiative here.

Despite the success of the programme, she admits she has received some stinging comments from trolls.

She said: "I've had people say that I'm trying to get famous from my brother's death, it threw me the first time but after I heard it a few times I knew it didn't make a difference, I'm trying to do something to help others."

She has said she would like to see more information supplied to young people about different drugs.

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Nicole also wants test kits to be supplied in places like colleges and nightclubs, so people can check what they're actually taking.

She said: "There's not enough being done to try and deter people from taking drugs, I do believe that we don't give enough credit to young people - because they are smart - but they will retaliate if you patronise them.

"If you give them the correct information they'll make an informed choice for themselves and that's the bes you can do but the 'Just Say No' approach has been failing for years.

"My biggest worry is that it's everywhere, it's not just at festivals or nights out like maybe it was ten years ago, it's everywhere.

"It's in every small town and village in Ireland, the amount of drugs available is staggering and nobody knows what's in them.

"It's frightening, so many people are dying needlessly but we all believe we're invincible."

"It's also an experimental culture and when you move away from home you are introduced to all these new experiences that you might want to try, plus there's also peer pressure."

Alex had completed his Leaving Cert the year before he died and was enjoying working in Cork city while he decided what he wanted to do in the future.

Nicole paid tribute to him, saying: "Alex was constantly happy, he was never down or sad, he loved people and he loved life.

"He loved to have a good time and he never worried about a thing.

"I never thought it would happen to us, never did I imagine it would come to my door."
An investigation has been launched into how the body of a dead woman lay undiscovered in a hospital toilet for "up to 10 hours".

The body of the woman - who is understood to be a Polish national - was found in a disabled toilet beside the Emergency Department of University Hospital Galway over the August bank holiday weekend.

The woman was not registered as a patient, either in the hospital or in the emergency department.

Local Labour councillor Niall McNelis has questioned how the woman was not found sooner.

"I've requested an update from the hospital manager to find out exactly what happened," the Galway West councillor said.

"It's a public toilet very close to the A&E department so surely there must have been checks from staff to keep the toilets clean and also from security.

"How did this happen over such a long period of time?" he asked.

Mr McNelis, who is also a member of the HSE West Regional Health Forum, added: "My other main concern is that if it's up to 10 hours, what are the procedures for strangers and for other visitors to the hospital?"

Locked

The 'Connacht Tribune' reported that the woman lay dead in the toilet for up to 10 hours before she was found.

It is understood that the toilet had been locked from the inside.

Her body was discovered when the facilities were being cleaned.

A spokeswoman for the Saolta University Hospital Group, which represents the University Hospital Galway, confirmed an investigation has been launched into the incident.

"The circumstances relating to the discovery of a deceased person in a disabled toilet which was locked in a public area adjacent to the Emergency Department at UHG are being investigated," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the woman was not an outpatient.

"The person entered the hospital building unknown to any member of staff," she said.

"The deceased was a member of the public and was not registered as a patient either in the hospital or the ED."

The case has been referred to the Galway West coroner, Dr Ciaran MacLoughlin, by the hospital.

A public inquest may follow.
The Drynam Road in Swords close to where the accident happened

The aftermath of the crash

Three people have been injured following a serious single vehicle crash in Swords this morning.

The front seat passenger, a man aged 24-years-old, was seriously injured in the 2am collision and was removed to Beaumont Hospital.

The other occupants of the vehicle, men aged 20 and 21, received minor injuries in the crash.

The scene at Drynam Road was examined by Garda Forensic Collision investigators but has since re-opened.

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Gardai in Swords are appealing for witnesses to the collision and anyone with information is asked to contact Swords Garda Station on 01 - 6664700, the Garda Confidential Line 1 800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in Ireland, with 5,500 smokers dying each year from tobacco related diseases.

Smoking kills. This fact has been made as well known to us as the alphabet since the warning was introduced as compulsory to cigarette packaging in 2003.

Yet why do young people still continue to smoke? I specify 'young people' as they, as a group, are more likely to be able to kick the habit than someone who has been smoking for 30 years of their life.

As a 22 year old woman, I know more people in my age group who smoke than I'd like to, and every time I see someone pull a packet of cigarettes out of their pocket, my heart winces.

We've been told point-blank that one in every two smokers will die of a tobacco related disease, that the tar in cigarette smoke contains carcinogens, which encourage the development of cancer cells in your body. We've been told that smoking is responsible for 85-90pc of all cases of lung cancer, that it increases the risk of cervical cancer, stomach cancer and oesophageal cancer, to name a few. Smoking can cause coronary heart disease, heart failure and heart attacks.

But despite these facts being widespread in Ireland thanks to the work of the Irish Cancer Society and the Health Service Executive, young people still continue to make smoking a habit, when it's something they could have easily avoided for their entire lives.

For the best part of the 21st century, these facts have been relayed to us, yet it's not enough to encourage people to stop, or to avoid smoking completely. How can someone in their youth begin smoking, knowing full well the effects it can (and will) have on their health?

Are the heartbreaking tales of people who have died from smoking not enough to make you want to put down that cigarette? Consider, for example, Gerry Collins. Mr Collins was the face of a national HSE Campaign to encourage people to give up smoking after being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2008 and lung cancer in 2013. That year, Mr Collins, a father-of-three, was told that he had less than a year to live. He fronted several campaigns detailing how his health had been destroyed by tobacco, saying: "I wish I had stopped smoking earlier, I really do. My life would have been totally different." Mr Collins died at the age of 57 in March 2014.

My own mother passed away from non-smoking related cancer in 2011, after having the vicious disease six times over 10 years. Had she been able to avoid cancer, I've absolutely no doubt that she would have done whatever it required in order for it to prevent it from damaging her health, and eventually taking her life at just 43 years of age. I think it's understandable then, that when I see a young person begin smoking for reasons I will never understand, that I feel enraged and heartbroken by their selfishness. There are people fighting cancer that would give anything to be in full health, yet here are these people voluntarily damaging their bodies and putting themselves at risk.

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Not to mention the fact that smoking has proven effects on those who are exposed to their dirty habit. Passive smoking can increase the risk of lung cancer and heart disease, with the risk of developing lung cancer being increased by 20-30pc in people who are regularly exposed to other people's cigarette smoke.

Speaking to Independent.ie, Joanne Vance, Community Programmes Manager with the Irish Cancer Society, said that there has been a "considerable" drop in 12-17 year olds smoking, from 15pc in 2010 to 8pc in 2016. There has also been a decrease in prevalence for 18-24 year olds, from 21.5pc in 2013 to 19.5pc in 2017, as well as a decrease of 6pc in the last for years for those in the 25-34 age group.

However, while the figures report good news for young people, Ms Vance said that there is still work to be done.

"The Irish Cancer Society and other health and government agencies need to continue to work harder to bring these rates down to 5pc. We can do this by engaging with younger smokers to find out more about the reasons why they continue to smoke, making sure they are well informed about real social and health harms of smoking, that the tobacco industry dont want them to know; and providing more targeted smoking cessation supports for them to quit, in places where they work, live and socialise.

"The Irish Cancer Society also runs a youth smoking prevention programme called X-HALE every year which aims to harness the potential for young people to drive the movement towards a tobacco-free generation among their friends, communities and wider networks using film, social media and community action. It is this kind of positive engagement that support young people to quit smoking, or not start in the first place. Since 2011, we have supported over 225 youth organizations to take part in X-HALE."

While I understand that smoking is an addiction, and I'm not undermining how difficult it is to give up, I think it's time for young people to make a conscious effort to ensure that our generation is the last affected by smoking and its detrimental effects.

For more information and support on how to quit smoking, visit quit.ie.

For cancer information and support, visit cancer.ie.
The attack in Barcelona was no real surprise, in terms of following a defined path similar to other Isil-inspired attacks. However, what is new is the level of ambition displayed. This wasn't just a man or two men in a white van casually trying to kill as many western tourists as they could.

The mention of another van being used could indicate that another individual or team were acting as a reconnaissance element. Travelling ahead and reporting back over the phone where the police checkpoints were, and what the level of security activity was. They would also have been assessing the area as to how target-rich it was at that time.

In other words, where was the best place to kill as many people as possible. The speculation about whether they had planned to escape afterwards is interesting. Previously such assailants have wanted to confront the security forces, not evade them.

Later, the shoot-out between Spanish police and armed terrorists at Cambrils indicates the second phase of a planned two-pronged attack. There was a higher level of tactical thought shown here than in previous attacks in Europe.

The man on the run from the first incident would serve as a distraction to allow the men armed with automatic weapons and suicide vests to detonate at another location - causing untold civilian casualties and maximising the impact of such an attack throughout Europe. So we have seen a slight escalation in both ambition and sophistication of operation conception with this attack. We have also seen a greater number of personnel coalescing to commit these acts.

So despite the 14 fatalities and numerous other casualties which have arisen from this act of terrorism, we can conclude it could have been far worse.

One reason for this is the lesson learned by the Spanish following the 2004 attack on their soil which resulted in 191 deaths.

The Spanish have a variety of law enforcement agencies, ranging from the national-level Guardia Civile, a type of armed gendermarie, and then numerous local and municipal constabularies.

After 2004, there was a streamlining of national intelligence gathering and analysis.

The info they gathered by different police entities was being crunched at a national level which ensured non-duplication of roles as well as accurate and timely interpretation of information.

Spain managed to contain its extremists for a long time. Many plots were successfully foiled. In 2015, Spain had the second highest rate of arrest of jihadists in Europe. This was coupled with the innovative concept of 'preventative arrest'.

That is effectively arrest without charge... usually the charge follows on, along with evidence. This would make many a civil rights activist in Ireland and Britain shudder, but the Spanish credit this innovation with allowing them to successfully interrupt a number of terrorist operations at the planning stages.

Whatever about 'preventative arrest', the streamlining and beefing up of intelligence analysis is something we could well take note of in this jurisdiction. Ensuring timely information that makes up the jigsaw of a clear operational picture to act on.

While on-the-ground intelligence gathering in most western societies is still best performed by ordinary police officers, who maintain good relations with the citizenry, the analysis of the information could be better performed by having a more diverse range of people working in national security...not just those who entered either the Garda or Defence Forces.

Diversity is the key here. The Spanish pride themselves on having a much better level of integration of their Islamic population into Spanish society and that this has yielded a better flow of information.

Declan Power is a former career soldier who is now an independent security and defence analyst who has been seconded on EU counter-terrorism and extremism projects in Africa and the Middle East.
'Hearts across Europe will break for the 14 victims and the more than 130 injured.' Stock picture

A little more than a year ago a truck mowed through crowds marking Bastille Day - more than 80 people were killed. This time it was Barcelona's colourful Las Ramblas that turned into a killing zone when a driver used a delivery van as a tool of terrorism. This was just Isil's latest declaration of war on all we cherish. But fun and freedom do not have a nationality, they belong to us all, and they will not be taken away by deluded fundamentalists, blinded with hate and zealotry.

Hearts across Europe will break for the 14 victims and the more than 130 injured. There is a consolation in the fact that swift reaction from the Spanish police has undoubtedly prevented the suspects in both the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils perpetrating more horrors.

The threat posed by the jihadis is all too clear and present but it will be defeated. Their goal to make us more fearful, suspicious and hateful will fail. Even if we can no longer be surprised by the barbarism and calculated cruelty: for we saw it in Manchester, and we saw it in the carnage in the Bataclan theatre where 89 concert goers were massacred. It was one of the survivors of that atrocity, Kelly Le Guen, who after enduring the suffocating terror emerged with dignity to ask: "Imagine if every cafe and restaurant where someone was killed in Paris had to close. There would be no more cafes left to go to..."

Ms Le Guen's reaction reflects the spirit of Europe.

Last summer, it was Nice that counted its dead, now it is Barcelona, but in between, streets in Stockholm, London and Berlin were strewn with dead and injured after vehicles were used in terrorist assaults.

Yesterday, the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, explained how he plans to bring together leaders from cities across Europe next month to study ways to better safeguard against vehicle attacks. The ultimate aim of the terrorist is to divide and harden hearts. Jihadis must know there is no sanctuary, and all necessary steps will be taken to do so.

Mr Estrosi had a message of defiance for those who would seek to sunder the bonds that hold us together.

He has proposed an international conference to convene to discuss closer cooperation and more sharing of intelligence on terrorism.

"I am convinced that life will prevail over death and that we will triumph over barbarism and terror," he said. We can not pretend however that dangers are not real as Mr Estrosi put it: "We won't win the war with the rules of peace."

Other cities have taken steps to limit threats especially in pedestrian-only zones. Security experts note that city planners need to move away from standard traffic barriers to far stronger blockades designed to stop even speeding vehicles. Charles Oakes, an American urban traffic security engineer, recently wrote that city planners need to reconsider the "expectation of civility" in traffic-control measures, and move toward barriers built to "withstand deliberate wanton acts of destruction and death".

We know too vividly how violence is a disease which can quickly spread if not cut out and dealt with.

Yet Europe has survived the ravages of two world wars enjoying an unprecedented era of internal cohesion by working together, and that is how Isil too will be crushed.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was prescient when he said that European integration is fundamentally a question of war and peace for the 21st century.

The best response to the hideous disregard for life shown in Spain yesterday is not to recoil but rather work closer together.
Dundalk company Greenbean Coffee Roasters picked up two prestigious Great Taste Awards, for their coffee blends recently.

The Great Taste Awards, organised by the Guild of Fine Foods in the UK are the most coveted awards in food and drink. The judging process is anonymous and very rigorous and all tasting sessions are completely blind; the judges never know which brand or product they're tasting.

Greenbean's Londinium blend, which won a two star award was developed in 2016 aimed at the very sophisticated and demanding coffee market in London. Their Casa Terra, which achieved a 1 STAR award is predominantly a Brazilian blend, using premium beans from some of Brazil's very finest growers.

'Our customers, the coffee shop owners, tell us that the vast majority of consumers drink coffee with milk, so we are delighted that our milk-oriented coffees have done so well at the Great Taste Awards,' said a spokesperson for the company which is based on the Coe's Road.
When Hannah Doyle sits in the hairdresser's chair at Justin Casey's salon in Park Street this afternoon (Tuesday), the eight-year-old will be doing more than getting her impressive locks trimmed - she will be helping two charities that are close to her heart.

Hannah, from Glenwood, will donate her beautiful hair to the Little Princess Trust, a British-based charity that provides, free of charge, real hair wigs to children in the UK and Ireland who have lost their hair due to cancer or other illnesses.

Her mum, Johanna Cunningham Doyle, explained the Friary School's student's reasons for making the decision. She said: 'Hannah decided to donate her hair as her aunt (my husband's sister) is currently fighting ovarian cancer and has been wig shopping so the conversation has been going on in the house.

'Also Hannah is organising fundraising for the Jack & Jill foundation too as she doesn't want them to be left out. So far she has raised close to 150 and as her cousin, Mary Cunningham, was a terminally ill baby and was cared for by a lovely local nurse Anne Reilly in Jack & Jill.

'We lost her sister too six years ago so Jack & Jill is a very actively talked about charity in our home and we will thank them forever for all their hard work'.

Johanna said her daughter had initially thought about the Irish charity Rapunzel but her hair, at ten inches, was just a few inches too short for them to take, so she found out about the Little Princess Trust and is happy to make the donation to them. In addition, Johanna said she was delighted with the positive response from the Justin Casey salon.

Donations can be made on the fundraising page on the everyday heroes website and search Hannah's hair donation.
Bobby Arthur and Dermot Clarke, CK17, The Order of the Knights of Saint Columbanus at the Veneration of the Holy Relic of St. Teresa of Calcutta at St. Patrick's Church

On a quiet, cloudy Thursday morning, the door of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dundalk barely closes for a second before it is opened again.

The soft thud of the heavy door closing, opening, closing, opening, is almost the only sound audible in the vast, serene space.

And it heralds yet another person, a pilgrim of sorts, who has made the journey to see a first class relic of St Teresa of Calcutta, known to most as Mother Teresa.

At the top of the main aisle, close to the altar, are Dundalk men Dermot Clarke and Bobby Arthur, there as representatives of the Knights of St Columbanus.

The knights from around the country have been providing a guard of honour for the relic since it arrived in Ireland in June and have been assisted by the Legion of Mary as well as a number of other Catholic and faith groups.

Dermot has a beautiful, decorated gold cross, about a foot high, in his hand, with a tiny glass window which holds an even smaller piece of stained cloth. It is blood from Mother Teresa, and it has what has attracted hundreds of people to the cathedral today.

Some people kiss it, some just touch it with their hands, while others hold it themselves for a moment, quietly pouring their intentions into it. It is a powerful scene of pure faith.

Mr Arthur explained: 'There has been a huge reception to the relic in Ireland since it arrived in Armagh on June 8. The idea of the tour around Ireland came from the Knights of Columbanus in Newry, and the relic has visited almost every one of Ireland's 26 cathedrals since then.

'In addition, around 250,000 prayer cards were printed to mark the event and so many were given out that around 20,000 remain. This is the first time the relic has been brought to Ireland and it is going to Newry where it will be permanently housed in a simple wooden cross that reflects the humility of St Teresa.

'This is nine months in the planning for our colleagues in CK 10 council in Newry and they sourced the gold reliquary in Fatima during a pilgrimage to the shrine for its centenary.

Mr Clarke, who is a deacon in the Haggardstown area, and, with Mr Arthur a member of the CK17 primary council of the Knights, said: 'There is a strong connection in Ireland to St Teresa because she studied here for a while. I also think that because so many people remember her she is a living saint to them and one they can easily identify with. Younger people are coming in their droves and there were around 150 people who came to the Mass at Faughart on Wednesday'.

That affinity is clear from those who emerge from the cathedral after veneration. Eric Igweike, who lives in Dundalk and is originally from Nigeria, said: 'I always come here when I have a pressing need in my heart. I believe in St Teresa and I think she will help get my prayers to the Lord and they will be answered'.

Maura McDonnell from Chapel Street and Betty Bellew from Ard Easmuinn found out about the relic from reading the parish leaflet and also heard people in the town talking about it last Thursday morning. Maura said: 'St Teresa has done so much for a lot of people in her lifetime and it was not easy for her to get to where she is today'.

And Betty added: 'She never gave up and I think she is a great example'.
When Ravensdale record setting sheep shearer Mark McGeown steps onto the stage at the hugely anticipated Convoy to Cooley on Sunday August 20, he will have the man whose record he's trying to break at his side, helping him.

Mark, who rose to prominence earlier this year when, at the County Louth Agricultural Show at Bellurgan Park, he set an Irish record for the most sheep sheared in eight hours - 514 - is getting ready to do even more and is to attempt the nine hour lamb shearing record, currently set at 617, at the Convoy to Cooley.

And in his corner will be a team to keep him hydrated, motivated and on track, which, remarkably, includes the holder of that record, Roy Collier from Wexford. 'It's that type of community', explained Mark. 'Roy knows the effort it takes to do this and if I break the record, which was set in 2015, it doesn't mean his achievement is going to go away'.

Also in the Annaverna man's corner will be Ivan Scott from Donegal, who assisted him at the Louth show, and, of course, Mark's wife, Eileen.

Mark, who travels all over the world shearing sheep, has just returned from Scotland and is dedicating the next week to the record attempt. Having set an impressive record in June at Bellurgan Park, he is clearer now about what it takes to meet a challenge like this.

One of the main things he's worked on since June is his core strength, having found that the strain on his back, bending over to shear sheep for hours, was difficult to bear at times. He's determined to avoid the headaches that crept up on him during the last event, probably due to lack of sufficient hydration.

And he has also been travelling around the country to ensure that he has the correct type of lambs lined up to shear in Cooley. The animals will weigh between 30 and 40kgs and ideally, they are an 'open wool mountain breed' whose fleeces are looser and easier to cut off.

Those with tighter-packed wool are more difficult to shear, while they also tend to be stronger animals, making them more difficult to hold and control.

The main fundraising at the Convoy to Cooley is for the Maria Gioretti centre, and Mark, who will start shearing at 6am for the early risers, will also be raising money for Temple Street Children's Hospital. He said: 'I would be thrilled if people came in, even for a few minutes during the day, to cheer me on and keep me going. They will be able to track the progress of the record attempt throughout the day'.

He says he is delighted with the preparations for the three-day extravaganza and added that the committee preparations for the weekend, which starts on August 18, have been 'incredible'.
Louth students were warned about the risk of potential 'rental scams' as the rush to find term accommodation heats up this week.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) issued the warnings, an encouraged vigilance around rental scams targeting third-level students before returning to college in September.

The warning comes as the Gardai issue a statement on recent rental scams taking advantage of students across the country.

USI President Michael Kerrigan urged students to be cautious saying that cheques or bank drafts should be used to pay the deposit.

'It's important to keep copies of receipts of payments and any correspondence. Don't hand over any cash to anyone, because you will not have a record or trace of your deposit.'

The USI president revealed that students were being caught in a situation where they had been asked to hand over up to two months rent as a deposit.

'This kind of money being stolen can have a serious impact on a student's ability to afford college for the coming year."

It's a shame that people are taking advantage of students like this. Students should visit the accommodation they're hoping to rent before sending over any sum of money", said Mr Kerrigan.

He added that it was important to meet the landlord and ask for proof of ID if there is uncertainty.

'If you're worried that you're being led into a scam, alert the Gardai or the local students' union right away.

It is always better to be safe. Don't rush into any arrangement that looks too good to be true.'

The union is also advising students not to hand over money until they receive they keys, and the tenancy begins. Websites like Daft.ie are useful for renting, Students' Union Facebook groups or free websites like homes.usi.ie for digs can be a reliable source to find accommodation too.

The warning co-incided with the chronic shortage of available rental accommodation for students across the country.

DkIT Students Union warned in the last few weeks that students trying to arrange accommodation for the incoming semester are struggling to find anywhere.

The union even took to placing adverts in the local media for landlords to register with them.

They also launched a campaign appealing to local families to consider renting out spare rooms in their homes to DkIT students.

Student Union president Pauraic Renaghan highlighted how an IT with world class facilities should not be in a position where students can't find accommodation.

He admitted that the influx of new companies to the Dundalk area had led to increased pressure on housing.
The first thing you notice about Mark Robinson is his smile. It's always ready to come out. The very next thing is his positivity an attribute he says he found at the CREATE LTI.

His 30th birthday was the turning point for the Cedarwood Park man. 'I had been doing nothing really for 13 years before that. I had worked in Superquinn and after I was let go, I didn't work again.

'On the day of my 30th birthday, I looked at myself and said it can't go on. And when a friend of a friend told me about the CREATE LTI that had just started up, I signed up'.

CREATE co-ordinators Sheila Reynolds and Mark Larkin 'opened the doors for me', says Mark. Despite starting the course three weeks after the other participants, and despite being older than many of them, Mark found himself able to fit in, making friends with his classmates and also with Sheila and Mark.

'They helped me so much, they opened my eyes. It gave me a routine at the start. We got to meet other people, from Northern Ireland, which was part of the cross border element of the course at that time. It all helped to open my eyes'.

Learning to cope with interpersonal problems was another aspect of the CREATE LTI, and it also tapped a previously unknown talent of Mark's - computers.

And it was this talent that led him from the LTI to O Fiaich College, where he spent two years studying Creative Media. He praises the team there too - Damien Kenny, Una Fagan, John Gaynor and Marcus Howard who supported him through the course and encouraged him onto the degree course at DkIT . Having graduated he is now heading into fourth year.

He helped design cup holders that included a QA scan on them for Reach Out, a mental health awareness charity, that directed college students easily to a website where they could find out more about wellbeing.

Dundalk St Vincent de Paul assisted him throughout this period and he is grateful to them also. But it was Mark's decision, and his alone, to knock on CREATE's door and take that first step himself. It was him who walked through the doors opened by Sheila and Mark.

Now, he is thinking about teaching computers, 'showing people how to do it'. The world is at his feet, or, more appropriately, his fingertips!
There will be plenty of joy and, hopefully, not too many tears as more than 1,600 students across the county prepare to open their Leaving Cert results today (Wednesday).

Graduates and their parents are being advised that a support line will be in operation on 1800 265 165 to offer confidential advice, information and support. The helpline will also take calls from students and parents seeking advice and up to date information on what choices are available.

It will open for three days this week as well as a further three days from Monday the following week, after the release of CAO Round One offers. The line is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on those days.

The helpline is being provided by the National Parents' Council Post Primary, is sponsored by eir and the Irish Independent, supported by the Department of Education and Skills and staffed by members of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors.

The helpline receives thousands of calls every year, giving expert advice to students to enable them to make informed choices about their future career paths and further education. All queries on 3rd level courses, Leaving Cert appeals and repeats, CAO procedures, a lack of CAO offers and financing further education will be dealt with in a professional and confidential manner.

In recent years calls to the helpline have increased, which shows the need for the personal touch at the end of a phone line at what can be a highly pressurised time for students and their parents.

John Anslow from eir, said: 'We've been supporting Exam Helpline for over 20 years and are delighted to do so again this year. eir has always been committed to providing support and resources for Irish students; our StudyHub service is a great educational resource for Leaving Cert students providing over 500 hours of free top quality tutorials.'

Meanwhile, the HSE is urging parents to be aware that direct promotions to kids about drinking alcohol are already taking place.

'Parents need to take steps to ensure teenagers have a safe night out and to be aware of the risks of alcohol promotions specifically targeting young people,' said the HSE statement. 'While we live in a country where alcohol promotion is pervasive, parents need to know that they are the most important influence in informing young people about the risks associated with drinking and substance use and in shaping their attitudes. It is vital to have open conversations with teenagers ahead of their celebrations next week.' For more information go to askaboutalcohol.ie.
The father of a girl rescued from a swamp along with her friend has paid tribute to the man who saved them.

The two girls, aged 12 and 13, got stuck in silt and mud at the area known as The Germans last Tuesday afternoon.

Brendan OReilly from Parnell Road was out walking in the woods by the old tower. He heard screams in the distance and ran towards the sound.

He came upon two young girls sinking in the mud. They were both up to their waists and continuing to sink.

He calmed them down, then gathered wood to use to get to them to help them out. It took almost an hour to pull the girls from the muddy material.

A week later, Brendans brother Liam posted about the incident on social media, in an effort to warn families about the danger.

One of the girls fathers saw the post, and realised that it involved his child. They hadnt known a thing about what had happened.

About a week beforehand she came home muddied and wet and just said they were down the beach messing and fell in puddles, he said. I had warned her not to go into that area.

The man said that he got in touch with Brendan as soon as he could to thank him from the bottom of his heart.

I owe him a keg of Guinness! he said. He and his wife are so grateful and relieved that their daughter and her friend are okay after their ordeal.

He didnt just save her, he saved me, because the thought of not having here is unthinkable, said the dad, who has spoken to the other family.

Im just glad I was there to help, said Brendan.

He said he knew the area very well, having frequented it regularly since his childhood, and knew the risk of the swamped area. I would even warn people if I saw them out walking, he said. I heard the screaming and I thought at first it was people messing but then I realised it was serious and I just ran through the woods, he said.

A modest hero, Brendan hadnt really wanted his name mentioned in connection with the incident, but he is glad that the parents ultimately found out what happened.

The girls were very brave and calm when I was getting them out of there, he said.

A spokesman for Bray Municipal District said that while they are currently trying to pinpoint the location, they do believe it is on private property.
The gala fundraiser held earlier this year in aid of the Wicklow Hospice Foundation has been shortlisted for a national award.

The gala ball, which was organised by Wicklow County Councillors, has been shortlisted for a Chambers Ireland Excellence in Local Government Award in the Local Authority Innovation category.

The event which was held in the Parkview Hotel, Newtownmountkennedy, raised over 84,000 for the foundation and was the brainchild of the elected members of Wicklow County Council, supported by the five Municipal Districts.

In its supporting submission to the awards organisers, Wicklow County Council highlighted how in January of this year the Wicklow Hospice Foundation needed to raise an additional 1m to enable the project proceed to tender.

The total building costs are estimated at 7.5m but 4.5m was required to secure a bank loan to commence the building work. At the fundraising levels at the time it was estimated it would take five years to reach this goal which the Hospice Foundation is working hard to achieve.

The event was a huge success with 320 people attending the gala dinner and succeeded in raising over 84,000 for the Wicklow Hospice Foundation, including a 10,000 contribution from each of the Municipal Districts.

Cllr Edward Timmins, Cathaoirleach of Wicklow County Council, has welcomed the shortlisting of the project for the awards.

'It was a huge honour and a privilege for the elected members and TDs to be involved in this fundraising event. The hospice, when developed, will provide end of life care to people throughout County Wicklow and I congratulate the fundraising committee and everyone involved. The nomination for the award is reflective of Wicklow Hospice Foundation's hard work and achievements to date and not least the generosity of the people of County Wicklow who have supported the project since the very beginning.'

The Excellence in Local Government Awards, sponsored by Vodafone in conjunction with the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, are held to recognise and celebrate the outstanding work being carried out by Local Authorities all over Ireland. Presentation of the awards will take place in November in the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Santry, Dublin.
Members of Greystones Guides making key-rings and bracelets to sell for charity at the festival day held during Irish Girl Guides international camp

Local Girl Guides took part in Ireland's biggest ever international Girl Guide camp, which took place in Rockwell College, Cashel, Co Tipperary from July 30 to August 6.

The Guides from Bray and Greystones were among 1,800 Girl Guides taking part in IGGNITE2017, which attracted Girl Guides from as far away as the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Georgia, the Philippines and St Vincent and the Grenadines as well as England, Scotland and Finland.

The girls camped under canvas (despite the weather) and took part in a wide range of games and activities designed to help them develop valuable life-skills.

'The girls had a fantastic experience, trying out all sorts of team-building activities as well as enjoying fun and friendship with girls from around the globe,' said camp chief Jenny Gannon.

Activities included water obstacle courses, kayaking, horse-riding, building rafts and rockets.

The girls also enjoyed playing quidditch as well as drama, music, body confidence, yoga, meditation and coding workshops.

'There was a serious side to camp too,' said Jenny.

'We partnered with Trocaire, Concern, UNICEF and Irish Aid to help the girls learn about the Sustainable Development Goals and how to stand up for refugees and to advocate for gender equality.'

Irish Girl Guides welcomes new members from the age of five and adult volunteers from the age of 18.

For more information go to irishgirlguides.ie.
The 184 route is one of 24 routes which will be operated by Go-Ahead

Three local bus routes are to be operated by UK bus company Go-Ahead over the next five years.

The 184 travelling between Bray and Newtownmountkennedy, the 185 to Enniskerry and 45A to Dun Laoghaire are among 24 routes to be taken over by the company.

The National Transport Authority (NTA) announced last week that Go-Ahead was the winner of the tender competition. The NTA has indicated that key service requirements such as fare and frequency will be incorporated in the contracts binding the new operator. Their announcement confirms that it is the NTA and not Go-Ahead who will determine fares and frequency over the next five years.

Cllr Tom Fortune said the NTA should come before the public accounts committee 'to fully explain all the implications surrounding this and who signs off on a decision like this'.

Deputy John Brady said that the announcement signals a serious move to the privatisation of the public transport service.

'I am eager to learn from the NTA what made Go-Ahead more preferable than Dublin Bus, who are already operating a decent service in both Wicklow and Dublin,' said Deputy Brady.

Deputy Pat Casey also expressed disappointment.

'I was hoping that at the very least that an Irish company would have been successful in bidding for these very important public transport routes,' he said. 'I am in favour of competition but I do feel that Irish transport providers should be regarded as providing the very best in terms of cost effectiveness, reliability, and standard of service. I am very disappointed with this decision and I will be hoping that this is not the beginning of a process to outsource our public transport needs to foreign companies.'

However, Fianna Fail activist James Doyle said the awarding of the contract is based on meeting the need of local commuters and is not about privatisation.

'The National Transport Authority took a detailed look at all orbital bus routes serving the greater Dublin area,' said Mr Doyle. 'They do this on a five-year basis so that the service meets the developing needs of the local population. That's what is important here, not scaremongering about privatisation. The buses remain in public ownership as do the terms of operating them.'

He said that the contract between the NTA and the operator is crucial. 'I've written to the NTA on several occasions and asked to see the proposed contracts so I could check them for myself,' said Mr Doyle.

Go-Ahead provides 25 per cent of London bus services and seven per cent of regional bus services in Britain. It is expected to begin operating some of the 24 routes by the end of November 2018 and all routes by February 2019.

Dublin Bus also applied for the franchise and was the only other company to make a formal bid. The company said it was disappointed with the result of the tender process.

Four other entrants dropped out of the process because of the condition that the successful company had to provide a depot. Contracts have yet to be signed but Go-Ahead will have 12 months to provide a depot.

NTA Chief Executive Anne Graham said that cost savings are envisaged and that there will be increased frequency of services as well as a 35 per cent increase in kilometres covered.

'We believe that a new operator in the market will bring a fresh dimension to the way that services are offered. Introducing new providers encourages everybody to focus on their customers' needs and it encourages innovation and improvements to service quality,' she said.

She said that there will be no redundancies in Dublin Bus associated with the result of this tender competition.

That National Bus and Rail Union (NBRU) General Secretary Dermot O'Leary said that it was 'disappointing that Dublin Bus were unsuccessful in the so-called tendering process'.

He said that the NBRU will focus their attention 'on ensuring that our affected members on the privatised routes will not be forced to move from their current workplace, we will also move to recruit those new entrants that will work for the private operator to ensure that they will be properly represented and work with them towards achieving similar terms and conditions as those workers we represent in the state-owned companies.'
When Redcross woman Abby McKenna looked ahead to summer 2017 she never envisaged representing her county as the Wicklow Rose - yet here she is.

The 22-year-old, who is on the brink of a return to college, has resigned herself to a season of hard work in the hospitality industry and preparing for her Digital Marketing course in Bray Institute of Further Education.

'I am going back to college in September and I didn't really have any plans like festivals or going on holidays. I suppose I always would have liked to enter the Rose of Tralee but never had the opportunity. When I was approached this year, the time could not have been more perfect so I just went for it,' Abby explained.

Thanks to the sponsorship of her employers Wicklow Brewery in Redcross, Abby was soon in the running for the Wicklow Rose title and following a tough audition and selection night at the Arklow Bay Hotel, Abby was crowned the 2017 Wicklow Rose - and has the tiara and sash to prove it.

As a young girl growing up in Redcross, Abby was a fan of the Rose of Tralee and, like many others, watched it every year on the television.

This week, Abby is at the heart of the action as she travels around Ireland on the famed 'Rose Tour'.

'For the full week we are travelling all around Ireland to visit different attractions and communities. It's a great experience for all of us, particularly the Roses who live outside Ireland,' she said.

Abby will certainly be dressed to impress following generous sponsorship from a number of boutiques including Buy Design in Athy, McMullan's in Arklow and Liz Collins in Gorey.

She has been paired up with the Texas Rose, Lydian Lawler Lopez, for the week and said that meeting her fellow contestants has been the high point so far.

'Everyone says it every year but it really is true - all the girls are so lovely. I have met them all and we are getting on very well. It's so interesting to meet girls from other countries and backgrounds. I haven't met my escort yet but I can't wait to see what he is like,' Abby added.

On Friday, Abby and her soon-to-be-revealed escort will attend the Rose Ball in the Dome and on Monday and Tuesday, the televised interviews will be broadcast live on RTE One.

However, not even Abby herself knows if she will yet be taking part in these.

'We don't find out until later it the week, and possibly the weekend, if we are through. To be honest I am having such a wonderful time that I don't mind one way or the other. It would be lovely to get through but I feel that I have already had such a great experience and met so many lovely people,' she said.

Whether she makes it through to the final or not, Abby won't be short of support in Tralee as her mum Grace, brother Adam, sister Kelly and grandmother Patricia Wilson and colleagues from Wicklow Brewery will be travelling down to cheer her on.

It's certain that the county of Wicklow will be rooting for their very own Rose to take the prestigious title.
Hong Kong is 10,000 miles from Newmarket but yet there are strong links between the two regions due to a body of 19 North Cork men who called it home and served in the police force there from 1864 until 1950.

Their fascinating story has been told by Patricia O'Sullivan who launched her book, 'Policing Hong Kong - An Irish History', on Friday as part of Scully'sFest in Newmarket. In the summer of 2009, Patricia O'Sullivan visited her 90 year old aunt, Ann O'Brien in Dublin. Ann was the child of Patrick and Ellen O'Sullivan of Barnacurra in Newmarket.

Patricia is the grand daughter of Patrick O'Sullivan. Patricia explained that when both she and Ann began to look through a collection of old photographs, Ann got down on her knees and began to drag further boxes of treasures from under a sideboard when the subject of an uncle, Mortimer (Murt) arose.

Ann said to Patricia, that she was "good at that googly thing ... go on your computer and find out what happened to uncle Murt in Gresson Street. My parents were such Victorians that they never told us."

"And that triggered my fascination and it was truly my stimulus to go about and search the family history about being in the Hong Kong police force," Patricia told The Corkman. So where did it all begin? She explained that in 1864 William Lysaught left Island in Newmarket for the Gold Rush in America but when he got there "it was over" and so he went to Hong Kong. He made a career in the police force and sent word home to Newmarket for family to come out.

"Coincidentally but not connected, in 1868, George Hennessy from Glenlara went to London to join to police force and at that time the Hong Kong police were recruiting from the Metropolitan police and so George, in 1873, opted to leave London for Hong Kong. After 11 years in Hong Kong, George returned on leave and married Bridget O'Sullivan of Curraduff. He then recommended cousins and nephews for the Hong Kong force," she said.

The head of police, a man named Henry May, also asked George Hennessy to find men to recruit for the police force in Hong Kong and so, Patrick and Mortimer O'Sullivan of Barnacurra joined. It was not all plain sailing living and working in the other side of the world. While Hong Kong in 1918 was a tranquil place compared to war torn Europe, on the morning of January 22, a running battle through the streets of Wanchai ended in the 'Siege of Gresson Street,' which saw the slaying of five policemen.

One of the dead was Mortimer O'Sullivan, who was shot five times in the head. This was so shocking in Hong Kong that Patricia said 250,000 people turned up to watch the funeral possession.

So what happened at the Siege of Gresson Street? Patricia explained that Inspector Mortimer O'Sullivan, Sgt Henry Coscombe Clarke and a team of nine Chinese detective constables went to a tenement in Gresson Street, Wanchai with a search warrant for stolen goods. However, unknown to them, the gang they were looking for had previously raided a British army munitions store.

"The gang were probably tipped off about the arrival of the police. A bloodbath ensued with the police standing no chance and four were killed in the building, and one more in the chase. Two robbers were killed and at least one escaped and one stood trial," said Patricia. She said all the policemen killed were married which children. And just in the last month, her branch of the family has re-established contact with Murt's children's descendants - after nearly 100 years. They all live in Chicago.

Murt was married to Hanora Aherne and he is buried in Happy Valley, Hong Kong next to his distant cousin, Edmund O'Sullivan of Curraduff. Edmund died of TB and left behind his wife, Maria, and four young children.

This group of Newmarket men were unlike many other migrants at the time - they were a tight-knit and discrete bunch and often preferring to work in the same stations and taking work leave together. Patricia pointed out that getting started with her research was made possible by an article in a contemporary police magazine which was available online, and which recorded a visit by Henry Goscombe Clarke's grandsons to the sites involved in the Greeson Street deaths. She made contact with one of those grandsons, Dennis Clarke, who was then head of the Conrad Hotel in Hong Kong.

"I got an invite from Dennis Clarke to stay at the Conrad as a guest. Needless to say, I had scarcely finished reading his email before I booked my flight. "Then a wealth of material gathered over the years or research from a serving Hong Kong policeman started me on a course where it became obvious that it was not just my grandfather and great uncle who had been in the police but so, too, had a large group of their kinsmen from Newmarket," she said. Patricia said her research had "taken over her life" and runs very deep. While she is based in the UK, the former music teacher spends four months of the year in Hong Kong. Patricia's book tells the story of the policeman and the criminals which they were dealing with, and it also follows the lives of the Newmarket men along with their wives and families when they first arrived and beyond. She said she was delighted at the turn out for the launch of her book in Newmarket but added that, as the book is printed in Hong Kong, it will take up to four weeks for it to hit the bookshelves in Duhallow.

Some of the men from Newmarket, and their wives, who went to Hong Kong

William Lysaught - Island

George Hennessy - Glenlara, married Bridget O'Sullivan, Curraduff

Edmund O'Sullivan - Curraduff

Mortimer O'Sullivan - Barnacurra, married Hanora Aherne

Patrick O'Sullivan - Barnacurra, married Ellen Kenneally

Tim Murphy - Island, married Mary Sheahan

Thomas Francies O'Sullivan - Scarteen

John O'Sullivan - Curraduff

James Murphy - Island

John Murphy - Island, married Margaret Fitzpatrick

Pat Murphy - Island

Michael Murphy - Brosna

Maurice Kenneally - Newmarket (Patrick O'Sullivan's brother in law)

Patrick Fitzpatrick - Newmarket (John Murphy's brother in law)

Michael Fitzpatrick - Newmarket

George Davitt - George Hennessy's grandson
The Zurich/Farming Independent Farmer of the Year Peter and Paula Hynes are opening their farm gates to the public on Tuesday next, August 22, to raise money for two of their favourite charities.

Visitors will be able to see what won Peter and Paula the title of Farmer of the Year and an array of experts will be on hand to talk about farm planning and finances, farm safety, breeding and genetic gain, among other topics. Teagasc, Agri Kids, AIB Bank, Biocell Ltd, Clippers Ireland, Cork Farm Machinery, Dairygold Co-op, Dairymaster, Goldcrop Ltd, ICMSA, IHFA, Munster AI, National Cattle Breeding Centre, Volac, and Zurich Insurance are all providing speakers on the day.

There will be lots for children to do, with the three Hynes children on hand to show off their farming skills.

Neither of the Hynes couple were born into farms, however they farm with Peter's stepfather Geofrey Good. The 105ha farm just outside Aherla is full of mature trees and charming stone buildings. However, much of the land needed to be reclaimed and there was also huge scope to lift the annual herd average from 240kg milk solids.

Now the Hynes want to let other people see how they reached the top of their game.

A new hi tech 20-unit Dairymaster Swiftflow parlour with Moo monitor + herd health and fertility system installed in April 2017 has transformed their lives.

"We don't spend more than 2.5 hours per day milking now... but that was the way we wanted it because we're not going to be able to rely on labour in the future so we are really investing in comfort for ourselves and our three daughters Georgina, Becky, and Chloe," said Peter.

Despite the big capital spending programme that is ongoing, it is the 1,200 that Hynes invested in a Grasshopper grass measuring device that Peter ranks as key to his profitability.

The Rathard pedigree herd of Holstein Friesians has trebled in size since 2010 to 150 cows today, and the aim is to increase this figure to 200 by 2018.

The difficulty of maintaining herd performance during expansion is widely acknowledged. Despite this, production per cow on the Hynes' farm has gone from 240kg milk solids to 420kg, while the breeding season has reduced from 31 weeks to 12, putting the herd in the top five per cent of Dairygold suppliers.

The parlour is chlorine-free, and the farm reduces costs doing trials for companies selling detergents and grass seed.

Pig slurry is also used to maximum effect to cut fertiliser costs, while maintaining dry matter production at an impressive 14.5t/ha.

The day starts at 11am and the two charities visitors on the day are asked to support with donations are Breast Cancer Ireland and Aware. Check out their video at goo.gl/rDwkvL
A pedestrian crossing at the bottom of Francis Street, to allow people on the Chord Road access the town in safety, is still deemed an important part of the overall plan around the Gate.

'The residents in the Chord Road area have shown great generosity in getting behind the Close the Gate campaign.

It's vital that their ongoing concerns are addressed, and central to these concerns are the impact of traffic on the residents in Francis Street and the need for a pedestrian crossing at the bottom of that Street,' local resident and the RENUA party's Michael O'Dowd stated.

'We will not tolerate becoming virtual prisoners surrounded by traffic.

I think it's safe to say that there is real disappointment that the Council did not seriously consider the alternative of reversing traffic in Shop Street which would have solved two problems, closing Laurence Gate and traffic congestion on Dublin Road/ Mary Street.'

It is envisaged that the council will monitor the traffic flows and consider all the elements of the plan. There have already been calls for Laurence's Street and Palace Street to be made two way, allowing traffic away from Peter Street.
Youngsters from Portmarnock and Baldoyle were introduced to traditional Irish musical instruments, dance, song and games at CEE Port Mearnog's week-long summer camp held at Naomh Mearnog GAA club recently.

This was the fourth year of the successful camp, demand for which grows year upon year.

And as a special treat, the youngsters, aged between six and 12 years, were taught by renowned Irish Trad band, Goitse, with one of the band members, Tadhg O Meachair, hailing from the locality.

The band, which was set up nearly nine years ago by former University of Limerick students, have had international success and are currently touring the UK, Europe and America.

'We got great feedback from the parents of children who attended this year's summer camp and they all really enjoyed the fact a renowned band was teaching them to play instruments,' said Neasa Ni Mearchair.

The summer camp was sponsored by Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann and Daa (Dublin Airport Authority). Two other musicians, Deirdre Ni Meachair and James Harvey also helped out with the teaching of particular instruments including the harp, fiddle and flute.

The children also took on art classes, based on the music being played at the camp and to top off the camp, a fundraising concert took place on the Friday evening, with Goiste performing.

Two of the camps participants, Darrach O Geimhnigh and Cliodhan Dalton performed bodhran solos while other camp members also performed prior to Goiste taking to the stage. 'It was a fantastic week and the concert really topped it off for everyone,' said Nessa.
Unleash that story within you and get feedback on your writing at a course in Creative Writing for adults in the beautiful surroundings of Ardgillan Castle.

Classes are starting on Monday, September for beginners and on the 7th and 8th for 'improvers' or people who have done some writing and who want to take it a stage further. Both beginners and improvers courses are for 10 weeks and run from 10.30am to 12.30pm. Various aspects of writing are covered on the course including short story writing, memoirs and some prose writing. The short story section will involve aspects such as creating characters, plotting, setting and dialogue.

Pat is one of the participants on the course and said: 'I learnt the important techniques in writing, such as how to plan a piece, or using dialogue or creating characters.'

Pat said he found his writing has improved a lot since he started doing the first course.

He said: 'I'm interested in writing historical fiction and I have written a number of short stories set in a bygone era.'

The class is taught by Ross Campbell, who said: 'The class is relaxed and informal and is located in the sumptuous exhibition room overlooking the parkland and we have a coffee break in the lovely tearooms downstairs.

'Participants are gently encouraged and the emphasis is on encouragement and building on the skills and abilities of the participants rather than criticism. It takes a lot of courage to submit work to a writers group.

'Participants who are new to a writing class may be anxious about how their work will be received. A lot of it has to do with confidence, that's why it's important to be very encouraging so as not to damage the participant's confidence.

'Students don't have to worry about feeling exposed to criticism of their work. Students do not read out their work to the class, it is circulated to the others by email.'

The course takes the form of a workshop. The tutor gives assignments to the class to do for the following week for discussion. Participants email their pieces to the tutor beforehand and he then circulates their pieces to all the other participants by email. This system has the big advantage that everyone will have been able to read each other's work before coming into the class to discuss it.
Once again, the people of Fingal have stepped up to the plate to donate blood when it is needed and the Irish Blood Transfusion Service is eternally grateful for your efforts.

This time, it was the good people of Skerries who got a visit from the Irish Blood Transfusion Service and responded to the appeal for blood donations in numbers.

The Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) would like to thank all 84 Donors who attended the recently held clinic in Skerries Community Centre.

A special thank you goes to the Irish Blood Transfusion Service's local voluntary organiser, Sara Rock and the Skerries Community Centre for the use of their facilities who accommodate us for all the clinics.

If you are ever in doubt that a blood donation is worthwhile then think about the fact that about 70,000 patients are transfused with blood each year in Irish Hospitals.

A spokesperson for the service said: 'To do this we must collect approximately 3,000 donations of blood each and every week from voluntary donors like you. A total of 5,748 units were required in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin alone during 2016.

'Finally on behalf of all the patients in hospitals who benefit from your generosity a heartfelt thank you to all who attended or helped with our Skerries clinic in any way.'
Three students of WKSF Skerries Karate have successfully earned their prized black belts.

Excitement, nerves, concentration and sweat were all part of a three-day karate and grading seminar recently held in Ireland for the members of the World Shotokan Karate Federation.

The seminar was conducted by world renowned Japanese Instructor Hitoshi Kasuya 8th Dan with Ireland's Sensei Mark Sheridan 5th Dan, Venezuela & Ireland's Sensei Francisco Astudillo 5th Dan and Sensei Colin Smith 6th Dan, South Africa.

The intensive three-day course was also utilised to examine students taking Dan grades (black belt). All prospective grading students having completed their mock grading earlier in the year were put forward and accepted for grading before the international panel. Dan grading assess whether a candidate has reached the appropriate standard.

For three Skerries students this was more than just a seminar. They were being examined for their black belt grades.

The three had juggled school, work and parenting with months of extra practice sandwiched into daily life which was rewarded with all three successfully passing and presented with their 1st black belt. Congratulations to Deirdre Tapley, Shane Hanlon and Louis Yeboah.

Training with WSKF Skerries Karate takes place at the Community Centre in Skerries.
A biography of a Fingal hero has been re-printed and released as we near the centenary of his death and 'I Die in a Good Cause - Thomas Ashe: A Biography' hits the shelves in book stores.

Sean O Luing is the author and he was born in Ballyferriter, west Kerry in the same year that Thomas Ashe died.

He worked as a primary teacher before joining the translation staff of the Dail, where he rose to become head of the department.

He was the author of books in Irish on John Devoy, Arthur Griffith and Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa and in English of 'The Fremantle Mission'.

On Monday, September 17, a request was made by the Defence of the Realm prisoners in Mountjoy prison for prisoner-of-war treatment. When this request was refused the prisoners began a hunger strike. At 5 pm on September 25, Thomas Ashe was transferred to the Mater Hospital where he died at 10.30 pm

An inquest into his death and developed into a long and dramatic inquiry during the inquest the prison doctor, Dr Lowe, maintained that no force was used against Ashe. However, other prisoners, Austin Stack and Fionan Lynch, gave evidence that Lowe virtually rammed the feeding tube down their throats.

In contrast to Lowe's claims, an examination by Professor McWeeney at the Mater Hospital revealed horrific facial and throat injuries including: twelve superficial scratches averaging half an inch in length on the right side of Ashe's face, nine superficial excoriations on the chin, six or seven point-like excoriations below his lip, a small number of excoriations near the Adam's apple and beyond the thyroid cartilage a semi-lunar depression such as would be caused by pressure of a thumbnail.

According to the author of the biography, Ashe's tragic and avoidable death at the age of thirty-two, not only removed him from the centre stage of Irish life, but in large measure from the national historical memory.

I Die in a Good Cause - Thomas Ashe: A Biography tells the story of his life. Originally from west Kerry, Ashe was a schoolteacher in Lusk and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers. During the 1916 Rising he commanded the Fingal Battalion of the Volunteers, who were tasked with destroying the communications network of the British establishment north of Dublin city.

His battalion won a major victory in Ashbourne. Twenty-four hours after the Rising collapsed, Ashe's battalion surrendered on the orders of Patrick Pearse. Ashe and Eamon de Valera were court-martialled and both were sentenced to death. The sentences were commuted to penal servitude for life. Michael Collins delivered the oration at his funeral. The circumstances of his death and funeral became one of the key factors in tipping public opinion towards supporting the 1916 rebels.
Fingal's coastal communities as well as the legions of tourists that will be visiting our beaches over the remaining weeks of the summer have been warned that August is the Coast Guard and RNLI's busiest month for rescues.

The Irish Coast Guard and the RNLI and the are issuing a joint call this month, urging people to be vigilant and to take care on the water and along the coastline.

It comes as both organisations note that August was the busiest month for coastal recreational incidents last year. Irish lifeboat crews last August alone responded 217 times to emergencies at sea.

While summer air temperatures may be warm, Irish waters rarely exceed 15C, making them cold enough year-round to trigger cold water shock, which causes the instinctive reaction to gasp and swim hard, which can quickly lead to drowning.

As part of its drowning prevention campaign, Respect the Water, the RNLI is calling on the public to help save more lives during this busy period by remembering and sharing key survival skills.

Kevin Rahill, RNLI Community Safety Partner explained: 'We want to start a national conversation that encourages people to fight their instincts around water, so we are asking people to remember and share two skills.

'The first is, if you see someone else in trouble; don't go into the water yourself as you may also end up in serious danger.

'Instead, dial 999 or 112 and ask for the Coast Guard. If you want to help, find something that floats and throw it to them, or shout instructions on how to float until the rescue services arrive.

'The second is, if you fall into cold water, fight your instincts to swim hard or thrash about as this could lead to drowning. Instead, relax and float on your back, keeping your airway clear, for around 60-90 seconds.

'This will allow the effects of cold water shock to pass so you can regain control of your breathing and then swim to safety or call for help. Just remembering these two simple points could help save your life, or someone else's.'

The Irish Coast Guard has two simple messages, to 'Stay Back, Stay High, Stay Dry' near exposed parts of the coastline and to 'Stay Afloat and Stay in Contact' when at sea.

Gerard O'Flynn, Irish Coast Guard Operations Manager said: 'While it is important that everyone going afloat wears a life-jacket, it is equally important that every user ensures their life-jackets are regularly serviced.

'Life-jackets are not fool-proof and users should always ensure that they have familiarised themselves on their proper operation and that they are in date for servicing. Anyone going afloat should also ensure they have a means of raising the alarm should they need to and that they ensure someone ashore is aware of their trip and estimated time of return.'

Away from the sea, we want everyone to exercise caution when walking on exposed cliffs.'
A Balbriggan teenager is hoping to fulfil her dream career and follow in the footsteps of her hero supermodel Naomi Campbell.

Vanessa Nnoli (19), who has always had an interest in modelling from an early age, is well on the way for the catwalks of Milan and Paris as she has already featured in the fashion pages modelling for Irish Fashion & Glamour magazine and has built up a portfolio and a website.

Vanessa moved to Ireland from Nigeria in 2015 to join her mother Catherine Kaczmarczyk, who has been living in Moylaragh for the past eight years, to pursue a college degree in nursing and to make her dream of becoming a model come true.

'I always had an interest in modelling since my childhood and took part in the end of year fashion shows at my primary and secondary schools in Nigeria, something which I loved doing,' Vanessa told the Fingal Independent.

When she moved to Ireland she had already finished her secondary school education in her home country.

However, as she wanted to study nursing in college to have a degree behind her, she had to repeat Fifth and Sixth Year to enable her complete her Leaving Certificate. She attended Loreto Secondary School in Balbriggan where she completed her exams and is now awaiting her results.

Moving from one country to another is a difficult time for anyone at any age so to enable Vanessa to meet new people and become involved in different groups she joined Acts of Compassion Ministry based in Balbriggan and SWAN International Youth Club in Dublin city centre.

She admits she did have negative thoughts at first about pursuing her modelling career here as she did not have any contacts within the modelling industry.

'I just feel I have to go for it. I have met with agencies but haven't been signed to one yet. Nothing comes easy in the modelling industry but it doesn't disillusion me.'

Vanessa added: 'I'm not going to give up and I am determined to get there, Naomi Campbell is my hero and it wasn't easy for her starting out and she became a supermodel so I do hope to follow in her footsteps.'
Arguably the most important road project in Fingal has reached a significant milestone in its development as Fingal County Council announces the launch of the second stage of the tender process for the Donabate Distributor Road.

The road is a crucial piece in Fingal County Council's attempts to deal with the housing crisis and could potentially open lands up for the development of thousands of homes.

The 20 million project is co-funded under the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund (LIHAF) which was announced earlier this year by the Minister for Housing, Planning Community & Local Government. Fingal County will provide 25 per cent of the project cost.

The project consists of a Distributor Road of approximately 4km in length, bypassing Donabate village. The alignment runs from R126 Hearse Road on the southwest of Donabate village, heading in an easterly direction, crossing the Dublin-Belfast railway line, then heading in a northerly direction to reconnect with the R126 Portrane Road.

The new road will form an important alternative road crossing of the railway line and will also serve the new housing development lands and is seen as crucial for the development of those lands.

Fingal County Council is proposing to commence construction before the end of this year and the construction phase is expected to last 18 months.

Cllr Adrian Henchy (FF) who lives on the peninsula, said he 'very much welcomed' the progress of the project but at the same time, he expressed 'very real concern' at the 'significant ramping up of development in recent weeks on the peninsula'.

He explained: 'Along with the construction of this critical piece of infrastructure by year end you also have the building of the National Forensic Hospital at St Ita's hospital campus and a number of house building schemes ranging from one-off housing to larger schemes.

'This will require intensive traffic management innovation to ensure accessibility in and out of the peninsula continues to be relatively smooth for people and it is of even greater importance to ensure that the current road and footpath infrastructure is also significantly upgraded and improved in tandem with the delivery of the new distributor road.'

Cllr Henchy added: 'It will not be acceptable for anyone to think that the new distributor road is the solution to all of Donabate and Portrane's traffic problems, it is a part of the solution but we also need to see improved roads, footpaths, new cycle lanes alongside traffic safety and management schemes.'

He concluded: 'However, overall it is welcome news that has been talked about since the 1980s and it is easy to understand why many people thought it was never going to happen. I have no doubt this infrastructure will also allow the village of Donabate breathe and get its unique village appeal back again following years of traffic congestion.'
Ireland has now submitted its formal bid to relocate the European Medicines Agency from London to Dublin and included Dublin Airport Central as one of its possible locations

The Dublin Airport Central office development is in the mix for the relocation of the European Medicines Agency which is moving from UK following the Brexit decision and Minister for Health, Simon Harris says Dublin is the 'perfect new home' for the agency.

Ireland has now submitted its formal bid to relocate the EMA from London to Dublin and included Dublin Airport Central as one of its possible locations.

Minister for Health Simon Harris said, 'The European Union must now ensure that a sustainable solution is found for the European Medicines Agency, and that any loss of expertise or disruption to its operations is minimised.

'We must ensure that European citizens are protected. The Irish Government firmly believes that relocation to Dublin will lead to the best outcomes for the Agency, its staff, stakeholders and, most importantly, the citizens of Europe.'

Minister Harris went on to say: 'Maximising staff retention and continuing to attract the best expertise to the EMA are vital to the future of the Agency. Moving the EMA to a neighbouring country, where English is the main language, is the least disruptive option for London-based staff.

'Dublin also offers the option to commute if families of EMA staff wish to remain in London for a period after Brexit. Quality of life in Dublin is excellent. It is a safe, tolerant, multicultural city with a vibrant cultural and social life. Dublin is already home to citizens from across Europe and is experienced in integrating large, multinational workforces into the local community.'

Talking about Ireland's bid for the agency, Minster Harris said: 'The Government is satisfied that the Irish offer to host the EMA fully meets all the stated criteria and we are fully committed to ensuring that the EMA can continue to deliver, without interruption, an excellent service to citizens and industry in a post-Brexit Europe.

'We firmly believe that a move to Dublin will ensure that European citizens can continue to have access to safe, innovative medicines, and that the EMA retains its reputation for excellence in the global regulatory system.'

As part of its offer, the Irish Government has undertaken to contract the services of relocation experts to assist EMA staff and their families to transition from London to Dublin. Three buildings have been identified from which the EMA may select its preferred option for a new headquarters, including at Dublin Airport Central.

Conscious of the significant costs which Brexit will incur for the EMA, the Irish Government will make a total contribution of 78m over a ten-year period toward the expenses related to a new premises.

Key to the Irish offer is the whole-of-government commitment to ensuring that the EMA can relocate to its new home and carry out its functions from day one.
A North Wexford man who reported his concerns to the HSE about the management of the charity Ataxia Ireland CLG, has said it gave him absolutely no pleasure to do so.

A damning report into Ataxia Ireland was recently published by the Charities Regulator following an investigation.

Albert Young (54), from Inch, who has Ataxia, has since set up a new charity with several others, to offer support to people living with the condition.

Ataxia is a brain condition that affects co-ordination, balance and speech. At least four families in north Wexford have a family member with the condition.

The investigation discovered that between January 2008 and April 2016, two founding trustees at Ataxia Ireland, a husband and wife, were wrongly paid 84,009, and that their daughter, the charity's chief executive, knew the payments broke Revenue Commissioner rules which say that charity trustees cannot be paid. Ataxia Ireland received 102,383 by the HSE last year.

The investigation also found the charity had weak internal financial controls, and that the CEO's pension contribution of 38,500 was paid from funds rather than from her salary.

Ataxia Ireland has said it will respond to the Charities Regulator report within 21 days of the publication of the report and that it will take appropriate action in line with the recommendations to ensure it is fully compliant.

Mr Young reported his concerns about Ataxia Ireland to the HSE in May 2016. 'I grew concerned about six months before,' he said. 'A lot of things just didn't add up.' He attended an AGM which he felt seemed 'very orchestrated'.

'What was very worrying was that money coming in seemed not to be going to members. They weren't seeing the benefit of it,' he said. He had been involved in several fundraisers for the charity, and his wife had organised a skydive, with 47 participants, which raised 27,000.

He grew even more concerned when he learned that many volunteer board members had resigned. These board members were bound by confidentiality rules, but Mr Young wasn't, so when he went to the HSE, they took his concerns seriously.

The charity was established to provide counselling to people with a new diagnosis, social outings for those who are housebound, and respite care.

Four former members, including Albert, have now founded Ataxia Foundation Ireland. 'We know a lot more about what we need than anyone else does,' he said. 'We needed to have another organisation there for members to go to for support. Ninety-nine per cent of Ataxia Ireland members are now with us.'

While the organisation is still in its infancy, it has founded an Ataxia support team with a voluntary liaison officer who is a nurse. All work is voluntary at the moment but an application for funding has been made to the HSE.
The project's cast and crew. Front: Chulainn O Faolain, Martin Byrne, Aisling Leonard, Tommy Woodbyrne, filmmaker Terence White, Michelle Britton and Eire Faolain. Back: John Whelan, Frank D'Arcy, Paul Hempenstall, Brendan Fortune, Ciaran Sloan, Peter O'Connor and Owen Dunbar

'Hunter', a new short film about the legendary Hunter Gowan, had its premiere in Shamrock Hall in Kilanerin recently.

The film, along with a behind the scenes video and blooper reel, played to a packed hall and received a very enthusiastic response from the audience.

'Hunter' was made during a community filmmaking project, held earlier in the summer, which was funded and supported by Wexford County Council's artist in the community scheme.

The workshop was facilitated by local filmmaker Terence White, and he guided a group of 12 adults in developing the film about the notorious John Hunter Gowan II, and the myths and stories that have built up around him.

Delighted with the reaction to the screening, Terence said that all the cast and crew attended the premiere and they were delighted to welcome a descendant of Hunter Gowan, Trina Strong, from Washington State, who was also at the screening.

The film was also screened at the Gap Arts Festival in Ballythomas over the past weekend.
Rehab Ireland has called on the Government to take action to find suitable homes for well over 600 people with disabilities who are on the housing list in Kerry.

According to Rehab, new housing figures have revealed that there are 662 people with disabilities on social housing waiting lists in Kerry.

In response to the figures, Rehab said that these people are housed in inappropriate settings and that they are being deprived of the basic human right to live in the community and play an active role in society.

The organisation, which supports over 20,000 people, has now reiterated its call for the Government to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

Rehab said that Ireland is the only country in Europe which has still failed to ratify the "vital" international agreement, which would afford people with disabilities the same basic human rights as all others in the community.

"Ireland really needs to get to grips with how we support people with disabilities to live in their own homes. These figures show the Government is failing our most vulnerable members of society. The right to a home is a critical human right outlined in the UNCRPD," said Rehab spokesperson Kathleen O'Meara.

"If the convention was ratified, the Government would have to be accountable. These worrying figures show that people with disabilities continue to be treated like second class citizens," she said.

"The reality is that people with disabilities remain invisible when it comes to policy and service provision. Every day in Rehab services we see people living full and active lives," said Ms O'Meara.

"We support nearly 200 adults to live independently in their communities through our supported accommodation services. It's past time the Government prioritise people with disabilities," she added.
As heat wave Lucifer swept across Europe, we were contending with a different deity as Poseidon took aim at the Kerry coast for our week long break.

The forecast was looking good, (no weather/flood/storm warnings) and the south west of the country was visible in some of the RTE weather forecasts on the telly.

Stoically I looked forward to a nostalgic holiday, redolent of summers past, eating sandwiches and salt and vinegar crisps in the car with the Whirlwind Princess and The Little Fella and going to the Aquadome pool in my native Tralee. (OK, I was gutted it wasn't going to be a week of beach days in The Kingdom), but there would be much fun to be had, oh yes. The first day was a bonus, an in lieu day for a bank holiday I had worked and I was going to savour every second of it, so the children were gingerly dropped off in creche and I suddenly found myself with time on my hands. It was a curious state to be in, and I went through a gamut of emotions feeling guilty for not doing anything, before slapping myself in the face realising that it is perfectly alright not to have lists of tasks to work through all the time.

The only thing I wanted to achieve was to look at bicycles with a view to buying one and so I drove to Wexford, rain pelting the car. The downpour was apocalyptic and threw everyone into bad form. The shiny bicycles did manage to cheer me up and conscious of my poor time keeping the previous week I returned to New Ross in plenty of time, having chilled out in a cafe with a good book and coffee.

We broke the journey to Kerry with a stop-off at Fota Wildlife Park, where having paid 37 to go in, the rain returned with a vengeance, but in keeping with our topsy turvy summer, the sun quickly broke through the clouds and we enjoyed a great afternoon among a Noah's Ark of animals: the lion cubs proving a particular hit.

We landed in my native Tralee and passed workmen putting up The Dome for the Roses. The town looked great and over the coming days I resisted the temptation to tear off across the county on a bucket list ticking exercise of must see destinations. Instead, we spent our time together in the company of friends, many of whom have children the same age as mine, and with relations.

The mantra for the week was relaxation and we repeated it daily. The only exception being a trip to south Kerry to visit cousins in Cahersiveen, a hidden gem of a town on the Iveragh Peninsula, close to Valentia Island, Skellig Michael - made famous recently by the arrival of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and the Star Wars crew. We didn't bother with the 75 trip to the spectacular Skellig Michael - instead opting for the 5 charge to climb the mountain on Valentia, with its breathtaking views and ascent! Returning to a festival in Cahersiveen that evening in the town where my father and his siblings grew up, a town I always love to visit, was a highlight of the trip.

As we dined in my cousin's restaurant, Camo's, a place run by his parents before him, whose cafe I visited since I was a nipper, the children munching on food prepared in the same kitchen, a sense of familial continuity and kinship was the icing on the cake on a great week. The drive home in the rain two days later and customary stop at McDonald's in Dungarvan was made tolerable by the company, while Spraoi street festival in Waterford capped what was a brilliant staycation break in rainy Ireland.
Annette Doran from Duncormick, Joan Sinnott from New Ross and Seamus Kane and Eileen Moulds from Ferns

Thousands of people arrived at Seamus Kane's farm in Whitechurch on Sunday for the final working farm day event.

The rolling fields were filled with vintage tractors, cars and farm machinery, on the way to the farm yard where outbuildings were filled to capacity with people of all ages enjoying the family games, food, braic-a-brac items and the numerous displays.

The smell of smoke from open fires was in the air, along with plenty of steam from the threshing machine and children and adults alike marvelled at the manual work on display.

The previous night a crowd attended a barn dance featuring T Bone Country.

There was an air of nostalgia and sadness to proceedings on Sunday, especially after one of the organisers Declan Dunne announced from the stage that this was the last year of the show has which raised tens of thousands of euro for water projects in Kenya. Seamus said: 'You would be nostalgic about it. It has been great and we never got a bad day's weather for it. All day people were saying it would be a disaster to lose this event.'

He said he is unable to get the volunteers he needs to run the event, which draws crowds of up to 4,000 people.

Children enjoyed games like guess the weight of a sheep, or a cake, to penalty shoot outs, hurling games, bottle fishing, horse racing, name the fish, name the doll, wheel of fortune and more. An old toy tractor and car display proved a particular hit, as did face painting and the children's disco.

Old farming traditions like butter churning, griddle bread being baked over a roaring open fire, horses being shoed by a farrier and a weaving display entertained. With pigs feet and colcannon, made by a team of local ladies, available as well as ice cream and barbecue food, everyone enjoyed a proper Irish spread.

Seamus thanked his wife Margie, his family and extended family and the volunteers.

'It was an absolutely fantastic family day out. The best part is seeing the contentment and happiness of the people, especially those coming along for the first time.'
Janie Wall from Gusserane and Newbawn with her grandchildren and great grandchildren

Mum-of-fifteen Janie Wall enjoyed the company of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren - many of whom travelled from Canada, Wales and Spain - at her 95th birthday party in the Horse & Hound in Ballinaboola recently.

Janie (nee Bohanna), originally from Loughnageer, Foulksmills, raised her family with her husband Dan in Kilbraney, Gusserane. They had 15 children: Paddy, Josie, Billy, Mary, Kathleen, PJ, the late Sonny, Eileen, Anne, Peg, Bernie, Pauline, Toddy, Edno and Martina.

A non smoker and a pioneer, Janie, who turned 95 on Thursday, enjoyed a wonderful night and she was very surprised with the arrival of some of her grandchildren from Spain.

Her daughter Mary, who travelled over from Ottawa for the party, said: 'We gave her a few surprises and she had a lovely night.'

Everyone enjoyed a birthday cake with Janie's face depicted on it in icing and a meal.

Janie, who lives in Carrigbyrne with her son Paddy and daughter-in-law Catherine, also enjoyed music by her grandson Ruben Buggy.

'She's a wonderful mother. We don't know how she managed to raise 15 of us. Her temperament is always the same and she is always calm. It was a lovely evening for her with everyone catching up with each other and the partying is still going on,' Mary said.
Regardless of the breed, no dog should ever be left unsupervised with a child

A new study has found that there is no scientific evidence backing up the assumption that certain breeds of dog are more dangerous than others and that the breed determines the likelihood of an animal behaving violently.

Dogs included on the Irish restricted breeds list include Rottweilers, Alsatians and Pit Bulls which means that their owners are required to adhere to certain rules such as keeping them muzzled and on a strong leash in public. This makes sense for any dog which may be inclined to be snappy or pose a threat to other animals and more importantly humans.

Those who are experienced and very comfortable with dogs see no need for these restrictions in the first place but my view is that it is better to be safe than sorry.

I can't understand why any family would have these 'restricted' breeds in a household with children given the many horror stories carried in the media over the years.

However, I can understand that owners who have reared their animal as a pet since birth would have confidence in their dog and feel that there is little or no risk involved.

It's a tricky one because if experts now say that these currently restricted breeds are now no more a threat than any others people might be more likely to disregard any risk at all.

The reason dogs such as Bull Mastifs are included on this list is because of their sheer might and strength.

They have the ability to severely maim or kill a human being, particularly if there is more than one animal involved so this list is just a way of warning owners to the risk.

Yes, a Jack Russell can bite as well, but they are smaller and less menacing and possible easier for a person to physically deal with if attacked.

Perhaps those with vast experience of different breeds would take a different view, but everything portrayed in the media about these breeds indicates that their basic nature is vicious and menacing.

If anyone wants a good guard dog - they get an Alsation. If they want a house pet they get a Chihuahua or a Pomeranian or a King Charles Spaniel - something cuddly and small which doesn't have the ability to rip their leg off.

Regardless of the breed, I don't believe that any dog should ever be left unsupervised with a child. Why take the risk?
A fascinating window into the New Ross area and Ireland in 1916 was provided by historian Jimmy FitzGibbon at a talk held at Hook Lighthouse on Wednesday night.

Mr FitzGibbon was contacted by Philip Murphy of Graiguenamangh last year when he found copies of the New Ross Standard, The Freeman's Journal and the Irish Independent as he was clearing out the store room of his relative's premises in the town, who were selling agents for the newspapers.

'Someone hadn't collected their bundle of newspapers. They were folded up together. As soon a I heard I rushed to Graiguenamanagh and found this unique copy,' Mr FitzGibbon said. 'It described how the previous edition of April 28 was not produced "because of disturbances in Dublin". I didn't realise until I was going through it how important this edition was.'

Mr FitzGibbon said the newspaper was quite fragile. 'When I went through it I said it would be interesting to give a talk on it. The edition had to go through the censor based in Queenstown in County Cork. It was registered at the GPO and could be posted for an additional penny to anywhere in the empire or to people living in the two Americas.'

At the penultimate summer talk at the lighthouse, Mr FitzGibbon read through the newspaper alerting the audience, who were mainly tourists, to items of interest in the one penny newspaper's pages. The edition was particularly important from a historical perspective as the previous edition was not produced due to censorship and martial law imposed by British forces following the 1916 Rising in mid-April. 'Reports of what was happening in Dublin two weeks before were featured, but were biased against the Irish. There was an editorial from the Gorey Guardian included which was critical of the vandalism and looting in Dublin by rebels.'

The newspaper editorial describes how the newspaper did not come out for the first time in its 87-year history due to martial law. 'It contained two weeks' news and would have been eagerly awaited by local readers of the time as there were no daily newspapers available across the district.'

The front page features details of births, deaths and marriages in the district and advertisements taken out by local businesses. There were reports of the Great War and how two local men had died in the conflict.

The edition featured very little sport, focusing more in detail on the price of commodities like milk and butter and on how the army was looking to buy horses for the British army for the Great War.

Attendees at the talk were able to peruse the edition.
The Government seems to want to punish the public for its own abject failure to address the housing crisis.

The announcement this week that Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy will seek to penalise property owners who don't - or can't - lease out their houses is nothing short of breath taking.

Rather than building new homes for the thousands of families languishing on social housing waiting lists Minister Murphy wants to use vacant houses to deal with the crisis.

Essentially the Fine Gael Government wants the electorate to fix a problem for them and if we don't we'll be punished.

Elderly people - who have worked hard and paid their taxes all their lives - will be 'encouraged' to rent out their family homes while they live in a nursing home.

Under the current 'Fair Deal' scheme the vast majority of the that rent would be hoovered up by the state. This means elderly people and their families would face a stark choice.

They could either lease out their family home and hand most of the rent over to the Government or keep the house - one that might have been in a family for generations - and face stiff penalties for their intransigence.

What if an elderly nursing home resident who has leased out their home passes away and their family opt to sell the home?

Does the tenant just get evicted? Would the family be forced to keep a house they can't afford until told otherwise?

What of those holiday homes that lie vacant for much of the year? Are the owners to be further punished because they have the audacity to have a holiday home?

Will homeless families be forced to move into vacant holiday houses in isolated rural areas?

Areas that in many cases don't have the facilities (schools, doctors, post offices, public transport, broadband etc) to cope with them and where jobs are few and far between as it is.

And what of the international vulture funds that were allowed snap up thousands of homes for a pittance? Will they be penalised for leaving many of those units vacant?

Will county councils be penalised over the thousands of existing council houses that lie vacant and can't be brought up to standard because the Government won't fund the repairs.

In additional to the vaguely defined 'penalties' Minister Murphy says he wants more power to acquire vacant homes under compulsory purchase orders.

That boils down to a threat. If people won't sign up to Fine Gael's plan the government will just take their properties.

This time of year is typically used to fly a few political kites. Often outrageous suggestions designed to make eventual budget cuts and tax hikes more palatable. What is especially worrying about Minister Murphy's proposals is that they have a whiff of actual policy about them.

Most readers will be familiar with the fate of Garrett Fitzgerald's Government - another FG administration that depended on Independent support - after it tried to tax children's shoes in 1982.

Mr Varadkar would do well to dust off his history books.
Hook Head features prominently in a major article all about Ireland, in the summer edition of Mototurismo magazine, a special interest Italian publication which features itineraries and touring suggestions for motorbikers.

Tourism Ireland in Milan, in conjunction with Failte Ireland, invited journalists Marco Ghezzi and Claudio Vismara, from Mototurismo, to visit earlier this year. The resulting, extensive article features lots of great information and photographs of places like Hook Lighthouse and Tintern Abbey.

It includes suggestions on good places to eat, including Roches Bar in Duncannon.

Niamh Kinsella, Tourism Ireland's Manager Italy, said: 'We are delighted with the excellent coverage in the summer edition of Mototurismo magazine. It's an excellent way to spread the word about Wexford and Ireland to a large audience of potential Italian visitors.'

Last year Ireland welcomed 336,000 Italian visitors, up eight per cent on 2015.

Ms Kinsella said: 'Tourism Ireland is determined to ensure that success continues and we have an extensive programme of promotions under way in Italy in 2017.'
Rehab says 528 people with disabilities are on social housing waiting lists in County Wexford, but council officials and councillors say the figure seems a little high.

The charity says the government needs to take urgent action to address the crisis, which is depriving people with disabilities of their basic human rights.

The Rehab figure of Wexford of 528 would be it the fifth highest in the country of people with disabilities on the lists.

However, Wexford County Council said that an analysis of current housing records shows that 386 applicants suffer from 'an enduring health impairment'. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy between the council's and the Rehab figures.

Rehab says appropriate social housing remains a major stumbling block for people with disabilities.

Nationally a lack of availability and choice makes housing a significant issue for the 600,000 people with disabilities living in our communities.

Furthermore, more than 3000 people with disabilities are still living in institutions.

This figure does not include the 1,200 people under 65, most of whom have disabilities, inappropriately placed in nursing homes.

The organisation says the government is to blame for the situation and accuses it of demonstrating a complete lack of priority for people with disabilities.

Kathleen O'Meara, Rehab's Director of Communications and Public Affairs said: 'Ireland really needs to get to grips with how we support people with disabilities to live in their own homes.

'These figures show the Government is failing our most vulnerable members of society. The right to a home is a critical human right.'

Asked about the situation, Cllr George Lawlor, who deals with housing issues on a daily basis, said the Rehab figure 'seemed a little high'. 'The council do their utmost to assist people with disabilities in the area of housing,' he said. 'The letting priorities have changed. In the past the length of time on the list was a key factor, but this has now changed and the condition and suitability of the accommodation you are in carry more weight than the length of time,' said Cllr Lawlor.'The council ploughs hundreds of thousand of euros every year into adaptation grants to assist people who require assistance to remain in their own homes, The figure of 528 would seem extremely high given the number of housing applicant cases I see coming in.. not many of them from people with disabilities. The figure of 528 would represent one in eight applicants and I doubt that,' said Cllr Lawlor.
Musician Sharon Shannon and her band have been announced in the line up for this year's Sligo Live music festival in October.

The Clare accordionist will perform live at 8pm on Saturday, 28th October 2017 in the Hawk's Well Theatre.

Festival Co-Producer, Rory O'Connor, confirmed that tickets will go on sale on-line from Sligolive.ie and in the Hawks Well (071 916 1518) today, August 15th.

"This is Sharon's first Sligo concert for many years and we expect lots of interest in the tickets. We saw her show in Cambridge Folk Festival recently and she and her band played a blinder. It was one of the best received shows in the whole festival and the four piece band played a very varied and crowd-pleasing programme with some excellent vocal numbers," he said.

Sharon has entertained US Presidents Clinton at the White House and Obama in Dublin and Irish Presidents Robinson and MacAleese on presidential visits to Poland and Australia respectively. She recently accompanied Irish president Michael D. Higgins on his official tour of China

Among the many awards she has received including Hot Press and Meteor Awards. She also celebrates being the youngest ever recipient of the Meteor Lifetime Achievement Award.

Her most recent album Sacred Earth Sharon released In March, sees her bringing African music into the mix for the first time. The Guardian critic, Robin Denselow, said "Sharon has perfectly mastered an African/Irish crossover Sacred Earth is a rousing reminder of why she is still so unique."

Tickets for this all-seated intimate performance are 24.50 plus s.c. They are on sale from www.sligolive.ie, Ticketmaster and the Hawk's Well Theatre (071 9161518).
He may have gone from Sligo but Sligo is still very much in the heart of retired GP and author Dr Paddy Henry.

Speaking to The Sligo Champion, from his new home in Dublin, the almost 89-year-old spoke of how much he misses General Practice.

For Paddy, who served the community in Rosses Point as GP for 62 years, the hardest part of retirement is missing his patients.

"If I could only see my patients I would be quite happy. I miss the fact that you were doing something useful to help people. I wanted to do something good for humanity," he said.

On his retirement two years ago, Paddy received more than 150 letters from his patients, which was a source of some consolation to him on giving up his practice.

"I found it very hard to retire. After receiving those letters I felt that I had done some good," he said.

He was the fifth President of the Irish College of General Practitioners.

"There were seven presidents after me deceased, I'm still trying to keep out of the Departure Lounge," he laughed.

Indeed, laughter is something Paddy feels strongly about in medicine and has written five books in total, two on humour in medicine: The Healing Power of Humour and Ha-Ha-Ha: Further Observations, anecdotes and thoughts of life in general practice.

His books were written in aid of North West Hospice and copies are still available there.

"Laughter is the most wonderful tranquilizer with no side effects," he said.

He sent a copy of his second book to Queen Elizabeth when she visited this country in 2011.

"I got a letter back from her, thanking me for the book and saying she appreciated the humour," said Paddy.

He recalled an incident with one of his patients years ago: having delivered a baby successfully in a nursing home, the mother, instead of thanking him, admonished him. She had seen him swimming at Rosses Point a few days previously and she had said to her husband, "look where he is if I needed him."

He and his wife Mary, who have three children, recently celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary.

His secrets to a long and happy marriage? "Clean living and stick with the one woman!"
He's been on radio stations and newspapers around the globe following his witty response to an Australian customer who called his integrity into question on a TripAdvisor review but restaurateur Anthony Gray has come out of the episode all smiles following a witty response.

An Australian called Graham had recently visited Anthony's restaurant, Eala Bhan on Rockwood Parade but left his windbreaker and a pair of glasses behind.

He became irate when it wasn't sent on to him quickly enough and took to TripAdvisor to say that while the food was good at the restaurant, he called into question the integrity of Mr Gray over the fact he was waiting on his jacket.

The jacket is now on its way to Australia, Anthony told The Sligo Champion and not only that, but the Sligoman has paid for the 18 cost and has extended an open invitation to the Australian tourist to return some day when he'll treat him to an overnight and another meal.

It was Anthony's witty response to the review that has got everyone talking and as far as he is concerned, all publicity is good publicity and he saw it as yet another chance to plug his beloved Sligo.

"When I wrote the reply I was hoping someone might pick up on it all right and there was obviously a bit of method to my madness but I never thought it would global like it has.

"I was upset at him calling my integrity into question and I was always going to respond. I mean what he said was just rubbish, I hadn't even met him and I didn't even know him so it was very unfair of him to say what he said," said Anthony.

The story has been picked up all across Australia and Anthony has been interviewed by the Australian Daily Mail and several Irish national newspapers and radio stations including 2FM.

"Look, it's all good for Sligo as far as I'm concerned. As everyone knows I'm not slow in promoting the county and I see this as an excellent opportunity to generate as much positive publicity as I can," he said.

He's also been getting plenty of calls and emails of support. People have emailed him from New York, Canada, Australia and the US.

"It was just mad there for a couple of days and it's slowing down now a bit. It's all good and if it attracts more people to the county then it has been worth it," said Anthony.

Latest tourism figures show a rise in North American visitors to the country but a significant drop from those living in Britain as Brexit fears heighten.

"Brexit is a factor and we need as much positivity as we can get. I'll always encourage people to come to Sligo and I saw the TripAdvisor review as an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive with the hope of creating good publicity for Sligo as well.

"My response was a bit of craic and was tongue in cheek and I just fired it back. It wasn't a bad review by Graham, he gave us a three star rating but he called my integrity into question so I decided to turn it around on its head and I'm quite happy I achieved this," said Anthony, who also owns Tra Bhan restaurant in Strandhill.

Graham, from Sydney wrote in his review: "My wife and i were visiting Sligo from Australia & Restaurant Eala Bhan was recommended to us for evening Dining. Based on that recommendation, we decided to Dine there on the only evening we were staying in Sligo.

"The food was quite reasonable, however we were extremely disappointed to find that the operator lacked integrity. This comment is based on the fact that I accidentally left my Wind Breaker with Eye glasses in pocket.

"We only discovered this when we arrived at our next destination, so rang and spoke to the Restaurant Manager (Anthony Gray) who confirmed that the jacket was with them. Based on his agreement to forward the jacket to me, I e-mailed details of my credit card to cover all costs to return the garment to me.

"When it did not arrive within a week or so, I re-emailed twice with no response. My wife and I have since returned to Australia, short of one jacket and one pair of glasses. Bottom line is, food might be OK but integrity is seriously lacking."

And, Anthony's celebrated reply was: "We are delighted you enjoyed your meal at multi award winning restaurant here in Sligo serving the finest local sourced ingredients on the very edge of the beautiful Wild Atlantic Way!

"I apologise that you forgot your jacket and glasses while dining with us. I apologise that I had not immediately sent your belongings back to Australia. I should have done a Joe ninety on it and hot tailed it up to the local post office and made your jacket a priority but unfortunately these things don't always happen the way you may have planed.

"I mean I'm only trying to run two restaurants in the middle of summer while my manager whom I'm delighted to say is 6 months pregnant but unfortunately is suffering God bless her wee soul and out of work resting - which I insisted on!!!

"Having 3 children myself under the age of 10 running around the house like gladiators and tearing to pieces while not going to bed on time, rising like ninjas at dawn, I am what you might say just a little tired and a tad busy.

"I should have pushed this way up my priority list but forgot and while all of this is going on I'm very busy busting a gut here and in the UK promoting my beloved Sligo. Why do I do this?

"I love my town, I love its people, I love every tourist that graces this beautiful part of the world and provides me and my staff with a living.

"People make mistakes and forget things just like you did with your possessions. But to come on TripAdvisor and review me about my lack of postal skills honesty and integrity beggars belief considering I never laid my mince pies eyes on you! I mean you are butchering my name insofar as my forgetfulness yet it was your forgetfulness that has us here!!!! POT KETTLE BLACK!!

"Your possessions are en route you will be glad to know!!! And as far as my honesty is concerned I'm not even going to charge your credit card for the post. Furthermore the next time you visit the beautiful Emerald Isle and my County I'll bring you shopping locally for a new Wind breaker. As far I see it's a bit of a crime against fashion."
There should be no further delays with the upgrading of the Tubbercurry, Grange, Strandhill and Ballinafad sewerage treatment plants following a decision by An Bord Pleanala yesterday (Monday).

Significant commercial and housing development, especially in Strandhill and Grange has been held up as the schemes have been operating at full capacity for years.

The Tubbercurry River, the receiving water for primary discharge at present has a long history of pollution. Under the new upgrade the discharge point will move to the Moy River, 5k away.

It's been a frustrating time too for residents in the towns and villages affected but the latest delay has now been overcome and Fianna Fail TD, Marc MacSharry has called on Irish Water to now get on with the work as soon as possible.

"It is galling to see such unnecessary delay for many years when considering the finance was available for these projects through the Department of the Environment going back to the FF lead Government of 2002-2007.

"It is a failure of public administration that a decade or more has been lost preventing these communities from enjoying the infrastructure they are entitled to under the Urban waste water treatment directive 1991 and the Urban waste water treatment regulations 2001-2010.

"We want immediate commencement of works with timely completion dates. These delays have prevented natural growth and development in each of Ballinafad, Tubbercurry, Strandhill and Grange" said Deputy MacSharry. He added: "This cannot be tolerated any longer with a national housing crisis and communities anxious to develop to their potential. No more excuses, the people deserve and are entitled to these upgrades so the message for Irish water and the Fine Gael Government is clear - get on with it."

An Bord Pleanala turned down an appeal from one objector in the Tubbercurry area who was the owner of lands subjected to compulsory acquisition.

An oral hearing into the matter took place in Sligo last June and on Monday the board issued its decision.

In all the upgrading schemes required permanent way leaves across 29 properties, temporary working areas involving 56 properties and a permanent right of way across two properties. There was only one objection from James Calvey.

He had plans to build an agricultural shed that would have been located directly over the proposed pipe if installed. He had already been approved in principle for grant funding for the shed. As a landowner downstream of the proposed discharge point he also had concerns about the standard of treatment.
Many tributes were paid to Sr Mary online from past pupils of the Ursuline Convent.

She was regarded by many as a "firm but fair principal" during her tenure 1973-1990.

"I was very sad to hear of Sr. Mary's passing," wrote Roseanna Gaughan of the Class of 1974.

"Over the years I've thought about her frequently. She invited me to help out by teaching Irish for a few weeks in 1978 when Miss Lee was absent due to illness.

"I had made a mess of university and was drifting with no idea what to do with my life, so her invitation was a lifeline. She invited me to talk with her on a few occasions and she knew I was troubled, as young people often are.

"Yet she never pried, was never judgemental, and encouraged me to do things I lacked the confidence to do. To this day, I think the invitation was, at least in part, a conspiracy between Sr Mary and my mother to help me find my way, and it worked. I'll always remember her with great affection," Roseanna told The Sligo Champion. Sr. Mary had previously been known as Sr. Ciaran in the 70's.
On the night before she died, when asked for the hundredth time how she was feeling, former principal of the Ursuline Convent Sr Mary Gilbride replied, "on top of the world, darling."

The Grange native passed away peacefully at the Ursuline community residence in Temple Street last Wednesday, 9th August. She would have been 83 years old on August 26th.

Professed as an Ursuline nun on 20th August 1959, and qualified as a Home Economics and Religion teacher, Sr Mary was remembered as a "great educator" and "visionary" by members of her congregation.

She served as principal of the Ursuline College in Finisklin, Sligo, from 1973-1990.

She went on to become Congregational Leader of the Irish Ursuline Union from 1990-1996.

"She made an enormous contribution, she was an educator par excellence," her colleague Sr Dorothy told The Sligo Champion.

"She was a visionary. She could see a future many of us couldn't see. And to the end she was like that, despite her illness," she said.

"She had a wonderful presence. Very much into the Humanity side of things. While there was firmness, there was a fairness trying to get justice. She was a very compassionate woman as well," added Sr Dorothy.

Requiem mass in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was con-celebrated by nine priests, with Fr Gerard Cryan the lead celebrant.

"She wouldn't gild the lillies," said Fr Cryan in his homily, referring to her 'no nonsense' style, "but she made sure they were watered, tended to and pruned if necessary."

Fr Cryan, who got to know St Mary in her latter years, said she challenged and comforted in equal measure and said her matter-of-fact and practical manner made her a good diocesan advisor.

"She endured some very difficult years," he said, referring to her battle with illness, adding that she had suffered in her time from cancer and TB but was "always a Christian stoic" who would practice the words of the Ursuline founder, St Angela: "Be consoled. Do not doubt. Persevere faithfully and take care not to lose your fervour."

Elphin Bishop Emeritus Christy Jones attended to say the final prayers over her coffin.

"There's always something very special about the funeral mass of a Religious. We're celebrating a life which was offered to God 50 years ago," he told mourners.

"She was a woman of great wisdom. Life has become very tough for religious in the last few decades, especially because of a hostile media. But the whole of society has been enriched by the prayer of the Religious and will be impoverished as they pass on," said Bishop Jones.

Past and present staff and pupils of the Ursuline College formed a guard of honour outside the Cathedral as Sr Mary's remains were carried to the hearse, for the short drive to her final resting place in the Ursuline Convent Cemetery Finisklin.
Get your ponchos and sombreros at the ready for Newcastle Parish's Mexican themed fair on Saturday August 26.

The fair will take place from midday until 4 p.m. in St. Francis School Grounds, Newcastle.

William Bennett, Rector Newcastle & Newtownmountkennedy said: 'We're all really looking forward to our annual themed summer fair.

'It's always a fun family day out and all our neighbours in surrounding communities are particularly welcome.

'There will be lots of stalls, and something for everyone- toys, books, bric-a-brac, clothes, cakes, country pantry, plants and flowers and lucky squares with a big cash prize. For the children there will be games and face painting.'

Refreshments will include Mexican food, burgers, smoothies, ice cream and drinks. Everyone welcome and fancy dress is optional but will add to the fun of the fair.
People across Wicklow are being urged to celebrate unpaid carers.

The Irish Red Cross is calling for Wicklow to celebrate its unpaid carers by nominating them for the 2017 Irish Red Cross Carer of the Year Award. The award is open to any member of the public currently providing voluntary care.

Pat Carey, Chairman of the Irish Red Cross, said: 'unpaid carers offer a standard of living to sick and vulnerable members of the community that would be impossible without their selfless commitment. It is essential that both Carers and care recipients are recognised and supported members of our communities and of society as a whole.'

Nomination can be made online at www.redcross.ie and should be returned by Thursday, August 31.
The family of the late Arklow fisherman Lenny Hughes have paid tribute to his memory at a fundraising event in aid of Arklow RNLI.

The event took place recently at Jack White's and raised a total of 7,500. Speaking to the Wicklow People, Lenny's sister Lucy Hayes said that the family was overwhelmed with the level of support received.

'It went far beyond our expectations. We had hoped to raise around 2,500 as it costs that much to send the Lifeboat out for eight hours. We had no idea how much it costs to send the Lifeboat for a day and it was out for three weeks searching for Leonard,' Lucy said.

Arklow Lifeboat led an extensive search for Lenny after he was lost at sea last year.

The Hughes family hosted an auction on the night and also sold raffle tickets to raise as much money as they could.

'My sisters went around to local businesses and they were so generous with their donations. We had an excellent attendance on the night as well,' she added.

The Hughes family, including Lenny's daughter Rebecca gathered at Arklow Lifeboat Station to hand over the proceeds last week.

'We were very proud to have raised this money in memory of Leonard and it was a pleasure to hand it over to the Lifeboat volunteers in support of the great work they do,' Lucy added.
One of the councillors at the heart of the Sinn Fein row has called on Deputy John Brady to resign.

Cllr Gerry O'Neill said that Deputy Brady has 'made a total mess of the party' and said he needs to resign.

'I'm calling for John Brady's resignation because he has made a total mess of the party in the county since he was elected to Leinster House. He would have been better off representing his constituents in the Dail and leave the local councillors to do the work in the county.'

Cllr O'Neill said that in the past two years in Wicklow more than 50 people have resigned from the party or let their membership lapse.

He went on to say that Deputy Brady's recent allegations regarding himself, Cllr John Snell (Rathnew) and Cllr Oliver O'Brien (Bray) 'were totally outrageous and totally untrue'.

'He knows as well as I do that at least 80 per cent of the Sinn Fein members in the county are with us and that the 14 members of the Driver-O'Boyle Cumann in Blessington are fully behind me. To suggest that my Director of Elections for the past 20 years is with him is also untrue.

'It is true that one former member has rejoined and is now linked to John Brady.

'As chairman of the local Sinn Fein Branch in Blessington I have had reason to dismiss some people over the years for anti-social behaviour and he is more than welcome to them at any time', said Cllr O'Neill.

'We [the three councillors] are considering taking legal action over some of the comments Deputy Brady made on East Coast Radio.'

Cllr O'Neill said he has been heartened by the amount of support they have received from members all over the country. 'We've gotten huge support. It's a pity it has come to this. John Brady needs to resign for the sake of the party. To dump three councillors in such a fashion is disgraceful,' he said. 'You have to have a bit of respect for people and we didn't get that.'

Cllr O'Neill said that he felt Deputy Brady and others have 'drifted away from Sinn Fein policy' and said he hoped the party would see sense because the problems are not just in Wicklow but nationwide.

Cllr O'Neill said the three councillors will now be focusing on consolidating their seats and 'we will be putting out names forward for election'.
The developer of a wind farm in south Wicklow has launched High Court proceedings against protesters its claims are interfering with works designed to connect the project to the national electricity grid.

The proceedings have been brought by Ballycumber Wind Farm Limited, which claims that the protesters are putting themselves in harm's way of dangerous equipment, including excavation machinery, in order to prevent works from being carried out.

The works, which include the laying of cable, are being carried out to connect the six-turbine wind farm at Ballycumber, Tinahely, to an ESB sub-station at Kilmagig near Avoca.

The company said if the alleged interference is allowed to continue, the firm will suffer serious financial damage of up 3.1 million.

The firm has sought injunctions preventing the protesters from impeding, interfering or obstructing works being carried out to link the wind farm with the ESB sub-station.

The company is also seeking orders preventing the defendants from obstructing it from carrying out grid connection works being carried out on what the company says are public roads.

On Monday last, Stephen Dowling Bl for the company told the High Court the protesters are allegedly members of of a group known as the South Wicklow Wind Action Group. Counsel said that in the last week the contractor hired to carry out works were not able to do their job after people had stood in front of a JCB digger.

Counsel said that communications from the protesters suggested that the works were being carried out on private lands and amounted to a trespass. Counsel said this is disputed and the company is conducting works on public roads only. No works are being carried out on private lands, counsel added.

Mr Dowling said that the the grid connection works are vital to the 31m wind farm project.

The project has a timeline whereby the wind farm will be ready to supply electricity by December 2017. The protests, counsel said, are putting that timeline in jeopardy and that important completion deadlines for various stages of the process will be missed.

Permission to serve short notice of the injunction application on the protesters was granted, on an ex parte basis by Mr Justice Charles Meenan.

The judge made the matter returnable to later this week.
County Wicklow's Lauren Flanagan has been selected as one of Ireland's two UN Youth Delegates for 2017/2018.

The Kilquade lady will be joined this autumn by Paul Dockery from Dromod in County Leitrim when they go to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The programme is run by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Irish Aid, and the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI), which represents organisations working with over 380,000 young people each year.

Valerie Duffy of the NYCI said: 'We are making this announcement to coincide with International Youth Day to remind young people of the importance of participating in decision making on issues affecting their lives, today and every day. The UN Youth Delegate Programme provides an exciting opportunity for Irish young people.

'After a competitive selection process which saw applications from all over the country, in Lauren and Paul we are delighted to have selected two impressive young people who will work throughout 2017 and 2018 to highlight youth issues at local, national, European, and global levels.'

While in New York, Lauren and Paul will speak on behalf of young people in Ireland at the UN Third Committee at the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly in September and October 2017.

As part of their role, the delegates will be attending youth events and consultations in Ireland before and after the UN General Assembly in order to consult with young people and take what they hear and research to New York.

'The UN Youth Delegate Programme aims to ensure that young people are more involved in decision making at the UN, and that the views of young people in Ireland are taken into account. The Irish UN Youth Delegates will work with delegates from other countries to produce a Youth Delegate Declaration so that the voices of young people can be acted on,' said Ms Duffy.

Those holding youth events in Ireland can contact unyouth@nyci.ie to invite the Irish UN Youth Delegates to attend. The delegates will also address a youth summit on peace and justice, as part of One World Week organised by the NYCI, which will take place on November 23 in the Aviva Stadium.
The lifeboat locates two kayakers who were overdue back at shore and unaware that they were being searched for

It has been a busy week for the crew of Arklow RNLI as they attended three callouts in eight days.

The most recent shout took place on Sunday shortly after noon when Arklow, assisted by two Wicklow RNLI vessels and the Coast Guard Rescue Helicopter 116 launched in search of two kayakers who were overdue back to Ennereilly Strand on the North coast of Arklow.

In worsening slight seas, Arklow Lifeboat proceeded to the last reported position of the kayakers in the vicinity of the northernmost wind turbine on Arklow Bank approximately eight miles from shore and established a search pattern.

On the second leg of the search, approximately one mile east of Mizen Head, the kayakers were located by Arklow Lifeboat and Rescue 116. They were in good spirits and heading toward the shore and unaware the search was ongoing for them.

Given that conditions were expected to worsen it was decided to take them aboard Arklow Lifeboat, which then returned to base, where the kayakers came ashore safely.

Once they had been located all lifeboats and the helicopter were stood down and returned to station.

Following the incident, Mark Corcoran, Arklow RNLI Community Safety/Press Officer said: 'Thankfully we were able to locate both these people today, if any members of the public ever see anyone in distress or know that someone is overdue back to shore, they need to contact 999 or 112 and alert the Coast Guard who will then task helicopters or lifeboats to the area. Once again, I can't stress enough the need to respect the water and also to always carry a mean of calling for help and be contactable.'

On Friday, the Arklow Lifeboat launched at 5.13 p.m. to assist flank station Courtown RNLI and Waterford based Rescue 117 Helicopter in an ongoing rescue.

Arklow Lifeboat proceeded to the scene approximately one mile east of Ardamine Beach, south of Courtown Harbour to assist Courtown Lifeboat and Irish Coast Guard Helicopter Rescue 117 in an already active rescue.

Once on scene, the Arklow crew assisted the Courtown volunteers, who were already in the water dealing with a casualty who had fallen from a 'doughnut' which was being towed by a jet ski. The casualty had suspected spinal injuries.

To enable the rescue helicopter to conduct an airlift safely, Arklow Lifeboat and her crew proceeded to clear the area of vessels and other leisure craft which had put to sea to try assist with the rescue. Following this, Arklow Lifeboat took aboard three casualties who had put to sea to try assist in the rescue but had ended up adrift.

Once the helicopter and Courtown Crew had completed the airlift of their two casualties, Arklow RNLI proceeded to Courtown Harbour where the three casualties aboard were transferred to Courtown lifeboat and brought ashore in Courtown.

Arklow Lifeboat then returned to sea and successfully located a vessel that had been of assistance during the rescue. The lifeboat and her volunteers then returned to Arklow.

There was more drama on Saturday, August 5, when the Lifeboat launched during the Maritime Festival in Arklow.

Following receipt of a distress call after the Blessing of the Fleet, Arklow Lifeboat was launched. In the meantime, Courtown Sea Safari Vessel 'Stitches', which is crewed and owned by RNLI Volunteers and which had been conducting boat trips as part of the festival had taken the casualty vessel on tow to prevent it drifting closer to shore.

The towline was then transferred to Arklow Lifeboat which then towed the eight metre yacht and its crew of four back into harbour.
Relatives of a seven-year-old boy missing after the Barcelona terror attack have flown to Spain in their desperate search for him.

The family of Julian Alessandro Cadman - who is understood to be a dual British-Australian national - have appealed for information about his whereabouts after he became separated from his mother.

Julian's father and grandmother are travelling to Spain from Australia as they await news, family member Debbie Cadman said.

Grandfather Tony Cadman has urged people to share a photograph of Julian on Facebook.

He wrote: "My grandson, Julian Alessandro Cadman, is missing. Please like and share. We have found Jom (my daughter in law) and she is (in a) serious but stable condition in hospital.

"Julian is seven years old and was out with Jom when they were separated, due to the recent terrorist activity. Please share if you have family or friends in Barcelona."

Expand Close Julian is missing CREDIT: JOM CADMAN / Facebook

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Whatsapp Julian is missing CREDIT: JOM CADMAN

In the photograph, Julian is wearing a jumper with a crest that says Chiddingstone Nursery, which is a nursery school in Kent.

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On Saturday the Philippines government said a seven-year-old child who is missing following the attack is the son of a 43-year-old Filipino woman who had been living in Australia.

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Sarah Arriola said the woman was with her son in Barcelona to attend the wedding of a cousin from the Philippines.

Ms Arriola said the woman, who was seriously injured, became separated from her child in the attack, and her British husband is headed to Barcelona to try to find his son.

After Mr Cadman made a plea for information, Prime Minister Theresa May said UK authorities were "urgently looking into reports" that a child, who has dual British nationality, is missing.

On Saturday Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, without naming the child, asked people to pray for a young Australian boy who is missing in the wake of the attack.

He said the boy's mother was badly injured and is in hospital.

"All of us as parents know the anguish his father is going through, and his whole family is going through, as they rush to seek to find him in Barcelona," Mr Turnbull added.
Dramatic footage shows the heroic moment in which a man saved a baby from the path of the Barcelona terror attack.

In a video released by El Pais, the man can be seen pushing a pram to safety as the van involved in the attack continues speeding down the pedestrianised Las Ramblas at around 5pm yesterday.

The CCTV footage from inside a local museum captures some of the terrifying scenes outside as pedestrians are seen running from the vehicles path.

It is unknown whether the man knew the child in the pushchair.

At least 13 people were killed and more than 100 others were injured as the driver drove through crowds along a 500m stretch of the area.

An Irish-Filipino family were among those injured in the attack on Las Ramblas.

Norman Potot (45) from Ballsbridge Co Dublin was on holiday with his wife, Pederlita Fernandez Potot (39) and their two children Nailah Pearl Potot (9) and Nathaniel Paul Potot (5) when the tragedy occurred.

Around 70 miles away in the seaside town of Cambrils, five terrorists wearing fake suicide belts were shot dead by police early on Friday after ramming pedestrians with a car in a second attack.

One female civilian died and six other people, including a police officer, were injured.
Moroccan Driss Oukabir, bottom left, whose ID card may may have been taken by his brother and, elsehwere, scenes on Las Ramblas in Barcelona Credit: AFP

The terror cell responsible for attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils has been dismantled, but a manhunt for one suspect is continuing, Spanish authorities have said.

At a press conference on Saturday Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said police have broken the "terrorist cell from Barcelona" - after he said five members were killed, four were in detention and as many as two were killed in an explosion.

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He said no new attacks were imminent, that they will be maintaining the country's terrorist threat alert at level four, and security at popular events and tourist sites around the country will be reinforced.

Catalan Police spokesman Albert Oliva later confirmed a manhunt is under way for any remaining members of the Islamic extremist cell, with the search focused on Younes Abouyaaqoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan.

He said officers have carried out nine searches of properties in Ripoll, the northern Catalan town where Abouyaaqoub and the other suspects lived.

Abouyaaqoub has been named in Spanish media as the suspected driver of the van which was used in the massacre on Las Ramblas that left 13 dead and nearly 130 injured.

Expand Close Tourists wait for the police to allow them to come back to their hotel on the Rambla boulevard after a van ploughed into the crowd, killing at least 13 people and injuring around 100 others is towed away from the Rambla in Barcelona. Photo: AFP/Getty Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Tourists wait for the police to allow them to come back to their hotel on the Rambla boulevard after a van ploughed into the crowd, killing at least 13 people and injuring around 100 others is towed away from the Rambla in Barcelona. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

In the wake of the twin attacks Spain's King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia visited the victims of the atrocity and spoke to medical staff at Barcelona's Hospital del Mar.

The royal couple then laid a wreath on Las Ramblas promenade, among a growing number of candles and floral tributes.

They were joined by Catalonia regional president Carles Puigdemont and surrounded by throngs of people.

On Friday it emerged another suspect, Moussa Oukabir, who is thought to have rented the van, was among five men shot dead as they launched a second attack in the coastal town of Cambrils.

Expand Close Spain's King Felipe and Queen Letizia visited the Potot family today in Barcelona / Facebook

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Whatsapp Spain's King Felipe and Queen Letizia visited the Potot family today in Barcelona

The teenager, said to be 17 or 18 years old, is suspected of using his brother's documents to hire the vehicle that ploughed through pedestrians in the tourist hotspot on Thursday evening.

He reportedly died along with Said Aallaa, 19, and Mohamed Hychami, 24, who were part of a group that mounted a similar attack in Cambrils that left one woman dead and six people injured.

The identities of the other two dead attackers are yet to be confirmed by police.

Four men, aged 21, 27, 28 and 34, who were arrested in connection with the attack remain in custody.

Three are Moroccan and one Spanish, and police said none of them was previously known to the security services for terror-related reasons.

Moussa Oukabir's older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reported to be one of those detained.

Some 34 nationalities were among almost 130 people wounded in the attacks in Las Ramblas and in Cambrils, which lies around 70 miles to the south west.

Catalan authorities said they have identified eight victims of the attack in Barcelona as an Italian, two Portuguese, three Spanish, one Spanish-Argentine and an American.

The victim of the second assault in Cambrils has been identified as a Spanish woman.

Family members or government officials have said another two Italians, a Belgian and a Canadian are also amongst the dead following the attack in Barcelona.

Relatives of a seven-year-old who became separated from his mother during the Barcelona attack have travelled to Spain from Australia as the wait for news continues, it has been reported.

Speaking after the family made an initial plea for help to find Julian Cadman, Prime Minister Theresa May said a child with dual British nationality was believed to be among those unaccounted for.

Authorities said 53 people injured in the attacks were still in hospital on Saturday, with 13 in a critical condition and 22 in a serious condition.

Police said the terrorists behind the rampage were preparing bigger attacks, with a suspected gas explosion on Wednesday at a house in Alcanar believed to have robbed the killers of materials to use in larger-scale operations.

Catalan regional police official Josep Lluis Trapero told reporters on Friday: "We think they were preparing at least one or more attacks in Barcelona.

"The explosion in Alcanar at least avoided some of the material they were counting on to carry out even bigger attacks than the ones that happened.

"Because of that the attack in Barcelona and the one in Cambrils were carried out in a bit more rudimentary way than the one they had initially planned."

On Saturday police carried out controlled explosions in Alcanar, and also raided the house of an imam believed to be the radicalising force behind the cell, the Associated Press reported.

Police are also looking for a white Kangoo vehicle which is believed to have been rented by the suspects and could have crossed the border into France, according to French media.

The attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils took place around eight hours apart on Thursday afternoon and in the early hours of Friday.

In an echo of the London Bridge attack in June, Mr Puigdemont said the five terrorists in the Cambrils car were wearing fake suicide belts when they were stopped.

Police said that an axe and knives were also found in the vehicle, with one of the latter used to wound one person in the face before the terrorists were gunned down.
Brigadier General Ali Qanso at the Defence Ministry as the Lebanese army launched operations against Islamic State (AP/Bilal Hussein)

Brigadier General Ali Qanso at the Defence Ministry as the Lebanese army launched operations against Islamic State (AP/Bilal Hussein)

Lebanon's US-backed army has launched its biggest military operation yet against Islamic State militants with a foothold along the border with Syria.

The long-awaited campaign aims to defeat the militants in their last enclave and put an end to a terror threat that has loomed over the country for years.

The Lebanese Hezbollah group and the Syrian army announced a simultaneous offensive to clear IS militants from the Syrian side of the border, in the western Qalamoun mountain range.

Hezbollah has been fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria since 2013.

Lebanese president Michel Aoun telephoned field commanders from the Defence Ministry where he was monitoring operations.

According to TV broadcasts, he said: "You will not disappoint us. Our hearts and minds are with you."

Operations commenced before dawn, with the military striking IS positions in the eastern border areas with Syria, Brigadier General Ali Qanso said.

He warned of a difficult battle ahead. The barren hills in eastern Lebanon will leave infantry exposed to IS snipers, and the militants are expected to mine the area on a vast scale.

A group of IS militants, including a self-styled "emir" or local commander, surrendered to the advancing Hezbollah and Syrian forces by midday, according to Hezbollah's Central Military Media outlet, run jointly with the Syrian military.

Lebanese authorities insist they are not coordinating with Mr Assad's government and Mr Qanso said the army was not even coordinating with Hezbollah.

That would spare Washington the potential embarrassment of appearing to be allied with a group it classifies as a terror organisation.

The US is a key patron of the Lebanese army and top brass from the Pentagon visited Lebanon in the run-up to the operation.

Nevertheless, Hezbollah ministers hold key portfolios in the Lebanese government, and the country is now accustomed to seeing the militant group run operations in parallel with the army.

The presence of extremists in the border area has brought suffering to neighbouring towns and villages, from shelling to kidnappings for ransom.

Car bombs made in the area and sent to other parts of the country, including the Lebanese capital, Beirut, have killed scores of people.

The army has accumulated steady successes against the militants in the past year, slowly clawing back territory, including strategic hills retaken in the past week.

Lebanon has seen sectarian infighting and random car bombings, particularly in 2014, when militants linked to al Qaida and IS overran the border region, kidnapping Lebanese soldiers.

Qanso said the army had no new information about the whereabouts of the soldiers kidnapped by IS militants.

Lebanese politicians say IS controls an area of about 300 sq km (115 square miles) between Syria and Lebanon, around half of which is in Lebanon.

About 600 jihadists, including snipers, are holed up in the Lebanese portion of the enclave, according to Mr Qanso.

They are armed with guided rockets, anti-armour rockets, mortars, and other heavy, medium, and light weaponry.

The area stretches from the Lebanese town of Arsal, and Christian villages of Ras Baalbek and Qaa, to the outskirts of Syria's Qalamoun region and parts of the western Syrian town of Qusair, which Hezbollah captured in 2013.

AP
Tributes for the victims of an attack in Turku, Finland (Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva via AP)

A suspect detained accused of stabbing two people to death in a knife attack in Finland is being investigated over murder with possible terrorist intent.

It appears that the man - an 18-year-old Moroccan asylum-seeker - targeted women during his rampage in two public squares, said Crista Granroth of the National Bureau of Investigation.

"We think the attacker was going after women," she said, adding that one man was wounded with a knife slash when he tried to stand between the attacker and a woman.

The Security Intelligence Service said the deadly stabbing attack was "a likely terror act".

Pekka Hiltunen said the agency was investigating the suspects' connections to the Islamic State group, since IS "has previously encouraged this kind of behaviour".

The suspect had yet to be questioned, while four others - also Moroccans living in Turku who know him - were detained on suspicion of involvement.

The dead from the apparent indiscriminate attack on Friday are Finnish citizens, while the eight wounded include one Italian, one Briton and one Swede.

Police said the suspect, whose name has not been released, was subdued with a shot in the thigh and that he is in hospital under guard.

Investigators say he came to Finland in early 2016 seeking asylum.

Police said they were working with colleagues from law enforcement abroad. The NBI said others involved in the investigation were the Security Intelligence Service, police in Turku and the European Union's police agency, Europol.

Europol was said to be helping to check whether there are connections to the events in Barcelona.

It was not known if the attack was linked to the decision in June by the Finnish Security Intelligence Service to raise its threat assessment.

At the time, it cited the country's "stronger profile within the radical Islamist propaganda". Finland was considered part of the coalition against the Islamic State group, it said.

Three of those wounded were still in intensive care. Four remain in hospital and four have been released. The youngest victim was 15, the oldest 67, police said.

A man visiting from Sweden said he was stabbed in the arm and tried to help another victim who died.

"I tried to stop the violent bleeding from her throat ... The woman was so badly injured that she died in my arms," Hassan Zubier told the Expressen tabloid.

Tabloid Ilta-Sanomat said one of the dead was a woman belonging to the local chapter of Jehovah's Witnesses who was handing out leaflets at a central Turku square.

A spokesman for the religious group told the tabloid they believed the woman was randomly attacked.

Flowers and candles were placed on a square in Turku, and Finnish flags flew at half-mast across the country.

"We need to stick together now, hate is not to be answered by hate," Prime Minister Juha Sipila said in a tweet.

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, wrote on Twitter that "Europeans stand with #Turku" and called it "another cowardly terrorist attack on innocents".

AP
Steve Bannon has returned to the conservative website Breitbart News after being pushed out of Donald Trump's team following a turbulent seven months.

The blunt-spoken and divisive strategist, who rose from the Trump campaign to a top White House post, was pushed out by the president on Friday.

He has returned as executive chairman to Breitbart News, which he led before joining the campaign, and presided over its Friday evening editorial meeting, the news site said.

From Breitbart, there was a dramatic one-word warning. "#WAR," tweeted senior editor at large Joel B Pollak.

Several sources said Mr Bannon had been hinting for weeks that he might soon return to the helm of Breitbart News. At one point he casually discussed it as though it was a certainty, a source said.

Mr Bannon told Bloomberg politics he would continue to fight the same fights from outside the White House.

"If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents - on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America," he said.

Still, Bannon told allies he intended to hold the administration accountable if it falters on campaign promises.

Mr Bannon's turbulent tenure was marked by the departure of much of Mr Trump's original senior staff.

He pressed the president to enact some of his contentious campaign promises, including a travel ban and pulling out of the Paris climate change agreement.

Mr Trump has now forced out his hard-line national security adviser, his chief of staff, his press secretary and two communications directors.

That's on top of the FBI director he inherited from former president Barack Obama.

Mr Bannon's departure is especially significant since he was viewed as Mr Trump's connection to his most-committed voters and the protector of the disruptive, conservative agenda that propelled him to the White House.

"It's a tough pill to swallow if Steve is gone because you have a Republican West Wing that's filled with generals and Democrats," former campaign strategist Sam Nunberg said. "It would feel like the twilight zone."

Mr Bannon's nationalistic, outsider conservatism served as a guiding force for Mr Trump's rise to office.

Without him, Mr Trump's agenda is in the hands of more moderate advisers, including his son-in-law, oldest daughter and an economic adviser Mr Bannon slammed as "globalist".

But he was also accused by critics of leaking to reporters for self-promotion and egging on Mr Trump's most damaging impulses.

Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr Bannon and chief of staff John Kelly, only recently installed, agreed that Friday would be his last day.

"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," she said.

One person close to Mr Bannon said he had offered his resignation on August 7 to go into effect a week later, the one-year anniversary of when he officially joined the presidential campaign.

But they said the departure was delayed after violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Mr Trump has recently downplayed Mr Bannon's role in his campaign and avoided an opportunity to express confidence in him publicly.

"He's a good person. He actually gets very unfair press in that regard," he said earlier this week. "But we'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon."

Mr Trump recently signalled to confidants that he would dismiss Mr Bannon but had not decided a timeframe, a source said.

But Mr Bannon had been telling people as recently as this week that he believed his job was safe and he would leave only if fired.

AP
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Asira Tarannum, a Mumbai journalist who was harassed by two bikers, is impressed with Mumbai police for taking swift action in the case. The cops have arrested the bikers who chased Asira's auto rickshaw early Thursday morning and passed lewd remarks at her.

asira Tarannum/twitter

Today morning, Mumbai Police tweeted Asira to apprise her of the arrests:

.@Asira_Tarannum reported stalking with a picture of the stalker & his vehicle number Didn't take long for us to hunt down the accused pic.twitter.com/XVAHZ3sILl  Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) August 18, 2017

Asira commended their 'prompt action' with special mentions:

Kudos @MumbaiPolice thank you for the prompt action! Special mention to Daya Nayak sir and team. https://t.co/4mqkF5njls  Asira (@Asira_Tarannum) August 18, 2017

After being chased by the men and gestured at, Asira had tweeted the Mumbai Police with a photo of the culprits riding a Honda Dio scooty. Her cry for help was immediately retweeted, aiding the cops in making the arrests.

Many lauded the Mumbai Police for their commendable work and praised Asira for showing courage in her time of anguish.

Congratulations for reporting n it gives courage to others to report the crime without hesitation. kudos to Mumbai police for prompt action.  Mona AdvaniBJP (@MonaBjp) August 18, 2017

Wow ! That was quick ! Thank you for making Mumbai safe for women. You guys are doing a great job    :)  (@Komal_Indian) August 18, 2017

Kudos to Mumbai Police and Asira!
A bar in Havana which used to be American Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway "hangout" spot and also the birthplace of the classic daiquiri cocktail, is marking its 200th anniversary this year.



"We're not being arrogant when we say this is where the world's best daiquiri is served," the director of El Floridita, Ariel Blanco, told Efe news on Wednesday.



A bronze statue inside El Floridita that depicts the famed author, nicknamed Papa, in a standing position and with his elbow on the bar is popular among tourists looking for an amusing selfie.



El Floridita, its directors say, has a trove of more than a thousand photos of Hemingway, "999 of which show him drinking", one waiter joked about the hard-living novelist and short-story writer, who helped popularise the daiquiri, a cocktail made with sugar, lemon juice, rum, shaved ice and maraschino liqueur, through his works.



As a diabetic, however, Hemingway consumed a daiquiri variation known as the "Papa Doble" that contained grapefruit juice instead of sugar and had double the normal amount of rum.

Ernest Hemingway at the Finca Vigia, Cuba (1946)

Hemingway lived in Cuba for 20 years from 1940. In this period he wrote his most famous work, "The Old Man and the Sea" which garnered Hemingway a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.



Although Hemingway has a place of honour in El Floridita, Constantino Ribailagua - a Catalan immigrant known as "Constante" who was the owner of the bar in the early 20th century and created some of its most famous concoctions - is its most venerated figure.



He came up with the Papa Doble and El Presidente cocktails and is credited with improving upon the original daiquiri, a concoction first invented - as the story goes - in the southeastern city of Santiago de Cuba by a group of thirsty American mining engineers who only had rum, lemons and sugar at hand for an afternoon cocktail.


A young Nigerian man by name Chibueze has died a cruel death after he was reportedly stabbed to death by his girlfriend during an argument this morning in India. According to Blacgold Exclusive who shared the video and photos of the dead man, the suspect in question came to India where she fell in love with the victim.

But, things didnt go down well after an argument which made the girl use a knife to stab the young man. She could be seen in the video crying as she couldnt believe what had happened.

A humble fellow who left Nigeria to India in search of a better life and then. Later fall in love with one runs girl who came to India to hustle on a street level. This early morning announced death  by stab. The girlfriend send him to early grave. What a life? The picture is the victim and girlfriend. Blacgold Exclusive wrote.

https://web.facebook.com/Blacexclusive/posts/1431831736854430
Popular Yoruba film actor and producer, Yomi Fabiyi, owes his career to a food vendor. Almost 20 years ago, when he was a young school leaver, unemployed and lived in the Shomolu area of Lagos, his favourite food vendor had opened his eyes to film acting.

Fabiyi, recounting his encounter with the vendor in an interview with our correspondent, said, This woman was what I would call my foremost fan. I used to patronise her small bukateria in those days. One day, she told me that each time I came to eat in her shop other people would like to come, too, just to listen to me talk. Then she advised me to find any of the outfits that produce films and join them.

When I told her that it would be difficult for me to become an actor, she promised to sponsor me. Before then, a lot of people had tried to encourage me to join the movie people, but I didnt listen to them until this woman spoke to me. I had to make up my mind.

A relative of mine told me how I could find and hook up with a film production company around Ebute-Metta. I already had it in mind to approach two popular actors that were my favourites. So I searched for them. Fortunately, one of them, who happened to be Baba Suwe, accepted me. That was how my journey into the world of movies started.

The actor said that initially, he doubted if he really possessed the qualities that could shape him into a movie star. In his eyes, movie stars were not ordinary people and they had special qualities that made them stand out in a crowd. Eventually, with close supervision and guidance from Baba Suwe, he learned the ropes in no time.

But the going was not as smooth as he had expected. Soon he found out that being apprenticed to a popular Yoruba movie actor had its fair share of challenges. In my position, it was not enough to be humble, committed, trustworthy and a hundred per cent loyal to my boss; I realised that I had to make a lot of sacrifice, too. In order to earn the approval of my boss and to move forward, I had to have these qualities. In addition, there must be proof that I had talent, he said.

For an aspiring actor in those days, Fabiyi noted, the path to success was often littered with obstacles and there was nothing anyone could do about it. I just had to endure. Some days I had very little food or nothing to eat. Sometimes, I had to depend on the kindness of a Hausa shopkeeper who allowed me to buy things on credit. And there were days when I slept outside because there was so much work to do. I didnt dare to complain to my boss about my suffering. I didnt have to bother him about food. He wasnt my father, after all. He was doing me a favour because I came to learn about film acting and production from him, he said.

The actor, who is also a director cum producer, counted himself lucky that his parents did not object to his choice of career. Instead, they chose to support him with prayers. My father was not always around. But my mum was quite worried when she observed that I was coming home late some nights. One day, when she asked me where I had been, I told her that I went in search of my destiny, he said.

Making a comparison between the older generation of actors and the younger generation, Fabiyi said the former had better training and more exposure than the latter. To be honest, many of us lack adequate training and exposure. This has significantly affected the quality of many films produced in this country.

The producer, who was caught up in a controversy over his marriage to a British lady last year, is still worried about the distance that exists between both of them.

We are still living apart. She insists that she will not settle in Nigeria, he said.

Contrary to general opinion, he denied that they were divorced. I have only initiated the idea of suing for a divorce. I am still considering that option, though. The only problem is that my wife has to be physically present in Nigeria to be served the divorce papers. But she has refused to come, he said.

Source: Punch
A Lagos State Traditional ruler, Baale of Osoroko, Ibeju-Lekki, Olusegun Oyiri has been charged to court and remanded in prison custody for allegedly burying a 45-year-old Police Inspector alive.

The deceased whose name was given as Sunday Musa, was declared missing in November 2016 after embarking on an official assignment of settling a land dispute issue between two communities in the area, alongside two other Policemen which saw him never returning home.

Reports have it that upon getting to the area, they saw hoodlums assaulting a man. He reportedly told the other two policemen to go and put the man in the car so he could be safe. But before they came back to where Sunday was, the hoodlums had pounced on him and taken him away.

His widow, Halima, had cried out to Saturday PUNCH at the time, urging the police authorities to provide her husband, with whom she had four children, dead or alive.

Sundays body was eventually found in June buried in a shallow grave as his family said he was buried alive.

The Baale of Osoroko community in Ibeju-Lekki area of Lagos, Olusegun Oyiri, was arrested and arraigned on Friday for the death of the policemen.

He was charged before an Ebute Metta Magistrates Court, Lagos alongside Akeem Balogun (51), Aroki Badiru (66) and Nasiru Shakiru (59). The police said the four accused persons allegedly conspired among themselves and unlawfully buried him in a shallow grave on November 29, 2016, at Osokoro community.

They were also accused of stealing the inspectors AK 47 service rifle, two magazines and 30 rounds of 7.62 live ammunition.

Magistrate A. O. Salawu (Mrs.) ordered the four defendants to be remanded in prisons custody following a remand application brought before the court by Mr. Emmanuel Eze from State Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Department.

The plea of the accused persons was not taken. However, Oyiris lawyer, Mr. O. Ajanaku, urged the court to admit him to bail due to his status as a community head. He insisted that the Baale did not participate in the policemans killing.

Magistrate Salawu declined the request and adjourned the case till August 31 for ruling on the bail application. She fixed September 21 for further hearing in the matter pending legal advice from the State Director of Public Prosecutions.

Punch
A ghastly accident that occurred along Ibadan expressway earlier today, has left a man who was rescued by emergency officials with one arm.

It was gathered that he was immediately rushed to the hospital for treatment. Here are graphic photos below;
Top Nigerian artist Falz famed for hits like Jeje, Soft Work and Soldier returns to Coke Studio Africa for a second time this year, paired alongside Ugandan legendary artist Bebe Cool, who makes his anticipated debut on the show this year.

Last year Falz was paired with Tanzanian rapper Joh Makini and the two produced great covers of each others songs and an original track You Dey Hot.

While speaking exclusively at the shows Behind the Music Studios in Nairobi during the shows recording, Falz said:-

It feels very good to work with Bebe Cool. He is a very cool guy a very chill guy. So far, we have a good working relationship and we are getting along well.

I am looking forward to learning more from him about his culture and language thats what is most exciting about this Coke Studio experience.

On top of the music collaborations, the two will also participate on Coke Studios Food Culture Exchange segment.

Falz and Bebe Cool will be produced by top Nigerian music producer GospelOnDeBeatz.

Falz revealed some info on his collaboration with Bebe Cool:-

Expect a lot of fire. Bebe Cool is a huge dancehall artist and I am a hip hop artist so that fusion is going to be electric!

Both Bebe Cool and Falz will also feature in a special Coke Studio dubbed The Global Fusion Edition alongside Coke Studio Africas international guest star  the American Pop/R&B star Jason Derulo and 8 other talented African stars.

They include Dela (Kenya), Mr. Bow (Mozambique), Joey B (Ghana), Betty G (Ethiopia), Jah Prayzah (Zimbabwe), Shekhinah (South Africa), Locko (Cameroon) and Denise (Madagascar).

This year Coke Studio has merged Coke Studio Africa and Coke Studio South Africa into onebigger and better Coke Studio Africa 2017.

The show promises to be a melting pot of music talents bringing together renowned music producers and top-notch artists drawn from various parts of the continent.

The merger increases the number of participating countries to 16, up from 11 in previous edition.

Source: Naijaloaded
The Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose has reacted to plans by the Nigerian Government to make hate speech a treasonable offence.

The Governor who released a statement through his media aide, Lere Olayinka, Fayose said the move is to silence opposition. Heres the statement;

I wish to express concern over the pronouncement of the Acting President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo that hate speech will henceforth be treated as terrorism. While I am totally against hate speech and will support any effort to curb it, it is important to caution the federal government on the danger inherent in the blanket categorisation of hate speech as treasonable. I make bold to say that saying the truth concerning the country and its rulers cannot be termed as hate speech.

I only hope Nigeria is not being systematically returned to the colonial days when the law of sedition was used to jail many of those who fought for our independence or the era of Buharis military regime when the notorious Public Officers (Protection against False accusation) Decree 4 of 1984 was used to jailTunde Thompson and NdukaIrabor, both of The Guardian newspapers for publishing what the government termed as false.

Most importantly, going by the APC governments use of the so-called anti-corruption fight to harass, intimidate, arrest and detain opposition figures, there is no doubt that categorising whatever that is termed as hate speech as act of terrorism is unconstitutional and an attempt to gag Nigerians, especially the press. It should therefore not be seen that since the use of corruption to harass, arrest and detain opposition figures is no longer fashionable, hate speech will now be another instrument of oppression to be used against opposition.

The questions that must be answered by the federal government are; what constitutes hate speech andwho determines it? Has the Presidency becomes law unto itself such that it is now the one to determine what is an offense and what punishment to be applied? From all intent and purposes, the Acting President pronouncement which is obviously not backed by any legislation is an attempt to provide reasons for an impending clampdown on opposition and Nigerians will resist any attempt to mortgage their fundamental rights to freedom of expression under the guise of hate speeches.

When the APC was looking for power, several provocative statements were made. Nigerians are yet to forget President Buharis the dog and the baboon would all be soaked in blood hate speeches and the threat by the APC to form a parallel government. What can be more treasonable than these statements made by President Buhari and his party?

It is also on record that during the 2011 election campaign, President Buharis inciting statement led to widespread violence by his supporters in the North after he lost. Over 1000 people were slaughtered in cold blood, including innocent National Youth Service Corp members. Therefore, even if the APC government is sincere with its new found hatred for hate speeches, the APC government must first apologise to Nigerians for being the number one promoter and beneficiary of hate speech.

Also, rather than this blanket criminalising of hate speeches, the federal government should embark on reorientation of Nigerians, especially the youths on the consequences of hate speeches to the unity of the country while the confidence of the people in the government (at all levels) must be restored.
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Khamenei has grabbed headlines with his English-language tweets in the past, as when he co-opted hashtags for the discussion of police shootings and the Black Lives Matter movement in the US, in order to suggest that the US government has a poor record on domestic human rights and has no standing to criticize the Islamic Republic of Iran. His more recent tweet, highlighted by the Post, was similar, using the hashtags #Charlottesville and #WhiteSupremacy in order to make himself visible to Americans discussing last Fridays clash between white nationalist demonstrators and counter-protestors, during which one person was killed and 19 other injured when a white nationalist drove into a crowd with his car.

Khameneis post was accompanied, without context, by an image of himself as a younger man, holding a dark-skinned child. The Post describes this as a ham-handed attempt to portray Khamenei as a more tolerant leader than US government officials, whom he urged to better manage their country and tackle #WhiteSupremacy rather than meddle in nations affairs. Perhaps related to this latter remark is the fact that Khameneis tweet was issued about a day after the US State Department issued its annual report on human rights and religious freedom issues throughout the world.

Agence-France Presse notes that the Iranian Foreign Ministry explicitly rejected the findings of that report as they relate to Iran. The same is true of certain other countries that were specifically named in the report, including Iran allies like China. In fact, the language used by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying was highly reminiscent of that employed by her Iranian counterpart Bahrem Qassemi, as well as by Khamenei and other Iranian officials. Hua urged the US to manage its own affairs rather than using religion to interfere in the affairs of other countries.

Meanwhile, Qassemis statement took the familiar line of accusing the US of spreading Islamophobia. Tehran has frequently employed this language as part of its strategy of deflecting and simply dismissing international criticism of its widely-recorded human rights abuses. Accusations of cultural imposition have been used by the Islamic Republic to excuse direct violations of international norms on human rights, as in the case of the execution of offenders who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes.

Last week, one such offender, Alireza Tajiki was executed on the basis of his conviction for male rape at the age of 15. Then, this week, the Iranian judiciary moved to implement the death sentence for a man who was convicted of murder at the age of 17. It was not immediately clear whether the second execution was carried out on Wednesday as planned, but the rapid movement from one case to the other may be indicative of deliberate rejection of imposed standards. Four other minor offenders have been confirmed as being executed earlier this year, and the Islamic Republic is only one of about a half dozen countries that still carry out such killings with the approval of the judiciary.

But in contrast to minor executions and certain other issues, Qassemis statement on the State Department report  and Khameneis possible allusion to it  did not acknowledge and defend relevant Iranian behaviors but instead ignored them completely in an apparent effort to refocus the conversation upon the US alone. It is clear that religious and racial discrimination, Islamophobia, and xenophobia are a widespread and frequent phenomenon among American politicians, Qassemi said, adding that Muslims appeared to face frequent violence and discrimination within the United States.

But even if one accepts this criticism, there are substantive differences between the difficulties confronted by Muslims in the US and the issues cited by the State Department regarding the rights of religious minorities in Iran. No matter how prevalent anti-Muslim discrimination may be in American society, this cannot historically be linked to the actual policies of the US government, which has codified freedom of expression and separation of church and state in its law and constitution since the nations founding.

The constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran, founded after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, technically enshrines equal protection under the law for religious minorities, but only for certain specifically-identified ones. And even on this point there is a long history of that equal protection being undermined by officials in the highest reaches of Iranian government. For instance, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, issued fatwas early in its history declaring the Bahai religious minority a threat to Iranian society and establishing the framework of persecution that continues to this day, including the denial of Bahai access to higher education and the arbitrary obstruction of Bahai commercial ventures.

AFP notes that the State Department report described the Iranian government  and not just individual Iranian officials or non-governmental entities  as continuing to harass, interrogate and arrest Bahais, Christians, Sunni Muslims and other religious minorities. Furthermore, the release of this report coincided with the publication of an article in IranWire that explained how these human rights issues were so deeply embedded into the ideology of the Iranian regime that those same issues were being exported to Irans foreign affiliates and proxies, and to the regimes areas of foreign influence.

IranWire specifically points to the growing plight of the roughly 2,000 Bahais living in Yemen, where Iran has supported the Shiite Houthi rebels in an insurrection against the elected government of President Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi, dividing the country into two distinct enclaves of political power. Even before assuming power and taking control of the capital city of Sanaa, the Houthi had already adopted Tehrans attitudes toward the Bahai faith and begun spreading conspiracy theories regarding supposed connections to Israel and a desire to partition areas of Yemeni territory into exclusively Bahai enclaves. But now that the Houthi have authority over much of the country, they are beginning to be exposed to institutionalized persecution.

At least seven Bahais have been imprisoned for their faith by Houthi authorities so far, and the IranWire report focuses on the case of one who is also a widely respected tribal leader, Sheikh Walid Saleh Ayyash. After his unexplained arrest, other tribal leaders demonstrated before Hurdaydah Prison and called for his release, only to be rebuffed in the strongest terms when prosecutor Rajeh Zayed met the protestors, addressed nearby soldiers, and said of the Bahai kill them and dont leave anyone behind.

Although Iranian authorities continue to defend themselves against international criticism by insisting that much of that criticism is based on Islamophobia, reports like these make it clear that the Iranian regime has been instrumental in spreading contrary phobias not only within but also beyond its borders. At least in the case of the Bahai, this rhetoric risks inciting violence from Shiite militants, but the wrath of the Shiite theocracy has been directed against a wide range of other religious minorities, to one degree or another.
Let Me Tell You is a new bespoke podcast series from



Hosts Daniel McConnell and Paul Hosford take a look back at some of the most dramatic moments in recent Irish political history from the unique perspective of one of the key players involved.


Update 3.30pm: Spanish police say reports that seven-year-old Julian Alessandro Cadman, who has been missing since Thursdays terrorist attack in Barcelona, had been found alive in hospital are not true.

Catalan police denied the report in a tweet from its official Twitter account.

There are many who ask for specific information about the Australian child. Communicative priority over victims is to family members  Mossos (@mossos) August 19, 2017

15:00 Neither we were searching nor we have found any lost child in the barcelona attack. All the victims and injured have been located  Mossos (@mossos) August 19, 2017

Update 2.10pm: A seven-year-old boy missing since the Barcelona attacks has been found alive in hospital, The Guardian is reporting.

More to follow.

Earlier:

Relatives of a seven-year-old boy missing after the Barcelona terror attack have flown to Spain in their desperate search for him.

The family of Julian Alessandro Cadman - who is understood to be a dual British-Australian national - have appealed for information about his whereabouts after he became separated from his mother.

Julian's father and grandmother are travelling to Spain from Australia as they await news, family member Debbie Cadman said.

Grandfather Tony Cadman has urged people to share a photograph of Julian on Facebook.

He wrote: "My Grandson, Julian Alessandro Cadman is missing. Please like and share. We have found Jom (my daughter in law) and she is (in a) serious but stable condition in hospital.

"Julian is seven years old and was out with Jom when they were separated, due to the recent terrorist activity. Please share if you have family or friends in Barcelona."

In the photograph, Julian is wearing a jumper with a crest that says Chiddingstone Nursery, which is a nursery school in Kent.

Mr Cadman's Facebook profile says he lives in Sydney and is from Gillingham, Dorset.

After Mr Cadman made a plea for information, Prime Minister Theresa May said UK authorities were "urgently looking into reports" that a child, who has dual British nationality, is missing.

Meanwhile, Spanish police hunting for the driver of the van used in the attack are focusing their efforts on a 22-year-old Moroccan national.

Younes Abouyaaqoub is said to be at the centre of the investigation into the massacre on Las Ramblas, and police believe he may still be alive and at large.

A different suspect wanted in connection with the terror attacks has been killed, according to police sources.

17-year-old Moussa Oukabir rented the van which ploughed into pedestrians in Barcelona on Thursday afternoon.

There are now calls for barriers to be introduced in the Las Ramblas area, where it happened.
Such vehicles  many of which are shell companies set up to borrow or invest  had assets, chiefly loans and debt, of 391bn, which is greater than the Irish economy.

The data comes amid a debate about the countrys hosting of such conduits, pitting critics, who see a risk to the countrys reputation, against those who want to keep them to help attract business from London after Brexit.
The UK government has proposed smaller firms involved in localised cross-border trade with the Republic should be exempted from the responsibilities.

Representative body Manufacturing Northern Ireland said that 99% of the businesses it represents were small or medium-sized but they had been given no idea how the suggested arrangements after March 2019 could work.

The group said: Essentially it means that Northern Ireland firms would be within the customs union whilst also being outside of the customs union as part of the UK. Is that possible or acceptable? It could lead to a rush of Great Britain manufacturers wanting to come and set up in Northern Ireland to avoid customs requirements but equally, it could see Irish firms using Northern Ireland as a back-door to the UK market, so trade could be distorted.

Large manufacturers in the North, around 60 or so, accounted for half of all employment and turnover from the sector, the group said.

Theyll be subject of currently complex and costly red tape and delay being outside the customs union.

Manufacturers constantly work to remove complexity and cost so this will be difficult for such strategically important employers and exporters. It is business which will be most impacted and which will be asked to make Brexit work. Efforts need to be stepped up to engage and get ideas about how these and other proposals are made workable.

Given all this, its difficult to understand how any guarantees can be provided about the absence of physical borders or customs checkpoints, regardless of any proposed exemptions, unless a comprehensive customs agreement and single market access is delivered, said Manufacturing Northern Ireland .

The UK government has dismissed any suggestion a customs border could be shifted to the Irish Sea, with checks and tariffs only in operation at entry and exit points between the island of Ireland and Britain.

If the EU signed off the UKs ultimate customs objective, a partnership deal with the UK mirroring Europes tariff system, then no Irish companies would be subject to new checks as a consequence of Brexit.

Press Association
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index dropped 0.7% at the close, trimming its weekly advance to 0.6%.

While stocks around the world declined, financial markets have proven increasingly resilient to terror attacks in recent years.

Europes benchmark has struggled to rebound since a mid-May peak, weighed down by a strengthening euro and geopolitical tension.

Also contributing to global market unease this week are worries about US President Donald Trumps administration following last weeks violence in Virginia.

Spains IBEX 35 Index slid 0.6% after trading 1.5% lower earlier in the day. All 19 groups in the Stoxx 600 dropped, with travel and media shares sliding the most. Shares in airline group IAG  which owns Aer Lingus, British Airways, and Iberia  fell 2% and EasyJet fell almost 1%, recovering earlier losses slightly as the broader European travel and leisure sector SXTP dropped 1.5%. The entire airline and leisure industry is down today purely from the attacks, said John Moore, a trader at Berkeley Capital.

People in the forthcoming months, we believe, will be less likely to take trips abroad, he said, adding that he expected the airline stocks to recover.

Falls among large consumer staples firms such as British American Tobacco and Diageo were the biggest weights on the Ftse 100, while financials also added pressure with HSBC, Lloyds and Barclays edging lower.

Reuters and Bloomberg
The significant funding injection was revealed in company documents filed, this week, by Irish Water.

This State payment, early last week, was in addition to the expected 178m it will cost to refund water charges.

Both Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe have said water charge refunds will come from budget underspends by departments.

Mr Donohoe has said the refund, expected to be paid to households before the year end, does not put the same pressures on the exchequer as other measures, due to it being a one-off payment.

However, yesterday, the Department of Finance defended a separate 270m payment to Irish Water.

The department said the payment was part of the Irish Water business plan 2015-2021 which included capital investment of 5.5bn over 2014-2021, with 270m of the 5.5bn scheduled for 2017.

This payment is not connected with the decision to end water charges. This separate issue will be considered as part of the overall fiscal arithmetic to be updated for Budget 2018 in October, a department spokesperson said.

In exchange for the investment, the utility has issued and allotted new shares to both the departments of housing and finance.

The spokesperson added: On foot of a request from the Department of Housing, the minister for finance consented to making the 270m equity contribution from the central fund and this transaction took place on Tuesday, 8 August.

On the same day, the minister wrote to the directors of Irish Water asking for the issue and allotment of the shares. Share certificates for both of the ministers will be issued in the usual way.

Irish Water confirmed it received the payment and said the money was not for a specific purpose or project, rather for the continued work to transform Irelands water services in line with the business plan.

Irish Water aims to invest 1.364bn on infrastructure by 2021 and a further 1.25bn each on drinking water capacity and wastewater quality over the same period.

The utility has also said it plans, by 2021, to have made capital investments of 950m on drinking water quality, and another 700m on wastewater capacity.

Dublin will receive the largest allocation, 827m, followed by Cork (305m), and Donegal (151m).

In a submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Future Funding of Domestic Water Supply earlier this month, Irish Water said it wants to reduce to zero the numbers at risk of contamination and the number of those on boil water notices.

However, the utility claimed that the overall scale of funding to carry out these projects would be a matter for Government

The repair and upgrading of Irish Waters water treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants, water and sewer network will require a multi-billion-euro investment programme over many years, a spokesperson said.
Since it successfully reinvented itself with the 1992 Olympics, it is a byword as a chic and sophisticated party destination for young people, uniquely combining culture, beach and a nightlife in a way that is emulated by its competitors.

Furthermore, it is an Irish favourite. Ireland has 39 weekly flights to Barcelona El Prat airport, 18 from Ryanair, 14 from Aer Lingus and seven from Vueling, a further eight to Reus tom the south and another two to Gerona to the north.

That means 1,000 people a day are flying to and from the Barcelona region, and while more than three-quarters of those will disperse to resorts along the coastline such as Salou, it can mean there are about 2,000 Irish in the city at any time.

The Fiestas de Gracia festival brought additional tourists into the city and it was that that the attackers hit hard on Thursday evening just as the citys plaza culture, street walking and sitting in cafes and watching the world go by, was at its peak with the last of the daytrippers and the first of the nightlifers mixing on the pavements where the white van zigzagged at speed down through panicked pedestrians for about 500m.

Cities have been hit before  Madrid, London, Paris and Brussels. Celebratory occasions have been hit before, in Nice.

However, Barcelona is different, and how the city, the nation and the international tourist fraternity respond to the attack will be crucial in

determining if this will happen again on a regular basis.

That Barcelona is a different kind of target relates entirely to tourism. There is no surer way of getting attention than closing down a countrys tourism industry, as happened in Egypt and Tunisia on repeated occasions and almost happened in Turkey.

This is the year that Spain is set to overtake France as the worlds leading touristm destination, ironically due to displacement of north Africa and Turkey in big tourism marketsm and a parallel slowdown in French tourism caused by militant attacks.

Up to June, in-bound tourism was up 11.6%, and from Ireland, their eighth most important inbound market, that was up 18.2%.

Barcelona is the main tourism hub. Irish visits to Catalonia are likely to pass 300,000 in 2017 with two-thirds of them visiting Barcelona city at some stage.

Hoteliers report attacks in Madrid, London, Paris and Brussels caused hotel bookings to slow down for three months. By the fourth month, occupancy and room rates return to normal. Bookings go down by about 13% for three months, then start to pick up in the fifth or sixth month.

The bad news for post-trauma, bargain- hunters is that hoteliers tend not to drop room rates, believing the disappearing business will not be tempted by price.

Airport delays will get worse all over Spain as the national and regional governments lean on airports

to beef up security. Worst hit will be the smaller regional airports with fewer gates and staff, where most of their traffic arrives in summer.

And a mystery. Last week, for the first time in a Spanish airport, police started screening baggage from

passengers who had landed before allowing them to leave the terminal.

Passengers pondered was it another problem in an airport plague by invasive security, strikes and go slows. After 5pm on Thursday, it took on a new meaning. El Periodico says the CIA had warned Spain about an impending attack in Barcelona. It was claimed the Sagrada Familia basilica was featured as a possible IS target on social media. Did it know something?

The strollers returned to Las Ramblas the day after the murders. They spontaneously broke out in chants of we have no fear.

After the tragedy of Fiestas de Gracia, it remains to be seen if the international community agrees with them.
The 24-year-old teacher of English was one of 16 Roses who made it through to the live TV interviews on Monday and Tuesday nights, the first woman representing Limerick to make it this far in a decade.

The remaining 48 Roses will learn today, privately, if theyve made the final cut but all were feted equally at the Rose Ball in The Dome last night.

My boyfriends mother was throwing the suitcase out and I thought it would

be very handy for Tralee, Kayleigh told the Irish Examiner.

Not affected by weight restrictions like the international Roses, Kayleigh said the suitcase was big enough to hold the 28 outfits she had packed for the week  and even herself.

I sat into it and asked my Dad to take a quick pic, that I shared with friends, she said.

And although 28 outfits sounds like a lot, the Kilcornan native admitted she was very lucky and most of what shes wearing, from her shoes to her headpieces, were kindly sponsored by shops in Limerick.

Kayleigh said although she was delighted to have been selected, this wasnt foremost on her mind before RTEs Marty Morrissey called out their names in The Dome on Thursday.

I didnt come down to Tralee thinking about being on stage so I was not nervous or thinking about it, she said.

Still, the relief was huge last night for the 14 other young women representing South Carolina, Fermanagh, Toronto, Kildare, Texas, Germany, Offaly, Florida, Hong Kong, Dublin, Sydney, Yorkshire and Galway.

Kerry Rose Breda OMahony is the only one guaranteed her place in the final cut.

Theres definitely something in the water in Rathmore  Rosewater, perhaps, as the east Kerry town has blossomed with three Roses in the last four years.

Mary Hickey represented the home county in 2014 and is back again this year as part of the chaperone team. Denise Collins, also from Rathmore, was the Cork Rose in 2016.

Yesterday, some housekeeping matters were attended to, such as who paired whom for the

remainder of the festival.

Each Rose is assigned an escort before the Rose Trip, which began on Sunday in Kildare. This was rotated yesterday ahead of the Rose Ball.

Jackie Healy-Rae, grandson of the famous political patriarch, will escort Washington Rose Sarah Robertson for the remainder of the festival.

After that matter was sorted, the focus shifted to hair and make-up as the 64 Roses prepared for the social event of the Tralee calendar, the Rose Ball.

Later today, the Roses will attend the opening of the Rose Exhibition at Tralee library.

Tonights big event is the Rose Parade when all eyes will be on Hurricane Gert and hoping shell steer clear of the southwest.
Leo Varadkar will begin a three-day official visit tomorrow and is due to meet Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau in Montreal.

Both men will march in tomorrows Montreal Pride Parade.

Mr Varadkar has been on holiday in the US this week. Yesterday he met Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, tweeting a photo of the meeting saying was it was great to speak with the mayor.

The Taoiseachs Canadian visit comes after Mr Trudeaus trip to Ireland last month during which he met with Mr Varadkar at Farmleigh, visited the Famine Memorial in Dublin and was also told of his Cork family connections.

Speaking ahead of the visit, Mr Varadkar said: I had the pleasure of welcoming Prime Minister Trudeau to Ireland early last month when we discussed a number of issues concerning Irish and Canadian relations. This return visit to Canada offers the opportunity to deepen the very important bilateral relationship between our two countries, a process that will be further accelerated through the CETA trade deal which comes into effect in September.

Mr Varadkar will then travel to Toronto, where he has a number of engagements focused on growing trade opportunities between Ireland and Canada.

He will address the Ireland Canada Chambers of Commerce and will also meet with IDA, Enterprise Ireland and Tourism Ireland client companies and representatives.

In the context of Brexit, it is more important than ever that the Irish Government seeks to expand our markets overseas and strengthen our relationships with major trading partners, he said.

In Toronto and Montreal I will meet with political and business leaders to further explore investment and tourism opportunities for Ireland. I also look forward to meeting with members of the Irish community in both cities and representatives of the emigrant support services that do such excellent work on their behalf.

Mr Varadkar will turn the sod on a park in Toronto in memory of George Robert Grasett, who tended to Irish famine victims on their arrival in Canada in the late 1840s.
Renars Veigulis, originally from Latvia but who had been living at Bridge Street, Freshford, Co Kilkenny, is charged with murdering Ms Apine, aged 29, at Bridge Street on May 14.

The mother was found with serious head injuries at the foot of the stairs in her rented house and the alarm was raised. She died later after being rushed to St Lukes General Hospital in Kilkenny City.

Mr Veigulis, who has not yet indicated how he will plead, had been remanded in custody in May and appeared again before Judge Kathryn Hutton at Cloverhill District Court yesterday when he was served with a book of evidence by Det Garda Paul Coleman.

The DPP has directed trial on indictment and a state solicitor said there was consent to the accused being sent forward for trial to the next sittings of the Central Criminal Court.

Judge Hutton told the accused he was being returned for trial on the single charge in the book of evidence.

She warned him that he must inform the prosecution within 14 days if he intends to enter an alibi. Speaking through an interpreter, Mr Veigulis replied, I understand. An order for video evidence to be furnished to defence was also made.

Defence solicitor Tony Collier said it was a most serious matter and applied for legal aid to include senior and junior counsel representation for his client. He also asked for legal aid for translation of the book of evidence for his client. Judge Hutton acceded to the request.

Mr Collier said Mr Veigulis remains remanded in custody and he has not yet made a bail application. A date for his clients next hearing date has not yet been fixed and Mr Collier said he expected to be notified in due course.

Ms Apine, who had also moved to Ireland from Latvia, had lived at St Teresas Terrace in Kilkenny city before she moved with her young daughter to Bridge Street, Freshford last year.

Unemployed, Mr Veigulis was first arrested on the day his partner was discovered seriously injured but released without charge the following day. However, he was re-arrested four days later and questioned at Kilkenny Garda station where he was charged on May 20.
It seemed the Mafia had controlled tickets for games, one TD said, and the resulting scandal showed the abuse of power that had festered within the OCI.

These were some of the remarks made at the Oireachtas Committee on Sport, as it got stuck into the critical report on the Rio ticket-touting affair and its links with the OCI.

At the centre of the scandal is Pat Hickey, the former Irish Olympic chief whose arrest in Brazil last year shocked the sporting world.

The former OCI president refused to co-operate with the committee saying he had received legal advice that it could interfere with proceedings in Brazil.

The committee heard how he ran his own fiefdom in the OCI during his long tenure.

But his successor gave an insight into how the OCI board operated before the ticketing scandal broke.

OCI president Sarah Keane said she knew change would not come about

easily.

People had their own agendas, she said, and there was concern about incomplete reporting.

After arrests in Brazil, it was decided to lock down all the OCIs electronic communications. Ms Keane now says the board is united to introduce reform.

However, the committee also heard from Irish Sports Council CEO John Treacy.

It was no secret how the OCI behaved over the years, he said. He described how Pat Hickey wasnt easy to stand up to, was a very powerful and dominant

person and got what he wanted.

Renowned mediator

Kieran Mulvey was made Sports Council chairman by the Fianna Fail government in 2010 to make peace with the OCI, ensure (in his own words) there were no international incidents and stop any rows. That was the level of fear around working with Mr Hickey and his lieutenants, as Sports Minister Shane Ross

described OCI members

earlier in the week.

We also now know that Mr Hickey secretly tied the OCI into contracts with ticket agents THG until 2026 for future games. THG is barred from the 2018 games, as it was from Rio also.

Hickey was also paid 360,000 over six years as an honorarium payment, an excessive sum as noted by Minister Ross. The final year of this fee was withheld.

It is clear nobody shouted stop while Mr Hickey ran the OCI. Those who ran against him as president also saw their sporting

discipline suffer, Ms Keane told the committee.

It will now be for other authorities to take up the findings in the report. But it is doubtful any more will be done on Irish soil, ahead of authorities in Brazil completing their inquiries.

There may be some merit in trying to compel Mr Hickey to attend Oireachtas hearings to answer questions, but this would be costly, take time and be fraught with legal hurdles.

Oireachtas Committee chairman Fergus ODowd put it succinctly yesterday when he said it seemed the Mafia had been in charge of tickets for the games. But for the athletes, the sports and the dreams of Irish Olympic fans, let us hope that the rotten culture in the OCI, as it was termed this week, has been consigned to history.
Theres going to be a busy new visitor attraction in Kinsale next weekend: the long-awaited opening of show units, for a brand new, 136-home scheme in the town by one of the countrys largest new homes providers, Gannon Homes.

Two show homes open their doors on Saturday and Sunday next, from 2pm to 4pm; sales prices for the smart-looking, very well- finished three-beds start from 310,000, and buyers are expected to come from far and wide, from down in the town, out in the south Cork hinterland and from Cork city too.

Given that it is Kinsale, one of Irelands busiest tourist towns, the start/end point for the Wild Atlantic Way, and under a half an hours drive from Cork Airport, buyers will also emerge from Dublin, the UK and from further overseas.

Dublin-based firm Gannon Homes has well over 10,000 house and apartment builds under its belt since 1984, but Kinsale Manor is its first foray into the Munster and the Cork market.

Selling agents for Kinsale Manor are Sherry FitzGerald, who next weekend release the first phase of Kinsale Manor, with 28 homes to be offered, and eleven are built so far, including two show houses and another being used as a sales office.

The 136-unit scheme will hit a sweet-spot for starter and mid-market buyers, with the mix predominantly of three- and four-bed homes on good sites, less than a kilometre from the town centre and 700 metres from the new SuperValu.

House design is by Wilson Architecture Cork, with up to 12 house type or variations shown in luxe-looking, image-rich 19-page digital sales brochure extolling Kinsales charms, ranges of amenities and attractions, schools and transport links, sport and outdoor attractions, as well as Kinsale Manors new role in housing provision there.

Interestingly, Kinsale has been quite to the forefront in variety of new housing stock in Cork county over the past 18 months, with 27 homes selling out at the Cluain Mara development, by Dublin-based Centurion Homes/Clarendon Properties, where townhouses of 1,200sq ft sold from 295,000.

High above the town, Cumnor Constructions privately funded Convent Garden has seen townhouses ranging from 235,000  265,000, and phase two three-bed townhouses selling there from 295,000-325,000.

The price entry point now for the large, latest r scheme  Kinsale Manor, up Barrack Street by the hospital  is notable as it starts from 310,000 for three-bed semis of 1,184 sq ft.

First-time buyers may well chalk 2017 down as the year when A-rated new three bed semis in good Cork locations tipped over the 300k mark.

OFlynn Construction launched its 140-home Kerry Pike city-fringing development Clonlara in May with a handful of 1,100 sq ft semis at 285,000/295,000.

But, most autumn new Cork releases will have starter semi-ds at and over a 300,000 entry level, suggest new homes agents like Sherry FitzGerald and Savills (Savills Cork yesterday released a new phase of six houses at Gort Fada, Glounthaune, at 295/305,000, with other imminent releases in Ashmount and Maryborough Ridge.)

Estate agent Paul Hannon, New Homes Director with Sherry FitzGerald Cork, says Gannon Homes bring a high-end, state of the art A3-rated product to market at Kinsale Manor, stating its the first large, brand new housing development to be built in historic Kinsale for many years.

He added that the harbour town was rated in the Top 20 Most Charming Towns in Ireland by travel professionals.

These elegant homes have a white plaster finish with reconstituted stone window sills and door surrounds, which update the architecture of Kinsale.

Initially, the three-bed homes will be offered for sale with a selection of four- bedroom detacheds at a later stage of the development, says Mr Hannon. The eleven built so far include one three-bed detached, which although not yet priced, is likely to be pitched well into the mid 300,000s, and the site maps also shows a proposed creche, plus playing field and playground towards the back of the site.

A sales office open on site next weekend in one of the 1,205 sq ft E-type houses, a distinctive double fronted floor plan, with front-to-back main reception room and similarly-proportioned kitchen/dining rooms.

The two show houses, in the C2 variations, have kitchens by Express Kitchens and visually rich finishes and features by Phoenix Interior Design, with rear garden/family rooms.

Homes are concrete/block built, with white render facades, reconstituted stone cills and adroit, attractive door-framing pillars, have PV solar panels for energy generation, triple glazing, natural gas central heating (no stoves), demand-controlled ventilation systems and, handily, USB sockets.

Designer Angelina Ball from Phoenix Design said that to pay homage to the setting, they went with a nautical and coastal Hamptons style without going overboard, and in the second show home we focused on a comfortable, contemporary interior, with some bespoke furniture in each show home.

VERDICT: Gannons lay down a market marker at Kinsale Manor

Kinsale, Cork

From 310,000

Size: 1,184 sq ft - 1,280 sq ft

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 3

BER: A3
OVERHEARD in Dublin a few years ago: Thats where

Nelsons Pillar once stood,

a father said to his young daughter, pointing to the Spire on OConnell St in Dublin.

Nelson Mandela? she asked, and not entirely unreasonably.

The late South African president was in the news again this week

when his words, quoted by former US president Barack Obama, became the most-liked tweet ever, chalking up more than three million thumbs-up.

No one is born hating another

person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion, Obama wrote in a tweet citing a

line from Mandelas autobiography Long Walk to Freedom in response to the white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left three dead and dozens wounded.

So-called white nationalists were

ostensibly protesting over plans to

remove a statue of the pro-slavery

Confederate general Robert E Lee

from the citys Emancipation Park,

although, as many have pointed out, their repugnant neo-Nazi display was part of a wider backlash to the Obama era.

In passing, its worth asking why we refer to these thugs as white nationalists? Surely that is far too polite and too legitimatising a term for the torch-bearing, slogan-chanting, neo-Nazi hate merchants that president Donald Trump cant seem to condemn.

As the fallout of the Charlottesville violence made headlines around

the world, four Confederate-era

monuments were taken down in the dead of night in Baltimore, 320km away.

The mayor, Catherine Pugh, said

the city had moved quickly and quietly, under cover of darkness, to take four monuments off their perches in an attempt to avoid further racial

violence.

Weve seen the toppling of statues many, many times. Recall the scenes

of jubilation as citizens, high on new-found independence, rushed to knock the symbols of the regime that went

before them. Weve witnessed the fall, quite literally, of a range of leaders from Saddam Hussein in Iraq to Lenin and Stalin following the break up of the former Soviet Union. Good riddance, you say? And so say all of us.

Yet in the case of the newly independent Estonia, not a decade had passed before some people wondered if they had done the right thing.

On a trip there in 1998, I was

particularly struck by one businessman who planned to open the first

Soviet Theme Park just seven years after independence.

The man behind the venture, Meelis Toom, said he felt compelled to recall the past after his 12-year-old asked him who Lenin was.

What he said then has particular

resonance now: The Soviet years may have been times that we dont want to remember, but I dont think that we should be allowed to forget.

Its a question that should be asked again in the wake of the Charlottesville violence. If you remove the vestige and emblems of the past, do you erase the memory of what they represented too?

Its also worth noting that todays far right conflate two very different episodes in history  they carry Confederate flags and the symbols of Nazism.

During the Second World War,

the majority of southern whites were behind the Allies in their fight against Hitler. The Nazi flags werent adopted by the far-right until much later and lets hope that a close retelling of history will expose their twisted thinking.

There is one small upside  those who argue that Confederate symbols (mistakenly, in my view) reflect American heritage will find it

impossible to argue that the swastika is anything but a symbol of hatred.

Thankfully, there are still many powerful reminders of the abhorrent brutality carried out under that

supremacist symbol. Perhaps we might invite the Charlottesville mob

to visit the Holocaust memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former Nazi extermination camp where 1.1 million men, women and children were

murdered.

It is a persuasive example of how you can preserve a deeply offensive vestige of the past and use it to help people

reimagine a better future.

The best way to deal with the controversial monuments, emblems and

symbols of the past is not to erase them but to explain and contextualise them. We may still be condemned to repeat history, but at the very least, let us do so with open eyes.

Getting back to one of our own toppled statues, Nelsons Pillar.

Admiral Horatio, the British naval commander famous for his victories against Napoleon, managed to stay on his perch longer than many monuments to British imperialism, which were carried off in the first flush of

independence.

Part of the reason for that was simply because it wasnt easy to

remove a 4m behemoth made of Co Wicklow granite and black limestone.

In the years following independence, there was talk of keeping the column, but replacing Nelson with a statue of the Virgin Mary. Other more secular figures were suggested too; Jim

Larkin, Robert Emmet, even John F Kennedy, as historian Donal Fallon

reminds us in his thought-provoking and engaging book, The Pillar: The Life and After Life of the Nelson Pillar.

Fallon also reminds us that while song and story tell us the pillar was bombed by the IRA in March 1966, the bomb was, in fact, planted by a

left-wing faction not under its control.

The IRA distanced itself from the

action saying  and heres the really interesting bit  that its movement was concerned not with the destruction of the symbols of imperialism,

but imperialism itself. A piece of plaster, however offensive, only has the power that we invest in it. That is why toppling the so-called symbols of hatred and intolerance will do little to change the ideologies they represent.

The reverse, unfortunately, is also true. A statue designed as a loving tribute to the memory of those who died in the Carrickmines fire tragedy in October 2015 was vandalised this week.

By whom and for what reason? It is not yet known, but let it be said you dont have to go to Trumps America to see thuggery and intolerance in action.
The centre must hold.

A phrase which has been in vogue since now finance minister Paschal Donohoe paraphrased the Yeats poem The Second Coming during his budget speech last year.

His was a response to the rise of populism, left wing and right wing, not just in Ireland but across the world in the wake of the financial crash. Donohoe has been on a sort of one-man mission to defend the centre from these noisy fringe voices who certainly made an impact on world affairs, from water charges here in Ireland, to Brexit in the UK.

He has railed against the shameless populism of the Paul Murphys, the Sinn Feins, and the UKIPs of the world who, if given the chance, would see a position where mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, as Yeats put it.

However, the question I ask is, just how can the centre hold when those in charge have allowed it crumble?

The three main reasons to play by the rules  job security, pension provision and the ability to buy a home  have been removed from the youngest generation of people now in the workforce.

To shed some light on my argument, let me explain.

My late dad, John McConnell, would have been 72 this year; so would my late mum Ann. Both died young, long before their time.

They would have, had they lived, been enjoying retirement in the knowledge their after-work life was more than adequately catered for.

Both were born in Dublin in the shadow of the Second World War in 1945, and therefore were so-called baby boomers. Those between 1945 and 1964, boomers are defined as

the lucky generation that has had previously unrivalled opportunity and wealth.

However, in my view, they were also part of the generation which has since connived to hoard and gorge that wealth, at the expense of their children. Unlike the generation that went before them, and the generation that has come after them, the boomers were the generation that has benefited most from the two greatest forms of personal wealth  property and pensions.

My parents generation, taken as a whole, has gathered unparalleled wealth and power, all at the cost of their children. I am not saying everyone of that vintage is loaded, but as an age cohort, that is where the money is.

As a result, I and my generation are paying higher taxes, working longer hours for less reward, will have far less job security, will have to make do with much poorer pensions  all to pay for their good time.

It is undeniable that the baby boomers have had the most extraordinary luck to have been born when they were. Now, having had the most extraordinary deal in terms of society, they have selfishly dumped their party bill on the shoulders of their kids.

My dad was a civil servant for most of his career. My mum stayed at home and reared six of us until her death at the age of 46 in 1991.

Both university-educated, they grew up as part of the luckiest generation in Ireland.

We grew up in middle-class Stillorgan, Dublin, as a single-income family.

We werent rich, but neither were we poor. However, specifically, how is my generation worse off than my parents?

It has been far more difficult for my generation to get on the property ladder, we have no hope of having a pension anything like those of the baby boomers and fewer and fewer of us have anything like the promise of a job for life.

And, when my parents bought our house, my Dads one salary was enough to pay the mortgage and raise us. Today, to have a hope of buying a house, two salaries combined are required. Is that progress?

Becoming an adult and starting a family is now slower and more difficult than it was for our parents.

Where they tended to settle down, marry and have kids in their 20s, we are doing so in our 30s. Is this by choice or driven by necessity?

Squeezed out of the property market during the Celtic Tiger boom, many

of my generation were forced to live at home longer, remaining dependent on their parents for much longer, ultimately stymieing their own development and potential contribution to society as a result.

Indeed, the crash in house prices didnt make it any easier for our generation to buy our first house, because the banks tightened all lines of credit. The boomers  the generation with the most cash  became the generation with the lowest amount of savings.

One of the main reasons our banks failed in 2008 is because they had a lower level of capital than they would have retained in the past. Instead they gorged on cheap credit raised on the international markets. We all know the fallout from that folly.

Now into another bubble, the next generation is set to be locked out of the market, especially in Dublin.

However, whereas my dad and his peers tended to enter into a job and stay with one company or government department for their career, those in their late 20s and early 30s today have no such comfort.

Zero-hour contracts, the need to be more flexible, the need to work longer hours for less reward is our reality.

The crisis in pensions means that those who retire in the next quarter of a century will receive much less per year than their parents who have retired on the old traditional guaranteed final salary pension.

The move en masse away from the defined benefit pension  where people retired with a massive tax-free, lump sum worth up to 1.5 times your annual salary plus an annual pension worth between a half or 60% of your final salary  to the lower defined contribution pensions has been a travesty.

Done because so many defined benefit schemes were massively in debt because they were gorged upon by the boomers, my generation now faces poverty in old age despite having good jobs.

Such a failure to look after the rights of those coming after them has meant a drift towards disenchantment with the centre, as Donohoe calls it.

In his first major speech as Finance Minister in June, he said: 2016 will probably be remembered as the year in which populism found its people  and the people found it. A research paper from the Harvard School of Government estimates populist parties

captured about one in every eight seats in recent European elections with its share of the vote rising from 5% in the 1960s to over 13% now.

It is arguable that the rise of UKIP, for example, did not see that party win power, but did see that party win the argument. This argument is even starker given its recent failure to win a single seat in the British parliament, he said.

A victory won without a single seat in the House of Commons. For the centre to hold, it needs to be protected.

The rewards for those playing by the rules have to be salvaged again. We need to launch a new social contract which will see a real future for those who want this country to succeed.

If we dont then the rise of populism will only continue. The centre must be protected if it is to hold.
Saturday, August 19th, 2017 (7:10 am) - Score 1,611

All of the biggest UK internet providers seem to be cutting their prices this month and now Sky Broadband has joined by slashing the monthly rental of their packages across the board. On top of that new customers will also receive a 100 Prepaid MasterCard gift when they join.

Every one of Sky Broadbands packages includes a wireless router (Sky Q Hub on the Sky Fibre Max product), Sky Talk line rental (standard UK call rates), unlimited access to WiFi hotspots from The Cloud, Sky Shield (Parental Controls and Anti-Malware), nuisance call blocking, unlimited usage, Sky Yahoo Email and of course the 100 Prepaid MasterCard.

Sky Broadband Unlimited

* Download speeds up to 17Mbps (1Mbps upload)  Average speed of 11Mbps

* Unlimited usage

* 19.95 one-off setup fee

* 12 Month contract PRICE: 20 per month for 12 months (28.99 thereafter) Sky Fibre

* Download speeds up to 38Mbps (9.5Mbps upload)  Average speed of 34Mbps

* 25GB monthly usage

* 59.95 one-off setup fee

* 18 Month contract PRICE: 23 per month for 18 months (28.99 thereafter) Sky Fibre Unlimited

* Download speeds up to 38Mbps (9.5Mbps upload)  Average speed of 34Mbps

* Unlimited usage

* 59.95 one-off setup fee

* 18 Month contract PRICE: 33.99 per month for 18 months (38.99 thereafter) Sky Fibre Max

* Download speeds up to 76Mbps (19Mbps upload)  Average speed of 57Mbps

* Unlimited usage

* 59.95 one-off setup fee

* 18 Month contract PRICE: 38.99 per month for 18 months (43.99 thereafter)

Sky are currently the only major UK ISP to also be promoting average download speeds for their packages alongside the usual up to (reflecting the fastest 10% of customers) measure and the eagle-eyed among you will perhaps have notice a subtle change. At its introduction the Sky Broadband Unlimited package promoted an average of 9Mbps but this has now risen to 11Mbps, while Sky Fibre Max has gone in the opposite direction and dropped from 60Mbps to 57Mbps.

We of course expect to see fluctuations, like those above, when an average is used (it will change as customers join / leave with different speeds), although 11Mbps seems a bit high for an ADSL2+ average on their entry-level package (the previous 9Mbps level was more in keeping with other studies). On the other hand we dont know for sure if Sky is using a mean or median average.

Sky also offers a 30 day Broadband and Talk Satisfaction Guarantee (during the first 30 days of all your services being activated), although this refund applies to subscription charges only (not set-up charges or non-inclusive call charges) and is pro-rated. Sky also has a variety of Sky TV packages that can be optionally added into these broadband and phone bundles, as well as a Sky Mobile service.
The Sony Xperia XZ Premium and Huawei P10 are great devices with top-tier hardware, premium craftsmanship, and great design aesthetics. The devices have several things in common like the presence of Android Nougat under-the-hood. However, there are relevant differences between the two devices that will set them apart in terms of performance.

The Xperia XZ Premium is Sony's flagship smartphone, which was unveiled at the MWC 2017 event back in February. The smartphone boasts a 5.46-inch 4K HDR Triluminos IPS LCD display and protected by Gorilla Glass 5. The flagship is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC with the Adreno 540 GPU alongside an octa-core CPU with custom Kryo 280 cores clocked at a maximum frequency of 2.45GHz. The device has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which is expandable up to 256GB in capacity. The Xperia XZ Premium has a non-removable 3,230mAh Li-ion battery with support for Qualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0, Phone Arena reported.

Sony's new flagship phone also comes with an IP68 certification. On the camera front, it has a new "Motion Eye" camera that incorporates a triple-sensor system including a laser sensor for faster auto-focus. It has an updated 19-megapixel 1/2.3-inch ExmorRS image sensor that is supplemented by the company's own SteadyShot 5-axis electronic image stabilization (EIS), PDAF and a LED flash. The Xperia XZ Premium's camera can record 4K videos at 30fps and 720p videos at an amazing 960fps, even though, the ultra slow-mo burst mode only lasts about 0.182 seconds.

On the other hand, like the Xperia XZ Premium, the Huawei P10 was also unveiled at the MWC 2017. The smartphone boasts a 5.1-inch IPS-NEO LCD screen that comes with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and is protected by Gorilla Glass 5. The device is powered by Huawei's own HiSilicon Kirin 960 SoC which is coming with an octa-core CPU clocked at a maximum of 2.4GHz with the ARM Mali-G71 MP8 GPU for graphics. The device has a 4GB of RAM and 32GB or 64GB variants of built-in storage, which can be expanded via microSD card of up to 256GB in capacity, as reported by Android Headline.

The Huawei P10 has a dual rear-camera module that incorporates a 12-megapixel RGB sensor and a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor, with both lenses developed by Leica. The Huawei P10's camera is capable of recording 4K videos at up to 30 fps and standard 1080p videos at up to 60 fps. The Huawei P10 boasts a 3,200mAh battery with support for fast charging.
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The alleged marketing strategies of British American Tobacco Plc in Africa have been cited in another British media outlet, this time for its activities in countries plagued by civil war.

The Guardians report, released Friday, is based on BAT documents provided by former employee Paul Hopkins. The newspaper said countries affected include Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia and South Sudan.

Among the accusations is that cartons of cigarettes were distributed to traders in Somalia after Al-Shabaab banned cigarette sales and threatened punishments under Sharia law between late 2008 and early 2009.

The documents also show BAT made plans to launch sales in South Sudan just two days before the country gained independence from the north after years of civil war left 4 million people displaced.

BAT is the worlds largest publicly traded tobacco manufacturer, having completed July 25 its $54.5 billion purchase of the 57.8 percent of Reynolds it did not already own.

Reynolds has become BATs largest global subsidiary, with legacy Reynolds shareholders owning 19 percent of BAT.

A 2015 BBC documentary disclosed claims of bribery committed by former BAT employees and individuals working on BATs behalf in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. The bribes were alleged to have been made to politicians and policymakers to cover up environmental damage and corporate espionage linked to BAT.

BAT has denied those claims, but said in its 2015 annual report that a number of allegations were made regarding historic misconduct in Africa.

British regulators confirmed July 31 they are investigating allegations of bribery and corruption practices by BAT. The Serious Fraud Office said it is looking into suspicions of corruption in the conduct of business by BAT, its subsidiaries and associated persons.

BAT said it has been informed that the Serious Fraud Office has now opened a formal investigation. BAT intends to cooperate with that investigation.

On Friday, BAT said it has complied fully with the regulations for tobacco products in the DRC  which have been in place in this country since 2007  that prescribes health warnings and health warning sizes, and sets limits for tar and nicotine content.

Additionally, in other African countries, including South Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland, where there is no tobacco regulation in place, we voluntarily apply a side panel health warning on all of our products sold in those markets.

BAT said it complies with tobacco tax law in all 200 global markets where it sells products.

In each market where we are present, we offer consumers a choice of products, which can include local brands, international brands and our Global Drive brands, BAT said.

It is expected that top-selling U.S. menthol cigarette Newport and top-selling U.S. electronic cigarette Vuse  both acquired from Reynolds  will be sold internationally.

The Guardian previously reported that BAT and other global groups have used threats against at least eight African nations, demanding they eliminate or dilute tobacco control measures that have saved millions of lives in the West.

Hopkins said fragile states were of interest to BAT, in spite of the practical difficulties and dangers involved in moving cartons of cigarettes and money about.

If you have no government, you have nobody annoying you about health warnings and nicotine content, Hopkins told the Guardian. No customs. You basically pay your tax to the local militias on the airfield where you are landing.

Somalia is a profitable market for BAT, Hopkins said, because people like the more expensive brands.

Anti-tobacco U.S. advocacy group the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids cited the Guardian report in again urging U.S. Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission regulators and Congress to conduct their own probes of BAT as it relates to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The group made similar requests during the regulatory review of BAT buying Reynolds, which served as BATs re-entry into the U.S. marketplace after 13 years.

In addition to possible violations of the FCPA, The Guardian report raises questions about whether BATs conduct in moving U.S. dollars during the DRC conflict also violates federal anti-money laundering laws, especially as the U.S. has had sanctions in place against the DRC since 2006, the campaign said.

This is a company that has proven it cannot and will not play by the rules, said Matthew Myers, the groups president. Unless and until they are held accountable by governments, shareholders, business partners and the public, the companys wrongdoing will only continue.

Stephen Pope, managing principal with industry research firm Spotlight Ideas of London, said Aug. 1 that there is an element of truth in that the wheels of government and legislation in Africa turn more easily if greased.

However, it is certainly not a practice that should be applauded.
CHARLOTTE  Police on Friday asked the public for help in finding a Charlotte elementary school teacher who is accused of sexually assaulting boys at an overnight summer camp he ran from his home.

Also Friday, police said they have identified three more victims in the case involving 29-year-old Taji Brown, a fifth-grade teacher at Billingsville Elementary School.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police detectives obtained 26 warrants for Browns arrest, including 13 counts each of indecent liberties with a child and indecent liberties with a student.

Brown was initially charged this week with inappropriately touching two boys while operating the program at his home on Pebble Creek Way in north Charlotte.

Brown has been with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools since 2011 and was suspended with pay, Observer news partner WBTV reported.

Police said Browns camp was called G.U.D.B.O.Y.S. (Gentlemen Understanding Destiny By Overcoming Your Statistics), and was billed as a mentoring program. Brown recruited the children for the program, police said, by preying specifically on young boys who had single mothers.

Police were notified of the program when the parent of a 10-year-old victim said their child told them Brown touched him.

The case highlights the importance of vetting childcare providers, especially during the summer months, Police Lt. Tom Barry said this week. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is available to help parents find programs for their children, he said.

We know its very difficult to find childcare when schools out, but we will be partners with you to help you in that struggle, if that is a struggle for you, Barry said.

Anyone with information on Browns location should call 911.
Someone vandalized the Confederate soldier statue in downtown Winston-Salem Friday night, spraying black paint on at least two sides.

The incident happened after 9 p.m. at the statue on the corner of Fourth and Liberty streets, Winston-Salem police said.

The vandal or vandals painted words on two sides of the statue near its base. Black paint also partially covered the motto, Our Confederate Dead.

The Confederate soldier on top of the monument wasnt damaged.

By 11 p.m., police had cleaned all of the writing and most of the paint from the statue.

An officer at the scene said they got off as much as they could.

Police didnt have any suspects Friday night, police Lt. John Morris said, adding that police dont know what the painted words say or mean.

We are real early in the investigation, Morris said he stood next to the statue.

The vandalism occurred shortly after police issued a statement that they had received several inquiries from residents about a potential KKK rally here downtown today. Police said the information appears to be a social media rumor and they have received no requests from the KKK for a rally.

An officer in a patrol car was watching the statue earlier Friday evening, said Leah Hall who works at Mooneys Mediterranean Cafe, a restaurant at the corner of Fourth and Liberty streets.

As soon as the officer left the scene, someone spray painted the statue, Hall said, but she didnt see it happen.

Earlier Friday, three men who stood in front of the statue told Hall that they came to the site to pay their respects to the monument, she said. Those men left before dark. People who appeared to be guarding the statue had been out there all week, Hall said.

It is a little frightening, especially after everything that happened this week, Hall said.

The vandalism at the statue happened six days after white nationalists staged a rally in Charlottesville to protest the citys decision to remove the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Counterprotesters flooded the city, and members of both sides fought.

Heather Heyer, 32, was killed Saturday when a car mowed down counterprotesters. James Alex Fields, 20, of Maumee, Ohio, and a Nazi sympathizer, has been charged in her death.

Several pedestrians walking on Fourth Street stopped and looked at the graffiti. Many asked each other what it said.

I want to know what it says, said Jameel Balenton of Charlotte, who was walking through downtown.

Balenton said he was OK with the statues defacing because it gets us away from the Confederate mindset.

Sophia Pappalardo of Winston-Salem accompanied Balenton as they stood in front of the statue. She said that all Confederate statues in the country should be removed.

Its a threat to different groups, such as black and brown people as well as Native Americans, Pappalardo said. Its a threat to anyone who is different from the white majority. Its a symbol of hate.

Allen Smith of Wilkesboro, who was visiting downtown Winston-Salem Friday, said he was sad about the vandalism.

It has been here for so long, he said of the statue. You wouldnt tear a page in a history book because you dont like what happened. This is the same thing.
More than a dozen freshmen at Wake Forest University wont have the typical first year of college: Sure, theyll go to class, meet new friends and broaden their horizons. But theyll be doing it in another country.

Seventeen freshmen were selected to go to Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of Global Awakenings, an inaugural yearlong study abroad program at Wake Forest. The city was selected for the program in part because the university has been sending students there since 1990 with great success, said David Taylor, assistant dean for Global Study Away with Wake Forest University. The university has been considering a freshmen study abroad program since 2014.

The students left for their first semester in Copenhagen on Friday, to return to North Carolina in mid-December.

Samantha Horowitz, 18, of Ocean City, N.J., said she was looking forward to having an unconventional freshman college year.

It will be hard in the beginning, but with 17 students, well all be in the same boat, going through the same struggles and the same things, Horowitz said. Ill be excited to say Im studying in another country.

Horowitz first learned of the program when interviewing for Wake Forest.

My interviewer talked about study abroad and the Copenhagen program, she said.

She said she wasnt initially thinking about studying abroad her freshman year, thinking that was too early in a college career to do that.

However, when Horowitz applied for WFU, there was a box on the application that asked if the applicant was interested in the Global Awakenings program. Horowitz checked it, deciding it would be a good opportunity. She was accepted to the university in October, and learned in early March she got into Global Awakenings.

Horowitz said she gradually began getting information on the program and is confident that even though shell be in Europe shell still have, the Demon Deacon experience.

There will be a 5k race similar to the Hit the Bricks run in the fall, shell be rooming with two other students in apartment-style housing and she got her class schedule  which is set and is what all of the students will take  that incorporates European influences into core subjects and requirements. Classes for the year include: a sense of place in European literature, European art of the 19th century, gender in Nordic cinema, Danish language and culture, and sustainable development in northern Europe, among others.

Horowitz said shes especially looking forward to the sustainable development class.

(Denmark) is one of the most sustainable countries, she said.

The group of five males and 12 females will begin classes about a week after they get to Copenhagen.

Im just so lucky that this is my year, that Im in the first class to go, Horowitz said.
RALEIGH  The North Carolina General Assembly quietly reconvened its work session Friday after a two-week hiatus, preparing for several days of partisan scuffles over redistricting, possible veto overrides and discharges of a chemical into a river.

The House and Senate opened sparsely-attended floor meetings at midday and adjourned minutes later until Tuesday. No votes were taken.

Lawmakers, who last met during a one-day session Aug. 3, have returned chiefly to redraw district boundaries for the 2018 elections before a court-mandated Sept. 1 deadline.

Federal judges struck down nearly 30 districts from the 2011 redistricting as illegal racial gerrymanders, but boundaries for several dozen seats now must be reworked.

Rep. David Lewis of Harnett County, senior chairman of the House redistricting committee, said he anticipated House and Senate district proposals would be released by late Sunday, in advance of a statewide public hearing Tuesday.

Committee votes on boundaries would be held Thursday, with the first floor votes Aug. 25, according to Lewis. Parliamentary and constitutional requirements mean the maps wouldnt be given final approval until the following week, he said.

While Republicans control both chambers and can draw the boundaries to their liking, the maps will face the review of a three-judge panel.

Democrats and their allies also are sure to oppose many boundaries and theyve already complained about criteria that committees agreed to in drawing the maps. In particular, the remap rules prevent the use of racial data about voters but allow for past election results  a key projector of a districts political leanings. Lewis has said other legal requirements will mean some pairs of incumbents will have to be drawn into the same district.

Legislators also must decide what to do about six vetoes issued by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper since late June.

Four vetoes had been issued before the one-day session but lawmakers then delayed acting on them. Coopers written objections to two more bills he vetoed this week from the Aug. 3 session were read aloud Friday.

Five vetoed bills originated in the House. Lewis said House Speaker Tim Moore hasnt made final decisions on whether override votes would occur next week.

A General Assembly environmental panel also will travel Wednesday to Wilmington for a meeting to investigate the discharge of the chemical GenX from a Chemours Co. plant in Bladen County into the Cape Fear River.

Senate Republicans have been unhappy with the Cooper administration for what they call incomplete or vague answers to questions they sent to two Cabinet secretaries about state and federal investigations related to the discharge.

The Cabinet leaders, who are seeking $2.6 million in emergency funds from the legislature to beef up water quality programs, say 70 water quality positions have been eliminated since 2013.

GOP budgets have made targeted reductions within the Department of Environmental Quality.

Lewis told reporters that lawmakers would not act this month on any proposed constitutional amendments or on attempts to redraw district boundaries for local judgeships. He said legislators could reconvene in late September.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un appears to have blinked and President Trump can claim a foreign policy victory and justification for his strategy.

Reminiscent of President Ronald Reagans peace through strength approach to deterring adversaries, President Trump stood up to the blustering despot and forced him to back down from his threat to launch missiles at Guam.

China, North Koreas biggest ally, no doubt played a role in getting Kim to change his mind, but primary credit should go to the president.

What a far cry from the policies of the last several administrations. They favored diplomacy over confrontation, allowing North Korea to proceed with its clandestine nuclear program in exchange for empty promises. Former President Jimmy Carter, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright were among those who visited North Korea on various diplomatic missions. Albright engaged in a champagne toast with Kims father, Kim Jong-il, after claiming success in getting the country to curtail its missile program. We have seen the failure of that approach and are witnessing the success of its opposite.

Though Kim seems to have backed down from launching missiles at Guam and touting his capability to strike targets on the U.S. mainland, he has retained his overheated rhetoric. In a case of the pot calling the kettle black, Kim warned the U.S., as reported by The Wall Street Journal, to take into full account whether the current standoff was to its benefit. He added it was incumbent on the U.S. to stop at once arrogant provocations against the DPRK (North Korea) and unilateral demands and not provoke it any longer.

Who provoked whom?

Kim added, If the Yankees persist in their extremely dangerous reckless actions on the Korean Peninsula and in its vicinity, testing the self-restraint of the DPRK, the North  will make an important decision as it already declared, meaning he might still order a strike against Guam, or put some missiles offshore to test American resolve.

American resolve has been tested and has prevailed, at least for now. Kim has lost face. His military leaders and others will take notice, as will the rest of the world. The significance of the unanimous UN resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea, which included the support of China, could not have been lost on Kim.

New presidents almost always face a foreign policy test. Some pass, some fail. John F. Kennedy was judged weak by Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev, which many believe precipitated the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Iran believed press reports that Ronald Reagan was a cowboy and dangerous, so they released American hostages on the day of his inauguration in 1981.

There is a time for diplomacy and a time for displaying strength. President Obama sent a signal to the world by setting a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan before victory over the Taliban could be achieved. He apologized to the world for what he saw as Americas arrogance. Our enemies took notice and viewed his statements as an invitation to adventurism.

President Trump and his defense secretary, Gen. James Mad Dog Mattis, took another approach, returning Kims rhetorical fire with rhetorical fire of their own. It worked, at least temporarily. Where to go from here remains an open question, but the goal remains the same. North Korea (and Iran) must never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons capable of reaching the United States or threatening Americas allies, including South Korea and Japan.

President Trump deserves credit for standing up for the country and confronting one of the worlds most unpredictable dictators. He probably wont get any credit from the media, most Democrats or the foreign policy establishment, but our adversaries are bound to take notice and perhaps adjust their view of the president in ways that benefit America.
Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger finally weighed in Thursday on the horrible events in Charlottesville last weekend with a Facebook post titled Reflecting on Charlottesville, Durham and North Carolina Monuments.

Berger denounces white supremacists and Nazis, but much of his essay is spent attacking Gov. Roy Cooper for criticizing a bill passed by the General Assembly that gives immunity to some motorists who run over protesters and for calling for the removal of confederate memorials on public property across North Carolina.

Of course, cities cannot remove the offensive statues on their own. Berger and his colleagues in the General Assembly made sure of that by passing a law in 2015 that forbids local governments from removing the memorials.

The law was signed by Gov. Pat McCrory after the massacre in an African-American church in Charleston by white supremacist Dylan Roof that prompted South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to demand that the Confederate flags be removed from the capital grounds.

Berger does not address why local governments were allowed to put up the Confederate monuments but are now not allowed to take them down. Somebody should ask him.

Gov. Cooper has also called on the General Assembly repeal the 2015 law, and it is the least that Berger and other legislative leaders should do.

Astonishingly, Berger did not mention President Trump at all in his post. Trump is under fire from leading Democrats and prominent Republicans alike for his remarks at a bizarre and rambling news conference Tuesday where he refused to draw distinctions between the neo-Nazis and white supremacists marching in Charlottesville and the counter protesters challenging them.

On Friday, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized Trump and called on him to apologize for his remarks that Romney said caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn.

Berger apparently cannot bring himself to join folks like Romney, Sen. John McCain, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and others who have called out Trump for, as one Republican commentator put it, giving aid and comfort to white supremacists.

Berger and other North Carolina Republicans have heard Trumps racism before. It is worth remembering that Trump was a keynote speaker at the state convention of the N.C. Republican Party in 2012 and in 2015.

In 2012 Trump was a prominent voice in the birther movement, folks claiming that President Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not eligible to serve as president. Trump raised the issue in his 2012 speech to North Carolina Republicans, presumably with Berger and Senators Tillis and Burr in attendance.

In 2015, Trump railed to his N.C. GOP audience about Mexican immigrants that he said were rapist and murderers. When he made similar remarks a few weeks later when he was formally announcing his candidacy, a firestorm of protest erupted, with many Republicans denouncing those comments too.

But he first made them here in North Carolina with the all the top GOP elected officials in the audience clapping their approval.

Trump being a bigot is nothing new. And many Republicans have attacked him for his racist remarks when he has made thembut not Phil Berger.

Everything is Roy Cooper's fault.

N Policy Watch
We learned Friday that Steve Bannon, the most prominent nationalist and friend to the alt-right in the White House, is on his way out. The Post reported that President Trump decided to remove him:

Trump had been under mounting pressure to dispense with Bannon, who many officials view as a political Svengali but who has drawn scorn as a leading internal force encouraging and amplifying the presidents most controversial nationalist impulses. 

Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News  a fiery, hard-right news site that has gone to war with the Republican establishment  had been expecting to be cut loose from the White House, people close to him said. One of them explained that Bannon was resigned to that fate and is determined to continue to advocate for Trumps agenda on the outside.

Coming after the wave of controversy over the events in Charlottesville and Trumps embrace of the cause of celebrating the Confederacy, one might be tempted to view this as some kind of recalibration that could result in a change in the administrations outlook toward matters of race.

Republicans will likely seize on Bannons ouster to argue that, in his heart, Trump isnt really a racist. Indeed, in recent days, a number of Republicans have stood up to testify to the presidents inclusive heart. I know Donald Trump. I dont think theres a racist bone in his body, says Sen. Orrin Hatch. The New York Times tells us that he once dated a model whos half black. What more proof do you need? (Ask Sally Hemings or Essie Mae Washington-Williams.) Lynne Patton, a longtime Trump family employee, says the president doesnt see color the way the average person does.

Trump himself has said that he is the least racist person that you have ever met. I could make a long and detailed case for why Trump is not in fact the least racist person you have ever met.

But this is the wrong question to ask. Not only cant we know with absolute certainty what lies in Trumps heart, but it also could not matter less. Hes the president of the United States  what matters isnt what he feels but what he does and the kind of example he sets.

And by those much more important measures, Trump is the most racially divisive president in our lifetimes  and its not even close. From literally the moment he began his presidential campaign in 2015, he has spread racist ideas, made racist arguments, appealed to racist sentiments, enacted racist policies and encouraged the most repugnant racists in American society to become more vocal and visible.

In the speech announcing his presidential candidacy, he attacked Mexican immigrants, saying When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best.  Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

He proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States, and even said hed be open to creating a registry to track all Muslims in the country.

His America First slogan was a deliberate echo of the America First party of the early 1940s, which trafficked in anti-Semitism.

On Thursday, he made another reference to a bogus story he told repeatedly on the campaign trail, in which Gen. John Pershing supposedly responded to terrorism by taking 50 Muslim prisoners and summarily executing 49 of them with bullets dipped in pigs blood, on the theory that this would be particularly offensive to Muslims. So in addition to proclaiming his support for a fictional war crime, Trump is arguing that offending Muslim religious sensibilities is the way to fight terrorism (this from a man who says its a deep insult to Christians when a department store puts up a Happy Holidays sign).

And of course, not only has he now embraced the cause of monuments celebrating the Confederacy  a rebellion against the United States for the purpose of maintaining slavery  he has explicitly equated its leaders to the founders of the American republic, putting figures like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on the same plane as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Given this extraordinary record, no sane person believes that its some kind of accident that all manner of neo-Nazis and white supremacists have felt emboldened by Trumps campaign, his election victory and his presidency to become more vocal and demonstrative than they ever have before.

Indeed, if you ask them thats exactly what theyll tell you. They regularly praise and celebrate President Trump, and say that his words and actions show that they no longer need to hide their ideology of hate. As David Duke said in Charlottesville last weekend, We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. Thats what we believed in. Thats why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said hes going to take our country back.

So Steve Bannon may be gone, but we shouldnt let that fool us into thinking that the Trump administration has undergone some kind of transformation. Well know that something has truly changed if the Justice Department displays a genuine commitment to upholding civil rights, or if the administration dials back on its vote suppression efforts, or if the president himself stops making statements that bring so much joy to the most detestable hatemongers in American society.

Thats how well know that Donald Trump is no racist in the ways that matter. I dont know about you, but Im not expecting much.
This weeks event: The violence in Charlottesville re-ignites nationwide controversy and tension over statues of Confederate soldiers and race in general.

Carroll Leggett: 0. William Kristol, the conservative journalist, made a great point after the Donald Trump media conference at Trump Tower Tuesday. He said it is now up to elected officials at levels below the presidency to take the initiative and ensure that the principles upon which the country was founded are honored, protected and preserved.

To stand quietly is to be complicit and provide tacit consent for patently evil forces that, though relatively few in number, have the ability to terrorize great portions of our population. This is about far more than statues. This is terrorism, raw, naked and flagrant -- no doubt about it.

Jim Monroe: 0. The only clear statement from all of this is violence gets you nothing.

I'm sad that the Southern heritage has been hijacked by white supremacist neo-Nazi crazies. We had a deeply divided country in the mid-1800s, and apparently the only way we could settle our differences was the Civil War. While it is wrong for us to hold something in high regard that causes pain to others, these statues should cause us to remember the stories that we've heard about those times and have us all to work as hard as we can to bring this country together and make sure the mistakes of long ago are not repeated.

Mike Walker: 0. Gen. Robert E. Lee renounced his oath of service to his country, and went on to lead an army that defended an economy operated by enslaved descendants of kidnap victims. Statues and other memorials to him and the soldiers he commanded are monuments not to heroism, but instead are reminders of the brutality and crime of slavery. Maintaining these commemorations makes no more sense than erecting statues to honor German generals of World War II.

Linda Petrou: 10. After World War II, when the governments of various countries want-ed to raze the Nazi concentration camps, the Jewish community said no, we want them to remain to show the world the obscene, vile, unspeakable deeds of the Nazi regime. They never wanted to forget.

Here in this country, a small group of vocal individuals have demanded any depiction of the Confederate era be erased. In some cases, they have resorted to violent illegal actions to see that this occurs.

These statues should be retained if only as a symbol of a obscene, vile, unspeakable time in this country (and in the world). The U.S., by abolishing slavery, led the world in this effort and it should be celebrated. The symbols should be kept so we never forget.

Khaetlyn Grindell: "0. The white supremacists in Charlottesville may have reignited the national conversation about race in United States, but the tension has been present since the founding of this nation. Racism is insidious; structural oppression smolders beneath the surface of our communities and may not always burn as brightly as Nazis carrying torches. The question that remains is this: are we finally ready to address both these overt acts of terrorism and the subtle ways that inequities continue to manifest?"

John Harrison: 0. Enfolded into a mythical Southern heritage, Confederate statues have served to ennoble an ignominious lost cause. Few rebellions have been so graciously commemorated or so many of their protagonists so lionized. That they still propagate sentiments of white-male supremacy and continue to evoke violence, mayhem and a deep strain of racism is a sad comment on large reaches of Southern culture.

A Confederate battle flag emblazoned with a swastika on display at the Charlottesville demonstration said it all. When is enough enough?

Suzanne Carroll: 0. Violence is never acceptable. The events in Charlottesville were not about defending Confederate statues, they were about igniting hate and racism and promoting a white supremacy agenda. To make matters worse, our president, out of fear of losing his base, laid the blame on many sides, refusing to acknowledge that his base committed an act of domestic terrorism.

Linda Hill: 6. We cannot rewrite history. Taking down statues, denouncing generals and the like is a waste of time and energy.

We live in the South. Those monuments are stone reminders of a lost war, not shrines to slavery. The violence in Charlottesville was sad and unnecessary. Could it have been avoided? I am not going to judge, nor point fingers. I will leave that to the authorities to figure out.

Hayes McNeill: 10. In our system, sucking up to fascists or to any violent group exemplifies raw politics at its worst.

We expect our presidency to be ennobling: you fight hard to win it, then you are obliged to faithfully represent, defend and encourage the best in American values. After the election, craven pandering to any voting bloc -- of which many candidates have been guilty -- must be put aside for the nobler goal of proving worthy of high office and of the public trust.

Stephen Flynn: 0. I have no words to describe my feelings on this past weekend and the killing of Heather Heyer. It was not to show support for a Civil War statue. Plain and simple, it was a hate march, and it is domestic terrorism.

These groups are domestic terrorists, and they have no place in my America. Take your fake flags somewhere else, America only has one flag. Fly another, and you are a traitor. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Heather did not deserve to die over a statue. Racism and bigotry start at the top and filter down.

JoAnn Dunn: 0. Violence, whether from the far right or far left political position, is always wrong. It is also wrong to attempt to wipe out history by removing any semblance of a period we have an objection to.

Continued unrest and violence have always preceded the downfall of nations and governments, and there are well-funded groups in the U.S. that have supporters ready to be bused in to keep the fires of violence going. If they keep this up, these groups will never elect any of the candidates they support, as law-abiding citizens will vote to keep them out.

Don Witte: 0. The president is elected to be a calming voice in time of situations like this, but since all he cares about is himself, he exacerbates the problem. It was left up to his daughter to say it right! So sad and avoidable for anyone else.

Virginia Underhill: Our president's self-contradictory rantings this week may be as good as it ever gets. He is totally unable to analyze a situation or to sympathize or even to offer aid in emergencies. When he speaks off-script and refuses to use the teleprompter his well-paid aides prepare in his best interest, his remarks plunge into chaotic patterns reminiscent of the obsessed. His white-supremacist rhetoric has endeared him to no one.

Apologies and solutions are now appearing in great numbers from many quarters, including a tweet from his nemesis, Barack Obama, all of which surely will go a long way toward reuniting our country and offering comfort to victims of crimes against humanity. 0 for this event and its aftermath.

Clint Johnson: 2. I fail to see how Confederate statues, erected almost 100 years ago, have reignited anything. The two times I've visited the Lee and Jackson statues in Charlottesville, both absolutely beautiful works of art, I was the only person admiring them. I spent well over two hours with them and not a soul came by to protest them.

The controversy has been created out of thin air by Democratic politicians trying to stir their bases. Charlottesville's mayor even blamed the election of Donald Trump for the violence in his city -- rather than explaining why his police force did not keep the volatile factions away from each other. To its credit, CBS TV even explained in a story that the groups were intentionally directed into each other's paths rather than separated by police lines.

Several years ago, the national news media decried ISIS tearing down statues in Iraq and Syria, emphasizing the history that was being lost. Now, the very same news media encourages tearing down statues of Americans in America.

The Union soldiers still alive at the turn of the 20th century did not object to the South honoring the Confederate soldier. In fact, when President Teddy Roosevelt agreed to re-turn the captured Confederate battle flags in 1905, he went on an extended train trip through the South. He personally handed the flags into the welcoming arms of Confederate veterans, then burst into song at every stop. Like Abraham Lincoln, Roosevelt liked to sing Dixie.

It is not the place of 21st century activists and politicians to tear down statues put up by 20th century politicians who wanted to honor the young men of the 19th century who marched off to war at the orders of 19th century politicians. Where will this stop? Will we have to get a new flag because the American flag was flown by 10,000 Klansmen in downtown Washington in 1925 -- with not a Confederate battle flag in sight? Will we tear down monuments to the Black Buffalo Soldiers whose service to the country included attacking Native American women and children? Will we tear down the World War II Memorial because we dropped two atom bombs on Japan? Will we tear down the Vietnam Memorial because of the atrocities committed by our soldiers in an unpopular war? Will we tear down the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. because they were slave owners?

While we are at that task, will we rename Washington, D.C. because it was named after a slave owner? If we do, I have a name idea for the capital of the nation: Stupid City.

Anne Wilson: From the Journal: Monday night, Justin Moore, the Grand Dragon for the Loyal White Knights of Ku Klux Klan, said he was glad Heyer died in the attack. Tragically, this statement from the N.C. Grand Dragon speaks volumes about racism and attitude in general. Its time to re-purpose the statues, removing them from prominent public space, and focus on new public art. This needs to be done lawfully and without fear of alt-right retribution.

Our N.C. General Assembly made a grievous error (legislative overreach) in passing the 2015 law preventing monument removal without legislative approval. Lets hope they respect Gov. Roy Coopers request to repeal that law. I am eager to hear comments from our Forsyth delegation, which will tell us a lot about our legislators. A no-response will also speak volumes. Score of 0.

John Wayne Lambeth: This is what vandalism and ignorance looks like. Charlottesville, here in North Carolina, it doesn't matter where  By trying to erase history, they are only repeating it.

Pure ignorance. This Confederate statue pulled down in our state was a piece of history. It's been there since 1924. And it's just now become a racist issue? I bet half of them dont even know why the statue is there and what it stood for. You can make a race issue about most anything these days. Simply pathetic.

They should be jailed and made to pay restitution. It's a part of history! Whether they like it or not. Where was the police at? I score this a fat 0 for stupidity and ignorance.

Tony Gagliardi: The story doesn't even rate a 0. The whole event was shameful. Both sides brought bats and shields and came to fight. Both sides shared in the responsibility for the death and injuries. The president condemned both sides and rightly so.

The press takes one side and the press should also be ashamed. The police could have stopped this crap but did not.

There is plenty of shame to go around. If you want to protest, do it legally without doing damage to property.

Derrick G. Hinson Sr.: 10. The president in his remarks was correct the first and third times: Radicals on both sides are to blame for violence. The Nationalists on the right had a permit to demonstrate. They have First Amendment rights. The Reds/ Anarchists showed up to shut down the demonstration. Violence ensued. A life was lost at the hands of a troubled young man in a homicidal act. Focus on the Left's attempt to erase the heritage and culture of the South was lost in the process. Attacking the South is just the beginning. The founding fathers are next. Western civilization and Christianity will follow. "
GEORGE D. CAMPBELL, Winston-Salem

Honor their bravery

I was glad to see that some of the vandals who destroyed the Confederate memorial statue in Durham, including Takiyah Thompson (Take down Confederate monuments, Cooper says, Aug. 16), had been arrested. Ill admit that I was impressed that she stepped forward to identify herself.

This was an illegal act that may have felt good to those who perpetrated it, but it hasnt accomplished anything except to give those protestors a bad name.

Im no supporter of white supremacy or slavery, but it shouldnt be dangerous or controversial to say that these Confederates stood up for what they believed and we should honor their bravery. They may have been wrong, but many of us have been wrong about many things. That doesnt always make us bad people.

Im glad the state legislature is preventing cities and municipalities from bowing to political correctness and the current knee-jerk urge to remove these monuments and memorials. I say we should have a long conversation about the Civil War, televised on UNCTV, then vote. I would accept the verdict of an informed public.

***

RUDY DIAMOND, Lewisville

Condemning violence

I was elated to hear conservative senators, representatives and columnists not only specifically denounce the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Va., but also criticize President Trump for his initial tepid response to what occurred. It is sad that Trump did not say what Republican Sen. Cory Gardner said: We must call evil by its name. These were white supremacists, and this was domestic terrorism. Instead, Trump calmly read prepared remarks denouncing, hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.

As I watched him read this statement it definitely appeared that he ad-libbed on many sides. The fact that the president did not single out the white supremacist sickos drew praise from a blogger on the neo-Nazi site, Daily Stormer. At 3:46 p.m. this deplorable sicko blogged, Trump comments were good. He didnt attack us  When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room  Really, really, good. God bless him.

I have no doubt that Trumps divisive rhetoric during the campaign and while he has been president has emboldened white supremacist hate groups.

In Charlottesville, Ex-KKK leader David Duke said in a video that was posted to Twitter by a photojournalist for the Indianapolis Star, We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.

Until Trump angrily denounces the white supremacists and fires Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller, alleged alt-right sympathizers in his administration, he will continue to embolden the deplorable, misguided, hate-filled groups that comprise the alt-right in America.

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#World University Games Chuncheong named host of 2027 World University Games The South Korean central region of Chungcheong was named the host of the 2027 Summer World University Games on Saturday, bringing the biennial event to the country for the fourth t...

#first lady First lady visits home of Cambodian child with heart disease First lady Kim Keon-hee visited the home of a Cambodian child with a heart disease Saturday and comforted the family, urging them not to give up under any circumstances, the presid...
Following a highly selective process, Advanced Satellites joins the top five percent of authorized DISH retailers in the premier program. As a result, customers in Kearney have a front-row seat to experience the latest products, announcements and offers available from DISH.

Advanced Satellites is truly tuned in to the needs and preferences of customers in Kearney, and we are proud to have them join our premier program, said Amir Ahmed, DISH senior vice president for indirect sales. Premier local retailers are a crucial part of our business, serving as trusted partners who help us better serve our customers, together.
ST. LOUIS  Farmers may enroll through Nov. 1 in the Monsanto Fund Americas Farmers Grow Communities program for an opportunity to direct $2,500 donations to local eligible nonprofit organizations.

Since 2010, the program has given more than $26 million to nonprofits across rural America, including $1.77 million in Nebraska. In 2018, more than $3 million will be awarded.

Food banks, emergency response organizations and agriculture programs for youths are among the entities receiving donations.

Farmers are eligible to enroll in the program if they are age 21 or older and actively engaged in farming 250 acres or more.

All program rules and an online enrollment form are posted at www.GrowCommunities.com or call 877-267-3332.
KEARNEY  A week after hail, wind and flooding rains damaged much of Custer County, assessments of the scope and cost of storm damage continue.

Staff at the Custer County office of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Farm Service Agency eventually will report ag-related losses to the state FSA office.

While individual crop insurance covers major crops, including corn and soybeans, County Executive Director Amy Mauler said producers of commercial crops not qualifying for such insurance, including fruits, vegetables, seed and forage crops, have 15 days to apply for the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program.

Livestock producers with hail or flood losses have 30 days to apply for help under the Emergency Livestock Assistance Program.

Area University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension educators can help livestock and crop producers consider options.

Custer County beef specialist Troy Walz said the feed value in hail-damaged cornfields depends on residual nitrogen. Tests must be done to be sure nitrates in the plant material is not too high for grazing cattle.

He said that also is true for cover crops such as oats planted to extend fall grazing.

Cattle producers with pasture damage may want to consider weaning calves early, Walz said.

The loss of cornstalks for late fall and winter grazing may require some producers to find other cornstalks to rent or to take on the expense of dry lot feeding, he added.

Alfalfa may have missed severe hail damage, especially if it was recently cut. The good thing about alfalfa is its a perennial. It will grow back, Walz said.

Ideally, you would stay off them (pastures) now, he said, although the several rains during the past week will help the damaged grasses to regrow.

Extension Crops Specialist Sarah Schlund, based in Dawson County, said insurance adjusters may require some crop producers to go through all the motions of finishing and harvesting grain, depending on what is left in the fields.

Defoliation will hurt corn and soybean yields. Also, she said, damaged corn is difficult to store because of mold concerns and might not be accepted at elevators.

Nitrates also are an issue when making silage from damaged corn. Schlund said mixing in dry matter such as ground hay can reduce nitrate concentrations, but it is costly.

You have to think of next year, she said, when considering cover crops to plant for grazing and/or soil protection to make sure there are no harmful effects for the 2018 crop year or long-term rotations.

Buyers of locally produced grain, including elevators and ethanol plants, also will be affected by the crop losses.

KAAPA Ethanol General Manager Chuck Woodside said the Ravenna plant and the KAAPA Grains elevator at Elm Creek buy corn from Custer County farmers. The Elm Creek elevator also buys soybeans.

We seem to suffer that in part of our trade area every year, Woodside said about the crop damage.

He said that while the storm damage hurts the raw product for KAAPA Ethanol Ravenna, cattle producers may be able to use more distillers grains from the plant to make up for other feed losses.

Risk management plans based on crop insurance will be the keys to economic survival for some farmers.

Ansley farmer and Nebraska Corn Growers Association board member Guy Mills Jr. said the Custer County storm damage proves the value of the strengthened crop insurance programs in the 2014 Farm Bill and the need to keep them in the new farm bill now being developed.

Crop insurance is vital to the sustainability of agriculture and economic well-being of rural areas, Mills said. In the event of a major disaster such as the one seen in Custer County this past weekend, one can easily recognize the importance of keeping crop insurance in the upcoming farm bill for the survivability of farmers, ranchers, rural business and lending institutions.
KEARNEY  Extra personnel will be staffing Kearneys fire stations, hospitals and roads Monday in anticipation of any emergencies.

Personnel from the Kearney Police Department, Buffalo County Sheriffs Office and the Nebraska State Patrol will monitor city, county and state roads in Kearney and Buffalo County in an effort to prevent traffic congestion and crashes.

Therell be a tremendous amount of traffic congestion, KPD Capt. Mike Kirkwood said of city streets.

Before the eclipse, KPD officers will be ensuring Kearney streets remain open for emergency vehicles and that traffic moves efficiently. During the eclipse, officers will be staged at several public viewing locations throughout Kearney to monitor traffic flow and direct traffic as needed.

From sunset Friday to sunrise Tuesday, state officials have restricted oversized semitrailer trucks from using the states highways. Oversized loads that transport heavy equipment and use pilot vehicles that travel on state and U.S. highways and Interstate 80 are forbidden from using the roads during that time, said Tom Sands, operations manager for the Nebraska Department of Transportation.

Oversized, wide loads also are banned during heavily traveled holiday weekends, such as Memorial Day, Sands said.

In addition to the streets, extra staff will be on-hand in the Kearney/Buffalo County 911 Center, Buffalo County Sheriff Neil Miller said. It will be business as usual at the Buffalo County Jail.

At CHI Health Good Samaritan, officials are leaving their surgery schedule open for emergency cases and have scheduled a walk-in clinic at Good Samaritan Medical Group-Family Medicine at 3320 Ave. A for nonurgent medical needs.

We plan and practice throughout the year for events that would bring large crowds through the doors, and well put those protocols in place if any incident causes more than usual numbers of people to become ill or injured, Director of Patient Care Services Kris Hughbanks said.

Kearney Regional Medical Center will not only have extra staff on-hand and on standby, but ambulatory patients who want to see the eclipse will be given protective eye wear and allowed to go outside to see the event.

The Kearney Volunteer Fire Department is increasing the numbers of paid engineers at all three stations from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Fire Administrator Jason Whalen said. Two people will be staffed at Station Two at 3820 30th Ave. and Station Three at Kearney Regional Airport at 5615 Airport Road, while five people will be on duty at Station One at 2211 Ave. A.

Typically, one person is on duty at each station. Engineers are also on standby Sunday.

Its hard to know how to prepare, without knowing what its (eclipse) going to bring, Whalen said.

Kirkwood offered these suggestions to motorists on Monday:

Decide early where to watch the eclipse.

Leave early in anticipation of slow-moving traffic.

If youre driving during the eclipse, dont watch the event from your vehicle. Pull over into a legal parking spot to watch the totality.

That is one of our concerns, that people will stop and block traffic and then theres an emergency. Vehicles will be ticketed and towed if theyre in the roadway, Kirkwood said.

Businesses that are remaining open during the eclipse are being asked to stay vigilant, Kirkwood said, and be on alert for suspicious or criminal activity while peoples attention is diverted from their normal daily routine.

Be nice to people. Be patient, and pick up your litter, he added.

@HubChic
HOLDREGE  Teri Fetters wanted to be a dog groomer since she graduated from high school.

She has been following that dream for 31 years, and after grooming at different establishments and in her basement, she now has a grooming salon of her own called, The Grooming Shed, in Holdrege.

As an animal lover, going to school to become a dog groomer was the perfect option for her after high school.

A friend of mine had actually gone to grooming school in Nebraska. I started thinking I didnt want to go for four years someplace. After getting out of high school, I just didnt want to be tied down like that, but I wanted a trade. Its a perfect trade if you like animals, she said.

She received her certification in 1986 after attending school in Colorado for 10 weeks. Not long after Fetters finished school, her mom, Lila Johnson, received her certification as a dog groomer.

Shes been grooming pretty much ever since. I have been off and on at different places, but this was always my dream ... to have my own place, Fetters said.

After grooming dogs in her basement for five years, Fetters wanted to move her business out of the house and work as a groomer full time.

Theres no natural light when youre in the basement, and the lighting just isnt really that great. So when you have a dark dog and its dark, and its just hard to really see very well. Im getting older, so my eyesight is not so great, she said.

When she saw the small sheds for sale at Livestock Feeders Service, she thought it would be a perfect place for her business.

After purchasing the shed and setting it up in their yard, Fetters and her husband, Roger, began the work on the building themselves.

We insulated everything, put all the sheetrock up and then Roger bought his own truck and started trucking, she said.

With Roger traveling to Wichita, Kan., five times a week, it became more difficult to find time to finish the shed. The couple hired a construction company to finish the job, and the final touches were put on last week.

Along with the new building, Fetters also has a new tub, a new hydraulic table, new dyers, new clippers and an outdoor dog run for larger dogs. She typically grooms four to five dogs in a day and will groom Monday through Saturday. Johnson will also groom at the Grooming Shed under her business name, Pet Clips.

Fetters works hard to help anxious dogs by having one dog at a time at her establishment and having its owner pick it up after she is finished, if possible.

The way I do my grooming is I dont bring them all in at once and have them sit and wait. I like to bring them in and a normal groom will take me an hour, she said. They have anxiety a lot of them, so why make them sit out here? We do offer that if somebody has to go to work and drops their dog off and picks them up after work. They can stay; thats not a problem, either.

The best part of grooming for Fetters is the relationships she establishes with the dogs and their humans, but that can also be bittersweet.

If somebody calls and says, My dog was hit or we had to put my dog down  because you do get attached to them  thats hard, but other than that I enjoy all aspects of (grooming), she said.

When it comes to grooming, Fetters works with all breeds of dogs and even cats, but not humans.

Ive had some people say, Can you cut my hair? Well, I can do your dog, she said with a laugh.
VALENTINE  Lynn Delano Meyers, 78, of Valentine died Wednesday, Aug. 2, 2017, at Cherry County Hospital in Valentine.

Graveside services were Aug. 8 at Mount Hope Cemetery in Valentine.

Holmes Funeral Home in Valentine was in charge of arrangements.



Lynn Meyers was born April 29, 1939, in Ainsworth to Vern and Anna Meyers. He grew up in a sod house south of town with his brother, Gene, and sister, Marian. Lynn left high school to join the U.S. Navy, sailing on the USS Fechteler, a destroyer that protected aircraft carriers that were located in the South Pacific Sea and the China Sea.

In 1963, he married Dixie Ross and had two sons, Thane and Monte.

Lynn was a ranch hand for various ranchers south of Valentine from 1963 until 1976, when he moved his family into town. He began working for Tetherow Cattle Co. and Perrett Construction, the latter being where he was employed as a heavy equipment operator until his retirement.

His wife, Dixie, always loved traveling with Lynn as he worked road construction jobs across Nebraska. Lynn and Dixie were very much in love throughout their 39-year marriage; his heart was broken when Dixie died in 2002.

Lynn was the definition of a tough ole cowboy. He loved his horse, Tim, and spent his younger years riding bulls and wrestling steers in area rodeos, winning many awards.

In his later years, after he retired and until the day he passed, he was dedicated to strength training and keeping physically fit. He could often be found walking up and down bleachers at the fairgrounds counting his progress with coins or wandering the canyons looking for wildlife.

He also enjoyed history and spent many hours checking out books at the library and watching documentaries, ready to impart his new knowledge when his family visited.

Lynns family will remember most his sense of humor, his stories and his dedication to his wife, kids and grandchildren. And, even a tough ole cowboy gives in to having his hair braided and his nails painted if asked by one of his treasured granddaughters.

He loved playing practical jokes and often had something ready to surprise his family. Some of the familys best memories were playing cards with Lynn and Dixie, everyone laughing the entire time. He was a rock for his family and brought joy to those around him.

Survivors include his sons, Monte and wife Laura Meyers and Thane and wife Kim Meyers; grandchildren, Shad, Lindsay, Krista, Amanda, AJ, Shelby, Tara and Emma; great-grandchildren, Jayden, Brooklynn, Brooklyn, Amaya, Grant, Mason, Bentley, Braelon, Brinn, Blake and Gannon; and many cousins, nieces and nephews.

Lynn was preceded in death by his wife; his parents; his brother; his sister; his in-laws, Arnold, Kay and Ted Ross; and many other loved ones.

While our hearts are broken, we know it was time for the cowboy to ride away. We will always love you, Grandpa Lynn.

Visit www.HolmesFH.com for the online guest register.
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Hugh Pett is seen with with his 3 1/2 inch refractor telescope fitted with a special solar filter that allows safe viewing of the sun, cutting the its intensity down by 10,000 times. Pett, a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, along with seven others will have their telescopes set up in the parking lot of the Kelowna Curling club on Monday.
Producer Penn Jillette of the famous magician team Penn & Teller poses for a photograph during the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, in Toronto on Friday, September 6, 2013. The entertainer has apologized after Newfoundlanders took him to task for insulting their intelligence on a talk show. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michelle Siu
President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One at Hagerstown Regional Airport in Hagerstown, Md., Friday, Aug. 18, 2017. The U.S. appears to be signalling that President Donald Trump's vow to aggressively promote a "buy American, hire American" agenda is not open to discussion during negotiations on a new North American Free Trade Agreement. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Pablo Martinez Monsivais
President of Finland Sauli Niinist and Finland's Minister of Finance Petteri Orpo, left, attend a prayer service for stabbing victims at the Cathedral in Turku, Finland, on Friday evening, Aug. 18, 2017. Several people were stabbed on the Market Square earlier Friday. (Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva via AP)
Supporters of Nigeria President, Muhammadu Buhari react on the street as his motorcade passes by, upon on his arrival, in Abuja, Nigeria, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Buhari returned to the country Saturday after more than three months in London for medical treatment, while the government gave no details on what exactly has been ailing him. (AP Photo/Olamikan Gbemiga)
This undated photo from the Kissimmee Police Department shows Officer Matthew Baxter. Officials said Officers Sam Howard and Baxter were checking suspicious people in an area of Kissimmee, Fla., known for drug activity when they were shot and did not have an opportunity to return fire, early Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. (Kissimmee Police Department/Orlando Sentinel via AP)
This 2016 photo provided by Sven Birkerts shows his father Gunnar Birkerts. Gunnar Birkerts, an internationally acclaimed modernist architect who designed buildings including the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, and the University of Michigan Law Library, has died. He was 92. Sven Birkerts, said his father died Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017, of congestive heart failure at his home in Needham, Massachusetts. (Sven Birkerts via AP)
FILE - In this June 28, 2017 file photo, Venezuela's chief prosecutor Luisa Ortega speaks during a press conference in Caracas, Venezuela. The ousted chief prosecutor fled to Colombia with her husband German Ferrer, on Friday, Aug. 18, 2017, a day after the Supreme Court ordered his arrest. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano, File)
ADVANCE FOR USE MONDAY, AUG. 21, 2017 AND THEREAFTER-Alan, who is getting treated at a nearby methadone clinic while trying to kick his heroin addiction, stands by the fire outside his tent at the homeless encampment where he lives along the river in Aberdeen, Wash., Wednesday June 14, 2017. "I'm just trying to make it," said Alan who asked not to have his last name published and dreams of having his own RV some day. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
Wyndham Lathem arrives at a police station as he is escorted by Chicago police, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017, in Chicago. Lathem, a Northwestern University professor, and Andrew Warren, an Oxford University financial officer, have been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, a Michigan native who had been working in Chicago. Authorities say Cornell-Duranleau suffered more than 40 stab wounds to his upper body during the July attack in Lathem's high-rise Chicago condo. Lathem and Warren surrendered peacefully to police in California on Aug. 4 after an eight-day manhunt. (AP Photo/Jim Young, Pool)
The mosaic tile design meant to represent Times Square's status as the "Crossroads of the World" is part of the subway station's border, in New York, Friday, Aug. 18, 2017. Transit officials have decided to alter subway tiles at the station that have a design that's been compared to the Confederate flag, to make it "crystal clear" that they don't depict the flag. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
The next public hearing on Foxconn Technology Groups plans to build a $10 billion manufacturing campus will be held Tuesday morning in Sturtevant.

Foxconn has not announced where it plans to build the massive facility, but it is eyeing locations in Racine and Kenosha counties.

The Legislatures budget-writing Joint Finance Committee announced Friday that the 11 a.m. public hearing will be held at Gateway Technical Colleges SC Johnson iMET Center, 2320 Renaissance Blvd.

Tuesdays hearing on the $3 billion tax incentive bill comes after the Assembly passed the measure with bipartisan support Thursday.

An Assembly committee previously held a public hearing on the proposal earlier this month. It must pass the Senate and be signed by Gov. Scott Walker before becoming law.

The Taiwan-based company says the plant could eventually employ up to 13,000 people.

Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, and John Nygren, R-Marinette, released a statement:

Foxconn has the potential to be a game-changer for our state. The reforms we have passed helped put our state in position for Foxconn to be a possibility. Foxconn is expected to make a $10 billion investment and bring as many as 13,000 direct family-supporting careers and 22,000 indirect jobs to their area. Hearing directly from the people of the Racine and Kenosha area is crucial to the project and the Foxconn legislation. We look forward to the hearing.

Its not yet known if representatives from Foxconn or chairman and CEO Terry Gou will attend Tuesdays hearing.

Earlier this week, Democrats unsuccessfully called for a second public hearing to glean more details from Foxconn.

However, Assembly Democratic leader Peter Barca, of Kenosha, was among a number of Democrats to join the Republican majority in passing the incentives package.

Later, he issued a statement explaining his support, acknowledging it had strong backing locally.

When my father immigrated to the United States and settled our family in Kenosha, it was a factory job that gave him the chance to eventually buy his own business and achieve the American dream. But as time passed, manufacturing left my hometown and communities all across Wisconsin, Barca said. If we can create new good-paying, family-supporting jobs in a high-tech industry, it could give future generations the same opportunities my family had.

At the end of the day, all politics is local, he continued. As I traveled my district over the last few weeks, I spoke with countless constituents and heard from nearly every major local leader in Kenosha and Racine that they supported this plan. Thats why I voted yes.
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As every physician practicing today knows, health care is in a constant state of flux. The latest news from Washington creates even more uncertainty. What we do know is that, for the foreseeable future, there will be an emphasis on team care, coordination, technology and, of course, meeting the requirements of the ever-expanding alphabet soup of acronyms, from MACRA to MIPS and beyond.

As I think about all the changes of the past decade, its quite remarkable to see where we are, and how far weve come. In the 1990s, most physicians were still in independent or small group practices. Today for the first time, the AMA reports that less than half of all physicians are independent.

And so what? Isnt that just an inevitable sign of progress? Things change. We adapt or die. The message we hear is: prepare for an era when virtually no MDs are independent and where patients are seen by advanced practitioners (aka mid-level providers) via telehealth platforms for all but the most serious illnesses.

Is that the only option  to remove choices for physicians and patients? Lets hope not. Id like to live and work in a marketplace where there are options for all physicians and patients. Where we dont force everyone into the same health care delivery system box. I think such a goal is realistic and attainable because thats how my partners and I have structured our practice.

With a total of six physicians, we are one of the last of the truly independent medical groups in our area  the central coast of California. Our practice is successful and thriving. Our patients are happy, and my fellow physicians and I love the freedom we have to practice medicine the way we know is best.

No, this isnt a story about direct pay, which in actuality is starting to flounder. Its the story of a model that puts the decision of whether or not to participate in a concierge medicine program directly in the hands of patients. My colleagues and I offer a hybrid concierge program, where about 20 percent of our patients opt to participate in the concierge program, the rest we see as traditional insured patients.

One of the features that differentiate our practice from others is that we take insurance, even Medicare. We charge a modest fee, about $150/month to cover service not provided by traditional health insurance. When combined, the services we offer well outpace the fee, making it a real value for patients.

This includes a highly personalized annual exam and consultation visit, direct contact information to us for after-hours questions or emergencies, and convenient scheduling with little to no waiting. Adult children up to 26 are covered under the monthly fee. Plus, our appointment times average about 30 minutes for a follow-up, and an hour for a physical, giving us time to talk with our patients  to look at them  and not the EHR screen in the eye. Thats a welcome change considering that the average physician today reports spending a ridiculous two-thirds of their time on paperwork.

Whats most popular with patients and their families is the patient advocacy and advice. When they are sick and frightened, patients arent dropped in the middle of a complex and confusing health care system to fend for themselves. We make the appointments with specialists and labs, get the results promptly and share them in a way that is understandable to patients. We dont abandon hospitalized patients. We remain actively involved in their care, so we can be ready to take over when they are discharged.

How does that work? Easily: we typically schedule one to two hours per day for our concierge patients. We still have to do what all physicians do: we use EHRs, and we also have to meet requirements for MIPS, etc. My colleagues and I still work hard. The difference is, there is no soul-sucking pressure from working in a grind. We have relaxed and enjoyable time during the day to treat patients the way we think is best. If our concierge schedule isnt booked, we either see other patients or attend to that always-present paperwork during work hours, not at home when we want to relax with family.

We continue to provide the same care to all patients; thats a point I cant stress enough. If someone is in crisis, they are seen first. Our biggest source of growth for the concierge program is keeping all patients happy. If we arent meeting their needs, they leave, and we dont succeed. We arent getting rich on this model, but our compensation is fair and our practice stable and growing. Most importantly, we are enjoying the practice of medicine again.

I get that there are questions about any concierge program. I surely had them when I was struggling to find a better way to survive and practice medicine. It came down to some fairly simple questions: whats best for my patients, community, colleagues and practice? For us, the answer was hybrid concierge. Because patient, as well as insurance relationships, are maintained. The model, pioneered by Concierge Choice Physicians, not only works for small practices like ours, it also works very well for large groups and even vertically integrated health systems.

We know health care will continue to evolve and were ready for what comes next. We hope that next will include practice models that give real choices to physicians and patients.

Is that important in an era of physician shortages, increasing demand, rising costs? Yes, because the hybrid concierge can bring a private, non-taxpayer source of revenue to health care delivery. One that can stabilize practices, keep physicians practicing longer and ensure all patients are seen. Are there going to be questions and issues that arise? Of course, but lets address them, not ban options that physicians and patients want. Health care will continue to be complex and at times confounding. As we search for solutions, lets make sure that choice remains an option that can benefit everyone.

Cary Fitchmun is a family physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Top stylist Laura Mullett hosted a wonderful fundraising afternoon at the Newpark Hotel last Thursday.

Vogue in the Afternoon was part of the Kilkenny Alternative Arts programme and was a fun fusion of fashion and art.

The fashion show and prosecco afternoon tea is part of the hotels ongoing sponsorship of the festival, which also includes the sponsorship of the Mick ODea Exhibition taking place with the artist in residence in the Home Rule Club on Johns Street,.

The Newpark is also hosting a art exhibition at the hotel until the end of the month by award-winning Irish artist Gill OShea, featuring a collection of vibrant portraits of some of Hollywoods female style icons from the last century.

Old style Hollywood glamour was the theme of many of the garments showcased in the afternoon fashion show in the glorious surrounds of the recently opened terrace.

Fashion from Heidi Higgins opened the show. Heidi's designs are simple and timelessly elegant and are a worthwhile investment in any fashion consious lady's wardrobe. They are available from her own store in Portlaoise and are also stocked in Serendipity in Kilkenny City. The models, included Miss Kilkenny Niamh De Brun who did a superb job showcasing a number of looks for the upcoming season from Kilkenny boutique Mimi and Marian Cooney.

General manager, Mark Dunne said that the hotel was delighted to be investing in the arts festival. The hotel is sponsoring artist, Mick O'Dea and also organised Vogue in the Afternoon in aid of Breast Cancer Ireland. As well as the fashion show there was also a talk by artist Gillian O'Shea.

Sunshine blazed down as attendees enjoyed tasty treats while watching the fashion show.

All the proceeds from the event went to Breast Cancer Ireland, a charity which was established to raise significant funding to support pioneering research programmes nationally as well as to promote education and awareness on the importance of breast health amongst women of all ages.
The county needs quality Primary Care services - with GPs at its epicentre - who to date have been neglected by successive governments.

Dr Richard Brennans comments, published in this newspaper today, carry significant weight and should be a stark warning to those in power - address the GP crisis now or the beds problem will be the least of your worries.

For the first time, 16 GP training places remained unfilled this year- with 170 filled, according to the Department of Health.

However doctors on the ground say 200 annually should be getting trained - so even if there was a full complement, it would not be enough.

More worryingly, the HSE, based on the demographic profile of current General Medical Service GPs, expects that approximately 157 GPs may retire on age grounds between 2017 and 2021.

This translates into over three GPs a month across the country over the next four years. The figures and the words of those at the coalface of this issue reveal that at no stage has the issue of Primary Care and GPs ever been as urgent.

Mr Brennan says the ability of GPs to provide additional capacity, additional doctors and practice nurses to provide care is seriously curtailed. In order to ensure a viable business model for future GPs, investment is required both in General

Practice and in the wider Primary Care setting. A reversal of the cuts of 38% during the austerity years is central to ensuring the survival and the future viability of General Practices.

The second problem is the shortage of younger doctors who are willing to enter General Practice training and who on qualification do not find it attractive to remain in Ireland, let alone Kilkenny - to provide care for communities.

These professionals need to be enticed into staying and improved contracts can achieve this aim. As Mr Brennan says there is international competition for doctors.

He is right in his argument that GPs must be allowed to provide increasing amounts of support and care within communities into the future, and General Practice should remain the cornerstone of locally based care.

Only the government can ensure this.
Three men are being questioned in connection with a stabbing in Castlecomer earlier this evening.

A young man is in a critical condition at St Luke's Hospital following the incident.

At approximately 7pm this evening gardai were called to the scene of a stabbing at a house on Love Lane, Castlecomer. On arrival they discovered a man in his early 20's on the street with stab injuries. The man was brought to St Lukes Hospital where he is described as being in a critical condition.

Three men, two in their 30's and one in his 40,s, were arrested at the scene and are currently detained under the provisions of Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984 at Kilkenny Garda Station.

The scene has been preserved for a technical examination.

Gardai wish to appeal for witnesses who may have been in the Love Lane area of Castlecomer this evening between 5pm and 7pm to contact them. Witnesses or anyone with information are asked to contact Kilkenny Garda Station on 056-7775000, The Garda Confidential Telephone Line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
As a Fairfield school board member, Phil Miller voted to allow transgender students to use restrooms based on their gender identity. (martyspittle/Pixabay)
Artist Zhao Bandi is now holding a solo exhibition, Zhao Bandi: China Party, at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art at Beijing's 798 art district through Oct 22. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Beijing-born artist Zhao Bandi, 51, rose to fame in the late 1980s for his paintings that demonstrate techniques which he learned when studying at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

But he soon dropped painting and turned to performance art, where he created and performed in several projects.

He is now holding a solo exhibition, Zhao Bandi: China Party, at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art at Beijing's 798 art district through Oct 22.

The exhibition showcases his creations since 1987 covering oil paintings, performance art, videos and fashion designs.

The highlights are his early paintings and his latest works. Also on show are his Giant Panda series of performance art in which he uses the animal as a medium to convey his opinions on the changing social scene.
Stronger measures in store to stabilize housing prices



By Yoon Ja-young



President Moon Jae-in said that his administration has no reason to hold back in talks with the United States over amendments to the free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries.

"According to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Korea-U.S. FTA benefited both countries. While global trade decreased 12 percent since signing the deal, trade between Korea and the U.S. increased 12 percent between 2011 and 2016," President Moon said in a press conference.

The comments follow the two countries' agreement to start follow-up negotiations over the free trade deal, which was triggered by U.S. President Donald Trump's demand that it should be revised since it was a "job killer" for the U.S.

Moon pointed out that the U.S. now has a bigger portion of Korea's import market. He also cited a report by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC), according to which the Korea-U.S. FTA decreased the U.S. deficit with Korea by $15.8 billion.

"While Korea is enjoying a surplus in goods trade, we are recording a huge deficit in the services trade, and we are also investing much more in the U.S.," the President said.

He added that the government will point out such facts and negotiate with the U.S., keeping the national interests at the forefront.

"The negotiations will be a long process, and we also need ratification and approval at the National Assembly. It is not desirable to fuss over the U.S. demand for a renegotiation."



Additional tax hikes



On tax hikes, President Moon said the government may consider it when there is a public consensus.












This file photo taken on Mar. 13 shows Senior White House advivor Steve Bannon as U.S. President Donald Trump (out of frame) speaks to the press before a meeting with his cabinet at the White House in Washington, DC. / AFP-Yonhap



U.S. President Donald Trump's chief strategist, who recently rebuffed his boss's threats to use military options against North Korea, left the administration Friday, the White House said.

Steve Bannon's departure was widely rumored as he continued to clash with other White House officials and took flak for Trump's failure to unequivocally condemn white supremacists in last week's deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."

Bannon, a former head of ultra conservative outlet Breitbart News, stoked further controversy earlier this week after he contradicted the president's bellicose rhetoric against the North in an interview with American Prospect.

"There's no military solution (to North Korea's nuclear threats), forget it," he told the magazine. "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about. There's no military solution here. They got us."












Apart from hosting and possible maintenance costs, there are not exactly downsides to having your own website. Even if its just a personal blog it can always become more useful down the line, if you utilize it in the right manner. In other words, more
San Diego Police Department Community Relations Officer Larry Hesselgesser  La Jollas favorite man in blue  has been a constant presence in The Village at community meetings, Neighborhood Watch gatherings and all things having to do with safety.

The talkative dad-of-two and artist-turned-officer has been with the San Diego Police Force for more than 20 years and has a wealth of knowledge on the inner-workings of the department ... knowledge he happily shares to encourage safety and take care of things that fall through the cracks.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, near Pasadena, went to grade school through high school there. I went to Pasadena City College and thought I would be an artist, but I didnt want to be a starving artist.

What was your art medium?

I did a lot of advertising and graphic art, and I did watercolor before law enforcement. My thought was I could do law enforcement and have art to fall back on. I had aspirations to go to the Pasadena Art Center, and its really hard to get in there. Some of the people working on projects were up for days in a row and it was a little overwhelming. When law enforcement became a reality, I knew I could do my art later in life, if I wanted to.

How did your career in law enforcement evolve?

My first job was working with my dad as a mechanic. I did a couple of summers and figured it wasnt for me. My next-door neighbor at the time was a K9 officer, so as I was growing up, I had that influence. I went on some ride-alongs with him and fell in love with law enforcement.

I started as a civilian jailer and parking control officer before I turned 21. I rode around in a little Cushman, one of those three-wheeled vehicles, before I became a police officer. I became a reserve officer for Monterey Park Police Department (near east Los Angeles) and when I decided to go full time, I went to the LA Sheriffs Department. I did two years in the jail there, then went on to patrol, but that was during the time of the Los Angeles riots (1992). I decided to move to San Diego after that.

What was it like during the LA riots?

I was at the Marina Del Rey Sheriffs station at the time. One of our areas was Ladera Heights, which is probably a mile or two from the flash point. I was in the patrol department, so we immediately went on 12-hour shifts, so 12 hours on and 12 hours off.

We had riot helmets on the whole time. We would ride four and sometimes five deep in a car as we went place to place. It was different. You could feel it in the air when you drove around; you saw buildings on fire, people being shot, people pointing guns out their car windows. It was people at their worst.

As we gained more control and as the days went by, things started to slow down and there was a feeling of things getting back under control. We just knew it would take some time. It was a tense time in law enforcement. There have been a lot of changes in law enforcement since.

What prompted the move to San Diego?

There was a lot going on in LA.  I had always come to San Diego on vacation, it was near and dear to me. And up in LA, there were fires, floods, earthquakes and the riots. Every time we had a disaster, it was 12 on and 12 off. I thought it was a good time to move. That was in the early 1990s.

What is your job like now?

My true love in law enforcement was being on the bicycle patrol with the beach team and when I was with LA, I worked at the Marina Del Rey (bay side) station and loved being on the boats, and I love diving. I got experience working on the police boat. When I came here, they had a Harbor Unit in Mission Bay. I was on that team for 10 years, and on the joint dive-team with the lifeguards. Im still the senior boat operator. If there is a dive call-out, I would assist the lifeguards on that.

The City disbanded the Harbor Unit in 2009 for budget reasons. I would have stayed on harbor patrol my entire career. But when that happened, the department put all the (harbor) officers back on street patrol. The captain at the time asked if I would be a community relations officer. He thought I would be good with people. Id been doing shift work for 20-some years and thought it would be nice to have a steady shift with weekends off.

I could take my experience and educate the public on crime prevention  people need to be more savvy about protecting their house and property. Were seeing a lot more quality-of-life crimes and we dont have the luxury of patrolling like we used to.

What does an average day entail?

I work four, 10-hour shifts, so I have three days off a week (Saturday, Sunday and Monday). Usually, when I come in on Tuesday, I have that whole day to catch up. Ill have 300-400 e-mails I must go through and sometimes half of those involve more investigation and looking things up for people. The longer Ive been here, the more people have my e-mail address and the more meetings I go to.

I like to think of this position as taking care of the things that fall through the cracks. Part of my job is to filter questions to the best person able to answer a citizens inquiry. I can guide them or I will be the in-between. There are also radio calls and many repeat calls that take our officers time away. So we try to help the situation however we can so these officers dont have to go to the same location so many times.

And thats Tuesday (laughs).

The e-mails come throughout the week and then there are meetings. We have Neighborhood Watch meetings with coordinators  well meet and talk to 20 or so neighbors for an hour. We let them know what Neighborhood Watch is all about, introduce them to nextdoor.com and let them know what the situation is with the police and how they can help us and we can all work together.

Then there are other meetings here and there.

Northern Division has two Community Relations Officers and we split our duties; I have all the beach communities and areas west of the I-5 freeway, and my partner has the eastern communities.

What do you do in your free time?

Ive always had an artistic background, so I got into music. I play guitar, sing and write my own songs. That is fulfilling my artistic side. Thats something most people dont know about me.

I also love pirate(y) stuff. Diving might be something I do in my retirement. There are a lot of shipwrecks off the coast of Florida and theres a lot of cool stuff out there. Its intriguing to me.

What are you musical influences?

Rock n roll was the big influence growing up in the 80s  your Guns N Roses, Motley Crue, Van Halen. I also like country-rock more so than true country. I also like easy-listening stuff like jazz. I like a variety.

What are your favorite foods?

Im a steak-and-potatoes kind of guy. But Ive been getting into intermittent fasting, so no snacks in between. Ill have big meals, no snacking. I also love all kinds of fish.

What about your favorite color?

Blue.

Editors Note: The People in Your Neighborhood series shines a spotlight on notable locals we all wish we knew more about! La Jolla Light staff is out on the town talking to familiar, friendly faces to bring you their stories. If you know someone youd like us to profile, send the lead via e-mail to editor@lajollalight.com or call us at (858) 875-5950.
PRESS RELEASE

Rise in Lindners Popularity on Pro-Russia Policy in Germany

Aug. 18, 2017 (EIRNS)In Germany, as in the United States, the population does not accept a new Cold Waror even hot war with Russia, despite the insistence of both the neoconservative and neoliberal elites, and nearly all of the media, that it must be so.

Bloomberg News had to note in an Aug. 9 article that the German politician rising fastest in approval going into Sept. 17 national elections is Christian Lindner, chairman of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Linders approval rose after he was attacked in Germanys mainstream media for proposing on Aug. 5 a policy of cooperation with Russia (and with Trumps United States), including "provisionally" recognizing that Crimea has become part of Russia. Bloomberg reported a poll published Aug. 9, in which 44.4% of Germans surveyed agreed with Lindner, while 43.2% disagreed with him.

The news service reports Lindner is likely to get the FDP over the 5% threshold and back into the Bundestag, in which case he will possibly become Foreign Minister in Chancellor Angela Merkels next government.
PRESS RELEASE

London, U.S. Media Back the Antifa for Race Riots

Aug. 18, 2017 (EIRNS)British and American media too numerous to count are backing and encouraging demonstrations of violent American "antifa" groups against President Trump, just three months after antifa rioters trashed sections of Hamburg and wounded hundreds of police during the G20 meetings.

The British intelligence intention of forcing Trump out of the White House remains constant since before his inauguration; but the "Russiagate" scheme has taken some sharp blows, from LaRouche PACs mass mobilization around the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity report proving there was no Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The British intelligence/George Soros-run operations have returned to the model of their "immigration" anti-Trump demonstrations of last Winter, but now with far more violence.

In the Republican Party, "Blimps" (British Liberal imperialists) have been coming out against the President: Sen. Robert Corker said he was neither "stable" nor "competent"; losing candidates Mitt Romney, Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio demanded he apologize for condemning antifa violence along with "white supremacist" violence.

Among Democratic elected officials, hysteria again reigns, with Rep. Steven Cohen of Tennessee putting up an impeachment resolution, one state senator advocating Trumps assassination, losing Wisconsin candidate Russ Feingold agitating for mass resignations from all government bodies, etc. Mass "protests" this Saturday in Washington, D.C. and Boston again involve violent antifa groups, against only a small "white nationalist" countergang in Boston and only Confederate statues in Washington.

President Trumps warning of Aug. 16 is being confirmed, as monuments to Abraham Lincoln have been defaced in Washington, D.C., and burned and partly destroyed in Chicago. The Los Angeles Times on Aug. 15 ran "Who was responsible for the violence in Charlottesville? Heres what witnesses say," quoting more than a dozen witnesses completely confirming the Presidents characterization of armed violence initiated by both sides, and more often by the antifa groups. Even witnesses quoted from antifa groups confirmed their own aggressive armed violence, along with that of the FBI-controlled "white supremacists."

The London Independent ran a long article Aug. 18, "Trump is About to Resign," promoting Tony Schwartz, Trumps hired co-author for The Art of the Deal, who has become a bitter Trump enemy and Clintonista in recent years. The paper crows,

"Trumps presidency is effectively over. Would be amazed if he survives to the end of the year. He resigns by then if not sooner. The circle [Ku Klux?ed.] is closing with blinding speed, says Tony Schwartz."

The Guardian printed a long political analysis, "The President of the United States is Now a Nazi Sympathizer," by columnist Richard Wolffe. The London Times claimed without evidence that Trumps economic advisor Gary Cohn and Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly were "disgusted" with his response to the Charlottesville events. London bookies are quoting up to 60% odds of Trumps impeachment, indicating the bets Brits are making on this.
PRESS RELEASE

Russian Military Police Facilitating UN Delivery of Humanitarian Supplies in Syria

Aug. 18, 2017 (EIRNS)UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura revealed, yesterday, that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu sent him a letter in the beginning of August in which Shoigu apparently proposed that the routes of UN humanitarian aid convoys would be put under the control of Russian military police. In the letter, de Mistura said, Shoigu indicated that

"there was going to be an impact on the speed of allowing convoys to get through to areas which have been reaching a de-escalation agreement,"

de Mistura said during a press conference at the UN offices in Geneva.

"This in order to make sure that it would be less complicated than in the past, by having military Russian observation points making the movement of aid quicker and facilitated than in the past."

This happened for the first time on April 16 when a 50-truck convoy made its way to Douma, in the Eastern Ghouta district of Damascus, with supplies for 45,000 people. De Mistura expressed the hope that this will become a pattern.

De Mistura described the Shoigu letter as a "turning point" that needs still to be solidified "because many of these blockages were recurrent and the answer was, okay, now we will be trying to help by being present so that those who block it will be less tempted to do so, and I think Douma today is a good sign in this direction, but we need, obviously, to verify it even more."

Jan Egeland, de Misturas assistant for humanitarian affairs, described the convoy to Douma as "highly symbolic," because it was the first convoy to that area since May. "Took a lot of effort, a lot of negotiations and a lot of help from Russia and others to make it happen," he said. Overall, he said, the number of Syrians that the UN is now able to reach with aid has increased from 6 million in January to 9 million in June. There are still eleven besieged areas, with some 540,000 people, that the UN unable to reach, but this is in the process of changing, he said, as permits are getting easier to get.

"So it can change, we have intensive diplomacy, negotiations with the Syrian government, with armed opposition groups and we have been helped by Russia, Iran, the United States, and the other members of our humanitarian task force,"

he said.

Otherwise, on the peace making effort, de Mistura described not so much a schedule, but an expected sequence of events that includes opposition meetings, technical meetings, another meeting in Astana, a meeting in Geneva and the UN General Assembly, all of which will culminate in another meeting in Geneva, sometime in the October-November time frame. De Mistura indicated that he expects that the Syrian opposition delegation, in whatever form emerges by then, will meet face-to-face with the Syrian governments negotiators. De Mistura explained that part of the reason for this elongated time scale is that the oppositionwhich consists of the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee, and the Cairo and Moscow platformsneeds a bit more time to organize itself.
PRESS RELEASE

U.S.-South Korean Military Exercises Still On

Aug. 18, 2017 (EIRNS)In a press release issued, today, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that the joint U.S.-South Korean exercise Ulchi Freedom Guardian 2017 will begin as scheduled on Oct. 21. This is despite the growing pressure to postpone or even modify the exercise in order to help lower the tensions with North Korea, especially as part of the joint Chinese-Russian dual suspension proposal, where the U.S. suspends its military exercises and North Korea suspends its nuclear and missile testing at the same time. China Daily, in an editorial posted yesterday, said it was "regrettable" that the U.S. has so far rejected the dual suspension proposal. "If it could lead to a possible solution to such a critical issue, why not give it a try?" China Daily said, while noting that just because past negotiation efforts have failed, doesnt necessarily mean that new efforts will end the same way.

Bloomberg News, in a story headlined "Military Drills Emerge as Key Obstacle to U.S.-North Korea Talks," reports that the U.S. rejects outright the Chinese double freeze proposal "and scaling down the drills now would make President Donald Trump look weak so soon after his warnings of fire and fury." It nonetheless quotes retired Army Col. William McKinney, who spent more than 40 years involved in U.S.-Korea military relations and planning and is the non-resident Korea Chair at Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., who says that the U.S. should consider suspending larger exercisesprovided it gets something in return.

"If there is a point in time when a degree of trust exists between the two parties for a quid pro quo agreement, then one or both exercises [the spring Foal Eagle exercise as well] might be up for being suspended,"

said McKinney.

South Korea is officially expressing the same view as the U.S. that the exercises must go on. South Korean Air Force Gen. Jeong Kyeong-doo, President Moon Jae-ins nominee to head the South Korean JCS told a parliamentary committee, on Aug. 17, that South Korea has no plans to reduce the scale of an annual joint military exercise with the United States. Earlier in the day, South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said that upcoming Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise will be played out on a similar scale to that of last year, that is, with approximately 50,000 South Korean troops joining 20,000 U.S. troops and smaller contingents from seven other countries that are part of the U.N. command in South Korea.

The North Korea response to the U.S.-South Korean military exercises, issued yesterday, by KCNA, was to warn that they would "further drive the situation on the Korean Peninsula into catastrophe"
PRESS RELEASE

China Daily Carries Extensive Profile of Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the 40-Year Work of the LaRouche Movement

Aug. 18, 2017 (EIRNS)The weekend edition of China Daily features a full-length profile of Helga Zepp-LaRouche by China Daily's U.S. correspondent Chen Weihua, entitled "Identifying With China" and with the kicker "Helga Zepp-LaRouche sees Belt and Road Initiative as fulfilling lifelong pursuit by her and her U.S. political activist husband, Lyndon LaRouche." The article then goes on to discuss Zepp-LaRouche's first extensive visit to China as a young journalist during the period of the Cultural Revolution. "My generation was still curious about the world," Zepp-LaRouche says. "The youth of today, they just Google about things from the search machine. I wanted to see what the world looks like." In the interview Zepp-LaRouche gives some of her impressions from that time, including that some of the Chinese she met with spoke German and they talked readily about their situation. "She found people were 'kind,' but said, 'People were not happy at all,'" Chen writes. On that trip, he says, Zepp-LaRouche also visited Africa and other parts of Asia, seeing the tremendous poverty. "I came back from this trip with the absolute conviction that the world had to change, had to be improved," she said. Coming back, she was looking for solutions and became acquainted with the work of U.S. political activist Lyndon LaRouche, Chen writes, "better known for launching the LaRouche movement."

"The movement which has included many organizations and companies in the world, promotes a revival of classical art and greater commitment to science; advocates the development of major economic infrastructure projects on a global scale; and calls for reform of the world financial system to encourage investment in the physical economy and suppress financial speculation." "Helga found Lyndon to be the only one who talked about the need for development and industrialization of Africa, and Third World countries as well as the establishment of an international development, something like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,"

he writes. Zepp-LaRouche and Lyndon were married in 1977.

The article continues in a discussion of the work of her and her husband in pursuing these goals together with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Mexico's President Jose Lopez Portillo. Zepp-LaRouche praises the work of China with the Belt and Road and the AIIB and details some of her activities on the issue over the last three years, including her participation at the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing. "I was really happy to participate," Zepp-LaRouche says in the interview, "because we have been fighting for this for so long. I sort of identify with the success of this project."

In the interview she also talks about the importance of the open attitude of the Trump Administration to the Forum in sending a high-level U.S. delegation, underlining how beneficial cooperation in the Belt and Road would be for rebuilding U.S. infrastructure. She says that in her discussion with African delegates at the Beijing Forum it was clear that they now have hope for the future, hope which was sorely lacking before the Chinese initiative. Chen continues: "Helga says that what China is doing has justified what she and her colleagues have done for the last 40 years." "We are very happy" with the BRI, Zepp-LaRouche says.

"It is one thing for a small organization like ours to produce ideas, but it's quite a different thing that the largest country in the world started to do it."

She laments the fact that her husband, Lyndon LaRouche, who is 94 years old, will probably not get to visit to China. "He loves China," Zepp-LaRouche says, "and he is convinced that the Chinese initiative (BRI) is the most important thing on the planet right now."

China Daily U.S.A appears everywhere in the United States. The interview is also scheduled to run in the European edition of China Daily next week.
Louisiana Tech, in partnership with participating high schools, is pleased to provide an opportunity for qualified students to earn college credit while still enrolled in high school. All courses in the dual enrollment program are taught at the high school during the regular school day. Students earn both high school and college credit for the courses in this program.

Dual Enrollment students are admitted to the University as visiting students. For high school seniors, Louisiana Tech will automatically determine which students meet the requirements to enroll the following fall as regular university students; those who meet the admission requirements will be admitted and evaluated for the Universitys merit-based scholarship program. Students who take the ACT or SAT in the fall of their senior year should send their scores to Louisiana Tech; scholarship offers may be adjusted if higher scores are achieved through the December test date. Techs ACT code is 1588; the SAT code is 6372.

Criteria to enroll in College Level, Degree Credit Courses

Within the guidelines below, each high school determines its minimum student participation criteria.

Academic Standing  have achieved 11th or 12th grade academic standing

Minimum scores  (with the recommendation of the high school principal and/or counselor, Louisiana Tech will honor the minimum scores indicated below)

GPA  must have at least a 2.5 overall high school GPA

Students who have NOT YET taken the ACT test*

Pre-ACT Composite score of 19, and

English Pre-ACT of 18, and

Math Pre-ACT score of 19

Students who have taken the ACT test*

ACT Composite score of 19, and

ACT English score of 18 (or Accuplacer Next Generation Writing, score of 250), and

ACT Math score of 19 (Accuplacer Quantitative Reasoning Algebra and Statistics (QRAS), score of 250 )

Students who do not meet the language arts or mathematics skills requirements (English and Math ACT sub-scores) will be allowed limited access to Dual Enrollment courses as long as the student is concurrently working on improving his/her reading/writing/mathematics skills. Before a high school student may enroll in an academic dual enrollment course in the Spring Quarter of their senior year, he/she must meet the minimum ACT score requirements in both English and Math.

Note: Louisiana Tech will accept an equivalent Pre-ACT score in lieu of an ACT score. If the student has taken the ACT (or Accuplacer), these scores will override Pre-ACT scores and will be used solely as the determining factor for enrollment. This is a Louisiana Board of Regents requirement.

Although Louisiana Tech sets forth the minimum ACT (or equivalent) scoring requirements for dual enrollment eligibility, each high school reserves the right to require higher minimum scores.

Preferred scores

ACT Composite score of at least 22, and

ACT English sub-score of at least 18, and

ACT Mathematics sub-score of at least 22

For the 2022-23 academic school year, Louisiana Tech will also be allowing the following criteria to those students who would like to take dual enrollment: as long as an eligible student has a 2.5 GPA in high school, he or she is allowed to take dual enrollment courses with the recommendation of the high school counselor. The high school counselor will have to send us his/her approvals in order for students to take dual enrollment courses, as long as the 2.5 GPA has been attained.

Student Tuition and Other Expenses

Application Fee  all students are required to pay an annual $20 application fee. Seniors are not required to pay a second application fee for admission to the University for their freshman year.

Tuition  a discounted rate of $150 per three-credit hour course will be charged for 2022-23. If a student enrolls and pays for four classes (12 credit hours) during the regular academic year (fall through spring), the fifth class will be complimentary (13th, 14th, and 15th credit hours). Additional courses (beyond 15 credit hours) will be billed at $150 per three-credit hours.

Text Books and Course Materials  students are required to use the same textbooks, course materials, and supplies as regular university students. Public high schools have been providing these items for their students. Private and parochial students will need to consider how these items will be obtained.
Confederate Motorcycles makes some of Americas meanest, leanest and loudest V-twin street machines.

But now theyre going electric, abandoning the internal combustion engine for a battery-electric powertrain, in partnership with Californias Zero Motorcycles.

The company in Birmingham, Ala., will sell the last of its massively expensive custom cruisers before plugging in a new machine, known as Hercules, that will run on battery power.

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Confederate President Matt Chambers, showing bikes at the annual car show known as The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, said his company has gone as far as it can possibly go with gas-powered motorcycles.

Thats pretty far. The $155,000 Bomber unit parked on the Quail lawn makes 150 horsepower, and 165 pound-feet of torque, and accelerates as quickly as almost any motorcycle currently in production.

We cant go any further than this, Chambers said of his decision to take the company in a new direction. Weve hit the ceiling. This is it.

Instead, he said, his company is partnering with Zero Motorcycles, the Santa Cruz makers of high-end electric street bikes, to create a new cruiser. It will be driven by twin Zero electric motors and will produce the equivalent of 175 horsepower and 290 pound-feet of torque.

Sketches show a sleek, streamlined cruising motorcycle  very Confederate in style, but all electric in power train.

Zero could not be reached for comment, but Chambers said the motorcycles will likely be made on the West Coast, perhaps in Zeros Scotts Valley facility.

And it will not be a Confederate. Going forward, Chambers said, his company is now called Curtiss Motorcycles  a nod to the builder and racer Glenn Curtiss, who set motorcycle speed records in the early 1900s before gaining fame as an aviator.

The change to Curtiss was guided in part, Chambers said, by the limitations of having a company called Confederate, with that words historical connection to the Civil War and current civil unrest.

I think we lost a lot a business with that name, Chambers said. Weve missed out on branding opportunities. So, its time to retire it.

Chambers said the Birmingham factory has sold 1,300 motorcycles in its history. Confederate has nine complete motorcycles left in stock, and will make 13 more of the just-debuted Bomber model, before moving on the new electric machines.

For Friday only, Chambers said, he was offering discounts to anyone attending The Quail. The normal $155,000 MSRP was being slashed  to $150,000.

charles.fleming@latimes.com

Twitter: @misterfleming
It was a dramatic moment in Roman Polanskis four-decade-long legal battle: Samantha Geimer, the victim in the filmmakers 1977 statutory rape case, appeared in a Los Angeles County courtroom in June and asked the judge to drop the case.

She said she was tired of the media spectacle, the personal anguish and the never-ending court drama.

On Friday, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon denied that request.

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Her statement is dramatic evidence of the long-lasting and traumatic effect these crimes, and [Polanskis] refusal to obey court orders and appear for sentencing, is having on her life, the judge wrote in his 10-page decision.

But he added that the court isnt obligated to dismiss the case merely because it would be in the victims best interest.

In his ruling, Gordon sharply rebuked Polanski, writing that his fugitive status continues to harm [Geimer] and compounds the trauma of the sexual assault committed against her that gave rise to this case.

Gordon also denied Polanskis latest request to unseal testimony given in early 2010 by Roger Gunson, the original prosecutor. The testimony was properly sealed under state law, so there is no basis by which this court can revisit that question, Gordon wrote.

Gunson gave the testimony while Polanski was in custody in Switzerland and facing extradition to the U.S. The director was ultimately freed after Swiss officials rejected the U.S.s request, citing the mystery surrounding the sealed Gunson testimony.

Polanskis lawyers have long contended that the Gunson testimony contains crucial details about a plea agreement made in the case that would have limited the filmmakers sentence to time he served at a Chino prison.

The director pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor and was sent to Chino for a 90-day diagnostic evaluation starting in late 1977. He was released after spending 42 days in custody, based on the recommendation of the prison.

But when it appeared that Judge Laurence Rittenband wanted to send him back to jail, Polanski fled the U.S. for Europe before an official sentence was handed down.

Harland Braun, Polanskis U.S. attorney, said Friday that the director was forced to flee because Rittenband was dishonest. He also questioned why the Gunson testimony has remained sealed.

Its a public proceeding  end of story. The public should have access to it, Braun said in an interview.

In a filing on Friday, Braun reiterated proposals to resolve the case, including having the court sentence Polanski in absentia. But Gordon rejected that suggestion in April, stating that the defendants fugitive status disqualifies him from seeking relief in the court.

Polanski has also offered to return to L.A. and appear in court if the judge sentences him first. Although Mr. Polanski accepts responsibility for his conduct, he believes the court system should accept some responsibility for its conduct in the case, Braun wrote in the filing.

But Gordon turned down those suggestions on Friday without issuing a written opinion, Braun said.

Polanski intends to continue pursuing the case by taking it to Interpol officials in Europe, Braun said. The filmmaker is hoping to convince officials in Lyon, France, that they should not honor any U.S. warrants for his arrest.

Two foreign decisions may work in the directors favor  the Swiss decision in 2010 and a decision by Polish officials last year to reject a separate U.S. extradition request.

Perhaps coincidentally, the new ruling in L.A. came on Polanskis birthday. The Oscar-winning director  whose films include Rosemarys Baby, Chinatown and The Pianist  turned 84 on Friday.

Polanski resides primarily in France and remains an active filmmaker. He debuted his latest movie, Based on a True Story, at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

david.ng@latimes.com

@DavidNgLAT

UPDATES:

6:55 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details.

This story was originally published at 5:10 p.m.
Defending President Trump can be a lonely job, and this week it has become particularly tough for the TV news outlets to find someone to do it.

Executives and producers across the networks say the presidents harshly received comments on last weekends deadly clash between far-right groups and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Va., have made it difficult to book guests to speak on behalf of the Trump agenda.

CBS News was turned down by 16 Republican members of Congress before finally booking Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.,to appear on this Sundays edition of its Washington discussion show Face the Nation, said a network insider not authorized to comment publicly. And Scott has been a vocal critic of his partys president, saying his moral authority has been compromised.

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Both Chuck Todd, moderator of NBCs Meet the Press, and Fox News anchor Shepard Smith also said they could not get GOP representatives on their shows this week as the rebuke of Trumps remarks  in which many say he equated white supremacist groups with the protesters who opposed them  grew stronger.

Its hard to find members at this point who are willing to come out and give a full-throated support of the president, said one TV news executive who asked for anonymity to speak freely on the matter. (None of the network executives would publicly discuss the booking issues.)

Executives and producers privately say the controversy over Charlottesville has only intensified a challenge that has existed since the day the president entered the White House  finding pro-Trump commentators and guests. Its likely to intensify the demand for the staffers who are exiting the White House. Both former press secretary Sean Spicer and ousted chief of staff Reince Priebus are being shopped to the networks for jobs as contributors.

With Republicans dominating Congress, there is no shortage of available conservative voices. But being a Republican these days doesnt mean a person will speak in defense of the administration.

MSNBC, which courts liberal viewers in the evening, has a host of Republican contributors, including former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Rick Tyler, who served as a spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruzs presidential bid. The cable news networks 4 p.m. Eastern hour is anchored by Nicolle Wallace, a communications veteran of the George W. Bush administration. They have all been as harsh critics of the Trump presidency as any Democrat.

Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist who is a contributor on CNN, uses the hashtag #PresidentLoco when tweeting about Trump.

CNN kept pro-Trump Jeffrey Lord on its payroll because of a need to provide balance to its coverage. But Lord faced criticism for his commentary. He was recently fired from the network after using the Nazi salute Sieg Heil on Twitter.

Even Fox News, where viewers tend to go for a more favorable reading on Trumps performance, is having moments in which its right-leaning commentators are grappling with how to rationalize the presidents behavior.

Conservatives have been buzzing about the contretemps between commentators Charles Krauthammer and Laura Ingraham. Krauthammer called Trumps comments about white supremacists a moral disgrace. Ingraham, a steadfast supporter of Trumps policies, told Krauthammer she was not going to pass moral judgment on whether Donald Trump is morally on the same plane as you are, Charles.

James Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox News parent 21st Century Fox, joined the growing number of business leaders who have gone out of their way to condemn Trump.

Fox News executives will be watching to see if Trumps growing unpopularity and questions about his competency will have an impact on the ratings of the cable network, which despite losing major on-air talent and addressing its sexual harassment problems has remained No. 1 in the ratings.

On nights when the news about Trump is particularly bad  such as the fallout over his impromptu news conference Tuesday  most of the Fox News commentators focus on bashing the media coverage they see as unfair to the president. But Fox is facing stiff competition. Fox News had a rare third-place finish behind CNN and MSNBC among viewers aged 25 to 54 on Tuesday, according to Nielsen.

While Fox News is not deviating from its conservative-leaning coverage, it is considering a change to its line-up. Its freewheeling discussion program The Five is expected to eventually move out of prime time and back to the early evening where it originated. It will likely be replaced by a show hosted by Ingraham. The Five would replace Fox News Specialists, which has been a ratings weak spot in the networks daytime line-up.

But John Podhoretz, a conservative commentator and columnist who frequently appears on MSNBCs Morning Joe, said Trumps recent travails are not likely to affect the popularity of Fox News with its audience.

Its not like there is another conservative show opposite Fox News that could steal conservative viewers who are anti-Trump, Podhoretz said. We just dont watch anybody.

stephen.battaglio@latimes.com

Twitter: @SteveBattaglio

ALSO

Another program change could bring conservative commentator Laura Ingraham to Fox News in prime time

Seth Meyers calls Trump a lying racist over his Charlottesville news conference

On Weekend Update, SNL alum Tina Fey advises staying home during far-right rallies
Thousands  millions?  of eyes will gaze toward the heavens Monday for the first total solar eclipse to cross the United States in nearly 100 years. It will sweep on a path of totality from Oregon through South Carolina.

Before and after the event, the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena is celebrating with the exhibit Eclipse.

I wanted to reference the symbolism weve attached to solar eclipses and the profound emotion and transcendent experiences people have, gallery director Stephen Nowlin said. I wanted to keep the show in the context of real science, not new ageism or pseudoscience.

Displayed throughout the cavernous rooms are interpretive visual artworks, artifacts, documents and projections, including a montage of images from scientific eclipse expeditions carried out by the Lick Observatory near San Jose, Calif., in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Rosemarie Fiores Smoke Eclipse #52, 2015. Firework smoke residue on Sunray paper. (Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles) (Rosemarie Fiore / Von Lintel Gallery, Los Angeles)

Howard Russell Butlers California Solar Eclipse, 1923. Oil on canvas, 49 inches by 33.5 inches. (The Buffalo Museum) (Howard Russell Butler / Collection of The Buffalo Museum)

Back then there was no spacecraft to examine the sun, Nowlin said. The only way astronomers could get a good look at the corona of the sun was to travel on arduous expeditions into remote areas of the world.

The corona, an aura of plasma that surrounds the sun and stars, is the centerpiece of several works. New York artist Rosemarie Fiore created her multicolored eclipse series with exposed pigments from colored firework smoke. Black Sun With Falling Corona, one of photographer Jacqueline Woods Black Sun pictures, evokes a mystical, apocalyptic reversed sun with a burning light encircling it against deep space.

The 19th century oil painter Howard Russell Butler was one of the earliest artists to record and depict the astronomical occurrences. Trained in physics, the landscape artist attended multiple eclipses, making his first excursion in 1918 with a U.S. Naval Observatory team to Baker City, Ore. Butler would sketch on location then complete the paintings in his studio. He became a very reliable documentarian, Nowlin said of paintings that were so scientifically accurate that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used them for research.

The exhibition, curated by Nowlin, Williams College astronomy professor Jay Pasachoff, New York Historical Society curator Roberta J.M. Olson and Lick Observatory Historical Collections director Anthony Misch, runs through Sept. 10.

Russell Crottys Blue Totality, 2017. Ink and watercolor, fiberglass, plastic and tinted bio-resin on paper, 48 inches by 48 inches by 1 inch, (Shoshana Wayne Gallery) (Russell Crotty / Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Mo)

Jacqueline Woods Black Sun With Falling Corona, 2016. Gelatin Silver Print, 40 inches by 30 inches. (Jacqueline Woods) (Jacqueline Woods /)

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A small matter of a musical about that guy named Alex on the $10 bill. Our Confederate monument legacy. And an energizing Mozart opera in Austria. Im Carolina A. Miranda, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, back from a wondrous trip to Tokyo (more cube watermelons and panda donuts, please). Here is the weeks essential culture news:

My name is Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton has landed at the Hollywood Pantages Theatre  and its got L.A. more frenzied than an Oprah studio audience.

The Times Deborah Vankin was in the audience at the star-studdded opening night. Spotted: show creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, filmmaker Ava DuVernay and actress Halle Berry. Times staff writer Sonaiya Kelley helped to capture the scene earlier in the day when fans mobbed Hollywood Boulevard for a $10-ticket lottery and brief performance by the L.A. cast.

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Times culture writer Jeffrey Fleishman examines the shows significance at this political moment: It has slipped quicksilver through our politics and turned a centuries-old orphans tale into a parable that praises American diversity at a time we are challenging the essence of who we are as a country.

And Times theater critic Charles McNulty, who has been following the shows evolution since it first debuted in New York, says the L.A. version would do the Founding Fathers proud. The production, he writes, under the propulsive direction of Thomas Kail, seizes hold of the audience from the opening number.

And because too much Hamilton is never enough, Calendar editor Mary McNamara led an hour-long conversation with Kail, as well as choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and music supervisor Alex Lacamoire, earlier this week  and there is video!

I, in the meantime, am still trying to start the totally true urban legend that show creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and I are long-lost cousins. (Cmon, primo, gurl needs tickets.)

Find all of the Times Hamilton coverage at latimes.com/hamilton.

Monuments to the Confederacy

Communities around the nation are taking stock of monuments to the Confederacy after violence erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., over the planned removal of a monument to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. As historian Kevin Waite pointed out in an op-ed in The Times, California, too, is home to Confederate monuments  including one in Hollywood Forever Cemetery. After the storys publication, it was removed  along with another Confederate marker in downtown San Diego.

Times art critic Christopher Knight has a powerful essay on the subject of removing these fraught civic monuments. Some claim that removing them erases history, he writes. Thats backward. Erecting them does. Of the Henry Shrady monument in Charlottesville, he adds: Art aims for truth, while kitsch is the cheery aesthetic embodiment of a lie. The Lee monument is kitsch. Pure fire. Los Angeles Times

Henry Shradys 1917 monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. (Steve Helber / Associated Press)

Plus, Lola Arellano-Fryer has an interesting piece that looks at how many of those Confederate memorials in the South actually hail from Northern foundries. Hyperallergic

In the meantime, descendants of some Confederate figures depicted in these statues  including Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee  say they are OK with having the sculptures removed (some far more forcefully than others). New York Times

What to do with all those statues once theyve been removed? Knight offers some ideas in his piece. Also, places such as Hungary, Taiwan and Paraguay provide interesting examples to follow  including one city that tore down a Stalin sculpture and left behind only its boots. Good work. Atlas Obscura

And because were all brushing up on our Civil War knowledge, some necessary reading: James M. MacPhersons 2001 article on how the Civil War, fought over slavery, has been over time whitewashed into a conflict about states rights. New York Review of Books

Rethinking Mozart

Salzburg is Mozarts birthplace, so it seems a fitting location to present his work in a fresh way. Times music critic Mark Swed took in a performance of the composers little-loved final opera La Clemenza di Tito at the Salzburg Music Festival  completely reimagined with contemporary themes by Los Angeles director Peter Sellars and Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis. The production, Swed writes, sets new standards for how to play Mozart, how to sing Mozart, how to stage Mozart, how to think about Mozart and, through the intense effort of doing all that, how to find cliche-free hope for humanity. Somebody please bring this to L.A. Los Angeles Times

In the galleries

Christopher Knight has been making the rounds of all the latest shows.

Of the exhibition of Dennis Hoppers photographs at Kohn Gallery, he reports: If you saw the blandly overblown 2010 Hopper retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which featured lots of bad paintings and sculptures draped in celebrity gauze, dont let it deter you from visiting this far more revealing show. Los Angeles Times

Plus, he also checked out filmmaker Alejandro Inarritus virtual-reality installation about immigration at Carne y Arena at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The show, he writes, contains banal manipulations, but the third section, featuring the testimonies of the real migrants that inspired the project, is worthwhile. Los Angeles Times

And there is the show of fearsome yet fragile sculpture by Ben Jackel at L.A. Louver, some of which depicts weaponry and armor. It is, Knight writes, a political art of a subtle and sophisticated sort. Los Angeles Times

Plus, L.A. artist Paul McCarthy has a new show of sculptures and tapestries at Hauser & Wirth  a horror show of lurid Disney characters in moments of agony and ecstasy. They have their feet firmly planted in reality, writes contributing reviewer David Pagel, in times whose weirdness is deeper and more troubling than the arts. Los Angeles Times

A new dean

Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne sat down with Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, the new dean of Woodbury Universitys ascendant School of Architecture to talk about how diversity, development, ethics and class inform the field. Architects in this country tend to have clients who are in the upper income level, she says. And I think that has really been a problem. Our students, many of them, come from underserved communities. Los Angeles Times

Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, dean of the School of Architecture at Woodbury University. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

In other news

 Author Jumpha Lahiri, actor Kalpen Modi (better known as Kal Penn), painter Chuck Close and Pritzker Prize-winning Los Angeles architect Thom Mayne of Morphosis have resigned from President Trumps Committee on the Arts and Humanities and called on him to step down in the wake of Charlottesville. The Hill

 How many ways can a person say racism is the real bread and butter of our American mythology? Kara Walkers artist statement for her latest show in New York is burning up the art Internets. Sikkema Jenkins

 A controversial project by artist Jill Magid, which turned the ashes of famed Mexican architect Luis Barragan into a diamond, has landed in Mexico City. Hyperallergic

 And an exhibition in New York looks at the work of Los Angeles architect Gregory Ain, whose career was waylaid by anti-communist hysteria. New York Times

 Yayoi Kusama is opening her own museum in Tokyo. A backup plan in case you cant get into the upcoming Kusama show at the Broad. New York Times

 In New York, a nude, all-male production of Hamlet. Mic

 A group of critics talk theater in the summer of Trump. New York Times

 Caltech is relocating seven historic Spanish Revival bungalows to make way for a new neuroscience center. Pasadena Star News

 The absence of women from the conversation about how cities have been made, and remade, over the last 50 years has directly fed their wealth disparity and urban displacement. Alissa Walker on how cities are mansplained. This is essential reading. Curbed

 Related, a conversation with Mabel O. Wilson about race and public place. Artforum

 Filmmaker Laura Gabbert and writer Daniel Hernandez team up for a moving short film and essay about a family divided, then brought together, at the U.S.-Mexico border. Huffington Post

 A moral history of air conditioning. The Atlantic

And last but not least

Because no parody shall go unlinked: Donald Trump, art critic. Instagram

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carolina.miranda@latimes.com

@cmonstah
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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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
If once-a-year holidays are special enough to warrant a party, why not pull out all the stops for an event that hasnt happened in nearly 40 years?

On Aug. 21, for the first time since 1979, the United States will experience a total solar eclipse, with the moon positioning itself between the Earth and the sun. Southern California isnt on the ideal viewing path, but is positioned so its residents  well, those who havent hightailed it 600-odd miles northeast for better views  can see the sun blocked up to 70% between the hours of 9 a.m. and noon.

While libraries, universities and observatories throughout the Los Angeles area are hosting viewing parties, were a fan of hosting your own party for your family or friends that morning  especially if there are young kids involved. (Pesky work or school in the way? Get together later and watch it online, en masse.)

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Theres certainly no blueprint for doing it right, except that if you are watching outside you need to make sure you have enough pairs of ISO-compliant eclipse-viewing glasses. The American Astronomical Society suggests you buy in person from science museums or select Best Buy, Lowes or Toys R Us. (Calling ahead is recommended to make sure they have them in stock, or check out aas.org for more options including a DIY one).

Now on to the fun.

Mine your local party shops for top-tier decor that will hold up from morning through night. At Long Beachs Wild Child Party & Supply you can buy a banner with all the phases of the moon ($35), as well as sunglasses-wearing sun balloons (starting at $12).

Cookie cutters in celestial shapes are available at Sur La Table ($2 each) to make moon-shaped pancakes. Or, up the ante by topping a round serving of scrambled eggs with a slice of pumpernickel toast with a crescent-shaped piece removed at the end. A lunchtime twist could mean serving an open-faced cheese quesadilla with black beans covering all but a sliver. For dessert? Heavenly Sours gummies ($8) from Sugarfina.

Party planner Camille Simmons of Long Beach shop Planning Pretty also recommends rounding out lunchtime with store-bought Moon Pies and SunChips (preferably served off her shops gold-rimmed plates, $18), as well as two-toned drinks made in a tall glass  orange juice-spiked soda water with blueberry syrup does the trick nicely.

Home@latimes.com
The average American saves less than 5% of his or her disposable income. Many financial advisors say that isnt enough to ensure a comfortable retirement.

The personal saving rate, calculated by the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, has hovered around 5% for the last few years. By the end of June, the rate had fallen to 3.8%, the bureau reported.

Carrie Houchins-Witt, a certified financial planner in Coralville, Iowa, encourages her clients to save 10% to 15% of their disposable income, putting the money in different accounts set aside for emergencies, retirement and other needs.

I have seen too many people in their golden years being forced to work because Social Security income does not cover their basic expenses, Houchins-Witt says. And while I think its a great idea for seniors to be active and possibly working to keep busy, I dont want them to have to rely on that income.

Decades ago, Americans personal saving rate was closer to what Houchins-Witt suggests. From 1950 to 2000, it averaged about 9.8%. It peaked in May 1975, hitting 17% before beginning to slide. At its lowest, in July 2005, it was 1.9%.

How to calculate your personal saving rate

To figure out your own personal saving rate, add up the following:

Your take-home income for the month, including money you diverted to retirement accounts;

Your employers contribution to your retirement accounts;

Any interest or dividends;

Rental income;

Government benefits such as Social Security or unemployment insurance;

Any other income.

Then add up the money you didnt spend. Include:

Money you put into savings accounts;

Income you put into retirement accounts, such as an IRA or your employers 401(k) plan;

Cash on hand, such as money in your checking account;

Any other unspent income.

Divide your total unspent funds by your total income, then multiply by 100 to get your personal saving rate.

Example: After adding all of your income for the month, you come up with $5,000. Youve spent everything but $500. Divide $500 by $5,000, multiply by 100, and you have a personal saving rate of 10%.

Why your personal saving rate matters

If your personal saving rate is lower than what financial advisors recommend, thats a sign you may not be doing as much as you should to prepare for retirement or unexpected expenses.

For many families, accumulating some wealth is crucial for goals such as making a down payment on a home, paying for the kids college tuition and maintaining a decent lifestyle in retirement.

Tracking your personal saving rate and taking some basic steps to boost how much youre setting aside can be important building blocks for a more comfortable future.

Whats next?

Build an emergency fund. This should be your top priority. Experts recommend saving enough to cover three to six months of expenses, but even a small amount will help you weather unexpected costs. Consider getting a side job or selling some possessions to raise extra cash.

Nail down a budget. Aim to dedicate 50% of your income to your needs, 30% to your wants and 20% to savings and debt payments. Set up an automatic savings plan that directs your bank to transfer a set amount to your savings account each month.

Invest in a retirement savings account. If your employer offers a tax-deferred retirement fund, such as a 401(k), contribute at least as much as your employer will match. Many companies match 1% to 5% of your salary. Look into opening an individual retirement account as well.
Dozens of people turned out Saturday for a march and rally in Venice to celebrate diversity and unity following a week of nationwide conflict over racial equality.

The peaceful event was one of many taking place around the country as activists push to spread often-dueling messages.

The Venice march began at 11 a.m. at the Venice boardwalk and headed to the Google building, followed by a rally until 3 p.m.

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This is a time where fear cannot keep us inside protecting ourselves, organizers said in a statement. Our only safety is standing strong against a culture of hate.

Marches and rallies are taking place across the country in the wake of racially charged violence a week ago in Charlottesville, Va. Far-right activists  including white supremacists  clashed with counter-demonstrators, resulting in the death of one woman.

Megan Massa, 25, a graduate student at UCLA, was among the more than 200 people who attended the rally in Venice.

With the events of last week in Charlottesville, my relationship to the social justice movement has changed, she said. Massa said she used to consider herself an ally of the movement, rather than a participant.

But as a member of an ethnically Jewish community, she said, I realized its me as well.

Ashley Lukashevsky, 24, a freelance political illustrator, was also among the demonstrators.

Charlottesville woke everyone up a little bit more, she said. [President] Trump is giving credence to all of these ideas, and people with intolerance and bigotry in their hearts are really feeling like they can voice their opinions in a really big way.

As the marchers made their way along the mile-long route, they chanted a cry taken up elsewhere in the country in recent days: No Nazis! No KKK! No fascist USA!

Felix Rodriguez, 27, a researcher at UC Irvine, said his father had expressed concerns for his safety after the Charlottesville violence.

But like I told him, black people and people of color are risking their lives every day just by being who they are, Rodriguez said. It would be hypocritical of me not to put my life on the line for this perceived threat of the alt-right.

Meanwhile, an anti-racism rally was held in Laguna Beach on Saturday, drawing about 300 people. Brittany DeArmond, one of the demonstrators, stood silently on the grass holding a sign that read, Cant we all just get along?

She said she had traveled from Irvine for the rally because she felt powerless last week when a woman was killed while protesting the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

We should all be treated fairly, DeArmond said, not based on what we look like. All people have hurt and all people have happiness.

The demonstration came a day before an anti-immigration rally scheduled in the Orange County city.

Activists are expected to gather Sunday to draw attention to crimes committed by immigrants who are in the country illegally. The group also will protest the cheap labor provided by immigrants, which they say drives down wages for U.S. citizens.

anna.phillips@latimes.com

Lopez is a contributor to Times Community News.

ALSO

After Virginia violence, far right and white nationalists turn to a familiar target: California

In new tactic, smugglers use drone to fly meth over Mexican border into San Diego, officials say

L.A. may deny rally permits to hate groups, city attorney says

UPDATES:

2:25 p.m.: This article was updated with additional comments from rally participants.

12:30 p.m.: This article was updated with details of the rally and comments from participants.

This article was originally posted at 10:45 a.m.
Shes a Los Angeles native, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, and at one time she was the definition of middle class.

College education. Good job. Nice apartment in the Cheviot Hills area.

Losing those things did not happen overnight. Theres a story here, an unraveling, a long process of decline. Often, for the tens of thousands of people who live on the margins in one of the most expensive regions of the world, a bad break is the beginning of a steep drop.

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Meg Shimatsu, 54, was diagnosed with diabetes almost 20 years ago, but the bigger blow came nearly a decade ago. Thats when doctors told her that her kidneys were giving out.

Her disease advanced in the wake of the economic recession, and work as a legal secretary was harder to come by. In 2012, Shimatsu began dialysis treatment that often left her fatigued. On her medical disability income, she could no longer afford her apartment, so she moved in with a sick, elderly friend in Eagle Rock, and helped keep his house in order.

That was a good deal until December, when the friend died and the landlord raised the rent.

Shimatsu got financial help from a brother living overseas and a niece in Colorado. In January, she checked into a low-rent motel on an interim basis, but couldnt find an affordable apartment. Between her car insurance, gas, food costs, phone service and mounting credit card bills, she was soon practically broke. She moved in with a boyfriend in Carson briefly, but that didnt work out.

By spring, she was living in her car, a 1990 Corolla with 275,000 miles on it.

We met for the first time on June 8, after several email exchanges, at a coffee shop in Eagle Rock. Shimatsu is thin and dark haired, her skin pale. She crossed her arms against the air-conditioned chill, a white bandage over the spot where needles pierce her skin during dialysis treatment. She said shes on a waiting list to get into a womens shelter, but was told that could take forever.

I have good days and bad days, she said. Some days Im totally exhausted.

Shimatsu is on a waiting list for a kidney transplant, but knows the process often takes many years. Luckily, Medicare and Medi-Cal pay the vast majority of her medical bills, but she worries about a possible Medi-Cal cut given the national healthcare reform conversation.

Meg Shimatsu rests at Friends in Deed, a daytime refuge for homeless women. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

At first, she seemed reluctant to discuss her situation in detail. She measured my questions, met them with pauses, then offered clipped replies.

Ive always been a self-sufficient person, and this is kind of a shock to me, she said.

Its easy to play the game of maybes.

Maybe she should have planned years ago for something going wrong, but she was never really flush.

Maybe she should have spent donations from family members more strategically, But I sort of panicked, said Shimatsu, who hadnt planned to be in a motel very long.

Maybe she should abandon Los Angeles for a place with cheaper housing, as her brother has encouraged her to do. But the thought of moving to an unfamiliar place in or out of California, and living in further isolation while chronically ill, is scary. And it still wouldnt be cheap.

In Los Angeles County, the average monthly rental of $2,300 is about $1,000 more than Shimatsus disability check. The average rental in the Inland Empire would take her entire check. In Californias Central Valley, which has some of the lowest rents in the state, the average rental of just under $1,000 would swallow roughly 80% of Shimatsus income.

To be honest with you, I have not always made the best decisions financially, she said. But thats in the past now.

So whats her plan?

In the best-case scenario, shell get a transplant, regain her health, go back to work and try to climb back into the middle class. While waiting for that to happen, maybe she can get part-time work and find a small place, or divide the cost of a bigger unit with roommates.

Until then shes got the 27-year-old Toyota.

Theres something seriously out of whack, I told her, when someone as sick as she is has to live in a car. Shimatsu mentioned a recent column of mine about a homeless woman who was reunited with her family, through the work of Pacific Palisades residents, and returned home to Scandinavia.

Theyve got a better safety net there, said Shimatsu.

But despite her predicament, she said the situation could be much worse.

In the beginning I had a really tough time falling asleep in the car, but I eventually got used to it and now I can sleep for eight hours, Shimatsu said.

In the beginning I had a really tough time falling asleep in the car, Meg Shimatsu says, but I eventually got used to it and now I can sleep for eight hours. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

She got a gym membership so she has a place to shower and kill a few hours indoors, and in her travels, she sees the roving armies of street dwellers.

I consider myself luckier than most homeless people, said Shimatsu.

Shimatsu often visits the Womens Room in Pasadena, a daytime refuge where she and other homeless women  some of whom suffer with mental illness or have been victims of domestic abuse  can relax, nap, get something to eat, and feel just a little bit less alone. In the midst of so many tragic tales, the miracle of the Womens Room is the sense of community and hope it provides, with a dedicated staff that includes lots of volunteers, including students.

On a visit with Shimatsu on Thursday, I met Brenda, who said she just got a room after years of living primarily on Gold Line trains, and Ruby, whose apartment building remodel forced her out of a $750 monthly unit. I cant find anything at that price, said Ruby. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

The nonprofits director, Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater, talked about the daily parade of those who, in a state that stands as a world economic powerhouse, are suffering through a worsening shortage of affordable housing.

Its not right, said the rabbi, who runs a rental assistance program to prevent more homelessness, along with a food pantry with equal numbers of Latino, African American, Asian and Caucasian clients. Its not right.

And yet the resilience of the clients  their very will to survive  is an inspiration to the rabbi and his staff.

When she heads back to the hospital, Shimatsu parks near the elevator for the night, so she can pop inside to use the restroom or hang out in the lobby. When her day is done, she folds herself into the back seat of the car and pulls up a blanket. She sets her alarm for 4 a.m. and is only steps from her morning dialysis treatment.

Shimatsu, an English major at Cal State Northridge, watches a bit of TV and does a lot of reading before retiring. She reads the newspaper and likes books that can help her focus and keep a positive outlook.

If youre not in a great situation, she said, you want to believe theres light at the end of the tunnel.

Get more of Steve Lopezs work and follow him on Twitter @LATstevelopez

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The mystery homeless woman of Pacific Palisades and the village that helped her home

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People keep leaping to their deaths from iconic Pasadena bridge. How do we stop them?
Gerald Freeman struggled for three decades to transform this desolate Mojave Desert outpost into a 21st century mecca for nature lovers and prospectors, spending more than $1 million on restoration, shade trees, organic farming projects and gleaming solar panels.

He wasnt the first.

Nipton had cycled through seven private owners before the Caltech-trained geologist bought the town for $200,000  all of them believing that a renaissance was at hand for the torrid community composed of a store, a five-room hotel and a handful of homes about 10 miles from Interstate 15 and two miles west of the Nevada state line.

Now, with the legalization of recreational marijuana in California and the recent sale of Nipton to a cannabis company for $5 million, it seems the historic mining camps time has finally come.

We want to pick up where Gerry left off, said Stephen Shearin, a spokesman for American Green, which has high hopes of turning Nipton into a desert wonderland for potheads and a distribution center for marijuana-related products.

Roxanne Lang and her granddaughter, Kiera Freeman, look around the town of Nipton. Right, an American flag waves in the wind as it greets cars passing through the town. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

The efforts to rebrand this tiny, tattered town as a Pot City USA reflect the green rush  elusive or not  that has swept some parts of California since voters in November legalized marijuana use.

A recent economic study sponsored by the state estimated that the legal market for marijuana could be more than $5 billion, and that it could help make California a destination for pot-loving tourists.

Some cities already are trying to cash in by aggressively approving marijuana licenses in hopes of generating needed tax income; bed and breakfasts in Washington and Colorado have been advertising marijuana vacation getaways for years.

But the situation in Nipton is in a league of its own.

We are excited to lead the charge, David Gwyther, chairman and president of American Green, said in a statement. The cannabis revolution thats going on in the U.S. has the power to completely revitalize communities in the same way gold did during the 19th century.

Stephen Shearin, who works for Pan Pacific contracted by American Green is the spokesperson for the endeavor to buy the town of Nipton. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

This acquisition allows us to channel the myriad interests in cannabis production and consumption, he said, for an immediate positive impact to this communitys members and to cannabis consumers across the country.

The companys promotional materials tout plans for hundreds of hotel rooms, mineral baths, a restaurant, a dinner theater, a cannabis farm, a huge balloon to hoist visitors into the air and a Green Express  a passenger rail line between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, with a dinner stop in Nipton.

It also intends to sell bottled water from local wells that has been mixed with certain marijuana extracts. That water wont make you high, but will make you feel like youre 18 again, Shearin said.

State and county officials are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Though a growing number of financially strapped communities across the state are seeking licenses to open pot dispensaries, San Bernardino County laws prohibit commercial cannabis activities in its unincorporated areas  with an exemption allowing people to cultivate marijuana plants indoors for their personal use.

Unless Nipton incorporates, land-use permits will not be issued and full criminal enforcement procedures will be in effect, San Bernardino County Sheriffs Lt. Sarkis Ohannessian said. As long as they follow the law, were all good.

Clockwise from top left: Carl Cavaness checks the water tanks in Nipton, Calif.; Jim Eslinger speaks to Damian Martindale; the interior of the town's old cafe sits vacant; Stephen Shearin, a spokesman for American Green, stretches outside an old structure that housed dynamite. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

With that in mind, American Green said it plans to incorporate Nipton and then implement its own laws.

That wont be easy. Incorporation of a community in California is a costly and complex process that can take years, said Kathleen Rollings-McDonald, spokeswoman for the Local Agency Formation Commission in San Bernardino County.

State law requires a minimum of 500 registered voters and a minimum population of 10,000 residents in order to have a tax base to offset the costs of basic municipal needs such as law enforcement, she said. So due diligence appears to be a little short in this case.

Some would call that an understatement. Nipton  whose first residents were miners in search of gold in the late 1800s  has a population of six.

American Green ended the first quarter of this year with just $191,000 in cash and debts of more than $6 million, according to its financial statements. On Friday, its stock was $.0022 per share.

The 120-acre town was purchased with preferred shares, venture loans and by working with capital investors, Shearin said.

Until news of Niptons purchase by a cannabis company raised eyebrows around the world, the town  just a 15-minute drive from the casinos in Searchlight, Nev.  was best known as one of Californias biggest lottery ticket sellers.

Leo Hernandez changes the open sign to closed as the trading post closes for the day in Nipton. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Freemans wife decided it was time to let her husbands dream go after he died of heart failure a year ago at age 81.

Nipton was always Gerrys thing, not mine, said Roxanne Freeman, 67. Without him around, I really cant wait to get out of Dodge.

With escrow expected to close in November, she said, Im at a crossroads. Ive been thinking about moving to Kansas City  or to a coastal city like Laguna Beach, with cooling sea breezes and views of the Pacific Ocean.

louis.sahagun@latimes.com

@LouisSahagun
On Monday morning, as the moon passes directly in front of the sun, more than 2,000 students at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, one of L.A. Unifieds most sought-after magnet schools, will get to view the eclipse in person through NASA-approved glasses.

Another 500 students at Leland Street Elementary School in San Pedro will do the same.

But many public-school students in Los Angeles will miss the chance to experience the eclipse live. They will be kept almost entirely indoors as they would in a situation of extreme heat, exceptionally harmful air pollution or a security threat near campus.

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In a memo sent to principals Thursday, Los Angeles Unified School District officials said that for safety reasons, students watching the eclipse outdoors must have signed permission slips and wear NASA-approved glasses. Any children without these will have to remain indoors from 9 a.m. to noon. Other school districts have taken similar precautions.

We dont want to be overbearing. We dont want to quell the excitement around the event of Monday because we know its historic, we may never see this again in our lifetime, said Diane Pappas, L.A. Unifieds chief executive of district operations and digital innovation. But I dont want children going blind because theyre not supervised and exercising proper precaution.

A day after the first memo went out, in response to criticism, the district sent a second email to principals, saying that teachers are allowed to make pinhole cameras with their students  a do-it-yourself way to watch the eclipse without staring at the sun. But with only days until the eclipse, signed permission slips remain a must-have. Many students are expected to have to watch the event inside classrooms, via NASAs live stream.

Some parents said they would keep their children home on Monday to watch from their backyards. But in L.A. Unified, where about 75% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch and come from families that struggle to make ends meet, its unlikely that many will have been able to snag pairs of the special eclipse glasses at the last minute.

The problem, known to anyone scrambling to buy the glasses, is that high demand means high prices. Many of the most reputable sellers have sold out.

Those public libraries that have been giving away glasses have been overwhelmed. Most libraries have already given away their allotment of glasses, warned the website of the STAR Library Network in Boulder, Colo., which supports libraries across the nation in providing programming in science, technology, engineering and math.

There are more than 514,000 students in L.A. Unified. District officials said they left it up to principals to buy glasses or solicit donations of them for the students in their schools.

Many schools were caught less than fully prepared, both in terms of organizing the learning opportunity and sorting out the safety protections.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles said it had not distributed any particular materials or precautions, leaving such decisions up to individual schools.

Glendale Unified School District informed parents about the eclipse by both letter and automated phone messages  and posted information online. The districts plan also included putting translations of the information online in Armenian, Korean and Spanish. These were posted midafternoon on Friday.

Parents and teachers at one South Pasadena school began preparing weeks ago.

David Kubela, principal of South Pasadena Middle School, said many of his students have parents who work at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Southern California. Over the summer, they worked with the schools science teachers to make plans.

They bought enough glasses for the schools more than 1,100 students. They sent forms to parents letting them opt out of the outdoor viewing.

Its such a wonderful real-world opportunity to see science in action, Kubela said.

Long Beach Unified isnt in session yet  except for two schools on an early-start calendar. The principal at one of them, Sato Academy of Mathematics and Science, said she has been thinking about the eclipse since last spring. Thats when a family wanted an excused absence for their childs upcoming trip to go watch it.

Principal Mona Merlo decided it would be unacceptable for the rest of her students to miss out.

We had to do this, said Merlo, who remembers watching a solar eclipse through a pinhole viewer as a fourth-grader in South Dakota.

On Friday, every student at Sato made a pinhole viewer and each class watched a short film on how a solar eclipse can lead to eye damage. It included a testimonial from a man with permanent vision loss.

Merlo looked for eclipse glasses but found every store sold out. She will, however, have four pairs for students in each class to share, courtesy of a science teacher from a different school, whose own class wont be in session.

Her plan for Monday is to hold a 20-minute fire drill, an ordinary back-to-school ritual, with one big exception: The drill will take place during peak eclipse viewing time.

anna.phillips@latimes.com

Twitter: @annamphillips
City Atty. Mike Feuer said Friday that he would urge Los Angeles officials to consider imposing restrictions or even deny permits to hate groups seeking to rally here in order to prevent the kind of violent clashes that erupted last weekend at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Permits for such demonstrations have not been sought in L.A. But if they were, Feuer said, he would recommend that officials look to precautions taken by other cities, such as Boston, which banned backpacks and bats at a rally planned for Saturday.

If it seemed unlikely that such violence could be prevented, Feuer said, he would look very carefully at turning down the request for a permit.

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Obviously, we are a nation where we value as one of the most high ideals freedom of expression. Fair enough, he said. But even the ACLU leadership  is saying today that has its limits. When people are coming to incite violence ... thats where we draw the line.

I think as a city we can draw that line, Feuer added.

Feuer was referring the the American Civil Liberties Union, which, in response to the Charlottesville violence, said Thursday that it would not represent white supremacist groups that want to demonstrate with guns. The ACLUs three California affiliates released a statement Wednesday declaring that white supremacist violence is not free speech.

Officials in Charlottesville had initially denied organizers of the Unite the Right rally a permit to hold the event at the site of a Robert E. Lee statue. But the ACLU filed a lawsuit defending protesters rights to gather there.

The rally ended with one woman killed and dozens of people injured as neo-Nazis and other far-right groups that had come armed with shields, helmets and even guns clashed violently with counter-protesters.

The violence in Virginia prompted concern among officials in other cities  including Boston and Berkeley  where far-right demonstrations have been planned.

There is a difference between protest that incites violence and protest that does not, said Ahilan Arulanantham, director of advocacy/legal director at the ACLU of Southern California. Protecting the right to protest is a core ACLU issue and we have litigated many, many cases on that subject.  But we were nonetheless very surprised by what happened in Charlottesville.

Arulanantham said there would be a crucial factor to consider if L.A. officials consider denying permits for such rallies: whether the group seeking such a permit was encouraging violence at the event. Denying a permit because opponents or others might become violent would not be enough, he said.

Its not just whether violence would happen, but whether the people seeking the permit are going to invite it or encourage it, he said.

Arulanantham said officials should also closely examine the credibility of a permit-seeking group that might claim to be nonviolent. Social media posts, the groups past behavior and what organizers tell people to bring to such rallies might indicate otherwise, he said.

The city attorney and ACLU werent the only ones speaking out against violent demonstrations this week. On Friday, the union representing rank-and-file Los Angeles police officers issued a statement decrying neo-Nazis, white supremacists, anti-Semites and the Ku Klux Klan. It implored those intending to hold violent rallies to cancel their event and stay home.

We urge them to look into their souls and try to figure out where their hate is coming from and seek professional help, the statement said. No one is born hating other people.

Feuers remarks came during an hourlong lunch with reporters, where he spoke candidly about the hateful speech and actions that have captured the countrys attention after the deadly Virginia rally. It was a far-reaching conversation, covering specific actions his office has taken and broader themes of solidarity and education.

He covered the uptick in the number of hate crimes and incidents reported to his office  32 so far this year, compared with 11 at about the same point in 2016  and actions city prosecutors have taken against alleged white supremacist gangs. He urged public officials to speak up and encouraged educators to talk to their students about the issues they see playing out in the news.

The conversation, he said, had to go beyond what happened at a single rally.

There is no place for complacency in our nation at this moment, he said. Sitting on the sidelines cant exist right now.

The conversation became personal at times, as Feuer spoke about the anti-Semitism he felt growing up in San Bernardino and the discrimination his Jewish grandmother endured in Russia.

Feuer also spoke of his late father. Mel Feuer was a turret gunner during World War II, captured by the Nazis and held in the infamous Stalag 17 prison camp after his plane was shot down.

Mel Feuer survived his imprisonment, despite being marched across a snowy Austria as the Nazis retreated. When he returned to the U.S., his son recalled years later, education became his calling, a way to teach children the principles that could deter such horror from happening again.

Feuer said he believes teachers should speak to their students about the current climate in the United States. The city attorney grew emotional as he spoke about his father, stopping to sip water as he tried to compose himself.

What would my dad do? he said. He would say the key right now is to focus on kids. This is the quintessential teachable moment.

Times staff writer Matt Pearce contributed to this article.

kate.mather@latimes.com

Twitter: @katemather
A popular Southern California pastor denounced white nationalists and called for a spiritual awakening as he kicked off an annual Christian retreat in Anaheim this weekend attended by more than 25,000 people.

For the followers of Jesus Christ, there is no place for racial bigotry or prejudice of any kind, Pastor Greg Laurie told the crowd in his opening remarks Friday night at Angel Stadium. I see people carrying these crosses and wearing swastikas and talking about white supremacy. There is no race thats superior to another race. Were all part of a human race.

Laurie is senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Orange County, an area known for its conservative roots. Every year, the church hosts the SoCal Harvest, a festive, three-day gathering that features food, testimonials and music performances by popular Christian artists.

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Laurie began his evening message  the highlight of the event  by addressing the racial and political division thats troubled the nation this week, following a white supremacy protest in Charlottesville, Va., that left with one person dead and then President Trumps controversial remarks blaming both sides for the violence.

Laurie called his speech A Second Chance for America. He spoke about the tensions of the 1960s and his own troubled past, doing drugs and being filled with hate.

When you become a Christian, those barriers come down, he said. Racial barriers come down, prejudice comes down.

Laurie said there are many threats to the United States right now  the tension among ourselves, terrorism, North Korea nuclear weapons  and asked the audience to pray for a spiritual awakening.

I pray we have another Jesus revolution in America, he said. We need it now more than ever.

Several attending the festival said Saturday that they agreed with Lauries message promoting unity and diversity.

God looks at us all the same, said Ernie Vasquez, a 39 year-old Maywood resident at the event with his wife and 3-year-old son. God doesnt look at color. The United States should not be promoting racism, certain races against each other. All the Nazis and all that stuff, its really disgusting.

Alora Twine, 21, of Anaheim, who was attending the festival with two friends, said Americans really need to be unified instead of tearing each other down.

She said she thought it was OK for the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville to remain until it became a focal point for racially charged violence. A group of white supremacists staged a rally in front of the statue to protest the citys efforts to take it down.

Twine said she believes now the country has changed and that such statues should come down. She said she also thinks Trump was wrong in blaming both the white supremacists and counter-demonstrators for the violence that ensued.

The presidents statement makes it sound like he chose one side over the other, she said.

Dennis Beagle, a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran, had a different take. He said they can tear down all the statues they want. Its not going to stop prejudice.

He also said he believed Trump was being honest when he blamed both sides for the violence in Charlottesville.

Its a no-win situation for him because by telling the truth, he gets attacked, Beagle said. And for telling the truth, hes being put on the cross...just like Jesus.

Dennis Beagle of Hesperia attends Harvest Crusade at Angel Stadium. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com

adam.elmahrek@latimes.com

To read the article in Spanish, click here

UPDATES:

6:10 p.m.: This story has been updated with more comments from people attending the festival.

This story was originally posted at 2:50 p.m.
USC on Friday moved to further distance itself from the former dean of its medical school at the center of a scandal, downplaying Dr. Carmen Puliafitos much-touted performance as a fundraiser for the university.

USCs senior vice president for university advancement said in a letter to alumni and supporters that assertions that Puliafito raised more than $1 billion while leading the Keck School of Medicine were overblown and that the physician was personally responsible for collecting barely 1% of that amount over the last seven years.

A Times investigation published last month reported that Puliafito, while Keck dean, associated with a circle of drug abusers and criminals who said he often used methamphetamine and other drugs with them. He served nearly a decade as dean before abruptly resigning in March 2016.

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The letter from Albert Checcio said the credit for the $1.2 billion in gifts to Keck in the last seven years is shared by many people, including individual researchers, department chairs and physicians, as well as USC President C.L. Max Nikias.

What these gifts illustrate is that fundraising at a multifaceted research university like USC is a collaborative effort, especially in medicine, where the relationships that donors build with all members of their health care team are paramount to philanthropic support, Checcio wrote.

No single individual is ever responsible for  or can take sole credit for  raising the money.

Checcio and Puliafito did not respond to interview requests.

University leaders, including Nikias, previously praised Puliafitos prowess with donors, going back to his arrival at USC. Introducing him to the campus in 2007, then-provost Nikias, who led the search committee that selected the dean, described him as a fundraiser of singular quality.

When Puliafito was up for reappointment in 2012, he listed fundraising as a key accomplishment, writing in a self-assessment that he had secured $500 million in contributions in his nearly five years as dean at that point. Nikias, who had become president, decided to keep Puliafito on for a second term over the objections of some faculty and staff, who expressed concerns about what they said was brusque behavior and excessive drinking.

In a letter that year announcing Puliafitos reappointment, provost Elizabeth Garrett said the positive feedback the university had received about him included his involvement in USCs historic fundraising campaign.

Evaluations of Puliafito noted the increase in research funding during his tenure as a significant achievement, Garrett wrote.

When a biotech company hired Puliafito last year, it said in a news release that the dean was responsible for fundraising initiatives resulting in over $1 billion in gifts and pledges for USC. The firm, Ophthotech Corp., later laid off Puliafito and scores of other employees after reporting poor results from a drug trial.

Throughout his years as dean, Puliafito was a public face of the schools efforts to court donors. He co-hosted Westside galas that raised money for Keck, welcoming celebrity guests such as Jay Leno and Pierce Brosnan and praising the gathered philanthropists.

Photos of these events show Puliafito posing with big-name donors like Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, the late Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey, and David and Dana Dornsife.

Puliafito stepped down as dean three weeks after a young woman suffered a drug overdose in his presence in a Pasadena hotel room. His involvement in the overdose was not publicly disclosed until The Times report on July 17.

A witness to the overdose told the newspaper of calling Nikias office in March 2016 to inform USC of Puliafitos role in the incident at the Hotel Constance. After The Times investigation was published, USC administrators acknowledged having received the call, but said it was handled by two receptionists who did not pass on the witness account to their superiors because they did not find it credible.

Administrators also said they had received complaints from employees about Puliafitos behavior, including two shortly before he resigned as dean. USC allowed Puliafito to remain on the Keck faculty and see patients. He also continued to represent the school at medicine-related events.

After the Times story, USC moved to fire Puliafito, forbid him to see patients and barred him from campus.

Much of Checcios letter Friday addressed USCs recent successes in fundraising overall, including more than $794 million in gifts and pledges in the last fiscal year.

Laura Fredericks, a philanthropy consultant and lecturer at New York University, said it is highly unusual for a university to publicly dispute how much a key administrator raised.

Fredericks said fundraising is often a group effort.

Having been in fundraising for 25-plus years, its very difficult for anyone to say who exactly raised X amount, she said. We all know in fundraising, theres many people who put many balls in motion to raise gifts.

paul.pringle@latimes.com

harriet.ryan@latimes.com

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

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A third person has been convicted in the beating death of a USC graduate student that shook the university community, Los Angeles County prosecutors said.

Jonathan Del Carmen, 22, pleaded guilty Friday to second-degree murder in the July 24, 2014, killing of Xinran Ji, an engineering student from China who had been walking home from a study group when he was attacked in the middle of the night.

He faces up to 15 years to life in prison when hes sentenced Nov. 3.

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Alejandra Guerrero, 19, and Andrew Garcia, 21, were also convicted in Jis killing.

On Wednesday, Garcia was sentenced to life without parole for his role Jis death. Prosecutors said the group attacked Ji, and Garcia chased him down and beat him with a bat.

Though Ji managed to escape the assault, a trail of blood traced the quarter-mile path he walked back to his apartment, where a roommate found him dead hours later, authorities said.

The group targeted Ji because he was Chinese and they assumed he had money, prosecutors said.

Guerrero, who was 16 at the time of the attack, was convicted in October of first-degree murder, robbery, attempted robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. She also faces life behind bars at sentencing.

A fourth defendant, Alberto Ochoa, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

Prosecutors said that after the attack, Garcia and the rest of the group drove to Dockweiler State Beach, where they accosted and robbed a couple. Garcia was convicted of robbery for the beach incident, along with attempted robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.

Jis death rattled the university  particularly its Chinese community. Parents and family members of students gathered in Beijing, seeking answers about the brutal killing, and dozens of students descended on the downtown L.A. courthouse to witness the defendants hearings.

About 4,600 of USCs 10,500 international students are from China, according to figures published on the universitys website.

Jis death came amid a string of violent incidents at the university. In 2012, two Chinese graduate students were shot and killed in a botched robbery near campus. Six months later, a man fired gunshots in the middle of campus, outside a Halloween party. The shooting injured four people; none were USC students.

In response, USC improved security and added non-armed security ambassadors in off-campus neighborhoods. International graduate students were also required to complete a safety education program.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.

Staff writer Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.
Aron Marrujo was playing in the frontyard of a friends house when paintballs began raining from a passing car.

His cousin tried to shield him. But Aron, 9, was hit above his right eye. The wound required nine stitches. An inch lower and he might have lost his eye.

Aron, who is mildly autistic, is afraid to play outside now. He asks his mother whether the scar will ever go away.

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In South Los Angeles, paintball attacks have nearly tripled in the past year, with the Los Angeles Police Departments South Bureau counting 68 paintball victims, compared with 24 at this time last year.

The attacks can cause serious harm. At a news conference Friday, LAPD officials displayed photos of a victim whose back was pocked with dozens of circular red welts. Another victims chest and stomach were covered with similar wounds.

Some shooters post videos of their exploits on social media, potentially inspiring others to use paintball guns to commit robberies, vandalize buildings or injure strangers, said Deputy Chief Phillip Tingirides.

Its almost become a fad, if you will, said Tingirides, who heads the South Bureau.

In paintball matches, players wear protective vests and helmets. Victims of street attacks have no such protection. On release from paintball guns, the balls can travel 300 feet per second, said Capt. Leland Sands of the LAPDs Southwest Division.

Paintball guns have improved in accuracy and velocity, making them more likely to inflict serious injuries, Tingirides said.

Some paintball guns look like real assault weapons. LAPD officials fear that an officer might mistake a paintball gun for a real gun and shoot the person wielding it. They are urging people to report tips about paintball crimes.

Four teenagers, ages 14 to 18, have been charged with assault with a deadly weapon in the attack on Aron. Investigators believe the shooting was random and that the teenagers were not targeting anyone else at the house.

Whether or not they choose to use these because theyre more accessible than getting an actual handgun  the fact of the matter is, its still a crime, Sands said.

At West 92nd and South Figueroa streets last week, LAPD vice officers witnessed a prostitute being shot with a paintball gun, Tingirides said. The same officers had also seen a homeless man targeted by paintball shooters. Several people were arrested in each attack.

Paintball shooters tend to be young, between f 17 and 20, Tingirides said. Police believe that some gang members have switched from real guns to paintball guns, because they know the penalties are lighter and because they may want to shoot without killing.

Theres been enough talk in gang intervention circles  Why are we killing ourselves? Tingirides said.

The paintball attacks have mainly taken place in South L.A. Through the end of July, there were 93 paintball incidents in the South Bureau, according to LAPD statistics, including vandalism as well as attacks on people. The number was 25 for the first seven months of 2016 and 15 for that time period in 2015.

Citywide, there have been 116 paintball incidents through the end of July.

Arons mother, Kenya Guzman, said she initially thought her son had been shot with a real gun in the July 13 attack.

She wants the shooters to think about what youre doing.

He was covered with blood. I saw the hole in his eye, and I was terrified, she said.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

cindy.chang@latimes.com

For more news on the Los Angeles Police Department, follow me on Twitter: @cindychangLA

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They arrived by trains, buses and cars, carrying signs and wearing T-shirts in defiance of bigotry and hate.

Im Jewish and have never confronted this kind of hate, Sarah Lutz, 29, of Quincy, Mass., said as she marched in downtown Boston on Saturday. And then to come here and see all these people supporting each other was overwhelming in the most positive kind of way.

Lutz joined tens of thousands of counter-protesters who peacefully descended on Boston Common, the nations oldest city park, on Saturday as far-right speakers held a so-called free speech rally claiming their 1st Amendment rights to assemble and express their views.

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The rallies came a week after violent clashes in Charlottesville, Va., between far-right activists  including white supremacists and neo-Nazis  and counter-protesters. One woman was killed and several injured when a white nationalist rammed his car Aug. 12 into a crowd of counter-protesters.

With the Charlottesville violence still fresh, Boston police said they took extra precautions, implementing a tight security plan to stave off any bloody battles. The plan was largely successful and there were no major incidents.

Officials deployed 500 police officers, extra security cameras and barriers to separate the opposing rallies. The city also banned participants from carrying sticks or flagpoles  which were used in the Virginia violence.

William B. Evans, Bostons police commissioner, said 27 arrests  mostly for disorderly conduct  were made on Saturday.

Thank God nobody got hurt, Evans said during an afternoon news conference. We didnt want what happened in Virginia here.  We didnt want that.

Earlier in the day, even as the protests were largely peaceful, tensions were running high.

 President Trump assailed the counter-protesters of the free speech rally. (Aug. 19, 2017) (Sign up for our free video newsletter here http://bit.ly/2n6VKPR)

Police helicopters circled overhead as officers kept the groups separated. The free speech group  about 50 in total  were dwarfed by counter-protesters associated with a Fight White Supremacy rally in which participants marched from Roxbury, a historically black neighborhood in Boston, to the Common. A little before 1 p.m., the free speech demonstrators were escorted from the Common by police in the opposite direction from the huge crowd of counter-protesters.

Go home, losers, chanted the counter-protesters, many of whom carried signs with anti-racism slogans. No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA, read one. Another protester carried a sign with a photo of Heather Heyer, the woman killed at the Charlottesville protest. It read, American hero.

As a group of police officers escorted what appeared to be a member of the free speech group from the park, several counter-protesters swarmed around yelling Nazi scum and go home. Officers placed the man in the back of a police van and drove off to applause from the crowd.

Some of the counter-protesters claimed their message had attracted more support than the one heard at the free speech rally.

Myiesha Wilson, 28, of Boston, said she came out to show her sons, ages 5 and 8, that opponents of racism were speaking out.

Its about Black Lives Matter. Its about everyone out here coming together, taking a stand for peace in a nonviolent way, Wilson said. Noting the thousands of counter-protesters, she added, Its great. Its making me a little emotional.

Pat Scalon, 70, of Andover, Mass., had attended the counter-protest with about 30 members of the Massachusetts chapter of Veterans for Peace.

Scalon, a Vietnam vet, said that the group included veterans from Iraq and one man who fought in World War II. Referring to the far-right activists, he said: These people are not going to come back because we lost too much blood over the centuries to make this country.

Organizers of the free speech rally said they dont condone racism, and some far-right speakers who attended last weeks rally in Charlottesville were uninvited from the Boston event.

On Saturday afternoon, President Trump seemed to assail the counter-protesters of the free speech rally.

Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you, Trump said on Twitter.

Trump has faced strong pushback from Democrats, Republicans and the business community for blaming both sides for the violence in Charlottesville. (Later Saturday afternoon, Trump sent a follow-up tweet to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!)

Demonstrations to show solidarity with the city of Charlottesville and to push back against racism were planned for Saturday in cities across the country, including New Orleans and Dallas. Authorities in both cities said they planned to deploy extra officers to maintain order.

But Boston was by far ground zero for protests on Saturday.

Far-right activist Kyle Chapman, a Bay Area resident who has developed an online following using the moniker Based Stickman, was among those who spoke at the free speech rally. Hes the founder of the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, a fringe right wing group that has shown up to rallies prepared to fight. Chapman, who sometimes carries a stick and shield during protests and wears a motorcycle helmet, was arrested after he clashed with protesters in Berkeley earlier this year.

I will not stand down, said Chapman, whose speech was streamed on his Periscope account. As long as Im free, I will continue to show up at these rallies, and I will continue to support my right-wing brothers and sisters.

Evans, who has been police commissioner since 2014, said 99.9% of the people here were here for the right reason.

And thats to fight bigotry and hate, he said.

kurtis.lee@latimes.com

Special correspondent Haller reported from Boston and Times staff writer Lee from Los Angeles.

ALSO

Robert E. Lee was not the George Washington of his time. But a lot ties them together

This Confederate history activist condemns white supremacists but says Trump was right

In the former capital of the Confederacy, the debate over the citys famed Civil War monuments is heating up

UPDATES:

5:15 p.m.: This article was updated with new comments from protesters.

2:55 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from the Boston police commissioner.

1:35 p.m.: This article was updated with comments on Twitter from President Trump and from Kyle Chapman, one of the rallys speakers.

11:40 a.m.: This article was updated with the rally ending peacefully and additional details.

9:55 a.m.: This article was updated with the rally beginning.

This article was originally published at 3 a.m.
Two Kissimmee police officers have died after being shot during a routine traffic stop Friday night, authorities said.

Sgt. Richard Sam Howard and Officer Matthew Baxter were shot in the McLaren Circle area of Kissimmee, according to a department spokeswoman.

Howard died of his wounds Saturday. Baxter died Friday night, shortly after the shooting.

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Two Jacksonville, Fla., police officers were also shot on Friday night, according to the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office. Both survived.

Two Pennsylvania state troopers were also reported shot late Friday.

Baxter was investigating three suspicious people about 9:30 p.m., when Howard came to help and a scuffle broke out, Kissimmee police Chief Jeff ODell said. Thats when Marine veteran Everett Glenn Miller, 45, allegedly shot the officers.

Investigators are still working to understand the details of what happened in the moments before the shooting, officials said.

The officers  who were wearing body armor under their uniforms  apparently did not have a chance to return fire. ODell said it looked like they were surprised by the gunfire.

Miller fled to a local bar, where Osceola County sheriffs deputies found him about 11:30 p.m. When they approached him, Miller reached for his waistband  but a fast-acting deputy tackled him and he was arrested, ODell said. Miller was carrying a 9-millimeter pistol and a .22-caliber revolver, the police chief said.

The Sheriffs Office recently took Miller into custody under Floridas Baker Act, which allows involuntary commitment of people in mental health crises. Miller, who has no criminal record in Florida, was enlisted in the Marines from 1989 to 2010, according to military records.

ODell said the community needs to help law enforcement. Social media posts showed Miller threatening law enforcement, ODell said, but we never got a call on that.

A Facebook page believed to be Millers is filled with posts expressing anger over racism, slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. In one post, he shared a meme encouraging people to shoot back with a photo of Martin Luther King Jr.

You can poke a tie up dog for so long, Miller wrote.

ODell said his officers would press forward with their duties while mourning their co-workers and friends.

We do not get to stop and cry for someone weve lost or mourn our hero, ODell said. At the time we go through it, the men and women of law enforcement are required to continue working and bring this individual to justice.

Baxter, 27, was married to a fellow Kissimmee police officer and had four young children, ODell said. Howard, 36, had one child.

They are both wonderful men, family men. They are both very committed to the community, ODell said. They were the epitome of what you ask for in law enforcement officers.

The last Kissimmee officer killed on the job was shot in 1983.

President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence said on social media that their thoughts and prayers were with the Kissimmee police.

It has also been a dangerous year for law enforcement in Central Florida. Lt. Debra Clayton, a 17-year veteran of the Orlando Police Department, was killed in a gunfight in a Wal-Mart parking lot while attempting to arrest a man suspected of killing his ex-girlfriend.

Orange County sheriffs Deputy Norman Lewis, a motorcycle officer, was also killed that day during the pursuit for Loyd.
A Marine veteran has been arrested in the shooting death Friday of a Kissimmee, Fla., police officer, and there is not much hope that a second officer hes accused of shooting will survive, Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff ODell said Saturday morning.

Police arrested 45-year-old Everett Glenn Miller on charges of first-degree murder, resisting arrest and carrying a concealed weapon, according to the Osceola County Jail.

Officer Matthew Baxter was killed and Sgt. Richard Sam Howard was shot and is in grave condition, ODell said. The uniformed officers were investigating three suspicious people reported in the area about 9:30 p.m. Five minutes later, dispatchers received the first call reporting the officers had been shot.

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The officers did not have time to return fire. ODell said it looked like they were surprised by the gunfire.

ODell said Miller fled to a bar a few blocks away, where he was later arrested.

The Osceola County Sheriffs Office had recently taken Miller into custody under Floridas Baker Act, which allows the involuntary commitment of people in mental health crises.

Baxter, 27, was married to a fellow Kissimmee police officer, and they had three young children, ODell said. Howard, 36, has one child.

They are both wonderful men, family men. They are both very committed to the community, ODell said. They were the epitome of what you ask for in law enforcement officers.

Baxter and Howard were wearing body armor under their uniforms when they were shot, ODell said. Howard is a 10-year veteran of the department and Baxter had been with the Kissimmee department for three years.

As of 9 a.m. Saturday, Howard remained in critical condition; ODell said there was not much hope that he will survive this.

Miller, who had two guns  a 9-millimeter and .22-caliber revolver  was taken into custody about 11:30 p.m. Friday, authorities said.

ODell said he did not expect to make any additional arrests.

This is a tough time for each and every one of us, ODell said.

ODell said the community needs to work with law enforcement. Social media posts showed Miller threatening law enforcement, ODell said, but we never got a call on that.

The area where the shooting happened is in McLaren Circle, which has historically been plagued by crime. ODell said Howard and Baxter were doing proactive police work there because it is known for drug sales.

Messages of support flowed from across the country.

On its Twitter account, the Orlando Police Department said, Please keep @kissimmeepolice in your prayers tonight.

The Orange County Sheriffs Office also offered its own message of comfort, saying, Our solidarity is with @kissimmeepolice as they deal with this tragic loss.

Our solidarity is with @kissimmeepolice as they deal with this tragic loss.  Orange County Sheriff's Office (@OrangeCoSheriff) August 19, 2017

Two police officers were also shot in Jacksonville, Fla., on Friday night. Both will survive. Two Pennsylvania state troopers were also reported shot late Friday.

President Trump sent a message of support to the Kissimmee police.

My thoughts and prayers are with the @KissimmeePolice and their loved ones. We are with you!#LESM  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

It has been a dangerous year for law enforcement in Central Florida. Lt. Debra Clayton, a 17-year veteran of the Orlando Police Department, was killed in a gunfight in a Wal-Mart parking lot while attempting to arrest a man suspected of killing his ex-girlfriend.

Orange County sheriffs Deputy Norman Lewis, a motorcycle officer, was also killed that day during the pursuit for Loyd.

Earlier reports Friday night from official sources indicated that two officers had died.

Orlando Sentinel staff writers Bianca Padro Ocasio, Christal Hayes, Krista Torralva and Gal Tziperman Lotan contributed to this report.

cdoornbos@orlandosentinel.com, 407-650-6931 or @CaitlinDoornbos

UPDATES:

8:25 a.m. This article was updated with a suspect arrested

This article was originally published at 12:40 a.m.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who resigned Friday from an unpaid post as President Trumps advisor on deregulation efforts, stepped down as the New Yorker was preparing to publish a lengthy article detailing Icahns potential conflicts of interest and questioning the legality of his actions.

Icahn said in a letter to Trump released Friday that he was resigning to prevent partisan bickering about his role that Democrats suggested could benefit him financially.

The resignation came just three days before the New Yorker was scheduled to publish its story online. In the story, the magazine points out potential conflicts and even possible criminal law violations involving obscure rules that require oil refineries to blend ethanol into gasoline.

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In his letter, Icahn wrote that he never had access to nonpublic information or profited from my position, nor do I believe that my role presented conflicts of interest.

But the New Yorker wrote that in 2012, Icahn, who made his name and fortune as a corporate raider, bought an 82% stake in CVR Energy, a Sugar Land, Texas, refinery. To comply with regulations designed to promote use of ethanol, refiners must blend the renewable fuel with their gasoline or buy credits from other refiners known as renewable identification numbers.

When Icahn bought his stake in CVR in 2012, the credits were cheap, about 5 cents each, so rather than equip refineries to add ethanol to its gas, the company just purchased credits. But by 2016 CVR was spending $200 million per year to buy them, and its stock value had dropped 70% from the prior year, the story said.

Icahn unsuccessfully tried to get the Obama administrations Environmental Protection Agency to change the point in the gasoline production process at which the ethanol blending was required, making it closer to the gas pump so refiners wouldnt be responsible and CVR wouldnt have to buy the credits, the magazine wrote.

Several weeks after Trumps November victory, Icahn agreed to become special advisor to the president on regulatory reform, and CVRs stock nearly doubled in value on the expectation that the renewable fuels rule would be changed, the magazine wrote.

On Dec. 22, the day after Icahn was formally declared a White House advisor, the price of the credits dropped. Then, on Feb. 27, news leaked that Icahn had struck a deal with the Renewable Fuels Assn. to change the ethanol blending requirement. That sent the price of credits down more, and it fell further when word leaked that an executive order on ethanol blending was imminent.

Previously the Renewable Fuels Assn. had opposed any changes, the magazine said. The associations head later said he was told by Icahn that the blending point would be changed whether the association objected or not, so he agreed to take a deal to his board.

Early in the year, CVR actually was selling renewable fuel credits, the magazine wrote. It was able to buy them later at a discount to meet federal requirements, according to the story.

A day after news of the deal with the Renewable Fuels Assn., the White House denied there was any plan to change the renewable fuel requirements, and no such change was made, according to the magazine.

Icahns attorney, Jesse Lynn, rejected suggestions that Icahn exploited his relationship with Trump to make bets on the renewable fuel credits. He said the CVR board, which Icahn chairs, made decisions on when to buy or sell credits. Any suggestion that we had access to information that others didnt is unequivocally false, he told the magazine.

Richard Painter, a former chief White House ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush, told the magazine that a federal law makes it illegal for executive branch employees to work on matters in which they have a financial interest. Lynn said the law doesnt apply to Icahn because he had no official role or duty. But Painter asserted that Icahns title was clearly an official one. He suggested the Justice Department should be investigating.

Painter, reached Saturday by the Associated Press, said Icahn faces potential legal exposure to insider trading laws as well as other fraud statutes if he took information from the White House or government in violation of any relationship or trust.

Despite being unpaid, his job title as advisor to the president exposes him to possible legal action, Painter said. When you have a title like that, thats to the president, its very hard to argue that youre not a government employee, Painter said.

Efforts by the Associated Press to reach Icahn through a CVR spokeswoman Saturday were not successful.
Hundreds of mourners gathered Saturday for the funeral of a Virginia state trooper who died in the fatal crash of a helicopter that had been monitoring a violent, white nationalist protest in Charlottesville.

Family, friends, political leaders and police officers from around the country honored Lt. Jay Cullen at Southside Church of the Nazarene near Richmond.

Cullen, who was head of the state polices aviation unit, was remembered as a safety-conscious perfectionist who loved being a trooper and flying.

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I think he loved it every single day he was there, said Will Payne, a longtime friend.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe called Cullen, who frequently piloted the governor around the state in a police helicopter, a silent giant. State Police Superintendent Col. Steven Flaherty was a man of unwavering integrity.

Authorities say Cullen was the pilot of a helicopter providing aerial video surveillance to police of activities in downtown Charlottesville last Saturday before it broke off to lend support to a motorcade for the governor. An investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing.

Cullen, 48, joined the aviation unit in 1999. Hes survived by a wife and two sons.

The funeral for the other trooper killed in the crash, Berke Bates, was held Friday.
Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It is Saturday, Aug. 19. Heres what you dont want to miss this weekend:

TOP STORIES

Mixed record for Trump on the border: Since President Trump took office, his border crackdown remains elusive, at least by some measures. Construction of the wall has yet to begin, the number of Border Patrol officers has actually dropped by 220, and immigration agents are on track to deport 10,000 fewer people this year than in President Obamas last year in office, the latest figures show. At the same time, illegal border crossings are down 22% compared with last summer. Arrests of people in the country illegally have surged 43% since January. Los Angeles Times

O.C. jail scandals stark consequences: A scandal roiling Orange County took a turn when a judge on Friday threw out the possibility of a death sentence for the man who murdered eight people at a Seal Beach salon, ruling that law enforcement has repeatedly failed to turn over relevant evidence about the use of jailhouse informants. The judge blasted the county district attorneys office and Sheriffs Department for failing to comply with his discovery orders, saying the agencies appeared to be the only ones in denial about the constitutional violations raised by the ongoing informant scandal. Families of victims are outraged. Los Angeles Times

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Californian dies in Barcelona: A California man was one of the 13 people killed in Thursdays terror attack in Barcelona. Jared Tucker, a 42-year-old Lafayette resident, was celebrating his honeymoon. Los Angeles Times

Hateful: Shock in Alameda after a synagogue is vandalized. More security is planned. East Bay Times

Fresh start: UC Berkeleys new chancellor is trying stir new optimism and excitement on a campus battered by financial woes, free-speech controversies, sexual-harassment scandals and a leadership crisis under her predecessor. Los Angeles Times

Making noise: How the rapper Common has become a big force in California criminal justice and prison reform  and is visiting the states lockups to meet with inmates. Cal Matters

Plus: L.A. County plans to study the effects of criminal justice reforms on public safety. It comes as some officials say reforms have caused problems. While developed with good intentions, the legislation may have created unintended consequences, placing our public and our first responders at risk, Sheriff Jim McDonnell said. Los Angeles Times

Homeless anger: Residents in Orange County want to clean up a huge homeless encampment that has grown on the Santa Ana River. Orange County Register

Eclipse not lost: Los Angeles has a lot going for it: the sunshine, the mountains, the ocean, the food. But on the day of the Great American Eclipse, it wont exactly be the place to be. Here in L.A., well experience a partial eclipse. Even at the point of greatest eclipse, just 62% of the sun will be obscured by the moon. No darkness. No stars. No animals acting funny. But there is still stuff to do. Los Angeles Times

Plus: Although the moon will push in front of the sun and darken the skies on Monday, Californias solar-heavy electricity grid isnt expected to run short on energy to power homes, businesses and industry. Los Angeles Times

Valley route: The Orange Line in the San Fernando Valley has by most measures been a big success  the busway that could. But does it make sense to turn it into a rail line? Curbed Los Angeles

Song stories: Randy Newman created an anthem for Los Angeles with I Love L.A. But his work over the decades also pointed to the political world we now inhabit. The Atlantic

This weeks most popular stories in Essential California:

1. After violence in Virginia, the far right and white nationalists are turning to a familiar target: California. Los Angeles Times

2. A look at how the shopping mall is being redefined. Orange County Register

3. After losing everything in the Erskine fire, this couple spent 13 months in a trailer. Now, theyve returned to a charred ghost town. Los Angeles Times

4. California confronts its Confederate past as monuments are abruptly removed. Los Angeles Times

5. A map of 11 big projects that could change the San Fernando Valley. Curbed Los Angeles

ICYMI, here are this weeks Great Reads

Hollywood horror story: Mel Gibson had high hopes when he started planning a movie based on the bestseller The Professor and the Madman. But what looked like a promising project has now capsized under an ugly legal dispute between star-producer Gibson and one of the production companies behind the movie. A series of fights over budgets, filming locations and final cut has raised questions about the future of the film, creating a cautionary tale about the challenges independent filmmakers face in trying to get their pet projects onto the big screen. Los Angeles Times

A new desert oasis  or mirage? The tiny desert town of Nipton had cycled through seven private owners, all of them believing that a renaissance was at hand for the community composed of a store, five-room hotel and handful of homes about 10 miles from Interstate 15 and two miles west of the Nevada state line. Now, with the legalization of recreational marijuana in California and the recent sale of Nipton to a cannabis company for $5 million, it seems the historic mining camps time has finally come. Los Angeles Times

Inspiration from the 818: Its the ugliest number  none of the digits repeat, and its super-hard to remember. But if theres an 818 at the beginning, thats all that matters.  Musician Alana Haim on the San Fernando Valleys area code and how the region is reflected in her music. Los Angeles Times

Falcon Crest, for real: In Napa Valley, an epic dispute over wine, land and a name. San Francisco Chronicle

Ten years of reality: An oral history of the Kardashian decade  and how it changed Hollywood. I dont think we knew what we were even saying yes to, Khloe Kardashian says. The Hollywood Reporter

Looking Ahead

Sunday: Rep. Brad Sherman will host a Valley Town Hall meeting in Reseda.

Sunday: California Hot Sauce Expo in Anaheim.

Sunday: Right-wing activists will hold rally on immigration in Laguna Beach.

Monday: Griffith Observatory holds an event for the partial eclipse of the sun. Another event is planned at Los Angeles State Historic Park.

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.
To the editor: If we really want to memorialize the Civil War, lets have statues that show the truth, not generals mounted on magnificent horses. (Why would Charlottesville racists do so much to protect a Robert E. Lee statue? Opinion, Aug. 14)

Lets have bronze memorials that depict blacks standing at the auction block and being torn away from their families. Lets show blacks being raped or beaten to death. Lets have a tree with a black person hanging from it.

Thats what it is about. One can say the Civil War was an economic conflict, but in reality it was a war about white superiority. It is a war we are still fighting.

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Wendy Averill, Culver City

..

To the editor: More than 2 million people visited the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp in 2016.

Did they go to honor the dead? To gloat over the killings? To contemplate a monumental historical event? I dont know the answer as, clearly, there is no one answer. Each person brings his or her context to the site, reacts individually and takes away what he or she will  an adjustment, a confirmation or a repudiation of previously held views.

Imagine what it would be like if there were statues of Adolf Hitler and swastikas in Germany.  Wilma Escalante, Torrance

Is a statue of Lee a paean to a Confederate hero or a piece of history to be reflected upon? Again, I dont know, but I respectfully raise the question and offer the possibility that there is more than one answer.

Linda Shahinian, Culver City

..

To the editor: President Trump asks where we draw the line when deciding which statues to take down. Line drawing can be difficult sometimes, but it is one of the things governments are called upon to do.

So how about this: If you took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, then took up arms against your country, killed American soldiers and tried to destroy the union in order to keep slavery in place, you dont get to have a statue on American soil.

Does that work?

Russell Kussman, Pacific Palisades

..

To the editor: Theres much talk about statues these days as white supremacists try to prevent the removal of a Robert E. Lee monument from a park in Charlottesville, Va. Trump voiced his concern, wondering if after the monuments to Lee and others are removed, statues of slave owners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson will be next.

No matter your opinion on this issue, what cannot continue is the denial of the evils that were built into this country and the evils of the men that signed off on them and fought to put them in place. The good they did does not cancel out the bad.

Jefferson had hundreds of slaves. How many Native Americans did Andrew Jacksons Indian removal campaign kill? Are we to ignore these facts about our American heroes?

White supremacy thrives because of this kind of denial. If you continue to deny these facts, then you are propping up an institutional and societal structure that continues to promote white supremacy. If you are not in denial, then speak up  for to be silent is to be complicit in those wrongdoings that continue to poison our country today.

Donnell Adair, Vancouver, Wash.

..

To the editor: Those who say the Confederate statues should not be taken down because they are a part of our history should imagine what it would be like if there were statues of Adolf Hitler and swastikas in Germany.

History should not be forgotten or denied, but should we have painful reminders of past atrocities thrown in our faces every time we go to the park?

If these hateful symbols must be preserved for the sake of history, they should be in a museum, not out in public.

Wilma Escalante, Torrance

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook.
To the editor: My thanks for Phil Zuckermans questioning of the modern evangelical movement and calling it alternative Christianity. (The Trump administrations alternative Christianity, Opinion, Aug. 11)

Having four major members of the Trump administration, including the vice president, openly belonging to and promoting that sect is disturbing.

The founding fathers wisely framed our Constitution to ensure our fragile experiment in democracy would only have a chance of survival were it to remain secular. It protects us from a theocracy. Not only does the infusion of Alternative Christianity into our secular democratic decision-making process at the highest levels violate our Constitution, this cult also continually borders on heresy regarding the true Christian message. There is no room in our government for evangelical ayatollahs.

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I speak as a highly informed, cradle-to-grave, practicing Roman Catholic Christian. I swear on the Bible.

Dave Cronkey, El Cajon

..

To the editor: Zuckerman doesnt understand conservatives or Jesus.

First, let me say that Vice President Mike Pence is not the most piously anti-gay politician in America. He simply believes that marriage is meant for a man and a woman.

Second, Jesus was not anti-money; he warned only of the love of money, which would make a person desire to serve wealth instead of God.

Zuckerman is correct about Christians being required to support the most vulnerable people. However, a study by Arthur Brooks at Syracuse University found that liberals gave far less to charity than conservatives, even taking into account religious giving. The reason for this is they understand Jesus to be speaking to individuals and not the government to be the ones who provide for the poor.

The Apostle Paul wrote, The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat. Those who are not able to work are the ones who should be helped. Government programs have encouraged people to rely on them rather than discover the satisfaction of honest work. So please dont accuse conservatives of creating suffering and misery in His name.

I agree that we fall short when it comes to displaying mercy and forgiveness, but again Jesus was talking about individuals and not the government.

Connie Veldkamp, San Clemente

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and 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.
In one poll after another, the number jumps out: 24%.

Thats the share of Americans who say they cant imagine anything President Trump could do that would sour them on him, according to a nationwide survey this week by Monmouth University.

Similarly, a CNN poll found 24% of Americans said they trust all or most of what they hear from the White House. A poll by ABC and the Washington Post found 24% who said Trump acts in a presidential manner. A poll by Marist College for National Public Radio and PBS, released Thursday, found that 27% approved of Trumps response to the violence in Charlottesville, Va. The same poll found that 20% of those surveyed said they strongly approve of the job Trump is doing as president.

Thats Trumps base  roughly one in four Americans  and its pretty solid. As Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson noted this week, if youve gotten this far, and you still strongly support Trump, theres not much thats likely to change your mind.

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For Trump, that base is also a trap.

Good afternoon, Im David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in Washington and elsewhere in national politics and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

DIGGING DEEPER, NOT BROADER

This week displayed Trumps unbridled id, his refusal to accept criticism and his imperviousness to advice like no other moment of his presidency. One image spoke volumes  the picture of newly minted White House Chief of Staff John Kelly staring at his shoes on Tuesday as Trump angrily insisted that the neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Va., included some very fine people.

Those remarks came only halfway through a dizzying week of headlines which began with a parade of white supremacists, mostly young men, wending its way through the historic lawn at the University of Virginia, carrying tiki torches, yelling out an English version of an old Nazi chant: Blood and soil and, at times, Jews will not replace us.

Although Friday nights parade was mockingly dubbed Citronellanacht by some who refused to take the relatively small group of marchers as a serious threat, the situation turned grimmer the next day. White supremacists clashed in violent confrontations with anti-fascist counter-demonstrators while an overmatched small-city police department and Virginia state police struggled to maintain order.

As officials tried to disperse the demonstrators, a neo-Nazi drove a car into a crowd of people, killing one woman and seriously injuring more than a dozen. Two police officers died later in the day when their helicopter, which had been monitoring the demonstrations, crashed while landing.

Trumps response unspooled over several days.

Saturday afternoon, he ad-libbed an amendment to a prepared statement and declared that on many sides, on many sides, people had committed violence. The equivocation stood in sharp contrast to Trumps handling of previous incidents, which he had quickly labeled as terrorism.

Sunday, White House aides defended Trumps response as criticism poured in from all corners.

Monday, as the alleged driver of the fatal car was arraigned on second-degree murder charges, the president appeared to give ground, reading a prepared statement that denounced racism and called out hate groups by name. When critics said they doubted Trumps sincerity, he complained of their unfairness. The next day, he proved them right with his angry, impromptu news conference in the lobby of Trump Tower.

By Tuesday afternoon, the tycoons that Trump likes to view as peers began abandoning him, quitting his business advisory councils. Trump attacked them as grandstanders and insisted many other executives were lined up to replace defectors. By Wednesday, he had no choice but to disband the councils for lack of membership. By the end of that day, the heads of each of the nations military services  the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps  had issued formal statements denouncing racism, an extraordinary rebuke of the commander in chief, although they did not mention him by name.

On Thursday, Trump continued to indulge his instinct to counterpunch, firing off angry tweets attacking Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona and congratulating Flakes likely primary opponent, former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who earlier this summer had predicted a quick death for Sen. John McCain from his cancer and suggested that Gov. Doug Ducey appoint her to serve in his place.

As Noah Bierman and I wrote, Trumps angry outbursts displayed a president who is trapped in a tightening spiral, in which each drop in his support causes him to appeal more fervently to his most ardent backers, costing him more support.

To the extent that his actions involve deliberation, rather than angry instinct, the strategy is to go deep, hoping to energize his base as much as possible. That strategy sufficed for Trump to win last year, barely, over a highly unpopular Democrat, Hillary Clinton. And its possible he could win again  no one can predict an election so far in the future.

But whatever the political merits, that approach makes effective governing all but impossible. As Lisa Mascaro wrote, congressional Republicans are increasingly resigned to the fact that the chances of passing their ambitious legislative agenda are evaporating.

Trumps desire to stoke grievances has repeatedly gotten in the way of his ability to rally support for his nominal priorities. Tuesdays news conference, for example, had been intended to focus on his infrastructure proposals. Thursday, the White House announced it was abandoning plans to create an infrastructure advisory panel.

And Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, signaled potentially more trouble ahead for Trump. In a speech back home in Chattanooga, Corker questioned Trumps stability and competence, loaded words that he repeated least anyone think he had used them by accident.

Just shy of seven months into his term, Trump may already have achieved lame-duck status  able to comment on events, but with little ability to shape them.

BACKING AWAY FROM A HEALTHCARE FIGHT

Amid the furor over Charlottesville, the administration quietly agreed on Wednesday to continue for now a healthcare subsidy that is widely seen as crucial for the Affordable Care Act. The decision indicated that at least for now, Trump wont try to deliberately cause Obamacare to implode, as he had suggested he would.

The administration had little choice after the Congressional Budget Office reported that cutting off the subsidies would actually cost the government billions more than it would save. The move would also cause some healthcare premiums to soar, the CBO said.

The administration decision to pay this months installment of the subsidies, known as cost-sharing reduction payments, brought praise from Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chair of the Senate Health Committee. When lawmakers return to work next month, they should quickly pass a limited package of fixes to the healthcare law, he said. But some conservative members of Congress and outside groups quickly dissented, denouncing the payments as a bailout for insurance companies.

The conservative opposition underscores the difficulty Alexander and like-minded lawmakers will face in gaining approval for a bipartisan healthcare bill.

OTHER NOTABLE STORIES

For many American Jews, the events in Charlottesville have brought anguish, Mark Barabak and Michael Finnegan wrote.

In Alabama, Trumps endorsement wasnt enough for Sen. Luther Strange to win a primary outright; he faces a runoff against former state Chief Justice Roy Moore, Mascaro wrote

Mascaro also took at deep look at the continued influence of the Koch brothers network, which exerts surprising clout at the White House despite their having snubbed Trump during the election year.

Will a trade fight with Asia sabotage the U.S. solar industry? The decision may be up to Trump, no fan of either solar power or China, Evan Halper wrote. The trade case, which the solar power industry sees as a huge threat, has generated an odd coalition of business group and environmentalists defending Chinese imports.

This week, Trump took a preliminary step toward confronting China on intellectual property rights. Jackie Calmes noted that although officials made a big show of the announcement, it doesnt actually do much.

On another trade front, negotiations over revising NAFTA began this week. Don Lee looked at the complicated trade politics of Trumps pledge to push buy American rules in the talks.

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions attacked Chicago and other sanctuary cities in a speech this week, Joe Tanfani wrote.

CALIFORNIA POLITICS

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher met with Julian Assange in London. Christine Mai-Duc explained why.

Californias GOP candidates for governor must win over the tea party. Heres how theyre trying, Phil Willon wrote.

Affirmative action has resurfaced in the race for governor; the last time it was prominent, it divided Democrats, Seema Mehta and Melanie Mason wrote.

AND FINALLY

Weed makes strange bedfellows: For the latest evidence, Halper checked out the strange, new alliance between Roger Stone, the Republican bad-boy fixer, and John Morgan, the very wealthy Florida trial lawyer and potential candidate for governor who was one of Clintons biggest donors.

ALL THE PRESIDENTS TWEETS

Twitter has long been Trumps favored means of pushing his message. Were compiling all of Trumps tweets. Its a great resource. Take a look.

LOGISTICS

That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in national politics and the Trump administration with our Essential Washington blog, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

If you like this newsletter, tell your friends to sign up.

David.lauter@latimes.com

@davidlauter
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.
To Laura Nguyen, art isnt just something pretty to look at. She believes it can be an agent of societal change.

Laura and her friend and fellow Huntington Beach High School senior Lauren Skinner run an online nonprofit organization that seeks to use art as fuel for local charitable efforts.

Their enterprise, Charitee, sells shirts adorned with amateur art. The funds raised are donated to Huntington Beach charity Robynes Nest, which provides resources and support to local high school students who are homeless or otherwise at risk.

Laura and Lauren, both 17, started Charitee last year after realizing how many unknown, talented artists are on the Internet, Laura said. They decided they could do something to support those artists and raise money for the betterment of the community at the same time.

We started this because we believe art can create change, and not enough people recognize this, Laura said. By giving back to the community, we ensure that art plays a bigger role in it.

We started this because we believe art can create change, and not enough people recognize this.  Laura Nguyen, Charitee co-founder

The teens search for promising artists online and get permission from each one chosen to use one or two images on a shirt. They currently offer 15 designs from nine artists on their website, artcharitee.com.

Since the operation is online, the two can use artists from around the world, including France and Spain, Laura said. They receive orders from all over the United States, she said.

Laura credits an Advanced Placement art history class that she and Lauren took and their membership in the schools Model United Nations program as prime influences for Charitee.

MUN focuses more on international relations, but its given us the critical thinking skills to apply these solutions to the local level, Laura said.

Neither student has a background in visual art, but both are musicians.

Laura is part of the high schools Academy of Performing Arts, playing piano for the orchestra and taking dance. Lauren plays guitar and regularly posts her music online.

For the girls, art can be a catalyst for positive cultural change.

Laura believes good art can cause people to question their preconceived notions, which ultimately can lead to progress in society.

People look at certain forms of art and they are offended by it or it makes them uncomfortable, she said. If something makes you uncomfortable, then you should think, Why?

Laura said they plan to continue with Charitee after they move on to college next year.

Influenced by the experience, Lauren hopes to go into business, specifically to aid small businesses in less-developed countries.

Laura is interested in defending civil rights and is considering working as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union or a similar legal team.

benjamin.brazil@latimes.com

Twitter:@benbrazilpilot
During the Aug. 8 Newport Beach City Council meeting, we experienced one of the most irresponsible and ideologically misguided acts in recent memory.

Newport Beach was eligible for $480,000 in needed state funds to improve our streets, specifically for MacArthur Boulevard and University Drive. Rather than pass a simple resolution to meet the eligibility criteria for these funds, our council, by a 5-2 vote, rejected the application and thus turned down funding that was due our city from revenue generated by Newport Beach motorists.

In effect, the prevailing council members were trying to send a message to Sacramento that they oppose the recent increase in the gasoline tax. I oppose this increase too. The California gas tax, like the sales and income taxes, are among the highest in the nation.

Sacramento needs to reduce taxes to promote economic growth. But refusing to accept money due to the city and generated by locals is the height of ideological foolishness. The tax is not reduced by one penny.

The so-called message received by Sacramento is that our local officials are irresponsible and the California Transportation Commission should feel free to allocate tax dollars generated in Newport Beach to Los Angeles and Oakland, much the same way they redirect our property taxes. You can hear Sacramento laughing at us.

Team Newport told us we cant afford to improve our streets, libraries and community centers. Then, they happily cut another $480,000 hole in the citys revenue. Unfortunately, this may not be the end of it.

The Orange County Transportation Authority estimates this new revenue source could provide $1.9 million annually to the city for needed street and road improvements. Is the council majority going to continue to make a point by refusing this money? Keep in mind, this is money generated by Newport Beach motorists.

We are used to ideological posturing by Councilman Scott Peotter on issues like this, but here he was joined by his Team Newport partners. Indeed, Peotter initially moved to approve the application, then voted against his own motion when it became clear he was being outflanked by people more extremist then himself. Credit to Councilman Brad Avery and Councilwoman Diane Dixon for not participating in this political stunt.

We can calculate the cost to Newport taxpayers of this political posturing: $480,000 this year and approximately $1.9 million each year thereafter when fully phased in. Newport Beach taxpayers cannot afford this level of irresponsibility. To deny Newport residents the benefit of the taxes they themselves pay is simply inexcusable.

KEITH CURRY is a former mayor of Newport Beach.
As the United States grapples with a seemingly growing movement of white supremacy and nationalism entering mainstream culture, a yearlong battle over a La Crescenta parks Nazi past has come to a close.

Officials with the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department unveiled a new historical marker at Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park Friday morning that showcased the areas German-American roots but also its ties to Nazi Germany.

Were so proud that this community worked with the county to best describe the history of this park and the German-American culture in Crescenta Valley, Mercy Santoro, a deputy director with the parks department, said at the unveiling.

Santoro said the work did not come without difficult conversations among community members.

A portion of the park, located at 3901 Dunsmore Ave., was formerly known as Hindenburg Park, named after former German President Paul von Hindenburg. Last February, a controversial sign using the Hindenburg name was erected, welcoming park-goers.

Privately funded by the Tricentennial Foundation, a local German heritage organization, the sign caused an uproar among some members of the community.

The Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys said the sign was a callback to Nazi atrocities and the areas Nazi past, creating an unwelcoming atmosphere  all because of the parks namesake.

Hindenburg was president of Germany from 1925 to 1934 and, during his tenure, he appointed Adolf Hitler as the countrys chancellor.

Historians saw this move as a contributing factor to the fall of the Weimar Republic and Hitlers ascendancy as leader of Nazi Germany.

During the 1930s and 1940s in La Crescenta, several pro-Nazi rallies were held on the parks grounds. The rallies were staged by the Bund, an American-based political group that modeled itself after the Nazi Party.

The installation of the Hindenburg sign led to weeks of meetings and debates about heritage versus history, culminating with the Los Angeles Community Commission on Human Relations voting to take down the sign last May. Many applauded the commissions decision.

The truth, and the complete truth, is really important, Mona Field, professor emeritus at Glendale Community College, said. Remembering the good as well as the bad, there is no neutral position when it comes to Nazism, anti-Semitism or racism.

Jason Moss, executive director of the Jewish Federation, said the new marker will show the true and full history of the park, and it will stand the test of time.

This is an example of how people can come together and work through differences through dialogue versus resorting to violence, he said.

Hans Eberhard, chairman of the Tricentennial Foundation, congratulated the efforts behind the new historical marker, but added he wasnt trying to cause any controversy. He said after a certain point he gave up the fight to keep the Hindenburg Park sign.

I was trying to preserve history, he said. We werent honoring the man Hindenburg but the park.

andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_Truc
I wasnt looking for a serious relationship after I graduated high school, so I guess you could say that what we had was nothing more than a summer fling. At the end of the summer I would find myself on a hill, surrounded by farms in upstate New York.

Inasmuch as I had learned about myself in those few months, I realized the true potential of Los Angeles when it comes to dating.

It started when we decided to hike in Eaton Canyon after catching up at a party one night. Ill go hiking if you remember to text me tomorrow, I told her, thinking she wouldnt remember. The next morning, I woke up to a text: Lol I remembered. Great.

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I picked her up and we drove through Altadena. The Spanish-revival homes conjured up early 20th century Los Angeles. An image appeared in my mind: Myself, an owner of a home with a red-tiled roof in Altadena, a wife, kids. The American Dream. It was a windy summer day, the kind that might have inspired Raymond Chandlers Red Wind. We hiked to a waterfall, and agreed to see each other again.

Days later, we hiked the three-mile trail from Eaton Canyon to Henninger Flats, once a part of the Mt. Wilson Toll Road. We ventured off the dusty trail and sat on a bluff taking in the view. The Santa Ana winds had pushed the smog out to sea that day. We could see downtown, Century City, Palos Verdes, even Santa Catalina Island.

My days were numbered. As we sat and talked, I couldnt help but think about how much I would miss everything. My family, my friends, my life back home. However, I was excited about starting a new life at college.

The sun went down and we were forced to make our way back. The orange hue from streetlights across the San Gabriel Valley helped illuminate what our measly flashlight couldnt.

Later, I suggested going downtown. My love affair with DTLA started in high school and it was just the place to take her. To me, downtown offered a nice change of pace from suburban living. I understood the inherent problems with gentrification, but the vibrant eclecticism of downtown cannot be denied. There is something special in seeing people of all walks of life interact. We sat, people-watching, in Grand Central Market.

More L.A. Affairs columns

At our communal table, seemingly important men in suits rubbed elbows with hipsters wearing Jesus sandals and Spanish-speaking day laborers. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the weather, taking in the slight breeze coming from Bunker Hill. After we ate, we made our way to the roof of the parking garage. The sun reflected off the polished glass of the skyscrapers in the financial district. It was blinding. We turned to the mountains, trying to pick out the bluff where we had sat earlier in the summer. I imagined myself living with someone downtown after college, sans Jesus sandals.

As the summer progressed, we found ourselves venturing farther from home. One such night, we sat in traffic on our way to Santa Monica. It seemed as if we spent as much time driving in my car as we did exploring at our destinations. Thats so L.A., I thought to myself. I stopped to help tourists jump-start their rental car in the parking garage of the Promenade. See, L.A. isnt as bad as you thought, I told them. They laughed.

It was dark at the beach. We found ourselves sitting on a swing set, as a light summer rain fell on our shoulders. As we sat, we watched the planes take off over the ocean by LAX. I tried to envision the lights of Los Angeles slowly disappearing from a plane window.

Before I left for school she sent me a text saying she just wanted to be friends. Thats all we ever were. We never labeled our relationship. Or so I thought. But it was great while it lasted. I had the opportunity to explore Los Angeles with someone who held my sense of adventure and open-mindedness.

My last day in Los Angeles was spent by myself. I drove up Angeles Crest Highway and pulled over in a turnout. Sitting on the hood of my car, I took in the view. The hot Santa Ana winds had pushed the smog out to sea again, creating a strikingly similar view to my first date with her. Downtown, Century City, Palos Verdes, even Catalina Island. This time, however; I sat alone. I relived my summer.

It is hard going back to upstate New York, but I step on the plane every time knowing that Ill fall in love with Los Angeles just a little bit more on my return trip.

The author grew up in Alhambra and is studying history and studio art at Hamilton College in New York. This fall, hell be studying abroad in Havana.

L.A. Affairs chronicles the dating scene in and around Los Angeles. If you have comments or a true story to tell, email us at LAAffairs@latimes.com.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

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After studying the results of a global survey of Catholics, the Vatican is acknowledging that churchgoers ignore its rules on fundamental issues including marriage, divorce and contraception.

But in a report issued Thursday, the Vatican laid part of the blame on its priests for not adequately getting the message across. The report also said the individualism and materialism of modern society were to blame as well.

Though the report suggests that the way the churchs rules are applied may be modified, a senior church official said Catholics should not expect wholesale change.

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The doctrine of the church is not up for discussion, Bishop Bruno Forte told a news conference at the Vatican on Thursday.

The surveys 39 questions sent out to Catholics last year drew responses from about 90% of the worlds bishops conferences as well as from 800 associations and individuals. The responses and analysis in the report are to be used to frame debate at a synod on the family scheduled for this fall. A second synod on the same theme is set for next year.

The report describes an increasing number of couples living out of wedlock and a rise in divorce. In North America, people often think that the Church is no longer a reliable moral guide, primarily in issues related to the family, which they see as a private matter to be decided independently, it states.

Focusing on complaints from Catholics denied the sacrament after they divorce and remarry, the report states that such denial does not mean that they are excluded from the Christian life and a relationship with God.

But Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, who is organizing the synod, said he did agree with a common request from survey respondents to simplify and speed up the churchs actions on marriage annulments.

The report also found that a vast majority of responses considered church dictates on contraception an intrusion into private life, although it appeared to reject a rule change, arguing that natural methods of birth control should not be discounted.

Respondents were clearly opposed to adoption of children by same-sex couples, the report said, but they did back the baptism of such children.

Referring to people living in same-sex unions, the report said that bishops are trying to find a balance between the Churchs teaching on the family and a respectful, non-judgmental attitude towards people living in such unions.

Kington is a special correspondent.
A missing imam and a house that exploded days ago became the focus Saturday of the investigation into an extremist cell responsible for two deadly attacks in Barcelona and a nearby resort, as authorities narrowed in on who radicalized a group of young men in northeastern Spain.

Investigators searched the home of Abdelbaki Es Satty, an imam who in June abruptly quit working at a mosque in the town of Ripoll, the home of the Islamic radicals behind the attacks that killed 14 people and wounded more than 120 in the last few days. Police were trying to determine whether Es Satty was killed in a botched bomb-making operation on Wednesday, the eve of the Barcelona bloodshed.

His former mosque has denounced the deadly attacks and weeping relatives marched into a Ripoll square on Saturday, tearfully denying any knowledge of the radical plans of their sons and brothers. At least one of the suspects is still on the run, and his younger brother has disappeared, as has the younger brother of one of the five attackers slain Friday by police.

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Catalan police said a manhunt was centered on Younes Abouyaaquoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan suspected of driving the van that plowed into a packed Barcelona promenade Thursday, killing 13 people and injuring 120. Another attack early Friday killed one person and wounded five in the resort of Cambrils.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for both.

Everyone so far known in the cell grew up in Ripoll, a town in the Catalan foothills near the French border 62 miles north of Barcelona. Spanish police searched nine homes in Ripoll, including Es Sattys, and two buses, and set up a roadblock that checked each car entering the town. Across the Pyrenees, French police carried out extra border checks on people coming in from Spain.

Neighbors, family and even the mayor of Ripoll said they were shocked by news of the alleged involvement of the young men, whom all described as integrated Spanish and Catalan speakers with friends of all backgrounds.

Halima Hychami, the weeping mother of Mohamed Hychami, one of the attackers named by police, said he told her he was leaving on vacation and would return Aug. 25. His younger brother, Omar, slept late Thursday and left mid-afternoon.

Mohamed Hychami is believed to be among the five attackers shot to death by police in Cambrils. Halima Hychami said she hadnt heard from Omar since he left.

We found out by watching TV, same as all of you. They never talked about the imam. They were normal boys. They took care of me, booked my flight when I went on vacation. They all had jobs. They didnt steal. Never had a problem with me or anybody else. I cant understand it, she said.

Even with Abouyaaquoub at large, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido declared the cell broken Saturday. In addition to the five killed by police, four were in custody and one or two were killed in a house explosion Wednesday. He said there was no new imminent threat of attack.

Police also conducted a series of controlled explosions Saturday in the town of Alcanar, south of Barcelona, where the attacks were planned in house that was destroyed Wednesday by an explosion. Authorities had initially thought it was a gas accident, but took another look after the attacks.

Initially, only one person was believed killed in the Wednesday blast. But officials said DNA tests were underway to determine if human remains found there Friday were from a second victim. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing searches, said investigators believed the remains may belong to Es Satty.

The official said investigators also discovered ingredients of the explosive TATP, used by the Islamic State group in attacks in Paris and Brussels, as well as multiple butane tanks that the group may have wanted to combine with the homemade explosive and load into their vehicles.

Neighbors on Saturday said they had seen three vehicles coming and going from the home, including an Audi used in the Cambrils attack and the van used in the Barcelona attack.

The president of the mosque where Es Satty preached, Ali Yassine, said he hadnt seen him since June, when he announced he was returning to Morocco for three months.

He left the same way he came, said a bitter Wafa Marsi, a friend to many of the attackers, who appeared Saturday alongside their families to denounce terrorism.

Members of Ripolls Muslim community denounced the vehicle attacks and offered their sympathy to the families of the victims.

Authorities said the two attacks were the work of a large terrorist cell that had been plotting for a long time from the house in Alcanar, 125 miles down the coast from Barcelona.

The lone named suspect still at large, Abouyaaquoub, figures on a police list of four main suspects sought in the attacks. Also on the list is 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, whose brother Driss reported to police that his documents were stolen. Ripolls mayor confirmed that those documents were found in a vehicle used in the attacks. Moussa was one of the five radicals killed, and Driss is in custody, police said.

A French police official said authorities were also looking for a Kangoo utility vehicle that was believed to have been rented in Spain by a suspect in the Barcelona attack that might have crossed the border.

Fatima Abouyaaquoub, sister-in-law of the Hychami brothers and the cousin of Younes Abouyaaquoub, said she found it all hard to believe.

Im still waiting for all of it to be a lie. I dont know if they were brainwashed or they gave them some type of medication or what. I cant explain it, she said.

Abouyaaquoubs mother said his younger brother, Hussein, left home Thursday afternoon and hasnt returned.

The sheer size of the cell and the close family relations among the attackers recalled the November 2015 attacks in Paris, in which Islamic State attackers struck the national stadium, a Paris concert hall and bars and restaurants nearly simultaneously, leaving 130 people dead. Since then, the extremist group has steadily lost ground in its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Islamic extremists have made a point of targeting Europes major tourist attractions in recent years  especially in rented or hijacked vehicles.

Yet Spain decided to keep its terrorist threat alert at level 4  out of five  declaring Saturday that no new attacks were imminent. Zoido said the country would reinforce security for events that draw large crowds as well as at popular tourist sites.

The dead and wounded in the two attacks came from 34 countries. By late Saturday, the Catalan emergency service said 53 people remained hospitalized, 13 of them in critical condition.

The 14 people killed spanned generations  from age 3 to age 80  and left behind devastated loved ones. They included a grandmother, 74, and her granddaughter, 20, from Portugal who were visiting Barcelona to celebrate a birthday; an Italian father who saved his childrens lives but lost his own; an American man who was celebrating his first wedding anniversary in vibrant Barcelona.

Francisco Lopez Rodriguez, a 57-year-old Spaniard, was killed with his 3-year-old grand-nephew, Javier Martinez, while walking along the Las Ramblas promenade. His widow Roser is recovering from her wounds in a hospital.

We are a broken family, niece Raquel Baron Lopez posted on Twitter.

ALSO

Police in Spain say attacks could have been worse as plot widens

Details emerge about Barcelona attack victims, including California man

At least 13 killed, 100 injured in Barcelona van attack blamed on jihadi terrorism

UPDATES:

3:50 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with additional details, including a manhunt for an imam wanted for questioning.

This article was originally published at 6:15 a.m.
Venezuelas political crisis deepened Friday as the controversial constitutional assembly declared that it is the countrys sole legislative body, essentially dissolving the democratically elected congress.

All public bodies are subordinated to the National Constitutional Assembly, said Delcy Rodriguez, the bodys president. No other power can impede our decisions.

The move was hardly a surprise. The assembly was elected late last month in a disputed election that domestic and and international critics said was an unconstitutional maneuver by President Nicolas Maduro to neuter the opposition-controlled legislature, known as the National Assembly, and consolidate his power. All of the candidates  and all 545 delegates who were elected  are loyal to the president.

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The electoral consulting company hired by the government, Britain-based Smartmatic, denounced the vote count as manipulated.

Venezuela has been paralyzed by months of protests against food shortages, violent crime, a collapsing economy and the deeply unpopular Maduros autocratic governing style. Protests have left more than 130 dead and thousands injured. Maduro has threatened to punish opposition leaders with jail terms.

He has characterized the formation of an assembly to draft a new constitution as a move to restore order.

Speaking at a session of the constitutional assembly Friday at the Federal Palace, Rodriguez reiterated that the new assemblys task is to restore order.

We will not permit any more distortions, misuses of power to attack the Venezuelan rule of law, he told the delegates.

Opposition leaders vowed to fight the move.

Julio Borges, president of the National Assembly, said in a statement that his bodys members are the legitimate representatives of popular will and that the 1999 constitution guarantees the democratically elected congress right to continue its functions.

The annulment will not be respected by the National Assembly, the international community or the people of Venezuela, he said.

Maduro has already moved against his most prominent critic, former Atty. Gen. Luisa Ortega Diaz, who prior to the July 30 vote declared the new assembly unconstitutional because it was not first authorized by a public plebiscite. On Aug. 4, the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court ordered the firing of Ortega.

Her replacement, Tarek William Saab, subsequently accused Ortega of being the mastermind of the deaths of the 130 people killed in clashes.

On Wednesday, the new assembly voted to deprive Ortegas husband, congressman German Ferrer, of his congressional immunity. The Supreme Court then issued a warrant for Ferrers arrest, claiming that he extorted government employees in exchange for promises they would not be investigated on corruption charges.

Special correspondents Mogollon and Kraul reported from Caracas and Bogota respectively.
Venezuelas opposition-controlled congress on Saturday rejected a government bid to usurp many of its powers, vowing to continue its legislative agenda and denouncing the move against it as a power grab by President Nicolas Maduro.

This is a parliament in resistance against an armed military dictatorship, declared congressional Vice President Freddy Guevara.

But there were no new street protests on Saturday. Months of antigovernment demonstrations have stalled in recent days amid a sense of weariness and rifts within opposition ranks.

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The latest political crisis essentially pits one legislative body against another. Venezuelas congress, known as the National Assembly, is controlled by Maduro opponents. A newly created body, the constituent assembly, supports Maduro and issued a decree declaring its ability to pass laws  a power that opponents say lies only with congress.

The opposition and many foreign governments, including the United States, have refused to recognize the legitimacy of the 545-member constituent assembly, which was elected late last month in balloting boycotted by opponents.

All constituent assembly delegates are loyal to Maduro, who has said the assembly is essential to restoring peace and order to the reeling South American nation.

The United States rejected the new assemblys usurping of congressional powers as illegitimate, and a group of a dozen hemispheric nations  including Mexico, Brazil, Canada and Argentina  also declared strong condemnation of the take over of congress.

Maduros government denies that congress has been dissolved. Only certain of the legislatures functions have been assumed because of the lawmakers failure to act against opposition violence, the government says.

Congress has been one of the last strongholds of the Venezuelan opposition, even though the government has largely stymied the bodys legislative efforts.

In March, Maduros administration moved boldly to restrict congress power. But widespread criticism forced the government to back down and helped spark a series of antigovernment street demonstrations.

Venezuela, once one of Latin Americas wealthiest nations, has been paralyzed by months of protests against shortages of food and medicines, violent crime and a collapsing economy. Street clashes have left more than 130 dead and thousands injured.

Maduro, who has denied he is leading the country toward a dictatorship, has threatened to punish opposition leaders with jail terms.

But Maduros embattled government received an unexpected boost this month when President Trump raised the possibility of U.S. military intervention. Trumps citing of a possible military option in Venezuela echoed Maduros frequent assertions that Washington is behind the unrest and seeks to invade oil-rich Venezuela  allegations denied by U.S. officials.

Various Latin American governments and the Venezuelan opposition disavowed the possibility of a U.S. military strike in Venezuela. The prospect recalled decades of deeply resented U.S. military interventions in Latin America.

But Maduro  protege of the late President Hugo Chavez, an anti-U.S. firebrand  has seized on Trumps comments as a rallying cry, even as U.S. officials have tried to tamp down the prospect of any military involvement.

On Saturday, Venezuelas Foreign Ministry declared its repudiation of the new threat of the United States empire, adding: Venezuela alerts the world of the new excuses of the government of the United States of America to continue advancing its expansionist plan of military aggression and intervention against our homeland.

---Special correspondent Mogollon reported from Caracas and Staff Writer McDonnell from Mexico City.

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

twitter: @mcdneville

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UPDATE: 2nd Kissimmee officer dies, suspect arrested at a bar

Two Pennsylvania State Police were shot Friday night, part of three unrelated incidents overnight in Pennsylvania and Florida that left five law enforcement officers shot and one killed.

In Kissimmee, Florida, two city police officers were shot responding to a call.

Kissimmee police Chief Jeff O'Dell confirmed Friday night that Officer Matthew Baxter was killed, and Officer Sam Howard was in grave condition.

A news conference is set for 9 a.m. Saturday in that incident.

Officer Matthew Baxter succumbed to his injuries. Officer Sam Howard is in very grave condition. pic.twitter.com/oXypORJaIn  Kissimmee Police (@kissimmeepolice) August 19, 2017

Two Pennsylvania State Police troopers were shot in Fayette County, south of Pittsburgh on the border with West Virginia and Maryland.

One trooper was shot in the stomach and the other in the hand, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; both were in stable condition. The suspect was shot and killed.

The paper reported the troopers saw a man they believed was wanted on a warrant. The troopers stopped the suspect, and he then reached into his backpack, pulled out a gun and started shooting, according to the paper.

A press conference is set for 10:30 a.m. in that incident.

Two Jacksonville police officers were shot responding to a suicidal person, WFTV reports.

Officers arriving to the home heard gunfire and, as they approached the house, the suspect began firing through a door, the station reports. Officials said one officer was in critical condition and the other in stable condition.

The sheriff's department said on its official Twitter account that the suspect was also shot, and died at the hospital.

Two #JSO police officers shot: Suspect was shot by police and died and has died at the hospital.  Jax Sheriff's Office (@JSOPIO) August 19, 2017

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A second Kissimmee, Florida, police officer has died and the suspect in the fatal shootings was arrested in a bar several hours after the attack, authorities said on Saturday.

Everett Miller faces a charge of first-degree murder for the killing of Officer Matthew Baxter, who died Friday night after the attack. Sgt. Sam Howard died Saturday afternoon, and authorities hadn't yet said what charges Miller could in connection with that killing.

During a patrol late Friday of a neighborhood with a history of drug activity, Baxter was "checking out" three people, including Miller, when the officer got into a scuffle with Miller.

Howard, his sergeant, responded as backup, said Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell. Kissimmee is located south of the theme park hub of Orlando, Florida.

The officers didn't have an opportunity to return fire. They weren't wearing body cameras.

Sheriff's deputies with a neighboring law enforcement agency later tracked Miller down to a bar and approached him. Miller started reaching toward his waistband when the deputies tackled and subdued him, O'Dell said.

The found a handgun and revolver on him.

"They were extremely brave and heroic actions taken by the deputies," O'Dell said.

The police chief said Miller was taken to jail wearing Baxter's handcuffs.

Authorities originally said they believed there were four suspects, but the chief said Saturday that no other arrests are anticipated.

Miller, 45, was a Marine veteran and was recently involuntarily committed for a mental evaluation by the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. The early stages of the investigation shows that Miller had made threats to law enforcement on Facebook, O'Dell said.

Baxter, 27, had been with the Kissimmee Police Department for three years. He was married to another Kissimmee police officer and they have four children.

Howard, 36, has served with the Kissimmee Police Department for 10 years. He and his wife have one child, O'Dell said.

"They are two wonderful men, family men," O'Dell said. "They are two committed to doing it the right way."

Separately, two other officers were injured late Friday in Jacksonville, Florida, after police responded to reports of an attempted suicide of a man at a home where the mother of his child, their 19-month-old toddler, the woman's mother and a family friend were thought to be in danger.

One of the officers was shot in both hands and the other was shot in the stomach.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said Saturday that officers Michael Fox and Kevin Jarrell are in stable condition following Friday night's confrontation with an armed Derrick Brabham, who was killed by the officers.

In Pennsylvania, two state troopers were shot and a suspect killed outside a small-town store south of Pittsburgh on Friday night.

President Trump tweeted early Saturday that his thoughts and prayers were with the Kissimmee Police Department. "We are with you!" he said.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott tweeted he was heartbroken by the news of Baxter's death and was praying for a quick recovery for Howard.
Kilcullen is vying to be crowned the winner of Bank of Irelands National Enterprising Town Competition 2017.

The search to find the countrys most enterprising town is set to reach its climax, with 78 entries from 31 local/city authority areas competing to be crowned the winner.

County Kildare Chamber and Kildare County Council are organising this years entry.

Judges will be in the town on Friday September 1.

Alison Redmond of County Kildare Chamber said, We are looking forward to showcasing Kilcullen to the judges. Kilcullen is the ideal choice this year as the town excels in enterprise with all local groups coming together and supporting very worthwhile projects. Kilcullen is home to a diverse range of businesses and I have seen over the past weeks engagement with the key stakeholders in the town a sense of pride and community spirit that Im sure will make Kilcullen a very worthy candidate for the national award.

The judges will consider a range of factors which demonstrate enterprising spirit and success including: Attractiveness of the town  welcome signage, appearance, parking and accessibility; Partnerships and reaching out  collaboration with local councils and agencies, joint initiatives between businesses, diaspora engagement and twinning; Town leadership and vision  innovative forward thinking and planning to support enterprise development; Community support  support for local businesses key services and culture, sports, heritage, environment; Awards or recognitions that the town or city village/area has achieved.
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After being diagnosed with arthritis in her 20s, Rathangan woman Grace Cafolla left her job in retail and set out on a whole new venture.

In 2016, Grace came across an article online about a new baby box phenomenon.

The concept started in Finland, by three fathers who set about providing a baby box starter kit to expectant families.

The baby box, which is fitted with a foam mattress, is said to contribute to Finlands low infant mortality rates.

The business then rolled out in the US and UK.

And now it has finally been adopted in Ireland.

Grace explains what attracted her to setting up the business.

At the start of 2016, I saw an article about how babies all over the world were sleeping in baby boxes. I loved the simplicity of it and the idea that every baby gets an equal start in life with a unique, safe and affordable place to sleep.

Despite having no children herself, Grace was intrigued by the idea of the baby box, and this has since become a passion of hers.

As many of us are aware, people tend to pass down Moses baskets over the years sometimes being stored in dusty cupboards and attics. The materials can harbour bacteria which is not ideal for a new baby to be inhaling. Once the baby has outgrown the box (when they are able to sit up, kneel or pull themselves up) the box can be re-purposed as a memory box or storage box for clothes.

The baby box can typically be used up to 6-8 months, depending on the size of the baby.

Some baby boxes come equipped with essential items that mothers are asked to bring along to hospital when they are going in to have baby, such as hand knitted cardigan, scratch mitts, hats, burp clothes, sleep suits and bodysuits to name a few.

For every box sold a donation is made to Temple Street Children's Foundation to help some of the most vulnerable babies and children in Ireland.

Grace says the baby box is really booming in Ireland.

We were at the baby fair in the RDS in April and the feedback was wonderful from all ages. A lot of people had heard of them and were curious to see them and try them. There will always be some skeptics about something new, but we have not experienced much of it. It is new concept for Ireland but these boxes have been used in Finland for over 75 years to much success that it's being adopted by hospitals and institutions worldwide.

Grace says the support for her business in Ireland has been fantastic. There is so much more awareness of these boxes in the last 8 months. Very few people haven't heard of them before and a lot of people are buying these boxes as presents for friends and families expecting a baby.

The business is primarily online, visit www.irishbabybox.ie for more information.
RTE Radio 1 will air a documentary this Saturday afternoon, 19th August right after the One oclock news, about a doctor from Fenagh who was murdered outside St Marys Church of Ireland in Mohill in 1923.

Ireland was awash with violence at that period in its history, with the War of Independence just finished, and the Civil War unleashing a further frenzy of blood-letting, even within families.

At the same time medical work was precarious, with very few remedies for diseases and illnesses. Antibiotics had not yet been discovered, surgical procedures were primitive, and doctors regularly exposed themselves to deadly infections as they tried to save the lives of their patients. In that setting many doctors had a heightened awareness of how fragile and precious the gift of life is.

One of those doctors was Michael Patrick (Paddy) Muldoon from Fenagh who served as medical officer of the Rynn Dispensary District following the First World War.

It was 1922. In the parish of Aughavas a clergyman in his mid 30s was noted for two unusual qualities: He was a member of the IRA, and he was keeping company with an unmarried woman in her late teens whom he described as his housekeeper.

The woman fell ill and asked Dr Muldoon for medical assistance. When he examined her he found that she was pregnant. This was a great scandal in a society that placed a premium on marriage as the preferred setting for having children, and on celibacy as the correct manner of life for the clergy.

According to an account by the late Robert Logan, who was born in Mohill in 1926 and lived there until 1992, the womans family intimated to Dr Muldoon that they would organise an abortion to get rid of the pregnancy.

Abortion was illegal in Ireland at that time, and the familys proposal did not sit easily with the doctor. He reported his concerns to the local RIC (police), who let the family know that they were aware of the pregnancy and would respond if anyone harmed the baby.

The clergyman sent the woman to Dublin for the final three months of her pregnancy, where he paid for her lodgings and other expenses. The baby, a girl, was born there in late January or early February 1923, and two weeks later the clergyman and the childs mother abandoned her on a doorstep near St Marys Chapel of Ease in Broadstone, before hurrying away from the scene.

Three Dublin women saw what they were doing and confronted them. These women called the police and the pair were arrested and later charged with the crime of unlawful child abandonment.

The case was not heard until May 1923. In the meantime everyone involved knew that the evidence was watertight and that adverse publicity would ensue.

According to Robert Logan, the housekeepers family guessed that Dr Muldoon was the one who had alerted the RIC to her pregnancy. They may have held a grudge against him on that account.

It is also possible that they were worried that the doctor would be called to give evidence in the forthcoming court case.

In any event, Roberts version is that it was this family who arranged for someone to kill the doctor.

On the evening of Sunday 18th March 1923 Dr Muldoon and another man paid a visit to the Catholic parish priest in Mohill, Canon Masterson at the Parochial House. After their visit the two men walked together down the length of Main Street. They had just passed St Marys Church of Ireland when they parted company. At that juncture a man approached Dr Muldoon and killed him by shooting him at close range.

On 9th May 1923 the clergyman was tried in a Dublin court on the charge of unlawful child abandonment. According to the Irish Times he admitted that he had in fact abandoned the child, but the jury failed to agree on the charge and he walked free.

Like many of his contemporaries, this man was a troubled individual, dabbling in republican violence as well as betraying his religious commitment to living a chaste life, and thinking that he could solve personal as well as political problems by resorting to the killing of the innocent.

His bishop did what he could to rein him in, and even reprimanded him in public by forbidding him from preaching at Masses.

The book Leitrims Republican Story 19002000 by Cormac O Suilleabhain states that he was eventually removed from his diocese, then went to England, was later reported to have worked as an army chaplain in the USA, but was (back) working in Morecambe, Lancashire by the early 1950s.

Dr Muldoon was buried in a graveyard surrounding the ruins of Fenagh Abbey in south County Leitrim. He left a widow and three young children. His widow was originally from a well-to-do medical family in Clifden, County Galway. She moved back there after his death, died in the 1950s and was buried in Clifden.

The nub of the story is that a doctor in a rural community in 1920s Ireland was killed because he would cooperate with the killing of an unborn child. That event happened almost a hundred years ago. So why is the Dublin media taking a new interest in the story at this particular time?

My own guess is that they will use it to try to embarrass the Catholic Church in Ireland by highlighting the sexual immorality of some clergymen and by alleging a cover-up of wrong-doing by some bishops.

This will feed into efforts by some media outlets to discredit the Churchs pro-life witness in the run-up to a referendum on abortion that will probably take place in Ireland next year.

Tune into RTE Radio 1 this Saturday afternoon just after the one oclock news, and judge for yourself.
The Champagne corks are popping once more at Leitrims 4* riverside venue, The Landmark Hotel. RSVP Magazine have awarded the Landmark Irelands Best Wedding Customer Service 2017.

What a year it has been so far for The Landmark Hotel! 2017 began with the launch of their beautiful new Wedding Brochure and a range of wonderful new packages. February brought much celebrations when Wedding Industry Guru, WeddingsOnLine.ie, unveiled The Landmark as Irelands Waterside Wedding Venue of the Year. This was just one for the 5 National Titles awarded this year and saw The Landmark keeping company with Barberstown Castle and Ballinacurra House.

These high status wedding awards are a reflection of the innovation and attention to detail that goes into each wedding to create the perfect wedding day for all Landmark brides and grooms. Marketing Manager, Aoife McCormack explains, Weddings inspired by you, created by us  this is the promise of our experienced wedding team. Each couple is unique and therefore every wedding is unique. Our promise to our couples is to support them as they plan their day and facilitate their plans as they put their personal stamp on their day. And also, above all, to provide them with the highest quality of food and service and most importantly the greatest memories.

The Landmarks award winning team would love to meet with you and give you a private tour of their beautiful Wedding suites and reception rooms. They invite you to contact their dedicated Wedding Team today, Tel: 071 96 22 222 or email: weddings@thelandmarkhotel.com.

Follow the Landmark on Facebook, twitter & Instagram

Celebrate your wedding in style at the Landmark Hotel!
The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has called for nominations in the annual Leading Lights in Road Safety awards.

Now in its tenth year, these awards recognise and honour the contribution made by people and organisations nationwide in reducing deaths and serious injuries on Irish roads.

The RSA is asking communities all over Ireland to once again nominate their Leading Light in road safety  whether that be a group or an individual who campaigns, educates and is committed to improving road safety in their community.

Announcing the call for entries, Ms Liz ODonnell, Chairperson of the Road Safety Authority said: We are delighted to bring the Leading Lights in Road Safety awards into their tenth year. Each year we call on the people of Ireland to recognise the ordinary people in their community that are doing extraordinary work to reduce deaths and serious injuries on our roads. These awards aim to acknowledge the remarkable contributions made by volunteers, teachers, students, businesses, journalists and community groups in making the roads safer for all.

If you know someone who is a hero for road safety in your community, or if you are one of those people, enter this years Leading Lights in Road Safety awards so we can celebrate the great work being done across the country.

This year, an additional category has been added to the list of awards, with the introduction of the Future Award.

The purpose of the Future Award is to highlight and acknowledge the development of innovative, technological concepts that demonstrate a real positive impact on road safety and an actual or future contribution to saving lives. This award will be given to an individual, business or organisation that displays innovation and forward-thinking in promoting road safety.

Moyagh Murdock, CEO of the Road Safety Authority, commented, Technology can play a very important role in making our roads safer. The Future Award will recognise innovative approaches to reducing road deaths that can be replicated on a wider scale.

Nominations are now open and more information on how to enter your nomination in the Leading Lights in Road Safety Awards are available on www.RSA.ie/LeadingLights

Entries will be accepted in each of the following categories:

 Road Safety Officer of the Year

 Education - Pre-primary, Primary, Secondary, Special, Third Level/Further and Community Education

 Public Sector

 Emergency Services

 Local Media

 National Media

 Business

 Future Award

 Approved Driving Instructor (ADI) of the Year

 CPC Trainer of the Year

 CPC Training Organisation of the Year

The winners in each of these categories will go forward and be in with a chance of becoming the winner of the Supreme Award for 2017.

The judging panel for the Leading Lights in Road Safety will be announced shortly. Entries to this years awards are currently being accepted and the closing date for entries is Wednesday, November 1.

The winners of each category will be announced at the awards ceremony in Croke Park on Wednesday, December 13.

Further details on the Leading Lights Awards can be found at www.RSA.ie/LeadingLights
Vince Cable came to Edinburgh yesterday on his tour of the country taking questions from members.

For 90 minutes, he answered questions on such varying subjects as tackling extremism, Brexit, freedom of movement, the triple lock, opportunities for young people and the fight against climate change.

He was particularly strong on tackling inter-generational unfairness and I was heartened to see him continue to keep social justice and reducing inequality as top priorities.

He talked about the need to curb some of the privileges pensioners get  such as wealthier people over state pension age who are still earning not paying National Insurance. He said it was important to maintain the triple lock, though, because we dont want to go back to the days when so many pensioners lived in poverty.

I was really pleased to meet so many people who had recently joined the party  some who had specifically joined because Vince was leader.

Watch most of it in the next two video clips. Dont be put off by the sound interference at the beginning of the first one. It sorts itself out.

Earlier in the day, Vince had gone to the Dynamic Earth attraction with Willie Rennie and Alex Cole-Hamilton.

.@vincecable joins @willie_rennie and @agcolehamilton at Dynamic Earth, ahead of tonight's Q&A in Edinburgh - tune in live on Facebook at 7! pic.twitter.com/4KyZ8pSiCw  Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) August 18, 2017

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
The Great British Summer may almost be over, but that doesnt mean we have to give up on the dream of seeking out some sunshine. Once the kids have gone back to school, there are plenty of bargains to be found in hot destinations around the world.

For many, the summer holidays are a great time to travel: youre almost guaranteed warm weather in nearby countries such as Spain and Italy, you can take the kids with you for a family holiday, and festival season sees plenty of us jetting off abroad to enjoy a musical experience to remember. With the arrival of September, the crowds start to thin and prices begin to lower making for a great time to grab a bargain. However, theres still plenty of warm weather to be found  heres where to go for some post-summer sunshine.

Andalusia, Spain

The Andalusian region of southern Spain remains warm throughout Autumn, with an average temperature of 25 in September and 20 in October. The area is home to cities such as Seville and Granada, both of which play host to stunning architectural masterpieces (the Alcazar of Seville and Grandas Alhambra are must-sees); it also boasts plenty of beautiful beaches thanks to its coastal location. Marbella, Malaga and Cadiz are just some of the areas in which to relax by the sea.

Morocco

This North African nation boasts a balmy climate in the autumn and winter months, and while areas such as the Atlas Mountains can get pretty cold, there are also plenty of opportunities for post summer sunshine. The coastal town of Essaouira, for example, enjoys mild weather and is also a popular winter surfing destination. An increasing number of airlines are offering direct flights to the seaside town, so its easy to access from the UK.

The Greek Islands

The Greek islands are bathed in a healthy dose of sunshine throughout the year, and autumn is no exception! Dotted across the Mediterranean, each one is different  from party loving Mykonos to peaceful Kastellorizo, theres something for everyone. A very popular summer holiday destination, as autumn arrives the crowds dissipate and the islands are calmer, setting the tone for some serious R&R.

Turkey

Head to Turkeys south west coast to enjoy sun, sea and sand even after summer has ended. The area remains warm well into October, and there are plenty of seaside resorts and towns to choose from. Charming Fethiye, bustling Marmaris, popular Bodrumwhether its nightlife, relaxation or adventure you want, Turkey has you covered.

Malta

Located in the central Mediterranean, Maltas historic beauty and natural charm are best enjoyed in the off season, when the crowds have gone home and the weather is warm yet not overbearing. With average temperatures remaining above 20 throughout September and October, its a welcome break from the British autumn, and great flight deals are plentiful.

Australia

Its no secret that as the UK slips into autumn and winter, the Australian summer is just beginning. Fly to Sydney to make the most of iconic beaches such as Bondi Beach or check out architectural landmarks like the Sydney Opera House, before renting a car and heading off on a road trip to Melbourne along a stunning coastal route.

California

The west coast of the USA is known for its laid back lifestyle and sunny climate, and with low cost airlines such as WOW air operating flights to cities like San Francisco, getting there doesnt need to break the bank. Head south to cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego for warmer weather and plenty to see and do.

IMG: Shutterstock
AN Bord Pleanala has rejected an appeal by discount retailer Dealz against the decision by Limerick City and County Council to refuse permission for illuminated shopfront signage and 2.8m tall vinyl window graphics.

Dealz, a division of UK retailer Poundland, was previously refused planning permission by the local authority for the retention of the signage at its store at the junction of Henry Street and Bedford Row in the city centre.

The 9,000 square foot store which extends over three floors opened in May 2016.

Prior to being leased by Dealz, the premises was previously occupied by clothing retailer Pamela Scott.

In its appeal to An Bord Pleanala, the company submitted the purpose of the vinyl signage on the windows was to mitigate the visual impact of shelving which can be seen from the street.

In its submission which was prepared by a plannin consultant, it also argued there was a need for illuminated signage as the external facades are usually in the shade.

In her report to the board, planning inspector Pauline Fitzpatrick said the vinyl signage which extends over two floors creates a visually obtrusive feature in the streetscape and that it amounts to visual clutter.

While Ms Fitzpatrick accepts that shelving will be visible from the street once the vinyl signage is removed from the windows, she says the use of such signage creates dead frontage and is not best practice.

Alternative design solutions including alterations to internal store layout which does not involve such dominent signage should be fully explored, she stated in her report.

In its decision, the board of An Bord Pleanala state the scale, design and quantum on the building frontage would be excessive in terms of visual clutter and that retention of the signage would seriously injure the visual amenities of the area.

Upholding the reccomendation of its planning inspector, the board at a meeting on July 31, decided to refuse the applicaton by Dealz for retention of the disputed signage.
ONE of Limericks longest established independent art studios has found a temporary home  just a fortnight after being evicted by the HSE.

Contact Studios left its premises in the grounds of St Josephs Hospital in Mulgrave Street after the HSE asked the group to leave its pre-fab premises after a health service audit.

Contact had been there since 1997, and had provided services to patients in return for the space.

It meant the loss of 14 visual arts spaces  more than a third of what is currently on offer.

However, this week, the group was invited by Ray OHalloran and Pat Brown to move into the Limerick City Build premises at Bank Place.

This site, formerly known as the Cahill May Roberts building, houses a training hub for young unemployed tradesmen.

Now space has been created for the artists following lobbying from Cllr Michael Sheahan and Senator Kieran ODonnell.

I marvelled at the work they were doing within the studio as professional artists, but also on a wider basis with the Limerick Mental Health Association giving of their free time. I thought it was a fantastic gift back to the HSE for the use of the building, and I was shocked when I was told they were being evicted, Cllr Sheahan said, But this is a good news story.

Limerick City and County Council is currently working on a permanent home for the artists, and the Fine Gael man said he hopes this will be finalised by next month.

Senator Kieran ODonnell pledged to continue to work with council, while Carl Doran, one of the studios longest serving members said the news gives them a renewed sense of purpose.

Were putting together ideas on how we can work with the Council on various projects, he added.
YOU can forget about eating your five-a-day, drinking lots of water and exercise  the secret to a long life is a game of bingo.

Four nights a week, Bridget Harding, from Dromlara, Pallasgreen can be found with her pen poised over a card. She celebrated her 100th birthday with family and friends in the local community centre on Saturday last after a special Mass.

One of her daughters, Joan jokes that she is the one who is worn-out.

She is getting better all the time and I am just exhausted! Every day she says to me, What is on today and what are we doing today? She is a great character, said Joan.

Bridget plays bingo in Oola on Tuesday night, Pallasgreen on Wednesday, Cappamore on Thursday and Tipperary on Sunday. And if she forgets her glasses it is no problem.

She does wear glasses but if she didnt have them it wouldnt be a great hardship to her. She could still read the paper and her bingo numbers, said Joan. All the bingo committees made a presentation to her.

Joan cant remember the last time her mum missed a night. Bridget says, in a fine strong voice, Ill keep going to bingo as long as Im always able to walk.

Bridget met her future husband, Oola man Paddy Harding at a local dance. In 1942, during World War II, she went to London to find employment and worked as a housekeeper in the presbytery of St Agnes Church, Cricklewood.

Six years later she married Paddy in London. In 1954, Bridget returned to Dromlara and reared a family of six children, Patrick, Bernadette, Joan, Marian, Seamus and Breda.

In a sign of the economic times, Paddy continued to work in England, and travel back and forth during holidays, until 1972. Sadly six years later he passed away aged 54. In 2004, her son Seamus passed away at another young age.

Bridget is very popular in her parish, across east Limerick and is adored by her family, 15 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren.

The generous lady even used her cheque for 2,540 from President Michael D Higgins to contribute towards her party. The size of the crowd at the Mass and celebration reflected the esteem Bridget is held.

Im very proud of all my family  theyre very good to me, said Bridget, who agrees that being so sociable and her love of meeting people has slowed down the hands of time.

The Leader asked her to reflect on her long life on this earth and knowing what she knows now  is there anything she would have done differently?

No, I wouldnt change a thing, said Bridget. What a lovely way to be.

She never smoked a cigarette in her life apart from when she was a young girl and pretended to by rolling up pieces of paper.

Her words of advice are, Keep off the drink and smoking. Take each day as it comes and do your best for each day. While the great grandmother wasnt a pioneer it would take a special occasion for a glass of Baileys, port or wine to pass her lips.

Bridgets two favourite sayings are God has no place for me yet and lll live long as I can and Ill die when I cant help it.

See page 17 of Leader 2 for more photographs
Apr 30, 2021, 1 AM

A stamp collector in the United Kingdom received a surprise when his latest order of United States stamps from Stamp Fulfillment Services was rejected. Due to enhanced security precautions, Stamp Fulfillment Services will no longer accept credit card pay

Washington Postal Scene  By Bill McAllister

John Wells would seem like a wonderful customer of the United States Postal Service.

For at least 20 years, the British stamp collector says he has been buying the latest U.S. stamps by mail from Stamp Fulfillment Services in Kansas City, Mo., spending several thousand dollars each year via my credit card.

But after Wells placed his latest stamp order for $1,270.52 worth of U.S. stamps on July 27, he got a stunning surprise.

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Due to enhanced security precautions, Stamp Fulfillment Services will no longer accept credit card payment for foreign orders, said an unsigned Aug. 11 letter that was returned with his unfilled order.

A Postal Service spokesman confirmed for Linns that Stamp Fulfillment Services is no longer accepting credit cards from foreign customers.

The Postal Service  not SFS  has instituted no longer accepting foreign credit cards in order to prevent fraud and protect our assets, said the Aug. 18 statement.

Linns had asked what percentage of sales would the policy affect. The brief statement said that information was deemed proprietary and would not be disclosed by the Postal Service.

The USPS also offered no further explanation of what had prompted that change.

U.S. customers can still use credit cards to make stamp purchases.

The change for foreign customers was noted in the spring issue of USA Philatelic in small type under the payment section for foreign orders.

Payment for foreign orders may only be made by check preprinted in U.S. fund or a draft drawn on a U.S. bank, a notice on the order form said.

Wells said he saw that notice, but when he called the Postal Services toll-free number he was told that there had been a few changes, but to send my order in the usual way.

This I did and the stamps duly arrived, he told Linns.

When he placed his July 27 order, however, he got the order back and an unsigned letter that began, Thank you for your recent philatelic order with our office.

The letter also suggested he use the USPS store on eBay.com and utilize their PayPal payment method.

Wells said he didnt like the way Paypal operates when it comes to controlling your money.

Payment by cheque seems too complicated, he said.

Paying by credit card is for me the simplest method of payment and I am in control of my own funds, Wells told Linns.

Wells, a resident of Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, said he was stunned that the USPS would reject his credit card.

The USPS must be flush with funds if they can afford to reject such revenue, he said, referring to the Postal Services well-known financial problems.

And, he added, There must be numerous foreign collectors and dealers that buy their stamps particularly since they are so popular.

Wells did not say what he will do about his unfilled order.

First, he said he would like an explanation from the Postal Service.

I look forward hopefully to why I, and no doubt other foreign customers, have suddenly become a security risk.

Wells said he is a longtime member of the American Philatelic Society, the National Duck Stamp Collectors Society, and the American Stamp Club of Great Britain, as well as being a life member of the British Civil Services Philatelic Society.
Im a Naga first, a Naga second, and a Naga last Angami Zapu Phizo, a separatist leader who died in exile, unable to see his dream of a sovereign Nagaland come true /news/talking-point/im-a-naga-first-a-naga-second-and-a-naga-last-111646984189904.html 111646984189904 story

On 12 June 1960, puzzled immigration officials in London detained a traveller who had landed up without bothering with that small thing called a passport. His face was partially paralysed but his tongue was defiant. When the British came to my country," he declared, they did not bring any passport with them. Why should I now carry one to Britain?" It was a startling riposte but the visitors identity clarified matters. Angami Zapu Phizo, one time insurance salesman and proprietor of Gwiz Products, which offered a range of face creams and balms, was a dangerous separatist, sentenced to death by the Indian Uniona union 70 years old now but which is yet to fully reconcile with the people Phizo represented, and whose cause delivered him to his tragic destiny: exile and death in a foreign land.

The Nagas, descended from Mongoloid tribes, occupied a vast hilly tract for much of known history. Then, in 1832, an East India Company captain with 700 soldiers, 800 coolies"and no passportdecided to gun his way through their lands. Held loosely by rival clans, the advent of the British produced the tribes first common enemy, transforming also into a catalyst for unity. For the captain, however, the motive was clearthe company had brought Manipur under its control and now sought a direct route into Assam; a route that could only be had by bulldozing through this savage tract lying in the midst of our settled districts". A few patronizing lines about civilizing the hillmen" were also thrown in, and Naga territory was justified as theirs to take.

Despite the hysterical onslaught of propaganda about headhunting, the Nagas were not convinced of their so-called inferiority. We are all equal," Phizo proudly noted. We have no caste distinctions, no high class or low class. There is no minority problem and we believe in that form of democratic government which permits the rule of the people as a whole. We talk freely, we live freely, and we often fight freely too. We have few inhibitions. Wild? Yes, but free. There is order in this chaos, law in this freedom." It was not what the West defined as civilized" but it held all the other cultural ingredients for nationhood. The Nagas were alarmed to learn that an accident of historyand the construction of a highwayhad made them Indians" overnight.

Phizo, however, was an unlikely voice for Naga nationalism. Born in 1904, his was a family of converted Christians that was still tribal enough to baptize him at the late age of 18. Selling insurance for a Canadian company in the bigger towns of the region, and the Bible in its villages, the man travelled extensively. And, over time, he developed a sense of nationalism inspired by the past as well as by his peers. The time, though, was not ripe: He married and eventually moved to Burma (now Myanmar), never, however, relinquishing his vision for a sovereign Nagaland. I am a Naga first, a Naga second, and a Naga last," he announced, even as the British thought him as thoroughly a nasty piece of work as ever there was one."

It was World War II that allowed Phizo an opportunity to realize his vision. And this did not merely entail terminating British domination but also aimed to challenge any Indian claims over Naga territoryhe did not intend to watch a black government" replace the white. When in the 1940s Subhas Chandra Bose and the Japanese took Burma, Phizo cooperated more readily with the latter than with Bose, even though the campaign to invade India was ultimately defeated. The British locked him up in jail for his pains. I was condemned a traitor," he remembered. But I was certainly not a traitor to my own conscience."

In 1946, Phizo came home to lead the Naga National Council. His opening sentiment was disappointment. In Burma, he had witnessed what patriotism could achieve". In Nagaland, there was nothingno unity, no ideas". He decided to plant these ideas, meeting Mahatma Gandhi to negotiate a space outside India for his people. I will come to the Naga Hills," Gandhi promised when the possibility of military coercion was raised, and I will ask them to shoot me before one Naga is shot." But Jawaharlal Nehru after 1947 would not brook any talk of tribal autonomyIndia was already in shock after Partition, and the borders that remained were not negotiable.

Phizo, who gave the impression of carrying, single-handed, in his little briefcase, the destiny of the entire Naga people", was prepared to fight. And when events turned violent under his direction, Nehrus determination was matched by the march of Indian troops. Phizo had no option but to live with the consequences. Travelling via Pakistan on a fake El Salvadoran passport to Switzerland first, Phizo went into exile. He made every effort to gather international support for his cause, but there was nothing anybody could offer. After all, Nehru, despite his blood-curdling policy in Nagaland, was a towering post-colonial figure; Phizo, as Londons newspapers announced, only a famous headhunter".

By the time he died in 1990, 30 years later, Phizo was resigned to his fate. I made a mistake in over-estimating the will of those I had left behind in Nagaland to resist the pressures put on them," he remarked gloomily to a journalist. I made another mistake in believing that in the West truth would conquer. That was not so. Having come here, I could see the world is too distracted, too divided. I thought of myself as a student of history, but I have discovered I have a lot to learn." He had a dream that seduced his people. What he learnt painfully was that it was destined to remain just that: a dream.

Medium Rare is a weekly column on society, politics and history. Manu S. Pillai is the author of The Ivory Throne: Chronicles Of The House Of Travancore.

The writer tweets at @UnamPillai
Rajkummar Rao, our man on screen Now a mainstay of the 'Hindie' scene, his performances have earned him a reputation as one of India's most exciting young actors. With three films out and two more to release, could 2017 be the year of Rao? /news/talking-point/rajkummar-rao-our-man-on-screen-111646984207582.html 111646984207582 story

It may seem a strange thing to say of someone who rode, three years ago in Vikas Bahls Queen, a scooter covered in heart-shaped balloons, but Rajkummar Rao isnt given to onscreen flamboyance. Over seven years and 20-odd films, the 32-year-old actor has built a reputation as an empathetic but unsentimental interpreter of regular lives. Which is why the showreel from his Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) days, in which he seems to have at least one eye on mass-market stardom, is surprising. Scene fragments show Rao in dramatic, romantic and slapstick situations; he dances, does some shirtless taekwondo, performs kalaripayattu. It feels like the resume of someone whos saying, look at me, I can carry a commercial film.

Rao can carry a film all right, but in a way thats far removed from the vanity of stars. His best performances are examples of what American critic Manny Farber called Termite Art. This particular approach, which Farber contrasts with ostentatious, obvious White Elephant Art, goes always forward eating its own boundaries and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity". Its difficult to imagine a better description of what Rao achieves with his roles in Shahid (2013) and Trapped (2017), Kai Po Che! (2013) and Newton (2017)busy, alert performances, composed of a multitude of small choices rather than a limited number of grand ones.

Its been an unusually busy year for Rao. This weekend, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwaris Bareilly Ki Barfi, in which he stars alongside Ayushmann Khurrana and Kriti Sanon, will release. Hes already had two films out this year, Vikramaditya Motwanes Trappedin which he gave his most physically charged performanceand Ajay Pannalals comedy, Behen Hogi Teri. Newton, a sparklingly written, mordant take on elections in a Maoist-controlled area of Chhattisgarh, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February, will open in September in India. Hansal Mehtas Omerta, in which he plays Omar Saeed Sheikh, the terrorist accused of murdering journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002, will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. And theres Bose: Dead/Alive, a web series premiering later this year (Mehta is the creative producer), in which he plays, improbably, Subhas Chandra Bose.

For someone with a rare ability to blend into scenes and disappear into parts, thats a lot of visibility. And though none of these is a big commercial film, the constant presence of Rao on screens big and small through the year might work to his advantage. Film buffs may talk of Trapped and Newton, but to the general publicwhen they think of him at allhes still that guy from Queen, the necessary evil that kicks off Kangana Ranauts process of self-discovery.

Vinod Mirani, a veteran analyst, says Rao isnt yet seen in trade circles as someone with much box-office cachebut he can get there. Id never have thought Naseeruddin Shah could have crossed over, but he did," he says. Rao will get his chance, he has to wait for the right role."

Unlike indie fellow-actors such as Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Rao has avoided playing the heros best friend or eccentric villain in major studio films so far. Its been offered to me," he says, during our second meeting, one early morning at his apartment in Andheri, Mumbai. Hes been shooting the Bose series, and it shows: a beanie obscures an unseemly haircut, and his normally thin face is puffy with the weight hes gained for the role. Id probably get a lot of visibility, but I dont think I would enjoy the process. And for me, the process is what you remember."

****

Rao grew up in Prem Nagar, Gurugram, with two older siblings and three cousins in an extended family. It was the sort of middle-class milieu that many of his characters find themselves in. His father was a patwari, a keeper of land records, and his mother a homemaker. It was a family of movie enthusiastswhen his parents were wed, his mother brought a large poster of Amitabh Bachchan to her new home.

Growing up, Rao was a Shah Rukh Khan fan, though also enough of an Aamir Khan fan to attempt, when he was around 14, a version of the dus dus ki daud" stunt from Ghulam with two of his friends (We sat on the tracks and counted to 10 while the train was coming towards us and then jumped. It was night, so all you could see was the light getting closer. It was plain stupid"). He took notice when a largely unknown actorthin, hungry, intense, much like he would himself be when he started out in films a decade laterburst on to the scene in Satya and Shool.

I was highly influenced by Manoj (Bajpayee)," Rao tells me, in his trailer at Mumbais Filmistan Studio, awaiting summons for a recording of The Drama Company show, part of a seemingly endless string of promotions for Bareilly Ki Barfi. It was after seeing him that I thought of becoming an actor." Years later, he would share scenes with Bajpayee in Chittagong and play opposite him in Aligarh.

Rao had started acting in school plays, but took it up in earnest when he began college. He joined the Shri Ram Centre repertory in Delhi in his first year. This meant travelling by bus from Gurugram to Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College in south Delhi every day, and from there to his theatre classes at Mandi House, before returning home late at night. He would spend the 4-5 hours of travel readingplays in English and Hindi, the acting treatises of Konstantin Stanislavski, Shiv Kheras You Can Win. It was exhausting, but ambition had taken grip. I could never lead a typical college life," he says. The moment I passed out from school, the only aim was to become a film actor. I just worked towards thatno girlfriends, no fun in life."

This focus only intensified when he began a two-year acting course at the FTII, Pune. Batchmate Anish John, now a leading sound designer, remembers how Rao used to impose a curfew of 11pm on himselfa rarity for that bohemian campus. John, who has worked with Rao on Trapped and Newton, believes he hasnt changed much since. He comes on set very focused. Hes not this brooding, serious actorits not like hes in character while eating lunchbut the minute the shot is ready, he switches on" (Rao says he watches documentaries and Game Of Thrones episodes on his phone to unwind between scenes nowadays). Amit Masurkar, Newtons director, also spoke of his discipline, saying, He would sleep every night at 9.30, wake up 2-3 hours before call time, do his exercises, get his hair curled, come on set exactly on time."

That Rao is capable of uncommon focus is of a piece with his screen persona. If theres one thing that unites nearly all his characters, its the single-mindedness with which they pursue whatever theyve set out to achieve. In Kai Po Che!, Govind alone among the central trio refuses to be side-tracked from their dream of running a successful business. In Newton, the eponymous heros insistence on official procedure begins to resemble mania, as all unadulterated idealism eventually does.

When the characters goal is less than wholesome, this concentration can take the performance into thrillingly dark places. In his first two films, Dibakar Banerjees LSD: Love, Sex Aur Dhokha (2010) and Pawan Kripalanis Ragini MMS (2011), Rao has the coiled energy of a wild animal on a hunt. Physically unintimidating, he bullies with speech instead, keeping up a jabbing verbal patter that denies the women hes seducing the chance to think clearly. Even when he isnt playing a creep, this attitude persistsin an amusing scene in Shahid, where he plays a lawyer, he cant seem to stop quizzing his client Mariam about her marital status.

****

His early audition was as Raj. (His) charm, the quiet intensity was there. But we needed to see the other side," says Kanu Behl, director of Titli, about his time as co-writer and chief assistant director on LSD.

Rao, who went by the name of Raj Kumar Yadav then, had moved to Mumbai after graduating from the FTII in 2008. In July 2009, after close to a year and a half of auditions, and nothing to show for them, he read in a Pune newspaper that Banerjee was looking for new actors for his digital film. He managed to get himself introduced to Atul Mongia, who was casting along with Behl. The part he was competing forthere were two other candidateswas of a fairly despicable supermarket manager who, in order to pay off a debt, tries to con an employee into sleeping with him so he can record the act on hidden camera.

Behl and Mongia were looking for someone who could pass for an average Delhi guy, with a bit of rakish charm but also capable of cruelty. Rao intrigued thembut he wasnt mean enough. We had to play mind games," Behl says. We wanted to make him unsure." Mongia played good cop, telling Rao that Behl didnt think he was up to the task. Over the next two and a half months, though, Rao grew into the part, and was finally cast.

When LSD released in March 2010, it was the ordinary-looking, intense actor in the second storywho seemed, as Behl put it, as if he was here to stay. This deliberately unattractive film was a moderate success; more importantly, it was a perfect springboard to launch Rao towards the kind of cinema he was looking to do. Anurag Kashyap saw the film and cast him in Gangs Of Wasseypur (still being written at the time), which in turn led to Shahid. Ekta Kapoor saw it and insisted he play another creep trying to con his girlfriend in the horror film Ragini MMS.

Over the next two years, Rao appeared in small parts in Shaitan, Chittagong, Gangs Of Wasseypur II and Talaash. Shamshad Alam, the crooked trader he plays in Gangs Of Wasseypur II, was conceived as a central character. After the part was vastly reduced in the writing process, Kashyap asked the actor if he would rather back out. Rao, who had already visited the area to pick up the accent, said he would stick on. Although Shamshad isnt on screen long enough to register as strongly as some of the other characters, hes part of one of the films most memorable set-pieces, an extended comic chase. The chase wasnt part of the script initially," Rao says. Zeishan (Quadri, playing the gangster Definite) was supposed to empty his gun before I made my entry, but it got stuck, and we stayed in character. I knew there was another bullet inside, so the reaction you see when he points the gun at me is genuine. Anurag was rolling on the floor. He said, we cant end the scene here." Its a small, stunning example of an actor known more for his preparation serving the film and his own performance by staying in the moment.

To understand the space Rao occupies in Hindi cinema today, a useful point of comparison is Nawazuddin Siddiqui, his co-star in Gangs of Wasseypur, Talaash and Chittagong, whose rise has been pretty much concurrent. Few would dispute that Siddiqui is the most exciting Hindi film actor of the last half-decade. His appetite for risk rivals Raos, but he has also branched out in directions that the younger actor hasnt, running a profitable side business as a rescuer of bloated commercial productions. Hes the sort of performer whose mastery of his craft is visible for all to see. With Rao, too, the mastery is there, but its not as easy to spot. Hes Robert Duvall to Siddiquis Robert De Niro, happy to inhabit rather than steal a scene.

If Siddiqui seems to gravitate towards the oddballskillers and thieves, cripples and pornographersRao has increasingly come to stand in for the average Indian striver. Its an image that started to form in 2013, his breakout year.

Abhishek Kapoors Kai Po Che!, in which he headlined with Amit Sadh and Sushant Singh Rajput, gave him his first big hit. His Govind is a wonderful creationfussy, square, ambitiousbut an even finer performance, one which earned him a National Award, would come later that year, in Hansal Mehtas Shahid. Playing Shahid Azmi, a real-life attorney who defends several accused in high-profile terrorism cases, Rao tempers his customary intensity and industriousness with a genuine sweetness. His passion in the courtroom scenes is a dramatic high point, but scattered along the way are dozens of little actorly moments, like when Shahid and his colleagues are being yelled at by their boss for their poor grasp of English, and he guiltily adjusts his tie.

Throughout his career, Rao has played driven, relatable young men, most of them comfortably or uncomfortably middle-class: journalist Deepu in Aligarh, desperate to land his first big story; white-collar worker Shaurya in Trapped, channelling the spirit of Mumbai through his untiring efforts in the face of insurmountable odds. Perhaps his new-found interest in physical transformationemaciated in Trapped, wizened in Raabta, shaving his head and gaining weight to play Boseis a reaction to finding himself Hindi cinemas favourite everyman (one wonders how his Omar Sheikh will subvert this relatability). He hopes to be like Daniel Day-Lewis one day, concentrating on one film at a time, disappearing completely into the role.

****

I really cant do things that I dont believe in," Rao says. But once he believes, his directors say, hes all in. For the Bose miniseries, he took up smoking. For Trapped, he starved himself to match his characters reality, subsisting on carrots, black coffee and a few sips of water. He also cut himself when the fake blood looked, well, fake. During the shooting of Newton, his mother died. Rao went home for a day, then returned to Chhattisgarh. This was her only dream. Shed have wanted me to come back," he says.

In person, Rao is affable and enthusiastic, happy to share credit for his performances with his directors and co-actors. He steers well clear of offending anybody; I was unable to get him to name directors he would like to work with in the future. The only time he made any displeasure known was when he spoke about the kind of performer he didnt like working with. Some actors can be really selfish," he says. They can only think about their lines, their scenesif they are looking okay, if they are facing the camera."

Raos involvement in scenes in which he doesnt appear on camera was mentioned so consistently by people I spoke to about him that it painted not only a flattering picture of Rao but a most unflattering one of Bollywood stars in general. Rao says hes always made it a point to give line cues when his character is involved but he isnt in the frame (this task is often delegated to assistants), and that he expects his co-actors to do the same for him. I think I perform better when Im giving cues," he sayssomething Masurkar echoes in a separate conversation. The Newton director also recalls how, for a sequence in which his character is being chased, Rao ran off-screen for the duration of the shot, so that the other actors would have an actual moving figure to focus on.

Onscreen too, Rao is great support. Unusually for Hindi cinema, he can be a remarkably self-effacing actor. His chirpy but slightly bland Deepu in Aligarh only serves to make Manoj Bajpayees withdrawn gay professor all the more intriguing (Siddiqui, performing a similar function in The Lunchbox, almost steals the film from Irrfan Khan). Its telling that the film Rao is most widely known forQueenis one in which he is on screen for barely 20 minutes. Its a sly, funny turnno one has ever put more gleeful lust into the words sweet corn"yet played in such a way that the focus in his scenes with Ranaut stays on Ranis emotional state.

Rao says he doesnt worry about top billing or commercial viability while signing a project, just the script and the directornot a unique sentiment coming from an actor, but one thats borne out by his filmography, which has a high percentage of worthy films and few outright duds. At a glance, it looks like a carefully planned career, but Rao insists this isnt the case. Honestly, when I look back, I just wanted to get away from the mundaneness of my life," he says. Now, through his work, he shines a light on other mundane lives, and makes them exceptional.

Rao in 2017

From a freedom fighter to a terrorist, the changing faces of the actor in four of his releases this year

Trapped (Released in March)

Rao says shooting Trapped was a draining experience. Not eating, not drinkingI had to do this to get as close to reality as possible. I wanted to stay in that building for the duration of the shoot, but they werent comfortable with that idea."

Newton (Releases in September)

The eponymous central characters stubborn idealism struck a chord with Rao. We rarely see characters like Newton nowadays, who really believe in their ideology and wont change for anything," he says.

Bose: Dead/Alive(Web series; release date not yet announced)

Rao was surprised when the part was offered to him, given that he has little physical resemblance to Subhas Chandra Bose. But then I thought, if I can get the soul right, then maybe people will connect to his journey."

Omerta (Festival release in September)

Hansal Mehta said Rao would look at images of bloodshed on his phone to get into the right frame of mind to play Omar Sheikh in Omerta. For such a negative person, theres something very sensual about Omar," the director says.
BERLIN - In a verdant German village, a church bell that bears a swastika tolls. Above the symbol is an inscription: "All for the Fatherland, Adolf Hitler."

When the Nazi iconography was discovered this summer in Herxheim am Berg, some called for the bell's removal, others for its protection as a relic of a shameful national history. The village is still deciding what to do.

Germans have a word for coming to terms with the past, "Vergangenheitsbewaltigung." The word, coined after World War II, has no equivalent in the English language, no analog that might inform the anguished American debate over Confederate monuments -- whose defenders include not just torch-wielding neo-Nazis in Charlottesville but also President Donald Trump.

On a continent riven in the last century by two world wars, genocide and a battle of ideas waged across the Iron Curtain, European nations have accepted the burden of curating the tortured landscapes of their past. Symbols - insignia, flags, monuments - have become explosive at moments of regime change, as shifts in political power alter the cultural currents of the day. East-west friction particularly marks the conflict over remembrance in Europe, from de-Nazification in the Cold War era to contests today over commemoration of communism's past.

"To some extent, Germany is an exceptional case," said Arnd Bauerkamper, a historian at the Free University in Berlin. "Only the abandonment of Nazi ideology, and the clear break with the Nazi past, enabled integration into the West - membership in NATO, German reunification. There never was such a decisive break with Confederate ideas in the United States."

But addressing monuments to people, parties and movements that have fallen into disrepute has not been simple in Germany, or elsewhere in Europe. And while memorials to victims now predominate, particularly here in the former capital of the Third Reich, continuing strife over names and symbols illuminates the continent's enduring divisions.

A statue of Franz Joseph I again occupies a prominent position in Prague, a century after Czechoslovak independence made the commemoration of an Austro-Hungarian emperor unthinkable. Other figures remain unpalatable. For years, Czech officials have debated what to do with the plinth once supporting a statue of Joseph Stalin that weighed 17,000 metric tons, destroyed in 1962 as the communist party line turned against the Soviet dictator.

Jirina Siklova, a Czech sociologist active in the dissident Charter 77 movement, said the site remains indelibly linked to Stalin.

"It is stimulation for an explanation of this man," she said. "Without this statue of Stalin, and without the liquidation of this statue, the new generation and tourists wouldn't remember this period."

Hungary has removed Communist-era statues from their pedestals and placed them in Memento Park, an open-air museum outside Budapest. Lithuanian's Grutas Park is similar.

This has not quieted dispute over public memorials, however, particularly as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has pursued nationalist politics. A monument unveiled in 2014 to mark the 70th anniversary of Hungary's invasion by Nazi Germany was dedicated to "the victims of the German invasion." Critics said it obscured Hungary's involvement in the annihilation of its Jewish citizens.

This year, activists threw paint-filled balloons at a Soviet memorial in Freedom Square in Budapest, in protest of perceived Russian influence in Hungarian affairs.

Jakub Janda, deputy director of the Prague-based European Values Think-Tank, said Russian influence is inseparable from a new effort by Czech communists to commemorate Communist-era border guards, who once policed the country's frontier with West Germany and Austria. Josef Skala, vice chairman of the Czech Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, said memorializing the guards is part of an effort to demonstrate that Czechoslovakia, in addition to the Soviet Union, was a victim in the Cold War.

"I, personally, and the party I belong to do not like rewriting history," Skala said. "We did not initiate the Cold War. We made mistakes, yes, but we were defending our interests."

Antipathy to Russia in Poland's ruling nationalist party, Law and Justice, has created a new row over Communist-era monuments in the former Soviet satellite state. The Polish government has set out to remove 500 Soviet monuments, as Russian senators call on President Vladimir Putin to respond with sanctions.

Statues of Stalin and Vladimir Lenin have also been toppled in Ukraine, as part of pro-Europe revolutionary activity that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

Still another approach is that of Romania, which last year unveiled a new sculpture - depicting three wings pointing to the sky - that honors those who died fighting Communist rule in Romania and Bessarabia.

The German capital is a tableau of conflicting impulses. An underground transit station was renamed for Karl Marx in 1946 - not in the communist east but in West Berlin. Parts of the Berlin Wall remain in place, including at Checkpoint Charlie, a major tourist destination. Two years ago, the head of a giant Lenin statue was exhumed and exhibited in Berlin.

The European Union in 2005 dropped proposals to ban both Nazi and communist symbols, due to concerns for freedom of expression as well as disagreement over the scope of the prohibition. Still, many European nations bar the use of totalitarian symbolism. In parts of Eastern Europe, bans expressly extend to communist iconography. In Germany, only the prohibition on Nazi symbols and signals is unambiguous; tourists from across the globe have recently learned that giving the Nazi salute is forbidden.

Many sites associated with the Nazis stand today as haunting museums. Other structures have been demolished to thwart neo-Nazi pilgrimages. A prison that housed Nazi war criminals was razed in 1987, its materials ground to powder and scattered in the North Sea.

But purging Germany of Nazism was not as swift as severe legal codes might suggest. Nor were the country's motives as pure, said Jacob S. Eder, a scholar of German history and Holocaust memory at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena.

"It's important to avoid making the mistake of thinking that now because every German city has some kind of memorial or museum to the Nazi past, that this was an easy process," Eder said. "It's actually quite the opposite."

Certain debates, he said, still confound the public. Parade grounds in Nuremberg where Hitler held massive rallies lie in disrepair. "The question is what to do with it and whether to let it just decay," Eder said.

Controversy in the 1990s and early 2000s marked the conceptualization of the Holocaust memorial in the heart of Berlin.

"People considered it a mark of shame," Eder said - an argument revived this year by Bjorn Hocke, a state leader of Alternative for Germany, a far-right party poised to enter the German Parliament for the first time in elections next month. "It was the government of Helmut Kohl that pushed for this monument, not out of a sense of moral responsibility but much more a political necessity, to improve Germany's reputation abroad."

From the beginning of the postwar era, as West Germany rebuilt under the Marshall Plan, external pressure guided de-Nazification.

"Our deliverance from the Nazi period wasn't a development within Germany, but we were forced by the Allied forces to become a civilized nation again," said Volker Beck, a Green Party lawmaker who heads the Germany-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group.

The process was faltering, as ex-Nazis sometimes found their way into power, said Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, author of "The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism."

"But the thing that kept West Germany in the American orbit - and committed to de-Nazification - was fear of the Soviet Union," he said. "There was no such fear in the American South."

Marshall aid to reconstruct Western European economies hinged on strict conditions to adopt democratic policies. By contrast, a decade after the Civil War, as federal troops were withdrawn from the South, the decrees of Reconstruction went unenforced.

- - -

Luisa Beck contributed to this report.
A few weeks before Thursday's attack in Barcelona, the Islamic State's main online magazine posted an illustrated article with advice on acquiring a special kind of truck - specifically, the kind best suited for mowing down large numbers of pedestrians.

The "ideal vehicle," the article in Rumiyah said, would be "large in size, heavy in weight," and with a raised chassis that can clear curbs and barriers. It also should be "fast in speed, or rate of acceleration," the magazine said, to ensure maximum momentum before striking.

Whether the men behind Thursday's attack in Barcelona saw the article is unknown, but they appear to have tried to follow the advice to the letter. The suspects sought to rent a large, heavy truck - later opting for a cargo van only because they lacked the required permits - and then drove to a plaza crowded with pedestrians, precisely as the article instructed.

Spanish authorities are still investigating whether the killings in Barcelona were directed by the Islamic State, but terrorist experts say that the group's still formidable propaganda machine, with its detailed prescriptions on how to kill large numbers of innocent people, remains a principal driver of terrorist acts around the world, even as the militants suffer crippling losses on the battlefield.

Although the Islamic State has lost more than half of its former sanctuary in Iraq and Syria, its Internet presence remains strikingly robust, analysts say. In the weeks preceding the Barcelona attack, the terrorist group issued at least a dozen new videos or online articles a day, most of them aimed at rallying supporters or encouraging sympathizers to kill and maim in its name. Many of the recent postings have explicitly urged followers to turn trucks and vans into weapons of terror.

Attacks like the one in Barcelona are painful reminders that the Islamic State is "more than a collection of territories," - it is also a virtual network that inhabits swaths of cyber-terrain that are "just as consequential as the spaces it holds in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere," said Rita Katz, founder of the SITE Intelligence Group, a private company that monitors jihadist websites around the world.

"It cannot be stressed enough how much ISIS needs the Internet to push its propaganda out to the world," said Katz, using another name for the Islamic State. "The world can win all the military battles it wants in Iraq and Syria, [but] the group will persist until its propaganda machine is effectively blocked."

The Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility for this week's attacks along Spain's popular northeastern coast, hailing "soldiers" of the caliphate who killed at least 14 people in separate attacks in Barcelona and the nearby resort town of Cambrils. Operational links with the assailants, however, had not yet been independently established. Islamic State officials have occasionally sought to take credit for strikes by lone wolves who were inspired by the group's propaganda but received little or no practical support.

A new posting on Friday on a pro-Islamic State social media channel urged more such attacks, appealing to supporters to create Barcelona-like mayhem in cities around the globe.

"No need to travel the world," stated the posting on the social media messaging service Telegram. "Just pick the main city. Find a hub spot for tourists. Choose you (sic) weapon."

The continuing incitements defy years of efforts to silence the group's propaganda efforts online. Indeed, U.S. officials say the Islamic State's information networks have suffered steep losses in recent months, because of military attacks and improved policing by social media companies to block jihadists' messages.

With the fall of former Iraqi strongholds such as Mosul and Fallujah, the group has lost studio and production facilities as well as at least a half-dozen key officials who helped direct propaganda campaigns, U.S. counterterrorism officials say. As a result, the number of social media channels used by the militants has plummeted in the past two years, from 40 active sites in 2015 to just 19 by this past spring.

Still, even in its diminished form, the group's media arm remains remarkably prolific, producing on average about 20 unique media products every day, from videos showing executions of hostages to step-by-step instructions for building a bomb, according to an analysis this week by two scholars with the Netherlands-based International Center for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague. The analysis, published by the national security website War on the Rocks, says the volume and quality of the jihadist content is testament to an extensive, sustained investment by an organization that has long recognized the power of the Internet to attract followers and spread ideology.

The group's senior officials have been deliberately preparing for the loss of the physical caliphate by pouring still more resources into its online network, to "ensure that its ideology will live on even as its territorial sway declines," the article states.

"They've invested strategically in this capability and it's paying off, in terms of longevity," said Colin Clarke, a political scientist with the nonprofit Rand Corp., who co-authored the essay with Charlie Winter, a senior research fellow at Kings College London. The crumbling of the group's physical strongholds means that the propaganda campaign is becoming more important as a way to perpetuate the caliphate as an eternal ideal, and to thus "keep the drumbeat going," Clarke said in an interview.

The group's messages have shifted in recent months, experts say, reflecting changing circumstances. The heavy rotation of videos extolling the virtues of life inside the caliphate in 2015 have moved to more warlike missives focused on terrorist attacks against the West, analysts say. Taken as a whole, the messages suggest that the terrorists fully expect to continue to fight, though the nature of the battle will change, said Tara Maller, a former CIA military analyst and now a senior research fellow at New America, a nonpartisan organization that promotes strategies to counter extremist ideology.

"It shows that the 'virtual' caliphate is going to continue, and actually seems to be operating at a high level," Maller said. "So it's not a surprise that they are continuing to try to inspire attacks overseas."

The enduring nature of the propaganda campaign should dispel any notion that the defeat of the Islamic State is at hand, now that the group's Syrian and Iraqi sanctuaries have been significantly undermined through the loss of territory, Maller said.

"We need more than just a military effort, because safe havens also exist online," she said. "We shouldn't assume that this group is going away just because we're beating them up on the battlefield."
Japan and the United States affirmed a policy for deterring North Korean threats through a bolstering of their bilateral alliance at Thursday's meeting of the Japan-U.S. Security Consultative Committee, also known as two-plus-two security talks.

Both sides also agreed to urge China to take concrete measures to address the issue and that Beijing is essential in getting Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions because of the lifeline it holds to the North Korean economy.

Foreign Minister Taro Kono said at a joint press conference held after the meeting: "The international community will jointly continue to apply maximum pressure on North Korea. I think it is necessary to do so." He went on to say, "China accounts for 90 percent of North Korea's trade, and its role [regarding North Korea] is very important."

Kono also urged China to "strictly and fully implement" the additional sanctions resolution against North Korea that was adopted by the U.N. Security Council on Aug. 5.

A joint statement issued after Thursday's meeting stipulated Japan's intention to "expand its role in the Alliance" to deter North Korea's threats. It referred to the United States' commitment to deploy "its most advanced capabilities to Japan."

The Japanese and U.S. governments will review the roles, missions and capabilities of the Self-Defense Forces and U.S. forces and improve their intelligence and surveillance abilities.

In reality, however, North Korea's nuclear and missile development has been progressing much faster than the two countries expected. "Strengthening the alliance will enhance the deterrence against North Korea, but will not be effective in directly leading to an abandonment of its nuclear program," a senior Foreign Ministry official said.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is stepping up pressure on China in various ways as it seeks a breakthrough in the North Korea issue. China is widely believed to have eventually agreed to the additional sanctions resolution out of consideration for Washington.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson praised the efforts of the U.S. administration, saying at the joint press conference, "What's different about this campaign is . . . the level of cooperation we are getting from China and from others in the region."

Trump, however, is unsatisfied with China's attitude. On Monday, he signed an executive order instructing the U.S. Trade Representative's Office to study whether to launch an investigation into China's infringement of intellectual property rights and others, based on Section 301 of the Trade Act.

Trump is also preparing to impose unilateral economic sanctions on Chinese firms doing business with Pyongyang. Washington apparently wants Beijing to agree to a powerful additional sanctions plan, including restrictions of crude oil supply to North Korea.

The United States has been slowly but steadily applying pressure on China on the military front as well. U.S. Air Force B-1 strategic bombers dispatched from the U.S. territory of Guam to the Korean Peninsula conducted a training flight around the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture earlier this month.

At the latest two-plus-two talks, the United States again assured Japan that Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands and that Japan falls under the nuclear umbrella provided by U.S. forces. The United States is apparently aware that strengthened cooperation between it and Japan is something China does not want.

The Trump administration seems to welcome the idea of Japan possibly possessing the capability to strike enemy bases, from the perspective of countering China. Japan and the United States agreed again to bolster cooperation between Japan, the United States and South Korea during Thursday's two-plus-two talks.

Tillerson intends to feel out China's reaction to the agreement.

During the talks, Tillerson said China's inaction on North Korea would lead to stronger defense cooperation between the United States, Japan and South Korea. Beijing will likely begin to consider whether such cooperation benefits itself, he added.
Naval researchers announced Saturday that they have found the wreckage of the lost World War II cruiser USS Indianapolis on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, 72 years after the vessel sank in minutes after it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.

The ship was found almost 3 1/2 miles below the surface of the Philippine Sea, said a tweet from Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen, who led a team of civilian researchers that made the discovery.

Historians and architects from the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, District of Columbia, had joined forces with Allen last year to revisit the tragedy.

The ship sank in 15 minutes on July 30, 1945, in the war's final days, and it took the Navy four days to realize that the vessel was missing.

About 800 of the crew's 1,200 sailors and Marines made it off the cruiser before it sank. But almost 600 of them died over the next four to five days from exposure, dehydration, drowning and shark attacks. Nineteen crew members are alive today, the Navy command said in a news release.

The Indianapolis had just completed a top secret mission to deliver components of the atomic bomb "Little Boy" to the island of Tinian. The bomb was later dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

In a statement on its website, the command call the shipwreck a "significant discovery," considering the depth of the water.

"While our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue, I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming," Allen said in a statement. His research vessel, Petrel, has state-of-the-art subsea equipment that can descend to depths like those at which the ship was found.

PHOTOS: Inside the wreckage of the USS Independence

The cruiser's captain, Charles Butler McVay III, was among those who survived, but he was eventually court-martialed and convicted of losing control of the vessel. About 350 Navy ships were lost in combat during the war, but he was the only captain to be court-martialed. Years later, under pressure from survivors to clear his name, McVay was posthumously exonerated by Congress and President Bill Clinton.

The shipwreck's location had eluded researchers for decades.

The coordinates keyed out in an S.O.S. signal were forgotten by surviving radio operators and were not received by Navy ships or shore stations, the Navy command said. The ship's mission records and logs were lost in the wreck.

Researchers got a break last year, however, when Richard Hulver, a historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command, identified a naval landing craft that had recorded a sighting of the Indianapolis hours before it was sunk. The position was west of where it was presumed to be lying. The team was able to develop a new estimated position, although it still covered 600 square miles of open ocean.

The ship is an official war grave, which means it is protected by law from disturbances. Naval archaeologists will prepare to tour the site and see what data they can retrieve. No recovery efforts are planned.

Diving deep: Exploring a WWII-era shipwreck with the E/V Nautilus crew

Hulver and Robert Neyland, the command's underwater archaeology branch head, wrote on the website that "there remains a lot we can learn."

"From the sinking to the battle damage and site formation processes, we hope to gain a better understanding about the wreck site and how we can better protect USS Indianapolis to honor the service of the ship and crew."
Another Palm Beach, Florida, charity announced Saturday that it was canceling plans to hold a gala at President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club - the ninth to cancel a big-ticket charity event at the club this week.

The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, a charity focused on the ritzy island's architectural landmarks, had planned to hold a dinner dance at Mar-a-Lago next March. The foundation was a new customer for Trump's club, and a potentially lucrative one: It spent $244,000 on rent and food on a previous gala at another site, according to tax filings.

But on Saturday, the foundation said it would find another venue.

"Given the current environment surrounding Mar-a-Lago, we have made the decision to move our annual dinner dance," Amanda Skier, the foundation's executive director, said in a written statement. She did not say which new venue the foundation would use.

That decision meant that Trump's club had lost nine of the 16 galas or dinner events that it had been scheduled to host during next winter's social "season" in Palm Beach. At least two other groups have also canceled charity luncheons there this week.

Those losses could reduce the club's revenue by hundreds of thousands of dollars by each event, and deny President Trump his dual role as president and host to the island's partying elite. If he returns to the club for weekends next winter, the president could often find its grand ballrooms quiet and empty.

These cancellations all followed the president's remarks on the march of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which the president said the protesters, who gathered under the pretense of wanting to preserve a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, included some "fine people."

On Friday, the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and Susan G. Komen joined the growing exodus of organizations canceling plans to hold fundraising events at the club.

Susan G. Komen, the nation's largest breast cancer fundraising group, said it would seek another venue after hosting its "Perfect Pink Party" gala at Mar-a-Lago every year since 2011.

The Salvation Army, which has held a gala at the club every year since 2014, said in a statement that it would not hold its event there "because the conversation has shifted away" from its mission of helping those in need.

And the American Red Cross said it would cancel its annual fundraiser at the club because "it has increasingly become a source of controversy and pain for many of our volunteers, employees and supporters," the charity said in a statement.

In a letter to staff Friday, chief executive Gail McGovern said, "The Red Cross provides assistance without discrimination to all people in need - regardless of nationality, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or political opinions - and we must be clear and unequivocal in our defense of that principle."

Trump's club earned between $100,000 and $275,000 each from similar-sized events in the past.

But the cancellations also reveal a widening vulnerability for Trump, who, unlike past presidents, refused to divest from his business interests when he joined the White House.

The Trump Organization has not responded to requests for comment.

The charitable groups join three other large event cancellations from Thursday: the Cleveland Clinic, the American Friends of Magen David Adom and the American Cancer Society, which cited its "values and commitment to diversity" in its decision to abandon the club.

Some of the club's most notable local boosters, with long fundraising histories and deep Palm Beach roots, were also in outright rebellion Friday against the club. Lois Pope, a Mar-a-Lago member and philanthropist who heads the Lois Pope Life Foundation and Leaders In Furthering Education, said she had told her foundation's board to move its well-known December gala from the club.

"The hatred, vitriol and anti-Semitic and racist views being spewed by neo-Nazis and White Supremacists are repugnant and repulsive," Pope wrote in a statement. "And anyone who would demonstrate even a modicum of support for them by insisting that there are 'good people' among them is not deserving of my personal patronage or that of my foundations."

One of the cancellations cut close to home for the Trumps. Big Dog Ranch Rescue said Friday it would no longer hold an upcoming event at the club and would instead move it to the group's facility nearby. Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was scheduled to co-chair the event.

The Autism Project of Palm Beach County also said Friday that it is not planning on hosting an event at the club, President Richard Busto told The Post on Friday. The local group has held "Renaissance Dinner" galas at Mar-a-Lago every year since at least 2008.

The Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation on Friday also announced it had canceled its annual medical briefing luncheon at the club and will move it to another venue.

"We stand with the community," the foundation's co-founder, Dusty Sang, told The Post Friday. "I think people are standing up for what they believe."

Another group, the Unicorn Children's Foundation, said it is "currently exploring other options" for a previously planned luncheon at Mar-a-Lago and would make its final decision next month.

The groups' cancellations follow rebukes from business executives this week, who heavily criticized Trump's comments that white supremacists and counterprotesters equally shared the blame for a deadly weekend in Charlottesville.
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A Texas middle school student was recently hospitalized after ingesting Xanax, a prescription anti-anxiety drug.

Brandi Nicole Hernandez of Elgin said her son was offered a "Tic Tac," which he bit into and quickly dissolved in his mouth, according to KVUE.

When her son asked the student what the pill was, the student allegedly repeated "a drug" and threatened to beat him up if he confessed to anyone.

RECOGNIZED: The most distinguished public schools in Houston's suburbs

A few hours later, Hernandez' son began to panic and his mother was called.

Hernandez told Chron.com her son was shaking when he got home and had low blood sugar, very red eyes and slurred speech.

A trip to the hospital and a urine test confirmed her son had consumed Xanax. Hernandez said her son and three other boys were suspended from school on Friday.

Authorities and school administrators are still investigating the incident.

NEW DRUG: Fentanyl, 50 times more potent than heroin,becoming a favorite of Mexican cartels

Elgin Independent School District's released the following statement on Friday:

The incident involving a student at Elgin Middle School is a matter that the district takes very seriously. Appropriate steps are being taken by the campus administration to fully investigate this matter. All students implicated will be disciplined in accordance with our student code of conduct.

Above: See what recent data says about teen drug use.
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The local Jewish community at Temple Beth-El used their Friday Shabbat Shalom service to promote a message of unity and inclusiveness nearly a week after a deadly clash fueled by anti-Semitism and white nationalism in Charlottesville, Virginia.

You can choose to cower in the face of bigotry and anti-Semitism or you can choose to take massive action  like you are tonight as a congregation, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said, addressing the audience. I came to you tonight as the mayor of San Antonio because I want you to know that my colleagues and I stand with you in solidarity.

During a neo-Nazi rally on Aug. 12 in Charlottesville, a car was driven into a group of people counterprotesting the gathering. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in the attack.

Nirenberg said the events hit close to home as he himself is the son of a Jewish father.

I want you to know that what happened in Charlottesville hurt me personally, he said. But it feels amazing to be here tonight as we convert a message of evil and hate into what our city should be founded on  which is compassion and love.

Nirenberg and District 1 Councilman Roberto Trevino were at the service alongside Senior Rabbi Mara Nathan as she led at least 100 people in the evening service.

The candlelit service was part of a national movement proposed by the Union for Reform Judaism as a direct counter to the really scary images of white men holding tiki torches in Charlottesville last week, Nathan said.

The goal is to take back that light and use it as we use it to start services and holidays as a symbol of warmth and holiness.

After the service, the participants filled the front of the temple for a group photo.

Using the hashtag #BeTheLightForJustice, the Temple Beth-El congregation hopes to be one of many groups spreading images that counter those from Charlottesville.

We are made free because of hope, Rabbi Marina Yergin said during the service.

The only wrong answer is to act with violence, Yergin said. We will not let hate win. We will fight hate with our voices.
Sixty people locked in a produce trailer and trying to enter the U.S. illegally were rescued by agents of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Rio Grande Valley sector Saturday morning, according to ICE.

The undocumented aliens were discovered after a canine unit hit on a tractor-trailer causing agents to to further inspect the vehicle. Agents say they found the huddled group "on and within pallets of broccoli lined with a thin sheet of ice."
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Thomas Hickman Temple Jr., a retired Air Force pilot who flew more than 200 missions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, died Aug. 4 at 93.

Raised in Montgomery, Alabama, the son of a World War I veteran, Temple joined the Army Air Corps while still in high school.

After graduating  they sent him to flight school for six months  then sent him to Iwo Jima, said his wife, Tawana Morris Temple.

A part of the 78th Fighter Squadron, Temple was among the first pilots to arrive on the island after the bloody battle that secured it as a final Allied stepping stone to a presumed invasion of Japan.

More Information Thomas Hickman Temple Jr. Born: Oct. 30, 1923, Montgomery, Ala. Died: Aug. 4, 2017, San Antonio Preceded by: Parents Lennie Davis and Thomas Temple Sr.; two sisters. Survived by: Wife Tawana Morris Temple; daughter Teri Temple; nephews John Andrews, Quentin Andrews and George Davis; niece Carolyn Urban. Services: Burial at 11 a.m. Sept. 7 at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, 1520 Harry Wurzbach Road. See More Collapse

When he landed, they had just leveled off a place on the beach, Tawana Temple said. He said there were bodies stacked up as high as his head on both sides of the runway.

Thinking at first that they were Japanese soldiers, Temple was heartsick to learn that they were U.S. Marines.

He flew P-51 Mustangs from Iwo Jima on a series of long-range missions to Japan that took hours through often bad weather before encountering Japanese fighters.

He was still on Iwo Jima when the bombs were dropped, nephew John Andrews said, referring to the atomic bombs that obliterated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war.

Back in Alabama, Temple studied engineering at Auburn University while serving in the states Air National Guard, which was called to active duty in 1950. He was stationed in Europe but flew 30 reconnaissance missions over North Korea in the early part of the war, his wife said.

Temple was in the 117th Tactical Reconnaissance Team in 1952 when he saved the life of Lt. Col. Maynard Swartz, who was leading a squadron of RF-80 Shooting Stars to Germany from an air base in Georgia.

They were at 32,000 feet when Swartz lost pressurization in his cockpit, which made him temporarily blind, Andrews said. Tommy was his wingman.  He told him all the instructions so he could make a blind landing.

While stationed at Kelly AFB in 1957, Temple met his future, a young Oklahoman who was working there. They married on Groundhog Day in 1958, and he was transferred to South Carolina a few months later.

He wasnt too happy with the assignment because it had to do with military transport, his wife recalled. Once a fighter pilot, always a fighter pilot.

In South Carolina, he was recruited to become part of a new combat crew training squadron, which later became the Air Commandos. Offered the opportunity to join the as-yet-unnamed unit that would fly unmarked aircraft in a Southeast Asian country, Temple asked if he could consult with his wife.

They told him, You have five minutes to decide and you cant leave the room, Tawana Temple said. He said, If I am called, I will go. He always did.

Going through intense training at Eglin AFB in Florida, Temple was sent to Vietnam in 1962, based in an obscure landing field hacked out of foliage 25 miles northeast of Saigon, with nothing but tents to live in, she said.

Tom flew 151 missions in six months. They flew night and day, a lot at night because thats when the Viet Cong liked to move around.

Leaving Vietnam in 1965, Temple was sent first to France and then England, where as the director of flying safety, he visited bases all over Europe. After assignments in Thailand and Ohio, he was the safety officer at Kelly when he retired.

With more than 5,000 flying hours during his more than 27 years in the service, Temple received seven air medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He would have stayed another three years, but they would have sent him to a base where he couldnt fly, Tawana Temple said.

mheidbrink@express-news.net
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Gorakhpur : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today hit out at Rahul Gandhi over his planned visit here saying the "yuvraj (prince) sitting in Delhi" cannot be permitted to make Gorakhpur "a picnic spot". The chief minister, who inaugurated a cleanliness campaign in the district to tackle the deadly encephalitis outbreak in the wake of death of 71 children at the BRD hospital here, also targeted Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.

"I feel that the shehzada sitting in Lucknow ..yuvraj sitting in Delhi will not know the importance of this cleanliness campaign. They will come here to make it a picnic spot, we cannot permit it," he said, attacking Gandhi who is scheduled to meet the families of the victims and visit the BRD hospital today.



"If someone gives an open challenge to the self respect of the people of Gorakhpur and eastern UP ...they will themselves come forward to fight such dreaded diseases through their awareness," Adityanath stressed launching the 'Swachch Uttar Pradesh - Swasthya Uttar Pradesh campaign' here . Voicing hope that the campaign will be successful in checking encephalitis, he accused the previous governments of depriving the people of the state of basic facilities for their vested interests. PTI
MARTINSVILLESouthern Virginia needs doctors and nurses. That's not a surprise. But the problem is growing, local officials say, to the point local practices aren't just willing to hire newly-graduated students, but also need for them to start working basically as soon as their credentials are placed in their hands.

The problem is also getting people trained for available jobs.

Those were among comments made by roughly 40 representatives of regional care providers Friday afternoon during a health care roundtable discussion at the New College Institute (NCI).

Participating providers and educators included Memorial Hospital in Martinsville, the Martinsville-Henry County Health Department, Southern Area Agency on Aging, Piedmont Community Services, Kings Grant retirement village, Carilion Clinic and Patrick Henry Community College (PHCC).

The discussion was held to find out how local higher education institutions  NCI in particular  can help health care providers meet their educational and training needs for employees.

Partnering with universities statewide, state-operated NCI provides local access to various bachelors and masters degree programs as well as training and professional development programs designed to be responsive to needs of the regions industries and other businesses.

NCI will be placing more emphasis on preparing people to be medical professionals in the future. In June, it announced a partnership with James Madison University to provide a nursing bachelors degree program as well as professional development opportunities in various health care fields.

In partnership with the University of Virginia, NCI already operates the Southside Telehealth Training Academy and Resource Center, which teaches people how to use electronic technology involved in providing medical care to patients and monitoring them over considerable distances.

Within a 60-mile radius of Martinsville-Henry County, between 200 and 300 registered nurse jobs are available. There also are jobs for medical professionals such as phlebotomists, laboratory technicians and radiological (X-ray) technicians, according to Michael Ehrat, chief executive officer of SOVAH Health Martinsville, which operates Memorial Hospital.

So many jobs are available that health care providers basically are stealing people from each other to fill some vacancies, said Kings Grant Executive Director Tom Fitzgibbons, with few people coming from elsewhere to fill others.

There also is a heavy demand for doctors as many are nearing retirement, discussion participants said, mentioning that the average age of a physician in the region is 56. They said efforts must be made to pay newer doctors more because many cannot afford to work in lower-paying rural areas and pay off student loans.

But the focus of the discussion was on educational needs.

NCI Executive Director Leanna Blevins asked whether nursing education provided in the classroom or online, or a combination of both, is better for students.

To balance acquiring skills with personal needs, a hybrid program probably is best, said Barbara Jackman, executive director of the Martinsville Henry County Coalition for Health and Wellness.

With a totally online program, their skills are not tested in the real world, Jackman said.

Their skills may not be as holistic, or raw, as they need to be, said Dr. Jody Hershey, director of the health department and the West Piedmont Health District.

Specially-built mannequins on which medical students can perform procedures are useful, discussion participants agreed. Yet students also need training on real people, they said, to understand how those procedures affect patients and learn, for instance, how to comfort nervous patients.

Along that line, there should be a funding source to pay living simulation actors to be involved in training students, said Alan Larson, chief executive officer of SOVAH Health Danville, which operates Danville Regional Medical Center.

Kathy Whitley, a nurse practitioner for the health department, voiced frustration with medical students having to find on their own medical facilities at which they can do their clinical work.

Thats crazy, Whitley said  colleges should provide students help with their searches.

When students approach the health department and she has to tell them that for them to work there, she must have communication with their professors, they look perplexed as to what they are going to do next, she said.

In addition to colleges, health care facilities  such as doctors offices  need to provide training opportunities, such as allowing interns to work for them to get experience, speakers said.

To earn their credentials, phlebotomy students must do 100 sticks to draw blood from people, said Rhonda Hodges, PHCCs vice president of workforce, economic and community development. But the college has trouble finding health care providers who will let them stick patients, she said.

Well work to get our students there (to medical practices) if they will just provide the learning opportunities, Hodges said.

Bill Jacobsen, vice president of Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital in Rocky Mount, said Franklin County High School turned down 289 students for training for health care careers last year because the area lacked enough medical facilities in which they could be trained.

It just broke my heart, Jacobsen said,  because theres such a need for health care workers.

Piedmont Community Services, which provides mental health and substance abuse counseling and treatments, is having trouble recruiting people with degrees and one year of clinical experience to fill vacancies with the organization, according to Executive Director Greg Preston.

Laws require students to have at least that much paid clinical experience, Preston said. Students no longer can count volunteer experience toward the requirement, he noted.

We dont know how to get students meeting the clinical experience requirement, he said, adding that due to a lack of providers being willing to provide clinical internships, college students cannot get jobs after they graduate.

Blevins said NCI will take the discussion participants comments into consideration in efforts to establish health care education and training programs that meet students and employers needs.

After students are trained and get jobs, however, there must be incentives to keep them here instead of gaining experience and then leaving for higher-paying jobs elsewhere, participants agreed.

I dont want a nursing professional skipping the community for another buck, Jacobsen said frankly.

We have to be creative in finding ways to attract them (medical professionals) to our community and retain them, Ehrat said.

Care is best when its delivered locally, he said, because it causes patients and their families less stress as opposed to having to travel long distances for care.

That ultimately is why the area needs enough medical professionals to handle patients needs, he indicated.
The "Free Speech" rally on Boston Common began late and ended early Saturday.

Scheduled to go from 12 to 2 p.m. Saturday, the rally began late and attendees were escorted off the Common around 12:45 p.m. by Boston police.

"I didn't realize how unplanned of an event it was going to be," Samson Racioppi, one of the scheduled speakers, told WCVB. "I really think it was supposed to be a good event by the organizers but it kinda fell apart."

A few dozen attended, a crowd vastly dwarfed by counter-protesters.

The rally was organized held by "Boston Free Speech," a First Amendment rights organization. John Medlar, a college student and one of the event's organizers, said the event aimed to advocate for free speech, and should not be compared to the "Unite the Right" rally that took place in Virginia.

Scheduled speakers included Kyle Chapman, a right-wing nationalist.

Days before the rally, organizers were crowdfunding to buy a PA system for Saturday's event and future rallies.
Multiple arrests have been made in Boston Saturday just outside Boston Common.

The arrests were made after the "Free Speech" rally ended early Saturday. After rally-goers were escorted from the Common, counter-protesters were told to disperse or face arrest.

As of late Saturday afternoon, a total of 27 people were arrested by Boston police.
The Boston Police Department issued a request Saturday: No urine-throwing, please.

The department asked via social media for people to not throw "urine, bottles and other harmful projectiles" at officers.

More than 500 uniformed and plainclothes officers were deployed for the day's events on Boston Common. An additional 200 Massachusetts State Police officers were on hand.

While a few dozen arrived to attend the "Free Speech" rally, an estimated 15,000 counter-protesters marched to the Common on Saturday to speak out against the event.

Scheduled to go from 12 to 2 p.m. Saturday, the rally began late and attendees were escorted off the Common around 12:45 p.m. by Boston police, citing safety concerns.

Both events were largely peaceful, with just over a dozen protesters arrested.
If you are proposing a merger or acquisition, or simply seeking an investor for your business, the process is the same. You have to put together a convincing story of a win-win opportunity for both sides. This may seem intuitively obvious, but as an angel investor, I have heard hundreds of new business pitches that focus heavily on the product, but dont tell the rest of the story.

Marty Zwilling

Full Story: If you are proposing a merger or acquisition, or simply seeking an investor for your business, the process is the same. You have to put together a convincing story of a win-win opportunity for both sides. This may seem intuitively obvious, but as an angel investor, I have heard hundreds of new business pitches that focus heavily on the product, but dont tell the rest of the story.
Visions for a large technology campus near downtown Missoula are taking shape off West Broadway, where plans for an "innovation corridor" are gaining traction and have found the backers needed to move the project from conception to reality.

And the timing may be perfect.

Martin Kidston

Full Story: http://www.missoulacurrent.com/business/2017/08/missoula-tech-innovation-plans/
Since 1996 the Native American Development Corporation http://www.nadc-nabn.org/ has worked with tribes throughout Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas to help build local business and champion economic growth.

"The thinking would be, its a place where not only existing high-tech companies in Montana can locate their business, but also tech companies looking to relocate from somewhere else to Missoula."

By ROB ROGERS [email protected]

Full Story: http://billingsgazette.com/news/development-group-in-billings-looks-to-connect-urban-american-indians/article_6e69cbd3-2811-5c53-87f4-6650bf2588f3.html
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The study, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, builds on work conducted by other researchers at Illinois, including biochemist John Woodland Hastings, who died in 2014, and John Cronan, a professor and the head of the department of microbiology."Bacteria are intelligent little organisms. They can survive almost anywhere and quickly adapt to new conditions," said U. of I. biochemistry professor Satish Nair, a co-author of the study with postdoctoral researcher Shi-Hui Dong and other colleagues.When bacteria compete with other microbes for scarce resources, the more successful group will produce a unique molecule - an antibiotic - to kill off the other species. When population growth of one group of bacteria outpaces availability of the nutrients it needs to survive, the group produces another unique molecule that tells it to go into a dormant, but more virulent, state and slow growth until more food is available, Nair said."Ever since Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, we have been using antibiotic molecules developed by one microorganism to kill another microorganism," Nair said. "Unfortunately, the bacteria have quickly adapted to resist antibiotics, and in a short time, antibiotics will be ineffective."On average, nearly every species of bacteria is resistant to at least one antibiotic. Two years ago, researchers in Europe and Asia discovered a so-called superbug that is resistant to all known antibiotics," Nair said. "Bacteria can share adaptations very easily, and there are so many bacteria with different adaptations to share, which is why they can develop resistance so quickly.""Broad-spectrum antibiotics and the overuse of antibiotics are problematic because antibiotics kill off many types of bacteria, even good ones, and the survivors figure out ways to adapt, sharing their strategies with other bacteria," Dong said."No pharmaceutical company is going to invest in 10 years' worth of research and development if a new antibiotic has a shelf-life of only two years," Nair said. "It's not enough time to recover the costs of production."Nair and Dong's new study targets the language, or group signal, that bacteria use to slow down growth rather than the antibiotic signal to kill. The researchers say understanding how bacteria produce the dormancy-signal molecule paves the way for developing molecules that can disrupt the communication of specific bacteria, with little chance for drug resistance to develop."We don't need to kill bacteria to treat disease and infection; we can just slow them down and make them less potent," Nair said. "That way, there is little chance for any resistance to develop."Source: Eurekalert
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Worry serves as a cue that the situation is serious and requires action. People use their emotions as a source of information when making judgements and decisions.

Worrying about a stressor keeps the stressor at the front of one's mind and prompts people toward action.

The unpleasant feeling of worry motivates people to find ways to reduce their worry.

Kate Sweeny, The Surprising Upsides of Worry, Social and Personality Psychology Compass(2017).

Furthermore, people who report greater worry may perform better -- in school or at the workplace -- seek more information in response to stressful events, and engage in more successful problem solving.The motivational power of worry has been studied and linked to preventive health behavior, like seatbelt use. In a nationally representative sample of Americans, feelings of worry about skin cancer predicted sunscreen use.Participants who reported higher levels of cancer-related worries also conducted breast self-examinations, underwent regular mammograms, and sought clinical breast examinations."Interestingly enough, there are examples of a more nuanced relationship between worry and preventive behavior as well," Sweeny said."Women who reported moderate amounts of worry, compared to women reporting relatively low or high levels of worry, are more likely to get screened for cancer. It seems that."Three explanations for worry's motivating effects:"Even in circumstances when efforts to prevent undesirable outcomes are futile, worry can motivate proactive efforts to assemble a ready-made set of responses in the case of bad news," Sweeny said. "In this instance, worrying pays off because one is actively thinking of a 'plan B.'"Worry can also benefit one's emotional state by serving as an emotional bench-mark. Compared to the state of worry, any other feeling is pleasurable by contrast. In other words, the pleasure that comes from a good experience is heightened if preceded by a bad experience."If people's feelings of worry over a future outcome are sufficiently intense and unpleasant, their emotional response to the outcome they ultimately experience will seem more pleasurable in comparison to their previous, worried state," Sweeny said.Research on bracing for the worst provides indirect evidence for the role of worry as an emotional buffer, according to Sweeny. As people brace for the worst, they embrace a pessimistic outlook to mitigate potential disappointment, boosting excitement if the news is good. Therefore, both bracing and worrying have an emotional payoff following the moment of truth."Extreme levels of worry are harmful to one's health. I do not intend to advocate for excessive worrying. Instead, I hope to provide reassurance to the helpless worrier - planning and preventive action is not a bad thing," Sweeny said. "Worrying the right amount is far better than not worrying at all."Source: Medindia
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"It was surprising to discover the industry came to view NRT as just another product," said UCSF's Dorie Apollonio, PhD, associate professor in clinical pharmacy and lead author of the study. "The tobacco companies want people to get nicotine and they're open-minded about how they get it."The new analysis comes on the heels of the FDA's decision to lower nicotine levels in conventional cigarettes while delaying regulation on e-cigarettes as part of a "comprehensive nicotine strategy.""The industry has long taken a broad view of all nicotine products as a way to support smoking," said senior author Stanton Glantz, PhD, a UCSF professor of medicine and director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. "Our study shows that by not regulating nicotine in all tobacco products, including NRT, the FDA could be walking into a trap."Smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths every year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and another 16 million Americans live with a smoking-related disease. The costs of such illnesses total more than $300 billion each year, when including both costs of direct medical care and lost productivity due to secondhand smoke exposure.In the new study, published in thethe authors dug into internal corporate documents of the seven major tobacco companies dated between 1960 and 2010. They found that cigarette makers had started investing in alternative forms of nicotine delivery as early as the 1950s, but stopped short because people largely regarded nicotine as harmful, and such products might have attracted the attention of FDA regulators.But in 1987, three years after the federal agency first approved nicotine gum as a quitting aid, the new research shows that the tide had turned on public perception toward nicotine. What's more, by 1992, the industry had determined that patches and gum by themselves do not help smokers quit.For more than a decade, the companies didn't act on this knowledge out of fear of FDA regulation. But once the agency started regulating cigarettes in 2009, tobacco corporations went all out in their bid to develop and sell NRT. The Tobacco Papers reveal that companies conjectured that their new nicotine products could successfully compete with pharmaceutical NRT and they set the goal of gaining market control of all products containing nicotine."It would be interesting to see in the next 10 years if the companies come up with nicotine water, inhalers, gum, edible products these are all on their agenda," said Apollonio. RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris currently market nicotine gum and lozenges as vehicles for smokeless nicotine.Clinical trials show that NRT can help people quit smoking, but only if used in conjunction with counseling and in tapering doses. Over-the-counter availability of NRT made it easy for smokers to get a nicotine fix in non-smoking environments like offices and flights, for example, with the net result that they were less likely to quit.Given that NRT products are widely available, one of the questions is whether they encourage nicotine abuse. A few studies have reported that abuse rates are low data that the FDA has used to keep NRT available over-the-counter but given the new findings, the agency should consider regulating the ways in which NRT is being marketed and its over-the-counter availability, the authors urged.Such changes in FDA are not uncommon. Formulations of the decongestant Sudafed containing the drug pseudoephedrine, for example, used to be sold over-the-counter in large bottles, but because pseudoephedrine is used to manufacture methamphetamine, that formulation is now available only by prescription. Similarly, Tylenol 3 went from being a prescription drug to over-the-counter and back to prescription-only, Apollonio said."Tobacco companies put out these products as a way to sidestep policies, by giving people a way to 'smoke without smoking,'" Apollonio said. "This can basically facilitate and normalize lifelong nicotine addiction."Source: Eurekalert
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Di Cara found that peroxisomes are necessary for proper functioning of the innate immune system, the body's first line of defense against microorganisms. The innate immune system is an ancient system of immunity that identifies, captures and processes a pathogen, and then presents it to the acquired immune system.The peroxisomes also communicate to other organs that there is an infection. The team discovered that when the organelle's basic function is altered, this communication is lost and the organism does not fight the bacteria."Understanding how the body fights infection has an impact on human health," says Di Cara. "We have to understand who the 'fighters' in the organism are before we can identify what's failing in the battle against bacterial infections."Peroxisomes are 'chemical factories' that process complex fat molecules into simple forms and modify reactive oxygen molecules, which together act to signal to cells and tissues to respond appropriately to changes in their environment.Along with their collaborator Nancy Braverman from McGill University, the researchers used a mouse model to confirm that what they observed in the flies also occurred in a mammalian system."To find organelles like peroxisomes that had no link whatsoever to fighting bacterial infections was a critical discovery--it will help expand the roles of what this important organelle does in innate immunity against bacterial and fungi, and its involvement in viral signaling and the lethal peroxisome genetic diseases," says Rachubinski. "As the threat of bacterial infections continues to grow, this discovery can help move our understanding of immunity forward."The work was recently published in Immunity. Funding for this project came from Alberta Innovates Collaborative Research and Innovation Opportunities (CRIO) Program and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.Source: Eurekalert
27-year-old David Tesinsky is an independent photographer who travels the world documenting subcultures, urban cultures, street stories and people's stories in general. I'm always in search for somehow controversial, unique, special lifestyles and I'm capturing bright moments and also problematics of nowadays, he says in his blog on Bored Panda. Photography for Tesinsky is the cure that heals people through seeing other's stories captured in a meaningful way. It's what has motivated Tesinsky for years now.

And as a way to give back to these people, places, and cultures, Tesinsky has been documenting different subcultures and people from around the world. From activists and a new generation of liberalists in Iran to exorcism rituals in Ethiopia; from the tragi-comical' life of a Japanese businessmen to Rap as a religion in Detroit, NY and Baltimor; from living legends and Rastafarians in Jamaica to the life of drug addicts in Prague; from soldiers in Ukraine to a Satan community in Prague, life and much more, Tesinsky is stirring souls and provoking thoughts in the minds of his viewers through the lens of his camera.

And the images will remain in your minds for a long time to come.

1. Nuns getting high

David Tesinsky

2. Americans react in Prague after Trump wins US Presidential election

David Tesinsky

3. The strong opinions of Chicago rappers

David Tesinsky

4. Pride and Prejudice at the LGBTQ Prague Pride

David Tesinsky

5. Sex enables even the disabled somewhere in Prague

David Tesinsky

6. Children of Islam, Tehran

David Tesinsky

7. The dread of the Rastafarian locks, in Port Antonia, Jamaica

David Tesinsky

8. Stripped naked and on top of the world, of sorts, in Belgium

David Tesinsky

9. Malu, a celebrity transgender in Cuba

David Tesinsky

10. Good old and happy, somewhere in a slum, in Osaka, Japan

David Tesinsky

11. Mira Ahimsa, a woman who has lived without any money for 10 years, in the Czech Republic

David Tesinsky

12. When the tiger walks the streets, somewhere in Czech Republic

David Tesinsky

13. When a Russian soldier comes back from war; for the moment, Russia

David Tesinsky

14. Ganja and the Rastafarians of Jamaica

David Tesinsky

15. Tales of transformation, in Havana, Cuba

David Tesinsky

16. Satanists of Prague during the Dark Harlequin ritual

David Tesinsky

17. Through the veins of a drug addict; Heroin culture in Prague

David Tesinsky

18. An Ethiopian exorcism

David Tesinsky

19. Rap religion in the streets of Manhattan

David Tesinsky

20. The dark nature of man shown through a Satanic ritual

David Tesinsky
Looks like posting nude pictures on Instagram is the latest trend these days, huh? Just a week ago, Esha Gupta bared it all in a racy photo shoot and essentially took the Internet by storm. And say whatever you want, but she looked totally badass and incredibly sexy in her photos and we loved it.

And now, actress Kalki Koechlin has also jumped on the bandwagon and posted a a rather risque picture on Instagram as well. The monochrome photo was shot by photographer Riva Bubber and is indeed stunning and very beautiful.

The actress took to her Instagram account and captioned the photo, Half way between shadow and light by @rivabubber #blackandwhite #loveyournakedness.

Half way between shadow and light by @rivabubber #blackandwhite #loveyournakedness A post shared by Kalki (@kalkikanmani) on Aug 17, 2017 at 11:43pm PDT

Kalki calls this picture a piece of art and her fans aren't denying that statement at all. Nor are we!

Riva replied and said, @kalkikanmani you look absolutely gorgeous and so childlike Thank you for trusting me with these.The photographer also shared another photo of the actress on Instagram and captioned it, She was one of the rare ones, so effortlessly herself, and the world loved her for it  Atticus. The very lovely @kalkikaKanmani.

The reason why Kalki bares it all in this stunning photo shoot is to teach us that we should all love our bodies, regardless of its shape and size. And, we totally agree with her way of thinking. Kudos Kalki!

The actress, in past, has always picked rather interesting roles, breaking away from the stereotype and choosing films that very few would opt for. She was last seen in Konkona Sen Sharma's critically praised directorial debut, A Death In The Gunj'.

She will soon be seen alongside Richa Chadha in Jia Aur Jia', a film about two women travelling to different places together. The teaser was released and people already love the camaraderie on screen.

Here's what Richa Chadha had to say when describing the plot in a little more detail, Kalki and I really enjoyed filming this in the picturesque locales of Sweden. It's a slice-of-life film about two girls on a road trip. They meet a guy in Sweden and the story takes an unexpected turn. It's massive fun,.
Love reading books before they appear on the big screen? Then here's a treat for you. 2017 is a year where various popular books from different genres have been adapted into movies and are all set to release soon.

If you want to know all the details, this is definitely the right place for you. Here's the guide that you have been all been looking for!

Check out these book adaptations and let us know if you'll be watching any of them:

The Dark Tower I: Gunslinger by Stephen King

(c) Twitter

Synopsis: Based on popular series of eight books, the film is a new take on the book of the same name. The story revolves around a young man who is all of a sudden transported to another universe known as Mid- World and eventually has to save the world. In this book, author Stephen King blends horror and sci-fi in a series for the ages.

Release date: August 25th, 2017

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Idris Elba, Katheryn Winnick

IT by Stephen King

(c) Twitter

Synopsis: Scared of clowns? Then this book is a must read. Stephen King introduces an evil entity that appears as a clown and hunts kids down and feeds on their fear. If clowns have ever terrified you, then you'd best watch the film in bright daylight!

Release date: 8th September, 2017

Starring: Bill Skarsgard, Finn Wolfhard, Jaeden Lieberher

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

(c) Twitter

Synopsis: While the film on the same has been made before, this one is a new interpretation and people already love the idea. Our beloved Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot is all set to investigate a murder on the Orient Express. This book is worth every bit of your time to see how the murder mystery unfolds.

Release date: 10th November 2017

Starring: Daisy Ridley, Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Josh Gad

The Mountain Between Us by Charles L Martin

(c) Twitter

Synopsis: This is one of those films that I have been looking forward to. This beautiful story written by Charles Martin revolves around a pair who survives a plane crash. Left with no one but just each other, they are forced to trust one another.

Release date: 20th October 2017

Starring: Kate Winslet, Idris Elba

Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle

(c) Twitter

Synopsis: Who doesn't love a Holiday romance! The book brings together a tale of holiday romance via three short stories written by the aforesaid authors. All the stories are connected to each other and will make you laugh, smile and cry. Definitely a worthy read and watch!

Release date: December 9th, 2017

Starring: TBA
Yes, you read that headline right. So,what do you think would look more dashing than a man in uniform and discipline meeting hard-edged style? It would be a deadly combination, I bet. And, it looks like this fantasy from Hollywood has come true for the badass cops of Kolkata. Even though the Kolkata Police have not replaced their line of Royal Enfields, they have added their foreign counterparts, the Harley Davidson Cruisers to give our old thumpers some tough competition. This wasn't some random move either. The Kolkata Police had good reason to add these kickass bikes to their line up.

Goutam SenGupta/Facebook

Though the reason seems obvious, there is always a need for speed. The Street 750 is much quicker and faster than Royal Enfield motorcycles. While the RE's would propel to 100 kph in 16 seconds, the Street 750 can do it in about 6.17 seconds with a top speed of 160 kph.

Goutam SenGupta/Facebook

The Street 750's are well customised and have built-in radios to communicate with the control room and other Harley riding cops. They have saddlebags and flashers to sirens, new graphics, and stickers, including a Kolkata Police emblem on the windscreen.

Goutam SenGupta/Facebook

As per V Solomon Nesakumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Traffic Department, they have 5 Harley Davidson Street 750s and these high-end bikes were bought around two months ago by the Kolkata Police Department for Rs 5.5 lakh each. They have planned to use them during VIP visits and for other ceremonial purposes, for now. They were first introduced to the public on August 15th as part of the Independence Day celebrations.

Obviously, the Street 750 will not be used for routine rounds but might be used for police chases, considering it is a powerful machine.

Goutam SenGupta/Facebook

On the other hand, the police force is in talks to also include TVS Apaches in their fleet which is seen as a step down from the RE's.

Photo:Team-BHP(Main Image)
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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...
Operation Vanguard has given the assurance that no blood will be spilled again in their operations.

The National Commander of the task force, Colonel William Agyapong told Starr News, the President issued a firm warning to the task force during its inauguration to ensure that no single drop of blood is spilled during their operation.

Lives are very precious, and let me say emphatically, from the onset of this mission, his Excellency was very strict that no blood should be spilt; no pint of blood and that is what we aim to do .We were not involved in this particular incident and I want the good people of this country to be rest assured ,we are here to help protect the environment and that is what we are doing, and we will do that within the ambit of the laws of this country .

Colonel Agyapong made the remarks after the taskforce honoured an invitation by the Eastern Regional Security Council ,REGSEC, on Tuesday in Koforidua having failed to attend the meeting Monday.

The REGSEC meeting was to among other issues, establish whether or not the Taskforce has hands in the death of the four persons found in a mining pit at Akukuso near Kwabeng .

He said the task force is not responsible for the killing of the four men. He noted no level of provocation will lead to the killing of any illegal miner .

No level of provocation will be such that it will require somebodys life to be taken. We are security men, we are policemen and military men, we will only use our weapons if our lives are threatened, at this stage, we havent come to that .

He said the Operation in the Eastern region is going well commending the locals in mining areas for volunteering more information to the Taskforce .

The Eastern regional Minister ,Eric Kwakye Darfuor, who doubles as Chairman of the Regional Security Council said the IGP has dispatched special investigators from the homicide unit of the Ghana Police Service to establish the cause of death of the four persons.

He, however, said, the preliminary autopsy report has ruled out gunshots hence it is possible to suggest the four persons drowned but the circumstances leading to their suspected drowning reveals a foul play which investigations into the incident will help unravel.

Meanwhile, the REGSEC will hold a stakeholder meeting which will involve the small scale miners on Thursday, August 17 to deliberate on the way forward on the operations of the taskforce.
Abuja (AFP) - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari returned home on Saturday after spending more than 100 days in London receiving treatment for an undisclosed illness.

His plane touched down around 4:35 pm (1535 GMT) at the international airport in Abuja, an AFP correspondent said.

Wearing a black caftan with a cap to match, the 74-year-old left the aircraft unaided and was met by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and other senior government officials, including ministers, security chiefs and state governors.

He took a salute to the military guard of honour before he was driven in a convoy to the presidential villa.

An enthusiastic crowd of supporters were at the airport and lined the roads to welcome Buhari back.

He is set to address Nigerians on Monday morning, the presidency said.

The president left for the British capital on May 7 with his prolonged absence causing tensions back home, where calls have grown for him to either return or resign.

Buhari, a retired general who headed a military regime in the 1980s, has been dogged by speculation about his health since June last year when he first went to London for treatment of what his aides said was a persistent ear infection.

He then spent nearly two months in London in January and February and said on his return in early March that he had "never been so ill".

In July, members of the ruling party and the opposition went to see him in London and even took pictures in an attempt to douse public anxiety.

The health of Nigeria's leaders has been a sensitive issue since the 2010 death in office of president Umaru Musa Yar'Adua after months of treatment abroad.

Buhari's main opponents in the 2015 election that brought him to power claimed he had prostate cancer. He denied it.

Since August 7, there has been a series of protests in Abuja demanding that Buhari return or quit if he is incapacitated.

The rallies turned violent on Tuesday when mainly ethnic Hausa traders pelted protesters with stones, prompting them to abandon their daily vigils.

Deji Adeyanju, one of the protest organisers, told AFP on Saturday he was excited at the news of Buhari's return.

"We are happy that the president is coming back today because we have been vindicated," he said.

Buhari shown with a Get Well card, surrounded by aides in London on August 12

"We organised the rallies to make him come back so that he can continue to carry out the mandate on which he was elected in 2015."

Adeyanju said a planned protest in Lagos on Monday has now been cancelled.

"There is no more demonstration as the president has acceded to our demand," he said, warning however that protesters would "maintain close vigilance" of the government and urging Buhari to tackle rising insecurity, including the Boko Haram insurgency and militancy in the Niger delta.

"More importantly, the president has to end mass poverty in the land and the fight against corruption has to be given a push," he added.

Dapo Thomas, a politics lecturer at Lagos university, said Buhari's return would boost the central government's clout.

"Every policy, every decision, every project will now have a stamp of authority and legitimacy," he said, adding that the anti-graft campaign would also be stepped up.

"Buhari's selling point is his integrity. He is very passionate about eradicating corruption from Nigeria and I think his return will re-invigorate the campaign," he said.

Buhari has been struggling to rid Nigeria of the endemic corruption that has blighted its development and helped tip the country into recession.

High-profile members of the previous government have been arrested on corruption charges, sparking accusations of a political witch hunt -- claims the current administration denies.
19.08.2017 LISTEN

Two NGOs working as intermediaries between extractive companies and their host communities in the Western and BrongAhafo regions, last week met together with the Philanthropy Forum-Ghana, to discuss strategiestowards accelerating development within their areas of operation.

The meeting, which took placefrom August 8 to10, was hosted by Newmont Ahafo Development Foundation, NADeF, at its office at Ntotroso in the BrongAhafo region of Ghana.

The conclave was organisedfor the NGOs to share their successstories, challenges as well as strategies for achieving sustainabledevelopment in the communities under their purview.

With about a decades worth of experience in the field, NADeFwas also to use the platform to share its wealth of knowledge and expertise with its nascentcounterpart, the Western Region Coastal Foundation, WRCF.

The WRCF, like NADeF, is essaying to drive socio-economic growth in communities within the catchment area of Multi-National Corporations[MNCs] in the Power, Oil & Gas industries based inthe western region.

During the two-day engagement, the represented organisations discussed a range of issues centered on how indigenous communities could leverage their natural endowments to undergird their own development.

Issues addressed included: strategic multi-stakeholder engagement and grassroots participation in the developmental agenda.

Also, pragmatic needs assessment and prioritization as well as proactive maintenance culture were part of issues discussed.

The Executive Secretary of NADeF, Ms Elizabeth Opoku-Darko, emphasised the need for effective multi-stakeholder engagement, saying it was key to eliminating the issue of mistrust between companies and their landlords.

Ms. Opoku-Darko bemoaned the lack of maintenance of social facilitiesby the locals and the authorities, remarking that itconstituted a major setback to growth.

She called on leaders of host communities to invest their royalties in high-priority projects that not only addressed their short-term needs but also benefitted posterity.

On his part, the President of PF-G, Dr Ben Ocra, who led his delegation, challenged the NGOs to be resourceful in coordinating the interests of both the natives and expatriate companies.

DrOcra also advised indigenous communities not to over-rely on the MNCs but instead, make the most of existing opportunities in their areas to push forward their own development.

Mr George Owusu, who led the WRCF team, highlighted the critical need for effective monitoring and evaluation of projects in the communities to help develop strategies in bridging the gaps within.

He noted that the WRCF would incorporate in its operations, knowledge gathered from the meeting and, would also fall back on NADeF for technical expertise to enhance its work.

As part of activities for the two-day meeting, Ms Rachel Anima-Boahen, Project Coordinator at NADeF, led the guests to visit the Foundations community-based facilities within the Asutifi and Ahafo districts in the region.
19.08.2017 LISTEN

Like me, she has spent most of her teaching and literary career in the West; actually, much longer than I have. And just before she retired several years ago, from Rhode Islands Brown University, one of the lesser known Ivy League academies  where Prof. Chinua Achebe, the even more famous and genius literary artist and thinker, also spent the final years of his long teaching career. Her only adult-child and daughter, KinnaLikimani, schooled at Smith College, one of the exclusive small liberal arts colleges largely attended by the children of the rich and famous, both right here in the United States of America and abroad.I was darn lucky to have had Prof. Achebe as my African Literature teacher at the City College of the City University of New York (CCNY of CUNY), a quite decent open-admission public academy for the children of working-class and lower-middle-class parents and young adults, while I attended.

Then also must be added the equally significant fact that Ms. Aidoos Zimbabwean-fathered daughter studied for the Masters Degree at Columbia Universitys School of Public Health, right here in New York City. I had occasion to meet her once at a live-celebration of a famous Afro-Caribbean novelist with Canadian citizenship, whose name I cannot readily recall, at the world-famous Schomburg Center for Research in Black Cultures, right here in Harlem, New York City. I also remember briefly chatting with Ms. Likimani and almost quarrelsomely carping her mothers rather melodramatic and weakly crafted novel of Islamo-African polygamy, Changes, at the reception immediately following a spirited reading by the aforesaid novelist. We had met courtesy of a mutual acquaintance, in my case, and in hers perhaps a mutual friend of her mothers, by the name of Prof. Vivian Windley, a long-retired City College professor of Education.

What I want to highlight here is that Ms. Aidoo and her daughter belong to the same Upper-Middle-Class culture that the former recently castigated in a Facebook post on the subject of the hosting of extra- and vacation classes by some Ghanaian high school teachers. The classes are also designated Summer Classes and/or Summer Camp, an obvious misnomer, as contemptuously and sneeringly decried by Ms. Aidoo. On the latter count, though, the notable Ghanaian playwright would be better off blaming globalization for such a jarringly embarrassing misnomer than these poor teachers trying to make ends meet, as it were. The last time around, I had staunchly defended her inalienable democratic right to imperiously storm out of the middle of a literary confab that was being held in her honor by a group of women professors on the campus of her alma mater and the countrys flagship academy, the University of Ghana, who had, in retrospect, envisaged her as a role model for both themselves and their female students. But definitely not this second time around.

On the first occasion, she had stormed out of her eponymous ceremony because some careless or inexcusably lazy program designers had had the chutzpah to blasphemously misspell her very unusual middle name of Ata as Attaa, which my twin late mother also answered to, a quite uncommon name for a twin Akan-born woman to sport or possess. I had actually started writing an article about the incident in which I had meant to upbraid her for being so undeservedly presumptuous and uncharitably petty-minded, but had ended up conceding her the inalienable democratic right to be snooty and insufferably obnoxious with whomever she felt witheringly affronted by.

Well, the abject hypocrisy here is that even as Education Secretary under the Rawlings-led junta of the so-called Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), Ms. Aidoo had woefully failed to creditably acquit herself. But even more significantly, and one may even add, relevantly, the running of extra-classes during the long mid-year recess for additional fees, apart from those charged during the regular trimesters, back then, was even more popular under her short-lived and lackluster tenure as Education Secretary some 30-and-odd years ago. And the bad news for her here, I am afraid, is that I dont even faintly remember Secretary Aidoo raising her voice against the practice even once to order a prohibition of the same.

So I really dont see what her beef is about. To be certain, the practice is inescapably global even here in the West, where Ms. Aidoo and her daughter, KinnaLikimani, have spent most of their adult lives. And if I may humbly ask: Has Ms. Aidoo ever heard of the Kaplan Centers, founded by a graduate or alumnus of City College, my alma mater? Very likely, her daughter Kinna took classes with operatives of one of the Kaplan Centers to better her chances of either getting into Smith College or Columbia University Graduate School of Public Health. So much for cynical blindness to the other woman in the mirror.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
19.08.2017 LISTEN

Despite being expensive, coupled with high maintenance cost and risky to operate. Helicopters are a sure bet in modern crime combat, detection and enforcement.

Many law enforcement institutions around the world, are beginning to make use helicopters in their day to day operations and crime combat.

In order to fight crime more effectively, the Ghana Police Service and for that matter, the government of Ghana which is mandated under article 200 of the constitution to resource the police to ensure optimum security for the nation, need to seriously consider buying helicopters for the Ghana police service if indeed, we are to achieve the aims of the constitution.

Recently, it was heartwarming to read that the Ghana Charismatic Bishops Conference called on the government to establish a helicopter Unit for the police service to enable them to fight crime in the country.

Such a call is undoubtedly is in proper order and deserves the support of all right thinking Ghanaians, civil society organisations, religious groups, chiefs, academia and of course, the media, the forth estate of the realm.

The use of helicopters in crime combat will significantly improve the security situation in the country and make the police a lot more versatile and mobile.

Helicopters can be used in search and rescue operation by the police in case the country is faced with all emergency situations including that which Sierra Leone is currently facing.

They can be used for surveillance, pursue hit and run vehicles, monitor traffic situation and to relay information to central control on where traffic can be redirected to in the city.

Also, helicopters can be used in locating missing persons especially in hard to reach or remote areas, for easy deployment of men to conflict zones or scenes of crime.

Because of the versatility of helicopters, the need for the Ghana police service to have a dedicated unit solely for helicopter services cannot be overemphasised. That is the more reason why I associate myself with the call by the Charismatic Bishops Conference when they called for the establishment of such a unit.

It must be stated clearly that it is long overdue actually, for the service to have such a unit to aid its operations in the country.

Although the Ghana police service had no fleet of helicopters, it constructed a helipad for such a purpose in August 2013 perhaps in anticipation of the purchase of helicopters for it by the government some time in the future.

The helipad which is located at the national headquarters in front of the national operations center, has been described as a white elephant obviously because of the lack of helicopters to make use of it.

Many have also said that having such a large space of land so to speak laying fallow at the national headquarters when in fact, there are no helicopters on it is comparable to having without a wife.

Although some security watchers have raised issues relating to high cost of maintainance, risk, and so on, the benefits on any day far out ways the negatives.

It is therefore important that the government listen to the call by the Charismatic Bishops Conference and accord it with the needed attention it deserves.

Abdul Hanan Mohammed EL-Saeed
An employee is seen behind an Infosys logo at the company's campus in the southern Indian city of Bangalore September 23, 2014. Infosys Ltd's new CEO Vishal Sikka has come up with a novel approach to reviving the financial fortunes of India's trailblazing outsourcing firm: use Facebook at work, tweet, but get the job done. Infosys has long been run as a conservative company known for keeping strict tabs on work hours and sometimes fining employees for not wearing ties on specific days. Such cheerless self-regard could not have come at a more challenging time, analysts say. To retain talent, Sikka hopes to create a more employee-friendly workplace. To match story INFOSYS-CEO/STRATEGY REUTERS/Abhishek Chinnappa (INDIA - Tags: BUSINESS SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY EMPLOYMENT) - RTR47FIS

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At least three US-based law firms sent out statements on Saturday saying they would initiate class-action lawsuits against Infosys for unlawful business practices, an exercise that is not uncommon with US-listed companies every time they go through a change, especially in the case of mergers and acquisitions.

A day after Infosys chief executive Vishal Sikka stepped down from his role at Indias second-largest information technology services company, these law firms sent out near identical statements asking Infosys investors to come forward.

Rosen Law Firm is preparing a class-action lawsuit to recover losses suffered by Infosys investors, said Rosen Law Firm. Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Infosys Limited, said another.

These law firms, often called ambulance chasers, spring up soon after a company goes through a major turmoil, especially after a merger or acquisition.

Like this 2010 piece in Investopedia says Like everything in America, when you're not happy with an outcome in life, you hire a lawyer. Why should this be any different? I've counted no less than six law firms making headlines for commencing investigations into the acquisition.

Similarly, this Fortune piece, explaining the springing up of lawyers inviting investors to come forward to file a class-action lawsuit against a company after M&A activity says virtually every single take-private buyout is quickly "investigated" by class-action attorneys in seek of litigious shareholders.

Infosys is also listed on the US stock exchange.

Very few investors actually come forward to ask for checking irregularities, almost never enough to merit a class-action suit.

Eventually, companies settle the cases, if any, that may be brought by the law firms. These lawsuits almost always result in a quick settlement and rarely go to trial. Its clear companies, which are under the gun to finalise the deals, have no interest in allowing their multi-billion dollar buyouts to be scuttled by a few disgruntled shareholders  or aggressive law firms, explained this piece in Fox Business.

This is the most likely fate of these rather standard and expected cases.

Infosys did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuits.
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A rather dull week for launches with only two new product introductions during the week. However, two high profile exits did make headlines. Here is the full list of important developments through the week.

PB Balaji becomes the new Tata Motors CFO

Tata Motors, India's biggest automobile company, has appointed PB Balaji as its new group chief financial officer (CFO) who will take over the reins from CR Ramakrishnan.

Balaji, who will take over from November this year, has been working with Hindustan Unilever as its CFO since 2014. He started his career with Unilever in 1995. Balaji is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai and has a post-graduate management degree from Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata.

GM India head resigns

Kaher Kazem, President and Managing Director of General Motors India, has resigned and will move to GMs Korea unit to take over as its President and CEO. GM Indias Chief Financial Officer Sanjay Gupta will take over the reins from September 1.

Gupta will combine his role as GM India President and Managing Director with his finance leadership responsibilities. Gupta joined GM in 2003 working in critical roles in VSSM, Auto Financing, Business Planning, Corporate Finance and Treasury, and Financial Planning & Analysis in the US and Canada. In 2012, he was promoted to Director, North America Financial Planning and Analysis and in 2013 was appointed Director US Sales Operations Finance.

VW files vehicle recall plan before NGT

German automaker Volkswagen has submitted a roadmap before the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to recall over 3.23 lakh vehicles which are allegedly fitted with a defeat device to fudge emission tests.

In late 2015, Volkswagen had announced the recall of 3,23,700 lakh vehicles in India to fix the emission software after Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) conducted tests on some models and found that their on-road emissions were 1.1 times to 2.6 times higher than acceptable BS-IV norms.

Maruti Suzuki Ciaz S launched

Maruti Suzuki, Indias largest car maker, launched a new variant of the Ciaz sedan, called Ciaz S priced at Rs 9.39 lakh and the petrol version and Rs 11.55 lakh for the diesel version.

The Ciaz S gets all-around body kit including front and rear bumper extensions, side skirts and a boot lid spoiler. The interiors if the Ciaz S gets all-black instead of the dual-tone setup of the variants. Black leather seats are standard.

Tiago AMT on XTA variant launched

Tata Motors reduced the entry price of the automatic version of most popular hatchback Tiago with the launch of the automated manual transmission in XTA version of priced at Rs 4.79 lakh.

The AMT version gets two-driving modes  City, Eco and Sport  like the manual version. But like the top-of-the-line XMA version the XTA variant does not get alloy wheels ORVM with LED and body coloured air vents.
Vishal Sikka | Infosys: The former CEO and MD of the IT giant was hand-picked by Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy in 2014 to lead the company during a time when it was battling a severe slowdown, amid broader challenges in the industry. But soon, Sikka came under fire from Murthy himself, who attacked several decisions taken at Infosys besides Sikka's supposed lavish lifestyle. For Sikka, the final straw appeared to be a leaked letter by the co-founder, in which he said Sikka was only 'CTO material, not CEO material'. The board, which sided with Sikka at the time, attacked Murthy's campaign for carrying out 'continuous assaults' against the CEO. (Image: Reuters)

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Four US law firms have said they are investigating potential claims on behalf of Infosys investors on whether the Indian company and some of its officials and directors have violated federal securities laws.

The development comes a day after the IT major, which is also listed in the US, saw its CEO Vishal Sikka resign citing slander by founders, led by NR Narayana Murthy.

The US law firms are: Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman; Rosen Law Firm; Pomerantz Law Firm and Goldberg Law PC.

The first non-founder CEO of Infosys, Sikka had the company's support but was forced to leave following what its Board termed as a "misguided" campaign by Murthy.

Rosen said in a statement that it is investigating "potential securities claims" on behalf of Infosys shareholders resulting from allegations that the firm may have issued materially misleading business information to the investing public.

It added that it is "preparing a class action lawsuit to recover losses suffered by Infosys investors".

Bronstein said its investigation concerns whether Infosys and certain officers and/or directors have complied with federal securities laws.

Pomerantz said its investigation is to ascertain whether Infosys and some of its officers/directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

On similar lines, Goldberg said its investigation focuses on whether Infosys and its officers/directors had violated federal securities laws.

The equity shares of Infosys are listed on BSE and NSE in India, while its American Depositary Share (ADS) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Following Sikka's resignation, Infosys' ADS dropped as much as USD 1.43 per share, or nearly 9 per cent, during intra-day trading on August 18, the day Sikka suddenly quit as CEO.

In India too, the company's stocks plummeted nearly 10 per cent on the BSE, with its market valuation falling by over Rs 22,518 crore.

Separately, the Infosys board today approved a share buyback plan of up to Rs 13,000 crore.

Among other things, Infosys said that given the significant shareholding of the US residents through ADS' and equity shares, it was necessary to obtain exemptive relief from the American market regulator US SEC on certain aspects of the tender offer procedures.

This is due to conflicting regulatory requirements between Indian and US laws for tender offer buybacks and the same has been obtained, it explained.
Gold prices in India were at their widest discount to international prices in 11 months on Friday due to sluggish demand and an influx of the precious metal sourced from South Korea.

Indian traders are likely to import 25 tonnes of gold from South Korea in July-August, taking advantage of a recent tax change that allows imports without the usual 10 percent customs duty, industry officials told Reuters.

"South Korean supplies are distorting the market. Retail demand is still weak due to the price rise," said N. Vijay, a bullion dealer from Salem in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

India had previously imposed a 12.5 percent excise duty on imports from countries with which it had signed Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), such as South Korea.

But this was scrapped along with other local taxes when India introduced a Goods and Services Tax (GST) from July 1.

Dealers in India were offering a discount of up to USD 13 an ounce this week over official domestic prices, compared with a discount of up to USD 7 an ounce last week. This week's discount was the maximum since September 2016.

Local gold prices jumped to 29,390 rupees per 10 grams on Friday, the highest since June 8.

"Retail buyers and jewellers are waiting for prices to correct. They are not comfortable in buying above 29,000 rupees," said a Mumbai-based dealer with a private bank.

Demand was also sluggish in other major centers in Asia due to high prices.

"At these levels, there has been more selling," Brian Lan, managing director at gold dealer GoldSilver Central in Singapore, said.

Spot gold rose on Friday, supported by international political tensions and doubts over the ability of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to push through its economic agenda.

"A pullback in prices could spur some buying, especially from those looking to buy gold as a safe haven, since people are worried about North Korea and also Trump," Lan said.

In top consumer China, premiums fell slightly to USD 3-4 an ounce, compared with a USD 5-6 range last week. In Hong Kong, premiums were quoted between 30 and 70 cents, versus the 40-70 cents range in the previous week.

In Japan, gold was flat versus the benchmark price, unchanged from last week, a Tokyo-based trader said.

Premiums in Singapore were also seen unchanged from the previous week's range of 60 to 80 cents.
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The recently announced share buyback programme worth Rs 13,000 crore by Infosys has once again raised questions on the recent but increasingly common practice of Indian companies, particularly IT companies, of putting surplus cash in the hands of shareholders.

Unlike the United States, where companies have undertaken share buybacks of over USD 1.5 trillion in the last three years alone, Indian companies have for long avoided such programmes.

This trend began to change since last year after major Indian companies such as the government-controlled Coal India, Novartis India and tech companies such as Cognizant, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro announced a stock repurchase option.

In this context, Infosyss buyback programme doesnt come as a surprise but as a reaction to the market anticipation of the company following suit like its competitors.

Three broad reasons can be attributed to Infosys own buyback policy, which is being done through a tender process.

First, like TCS, Infosys was sitting on a huge cash pile of close to USD 6 billion. The companys quick ratio  measure of liquidity  is at a three-year high of 3.77 percent, indicating the companys current assets are 3.77 times higher than its current liabilities.

However, in an uncertain growth climate with fewer acquisition opportunities, sitting on such a huge reserve of cash simply meant increasing its own cost of funds.

Secondly, the recently announced capital allocation policy is also being seen as an effort to boost Infosyss falling share price. In the last one year, the companys share price has fallen from a high of Rs 1,278 in June 2016 to Rs 923 on Friday.

Apart from putting more cash in the hands of otherwise jittery shareholders  a significant portion of the buyback has been reserved for small shareholders  a buyback also reduces the number of outstanding shares, thereby increasing the companys earnings per share or its overall market value and expectation, thereby even benefitting those shareholders who dont want to participate in this buyback.

By announcing a buyback in the light of recent news over management struggle and job losses, Infosys move is also a signal to the market that its long-term prospects still remain bright.

Third, the Dividend Distribution Tax (DDT), announced in the 2016 Union Budget, is also being seen as a reason for companies like Infosys to adopt the buyback route as a more tax-effective way of rewarding shareholders with cash rather than announcing dividends.

Under DDT, the net taxation on dividends can go up to 25 percent but under a buyback, the highest tax rate applicable would be capped at 15 percent.

However, all buybacks cannot be assessed uniformly. A buyback funded by debt rather than cash reserves may end up defeating the very objective of the programme.

In the case of Infosys, the buyback is a much welcome move but definitely not a surprising one. It is one of the few instruments available to enthuse confidence in investors about its gloomy prospects. Now its over to Dalal Street, when it reopens on Monday morning.
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Infosys said on Saturday that it would buy back 11.3 crore shares or 4.92 percent of equity capital at Rs 1,150 apiece. The company will be spending Rs 13,000 crore for the same.

The company further said that the buyback represents premium of 17.73 percent and 17.92 percent on BSE and NSE, respectively, over the closing price of the stock as of August 16, 2017, the date of intimation to the exchanges of the board meet to consider the proposal of the buyback.

The buyback comes in the wake of a surprise exit of Vishal Sikka on Friday as MD and CEO of the company. He cited "continuous stream of distractions and disruptions" among reasons for quitting.

The news of Vishal Sikkas exit didnt go well among market participants. The S&P BSE Sensex lost 270 points while Infosys shares crashed by 9.6 percent following the news of Vishal Sikkas resignation.

It wiped out a little over Rs 22,000 crore of investors wealth in Infosys as the companys market capitalisation which is the combined market value of its listed shares sank to Rs 2,12,033 crore on Friday.

The liquid assets including cash and cash equivalents and investments were Rs39,335 crore as on June 30, 2017, as compared to Rs38,773 crore as on March 31, 2017.

The buyback is a way of rewarding shareholders in an efficient and cost-effective manner. A buyback allows companies to invest in themselves.

Buyback leads to a reduction of the number of shares outstanding on the market, which in turn increase the proportion of shares a company owns.

The reasons could be many for a company to go for a buyback. It improves the earnings per share (EPS), helps to improve return on capital, return on net worth and to enhance the long-term shareholder value.

It also provides an additional exit route to shareholders when shares are undervalued or are thinly traded.

Earlier in the year, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) said that it would buy back shares worth Rs16,000 crore at a fixed price of Rs2,850 each.

Should investor tender their shares?

The share buyback is the only near-term positive for Infosys and the way things are evolving for the Indias second largest software services exporter, investors will be better off tendering their shares.

The stock will remain in the spotlight when trading resumes on Monday.

Infosys has been an underperformer in last 12-18 months as a slowdown in business demand, automation, rising currency as well as allegations of corporate governance issues weighed on sentiments.

The stock touched fresh multi-year low on Friday of Rs884.40. It is down nearly 9 percent so far in the year 2017 and by about 13 percent in the last one year compared to 12 percent gain in the S&P BSE Sensex in the same period.

Constant rhetoric was sending the wrong signal. Infosys as a charm or a leading stock lost flavour. It is over-owned by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) will now only see unloading by them, Sanjiv Bhasin, EVP-Markets & Corp Affairs, India Infoline said.

There are many investors who have been sitting on Infosys at Rs1200. Now, it is clear that uncertainty will remain at the realm and even though Vishal Sikka did the humongous amount of reworking, he said.

Bhasin further added that this constant bickering was getting too much and the buyback will be a good time to tender whatever you have if you are a shareholder.

As of close of market hours on Friday, Infosys was quoting at Rs 923.10, down Rs 98.05, or 9.60 percent on the BSE.
An exterior view of Life Insurance Corporation of India's (LIC) headquarters is seen in Mumbai September 18, 2014. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

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The Life Insurance Corporation of India is monitoring developments in Infosys closely and is likely to meet the companys management soon, sources in the know told Moneycontrol.

This comes a day after Vishal Sikka resigned as MD & CEO at Infosys. The company said on Saturday that it would buy back 11.3 crore shares or 4.92 percent of equity capital at Rs 1,150 apiece. The company will be spending Rs 13,000 crore for the same.

The insurance company has, however, not decided on whether to participate in the buyback.

Sources also told Moneycontrol that LIC is concerned about shareholders interest and wants the issues to be resolved at the earliest.

The stock will remain in the spotlight when trading resumes on Monday.

As of close of market hours on Friday, Infosys was quoting at Rs 923.10, down Rs 98.05, or 9.60 percent on the BSE.
Infosys Chief Executive Vishal Sikka_Infosys_Vishal_Sikka_Infosys1

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Vishal Sikka, who stepped down as Infosys MD and CEO on Friday, said the continuous drumbeat of distractions and negativity over the last several months inhibited their ability to make positive change and stay focused on value creation. He said that addressing the noise by itself is damaging; hundreds of hours of his own time has gone into this recently. Industry experts said outsiders who are brought in to bring about such huge structural changes in the company often pay the price.

While Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy said his primary concern was the deteriorating standards of corporate governance, Sikka maintained that all allegations have been repeatedly proven false and baseless by multiple, independent investigations.

A Ph.D in computer science from Stanford University, Sikka was brought in taken into account his ability to leverage technology to help businesses become more competitive, as board members in an earlier Infosys statement had said.

Sachin Rajan, Consultant at Russell Reynolds Associates noted there is a tendency to expect the CEO to be in line with the founder. But, the contributions made in the years of building a company with the new CEO are not comparable.

The new CEO is often expected to be a magic wand to get the years of experience that founder has and take the company to the next level rapidly. That doesnt happen, he added.

In the past few months there has been a tiff between the founder and the Infosys management with Murthy raising concerns about compensation hike to COO UB Pravin Rao as well as severance pay to former CFO Rajiv Bansal.

Sujaya Banerjee, Chief Executive Officer of Capstone People Consulting said that founders/promoters have a deep emotional connect to the organisation that they built and has been run in a certain way.

When we get a professional, there is a lot of romance associated with the transformational agenda. But, there is a lot of price that has to be paid for that organisational transformation, she said.

Banerjee explained that when an outsider is portrayed as a savior who will drive change and they buy into the idea, there are a lot of stumbling blocks to drive a change of this kind.

In his resignation letter to the Infosys board, Sikka said the structural challenges this (allegations) engenders within the organisation, has a very damaging effect on their ability to carry out any kind of a transformation, especially one that is as fundamental as transforming from a cost-oriented to an innovation-oriented value delivery to clients.

Murthy has responded to Sikkas letter and the Infosys statement saying that he has never sought any money, position for children or power.

There is a huge risk associated with taking on these journeys for a new CEO because it can both ways. There is also a chance that they may be a victim of that change. Here, it is crucial to be able to constantly befriend and earn the trust of the old order, said Banerjee.

While the Infosys board will be on the lookout for a new chief executive officer, experts like Banerjee said they should just go the Tata way and get someone who is an old-timer and trusted by all stakeholders.

Sikka has stated that he will be working closely with the board and the senior management team to plan out the details and the timelines to ensure a smooth transition and in the meantime, continue work without disruption.

Experts pointed that often there is huge pressure for a new CEO, especially an outsider, if they have been brought to pull up the company. Especially, because a quick turnaround is expected.

Rajan said even if a new CEO is able to have a stable run for a couple of years without anything getting derailed; that should be seen as a success. But often the next trajectory of growth is expected to be immediately start appearing. That is where the disconnect begins, he added.

There is also murmur that promoters sometimes tend to be too close to the day-to-day affairs of the company, which may lead to some differences of opinion. This is because the business is done now could be much different from how it was conducted earlier.

Sometimes there is way too much proximity and way too much access. There will always be a cohort in an organisation that will resist change and know that they have access to and can gravitate to the older regime. This may get disruptive, explained Rajan.

Consultants believe founder-promoters should have well-defined areas of functioning so that any minor differences with the current board or the top management can be ironed out easily. Without that, there is always a grey area of what is the CEOs responsibility and to what extent they have the freedom to exercise their rights.
BJP president Amit Shah on Friday said not a single corruption charge has been levelled against the Narendra Modi government in the last three years, in contrast to the previous Congress-led UPA administration which saw 'scams amounting to Rs 12 lakh crore'.

Praising the NDA government for taking "bold" decisions like demonetisation of high values notes and the GST rollout, he said the BJP-led coalition's governance mantra is the development of the people of the country.

"The BJP government believes in the development of the people. The Modi government's 60 per cent time (term) is already over, but not a single corruption charge has been levelled against it by the Opposition," Shah said.

The BJP chief, who arrived here today on a three-day visit of Madhya Pradesh, was addressing a meeting of intellectuals here.

The newly-elected Rajya Sabha MP said the Manmohan Singh government's tenure was marred by a string of scams. "The UPA government saw scams amounting to Rs 12 lakh crore," he claimed.

He said the UPA government had "lowered" the status of the prime minister and his office, but the ruling NDA has restored the dignity of the top post.

All UPA ministers used to consider themselves "above the PM", but this has changed under the current dispensation, the BJP chief said.

"The present Prime Minister has restored the glory of the post and is taking decisions that are good for the people," he said.

Praising "bold" decisions like demonetisation and the rollout of Goods and Services Tax (GST), he said these steps are good for the people. No other government had the courage to take such hard decisions in the interest of the people.

The BJP is committed to the development and the states where it has formed governments have seen fast-paced growth, Shah said and cited the examples of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh which were earlier called 'BIMARU' (laggards).

Referring to Bihar, Shah said when the BJP was in power there in alliance with the JD(U), it had seen progress but the state lagged behind when the saffron outfit was no more part of the ruling alliance.

Now, Bihar will again walk on the path of development, he said, apparently referring to the BJP becoming part of the Nitish Kumar government.

Shah lashed out at the Congress for its "family-oriented" politics and alleged that the party had failed to develop the country in the 67 years.

Praising the BJP, Shah said it was the only party in the country which has been founded on certain principles and was upholding them wherever and whenever in power.

It is the largest party in the world and is committed to development of the last man of the society, he asserted.

Shah praised the Modi government for launching welfare schemes like Jan Dhan (aimed at financial inclusion) and Ujjwala (providing LPG connections to BPL families).

Till now, more than 2.80 crore LPG connections have been released for the beneficiaries under the Ujjwala scheme, the BJP chief said.

Shah contested Congress leader Ajay Singh's claim that the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh received more funds under the UPA government than the NDA regime.

Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh assembly, has made the claim in a letter addressed to the BJP.

The NDA government has given over Rs 500 crore (RPT) Rs 500 crore to Madhya Pradesh for different schemes, Shah said.

In the last three years, the Modi government has launched 106 schemes for welfare of the poor and other disadvantaged sections of the society, he said.

Earlier, on his arrival here in the morning from New Delhi, the BJP president was accorded a warm welcome at the airport by the party leaders led by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Shah later unveiled a statue of Deendayal Upadhyaya, a top Jan Sangh leader and the party's ideologue, near the city's Lal Ghati square.

A large number of BJP workers, many of them sporting saffron turbans, led Shah's entourage to the state party office.

Enroute to the party office, he paid floral tributes to Raja Bhoj, a medieval-era king from the Paramara dynasty, Dalit icon B R Ambedkar and Jan Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

Soon after arrival at the party office, Shah chaired a series of meetings with the party leaders and ministers. He had lunch at the house of state minister Narottam Mishra and interacted informally with senior journalists.

The visit is part of the BJP chief's 110-day nationwide tour to strengthen and expand the party's support base ahead of the 2019 general elections.

The Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP is in power for over a decade, are due in end-2018.

Shah also released a book, "Marching with a Billion, Analysing Narendra Modi's Government At Midterm", authored by noted journalist Uday Mahurkar.
India's Brahmos supersonic cruise missiles, mounted on a truck, pass by during a full dress rehearsal for the Republic Day parade in New Delhi, India, January 23, 2006. REUTERS/Kamal Kishore/File Photo TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY - RTSGNF4

India on Friday termed as 'incorrect' reports of it supplying BrahMos anti-ship cruise missiles to Vietnam even as the Southeast Asian country said the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two nations has been growing in many fields including security and defence.

Replying to questions on the issue, external affairs ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Vietnam's Foreign Ministry has already rejected the report, saying it is incorrect.

"It is not correct, that is what I am trying to say. The person who has been quoted, the ministry has already rejected and they are saying that the news item which is running and which is out is incorrect," he said.

However, there was no clear denial of the report by Vietnam's foreign ministry in the public domain.

When asked about the report, a spokesperson in the Vietnam foreign ministry said the VietnamIndia comprehensive strategic partnership has been actively developing in many fields including economics, trade, investment, culture, education, security and defence.

"The bilateral security and defence ties have been making practical contribution to peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and the world at large," the spokesperson said, adding Vietnam persistently pursues a national defence policy of peace and of self-defence.

The spokesperson further said "procurement of defence equipment by Vietnam is consistent with the policy of peace and self-defence and is the normal practice in the national defence. We will forward your question to the relevant agency."

There was no comment available from the defence ministry on the issue.

India had held talks with Vietnam for supply of the BrahMos missile.

In February, while replying to a question in Lok Sabha on whether the government has any plans to sell Akash and BrahMos missile to Vietnam, Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre had said that India has held talks with the Southeast Asian country on the issue.

"India and Vietnam share a strategic partnership. Defence cooperation, including supply of defence equipment, is an important aspect of this partnership.

"Both countries have held discussions on range of issues in this regard," he had said in a written reply.

Vietnam, which is involved in a territorial dispute with China, is keen to get it hands on the supersonic missiles that can be fired on land, water and under water.

The Brahmos missile system is jointly developed by India and Russia.
The Orissa High Court on Friday granted bail to Seashore Group of Companies CMD Prashant Dash in a chit fund related case.

Dash was arrested by the CBI from Mumbai in December 2013 for allegedly duping hundreds of poor people, who had invested over Rs 500 crore in his company hoping for better returns.

The Bench of Justice C R Dash granted bail to Dash and directed him to deposit his passport with the Investigating Officer (IO).

The court also told Dash not to visit places outside the state without prior permission from the IO.

However, Dash, who is now lodged in a Bhubaneswar jail, is unlikely to walk free immediately as there are several other cases registered against him, sources said.
NEW DELHI, INDIA - OCTOBER 30: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and JD (U) President Sharad Yadav during an event in which Shoaib Iqbal, Lok Janshakti Party MLA from Matia Mahal and four councilors joined the Janta Dal United on October 30, 2013 in New Delhi, India. Iqbal, who quit Lok Janshakti Party to join JD(U) ahead of Delhi assembly elections, has been an MLA since 1993 and is said to have strong influence over Muslim votes in a few constituencies. (Photo by Ajay Aggarwal/Hindustan Times in Getty Images)

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's faction of JD(U) on Saturday passed a resolution to join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance after breaking the 'Grand Alliance' with Lalu Prasad's RJD and Congress in the state.

The rival JD(U) faction headed by Sharad Yadav called for parallel meetings in Patna on Saturday while indicating that the party may be heading for a split after the disintegration of the alliance. The meeting of Sharad Yadav's faction--called 'Sanjhi Virasat Bachao'--was attended by all major parties from the opposition.

Earlier, Sharad Yadav turned down Nitish Kumar's invitation to participate in the national executive committee meeting.

Lalu Prasad Yadav called Nitish's executive meeting a "BJP meet", instead of JD(U)s, while supporters of RJD and Sharad Yadav protested outside the CM's residence where the national executive meeting was taking place.

Also, Sharad Yadav loyalists opposed to the pact with BJP, are organising a programme called 'Jan Adalat' at S K Memorial hall.

The outcome of Nitish's meeting makes it clear that battle lines within

the JD(U) are drawn and the party has headed for a vertical split.

Earlier, JD(U) principal secretary general K C Tyagi has, however, maintained that there is no split and that Yadav "has left voluntarily".

Asked about the agenda of the national executive meeting, Tyagi said it would put its seal of approval on the party's Bihar unit decision to break away from the Grand Alliance and form a government with BJP "in the interests of the state".

Kumar had made it clear that he had walked out of the Grand Alliance of the JD(U), RJD and Congress as per the wish of the party's Bihar unit.

"The national executive would also give its consent to the invitation of BJP President Amit Shah to the JD(U) to join the NDA fold," Tyagi said.

Shah had extended the invitation when Kumar had met him in Delhi recently.

Some other amendments in the party constitution would also be taken up, he said, but refused to divulge details.

Asked about "Jan Adalat" which would also be attended by Yadav, Tyagi said it is not an official programme of the party.

A poster war has erupted in Patna with the rival groups publicising their respective programmes and agendas.

"Jan Adalat ka Faisla ... Mahagatbandhan Jaari hain (Jan Adalat's decision ... The Grand Alliance is continuing)" --the rebel-JD(U) posters say. They carry photographs of Sharad Yadav, JD(U) Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar Ansari and former state minister Ramai Ram, who was suspended by Bihar JD(U) chief Basistha Narayan Singh.

Sharpening the attack on Nitish Kumar, Anwar Ansari asserted in Delhi that those opposed to the Bihar chief minister represented the "real" JD(U), and added "Nitish represents BJP Janata Dal".

But he refused to acknowledge a "split" in the party and said there is "sharp resentment" among JD(U) workers on the removal of Sharad Yadav as the leader of party MPs in the Rajya Sabha for questioning Nitish Kumar's decision to form an alliance with the BJP.

Another Sharad Yadav loyalist Vijay Verma, who was among 21 JD(U) leaders suspended recently, said, "Our programme is to strengthen secular forces in the country."

The rebel JD(U) programme follows a mega meeting of anti-BJP parties held on Thursday in the national capital, which they said, was to save the "composite culture" of the country.

The party's former national general secretary Arun Kumar Srivastava, who was expelled after the JD(U) legislator in Gujarat voted against the NDA candidate in the recent vice-presidential polls, said in Delhi that the rebels could approach the Election Commission to claim the party's name and symbol in case of a split.

Srivastava also claimed that 14 of the state party units, except those in Bihar and Jharkhand, were supporting Sharad Yadav and those opposed to Nitish Kumar.
JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar and BJP's Sushil Modi

Supporters of rival JD(U) factions headed by Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav clashed outside the residence of the chief minister in Patna on Saturday, police said.

Riding two-wheelers without helmets, Yadav's supporters were escorting him from the airport to the S K Memorial Hall, the venue of their Jan Adalat programme, when they stopped outside the chief minister's residence on the way and shouted slogans.

The clashes took place when some of them carrying sticks and belts tried to enter Nitish Kumar's 1, Anne Marg residence -- opposite the Raj Bhavan.

Soon, Kumar's supporters, who had gathered there for (JD (U) National Executive Committee meeting came out and chased away Yadav's supporters, police said.

Yadav, who was in the car with suspended JD(U) MP Ali Anwar, refused to comment on the incident and told reporters, "I will speak at the programme." Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj who reached the chief minister's house on hearing of the trouble, told reporters that a probe would be conducted and the guilty would be punished.

"We will watch CCTV cameras and try to identify those behind the violence and act against them," the SSP said.

Asked about security arrangements and why Yadav was allowed to take that route, the SSP said the concerns would be part of the probe.

Parallel meetings were held here by the rival JD(U) factions headed by Kumar and Yadav. While the JD(U) national executive committee met at the chief minister's residence, the rival camp held its Jan Adalat in S K Memorial Hall.

Yadav, Ali Anwar and suspended former Bihar minister Ramai Ram were prominent figures at the Jan Adalat programme.

The two JD(U) leaders fell out after Nitish Kumar broke the Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress in Bihar and joined hands with the BJP.
Chief Minister Manik Sarkar

Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar on Friday said the Left Front government has no plans to go to court against Doordarshan and All India Radio for allegedly not airing his Independence Day recorded speech.

"We are not thinking of going to the court on the issue of censorship on my recorded Independence Day speech," he told reporters here.

However, Sarkar added that the issue would be taken before the people.

"We are not going to the court, but we would go to the people and tell them about the undemocratic, autocratic and intolerant steps of Prasar Bharati," he said.

Sarkar, also a Politburo member of CPI-M, said "as a political activist I expressed my political statement in my Independence Day speech, because I think the day is a political event."

Doordarshan had said it gave "wide coverage" to Sarkar's Independence day programme though it did not tell anything on his complaint that his recorded speech was blacked out.

"On August 15, 2017, Doordarshan gave wide coverage to the chief minister's Independence day programme and telecast report running to 29 minutes and 45 seconds. Out of which, the chief minister's speech coverage was for 12 minutes," U K Sahoo, head of Doordarshan Kendra, said in a letter to the media.

"The allegation that Doordarshan Kendra, Agartala blacked out the Chief Minister on Independence day is totally incorrect and is vehemently refuted," Sahoo said.

CPI(M) MP Sankar Prasad Datta said the issue would be raised in the Parliament's winter session.

Meanwhile, CPI-M activists demonstrated before the Doordarshan Kendra Agartala.

CPI-M Central Committee member Gautam Das said "people of the state would not tolerate this undemocratic step of Prasar Bharati, which is controlled by Modi government".

Opposition Congress MLA and former Leader of the opposition, Ratan Lal Nath said, the CPI-M was trying to "politicise" the issue before the assembly elections due in February next.

"They have no issue, so they are trying to politicise it and making a issue because they know that they are going loose in the elections," he said.
Infosys

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Three US law firms -- Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, Pomerantz Law Firm, and Rosen Law Firm -- have initiated investigations against information technology services major Infosys on multiple concerns relating to securities transactions of the company.

According to statements on the legal firms' websites the lawsuits pertain to potential lack of compliance of federal securities laws, securities fraud, unlawful practices, and materially misleading information.

"The investigation concerns whether Infosys and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices," Pomerantz Law Firm said in its press statement.

Meanwhile, Rosen Law Firm said it was investigating "...potential securities claims on behalf of shareholders of Infosys resulting from allegations that Infosys may have issued materially misleading business information to the investing public."

Additionally, Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman informed in a statement that it was investigating concerns whether Infosys and certain of its officers and/or directors have complied with federal securities laws.

The move comes after Infosys' shares in India plummeted to fresh low points after its CEO's exit. The company's American Depositary Receipts also dropped as much as $1.43 per share, or nearly 9 percent, during intraday trading on August 18, 2017.

An American depositary receipt (ADR) is a negotiable certificate issued by a US bank representing a specified number of shares (or one share) in a foreign stock traded on a US exchange, according to investor education portal, Investopedia.

On August 18, Sikka said in his resignation letter that over the last many months and quarters, he had been besieged by false, baseless, malicious and increasingly personal attacks.
Martin Luther King Jr. sat alone in a cell, surrounded by nothing but harsh metal bars, a toilet and small white sink.

Unable to change the injustices in the world outside the Birmingham Jail, he began to write in the slim white spaces bordering a newspaper. Although the year was 1963, many say the words of his letter still hold true: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

For a group of Burke County residents, the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, was an injustice. And they decided to make a change here at home.

A diverse crowd of residents gathered at the Gaston Chapel AME Church in Morganton on Thursday for a peace rally to discuss the events that happened in Charlottesville and to begin making a change.

The Rev. Tommy Carpenter of the Burke County Ministerial Alliance sent an invite to The News Herald, with a subject line reading, When Hatred Rears Its Ugly Head.

And for many of those attending the rally, the head has been held high above them for some time.

Jasper Hemphill, the president of the Morganton Area Ministerial Alliance, said he grew up on Bouchelle Street in Morganton  the same street that a black man was once drug down after he was lynched.

We had to learn to live with that or ignore it or put on blinders, Hemphill said. The blinding days are over, church. If we dont do it, who will? If we dont speak up, who will?

Jim Dahlin, the rector of St Mary's and St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, did just that  he spoke. But not only did he speak, he made a call for action.

How can Burke County, North Carolina, heal from these wounds of racism? he said. And Im new. Ive only lived here for two years, but I noticed we have a lot of things commemorating our history in the courthouse square.

He was referring to the Confederate monument, which is one of many across the country some say should be torn down. But Dahlin suggested a memorial for the two victims of lynching in Burke County to be placed in a public space, too.

Our Mayor Ronnie Thompson is sitting in the back, Dahlin said. I think we should all share with him our support for getting a memorial to our victims of lynches tonight before he can leave.

Thompson said Thursday night was the first time he heard of the suggestion and was surprised by the support he saw.

My first thought was, Youve got to be kidding me, Thompson said. But if were going to put history on display, thats part of history. I dont know if youd want to put that in your travelling tourism guide.

Thompson said he also spoke this week with multiple people concerned about the Confederate monument on the courthouse square and what it represents. Thompson said he has been around the statue since he was 4 years old and sometimes doesnt notice it anymore.

I guess I should, Thompson said. Its been discussed for many years, and were at the point where its being discussed again. Everybody has a viewpoint, and everybody deserves to be heard.

And among the many voices heard Thursday was Barbara Myers, president of the Burke County NAACP.

We belong, and were not afraid, Myers said about marginalized groups. The NAACP will fight, we will stand and we shall not be moved by those cowardly groups. Fear does not live here and has no place in our back yards.

And Gwendolyn Benjamin, a pastor at the church, said the fear is beginning to affect the community whether people realize it or not.

Carpenter said he even had a friend approach him to talk about the status of the country and the parallels it shares with times before  times he said he never thought would be relived again.

This is 2017, my brothers and sisters, Carpenter said. When I see people walk past me, I wave my hand and they dont speak. I understand that theres something wrong.

And as the meeting closed with prayer, instead of waving, hands were placed in hands. Mens in womens. Black in white.

Its time for us to stand together as one, Carpenter said. Its time for us to send a signal to the White House that things have to change.

Ryan Wilusz can be reached at rwilusz@morganton.com or 828-432-8941.
Law enforcement officers were called to an abandoned chemical plant in the Chesterfield community Thursday night for the second time in three days.

Burke County Sheriff Steve Whisenant said the call came from a nearby resident concerned about a suspicious person on the property, who turned out to be the owner. Records show the property was most recently registered as Specialized Technological Services owned by Timothy V. Wright.

The previous 911 call came Tuesday and led to a deputy becoming sick from a possible chemical exposure after coming onto the property to investigate a breaking and entering.

Deputy Bryant Baker was treated at a local hospital for his illness, which included trouble breathing and numbness in his arm, Whisenant said.

Local residents are saying that the false alarm Thursday night is likely due to the community being on edge about the crime and the sickness that took place.

We want this taken care of as soon as possible, resident Kathy Harshaw said. I love this community. The community is quiet. Everyone stays to themselves, but its family.

And Harshaw said she plans to bring the family together for a community meeting to figure out how to address the mystery of whats being stored on the site.

Harshaw and fellow resident Delphene Perkins said residents are concerned that an abundance of health problems in the community could be caused by whatever led to the deputy becoming sick.

(My husband) has health issues, and Im wondering if its from all these years living here, Perkins said. I think about it all the time. (The property) is here all the time. We see it. And we cant sell our property because there are chemicals here.

Perkins said residents also hear loud popping sounds coming from the property, and they believe the sounds are coming from the barrels. When Perkins saw lights coming from the property Thursday night, she and her family walked to the property to see what was going on.

Deputies with the sheriffs department were on scene and talked to the owner, Whisenant said. The owner said he found more items that were missing since he last looked Tuesday.

But Harshaw said she was concerned when Burke County Emergency Management Director Michael Willis showed up to the scene.

Willis said he was there to assist deputies in case anyone was exposed to the chemicals.

As far as we know, the building is closed, Willis said. If its closed, that means it should be empty. And if its not empty, I want to know whats in there.

A Burke County press release said that the state is coming in to investigate the chemicals on site. At the moment, multiple hydrocarbons are known to be stored on the property, the release said.

Willis said that there are multiple types of hazards, but hydrocarbons only fall under the flammable and combustible categories. Willis said citizens are not at risk to exposure or contamination, and he doesnt believe any chemicals have leaked into the ground.

This is the first Im hearing of it, and it brings up a whole lot of concerns, said Aaron Buff, who recently moved to Piney Road. Right now, all four (of my children) are here all day. Its a huge concern and something I will look into. Its also concerning I wasnt informed about it and wasnt even aware it was there.

But a lot of community members are well-aware of the property and have been for some time.

Nearby resident Kelvin Corpening said he remembers protesting against the plant alongside his mother and about 50 other residents when operations first began.

Trucks used to come in night and day  especially late at night, he said Wednesday. We didnt know what was coming in and out of there. We assumed it was hazardous waste.

Whisenant said the plant worked with cleaning chemicals and has not been operational for some time. Corpening said he believes the plant opened 30 years ago and shut down about 10 years ago.

Harshaw said shes concerned that the owner keeps coming to the property and is worried he might be trying to remove chemicals from the site. She said the whole situation is a mystery and hopes to get former minister James Johnson involved in the community meeting.

Johnson helped lead the protest against the plant when it first opened. He said he doesnt plan on bringing out the old picket signs but is patiently waiting until the investigation concludes.

I hate to see it surface back in any way, shape or form, Johnson said Wednesday. But right now, it looks like theres something that needs to be cleaned. If it made somebody sick, something needs to be done.

No arrest had been made as of 2:30 p.m. on Friday. Whisenant said the owner plans to follow up with the sheriffs office on Monday regarding the investigation.

Attempts to reach the owner were unsuccessful.

Ryan Wilusz can be reached at rwilusz@morganton.com or 828-432-8941.
James Durbin/Reporter-Telegram

Unemployment in the Midland metropolitan statistical area dropped to 3.2 percent in July from 3.5 percent in June and is well below the 4.9 percent reported in July 2016.

Midland tied with Austin-Round Rock for second lowest unemployment in the state, just behind Amarillos 3.1 percent. Midland saw a rise in its civilian labor force, along with more Midlanders employed and fewer Midlanders unemployed, according to data from the Texas Workforce Commission.
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 []
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One person has been arrested in connection with a shooting in a Walmart parking lot in Mount Dora, according to police.

Kederick Hunter, 20, was booked into the Lake County Jail on Saturday.

1 arrested, 1 sought in Walmart parking lot shooting

Arrest warrants issued for Kedrick Hunter & Gabriel Dejkunchorn

PREVIOUS STORY: 2 injured in shooting at Mount Dora Walmart, police say

Police issued an arrest warrant for Hunter and Gabriel Dejkunchorn, 20, for their involvement in the July 21 shooting.



Police were called out to the Walmart at US 441 and Eudora Road around 9:30 p.m. Friday in response to a shooting that occurred in the parking lot. They found two victims -- Christian Watson, who was shot in the back, and Gabriel Dejkunchorn, who was shot in the knee.

Both men were airlifted to area hospitals.

Police discovered all three men were in a car in the Walmart parking lot--Watson in the drivers seat, Hunter in the passengers seat, and Dejkunchorn in the back seat behind Watson.

Police said Dejkunchorn was holding a gun when it accidentally went off. Dejkunchorn shot himself in the knee and the bullet then penetrated the front seat and hit Watson in the back.

Watson ran from the car to see help and Hunter ran from the scene, but eventually returned and told investigators he wasn't there at the time of the shooting. Dejkunchorn also claimed someone else shot them, officials said.

Investigators determined only one shot was fired.

Hunter and Dejkunchorn face one charge of false reporting during the commission of a crime. Watson will not face any charges.

Anyone with information is asked to call Mount Dora Police at (352) 735-7130.
Plainview Lions Club

They are bison, bison, bison and not buffalo, as weve always called them, explained Texas Parks and Wildlifes Leann Pigg of Caprock Canyons State Park near Quitaque, as her instructional picture clips were shown on a giant screen for the program at our Lions Club meeting this past Wednesday at the civic center. This herd of approximately 140 roam loose over the 1,700-acre venue, mingling with onlookers and campers while in the park. Before our program, both Queen Katie Mahagan and Princess McKinley Whalen were back in their royalty positions at the head table with Lion Boss Misty Rowell manning the gavel, Bill Cross led pledges, Larry McNutt and Sharon Wright led singing and Mike Melcher gave the invocation. Guests introduced by Lanell Julian were Emily Ballard with Shala Whalen, Luke Miller with Brent Richburg and Timothy Schniers with Michael Subealdea. The ever-present raffle snatched in $97 for Texas Boys Ranch. At meetings end the Board of Directors voted into the club Chris Williams, sponsored by Ashley Mayberry.

Its great to be a Lion. We Serve  Ron White

Kiwanis International of Plainview

Eleven people attended Thursdays regular meeting at Plainview Country Club. Ron Gammage offered a prayer following the Pledge of Allegiance. Kaitlin and Kristen Lawson accompanied their dad, Charles.

Meredith Riney is this months Meals on Wheels driver.

Details continue to be worked out for the clubs 22nd annual barbecue, set for 5-7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 1 at Estacado Junior High. The convenient drive-through station once again will be offered, along with eat-in. Tickets, available from any Kiwanis member or at Independent Insurance Agents of Plainview (716 Broadway), are $7 for a Weekends Barbecue sandwich, chips, drink and dessert. Thanks to Xcel Energy, Weekends BBQ, Frito Lay, United Amigos, Covenant Hospital, Mark Warren and Meredith Riney for donations.

Anthony Booth with Agrellus, an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of agriculture products, spoke to the group about that start-up company.  Kevin Lewis

Plainview Rotary Club

The Plainview Rotary met Tuesday at the Plainview Country Club.

President Kim Street called the meeting to order and Leslie Gattis led the invocation. Ross Owen led the Pledge of Allegiance.

Guests were Trip Fortenberry and Melody Brown.

Coralyn introduced the year's foreign exchange student. Maude Esconde was introduced to the group by Coralyn Dillard. She is staying with the Gary Massingale family. Charles Starnes presented the French flag to the group.

Continuing to discuss the United Way, V.O. Ortega introduced the day's guests. Brenda Jones represented ECI, which has been in existence for over 30 years. This group works with children from birth to 3 years old with development problems. Homes are visited to help them with their children.

ECI covers nine counties and serves 292 children. A total of 22 people are on staff. All dollars from united Way stay in Plainview.

Also, speaking was Marci Brown who is the director of Crisis Center of the Plains, which helps victims of domestic abuse.

The center covers Motley, Lamb to Hall County and in between to Hale County. United Way helps the Safe House that stays full all year around with 106 families during the year. The United Way money stays in the county. Last year 697 victims were served.

Ross led the Four-Way Test and Kim dismissed the group.

--Cynthia Gregory
In Covenant Health Plainviews continued efforts to better serve the medical needs of our community, the hospital is proud to welcome Dr. Hima Jyothi as Plainviews new pediatrician.

Im just so excited to make the move to Plainview. The community seems so warm and friendly, said Jyothi who will start her practice Sept. 5.

Currently, the hospital is remodeling their Covenant Healthcare Center, located at 2222 W. 24th St., which will house Jyothis practice.

We are so happy to have Jyothi join our physician team here at Covenant Health Plainview, said CEO Bob Copeland.

She has been very well trained and has some great credentials behind her name. She also has an undeniable passion for children. There is no doubt she will be a great asset to the families of Plainview and the surrounding communities.

Jyothi is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics and is a certified provider in Pediatric Advanced Life Support as well as in the Neonatal Resuscitation Program.

In 2013, Jyothi completed medical school at Sri Venkateswara Medical College in Tirupati, India, before joining the Pediatric Residency program at Newark Beth Israels Childrens Hospital in Newark, New Jersey.

Jyothi has also served at hospitals in Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and California.

I gained a lot of experience during my time in New Jersey, added Jyothi. I was exposed to a variety of pediatric cases which I feel have strengthened me as a physician.

Jyothi was able to help a lot of children which she feels is her true calling in life.

My was a physician and growing up I became very fascinated with how the body worked and why people get sick, said Jyothi on why she chose a career in the medical field.

While going to medical school I really fell in love with pediatrics. Kids have always made me happy; their smiles always put a smile on my face.

After completing her residency, Jyothi said she had a desire to live in a smaller community and in an area where she could have more of an impact when it came to pediatric medicine.

It all just kind fell into place perfectly, Jyothi said. I felt there was a lot of need in Plainview for a pediatrician.

Outside of the doctors office, Jyothi says she mostly enjoys spending time with her family; husband Vishnu, a computer programmer, and their 6-year-old son, Arjun. Jyothi also likes to stay active with hobbies that include cooking, hiking and traveling.

After Jyothis practice opens on Sept. 5, walk-ins will be welcomed at her new Covenant Health Care Center Plainview office. For more information about appointments contact 806-291-5100.
Plainview/Hale County Crime stoppers Committee will pay a reward of up to $350 to anyone with information that will lead to the arrest and indictment of the person or persons responsible for the following crime:

--On Aug. 3, someone entered two buildings at 1709 W. 10th and took miscellaneous collectible items.
Unemployment numbers for the six counties within the Heralds circulation area showed a strong improvement in July, according to a report Friday by the Texas Workforce Commission.

Hale Countys jobless rate fell from 6.5 percent in June to 6.1 percent in July, with Briscoe dropping from 5.0 to 4.7 percent, Castro from 3.6 to 3.5, Floyd from 6.0 to 5.8, Lamb from 5.9 to 5.6 and Swisher from 4.3 to 4.1 percent in July.

It is good to see the unemployment number coming back down, observed Mike Fox, executive director of the Plainview/Hale County Economic Development Corporation. The Hale County seasonal up-and-down trends seem to be consistent from one year to the next. I look for that pattern to continue in the months to come.

Our larger employers have given no indication of planned layoffs and, in fact, many are hiring, Fox adds. The decrease in the labor force and number of employed may require further research as to the cause of this trend. Hale Countys labor force declined by 337, to 12,136, while the number of people employed declined 260 to 11,401.

As wind and other renewable energy projects start up, we will need a labor force to support those industries, Fox explains. In the coming months, there will be job opportunities for those desiring employment. There are exciting times ahead for Hale County with regards to jobs and overall economic development.

Danny Soliz of Lubbock, director of business development with South Plains Workforce Solutions, said every county across the South Plains showed declines with the exception of Cochran and Dickens. Both climbed from 4.9 to 5.5 percent.

The weather has been good, and there is a lot of construction, with a lot of people working, Soliz said. I expect the numbers will continue coming down in the next month with even more people going back to work, particularly with the start of school. After that, retail businesses will begin hiring staff for the holiday buying season.

Soliz said the economic throughout the South Plains is healthy. The weather certainly has helped out a lot, and we particularly are seeing that in Hale and surrounding counties, he said.

While it appears that many retail buyers are holding onto their money now, Soliz expects retail spending will increase with the anticipated bumper crops. With more money in circulation, the unemployment rate show continue to decline. Hale County will also benefit soon when construction begins on that big wind energy project, he adds.

Texas seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent, down from 4.6 percent in June. Annual employment growth for Texas was 2.4 percent, which was double the annual growth rate as compared to a year ago.

The Amarillo Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) recorded the months lowest unemployment rate among Texas MSAs with a non-seasonally adjusted rate of 3.1 percent, followed by the Austin-Round Rock and Midland MSAs with a rate of 3.2 percent. The College Station-Bryan and Sherman-Denison MSAs registered a rate of 3.5 percent for July. Lubbock MSA posted a rate of 3.6 percent for July, down from 3.9 in June.
The sun will be about 75 percent obscured at 12:57 p.m. Monday during the height of the solar eclipse in Plainview, but dont look up without proper protection or risk receiving permanent damage.

Your eyes will be damaged by the eclipse, explains Covenant Health Plainview ophthalmologist, Douglas Kopp, MD.

When you look directly into the sun, the radiation omitted will burn your retinas. The sun puts out a lot more than visible light; infrared waves make heat, UV rays do damage too and the radiation burns the most important parts of your retinas.

According to NASA, the eclipse begins in Plainview at 11:30 a.m. and ends 2:26 p.m., a duration of almost 3 hours. Its magnitude will be 79.5 percent with maximum area obscured at 74.77 percent.

The sun will be obscured 72 percent in Lubbock and 78.4 percent in Amarillo. The path of total eclipse includes Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina.

Its been almost 40 years since the last solar eclipse was visible in the United States.

In a total solar eclipse, the moon moves between the Earth and the sun. The moons shadow passes across the Earth and, for the people in the path of totality, the sun disappears behind the moon. West Texas will have about 75 percent totality, so the sun will be mostly blocked but some will remain visible.

Staring directly into the sun during the eclipse can cause permeant damage to the eye.

Kopp said he has treated many patients with eclipse burns to their eyes. Damage can include a permanent blind spot in the middle of your vision.

Kopp added that the risk of eye damage during an eclipse is reduced during the brief period when the sun is completely covered by the moon. However, during the Aug. 21 eclipse, Texas will not experience a total solar eclipse.

The eclipse is never going to be in its totality here in our region because we are not in that zone, added Kopp. So the entire time during the eclipse in West Texas your eyes are going to be damaged if you look at it.

The American Astronomical Society says the only safe way to look directly at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed sun is through special-purpose solar filters, such as eclipse glasses or handheld solar viewers.

Homemade filters or ordinary sunglasses, even very dark ones, are not safe for looking at the sun; they transmit thousands of times too much sunlight. Also, wearing solar eclipse glasses to look through a camera, binoculars or a telescope will not protect your eyes.

The Society advises to obtain solar filters and viewers from reputable vendors as there have been recent cases of fake lens being distributed. Lens must meet a very specific worldwide standard known as ISO 12312-2. More information can be found at eclipse.aas.org

Steps to follow for safely watching a solar eclipse:

--Carefully look at your solar filter or eclipse glasses before using them. If you see any scratches or damage, do not use them.

--Always read and follow all directions that come with the solar filter or eclipse glasses. Help children to be sure they use handheld solar viewers and eclipse glasses correctly.

--Before looking up at the bright sun, stand still and cover your eyes with your eclipse glasses or solar viewer. After glancing at the sun, turn away and remove your filter  do not remove it while looking at the sun.

--The only time that you can look at the sun without a solar viewer is during a total eclipse. When the moon completely covers the suns bright face and it suddenly gets dark, you can remove your solar filter to watch this unique experience. Then, as soon as the bright sun begins to reappear very slightly, immediately use your solar viewer again to watch the remaining partial phase of the eclipse.

--Never look at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed sun through an unfiltered camera, telescope, binoculars or other similar devices. This is important even if you are wearing eclipse glasses or holding a solar viewer at the same time. The intense solar rays coming through these devices will damage the solar filter and your eyes.

--Talk with an expert astronomer if you want to use a special solar filter with a camera, a telescope, binoculars or any other optical device.

Monday forecast calls for mostly sunny skies in Plainview with only a few high clouds.
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HOUSTON  In the finale at Minute Maid Park, the As will face Astros starter Brad Peacock  who is, get this, 10-1 with 121 strikeouts in 922/3 innings.

Yes, that is the same Brad Peacock who was once an Oakland minor-leaguer and who was traded to Houston along with Chris Carter and Max Stassi in exchange for Jed Lowrie and Fernando Rodriguez before the 2013 season.

Hes made some significant adjustments, As manager Bob Melvin said. His arm angle is lower now, hes got a different complement of pitches. Hes really reinvented himself. Its a credit to them over there for basically having a different guy now. When we had him, he was straight over the top, heater and curveball, basically. Now hes throwing a lot more pitches, getting a lot more movement because of his arm slot. A lot more confidence; hell throw any pitch in any count.

We did have Brad Peacock. We didnt have the Brad Peacock were seeing right now.

Peacock, 29, is 2-0 with a 2.19 ERA against Oakland this year after going 1-4 with a 4.79 ERA in his first 10 career outings against the As.

Astros manager A.J. Hinch described Peacocks season as exceptional. Watching him evolve as a pitcher the last couple of years, its really come together this year, his ability to miss bats. Hes had to change the way he pitches mostly because of health issues. Hes battled his control in the past, but hes found a niche in his delivery. ... Hes arguably been our most consistent pitcher this year outside of Dallas Keuchel.

The strikeout numbers are real. It takes a lot to accumulate those kinds of strikeout numbers.

The As acquired Peacock as part of the Gio Gonzalez deal with Washington before the 2012 season.

Briefly: Three of the four umpires Saturday wore white wristbands as part of the umpires protest of recent criticisms by players. Home-plate umpire Ryan Additon was the exception. ... Umpire Jerry Layne was back, at third base, after leaving Friday nights game when struck on the left wrist by a foul ball. ... The As Ryon Healy has a 10-game hitting streak at Houston.

Susan Slusser is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

On deck

Sunday

at Astros

11:10 a.m. NBCSCA

Cotton (5-10) vs. Peacock (10-1)

Monday

at Orioles

4:05 p.m. NBCSCA

C. Smith (0-2) vs. TBA

Tuesday

at Orioles

4:05 p.m. NBCSCA

Blackburn (3-1) vs. TBA

Leading off

Multitalented: Reliever Chris Hatcher was a catcher in the minors. Yeah, I dont think well be doing that with him, manager Bob Melvin said when asked if Hatcher might catch in an emergency. But its good to know.

 Susan Slusser
Dozens of soldiers, some as young as 11, sported the blue uniforms of Union soldiers as they stood at attention for the raising of the United States flag at Fort Point on Saturday.

The Civil War re-enactors marched into the fort for Living History Day, just one week after violent riots broke out on the other side of the country over the plan to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

White supremacists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Va., and the University of Virginia campus on Aug. 12 to protest the statues removal from a city park. Residents, civil rights leaders and onlookers took to the streets in counterprotest. One woman died in the riots.

The events in Charlottesville reignited a national conversation about the appropriateness of Confederate monuments in cities nationwide.

But the national debate didnt sway any plans for the re-enactment at Fort Point.

For Austin Bettencourt, 22, the point of Saturdays re-enactment was education.

It was the most defining war in our history, he said. It was what cemented the American mentality: We are a nation, a unified country.

Bettencourt has been re-enacting the Civil War for 12 years. He said the annual event at Fort Point is meant to show a soldiers daily life. No battles were fought at the fort or near San Francisco, but Union soldiers underwent vigorous training to prepare for battle.

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Bettencourt dressed in a Union uniform Saturday, but most of his ancestors fought on the Confederate side. No matter which side they fought for, he said, its important to honor their sacrifice.

The perseverance and the strength they had is beyond admirable, he said. And thats something that needs honoring, no matter what.

The plans for Fort Points construction in 1853 were signed by Jefferson Davis, then the U.S. secretary of war. Davis went on to become the president of the Confederate States of America.

That connection surprised San Rafael resident Joe Ridout, who brought his two daughters, Sierra, 4, and Ruby, 2, to the re-enactment. In light of the ensuing national debate, Ridout said, it was interesting to see the stark connection Fort Point has to the Confederacy.

But re-enactments are not political one way or another, he said.

I think its a great way to introduce history on a face-to-face level, he said.  I wanted these two little ones, who just came upon this world, to see something thats been here for so much longer.

Re-enactor Jamin Gjerman said Civil War re-enactments are different from monuments erected of Confederate generals, but they havent been immune from protests.

Gjerman, 23, has been re-enacting Civil War battles since he was 11, and said people have come out to protest events in the past, especially the use of Confederate flags.

He said it could get worse in light of the events in Charlottesville, but he plans to continue for the educational value of re-enactments.

It gives people a way to experience things in context that you would never get the chance just studying it, he said.

Many of the re-enactors are part of formal groups who travel around the state to play out battles and daily soldier life, sometimes for weeks at a time. Bettencourt said they study and research for hours to keep it as educational as possible and focus on the soldiers.

To re-enact the Civil War is to honor them the best we can, he said. Were not trying to make a political statement, were just telling it how it is.

Alison Graham is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: agraham@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @alisonkgraham
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Seven elderly residents were removed from an unlicensed care home in San Franciscos Cole Valley neighborhood Friday morning, police said.

Firefighters responding to a medical emergency at 1208 Stanyan St. at 9:30 a.m. alerted police of possible elder abuse, said Officer Grace Gatpandan, a police spokeswoman.

Officers found the house was being used as an unlicensed residential care home, Gatpandan said.

According to public records, a business called Moanas Independent Living had operated out of the address, but neither the business nor the address had a license registered with the state to run an assisted living facility or adult care home.

The seven residents located by officers at the home were taken to local hospitals, either for treatment or because they could not care for themselves, Gatpandan said.

Investigators were questioning one person in connection with the operation of the home, Gatpandan said, but that individual had not been arrested as of Friday evening.

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Two men were booked into County Jail on suspicion of elder abuse about an hour after police responded to the home, but Gatpandan could not confirm if they were related to the case.

The homes inhabitants were a mix of elderly adults who could live independently and several who required licensed, around-the-clock medical care, said Chandra Johnson, a spokeswoman for the citys Human Services Agency, which oversees the adult protective services unit.

Nurses and social workers worked with the displaced residents all day Friday, Johnson said.

Our agency is concerned any time we hear about people who are not receiving the level of support and care that they need, Johnson said. Our efforts right now are making sure that people are safe and are receiving the adequate attention.

The Human Services Agency alerted the state Community Care Licensing Division, and the homes operators may have to answer to state regulators as well.

Potentially, there are code violations across several regulatory bodies, Johnson said.

Anyone with information about the care home is asked to call the police special victims unit at (415) 553-9225.

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo
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The hook of fanfare, food and fun connected the Sunnyside community to Achieve 180, the Houston Independent School District's ambitious new strategy to increase the academic vigor of underperforming schools.

A parade on Saturday followed by a resource fair at Worthing High School  dubbed with social media hashtag #SouthsideTakeover  enacted one of the critical pieces of the all-in plan to resolve longstanding academic issues at nearly three dozen HISD schools.

Achieve 180 is a turnaround plan for 32 under-served campuses announced by HISD Superintendent Richard Carranza in April. Trustees funded the ambitious initiative during June's budget approval vote.

Now Playing: HISD Superintendent Richard Carranza talks about Achieve 180, a turnaround plan for 32 under-served campuses. Video: Cindy George Video: JW Player

The plan aims to create learning environments with high expectations and ensure that each school has a nurse, counselor and librarian. The framework for school transformations rests on six pillars: leadership excellence, teaching excellence, instructional excellence, school design, social and emotional learning support and family and community empowerment.

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Carranza, who showed up in a 10-gallon hat, could hardly move around campus amid ongoing handshakes and hugs. He said Achieve 180 is a "movement" expected to include more than 1,000 teachers as well as about 20,000 students and their families.

"This is pillar six of our Achieve 180 plan  empowering the community, not just engaging. ... It's important because this is what we need to do to reconnect with our communities to make our communities understand that they own our schools. This is their school," he said. "This is a celebration  but if you think we're celebrating now  wait until a year from now, when Worthing High School is out of Improvement Required status and they are just academically accelerating. There's no doubt in my mind that's what we'll be talking about next year.

Lorine Robinson of Sunnyside found about the event while registering her 5-year-old grandson, Javon Rogers, for kindergarten at Reynolds Elementary, which is in the Worthing feeder pattern.

She received a backpack and one uniform to check off her needed supplies list.

"I'm glad they are getting the community involved," the home health care worker said.
Troy

The offices of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Gov. Andrew Cuomo are monitoring an investigation into Tuesday's shooting of a 22-year-old parole absconder who may not have been armed when at least one Troy police officer opened fire and injured the man during a traffic stop.

An executive order Cuomo signed two years ago allowing the state attorney general to investigate deadly encounters between police and unarmed civilians does not give Schneiderman's office authority to intervene in the Troy case because the parolee, Dahmeek McDonald, was not killed. The limitation in the executive order has raised questions among some district attorneys and others about whether the governor's order should have been written to give Schneiderman broader authority to intervene in any case where police use deadly force, whether or not someone dies.

"The executive order was signed after a series of fatal altercations," said Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for the governor. "We are monitoring this case closely and we'll take action as appropriate."

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Tuesday's shooting took place as Schneiderman's office is investigating the April 2016 fatal shooting of a DWI suspect by a Troy police sergeant. Earlier this year, Cuomo signed another order that allowed Schneiderman's office to expand that investigation and examine Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel E. Abelove's controversial handling of the 2016 shooting, including his decision to rush the case before a grand jury that cleared the sergeant, Randall French, less than a week after the shooting.

Cuomo signed the 2015 executive order after a series of fatal encounters between police and unarmed civilians in New York and across the nation. The order gave Schneiderman the power to conduct independent investigations in fatal police encounters when, "in his opinion, there is a significant question as to whether the civilian was armed and dangerous at the time of his death."

The governor's order said a basis of the intervention would be to alleviate "public concerns ... that such incidents cannot be prosecuted at the local level without conflict or bias, or the public perception of conflict or bias."

A spokesman for Abelove said their office "will not be commenting on the shooting from Tuesday, as Troy PD is still investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting."

Oneida County District Attorney Scott D. McNamara, president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York, said Cuomo has the ability to issue an order giving Schneiderman authority to intervene in the investigation of this week's shooting in Troy. Still, McNamara said he and other district attorneys believe they can handle these types of cases "fairly and dispose of them properly," but he does not question the governor's ability to do what he did.

"Honestly, because of everything that's going on, I think it was appropriate for him to do it," McNamara said. "I have no idea why he limited it to just fatal shootings. My speculation is that he was trying to limit the order to as narrow of a situation as it could be. ... But he clearly has the authority on any case that he sees fit to have a special prosecutor step in."

In general, the attorney general's office often waits several days, if not longer, to determine whether to intervene in an investigation involving a police shooting. During that period, they also are sometimes left waiting to see whether someone shot or injured by police dies.

"Over the last two years, we've been able to work collaboratively with district attorneys across the state  including in cases where a civilian was seriously injured and might not survive  in order to faithfully execute our responsibilities under the executive order," said Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for Schneiderman.

Albany County District Attorney David Soares said delays in determining who has jurisdiction on a case can be problematic.

"The investigation must be immediate, and within that space you can't afford to engage in any uncertainties," Soares said. "The last thing you want at a scene are people standing around wondering whether I have a conflict. ... If the governor wants the attorney general's office to do these cases because it wants to remove any appearance of impropriety, then they should be doing them all and that way the public can be assured there's complete transparency."

Soares noted that Schneiderman's ongoing investigation of Abelove's handling of the 2016 fatal shooting in Troy is ongoing even as Abelove is now tasked with overseeing any potential grand jury investigation of Tuesday's shooting.

"Some may perceive a cloud even before the case arrives at the district attorney's office because the attorney general is investigating the district attorney," Soares said.

Troy police are also the subject of another outside investigation being led by Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka, who, as a court-appointed special prosecutor, is using a grand jury to investigate the unauthorized search of a city apartment in June by members of a detective unit. The city placed six detectives on leave that month after allegations surfaced that the detectives argued about whether to file a report stating they entered the apartment without a search warrant because they suspected someone was burglarizing the residence.

Their search was prompted by a tip from Schenectady police that a woman wanted on felony charges in their city may be staying at the apartment. The woman was not found inside, but detectives recovered drugs.

blyons@timesunion.com  518-454-5547  @brendan_lyonstu
A sought-after medication used to wean addicts off heroin and other opioids can now be prescribed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants, as well as doctors, in New York state.

The state's addition of medical practitioners who can prescribe buprenorphine, known by the brand Suboxone, is an attempt to increase access to the medication amid the heroin and opioid abuse epidemic. It's the latest effort to make medication-assisted treatment for addiction more widely available.

A once controversial therapy, it's become more widely accepted in light of rising overdose deaths and improved understanding of addiction as a medical disorder affecting brain chemistry.

"We hope and expect that the addition of NPs and PAs will increase access," said Stephanie Campbell, executive director of Friends of Recovery New York.

Nurse practitioners and physician assistants joined the list of practitioners who can prescribe buprenorphine in May, says the state Health Department. Rules covering their participation were published this week in the New York State Register. All practitioners who want to prescribe the medication must go through a training course and are subject to limits on how many patients they may have on the drug.

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Buprenorphine is one of several medications used to help addicts give up opioids, whether they are abusing prescription painkillers like oxycodone or illegal drugs like heroin. Like methadone, it is a highly regulated substance whose ingredients include an opioid. It can help someone slowly kick an opioid addiction.

Unlike methadone, which may be dispensed only at a federally approved clinic, buprenorphine can be ordered by a medical practitioner and picked up at the pharmacy, like most other prescription drugs.

But recovering addicts and their families have told the Times Union about challenges in finding ethical providers who will prescribe buprenorphine, especially those who will take insurance rather than cash. A couple of years ago, they reported it was easier to get Suboxone on the street than in a doctor's office.

Since then, federal health officials have urged opening up access to medication assisted therapy, and have expanded the number of patients that doctors may monitor, from 100 to 275 patients. (The new rule will allow nurse practitioners and physician assistants to prescribe to 30 patients initially, and then increase to 100.) The state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse has approved more clinics that dispense both methadone and buprenorphine, as well as a third drug, naltrexone, known as Vivitrol.

Lisa Wickens-Alteri, a Guilderland resident and patient advocate who speaks publicly about her son's struggle with addiction, praised the state's efforts to increase medication-assisted treatment at clinics. But it remains difficult to get Suboxone at a medical office, she said. She recently contacted a large regional medical office with more than 100 providers and found that only one practitioner there was prescribing buprenorphine.

Many middle class people who could benefit from the medications won't go to a clinic to get them, she said. "Who's going to go to Whitney Young if they're going to Bethlehem High School, to get treatment?" Wickens-Alteri said, referring to the methadone clinic on DeWitt Street, between rail tracks and the river. "There's still that stigma."

Doctors who prescribe buprenorphine in private practices, outside of addiction treatment centers, have said several factors keep their peers from also doing so. Monitoring patients on the drugs carries added responsibilities, and improper supervision can result in suspension of a medical license if a patient sells Suboxone on the street.
While the state considers overhauling teacher certification requirements to address the growing statewide shortage of candidates, area school officials have different ideas about what those changes should look like.

Most districts in the Danbury area have managed, unlike other districts around the state, to fill all or most vacancies before the school year starts. But they still recognize that finding qualified candidates has become more difficult, especially in subject areas like math, science, foreign languages and special education.

We are having difficulty finding teachers to fill certain areas, said Region 9 Superintendent Thomas McMorran. At this point a strong teacher of Spanish or French is worth her weight in gold.

Region 9, like Danbury, Bethel and Newtown, was able to fill all open positions for the coming school year, while Brookfield, New Milford and New Fairfield each have one position left open. Ridgefield was the outlier, with 12 unfilled positions, although Superintendent Karen Baldwin said she thinks this has more to do with the districts declining enrollment discouraging applications than with certification.

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The most recent statewide data shows that 250 teaching positions in Connecticut went unfilled during the 2014-15 school year, more than double the 95 unfilled positions in 2010-11, according to state Department of Education reports.

Dianna Wentzell, state commissioner of education, said the rising number of vacancies and feedback from staff prompted the department to look into making changes to the certification process, which hasnt been revised since 1998.

What were hearing from our teachers and higher education partners and school districts is that some of our regulations are outdated and make it difficult for people who want to pursue education, Wentzell said. So we need to take a look to see where we may be inadvertently creating barriers to education in Connecticut.

The department does not yet have a specific plan for the changes but hopes to come up with suggestions to be added to the state Board of Educations legislative agenda this fall, Wentzell said.

Most proposals right now focus on removing unnecessary roadblocks, such as requiring bilingual teachers to prove English proficiency as well as aptitude in a second language, even though theyve already gone through an English-speaking program.

She also hopes the department can help streamline the complicated process of increasing certification levels throughout a teachers career, where many teachers can get blocked from moving to the next level by a technicality or miscommunication.

Some school officials, like Newtown Superintendent Lorrie Rodrigue, agreed that removing some of the hoops to jump through for teachers would make things easier.

What an outstanding idea, to look at what we all know can be often a complex, more bureaucratic system, Rodrigue said. (The system) can be made significantly less complicated for those candidates who want to apply for positions throughout the state.

McMorran and Rodrigue agreed, like officials in New Milford and Danbury, that one focus of change should be making it easier for teachers from other states to move into Connecticuts workforce.

These officials said they would permit teachers from other states with good performance evaluations to begin teaching while they await certification in Connecticut, instead of waiting until they go through the process.

If I have a left foot in Danbury and my right foot across the line in Carmel, N.Y., Im just the same person I was one foot earlier, said Danbury Deputy Superintendent Bill Glass. The idea of saying there must be some sort of magical wall between states is ludicrous."

Glass said that, for Danbury, going into the new school year without unfilled positions, as the district is this year, is unusual. In years past the district has always had at least a few positions that had to be filled with long-term substitutes.

But this year, the lack of a state budget has led to a larger pool of candidates for Danbury, because other districts have been forced to lay off teachers while they await clarification on state aid to local schools.

Another idea for changing certification requirements, Glass said, could be allowing more flexibility in measuring aptitude. The current system focuses too much on passing standardized tests, which doesnt always translate to the classroom, he said.

Just because you pass a test doesnt mean youre going to be a good teacher, Glass said. Weve had folks whove struggled to pass the certification exams who have turned out to be our best teachers.

New Milford Superintendent Joshua Smith said flexibility should also be used in figuring out who can teach which subject. He said as new subjects are added to the curriculum, such as a middle-school engineering class in New Milford, it is difficult to determine which certification applies.

There are more courses that dont live clearly in one subject matter, Smith said.

But Smith and other officials also fear that too great a change could mean a watered down pool of candidates.

Were going to solve the problem with lowering our standards, does that sound right? McMorran said. If we have someone were going to entrust with teaching kids who finds navigating a bureaucracy too difficult, we probably dont want to have them.

McMorran said addressing the teacher shortage could be done in other ways, such as finding better support for teachers workloads so they dont leave the profession early, as he said teachers increasingly do.

He added that reducing the emphasis on standardized testing could make subjects like math and science more appealing to students and encourage them to become teachers in those areas.

Wentzell said the deparment plans to work with officials from around the state but wants districts to know the focus for the changes will not be on lowering standards.

Were not changing our ideas about rigor; were changing our idea about the process, she said.

But, as always, it will be up to each individual district to find a candidate they think is qualified.

We know we are not the final decision-maker, Wentzell said. We dont place teachers in schools, we just certify whether theyve met the minimum requirements to teach.

We have a lot of faith in our leaders at the local level to make good human resource decisions and we want to make sure were not getting in their way.

aquinn@newstimes.com
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STRATFORD  When she heard a loud argument last weekend between two family members, Raenetta Catchings tried to intercede and was accidentally shot to death, police sources said.

On Friday, Michael Buddha Catchings surrendered to police for his involvement in the incident. A source said Raenetta Catchings thought of Michael Catchings as a younger brother, although it was not clear exactly what their relationship was.

Michael Catchings, 21, of Stratford, was charged with first-degree manslaughter with a firearm, attempted murder, criminal use of a firearm, criminal possession of a firearm, unlawful discharge of a firearm, carrying a firearm without a permit, first-degree reckless endangerment, second-degree breach of peace, first-degree assault and first-degree threatening.

He was already on probation for an assault in Stamford, and was held on $500,000 bond, pending arraignment in Superior Court on Tuesday.

Raenetta Catchings, 27, the mother of two young children, worked for the Center for Transitional Living and friends and family said she always went out of her way to help people.

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Early Sunday morning, police said, she tried to break up between Michael Catchings and another male relative in the street outside her North Avenue home. Police said Michael Catchings pulled out a gun and began firing at the other man  a 24-year-old who police have not identified  and in addition to hitting him, fatally shot Raenetta Catchings.

Members of the Catchings family, which had been celebrating a relatives 50th birthday at the time of the shooting, were initially reluctant to cooperate with officers, police said. But that apparently changed and, notified that police had a warrant for his arrest, Michael Catchings turned himself in without incident.

Apparently it was the result of the argument out in front of the house that we initially reported, Stratford Police Capt. Frank Eanotti said. Things apparently went south, and the result was a tragedy. It went from a verbal argument to a gun being pulled.

As of Wednesday, the man Michael Catchings is also accused of shooting was reported to still be in critical condition.

At Mondays Stratford Town Council meeting, Stratford Police Chief Joseph McNeil assured council members and that public that there would be an arrest soon.

We have a very good record at finding suspects and bringing them to justice, McNeil said. I dont care what state they go to or what country they go to  we will find them and bring them in. We have a great force with many smart and talented people.

Eannotti said the department had a number of good leads in the case that pointed us in the right direction.
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Police believe a 33-year-old registered sex offender from San Antonio planted a camera in a public restroom at a downtown Seattle hotel.

Patrick Middleton was charged with voyeurism Monday for the operation that was discovered in November 2015.

The director of the Hyatt hotel in the 700 block of Pine Street called police Nov. 25 that year to report a device placed in the women's health club restroom, plugged into an electrical outlet at a vanity mirror, police reports say. The device bore a label saying, "AC/DC Adapter."

The director of security discovered a pinhole in the device that turned out to be a camera. Staff reviewed the footage to find a man captured placing the device, according to court records. Other video files depicted women changing clothes.

RELATED: Charge: Girl molested by neighbor 'didn't want him to be mad'

The hotel used surveillance and key card information to identify the man who planted the camera as Middleton. They believe he entered the health club 11 times between Nov. 22 and 23 and that he paced and loitered outside the health club.

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Authorities appear not to have arrested him for this incident, but collaborated with San Antonio law enforcement to identify him.

RELATED: Charge: Attempted Ballard Pool voyeur 'has needs'

The King County Superior Court issued a $50,000 warrant for Middleton.

Middleton is a lifetime registered sex offender for sex crimes involving children, according to the Texas sex offender registry.
1 Officers shot: A police officer in Florida died from his injuries Saturday, a day after his colleague was killed when a suspect fired at them during a scuffle. The suspect was later arrested at a bar. Sgt. Sam Howard, 36, died Saturday at a hospital where he was taken after Friday nights shooting in Kissimmee. Officer Matthew Baxter, 27, died a short time after authorities say he was shot by Everett Miller, 45. During a patrol of a neighborhood with a history of drug activity, Baxter was checking out three people, including Miller, when the officer got into a scuffle with Miller. Howard responded as backup, said Police Chief Jeff ODell. Deputies with a neighboring law enforcement agency later tracked Miller down at a bar.

2 Confederate statue: Duke University removed a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee early Saturday after it was vandalized amid a national debate about monuments to the Confederacy. The university in Durham, N.C., said it removed the carved limestone likeness before dawn from Duke Chapel, where it stood among 10 historical figures. Officials discovered Thursday that the statues face had been gouged and that part of the nose was missing. Another statue of Lee, the top Confederate general during the Civil War, was the focus of the violent protest in Charlottesville, Va., that turned deadly a week ago. Duke University President Vincent Price said he consulted with faculty, staff, students and alumni before deciding to remove the statue.
WASHINGTON - Stephen Bannon thought he'd only serve a year as the president's chief political strategist. Rumors of his imminent sacking arose every few weeks. In April, the rumor that he'd be plucked off the National Security Council actually proved true.

But even with the news Friday that the key Donald Trump adviser was out of the White House, the leaders of the "alt-right," which Bannon elevated and then denounced, predicted that their movement would continue.

"I'm sad to see Bannon go, but I was never sure who Bannon was ideologically and politically," said Richard Spencer, the white nationalist who popularized the term "alt-right" to rebrand the white nationalist movement. "He's a fighter, to be sure, and a populist in a basic sense, but what he actually believed was never clear."

Bannon's detractors thought they knew what he believed. They pored over books he praised, especially the 1973 anti-refugee book "The Camp of the Saints." They shuddered at how he called the news site he will return to lead, Breitbart, a "platform for the alt-right," with verticals on "black crime" and paranoia about unchecked immigration.

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Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor whom Bannon helped turn into a transgressive campus celebrity, said "time will tell whether the Trump administration will drift into turpitude without Steve around."

"Steve is far more dangerous and powerful outside of the White House now. And I think he will be happier, too. I can't wait to see Bannon the Barbarian viciously crush his enemies from whatever perch he believes he will be most effective from," Yiannopoulos said.

For Democrats, the removal of Bannon isn't enough. In statements Friday, Democratic lawmakers were sure to bring up the president's comments on the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and mention that the Trump administration still included Attorney General Jeff Sessions and immigration policy adviser Stephen Miller.

"Steve Bannon's firing is welcome news, but it doesn't disguise where President Trump himself stands on white supremacists and the bigoted beliefs they advance," said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

"It's good news that he's not in the White House," said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., who has sought Bannon's firing since November. "But I don't think anyone should have any illusions that now that Steve Bannon is gone, the president is going to take very different positions. These are the president's positions. These are the president's policies. They remain."

"A Nazi sympathizer, Klan defender, and supremacist protector should not be President of the greatest country in the world," said Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, in a statement, who was first to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump.

No member of Trump's administration worried liberals as much as Bannon. They shared photos of the strategist looking particularly unkempt. The Onion portrayed Bannon as a ghoulish fairy tale villain, with a headline announcing that he had burst "into millions of spores" upon his departure.

Anthony Atamanuik, a Trump impersonator who hosts the weekly Comedy Central satire "The President Show," cast the actor John Gemberling to play Bannon as a shambling, wide-eye slob.

"I conceived him your friend who breaks out the Ouija board at the seance," Atamanuik said. "He was the guy who came up with theories about aliens building the pyramids, because he could not entertain the possibility that they were built by black or brown people. I think we did something accurate without knowing it - we had Trump being scared of him."

Progressive activists were genuinely scared of him. The first #FireBannon signs appeared at rallies the day after Trump's presidential victory. At some rallies, the chant "No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA" was altered to squeeze in a mention of Bannon. The chants never went away, and this week, many of the post-Charlottesville protests and vigils featured calls for Trump to fire Bannon.

The progressive group Daily Action organized at least 44,000 calls to the White House demanding Bannon be removed; Color of Change, which has organized advertiser boycotts of Breitbart and other news sites, got close to 100,000 people to sign anti-Bannon petitions.

"His record made him such a clear figure of what Trump's policies would mean for people," explained Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change. "We wanted to say to members of Congress, who were seeking to treat this administration as normal, that they'd be held accountable for doing business with people like this."

The success of those left-wing protests left a bitter taste for Bannon's alt-right defenders. As the Bannon news circulated on Reddit and 4chan forums, Trump fans veered between rationalization ("He will return to Breitbart in a civilian capacity in order to fight in the culture war") and depression ("Why would you contact a leftist columnist and give an unsolicited interview in which you kill your reputation and give the media an angle on you?").

Vox Day, an alt-right activist and science fiction author, argued that Bannon's enemies had missed the real reason he was terminated. Bannon's nationalism, for all the hate it drew, put him on the opposing side of neoconservatives - the war hawks that the left used to hate.

"He's not a bureaucrat, and the kind of strategic advice he offers Trump can just as easily be provided from outside," Day said. "My one concern is that this could mean that the military interventionists are going to get their way in Syria, Venezuela and North Korea. I suppose we'll find out soon enough."

- - -

The Washington Post's Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.
The local job outlook continues to look bright with a new report showing the regional and Texas economy continuing to add more jobs, while yet another company is announcing its plans to expand in Conroe and hire dozens of workers.

The Texas Workforce Commission, which tracks job growth across the state, reports with the Texas economy expanding for the 13th month in a row, more jobs were added locally, as well as across Texas. A few days before Friday's report was released Bauer-Pileco Inc., a German-based company with its North American headquarters in Conroe, announced it would be expanding its local presence.

Statewide, the workforce commission reports 19,600 jobs were added in Texas in July, reducing the state's unemployment rate to 4.3 percent, down from 4.6 percent the month before.

The local job market also got a boost, with more people finding work in what the commission describes as the Houston-The Woodlands area, with the unemployment rate for the area declining to 4.9 percent in July. Federal numbers show their most recent numbers for Montgomery County to be slightly better, with the unemployment rate for June at 4.7 percent. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has not yet released their July numbers for the county.

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"Texas employers continue to keep our state's economy strong with private-sector employment expanding over the year with overall job-growth of 266,000 including 20,500 jobs added in July," said TWC commissioner Ruth Hughs.

"Texas is a state that continues to welcome new employers and work with our homegrown businesses, offering them the tools they need to grow and succeed."

Beyond statistics, a steady drumbeat of announcements of new businesses opening, companies moving to the region, and other upbeat reports continue to brighten Conroe's economic picture.

Bauer-Pileco says it will be building a new 78,774-square-foot facility in Conroe Park North. In announcing the move, the company says it will be relocating its North American headquarters from North FM 3083 to the new and larger building to be built in the industrial park.

Though company officials haven't announced specific hiring plans, Conroe Mayor Toby Powell says Bauer-Pileco will hire between 60 to 90 people over a period of time. The company's more expansive headquarters will be adjacent to a number of other companies with international roots that are also or will soon be looking for new workers.

Icotex, a joint venture between German-based Juegenrich and Japan's Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift division, opened its new plant in the industrial park earlier this month. About 80 people are expected to be hired when the plant is running at full capacity. Dozens of more jobs are expected to open up when Mexico-based Galdisa USA and China-based Memstar USA finish their new plants nearby.

"We have an awful lot to offer to these large companies," Powell said, noting Conroe's ranking as the fastest growing city in the nation, its amenities and a wide range of additional offerings.

"We're in the running for an awful lot of programs (new companies) right now," he said.
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BERLIN - "There is only one side - the good side," cried Eva Kese, mustering a smile as she fought back tears. "Your hate has no place here."

Kese, 30, stood Saturday facing a crowd of about 500 neo-Nazis. They were gathered on the outskirts of the German capital to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Rudolf Hess, a deputy to Adolf Hitler. The demonstration marked another, more recent anniversary: One week since a march by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Virginia left one counterprotester dead.

Kese held up a sign with a hand-drawn pink heart to the neo-Nazis, who countered with a giant banner of their own, reading, "I regret nothing."

Choosing her words carefully, she repeated: "There is only one side."

President Donald Trump, she said, had drawn her to the streets of the German capital to counter the demonstration. She was incensed by his reaction to the violence in Charlottesville last weekend, in which he blamed "hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides."

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"Donald Trump brought me here today," said Kese, a mother of two who was born in Germany. "You can't stand for an ideology that says one side is inferior."

The rally in Berlin was planned before global attention turned to Charlottesville, but it took on new meaning after a week dominated by discussion of the Nazi past. Counter-protesters said they felt new urgency to denounce Germany's dark history - particularly in the former capital of the Third Reich - after watching it re-emerge like a phantom and haunt an American college town.

"It's dangerous everywhere, not just in Germany," said Sabine Sauer, 55.

Among the crowd of neo-Nazis, most of whom declined to be interviewed, an elderly man with glasses and a button-down shirt under a white T-shirt said he had been watching events in the United States with delight.

"They're finally standing up," said the man, who declined to give his name as other members of the crowd encircled him, preventing him from speaking further. Refusing media interviews was among the directives issued to demonstrators by organizers of the march, German media reported.

The guidelines for the march stipulated by authorities were also extensive - and made for a scene starkly at odds with the violent confrontation in Charlottesville. Speech is more strictly policed in Germany than it is in the United States, in large part to keep Nazi ideology at bay.

Following strict laws put into place after World War II, demonstrators were forbidden from chanting Nazi slogans, displaying swastikas and wearing certain military uniforms. They couldn't carry weapons.

Torches were also forbidden, an organizer announced before the march, and only one flag was allowed for every 50 people.

The Hess apologists were restricted in how they could talk about the prominent Nazi politician, who was convicted of crimes against peace after the war. They were barred from quoting him or playing his speeches.

The destination of the march was the former site of Spandau Prison, where Hess committed suicide in 1987. Soon after, it was demolished - ground to powder that was scattered in the North Sea - to prevent it from becoming a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis.

That didn't stop it from being the focus of Saturday's march, whose participants advance the conspiracy theory that Hess was killed covertly by the British.

But the neo-Nazis never reached the location of the former prison. They proceeded haltingly, flanked by police who kept counterprotesters behind metal barricades. The neo-Nazis remained mostly quiet, carrying the black, white and red flags of the German Empire.

"Nazis out," counter-protesters shouted, as a large crowd moved to block the road.

After a two-hour stalemate, in which opposing sides were separated by a 30-yard no man's land guarded by police, authorities led the neo-Nazis away from their intended destination, down a side street and back around to the transit station where they had begun.
Helsinki

Two people died in a stabbing attack in the center of the southwestern Finnish city of Turku on Friday, with police announcing an investigation into the motive and identity of a male suspect they shot and arrested.

The suspect was described as "a young foreigner" late Friday and taken to hospital after being shot in the thigh, police said.

Finnish police were cooperating with international agencies including Europol. The Finnish security police SUPO were also taking part in the probe.

Police said a search was under way to rule out other assailants, but the situation was under control.

"So far we are not investigating this as terror attack, but we can not rule that out," a spokesman for the Finnish Central Criminal police said.

Prime Minister Juha Sipila chaired an emergency Cabinet meeting via conference call late Friday, where police gave a briefing.

Sipila said the government "condemned the attack" and expressed condolences to the victims and their families.

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President Sauli Niinisto issued a statement saying the attack was "shocking and cowardly."

There were conflicting reports about how many were injured. Teemu Elomaa, a doctor at Turku Central University Hospital, said nine people received medical attention, and that three people were in intensive care. He said all the victims were adults.

Police told reporters they could not confirm whether the assailant had shouted words in Arabic, as some witnesses claimed.
Most of President Donald Trump's evangelical advisers have stood by him this week following much criticism over his response to violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, even as several CEOs left business advisory councils and members of his Committee on the Arts and Humanities have announced they are leaving the panel.

In a first for his evangelical advisory council, New York City megachurch pastor A.R. Bernard announced Friday that he had stepped down from the unofficial board of evangelical advisers to Trump. Bernard sat at the president's table on May 3, the night before the National Prayer Breakfast when Trump gathered several religious leaders to announce an executive order on religious freedom.

Bernard's Brooklyn-based Christian Cultural Center, which claims 37,000 in membership, has been described by the New York Times as the largest evangelical church in New York City. He said he submitted a formal letter on Tuesday, the same day Trump made controversial remarks about the events that took place in Charlottesville.

During a news conference, while he condemned white supremacists, Trump defended some "fine people" in Charlottesville and asked why the "alt-left" had not been criticized for violence. On Thursday, the president mourned the loss of "beautiful statues and monuments," referring to monuments to Confederate leaders.

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Bernard was part of Trump's advisory council during the campaign, but he told the Times last year that he had stepped away from that election role because he felt more like "window dressing" than a genuine adviser. The Times also reported that Bernard is a registered Republican, though he voted twice for Bill Clinton and twice for President Obama.

Attempts to reach Bernard Friday night were unsuccessful.

Bernard has been part of a group of a few dozen leaders who have given advice through the White House's liaison office. Other leaders who have been involved have been mostly a mix of Pentecostal and Southern Baptist pastors, including Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas and Paula White of New Destiny Christian Center in Florida.

Some leaders, including Southern Baptist pastor Jack Graham, Tony Suarez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and televangelist Mark Burns, doubled down in their support of the president.

However, Chicago-area megachurch pastor James MacDonald reminded his followers that he resigned after the Access Hollywood tapes were published during Trump's campaign. MacDonald had called Trump "lecherous and worthless" in a letter to the rest of the council.

Johnnie Moore, a former vice president of Liberty University, said in a text message that the group still plans to extend invitations to Bernard on various issues.

"I am responsible for attempting to give them good advice if I have the opportunity to do so," he said. "I believe it would be immoral not to try and make a difference when and how I can."

Earlier this week, Moore issued a statement saying evangelicals "abhor racism, anti-Semitism, white nationalism and white supremacism."

"I do not know a single evangelical leader who is racist. I do know evangelicals who struggle to build bridges of understanding for various reasons," he said. "I also believe the way that some in the media and in the administration as well as other politicians and also activists . . . [who] have handled the Charlottesville incident has at times been unhelpful, too emotional and insensitive."

Several members of Trump's Committee on the Arts and Humanities said in a letter Friday that they were leaving the panel. A rising number of Americans wants Trump to resign a Public Religion Research Institute poll conducted in early August found, but white evangelicals remain most opposed to the idea. Among white evangelicals, 79 percent oppose the calls to impeach Trump compared with half of Americans who say Trump does not deserve to be impeached.

Evangelicals, particularly white conservative ones, have debated their relationship to political power since the 1970s and 1980s, when Religious Right leaders tried to mobilize conservative Christians in politics. While 80 percent of evangelicals voted for Trump, many leaders became fiercely divided over whether to be so vocally supportive of the president.

Leaders are especially split over how to respond to Trump's policies. Many of them see him as a vehicle to enact antiabortion policies and are especially pleased with his pick of Vice President Mike Pence and his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

In a town just an hour southwest of Charlottesville, two evangelical brothers responded very differently from one another. On Sunday, Jonathan Falwell, who leads the megachurch Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., denounced racism from his pulpit. His brother Jerry Falwell Jr., who leads Liberty University, remained silent for several days until he tweeted support for Trump on Wednesday.

The brothers' responses to Charlottesville reflect the larger divide in evangelicalism right now over how to respond to racially and politically charged issues. Several evangelical leaders spoke out against racism from their pulpits on Sunday, but fewer have directed criticism toward Trump specifically.

One of the architects of the Religious Right, Jerry Falwell Sr., helped create Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., and its offshoot, Liberty University, institutions that were handed off to his sons Jerry Falwell Jr., who took the school, and Jonathan Falwell, who took the church. The two brothers seemed split during the election, with Jerry Falwell Jr. becoming one of Trump's earliest evangelical leaders to support him. Trump has spoken at Liberty several times, including this year's commencement ceremony.

Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, defended Trump earlier this week. However, in a later post, he quoted Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who sharply condemned the violence by white racists. On Friday, he hinted his support for keeping Confederate monuments.
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Barcelona

Spain was seized Friday with the realization that it had incubated a large-scale terrorist plot, as authorities across Europe mounted a manhunt following the deadliest attacks to strike the country in more than a decade: two vehicle assaults in Barcelona and a Catalan coastal town.

Investigators believe that at least eight people plotted the attacks, putting them at a level of sophistication comparable to major strikes in Paris and Brussels in recent years.

Spanish counterterrorism officers were scrambling to untangle the terrorist network, which involved at least four Moroccan citizens younger than 25, according to intelligence officials. In addition to those four, authorities have detained three Moroccan men and a Spaniard.

In a sign that the attack could have been significantly worse, police said they believed the assailants were planning to use propane and butane canisters in an explosive assault against civilians. Instead, the gas ignited prematurely, destroying a house in Alcanar, about 100 miles southwest of Barcelona that was being used by the suspects. The explosion killed at least two people and injured 16, including police officers and firefighters investigating the site.

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Hours later, police said, one of the suspects set out for the Las Ramblas area of Barcelona in a white delivery van, which he used to mow down pedestrians strolling along the tree-lined promenade.

As of Friday night, the fate of the main suspect  the driver of the van, who fled on foot after the rampage  was unclear. Police were investigating the possibility that he was among five assailants killed Friday in a second vehicle attack in Cambrils, a seaside town southwest of Barcelona.

Meanwhile, the nation began to mourn the international group of 13 victims  including at least one American  who were fatally struck in the heart of Barcelona's tourist district Thursday afternoon. A 14th victim was killed in the second ramming attack.

The slain American was identified by his family as Jared Tucker, 42, of the San Francisco Bay Area, who was on a European vacation with his wife to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

Spanish authorities still have not identified all of the casualties, so the U.S. Consulate in Barcelona is working with them to determine whether any more Americans were killed or injured.

The bloodshed prompted France to announce it was reinforcing its frontier with Spain, a sign of fears that further violence could spill beyond Spanish borders. Anti-immigrant Central European leaders seized on the suspects' nationalities to call for tighter controls on migration.

The Islamic State claimed that its "soldiers" carried out the Barcelona attack, but the level of actual involvement by the terrorist group was unclear.

Spanish intelligence officials were circulating at least four names among their European counterparts Friday, according to a Spanish intelligence official and a European intelligence official.

The four men, all holding Moroccan citizenship, ranged in age from 17 to 24. Three were born in the North African country: Said Aallaa, 18; Younes Abouyaaqoub, 22; and Mohamed Hychami, 24. The fourth was identified as Moussa Oukabir, 17, but the European intelligence official said Spanish officials had flagged someone with the same family name but a different first name. All lived in or near the Catalan town of Ripoll, close to the French border.

At least three of the men were killed in the attack in Cambrils, the Spanish intelligence official said, without identifying which of them were dead.

Two Spanish security officials said police originally sought Oukabir's older brother because his identity card was found in the truck used for the Barcelona attack. The older brother, who is in custody, denies any connection to the attack and said his brother may have stolen his identity card, the official said.

"We cannot rule out further attacks," Maj. Josep Llui-s Trapero, a Catalan police official, said.

Authorities were not aware of any previous connection to extremism among the detained men, he said.

All five men involved in the second attack in Cambrils were shot dead after plowing an Audi into people along the corniche at about 1 a.m., Trapero said.

The nationality of the men was sure to raise alarm in European counterterrorism circles. Moroccan networks also were connected to major terrorist attacks in France and Belgium in recent years. Spain has a significant Moroccan population, and there has been a spike in arrivals of migrants from Morocco this year.

Their background also prompted Europe's anti-migrant politicians to condemn what they said was a connection between migration and terrorism, even though there was no evidence that the men were part of the waves of migration from Africa and the Middle East in recent years.

"It is evident to everyone that there is a correlation between illegal immigration and terrorism," Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told his country's MTI news agency. "Europe must protect itself, and the security of the people must be guaranteed."

In Barcelona, thousands of people gathered at midday Friday in a square at the top of Las Ramblas for a minute of silence, led by Spanish King Felipe VI and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Afterward, they cheered, held single red roses to the sky and chanted in Catalan: "I am not afraid."

The Las Ramblas neighborhood was eerily quiet in the morning as armed police patrolled on Friday.

Later in the day, tourists and onlookers filled the long boulevard, turning what is ordinarily a vacation hot spot into a site of mourning. Some set out candles to commemorate the victims.

Less than 24 hours after the attack a fierce debate erupted in Barcelona over the meaning of what had happened. Demonstrations materialized Friday evening over the place of Islam in Europe. A small group of far-right demonstrators gathered in Barcelona's main square to protest what they called the "Islamicization of Europe." They were met by thousands of counter-protesters who decried Islamophobia, waved rainbow flags and shouted slogans such as "Barcelona! Anti-fascist!"
Dakar, Senegal

Rescuers in Sierra Leone's capital said Friday that it was unlikely any of the hundreds of people buried in mudslides this week were still alive, after torrential rains that hit the country's capital left more than 400 people dead.

A search and rescue mission carried out since heavy rains triggered the collapse of a hillside and caused muddy rivers to flow through the streets of Freetown, the capital, has now all but turned into an effort to recover bodies, emergency responders and aid groups said.

More than 600 people are believed to be missing, with many still trapped under tons of mud that some residents, facing a shortage of heavy equipment, took to digging through with their bare hands. Sierra Leone's ministry of health and other groups leading the search called for more volunteers to help find victims.

As late as Wednesday, some residents of Freetown had reported getting phone calls and text messages from people trapped under the mud, but efforts to reach them were crimped by continued rainfall.

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The severity of the disaster has been illustrated by the need to bury the dead in mass graves, evoking memories of other tragedies in Sierra Leone's recent history in which victims had to be buried in such a fashion, from the Ebola outbreak to the country's long civil war.

More than 400 bodies were buried by late Thursday. The government said the death toll was expected to rise in the coming days.

But as efforts to find victims continues, authorities have also voiced worry that some of the bodies being interred could be infected, because the longer the search takes, the higher the chances that the corpses are infected.

"Bodies will be disinfected to avoid the spread of any infection that they may likely carry," said Idalia Amaya, emergency coordinator for the Catholic Relief Service, one of the organizations involved in the search.

The United Nations and aid groups have also sounded the alarm over the spread of disease.

Ramatu Jalloh of Save the Children in Sierra Leone said she believed some water sources, particularly wells and reservoirs, may have been contaminated, heightening the risk of cholera spreading. Two cases of cholera were reported earlier, but later tested negative, according to Amaya.

Papani Bai-Sesay, head of biodiversity at the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone, an advocacy group, said such disasters could have been prevented "if only people listened."

Bai-Sesay said that as Freetown's population increased drastically in recent years, the demand for land skyrocketed, spurring residents to cut down forested areas.
CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's new pro-government Constituent Assembly formally moved Friday to assume the powers of the opposition-dominated congress, completing what critics call a power grab that effectively puts all branches of government under the control of President Nicolas Maduro.

The Constituent Assembly, created in a July 30 vote decried as fraud by the opposition and a host of nations, had begun to assume the role of the National Assembly, whose members were democratically elected in 2015.

But in a move likely to spark further international condemnation, the motion Friday formalized the arrangement. The body was also poised to pass a new law that critics say could be used to punish opposition leaders and anti- government protesters with as much as 25 years in prison.

The body had invited the National Assembly to attend Friday's session - an invitation that was declined. Before the vote to assume their powers, the Constituent Assembly's president, Delcy Rodriguez - a top Maduro ally - theatrically pointed to the empty seats reserved for them.

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"When they're called for national dialogue, cameras please, see? Empty seats, There's the definition of the Venezuelan right," she said.

The opposition-led congress decried the vote as an attempt to finally "close" congress and said via its official Twitter account that it does not recognize the "fraudulent" move. It called on Venezuelans to join legislators in a session at the Constituent Assembly's legislative palace Saturday morning.

"The Constituent Assembly is null, and its acts are illegal and unconstitutional. The National Assembly, the international community and the people will not abide by the annulment decision," the opposition tweeted.

Luis Almagro, secretary general of the Organization of American States, tweeted, "Fraudulent dissolution of the National Assembly by the Constituent Assembly deepens the coup d'etat in Venezuela."

But Diosdado Cabello, a senior member of Maduro's inner circle, said that the decision had stopped short of disbanding congress and that the assembly was simply assuming congressional powers.

"For those raving, the Constituent Assembly has not eliminated the National Assembly," Cabello tweeted. "It is only assuming the functions of those who have placed themselves on the margins of the constitution."

Nevertheless, Venezuela's congress appeared to be left in an even more precarious legal limbo. The pro-government supreme court robbed the congress of its authority in March. Yet even after the new Constituent Assembly began to meet in its legislative palace this month, opposition lawmakers have continued to convene there in a separate chamber. It remained unclear whether opposition leaders could continue that arrangement.

Maduro - the anointed successor of Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013 - has billed the Constituent Assembly as the cornerstone of his completing Chavez's socialist dream. The assembly's members - ranging from student leaders to fishermen to top government officials - are being vested with vast powers to change the constitution, and will be used to streamline efforts to funnel more power and authority to local communities. But critics say that in practice it will be used to consolidate Maduro's power and ensure more political largesse in poor communities in exchange for their loyalty.

The U.S. Department of State condemned the move Friday evening.

"The United States strongly condemns the assumption of legislative powers by the illegitimate Constituent Assembly," a State Department news release said. "This power grab is designed to supplant the democratically-elected National Assembly with an authoritarian committee operating above the law. In our view, the democratically-elected National Assembly is the only legitimate legislative body. . . . As long as the Maduro regime continues to conduct itself as an authoritarian dictatorship, we are prepared to bring the full weight of American economic and diplomatic power to bear in support of the Venezuelan people as they seek to restore their democracy.

The moves come amid an escalating crackdown on dissent after four months of anti-government street protests have left more than 100 dead.

The Constituent Assembly moved Thursday night to strip legislative immunity from German Ferrer, a member of the elected congress. It came as he and his wife, Luisa Ortega Diaz - Venezuela's former chief prosecutor who was removed from office this month - appeared to join a rising number of dissidents fleeing the country to escape a broadening crackdown.

On Wednesday, the supreme court issued an arrest order for Ferrer. Both he and Ortega were previous government loyalists who turned against Maduro amid mounting allegations of human rights abuses and corruption. They had emerged as two of the most vocal and influential government critics.

Nicmer Evans, a political ally of the couple, told The Washington Post that they had left Venezuela.

Late Friday, Colombia's immigration agency confirmed that Ortega and Ferrer had arrived in Bogota via a private flight from Aruba. In the afternoon, Ortega participated via a video call in a meeting with top prosecutors from across Latin America. She said she had proof that Maduro and his circle were involved in the Odebrecht corruption scandal, that her removal was the "materialization of the systematic persecution" against her and her office, and that the new chief prosecutor's office would destroy any evidence that came his way.

"I will not stop fighting. And I ask you to not abandon Venezuela," she said.

Since the Constituent Assembly's creation, three opposition mayors have gone into hiding, and two have fled the country.

Addressing the increased targeting of dissenters, opposition lawmakers said in a statement that "Nicolas Maduro needs silence to consummate injustice. Any expression of the people's voice is being criminalized."

The arrest warrant for Ferrer was connected to government charges that had used his wife's former post to extort $6 million from business executives. Ferrer has strongly denied the charges, describing them as political persecution.

In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Ortega denounced the creation of the Constituent Assembly - members of which include Maduro's wife and son - as "the birth of a dictatorship."

"We are just a tiny sample of what comes to anyone who dares to oppose the totalitarian way of governing," she said. "I will continue fighting for Venezuelans, for their liberties and rights, until my last breath."

- - -

Faiola reported from Miami.
San Antonio police are investigating a possible murder-suicide involving a married couple on the North Side.

Officers say they discovered the remains of a man, 62, and a woman, 65, following a welfare check Saturday afternoon on the 2200 block of Pipestone Drive.

When officers entered the residence, they say both individuals were already dead and both had gunshot wounds.

RELATED: Saturday morning shooting at East Side house party sends 4 to the hospital

Police say they are investigating the deaths as a murder-suicide.

No note was left by the suspect, but a family member did receive a text message prior to the shootings said Detective Leroy Carrion.

The daughter of the suspect told police she found her father and his wife in their home just prior to police arriving, according to a news release.

Police did not say if the daughter was also related to the victim.

This is a developing story and will be updated as details become available.

More for you Texas couple finds ring lost in tornado, immediately gets engaged

Staff writer Alexandro M. Luna contributed to this report.
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Thomas Hickman Temple Jr., a retired Air Force pilot who flew more than 200 missions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, died Aug. 4 at 93.

Raised in Montgomery, Alabama, the son of a World War I veteran, Temple joined the Army Air Corps while still in high school.

After graduating  they sent him to flight school for six months  then sent him to Iwo Jima, said his wife, Tawana Morris Temple.

A part of the 78th Fighter Squadron, Temple was among the first pilots to arrive on the island after the bloody battle that secured it as a final Allied stepping stone to a presumed invasion of Japan.

When he landed, they had just leveled off a place on the beach, Tawana Temple said. He said there were bodies stacked up as high as his head on both sides of the runway.

Thinking at first that they were Japanese soldiers, Temple was heartsick to learn that they were U.S. Marines.

He flew P-51 Mustangs from Iwo Jima on a series of long-range missions to Japan that took hours through often bad weather before encountering Japanese fighters.

More for you Texas couple finds ring lost in tornado, immediately gets engaged

He was still on Iwo Jima when the bombs were dropped, nephew John Andrews said, referring to the atomic bombs that obliterated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the war.

Back in Alabama, Temple studied engineering at Auburn University while serving in the states Air National Guard, which was called to active duty in 1950. He was stationed in Europe but flew 30 reconnaissance missions over North Korea in the early part of the war, his wife said.

More Information Thomas Hickman Temple Jr. Born: Oct. 30, 1923, Montgomery, Ala. Died: Aug. 4, 2017, San Antonio Preceded by: Parents Lennie Davis and Thomas Temple Sr.; two sisters. Survived by: Wife Tawana Morris Temple; daughter Teri Temple; nephews John Andrews, Quentin Andrews and George Davis; niece Carolyn Urban. Services: Burial at 11 a.m. Sept. 7 at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, 1520 Harry Wurzbach Road. See More Collapse

Temple was in the 117th Tactical Reconnaissance Team in 1952 when he saved the life of Lt. Col. Maynard Swartz, who was leading a squadron of RF-80 Shooting Stars to Germany from an air base in Georgia.

They were at 32,000 feet when Swartz lost pressurization in his cockpit, which made him temporarily blind, Andrews said. Tommy was his wingman.  He told him all the instructions so he could make a blind landing.

While stationed at Kelly AFB in 1957, Temple met his future, a young Oklahoman who was working there. They married on Groundhog Day in 1958, and he was transferred to South Carolina a few months later.

He wasnt too happy with the assignment because it had to do with military transport, his wife recalled. Once a fighter pilot, always a fighter pilot.

In South Carolina, he was recruited to become part of a new combat crew training squadron, which later became the Air Commandos. Offered the opportunity to join the as-yet-unnamed unit that would fly unmarked aircraft in a Southeast Asian country, Temple asked if he could consult with his wife.

They told him, You have five minutes to decide and you cant leave the room, Tawana Temple said. He said, If I am called, I will go. He always did.

Going through intense training at Eglin AFB in Florida, Temple was sent to Vietnam in 1962, based in an obscure landing field hacked out of foliage 25 miles northeast of Saigon, with nothing but tents to live in, she said.

Tom flew 151 missions in six months. They flew night and day, a lot at night because thats when the Viet Cong liked to move around.

Leaving Vietnam in 1965, Temple was sent first to France and then England, where as the director of flying safety, he visited bases all over Europe. After assignments in Thailand and Ohio, he was the safety officer at Kelly when he retired.

With more than 5,000 flying hours during his more than 27 years in the service, Temple received seven air medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He would have stayed another three years, but they would have sent him to a base where he couldnt fly, Tawana Temple said.

mheidbrink@express-news.net
LANCASTER, Pennsylvania  My wifes family lives in Pennsylvania, and we recently traveled back to that corner of the world for a visit.

Lancaster County is probably best known for its Amish community. Horses and buggies. Winding rural roads. Farmhouses nestled into rolling hills. An insulated and quiet community rooted in Christian faith. Less known, perhaps, is that the city of Lancaster is a leading destination for refugees of all faiths.

BBC News dubbed it Americas refugee capital because the city takes 20 times more refugees per capita than the rest of the United States. This is in a county that went big for President Donald Trump.

In some ways that reflects the urban-rural divide. The city is blue, and the county is red. Still, that dynamic  pro-refugee and pro-Trump  was intriguing enough to detour from our family trip to meet with Church World Service. The agency helped resettle 407 refugees here last fiscal year. The goal was 550 this fiscal year. Then came the temporary travel ban barring refugees and people from six Muslim-majority countries.

Its basically a complete hold right now, said Stephanie Gromek, community resource coordinator for Church World Services Lancaster office.

Six arrivals are expected in August, Gromek said.

Before the ban, that number would have been roughly 50. These are people who have undergone significant vetting, whose lives are delayed in war zones or camps.

Even when the ban lifts  and who knows when or how that will take shape  many refugees will be delayed entry because their applications will need to be restarted. Key deadlines will have passed, Gromek said.

With fewer refugees to serve, there have been some modest staff cuts. Donations still come in  coats, furniture, dishes, cleaning supplies and toys  but its unclear how much is needed.

This is happening in San Antonio, too.

We have the same problems, said Saghar Rosham, who oversees the resettlement program with Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio.

Placements have flowed to a trickle (nine are planned for August). Programs have been cut. Staff has been juggled.

But whats particularly interesting in Lancaster is the closeness of it all.

Or as Gromek, who does fundraising, said, It is a particularly fine line that we have found ourselves having to walk because there may be conservative groups, churches, that may have voted in favor of Trump, but are extremely committed to refugees and the work that we do.

That sounds incongruous, and without context it is, but it reflects the regions deep Anabaptist roots, said E. Fletcher McClellan, a political science professor at Elizabethtown College. Lancaster County has always been a conservative area, especially on social issues, he said. But the Mennonites and Amish, who settled this region, fled persecution.

I dont want to paint an overly nuanced, kumbaya picture. The urban-rural divide is real here. In early 2016, anti-refugee protesters rallied outside Church World Services Lancaster office, and refugee supporters rallied right back. You see occasional Confederate flags here.

I dont think its that much different from the rest of the country, McClellan said. There is a kind of polarized aspect between Lancaster city and the county.

But Gromeks point that many of Church World Services supporters voted for Trump reflects individual nuance, and also moral compromise. Talking about this is a fine line.

This presidency challenges our collective morality  and each day offers a new manifestation of regret. The latest is Virginia, amplified by Trumps flaccid response to white supremacists.

On refugees, hes been depressingly strong.

I hate taking these people, Trump told Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull just after his inauguration. The recently released transcript of their conversation shows a startling lack of understanding and humanity.

When America turns its back on humanity, we live to regret it. The Jews fleeing Nazis on the St. Louis. Rwanda. Iraqi and Afghan translators who struggle to obtain visas. Central American children and Syrian families.

In Americas refugee capital, there are few new arrivals these days. But its through the work of places like Church World Service where the fine line will be walked, divides will be bridged, and our moral center will hold.

JBrodesky@express-news.net
Robert E. Lee wasnt a Nazi and surely would have had no sympathy for the white supremacist goons who made his statue a rallying point in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend.

That doesnt change the fact that his statue is now associated with a campaign of racist violence against the picturesque town where Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia. The statue of Lee was already slated for removal by the city, but the Battle of Charlottesville should be an inflection point in the broader debate over Confederate statuary.

The monuments should go. Some of them simply should be trashed; others transmitted to museums, battlefields and cemeteries. The heroism and losses of Confederate soldiers should be commemorated, but not in everyday public spaces where the monuments are flashpoints in poisonous racial contention, with white nationalists often mustering in their defense.

Some discrimination is in order. Theres no reason to honor Jefferson Davis, the blessedly incompetent president of the Confederacy. New Orleans just sent a statue of him to storage  good riddance. Amazingly enough, Baltimore has a statue of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the monstrous Dred Scott decision that helped precipitate the war. A city commission has, rightly, recommended its destruction.

Robert E. Lee, on the other hand, is a more complicated case. He was no great friend of slavery. He wrote in a letter to his wife that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country (he added, shamefully, that it was good for blacks  the painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race). After the war, he accepted defeat and did his part to promote national healing.

Yet faced with a momentous choice at the start of the war, he decided he was a Virginia patriot rather than an American nationalist. He told one of President Abraham Lincolns advisers: I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four million slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native state? He betrayed the U.S. government and fought on the side devoted to preserving chattel slavery.

That is a grievous political sin, although he obviously wasnt the only one guilty of it. The Civil War was an America conflict, with Americans on both sides. An honorable soldier, Lee is an apt symbol for the Confederate rank and file whose sacrifices in the wars charnel house shouldnt be flushed down the memory hole.

The Baltimore commission has called for moving a striking dual statue of Lee and Stonewall Jackson to the Chancellorsville, Va., battlefield where the two last met before Jacksons death. This would be appropriate and would take a page from the Gettysburg battlefield. A statue of Lee commemorates Virginias losses and overlooks the field where Gen. George Pickett undertook his doomed charge.

For some of the left, thats the right answer, but this unsparing attitude rejects the generosity of spirit of the two great heroes of the war, Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. Notably, Grant vehemently opposed trying Lee for treason.

For supporters of the Confederate monuments, removing them from parks and avenues will be a blow against their heritage and historical memory. But the statues have often been part of an effort to whitewash the Confederacy. And its one thing for a statue to be merely a resting place for pigeons; its another for it to be a fighting cause for neo-Nazis.

Lee himself opposed building Confederate monuments in the immediate aftermath of the war. I think it wiser, he said, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavoured to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.

After Charlottesville, its time to revisit his advice.

comments.lowry@nationalreview.com
The Harlandale Independent School District has become the fourth public school district in Bexar County to come under the scrutiny of the Texas Education Agency.

Its a sad commentary on the quality of governance in local school districts when one-fourth of them require state scrutiny or intervention. Fortunately, the number of dysfunctional school boards remains in the minority.

We are grateful that the vast majority of Bexar County school boards operate professionally and have track records of being good stewards of taxpayer money.

Harlandale, a low property wealth district on the South Side, was notified of the investigation Aug. 11, TEA spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson, an agency spokeswoman, confirmed.

The issues under investigation involve governance, nepotism, contract procurement and conflict of interests, according to a TEA letter obtained by the Express-News Editorial Board.

The Harlandale investigation was launched in response to several complaints and an initial review of those complaints by the agencys Special Investigation Unit. An investigation by the TEA, like that of a grand jury, is not a finding of any wrongdoing, but it does indicate sufficient cause for further inquiry.

Earlier investigations by the TEA in Bexar County have resulted in Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath appointing a board of managers to replace the elected boards in the Edgewood and South Side independent school districts and the appointment of a conservator in South San Antonio ISD.

There are 1,210 school districts Texas. At the end of July, 28 were operating under a conservator or a state-appointed board of managers. A year go that number stood at 19, according to the TEA.

That the activities in Harlandale warrant a TEA investigation comes as no surprise. The politics on this school board are intense. It members are polarized and tend to focus their energies on their political agendas.

The Harlandale community has been slow to heal after the board forced Robert Jaklich out as superintendent in 2012. Jaklich left shortly after the district won the coveted H-E-B Excellence in Education award as the outstanding school district in the state.

Jaklich, who many considered a game changer for the district, took a job in Victoria as he faced waning board support. His departure resulted in an unprecedented public scolding of the school board by then-Mayor Julian Castro.

Rey Madrigal, who came up the ranks within Harlandale ISD, was named superintendent in 2013. Included in the TEAs long list of information requests are details of a personal land deal involving the superintendent in 2015.

That questionable transaction landed Madrigal in hot water with the school board in fall 2015. The board gave him a written public reprimand for failing to inform members of a personal land deal involving the districts insurance vendor.

In March 2015, Madrigal and his wife paid $105,000  nearly $40,000 less than its taxable value  for a property in Rockport sold to them by Diane and Sam Mullen, principals in the Mullen Pension and Benefits Group, the Express-News reported.

Six months later, Madrigal recommended that the board award the Mullens company a contract. The move prompted public outcry and a call for an outside investigation of the land deal.

In November 2016, Sam Mullen, the chief financial officer of Mullen Pension & Benefits Group, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. He was charged with bribing consultants for area school districts for insider information to win insurance contracts.

One of those caught up in that investigation was former Harlandale board member Joshua J. Cerna, an employee of the Mullen Group. Cerna served on the Harlandale board for 10 years through 2012, but Harlandale was not among those alleged to have been defrauded. He pleaded guilty last fall to a wire fraud conspiracy charge.

It is disappointing to see the activities of yet another public school district prompt an investigation, but we welcome such scrutiny when warranted.

Some of the problems facing the more dysfunctional school districts in our community are incapable of being fixed internally. Changing the cultures that have been allowed to develop will require outside intervention.

And then it falls to the TEA to act.
Re: Bathroom bill now seen going down the drain, front page, Aug. 11:

Thank you, Speaker Joe Straus and members of the Texas House, for putting the skids on the Texas Senate, the lieutenant governor, the governor and their personal agendas.

You have consistently focused on matters of importance to this state: infrastructure, education, health and responsible economic growth, rather than bending to the minority voice that calls for legislation that is designed to specifically discriminate and do harm.

Lydia O. Powell, Converse

Judge Cross unfit

Re: Kazen sets sights on Cross probate bench, Gilbert Garcia, Aug. 9:

Columnist Gilbert Garcia reports that Judge Kelly Cross of Probate Court 1 says she is exhausted and overwhelmed from months of dealing with her heavy court workload and her own legal issues.

Cross filed her campaign fund report five months late and has not accounted for $12,770. If she cannot handle her own personal financial and legal affairs, she is not competent to rule on will, trusts and other probate issues.

So, Judge Kelly, who said doing this amount of work over peoples lives, I barely made it through healthy, you should resign or at least not run for re-election.

David Austin Coffman

A negative script

Re: Writing on the wall? Not cursive, Alfredo Torres Jr., Another View, Aug. 9:

I could not agree more about the lack of penmanship among todays students. I had the same experience at UT. I was chatting with a group and wrote something on the board, and a coed said, Wow, thats beautiful, but I have no idea what it says. I was like, uh, what? Youre at the University of Texas and you cant read cursive? I was stunned and angry.

Its ridiculous how unprepared students are for anything today. If their phone crashes, they act like a heroin addict. If anything breaks, they have no clue how to fix it; panic sets in. They can work a phone (so can a chimp), but they have no idea how it works. High school diplomas are so dumbed down they garner zero respect.

The lack of cursive is a metaphor for how little respect schools have for a real education. If you can fill in a dot on a test for which youre practically given the answers and block-print your name, youre done. College isnt much better; some Ivy League schools have done away with grades, and schools are doing away with student rankings. Were all winners, so why bother?

The result: a bunch of entitled adults, worried about cultural approbation and their own selfish ends. Its no longer We the People; its Me the People. Its no melting pot; its 10,000 pots that dont care to melt. I weep for the future. Cursive is a ladder.

Shannon Deason

Waste of funds

Two city councilmen filed an official request to relocate a Confederate monument that has been in Travis Park for 118 years. The monument depicts a soldier, holding a rifle as he points to the sky. The inscription states, Lest We Forget, Our Confederate Dead.

The relocation would represent the kind of wasteful spending that occurs more frequently these days as our leaders lose focus on what is important for our communities.

Removing the movement would cost thousands of taxpayer dollars, just so a few minority members will not be offended. I do not live in their districts, but these two councilmen, along with the mayor, do not understand the needs of the city. With money being short these days, the wasteful use of funds to pay for the removal of such symbols of American history is becoming more troublesome.

I am lucky enough to live in a district and city where our officials are improving infrastructure with road repairs, new sidewalks, bike lanes, parks and the fiber network capability to benefit residents.

Hopefully, during the next election, you will replace these individuals with officials who will think of better ways to improve your quality of life without wasting your taxes.

Mark Taylor, Schertz

Learn from history

I wholeheartedly agree with Councilman William Shaw, who stated we have a diverse community in which one size does not fit all. The strength of our state  indeed our nation  has been our diversity. The Confederate monument represents one segment of that diversity, and I suggest to Councilman Shaw and others who share his view that they erect a monument to Martin Luther King Jr., or another individual who has greatly influenced us. Do not destroy history; learn from it.

Do not denigrate the memory of Confederate soldiers, most of whom did not own slaves. They were farmers who believed states had the right to enact their owns laws without bowing to the federal government. Most had nothing to gain from slavery.

I honor their memory as much as I do the Vietnam veterans who fought an unpopular war and faced abuse when they returned. My husband is a combat veteran who received the Bronze Star during Vietnam. We cannot erase the history that displeases us.

Georganne Hitzfeld, Castroville

Single payer tutorial

Re: Skip the ideology, Your Turn, Aug. 8:

The letter writer errs in his supposition.

He wants single payer health care explained. So here it is: Medicare. It works fine, with much lower administrative costs than market insurance.

Dave Searcy
PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa will today present his inaugural State of the Nation Address (SONA) amid high expectations that he would tackle the skyrocketing prices of basic commodities and bring to an end the current cash crisis ahead of the festive season.

Mnangagwa who took over as State President last month after long-time ruler ex-President Robert Mugabe stepped down following military intervention would be under pressure to urgently introduce a raft of measures to stabilise the economy currently on a tailspin and restore public confidence in his administration.

Clerk of Parliament Kennedy Chokuda yesterday said the Presidents address would be held at the Harare International Conference Centre (HICC).

President Mnangagwa will address a joint sitting of Parliament and issue out a SONA at the HICC, Chokuda confirmed to NewsDay.

The sitting at the HICC is in compliance with section 150 of the Constitution which allows Parliament to sit at different venues other than Parliament.

MDC-T spokesperson Obert Gutu said Mnangagwas statement should address the current economic meltdown and the liquidity crunch before things get out of hand.

In fact, the situation is now worse than it was during the Mugabe regime. Life is getting very tough for the majority of Zimbabweans and the government appears at sixes and sevens regarding what to do in order to arrest the economic implosion, Gutu said.

He also implored Mnangagwa to de-militarise State organs and revert back to civilian rule as provided for in the Constitution.

The State apparatuses are becoming increasingly militarised as we see more and more members of the armed forces being appointed to influential positions in government.

The MDC would like the President to address what measures his government is taking to stop the creation of a de facto military junta running the affairs of government, Gutu said.

The opposition added that Mnangagwa should spell out the roadmap to free and fair polls and indicate when he would appoint the new Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) chairperson following Justice Rita Makaraus recent

resignation.

The Zec chairperson recently resigned and we dont know when exactly her replacement will be announced, the MDC-T said.

The Morgan Tsvangirai-led party also urged Mnangagwa to rein in his special adviser, Chris Mutsvangwa, and stop him from making inflammatory statements that could cause alarm and despondency ahead of next years crunch polls.

We are still being denied access to the State-controlled print and electronic media and we are concerned that senior members of Mnangagwas administration have publicly announced that the army and traditional leaders will be campaigning for Zanu PF in next years elections. This is a very serious cause for concern because such a move flagrantly violates the basic tenets of our Constitution, Gutu added.

Mutsvangwa has, however, disowned the alleged remarks, saying he was quoted out of context.

Peoples Democratic Party spokesperson Jacob Mafume also said Mnangagwa should arrest the cash crisis and skyrocketing of prices, to mention but a few.

He needs to atone for the disaster of the Cabinet he has appointed. We need clear strategies and roadmaps on how he will deal with the crisis of political illegitimacy and economic crisis, Mafume said.

For political legitimacy the army has to go back to the barracks, but not just changing uniforms and coming back as civilians in suits. We need a roadmap to free and credible elections and a transitional management which is inclusive.

The countrys economy has been on a free-fall with prices of basic commodities rising while foreign currency shortages have not eased.

Political analyst Blessing Vava said Mnangagwa should highlight the roadmap to elections. (It is fundamental) how this government is going to ensure and guarantee a free and fair election.

Will there be a shift in terms of the playing field, equal access to the media and campaign zones etc? There might just be pledges, but is there the will to ensure that the reforms are addressed? Vava said.

University of Zimbabwe media lecturer Wellington Gadzikwa said todays address would give Mnangagwa an opportunity to unveil his economic vision to instil investor confidence as well as end partisan politics in State matters.

He has to tackle the cash crisis, elections, stability in government and remove partisan politics in State resources, Gadzikwa said.

Welshman Ncubes MDC said since the rise of Mnangagwa to the throne, there has been a lot of paperwork and fictitious stories, but no tangible results to accompany the publicity he had received so far.

We are expecting the same old lyrics, too sweet to hear, but not achievable. Mnangagwa is more of a Hollywood actor than a State President, MDC spokesperson Kurauone Chihwayi said.

The MDC is not expecting miracles from the same Zanu PF comedians. They still need cartons of cosmetics to convince us that they are beautiful, not the cheap bar-talk.

MDC-T vice-president and Kuwadzana East MP Nelson Chamisa requested Speaker of the National Assembly Jacob Mudenda to allow MPs to ask Mnangagwa questions after the SONA presentation.

We know that section 140 (1) of the Constitution and Standing Rules and Orders section 167 and 168 give that right since the President is still new so that we are allowed to do a question-and-answer session with Mnangagwa so that we present to him the issues troubling the nation, especially after reports that some senior security officers have been retired, Chamisa said.

But, Mudenda ruled Chamisa offside saying although section 140 (3) of the Constitution allowed for the President to attend Parliament to answer questions in Parliament, the Head of State was not obliged to respond to questions from his SONA presentation.

He urged Chamisa to raise SONA-related questions at a different forum. NewsDay

Breaking News via Email
PRESIDENT Mnangagwa yesterday opened up on former President Robert Mugabes retirement package and the immunity status of the ex-First Lady in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, where he is attending the World Economic Forum.

He dismissed media reports suggesting that the former President got a $10 million retirement package and that his family enjoys full immunity from prosecution, but pledged to ensure they were living in peace.

When asked if he had given former First Lady Grace Mugabe immunity from prosecution, President Mnangagwa said: No. We have not given anybody any immunity. What I promised to my former President and the founding father of our nation, President Mugabe, is that first we give him a package  a very lucrative package.

The interviewer sought confirmation that the package amounted to $10 million, to which President Mnangagwa retorted: there is no figure, but it is a question of him continuing to enjoy his salary, his allowances as before, offices, security and travel by first class. My Government will also facilitate him going to Singapore for medical check-up. All those things including the First Lady. We are going to do that.

President Mnangagwa clarified the position on the immunity from prosecution for the former First Lady.

So we are not saying anybody commits a crime then the former status will stop the police dealing with that issue, but I am saying that the new administration will do everything possible to make sure the family lives in peace, undisturbed. This is what I want, said President Mnangagwa.

He said his administration adopted a zero tolerance to corruption.

My approach is zero tolerance to any corruption, he said. No sacred cow in dealing with that. If you are following what is happening in Zimbabwe today, so many high profile persons have been brought before the courts and this is only in less than two monthsand the list is unending.

A number of former Cabinet Ministers have since appeared in court to answer to charges of corruption, with the new administration determined to once and for all arrest the cancer that had afflicted Government and society at large.

Former Ministers who have so far appeared in court include Ignatius Chombo, Walter Mzembi, Walter Chidhakwa and Samuel Undenge.

Their cases are still before the courts.

Others skipped the border the moment the Zimbabwe Defence Forces launched Operation Restore Legacy in November last year.

The operation targeted criminals that were taking advantage of the then President, Robert Mugabe, to engage in activities that pushed the country to the edge of political, economic and social turmoil.

Some of the ministers now living in self-imposed exile for fear of prosecution back home are Jonathan Moyo, Saviour Kasukuwere and Patrick Zhuwao.

 Chronicle

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Babban Gona, a reputable international organization, is recruiting suitably qualified candidates to fill the position below:Do you want to change the world by enabling 1 million people lift themselves out of poverty by 2025? Do you want to build Africas largest farmer service operation, of nearly 5,000 passionate and committed team members, delivering yield enhancing services to a million of smallholder farmers?Do you want to build one of Nigerias largest supply chains capable of moving hundreds of thousands of metric tons of farming products to a million smallholder farmers?Do you want to build Africas leading commodity trading organization, storing and marketing millions of metric tons of produce? If you answered yes to these questions join our team. Babban Gona seeks a passionate leader as our Head of Operations.We are seeking a driven, and knowledgeable professional with demonstrated leadership experience in managing large complex operations, coupled with experience across sales, administration, human resources and procurement.The Head of Operations will manage a diverse team spanning our agricultural services team delivering agricultural products and services to thousands of Smallholder Farmers, Agricultural Commodity Sales, Inbound and Outbound Logistics, Warehouse/Inventory Management, Procurement, IT, Administration and HR.The Head of Operations will work closely with the Managing Director to create and execute on the vision, identify deliverable gaps and put in place appropriate structures and policies to enable the organisation to continue to scale.They will also be responsible for developing long-term relationships with external stakeholders such as input providers, human development practitioners, equipment and office resources providers etc.As part of the leadership of the organization, the Head of Operations will support overall strategic and operational decision-making, in addition to fulfilling stewardship responsibilities within their division.Apply today, and join us as we transform the Nigerian agriculture sector and enable 1 million smallholder farmers to transition from subsistence farming to commercial farming by 2025. Agriculture is Nigerias job creation engine; we believe that in partnering with you, we can establish it as a basis for security and employment.General:Design and lead the operations of the entire organization with the overall aim of delivering a high level of service that meets organizational, farmer and employee needs, while maintaining the balance between risk, cost and service objectives.Develop best practice processes to deliver standardized and efficient services across the operations.Stay up to date with trends and developments within functional areas of expertise by researching and deploying best practices of similar and successful companies as benchmarksDevelop and maintain metrics as well as analyze data to assess performance and implement improvements across the operations.Promote and lead a culture of structured Continuous Improvement through simplification, standardisation and automationOwn the service level agreement (SLA) obligations for shared services in line with cost, quality and control requirementsEnsure compliance with applicable laws and regulations.Agricultural Services:Create and execute dept. strategy to manage the seamless delivery of yield enhancing agricultural products and services to thousands of smallholder farmers on credit.Inspire and lead a team of thousands of field officers, to go above and beyond to support our smallholder farmer customers.Commodity Sales:Manage a sales organization to establish and honour forward contracts and sales relationships with leading food companys.Drive effective sales of hundreds of thousands of metric tons of agricultural products, enabling the organization to optimize value for our smallholder farmer members.Supply and Distribution:Create and execute dept. strategy to manage the seamless receipt and distribution of inputs and harvest services to farmers and ensure delivery of farmer produce to customers.Direct inventory management by supervising inventory reconciliation and reporting, as well as supervising produce storage to minimize post-harvest losses or over- and under-capitalizationOversee Enhanced Warehouse Receipts programme by planning logistics and produce shipments to customers.Information Technology:Lead an enterprise development team to build and manage applications to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the companys operations.Identify and address operational areas of improvement and bring to realisation the relevant technological interventions required to overcome themHuman Development:Lead the strategy and execution of the Training and Development and Human Resources functionsOversee the delivery of the Training and Development of farmers via the Farm University Platform including onboarding members, designing relevant modules, planning logistics and ensuring relevant best practice methods are taughtDrive the Human Resources function strategy to attract exceptional talent and develop a talent management process aimed at increasing employee success and satisfaction.Procurement:Develop and implement organizational strategies for procuring storage and harvest equipment, agricultural inputs, insurance and office equipmentLiaise with various departments to determine their equipment and service needs to enable cost planning and sourcingNurture relationships with suppliers while identifying and researching potential new suppliers, including vendor and contract managementNegotiate the best prices for the organization bearing in mind quality, quantity, time and locationIdentify and realize cost-saving and cost-reduction opportunitiesAdministration:Oversee coordination of office activities and smooth running of operations to drive sustainable growth and ensure efficiency and compliance to company policiesSupervise execution of administrative tasks and implement effective administrative system, ensuring staff have adequate support to work efficiently.Oversee creation and updating of records/databases with personnel, financial and other data.Maintain a safe and secure work environment and ensure general welfare across the organization; identify additional service offerings, department needs or opportunities for improvementSubmit timely reports and prepare presentations/proposals as assigned, to track performance or management of business operationsEnsure proper allocation of resources and provide an effective support system while balancing staff needs and economic productionA Bachelor's Degree. Master's Degree preferred.Minimum of 3 years leading Operations for logistically and operationally intensive businessMinimum of 10+ years of overall progressive experience in Commodity Sales, Agricultural Services, Procurement and Supply & DistributionDemonstrable ability to lead and manage staff across various functionsAbility to engage at executive levels and collaborate across business units and functional partnersExperience in managing high volume transactions across a branch network of warehouses in remote areasExperience in managing network of transport contractorsProven strategic influencing, networking and stakeholder management skillsOutstanding track record in leading service, process and system improvementsStrong analytical, problem solving and organisational skillsAdvanced proficiency with and extensive skills in MS ExcelAbility to work independently and handle multiple projectsProven ability to manage tasks with competing priorities and deadlines, independently determining order of priority and self-initiating other value-added tasksHigh level of integrity and objectivity anchored by their fundamental professional competence and due care, confidentiality, and professional behaviourEffective attention to detail and a high degree of accuracyExperience in managing agricultural commoditiesCompensation & BenefitsSalary and benefits are competitive, commensurate with experience.Applicants should send their CV's and cover letter to: careers@doreopartners.com using "Head of Operations" as the Subject of the mail.
Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is an International non-governmental organization supporting relief and development work in over 99 countries around the world. CRS programs assist persons on the basis of need, regardless of creed, ethnicity or nationality. CRS works through local church and non-church partners to implement its programs, therefore, strengthening and building the capacity of these partner organizations is fundamental to programs in every country in which CRS operates.CRS re-established presence in Nigeria in 2000 and currently focuses on vulnerable children, agriculture, health and HIV, extractives and governance, and peace building programming.Job Ref: SOY81517 Location: Damaturu - YobeThe Security Officer assists in maintaining a safe and secure environment for CRS employees and visitors, premises, and assets as well as maintaining regular communication with staff during field movement.The Security Officer is responsible for ensuring that appropriate systems and procedures are in place to maximize safety and security and that they are adhered to at all times.The Security Officer is responsible for supporting the Northeast Nigeria Security Coordinator and Head of Office, Yobe State to ensure that safety and security is mainstreamed into all field operations across Northeast Nigeria and that the high-quality information is available for decision making.Policies and Procedures:Be familiar with CRSs Safety and Security procedures and policies and Safe and Sound Manual, and support the NE Security Coordinator and Head of Office, Yobe in ensuring they are adhered to at all times.Work with the Security Coordinator to develop, consolidate, implement, and regularly review operating procedures and security plans across Northeast Nigeria.Assist the Security Coordinator to provide training(s) that may include Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), Contingency Plans (CPs), Security Management, Incident Reporting, Prevention and Response Mechanisms, Communications (including satellite phones), and risk/threat analysis.Communication:Provide thorough security briefings to CRS staff and visitors upon arrival in Yobe State.Initiate, review, and collate security incident reports for each field site.Implement, maintain, and regularly update the CRS Yobe State staff and visitors list, Security Communications Tree and SOPs as neededEnsure the communication equipment functions at all times (HF radio, sat phone, internet, phone lines). Follow-up on any calls made by satellite phone and radioStaff and Vehicle Movement:In collaboration with the Travel Team, monitor movement and provide security guidance to international and national staff on the current situation in operational areas.Daily track and record all CRS field movement within Yobe State. Maintain strong communication to report and record observations, information, and occurrences during staff movementServe as focal point with drivers during interstate movement by tracking the location of all vehicles and staff and communicate with CRS Security Officers in other states.Regularly conduct field visits to assess field site compliance with safety and security procedure during field activities.Ensure vehicle and personal tracking systems are appropriate, fully resourced, and operationalMonitoring and Analysis:Collect information regarding politics and security in Yobe and Borno States as well as on safety and security issues concerning CRS.Respond to security relevant incidents with information gathering and inform the CRS NE Operations Security Coordinator and the Head of Office, Yobe.Undertake continual assessments of equipment (including vehicles) and organizational assets to ensure that minimal conditions for security are met. Prevent loss and damage by reporting irregularities; informing violators of policy and procedures.Ensure that perimeter security staff (guards) have the capacities to perform their duties as per the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).Conduct monthly health and safety inspections such as, but not limited to: fire extinguishers, smoke/fire detectors and inspection of CRS facilities in Yobe StateRegularly inventory and stock as necessary hibernation kits, first aid kits, and vehicle safety kits; ensure that staff know what is in the kits and how and when to use themSubmit regular contextual updates (weekly/monthly situational reports) to the Security CoordinatorWork closely with CRS field teams to ensure all incidents and accidents are followed up with an official written Incident Report, which is then shared with relevant stakeholders and filed appropriately.Take appropriate measures to secure CRS premises, personnel, assets, and properties by regularly monitoring and control of CRS existing security set-up.Check that facilities and equipment conform to security norms (closures and doorways are in a good state, open spaces lit up, buildings identified, fire extinguishers present, electrical installations buried, etc.).Review lodging options for staff in Damaturu and in field locations, ensuring they meet CRS standard operating procedures.Coordination:Maintain a wide professional and personal network of influential actors and clearly communicate CRSs status and mission in Yobe State and across NE Nigeria.Build acceptance to facilitate continuity of current CRS programs and any future humanitarian or development programming by liaising with local communities, local authorities and other humanitarian actors and stakeholders within the state.Coordinate regularly with the NE Security Coordinator on safety and security issues and fulfill all reporting requirements to the Country Office in Abuja.Assist NE Security Coordinator in staff safety and security matters and act as a backup security focal point, as requested.Attend and represent CRS at UN, Sector, and other meetings relating to access and security as appropriate, following guidance from the Head of OfficeMinimum of 2-3 years experience in the field of community engagement, risk management, safety and security management or other related fieldsDegree in Criminal Justice, Peace and Security Studies, Political Science or a related-fieldMinimum of two years working in a security-sensitive environment.Previous experience in security management with NGOsCompleted formal security management trainingsAbility to plan and organize work and write clear and concise reports and communicate effectively (both written and verbal)Proven ability to prioritize tasks and meet deadlinesProven ability to read mapsKnowledge of the geography and culture of Northeast NigeriaStable, moral, reliable character and a good team playerExcellent communication skills, calm, with a good sense of humorProven commitment to accountability practicesExcellent Microsoft Office skills (Excel, Word, email, Skype, internet searches)Fluency in oral and written English. Fluency in Hausa or Kanuri or any other local language is a distinct advantage.Demonstrated ability to transfer knowledge through formal and informal trainingApplicants should download the "Application Form Below" and send with a detailed 3-page resume in a single file word document to: vacancies.ne.nigeria@crs.org The position title and location must be expressly stated as the subject of the email quoting reference number: "SOY81517"Note:Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.CRS is an equal - opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, etc. Qualified women are strongly encouraged to apply. CRS recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to protecting children and vulnerable adults from abuse and exploitation.29 August, 2017
"Is it the last chance saloon for rural Ireland" was one of the questions posed at a panel discussion at the launch of the Kickham Country Weekend in Mullinahone on Friday night.

And after a lively two hour debate, the answer appeared to be a resounding "no".

Kickham country, where the honour of the little village holds sway, wanted the message to go out that rural Ireland is alive and well and prospering.

There are problems - inadequate broadband, poor transport communications and de-population in some areas - but certainly rural Ireland is not at death's door.

The panel discussion, chaired by a neighbour's child, RTE's Mary Wilson, was a new format for the start of the popular weekend.

Instead of an opening night lecture, it launched a discussion on 'Rural Ireland 2017'.

And the debate brought a larger - and younger - audience to the Knocknogow Community Centre for the lively discussion.

And the panel itself suggested that rural Ireland can encourage entrepreneurship and job creation.

It included Jim Brett from nearby Windgap, the boss of the Brett Group that employs over 180 in its grain operations.

There too was John Bermingham who established tourist accommodation and a music venue, Croc an Oir, literally at the end of a boreen.

Joining the panel was another young entrepreneur from the village, Richie Morrissey, who now heads up two businesses - personal training and clothing wear.

And detailing how rural businesses can benefit from local and state funding were Director of Services with Tipperary County Council, Sinead Carr, and CEO of South Tipperary Development Company, Isabel Cambie.

Opening the debate, Drangan native Mary Wilson - who has 250,000 listeners from urban and rural Ireland five days per week on her Drivetime progamme - said she was very proud of Tipperary and where she came from.

"This area formed me", she said.

When asked where she came from, she would first say Drangan. If that didn't register, she would say Mullinahome and if the person asking was still unsure, she would say Kickham country and that would be sufficient.

She added that while she now lives in Dublin, rural Ireland still gives you a sense of place. Charles Kickham realised this and had a strong sense of place in his writings. But while he often wrote of a rural idyll, you cannot live on neighbourliness and that meant the question asked by GAA pundit Pat Spillane, "is it the last chance saloon for rural Ireland", had to be asked and answered.

And the panelists gave an upbeat assessment on what the future can hold.

Jim Brett described how he had left a job as an agricultural journalist with RTE to return home to the family business. Asked by Mary Wilson what that job entailed today, he replied - "I mange change".

John Bermingham recounted how his early career had involved farming first (depite being unsuited to the job) and then as a travelling musician before settling back in his native place to establish Croc an Oir.

If he had complaints from the time, they centred on the difficulty getting planning permission for his new venture.

The youngest panel member Richie Morrissey had shown an independent nature from an early age, and that had blossomed into his personal trainer business in Mullinahone allied to a new clothing line he had established.

Speakers from the floor had a somewhat less positive outlook at times. They mentioned the amount of form filling needed when applying for state funding, the difficulties put in the way of potential entrepreneurs, the poor broadband, and the closure of rural shops and post offices.

Jackie Bolger highlighted the broadband issue and how it is impacting on rural business and Rickie Sheehan hit out at what he descibed as "Dublin thinking" when it came to filling out forms in so many areas. "The odds are loaded against country people", he claimed.

Rural isolation was another area highlighted and Christy Sheehan spoke about the Men's Shed organisation and the importance of people talking to each other and simply saying Hello.

Secretary Teckie Brett said that the festival had been going strong for thirty four years and now a new committee of twelve had been chosen to continue the work.

She made a special presentation to Sheila Foley who had done trojan work to keep the memory of Charles Kickham alive in his native place over many years as secretary of the committee.

The Friday night debate heralded a weekend of activity in the village, again with some new additions. Instead of a bus tour of historic sites, Rickie Sheehan conducted a walking tour of Mullinahone on Saturday; there was a concert in the community centre that night while there was music in the local pubs every night; on Sunday the annual mass for Charles Kickham and James Maher was celebrated; and the final gathering for song and poetry took place at Croc an Oir later in the day.
(Natural News) During his combative press conference with the disgustingly dishonest establishment media at Trump Tower on Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump doubled down on his earlier statements that demonstrations on the Left and Right were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend.

At one point in recognizing that there were good people on both sides  those who showed up to support keeping a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Emancipation Park and those who showed up to support removing it  the president wondered aloud where efforts to rewrite and memory-hole U.S. history by the Left would end.

This week its Robert E. Lee. I notice that Stonewall Jacksons [statue is] coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You really do have to ask yourself, when does it stop? Trump said.

And within 24 hours, guess what? Calls to remove George Washington and other founding fathers began.

As reported by CBS Chicago, a local pastor who is black, has drafted a letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel demanding he remove a statue of our first president and another from two parks on the citys South Side:

A Chicago pastor has asked the Emanuel administration to remove the names of two presidents who owned slaves from parks on the South Side, saying the city should not honor slave owners in black communities.

A bronze statue of George Washington on horseback stands at the corner of 51st and King Drive, at the northwest entrance to Washington Park.

Bishop James Dukes, a man of God who is pastor of Liberation Christian Center, said he wants the statue to be taken down and Washingtons name scrubbed from the park. He also wants the park rededicated to an African-American figure. (Related: Theres a purge of ALL Confederate monuments coming as Alt-Left seeks to erase, rewrite history.)

When I see that, I see a person who fought for the liberties, and I see people that fought for the justice and freedom of white America, because at that moment, we were still chattel slavery, and was three-fifths of humans, he said. Some people out here ask me, say Well, you know, he taught his slaves to read. Thats almost sad; the equivalent of someone who kidnaps you, that you gave them something to eat.

He went on to say that even though Washington led the country in a successful revolution against a tyrannical British monarch and set the stage for the creation of the greatest experiment in self-government the world has ever seen before and since hes no hero to black people.

Theres no way plausible that we would even think that they would erect a Malcolm X statue in Mount Greenwood, Lincoln Park, or any of that. Not that say Malcolm X was a bad guy; they just would not go for it, he said. Native Americans would not even think about putting up a Custer statue, because of the atrocities that he plagued upon Native Americans. And for them to say to us just accept it is actually insulting.

Dukes also wants the city to remove Andrew Jacksons name from nearby Jackson Park, again because he was a slave owner. He says Washington Park should be renamed after former black Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, and to rename Jackson Park after the legendary race-baiter and race hustler Jesse Jackson.

I think we should be able to identify and decide who we declare heroes in our communities because we have to tell the stories to our children of who these persons are, he said. In an African-American community, its a slap in the face and its a disgrace for them to honor someone who was a slave owner.

Well, maybe it is to a race-baiter and someone ignorant of history playing on the peoples emotions.

For the record, Washingtons will mandated the freeing of his slaves after his wife Marthas death, the only slave-owning founder to do so.

As for Jackson, he demanded his slaves be treated humanely and believed that Providence, in time, would eventually eradicate the evil. And it did, through the Civil War  and the constitutional amendment process which, of course, was devised and ratified by our founders.

None of this matters, however, to people like Dukes, but there is a certain irony here as well. Jackson lashed out at abolitionists during his presidency, but not because he thought it should forever endure. Rather, he generally perceived the growing slavery controversy as artificial and political, with both abolitionists and southern extremists seeking to divide the Union to serve their separate ends.

Doesnt that sound familiar?

What people like Dukes dont get is that as times and culture has changed and as our nation has diversified ethnically, so have American attitudes regarding who we consider heroes. Today we honor Americans of many different races, backgrounds, histories, and achievements, from the time when our country began to the present. Some of those figures are every bit as controversial to a faction of our population as the founders are to others, but you dont see people clamoring for those memorials and icons to be taken down and memory-holed.

Why, then, should only memorials to white men be dismantled?

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

CBSChicago.com

MountVernon.org

PresidentialProfiles.com

NaturalNews.com
More than a million people visit San Franciscos Ocean Beach every year but few of them realize just how dangerous the waters can be. Four people died in the waters at Ocean Beach last year. Two of the victims were teenage boys from Vallejo who were just wading near the shore.

I think this is one of the most dangerous beaches in America, said Kim Chambers, a world famous ocean swimmer who does freestyles daily San Francisco Bay

NBC Bay Area

A couple of years ago, Chambers swam 30 miles from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge through shark-infested waters.

You wouldnt get me dipping my toe in the water here today, she said, eyeing Ocean Beach on a warm day in July. This is not a swimming beach.

Thats a message the National Park Service  the agency in charge of Ocean Beach  echoed in a news conference earlier this summer.

But some people argue the message is murky. Swimming is allowed at Ocean Beach, and although signs posted up and down beach warn of rip currents and drownings, they dont explicitly state that people shouldnt be swimming.

That could now be changing. In just the past month, prompted by inquiries from NBC Bay area, federal officials committed to taking a closer look at the signs to determine if the language is strong enough.

Retired San Francisco Police Officer Henry Kirk walks the beach every day, and hes convinced officials have to do more to stop unsuspecting people from getting swept out to sea.

NBC Bay Area

Too many lives are being lost, he said. Pointing to the warnings signs, he added, It is because it doesnt say no swimming.

As a former cop, he knows that when an adult puts a child in danger, he or she can be charged under Child Endangerment laws. But on the beach, he sees people allowing their toddlers to play in the surf all the time.

The rip currents at Ocean Beach are deceptive. Huge amounts of sand from an ancient river delta migrate along the ocean floor, constantly forming deep troughs. A spot that seems like easy wading one day, can haul swimmers straight out to sea the next.

Once theyre out in the open ocean, swimmers can get hit by yet another current moving southward. Its like a freight train, fueled by billions of gallons of Sacramento River water rushing out of the Golden Gate.

NBC Bay Area

And if that isnt enough, frigid water in the low 50s can bring on hypothermia in minutes. As body temperature drops, the heart and other organs cant work normally. Left untreated, hypothermia can kill.

Since 1997, at least 11 people died at San Francisco beaches that are patrolled by the National Park Service. Nearly 430 people have been rescued. This data comes from the United States Lifesaving Association, which tracks beach deaths and rescues across the country. While it is unclear how many of the incidents occurred at Ocean Beach, the consensus among officials is that Ocean Beach is the most treacherous of San Franciscos beaches.

There are no lifeguards watching from guard towers. Instead, there are National Park Service Beach Patrol Rangers: two pickup trucks with two rescue swimmers in each. They warn people who are wading too far away from shore to be careful. Rangers issued some 2,500 warnings to would-be swimmers last year.

Its hard to fence off the world from people at every dangerous turn, said Doug Armstrong, supervisor of the Ocean Rescue Unit.

I think just warning people of the dangers is appropriate, he added.

NBC Bay Area

When asked at what point the National Park Service should step in and say people shouldnt be swimming at Ocean Beach, Armstrong directed questions to federal officials who make those decisions.

Questions from the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit may be prompting a change. On Thursday, the National Park Services local sign committee discussed clarifying the message on the signs. The proposed text change would advise people not to swim, surf or wade in the water, and would let people know they are entering at their own risk.

But if you look at some tourist guides to San Francisco, which is where many visitors learn about Ocean Beach, many wont tell you its deadly. Some dont mention Ocean Beach at all, while others have warnings like, casual swimmers beware, or it can get chilly.

Howard Picket, Chief Marketing Officer for San Francisco Travel, the most prominent marketing organization for the city, says his groups messaging is fair and balanced and doesnt put anyone at risk.

We want people to come to the city and be safe, he said, and thats the context of how we want all our messaging.

San Francisco Travels website warns of cold water that can be hazardous and says extreme caution is advised  but the message stops short of stating that Ocean Beach is not a swimming beach.

When asked if the language should be stronger Pickett said, If somebody felt like we ought to be more strenuous in our messaging, obviously we would do that, but right now we havent had those types of dialogues. No one has come to us and said absolutely tell people they should not swim in Ocean Beach.

If you have a tip for the Investigative Unit email theunit@nbcbayarea.com or call 888-996-TIPS.

Follow Liz Wagner on Facebook and Twitter.




Big Ben's bongs to fall silent until 2021 for repairs





Big Ben basics







The Great Bell forms part of the Great Clock in the Elizabeth Tower - commonly known as Big Ben



It was completed in 1859



It weighs 13.5 tons and the Elizabeth Tower stands 315ft tall



Every hour it strikes an E note, and every 15 minutes four "quarter bells" chime



To stop the chimes, the striking hammers will be locked until 2021



Big Ben's Ayrton Light to be switched off

14 August 2017BBC NewsBig Ben's famous chimes will fall silent from next week until 2021 to allow essential repair works to take place.The bongs will sound for the final time at midday on Monday before being disconnected to allow the clock and surrounding tower to be restored.The Great Bell has sounded on the hour for 157 years.It last fell silent in 2007 and, before that, for major refurbishments between 1983 and 1985.Parliamentary authorities said stopping Big Ben - the commonly used name for the Palace of Westminster's Elizabeth Tower - would protect workers carrying out the repairs.It will still sound for important events including New Year's Eve and Remembrance Sunday.The clock's keeper, Steve Jaggs, said Big Ben falling silent was a "significant milestone" in the project to restore the tower."This essential programme of works will safeguard the clock on a long term basis, as well as protecting and preserving its home - the Elizabeth Tower," he added.The landmark Elizabeth Tower is said to be the most photographed building in the UK.Scaffolding is up and repair work has already started.The project's principal architect Adam Watrobski told the BBC the works would install new amenities in the tower, including a lift, toilet and kitchen.Essential maintenance will also be carried out and the building will be made more energy efficient.As well as conservation work to the tower, the Great Clock will be dismantled piece-by-piece and its four dials will be cleaned and repaired.The Ayrton Light, which shines when Parliament is sitting, will also be renovated.During the repair work, an electric motor will drive the clock hands until the main mechanism has been restored, so it will continue to tell the time.However, the faces will need to be temporarily covered while the clock is undergoing maintenance.The wider Parliamentary estate is also in need of repair, and a multi billion-pound programme involving MPs temporarily relocating has been put forward.Meanwhile BBC Radio 4, which broadcasts the chimes of Big Ben live, has announced it will broadcast a recording when the bells fall silent.Head of station management Denis Nowlan told the Today programme that various alternatives were considered, including the bells of Nottingham Council House."We came very close to using the sound of Nottingham's bells," he said.However, a spokesperson confirmed: "After considering various options, we've decided that pre-recording Big Ben's chimes offers the most reliable and resilient option whilst the Palace of Westminster carries out its repairs."BBC News19 May 2017A lamp at the top of Elizabeth Tower - which is switched on in the evening whenever Parliament is sitting - is to stop shining for the first time in more than 70 years.The Ayrton Light, located above the Great Bell - known as Big Ben - needs to be fully dismantled and restored. A temporary light will replace it.Installed in 1885, it was previously turned off only during both world wars. Big Ben will not chime regularly until 2021 because of repairs to the tower.The light is said to have been installed at the request of Queen Victoria, so that she could see from Buckingham Palace when members of either the Commons or the Lords were sitting after dark.It is named after Acton Smee Ayrton, a Liberal politician who was First Commissioner of Works between 1869 and 1873.It is not yet known when the light will switch off, or how long it will be off for.Big Ben will not be heard from midday on Monday. The House of Commons has said it will look again at the length of time it will be silenced after "concerns".Parliament said it had to protect workers carrying out the renovations.But Prime Minister Theresa May said "it can't be right" that the bell will not chime regularly again for four years.It will still sound for important events including New Year's Eve and Remembrance Sunday.
Hundreds of people flocked to Mountain Views City Hall on Saturday, standing up against hatred, sexism and a white nationalist movement that has dominated headlines since last weeks deadly riot in Charlottesville.

Originally, the Stand Up for Equality and Diversity Rally, which lasted from 1 to 3 p.m., was meant to counter an alt-right protest called March on Google to Charleston Park.

The controversial event was envisioned to protest the tech giants firing of James Damore, who wrote a controversial memo on gender rules at Google. However, it was canceled when leaders of the right-wing group cited credible alt-left terrorist threats.

Concerns about violence also forced the Make-a-Wish Foundation to nix its charity walk, originally scheduled for Saturday.

Even so, the counter-protesters decided to forge ahead with their rally.

On Saturday, they peacefully held up signs and chanted, What do we want? Equality. When do we want it? Now!

"I dont support violence, and I certainly dont support terrorism and people marching around with tiki torches," protester Elizabeth Beheler said. "So yes, I think that I am a suburban soccer mom here peacefully expressing myself."

Protester Natalia Price said part of her attendance at the rally was to challenge President Donald Trump's response to the violence in Charlottesville. She said her family came to the United States to experience love, respect and diversity, but she finds that the current administration is not upholding those values.

"He keeps supporting things that are just completely counter to that," Price said. "And I think the American people want to stand up and say, 'This is enough. Were done with it.'"

Among a slew of speakers, Mountain View Mayor Ken Rosenberg told the 400-strong crowd that he planned to go to Charleston Park himself and stare down neo-Nazis and people who promote fascism under the cloak of free speech.
Valeria Syanchuk should have been celebrating her 18th birthday on Thursday, but instead the Bergen County, New Jersey, resident took cover in a cafe with her mother and grandmother moments after a driver plowed into one of Spains most popular destinations.

What should have been a joyous celebration turned into hours of horror and uncertainty, she said. This was her first visit to Barcelona, and terrorism was not on her mind.

"I was panicking," she said. "People kept looking at us like something was wrong, and we had no idea what they were saying."

Witnesses described hordes of people running and screaming in the moments after the attack. One tourist from Argentina saw a 3-year-old boy die on the street. A brown stain is all that remains two days later.

Valeria Syanchuk

Syanchuk and her family landed in Barcelona around 11 a.m. By that evening, the three women were tired from wandering the Gothic Quarters serpentine streets. Her grandmother asked if they could stop and rest somewhere. As they entered a cafe, the employees scrambled to shut the gates.

"Do they know what happened?" asked one employee to another, Syanchuk said.

The cafe workers explained they had received an alert from the Spanish government to remain inside because a terrorist attack was underway. Terrified, the employees wanted to get home and advised Syanchuks family to return to their hotel.

The women hurried through the maze-like streets, but police had the area on lockdown. The cafe was already closed and their hotel entrance was blocked. Instead, the women were forced to wait in the street as armed guards descended onto the area.

"We got lucky because my mother wanted to sit down," Alena Ansolis, Syanchuks mother, said. "We were heading back to the hotel. It happened right outside there."

Hours passed and the only information available was that the driver remained on the loose.

"I kept searching news and kept refreshing every couple of minutes," Syanchuk said. "You have no idea who these people are, if theyre standing right next to you."

When the immediate threat passed, Syanchuk and her family asked police to escort them back to the hotel. Since then, the three have stayed close together but decided to continue their journey through Europe. Syanchuk will be meeting relatives for the first time in Germany, and she doesnt want to miss the opportunity to experience something positive after the events of this week.

"Walking down the street is so emotional," she said, adding that the increased police presence and outpouring of sympathy makes her family feel safer.

"I saw a man driving a garbage truck and he got out to put a rose on a memorial. Everyone has come together. It doesnt matter who."

The streets of Las Ramblas are brimming with memorials dedicated to the 13 people who died and the more than 100 who were injured in Thursdays attack. Tourists and residents continue to offer signs, flowers, candles and other mementos for the fallen.

An American from California was among those who died in Thursday's attack. Jared Tucker, 42, and Heidi Nunes-Tucker, 40, were celebrating a belated honeymoon with sangria when Tucker stopped for a bathroom break. A mere minute passed before chaos erupted in the streets, Nunes-Tucker told NBC.

The dozen other fatalities included tourists from Canada, Belgium and Italy. A three-year-old Spanish boy also died.

On Saturday, two days after the attack, dozens of taxis paraded into Las Ramblas bringing with them giant wreaths to place at a large memorial where the rampage first started. Some wept while they addressed a sea of onlookers.

"I am Muslim and these people dont represent us," said one driver. "Criminals have attacked us, but true Muslims stand here with you today and always will."

After presenting the wreaths, these taxis paraded down Las Ramblas honking their horns and waving. Spectators clapped and sang, including Syanchuk, whose balcony faces one of the memorials.

"There are so many more people than when we first arrived," Syanchuk said. "People have been chanting and marching. Ive never seen anything like it."
A white supremacist, front and center at the rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, is from Keene, New Hampshire, and his neighbors are shocked.

Most residents in the city are appalled by Chris Cantwell's extremist views, but few people are more surprised than his landlord.

"He never showed that personality to me," Todd Tousley told NBC Boston in an interview outside Cantwell's apartment Thursday.

Tousley couldn't believe his eyes when he saw his own tenant on a Vice News documentary -- featured as one of the leaders of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

"We're not non-violent, we will f****** kill these people if we have to," Cantwell said in the video.

"Pretty surprised, pretty surprised," Tousley said. "It's kind of scary to hear anybody talk like that."

Cantwell has lived in Keene New for about five years. But residents want to make it abundantly clear he was not brought up here.

"That's not New Hampshire, that's not what we are, it's not American," said Ian Hoppock, who calls Keene his hometown.

"Shocking and shameful, it breaks my heart," said Keene High School Teacher Jennifer White.

The self-proclaimed racist was shown several times in the documentary, at one point unloading his weapons, and later reacting to the news that a counter protester was killed by a white nationalist who rammed his car into the crowd.

"The fact that nobody on our side died, I would call that points for us," Cantwell said.

"That's one of the most repulsive and sickening things I have ever heard," Hoppock said.

"It seems we have absolutely gone to the point of self-destruction," said Gardner, Massachusetts, resident Kathleen Innis, who was visiting Keene Thursday.

In a YouTube video posted Wednesday, Cantwell is in tears, blaming the weekend violence on the counter protesters.

"It was done in defense of myself and others," he said in the video. "I would not have done it for any other reasons."

Tousely thinks that latest video shows his tenant's true colors.

"I have a feeling deep down inside, he doesnt really mean it," Tousley said. "It's like a mob mentality."

Cantwell didn't return our calls or emails for comment, but he did post in his blog Thursday. He says there is a warrant out for his arrest in Virginia and he plans to turn himself in.

Cantwell says he's staying in an undisclosed location because death threats have him fearing for his life.
From a white power record label in Burbank to an Aryan motorcycle club in Canton, there are 32 active hate groups in the state of Illinois, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centera nonprofit advocating against extremism.

While the nations history is wrought with examples of racism and bigotry, groups like the SPLC are sounding the alarm over current eventssuch as the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend. A 32-year-old woman was killed and 15 people were injured after a car rammed into a crowd of counter-protesters.

Another nonprofit, the Anti-Defamation League, expressed concern ahead of the so-called Unite the Right rally and said it was possibly the largest white supremacist gathering in a decade.

Illinois is no stranger to such demonstrations. In 1978, a neo-Nazi group planned to march in Skokie where a large Jewish population, including Holocaust survivors, resides. The Nazis instead marched in Marquette Park in Chicago where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once lived.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was among those rallying against the Nazis at the time, called it a political awakening in a recent statement rebuking President Donald Trumps failure to squarely blame white supremacists for Virginias spate of violence.

The SPLCs digital Hate Map, an interactive feature on its website cataloging what it calls extremist and fringe groups, has been circulated widely on social media in recent days in response to the events in Charlottesville.

SPLC officials did not respond to request for comment. On its website, the organization details why it has included the groups on its map.

Lonnie Nasatir, the Midwest regional director for the ADL, says hate groups in Illinois today are fluid, often quickly dissolving and hard to track.

Theyre very hard to quantify, he said in a phone interview, adding that the 32 listed by the SPLC is a good ballpark number.

The ADL says white supremacists and extremists have renewed attempts to insert their hatred in a number of towns and cities across the country, placing much of the blame on rhetoric coming from the Trump White House.

The president has faced heavy criticism since his insistence that the Charlottesville violence was stoked by both sides, though he has denounced Nazis, the KKK and white supremacists in scripted comments. Trumps statements, however, have garnered the praise of former KKK grand wizard David Duke and white nationalist icon Richard Spencer.

Unfortunately we didnt get the denunciation we were looking for from the president, Nasatir said. My fear is that theyve (white supremacists) again been emboldened and are feeling empowered to go to the next rally.

Nasatir said groups like the ADL and SPLC are staying vigilant in the fight against extremism and hate. He said his organization is communicating with law enforcement about its findings all the time.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it does at times investigate domestic hate groups but does not actively track them.

Our focus is not on membership in particular groups or adherence to particular ideologies or beliefs but on criminal activity, said FBI spokeswoman Diane Carbonara. The FBI cannot initiate an investigation based solely on an individuals race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of the First Amendment or other Constitutional rights, and we remain committed to protecting those rights for all Americans.

In interviews given since the chaos in Charlottesville, some marchers said they were only there to protest the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Leewhile others openly professed their racist beliefs.

Still, not everyone agrees with the SPLCs findings. The village of Gurnee, reportedly home to a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, has requested to be removed from the Hate Map.

Gurnee police told the Lake County News-Sun there has been no record of Klan activity in the area since 1987.

The American Family Association, a conservative advocacy group defending natural marriage and resisting the aggressive, radical, homosexual agenda, vehemently denied it is a hate group in a statement Thursday.

Organizations like the AFA, which has two facilities in Illinois, have also said the SPLC lumps right wing organizations in with hate groups.

Nasatir says, citing ADL analysis, a majority of recent extremism-related deaths in America are a result of conservative fringe group activity, but concedes left-leaning organizations are capable of violence and hate as well.

Theres no question there are left forces that are dangerous and we need to be mindful of that, he said. You cant just focus on one.
Sunday was a violent cap to the weekend in Chicago, as eight people are dead and at least 54 were wounded in shootings across Chicago this weekend.

Seven people were shot, including one fatally, in an incident in the 11900 block of S. Loomis Sunday morning. A man was shot in the head and was pronounced dead at the scene when a man in a black SUV opened fire at a group of people in the parking lot of a banquet hall.

Six more people were shot, and their conditions range from serious to stable, according to police.

An 8-year-old boy was struck by the SUV as the gunman fled the scene, and he was taken to Christ Hospital in stable condition with a broken ankle.

The most recent fatal shooting occurred Sunday afternoon in the 3000 block of W. Polk. A 20-year-old man was shot to death at approximately 6:25 p.m. when an SUV drove by and one of the occupants fired shots at a group of people. The man was struck in the head, and was pronounced dead at the scene.

A 17-year-old boy and an 18-year-old man were also shot and were taken to local hospitals after the shooting.

The first fatality of the weekend came on Saturday morning, as a 26-year-old man was shot to death in the citys West Pullman neighborhood. The man was standing next to a car in the 12200 block of S. Greet St. at approximately 4:30 a.m. when a black SUV pulled up, and one of the occupants opened fire.

The man was struck in the head, and he was taken to Metro South Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A 45-year-old woman was also with him at the time, and she was taken to the hospital in stable condition with gunshot wounds to her left arm and left leg.

On Saturday afternoon, a 24-year-old man was shot to death at the intersection of 63rd and Carpenter. The man was shot in the face, chest, and arm, and was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Four more people were killed in separate shootings between 1:25 a.m. and 5:10 a.m. on Sunday morning. A 22-year-old man was killed in the 7000 block of S. Paulina when a vehicle pulled up to a group that he was standing in.

A short time later, a 22-year-old man on the 1000 block of W. Maxwell was shot and killed by a pair of unknown gunman who got out of a car and opened fire.

A man was killed in the 3800 block of S. Archer while he was sitting at a stoplight. A car pulled up alongside his vehicle and an occupant opened fire, striking him in the head, neck, and arm. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Friday:

A 30-year-old man was standing in an alley on the 5400 block of S. May when a man walked up and shot him. The incident, which occurred at approximately 5:24 p.m., left the man with gunshot wounds to his arms and stomach, and he was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition. The gunman fled in a white vehicle.

A 14-year-old boy was walking with a group of friends in the 900 block of W. Cullerton when a person in a red sedan fired shots at him. The boy suffered graze wounds to his chest and his left knee and was taken to Stroger Hospital in stable condition.

Two men walked up to a 34-year-old man sitting in a car and fired shots at him in the 100 block of N. Kilbourn at approximately 11:34 p.m. The man suffered a gunshot wound to his leg, and was taken to Mt. Sinai in good condition.

Saturday:

A 22-year-old man was standing on a sidewalk in the 1200 block of N. Campbell when he was hit by gunshots at approximately 12:50 a.m. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds to his right arm, and was transferred to Stroger Hospital in stable condition.

An occupant of a passing brown minivan fired shots at a 19-year-old man in the 5800 block of W. Belden at approximately 1:30 a.m. The man suffered a gunshot wound to his left leg and was taken to Community First Hospital in stable condition.

A 23-year-old woman was sitting on a porch in the 2700 block of E. 78 th St. at approximately 2 a.m. when she was shot in the buttocks. A man exited a vehicle, fired shots at the residence, and then fled. The victim was taken to Northwestern Hospital in good condition.

St. at approximately 2 a.m. when she was shot in the buttocks. A man exited a vehicle, fired shots at the residence, and then fled. The victim was taken to Northwestern Hospital in good condition. A 16-year-old boy was standing in a large group of people in the 100 block of S. Kildare at approximately 2:40 a.m. when shots rang out, striking him in the right leg. He was taken to Mt. Sinai in stable condition, but is not cooperating with authorities.

Two people were shot in the 200 block of N. Homan at approximately 3:45 a.m. A 21-year-old man was shot multiple times after a man fired shots from a nearby alley. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in serious condition. A 23-year-old man suffered a graze wound to his right arm and refused treatment.

A person in a gray Jeep fired shots at a 25-year-old man in the 8300 block of S. Peoria at approximately 4 a.m., striking him in the abdomen and right leg. He was taken to Christ Hospital in critical condition.

A 24-year-old man was standing near a vehicle in the 10000 block of S. Avenue M when a person in a gold Trailblazer fired shots at him. The victim was shot in the left arm and was taken to Christ Hospital in stable condition.

A 26-year-old man was shot and killed in the 12200 block of S. Greet St. at approximately 4:30 a.m. The man was standing next to a car when a black SUV pulled up and one of the occupants opened fire. The man was struck in the head and was pronounced dead at Metro South Hospital. A 45-year-old woman who was standing with him was also shot, and she was taken to Christ Hospital in stable condition after being shot in the left arm and left leg.

A 24-year-old man was shot and killed at the corner of 63rd and Carpenter at approximately 4:20 p.m. The man suffered gunshot wounds to his face, chest, and arm, and was pronounced dead at an area hospital.

Two people were shot in the 2700 block of N. Monticello at approximately 6:26 p.m when the occupant of a dark colored SUV fired shots at them as they walked down the street. A 21-year-old man was shot in the head and was taken to Illinois Masonic Hospital in critical condition, and a 20-year-old man was shot in the thigh and taken to the same hospital in stable condition. Both men are gang-affiliated, according to police.

A 20-year-old man was shot in the head on the 900 block of W. 83rd St at approximately 7:42 p.m. A dark-colored SUV pulled up to where he was standing and an occupant fired shots at him. He was taken to Christ Hospital in critical condition.

A 17-year-old boy was shot in the left knee on the 4700 block of W. Fulton at approximately 8:12 p.m. He was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital in good condition.





A 42-year-old man was shot in the left leg at approximately 9:15 p.m. The incident, which occurred in the 5800 block of W. Augusta, happened while the man was sitting in a parked car and a black Jeep Wrangler pulled up alongside him. One of the occupants of the Jeep then opened fire. The man was taken to Western Suburban Hospital in stable condition.

A 16-year-old boy was caught in the crossfire as two groups of men fired shots at one another in the 700 block of N. Lawndale at approximately 9:35 p.m. The boy was hit in the right leg, and he was taken to Stroger Hospital in stable condition.

A 36-year-old man was shot in the left leg as he was walking down a street in the 2800 block of W. Augusta at approximately 10 p.m. A man stepped out of a Chevy vehicle and opened fire, striking the victim in the left leg. He was taken to Norwegian Hospital in stable condition.

Three men were shot by two masked offenders in the 5100 block of W. Chicago at approximately 11:10 p.m. A 19-year-old was taken to Western Suburban Hospital in stable condition after being shot in the left hip and left leg. A 24-year-old man sustained a gunshot wound to his left arm and was taken to the same hospital in stable condition. A 30-year-old was shot in the back and was taken to Mount Sinai in serious condition.

Three people were shot during an argument in the 5000 block of W. Ferdinand at approximately 11:30 p.m. A 30-year-old man was shot in the right leg and chest, and was taken to Mount Sinai in critical condition. A 62-year-old man was shot in the left leg and was taken to Western Suburban in stable condition, and a 32-year-old woman was taken to the same hospital in stable condition with a gunshot wound to her left leg.

Sunday:

A 27-year-old man was shot in the head as he was driving in the 4500 block of S. Wood at approximately 12:45 a.m. After he was shot, he crashed his car into a tree. He was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition.

A vehicle pulled up to a group of people in the 7000 block of S. Paulina and an occupant opened fire at approximately 1:25 a.m. A 22-year-old man was struck multiple times and was pronounced dead at St. Bernard hospital. A 23-year-old was shot multiple times and is in critical condition at Mt. Sinai. Make and model information on the vehicle is unknown.

A 60-year-old man was shot in the right shoulder while he was driving in the 0-100 block of E. 43 rd St. He was taken to Mercy Hospital in good condition.

St. He was taken to Mercy Hospital in good condition. A 22-year-old man was standing on a street in the 1000 block of W. Maxwell when a car drove up and two armed individuals got out. They then fired multiple shots, striking the victim. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.
A Chicago-area pastor has requested that Washington and Jackson Park be renamed, and that statues of the two former presidents be removed. In response, he has received death threats, he says.

Rev. James Dukes says that the number of hate messages he has received since making his proposal has surpasssed hundreds, but he says that he just wants to respect the suffering of those in his community.

"We can have public hearings and the public can engage my only fear is if that happens others from around the country will come and we surely don't want another Charlottesville in Chicago!," he said.

His recommendation comes in the aftermath of violent protests in Charlottesville, VA over the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue.

Dukes wants Washington Park to be renamed after former Chicago mayor Harold Washington, and for Jackson Park to be renamed after the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

For this part, Jackson declined the proposal, saying instead that he wants to focus on more immediate concerns.

What we need to do now is focus on what has happened in the reversal of our civil rights struggle under (Attorney General Jeff) Sessions, Rev. Jackson said.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel also rejected the idea, saying that the neighborhood names and statues will remain intact.

I want to be clear as it relates to Washington Park and Jackson Park: they will stay named after the presidents who helped keep this union together, he said.

The same cannot be said of the Italo Balbo monument, a long-time fixture in the Burnham Park neighborhood.

That statue, donated to the city by former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, could come down, and one alderman is offering a proposal to do just that.

Balbo was the number one sidekick for Benito Mussolini, 36th Ward Ald. Gilbert Villegas said. I think there's other Italians that have done great things for the city of Chicago and the country in general.

Mayor Emanuel says that there will be discussions about whether to remove the Balbo monument, saying that "there is time to work together on that."

While the push to remove the Balbo monument has some supporters, Rev. Dukes isn't swayed by the opposition he's faced after suggesting that a similar fate befall statues honoring Washington and Jackson.

"It just shows that this is a deep seeded problem in America and we need to address it," he said.
A 3-year-old is recovering from a gunshot wound after getting ahold of his fathers gun, according to Hartford police.

Hartford Police Deputy Chief Brian Foley said Saturday that the child was brought to Saint Francis Hospital by his parents with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. The child was in critical condition and transported to Connecticut Childrens Medical Center for further treatment. The boy is expected to make a full recovery.

Police said the boys father is a legal gun owner and stores the firearm in a safe at the familys home on East Raymond Street. He had taken the gun out of the safe and put it on the bed when the accident occurred.

The child was in the room, unbeknownst to him. He had grabbed the gun while it was on the bed and pulled the trigger at the same time, shooting himself in the shoulder. Foley said.

No charges have been filed, but there will be a criminal investigation and risk of injury charges or unsafe storage of a firearm charges are possible.

It does bring up the issue of safely storing firearms around the house. This family looks like they took the right precautions 99 percent of the time. This is the unfortunate one percent, Foley said.

The Department of Children and Families will be involved in the investigation as well.

By accounts from community members this is a good family. Good, hardworking parents and this is just a tragic accident, Foley said.

(Preliminary) HPD investigating 2yo at hospital with Non-Life Thrt. GSW. 2yo got ahold of parents gun.  Brian Foley (@LtFoley) August 19, 2017

The investigation is ongoing. The child and parents have not been publicly identified.

No other details were immediately available.

((CORRECTION: Police initially said the injured child was 2, but later amended that information and said the boy was actually 3. The story has been updated to reflect that information.))
Connecticuts US senators are reacting to President Donald Trumps impromptu, controversial comments blaming both sides for the deadly weekend violence in Charlottesville, Va.

At a press conference Tuesday, the president doubled down on comments he made about violence that broke out at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville that left one woman dead and dozens of other people injured.

"Those people  all of those people  excuse me. I've condemned neo-Nazis. I've condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee," he said.

At a town hall event in Waterbury, Sen. Chris Murphy reacted to the comments with strong words.

I nearly threw up when I read that our president used the seal of the US to defend white supremacists, Murphy said.

Murphy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal are aggressively countering the presidents remarks.

He said they really werent all white supremacists that there was violence on the other side - thats everything these neo-nazis would have wanted the president to say and he said it today, Murphy said.

Blumenthal responded through a series of tweets, saying Donald Trump is not the real America. All Americans should condemn these disgusting, indefensible comments. Let us unite.

Donald Trump is not the real America. All Americans should condemn these disgusting, indefensible comments. Let us unite.  Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) August 15, 2017

When asked for comment, the Connecticut Republican Party stood by a statement they issued Sunday. Attributed to chairman JR Romano, it read in part:

The events that have unfolded in Charlottesville are not only tragic they're painful. Those who espouse the values of white supremacy, racism and bigotry are not American values they aren't our values.

In the face of hate we must show love. We are encouraging people from around our state and the country to engage in acts of kindness with your neighbors and your community.

Murphy argued that true American values are what he will continue to fight for and the message from President Trump is what he will continue to fight against.

I dont think we can just remain silent when the president of the US is effectively offering a defense of some really, really terrible people, Murphy said.
Hartford police made 58 underage drinking referrals Friday night in the parking lots of a Florida Georgia Line Concert at the Xfinity Theatre.

Hartford police had prepared for an increased level of law enforcement at the concert, specifically to crack down on underage drinking after many concertgoers wound up in the hospital at a recent event.

On July 21, the Xfinity parking lots were packed with people, many of whom were under 21 years old, for a Chance The Rapper concert. Police said there was a lot of heavy drinking, which resulted in 50 people being charged with underage drinking and 96 people being taken by ambulance to hospitals.

Many of those patients were suffering from severe intoxication and some were transported to Connecticut Childrens Medical Center in Hartford.

After the incident, police met with Xfinity Theatre representatives, and Xfinity Theatre agreed to pay for an additional law enforcement presence at the FGL show.

Police said they made 58 referrals. AMR supervisors did not release a specific number of transports, but estimated that around 30 people were transported to the hospital, police said.

Hartford Police Deputy Chief Brian Foley described Fridays show as more subdued and calmer than some others.
South Windsor police are investigating the untimely death of a man found in his home on Palmer Drive Saturday.

Police said a nurse visiting the home called police around 8 a.m. when no one came to the door. When officers entered, they found the 31-year-old man dead. He has not been publicly identified.

The nurse made daily visits to provide medication to the victim, police said.

The State Police Major Crimes unit and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will assist with the investigation.

Police said there is no threat to the public, though the cause and manner of death are being called undetermined at this time.

NBC Connecticut will provide updates as they come into the newsroom.
Officers were dispatched at 7:09 a.m. to the 100 Block of North Somers Avenue in regard to an unknown person shooting out the back window of a 2005 Chevrolet Suburban with what appeared to be a BB gun.
What to Know At least 13 people are dead in Barcelona, with another dead in the resort town of Cambrils

One American was killed and another injured, according to the State Department, but they have not been identified

A crowd chanted "I am not afraid! I am not afraid!" after a minute's silence Barcelona's main square

A missing imam and a house that exploded days ago became the focus Saturday of the investigation into an extremist cell responsible for two deadly attacks in Barcelona and a nearby resort, as authorities narrowed in on who radicalized a group of young men in northeastern Spain.

Investigators searched the home of Abdelbaki Es Satty, an imam who in June abruptly quit working at a mosque in the town of Ripoll, the home of the Islamic radicals behind the attacks that killed 14 people and wounded over 120 in the last few days. Police were trying to determine whether Es Satty was killed in a botched bomb-making operation on Wednesday, the eve of the Barcelona bloodshed.

His former mosque has denounced the deadly attacks and weeping relatives marched into a Ripoll square on Saturday, tearfully denying any knowledge of the radical plans of their sons and brothers. At least one of the suspects is still on the run, and his younger brother has disappeared, as has the younger brother of one of the five attackers slain Friday by police.

Catalan police said a manhunt was centered on Younes Abouyaaquoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan suspected of driving the van that plowed into a packed Barcelona promenade Thursday, killing 13 people and injuring 120. Another attack early Friday killed one person and wounded five in the resort of Cambrils.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for both.

Everyone so far known in the cell grew up in Ripoll, a town in the Catalan foothills near the French border 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Barcelona. Spanish police searched nine homes in Ripoll, including Es Satty's, and two buses, and set up a roadblock that checked each car entering the town. Across the Pyrenees, French police carried out extra border checks on people coming in from Spain.

Neighbors, family and even the mayor of Ripoll said they were shocked by news of the alleged involvement of the young men, whom all described as integrated Spanish and Catalan speakers with friends of all backgrounds.

Halima Hychami, the weeping mother of Mohamed Hychami, one of the attackers named by police, said he told her he was leaving on vacation and would return Aug. 25. His younger brother, Omar, slept late Thursday and left mid-afternoon.

Mohamed Hychami is believed among the five attackers shot to death by police in Cambrils. She hasn't heard from Omar since he left.

"We found out by watching TV, same as all of you. They never talked about the imam. They were normal boys. They took care of me, booked my flight when I went on vacation. They all had jobs. They didn't steal. Never had a problem with me or anybody else. I can't understand it," she said.

Even with Abouyaaquoub at large, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido declared the cell "broken" Saturday. In addition to the five killed by police, four were in custody and one or two were killed in a house explosion Wednesday. He said there was no new imminent threat of attack.

Police also conducted a series of controlled explosions Saturday in the town of Alcanar, south of Barcelona, where the attacks were planned in house that was destroyed Wednesday by an explosion. Authorities had initially thought it was a gas accident, but took another look after the attacks.

Initially, only one person was believed killed in the Wednesday blast. But officials said DNA tests were underway to determine if human remains found there Friday were from a second victim. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing searches, said investigators believed the remains may belong to Es Satty.

The official said investigators also discovered ingredients of the explosive TATP, used by the Islamic State group in attacks in Paris and Brussels, as well as multiple butane tanks that the group may have wanted to combine with the homemade explosive and load into their vehicles.

Neighbors on Saturday said they had seen three vehicles coming and going from the home, including an Audi used in the Cambrils attack and the van used in the Barcelona attack.

The president of the mosque where Es Satty preached, Ali Yassine, said he hadn't seen him since June, when he announced he was returning to Morocco for three months.

"He left the same way he came," said a bitter Wafa Marsi, a friend to many of the attackers, who appeared Saturday alongside their families to denounce terrorism.

Members of Ripoll's Muslim community denounced the vehicle attacks and offered their sympathy to the families of the victims.

Authorities said the two attacks were the work of a large terrorist cell that had been plotting for a long time from the house in Alcanar, 125 miles down the coast from Barcelona.

The lone named suspect still at large, Abouyaaquoub, figures on a police list of four main suspects sought in the attacks. Also on the list is 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, whose brother Driss reported to police that his documents stolen. Ripoll's mayor confirmed that those documents were found in a vehicle used in the attacks. Moussa was one of the five radicals killed, and Driss is in custody, police said.

A French police official said authorities were also looking for a Kangoo utility vehicle that was believed to have been rented in Spain by a suspect in the Barcelona attack that might have crossed the border.

Fatima Abouyaaquoub, sister-in-law of the Hychami brothers and the cousin of Younes Abouyaaquoub, said she found it all hard to believe.

"I'm still waiting for all of it to be a lie. I don't know if they were brainwashed or they gave them some type of medication or what. I can't explain it," she said.

Abouyaaquoub's mother said his younger brother, Hussein, left home Thursday afternoon and hasn't returned.

The sheer size of the cell and the close family relations among the attackers recalled the November 2015 attacks in Paris, in which Islamic State attackers struck the national stadium, a Paris concert hall and bars and restaurants nearly simultaneously, leaving 130 people dead. Since then, the extremist group has steadily lost ground in its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Islamic extremists have made a point of targeting Europe's major tourist attractions in recent years  especially in rented or hijacked vehicles.

Yet Spain decided to keep its terrorist threat alert at level 4  out of five  declaring Saturday that no new attacks were imminent. Zoido said the country would reinforce security for events that draw large crowds as well as at popular tourist sites.

The dead and wounded in the two attacks came from 34 countries. By late Saturday, the Catalan emergency service said 53 people remained hospitalized, 13 of them in critical condition.

The 14 people killed spanned generations  from age 3 to age 80  and left behind devastated loved ones. They included a grandmother, 74, and her granddaughter, 20, from Portugal who were visiting Barcelona to celebrate a birthday; an Italian father who saved his children's lives but lost his own; an American man who was celebrating his first wedding anniversary in vibrant Barcelona.

Francisco Lopez Rodriguez, a 57-year-old Spaniard, was killed with his 3-year-old grand-nephew, Javier Martinez, while walking along the Las Ramblas promenade. His widow Roser is recovering from her wounds in a hospital.

"We are a broken family," niece Raquel Baron Lopez posted on Twitter.
All four African-American Dallas City Council members held a joint press conference Friday to demand that Confederate monuments in city-owned parks be taken down.

Some comments from the councilmen were less decisive about the issue earlier in the week, but they all agreed Friday that the end result of a task force study on the issue must be removing the monuments.

"We stand in solidarity to say that those statues must be and will be removed. However, there is a process that we have to go through," said Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway.

A Friday memo to council members from Mayor Mike Rawlings detailed a plan for that process.

Rawlings wants all 14 council members to name an appointee to the task force by 5 p.m. Monday. The mayor will then add additional appointees and schedule task force meetings. The sessions will be held under the city's open meeting rules. The Dallas Parks Board and Cultural Affairs Commission will review task force findings. The mayor set a Nov. 8 deadline for final Dallas City Council action on the findings.

"I'm going to continue to push the mayor to shorten that time frame," Councilman Kevin Felder said. "We need to get on with this process."

Confederate statues in the city of Dallas must come down, according to Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway.

Councilmen Tennell Atkins and Casey Thomas joined Caraway in saying they are less concerned about speed in the process.

"I'm not worried about a deadline," Atkins said. "We are trying to make sure what we do is right for the citizens and looking out for everyone."

All four council members speaking Friday said they want the result to be about more than just statues.

"This should be a first step toward moving Dallas to being a whole city and a more equitable city for those who are here now and those who will be here in the future," Thomas said.

All four also agree a possible result could be moving the statues to some display that would include a more thorough presentation about the Civil War.

"Taxpayer dollars should not support vestiges of racism, white supremacy and oppression," Felder said. "Maybe it's appropriate to have them in museums or put them in some sort of historical context."

Those are among the issues to be considered before the planned November City Council vote.

On Thursday, Caraway issued the following statement on the statues:

"As the nation grapples with what to do with the vestiges of the Confederacy, so does Dallas. It is a necessary conversation that has been brewing for many years. With that said, I support the effort to research the proper policy on removing statues, and to survey the thoughts of City Officials on what the process, if any, should look like. This is not the decision of one person. In the meantime, my focus will be on the residents of Dallas and their immediate needs. I choose to focus on making our neighborhoods safer by combatting the scourge of drugs in our communities. I choose to focus on combatting homelessness and making sure the most vulnerable of us all have a safe place to lay their head at night. And, I choose to work on bringing economic development to Southern Dallas, and finding equitable ways to provide a better quality of life for many who need only the opportunity."

Memo from Mayor Mike Rawlings:



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A North Texas community is heading to the polls in a special election this month.

Three people, each with a unique background, are vying for a city council seat in Rowlett.

Regardless of who wins on Aug. 26, Rowlett is set to make history.

The city of about 60,000 is peppered with political posters, and candidates in several races are making one last pitch outside of Rowlett City Hall.

"Hello, are you here to vote" candidate Blake Margolis asked a couple walking toward the building.

When it comes to the race for Rowlett's City Council Place One, while the campaign signs aren't unique, the faces behind them are.

"I'm Arab, I'm transgender, I'm autistic," said candidate Lina Khalil.

"I would be the first Hispanic male ever in the history of Rowlett to become city council [member]," said candidate Israel Deases.

"What I think makes me unique is my age," Margolis said.

Margolis, 18, said he is finishing up his last year of an online high school with college credit.

"Most 18-year-olds aren't interested in city government," he said. "In fact, they don't even know how city government works."

The teen created the Rowlett/Sachse Scanner Facebook page when he was 13 years old.

Khalil is the daughter of Lebanese immigrants and is transitioning toward becoming a man.

"I'm part of a lot of different communities. That puts me in a position to be a strong advocate for the population at large," Khalil said.

Khalil has a software engineering degree as well.

Deases hopes to bring representation for the city's estimated 16-percent Latino community. When asked what he would fight for first as councilman, Deases responded, "To make the city more comfortable for everybody.

"Right now, everybody is in chaos, and a lot of racism. That's one of the things I would like to work on," he said.

The 47-year-old assistant manager of a local store pointed out his competitors are 18 and 27 years old, respectively.

"I feel like they're young," he said. "They still need to go out and discover the world more, and I feel like I'm the best candidate for this."

Margolis has been politically active since age six when he attended a city council meeting and stood before council members to ask a question about a local park.

"I've been involved in my city," he said. "I would fight for everybody to be heard, and I think it's important that everybody of all kinds are heard."

Election Day is Aug. 26.

The candidates will be at a forum Saturday evening at 7 p.m. at Rowlett's Church in the City.

We asked each candidate to talk about their platform. Watch their answers in the following video:

Three candidates for City Council in Rowlett  Israel Deases, Lina Khalil and Blake Margolis  talk about their platform in the race for "Place One."
The remains of more than 100 people found in a community in Tijuana, Mexico Wednesday are believed to have been buried in that location a decade ago and are possibly connected a drug cartel member who was arrested in 2009.

Ev Meade, Director of the Transborder Institute at University of San Diego (USD), told NBC 7 Thursday, a press release confirming the discovery was sent out by a special branch of the Attorney General's office for organized crime in Mexico.

Thursday, investigators were uncovering the bones of more than 120 people outside of the Maclovio Rojas area in Tijuana.

Meade said while this is a new discovery, it's part of a longer history.

"On the one hand, this is a new story because it is a new discovery-- these are new remains that havent been seen before. But in another way, this is a very old story. Its the same story that has been going on since 2007 or 2008 when we started to learn the terrible history of a guy named 'El Pozolero' or 'stew maker,' Santiago Meza, who worked for the Arrellano-Felix cartel and Sinaloa cartel, dissolving the bodies of their victims in acid," Meade said.

According to Meade, Meza was arrested in 2009 and admitted to dissolving the bodies of more than 300 people in acid and burying them. He gave the authorities a map of where the bodies were located.

But Meade said the authorities "sat on this incredible declaration" because they were focused on taking down some of the big drug cartels in Tijuana.

It wasn't until 2012 that one of the mass graves was discovered, Meade added.



"This was the first time not only that they dug up one of these mass graves but that they allowed the victims families to see what it was like and see if they could perhaps do identifications," he told NBC 7. "There was a micro-burst of activity around it then but it never really went anywhere in part because it was hard to identify the victims and in part because of politics."

Meade said new evidence led to the discovery of the bodies Wednesday, five years after the initial findings.

At this time, it is unknown who the victims are and what caused their death.

It has not been confirmed if Meza is connected to this incident.
NBC4 Southern California and Telemundo 52 Los Angeles have teamed up again for the Clear the Shelters adoption drive.

We're live this morning form the Inland Valley Humane Society.

Watch live video from participating shelters above when available

More than 60 local shelters and rescue organizations are part of the effort, reducing adoption fees to $20 on August 19. You'll find our shelters map here.



Clear the Shelters raises awareness about the benefits of pet adoption and aims to reduce the animal overpopulation at local shelters. During the month-long campaign, the stations will cover news stories to spotlight the issue, including the importance of spaying/neutering, the benefits of micro-chipping, and helping families find the right pet for their homes.

The campaign culminates on Saturday when the stations broadcast live on NBC4's Today in LA at 7 a.m. at shelters throughout the Southland and continue coverage all day. Newscasters will be present at several shelters to celebrate with families and their new pets. The evening newscasts will recap the day with success stories and highlights. Additionally, local sponsor VCA Animal Hospitals will be at the shelters to provide each person adopting a free first exam and Healthy Start Certificate at VCA Animal Hospitals.

The broader community is encouraged to begin posting photos of their pets on all social media platforms and share why they love them using #LoveMyPet and #ClearTheShelters.

For updates and a map of participating shelters, visit nbcla.com/cleartheshelters. For shelters throughout the country, visit www.cleartheshelters.com.


Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reopened the case of a man who died after an overdose of meth at a prominent Democratic donor's house amid pressure from the man's family.

Gemmel Moore, 26, was found dead at Ed Buck's West Hollywood home last month, according to officials.

The coroner ruled the fatal overdose as an accident, but Moore's family are unconvinced, wondering if he was forced to take the drugs or did so voluntarily.

"Accountability is everything," Derrick Nixon, Moore's brother said.

Moore's mother, Latisha Nixon, is seeking immunity for witnesses in an effort to encourage people to come forward with information regarding her son's fatal overdose.

"Ed Buck needs to be stopped," she said. "I need you guys to put pressure on whoever needs to put pressure."

Buck claims his innocence and his attorney released a statement regarding the investigation.

"This is a tragedy," Buck's attorney, Seymour Amster, said. "Mr.Buck had nothing to do with it. No matter how much pressure is put on law enforcement, the answer will remain the same."

Moore was homeless and addicted to drugs, according to his mother. He made a living as a male escort in order to support himself.

"My son needed the money and unfortunately we know the outcome," Latisha Nixon said.

His family was successful in demanding the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to reopen the case. Authorities said they found no circumstances of foul play, but are assigning several investigators as "an abundance of caution."

"I just want justive for Gemmel," the victim's aunt, Gena Livings said. "We miss him so much. We just want justice for him."
A police officer in Florida died from his injuries Saturday, a day after his colleague was killed when a suspect fired at them during a scuffle while they were on patrol. The suspect was later arrested at a bar.

Sgt. Sam Howard died Saturday afternoon at a hospital where he had been taken following Friday night's attack in Kissimmee, Florida, located south of the theme park hub of Orlando.

Officer Matthew Baxter died Friday night, a short time after authorities say he was shot by 45-year-old Everett Miller.

Miller faces a charge of first-degree murder for the killing of Baxter. Authorities hadn't yet said what charges he could face for Howard's death.

During a patrol late Friday of a neighborhood with a history of drug activity, Baxter was "checking out" three people, including Miller, when the officer got into a scuffle with Miller. Howard, his sergeant, responded as backup, said Kissimmee Police Chief Jeff O'Dell.

The officers didn't have an opportunity to return fire. They weren't wearing body cameras.

Sheriff's deputies with a neighboring law enforcement agency later tracked Miller down to a bar and approached him. Miller started reaching toward his waistband when the deputies tackled and subdued him, O'Dell said.

They found a handgun and revolver on him.

"They were extremely brave and heroic actions taken by the deputies," O'Dell said.

The police chief said Miller was taken to jail wearing Baxter's handcuffs.

Authorities originally said they believed there were four suspects, but the chief said Saturday that no other arrests are anticipated.

Miller, 45, was a Marine veteran and was recently involuntarily committed for a mental evaluation by the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. The early stages of the investigation shows that Miller had made threats to law enforcement on Facebook, O'Dell said.

Baxter, 27, had been with the Kissimmee Police Department for three years. He was married to another Kissimmee police officer and they have four children.

Howard, 36, has served with the Kissimmee Police Department for 10 years. He and his wife have one child, O'Dell said.

"They are two wonderful men, family men," O'Dell said. "They are two committed to doing it the right way."

Separately, two other officers were injured late Friday in Jacksonville, Florida, after police responded to reports of an attempted suicide at a home where the mother of the man's child, their 19-month-old toddler, the woman's mother and a family friend were thought to be in danger. One of the officers was shot in both hands and the other was shot in the stomach.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams said Saturday that officers Michael Fox and Kevin Jarrell are in stable condition following Friday night's confrontation with an armed Derrick Brabham, who was killed by the officers.

In Pennsylvania, two state troopers were shot and a suspect killed outside a small-town store south of Pittsburgh on Friday night.

In a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, a suspect was fatally shot and an officer injured after they got into a struggle.

President Trump tweeted early Saturday that his thoughts and prayers were with the Kissimmee Police Department. "We are with you!" he said.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott tweeted he was "heartbroken" by the attacks on the officers.

U.S. Rep. Darren Soto said Saturday that he will ask for American flags to be flown over the U.S. Capitol and he plans to ask for a moment of silence on the floor of the U.S. House to honor the officers.

The officers were fatally shot in a district where the top prosecutor says she will no longer seek the death penalty. State Attorney Aramis Ayala announced earlier this year that she wouldn't seek the death penalty, explaining it's not a deterrent and it drags on for years for the victims' relatives. The announcement came as her office was building a case against Markeith Loyd, who is charged with the fatal shooting of an Orlando Police lieutenant.

Gov. Rick Scott on Saturday evening issued an executive order removing the case from Ayala and reassigning it.

"Today, I am using my executive authority to reassign this case to State Attorney Brad King to ensure the victims of last night's attack and their families receive the justice they deserve," Scott said in the order.

A spokeswoman for Ayala didn't respond to an email inquiry seeking comment.
A Weston family who witnessed the deadly van attack in Spain returned home Friday afternoon.

The Ritkes family was vacationing in Europe when a driver intentionally plowed through a busy shopping district in Barcelona. The family of six landed at Miami International Airport with the violence burned in their memory.

People were screaming terrorists immediatelyjust a wave of people stampeded. It happened so quickly, and all of the sudden you see hundreds, thousands of people running at you, recalled Gary Ritkes. They said experiencing the tragedy together has made them closer as a family.

They were just feet away from the van that killed more than a dozen people and injured more than 100.

You just heard screaming. You heard, must have been bodies, we don't know. It was terrible noises and we ran for our lives, said Sonia Ritkes.

They were filing a police report just before the attack because Sonia had been robbed. They believe that if they hadnt been waiting for police, they would have been directly in the vans path.

Gary ran back in and said I'm getting Charlie and Bo. I grabbed my other kids and I said hold hands, recalled Sonia.

The family saw a restaurant and a man told them to run inside. The family ended up taking shelter inside, until the all-clear was given.

All I kept thinking was oh my god. Even though the doors were closed, it was glass walls [and] anybody could just jump in [and] just break the glass, explained Sonia.

Despite the terrifying and chaotic end to the 10-day vacation, the family says the violence will not stop them from traveling across the world in the future.
Today

HomeStore, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., 701 E. Dodge St., Fremont. The HomeStore sells donated items at discounted prices. Proceeds support the mission of Fremont Area Habitat for Humanity.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, 136 N. Main St., Fremont.

Storytime, 11-11:30 a.m., Keene Memorial Library auditorium, 1030 N. Broad St., Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous womens heart to heart group, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous open meeting, 7:30 p.m., United Faith Church, 218 W. Gardiner St., Valley.

Narcotics Anonymous Lie Is Dead Group, 8 p.m., Care Corps, 723 N. Broad St., Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10:30 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Sunday

Alcoholics Anonymous Happy Sober Sunday Group, 9 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous Seekers of Serenity Group, 10:30 a.m., Care Corps, 723 N. Broad St., Fremont.

Saunders County Museum Car and Tractor Show, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saunders County Museum, Wahoo. Sponsored by the Stardusters Car Club, there will be nearly 30 classic cars that can provide rides. All proceeds will benefit the museum.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous Point of Freedom Group, 7 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Education Building, west of the church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Enter through the rear door.

Sofia Talvik, 7 p.m., The Pioneer Theater, May Brothers Building, 105 E. Sixth St., Fremont. Talvik is a Swedish folk/Americana artist. Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for students, and may be purchased online at www.maybrothersbuilding.com.

Alcoholics Anonymous Sunday speaker, 7:30 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Monday

TOPS Club (Take Off Pounds Sensibly), 9 a.m., First United Methodist Church, 850 N. Broad St., Fremont. Weigh-ins begin at 8 a.m. Visitors (preteens, teens and adults  male and female) are welcome. The first meeting is free. For more information, call Janet Bloemker at 402-721-8952.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 10 a.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, noon, Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Solar Eclipse activities, noon to 1:30 p.m., Keene Memorial Library, Fremont. The library will assist people with building pinhole viewers and have a limited number of eclipse glasses available for safe viewing. Participants also can decorate cookies to resemble the sun complete with sunspots and solar flares. The activities are free and open to the public.

Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, 5:15 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.

Narcotics Anonymous basic text study, 6:30 p.m., Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Education Building, west of the church, 1440 E. Military Ave., Fremont. Enter through the rear door.

Celebrate Recovery, 7-9 p.m., Sanctuary Church, 1640 W. Military Ave., Fremont. Childcare is available.

Celebrate Recovery, 7 p.m., Fremont Church of the Nazarene, 960 Johnson Road.

Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 854 meeting, 7 p.m., Fremont Eagles Club. Drinks will be provided. For more information, call 402-690-1123.

Alcoholics Anonymous 12x12 meeting, 8 p.m., Chapter 5 Club, Fremont.
What to Know NYC won't be in the "path of totality" but it'll still be quite a spectacle; the moon will start to cover the sun at 1:23 p.m. Aug. 21

At 2:44 p.m., it'll be at its maximum coverage (about 70 percent to 75 percent), and the partial eclipse will end at 4 p.m.

The only safe way to look directly at uneclipsed or partially eclipsed sun is through special-purpose solar filters, so get your glasses now

On Monday, August 21, hundreds of millions of people will get a chance to view the first total solar eclipse visible from the contiguous United States in nearly 40 years. Here are some of the most asked questions about the historic event.

Whats the gist of Monday's solar eclipse?

Fourteen states are in the path of totality, called umbra. The New York region will be experiencing a partial eclipse, or penumbra. You can see a partial eclipse, where the moon covers only a part of the sun, anywhere in North America. To see a total eclipse, where the moon fully covers the sun for a short few minutes, you must be in the path of totality. The path of totality is a relatively thin ribbon  around 70 miles wide  that will cross the United States from West to East.

[NATL] Total Solar Eclipse Crosses the US for 1st Time in 99 Years

When and where will the eclipse be viewable?

The first point of contact will be at Lincoln Beach, Oregon, at 12:05 p.m. EDT. Totality begins there at 1:16 p.m. EDT. Over the next hour and a half, the eclipse will cross through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and North and South Carolina. The total eclipse will end near Charleston, South Carolina, at 2:48 p.m. EDT. From there the lunar shadow leaves the United States at 4:09 EDT. Its longest duration will be near Carbondale, Illinois, where the sun will be completely covered for two minutes and 40 seconds.

10 Things To Know About the Upcoming Solar Eclipse

How many people will be able to see the eclipse?

An estimated 500 million people will be able to observe the total solar eclipse, in partial or total form: 391 million in the United States; 35 million in Canada; 119 million in Mexico; it will also be viewable in Central America, parts of South America and northwestern Europe.

When was the last total eclipse in the continental United States, and when is the next one after this year's?

The last time the contiguous United States saw a total eclipse was in February 1979. The next one is in April 2024.

Who is capturing the eclipse?

Eleven spacecraft, at least three NASA aircraft, more than 50 high-altitude balloons, and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station are all offering a unique vantage point for the celestial event.

Where can I get special glasses to view the eclipse with?

A number of retail chains are selling official eclipse eyewear; among them are: 7-Eleven, Best Buy, Bi-Mart, Caseys General Store, Circle K, Hobby Town, Kirklands, Kroger, London Drugs, Loves Travel Stops, Lowes, Maverik, Pilot/Flying J, Toys R Us, and Walmart.

Libraries across the country are also giving away free eclipse glasses with support from NASA, Google, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Space Science Institutes STAR_Net initiative. More than 2 million ISO-compliant solar eclipse glasses have been handed out to more than 6,900 libraries. To find out which libraries are holding eclipse-related events and distributing the free glasses, see the library map on the STAR_Net website.

Are there any basic safety tips while watching the eclipse?

Eclipse glasses are an essential tool, but unfortunately some aren't safe to use, so you shouldn't use any eclipse glasses that haven't been verified as safe or properly certified (Amazon has recalled some). Make sure the certified glasses youre using havent been damaged.

It's also important not to look at the eclipse with regular sunglasses or unfiltered binoculars, through a reflection, or through clouds or fog. Phones and cameras need special solar filters or the eclipse could damage their lenses.

What are other ways to view the eclipse?

Trees with a lot of leaves will project the eclipse onto the ground. Its one way you can view the eclipse without special glasses.

Come Monday, eyes will be on the sky to witness a rare solar eclipse. In the tri-state, it wont be a total eclipse but people could still be risking their vision. Roseanne Colletti has more.

When is the best time to view Mondays eclipse?

In the greater New York area, the eclipse begins at 1:23 p.m. on Monday, August 21, according to Andrew Yolleck, a STEM educator at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. This is when the moon starts passing over the sun. Maximum eclipse will occur at about 2:44 p.m. and thats the time to best view the eclipse. Its also when it will be darkest outside. The moon will slowly move off of the sun after that, with the eclipse ending at 4 p.m. As of Friday, the weather looks good for viewing, with mostly clear skies in the forecast for the New York area.

Where is the best place to view the eclipse in the tri-state? How dark will these areas get?

Areas further south in the tri-state will get the best view. The southern tip of New Jersey, near Cape May, will see the moon covering 75 to 85 percent of the sun since the area is closest to the path of totality, which is cutting through the Southern states.

Areas closer to New York City will see about 71 percent of the moon covering the sun, according to Yolleck. During maximum eclipse, it will be darkest in the areas further south. In areas in the path of totality, it will be as dark as night for a couple of minutes. In the New York City area it will still be light outside, although somewhat darker. Here are some places to catch a glimpse of the eclipse in the tri-state area.

Will the 2024 eclipse be visible in the New York region?

The next total solar eclipse will be great for East Coasters. While people in the New York area will see about 70 to 75 percent of the sun covered on Monday, it will be even more than that in 2024. Whats more, the path of totality  where viewing of the eclipse is most optimal  will be closer to the tri-state area. People who travel Upstate or to cities like Buffalo will get a near-optimal view of the eclipse, according to Yolleck. And those willing to head near the United States-Canada border, to places like Burlington, Vermont, will enter the path of totality.

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Around 1,400 animals in our area found new homes Saturday as NBC10 helped to Clear the Shelters as part of a national initiative to find homes for cats, dogs and other pets.



In the greater Philadelphia region, 49 rescues and shelters waived adoption fees during the day. (Find the shelter closest to you.)

[PHOTOS] Clear the Shelters: Pets Find New Homes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey u0026 Delaware

The goal was to #ClearTheShelters by finding 'furever' homes for as many animals as possible.



Locally 4,823 animals have been adopted since the campaign kicked off three weeks ago while 1,436 were adopted Saturday alone. Nationally, nearly 65,000 animals were adopted since the campaign began.

Across all three of their campuses in Georgetown, Delaware, New Castle, Delaware and West Chester, Pennsylvania, 237 pets were adopted from the Brandywine Valley SPCA with 141 adopted at the West Chester campus on 1212 Phoenixville Pike. That's where NBC10 personalities Keith Jones and Jessica Boyington joined in the fun Saturday morning. Before the shelter opened at 10 a.m., people were already lined up. Soon after the event began, one couple adopted a 14-year-old dog and a family that had lined up since 6:30 a.m. walked away with a beloved pooch.

Telemundo62s Jaime Becerril and Christian Cazares were at the ACCT Philly on 111 Hunting Park Avenue in Philadelphia where Always Best Care Senior Services donated $3,000 to the effort.

At the Brandywine Valley SPCA in New Castle, pets got hugs from their new owners who lined up to get to take home their new loved one.

It was mostly cats and dogs that got adopted but at least one hamster found a home after being adopted from the Abington SPCA.

And at the Pennsylvania SPCA, "Laverne found her Shirley, or something like that," during a dog adoption.

NBC10s Keith Jones and Jessica Boyington play with some adoptable felines at the Brandywine Valley SPCA in West Chester, Pennsylvania that are up for adoption at Saturdays Clear the Shelters event.

Share your photos and videos as well as your #LoveMyPet stories on NBC10, the NBC10 app and on social media using the hashtag #CleartheShelters.
As the debate over if the Frank Rizzo statue should remain on city property continues, a mural of the late Philadelphia mayor was defaced overnight.

A police officer patrolling the area around the Italian Market in South Philadelphia  once a Rizzo stronghold  heard breaking glass just before 3 a.m. Saturday in the area of 9th and Montrose streets, police said.

The officer rushed toward the mural to find a group of masked people with mason jars full of white paint and spray paint vandalizing the mural.

One of the paint-filled glass jars smashed onto Rizzos face leaving a large splash of paint over Rizzos nose. Vandals also wrote the words Kill Killer Cops and Rest in Peace David  apparently a reference to David Jones, who was shot and killed during a June traffic stop.

The officer gave chase and caught up to one of the suspected vandals but the others got away, dropping jars of paint along the way.

This was at least the third time the Rizzo mural was vandalized including as recent as May.

The mural of Frank Rizzo has been both beloved and reviled since its creation in 1995 by artist Diane Keller, Mural Arts Philadelphia executive director Jane Golden said earlier in the week. Given our history about community-driven projects, perhaps it is time to have a conversation about whether this mural should stay or be replaced by something else.

The argument over removing honors to Rizzo includes a statue of the politician.

The bronze statue of Rizzo, Philadelphia's polarizing former police commissioner and mayor, was defaced late Thursday with the words "Black Power" written in white spray paint.

The vandal also wrote "The Black community should be their own police" on the steps of the Municipal Services Building on John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Center City where the statue stands.

The string of vandalism follows renewed calls for the removal of public images in the wake of the deadly violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and national discussion over how to handle statues and monuments linked to racism and other emotionally charged issues.

Driven by Philadelphia Councilwoman Helen Gym, there is growing support for removing tributes to Rizzo, who died of a heart attack in 1991. Some call the statue and mural reminders of Rizzo's strained history with the African-American and gay communities during the late 1960s and 1970s.

Rizzo, a hard-charging, big-mouthed icon of head-cracking law enforcement in Philadelphia, served as police commissioner for four years before serving two terms as the citys mayor from 1972 to 1980. His friends, family and fans remember him as a devoted public servant unafraid to speak his mind. Thousands of people signed a recent online petition to keep the statue in place.

Rizzo's detractors saw his police force as corrupt and brutal.



Lowlights from his time as police commissioner include an incident in 1970 of officers raiding the Philadelphia headquarters of the Black Panthers and forcing the men to strip in public.

For those who knew and covered him, like former cop and retired Inquirer reporter Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. and NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Rizzo can't be easily compared to other politicians. And Rizzo doesn't belong in the same category as long-gone Confederate leaders whose statues are coming down across the country.
Another U.S. Navy official has pleaded guilty in a multi-million dollar Navy bribery scheme involved 28 defendants, including 21 current and former Navy officials.

U.S. Navy Captain Jesus Vasquez Cantu, 59, admitted Friday in federal court that he accepted bribes from Leonard Glenn Francis, owner Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA), also known as "Fat Leonard."

He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery.

According to his plea agreement, Cantu accepted bribes in the form of parties, hotel rooms, and the services of prostitutes on several occasions in 2012 and 2013. In return, he provided Francis with proprietary U.S. Navy information to Francis which was used to help his with his company's business.

Cantu also admitted that he was involved in a bribery conspiracy with Francis during his time as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics for the Commander of the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet aboard USS Blue Ridge in 2007.

In March of this year, nine high-ranking Seventh Fleet U.S. Navy officers were also indicted for accepting bribes from Francis in exchange for military secrets, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office, including retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Bruce Loveless.

The Seventh Fleet is the largest numbered fleet in the U.S. Navy, with 60-70 ships, 200-300 aircraft and approximately 40,000 Sailors and Marines. It is responsible for Navy ships and subordinate commands that operate in the Western Pacific.

A total of 28 defendants have been charged in connection to the investigation19 of whom have pleaded guilty and nine still await trial.

"The number of U.S. Navy officials who participated in this conspiracy is astounding," said Acting U.S. Attorney Alana W. Robinson. "Like so many others, this defendant sold out the Navy and his country for cocktails and karaoke. We are pressing forward in this investigation until we are certain that all involved have been held accountable."

In June 2016, Rear Admiral Robert Gilbeau became the first highest-ranking U.S. Navy officer to be charged in the case. He pleaded guilty to one felony charge in connection to the years-long corruption and fraud scheme.

He was sentenced in May of this year to three years of supervision after incarceration and was ordered to pay $150,000 in fines and restitution to the U.S. Navy.

Francis has also pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing.

Cantu will be sentenced on Nov. 9.
A five-alarm fire at a College Park, Maryland, apartment building burned much longer than it should have, putting firefighters and the public at unnecessary risk, according to College Park Fire Chief Bill Corrigan.

The Fuse 47 building on Berwyn House Road was still under construction at the time of the fire.

Corrigan told the News4 I-Team the standpipe valves firefighters typically use to pump water up through a building in an emergency were left in the "closed" position.

Mat Chibbaro, College Park Fire

The design of the building limited firefighter access to the structure, Corrigan said, and the sheer size also hampered firefighter efforts.

"This building was 100 percent within the allowable parameters, but it was built to the absolute max," Corrigan said. "Probably to within fractions of an inch and fractions of a square foot in every dimension that they're allowed."

The five-alarm fire drew hundreds of firefighters from across the region. Thick smoke evacuated neighbors and even caused classes at nearby University of Maryland to be suspended for the day.

"I came out of my office and could see that the building was on fire from two blocks away," Corrigan said. "I was kind of like, 'Man, this isn't gonna be good.'"

That's because Corrigan has seen this kind of fire before, over and over again. In Montgomery County in 2014 and in Raleigh and Kansas City this past March.

"Since we've had ours, there's been one in Boston, there's been one in Oakland, so it's getting to be a once every couple of weeks occurrence somewhere," said Corrigan.

Buildings taller than five stories used to be considered high-rises, with strict requirements for steel and concrete construction and a more robust sprinkler system.

Mat Chibbaro, College Park Fire

But trade-offs in the code have allowed residential wooden buildings to climb taller and taller. In most places they can be five stories of wood built on top of a cement and steel base.

"It's the least expensive way to get the most number of people living in the smallest amount of acreage," said Corrigan, who added that fires like the one at Fuse 47 can actually be six or seven stories off the ground.

He said lightweight, wooden construction is more flammable than the traditional masonry style and can burn to collapse faster. Plus, the rear of the College Park building was built into a hill, with no access for firefighters. The front was largely blocked by construction equipment and power lines.

Provided by College Park Fire Dept.

Firefighters actually ran hose up the side of the building to provide water for the fire, a long and painstaking process, after realizing the standpipes, the internal water supply designed for firefighting, were not delivering water, the chief said.

"So when we pumped in through the fire department connection in the front of the building, the water wasn't going anywhere," Corrigan said. "We were pumping up against a closed valve."

The News4 I-Team reached out to the builder to ask about the chief's findings, but repeated calls were not returned.

The building's fire sprinkler system had already been installed, but the current code did not require it to be turned on yet, since the building was still under construction.

Mat Chibbaro, College Park Fire

"This would have been a one sprinkler head fire, and the next day nobody would even have been talking about this incident," Corrigan said.

Instead, it was still smoldering -- just like the battle sparked by all of these fires to get the codes changed.

"That's a Very Dangerous Time"

Fire chiefs around the country say apartment buildings are getting bigger and bigger, but the protections that are supposed to be in place to allow that really aren't operational until renters are ready to move in.

"When they're under construction they're particularly vulnerable, so for firefighters that's a very dangerous time," said Hagerstown Fire Chief Steve Lohr.

Lohr was chief of the Montgomery County Fire Department in April 2014 when a blaze tore through the Gables Upper Rock apartments under construction in Rockville.

"When the first arriving unit pulled up, we had sections of the roof falling off of that building," said Lohr, adding that his firefighters also had issues accessing the rear of the building, just like in the College Park fire.

At the time, the Gables Upper Rock fire was the largest fire in Montgomery County history.

The fire sprinklers were already installed but were not activated, Lohr said. They were slated to be turned on the next day.

"Every second that passes, the fire is growing," said current Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein, who was chief of operations at the time of the fire.

The department immediately began fighting to get Montgomery County codes changed.

Now, new wooden buildings can be five stories total, and firefighters have to have a path around the structure.

"We did make those adjustments," Goldstein said. "And I would not be surprised if Prince George's County works on some refinements similar to what happened after Upper Rock."

Another Fire Fight

A group of fire officials from various Maryland departments tried to address the code issues statewide but failed in the legislature the past two years.

"I think there was great opposition," State Fire Marshal Brian Geraci told News4. "I think that the bill asked for too much and I think that's what hurt us."

Geraci said the American Wood Council vigorously defended the more affordable style of construction, saying when existing codes are followed and completed, the buildings are safe.

In a statement to the News4 I-Team, the American Wood Council said, in part, "The intent of the recent Maryland legislation was not clear and, as a result, imposed unrealistic requirements on both existing and new construction. The requirements were expensive and of uncertain benefit."

Lohr said local officials need to understand the risks.

"We have buildings that are just simply too big to deploy in with the limitations that have been granted," he said.

He predicts as lightweight wooden structures become popular in more rural areas, smaller fire departments and water supplies will make fires at those construction sites even harder to battle.

"Let's get people with a vested interest in this, on all sides of the issue, into the same place and treat it as an engineering problem that we can sit down and propose reasonable solutions to," said Lohr, adding that Montgomery County should be an example statewide.

The state fire marshal agrees and says counties shouldn't wait for the state to act.

"The larger jurisdictions that could do something on the local level ought to be sternly looking at that and making those changes," Geraci said.

They would also like to see fire sprinklers turned on as soon as the systems are installed and approved and maybe even switch to the more robust systems high-rises require.

College Park Chief Corrigan said he plans to approach Prince George's County leaders once his investigation is complete.

"It's not just a local problem to us," Corrigan said. "We have the ability maybe to be trendsetters and kind of be the ones that make the push."

National Multifamily Housing Council statement:

The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) is working with leaders of the apartment industry from across the country to share new ideas, best practices and innovative solutions to help prevent fires in construction projects of apartment complexes. From new technological approaches to increased site security, NMHC is committed to acting as a nation-wide clearinghouse that will surface the most effective and safety-focused techniques aimed at mitigating such occurrences. To that end, we look forward to working with not just our membership, but first responders as well as community and policy leaders.

National Association of Home Builders statement:



Obviously, safety is in the forefront of builders and developers minds throughout the construction process. Safeguards are created at the local, state and federal levels. The existing code requirements, which are developed with local government entities, including fire marshals, cover all aspects of fire protection and prevention including proper access to building sites and allowable building materials. Proper fire prevention and safety training is also key in this process. NAHB partners with other organizations on fire safety, and offers resources to address prevention and protections.
Democratic lawmakers have requested thousands of pages of documents pertaining to properties owned by Kushner Cos. in Maryland.

U.S. Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, and U.S. Reps. Elijah Cummings, Dutch Ruppersberger, John Sarbanes and Anthony Brown, sent a letter to Kushner Cos. on Friday.

President Donald Trump's son-in-law stepped down as CEO of the company earlier this year before becoming a senior adviser in the White House, but still has financial interest in many of its properties.

News outlets have recently reported that the company routinely seeks to arrest tenants who owe money, and that tenants have reported sub-standard conditions in the housing complexes.

Kushner Cos. owns properties in which residents use housing vouchers. In a statement, the company's general counsel Emily Wolf says it is in compliance with federal requirements, and that the company uses legal measures "only as a last resort."
Police in Maryland said a man confessed to the fatal stabbings of his 6-year-old sister and his two young cousins while they were lying in bed.

Antonio Shareek Williams, 25, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of the three girls in Prince Georges County. Police said their bodies were discovered around 7:30 a.m. Friday in a home in the 6400 block of Brooke Jane Drive in Clinton, Maryland.

Investigators said Williams was left in the home by his mother to watch over Nadiara Janae Withers, 6, who police said was his sister, and two cousins: 9-year-old Ariana Elizabeth DeCree and 6-year-old Ajayah Royale DeCree.

The DeCree sisters are from in Newark, New Jersey, and were in Clinton visiting for the summer. They are the daughters of the suspects mothers cousin, police said.



When the mother, Andrena Kelley, returned home from work early Friday morning, she discovered the girls in their beds, suffering from what appeared to be stab wounds.

The Prince Georges County Fire Department responded to the scene, but all three children were pronounced dead at the scene.

Police said they found a 2-year-old girl, who was unharmed, in the home when they arrived. She was another sister of the suspect.

Investigators said Williams was arrested and later provided a full confession of how he stabbed and killed the three girls while the kids were sharing a bed. They said he did not provide a reason for the attack.

VIDEO: Our Homicide Detectives escort 25 y/o triple homicide suspect Antonio Williams to Department of Corrections late Friday night. pic.twitter.com/ToM35IT03z  PGPDNEWS (@PGPDNews) August 19, 2017

Williams is in custody of the Department of Corrections on a no-bond status. Police said they had no word about a lawyer for him.

Nadiara's father and stepmother set up a GoFundMe page for the little girl's funeral.


New Hampshire residents have another mosquito-borne virus to be concerned about.

The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services says it's identified the first case of Jamestown Canyon virus this season.

Health officials say a resident from Hanover tested positive for the virus, which has the potential to cause serious health complications.

State Epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan said the virus is rare.

It has been found before in New Hampshire and Maine but there have been only about 50 human cases identified in the U.S. since 2000.

Like West Nile and Eastern Equine Encephalitis, the virus is spread by mosquitoes. It circulates widely across North America, primarily between deer and mosquitoes.
Clear the Shelters, the popular nationwide pet adoption drive spearheaded by NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations, returns Saturday, August 18.

One of the participating shelters, All Breed Rescue in Williston, Vermont, shared a success story that it said demonstrates the transformative power of pet adoptions.

He taught me how to laugh again, Nancy Poitras of South Burlington said of her 4-year-old rescue dog, Brick.

Poitras adopted Brick from All Breed Rescue in 2015. She told necn that at the time, she was in a job she didnt love, which required her to work long hours and weekends, and was desperate for a change.

I wasnt the happiest person in the world, Poitras recalled.

However, after adopting the pit bull mix, who has an insatiable appetite for play and running, Poitras said she was able to discover a new passion and career path: dog training.

This fits better for me, Poitras said of her new business, Brick Approved K9 Performance.

The trainer now hopes others will find pets to improve their quality of life at All Breed Rescue.

The non-profit ferries dogs from Southern shelters with high kill rates up to New England, to find new leases on life.

Every dog should have at least one human for them, said Scarlett Clark of All Breed Rescue.

Clark said the organization places approximately 70 or 80 dogs a month in new homes.

The animals up for adoption at the shelter in Williston range from puppies to seniors, in a wide range of sizes, with staff helping identify traits in the animals that match what prospective owners are looking for.

Clark said an online application is required, and the shelter charges an adoption fee to help defray the costs of operations.

However, on Clear the Shelters day Saturday, adoption fees are greatly reduced for most animals, with some even fully sponsored by generous community members, Clark told necn.

Clark noted that throughout the entire year, there is a regular flow of dogs into Vermont from the South, so people should keep checking in with the shelter as they do their research and plan for how to add a pet to their household.

We will never not have dogs, Clark said, holding a Chihuahua named Paco. Were always going to have a dog for someone.

For more information on All Breed Rescue, visit this website.
Thousands of demonstrators chanting anti-Nazi slogans converged Saturday on downtown Boston in a boisterous repudiation of white nationalism, dwarfing a small group of conservatives who cut short their planned "free speech rally" a week after a gathering of hate groups led to bloodshed in Virginia.

An estimated 40,000 counterprotesters marched through the city to historic Boston Common, where many gathered near a bandstand abandoned early by conservatives who had planned to deliver a series of speeches. Police vans later escorted the conservatives out of the area, and angry counterprotesters scuffled with armed officers trying to maintain order.

Members of the Black Lives Matter movement later protested on the Common, where a Confederate flag was burned and protesters pounded on the sides of a police vehicle. At least one person was arrested.

In total, about 33 arrests were made, mostly for disorderly conduct, but a few charged with assault and battery on police officers, police said later Saturday afternoon. Three ballistic vests were confiscated by officers, including one that had a weapon.

No serious injuries or property damage was reported, police said, adding that the dueling demonstrations all went according to their plan.

Later Saturday afternoon, Boston's police department tweeted that protesters were throwing bottles, urine and rocks at them and asked people publicly to refrain from doing so. About 10 minutes before that, President Donald Trump had complimented Boston police, tweeting: "Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you."

He also complimented Boston's Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh, and tweeted that he wanted "to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!"

Organizers of the conservative event, which had been billed as a "Free Speech Rally," had publicly distanced themselves from the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and others who fomented violence in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. A woman was killed at that Unite the Right rally, and many others were injured, when a car plowed into counterdemonstrators.

Opponents feared that white nationalists might show up in Boston anyway, raising the specter of ugly confrontations in the first potentially large and racially charged gathering in a major U.S. city since Charlottesville. But only a few dozen conservatives turned out for the rally on historic Boston Common and left early.

Thousands Protest at Boston 'Free Speech' Rally

One of the planned speakers of the conservative activist rally said the event "fell apart."

Some counterprotesters dressed entirely in black and wore bandannas over their faces. They chanted anti-Nazi and anti-fascism slogans, and waved signs that said: "Make Nazis Afraid Again," "Love your neighbor," "Resist fascism" and "Hate never made U.S. great." Others carried a large banner that read: "SMASH WHITE SUPREMACY."

Chris Hood, a free speech rally attendee from Dorchester, said people were unfairly making it seem like the rally was going to be "a white supremacist Klan rally."

"That was never the intention," he said. "We've only come here to promote free speech on college campuses, free speech on social media for conservative, right-wing speakers. And we have no intention of violence."

Robert Paulson, another free speech rallygoer, said there was definitely a lot of tension.

"They believe that we're Nazis and KKK down here. That's what they think, a lot of them. It's not true. A lot of the people down here just love the United States, are here to promote free speech," he said.

Rockeem Robinson, a youth counselor from Cambridge, said he joined the counterprotest to "show support for the black community and for all minority communities."

Katie Griffiths, a social worker also from Cambridge, who works with members of poor and minority communities, said she finds the hate and violence happening "very scary."

"I see poor people and people of color being scapegoated," she said. "Unlearned lessons can be repeated."

TV cameras showed a group of boisterous counterprotesters on the Common chasing a man with a Trump campaign banner and cap, shouting and swearing at him. But other counterprotesters intervened and helped the man safely over a fence into the area where the conservative rally was to be staged. Black-clad counterprotesters also grabbed an American flag out of an elderly woman's hands, and she stumbled and fell to the ground.

Yet Saturday's showdown was mostly peaceable, and after demonstrators dispersed, a picnic atmosphere took over with stragglers tossing beach balls, banging on bongo drums and playing reggae music.

The Boston Free Speech Coalition, which organized the event, said it has nothing to do with white nationalism or racism and its group is not affiliated with the Charlottesville rally organizers in any way.

Dating to 1634, Boston Common is the nation's oldest city park. The leafy downtown park is popular with locals and tourists and has been the scene of numerous rallies and protests for centuries.

Rallies also were planned in cities across the country, including Dallas, Atlanta and New Orleans.

Hundreds of people gathered at City Hall in Austin, Texas, Saturday morning, holding signs in support of racial equality. The Austin American-Statesmen reported organizers for the Rally Against White Supremacy estimated about 1,200 people were in attendance.

In Laguna Beach, California, an anti-racism rally was held one day before the group America First! planned to hold a demonstration in the same place that's being billed as an "Electric Vigil for the Victims of Illegals and Refugees."

Organizers said they held a separate gathering in order to avoid a confrontation. Several hundred people showed up Saturday. They held signs with a variety of messages, from "Black Lives Matter" to "Respect Earth." One said: "Make America Human Again."

Protesters gathered Saturday outside Trump's private golf club in New Jersey where he recently spent a 17-day vacation.

The protesters staged a "No Hate in the Garden State" rally, with those in attendance sharply rebuking Trump's handling of the protests in Charlottesville. Many also blasted his assertion that "both sides" -- the white supremacists and the counterprotesters -- were to blame for the violence that left one protester dead.
A Massachusetts woman's death early Saturday morning is being investigated as an apparent homicide, according to authorities.

In a press conference, Assistant District Attorney Greg Connor said that the victim, 33-year-old Michelle Clarke, was killed before 4:00 a.m. at her Weymouth home on Lake Street.

No arrests have been made yet, but authorities are following up on a few leads.

Connor said that police were dispatched to Clarke's home for a well-being check after a friend called them expressing concern.

Upon their arrival, they discovered Clarke's body, which Connor said sustained sharp trauma injuries.

Clarke has a 6-year-old son who lives with her, but was staying with relatives overnight and was not present when the homicide occurred, authorities said.

Clarke was a hard-working mother with two jobs, one as a full time medical assistant during the week and the other as a bartender twice a week at a local Dorchester bar, those who knew her said.

Ernie Robinson, a close friend and former roomate, said a man once came to the bar looking to start trouble with Clarke. The man came in and threw a drink on her while her car was t'd up.

A neighbor said Clarke had only lived on Lake Street for about a year.

Connor said that police don't think there is an ongoing threat to the community at this time. He added that it was too early to determine the exact manner of Clarke's death.

This incident is under investigation.


Exhibition reveals 160 years of YMCA's work in Norfolk

An exhibition celebrating 160 years of the work of YMCA Norfolk is set to open at the Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum near Dereham from August 21 to September 10.

A group of young people who use the YMCA's services spent five months helping to research the history of YMCA Norfolk, culminating in the exhibition which last year was seen at the Bridewell Museum in Norwich.



A grant of 47,100 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, supported young people to research and record history about the YMCA, as well as document the lives of some of the people who access YMCA services today. The Y-Heritage project has enabled the young people to develop new skills as well as giving them access to museum objects and archives, and to meet with museum and heritage professionals.



The YMCA is the longest standing youth charity in Norfolk. In 1856 Norwich Young Men's Christian Association was founded by a group of young men to help apprentices and shop workers in Norwich and to improve the moral and religious life of the city.



At times of crisis, the charity stepped forward to support the city's citizens. Almost 300 people who were evacuated from their homes in the floods of 1912 were given shelter. During the First World War, soldiers coming to the city were provided with food and accommodation and during the Second World War, the premises in St Giles were given over to feeding and entertaining troops and mobile vans toured remoter areas of the county with refreshments and essential items. After the war, the first summer camps were pioneered by the YMCA and enabled thousands of youngsters to enjoy an affordable summer holiday. Today YMCA Norfolk provides a safe home and support for over 240 young people every night across the county.



YMCA Y-Heritage Project Officer Karina Flynn said: "Working on this project has provided an important perspective on what local heritage can offer young people besides a greater understanding of their own background and identity. It offers an opportunity to share stories with the hope of generating understanding amongst other groups and wider communities."



YMCA Norfolk Chief Executive Tim Sweeting said: "For young people at the YMCA today creating an exhibition revealing this rich and diverse history has allowed them the chance to use the past as a tool for the future. It has also given them the opportunity to discover new skills and interests and to share their experiences of the YMCA today."



Luke Millman is one of the young people who have been working on the project. He said: "From this experience I've learnt about YMCA, its past and just how much its changed from supporting young soldiers during the war and how valuable to us as homeless young people the YMCA still is, and in that sense it hasn't changed."



Norfolk County Council's Chairman of Communities, Margaret Dewsbury, said: "This exhibition showcases the significance of the internationally known YMCA, and how it has, over the last 160 years, had such an impact at a local level. Over the course of history, its support to the people of Norfolk has been immeasurable and I hope the young people who were involved with the research for this exhibition have enjoyed this very special experience."



Pictured above is YMCA Norfolk CEO Tim Sweeting promoting the exhibition.




Film highlights homelessness challenge in Norwich Film highlights homelessness challenge in Norwich

A special screening of highly acclaimed film I, Daniel Blake was shown in Norwich on August 17. Prior to the film, people who have experienced homelessness spoke about their journey through the system and the desperate need for more support.



Helen Baldry reports



The event atwas organised by local Christian charity, who provides supported accommodation to vulnerable adults who would otherwise be homeless. Through links with local churches, they house 20 people in Norwich ranging from refugees to those recovering from addiction.from, a medical centre in Norwich that treats vulnerable people, gave some hard-hitting statistics on rough sleeping in Norwich. In 2014, 34 rough sleepers were identified in Norwich on a count . In the first three months of this year, 136 separate individuals were identified. The average age of death for a homeless man is 47 and 43 for a female rough sleeper. City The most common cause of homelessness is relationship breakdown.from Hope Into Action explained that people motivate others to bring about positive change in their lives. The two speakers who told about their homelesness and addictions, Graham and Donald, confirmed that genuine human connection, and the right help at the time it is needed  rather than at stages along the way  can make all the difference.explained that he always felt different. At the age of six he was dropped off at his nannys house and his mother said to him, If I had you first, I woudnt have had any more [children] That comment has stayed with him for a lifetime. He has never settled and has had numerous relationships. He has been homeless a number of times, even living in his car for 18 months. Graham took a massive overdose of anxiety and depression medication. He was told he could not be helped because his his mental health made him intentionally homeless. Grahams vulnerability meant that he was unable to challenge the councils position. He didnt know that he could untilstepped in and helped him get some supported housing.Graham said, My life changed the moment I walked into City Reach. He had seen many doctors in the past who had not enaged with him and had looked away from him at their computers before brushing him aside. This time he was asked one queston, How are you? That was the catalyst for getting help.Graham believes that relationship was at the centre of the big turning points in his life. He now volunteers at City Reach and he champions peoples causes. He said, I just want to give back a little bit of what I got. If I can change one persons life it will make mine worthwhile.also shared his story. Born in a ex ship-building area on the West Coast of Scotland, Donald grew up in a place where unemployment and poverty was rife. By the age of 18 he had a serious cocaine addiction and was dealing in the drug to the extent that his life was in danger and he had to leave Scotland. He moved to the South of France and got clean, but the lure of drugs became too much and he returned to crack addiction. His work in the yachting industry in France led him to travel to Antigua, where he met someone who had worked atin Norwich. When he returned to the UK in 2003, he came to Norwich and was rehoused in 2004. It took Donald years to feel truly settled and make his house like a home. Donalds cycle of coming though and then falling back seemed to be on repeat and he couldnt accept the idea that he could be successful and not revert back to drugs. He then had counselling which helped him to confront these issues.Donald now has a key role in ensuring the voices of hard to reach groups can be heard, with the overall aim of further improving services for vulnerable people.Hope Into Action, who organised the evening, held a fundraising raffle and collection  but the main purpose was to bring people together and to have a open conversation about the issues affecting homeless people. The film highlighted many of the issues faced by the charitys tenants.Click below to view the trailer for 'I, Daniel Blake'
Ales scoop CAMRA awards

WEST Berkshire Brewery is celebrating a good old success story for two ales at the CAMRA Champion Beer of Britain competition.

The Yattendon brewerys flagship ale, Good Old Boy, was awarded bronze in the best bitter category, while Maggs Magnificent Mild scooped silver in the mild category.

West Berkshire Brewery chief executive Simon Lewis said: This is a fantastic achievement for our beers and for our brewers.

Good Old Boy was one of our original beers and we believe it to be one of the very best bitters out there  its great to see that CAMRA agree with us.

Maggs Magnificent Mild is deliciously rich and smooth, and to have been awarded silver is a sign of its quality and great flavour.

With such fierce opposition from other beers within these categories, were honoured to see both ales win awards in such an important competition.

Good Old Boy is brewed with traditional Maris Otter malted barley and fruity Bramling Cross and Northdown hops. The bronze award is the 10th it has scooped.

Maggs Magnificent Mild is a traditionally-styled, dark mild.

The silver award adds to the 19 awards to its name.
By PTI

MUMBAI: Ratings agency Moodys today downgraded ratings on ICICI Banks future bond issuance through its Bahrain branch under the medium term notes (MTN) programme, but retained the ratings on its existing bonds.

We have downgraded the provisional ratings on forex currency senior unsecured MTN programme of the banks Bahrain branch to Ba2 from Baa3, because the forex bond ceiling for Bahrain is now at Ba2, Moodys said in a note.

At the same time, weve retained the Baa3 ratings on its forex senior unsecured outstanding debt raised through this branch, Moodys added.

When contacted, the bank said the rating action is linked with Bahrains sovereign rating, and not with ICICI Bank. The rating of the bonds, which have already been issued out of our Bahrain branch, has been reaffirmed.

Downgrading of Bahrains rating would mean that any future bond issuance out of our Bahrain branch would carry a lower rating. We do not intend to make any such issuances, the bank said in a statement.

Moodys also downgraded the branchs counterparty risk assessment to Ba1(cr)/not prime (cr) from Baa3(cr)/P-3 (cr), apart from downgrading the local currency country risk ceiling for Bahrain to Ba1.

The downgrading of the provisional ratings on the foreign currency senior unsecured MTN programme for the Bahrain branch to Ba2 is solely on account of the forex bond ceiling of Bahrain, which was downgraded to Ba2, it said.

Similarly, the downgrading of the branchs CRA is solely on account of the local currency country risk ceilings of Bahrain, which is also downgraded to Ba1.

All other ratings under the MTN programme of the bank remain unchanged, Moodys said, adding the outlook on all ratings is stable.

On the ratings rationale, the agency said it affirms the ratings on the outstanding forex senior unsecured bonds issued by the Bahrain branch under the MTN programme at Baa3, on the basis of an unconditional standby letter of credit on these outstanding bonds through ICICIs Dubai branch.

The features of the standby letter of credit satisfy the key criteria required to achieve full credit substitution. Consequently, ratings of these instruments are in line with Baa3 forex senior unsecured ratings of Dubai branch, it said.

It also affirmed the forex senior unsecured debt rating of the Bahrain branch as the only bonds outstanding are those covered by the standby letter of credit.

MUMBAI: Ratings agency Moodys today downgraded ratings on ICICI Banks future bond issuance through its Bahrain branch under the medium term notes (MTN) programme, but retained the ratings on its existing bonds. We have downgraded the provisional ratings on forex currency senior unsecured MTN programme of the banks Bahrain branch to Ba2 from Baa3, because the forex bond ceiling for Bahrain is now at Ba2, Moodys said in a note. At the same time, weve retained the Baa3 ratings on its forex senior unsecured outstanding debt raised through this branch, Moodys added. When contacted, the bank said the rating action is linked with Bahrains sovereign rating, and not with ICICI Bank. The rating of the bonds, which have already been issued out of our Bahrain branch, has been reaffirmed. Downgrading of Bahrains rating would mean that any future bond issuance out of our Bahrain branch would carry a lower rating. We do not intend to make any such issuances, the bank said in a statement. Moodys also downgraded the branchs counterparty risk assessment to Ba1(cr)/not prime (cr) from Baa3(cr)/P-3 (cr), apart from downgrading the local currency country risk ceiling for Bahrain to Ba1. The downgrading of the provisional ratings on the foreign currency senior unsecured MTN programme for the Bahrain branch to Ba2 is solely on account of the forex bond ceiling of Bahrain, which was downgraded to Ba2, it said. Similarly, the downgrading of the branchs CRA is solely on account of the local currency country risk ceilings of Bahrain, which is also downgraded to Ba1. All other ratings under the MTN programme of the bank remain unchanged, Moodys said, adding the outlook on all ratings is stable. On the ratings rationale, the agency said it affirms the ratings on the outstanding forex senior unsecured bonds issued by the Bahrain branch under the MTN programme at Baa3, on the basis of an unconditional standby letter of credit on these outstanding bonds through ICICIs Dubai branch. The features of the standby letter of credit satisfy the key criteria required to achieve full credit substitution. Consequently, ratings of these instruments are in line with Baa3 forex senior unsecured ratings of Dubai branch, it said. It also affirmed the forex senior unsecured debt rating of the Bahrain branch as the only bonds outstanding are those covered by the standby letter of credit.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The Congress today demanded a Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe into alleged over-invoicing of imported electrical equipment by the Adani Group that resulted in consumers paying Rs 2 per unit more for power across the country.

Congress senior spokesperson Ajay Maken demanded that the government should immediately reduce by Rs 2 per unit cost of electricity in the areas where the group companies operated.

The Adani Group, however, denied the statements and reports saying these were "motivated" and brought out with "ulterior motives to create sensationalism".

Maken said on February 5, 2013, the Congress-led UPA government had initiated a probe into alleged over-invoicing on import of electrical equipment by a subsidiary of the Adani Enterprises in the power sector.

He said on the basis of the investigations conducted by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, a 97-page show cause notice was issued on May 25, 2014 to an Adani Group subsidiary.

"The BJP government should immediately order a CBI investigation monitored by a judge of the Supreme Court into the corrupt practices of over-invoicing which in turn led to grossly inflated prices for the public," he said.

"Investigating this practice is critical as the price of this equipment has a direct bearing on the price paid by the common man for electricity," Maken said, alleging that the investigations have slowed down ever since the BJP government came to power.

The party spokesperson said tax avoidance and shell company-use should also be looked into as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has himself talked about this issue and made "loud promises" of acting against them.

"It is time that the BJP demonstrates that its words are not just rhetoric or 'jumlas' on paper," he said.

"Is Adani or other big defaulters being spared because of their proximity to Modi," he asked and questioned the prime minister's "silence" on it and also the alleged delay in the investigations.

An Adani Group spokesperson said, "As a responsible corporate citizen, all our transactions are always conducted within the framework of extant regulatory guidelines and provisions. It is a standard procedure for the Group to follow International Competitive Bidding (ICD) route for major capital expenditures to ensure transparency and competitiveness in the process.

The "Adani Group is aware of the investigations being conducted by the DRI, and has fully cooperated, and shall continue to cooperate with the investigating agencies," the spokesperson said.

Quoting an article in a foreign publication, Maken said, in this case, three methods through which electricity tariffs have been artificially inflated were - over-valuation of imported coal, over-valuation of power plant equipment and compensatory tariffs awarded to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees.

The Congress leader said the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) should exercise its powers under Section 79 of the Electricity Act, 2003 to investigate and reopen the affairs of all private power-generating entities to identify such fake over-pricing of all equipment to help bring down electricity tariff in the country.

The Congress party, he claimed, shall pursue this matter to the fullest extent by also filing a petition before the CERC utilising the data available in the public domain.

If the Modi government wanted to go beyond the "hollow rhetoric" there should be an immediate reduction in the power tariffs by up to Rs 2 per unit wherever these companies were producing and transmitting electricity as the cost of over-invoicing of machinery imported by the Adani Group and other similarly situated entities was ultimately borne by the consumer, he said.

The money allegedly syphoned off by the Adani Group and other such entities belonged to people of India and consumers should get reduced electricity tariff by at least Rs 2 per unit if not compensation for inflated tariff wrongly charged, Maken said.

He alleged that in a recent expose by an international publication, "it is now clear that the DRI report names the Adani Group and contains crucial allegations that the Adani Group utilised a network of off-shore companies to purchase electrical equipment and then sell it to an Indian counterpart at a much-inflated value and as high as about 860 per cent of the original value of the product".



NEW DELHI: The Congress today demanded a Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe into alleged over-invoicing of imported electrical equipment by the Adani Group that resulted in consumers paying Rs 2 per unit more for power across the country. Congress senior spokesperson Ajay Maken demanded that the government should immediately reduce by Rs 2 per unit cost of electricity in the areas where the group companies operated. The Adani Group, however, denied the statements and reports saying these were "motivated" and brought out with "ulterior motives to create sensationalism". Maken said on February 5, 2013, the Congress-led UPA government had initiated a probe into alleged over-invoicing on import of electrical equipment by a subsidiary of the Adani Enterprises in the power sector. He said on the basis of the investigations conducted by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, a 97-page show cause notice was issued on May 25, 2014 to an Adani Group subsidiary. "The BJP government should immediately order a CBI investigation monitored by a judge of the Supreme Court into the corrupt practices of over-invoicing which in turn led to grossly inflated prices for the public," he said. "Investigating this practice is critical as the price of this equipment has a direct bearing on the price paid by the common man for electricity," Maken said, alleging that the investigations have slowed down ever since the BJP government came to power. The party spokesperson said tax avoidance and shell company-use should also be looked into as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has himself talked about this issue and made "loud promises" of acting against them. "It is time that the BJP demonstrates that its words are not just rhetoric or 'jumlas' on paper," he said. "Is Adani or other big defaulters being spared because of their proximity to Modi," he asked and questioned the prime minister's "silence" on it and also the alleged delay in the investigations. An Adani Group spokesperson said, "As a responsible corporate citizen, all our transactions are always conducted within the framework of extant regulatory guidelines and provisions. It is a standard procedure for the Group to follow International Competitive Bidding (ICD) route for major capital expenditures to ensure transparency and competitiveness in the process. The "Adani Group is aware of the investigations being conducted by the DRI, and has fully cooperated, and shall continue to cooperate with the investigating agencies," the spokesperson said. Quoting an article in a foreign publication, Maken said, in this case, three methods through which electricity tariffs have been artificially inflated were - over-valuation of imported coal, over-valuation of power plant equipment and compensatory tariffs awarded to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees. The Congress leader said the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) should exercise its powers under Section 79 of the Electricity Act, 2003 to investigate and reopen the affairs of all private power-generating entities to identify such fake over-pricing of all equipment to help bring down electricity tariff in the country. The Congress party, he claimed, shall pursue this matter to the fullest extent by also filing a petition before the CERC utilising the data available in the public domain. If the Modi government wanted to go beyond the "hollow rhetoric" there should be an immediate reduction in the power tariffs by up to Rs 2 per unit wherever these companies were producing and transmitting electricity as the cost of over-invoicing of machinery imported by the Adani Group and other similarly situated entities was ultimately borne by the consumer, he said. The money allegedly syphoned off by the Adani Group and other such entities belonged to people of India and consumers should get reduced electricity tariff by at least Rs 2 per unit if not compensation for inflated tariff wrongly charged, Maken said. He alleged that in a recent expose by an international publication, "it is now clear that the DRI report names the Adani Group and contains crucial allegations that the Adani Group utilised a network of off-shore companies to purchase electrical equipment and then sell it to an Indian counterpart at a much-inflated value and as high as about 860 per cent of the original value of the product".
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The promoter-versus-outsider debate has returned to the fore on running a blue-chip enterprise in India with experts blaming differences between the top management and some founders for Vishal Sikka quitting as Infosys CEO.

Sikka took charge as Infosys' first non-founder CEO in 2014, prior to which the top post at the company was held by one or other founders of the country's second largest IT firm.

The company today announced a surprise resignation by 50 -year-old Sikka, who cited "a continuous stream of distractions and disruptions" for his decision, while the Infosys board was direct in blaming "continuous assault" and "campaign" by founder and ex-chairman NR Narayana Murthy.

This is the second high profile exit of an 'outsider' from the top post of a big enterprise in India, after Cyrus Mistry was removed as the head of the over USD 100 billion Tata group.

While Mistry's family has a significant stake in Tata Sons, the group's holding company, he was still seen as a non-Tata. The main reason cited for his exit by several experts was differences with Ratan Tata.

Tata group has appointed N Chandrasekaran, again a nonTata but a long-timer at the group firm TCS, as its new chief.

A large number of Indian blue-chips are run by promoter family members and include Bajaj, Hero Group, Bharti, Mahindras, Dr Reddy's, Lupin and Sun Pharma.

While several of these appoint professional outsiders as CEOs and for other top positions, the top-most executive positions (including as Executive Chairperson) are held by the promoters.

At the same time, there are also large groups like ICICI, HDFC, ITC, L&T and Axis Bank, where the top-management positions are held by non-promoters and for several years together without any disruptions in several of such cases.

At several family-run companies, children are seen to be groomed as successors and some of the examples include both the Reliance groups, Wipro, Godrej Cipla and Adani.

While 70-year-old Narayana Murthy's son Rohan Murthy was also associated with Infosys for a while, the IT czar asserted today he is not seeking "any money, position for children, or power" and his concern primarily was the "deteriorating standard" of corporate governance at Infosys.

Still, several experts and industry leaders opined it was the differences between the promoters and the top management that led to Sikka's exit.

Entrepreneur and Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar tweeted that it is a low point in the history of Infosys and it is "inconceivable" that a professional CEO appointed by the board and shareholders will be "hounded out".

Industrialist Harsh Goenka tweeted, "To run an organisation effectively you need to humour and understand the axis of power... Cyrus, Sikka didn't".

Investor advisory firm IiAS said transitioning from a 'promoter' led culture to a professionally managed company is a challenge - for both the company as well as the professional manager.

HDFC Securities' V K Sharma said Sikka's exit draws a long-drawn out boardroom battle to a close.

"While the company did better than the industry during Sikka's tenure, it was no where near achieving Sikka's own USD 20 billion target by 2020. The forthcoming buyback may delay the stock from falling more," he said.

Sharma said Sikka's allegation that he was continuously being distracted does not wash as he had long enough a honeymoon period to make his mark.

Sikka's resignation also led to Infosys' stock plunging sharply and the company's market valuation saw an erosion of over Rs 22,000 crore.

V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said the market has signalled its displeasure with the stock tanking by 10 per cent, but this unfortunate incident might turn out to be an opportunity if the board quickly finds a new CEO who can lead from the front without "disruptions" from the promoters.

NEW DELHI: The promoter-versus-outsider debate has returned to the fore on running a blue-chip enterprise in India with experts blaming differences between the top management and some founders for Vishal Sikka quitting as Infosys CEO. Sikka took charge as Infosys' first non-founder CEO in 2014, prior to which the top post at the company was held by one or other founders of the country's second largest IT firm. The company today announced a surprise resignation by 50 -year-old Sikka, who cited "a continuous stream of distractions and disruptions" for his decision, while the Infosys board was direct in blaming "continuous assault" and "campaign" by founder and ex-chairman NR Narayana Murthy. This is the second high profile exit of an 'outsider' from the top post of a big enterprise in India, after Cyrus Mistry was removed as the head of the over USD 100 billion Tata group. While Mistry's family has a significant stake in Tata Sons, the group's holding company, he was still seen as a non-Tata. The main reason cited for his exit by several experts was differences with Ratan Tata. Tata group has appointed N Chandrasekaran, again a nonTata but a long-timer at the group firm TCS, as its new chief. A large number of Indian blue-chips are run by promoter family members and include Bajaj, Hero Group, Bharti, Mahindras, Dr Reddy's, Lupin and Sun Pharma. While several of these appoint professional outsiders as CEOs and for other top positions, the top-most executive positions (including as Executive Chairperson) are held by the promoters. At the same time, there are also large groups like ICICI, HDFC, ITC, L&T and Axis Bank, where the top-management positions are held by non-promoters and for several years together without any disruptions in several of such cases. At several family-run companies, children are seen to be groomed as successors and some of the examples include both the Reliance groups, Wipro, Godrej Cipla and Adani. While 70-year-old Narayana Murthy's son Rohan Murthy was also associated with Infosys for a while, the IT czar asserted today he is not seeking "any money, position for children, or power" and his concern primarily was the "deteriorating standard" of corporate governance at Infosys. Still, several experts and industry leaders opined it was the differences between the promoters and the top management that led to Sikka's exit. Entrepreneur and Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar tweeted that it is a low point in the history of Infosys and it is "inconceivable" that a professional CEO appointed by the board and shareholders will be "hounded out". Industrialist Harsh Goenka tweeted, "To run an organisation effectively you need to humour and understand the axis of power... Cyrus, Sikka didn't". Investor advisory firm IiAS said transitioning from a 'promoter' led culture to a professionally managed company is a challenge - for both the company as well as the professional manager. HDFC Securities' V K Sharma said Sikka's exit draws a long-drawn out boardroom battle to a close. "While the company did better than the industry during Sikka's tenure, it was no where near achieving Sikka's own USD 20 billion target by 2020. The forthcoming buyback may delay the stock from falling more," he said. Sharma said Sikka's allegation that he was continuously being distracted does not wash as he had long enough a honeymoon period to make his mark. Sikka's resignation also led to Infosys' stock plunging sharply and the company's market valuation saw an erosion of over Rs 22,000 crore. V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said the market has signalled its displeasure with the stock tanking by 10 per cent, but this unfortunate incident might turn out to be an opportunity if the board quickly finds a new CEO who can lead from the front without "disruptions" from the promoters.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Vishal Sikkas resignation has cemented the battle lines inside Indias second largest IT firm, with the board of the company finally going on the offensive against co-founder NR Narayana Murthy for the first time. While, Narayana Murthy, and his co-founders, have been spearheading the campaign against alleged corporate misgovernance since last year, the board has refrained from criticising Murthy, who many consider inseparable from the companys image.

This restraint has been thrown away post-Sikkas announcement on Friday. The board squarely placed the blame for the development, stating that he had used the threat of media attacks to make inappropriate demands that were inconsistent with his stated desire for stronger governance.

More important is its categorical denial that it would offer him a formal role in governance. Speculation that the rift in the company could be healed over the last few months, have pivoted around expectations that Murthy would be offered such a role. Such a reconciliation seems unlikely now.

Mr Murthy has demanded that the Board adopt certain changes in policy, else he will attack board members in the public, which threat was carried out when the Board did not acquiesce; He has demanded operational and management changes under the threat of media attacks; Mr. Murthy wanted the demands to be adhered to without attribution to him, the board said in its statement.

Murthy, for his part, has stated that he is extremely anguished by the allegations and that he wasnt seeking money, position for children or power. It is below my dignity to respond to such baseless insinuations, he added.

CHENNAI: Vishal Sikkas resignation has cemented the battle lines inside Indias second largest IT firm, with the board of the company finally going on the offensive against co-founder NR Narayana Murthy for the first time. While, Narayana Murthy, and his co-founders, have been spearheading the campaign against alleged corporate misgovernance since last year, the board has refrained from criticising Murthy, who many consider inseparable from the companys image. This restraint has been thrown away post-Sikkas announcement on Friday. The board squarely placed the blame for the development, stating that he had used the threat of media attacks to make inappropriate demands that were inconsistent with his stated desire for stronger governance. More important is its categorical denial that it would offer him a formal role in governance. Speculation that the rift in the company could be healed over the last few months, have pivoted around expectations that Murthy would be offered such a role. Such a reconciliation seems unlikely now. Mr Murthy has demanded that the Board adopt certain changes in policy, else he will attack board members in the public, which threat was carried out when the Board did not acquiesce; He has demanded operational and management changes under the threat of media attacks; Mr. Murthy wanted the demands to be adhered to without attribution to him, the board said in its statement. Murthy, for his part, has stated that he is extremely anguished by the allegations and that he wasnt seeking money, position for children or power. It is below my dignity to respond to such baseless insinuations, he added.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Employees have a mixed reaction about resignation of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. While a section of the employees that Express spoke to said they were concerned about the new policies that might be brought about in the wake of the developments, others felt it would not have a direct bearing on them.

Although everyone knew about the resignation by Friday morning, there was no widespread discussion about the same, employees said. The innovation and style of working that Sikka brought about was a hit among a large section of the employees, who believed that a CEO in sync with the latest trends in technology would be able to steer the company in the right direction.

For these employees, Sikkas resignation came as a blow. One mid-level engineer working in the Bengaluru campus said they were not worried about job security but about new policies. We do not know what kind of person will be brought in to replace Sikka. New policies will have impact on employees. This is what we are concerned about.

Others felt it would not affect them directly. There will be no direct impact on us due to his resignation. Many of the employees do have a grouse against Sikka as promotion and payhike was suspended during his tenure, inconveniencing many, another employee said on condition of anonymity.

BENGALURU: Employees have a mixed reaction about resignation of Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka. While a section of the employees that Express spoke to said they were concerned about the new policies that might be brought about in the wake of the developments, others felt it would not have a direct bearing on them. Although everyone knew about the resignation by Friday morning, there was no widespread discussion about the same, employees said. The innovation and style of working that Sikka brought about was a hit among a large section of the employees, who believed that a CEO in sync with the latest trends in technology would be able to steer the company in the right direction. For these employees, Sikkas resignation came as a blow. One mid-level engineer working in the Bengaluru campus said they were not worried about job security but about new policies. We do not know what kind of person will be brought in to replace Sikka. New policies will have impact on employees. This is what we are concerned about. Others felt it would not affect them directly. There will be no direct impact on us due to his resignation. Many of the employees do have a grouse against Sikka as promotion and payhike was suspended during his tenure, inconveniencing many, another employee said on condition of anonymity.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: A major part of the documentation work on the investigation into the drug racket has been completed and charge sheets in 11 cases will be filed at the end of September, prohibition and excise (enforcement) director Akun Sabharwal has said. Speaking on the sidelines of an event here on Friday, he said, We held a series of meetings with our legal advisers and public prosecutors. My assessment is that we should start filing charge sheets from September end. The forensic lab reports on the body fluid samples are expected between September end and mid-December.

The excise task force has arrested 22 persons so far in connection with the racket. They include US citizen and former NASA aerospace engineer Anish Dundoo, Dutch national Mike Kamminga, South African national Alex Victor and seven engineering graduates employed with multinational companies in the city.

Speaking during a panel discussion, Sabharwal said, What started off as a duty grew close to my heart.

Answering a question from the audience on the speculated list of schools affected by the drug menace, he made it clear that the list that came in the media was not official. The list got leaked and is not authentic. We have written to 26 schools individually on the menace, he said.He also cautioned schools not to shrug off their responsibility by conducting rallies and displaying placards but to be open about it and clean up the mess. The schools should not shove the issue under the carpet, Sabharwal said.

Dr D Usha Reddy, educationist, said, Sermonising will not work nor will judging children. But, knowing the background will help them come out of the trauma.

Nigerian drug peddler nabbed with 20 gm cocaine

A 25-year-old Nigerian national was arrested by Hyderabad Task Force police here on Friday on charge of drug peddling and 20 grams of cocaine was seized from him. According to police, in a joint operation, Task Force sleuths and Golconda police apprehended the Nigerian at Seven Tombs who was found with cocaine. The accused has been identified Ugochukw Chukwuebuka, who is into cloth business and is a resident of Bandlaguda in Rajendra Nagar. He came to India on a business visa. He started supplying drugs to customers by purchasing them at lower prices and selling for huge amounts.

HYDERABAD: A major part of the documentation work on the investigation into the drug racket has been completed and charge sheets in 11 cases will be filed at the end of September, prohibition and excise (enforcement) director Akun Sabharwal has said. Speaking on the sidelines of an event here on Friday, he said, We held a series of meetings with our legal advisers and public prosecutors. My assessment is that we should start filing charge sheets from September end. The forensic lab reports on the body fluid samples are expected between September end and mid-December. The excise task force has arrested 22 persons so far in connection with the racket. They include US citizen and former NASA aerospace engineer Anish Dundoo, Dutch national Mike Kamminga, South African national Alex Victor and seven engineering graduates employed with multinational companies in the city. Speaking during a panel discussion, Sabharwal said, What started off as a duty grew close to my heart. Answering a question from the audience on the speculated list of schools affected by the drug menace, he made it clear that the list that came in the media was not official. The list got leaked and is not authentic. We have written to 26 schools individually on the menace, he said.He also cautioned schools not to shrug off their responsibility by conducting rallies and displaying placards but to be open about it and clean up the mess. The schools should not shove the issue under the carpet, Sabharwal said. Dr D Usha Reddy, educationist, said, Sermonising will not work nor will judging children. But, knowing the background will help them come out of the trauma. Nigerian drug peddler nabbed with 20 gm cocaine A 25-year-old Nigerian national was arrested by Hyderabad Task Force police here on Friday on charge of drug peddling and 20 grams of cocaine was seized from him. According to police, in a joint operation, Task Force sleuths and Golconda police apprehended the Nigerian at Seven Tombs who was found with cocaine. The accused has been identified Ugochukw Chukwuebuka, who is into cloth business and is a resident of Bandlaguda in Rajendra Nagar. He came to India on a business visa. He started supplying drugs to customers by purchasing them at lower prices and selling for huge amounts.
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: An industrialist, Inturi Sambaiah, 74, has complained to the Director-General of Police (DGP) Sambasiva Rao that his partners had cheated him to the tune of `5.25 crore on the pretext of overtaking a private company. The victim, a resident of Mangalagiri, owns Firewater Beverages Pvt Ltd, along with his business partner. They had a sale agreement with Sri Shakti Distilleries Pvt Ltd located in Rayagada of Odisha whose owner was Uma Maheshwar Rao. Initially, Maheshwar Rao claimed that he is the sole owner of the company, but later it was found that there were several other partners.

Revealing his ordeal to the press, Sambaiah said, I had employed one of my partners, Achyutha Ramaiah, to look after the financial transactions due to my age. Achyutha colluded with Maheshwar Rao with a criminal intent and finally said that we didnt pay anything despite paying `5.25 crore.

After learning that he had been cheated, the victim approached the Rayagada police. A case was registered against Maheshwar Rao, resident of Visakhapatnam, Akanta Venkateswarlu Sanapala, Tati Reddy Tamma, and Shyam Prasad Reddy. Recently, Sambaiah complained to the DGP that the accused had cheated several others in the State. The DGP reportedly alerted the CID based on the complaint.

VIJAYAWADA: An industrialist, Inturi Sambaiah, 74, has complained to the Director-General of Police (DGP) Sambasiva Rao that his partners had cheated him to the tune of `5.25 crore on the pretext of overtaking a private company. The victim, a resident of Mangalagiri, owns Firewater Beverages Pvt Ltd, along with his business partner. They had a sale agreement with Sri Shakti Distilleries Pvt Ltd located in Rayagada of Odisha whose owner was Uma Maheshwar Rao. Initially, Maheshwar Rao claimed that he is the sole owner of the company, but later it was found that there were several other partners. Revealing his ordeal to the press, Sambaiah said, I had employed one of my partners, Achyutha Ramaiah, to look after the financial transactions due to my age. Achyutha colluded with Maheshwar Rao with a criminal intent and finally said that we didnt pay anything despite paying `5.25 crore. After learning that he had been cheated, the victim approached the Rayagada police. A case was registered against Maheshwar Rao, resident of Visakhapatnam, Akanta Venkateswarlu Sanapala, Tati Reddy Tamma, and Shyam Prasad Reddy. Recently, Sambaiah complained to the DGP that the accused had cheated several others in the State. The DGP reportedly alerted the CID based on the complaint.
By IANS

NEW DELHI: Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who now plays the lead role in most of his films, says that he never wanted to play the typical hero as a person with no bad qualities doesn't exist.

"I don't believe in characters that are either completely negative or positive like a hero doesn't have any bad qualities. A person like him doesn't exist only," Nawazuddin, who doesn't act for awards, told reporters here on Friday.

"So, I never had any interest in a hero's role or out and out negative role. I prefer grey characters," he added.

He also pointed out that the difference between his forthcoming film "Babumoshai Bandookbaaz" and other films is that the "kind of hero you have been seeing, is not there in this film".

In fact, he proudly said he plays "UP's James Bond" in this film.

"Pierce Brosnan who used to play James Bond...he was my madness at one point of time because he had the attitude and swag. Wherever I get the opportunity, I 'stick' that attitude in my films. In this film also, I'm UP's James Bond," he said.

Asked about the kind of roles he wants to do, the "Peepli Live" actor said: "There are lots of characters that are left to do. Dilip Kumar's role in 'Mughal-E-Azam'...I would like to do that at least once with that kind of an attitude...the royal one."

What about a biopic apart from "Manto"?

"I have many unsung heroes (in mind) on whom I would like to do a film on. But there are just two biopics that are my favourites - 'Bandit Queen' and 'Gandhi'," he said.

As of now, he is confident that "Babumoshai Bandookbaaz" will not be a flop.

"We have confidence in our film because it was made within a controlled budget and within that budget, a film never flops. Thank God. I will not tell you the budget. But within that budget, a film never flops," he reiterated.

Quite possibly, also because the Kushan Nandy directorial was surrounded by controversies. Starting with the Central Board of Film Certification's (CBFC) demand for 48 cuts in the film, which has intimate scenes, to get 'A' certification.

It was later cleared by the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) with eight "minor and voluntary cuts"

Asked about the censor board row, he said: "It's their job. They have their own rules, but our job is to fight. So we fought and the Tribunal gave minor cuts."

"Films should be made in their (filmmaker's) own way. Whatever topic comes to your mind, the kind of films you want to make. There shouldn't be any attack on creativity," he added.

But what about getting support from Bollywood?

"When we did a press conference, there were about 20 filmmakers. What bigger support do you need?" he asked.

The film will release with its "original flavour" on August 25.

NEW DELHI: Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who now plays the lead role in most of his films, says that he never wanted to play the typical hero as a person with no bad qualities doesn't exist. "I don't believe in characters that are either completely negative or positive like a hero doesn't have any bad qualities. A person like him doesn't exist only," Nawazuddin, who doesn't act for awards, told reporters here on Friday. "So, I never had any interest in a hero's role or out and out negative role. I prefer grey characters," he added. He also pointed out that the difference between his forthcoming film "Babumoshai Bandookbaaz" and other films is that the "kind of hero you have been seeing, is not there in this film". In fact, he proudly said he plays "UP's James Bond" in this film. "Pierce Brosnan who used to play James Bond...he was my madness at one point of time because he had the attitude and swag. Wherever I get the opportunity, I 'stick' that attitude in my films. In this film also, I'm UP's James Bond," he said. Asked about the kind of roles he wants to do, the "Peepli Live" actor said: "There are lots of characters that are left to do. Dilip Kumar's role in 'Mughal-E-Azam'...I would like to do that at least once with that kind of an attitude...the royal one." What about a biopic apart from "Manto"? "I have many unsung heroes (in mind) on whom I would like to do a film on. But there are just two biopics that are my favourites - 'Bandit Queen' and 'Gandhi'," he said. As of now, he is confident that "Babumoshai Bandookbaaz" will not be a flop. "We have confidence in our film because it was made within a controlled budget and within that budget, a film never flops. Thank God. I will not tell you the budget. But within that budget, a film never flops," he reiterated. Quite possibly, also because the Kushan Nandy directorial was surrounded by controversies. Starting with the Central Board of Film Certification's (CBFC) demand for 48 cuts in the film, which has intimate scenes, to get 'A' certification. It was later cleared by the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) with eight "minor and voluntary cuts" Asked about the censor board row, he said: "It's their job. They have their own rules, but our job is to fight. So we fought and the Tribunal gave minor cuts." "Films should be made in their (filmmaker's) own way. Whatever topic comes to your mind, the kind of films you want to make. There shouldn't be any attack on creativity," he added. But what about getting support from Bollywood? "When we did a press conference, there were about 20 filmmakers. What bigger support do you need?" he asked. The film will release with its "original flavour" on August 25.
Grandpa, my granddaughter asked as she played with her iPad, Where does our shadow go during an eclipse?

Hmmm. Good question. Now how to respond? The educator in me says take the high road. Be scientific. Dress like Bill Nye. Find a globe, a light and a ping pong ball. Set it all up and use a pointer to explain every exact detail like my ninth grade science teacher, Mr. Lemp. This method would validate science for my granddaughter and perhaps encourage her interest in the field as she matures.

Naaaah. That sounds too modern. Let the avalanche of media astronomers provide all the facts, warnings and more warnings. I need a different angle.

My extended pondering has created an uncomfortable silence for my granddaughter. Shes looking at me now as though she asked me to explain where babies come from.

Maybe I should use history. Invoke the Aztecs. You remember the Aztec empire. The ruler and priest classes joined together to create the belief that human sacrifice was necessary to keep the sun rising. The heart was to be ripped from some poor chumps chest and thrust upward while still beating, then... this is too graphic for a six year old, right? Im a tad queasy myself.

Forget the science and the history.

What remains is...honesty. The truth. We know its out there.

Lets be frank, this whole eclipse event is a fraud. You know it; I know it. My sources tell me that a large contingent of Chambers of Commerce hatched this idea about two decades ago. That group was also behind the Y2K event which was designed to remove all money from banks and encourage rampant main street spending prior to cash becoming worthless and well, you know how THAT turned out.

This time, the truth is undeniable. Theres no eclipse. The manufacturers of those special glasses actually installed a big glob of goo that, on a prearranged celestial signal, will travel across your field of vision, simulating a dark circle covering the sun. (Thats why you gotta get the special ones... with that particular number!)

My granddaughters starting to step from foot to foot. Still waiting.

My sources also confirmand you heard it here firstaliens took over the Space Lab when it was over North Korea. (Aliens love crazy.) Selecting only the best humans, the aliens will use the two minute, thirty seconds of darkness to whisk up any human who is not wearing those special glasses. Aliens have decided, these are the smart humans, who know whats really going on. So my granddaughter should be safe...if she wears the glasses.

Me? Ill be up in Space Lab, Level 3, B holding area. Its reserved for eclipse disbelievers and aliens who cast no shadows. Truth.
By IANS

MUMBAI: Superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Saturday extended his support to the upcoming 48th edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), and says Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani is taking relevant steps to make the gala the "most inclusive forum for Indian cinema".

Irani on Saturday said that she is looking forward to the presence of the superstar at the event, which is held annually in Goa. The 48th edition will be held from November 20 to 28.

"Great endeavour by I&B Minister Smriti Irani to make IFFI the most inclusive, relevant forum for Indian cinema. My unwavering support to you," Shah Rukh posted on Twitter.

To that, Irani responded: "I am grateful for the industry's overwhelming support, SRK look forward to seeing you at IFFI 2017."

....I am grateful for the industry's overwhelming support @iamsrk , look forward to seeing you at #IFFI2017. https://t.co/Wp3ZarFeGb  Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) August 19, 2017

Last year, the 47th edition of the IFFI came to a close with Iranian film "Daughter" coming away as the festival's best film. Over 300 films from 90 countries were screened at the nine-day event.

Nearly 4,500 delegates were present at the event last year to participate in IFFI, which is reckoned as one of Asia's oldest film festivals.

MUMBAI: Superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Saturday extended his support to the upcoming 48th edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), and says Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani is taking relevant steps to make the gala the "most inclusive forum for Indian cinema". Irani on Saturday said that she is looking forward to the presence of the superstar at the event, which is held annually in Goa. The 48th edition will be held from November 20 to 28. "Great endeavour by I&B Minister Smriti Irani to make IFFI the most inclusive, relevant forum for Indian cinema. My unwavering support to you," Shah Rukh posted on Twitter. To that, Irani responded: "I am grateful for the industry's overwhelming support, SRK look forward to seeing you at IFFI 2017." ....I am grateful for the industry's overwhelming support @iamsrk , look forward to seeing you at #IFFI2017. https://t.co/Wp3ZarFeGb  Smriti Z Irani (@smritiirani) August 19, 2017 Last year, the 47th edition of the IFFI came to a close with Iranian film "Daughter" coming away as the festival's best film. Over 300 films from 90 countries were screened at the nine-day event. Nearly 4,500 delegates were present at the event last year to participate in IFFI, which is reckoned as one of Asia's oldest film festivals.
Gopinath Rajendran By

Express News Service

The transition from an Indie filmmaker to a feature film maker isnt a walk in the park. But director Sandeep Mohan who has a couple of Indie films to his credit sounds quite assured, as we begin conversing about his latest release, Shreelancer, which is about a freelancer named Shree.

Not being in a nine-to-five job, Shree battles with self-doubt about his artistic abilities. His parents add to this by frustrating him in the name of being worried about his future. Fate has him travelling to a friends wedding, and that journey transforms his life, says Sandeep who has previously helmed Hola Venky! and Love, Wrinkle-free. My previous films had a good dose of comedy. But Shreelancer will be more dramatic. Theres less humour than in my previous films.

Sandeep has been inspired to create Shrees character by what he experienced in his 20s. Another difference from my previous films would be the fact that I can relate some parts of Shrees character to my younger self. I was an advertising copywriter too.

He says when he used to freelance, many people did not even understand what it meant. Now, Im slowly seeing this trend increase. Just like people going to office, youngsters are beginning to flock to cafes with their laptops. I dont think there can be a better time to do a film based on the lives of freelancers and what they go through, he says, adding that he hopes that the film will make people better understand their world.

The director also feels that there isnt much of a difference between independent films and those that get a wide release. They are just named differently, but theyre all the same. From the audiences perspective, a film is only either good or bad. If theres a difference at all, Id say tha tindie films are more relatable and sensible (laughs).

Shreelancer has already been shown at a few international film festivals. We premiered at the New York Indian Film Festival and later went to Chicago. The way I see it, festivals are a nice way to see different kinds of films. Its all about trying to tell the audience an interesting story about a person like them. Shreelancer will have its Chennai and Hyderabad release on August 25, a week after its release yesterday.

The transition from an Indie filmmaker to a feature film maker isnt a walk in the park. But director Sandeep Mohan who has a couple of Indie films to his credit sounds quite assured, as we begin conversing about his latest release, Shreelancer, which is about a freelancer named Shree. Not being in a nine-to-five job, Shree battles with self-doubt about his artistic abilities. His parents add to this by frustrating him in the name of being worried about his future. Fate has him travelling to a friends wedding, and that journey transforms his life, says Sandeep who has previously helmed Hola Venky! and Love, Wrinkle-free. My previous films had a good dose of comedy. But Shreelancer will be more dramatic. Theres less humour than in my previous films. Sandeep has been inspired to create Shrees character by what he experienced in his 20s. Another difference from my previous films would be the fact that I can relate some parts of Shrees character to my younger self. I was an advertising copywriter too. He says when he used to freelance, many people did not even understand what it meant. Now, Im slowly seeing this trend increase. Just like people going to office, youngsters are beginning to flock to cafes with their laptops. I dont think there can be a better time to do a film based on the lives of freelancers and what they go through, he says, adding that he hopes that the film will make people better understand their world. The director also feels that there isnt much of a difference between independent films and those that get a wide release. They are just named differently, but theyre all the same. From the audiences perspective, a film is only either good or bad. If theres a difference at all, Id say tha tindie films are more relatable and sensible (laughs). Shreelancer has already been shown at a few international film festivals. We premiered at the New York Indian Film Festival and later went to Chicago. The way I see it, festivals are a nice way to see different kinds of films. Its all about trying to tell the audience an interesting story about a person like them. Shreelancer will have its Chennai and Hyderabad release on August 25, a week after its release yesterday.
G Parthasarathy By

Pakistan has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world where no prime minister has ever completed his/her mandated five-year term, over the past 70 years. In four instances, elected prime ministers have been ousted in military coups, leading to prolonged periods of military rule. In every case, the judiciary has buckled to the coercive power of the military and justified coups on a dubious doctrine of necessity. Nawaz Sharif was removed from office recently by a mind-boggling Supreme Court decision for not having declared, in returns he submitted to the Election Commission, a paltry sum of $2,700, which was due to him, but he never received.



Interestingly, the court included two military Intelligence officials with no knowledge of civil law, in the Joint Investigation Team it constituted, to investigate allegations of undeclared properties and assets abroad, by the Sharif family. Virtually everyone in Pakistan knows that General Pervez Musharraf has properties in London and Dubai, and his successor, General Ashfaq Kayani, whose family members were alleged to have dubious financial dealings, lives in a villa in Sydney. The Supreme Court has never bothered to act against these worthy sons of Pakistan.



These developments are going to have serious implications for India and Afghanistan, who face an army, which is the fountainhead of cross-border terrorism. Sharif is the only political leader in Pakistan, who has public support and stature to at least raise questions about the adverse international repercussions of the army sponsorship of radical Islamic terrorist groups operating against India and Afghanistan. Pakistans new PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, who was earlier described as an ornamental defence minister, are both new and largely untutored to the ways the military establishment manipulates the civilian establishment, media and judiciary, while remaining outside the realm of any civilian control. Pakistans foreign and security policies are now going to be under the total control of the military and ISI.



Any expectations that our bleeding heart liberals may have of Pakistan relenting on cross-border terrorism against India, especially in Jammu and Kashmir, are unrealistic. Lashkar-e-Taiba cells in India will be activated to disrupt communal harmony and the blame laid on the Narendra Modi government. They will be emboldened in doing this by the viciously anti-India postures of strategic containment adopted by China. But, with the advent of the Trump administration and its avowed policy of acting against radical Islamic terrorism, there are signs of nervousness in the Pakistan military establishment about tougher US policies in dealing with ISI support for the Taliban and Haqqani network in Afghanistan.

India will now have to step up its already close cooperation with Afghanistanin world capitals such as Washington, London, Bonn, Paris and Tokyoin countering Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Denial of economic assistance by these countries will generate pressures within Pakistan, which is already confronting serious balance-of-payments problems. Saudi Arabia will have to be persuaded by the US and others not to step in with generous support to Pakistan. New Delhi would also be well advised to increase the costs for Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, by measured cross-border retaliation.



The nation has to be kept prepared for facing prolonged two-front threats, which will, sooner rather than later, be carefully coordinated. While we will have to stand alone in dealing with these security threats, there are many across the world who are tired of both Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, and the jingoism and territorial ambitions of China enforcing its territorial claims across Asia. dadpartha@gmail.com

Pakistan has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world where no prime minister has ever completed his/her mandated five-year term, over the past 70 years. In four instances, elected prime ministers have been ousted in military coups, leading to prolonged periods of military rule. In every case, the judiciary has buckled to the coercive power of the military and justified coups on a dubious doctrine of necessity. Nawaz Sharif was removed from office recently by a mind-boggling Supreme Court decision for not having declared, in returns he submitted to the Election Commission, a paltry sum of $2,700, which was due to him, but he never received. Interestingly, the court included two military Intelligence officials with no knowledge of civil law, in the Joint Investigation Team it constituted, to investigate allegations of undeclared properties and assets abroad, by the Sharif family. Virtually everyone in Pakistan knows that General Pervez Musharraf has properties in London and Dubai, and his successor, General Ashfaq Kayani, whose family members were alleged to have dubious financial dealings, lives in a villa in Sydney. The Supreme Court has never bothered to act against these worthy sons of Pakistan. These developments are going to have serious implications for India and Afghanistan, who face an army, which is the fountainhead of cross-border terrorism. Sharif is the only political leader in Pakistan, who has public support and stature to at least raise questions about the adverse international repercussions of the army sponsorship of radical Islamic terrorist groups operating against India and Afghanistan. Pakistans new PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, who was earlier described as an ornamental defence minister, are both new and largely untutored to the ways the military establishment manipulates the civilian establishment, media and judiciary, while remaining outside the realm of any civilian control. Pakistans foreign and security policies are now going to be under the total control of the military and ISI. Any expectations that our bleeding heart liberals may have of Pakistan relenting on cross-border terrorism against India, especially in Jammu and Kashmir, are unrealistic. Lashkar-e-Taiba cells in India will be activated to disrupt communal harmony and the blame laid on the Narendra Modi government. They will be emboldened in doing this by the viciously anti-India postures of strategic containment adopted by China. But, with the advent of the Trump administration and its avowed policy of acting against radical Islamic terrorism, there are signs of nervousness in the Pakistan military establishment about tougher US policies in dealing with ISI support for the Taliban and Haqqani network in Afghanistan. India will now have to step up its already close cooperation with Afghanistanin world capitals such as Washington, London, Bonn, Paris and Tokyoin countering Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Denial of economic assistance by these countries will generate pressures within Pakistan, which is already confronting serious balance-of-payments problems. Saudi Arabia will have to be persuaded by the US and others not to step in with generous support to Pakistan. New Delhi would also be well advised to increase the costs for Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, by measured cross-border retaliation. The nation has to be kept prepared for facing prolonged two-front threats, which will, sooner rather than later, be carefully coordinated. While we will have to stand alone in dealing with these security threats, there are many across the world who are tired of both Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, and the jingoism and territorial ambitions of China enforcing its territorial claims across Asia. dadpartha@gmail.com
By ANI

PATNA: One Army Column and one Engineer Task Force (ETF) have been deployed in six districts of Bihar, which have been successful in rescuing more than 300 people from the flood-hit areas.



At least 27 people were rescued from Katihar, 106 from Madhubani, 84 from East Champaran and 18 from West Champaran.



Besides the rescue operation, 15,765 food packets were distributed among the flood-affected people and around 4,439 were provided with medical aid.



Arrangements have also been made for crowd control and repair of embankment.



According to the incoming reports, more teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) are being airlifted from Pune to Patna.



Supaul, Saharsa, Bagha, Gopalganj, Madhubani, Sitamarhi, Khagaria, Darbhanga and Madhepura districts are the other districts which have been affected by floods.



Yesterday, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams were working on war-footing to combat the situation in the flood-affected areas of Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and West Bengal and fanned out its 126 flood rescue teams so far across the country to help the affected people.

After more than 100 deaths in Bihar due to floods this month, the NDRF teams had intensified their rescue operations in the state.

PATNA: One Army Column and one Engineer Task Force (ETF) have been deployed in six districts of Bihar, which have been successful in rescuing more than 300 people from the flood-hit areas. At least 27 people were rescued from Katihar, 106 from Madhubani, 84 from East Champaran and 18 from West Champaran. Besides the rescue operation, 15,765 food packets were distributed among the flood-affected people and around 4,439 were provided with medical aid. Arrangements have also been made for crowd control and repair of embankment. According to the incoming reports, more teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) are being airlifted from Pune to Patna. Supaul, Saharsa, Bagha, Gopalganj, Madhubani, Sitamarhi, Khagaria, Darbhanga and Madhepura districts are the other districts which have been affected by floods. Yesterday, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams were working on war-footing to combat the situation in the flood-affected areas of Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and West Bengal and fanned out its 126 flood rescue teams so far across the country to help the affected people. After more than 100 deaths in Bihar due to floods this month, the NDRF teams had intensified their rescue operations in the state.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Accusing the Congress government of misusing its powers for political gain, former minister and MLA Basavaraj Bommai on Saturday said that the two cases against BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa being investigated by the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) were a political vendetta.

The cases being investigated by the ACB pertains to alleged denotification  cancellation of a notification of intent to acquire land  of 657 acres of land acquired for developing the Shivaram Karanth Layout in the city.

Speaking at a press conference, Bommai said that the Shivaram Karanth Layout was not denotified. He said,  The preliminary notification was issued for 3,546 acres. Out of which 257 acres were dropped after farmers complained to the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) stating they would face hardship if their lands were acquired. Therefore, these 257 acres were deleted from preliminary notification and were not denotified. When you denotify areas after the final notification is issued, then it is wrong. 

Bommai also said that the dropping of the remaining 440 acres was a simple exercise of powers that the Board has. Bommai questioned, There was no administration lapse and BDA exercised its powers. Where is the basis for a complaint?"



He questioned the need for an ACB investigation when the case had been with CID for four years. This is a clear case of political vendetta and we will fight it legally and politically. When the Congress formed ACB, we had accused it of forming it to harass people who oppose them. Our words have been proven true. If the ACB wants to act with alacrity, then why is not investigating the cases filed against the Chief Minister himself? he asked.

NEW DELHI: Accusing the Congress government of misusing its powers for political gain, former minister and MLA Basavaraj Bommai on Saturday said that the two cases against BJP state president B S Yeddyurappa being investigated by the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) were a political vendetta. The cases being investigated by the ACB pertains to alleged denotification  cancellation of a notification of intent to acquire land  of 657 acres of land acquired for developing the Shivaram Karanth Layout in the city. Speaking at a press conference, Bommai said that the Shivaram Karanth Layout was not denotified. He said,  The preliminary notification was issued for 3,546 acres. Out of which 257 acres were dropped after farmers complained to the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) stating they would face hardship if their lands were acquired. Therefore, these 257 acres were deleted from preliminary notification and were not denotified. When you denotify areas after the final notification is issued, then it is wrong.  Bommai also said that the dropping of the remaining 440 acres was a simple exercise of powers that the Board has. Bommai questioned, There was no administration lapse and BDA exercised its powers. Where is the basis for a complaint?" He questioned the need for an ACB investigation when the case had been with CID for four years. This is a clear case of political vendetta and we will fight it legally and politically. When the Congress formed ACB, we had accused it of forming it to harass people who oppose them. Our words have been proven true. If the ACB wants to act with alacrity, then why is not investigating the cases filed against the Chief Minister himself? he asked.
By PTI

DHANBAD: Prominent businessman and chairman of the Rainbow group Dhiren Rawani was shot dead by his nephew at Bhowra near here, police said today.

A senior police officer said Rawani was shot dead by his nephew Kunal Rawani near his parent's house at Bhowra about 30 km from here last night.

Rawani, who lived in Dhanbad had gone his parents house for celebrating Mansa Puja. He was talking with his neighbours when Kunal Rawani came on a bike and pumped two bullets on him. He was immediately rushed to Central Hospital of Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) Dhanbad where doctors declared him dead, the police said.

Rainbow Group has a chain of business in different states including Jharkhand, Bihar and Bengal. Beside real estate, Rainbow Group has hotels in many places.

Kunal after killing Dhiren Rawani tried to escape from spot but local people caught him and thrashed him badly, the police said.

He was rescued by police in a critical condition and taken to Patliputra Medical College Hospital (PMCH) where doctors declared him brought dead.

Kunal is the son of Dhiren Rawani's cousin Shankar Rawani.

Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Dhanbad, Manoj Ratan Chothe said Dhiren Rawani was killed by his cousin's son. Property dispute is said to be reason behind murder.

However, police are investigating the matter from all angles, the officer added.

DHANBAD: Prominent businessman and chairman of the Rainbow group Dhiren Rawani was shot dead by his nephew at Bhowra near here, police said today. A senior police officer said Rawani was shot dead by his nephew Kunal Rawani near his parent's house at Bhowra about 30 km from here last night. Rawani, who lived in Dhanbad had gone his parents house for celebrating Mansa Puja. He was talking with his neighbours when Kunal Rawani came on a bike and pumped two bullets on him. He was immediately rushed to Central Hospital of Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) Dhanbad where doctors declared him dead, the police said. Rainbow Group has a chain of business in different states including Jharkhand, Bihar and Bengal. Beside real estate, Rainbow Group has hotels in many places. Kunal after killing Dhiren Rawani tried to escape from spot but local people caught him and thrashed him badly, the police said. He was rescued by police in a critical condition and taken to Patliputra Medical College Hospital (PMCH) where doctors declared him brought dead. Kunal is the son of Dhiren Rawani's cousin Shankar Rawani. Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Dhanbad, Manoj Ratan Chothe said Dhiren Rawani was killed by his cousin's son. Property dispute is said to be reason behind murder. However, police are investigating the matter from all angles, the officer added.
Vikram Sharma By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Back in July 2015, the Indian Coast Guard was tipped off by the Kerala police about a vessel in the Arabian Sea carrying contraband, possibly drugs, possibly arms. The Coast Guard intercepted Barooki, an Iranian fishing vessel, 100 km west of Alleppey. Its crew of 10 Iranians and a Pakistani said they drifted off course on high seas.

The Kerala police searched the vessel high and low, and found a Thuraya communication set and a Pakistani ID car, but no contraband. After months of investigation, the crew were freed by a local court in March 2016 and the vessel was put up for auction, with its 16,000 litres of diesel. It was bought for scrap by a firm from Gujarat and its rusting hulk now lies anchored in Thiruvananthapuram.

Did the Kerala police miss something? That question is irking investigators again after the Coast Guard on July 30 this year intercepted another ship - Panama-registered M V Hennry - off Porbandar and found 1,446 kg of heroin with a street value `3,500 crore concealed in a mind-boggling array of secret compartments: water tanks, pipes and the diesel tank.

It was the biggest-ever drug seizure in India. A crew member had told investigators Pakistani loaders worked for four days to stuff 1,526 packets of heroin in special cavities across the boat. He also revealed that such cavities are par for the course for smuggling dhows in the Arabian Sea, and one such ship, Barooki, was indeed intercepted by the Indian authorities.

The mention of Barooki rang alarm bells in the Narcotics Control Bureau, which has now dispatched its sleuths to Thiruvananthapuram to search the dhow again. Simultaneously, a probe is underway to ascertain of the same overseas gang that operated both Barooki and Hennry.

Before interception by the Indian Coast Guard, the Barooki had set sail from Kalat in Iran. The 12 crew members  who spoke no Hindi or English  claimed they were fishermen who had drifted off course. Apart from the sat phone and the Pakistani ID card, what raised the suspicions then was the crew members revelation that there had been two Pakistani nationals on board but they had disembarked midway. 

Sleuths are intrigued by the Iran-Pakistan-India links of both Hennry and Barooki. While the latter set out from the Iranian port of Kalat, Hennry steamed out of Bandar Abbas. The captain of Hennry, Suprit Tiwari works for Saiyed Ali Manori, the Iranian owner of Hennry.

Upon Manoris instructions, Tiwari was supposed to pick up heroin consignment from Gwadar Port in Pakistan and head for Egypt. But he decided to ditch Manori as he was not happy with the `50 crore cut. He decided to head to India and sell the drug through his contacts.

NEW DELHI: Back in July 2015, the Indian Coast Guard was tipped off by the Kerala police about a vessel in the Arabian Sea carrying contraband, possibly drugs, possibly arms. The Coast Guard intercepted Barooki, an Iranian fishing vessel, 100 km west of Alleppey. Its crew of 10 Iranians and a Pakistani said they drifted off course on high seas. The Kerala police searched the vessel high and low, and found a Thuraya communication set and a Pakistani ID car, but no contraband. After months of investigation, the crew were freed by a local court in March 2016 and the vessel was put up for auction, with its 16,000 litres of diesel. It was bought for scrap by a firm from Gujarat and its rusting hulk now lies anchored in Thiruvananthapuram. Did the Kerala police miss something? That question is irking investigators again after the Coast Guard on July 30 this year intercepted another ship - Panama-registered M V Hennry - off Porbandar and found 1,446 kg of heroin with a street value `3,500 crore concealed in a mind-boggling array of secret compartments: water tanks, pipes and the diesel tank. It was the biggest-ever drug seizure in India. A crew member had told investigators Pakistani loaders worked for four days to stuff 1,526 packets of heroin in special cavities across the boat. He also revealed that such cavities are par for the course for smuggling dhows in the Arabian Sea, and one such ship, Barooki, was indeed intercepted by the Indian authorities. The mention of Barooki rang alarm bells in the Narcotics Control Bureau, which has now dispatched its sleuths to Thiruvananthapuram to search the dhow again. Simultaneously, a probe is underway to ascertain of the same overseas gang that operated both Barooki and Hennry. Before interception by the Indian Coast Guard, the Barooki had set sail from Kalat in Iran. The 12 crew members  who spoke no Hindi or English  claimed they were fishermen who had drifted off course. Apart from the sat phone and the Pakistani ID card, what raised the suspicions then was the crew members revelation that there had been two Pakistani nationals on board but they had disembarked midway.  Sleuths are intrigued by the Iran-Pakistan-India links of both Hennry and Barooki. While the latter set out from the Iranian port of Kalat, Hennry steamed out of Bandar Abbas. The captain of Hennry, Suprit Tiwari works for Saiyed Ali Manori, the Iranian owner of Hennry. Upon Manoris instructions, Tiwari was supposed to pick up heroin consignment from Gwadar Port in Pakistan and head for Egypt. But he decided to ditch Manori as he was not happy with the `50 crore cut. He decided to head to India and sell the drug through his contacts.
Anand ST Das By

Express News Service

PATNA: As expected, the Nitish Kumar faction of the JD(U) formally became part of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Saturday with the party unanimously adopting a resolution to that effect at its national executive here.

The JD(U) national executive met at the residence of chief minister Nitish Kumar while a parallel convention was held by JD(U) rebels led by Sharad Yadav at an auditorium in Patna. Yadav and several rebel leaders attended the convention amid rumblings of a virtual split in the party.

The JD(U) is a part of the NDA from today, the partys national general secretary and Nitish Kumar loyalist K C Tyagi said after the meeting. He went on to rubbish the rebel camps claim that it has the support of 14 state units of the party who, according to the Sharad Yadav faction, are opposed to Kumars decision to form a government in alliance with the BJP.

Tyagi said all wings of the party in Bihar and the state units fully support the decision to sever the alliance with the RJD and the Congress and join the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

All 16 state units of the party, except the Kerala unit are with Nitish Kumar. All 71 MLAs of the party in Bihar and the 30 MLCs are with Nitish Kumar. There is absolutely no split in the party, said Tyagi.

He said Kumar telephoned Yadav to invite him to the national executive meeting but yet he (Yadav) decided to hold his parallel convention in Patna the same day. It is unfortunate.

He is a very senior leader with a long association with the Socialist ideology. It is unfortunate that he is being seen with the RJD, which symbolises corruption. We have no hatred for Sharad Yadav nor did we object to his Sanjhi Virasat programme in Delhi.

Delivering a sting, Tyagi added, Considering his seniority and long association with the party, we have not taken any stern action against him so far. If he attends the RJDs rally on August 27, that will be crossing the Laxman Rekha.

Tyagi rubbished the parallel Jan Adalat convention addressed by Yadav and the JD(U)s suspended Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar at SK Memorial Hall saying, It was not a JD(U) convention because slogans condemning Nitish Kumar and hailing Lalu Prasad Yadav were chanted by their supporters.

While the JD(U) national executive meeting was going on at Kumars official residence, dozens of RJD supporters had a minor clash with JD(U) supporters outside. Police intervened and controlled the situation.

The JD(U) has returned to the NDA after four years. Kumar had walked out of the alliance in 2013, ending a 17-year-old partnership with the BJP in protest against Narendra Modis elevation as chief of the BJPs campaign committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

PATNA: As expected, the Nitish Kumar faction of the JD(U) formally became part of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Saturday with the party unanimously adopting a resolution to that effect at its national executive here. The JD(U) national executive met at the residence of chief minister Nitish Kumar while a parallel convention was held by JD(U) rebels led by Sharad Yadav at an auditorium in Patna. Yadav and several rebel leaders attended the convention amid rumblings of a virtual split in the party. The JD(U) is a part of the NDA from today, the partys national general secretary and Nitish Kumar loyalist K C Tyagi said after the meeting. He went on to rubbish the rebel camps claim that it has the support of 14 state units of the party who, according to the Sharad Yadav faction, are opposed to Kumars decision to form a government in alliance with the BJP. Tyagi said all wings of the party in Bihar and the state units fully support the decision to sever the alliance with the RJD and the Congress and join the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. All 16 state units of the party, except the Kerala unit are with Nitish Kumar. All 71 MLAs of the party in Bihar and the 30 MLCs are with Nitish Kumar. There is absolutely no split in the party, said Tyagi. He said Kumar telephoned Yadav to invite him to the national executive meeting but yet he (Yadav) decided to hold his parallel convention in Patna the same day. It is unfortunate. He is a very senior leader with a long association with the Socialist ideology. It is unfortunate that he is being seen with the RJD, which symbolises corruption. We have no hatred for Sharad Yadav nor did we object to his Sanjhi Virasat programme in Delhi. Delivering a sting, Tyagi added, Considering his seniority and long association with the party, we have not taken any stern action against him so far. If he attends the RJDs rally on August 27, that will be crossing the Laxman Rekha. Tyagi rubbished the parallel Jan Adalat convention addressed by Yadav and the JD(U)s suspended Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar at SK Memorial Hall saying, It was not a JD(U) convention because slogans condemning Nitish Kumar and hailing Lalu Prasad Yadav were chanted by their supporters. While the JD(U) national executive meeting was going on at Kumars official residence, dozens of RJD supporters had a minor clash with JD(U) supporters outside. Police intervened and controlled the situation. The JD(U) has returned to the NDA after four years. Kumar had walked out of the alliance in 2013, ending a 17-year-old partnership with the BJP in protest against Narendra Modis elevation as chief of the BJPs campaign committee for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
By PTI

PATNA: Supporters of rival JD(U) factions headed by Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav clashed outside the residence of the Bihar chief minister here today, police said.

Riding two-wheelers without helmets, Yadav's supporters were escorting him from the airport to the S K Memorial Hall, the venue of their Jan Adalat programme, when they stopped outside the chief minister's residence on the way and shouted slogans.

The clashes took place when some of them carrying sticks and belts tried to enter Nitish Kumar's 1, Anne Marg residence -- opposite the Raj Bhavan.

Soon, Kumar's supporters, who had gathered there for (JD (U) National Executive Committee meeting came out and chased away Yadav's supporters, police said.

Yadav, who was in the car with suspended JD(U) MP Ali Anwar, refused to comment on the incident and told reporters, "I will speak at the programme."

Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj who reached the chief minister's house on hearing of the trouble, told reporters that a probe would be conducted and the guilty would be punished.

"We will watch CCTV cameras and try to identify those behind the violence and act against them," the SSP said.

Asked about security arrangements and why Yadav was allowed to take that route, the SSP said the concerns would be part of the probe.

Parallel meetings were held here by the rival JD(U) factions headed by Kumar and Yadav.

While the JD(U) national executive committee met at the chief minister's residence, the rival camp held its Jan Adalat in S K Memorial Hall.

Yadav, Ali Anwar and suspended former Bihar minister Ramai Ram were prominent figures at the Jan Adalat programme.

The two JD(U) leaders fell out after Nitish Kumar broke the Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress in Bihar and joined hands with the BJP.

PATNA: Supporters of rival JD(U) factions headed by Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav clashed outside the residence of the Bihar chief minister here today, police said. Riding two-wheelers without helmets, Yadav's supporters were escorting him from the airport to the S K Memorial Hall, the venue of their Jan Adalat programme, when they stopped outside the chief minister's residence on the way and shouted slogans. The clashes took place when some of them carrying sticks and belts tried to enter Nitish Kumar's 1, Anne Marg residence -- opposite the Raj Bhavan. Soon, Kumar's supporters, who had gathered there for (JD (U) National Executive Committee meeting came out and chased away Yadav's supporters, police said. Yadav, who was in the car with suspended JD(U) MP Ali Anwar, refused to comment on the incident and told reporters, "I will speak at the programme." Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj who reached the chief minister's house on hearing of the trouble, told reporters that a probe would be conducted and the guilty would be punished. "We will watch CCTV cameras and try to identify those behind the violence and act against them," the SSP said. Asked about security arrangements and why Yadav was allowed to take that route, the SSP said the concerns would be part of the probe. Parallel meetings were held here by the rival JD(U) factions headed by Kumar and Yadav. While the JD(U) national executive committee met at the chief minister's residence, the rival camp held its Jan Adalat in S K Memorial Hall. Yadav, Ali Anwar and suspended former Bihar minister Ramai Ram were prominent figures at the Jan Adalat programme. The two JD(U) leaders fell out after Nitish Kumar broke the Grand Alliance with the RJD and the Congress in Bihar and joined hands with the BJP.
By PTI

MUMBAI: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take the defence ministry "seriously" as the country is "staring at a war with China" and facing terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

"The environment in the country today is such that on one hand we are staring at a war with China and on the other, infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan does not stop,"

Thackeray told reporters here.

"The prime minister should take a stand... the defence ministry should be taken seriously and cannot be played with," he said.

Thackeray, whose party is a constituent of the Modi government, was apparently referring to the fact that there is no full-time defence minister as the charge is with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

The defence portfolio was with Manohar Parrikar before he moved to Goa as the chief minister in March.

"The Goa chief minister is going to contest a byelection.

Yesterday, I read his statement that if he loses, he will once again take up defence ministry. If the ministry is being treated lightly, anarchy will prevail across the country," he said.

"Whether he (Parrikar) wins or loses is immaterial,"

Thackeray said, asking the prime minister to take the defence ministry "seriously".

Taking a dig at Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, he said, "While Fadnavis feels that there will be lawlessness if the government gives a complete loan waiver, in reality, if a losing chief minister (referring to Parrikar) goes to Delhi, there will be anarchy across the country."

The Sena supremo further demanded that the government reveals the names of all farmers, who benefitted from the government's loan waiver scheme.

"The government, in its enthusiasm, may declare more names of farmers being benefitted than total population of the state. Just so that this does not happen, the names of all beneficiaries should be declared in the legislative assembly," he said.

He added that Shivsainiks will personally visit those farmers and verify the government's claims.

Earlier, Sena MP Sanjay Raut slammed Parrikar and said it seemed that the Goa chief minister was afraid of losing the polls and people may reject him.

"This is a democracy. If your people do not choose you and you lose, then go and sit at your home. You say, I will go to the Centre and be the defence minister again after losing.

Is the defence ministry of the country a game?" he questioned.

He pointed out that there is no full-time defence minister in the country.

Parrikar had resigned as the defence minister after the Goa assembly polls and was sworn in as the chief minister on March 14.

MUMBAI: Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray today said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take the defence ministry "seriously" as the country is "staring at a war with China" and facing terrorism emanating from Pakistan. "The environment in the country today is such that on one hand we are staring at a war with China and on the other, infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan does not stop," Thackeray told reporters here. "The prime minister should take a stand... the defence ministry should be taken seriously and cannot be played with," he said. Thackeray, whose party is a constituent of the Modi government, was apparently referring to the fact that there is no full-time defence minister as the charge is with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. The defence portfolio was with Manohar Parrikar before he moved to Goa as the chief minister in March. "The Goa chief minister is going to contest a byelection. Yesterday, I read his statement that if he loses, he will once again take up defence ministry. If the ministry is being treated lightly, anarchy will prevail across the country," he said. "Whether he (Parrikar) wins or loses is immaterial," Thackeray said, asking the prime minister to take the defence ministry "seriously". Taking a dig at Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, he said, "While Fadnavis feels that there will be lawlessness if the government gives a complete loan waiver, in reality, if a losing chief minister (referring to Parrikar) goes to Delhi, there will be anarchy across the country." The Sena supremo further demanded that the government reveals the names of all farmers, who benefitted from the government's loan waiver scheme. "The government, in its enthusiasm, may declare more names of farmers being benefitted than total population of the state. Just so that this does not happen, the names of all beneficiaries should be declared in the legislative assembly," he said. He added that Shivsainiks will personally visit those farmers and verify the government's claims. Earlier, Sena MP Sanjay Raut slammed Parrikar and said it seemed that the Goa chief minister was afraid of losing the polls and people may reject him. "This is a democracy. If your people do not choose you and you lose, then go and sit at your home. You say, I will go to the Centre and be the defence minister again after losing. Is the defence ministry of the country a game?" he questioned. He pointed out that there is no full-time defence minister in the country. Parrikar had resigned as the defence minister after the Goa assembly polls and was sworn in as the chief minister on March 14.
WASHINGTON  It turns out that the man who was involved in well over 3,500 lawsuits during his bizarre business career has become even more interesting for lawyers of all stripes since entering the White House.

The rest of us may not have a clue on the whereabouts of those million well-paying jobs Donald Trump claims to have created, but he is hiring lawyers, his aides are hiring counsel, the special counsel investigating Russiagate is hiring left and right, and pretty much every interest group and nongovernmental agency is on the way to court.

Even law students are being affected.

And you thought the Trump administration was just a full-employment opportunity for journalists, who are getting to dust off adjectives  bizarre, unprecedented, unhinged  that had been more or less forbidden in newsrooms until Trump.

After Trumps meltdown over the angst of trying, pretending and refusing to condemn neo-Nazis, racists, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Semites and other vermin of the alt-right, we have no choice but to admit that our beloved country has entered a modern Dark Ages. We will just have to gird our loins and wait for sanity. (Yes, the eclipse is sort of a short-term symbol.)

Trump is such a self-absorbed narcissist, he will soon start saying we have to thank him for making us think about such questions as:

Can the president of the United States be sued?

Can the president of the United States be indicted?

Can the president of the United States pardon himself?

What constitutes obstruction of justice?

Can the president accept payments from foreign governments under the emoluments clause of the Constitution?

If youre president, do nepotism rules apply?

Why dont conflict-of-interest rules apply to the president?

If a presidential candidate calls for a ban on all Muslims entering the country, is that evidence of bias if he becomes president?

What happens if the president keeps firing people investigating him and Republicans in Congress refuse to consider impeachment? Is there any recourse?

Is the Republican Party paralyzed? Comatose? Pointless? Dead? And why are Republican leaders so loath to turn their back on a racist president (propagator of the birther lie) who has lost his moral authority? (If he ever had any).

Does anyone in politics today have moral authority?

Thanks to Adam Liptak of The New York Times, we have learned that law schools all over the country are revamping their constitutional law courses to explore how Trump has opened up huge fissures in our thinking of what the Constitution has meant for 200 years. He says law courses are being revamped almost daily to take into consideration issues Trumps behavior has raised.

We are learning, to our consternation, that our Constitution was built on assumptions that can be overturned in the blink of an eye by powerful or corrupt or misled leaders.

And were learning that taking a job in this White House means hiring a lawyer before youve even cashed your first paycheck.

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who is looking into the ramifications of the Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign worked with the Russians, has hired at least 16 of the best lawyers in the country. One wonders why these Republican and Democratic lawyers, many partners in firms and all making good money, would quit good jobs for short-term government salaries if they didnt believe theres fire behind all that smoke.

There is a multitude of lawsuits from consumer groups and from environmental groups trying to block how the administration is gutting dozens of regulations meant to protect the environment and consumers. Yes, some were turgid, pointlessly bureaucratic and outmoded. But dozens of others are vital for health, safety and the future.

With the presidents once-vaunted business advisory groups disbanded because so many business leaders were dismayed by Trumps tin-ear and hard heart after the alt-right-led violence in Charlottesville, Va., business is looking to be more courageous than GOP leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President Mike Pence, who keep defending the president.

Because of Trump, we are reaching a tipping point where we have to make up our own minds about what is right, what is immoral, what it means to be a profile in courage and where each of us stands. Lets hope it doesnt come to each of us having to hire a lawyer.
Harpreet Bajwa By

Express News Service

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Vigilance Bureau on Saturday gave a clean chit to Punjab CM Capt Amarinder, his son Raninder Singh and son-in-law Raminder Singh and all other accused in the Rs 1,144-crore Ludhiana City Centre scam.



The bureau filed a cancellation report in the case in the court of Ludhiana Sessions and District judge Gurbir Singh.



The agency had filed an FIR in March, 2007 against Amarinder and thirty five others, including the managing director of Delhi-based firm Today Homes entrusted with the task to complete the infrastructure of the City centre project announced by Captain during his tenure as CM in 2003. The vigilance filed a 130-page charge-sheet in the court in December the same year and it also listed 152 persons as witnesses in the case. Later, a 20,000-page file regarding the charges was also submitted in the court. However, the case remained pending trial in the Ludhiana court, as the charges were not framed against any of the accused.



Sources said that just few days before the Assembly election results were declared in March this year, the bureau decided to review the case following an application filed by Chetan Gupta--one of the accused in the case, who is also the director of Today Homes.

This Ludhiana City Centre project, first announced in 2003, was launched in 2006 and was touted as the fourth-largest project in Asia involving multiplexes, malls and leisure parks.

But when SAD-BJP government came to power in February 2007, the then government registered a case against Amarinder and others for tweaking rules to favour Today Homes. It was alleged that the infrastructure firm received undue benefits of at least Rs 1,144 crore due to the favoritism by Captain and officials of Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT).



The case was not pursued actively in SAD-BJPs second term (2012 to 2017). In 2015, the Enforcement Directorate initiated a probe into the project and registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to look into the trail of the scam money.



Last year vigilance bureau had filed a closure report in a court in Mohali in the Amritsar Improvement Trust scam that also allegedly involved Capt Amarinder Singh.

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Vigilance Bureau on Saturday gave a clean chit to Punjab CM Capt Amarinder, his son Raninder Singh and son-in-law Raminder Singh and all other accused in the Rs 1,144-crore Ludhiana City Centre scam. The bureau filed a cancellation report in the case in the court of Ludhiana Sessions and District judge Gurbir Singh. The agency had filed an FIR in March, 2007 against Amarinder and thirty five others, including the managing director of Delhi-based firm Today Homes entrusted with the task to complete the infrastructure of the City centre project announced by Captain during his tenure as CM in 2003. The vigilance filed a 130-page charge-sheet in the court in December the same year and it also listed 152 persons as witnesses in the case. Later, a 20,000-page file regarding the charges was also submitted in the court. However, the case remained pending trial in the Ludhiana court, as the charges were not framed against any of the accused. Sources said that just few days before the Assembly election results were declared in March this year, the bureau decided to review the case following an application filed by Chetan Gupta--one of the accused in the case, who is also the director of Today Homes. This Ludhiana City Centre project, first announced in 2003, was launched in 2006 and was touted as the fourth-largest project in Asia involving multiplexes, malls and leisure parks. But when SAD-BJP government came to power in February 2007, the then government registered a case against Amarinder and others for tweaking rules to favour Today Homes. It was alleged that the infrastructure firm received undue benefits of at least Rs 1,144 crore due to the favoritism by Captain and officials of Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT). The case was not pursued actively in SAD-BJPs second term (2012 to 2017). In 2015, the Enforcement Directorate initiated a probe into the project and registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to look into the trail of the scam money. Last year vigilance bureau had filed a closure report in a court in Mohali in the Amritsar Improvement Trust scam that also allegedly involved Capt Amarinder Singh.
By Express News Service

MUMBAI: Sikka has left, if not with a bang, at least without financially wrecking the firm. And Infys first brush with an outsider CEO has proved disastrous.

Murthys criticism of the Board, for failing to keep checks and balances, may make him appear like a petulant founder unwilling to let go. But if the petty remarks (like Sikka using self-paid chartered planes) are ignored, the alleged improprieties seem more serious than imagined.

Chief among them is the $200-milion Panaya deal that Sikkas team pulled off. He also questioned the generous severance packages made to former CFO Rajiv Bansal and former general counsel David Kennedy.

Murthys angst is not without a reason. While Infosys said investigations it instituted unequivocally found the complaints false with no evidence of wrongdoing, it refused to make the findings public. In its recent 20-F filing, Infy stressed distractions from activist shareholders as a possible risk, but didnt find it necessary to enclose the full report.

Murthys latest salvo on Friday, is equally damning, questioning the authenticity of the investigation. ...A report produced by a set of lawyers hired by a set of accused, giving a clean chit to the accused, and the accused refusing to disclose why they got a clean chit. They say that this is not the way an impartial and objective investigation should be held.

In 2003, it was based on Murthy Committees recommendations that Sebi revised governance norms under Clause 49. If corporate governance concerns are real, its intriguing why Murthy hasnt taken it up with the market regulators. The charges leveled are serious and out in the public. Still, regulators are yet to knock on Infys doors seeking clarity.

MUMBAI: Sikka has left, if not with a bang, at least without financially wrecking the firm. And Infys first brush with an outsider CEO has proved disastrous. Murthys criticism of the Board, for failing to keep checks and balances, may make him appear like a petulant founder unwilling to let go. But if the petty remarks (like Sikka using self-paid chartered planes) are ignored, the alleged improprieties seem more serious than imagined. Chief among them is the $200-milion Panaya deal that Sikkas team pulled off. He also questioned the generous severance packages made to former CFO Rajiv Bansal and former general counsel David Kennedy. Murthys angst is not without a reason. While Infosys said investigations it instituted unequivocally found the complaints false with no evidence of wrongdoing, it refused to make the findings public. In its recent 20-F filing, Infy stressed distractions from activist shareholders as a possible risk, but didnt find it necessary to enclose the full report. Murthys latest salvo on Friday, is equally damning, questioning the authenticity of the investigation. ...A report produced by a set of lawyers hired by a set of accused, giving a clean chit to the accused, and the accused refusing to disclose why they got a clean chit. They say that this is not the way an impartial and objective investigation should be held. In 2003, it was based on Murthy Committees recommendations that Sebi revised governance norms under Clause 49. If corporate governance concerns are real, its intriguing why Murthy hasnt taken it up with the market regulators. The charges leveled are serious and out in the public. Still, regulators are yet to knock on Infys doors seeking clarity.
By Express News Service

BHOPAL: The ruling BJP hasnt a fixed target of winning 350 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but is looking to score much beyond that figure in the next general polls.

But BJPs plans to win more seats on its own in the 2019 polls will have no bearing on the health of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), as the BJP will continue to be its part even after increasing its individual seats tally further.



Weve not set a target of winning just 350 seats in 2019 polls, but are working at winning much more than that number. The party is working to bolster its organisation on each and every seat to increase its numbers in next elections. But the NDA will continue to be with us in future also. We had majority on our own even in 2014, but continued to be part of the NDA and will continue to be a seminal part of the alliance in future also, BJP national president Amit Shah told journalists in Bhopal on Saturday.



A few hours after the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) formally announced joining the NDA, Shah welcomed the decision, but added that no formal decision has been taken as yet about JD(U) joining the government at the Centre.

On West Bengal chief minister Mamta Banerjee reportedly saying that she didnt have any problem with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but blamed BJP president Amit Shah for the environment of dictatorship in the country, Shah thanked Mamtaji for appreciating the PMs leadership.



While lauding chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans leadership in MP, Amit Shah exuded confidence that the party would win another term in the state with two-thirds majority in 2018. He, however, ruled out the possibility of Lok Sabha and MP Assembly polls being held simultaneously in 2018.



On the One Nation One Election (ONOE) formula mooted by Narendra Modi, Amit Shah said the thought has been put forward by the Prime Minister before all political parties and the nation. We need to have a public debate between all political parties on the issue, followed by the Election Commission deciding over it, said Shah.



When asked the governments approach on Kashmir, Shah said that the government is tackling the separatists and terrorists with full seriousness in the valley. Very good results have accrued over the last two months and things are finally on the right track now, added Amit Shah.



When asked about two senior ministers Babulal Gaur and Sartaj Singh being dropped from Shivraj Singh Chouhans cabinet in Madhya Pradesh in 2016 on the pretext that they had crossed 75-plus years of age, the BJP national president put the ball in the Shivraj Singh Chouhans court saying its prerogative of the CM to decide who to include and drop from the government.



Amit Shah, however, ruled out that any rule or formula had been framed by the party to stop those aged over 75 years from contesting elections. No such rule has been made which will stop leaders aged above 75 years from contesting the polls, said the BJP national chief.



Shahs statement is likely to boost the electoral prospects of eight-time BJP MLA and former chief minister Babulal Gaur, who is eyeing to win from Govindpura Assembly seat of Bhopal for the ninth consecutive time in 2018.

BHOPAL: The ruling BJP hasnt a fixed target of winning 350 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but is looking to score much beyond that figure in the next general polls. But BJPs plans to win more seats on its own in the 2019 polls will have no bearing on the health of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), as the BJP will continue to be its part even after increasing its individual seats tally further. Weve not set a target of winning just 350 seats in 2019 polls, but are working at winning much more than that number. The party is working to bolster its organisation on each and every seat to increase its numbers in next elections. But the NDA will continue to be with us in future also. We had majority on our own even in 2014, but continued to be part of the NDA and will continue to be a seminal part of the alliance in future also, BJP national president Amit Shah told journalists in Bhopal on Saturday. A few hours after the Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) formally announced joining the NDA, Shah welcomed the decision, but added that no formal decision has been taken as yet about JD(U) joining the government at the Centre. On West Bengal chief minister Mamta Banerjee reportedly saying that she didnt have any problem with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but blamed BJP president Amit Shah for the environment of dictatorship in the country, Shah thanked Mamtaji for appreciating the PMs leadership. While lauding chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhans leadership in MP, Amit Shah exuded confidence that the party would win another term in the state with two-thirds majority in 2018. He, however, ruled out the possibility of Lok Sabha and MP Assembly polls being held simultaneously in 2018. On the One Nation One Election (ONOE) formula mooted by Narendra Modi, Amit Shah said the thought has been put forward by the Prime Minister before all political parties and the nation. We need to have a public debate between all political parties on the issue, followed by the Election Commission deciding over it, said Shah. When asked the governments approach on Kashmir, Shah said that the government is tackling the separatists and terrorists with full seriousness in the valley. Very good results have accrued over the last two months and things are finally on the right track now, added Amit Shah. When asked about two senior ministers Babulal Gaur and Sartaj Singh being dropped from Shivraj Singh Chouhans cabinet in Madhya Pradesh in 2016 on the pretext that they had crossed 75-plus years of age, the BJP national president put the ball in the Shivraj Singh Chouhans court saying its prerogative of the CM to decide who to include and drop from the government. Amit Shah, however, ruled out that any rule or formula had been framed by the party to stop those aged over 75 years from contesting elections. No such rule has been made which will stop leaders aged above 75 years from contesting the polls, said the BJP national chief. Shahs statement is likely to boost the electoral prospects of eight-time BJP MLA and former chief minister Babulal Gaur, who is eyeing to win from Govindpura Assembly seat of Bhopal for the ninth consecutive time in 2018.
Balbir Punj By

Dear Hamid Ansari Sahib, I had the privilege of serving as a member of Rajya Sabha (2008-14) while you were the presiding officer of the Upper House in your capacity as the vice president of our Republic. Sir, you conducted yourself with finesse, tact and grace during your decade long tenure. So your parting remarks came as a bit of surprise to me.

In your interview to Rajya Sabha TV and also while delivering your final address as vice-president, at the 25th annual convocation of the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru, you made two pointsthat cultural nationalism is an illiberal form of nationalism, and fear and unease were growing among Dalits, Muslims and Christians in India.

Sir, for now we shall ignore your remarks about how Dalits and Christians feel. But whatever you said about Muslims feeling insecure in India is indeed true. Sadly its not the complete truth but half truthmore dangerous than a total lie.

You obviously cannot be speaking for all the nearly 200 million Muslims of the country. But there may be a large section of Muslims feeling insecure in India. But is there any part of the globe where one or the other section of Muslims does not feel insecure or alienated from the country of their origin or residence?

Do Muslims feel safe in the USA or China? In spite of growing bon-homie between socialist China and an Islamic Pakistan, Muslims are at war with the state in the Xinjiang province of the Communist nation. Why?

What is the situation in Europe? Muslims have serious problems with all the countries of the continent and they express their resentment through periodic incidents of violence. From 1970 to 2016, in 46 years,

5, 215 innocent people have died from bombings 2,463 from assassinations, 2,270 from assaults, 957 form hostage situations, 183 from hijacking, 88 from building attacks, according to a Washington Post analysis. Many of the culprits in each of these unfortunate incidents were Muslims.

Sir, the situation is worse in our neighbourhood (Pakistan and Afghanistan) where Muslims are over 95 per cent of the total population. The minorities (Hindus and Sikhs), living long before the arrival of Islam there, have virtually been liquidated during the Islamic rule. In both these countries, sections of Muslims continue to feel insecure and resort to violence either against the state or each other. The killers and their victims, both, swear by Islam.

According to official figures, 62,403 is the number of Muslims that were killed in Pakistan in the name of faith between 2003 and 2016 end. In Afghanistan 1,662 civilians have been documented as killed and 3,581 injured till June end, this year alone.

Look at the figures from Iraq. Last year, 16,393 civilians lost their lives and 11,263 have been killed till July end this year (2017). I need not mention here the havoc caused by ISIS. Guns and bombs are operated by humans, who in turn are motivated by a mindset which, in all these cases, is shaped by theological fundamentals.

Should not one look at such religious beliefs which inspire believers to kill non-believers, even at the cost of getting themselves killed? Why is the community always at war, with itself in an entirely Islamic society and with the state or non-Muslims, when in minority?

Its unfortunate, but true sir, that a large section of Muslims have never felt safe in India either. If it werent so, would there have been a demand, backed by direct action for the partition of the country on a theocratic basis?

Sir, we all know the story behind the creation of Pakistan. A large section of Muslims did not feel secure living as equals with Hindus, in spite of Gandhiji bending backwards to placate them and their sensibilities. While the Communists provided all the intellectual frame work to support the Muslim Leagues demand, the departing British happily joined the conspiracy to vivisect India.

A tired and pusillanimous Congress leadership acquiescenced and the evil deed was done. For the last 70 years an insecure Pakistan has continued with an overt and covert war, in the spirit of holy jihad, against kafir India. So insecurity continues to haunt a section of Muslims in India where they are a growing minority (in term of numbers) and in Pakistan as well which is a declared Islamic state.

Sir, the unfortunate lynching of Akhlaq at Dadri in 2015 and recent killing of Junaid in an altercation in an over-crowded train near Delhi may have triggered such an overreaction on your part. And while doing so, you forgot that these hapless men were part of a country which recorded 33,981 murders, 36,735 rapes, 66042 riots and over one lakh suicides in 2014, according to the statistics available with the National Crime Record Bureau.

Can someone be immune from such crimes on the basis of religion? Does not such an expectation smack of a sense of entitlement? All crimes, irrespective of the religion of the culprit or of the victim deserve to be put down with a heavy hand.

Recently, Mukesh Pandey, 30, IAS and District Magistrate of Buxur committed suicide. Imagine instead of being a Brahmin, the unfortunate young man had been a Dalit or a Muslim. Sir, this calamitous incident would have been exploited a la Rohith Vemula, a Hyderabad University scholar who committed suicide in January 2016.

As it turns out now, Vemula was not a Dalit and he did not commit suicide because of any persecution at the hands of the authorities. But a false narrative was built and publicised at a global level. Sir, dont you think, you too, may be inadvertently contributing your bit in promoting this false narrative further?

Balbir Punj

Former Rajya Sabha member and Delhi-based commentator on social and political issues

Email: punjbalbir@gmail.com

Dear Hamid Ansari Sahib, I had the privilege of serving as a member of Rajya Sabha (2008-14) while you were the presiding officer of the Upper House in your capacity as the vice president of our Republic. Sir, you conducted yourself with finesse, tact and grace during your decade long tenure. So your parting remarks came as a bit of surprise to me. In your interview to Rajya Sabha TV and also while delivering your final address as vice-president, at the 25th annual convocation of the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru, you made two pointsthat cultural nationalism is an illiberal form of nationalism, and fear and unease were growing among Dalits, Muslims and Christians in India. Sir, for now we shall ignore your remarks about how Dalits and Christians feel. But whatever you said about Muslims feeling insecure in India is indeed true. Sadly its not the complete truth but half truthmore dangerous than a total lie. You obviously cannot be speaking for all the nearly 200 million Muslims of the country. But there may be a large section of Muslims feeling insecure in India. But is there any part of the globe where one or the other section of Muslims does not feel insecure or alienated from the country of their origin or residence? Do Muslims feel safe in the USA or China? In spite of growing bon-homie between socialist China and an Islamic Pakistan, Muslims are at war with the state in the Xinjiang province of the Communist nation. Why? What is the situation in Europe? Muslims have serious problems with all the countries of the continent and they express their resentment through periodic incidents of violence. From 1970 to 2016, in 46 years, 5, 215 innocent people have died from bombings 2,463 from assassinations, 2,270 from assaults, 957 form hostage situations, 183 from hijacking, 88 from building attacks, according to a Washington Post analysis. Many of the culprits in each of these unfortunate incidents were Muslims. Sir, the situation is worse in our neighbourhood (Pakistan and Afghanistan) where Muslims are over 95 per cent of the total population. The minorities (Hindus and Sikhs), living long before the arrival of Islam there, have virtually been liquidated during the Islamic rule. In both these countries, sections of Muslims continue to feel insecure and resort to violence either against the state or each other. The killers and their victims, both, swear by Islam. According to official figures, 62,403 is the number of Muslims that were killed in Pakistan in the name of faith between 2003 and 2016 end. In Afghanistan 1,662 civilians have been documented as killed and 3,581 injured till June end, this year alone. Look at the figures from Iraq. Last year, 16,393 civilians lost their lives and 11,263 have been killed till July end this year (2017). I need not mention here the havoc caused by ISIS. Guns and bombs are operated by humans, who in turn are motivated by a mindset which, in all these cases, is shaped by theological fundamentals. Should not one look at such religious beliefs which inspire believers to kill non-believers, even at the cost of getting themselves killed? Why is the community always at war, with itself in an entirely Islamic society and with the state or non-Muslims, when in minority? Its unfortunate, but true sir, that a large section of Muslims have never felt safe in India either. If it werent so, would there have been a demand, backed by direct action for the partition of the country on a theocratic basis? Sir, we all know the story behind the creation of Pakistan. A large section of Muslims did not feel secure living as equals with Hindus, in spite of Gandhiji bending backwards to placate them and their sensibilities. While the Communists provided all the intellectual frame work to support the Muslim Leagues demand, the departing British happily joined the conspiracy to vivisect India. A tired and pusillanimous Congress leadership acquiescenced and the evil deed was done. For the last 70 years an insecure Pakistan has continued with an overt and covert war, in the spirit of holy jihad, against kafir India. So insecurity continues to haunt a section of Muslims in India where they are a growing minority (in term of numbers) and in Pakistan as well which is a declared Islamic state. Sir, the unfortunate lynching of Akhlaq at Dadri in 2015 and recent killing of Junaid in an altercation in an over-crowded train near Delhi may have triggered such an overreaction on your part. And while doing so, you forgot that these hapless men were part of a country which recorded 33,981 murders, 36,735 rapes, 66042 riots and over one lakh suicides in 2014, according to the statistics available with the National Crime Record Bureau. Can someone be immune from such crimes on the basis of religion? Does not such an expectation smack of a sense of entitlement? All crimes, irrespective of the religion of the culprit or of the victim deserve to be put down with a heavy hand. Recently, Mukesh Pandey, 30, IAS and District Magistrate of Buxur committed suicide. Imagine instead of being a Brahmin, the unfortunate young man had been a Dalit or a Muslim. Sir, this calamitous incident would have been exploited a la Rohith Vemula, a Hyderabad University scholar who committed suicide in January 2016. As it turns out now, Vemula was not a Dalit and he did not commit suicide because of any persecution at the hands of the authorities. But a false narrative was built and publicised at a global level. Sir, dont you think, you too, may be inadvertently contributing your bit in promoting this false narrative further? Balbir Punj Former Rajya Sabha member and Delhi-based commentator on social and political issues Email: punjbalbir@gmail.com
By Express News Service

GUNTUR: Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas launched free dialysis services at Guntur Government Hospital (GGH) on Friday. Srinivas said the GGH is providing dialysis treatment to 60-70 patients per day and that the government will give `2,500 aid to each patient getting treatment.

The GGH allocated 19 beds in the hospital for dialysis patients, with the cooperation of NephroPlus. He directed the GGH to appoint nodal officers for different blocks to provide quality medicare. AP Medical Council chairman Dr Y Raja Rao, DME Dr N Subba Rao, GGH Superintendent Dr DS Raju Naidu, RMO Dr Y Ramesh and others participated.

APASICON-2017 begins in Guntur

Guntur:APASICON-2017, the 40th Annual State Conference of Association of Surgeons of India (ASI), AP Chapter, began here on Friday. The three-day meeting is being organised, in association with ASI Guntur district Chapter, Guntur Medical College, NRI Medical College and Katuri Medical College. Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas inaugurated the Conference at the Guntur Medical College auditorium. He said facilities in government hospitals in the State would be developed to provide quality medicare to people.

GUNTUR: Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas launched free dialysis services at Guntur Government Hospital (GGH) on Friday. Srinivas said the GGH is providing dialysis treatment to 60-70 patients per day and that the government will give `2,500 aid to each patient getting treatment. The GGH allocated 19 beds in the hospital for dialysis patients, with the cooperation of NephroPlus. He directed the GGH to appoint nodal officers for different blocks to provide quality medicare. AP Medical Council chairman Dr Y Raja Rao, DME Dr N Subba Rao, GGH Superintendent Dr DS Raju Naidu, RMO Dr Y Ramesh and others participated. APASICON-2017 begins in Guntur Guntur:APASICON-2017, the 40th Annual State Conference of Association of Surgeons of India (ASI), AP Chapter, began here on Friday. The three-day meeting is being organised, in association with ASI Guntur district Chapter, Guntur Medical College, NRI Medical College and Katuri Medical College. Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas inaugurated the Conference at the Guntur Medical College auditorium. He said facilities in government hospitals in the State would be developed to provide quality medicare to people.
By Express News Service

ODISHA: Monsoon fevers are de rigueur in Odisha. While swine flu and dengue are spreading in the urban areas, the tribal hinterland has been beset with outbreaks of encephalitis since 2012. Though no Japanese Encephalitis (JE) mortalities have been registered as yet in the official records, 473 acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) cases have been diagnosed so far. Odisha stands fifth in AES mortality after Uttar Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal and Bihar.

According to the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, AES had taken 13 lives by the first week of August. Apart from AES, eight persons have fallen victim to swine flu in Odisha in the last two weeks. More than 100 positive cases have been detected. Dengue is the other scourge in the state: two deaths and 367 positive cases.

Both AES and JE have been regular visitations in Odisha since 2012. Last year, the state grabbed the national headlines when 115 children died of AES and 42 fell to JE. Most of the deaths were reported from Malkangiri district.

But the state government has been equivocating on the incidence of AES. It went to the extent of claiming that consumption of seeds of a plant called Cassia occidentalis, locally known as Bada Chakunda, caused death of a third of the children who fell to encephalitis in Malkangiri district.

An expert committee suggested that JE could not be blamed for all the deaths because encephalopathy was the culprit. Encephalopathy, it said, is a non-infectious biochemical syndrome that can be aggravated by the consumption of Cassia seeds. The fact is the Naveen Patnaik government remained aloof to the spread of AES, which is caused by a vector-borne virus hosted by pigs.

The Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC), Bhubaneswar, carried out a study on the outbreak of AES in Malkangiri in 2015 but its findings were not paid heed to. From 38 deaths in 2012 to 115 in 2016, the AES surge was waiting to happen.

ODISHA: Monsoon fevers are de rigueur in Odisha. While swine flu and dengue are spreading in the urban areas, the tribal hinterland has been beset with outbreaks of encephalitis since 2012. Though no Japanese Encephalitis (JE) mortalities have been registered as yet in the official records, 473 acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) cases have been diagnosed so far. Odisha stands fifth in AES mortality after Uttar Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal and Bihar. According to the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, AES had taken 13 lives by the first week of August. Apart from AES, eight persons have fallen victim to swine flu in Odisha in the last two weeks. More than 100 positive cases have been detected. Dengue is the other scourge in the state: two deaths and 367 positive cases. Both AES and JE have been regular visitations in Odisha since 2012. Last year, the state grabbed the national headlines when 115 children died of AES and 42 fell to JE. Most of the deaths were reported from Malkangiri district. But the state government has been equivocating on the incidence of AES. It went to the extent of claiming that consumption of seeds of a plant called Cassia occidentalis, locally known as Bada Chakunda, caused death of a third of the children who fell to encephalitis in Malkangiri district. An expert committee suggested that JE could not be blamed for all the deaths because encephalopathy was the culprit. Encephalopathy, it said, is a non-infectious biochemical syndrome that can be aggravated by the consumption of Cassia seeds. The fact is the Naveen Patnaik government remained aloof to the spread of AES, which is caused by a vector-borne virus hosted by pigs. The Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC), Bhubaneswar, carried out a study on the outbreak of AES in Malkangiri in 2015 but its findings were not paid heed to. From 38 deaths in 2012 to 115 in 2016, the AES surge was waiting to happen.
By AFP

HELSINKI: Police shot and wounded a suspect after a stabbing spree in which a man killed two people and wounded six others in the Finnish city of Turku.

Within hours of the attack on Friday the force had announced increased police patrols across the country.

"There are eight victims in the stabbing. Two dead and six injured," Turku police tweeted after the assault in a market square. A hospital official told journalists that all the victims were adults.

Police shot a suspect in the thigh minutes after the attack at another square nearby, arresting him and confiscating his knife.

His identity has not yet been established, police said late Friday, nor was the motive for the attack clear.

Police described the suspect in custody as "a young man of foreign origin", providing no other details except to say they were collaborating with the Finnish Immigration Service.

While security forces wrote on Twitter that police were "looking for other possible perpetrators", police told journalists it was likely there was only one attacker.

Police assured Turku residents the city was safe on Friday evening.

The stabbing spree comes with Europe on high alert a day after drivers slammed vehicles into pedestrians in two attacks in Spain, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 100 others. The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack.

In Turku, images of a body covered in a white blanket were published on some online news sites, including the local daily Turun Sanomat.

Police patrols stepped up

The attack took place in the heart of the port city in southwestern Finland, just after 4:00 pm (1300 GMT) in a bustling neighbourhood.

"The perpetrator stabbed two people on the market square, one of whom came to the aid of the other," police told reporters.

"Then the perpetrator left the square to a busy street and stabbed more people."

Police arrested a suspect minutes later.

One victim died at the scene and the other in hospital, police said.

Bystanders had rushed to the scene to help the victims.

"I saw an old woman, I tried to help her. She was bleeding all over her body," Wali Hashi, who witnessed the attack, told AFP.

"She was wounded to her neck with the knife... I took her aside."

Another witness, who did not want to give his name, told public television YLE: "A young woman screamed really loudly at one corner of the square. We saw a man on the square, with a knife in his hand and he was waving it."

Police said the suspect in custody was being treated in hospital.

Central Turku -- located about 140 kilometres (90 miles) from the capital Helsinki -- was swiftly cordoned off and stores and restaurants closed.

Police also tweeted that they had raised their emergency readiness across the country after the stabbing, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.

"The number of patrols is being increased, information gathering is intensified," they wrote.

Investigators from Finland's National Bureau of Investigation were also examining surveillance camera footage from the scene.

'What we've been afraid of'

Prime Minister Juha Sipila tweeted that his government was "following the situation in Turku closely and the police operation underway".

Turku mayor Aleksi Randall said in a statement it was "difficult to understand that such violence would happen on this scale in Turku.

"Occurrences that have been all too frequent in Europe and around the world have now arrived here, which is what we've been afraid of, too."

President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said the EU "strongly condemns" the attack.

Police refused to confirm if the stabbing had been terror-related.

"At this stage of our investigations we can't say if it is a matter of terrorism," police told a press conference.

In June, Finland's intelligence and security agency Supo raised the country's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second notch on a four-tier scale.

It said at the time it saw an increased risk of an attack committed by IS.

"Supo has become aware of more serious terrorism-related projects and plans in Finland," it said.

"Foreign terrorist fighters (who have) left from Finland have gained significant positions within IS in particular and have an extensive network of relations in the organisation," it said in its June assessment.

In 2012, Finland's then-prime minister Jyrki Katainen escaped a knife attack in Turku while campaigning for municipal elections.

The man who approached him carrying a knife was found to be psychologically disturbed and no charges were brought against him.

HELSINKI: Police shot and wounded a suspect after a stabbing spree in which a man killed two people and wounded six others in the Finnish city of Turku. Within hours of the attack on Friday the force had announced increased police patrols across the country. "There are eight victims in the stabbing. Two dead and six injured," Turku police tweeted after the assault in a market square. A hospital official told journalists that all the victims were adults. Police shot a suspect in the thigh minutes after the attack at another square nearby, arresting him and confiscating his knife. His identity has not yet been established, police said late Friday, nor was the motive for the attack clear. Police described the suspect in custody as "a young man of foreign origin", providing no other details except to say they were collaborating with the Finnish Immigration Service. While security forces wrote on Twitter that police were "looking for other possible perpetrators", police told journalists it was likely there was only one attacker. Police assured Turku residents the city was safe on Friday evening. The stabbing spree comes with Europe on high alert a day after drivers slammed vehicles into pedestrians in two attacks in Spain, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 100 others. The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack. In Turku, images of a body covered in a white blanket were published on some online news sites, including the local daily Turun Sanomat. Police patrols stepped up The attack took place in the heart of the port city in southwestern Finland, just after 4:00 pm (1300 GMT) in a bustling neighbourhood. "The perpetrator stabbed two people on the market square, one of whom came to the aid of the other," police told reporters. "Then the perpetrator left the square to a busy street and stabbed more people." Police arrested a suspect minutes later. One victim died at the scene and the other in hospital, police said. Bystanders had rushed to the scene to help the victims. "I saw an old woman, I tried to help her. She was bleeding all over her body," Wali Hashi, who witnessed the attack, told AFP. "She was wounded to her neck with the knife... I took her aside." Another witness, who did not want to give his name, told public television YLE: "A young woman screamed really loudly at one corner of the square. We saw a man on the square, with a knife in his hand and he was waving it." Police said the suspect in custody was being treated in hospital. Central Turku -- located about 140 kilometres (90 miles) from the capital Helsinki -- was swiftly cordoned off and stores and restaurants closed. Police also tweeted that they had raised their emergency readiness across the country after the stabbing, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets. "The number of patrols is being increased, information gathering is intensified," they wrote. Investigators from Finland's National Bureau of Investigation were also examining surveillance camera footage from the scene. 'What we've been afraid of' Prime Minister Juha Sipila tweeted that his government was "following the situation in Turku closely and the police operation underway". Turku mayor Aleksi Randall said in a statement it was "difficult to understand that such violence would happen on this scale in Turku. "Occurrences that have been all too frequent in Europe and around the world have now arrived here, which is what we've been afraid of, too." President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said the EU "strongly condemns" the attack. Police refused to confirm if the stabbing had been terror-related. "At this stage of our investigations we can't say if it is a matter of terrorism," police told a press conference. In June, Finland's intelligence and security agency Supo raised the country's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second notch on a four-tier scale. It said at the time it saw an increased risk of an attack committed by IS. "Supo has become aware of more serious terrorism-related projects and plans in Finland," it said. "Foreign terrorist fighters (who have) left from Finland have gained significant positions within IS in particular and have an extensive network of relations in the organisation," it said in its June assessment. In 2012, Finland's then-prime minister Jyrki Katainen escaped a knife attack in Turku while campaigning for municipal elections. The man who approached him carrying a knife was found to be psychologically disturbed and no charges were brought against him.
By PTI

PESHAWAR: A local leader of hardline Islamic party Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) was today shot dead by unidentified gunmen near a mosque in Pakistan's restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The assailants on a motorcycle fired at Maulana Syed Attaullah Shah as he came out from the mosque after early morning prayer in Dera Ismail Khan city, police said.

The gunmen managed to flee from the scene.

No one has yet claimed the responsibility for the attack.

A contingent of police reached the scene and started investigation after collecting evidences from the spot.

PESHAWAR: A local leader of hardline Islamic party Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) was today shot dead by unidentified gunmen near a mosque in Pakistan's restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The assailants on a motorcycle fired at Maulana Syed Attaullah Shah as he came out from the mosque after early morning prayer in Dera Ismail Khan city, police said. The gunmen managed to flee from the scene. No one has yet claimed the responsibility for the attack. A contingent of police reached the scene and started investigation after collecting evidences from the spot.
By IANS

OSLO: Norway's Coast Guard have seized a Greenpeace vessel and arrested 35 activists after they violated the safety zone around a drilling rig in the Barents Sea, a media report said on Friday.

Protesting the drilling at the Korpfjell field on Thursday, Greenpeace activists entered the 500-metre safety zone around the rig Songa Enabler with kayaks and a floating globe with signatures from people all over the world demanding an end to the ongoing drilling, Xinhua news agency reported.

Korpfjell field is the northernmost oil-drilling area ever set up in the Barents Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located some 415 km from mainland Norway, the report said.

The police ordered the protestors to leave the security zone, saying Norwegian state-owned oil company Statoil had permission to drill in the area.

When Greenpeace refused to leave, the police requested the Coast Guard to take action. Shortly afterwards, crew members from the Coast Guard boarded Greenpeace's vessel Arctic Sunrise, arrested its crew and took control of the ship.

Truls Gulowsen, head of Greenpeace Norway, disputed the Coast Guard's right to board the ship and urged Norwegian authorities to be more worried about climate change.

"The Norwegian coast guard doesn't have the right to board or remove our ship. Protest at sea is an internationally recognised lawful use of the sea, related to the freedom of navigation," he said.

"The Norwegian government seems more interested in protecting the reckless Arctic oil drilling operation carried out by state-owned Statoil, than listening to the concerns voiced by people from all over the world and protecting the right to protest against the opening of a new, aggressive oil frontier in the Arctic," Gulowsen said.

OSLO: Norway's Coast Guard have seized a Greenpeace vessel and arrested 35 activists after they violated the safety zone around a drilling rig in the Barents Sea, a media report said on Friday. Protesting the drilling at the Korpfjell field on Thursday, Greenpeace activists entered the 500-metre safety zone around the rig Songa Enabler with kayaks and a floating globe with signatures from people all over the world demanding an end to the ongoing drilling, Xinhua news agency reported. Korpfjell field is the northernmost oil-drilling area ever set up in the Barents Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located some 415 km from mainland Norway, the report said. The police ordered the protestors to leave the security zone, saying Norwegian state-owned oil company Statoil had permission to drill in the area. When Greenpeace refused to leave, the police requested the Coast Guard to take action. Shortly afterwards, crew members from the Coast Guard boarded Greenpeace's vessel Arctic Sunrise, arrested its crew and took control of the ship. Truls Gulowsen, head of Greenpeace Norway, disputed the Coast Guard's right to board the ship and urged Norwegian authorities to be more worried about climate change. "The Norwegian coast guard doesn't have the right to board or remove our ship. Protest at sea is an internationally recognised lawful use of the sea, related to the freedom of navigation," he said. "The Norwegian government seems more interested in protecting the reckless Arctic oil drilling operation carried out by state-owned Statoil, than listening to the concerns voiced by people from all over the world and protecting the right to protest against the opening of a new, aggressive oil frontier in the Arctic," Gulowsen said.
By AFP

MONTEVIDEO: Uruguay's unique new marijuana industry has run into a hurdle as international anti-money laundering rules are forcing banks to close the accounts of pharmacies legally selling the drug.

Uruguayan pharmacies started selling marijuana last month under a 2013 law that made the South American country the first in the world to legalize pot all the way from production to sale.

But lenders such as Uruguayan state bank Banco Republica (BROU) now say they must abandon such businesses.

Not doing so would "cause BROU and its clients to be financially isolated," its president Jorge Polgar was quoted as saying by El Observador newspaper.

That would "prevent it from carrying out any kind of operation with an international counterpart," he warned.

Another major bank, Santander of Spain, said it too would close any accounts held with it by Uruguayan pharmacies selling the drug.

"As a global bank with clients in various countries, we have to observe the various norms in force in those places," a Santander source told AFP.

Blow to government

Some pharmacies have warned they will have to stop selling marijuana because of the banking restrictions.

"The truth is we did not know... that this could happen," Economy Minister Danilo Astori was quoted as saying by La Republica newspaper.

"A way will have to be found and we are looking for one."

The marijuana law was launched by Uruguay's last president Jose Mujica.

He urged his successor and ally Tabare Vazquez to find a solution.

"If this gets blocked, then the whole parliament will be blocked," warned Mujica, now a senator, whose Broad Front party has a majority in the legislature.

Despite widespread public opposition, Mujica pushed through the law, saying it would stem violence and crime by undermining the illegal drugs trade.

"This is a blow to the government and to the Broad Front," said Adolfo Garce, a political scientist at Uruguay's University of the Republic.

"Having made so much progress, having planted and harvested the marijuana and delivered it to the pharmacies... not being able to sell it due to an unforeseen problem is a very hard blow."

Another of the architects of the law, Julio Calzada, said Uruguay will now have to talk with US banks to seek a way around the restrictions.

"There are alternatives," he said, "but not in Uruguay."

Half population opposed

A survey published this month indicated that half of Uruguayans were opposed to selling marijuana in pharmacies.

More than 10,000 users have signed up with the authorities to buy the drug legally, according to the Cannabis Control and Regulation Institute.

In all, 16 pharmacies have been authorized to sell marijuana under state controls, barely enough to cover a country of 3.5 million people.

No major pharmacy chain has agreed to sell the drug.

Many pharmacies have been unwilling to participate in the scheme because of concerns about security and doubts that the small market of registered users is worth the trouble.

US laws

Cannabis producers have experienced similar difficulties in the United States, where several states have legalized marijuana for medicinal or recreation use.

US federal anti-drug laws forbid banks from letting them hold accounts, obliging the producers to operate in cash.

Credit rating agency Standard and Poor's estimates that only 300 of 12,000 financial institutions in the United States do business with producers of the drug.

MONTEVIDEO: Uruguay's unique new marijuana industry has run into a hurdle as international anti-money laundering rules are forcing banks to close the accounts of pharmacies legally selling the drug. Uruguayan pharmacies started selling marijuana last month under a 2013 law that made the South American country the first in the world to legalize pot all the way from production to sale. But lenders such as Uruguayan state bank Banco Republica (BROU) now say they must abandon such businesses. Not doing so would "cause BROU and its clients to be financially isolated," its president Jorge Polgar was quoted as saying by El Observador newspaper. That would "prevent it from carrying out any kind of operation with an international counterpart," he warned. Another major bank, Santander of Spain, said it too would close any accounts held with it by Uruguayan pharmacies selling the drug. "As a global bank with clients in various countries, we have to observe the various norms in force in those places," a Santander source told AFP. Blow to government Some pharmacies have warned they will have to stop selling marijuana because of the banking restrictions. "The truth is we did not know... that this could happen," Economy Minister Danilo Astori was quoted as saying by La Republica newspaper. "A way will have to be found and we are looking for one." The marijuana law was launched by Uruguay's last president Jose Mujica. He urged his successor and ally Tabare Vazquez to find a solution. "If this gets blocked, then the whole parliament will be blocked," warned Mujica, now a senator, whose Broad Front party has a majority in the legislature. Despite widespread public opposition, Mujica pushed through the law, saying it would stem violence and crime by undermining the illegal drugs trade. "This is a blow to the government and to the Broad Front," said Adolfo Garce, a political scientist at Uruguay's University of the Republic. "Having made so much progress, having planted and harvested the marijuana and delivered it to the pharmacies... not being able to sell it due to an unforeseen problem is a very hard blow." Another of the architects of the law, Julio Calzada, said Uruguay will now have to talk with US banks to seek a way around the restrictions. "There are alternatives," he said, "but not in Uruguay." Half population opposed A survey published this month indicated that half of Uruguayans were opposed to selling marijuana in pharmacies. More than 10,000 users have signed up with the authorities to buy the drug legally, according to the Cannabis Control and Regulation Institute. In all, 16 pharmacies have been authorized to sell marijuana under state controls, barely enough to cover a country of 3.5 million people. No major pharmacy chain has agreed to sell the drug. Many pharmacies have been unwilling to participate in the scheme because of concerns about security and doubts that the small market of registered users is worth the trouble. US laws Cannabis producers have experienced similar difficulties in the United States, where several states have legalized marijuana for medicinal or recreation use. US federal anti-drug laws forbid banks from letting them hold accounts, obliging the producers to operate in cash. Credit rating agency Standard and Poor's estimates that only 300 of 12,000 financial institutions in the United States do business with producers of the drug.
After threatening fire and fury, how does a superpower deescalate? By scrambling its secretary of State, secretary of Defense and military chief to reassure foreign leaders that President Trump should be taken seriously, not literally.

Thats what Rex Tillerson, James N. Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been doing for the past week  and it seems to have worked.

Recently, Trump warned that if North Korea made any more threats against the United States, hed unleash fire and fury like the world has never seen. Mattis quickly clarified that the U.S. red line would be an actual military attack, not verbal assaults.

Only five days ago, Trump sounded ready for battle, tweeting that U.S. forces in Asia were locked and loaded. Dunford, on a visit to Korea, lowered the temperature. Were all looking to get out of this situation without a war, he said.

And perhaps there wont be one, after all. On Monday, North Koreas leader, Kim Jong Un, backed down, announcing that he had decided to delay his plans for a missile strike on Pacific Ocean waters near the U.S. territory of Guam.

A win for the madman theory, the notion that a president can get his way simply by scaring the bejesus out of the rest of the world? Not necessarily. U.S. officials argue that the credit should go to Mattis blunt clarity, Dunfords reassuring steadiness and Tillersons patient diplomacy. To them, Trumps incendiary tweets actually got in the way.

Even some Democratic foreign policy experts are willing to give the Trump administration kudos for making headway on one of the worlds most intractable problems.

Theres a fairly considered policy running underneath all that noise, Ely Ratner, a former advisor to former Vice President Joe Biden, said. Theyre pursuing a maximum pressure strategy with a sanctions regime that is unprecedented.  I think were heading down the right road.

The key to the strategy, aimed at stopping North Korea from building a nuclear weapon that can strike the United States, has been a persistent campaign to woo China, North Koreas powerful neighbor and trading partner, to Trumps side. Economic and military pressure on North Korea wont work unless the United States and China are working together. Thats why the most important U.S. success in the last few weeks wasnt Kims stand-down on Guam; it was Chinas decision to support and enforce new and tougher trading sanctions against North Korea.

Those decisions stemmed from Trumps success in convincing Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, that the Korean problem should be a top priority for both countries  and that China could reap rewards in trade negotiations with the United States if it cooperates.

The drive to enlist Xis help also included conciliatory signals from Mattis and Tillerson, who said the United States is willing to negotiate with North Korea, which China wants, without tough preconditions like a complete halt to the nuclear program.

The U.S. has no interest in regime change or accelerated reunification of Korea, Mattis and Tillerson wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week. If China wishes to play a more active role in securing regional peace and stability  from which all of us, especially China, derive such great benefit  it must make the decision to exercise its decisive diplomatic and economic leverage over North Korea.

The next big decisions may come this fall, when Trump is scheduled to meet Xi in Beijing. China experts believe Xi would like to show significant progress on the Korea problem then. And that will touch off new debates inside the Trump administration. What concessions is the United States willing to make to induce North Korea to consider ending, or at least freezing, its nuclear program?

And if Kim wont give up his weapons, as experts anticipate, is the United States ready to adopt a policy of containment, hoping to deter a nuclear North Korea from ever using them?

The administrations answer, so far, is no. But in the long run, even with Chinas help in imposing sanctions on North Korea, it may have no choice.

Deterrence is not desirable, said Jeffrey A. Bader, an Asia expert who worked on former President Obamas National Security Council staff. Its inadequate in the face of a regime like North Koreas. It sounds passive, and no administration wants to look passive. But its what youve got left if everything else fails. Come back in four years, and Ill bet thats where we are.

Still, containments better than a hot war, especially a hot nuclear war. Give the president and his aides some credit  especially Mattis, Tillerson and Dunford for building a ladder to help their boss down from the limb he climbed on.
By Associated Press

CARACAS: President Nicolas Maduro has angrily blasted Venezuela's classical music maestro Gustavo Dudamel, accusing his one-time supporter of being duped into criticising the government that has for years been one of his biggest promoters.

"I hope God forgives you," Maduro said in a televised appearance yesterday, swiping at the Venezuelan-born conductor for roving around Madrid and Los Angeles while his compatriots build a revolution that he once helped glamorise.

"Welcome to politics, Gustavo Dudamel. But act with ethics, and don't let yourself be deceived into attacking the architects of this beautiful movement of young boys and girls," the socialist leader said.

Maduro was referring to Dudamel's longtime association with Venezuela's world-famous El Sistema musical education program. Dudamel, 36, began studying music as a child in El Sistema and has continued to tour with its ensembles the world over even after becoming the Los Angeles Philharmonic's musical director a decade ago.

But he joined a growing cadre of internationally-known Venezuelan athletes and celebrities and publicly broke with the government in May after a member of El Sistema was killed amid a wave of protests that went on to kill more than 120 people.

In an online essay titled "I Raise My Voice," Dudamel urged Maduro to reduce political tensions by listening to instead of cracking down on youth protesters.

In July, he went further, calling on Maduro to scrap his plans to rewrite the constitution, a move condemned by dozens of foreign governments as an illegitimate power grab.

"Our country urgently needs to lay the foundation for a democratic order that guarantees social peace, security and a prosperous future for our sons and daughters," he wrote in a column published in the New York Times.

Maduro's rebuke comes as Dudamel is scheduled next month to conduct the National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in a four-city US tour concerts that may now be in doubt as his relations with the Maduro government sour.

Last month, on the eve of the elections for the questioned constitutional assembly, Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra abruptly canceled a series of shows in Colombia's capital, citing unspecified logistical problems.

There was no immediate response by Dudamel to Maduro's criticisms.

The world-famous El Sistema, created more than four decades ago, is one of the rare institutions to have survived even thriving under the 17 years of socialist rule. The program connects about 400,000 Venezuelan children, many of them poor, with classical music, and has been emulated by music educators in dozens of countries.

While Maduro seemed betrayed, his opponents and fellow classical music performers appear in no mood to embrace Dudamel, who they've long accused of being too cozy with the increasingly autocratic leader.

CARACAS: President Nicolas Maduro has angrily blasted Venezuela's classical music maestro Gustavo Dudamel, accusing his one-time supporter of being duped into criticising the government that has for years been one of his biggest promoters. "I hope God forgives you," Maduro said in a televised appearance yesterday, swiping at the Venezuelan-born conductor for roving around Madrid and Los Angeles while his compatriots build a revolution that he once helped glamorise. "Welcome to politics, Gustavo Dudamel. But act with ethics, and don't let yourself be deceived into attacking the architects of this beautiful movement of young boys and girls," the socialist leader said. Maduro was referring to Dudamel's longtime association with Venezuela's world-famous El Sistema musical education program. Dudamel, 36, began studying music as a child in El Sistema and has continued to tour with its ensembles the world over even after becoming the Los Angeles Philharmonic's musical director a decade ago. But he joined a growing cadre of internationally-known Venezuelan athletes and celebrities and publicly broke with the government in May after a member of El Sistema was killed amid a wave of protests that went on to kill more than 120 people. In an online essay titled "I Raise My Voice," Dudamel urged Maduro to reduce political tensions by listening to instead of cracking down on youth protesters. In July, he went further, calling on Maduro to scrap his plans to rewrite the constitution, a move condemned by dozens of foreign governments as an illegitimate power grab. "Our country urgently needs to lay the foundation for a democratic order that guarantees social peace, security and a prosperous future for our sons and daughters," he wrote in a column published in the New York Times. Maduro's rebuke comes as Dudamel is scheduled next month to conduct the National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in a four-city US tour concerts that may now be in doubt as his relations with the Maduro government sour. Last month, on the eve of the elections for the questioned constitutional assembly, Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra abruptly canceled a series of shows in Colombia's capital, citing unspecified logistical problems. There was no immediate response by Dudamel to Maduro's criticisms. The world-famous El Sistema, created more than four decades ago, is one of the rare institutions to have survived even thriving under the 17 years of socialist rule. The program connects about 400,000 Venezuelan children, many of them poor, with classical music, and has been emulated by music educators in dozens of countries. While Maduro seemed betrayed, his opponents and fellow classical music performers appear in no mood to embrace Dudamel, who they've long accused of being too cozy with the increasingly autocratic leader.
By Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG: Zimbabwe blocked flights by South Africa's government-owned airline on Saturday as tensions rose over allegations that Zimbabwe's first lady assaulted a young model at a luxury hotel in Johannesburg.

South Africa's government said it had not yet decided to grant the Zimbabwe government's request for diplomatic immunity for Grace Mugabe, who has not commented on the allegations.

Local media reported that Mugabe was expected to attend a regional summit with 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, in what would be her first public appearance since the alleged assault Sunday night. But there was no sign of her as of midday.

Twenty-year-old model Gabriella Engels has claimed that Grace Mugabe whipped her with an extension cord, cutting her forehead. Lawyers for Engels have threatened to go to court if immunity is granted.

Foreign ministry spokesman Nelson Kgwete said in a text message to The Associated Press on Saturday that South Africa was still considering the request. "Decision yet to be made," Kgwete said.

South African police have issued a "red alert" at borders to ensure Grace Mugabe doesn't leave undetected. Police also say their investigation is complete but needs a government decision on the immunity appeal.

South African Airways said Zimbabwe had placed restrictions on its operations, affecting its flights between the neighboring countries.

In a statement, the South African government-owned airline said its flight from Zimbabwe's capital to Johannesburg was unable to take off as scheduled on Saturday morning. Another flight from Johannesburg to Harare has been canceled.

South African Airways said Zimbabwean authorities were demanding a "foreign operators permit" to allow the airline to operate in Zimbabwe. It said it has been flying to and from Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and that the permit was never required until Saturday morning.

The statement by the airline does not mention the allegations against Zimbabwe's first lady.

Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe chief executive David Chawota did not specify the "issues" requiring attention. "The South Africans know what should be done in terms of processes," he said.

The scandal over Grace Mugabe is a sensitive issue for South Africa as it weighs the possible diplomatic fallout from neighboring Zimbabwe if it acts against the first lady  and the likely outrage at home if it grants immunity and allows her to leave.

Some demonstrators protested on Saturday in Pretoria against the 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe and his wife, saying she should be prosecuted.

It is not clear whether Grace Mugabe entered South Africa on a personal or diplomatic passport.

Zimbabwe's state-owned newspaper reported last weekend that she was in South Africa for medical care, but she told police after the alleged assault that she was scheduled to attend the summit with her husband.

JOHANNESBURG: Zimbabwe blocked flights by South Africa's government-owned airline on Saturday as tensions rose over allegations that Zimbabwe's first lady assaulted a young model at a luxury hotel in Johannesburg. South Africa's government said it had not yet decided to grant the Zimbabwe government's request for diplomatic immunity for Grace Mugabe, who has not commented on the allegations. Local media reported that Mugabe was expected to attend a regional summit with 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, in what would be her first public appearance since the alleged assault Sunday night. But there was no sign of her as of midday. Twenty-year-old model Gabriella Engels has claimed that Grace Mugabe whipped her with an extension cord, cutting her forehead. Lawyers for Engels have threatened to go to court if immunity is granted. Foreign ministry spokesman Nelson Kgwete said in a text message to The Associated Press on Saturday that South Africa was still considering the request. "Decision yet to be made," Kgwete said. South African police have issued a "red alert" at borders to ensure Grace Mugabe doesn't leave undetected. Police also say their investigation is complete but needs a government decision on the immunity appeal. South African Airways said Zimbabwe had placed restrictions on its operations, affecting its flights between the neighboring countries. In a statement, the South African government-owned airline said its flight from Zimbabwe's capital to Johannesburg was unable to take off as scheduled on Saturday morning. Another flight from Johannesburg to Harare has been canceled. South African Airways said Zimbabwean authorities were demanding a "foreign operators permit" to allow the airline to operate in Zimbabwe. It said it has been flying to and from Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and that the permit was never required until Saturday morning. The statement by the airline does not mention the allegations against Zimbabwe's first lady. Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe chief executive David Chawota did not specify the "issues" requiring attention. "The South Africans know what should be done in terms of processes," he said. The scandal over Grace Mugabe is a sensitive issue for South Africa as it weighs the possible diplomatic fallout from neighboring Zimbabwe if it acts against the first lady  and the likely outrage at home if it grants immunity and allows her to leave. Some demonstrators protested on Saturday in Pretoria against the 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe and his wife, saying she should be prosecuted. It is not clear whether Grace Mugabe entered South Africa on a personal or diplomatic passport. Zimbabwe's state-owned newspaper reported last weekend that she was in South Africa for medical care, but she told police after the alleged assault that she was scheduled to attend the summit with her husband.
Newport Art Museum wraps up fall with variety of programs

Though it hasnt always felt like fall these past few weeks, the museum is in high gear hosting fall events and planning for winter.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday morning by the American Civil Liberties Union regarding conditions and overcrowding in Nebraskas prisons should come as no surprise.

The concept behind the suit is far from new. Overcrowding and understaffing have long plagued Nebraskas penal system, and the Journal Star editorial board has for years called upon state officials to address the health and safety concerns of incarcerated Nebraskans.

What is new is the level of detail in the allegations, including the lack of accommodations for those with disabilities and statistics highlighting the scope and extent of overcrowding and use of isolation that are among the highest in the nation.

Most importantly, the 84-page filing indicates what weve come to expect from Nebraskas prisons is not normal. With litigation against the Department of Correctional Services, Nebraska Board of Parole and three officials in those departments now officially pending, the state must swiftly take overdue action to improve the conditions in its facilities.

State and federal data indicate Nebraska prisons are at 159 percent of their designed capacity. They have zero psychiatrists currently on staff and battle ever-increasing staff turnover. The suit alleges they resort to segregation more frequently and on more inmates than recommended. Federal stats show a prisoner suicide rate nearly 30 percent higher than the national average.

This is not normal. But, sadly, it has become so in Nebraska prisons.

Prisoners may not be a politically expedient group to appease, seeing as felons dont have the right to vote for two years after their release and are invisible to most voters. But they are Nebraskans and Americans nonetheless  and didnt lose their rights as such by entering prison.

Yet, in a statement released Wednesday, Gov. Pete Ricketts said the lawsuit threatens public safety by seeking the early release of dangerous criminals and could endanger our Corrections officers by further limiting the tools they have to manage the inmate population.

Prisoners arent there to be managed, simply held until their release. These men and women in the corrections system need adequate care and resources if they hope to be rehabilitated for re-entry into society  hence the use of the word corrections  as nearly all will one day be eligible to leave.

Accordingly, its in the best interest of the state and its taxpayers to ensure inmates leaving state prisons and reintegrating into Nebraska are healthy, functioning, contributing citizens. The more of them who hold jobs and pay taxes helps reduce the financial burden of support paid by all Nebraskans.

For decades, Nebraskas prison system has been in disrepair. After years of inadequate investment and inmate care, the status quo cannot continue  and must see dramatic improvement after the introduction of this lawsuit.
Reporter

Noelle McGee is a Danville-based reporter at The News-Gazette. Her email is nmcgee@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@n_mcgee).
Reporter

Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk).
New Delhi: Five years on, the Kakodkar committee recommendations on railway safety are yet to be implemented in any meaningful way. If they were, perhaps horrific rail accidents like the one in Muzaffarnagar on Saturday could be avoided.



At least 20 people were killed and 34 sustained injuries when 13 bogies of the Utkal Express, which runs on the Puri-Haridwar-Kalinga route, derailed on Saturday evening.



The Ministry of Railways in 2012 appointed Anil Kakodkar to head a high-level review committee to examine the safety aspects of Indian Railways and suggest improvements. Among the recommendations were investing Rs 1 lakh crore over a 5-year period and the creation of a statutory railway safety authority.



However, the safety authority is yet to be created, despite mounting evidence that the Railway Board is seriously overburdened. In June, Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain told Parliament that 53% of accidents are due to derailments. He also revealed that a majority of the practical measures suggested by the Kakodkar committee were implemented, but no headway was made on the railway safety authority.



"There is no decision to create a railway safety authority. An independent institution namely the Commission of Railway Safety already functions under the Ministry of Civil Aviation. It discharges the functions of review/approval of safety aspects in railways independently," Gohain said.



Quoting a report by the NITI Aayog, the minister had informed Lok Sabha that in last five years (2012-13 to 2016-17) out of a total of 1,011 casualties, 347 occurred due to derailments.



He said out of a total of 586 accidents, 308 were due to derailments, 21 occurred on Manned Level Crossings (MLCs) and 199 on Unmanned Level Crossings (UMLCs).



The total number of those injured in the said period were 1,634. As many as 944 were injured in derailments.


New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah will meet chief ministers and deputy chief ministers of all BJP-ruled ruled states on Monday to take stock of development and social welfare work being done.



This leg of the work-assessment by the BJP high command assumes significance as it comes just ahead of a long-pending Cabinet and party reshuffle at the Centre.



This will be Modi's third meeting with the chief ministers after the BJP swept to power in 2014, but the first such exercise since it formed a government in Bihar by joining hands with the JD(U).



Ahead of the meeting, the respective states had been asked to send in details to the central office on the progress made in various developmental works, both under central and state-sponsored schemes.



Some chief ministers have also been asked to make brief presentations on their flagship schemes which can be tweaked and implemented in other states as well.



The discussions in the meeting are expected to revolve around implementation of the Centre's flagship schemes in the states and development works being done there, sources said.



The meeting is being organised just days after Shah unfolded the blue print for 2019 elections, which may also feature in the discussions.



Shah had asked party leaders to focus on about 120 winnable seats which party lost in 2014 elections and is aiming for more than 350 in the next general elections.



In the last meeting, the party high command had laid emphasis on two crucial issues. The party wants BJP-ruled states to come up with a mechanism for better coordination with the central government, especially the PMO. For this, it was sought in the last meeting that chief ministers nominate a nodal officer in their respective offices.



The partys central unit is also laying emphasis on proper implementation of central government schemes. To reap electoral dividends, the benefits of these projects, the party feels, should percolate down to the last man in the rural areas.
Kolkata: Gorkha Janamukti Morcha chief Bimal Gurung on Saturday wrote a letter to the Home Minister Rajnath Singh seeking a probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the Darjeeling blast.



The GJM chief letter came after the West Bengal Police filed a case against Gurung and two others under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in the case.



The UAPA case was filed against Gurung after he was released recently by a court in the murder case of Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League president Madan Tamang in 2010.



The Morcha has alleged that Gurungs name was dragged in to the case without any proof.



On August 18, a blast occurred in Darjeeling town and before anyone could come to terms with the nature of the blast the Darjeeling police have rushed to file an FIR against the GJM president and other leaders. Sir, every Gorkha is today wondering as to how it is possible that an FIR be filed this early in such a serious matter, while the investigations have not yet begun? Gurungs0 letter to Rajnath said.



The GJM chiefs letter questioned how was it possible that the police didnt see someone planting a bomb when the blast site is situated right next to the Darjeeling Sadar Police Station.



It is either a case of gross incompetence, or a case of fake blast planted by state agents to frame the GJM leadership. We suspect that the blast is a handiwork of the Bengal government to disrupt the Gorkhaland movement, said the letter.



Gurung said a high-level inquiry committee must probe the case. He said the panel must be made up NIA investigators and monitored by a Supreme Court judge.



An explosion rocked Darjeeling late on Friday. No one was injured but several shops were damaged. The incident took place in front of the Old Super Market near Singamari Motor Syndicate which is close to the GJM office.
Kolkata: An explosion rocked Darjeeling late on Friday. No one has been injured but several shops were completely damaged.



A large contingent of police force led by Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Chaturvedi rushed to the spot and cordoned off the area.



The blast took place in front of the Old Super Market near Singamari Motor Syndicate, close to the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) office.



Speaking to News18, Mohan Lama, a local resident in Darjeeling said, We were watching TV when we heard a loud explosion. It was deafening. My wife and children all panicked. We were scared. We could not sleep for the whole night out of fear.



Local police came to our locality and questioned few local people.



A senior police officer said, Preliminary inquiry revealed that it was Improvised Explosive Device (IED). It seems a handiwork of some local criminal. A team from forensic science department visited the blast site and collected few samples.



So far there is no reaction from GJM leaders about the blast.



For the last two months, Darjeeling is under indefinite strike as GJM demanding for a separate state of Gorkhaland. Series of violent protests reported in these two months and several people were killed in clashes with the police.
DES MOINES | Among the scores of livestock, amusement park rides, food on a stick and cows made of butter, there is another staple of the Iowa State Fair:

Politicians and political candidates.

Even though 2017 is an off year for Iowa politics  there is no statewide election this year, nor is there an immediate build-up to the states first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses  there has been a political presence at this years Iowa State Fair, which concludes Sunday.

This may not be an election year, but its still Iowa.

The 2018 elections  the June primary and November general  are still 10 and 15 months away, but the campaigning for those elections has begun in earnest.

That has been evident at the fair, where candidates  in particular, those seeking to be the states next governor  can be found among the masses.

One must look a little harder, if so inclined, to find politics at this years fair. The political atmosphere is nothing like two years ago, when there was a presidential candidate at the fair almost every day, and on some days, the crowds that came to see them were massive.

But the politicians and candidates are back this year. There even was a presidential candidate at the fair, even though the 2020 Iowa caucuses are roughly 2 years away and the next presidential election is more than three years off.

Iowa's top office

But most active have been the candidates for Iowa governor.

Gov. Kim Reynolds has been a consistent presence at the fair, although thats not uncommon for a sitting governor.

But Reynolds, who earlier this year became the states first female governor when Terry Branstad resigned to become U.S. ambassador to China, also has a campaign to run. Her campaign team has a booth among the scores of others inside the fairgrounds Varied Industries Building, just across Grand Avenue from the grandstand.

Reynolds has spent some time at her campaigns booth, but she also has strolled the grounds, regularly stopping to visit with and grant photo requests from fairgoers.

On Wednesday, Reynolds spent some time in the Iowa Egg Council stand, passing out free hard-boiled eggs, which, of course, were served on a stick.

Reynolds stopped on her way to the stand to chat and pose for photos. One woman thanked Reynolds for comments she made earlier in the week regarding proposed tuition increases at the states public universities.

Thank you for saying thats too much, the woman told Reynolds.

The universities, in light of what they say is insufficient state funding, have proposed raising tuition by as much as 41 percent over the next five years.

That is too much. There is no way that Iowa families could afford a 7 percent increase over five years, Reynolds said at her weekly news conference.

Ron Corbett, the Cedar Rapids mayor who is challenging Reynolds from within the Republican Party, also has been a frequent presence at the fair.

Corbett has regularly set up shop at the Republican Party of Iowas booth inside the Varied Industries Building, where he has greeted visitors and handed out free copies of his book, Beyond Promises. On Wednesday, Corbett estimated he had handed out roughly 1,000 copies of his book during the fair.

Corbetts hand-shaking, chatting and book-giving have been methods to introduce himself to Iowa voters, something he acknowledges he must do in order to make his candidacy more familiar to voters outside eastern Iowa.

The Democratic candidates for governor, of which there are eight, took turns appearing at the Iowa Democratic Partys booth, which is just across the aisle, both physically and politically, from the Republicans.

Cast your vote

Anyone who attends the fair and wants to contribute to polls on the governors race have a couple of options.

The Des Moines TV station WHO-TV is once again holding its Cast your kernel poll, in which passers-by take a corn kernel and place it in a jar bearing the name of the candidate he or she supports.

As of Wednesday, Reynolds was the clear leader among the Republican candidates. There were 10 full jars and 11th being filled, while no other candidate had filled as much as a single jar.

Nate Boulton, a state senator from Des Moines, had a healthy lead among the Democratic candidates. He was on his fifth jar, while Fred Hubbell, a Des Moines businessman, was on his second.

The Iowa Secretary of State has its own gubernatorial poll. Fairgoers can cast a vote electronically, and results are available in real time on the Secretary of States website.

As of Friday morning, Reynolds at 77 percent and Boulton at 39 percent were their respective parties big leaders in that poll, as well.

Presidential politics were prevalent at the fair as well.

The backdrop for the Republican Party of Iowas booth is a banner that reads Stand with Trump, while standing nearby are two cardboard cutouts of President Donald Trump. Visitors have been signing the roughly 4-foot-by-10-foot banner throughout the week; by Wednesday, it was virtually covered with signatures.

On Wednesday, the day after Trumps highly criticized remarks about a white supremacy rally in Virginia that turned violent, supporters continued to cover the Stand with Trump banner with signatures.

And the many Iowans running for governor were not the only candidates for executive office to appear at the Democrats booth. The partys first officially announced candidate for president in 2020, Maryland U.S. Rep. John Delaney, visited the fair Wednesday and Thursday.

In addition to stopping at the Democrats booth, he spent some time taking in all the fair had to offer, stopping along the way to visit with fairgoers, of course.

Welcome to the Iowa State Fair, where politics never really take a year off.

Just ask Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Polk County Democrats.

It doesnt feel like an off year, Bagniewski said.
Bengaluru: A day after the Anti-Corruption Bureau summoned former Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa for alleged irregularities in denotifying land for a housing project, the case has taken a new twist. A Karnataka Administrative Services officer has alleged that the ACB forced him to testify against the state BJP chief.



KAS officer H Basavarajendra, who was a Special Land Acquisition Officer at Bangalore Development Authority, has written to the chief secretary, State Human Rights Commission and Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms that ACB officials exerted pressure on him to lie that Yeddyurappa as CM has passed illegal orders of denotification of 257 acres for Shivarama Karanth Layout.



In the letter, the officer alleged that when he refused to heed to the demands, he was told by the Deputy SP of the ACB that he would be made a co-accused in the case. He said in the letter that he had received a call from deputy SP of ACB, JK Anthony, on Thursday informing that he has been summoned on Saturday as an accused in the case.



Yeddyurappa has accused CM Siddaramaiah of using the ACB for filing false cases ahead of the assembly election later this year. The government has reopened 10-year-old denotification cases against me, but I will not run away. Like other chief ministers, I too denotified land to protect the properties of the poor. I am not afraid of these cases and will continue to fight the Congress government," he



BJP leader Basavaraj Bommai said that the party is behind Yeddyurappa and existence of ACB itself is in the court and there is no credibility to the institution. He added that it was not a case of denotification as the land was not notified yet and the formation of the layout was quashed by the Karnataka High Court.



However, Siddaramaiah rubbished allegations of opposition being targeted by government institutions and maintained that law was taking its own course based on a complaint filed in ACB.
New Delhi: A 24-year-old woman who was allegedly set on fire by her in-laws at their house in Vikaspuri of west Delhi, died at a hospital on Saturday, following which three persons, including her husband, were arrested, the police said.



On receiving a PCR call on Friday about a woman being set ablaze, a police team rushed to the spot and took the woman, who has suffered burn injuries, to Safdarjung hospital, a police officer said.



She died during treatment at the hospital today, DCP (West) Vijay Kumar said.



"Statement of the woman was recorded at the hospital in which she alleged that she was set on fire by her husband and in-laws," the officer said, adding the victim claimed the incident took place when she had gone to her in-law's place to collect her son's clothes.



The woman was married to Gurcharan Singh in 2012. A case has been registered at Vikaspuri police station and the victim's husband, her father-in-law Rawel Singh (62), and brother-in-law Prabhjot Singh (25) have been arrested, the DCP said.



The victim's relatives alleged that there were "regular" demands of dowry from her in-laws. A few days ago, her in-laws had demanded Rs 10 lakh, and when it was not met they forced her out of their house, the police said.
Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Charlize Theron hopes to create an AIDS-free generation in her home country South Africa which has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world.



The star who is the founder of Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project which supports community-based HIV programmes said the country's "ridiculously large" HIV burden was hard to ignore and that prompted her awareness from an early age.



Her project has partnered with other leading organisations fighting the pandemic in the country of her birth.



"We have to be able to put our foot down and say enough is enough, let's end this," she told AFP during her visit to the country. "We just need the resources," she added. Through her support of Choma Dreams Cafe, a place that aims to empower adolescent girls by providing them access to education, life skills and mentorship, Theron believes that HIV infections can be halted.



"My personal opinion is that we're never gonna stop AIDS by just simply treating it...it's never going to happen," she said. "You cannot wait for people to become infected and think you are going to stop AIDS. You have to invest in young people before they become HIV-positive," she said.



Around seven million South Africans, or 19.2 percent of the population, are living with the virus and adolescent girls are at most risk of infection, according to the UN AIDS agency. According to government, 3.4 million are receiving treatment, in what is said to be the largest roll-out of life-saving drugs.



Decrease HIV infections



Theron said she was "incredibly proud" of South Africa's treatment efforts, although many people who should be on treatment are still not getting it.



The 42-year-old movie star who left South Africa as a teenager stressed that gender inequality and poverty played a major role in the spread of HIV, and that the virus must not be seen as a sexual health problem. Theron stirred controversy during her speech at the 2016 international AIDS conference in Durban, when she said the virus which is ravaging Africa was fuelled by "sexism, poverty and homophobia".



"I stand by what I said last year," she said emphatically, stressing the importance of holistic approach in the fight against HIV. "When you look at HIV and AIDS, you have to looks at the factors that are driving it ... you have to see why are these people getting infected."



The Atomic Blonde star mingled with teenage girls at the Choma Dreams Cafe in Soweto -- an internet-connected resource facility nestled among shacks in the teeming neighbourhood blighted by high unemployment and poverty. The centre caters to vulnerable girls aged between six and 18 years, providing them with HIV prevention tips in fun girl-friendly ways. Some of them are AIDS orphans and exposed to crime and sexual violence which heighten their vulnerability to the disease.



"I think if we can grab them before they become HIV positive, you can actually tell them this is just 100 preventable and you don't have to become HIV positive," she said. "I think we would see a decrease in the number of infections."



The Soweto centre is one of the 40 hubs spread across South Africa's two most populous provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
Your love has encouraged me to come more close to you ... so here is me from the sets of YPD Phir se... #newbeginnings #shootmode #hyderabad pic.twitter.com/nWGP1dJW0w  Dharmendra Deol (@aapkadharam) August 17, 2017

Me and Bob eventually succeeded in getting dad here.. Welcome Dad!! https://t.co/v42oZb42ij  Sunny Deol (@iamsunnydeol) August 17, 2017

Veteran actor Dharmendra has made his debut on social media website Twitter and his actor son Sunny Deol has welcomed him.Dharmendra, 81, on Thursday made his debut on Twitter, with two photographs of himself from the sets of his upcoming film Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se."Your love has encouraged me to come more close to you... So, here is me from the sets of Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se... New Beginnings, shoot mode, Hyderabad," he tweeted.The Sholay actor has 3,273 followers, among them sons Sunny and Bobby and grandson Karan Deol, who is soon going to make his debut in Bollywood with Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas.Sunny on Thursday tweeted that he and his brother Bobby "succeeded" in getting their father on the micro-blogging website."Me and Bob eventually succeeded in getting dad here... Welcome Dad," Sunny tweeted.The third part of Yamla Pagla Deewana is being shot in Hyderabad and also features Bobby and Sunny.The part first part of Yamla Pagla Deewana released in 2011 and was directed by Samir Karnik.
Hyderabad: After spending five years of his career on the Baahubali franchise, actor Prabhas has now joined the upcoming multi-lingual action film Saaho.



"He has finally joined the sets of Saaho from today. He will shoot non-stop for the next three weeks. He is quite excited because he is returning to a film set after a long gap and will get to shoot for something different in a long time," a source from the film's unit said.



Directed by Sujeeth, the project also marks the Telugu debut of Shraddha Kapoor.



Neil Nitin Mukesh is playing the antagonist in this Rs. 150 crore action extravaganza, which will be simultaneously shot in Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam as well.



According to Sujeeth, a large chunk of the film's budget will be spent on action.



"The scale on which it is being made, a major budget will be spent on some extravagant action scenes. Although it will be a commercial outing, we are attempting something new and I would like to keep that as a surprise element," Sujeeth said.



International stuntman Kenny Bates, popular for his work on films such as Die Hard and Transformers, has been brought on board.



"Kenny will be supervising the action scenes. We have already finalised locations in Abu Dhabi and some places in Europe where shooting will be done extensively," he said.


New Delhi: The Congress on Saturday charged the BJP with ignoring the death of several cows at a cowshed run by a party leader in Chhattisgarh and asked whether Chief Minister Raman Singh would impose death penalty on "one of their own" as he had sought earlier.



At least 27 cows had died at a government-aided cow shelter in Durg district of Chhattisgarh run by one Harish Verma, who was arrested on Friday, local police had said.



Referring to the Chief Minister's comments earlier this year, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said 'gauraksha' (cow protection) has been reduced to killing of innocents, mostly of minority community.



"If this is the new definition of gauraksha, I suppose everybody should ignore this terrible event (of cows death in Chhattisgarh)...because double standards is the definition of the BJP," Singhvi told reporters in New Delhi.



The Congress leader said "if I recollect, no less than death penalty was demanded more than once by the chief minister of Chhattisgarh."



"We will hang those who kill cows," the Chief Minister had said in April this year, a day after BJP-ruled Gujarat passed a stringent law, making cow slaughter punishable with a life term.



Singhvi said the BJP government will not act against "their own" in this case because "double standards is the definition of the BJP".
Gorakhpur (UP): Terming the deaths of scoresof children at a state-run hospital here as a "government made tragedy", Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath should not try to cover up the matter.



"All those whom I met told me that oxygen shortage led to the death of their children. Many families were given ambu bags (a manual resuscitator) and they pumped it for hours...It is very clear that it government-made tragedy," Gandhi said. The government should take action in the matter and not try to cover it up, he said.



It is absolutely clear that oxygen shortage and laxity were the reasons behind the tragedy, he told reporters after meeting family members of the victims.



"The chief minister should not try to cover up (the matter) and action should be taken against the guilty. This is my message," the Congress vice-president asserted.



Gandhi said that he had visited the BRD medical college and hospital here earlier as well and had told Prime Minister Narendra Modi through the media that it needs funds as there were too many shortages.



But no action was taken, he rued.



There have been scores of encephalitis related child deaths in the BRD medical college hospital in recent days triggering a nation-wide outrage.



"Modiji speaks of a new India. This kind of new India we do not want. We want hospitals where poor people can take their children (for treatment) and come back happily," Gandhi said.



He complimented the media for raising the issue. "...I want to thank them for this (highlighting the issue)...it is not a matter concerning Uttar Pradesh but is a national tragedy. It is indicative of the health care of the country," he said.



Earlier in the day, Adityanath also had hit out at the Congress vice-president over his visit here, saying the 'yuvraj' (prince) sitting in Delhi cannot make Gorakhpur 'a picnic spot'.



Adityanath, who launched a cleanliness campaign in the district to tackle the deadly encephalitis outbreak in the wake of death of 71 children at the BRD hospital here, also hit out at his predecessor and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.



"I feel that the shehzada sitting in Lucknow ..'yuvraj' sitting in Delhi will not know the importance of this cleanliness campaign. They will come here to make it a picnic spot, we cannot permit it," the chief minister said taking a jibe at Gandhi, before the Congress leader's visit to Gorakhpur to meet the families of the victims.



Other opposition parties, the SP and the BSP have also been attacking the Adityanath government over the hospital deaths.
The Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) has passed a resolution in its National Executive Meeting to join the BJP-led NDA. Former party chief Sharad Yadav will shortly hold a parallel meeting, indicating a vertical split in the JD(U).

Will the JD(U) also witness a symbol war now? Stay tuned for live updates:

Read all the Latest News , Breaking News , watch Top Videos and Live TV here.
Bhopal: BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday said Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has helped Madhya Pradesh shed the BIMARU tag and ushered in development in the state.



Shah, who is in Madhya Pradesh on a three-day tour, said the Narendra Modi government at the Centre has helped curb corruption which earlier governments had failed to do.



He urged ministers to make sure that the BJP wins all 29 seats in MP in the next general election, asking them to ensure that Congresss senior leaders such as Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia are defeated. Shah alleged that these leaders collude with BJP MLAs for securing win.



Addressing a meeting of party officebearers, the BJP chief warned them saying that most of the are inactive and they need to be back in business soon.



In a separate meeting with the Shivraj cabinet, Shah claimed that bureaucracy was dominating things in the state which he said on the basis feedbacks. I can give names of such officers if CM wants me to, he said.



He also said that there was no party rule which barred leaders over the age of 75 from contesting elections. This comes after Chouhan had axed Home Minister Babulal Gaur and PWD minister Sartaj Singh from the cabinet on age grounds.



Shah, however, said that it was CMs discretion on who he wants in the cabinet.



The BJP president dubbed implementation of GST as the biggest tax reform after independence and claimed that 91 lakh new taxpayers have been enrolled since demonetisation.
Patna: Rival JD(U) factions headed by Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav will hold parallel meetings on Saturday, indicating that the party may be heading for a split after the disintegration of the Grand Alliance in Bihar.



A national executive committee meeting of the JD(U) has been called at its national president and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's official residence where the party is expected to formally accept the invitation to join the BJP-led NDA.



Loyalists of Sharad Yadav, who has spoken out against Nitishs decision to join hands with the BJP, are also organising a programme, 'Jan Adalat' at SK Memorial hall.



The two meetings make it clear that battle lines within the JD(U) are drawn and the party may be heading for a vertical split.



JD(U) principal secretary general KC Tyagi has, however, maintained that there is no split and that Yadav "has left voluntarily".



Tyagi told PTI that the national executive meeting at the One Anne Marg residence of the chief minister is the party's official programme.



The party was originally set to hold its national executive in Delhi on July 23-24 last. But the date was changed to August 19 and the venue was shifted to Patna.



Asked about the agenda of the national executive meeting, Tyagi said it would put its seal of approval on the party's Bihar unit decision to break away from the Grand Alliance and form a government with BJP "in the interests of the state".



Kumar had made it clear that he had walked out of the Grand Alliance of the JD(U), RJD and Congress as per the wish of the party's Bihar unit.



The JD(U) is registered with the Election Commission as a regional party of Bihar, he had said.

"The national executive would also give its consent to the invitation of BJP President Amit Shah to the JD(U) to join the NDA fold," Tyagi said.



Shah had extended the invitation when Kumar had met him in Delhi recently.



Some other amendments in the party constitution would also be taken up, he said, but refused to divulge details.



Asked about Jan Adalat which would also be attended by Yadav, Tyagi said it is not an official programme of the party.



Bihar JD(U) chief spokesman Sanjay Singh said "we have nothing to do with the Jan Adalat programme."



A poster war has erupted here with the rival groups publicising their respective programmes.



The posters by rebel JD(U) leaders led by ousted party parlimentary board chief Sharad Yadav make clear their stand against Kumar's decision to sever ties with the Grand Alliance partners  RJD and Congress



"Jan Adalat ka faisla ... Mahagatbandhan jaari hain (Jan Adalat's decision ... The Grand Alliance is continuing)" the posters say.



They carry photographs of Sharad Yadav, JD(U) Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar Ansari and former state minister Ramai Ram, who was suspended by Bihar JD(U) chief Basistha Narayan Singh.



Sharpening the attack on Nitish Kumar, Ansari asserted in Delhi that those opposed to the Bihar chief minister represented the "real" JD(U), and added "Nitish represents BJP Janata Dal".



He refused to acknowledge a "split" in the party and said there is "sharp resentment" among JD(U) workers on the removal of Sharad Yadav as the leader of party MPs in the Rajya Sabha for questioning Nitish Kumar's decision to form an alliance with the BJP.



The rebel JD(U) programme follows a mega meeting of anti-BJP parties held on Friday in Delhi, which they said, was to save the "composite culture" of the country.



The party's former national general secretary Arun Kumar Srivastava, who was expelled after the JD(U) legislator in Gujarat voted against the NDA candidate in the recent vice- presidential polls, said in Delhi that the rebels could approach the Election Commission to claim the party's name and symbol in case of a split.



"Although I do not think Nitish will claim the party symbol because he has no love for the party or its symbol, but we will definitely approach the EC in case there is need," he said.



Srivastava also claimed that all the state party units, except those in Bihar and Jharkhand, were supporting Sharad Yadav and those opposed to Nitish Kumar.



"We have received support letters from the presidents of 14 state units who are opposed to the JD(U) alliance with BJP. They expressed their willingness to attend the Patna convention but may not be able to do so since it is being held at short notice," he said.



He accused Nitish Kumar of not honouring the "democratic norms" in removing party leaders without seeking explanation.



"I was not served any notice or asked for any explanation. The same happened with Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar and 21 other leaders who were removed in Bihar," he claimed.



Srivastava also attacked Tyagi for siding with Kumar and his decision to go with the BJP, saying he was doing so for the "lust of power".



(With PTI inputs)
MASON CITY | A Hampton man pleaded guilty to stealing knives from Menards as well as a controlled substance violation.

Steven Duane Springer, 51, took several knives from Menard's in Mason City on Feb. 21.

An officer stopped Springer after he had left the store and located the unpaid merchandise, according to the criminal complaint. The knives were valued at $212.

Springer was sentenced to seven days in jail and a $315 fine for the theft. Springer was also charged with Possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamine, third or subsequent offense. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison not to exceed five years as well as a $750 suspended fine.

The two sentences are to be served concurrently.

 Courtney Fiorini
New Delhi: The tenure of US President Donald Trump has often been described as White House in crisis. From reports that he colluded with Russian Intelligence in order to get damaging information on his opponent in the 2016 Election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, to allegations that the White House was stoking White Supremacist sentiments  Trump has been firefighting since he took office, seven months ago. On Friday, POTUS (President of the United States) fired Steve Bannon, his Chief White House Strategist. This was a major change in the White House since Bannon was often referred to in American media as the Shadow President  the real power behind the throne.



But Bannon is not alone in the long list of political operatives who once had Trumps ear but later fell by the wayside, adding to the chaos in the White House.



Reince Priebus



After winning the election against Hillary Clinton, Trump named Reince Priebus as his pick for White House Chief of Staff, and the Republican Party breathed a sigh of relief. Priebus was, after all, the former Chairperson of the Republican National Committee and would be seen as the party establishments man on the inside, who would keep the maverick President in line with party values. But Priebus soon fell out of favour with Trump. There were reports of friction between Priebus and Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law who enjoys a great degree of influence in the administration. Meanwhile, the Trump administration was facing leaks  instances of White House aides leaking embarrassing information to the press. Anthony Scaramucci, who had been appointed as the White House Communications Director, indicated that Priebus was the leaker. This culminated in Priebus losing his job. This was the shortest tenure of any permanent White House Chief of Staff in history.



Michael Flynn



During the transition of power, former President Barack Obama had warned Trump against appointing General Michael Flynn to any sensitive position. Going against his predecessors advice, Trump named Flynn as his National Security Advisor (NSA). It later emerged that Flynn had met with Sergey Kislyak, Russian ambassador to the US, and had lied to Vice President Mike Pence when he was pressed about the meeting. In February, just a few weeks into the Trump Presidency, Flynn was dismissed from service. He is now under investigation for colluding with a foreign power.



Sean Spicer



Sean Spicer had a tumultuous tenure as White House Press Secretary. He began his job by claiming, falsely, that the crowd gathered at Trumps swearing in ceremony was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period  both in person and around the globe. His relationship with the White House Press Corps was, at best, adversarial. During this short period, he made several controversial statements, including one where he insinuated that Syrian President Bashar Al Assads actions were worse than those of Adolf Hitler. In the weeks leading up to his resignation, he is said to have sought a greater role in communication, although Trump was reportedly unhappy with his work. The final nail in the coffin came when Trump appointed Anthony Scaramucci as the Communications Director. On July 21, Spicer announced that he was quitting and was replaced by Sarah Huckabee Sanders.



Anthony Scaramucci



The shortest tenure of all Trumps aides. On July 25, he took over as White House Communications Director but even before he could set up his desk, he was edged out  a mere six days after his appointment. Scaramuccis primary job was to find the leakers who were passing on information to the press, and have them fired. However, after General John Kelly took over as Chief of Staff, the axe fell on Scaramucci himself. According to reports, Kelly felt that Scaramucci was not disciplined and was doing more harm than good to Trumps public image. Scaramucci had infamously given an expletives-laden interview, in which he lashed out at senior White House officials like Steve Bannon.



Steve Bannon



When Trump appointed Bannon as his Chief Strategist, a position that did not exist before Trump became President, many Americans had cause to worry. Bannon, the executive chairman of far-right news website, Breitbart, was accused of being a White Supremacist and a Neo-Nazi. Breitbart News has been accused of peddling racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic material. Trump came to power after a campaign filled with vitriol against minorities, including people of colour, and it was felt that Bannons appointment would mean that some of the political rhetoric would find its way into policy. And indeed, Bannon is believed to be the brains behind the infamous Executive Order 13769, colloquially referred to as the Muslim Ban. The Executive Order, called out for its Islamophobia, banned citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from travelling to the US.



But soon, the notion that Bannon, rather than Trump, was calling the shots created friction between the President and his most powerful aide. This took place amidst turf wars between Bannon and Jared Kushner. On Friday, a White House spokesperson said Bannon and White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly mutually decided that Bannon should step down. Later, however, Bannon said that he was not fired, but had rather resigned.
Washington: US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told staff in an email - seen by Reuters on Friday - that everyone must stand up and condemn hate, as President Donald Trump faces a backlash for his response to violence at a protest by white nationalists.



Trump blamed both sides for clashes in the southern college town of Charlottesville in Virginia last weekend, where white nationalists were protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. A woman was killed when a suspected white nationalist plowed his car into a crowd.



"Those who march spewing hate are few, but loud. We must denounce them at every turn, and make them feel like they are on an island and isolate them the same way they wish to isolate others," wrote Haley, a member of Trump's cabinet, in the email sent Thursday to staff at the US mission to the United Nations.



Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, said the "horrible acts" seen in Charlottesville "took me back to sad days dealing with the Charleston tragedy in 2015."



Haley attracted national attention when she secured the removal of the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's capitol grounds after a white supremacist killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston.



"People aren't born with hate. We all have a responsibility to stand up and condemn it," Haley wrote in the email to staff, which did not refer to Trump.



"While we should respect diversity of viewpoints, it is incumbent on us to challenge hate with the values we cherish. And it is incumbent on us to never, ever countenance violence as we do so," she said.



Trump has alienated Republicans, corporate leaders and US allies, rattled markets and prompted speculation about possible White House resignations with his comments since the violence in Charlottesville.



On Monday, Trump bowed to political pressure and denounced neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan by name, but on Tuesday he again inflamed tensions by insisting counter-protesters were also to blame and that there were "very fine people" among both groups.



Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and several top US military officers have since broadly condemned racism.



United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in a Twitter post on Tuesday said that racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia were "poisoning our societies," adding: "We must stand up against them. Every time. Everywhere."
Washington: Donald Trump is weighing his options on formulating a new US strategy in South Asia with the focus on Afghanistan, the White House has said, after the President held a key meeting with his national security team.



Trump would take a final decision on this at an appropriate time, the White House said, without divulging the details of the meeting.



"The President is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement after Trump was briefed by his national security team at the presidential retreat at Camp David, a picturesque presidential resort in Maryland.



Besides the National Security Adviser Lt Gen H R McMaster, the meeting was attended by Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of national Intelligence Daniel Coats, and President's top Adviser on South Asia Lisa Curtis.



Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, attended the meeting through a secured video conference.



The administration has said its Afghanistan strategy will be determined by a review of its approach to the broader region, including Pakistan and India.


Miami: Eclipse-chasers are a dedicated crew of scientists who travel the globe to catch a few moments in eerie darkness, and even after seeing dozens of eclipses, they say they can't get enough.



Also known as "umbraphiles," these self-described addicts live their lives in pursuit of the intense experience of falling under the Moon's shadow.



"The sudden onset of twilight was so surreal and so electrifying," recalled Fred Espenak of the first total solar eclipse he saw in the United States back in 1970.



"It is such an incredible, sensory-overload kind of event," he told AFP.



Once it was over, he said he "immediately started thinking about future eclipses."



Espenak, now 65, is a retired NASA astrophysicist who goes by the moniker "Mr. Eclipse."



He has been to 27 eclipses, and seen 20 of them -- cloudy weather interfered with the rest.



Each one is unique, he says -- the way the twilight falls in the middle of the day, casting shadows on the Earth; hearing birds return to their nests; feeling the temperature suddenly drop.



The most memorable, he says, was an eclipse he traveled to in India in 1995 with about 35 other people.



One of the women in the group became overwhelmed -- she said she'd waited 25 years to see an eclipse, and wept over how it had gone by so fast, lasting just 41 seconds.



"We stayed in contact," Espenak said. "And to make a long story short, we got married."



When the so-called Great American Eclipse marches across the country on Monday, Espenak plans to be in Wyoming, operating 17 different cameras.



His advice for first-time eclipse-watchers?



"Don't do what I do. Don't take any pictures. Just watch it and enjoy it. There is so much to see," he said.



World record-holder



Most people who see an eclipse will experience just a minute or two of darkness, but in 1973, Donald Liebenberg set a world record when he rode the Concorde jet and chased an eclipse at supersonic speed.



From the cabin of the aircraft at an altitude of 60,000 feet (18,200 meters), his view of totality -- when the Moon's shadow completely blocks the sunlight -- lasted 74 minutes.



"The corona is so brilliant especially when you are above most of the water vapor and the other scattered light problems in lower altitudes," he said, recalling the deep purple sky.



Now 85, Liebenberg has spent more than two and a half hours of his life in totality, longer than anyone else on the planet.



He has traveled to Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa and Zambia, among other places, and seen 26 eclipses so far.



"Looking forward to the 27th," said Liebenberg, an adjunct professor at Clemson University in South Carolina.



"This one is special in the sense that it will occur over my house. I will be in my driveway instead of traveling thousands of miles."



Frequent flyer



Glenn Schneider, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, saw his first total eclipse when he was 14, and recalls a sensation of being frozen in time.



"I realized that this was the start of something that had changed my life, that I was going to have to see the next one. And the next one," he said.



"It almost sounds like it is an addictive phenomenon and it is. You should warn people of that."



Total solar eclipses happen on average about every 16 months somewhere on Earth.



Schneider has missed only a handful.



He still laments "the one that got away" -- an eclipse he missed in 1985 that brushed the coast of Antarctica.



But he has managed to get himself in the Moon's umbral shadow 33 times so far.



"I save my frequent flyer miles for eclipses," he said.



And now, the time between eclipses is "sort of a mundane reality," he said.



He has plans for every future eclipse, including one at sunrise over New York in May 2079 when he would be 123 years old.



"I don't think I am going to make it but I've left information for my daughter for her to go and see it," he said.



For Schneider, it's not just the view, or the scientific interest he has in the phenomenon.



"We are talking about a very visceral, emotional connection," he said.



"You really get a sense of celestial mechanics in action."



Espenak agreed.



To experience an eclipse "gives you a sense of perspective that you don't get any other way," he said.



"How insignificant we are compared to the whole system. How inconsequential some of the struggles we have with politics and the nonsense going on in our daily lives," he added.



"When the grand scheme of the solar system is played out in front of us, it's a humbling experience."
New York: Another presidential advisory committee is breaking up.



Actor Kal Penn, artist Chuck Close and the entire membership of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities have announced their resignation. A letter dated Friday, and signed by 16 of 17 committee members, cited the "false equivalence" of President Donald Trump's comments about last weekend's "Unite the Right" gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump has blamed "many sides" for the demonstrations that left an anti-racism activist dead.



The White House said Trump had already decided against renewing the advisory committee for budgetary reasons.



"Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions," the letter reads. "Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too."



The only member whose name did not appear was Broadway director George C. Wolfe. Representatives for Wolfe at Creative Arts Agency said Friday that he was also resigning and that his name would be added to the letter, which seemed to contain a hidden political message beyond the ones stated openly. The first initials of the letter's six main paragraphs spell out "r-e-s-i-s-t."



"Earlier this month it was decided that President Trump will not renew the executive order for the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), which expires later this year," the White House said in a statement attributed to an unnamed spokesperson. "While the committee has done good work in the past, in its current form it simply is not a responsible way to spend American tax dollars."



The statement said the committee "merely redirects funding" from federal cultural agencies that report directly to the president, Congress and taxpayers.



"These cultural agencies do tremendous work and they will continue to engage in these important projects," the statement said.



Earlier this week, two business advisory councils were disbanded as members left in protest.



Friday's exodus heightened the arts world's contentious relationship with Trump. The president struggled to find entertainers, many of whom backed Hillary Clinton in 2016, to perform at his inaugural gala, and Kennedy Center honorees for lifetime achievement have already said they will not attend the White House reception in December.



As president, Trump has also recommended defunding the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.



The arts and humanities committee was established in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan and, with the first lady serving as honorary chair, works with both government and private agencies in promoting the arts through such programs as Turnaround Arts and Save America's Treasures. Others signing the resignation letter included Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri; and Vicki Kennedy, widow of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. All were appointed by President Barack Obama.
Istanbul: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday urged ethnic Turks in Germany to reject its main parties in upcoming elections, prompting a sharp warning from Berlin to stop the "unprecedented" meddling.



Erdogan called on ethnic Turks to ignore Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their partners in the grand ruling coalition, the Social Democratic Party (SPD).



They should also reject the Greens, he said, branding all three parties "enemies of Turkey".



The president's attack -- one of his strongest-ever tirades against any EU state -- escalated an already intensifying diplomatic crisis between two NATO allies with longstanding historical links.



Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel of the SPD was quick to react, condemning Erdogan's comments as an "unprecedented act of interference".



Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Twitter: "We expect foreign governments to not interfere in our internal affairs."



Erdogan issued his call in televised comments to reporters in Istanbul after Friday prayers.



"I tell all my kinsmen in Germany... not to vote for them. Neither the Christian Democrats nor the SPD nor the Greens. They are all enemies of Turkey," he said.



He accused the SPD and CDU of playing a game of "the more you beat up Turkey, the more votes you get" during the election campaign.



"You need to support political parties there now which do not display enmity to Turkey," he said.



'Teach a lesson'



Erdogan did not make it clear which German political party he would like people to support in the polls for the Bundestag on September 24.



But he said he expected voters of Turkish origin to "teach a lesson to the parties which are disrespectful to Turkey" when they cast their votes in a "struggle for honour".



Tensions have spiralled between Germany and Turkey in recent months.



Berlin has lambasted Ankara over the magnitude of the crackdown that followed last year's failed coup, which has seen several German citizens arrested, including journalists.



Ankara meanwhile has accused Berlin of failing to extradite suspected Kurdish militants and coup plotters who have taken refuge there.



Turkish German journalist Deniz Yucel, the Istanbul correspondent of the Die Welt daily, has been held in jail in Turkey since February ahead of trial on terror charges.



German journalist Mesale Tolu has been held on similar charges since May, while activist Peter Steudtner was arrested in a July raid.



According to German foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer, there are 10 Germans, including dual nationals, in custody in Turkey.



Gabriel's SPD -- whose candidate for the chancellorship is ex-EU parliament speaker Martin Schulz -- and Merkel's CDU are rivals in the election. But they have been in broad agreement on the policy regarding Turkey within the coalition.



The opposition Greens meanwhile have pushed for an even tougher line against Ankara.



The Greens' co-leader Cem Ozdemir, who is himself of Turkish origin, said Erdogan's comments showed that people who support democracy and oppose repression and corruption in Turkey are "quite simply considered to be traitors and enemies".



'Lost all proportion'



Erdogan said it was not Turkey's responsibility to reduce the tension as Germany was to blame, even accusing Berlin of being out of step with EU membership requirements.



But Gabriel denounced his comments as "an unprecedented act of interference in the sovereignty of our country". Erdogan was seeking to incite people in Germany against each other, he said.



The SPD's Schulz meanwhile, said Erdogan had "lost all sense of proportion" in a tweet.



"And all the more we stand on the side of all those who are struggling for a free and democratic Turkey," he added.



There are an estimated three million people of Turkish origin in Germany. Many of them came, or are the descendants of those who came, to West Germany as Gastarbeiter (guest workers) from the 1960s, to make up for a postwar labour shortage.



Analysts say that some 1.2 million people of Turkish origin will have the right to vote in the September polls as German citizens.



In the past, Turkish-origin Germans have inclined to the left, with most voting for the SPD.



But Erdogan is also popular with Turks living in Germany, and 59 percent of the votes cast by Turkish citizens resident in Germany went to his ruling party in November 2015 parliamentary polls.
Helsinki: Police are now investigating a stabbing spree in Finland that left two people dead as a terrorist attack, police said Saturday, identifying the suspect as an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen.



"The incidents were initially investigated as murders, but in light of further information received during the night, the offences include now murders with terrorist intent and their attempts," police said in a statement.



The suspect's "identity is known to the police. He is an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen," it said, providing no other details about him.



Police shot and wounded the knife-wielding suspect on Friday, arresting him minutes after an afternoon stabbing rampage at a busy market square in Turku in southwestern Finland.



Police on Saturday raised the number of injured in the attack from six to eight, adding that the injured included an Italian national and two Swedes. The other victims were all Finns.



Police also arrested five people in a Turku apartment overnight.



"There was a raid and we have now six suspects in custody, the main suspect and five others," detective superintendent Markus Laine of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) told AFP.



"We are investigating the role of these five other people but we are not sure yet if they had anything to do with (the attack)... We will interrogate them, after that we can tell you more. But they had been in contact with the main suspect," Laine said.



In June, Finland's intelligence and security agency Supo raised the country's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second notch on a four-tier scale.



It said at the time it saw an increased risk of an attack committed by the the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.



Flags at half-mast



Police have said they are collaborating with the Finnish Immigration Service and international authorities in their investigation.



"Several national authorities are participating in the investigation. We are also working together with our foreign colleagues to investigate the case," it said in a tweet.



The suspect is being treated in hospital in intensive care for a gunshot wound to the thigh.



The motive for the attack was not yet known.



"We haven't yet interrogated the main suspect because of his medical condition," Laine said.



Police also said they had impounded a white Fiat Ducato van suspected of being tied to Friday's stabbing, but provided no other information about how it was linked.



On Saturday, the interior ministry ordered flags to fly at half-mast across Finland in honour of the victims.



The Nordic country also raised its emergency readiness nationwide after the stabbing, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.



Media reports in Finland said police believed the suspect had picked his victims at random, but Laine could not confirm that.



Police have said it was likely the suspect acted alone, but said Friday they were looking for "other possible perpetrators."



In Turku, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto attended a vigil held in the Turku Cathedral on Friday evening in honour of the victims.
Moscow: The Islamic State jihadist group on Saturday claimed responsibility after a man stabbed seven people on the street in a Russian city before being shot dead by police, despite investigators saying it was probably not a terrorist attack.



"The executor of the stabbing operation in the city of Surgut in Russia is a soldier of the Islamic State," IS propaganda outlet Amaq said in a statement, after the jihadists also claimed responsibility for twin attacks in Spain that left 14 dead.



The attack also comes a day after a stabbing spree in Finland, which left two people dead and eight others injured and is being investigated as a terrorist attack, although the assailant's motive is unknown.



Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said a man in Surgut had "carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds". It said armed police called to the scene "liquidated" the attacker following the stabbing today morning.



Regional officials said seven people were taken to hospital, with the figure confirmed by investigators, who lowered an earlier toll of eight wounded.



A spokesman for regional police had earlier downplayed the possibility of a terrorist incident, telling Interfax news agency that the theory that the incident was "a terrorist (attack) is not the main one".



The Investigative Committee said it had established the attacker's identity, saying he was a local resident born in 1994, and that they were looking into "his possible psychiatric disorders".



Opposition leader Alexei Navalny questioned the authorities' treatment of the incident, writing on Twitter: "Someone runs round with a knife and tries to kill as many people as possible. What is that, if not a terrorist attack?"



Investigators have opened a criminal probe into attempted murder, not terrorism, with the Investigative Committee's chief Alexander Bastrykin taking the case under his personal control.



Regional police said officers fired warning shots at the scene before firing at the suspect, who was wearing a balaclava.



YouTube footage shown on Russia's Ren TV television showed a black-clad man lying on a pedestrian walkway with a policeman kneeling on his back as sirens wail.



Unconfirmed reports from the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid and other media identified the attacker as 19-year-old Artur Gadzhiyev, saying that his father is known to authorities for involvement in radical religious organisations and comes from the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan in the North Caucasus.



Regional officials said four of those stabbed remained in a serious condition while another was stable in hospital. Two have already been discharged.



Russian television reported that the stabbing victims are aged between 27 and 77 and include two women. State news agency TASS said the city's largest shopping centre was evacuated after the stabbings, citing its director, and police posted a video of the attack site, showing it to be a busy area with traffic and blocks of flats.



The city lies some 2,100 kilometres (1,330 miles) northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.
Karachi: Pakistani soldiers on Saturday carried the flag-draped coffin of German-born Catholic nun Ruth Pfau to a state funeral where she was honoured after devoting her life to eradicating leprosy in the country.



Widely known as Pakistan's Mother Teresa, Pfau died last week in the southern city of Karachi at age 87. She is to be buried in her adopted homeland.



Mourners paid their last respects as Pfau's coffin was carried to the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre that she founded before being taken on to St. Patrick's Cathedral for the official service.



Pfau had been living in Pakistan since 1960, and her leprosy centre in Karachi was Pakistan's first hospital dedicated to treating the disease. She later opened treatment centres across the country.



"It is a big loss to this hospital and to humanity. It is very hard to find a person like her in today's era," said Yasmeen Morris, a staff member at the centre.



"She led a very simple life and she loved humanity."



In 1996, the World Health Organisation declared that leprosy had been controlled in Pakistan, which led Pfau to the more challenging task of eliminating the disease.



Last year, the number of patients under treatment for leprosy fell to 531 from over 19,000 in the 1980s.
Barcelona: Spanish police on Saturday released the names of three Moroccans suspected of deadly terror attacks and who were shot dead overnight by security forces in the seaside resort of Cambrils.



Catalonia's regional police identified them as Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24. Police said they were searching for a fourth suspect, Younes Abouyaaqoub, aged 22.



Police on Friday stepped up their investigation into the twin vehicle attacks in Spain that left 14 dead and over 100 more injured in a bustling tourist area of Barcelona and the nearby seaside resort of Cambrils.



The attacks claimed victims and wounded from three dozen countries.



Of the 12 people police suspect of involvement in the attacks, five were shot dead by security forces in Cambrils and another four have been arrested, said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police during a television interview late Friday.



The three remaining suspects have been identified but have not been detained, he added.



Police suspect two of them may have died in a blast at a house in Alcanar, about 200 kilometres south of Barcelona, where the group is believed to have been preparing explosive devices.



Officers have found "the remains of two different people, we are working to prove that they are two of these three people who have been identified," said Trapero.



Police have not yet identified who drove the white van that sped into crowds on the busy Las Ramblas avenue in central Barcelona, leaving 13 people there dead, he added.



Earlier on Friday Trapero said the group was preparing "one or several attacks in Barcelona" with explosive devices but after the blast at the house in Alcanar they moved quickly to commit "more rudimentary" attacks.
LAKE MILLS | Tony Nelson knows a thing or two about environmental issues.

In February 2012, Nelson, the Clear Lake City Council's representative on the North Iowa Landfill Board, cast the deciding vote that prevented Colorado-based Creative Energy Systems from building a plant in Mason City that was to convert trash from the landfill to energy to be used by Alliant Energy. Opponents were vocal, expressing environmental concerns.

Today, Nelson has a personal and professional stake in the controversies concerning the building of CAFOs  concentrated animal feeding operations  most recently in Worth County where several CAFOs are planned. And he thinks CAFO opponents are over-reacting.

Nelson works for his family's business, American Resources LLC, in Lake Mills which he describes as a "pig equipment business," among other things. The company is a distributor of products for swine production and building confinements.

Nelson said anti-CAFO groups, such as the one active in Worth County, are not taking all aspects into consideration.

Modern technology is addressing many of the concerns of CAFO opponents, according to Nelson.

"Anti-groups like this jeopardize not only the producers who make their living from pigs but from companies all over Iowa like mine who supply the needed materials and equipment for construction companies, integrators and swine producers," said Nelson.

Worth County residents rally opposition to CAFOs KENSETT | There was an unspoken yet prevailing theme Thursday night at a meeting of Worth Co

He cited figures from the National Pork Board (Pork Checkoff) in Des Moines: over the past 50 years, pork producers are using 78 percent less land, 41 percent less water and have a 35 percent smaller carbon footprint (per unit basis, such as per pound produced).

"Technology has come a long way with making farming, or more specifically, pig production, more sustainable and environmentally friendly," said Nelson.

As an example, he mentioned a new solid separator his company distributes that separates the solid and liquid slurry (manure) to make application easier and to reduce costs, requiring 20 percent less land, eliminating odors and physical contaminates from being reapplied to the soil. It sells for $30,000.

"So pig producers are being targeted in the wrong way," said Nelson. "I hope our state, counties, communities and especially our legislators recognize that we rely upon agriculture to power Iowa's economy and provide jobs and income for a huge percentage of Iowa's residents."
Johannesburg: In a tit-for-tat dispute, Zimbabwe blocked flights by South Africas government-owned airline amid tensions over allegations that Zimbabwes first lady Grace Mugabe assaulted a young model at a luxury hotel in Johannesburg.



Zimbabwes action followed the grounding on Friday evening of an Air Zimbabwe flight at Johannesburgs main international airport after South African authorities concluded it was not in compliance with civil aviation rules.



Both countries said they imposed restrictions because planes did not have a foreign operators permit.

South Africas government, meanwhile, said it had not yet decided whether to grant the Zimbabwe governments request for diplomatic immunity for Grace Mugabe, who has not commented on

the allegations against her.



The outspoken wife of President Robert Mugabe has been criticised for a fiery temper and lavish shopping expeditions, but her rising political profile has some asking whether she is maneuvering to succeed her husband.



There was no sign of Grace Mugabe at a regional summit that Zimbabwe's 93-year-old president attended today in South Africas capital, Pretoria.



Twenty-year-old model Gabriella Engels has claimed that Grace Mugabe on Sunday night whipped her with an extension cord, cutting her forehead. Lawyers for Engels have threatened to go to court if immunity is granted.



Foreign ministry spokesman Nelson Kgwete said in a text message to The Associated Press that South Africa was still considering the request. Decision yet to be made, Kgwete said.



South African police have issued a red alert at borders to ensure Grace Mugabe doesn't leave undetected. Police also say their investigation is complete but needs a government decision on the immunity appeal.



State-owned South African Airways said Zimbabwe had placed restrictions on its operations. A flight from

Zimbabwe's capital to Johannesburg was unable to take off on Saturday morning, and another flight from Johannesburg to Harare was cancelled.



South African Airways said Zimbabwean authorities were demanding a foreign operator's permit, something that had never been required in the more than two decades the airline has been flying to and from neighboring Zimbabwe.



The airlines statement did not mention the allegations against Zimbabwe's first lady. David Chawota, head of the civil aviation authority in Zimbabwe, did not specify the issues requiring attention. The South Africans know what should be done in terms of processes, he said.



Similarly, the South African Civil Aviation Authority said an inspection conducted yesterday evening on an Air Zimbabwe Boeing 767-200 aircraft found it did not have a foreign operators permit, and the operator was instructed not to take off until such time that there is full compliance with aviation guidelines.



The scandal over Grace Mugabe is a sensitive issue for South Africa as it weighs the possible diplomatic fallout from Zimbabwe if it acts against the first lady  and the likely outrage at home if it grants immunity and allows her to leave.



South Africa is home to several million Zimbabweans, many of whom left their country for better opportunities, and the two countries have a close trade relationship. Some demonstrators protested today in Pretoria against Zimbabwes president and his wife, saying she should be prosecuted. Arrest Grace, please. Grace is a disgrace, some chanted.



It is not clear whether Grace Mugabe entered South Africa on a personal or diplomatic passport. Zimbabwe's state-owned newspaper reported last weekend that she was in South Africa for medical care, but she told police after the alleged assault that she was scheduled to attend the summit with her husband.
Barcelona: Suspects in Spain's twin terror attacks had been planning an even bigger assault than the deadly car rampages they carried out, police said, as distressing details emerged of families torn apart in the horror.



A 35-year-old Italian was among 14 killed, mowed down in front of his wife and young children in Barcelona when a driver rammed his van through crowds on the busy Las Ramblas boulevard on Thursday, before fleeing on foot.



Police said they shot dead five "suspected terrorists" who had knocked pedestrians down in the Catalan seaside resort of Cambrils in a second attack in the early hours of Friday, and arrested four others as Spain reeled from the deadly violence.



Catalonia's regional police identified three of the suspects who were killed as Moroccan nationals.



They were Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24.



Police said Friday they suspect 12 people of involvement in the attacks: the five who were killed, four who were arrested and three who have been identified but who remain at large.



Officials suspect that two of these three may have died in a blast at a house in the town of Alcanar, about 200 kilometres (140 miles) south of Barcelona on Wednesday evening.



Bigger plans



Initially treated as a random gas blast, police later linked the explosion to the Barcelona assault, believing occupants of the house were preparing a larger attack, possibly a vehicle bomb, with the use of gas canisters and slipped up.



Police removed dozens of gas canisters from the house, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.



"They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona, and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope," said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonia's police.



After the explosion the suspects quickly went on to commit "more rudimentary" attacks. These involved the vehicles ploughing into pedestrians in Barcelona and Cambrils, he added.



The Cambrils suspects had an axe and knives in the car as well as fake explosive belts stuck to their bodies, said police.



High 'level of coordination'



Both Spanish attacks followed the same modus operandi.



Drivers deliberately targeted pedestrians with their vehicles, the latest in a series of such assaults in Europe.



The Mediterranean resort of Nice in France was particularly hard hit on July 14, 2016, when a man rammed a truck into a crowd, killing 86 people.



Otso Iho of Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre said the Spanish assaults, which stretched out over two different cities, appeared to be "a much higher level of coordination than has been typically present in previous attacks."



It is also believed to be the first time IS has claimed an attack in Spain.



In a poignant moment Friday, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, King Felipe VI and the president of Catalonia -- where both attacks took place -- held a minute of silence in Barcelona. It was followed by the crowd applauding and shouting "not afraid".



But in a sign of the tensions sparked by the attacks, about 20 far-right militants tried to protest at the march. Some held up signs reading "No More Mosques" or "Refugees not welcome anymore".



Scuffles broke out between the far-right militants and the march participants.



Relatives separated



Details started to emerge Friday on the identity of victims, as did tragic stories of families ripped apart.



Witnesses in Barcelona described how the van pushed through the crowd, leaving bodies strewn along the boulevard as people fled for their lives, screaming in panic.



"We were on the city tour bus, we were 20 feet from the accident when it happened," said Alex Luque, a 19-year-old student from New York.



"We heard the van and the impact with people and then we saw people running."



Then just eight hours later attackers struck in the early hours of Friday in Cambrils. An Audi A3 car rammed into pedestrians, injuring six civilians and a police officer. One civilian, a woman, later died of her injuries.



The police shot dead the five attackers. They also said they had arrested four suspects -- three Moroccans and a Spaniard.



Police said they have not yet identified who drove the white van that sped into crowds in Barcelona.



There were some three dozen nationalities among the dead and injured, from countries including Algeria, Australia, China, France, Ireland, Peru and Venezuela, according to Spain's civil protection agency.



The Catalan government said seven victims of the attacks had been identified - five Spanish nationals, an Italian and a Portuguese.



Fifty-nine injured remained in hospital, including 15 who were in critical condition, the Catalan interior ministry said.



Memories of Madrid 2004



The Spanish government must now decide whether to raise the terror threat level from four to five (the maximum) during the height of the tourist season.



Spain, the world's third most popular tourism destination with the industry accounting for 11 percent of the country's economy, had until now been spared in the recent wave of extremist attacks that have rocked nearby France, Belgium and Germany.



It had even seen a surge in tourists as visitors fled other restive sunshine destinations such as Tunisia and Egypt.



But it is no stranger to jihadist attacks.



In March 2004, it was hit by what is still Europe's deadliest, when bombs on commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people in an attack claimed by Al Qaeda-inspired extremists.



Spain has also had to deal with a decades-long campaign of violence waged by Basque separatist group ETA, which only declared a ceasefire in 2011.
Madrid: The terror cell behind Spain's deadly twin attacks has been "dismantled", Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said on Saturday, although local authorities took a more cautious tone.



"The cell has been completely dismantled," he told reporters, speaking of the group that is believed to have consisted of at least 12 young men, many of them Moroccan, some teenagers.



But Joaquim Forn, in charge of interior matters in the northeastern region of Catalonia where the attacks took place, downplayed Zoido's comments.



"We can't say the investigation is finished until we locate or detain all those who we think form part of this terror cell," he told reporters.



Police are still hunting for 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub without confirming reports he was the driver who smashed a van into people on Barcelona's busy Las Ramblas boulevard on Thursday.



Thirteen people died and scores more were injured in scenes of horror witnessed by terrified friends and relatives.



Investigators have been working against the clock to unravel the terror cell behind the Barcelona rampage and a second ramming attack with a car in the seaside town of Cambrils early yesterday, which left another person dead and six injured.
Beijing: Life may be stranger than fiction for an award-winning Chinese crime writer who has been arrested in connection with a quadruple-homicide that took place more than two decades ago.



For 22 years, police in eastern Zhejiang province tried to crack the cold case of how a family ended up dead in the guesthouse they ran.



They filled stacks upon stacks of notepads with possible suspects and leads, only to learn earlier this month that the answer may have been hiding in plain sight at the local bookstore.



According to a police statement, Liu Yongbiao, a 53-year-old author, was arrested last week at his home in neighbouring Anhui province along with a villager with the surname Wang.



They have been charged with and confessed to the murders.



Authorities told The Paper, a Chinese publication, that Liu remarked as he was being handcuffed: "I've been waiting for you here all this time."



Liu, who was a member of the prestigious Communist Party-led China Writers Association, worked with one of the country's largest publishing houses and had a novel turned into a television series.



In the preface to his novel The Guilty Secret, according to The Paper, the writer revealed that he was working on a sequel starring a wordsmith who commits a series of murders but is never caught.



The book's planned title was The Beautiful Writer Who Killed.



Breakthrough



The gruesome nature of Liu's own alleged crime would have provided ample fodder for his story.



On the evening of November 29, 1995, police said, two men checked into a guesthouse in Huzhou, a picturesque city on the Yangtze Delta, with the intention of executing a robbery.



They ended up bludgeoning to death the couple that owned the guesthouse and their grandson as well as another guest.



With authorities lacking advanced forensic technology at the time, they had just one thing to go on: the guesthouse staff's recollection that the two men spoke in heavy Anhui accents.



Then, nearly 22 years later this August, police said they made a "breakthrough" in part due to DNA testing, which pointed them to Liu and Wang.



At the time of Liu's arrest, he was editing a student paper and running a literature course, Chinese media reported.



Liu's students told the Beijing News that he never talked about his personal life.



Fang Ming, whom Liu tutored in writing from the sixth grade to the eighth, remembered his teacher as a solemn man.



"(Liu) was a very serious person," Fang said.



"He rarely smiled and often criticised his students. Though he never raised his voice, he always wore his disappointment on his face."



Liu described himself as a "man of the countryside," Chinese media reported, having grown up poor in a village where his education ended after high school.



One of the officers who arrested Liu told The Paper that he handed him a letter addressed to his wife.



"I've been waiting for this day for the last 20 years," the letter said.



"Today there is finally a conclusion. I can finally be free from the mental torment I've endured for so long."
Words matter.

If you manage to put them in the right order at the right time, you can nudge the world a little.

Politicians are often remembered for something they said, for better or worse.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"...

"Ask not what your country can do for you..."

"I am not a crook..."

"Read my lips -- no new taxes..."

"It depends on what your definition of 'is' is..."

And, more recently, "I'm the only one who can fix it..."

Words matter.

In his Gettsyburg Address, President Lincoln said, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here..." and yet, back in my school days, every grade school kid was required to memorize his entire speech.

In my newspaper career, I have only been summoned to court once concerning something I wrote  and it was due to one word in one article.

The story in question had been written years earlier and involved a fatal accident. I had interviewed the fiance of the victim. Now there was a court dispute involving the accident victim's estate and who was entitled to what.

There was a question as to whether the victim's significant other was his common-law wife or his fiancee. A lawyer wanted to know if the woman I had talked to years ago, just after the accident, had identified herself as his fiancee or if someone else had identified her as that. A lot of money was at stake.

I told the lawyer I couldn't remember how I came to call the woman his fiancee. The only thing I knew for sure was I didn't make it up. I was never called to testify, and I have no idea how the case was settled.

Words matter. Even one word sometimes.

One of my hobbies over the years is to write down phrases I have heard that have had special meaning to me. I have more than 200 of them now, in a computer file.

I think it may have started in the 1970s when L.B. Henry, a crusty old Louisiana politician, talked about the importance of picking your battles and knowing when to speak up.

"The difference between salad and garbage is timing," he said.

More recently, a fellow was talking about how actions have consequences. "If you cook with gunpowder, your lunch will explode," he said. You can apply that to all sorts of situations, nationally and locally.

Last week, I was at a function in which retired Vice Admiral Norman Ray was describing a succinct way of sizing up a situation. "What...So what...and Now What?" he said.

Perhaps in the national political climate we find ourselves in, it might be fitting to refer back to Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address:

"Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

Words matter.
In 1997, my 9-year-old daughter met Miep Gies, the Gentile friend who helped hide Anne Frank and her family in the small attic apartment in Amsterdam until they were caught and murdered by the Nazis.

This was a momentous event in our family.

Gies was in Cleveland to deliver an evening speech. I interviewed her earlier in the day. When she found out I had a young daughter, she asked whether she could meet her, so I brought Caitlin to her speech that evening.

My daughter was mesmerized by this tiny but mighty hero, and the next day she asked to read Anne Franks diary. An ever-hovering single mom, I was worried that she was too young. I asked her teacher, who assured me that Cait could handle the harrowing account of the bright, idealistic girl whose only crime was to be Jewish in a Nazi-occupied country.

We are not Jewish, but we have many Jewish friends, including three generations of a family who, for years, included Cait and me for Passover. Gloria and Lawrence were the grandparents, and Cait always felt like one of their beloved grandchildren at the table, which tells you everything you need to know about this wonderful family.

For weeks, Cait pored over Anne Franks diary. One evening, shortly before bedtime, she ran into my bedroom, her hair still wet from her shower, her eyes wide with fear.

We would hide Gloria and Laurie, she said. We would hide them, wouldnt we?

When I looked at her quizzically, she raised her voice. From the Nazis, Mom. We would hide them from the Nazis if we knew them back then?

I pulled her close. Of course we would.

And Jeff and Joan and Peter and Lia, too? she said. Even though we could be killed, right?

Yes, I whispered, kissing the top of her head, trying to force the horror from my mind.

I havent thought of that moment for years. Im sure  I hope  I dont need to tell anyone why Im remembering it now.

Last week, white supremacists descended upon Charlottesville. They claimed to be protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. But if their only goal was to preserve this glorification of the slave-owning South, they wouldnt have worn swastikas and repeatedly yelled blood and soil  the English translation of the Nazis German phrase Blut und Boden  and Jews will not replace us.

They also wouldnt have targeted Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville during morning services. The temples president, Alan Zimmerman, described in a blog post what happened last Saturday morning. An excerpt:

I stood outside our synagogue with the armed security guard we hired after the police department refused to provide us with an officer. ...

For half an hour, three men dressed in fatigues and armed with semi-automatic rifles stood across the street from the temple. Had they tried to enter, I dont know what I could have done to stop them, but I couldnt take my eyes off them, either. Perhaps the presence of our armed guard deterred them. Perhaps their presence was just a coincidence, and Im paranoid. I dont know.

Several times, parades of Nazis passed our building, shouting, Theres the synagogue! followed by chants of Seig Heil and other anti-Semitic language. Some carried flags with swastikas and other Nazi symbols. ...

Later, I noticed that the man accused in the automobile terror attack wore the same polo shirt as the man who kept walking by our synagogue; apparently its the uniform of a white supremacist group. Even now, that gives me a chill.

When services ended, my heart broke as I advised congregants that it would be safer to leave the temple through the back entrance rather than through the front, and to please go in groups.

This is 2017 in the United States of America.

In 1997, my daughter asked whether we would protect Gloria and Laurie, Jeff and Joan, Lia and Peter. Today when I think about her question, I see their faces and so many more: Jill, Jeff, Benjamin, Steve, Joe, Pam, Debbie, Ron, Dahlia, Lana, Jane, Gail and Amy. The list goes on and on.

In 2017, the president of the United States has sided with the white supremacists who chanted racist and Nazi slogans.

The question looms for all of us as Americans: What will we do to counter the racism and bigotry of this president?

History tells us what the answer must be.

Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and professional in residence at Kent State Universitys school of journalism. Email her at con.schultz@yahoo.com.
Lost Tribe, MAC collaborate for Carnival 2018

Seven is representative of Tchaikovskys ballet Swan Lake, as well as the Magnificent Seven buildings around the Queens Park Savannah. Its costumes are also inspired by poui trees in full bloom, and the story of seven sisters and their encounter with a wandering young man who becomes their guest.

The costumes are vibrant with a fairy-tale feel to them and are expected to come to life under the hands of MACs director of makeup artistry in New York, Romero Jennings.

Jennings was born in Jamaica and although he grew up in New York, he still calls himself an island boy. With over 30 years of experience in the field, he is accomplished in the world of makeup artistry and has done looks for three international magazine covers, including Harpers Bazaar in Spanish and LOfficiel, Ukraine.

Working with LTCBs theme, Jennings revealed, was like a makeup artists dream come true! The costumes are graphic, colourful, filled with sparkle and dimension, he said. Creating the looks were so satisfying as an artist.

Since I am an island boy born in Jamaica, I imagined beautiful, bright fabrics against many different skin tones! It really is a dream partnership with Lost Tribe. Although it is his first time working with a Carnival band, Jennings is not daunted. The partnership with Lost Tribe was perfect, I am counting on working together with the band and even using some of its costumes in upcoming photo shoots and presentations. A photo shoot has already been done at the MAC location in Trinidad.

Having the freedom to interpret the looks since he was able to consider all aspects of island life when designing them, Jennings went on to describe the surreal process.

As my brain was thinking, I could smell and taste the food (doubles), feel the sun and ocean air. It was so unreal, I could taste the island.

No, I have never been to Trinidad before this trip but I knew that it would be like home. The island and people are amazing! It was bigger and more dynamic than I thought. Trinidad has a laid-back vibe but a fast, inviting riddim. He explained that customers will be able to recreate his looks with the aid of the face charts they have produced.

I had Christa Wong, a NYC based makeup artist Face Chart Pro create the polished charts.

We used them for the band launch and will use them as a guide for customers to get the same looks with ease.

Face charts really are an art form, Jennings said.

When asked about his favourite look, Jennings found it difficult to choose one because he loved so many of them.

However, he tentatively settled on Fleur, because the colours are delicious and the engineering creates a cloud of floating fabric that looks effortless but effective. Jennings described his work with the Lost Tribe team as magical and said he would not change a thing they did on launch night.

I am so proud of the MAC Travel Retail Caribbean team. He added, I know as a leader that you are as good as your team and the team is talented and with a high level of artistry skills. They are the heroes and I really love and appreciate working with them. Jennings was impacted personally by the experience.

It reminds me of where I come from and to always remember to stop and smell the roses, he said. I realise how much I missed the magic of the Caribbean.

 It is electric but calming at the same time. Island peeps, bredrin, have a drive and determination to never give up and always strive for the best but look for the beauty within.
Judge agrees COP election must be postponed

A High Court judge in San Fernando yesterday agreed that the elections should be postponed.

This, after Justice Ricky Rahim began hearing an injunction filed by a COP member on Thursday against the holding of the elections, on the grounds that there was no national executive committee in the party due to the number of resignations that took place this week.

Interim political leader Dr Anirudh Mahabir, general secretary Clyde Weatherhead and deputy political leader Lorraine Pouchet all resigned on Tuesday.

The contenders for the political leader post in the elections are Nicole Dyer-Griffith, who was present in court, former PP government minister Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan and the partys former chairman, Sharon Gopaul- McNicols.

Already engaging the High Court is a lawsuit filed by the COP member Kirt Francis on August 7, against Dyer- Griffiths being fit to contest the post due to her not being a member in good standing, having rejoined the party in February. The hearing of that lawsuit has not yet been assigned to a judge.

At yesterdays hearing, Justice Rahim urged attorney Lester Chariah for Francis; attorney Christian Chandler representing Dyer-Griffith and attorneys David Mark Kidney and Wayne Beharry representing chairman Jamieson Bahadur to discuss the issue with a view to arriving at an amicable resolution.

The injunction was filed against Bahadur but Christians appearance with Dyer-Griffith yesterday, was for seeking the courts permission to have her joined as an interested party to the proceedings.

This was granted.

The case was stood down for the attorneys to talk and all except for Chandler consented to postpone the elections.

Justice Rahim said the court must ask the objective question of whether the risk of injustice to Dyer-Griffith is greater than the claimant who, on affidavit, pleaded that he represented 42,000 COP members.

Rahim said that the issues raised in the substantive lawsuit was of greater interest to the general membership of the party than any individual claim to political office.

The claim lies with ensuring the constitution of the party is fulfilled and that office holders are legitimately accepted, Rahim said.

The court considers the hardships of interested third party (Dyer- Griffith) and is not persuaded that these are greater than the injustice of the claimants. He went on to state that all but one member of the election committee had resigned which rendered the managing of an election impossible.

Dyer-Griffiths attorney did not sign the order which mandates that the election for political leader of the COP is hereby postponed.

The order further states that the national executive of the COP will meet on or before September 4 and that the national executive shall consider the applications for membership of the 35 members who resigned.
Coporate TT rallies behind Haleema

Although the contributors, including the Love for All Foundation, Pizza Boys, various mosques, close friends and family, did not want to disclose the amount they individually gave, Haleema can now leave the country to seek her much needed procedure scheduled for September 4.

Haleema was diagnosed with Beta Thalassemia Major, a blood disorder, and was denied funding by the Childrens Life Fund Authority (CLFA) on the grounds that her application contains little evidence of a definitive diagnosis of Beta Thalassemia Major...and furthermore it appears that the requisite testing for the donor has not been carried out, both of which may be required before the course of treatment can be appropriately selected. The CLFA also said, Thalassemia is not considered to be a life-threatening illness as required by Section 19 (e) of the Act. The board said its clinical assessments were based on other patients with the same medical condition as further confirmed by the clinical meeting with consultant paediatricians and a haematologist on April 28 where it was agreed that Thalassemia is not a life-threatening illness and, with proper management, life expectancy extends well into adulthood. Fighting to hold back tears, Haleemas mother Kristal told Newsday, I will like to thank the corporate sector which has rallied around Haleema. I will like to thank each and everyone who has contributed to my daughter in getting the money for her surgery. I feel so happy and I thank everyone for their support and prayers. Kristal was speaking moments after the family was yesterday presented with a cheque from businessman Stefan Chin, son of MovieTowne owner Derek Chin, in the sum of $20,000.

Today was the happiest day of my life after a few days of ups and downs. Today I was lifted up with so much that I know for sure now she will get the surgery. I have been praying for this. Kristal said they are leaving on August 31 to reach India on September 4 and would be there for three months.

The first month, doctors will do the treatment and surgery and they will take the two months to monitor her after the surgery. Haleema lives at Mohess Road, Penal with her mother and father Hamil Mohammed and two siblings.

Chin called on corporate citizens to help those in need. The cheque presentation took place at MovieTowne, Invaders Bay, Port of Spain. Chin said after learning about the familys plight, he saw it fitting to get on board to help.

When I saw this on the television I took an interest in it because I realised it was somebody in need, and if you have the ability to help why not help? I think it is a responsibility of corporate citizens to help and once corporate citizens could help they should. It will help the country all around. Meanwhile, attorney Gerald Ramdeen said it has been a very long and hard journey for the family. Last Tuesday he petitioned the High Court in San Fernando to compel the CLFA to respond to Haleemas application. On Wednesday the CLFA announced its decision to deny the funding.

Ramdeen said the family sees no use in appealing the matter since they have managed to raise the money.

I dont think they want to go through the emotional trauma of going to court, Ramdeen said.

They had done very well, as much as $300,000, and by yesterday afternoon they were about $100,000 short. Between yesterday (Thursday) and this morning (Friday) they have been able to raise the $100,000. He said with all the bad news every day, there were still very good people who look out for those in need.

That goes to show, this is a family who did all they can to save the life of their daughter and I am very pleased today to say that Trinidad and Tobago has contributed to be able to save Haleemas life.
PORTLAND, Ore., Aug. 18, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Erickson Incorporated, a leading global aerial firefighting company for more than 30 years, owns the worlds largest S-64 Aircrane fleet, and the Aircrane Helitanker is recognized throughout the industry as one of the most effective and efficient firefighting aircraft in the world. Northern Hemisphere fires are experiencing above average conditions, and what follows is an outline of Ericksons current jobs. In late fall, the Aircranes are mobilized to the Southern Hemisphere to fight fires south of the equator.



Andy Mills, Interim CEO and president said, We have an outstanding reputation for having some of the best pilots and maintenance crews in firefighting. When property is at risk and a wildfire is out of control, we are called in to help control the situation. Ericksons Aircranes have 2,650 gallon hydrotanks and a sea snorkel that helps provide outstanding capabilities for fire authorities in both initial attack of fast moving fires and advanced structure protection.

NORTH AMERICA

British Columbia Canada: Erickson currently has multiple Aircrane Helitankers assisting fire authorities across British Columbia as they battle several large-scale fires that have consumed vast forested areas and released smoke visible all along the West Coast of North America.

California: Erickson currently has one Aircrane under contract with Los Angeles County, one Aircrane with Los Angeles City, one with San Diego Gas and Electric, and one under contract with CalFire in Santa Rosa, CA for initial attack and rapid response to the extreme fire conditions across California. Additional Aircranes are available to the U.S. Forest Service for western U.S. wildfires.

EUROPE

Greece: Erickson currently has three Aircrane Helitankers under contract to provide fire protection throughout Greece and are based in the cities of Tatoi, Elefsina and Andravida, Greece.

Turkey: Erickson currently has one Aircrane under contract in Istanbul, Turkey for year-around fire protection and emergency services response for natural disasters. Erickson has worked with the Turkish authorities for more than three years.

AUSTRALIA

The National Aerial Firefighting Centre (NAFC) has extended a contract with Erickson for 2017-2018, through Australian partner Kestrel Aviation, for six S-64 Aircrane helicopters to support firefighting efforts across the country. Its expected that Erickson will provide services beginning in early October, which is the start of fire season in that part of the southern hemisphere. Earlier this year, six Aircranes fought fires in Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia.

About the S-64 Aircrane

Erickson provides the S-64 Helitanker with a 2,650 gallon tank capable of snorkeling or scooping fresh or salt water. It has internal foam mixing capabilities and provides water or retardant dispensation utilizing eight coverage levels. The aircraft can be configured with a water cannon for high rise and structure protection. The S-64 E & F model is a twin turbine helicopter certified in Standard Category and designed exclusively for cargo carriage and external load. The F model, the larger of the two has a maximum gross weight of 47,000 lbs., a fuselage length of 88.6 feet and a rotor disk diameter of 72 feet, and a combined horsepower rating of 9,600 SHP.

As populations and development expand, aerial firefighting over residential properties and structures becomes a more crucial part of the equation. Ericksons S-64 not only excels at supporting ground fire fighters in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), but the aircraft is capable of dipping for water in areas a fixed wing cannot access and it is able to come in slower and lower for precision placement of the water drop on and around residential properties and structures.

About Erickson

Erickson is a leading global provider of aviation services and operates, maintains and manufactures utility aircraft to safely transport and place people and cargo around the world. The Company is self-reliant, multifaceted and operates in remote locations under challenging conditions specializing in Global Defense and Security, Manufacturing and MRO, and Commercial Aviation Services (comprised of firefighting, HVAC, transmission line, construction, timber harvesting, oil and gas and specialty lift). With roots dating back to 1960, Erickson operates a fleet of over 50 aircraft, is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, USA, and operates in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific, and Australia. For more information, please visit our website at www.ericksoninc.com.
CARPHA: Red eye on the rise

In a release, Dr Virginia Asin-Oostburg, director, Surveillance, Disease Prevention and Control urged people to take the necessary precautions to prevent and reduce the spread of this illness. CARPHA said conjunctivitis referred to inflammation of the membrane covering the whites of the eyes and the inside of the eyelids. The congestion of blood vessels in this membrane gives rise to a reddened appearance and explains the more common names red eye or pink eye. The most common causes of conjunctivitis are viruses, bacteria, and allergens. Viral and bacterial conjunctivitis are very contagious and can spread easily from person to person.

Eye symptoms can include, redness, irritation, itchiness, production of excessive tears, clear or yellow discharge that may make the eyelids stick together, especially on mornings, and swelling of the eye lids.

CARPHA advised members of the public to practice good hygiene. They advised people to avoid close contact with those with conjunctival symptoms, keep unwashed hands away from face and eyes. Also avoid sharing personal items such as pillows, wash cloths, towels, eye drops, eye makeup, face makeup, makeup brushes, contact lenses and, contact lens containers, or eyeglasses and disinfect frequently- touched surfaces in common areas, (for example doorknobs, counter-tops in shared spaces).

When contacted Dr Kaiawa Clarke, medical doctor in the ophthalmology department at the Port of Spain General Hospital, said he was aware of the release from CARPHA and indicated that he had not seen an increase of people at the hospital with conjunctivitis.

I cannot really say I have seen an increase in conjunctivitis patients coming in Port-of-Spain at least right now. Usually when it is in season three or four people will come in per day and I cant remember when last I saw a conjunctivitis patient. Clarke said with conjunctivitis, the main thing to reduce the spread of it, is hygiene because it is very infectious.

He said there was a need to do a lot of hand washing, and washing of pillows to really reduce the risk, Once you get it you just have to run its course, and there is no real treatment to stop it. He continued, Some people can have conjunctivitis for a week, or three weeks and if it is a complicated viral conjunctivitis, you can actually have problems for a couple of months afterwards.

But the main thing is hygiene, it is the take home message if you want to stop the spread of conjunctivitis.
Medical Assoc PRO: Doctors must update skills

It is both in the interest of the doctor and the patient he said. In an interview with Newsday on Wednesday, Trinidade who is a ear, nose and throat surgeon, said that the objective of continuous medical education is to update doctors on current medical practice or what is currently accepted as best medical practice. However, he said doctors can update their knowledge by reading journals or listening to experts in various specialities in the field of medicine.

He said while this is to be encouraged, medical boards must also take the responsibility to encourage and develop programmes which promote continuous medical education.

Trinidade said, however, while in our local jurisdiction continuous medical education is voluntary, it is compulsory in other parts of the world.

We are one of the few territories in which it is not mandatory for doctors to engage in continuous medical education, he said.

Asked why some doctors are not taking the initiative, Trinidade said while he could not speak for them, it could be that they are contented with their medical knowledge.

You would think that doctors would want to know the best way to treat their patients. Trinidade said the TTMA offers sessions on a monthly basis at the associations branches in north, central, south, Tobago and the newly-opened eastern branch.

Continuous medical education certificates that doctors receive after the sessions are endorsed by the American Academy of Continuous Education.
Families pick up pieces after storm

Debris was also reported swirling all around for only a few minutes, residents recalled. When it ended, galvanised sheets were hanging off electrical lines and the supply went in the Aripero, Rousillac area. It was a nightmare I would never forget, said mother of six Lena Dyer,55. Dyer continued, I am speaking and my pores are raising. It only last for a short while, but I would never forget those few minutes, said Dyer. She said at the time, she was preparing a meal in her kitchen when her roof was ripped off her house. Just like that, my roof went off and rain started to pour inside, most of our appliances were damaged. Four years I have been living here and I have never experienced something like this,she said. Another resident Charmine John- Williams of Iris Avenue said she felt as though she was reliving the moments of 2015, the year another storm hit the community.

John-Williams said that she now relives the nightmare as her roof was damaged for a second time.

In 2015 I did not get any help, so I really hope to get help this time around, John-Williams.

Chairman of the Siparia Regional Corporation Dr Glenn Ramadharsingh, together with other officials, met with affected residents to bring relief. Yesterday, officials from the Self Help Commission of the Community Development Ministry went to the community to meet with residents. Ag Chief Executive Officer Janice Phillip said her team visited the affected homes delivering application forms to the residents. She said that once the forms are filled out and submitted to Self Help, the damage would be assessed and residents could receive relief within a seven- day period. She explained that the affected residents would be given a purchase order to be taken to a hardware to be supplied with building materials.

Phillip was also accompanied by chairman Edgar Zephyrine and other officials. Tarpaulins and mattresses were also delivered to the homes of affected residents by officials from the Siparia Regional Corporation.
Zanu-PF Politburo member Cde George Peter Rutanhire has died.



Cde Rutanhire succumbed to renal failure at Karanda Hospital in Mt Darwin early yesterday. Mashonaland Central Provincial Affairs Minister Advocate Martin Dinha confirmed the death.

On behalf of Mashonaland Central, I wish to convey my deepest condolences and sorrow to the Rutanhire family and the whole family of Zimbabwe over the untimely death of this gallant son of the soil, said Adv Dinha.



His heroism ad selfless dedication to the liberation of Zimbabwe is illustrious. At one point, he and his wife saved me from imminent death after some people had conspired to poison me at a function in Mt Darwin. I am hurt by Cde Rutanhires death.



Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association provincial chairman (Mashonaland Central) Cde Sam Parirenyatwa said they would request national hero status for the veteran of the Second Chimurenga that led to Zimbabwes Independence in 1980.



We have requested the partys Politburo to confer national hero status on Cde Rutanhire. Our application will be in the Politburo office by (Sunday) morning.



We are, however, disturbed that this gallant fighter was taken to hospital in an old truck, which broke down along the way and had to get to hospital in a scotchcart.



Born Jackson Musanhu, Cde Rutanhire joined the Second Chimurenga in the early 1970s after encountering Zanla fighters at St Alberts Mission where he was a catechist.

He and his wife left for Mapapai Base, Mozambique, in 1972 after having been sold out to

Rhodesian operatives.



Cde Rutanhire went for military training in Tanzania later that year, becoming one of the foremost prosecutors of the armed struggle.



He was among the signatories to the famous Mgagao Declaration, which unequivocally pronounced President Mugabe leader of Zanu.



After Independence, Cde Rutanhire held several posts in Government and Zanu-PF, and was elevated to the Politburo in 2010, a position he held until the time of his death.



He was head of the Chitepo Ideological College, and chair of the Fallen Heroes Trust of Zimbabwe, which  among other things  has been at the forefront of identifying mass graves of people butchered by the colonial regime prior to Independence. Sunday Mail
First Lady Grace Mugabes philanthropy put Zimbabwe on the regional map in South Africa yesterday when a beneficiary of her scholarship scooped third prize in the Sadc Essay Writing Competition.



Prudence Zvikomborero Mavura won first prize as an Ordinary Level student in 2016, and was back in the spotlight this year, walking away with a certificate and prize money.

Prudence got a scholarship from Amai Mugabe to study at Kriste Mambo High School after scooping nine As at O-level.



Though she is doing Pure Mathematics, Statistics, Economics and Accounts, her passion for writing has not died.



On the sidelines of the 37th Sadc Heads of State and Government Summit here yesterday, she said: I would like to thank Amai Mugabe for awarding me the scholarship to pursue my A-Level studies at Kriste Mambo.



I am just repaying the confidence she had in me. I would also like to thank my mentor at Murambinda B Secondary School, Mr Joseph Kufa, for encouraging me to enter this years competition. My mother was also instrumental in my entering of this years competition. She is my pillar of strength, and I just want to thank her for being there for me.



This years topic was Harnessing sustainable energy for regional economic development. I think this was a very important topic because Sadc needs to invest heavily in the energy sector.



She has been in the competitions top three for three years running.



Prudence said: I want to encourage my peers to aim high in everything they do. Gone are the days when girls were looked down upon. We should take advantage of the equal opportunities being availed to us to achieve more.



My desire is to transform what I have been writing about into practical action. Resources are not permitting, but my desire is to embark on a sustainable energy project that will benefit communities, especially the disadvantaged ones.. Sunday Mail
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SAN DIEGO, Aug. 18, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Max Sound Corporation (MAXD) (OTC PINK:MAXD) provides the following update of expanded agenda to its Coalition against Google, Inc.



On June 27, 2017 the European Commission (EC) adopted a Prohibition Decision (a guilty verdict) in the Google Search Case. Google was fined a record 2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) and given 90 days to mend its ways. This significant fine by the EC significantly impacted Google Inc.s earnings and it continues to pursue additional anti-trust claims against them.

The Competition Complaint filed with the EC was initiated by business owners Adam and Shivaun Raff who were harmed by Googles fraudulent practices and took action. Here is a definitive timeline of the events leading up to the landmark fine above which represents a significant victory for victims and consumers alike:

http://www.foundem.co.uk/Foundem_Google_Timeline.pdf

Although the record-breaking 2.42 billion fine is likely to dominate the headlines, the prohibition of Googles immensely harmful search manipulation practices is far more important. There cant have been many Competition cases where the stakes for consumers, businesses, and innovation were any higher. said Shivaun Raff, CEO and Co-Founder of Foundem, the lead Complainant in the European Commissions Google Search case. The Google Search case is not about Googles comparison shopping service; it is about Googles core search results and the illegal practices Google uses to manipulate them.

The Raffs are Co-Founders of Foundem and SearchNeutrality.org and the matters covered on these sites should be of great interest to any other victims of Googles bad practices who previously thought they were alone in their battles against Google, said John Blaisure, Max Sound's CEO.

Another group taking on Google in the European Union, in concert with the Coalitions agenda, is Grip (Google Redress & Integrity Platform) http://www.grip.eu/.

GRIP is a new initiative to evaluate the potential damage claims arising from Googles anticompetitive behavior. GRIP believes that Googles alleged anti-competitive behavior has potential to prevent and/or reduce competition in several technology markets, harm consumers and dynamic small companies, and stifle innovation. We believe that the ultimate number of businesses and individuals potentially affected could be significant. GRIP will work with you to better understand whether you or your business have been harmed by Googles anticompetitive business practices and, if appropriate, refer you to legal practitioners who will provide you with expert and realistic advice, which will reflect your individual needs and circumstances.

Regular people, inventors and businesses harmed by Google from all around the world are finally gathering together to be heard and vindicated, said Mr. Blaisure. The Coalition represents a major movement to expose the Internet giant and let courts world-wide know that laws, capitalism and freedom cant be hidden by a company that has built its fortunes stealing from the hard working innovators, honest business owners and trusting consumers of the world. In the upcoming weeks we plan to announce key players in the Coalition.

As previously mentioned, on July 25, 2017 Law firm Buether Joe & Carpenter LLC filed a Fourth Amended Complaint against Defendants Google, Inc., Flux Factory, Inc., Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sebastian Thrun, Eric "Astro" Teller, et al. The fourth amended filing is a Motion for Leave to add Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) pursuant to 18 U.S.C.  1961, et seq. and on August 9, 2017 it was announced that Max Sound Corp. would lead the newly formed Coalition of individuals and businesses harmed by Google, Inc. and/or Alphabet, Inc. Since that time, MAXD has been in talks with several organizations helping the Company finalize its mission and goals that will go forward with the Coalition's agenda.

RICO claim and the Coalition links:

http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/max-sound-amended-filing-against-google-adds-racketeering-influenced-corrupt-organization-otc-pink-maxd-2227796.htm Download the filing from the court here: Amended Complaint or download entire motion from BJC here: Share File

https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/08/09/1082613/0/en/Max-Sound-Commits-To-Lead-Anti-Google-Coalition.html

About Max Sound Corporation: As creators of the acclaimed MAX-D HD Audio, Max Sound can provide a better solution for Audio, Video and Data transmissions. Max Sound Corporation is the company that brings forth technologies for the betterment of our world, including being co-owners of the Optimized Data Transmission Technology patent portfolio. Max Sound, MAXD and MAX-D Audio Perfected and HD Audio are registered trademarks. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. To learn more about the MAX-D Technology, please visit http://maxd.audio.

Max Sound Representation:

G. Robert Blakey: George Robert Blakey is an American attorney and law professor. He is best known for his work in connection with drafting the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and for scholarship on that subject.

Buether Joe & Carpenter: Buether Joe & Carpenter, LLC is an intellectual property and commercial litigation boutique law firm focusing on patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, and unfair competition lawsuits, as well as antitrust, contract and other business disputes for both plaintiffs and defendants. BJC offers clients the expertise of attorneys with decades of experience in handling complex litigation in an effective and efficient manner. For more information, visit www.bjciplaw.com.

Christian, Smith & Jewell: Christian, Smith & Jewell (CSJ) stands out as a premier law firm in the Houston legal community. CSJ takes pride in handling tough cases, both large and small in state and federal courts across the United States and abroad. CSJ excels in all types of civil litigation, including shareholder and partnership disputes, stock fraud, commercial, oil and gas, real estate, lender liability/debtor litigation, loan work outs, director's liability litigation/arbitration, structured settlements, construction law, personal injury, and international arbitration/litigation. For more information, visit www.csj-law.com

SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT UNDER THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995: Statements in this press release which are not purely historical, including statements regarding Max Sound's intentions, beliefs, expectations, representations, projections, plans or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the risks associated with the effect of changing economic conditions, trends in the products markets, variations in the company's cash flow or adequacy of capital resources, market acceptance risks, technical development risks, and other risk factors. The company cautions investors not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. Max Sound disclaims any obligation and does not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements in this press release. Expanded and historical information is made available to the public by Max Sound Corporation and its Affiliates on its website http://maxd.audio or at http://www.sec.gov.
In 1907, Germans cut the head off a man in Africa and sent it, with hundreds of others, to Germany as part of research to establish white superiority. The man, Cornelius Fredericks, was a legendary Nama fighter who'd led a rebellion against occupying German forces in Namibia, and he was killed at a concentration camp on Shark Islandalong with thousands of others. Historians call it the first genocide of the 20th century, one that claimed at least 60,000 and wiped or forced out 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama, reports the Wall Street Journal. Now, Namibia wants official recognition of genocide, a formal apology, and reparations. After a year of negotiating, Berlin says it will agree to the first two and even pay some compensation, but the details are still being ironed out.

Meanwhile, the world watches "very closely," says Germany's ambassador to Namibia. Nations such as Belgium, France, and Britain have expressed sorrow or regret over colonial abuses, assassinations, and slave trades, but have not formally apologized or offered reparations. President Obama also fell short of apologizing when he visited Hiroshima last year to pay homage to the victims of the atomic bomb. Japan, for its part, apologized and paid $9 million in 2015 to surviving South Korean "comfort women" who were enslaved by the Japanese military. How Germany handles its slaughter of Africans more than 100 years ago could set an example to other governments facing similarly dark pasts. Click for the full story, in which Germany says it admits to genocide in a "historical" context, not a legal one, because it didn't exist as an international crime at the time. (Read more genocide stories.)
The hunt is on for frozen tusks from the extinct woolly mammoth, and NPR reports that it's making people rich in otherwise poor regions of Siberia. But it's also taking a devastating toll on the landscape, according to a photographer who embedded with hunters for three weeks. "It should be one of the most pristine places on earth," Amos Chapple tells the news organization, but the tusk hunters' favored technique is changing that. First, they blast the hills using firefighting pumps that draw water from nearby rivers. "Once they see the end of a tusk, they'll just give it a little wiggle, and then blast it some more, give it another wiggle, and eventually it'll come out. It's like extracting a tooth." Meanwhile, all that newly blasted silt runs back into the river.

Don't expect such hunts to end, however, thanks to a booming international trade that is perfectly legal, reports the BBC. One particularly large stockpile from Russia of more than a ton was seized in China earlier this year, but only because it was improperly declared. Critics say the tusks, of which some 10 million sets may still be frozen in Arctic tundra, are often sold as elephant tusks, thereby driving demand for ivory and further endangering elephants. In fact, half the ivory sold in China is thought to be mammoth ivory, the BBC notes. Woolly mammoths were kind of like "prehistoric giant hairy" elephants that got bigger and hairier the further north they migrated, until eventually, around 10,500 years ago, they died outpossibly due to being over-hunted and, per the Christian Science Monitor, "terribly inbred." (Could geneticists bring them back to life?)
Experts really can't stress enough how much you absolutely shouldn't look at this Monday's eclipse without proper eye protectionand maybe not even then. "There are serious risks associated with viewing a solar eclipse directly, even when using solar filter glasses," USA Today quotes Ohio optometrist Michael Schecter as saying. He says one of the problems is that during an eclipse, the moon covers enough of the sun to allow it to be viewed without pain, tricking people into thinking it isn't doing harm. And NASA warns that eclipse glasses that filter out 100% of harmful rays still need to be used perfectlyfor example, by not peeking over the top of them. Just a few seconds of looking at a solar eclipse can do lasting damage.

A recent case out of Florida shows just what that damage can entail, Live Science reports. A 12-year-old girl was taken to the emergency room with blurry vision after she spent a minute looking directly at the sun. She suffered solar retinopathy, which is what happens when extremely bright light creates molecules that kill cells in the retina, creating blurry vision and blind spots. There is no treatment for solar retinopathy, and while vision can improve, it will rarely return to "normal." In this case, the girl's vision never improved. The risk of looking at an eclipse is the same as staring at the sun. NJ.com has a bunch of safety tips for viewing Monday's eclipse, including instructions not to use regular sunglasses. And Quartz warns that researchers find young males are the most likely to damage their eyes while looking at an eclipse. (Read more solar eclipse stories.)
A beloved Pennsylvania teacher died Monday after falling from a balcony in Mexico while laughing too hard. Trib Live reports 50-year-old Sharon Regoli Ciferno was on a vacation in Mexico with her 15-year-old daughter when she fell from a balcony Aug. 4. David Regoli tells Penn Live his sister was sitting on the ledge of a friend's roof-top deck. "She was sitting on the bench when she started laughing very hard and when she put her head back she lost her balance and fell back," he says. David Regoli says "alcohol did NOT play a role" in his sister's death. Ciferno suffered injuries to her body and brain. She died Monday at a hospital in San Diego.

Ciferno taught sixth grade at Huston Middle School and had worked in the Burrell School District for 28 years, according to her obituary. "She wore her heart on her sleeve," principal Brian Ferra tells Trib Live. "She would do anything for anyone." Ciferno was loved by students and parents alike. "She wasn't just a teacher," one of her former students says. "She was a friend, she was your peer, your inspirationat least to me." Ciferno leaves behind a husband and two children. Her family is taking comfort in the fact that her organs have been donated to five people in need. (Read more accidental death stories.)
The California man missing in Barcelona after a car rammed into pedestrians in a popular tourist area is among the 13 killed during the terror attack, his family confirmed Friday. Jared Tucker, 42, and wife Heidi Nunes-Tucker were celebrating their first wedding anniversary on a European trip through France, Italy, and Spain. After enjoying drinks at an outdoor patio on Barcelonas famed La Rambla, Nunes-Tucker separated from Tucker to browse jewelry stands while he went to look for a restroom. "Next thing I know there's screaming, yelling," she told NBC News. "I got pushed inside the souvenir kiosk and stayed there hiding while everybody kept running by screaming." Nunes-Tucker returned to the promenade after the attack, but couldnt locate her husband.

We love Jared, we love you, and we are grateful that in this time of turmoil in this world we can still band together in a time of need and support each other, Tuckers family wrote in a statement confirming his death to the Washington Post. Tuckers father, Dan, says it was his sons first time in Europe. "I'm not angry, necessarily. But more importantly, I don't understand it," he said. "It's hard to understand how anything like that can happen. And what's really bizarre is, what are the chances?" Per NBC News, Thursdays attack that left over 100 injured was one of three incidents believed by officials to be connected in Spain. Five attackers wearing bomb belts were shot dead by police soon after the van attack in a seaside resort southwest of Barcelona, while an explosion killed one person Wednesday night in a town 100 miles southwest of the city. (Read more Barcelona attack stories.)
Three separate shootings in Florida and Pennsylvania Friday have taken the life of one police officer while injuring five more. NPR reports that Officer Matthew Baxter was killed and Sgt. Sam Howard remains in grave critical condition after responding to an incident in central Kissimmee, Fla., Friday evening. Per CNN, the officers were caught off guard by gunfire when responding to a suspicious activity call. They were unable to return fire in the possible ambush. Florida Gov. Rick Scott called Baxter, a father of three and three-year veteran on the force, a hero, tweeting: Tonight we lost a brave officer - Matthew Baxter. Husband/father/hero. Praying for @kissimmeepolice; President Trump also sent condolences over social media after the news broke. Kissimmee police have three suspects in custody and are searching for another.

"This is a tough time for each one of us," Kissimmee Chief Jeff O'Dell said, asking the public to keep the police department and the families of the fallen officers in our thoughts and prayers. In a separate incident 165 miles north of Kissimmee in Jacksonville, Fla., two officers responding to an attempted suicide call Friday night were shot. The suspect began shooting the responding officers through a door with a high powered rifle before exchanging gunfire outside. The suspect was shot and died later at the hospital; one injured officer is in critical condition, the other in stable condition. Meanwhile, NPR reports that two state troopers serving a warrant in Pennsylvania Friday were shot. No updates on their condition, but they were said to be alert and conscious after the shooting occurred, when one was flown to a nearby hospital while the other was transported by ambulance. (Read more Cops stories.)
Elisabeth Moss had "probably the politest response" possible to a fan comparing her religion to a totalitarian regime in a near-future dystopia, Vulture reports. According to the Guardian, a fan on the actress' Instagram account asked her if starring in The Handmaid's Tale had made her "think twice about Scientology." The fan claimed both Giliead, the setting of The Handmaid's Tale, and Scientology "believe that all outside sources (aka news) are wrong or evil  its just very interesting." Moss, who was raised in Scientology, has been extremely reluctant to discuss her religion in the past but, for whatever reason, decided to respond in this instance.

Thats actually not true at all about Scientology," Moss responded. She went on to say religious freedom and equal rights for all are "the most important things to me probably," adding, "Thanks for the interesting question!" But HuffPost reports Moss' answer was disingenuous, at least according to Scientology defectors, including actress Lea Remini, who says the church discourages Scientologists from even using the internet. And it doesn't seem like the Instagram commenter totally bought Moss' answer, responding, Thank you for taking the time to try and explain a little. Either way, you do you and imma do me and if that makes us happy I supposed thats all that matters. Indeed. (Read more Elisabeth Moss stories.)
Remember Barack Obama and Joe Biden? Well, they're coming backin cartoon form! Maybe. Probably not. But maybe! NBC News reports Adam Reid, a filmmaker and commercial director, has launched a Kickstarter to produce Barry & Joe: The Animated Series. The "adult animated sci-fi sitcom" features Obama and Biden traveling back in time into their younger bodies to team up against President Trump and the Russians and save the future. They're aided in their quest by astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, obviously. Reid, who admits Barry & Joe is "just leftist fan fiction meant to give solace to those who need some hope and healing," has a dream cast of Jordan Peele as Obama and Chris Pratt as Biden. He's trying to raise $100,000 by the end of August to produce a pilot. He's more than a quarter of the way there. (Read more cartoon stories.)
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Today

Partly cloudy this morning followed by periods of snow showers this afternoon. High 27F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 50%..

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New Delhi:

The board of the countrys second-largest software services provider Infosys approved the share buy back of 11.3 crore shares, or 4.92 percent equity, at Rs 1,150 each at a meeting on Saturday in Bengaluru, the company said in a stock exchange filing. The buyback price implies a premium of 24.5 percent to Fridays closing price.

The companys first stock buyback comes as cash and investments rose to Rs 33,565 crore at the end of June, up from over Rs 32,000 crore a year earlier, according to a company presentation.The planned repurchase comes a day after the Bengaluru-based company's chief executive officer and managing director Vishal Sikka called it quits over months of acrimony between the board and a cohort of founders led by ex-chairman N R Narayana Murthy.

The shares plunged 9.56 percent, the biggest drop in over a year, to Rs 923 on Friday, wiping out Rs 24,440 crore of the companys market value. Most brokerages, and at least one big investor, termed Vishal Sikkas exit midway his tenure as a negative.

Bhavin Shah, founder, Sameeksha Capital said retail investors are likely to benefit from the buyback price as it should get a higher the acceptance ratio. He expects the buyback to act as a near-term shore for the stock. We would be a buyer in Infosys at Rs 800-850 levels, he told BloombergQuint in a phone interview. would sell if the stock goes near to the buyback price. Shah said the bigger concern right is more about client reactions to Sikka's departure.

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Photographer and former Andy Warhol muse Editta Sherman spent 60 years photographing models, artists, writers, and other local celebrities during her residency in the Carnegie Hall Artist Studios, earning her the moniker the "Duchess of Carnegie Hall." Now, the New-York Historical Society is celebrating Sherman's legacy with a retrospective on her work.

Starting this weekend, the museum will showcase 65 of Sherman's portraits as part of their show The Duchess of Carnegie Hall: Photographs by Editta Sherman, with featured subjects including actor Yul Brynner, country star June Carter Cash, authors Betty Smith and Pearl S. Buck, and Tilda Swinton. The exhibition hangs in the museum's new Center for Womens History, a fitting spot for a photographer who earned her stripes in a male-dominated field while raising her children on her own.

"In her own way, shes a female trailblazer," NYHS curator Marilyn Kushner told the Post. "She succeeded in a mans world. And while there were definitely other women taking photographs [in mid-20th-century New York], she did it while supporting her family."

Sherman, born Editta Rinaolo in Philadelphia in 1912, married sound engineer Harold Sherman in 1935; he died in 1954, leaving Sherman with five young children. By then, though, the Shermans had taken up residency in an artist studio located above Carnegie Hall, and she managed to make a name for herself by photographing some of the famous residents and guests who flitted in and out of the neighboring studiosChristopher Plummer, Marcel Marceau, and Joe DiMaggio were among some of Rinaolo's portrait subjects.

Later in life, Sherman became a tenants' rights advocate, when the Carnegie Hall tried to evict rent-controlled tenants in the aughts. She died in 2013, at age 101.

Sherman was also good friends with famed street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, who died last yearhe's the one who gave Sherman her "Duchess of Carnegie Hall" nickname. There's only a small portrait of Sherman and Cunningham on display as part of the exhibition, though some of Cunningham's other personal items were donated to the N-Y Historical Society in February.

The Duchess of Carnegie Hall: Photographs by Editta Sherman will be on display though October 15th.
New Delhi:

Uttar Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday blamed previous Samajwadi Party government for the children deaths in Gorakhpurs BRD medical college and Hospital.

Encephalitis breeds in filth. The previous regime is responsible for the deaths due to encephalitis, he said.

Government in last 12-15 years ruined institutions in UP for selfish motives by institutionalizing corruption, kept people deprived of facilities, Yogi said.

UP CM Adityanath who is in Gorakhpur on a days visit to inaugurate Swachch Uttar Pradesh-Swasthya Uttar Pradesh campaign also took a dig at Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, who is scheduled to visit Gorakhpur on Saturday.

He said, There is a 'Yuvraj' (prince) sitting in Delhi, who doesn't understand the significance of a Swachhta Abhiyan. There's no valid reason why he should be permitted to turn Gorakhpur into his picnic spot.

Delhi mein baitha koi yuvraj swachhta abhiyan ka mahatv nahi jaanega. Gorakhpur unke liye picnic spot bane uski ijazat nahi deni chahiye: CM pic.twitter.com/lCUNOxM9N1  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) August 19, 2017

Rahul Gandhi will also arrive in Gorakhpur on Saturday in connection with the death of children in BRD Medical College Hospital, due to alleged oxygen disruption over unpaid bills.

Also Read | Fireworks expected between Nitish, Sharad factions in JD(U) national executive meet today

In a heart-wrenching incident, at least 32 children had died in Gorakhpurs BRD hospital in a span of two days due to disruption in the supply of liquid oxygen.

It was reported that oxygen supply was disrupted by the provider because of non-payment of dues worth Rs. 69 lakhs despite several reminders.

The issue of children deaths due to oxygen disruption created a huge controversy with opposition parties demanding CM Adityanath and Health Minister Siddhartha Nath Singhs resignation.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Bhartiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Saturday addressed press conference in Bhopal during which he focused on corruption and black money. He said that the government has completed 3 years in office and there is not a single instance when Opposition has dared to accuse us of corruption.

Shah said that Modi government has become successful in wiping out the corruption of Rs 59,000 crore through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme.

Speaking on the rollout of Goods and Services Tax in India, Shah said that the BJP-led central government has become successful in realising the dream of GST.

Shah stressed that whole worlds view about India has changed and they are now looking differently at us. He added that India can go to any limit to protect itself.

On the black money, BJP president said that Modi government is taking strong steps against black money.

BJP president Amit Shah arrived in Bhopal on Friday on a three-day visit. He unveiled a statue of Deendayal Upadhyaya, founder-leader of the erstwhile Jana Sangh and the partys ideologue.

Shah was accorded a warm welcome by the chief minister and other party leaders, including Kailash Vijaywargiya and Prabhat Jha as well as state party president Nandkumar Singh Chauhan, when he landed at Bhopals Raja Bhoj Airport.

The visit is part of the BJP chiefs 110-day nationwide tour to strengthen and expand the partys support base ahead of the 2019 general elections.

Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, where the BJP has been in power for over a decade, are due next year.

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New Delhi:

The Delhi government will take over around 449 private schools, which have been served show-cause notices over charging an extra fee, only as a "last resort" if they do not roll back their decision, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Thursday.

Addressing a press conference, his first in nearly four months, Kejriwal said the government does not intend to "interfere", but will surely "discipline" the schools if needed.

The schools are the ones identified by a committee headed by Justice Anil Dev Singh as having overcharged parents on the pretext of implementing recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who was also present, said the show cause notices were served four days ago with a deadline to respond within two weeks.

"The schools will not be allowed to loot students like they used to do under previous governments due to political collusion.

"Some of them are doing good work. But if they don't implement the recommendations of the panel's report then we will take them over as a last resort," Kejriwal said.

The panel, formed last year, had scrutinized a total of 1,108 private unaided schools.

Kejriwal said among the schools that have not rolled back the fee hike, one had a surplus of Rs 15 crore while another had Rs 5 crore surplus.

"I hope we don't have to take over. Today, we intend to send out a message to the managements of those schools to implement the recommendations," Kejriwal said.

Sisodia said the government was keeping a watch on everything and will verify cases where schools have claimed to have returned fees.

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New Delhi:

Janata Dal (United) on Monday condemned Union minister of state for health Faggan Singh Kulaste for his remarks as he raised conspiracy factor behind the deaths of infants at Gorakhpurs BRD Medical College.

On Sunday, Kulaste had said that Gorakhpur hospital tragedy may be a conspiracy of someone.

JD(U) leader K C Tyagi said they cannot buy his theory and it is a time to provide relief to the victims instead making such statements which were not required. He said they condemned his statements.

Rebel JD(U) leader Ali Anwar also echoed his view on the matter and slammed the minister for his statements. He demanded Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanaths resignation in the matter. He said oppositions demand is justified.

Also Read: Union minister Faggan Singh Kulaste says Gorakhpur hospital tragedy 'may be a conspiracy of someone'

Anwar said the Prime Minister must sack Adityanath if the latter does not tender his resignation.

Also Read: BJP hopeful of Nitish to 'manage' Sharad Yadav's discord

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New Delhi:

China has not shared hydrological data on rivers Satluj and Brahmaputra this year despite an agreement, the External Affairs Ministry (MEA) said on Thursday.

However, the MEA was not sure whether it was intentional amid the Doklam standoff or due to some technical reasons.

MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said there is an existing expert-level mechanism, established in 2006, and there are two MoUs under which China is expected to share hydrological data on rivers Satluj and Brahmaputra with India during the flood season of May 15 to June 15.

For this year, we have not received hydrological data from the Chinese side, the spokesperson said.

However, he added that it was premature to link it with the floods in Assam as there can be technical reasons behind China not sharing the data.

MEA also did not confirm the reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to China next month to attend Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) summit, saying he does not have any information about it.

Kumar also said that India is trying to engage with China to find a mutually acceptable solution to the sensitive border dispute in the Doklam plateau.

Also Read | MEA confirms Chinese attempt to infiltrate Ladakh region on Independence Day

It is a sensitive issue... We will continue to engage with China to find mutually acceptable solution. Peace and tranquillity in border areas are important pre-requisites for smooth development of bilateral relations.

However, he quipped, I am not an astrologer, so cannot predict, when asked by when the Dokalam standoff will be resolved.

He also noted that in view of floods in Bihar, India was closely coordinating with Nepal, both at Centre and state-level.

Asked about the reported comments of the Japanese Ambassador on Dokalam face off and if India welcomes it, Kumar gave a very guarded reaction, saying the remarks speak for themselves.

The Japanese ambassador was quoted in media as saying that no country should use unilateral forces to alter the status of Dokalam.

We recognise Dokalam is a disputed area between Bhutan and China and two countries are engaged in border talks... We also understand that the India has a treaty understanding with Bhutan thats why Indian troops got involved in the area, the ambassador had reportedly said.

Reacting to the Japanese ambassadors comments, Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing said, I want to remind him not to randomly make comments before clarifying relevant facts. In the Donglong (Doklam) area, there is no territorial dispute. The boundary has been delimited and recognised by the two sides.

Kumar also refused to divulge details of communication by other countries to India on the Dokalam issue.

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, Kiran Bedi slipped into disguise to measure the safety of women after dark. Riding pillion on a two-wheeler with her staff, Bedi had covered her face with a scarf.

Announcing her incognito ride on Twitter, she said, "Found Puducherry reasonably safe at night. But will be improved".

While many of her followers praised her for the surprise outing, but some others pointed out a violation of rules. It was noticed that neither she, nor the woman riding the two-wheeler was wearing a helmet.

In response to the brickbats, Bedi said not wearing a helmet was a deliberate choice.

Not wearing a helmet was a careful choice, she said, as she wanted to appear vulnerable and wanted to see how we women driving a bike were looked at.

ALSO READ | Kiran Bedi: The Medical Council of India rescinds admission of 95 students in PG courses

A clip of Night Round done 'incognito' to check how safe was it for women++during late night hours.

Helped identify areas for improvement.. pic.twitter.com/1BeMsL1JQX  Kiran Bedi (@thekiranbedi) August 19, 2017

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New Delhi:

Three AIMIM corporators, who refused to stand up during recitation of 'Vande Mataram' in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation, were suspended on Saturday.

Shiv Sena-Bhartiya Janata Party corporators protested against the act of AIMIM corporators by creating ruckus in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation.

The Shiv Sena-BJP corporators approached well of the house and raised slogans against AIMIM corporators for refusing to stand up.

Both ruling and Opposition corporators indulged in verbal duel and broke furniture and fans present in the assembly hall.

The Shiv Sena-BJP corporators said that if they want to live in this country, they will have to sing 'Vande Mataram.'

Amid the ruckus in the assembly, AMC Mayor Bhagwandas Ghadamode (BJP) adjourned the proceedings twice and announced the suspension of the three AIMIM corporators for a day. Finally, he adjourned the proceedings for the day.

AIMIM MLA Imtiaz Jaleel said that there is no law which says that people must stand up during the singing of 'Vande Mataram', though it is a tradition that is respected.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Mumbai:

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take the defence ministry seriously as the country is staring at a war with China and facing terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

The environment in the country today is such that on one hand we are staring at a war with China and on the other, infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan does not stop, Thackeray told reporters at Mumbai.

"The prime minister should take a stand... the defence ministry should be taken seriously and cannot be played around with, he said.

Thackeray, whose party is a constituent of the Modi government, was apparently referring to the fact that there is no full-time defence minister as the charge is with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.The defence portfolio was with Manohar Parrikar before he moved to Goa as the chief minister in March.

The Goa chief minister is going to contest a by-election. Yesterday, I read his statement that if he loses, he will once again take up defence ministry. If the ministry is being treated lightly, anarchy will prevail across the country, he said.

Whether he (Parrikar) wins or loses is immaterial, Thackeray said, asking the prime minister to take the defence ministry seriously. Taking a dig at Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, he said, While Fadnavis feels that there will be lawlessness if the government gives a complete loan waiver, in reality, if a losing chief minister (referring to Parrikar) goes to Delhi, there will be anarchy across the country.

The Sena supremo further demanded that the government reveals the names of all farmers, who benefitted from the governments loan waiver scheme.The government, in its enthusiasm, may declare more names of farmers being benefitted than total population of the state. Just so that this does not happen, the names of all beneficiaries should be declared in the legislative assembly, he said.

He added that Shivsainiks will personally visit those farmers and verify the governments claims. Earlier, Sena MP Sanjay Raut slammed Parrikar and said it seemed that the Goa chief minister was afraid of losing the polls and people may reject him.

This is a democracy. If your people do not choose you and you lose, then go and sit at your home. You say, I will go to the Centre and be the defence minister again after losing. Is the defence ministry of the country a game? he questioned. He pointed out that there is no full-time defence minister in the country. Parrikar had resigned as the defence minister after the Goa assembly polls and was sworn in as the chief minister on March 14.

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New Delhi:

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhis scheduled visit to Gorakhpur on Saturday will intensify the ongoing political battle over a large number of deaths of children at the BRD medical college.

The chief minister will be here on a days visit to inaugurate Swachch Uttar Pradesh - Swasthya Uttar Pradesh campaign which will be carried out between August 20-25 in all the districts, BJP spokesman of the region Satyendra Sinha said.

The chief minister will launch the campaign from Andhiyari Bagh locality and will also tour encephalitis and flood-affected areas, he said.Gandhi will also arrive here tomorrow in connection with the death of children in the BRD medical college hospital, Congress district unit president Sayed Jamal said.

ALSO READ: Allahabad HC seeks report from UP govt on Gorakhpur deaths

Till Friday, the death toll in the BRD hospital since August 7 was 71 due to various causes including encephalitis.Some of the deaths were alleged to have been caused by shortage of oxygen, a claim dismissed by the Uttar Pradesh government.

READ: Akhilesh Yadav demands CBI probe into Gorakhpur hospital tragedy

With PTI inputs

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New Delhi:

The fatal swine flu has killed at least 12 people in the Gujarat on Friday. The death toll has reached to 242 people in the state since January this year, the state government data revealed.

According to the recent data issued by the state government,12 people infected with this H1N1 virus died in various parts of Gujarat even as 228 new cases were registered on Friday.

While four deaths each were reported in Ahmedabad and Vadodara city, one death each was reported in Ahmedabad district, Mehsana, Gandhinagar city, and Patan district.

Chief Minister of Gujarat Vijay Rupani has visited civil hospitals in Surat, Rajkot, Vadodara and Ahmedabad city. During his visit to a hospital in Vadodara, Ruapni added that he has requested the Centre to send a team of medical experts to suggest steps to prevent the spread of the HIN1 virus infection.

The state government also launched 104 helpline to provide information about this deadly disease.

Also Read: Upsurge in swine flu cases, Delhi witnesses 320 cases so far
New Delhi:

Suffering from painful menstrual cramps every month? Worry no more! Help is at hand from yoga. Known as dysmenorrhoea, menstrual cramps include sharp, throbbing, burning, or nauseating pain in the lower abdomen and back. Yoga experts suggest a few yoga asana or poses that could really help you and ease the pain during that painful time of the month.

Yoga expert Deepak Jha, Medanta Hospital and Archana Dhawan Bajaj, Gynaecologist and Obstetrician at Nurture IVF Centre, have listed a few asana that might be helpful:

*Half bound squat: In this asana, if you stretch out your hips correctly, it significantly reduces the pain of cramps.

Take your right hand and bring it towards your lower back, hugging your right knee with your armpit. Take your left arm around the lower back, and try to touch the fingers of both the hands together. If you can manage, try to hold your left wrist your right hand. Remain in this position and breathe deeply five times.



* Arching pigeon: Pigeon pose also helps in opening your hips but sometimes you may feel better by just working on one side at a time. This variation also helps in stretching the lower part of the belly.

Sit on the floor on your hips and bend your right knee and stretch your left leg behind you. Placing your hands on your hips, gently arch your back. While arching your back, you can feel a nice stretch in front of the left side of your hip, however, if you feel pain, then you could lean forward and place your hands in front of you on the floor. If you feel comfortable and want to stretch a bit more, you can raise your hands in the air and remain still in this position for five deep breaths before repeating the same exercise on the other side.

* One armed camel: In this asana, your abs are stretched as well as the front side of the hips which eases the pain.

Stand on your shins so your knees are underneath your hips. Stretch your right hand backwards, stretching your right hand backwards place it on the mat just behind your right foot. Stretch your left arm in the air. Move weight forward towards your knees so that you feel a stretch in your quads, belly, and chest. Gently lower your head behind you, and hold for five deep breaths. Change sides, and hold for five breaths in the opposite position, before lifting your body.

Also Read: Walnuts can help to control hunger pangs, reveals study

* Wide child's pose: The pain you feel in your lower back can be greatly eased by this asana and bring relaxation.

Placing your knees on the floor, widen then them as much as you feel comfortable, bend forward, extending your arms in front of you. Lay your forehead on the mat or turned sideways remaining in the position for five deep breaths. Turn your head to the other side for another five deep breaths.



* Reclining twist: This helps to relax and increase the flexibility of the spine from side to side, which can help in reducing the pain the lower abdomen and back.

Lie down on your back. Extend your left knee over to the right side. Stretch your arms out as wide as you can, looking on the left side. Remain in this position for at least five deep breaths, feeling the stretch in your spine and side to side. With the help of your abs lift your knees back to central position and repeat for the opposite side.

* Menstrual cramps can also be relieved by a massage with essential oils, sleeping with a heating pad, taking rest and taking medication under medical advice only.

Yoga can help in alleviating the pain and avoiding the emotional and physical stress associated with menstrual cramps.

Also Read: Vitamin C injections may be useful to fight off blood cancer: Study
New Delhi:

Climate change is a much discussed topic all over the world. It is the cities in which the effects of global warming are seen the most.

Urban heat island effect is a term which is getting popular these days. The effect refers to the pockets of immense heat which is captured by the concrete, dark roofs, asphalt and dearth of foliage. This easily defines the cityscapes in America.

According to experts, Los Angeles which is surrounded by desert and covered in thousands of miles of asphalt can be called termed as the poster of child of this effect.

As a result of this, city officials are looking at innovative ways to tackle the record-breaking rise in temperatures.

As per Los Angeles Times, the mayor of the city Eric Garcetti D, aims to decrease the average temperature of the city by 3 degrees over the next 20 years.

One of the innovative ways involve coating Los Angeles streets in a substance known as Coolseal. Coolseal is a gray coating which is designed to reflect solar rays. The material is used to hide the planes from the spy satellites.

City officials have said that it has started delivering the results.

It is being reported that the coating was tested for the first time on a parking lot in the San Fernando Valley in 2015. It is one of the hottest parts of the town.

As a matter of fact, the summer temperatures have increased to a great extent. It used to earlier average in the upper 80s but now has escalated above 100 degrees many times in the last year.

For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Real Estate tycoon Donald Trump has proven to be one of the most controversial Presidents of United States in recent times. In just first eight months of his term, most of his senior administrative staff has either been fired or has left following differences with the President and his policies.



Here is a list of people who have either resigned or have been fired in US top posts:



Sally Yates: The process of firing the key staff started right after Trump took oath to office and issued his first executive order - Muslim travel ban. Sally Yates, who was White House's top lawyer, was fired on January 30 after she defied the Trump administration by saying the Justice Department would not defend travel restrictions targeting seven Muslim-majority nations.



Michael Flynn: The allegations of Russian meddling in US Presidential elections came to haunt the Trump administration within first month. Flynn, who held the post of National Security Adviser for less than a month, resigned on February 14. He sincerely apologised to Trump and Vice-President Mike Spencer for providing them incomplete information about his Russian contacts, namely Russia Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.



Preet Bharara: The next key head to role was former US Attorney Preet Bharara. The Indian-origin professional was fired in March, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions forced the 46 appointees made by the former President to tender their resignations. When he refused, he was shown the door. I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired, he had written on Twitter.



James Comey: The former FBI director was ousted after he took 'keen' interest in investigating allegations of Russian collusion in the 2016 Presidential Election. On May 9, Trump fired Comey citing incompetency after he sought increase federal resources for better probe in the matter.



Mike Dubke: The first person to start cycle of hire and fire on the post of White House Communication Director was Mike Dubke. Dubke tendered his resignation on May 18, around three months after his appointment. While he provided no reason for his departure, he said, It has been my great honour to serve President Trump and this administration.



Sean Spicer: The White House press secretary resigned on July 21 over the appointment of New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as the communications director. The 45-year-old rejected Trumps offer to stay on, maintaining that the appointment was a mistake.

Read | Donald Trumps press secretary Sean Spicer resigns



Michael Short: Scaramucci's appointment as communication director resulted in another resignation as senior assistant press secretary Michael Short resigned on July 25 amid reports of Scaramucci making cuts.



Reince Priebus: July 26 Anthony Scaramucci accuses White House chief of staff Reince Priebus of being the leak. July 27 Priebus reisgns. It was however reported that prior to his resignation Priebus had held several conversations with Trump regarding leaving the White House.

Read | Trump fires Chief of Staff Priebus, appoints John Kelly

Anthony Scaramucci: Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci was ousted from from his position as White House director of communication on Augsut 1 after allegation erupted against him for using unparlianmentary language used by him against his colleagues.



Carl Icahn, billionaire investor and special adviser to Trump resigned on August 18 over a conflict of interest; he was being criticised for making policy recommendations that would help his own investments.



Steve Bannon was ousted from his position White House adviser on August 18. The chief strategist had a controversial tenure in the White House, marred by rivalries and back-stabbing. (Read full story here)

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Moscow:

A knife attacker stabbed eight people on the street in Russias far northern city of Surgut before being shot by police, investigators said on Saturday.



The attacker carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds to eight, Russias Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes said, adding that armed police then liquidated the attacker.

Also read:



Finland stabbing spree: Two dead, eight injured in Turku; PM Juha Sipila terms attack as utterly deplorable act

Spain terror attack: 34 nationalities among 100 injured, police arrest 4th suspect

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New Delhi:

President Donald Trump continued with his spell of firing top notch officials of his camp with the latest casualty coming in the form of his chief political strategist Steve Bannon. Bannon is considered by many as the architect of his 2016 election victory and a driving force behind his nationalist and anti-globalization agenda.

Bannon's firing, a year and a day after Trump hired him as his campaign chief, put an end to the bitter rivalry between the far-right wing and more-moderate factions.

He was instrumental in some of Trump's most debatable policy moves including the ban on people from several Muslim-majority countries, abandoning the Paris climate accord, tearing up international trade agreements and cracking down on illegal immigration. He was no friend of the Republican political establishment and was loathed by liberals but was a darling of some of the president's hard-line conservative supporters.

White House officials said Trump had told new Chief of Staff John Kelly to crack down on the bickering and infighting, and that Bannon's fate was sealed by comments published on Wednesday in the American Prospect liberal magazine in which he spoke of targeting his adversaries within the administration.

Trump, seven months into his presidency, has become increasingly isolated over his comments following white supremacist violence in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville last Saturday and his attacks on fellow Republicans. Some Republicans had even begun questioning Trump's capacity to govern.

As Trump came under fire from Republicans including two former presidents, and from business leaders and U.S. allies abroad, he faced mounting calls for Bannon's ouster. Critics had accused Bannon of harboring anti-Semitic and white nationalist sentiments.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

Bannon returned to his post as executive chairman of right-wing Breitbart News on Friday afternoon, the website said. Prior to joining the Trump campaign, he had spearheaded Breitbart's shift into a forum for the "alt-right," a loose online Confederation of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites.

Bannon said his departure from the White House signals a major shift for the Trump agenda. "The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over," Bannon told the conservative Weekly Standard.

"I just think his ability to get anything done - particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, it's just gonna be that much harder," Bannon said.

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New Delhi:

Sierra Leone's capital Freetown has witnessed a devastating mudslide and flooding that claimed over 400 lives. Muddy water and debris continue to flow through the streets of Freetown but much of the damage can be attributed to a massive mudslide that struck early Monday morning.

The government has not given a death toll from the disaster. The Red Cross said on Friday that more than 600 people are still missing, and a search continues for corpses buried in the mud.

There are reports that many people are still alive but trapped in their homes underneath the mud. Large scale burials have begun amid rainy weather and the threat of further mudslides.

Rescue officials have warned that the chances of finding survivors are getting smaller every day. Forecasters have also predicted the more rain which will aggravate the situation and will increase problems in rescue operations.

Mourners were gathered to pay respects at a mass burial on Thursday afternoon as the search operation is continuing.

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Initially, the mass burial planned for Wednesday but government allow families to identify their loved ones.

"While flooding is a natural disaster, the scale of the human tragedy in Freetown is, sadly, very much man-made," said Makmid Kamara, the organization's deputy director of global Issues, said right group Amnesty International.

"The authorities should have learned lessons from previous similar incidents and put in place systems to prevent, or at least minimize, the consequences of these disasters. Devastating floods are now an annual occurrence in the country's capital".

"Yet, due to a lack of regulation and insufficient consideration for minimum standards and environmental laws, millions of Sierra Leoneans are living in dangerously vulnerable homes", also added.

The country's President, Ernest Bai Koroma, and other dignitaries including Libyan President Ellen Johnson sirleaf were expected to attend the ceremony.



The city morgue at the Connaught Hospital has been overwhelmed by the influx of victims in what is one of the deadliest natural disasters to hit Africa in recent years. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people have also been displaced, Abu Bakarr, spokesman for the Red Cross in Sierra Leone, told CNN on Tuesday.

Flooding is not unusual in the region, which is experiencing its rainy season.But this year has been particularly wet, with Freetown receiving more than 27 inches of rain between July 1 and August 13 -more than double the average of 11.8 inches, according to the US National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center.

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Joel Colindres arrived in the United States in 2004 after days of traveling by car through Mexico, crossing the border in Texas on foot without any documentation in his pockets.

The 20-year-old had fled his native Guatemala, where he often feared for his life, and where he had been mugged at gunpoint several times.

But he also came for the American dream. And in many ways over the last 13 years, he achieved that dream: He has held the same job construction for over a decade, got married, bought a home and had two children.

For the last four years, Joel has lived in New Fairfield with his wife, Samantha, a U.S. citizen, and their two American-born children, 6-year-old Preston and 2-year-old Lila.

But the dream was shattered on July 20, when Joel and Samantha were told during a meeting with U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials in Hartford that he had 28 days to leave the country.

Joel and Samantha both broke down crying. All Samantha could hear was Joels lawyer saying, How can you do this?

For more than a decade, Joel had lived under an order of removal issued when he missed court hearing on his immigration case shortly after he entered the country.

The 28th day would fall on Thursday, Aug. 17. Joel bought a ticket on a plane leaving JFK around 3 p.m.

By Wednesday afternoon, Joel and Samantha had been notified that both of his pending requests for a stay allowing him to remain in the country at least temporarily were denied.

The next 24 hours were hell.

Preston  told only that Daddy was going on vacation  cried for hours, clinging to his father, pleading with him to stay home.

He said, Daddy, please dont go. It broke my heart, Joel recalled.

He gave his son, whom he calls his little monkey, his favorite hat and wrote a personal message in it. Preston gave Joel his favorite stuffed monkey, which Joel packed in his carry-on, along with every love letter and card that his wife had given him.

On Wednesday night, the couple let the children stay up way past their bedtimes, unwilling for the night to end, which means it would be the day Joel would be forced to leave his family behind. Before bed, Joel and Preston knelt by the boys bed, draped with a comforter bearing images of construction equipment, and prayed together that Joel could stay in New Fairfield.

It was beautiful that my son believes in that, but it was gut-wrenching, because it could have been his last night with him, Samantha said.

Samantha took a picture of them praying. She wanted to document every moment she could; she took pictures of her husband brushing his teeth and sleeping.

The next day, the family of four left for the airport. Joel sat sandwiched between his two children in the back, while Samantha drove to JFK.

He wanted to savor every last minute with them, Samantha said.

They arrived at the airport and began the wait for the ICE officials who would accompany Joel to his plane. They waited for hours, sitting on the floor. Preston continued to cry. He hugged his father, who was visibly distraught.

With just 30 minutes remaining before Joels flight was supposed to leave, the ICE officials still hadn't arrived. Slight panic set in; what would happen if Joel missed his flight?

But then Samanthas phone rang. It was Joels attorney, Erin ONeil-Baker.

Go home, she said.

She explained that the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals had issued a temporary stay of Joels deportation while the court reviews his case.

My husband picked me up in the airport and twirled me around for like a minute, Samantha said. My husband and son ran to the car together.

Once they got to the car, Preston shouted, This is the best day of my life.

A hard fight

In the 28 days since the meeting with ICE, Joels family, friends and several federal lawmakers had fought to keep him in the country. Samantha took to social media to explain the situation and build support for his cause. She created a Facebook page called Save Joel Colindres.

She posted photos, updates and arranged a rally in Hartford, which drew a crowd of 100.

Those at the rally chanted, Keep Joel Home! and many held signs saying, I stand with Joel. Samanthas eyes filled with tears several times as the crowd chanted its support for her husband.

Its really emotional to have everybody here, she said that day. Were going to keep fighting for whats right and what we believe in, and thats my husband.

Soon after, U.S. Rep Elizabeth Esty and Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal wrote to federal immigration authorities urging them to allow Joel to stay in the country while he tried to get legal status.

Esty and Blumenthal held a press conference earlier this month at the Colindres home in New Fairfield  once again calling on immigration authorities to give Joel more time to make his case.

That case dated to 2004, when Joel began his journey from Guatemala to the United States, along with about eight others. It took him more than two weeks to reach the American border, traveling mostly by car.

When he got to Texas, Joel got separated from his companions, some of whom were apprehended by ICE. He went to a nearby police station voluntarily and ICE was notified.

After several hours, Joel was allowed to enter the country provisionally and released, his family said. He took a bus to New York, where his brother was living.

But after missing a court date in Texas, an order of removal was issued against him. Joel said he never received notice of the hearing because federal authorities used an incorrect address and an incorrect spelling of his name.

Years went by. After Joel and Samantha married, they went to an attorney to begin the process of obtaining his citizenship. It was then they learned about the 2004 order of removal.

That order has been a big barrier to him getting legal status. Without it, he would have a clearer path to permanent residency, ONeil-Baker said.

His attorneys have filed numerous requests with immigration agencies to get the order reversed, including a request for a waiver from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In addition, a request has been filed to reopen the 2004 removal order case. That request includes his argument for asylum. ONeil-Baker has said that three of Joels family members have been killed in Guatemala over the last year, suggesting that his fears about returning to Guatemala are well-founded.

Even though Joels future in the United States is still uncertain, the family is just happy to have more time together.

I was preparing to come home that night to be alone with my children, and I was home with my husband, Samantha said. We dont know how much time, but I was just grateful for that one extra night.

One day with my family means the world to me, Joel said.
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HARTFORD  Joel Colindres and his wife, Samantha, dont know how long he will be allowed to stay in the country, but they are both happy that their family will stay together for the time being.

Joel Colindres, 33, who came to the U.S. from Guatemala in 2004, had been ordered to leave the country by Aug. 17.

He had bought his ticket back to Guatemala and was at the airport with his family on Thursday afternoon when the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay of his deportation  less than an hour before his flight was scheduled to leave.

We are very happy, said Joel, standing in front of his attorneys office in Hartford. We are so thankful to be here.

It's a miracle, Samantha said, a huge smile on her face.

The 24 hours leading up to his scheduled deportation were excruciating, the couple said.

My son was crying 10 hours straight, Colindres said, his voice breaking. He said, Daddy, please dont go. It broke my heart.

More News New Fairfield man hopes for late reprieve in effort to avoid...

I dont want this to happen to anyone else, he said. Its like someone ripping your heart out of your chest.

The couple lives in New Fairfield with their two American-born children, 6-year-old Preston and 2-year-old Lila.

The federal appeals court will review Colindress case and could issue another stay while federal immigration authorities consider several pending requests, said his attorney, Erin ONeil-Baker. There is no expiration date on the existing stay.

Colindres has said that when he first came to the United States, a mix-up with paperwork led him to miss an immigration court date, resulting in an order for his removal. The order has created a barrier to his seeking legal residency based on his 2010 marriage to Samantha, a U.S. citizen.

In May, attorneys filed a request for a waiver from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which if approved could help Colindres get legal status.

ONeil-Baker has said that 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. She added that it can take six to nine months for USCIS to decide on the waiver.

Colindres also has a pending request to reopen his 2004 order of removal  if approved, that could also eliminate his order of removal. That application includes his argument for asylum.

He has said he fears for his life if he goes back to Guatemala. ONeil-Baker said three of his family members in Guatemala were murdered in the last year.
Since New Years Day, Connecticut taxpayers have been inundated with articles on the state budget crisis.

While none of Governor Malloys dire reductions in state aid to municipalities has yet materialized, the state still has a $3.5 billion future deficit even after state union concessions.

Each day there are reports of new municipal projects expecting still more nonexistent state dollars.

It appears that, in the face of this enormous, unprecedented crisis, Bethels local officials have chosen to live in the State of Denial.

Currently, Bethel has a $13.5 million Police Station project that has been already reported as over budget, with several important features sitting on the chopping block.

Just last year, the town added six new positions to its employment rolls.

In June, we found out that town officials had created a new $100,000 position to oversee the water and sewer departments.

And in April, the Finance board turned a part-time social services director into a full-time department head.

Bethel taxpayers learned that the town expects state money for a $600,000 overhead pedestrian bridge as part of their Utopian T.O.D. (a.k.a. Total Over Development).

There is an approximately $1 million plan to refurbish the showers at the municipal center, when the high school is already designated as an emergency shelter.

On Tuesday, the Board of Finance will consider sending some $67 million in school renovations to a September referendum.

With spending like this it is no wonder that young and old are fleeing Connecticut.

The town of Bethel and the State of Connecticut needs leaders that accept the reality that you cannot spend, tax and bond your way to prosperity.

Twenty-five years of the state income tax has provided ample proof of that.

Connecticut taxpayers deserve far better.

Billy Michael

Bethel
MONTREAL, Aug. 14, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - CECI and WUSC wish to express their profound sadness over the loss of Bilel Diffalah, a Canadian volunteer, who was among the victims of the attack in Ouagadougou on the evening of August 13, 2017. All remaining CECI and WUSC volunteers in Burkina Faso are safe and accounted for.

Bilel had been in his role as Hygiene and Biosecurity Advisor with the Uniterra volunteer cooperation program (jointly implemented by CECI and WUSC) since November 2016. He had been working alongside the Interprofessional Poultry Organization, a local partner of the program.

"Bilel was a very dedicated volunteer. He was respected both by his colleagues and by the partner organization with whom he was working. In our experience, he had always shown exemplary behaviour as a Canadian volunteering overseas." said Fatimata Lankoande, coordinator of the Uniterra program in Burkina Faso.

Immediately upon the announcement of the attack at the Aziz Istanbul restaurant, the CECI and WUSC teams in Canada and Burkina Faso reached out to the 28 Canadian volunteers present in Ouagadougou and throughout Burkina Faso to ensure their safety. Nearly all were found safe and sound but one person was unaccounted for.

"Our country teams, with the support of the Canadian Embassy in Ouagadougou and Global Affairs Canada in Ottawa, deployed every means to make contact with the missing person. Unfortunately, we received confirmation around noon, Montreal time, that this person was among the victims." said Odette McCarthy, Director of the Uniterra program. "CECI and WUSC wish to extend their deepest condolences to the family and friends of Bilel and to all those affected by Sunday's attack."

Canadian volunteers in the Uniterra program are subject to strict security rules that are regularly reviewed by the CECI and WUSC teams in Canada and Burkina Faso. These teams provide daily monitoring of security levels and alerts issued by various embassies including Canada, the United States, and France. Volunteers are informed as soon as changes to the rules are made, particularly with regards to the list of places they should avoid.

For several months, the situation has been stable in the country, and no incidents had occurred since the deadly attack in January 2016. Over the past 18 months, the alert level was raised a few times, mostly with the approach of long weekends and festivities. On these occasions, CECI and WUSC have tightened security rules for Canadian volunteers. This was not the case this weekend, no special official warning had been issued.

Centre for International Studies and Cooperation (CECI) is an international cooperation organization founded in 1958 that combats poverty and exclusion through sustainable development projects in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Established in Burkina Faso since 1985, CECI has since assured an ongoing presence through a team of professionals and dozens of Canadian volunteers who each year support rural communities in areas such as sustainable economic development, food security and gender equality. www.ceci.ca

WUSC (World University Service of Canada) is a Canadian non-profit organization dedicated to improving education, employment, and empowerment opportunities for youth around the world. WUSC's vision is a world where all young people can grow up in safe, secure, and supportive environments; where they can learn, work, and play a vital role in the country's development. www.wusc.ca

Uniterra is a leading Canadian international development program that is jointly operated by CECI and WUSC. Each year, 600 volunteers contribute their time and experience to positive and lasting change towards a more equitable world by dedicating a few weeks to two years of their lives to international volunteer work. The program also provides opportunities to get involved in Canada and play an active role in combatting poverty. The Uniterra program receives funding from the Government of Canada, provided through Global Affairs Canada. www.uniterra.ca

SOURCE Centre d'etudes et de cooperation internationale (CECI)

For further information: France-Isabelle Langlois, Director of Communication and Development, 514-774-7527, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.ceci.ca/fr


Canadians gathered in Calgary to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Dieppe Raid and the contributions of Canadians in the Second World War.

CALGARY, Aug. 19, 2017 /CNW/ - The efforts of Canadians at Dieppe helped the Allies eventually achieve victory in the Second World War. The sacrifices and achievements of those who gave so much to help restore peace and freedom to the world will never be forgotten.

Today, on behalf of the Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence, Member of Parliament for Pitt Meadows  Maple Ridge, Dan Ruimy joined their Honours, the Honourable Lois Mitchell, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, his Honour, Honorary Colonel Douglas Mitchell, and members of the King's Own Calgary Regiment Association and Calgarians at The Military Museums to pay tribute and recognize those who served in uniform during the Second World War.

The ceremony included the playing of the Last Post followed by two minutes of silence, the Reveille, the laying of a Regimental wreath, and the reading of the names of the 13 members of the 14th Army Tank Regiment (The Calgary Regiment [Tank]) who were killed in action there. Following the ceremony, Mount Royal University introduced Raghed Mirza, a recent recipient of the Captain Douglas Purdy Bursary. This bursary is named in the honour of alumni and Dieppe Raid casualty Captain Purdy, and was presented to Mirza by Purdy's great-niece, Ms. Kelly Ann Purdy.

The Dieppe Raid took place on August 19, 1942, with almost 5,000 Canadians coming ashore along the heavily defended coast of occupied France. Accompanied by British and American troops, the Canadians fought valiantly against the German forces during Operation Jubilee, as the Dieppe Raid was codenamed by the Allies. The Canadians sustained heavy losses with more than 900 of our men making the ultimate sacrifice and some 1,950 more becoming prisoners of war. The hard lessons learned in Operation Jubilee, along with other subsequent landings, helped refine Allied amphibious techniques before the successful D-Day attacks on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Seventy-five years later, Canadians came together both in Canada and in France to remember. Commemorative events and opportunities to learn more about Canadians' actions in Dieppe Raid were organized in communities across Canada. From coast to coast to coast, Canadians gathered to remember this important moment in Canada's military history.

Quotes

"Today, we remember the sacrifices and bravery shown by Canadians who fought at Dieppe and served throughout the Second World War. We recognize their courage and loss as we pay tribute and honour those who served Canada, at home and abroad, when our country needed them. During this solemn anniversary, we also take time to help tell the stories of Canadians at Dieppe and ensure that their efforts and experiences are shared and never forgotten by future generations."

Member of Parliament for Pitt Meadows  Maple Ridge, Dan Ruimy on behalf of The Honourable Kent Hehr, Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence

"2017 marks the 75th Anniversary of the 19 August, 1942 Dieppe Raid. Only six known Veterans of the Calgary Regiment that served in World War II remain alive, three of whom participated in the Dieppe Raid. This is quite possibly the last opportunity for us to have these Veterans participating in this commemoration."

Colonel (Retired) Roy Boehli, CD, Director King's Own Calgary Regiment Association

"The Military Museums of Calgary are proud to host the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Dieppe Raid; it is through ceremonies such as this that we ensure that acts of honour and sacrifice are not forgotten. Canadian military history is a rich tapestry of the stories of brave men and women who served our country."

Douglas D. Stinson CD, PEng. Colonel (Retired) Museum Manager, The Military Museums

Quick Facts

The Dieppe Raid began before dawn on August 19, 1942 . The operation was intended to test German defences, practice Allied assault techniques, force the enemy to divert military resources from the Eastern Front and acquire valuable intelligence. Supported by British and American commandos, almost 5,000 Canadian soldiers took part in the attack on the occupied French port of Dieppe . Sadly, it would prove to be the bloodiest single day of the entire Second World War for Canada and more than 3,350 of our soldiers were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.

. The operation was intended to test German defences, practice Allied assault techniques, force the enemy to divert military resources from the Eastern Front and acquire valuable intelligence. Supported by British and American commandos, almost 5,000 Canadian soldiers took part in the attack on the occupied French port of . Sadly, it would prove to be the bloodiest single day of the entire Second World War for and more than 3,350 of our soldiers were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. As part of the events marking the 75 th anniversary of the Dieppe Raid, the King's Own Calgary Regiment dedicated a new monument in Dieppe , France , on August 19, 2017 . The monument pays homage to regimental participants in the raid.

anniversary of the Dieppe Raid, the King's Own Calgary Regiment dedicated a new monument in , , on . The monument pays homage to regimental participants in the raid. Those who fought in the Dieppe Raid were among the more than one million Canadian men and women who served in uniform during the Second World War.

The King's Own Calgary Regiment suffered a very high number of casualties during the Dieppe Raid. Of the 421 all ranks of the Regiment who embarked on the raid, there is a total of 180 known casualties, of which 13 were killed in action or died of wounds, with an additional 167 casualties identified as prisoners of war, wounded, and/or missing.

The Dieppe Raid is significant in the fact that the Calgary Regiment's participation in the raid marks the first time in history that tanks were employed in an amphibious assault. Of the 34 Battle Honours awarded to the Regiment, Dieppe is one of the 20 Battle Honours that are currently emblazoned on the Regimental Guidon.

is one of the 20 Battle Honours that are currently emblazoned on the Regimental Guidon. The Mount Royal University awards 28 Military Memorial Bursaries annually to full-time students enrolled at the university who are in financial need.

University awards 28 Military Memorial Bursaries annually to full-time students enrolled at the university who are in financial need. The Captain Douglas Purdy Military Memorial Bursary was created in honour of the Captain who had attended Mount Royal College and was killed in action at Dieppe on August 19 th , 1942.

and was killed in action at on , 1942. 2017 is a special year of commemoration for Canada as we remember the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge , the 75th anniversary of the Dieppe Raid, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Passchendaele and Canada 150.

Associated Links

SOURCE Veterans Affairs Canada

For further information: Media Relations, Veterans Affairs Canada, 613-992-7468, [email protected]; Sarah McMaster, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Veterans Affairs, 613-996-4649

Related Links

www.veterans.gc.ca


KENORA, ON, Aug. 19, 2017 /CNW/ - Today, at the Metis Nation of Ontario (MNO) 24th Annual General Assembly being held in Kenora, the results of the MNO's Ontario Metis Root Ancestors Project (the "Project") were publicly released. The results from the Project are available on the MNO's website at: www.metisnation.org.

The Projectwhich included the review and compilation of well over 100,000 historical recordsidentifies hundreds of Metis Root Ancestors from well-recognized historic Metis communities within Ontario. The Project took over five years to complete and now represents the largest collection of publicly available genealogical information on Ontario Metis.

The Project flows from the direction the MNO received from its citizens and communities in province-wide consultations held in 2010/11 and subsequent direction from the 2011 MNO Annual General Assembly to create "a list of 'root' Ontario Metis families that people could simply trace to" and "a compilation of easily accessible source materials relevant to genealogical research" to assist individuals applying for MNO citizenship or Harvester Cards.

This direction was provided to the MNO because, unlike in western Canada, Metis land and money scrip was, for the most part, not issued in Ontario. As such, the extensive Metis scrip records available to the Metis in the Prairies in completing their genealogies do not assist the descendants of many historic Metis communities in Ontario in completing their genealogies in order to obtain citizenship within the MNO. Instead, Ontario Metis rely on different documents that identify Metis families in the historic record. The release of today's Metis Root Ancestor materials online will assist Ontario Metis in completing their genealogies showing they are ancestral connected to a historic Metis ancestor as required by the MNO Registry Policy, which underlies the credibility of the MNO Registry.

More specifically, the Project identifies hundreds of historic Metis Root Ancestors and over five thousand descendants of these families from seven well-recognized historic Metis communities within Ontario that include:

The Rainy River/ Lake of the Woods /Treaty 3 Historic Metis Community

/Treaty 3 Historic Metis Community The Northern Lake Superior Historic Metis Community

The Abitibi Inland Historic Metis Community

The Mattawa /Ottawa River and Environs Historic Metis Community

/Ottawa River and Environs Historic Metis Community The Killarney and Environs Historic Metis Community

and Environs Historic Metis Community The Georgian Bay and Environs Historic Metis Community

While these seven historic Metis communities have presently been identified, the MNO continues to undertake additional historic research for the potential identification of other historic Metis communities in Ontario as well as for new information that may change or expand these existing communities.

MNO Acting President France Picotte said, "We are extremely proud to be able to launch this Project at this year's Assembly. We believe this Project will many in applying for citizenship within the MNO as well as assist our existing MNO citizens in applying for MNO Harvesting Cards.

"Moreover, we believe these materials will be helpful educational resources and tools in creating greater awareness about Ontario Metis history generally and the rights-bearing Metis communities that the MNO represents today throughout the province," added Picotte.

SOURCE Metis Nation of Ontario

For further information: Mike Fedyk, MNO Director of Communications, 613-314-9402 (cell)

Related Links

http://www.metisnation.org/


OTTAWA, Aug. 18, 2017 /CNW/ - Lawrence MacAulay, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, announced today the appointment of Genevieve Parent as a part-time member of the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal. The appointment is for a three-year term.

This appointment is part of the Government of Canada's rigorous new approach to Governor in Council appointmentsan approach that uses open, transparent and merit-based selection processes that strive for gender parity and reflect Canada's diversity.

Quote

"I am pleased to announce the appointment of Genevieve Parent to the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal. I am confident Ms. Parent's experience and knowledge of food security and agri-food law will greatly benefit the Tribunal in its vital role protecting the health and well-being of consumers and the economic vibrancy of Canadian agri-food industries."

- Lawrence MacAulay, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food

Quick facts

The Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal is an independent tribunal established by the Government of Canada to provide impartial reviews of notices of violation issued by federal agencies regulating agriculture and food.

to provide impartial reviews of notices of violation issued by federal agencies regulating agriculture and food. Members of the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal are appointed by the Governor in Council upon the recommendation of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

Additional links

Follow us on Twitter: @AAFC_Canada

Like us on Facebook: CanadianAgriculture

Biographical Note

Genevieve Parent is a full professor in the Faculty of Law at the Universite Laval, where she holds the Legal Research Chair in Food Diversity and Security. Her areas of interest include food security and national and international agri-food law. Her research over the last 20 years has focused on promoting food diversity through the development of national and international legal instruments, studying the impact of international law on Canadian and Quebec agri-food legislation, and achieving a greater coherence between international economic law and other dimensions of law to promote sustainable, global food security. She has published numerous scientific papers and is frequently invited to speak at national and international meetings on food security issues.

SOURCE Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

For further information: Guy Gallant, Director of Communications, Office of the Honourable Lawrence MacAulay, 613-773-1059; Media Relations, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 613-773-7972, 1-866-345-7972

Related Links

www.agr.gc.ca


 Ion Bank of Hamden recently has been awarded an Energy Star Building Label for 2017 after efficiency upgrades through Energize CTs Energy Efficiency programs in partnership with United Illuminating, according to a release. The bank participated in Energize Connecticuts Small Business Energy Advantage program, which offered incentives and funding assistance for the project, the release said. More than 100 LED bulbs and LED tubes were installed at the branch. Rebates and zero-percent financing provided through the program made the upgrades much more cost efficient. It was easier for us to justify our upgrade expenses, Craig Porter, director of marketing for Ion Bank, said in the release. Energy efficiency is part of the companys long-term strategy and cost efficient solutions are always important. The project was a win-win.

 Quinnipiac University faculty members Rebecca Abbott, Liam OBrien and Christine Kinealy have won a New England Emmy Award for the documentary, Irelands Great Hunger and the Irish Diaspora, according to a release. Its a huge honor to have this sort of recognition for our work, Abbott, a Hamden resident who co-produced the documentary, said in the release. Since the process of making this documentary took several years, its really gratifying and rewarding to know that our efforts are valued in this way. Abbott, who filmed and edited the documentary, and co-producer OBrien, of Higganum, are professors in Quinnipiacs Department of Film, Television and Media Arts, the release said.
New evacuation orders were issued Friday for the Lolo Peak fire as winds fed the blaze, setting flames that were clearly visible from Missoula dancing in the night sky.

Thick smoke prompted closure of Highway 12 at the junction with Highway 93 and created eerie swirls in shades of gray, pink and black just before nightfall.

Fridays weather was dangerous enough that Public Information Officer Mike Martin said his expectation was that eight out of every 10 spots or embers would ignite on the ground.

Fire officials said the cold front that arrived Friday, bringing wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour and low humidity, would make it "the most critical day of the fire to date.''

We anticipate some significant fire activity all afternoon into the night,'' Ravalli County Sheriff Steve Holton said Friday afternoon. "And tomorrow is not looking much better.''

An evacuation order was issued at 6:30 p.m. Friday for the north side of Highway 12 west of Stella Blue, but not including Stella. The order includes Sleeman Creek Road.

"There are homes up here,'' said public information officer Tim Love. If the fire jumps the fire line or Highway 12, he said, people "could be cut off and they couldn't get out.''

Wendy Christiansen and her family live up Sleeman Creek. They've been moving things out for the past few days in anticipation of being evacuated.

"Friends have taken us in,'' she said. "It's amazing what you don't need. We have our people and our pets and we are OK.''

Holton said for those who decide to stay in their homes, fire officials and officers will try to let them know if the fire blows up and the threat to lives is imminent. But they might not have time to beat fast-moving flames.

We are marking homes, in conjunction with the incident management team, to let them know if people are there,'' Holton said. "But unless we have the time and resources, we cant alert people who stay behind.

Thursday night, the blaze claimed two homes and numerous outbuildings after the fire took another run of more than 3,800 acres and jumped the containment line.

The Missoula County Sheriffs Department confirmed Friday that two residences in the upper Folsom Road area considered a total loss. The two homeowners, both of whom had been evacuated, have been notified of the loss.

The Lolo Peak fire is now estimated at 18,896 acres, with 603 people working on it.

Fire officials were most concerned Friday night that the fire would jump Highway 12. The combination of high grasses and wind could send flames racing north toward more homes and Lolo.

On Friday firefighters focused their efforts in three areas: Along U.S. Highway 12, especially near Mill Creek Road; along the northeastern edges in the Mormon Creek and Carlton Creek vicinity; and on the western edge near Elk Meadows Road.

As theyve been doing, they may choose to fight fire with fire if conditions allow.

In a video posted on the Lolo National Forests Facebook page, Fire Operations Manager Mark Goeller said the northeast edge of the fire has the greatest potential to take off and run through the Highway 12 corridor, particularly in the Mormon and Carlton creek areas.

A hand crew spent Friday working on Carlton Ridge to put out one of the main spots in thick steep terrain, according to Jordan Koppen with the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. During the next few days, crews will continue to dig hand lines and try to bring the line over from Carlton Ridge to McClain Creek.

Heavy equipment engines and retardant planes also are in the area trying to keep the fire in check.

On the fires northern edge near Mill Creek Road, firefighters will continue to try to hold the established containment line.

In the Mill Creek area, we will utilize some light firing if conditions are appropriate, to bring fire down to the main control line  and hold the fire that may come under the influence of strong winds, Goeller said.

In the Mormon Creek area, which has the greatest potential to take off and run through the Highway 12 corridor, Goeller said they might do some light burning operations from the old ski slope down to remove the fuels before the main fire makes another run in the area.

On the western edge, firefighters spent Friday trying to anchor the fire to the Elk Meadows Road containment line as the fire backs into the wind.

Well utilize existing roads, heavy equipment lines that were built previously, and utilize aircraft as appropriate to keep the fire in check, Goeller said. We do not want any part of that (area) to have the fire make end runs around the north and west side of the fire and come into the Highway 12 corridor.

Travel on Old Highway 93 at Rowan Road to Long Avenue is closed to the public for fire operations. Anyone caught trespassing in a closed area will be stopped, and criminal charges can be filed.

Evacuation orders are in place for all homes west of U.S. Highway 93 and south of West Carlton Creek Road to Bass Creek Road in Missoula and Ravalli counties. The current evacuation order has been expanded to west of Florence Carlton Loop, from Holloway Lane north to Tie Chute Lane, Holton, the Ravalli sheriff, said.

For safety reasons, re-entry to evacuated homes is indefinitely postponed until conditions improve.

Last night we had significant problems with traffic, and a number of engines were blocked from getting into an area, Holton added.

Bobbie Bartlette, a former Forest Service fire manager who now manages a campground at the Squaredance Center, said the campground was evacuated late Wednesday night.

"This area hasn't burned for a very long time,'' she said. "We knew this hillside was going to burn, that this was going to be the one nature needed to take care of.

"Can it be impressive, exciting and awesome and at the same time concerning to the pit of your stomach? Yes,'' she said.

Frank Hines home is just north of where the fire jumped the containment line Thursday night. Both firefighters on the ground and those fighting it from a helicopter above have been using his property as a staging point to access the fire.

The firefighters have been great gentlemen, Hines said. My opinion is that these guys are excellent, and they know what theyre doing.

The Missoula-based National Guard activated 155 soldiers Friday to support the fire. The soldiers should arrive by Saturday, and will staff 35 security checkpoints around the fire area to free law enforcement personnel for other duties.

Gov. Steve Bullock has declared a fire emergency for Montana, which authorizes the Montana National Guard to support wildfire efforts as needed.

***

A crew of Alaskans from Noorvik, a village closer to Russia than any other American state, was one of the groups working on mop-up activities inside the containment line near the failed ski area west of Florence.

Moving through the black, the crew checked for hot spots left over in smoldering stumps and patches of duff. The Type 2 group broke into squads of five to dig through stumps with Pulaskis, a shovel modified so that the spade is at a right angle.

Like campers sifting through ash and coals before going to bed, the squads worked in successive 50-foot segments back from the containment line all morning. Mop-up work is no easy task, according to Bill Queen, one of the public information officers assigned to the fire.

Its dirty work, Queen said. You blow your nose and you wonder if youll ever have clean lungs again.

Most often, firefighters arent wearing any mask or protection for their breathing. The crew from Noorvik was black with soot around noon when they met back up around Drop Point 80 near McClain Creek.

Weve got a good team here, said Thomas Outwater a Noorvik firefighter. Last night was a bit intense but weve recovered. Weve been here for seven days and were doing what we came here to do.

***

The Federal Emergency Management Agency  or FEMA  has authorized the use of federal funds to help with firefighting costs. The authorization makes FEMA funding available to pay 75 percent of the states eligible firefighting costs under an approved grant for managing, mitigating and controlling designated fires. Eligible items can include expenses for field camps; equipment use, repair and replacement; mobilization and demobilization activities; and tools, materials and supplies.

FEMA grants do not provide assistance to individual home or business owners.

The lightning-caused Lolo Peak fire was discovered July 15. The estimated costs of fighting the fire so far are $17.9 million, and 743 structures are considered threatened.

Pilot cars were shepherding vehicles through the Highway 12 corridor earlier Friday, and law enforcement officials are cautioning against stopping along Highway 93 or anywhere firefighters are working, noting that it can cause significant traffic hazards.

Missoulian reporter Thomas Plank contributed information for this story.
NEW HAVEN >> Millions of Americans will attempt to see one of natures most spectacular events Aug. 21 when the moon passes directly between the Earth and sun, fully or partially blocking the sun.

That means people across Connecticut and the country will attend eclipse-themed parties with music, crafts and games and visit local community centers, museums, observatories and parks, donning safety solar glasses or using special telescopes, to view the first visible total solar eclipse from the U.S. in over 25 years.

Some people, known as eclipse chasers, who plan their entire lives, and potentially income, around these remarkable cosmic coincidences will travel hundreds of miles and go to great lengths just to witness again one of natures more awe inspiring sights.

Celestial wonder

During totality, the light of the sun is dimmed to about the same brightness as the full moon, allowing bright stars and planets to be easily seen. For this reason, the suns outer atmosphere, or solar corona, can be seen as well. Without a total eclipse, the corona is too faint to be seen against the background of light produced by the solar disc, according to Yale University Astronomy Professor Robert Zinn.

Just before and after totality, the diamond ring effect and Bailys beads may be seen, Zinn said. During the diamond ring effect, there is a ring of light around the moon and a very bright spot on the ring, the diamond, where a tiny part of the sun is not covered by the moon. Bailys beads, meanwhile, are bright spots on the limb (edge) of the moon where sunlight is streaming down one or more of the moons valleys.

During a solar eclipse, the shadow of the moon is cast on the Earth. The shadow moves rapidly, approximately 1,000 miles per hour, from west to east on the Earths surface in a narrow band about 70 miles wide, he said.

Observers from Salem, Ore. to Charleston, S.C. will be inside the band or the path of totality, allowing them to see a total solar eclipse as the moon will completely cover the suns disc.

However, only a partial eclipse will be visible from Connecticut, meaning the solar corona, diamond ring effect and Bailys beads cannot be seen. Nonetheless, Zinn said a partial eclipse is still worth observing because people can see the moon covering different amounts of the solar disc as the eclipse proceeds.

In New Haven, the eclipse will begin at 1:25 p.m. when the moon starts to cover part of the suns disc. The covered part will continue to grow to 68 percent by 2:45 p.m.

While there will be noticeably less sunlight at that time compared to a normal day in August, the sunlight will be too bright for planets or stars to be seen. After reaching the apogee, the amount of the suns disc that is covered will diminish until the eclipse ends at 4 p.m.

Celestial curiosity

According to Dr. Alexus McLeod, an associate philosophy professor at the University of Connecticut, in ancient times societies would sometimes view the unusual events in the sky such as solar eclipses as prophecies, signaling a positive or negative omen for rulers. However, he said it often was an attempt to make sense of the natural world in a way that would give it significance in a human community and culture.

Zinn described total solar eclipses as rare events with the next one being visible from the continental U.S. on April 8, 2024. He said while astronomers have observatories that are designed to make detailed observations of the sun, it is still of scientific value to make observations during a total solar eclipse.

Yale Universitys Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium, 355 Prospect St., will offer viewing for Connecticuts partial solar eclipse. Beginning at 1 p.m., the event offers observation through solar telescopes and eclipse glasses, which are available on a first-come, first-served basis, as well as a live video feed of the total solar eclipse.

Other locations where the partial solar eclipse can be viewed include:

 Connecticut Science Center - 250 Columbus Blvd., Hartford, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

 White Memorial Conservation Center - 80 Whitehall Road, Litchfield, 1 to 3 p.m.

 Stepping Stones Museum for Children - 303 West Ave., Norwalk, 1 to 5 p.m.

 Ballard Park - 485 Main St., Ridgefield, 1 to 4 p.m.

 Westport Astronomical Society - 182 Bayberry Lane, Westport, 1:15 to 3:45 p.m.

 The Childrens Museum - 950 Trout Brook Drive, West Hartford , 1:20 to 4 p.m.

 John J. McCarthy Observation - 388 Danbury Road, New Milford, 1 to 4 p.m.

 Van Vleck Observatory at Wesleyan University - 96 Foss Hill, Middletown, 1 to 4:30 p.m.

Safety

Most of these locations will have properly filtered telescopes and binoculars. Zinn said under no circumstances should [people] view the sun without taking precautions. Sunglasses, even the darkest ones, are not safe as they let in too much sunlight, he said. One of the only safe ways to look at the uneclipsed or partially-eclipsed sun is with eclipse glasses or handheld solar viewers, which have specifically made filters.

However, it is no longer sufficient to just look for the logo of the International Organization for Standardization and a label indicating the product meets the ISO 12312-2 international safety standards. Some companies are printing the ISO logo and certification label on fake eclipse glasses and handheld solar viewers results on their websites to support their claim of compliance with the ISO safety standards, according to the American Astronomical Society. The only way to be sure the solar viewer is safe is to verify that it comes from a reputable manufacturer or one of their authorized dealers.

While NASA isnt trying to be the eclipse safety-glasses police, its our duty to inform the public about safe ways to view what should be a spectacular sky show for the entire continental United States, said Alex Young, associate director for science at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. Its important that individuals take the responsibility to check they have the proper solar eclipse viewing glasses.

An alternative method for safe viewing of the partially-eclipsed sun is with a pinhole projector. With this method, sunlight streams through a small hole onto a makeshift screen like a piece of paper or the ground. Zinn said looking at the projected image of the sun is perfectly safe.

However, failure to follow these guidelines can be dangerous as viewing the sun directly, even for brief periods, can cause permanent damage to the retina and result in blindness, said Dr. Russell Van Gelder, a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Van Gelder explained that the lenses in a persons eyes act like a magnifying glass five times more powerful than a handheld one. People use a typical handheld magnifier to focus the sun to burn holes in paper, so when they look at the sun without proper eye protection, they focus the suns light on the retina, burning holes and therefore causing blindness.

The complete solar eclipse is a wonderful and memorable phenomenon that should be experienced by everyone in the eclipse path, he said. It is essential, however, that viewing is done safely.
Zimbabwes first lady Grace Mugabe failed to appear Saturday at a summit in South Africa attended by her husband, an event overshadowed by her effort to obtain diplomatic immunity over assault allegations. The wife of President Robert Mugabe has not been seen since being accused of attacking a 20-year-old model with a electrical extension cord last weekend in a Johannesburg hotel where the couples two sons were staying.The case has become a media spectacle, with protesters gathered outside the summit, some brandishing placards that read Grace, disgrace.The alleged assault is a political headache for South Africa and Zimbabwe, close neighbours with deep economic and historical ties.The matter also appears to have spilled into aviation, with South African Airways abruptly announcing that it was halting flights to and from Zimbabwe in a decision that followed flights being cancelled overnight after a dispute over permits, officials said.Police had said Grace Mugabe was expected at the two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting that opened with a first spouses programme.But the 52-year-old wife of Zimbabwes leader was not among the first ladies in reserved seating at the foot of the platform where several heads of state spoke. Her husband, 93, in a black suit and beige scarf, was among eight regional leaders present.Neither South Africas foreign ministry or the police said where the Zimbabwean first lady was, after it emerged that two aircraft were barred from leaving Johannesburg and Harare.One was owned by Air Zimbabwe, the company regularly used by President Mugabe, and one by South African Airways (SAA).The first flight could not take off Friday night from Johannesburg International Airport because the airline lacked an international permit to operate, according to South Africas civil aviation authority.The same regulation affected South African Airlines, whose flight SA25 was supposed to leave Harare on Saturday at 7:00 am (0500 GMT), but was grounded before being cancelled.In more than 20 years of operations in Zimbabwe, this is the first time we have been asked for this document, SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali told AFP.After an emergency meeting late Saturday, however, the transportation ministry said both Air Zimbabwe and SAA had submitted the required documents, potentially signalling a resumption of flights.The regional summits closing ceremony on Sunday was also scheduled to include partners of the heads of state for its 15 member nations.Mugabes wife has claimed diplomatic immunity after allegedly assaulting Gabriella Engels nearly a week ago.South African police have said they are on high alert to prevent her leaving the country, with an arrest warrant also reportedly being considered.We are awaiting the outcome of the request, a police spokesman said, referring to Mugabes effort to obtain diplomatic immunity.Engels, who has filed a case of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, appeared at a press conference on Thursday, wearing a large plaster on her forehead.Lawyers who have taken Engelss case told reporters she was offered cash to make the incident go away but she is determined to press charges against the Zimbabwean first lady.Willie Spies, one of her lawyers, said that if diplomatic immunity was granted they would consider bringing an injunction in court.Grace Mugabe was in South Africa reportedly to have her ankle treated following a minor accident last month.Her husband flew to the country late Wednesday, the day after his wife failed to attend an agreed meeting with South African police over the alleged assault.Zimbabwean officials have declined to comment on the allegations against the first lady or her immunity claim.Grace and Robert Mugabes two sons Robert Jr and Chatunga live in Johannesburg, where they have a reputation for partying.Grace Mugabe regularly speaks at rallies in Zimbabwe and is seen as a potential successor to her increasingly frail husband.
This is something I really dont want to talk about because I went through a whole lot. It all happened sometime in December 2015 at Asaba, Delta State. I was at an occasion when my phone rang and I stepped outside to take the call. As I was talking, I saw two guys standing by an Autobiography Range Rover. They were waving and hailing me. I realised they were my fans so after taking my call, I went to meet them and we exchanged pleasantries and then got talking.

The actor continued: One of the guys pointed at the white Range Rover and said Igwe Tupac, this is my jeep. I just bought it. It is an Autobiography Range Rover. I am getting married in three days time. Igwe Tupac, what will it take for you to attend my wedding? I was like congrats but we cant talk here. Let us exchange numbers. While that was going on, a gun totting policeman came out of the compound and joined us. Probably he had been watching me all the while at the event. .

He barged into us and was like oh boy, I like this guys film. He was obviously a fan so I felt compelled to listen to him. He kept blabbing that he had all my films. At a point, I was beginning to get tired, so I stepped aside. But he came right after me and said bros, na you I de talk to. Okay, let me throway one for you, to salute you. I be one of your biggest fans.

Before I knew it, he had cocked his gun and fired into the air. I almost went deaf from the gunshot. However, he was probably drunk and lost control of his rifle, which was in rapid mode. The guy who was getting married in three days time was hit in the ribs but he didnt know. His friend was asking him, were you shot? He said no but he was wrong! He had a bullet in the ribs and he died a shot while after. Sadly, that was the end of his marriage plans.

Immediately he was shot, Igwe Tupac was rushed to the hospital and doctors extracted five bullets from his abdomen and another from his leg. After spending two months in intensive care, he was finally discharged. Its a miracle that I survived at all. It was by the sheer grace of God. Five bullets pierced my abdomen and another one hit my leg and yet I survived, but the guy who was getting married took one bullet and died. I have only God to thank for this new lease of my life. These days when I see policemen bearing guns, I become wary and scared. Who wouldnt be after going through what I went through? I have been to a couple of occasions lately and when I see gun totting cops around me, I become very cautious, sometimes even hostile. I just have to protect myself.

Nollywood actor, Charles Okocha a.k.a Igwe Tupac, whose famous shove it up your ass dance is one Nigerias favourite, has revealed how he was almost killed last year after a policeman shot him at close range in Asaba, Delta State.The actor who had a chat with with TS Weekend recently, said:
Some Nigerians in the United Kingdom on Friday concluded arrangement to hold an a ll-night protest against President Muhammadu Buharis long absence from Nigeria at the Abuja House in London.The protest was scheduled to take place between 5 pm on Friday and 9 am on Saturday (today).The #ResumeOrResign protesters asked Buhari, who had spent 104 days outside the country to receive medical treatment, to either return to Nigeria to resume work or resign so as to allow a more capable person to lead the country.Similar #ResumeOrResign protests by the #OurMumuDonDo movement, led by popular Nigerian entertainer, Charly Boy, had taken place in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja for several days until August 15 when the group was attacked and wounded by pro-Buhari protesters at the Wuse market.In a Facebook post on Friday, a UK-based Nigerian and Convener of Hope for Nigeria, Chidi Cali, announced that the British police operating in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea had given them permission to hold the protest in front of the Abuja House, London.Cali also said the police promised to provide the protesters security while their sit-down protest lasted.Calling on Nigerians living in London to join the protest, Cali expressed delight that the British Police and the Kensington and Chelsea Council allowed their protest, which would be a candlelight vigil and procession, to hold.A sticker showing the permission of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for the protest to hold was seen notifying London motorists to avoid the Abuja House while the protest lasted.As of 8pm on Friday, Cali posted some pictures of the protesters setting the stage, decorated with the Nigerian flag and carrying posters with inscriptions such as Resume or resign, Enough is enough and We must know Buharis health status.Some British police officers were also seen standing in front of the Abuja House to protect the protesters.Meanwhile, the Socialist Party of Nigeria has condemned the attack on the #ResumeOrResign protesters by Buharis supporters at the Wuse Market on Tuesday in Abuja.The party said even though it did not necessarily agree with the proposition of the Charly Boy-led group that the resignation of President Buhari and replacement by acting President Yemi Osinbajo would resolve any of the socio-economic problems afflicting the working and toiling people of this country, the attack on him and the other protesters was condemnable.A statement on Friday by the partys National Secretary, Chinedu Bosah, said the attack was a clear indication that the ruling All Progressives Congress had the intention of repressing criticisms of the Buhari administration with extreme measures.The statement partly read, We call on the labour movement and the people to also speak up and condemn the attack because it portends grave dangers for the struggles of the working people in general.This attack raises fears about how fast Nigeria is being turned into a banana republic where any criticism of the ruling party and the administration of President Buhari are considered as a crime punishable by complete character assassination, blackmail or death.As far as we are concerned, citizens have a right to ask questions, not just about government policies but also about the conducts, actions and the health conditions of political office holders, including that of President Buhari whose medical bill in London is being footed by taxpayers.The party added that the APC and the Buhari government should be held responsible for the attack.
Happy New Month Nigeria! Welcome to the month of June. As the world searches for a respite from all its troubles since 2020 began, one can ...
Can you imagine you driving on Nigeria road in your Audi and suddenly a car hits you.

Instead of you complaining, your car just repairs itself automatically, not only that, your car changes colors while driving.

This is what Spanish designer Daniel Garcia was thinking of when he created this awesome concept design for Audi.

He got some inspiration for this particular design from Santiago Calatravas buildings in his hometown of Valencia. Audi seems to be an innovation enclave on its own with different amazing concepts it develops these days.

See more photos
Africas richest man, Aliko Dangote, has said he will not be running for Nigerias presidency in 2019 general elections or in the near futu...

Africas richest man, Aliko Dangote, has said he will not be running for Nigerias presidency in 2019 general elections or in the near future.

According to Bloomberg Markets Magazine, Dangote declared that he ws not cut out for politics, stressing that he was more comfortable with business.





He, however, said there was need for cooperation with politicians.





He told the magazine: No, Im not interested in active politics. Theres quite a lot we can do from the business side. I enjoy a lot of what I am doing and I also love my freedom and I dont have too much.

The little (freedom) I have, politics would take away. I am not ready to give that up. There are businessmen who are interested in politics. Im not one of them.

Well, in Africa, yes, I do think you need politicians. But at the same time, we cannot get things right unless there is good cooperation between politicians and businessmen. Its a win-win. When you look at it today, in Nigeria, over 85 per cent of the GDP is from the private sector.





On whether he is under pressure to make political donations, he said: Well, you know the political donation depends on who you are dealing with and who you are donating money to. But the issue is we dont go and give people in politics money for favours.





Ive told presidents of countries, Im a contractor, Im running a business, I dont need any favours.

And really, when you look at it today, in all our businesses, we dont need any favour. Weve done our numbers. We think this business will work and we dont need government support.
In the 2006 best seller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything there is a story of man who leaves his management position in the corporate world to open a business supplying bagels to offices. He brings bagels and cream cheese to locations in these offices and leaves a box at each station for people to drop in the posted price. The man kept detailed daily records on each and every station. Over time he noted trends. On average hed get about 74 percent of what should have been paid based on the bagels that were consumed. That percentage would go up if the weather was good; it would drop if it was stormy or snowing. The stations that were on floors occupied by executives at these various companies scored the lowest percentage received  by far!

This last observation led the gentleman to wonder what it was about the role of being an executive that made one less honest, that made one more inclined to take a bagel and not pay for it. Or, conversely, was it not that the role affects the individual, but the individuals characteristic of having some moral flexibility was a pre-requisite for becoming an executive? Either option is hard to hear, particularly if you are, have been, or aspire to be an executive.

Recently the Washington Post hosted an article written by a professor and doctoral student of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia titled Being rich wrecks your soul. We used to know that. It noted that throughout history, the accumulation of immense wealth was viewed as bad -- for you! Immense wealth harmed your character. This was espoused by philosophers, authors, and movies -- until recently. Think of Dickens A Christmas Carol and the evil, covetous Ebenezer Scrooge, or Its A Wonderful Life and Mr. Potter who keeps the mislaid deposit.

Or, how about Christ. Over 42 percent of his parables are about money or the management of money. Christ speaks more about money and wealth than any other topic -- and he doesnt go easy on the rich. Recall the parables of the man who built large barns to store his abundance of grain, or trying to fit a camel through the eye of a sewing needle. Jesus understood the alluring pull of wealth, drawing us to self-centeredness. But something has shifted. Wealth, extreme wealth, seems now seen as neutral or even good.

The authors write, The point is not necessarily that wealth is intrinsically and everywhere evil, but that it is dangerous -- that it should be eyed with caution and suspicion, and definitely not pursued as an end in itself; that great riches pose great risks to their owners; and that societies are right to stigmatize the storing up of untold wealth. Pope Francis declares that wealth needs to be used for the common good, else it is an instrument of corruption and death.

The bagel provider story might be passed off as anecdotal, but many recent behavior sciences studies show that wealth leads to behavioral maladies and vices. These studies conclude the rich are more likely to cheat, shoplift, be adulterous, drink heavily, run stop signs, cut you off in traffic, be more prone to suicide, and be tax evaders. The rich are less compassionate and empathetic to those who suffer, poorer at reading others emotions, less engaged with others, and lonelier.

One of the dangers of wealth is that it becomes your measure. Your worth and value become tied to your financial status -- a measure you impose upon yourself. Jesus speaks of your heart being tied to your treasure, and if your treasure is money your heart belongs to it -- not life, light, love, or others.

In the '60s, CEOs earned 20 times that of the average employee in their firm. That ratio is now pushing 400 times the earnings of the average, not the lowest, employee. Think tanks, frequently backed by billionaires, espouse arguments that the extreme compensation of CEOs and executives is a natural product of their talent and merit. But are these current business leaders that much smarter and more talented than their counterparts in the '60s? Are they 400 times more productive than the average worker?

Wealth should be nothing more than a tool to enabling some further good, some common good, some good beyond yourself and family. The accumulation of wealth is accompanied by moral danger. This was widely recognized by the wise in the past; we need to relearn.

The authors end their article with, But its time to put the apologists for plutocracy back on the defensive, where they belong -- not least for their own sake. After all, the Buddha, Aristotle, Jesus, the Koran, Jimmy Stewart, Pope Francis and now even science agree: If you are wealthy and are reading this, give away your money as fast as you can.

The Rev. Scott Wipperman is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Helena. He enjoys nature, is a fixer-of-many-things and is truly enamored with Helena.
Spanish police expanded a manhunt Saturday for a Moroccan man believed to be one of the perpetrators of twin terror attacks in Barcelona and another seaside resort that killed 14 and wounded around 100.With the country in shock after two vehicles ploughed into crowds of pedestrians, Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said the cell behind the carnage claimed by the Islamic State group had been dismantled.Police were still hunting for 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub without confirming reports he was the driver who smashed a van into people on Barcelonas busy Las Ramblas boulevard on Thursday.Thirteen people died at the scene and scores more were injured in scenes of horror witnessed by terrified friends and relatives, with locals and tourists laying flowers, candles and teddies in their memory.Investigators meanwhile were busy unravelling the terror cell of at least 12 young men  some of them teenagers  behind the Barcelona rampage and a second ramming attack with a car in the seaside town of Cambrils early Friday.One woman was killed and six other people wounded in that attack, with police killing five suspected terrorists who were in the car and arresting four others.Police also identified another three suspects linked to the attacks, two of whom are thought to have died in a blast on Wednesday night as they tried to make explosives at a house in Alcanar, a town some 200 kilometres (140 miles) south of Barcelona.On Saturday, police searched the home of an imam in Ripoll, a small town further north at the foot of the Pyrenees where some of the suspects lived, his flatmate Nourddem told AFP, without wanting to identify him.The El Pais daily, quoting police sources, said the imam could be one of the dead in the explosion.As the hunt for Abouyaaqoub gathers pace, Spanish police tipped off their French counterparts about a white van linked to the attacks that may have crossed the border, a French police source told AFP. Suspects father in shock The IS group had initially only claimed the Barcelona rampage, but on Saturday its propaganda agency Amaq said its soldiers had also carried out the attack in Cambrils.Police in Catalonia said three of the suspects shot dead in Cambrils were Moroccan nationals, identifying them as Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24.Moussas brother Driss is one of the four arrested.Back in Morocco, their father Said was in shock, with tears in his eyes when he was told of the news while at a wedding, surrounded by relatives.Were under shock, completely devastated, he told AFP, saying Moussa had been studying normally at school while Driss worked honestly.I hope they will say hes innocent I dont want to lose my two sons. Bigger plans Police said they believed the suspects were planning a much larger attack, possibly a vehicle bomb, with the use of gas canisters.But they appear to have made mistakes, accidentally detonating Wednesdays explosion.Security forces removed dozens of gas canisters from the house in Alcanar, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.They were preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona, and an explosion in Alcanar stopped this as they no longer had the material they needed to commit attacks of an even bigger scope, said Josep Lluis Trapero of Catalonias police. High level of coordination Both attacks followed the same modus operandi with drivers deliberately targeting pedestrians in the latest in a series of such assaults in Europe.In July 2016, 86 people were killed in the French resort of Nice when a man rammed a truck into a crowd. There have since been other deadly attacks using vehicles in Berlin, London and Paris.Otso Iho of Janes Terrorism and Insurgency Centre said the Spanish assaults appeared to have a much higher level of coordination than has been typically present in previous attacks.It is believed to be the first time IS has claimed an attack in Spain. Security increased Among the dead and injured were people from three dozen countries, including Algeria, Australia, China, France, Ireland, Peru and Venezuela, Spanish officials said.Fifty-nine people are still in hospital, including 15 in critical condition, the Catalan interior ministry said.The Spanish government on Saturday decided to maintain the terror threat level at four out of a maximum of five, Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido said, adding security had been increased in crowded places.Spain is the worlds third tourism destination and does not want to scare visitors away as it depends on the sector for its recovering economy.Until now, the country had been spared the recent wave of extremist attacks that have hit France, Belgium and Germany.It had even seen a surge in tourists as visitors shunned other restive sunshine destinations such as Tunisia and Egypt.But it is no stranger to jihadist attacks.In March 2004, it was hit by what remains Europes deadliest attack, when bombs on commuter trains in Madrid killed 191 people in an assault claimed by Al Qaeda-inspired extremists.Spain has also had to deal with a decades-long campaign of violence waged by Basque separatist group ETA, which only declared a ceasefire in 2011.
President Muhammadu Buhari has finally returned to Nigeria from his medical trip to the United Kingdom, after over 100 days.

President Muhammadu Buhari has finally returned to Nigeria from his medical trip to the United Kingdom, after over 100 days.



The presidential jet, Eagle 1 touched down at the Nnamdi Azikiwe InternationalAirport, Abuja at about 4:36pm on Saturday.

The president was received by Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, Imo State governor and chairman of APC governors Forum, Rochas Okorocha as well as his media aides, Femi Adesina, Garba Shehu and other cabinet members.

Buhari was seen dressed in black traditional attire while acknowledging cheers from his supporters and family members, amid a broad smile.
A Second Republic presidential candidate who is currently an All Progressives Congress, APC, stalwart, Alhaji Bashir Tofa has visited Pre...

A Second Republic presidential candidate who is currently an All Progressives Congress, APC, stalwart, Alhaji Bashir Tofa has visited President Muhammadu Buhari in London.

Buhari is currently in London nursing an unknown ailment. The president has spent over 100 days in the Queens country.





Tofa, who was on a lone visit to the president, wished him quick recovery.





He said Nigerians have been missing him and would be glad to have him back as soon as possible.





Buhari in his response said he was only waiting for his doctor to give him a nod before he could return.





Only last week, Buhari had hosted over ten prominent Nigerians in his temporary base in London.

Among those who have gone to see the president include: Pastor Enoch Adeboye, Senate President, Bukola Saraki, Yakubu Dogara of the House of Reps, Femi Adesina, Garba Shehu, Lai Muhammadu and host of others.








Following the arrival of President Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria from a medical vacation in the United Kingdom, Chairman, National Caretaker Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Senator Ahmed Makarfi has charged the ruling party to stop the blame game and focus on governance.In a chat with Vanguard Saturday, Makarfi said the PDP has always wish the President well, noting that having return, the buck passing game should now give way to governance.We are glad he is back home. The official position of the PDP has been to pray for his quick and full recovery and to return home. Now that he is back, there should be no more buck passing within the government, he said.Meanwhile former Minister of Aviation and chieftain of the PDP, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode said the resilience of protesters eventually forced the hand of President Buhari to return home after spending 105 days in London.Reacting to President Buharis arrival yesterday, the ex- Minister commended the Charly Boy-led #OurMumuDonDo movement saying their offshore campaign in London, forced the President to change his mind to return home.I commend the efforts of the #ResumeorResign group for chasing Muhammadu Buhari out of the United Kingdom after one night of protest outside Abuja House in London, he wrote on his Twitter Handle.
Conveners of the #ResumeOrResign groups, Charles Oputa, a.k.a Charly Boy and Deji Adeyanju have expressed delight over the return of President Muhammadu Buhari who has been in London since May 7 2017 for a medical treatment.President Buhari arrived Nigeria on board Nigeria Air Force One jet on August 19th 2017 and was received by his vice and Acting President Yemi Osinbajo at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International airport in Abuja on Saturday.In a statement jointly signed by Charles Oputa (Leader, #ResumeOrResign)FOR: Our Mumu Don Do Movement; Deji Adeyanju (Co-Convener  #ResumeOrResign)FOR: Concerned Nigerians; Ariyo Dare Atoye (Co-Convener  #ResumeOrResign)For: Coalition in Defence Of Nigerian Democracy; Jude Ndukwe (Co-Convener  #ResumeOrResign)For: Movement For The Advancement Of National Transformation and Bako Abdul Usman (Co-Convener  #ResumeOrResign) For: Campaign For Democracy, the coalition said Buharis return comes at a time Nigeria is in dire need of leadership.The coalition which has held several sit-outs both in Nigeria and in London, including a vigil in front of the Abuja House where Buhari had been recuperating in London to demand the Presidents resumption or resignation from office if incapacitated, also urged the President to immediately get to work.The coalition who equally thanked all Nigerians both in Nigeria and Abroad including non-Nigerians who lent voice to its #ResumeOrResign protests however urged President Buhari to address the various issues threatening the peace and unity of Nigeria especially the issues of quit notices and hate speech.According to the statement, We are excited by President Muhammadu Buharis return to Nigeria today having completed his medical treatment in the United Kingdom.His return comes at a time when Nigeria is in dire need of leadership to overcome the various economic socio-political challenges that threaten our collective hope and aspirations to peaceful coexistence, growth & development.We would like to use this medium to thank all Nigerians who participated in our #ResumeOrResign sit outs at home & abroad in any way.As he returns, we urge President Buhari to immediately get to work. We urge him to fulfill his campaign promises to the Nigerian people which include creating jobs, defeating the menace of corruption, revamping the economy, overcoming the many security challenges that threaten our national security, putting an end to the pervasive religious and ethnic & reuniting the country.We expect Mr. President to urgently address all the various threats coming from different groups, including the issue of quit notice, food poising, Biafra agitation and hate speeches flying around.We also reiterate our oft stated demand for full disclosure relating to the nature of illness President Buhari suffered from, the nature of treatment he underwent and the cost of that treatment.
Ekiti State Governor Peter Ayodele Fayose is famous for his controversies. On Saturday, ahead of President Muhammed Buharis arrival fro...

Ekiti State Governor Peter Ayodele Fayose is famous for his controversies. On Saturday, ahead of President Muhammed Buharis arrival from London, Fayode declared himself as Nigerias president in-waiting.He spoke at the Jolly Nyame Stadium, Jalingo the Taraba State capital during the funeral service of former Governor Danbaba Danfulani Suntai.The Ekiti governor came when all other dignitaries were seated and the occasion had begun.He waved at the gathering, acknowledging cheers which briefly interrupted the service.He wore a white garment with brief arms and white half-shoe to match.As he strode in, some people initially had mistaken him for former President Goodluck Jonathan, in spite of their stark difference in body frame and height.Leading Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo of Gombe State and Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong to the podium to offer their condolences and tributes, Fayose stirred a melodrama. Twice, he called himself president in-waiting.He humorously thanked the moderator, GT Kataps for giving him the chance to step on the podium.Thank you for giving me the chance. Maybe I am the president in-waiting, he said. There was a thunder of laughter and cheers from the audience.As he made his speech, members of a women choral group began to make noise. Women should not make noise, especially when a president in-waiting is talking, he said. Again, he was cheered up by fans.He based his tribute on courage and fearlessness which he is known for, which were also attributes of late former Governor Danbaba Danfulani Suntai.But when it was the turn of the Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong to speak, he told Fayose that there was no qualm since his presidency was a waiting type.Lalong said: Thank God you are a waiting president. You will wait for my President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari; he is returning today; you will welcome him.It was a few hours after Lalongs speech that President Buhari arrived the Presidential wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport.Lalong is of the All Progressives Congress (APC), while Fayose is of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).Fielding questions from newsmen, Fayose said he attended Suntais funeral because the deceased was an achiever, and particularly when Governor Darius Ishaku of the PDP won his election in the court he celebrated the victory in Ekiti too.
Manchester United claimed their second consecutive 4-0 victory as Swansea City collapsed to a thumping defeat at the Liberty Stadium on S...

Manchester United claimed their second consecutive 4-0 victory as Swansea City collapsed to a thumping defeat at the Liberty Stadium on Saturday.Eric Bailly put United in front with his first goal for the club late in the first half, during which the home side had defended resolutely.It was not until the final 10 minutes that the visitors gave the scoreline its convincing gloss, with Romelu Lukaku, Paul Pogba and Anthony Martial all scoring in the space of four minutes.The result follows a 4-0 victory over West Ham on the opening weekend, while for Swansea the creativity of Gylfi Sigurdsson was sorely missed.Sigurdsson  provider of nine goals and 13 assists in the league last season  left for Everton on Wednesday in a deal worth a reported 45million following drawn-out negotiations between the two clubs.'The Iceland international had sat out Swansea's season-opening goalless draw with Southampton last weekend, in which the Welsh club attempted just four shots on goal, and their attacking threat was limited once more on Saturday.Jordan Ayew clipped the crossbar early on but that was one of only six attempts by Swansea  one of those on target.A new 3-5-2 formation suggested Swansea's priority was keeping their visitors at bay but it was the Welsh club who created the first opening of the match  Ayew's attempted chip kissed the crossbar as it floated across the face of goal.Lukaku then poked wide after United embarked on a rapid counter-attack, before Phil Jones headed against the woodwork from a Juan Mata free-kick when he should have done better.Kyle Bartley justified his inclusion as the extra man in Swansea's back line when he made a crucial tackle to halt Marcus Rashford, who would have been clean through on goal without the former Arsenal man's intervention.An ambitious overhead kick from Martin Olsson  struck more in hope than expectation  was comfortably held by David De Gea midway through the half, but a misjudged Alfie Mawson header then created an opening for Rashford.The young striker  heckled throughout for the dive that won United a penalty in the last meeting between these sides  lifted the ball harmlessly into Fabianski's arms, before Jose Mourinho's men broke the deadlock on the stroke of half-time.Pogba's powerful header from a Daley Blind corner was touched onto the crossbar by Fabianski, but Bailly was on hand to finish the job after the ball bounced on the goal line.The second half was played at a rather pedestrian pace for long spells, as Swansea struggled to find a way through.When half-chances to level did arise, they were not taken  Tammy Abraham's wayward header on the hour was about as close as they came.Lukaku then opened the floodgates when he found space in the box to direct a considered shot beyond Fabianski in the 80th minute, before Pogba - who survived calls for a second yellow card during the first half - lifted a delicate chip over the Poland international.Substitute Anthony Martial then finished the job, cutting inside Mawson to slot home United's fourth.
The Commissioner of Police Abia, State Command, CP Adeleye Oyebade has declared the recently formed Biafra Security Service of the Indige...

The Commissioner of Police Abia, State Command, CP Adeleye Oyebade has declared the recently formed Biafra Security Service of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as illegal.Oyebade in a press briefing at the commands headquarters in Umuahia, the state capital warned those behind the formation of the security network he described as unlawful and illegal to retrace their steps.He stressed that the Nigerian constitution recognizes only the Nigerian Police, Nigerians Army and the Department of States service, adding that any other group claiming to be providing security without an approval from constitution was illegal.The state police boss further stated that the full weight of the law would be brought upon the organizers of the said BSS who he noted were displaying videos of the outlawed security service on their social media network.Oyebade who stated that the police and other security operatives in the state would never fold their hands and watch unscrupulous elements to disrupt the relative peace in the state reiterated that the police in synergy with other sister agencies to make the state safe for business and economic activities to thrive.He also used the opportunity to parade suspected armed robbers, kidnappers, cultists amongst others who he said were still being investigated and would soon be arraigned in court for trial for commencement of prosecution.Amongst the paraded suspects was a car snatcher identified as Onyekachi Nwaogu of No. 7 Nwankwo Street off Obohia, Aba South Local Government Area of the state.Oyebade also disclosed that detectives attached to the D7 SCIID, Umuahia, but operating in Aba also recovered a Red coloured Toyota Camry with reg number SSM 521 TP with engine number 5X3249568 and chasis no. 4018G12K4TU74221 suspected to have been stolen from its owner.He appealed to Abians to always provide necessary information about the activities of hoodlums in their areas to the police and other security agencies in the state who he stated were ready to make the state unsafe for criminals to thrive.
Nigerians in London on Friday took over the Abuja House in London, demanding that President Muhammadu Buhari should either return to his co...

Nigerians in London on Friday took over the Abuja House in London, demanding that President Muhammadu Buhari should either return to his country or resign.

They said the President should hand over power completely to his deputy.





President Buhari had left Nigeria for medical treatment in London on May 7.





The protesters, displaying various placards and Nigerian flags could be heard chanting Buhari go home, in front of the Abuja House, which is said to be housing the ailing President Buhari.





Video below.
Immediate past governor of Edo state and leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Edo state, has met with the 20 APC lawmakers in the state House of Assembly urging them to avoid actions capable of creating political tension in the state.At the meeting which held at the GRA residence of the former governor Tuesday night, Oshiomhole stressed the need for the lawmakers to ensure that they give support to the developmental strides of the governor Godwin Obaseki led administration so he can fulfil his electoral promises to the people of the state.Both the ousted Speaker of the House, Justin Okonoboh and his Deputy Elizabeth Ativie and the new leadership led by Alhaji Kabiru Adjoto and his deputy, Victor Edoror and other APC lawmakers were in attendance.The former governor had last Tuesday rushed back to Benin from Abuja following the change of leadership in the state House of Assembly. Upon his arrival, he met with the state governor Obaseki and members of the state Executive of the party, led by its chairman, Anslem Ojezua, before meeting with the lawmakers.Oshiomhole who expressed his disgust about the penchant of lawmakers in the state in changing its leadership stressed the need for lawmakers and their leaders to always work in harmony just as he urged the new leadership to carry members along in their dealings.It was learnt that the governor was said to have warned the lawmaker against actions capable of affecting the fortunes of the party in the state, commending the lawmakers for their loyalty to the party despite the change of leadership.
Coal isnt created equal.

Differences in chemistry and geology mean that coal from some parts of the country produces more pollution when burned, or is found in seams of varying thickness and accessibility, influencing the cost of mining it. Those regional distinctions, along with other factors, help shape the competitiveness of the fuel and the fortunes of mining communities.

Appalachian coal, high in sulfur and costly to mine, has been losing market share to other American coal-producing regions for years. Looking to stem the tide, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice last week proposed that the federal government subsidize coal-fired power plants that buy from Appalachian mines by $15 a ton, up to $4.5 billion per year.

Though they may simply be political bluster and opportunism, Justices comments  which he has hinted are of interest to President Donald Trump  have sparked infighting among coal-producing regions.

The proposed subsidy has predictably come under fire from politicians and coal producers beyond Appalachia, including those in the Illinois Basin and St. Louis-based companies such as Peabody, which operates the countrys largest mine in Wyoming.

It wouldnt be fair to incentivize one type of coal over another, said Phil Gonet, president of the Illinois Coal Association. This violates the principle that I thought the coal industry was following, that we want to do away with subsidies. We want a level playing field, where all kinds of energy can compete.

Gonet, whose trade organization represents member companies active in Appalachia as well as the Illinois Basin, said its fair to say that Illinois coal producers would lose out to their eastern counterparts if Justices proposal were implemented.

He says competition between coal-producing regions is nothing new, and notes that its often the case that one benefits at the expense of another.

Its hard to lift all boats, Gonet said.

A clear example occurred in 1990, when passage of the Clean Air Act steered demand away from coal producers in Appalachia and Illinois in favor of lower-sulfur coal from Wyomings Powder River Basin.

We argued back in Illinois that this was a federal policy that was going to hurt us, but the environmental argument won out, Gonet said. Most people would agree that getting sulfur dioxide out of the flue gas was a good thing. I dont think a lot of people would object to clean air, but along the way we lost half of our production and two-thirds of our workforce.

Other policies also shifted the balance of power toward Wyoming in recent decades, said Rob Godby, professor of energy economics at the University of Wyoming. Deregulation of railroads in the 1980s, for instance, enabled the states mines to cost-effectively ship coal as far as the Southeast.

Godby says that, unlike Justices proposal, the environmental and railroad policy changes were never employed to give an opportunity to a particular region.

What it really comes down to, he says, is economics. The economies of scale enjoyed in the Powder River Basin  where just 12 mines account for 40 percent of the nations coal production  give Wyoming another advantage that other coal regions cant match.

But Wyoming mines, too, are feeling pressure, as competition from cheaper, cleaner natural gas erodes market share.

Thats why Godby can see why Justices idea and other pro-coal rhetoric has traction. For decades, roughly half the nations electricity was generated by coal, and just in the last 10 years, that share has plummeted to about 30 percent, thanks to surging natural gas consumption. A shift of that magnitude, he says, is bound to be jarring.

Unfortunately, the majority of that change has occurred in Appalachia first, but its now affecting all coal regions, Godby said. Its part of why the promise to bring back coal jobs is popular in those places. ... The transition has been so quick and so sudden that it offers hope to people who are wondering what hit them.

If Justices proposed subsidy were adopted, it would bring coal from such regions as the Illinois Basin more in line with the prices for Appalachian coal, which is by far the most expensive in the country, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Godby, though, says the policy would only provide marginal help, noting that power plants are optimized to use specific fuel types and cant easily convert from one to another. And it wouldnt address the challenge presented by natural gas.

Even with Trump as a professed champion of coal, its far from certain that the subsidy advocated by Justice would ever happen. As Godby points out, such a move would aid one Republican-dominated coal region at the expense of another, and would betray the partys ideological opposition to market interference.

Moreover, Godby suggests that attempts to find a quick fix through subsidies could ultimately hurt the displaced coal workers it aims to help.

The other problem is postponing the inevitable by making something artificially competitive probably isnt going to help those people in the long run, he said.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has saluted President Muhammadu Buhari on his return from his over three months medical vacation to Lo...

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has saluted President Muhammadu Buhari on his return from his over three months medical vacation to London.The welcome message of the party was issued by the Mr. Dayo Adeyeye, National Publicity Secretary, PDP National Caretaker Committee on Saturday in Abuja.We believe that Mr. President is healthier now to assume his responsibility at the helm of the Countrys affairs.We thank the Almighty for saving his life.We pray that God grants him better health and understanding on how to rescue our poor economy and relieve Nigerians from the current hardship.The President departed Nigeria on May 7 and returned on Aug. 19.He will be addressing the nation on Monday.
The Ogun State Police Command on Friday said it has arrested 32 years old Olatunde Akapo for allegedly beaten his neighbour to death wit...

The Ogun State Police Command on Friday said it has arrested 32 years old Olatunde Akapo for allegedly beaten his neighbour to death with lethal charm.The victim, Augustine Ode (42), was said to have been struck with the dangerous charm by his assailant, he slumped and died afterwards.The Police Public Relations Officer in Ogun State, Abimbola Oyeyemi, in a statement said the suspect was arrested following a complaint by the deceaseds brother who reported the case at the Ibogun Police Division.The deceaseds brother said the brother was having a minor disagreement with his neighbor which degenerated to a fight and in the process, the suspect rushed into his room, came out with a charm with which he used to beat the deceased.As a result of which the deceased fell down and subsequently died.Upon his report, the DPO Ibogun Division, Nicholas Tamuno- Inam led detectives to the scene at Alapako Eke and the suspect was promptly arrested.The remains of the deceased have been deposited at Ifo General Hospital morgue for autopsy.The Commissioner of Police, Ahmed Iliyasu, has directed that the case be transferred to Homicide section of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department for further investigation and prosecution of the suspect, Abimbola stated.
Recuperating President Muhammadu Buhari is amused by the Resume or Resign campaign recently launched against him by some Nigerians. ...



I thank Pastor Adeboye for visiting today, and for his prayers and good wishes. May God continue to bless him and his work. pic.twitter.com/eds2rT1gG5

 Muhammadu Buhari (@MBuhari) August 18, 2017

The campaign, led by an entertainer, Charles Oputa (aka Charly Boy), was meant to force him to return home immediately from his medical vacation in London and resume work, failing which he should relinquish power.Buharis Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr.Femi Adesina, who was part of the Presidents media team that visited him last week in London, said Buhari has enough time to watch television, and commended the NTA particularly, and Nigerian media generally, for bringing him up to speed with what was happening back home.He (Buhari) said he had been watching the protests by people who wanted him to return home post-haste or resign, Adesina said in a write up on the London visit.He added: He mentioned one of the leaders of the protest by name and laughed. I did not discern any malice in the laughter.The General Overseer Worldwide of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, yesterday visited the President in London, the latest of dignitaries to call on the President.Buhari, writing on his Twitter handle yesterday, thanked Pastor Adeboye for his visit and prayers.Pastor Adeboyes visit came 24 hours after that of Senate president Bukola Saraki and House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara.Saraki yesterday on Twitter shared his thoughts on what he saw of the Presidents health.He said Buharis insistence on his doctors advice was yielding results.He described the London meeting he and Dogara had with the President as one of substance.His words: Mr. President exhibited remarkable recovery and was very conversant with all the political happenings back at home and across the continent.It was a meeting of substance where we discussed important matters of state. We also discussed the 2017 budget.In particular, we talked about the virement request by the Presidency which is before the National Assembly.We then considered the steps to be taken in the preparation of the 2018 budget to ensure its early passage.International issues were also discussed and Mr. President informed us that he has conveyed his sympathies to the people of Sierra Leone.We must give thanks to God for this highly welcomed recovery.It is clear that Mr. Presidents insistence on following his doctors advice has yielded the desired results.I therefore confidently look forward to Mr. Presidents imminent return home.Charly Boy and his fellow protesters have since suspended their action following an attack on them at the popular Wuse market in Abuja on Tuesday by those the group called thugs.We just went to Wuse market for mobilisation against 100 days event tomorrow & a regular face at Unity Fountain brought thugs to attack us, Deji Adeyanju, one of the organizers of the anti-Buhari protest wrote on Twitter.However, eyewitnesses said it was traders at the market that stopped the anti-Buhari group from entering the market.They said some boys in this market threw stones at Charly Boys group.The police had, last week, fired canisters of tear gas at the protesters after gathering at the Unity Fountain, Abuja.The police said their action followed the infiltration of the protesters by hoodlums.
Senate Joint Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff and Marine Transport, said it has recovered N120 billion from companies involved in N3...

Senate Joint Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff and Marine Transport, said it has recovered N120 billion from companies involved in N30trn revenue scam.

The committee on Friday directed 13 more companies to appear before it on Monday to explain their involvement in the probe.





Chairman of the committee, Sen. Hope Uzodinma, in a statement on Friday said the committee was giving the companies the last opportunity to appear before it.





The companies are Dana Group, A-kehnal Integrated & Logistics Limited, Don Climax/Skyaim, Gagsel International, Africa Tiles & Ceramics and Network Oil & Gas.





Others are IBG Investment Limited, BUA International limited, Huawei Technologies, Indorama Petrochemicals, StarComms Plc, African Industries and African Wire and Allied.





Uzodinma disclosed that the committee had resolved to direct the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to start issuing Demand Notice (DM) to companies found culpable in the on-going investigation.





He added that companies found to have been involved in round tripping and money laundering would be charged to court with immediate effect.

The committee has only taken the first batch of the companies invited.

Only 61 companies have been interrogated and over 2000 companies are still expected to appear before us.

During the committee sitting on Friday, 18th August most of the companies representatives heaped praises on the committee for what they described as a thorough job, he said.
Suspected Nigerian drug trafficker jumped to his death off the fourth floor of a building in southern New Delhi,India yesterday while tr...

Suspected Nigerian drug trafficker jumped to his death off the fourth floor of a building in southern New Delhi,India yesterday while trying to escape police arrest.Forty-year-old Cyprian Ama Ogbonnaya had been trailed to the building by the police after receiving a tip off that drug would be supplied in the area.A senior police officer confirmed that a team of Special Cell sleuths of south range raided the house in Chhattarpur Enclave area.The team was questioning some locals, when Ogbonnaya suspecting police presence in the building jumped from its fourth floor flat through a window, which was witnessed by many people who were present in the building premises.He was rushed to AIIMS trauma Centre where he was declared dead by the doctors, the police officer said, adding that an inquest had been ordered into his death and a medical report by the doctors to ascertain the exact cause of death was awaited.He said that two Nigerian women, who were also present in the flat, from where Ogbonnaya jumped off, were being questioned by the Special Cell.During the raid, 25 kg of Ketamine was recovered.Ketamine is sold popularly as Ketalar for anaesthetic purposes is also consumed by drug users for its trance inducing effect.
U.S. President Donald Trump has fired his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon in the latest high-level White House shake-up. Bannon, a forc...

U.S. President Donald Trump has fired his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon in the latest high-level White House shake-up. Bannon, a force behind some of Trumps most contentious policies, including a travel ban on people from several Muslim-majority nations, was a powerful and controversial figure known for far-right political views.On July 28, Trump replaced his beleaguered White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, installing retired General John Kelly in his place in a major shake-up of his top team. Trump then ousted White House communications chief Anthony Scaramucci on July 31 over an obscene tirade just 10 days after the president named him to the post. Scaramuccis hiring had prompted Sean Spicer, a Priebus ally, to abruptly resign as press secretary.Trump, seven months into his term in office, has become increasingly isolated over his comments following white supremacist violence in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville last Saturday. As Trump came under fire from prominent fellow Republicans, business leaders and U.S. allies abroad, he faced mounting calls for Bannons ouster. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steves last day, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Friday.We are grateful for his service and wish him the best. A champion of economic nationalism and a political provocateur, Bannon, 63, is a former U.S. Navy officer, Goldman Sachs investment banker and Hollywood movie producer. Critics have accused Bannon of harbouring anti-Semitic and white nationalist sentiments. Democrats welcomed Bannons departure. There is one less white supremacist in the White House, but that doesnt change the man sitting behind the Resolute desk, Democratic National Committee spokesman Michael Tyler said in a statement, referring to Trumps Oval Office desk.Donald Trump has spent decades fueling hate in communities, including his recent attempts to divide our country and give a voice to white supremacists. Bannon had been in a precarious position before but Trump opted to keep him, in part because his chief strategist played a major role in his 2016 election victory and was backed by many of the presidents most loyal rank-and-file supporters. The decision to fire Bannon could undermine Trumps support among far-right voters but might ease tensions within the White House and with party leaders.Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress but have been unable to pass major legislative goals including a healthcare legislation overhaul because of fierce intra-party divisions. Trump fired Bannon from the White House post one year and one day after he hired the firebrand to head his presidential campaign. Trump ran into trouble in recent days after saying anti-racist demonstrators in Charlottesville were as responsible for the violence as the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who instigated the protests.Those remarks sparked rebukes from fellow Republicans, top corporate executives and some close allies even as some supporters, including Vice President Mike Pence, stood by Trump.
In reaction to Acting President Yemi Osinbajos promise to treat what he described as hate speech as terrorism Mr. Jackson Ude the pub...
Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has said that Chelsea manager Antonio Conte should not be complaining.He said the Blues should be strong enough to challenge for the Premier League title this season.Conte is claiming that his squad is too small, and had said on the eve of the new season that he needed more players at Stamford Bridge and was expecting the most difficult season of his managerial career.Chelsea started their title defence with a 3-2 defeat to Burnley last weekend.Mourinho noted that the arrivals of Tiemoue Bakayoko, Antonio Rudiger and Alvaro Morata for a combined 132 million should compensate for the loss of Nemanja Matic, John Terry and Diego Costa.The Chelsea boss has also been linked with a 40m move for Leicester midfielder Danny Drinkwater, and Mourinho seemed to suggest a deal could be close.Mourinho added, When people say, for example, Chelsea lost an important midfield player, if you lose one but you buy Bakayoko and Drinkwater for example, whats the problem?The problem is when you sell and you dont buy. When you sell and you keep buying, whats the problem?You are probably even stronger so I think every top team in the Premier League is strong enough, is potentially strong enough with the financial situation to be fighting for everything and when everybody is also in Europe, five in the Champions League and then two in the Europa League, you have the top seven teams playing for everything and all of them are strong.Mourinho insisted that Chelsea, who play Tottenham at Wembley on Sunday, are still favourites to claim the Premier title this season.He added, For me the favourite is the champion. Always. It doesnt mean you are going to win it but I think it is the stamp that you have when you are champion, it is that the next season you are the favourite.The former Real Madrid boss said Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham, Manchester City and Chelsea will have no excuses if they do not challenge this season.He said, If they have problems, the problems are going to finish in a couple of weeks because in a couple of weeks the market is closed and they dont have problems anymore.If they have, and I dont know if they have, but if they have, in a couple of weeks the problems are over.They have very good teams, very good players and I dont see any reason for them not to be fighting for the title.
PARK RIDGE -- A Friday night fire at a condominium complex caused a roof to collapse, displacing about 50 residents, authorities said.

Authorities received a 911 call at about 9 p.m. from a resident reporting that a neighbor's smoke detector was going off in a second floor unit, according to a post from the Park Ridge Fire Department's Facebook page.

Firefighters arrived to find thick black smoke billowing from the North Maple Avenue building. They battled the blaze for about an hour, according to northjersey.com, with assistance from Woodcliff Lake, Montvale, Hillsdale, Westwood, River Vale, Old Tappan, Emerson, Pearl River, and Washington Township fire departments.

No injuries were reported.

The roof collapsed on the portion of the building where the fire started, and smoke and water damage to additional units forced about 50 people from their homes. The Red Cross assisted them Friday night, authorities said.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Allison Pries may be reached at apries@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AllisonPries. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
CAMDEN -- Three men, including two pharmaceutical representatives and one retired firefighter, pleaded guilty Friday to their role in a $25 million drug scheme that involved convincing public employees to seek unnecessary, expensive medications, authorities said.

Michael Pepper, 45, of Northfield, Thomas Hodnett, 41, of Voorhees, and Steven Urbankski, 37, of Marlton, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud Friday in federal court in Camden, authorities said.

The charges stemmed from a scheme the three took part in between January 2015 and April 2016, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. During that time, the three recruited New Jersey residents receiving insurance under the state health benefits system and persuaded them to obtain pricey compounded medications they did not need from a pharmacy outside the state, authorities said.

The pleas come just a day after others admitted their roles in the scheme. On Thursday, 42-year-old Matthew Tedesco, an Atlantic County pharmaceutical sales representative from Linwood, and Robert Bessey, 43-year-old Philadelphia man, both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud in federal court in Camden, authorities said.

Compounded medications are made by a pharmacist and given to patients when general, FDA-approved drugs cannot adequately treat their conditions. They are sometimes given to those who have allergies to traditional medications.

But in this case, Pepper, Hodnett and Urbanski collectively recruited public employees to fraudulently obtain such medications, according to the US Attorney's Office.

That involved getting doctors to sign prescriptions without ever evaluating patients, which were then filled by the unnamed compounding pharmacy. These were "compounded medications that paid the most and order 12 months of refills without regard to their medical necessity," according to federal authorities.

The "pharmacy benefits administrator" under the state benefits program would then reimburse the claims, paying up to thousands of state dollars in each, authorities said. In total, the administrator paid more than $50 million for compounded medications sent to people in New Jersey, around half of which was used in the wide-ranging scheme, according to federal authorities.

Of that, Pepper, a former Atlantic City firefighter, and Urbanski, a pharmaceutical sales representative, received more than $113,000 each, while Hodnett, another pharmaceutical sales representative, made nearly $270,000, authorities said.

Tedesco, a leader in the scam, received some $11 million, authorities said.

All of those who have pleaded guilty so far face up to 10 years in prison and fines of $250,000. Pepper, Hodnett and Urabnski will be sentenced December 5.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amahoover. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
MIAMI  I can imagine Calvin telling his kids someday: Your grandma saved my life when I was born. She did it by never giving up on me, and by using an ancient software program called Facebook, joked Dr. Redmond P Burke.

Burke, the chief director of cardiovascular surgery at Nicklaus Childrens Hospital in Miami, operated July 27 on 4-week-old Calvin Taylor, despite the baby being rejected by four high-risk congenital heart transfer hospitals.

At home in Savannah, Mo., Calvins mother, Sarah Lemons, had searched for three weeks before connecting with Nicklaus on Facebook.

We expected to go to the hospital and get another No but they said Yes and I went speechless, Lemons said. I looked over at my fiance and said Did they just say yes? and hes like Yeah, they did! and I started crying. We got here that night.

Born June 28 at 7 pounds, 2 ounces, Calvin stopped breathing hours after birth. He was rushed to a childrens specialty hospital, then assessed over the next few days.

Besides having hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a birth defect that affects normal blood flow in the heart, Calvin had narrow airways and suffered a minor stroke.

His condition was considered too complex for surgery.

At the familys urging, four other hospitals were contacted, only to give the same answer.

So, while also planning Calvins funeral, Lemons kept researching potential places he could go for help.

Then she came upon a Facebook group of families with kids who also had hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

All kinds of moms got on there telling me different surgeons all across the U.S., Lemons said. And for some reason Dr. Burke from Miami stood out.

In a five-hour operation, Calvins heart was rebuilt, according to Burke.

While the operation went smoothly, a minor complication arose the day after, to which Burkes cardiovascular team swiftly responded.

By the fourth day post-surgery, Calvins condition normalized. Smiling at his mom and crying when alone, Calvin began to fly through his hospitalization, Burke said.

His mom cant keep her hands off him, he said. I think she was so afraid she was going to lose him, she has to convince herself all the time that hes still there.

Lemons strong devotion inspired Burke, making the operations success all the more meaningful for him.

Calvin will need two more surgeries. They wont cure the syndrome, but will help restore his hearts functionality.

The second surgery is scheduled for when hes 4 to 5 months old, the third when hes 3 to 4 years old.

For now, Lemons is excited to just eat a home cooked meal back home with her family of five.

You dont realize how many good people you have in your life until something bad happens and everyone comes together, Lemons said. [Calvins] definitely going to have a heck of a welcoming coming home.
UPDATE: Weigand said he is shutting down his business.

CHERRY HILL TWP. -- In a nice suburb of Philadelphia, there is a business that sells white supremacist music, clothing and other racist and anti-semitic gear to people all over the world.

Micetrap Distribution LLC has become one of the largest distributors of white power materials in the country, according to a former law enforcement agent who monitored it.

The business is registered to Steven Wiegand, 45. Records show he grew up in Pennsauken, started his business in Maple Shade, and now lives on a sidestreet off of Route 70 in Cherry Hill.

And he's been hawking hate since the late 1990s, says Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.

"This is white supremacist propaganda," he said of Micetrap and similar sites. "Whether we're talking about the music or the clothing or the accessories, this is hate in a very pure form. It's anti-Semitism, it's anti-black hate, it's anti-immigrant. It helps glue these people together."

Wiegand did not respond for requests for comment. At some point Friday -- a day after the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article about him -- he posted a note on his doorbell saying he wouldn't talk, was video recording the property and would consider knocking to be harassment.

He told Inquirer reporter Tricia L. Nadolny that he is a businessman, not a white supremacist.

He made similar statements in a 2015 Facebook post about his business being named as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"We are merely a business that offers for sale merchandise and music, items that can be found on hundreds and thousands of other websites, including Ebay and Amazon," he wrote. "As a business, we do not advocate anything and our customers and supporters are intelligent enough to form their own opinions and ideals."

Posts on his website and Facebook page tell a different story. He rails against Israel, calls immigrants "enemies" and says white "culture" is under attack. He called "white lives matter" a "motto for survival."

The website sells items ranging from "Stop race mixing" pins, to shirts celebrating Hitler or the Atlantic City Skinheads." There are countless albums from white power bands, with song names that, among other things, refer to the Holocaust as a good thing.

21 years and counting

Pitcavage said said groups in the white power movement die out quickly, as people leave and join new groups, or members disappear in in-fighting or to prisons.

"Micetrap is ancient by white supremacist terms," he said.

As far as white power retail operations go, Pitcavage said they generally fail because there are a limited number of people who will buy that kind of music and merchandise.

So why has Micetrap survived? "It's probably mostly been sticktoitiveness as well as the collapse of some of his competition," Pitcavage said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center featured Wiegand in a 2006 article on white power music.

It said that Wiegand's first foray into white supremacy was starting the White Pride Network at www.whitepride.com in 1996.

He started Micetrap two years later and was briefly a member of the National Alliance hate group, the article said.

He eventually took over 14 Word Press, the business the published the writings of white nationalist leader David Lane. Wiegand sold the site after The Courier-Post and The Burlington County Times published articles about him, according to court documents.

After the articles were published, he was fired from the convenience store he was managing in 2002, court documents show. He sued, a judge dismissed his first amendment claims, and he settled the final remaining count, in which he alleged his boss promised not to fire him if he sold 14 Word Press and took other steps.

Wiegand has had disputes with various white power bands, music labels and groups in his 20 years in the movement, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He's been accused of bootlegging music and hacking other white supremacist sites, and has his own site protected by anti-hacking software.

Pitcavage said it's not strange that Wiegand has remained unaffiliated with a white supremacist group for most of years in the movement.

"Like a lot of people involved in white power music, he's had kind of dalliances with different groups," he said. Most white supremacists, he said, are not affiliated with a specific group.

Creating a 'soundtrack'

Pitcavage said white power music originated from one white supremacist subculture, racist skinheads, in Great Britain.

Some of the music is completely focused on white power or anti-Semitism, while some songs are more subtle, Pitcavage said.

Micetrap not only sells racist music that is banned from iTunes or Spotify, it also has an online "radio" where people can stream the music.

White power music stores like Micetrap "occupy a unique place in the movement because the make the goods and the soundtrack," Pitcavage said.

The music is a common interest that helps create a subculture, which is key to making the people within it feel connected to one another and part of something, he said.

Running the business all those years can't be easy, Pitcavage said, because many companies don't want to do business with someone selling white power products. Wiegand complains about it on Micetrap's Facebook page.

Pitcavage made a fake account on Micetrap's online store and determined Wiegand only allows previous buyers to use Paypal. He said this is a move to prevent someone like him from making an account, buying something and then sharing the Paypal account info with Paypal so that the account could be shut down in accordance with the corporation's policy.

Wiegand is likely using an account in someone else's name, he said.

'Hate spreads fear'

Pitcavage said the Anti-Defamation League has done research on Wiegand over the years, even though he has no record of violent crimes like some white supremacists.

"White supremacists who never engage in an act of violence are still a danger," he said. "White supremacy as an ideology is so poisonous it can tear apart communities. Spreading that hate spreads fear."

Wiegand told the Inquirer that his business has been growing steadily for four years, and Pitcavage said there's no reason to doubt it.

He said it coincides with the rise of the Alt-Right movement, a term for far righters who espouse racist and anti-Semitic views, which has been on the scene and growing in since 2012.

"It brought in a fair amount of new blood," he said.

It is also possible that all the recent headlines about white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia could boost Wiegand's business more, the researcher said. That's because the publicity can cause people who are already leaning towards white supremacy to seek out information on the movement and become indoctrinated.

"It gives them a chance to expand their movement," he said.

Micetrap will be there if any new white supremacists want to wear their racist beliefs, literally, on their sleeve.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
CAPE MAY -- Members of the Cape May Fire Department and Cape May Beach Patrol formed a human chain to save three swimmers Friday afternoon.

Cape May Fire Department officials said that they received a call about a water rescue close to Beach and Philadelphia avenues around 5:45 p.m. Friday. When firefighters arrived, the three swimmers that were originally in trouble made it safely back to the beach. However, one person who had been trying to save the three needed to be rescued, officials said.

Two members of the fire department, along with beach patrol members, formed a human chain and were able to bring the person back to shore. The fire department, along with the Cape May Police Department, used a retrieval line to bring the chain members back safely.The United States Coast Guard was also present and assisted with support on the rescue.
JERSEY CITY -- Nearly 100 public high school students celebrated the completion of their summer internship program with the city on Friday.

A number of city officials including Mayor Steve Fulop and Superintendent of Public Schools Marci V. Lyles were on hand at the Hyatt Regency yesterday for the final ceremony commemorating the students of the 2017 Jersey City Summer Internship (JCSI) program.

The program, now in its fourth year, is an initiative of the Jersey City Economic Development Corporation and Mayor Steve Fulop's office.

Eighty-two of Jersey City's public high school students participated in the competitive, 6-week paid internship where they received ongoing training and mentoring support with a number of different companies.

The students received weekly instruction in essential workforce skills including team work, public speaking, research, and other skills such as networking and interviewing.

The internships were provided by top companies and leading nonprofits in Jersey City, Manhattan, West New York, Iselin and Roseland.

The internship program is part of the larger Summer Works Program that has placed more than 3,000 young men and women in jobs, internships and other enrichment courses.
Its meant to boost your health but Minnesota doctors caution that this alternative health remedy can send you or a loved one to the emergency room.

Six people have been treated at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, Minn., this year for injuries sustained after accidentally drinking highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide.

Although these were accidental cases in which the patients thought the odorless, colorless liquid was water, there are people intentionally drinking diluted hydrogen peroxide as a natural treatment for sinus infections, inflammation and other ailments.

The way people describe it is that they take 3 drops of concentrated peroxide and dissolve it in about eight ounces of water and take it three times a day, explained Dr. Ann Arens, a medical toxicologist at the Minnesota Poison Control System. There are a bunch of websites and YouTube videos. Theres no science behind any of it helping. Theres no benefit of doing it and it really opens you up to a lot of potential harm.

Doctors have seen more cases of hydrogen peroxide poisoning in the last two months, she said.

The hydrogen peroxide in these cases is stronger than the 3 to 5 percent concentration usually found in the drug store. In these cases, the bottle is labeled food grade quality and contains 35 percent hydrogen peroxide.

It burns as soon as you drink it, Arens said.

Consuming the liquid can burn holes in the esophagus and stomach, and can create oxygen bubbles that can be released in the blood stream. When that happens, explained Dr. Stephen Hendriksen, an emergency medicine doctor at HCMC, the bubbles can travel to the brain and cause seizures and stroke-like symptoms.
Here's the deal: You rebuke white supremacy and, well, that's it: Opinion
EFFINGHAM  The Illinois State Police said troopers arrested a 54-year-old San Diego man Thursday after finding $648,000 worth of heroin in his sport-utility vehicle during a traffic stop.

According to a state police news release, the trooper initiated the stop at about 10:55 a.m. as the SUV was heading east from Vandalia on Interstate 70.

The trooper stopped the vehicle because the man improperly changed lanes, police said. During a search, the trooper discovered 4 pounds of heroin inside the vehicle, police said.

In addition to a citation for improper lane usage, the man faces the preliminary charges of possession of a controlled substance and controlled substance trafficking, the media release said. Those charges are subject to review by the Fayette County State's Attorney's office.

The man being was held at the Fayette County Jail on Thursday.
Yes, a slight portion of southwest Iowa will experience a total eclipse.

Part of a nationwide narrow swath, known as the path of totality, will include a 582-acre of land in Fremont County near Waubonsie State Park, as well as the town of Hamburg.

At 1:05 p.m. Monday, this small area will experience a 32-second glimpse of the 2017 total eclipse, according to a statement from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Part of this area is public ground, said Matt Moles, a DNR spokesman and former technician at Waubonsie. The DNR is preparing the area for eclipse watchers.

Parking is limited at the site, but the towns of Hamburg and Sidney plan to provide shuttle services for the event, Moles added.

The school in Hamburg is in charge of its shuttle service.

We are going to do everything we can to get people there to enjoy the experience, said Mike Wells, superintendent for the Hamburg Community School District. We even have 150 solar glasses and plan to grill some hot dogs for the viewers.

The hot dogs, solar glasses and seats on the bus will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, he said.

The shuttle will leave from Marnie Simons Elementary/Middle School, located at 309 S St. in Hamburg, promptly at 11 a.m.

The Sidney shuttle will depart from the Fremont County Historical Museum at 10:30 a.m. and seat availability is also on a first-come, first-served basis.

We have no idea how many people will come to view the eclipse at this spot, but well try to accommodate as many as possible, Moles said. A lot will depend on the weather.

Other than the walk-in campsites, all the cabins and all the campsites that can be reserved at Waubonsie State Park have been taken for Sunday evening, he said.

While it might not be totality, most of Iowa will experience an eclipse of 90 percent or greater, Moles said. He stressed that special glasses, a pinhole projection box or special filters for a telescope are needed to safely view a solar eclipse.

For more eclipse-related information, including viewing safety, FAQs, maps, educational activities and events, go to eclipse2017.nasa.gov.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.  A Decatur native who witnessed last weekends deadly clash in Charlottesville said the scene played out with much more chaos than depicted on television.

"The smell, the sounds, things flying through the air, and the bull horns and angst, in a so-called quiet American city," said A.D. Carson, a 1997 Stephen Decatur High School graduate who has gained national prominence for his study of hip-hop.

Carson, who has a doctorate degree from Clemson University and began writing rhymes as a child, is starting as an associate professor of Hip-Hop and the Global South at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville this fall.

Last Saturday, he joined counter-protesters assembled in response to Neo-Nazis, skinheads and Ku Klux Klan members arriving after the city decided to remove a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed and 19 others were injured when the driver rammed a car into a crowd of demonstrators.

On the eve of the rally, hundreds marched through the University of Virginia campus holding torches and chanting racist slogans. The next morning, many looked like they were dressed for war as they made their way to Emancipation Park, said Carson, who also taught English at MacArthur High School.

"They had shields, they had helmets and they were ready to inflict harm on people," Carson said. Whatever they say, they were out there to peaceably demonstrate  the way they showed up told a different story."

Carson said he was invited to give a speech at McGuffey Park near the city's downtown, and felt that being new to the area and UVA, he was more than willing to speak. Within a couple hours, the sights and sounds grew more gruesome, he said.

"I had a friend like earlier in the day (say), 'The police are unequipped to deal with what's going on over there, somebody's going to die.' And he left early because he just felt it was completely unsafe out there, and you know, he was correct."

Carson joins the UVA faculty as somewhat of a rising star in the academic world  he gained headlines last year for completing a dissertation in the form of a hip-hop album that explores rhetoric, American social history, and art. Last year, while at Clemson University, he witnessed intense protests after a banner honoring African Americans was found to have racially-charged items on it.

Carson said his mother, who lives in Decatur, is worried that his son has found himself in the middle of situations.

"I say often that my mom said to me that 'I know you can't be quiet, but be safe,' he said, "so I carry that with me."

His arrival in Charlottesville came after the city for more than a year engaged in contentious soul searching over its Confederate monuments, a process that led to the decision to the Lee statue. The funky, cosmopolitan nestled in the rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains is known for being home to President Thomas Jefferson's plantation, Monticello, and the place where the Dave Matthews Band got its start.

The heart of its downtown is an open-air pedestrian mall lined with restaurants, bars and quirky boutiques. Tourists flock there not only for the history and culture but also to visit the wineries that dot the countryside just outside of town.

Charlottesville was easily overwhelmed by the numbers that showed up last Saturday, said Ed Ayers, a leading Civil War scholar who taught at UVA for decades. Despite Virginia's bloody part in the Civil War, Ayers said, the Lee statue does not have a significant historical connection to Charlottesville. The city "did not play a central role in the war at all, he explained, and the statue was not erected until the 1920s, when Jim Crow laws were eroding the rights of black citizens.

Charlottesville was just "a very clear symbol they could go to and have a protest," Ayers said.

The city is proud of Jefferson's university, a prestigious school with graduates that include prominent figures such as Robert F. Kennedy. But UVA is also a school largely built by slaves and where professors had ideological connections to the resistance movement that followed the Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision.

The university did not admit black students until 1950.

Carson has a bachelor's degree from Millikin University and a master's degree from the University of Illinois at Springfield. He also still collaborates closely on music with Blake Wallace, a branch manager and loan officer at Staley Credit Union in Decatur. Wallace said friends and family back in Decatur watch Carson with awe as he's traversed through the events last year at Clemson, and now Charlottesville.

"He has a voice that's so respected, so prominent and strong  maybe he has purpose there, for him to be at these two places," Wallace said.

Wallace said when Carson gained attention for his dissertation, Decatur residents shared the news on social media with pride.

"He seemed like a badge of honor for Decatur for people here, and people are proud of what he's doing here," he said.

With classes beginning soon, Carson and Wallace said they're continuing to work on music as Carson makes his way in a highly-touted position at a prestigious school now at the center of the nation's attention.

"He'll definitely hold his own. I'm not too worried," Wallace said.
When I was at the doctors office recently, it seemed like several people had read and liked one of my columns that talked about sayings and expressions that were old and new.

One reader said she was reminded that she had used all the sayings from my article that ran this summer. She wanted more and wondered if I knew some of the origins and meanings.

Since I aim to please, I went searching online and found some more tidbits of words that we know and love.

 Two peas in a pod. Two things that are so alike or so with each other in appearance, tastes, etc., that they are

practically identical.

 Heavens to Betsy. Various theories have been put forward. The most common of these is that Betsy was Betsy Ross, who stitched the first American flag.

 Give an inch and they take a mile. Someone who has been given a small amount of power or freedom to do something, and then has tried to get a lot more.

 Waking up on the wrong side of the bed. The left side of the body or anything having to do with the left was often associated considered sinister. To ward off evil, innkeepers made sure the left side of the bed was pushed against a wall, so guests had no other option but to get up on the right side of the bed.

 No spring chicken. New England chicken farmers generally sold chickens in the spring, so the chickens born in the springtime yielded better earnings than the chickens that survived the winter. Sometimes, farmers tried to sell old birds for the price of a new spring chicken. Clever buyers complained that the fowl was no spring chicken.

 Rub the wrong way. In colonial America, servants were required to wet-rub and dry-rub the oak-board floors each week. Doing it against the grain caused streaks to form, making the wood look awful and irritating the homeowner.

 Rule of thumb. Legend has it that 17th century English judge Sir Francis Buller ruled it was permissible for a husband to beat his wife with a stick, given that the stick was no wider than his thumb.

 Go the whole 9 yards. World War II fighter pilots received a 9-yard chain of ammunition. Therefore, when a pilot used all of his ammunition on one target, he gave it the whole 9 yards.

 Let your hair down. Parisian nobles risked condemnation from their peers if they appeared in public without an elaborate hairdo. Some of the more intricate styles required hours of work, so of course it was a relaxing ritual for these aristocrats to come home at the end of a long day and let their hair down.

 More than you can shake a stick at. Farmers controlled their sheep by shaking their staffs to indicate where the animals should go. When farmers had more sheep than they could control, it was said they had more than you can shake a stick at.

 That burns my biscuits. People often say this when they are annoyed with something.

 Whatever floats your boat. Whatever works successfully for you, or whatever makes you

happy.

There are many more expressions that I couldnt fit in one column. Someone gave me a notebook so I would have it handy to keep more expressions from our past. So you may expect to see more in the future.

Mary Hepburn is in her 22nd year of writing the Church News & Views column for the North Platte Telegraph.
While many kids spent the summer traveling, Margeaux Belanger spent some of the summer  or rather, winter  in Australia.

Belanger, a junior at Gothenburg High School, was one of 85 ninth- through 12th-grade students across the world chosen to sing in the Honor Performance Series in Sydney, Australia.

The trip to Australia  where it was winter  included tourism opportunities and a concert at the Sydney Opera House.

Belanger first heard of the opportunity as an eighth-grader, when she performed at Carnegie Hall. She has sung practically her whole life, and said she took it up seriously about five years ago. Belanger was influenced by her father, a band teacher at Gothenburg High School, who told her music could give her opportunities in and outside of Nebraska.

For her Honor Performance Series audition, Belanger chose two pieces  one in Italian and one in English  which she described as college-level. While each piece fit her vocal range, they also demonstrated that she could sing in a foreign language, as well as take on different vocal techniques, she said.

Planning the trips logistics proved stressful, but it was a really amazing trip, Belanger said.

Belanger said she loved learning from the choirs renowned director, who taught different cultures through music, and she loved exploring the historical Sydney landmarks. Choir members also got to explore the Blue Mountains and see wildlife. Even in Sydneys winter months, temperatures stayed in the 50s and 60s, she said.

On July 10, the choir performed at the Sydney Opera House. Belangers mother and stepdad attended the concert and had spent the week touring, too.

Belanger said the trip helped her in her own musical aspirations, which she plans to pursue after high school, though she doesnt know how just yet.

Music can be an experience, she said.
MONTICELLO  As the old locomotive steam train pulled into the station at Monticello in 1917, young men from the region boarded and headed off to fight in what was considered The War to End All Wars.

More than a dozen volunteers dressed in military attire from that era boarded a train Saturday at the Monticello Railway Museum, a gesture meant to honor the anniversary of Illinois Army National Guard troops traveling to Texas Camp Logan in preparations to fight in Europe during World War I.

The event, organized by the railway museum and the Illinois State Military Museum, was meant to symbolize the sendoff of troops across the country when America entered the war.

This kind of scene would have been going on all across the country, where wives would be saying goodbye to their husbands as they go off to war  some of them never to return, said Bill Lear, curator at the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield. So what we did ... we have soldiers in the uniforms at the time boarding similar trains to what they would have in the early 1900s. It creates a stunning, visual picture which we were hoping to achieve.

A total of 351,153 Illinoisans served in the armed forces during the war, the third-highest number of all the states, according to records compiled by the Office of the Adjutant General. Between 1914 and 1918, 4,734,991 Americans served in the military.

Along with boarding the train, the Living History Detachment set up exhibit tables, tents, and displays showcasing equipment and items Illinois Soldiers would have used during the Great War.

Among those in uniform was Stan Buckles, a Mount Pulaski resident and volunteer at the Illinois State Military Museum.

For him, the importance of keeping the history and memory of World War I alive is personal because he is related to Frank Buckles, the last surviving American veteran of World War I. Stan Buckles said Frank told his family stories of his time in the Army, attending Fort Riley before being sent to England, and driving ambulances in France near the end of the war.

Frank Buckles died in 2011 at the age of 110.

A lot of problems that we still deal with today can be traced back to World War I and its aftermath, and I think thats why its so important to study it, said Stan Buckles.

The war also marked a sharp change in Americas stance on foreign policy, said Richard Schachtsiek, a Springfield resident and volunteer at the Illinois State Military Museum.

Where before the country had followed the Monroe Doctrine policy to avoid interfering in European or other, non-American, matters, Schachtsiek said World War I saw the United States move toward its eventual role as a world superpower.

Were dealing with a time when America just getting involved in the international stage, he said. We got involved, and therefore we got involved on the stage that led to us getting into World War II.
INDIANAPOLIS  A state chamber of commerce-commissioned study released this week by Ball State University contends school corporation size has a direct impact on student achievement, and that small schools are not able to offer a variety of courses for high school students.

The study stops short of suggesting small school districts in contiguous communities should combine to save on overhead expenses.

The study is based on research commissioned by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce Foundation and conducted by Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research.

The study focused on school overhead costs, and noted that smaller schools have higher overhead costs per pupil than larger schools.

Michael Hicks, economics professor and CBER director, said the concern is with the overhead costs associated with smaller school corporations compared with larger school districts.

"We have so many small corporations, causing it to be difficult for them to fund STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) courses and other more costly programs, especially for high school students. We did not look at charter or private schools in the study. We did look at all traditional public schools in Indiana," Hicks said.

In 2014, 154 of Indiana's 289 school corporations had a total enrollment of fewer than 2,000 students in each of those corporations. Eighty-five of those corporations experienced enrollment declines of 100 or more students between 2006 and 2014.

In Northwest Indiana, several districts have an enrollment of fewer than 2,000 including the School City of Whiting (1,175), River Forest Community School Corp. (1,550), Lake Station Community Schools (1,300), Porter Township School Corp.(1,360), Union Township School Corp. (1,450), South Central School Corp. (950), Metropolitan School District of New Durham Township (890) and Tri-Township Consolidated School Corp. (390).

The largest school district in the Region is the School City of Hammond with 13,000 students.

Indiana Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Kevin Brinegar said it's not about closing buildings or eliminating schools.

"It's about reducing per pupil administrative costs to put more money into classrooms, increasing pay for deserving teachers, making more STEM classes available and, most importantly, helping ensure the best possible student outcomes," he said.

Brinegar and Hicks said there was other research available with similar results.

"This study shows that when school corporation enrollment is less than 2,000, it reduces the operating efficiency," Brinegar said. "The study looked at the courses that are not available to students in a small district."

The study also says that school corporations with an enrollment of 2,000 to 2,999 had better SAT, ACT and AP scores.

Chris Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural School Association, said previous reports have been done, and the association understands that larger schools have more offerings.

"This study added on to that," he said.

"We agree that smaller schools have a harder time generating dollars and competing for teachers. Some communities have done their own studies. There are some clear recommendations that the state provide incentives and funding, and I have no problem with that. I think the issue warrants further study."
INDIANAPOLIS  It appears increasingly likely that the Indiana Election Commission will not meet its Sept. 1 statutory deadline to approve a consolidation plan for Lake County's numerous "small" voting precincts.

On Friday, the four-member commission again was unable to secure the three votes needed to ratify the consolidation proposal recommended by Lake GOP Chairman Daniel Dernulc.

His plan calls for eliminating 154 of the county's 523 precincts, mostly those with fewer than 600 active voters, to save taxpayers an estimated $102,530 at each election through reduced polling place staffing costs.

Lake Democratic Chairman James Wieser refused to submit a plan because he claims the consolidation mandate imposed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly is likely to disenfranchise voters, particularly in Hammond, East Chicago and Gary, where the bulk of the precincts would be eliminated.

Just as they did last week, the two Republican election commissioners voted in favor of the consolidation proposal, while the two Democratic commissioners opposed it.

At least three "yes" votes are required for the commission to take any action.

Republican Bryce Bennett, Jr., the commission chairman, said he may call another meeting prior to the deadline to see if there is any way to resolve the deadlock.

Meanwhile, the Indiana NAACP has requested a federal judge issue an emergency injunction halting consolidation while its challenge to the constitutionality of the mandate contained in Senate Enrolled Act 220 is pending in court.
CROWN POINT  Following multiple complaints from residents, the city's board of works voted to revoke a permit allowing a company to sell educational books door-to-door.

The board granted Southwestern Advantage permission to sell the books door-to-door at its July 19 meeting. Complaints started rolling in soon after.

Callers to the police and to Mayor David Uran said the solicitors for Southwestern, who are college students from Estonia, were pushy, not wearing their required identification and would not leave the property. Officials said residents also complained the solicitors took photos of their children and posted them on Facebook.

"It is concerning," board member Michael Conquest said. "It's a reflection on us. They tainted that reflection. I'm willing to pull the plug on them."

City Attorney David Nicholls said during his nine years there he could not remember ever having to revoke a solicitor's permit.

Officials said the two solicitors were made aware of Wednesday's meeting to address the matter but they did not attend.
Monday's solar eclipse has been generating a lot of buzz for an event that will last only a few hours.

Special eclipse glasses to protect eyes staring at the sun have been hot commodities. The Merrillville Community Planetarium, at Pierce Middle School, and many stores sold out last week. Libraries reported their eclipse glasses were all gone, too.

Concerns about the eclipse even prompted Gary Community School Corp. to cancel classes for Monday. The School City of Hobart is delaying the end of school on Monday for 10 minutes to keep children inside, and Munster High School and Wilbur Wright Middle School in Munster both have all activities indoors on Monday. Science teachers in Munster plan to let students view the eclipse online through NASA's website.

Chesterton High School students, however, will all be outside, experiencing it in person.

Some other schools have viewing parties planned, too.

In Northwest Indiana, the eclipse will begin at about 11:55 a.m., reach maximum coverage at 1:20 p.m., and end at 2:45 p.m., just when some schools would be dismissing students.

Science explained

Bruce Hrivnak, professor of physics and astronomy at Valparaiso University, explained the science behind the eclipse.

The total eclipse of the sun will be visible along a 68-mile wide path across the USA, stretching from Salem, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina. For those fortunate to be within the path, a clear sky promises the rare sight of the moon gradually covering up more and more of the sun until it is totally covered for up to 2.5 minutes, followed by the gradual uncovering of the sun as the moon slowly moves past it. This produces a shadow on the Earth that sweeps across the USA.

For those in the shadow path, the view during totality will be spectacular. The faint solar corona will flash into view, extending about a solar diameter above the edge of the sun. Bright stars will appear. Birds and other animals are confused and begin nighttime behavior."

Total solar eclipses are rare.

"The last total solar eclipse to be seen in the continental USA was in 1979, and the next one will be in 2024," Hrivnak said.

What you'll see

So what does this mean for those of us here in Northwest Indiana, hours north of the path?

Although only those in that narrow region will see the total eclipse, the rest of the USA and all of North America will be treated to a partial eclipse. Here in Valparaiso, the sun will gradually be covered up to a maximum of 90 percent, which will greatly reduce its brightness, but not nearly as spectacularly as for those in the eclipse path," Hrivnak said.

"Viewing of this event will require special care to protect the eyes," he said.

If you couldn't locate special eclipse glasses, you can try pinhole projection. Safe viewing suggestions can be found at NASA's website, https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov. There is no need for a telescope, so viewing can be conducted from anywhere  with proper eye protection.

And no, sunglasses don't count.

You never want to look directly at the sun without appropriate protection except during totality. That could severely hurt your eyes," NASA's website states. "However, there are many ways to safely view an eclipse of the sun including direct viewing  which requires some type of filtering device and indirect viewing where you project an image of the sun onto a screen. Both methods should produce clear images of the partial phase of an eclipse.

High interest here

Greg Williams, Merrillville Community Planetarium director, has been busy.

There has been a tremendous interest with the public," Williams said. "We sold 150 solar glasses on Monday and 210 glasses on Tuesday, and that mirrors the interest kids have. I had students in the Planetarium Club today asking about the eclipse, and there has been a lot of coverage on it because its taking place here in the United States and not somewhere else in the world. People are traveling to the path of totality in areas like Kentucky and Tennessee.

The planetarium staff members are making their final arrangements for a viewing, though priority is placed on Merrillville school students, and every Merrillville student has been provided with a pair of solar viewers. Williams said the planetarium will stream the event live on its website.

Larry Maka, board member of the Calumet Astronomical Society and public relations chair, said the group has no local solar eclipse events planned, and for one very good reason.

Most of our members are traveling to the path of total eclipse! he said.

Maka says his organization has received many inquiries about the eclipse. People are excited about the rare event.

To learn how to make your own pinhole camera for viewing the solar eclipse, visit jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/project/how-to-make-a-pinhole-camera.
HAMMOND  Another downtown structure is being taken over by the city.

The Hammond Redevelopment Commission plans to purchase the Hotel LaSalle for $700,000.

The commission earlier this week approved a purchase agreement for the structure. Hammond Chief of Staff Phil Taillon anticipates a closing could take place within 90 days after a due diligence period, which would include a closer inspection of the structure.

The city would use tax increment financing money to fund the purchase. Revenue generated by increases in taxable assessed valuations in tax increment financing districts are put into a special fund that can only be used for specific purposes within the district.

Taillon said it has not been determined what the city will do with the building, but said it will not remain a hotel. He also said it would not be used as a municipal office building.

If the sale goes through and the building is no longer used as a hotel, a number of residents currently living at the structure would have to find new accommodations. Taillon said the city would follow proper procedures in dealing with the tenants if the sale of the property goes through.

Current owner Louis Karubas, who was hoping the city would maintain the building as a hotel, said he has 50 tenants. Some of them, he said, have been at the hotel that rents spaces by the month for as long as 40 years.

Karubas, a former Hammond City Councilman, has owned the building since 1970. He said he decided to take the city up on its offer to purchase the structure because he wants to retire.

In addition to the hotel rooms, Karubas said the historic structure has a restaurant facility that is in very good condition. Taillon mentioned a restaurant as a possible use for part of the building.

A July 2010 story in The Times talked about how the hotel also had tunnels that were once used by gangsters to escape law enforcement officers during the Prohibition Era. It also said a baron and baroness from Norway visited the hotel a few years after Karubas bought the facility.

That article, however, also noted how sex offenders were housed there for a time prior to them being moved to another location.

Taillon indicated Thursday, however, the city would like to preserve the building and have it reused for other purposes if at all possible. Karubas said he has kept the building in good shape.

A 2008 story in The Times noted some of the renovations Karubas made and spoke of marble tile and cut crystal and hanging glass light fixtures in the lobby.

Dave Ryan, executive director of the Lakeshore Chamber of Commerce, called the hotel a "hidden gem" for the city. He said with the right supervision and direction, it "could have limitless possibilities."
DECATUR  At Giggles on Friday, the phone would not stop ringing  all of the calls last-minute attempts to find solar eclipse glasses still for sale.

"We need a secretary," said Chrissy Spurlock, who owns the independent toy store on Merchant Street downtown.

Gas station attendants and customer service reps at Kroger and Walmart, all said they were getting nonstop calls  and all having to break the news over and over that there were no more sunglasses for sale and no shipments were expected before Monday's solar eclipse, set to reach peak effect in Decatur at 1:19 p.m.

Astronomers, both professional and amateur, have had Aug. 21 marked on their calendars for at least a year for the first coast-to-coast total eclipse in North America since 1918.

Now in the final days before its arrival, people in Decatur and across the country have just started to catch the excitement as media coverage has ramped up.

The best seats on the continent will be in the "path of totality," a line stretching from Oregon, through southern Illinois, and out to the Carolinas. But only a few hours away by car from the best areas, Decatur is primed for a better spot than most.

Holly Johnston, an incoming senior at Warrensburg-Latham High School, came to Merchant Street with her mom, Angie Johnston, as one of the lucky few who reserved glasses before all 450 pairs at Giggles were spoken for. Angie Johnston said she called after she saw the store's post about their latest shipment on Instagram.

"She's going to come to my office and we'll watch it from there," she said, referring to her daughter.

The interest came from Holly, who said she's into science, even if she played down her excitement to the Herald & Review.

"I saw it on the news or whatever. It's cool."

Some may remember the most recent eclipse events to hit the area in 1994 and 1979, but this one is different. Decatur is just a three-hour drive from seeing the moon completely match with and cover the full diameter of the sun  a total eclipse  an astronomical event that hasn't happened anywhere in Illinois since 1869. For people who can't make the trip to southern Illinois, Decatur will experience a partial eclipse, which is more common.

Starting around noon, the path of the moon will start to overtake the sun's rays, and as it moves closer to its peak coverage, the sky will grow darker.

"It'll be about like twilight," said Casey Watson, a natural sciences and mathematics professor and physics chair at Millikin University.

Watson is part of a team in Wyoming that will be along the path of totality that is set to his southern Illinois later in the day.

"If I'm looking up at the eclipse, I'll see maybe some wisps of the corona around it and stars, I'll be able to see stars all around as if it were nighttime," Watson said.

Perhaps even more strange and breathtaking, those viewing the total eclipse will be able to see a small band of sunlight across the horizon.

"You will see where the eclipse is not happening, then it will look bright, that is a strange thing to see," he said.

From Decatur's vantage point that won't happen, but with the sun more than 90 percent covered for nearly two minutes, the effect will be easily noticed.

100,000 times more protective

Total solar eclipses don't happen on any other planet that in the solar system. That's because the earth's only moon happens to have almost exactly the same diameter in the sky as the sun.

There's more factors that have to go right beyond that. The diameter of sun changes constantly since the earth's orbit is not a perfect circle  it's slightly oblong  which means the sun actually appears 3 percent larger in January than in July.

Eclipse viewing comes with its dangers, and with all the excitement, science groups like the American Astronomical Society and NASA have been urging the public to use eclipse glasses, which are 100,000 times more protective than everyday sunglasses.

"You can't see anything," Angie Johnston said as she tried them on at Merchant Street in the midday sun.

Dr. John C. Lee, an ophthalmologist who's practiced in Decatur since 1979, said eclipse viewers have to be extremely careful, even if they're going to use glasses to look at the event directly.

"It doesn't guarantee (protection) if there's a flaw such as a scratch on it, so overall direct viewing is not recommended. I think they should do indirect viewing such as a pinhole in a box," Lee said.

Lee warned that direct viewing of the sun for any length, which will still be partially visible at the height of the eclipse in Decatur, can risk permanent eye damage.

Lee said when human eyes look directly at the sun, the retina, which functions to focus and sharpen images, gets overwhelmed by the light.

"It's like a magnifier of the sun's rays. If they look at the sun too long unprotected, it will be a permanent burning scar," he said.

Dr. Larry Baker, veterinarian of Northgate Pet Clinic said he doesn't believe pets or animals will be in any danger during the eclipse, despite some media reports suggesting pets should stay inside.

"I'd be surprised  not that animals are dumb or anything  I just don't think an eclipse would mean anything other than a cloudy day," Baker said.

"The pea fowl, they might roost, think it's dark enough to hop back up in the tree and roost for the evening, but when the sun comes back up a few minutes later I think they'll just pop back down again," said Ken Frye, director at Scovill Zoo.

'I've been ordering every day'

At Giggles, Spurlock said she wasn't planning to sell eclipse glasses until she started getting one person after another asking for them.

"I didn't even think about it. So on Sunday, I found a wholesaler, and I did seven orders. They were limiting how much you could buy. I've been ordering every day," she said.

Spurlock said if there were no limits to orders she would've ordered thousands.

Other Decatur institutions have had a plan all along. Millikin University will be setting up three telescopes and providing approximately 500 glasses for students and families starting at 11:30, said spokesman Dane Lisser.

"We moved it to the quad just because we're expecting a good crowd," Lisser said.

The Beach House on Lake Decatur at 11:30 will be giving away eclipse glasses to the first 100 patrons and featuring a special menu including cocktails like a "Moonjito," "Dark Side of the Moon," and of course a tequila sunrise, according to General Manager Bart Kraeger.

The Decatur Public Library, which is still waiting on a shipment of 550 sunglasses to hand out to library cardholders, will be closed for 90 minutes on Monday so staff can view the eclipse.

"Also we don't expect really anybody in here at that time anyway," City Librarian Rick Meyer said.

The library's late arrival came after it had to return its first order to Amazon when the online retail giant issued a recall of its eclipse glasses.

As precise as the science is on tracking the movement of celestial bodies, meteorology is a whole other ball game. As of Friday, Monday's forecast calls for some clouds.
VALPARAISO  Mayor Jon Costas is planning a big finish to his final term in office, including building an addition to City Hall.

"We feel we need to expand City Hall a bit," Costas told The Times Editorial Board this week. He has announced he will not see re-election.

The addition would be added to the back of City Hall, taking the building as far back as the alley, he said.

Money that has been saved up would be used for the expansion, he said.

City Hall used to be the main post office. The city took over the building when a new post office was built at Valparaiso Street and Vale Park Road on the city's north side.

The elegant exterior would not be affected, Costas said. The addition would be in keeping with that style.

The council chambers would be doubled, and on the main floor, for easy access to hearings and other big meetings there. Offices would be added on the second floor, and conference rooms would be added, too, Costas said.

He estimates the cost at a couple of a million dollars.

The City Hall expansion would be done in 2019, his last year in office.

Downtown improvements

Among the changes Costas has made since he was first elected has been to create a downtown park that has proven popular. Other cities have been eyeing this model.

When the Northwest Indiana Symphony performed a free concert at that park this summer, the park was packed with spectators.

Even when there aren't scheduled events, the park is a popular spot well into the evening.

The vibrant downtown is attracting residents. In fact, it's the hottest residential market in the city, Costas said.

"The homes that used to sit (on the market) in the downtown are the ones going first," he said.

Costas wants to encourage construction of higher-density, affordable homes downtown.

Developer Bob Coolman purchased the old St. Paul School downtown, Costas said, and plans to put 18 to 20 units in it.

People from Chicago are starting to move to Valparaiso, he said.

A downtown bus terminal lets them board the ChicaGo Dash and commute to jobs in Chicago. The Valparaiso Redevelopment Commission this week released a study that showed the typical rider earns $75,000 in Chicago and is bringing that income back to Northwest Indiana.

"I think 200 units could be filled like that," he said, snapping his fingers.

What's next

When Costas, a Republican, completes this term, he will have served 16 years, four years shy of the record set by his predecessor David Butterfield, a Democrat.

Costas credited Butterfield with doing much to get the city in good shape for when Costas took over.

Costas said he is intent on turning over a city in good shape to whomever becomes the next mayor.

"We want it to be sustainable going forward," he said, which is why the city adopted a wheel tax to pay for road repairs and has added few staff members.

As for Costas himself, he isn't sure where his life will take him. When the right opportunity arises, in whatever sector that might be, he'll know, he said.
Hundreds of residents have accepted buyouts and moved out of a shorefront community on Staten Island, leaving the few that remain facing a life very different from the one they knew before Hurricane Sandy. NY1's Amanda Farinacci filed the following report.

It's summer in Oakwood Beach  the time of year residents here once savored.

But most are gone now, moving out after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.

It's quiet now.

This was the first community to join Gov. Andrew Cuomo's program of buying out entire neighborhoods, and allowing nature to reclaim the land to end the cycle of damaging storms and costly repairs.

303 homeowners in Oakwood Beach accepted the voluntary buyouts. 27 did not.

Four of the holdouts live on Fox Lane, including Christopher Camuso.

"My neighborhood is very quiet. It's very peaceful here," Camuso said.

Peaceful, but not without challenges. Camuso's flood insurance has tripled, and city services have declined.

"They pick up garbage around the block; they don't pick up garbage here no more," Camuso said. "They can't come down here."

That's because of the craters that opened up in the road, some of them quite deep and filled with green, murky water.

Cars that drive through them often become caked with algae.

The street hasn't been maintained since Sandy. Residents say broken streetlights haven't been replaced, either.

Residents familiar with the perils of driving up the street say they only travel about five miles an hour when passing by.

Others have not been so lucky, and that's why people can find pieces of damaged cars littering the street.

City and state officials told NY1 that they are negotiating the transfer of the open land to the city, most likely to the parks department.

The department is expected to then develop a long-term plan for the area, including what to do with the roads.

For that reason, the transportation department said it has decided to leave the streets as they are.

And so things will remain as they are in Oakwood Beach for the foreseeable future.
Steve Bannon is returning to the fiery alt-right website that he led before joining the Trump campaign. And his exit from government to Breitbart speaks to a complicated tug of war, not just within the White House but in conservative media. Josh Robin filed the following report.

Breitbart's top story Friday plays it straight. But a top editor has a warning.

"War," he tweeted, adding in a post, "It may turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Trump administration."

To many, Trump is abandoning the so-called alt-right, the nationalist, populist force.

He is firing the man who, arguably more than anyone else, connected him with that force, delivering him the White House.

"All the senior West Wing officials that have plates at the table are Democrats, people who voted for Clinton, Bushies and generals," said former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg. "You know, Steve went in there, and every day, Steve went in there. They wanted him out."

Top among them, it's believed, is son-in-law and aide Jared Kushner, seen as long pushing for Trump to sideline Bannon.

Bannon may not have a West Wing badge, but at Breitbart, he has a major megaphone. That means Bannon's wars are just shifting battlegrounds.

"Breitbart is going to war with this Trump White House when this Trump White House is wrong on issues," Nunberg said.

The Breitbart friction extends to unusual enemies: other websites considered right-wing, like Drudge Report and The Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch.

As for why he was fired, Trump is known to demand credit, always. Recent interviews played up Bannon as a pupeteer, willing to contradict the president.

The question now is, what kind of a president is Donald Trump without his svengali?

"Donald Trump is the only man that could have won that election the way he won it. But he only could have won it with that message, which are principles that we're going to find out if he actually holds dear to now that Steve's not there, or if he's just going to become a typical politician," Nunberg said.
There are a number of competitive City Council races in next month's primary. That includes some incumbents in tough fights for re-election, like Brooklyn Councilman Carlos Menchaca. NY1's Bobby Cuza looks at the Democratic primary race in City Council District 38.

Four years ago, Carlos Menchaca was a young upstart who pulled off a rare feat, unseating incumbent Council member Sara Gonzalez. This time around, he's the one with a target on his back, with his rivals claiming he does little for constituents.

"They don't even know where he is," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez is trying to turn the tables on Menchaca and win back her old seat. Though she, too, was knocked for being absent from the job, she's running on her old record.

"I believe that in the history of the seat," Gonzalez said. "I have been the one to bring the most dollars into this district."

The race for Council District 38, which includes Sunset Park and Red Hook, features another familar face: Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, who's spent 22 years in the Assembly, rising to assistant speaker and, among other things, spearheading the ban on the use of cell phones while driving. He says Menchaca hasn't been getting things done.

"He's the kind of guy who likes to speak loud, but the results are minimum," Ortiz said.

"In the last three years, we've done so much," Menchaca said.

Though he's had little of own legislation passed, Menchaca has been active on immigration issues, and points to new school construction.

"About a quarter of the schools that are getting built in the city of New York are coming to Sunset Park. That's an accomplishment," Menchaca said.

He also has across-the-board support from elected officials, unions and other groups, and says Ortiz is motivated by the higher Council salary; Ortiz says it's about service.

Rounding out the field are two first-time candidates, one of whom is nearly leading the pack when it comes to fundraising.

Delvis Valdes, an attorney and community activist, trails only Menchaca in money raised. And he says Menchaca, who was among those arrested at a January protest outside Trump Tower, has been preoccupied with opposing the president.

"He's more concerned about national issues, and we need someone who's going to represent the people here locally," Valdes said.

Finally, there's Chinese-born attorney Chris Miao, who founded his own law firm and is appealing to the district's large Asian-American population.
Dear Dr. Roach: How does a person with a pacemaker die? Won't the pacemaker keep the heart beating? My husband is 87 and on his seventh pacemaker. Please advise so that I know what to expect.

-- G.D.

A: An electronic pacemaker is implanted for a variety of electrical problems with the heart when a person's natural pacemaker, located high in the right atrium, fails to do its job of stimulating the heartbeat.

When someone dies, the heartbeat irreversibly stops. That's part of the legal definition the physician uses most commonly when declaring someone deceased. Patients also may be declared dead with irreversible cessation of brain function, which is the case for most organ donors. In that case, machines, including mechanical ventilators, keep the body alive.

The electronic pacemaker will keep sending electrical signals until its battery runs out, but the heart cannot respond mechanically. The electrical signal is imperceptible.

Let us hope your husband wears out several more pacemakers.

Spinal stenosis

Dear Dr. Roach: I'm 67 and overweight, and I understand I have spinal stenosis. Overall, I feel pretty good, and my back feels just great, except that I have pain in the back of my thighs, with the worst being at the joint where my thighs connect to my hips.

But it's not just the joint, it's also all of the muscles in the backs of my thighs. I cannot sit on a hard chair for very long, and therefore I sit on very soft chairs with extra cushioning in order to be semi-comfortable. No matter what I sit on, when I get up I don't have a lot of strength in my legs. It is quite painful, the process of going from sitting to standing. It takes me a few seconds to get to where I finally can start walking, which of course is still painful, but not as painful as the standing-up process. I have only limited pain when sitting on something very soft, and even less pain lying down, but I am in some pain all the time. I am writing because this whole situation has gotten much worse lately and is becoming a problem.

-- H.K.

A: I am quite concerned. If your problem is due solely to spinal stenosis, it's time to get re-evaluated.

Spinal stenosis is when arthritis and abnormal bone growth in the spinal canal compress the spinal cord and its nerve endings. This can cause the pain you describe. On a careful physical examination, the clinician can find numbness and decreased reflexes. However, weakness in spinal stenosis is a big red flag, since it means the compression is very severe, and weakness often is irreversible even with surgical treatment.

It is possible that there is another problem going on. There are many conditions that can cause muscle weakness and diffuse pain, from very serious (degenerative nerve and muscle diseases) to more easily treatable (including vitamin D deficiency). Pain with sitting may be a separate issue or could be related to the spinal stenosis.

Either you have worsening spinal stenosis that needs urgent re-evaluation or you have an undiagnosed condition. The bottom line is that it's time to get back to your doctor.

* * *

Dear readers: A recent column on constipation has generated a lot of letters (I have found that columns on stomach and bowel problems reliably do so). Here are some of the suggestions I received:

Probiotics or yogurt with live cultures. I often discuss these for diarrhea, but they can be helpful for constipation as well.

Prunes. These have several substances that can help constipation.

Adequate water intake. I just ran out of space to mention it in the column, but it's important.

Raising the feet during a bowel movement. This can be done with a footstool. This simple maneuver changes the pressure inside the abdomen, making voiding easier.

The booklet on constipation explains this common disorder and its treatments. Readers can order a copy by writing: Dr. Roach, Book No. 504, 628 Virginia Dr., Orlando, FL, 32803. Enclose a check or money order (no cash) for $4.75 with the recipient's printed name and address. Please allow four weeks for delivery.
Aisha Nakasinde is the latest murder victim

Police in Entebbe together the Flying Squad Unit have intesfied investigations into the serial murders of women in Entebbe, a day after the body of the 11th victim was recovered.



The body of 25-year-old Aisha Nakasinde, a food vendor, was found on Thursday this week a few metres from Kasenyi Barracks in Katabi town council.



Nakasinde, a resident of Bugabo in Katabi town council, left her home on the August 13 but never returned. A missing person case was reported at Entebbe Police Station the day after she went missing.

In the last two months, bodies of young female adults have been found decomposing in bushes. Preliminary investigations into the alleged murders indicate that the unidentified suspects kill their victims after sexually assaulting them.



According to the Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesperson Emilian Kayima, Nakasinde's body was found decomposing in an abandoned bush.



"She was murdered in the same style as the other women whose bodies have been recovered in bushes and banana plantations," Kayima said.



Similar to the other incidents, the body was found stripped with some clothes lying near the dead body and sticks inserted in her private parts.



No arrests have yet been made in relation to the murder of Nakasinde. In relation to the other ten females murdered in the last two months, a number of suspects have been arrested and some of them released. A total of 6 suspects are still in custody in relation to these murders.

Police says for example for the murder of Norah Wanyana, formerly a student at Air Force Secondary School in Entebbe, the arrested suspects eventually confessed to carrying out the murders and rape.



The 10th woman murdered in the same way was Sarah Nakajjo whose body was found last week.



The police spokesperson Asan Kasingye, also a resident of the area says, "the murders are taking advantage of their victims after meeting them in bars and other such places then luring them to the areas where they are attacked and murdered from."



A similar wave of serial murders was a few weeks ago reported in Nansana Municipality in Wakiso district.



The Nansana insecurity was at least temporarily halted after the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kale Kayihura camped in the area for a week, transferred most of the police officers deployed in the area and elevated the police station to a fully-fledged divisional station.
The rhino horns found in Tuan's bag

A Vietnamese national was yesterday evening arrested at Entebbe airport after Uganda Wildlife Authority dogs sniffed out 23.38kgs of rhino horn in his possession.

Thai Xuan Tuan, 22, came from Kenya by road and was scheduled to fly to Hanoi through Doha with Qatar Airways.

According to a statement from UWA, the dogs sniffed out the rhinos' horn in Tuans bag at the baggage conveyor and followed it to departure where it was checked in, tagged in his names.

The dog handlers on duty confirmed the suspected contraband and called in airport joint security who picked up Tuan from the waiting lobby, opened the bag and found a pack in which 12 rhino's horns that weighed up to 23.38Kgs concealed. Each rhino horn can average 1-3 kg.

He is being detained at Aviation Police, Entebbe where he will record statement before being aligned in court.

With only about 25 radiotherapy machines for a population of over 87 million, and with cancer cases on the rise in Vietnam, rhino horn is in high demand and a kilogram can fetch up to $100,000. It is believed by the nationals, that rhino horn powder can cure cancer and hangovers.

African Wildlife Foundation congratulates UWA Canine Unit for this big seizure. AWF is happy that our partnership with UWA is combating wildlife trafficking is yielding incredible results.

We call upon the law enforcement to ensure that this suspect is dully tried in courts of courts of law and if found culpable, be handed a stricter sentence to send a clear message to other traffickers who would want to use Uganda as a conduit, said Abiaz Rwamiri, a communications officer at African Wildlife Foundation.

According to Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), this is the biggest seizure so far by the dogs since their seven-month operation that started in January.

So far, 64 suspects have been arrested with different contrabands including ivory, pangolin scales, ostrich egg shells, warthog and hippo teeth. At least 12 suspects were convicted and paid fines totaling Shs 39.8m, seven cases are still pending in court while 33 suspects have been cautioned and released by police.

In the last five years, over six tonnes of ivory have been seized at Entebbe International Airport and over 12 tonnes of ivory has been seized in other airports in Asia believed to have passed through Entebbe.

Wildlife trafficking is one of the leading transnational crimes in the world and is now a multibillion dollar business. It has been categorized by UN among serious crimes alongside drug trafficking, human trafficking and arms trafficking. Concerted efforts are therefore required to curb the wildlife trafficking across the globe.

Uganda and neighbours  Kenya and Tanzania  were named in 2013 along with five other countries as playing a primary role in illegal wildlife trade, whether as source, transit or demand countries for illegal wildlife products. Uganda serves as a major transit hub in the wildlife supply chain, with ivory and other wildlife products seized by authorities moving toward ports in Kenya and Tanzania.

In order to clear Ugandas image that has been tainted as a conduit for illicit wildlife trade, UWA, with support from African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), established the first ever Detector (Sniffer) Dog Program for Uganda famously referred to as UWA Canine Unit.

The creation of the canine unit with trained dogs in detection of ivory and other wildlife contraband was based on the fact that dogs are not corruptible and experience has shown that well-trained dogs can detect anything no matter the method of concealment.

This had been demonstrated in drug trafficking and explosives where dogs have done a tremendous job.

Dogs had also been successfully used in Kenya to combat ivory trafficking through Jomo Kenyatta International airport and Mombasa sea port, the reason traffickers had resorted to using Entebbe to ship large quantities illegal items.

Over the last five years, over six tonnes of ivory have been seized at Entebbe airport and over 12 tonnes of ivory have been seized in other airports in Asia believed to have passed through Entebbe.

On January 23, 2017, President Yoweri Museveni wrote a letter to Entebbe airport authorities granting UWA dogs and their handlers unlimited and uninterrupted operation at the airport including the VIP section.

The presidents letter that was addressed to the minister of transport ordered dismissal of anyone found obstructing the dog handlers from accessing some areas of the airport.

The national legislation on wildlife is being revised to provide deterrent punishments.
At the end of July 2017, more than 40 households in Wakiso township, Wakiso district lost their electrical appliances due to a power surge.



The power surge occurred as Umeme technicians were replacing poles and wires in the area. The damaged appliances included computers, television sets, radio receivers, fridges and bulbs among others.

Few if any, power consumers filed any complaints as many power consumers are oblivious that they can file for compensation from the power distributor, Umeme.

In the event of damaged appliances due to a power surge, customers can seek for compensation from Umeme

Stephen Ilungole, Umeme's media manager, says once a power surge occurs, the customer has to report the incident immediately to the area offices for authenticity purposes. "The complaints must be reported within 24 hours," he says.



According to Ilungole, once Umeme receives the complaint, it dispatched engineers to the affected premises to investigate the claims and possible causes. The engineers assess the earthing, which is mandatory and wiring of the house. Earthing serves to evacuate fault current to the ground.



If an appliance is not properly insulated, or electrical power is lost for another reason, the earthing connection prevents electrocution. Umeme can't accept blame once the earthing is poorly done. After their investigations, Umeme engineers file a report, which is sent to their headquarters in Kampala.



The report is submitted to the Umeme's legal department, which then determines whether or not the company accepts liability and compensates the complainant. The final report is shared with the complainant.



According to Ilungole, "there is no time frame for resolving the complaints." He says compensation issues are intricate and may go through lots of back and forth stages.



Appeal



If a complainant is displeased with Umeme's decision, he or she can take the case to the next level - filing a complaint with the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA). ERA is the regulator of the electricity supply industry. It is a quasi-government body that regulates the generation, transmission, distribution, sale and import of electricity in Uganda.

ERA derives its mandate from the Electricity Act of 1999. In accordance with section 79 (3) of the Act, ERA is required to handle complaints made by electricity consumers in relation to services provided by electricity companies.

Consumers have a right to file any complaint and report to ERA if their complaint is not resolved by the distribution company.



According to ERA quality of service standards (QoSS) for customers, a technical complaints/queries investigated is supposed to be investigation within 5 to 7 working days, non-technical complaints/queries investigated within 30 working days and investigations involving a 3rd party completed within 60 working days.



"Electricity companies are responsible for giving their customers good quality and efficient service. If you have a problem or a complaint about the service that you receive from your electricity supply company, you should inform the company so that it has the chance to put it right," ERA complaints handling procedure manual reads.



Adding that, "Each electricity company is required to have a procedure for dealing with complaints made by its customers. These procedures conform to the standard procedures set by the ERA."



ERA QoSS for customers require that at least, each meter be read once every three months, a customer be reconnected within reconnect customer after payment, 100 percent of customer calls be answered within 30 seconds, 100 percent of emergency calls attended to within 30 minutes, 100 percent of technical complaints/queries investigated within 5 to 7 working days, 100 percent of non-technical complaints/queries investigated within 30 working days, 100 percent of investigations involving a 3rd party completed within 60 working days and any faulty meter be replaced within five working days.



"We acknowledge receipt of your complaint and may request you to submit more information if necessary. ERA investigates your complaint so that we have all the facts from you and the electricity company. We give both sides the chance to comment on the information provided and keep you informed up-to the point of resolution. ERA may also arrange for a hearing if necessary after which a decision is reached and communicated," the complaint guidelines reads.



And if a person is dissatisfied with the decision of ERA, the complainant may proceed and file an appeal at the Electricity Disputes Tribunal (EDT) or the Courts of Law. Engineer Ziri Tibalwa Wako, the chief executive officer, Electricity Regulatory Authority told URN that they cannot blame Umeme for failing to sensitise their customers about compensation procedures because of "conflict of interest."



She says "it is the responsibility of ERA and government to educate people on their rights and responsibilities."
The Howard G. Buffett Foundation continues to spread its generosity  and we owe a tremendous amount of gratitude for it.

The latest recipient is the Dove domestic violence program, which announced the Buffett organization had provided $1 million last week. The program, which offers the only shelter of its kind in Macon County, had been hit hard by the state budget fiasco.

The $1 million gift is a lifeline and is just the latest donation to a Decatur organization made by the foundation founded by Buffett, a former Archer Daniels Midland Co. vice president and son of investment banker Warren Buffett.

In the past several months, $3 million went for an expansion focused on law enforcement at the Childrens Museum of Illinois, $350,000 to the Macon County Sheriffs Office for training firearms, radios and five police vehicles, and $3.9 million for a new amphitheater in Nelson Park. The organization also is giving $2 million to extend the train at Scovill Zoo.

Also taking shape, and funded with $15 million from the foundation, is the Macon County Law Enforcement Training Center set to open in October. The facility is a partnership between Richland Community College and the Illinois Law Enforcement and Training Standards Board and will be home for up to 100 cadets for 12- to 14-week sessions. The project will put classrooms, training rooms, dorms, offices and a firing range on a 5-acre site U.S. 51 near Grove Road.

For project after project, we are blessed by the Buffett Foundation. Our community thanks you.
LINCOLN  Kendrick Lamar didnt need anyone else. He owned the stage all on his own.

To chants of Kendrick! Kendrick! Kendrick! the rapper appeared onstage at Pinnacle Bank Arena all by himself, and he held down a massive stage without a band, without a DJ and with only his fiery raps to keep a packed house enthralled.

Only an occasional dancer joined the rapper onstage. Dressed in a yellow karate gi inscribed with the phrase broken dreams, Lamar was joined by a dancer dressed as a ninja during DNA, and he fought off the ninjas elaborate katana attacks by rapping right at him and driving him off the stage.

Is anybody alive right now? Lamar asked the more than 12,000 in the arena, and they responded by screaming his name and his lyrics right back at him.

I think some of my most dedicated fans are in this room right here, right now, Lamar said.

From the moment he arrived onstage, Lamar had his fans reacting to every rhyme. During Element and King Kunta, he let back on the throttle and let the audience shout the words instead.

Rolling Stone just called him the best rapper alive in a cover story, and I cant argue with the assessment.

From a technical standpoint, hes rapid-fire and full of energy with a flow anyone can be envious of. But hes also an introspective storyteller, crafting rhymes about growing up in Compton, California, race in America and his place in pop music.

Theres a reason hes taken home seven Grammy Awards, and his latest album, DAMN., is the top album in the country right now. And it hasnt left the charts top echelon since it was released several months ago.

Fans were up on his oldest material, hoisting cups of beer and rapping along with Lamar on Swimming Pools, and they went for brand-new tracks, shouting every word of Loyalty and Element as the energetic rapper flashed across the stage.

In the middle of the set, Lamar moved to a smaller stage toward the center of the arena.

How yall feelin down here? You feelin good? he said. I only ask for one thing. Can yall help me sing this (stuff) one time?

And fans rapped along with Lust as Lamar crouched on the stage and busted out every rhyme.

Somebody said Nebraska knows how to party, Lamar said.

They do when you come to town, Kendrick.
Omaha-based Election Systems & Software, a global provider of voting equipment and software, said a database of Chicago voter information had been left unsecured.

The files were found unsecured on an Amazon Web Services server, ES&S said in a release Thursday. A private researcher found the files and alerted authorities, who notified the Omaha company.

The files included 1.8 million names, addresses, dates of birth, partial Social Security numbers and, in some cases, drivers license and state ID numbers, ES&S said.

ES&S was notified on Aug. 12, and it shut down the server and secured the files by that evening, the company said Thursday. Its performing an ongoing investigation to determine what happened, it said.

The backup files on the (Amazon) server did not include any ballot information or vote totals and were not in any way connected to Chicagos voting or tabulation systems, ES&S said. These backup files had no impact on any voters registration records and had no impact on the results of any election.

Amazon Web Services leases electronic storage space to entities. A Chicago elections official told the Chicago Tribune that ES&S had placed on an Amazon server a backup file containing information on every voter in the city.

ES&S said it is in the process of reviewing all procedures and protocols, including those of its vendors, to ensure all data and systems are secure and prevent similar situations from occurring.

The Tribune reported the citys elections board was reviewing its contract with ES&S.
Unison musical duo pianist Shoushan Hakobyan and violinist and composer Rouben Aghiyan, who moved from Armenia to the U.S. five years ago, have been raising thousands of dollars for the families of Armenian soldiers killed, and to assist border villages, by giving charity concerts for the last two years.

Last year, after the Artsakh April War, Unison duo gave a charity concert together with some other American-Armenian musicians in Los Angeles, and another one in Yerevan. The revenues were given to the families of the five soldiers who died during the April War.

This year, Shoushan and Rouben gave another two charity concerts, one in the United States and one in Armenia, aiming at supporting one of the border villages.

The Yerevan concert was held at The Club, together with some other Armenian musicians.

The concert was attended by composer Tigran Mansuryan (photo), whose works were also performed. Mansuryan was quite enthusiastic about the concert and made a financial contribution.

This time, musicians decided to support the music school in Achajour, a village in Tavoush Province. This school, closed during the first 20 years of Armenian independence, has been operating for the past six years. 70 children attend the school. One of them is a laureate of an international competition.

The number of pupils enables teachers to earn higher salaries. The school has a choir and a folk instruments ensemble.

Unison duo gifted some musical instruments - kanon, duduk, drums - all made by renowned masters, as well as musical literature, recordings and a record player to the Achajour Music School.

The schoolchildren gave a concert, and the duo gave a master class in return.

The Achajour Music School has only three rooms in one of the corners of the community cultural house. Arranging class hours is a great challenge.

Since the schools area is not big, many applicants have been denied access to school. Of the 27 who applied last year, only seven were admitted, since the building conditions didnt allow more.

The community cannot afford constructing a new building. Teachers expect some type of government support.
Now that someone has been charged with a series of rapes in Omaha from the early 2000s, an innocent man who was included in a controversial 2004 DNA sweep wanted to make sure that police destroyed his and other innocent mens DNA samples and kept no record of them.

Dick Davis II, who now lives in Georgia, was one of several black men from whom Omaha police collected DNA in 2004 while feverishly trying to solve the crimes, despite none of the men being considered suspects.

Davis voluntarily allowed police to swab the inside of his cheek, but he said he felt coerced when police showed up at his family home and asked him in front of his wife to provide a sample.

Omaha police said last week that they have destroyed Davis and all other DNA samples from the investigation.

The controversial DNA sweep led to new provisions in state law, sponsored by State Sen. Ernie Chambers, that set stricter guidelines for police collection of DNA.

The law also requires that police notify innocent people in writing that they have not been implicated by their sample, that police not keep their DNA samples and that they purge any identifying information from their records.

A child rapist already in a Nebraska prison was charged this June with the series of four rapes in the early 2000s. It was DNA that implicated the man, 41-year-old Brandon Weathers, but not from the DNA sweep of 2004. Prison officials forced Weathers to provide a DNA sample in June because of a state law requiring convicted felons to submit one. Weathers is awaiting trial.

After Davis read that a suspect had been identified, he emailed Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine in June to ask what would happen with his sample.

Kleine said his chief deputy, Brenda Beadle, contacted Omaha police and told them they needed to destroy the innocent mens DNA samples and notify them.

Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer sent Davis a letter July 27 notifying him that his DNA sample was destroyed by personnel assigned to the Omaha Police Department Evidence/Property Unit.

Schmaderer wrote to Davis: Your sample was not submitted to any DNA database or used for comparison purposes in any other criminal investigation.

Omaha Police Lt. Darci Tierney told The World-Herald by email that all samples collected as part of the early 2000s investigation had been destroyed.

The email from Tierney said police do not have any DNA markers for the disposed samples.

Davis said Kleine called him Friday, and Beadle emailed him in June. He welcomed their responses and the letter from Schmaderer, but he said he was looking into whether the law requires that he be provided documentation that the sample was destroyed.

And he remained critical of the tactic as an attack on black men, and then-Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren for allowing it.

For something like that to happen under a black mans watch, the first African-American police chief of Omaha, was unacceptable, Davis said.

Warren said again Friday that the DNA collection was justified. It was not random, he said, and it was authorized by a warrant from a judge based on probable cause.

Warren said police were investigating the brutal rapes of multiple black women, one of whom had told police that she believed her attacker said he worked for the Omaha Public Power District. The DNA samples were taken from men who worked for OPPD.

Police believed the rapist would attack more women if he werent caught, Warren said.

We would have used any lawful means to identify and apprehend the perpetrator, Warren said.

Police did not randomly collect DNA samples from black men, he said, nor did police have any motive to store the information.

But Chambers and University of Nebraska at Omaha criminal justice professor Sam Walker, among others, criticized the sweep as overly broad and based on an overly general suspect description.

What happened in Omaha was happening across the nation at the time, Walker said Friday.

These are called DNA sweeps or swab-a-thons, Walker said. They had no individualized suspicions about these people.

Walker said the average person feels compelled to agree to the request when police show up and say they want a DNA sample.

But Walker said the tactic fell out of favor with police nationally because of the controversies, including the one in Omaha.

I havent heard of one in years, he said.
As polls closed in Nebraska and the first returns came in Tuesday night, heavy returns out of Douglas and Lancaster County gave Democrat Carol Blood an early lead in the Nebraska governor's race over Republican Jim Pillen.
LINCOLN  A 46-year-old man died when his vehicle went off a county road south of Whiteclay, Nebraska, on Thursday, according to Sheridan County authorities.

Francis Ray Rencountres death marks the second motor vehicle fatality in the county since four beer-only stores closed at the end of April in the tiny border town.

Sheridan County Attorney Jamian Simmons said it is believed that alcohol contributed to the crash, during which Rencountres vehicle went off a bridge into a ravine and rolled.

He said the preliminary investigation suggests that Rencountre and a female passenger were on their way back to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, after driving to Rushville, Nebraska, to buy alcohol.

The woman, who was not named, was injured and transported to the Pine Ridge Hospital for treatment. Simmons said her condition was unknown as of Friday afternoon.

Thursdays crash remained under investigation, Simmons said.

Rencountres death came three days after the Nebraska State Patrol completed a six-week special enforcement in Sheridan County.

It also came nearly six weeks after a coroner ruled the death of Troylyn Pourier, 49, of Pine Ridge was related to a July 2 rollover accident south of Whiteclay.

Simmons said Pouriers blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit when she was tested immediately after the accident. She died three days later in a Rapid City, South Dakota, hospital.

Many Whiteclay-area residents had predicted that the closing of the beer stores would force residents of the officially dry Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to drive farther to buy alcohol, and would increase alcohol-related crashes and fatalities.

The special enforcement, however, produced almost the same results this year as did a similar enforcement in the county last summer, before the stores closed.

In each year, troopers took two drivers off the road for driving while intoxicated. Troopers this year also made five arrests for misdemeanor drug possession.

In addition, they issued citations and warnings on suspicion of speeding (215 this year, 129 last year), open container (one this year, six last year), driving under suspension (two this year, nine last year), no seat belt (seven this year, 11 last year), child restraint violation (11 last year) and no proof of insurance (one this year).

There were no fatalities recorded during last years enforcement effort. Pouriers death fell during this years enforcement.
Nebraskans' views of Monday's eclipse might just come down to where the clouds are in the sky, forecasters say.

"It's hard to say exactly what the sky is going to look like," said Bryon Miller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Valley. Miller said the Omaha area can expect about a 55 percent cloud cover during the eclipse and areas in central Nebraska, from Grand Island westward, can expect between 40 to 50 percent cloud cover.

"It's not ideal conditions but you should be able to see something," Miller said.

The skies above Scottsbluff and Alliance may also be partly cloudy, said Tim Trudel, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

"It looks to be about 40 to 60 percent cloud cover but the concern is that those will be low clouds," Trudel said. "The view (of the eclipse) will all depend on how the clouds set up. Unfortunately we can't really predict that."
Six days after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned violent, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse released a long statement Friday night on Facebook.

The Republican said that hed been speaking with a number of Nebraskans over the past week who are scared and expect more violence.

Sasse said he also feels that more violence is coming, comparing the mood to the summer of 1967, which was marked by race riots and violence across the U.S.

The 16-point statement condemned white supremacy and blamed the white supremacists in Charlottesville for the violence, but said Sasse is against removing Confederate monuments by mob or in the middle of the night.

Sasse also warned that national unity would be hard to come by and urged Nebraskans to use discussion and education to address the nations divisions.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said Sasse was against removing Confederate monuments. It has been updated to say that he is against removing them by mob or in the middle of the night.
As yet, there has been no official statement as to what caused the wildfires that ravaged swaths of the Khosrov Forest State Reserve in Armenia.

The blazes started on August 12, and were only extinguished, for the most part four days later after a water tanker plane was sent from Russia.

There is also no official count as to the specific number of hectares destroyed.

Local environmental activists and NGOs claim that thousands of hectares were destroyed, while government officials refer to hundreds of hectares.

According to the State Forest Monitoring Center, satellite reconnaissance reveals that 683 hectares were burnt.

The Russian IL-62 tanker plane made seventeen passes over the reserve. Its now up to units of the Ministry of Emergency Situations to conduct mopping-up operations.
Andhra Pradesh: Doctor tries to inject hospital chief with HIV blood

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

In a bizarre incident, a doctor allegedly tried to inject an HIV infected blood into a female medical superintendent at Proddatur district government hospital in Andhra Pradesh.

According to the police, orthopaedician David Raju reached the chambers of Dr Lakshmi Prasad, the hospital superintendent, tried to attack him with a syringe containing the blood of an HIV patient, reports Times of India. However, a member of the staff noticed the syringe in his hand and helped Dr Lakshmi Prasad avoid he attack.

The superintendent informed the higher authorities and police were rushed the spot. Dr Jayarajan, the District Coordinator of Hospital Services (DCHS), spoke to both doctors. Dr David Raju told him that despite discharging his duties properly, he was being harassed by the superintendent.

According to preliminary investigation, David Raju wanted to take revenge against Lakshmi Prasad as the latter often reprimanded him for dereliction of duty.

A case of attempt to murder was registered by the Proddatur police against David Raju who is presently in police custody. Investigation is on.

OneIndia News
Bihar: Gau rakshaks search homes of 6 Muslim families, beat men on suspicion of eating beef

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Patna, August 19: A horrific episode of "cow vigilantism", where six families were attacked on suspicion of eating beef by a group of 100-odd men in Bihar's West Champaran, came to light on Friday.

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The latest attack in the name of cow protection, which took place on Thursday, is the second such case in Bihar since Chief Minister Nitish Kumar joined hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form a fresh government in the state less than a month ago.

Although several attacks were carried out by cow vigilantes, also known as gau rakshaks, across the country in recent times, Bihar did not witness any such mob violence till the new Janata Dal (United) (JD(U))-BJP alliance government took power in the state.

The first cow vigilantism attack case in the state came to light on August 3, when three persons were badly beaten up for allegedly smuggling beef in Bhojpur district.

Although the police had not arrested any of the attackers in the latest case, the victims were taken into "protective custody".

Bettiah Sadar sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Sanjay Jha told The Telegraph that based on the statement made by the wife of a victim, a complaint has been lodged by the police against the attackers.

As per reports, around 100-odd men, a few of which belonged to the Hindu right wing group, the Vishva Hindu Parishad, brandishing sticks and chanting "Bharat Mata ki jai", marched towards the homes of the victims, before thrashing six men and holding one person captive.

The attack took place at Dumra village of West Champaran, around 185km northwest of Patna.

The attack on the Muslim families by cow vigilantes took place after Rajdev Sah, a resident of the Dumra village lodged an FIR, alleging that a calf had gone missing from the village on Wednesday evening and the villagers suspected it had been killed for meat.

After the FIR was lodged, the cow vigilantes carried out the attack by forcefully entering the houses of six Muslim men and allegedly beating them up on Thursday.

The attackers also searched the houses to find out if beef has been stored in them.

In Bihar, slaughter of milk-yielding cows and transport of beef are banned. However, law book does not mention whether a person can consume beef or not in the state.

Several police personnel rushed to the spot after one of the victims managed to inform about the attack at a local police station.

After reaching the village, the police rescued the victims from the clutches of the attackers and sent the injured for treatment to a nearby hospital. Instead of nabbing the attackers, the police pacified them and promised to take action against the "cattle thieves and beef-eaters".

Thereafter, the police took the victims into custody to avoid "any untoward incident".

The victims were taken into custody on charges of "hurting religious sentiments", informed the police.

A local VHP leader, Neeraj, told The Telegraph that gau rakshaks were keeping close tabs on the people involved in consumption and transport of beef in the district.

"We have our activists almost in every village, who keep on passing information about illegal slaughterhouses and beef smuggling," Neeraj said.

OneIndia News
BJP has done to JD(U) what Congress did to Samajwadi Party but there is a difference

India

oi-Anusha

Parallel meetings, verbal attacks on leaders of the same party, a divided house scrambling for control- scenes playing out in Bihar today are strikingly similar to what happened in Uttar Pradesh with the Samajwadi party ahead of the elections.

Aligning with the Congress proved costly for the SP in Uttar Pradesh while Nitish Kumar's decision to go with the BJP in Bihar has split his JD(U). Despite the two scenarios being very similar for the regional parties, the situation and most importantly the causes are very different.

Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) passes resolution to join NDA, Sharad to hold parallel convention

The JD(U) today is a split house. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar faced protests from his own men led by Sharad Yadav. Despite the protest, Nitish Kumar's faction of JD(U) passed a resolution to join the NDA. Sharad Yadav and his supporters boycotted the national executive meet. It reminds one of how a divided Samajwadi party cadre was torn between meetings called for by Akhilesh Yadav at his residence and party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav at the party headquarters in the run up to the Uttar Pradesh polls.

While the scenarios are eerily similar, political analysts feel that the causes and context are very different. "It is undoubtedly a split but the context matters. The context is different in both cases. One (Samajwadi Party) was a family or dynasty split. The other is not. It is this fundamental issue that makes all the difference between the two," said Psephologist Dr Sandeep Shastri. He added that the concerns within the two parties were also very different politically.

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How is SP split different from JD(U) split

"In the Samajwadi Party, the split was more to do with the old guard v/s the new guard, both in terms of leadership and those who decided to follow that leadership. In Bihar, the split seems to be between those who are rooted in Bihar and those rooted outside," added Dr Shastri. He implied that those who were engaged in politics within the state of Bihar stood by Nitish Kumar while those who were concerned with politics outside the geographical boundary were aligning with Sharad Yadav.

"Much of the JD(U) which is clubbed into state politics is strongly with Nitish. Many aligning with Sharad Yadav are invariably state units of other parties or those concerned with politics outside Bihar, say, the Parliament. Locus of political operation of two group is very different" Dr Shastri said.

Congress and BJP's respective role

Has the BJP done to JD(U) in Bihar what the Congress did to Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh? While one may see a definite pattern, experts believe that the two scenarios are very different, In fact, the BJP may have had a direct role in splitting the JD(U) than the Congress had in dividing the SP.

"In Bihar, the role of a national party (BJP) is direct. The split has happened because one group decided to align with a national party, one that is in power. In Uttar Pradesh, however, the role of a national party (Congress) was masked. The real issue was largely family and dynasty politics. Aligning with the Congress simply became a mask to hide the family differences," he insisted.

OneIndia News
Converted, married and threatened to be shifted to Syria, Kerala woman gets protection

India

oi-Anusha

The Kerala High Court has directed the state police to provide protection to a woman and her family after they alleged that they had been receiving threats from radical Islamic groups.

The 24-year-old Hindu girl is said to have converted to Islam and married Anees but returned to her parents after she learnt that she was being taken to Syria. The High Court has taken serious cognizance of the case and has issued a notice to Anees and has asked the police to probe the Syria angle.

The woman's parents, residents of Kannur, filed a police complaint that they have been receiving threats from alleged radical Islamic organisations. The parents allege that the threats began after their daughter who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man, left him and returned to them.

[Kerala Love Jihad: She embraced Islam before I met her says man facing NIA probe]

The 24-year-old woman went missing in June this year. Worried parents filed a missing complaint after which she appeared in court. On June 6, 2017, the woman appeared before the court for the first time and said that she had been married to Anees. She was asked to make her choice and she chose to leave with her husband. Within months, the woman returned to her parents in Kannur after she learnt of a plan to shift her to Syria. The parents claim that they have been receiving threats to return their daughter to Anees ever since she came back home.

The court on Friday held discussions with the woman in question who claimed that she had returned to her parents out of her own will.

"The woman who left with her husband the first time realised that there was a plan to take her to Syria. She saw posters of PFI claiming that she was married to Anees only to be taken to Syria and hence left from there and returned to her parents," the order copy of the Kerala High Court suggests.

Anees, the main accused in the case, has, however, claimed that his 'wife' is being kept forcefully at her parent's residence. The court has issued a notice to Anees over allegations of him planning with members of the PFI to take the girl to Syria. The police have been asked to probe the role of alleged radical Islamic groups in the case. The girl and her parents are currently under police protection.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 17:56 [IST]
In UP 166 criminals killed in encounters in past five years: Yogi

This Diwali, UP CM Yogi asks govt employees to celebrate festival with needy, deprived families

Modernisation of police force helped in controlling crime in UP: CM Yogi

Yogi govt orders demotion of DySP to inspector for taking bribes in rape case

'Derogatory' comments against Adityanath on social media, accused absconding

India

oi-PTI

Shahjahanpur (UP), August 19: A man has been booked for allegedly making derogatory comments against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on the social media.

Updesh Yadav Samajwadi, a resident of Kilapur in Shahjahanpur district, allegedly posted derogatory comments against Adityanath on his Facebook page on Thursday night, Virendra Chauhan, the police station in-charge of Mirzapur, said.

A police complaint against the accused was lodged this morning by Manoj Kashyap, who had contested the state Assembly polls earlier this year on a BJP ticket from Jalalabad, Chauhan said, adding that the accused was absconding.

PTI

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 16:59 [IST]
First-Day-of-Period leave: Trupti Desai, Abha Singh rip apart Barkha, Shobhaa De extends support

India

oi-Shreya

By Shreya

The debate around the plausibility of a First-Day-of-Period leave has been going around for long now, after a Mumbai based company implemented the policy in their organisation.

When most women were jumping with joy, expecting similar policy to be implemented at their workplaces, Journalist Barkha Dutt wrote an article in Washington Post, titled "I'm a feminist. Giving women a day off for their period is a stupid idea."

Calling the initiative a "harebrained policy", Dutt argued that the policy is unnecessary because, "Our periods can be annoyingly uncomfortable and often painful, but this reality usually demands no more than a Tylenol or Meftal and, if needed, a hot-water bottle."

While many opposed her argument, Author Shobhaa De spoke to OneIndia and said that she agrees with Barkha Dutt.

"I agree with Barkha. I certainly don't want women to be treated like sick people. Periods are a part of a woman's life. They must be accepted. But granting leave is counterproductive to the overall cause of women," De said.

De also claimed that such a step would further create a divide between men and women, "Periods are not a sickness! As a national level athlete myself, I didn't let periods stop me from competing and winning. Neither did I ever skip a day's work because of period cramps. Let's not create further alienation because of this issue. It will bolster prejudice and hamper career women from getting ahead," she added.

However, several women criticized Dutt's argument, Trupti Desai, Women Activist and Founder of Bhumata Brigade called it a 'welcome move', she said, "There is no reason to oppose such a move, women who experience severe pain during their period should be able to avail an off."

When asked if this would be perceived as a setback to equality, she exclaimed, "Men don't get periods, it's women who have to go through this biological cycle for the most part of their life."

Trupti Desai's thoughts were backed by Bombay High Court Lawyer Abha Singh, who called, Barkha Dutt's argument on the issue, "regressive", Singh questioned, "How can you call this inequality? Tomorrow will you question maternity leave as well?

Abha Singh further said, "If you call this move discriminatory, I would say this is positive-discrimination. This is one of the best steps towards gender-sensitization."

Without taking any name, Singh revealed that some of the biggest law firms in Mumbai make pregnant women work long hours, and if these women oppose, they risk losing the job, she said that such companies need to be raided.

AISA President Kawalpreet Kaur also had a sharp reaction to Dutt's article, she said that Dutt should not 'homogenise' the issue as period pain differs from women to women. No two women feel the same pain, supporting the policy, Kaur said, "Such policy should be implemented, but it should be left to women if they want to avail the leave or not."

While this debate will continue, the reality is that many women do suffer excruciating pain on the first day of their period and diseases like Polycystic ovary and Endometriosis are on the rise, thanks to modern lifestyle and stress.

However, Gynaecologist Shyamal Mukherjee and Manju Gupta reiterated Dutt's argument saying that period pain is not a big deal.

Mukherjee said, "Rather than not going to work, women should get treated for period pain if it's very severe and prevents them from working."

Refuting statements which said that leaves on period are detrimental to women empowerment, Joyonto Mukherjee, founder of Trained and Tutored, said, "I have made sure that there is a two-day off scheme for women who undergo severe period cramps. My company has around 85% women, and all they need to do is just drop a text message to the HR to avail the leaves."

He also said, "Sensitivity is very important, this is not a fight between sexes, this is about understanding the reality and accepting it, schools and colleges should also start implementing the policy."

Raj Kamal, Art Consultant of TV18 Broadcast Ltd called this a 'thoughtful gesture and said that people who are calling it discriminatory should understand what discrimination is. He added, discrimination would be giving women 50% pay hike for just being women.

The issue of First-day-of-period leave has garnered diverse opinions, while most people say that the choice should be left to women whether they want such a leave or not, one must remember, not all women live with the privilege of making a choice.

For example, women working in factories don't have the choice of taking a day off on their period because that would mean a day's salary cut, a reason why many are pressing for a law to be enforced, where women can claim a leave if they experience severe menstrual cramps.

OneIndia also spoke to working men and women on the issue, here's what they had to say:

Sonika Tewari, College Lecturer, Mumbai: It's not a new thing, women can't afford to be such delicate darlings, by now women should have been able to manage the pain. There's no need for such a leave as that would only hamper work flow.

Sreya Chatterjee, Journalist: I believe it should be a choice. A lot of women have a painless period, many don't. I completely feel this should be left on choice.

Soumyadipta Banerjee, Blogger, and Founder of Bollywood Journalist: Most male bosses in the corporate sector are sensitized enough and educated about being more vigilant towards creating a favourable workplace for women. But most women won't reveal about their first day of period as a cause for leave.

Shreyosi Mazumdar, Corporate Lawyer: I am against it. I think claiming equality and privileges at the same time is hypocrisy. It is a natural phenomenon and many of us face immense discomfort. Let us utilize our leaves for that.

Kangkan Acharya, Journalist: To decide on such a policy we need a scientific study. Organisations cannot incorporate something just because it is fashionable to do. They need to leave space for policies which are necessary to be implemented. Secondly, if the Government decides to grant this off to women working in govt offices it should also come up with a policy for women working in the informal sector too.

Though it is difficult to draw a conclusion, such discussion or debate surrounding period would at least help break the taboo around the issue

OneIndia News
Bharat Jodo Yatra will proceed to Srinagar, come what may, says Rahul Gandhi as march enters Maharashtra

Demonetisation deliberate move by 'PayPM' to help his friends: Rahul Gandhi

If Cong is elected in HP, decision on 1 lakh govt jobs, pension scheme in 1st cabinet meet: Rahul

Himachal will vote for...: Congress MP Rahul Gandhi's appeal to people on election day

Cong leader Abhay Thipsay who defended Nirav Modi in UK court now at Bharat Jodo Yatra

Gorakhpur incident is a government made tragedy: Rahul

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Firing a fresh salvo at the government over the death of infants at a Gorakhpur hospital, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday dubbed it as a 'government made tragedy'.

Rahul said the government must take action against the deaths and not try to cover it up.

"Modi ji talks of new India, we don't need a new India like this, we need India where poor can take kids to the hospital and return happily," he told the media after meeting families of victims of the tragedy at BRD hospital.

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Senior Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad, Raj Babbar and RPN Singh also accompanied Rahul Gandhi to meet the family members.

Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh has become the epicenter of Indian politics post the death of more than a 100 children at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College and Hospital allegedly due to lack of supply of oxygen in recent times.

On Saturday, just a few hours before Rahul Gandhi's scheduled visit to Gorakhpur to meet the parents of the deceased children, CM Adityanath trained his guns at the Congress leader during the launch of Swachh Uttar Pradesh, Swasth Uttar Pradesh (Clean Uttar Pradesh, Healthy Uttar Pradesh) campaign in Gorakhpur.

"The prince sitting in Delhi won't understand the value of cleanliness. Gorakhpur should not be allowed to become a picnic spot for him," Adityanath said.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 18:33 [IST]
No point raising Pegasus; Opposition should not link Parliament session with polls: Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi

Naqvi says 'One Election' is need of hour

India ahead of other countries in security of minorities: Naqvi

India

pti-PTI

Gandhinagar, Aug 19: Asserting that some hostile forces were trying to create an atmosphere of insecurity in the society, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Saturday said India remains ahead of other democratic countries in terms of freedom of expression, safety and security of minorities.

He also said Narendra Modi government would not allow any "destructive agenda to dominate development agenda".

"India's beauty lies in its cultural heritage and social harmony. But some elements want to disturb this fabric," the Union minister of state for minority affairs and parliamentary affairs said at an event here.

"We all need to come together to defeat such elements. The Modi government will not allow any destructive agenda to dominate our development agenda. The government is committed to empowering minorities," he was quoted as saying in a release.

Accusing opposition parties of trying to give a communal colour to criminal incidents, he stressed that minorities are safe and secure in India, "more than many other countries".

"In their desperation and depression, they are misusing religion, community and caste issues for their narrow political interests," he alleged.

He said secularism was in the "DNA of Indians and India's uniqueness lies in its unity in diversity - 'sarva dharma sadbhav'".

India remains ahead of other democratic countries in terms of freedom of expression.

"But this freedom should not lead people to commit acts that end up helping people who are acting against national interests," the minister said.

During the event, the minister handed over cheques to the beneficiaries of the programmes of the Gujarat Minority Development and Finance Corporation (GMDFC). As many as 535 beneficiaries, including differently-abled persons, were given Rs 4.87 crore for business and education.

PTI
Kashmir businessman Watali got Sharif for Modi's swearing in: Good joke says NIA

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Kashmiri businessman, Zahoor Watali has been using diversionary tactics and throwing big names during his interrogation. Watali was arrested by the National Investigation Agency on the ground that he was a facilitator of the funds being sent by the ISI into the Kashmir Valley.

He takes the names of politicians and speaks about how well connected he is. He baffled the NIA when he said that he was instrumental in bringing former Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif to India for Narendra Modi's swearing in as PM in 2014.

These are classic criminal tactics that such persons use, NIA officials say. We have seen many such cases and hence this comes as no surprise to us, NIA officials also said.

Watali is the 8th person to be arrested in the Kashmir terror funding case. He will now be questioned along with the others arrested. There is enough material on hand to suggest that he had played a key role in the funding. He was close to ISI officials and several politicians in Pakistan. He would also pick up money from the high commission and remit it into the accounts of separatists for a commission of 9 per cent, sources also informed.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 13:30 [IST]
On July 6, Armenias government approved the State Mid-Term Expenditure Framework for 2018-2020, which foresees a reduction of public funding for science starting next year.

"The main objective of the mid-term expenditure framework is to increase public expenditure management system efficiency," the framework says.

The main issues of science in Armenia are listed in the framework:

Insufficient state funding;

Low level of participation of private sector in science funding;

Science and technology management systems non-compliance with contemporary standards;

Inadequate number of qualified staff in some areas of science;

Senior age of researchers, absence of an effective system to train scientific personnel;

Lack of strategic development programs for most scientific organizations;

Non-compliance of most of scientific infrastructures with modern standards;

Insufficient level of scientific research orders from the economy;

Lack of science-production cooperation encouragement;

Small number of applied research;

Insufficient level of interdisciplinary research coordination.

In 2018-2020, base funding will be cut 4.98% compared to this year. Base funding includes fundamental applied research, maintenance and development of the infrastructure of scientific organizations, protection of scientific objects of national value, training of scientific personnel, ensuring scientific and scientific-technical activities, acquisition of scientific equipment for joint use and implementation of international cooperation programs.

Base funding also includes bonuses for researchers with science degrees. Bonuses will be reduced by 3.32% compared to this year. Currently, candidates of science receive 25,000 drams, doctors - 50,000 drams, but these amounts are also taxed.

Targeted program research funding will be reduced by 9.72% next year. State support for thematic research will be reduced by 14.2%.

Ghazar Galoyan, Acting Head of the Laboratory of Petrology and Isotopic Geology in the Institute of Geological Sciences, says, "Were in it already, but new people will definitely not enter (or be interested) the field of science. So, they are practically closing down science in Armenia."

David Pipoyan, Head of Informational Analytical Center Assessing Risks in the Food Chain of the Center for Ecological-Noosphere Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, notes that his vision is different in reducing science funding. He believes science and research development strategy should be in line with international trends.

"Today, the European Union, being a strong science and education policy unit, is focusing on commercialization and innovation research. If ten years ago you told an expert that science for excellence funding would be reduced in favor of innovation, everyone would say that it couldnt be true. Today, the share of fundamental science funding in the EU is very small, and the funding for applied and interdisciplinary research is growing. The scientific system in Armenia needs a restart, and reconsideration," says Pipoyan.

Pipoyan says the word science is less used than research and development today. During the last year, he has visited different scientific institutions in the EU - Italian, Polish, German - where people with serious scientific achievements call themselves researchers. In Armenia, they get a scientific degree using theses written by someone else.

"I assure you that with the available resources you can give a very good product if you manage it right. If your scientific product isnt required by anybody today, it is a luxury to have such science. Its better to use this resource to develop sheep breeding, because Armenian lamb is in demand, says Pipoyan.

In his opinion, science-government and science-private sector relations should be revised. Today, a scientific institute can do tremendous skilled work, but it takes only one official to hinder it.

"Scientists are always losing in that struggle. This is a very bad phenomenon. Officials come and go, while scientific institutions should always provide stability. The government should be supportive. Competitions should be organized for state needs, and their results should be used, not lost. Believe me, scientists and researchers can have a very important role in state building," says Pipoyan.
Kashmir terror funding: NIA's next stop- Pakistan High Commission

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Businessman Zahoor Watali was arrested by the National Investigation Agency in the Kashmir terror funding case. He has been on the radar of the investigating agencies for over 20 years now.

He is accused of moving ISI funds to Kashmir through his various businesses. He is also accused of being close to big-wigs in Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

NIA sources said that his job was to move ISI funds into the Valley which he did through various channels both in Kashmir and abroad. He would work on a commission basis. For every successful remittance that he would make, he would earn a commission of 9 per cent, an NIA source informed.

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The money would be routed through hawala. He would often pick up the funds directly from the Pakistan High Commission and then remit it to the accounts of separatists.

The remittances would run into several crores of rupees. It is hard to put a number for now said the NIA official while adding that the money has been moving freely from Pakistan into India for over 2 decades now.

The NIA would also look to question some persons in the Pakistan High Commission over the issue. It has been found that most of the money would be picked up by middlemen such as Watali from the High Commission before it moved to the purses of the separatists.

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 12:00 [IST]
Kerala Love Jihad: She embraced Islam before I met her says man facing NIA probe

India

oi-Anusha

The decision to marry a girl who converted to Islam has brought upon a National Investigation Agency probe against Shafin Jahan. The man who is facing probe in a suspected Love Jihad case by the NIA and his advocate tell OneIndia why they believe that Hadiya and Jahan's fundamental rights are being violated by none other than the judiciary.

"The conversion was done in January 2016. She was officially converted in an institution Therbiyathul Islam Sabha in Kozhikode. The certificate of conversion has been submitted in the Kerala High court which led to the quashing of the first Habeas Corpus case. In January 2016, she also joined an Islamic institution (Sathya Sarani) to study and did a two-month course and completed in March 2016. Jahan met her only after she had already converted. Where is the Love Jihad here?," asked Naseer, Jahan's advocate.

Shafin Jahan was called a 'stranger' in open court. Two days after his marriage to Hadiya previously Akhila, he was dismissed from the court hall and his marriage was annulled. "Application had been filed for a marriage certificate but the Kerala High Court asked the sub-registrar's office to not register the marriage or issue a certificate," said Jahan's advocate.

"Akhila was already Hadiya when she came to us," says Kerala Islamic centre

According to Shafin Jahan, a native of Kollam, he met Hadiya months after she had converted to Islam. Jahan, who worked in a private firm in Oman found Hadiya's profile on a Muslim matrimonial website in April 2016. His advocates insist that Hadiya had herself created the profile while she was living with Sainaba, a social worker after the court let her choose between Sainaba and her parents.

"Jahan knew that Hadiya was a converted Muslim since all the details were uploaded on the matrimonial website. He contacted her in April 2016. Hadiya's father filed the second Habeus Corpus case in August 2016. Jahan came down to India in November and the couple got married on December 19, 2016. Within two days i.e., on December 21, 2016, the court annulled their marriage. They stayed together only for two days. Now he has been restrained by a court order from meeting his wife," said Jahan's advocate Naseer.

Violation of Human rights

Jahan has claimed that his personal life and choices have been blown out of proportion simply because Hadiya's father raked up the example of some Kerala youth converting to Islam and leaving the country to join the ISIS.

"Hadiya does not even hold a passport. She has neither applied for one. All her certificates are with her father. The father claimed that she was under detention at an Islamic study centre but the truth is that she is now under detention forced upon her by the courts," Nasser said.

Hadiya had appeared before the Kerala High Court in the first Habeus Corpus petition on August 22, 2016. "She told the court that she had converted out of her choice and wanted to study Islam. She even asserted that she was not being kept in detention," he added. In fact, Jahan alleges that Hadiya is being kept under detention now.

"The court sent her to a hostel in the second Habeus Corpus case. She was treated like a terrorist. The police forcefully shifted her to her parent's house under the court's order and now she is under house arrest. She neither has access to phone, television or anyone from the outside. Her human rights are being violated and all this is happening by the order of the courts," he added,

Jahan's tryst with the SDPI

Jahan's life in Kollam was chequered with the police claiming that there were cases filed against him. The police also insisted that he was active with the Social Democratic Party of India, the political wing of the Popular Front of India. "So what is wrong in that? SDPI is an organisation that is open to anyone. It is not a crime to be part of SDPI, Naseer aded.

Jahan also has a criminal case against him. The passport office had sent him notices alleging discrepancies in claims made by him. The police told the Kerala High Court that Jahan had hidden details of a criminal case against him while applying for renewal of his passport. "The police claim that there are four cases against him but only one is really in his name. All three others name different persons. Even the one case that he is involved in, is a notice issued by the passport office inquiring why he did not mention a case under section 323 IPC while re-applying," insisted Jahan's advocate.

The NIA on Friday officially launched its investigation into the case. Jahan is likely to be questioned in the next few days. Meanwhile, Hadiya continues to live with her parents. In a video released, illegally, by Rahul Eashwar, an activist in Kerala, shows the woman complaining about the way her parents are treating her for following her religion.

OneIndia News
Two of 8 cheetahs released in acclimatisation enclosure at MP's Kuno National Park: Official

Two cheetahs make their first kill at Kuno National Park

Make Aadhaar card mandatory at Garba events during Navratri: Hindu group

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

A month before Navaratri celebrations begin in the country, a Hindu leader has come up with a bizarre demand before district administration in Madhya Pradesh.

Kailash Begwani, President of Hindu Utsav Samiti in Bhopal, has made a request to the district collector to allow only Hindus to the cultural activities to be held during Navaratri celebrations next month.

He appealed to the government, '' Only Hindus should attend Hindu festivals and appeal Collector to make Aadhar mandatory at Garba events.''

Only Hindus should attend Hindu festivals; appeal Collector to make Aadhar mandatory at Garba events-Kailash Begwani,Pres Hindu Utsav Samiti pic.twitter.com/nq1wNHKisO  ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

When asked about reasons for such demands, he said, ''Some families complained that girls who come for Garba face problems as people from other castes take entry by changing names.'' He added that the Hindu festivals should be limited to only the Hindu community and other communities should refrain from being a part.

Navaratri, a multi-day Hindu festival celebrated in the autumn every year, will begin on Thursday, 21st September 2017.

OneIndia News
Mumbai University Results 2017 to be declared in two stages

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Mumbai University Results 2017 will be declared in two stages. The results have already been delayed and a notification on the website reads, "coming soon."

The proposal - to release Mumbai University final year results of various streams in two stages - had been sent to the varsity's examination department to check if it would be legally permissible, said Maharashtra Education Minister, Vinod Tawde.

Mumbai University said yesterday evening that, 16,00,257 papers have been checked so far, while 1,50,674 papers are yet to be assessed.

Governor C Vidyasagar Rao, who is also the chancellor of Mumbai University, held a meeting with Tawde and officers of examination department.

The Minister said, in the meeting, that it was decided to explore the option of early release of results if assessment of few papers is incomplete.

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 6:55 [IST]
UP ATS picks up two more accused in Al-Qaeda radicalisation case

Muzaffarnagar train derailment: Lalu calls for Suresh Prabhu's resignation

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Lashing out at the Union Railway Minister over the derailment at Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffargar which has left 10 people dead so far, former railway minister and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Saturday demanded Suresh Prabhu's resignation.

"How will people travel, there is no guarantee of safety. Railway Minister should resign," ANI quoted Lalu as saying.

ADG (Meerut Zone) Prashant Kumar said the number of injured persons was yet to be ascertained. However, eyes-witnesses said at least 20 people were wounded.

Railway ministry officials said they are still awaiting details of the accident that took place around 5:45 pm.

UP health minister Siddharthnath Singh said medical services have been mobilised and he has instructed Meerut and Muzaffarnagar officials to ensure all help is extended to the injured.

UP Chief Minister condoled the loss of lives in the accident and said his government were in constant touch with the railway ministry.

"Our two ministers Satish Mahana and Suresh Rana have been sent to the spot," he told ANI.

MoS Railways Manoj Sinha has been sent to the accident spot to oversee the relief and rescue operations.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 20:46 [IST]
NEET 2017: After Tamil Nadu, Gujarat wants to take the ordinance route

India

oi-Anusha

"If Tamil Nadu can pass on an ordinance, why can't we?" seems to be the Gujarat government's line of thought over NEET 2017. Owing to pressure from parents and students state board schools, the Gujarat government now intends to study the draft ordinance of Tamil Nadu government and hopes to replicate it.

Parents of students studying in state board and Gujarati medium schools have demanded an ordinance on the lines of one drafted by Tamil Nadu to exempt its students from NEET 2017. Gujarat's Education Minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama has said that legal opinion on the same has been sought.

The Gujarat government has so far maintained that since the matter of NEET is before the Supreme Court, it was not in a position to address concerns of parents and students. With Tamil Nadu passing an ordinance in February 2017 and following it up with a draft ordinance that now awaits the President's nod, Gujarat government is being pressurised to take the ordinance route.

"We have referred the matter to the attorney general for legal advice. We are waiting for the judgement of the Supreme Court on this issue. We are hopeful of a favourable solution," said Bhupendrasinh Chudasama. "We have asked for a copy of the ordinance, cleared in Tamil Nadu, the feasibility of which will be studied by the senior officials from both the departments (health and education) in Gujarat's context," he added.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 13:14 [IST]
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

Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) passes resolution to join NDA, no action against Sharad

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) on Saturday passed a resolution at the National Executive meeting to join BJP-led NDA at the Centre. The resolution paves the way for partymen to join the Union ministry.

Party leader K C Tyagi after the meeting said,''JD(U) under Nitish Kumar to become part of NDA.

He reiterated that there is no split as such in Janata Dal (U). ''71 MLAs, 30 MLC & all office bearers all are with Nitish Kumar, ''he eadded.

Earlier, Nitish Kumar began the national executive meeting in Patna amid protest by supporters of rebel leader Sharad Yadav and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) outside CM's residence. Security outside CM's residence increased after the demonstration.

Before the meeting began, the party had denied rift in the party and sought 'on the record' statement by rebel leader Shard Yadav over his disagreement with the party.

Senior JD (U) leader KC Tyagi, who is with Nitish Kumar faction, said: ''We want it on record that though Sharadv Yadav Ji does not agree with party's decisions but there is no rift in the party.''

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''Sharad Yadav Ji is invited (for JDU National Exec. meet), but he can sort out differences but he shouldn't attend Lalu Yadav's program,'' he said.

Meanwhile, Sharad Yadav reached the S K Memorial Hall amid slogans in his support and against Nitish Kumar.

Ever since Nitish Kumar formed an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the developments in Janata Dal (United) have been giving indications of dissent among party leaders.

Firstly, Sharad Yadav maintained his silence over the new alliance, then he was removed as parliamentary leader of the party followed by suspension of 21 members believed to be his loyalists.

After the mega meeting of anti-BJP parties held in Delhi, JD (U) rebels all set to hold a convention in Patna, coinciding with the national executive meet convened by the party headed by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Ahead of the parallel conventions, poster war has broken out between the two camps of the party.

Hoarding by the Sharad Yadav-led faction stick to the idea of 'Mahagatbhandhan'. The posters highlight the 'existence of grand alliance' formed by 17 opposition parties.

The Yadav faction has organised a Jan Adalat at S K Memorial Hall. "No leader from our side will attend the national executive as 'Sharad Yadav's JD(U)' is the 'asli (real) JD(U)'. If need arises, we will go to the Election Commission for claiming the symbol," said Ali Anwar, Rajya Sabha MP.

Poster war in Bihar ahead of Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav's meetings



Read @ANI story | https://t.co/q9LO31gTM2 pic.twitter.com/7h1JgKHXUf  ANI Digital (@ani_digital) August 19, 2017

A day before the convention, sharpening the attack on Nitish Kumar for giving up "democratic norms", Anwar Ansari asserted that those opposed to the Bihar CM represented the "real" JD (U), and added, "Nitish represents BJP Janata Dal."

However, refusing to acknowledge a "split" in the party, Ansari said there was "sharp resentment" among JD(U) workers on the removal of Sharad Yadav as the leader of party MPs in the Rajya Sabha and also for questioning Nitish's decision to form an alliance with the BJP.

Reports also indicate that the party is heading for a split.

(With agency inputs)
Sena asks Modi to take defence ministry 'seriously' as nation 'stares at war with China'

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Mumbai, August 19: The Shiv Sena, the alliance partner of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has an advise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Sena wants the PM to take the defence ministry seriously at a time when the nation is facing several foreign threats.

Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Friday said Modi should take the defence ministry "seriously" as the country is "staring at a war with China" and facing terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

"The environment in the country today is such that on one hand we are staring at a war with China and on the other, infiltration of terrorists from Pakistan does not stop," Thackeray told reporters.

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"The prime minister should take a stand... the defence ministry should be taken seriously and cannot be played with," he said.

Thackeray, whose party is a constituent of the Modi government, was apparently referring to the fact that there is no full-time defence minister as the charge is with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

The defence portfolio was with Manohar Parrikar before he moved to Goa as the chief minister in March.

"The Goa chief minister is going to contest a byelection. Yesterday, I read his statement that if he loses, he will once again take up defence ministry. If the ministry is being treated lightly, anarchy will prevail across the country," he said.

"Whether he (Parrikar) wins or loses is immaterial," Thackeray said, asking the PM to take the defence ministry "seriously".

Taking a dig at Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, he said, "While Fadnavis feels that there will be lawlessness if the government gives a complete loan waiver, in reality, if a losing chief minister (referring to Parrikar) goes to Delhi, there will be anarchy across the country."

The Sena supremo further demanded that the government reveals the names of all farmers, who benefitted from the government's loan waiver scheme.

"The government, in its enthusiasm, may declare more names of farmers being benefitted than total population of the state. Just so that this does not happen, the names of all beneficiaries should be declared in the legislative assembly," he said.

He added that Shivsainiks will personally visit those farmers and verify the government's claims.

Earlier, Sena MP Sanjay Raut slammed Parrikar and said it seemed that the Goa chief minister was afraid of losing the polls and people may reject him.

"This is a democracy. If your people do not choose you and you lose, then go and sit at your home. You say, I will go to the Centre and be the defence minister again after losing. Is the defence ministry of the country a game?" he questioned.

He pointed out that there is no full-time defence minister in the country.

Parrikar had resigned as the defence minister after the Goa assembly polls and was sworn in as the chief minister on March 14.

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 10:42 [IST]
In UP 166 criminals killed in encounters in past five years: Yogi

At Swachh-Swasth UP campaign, Yogi warns Rahul not to make Gorakhpur picnic spot

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

Lucknow, August 19: Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh has literally become the epicenter of Indian politics post the death of more than a 100 children at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College and Hospital allegedly due to lack of supply of oxygen in recent times.

While the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)--both at the Centre and in the state--is maintaining that the government is committed to the welfare of children, opposition parties, including the Congress, have been demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath over the deaths of the children.

On Saturday, just a few hours before Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's scheduled visit to Gorakhpur to meet the parents of the deceased children, CM Adityanath trained his guns at the Congress leader during the launch of Swachh Uttar Pradesh, Swasth Uttar Pradesh (Clean Uttar Pradesh, Healthy Uttar Pradesh) campaign in Gorakhpur.

After launching the campaign, the CM was seen cleaning a street in Gorakhpur's Andhiyari Bagh locality with a broom.

"The prince sitting in Delhi won't understand the value of cleanliness. Gorakhpur should not be allowed to become a picnic spot for him. (Delhi mein baitha koi yuvraj swachhta abhiyan ka mahatv nahi jaanega. Gorakhpur unke liye picnic spot bane uski ijazat nahi deni chahiye)" the CM said, while attacking Rahul ahead of his visit.

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However, Adityanath did not mention any name while attacking Rahul, but the use of the word "Yuvraj" (Prince) was enough to indicate whom he was referring to in his speech. The BJP has often called Rahul a "Prince".

Moreover, on several occasions, Rahul had criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Swachh Bharat abhiyan (Clean India campaign). That is why Adityanath in his speech criticised "Yuvraj" for not understanding the value of cleanliness.

The latest campaign on cleanliness and health has been launched by the UP government after Adityanath recently blamed dirty surroundings and open defecation for the rise in the number of cases of encephalitis, the mosquito-borne disease that infected most of the dead children in the Gorakhpur hospital.

"The common man should join the cleanliness campaign. From Gorakhpur, we will start the Swachh-Swasth UP campaign. (Aam janta ko safai abhiyaan ke saath judna hoga. Gorakhpur se 'Swachh-Swasth UP abhiyan' shuru karenge)," said Adityanath.

"I started movement against encephalitis. When it comes to the disease, prevention is better than cure and it starts with sanitation," he added.

The CM also blamed the previous Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BJP) regimes in the state for the current deplorable situation of most of the government-run institutions.

"The governments in the last 12-15 years ruined institutions in UP for their selfish motives. The previous governments institutionalised corruption and deprived people to avail facilities," alleged the UP CM.

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 11:58 [IST]
What makes Amit Shah, Amit Shah," the modern day Chanakya of India

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

He is tough, a task master and yet a simple person. He is termed as a modern day Chanakya and a man seen as capable of winning any election. This is the 53 year old Amit Shah, the national president of the BJP.

Shah believes in three things- Karyakarta, vichardara and karyalaya. This means he understands the importance of the workers, the commitment to ideology and the value of the workplace.

Shah was interested in politics from a very young age. He read Kautilya's Arthashashtra when he was nine years old. In politics, Shah ensures that the words of Chanakya are implemented and he has often told party workers that the success of a project depends on its secrecy.

Shah was a go getter since day one. As a child he drew inspiration from the Bhagwat Puran and the political thought of Mahatma Gandhi. He joined the RSS at an early age and met his mentor Narendra Modi at a shakha in Ahmedabad.

He worked for long under Kushabhau Thakre and is said to have learnt his organisational skills. As a booth level worker, he took up the challenge of registering all BJP workers manually. As the national president of the BJP, he ensured that the party became the largest in the world.

Those who work closely with Shah say that he is a task master, but equally simple. During the state visits, he stays at the party office and does not believe in 5 star accommodation. If not at the party office, then he stays at the government guest house. He never uses as a chartered aircraft and prefers doing short distances by road.

A strict vegetarian, non-smoker and teetotaler, Shah believes in a style of functioning that does not involve a coterie. None in the party can say with confidence that they are part of an Amit Shah coterie. Shah believes in a style of functioning that involves making use of every worker in the party.

Shah gained the simplicity due to his upbringing. He was born in a very prosperous family. His great grandfather was the nagarseth of the princely state of Mansa. His parents ensured that he did not get used to the comforts. His family stayed in a one room apartment when they moved to Ahmedabad. Shah would walk to school and eat from a brass plate when the others would be served in steel plates.

OneIndia News
At UNSC, US calls on world to tell Russia to stop its nuclear threats

Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon fired or resigned?

International

oi-PTI

Washington, August 18: US President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon, who played a key role in the electoral victory of Trump last year, left his position. A top White House official did not elaborate whether Bannon was fired, or resigned.

Bannon, 63, became the fourth high-profile White House official to have left the Trump administration in recent weeks.

The other three being White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci. Over the past few days, there had been an increasing demand from Trump's political opponents, Democrats in particular, to fire all those from the White House who are believed to be close to right wing nationalists.

Leading such a demand was Indian-American Congresswoman from Washington State Pramila Jayapal. The sudden departure of Bannon, a former editor of right- wing Breirbart news website, from the White House was celebrated by Democratic leaders and civil rights activists, who described this as a welcome step and demanded that Trump fire other right-wing nationalists within the White House. "

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," Sanders said, thus bringing down the curtains on Bannon, who played a key role in electoral victory of Trump last year.

The White House announcement comes three days after Trump said of Bannon, "I like him, he's a good man." He also said that press treats him "very unfairly." The move was welcomed by Democratic leaders, civil rights activist and members of the diplomatic and think-tank community.

"Steve Bannon's firing is welcome news, but it doesn't disguise where President Trump himself stands on white supremacists and the bigoted beliefs they advance," Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said.

"President Trump's growing record of repulsive statements is matched by his repulsive policies. Personnel changes are worthless so long as President Trump continues to advance policies that disgrace our cherished American values.

"The Trump administration must not only purge itself of the remaining white supremacists on staff, but abandon the bigoted ideology that clearly governs its decisions," Pelosi said. Jayapal declared this as a victory.

"This major victory was only possible because citizen- activists like you across the country raised our voices together," she said. "On Tuesday, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal filed a resolution demanding Trump fire staff who have supported white supremacists. And today Bannon is out.

Pramila's resolution played a key role in putting pressure on Bannon and the White House to respond after Charlottesville," her office said. Former top American diplomat Nicholas Burns described this as a good news. "He (Bannon) is wrong on immigration/refugees; Islam; trade+US role as global power. But Trump shares all his views," he tweeted.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley said Bannon should have never been given the honour of working in the White House and serving the Office of the President of the US. "His past work and strong ties to the white nationalist movement are a direct assault on our American values

. "But, let's be clear, his departure does not absolve President Trump of his actions. The Oval Office has become the epicenter of support for neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and domestic terrorists.

Crowley said that President Trump must apologise for standing up for hate and must immediately reverse course on his anti-immigrant and anti-American policies.

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 9:56 [IST]
Islamic State claims responsibility for Russia knife attack

International

pti-PTI

Moscow, Aug 19: Even as the Russian authorities refrained from calling knife attack in Surgut as a terrorist attack, the Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the attack.

"The executor of the stabbing operation in the city of Surgut in Russia is a soldier of the Islamic State," IS propaganda outlet Amaq said in a statement, after the jihadists also claimed responsibility for twin attacks in Spain that left 14 dead.

The attack also comes a day after a stabbing spree in Finland, which left two people dead and eight others injured and is being investigated as a terrorist attack, although the assailant's motive is unknown.

Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, said a man in Surgut had "carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds". It said armed police called to the scene "liquidated" the attacker following the stabbing today morning. Regional officials said seven people were taken to hospital, with the figure confirmed by investigators, who lowered an earlier toll of eight wounded.

A spokesman for regional police had earlier downplayed the possibility of a terrorist incident, telling Interfax news agency that the theory that the incident was "a terrorist (attack) is not the main one".

The Investigative Committee said it had established the attacker's identity, saying he was a local resident born in 1994, and that they were looking into "his possible psychiatric disorders".

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny questioned the authorities' treatment of the incident, writing on Twitter: "Someone runs round with a knife and tries to kill as many people as possible. What is that, if not a terrorist attack?" Investigators have opened a criminal probe into attempted murder, not terrorism, with the Investigative Committee's chief Alexander Bastrykin taking the case under his personal control.

Regional police said officers fired warning shots at the scene before firing at the suspect, who was wearing a balaclava. YouTube footage shown on Russia's Ren TV television showed a black-clad man lying on a pedestrian walkway with a policeman kneeling on his back as sirens wail.

Unconfirmed reports from the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid and other media identified the attacker as 19-year-old Artur Gadzhiyev, saying that his father is known to authorities for involvement in radical religious organisations and comes from the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan in the North Caucasus. Regional officials said four of those stabbed remained in a serious condition while another was stable in hospital.

Two have already been discharged. Russian television reported that the stabbing victims are aged between 27 and 77 and include two women. State news agency TASS said the city's largest shopping centre was evacuated after the stabbings, citing its director, and police posted a video of the attack site, showing it to be a busy area with traffic and blocks of flats. The city lies some 2,100 kilometres (1,330 miles) northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.

PTI
At UNSC, US calls on world to tell Russia to stop its nuclear threats

Los Angeles streets coated with Coolseal to combat climate change

International

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

The city streets of Los Angeles, the city is known as the poster boy of heat-island effect, is being coated with a substance known as CoolSeal, a gray coating designed to reflect solar rays, to reduce rising temperatures.

As per the US media, the coating of the streets is not a crux of the story. In fact, the material used in the coating has received global attention

GuardTop LLC, a California-based, asphalt coating manufacturer, is part of the pilot project in Los Angeles. The company began working with the defense industry to develop cool pavement for military spy planes, according to Jeff Luzar, GuardTop's vice president of sales.

Luzar said the officials were interested in lowering the temperature of taxiways so that sensitive aircraft would be less easily seen by spy satellites using infrared cameras, which form images using thermal energy.

Years later, the product being applied to Los Angeles streets is largely similar but has been refined over the years to make it even more solar-reflective.

Greg Spotts, assistant director of the Bureau of Street Services, said the coating was first tested in 2015 on a parking lot in the San Fernando Valley, one of the hottest parts of town. Officials say has already shown promising results, reports The Washington Post.

"We found that on average the area covered in CoolSeal is 10 degrees cooler than black asphalt on the same parking lot," Spotts said. "We thought it was really interesting. It's almost like treated asphalt warms at a lower rate."

City officials claim Los Angeles is the first U.S. city to test "on-road use" of cool pavement to fight urban heat.

Officials believe the coated streets are more comfortable for pets as well, as Fox affiliate KTTV asked when they tested whether pets were more amendable to a treated roadway vs. typical asphalt.

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Story first published: Saturday, August 19, 2017, 12:14 [IST]
Surgut attack: Terrorism not main angle in probe, say police

International

pti-PTI

Moscow, Aug 19: In connection with the probe into a knife attack in Surgut, Russia, the police said on Saturday that "terrorism" was not the main angle of the investigation.

"The version that the attack was a terrorist one is not the main one," the interior ministry's press service in the Khanty-Mansi region told the Interfax news agency, saying that the attacker had been identified and may have suffered from psychiatric disorders.

At least eight people have been injured in a knife attack in Russia. The attacker was shot dead by police in Surgut, central Russia.

The attacker 'carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds to eight,' Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes said.

The incident took place in a city some 2,100 kilometres northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region. AFP reports that two of those stabbed are in a serious condition while five more are in a stable condition, the government of the Khanty-Mansi region said.

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by  Graham Pierrepoint



US President Donald Trumps top team at the White House has seen an incredible amount of change over the past few months  with big names in staff having exited the Oval Office in just the last week or so as a result of the appointments of both Anthony Scaramucci and John Kelly  but for varying reasons. We have seen gaffe-friendly media mouthpiece Sean Spicer quit his post, likewise chief of staff Reince Priebus, along with Scaramucci himself  who is believed to have been removed from his position in communications as a result of harmful rhetoric he reported to a journalist regarding Priebus and close Trump associate Steve Bannon.

And yet  following a further review by new Chief of Staff Kelly  Bannon is the next surprise head to roll from the neck of Trumps staff, with rumors surrounding how tenable his position was within the White House having circulated in days before he was stated to be leaving his post. Bannon, previously head of the conservative news network Breitbart, was seen as a polarizing figure  one who had been drafted in as Chief Strategist to Trump, and a figure who many thought to be one of the Presidents closest allies. However, it seems that Kelly is encouraging big changes to roll out even further  which will come as a positive to several staffers in the White House thought to be concerned about Bannons role in proceedings.

It has been a controversial rollercoaster year for President Trump already, and hes not yet seen the summer out  as investigations continue into the White Houses alleged ties with Russia (including alleged meetings that took place between Trump Jr and Russian legal personnel in the weeks leading up to last years US election), and as a continued war of words bounces back and forth between Trump and Kim Jong Un in North Korea, the world has never quite taken its eyes off the Oval Office this year. While Frances Emmanuel Macron and the UKs Theresa May have commanded their own headlines for some time in early spring, Trump and his team continue to be of considerable interest to the media  and with many Republicans seemingly reacting to recent white supremacist killings in a manner converse to Trumps recent divisive rhetoric, we could be in for a very interesting few months at the White House  meaning that while Bannon may be bowing out, Trump could be with us for a while yet.
Brisbane Times 08 Sep 2022

Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has been indicted on money laundering and conspiracy charges in connection with Trumps..
Medical Robots Market : Key Growth Factors and Industry Analysis 2016-2026

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Medical Robot is a robot which enables the surgeons to perform surgeries with more precision. Medical robotics is emerging field. There are a wide variety of medical applications had emerged such as Surgical robots, laboratory robots, telesurgery, remote surgery, and teleconsultation robots, rehabilitation robots to help for the deaf and the blind. Medical robots assist in surgeries and make possible to decrease risk of infection. Medical robots are enables to increases accuracy of surgeons and reduce risk of patients For instance, heart bypass surgery requires, patients chest to be open and that long incision be made. The surgeon first cuts through skin, then tissue, and muscle, fascia, and then reaches to the heart. Through Medical robots it become easy to perform critical surgeries with precision. Medical robots are has advantages such as decrease post-operative pain, decrease risk of infection, decreases blood loss and minimum level of anesthesia. Medical robots have many challenges in the application of robotics in the medical field, such as safety, cost and reluctance to accept this technology.Request Report Sample@Medical Robots Market: Drivers and restraintsGlobal medical robots market can be driven by following drivers, Medical robots has gained widespread of acceptance by diverse range of fields such as Interventional cardiological surgery, Neurological surgery and orthopedic surgery etc., are provides lucrative market opportunities. Medical robots provides greatest contributions in more complex cases with more precision. Increasing technological innovations in medical field propels the global medical robots market. Major restraints of the market, Medical robots are expensive and need a technical professionals to perform surgeries.Medical Robots Market: SegmentationGlobal Medical Robots Market can be segmented as following typesGlobal Medical Robots by Products:Instruments and AccessoriesRobotic SystemsSurgical RobotsNeurological Surgery Robotic SystemsCardiology Surgery Robotic SystemsLaparoscopic Surgical Robotic SystemsOrthopaedic Surgical Robotic SystemsSteerable RoboticsRehabilitation RobotsTherapeutic RobotsProsthetic RobotsAssistive RobotsExoskeleton RobotsNon-invasive Radiosurgery RobotsHospital and Pharmacy automation robotsPharmacy automation robotsIV RobotsGlobal Medical Robots Market, by ApplicationNeurology ApplicationsOrthopaedic ApplicationsCardiology ApplicationsLaparoscopic ApplicationsOther ApplicationsMedical Robots Market: OverviewIncreasing the demand for advanced treatment methods for various severe diseases, increasing the prevalence of cardiac and neurological disorders and cancer are provides a robust market growth. Increasing the technological advancements and applications of these advancements in critical surgeries propels medical robots market over the forecast period.Medical Robots Market: Region-Wise OutlookDepending upon the geographic regions medical robots market is segmented into seven key regions: Those are North America, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia pacific excluding japan, Japan, Middle East and Africa.Visit For TOC@North America dominating the global medical robots market. Increasing awareness among the people towards the use of innovative technologies providing lucrative market. Asian Pacific region market is considered to rapidly evolving healthcare infrastructure, this region is anticipating providing a robust growth of global medical robots market.Medical Robots Market: Key playersSome of the key players in Market are Stryker Corporation, Intuitive Surgical, Inc., Houston Medical Robotics, Inc., Hansen Medical, Inc., Kirbey lester, Otto Bock Healthcare, Kinova robotics, Varian Medical Systems, Hocoma AG, Vecna Robotics, Globus Medical, IRobot Corporatin, Titan Medical, Inc, KB Medical S.A.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:
Synthetic Biology Market : In-Depth Market Research Report 2016 to 2026

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Synthetic Biology is one of the breakthrough technologies developed by mankind from chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering which ultimately changed the approach towards therapeutics. It has a varied areas of applications in biofuels, industrial enzymes, vaccine and antibody production, bio-based chemicals and synthetic biology life science research. Synthetic biologists develop such biological systems using by molding the core components (genetic circuits, part of enzymes and metabolic pathways) and understanding their performance while using these smaller parts or devices into the specific integrated systems. The production of new medicines is now done by using synthetic biology on a cellular, molecular and genetic level to address the emerging health issues.Synthetic Biology Market: Drivers & RestraintsInternationally, companies have started investing in Synthetic biology as many governmental bodies are turning towards biomass and climate change. In past few years synthetic biology has gained industrial interest which has a large scale applications and potential of new gene editing techniques are some of the drivers for this market. Traditional medicines are being replaced by genetically engineered products, DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis technologies. This market though has a potential there with any advances there are risks and hindrance like government regulations and policies, biosafety and biosecurity issues, bio-war but these issues are being addressed by the regulatory bodies and research institutions. The synthetic biology market has changed the complete approach towards traditional ways of combating with newer diseases and genetic challenges with the advanced computing and design systems.Request Report Sample@Synthetic Biology Market: SegmentationSynthetic Biology market is basically can be classified into products, technology and applications.The Synthetic Biology market based on product can be subdivided into following:Core Products.Synthetic DNASynthetic GenesSynthetic cellsDNA & RNA Purification KitsRecombinant ProteinsThe Synthetic Biology market based on technology can be subdivided into following:MutagenesisDNA sequencingGenome engineeringThe Synthetic Biology market based on applications can be subdivided into following:Pharmaceutical CompaniesResearch OrganizationsChemical IndustriesUniversitiesSynthetic Biology Market: Market OverviewSynthetic biology market is a technology which has now a massive demand in the biotechnology sector, chemical and biofuel industries and their products will outstrip the products of the other industries in the near future. There is progress towards making this technology useful in the therapeutic areas from which the society can be directly benefited. The success of synthetic biology in DNA sequencing and synthetic microbes in vaccines, faster and efficient modular DNA assembly methods has proved to be a potential market and thus there is a significant investment done by the pharmaceutical and healthcare companies.Synthetic Biology Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global radiofrequency ablation system market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Visit For TOC@Europe is a leading market followed by North America, Europe has invested in developing synthesis of biologically based or biologically inspired systems. In North America Defense is a major contributor in the investment done in the past years. In Asia, India and China are said to progress in developments over future to be a part of the Synthetic biology market. The success of this market will depend upon the conversion from basic research to applications which will rise the future opportunities to understand the natural biological systems. Thus the market for synthetic biology is showing no sign for slowing down but managing the future social, ethical and legal responsibilities will lead to innovation.Synthetic Biology Market: Key PlayersThe major key players in the synthetic biology market are Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Agilent Technologies, GEN9, Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC., Amyris Biotechnologies, Epoch Life Science Inc., Gevo Inc., Intrexon Corporation, Sangamo Biosciences and Gingko Bioworks.About Us Future Market Insights 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:
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Biologics are drugs in the form of genetically engineered proteins, derived from human genes. As per the US FDA, biologics can be composed of sugars, proteins, or nucleic acids or complex combinations of these substances, or may be living entities such as cells and tissues. The biologic drugs are derived from a variety of natural sources such as humans, animals, or microorganisms and consist of products, such as vaccines, blood and blood components, allergenics, somatic cells, gene therapy, tissues, and recombinant therapeutic proteins. Advanced biotechnology techniques and complex processes are used to manufacture biologics. They are at the forefront of biomedical research.Biologics Market: Drivers and RestraintsDrivers for the biologics market include big brand name drugs losing patent extensions, growing incidence of chronic diseases and their diagnoses across the globe, increased availability of advanced diagnostics, rising government initiatives in healthcare and growing technological advancements in research and development across the globe by big drug makers to sustain competition and invest in incremental innovation. Other factors increasing the demand for biologic drugs include rising regulatory convergence and better access to healthcare for all nations.Request Report Sample@Restraints for the market include difficulty in manufacturing, as the drugs are highly complex in nature. They must be processed under tightly controlled conditions/controls, maintained throughout the production process. This type of atmosphere and quality control procedures are not easily available in less developed nations. Environmental contamination needs to be eliminated from the manufacturing process. Further, biologics are extremely susceptible to light, heat conditions, and need extremely good refrigeration processes, which is not available uniformly throughout the world.Biologics Market: SegmentationBiologics Market can be segmented into these following ways:Segmentation by product typeVaccinesBlood and Blood ProductsAllergenic extractsHuman Cells and TissuesProteinsGene TherapiesCellular TherapiesXenotransplantation ProductsSegmentation by applicationRheumatoid arthritisAnemiaCancerDiabetesOthersSegmentation by source materialHumansAvian Cell CultureYeastBacteriaInsects Cell CultureTransgenicsBiologics Market: OverviewBiologics market is at risk over the forthcoming years due to leading biologic drugs expected to lose exclusivity over the next seven years. The patented biologic drugs are expected to be replaced by biosimilar drugs. Competition is expected to be limited in the market as the drugs are expected to be formed using various types of innovative technologies. Increasing geriatric population, early onset of ageing, increasing awareness for technologically advanced medical procedures and drugs, higher spending power, and rising incidence of chronic diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. are expected to drive the market growth of biologic drugs.Biologics Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, biologic drug market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Visit For TOC@In terms of geography, North America and Europe dominate the market, followed by Asia-Pacific. However, rising technological advancement in healthcare and systematic drug review process will drive the markets over North America, Japan and other regions. Europe currently dominates the biosimilars market driven by technically advanced healthcare infrastructure and high patient awareness & regulatory harmonization. Increasing funding for development of biologics available through public-private partnerships, availability of high-quality research infrastructure and innovative strategies developed by drug makers to restrict entry of new players are factors expected to contribute to market growth of biologics over the forecast period. Emerging markets include Eastern European countries followed by countries in Eastern Africa. Rising disease incidences in these countries is expected to prove favorable for the growth of the biologics market.Biologics Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in biologics market are Unilife Corporation, Retractable Technologies, Inc., Smiths Medicals, Becton, Dickinson & Company, Smiths Medical, Terumo Corporation, Pfizer Inc. (AC. Hospira), Roche Diagnostics, AstraZeneca, Bayer AG, Genzyme, GSK Biologicals, Lundbeck, Novartis AG, and Merck KGaA.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:
Halal Pharmaceuticals Market : Growth, Demand and Key Players to 2026

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Halal pharmaceuticals are those medicines that stringently adhere to Shariah law. More specifically, halal pharmaceuticals refer to medicines that should not contain any parts of animals (dogs, pigs and ones particularly with pointed teeth), insects (bees), alcohol and other substances prohibited as haram under the Shariah law. Competent religious local regulatory bodies in countries generally provide a better segregation regarding the classification of drugs as halal or haram (unlawful) across the world. Halal pharmaceuticals are subject to normal pre-marketing and post-marketing controls by the relevant national pharmaceutical regulators such as the National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau in case of Malaysia. Halal medicines market has vast potential globally in terms of revenue generation supported by growing demand for faith-compliant medicines from an expanding Muslim population. Drugs approved by halal drug certifiying agencies such as Lembaga Pengkajian Pangan Obatobatan dan Kosmetika Majelis Ulama Indonesia (LPPOM MUI) of Indonesia and Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia are expected to witness rising consumption globally. Currently, halal medicines are estimated to have contributed close to one-third of the total revenue from the global halal market, posing an extremely attractive opportunity for Shariah compliant drugs. This is supported by the fact that demand outstrips supply of halal medicines by a significant margin, creating potential for future economic value added in the industry.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.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.Visit For TOC@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:
Millimeter Wave Technology Market : Key Growth Factors and Industry Analysis 2016-2026

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Millimeter wave (MV) technology is a special type of electromagnetic wave technology. It is a mature technology and recently has been adopted in various application across industries. In the perspective of wireless communication, the millimeter wave generally occupy frequency range between 30 GHz to 300 GHz.Millimeter Wave Technology Market: Drivers and RestraintGlobal millimeter wave technology market is expected to witness double digit compound annual growth rate over the forecast period. Factors which are driving the growth of global millimeter wave technology market are, rising mobile data traffic and growing demand for bandwidth intensive applications, increasing demand for the high speed data connectivity and high potential usage of millimeter wave technology in consumer electronics application.Request Report Sample@On the other hand, factors which are restraining the growth of millimeter wave technology market are environmental concerns and limited range. Non-uniform licencing approach is creating a major challenge for the growth of millimeter wave technology marketThe global millimeter wave technology market is expected to witness great growth opportunity over the forecast period due to technological advances that encourages the adoption of millimeter wave technology across different industrial verticals such as aerospace, healthcare, defence, telecommunication and automobiles.Millimeter Wave Technology Market: SegmentationGlobal millimeter wave technology market is segmented on the basis of product, licence, frequency band, application and region. On the basis of product, the global millimeter wave technology market can be segmented into telecommunication equipment, scanner system, radar & satellite communication system and others.On the basis of license, the global millimeter wave technology market can be segmented into light licence frequency millimeter wave, fully licence frequency millimeter wave and unlicensed frequency millimeter wave.On the basis of application, the global millimeter wave technology market can be segmented into telecommunication, healthcare, military, aerospace & defence, automotive & transportation, consumer electronics and others. In mobile & telecommunication application segment, there is great opportunity for millimeter wave technology. In automotive & transportation application segment, this technology can be used in drivers assistant system and the technology can accelerate the commercialization of unmanned vehicles. Additionally. The millimeter wave technology has significant value in healthcare application segment, where it can be used in scanning and imaging devicesOn the basis of frequency band, the global millimeter wave technology can be segmented into 8 GHz to 57 GHz band frequency, 58 GHz to 86 GHz band frequency and 87 GHz to 300 GHz band frequency.Millimeter Wave Technology Market: Region wise outlookOn the basis of region, the global millimeter wave technology market can be segmented into seven regions which include  North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Japan. Further the market is sub-segmented as per the major countries of each region in order to provide better regional analysis of millimeter wave technology market. Out of all these region, North America is expected to dominate the global millimeter wave technology market. U.S is expected to witness a double digit CAGR growth due to rising applications of millimeter wave technology in mobile & telecommunication industryVisit For TOC@Millimeter Wave Technology Market: Key PlayersProminent players in the global millimeter wave technology market are Bridgewave Communications, Inc., Keysight Technologies Inc., Keysight Technologies, Siklu Communication Ltd, MI-Wave Inc., Millitech Inc. among others. Key market players are focusing on launch of new products in order to be competitive in the market. For instance, In October 2015, Bridgewave Communications, Inc. launched wireless backhaul millimeter wave system with highest capacity. Millimeter wave technology is able to fulfil the increasing demand of cost efficient high speed data connectivity due to which original equipment manufacturers of consumer electronics are excited in adopting the technology to enhance the proficiencies of existing applications.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:
LIMS Market Analysis, a Size nd Forecast Report 2016-2026

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Rise in the advanced technologies and rapid innovations healthcare information technology (IT) enables unlock potential for the companies which are striving in healthcare information technology. Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) have become important tool for moving the information, gathering, decision making, calculation, review, and release the process away from the office and into work place. LIMS is a software based laboratory and information management system which enables support modern laboratory operations. LIMS has its broad range of applications in various fields such as Environmental science, Pharmaceuticals, Petrochemicals. LIMS has provides its applications in sample management, data mining, data analysis, and electronic laboratory network. In pharmaceutical industry LIMS provides enormous applications such as test library included as standard functionality, dissolution, disintegration, dosage uniformity, drug release, product assays and stability module that simplifies stability studies. Biotechnological applications, LIMS assists Research and Development labs by integrating with instrumentation to provide automation to microarrays, gel electrophoresis, gene expression profiling etc. There is a significant difference between LIMS and LIS. LIMS is aimed to process and report data related to batches of samples from biology labs, drug trails, water treatment facilities. LIS designed for process and report the data related to individual patients. Global LIMS market is expected to exhibit a significant CAGR as well as annual growth over the forecast period.LIMS Market: Drivers and restraintsGlobal Laboratory Information Management System market can be influenced by following factors, LIMS provides wide range of applications to biopharmaceutical companies to address the key challenges in drug development process. Due to applications pharmaceutical companies inclined towards LIMS. Laboratories adopted advanced technologies in order to maintain precision and robust functionality specific for bio analysis, in vitro ADME experiments, and discovery R&D and QA/QC R&D. Key restraints include lack skilled professionals to manage advanced technology is major bottleneck for global LIMS market.Request Report Sample@LIMS Market: SegmentationGlobal Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) Market can be segmented as following typesBy ProductSoftwareHardwareServicesBy Delivery ModeOn premiseCloud BasedBy End UserPharmaceutical IndustryBiotechnology IndustryHospitalsResearch centersLIMS Market: OverviewGlobal LIMS market is gaining huge traction due to increasing the demand of LIMS in biopharmaceutical companies and laboratories due to its efficiency and effectiveness. Technological advancements in the laboratory system enables to make significant changes in the market. The LIMS market expected to account a lucrative market as well as robust growth rates over the forecasted period.LIMS Market: Region-Wise OutlookLaboratory Information Management System (LIMS) market is segmented into seven key regions: Those are North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia pacific excluding japan, Japan, Middle East and Africa.North America dominating the LIMS market due to increased awareness among the people towards the innovative technologies to maintain laboratory information. Asian Pacific region market is considered to rapidly evolving healthcare infrastructure, the region is anticipated to unlock the potential of LIMS market over the forecast period.Visit For TOC@LIMS Market: Key playersSome of the key players in LIMS Market are Thermo fisher Scientific, Inc., Siemens SA, Perkin Elmer Inc., Labware, Star LIMS (Abbott Laboratories. Abbott Park, U.S.A), Genologics (Illumina, Inc.), Promium LLc. LabLynx Inc., Autoscribe Informatics, Novatek International, Core Informatics etc.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Americans waste 40 percent of the food we produce. From food pantries to fertilizer, heres what Madisonians are doing about it.
Automotive Seating Systems Market

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The design, price, and features of automotives vary from vehicle to vehicle. The seating systems of premium vehicles are more expensive and have advanced features, such as automatic heating. Various manufacturers are designing and developing automotive seating systems integrated with smart technologies and improved safety features to mitigate risks in case of accidents.The new designs of automotive seating system also increases the fuel efficiency of the vehicles with lightweight designing. Moreover, the safety concerns related to driving and increase in demand for premium vehicles and economy cars in the developing regions such as India and Brazil will provide opportunities for the automotive seating systems market globally. The global automotive seating systems market will register a moderate CAGR over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@Automotive Seating Systems Market: DriversThe global automotive seating systems market is primarily driven by the growth in the automotive industry with new launch of an array of vehicles in the market and the demand for luxurious and comfortable seating among the consumers. The greenhouse gas emission regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency are also driving the demand for lightweight automotive seating systems having a positive impact on the automotive seating systems market globally. The new trends in the automotive seating systems market are integration of smart technologies; for example, Faurecia, one of the leading players in the automotive seating systems market, developed automatic seat positioning system which can be adjusted using a smartphone.Cost reduction challenge associated with the designing and manufacturing of automotive seating systems can pose challenges to the growth of the automotive seating systems market during the forecast period 2016-2026.Automotive Seating Systems Market SegmentationThe global automotive seating systems market is segmented based on vehicle type, seat type, technology, distribution channel, and region.Based on vehicle type, the automotive seating systems market can be segmented into PC (Passenger Cars), LCV (Light Commercial Vehicles) and HCV (Heavy Commercial Vehicles).On the basis of seat type, the automotive seating systems market is segmented into split Seat, bench seat and split bench seat.Based on technology, the automotive seating systems market is segmented into heated, powered, powered & heated, and standard type.Based on the distribution channel, automotive seating systems market is segmented into OEM and Aftermarket.Based on the geographic regions, the global automotive seating systems market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan, and Middle East & Africa. Among the aforementioned regions, APEJ will dominate the automotive seating systems market over the forecast period 2016-2026. China, India, and South Korea will be key to the growth of the automotive seating systems market during the forecast period.Consistently growing automotive sector in the region will contribute to the expansion of the market in the region. North America and Western Europe are the other key markets in the region. Emerging economies in Latin America will continue to offer growth opportunities to manufacturers, as the automotive sector witnesses steady growth in the region.Visit For TOC@Some of the major players identified in the global automotive seating systems market includes, Johnson Controls Inc., Faurecia SA, Marter Automotive Seating Systems, Toyota Boshoku Corporation, Lear Corporation, Magna International Inc, and IFB Automotive among others.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Autonomous Vehicles Market Analysis, a Size nd Forecast Report 2016-2026

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Autonomous vehicles also known as robot cars are driverless vehicles, controlled by the computer, which is yet to be commercialized in the market. Autonomous vehicles have sensors installed in it, which detects the objects in its surroundings via radar, GPS, lasers and computer vision and chooses the appropriate path and direction. With the increasing road accidents due to human error while driving provides lucrative opportunities for autonomous vehicles over the forecast period, as the autonomous vehicles are comparatively safe when compared with manually controlled vehicles. The autonomous vehicles will also help in reducing the CO2 emissions to the environment. The commercialization of autonomous vehicles will also contribute to the revenue growth of different industries such as, IT, technology and electronics. The use of autonomous vehicles are not limited to passenger cars, it can be used in industrial fleet, construction, public transportation and for agricultural applications. The merits of an autonomous vehicle over manually operated vehicles are, increased fuel efficiency, safety and low emissions among others. Considering the aforementioned factors, the global autonomous vehicles market will project a healthy growth rate over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@The global autonomous vehicles market is primarily driven by the numerous advantages of an autonomous vehicle such as increased safety reduced driving stress, efficient parking reducing the costs, fuel efficiency, reduced CO2 emissions to the environment and increasing geriatric population will have a positive impact on the global autonomous vehicles market. Apart from the aforementioned factors, the autonomous vehicles will have a positive impact on the economy as a whole. However, the data security concerns might pose as a restrain to the global autonomous vehicles market as the controlling software can be hacked by unauthorized parties, and input spurious information to the system.The global autonomous market is segmented based on level of automation, application and region. Based on automation level, the global autonomous vehicles market can be segmented into Driver Assistance, Partial Automation, Conditional Automation, High Automation and Full Automation. Based on applications, the global autonomous vehicles market can be segmented into Passenger Cars, Public Transportation, Industrial fleet, Construction and Agricultural applicationsBased on the geographic regions, global autonomous vehicles market is segmented into seven key market segments namely North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. Among the aforementioned regions, the Western Europe market holds the largest share of global autonomous vehicles market, due to the higher adoption of autonomous vehicles in the region. North American market for autonomous vehicles is trailing behind the Western European market. Over the forecast period, China in the Asia-Pacific market will surpass the European as well as American market for autonomous vehicles. The adoption of autonomous vehicle in the developing economies such as Latin America and MEA will be low as compared to other region. Overall, the global autonomous vehicle market will project a healthy CAGR over the forecasted period considering its tremendous advantages over conventional vehicles and impact on environment.Visit For TOC@Autonomous Vehicles Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players identified in the global autonomous vehicles market are Google, BMW AG, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla Motors, Audi AG among others.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Automotive Air Filters Market to Witness an Outstanding Growth by 2020

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Air filters are essential component of an automotive which serves basically two purposes based on its type. There are two types of automotive air filters namely intake air filters and cabin air filters. Where the former acts as a barrier against foreign particles such as dust to enter engines combustion chamber, the latter restricts the entry of dust in the cabin of the vehicle through the vent of HVAC system. Non-performance of intake air filters may lead to inefficiency of engine and increase in its emission levels. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the vehicle user to clean it at regular intervals and replace it with new once it completes its lifetime.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Automotive air filters have both OEM as well as replacement markets wherein the latter dominates the global sales. The automotive air filter market is driven by increasing demand for automobiles, strict emission norms and changing lifestyles. The increasing number of vehicles with air-conditioned cabins is boosting the market for cabin air filters. The increasing health consciousness of people wherein they require resistance from dust, pollution, harmful exhaust gases and other contaminants while driving is attracting the car users for the cars with cabin air filter.According to The World Health Organization (WHO), the urban outdoor air pollution causes about 1.3 million deaths every year worldwide. Apart from the developed countries, the developing countries are also becoming conscious about their safety from outdoor pollution which is a positive sign for the growth of cabin air filters market in the long term.Based on vehicle type, automotive air filter market can be segmented under passenger cars, light commercial vehicles and heavy commercial vehicles. However, there exist certain restraints for automotive air filters market including large interval of their replacement in the developing countries and increasing market for duplicate automotive air filters.A sample of this report is available upon request @Growing per capita income in other Asian countries such as India is propelling the demand for passenger cars. On the other hand, the increasing industrialization and commerce in Asian countries are boosting the market for commercial vehicles which is driving the automotive air filters market in the region. Commercial vehicles in the developing countries need more care and maintenance as the quality of parts used in them is low as compared to the commercial vehicles manufactured in the developed countries.Moreover, due to less developed infrastructure the chances of entry of dust and dirt in the combustion compartment are high. Due to these factors, the replacement market in the developing markets including Asia Pacific is high as compared the developed countries. However, cabin air filters finds very less usage in commercial vehicles as the requirement for cabin convenience is very less in their case.Buy Now: You can now buy a single user license of the report @Among the regions, Asia Pacific dominated the global sales of automotive air filters followed by North America. China surpassed U.S. in 2010 to become the country with largest automotive population. Some of the key companies operating in automotive air filter market include AC Delco Inc., Affinia Group, Denso Corporation, Hengst GmbH and Company KG, Cummins Inc, Toyota Boshoku Corporation and Hollingsworth & Vose Company 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:
SDN and NFV Technology in Telecom Network Transformation Market Estimated to Expand at a Robust CAGR over 2016 - 2026

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Global SDN and NFV technology in telecom network transformation in Telecom Network Transformation Market: Drivers and ChallengesThe major reason behind the adoption of SDN and NFV by service providers in their network transformation is because SDN and NFV technologies are synergetic and they offer improved programmability, faster service enablement, and most importantly lower down the overall CAPAEX and OPEX for the service providers. SDN and NFV provide a complete digital network that is essential to increase customer satisfaction level. SDN and NFV technology in telecom network transformation emerged as paradigm that has potential to transform service providers networks by delivering cloud style nimbleness and innovation.A sample of this report is available upon request @The communication network telecom service providers are generally more complex, multilayer, and have variety of users that require high network availability and performance. As compared to data centers, a more stringent set of requirements will need to be met, in order to deploy SDN and NFV in these network.Global SDN and NFV technology in telecom network transformation in Telecom Network Transformation Market: SegmentationSDN and NFV technology in telecom network transformation in telecom network transformation market can be segmented on the basis of component, technology, and region. Component category include software and different types of services such as professional services and managed services. On the basis of technology, the market can be segmented into SDN and NFV. Region wise, the Market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Japan, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Middle East & Africa.Request to view table of content @Cisco System Inc. Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM Corporation, Juniper Networks, Pica8, Inc., Intel Corporation, and Big Switch Networks, Inc. are some of the big players of global SDN and NFV technology in telecom network transformation market.Regional OverviewNorth America is the largest SDN and NFV market as most of the technology providers such as Cisco, IBM, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are based in the North America region and are making huge investment over there. Also, due to the ongoing advancements in 4G and 5G technologies the US, telecommunication service providers are deploying SDN and NFV at every layer of their network.In Europe region, technology service providers have already understood the value proportion of SDN and have already started deploying SDN in their networks but enterprise market still remain gloomy in terms of adoption of SDN.In Asia Pacific region, growth in countries such as China, India, and Japan are immensely contributing in the market. In India, the telecommunication services industry is going through the transformation and service providers have started to deploy SDN and NFV technology in telecom network transformation at massive scale.Buy Now: You can now buy a single user license of the 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:
C4ISR Market to Register Substantial Expansion by 2025

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Global C4ISR Market: Market DriversThe major market driver for C4ISR market is increase in sales for cybersecurity, GPS/navigation, unmanned sea vehicles, and missile defense systems. Frequent terror attacks across the borders in many countries is also major driver for the C4ISR market.A sample of this report is available upon request @The C4ISR systems are also being increasingly adopted by border protection agencies as they offer electro optic solutions for surveillance operations which is advanced supplement for Radar technologies. New technologies like commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software and the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to fuel the global C4ISR market.Some of the key challenges in C4ISR market is current government measures like reduction in defence budgets primarily in western countries is impacting the growth the global C4ISR market.Global C4ISR Market: SegmentationThe Global C4ISR market is segmented based on the platform, by Application and by region.On the basis of platform Global C4ISR market is segmented, air-based, Naval based and Land based platforms.On the basis of application Global C4ISR market is segmented into Command & control, communications, computers, surveillance & reconnaissance.On basis of region global C4ISR Market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa (MEA).Global C4ISR Market Overview:North America C4ISR Market is expected to have the major market share during the forecast period due to presence of large military capabilities. The C4ISR Market is followed by Asia Pacific primarily from china and India. Europe C4ISR Market is also expected to have significant market share during the forecast period.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Global C4ISR Market Key Market Players:Some of the Key players in C4ISR Market include Lockheed Martin Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Elbit Systems Ltd., QinetiQ Group plc, Leidos, Inc., Raytheon Company, and Harris Corporation.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:
Enterprise Digital Labs Market: Global Forecast over 2016 - 2026

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Enterprise Digital Labs Market: Drivers and ChallengesThe major factor driving Enterprise digital labs market is the availability of digitally native retailers. Digital retailers such as Amazon, Flipkart have changed the business scenario. These companies target their customers and engage them with the help of new service channels. These companies take help from digital technology such as social media, point-of-sales-devices, in-store interaction and mobile apps to connect their customers digitally. This has influenced digital transformation service providers to help other industry verticals in adopting digital business activities.A sample of this report is available upon request @The restraint for the growth of enterprise digital labs is that can benefits to enterprises that follow all the business practices and are flexible enough to adopt newer technologies coming in the market. For transforming any business digitally, it requires capital investment and proper functioning of organization in terms of business practices.Government organizations have been taking initiatives on digitization to streamline their services and creating more transparency in governmentEnterprise Digital Labs Market: SegmentationEnterprise Digital Labs companies offer services to clientsRequest to view table of content @Various industries are adopting these Enterprise Digital Labs services such as BFSI, Healthcare, Retail and Consumer goods, IT and Telecom, Government, Automotive, Oil and gas and others.Key Market Players:There are many companies that are helping enterprises in transforming their business digitally few of them are McKinsey, Swisscom, Zinnov, TCS, and AccentureBuy Now: You can now buy a single user license of the 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:
Network Security Market Set to Grow Exponentially During the Forecast 2016 - 2026

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Network Security Market: Drivers and ChallengesThe major factor driving Network security market is the growing need of security solutions for cloud technology. Due to heavy use of virtualization, threats such as malware or defective process are reducing the efficiency of the hypervisor. This has encouraged Network security solution providers to offer advanced Network security solutions such as Firewall to scan every byte of each packet on all the network traffic. This Network security solution strengthens cloud-based security by providing additional benefits such as malware protection, detection of intrusion, policy violation data theft and other security measures.The key challenge in the Network security market is the rising demand for solutions that can support BYOD approach. With the introduction of BYOD policy companies allow their employees to access business information through their personal devices and to follows open and interconnected network policy. This creates difficulty for network security solution to understand if the action has been taken up by the device, machine or human. Many network security solution providers are working towards the development of intelligent security solution that can secure information not only the device or communication pathway.Another restraint in Network security is the vulnerability to cyber-attack. This has badly affected operating system of the companies as many organizations are running their network connected devices without network security updates, faces the problem of vulnerability to viruses, theft and data loss along with cloud Integration and connectivity. This have given hackers and cyber-attackers an easy access to the organizations network. To secure network, timely detection, removal of viruses and control is needed. It is necessary to identify and fix the issues related to network performance and reliability.Key Contracts and Key Players:In June 2016, Fortinet, a security solution provider has acquired AccelOps, a network security monitoring, and analytics company. This acquisition helps to provide more efficient network security solutions for automated threat prevention feature.In June 2016, Barracuda networks has entered into the distribution agreement with Synnex Australia to increase its presence in APAC region by offering cloud backup and storage solutions, and disaster recovery solution in Australia and New Zealand.In March 2016, TrendMicro has acquired TippingPoint, network security Solution Company from HPE. This acquisition strengthens TrendMicros vulnerability management, threat protection, and advance network solution capabilities.In Network Security market there are many other solution providers some of them are PaloAlto Networks, Sonicwall, McAfee, CheckPoint Software Technologies, AT&T, Microsoft, Cisco, Optiv Security Inc., Juniper and Siemens.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:
Alnico Market to Perceive Substantial Growth During 2015 to 2021

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Alnico belongs to the group of permanent (hard) magnets primarily composed of aluminum, nickel and cobalt. They are hard ferromagnetic substances which are widely used in temperature sensitive applications such as hall-effect and MR-based electronic and automotive sensors.They are also known as composite magnets which are usually manufactured from sintering or casting offering superior mechanical characteristics. Alnico magnets are made from the combination of aluminum, nickel and cobalt with small amounts of iron and other small elements that improve the property of the magnet. After rare earth magnets, Alnico is considered as the strongest permanent magnet. It is also used in various household appliances as well as for the production of horse shoe magnets.A sample of this report is available upon request @The global market for alnico has been witnessing significant growth owing to rapid expansion of the automotive industry. Alnico magnets are majorly used in several components of an automobile including exhaust systems and sensors among others. Asia Pacific accounted as the largest market for alnico magnets, which was majorly supported by China, followed by several regions in Rest of the World (RoW) such as Latin America and Middle East. After the global economic slowdown in 2008-09, the manufacturing industry in North America has been slowly gaining pace. Alnico magnets are being increasingly implemented in electric motors and various sound reproductive systems such as microphones and loudspeakers. However, over the years, the industry for alnico magnets in this region has been noticeably saturated due to increasing consumption of NdFeB magnets. These magnets have been increasingly superseded by rare earth magnets such as NdFeB as well as ferrite in different automotive and electronic equipments, resulting in low demand from retail and manufacturing companies. However, alnico magnets cannot be replaced completely by rare earth elements due to their wide temperature range and stability. Thus, besides the automotive industry, growing demand for electric motors and sound systemshas been strongly contributing towards the growth of the alnico market.Moreover, rapid growth of industrial activities in emerging regions such as Asia Pacific has resulted in growth of various application sectors such as healthcare, electronics and power generation among others, which in turn is expected to contribute towards the demand for alnico magnets in Asia Pacific over the forecast period.Increasing demand for alnico magnets on account of growth of the automotive industry is expected to be one of the vital factors driving the demand for alnico magnets over the forecast period. Rise in disposable income, improved infrastructure and increasing population are some of the factors driving the demand for automobiles.Moreover, increasing use of alnico magnets in temperature sensitive applications owing to growing industrialization and electronics industry is also expected to contribute towards the growth of the market. However, increasing substitution of alnico magnets by rare earth magnets such as NdFeB on account of larger energy products and stronger magnetic fields, allowing smaller size magnets to be used for a given application is expected to hamper the growth of the market. Increasing application scope of alnico magnets in HEVs coupled with growing demand for these vehicles is expected to open opportunities for the growth of the market over the next few years.Buy Now: You can now buy a single user license of the report @Adams Magnetic Products Co., Arnold Magnetic Technologies, Dexter Magnetic Technologies Inc., and Tengam Engineering Inc. are some of the leading manufacturers of alnico dominating the industry.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Wet Waste Management Market to Undertake Strapping Growth During 2016 - 2026

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Global Wet Waste Management Market: IntroductionWet waste refers to the organic waste usually heavy in weight due to dampness and can be segregated on the basis of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste. Wet waste generally consist of vegetable waste, food waste, tea leaves, shredded newspaper etc. Wet waste management on the other hand is the process of compositing the waste to use it as manure, biogas etc. Further, compositing is the process of shattering down the organic matter in the presence of water and air, using small insects and microorganisms present in the air. The end product, called compost, is usually rich in readily usable plant nutrients forming a part of healthy soil. Moreover, removing waste from public areas helps in reducing risks associated to health, decreasing exposure to biohazards and also reduces infestation of pests. Wet waste management also yields waste energy which can further be deployed in generating electricity.A sample of this report is available upon request @Global Wet Waste Management Market: SegmentationThe global wet waste management market can be segmented on the basis of source, service and type of waste. On the basis of source, the global wet waste management market can be segmented into municipal, industrial, commercial, healthcare and others (glues, construction, solvents etc.). On the basis of service, the global wet waste management market can be segmented into collection and transportation equipment, storage equipment, sorting equipment, processing equipment and disposal equipment. On the basis of type of waste, the global wet waste management market can be segmented into meat & bones, food waste, agricultural waste, medical waste, shredded paper and others.Global Wet Waste Management Market: DynamicsRising awareness for wet waste management is a key factor driving the global wet waste management market. Moreover, introduction of new wet waste management technologies such as waste to energy solutions is another major factor fuelling the growth of the overall wet waste management market. Increasing environmental sustainability and growing usage of eco-friendly fuels is a key element driving the growth of the global wet waste management market. Increasing government initiatives to spread wet waste management awareness among the individuals is further expected to enhance the overall market during the forecast period. However, lack of participation from industries and other sectors such as commercial, food and healthcare is expected to hamper the overall global wet waste management market growth during the forecast period. Moreover, lack of treatment plants and landfill sites is another factor which is expected to rise up as a challenge to the global wet waste management market over the forecast period.Global Wet Waste Management Market: Region-wise OutlookOn the basis of region, the global wet waste management market is divided into seven key regions including North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East & Africa and Japan. In terms of market growth, North America is expected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period followed by Asia-Pacific and Western Europe. Moreover, high waste generation from medical and industrial sectors as well as strict regulations by European Commission is expected to drive the demand for wet waste management in the Western Europe region.Buy Now: You can now buy a single user license of the report @Global Wet Waste Management Market: Key PlayersMajor companies involved in the wet waste management are Clean Harbors Inc., Remondis SE & Co. KG, Waste Management Inc., Republic Services Inc., Veolia Environment S.A., Suez Environment, Progressive Waste Solution Ltd., Republic Services Inc., Stericycle, Advanced Disposal 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:
Data Warehousing Solutions Market Demand is Increasing Rapidly in 2016 - 2026

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Data Warehousing Solutions Market: Drivers and RestraintsBusiness data is acquired from internal as well as external sources and is diverse in nature. Due to the exponential growth of this data, and the need to analyse this data for a better understanding is driving the market for data warehousing solutions. Enterprises are opting for solutions that maximize performance and enable a fast data flow with real time analytics, which are offered by efficient data warehousing solutions. Another major driver for this market is using data to perform trend analysis and data mining for future trends prediction. Inadequate time to build in-house software is making end users invest in data warehousing solutions and helping the market grow. Major restraint for this market is poor data quality because of unavailability of required data and inefficient data warehouse architecture, which isolates the customers from using data warehousing solutions.A sample of this report is available upon request @Data Warehousing Solutions Market: SegmentationData warehousing solutions can be segmented on the basis of type of offering, type of data, type of deployment, end users, verticals and regions. The different types of offerings under data warehousing include extraction, transportation and loading (ETL) solution, statistical analysis, data mining, and others. The types of data used in data warehousing solutions are structured and unstructured data. Data warehousing solution can be segmented on the basis of deployment type of its system into on-premise, cloud based and hybrid. The end users for data warehousing solutions are SMEs and large enterprises. Data warehousing solutions are applicable in the following verticals, government, BFSI, retail, healthcare, IT and telecom, manufacturing, energy and utilities, transportation and logistics, and others. Regionally data warehousing solutions can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, and Middle East and Africa.Data Warehousing Solutions Market: Regional OutlookData warehousing solutions market is dominated by the North America region at present due to the fact that North America readily invests in new technologies. Asia Pacific, Japan and Western Europe are expected to be emerging regions in this market and will see a good growth rate in the future. Asia Pacifics and Japans growth is due to its steady economic growth and growing commercial activity. Western Europe will see a good growth owing to the efforts European Union intends to make to promote the growth of big data in this region. Eastern Europe is expected to see a moderate growth rate with a few enterprises looking to invest in this region.Request to view table of content @Data Warehousing Solutions Market: Competition LandscapeThe key players involved in data warehousing solutions market are Oracle Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Teradata Corporation, IBM Corporation, SAP SE, Amazon Web Services Inc., MarkLogic Corporation, Infobright, Cloudera Inc., MapR Technologies, Inc., and Hortonworks Inc. Recent trends involved in data warehousing solutions include a shift to cloud based services and investments in latest technologies to cope up with competition in the market.Buy Now: You can now buy a single user license of the 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:
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Product Structural Simulation Solutions Market Growth to be Driven by Technological Advancements 2016 - 2026

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Product Structural Simulation Solutions Market: Drivers and RestraintsEnterprises are shifting to product structural simulation solutions to accelerate the product development cycle. Engineers are able to assess the regions of interest in detail, which meets the need to enhance the final products quality. The amount of time and effort to build recurring parts in a structure can be reduced by using simulation solutions that analyze the substructure once and place it at the required positions. One major restraint for this market is the possibility of incorrect estimation of product accuracy. For product structural analysis engineers with in depth knowledge are required and with the introduction of new simulation software, they need to be trained which increases expenses.A sample of this report is available upon request @Product Structural Simulation Solutions Market: SegmentationThe product structural simulations market can be segmented on the basis of types of solutions, technology used, verticals, and regions. The types of solutions are further categorized into computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, crash simulation, linear and non-linear analysis, model mesh simulation, static and dynamic analysis, and others. Segmentation of product structural simulation solutions can be done on the basis of technology used, into augmented reality solutions and non-augmented reality solutions. On the basis of verticals, the market can be segmented into aerospace and defense, automotive, consumer products and packaging, electronics, energy, medical and others. Region wise, the market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East and Africa.Request to view table of content @Product Structural Simulation Solutions Market: Regional OutlookNorth America leads the product structural simulation solutions market owing to the presence of key players in this region. Asia Pacific is expected to witness a high growth rate with countries like China, India and Korea dominating the market. Latin America is expected to grow moderately in this market as countries like Brazil are opening up to new technologies. Western and Easter Europe will witness a moderate growth rate owing to the trend of investing more money in research and development. Middle East and Africa market is impacted by UAEs market, which is fast in adopting new technologies, will help the market grow.Buy Now: You can now buy a single user license of the 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:
Security Interlocking Doors Market Analysis - Size, Share, Growth, Industry Demand, Forecast, Application Analysis To 2017

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ReportBazzar has released its latest research-based report entitled Security Interlocking Doors market. This comprehensive report provides a holistic approach to the market growth with a detailed and precise analysis of the overall competitive scenario of the Security Interlocking Doors market worldwide along with the key trends and latest technologies, playing a prominent role in the Security Interlocking Doors market growth over the next eight years.It also takes into account the market trends, aspects such as drivers, constraints, challenges, and opportunities that impact the market and presents statistical and analytical account on it. This research report features a comprehensive discussion about the current scenario to estimate trends and prospects of the Security Interlocking Doors market. Moreover, it provides dynamic and statistical insights pertaining to the market at both regional as well as global level.Get Free Sample Copy of this Report @:Application segments such as demolition and construction as well as products used in the manufacturing of engineering equipment come under heavy industries. In addition, heavy industries also include ancillary industries that have their relation with these applications. These industries are mostly capital intensive in nature, have huge barriers to entry and low transportability. The industry mostly includes heavy electrical, huge buildings and machine tools. Rising construction of high rise buildings is one of the primary growth factors of Security Interlocking Doors market.Recognizing the rising prevalence of Security Interlocking Doors market, this research report proves to be a primary source of guidance and detailed data on the market at global scale. The report evaluates the present scenario and status as well as changing trends in the market to project its outlook and prospects. This report is a systematic research study based on the market and analyzes the competitive framework of the global Security Interlocking Doors industry. A holistic report covers exhaustive information obtained from reliable industrial sources and through proven research methodologies. The data thus obtained is then combined with relevant tables and graphs to support the information revealed. Thus the report features graphs, figures, and data and provides a high-level blueprint of the global market.Browse full report with Table of Content @:Various competent analytical tools have been used to offer a comprehensive assessment of the market. The report comprises of each aspect of the global market for Security Interlocking Doors. Here, the market is basically segmented by its product type, application and region. It starts with the basic information and then advances to the market classification and segmentation based on different criteria. It analyses the key segments and the regional subdivision of the market and helps determine the future of the market in the global arena.Major regions, countries, and sub-segments have been analyzed for providing the better understanding of the market scope worldwide. The report studies the market by evaluating the manufacturers, manufacturing chain, contribution in the industry, regulations, prevalent policies and cost structures. The regional markets for the Security Interlocking Doors market are analyzed by evaluating the raw material price trend analysis, logistics, demand, and supply, production capacity, as well as the historical performance of the market in the given region.The report also provides insights on the competitive landscape of the global Security Interlocking Doors industry with the leading players profiled in the report. The company profiles, trends, tactics, merger & acquisitions, business strategies, financial metrics of the major participants operating in the global Security Interlocking Doors market have been reviewed in this study.Ask for Discount @:Some Points Of Table Of Content:1 Security Interlocking Doors Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Security Interlocking Doors1.2 Security Interlocking Doors Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Security Interlocking Doors Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Security Interlocking Doors Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Automatic1.2.4 Non-return1.3 Global Security Interlocking Doors Segment by Application1.3.1 Security Interlocking Doors Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Airport1.3.3 Confidential Laboratories1.3.4 Government Departments1.3.5 Other1.4 Global Security Interlocking Doors Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Security Interlocking Doors 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 Security Interlocking Doors (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Security Interlocking Doors Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Security Interlocking Doors Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Security Interlocking Doors Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Security Interlocking Doors Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Security Interlocking Doors Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Security Interlocking Doors Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Security Interlocking Doors Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Security Interlocking Doors Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Security Interlocking Doors Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Security Interlocking Doors Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Security Interlocking Doors Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Security Interlocking Doors Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, ExpansionAbout us:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors. Our intelligence database comprises of vast arrays of strategically analyzed and high-level market research reports that encompass all major industries worldwide. All the specialized research reports available at Reportbazzar.com are tailor-made to suit your every business need, no matter how diverse or demanding it is.Contact for more details:Report BazzarUnited States30 Wall Street, 8th floor,New York, NY 10005.US: +1 (212) 389-6363
Food Analyzer Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth and Forecast Report To 2021

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ReportBazzar has released its latest research-based report entitled Food Analyzer market. This comprehensive report provides a holistic approach to the market growth with a detailed and precise analysis of the overall competitive scenario of the Food Analyzer market worldwide along with the key trends and latest technologies, playing a prominent role in the Food Analyzer market growth over the next eight years.It also takes into account the market trends, aspects such as drivers, constraints, challenges, and opportunities that impact the market and presents statistical and analytical account on it. This research report features a comprehensive discussion about the current scenario to estimate trends and prospects of the Food Analyzer market. Moreover, it provides dynamic and statistical insights pertaining to the market at both regional as well as global level.Get Free Sample Copy of this Report @:Application segments such as demolition and construction as well as products used in the manufacturing of engineering equipment come under heavy industries. In addition, heavy industries also include ancillary industries that have their relation with these applications. These industries are mostly capital intensive in nature, have huge barriers to entry and low transportability. The industry mostly includes heavy electrical, huge buildings and machine tools. Rising construction of high rise buildings is one of the primary growth factors of Food Analyzer market.Recognizing the rising prevalence of Food Analyzer market, this research report proves to be a primary source of guidance and detailed data on the market at global scale. The report evaluates the present scenario and status as well as changing trends in the market to project its outlook and prospects. This report is a systematic research study based on the market and analyzes the competitive framework of the global Food Analyzer industry. A holistic report covers exhaustive information obtained from reliable industrial sources and through proven research methodologies. The data thus obtained is then combined with relevant tables and graphs to support the information revealed. Thus the report features graphs, figures, and data and provides a high-level blueprint of the global market.Browse full report with Table of Content @:Various competent analytical tools have been used to offer a comprehensive assessment of the market. The report comprises of each aspect of the global market for Food Analyzer. Here, the market is basically segmented by its product type, application and region. It starts with the basic information and then advances to the market classification and segmentation based on different criteria. It analyses the key segments and the regional subdivision of the market and helps determine the future of the market in the global arena.Major regions, countries, and sub-segments have been analyzed for providing the better understanding of the market scope worldwide. The report studies the market by evaluating the manufacturers, manufacturing chain, contribution in the industry, regulations, prevalent policies and cost structures. The regional markets for the Food Analyzer market are analyzed by evaluating the raw material price trend analysis, logistics, demand, and supply, production capacity, as well as the historical performance of the market in the given region.The report also provides insights on the competitive landscape of the global Food Analyzer industry with the leading players profiled in the report. The company profiles, trends, tactics, merger & acquisitions, business strategies, financial metrics of the major participants operating in the global Food Analyzer market have been reviewed in this study.Ask for Discount @:Some Points Of Table Of Content:1 Food Analyzer Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Food Analyzer1.2 Food Analyzer Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Food Analyzer Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Food Analyzer Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Solid1.2.4 Gas1.2.5 Liquid1.3 Global Food Analyzer Segment by Application1.3.1 Food Analyzer Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Food Industry1.3.3 Pharmaceutical Industry1.3.4 Cosmetics1.3.5 Others1.4 Global Food Analyzer Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Food Analyzer 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 Food Analyzer (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Food Analyzer Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Food Analyzer Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Food Analyzer Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Food Analyzer Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Food Analyzer Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Food Analyzer Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Food Analyzer Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Food Analyzer Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Food Analyzer Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Food Analyzer Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Food Analyzer Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Food Analyzer Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, ExpansionAbout us:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors. Our intelligence database comprises of vast arrays of strategically analyzed and high-level market research reports that encompass all major industries worldwide. All the specialized research reports available at Reportbazzar.com are tailor-made to suit your every business need, no matter how diverse or demanding it is.Contact for more details:Report BazzarUnited States30 Wall Street, 8th floor,New York, NY 10005.US: +1 (212) 389-6363
Government often played the savior with Business. Harry Truman seized control of the rail industry to avoid a crippling strike; John F. Kennedy exploded when U.S. Steel announced a major price hike, fuming, "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of b------, but I never believed it 'til now."

Now the demon is in politics, and hope is in the land that Business can be the savior. The president's Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of prominent chief executives, disbanded in protest over President Donald Trump's ambivalent response to a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

When a trickle of chief executives resigned from a similar panel, the Manufacturing Council, the president responded with a shiv in the side. "Now that Ken Frazier of Merck Pharma has resigned from President's Manufacturing Council," Trump tweeted, "he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!" That council was also disbanded.

Merck will be back, and so will the bankers. They all want to be in the room when tax cuts are on the table and to push on deregulation.

And denouncing racism is easy. Nobody is for it, and quitting a panel is not the same as leading. Saviors have to do more than refuse to associate.

Once we had business leaders such as Citicorp's Walter Wriston, who seemed to legitimately straddle the interests of business and society, at least until he lent too much of his bank's equity to Argentina. And we had financiers who moved between the public and private good, Bernard Baruch in an earlier time, Arthur Levitt or Richard Ravitch in our own.

They commanded respect and followership, which leaders do. No such leader has emerged today, and on a host of issues on which the Trump agenda is wrongheaded, chief executives have been silent.

Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, forcefully denounced white supremacists, by that term, but he has not, in similar language, denounced the president's trade agenda. Walmart is arguably the largest anti-poverty program in the United States. It sells the most goods at the lowest prices, particularly to the poor.

It would be nice to hear McMillon speak frankly about his international supply chain, and what Trump's threatened actions against China and Mexico would do to prices on the floor. But retail executives -- not just at Walmart -- are cowering.

Similarly on immigration, economists are shouting the news that the United States needs immigrant workers. Wisconsin cannot produce milk without them; Silicon Valley is starved for engineers; the health-care industry needs technicians.

THE TEMPLATE FOR CEOs

Trump's mind is fixed in a win-lose world, which is an adequate representation of the two industries he knows: casino gaming; and shaking down local authorities for tax breaks. Some CEO should remind him that for society at large, business is not win-lose. Individual firms compete and prosper or die, but the economic ecosystem is enriched by new entrants, new products, new accents.

As Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune elegantly observed, immigrant workers are a plus. "When farmers can find workers, they grow food and fiber that have to be processed, packaged, transported and sold -- all of which boosts employment."

The template for chief executives has been: Avoid saying anything that lands you on the president's Twitter feed. I have a sneaking suspicion that many -- most? --are too thirsty for tax cuts to risk calling him out.

Early in the year, Trump put the arm on Gregory Hayes, chief executive of United Technologies, which owns Carrier -- which promptly decided to retain 1,000 workers in Indianapolis rather than move them to Mexico. Similarly, Ford Motor canceled plans for a project in Mexico that Trump had called an "absolute disgrace."

No matter whether Trump was responsible for these moves, as he claimed. The CEOs should say unashamedly that they hire workers to suit not the political purposes of the White House but, as is proper, the long-term interests of their shareholders.

A few chief executives took issue with Trump on climate change. It would be good hear them -- not just faceless industry lobbyists -- on the ill wisdom of Trumpcare and on the employer model of health care generally. Ditto, McDonald's could add, meaningfully, to the discussion on the minimum wage, for instance by pointing out there is no single minimum that can be effective in both, say, Arlington, Virginia, and Ashland, Kentucky. They could say that the federal government could accomplish more by enlarging the EITC (but I forgot: Trump is well informed; he knows that).

This may seem like small-bore stuff, economic policy as opposed to fighting racism. But few CEOs have the moral authority to lead on transcendent social issues. And Trump's signature character flaw isn't racism, it's dishonesty.

COMMERCIALLY CORRECT CULTURES

Chief executives won't be the remedy, because they preside over commercially correct cultures that reflexively shrink from frankness. In a pinch, they obfuscate. (Just once I would like to hear a commercial airline skip the blather about "willing and able to assist." Just tell us your lawyers are putting us on notice, OK?)

The odd John Mackey or Mark Cuban speak their minds. Jamie Dimon is frank but, as if burned by his scrapes with the Obama administration, no longer so visible. The age of the public financier is gone.

Blackstone chief executive Steve Schwarzman, who chaired the Strategic and Policy Forum, is in high dudgeon over Trump's taking credit for disbanding the council. Schwarzman, a man of great wealth and greater self-regard, would better channel his sense of aggrievement into an issue he could do something about, such as the shameful and unwarranted tax break, known as carried interest, that allows private-equity moguls such as Schwarzman to pay a lower rate than schoolteachers. During the campaign, Trump promised to eliminate the tax break; since then, with people like Schwarzman cooing in his ear, he hasn't addressed the issue.

I have a fantasy that Howard Schultz, of Starbucks fame, will challenge Trump (privately he has rebuffed such suggestions). Picture a chief executive who marketed an American brand around the world taking on a three-time deadbeat whose idea of competition is build a wall. Schultz has a moral compass; he also understands profit.

Then again, Schultz may prefer hawking lattes. Regardless, there is a vacuum in the center and CEOs could fill it. Opposing Trump shouldn't mean opposing business, nor should enlightened apostles of business consider him an ally. For executives, that would be a good message to start with. Finding a savior will have to wait.

Roger Lowenstein is a financial journalist and writer.
If any '80s song could aptly describe Depoe Bay's attitude toward eclipse chasers, it might be a little ditty by The Human League called "Don't You Want Me."

Mayor Barbara Leff issued a plea for visitors Saturday, dispelling rumors that it's been raining in the coastal town 1,400. In a release, she wrote that the sun has been shining and that "the whales are frolicking."

"People up and down the coast have worked so hard so visitors can have a good time and be safe while they're here," she told The Oregonian/OregonLive over the phone. "It would be a shame if they (visitors) were turned off because of some misinformation that got out there."

Weather among the path of totality in Oregon, the 60-mile stretch of the state where the moon will fully block the sun from between 30 seconds and two minutes, is largely expected to be clear come time for the show.

National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Cullen told The Oregonian/OregonLive Saturday that the agency expects clouds along the coast Monday morning.

Much of that cover is expected to linger in cities farther north like Seaside and Astoria while most of the sky should be clear by 10 a.m. or so in the central coast.

"That may happen, it may not," he said. "The best chances for improvement are further south in Lincoln City and Newport."

Weather service update Will there be cloud cover during the eclipse? Were live with the US National Weather Service Portland Oregon for an update on weather during the eclipse. Well be doing daily updates through the weekend. Posted by The Oregonian on Saturday, August 19, 2017

That includes Depoe Bay, where city officials and business owners have long been bracing for an influx of visitors. Leff said an eclipse preparedness committee has been prepping for more than a year.

"We wanted to make it as easy for our visitors as we could," she said. "I love the opportunity to show off the area."

And as Oregon Department of Transportation and weather service officials have warned, Leff said visitors would be better off exploring the city after the eclipse rather than fight traffic leaving the coast.

"Besides, by the time the moon is gone, it's going to be lunchtime," she said.

Along Depoe Bay's scenic seafront walkway, volunteers staffed a booth stocked with certified eclipse glasses and information about the best places viewing places around town.

Around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, though, most volunteers kept themselves busy taking cell phone photos of whales spouting in the bay behind the booth. Jeff Wiseman, a volunteer, was confident the yet-to-materialize crowds would eventually show up.

"It's slow right now, but I think a lot of people are traveling today," he said. "I'm sure we'll see them by tomorrow."

At the Thriftway grocery store north of Depoe Bay, Elizabeth Davis, a customer service rep, said the biggest rush they'd seen had been from locals who bought extra supplies ahead of what they thought would be a crush of people.

"For the last 2 1/2, we were packed with locals," she said. "Since they left, we've been dead."

Farther down the coast, some residents said that Saturday wasn't just less crowded than expected, but even less crowded than an average weekend in August.

Jaycee and Katie Butler, both residents of Newport, said the central coast city was a ghost town.

They headed to the popular Clearwater Restaurant Friday night prepared for a hefty wait. Instead, they were seated immediately among a number of empty tables.

Jaycee Butler said he stocked up earlier in the week on essentials including water, gasoline and extra food but said he thought reports of record crowds, from numerous news outlets including this one, were "a whole lot of hype."

Still, few hotels on Highway 101 displayed anything other than "no vacancy" signs.

One parking lot along the highway in Depoe Bay advertised spaces for $100 a day or $500 for the whole week. As of Saturday afternoon, only a single space was occupied.

The latest weather and visibility reports for the rest of Oregon also look good for eclipse chasers. Madras, Prineville and other Central Oregon cities expect clear skies come showtime, albeit with possibly a dash of smoke from area wildfires.

Toward the state's eastern reaches, cities like Ontario and Baker City are also expecting clear skies and temperatures in mid-70s.

Kale Williams of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.

--Eder Campuzano | 503.221.4344

@edercampuzano

ecampuzano@oregonian.com
Outraged Portland school board members on Friday pledged a rigorous outside investigation into how years of sexual misconduct complaints against a Portland Public Schools educator went nowhere.

The Oregonian/OregonLive, in an article published online Thursday, reported the district's botched handling of students' first-person complaints about Mitch Whitehurst.

After reading it, newly elected school board chair Julia Brim-Edwards said she found the district's inaction troubling and pledged to hire an outside firm to investigate.

Other board members expressed anger and mortification. One said the district needs to get better advice from its lawyers on staff and from its outside law firm.

The Oregonian/OregonLive's investigation found the district protected Whitehurst, a 32-year district employee, not children. Whitehurst ultimately left under a cloud and surrendered his license in 2016, but only after a male colleague complained that Whitehurst mistreated him.

Girls and young women reported troubling behavior to school officials and asked that he be stopped, only to be disbelieved and see Whitehurst go unscathed, the news story said.

"It's so hard to read," recently elected board member Scott Bailey said Friday. "I was mortified. It's obvious (Portland Public Schools) has let students down and the public down, and we need to do whatever we can to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Whitehurst's conduct came to the Portland school board's attention last year when district lawyers urged the panel to settle a lawsuit from a male colleague who accused the district of tolerating Whitehurst's unnerving behavoir.

The board agreed to settle on a 4-3 vote, and only after insisting staff scrutinize the case. That directive was ignored.

Board member Mike Rosen said Friday he wants the investigation to take a hard look at the district's legal advice.

Board members got a "convoluted" rundown of the facts when briefed on the lawsuit, he said Friday. Rosen said he felt lawyers pressured board members to settle to avoid more information about the district's mishandling of Whitehurst emerging in a trial.

"I don't want to mention names. I think it is enough to say the counsel that what we got from our attorneys  whether they were from inside the district or outside counsel  it was awful," Rosen said. "It just makes me realize we need better counsel from the inside and the outside."

Stephanie Harper, a lawyer for the district, was Portland Public Schools interim general counsel when the district settled for $250,000. Prominent Portland firm Miller Nash has long been the district's go-to defender. Billing records show the district paid Miller Nash $284,000 to handle the case.

Miller Nash managing partner Kieran Curley did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.

Brim-Edwards said she made the decision to commission an outside investigation in consultation with co-vice chairs Julie Esparza Brown and Rita Moore. Neither Esparza Brown nor Moore responded to requests to comment Friday.

Other board members said they hope the investigation will smoke out facts that district employees refused to give The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Harper declined to say who at the district made the call in 2013 to write off eighth-grade girls' firsthand accounts about their gym teacher's wolfish stares and comments about their bodies as "rumors."

Harper has emphasized she didn't make the determination that the girls' statements were rumors. But she won't say who did. And the district declined to released paperwork to show who was responsible or explain the rationale.

Rosen and Bailey both said they want answers.

Rosen said he felt it was "outrageous" that staff members have not provided the name of who decided the girls' accounts were rumors.

"I hope the investigation figures out who it was. I'd love to hear that person's logic. How many woman had to come forward over 32 years before there was a credible complaint that wasn't quote a rumor?" Rosen said. "I think it is embarrassing. I mean who is accountable?"

Rosen added that he was upset staff members hadn't followed up on the board's request to look at this case. He also said he blamed himself and wished he'd made staff follow through on the board's directive.

Current board members Esparza Brown, Amy Kohnstamm and Paul Anthony were on the board when the case was settled. None of them responded to requests for comment Friday.

Anthony, at the time, rebuked the board for its decision to settle and voted no. He argued a trial was needed to get to the truth and that the board was only settling to avoid a risk to its reputation when a risk to children should be top of mind.

Kohnstamm countered by noting that the board could settle the case but still evaluate concerns to make sure the district has a process that safeguards children.

In an April committee meeting, she and other board members asked what lessons had been learned from the Whitehurst case.

"What were the systemic pitfalls that allowed that to not get addressed?" Kohnstamm asked.

No one on staff could say.

After getting nowhere, then-school board chair Tom Koehler said, "I just want to make sure when this comes to the board that there has been a thorough evaluation of lessons learned from that Whitehurst case because we asked for that."

Brim-Edwards has promised this time will be different. She said Thursday that she felt district employees have been allowed to ignore requests for important information. That will change, she said.

Rosen said he noticed a huge increase in the sense of urgency this board has brought to the issue. In July, three new board members joined the seven-member panel.

"I hope the investigation is thorough," Rosen said, "and identifies the chain of command of people involved in the decision-making, so we don't end up in this spot again."

Read The Oregonian/OregonLive's investigation here:

 Bethany Barnes

Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com
Gov. Kate Brown traveled Friday to Douglas County to mark a symbolic end to the contentious debate over the Elliott State Forest, even as a timber company that had hoped to buy the forest vows to fight the state in court.

Brown, joined by Treasurer Tobias Read, a fellow Democrat, made the trip to celebrate the state's decision to keep the forest in public lands. It did so by using $100 million in state debt to buy a portion of the forest that straddles parts of Douglas and Coos counties.

"Oregonians overwhelmingly made it clear that the Elliott's lands should remain in public hands," Brown said in a statement. "Now more than ever, it's imperative that we not scale back any of Oregon's public lands or national monuments."

The Elliott is constitutionally required to make money for the Common School Fund, an account that distributes millions to K-12 education across the state. The fund, currently valued at $1.5 billion, delivered about $136.6 million to schools in the 2015-17 biennium.

But officials began talk of selling the forest soon after timber sales plunged in 2012 amid lawsuits over the presence of threatened species. In February, the state appeared close to accepting a $221 million offer from Lone Rock Timber Partners but reversed course in May.

Environmental, hunting and conservation groups battled the proposed sale, and ultimately the State Land Board  comprising Brown, Wheeler and Secretary of State Dennis Richardson -- unanimously agreed on a plan to remove much of the forest's most valuable environmental and riparian zones from the mandate to produce money from timber harvests.

The forest is known to be home to threatened and endangered species such as the marbled murrelet, northern spotted owl, and coastal Coho salmon.

Oregon lawmakers also approved a bill, which Brown subsequently signed, to set up a process so the state could transfer natural resource-based land that is not producing revenue for the Common School Fund to another state agency. That trust lands transfer process would protect public lands from being privatized. It mimics a policy that has been in place in Washington for decades.

Now, Lone Rock Timber Partners is suing the state for "unilaterally and wrongfully" terminating an agreement to sell off the land. The Roseburg company was the lone bidder for the forest.

The Oregon School Boards Association, a statewide nonprofit, had also challenged the state's decision to issue bonds to buy a swath of the forest. The education association said the state had an obligation to make the Common School Fund whole.

In late April, the association threatened to sue the state if it did not produce a deal that resulted in $220.8 million being deposited into the Common School Fund. A previous state appraisal valued the forest land at nearly one-quarter-of-a-billion dollars.

Asked Friday, whether it was still planning to pursue a lawsuit, the association said it was still weighing its options and hadn't decided on its legal options.



-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen
In reference to the letter published Aug. 14 "Hillsboro needs some soul-searching," it is indeed unfortunate that Wilson family of Boulder City, Nev., had negative experiences with the people of Hillsboro. However, I would submit that no city in the United States is free of prejudice and the human frailties mentioned in the letter.

As mayor of the city of Forest Grove, I have received my share of negative letters about our city, and while I do not like receiving those comments which demean the city and the people who live in Forest Grove, I make an effort to communicate with the writers as to the issues they raise and the city's efforts to correct any and all shortcomings we may have. In that communication, I often find that my new friends realize that our difficulties are not unique to Forest Grove, and that our people are working to make Forest Grove all it can and should be. I would submit that Hillsboro is no different and that all cities try, with purpose and intention, to make themselves as inviting as possible. Unfortunately, every city has residents who don't agree with these goals. It is my hope, and I'm sure the hope of every other mayor in Oregon, that our communities get beyond those obstacles and make Hillsboro, Forest Grove and all the other cities in Oregon even more open, more affirming and more accepting of the richness of our diversity.

Pete Truax, Mayor of Forest Grove
BY RACHEL PRUSAK

As a nurse of 20 years, I was truly disappointed to read The Oregonian's July 22 editorial about Rep. Julie Parrish, R-West Linn, and her efforts to roll back parts of the Oregon Healthcare Protections Bill (House Bill 2391). If Parrish and the Republicans backing Referendum 301 succeed, it would jeopardize funding that 375,000 Oregonians rely on to pay for Medicaid, threaten health insurance coverage in rural Oregon and likely increase premiums for hundreds of thousands of Oregonians. It's callous, retaliatory politics, and it's a betrayal of the Oregon families whose health and well-being is at stake.

Leading a referendum to repeal health care coverage for 350,000 people without a clear, viable plan to replace it is strikingly Trump-like. That The Oregonian/OregonLive editorial board failed to make that connection is surprising, but Oregon families know better. The Healthcare Protections Bill safeguards coverage for the more than 350,000 Oregonians who received health insurance for the first time under the Affordable Care Act, and it decreases premiums by 6 percent for those who purchase insurance on their own.

We cannot, as The Oregonian has done, ignore the imminent federal threats to health care. The political malpractice that Trump and the national GOP continue to engage in could leave millions without health insurance if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, including nearly half a million Oregonians. It's clear that even after the Senate defeated the so-called "skinny repeal," the threat to health care is not over. This should heighten the urgency to protect Oregonians' care, not gamble with it.

There's good reason that the Healthcare Protections Bill had the full support of a bipartisan workgroup and dozens of health and advocacy groups. It's a smart policy that protects Oregonians' health care while also making it more affordable for hundreds of thousands of families. It's exactly the type of forward-thinking health policy that ensured 95 percent of Oregonians today have health care. We cannot afford to slide backward and leave Oregon families one broken ankle or unexpected illness away from crippling medical debt. As a nurse, I've seen first-hand the difference that the Affordable Care Act has made: My patients receive the preventative primary and palliative care they need and deserve rather than costly care in the emergency room. With access to affordable healthcare, patients have become empowered to make better decisions about their health as opposed to putting off the care they so desperately need.

I hope in future pieces that the editorial board will heed its own call -- facts do matter. And this pivotal one was sadly absent: Parrish is eager to repeal parts of the Oregon Healthcare Protections Bill, but she has yet to put forward a balanced-budget plan that would achieve the same goal of protecting the 350,000 low-income Oregonians whose health care is at stake.A plan to repeal Oregonians' health care without a viable plan to replace it is dangerous, reckless, and, yes, straight out of Trump's playbook. Oregon leaders have a choice: Kick hundreds of thousands of Oregonians -- like my patients -- off their health insurance, or allow insurance companies and hospitals who supported HB2391 to pay their fair share. I believe that choice is clear!

Rachel Prusak, MSN, APRN, FNP, lives in Northeast Portland.
A 9-year-old boy at Symbiosis Gathering who had been reported missing to the Crook County Sheriff's Office on Friday was found by about 1 p.m. Saturday, medical volunteers said.

Symbiosis Gathering, a music festival held on private property in the middle of the Ochoco National Forest, has sold out all its 30,000 tickets, according to Max Hamblin, health director for Crook and Jefferson counties.

Volunteers at Symbiosis Gathering reported Kai Paul missing to the Crook County Sheriff's Office Friday.

An intake desk at the medical tent had a picture of the boy, with the last place he was seen on Friday: a beach water slide at a man-made lake. Volunteers wrote that his name Kai Paul. By mid-day Saturday, a copy of the picture said "FOUND."

Volunteers would not answer any questions about the child on the record, referring The Oregonian/OregonLive to the event organizers for an official statement. Bosque Hrbek, one of the founders of the festival, was not able to provide details about the case.

The festival areas are split into two sections: one where people listen to music and party and one where they camp. The camping area is a forest of trees and tents that is not lit at night.

The missing-child report came a day after a Michigan woman was also reported missing. Staff first contacted the sheriff's office Thursday night. She was found Saturday morning.

This post has been and will continue to be updated.

Molly Young contributed to this report.

-- Fedor Zarkhin

503-294-7674; @fedorzarkhin
A Michigan woman feared missing from a solar eclipse festival near Prineville has been found, authorities announced Saturday morning.

Valerie Kroes was located at the Symbiosis Gathering less than two hours after Crook County deputies announced she was missing from the event.

Kroes was reported missing by event security staff late Thursday night, said Vicky Ryan, county emergency preparedness coordinator. Kroes had not been seen since then, Ryan said.

Deputies launched an investigation based on the report from security staff.

Staff members found Kroes Saturday morning at her campsite, Ryan said.

This story has been updated with additional information regarding the search.

-- Molly Young

myoung@oregonian.com

503-412-7056

@mollykyoung
Firefighting authorities have sent out reminders that drone operators cannot fly their unmanned crafts over Oregon's wildfires. The airspace over some fires has been closed by the Federal Aviation Administration so that tankers and other needed aircraft are not impeded.

Here's a time lapse video from Oregon's Willamette National Forest that shows how quickly a fire can flare up.

Jones Fire Timelapse 8-18-17 Fire activity on the #JonesFire increased in the afternoon and remained high into the early morning. The fire backed down to Fall Creek Trail to the southeast and began moving west within containment lines towards the fires interior. The northeastern portion of the fire spread quickly and approached uncompleted control lines. In response, fire managers planned for new control lines on the next ridge. In the southwest, a small portion of fire moved beyond the USFS 1817 road control line but was contained. The fire continues to hold at the USFS 1817 road in the northwest. #ORwildfire #wildfire #willamettewildfires2017 Public and firefighter safety remain the top priority. Today, crews will begin construction of control lines on the USFS 1817 and 1830 roads. Fire fighters will continue to hold and improve existing control lines around the fire's perimeter. Mop up operations continue in the northwest. This short timelapse captures the fire activity on the afternoon of Friday 8-18-17. Posted by Willamette Wildfires on Saturday, August 19, 2017

The Willamette National Forest sent out a reminder about drones on Saturday.

Thinking of using a drone during the #eclipse? #DYK there are flight restrictions in place above wildfires?https://t.co/FAD0jj9DII pic.twitter.com/qpLo0kQN5T  WillametteNatlForest (@willametteNF) August 19, 2017

A similar warning went out in Central Oregon, where tankers are taking part in the efforts to fight the fire just west of Sisters.

Can't say it enough - From the #MilliFire Fly a drone into a wildfire when a flight closure is in place - we CAN'T fly tankers & helicopters

Firefighting efforts are increasing bedeviled by drones, including just this week in Montana apparently. The Missoulian reported Friday:

A drone reported in the fire area Friday caused fire managers to shut down air operations near Highway 12 during a time of heightened concern the fire would jump the highway and endanger more Lolo residents' homes.
UPDATED 10:51 p.m.

Crews battling a fire that threatens residential areas near Sisters worked Friday night to build a direct line on the leading edge of the fire, with engine crews patrolling the area and dozer crews digging fire line, fire officials said.

Gusty winds Friday pushed the Milli fire to the east-southeast, prompting officials to invoke a Level 3 (go now) evacuation for an estimated 600 residents. The Oregon Department of Transportation has closed Oregon 242 because of the fire, and one additional subdivision remained under a Level 1 (get ready) evacuation notice Saturday afternoon.

Because of the fire's threat to people and property, firefighting officials have ranked it the nation's top priority for resources and crews. A map showing evacuation zones can be found on Deschutes County's website.

The blaze is moving east and producing a large column of smoke, fire information officer Susie Heisey said Saturday afternoon. Officials are using a lot of aviation resources in an effort to stop its advance, she said.

Sisters-area resident Jim Monroe, 69, and his wife moved to the Crossroads subdivision two years ago, choosing the community as retirement community after both held jobs in Kenya. Anticipating Friday's evacuation order, they left their home on Thursday.

"We love central Oregon," Monroe said, while driving to Portland to visit children and grandchildren. "When we lived in an area with abject poverty (Kenya) and with people who have nothing, losing belongings in a forest fire is a real First World issue.

"We don't want to lose anything...but we're trying to keep this thing in balance."

The couple left their house with important papers and their dogs. They expect to spend most of their time away from Sisters with releatives in Salem. That is also where they will view the eclipse on Monday, dropping plans to have family gather and viewing at their Sisters home.

About 5 p.m. Saturday, authorities expanded the area of Deschutes National Forest that is closed to the public. Forest Road 16 leading from Sisters to popular outdoor recreation areas south is closed.

Three Creeks Campground, which was not threatened by the fire, was evacuated of what a spokesperson called a "minimal" number of campers. Three Creek Meadow and Park Meadows were closed early Saturday, but Tumalo Falls Trailhead remains open. The closure boundaries to the west and north remained fairly constant.

Crews will be working overnight to contain the fire's eastern edge, Heisey said.

Elsewhere:

Umpqua North Complex: The fire has been growing due to windy and warm conditions. The Douglas County Sheriff's Office has issued a Level 3 (Go) evacuation notice in the Dry Creek and Illahee areas. Moore Hill Lane was under a Level 2 (Get Set) order. And the Susan Creek residential area and the BLM Susan Creek Campground were issued a Level 1 (Get Ready) order. At 8 p.m., authorities told residents in the Clearwater area along Highway 138 East to get ready to go, as well. The Level 1 notice applies to homes between mile markers 53 and 61.

Highway 138 East is closed between mile markers 43 and 54 due to falling debris and firefighters in the area. The fire started Friday, Aug. 11, 50 miles east of Roseburg and covers 6,878 Acres.

Nena Springs Fire: Warm Springs Law Enforcement officers reduced the Kah-Nee-Ta Resort evacuation notice from Level 3 to Level 1, allowing resort visitors to use Highway 3. The resort remains open.

Charley Canyon, Webster Flat Road, South Junction, Culpus Bridge, and Wolf Point Subdivision were also reduced to a Level 2. All roads except Webster Flat are open.

Lighter wind Saturday is expected to slow fire growth. High temperatures will create dryer conditions. In the last two days, the fire has gained just over 19,000 acres, bringing the fire's total to 66,003 acres.

Chetco Bar Fire: The Curry County Sheriff's Office has been expanding the areas subject to a Level 3 (Go) evacuation order. They included the Alfred Loeb State Park on the south coast near the Oregon-California border, Gardiner Ridge Road up to Hazel Camp area, Cate Road, and the Wilson Creek area. Displaced people are being directed to the Brookings-Harbor High School. A map of current evacuated areas is available here.

Lightning is believed to have started the fire July 12 near Pearsoll Peak in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. The fire is burning within the fire scars of the 2002 Biscuit Fire and 1987 Silver Fire.

The area is under a red flag warning through noon Sunday due to strong gusty winds and low relative humidity. The combination of high winds, low relative humidity and warm temperatures creates potential for the fire to grow rapidly.

A community meeting is planned for 3 p.m. Sunday at Azalea Middle School, 505 Pacific Ave. in Brookings.

-- Allan Brettman

-- Jim Ryan and Carli Brosseau contributed to this report.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and five other members of Congress embarked Thursday on a week-long diplomatic mission to Asia to ease tensions with North Korea. They hope to aide peacekeeping efforts in a region marred by nuclear proliferation and escalating brinksmanship.

"At this moment, the relationship between the United States and North Korea is extremely tense," said Merkley in an exclusive phone interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive from Tokyo. "It represents an extraordinary risk of potential war. A miscalculation could result in extraordinarily damaging circumstances."

Merkley, Oregon's junior Senate member and a Democrat, said delegates plan to meet state and military leaders in Japan, South Korea and China. Visits are scheduled to the Demilitarized Zone between the two Korean states and a China-North Korea border area.

Besides Merkley, delegation members include Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Reps. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.; and Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo.

Their trip comes as Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator, has ramped up his military's testing of nuclear missiles. American and allied forces have also bolstered their numbers in the region, fueling nervous tempers.

Hostilities have also risen via direct threats exchanged between Kim and President Trump. Last week, the Korean leader threatened to launch a missile attack against the American territory of Guam; Trump responded by saying Kim's regime would be met with unmatched "fire and fury" if threats did not cease. Trump also posted a tweet that seemed to indicate the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against North Korea.

In his phone interview conducted when it was Friday afternoon in Oregon and Saturday morning in Japan, Merkley referenced the tweet and criticized Trump's demeanor as "cavalier."

Asked if he believes Trump administration and Pentagon officials can stave off a war with the aggressive Kim regime, Merkley -- often a Trump critic -- was glum.

"I am extremely nervous. I lack any form of confidence in the president's judgment," he said. "I do believe that potential errors he might make -- I'm hoping -- would be corrected by seasoned policy and military leaders that surround him."

A member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a subcommittee that drafts policy on East Asian affairs, including non-proliferation, Merkley said there is no easy solution to sky-high tensions. Regional issues are intertwined and interests compete, he said.

South Korean and Japanese leaders are "very nervous," Merkley said, over the possibility of war. Many could die in those countries should North Korea launch a missile barrage in their direction.

"Tens of thousands of people could die in less than an hour," Merkley said.

Relations with China only complicate matters, he said. Chinese leaders are uncomfortable that the U.S. is discussing use of missile defense technology in the region, he said.

And although China has "enormous leverage" over North Korea -- it could stop smuggling of goods and currency over their shared borders, Merkley said -- it is reticent to use its power to stop Kim's pursuit of advanced nuclear arms.

Merkley said Chinese officials have signaled that they fear pressuring the Kim regime because the North Korean state could collapse, triggering a flood of Korean refugees into China.

Chinese officials also fear a reunified Korean state that could be friend to American interests and foe to the Chinese, Merkley said.

Most foreign policy experts are resigned that there is no pre-emptive strike that would benefit American interests, Merkley said. That's why he and members of Congress continue to seek what he described as "policy insights" to inform U.S. strategy.

Asked if North Korea possesses a nuclear missile that can reach the mainland U.S. and Oregon, Merkley said the regime's ballistic missile technology is still lagging. But, he added, "Their technology is advancing very rapidly."

-- Gordon R. Friedman

503-221-8209; @GordonRFriedman
Former Portland Police Chief Larry O'Dea's assistant chiefs told investigators that O'Dea asked them not to discuss his off-duty shooting of a friend outside their meeting room after he disclosed it the morning of April 25, four days after it occurred on a camping trip in Harney County.

O'Dea also told his executive assistant about the shooting but asked that the information "stay between us,'' the assistant told investigators, according to findings issued by the city's Bureau of Human Resources Director Anna Kanwit.

The memo, heavily redacted, was released Friday in response to a public records request.

During his morning meeting with his command staff, O'Dea told the assistant chiefs that he had already alerted the mayor and captain of internal affairs about the shooting.

When the Police Bureau's public information officer, Sgt. Pete Simpson, got a call a month later from a reporter asking about O'Dea and a shooting, Simpson knew nothing about it.

Simpson was then directed by the chief to put out a statement acknowledging that O'Dea had been involved in a negligent discharge of his gun and explaining that the chief "chose to keep matter private as it was an off-duty incident while on vacation.''

Simpson later told investigators that he was concerned about a double standard.

The same day that O'Dea told his assistant chiefs to keep quiet about his shooting, he had Simpson put out a media release on another officer arrested and accused of drunken driving while off duty.

"O'Dea's insistence the public be informed of an officer's off-duty alleged criminal conduct,'' while ensuring his own off-duty shooting of a friend "be kept confidential is also problematic and created the impression the chief believed his behavior was governed by a different set of standards,'' Kanwit wrote.

Kanwit found O'Dea brought discredit to the city for wounding a friend in a shooting while camping and not notifying the public about it until reporters asked about it.

On April 21, O'Dea shot his friend, Robert Dempsey, while hunting squirrels in the Catlow Valley area of Harney County. The hollow-point bullet hit Dempsey in the lower back and fragmented. Dempsey was released from the hospital the next day, the bullet still lodged in his body.

Four days later, O'Dea met with his assistant chiefs at 8 a.m. At that time, he told them he had informed the internal affairs captain about the shooting, according to the investigation.

In fact, O'Dea hadn't yet alerted Capt. Derek Rodrigues, the internal affairs captain, about the shooting. Rodrigues met with the chief three hours later, about 11 a.m., that day.

The city redacted several lines referencing Rodrigues' testimony. According to sources, O'Dea minimized his shooting to the assistant chiefs and the internal affairs captain, was tearful and never mentioned he had any contact with police officers stemming from the wounding of his friend.

O'Dea also never directed Rodrigues to inform the city's Independent Police Review Division to begin an administrative inquiry into the off-duty shooting  a step that should have been taken immediately.

Based on O'Dea's statements to then-Mayor Charlie Hales, his assistant chiefs and his executive assistant, they all presumed that an administrative review of O'Dea's investigation already was underway, according to the investigation.

Although the assistant chiefs said O'Dea had told them not to discuss his shooting outside of their,meeting, Kanwit didn't sustain an allegation that O'Dea improperly directed or suggested that his assistant chiefs keep his shooting quiet. Some of the assistant chiefs took O'Dea's statements as a "directive,'' others thought he wanted them to keep the matter confidential, she wrote.

"This allegation is not sustained but only because of what appears to be a general lack of forthrightness on the part of O'Dea. It is difficult to determine if O'Dea's actions were a deliberate attempt to keep the incident as quiet as possible,'' Kanwit wrote.

O'Dea lied or left out information during his May 24 interview with investigators from the Independent Police Review Division, Kanwit found. O'Dea claimed he notified the mayor and his assistant chiefs the moment he realized he was the one responsible for having shot his friend, but that wasn't true, according to the investigation.

"The overall impression from the investigation is that O'Dea allowed certain assumptions to be made but that he took no action to ensure that important and critical information was shared,'' Kanwit wrote.

Mayor Ted Wheeler, who serves as police commissioner, supported Kanwit's findings and sent a letter last month to O'Dea, informing him that he'd be fired if he was still working as chief.

O'Dea retired while under criminal investigation at the end of June. A grand jury indicted him on a negligent wounding charge, but a Harney County judge agreed to a civil compromise that allowed the charge against O'Dea to be dismissed.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian
MCFARLAND - Amy passed away peacefully on Aug. 16, 2017, surrounded by her family and friends. Amy was a strong willed, loving person. She looked forward to working for the McFarland School District as a lunch lady. She also worked at McDonald's restaurant for eight years, and was a longtime crossing guard for the McFarland Police Dept. She and her family worked for Pete and Phyllis Moore at Columbus 151 Speedway for many years. She enjoyed life to the fullest and made many, many friends over the years. She will be deeply missed by all.
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BLOOMINGTON  Last Saturday, while driving at 2 a.m. through the downtown bar district, Bloomington Police Assistant Chief Ken Bays saw hundreds of people on the streets as the establishments were closing.

"I would expect this weekend we will have a much larger turnout with the colleges back in session," he said.

Illinois State University seniors Katie Radar and Kayla Deforest were among those bar patrons late Thursday night.

"It's insane," said Radar, referring to the 500 and 600 blocks of North Main Street where many of the bars patronized by college students are located. "There are people in the streets, people on the sidewalks, people spilling out."

"All the people in these packed bars, they just make everybody go outside at closing time," added Deforest. "And campus is too far to walk to so everybody is waiting on a ride."

Lee Eutsey, who has been transporting college students to the downtown bars for 10 years on his Magic Bus shuttles, asks whether the congestion he sees, especially in the 500 block, each weekend "is a disaster begging to happen?"

I would call it organized chaos, which is why officers are down there," said Bays. "Absent our presence and the policies that we've implemented, I don't believe it would be safe"

The city hires back off-duty officers who patrol the downtown bar district and assist with crowd and traffic control during peak times on weekend nights.

Bays said changes made six months ago to late-night traffic flow are working to keep the downtown bar district safer for the throngs of patrons.

In 2016, there were five crashes in the 500 block of North Main Street during peak bar hours  between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m.

"Since this plan was implemented we have had zero during those same hours," said Bays."

The changes require downtown shuttle buses that hold 12 to 70 people to pick up and drop off passengers in the 500 block of North Center Street. That block is closed to all other vehicles from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. every Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The 500 block of North Main Street, between Market and Mulberry streets, where the shuttle buses formerly parked, is open to traffic. There are designated parking spaces on the east side of the block reserved from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. the same days for taxis, Uber and other licensed drivers-for-hire.

"The Ubers, the taxis, the designated drivers  they will all line up on the side of the street up to the stop sign (at Main and Mulberry streets)," said Radar. "And it will be students, probably seven people deep, from the buildings to the road on both sides for pretty much the whole block. It's insane."

The traffic configuration was changed in January to create better visibility after one of the 2016 accidents resulted in a BPD officer suffering minor injuries when a shuttle bus backed into a vehicle and that vehicle was knocked into the officer.

"A small car is much easier to see around and maneuver than a bus, so we implemented this plan to increase visibility, still provide these downtown shuttles the opportunity of ferrying passengers and allow the licensed taxicabs, Uber drivers and other TNCs (transportation network companies) to contribute to the removal of all of the patrons downtown when the bars close," said Bays.

The police department's ultimate goal is an efficient, quick and safe way for patrons to leave the downtown area.

Bays thinks that strategy is a factor in the department's low overall number of calls for service downtown so far this fiscal year. The 3,400 service calls to date are less than half of the number during the same period last year, said Bays.

"You can't have a problem if there aren't people there to start a problem," he said.

So the buses, cabs and TNCs play a major role in getting everybody out of downtown quickly  typically within 30 minutes or less of the bars closing, said Bays.

"The benefit we get from that is we have fewer incidents," he said. "So that also has a positive effect on crime or disorderly conduct-type of events."

But Eutsey said at closing time, "if it's not gridlocked, it's near gridlocked. You have people en mass crossing the street."

"The police talk about how before the change the buses pulling out were a problem because they blocked the line of sight," said Eutsey. "Now you've got 20 cars constantly pulling in and out of traffic  people in the street constantly stopping, doors opening, people getting in and out, in and out in the street. When (the buses) were over there we had to pull over to the curb. Now these cars just pull up in the street."

Bays said when the designated spaces reserved in the 500 block of North Main Street for vehicle-for-hire cars are full, some drivers don't pull over.

"And we deal with that when we can," said Bays. "The alternative under the old plan was buses were lined up along there, but there wasn't enough room for all the buses. So you would see other buses doing what these car do, but the cars are much easier to see around and have fewer blind spots for the pedestrians who make their way across."

Radar says she uses Uber for rides to and from the downtown bars.
BLOOMINGTON  While the Bloomington Fire Department has made strides in improving response times for fire and medical emergency calls, BFD still has work to do to meet national standards, Fire Chief Brian Mohr said.

That likely will include easing demand on the headquarters fire station at 310 N. Lee St., and looking at building a new station to serve the city's northeast side.

Mohr will present a strategic plan for improving response times and report on progress his department has made since last year at a City Council work session at 5:30 p.m. Monday at City Hall. The council is not expected to take any action.

The department has reassigned some of resources to different fire stations, added personnel, realigned the response districts for the fire stations and improved equipment on its vehicles that pre-empts traffic signals, he said. To improve emergency medical response times, the council in December approved a $545,000 tax levy increase to fund a second ambulance crew at the headquarters station.

"But we're still not reaching the (National Fire Protection Association's) performance measure of a 6-minute response time 90 percent of the time," said Mohr.

He has said overuse of the headquarters was one of the reasons the department met the response time national benchmark of six minutes only 66.5 percent of the time for emergency medical calls last year.

"I'll show the council what areas of our city have the highest number of calls and how that affects our ability to meet performance measures," said Mohr, adding, "The headquarters response district is still and has been our highest call volume area."

In 2016, 46 percent of the department's calls for the entire community happened in the headquarters response district, which encompasses downtown and neighborhoods on the city's northwest side, he said.

When the crews and vehicles based at the headquarters station are busy, resources from other outlying stations are brought in to handle other calls, which adds an average of 1 minute and 57 seconds to response times, said Mohr.

Studies performed by Five Bugles Design and the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association determined the current locations of the city's five active fire stations "serve the community very well," said Mohr.

"However, the travel distance to the northeast (sector of the city) is always going to be a concern until we can build a fire station or put resources there," he added. "During this current budget year we are going to do a study to try and find the most strategic place to build a new (northeast) fire station."

The department will continue to look at ways to collaborate with Normal to improve fire and emergency medial responses in that area.

Mohr said he will keep talking to Normal about possibly sharing a fire station, but that might not be the best way to proceed, he said.

"Both the town of Normal and the city of Bloomington have their own community that they have to make sure they are providing the best services to," said Mohr. "To put a station basically on the (two communities' boundary) line might not be the best location for Normal and it might not be the best location for Bloomington.

"The reality is a location on the that line limits Normal's reach to the far north," said Mohr.

The site also could limit BFD's ability to assist Fire Station No. 6, at 4040 E. Oakland Ave., which serves Central Illinois Regional Airport, and Fire Station No. 3 at 2301 E. Empire St. with their coverage, he added.
BLOOMINGTON  In the decade that Lee Eutsey has been providing rides on his Magic Bus shuttle for college students to and from downtown Bloomington's bars, he has striven to make it a fun experience, but he also wants to keep them safe.

His first and foremost safety tip is that they use their cellphones to book a ride with Uber and other legal transportation network companies (TNCs) through the businesses' online apps.

The city of Bloomington has a process in place to vet TNC drivers as well as monitor insurance compliance and safety inspections of their vehicles as a condition of operating in the city, said Bloomington Police Assistant Chief Ken Bays.

They are not required to display "trade dress," such as a sign in the window identifying them as an Uber vehicle, for example, said Bays.

That worries Eutsey.

"This invites anyone and everyone without proper background checks and insurance to go out and make money on the weekends picking up people in the 500 block of North Main Street," said Eutsey. "I don't think I even need to elaborate what sort of trouble they are inviting, do I?"

Giving rides to and from the bars has become a cottage business for illegal designated drivers for hire, he contends.

"All you have to do is look on Facebook and Twitter and there are (people) advertising this," said Eutsey.

Designated drivers for hire are not vetted by the city nor are their vehicles inspected, "so we have no way of knowing their safety," said Eutsey. "Their operation would be in violation of our ordinances if they are providing rides in exchange for money."

Eutsey and Bays offered these tips to keep college students safe while in the downtown bar district:

 Don't get into any bus that is overcrowded.

"There are plenty of buses. You don't have to take the first one," said Eutsey.

 Find your ride home early.

"Don't wait until the (crowd) crush at bar rush (when the bars close)," said Eutsey. "Buses start loading about 12:45 (a.m.) so get out there and get your spot and avoid the rush."

 Don't take rides from illegal taxi services and designated drivers for hire.

"If anything happens, their lives and yours can be ruined because they don't have proper insurance or licenses to operate," said Eutsey.

 Students new to the Twin Cities should visit downtown Bloomington during daylight hours so they are familiar with the area when they come back in the evenings, said Bays.

 Go with friends.

"Strength comes in numbers, and they can look out for one another better," said Bays.

 Don't overconsume alcohol and don't leave your drink unattended while in a bar.

"Make sure you maintain your wits and you're able to make good judgments," said Bays.

 Plan ahead.

"Have a plan for transportation in the event you do over consume and are impaired," said Bays. "That plan could be public transportation, taxicabs or the TNCs that the city has approved to operate or downtown shuttle buses."
Gov. Bruce Rauner has said for the past several days that he's open to just about any sort of compromise in order to get school funding reform signed into law.

For example, he recently told Amanda Vinicky on Public Televisions "Chicago Tonight" program that there was nothing on his list that he had to have. "Nothing," he said when asked to clarify. "Absolutely nothing has to happen. The only principle we should be guided by is what's best for our children, what treats them all the same so they have the best chance they can at the American dream."

That could be a very big caveat. It more than just implies that he intends to stick to his guns on stripping money from the Chicago Public Schools, which he contends is given special treatment in the education funding reform bill he vetoed. The Democrats will most definitely not like that.

But even if the negotiations among the four legislative leaders do produce some progress, some folks are still doubtful that Gov. Rauner can bring himself to sign the bill, or that his new staff can get him to stick to his word.

If you go back to 2015, you may remember that after weeks of negotiations over a stopgap budget and after a tentative deal had been reached, Rauner decided during the ensuing weekend that he had some additional demands that would clearly be unacceptable to the Democrats. His top staff fought back hard, insisting that he couldn't back out after accepting terms. Rauner signed the bill.

More recently, near the end of June, you might recall that Rauner's office publicly berated the Democrats for not officially transmitting the Chicago gun crimes bill to his desk in order to deliberately deprive the governor of a "win." The Democrats denied they had any such intentions and the legislation was quickly sent to Rauner. The governors staff set up a press conference for the very next day and Chicagos police superintendent came down to the Statehouse for the signing ceremony.

Just before he was set to sign the bill, however, Rauner blew up at his communications staff over a single sentence in a Chicago Tribune article which detailed his battle with Mayor Rahm Emanuel about the sale of the James R. Thompson Center building. As it turns out, Rauner had misread the sentence, but the blowup was "like nothing I had seen before," said one person who was present.

And then the governor reportedly had second thoughts about signing the gun bill, other sources say. Mind you, this was just before the signing ceremony was supposed to begin.

A task force inserted into the legislation to help the Illinois State Police combat violent crimes was what reportedly set him off. Sources say he flip-flopped and wanted to veto the bill. Again, this was minutes before he was set to publicly sign the thing with Chicago's most senior cop on his way to town.

His top staff had to intervene again and eventually convinced him to calm down and sign the bill.

Most of those staffers had been with Gov. Rauner since the campaign. They'd learned over the years how to deal with him and, since they helped get him to the governor's office, Rauner trusted them enough to eventually listen. But Rauner fired some of them when he brought in far-right Illinois Policy Institute staffers and the rest quit in disgust.

Nobody on his current upper echelon staff has a similar personal history with Rauner. And, so far, nobody on that staff appears to have the ability to steer him in the right direction. They're letting Bruce be Bruce, and that has its consequences.

Rauner's former staffers negotiated what started out as a quasi sanctuary state bill for illegal immigrants to a point that was even further to the right than where the governor wanted to be. While he is expected to sign the bill as I write this, Rauner hedged publicly about it during an appearance on the Fox News Channel and proponents couldn't get him to firmly commit to make it a law.

So, there's naturally some informed doubt that the governor will be able to bring himself to sign something as big and important as an education funding reform bill. The governor publicly denied last week that the First Lady has become more involved in his administration, but by all accounts she most certainly has and she now may be the only hope of keeping him on track. This piece of legislation will forever define him, one way or another. If it's passed over his veto (in whatever form), he may never live it down.
David Duke announces, "We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump." The president responds by refusing to immediately condemn their deadly hate.

Heather Heyers murder by a terrorist in Virginia is yet another horror we decry. Every day, we are confronted with failures to uphold the principles of our Constitution: a bombing of a mosque; Jewish cemeteries vandalized; Americans killed because of their skin color; harassment, discrimination, and violence towards women and minorities; transsexuals murdered.

This must stop. Hate is not an American value.

Statues glorifying treason have no place in public squares or on college campuses. It is past time we stopped honoring traitors who fought against our country to defend slavery. The confederate flag is a symbol of hatred and treason. It should be treated as such.

Marchers in Charlottesville waved that alongside swastikas while chanting Nazi slogans. With screams to intimidate, The heat here is nothing compared to what you're going to get in the ovens, they communicate strongly that racism and violence are the basis for their actions. Make America Great Again hats are central in all of this, generating fear in some and disgust in others.

Black Lives Matter. White privilege exists. And I am white. We are struggling for the soul of our nation. I will fight, along with people of every ethnicity, religious affiliation (or none), gender and sexual orientation for American values of equality and justice for all.

Condolences to loved ones of Heather Heyer and the victims of violence in Charlottesville.

Brenda Wernick, Bloomington
There will always be gay bars, but will they be as vivid, sexy, and subversive as the haunts of yore? The history of NYC nightlife is studded with the memories of fascinating boites that attracted gays in desperate need of connection, then ultimately fell away as newer spots and trends emerged. To learn more about the places we miss, I turned to Kyle Supley and Michael Ryan, who specialize in documenting the formative days of bar hopping. By day, Kyle does comedy, historic restoration, and works for Wilsonart, while Michael is involved with TED (as in TED Talks). Once a yearfor three years in a rowthey've done Gay Bars That Are Gone, an informative walk as part of Jane Jacobs festival, in May. Here's our chat:



Hi, guys. What's your favorite lost NYC gay bar?

Kyle: My favorite is probably the Ninth Circle (a fab West 10th Street steakhouse-turned-gay-bar full of leather clones, twinks, hustlers, and celebrity drop-ins, all either cruising, playing pool, doing drugs, or rubbing against each other.) The location was so great--Mapplethorpe, Warhol and Lou Reed were all there in the late '60s. I also like Uncle Charlie's.

Julius (in the Village) is the oldest place, right?

Michael: Yes, the oldest currently operating.

Kyle: I moved to New York in '99. I wasn't going to bars right away. I heard of Julius. I heard, "It's for the older crowd." But I was curious. I love older spaces and things from a different time. I went, and it felt like a time capsule. Word spread that if you want to experience what the community was like, go there. I think there's a resurgence to build relationships with people who were there at the time or with younger people who share an interest in that time.

What are your 'Gay Bars That Are Gone' walks walks like? Are they like seances?

Michael: The point of the walk is to share memories. It's more of a walking conversation than a tour. We try to cover different types of places--gay dance clubs, leather scene, piano bars, Rose's Turn, the old Duplex space. And we try and have a guest speaker to talk from a first hand account. Some favorites are the Roxy, Crisco Disco, and the Mine Shaft, and we always end with Stonewall. The ones that really surprise people are the most historic oneslike the Vault at Pfaff, where Walt Whitman went. It was an underground space, a beer cellar. Whitman has an unfinished poem called "The Two Vaults" about the bohemians in the place. ("Drink on, drinkers.")

So Walt Whitman was openly gay?

Michael: Not publicly.

But he went to a gay bar.

Michael: It was a bohemian bar, so we don't have the language to put it in "gay bar" explicitly. But when the local press talked about the bar, it was in the salacious category of bars.

Kyle: The writer Allan Gurganus wrote, "It was the Warhol factory, Studio 54, and the Algonquin roundtable all rolled into one." It was at 643 Broadway near Bleecker.

Michael: It's a nail salon space now. That's an interesting thing about the touristsyou're hearing these great stories. We were outside the Mine Shaft [a raunchy 1970s/'80s gay sex club on Washington Street]. It's now a Samsung store. There's always a striking contrast to what it was and what it is now.

Kyle: It has a window with LED lights around it, and a tourist was in the window and seemed to be making a humping motion. He looked up and saw all these people (our group) looking at him.

That's rich on so many levels.

Kyle: That was a funny moment because there was a massage chair facing the street and there was a gentleman on the massage chair facing downward, with the masseuse behind him pushing his shoulders. But with the reflection and a quick glance, while Michael was giving a history of the Mine Shaft, it looked like something sexual was happening.

Believe me, I saw way raunchier things at the actual Mine Shaft. What did you learn about that club?

Michael: We read the signs they used to have outside talking about the dress codes to illustrate how exclusive these spaces can be. Traditionally, bars are supposed to be about inclusivity.

A lot of bars--like the Ninth Circlewere fairly inclusive, but the Mine Shaft was specifically for a butch (or butch acting) sex crowd. But they didn't really do a full inspection. If you sort of looked the part, you got in.

Kyle: One great story was about a celebrity known for being flamboyant who wasn't allowed in to the bar. A scuffle happened at the top of the stars. Everyone looked.

It must have been Paul Lynde. How has the bar scene changed from the 1970s to today, in your opinion?

Michael: It's really the lack of these gay spaces, with real estate being what it is. There are no big clubs anymore and there's also the rise of dating apps and people connecting on a screen rather than a bar stool.

Kyle: I'm in my mid 30s and Michael here is in his mid 20sunless you lied. [laughs] I caught the tail end of the larger clubs like Twilo and the Tunnel. A lot of the spaces, I got there once and then they closed. It's sad to see these large spaces pushed off the islandand even those that were pushed have been kind of closing as of late, too. Now you can stay in your hometown and live your gay life, you don't have to come to a metropolitan city and have that connection. But sometimes there's a hunger to go back to that.

Well, there are still plenty of bars in Hell's Kitchen.

Michael: One of the tools I used in putting together the walk was a project called Outgoing NYC. A map was created of all gay bars and gay spaces from 1859 to now. You can see the dots on the map of Manhattan, and the peak is still in the 1980s in terms of the most bars. It's interesting to watch the shifts in neighborhoods.

Kyle: When I moved here, the hotspot was 8th Avenue between 14th and 23rd. Google came in, raised the rents, and everything moved to Hell's Kitchen.

Many of the HK bars are pretty small, I must say. Forty people and they look crowded.

Kyle: The type of bars and what occurs in them has changed. If you want your dirty, dark backroom, that's obviously changed for different reasons.

As you say, younger gays generally use apps for sex. They rarely go to bars to get picked up. Many of them go with a few friends to have a drink and watch a drag show.

Michael: It's great to see new gay bars open. But you can feel the former retail store. G Lounge or Splash were very designed spaces, designed on being an actual nightlife experience.

Kyle: It was more focused, what it felt like and looked like.

Michael: I live in Astoria. I've been going out in Jackson Heights a lot recently and that's a totally separate gayborhood. It feels disconnected from Manhattan. The gay bars are in spaces that seem a little more interesting to me.

Kyle: When I go to Boston or other smaller cities, the people are more open and willing to talk to each other. It's coming back a little. Back in the '60s and '70s, there was more of a connection and community. We've lost that. But there's a hunger to get back to that.

You had to go out to feel the community back then. And as we've mentioned, there was the motivation to go out and get picked up.

Kyle: Or to dance. That's something I lament a lot. I promote a night once a month at Julius. I want to promote dancing. I'm saying, "You can dance, you can look foolish." It's called After Dark: A Disco-very, and it's playing on that word. It's every second Saturday. I play oldie-oldies and I time tunnel from the '50s and '60s through the late '80s. I end in the 80s because I don't like much music after that. There is good stuff today, but it's not part of After Dark.

When people dance at your party, do they do it it awkwardly?

Kyle: Yeah, they definitely require a few drinks and the real dancing doesn't happen till about 11. The thing about Julius is you'll get people who never heard of the bar. They come to realize you can let loose with your friends and not be glared at.
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G. K. Chesterton in 1919 [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

***

(1-25-91)

How does a Catholic respond to the astonishing and widespread displays of disinformation, and often sheer malice, such as we see in anti-Catholic rhetoric? We shall take a look at some of the classic examples from great Catholic writers:

1. Archbishop Fulton Sheen

There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church  which is quite a different thing. (Foreword to Rev. Dr. Rumble, Radio Replies, Vol. 1, 1938, p. ix)

2. G. K. Chesterton

The great temptation of the Catholic . . . is the temptation to intellectual pride. It is so obvious that most of his critics are talking without in the least knowing what they are talking about, that he is sometimes a little provoked towards the very un-Christian logic of answering a fool according to his folly. He is a little bit disposed to luxuriate in secret, as it were, over the much greater subtlety and richness of the philosophy he inherits; and only answer a bewildered barbarian so as to bewilder him still more. He is tempted to ironical agreements or even to disguising himself as a dunce. (The Thing, New York: Sheed & Ward, 1929, 134)

So many people are at once preoccupied with it and prejudiced against it. It is queer to observe so much ignorance with so little indifference. They love talking about it and they hate hearing about it . . . I fancy there is more than meets the eye in this curious controversial attitude; the desire to ask rhetorical questions and not to ask real questions; the wish to heckle and not to hear. (Ibid., 81-82)

I could not understand why these romancers never took the trouble to find out a few elementary facts about the thing they denounced . . . Boundless freedom reigned; it was not treated as if it were a question of fact at all . . . It puzzled me very much . . . to imagine why people . . . should thus neglect to test their own case, and should draw in this random way on their own imagination . . . I never dreamed that the Roman religion was true; but I knew that its accusers, for some reason or other, were curiously inaccurate. (The Catholic Church and Conversion, New York: Macmillan, 1926, 36-38)

. . . rags and tatters of stale slander and muddleheadedness . . . the official policy of the opposition to the Church . . . When a man really sees the Church, even if he dislikes what he sees, he does not see what he had expected to dislike. Even if he wants to slay it he is no longer able to slander it . . . There drops from him the holy armor of his invincible ignorance; he can never be so stupid again. (Ibid., 49-50)

3. James Cardinal Gibbons

The Catholic Church is persistently misrepresented by the most powerful vehicles of information . . . The Church is misrepresented in so-called Histories like Foxes Book of Martyrs . . . He has been successfully refuted by Lingard and Gairdner. But, how many have read the fictitious narratives of Foxe, who have never perused a page of Lingard or Gairdner? . . .

She is the victim of the foulest slanders . . . If it is a sin to bear false testimony against one individual, how can we characterize the crime of those who calumniate 300 million human beings, by attributing to them doctrines and practices which they repudiate and abhor? I do not wonder that the Church is hated by those who learn what she is from her enemies. It is natural for an honest man to loathe an institution whose history he believes to be marked by bloodshed, crime and fraud . . .

Ask not her enemies what she is, for they are blinded by passion; ask not her ungrateful, renegade children, for you never heard a son speaking well of the mother whom he had abandoned and despised. Study her history in the pages of truth. Examine her creed. Read her authorized catechisms and doctrinal books . . .

Were a tithe of the accusations which are brought against her true, I would not be attached to her ministry, nor even to her communion, for a single day. I know these charges to be false. The longer I know her, the more I admire and venerate her. Every day she develops before me new spiritual charms. (The Faith of Our Fathers, New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, revised edition, 1917, xi-xiv)

4. Louis Bouyer

What would strike Catholic susceptibilities would be . . . the caricature set up for attack . . . the things censured would, as a rule, be equally repugnant to a well-informed Catholic as to a Protestant . . . For example, the worship of saints and the veneration of images are denounced as idolatrous; but it is held that Catholics adore the saints in the same way as God, or instead of God, and that they actually pray to images. Or else exception is taken to Papal infallibility, which is taken to be a kind of omniscience; or to the infallibility of the Church, which is thought to mean some kind of sinlessness in ecclesiastics. A pagan element is attributed to Catholic worship, simply because it is thought that the Church regards the efficacy of liturgical prayer or the rosary as independent of the spirit in which it is said; or else they attribute a magical element to the Catholic belief in the sacraments, on the supposition that they do not require faith, contrition, etc., on the part of the recipient . . .

These stock accusations . . . all derive from a view of Catholicism held as self-evident, namely, that it is an organization for practising religion by proxy, God, in his absence, being replaced by an all-powerful agency. This ultimately, and nothing else, is the object of attack. (The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, translated by A. V. Littledale, London: Harvill Press, 1956, 18)

5. Sir Arnold Lunn

There is no institution in the modern world of which men know less; there is no institution which they are so ready to caricature . . . Catholics exhibit no surprise when their doctrines are travestied . . . Most Catholics avoid controversy not because they dislike intelligent discussion with a non-Catholic, but because the preliminary spade work which is necessary to clear the ground of debate from the litter of ignorant prejudice exhausts all but the stoutest heart. It is tedious to argue with people who believe that Catholics pay for confessions, and that Catholics worship images . . . What can you do with people who exhibit wild surprise when you tell them that Catholics . . . are depressed, not by modern scepticism, but by modern credulity? (Now I See, London: Sheed & Ward, 1944, 125-126)
There have long been efforts to ban landmines, primarily for the simple reason that they persist long after the war has ended, when they can blow up and injure innocent people who had nothing to do with the war that led to the creation of the minefield.

Why am I mentioning this at a moment when youd expect me to be blogging about the Nazi marches in Charlottesville? Because propaganda does the same thing as landmines.

A case in point: The Nazis made efforts to spread their virulent anti-Jewish views to potential allies, including in the Middle East. (If youre not familiar with this, Jeffrey Herfs brief article Hate Radio will provide an introduction, and then his book Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, as well as others such as Jihad and Jew-Hatred, can provide still more info if that isnt enough). They took European claims of Jewish conspiracies and promulgated them, and anyone who has heard a radical Muslim talk about Jews will have heard such claims, and probably will have noticed the similarity.

The Nazis planted ideological landmines in the Middle East, and they are continuing to go off today. The Arabs who embrace those ideas are feeling the impact of weaponized ideas which aimed at turning them into allies of Germany. WWII is long since over, and most Germans today repudiate the views that led to the Holocaust. But the places where those memes were sown continue to be impacted by them, and in turn others are harmed as well. Planting hatred is every bit as dangerous as planting physical landmines  and perhaps more so.

Hopefully you can see the ironies as we consider the conspiracies about Jews voiced by the Nazis in Charlottesville. One of them, Matt Heimbach, turns out to be from here in Indiana. He apparently converted some years ago to (and then was excommunicated from) the Antiochene Orthodox Church, which was brought to the United States by Arab immigrants, another irony. Heimbach expresses the idea that a white genocide is on the horizon, and that he is simply acting to defend his white race. This, of course, is a stance that leads to immigration policies that would keep out the people that brought the faith that Heimbach chose to embrace.

Heimbach and others like him are giving voice to propaganda that includes elements created centuries ago, which were promulgated by our nations enemies, and which now flourish not only among Nazis, Klansmen, and other white supremacists, but also among Muslims  whom the former are eager to keep out of their country. While some Americans tend to think of Neo-Nazis in the United States as influenced by German Nazism, in fact the direction of influence is the reverse: German racists were influenced by the example of the American South decades before Hitler began his rise to power, and this influenced Hitler and his Nazis.

It is not just propaganda that behaves and causes damage like a landmine. Hatred itself is a landmine. The seeds were sown in the past  sometimes centuries ago, but they have sprouted and spread more recently and then found fertile soil in which to lay dormant until they are watered and invited to find nourishment in the light of the sun once again. The same kind of hatred was used to justify enslavement, then segregation, then discrimination, to say nothing of war against the United States. And on it goes, sometimes taking new forms, but with a clear continuity that can be traced across the years.

There is, however, one big difference between landmines and hateful propaganda. Landmines, when they blow up, kill other people. Propaganda and hate, when they sprout, will certainly damage the soul, the mind, and the morals of those in which these things take root.

But typically it is others whose lives are lost, who are killed as a result of the explosion of hatred going off. Another irony in this post is that the same hate-inspired lies about Jews and others can be seen motivating terrorism on the part of both white Nazis and Islamic jihadists. And yet despite embracing the same old propaganda, each will view the other as dangerous, not realizing that it is precisely because of the same sort of virulent propaganda that they view one another in this manner. They will demonize and resist one another precisely because of what they share in common!

And so lets be sure to notice the sources of the lies that continue to be spouted, and the heritage of the viewpoints and organizations that are becoming more vocal and violent. Even before there was the Nazi party in Germany, there was the Ku Klux Klan. It was founded by people who lost a war that aimed to preserve slavery and destroy the United States in order to do it. They engaged in acts of terrorism. That is what they stand for.

And so dont believe anyone who sides with these terrorists and yet who claims to be trying to keep the nation safe from terrorists. They may hate other terrorists. But the legacy of the KKK, as of the Nazis when they came along later and looked with admiration at Americas Klan as a model, has always been to achieve their ends through terror.

And then, as now, those who represent love  including but not limited to Christians  must stand against these forces of darkness.

But we must do so in a way that doesnt fall into the same trap, or step on the same landmine of fear and hate. Acts of hate against the haters, acts of terror purportedly in the interest of ending terrorism but in fact only interested in keeping us safe from those terrorists, will not end terrorism, but will either foster it in the enemy, or cause it to take root in ourselves, and perhaps both.

And so the minefield will continue to persist and damage if we do that.

Only learning to love in a way that stands against evil while refusing to embrace its terms and methods of conflict can ever clear the minefield  or should I say, the mindfield?  in which hate and propaganda take root.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has applauded the Bank of Ghana for revoking the licences of UT and Capital banks, describing the action as of the regulator as decisive.



The Bank of Ghana [BoG] on Monday announced a takeover of the two commercial banks by GCB Bank, and said it would stop at nothing in ensuring that perpetrators are punished.



He said the manner with which the BoG acted demonstrates how responsive the regulator is, while assuring of the support of Ghanaians.



The most recent measure in intervening decisively in the matters of UT Bank and Capital Bank demonstrates your preparedness to act in a manner worthy of a responsible central bank of praise worthy regulator. I am confident that you have the support of the nation, he said.



President Akufo-Addo gave the commendation at the launch of the 60th anniversary of BoG in Accra Friday. Stakeholders in the banking sector attended the event.



It is on the theme celebrating 60 years of central banking in Ghana, achievements, challenges and prospects.



Launching the anniversary, he urged BoG to introduce stringent measures to sanitise the countrys banking sector by strategically addressing the challenges to inject confidence in the sector.



These he said includes lowering the cost of funds to ensure increased investments, weeding out unlicenced institutions to inject confidence in the financial sector and protecting the integrity of payment systems.



Akufo-Addo also wants broadening and deepening access to banking to most of our rural population. The need to entrench reputation and credibility in the financial system is crucial.



For the president, there is an urgent need to address the weaknesses in the banking sector, noting, a weak banking system undermines growth.



The current weaknesses in our banking sector need to be addressed forcefully to minimize any adverse financial consequences to unsuspecting savers and the spill over effects on the economy, he advised.



Cooperation



The president suggested the need for cooperation between the bank and the government to be strengthened, stating, to sustain macro economic stability and rapid growth in a developing nation like ours, there must be partnership, a cooperation between the central bank and government.



Though he said BoG enjoys full autonomy, it does not mean the banks monetary policy should be at variance with governments overall macro-economic policy.

Source: 3news.com









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The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has blocked the accounts of the directors of the defunct UT and Capital banks until investigations into the movement of funds from those accounts are concluded.



The move is to trace whether there were some unusual transactions in those accounts days before the takeover of the two banks by the GCB Bank Limited.



The Head of the Banking Supervision Department of the BoG, Mr Raymond Amanfo, told the Daily Graphic in an interview in Accra yesterday that the restrictions on the accounts were also to halt the movement of funds from those accounts.



We are only blocking the accounts to find out whether there were any serious movements of funds from those accounts, he said.



Restrictions



The restrictions on the accounts of the directors follow the central banks collapse of the banks due to their inability to turn around their negative capital adequacy position.



That has necessitated a purchase and assumption (P&A) agreement that allows the GCB Bank Ltd to take over all deposit liabilities and selected assets of both the UT and the Capital banks, in accordance with Section 123 of the Banks and Specialised Deposit-taking Institutions (SDIs) Act, 2016 (Act 930).



We dont know how many accounts those directors have for now, but the ones that we know have been blocked and when we go into the system, we will find out the others and block them, Mr Amanfo said.



He said the accounts of the directors had not been frozen but only blocked temporarily to allow for investigations into the recent movements of cash from those accounts.



Its not true we have frozen their accounts; we have only blocked them for a while to see whether there were some unusual movements of funds from those accounts, he said.



He added that the exercise to track and restrict the accounts of the directors was being carried out in all the branches of the defunct UT and Capital banks across the country.



The BoG, in addition to restricting the directors access to their accounts, is also conducting a forensic audit into the operations of the two insolvent banks and their directors to unravel the factors leading to the collapse of the two banks.



The audit will seek to ascertain the banks compliance with the rules of corporate governance and adherence to proper financial administration.



Corporate governance breaches



At a news conference in Accra last Monday, the Governor of the BoG, Dr Ernest Addison, had said those who breached the corporate governance and financial rules of the banks would face punitive sanctions.



The last phase of the BoGs action will involve a thorough investigation of the operations of the UT Bank and the Capital Bank and appropriate action will be taken against shareholders, directors and key management personnel who are found to be culpable.



The UT Bank and the Capital Bank were heavily deficient in capital and liquidity and their continuous operation could have jeopardised not only their depositors funds but also posed a threat to the stability of the financial system.



It, therefore, became necessary for the BoG to revoke their licences and approve a purchase and assumption (P&A) transaction to allow the GCB Bank, a large bank with the right balance sheet, to take over all deposits and selected assets of the UT Bank and the Capital Bank, he said.



The UT Bank has six directors, with Captain Joseph Nsonamoahas (retd) the Co-Founder and Chairman of the board, while the Capital Bank too has six directors, with Dr Mensa Otabil as its Chairman.



Pact with IMF



The liquidation formed part of prior actions agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ahead of the next review of Ghana's three-year aid programme at the end of August.



The GCB Bank is the second largest bank by assets out of the 33 banks operating in Ghana, including the UT and the Capital banks.



"The UT Bank and the Capital Bank were deeply insolvent, meaning that their liabilities exceeded their assets, putting them in a position not to be able to meet their obligations."



Deposits at the two banks were safe and depositors would now become customers of the GCB Bank and they might continue banking at the UT Bank and the Capital Bank branch locations, Dr Addison added.







Source: graphic.com.gh









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Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
The Member of Parliament for Tema East and Deputy Transport Minister, Nii Kwartei Titus-Glover has denied rumours making rounds on social media that he has died.



The MP speaking on Adom FMs Morning Show, Dwaso Nsem on Thursday described the news as a false one.



The Deputy Minister said he is currently at an Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU) congress at the Great Hall in Kumasi.



I am assuring all friends and loved ones especially my mum that Titus-Glover is alive and strong, he said.



He also denied that he has been involved in a vehicular accident.



I arrived in Kumasi with a flight, so how can I have been involved in a vehicular accident?, he quized.

Source: adomonline









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Keith Butler is in the business of preparing for disasters, but he was not prepared for what he saw on Aug. 19, 2007.

Wed never seen that before, La Crosse Countys emergency management director says over and over as he recounts the carnage.

Torrential rains swept away roads, bridges and buildings. Hillsides liquefied, and basements filled with mud. A freight train derailed just south of La Crosse, fueling fears of a hazardous waste spill. Across the river in Minnesota, the situation was even more grim: seven people died and communities were washed away by the floodwaters.

SWCD_74_0726_03.jpg Streambank damage in Minnesota City, Minn., after the 2007 flood. Flooding is just as big a concern today for the Winona County Soil and Water

In two decades of responding to emergencies  first as a 911 dispatcher and later as emergency manager  Butler had come to view the main flood threat as the Mississippi River, where waters can take weeks to rise. This disaster came literally overnight, as babbling brooks and even dry ditches turned to raging rivers.

It took us by surprise, Butler said. We didnt have a lot of history or training for when the river comes down the hill.

In the decade since, hes seen this type of damage again and again. And climate scientists say its likely to continue.

This new climate regime, in which warmer temperatures trigger more powerful storms, has rendered much of the nations infrastructure and planning increasingly inadequate. Flood maps need to be redrawn, homes and businesses moved. Roads and bridges are washed out with regularity. Storm sewers and catch basins cant contain the runoff made greater and more powerful by ever more acres of row crops and pavement.

Were seeing flooding in places that have never flooded before, said Rick Larken, who worked on flood relief after the 2007 flood in Winona County and is now president of the Association of Minnesota Emergency Managers. Our infrastructure across the country is stressed already, and now were looking at this increasing number of mega-rain events and saying that infrastructure is not capable of handling it.

A widely-cited study commissioned by Congress found that disaster mitigation has a four-fold payback, but despite recognition from those on the ground, such changes are expensive and politically fraught, and they arent happening on any large scale.

How do you plan for 7 inches of rain in a coulee? said Dave Bonifas, a community development planner for the Mississippi River Regional Planning Commission who has drafted hazard mitigation plans for La Crosse and neighboring counties. You cant. You can plan for what the average would be. What happens when you get 12 inches?

Hundred year floods every year

Since 2007, unusually heavy rains have hit the Coulee Region eight times, triggering flash flooding and mudslides, resulting in at least 10 deaths and more than $1 billion in property damage, according to a storm database maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Houston County in southeastern Minnesota has been the subject of five flooding-related disaster declarations since 2007, after just 10 over the previous 42 years. Iowas Allamakee County has has seven.

Storms hit in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2013, and 2015. Last year there were three: Trempealeau and Buffalo counties got drenched on Aug. 11; northeast Iowa got it less than two weeks later. Then the entire region was soaked by a series of storms in September that killed two people, derailed a train and caused about $22 million in damages  more than half of it in Vernon and Crawford counties.

Butler hadnt even delivered disaster relief paperwork to local municipalities for the September event before they were hit with yet another 5-inch rain storm in July.

Im concerned were getting storms every year, every other year, Butler said. Now were getting them every 10 months.

In Winona County, a highway crew was out on June 22 repairing damage from a 5-inch rain event the previous month when the skies opened up over Altura. One of the workers heard something and looked up to see a wall of water, which he captured in a dramatic cell phone video.

So-called hundred-year floods have become a nearly annual event  and climatologists say they are likely to become even more common as global temperatures continue to rise.

What may have been a hundred-year flood historically may be something you see much more frequently with climate change and other things happening, said Jeff Schlegelmilch, deputy director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia Universitys Earth Institute. Theres definitely more and more of an acknowledgment of the likelihood of seeing more extreme weather events going into the future and that we cant use historical markers to help sort of guide us  going into the future under this changing environment.

In fact, emergency managers now prefer to talk about weather events in terms of probability.

When folks hear these 1,000-year storms, they think, Oh, we had a thousand-year storm last year, that means were good for another 999 years, Larken said. In any given year out of a thousand storms the probability of one being that bad is 1 in 1,000. That probability stays with you the whole year. You could have two thousand-year storms in a year.

Moving homes, banning culverts

The changing weather patterns dont just require new names.

It requires rethinking how we prepare for disaster events, both structurally but also as a whole community, Schlegelmilch said. Its something that require more than just government intervention. The private sector has a role in this and individuals may experience more situations where they have to be able to spend some time on their own, and neighbors helping neighbors.

Floodplains may need to be redrawn. Building codes revised. Storm water systems redesigned.

The infrastructure thats built now and in the ground now was built for 40, 50 years ago  or even 10 years ago, Larken said. Now as we move forward and we start to see the potential for more water per storm  maybe fewer storms  that same infrastructure is inadequate to deal with it.

Urban planners now talk in terms of resiliency: designing communities to withstand both economic and natural disasters.

If you think about it, its self-sufficiency, said La Crosse planning director Jason Gilman. We have to build smarter to make the best use of the infrastructure we have and that were prepared for potential calamities.

After being hit in 2008 with the second major flood in less than 10 months, the Crawford County village of Gays Mills undertook an $8 million relocation project, essentially moving half the residents higher ground.

Its changing the character of those small towns but its making it safer, said Lori Getter, spokeswoman for Wisconsin Emergency Management, which administered federal mitigation grants to help buy out flooded home and business owners. Its cheaper in the long run than having these repetitive flood losses.

Winona city planner Carlos Espinosa said the impacts of climate change will inform the citys next comprehensive plan, which is scheduled to be drafted in the next few years and guides development and land use decisions.

In the La Crosse County town of Barre, chairman Ron Reed wants to do away with culverts.

When more than 6 inches of rain fell over La Crosse County in less than 12 hours on the night of July 19, a dry creek in Drectrah Coulee swelled into a raging current that took out culverts on three of his town roads. Water got under one culvert, bending the eight-foot diameter corrugated steel pipe up into the air.

Reed said the town should require developers to build concrete bridges over creeks if they want the public to bear the maintenance costs.

That particular culvert should have been a bridge, he said. Theres no reason why we should have to take all that expense.

Rolling the dice

But change isnt happening everywhere.

Climate change has not been a factor in updates to the planning and zoning ordinance in Winona County, one of the hardest hit places in the 2007 floods.

Were talking about making changes, but it isnt in response to flooding, said planning committee chairman Eugene Hanson.

Hundred year floods We fairly routinely poke fun at the idea of a hundred year event because it seems to be about every year or every other year. Ron Chamberlain, La Crosse County Highway Commissioner

In the aftermath of the 2007 flood, Winona Countys Soil and Water Conservation District received state funding to repair erosion. While grateful for the help, district manager Daryl Buck said he told state officials, Please dont forget us when the flood is gone.

Yet Buck said the agency has not received funding for any new storm water retention ponds or grade stabilization projects that could make a difference in slowing down runoff.

In Minnesota, special watershed districts are given the power to manage water in areas that generally span multiple municipalities. But despite this authority, the Stockton-Rollingstone-Minnesota City Watershed District has not undertaken any special projects to alleviate flooding in communities like Stockton, which has been hit repeatedly by floods, said Lew Overhaug, a Winona County land use planner who serves as the districts technical adviser.

When it comes to road and bridge design, engineers rely on 25- and 100-year flood probability models, which La Crosse County Highway Commissioner Ron Chamberlain said increasingly feel outdated.

We fairly routinely poke fun at the idea of a hundred-year event because it seems to be about every year or every other year, Chamberlain said.

But without proof to show lawmakers, the funding simply isnt there to build for higher standards.

You cant afford to put in every culvert at the hundred-year event, he said. You dont have that kind of money.

Urban planners face a similar challenge in setting standards for subdivisions, where a storm water system designed to handle the biggest storms might make the project infeasible to build or maintain.

Walking the fine line between adequate design and over-design is always a conundrum, Gilman said.

Ironically, theres a greater political risk to playing it safe than trying to prevent disasters.

When it happens generally the folks in power say we have to help the good people of X community recover, and theyll pass assistance packages, Larken said. Its not very politically desirable to say we have to help the people of X community prevent damage. Youre sort of rolling the dice there.

'The water is rising'

While moving and raising homes is expensive, it does pay off, according to a 2005 cost-benefit study by the Multihazard Mitigation Council, a coalition of engineers, builders, insurance and other professionals. That study found that every dollar spent saves society about $4 in costs.

It cuts down on the response and recovery they have to go through every time theres a disaster, council director Philip Schneider said.

Water is rising Whether the gods are angry at us or human caused climate change, theres a lot of arguments to be made for everybody to figure that out. But Im telling you the waters rising and we have to do something about it. Rick Larken, president of the Association of Minnesota Emergency Managers

Recognizing the strains on government budgets, that group is now exploring a private-public model for funding structural improvements designed to make buildings that can better withstand floods, wildfires, hurricanes and rising seas.

Schneider said the organization is hoping to convince lenders, insurers and government agencies to help underwrite such improvements, which would in turn lower their risks and costs.

But for now there is not a centralized governmental approach to this type of planning.

It all happens on the local level, said Amber Schindeldecker, spokeswoman for Minnesotas office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which has not reported an increase in applications for hazard mitigation projects.

Schlegelmilch, of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said the politics of climate change have hamstrung discussions at the state and national level.

We need to use code words, like extreme events and things like that in order to just have the conversation, he said. In such a polarized environment, it keeps us from coming up with real solutions. Ultimately these problems are so big and so pervasive across the country that we need to have a grown up conversation at the national level. And it requires more than 140 characters to really play these themes out.

Meanwhile, emergency response professionals are focused on sounding the alarm, regardless of the cause.

Whether the gods are angry at us or human caused climate change, theres a lot of arguments to be made for everybody to figure that out, Larken said. But Im telling you the waters rising and we have to do something about it.
President Akufo-Addo received four new envoys at the Flagstaff House yesterday.



They were the new British High Commissioner to Ghana, Iain Walker; his colleague from Angola, Augusto da Silva Cunhu; that of Burkina Faso, Pingrenoma Zagre, and the Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana, Femi Michael Abikoye.



The envoys presented their letters of credence to the president.



Welcoming them, President Akufo-Addo talked of the strong links that exist between Ghana and the respective countries, especially the United Kingdom [Britain].



He, therefore, expressed the hope that going forward, the envoys would help pursue programmes and policies that would ensure the mutual benefit of their respective citizens.



The president recalled how Ghana gained independence from British colonial rule in 1957 and the various stages that the country went through to its current state, saying, Today, we are a strong growing democracywe are an open society  a country where individual rights and liberties are respected, a country which recognizes the importance of freedom.



We treasure our relationship; weve found a way to turn what was an unequal relationship to an equal relationship of partners.



He continued, You are welcome here; we are hoping that your presence here is going to continue to enhance the relationship between our two countries, strengthen especiallyties and bonds that exist between us.



As a country that is charting a path expected to lead to rapid growth of its economy create jobs, President Akufo-Addo told the British High Commissioner, We are counting on receiving increasing British investments in our country, just like we are also looking at heightening trade between Ghanaian businesses and UK firms.



Mr Iain Walker pledged his governments commitment to Ghana.



We see your ambition and will match this with action, not words. Where you ask us, we will help you drive reform  practical, pragmatic change to demonstrably improve the business environment. And I commit that I will persuade more UK businesses to invest and partner Ghanaian firms to create jobs and prosperity for both Ghana and UK, he promised.



On his part, the Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr Femi Abikoye pledged that I wish to solemnly assure your Excellency that during my tenure of office, I will exert my efforts to expand and deepen friendship and mutually-beneficial cooperation, enhance mutual understanding and friendship between our governments and peoples to propel Nigeria-Ghana relations to new height.



Their colleagues from Angola and Burkina Faso also gave similar assurances.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The office of Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has denied accusations that he; then running mate of the NPP, promised not to borrow when his party comes into office.



The Minority has described as shameful, Dr Bawumias new position on borrowing.



Deputy Minority Leader, James Klutse Avedzi said: It is shameful for Bawumia to say in the past that we dont need to borrow because we have all the resources here and now saying that we need to borrow and borrow responsibly, that is the problem I have with him. He knows that what he said when he was in opposition as a running mate was meant to deceive the people of Ghana so that he can get the votes, hes got it now and he is now telling the people that he will borrow.



However, Dr. Bawumias office, in a statement, challenged the Deputy Minority Leader, James Klutse Avedzi, to prove that the Vice President made such a statement.



Read full statement below



Argue on Facts and Not Fabrications



The Office of the Vice Presidents attention has been drawn to a statement (on Citi FM on August 16, 2017) attributed to the Deputy Minority Leader, Hon James Klutse Avedzi, accusing the Vice President of doing a U-turn on the issue of borrowing by government. Specifically, the deputy minority leader is reported to have stated that:



The Vice President . . . while he was the running mate for the NPP was emphatic on the issue about borrowing in Ghana saying that the country need not borrow and that we have the resources here in Ghana and that when they win power they will not borrow.



The Office of the Vice President would like to state for the record that the above statement attributed to the Vice-President by the deputy minority leader (and subsequently by many NDC communicators) is a complete and utter fabrication. The Vice Presidents speeches, lectures and statements on the economy over the years are a matter of public record.



We are therefore challenging the deputy minority leader (and the other NDC communicators) to immediately provide the evidence to back up their claim. They cannot provide any such evidence because the Vice-President has never made such a statement.



To deliberately fabricate statements in an attempt to attack your political opponent is an exercise in desperation and intellectual dishonesty. As politicians, it is important that we elevate the discourse and argue based on facts and not on fabrications and outright lies.



Our advice to them is to go back and take the time to READ the Vice Presidents lectures as well as speeches and try to criticize based on the statements contained therein. Ghana deserves much better.



..Signed



Frank Agyei-Twum



Director of Communications



Office of the Vice-President

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Two Pennsylvania State Police troopers were injured and a suspect killed in a shooting outside a Fayette County business Friday night.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The shootings occurred outside the

Shop 'n Save store at 58 W. Church Street, between 8 and 9 p.m.

Witnesses said the troopers, possibly working undercover, saw a man they believed had an outstanding warrant against him. The troopers stopped him, the witnesses said, and he reached into his backpack, pulled out a gun and started shooting.

At least one of the troopers returned fire, killing the man, the witnesses said. The dead man was in his mid-20s, the witnesses said.

More than a dozen state police cruisers outside of Shop n' Save in Fairchance, Fayette County. #WPXI pic.twitter.com/J4P1G3nY0Z  Shelley Bortz WPXI (@WPXIShelley) August 19, 2017

WPXI reports: One of the troopers was life-flighted from the scene to a hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia, officials said. The other trooper was taken to a hospital via ambulance. Both were stable and alert.

KDKA reports: Sources tell KDKA that one trooper was shot in the stomach and was in surgery at a hospital in Morgantown around 10:30 p.m. Sources say the other trooper was shot in the hand.

In Florida overnight, one police officer was killed and three wounded. The officers were responding to suspected drug activity and reports of a suicide attempt, police said Saturday.

One officer was killed and another gravely injured late Friday night in Kissimmee in central Florida just south of the theme park hub of Orlando. The other two officers were injured a couple of hours later in Jacksonville, one of them shot in both hands and the other in the stomach.

Three of four suspects in the Kissimmee shooting were arrested, and the shooter in Jacksonville was shot and killed when police returned fire.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- The lead prosecutor handling the case against Penn State fraternity members charged after a pledge died faces a hearing of her own in front of the state board that deals with complaints about lawyers.

Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller

The Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court this week scheduled the Nov. 29 hearing to consider whether Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller committed professional misconduct in texts with judges that discussed pending cases and by using a fake Facebook account to obtain information on defendants.

The Office of Disciplinary Counsel's petition for discipline filed in February said Parks Miller contacted judges about cases without informing defense lawyers. It said she misled the disciplinary counsel's investigators.

Parks Miller said Friday she is willing to answer for her conduct and looks forward to presenting the facts at the hearing.

"The true operations in Centre County are very disturbing and always have been as long as I have been privy to behind the scenes," Parks Miller said. "I am more than willing to ... be truthful and have my behavior be measured."

The petition claims a February 2013 email about bail included the defendant's lawyer and several other people but after Judge Bradley Lunsford responded directly to Parks Miller alone she then replied only to him that he should rescind his bail order.

"He is already gone," Lunsford replied.

Parks Miller has argued she did not realize the judge had stripped other respondents off the email.

Disciplinary Counsel Anthony Czuchnicki wrote that in May 2014 Parks Miller wrote directly to Lunsford about a different case, asking him: "Are you serious? Scheduling a hearing with me and a pro se inmate ... making me answer to him about the complaints he filed about guards?"

Lunsford, who has since left the bench, later canceled the hearing. A phone listing for Lunsford could not be located.

Czuchnicki said that email exchange was an example of conduct that undermines the integrity of the criminal justice system.

Parks Miller admitted on Friday the email about the inmate was "improper." She said the dispute with Czuchnicki's office is over what the appropriate sanction should be.

The Office of Disciplinary Counsel said it recovered 15 partial texts from Parks Miller's cellphone to another Centre County common pleas court jurist, Judge Jonathan Grine, also in May 2014, sent the day after a trial. They included references to the judge laughing and speculating about the "poor kid's" family and a suggestion regarding restitution.

Grine gave the defendant three years and ordered restitution. Grine did not return a phone message Friday.

In October 2014, Czuchnicki wrote, Parks Miller did not correct Lunsford when he denied during a recusal hearing that there had been text exchanges between them, despite the fact he sent her 89 texts from May to October that year.

Parks Miller on Friday defended her decision in May 2011 to set up the bogus Facebook account, under the pseudonym Britney Bella, saying it was part of a legitimate law enforcement operation into local head shops selling bath salts.

Czuchnicki called the Facebook account an example of "dishonest and deceitful" conduct that violated the state's rules for lawyers' conduct.

The fake account ended up being friends with at least two people who were defendants but did not have lawyers.

Parks Miller, Czuchnicki wrote, should've known the unrepresented people she was connecting to through the Britney Bella account "misunderstood her role in the matter" and she "failed to make reasonable efforts to correct the misunderstanding."

In the Penn State fraternity case, 18 members of now-closed Beta Theta Pi and the fraternity face charges in the February death of pledge Tim Piazza, of Lebanon, New Jersey. Some are accused of aggravated assault and involuntary manslaughter, while others face less serious allegations that include evidence tampering, hazing and alcohol violations. A preliminary hearing for the fraternity and 16 defendants has already lasted five days, with three more scheduled.

Parks Miller lost the Democratic primary earlier this year and will be out of office in January.
WILLIAMSPORT-A suspended Penn State pre-med student is allowed to attend classes Monday after a federal judge directed the university to assist him in registering for them.

U.S. Middle District Judge Matthew W. Brann on Friday granted Joe Doe injunctive relief that lifts the sophomore's suspension.

The judge in his 33-page opinion found Penn State violated its procedures in adjudicating the allegation of Jane Roe that Doe digitally penetrated her in her dorm room last Sept. 7.

"We're thrilled," was the response of Doe's lawyer Andrew T. Miltenberg to the decision. "The judge clearly saw through what was confusing and inconsistent testimony by Penn State witnesses."

Penn State by design or negligence does not have a fair and consistent policy in dealing with sexual misconduct cases, he said.

"Thank goodness Judge Brann stepped in," Miltenberg said.

Miltenberg accused the investigator, Katharina Matic, the university's the senior Title IX compliant specialist, of confirming a pre-ordered result to the case.

Penn State did not respond to a request for reaction to the decision.

Doe's ongoing suit against Penn State, its board of trustees, President Eric J. Barron, Matic and two others, claims the university favors females in sexual misconduct cases.

Doe contends his due process rights were violated when a three-member Title IX panel found he violated the Student Code of Conduct by having nonconsensual sex with Roe.

The panel suspended Doe for the fall semester and banned him from on-campus housing. He also was suspended from the seven-year program with Thomas Jefferson School of Medicine in Philadelphia as long as Roe was in it.

Brann found in lifting the suspension Doe has a likelihood of succeeding with his due process claims.

His reasoning, he wrote, is based on "significant and unfair deviation from policy during the investigation and (panel) hearing and the redactions made by the investigator (Matic) to Doe's June 1 response to the charge and sanction notification."

The judge cited the rejection of almost all the 22 questions submitted by Doe including those about an unproduced medical exam of Roe.

Penn State's procedure in the Code of Conduct allows the complainant and respondent to suggest questions to be posed to each other through the panel, Brann pointed out.

"Questions regarding the exam were still essential to the panel's final, and ultimately dispositive, credibility determination," the judge wrote.

Another violation of procedure Brann found was the hearing panel members were to have across at least five days to individually review the investigative packet, but in this case they had one day.

Brann also viewed with skepticism the role of Matic as the investigator in redacting information submitted by Doe that could have relevance in his fate. That included a witness confiding Roe had feelings for Doe and she pursued a physical relationship, he said.

Matic testified during the injunction hearing her role as the investigator is to be impartial and objective to both parties.

Brann made note of Doe telling Matic on Nov. 16 the investigation had eclipsed the 60-day timeline embodied in the Code of Conduct and Student Conduct Procedures and he had yet to be provided a written statement of Roe's allegations.

In finding Doe would suffer irreparable harm if not allowed to re-enroll, Brann wrote he believes "Penn State is understating the significance of the disciplinary action taken in this case."

He also noted during the investigation Doe remained on campus in the Penn State-Jefferson program and separated from Roe without incident.

"I have no reason to believe this status quo cannot be maintained..." he wrote.
A man facing two counts of attempted homicide from shooting a man two separate times in the last week has been arrested in Virginia.

Police said Robert Sheets, 29, was arrested following a vehicle pursuit that started in Fairfax County, Va. and ended in Fauquier County, Va. No officers were injured as a result of the 30-minute pursuit.

Sheets is facing fleeing and eluding charges in Virginia, but is expected to be extradited back to Lancaster County in coming days to first face attempted homicide charges.

Officers in Fairfax County initially saw Sheets driving a maroon Ford, which prompted the pursuit.

Sheets is accused of shooting a 30-year-old man twice in the last week. Police said Sheets initially shot the victim in the chest on Monday, and returned the next day and shot him in the head when he discovered the victim did not die.

The victim walked a distance on Wednesday until he was discovered by bystanders who called 911.

Police said the shootings happened at a location in Manor Township.
Police arrested a Philadelphia activist who earned less than 4 percent of the mayoral vote in 2011 for allegedly vandalizing the statue of former Mayor Frank Rizzo, according to a Philly.com report.

Video of an activist spray painting the words "black power" onto the statue Thursday night made the rounds on social media.

Rizzo, who also served as the city's police commissioner from 1967 to 1971, faced criticism for overseeing a period when the use of excessive force was common in the city. He was elected mayor in 1972 and left office in 1980. He died of a heart attack in 1991.

During Rizzo's tenure first as commissioner and then as mayor, police raided the offices of the Black Panther Party and clashed with the black liberation group MOVE.

According to Philly.com, police arrested Wali Rahman, 40, on Friday. He was charged with criminal mischief, possession of an instrument of crime, and two related counts.

Rahman was previously arrested during a protest in 2009 and sentenced to two years' probation, according to the report.
On a brightly lit factory floor with broad windows looking out on the Fitchburg prairie, workers are assembling machines that can create a three-dimensional image of the most elemental structure of a sliver of rock, a bit of metal or a paper-thin computer chip, down to its very atoms  opening windows for scientists to learn about the age of the Earth and, more recently, the moon.

Its a new home for Cameca Instruments at 5470 Nobel Drive, in the Fitchburg Technology Campus, a stones throw from Camecas previous space at 5500 Nobel Drive, a building it shared with several other high-tech companies.

It gives us better manufacturing space, said Tom Kelly, vice president for innovation and new technologies for Cameca (pronounced kah-MEE-kah). The new assembly area is in one location, instead of scattered around the building, as it was before, and it is set up to build as many as five microscopes at a time, he said.

Camecas atom probe microscopes have been used to help determine, from a tiny crystal shard, that the earths crust is at least 4.4 billion years old and that the moon is a similar age. They also have allowed major electronics manufacturers to examine the chemical composition of a microchip.

Its like an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging machine, used in medicine) at nanoscale, said Kelly, whose research as a UW-Madison engineering and material science professor led to development of Camecas LEAP, or Local Electrode Atom Probe, specialized microscope.

Heres how Camecas LEAP microscope works: A super-high-speed turbo pump first creates a vacuum that removes atmospheric gases. High-voltage electricity is applied to the product sample, and the electrical field sends charged atoms to a detector that creates a 3-D color image of the samples chemical structure.

Kelly, 62, founded Imago Scientific Instruments in Madison in 1998, a leap of science as well as a leap of faith for members of his big Boston family who gave him money to prove his concept for the LEAP microscope and bring it to market.

The first commercial version was shipped in 2003 to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energys largest science and energy lab, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

From there, the company has grown, advanced its research and gained clients worldwide. The LEAP has been named to R&D magazines R&D 100 awards for the most significant new discoveries in research and development in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2015.

In 2010, Ametek  a publicly traded, suburban Philadelphia electronics manufacturer with $3.8 billion in sales in 2016  bought Imago for $6 million and made it part of Ameteks Cameca division, based in France. Camecas revenues last year were around $120 million, Kelly said.

The $5.9 million, one-story Fitchburg building has 28,000 square feet of space, about 45 percent more than Cameca had before. The building is owned by Ruedebusch Development and Construction and leased to Cameca.

The new building opened in June and houses 50 employees; another 20 operate remotely. Camecas suburban Paris manufacturing center has 200 employees, while its location in Wrexam, Wales, in the United Kingdom  added through the 2016 purchase of Nu Instruments  has 100 employees.

The LEAP microscope is Camecas flagship product. The most recent model, the LEAP 5000, was introduced in 2014.

Samples used in the instrument are smaller than the eye can see, at 50 nanometers wide, or one-thousandth of the width of a human hair.

Dating the Earth

In 2005, early versions of the atom probe could pull off 15,000 atoms per second. Todays LEAP 5000 can extract 100,000 atoms per second. That means a substance can be analyzed within minutes  rather than days, using other types of high-powered microscopes  to identify its chemical composition.

For John Valley, geochemistry professor at UW-Madison, a flake of zircon crystal from a sheep ranch in Australias Outback, analyzed through the LEAP in Fitchburg and a larger Cameca instrument made in France, was found to date back 4.4 billion years, according to a report published in 2014 in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The study affirmed the idea of a cool, early Earth, with temperatures low enough for liquid water, not long after the planet formed a crust from a sea of molten rock, Valley said, at the time.

That indicates that, even though theres no evidence of life that long ago, the oceans were habitable. Thus, the earliest emergence of life could have been 800 million years earlier than the earliest known microfossils that are believed up to 3.5 billion years old, Valley said in an interview last week.

Even today, UW scientists use instruments made by Cameca and Nu and work closely with the company, he said.

Were using the LEAP to study samples returned by the Apollo astronauts (1969-1972). LEAP is allowing us to understand the genesis of the moon, Valley said.

He said geoscience graduate student Tyler Blum, working in his lab, has been studying zircons, or mineral crystals, found at four of the Apollo landing sites. We found clusters of radiogenic lead in a zircon from the moon that is the same age as one from Earth: 4.4 billion years old, Valley said.

That provides evidence about how and when the moon was formed, which we think was from the impact of a very large planetary body with the Earth, he said.

Range of applications

But Camecas instrument is not just a way to see back into the distant past. It is also used to develop and analyze the most recent advances in technology, Kelly said.

He said big players in the semiconductor industry employ the LEAP to improve their manufacturing process and their products, as well as to analyze what their competitors are doing.

Camecas instruments cost $1 million to $3 million and they are heavy, weighing 4,800 pounds, or more than two tons. Shipping one of them, with its units bolted into specialized crates, fills a whole semi-trailer truck, said Jesse Olson, Camecas U.S. director.

And it takes about two months to assemble and test a product that complicated and sensitive. Cameca will build its 100th LEAP unit later this year.

Because of the complexity and price, in 2016, the company developed the Eikos, a smaller, slightly slower, less costly version, aimed at universities and research institutions.

It was 50 years ago, in 1967, that the first atom probe was invented, Kelly noted, and the LEAP microscope took off from there, and continues to improve.

The contemporary range of applications enabled by Camecas LEAP microscopes has expanded dramatically from strictly metals to include materials as diverse as bulk metallic glasses, advanced magnetic materials, oxides, ceramics, and even biominerals, Olson said.

UWs Valley said Camecas instruments have played a key role in advancing science. Im super-excited to have Cameca (in Fitchburg), he said.
Downed power poles and an ice covered sign are shown in Escuminac, N.B., on Friday, Jan. 27, 2017. A review of a devastating ice storm in New Brunswick that left two people dead and more than 130,000 people without power says the provincial government should increase funding for emergency services and better educate the public on emergency preparedness. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Diane Doiron
Brig. Gen. Ali Qanso, chief military spokesman, speaks during a press conference at the Lebanese Defense Ministry in Yarzeh near Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Lebanon's U.S.-backed army launched operations against Islamic State group positions inside the country on Saturday, to start the most serious engagement with the militants since they found a foothold here in 2014. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
OK, it's almost back to school season. Time for a pop quiz. Test your knowledge of credit scores.

1. The top possible credit score is 830, 990 or 850?

2. True, false or it depends: Checking your own credit score too many times can have an adverse effect on the score.

3. True or false: In case of a security threat, you can freeze all your credit reports with one phone call.

4. True or false: Credit reports include marital status.

5. True, false or it depends: Your credit report includes your gas and electric bill payment history.

Ready for the answers?

I called up Heather Battison, a vice president at TransUnion, one of the "big three" national credit reporting companies, for help.

1. The top possible credit score is ... all of the above. The industry standard top score is 850, but some credit scoring formulas are different. A score of 750 or above should be enough to get very low rates and access to lots of credit products. Battison says the average score in TransUnion's database hovers around 645, "which is not the greatest."

2. False. Checking your own credit score will not have an adverse effect on the score. Battison says that according to TransUnion's annual survey of credit myths, this is one of the most widespread false beliefs among consumers. In their most recently released survey, 43 percent thought it was true. The misconception arises because when credit reporting agencies receive too many "hard inquiries" from banks or other lenders, your score can indeed take a hit. But when you check your own credit, it's known as a "soft inquiry." And you should do it at least once a year at www.annualcreditreport.com. Check more often if you are applying for a loan.

3. False. You cannot freeze all your credit reports with one phone call. TransUnion and Equifax offer a product called Multi-Bureau Lock. Experian, the other major credit reporting agency, you'll have to notify separately. A credit lock prevents lenders from accessing your credit report. In the case of identity theft, a lock would prevent anyone from opening new accounts in your name. If you need more credit, Multi-Bureau Lock can be reversed with a swipe from your mobile phone. That's why Battison says TransUnion has begun advising consumers to keep their credit locked as a default option. Note, this is less drastic than a security freeze, which requires verifying one's identity through a multistep process when you want to turn it on again.

4. False. Credit reports do not include marital status. This is another of the most commonly believed myths in TransUnion's survey. More than half of consumers over 55 got this wrong. Marital status isn't on a credit report, and you and your spouse have separate credit histories and credit scores. That said, your spouse's credit can certainly affect yours when it comes to any joint purchases or joint accounts. The terms of a mortgage, auto loan or credit card will be dictated by the person with the lower score if you go in together. And, people can become responsible for their spouse's student loans under some circumstances.

5. It depends. Fifty-one percent of Transunion survey respondents believed utility payments are included in their score. Some utility companies report only late payments, meaning that the information can hurt you but not help. Other utility companies give the good news along with the bad: both the on-time and the late payments.

How did you do on the quiz? Are you credit-savvy or a total novice? Report back and let me know what other questions you have about credit scores.
People take photos as Spain's King Felipe and Queen Letizia, right, paying respect at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the van attack victims in Las Ramblas promenade, Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017. Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort, as the investigation focused on links among the Moroccan members and the house where they plotted the carnage.(AP Photo/Santi Palacios)
Meet Gavin and Macey Bebble, cousins and fellow St. Mary's stars

Two fellow Class of 2023 members, Gavin and Macey Bebble share a bond as cousins, friends and leading members of multiple talented St. Mary's teams.
Markable is on the move.

The startup, which launched its fashion-finding app in May 2016, is participating in the Friends of eBay mentorship program in New York City.

Co-founder and CEO Joy Tang was featured in a Forbes article in July titled Dont be Intimidated by Problems, Be Inspired.

The company recently finalized a $2.55 million funding round, led by Plug & Play Tech Center, a Silicon Valley accelerator and investor.

Markable now has 16 employees and is about to add four more.

At the same time, though, the company has made some major changes.

Originally viewed as a way for fashionistas to hunt down an article of clothing or an accessory based on a photo and buy it, Markable has switched its focus from fashion consumers to fashion retailers.

The company also has moved its base and the bulk of its employees to New York; the smaller Madison office will stay open, though, at 100state, 316 W. Washington Ave., Tang says. She currently splits her time between the two cities.

Tang, a math whiz who won a gold medal in Chinas Math Olympics at age 16 and earned a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says Markable is an artificial intelligence company that can recognize products from videos and photos using deep-learning technology.

Deep-learning software attempts to mimic the activity in layers of neurons in the neocortex, the wrinkly 80 percent of the brain where thinking occurs. The software learns, in a very real sense, to recognize patterns in digital representations of sounds, images, and other data, according to an article in the MIT Technology Review.

Tang says the company uses self-learning algorithms that understand how to recognize fashion objects, faces, any kind of moving object or even makeup on faces. Were developing a brain like humans, she said.

But she realized her original goal wasnt working after New York Fashion Week last September. Markables app was announced between shows, she said, but people were not downloading. People dont want to download apps anymore ... their phones are too full.

At the same time, Tang said, we realized our technology is highly needed for retailers. There are lots of things we can do to help them. Wed rather be their friend than be their competitor.

So, Markable made the switch. Now, when a customer goes on a stores website to search for a certain item, it will only show similar products for that company, not for competitors products.

How does that differ from what stores already offer? Markable brings several extra features, Tang said. For one thing: If you like a jacket, we can show you how other fashion bloggers or celebrities look in a similar jacket, she says. Also, the app will offer other items in the bloggers outfit for you to buy, including shoes, handbags, even sunglasses.

Tang says Markable has 800 retailers in its database, including in-depth relationships with about 10 of them.

Tang says 12 of Markables employees are in New York now, and thats where client relationships are based. The Madison office has four employees and offers support, with the legal team, graphic design and training data.

We hope to become a new standard for retailers, Tang said. If you want your customers to have good engagement, you have to think about Markable.
A police car is parked in front of the Frank Rizzo mural Saturday morning after it was vandalized in South Philadelphia. Read more

The most defaced face in Philadelphia took it right on the nose this time.

Less than two days after the words Black Power were painted on the Frank Rizzo statue at the Municipal Services Building, the Italian Market mural honoring the former police commissioner and mayor was vandalized overnight.

Dried white paint is streaked down Rizzo's nose and the words Kill Killer Cops and RIP David are spray-painted on his suit  believed to be a reference to David Jones, who was shot and killed by police in June.

"I'm disgusted by this," said lifelong South Philadelphia resident Brian Ercolani, while taking in the scene at Ninth and Montrose Streets on Saturday morning. "It's a cowardly act to come here in the middle of the night and do this. It almost feels personal to me."

Sgt. Eric Gripp, a police spokesman, said that officers noticed a group of men defacing the mural with paint around 3 a.m. Saturday. Officers chased them on foot, apprehending one suspect and recovering spray-paint cans and masks, Gripp said.

The Rizzo mural is considered to be the most vandalized mural in the city, but Ercolani said, "This is the worst I've seen."

The statue of Rizzo stands just over a mile to the north. On Friday, Wali Rahman was arrested and accused of vandalizing the 10-foot-tall monument at 15th Street and John F. Kennedy Boulevard.

Police said Rahman, 40, of Germantown, spray-painted Black Power onto Rizzo's chest and arm around 11 p.m. Thursday. Video of the act recorded by Fox29 cameras was used to identify Rahman, who was a mayoral candidate in 2011.

In addition to allegedly spray-painting the statue, Rahman is accused of writing "The Black community should be their own Police" on the steps beneath the statue at Thomas Paine Plaza across from City Hall.

The statue and mural have become the focus of renewed criticism in the aftermath of last weekend's violence in Charlottesville, Va. Protesters and some city officials have said the works represent an era in which a tough-talking, law-and-order mayor discriminated against minorities and homosexuals. On Wednesday evening, thousands of demonstrators surrounded the statue and called for its removal. A man was ticketed for throwing eggs at it earlier that day.

Duke University on Saturday removed a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, days after it was vandalized amid a national debate about monuments to the Confederacy. Another statue of Lee was at the heart of the Charlottesville protest.

Councilwoman Helen Gym, who has called for moving the Rizzo statue, tweeted Saturday that the statue and mural "have long been the most vandalized in the city. It is not new and points to how divisive his legacy remains."

Back at the Italian Market on Saturday morning, Point Breeze resident John Coates said he wasn't surprised by the latest vandalism.

"I've grown accustomed to this," Coates said. "It's an interesting time to have this up in what is a pretty diverse neighborhood these days."

Coates said it may be time for the city to consider moving the Rizzo statue and perhaps get rid of the mural.

"Looks like they're already trying to get rid of it," said Coates' friend Evan Parish Matthews.

"People don't want it up anymore," said Matthews, of South Philadelphia. "The legacy of Frank Rizzo brutalizes the residents of this neighborhood."

Jane Golden, executive director of Mural Arts Philadelphia, wrote a column last week for the Inquirer and Philly.com saying that it was time to have a public conversation about what to do with the Rizzo mural.

Reached Saturday afternoon, Golden sounded exasperated. Her organization just finished the credits for the last touch-up, after vandals apparently shot Rizzo's face with black paintballs in May.

"This has just become so divisive," Golden said. "My hope is that there is some way to use this and the statue as a catalyst for conversations that contribute to positive change."

Golden described Saturday's damage as "extensive," likely caused by a bottle or balloon full of white paint. Restoring the mural won't be cheap.

"We've had a lot of complicated projects in the life of Mural Arts," Golden said, "but this is one of the more complex ones."
The May 3, 2012, crash killed 20-year-old Brittney Dixon as she crossed Roosevelt Boulevard at Cottman Avenue. Read more

As the court crier for a Philadelphia Traffic Court judge, Tanya Muskelley spent years listening to tales of woe from drivers who appeared before her boss.

On Friday, Muskelley, 48, herself became one of those tales, surrendering to begin a three- to six-month prison term for drunken driving in a 2012 accident that killed a Northeast Philadelphia woman.

It could have been worse. Muskelley had been charged with vehicular homicide while driving under the influence in the May 3, 2012, crash that killed Brittney Dixon, 20, as she crossed Roosevelt Boulevard at Cottman Avenue.

Assistant District Attorney Thomas Lipscomb said that 2 hours after the accident, testing showed Muskelley had a blood-alcohol level of .201, which is 2 times the legal threshold of driving drunk.

But the facts of the case were problematic. Lipscomb said that Dixon was hit crossing against a red light and that Muskelley was driving behind a large truck when she hit Dixon in the crosswalk.

And the trial was delayed until May because of an evidentiary dispute. A Common Pleas Court judge had ruled that the prosecution could not use as evidence alcohol-safety driving materials discovered after police obtained a warrant and searched the trunk of Muskelley's car. The materials were from a prior drunken driving arrest for which she entered a pretrial diversion program. Superior Court affirmed the Philadelphia judge's ruling.

On May 30, a Common Pleas Court jury returned a guilty verdict on the charge of driving under the influence but acquitted Muskelley on three homicide counts.

On Aug. 11, Judge Diana L. Anhalt sentenced Muskelley to the maximum  three to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine  but gave her a week to surrender.

Muskelley was taken into custody Friday morning after she returned to Courtroom 807 in the Criminal Justice Center. In addition to the prison term and fine, the judge suspended Muskelley's driver's license for a year and ordered her to attend alcohol highway safety classes.

"From the start, she was guilt-ridden that she was involved in an accident that took the life of another person," said defense attorney James A. Funt. "She tried to send flowers and to reach out.  and now she'll pay the price."

It also cost Muskelley her job. After her arrest in Dixon's death, she was fired from the $44,600-a-year job she had held since 2004.

Court criers are charged with opening and closing court sessions, assembling daily case files, and helping to maintain order. The job has evolved over the years, but by tradition many court criers in Pennsylvania still say, "Oyez, oyez. All manner of persons who have any thing to do before the honorable judges of the court here holden this day, let them come forward, and they shall be heard." These days, some criers just say: "All rise, court is now in session, the Honorable [insert name here] presiding."

In 2012, Muskelley was mentioned in a state Supreme Court-commissioned investigatory report by lawyer William G. Chadwick about ticket fixing and other improper conduct in Traffic Court.

A section of the report dealing with Traffic Court Judge Robert Mulgrew reported that Mulgrew's personal aide, Gloria McNasby, and Muskelley "denied or minimized" Mulgrew's giving "special consideration" to politically connected individuals with cases in Traffic Court.

Other witnesses and documents proved otherwise, Chadwick wrote, adding that "no employee other than [McNasby and Muskelley] said that Judge Mulgrew did not participate in the practice."

Mulgrew and three other Traffic Court judges subsequently were indicted by a federal grand jury and in 2014 convicted of lying to the grand jury or FBI agents. Mulgrew, now 60, is serving an 18-month prison term in the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Dix.

In 2013, the legislature and Gov. Tom Corbett abolished Traffic Court, replaced the judges, and merged the court's caseload into the city's regular judicial system.
The Rev. Gregory Holston (right) of POWER stands next to Bishop Claire Burkat of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America during the Philly Is Charlottesville demonstration in Philadelphia. Read more

At services this weekend, Rabbi Nathan Weiner plans to stand before members of Congregation Beth Tikvah in Marlton and talk about the deadly horror in Charlottesville. He will decry the hatred, racism, and anti-Semitism that were on unabashed display there. But what he will not do, he says, is speak the name of President Trump.

"I don't take a political stand," said the 35-year-old rabbi. "I preach on values."

Yet he concedes he is struggling. And in that, he's got some high-minded company.

Even before the tiki-torch marches, the violence, and the president's equivocal blame-laying, preaching in the Age of Trump has been fraught territory for faith leaders nationwide, many of whom confront flocks that sit, sometimes testily, on opposing sides of the partisan aisle. As pastors, they must be "caring and compassionate, listening and holding communities and families together," said the Rev. Nicole Diroff, associate director of the Interfaith Center of Greater Philadelphia. But as voices of a higher authority, they also must call out injustice and immorality, and "speak truth to power."

The challenge is to do both without angering and driving away those they are charged to lead.

"I'm struggling to find a way to do it that will make me proud of my decisions in 50 years," said Weiner, "and allow me to bring as many people as I can into the fold."

The tragic events of Charlottesville, and Trump's reaction to them, have eased that dilemma for some clergy. There comes a time when naming names is imperative, said the Rev. Wayne Croft Sr., senior pastor of St. Paul's Baptist Church in West Chester. In last Sunday's sermon he did, condemning the commander-in-chief as lacking moral courage by first attributing the mayhem to "many sides" and failing to point the presidential finger at the white supremacist groups massed in the Virginia college town.

A pastoral calling demands taking sides, said the Rev. Leslie D. Callahan of St. Paul's Baptist Church in Philadelphia, who has openly opposed the Trump administration for what she calls its "racist pedigree."

"Our commitment to social justice and human thriving and human rights can't be opaque or general. [Pastors] need to be very explicit and emphatic," she said. "So I think my preaching is clearer than it's ever been."

At a time of heightened political tensions, however, that forthrightness has the potential to be misinterpreted as judgment, of disapproval of the people in the pews. When Croft assailed the president, his predominantly African American congregation  only a smattering of them Republicans  responded with applause and amens. Such is not always the case.

Since the November election, several Lutheran clergy reported being approached by church members complaining that a particular sermon was chosen as a way to criticize their political choice. In fact, the denomination's lectionary dictates the preaching topics for the week, said Bishop Claire Burkat of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Conference of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

Rabbi Deborah Waxman, president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, described how different it felt to deliver sermons to fellow members of the Reconstructionist movement, in which many are of the same political persuasion, and then venture out to speak to a more diverse group.

"Sometimes the ground is a mountaintop and I'm there with hundreds of others," she said. And "sometimes it's a very small patch and I need to be sure that I'm firmly planted."

Imam Anwar Muhamin of the Quba Masjid in Philadelphia and the Islamic Center of Reading has found that the ability to have thoughtful, measured discussions has been further complicated by the constant undermining of the truth.

"We are living in a time when the truth has multiple definitions," he said. "Before, a fact was a fact. Now people are adapting postures not even rooted in truth, so it's hard to have a productive conversation."

Earlier this year, the Interfaith Center's Religious Leaders Council hosted a seminar for clergy at United Lutheran Seminary in Mount Airy (formerly Lutheran Theological Seminary) to discuss the challenge of ministering to such a divided nation. About 180 religious leaders attended,

Some said they had discovered that their congregations were more divided than they had thought, with Trump and Clinton supporters popping up in unlikely places. Some realized an uncomfortable fact: Their personal views varied substantially from those of most of the people in their congregation.

The Rev. Keith Anderson of Upper Dublin Lutheran Church found pain in the political divides in his congregation. Since the campaign, some families had been so torn apart by the intensity of their differences that members confided to their pastor that they felt cut off from those they love.

So Anderson took on the role of healer-in chief. He organized a series of seminars and brought in a facilitator trained at Pennsylvania State University's Center for Public Diplomacy to teach conversation skills that would help people communicate and understand the complexity of "why they believe what they believe," he said. He also brought in the social action group POWER to discuss the role of faith in public life.

The Rev. Gregory Holston, POWER's executive director, said he empathizes with pastors shepherding divided congregations, but added that "there is always pressure to preach the Gospel full and free." Doing so has stirred trouble and hostility since biblical times, said Holston, also pastor of Janes Memorial United Methodist Church in Germantown.

Last Wednesday, under POWER's sponsorship, he led a "Philly Is Charlottesville" anti-racism march on Broad Street with Burkat and other clergy marching alongside. In the pulpit Sunday, Holston plans to talk about racial justice. The Rev. Christopher Walsh of St. Raymond of Penafort Catholic Church in Philadelphia and the Rev. Tom Newton of Christ Our Light parish in Cherry Hill say they will do likewise.

"I'm not preaching against the president," said Newton. "I'm not going to stand up at the lectern and say that President Trump is a horrible, mean-spirited, bigoted person. I don't know that.

"We have people in our congregation who support President Trump and may still," he said. "I'm speaking against racism, exclusion, in favor of welcoming refugees. That is what the Gospel teaches us."
Sarah Botham, a marketing director with Botham Vineyards, always saw gift baskets as a problematic gift  oddly shaped, inefficient and hard to send.

While looking for ways to generate additional revenue for the vineyard, which her husband owns, Botham began to consider ways that their wine could be gifted in a more elegant manner.

I looked at it as, how do I solve the gift basket issue if I want to do something like this? she said. I thought boxes would be a better solution.

What emerged was Wiscoboxes, a Mount Horeb-based company that specializes in making Wisconsin-themed gift boxes. The boxes hold not only wine, but other classic state staples such as chocolate, Bucky-shaped cheese, and Colectivo coffee.

Initial ideas for the company took shape in early 2016 but only began to come into fruition after Botham met up with a former student, Megan Madsen, now the companys brand manager. Botham teaches classes as a faculty associate with UW-Madisons Department of Life Sciences Communication.

We put our heads together and here we are, Botham said.

With a few hundred box sales now under its belt, the new business just received a 200-box order for a corporate-run event  its biggest order yet. Wiscoboxes splits its business about 50/50 between personal gift orders and corporate orders, Madsen said.

The pair launched the company in March 2017, with the meager goal of just ten boxes to sell to people outside of their social circles. They met and exceeded their initial goals, with sales soaring through May due to Mothers Day gift purchases.

The boxes contain products made by 50 vendors from 30 cities across the state.

We are really celebrating the makers, artists and manufacturers of our products, said Madsen.

Botham said the pair have made a concerted effort to ensure everything is made in Wisconsin, and that the contents embody the spirit of the state.

The boxes 13 themes take on charming, sometimes-kitschy names like Cheese Please, Purebred Red  a Badgers-themed customer favorite  and Enticing Vices, and range in price based on the size of the box and value of the contents. For example, Enticing Vices, which labels itself as the holy trinity of guilty pleasures, costs $45 for a small box. The box comes with a small bag of Colectivo Coffee, truffles and chocolate-covered espresso beans from Sjolinds Chocolates, a Mount Horeb-based craft chocolate store, and a bottle of Latitude 43 wine from Botham Vineyards.

But customers can also build their own boxes to suit the occasion.

We wanted to make Wiscobox workable for everyone who was gifting, Botham said.

She imagines the boxes can be used for housewarming occasions, birthdays or bridal showers.

However, the boxes have attracted professional clientele as well. Wiscoboxes has worked with hotels, law firms, real estate agents and accounting firms, with six regular clients that are companies. Businesses have used the boxes for everything from welcoming a new employee to congratulating someone who has received a promotion.

Wiscoboxes is looking to hire more employees as demand for its product grows  currently Botham and Madsen make some of the local deliveries. The companys customers are primarily based in Madison and Milwaukee, though they have shipped orders throughout the state.

The idea is to celebrate Wisconsin in all of its glory, Botham said.
In the wake of President Donald Trumps defense of neo-Nazis and white nationalists, fellow Republican and Gov. Scott Walker denounced racism but praised the Trump administrations work.

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson said he was not entirely comfortable with Trumps remarks but didnt believe he is a racist.

A more forceful Wisconsin Republican response came from Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, who opened up a can of worms about when exactly a person  much less the president  has lost any claim to any sympathy from anyone.

Addressing Trumps comments about the racists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, last week, Steineke said: I dont think its possible to be racist and a white nationalist and be a decent human being. There is no place for these kinds of racists in the Republican Party.

It seems self-evident that being a racist or white nationalist is a decency deal-breaker  unless maybe youre looking at that racist or white nationalist through the eyes of a loved one. Personal relationships make things complicated.

Clearly, legitimate political parties dont welcome racists into their midst.

Im not sure that a person who, like Trump, sees some very fine people within a crowd of neo-Nazis and white nationalists can be anything but a racist himself. But at the very least, hes a racist sympathizer.

Steinekes criticisms of Trump date back to before he won the Republican nomination, and hes been happy to declare to me that hes willing to recognize the significant failings of (people) in my own party.

But only to a point, apparently. He didnt respond this week when I asked him whether racist sympathizers can be decent human beings or a welcome part of the Republican party, or whether being a decent human being should be a prerequisite for being president.

Call me sentimental, but I think the answer to that last question is yes. Call me judgmental, but a reality TV star who brags about assaulting women, feels the need to publicly defend his penis size, makes fun of a disabled person during a political rally, and mulls creating a registry for Muslims in the United States, among other things, is not decent.

Im still optimistic enough about the American people and system of governance to believe Trump wont be allowed to bring on a nuclear apocalypse or force Muslims to start wearing yellow crescent moons on their chests. But if Im wrong, Wisconsin Republicans like Walker and Johnson are at this point in the same boat with the kind of people who lauded Mussolini for making the trains run on time.

When I look at the substance of what this administration is doing and the benefits it has for manufacturers, for farmers, for others in this state, Ive been overall very pleased, Walker told reporters on Wednesday.

And I guess if the leader of that administration delivers poorly veiled praise to neo-Nazis, so be it.

During the presidential race last year, Republican state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald urged reluctant Trump-supporters to get aboard the Trump train.

Now that they have, youve got to wonder if anything will get them off.
Police arrested a man they believe shot at someone Friday night on Madison's Southeast Side.

Antonio de Jesus Uriostegui Valencia allegedly shot at someone on the 4600 block of Femrite Drive around 10 p.m. after an argument, Sgt. Daniel Perez said.

Police found evidence of shots fired and were able to locate de Jesus Uriostegui Valencia at which time he was taken into custody, Perez said.

Perez said de Jesus Uriostegui Valencia faces tentative charges of first degree reckless endangering of safety.

No injuries were reported, Perez said.
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Another group of travellers have pitched up in Plymouth overnight.

Three caravans have set up camp in Central Park, directly behind the Lyndhurst Stand at Home Park.

Eyewitnesses claim that they arrived in the early hours of the morning.

It's the latest in a wave of traveller-related incidents in the city.

(Image: Richard Amofa)

On Friday, The Herald learned of another group of travellers, this time in a Plymstock park, plan to stay at the site for another week.

Up to 15 caravans are currently pitched in the park, directly opposite the Staddy social club in Staddiscombe Road.

The council is preparing legal action to force the caravans to move, but locals have urged the authority and police to do more.

(Image: Carl Eve)

The travellers face court action after being told to move formally on August 10, although since then more caravans have arrived at the site.

Speaking to The Herald this morning, one of the men, who claimed he came from London, then Brighton, then West Sussex, said he was unaware the council had set any day for travellers to leave.

He claimed he was not working, but was on holiday with his family and would probably stay for another week.

He insisted the traveller group were not causing any trouble and that the setting up of the camp in a public field was just part of the traveller's culture.

Plymouth City Council told The Herald on August 14 that it was applying through the courts to have the group removed.

The council admitted that it would go to county court that day with a Claim for Possession, to await a hearing date "which we expect will be next week".

A spokesperson said if it was successful the "Notice of Hearing and Claim for Possession papers will then be served on the unauthorised encampment."


Louisiana's Public Safety and Corrections officials are reviewing the sentences of 16,000 inmates who could have their prison time shortened as criminal law changes take effect Nov. 1. That's around 45% of the 35,500 people the state has locked up now, reports the Times-Picayune.

Gov. John Bel Edwards and the state Legislature overhauled the criminal justice system this past spring, aiming to reduce Louisiana's highest-in-the-world incarceration rate. Some law changes have already taken place, but changes that mostly retroactively affect low-level offenders in prison go into place in November -- driving the review.

The 16,000 prison terms being reconsidered are for nonviolent offenses only and many will likely remain unchanged, said Jimmy LeBlanc, secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections. For example, some inmates who are serving sentences for multiple offenses won't be affected. Also, the majority of people whose sentences are affected won't necessarily be getting out anytime soon, LeBlanc said.

Still, there will be an initial surge in releases from prison right after Nov. 1. About 3,000 to 4,000 of the 16,000 sentences being reviewed could be changed to make inmates eligible for release before the end of the year.
Authorities across Europe mounted a manhunt for those involved in a large-scale terrorist plot following the deadliest attacks to strike Spain in more than a decade: two vehicle assaults in Barcelona and the Catalan coastal town Cambrils, reports the Washington Post.

Investigators believe that at least eight people plotted the attacks, putting them at a level of sophistication comparable to major strikes in Paris and Brussels in recent years. Other more recent attacks in London, Berlin, and the southern French city of Nice were perpetrated by individuals operating largely on their own.

Spanish counterterrorism officers were scrambling to untangle the terrorist network, which involved at least four Moroccan citizens under age 25, according to intelligence officials. In addition to those four, authorities have detained three Moroccan men and a Spaniard.

In a sign that the attack could have been significantly worse, police said they believed the assailants were planning to use propane and butane canisters in an explosive assault against civilians. Instead, the gas ignited prematurely, destroying a house in Alcanar, about 100 miles southwest of Barcelona that was being used by the suspects. The explosion killed at least two people and injured 16, including police officers and firefighters investigating the site.

Related:

Spanish Officer Shoots, Kills 4 Terrorists to Save Injured Comrade

Vehicular Terror Attack in Spain Kills 13, Two Arrested
Two Pennsylvania State Police troopers were shot and a suspect was killed Friday night in a shootout outside of a Fairchance, PA, convenience store.

Witnesses told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the troopers, possibly working undercover, saw a man they believed had an outstanding warrant against him. The troopers stopped him, the witnesses said, and he reached into his backpack, pulled out a gun and started shooting.

At least one of the troopers returned fire, killing the man, the witnesses said. The dead man was in his mid-20s, the witnesses said.

One of the troopers was life-flighted from the scene to a hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia, officials said. The other trooper was taken to a hospital via ambulance. Both were stable and alert, WPXI TV reports.
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Steve Bannon being pushed out of the White House is not symbolic of the required ideological shifts or change necessary for President Trump to be fit for office.

Steve Bannon being elevated to the Presidents Chief Strategist was nothing but a symptom of the larger problem. The larger problem is that our President is a white supremacist, neo-Nazi sympathizer with a conspiracy-addled brain who attracts and elevates people like Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon.

Bannon being kicked out is problematic for Trump in the larger scheme of things because he cant afford to lose the support of one of his top propaganda outlets, but it is even more problematic because it perfectly captures Trumps cowardice and the way he fixes problems he creates.

The problem of Trumps racism and inability to lead is not fixed by Bannon being kicked out. Bannon is but a symptom of the larger Trump problem.

All of this drama, and its high Trumpian drama made-for-TV, is meant to hide the fact that President Trump sided with neo-Nazis and white supremacists after one of them killed a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trump has not denounced the thinking behind white supremacy. He is, like a child, unable to suggest his side was wrong, even after they killed a woman, without telling mommy that his sibling did it, too. Except his sibling did not do it, too.

So Trump has done what any low-level bully does; he fired someone underneath him who represents the thing Donald Trump just got in trouble for doing. Its like kicking the dog.

A real leader takes responsibility for their own words. They dont fire underlings for getting too much press and as a cover for their own mistakes.

We still have a Nazi and white supremacist defending President in the United States White House.

No one should be surprised, and those Trump voters who are saying they are so sorry they voted for him need to explain how they didnt know that they were voting for exactly what they are getting, since Trump was all of these things before and during the campaign.

They asked us to give him a chance, said What damage can he do. These were never inspiring come backs, but now they should haunt the people who uttered such tripe.

How many days will it be before some desperate pundit declares that Trump has become President finally, and what low bar will he have to scuttle past to get such undo, inaccurate praise.

Maybe Trump will be expected to say he is not exactly standing with the thinking that killed millions of people. What courage.
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By Thomas Escritt and Noah Barkin

BERLIN/WEIMAR, Germany (Reuters)  For the past decade, the pupils of the Manfred von Ardenne school in Berlin have been visiting a local cemetery to tend the graves of victims of the Nazis.

By honoring those who died doing forced labor for Adolf Hitlers regime and learning their stories, pupils gain a clearer, more visceral understanding of their countrys crimes 75 years ago.

It is very important for us to bring our pupils closer to what happened to make sure it never happens again, said Annemarie Sardisong, the schools head teacher. Especially now when the world seems to be coming out of joint.

In few countries was public opinion so shocked by last weekends events in Charlottesville, Virginia, as in Germany, where the sight of skinheads marching by torchlight and chanting anti-Jewish slogans had historical resonance.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned racist, far-right violence, although she also stressed that Germany had its own problems with extremism and needed to put its own house in order before pointing the finger at others.

But when U.S. President Donald Trump declined in a press conference to distance himself from white supremacists chanting Jews will not replace us, even the officially impartial German public media struggled to conceal its shock.

There is a new reason to be worried about the condition of the U.S., said news anchor Claus Kleber in a Tuesday evening broadcast. Eight years after the United States elected its first black president, we thought America had overcome its original sin of slavery and racism. Is this a relapse?

After the fall of the Nazi regime, which murdered some 6 million Jews in concentration camps and gas chambers, atoning for crimes like the Holocaust was central to post-war West Germanys ambitions to win back the worlds trust.

From the first, unamendable article of the German constitution, which declares human dignity is inviolate, to bans on extremist organizations and totalitarian symbols, or political culture classes in schools, huge efforts go into maintaining a healthy polity.

Such sensitivity can take foreigners by surprise.

Last week, a drunken American tourist was assaulted in the eastern city of Dresden for giving an outstretched-arm Hitler salute and then charged with the crime of displaying the symbol of an unconstitutional organization.

Two Chinese tourists had a similar experience, detained and fined by a passing policeman for giving the Hitler greeting when posing for photographs in front of the German parliament.

In the aftermath of the Charlottesville clashes, when a young woman was killed as far-right activists marched under the sign of the Nazis swastika symbol, Trumps failure to draw a distinction between neo-Nazis and their opponents shocked.

For an American president, his reaction was completely inappropriate, said Bengt Kasper, 54, a history teacher taking his class round the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar.

SUPPRESSING HISTORY

All over Germany lie Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones embedded in pavements, marking the last place where victims of Nazis lived in freedom before being murdered by the regime. Remembrance culture ensures the past is never far away.

Visitors familiar with London memorials that glorify generals who carried out bloody imperial campaigns in the 19th century or statues in the U.S. to Confederate leaders who fought to preserve slavery in the American Civil War are often surprised by Germanys emphasis on commemorating its darkest deeds.

I have the feeling that in the U.S. a lot of history is suppressed. We do it differently here  just look at where we are, said Martine Pukownick, 48, a nurse visiting Buchenwald, standing next to the ovens in which prisoners dead of exhaustion or typhus were cremated.

It is an irony that much of the ground for todays remembrance culture was laid by the U.S. and British victors who occupied Germany after World War Two, said Jeannette van Laak, a historian.

It was part of the democratization program put in place by the allies, she said, describing exhibitions they put on to inform a defeated and demoralized population about the horrors Germany perpetrated. It wasnt just pedagogical finger-wagging, she said. It was sober and objective.

Even in Germany, this ground is contested. A long line of conservatives, chief among them the late Franz-Josef Strauss, who ran the state of Bavaria for decades, have criticized what they see as Germany cringing before its past.

Today, that line is represented by the hard-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which is set to enter parliament for the first time in a Sept. 24 election. Bjoern Hoecke, one of its most prominent politicians, caused uproar by describing the vast field of stark concrete pillars that is Berlins Holocaust memorial as a monument of shame.

Controversy has been stirred in the United States by the removal of monuments to the pro-slavery Civil War Confederacy, a step decried by Trump in comments which echoed the views of white nationalists and drew stinging rebukes.

I saw how memorials were built and destroyed in East Germany, said Kasper, the history teacher, who cautioned against tearing down statues. It was the government that decided. Thats not the way to go. Americans must decide for themselves. It should not be decided rashly and emotionally.

(Editing by Nick Tattersall and Giles Elgood)
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On the heels of Republicans like Sen. Bob Corker questioning Trumps stability, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) has introduced a resolution calling for Trump to be removed from office due to a mental disorder.

The resolution states:



Rep. Lofgren said in a statement provided to PoliticusUSA, Many Americans, including many Republicans, have observed the Presidents increasingly disturbing pattern of actions and public statements that suggest he may be mentally unfit to execute the duties required of him. The President has not released a serious medical evaluation. As would be the case if the President were physically unable to execute the office of the President, this resolution urges those entrusted with the responsibility enshrined in the 25th Amendment to employ the services of medical and psychiatric professionals to help in their determination whether the President is mentally capable of carrying out his Constitutional responsibilities.

Only medical experts can determine whether Trump has a mental condition or illness, but consider where we are as a country. A member of Congress has proposed a resolution calling on the President Of The United States to be removed from office until he has a full psychological evaluation.

The chatter about Trumps mental state has grown from whispers to members of Congress openly questioning whether Trump is capable of doing the job.

Congress is telling Trump that needs a psych eval. The President is so dangerous that even Democrats are saying that it might be a good idea for Mike Pence to step in take over the duties of the presidency.

Donald Trump may finally bring America together in an effort to toss him out of office.
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The number 2 Republican in the Senate couldnt even manage to condemn President Trump for defending Nazis and white supremacists who killed a woman, so low has the Republican Party fallen.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said in an exclusive Chronicle interview that Trumps Charlottesville response was lacking, but I dont think its useful to criticize the president.

Republicans thought it was useful to criticize President Obama for wearing Mom jeans, but its not useful to criticize a Republican President who sides with Nazis. Cornyn himself has a long list of criticisms of Obama, including, wait for it

From The Hill:

He himself has displayed an astounding lack of leadership, Cornyn said of the president. Frankly he should be embarrassed but, unfortunately, the threshold for embarrassment here in Washington seems to be much higher here  than in the rest of the country, Cornyn said. It rankles many of us to have the president engage in such blatant demagoguery and blame-shifting when he himself has failed to take responsibility for his duties, he added.

What awful thing had Obama done? Had he sided with Nazis? Defended a murderer and said both sides do it? Um, no. He asked Republicans to do their jobs and raise the debt ceiling. This was Cornyns reaction to Obamas irritation at GOP obstruction to what used to be normal business.

Cornyn criticized Obama over data-transer-concessessions.

He ripped into Obama over the Clinton email probe.

Cornyn jabbed Obama over the former President trying to save the country from the Bush recession and for  yes, wait for it  achieving little in his first months in office, and made fun of his sagging poll numbers (which were nowhere near the toilet territory of Trumps):

I think there will be a significant number of voters who, leading up to 2010, will wonder if they voted for someone they didnt get. Cornyn didnt hesitate to jab Obama, saying that the president had achieved little in his first months in office. And the Texas Republican called Obamas economic stimulus package ill fated.

Theres plenty more where that came from. The point is, Cornyn thought there was something to be gained by criticizing Obama for doing things like the stimulus package. But now he cant muster the courage to see the point in criticizing Donald Trump, even a little, for defending a Nazi sympathizer who murdered an innocent women.

Now that a few other Republicans managed to find the courage to stand up to their own President after he defended Nazi and white supremacist ideologists after one of them killed a woman, Cornyn doesnt see anything to gain by criticizing Trump.

Weve all been shocked that the unhealed wounds of the nations racial divide flared up in such a surprising and disturbing way, Cornyn said, as if there had been no clues that Trump was going to divide the nation with racist hate during the campaign when he, oh I dont know, repeatedly engaged in racist hate, including offering to pay for the legal fees of his supporters who beat up a minority protester.

I think the president had an opportunity to send a message that would unite America behind our common resolve to heal those wounds and unite our country, and unfortunately I dont think he did that. That was Cornyns big criticism.

Cornyn seems to see Trumps biggest fault in defending Nazis is trying to have it both ways and not satisfying anyone, Sometimes, when you try to have it both ways, you satisfy people on neither side, and I think thats what he did.

Its not about sides or satisfying anyone, and even children know this. There is no other side against Nazi beliefs. Or, rather, there should NOT be a side other than against.

Republicans cant even manage to call out Trump for defending Nazis. They have found a way to make even this something that is only mildly disappointing, as if Trump littered once by accident and was apologetic.

The stunning lack of Republican expectation for even a modicum of pretense at moral leadership from Donald Trump says a lot about the modern GOP.

This, as anyone with a cell left in their brain can see, is not going to end well. Republicans will pretend to be shocked. So shocked. After all, how were they to know that the man who sided with Nazi ideology would not be a good leader for a free country.

If only someone had told them that defending Nazis didnt end well. If only there were a thing called history that could predict where gutless behavior like this went in the face of evil.
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A week after violence broke out at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, anti-racism demonstrators in Boston showed the world how to hold a peaceful protest, even with a far great number of participants.

The massive and quickly-organized event in Boston brought out an estimated 20,000 counter-protesters, and there have been very few arrests, no major violence, and most important, no deranged individuals driving cars through crowds of people.

According to CNN, The march and rally were largely peaceful other than a few skirmishes between counter-protesters and Donald Trump supporters.

The news organization noted that just eight people were arrested out of the tens of thousands who gathered in the city.

Controversial rally in Boston has ended, police say. At least 8 arrested on what was a mostly peaceful day. https://t.co/iPNIPSrrQz pic.twitter.com/fqPbKnMUQa  CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) August 19, 2017

With far greater crowds, whether its today in Boston, or the massive womens marches earlier in the year, the resistance is proving not just that they are larger in numbers than either Trump supporters or white supremacists, but also that they understand freedom of speech does not have to be violent.

While last weekend in Charlottesville was a deeply disturbing chapter in American history, todays massive anti-racism march in Boston gives us all a reason to look to the future with optimism.
A fire on Madison's Southwest Side Saturday morning displaced three residents, the Fire Department said.

A resident of a duplex on the 6200 block of Hammersley Road woke up to see and smell smoke around 5:15 a.m., spokeswoman Cynthia Schuster said.

The man immediately awoke the other residents of the fire as there were no working smoke detectors on the first or second floor, Schuster said.

The Fire Department arrived on scene within five minutes of the resident's 911 call and knocked down the fire in two minutes, Schuster said.

The fire was contained to the kitchen, Schuster said, but there was smoke damage throughout the unit.

No one was injured and all occupants made it out of the building safely, including a pet bird, Schuster said.

The American Red Cross provided assistance and temporary accommodations for the residents until their unit is habitable again, Schuster said. The residents in the other unit were able to return to their residence.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, and no estimate for the cost of damages was available.
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By Gina Cherelus

(Reuters)  Duke University removed a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from the entrance of a chapel on the Durham, North Carolina, campus, officials said on Saturday, days after it was vandalized.

The decision to take down the statue followed discussions among students, faculty, staff and alumni about maintaining safety on campus, university President Vincent E. Price said in a statement.

I took this course of action to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university, Price said.

The prestigious university will preserve the statue of Lee, who led Confederate forces in the American Civil War of 1861-1865, and use it as an educational tool so that students can study Dukes complex past, Price added.

The Confederacy, comprised of 11 Southern states, broke from the Union largely to preserve the institution of slavery.

Symbols of the Confederacy have come into focus since last weekend, when white nationalists, angered at the planned removal of a statue of Lee from a park in Charlottesville, Virginia, engaged in violent protests where a counter-protester was killed.

The Robert E. Lee statue, one of 10 outside Duke Chapel, was vandalized and defaced late on Wednesday night. Campus security discovered the damage early Thursday, according to university officials. The incident was under investigation.

Wednesday nights act of vandalism made clear that the turmoil and turbulence of recent months do not stop at Dukes gates, Price said.

We have a responsibility to come together as a community to determine how we can respond to this unrest in a way that demonstrates our firm commitment to justice, not discrimination, he said.

Duke will form a committee to advise the school on how to properly memorialize historical figures on campus, and to recommend teaching programs, exhibitions and forums to explore its past.

There are more than 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy, including 700 monuments and statues, in public spaces across the United States, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.

The large majority of these were erected long after the Civil War ended in 1865. Many went up early in the 20th century during a backlash among segregationists against the civil rights movement.

More than a half-dozen have been taken down since last week.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)
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By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters)  Defense Secretary Jim Mattis travels to the Middle East and eastern Europe next week to play the increasingly familiar role of reassuring allies that the United States is committed to them despite mixed messages from President Donald Trump.

Mattis will visit Jordan, Turkey, and Ukraine to address concerns about the fight against Islamic State and give a message that Washington will not tolerate Russias annexation of eastern Ukraine.

The informal portfolio of soothing traditional U.S. friends upset by Trumps often sharp comments and tweets on foreign policy is one that the retired Marine general is becoming used to.

There is no-one in the administration, maybe with the exception of Vice President Mike Pence, that has to shoulder the responsibility of Trumps rhetoric more than Mattis, said Joshua Walker, a former U.S. diplomat and current fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank.

Earlier this month, Trump said that a U.S. military option was being considered for Venezuela as the country is torn by political and economic upheaval. Within a few hours, the Pentagon publicly announced that it had not received any orders on Venezuela, lowering the temperature slightly.

Mattis, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, sent a conciliatory message to North Korea last weekend in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal after Trump had threatened fire and fury if Pyongyang tried to attack the United States.

The two officials wrote that the United States has no interest in regime change or accelerated reunification of Korea, addressing some of North Koreas fears that Washington ultimately intends to replace its leadership.

It is certainly true that to some extent if you look at both Mattis and Tillerson, who travel a lot, they are both explainers and people who both manage to moderate and reassure, said Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

Mattis served as the head of U.S. militarys Central Command from 2010 to 2013, and foreign leaders, especially in the Middle East, trust him, said Cordesman.

On a trip to Iraq earlier this year, Mattis grabbed headlines when he said the U.S. military was not there to seize anybodys oil.

That was an attempt to calm Iraqi worries after Trump had told CIA staff in January, when referring to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003: We should have kept the oil. But okay. Maybe youll have another chance.

Trump has also upset NATO allies by demanding they increase their defense spending and by seeking better relations with Russia.

I do think that Secretary Mattis finds himself spending time, putting President Trumps statements into a broader context in some cases that does mean defining them more narrowly, or more precisely as to what they mean, Christine Wormuth, a former number three at the Pentagon, said.

A TRIP TO REASSURE

On the trip that starts this weekend, Mattis will make the first visit to Ukraine by a U.S. secretary of defense since 2007. He will try to reassure Kiev that the United States remains committed to restoring Ukraines sovereignty after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

Questions were raised when Tillerson said in June that the Trump administration did not wish to be handcuffed by the 2015 Minsk accord to end fighting in Ukraine.

That agreement, signed by Russia and Ukraine, calls for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line and constitutional reform to give eastern Ukraine more autonomy.

While it is not a close U.S. ally, Ukraine has counted on American support against Russia since a pro-Western government took power following street protests in 2014 that ousted a Kremlin-backed president.

Trumps comments during the election campaign last year, from praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin to appearing to recognize Crimea as part of Russia and contemplating an end to U.S. sanctions on Moscow, stoked fears in Kiev that Trump would mend ties with Russia at Ukraines expense.

The Pentagon is awaiting White House approval for a proposal to send defensive weapons to Ukraine, including anti-tank missiles, a U.S. official said.

Michael Carpenter, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the region, said the trip would be important because it would send a signal to Kiev that the United States remained committed and the approval of the lethal weapons would be a tangible sign of that.

Mattis believes that this is a security issue that goes beyond Europe, that this is about international norms, sovereignty and territorial integrity, Carpenter said.

The Pentagon says Mattis will also emphasize the commitment of the United States to Turkey and help Ankara address its legitimate security concerns- including the fight against the (Kurdistan Workers Party).

However, Mattis will have to address a number of differences, including the Pentagons decision to arm Kurdish YPG fighters to support an operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State.

Ankara views the YPG, fighting within a larger U.S.-backed coalition, as the Syrian extension of the Kurdish PKK militant group, which it is fighting in southeastern Turkey.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Alistair Bell)
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The financial losses are piling up for Trump as seven charities have announced that they will not be returning to Trumps Mar-a-Lago private club to hold fundraisers.

David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post tweeted his list of charities that have bailed on Trump:

The latest on charities pulling out of @realDonaldTrump's Mar-a-Lago, incl. 7 canceled galas https://t.co/eQDYMA2qMz pic.twitter.com/jXvwGN69Ly  David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) August 19, 2017

According to The Post, Trump could be losing millions of dollars from these canceled events, The cancellations hit at one of the private Florida clubs top moneymakers: The club earned between $100,000 and $275,000 each from similar-sized events in the past during Palm Beachs glitzy social seasons.

There are two things that Trump appears to love more than anything else in this world. Trump loves getting good publicity, and he loves money. The Presidents comments on Charlottesville are earning him unending negative publicity, and he is losing money.

The many financial conflicts of interest in Donald Trumps presidency cut both ways. Trump is the using the presidency to make money, but there is also potential there for a disgusted population to strike back by hitting Trump in the wallet. Never in the modern presidential era has a president been so vulnerable to outside financial pressures.

Charities are pulling away from Trump because the Trump brand name is becoming closely associated with racism. No good charity wants to risk their good name by being associated in the minds of the public with Trumps support for racists.

This is a reminder that Trump is not only ruining the presidency. He is also destroying a business.
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As people rush to distance themselves from Donald Trump on the heels of his statements defending white supremacists, the president and First Lady have announced that they will not be participating in the Kennedy Center Honors later this year.

Each year, the Kennedy Center honors the careers and achievements of artists who have helped shape cultural life in the United States with a weekend that includes celebrations and events, a White House statement read. The President and First Lady have decided not to participate in this years activities to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.

Its unclear whether any of the honorees would have been left if Trump did decide to attend the ceremony, which recognizes careers in the performing arts.

Carmen de Lavallade, a choreographer being honored at the gala, announced earlier this week that she would skip the White House reception connected to the official ceremony, citing Trumps divisive recent rhetoric.

In light of the socially divisive and morally caustic narrative that our current leadership is choosing to engage in, and in keeping with the principles that I and so many others have fought for, I will be declining the invitation to attend the reception at the White House, she said in a statement.

Responding to Trumps decision to skip the event, the president and chairman of the Kennedy Center essentially gave a collective sigh of relief.

In choosing not to participate in this years Honors activities, the administration has graciously signaled its respect for the Kennedy Center and ensures the Honors gala remains a deservingly special moment for the honorees, they said. We are grateful for this gesture.

The news comes a day after all 17 members of the White House panel on the arts and humanities resigned en masse, saying to Trump: Your values are not American values.

Other White House councils have also disbanded following Charlottesville, signaling that this president is increasingly alone and isolated, even among the people  business leaders  with whom he claimed to have great working relationships.

The longer Donald Trump remains in the White House, spewing hatred and emboldening some of the vilest aspects of American society, the more difficult it will be for anybody with a conscience to stand by him.
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The white supremacists and neo-Nazis that Trump endorsed as good people had to cut their rally short as counter protesters in Boston chanted, Get the f**k out of our city.

Video:

Opposition groups began to march on the streets of Boston Saturday (August 19) ahead of a Free Speech rally with right-wing speakers, a week after a woman was killed at a Virginia white-supremacist protest.

Streets around Boston Common were lightly trafficked early on Saturday, while some 500 police officers placed barricades to prevent vehicles from entering the park, the nations oldest.

Last weekends violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one woman was killed in a car rampage after bloody street battles, ratcheted up racial tensions already inflamed by white supremacist groups marching more openly in rallies across the United States.

Just in case anyone in the White House or conservative media tries to demonize these brave people who stood up against racism, protester Danielle Williams said, What brought me out here today? I wanted to use my faith voice to say that enough is enough. I feel that with Donald Trump and what he stands for, the message of hate that he stand for needs to be diluted with love, and thats why I came here today.
Adam Parker has covered many beats and topics for The Post and Courier, including race and history, religion, and the arts. He is the author of "Outside Agitator: The Civil Rights Struggle of Cleveland Sellers Jr.," published by Hub City Press.
Derryck Barentine had just turned 20 and was working as a welder apprentice through a contractor at Detyens Shipyards, a ship repair yard in North Charleston. In the sprawling industrial complex, deaths due to falls, crushing and electrocution have left coworkers like him  men and women scarred by the tragedies they witnessed and the friends they lost. Read moreShipyard deaths take toll on workers left to grapple with trauma, friends lost
Emails between patients and doctors lead to more office visits and dont improve health, contrary to the intent of the increasingly popular exchanges, according to a UW-Madison study.

A likely reason for the additional office visits: Patient conditions are too complex to explain by email and doctors want to avoid liability, so they often bring in patients who email  even for minor problems for which patients would not have sought an office visit.

These emails basically work as a trigger because theyre not as comprehensive as a face-to-face interaction, said Hessam Bavafa, an assistant professor of operations and information management at UW-Madisons Wisconsin School of Business.

The findings, published in the journal Management Science, could lead health care organizations to rethink or improve e-visits, which have become widely available in recent years, including in Madison.

Bavafa and two researchers from the University of Pennsylvania studied e-visits, from 2008 to 2013, at an unnamed large health care system on the East Coast, where about 15 percent of patients emailed with their doctors.

E-visits resulted in a 6 percent increase in office visits. For doctors, the additional office visits took up 45 minutes a month, causing them to see 15 percent fewer new patients.

It was a bit surprising, Bavafa said. When you give email access to patients, youre providing them with a new channel of communicating with their providers. But youre also reducing the cost of the communication. Previously, they had to pick up the phone (or go in). Now, you can send an email at 2 a.m.

To assess whether e-visits improved health, the researchers looked at patients levels of cholesterol and glucose, measures for heart disease risk and diabetes.

We didnt find any improvements, Bavafa said.

The health care system that was studied has free-form e-visits, secure portals with subject lines and text boxes, allowing patients to write whatever they want. Structured e-visits  online forms with particular questions and possible responses  might elicit more specific information from patients that could yield different results, Bavafa said.

Many doctors dont get paid for emails to patients, but some health care systems charge co-pays for e-visits.

UW Health uses structured e-visits, available only for certain conditions, and charges $30, spokeswoman Lisa Brunette said.

UnityPoint Health-Meriters Virtual Care visits, also for certain conditions, are done by video, with a $39 fee.

We dont think this is adding more visits for patients since we have appropriate parameters in place for the visits, Meriter spokeswoman Leah Huibregtse said.

Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin has structured e-visits, called Virtuwell, and also allows patients to email doctors through MyChart, like other providers, said Dr. Mark Huth, CEO.

In our experience, it has led to fewer office visits, Huth said. Its a tremendous convenience for the patients as well.

SSM Health Dean Medical Group also has e-visits.
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
LAS VEGAS  Control of the U.S. Senate may come down to Nevada, where a slow ballot count entered its final act Saturday in the nail-biter contest between Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt. Read moreSenate control may come down to Nevada as count nears end
When Jim Hair told me his son's friend, Dave Paape, invited us to stay at his cabin on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, I was all in. Not that I spend much time fishing anywhere, but getting to Alaska again, and especially the Kenai, was very appealing. I told Jim he and I, and "Backwater Bob" Kennedy should go, and before long it was planned.

I'd written previously about an Alaska trip with my wife, Linda, which we both enjoyed immensely. I sure wish she was around to go back with me, but going with two friends who have supported me so much since her passing seemed like a nice alternative.

We spent a night in Anchorage, then headed south on U.S. Highway 1 to the Kenai. We were first impressed by the fast-moving turbid waters of the Turnagain Arm, a long stretch of ocean water extending into the Gulf of Alaska. Tidal differences of up 30 feet or more can lead to Bore tides, which are moving walls of water that are especially dramatic with the ocean rushing in to fill the Arm after an extremely low tide. Some of the tides bring in surfers or dolphins riding the waves, as well as feeding beluga whales.

Other great scenery and a busy two-lane highway were part of our three-hour trip before reaching Dave's cabin. He would be arriving later in the evening with his son, Henry, in preparation for a couple days of fishing like the three of us had not done before.

The cabin was an A-frame, with a front deck that looked out to high mountains a half mile away, and a rear view that looked up to another peak almost out the back door. We could see one glacier between a couple of the peaks out front, but Dave told us when he bought the place 10 years ago he could see seven. Interestingly, he noted "this change is referred to by most Alaskans as the glacier just melting," with no reference to why.

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Our next day's fishing would be on Resurrection Bay, an ocean inlet, in Dave's boat, a wide, curved 15-footer with a 9.9-horse motor. It was roomy enough for the five of us, and the motor got us around just fine. Although other species might be caught, we were fishing for silver salmon using a rubber lure tipped with a piece of herring and weighted to take it down to depths of a 100 feet or more.

A five-pounder was in the boat after about 15 minutes, but then things slowed. We ended up with five fish to take back to smoke for eating later, but, what we lacked in fish action was more than made up in scenery, with a backdrop of mountains and glaciers.

The next day we geared up a bit differently. When I looked off the deck, Dave was taking the motor off the boat and explained later we'd be just "drifting" while he maneuvered with two long oars for 21 miles on the fast-moving Kenai River. We would be fishing with imitation salmon eggs, drifting it over areas where red salmon were spawning, hoping to hook into rainbow trout, a fish which loves to inhale salmon eggs. Just by luck, I caught the first rainbow, a 15-incher, with little luck after that. Although, again, the scenery was glorious.

Fishing the Kenai, we passed by hundreds of other fishermen/women, few drifting like us, but most on shore casting out to try to snag the mouth of the non-eating red salmon, also called sockeye. I couldn't believe how successful some were at this tricky technique, and just wished I could be snorkeling the river to witness it

At one site near the famous Russian River, a tributary of the Kenai, we saw maybe 50 people fishing from the shore. Some were very near a grizzly bear, probably looking for a free meal of salmon carcasses that were thrown in the water after cleaning caught fish.

I was kind of amazed, as I had just finished one of those can't-put-down books called "After the Bear." It was written by a fisherman who had been mauled near there by a grizzly in 2003, losing his sight and having numerous operations to restore his face.

After my trip to Alaska with Linda I felt it just didn't seem like part of the U.S., and now, three years later, the spectacular Kenai Peninsula reaffirmed that thought.
"Where there is no struggle, there is no strength," Oprah Winfrey said.

With those words in mind, I wished myself good luck and began to climb the 7,200 steps that lead to the top of Mount Tai, a famous, sacred mountain in China. It's also the leader of China's five great mountains. It contains historic and cultural value in Chinese history. It has been recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization as a "Nature and Culture World Heritage" site. Mount Tai has been managed by this organization for around 15 years.

Mount Tai has been worshipped on and to for about 3,000 years. Many people have paid tribute to the mountain, including Huang DI, the first Chinese Emperor, and many other successful emperors. They paid tribute to the mountain during the Feng-Shan sacrifices. Feng was the ritual that ancient emperors provided offerings to heaven on top of Mount Tai. Shan was the offering ceremony to earth on a lower hill of Mount Tai.

Considered a spiritual mountain, Mount Tai is still visited today by many Chinese people who want to seek good fortune and protection.

The altitude of the mountain is 5,029 feet. The 7,200 steps lead visitors to its top, Nantian Men. An average person will likely spend 7-1/2 hours to complete the journey.

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Going through the north gate, there is the option of taking the cable car from beginning to end or climbing the whole way. The other option is to enter through the "Red Gate" at the south end of the mountain, where you have the option of hiking halfway to Zhongtan Men and taking the cable car to Nantian Men.

We decided to enter the "Red Gate." Most people enter through the Red Gate and still climb the whole way because that was the exact trail Confucius took, and it is the most traditional route. Also when walking the Red Gate's trail, you'll get to see more historical and cultural sites. During our climb, we saw temples, shops, and animals. The temples we passed were worshiped by the Chinese for over 1,000 years; their faith has been associated with Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. These shops were filled with burning incense and other goods and food.

Mountain climbers were greeted by many natural habitats, peacocks, chickens, hens and dogs. When we reached the halfway point we were exhausted and definitely didn't want to climb another few thousand stairs. We climbed into our cable car which swayed its way to the top. We were high up from the mountain and had fantastic bird's eye view. The trails appeared as never-ending, tangled threads bounded by lush green covered mountain side. Visitors were like tiny ants crawling along the threads.

When we were nearing the top, we saw the so-called "Shibapan," which means 18 levels of stairs. This is the most adventurous and difficult part of the 7,200 steps. The Shibapan are the 1,827 steepest set of stairs on Mount Tai. When people arrive at the Shibapan, they are already exhausted, but they have to climb this more difficult part to reach the finish line. We began heading up even higher. Clouds surrounded us and helped us float to the top. It was a sight to see.

When we reached the top of the mountain, there were hotels, stores, restaurants, and campgrounds. Some people decide to stay for a couple hours and head back down. We decided to stay in a hotel and spend one or two nights to enjoy the sunrise, relax, and explore nature.

The Jade Emperors Peak, the very tip of Mount Tai, is where we watched the sunrise very early in the morning, about 4 a.m. The early morning is cold. Local hotels offer large army coats to rent.

We left our hotel at 3:40 a.m. and spent 20 minutes hiking and readying our cameras for the sunrise to appear. Unfortunately, it was a cloudy day, so we couldn't see it very well. Instead, we decided to walk around.

The Jade Emperors peak is north of the Temple of Princess of Rosy clouds. There is also a large rock with words inscribed in Chinese. One of the most important rock inscriptions was Tang Mo Ya by one of the most prominent Tang Dynasty's emperors, Tang Xuan-Zong (r. 712-756). He went to the Fung-Shan ceremony on Mount Tai. He later wrote about his experience. He ordered his words to be carved on a rock and inlaid with gold.

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The inscription is 13.2 meters high, 5.3 meters wide, and contains 108 words. Another famous rock is inscribed "The Most Revered of the Five Sacred Mountains," which is 2.1 meters high and 0.65 meters wide. According to an original document, there were about 2,500 stone inscriptions. Now, there are around 1,000 still standing.

In ancient China, Chinese thought that nature was like a God. The Chinese philosophy is to connect their inner spirits with nature. They write on stones to represent their desire of being in harmony with nature. If an emperor made a wrong decision that offended nature, the country could be punished by floods and earthquakes. If he made a good decision, there would be clear skies and good harvest. They decided to write holy inscriptions on stones to be in one with nature.

When it was time to leave, we rode the cable car down half the mountain and hiked through a small trail to a bus, and then we rode a bus to return to the Red Gate.

Visiting Tai Mountain was a great experience. I got to see Chinese culture that was passed down generation to generation. The sacred mountain was the vehicle and symbol of Chinese civilization. The 7,200 stairs to the top serve as a reminder of our long and difficult spiritual journey to reveal the inner connection between us and nature.
As my parents have grown older, my desire to haul them around to far-flung places has only grown.

Since my dad turns 75 this year and my mom turns 70 the next, I know our time together could easily come to an end in the next 5 to 20 years. So of course I want them to relax on beautiful beaches, enjoy delicious dinners and forget about their worldly troubles for a while.

Unfortunately, vacationing with parents isn't cheap. You're adding a few adults to your travel plans, and we all know that more people means more money.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to vacation with your parents for less than you think. Here are a few of my top tips:

Leverage travel rewards together

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The last few years, I've talked my parents into signing up for valuable travel credit cards that help them fly and stay for free. They've used signup bonuses from cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred and Southwest Premier Credit Card to fly to Jamaica with us twice.

This year, they're leveraging their Chase Ultimate Rewards points to fly with us to Jamaica, then transferring points to IHG Rewards and Hyatt for seven nights at the Holiday Inn Resort in Montego Bay and the Hyatt Ziva all-inclusive.

The key to making a rewards strategy work with parents is making sure you're all on the same page, booking early when there's plenty of award availability and ramping up your point-earning strategy at least 12 months before you plan to go anywhere.

Book a huge condo for everyone

Another strategy we've used with my parents is booking a big rental home or condo so that everyone has plenty of space. Booking a condo on the beach is often much cheaper than staying in a hotel, plus you can save even more by preparing your own meals.

An added bonus is that you can enjoy a common living space big enough for everyone to hang out.

Drive, don't fly

No matter where you're traveling, airfare is often the biggest expense of any trip. CheapAir.com reports that the average domestic fare is $336 as of this writing, bringing the grand total for airfare to at least $2,016 for an extended family of six.

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The best way to avoid this added expense is to travel somewhere you can drive, not fly. Even if you have to rent a car, you could still end up way ahead.

Ask for those senior discounts

Some hotel brands offer discounts just for seniors. Hyatt, Choice Hotels, Marriott and Wyndham are examples with special savings.

The best way to find out about these discounts is to call and inquire. Marriott, for example, doesn't offer the senior rate on their website but asks guests to call their reservation line to secure a senior discount of up to 15 percent off.

If you can talk your parents into making your reservations, you could easily save up to 15 percent at 4,000 Marriott locations, up to 50 percent off Hyatt properties and special savings at Wyndham hotels, to name a few.
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A Rochester business discovered a dim spot days ahead of Monday's solar eclipse.

Everything Hobby , 1310 Seventh St. NW, is offering cash refunds after discovering the glasses it sold for viewing the solar eclipse might be counterfeit.

"There is growing concern that the Solar Eclipse Sunglasses we sold bore the correct certifications, but upon further inspection may, in fact be counterfeit," the store posted in its Facebook page late Friday morning.

The store sold 100 pairs of glasses, but one customer purchased 56 of them and had already returned them Friday afternoon.

Kyle Pasbrig, a store employee, said the decision to offer refunds came out of concerns for customers' safety. Full cash refunds are being offered up until the eclipse, and store credit will be given for pairs returned after the moon temporarily blocks the sun on Monday.

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Everything Hobby isn't the only business to be stuck with what appear to be fake solar eclipse glasses. Amazon has sent warnings to some customers, and the Better Business Bureau issued a scam warning earlier in the week.

"Scammers are opportunists who take advantage of whatever is going on in the news and in the world," said Katherine Hutt, BBB national spokeswoman. "The phony and dangerous eclipse glasses are an obvious fraud, but consumers should be prepared for other possible scams as the excitement over the total eclipse escalates this week. BBB's scam tips can help identify all the common tactics scammers use."

Pasbrig said Everything Hobby became aware of the problem when a customer returned the glasses and questioned whether they were properly certified. He said information provided with the glasses appeared to conflict with known safety precautions.

Unfortunately, as Pasbrig noted, spotting fake glasses can be difficult. Since fake ratings can be printed on the paper frames, simply looking at them isn't enough.

While normal sunglasses block about 50 percent of the sun's rays, properly certified solar filter glasses block more than 99.99 percent of the rays.

The best way to test a pair of glasses is to look at a smartphone's LED flashlight while wearing them. You should only see the bulbs. If any other light is seen, the glasses are likely unsafe for viewing the solar eclipse.

The American Astronomical Society has published a list of reputable vendors, but it might be too late to track down a pair by Monday.

Without a special pair of glasses, the best option for viewing the solar eclipse is by making a pinhole projector using directions that can be found online .
Action following a pair of mayoral vetoes will be considered Monday.

Rochester Mayor Ardell Brede vetoed two actions following the Aug. 7 Rochester City Council meeting, which require a second council vote on Monday.

Kutzky House

Brede objected to the denial of a demolition permit for the Kutzky House, which was moved from 718 W. Center St. to 809 First St. SW in 2014 to make room for the development of the Nicholas Apartments.

In a statement regarding his decision, Brede cited previous appraisals that questioned the historic status of the 103-year-old former home of August and Bertha Kutzky, early settlers of Rochester who owned land that became part of the Kutzky Park Neighborhood.

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He also acknowledged circumstances are not ideal.

"Certainly, as some would say, it's a 'travesty' that the house was left to be in a condition that creates an uninhabitable situation," he wrote. "To force what I would see as a public flogging of the ownership serves no real purpose at this stage. Could the house have been preserved, perhaps; is this 'demolition by neglect,' perhaps."

On Aug. 7, the council voted 4-2, with one member missing, to deny the permit, indicating members wanted more information regarding plans for the property if the house were demolished.

Livestreaming

Brede's second veto came after a 5-1 vote to install video equipment in room 104 of City Hall, where the council holds its weekly committee-of-the-whole meetings. The equipment, which comes with a $25,000 price tag, would also allow the meetings to be streamed live online.

In his veto statement, the mayor said the expenditure is "unnecessary and audio recordings are sufficient."

The current practice calls for posting audio recordings of the informal meetings online.

Next steps

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With the measures vetoed, the council will vote during their regular meeting at 7 p.m. Monday in council chambers of the city-county Government Center, 151 Fourth St. SE., on whether to override each veto.

Five of the seven council members must approve the action to overcome the mayor's objection in each instance.
ST. PAUL  Minnesota residents who work in Wisconsin will get a tax break next year, but they'll still have to file tax returns in both states.

Minnesota is abandoning efforts this year to reach a tax reciprocity agreement with Wisconsin. Instead, the state will give Minnesota residents who cross the border a tax credit to make up for the higher Wisconsin taxes. That tax credit will be in effect for 2017 and cost the state an estimated $8.5 million.

Minnesota lawmakers passed legislation this year allowing the tax credits to kick in if a tax reciprocity agreement couldn't be reached. House Taxes Committee Chairman Greg Davids, R-Preston, authored the bill.

"This is a great day for Minnesotans that work in Wisconsin. They just got a pay raise, and that's a good thing," Davids said.

Minnesota had a tax reciprocity agreement with Wisconsin for more than 40 years. That ended in 2009 when then-Gov. Tim Pawlenty scrapped the deal in the midst of a state budget shortfall. He cited Wisconsin's repeated failure to pay money it owed Minnesota on time. At one point, Wisconsin was sending its payments for $100 million to the state 15 months late. Since 2009, efforts by Minnesota and Wisconsin revenue officials to reach a deal have failed.

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An estimated 24,000 Minnesotans work in Wisconsin and many of them have had to pay hundreds of dollars more in income taxes each year than they did when reciprocity was in place. The hardest-hit county in the state is Houston County, which has the most Minnesota residents working in Wisconsin. A 2013 study estimated 3,638 Houston County residents work in the Badger State.

Minnesota Department of Revenue Commissioner Cynthia Bauerly sent a letter to Wisconsin Department of Revenue Secretary Richard Chandler this week announcing the decision to cease tax reciprocity negotiations for 2017. In a statement, Bauerly said she concluded reinstating tax reciprocity would not be in Minnesota's best interest at this time.

"Given the new refundable credit, Minnesotans will not pay more in taxes without an agreement," Bauerly said. "And because an agreement would cause additional financial exposure for Minnesota's budget, an income tax reciprocity agreement with Wisconsin is not in Minnesota's best interest."

The Wisconsin Department of Revenue did not respond to a request for comment on Minnesota's decision.

La Crescent Mayor Mike Poellinger said tax reciprocity is a big issue in his community, where upwards of 80 percent of residents work in Wisconsin. He welcomed news about the tax credit.

"It's great that it's happening, and I applaud Minnesota for recognizing the situation and trying to remedy it," Poellinger said.

However, he said he does have concerns about how complicated it will be for people to take advantage of the tax credit.

"If it's not simple to apply, it may be something where (taxpayers) have to seek professional help to take advantage of it. Hopefully, that won't be the case," he said.

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He added he still would like to see tax reciprocity between the two states restored because it makes filing taxes much easier for border-crossers.

Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona, supported the tax credit legislation. He said he supports Minnesota officials' decisions to give up on the reciprocity talks this year and move ahead with the tax credit.

"I just don't see us working with Wisconsin in particular on this issue," he said. "It's not a big enough issue for them. They obviously aren't getting the same number of complaints we are, or if they are, they are going unheeded."
RUSHFORD  When floodwaters submerged this small town 10 years ago, some feared it never would recover.

Hundreds of homes and business were damaged or destroyed. The city's elementary school had raw sewage in its basement. It took a month just to get electricity back in town.

But early worries that this town of 1,700-plus would wither and die were unfounded.

"I think that's kind of the surprise of what happened. People did stay. And they made a point of it. It's their home," Rushford Mayor Chris Hallum said.

On a recent weekday, Hallum offered a guided tour of the city's downtown. All of the commercial spaces are full. Some of the buildings were renovated after the storm. Others were torn down and replaced with newer buildings.

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"We are a full service community. We've got restaurants. We've got two banks and a credit union. We've got the hardware store. We've got a clinic. We've got the pharmacy. We've got Tri-County Electric right here in town. There is so much that we have. People want to be here," Hallum said.

That is not to say it has been easy. The region suffered one of the worst natural disasters in state history. On Aug. 18, 2007, rain started to fall. And it kept falling, shattering the state's rainfall records with 15 inches recorded in Hokah. Seven people died in the floods, and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage resulted. Hardest hit were the cities of Rushford, Stockton, Minnesota City and Elba.

Hallum remembers all too well the night Rush Creek topped the city's levee and poured into town. He lived in an upstairs apartment in a part of town called "Jerusalem." In the middle of the night, firefighters rescued him and his neighbors using a boat.

"We were hitting cars we couldn't see," Hallum said.

A 10-year recovery

Rushford-Peterson Public Schools Superintendent Chuck Ehler had been on the job only five weeks when the floods hit. He was out of town celebrating his son's birthday when he got a 4 a.m. phone call that the community was flooded and the district's elementary school was being used as an evacuation center.

"I made my way into town Monday morning," Ehler said, "and it was almost disbelief. Just saying, 'Wow. What happened to our quaint little community?'"

The lower level of the school was filled with raw sewage. Floodwaters had damaged the elementary wing, shop area and tunnels under the school. Despite the obstacles, the community rallied, and the school opened on time for students.

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But one of the major fears was the district would lose a lot of students. In the immediate aftermath of the flood, 13 families moved, Ehler said. Despite the hardships and challenge, the community embraced the motto "Never, ever give up," which appeared on bumper stickers and signs around town.

And 10 years later, Rushford-Peterson's enrollment has remained stable. Today  the 10th anniversary of the flood  the district is celebrating the opening of a new $38 million early childhood-through-12th grade school with an open house and ribbon-cutting. That school was built, in part, thanks to $20 million in state assistance.

"When we first started that whole recovery process, they told us it would be a 10-year process. And they're right. It has been," Ehler said.

'A place of fellowship'

Amy Feller is among those who decided to invest in the city and open a business. She and her husband, Kevin Feller, own Jessie Street Java. They opened the downtown coffee shop three years ago. How's business?

"It's been really good. This has been our best year yet. It's just building. Our loyalty is getting stronger," she said.

The coffee shop owner lived through the floods and said she was inspired by the generosity and camaraderie she saw in the wake of the disaster. She wanted to open up a place to help continue that sense of community.

"Everyone rallied together so incredibly (after the flood) that it actually formed a deeper love for this community for me because I saw the true hearts of people who were willing to help complete strangers," she said. "We knew that Rushford needed a place to bring that spirit back after the flood. This is a place of fellowship."

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'Rushford has come back'

Rushford resident Bonnie Prinsen also was struck by the generosity that followed in the wake of the flood. She helped volunteer to cook and serve food at St. Joseph Catholic Church's Montini Hall. Dubbed "Montini Cafe," crews whipped together three meals a day for displaced families and cleanup volunteers for three months. Donations of food and money kept pouring in to keep the meals coming.

"It was kind of a miraculous thing. We're small. We're not a wealthy group, but we were never at a loss for food," Prinsen said. "We served over 50,000 meals."

On Sunday, the church is reopening Montini Cafe from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to commemorate the flood. The event will feature a hot meal, live music and a program with speakers at 1 p.m.

"The flood was such a difficult time for so many people. I think there is still healing to happen. It was devastating. But most people have positive memories of Montini Hall," she said.

Ask residents how the town is doing and most agree it is doing fairly well. There still are some people struggling. Some vacant lots still can be seen around town where people opted not to build. And, similar to most rural small towns, Rushford has its share of challenges, including attracting new businesses and a lack of housing stock. But overall, residents are bullish on Rushford's future.

"I would definitely say Rushford has come back," Prinsen said.
ST. PAUL  It's the last call for St. Paul's only 3.2 bar, and the owner is ready to turn out the lights.

"I'm 75. It's too late for me," said John Weber, taking a break from mowing grass at the Beehive Tavern in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood. "There is no money in it anymore."

The Beehive once was among dozens of Twin Cities bars serving the low-alcohol beer. But sales of 3.2 beer are as flat as a week-old opened bottle of Pabst, and Minnesota is one of only five states that still sells it.

That means the future of 3.2 bars like the Beehive is bleak. The low-alcohol beer is also sold in gas stations and supermarkets, where sales have been hurt by the recent addition of Sunday liquor sales. And tastes have changed, making 3.2 Minnesota's most endangered brew.

"I have seen people come in here and then turn around and walk out," said Beehive bartender Michael, who didn't want his last name published.

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The fact that such a weak beer even exists requires some explaining.

During Prohibition, the U.S. Congress tried to weasel out of a complete ban on alcohol. It declared that any drink with 3.2 percent alcohol or less could not be called an "alcoholic beverage" by law.

Overnight, bars selling 3.2 beer spread across the country.

"It was the first step in repealing Prohibition," said Mike Madigan, president and legal counsel of the Minnesota Beer Wholesalers Association .

When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, states had the power to make their own rules.

State by state and even county by county, new rules were set. They banned sales to minors, forbade Sunday sales, limited sales only to bars, and eliminated late-night hours for taverns.

Out of the five states selling 3.2 beer today, Colorado and Oklahoma are scheduled to phase it out in the next two years. That will leave Utah, Kansas and Minnesota as the last holdouts.

Madigan said 3.2 beer is only "in the single digits" as a percentage of Minnesota beer sales. Half of the national 3.2 beer market is in Oklahoma and another 20 percent in Colorado.

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This has led to speculation that big beer-brewers might suspend the brewing of 3.2-beer.

But Madigan doesn't think so. The market is shrinking, but in Minnesota it's not going to disappear because of sales at resorts. The resorts have found that 3.2 licenses are easier to get, and those in isolated areas don't have to worry about competition from bars that serve stronger beer.

But in the metro area, low-alcohol beer seems like a relic. The hottest trend in brewing today is craft beers, with alcohol content typically between 5 percent and 10 percent  up to triple the wallop of the so-called "baby beers."

At the Beehive Tavern, it feels like the end of an era, with no one there to see it.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon there were no customers to serve, so owner Weber talked about how the place was established in 1889, converted to a 3.2 bar during Prohibition, and never converted back.

It can sell only 3.2 beer and wine that's diluted to reach the 3.2 percent level.

Weber said his business got hit when the state in 2007 banned smoking in public places.

"That hurt us. Smoking and beer go together," he said.

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Then, in July the state lifted the ban on Sunday liquor sales. Until then, 3.2 bars were the only place to buy a beer on Sunday. "Sunday used to be a good day for us," said Weber. "It's been one thing after another."

The future of the bar is as dim as the beehive Christmas lights behind the bar. Weber is selling the place and said that one prospective buyer would turn it into a food store.

He wistfully recalled the days when the Beehive was busy with community events and meetings.

"We don't have any busy times anymore," he said.
ST. PAUL  Hamline University announced Thursday that it's one of 10 schools chosen to open a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Campus Center.

The goal of the center is to make higher education institutions a place to "engage and empower campus and community stakeholders to uproot the conscious and unconscious biases and misbeliefs that have exacerbated racial violence and tension in American society," according to The Association of American Colleges and Universities.

And for Hamline President Fayneese Miller, it's personal. She grew up in Virginia, in a town about 100 miles south of Charlottesville  the scene of the ugly incident last weekend where white supremacists clashed with protesters, killing one woman and injuring 19 others.

That scene, she said, showed clearly  on video  the deep racial issues in the U.S.

"Charlottesville was a visual representation of what has been going on underneath the surface. We've been marching toward this point for a very long time. It came to a head. We saw it. It was visible," Miller said.

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Miller wasn't surprised by what happened, though, given her experience.

"These things have been bubbling under the surface," she said. "And when we talk about racial healing and racial understanding, as a black woman who grew up in the South, I am not surprised by what I saw. Not at all surprised by it."

All schools selected were awarded $30,000 to get their racial healing centers started. Other colleges and universities chosen include Spelman, Duke and Rutgers.

Miller said Hamline was told this week the school was picked for the project.

"It's coincidence that it comes out at the same time this other event is going on. But it gives us another way of coming into this problem," she said. "It gives us another way of engaging people. It gives us another way of showing them what we're talking about and not just talking about it."

How the center will work isn't completely clear yet. Miller said officials still are in the planning process, and the center will partner with organizations beyond the campus in the greater Twin Cities and the state.

A working group from Hamline will meet with the other schools in the project next month and will begin to develop a guide for how centers across the country will work.

"If we don't have those conversations, if we don't come to some sort of understanding, I fear that we could return to some pretty dark days," Miller said. "We don't want just the conversation. We want something that comes out of this that's meaningful, that's tangible."

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Funding for the first-of-their-kind centers comes from the Newman's Own Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. A complete list of schools is on the AAC&U's website.
MINNEAPOLIS  Construction delays dashed hopes for a July opening of the highly anticipated campground at the newest gem in Minnesota's state park system, but officials are still holding out hope that it might be ready in time for the fall color season.

There's still work to be done at Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park , said Scott Kelling, northeast regional manager for parks and trails at the Department of Natural Resources.

"We're hopeful it will happen this year," Kelling said in an interview Thursday. "We will not be doing a grand opening. It will probably be a softer approach once we decide we can open. We've got our sights set on a September opening with a date to be confirmed."

The state agreed to buy the 3,000-acre site and its picture-postcard views from U.S. Steel in 2008. The $18 million sale closed in 2010, saving the land from being developed into expensive vacation homes. It was already adjacent to Soudan Underground Mine State Park, which dates from 1963, giving the combined operation 4,000 acres and 10 miles of shoreline on a lake dotted with nearly 400 islands that's just a portage away from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

The DNR broke ground on the campground in 2015. It's designed to accommodate more than 250 nightly guests in tents and recreational vehicles. Demand for the spaces is expected to be high.

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Visits across the entire state park system surged to a record 10 million last year. The DNR expects the new park to draw around 250,000 visitors annually once it's fully developed.

"We're confident we'll be able to run a full camping season in 2018," Kelling said.

A major reason for the delays is that the park is piloting a new signage system, and Kelling said the fabrication and installation has taken longer than expected. Information kiosks remain under construction because some materials were substandard and had to be sent back. Rain slowed construction, too. A key entrance sign isn't expected to arrive until the end of the month. Building roads, septic systems and water systems on the rocky terrain has been complicated, too.

"We know a lot of people are anxious for it to open, and we are too. But we want to make sure we make a good first impression and that our customers have an unforgettable experience when they meet the park  for all the right reasons. And once it's open it'll be open for a long time to come," he said.
For a few hours, the commanding topic on Donald Trumps Charlottesville remarks was why he couldnt have delivered Mondays thorough, tone-appropriate condemnations of racists on Saturday.

Then came Tuesday.

In wide-ranging remarks that sent some TV analysts into conniptions, the president took advantage of having checked the box for rebuking the right villains, and explored some substrata of the Charlottesville controversy that raised eyebrows nationwide.

He just equated Robert E. Lee and George Washington! gasped one talking head. He just defended the neo-Nazis! blurted another.

Except he did no such thing. Everyone is free to like or dislike what the president says; making stuff up is another matter.

His main themes:

The violent left was on hand in Charlottesville as well, with the clear intent to react to the hate groups with a variety of weapons. This is a fact.

Alongside a throng of admitted racists, decent people can be found at protests seeking to prevent the erasure of Confederate monuments.

If the Confederate monuments are obliterated, activists will not stop there. Get ready for attacks on imagery featuring any of historys slaveholders, from Sam Houston to Thomas Jefferson to George Washington. Anyone doubting this has not been paying attention to the wanton fervor of the revisionist left.

On the day after hooligans in Durham, North Carolina, yanked down and defiled a Confederate monument, Trump said his favored policy on the fate of statues is to leave the matter to a local town, community or federal government, depending on where it is located.

Sounds reasonable to me. But then my radical position is to harbor neither affection nor revulsion for the statues, which are sure to be future flashpoints. Those will be interesting occasions, as people seeking to preserve those images with no racist intent find themselves aligned with execrable figures such as David Duke and Richard Spencer.

Should that send good-hearted folks away from their cause? If David Duke likes Star Trek, do I have to stop watching it? This is all so very stupid, a fog machine billowing from one source: narrators hell-bent on affixing President Trump to the hate groups he has repeatedly berated.

In what now seems like ancient history, for the record, count me among those who would have liked to have heard the specific condemnations of neo-Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists sooner rather than later. The president could have done himself a great favor, sparing himself two days of criticism from enemies and supporters alike.

He attempted Tuesday to suggest that his broad Saturday rebukes were sufficient. They were not, especially for a president who knows he has a loud chorus of haters ready to suggest the redesigned Oval Office will feature a wall-mounted swastika flag.

But with specific scoldings now on the record, honest examination of the presidents actual words will reveal that his observations are worthy. They are also shared by millions who grow weary of the daily chore of being called racists by virtue of their votes for Trump.

That burden will not soon be lifted. There is no shortage of attackers eager to spread that slander, and no shortage of inattentive Americans who may choose to believe it.
Among the imponderables staring us in the face in year 1 of the Trump administration is John Koskinen. Why does this man remain Commissioner of the IRS? Speaking of Obama holdovers, Koskinen is a beaut. I should have thought he was a prime candidate for sacking on day 1, though I dont recall President Trump ever mentioning the scandals that have disgraced the IRS on the campaign trail.

Koskinen has capably served as a bureaucratic foot dragger, dissembler and apologist for the scandals involving the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups. The IRS has persistently downplayed and misrepresented the facts underlying the scandals since former IRS acting director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner mounted a carefully stage managed production to acknowledge them in May 2013.

Litigation ensued. Engaging in a war of attrition, the IRS has dragged out the litigation and withheld basic information. It has destroyed information responsive to congressional subpoenas. Forbes has helpful background here and a useful timeline here.

The litigation returned to the news this week when District of Columbia federal district judge Reggie Walton ordered the IRS to name the specific employees the agency blames for targeting tea party groups for intrusive scrutiny and said the government must prove it has ceased the targeting. Stephen Dinan reported on the particulars of Judge Waltons order in his Washington Times article on the case.

Dinan quoted Judge Walton speaking at the hearing earlier this week. Lay it on the line. Put it out there, he told attorneys for the IRS, who are continuing to fight some Tea Party groups demands for full disclosure.

Dinan also briefly quotes American Center for Law & Justice senior litigation counsel Carly Gammill, who represents some of the Tea Party groups in the litigation. With a little help from Foley & Lardners Cleta Mitchell, I reached out to Gammill for a statement on Judge Waltons order yesterday. Ms. Gammill graciously responded:

Despite confirmation from the D.C. Circuit last August that Plaintiffs constitutional claims against the IRS remain viable, resulting in a remand of the case to the district court for a decision on the substantive merits of Plaintiffs claims, the agency has persisted in its efforts to prevent disclosure of the details surrounding its targeting of these groups. Like the Plaintiffs, however, the district court was unpersuaded with the IRSs latest arguments in support of its cover-up. At long last (four years into the litigation), the district court has finally ordered that the IRS produce information (including related documents not yet disclosed) addressing these crucial issues. The court has instructed the IRS to explain, among other things, the reasons for the IRSs delay of the Plaintiffs applications for tax-exempt status (to be addressed as to each separate Plaintiff), the identities of the individuals responsible for the delays, and any actions taken by the IRS since it granted them tax exemption that are outside the normal course of business. The court also put to rest any notion that the IRS may limit the scope of its search for documents to only those dated between January 2009 and May 2013 (when former EO Director Lois Lerner publicly apologized for some of the IRSs discriminatory conduct just ahead of the release of TIGTAs [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administrations] first report on the subject), ordering instead that the relevant time period extends through the 2015 release of TIGTAs follow-up report, and that all relevant sources of documents must be searched. The impact of this ruling cannot be overstated, as it means that the IRS must finally acknowledge its wrongdoing (and the reasons for it) in the context of a judicial proceeding in which the agency may be held legally accountable for its misconduct.

Or so we hope.
Devoting a whole week to praising God by millions of people around the world turned out to be a wonderful experience for many people at the 65th annual convention of the Redeemed Christian Church of God. And not unexpectedly it offered several story pegs to writers  ranging from things usually taken for granted to the most spiritual experience.

To have millions of people flock into the Redemption Camp, with thousands of volunteers and guests accommodated and fed freely during the period without any incident and for programmes to run seamlessly, may be taken for granted but it is a miracle in itself.

The Friday scenes at the twin camps of the church  the original Redemption Camp at Kilometre 46, Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and at The Arena, the three-kilometre-by-three-kilometre auditorium  witnessed a deluge of unforgettable experiences by worshippers. A typical example was one of a fair-complexioned lady of about 45 years old who dangled her car key unconsciously as she walked several metres uphill. I have never seen a thing like this all my life, she said.

Like the reporter, as early as 4.30 p.m. for an event that would start at 8pm, she had to park her car near the entrance of the Arena and walk several metres to the auditorium, which was purposefully built for an envisaged crowd of that size. But it would seem that on a day like that the auditorium would still come under pressure.

With the completed sections of The Arena full to capacity, over 3 million people must have been there.

Amazingly, the old auditorium at the Redemption Camp was almost full, even without the physical presence of Pastor Adeboye there. The auditorium seats 3 million people.

People also participated at viewing centres of the numerous RCCG parishes around the country, and in 194 other countries around the world.

Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, who must have had a VIP entry, as did some state governors who were in attendance on Friday, couldnt help but note the miracle during a book launch at the Redemption Camp last Tuesday. He said: The RCCG is the church that has been able to pull the largest gathering at a single convention in the world. Apart from Coca-Cola, the Church is next in mileage across the world.

He added, It all has to do with the sincerity, dedication and humility of Daddy GO (as Pastor E.A. Adeboye is fondly called).

The General Overseer, however, characteristically attributed all the achievements to God. That must have been the reason why, as revealed by him, even though he slept for only one hour a day during the convention and participated in nearly all daily programmes, he looked fresher and more energetic by the day. During the thanksgiving service on Sunday, he looked like a man in his 50s, far younger than a 75-year-old man.

He said at the launch of a book, Pastor E.A. Adeboye: His Life and Calling, written by 40 authors, which was hidden from him by his wife, Folu Adeboye, the lead author, until an hour to the ceremony: My wife knows that if I had any idea about what is happening today, it would never happen. I would have stopped it long ago because who am I without Jesus Christ? If there is anyone to be celebrated, it should be Him.

People say I am humble, but people need to know where I am coming from. I cannot say I have any ability or wisdom. Everything has been the Lord Himself. When I was about 40 and spotted grey hairs on my head, I wondered why and God said I was carrying a burden that was not mine. God said, I am just using you as camouflage. People need to see someone. So, I am putting you forward so that I can do the work from behind.

So, everything that is happening in RCCG, nothing is of Adeboye at all; it is all about God. So, for you to say you are writing a book about somebody that is nothing; someone who has almost zero beginning, from a poor family and who passed through secondary school by Gods grace.

That was the reason why when this writer was urged to launch a book he wrote about Pastor Adeboye in March titled, Stories of Pastor E.A. Adeboye: The Power of Testimony, he said the General Overseer would not be comfortable with it.

The convention was evidently a successful one, and at the thanksgiving ceremony on Sunday, retired Assistant General Overseer, G.A. Ilori, rightly gave profuse glory to God for the success of the convention.We have had opportunity to praise God and He has done wonderful things in our lives, he noted.

The week was eventful for deacons, deaconesses, assistant pastors, pastors and elders who were ordained by the church. Those ordained were 47 honourary elders;1,037 full pastors; 2,236 assistant pastors; and 8, 222 deacons and deaconesses.

It was similarly important for the mothers of the 106 babies who were delivered at the medical facility of the church, as it was for thousands of other mothers who had been prayed for by the church and so took their babies to the altars at the twin camps and viewing centres across the world for dedication and blessing.

On Friday at the Arena, from where this reporter sat, he counted over 2,000 people as they poured out from one side of the Arena and gave up when the surge made it impossible to continue. People were also pouring in from all angles. In the end, an estimated pool of thousands of mothers had gathered at the altar, some of them shedding tears of joy.

The scene at the old auditorium, which was beamed on the screen, showed a similar pool.

I rejoice with you all because my father visited your wombs and gave you joy, Pastor Adeboye said as he prayed for them.

Of major importance to Pastor Adeboye, who always emphasizes salvation and what it takes to make heaven, were the people, in large numbers, who rushed to the altar anytime the call was made every day.

Amazing testimonies were also given, and for the many whom needed miracles there were opportunities to be hopeful or even assured of one.

On Thursday, Pastor Adeboye led the millions of people participating in the convention around the world to replicate the miraculous fall of the Wall of Jericho, which happened some 10, 000 years ago. Well aware that the exercise would sound childish to some church members and others, he took some time to explain it. He started by saying, I know you trust me, but I have to assure you about what God has asked us to do.

Initially, I wanted us to sing praises to the Lord and dance to end tonights service, but He told me we should do something special.

Assured that the congregation was convinced, he asked that people do a circular walk in the limited spaces they had as he counted from one to seven. After the seventh, the churchs music instrumentalists were to blow trumpets for the congregation to shout Halleluyah as the Israelites did.

For most people, that was not going to be a problem so long as Pastor Adeboye, noted for signs, wonders and miracles, led them.

Promptly, the exercise began, but at the 6th round, some people shouted Halleluyah. He let it pass for the exercise to be completed, after which he explained the premature shout of Halleluyah was from the devil inside the few people who shouted that came out. He then asked for a repeat of the seventh round after which the trumpets blared for a thunderous shout of Halleluyah and continuous praise of the Lord by a joyous congregation, which at the Redemption Camp alone, numbered thousands. The auditorium was full to capacity.

The Friday he had called a special day was also described by many people as a wonderful experience. He blessed them with the staff he had been given by the founder of the church, the late Rev. Josiah Akindayomi.

Like the night before, he took time to prepare the congregation for what some people might deem childish. He extolled the achievements of the founder of the church, recalling that although he was illiterate, God had done many great things for the church through revelations He had given him. Among them were the name of the church revealed to an illiterate in English; that he would travel the world over, which he did before he died; and that he would be instrumental to the spread of the church, which is now in 195 countries and counting.

That said, he paused and let out what was a secret to many people: God had instructed Rev. Akindayomi to make a short wooden staff to be blessed; and to be handed over to his successor. The congregation went quiet for more information about that; and when he lifted up the staff, people went wild with excitement.

Again, he called for attention and explained that the staff had been given to him years ago but God ordered that it should be used sparingly: he was going to use it at the Convention for three special prayers, including a prayer for God to make a way where there is no way. He would raise it up, mention a prayer point and the congregation would pray. The prayers done, he raised it up again to bless handkerchiefs. As he did and prayed, the congregation waved the handkerchiefs with shouts of Halleluyah, halleluyah.

Throughout the Convention, the theme, Halleluyah or Praise was emphasized by Pastor Adeboye and guests, including Bishop David Oyedepo and Rev Joe Olaiya, who ministered day and night. They explained the benefits of praising God as including the special attention of God, invitation of Gods presence and glory, which provides His favour, healing, access to revelation and breakthrough.

To close the convention, during which Pastor Mrs. Adeboye led prayers for all nations and their leaders, including President Buhari, Pastor Adeboye said: It has been a glorious convention; God has surprised us, as He always does. Thank you all for your prayers, support and for standing by us.

He recalled how during the churchs Holy Ghost Congress in Abuja, God had asked him to praise Him for three days before asking for anything; and how that made the event a huge success. He then assured that for praising God all week, prayers would be answered.

He went on to bless the congregation and participants around the world. For the rest of your life, you will be singing, dancing and shouting halleluyah, he prophesied, among others.

If the Lord tarries (in His second coming) we shall all be here again next year (for the convention) he signed off prophetically.

Most likely, there would also be many more new faces and a renewed challenge of hosting millions of expectant people.

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President Muhammadu Buhari will return to Nigeria Saturday after receiving medical attention in London for 103 days, the presidency said this morning.

Mr. Buhari left the country on May 7 after handing over power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has functioned as Acting President since then.

A statement by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said Mr. Buhari would speak to Nigerians in a broadcast by 7 a.m. on Monday, two days after his arrival.

Mr. Adesina quoted the President as thanking all Nigerians who have prayed ceaselessly for his recovery and well-being since the beginning of the health challenge.

PREMIUM TIMES was first to report that Mr. Buharis health had improved, and that he was waiting for clearance from his doctors to return home.

In that May 25, 2017 report, a source who sees the president almost every hour was quoted as saying Mr. Buhari was doing very good but waiting on his doctors to declare him well enough to return to his post.

Because of the huge secrecy that has surrounded the Presidents real medical condition, many Nigerians were skeptical about that report. But PREMIUM TIMES stood firmly by its story.

However, shortly afterwards the president began to receive delegations from Nigeria at the Abuja House in London, with photographs of the visits widely circulated by the presidency.

On July 11, Acting President Yemi Osinbajo travelled to the British capital to meet the President, returning to say his boss health had improved significantly.

On July 23, Mr. Buhari received Governors Rochas Okorocha of Imo, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa, Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna, Yahaya Bello of Kogi, and the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, John Oyegun. A photograph of the President and his guests at dinner during the visit was widely circulated.

Three days later, on July 26, Mr. Buhari met with seven Nigerian governors, led by Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara and comprising governors of Ebonyi, Kano, Benue, Akwa Ibom, and Oyo.

On August 12, the President received his presidential media team comprising Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture; Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity; Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity; Lauretta Onochie, Personal Assistant on Digital/Online Media, and Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Senior Special Assistant on Diaspora Matters.

The president was to receive Senate President Bukola Saraki and House Speaker Yakubu Dogara afterwards. He also hosted the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Enoch Adeboye.

Mr. Buhari left the country for London on May 7 to continue with his medical treatment.

He had returned to Nigeria on March 10 after spending 51 days in the British capital during which he attended to his health.

Upon his return, the president said he couldnt recall being so sick since he was a young man, including in the military with its ups and downs.

He also said he could not recall ever having blood transfusion before.

The president also hinted that he would return to the UK for further treatment.

However, as soon as he returned to the UK in May, rumours began to spread that he had passed on, a speculation that was promptly debunked by the presidency.

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The presidential jet flying President Muhammadu Buhari from London will arrive Nigeria at past 4PM Nigerian time, a presidency official has told PREMIUM TIMES.

The official, who requested not to be named because he is not an official spokesperson, said the presidents delegation left London at about 10:30 am Nigerian time and is expected to fly for about six hours.

We are expecting the president to touch down in less than two hours, the official told Premium Times at 2: 10 PM. A welcoming party is building up in the villa, and we will soon head out to the airport to receive him. We are all excited.

When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said he was not sure about the Presidents actual arrival time.

All we know is that he will be here insha Allah later this afternoon, Mr. Shehu said. We shall be at the airport to receive him.

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, had announced Saturday morning that President Buhari would return to the country later today after receiving medical attention in London for over 100 days.

He left the country on May 7 after handing over power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has functioned as Acting President since then.

Mr. Buhari will speak to Nigerians in a broadcast by 7 a.m. on Monday, Mr. Adesina said

The presidential spokesperson quoted Mr. Buhari as thanking all Nigerians who have prayed ceaselessly for his recovery and well-being since the beginning of the health challenge.

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Osita Chidoka is a former Minister of Aviation, Corps Marshall of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) and currently a governorship aspirant in Anambra State.

He recently spoke with PREMIUM TIMES Musikilu Mojeed, Festus Owete, Abdulaziz Abdulaziz and Idris Ibrahim on his years in the Obasanjo, YarAdua and Jonathan administrations as well as his chances in the November 18 governorship election in Anambra State.

Excerpts:

PT: When you left government, you went to study law. How are you combining that with the plan to become Anambra governor?

Chidoka: Tough combination! I took some time off school to pursue the election. Elections are here between now and November and so in four months it will be over. If I win, I will put the law programme in abeyance for another four years. I am already in my third year, so I hope to conclude it.

PT: Well, you can then be described as a dropout?

Chidoka: Well, Im in good company because all the dropouts from all the major schools in the world, like Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook), like Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft), all ended up doing wonderful things. So, I am in very good company.

PT: One thing that baffles everyone is that you left PDP and joined UPP to actualize your ambition, but some people feel that UPP is a relatively unknown party. How do you hope to realise your ambition on that platform?

Chidoka: Let me take two issues here. Let me take the first one  relatively unknown. So, whenever I hear that from people, it then means to me that they still live in yesterday.

Yesterday was the day for the Northern Peoples Congress or the Action Group or the NCNC to campaign in the North. They travelled from Enugu to Kano, a journey that will take you about two days. By the time you get to the villages and get to the village head to transmit the information to the people, it takes you about three months. Before, when you decide to leave Enugu and by the time information gets to the last person, say Birnin Kebbi. So, information and symmetry was the reason you needed large organisations to be able to get things done.

Even think about it. When you publish in Lagos, sometimes the trucks leave in the night and travel to Ilorin, then another set of trucks will take it from Illorin and travel to Kano to go and deliver. Delivering a newspaper was such a tedious task. Now fast forward to this period. How many years old is PREMIUM TIMES? It is one of the most widely read. It has more followers and has more people reading it than Daily Times had at the peak of its power. So that is the power of the changes in the society. That is why an Emmanuel Macron can leave a socialist party, form a new party and within two years win an election in France. Thats why Barack Obama, a senator from nowhere could come defeat major democratic candidates like Mrs. Clinton, who were all relying on yesterdays strategies.



Lets bring it back to APC. It was an impossible feat when the UPN, NPP, PRP came together under the PPA alliance. The party couldnt find its rhythm. It couldnt even face NPN because it didnt have the capacity to put the structure that NPN had on ground. If you go back to the 1960s, UPGA was the same. But today, APC came and within two years, defeated a behemoth called PDP in an election. It happened again in Ghana where you saw an opposition party defeating the ruling party. Its all over the world. Information is no more asymmetrical. Information is now possible to move. If I grant this interview today, by tomorrow evening over a million people can read it.

So, if you introduce a party like UPP today in Nigeria you can within the next one week make the party well known to everybody. You can pass information on YOUTUBE, Facebook, WhatsApp and others.

When people say relatively new, it then mean to me they are in the old world. So, I want to say that the election we are going to be facing in Nigeria will be a test between the old and the new. It will be a test of those who still stand between what I called the stakeholders approach to politics and the person who drives a mass approach to politics.

On the second part of the question  PDP is a great party. I worked in the PDP. I was a key member of the PDP. But like every political party, PDP needs a rethinking; it needs a refresh; it needs to be reprogrammed and as I can see, the crisis that came between Sheriff and Makarfi-led faction was a test of the need to refresh the PDP brand. I dont know whether the refresh is going to happen sooner or later but it is not going to happen before the Anambra election definitely.

On the second stage, Anambra State has an endemic problem of multiple factions of PDP in the state. The state has a bad history of PDP. The court cases following the 2015 elections over the senatorial and House of Representatives election are still on in the Supreme Court. So, Anambra has endemic problem in the PDP that the Sheriff-Makarfi problem does not resolve. So, I have to figure out if I have to run this election, I have to create a platform and I have to deploy the three factors I named earlier on to make it happen.

PT: So, you were not afraid of the people contesting on the platform of PDP?

Chidoka: I would have been the natural winner of that primaries. There is nobody in the PDP that would have defeated me in the primaries.

PT: Do you think there is something wrong with the judgement of people like you with the way the PDP has gone, given that as far back as the Ahmadu Ali/Ojo Maduekwe days, you were one of the brain boxes of the party, writing policies, and designing framework and all that. And you continued that even during the Jonathan days. How come you didnt see that the party was going to face defeat?

Chidoka: I saw that clearly. I saw that the party had the potential to face defeat in an election because of two reasons. One, there is the voter fatigue  16 years of a party being in power can create voter fatigue. Sometimes people reject parties around the world. People tend to get tired of a political party except if the party itself get into a refresh mode. Weve never seen a party in America sustaining itself in power beyond 12 years or in any other advance democracy apart from Japan where you see the liberal party lasting long. But they will eventually lose power. So, there was that issue of voter fatigue. In the 16 years of PDP, the party suffered too many heats that by the time you present it again in 2015, there were too many issues that needed to be dealt with. It needed a re-imagining, a rethinking.

The second one was the electoral reforms introduced by the PDP. The voters became empowered. And after they became empowered, the government of the day needed to have determined the voter demographics in Nigeria and chose which one they should align with. So, PDP was not a party for labour. The labour unions were not in alliance with the PDP. If you go to the ANC they have the labour union with them.

The party was not aligned with the middle class even though they aided the middle class. There was no careful policy to align with the middle class and the middle class were also few. All we needed to do as a party was to find out which of the groups to align with  be it social, economic or religious.

Now APC came and went to the lower masses of the society and promised them salvation. They sold fear to them of a country that had left them behind. They sold fear to ethnic groups that felt they had been marginalised in power. So, they mobilised them against the same government.

In reverse, the PDP did not sell anything to them. They just wanted to continue in office. We didnt sell anything to the masses. We neither sold hope nor fear. So, we just kept attacking Buhari, attacking the APC. So, we were reacting to the APC. There was no formidable plan to sell to the country why continuity was in their best interest. And many of us sounded that note of warning that the party had to sell something to the people who believe in this party. If you noticed, PDP, from 2003, has consistently lost election in the north.

In 1999 President Obasanjo won more votes than Shagari did in 1979 in the north. In 1979, Shagari lost Kaduna, Kano, Borno, Gongola but in 1999 Obasanjo won all the northern states and won with a vote margin larger than the ones Shagari won with.

In fact, many Nigerians still do not remember that the story of 12 2/3 is because Shagari did not get the 12 2/3 votes cast in Kano. Shagari was struggling to argue that he got 2/3 of the 1/3 of the 2/3 in the 13 states. Obasanjo was clearly accepted in the north and the south-east, the south-south but he lost woefully in the south-west. He couldnt make 25 per cent in the south-west states. But by 2003, Obasanjo won 96 per cent of votes in Ogun and then lost in all the key northern states. He got the whole south-south and southeast. He got the whole middle belt and got Adamawa and Taraba and lost to Buhari in the key northern states.

My take is that Sharia and Obasanjo posture as being anti-north aided the 2003 defeats in the key northern states. PDP did not go back to themselves to find out what it did wrong to the north to reverse it because the north was a major platform of the PDP. They voted for PDP in the governorship elections, but PDP lost in the presidential election  Bauchi, Katsina. All the governors came back but Obasanjo lost.

By 2007, we presented a northern candidate, YarAdua against Buhari again. He lost in the key northern states. He got his votes from southeast, south-south, southwest, Middle-Belt and made some votes in the north and defeated Buhari. By 2011, Jonathan lost in all the key northern states again and won with the southern combination with the middle belt and Kaduna and Adamawa. So, by 2015 he lost the whole 19 (northern) states; he lost the whole Middle Belt together with the north. He lost almost 60 per cent of the southwest which used to be the partys base. PDP was a party without base. It kept retreating until it became a south-east, south-south affair.

In the south-east, there was large voter apathy. They didnt feel that the government, despite the top Igbos in the administration, represented their interest. So, all these were clear to me in the analysis, in the frame work I had.

PT: In all of this, did you also sense the feeling generally of the socio-economic crises the country faced in terms of poverty, corruption etc

Chidoka: I will come to the existential issues because PDP had a historic moment. And I will tell you three things I think conspired against the PDP.

First was YarAduas death and the quest for Goodluck Jonathan to become president. We introduced something we called the Doctrine of Necessity. The governors came and got the president to get the National Assembly to pass the Doctrine of Necessity. And in passing the Doctrine of Necessity, the government started to woo different groups. So, they increased the salary of civil servants. In 2010, the salary of civil servants went up. If you look at governments recurrent expenditure, it ballooned around 2010-2011.

They also drew out from the Excess Crude Account and I suspected in agreement with the governors in order to pass the Doctrine of Necessity. I dont have evidence to that. And then the Boko Haram challenge became intensified. So, government stopped most of its capital projects and spent its money paying the new wage bill, which had tripled, started paying for the war against Boko Haram. So, poverty increased. In that existential moment, Nigeria needed to have pressed a reset button. We needed to have halted to say: What are the fundamental issues affecting us and how can we address it?

For instance, I thought the Boko Haram issue presented an opportunity to reset our security architecture. The one that was done under Babangida when we created the SSS, NIA and DIA was already too old for the country. The country had changed in its method, in its process. Yes, the country felt a sense of ruthlessness arising from the government at that time because the government suddenly had many multiple battlefronts open. It was struggling to pay wage bills that were too high, struggling to maintain a democratic culture, governors were continuing to demand more and more of sharing of the money in the excess crude account and then struggling to fight a war in the north-eastern part of the country.

That was a terrible thing for any government to sustain. But instead of taking the rightful decision because an election was coming, they decided to manage it to at least conduct the election. The height of it was when the government went and removed the fuel subsidy on an inauspicious date in January 2012.

PT: Following the defeat of PDP you played a key role in convincing the then President Goodluck Jonathan to concede. How did you get to achieve that?

Chidoka: Like I said in some fora, the president was keen on conceding defeat. When he called me and I came back to Abuja from the East, he was the first person that told me that the election had been lost. And then I thought there was still hope, but he said we had lost. So, I said what do we do now? He said he will accept it. That was his first reaction. He said draft something for me to say that people should calm down, the country should move forward. That was in the night I was with him till about 1 a.m. When I left him, definitely I was sad. I think I came back in the morning, (Godsday) Orubebe had gone to the National Assembly. A lot of people were coming to say no you cant concede, you have to go to court, no one would preclude you from going to court. So, I came back with the speech and I said this thing is getting out of hand, this is what we agreed yesterday. He said yes, he will still make the speech but the part that says he had called Buhari and conceded defeat, maybe we should put that away let him make the statement first.

So, that was when I invited the then attorney general to come. And I called Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to come. And the attorney general said no, even if you concede defeat, you can still go to court. PDP can go to court and you cant refrain your right of going to court by conceding defeat but that will calm down the tension in the country. So, we kept talking to him and then at about 5:10pm, I remember correctly, Waripamowei Dudafa (SA on Domestic Matters) came and said you have to make this call. We have to leave here on May 28, no matter what people say. He was quite bold. He said to him no matter what anybody says here, May 29th is certain. We will leave here. So, lets leave as heroes. So, Dudafa went in, got Buhari and came and called him. So, he went in and had that conversation with him.

So, at about 5:17 p.m., if I remember correctly, I tweeted that the president had just called Buhari and had accepted defeat. I said I have to say this to the world and he said yes. He was convinced that there was no room to wait for Borno and Yobe results to be announced because at that time I knew we had lost and so if we waited for that announcement to be made, the whole media and everybody would have turned to Buhari and whatever you were saying at that time would have been like ok, its done and its an afterthought.

So, I felt that he needed to take the moral high ground because two things were important. This president set up a process that made him lose an election. I thought history would remember that more than the weaknesses of his government. I thought that whenever the history of Nigeria would be written, in the next 50 or 100 years, the most significant issue will be that the first government opposition election victory was done under President Jonathan. History is such a strange story, it doesnt quite record little things. It takes the high marks of society. So, even all the arguments of how he ruled and didnt rule would have become an issue if anything had gone wrong and he had rejected the result. So, he needed to claim ownership of that results. He took ownership of that result and said I set up this process that led to this and if this is the outcome, I have accepted it.

PT: You talked about his weaknesses and in the last few weeks there have been tales of corruption in the Goodluck Jonathan administration. What are these weaknesses you alluded to and what is your general assessment vis-a-vis the kind of revelations that are coming out today?

Chidoka: Basically, there is one sickness. There is something I am very much interested in seeing happen in Nigeria. I want to see us go to a single term presidency, single term executive office, be it six years, be it seven years, whatever. I dont think this country can afford re-election of executives every four-years. We cant afford it.

Two, it is what causes the major weakness of people in government. Once you are looking to the second term you will tend to keep your real personality in check, trying to please everybody to be able to be re-elected. So, when I talk of weakness, its a systemic weakness. A weakness that saw Jonathan whom I know to be a different man. He has a logical mind, he is not a greedy person, and he is not avaricious. He is really not interested in the expensive things of life that fascinate people. He really has what I will call a middle-class approach to life as a person. I havent seen things of greed in him. He exercises every day; he is very empathetic but he was in a situation where he thought, I believe, that getting a second term is dependent on how far he manages other peoples interests. So, the scientific mind of a scientist that he is, the ability for him to logically deduce what is right did not seem right. If you look at Jonathan, in person he is an exquisite chairman of a meeting. I cant quantify his patience in listening to counter opinions, in managing contending forces. Sometimes when people get haywire, he will say hey, everybody calm down. I have seen this happen in national executive council many times, whether we go regional or divide meetings. He manages to bring everybody back to the centre. His greatest strength is his greatest weakness. But in trying to win a second term, he allowed that ability to create that consensus to be a dominant force in his government.

So, he wanted to work with both tendencies until after the elections happened. And I know with certainty that Jonathan in his second term would have been a totally different President Jonathan; like the Jonathan that people dont see. The one we see in cabinet, at least for the one year I was there. First of all, he comes to council early. He was always there by 10am. The maximum delay in council is 5-10 minutes. And he sat through the meetings. I have never seen him rise up from the meeting to say I want to go and do something and come back. He never called for intermediary.

The President of Cote dIvoire, Alassane Quattara, came for a meeting of ECOWAS. He received him at the airport. As we were driving to town he told me that I hope this meeting ends early because your president (Jonathan) has such great patience that he listens to nonsense. I said yes, that is his style, he hears everybody out. So, I think that the Jonathan that people finally saw in Nigeria was a Jonathan that started looking for a second term. The Jonathan that would have been the president was the one that came and in the first one year of his governance he initiated so many policies. I am sure this present government was shocked at the quantity of policies and programmes that the Jonathan government had done that was not in the public domain. Whether you go to the area of water, to the area of power to the area of agriculture to the area of aviation. There were immense tune-ups of policies in those areas.

But when it came to the integrity of managing contending forces, he was, I think, too eager to get pass the second term hurdle that he let things slip under the grass.

PT: Does he regret all of this?

Chidoka: I dont know if he does, I havent asked him. This is my own personal assessment of what I thought was the problem.

PT: But given what has happened in the last two years, do you regret persuading Jonathan to concede?

Chidoka: No, I dont. I knew that the APC government was not going to work. I had no illusion. Because it fundamentally sold something I knew it cannot offer. I have been in government long enough to know that they cannot offer what they were selling. They cannot deliver on it.

Secondly, I knew that President Buhari, fundamentally, had ideological differences with the people that he formed government with. He wasnt a free market person. He wasnt a believer in what I will call the quality of Nigerian inclusiveness. He didnt have the mindset to include. So, I knew that a time will come when the tension in the government will rear itself. And those are the tension that strange bedfellows coming together will create. There was no ideological consistency; there was no ideological uniformity. Even the ANC with its ideological coherence, is beginning to lose grounds in South Africa. In every recent election,the percentage of votes for the ANC mhas continued to drop. So, I knew that without ideological coherence, it was strange bed fellows working together. I knew an Obasanjo and a Buhari will not agree over time. I knew that Tinubu and Buhari will not agree over time because they came from different ideological schools. It was going to be a matter of time when those will rear its heads in the government.

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President Muhammadu Buhari arrived Nigeria Saturday, after nearly four months in the United Kingdom where he received medical treatment for an undisclosed ailment.

The Nigerian Airforce plane carrying Mr. Buhari landed at the Abuja international airport at exactly 4.36 p.m. Nigerian time.

Dozens of state officials were at the airport to receive the president.

The governors at the airport included governors of Kano state, Abdullahi Ganduje, Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara, Muhammed Abubakar of Bauchi, Abubakar Bello of Niger, Nyeson Wike of Rivers, Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi and Deputy governor of Kaduna state, Barnabas Bala.

Among those at the airport to welcome the president included members of the National Assembly, service chiefs, Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, as well as other presidential aides.

Others at the airports are the National Security Adviser to the President (NSA), Babagana Monguno; the Director-General, State Security Service, SSS, Lawal Daura, and other dignitaries.

The president took a national salute from the Presidential Guards Brigade while cultural groups sang and danced to welcome him back home.

Mr. Buhari, who appeared in traditional attires with a cap, later rode in a motorcade to the presidential villa.

He is expected to speak to Nigerians in a broadcast on Monday at 7 a.m.

President Buhari left Nigeria on May 7, for the second round of his medical treatment in London.

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The Tor Tiv of Benue state, James Ayatse, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to as a matter of urgency, assent to the Nigerian Peace Corps Bill.

Addressing the officers and men of the Corps in his palace, Gboko, on Friday, the royal father said the Peace Corps seeks to engage the youth in the society.

The traditional ruler also charged the national commandant of Peace Corps of Nigeria, Dickson Akoh, not to relent in his effort to get the youth off the streets with gainful employments.

Two days ago, this whole place was filled by young people here in Gboko. Some of them were outside drumming, and the common challenge all of them have, is that they dont have something to do. This is what you are addressing.

He added that as a leader, he knew the dangers in leaving the youth idle.

With all the energy and intelligence embedded in them, if you dont engage them, the devil will engage them. I want to assure you that we will not withdraw that support until the bill is signed into law. We will continue to be there for you, he said.

The royal father also said: I want to salute the gallantry of the leadership in the struggle, a long struggle for this noble work.

He also condemned the harassment of Mr. Akoh and other officers of the Peace Corps by security agencies, saying it was uncalled for.

Responding, Mr Akoh said they were at the Tor Tiv palace to celebrate and congratulate him on his ascension to the traditional dynasty.

He acknowledged the role the Tiv Area Traditional Council played while the Bill was before the both chambers of the National Assembly.

Immediately the public hearing on the Bill was advertised, the Tiv Area Traditional Council was the first institution that wrote a strong memorandum in support of Peace Corps, even though many other traditional councils supported it from other states.

He said, when established, the Nigerian Peace Corps would only help to complement the efforts of other agencies in contributing its quota in neighbourhood watch and nation building.

He assured the Tiv traditional institution that, having supported the passage of the Bill, the Peace Corps would not deviate from its core mandate as stipulated in the bill, when established.

The National Assembly had recently passed a bill for an act to establish the Nigerian Peace Corps and also adopted the conference committee report which seeks to give legal backing to the existing Peace Corps of Nigeria.

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The Kogi State Commissioner for Health, Saka Audu, has appealed for calm over reports of a mysterious disease in the state.

The commissioner, who denied that 62 people had died from the disease, told journalists in Lokoja that those so far diagnosed were found to be suffering from gastroenteritis and malaria.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the state Ministry of Health had in a statement put the figure of those who died at 62 in Okunran, Okoloke and Isanlu-Esa all in Yagba West Local Government Area.

The current information available to us is that the strange disease actually started six weeks ago in Okoloke village in Yagba West, which is a settlement that is predominantly inhabited by Fulani herdsmen.

There have been cases of reported deaths following abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea, but the patients who showed signs of illness had since been evacuated and transported to Kogi State Specialist Hospital, Lokoja for better treatment.

So far, we have evacuated 39 patients from Okoloke area and only six of them were admitted and have shown significant sign of improvement while others have since been discharged.

Out of the six that were admitted, three of them were diagnosed of gastroenteritis and the remaining three were just cases of malaria, and they have shown remarkable signs of improvement, Mr. Audu said.

He also stressed that the disease was not Lassa fever, saying the result of samples taken from the patients to Irua General Hospital for investigation proved negative.

On the 62 persons earlier reported to have died, the commissioner said the figure was given by local leaders in the affected areas and was yet to be verified by government.

We will investigate and trace the dead people to the grave yard and come up with the correct figure.

We want to assure the general public that government is doing all that is humanly possible to stay on top of the situation and forestall further loss of lives.

We will continue to inform the public as the investigation progresses, Mr. Audu said.

(NAN)

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The All Progressives Congress (APC) has welcomed President Muhammadu Buhari back to Nigeria after his medical vacation to the United Kingdom.

A statement by the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Bolaji Abdullahi, said, The Party thanks the Vice President, His Excellency Prof. Yemi Osinbajo for his competent leadership in the absence of President Buhari and especially commends him for his effort to unite the country and drive the recovery of the national economy.

The APC also thanks all Nigerians who had prayed ceaselessly for the speedy recovery and safe return of the President, assuring them that the APC-led Federal Government is poised to fulfill all the electoral promises the Party made to Nigerians.

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, had announced Saturday morning that President Buhari would return to the country later today after receiving medical attention in London for over 100 days.

He left the country on May 7 after handing over power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has functioned as Acting President since then.

Mr. Buhari will speak to Nigerians in a broadcast by 7 a.m. on Monday, Mr. Adesina said.

The presidential spokesperson quoted Mr. Buhari as thanking all Nigerians who have prayed ceaselessly for his recovery and well-being since the beginning of the health challenge.

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A Lagos-based human rights lawyer, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, has said the Nigerian governments classification of hate speech as a form of terrorism is a plot to gag the citizens.

Mr. Adegboruwa said in a statement Saturday that any law capable of hindering the freedom of expression granted under Section 39 of the 1999 Constitution and the African Charter would be illegal and unconstitutional

First, I do not agree on the concept of hate speeches, Mr. Adegboruwa said.

The Constitution in Section 39 has granted an unqualified freedom of expression to every citizen. If any speech made has violated anybodys legal rights at all, there is the extant common law remedy of libel actions for damages in civil cases and criminal libel in criminal cases.

Mr. Adegboruwas position came as Acting President Yemi Osinbajo lashed out at purveyors of hate speech across the country, likening them to terrorists.

As I have said, we have drawn a line against hate speech, it will not be tolerated, it will be taken as an act of terrorism and all of the consequences will follow, said Mr. Osinbajo, a professor of law, during a National Economic Council security retreat in Abuja last week.

But Mr. Adegboruwa said it had now become commonplace for government and government officials to seek to gag the people by seeking all manner of restraint of the freedom of speech.

To that extent, I do not agree with the Acting President on the concept of hate speeches as terrorism. Every citizen should be allowed the freedom of expression under the law, he said.

Secondly, I believe that the National Assembly lacks the legal competence in law to pass into law any bill seeking to gag citizens. Such a law, if ever passed, will run counter to section 1 of the 1999 Constitution which has declared the constitution to be the supreme law.

Any law capable of hindering the freedom of expression granted under section 39 of the 1999 Constitution and the African Charter will be illegal and unconstitutional. To that extent, the National Assembly has no power to make any law that will violate the constitution. It is ultra vires.

It is in the light of the above that I find it difficult to agree with this current government declaration that there is need for a new law to regulate what people term as hate speeches. This is just an attempt by the ruling Apc government to gag citizens and if such law is ever passed, we shall challenge it in court.

The Ekiti State governor, Ayodele Fayose, had earlier taken a similar position as Mr. Adegboruwa against the federal governments categorisation of hate speeches as acts of terrorism.

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Neo-Nazis are a constituency of President Donald Trump. So are white nationalists. And the so-called alt-right you keep hearing about? Theyre a constituency as well.

All politicians have constituencies who can be counted on to organize volunteers, raise or make donations, and mobilize voters come Election Day. Elected officials are constantly reaching out to those groups: labor, evangelicals, community organizations and business owners, to name a few.

Good politicians know that this relationship is ongoing. Their political operations are constantly talking to these groups, both directly and indirectly, knowing its important to keep them engaged and, more important, not to alienate them.

President Trump didnt want to condemn hate groups, even after a white supremacist drove his car into a group of protesters, killing one person and injuring many more, because theyre a constituency. He needs them, more than ever, as his approval ratings sink lower with each new poll.

Refusing to condemn hate groups for the first 48 hours after the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville last weekend, and choosing to call for an end to violence on many sides, were Trumps way of signaling to his base.

Trumps constituents took his words as they were meant to be heard. Andrew Anglin, founder of the Daily Stormer website, was pleased, writing, When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.

Anglins feelings were echoed online in communities where the so-called alt-right are known to congregate. Commenters on the website Reddits message board /r/The  Donald were largely satisfied that Trump didnt call out hate groups explicitly.

President Trump eventually did condemn hate groups, after being called on to do so by Republicans and Democrats. He followed this by signaling to his constituency group that he was still with them. First, he told a reporter that he was strongly considering pardoning Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a far-right hero convicted of contempt of court. Then he retweeted alt-right media celebrity Jack Posobiec  known for pushing debunked #pizzagate and Seth Rich conspiracy theories.

Finally, at a press event meant to be about infrastructure, Trump came wholly to the Charlottesville ralliers defense, saying, Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch.

Ive followed Trumps supporters online for the past year, eavesdropped on their digital conversations, and observed how theyre organized. For the most part, they arent engaged in any policy or political issue unless that issue involves race baiting. Trumps election brought them out of the shadows and they have no intention of returning there anytime soon.

What happened in Charlottesville might have shocked most Americans but it emboldened white nationalists and their allies. The hate groups are taking an online victory lap. Theyre planning their next rallies and actions. Theyll continue to have President Trumps back because hes shown them time and time again that he has theirs.

Trumps constituents took his words as they were meant to be heard. Andrew Anglin, founder of the Daily Stormer website, was pleased, writing, When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.
A civil society organisation, Partners for Electoral Reform (PEF), has urged the National Assembly to use ongoing constitutional review to provide for duration the president could be absent from duty.

The call came as President Muhammadu Buhari returned to Nigeria after 103 days in London for medical treatment.

The chairman of the group, Ezenwa Nwagwu, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Abuja, while welcoming Mr. Buhari back.

He said the protest for Mr. Buhari to resume or resign which was carried out while he was away, was unnecessary, but that the constitutional lapse thrown up by his long absence needed to be addressed.

Our constitution never contemplated the situation where the president will be away for a long time without defining clearly how long that can be.

Yes, the president never broke any law by staying away for the period he did; he followed the constitutional path but his absence for so long was the issue.

The lacuna in our Constitution is one in which we will have to deal with. If we dont deal with it today we will have to deal with it in the future.

This is because the deep question will be that if a president is inaugurated and falls ill after, can he just transmit power and stay away for any length of time? Mr. Nwagwu said.

He, however, said it was a thing of joy that President Buhari had returned, and prayed that God would sustain his recovery to enable him to take charge of governance.

He added that the presidents recovery and return had punctured the lies being peddled that he was in coma. (NAN)

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More parts of the Abuja metropolis are falling under a blanket of darkness from dusk, as the street lighting infrastructure appears to be collapsing in Nigerias federal capital city.

Lights installed on major streets such as Aminu Kano Crescent, Herbert Macaulay Way, Muhammadu Buhari Way and Ahmadu Bello Way in the citys phase one district are at best inconsistent. The situation is even worse in most other districts.

Residents say the creeping darkness, which has now affected many parts of the once brilliantly lit city, has noticeably gathered pace since Muhammad Bello became the Minister for the Federal Capital Territory Administration, FCTA, in November 2015.

I keep wondering if we have a department in FCDA saddled with the responsibility of maintaining these street light, said a resident, Abraham Angelo.

Those days when you drive round the town of Abuja in the night you will be fascinated with the beauty of the city when the lights are on. But what we have this days is darkness, you hardly drive down the length of a street or crescent and see a working streetlight, Mr. Angelo said.

The FCDA current administration need to up their game because the way things are, I hardly will say we have FCT minister, he added.

Another resident, Stanley Joseph, who lives at Dakwo, a suburb of the city, also blamed the authorities.

The way I see the problem about Abuja street lights, I dont think the maintenance department of FCDA is doing its job. Between 1997 to the end of Obasanjos tenure, when Abuja street lights used to function very well, if you came to Abuja at night you would think its afternoon.

But nowadays you just see some section of the city having light while others dont have light. Most of the time we experience blackout specifically the airport road axis I usually pass, Mr. Stanley said.

But the Federal Capital Development Authority, FCDA, said the minister is taking steps to stop the rot, as officials highlighted the factors that have made the problem difficult to resolve.

In a chat with PREMIUM TIMES, Omoniyi Olaloye, an engineer who is the acting director of Facilities Maintenance and Management at the FCDA, blamed vandalism by hoodlums and inefficiency of maintenance contractors for the deteriorating street lighting system in Abuja. He also blamed the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, AEDC.

Mr. Olaloye said the major challenge, however, was that the system depends solely on power supply from AEDC, which always complained about system breakdown.

When they have system breakdown all over the country, we dont have light. And they are also having challenge of vandalism. People are vandalizing their installations.

They have their installations, we have our own and we connect them. If they have vandalism on their own side, we dont get light and when we have vandalism on our own side we dont get light, he said.

There was a time vandals cut off their main cable that feeds the transformers. It is not our own installation, but once the cable is cut, our transformer cannot get light.

He said most cases of vandalism occur on the side of AEDC.

Unexecuted contracts mess

The FCT minister, Mr. Bello, had in June 2016 warned the street lights maintenance contractors to wake up and light up the streets of Abuja or lose their contracts.

But the ministers warning fell on deaf ears as many street light installations in the city have remained as they were.

Mr. Olaloye accused contractors awarded maintenance contracts under previous administrations of the territory of not executing most of the major projects awarded to them.

The Honourable Minister discovered that these contractors were not performing well, so they have been relieved of their work and new ones are coming in any moment from now, explained the acting director.

In fact, some of them have started collecting their award letters. They went through a rigorous process because some people in the past just buy these contracts, they dont even know what is involved. Later they would discover, for example, that as a street light contractor, you must have a platform.

Mr. Olaloye stressed that most contracts in the past were awarded to contractors who did not have the capacity to execute the maintenance projects.

You know what they call a platform? It is the equipment that will take you up to the pole, its a very expensive equipment. Many of them dont have it. So, the minister in his wisdom has packaged a new set of contractors, they have gone through the procurement process and they are awarding the contracts to new contractors who will be able to do the work for us.

According to Mr. Olaloye, the maintenance department that supervises the projects is now prepared to ensure that past wrongs are not repeated.

In the past government, people collect contracts without even being able to execute them. This is the challenge that we have been having and the minister has done his best to make sure that these things are not repeated.

Vandalism of street lights

In the course of the investigations for this report, it was discovered that crime rate has risen in some strategic locations of the Abuja metropolis as a result of defective street lights.

Mr. Olaloye suggested that some hoodlums vandalise street lights just to provide cover for robbery and other forms of theft.

We discovered that some bad boys hang around, the thieves, the robbers, people that when maybe you have vehicle problem in the night, they would just come out of the bush.

They deliberately cut off our cables. When we repair in a particular place today, we discover that after one or two weeks, these people go back there to cut off the flex, the cables. They make sure that about 10 to 15 poles dont have light so that they can operate, Mr. Olaloye said.

We have spots all over the city like that. Whatever you do, they go back there to spoil it.

In fact, there is a bridge, the bridge that goes to the (National) Stadium, do you know that some people live under that bridge? If your vehicle stops under that bridge at night, they will come out. Whatever we do there, they go back, they cut the cable because they dont want light there.

Apart from the fact that they create darkness so that they can attack people, they also feed on the installations. They cut our cables, some of them enter the manholes at night and cut more than 50 metres and even 100 metres of cable off to sell. People have been caught.

Some of them enter our transformers, some of them collude with AEDC officials to bring black out in an area so that they could enter the transformer and empty all the installations inside and go and sell.

Mr. Olaloye said the minister was doing a lot to beef up security in the noticed affected spots to curb out the challenges.

He is always holding meetings with our security agents, so that they can be up and doing, he added.

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Thousands of pro-President Muhammadu Buhari protesters on Saturday temporarily blocked the highway along the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja (NAIA) singing and dancing to welcome President Buhari from London.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that security personnel deployed to ensure smooth traffic flows along the highway abandoned their duty posts as they could not control the crowds, shouting Sai Baba Buhari.

Some of the pro-Buhari protesters were also heard casting and shouting unprintable words at Charles Oputa, otherwise known as Charly Boy, who led a protest movement calling on President Buhari to return home or resign.

Another set of protesters also stormed the Supreme Courts gate of the Presidential Villa, begging the security personnel on duty to allow them enter the main premises of the Villa to welcome the President.

NAN reports that President Buhari, who returned to Abuja on Saturday without his wife, Aisha, was received at the airport by the acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, six state governors, ministers and some presidential aides.

NAN reliably learnt that Aisha Buhari, who was with her husband in London during his medical vacation, would soon be returning to Nigeria.

Among those at the airport to welcome the president included members of the National Assembly, service chiefs, Inspector-General of Police Ibrahim Idris, Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari as well as other presidential aides.

Others at the airports were the National Security Adviser to the President (NSA) Retired Maj.-Gen. Babagana Monguno; the Director-General, Department of State Security (DSS), Lawal Daura, and other dignitaries from and within Abuja.

The President took a national salute from the Presidential Guards Brigade while cultural groups were also singing and dancing to welcome him back home.

The President, who has since retired into his official residence in the Presidential Villa, Abuja, is expected to speak to Nigerians in a broadcast on Monday at 7a.m.

(NAN)

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The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has saluted President Muhammadu Buhari on his return from his over three months medical vacation to London.

The welcome message of the party was issued by the Mr Dayo Adeyeye, National Publicity Secretary, PDP National Caretaker Committee on Saturday in Abuja.

We believe that Mr President is healthier now to assume his responsibility at the helm of the Countrys affairs.

We thank the Almighty for saving his life.

We pray that God grants him better health and understanding on how to rescue our poor economy and relieve Nigerians from the current hardship.

Also, a leader of the All Progressives Congress, Ahmed Tinubu, expressed joy at the return of President Buhari, saying the presidents return was a nations hope fulfilled.

In a statement by his Media Office, Mr. Tinubu, who is at present abroad, said the president had always been a man of moral fortitude, discipline, strength and dedication.

According to him, the attributes had helped him battle medical challenges. These same attributes will lead him to success in surmounting our national challenges.

President Buhari has demonstrated time and again his devotion to this nation and its great causes. His love of country and the realization that he has a mission to fulfil so that Nigeria may realize its better self by providing security and prosperity to all Nigerians has compelled him home.

Just as we gathered to pray for his health and his return, we must remain united in spirit to support President Buhari as he pursues the progressive agenda for which he was elected and that promises us all a better day.

Our nation is strong but must overcome many challenges. We can do so with President Buhari at the helm and with the rest of the nation in active support.

Thus, the presidents return home is both real and symbolic. We all must renew our faith in our collective purpose and rededicate ourselves to a nation indivisible and united in reconstructing our political economy so that it provides a decent and good life to all our people.

It has been a heartening thing to see that our nation has matured to the point where governance continued in a meaningful, seamless manner during the presidents absence. This again was a sign of the harmony between President Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.

On this day, it is even more heartening to think of the things that can now be achieved with President Buhari back to lead the nation.

Today is a glad and happy one for those who wish Nigeria well. While we celebrate the Presidents return, we also must quickly turn to the hard and heavy work at hand.

With President Buhari back and with the nation united behind him, we can accomplish excellent things. May we do our best to become our best.

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Residents of Daura in Katsina State are in an upbeat mood over reports of President Muhammadu Buharis return to Nigeria after his medical vacation abroad.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that those interviewed on Saturday expressed gratitude to Allah for the Presidents recovery and return to Nigeria.

Salisu Haro, a civil servant, said the Presidents return represents a ray of hope for the nation and prayed that Nigerians would support him to deliver quality leadership that would take the country to the next level.

He commended a section of the media for keeping Nigerians abreast of Buharis condition throughout his stay in London, adding that objective journalism would help to accelerate national development.

Abdumanaf Daura, APC Northwest Organizing Secretary, described the report as encouraging, saying it has put all those spreading rumours of Mr. Buharis incapacitation and death to shame.

He berated those he called unpatriotic elements using the presidents ill health for politics and spread of baseless rumours, saying they should atone for their sins.

The politician thanked Nigerians for their resilience, prayers and understanding during the trying moments of the nation, stressing that Mr. Buhari was back into the country for good.

Nura Usman, a civil servant, expressed the hope that Mr. Buhari would continue with his reform agenda.

We are solidly behind his crusade on corruption, insurgency and every other evil that derailed the progress of this nation.

We have been praying for his well being and God has answered our prayers, Usman said.

Nura Habu, a local farmer, said the residents would organise prayers to celebrate the return of Mr. Buhari.

Chukwu Emeka, a trader, danced on hearing the news, saying he had prayed fervently for the presidents recovery and return.

Mr. Emeka who has lived in Daura for over 20 years with his family, said God has put to shame those wishing to see the president dead.

Musa Zango, an Imam, attributed the return of the president to God, because of Buharis good intention to the nation.

He pledged that the residents would organise special prayers to thank God and protect the President from all evil machinations as he as he steers the affairs of the nation.

(NAN)

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The governorship primary of the United Progressives Party, Anambra State on Saturday claimed the life of a member of the party who died in a pandemonium that erupted during accreditation.

The deceased, Maduabuchi Uwakwewas, was the UPP chairman, Owerre-Ezukala ward 1, Orumba-South local government area of the state.

There are however conflicting reports as to what led to his death.

While a source who pleaded anonymity blamed the police for his death, the spokesman of the police in the state, Nkiruka Nwode, however blamed thugs who stormed the venue of the accreditation for his death.

The source said Mr. Uwakwe lost his life following a pandemonium that erupted when the men of the state police command sprayed tear-gas at the venue of the event in Geogold hotel, Awka, to disperse a group who allegedly wanted to disrupt the accreditation exercise.

The source, who is a UPP member from Owerre-Ezukala ward 1, stated that Mr. Uwakwe was asthmatic, and, that he probably died as a result of exhaustion after inhaling the tear-gas.

But Mrs. Nwode, an Assistant Superintendent Of Police, told our reporter on phone that thugs hired by one of the aspirants caused a stampede when they stormed the venue of the accreditation and the man slumped during the incident.

She said if not for the intervention of the police, more deaths would have been recorded.

We even arrested one of the thugs, so the statement that police caused the death of the man is totally false and baseless, she said.

Meanwhile, former aviation minister, Osita Chidoka, has emerged the UPP governorship candidate in the primary which later held at the Emmaus House, Awka.

The second contestant, Chudi Offodile, had pulled out of the primary earlier before the commencement of the accreditation of delegates, accusing the UPP hierarchy of manipulating the list of the delegates deliberately to shortchange him.

Sources disclosed that Mr. Offodile said he was heading to the courts to challenge the list of delegates used in the conduct of the governorship primary and even the out-come of the exercise.

Out of the total 1,473 delegates that participated in primary, Mr. Chidoka pulled a total of 1,222 votes to fly the UPP flag in the November 18, Anambra governorship contest, while Mr. Offodile had a total of 87 votes recorded in his favour. 19 votes were voided.

Addressing party members shortly after he was declared candidate, Mr. Chidoka commended them for the confidence reposed in him to fly the partys flag in the election, and, pleaded with them to brace up to the challenges of mobilising the people of the state, especially the electorate to embrace the partys manifesto and vote for the party.

Mr. Chidoka pledged that UPP administration in Anambra state under him as governor would engender a transformation that would endear the Biafra agenda to the people of Nigeria.

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The Oyo State capital, Ibadan, may soon have a total of 32 traditional rulers (Obas), if a report submitted to the state government on Friday becomes law.

The report was put together as recommendations by the Judicial Commission of Inquiry for the review of the existing 1957 Declaration of Olubadan and other related chieftaincies in Ibadanland. The commission was set up by Oyo State Governor, Abiola Ajimobi.

The report was presented to the governor by the chairman of the commission, Akintunde Boade, at the Governors Office, Ibadan, on Friday.

The report also recommended that the Olubadan, Saliu Adetunji, will maintain his status as the paramount ruler of the ancient city.

In a bid to reduce the long years it takes a potential Olubadan to get to the pinnacle of the two chieftaincy lines producing the Olubadan on rotational basis, the panel also reduced the rungs from the existing 22 to 11 on the Otun line, while the Balogun line was reduced to 12 from 23.

This, the report stated, means that the Ikolaba chieftaincy will now become the entry point for a potential high chief, instead of Jagun chieftaincy as it currently stands, if the recommendations were adopted.

The presentation of the report by the 11-member commission was witnessed by members of the Olubadan-in-Council, led by the Otun Olubadan, Lekan Balogun, and Balogun of Ibadanland, Owolabi Olakulehin, among others.

Receiving the report, Mr. Ajimobi said no effort would be spared to ensure that the recommendations were implemented as early as next month.

The governor said that his administrations resolve to carry out a comprehensive review of the Olubadan chieftaincy was in response to the requests by the Olubadan-in-Council, Ibadan elders and others.

Insisting that the exercise was not new, the governor recalled that previous administrations had reviewed the chieftaincy declaration, but could not muster the political will to implement their respective reports.

He said that review was necessary in order to enhance the status of the Olubadan, to be in line with what obtains in other states in Yorubaland as well as to conform to the modern trend in culture and tradition.

The governor said that he was not unmindful of the pockets of opposition to the move, noting that he was not bothered as long as those in support were overwhelmingly in the majority.

It is not everybody that will agree with us but once we have the majority who are in support, we are not bothered, he said.

As is customary, some people will disagree with any policy the government wants to implement, only for them to commend such policy in future.

By the grace of God, we can implement the recommendations as early as next month. The review will only enhance the status of Olubadan as the imperial majesty. It will not diminish his influence in any way.

Earlier, Mr. Boade had explained that in arriving at 32 beaded crowns, the commission gave preference to the current 11 high chiefs that made up the Olubadan-in-Council; nine eligible ancient baales and five baales who are members of the Oyo State Council of Obas and Chiefs.

He added that two baales at the states borders with Ogun and Osun States were also considered for beaded crowns judging by their untiring efforts in ensuring that their areas were secured for Ibadanland.

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The Pro-Life Scriptural Rosary

The Lord calls us to delight in and meditate on His word day and night (Ps 1:2). If we do this, the Lord promises us success in all our works (Ps 1:3). Consequently, when we pray the rosary and the Scriptures, we are taking steps that will be successful in protecting human life and stopping abortion. Pray this scriptural rosary so that life will be cherished.

The First Joyful Mystery

The Annunciation

1) "You shall conceive and bear a Son and give Him the name Jesus." Lk 1:31

2) "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; hence, the holy Offspring to be born will be called Son of God." Lk 1:35

3) "Know that Elizabeth your kinswoman has conceived a son in her old age." Lk 1:36

4) "The virgin shall be with Child and give birth to a Son, and they shall call Him Emmanuel, a name which means 'God is with us.'" Mt 1:23; Is 7:14

5) "Joseph, son of David, have no fear about taking Mary as your wife. It is by the Holy Spirit that she has conceived this Child." Mt 1:20

6) "He had no relations with her at any time before she bore a Son, Whom he named Jesus." Mt 1:25

7) "Truly You have formed my inmost being; You knit me in my mother's womb." Ps 139:13

8) "The fruit of the womb is a reward." Ps 127:3

9) "They ripped open expectant mothers." Am 1:13

10) "Mary said: 'I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say.'" Lk 1:38

The Second Joyful Mystery

The Visitation

1) "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leapt in her womb." Lk 1:41

2) "Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried out in a loud voice: 'Blest are you among women and blest is the Fruit of your womb.'" Lk 1:41-42

3) "The moment your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby leapt in my womb for joy." Lk 1:44

4) "He will be great in the eyes of the Lord. He will never drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb." Lk 1:15

5) "You, O child, shall be called prophet of the Most High." Lk 1:76

6) "You shall go before the Lord to prepare straight paths for Him." Lk 1:76

7) "...giving his people a knowledge of salvation in freedom from their sins. Lk 1:77

8) "...nor shall you stand by idly when your neighbor's life is at stake. I am the Lord." Lv 19:16

9) "If you remain indifferent in time of adversity, your strength will depart from you." Prv 24:10

10) "Blest is she who trusted that the Lord's words to her would be fulfilled." Lk 1:45

The Third Joyful Mystery

The Birth of Jesus

1) "She gave birth to her first-born Son and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the place where travelers lodged." Lk 2:7

2) "They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house, found the Child with Mary His mother." Mt 2:10-11

3) "They prostrated themselves and did Him homage." Mt 2:11

4) "Get up, take the Child and His mother, and flee to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you otherwise." Mt 2:13

5) "Herod is searching for the Child to destroy Him." Mt 2:13

6) Herod "ordered the massacre of all the boys two years old and under in Bethlehem and its environs." Mt 2:16

7) "A cry was heard at Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation." Mt 2:18; Jer 31:15

8) "Rachel bewailing her children; no comfort for her, since they are no more." Mt 2:18; Jer 31:15

9) "Those who had designs on the life of the Child are dead." Mt 2:20

10) "Mary treasured all these things and reflected on them in her heart." Lk 2:19

The Fourth Joyful Mystery

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple

1) "When the day came to purify them according to the law of Moses, the couple brought Him up to Jerusalem so that He could be presented to the Lord." Lk 2:22

2) "My eyes have witnessed your saving deed displayed for all the peoples to see." Lk 2:30-31

3) "This Child is destined to be the downfall and the rise of many in Israel, a Sign that will be opposed." Lk 2:34

4) "You yourself shall be pierced with a swordso that the thoughts of many hearts may be laid bare." Lk 2:35

5) "She gave thanks to God and talked about the Child to all who looked forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem." Lk 2:38

6) "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you." Jer 1:5

7) "I prayed for this child, and the Lord granted my request." 1 Sm 1:27

8) "Now I, in turn, give him to the Lord." 1 Sm 1:28

9) "You shall not offer any of your offspring to be immolated to Molech." Lv 18:21

10) "The Child grew in size and strength, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him." Lk 2:40

The Fifth Joyful Mystery

The Finding of Jesus in the Temple

1) "You see that Your father and I have been searching for You in sorrow." Lk 2:48

2) "He went down with them then, and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them." Lk 2:51

3) "Let the children come to Me." Mt 19:14

4) "Do not hinder them. The kingdom of God belongs to such as these." Mt 19:14

5) "Then He embraced them and blessed them, placing His hands on them." Mk 10:16

6) "He, the Dayspring, shall visit us in His mercy to shine on those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death." Lk 1:78-79

7) "God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living." Wis 1:13

8) "Jesus told him: 'I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.'" Jn 14:6

9) "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life." Dt 30:19

10) "Jesus told her: 'I am the Resurrection and the Life.'" Jn 11:25

Nihil obstat: Rev. Edward J. Gratsch, December 22, 1993

Imprimatur: Most Rev. Carl K. Moeddel, Auxiliary Bishop and Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, December 30, 1993
Mondays solar eclipse is expected to be a unique event, but its not worth burning your retinas over.

Experts recommend anyone viewing the eclipse Monday afternoon wear specially approved glasses to avoid solar retinopathy, or damage to the eyes retina. Even though the sun will be partially obscured, the remaining rays can do damage to people who stare at it for a significant time.

Dr. Brett Foxman, ophthalmologist and retina specialist at Retinal and Ophthalmic Consultants in Northfield, said its common sense to not stare at the sun on a normal day. The habit to look away from the sun shouldnt change Monday.

Its pretty rare for someone to come in with sight damage from looking at the sun too long, but it does happen, he said. Its the same risk during a solar eclipse  and increased, because people may think they can look at the sun since the brightness is knocked down, but the remaining sun is still enough to cause damage.

Foxman said looking at the sun can damage the macula, or center part of the retina, the nerve lining that covers the back of the eye. The image of whatever someone looks at is focused on the retina, and looking at something like the sun can burn the retina.

The reason this area of the retina is important is because the macula contains the fovea, an extremely small point in the center that is responsible for a persons sharpest central vision.

Damage to that area of the eye can impair or completely destroy straight-ahead vision, experts say. In other words, Foxman said, it could be the difference of reading several lines down on an eye chart exam versus only the top letter E.

Experts say people are often not aware of the damage happening because it is painless.

Prolonged ultraviolet ray exposure from the sun can damage the macula, which is why experts like Foxman and solar eclipse scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration stress the importance of wearing special-purpose solar filters.

Regular sunglasses, welding glasses or anything else not approved by the American Astronomical Society most likely let in too much light and therefore are not effective for someone staring at the eclipse, Foxman said.

A list of American Astronomical Society-approved eclipse glasses that meet the international standard ISO 12312-2 can be found at eclipse.aas.org/resources/solar-filters.

People should also not use things like binoculars or telescopes without special filters to view the solar eclipse as the suns heat will be magnified, NASA experts said.

People in the pathway of the total solar eclipse, which does not include any part of New Jersey, can remove their glasses when the moon completely covers the face of the sun.

Making a pinhole projector is also a safe, indirect way of viewing the solar eclipse. Foxman said thats how he viewed a past solar eclipse with his children, and it was just as good a way to experience the event.

If you make a big one, it could be something for a large number of people to see, he said. This weekend Ill play around with it to remember how I did it back then, because as long as the suns out, you can practice.

To learn more about solar eclipse eyeglass safety and how to create a pinhole projector, visit eclipse2017.nasa.gov/safety.
SEATTLE, Aug. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kaiser Permanente Washington joins today with families throughout our region as it launches a statewide, long-term commitment in creating healthier communities.

"We promised our members that Kaiser Permanente would bring our world-class approach to care to all Washingtonians and invest in our people, our care delivery and our community," said Susan Mullaney, president, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington. "We refer to our approach as Total Health  including body, mind and spirit.

"Total health happens where we live, work, learn and play. That's why we're investing in healthy and sustainable communities to address the building blocks for health. That's why we're excited to be the lead sponsor for Big Day of Play, a celebration of diversity, and a chance to build relationships and explore ways families can play and be active together," Mullaney said.

Steve Tarnoff, MD, president, Washington Permanente Medical Group, said, "The goals of this event align with ours: improving health outcomes, expanding relationships with underserved communities, and removing barriers to access, opportunity and resources."

Presented by the Seattle Parks and Recreation's Get Moving Initiative, this free community event at Rainer Playfields on Aug. 19 is just one example of how Kaiser Permanente is engaging to reach thousands of children and families.

Among Kaiser Permanente's commitments to creating healthy communities:

Thriving Schools: In October, working with Seattle Children's Theatre, Kaiser Permanente will debut a new educational theater program. Helping young teens address the issue of bullying is the first topic. The $600,000 investment is expected to reach more than 20,000 students in King, Pierce, Kitsap, Snohomish, Spokane and Whitman counties during the 20172018 school year. Additionally, Kaiser Permanente provides more than $2 million in care for more than 7,500 students through school-based clinics at eight locations and at Orion Health Center, where we reach another 1,000 homeless and at-risk youth.

Healthy Eating, Active Living: Beyond the many day-of offerings at the Big Day of Play, visitors will find a pop-up fitness area that features an example of exercise equipment being installed at 10 parks and playgrounds around the state over the next two years through Kaiser Permanente's collaboration with the Trust for Public Land and local communities.

Kaiser Permanente is also supporting a pilot of Pause & Play stations at two bus stops in the Rainier Valley. The installations are designed to provide an easy outlet for young people to stay active  even while waiting for the bus.

Access for the underserved and underinsured: While extending support in other ways, Kaiser Permanente also remains fully committed to providing care and coverage for many who are uninsured or underserved. This includes $30 million to serve about 25,000 Medicaid members this year, and providing about $3 million in medical financial aid.

And more: "These are just a few examples of how we are ramping up to do more to address the needs of communities we serve," Mullaney said. "Kaiser Permanente believes that creating healthy and sustainable communities requires a wide variety of community-based strategies as well as the support from a broad array of contributors, advocates, policy experts, health practitioners and most importantly, community residents.

"In Washington, our mission includes our 670,000 members and more than 6 million people across the areas we serve," said Mullaney.

From increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables to advancing economic opportunity, from addressing the profound need for mental health resources to making business choices that respect our environment, Kaiser Permanente is excited to partner with the people of Washington to make total health a reality for all.

About Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care. We are recognized as one of America's leading health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Founded in 1945, Kaiser Permanente has a mission to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve. We currently serve 11.8 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia. Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal Permanente Medical Group physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery and world-class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to: kp.org/share.

Contact:

Jackson Holtz, [email protected]

206-448-2728

SOURCE Kaiser Permanente

Related Links

http://www.kaiserpermanente.org


NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors that they have until September 19, 2017 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Lexmark International, Inc. (NYSE: LXK), if they purchased the Company's securities between August 1, 2014 and July 20, 2015, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Get Help

Lexmark investors should visit us at https://www.claimsfiler.com/cases/view-lexmark-international-inc-securities-litigation or call to speak to our claim center toll-free at (844) 367-9658.

About the Lawsuit

Lexmark and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

The alleged false and misleading statements and omissions include, but are not limited to, that: (i) there were significant declines in demand and growth for the Company's supplies business; (ii) supplies revenue growth was not caused primarily by demand, but by advance buying ahead of scheduled price increases; (iii) this buying practice resulted in excessive inventory levels at its wholesale distributors; and (iv) as a result of the foregoing, Lexmark's financial statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

About ClaimsFiler

ClaimsFiler has a single mission: to serve as the information source to help retail investors recover their share of billions of dollars from securities class action settlements. ClaimsFiler's team of experts monitor the securities class action landscape and cull information from a variety of sources to ensure comprehensive coverage across a broad range of financial instruments.

To learn more about ClaimsFiler, visit www.claimsfiler.com.

SOURCE ClaimsFiler

Related Links

http://www.claimsfiler.com


LOS ANGELES, Aug. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In anticipation of potential rallies and demonstrations being organized by hate groups, the Los Angeles Police Protective League issued the following statement today:

"Our Constitution prescribes the right for even the vilest, repugnant, and hate-filled individuals and organizations to peacefully assemble and protest. As members of law enforcement, no matter how much we abhor and repudiate the beliefs of Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Anti-Semites and the KKK, we are duty bound by the oaths we swore to keep the peace when these disgusting and despicable individuals congregate.

The recent events that unfolded in Charlottesville, Virginia cannot be tolerated in our country and, make no mistake, there is no moral equivalency between Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Anti-Semites, or the KKK and those that showed up to protest against them. The tragic murder of Heather Heyer and the line-of-duty deaths of Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke Bates should serve as stark reminders that good people, good Americans, must continue to stand up and stand for what is right and peacefully confront hate and hate-mongers.

We strongly urge any organization or individuals planning to assemble with the goal of re-creating the violence that occurred in Charlottesville, to cancel their event and stay home. We urge them to look into their souls and try to figure out where their hate is coming from and seek professional help. No one is born hating other people."

About the LAPPL: Formed in 1923, the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) represents the more than 9,900 dedicated and professional sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department. The LAPPL serves to advance the interests of LAPD officers through legislative and legal advocacy, political action and education. The LAPPL can be found on the Web at www.LAPD.com.

SOURCE Los Angeles Police Protective League
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dubbed "world renowned" in 2009 by AOL's celebrity news for his work on criminal and missing persons cases, best-selling author of The Rational Psychic and extrasensory expert Jack Rourke was the go-to guy when CNN wanted a spiritual perspective on the passing of superstar Michael Jackson. Recently, however, Mr. Rourke has turned his keen awareness toward more pressing matters  Russia.

PR Star Media Group

In June 2017 Jack was interviewed by Russia's state run REN TV. In this two-part interview, Jack was featured as the top psychic in the United States. Now, Jack is no stranger to the media. CBS television featured him as the real-life version of the fictional psychic detective at the center of their hit drama The Mentalist. Jack also profiled the Casey Anthony murder case on FOX's now-defunct Ricki Lake reboot. What makes this Russian interview with psychic Jack so unique though is both the timing and what he said.

During the Ren TV shoot, Jack was prompted to predict something positive about Russia that would take place in August 2017. Instead, he paused. Again, he was encouraged to say something flattering about Putin. Or comment on the pending good fortune of the Russian people. Still, Jack delayed. Finally, after a rather long and pregnant pause, Jack said something perhaps a bit shocking. He predicted Russia would intervene in the ongoing tensions between America and the rogue nation North Korea in a way the American government would not like.

Before part one of Rourke's interview even aired it appeared his prediction had already come true. On July 4, 2017, Reuters issued a report titled "Russia and China tell North Korea, U.S. and South Korea to embrace de-escalation plan." Russia did indeed intervene with North Korea much to the chagrin of the U.S. and its allies. Mr. Rourke discussed this fact a full two weeks before the Reuters story broke. Was this a coincidence? More importantly, is it appropriate for a psychic to speak on world events such as this? Is it possible Mr. Rourke used clairvoyance with the intention of both warning America and perhaps tempting the Kremlin into action?

Getting an interview with Jack Rourke is not easy. For this story, a series of emails were exchanged with his office. Ultimately, requests for interviews were denied. Could Jack Rourke be the one psychic who shuns the spotlight? It turns out Rourke is notorious for turning away media requests. He turned down a 2013 interview with CBS Local naming the best psychic and mediums in Los Angeles. He declined an invitation to appear on Good Day Australia when they requested he make on-air predictions about Hollywood celebrities. He again refused to discuss celebrities on NBC's Trisha show in 2013. And in a 2009 interview on a popular syndicated morning radio show, after continually denying rumors linking him to the intelligence community, Jack exited the interview unannounced. So unlike sensitives who trade in celebrity gossip and the sentimentality associated with allegedly talking to the dead, Rourke has instead quietly carved out a career earnestly trying to help those who seek him out. But now it seems he has used his influence in a way perhaps no other modern psychic has. Why?

Just hours after this story was scrapped due to the elusive psychic's refusal to participate, a mysterious telephone call came from an anonymous source. It was Rourke. He was cautious yet amiable and rather charismatic. An interview was scheduled for a few days later at a luxury Hotel in Los Angeles.

You're a hard man to get a hold of.

JR: Am I? Well, I'm just cautious about being misrepresented. Frankly, there's a lot of unhealthy and egotistical nonsense out there about what ESP is. There's even more spiritually dangerous misinformation in the public sphere concerning what it means to be psychic. I don't want to encourage or inadvertently contribute to these misperceptions. I describe a lot of these things in my book The Rational Psychic.

Tell me then, what's it like being a professional psychic?

JR: Every day is Halloween. There are ghosts and goblins haunting my every step.

You're joking but I imagine your life is not normal?

JR: At the beginning of my career I worked a lot with people who thought they or their homes were haunted. My business has changed since then. What's normal though? One only needs to read the headlines to learn societal norms are constantly challenged these days. Kidding aside, I deal with people and their practical concerns in spiritual and hopefully meaningful ways. My methodology is unconventional, yes. However, there's really nothing spooky about what I do at all. There have always been shamans and spiritual advisers in one form or another serving mankind going back to when we as a species were living off the land.

But being a psychic, it is weird, you admit that?

JR: Being psychic as a vocation is weird in that it's uncommon. But my business is run in a very conventional way. There's not a lot of high strangeness. At the end of the day, my work is fundamentally about loving people so that they can spiritually find meaning and purpose within. I help clients discover that their circumstances, no matter what, are workable.

There are a lot of very smart people who say extrasensory perception is a hoax.

JR: Well, in some instances those experts would be correct. However, what I've noticed is that many who seek to invalidate ESP don't really understand what it is they're trying to disprove. They construct experiments that cannot succeed. There's also often an agenda. A lot of fear and disdain that fuels rationalizations that minimize positive results. I'm no longer concerned with such things though. I've come to understand ESP as a natural function of consciousness that shows itself in both paranormal and completely ordinary ways. It's the illogical beliefs and exotic personalities often associated with ESP that deserve scrutiny in my view.

What makes you so sure ESP is real?

JR: At this point, repeated undeniable personal experience. But my favorite quote that speaks to the validity of ESP comes from the book The Reality of ESP by Dr. Russel Tarq. In that book, UC Davis statistics professor Jessica Utts, who was commissioned by the CIA to review 20 years of classified remote viewing research concluded, "The SRI data (Strategic Research Institute depicting the existence of ESP) is stronger than the FDA experimental evidence showing that aspirin prevents heart attacks.

Wow.

JR: Yep

So, speaking of the CIA

As if by divine intervention a waiter brings our order. After the interruption, Jack deftly changes the subject. I redirect him.

I heard a radio interview some years back addressing a rumor you have links to the intelligence community. Care to comment?

JR: No.

Seems odd that a major Hollywood movie studio would hire you as an expert on psychic spies to help promote the feature film PUSH if you had no familiarity with the subject.

JR: I have clients in various professions. For many, it's surprising that educated high-functioning people use services like mine but they do. That's all I have to say about that.

You had a platform to speak directly to the Russian people. Why did you predict Russian involvement in North Korea in a way the American government would not like?

JR: It's what I saw. I was just being honest. I first discovered my mind is attuned to geopolitical events when I predicted the invasion of Georgia by the Russian Army for the Associated Press.

But right now, given the political climate, why say something so controversial?

JR: Well, I didn't think it controversial. I'll admit, there was a moment when I was worried about how what I clairvoyantly saw would be received. But I was literally seeing information that indicated a nuclear conflict in the very near future. I was frightened. If I'm honest though, I was very concerned about sharing such information. The reason I spoke so frankly was I thought maybe, at the risk of sounding self-important, I thought maybe I could do some good. Truthfully, I thought no one would care what I had to say anyway.

Weren't you making an assertion by speaking directly to the Russian people on their state-run Media?

JR: Does it matter if my speaking up helps avoid armed conflict?

Good point. You're opening an office in New York City?

JR: Yes, for years I've worked with clients across North America as well as Europe and South Africa. So, having a footprint in New York closer to those time zones makes sense. I'm excited.

Do you have any predictions for me?

JR: Yes. You will live a long and happy life.

Sounds like a dream.

JR: A beautiful dream we all deserve.

For more information about Jack Rourke visit: www.jackrourke.net

Related Images

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Related Links

Jack Rourke Biography

Psychic Readings New York Office

SOURCE Jack Rourke

Related Links

https://jackrourke.net


"To be able to honor the brave men of the USS Indianapolis and their families through the discovery of a ship that played such a significant role during World War II is truly humbling," Mr. Allen said. "As Americans, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the crew for their courage, persistence and sacrifice in the face of horrendous circumstances. While our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue, I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming."

The Indianapolis was tragically lost in the final days of World War II when it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the early morning hours of July 30, 1945. The Indianapolis sank in 12 minutes, making it impossible to deploy much of its life-saving equipment. Prior to the attack, the Indianapolis had just completed its secret mission of delivering components of one of the two nuclear weapons that were dropped on Japan. Of the 1,196 sailors and Marines onboard, only 317 survived.

"Even in the worst defeats and disasters there is valor and sacrifice that deserve to never be forgotten," said Sam Cox, Director of the Naval History and Heritage Command. "They can serve as inspiration to current and future Sailors enduring situations of mortal peril. There are also lessons learned, and in the case of the Indianapolis, lessons re-learned, that need to be preserved and passed on, so the same mistakes can be prevented, and lives saved."

"For more than two decades I've been working with the survivors. To a man, they have longed for the day when their ship would be found, solving their final mystery," said Capt. William Toti (Ret), spokesperson for the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. "They all know this is now a war memorial, and are grateful for the respect and dignity that Paul Allen and his team have paid to one of the most tangible manifestations of the pain and sacrifice of our World War II veterans."

As the naval flagship of the Fifth Fleet, the sunken Indianapolis was the object of many previous search efforts. Mr. Allen had recently acquired and retrofitted the 250-foot R/V Petrel with state-of-the-art subsea equipment capable of diving to 6,000 meters (or three and a half miles).

"The Petrel and its capabilities, the technology it has and the research we've done, are the culmination of years of dedication and hard work," said Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Mr. Allen. "We've assembled and integrated this technology, assets and unique capability into an operating platform which is now one among very few on the planet."

The other key factor in the discovery was information that surfaced in 2016 by Dr. Richard Hulver, historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command, which led to a new search area to the west of the original presumed position.

By finally identifying a naval landing craft that had recorded a sighting of the USS Indianapolis the night that it was torpedoed, the research team developed a new position and estimated search, which was still a daunting 600 square miles of open ocean.

Allen-led expeditions have also resulted in the discovery of the Japanese battleship Musashi (March 2015) and the Italian WWII destroyer Artigliere (March 2017). His team was also responsible for retrieving and restoring the ship's bell from the HMS Hood for presentation to the British Navy in honor of its heroic service. Mr. Allen's expedition team was recently transferred to the newly acquired and retrofitted R/V Petrel specifically for continuing exploration and research efforts.

The 16-person expedition team on the R/V Petrel will continue the process of surveying the full site as weather permits and will be conducting a live tour of the wreckage in the next few weeks. The USS Indianapolis remains the property of the U.S. Navy and its location will remain confidential and restricted by the Navy. The crew of the R/V Petrel has been collaborating with Navy authorities throughout its search operations and will continue to work on plans to honor the 22 crew members still alive today, as well as the families of all those who served on the highly decorated cruiser.

For more information, contact:

[email protected], 206-342-2230

The following link provides visual assets, materials and video interviews from:

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen

Director of subsea operations for Mr. Allen, Robert Kraft

Director of the Naval History and Heritage Comment, Sam Cox

Naval Historian Dr. Richard Hulver

B-roll of the R/V Petrel in its search for the U.S.S. Indianapolis

Historic photos of the U.S.S. Indianapolis

The following links are recommended resources provided by Dr. Hulver and provide the history of the USS Indianapolis.

Naval History and Heritage Command's USS Indianapolis Page

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/disasters-and-phenomena/indianapolis.html

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/disasters-and-phenomena/indianapolis.html USS Indianapolis Photos -- Imagery in this section can be attributed to "U.S. Navy Photo Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command" or "U.S. Navy Photo."

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/us-navy-ships/alphabetical-listing/i/uss-indianapolis--ca-35-.html

Photos -- Imagery in this section can be attributed to "U.S. Navy Photo Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command" or "U.S. Navy Photo." https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/us-navy-ships/alphabetical-listing/i/uss-indianapolis--ca-35-.html Indianapolis Bibliography

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/loss-of-uss-indianapolis-ca-35/bibliography.html

About Paul G. Allen

Four decades after co-founding Microsoft, entrepreneur and philanthropist Paul G. Allen is still exploring the frontiers of technology and human knowledge, and acting to change the future. Mr. Allen is working to save endangered species; combat climate change; improve ocean health; share art, history and film; develop new technology; tackle epidemics; research how the human brain works; and build sustainable communities.

Mr. Allen is deeply committed to honoring our past and the lessons it provides to our future. He has created public spaces including the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Collection, MoPOP and the Living Computer Museum + Lab where people learn and interact with historic, cultural and musical heritage. The inaugural Seattle Art Fair helped put the city on the map as one of the premier art destinations in the country. He also thinks globally, making impact investments that will help developing countries expand their health and infrastructure and nurture a diversified economy.

Many of his ventures were seeded in his youth, and reflect the depth and diversity of his passions. Honoring his father's service in World War II, Mr. Allen is especially interested in collecting and protecting the artifacts that speak to the heroism and service of that day. His recently acquired Research Vessel Petrel provides a platform to search for historic artifacts that have been lost at sea.

To learn more, visit PaulAllen.com.

SOURCE Paul G. Allen

Related Links

http://paulallen.com


If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
New Delhi, Aug 16 : A day after Indian and Chinese troops clashed along the northern bank of Pangong Lake in Ladakh, a flag meeting was requested by the Chinese side, sources said on Wednesday.

A scuffle took place on Tuesday when troops of China's PLA tried to cross the Line of Actual Control near Pangong Lake in Ladakh.

The standoff continued for more than an hour, during which soldiers on both sides were involved in stone pelting, which led to injury to troops on both sides, sources said.

This is a one of its kind incident where troops were involved in a skirmish, though no weapons were used.

Later, a standard drill in which banners are shown asking the other side to go back to the agreed point - was held, and the Chinese troops retreated.

Army officials in Delhi have refused to comment on the incident, but have not denied it either.

The development in Ladakh comes as troops of both sides are locked in a tense standoff in Doklam, in Sikkim sector, that entered the third month on Wednesday.
Madrid, Aug 18 : Spanish police on Friday said that they killed five people in the town of Cambrils to stop a second attempted van attack after an earlier one in Barcelona that claimed the lives of 13 people and injured over 100 others.

In Cambrils, seven people including a police officer were injured when a car rammed into a group earlier on Friday, the BBC quoted the Catalan emergency services as saying.

Spanish media reported that the vehicle overturned and when the attackers, who were wearing explosive belts, got out they were quickly fired upon by police.

The police have said that the situation in Cambrils - a popular seaside resort - is now under control.

A bomb squad is deployed to carry out controlled blasts on the explosive belts.

The incident in Cambrils came after Thursday afternoon's attack in Barcelona when a van ploughed into crowds in the city's Las Ramblas area.

The driver of the van, who fled on foot, is still at large.

The Islamic State terror group has said it was behind the Las Ramblas attack, saying in a brief statement carried by its Amaq news agency that it was carried out by "Islamic State soldiers".

Authorities are now linking the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils with an explosion at a house on Wednesday evening in the town of Alcanar that left one person dead.

So far, two people have been arrested, and the police have released a photo of a man named as Driss Oubakir, whose documents were used to rent the van involved in the attack, reports the BBC.

However, latest reports suggest the 20-year-old Moroccan born has told the police that he was not involved and his documents were stolen.

The people injured in the Las Ramblas attack included four Australians and one from Hong Kong, reports CNN.

Belgium has confirmed that one of its citizens was among the 13 victims.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has travelled to Barcelona and declared three days of national mourning.

He said the attack was "jihadi terrorism".

"I want to express my solidarity with all of Spain to the city of Barcelona, today hit by jihadi terrorism, like other cities have been in the world."

The One World Trade Centre in New York lit up in the colours of the Spanish flag to show solidarity with Barcelona. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower went dark In a statement, US President Donald Trump said: "The United States condemns the terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, and will do whatever is necessary to help. Be tough and strong, we love you!"

Russian President Vladimir Putin said the attack in Barcelona was a "cruel and cynical crime committed against civilians".

Facebook has activated its safety check mechanism, allowing users both in Barcelona and Cambril to mark themselves as safe.
Madrid, Aug 17 : The Spanish Coast Guard has said it rescued 600 migrants crossing from Morocco in a 24-hour period amid a spike in the number of arrivals, the media reported.

The rescued migrants on Wednesday were in 15 vessels including toy paddle-boats and a jet ski and included 35 children and a baby, reports the BBC.

According to UN figures, more than 9,000 people have arrived in Spain so far this year - three times as many as the previous year.

More than 120 people are believed to have drowned while attempting the crossing.

Most are sailing across the 12-km Strait of Gibraltar and many are choosing cheap, child-sized paddle boats without motors that allow them to bypass people smuggling networks and their fees.

Some migrants use social media to contact the Spanish authorities and inform them of their location once they are in territorial waters, the BBC reported.

However, a much larger number - nearly 100,000 - have crossed from Libya to Italy since the start of the year. The IOM says 2,242 people have died on that route, the International Organisation for Migration said.

In June, about 5,000 people were rescued in one day in the Mediterranean off Libya.
London, Aug 19 : British Prime Minister Theresa May said her government was trying its best to look into reports of a missing child with dual British nationality after deadly terrorist attacks in Spain which left 14 people dead.

"We're urgently looking into reports of a child believed missing, who is a British dual national," Xinhua news agency quoted the Prime Minister as saying.

"Sadly, I must tell you that we do believe that a number of British nationals were caught up in the attack," she said.

The seven-year-old boy, Julian Alessandro Cadman, was separated from his mother when a van rammed into a crowd of people in the pedestrian area in central Barcelona on Thursday, reports said, citing a post on social media from the boy's grandfather.

Cadman's mother was badly injured and is reportedly in a serious condition in hospital. The family has shared a picture of Cadman in a bid to find the boy from Australia.

"The Foreign Office is offering consular assistance to those who were involved in the attack and their families, and are working urgently to see if there are others who need their help," May said.

Earlier Friday, May spoke with Spanish Prime Minister Maiano Rajoy over the double terror attacks. "Terrorism is the great threat we all face," she said.

Thirteen people were killed Thursday afternoon in the popular Las Ramblas area of Barcelona when a white van zigzagged at high speed down the busy avenue thronged with tourists, knocking down pedestrians.
Washington, Aug 19 : US President Donald Trump pledged the full support of the United States in investing the attacks in Spain's Barcelona and Cambrils and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

According to a White House statement released on Friday, Trump made the pledge in a phone call with Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Trump told Rajoy that the US was prepared to render "whatever assistance" Spanish authorities need as they pursue their investigation into the attacks in Barcelona and the nearby seaside town of Cambrils, Efe news reported.

During their call, Trump also extended his condolences to the victims and families of the attacks.

The two leaders spoke shortly after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that a US citizen was among the 13 people killed on Thursday when terrorists drove a van into a throng of pedestrians in Barcelona's Las Ramblas district.

Another American suffered minor injuries in the attack, according to State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert.

Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to condemn the attack and urge Spaniards to "be tough & strong" in the face of terrorism.

Islamic State issued a claim of responsibility for the violence in Barcelona.

Trump and Rajoy first met in person in May, during the NATO summit in Brussels. The two men saw each other again last month at the G20 gathering in Hamburg.
Madrid, Aug 19 : A huge manhunt is underway across Europe for at least one suspect still at large after plotting Spain's terrorist attacks in which 14 people were killed and hundreds were injured.

The police are now hunting for Moroccan-born Younes Abouyaaqoub, said to be at the centre of the investigation into the Thursday massacre in which a van driven by terrorists ploughed into a crowd in Barcelona's Las Ramblas boulevard killing 13 civilians and injuring 13 people, the Telegraph reported.

Moussa Oukabir, the 18-year-old who was previously reported as the key suspect in Barcelona attack, was one of five men shot dead by police in a second terror attack in the coastal town of Cambrils, authorities said on Friday night.

Oukabir was killed along with terrorists Said Aallaa and Mohamed Hycham in the Cambrils attack that left one woman dead and five others injured after the men drove into pedestrians.

The other two terrorists killed in the attack are yet to be identified.

Police said that the suspects in the double attacks originally planned to use explosive devices to wreak greater devastation but were apparently thwarted because their materials detonated prematurely.

According to Spanish newspaper El Pais, police in Catalonia said they were searching for Abouyaaqoub, who is understood to be a key member of a 12-member jihadist cell behind the double attacks. The massive manhunt was launched amid fears that they could be preparing further attacks at popular tourist areas.

Abouyaaqoub, 22, lived in the town of Ripoll to the north of Barcelona. One former classmate described Abouyaaqoub as "very shy". She told La Vanguardia newspaper: "He didn't like attention.

"He was quiet and never got in trouble. It's very shocking to tell you the truth, here nobody can believe that he was capable of doing this," the classmate said.

So far, three people have been arrested in Ripoll and one person in Alcanar. Three of them are Moroccan citizens and another is Spanish, media reports said.

Authorities said there was a clear link between an explosion at a house at Alcanar on Wednesday and the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.
London, Aug 19 : An artwork by acclaimed street artist Banksy that appeared on a public toilet block in east London, only to disappear after it was vandalised, has been rediscovered over a decade later, the media reported.

Known as the "Snorting Copper" and considered an exemplary image by the elusive graffiti artist, it shows a uniformed policeman on his hands and knees snorting a line of cocaine, reports the Guardian.

Although the painting has been valued for insurance purposes at 1.25 million pounds, Jonathan Ellis and David Kyte, who uncovered the painting after they bought the disused site, said they have no intention of selling it.

Instead, they are restoring it and will return it to its original site in Shoreditch, Hackney, so that the general public can see it. The unveiling will take place on October 5.

"It's an amazing piece," Ellis told the Guardian. "We've had offers to sell it. But we want to put it back. We think that's the right thing to do for the public to enjoy it. I'm proud to be able to do something like that."

John Brandler, a specialist dealer in Banksy artworks, said the painting was a famous image, reproduced in several books, "but no one knew where it was".

Other Banksy works have been vandalised or destroyed.

In 2014 a Banksy artwork in Clacton-on-Sea depicting pigeons holding anti-immigration banners was removed by the local council after someone complained it was racist.

Banksy, known for his stencil-based images, has maintained his anonymity, despite repeated attempts to unmask him. Describing himself as a "quality vandal", he has made his name by poking fun at authority figures through artworks in public places, the Guardian reported.

Stencil enables him to work at speed, quickly disappearing into the night.

In 2005, he smuggled his own works into major museums including Tate Britain in London and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In 2015, he opened Dismaland in Weston-super-Mare, a temporary amusement park and conceptual art show.

In July, his "Girl with Balloon" - in which a child watches her heart-shaped balloon drift away - was voted Britain's best-loved work of art.
Mumbai, Aug 19 : Filmmaker Anubhav Sinha, who has taken the indie cinema route with "Mulk", might release the making of a recce video shot to document the journey of the upcoming film's team.

Sinha and his team of four went on a recce for the film in Uttar Pradesh earlier this week and recorded a feat of being the first economical commercial film recce.

"Anubhav sir has always been very careful when it comes to budgeting on a film and is always of the opinion that there should never be unnecessary splurging on a film. Right from carpooling in Lucknow to eating street food in dhabas to flying economy, we didn't really waste any money," executive producer Sagar Shirgaonkar of Benaras Media Works, said in a statement.

"We spent close to Rs 80,000 cumulative for five nights for four people which is quite unbelievable, but it is a collective decision to treat 'Mulk' as a indie film."

Generally during a film recce, huge budgets are reserved, but they wanted to experiment a little and wanting to make the "impossible" possible.

"Maybe once the film goes on floors, Anubhav sir will release the making of the recce video we shot to document our journey," said Shirgaonkar.

The social-thriller, based on true life events, will go on floors in October.

Starring Rishi Kapoor, Taapsee Pannu, Prateik Babbar and Rajat Kapoor, the film be shot in Varanasi and Lucknow.
Bengaluru, Aug 19 : The University of Nottingham (UoN) on Saturday launched the Post Graduate Certificate in Education (International) (PGCEi) for teacher education in partnership with the TISB Training Academy (TTA)

The TTA is part of the TISB and NPS Group of Institutions.

The PGCEi launched by the UoN at their campus is a global platform to compare teaching approaches across different countries and help teachers in developing a global approach to education.

"The course aims to promote in-depth understanding of teaching strategies, develop expertise in practitioner research and make appropriate use of professional and research literature," said Anne Emerson, Associate Professor, UoN, and PGCEi Coordinator (Asia) in a statement.

Earlier in March, a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) was signed between the two institutions to introduce the PGCEi in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Mauritius, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The programme consists of four 15 credit modules and is blended learning, which is a flexible amalgamation of online distance learning as well as face-to-face sessions.

"The content and design of the PGCEi will benefit teachers irrespective of the curriculum or grade they teach. Improved teacher skill and pedagogical knowledge will directly impact student outcomes and performance," added Bindu Hari, Director, TISB, NAFL and NPS Group of Schools.

The web-based virtual learning environment (VLE) enables teachers from tier-2 and 3 cities to access high quality teaching qualification.

"It was my dream to offer teachers more opportunities to learn from the best practices from all over the world," said K.P. Gopalkrishna, Chairman, TISB, NAFL and NPS Group of Schools.

The course will start in December 2017 and take eight months to a year to complete. The 60 credits earned from the PGCEi can be carried forward into a MA in Education in preparation for Ph.D study.
New Delhi, Aug 19 : A young woman set afire by her husband and in-laws over dowry died here on Saturday and three persons have been arrested in the case, police said.

Parvinder Kaur, 24, admitted in the Safdarjung Hospital here on Friday with burn injuries, said in her police statement before her death that she was set afire by her husband and in-laws, Deputy Commissioner of Police Vijay Kumar said.

Kumar identified those arrested on Saturday as Parvinder's husband Gurcharan Singh, 27, father-in-law Rawel Singh, 62, and brother-in-law Prabhjot Singh, 25.

In response to a call on Friday, police personnel reached the family's house in Vikas Puri in west Delhi and came across the smell of kerosene on the premises along with burnt clothes, matchbox, and the woman's sandals.

"The woman's statement was recorded at the Safdarjung Hospital, wherein she alleged that she had gone to her marital home to collect her son's clothes around 9.30 p.m. (on Friday), where she was set afire by her husband and in-laws," Kumar said.

He said hospital authorities on Saturday informed police that Kaur had died.

The woman's father Satpal Singh told IANS that she was thrown out of her marital home over dowry demands.

"She was living with us since August 4. On Friday, she had gone to collect her son's clothes from the house when they set her on fire," Satpal Singh said.

Her brother Amandeep Singh said she had been married for almost five years and had a four-year-old son and there were constant fights over dowry.

"Of late, we said we won't pay the dowry. That led them to kill her," he added.
New Delhi, Aug 19 : Days after Indian and Chinese troops got involved in a shuffle in Jammu and Kashmir's Ladakh, a video of the stone pelting surfaced on Saturday, but army sources however said they cannot confirm its authenticity.

The video shows soldiers pelting stones at each other and getting involved in fisticuffs by the bank of a lake.

A scuffle took place between the Indian and Chinese troops this week which saw stones being pelted from both sides.

The incident took place on Tuesday when Chinese soldiers tried to cross the Line of Actual Control. A Border Personnel Meeting on Wednesday however saw both sides agreeing to take steps to ensure peace along the border and leave the incidents behind, according to sources.

Indian Army chief, Gen. Bipin Rawat will start a three day visit to Ladakh from Sunday, during which he will review the security in the area, and also attend a ceremony in which President's Colours will be given to battalions of the Ladakh Scouts.

Meanwhile, a standoff with China in Sikkim sector has been continuing since June 16.
Mumbai, Aug 19 : Known for working with a riot of colours and psychedelic prints to produce quirky designs loved all around, ace designer Manish Arora says it is the time when India should not be separated from the world in terms of fashion as the customer has become global.

"I actually like to make everything one now because there is no need to separate India," Arora told IANS in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) Winter/Festive 2017.

Adding about his global plan for brand Manish Arora, he said: "India is no more a market where you have to separate it because the customer is as global as in China or Middle East or Europe. It's the right time to include India in the part of a global plan."

The designer, who at the age of 43 was conferred the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, France's highest civilian award, is one of the celebrated names internationally and has successfully completed 10 years of showcasing in Paris.

Arora's international presence started with his successful debut at the London Fashion Week in September 2005. He later showed his creative prowess at platforms in Hong Kong and Miami.

In 2007, he showcased for the first time in Paris Fashion Week, eventually becoming a member of the distinguished French Federation of Pret-a-Porter in the same year.

Arora feels India is no longer an understated country in terms of fashion sense, and this is the reason why he has showcased his Paris collection on the LFW runway.

"The collection that I have showed here (at LFW) was from my last show in Paris. Even if we are celebrating our 10 years in Paris, the one way was of showing the line was to have my lines from past 10 years, but I said that why can't we show what we did in Paris because now India or the generation who is coming for LFW is kind of ready to see relevant new things.

"They know a lot. They are in touch with what's happening right now, so we chose to show the collection which is CosmicLove," he said.

The celebrated Indian couturier marks the 10th anniversary of his colourful Paris collection by presenting 'CosmicLove' at the fashion week.

His show, Etihad Airways Presents Manish Arora, took the audience on a visual journey spanning the tribes of Africa and the outer reaches of the universe.

About India as a market, Arora says that the current generation in India is very out and about in terms of fashion.

"They are travelling, they have internet. When I was there, we didn't have Google, we didn't know what to search on, we didn't know what is happening worldwide, but now you can't trick people.

"They know what's happening and the best way is to come back with what is currently going globally," he said.

"Besides that, I think Indians also know what they want to do, which is quite new and interesting.

"A 22-year-old guy or girl know what looks good on them. They know the style, they have the character and they want to make statement in their own way and that is something that we have to tap on right now," he added.

About his 10 years in Paris, he still feels that he has just started.

"I am just beginning and I hope there are many 10 years to go ahead," Arora said, adding that he is coming up with a perfume line.

(The writer's trip is at the invitation of LFW organisers. Nivedita can be contacted at nivedita.s@ians.in)
Kolkata, Aug 19 : Days after clashing with the BJP-led central government over the format for celebrating independence Day in educational institutions, West Bengal's Mamata Baneerjee regime is again on a collision course with the centre over observance of Teachers Day on September 5.

At the core of the dispute is a circular sent by Union Ministry of Human Resources Development to the states recommending a structured format that promotes Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet scheme "Swachh Bharat Mission" across the nation through the programmes to be organised in the schools on Teachers' Day.

The Trinamool Congress state government, which has emerged as one of the staunchest critics of the Modi government, on Saturday made it clear that it was in no mood to abide by the "recommendations".

Describing the circular as "laughable", state Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said: "We on our part have sent circulars to all schools in advance to observe Teachers' Day with due reverence and solemnity. All educational institutions will observe the day."

The HRD Ministry circular refers to the recommendations as "suggested" by Modi to engage schools children in the "Swachh Bharat Mission" through national level essays and painting competitions.

"The honourable prime minister has suggested to promote the message of 'Swachhta' on a massive scale and engage smart, young minds in the Swachh Bharat Mission through national level essay and painting competitions organised across all schools on occasion of Teachers Day.

"This initiative would ensure a structured participation of the school children, youth in the programme and bring in fresh ideas, energy and enthusiasm to the mission," says the circular.

The painting completion would be for students from class 1 to 5 and the essay competition for students in two categories - one for class 6 to class 8 and other for class 9 to class 12.

The circular proposes that the theme of the essay competition should be "What will I do to make India clean", and that for the painting competition "Clean India of my dreams".

The circular recommends that every school "strongly encourage all students to participate in the essay and painting competition" and calls for giving awards to the best essays at the village, district and national levels.

"I don't know why they have sent this circular. Do they feel we don't know how to observe the day?" asked Chatterjee, while categorically stating that the schools would organise programmes on their own, just as they have been doing for years on that day.

Perhaps as a counter to the BJP led government's move, the Trinamool dispensation in the state has decided to hold a central programme in the city where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would launch a scheme for distribution of schools bags and exercise books to students.

Teachers of schools, colleges and universities would be honoured with certificates and medals during the programme.

Ahead of Independence Day earlier this week, a similar circular from the MHRD had become a bone of contention between the Modi and Banerjee governments.

The union ministry had issued the circular to all state Education Secretaries specifying "additional activities" to be undertaken by schools under the Sarva Shiksha Mission to celebrate Independence Day in a "befitting manner".

It asked every school to arrange a "Sankalp programme" from August 9 to August 30 and organise an oath-taking ceremony where all teachers and students would have to take a vow to rid the country of the five problems of poverty, corruption, terrorism, communalism and casteism by 2022, when the nation would be celebrating 75 years of freedom.

The state government responded by issuing a directive to all District Project Officers in-charge of the Sarva Shikha Mission in the state, virtually negating the Union ministry circular and asking the schools to "Stop all preparations" for celebrating the day in the format prescribed the the MHRD.
Darjeeling, Aug 19 : A civic volunteer died, and two others were injured in a blast in northern West Bengal's Kalimpong police station on Saturday night, police said.

The blast took place at 10.15 p.m., nearly 24 hours after an explosion in the heart of the hill town of Darjeeling that damaged few shops, triggering tension among locals though none was injured.

Police have booked three top GJM leaders including its chief Bimal Gurung under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in connection with the Darjeeling blast.

The explosion at the Kalimpong police station left a home guard and a jawan of the Seema Sashatra Bal injured. Both the injured have been hospitalised, said Kalimpong Superintendent of Police Ajit Singh Yadav.

"Civic volunteer Rakesh Routh has been killed," he said.

More details were awaited.

The GJM denied its involvement in the Darjeeling bladt, and demanded a probe by a high level enquiry committee comprising National Investigation Agency officials under the supervision of the Supreme Court.

"There was a bomb blast in Darjeeling's motor stand area at 12.10 a.m. No one got injured as the place was empty at the time of the blast. We are investigating the incident," Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Kumar Chaturvedi told IANS.

Police said the blast was caused by an Improvised Explosive Device, and the impact was felt over 40 feet. Police recovered wire from the spot.

The blast took place on the 69th day of the indefinite shutdown called by the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM), which has demand a separate Gorkhaland state be carved out of the north Bengal hills.

According to sources, a number of shops and the road in front of the motor stand area have been damaged.

Fire tenders, police and Central Reserve Police Force personnel rushed to the spot after the blast. Police have been deployed in the area.

No individual or organisation has so far taken responsibility of the blast, but the police said top GJM leaders like Gurung, Prakash Gurung and Pavin Subba were prima facie suspects.

In the afternoon, police filed an FIR against these three leaders and "others" and started a case at the Darjeeling Sadar police station.

"Regarding the bomblast at Darjeeling motorstand on Saturday, case has been started against Bimal Gurung, Prakash Gurung, Praveen Subba and others," a police officer said.

The sections applies include 120B (Punishment of criminal conspiracy), 121 /121A/122 of IPC (relating to waging or intending to intention of waging war against the government), as also sections 16/17/18/18A/18B of UAPA (that deal with terrorism and organising of terrorist camps as also recruiting people for the same).

Cases under some sections of the West Bengal Maintenance of Public Order and Prevention of Damage to Public Property have also been slapped against the accused.

GJM chief Gurung, in a statement, termed the blast as "the handiwork" of those opposed to Gorkhaland and demanded an "unbiased investigation".

"The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha condemns and protests against the bomb blast. The blast, we believe, was the handiwork of those who do not want Gorkhaland state to be formed. This was a planned move aimed at bringing disrepute to the movement and the demand for Gorkhaland.

"The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha demands that a probe be initiated, at the earliest, by a high level enquiry committee, comprising of NIA officials under the supervision of the Supreme Court of India, so that an unbiased investigations can be carried out into this heinous attempt to bring disrepute to the Gorkhaland movement and the leaders associated with it, and wilful attempts at causing unrest in peaceful Darjeeling."

He wondered how the blast could take place as the entire Darjeeling region has been "fortified and turned into a garrison of sorts" and that it occurred only 200 metres from the police station.

"GJM will never support any undemocratic means, and we condemn this attempt at breaching peace in the hills. We request everyone not to be misled and not to be scared, and to maintain peace in the hills," the statement added.
Baghdad, Aug 20 : The Iraqi forces killed 66 Islamic State (IS) militants, including suicide bombers,near the city of Mosul in Iraq, defence officials said.

The troops, backed by the army's gunships, conducted an operation against the militants in Attshana mountain range west of Mosul. The Iraqi army killed 66 militants, many of whom were wearing explosive belts, the Iraqi Defence Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The extremist militants were preparing to move to Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, to carry out attacks against the civilians and the security forces in the city, Xinhua news agency cited the statement as saying.

On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi officially declared the liberation of Mosul from IS after nearly nine months of fierce fighting to dislodge the extremist militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq.

The Iraqi forces, including the predominantly Shiite Hashd Shaabi units and Sunni tribal fighters, took new positions near the town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, to free the town and nearby areas from IS militants.

The Iraqi forces still have to wage more offensives to drive out IS militants from their redoubts in eastern bank of Shirqat, Hawijah in southwestern Kirkuk and the adjacent sprawling rugged areas in eastern Salahudin province, in addition to the remaining IS strongholds in the border towns with Syria in western Anbar province.
Pyongyang, Aug 20 : North Korea accused Japan of building a cyberspace attack force in its military under the pretext of self-defence, the media reported.

Official newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Saturday said the Japanece Defence Ministry is planning to boost the size and capability of its cyber unit under the excuse of self-defence against hackers.

The members of the cyber unit will be drastically increased and a department for specializing in cyber attack capability will be set up, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Their cyber unit is not for merely protecting the computer system of the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) from hacking, but for attacking the computer systems of its rivals," said the newspaper, adding that once the unit has the capability to attack, the SDF will "completely turn into the force in attack formation".

"If they are engrossed in war hysteria for re-invasion (of the Korean peninsula) while talking about the improvement of the so-called attacking capability, far from drawing a lesson from their crimes-woven past history, they will follow in the footsteps of their defeated predecessors," it said.

The Japanese Defence Ministry was mulling increasing the number of soldiers in its cyber defence unit from the current 110 to 1,000, and a new working group to study cyber warfare techniques will also be established, according to media reports last month.

The initiative is part of the Japanese government's plan to boost its cyber defence capabilities ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Barcelona, Aug 20 : The Spanish government decided to maintain its anti-terrorism alert level at 4 but pledged to reinforce security measures at the same time, the Interior Ministry said.

The decision was made during an anti-terror meeting on Saturday chaired by Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido in the morning, Xinhua news agency reported.

A total of 14 fatalities occurred in two terrorist attacks in the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Cambrils that also hurt about 126 people of 34 different nationalities.

Thirteen people were killed on Thursday afternoon in the popular Las Ramblas area of Barcelona when a white van zigzagged at high speed down the busy avenue thronged with tourists, knocking down pedestrians.

On early Friday morning, the fourteenth victim, a woman, was stabbed when five people jumped out of a car and began attacking people at random on the seaside promenade in Cambrils, a town south of Barcelona. Spanish police gunned down all five attackers. Six others were also injured in the attack.

As of Saturday morning, 54 injured people are still hospitalized with 12 of them in critical condition, according to Catalan emergency services.

Government of Catalonia considers the terrorist cell responsible for the double-attack has not been totally destroyed as some attackers are still at large, Catalan Minister of the Interior Joaquim Forn told reporters.

"We are optimistic, but the searching operation conducted by the Mossos (police authority in Catalonia) can not be considered as finished until we determine and stop all the people who are members of the cell," said Forn.

Meanwhile, Spanish authorities identified one fugitive terrorist as Younes Abouyaaqoub. Police are searching for the 23-year-old Moroccan in Ripoll near Barcelona. The suspect has been wanted by Interpol prior to the double attacks.

Confusion still reigns over the identity of the van attack driver. The police firstly thought the driver was Moussa Oukabir, one of the terrorists gunned down in Cambrils, and later they turned their attention to Younes Abouyaaqoub.

Police authorities in Catalonia said that they are ruling out the possibility that the van's driver would join the group that carried out the attack in Cambrils.

So far, four people have been arrested and are being questioned by police.
On August 2, 2017, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) held a recognition reception at the United Nations to acknowledge the young innovators who won NFTEs World Series of Innovation challenge in April. NFTEs World Series of Innovation challenge asked youth from around the world to apply their entrepreneurial mindsets to help solve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) -- global goals that the United Nations has identified as the largest and most serious challenges to humanity -- and eleven teams of young innovators were recognized for their entrepreneurial ideas.

Shawn Osborne, President & CEO of NFTE, expressed his gratitude to NFTE partners, teachers, students, friends and UN representatives who gathered to celebrate the first-ever World Series of Innovation recognition event. He said, We are proud to share the transformative nature of the NFTE experience that activates the entrepreneurial mindset in young people, the cornerstone of our program, because research shows that this mindset positively impacts the lives of young people. The World Series of Innovation, NFTEs online program and competition, provides an experiential activity to allow young people, ages 13 to 24, to think creatively and create solutions for some of the worlds most pressing challenges. This year, almost 1,700 students from around the globe participated and submitted ideas. We are honored, along with our corporate partners, to mobilize more young people to find solutions to these global challenges.

Video presentations of the winning finalists highlighted the evening. The World Series of Innovation was presented by The Moodys Foundation with additional support from The Coca-Cola Company, GoDaddy, Mastercard and Pitney Bowes. Additional support for this event was provided by the UN Global Sustainability Index Institute Foundation.

Gus Harris, Executive Director, Moodys Analytics, and a member NFTEs Board of Directors, said, NFTE helps students learn vital entrepreneurial skills including opportunity recognition, critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, communication and collaboration. The World Series of Innovation resonates by giving participants the opportunity to use innovation to help find solutions to global goals. We are proud that by supporting the NFTE program, we can empower youth to develop life skills that anchor an entrepreneurial mindset, while giving them an opportunity to address noble and urgent causes that challenge the world.

The 2016 World Series of Innovation consisted of six unique challenges (http://innovation.nfte.com), and there were two winning student teams per category. Each winning team received $2,000 in cash and prizes, plus $500 for their school or youth serving organization. Runner-up teams received a prize of $250.

Ramu Damodaran, Chief, UN Academic Impact Secretariat, discussed the importance of the 2030 Agenda and its synchronicity with NFTEs mission and programs. He commented, Entrepreneurship is central to the realization of the United Nations agenda, in particular the Sustainable Development Goals. At the United Nations Academic Impact, we seek to foster intellectual entrepreneurship where fresh and innovative scholarship allow us to think local and act global, transferring the results of immediate and local research to the attainment of objectives that are truly global in scale.

Megan Smith, 3rd U.S. Chief Technology Officer, inspired the audience with her perspective on innovation, technology, entrepreneurship and education. Ms. Smith commented that she was impressed by the way the UN joined the worlds collective voice together to support the Sustainable Development Goals and commit to this extraordinary agenda. The challenge to the young entrepreneurs, who showcased their ideas and solutions in their videos, proved that if young people find passion, they will be unstoppable.

The winners were:

Moodys Good Jobs Challenge: Design a business that helps people get good jobsjobs that pay enough and that are enjoyable for the people doing them. (SDG #8, Decent Work and Economic Growth)



Adjudicator Winner and Peoples Choice Winner: Tie-In Project: a company that works to provide employment opportunities for minority youth by contracting students to lead social media projects for local businesses

Moodys Quality Education Challenge: Design a business that brings high-quality education to more kids. (SDG #4, Quality Education)

Adjudicator Winner: Sunbook: A solar-powered LCD touch-screen book that works offline, promoted through a get one give one campaign similar to Toms shoes

Peoples Choice Winner: Primos Project: A solar-powered printer that prints educational materials for people in rural communities

Coca-Cola Clean Water Challenge: Design a brand of bottled water that inspires people to protect and restore water-related ecosystems. (SDG #6, Clean Water and Sanitation)

Adjudicator Winner: Concilio Water: Water bottle connected to an online gamegame triggers charitable donation for each water trivia question that a customer answers correctly

Peoples Choice Winner: Current Water: Sustainable sourcing and bottling methods (paired with the opportunity for consumers to help select a charity that benefits from proceeds)

GoDaddy Internet Access Challenge: Design a business that helps provide developing countries access to the internet. (SDG #9, Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure)

Adjudicator Winner: The Moose: Kinetically powered micro-modems inside sneakers

Peoples Choice Winner: Dream-Fi: solar and battery powered internet drones transit signal to a tiny router in your shirt pocket

Pitney Bowes STEM Education Challenge: Design a product that helps kids or adults to explore real-world STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). (SDG #4, Quality Education)

Adjudicator Winner: ArchiPicture: an app leveraging augmented reality technology to display 3D images of objects at their actual size

Peoples Choice Winner: NanoScience: an interactive app that teaches children and adults about nanoscience and its intersection with interests such as sports, biology, and fashion

Mastercard Refugee Challenge: Design a technology product or service that allows refugees to accept and deliver payments to help cover their most basic needs. (SDG #9, Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure)

Peoples Choice Winner: Refugee Pay: mobile wallet with the option for refugees to redeem rebates for necessities

Adjudicator Winner: ReThinking Refuge: A system that allows refugees to provide an ID based on a finger scan

Volunteers from sponsoring companies helped to select Adjudicators Choice winners.

Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE)

Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) is an international nonprofit that activates the entrepreneurial mindset in young people and builds their knowledge about business startup. Students acquire the entrepreneurial mindset (e.g., innovation, self-reliance, comfort with risk), alongside business, STEM, and presentation skillsequipping them to drive their best futures in the 21st Century. NFTE focuses its work on under-resourced communities, with programs in 23 locations in 10 countries. To learn more, visit http://www.nfte.com, like NFTE on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/NFTE, or follow us on Twitter at @NFTE.

The Moody's Foundation

Moody's is an essential component of the global capital markets, providing credit ratings, research, tools and analysis that contribute to transparent and integrated financial markets.

Built on the recognition that a company grows stronger by helping others, The Moody's Foundation works to enhance its communities and the lives of its employees by providing grants and engaging in community service in local neighborhoods. The Moody's Foundation, established in 2002 by Moody's Corporation, partners with nonprofit organizations to support initiatives such as education in the fields of mathematics, finance, and economics, as well as workforce development, civic affairs, and arts and culture. For more information, please visit http://www.moodys.com/Pages/itc003.aspx
BOOK OF THE YEAR - Finalist - Foreword Reviews "We Never Said We Were Sorry"

In 1953, twelve year old Jerry traveled from upstate New York to Little Rock, Arkansas to visit a sister about to have a baby. While there he witnessed 'Colored ONLY' signs at the city ZOO - restrooms and at the movie theater. Signs that told a white person where they could drink from a fountain and fountains for 'Colored ONLY'. Jerry never got over the culture shock and the guilt that went along with it. He vowed one day to do something about it.

The time came when he saw Obama running for president. It was a 60 Minute interview when the moderator asked Michelle Obama if she feared for his life during the campaigning. "It's a risk for a black man just pumping gas," she said. The final straw came when Antil saw a press conference where President Obama said that he remembered as a Senator crossing a street and hearing car doors lock.

Antil's book - Hemingway, Three Angels, and Me - that actually has a flap that says, "We never said we were sorry," has been selling worldwide. In fact the international - UK and Denmark - BOOK AWARDS - where authors are the judges - selected Antil's, Hemingway, Three Angels, and Me as the second best adult novel in Europe in 2017.

"The acceptance of the book in America is so disappointing," says Antil. I sent copies to President Obama with a note that I would donate as many books to as many schools as he or his family wished. I received no response. I called a public figure in New Orleans and offered to donate a copy of the book to every middle school or high school child there and I was told..."They don't read." It was stated as if the "N" word was being replaced by the "T" word - 'they'. After that I donated $50,000 worth of the book to each and every high school student in a deep south 2,700 student high school....and even now, a year later I've never got so much as one thank you letter from a teacher or student."

"The "N" word is disgraceful," says Antil. "But the 'T" word seems to be setting America back hundreds of years. We're allowing a political correctness of calm and order by complacency - to win over the encouragement of love, respect, and enabling and encouragement our nation's flag brags about."
To showcase innovation in Madison and among our client base, Acumium is a proud sponsor of the Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau event neXXpo. It's all part of an eight-day conference called Forward Fest, Wisconsins largest technology and entrepreneurship festival.

The event is a celebration of innovation and entrepreneurship, and its goal is to highlight businesses that will help drive our success in the next wave of the economy. Acumium, a Madison, Wisconsin-based digital marketing and web development agency, is proud to sponsor the following companies:

DROPP

http://www.dropp.co

One of the first major financial commitments college students and young professionals make is signing an apartment lease. What many of them dont realize is that the credit reporting system in the United States does not include on-time rent payments as part of their credit history.

Scott and Matt Johanek, recent graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, learned this the hard way but were smart enough to do something about it. They created DROPP, a web application that helps people establish and build credit worthiness through monthly payments that traditional credit reporting agencies ignore when compiling credit histories. These payments include such significant expenses as rent and childcare. Whats more, DROPP makes all this possible without the need for credit cards.

Standard of (k)are

http://www.sok401k.com/

Retirement readiness has become a buzz term in the financial planning industry. Retirement planning professionals now recognize that it is not enough to simply track participant rates, deferral rates and fund performances. They must be able to demonstrate and measure an individuals ability to retire successfully  which means providing a higher level of service.

Chris Krueger and Dan Helf, veteran retirement planning advisors based in Madison, Wis., recognized this gap in the industry and worked to formulate a more efficient and personable way to help people achieve long-term feelings of security in the retirement planning process. They developed Standard of (k)are  a full-service web application that uses best fiduciary practices to create a retirement readiness tool for 401(k) advisors, plan sponsors and participants.

Cellara

http://www.culturetrax.com/

Stem cell research is revolutionizing science and technology, and scientists need exceptional tools to keep pace in this rapidly evolving field. Enter Cellara, a dynamic team of stem cell and biotechnology professionals which is leading the way in establishing a global laboratory standard. Their approach will help fellow scientists better communicate with each other, more precisely document their work, and more effectively share knowledge and research.

Through development and collaboration with scientists and software experts, Cellara has introduced CultureTrax  the first platform for stem cell culture researchers and scientists. The companys vision is to accelerate scientific discoveries and breakthrough therapies based on advanced cell culture technology.

My Life and Wishes

https://www.mylifeandwishes.com/

When Michelle Braddocks father, a private man who didnt share household information with family members, passed away unexpectedly in 2013, she not only grieved the loss but also struggled to tie up all the loose ends. Michelle and her husband, Jon, spent months locating and obtaining access to her fathers bank accounts, insurance policies, safe deposits, retirement and pension accounts, online profiles and other valuable data that required closure.

The frustration that went along with that process led to conversations with friends whod lost loved ones and experienced similar challenges. With Jons entrepreneurial experience and Michelles 30-plus years in the insurance and financial services industry, the couple created My Life & Wishes  a secure, online end-of-life planning platform and digital record that eliminates many of the anxieties survivors typically experience.

Innocorp

https://fatalvision.com/

In 1992, a drunk driver barreled into the front yard of a home in Dane County, Wis., and struck a friend of Michael Aguilars 5-year-old son. The boy spent a week in the hospital and survived. Knowing how much worse the incident could have been, Aguilar  then the owner of a management consulting and training company  was determined to do something to help prevent future drunk driving-related injuries and fatalities.

He and his friend, Patrick Flaherty, developed the concept of so-called drunk goggles to simulate alcohol impairment as a tool to educate people about the dangers of drunk driving. The roots of Innocorp were in place, the start of a line of awareness-boosting impairment-simulating products and educational materials.

Acumium Innovation

Acumium, a digital marketing and application development agency based in Madison, takes the time to understand at a deep level the problems their clients products and services aim to solve, which is how the companys team of technology experts can arrive at powerful and effective solutions. Each of the above sponsored companies has been given a leg-up with Acumium custom software solutions and business consulting.

Want to experience whats next for Greater Madisons economy? Join us for neXXpo 2017 on Monday, Aug. 21 at the Overture Center!
National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence NPEIV condemns all forms of violence in the family and community

Yesterday, the President of the United States retracted his condemnation of white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and the KKK by saying there are two sides. There are not two sides to hatred, bigotry, discrimination, and a white supremacy nationalist agenda. That is merely a way to rationalize violence and prejudice, and the NPEIV stands against all forms of such hatred and discrimination in this country and globally.

NPEIV is proud to be a bipartisan organization. The NPEIV mission is to prioritize the reduction and prevention of all forms of interpersonal violence, and encourage healthy relationships across cultures and communities. This should be a universal stance. Moreover, its mission of ending the cycles of violence in the home and communities cannot and will not be accomplished without the elimination of all types of oppression, including racism and sexism. With this mission in mind, it must be made clear that hatred, derogatory rhetoric and discriminatory behavior has only one side.

As an anti-violence, social justice, and public health alliance, we refuse to duck our heads and remain silent on recent events and comments that allow rhetoric and behavior to endanger the lives of others, stated Dr. Robert Geffner, the NPEIV President. We mourn the loss of life and injury over the weekend, in the past several months, and for those who face the daily reality of oppression and discrimination of any type. Dr. Viola Vaughan Eden, NPEIVs President-Elect noted, we must continue to denounce hatred and violence of all forms, both hooded and unveiled. We must push forward in our charge for fairness, equality, and inclusive policies. The NPEIV Board believes that it is important to hold hate groups accountable for provoking violence and oppression, including those in political positions who do not condemn such attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

NPEIV will continue to denounce and do its part to dismantle all systems of racism, hatred, and oppression. NPEIV is a national coalition of individuals and organizations working together to make these public health and social justice problems a national priority and to encourage healthy relationships for all people, in all communities, and at all stages of life.

The NPEIV Annual Forum next month in San Diego, CA is where members and others come together in person to further efforts through collaboration and unity to end the damaging cyclic nature of violence across cultures, in our communities, in our country, and globally. Join NPEIV today in its efforts to plan the agenda for the coming year. For more information about NPEIV, or the annual Forum, go to https://www.npeiv.org/. NPEIV can be reached at ivat(at)ivarcenters.org.
LaserCoil Technologies has enhanced its laser blanking systems with a new continuous mode feature, helping to improve processing speeds. The ability to change between Index Mode and Continuous Mode allows our customers to select the option that offers the best production run from a rate and reliability standpoint.

LaserCoil Technologies LLC has announced the addition of Continuous Mode (On the Fly Cutting) capability to its coil-fed laser blanking systems enabling users to choose either Feed Index Mode (Stop/Start) or Continuous Mode in order to optimize cutting parameters for each part configuration, increasing processing rates and enhancing quality. To illustrate the process, LaserCoil has posted a 2:15 minute video on the home page of its website at http://www.lasercoil.com.

The introduction of our multiple head systems featuring 6kW lasers had already enabled LaserCoil systems to reach high processing speeds, said LaserCoil Technologies Chief Technology Officer Jay Finn. But the ability to change between Index Mode and Continuous Mode allows the customer to select the mode that offers the best production run from a rate and reliability standpoint.

Most parts will run faster in continuous mode, which offers a smooth and steady mode of operation. This would be a mode of choice for customers with production runs that are 10,000 blanks and over, Finn elaborated. In some instances, the length of a single cut path can take longer than the existing cutting window allows at the faster production rate. Rather than split the cuts between the heads, index mode allows the user to choose a mode where the cut can be completed prior to indexing the material.

LaserCoil Technologies coil-fed laser cutting systems feature gantry-mounted laser heads stationed in multiple cutting cells that travel along the moving strip, and balancing the workload. The laser cutting heads, using linear-induction motors, enable cutting of tightly nested, complex curvilinear shapes while the systems dynamic profile conveyor features adjustable lanes that support the coil strip while automatically repositioning as needed to clear a path for the laser cut. This feature also facilitates gravity-shedding of scrap and offal, delivering completely finished blanks without any scrap to any type of stacking system.

Importantly, from a capital investment standpoint, LaserCoil systems are flexible and can integrate with any coil line automation, as well as be retrofit into aging blanking press lines.

By laser cutting direct from coil stock, LaserCoil systems provide a fast and flexible approach to blanking that is well-suited for production environments running multiple blank profiles and mixed material types. The systems can process a wide variety of coil material in aluminum, mild steel, the new high-strength steels, and other materials for surface sensitive panels as well as structural components in thicknesses from 0.5 to 3.5mm and up to 2.1 m wide coil at any length.

For more information on this approach to laser cutting of coil strip or see the video of a system running in continuous mode, visit http://www.lasercoil.com.

END

About LaserCoil Technologies

LaserCoil Technologies LLC provides metal fabricating systems and solutions featuring advanced and patented technologies for laser cutting of blanks, based on over half a decade of research and successful production runs since 2011. The technology originated out of Automatic Feed Company, a known innovator in pressroom automation with nearly 65-years manufacturing expertise focused on blanking and cut-to-length lines. This depth of experience provides LaserCoil the right qualifications to deliver effective and unique press feeding technology to the market.
Stepping Stone School in Austin, Texas, Friday, August 18, 2017 "This is an exciting event the children will remember for years to come. The enthusiasm is building in our classrooms and with our students for this once in a life time event," said Rhonda Paver, MA, owner and executive director of Stepping Stone School.

On Monday, August 21, 2017, all of North America will experience an eclipse of the sun. Anyone within the path of totality can see one of natures most awe-inspiring sightsa total solar eclipse. In Texas, we will experience a partial eclipse of the sun.

During the eclipse, our children will stay indoors and all safety precautions will be in place. This is a wonderful learning opportunity for the children and they will be watching the eclipse via NASAs live stream in each classroom.

Our young astronomers will create a solar eclipse in their classrooms to show how a small celestial body like the moon, can obscure the light from a much larger one, such as the sun. They will recreate this fantastic phenomenon by using a flashlight to represent the sun, a quarter as the moon and their faces as the Earth.

"This is an exciting event the children will remember for years to come. The enthusiasm is building in our classrooms and with our students for this once in a life time event," said Rhonda Paver, MA, owner and executive director of Stepping Stone School.

Below is the link the children will be viewing on Monday.

View NASA Solar Eclipse

About Stepping Stone School:

Stepping Stone School, the largest privately owned childcare provider in Central Texas and the 31st largest in the nation, has been locally owned and operated since 1979. The Paver family has grown the company from its humble beginnings to the 20 schools it currently operates. The founders and employees apply the principles of the schools nationally recognized curriculum while providing the highest quality early education and care. In addition, the founders and organization consistently exercise their philanthropic commitment to their community through donations of time, money, sponsorships and resources to organizations whose missions are to better the lives and education of children and families. Stepping Stone School has been named the Best in Childcare by the readers of Austin Family magazine for 19 years, Best of the Brazos Valley over the last three years and Best Austin Preschool by the parents on Nickelodeons Parents Connect website in 2010. Stepping Stone School is also the tenth largest provider of corporate child care in the nation.

For more information, please visit the Stepping Stone School Web site at http://www.steppingstoneschool.com./

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"Diablo en Brooklyn," the new CD by Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet.

Gabriel Alegria has dedicated his life to introducing audiences to jazz-infused interpretations of traditional music from his Peruvian homeland, Afro-Peruvian arrangements of works from the Great American Songbook, and original compositions inspired by both styles. On "Diablo en Brooklyn," the sixth recording by Alegrias Afro-Peruvian Sextet, the ensemble presents what is without a doubt their most fully realized and boldest album to date. It is also the first to be made entirely in Peru and, most notably, at Limas legendary IEMPSA Studiosa landmark in the production and distribution of Afro-Peruvian music that was founded in 1942. The new CD will be released by Saponegro Records on September 22.

Trumpeter, composer, bandleader, and educator Alegria has long committed himself to being the standard-bearer of Afro-Peruvian jazz in the U.S. and, over the past 12 years, has brought this music to American audiences through both recordings and concerts. "Diablo en Brooklyn" was loosely inspired by the Peruvian Son de los Diablos tradition going back to colonial days and featuring a parade of mock devils down the city streets of Lima. Alegria, who has lived in Coney Island for the last decade, got the idea to musically transport that tradition to his Brooklyn neighborhood after being exposed to the diverse sounds emanating from the speakers on wheels residents roll out to street corners every summer along with their barbecue pits.

You cant really hear anything but bass, he says. But over the months, on my way to pick up my daughter from daycare, I would hear bass lines that I really liked. They show up integrated into the Peruvian panalivio and festejo grooves at the heart of his fourt-part Brooklyn Suite.

In an intriguing departure from standard sequencing, the four movements of the studio-recorded suite are interspersed among four live tracks: three originals featured on previous albums and a 12-minute version of Summertime, the hit single from the bands 2008 debut recording Nuevo Mundo.

That the musicians in the Afro-Peruvian Sextet have been playing together for years is evident from their finely-meshed performances and the facility with which the players blend traditional Peruvian rhythms and American jazz. Saxophonist Laura Andrea Leguia, master percussionist Freddy Huevito Lobaton, bassist Mario Cuba, drummer Hugo Alcazar, and acoustic guitarist Yuri Juarez tackle the challenges of the polyrhythmic grooves with an energy that is infectious.

Alegria and company celebrated their decade together in 2015 by inviting a stellar cast of guest artists including Ron Carter, Arturo OFarrill, and Yellowjacket Russell Ferrante to play on their last release, "10." Alegria explains that on "Diablo en Brooklyn" we went back to the essence of the sextet. The six core members. This album represents what Afro-Peruvian jazz music and a bicultural ensemble can contribute to the world.

Gabriel Alegria was born in Lima on June 11, 1970. His grandfather, Ciro Alegria, was a famous, politically involved novelist ("Broad and Alien Is the World") who spent half his life in exile in Cuba and Chile because of his political views. Gabriels father, Alonso Alegria, is a prominent playwright (Crossing Niagara) and theater director. Rebelling from the predominantly classical music tastes of his father, Gabriel got into rock and pop via albums by the likes of the Police and Genesis, but when it came time to choose an instrument for the school band, he picked the trumpet. It was in the band that he discovered jazz.

Alegria attended high school in Ohio, where his father was a visiting professor at Kenyon College, and then studied at the National Conservatory in Lima. He returned to Ohio to attend Kenyon College, after which he moved to New York, earning an M.A. in jazz studies at City College under the tutelage of Ron Carter. He subsequently moved back to Peru to play with the Lima Philharmonic. During his five years with the orchestra, and in side gigs in jazz and rock bands, Gabriel started to develop his concept of Afro-Peruvian jazz. In 2005, while completing a PhD in jazz studies at USC, he formed his sextet. Its first album, "Nuevo Mundo" (2008), recorded for his own label Saponegro (black frog), was produced by one of his mentors, trumpet great Bobby Shew.

Moving back to New York he got a major boost from Arturo OFarrill, who contacted him about writing for his Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra. The Afro-Peruvian Sextet recorded its second album, "Pucusana" (2010), followed by the live "Afro-Peruvian Jazz Secrets" (2012), "Ciudad de Los Reyes" (2013), and then its tenth-anniversary disc "10" (2015). That year the band won Hot House magazines New York City Ensemble of the Year award.

The Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Sextet is set to perform an ambitious CD release concert (10/21-22) at Roulette in Brooklyn with special guest Arturo OFarrill and, direct from Lima, dancers Graciela Bramon, Javier Barrera, and Wendy Cotito, with choreography by Antonio Vilchez. The sextet + dancers will also perform two nights (10/25-26) at DePauw University, Greencastle, IN. Sextet only appears Fri. 10/27 at Merrimans Playhouse, South Bend, IN; Sat. 10/28 at the Bop Stop, Cleveland; and Sun. 10/29 at Erie (PA) Art Museum.
Engineered Tax Services (ETS) is helping make communities better places by helping their clients donate used, eligible assets to Habitat for Humanity.

Your contribution will be a great way to serve the local community, reduce, reuse, and increase the tax benefits of your project, said Tax Manager, Catherine LaPorte.

The process begins with a cost segregation study on a clients construction project. ETSs expert engineers then assess which items are eligible for tax deductions via donation. The ETS team then coordinates with the clients local Habitat for Humanity center to pick up eligible assets. The clients, in turn, receive additional tax deductions by not letting those items go to waste by donating them to charity  so, it really is great for everyone involved.

Preparing for Your Charitable Contribution

For cities that Habitat for Humanity offers this service, a noncash charitable contribution worksheet is given to each client to assist with recordkeeping. This worksheet is also used to prepare IRS Form 8283 for reporting of noncash contributions. This list is not all inclusive, but items may be added as needed. The client also needs to provide a rough estimate of the type and number of items being removed - that helps in arranging the pick-up. This same sheet will be used for logging actual accepted goods.



Below is some of the criteria provided by Habitat for Humanity which outlines the acceptance guidelines and restrictions. Clients can refer to the guidelines on the Habitat for Humanity website prior to the cost segregation study and deconstruction to plan the separation of items accordingly and also to see if this is available in your city.





Any goods must be already removed from walls, bases, or other fixtures and brought to ground level for pick up.





A photo of at least one (1) of each item is to be sent to the center prior to scheduling pick-up.



About Engineered Tax Services

ETS is a nationally licensed engineering firm which is headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida with 15 offices nationwide and over 140 employees and consultants. ETS works with many of the Top 100 CPA firms and Fortune 500 companies nationwide. You can learn more about cost segregation with this helpful video.
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. To do so, first type the original number into the text box. Then click on the "Scientific Notation" option located at the top of the floating window. Finally, click on the "Standard" button found beneath the text box to display your result. This program is useful for scientists and engineers working with decimal-based numbers. It provides easy access to those who need to convert those numbers into more compact forms without having to do heavy math calculations first.

Scientific notation is a way to express very large or very small numbers. It is used in physics, chemistry and other fields where large numbers are common. Those numbers are written as a power of 10 followed by a number with an exponent. For example, 1,000,000 (one million) is written as 1  103. The exponent shows how many zeros are after the first digit. For example, 1,000,001 is written as 1  102. Scientific notation is a useful tool for making calculations easier. You can use it to write down very big or very small numbers in one step instead of writing out both the large and small numbers separately. You can also use it to express large or small numbers in terms of other units like centimeters or millimeters.

Scientific notation solver is an online tool that can be used to convert any number into scientific notation. Simply enter any number to the left of the decimal point and it will automatically convert it into a scientific notation equivalent. This web tool can be very helpful when you need to convert a large number into scientific notation. However, please note that this online tool can only convert numbers that are in scientific format. For example, it cannot convert a non-scientific number like "1,085" into a scientific notation equivalent. It is also important to keep in mind that this web tool only works when converting numbers from one particular format to another. For example, if you want to change a non-scientific number like "1,085" into standard format, then you will have to use another online tool like NumberFormatting.com.
READ MORE: Kenpong and Mona split

Hajia4Real shot into fame when started dating business mogul Kennedy Agyepong (not the Assin Central MP), popularly called Kenpong.

She won the admiration of many with her beauty and sexy photos she shared on her Facebook page.

I have no regrets in life at all. When I look back at who I was before and the woman I have transformed to become, I will say that, whatever I did or whatever life I lived in the past have contributed to who I am today," she told the Graphic Showbiz newspaper.

"There is no need to feel bad for it. In life, everything you go through is a lesson. There are mistakes I may have made in the past, but I think they had to happen so that I learn from them, she said.

Hajia4Real joggles business with schooling. And she is a mother of a one-year-old girl.

READ MORE: Mona Montrage Is Stylishly Sexy In New Photos

Her business, 4Real Beauty, is a cosmetic line and according to her: "Ever since the range hit the market, the response has been overwhelming and that is my inspiration. To do more and more. My past is my past."

Hajia4Real and Kenpong ended their relationship in 2015 over former's lavish lifestyle, a source quoted by Ghanacelebrities.com had said.
Garba, a resident of Gidan Dare area of Sokoto, was arraigned on a four-count charge of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, criminal misappropriation and cheating.

Police Prosecutor Ashafa Jega, told the court that the accused was entrusted with N639,500 by the complainant, Muhammadu Ahmad of Gidan Bahuri area, Sokoto, to give his son.

The accused was told to give the money to the complainants son, Al -mustapha Tukur, a phone dealer at Kasuwan Kure but converted it to his own, he said.

According to Jega, gave no convincing explanation why he spent the money.

He said the offence which was committed on August 3, contravened Sections 309, 312 and 322 of the Penal Code.

The businessman pleaded not guilty to the charge preferred against him.
The president of the court, Mr Ademola Odunade, held that the union between Oluwatoyin and Asimiyu collapsed due to irreconcilable differences.

In the interest of peace and order, the union between both of you has ceased to be, henceforth.

The custody of the two children produced by the union is granted to Oluwatoyin.

Asimiyu shall pay a monthly feeding allowance of N10,000 for their upkeep in addition to being responsible for their education and other welfare, Odunade said.

Earlier, Oluwatoyin, a nurse by profession had told the court that her husband, Asimiyu, was threatening her life with machete.

My lord, ever since I married Asimiyu, I have never known anything called peace as he usually frustrated my stay in his house with the threat of hacking me to death.

From day one of our marriage, his mother stated that she was not going to accept me as her sons wife because I was no match for him.

I told Asimiyu to let us terminate the relationship, but he promised that he would forge ahead with me.

I saw hell when I was to be delivered of our first child. Only the placenta was coming out from my vaginal while the baby refused to come out until God took charge.

After then, he turned me into a punching bag anytime he wished.

Worst still, Asimiyu often destroyed my clinic equipment, thereby denting my image before my patients or customers.

For years, he decided not to fend for the children and me until he sent us out of the house.

In fact, Asimiyu has no milk of human kindness in him, Oluwatoyin said.

Asimiyu, an employee of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) in Ibadan, accepted the divorce suit.

He, however, denied most of the allegations Oluwatoyin levelled against him.

My lord, it is absolutely untrue that my mother contributed to the marital problems between Oluwatoyin and me.

 I must say that I made a terrible mistake to have ventured into the marriage.

Oluwatoyin has done everything within her power to pull me down from greatness and I am still facing the challenges till date.

I am a Muslim and I married her while she was a member of the Christ Apostolic Church.

All of the sudden, she started attending a white-garment church and was performing rituals for people in my house.

I got irritated because we never, ever discussed converting my house into a spiritual centre.

That was what she meant when she alleged in her submission that I was denting her image before her patients or customers

Oluwatoyin had no time to take care of our children because she devoted all her time to her spiritual activities.

The older of our two children was supposed to write his promotional examination in his school, but Oluwatoyin refused to let him go.

I became angry because of her action and I took the child away from her. She, however, reported the matter to the Orita-Aperin Police Station and some policemen from there to arrest me.
The accused, who hails from Nyanya Gwandara, Nasarawa State, is facing one-count charge of criminal force.

The Presiding Officer, Mr Yakubu Ishaku, granted the accused bail in the sum of N100,000 and also ordered him to produce one surety in like sum.

Ishaku directed that the surety must be residing within the courts jurisdiction and should present two passport photographs as well as an affidavit of means to the court registrar.

He also ordered the accused to take an undertaking to be of good behaviour and to live peacefully with the complainant, Blessing Ahonsi.

Ishaku adjourned the case until August 29.

Earlier, the Prosecutor, Mr Frank Swem, had told the court that the accused committed the offences on August 12 at about 9.00 a.m. in Nyanya Gwandara.

Swem alleged that the complainant, who was residing in the same house with the accused, reported the case of assault at the divisional police station in Masaka Nasarawa.

He told the court that the accused was relocating to another apartment when the complainant approached him and demanded for his share of electricity bills.

The prosecutor said the offences contravened Sections 265 of the Penal Code.
One person died on the spot while the other passed on upon arrival at the Tema General Hospital where he was rushed to for medical attention.

The only survivor among the three persons contracted by the company to do some fabrication work on the reservoir which sends fuel to machines at the factory is responding to treatment at the Lagoon Hospital in Tema.

The bodies of the two persons  aged 39 and 45 years  have been deposited at the morgue of the Tema General Hospital, pending autopsy.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that the welders were doing hot fabrication on the fuel tank at a time when there was built-up pressure in it and so it exploded.

It is reported that this is the second time such an incident has occurred in the company, with both incidents recording casualties.

A man, who claimed to be the administrative manager of the factory, told DAILY GUIDE at the scene that three persons were cleaning an oil tank, which contained sludge when the explosion occurred.

According to him, When we got to the scene, according to the workers, they were trying to de-sludge it. So in the course of trying to de-sludge it, they had to cut an area to enable the process to be easily done; then all of a sudden, the thing exploded.

Second in-command at the Tema Regional Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Timothy K. Affum, explained that his outfit received a distress call about the explosion at the company.

I must say there was no fire, there was only an explosion at the company. At exactly 10:31 this morning, we received report of an emergency so when we got to the company, we realised that it was one of their tanks containing dirty oil they used to power some of their machines that had exploded.

Our investigations revealed that they were doing some hot works at the time and they were virtually done with it, because what they were doing at the time of the explosion was grinding to ensure that the outer side of the tank was smooth when the explosion occurred, he indicated.

He advised factory management in the area to always adopt safety measures to ensure the protection of lives and property.
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He accused the government of feet dragging, saying it was unimpressive and inconsistent with Ghanas proud history of supporting countries in times of distress.

The Ghana government on Friday sent relief items estimated at over one million dollars to Sierra Leone.

The announcement, contained in statement signed by the Information Minister, Mustapha Hamid, also urged Ghanaians to support Sierra Leone with clothing and other items.

But Okudzeto slammed the appeal, saying the government should have sent the relief items first before appealing for support from Ghanaians.

He said by now, a contingent of the Ghana Armed Forces should have been sent on a rescue mission.
Speaking Friday at a joint graduation ceremony at the Ghana Armed Forces Staff and Command College, Dr Bawumia said some of the graduating soldiers may be needed in the fight against galamsey.

For the Ghanaian officers, you are aware that one of the problems we are facing as a nation is the issue of illegal mining also known as galamsey.

Some of you may be needed to assist in this fight. The president, Nana Akufo-Addo, is committed to ending this destructive impact on our forest, water bodies and agriculture.

I, therefore, urge anybody involved in this fight to be dispassionate in ensuring that this menace is eradicated once and for all.
A resident who spoke to Radio Ghana on the fear of a possible terror attack in Paga said the former Interior Minister under the Mahama administration, James Agalga, promised to mount surveillance cameras on the Paga-Burkina Faso border to monitor the movements of people.

READ MORE: Army clashes with suspected jihadists at cafe

He challenged the Akufo-Addo administration to mount the surveillance equipment to make residents feel safe.

He said: Last year, when the former deputy minister of Interior, James Agalga who is also the MP for Bulsa North came to Upper East during the Government for the People Forum. He promised that the government will mount surveillance equipment at our borders just to ensure we all safe from a possible terrorist attack.

I dont know what has become of that promise. I think this just the best opportunity for this government to see to it that those surveillance equipment are installed so that well know who is entering Ghana and who is leaving Ghana.

And we can all feel safe to do our businesses.

Gunmen last Sunday opened fire on customers seated outside a Turkish restaurant in Burkina Fasos capital, Ouagadougou.

Burkina Faso, a landlocked nation bordering Ghana, Mali and Niger, has seen a string of attacks claimed by jihadist groups in recent years.

In December 2016 a dozen soldiers were killed in an assault on their base in the north of the country. And in October that year, there was an attack that killed four troops and two civilians.

The worst attack was an assault on a hotel and cafe in central Ouagadougou in January 2016 that killed 30 people including several foreigners.

Meanwhile, the District Chief Executive of Paga, Clement Dandori, has assured residents of maximum security, urging them to go about their normal business.

Burkina Faso is our closeness neighbour so whatever happens there affect us here.

It is our prayer that Burkina Faso will be able to contain the situation before it becomes a West African issue.

Burkina Faso is surrounded by so many West African countries, he said.

But for us around Ghana, we have every confidence in our Minister for National Security and apparatus that they can keep the situation under control.
He said the complex nature of terrorism requires constant training of the security personnel to be ready at all times.

He praised the Defence College for introducing the counter terrorism module to equip the Ghana Army and armies of neighbouring countries.

Dr Bawumias comments after last weeks terrorist attack in Burkina Faso which claimed 17 lives at a Turkish restaurant.

Terrorism in all its forms and manifestation has most often eluded state security agencies. They target very sensitive areas to cause maximum fear and panic. For the students from countries like Nigeria, Cote DIvoire and Mail, this was not very new to you as your countries have experienced difference acts of terrorism," he said.

He continued: It is my hope that the knowledge that you have acquired will go a long way in preparing your various institutions towards the fight against terrorism.

For the Ghanaian officers, you are aware that one of the problems we are facing as a nation is the issue of illegal mining also known as galamsey.

Some of you may be needed to assist in this fight. The president, Nana Akufo-Addo, is committed to ending this destructive impact on our forest, water bodies and agriculture.

I, therefore, urge anybody involved in this fight to be dispassionate in ensuring that this menace is eradicated once and for all.
Some men know how to calculate the menstrual cycle accurately than the women themselves. If you are a man and you dont know then it's time to sit up and know when is her period to avoid causing unnecessary conflicts. Give her a little extra breathing room, a little more help to get through the rough week ahead for you both.

Always listen to her

Most women are attention seekers and every caring man must listen to his woman to know her needs, concerns, suggestions and address them. If she is talking to you, it is better to unplug your world and listen attentively to her just for some few minutes or hours. This will make her happy and always think you care about her.

READ ALSO: How to have the quickest orgasm

Never forget her important dates

Anniversaries, birthdays, first day you met and other dates are so important to women that you should never forget. Set a reminder a week before such dates to give you ample time to prepare for the surprise party or buy a special gift for her. Just dont forget if you dont want to rant for a month.

Always be her deputy when she is fighting or arguing with someone

When your woman is having some girly moments with her bestie, you should definitely take her side and find ways to solve the issue amicably. It also includes her family members, always provides the shoulder for her to cry on or your relationship will not survive the fate of time.

Always compliment her when she is mad

Be sincere and say I Love You whenever you offend her directly or indirectly. She will forgive you and calm down.

Dont criticize her

Whenever she does something wrong; she knows and feels about it even before she tells you or you find out yourself. Dont be the captain obvious and outline her mistakes to her. Just be a supportive partner and encourage her to do the best with care and dedication.

Listen to her words and ignore her actions when she is angry
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The group cited President Donald Trump's handling of the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia, rally last weekend in an open letter to Mnuchin being circulated on Friday, Yale Daily News reported.

More than 290 alumni signed the letter to Mnuchin, which also criticized Trump's wavering denunciations of the white nationalist groups that converged on the Virginia rally, where a counterprotester was killed and many others were injured on Saturday.

"We call upon you, as our friend, our classmate, and as a fellow American, to resign in protest of President Trumps support of Nazism and white supremacy. We know you are better than this, and we are counting on you to do the right thing," the letter to Mnuchin read.

Matthew Countryman, one of Mnuchin's classmates who signed the letter, insisted the admonition had nothing to do with politics: "This is not a matter of the debt ceiling or the infrastructure project," Countryman told CNN. "This is a question of what kind of democracy, what kind of nation will we be, and whose side is [Mnuchin] on?"
When asked why he seems to have taken a long break from acting, Ike said, "I tried to restructure the man, Emeka Ike. Emeka Ike is a leader and as a leader, you need to appraise and reappraise your empire and achievements. So, I have been appraising my constituency and I am happy that we are moving forward. At a point, you relocated to Abuja from Lagos."

The actor who recently relocated from Lagos to Abuja, had this to say about his move.

"I felt that my life was seriously threatened in Lagos. I have said it before that I am going to arrest some people very soon. In fact, some people took advantage of the AGN crisis to threaten my life and all that will be sorted out very soon by the police. I relocated to Abuja to avoid a situation where I would be walking on the streets of Lagos and a criminal would gun me down.

"I used my discretion to stay away while I watched from afar what was happening in Lagos. That was why that woman (his ex wife) is no longer living with me. God knows I am not a wife beater. I didnt touch her and my children testified to that in court. I dont know what came over her and who used her to blackmail me. But all that will be unravelled soon."

When asked about the truth behind the domestic violence accusations thrown at him by his ex-wife, he said:

"Have you watched that one movie, where the wife was saying everything is alright between me and my husband. He takes care of me and provides all my needs. That was the situation between my wife and I. If I didnt know I would have blamed her sudden change of character on my enemies. I love her so much.

"Why would she blackmail me by claiming that I was always beating her up when I didnt. To avoid the disturbing mess, I had to abandon my businesses and house in Lagos and find a new life in Abuja."

Ike went on to add that he had not seen the divorce coming and he had not been prepared.

"I wasnt. I dont even believe we are divorced and I cannot remarry again. I am a real Christian and Christians dont divorce. I told the court that Im not divorcing my wife but they went ahead and got an injunction against a High Court order.

"I must see to the end of this matter because they have put my children out there without a mother. Shes in pain wherever she is right now because I know they are dealing with her. I learnt that she was beaten black and blue by one wife snatcher sometime ago, beside Mobil Petrol Station on Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. My own wife beaten up like a common criminal!

"I want to know what has gone wrong with my wife, I want to know the devil that is behind this. What is the extent of blackmail that brought her to this degrading level? The Inspector General of Police will be investigating into the matter very soon. While doing this, I have to stay away from Lagos because they could be after me.'

Recall that Ike once accused Pastor Chris Okotie of Household of God Church International Ministries, of being the brain behind his marital crisis.

While addressing this issues, he said, "The guy who is confusing my wife attends his church. Hes one of the elders of the church. Its a church arrangement. When there is crisis in the family, a true man of God should invite both husband and wife with the aim of resolving their differences but Chris Okotie refused to pick my calls.

"Whenever I called him on the telephone, he usually avoided my calls. As a man of God, he was supposed to use his position to save our marriage. I didnt chase my wife out of my house, I wanted Chris Okotie to advise her to return to her husband but he refused to pick my calls.

"He did not bother to find out what went wrong between us. While I am still alive, my wife was demanding that I should will part of my property to her. She shut down a school I spent millions of naira to establish.

"Who was telling her to make such a demand? Where is she taking the property to? What happens to our children who will inherit my property? She was insisting on getting her own share of my property.

"At that point, I had to leave Lagos for Abuja because some people were strongly behind her and my life was no longer safe. But Im coming back to Lagos soon.

"My house and property are still in Lagos. Nothing is hidden under the earth that cannot be unearthed someday. She blackmailed me for what I am not. You will feel sorry for a man whose wife was blackmailed to blackmail the entire family."

When asked about his feelings for Emma after all that has happened between them, Ike expressed undying love for her, while asking her to confess the truth as a condition for him to take her back.

"Love never dies. Real love doesnt die, forget what we are talking about. The Bible says that love covers multitude of sin. Shes the mother of my children. She was nobody when I met her, she never knew her father.

"I built a house for her family in Lagos and also in Isoko. I trained her up to the masters degree level. I gave her the exposure she needed in life. There are thousands of pretty girls who would want to marry me the first week we got divorced. But I am a gentleman, it is not about marriage for me now, its about doing the right thing.

"What is wrong with my woman? If its something we can redeem her from, we will still redeem her. Forget about marrying her again. I dont need to marry again, but I need to know what was wrong with my wife. I need to know why she started blackmailing me.

"Accepting her back is not the problem, but let her confess and get herself back. I believe shes under the influence of something."

Vanguard reportedly reached out to Emma on the issue, but she insisted that she has moved on with her life and that the marriage is over.

The marriage is over. I have moved on with my life. I am not willing to talk about it again. His actions have not shown that hes remorseful."

You will recall that Emma accused the father-of-four of domestic violence and petitioned the courts on July 13, 2015, for a divorce which was granted earlier this year.

She accused him of physical and verbal abuse throughout the 14 years of their marriage.
The Prosecutor, Sgt. Godwin Awase, told court that the accused committed the offences in January, 2015 at Alagbado area of Lagos.

He said the accused collected the money from Mr Nurain Akintola to buy some spare parts to repair his (customers) bus.

After examining the bus, the accused demanded N165, 000 to buy the spare parts and the complainant gave him the money.

He converted the money to his personal use and abandoned the bus.

All efforts made by the complainant to get his bus repaired or retrieve his money proved unsuccessful, Awase said.

The prosecutor said the offence contravened Section 287 and 314 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015 (revised).

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Section 314 stipulates 15-year jail term for offenders.

The accused however pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The Magistrate, Mr J.A Adigun, granted him bail in the sum of N50, 000 with one surety in like sum.

He said the surety should be gainfully employed and should show evidence of payment of two years tax to Lagos State Government.
According to Punch, Mohammed dragged the girl into Maje market and raped her. It is reported the incident occurred in March 2017. The girl was on her way back from an errand when she was raped.

The teenager is now pregnant. When her parents asked her who was responsible she mentioned Haruna Mohammed who raped her months earlier.

Haruna Mohammed has spoken about the accusation. "I dont even know what pushed me to have sexual intercourse with little girls forcefully; each time I stopped, something will push me to do it again.

It never occurred to me that one day, police operatives will apprehend me. Now, it is clear to me that what I did was wrong and this is why the law is taking its course" Mohammed told Punch.

The Public Relations Officer of the Niger state command Comfort Olawumi said investigations have been concluded and the suspect was arraigned in court.
The State Commissioner for Health, Atolagbe Alege disclosed this ata press conference in Ilorin on Friday, August 18.

Alege said out of the five samples taken to virology unit research centre at Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), one was confirmed positive case of Lassa fever.

The Commissioner said sample was taken from Babanla primary Health Care Centre in Ifelodun Local Government Area of the State where a 10 year old boy was confirmed positive for Lassa fever.

He said in Oro-Ago axis, the four samples taken tested negative.

According to him, medical team from the State Department of Public Health is moving to Babanla immediately to monitor the situation, isolate the victim and commence contact tracing for possible treatment and quarantine where necessary.

Alege said that isolation centers will be created at General Hospital Omu-Aran, and Oro Ago, adding that the information had been promptly communicated to National Centre for Diseases Control which is working with the state to nip the disease in the bud.

He appealed to members of Babanla community not to panic as the government is on the alert to prevent any outbreak.
Secret dairies kept by the girls while in captivity, which were obtained by the news organisation, showed that the terrorists whisked them away after their (Boko Haram) robbery operation in the school failed.

The girls, who spent three brutal years in the terrorists' captivity, were kidnapped from their hostel at the Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State by Boko Haram fighters on April 14, 2014.

In the diaries, one of the girls, Naomi Adamu, said Boko Haram's primary operation at the chibok school was to to steal machinery for house building.

But when they did not find what they were looking for, the terrorists were not sure if they should attack the girls or kidnap them.

"One boy said they should burn us all, and they (some of the other fighters) said, No, let us take them with us to Sambisa (Boko Harams remote forest base)  if we take them to Shekau (the groups leader), he will know what to do," Adamu wrote.

Adamu was among 82 of the Chibok girls released by Boko Haram in May  part of a second batch after 21 of them were freed in October. The rescued girls are said to be going through a "restoration process" at an undisclosed location in Abuja

About 113 of the girls are believed to be still held by the militants.

The girls said they started documenting their ordeal a few months after the abduction, when the terror group gave them exercise books to use during Koranic lessons.

To hide the diaries from their captors, the girls would bury the notebooks in the ground, or carry them in their underwear.

The diaries were said to have been written by Adamu and her friend, Sarah Samuel - the authenticity of the book cannot be verified.

It was gathered that three of the other Chibok girls also contributed to the bitter tale, with some parts written in less coherent Hausa.

"We wrote it together. When one person got tired, she would give it to another person to continue," Adamu, 24, said from the state safe house in Abuja.

According to them, life in Sambisa involved regular beatings, Koranic lessons, domestic labour and pressure to marry and convert.

When five girls tried to escape, the militants tied them up, dug a hole in the ground, and turned to one of their classmates, the report said.

ALSO READ: Boko Haram slaughters Borno villagers in reprisal attack

The jihadists were said to have handed her a blade and said 'cut off the girls heads, or lose your own.

"We are begging them. We are crying. They said if next we ran away, they are going to cut off our necks," Adamu wrote.

On another occasion, the militants gathered those girls who had refused to embrace Islam, brought out jerry cans purportedly filled with petrol and threatened to burn them alive.

"They said, You want to die. You dont want to be Muslim, (so) we are going to burn you," the diary entry read.

The militants later burst into laughter  the cans contained nothing but water, the girls wrote.

While in captivity, some of the girls were said to have escaped, and ended up in a nearby shop where they asked the owners for help, as well as food and water.

"The girls said, We are those that Boko Haram kidnapped from (the school) in Chibok, Adamu wrote.

"One of the people (in the shop) said: Are these not Shekaus children?"

Although the shop owners let the girls stay the night, they took them back to Boko Harams base the next day.
In a statement, Adesina noted that President Buhari is scheduled to return to the country later today, after receiving medical attention in London.

He had earlier informed his media team led by Minister for Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, that he wants to return to Nigeria but his return is solely dependent on his doctors orders.

ALSO READ: President insists only doctors will decide return date

The President also thanked all Nigerians who have prayed ceaselessly for his recovery and well-being since the beginning of the health challenge.

On Friday, August 18, 2017, RCCG head, Pastor Enoch Adeboye visited President Buhari in London after there had been various visits from other public office holders including the acting President, Yemi Osinbajo.
"All of our police units are on the highest state of alert and they are placed everywhere across the city," Kabul police spokesman Abdul Basir Mujahid told AFP.

"We have increased the number of police checkpoints in and around the diplomatic quarters (too)," he added, amid fears that the Taliban would mark the anniversary with a large-scale attack.

August 19 commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919, which granted Afghanistan full independence from Britain, although the country was never part of the British empire, after three bloody wars.

While Afghanistan's red, black and green tricolour flag adorned many Kabul streets, the day was largely going unobserved by ordinary Afghans, who are frustrated by the deteriorating security situation and the lack of progress by the US-led international coalition forces.

As in recent years there are no public ceremonies planned in the capital.

The city has been on edge since a massive truck bomb ripped through its diplomatic quarter during morning rush hour on May 31, killing about 150 and wounding around 400 people, mostly civilians, in an unclaimed attack.

Taliban insurgents are currently at the peak of their summer fighting season and have launched several deadly assaults around the country in recent weeks.

Ghani welcomed dozens of Afghan officials for a morning ceremony at the presidential palace and laid a wreath at the independence minaret inside the defence ministry compound.

"A very happy Independence Day to everyone in AFG," Ghani said on Twitter.

"This day was earned with lots of sacrifices. We must pay homage & celebrate this legacy."

Trump mulls next step

While some Afghans changed their Facebook profile pictures to the Afghan flag or to Amanullah Khan, the king who secured Afghanistan's independence, others lamented that the fight against the Taliban, now in its 16th year, meant there was little to celebrate.

"What independence day are we talking about when we are still at war with terrorism and don't seem to be winning against it?" one user wrote on the social media site.

The day got under way as US President Donald Trump wrapped up a meeting of his national security team at Camp David on Friday as he tries to forge a new strategy for Afghanistan.

Trump must decide if he wants to continue on the current course, which relies on a much reduced US-led NATO force to help Afghan partners push back the Taliban, or try a new approach, such as sending more troops or even withdrawing altogether.

General John Nicholson, the top US commander in Afghanistan, offered his congratulations on "98 years of independence".

"We look forward to many years of continued friendship and cooperation," he said in a statement.

Afghan pop star Aryana Sayeed, who has been likened to Kim Kardashian for her skin-tight clothing and selfies, has said she will stage a concert despite threats from conservatives who oppose women performing in public.
The man went after women specifically, killing two women, police said. Eight other people were injured, among them six women.

"We think that the attacker especially targeted women, and the men were wounded after coming to the defence of the women," superintendent Christa Granroth of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation told reporters.

Investigators had initially probed the stabbings as murders, "but in light of further information received during the night, the offences now include murders with terrorist intent and their attempts," police said in a statement.

Police identified the suspect as an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen who arrived in Finland in early 2016 and who had sought asylum. His name was not disclosed and his motive was not yet known.

"We tried to talk with the attacker in hospital but he didn't want to speak," Granroth said.

The suspect is being treated in hospital for a gunshot wound to the thigh.

Media reports said his asylum request had been rejected, but police would not confirm this, saying only that his case had been processed by migration authorities.

Police said they were examining whether the suspect had any link to the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for twin terror attacks in Spain on Thursday and early Friday.

"Whether or not there is a connection to IS will be one of the main focuses of the investigation," Finnish intelligence agency SUPO director Antti Pelttari told reporters.

Barcelona link?

Police said they had issued an international arrest warrant for another person outside Finland who is believed to be dangerous.

Four Moroccan citizens were arrested in a Turku apartment and refugee reception centre overnight, police said, correcting their figure from five to four.

The four all have links to the suspect, but police have not yet established whether they were connected to Friday's stabbing.

Police were also probing whether there was a link to the vehicle attacks in Barcelona and another Spanish seaside resort that killed 14 people and wounded around 100 others.

Most of the suspects in those attacks were also Moroccan citizens.

"Of course this is something we are going to investigate, whether it has something to do with the terrorist attack in Barcelona," Granroth said.

Police said they believed the suspect had planned the Turku attack but selected his victims at random.

Among the eight injured were an Italian national, a Swede and a Briton, and the rest were Finns. The 10 were aged 15 to 67.

In June, SUPO raised Finland's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second on a four-tier scale.

It said at the time that it saw an increased risk of an attack committed by IS.

The agency said it was keeping a particularly close eye on around 350 individuals, an increase of 80 percent since 2012.

"Finland's profile within the radical Islamist propaganda has become stronger. Finland is considered as a Western country and a part of the anti-IS coalition, and propaganda is produced in the Finnish language and directed against Finland. The propaganda incites attacks in Finland," SUPO wrote.

The stabbing rampage is the first terrorist attack in Finland.

Experts were cautious about drawing any links between the attack and Islamist extremism.

"But if it is related, this is pretty much a continuation of the easy-to-use blatant attacks that Europe has seen," terrorism researcher Leena Malkki from the University of Helsinki told public broadcaster YLE.

Flags at half-mast

The interior ministry has ordered flags to fly at half-mast across Finland.

Immediately after the attack, the Nordic country raised its emergency readiness nationwide, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.

On Saturday, a demonstration in memory of the victims was held at the market square where the attack took place, organised by Iraqis, Turks and Syrians.

Finland, a country of 5.5 million inhabitants, saw a record 32,500 migrants seek asylum there in 2015.

That number fell to around 10,000 last year, after Finland, like its Nordic neighbours, tried to discourage asylum seekers by tightening rules and reducing social benefits.
"There was a raid and we have now six suspects in custody, the main suspect and five others," detective superintendent Markus Laine of the National Bureau of investigation told AFP.

"We are investigating the role of these five other people but we are not sure yet if they had anything to do with (the attack)... We will interrogate them, after that we can tell you more. But they had been in contact with the main suspect," Laine said.

Police have not confirmed the identity of the suspect, but Laine said investigators were "pretty sure" they knew who he was.

Police have so far only described him as "a young man of foreign origin", providing no other details except to say they were collaborating with the Finnish Immigration Service.

The suspect is being treated in hospital in intensive care for a gunshot wound to the thigh.

The motive for the attack was not yet known, and police have refused to confirm if it was terror-related.

"We haven't yet interrogated the main suspect because of his medical condition," Laine said.

Media reports in Finland said police believed the suspect had picked his victims at random, but Laine could not confirm that.

Police have said it was likely the suspect acted alone, but added they were looking for "other possible perpetrators."

Central Turku was swiftly cordoned off after the attack, which occurred just after 4:00 pm (1300 GMT), although the area was reopened several hours later.

Finland also raised its emergency readiness across the country after the stabbing, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.

In June, Finland's intelligence and security agency Supo raised the country's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second notch on a four-tier scale.
Hezbollah is deeply embroiled in the civil war that has raged in neighbouring Syria since 2011, fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The Lebanese army has sought to keep out of the conflict but has been forced to take action since jihadists of IS and then Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front assaulted the border town of Arsal in 2014 and abducted 30 soldiers and police.

"In the name of Lebanon, in the name of kidnapped Lebanese soldiers, in the name of martyrs of the army, I announce that operation 'Dawn of Jurud' has started," army chief General Joseph Aoun said Saturday.

He was referring to two mountainous border areas -- Jurud Ras Baalbek and Jurud al-Qaa -- where IS has been active.

"The army is confronting the Daesh terrorists to chase them out and recover territory," army spokesman General Ali Kanso said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. "We have no fear of Daesh."

Kanso said the army believed there were around 600 IS fighters in the two areas, controlling some 120 square kilometres (46 square miles) of territory.

Hezbollah said it had launched a simultaneous operation against the jihadists from the Syrian side of the border but the army spokesman denied there had been any coordination.

Nine Lebanese soldiers captured during the 2014 raid are believed to remain in the hands of the jihadists.

Four were executed by their captors while a fifth died of his wounds. Sixteen were released in a prisoner swap in December 2015.

Last month, Hezbollah carried out a six-day offensive against IS and Al-Qaeda's former affiliate in the Jurud Arsal district further south.

It ended with a ceasefire under which nearly 8,000 refugees and jihadists were transported to a jihadist-held area of northwestern Syria in return for the release of five captured Hezbollah fighters.

The evacuations were completed on Monday.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah vowed earlier this month to clear the whole border area of jihadists, saying it was in the interests of both Lebanon and Syria.
Aliou Mahamar Toure had denied a long list of offences, as he stood trial in Bamako, having been accused of endangering state security and aggravated assault.

"The court finds the accused guilty of all charges," said the verdict after the one-day trial. Rights groups had earlier said the charges -- among them he was said to have whipped women for not wearing sufficiently conservative clothing -- did not reflect the gravity of his offences.

Toure, the feared former "Islamic police chief" of the city of Gao, was arrested in December 2013 by the Malian army.

He had spread terror in Gao as one of the most high-profile faces of Al-Qaeda offshoot MUJAO (the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa).

Victims gave gruesome testimony in court to the jury, which Toure listened to with his head bowed.

"He didn't want to release them, he himself cut off their hands and feet. Afterwards he paraded around with the hands and feet," one witness said, describing the fate of his brother's four children.

One person recounted being arrested and drugged by Toure and his henchmen after being accused of stealing. "They cut off my right hand," the victim said.

Toure took the stand wearing a traditional white robe in the presence of at least eight of his victims, an AFP journalist at the court said.

He told the jury he had not cut the hands and feet himself. "It was the Mauritanian, Algerian and Sahrawi jihadists who were cutting hands," Toure, a Malian national, said.

At one point Toure said he was "very ill" and asked to be allowed to sit down.

Rights groups including the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its Malian equivalent said the charge sheet did not mention war crimes or torture, offences they believe Toure committed in his role.

Toure was also convicted of firearms offences and of criminal conspiracy.

Jihadists hijacked a rebellion led by Tuareg separatists in northern Mali to take over key cities until a French-led intervention removed them in early 2013, though they remain active in the area.

Toure was the most senior Malian among the ranks of jihadists in Gao, where many were foreigners.
Russian police said Saturday that "terrorism" was not the main angle of the investigation after identifying the attacker who stabbed seven people on the streets of a far northern city of Surgut.

"The version that the attack was a terrorist one is not the main one," the interior ministry's press service in the Khanty-Mansi region told the Interfax news agency, saying that the attacker had been identified and may have suffered from psychiatric disorders.
But lenders such as Uruguayan state bank Banco Republica (BROU) now say they must abandon such businesses.

Not doing so would "cause BROU and its clients to be financially isolated," its president Jorge Polgar was quoted as saying by El Observador newspaper.

That would "prevent it from carrying out any kind of operation with an international counterpart," he warned.

Another major bank, Santander of Spain, said it too would close any accounts held with it by Uruguayan pharmacies selling the drug.

"As a global bank with clients in various countries, we have to observe the various norms in force in those places," a Santander source told AFP.

Blow to government

Some pharmacies have warned they will have to stop selling marijuana because of the banking restrictions.

"The truth is we did not know... that this could happen," Economy Minister Danilo Astori was quoted as saying by La Republica newspaper.

"A way will have to be found and we are looking for one."

The marijuana law was launched by Uruguay's last president Jose Mujica.

He urged his successor and ally Tabare Vazquez to find a solution.

"If this gets blocked, then the whole parliament will be blocked," warned Mujica, now a senator, whose Broad Front party has a majority in the legislature.

Despite widespread public opposition, Mujica pushed through the law, saying it would stem violence and crime by undermining the illegal drugs trade.

"This is a blow to the government and to the Broad Front," said Adolfo Garce, a political scientist at Uruguay's University of the Republic.

"Having made so much progress, having planted and harvested the marijuana and delivered it to the pharmacies... not being able to sell it due to an unforeseen problem is a very hard blow."

Another of the architects of the law, Julio Calzada, said Uruguay will now have to talk with US banks to seek a way around the restrictions.

"There are alternatives," he said, "but not in Uruguay."

Half population opposed

A survey published this month indicated that half of Uruguayans were opposed to selling marijuana in pharmacies.

More than 10,000 users have signed up with the authorities to buy the drug legally, according to the Cannabis Control and Regulation Institute.

In all, 16 pharmacies have been authorized to sell marijuana under state controls, barely enough to cover a country of 3.5 million people.

No major pharmacy chain has agreed to sell the drug.

Many pharmacies have been unwilling to participate in the scheme because of concerns about security and doubts that the small market of registered users is worth the trouble.

US laws

Cannabis producers have experienced similar difficulties in the United States, where several states have legalized marijuana for medicinal or recreation use.

US federal anti-drug laws forbid banks from letting them hold accounts, obliging the producers to operate in cash.
GENESEO  Doug and Shelly Emerick are a team, not only in their marriage, but also in the business they own and operate, Emerick Pest Control Inc.

After 20 years of operating the business from a one-room office in their home, the Geneseo couple have moved into a new facility at 361 J.F. Edwards Drive, north of Geneseo, on Illinois 82. The new space also accommodates equipment for their 11 employees.

Known as Dead Bug Doug, Mr. Emerick had previous experience working in the pest control field when he saw the need and opportunity for him and his wife to start their own business. One of the hurdles they had to overcome in the beginning years of their business was operating a pest control business in the Midwest winters.

We wanted to have our business in our home so I could work from home and raise our two children, Mrs. Emerick said. "After 20 years, we outgrew our one-room office at home.

Mrs. Emerick is president/owner of the company with her husband as vice president. Emerick Pest Control has developed a client list that includes Fortune 500 companies and small mom-and-pop locations. They cover 11 counties in Illinois and four in Iowa.

"Our employees are a large part of the success we have had in running our business for 20 years, Mrs. Emerick said. And with Dougs knowledge in the pest control field, and my experience in running an office, we make a good team."

For more details on Emerick Pest Control, call 309-944-8361.
CHICAGO  The Hyatt Regency brand on Wednesday celebrated its 50th anniversary with the launch of a new film titled, "Come Together."

Tarriona Tank Ball shares Hyatt Regencys 50-year history of fostering connections by bringing people together to build community and share unique ideas and new perspectives.

Ground was broken April 20 for the 134-room Hyatt Place hotel and 99-room Hyatt House hotel as part of the $80 million The Bend on the Mighty Mississippi development of retail, lodging, restaurants, apartments, offices and other amenities. The 132-acre site on East Moline's 12th Avenue once was home to a Case-IH plant.

The nine-story hotel marks the first Hyatt dual-branded hotels in the Quad-Cities. A single lobby will serve both hotels, the Hyatt Place for nightly stays and the Hyatt House for extended stays. Amenities will include a full-service restaurant, meeting facilities and a rooftop lounge.

The $40 million Hyatt hotel project was designed by Legat Architects. Olympia Hotel Management has been selected to manage the Hyatt Place and the Hyatt House.

The Hyatt film, directed by Simon Benjamin, is inspired by the Hyatt Regency brands history.

"Understanding and the power of collaboration have been part of our DNA for years, and there are few brands that can speak to it as authentically as Hyatt Regency," said Maryam Banikarim, global chief marketing officer for Hyatt. "We continue to be inspired by the events that happened at Hyatt Regency Atlanta 50 years ago and are very proud to create a film that celebrates when groups of people come together to foster understanding."

"Sharing stories that inspire people to better understand each other is what my art is all about. Naturally, I was very excited to work with the Hyatt Regency brand on this project," said Ball, winner of the 2017 NPR Tiny Desk Contest. "When we come together and allow our commonalities to supersede our differences, amazing things can happen."

The film can be viewed at hyatt.com/understanding.

Hyatt Regency has more than 175 urban and resort locations. For more details, visit hyattregency.com.
Cheers to Quad-Citians who joined together in love at Vander Veer Park Wednesday.

The turnout for the No Hate march was impressive, but not surprising given its twin purpose, which our community and we clearly and unequivocally support: To denounce recent hate literature spread in the Q-Cs, and the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

Retired Rabbi Henry Karp called it amazing and so heartwarming -- that so many people would take time out in the middle of the week to join us as a community of love.

It was also a demonstration of Americans at their best even when hateful people throw their worst at them. And it reminds us of the power we have when band together to battle bigotry and racism.

Indeed, Americans everywhere are joining together against hate. Local governments, including Silvis have condemned it. Bipartisan leaders in Washington are speaking out. So are business leaders, who took a side in a debate that really has only has one, breaking with Donald Trump over the presidents initial refusal to flat out denounce the words and actions of violent spreaders of hate.

Even in Springfield, lawmakers came together to repudiate and condemn neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups and warn they are not welcome here. Its our job to spread that message once again, and disappointing that we must.

Jeers to those, including President Trump, who refuse to see the deep and lasting damage caused to society when hatred preached by racists goes unchallenged.

The hateful literature distributed in our community last week worried about the future of white children in an interracial America. We should all worry about the future of children of all colors if such poison continues to spread.

President Obama reminded us of that in the wake of Charlottesville, by tweeting the words of Nelson Mandela:

No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion.

People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

Cheers, and cautious optimism, after Moline police released the name of the last person they believe saw Trudy Appleby alive. Whether it will lead to a resolution in the case of the Moliner missing for 21 years will depend, as this case always has, on people stepping forward with information.

Unfortunately, William Ed Smith, the man a witness says saw him pick up the girl at her home shortly before she went missing on Aug. 21, 1996, is dead. But the witness is not. Police say Mr. Smith had threatened to kill the man if he ever told police he saw Trudy with him that day.

There must be others who can fill in the blanks about the activities engaged in that day by Mr. Smith, who police say was despondent and cried often in the days following the 11-year-olds disappearance. Investigators are interested in activities on or around the date of her disappearance on Campbells Island and in the waterways surrounding it, at East Moline Empire Park boat launch and Black Bird Island and Dynamite Island in the Mississippi.

Please do not assume that we know what you may know, Detective Griffin said. And no information is insignificant.

Share what you know with Moline Police at 309-524-2140 or Crime Stoppers of the Quad Cities at 309-762-9500.
NORMAL, Ill.  "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It's a common question posed to young people.

But for 15 youngsters from the YWCA McLean County who took part in a recent College for Kids workshop at Heartland Community College in Normal, the questions went deeper.

Not only were they asked about goals and career choices, they also were asked about the steps to get them there. And they were given help finding the answers.

Heartland student Darius Carr, of Bloomington, said, "It's incredible the careers they're choosing."

Not surprisingly, professional athlete, entertainer, soldier and teacher were among their choices.

But Alex Monzalvo, of Bloomington, was more specific.

"I want to be a microbiolgist and find a cure for cancer," said the 10-year-old.

It was difficult to tell who was learning more at the workshop, the children or the Heartland students who were teaching them.

In fact, both were learning and even stepping outside their comfort zones a bit.

The youths from the YWCA, ages 9 to 12, had to fill out an "application" to participate. They were even asked about "work experience," which might include baby-sitting siblings or having a lemonade stand.

"A lot of these kids may not even think college is possible," said Alicia Lenard, an adjunct professor at Heartland. "It's so important to plant the seed as soon as possible."

The workshop was organized by students in Lenard's general studies course called Life Success. The course includes skills that are important to success in college and life in general, such as taking personal responsibility, staying motivated and working with others, Lenard explained.

"I always have some sort of hands-on project where students can apply their knowledge," she said.

Lenard received an Inspire Grant from Heartland, which helps fund service learning projects.

"Having students teach other students, I think that's the most powerful service there is," said Lenard.

The afternoon started with a tour of campus to give the children an idea of what college is like. The "college experience" was continued by having the youngsters move to different classrooms for each of their three classes. Each classroom was set up differently, too.

In the first, Career Brainstorming, they were in a computer lab, doing research on a federal Bureau of Labor Statistics website on their desired careers. That included looking up what education or training is needed, average pay and projected demand.

In the second class, Career Vision, they made career posters on which they wrote goals and steps to achieve them.

The third class, On Course Memory, had students working in small teams around separate tables, playing a matching game with new terms they had learned.

In a discussion of what it takes to be a good student, Alex said, "Work hard and never give up."

Jazmin West, 11, of Bloomington, gave her reasons for wanting to be a teacher: "I like going to school. I like kids. I like teaching new things."

Heartland student Mayson Nelson of Normal found it interesting to be in a teaching role.

"I like getting to know about the students and what they need help with," she said.

In addition to designing the classes, the Heartland students put together a careers activity workbook that each student could take home so the learning would continue. The activities ranged from coloring pages to word-finding games to puzzles, providing information along with fun.

Nathina Williams, early learning director at the YWCA, called the workshop "amazing" and said it's important for the children "to know they have different options."

"A lot of our children have never talked about college before," she said.

Lenard said she was proud of her students and the work they put into the project. She also was pleased with the excitement of the children.

"I want to do this every single year for the children," said Lenard. "You never know what could change a little kid's life."
Today is Saturday, Aug. 19, the 231st day of 2017. There are 134 days left in the year.

1867  150 years ago: Messrs. Case & Co., contractors, are fitting up a floating boarding house for their laborers. It will be 160 feet long.

1892  125 years ago: S.S. Hull and Joseph Repine were members of the first jury panel for the September term of circuit court.

1917  100 years ago: M.H. Sexton was named as a delegate to the state Knights of Columbus convention.

1942  75 years ago: A test of Rock Island water before and after being filtered revealed 24,000 counts of bacteria for each one cubic centimeter of water before filtering and only 100 bacteria per cc after the water was processed.

1967  50 years ago: The House has passed a massive Social Security overhaul that would raise benefits, hike taxes and crack down on idle state welfare recipients. But it probably will be months before the extra money is flowing to some 24.2 million current beneficiaries because the Senate isnt ready to consider the legislation at once.

1992  25 years ago: Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris announced the appointment of longtime Rock Island attorney Marvin Andich as director of the attorney generals regional office here.
MOLINE  Do you know the capital of Ethiopia?

Nicholas Reynolds does.

Or, do you know who was the first president to be arrested? Can you name all the republics in the Soviet Union?

Those questions are all so easy for Nicholas that he almost rolled his eyes when asked them by his father, Mike Reynolds, and his grandfather, Terry Reynolds, all of Moline.

Nicholas is 6. And the answers to the questions were Addis Ababa in Ethiopa, Franklin Pierce for running over a woman over with his horse and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Byelorussia, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldavia, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

Nicholas said he got online about seven months ago and now looks things up every day to learn as much as he can. His favorite subject is geography.

"I always try to find geography stuff," he said. "I'm going to be a geography teacher in Canada, 'cause it's one of the safest countries in the world."

Before he moves up north, however, Nicholas said he's going to be the 46th president of the United States. If so, his knowledge of every country in the world, and their capitals, will come in handy.

Nicholas now is starting to break countries down into their parts to learn states, provinces and territories. Of course  as Nicholas told his father  Poland doesn't have states; they have voivodeships. Which he's starting to memorize.

His favorite fact that he's learned. That the capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou. Try saying that three times fast. Nicholas did.

He said he's also interested in learning more about World War II, the Periodic Table and the solar system.

"Today, I wasn't listening to geography for a few minutes, so I listened to planets," Nicholas said, adding he mostly stumbles upon new subjects. "I found it on the computer, and it looked like I wanted to learn it. So I just did."

On Thursday, at his "computer room" in his grandfather's home, a desktop computer projected the same paused YouTube video that was on a laptop showing the People's Republic of China. A piece of paper was taped to the laptop so he could trace all the provinces. That's part of how Nicholas learns things.

"I just write down the stuff," he said.

His father said Nicholas has been learning everything on his own. His family just keeps quizzing and encouraging him.

"Once I found out he was really into this, I just started in everyday conversation  if something comes up  I quiz him on it," Mike Reynolds said.

Nicholas' sister, Abby, 10, helps him with the pronunciation of difficult words and will ask him questions and fact check his answers, Terry Reynolds said. He added Nicholas also devours fact books.

"We go to Barnes and Noble and I get him something every time we go down there," Mike Reynolds said. "He picks out what he wants and he just learns different facts."

It's difficult to find a question Nicholas can't answer.

"Every once in awhile, I'll throw him a real curve ball," his grandfather said. "He thinks about it and he comes up with an answer sooner or later. I haven't found many I can stump him on at all."

Nicholas is confident in his memory, proclaiming "You won't stump me" as his father and grandfather peppered him with trivia questions about countries and presidents.

"His teachers said they think he has a photographic memory, because when you ask him a question you'll see him looking like he's accessing it in his brain and he's looking at it," Mike Reynolds said.

He said Nicholas remained in kindergarten at Wilson Elementary School last year but also took some classes with the third graders.

"It was a reading mastery and comprehension," Mike Reynolds said. "They didn't want to move him around too fast, but that's where they thought would be best for him.

"Kindergarten wasn't challenging for him, obviously."

After dozens of questions Thursday, Nicholas finally was stumped on the address for the White House: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's not a question he's likely to miss again.

"Learn something new every day, buddy," Mike Reynolds said. "I tell him learn something new every day, right? One new thing."

Nicholas replied with an enthusiastic "Yes!"
EAST MOLINE  Energetic and enthusiastic best describes Pat Reuter and Margaret Baumann, co-chairwomen of the upcoming luncheon planned by the United Methodist Women at Christ United Methodist Church in East Moline.

Seasons of Fun is the theme of the event on Saturday, Aug. 26, with table viewing at 11:30 a.m. and lunch served at noon in the fellowship hall of the church at 3801 7th St. Tickets are $10 per person and reservations are due by Monday, Aug. 21. For ticket information, call Mrs. Reuter, 309-755-6774. Tickets will not be available at the door on Aug. 26. The menu features chicken salad, croissant, fresh fruit, chips and dessert.

The mens group from the church, The Called, will provide musical selections. Door prizes will be awarded.

The luncheon is sponsored each year by the United Methodist Women and is just one of the efforts of the group in their goal to reach a $20,000 annual budget that they contribute to local and worldwide charities.

I love helping organize the luncheon, Mrs. Reuter said. It is a fun event to be involved in and it makes a person feel good to be doing something good for other people and the people who come to the luncheon do enjoy it. Most people return each year because I think they have a good time.

Money raised by the women's organization is used to support Winnies Place of Churches United (a shelter for women); Youth Hope through Churches United; United Township High School Project Graduation; First Day Fund for school supplies; Black Hawk Area Special Education playground equipment and for the birthday kits distributed through the Churches United Food Pantry located at Christ United.

The women's organzation also serves weekly lunches to the East Moline-Silvis Rotary Club which meets at the church.

We dont raise a lot of money from any one event, Mrs. Reuter said, but we like to be able to help others.

Before the tabletop luncheon, the womens group held a tea every year where they served tea and finger sandwiches. The ladies wore hats and gloves and we did that quite a few years, Mrs. Reuter said. We didnt have anything like it for a few years and then we decided to bring it back as a luncheon.

There have been some unique table decorations. People really get creative. This year one table will have a Road Trip theme and the hostess at that table is going to include road maps and toy cars in her decorations. We also will have a table decorated for Wells for Wellness and that is a charity to raise money for clean water in Africa, and there will be tables decorated in holiday themes.

Each woman who decorates a table serves as the table hostess.

Mrs. Reuter said there will be a total of 14 decorated tables for this years luncheon ... And now we allow paper products because it can be difficult to bring in all the china and crystal, silver and centerpieces. Many of the hostesses do use china and crystal.

As for Mrs. Reuter, she plans to have a Down by the Seaside theme for one of the two tables she is decorating. I am going to use my mothers set of china from her childhood and it is 100 years old, her china tea pot and some sea shells, and Im going to use my mothers Fostoria china on that table.
What hath connectivity wrought? Two eclipses, 47 years apart, tell a small piece of the story and raise questions about spontaneous gatherings in the 21st century.

In the early 1960s, I read an astronomy book that showed a total solar eclipse would pass a few hours from my home on March 7, 1970. I vowed then I would travel to see it; sure enough, seven or eight years hence, a group of us drove south from Petersburg, Va., to Tarboro, N.C., and watched the darkened moon blot out the sun. There was little traffic, and our carload was virtually alone in a field that stretched for miles.

At 99 percent total, the eclipse was pretty interesting. A bluish veil descended over earth, birds made night sounds and the few passing cars had their lights on. But the moment the eclipse reached 100 percent totality was incomparably different from the view a split second earlier -- surreal beyond imagination.

Shadow bands -- wavy lines like ripples on a pond -- stretched for miles across the landscape. The corona surrounding the blackened moon was a ring of pure white brilliance resembling burning magnesium. Only one other time -- the birth of my son -- have I witnessed anything so miraculous and remote from my lifes other experiences. (For the best description Ive ever read of the experience, read Bob Bermans A Total Solar Eclipse Feels Really, Really Weird at Wired.)

So, a few years back, when I first heard about the total eclipse that will cross America on Monday, I made a similar vow to witness the event. We chose Madras, Ore., because its the least likely spot to experience clouds. Aware the event was gathering attention, we made hotel reservations a year in advance.

The closest accommodations not yet reserved were 43 miles away, in the town of Bend. No problem, we thought; wed simply rise early and drive north on the generally empty roads of Oregons high desert. We asked the tourism bureau in Madras for information about restaurants, restrooms and such, and they kindly proffered information by surface mail and email.

In late spring 2017, the warnings began.

Web articles and emails from Madras advised caution. The drive from Bend, normally 45 minutes, would likely take eight to 10 hours. Local authorities suggested driving to Madras the day before and sleeping in cars. Missives warned drivers pulling off the sides of roads not to keep their engines (and air conditioners) running, as running vehicles risk igniting potentially lethal grass fires.

Emergency vehicles, other emails suggested, might not be able to reach distressed drivers having medical episodes. Restrooms would likely be overwhelmed as 1 million visitors and a high percentage of Oregons 4 million residents cram into the 70-mile-wide path of totality.

The same story, it seems, was playing out across the entire path, stretching from Oregon to South Carolina: tens of millions of people forming 100 Woodstocks simultaneously and contiguously from sea to sea. With the warnings becoming ever more apocalyptic, and not being fond of crowds, my family and I reluctantly decided to cancel our visit to Oregon and miss one of the premier events of a lifetime.

Ironically, the internet that helps people avoid crowds and congestion (think of Google Maps or Waze) is helping to funnel millions into what could be one of the greatest congestion events in history. I suspect that a considerable portion of the crowd will be there not because of any abiding fascination with astronomy, but rather because this is the Era of Connectivity, and all their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pals are going.

This spontaneous massing for the eclipse is sibling to the frenzy that led to the Fyre Festival catastrophe that left many stranded in atrocious conditions in the Bahamas earlier this year and cousin to the Twitter mobs that instantly destroy the reputations and lives of random strangers who stumble over the wrong persons or groups sensibilities somewhere on social media.

As with Twitter mobs, traffic jams and mega-concerts, Ill continue using the internet to avoid crowds, not plunge into them. Lets see if more follow suit after Eclipsomania.
Id like to address the elephant in the room. That elephant being the Republican Party and their refusal to represent the majority of their constituents. Lets begin with stricter gun control (something that would help lessen the fears parents have when sending their children off to school), 53% of Americans favor this (Pew Research) yet the elephant in the room refuses to consider any such thing. Over 70% of Americans want stricter background checks yet again; the elephant in the room refuses to represent them. 61% of Americans say abortion should be legal. Again, the elephant in the room pushes laws that do the opposite. 74% of Americans do not want social security reduced in any way. But the elephant in the room pushes to do just the opposite, cut social security. 63% of Americans now prefer Medicare for all, but the elephant in the room fights it with all its might. 67% of Americans feel more needs to be done to reduce climate change, but not the elephant in the room. The elephant sides with the fossil fuel industry claiming its not a big concern. Given these few statistics (there are more like them) its obvious that the Republican Party is the party of minority rule, quite the opposite of what our founding fathers envisioned. The Republican Party has become a power cult, not a party that represents the majority of Americans. Remember this while you mark your ballot in this midterm election. Save Democracy! Vote Democratic!
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The artwork of 12 children was stolen from Good Dirt Clay Studio on Macon Highway on Aug. 9 while sitting on shelves outside the studio for parents to pick up.
Composting is the solution to recycling organic material so that it can be repurposed as fertilizer and can be useful to everyone in Athens.
'The meanness of the board statement apart, it nowhere answers the most fundamental and damaging aspects of the deteriorating work culture among top company executives to which Narayana Murthy had been repeatedly drawing attention,' says B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.

The malodorous controversy that had engulfed the country's iconic IT enterprise, Infosys, ever since its co-founder, N R Narayana Murthy, went public in February 2017 with his strong disapproval of its straying from the austere and noble traditions set by him and other co-founders has now reached a climax, culminating in the resignation of the chief executive, Vishal Sikka.

He has chosen to leave after kicking up a maelstrom of innuendos and insinuations, both in his resignation letter and his long, self-defensive, bitter blockbuster of a letter to employees leaving no doubt in anyone's mind about the founders having been thorns in his flesh.

Sikka has blamed their 'unrelenting, baseless/malicious, and increasingly personal attacks' for his decision to quit.

The Infosys board has been quick to back him up with a vitriolic broadside directed at Narayana Murthy himself.

'Murthy's continuous assault, including his latest letter, is the primary reason for the resignation of Sikka despite strong board support,' the board said in its statement, adding: 'Murthy's letter contains factual inaccuracies, already disproved rumours, and statements extracted out of context from his conversations with board members.'

Not only Narayana Murthy, but his admirers all over the world, will have every reason to be 'extremely anguished by the tone and tenor of the statement', hauling over the coals a role model for corporate chieftains in simplicity, austerity, philanthropy and uprightness, and a living legend in his own right who raised the company to the high stature it enjoys today.

The meanness of the statement apart, it nowhere answers the most fundamental and damaging aspects of the deteriorating work culture among top executives of the company to which Murthy had been repeatedly drawing attention.

The most objectionable among them was the quantum of the compensation packages of top executives of the company which were not only unconscionable in themselves but astronomical in India's setting.

For instance, the chief executive was granted a steep rise from Rs 6 crore (Rs 60 million) to more than Rs 65 crore (Rs 650 million) per year.

Similarly, the chief operating officer got a breathtaking bonanza of Rs 12 crore (Rs 120 million) as against the Rs 4 crore (Rs 40 million) he was getting previously.

This can only be termed obscene in the context of a measly 6 to 8 per cent increase for the rest of the employees and the fact that the salary for entry level software engineers had not been raised in the IT industry in India for the past seven years despite a 60 per cent rise in consumer price level during the same period.

Murthy was entirely right in demanding that top leaders of Indian companies must show 'self-restraint in... compensation and perquisites' and that the Infosys board should have set and followed standards of fairness by its actions.

He touched the chord of millions of Indians by his call, on a larger plane, to usher in an era of 'compassionate capitalism and make it acceptable to a majority of Indians who are poor'.

Murthy's close associates from the founding days, notably T V Mohandas Pai and V Balakrishnan, the former chief financial officer, were even more trenchant.

Pai was emphatic that 'unless people at the bottom (software engineers) get good, regular hikes, paying people at the top for doing nothing... for long period of time is totally wrong... We should have Indian norm for compensation. We can't follow American norm. We (Infosys) are not an American company.'

Balakrishnan said a pay hike for a top executive was 'terrible for any leadership' when subordinates were being asked to 'sacrifice' on wages.

He demanded reconstitution of the Infosys board since the quality of governance and value system that Infosys was known for were 'being decimated under the current leadership'.

This issue is at the heart of good corporate governance, but the Infosys board's statement simply turns a blind eye to it in its anxiety to traduce Murthy.

It has shown the same contemptuous disregard for public opinion by taking a self-exculpatory stand on the unsavoury allegations of violations of norms of prudence, propriety and probity pertaining to the $200 million acquisition of the Israeli firm Panaya by Infosys.

The board has claimed that the report of the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, which it had appointed to go into the complaints concerning the deal, contained no adverse findings, but has refused to make the report public.

It has not also explained why executives involved in the acquisition, particularly Ritika Suri -- a former colleague of Vishal Sikka when he was the chief technology officer at Germany's SAP and a member of the team that clinched the deal -- quit Infosys soon after the global law firm submitted its report.

Suri, incidentally had been brought in by Sikka as head of corporate development and ventures after he became the chief executive.

Murthy, while questioning the abnormal pay rise for Sikka as well as the rationale for the large severance packages offered to two former employees, had wondered whether 'the company is using such payments as hush money to hide something.'

The board is also silent on the recommendations, if any, received from law firms and corporate governance experts claimed to have been appointed by it to hold consultations with the founders and other key stakeholders.

Thus, the present board must bear the entire responsibility for the dreadful mess in which Infosys finds itself today. It has been a classic case of fouling up one's own nest.

If at all I can fault Narayana Murthy, it is on the count of his taking the matter to the public domain without making it clear whether he had tried his best, with all the enormous prestige he commands, to sort out the issues troubling him by quiet and discreet discussions with the board.

After all, the founders togethers have a stake of roughly 13 per cent in the company, and they could have all together pulled their weight from behind the scenes to steer the company in the right and proper direction.

The investing public and indeed, all those for whom Infosys had so far been a source of inspiration as a symbol of all that is best in the corporate world, would be interested in knowing whether Murthy and his co-founders made the necessary efforts and were forced to come into the open because of their failure to make the board see reason.

The course personality clashes have taken in the cases of both the Tatas and Infosys, deemed to be exemplars of discernment, rectitude and excellence has set a bad example which the country could have well done without.

B S Raghavan, a retired member of the Indian Administrative Service, was the commerce and industry secretary of West Bengal, chief secretary of Tripura, chief executive of four major public sector enterprises, and adviser to the Indian subsidiary of a well-known German industrial firm.

He was also the chairman of three UN Committees, involved in negotiations in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD.

IMAGE: Vishal Sikka, left and, Infosys' co-founder N R Narayana Murthy.
Asks 21 smartphone makers - mostly Chinese - to share security practices. This comes against the backdrop of a military stand-off between India and China in Doklam.

The government has asked 21 smartphone manufacturers - the majority of them from China - to share the security practices and architecture they follow while making devices, in a bid to strengthen and secure cyberspace and digital infrastructure in the country.

The move by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology comes against the backdrop of a military stand-off between India and China in Doklam.

According to sources in the ministry, the government is concerned about data security as most of the Chinese firms making smartphones in India have their servers in China, which make the data more vulnerable to hacking and misuse.

These companies have been working in India for the past many years and, till now, there are no security standards in place.

Also, trade balance in the electronics sector is heavily tilted in favour of China, which is also a concern for India, an official said, adding that the government now wants to ensure that all smartphone makers follow a strict protocol to ensure data security.

In a letter to the 21 companies, the ministry has given the August 28 deadline for submitting detailed responses on the safety and security practices, architecture, guidelines or standards followed and implemented in the products, and services made for the country.

Based on the responses, the government would start verification and audit of devices, wherever required, the official said. The government has also warned that if the procedures are not followed by the companies, it will impose penalties under provisions of the IT Act.

The official further said the testing and verification of devices would be done in India, and the government was upgrading testing facilities in existing labs for the same.

The government feels that smartphones are playing a crucial role in achieving the goals of Digital India and have achieved an impressive penetration of 65 to 75 per cent in the country.

Today these devices hold valuable information of the users while empowering them to interact with their surroundings in innovative waysThere is a need to ensure the security and safety of these devices, the letter sent to smartphone makers said.

Handset makers that Business Standard spoke to said they were reviewing the letter and not yet ready with their replies.

While most of the 21 firms said they had got the letter, two companies said they were yet to receive it.

According to sources, the handset firms are mulling the option of lobbying the government through an industry body, instead of presenting their cases separately.

Our team is working on it, and we will reply by the stipulated date.

My sense is, the onus is on the open operating system providers and not the handset companies.

Whatever third-party applications one downloads, their servers have access to certain data and information, said Arvind Vohra, chief executive and managing director, Gionee India.

Pankaj Mohindroo, national president, Indian Cellular Association, said while there could be no argument against the need to have secure communication and protection of data, "we must grasp the issue in its entirety".

Different levels of consumer verticals need different levels of security commensurate with the degree of risk. We should not move towards an ecosystem which can stop innovation in the development of mobile application, he said.

Photograph: Jason Lee/Reuters
Naresh Chandra was most certainly among the greatest patriots two generations of Indian strategists have seen, through the tenure of nine PMs, says Shekhar Gupta.

The description we use most lazily -- and safely -- in a tribute to a prominent public figure on his passing away is 'patriot'. Lazy, because any fellow Indian must be presumed to be a patriot. And safe, because nobody is likely to question you.

We are too polite to speak ill of the dead.

The equation changes when the person is somebody who was more than once insinuated to be a traitor, a foreign 'mole'. That too by powerful and influential people.

It changes also because the man was most certainly among the greatest patriots two generations of Indian strategists have seen, through the tenure of nine prime ministers.

Naresh Chandra never used his last name 'Saxena', perhaps to give anonymity to older brother Girish 'Garry' Saxena who joined the Research and Analysis Wing, became its legendary chief, and passed away recently.

But anybody who knew him would accept that he was not just another IAS officer who rose to hold every job a serving officer would covet: Chief secretary of Rajasthan, water resources secretary, defence, home and then the bureaucratic Mount Kailash, Cabinet secretary.

There wasn't a box in the service hierarchy Nareshji left unchecked.

He was one of a kind. In so many decades of interacting with smart people, I am not sure I have met two more with approach to a new challenge, or a crisis.

He sparkled in problem-solving, flourished in a crisis.

Better still, he was the greatest teller of stories. Never in a manner of boasting.

In fact, he would tell these as if these were just funny interludes but often explained how he employed some learning from his district service to resolve what looked intractable.

He didn't tell you all the facts.

Be it New Delhi or New York, I am no early riser. So it is never welcome when the phone rings at 6 am, as it did at Manhattan's Lexington Hotel (then an Indian hangout as it was owned by the Taj Group) in the fall of 1997 while the United Nations General Assembly was on.

Naresh Chandra, then India's ambassador to Washington, was calling, distraught. "Arrey bhai, yeh kya chhap diya aap ne?" he asked me in his characteristic Allahabad Hindustani.

"Main to yahan safeer hoon, aur yeh keh rahey hain ki main spy hoon (What have you published? I am the ambassador here and this gentleman says I am a spy)."

In a few hours he had to accompany then prime minister I K Gujral to the meeting with President Bill Clinton.

He was referring, of course, to an article written by Swadeshi Jagran Manch convener and my friend Swaminathan Gurumurthy, in The New Indian Express.

The article delved into the mystery of P V Narasimha Rao planning a nuclear test, getting the site ready in Pokharan and then pulling back at the last moment, as the Clinton administration confronted him with satellite and intelligence evidence of his plans.

Gurumurthy's suggestion was that the United States had been tipped off by a mole, and that was Naresh Chandra.

The ambassador said he was coming to see me in the Lexington lobby with a faxed copy of the article.

I tried explaining to him the complexities of the Indian Express group, that The New Indian Express was, in fact, another newspaper owned by another branch of the same family and therefore this particular article had not been published in the paper I edited.

But Chandra's point simply was, that is all very well, but 'hum ab duniya bhar ko kya munh dikhayenge (what face do I have for the rest of the world)?"

I obviously was of no great help. I knew his credentials -- as well as his connections.

In any case, as Cabinet secretary, he would have known every secret worth keeping -- R&AW, incidentally, is controlled by the Cabinet secretariat.

At the same time you couldn't dismiss Gurumurthy out of hand.

He has access, intellect, and you can argue with his views on all things, from economics to foreign policy to definition of secularism, but you can't question his patriotism.

So what the hell was the truth?

I searched for an answer obsessively for more than a decade, raising it with Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narasimha Rao.

All I got were enigmatic smiles with things like "ab isko chhodiye aap (now you forget this).

But in the top-most establishment nobody believed the slur on Chandra.

Rao had appointed him his interlocutor for the negotiations with the US on nuclear and missile issues.

Gujral and then the Bharatiya Janata Party, which followed, continued to have him as ambassador to Washington in spite of the fact that the startling allegation -- of espionage, no less -- had been made by none else than Gurumurthy, who had so much clout with the top echelons of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the BJP and open access to both the Vajpayee and L K Advani households.

And to complete that intriguing circle, in 2006, we saw sitting on the dais with other distinguished speakers at Jaswant Singh's book release Naresh Chandra himself, telling delightful stories of how, as India's ambassador to a bitter, betrayed Washington in the May of 1998, he got by telling no lies, as diplomats proudly say they do for their country, but speaking as Jack Nicholson told Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give, 'some version of the truth'.

Jaswant Singh claimed in his book that there was a mole in Rao's circle.

If he had the vaguest suspicion that Chandra was that spy/traitor/mole, why would he have him sharing the stage with him?

Each time I harassed Narasimha Rao on this, he merely patted his belly as if to say, let it be there.

In a Walk The Talk interview in December 1995, when I pressed on, he shut me up by saying, 'leave at least something for me to take to my chita (funeral pyre).'

Jaswant Singh's 2006 book gave me fresh impetus to resume that search. The result was a series of three columns.

My conclusion in those articles, which hasn't been challenged since (including by him), was that Rao had never meant to test.

He was under pressure from the Clinton administration to roll back his nuclear plans at a time when India was vulnerable.

The fox played a subterfuge on the Americans by pretending to test, getting caught and then 'cancelling' to give Clinton comfort and buy Indian scientists the time they needed.

Chandra was probably a player in this, a willing 'mole', but all for a good, patriotic cause.

It is just that his reward later was these insinuations of high treason.

The fact is, it was on March 18, 1989 that Rajiv Gandhi took him aside at an Indian Air Force firepower demonstration at Tilpat, outside Delhi, and said Pakistan was 'a screwdriver's turn away from its nukes' and India should start active weaponisation.

He gave the keys to Chandra, who guarded our strategic equivalent of the family silver directly for a decade, until Pokharan-2.

Footnote: A few months later, the Centre conferred the Padma Vibhushan on him and that ended all whispers.

Chandra's patriotic commitment was so stubborn it didn't shake even when it was viciously questioned. He wouldn't even write a memoir, not so much to come clean but to tell the country some of what he did.

'What people would like to read, I can't write. What I can write, nobody would read,' he would say.

He was quite simply among the finest servants of Mother India we have seen in our times.
'As general elections draw near, the BJP and JD-U (in whatever form it is) will do a deal -- the state to the JD-U in return for support at the Centre for the BJP,' says Aditi Phadnis.

IMAGE: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, right, with Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi. Photograph: PTI Photo

It is in July that Indian Socialists tend to set water on fire.

On July 19, 1979, as industry minister in the Morarji Desai government, George Fernandes gave a fire and brimstone speech defending his prime minister and damning to hell forever those attempting to destabilise it.

On July 20, he signed a letter pledging allegiance to Charan Singh as the new PM.

His statement/justification? 'I personally don't think that there has been a sustained effort to make the ordinary man feel that it is his government and he is participating in it... No one is prepared to accept today that there can be people of integrity in public life,' he was quoted as telling The Statesman on July 21, 1979.

For the circa 2017 version of the same script, consider what Nitish Kumar said in February.

Speaking at the launch of a book by P Chidambaram, Kumar said: 'Right now, the need of the nation is Opposition unity. The day this Opposition unity comes, you see what happens... There is nothing to fear. Everything will be all right.'

'We should follow our agenda 90 per cent and only 10 per cent we should react to the agenda of others. We should move forward after setting our own agenda with maximum Opposition unity.'

In July 2017, Nitish Kumar gracefully accepted the congratulations of the Bharatiya Janata Party upholding him as the crusader leading the struggle against corruption after he had jettisoned Lalu Prasad Yadav and family, pleading his inability to 'suffer corruption' any more.

The BJP elbowed Lalu out to take its place beside Kumar to form a government.

The Congress is convinced this is a script thought up more than three months ago.

The party cites as evidence Kumar's support to Ramnath Kovind as the candidate for president.

While Congress President Sonia Gandhi was able to persuade Sharad Pawar to stay in the Opposition and support Congress candidate Meira Kumar (at that meeting to sign Meira Kumar's papers, Gandhi dimpled charmingly at Sharad Pawar's efforts to postpone signing the papers and insisted he sign them there and then), Nitish Kumar slipped out of the Mahagathbandhan's grasp.

He got a front row seat in the Central Hall of Parliament when Kovind was sworn in.

So what happens now?

Bihar will now get the economic package it has been asking for.

The central government will now shower economic largesse and uphold Bihari pride (Kumar won the assembly election on the back of the insult to Bihari pride by Narendra Modi and his cohorts).

The CM-with-BJP-support will propel the political debate around corruption, and slip effortlessly back into the lingo of the Emergency and the bad, bad things the Congress did.

As general elections draw near, the BJP and the Janata Dal-United (in whatever form it is) will do a deal -- the state to the JD-U in return for support at the Centre for the BJP.

It will help both of them if the assembly and Lok Sabha elections are held together (assembly elections are due in Bihar in 2020).

What of caste calculation, which is central to Bihar politics?

Muslims and Yadavs add up to around 30 per cent of Bihar's population. In the Lok Sabha elections of 2014 -- where Kumar suffered such a blow that he abandoned the BJP and joined hands with Lalu -- many upper class Yadavs abandoned Lalu and voted for the BJP.

Kumar will be the National Democratic Alliance's delivery vehicle for the support of his own caste and other lower castes. The BJP will make significant dents in Lalu's vote base.

That leaves the Muslims.

During his last tenure as CM with BJP support, Kumar was vicious with that party, largely for the demonstration effect he knew this would have on the Muslims.

He reviled, insulted and slighted them at every available opportunity, knowing they had nowhere to go.

This caused Muslims even in places like Kishangunj, to support Kumar, even though he in turn was propping up a government in which the BJP was a big player.

An action replay of that script should not be a problem.

What this will effectively mean is a pulverisation of the Opposition as we know it.

But then Kumar would be the first to say that he is not, after all, Jesus Christ to die on the cross.

He has a government and he has managed to live to fight another day.

The question is what will he do with the government now?
'Even if the BJP's hope of a Congress-mukt Bharat is realised, it will still have to contend with Mr Gandhi's god-like status in the foreseeable future,' says Amulya Ganguli.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

BJP chief Amit Shah's smart alecky quip about the Mahatma being a chatur bania (wily trader) is not in the same league as Sarojini Naidu's cheeky description of the Father of the Nation as Mickey Mouse because of his large ears.

While Naidu's was the witticism of a friend, Shah belongs to the camp which believes that Gandhi's assassin Nathuram Godse's intention was good, but his methods were wrong.

As the then RSS chief Rajendra Singh (1922-2003) once explained (external link), 'usne acche uddeshya ke liye galat method istemal kiya.'

However, even after using a galat method, Godse remains a patriot in the eyes of the Sangh Parivar as BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj said before his party shut him up for being politically incorrect at a time when the BJP is feeling its way through the cultural labyrinth of Indian society.

Arguably, therefore, Amit Shah's wisecrack is neither a good-humoured dig nor a back-handed compliment to a chatur saint/politician.

However, he is not alone in his denigration of the person about whom Einstein said that 'generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this, in flesh and blood, walked upon the earth'.

Lord Wavell, the last but one British viceroy, characterised Gandhi as an 'extremely shrewd, obstinate, domineering, double-tongued, single-minded politician; and there is little true saintliness in him' while the writer Nirad C Chaudhuri described Gandhi as a person who 'had the capacity for prevarication of a Hindu bania and a Hindu guru combined'.

But these are the criticisms of neutrals who had nothing to gain from their disparagement of a national figure. But it isn't only that the BJP president does not belong to this category, his own past can also deny him the privilege of being an honest critic.

Moreover, a number of blogs doing the rounds in the cyber world confirms that Rajendra Singh and Sakshi Maharaj were merely articulating the views prevalent in the saffron brotherhood about Gandhi.

One of the blogs, entitled Rangeela Gandhi, accuses the Mahatma of sexual escapades while another carries the heading, Gandhism -- A deceitful philosophy used by charlatan and frauds.

It says that 'one wonders how Mr Gandhi with his pious platitudes and tokenism which seldom gave the concrete solution to any problem was able to exercise such a popularity among the masses of India to enjoy a god-like status. The puzzle was that how this instant saintly acts crash course was so readily lapped up by the bovine millions to ultimately go to their doom of losing one-third of their country and yet have the audacity of calling it independence'.

While the similarity between the last sentence and the Communist slogan of yeh azadi jhooti hai in the late 1940s draws attention to the fascism-Communism likenesses, what is noteworthy in the present context is how the Mahatma continues to rile the saffron camp even seven decades after his death.

Amit Shah drew satisfaction from the Congress's travails which, he believes, will lead to the fulfilment of Gandhi's advice for turning the party into a Lok Sevak Sangh.

But even if the BJP's hope of a Congress-mukt Bharat is realised, it will still have to contend with Mr Gandhi's god-like status in the foreseeable future.
IMAGE: BJP president Amit Shah having a view of the Upper Lake from VIP Road after paying obeisance to Raja Bhoj, during his three-day visit to Bhopal on Friday.

Photograph: PTI Photo

Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah has said his party has not come to power for mere five or 10 years, but at least 50 years and called upon workers to strengthen the party and take it to every part of the country.

Shah also said that though the BJP appears to be at its peak with a majority government at the Centre and 1,387 MLAs in states the workers feel the party has still a long way to go.

'Today, we have a majority government at the Centre with 330 MPs, and also have 1,387 MLAs in different states. The party appears to be at its peak, but dedicated workers feel we have a long way ahead,' a BJP release on Saturday quoted Shah as saying at a meeting with partymen.

'We have not come to power for 5-10 years, but at least 50 years. We should move forward with a conviction that in 40-50 years we have to bring major changes in the country through the medium of power,' Shah said.

He was addressing the Madhya Pradesh BJP's core group members, office-bearers, MPs, MLAs and district chiefs, among others, at the party headquarters in Bhopal on Friday.

Shah arrived on Friday on a three-day visit to Madhya Pradesh for meetings with the BJP workers and office-bearers besides participating in various programmes as part of his 110-day nationwide tour.

The BJP president reminded the activists that the party has become a political force to reckon with due to hard work, dedication and sacrifice of its leaders over the years.

Today the BJP has become a party of 10-12 crore members because of many stalwarts who have dedicated their lives in building and strengthening the organisation, said Shah, according to the release.

'We have to ensure no place in the country is left where we don't have our flag. For this, we have to strengthen the organisation further,' Shah said.

'Character is the basis of our foundation,' he said, and called upon the BJP workers to ensure the party is present in every (polling) booth, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kamrup to Kutch.
UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had hit out at the Congress vice-president, saying the 'yuvraj' sitting in Delhi cannot make Gorakhpur 'a picnic spot'.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi visited Gorakhpur on Saturday and met families of children who died at the state-run BRD Medical College allegedly due to scanty oxygen supply.

Terming the deaths of scores of children as a 'government made tragedy', Gandhi said that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath should not try to cover up the matter.

"All those whom I met told me that oxygen shortage led to the death of their children. Many families were given ambu bags (a manual resuscitator) and they pumped it for hours...It is very clear that it government-made tragedy," Gandhi said.

The government should take action in the matter and not try to cover it up, he said.

It is absolutely clear that oxygen shortage and laxity were the reasons behind the tragedy, he told reporters after meeting family members of the victims.

"The chief minister should not try to cover up (the matter) and action should be taken against the guilty. This is my message," the Congress vice-president asserted.

Gandhi said that he had visited the BRD medical college and hospital earlier as well and had told Prime Minister Narendra Modi through the media that it needs funds as there were too many shortages. But no action was taken, he said.

There have been scores of encephalitis related child deaths in the BRD medical college hospital in recent days triggering a nation-wide outrage.

"Modiji speaks of a new India. This kind of new India we do not want. We want hospitals where poor people can take their children (for treatment) and come back happily," Gandhi said.

He complimented the media for raising the issue.

"...I want to thank them for this (highlighting the issue)...it is not a matter concerning Uttar Pradesh but is a national tragedy. It is indicative of the health care of the country," he said.

Earlier in the day, Adityanath also had hit out at the Congress vice-president over his visit, saying the 'yuvraj' (prince) sitting in Delhi cannot make Gorakhpur 'a picnic spot'.

Adityanath, who launched a cleanliness campaign in the district to tackle the deadly encephalitis outbreak in the wake of death of 71 children, also hit out at his predecessor and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.

"I feel that the shehzada sitting in Lucknow ..'yuvraj' sitting in Delhi will not know the importance of this cleanliness campaign. They will come here to make it a picnic spot, we cannot permit it," the chief minister said taking a jibe at Gandhi, before the Congress leader's visit.

Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who visited Gorakhpur along with Rahul, said, "In spite of being five-time MP from Gorakhpur, he (Adityanath) did nothing for the hospital."

Around 71 children lost their lives in the BRD hospital since August 7 due to various causes including encephalitis.

The Congress hit back at Adityanath, saying the eastern Uttar Pradesh town was not a 'picnic spot', but 'a spot of virtual murder'.

All India Congress Committee spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said the chief minister was the Lok Sabha member from Gorakhpur where the tragedy took place, and accused him of reducing the debate over medical negligence to such 'cheap politicking'.

"He has insulted the sacred memory of those helpless and poor children who died, by reducing the debate to such cheap politicking as a picnic spot.

"I will leave for the people of India to judge whether in an anxiety to score political point over Rahul Gandhi, has he not reduced this whole, serious, terrible and tragic episode to a farce and grossly insulted the memory of those children," he told reporters.

Gorakhpur was not a picnic spot, instead it 'has been turned into a murderous spot by utter negligence, lack of accountability and total callousness', Singhvi alleged.

"It is a spot of virtual murder. The chief minister's statement is objectionable and insulting," he added.

The Congress leader said it was the spot where hundreds of children seemed to be dying, whereas 'business as usual' was the answer charted out by the entire Yogi Adityanath government.

Hitting back at the chief minister for his barb, Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar said it only reflected the 'pettiness' and 'panic' over Gandhi's visit.

"The chief minister took no action and he wants to divert the issue...he is belittling the position that he holds by such petty statements...Rahulji has come here to share the the pain of the poor...but asking why he has come only indicated the pettiness of the chief minister and panic that his visit will ensure justice," Babbar said.

Babbar, along with other senior leaders including Ghulam Nabi Azad and RPN Singh, accompanied Gandhi.

IMAGES: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi meets family members of children, who died at BRD Medical College Gorakhpur earlier this month, in Gorakhpur on Saturday. All Photographs: Courtesy @OfficeofRG/Twitter
Party said it will take action against Sharad Yadav if he attends Lalu Yadav's August 27 rally. M I Khan reports from Patna.

IMAGE: Bihar Chief Minister and national president of JD(U) Nitish Kumar along with general secretary K C Tyagi during the party's national executive meeting, in Patna on Saturday. Photograph: PTI Photo



The Janata Dal-United, headed by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, has officially joined Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance.

The party passed a resolution at its national executive meeting in this regard.

"A resolution in this regard was unanimously approved in the national executive meeting of the party," a seenior JD-U leader said.

He said that JD-U's national general secretary K C Tayagi moved a resolution to join the NDA that was approved in the meeting.

Making the announcement, party leader K C Tyagi categorically denied that there was any split in the party following differences with senior leader Sharad Yadav.

"The JD-U national executive meeting chaired by party president Nitish Kumar approved a resolution to become part of the NDA," the principal general secretary told reporters.

The national executive also put its seal of approval on the Bihar JD-U's unit decision to walk out of the Grand Alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Congress and join hands with the BJP to form a government in Bihar, Tyagi said.

"BJP president Amit Shah during a meeting with our (JD-U) president Nitish Kumar recently had urged him to bring the JD-U into the NDA. The national executive committee approved it and now we have become part of NDA," Tyagi said.

The BJP president welcomed the decision of the JD-U and said it heralded a 'new era of development' in the state.

"I welcome the JD-U decision of joining NDA, as this will not only strengthen the NDA but will also begin a new era of development and growth in Bihar," Shah said.

The party's national executive was held on Saturday at 1, Anne Marg in Patna, official residence of the CM.

Most of the JD-U leaders, including 70 MLAs of the party, two Lok Sabha MPs and seven Rajya Sabha MPs participated in the meet.

Flanked by the party's senior leaders R C P Singh, Harbansh and Pawan Varma among others, Tyagi denied that there was any split in the party.

"Party mein koi division nahi hua hai (there has been no division in the party)," Tyagi said while addressing a press conference in Patna after the conclusion of national executive meeting.

Tyagi said heads of the party's 16 different committees are with Kumar.

He said in Bihar, all 71 party MLAS, 30 MLCs and two Lok Sabha MPs and most of Rajya Sabha MPs are with Kumar, except Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar.

"So how can there be split in JD(U)?" he asked.

However, Tyagi said that party has not acted against Sharad Yadav for his anti-party activities.

"But we will take action against him after August 27 if he attends (Rashtriya Janata Dal chief) Lalu Prasad Yadav's rally in Patna," he said.

The JD-U will hold an open session during the day in which Nitish Kumar would be present.

Sharad Yadav skipped the national executive committee meeting and attended a parallel programme, Jan Adalat, of those loyal to him, including suspended JD-U Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar Ansari.

The programme promised to continue with the Grand Alliance.

Yadav, who was sacked as JD-U's Rajya Sabha leader said that JD-U is his party and that the grand alliance remains intact.

"We promised to continue this alliance for at least five years. The public gave us opportunity. The manifesto is our commitment for five years. The people of Bihar vested faith in us. I am not happy with alliance breaking," he said during Jan Adalat programme in Patna.

Yadav launched a veiled attack at the JD-U faction led by Nitish Kumar and said he contributed in forming the party and now he was being asked to leave it.

"I formed the party and some people are telling me that this is not my home. People are raising questions over my intention. I went to attend JD-U's national executive committee meeting but they didn't allow me to participate and said that I don't belong to their party," he added.

Yadav, who is miffed with Nitish Kumar for severing ties with grand alliance and joining hands with the BJP, had earlier called for a convention 'Sanjhi Virasat Bachao' in Delhi on Thursday with an aim to safeguard the 'composite culture' of India.

Sharad Yadav fell out with Nitish Kumar over his decision to walk out the Grand Alliance.

The national executive meeting also came down heavily on the Congress.

The JD-U, in its political resolution, said the party had played a 'positive role' in forming the Grand Alliance by lowering the number of its seats and it even gave 41 seats to the Congress in the 2015 Bihar assembly polls.

'This (Congress) is the same party, the number of whose members had dwindled to four in the 2010 Bihar Assembly polls,' the resolution said.

It added that through the Bihar model of alliance, the JD-U had tried to facilitate an 'alternative thinking' in the country.

'After Bihar, in the Assam election, the JD-U worked for a shared alternative...But, the Congress perennially remained inactive and indifferent, despite the fact that the AGP (Asom Gana Parishad) and the UDF (United Democratic Front) were active with the JD-U,' it said.

It was observed at the meeting that despite the sincere efforts from 2015 to 2017, it had become clear that the Congress 'neither had the capacity nor the interest' in forging an opposition unity.

The meeting also said that the Congress, in the past, had initially supported the governments of Charan Singh, Chandrasekhar, H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral at the Centre but later, withdrew its support and toppled them.

'It (Congress) has never made an honest attempt to forge a national unity based on alternative policies and programmes, nor does it think of it,' it observed.

With inputs from PTI and ANI.
The Rajya Sabha election was personal so it had to be won and Amit Shah needed to be sent a message, says Aditi Phadnis.

Rarely, if ever, has there been such a to-do about one Rajya Sabha seat.

The National Democratic Alliance was determined the Congress should not win it.

The Congress was equally clear -- ensuring Ahmed Patel's victory was a prestige issue.

So what is it about this man?

Patel has been a Rajya Sabha member since 1993, and today, when youngsters question his claim to knowing mass politics and talk about the Sultanate that is the Congress, they are probably unaware that he was not just a member of the sixth but also the seventh and eighth Lok Sabha and was president of the Gujarat unit of the Youth Congress from 1977 to 1982.

Patel is the archetypal Gandhi family loyalist.

When Indira Gandhi was licking her wounds in the aftermath of the 1977 reverses, it was Patel (and Sanat Mehta, the Congress stalwart of Surendranagar) who invited her to Bharuch to address public meetings.

She was diffident, they were aggressive.

Eventually, those meetings helped her overcome her demoralisation and script a comeback.

While his election to the sixth Lok Sabha established him as a political leader of promise, it was during his second term in the Lok Sabha -- 1980 to 1984 -- that Patel really came into his own.

Rajiv Gandhi was being groomed to take over and the young, slightly shy Patel found favour with the young leader.

When Indira Gandhi was assassinated and Rajiv Gandhi came to power in 1984 with a brute 400-plus majority in the Lok Sabha, Patel was promoted rapidly as party apparatchik: He was made joint secretary of the Congress, briefly appointed parliamentary secretary and made general secretary of the Congress in addition to handling his responsibilities as a member of Parliament.

Little wonder then, that he knows the party like the back of his hand.

And when the Congress president and the prime minister were two different persons, he had a unique position of power in both government and party, without being a member of the former.

This was a conscious choice.

Through his career he has been offered ministerships half a dozen times. He has always rejected it -- making him one of the most sought-after men in the Congress.

His lowest point was probably the Rao years. P V Narasimha Rao beckoned to offer him a ministership, for he could have done with a credible Muslim face in his council of ministers. Patel rejected all of it.

He had lost the Lok Sabha election. A friend, Najma Heptulla, got him guest accommodation in Delhi's Meena Bagh. Rao was having none of that.

Patel's son and daughter were both taking board exams. In the middle of the exam season, Patel was told he had three days to vacate the house or face action. He hasn't forgotten that to this day.

'Accept something from that man?' his supporters said scornfully later.

What he did accept, however, was the secretaryship of the Jawahar Bhavan Trust, a project begun by Rajiv Gandhi, visualised as a think-tank for the Congress, but pushed in earnest by Sonia Gandhi in the years after his assassination.

The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, housed in the Jawahar Bhavan premises, was offered -- in the first Budget presented by then finance minister Manmohan Singh -- an outlay of Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million), which was rejected with dignity by Sonia Gandhi.

It was Patel who worked tirelessly to raise money and drove contractors and others to finish the project.

The appointment, as can be imagined, gave him a unique opportunity denied to other Congressmen -- access to Sonia Gandhi.

Unlike Shiela Dikshit, equally close to Rajiv Gandhi during his days in power, or N D Tewari, he did not join the group that tried to break away from the Congress during the Rao regime, although personally and politically he got little from the regime except membership of the Congress Working Committee.

While he was unfailingly polite to Rao, he never accepted his authority. He never forgave Rao for allowing the Babri Masjid to be demolished and campaigned overtime for his removal when it became clear that there were alternatives to him.

But for Patel those were lonely years, mitigated only by the vast network he had created as a result of holding so many party positions.

This was demonstrated most clearly during the party conference in Tirupati in 1993 where after years, elections were held to the CWC. He got the third highest number of votes, presumably a result of past favours.

The period from 1996 to 2000 was one of great instability in Indian politics, but it was nothing compared to the instability in the Congress.

Much of the politics in the party was dictated by the governments it had been supporting. When Sitaram Kesri was elected Congress president, Patel lobbied strongly for him against Sharad Pawar, who was also in the running for the same job.

Popularity in the party is a double-edged sword. Kesri used to say: 'The Gandhi family is like the sun. You are in danger of getting burnt by it if you get too close to it; but you can't do without its warmth either.'

Patel's closeness to the Gandhi family is undeniable. But unlike others, he resisted the temptation to use it to leverage personal business.

Those who have seen him in action say he can raise Rs 30 crore (Rs 300 million) in Gujarat in 30 minutes by making a few phone calls. Reporters have been witness to sackfuls of currency notes going through his office to 'facilitate' this or that election.

The Rajya Sabha election was personal so it had to be won and Amit Shah needed to be sent a message.

You don't mess with Patel.

Now we wait for the 2019 general election when Shah will almost certainly contest Ahmedabad.

How many seats will the Congress get from Patel's home state?
'How can you fight an enemy you can't see?'

Manavi Kapur reports.

When Monica Kumar went to bed on the night of August 1 in her home in outer Delhi's Chhawla, all she could think about was waking up early the next morning for household chores.

What the 23 year old didn't expect was a strange feeling in the middle of the night that someone was tugging at her hair.

"We went to bed early that night and locked the door from inside. When she told me she could feel a 'presence' in the room, I told her it's nothing and that she should go back to bed," says Pramod Kumar, her husband.

Still a little uneasy, Monica got up to use the washroom, only to find her long tresses chopped and lying around her bed.

Monica was the first 'victim' of this mysterious hair chopping incident, which has taken proportions of an urban legend after more cases were reported from other outer Delhi villages.

Reminiscent of the days when several residents of Delhi saw the 'monkey man', people have their own versions of the story and their own bizarre theories about what may have actually happened.

Chhawla, just outside of Dwarka, wears the appearance of a typical village, where a group of men huddle on the streets to discuss everything from water supply to local scandals.

The incident at the Kumar household is currently a hotly debated issue, with reactions ranging from dismissal to wonder.

"Madam, all this is bogus. Have you noticed that all these incidents that have been reported are from homes belonging to the lower castes?" says a senior resident of Chhawla. He believes this was initially a prank that went wrong, and more people followed suit when they saw the kind of media attention it was garnering.

"We are all retired men here. We mostly sit in the courtyard talking till late in the night. Would we not have spotted any suspicious activity?" he scoffs.

Inside her home, Monica stares blankly at the television, almost defiantly silent.

Her husband says she has a sore throat and cannot speak. Other women of the household gather around with their theories of what happened that fateful night.

"If the door was locked from inside and this still happened, we don't know how to stop it. I'm thinking I'll cut my hair myself to avoid this trauma," says a woman of the house.

Others in the neighbourhood and surrounding villages have resorted to totems and superstitious rituals to 'ward off evil'.

Some have left imprints of their hands with cow dung outside their homes, others have hung the proverbial nimbu mirchi over the doorstep.

Such was the sway of this legend that a sense of paranoia spread to the neighbouring states of Rajasthan and Haryana. Even senior police officials had to step in to stop people from spreading rumours and irrational, superstitious tales.

The police, though, suspects that most cases were a result of some conflict within the home or a manifestation of a psychological problem. They have also tried counselling the women to arrive at the truth.

Pramod, whose brother is incidentally a barber, seems rather nonchalant about the issue. "I know we were perhaps the first ones to report this case, but how can you fight an enemy you can't see? If the police do nab someone, I would really like to know how he got in," he says with a cheeky smile.

Monica remains resolutely silent and rather disgruntled at being reminded of the night.

"She's just scared. But I tell her that there's nothing to fear when I'm around," says Pramod.

For now, the family sleeps in the same room and keeps all doors locked.

Family members may finally get to sleep in their own rooms once the hair-splitting over hair-chopping stops.

IMAGE: A woman from Delhi, not Monica Kumar, whose hair was chopped off. Photograph: PTI Photo
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Pressure from state lawmakers in both parties, as well as from hundreds of people who showed up at a series of public hearings this month, is mounting on the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and state Water Control Board to slow or reconsider the water quality certifications it intends to issue for a pair of natural gas pipeline projects.

In a filing this month with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities, an environmental law group contends that, contrary to the companys claims that it will save ratepayers money, Dominion Energys proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline could cost its captive Virginia customers more than $2 billion in unnecessary costs to benefit its shareholders.

And another environmental group has taken to the airwaves with an ad attacking Dominions safety record and urging viewers to call Gov. Terry McAuliffe, an early and enthusiastic supporter of both the Atlantic Coast and shorter Mountain Valley Pipeline planned for southwestern Virginia by EQT Midstream Partners.

The stepped-up offensive from pipeline opponents comes as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which approves gas pipelines and has issued favorable environmental impact statements for both pipeline projects, has a quorum again for the first time since February. The commission could act on the two projects any day, said Mary ODriscoll, a FERC spokeswoman.

When FERC, as many expect it will, approves the pipelines, the last hope for environmentalists, some landowners in the pipelines path and others looking to block the projects, will shift to the Water Control Board. That body is expected to vote in November on a recommendation from the DEQ that there is a reasonable assurance that the pipelines construction will not violate Virginia water-quality standards.

***

Pipeline opponents point out that environmental agencies in other states, including New York, have blocked similar projects by refusing to grant water quality certifications.

DEQ Director David Paylor has said the agency is using all of its legal authority in handling the pipeline permitting, including requiring Dominion and EQT to submit thousands of pages of plan sheets for how the developers will manage erosion, sediment and stormwater for every foot of land disturbance related to pipeline construction. But critics of the agency say it has already ceded a vast portion of its powers to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

DEQ has decided to let the corps handle permitting for the hundreds of water crossings for the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which will run from West Virginia through the heart of Virginia to North Carolina, with an extension to the Hampton Roads area, and the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline from West Virginia to southern Virginia.

Paylor has said in past interviews that the DEQ would only be duplicating the corps work and would be better served by focusing on upland areas, the ridgetops that will be flattened and deforested to make way for the pipelines and the impact that could have on waterways downhill.

But the standards the corps will use, under the Nationwide Permit 12, are incompatible with Virginias regulations, say opponents like David Sligh, a former DEQ senior engineer, conservation director for the nonprofit Wild Virginia, an investigator for the Dominion Pipeline Monitoring Coalition and an environmental attorney.

For example, the corps regulations acknowledge potential impairments to existing recreational and wildlife uses of waterways, which state regulations do not allow, Sligh said.

Theyve explicitly decided theyre not going to exercise that authority, he said. To say theyre doing everything they can is just dishonest.

Sligh believes thats not an accident.

If they apply Virginia water quality standards, he said, they wont be able to issue the certification.

***

Earlier this month, four state lawmakers  Del. Richard P. Dickie Bell, R-Staunton; Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke; Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath; and Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr., R-Augusta  wrote to McAuliffe, Paylor and Robert Dunn, chairman of the Water Control Board, asking them to put the brakes on the approval process.

We write to urge the commonwealth to use the full scope of its authority to assess the impacts of the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines with particular emphasis on all aspects of the impacts of these pipelines on our states water supplies, they wrote. The lawmakers requested that DEQ require individual water quality certifications for each wetland and stream crossing rather than rely on the corps permit.

In addition, DEQ should decline to move forward with the scheduled public comment period of the Section 401 review until the pipeline developers have provided all information necessary for thorough DEQ review, says the letter, which also asks for pushing back the public comment and hearing period.

The public hearings, which DEQ says about 1,000 people attended, concluded last week and the comment period ends Tuesday.

The timeline proposed by the DEQ is not adequate for the needed review of these pipelines by the commonwealth. Why the rush? the lawmakers wrote. Protection of Virginias streams, rivers and public and private water supplies is too important to place at risk.

Ann Regn, a DEQ spokeswoman, said Friday that the agency has no intention of extending the period.

The agency is focused on sifting through thousands of deep and broad comments on a variety of topics, said Regn, adding that DEQ is following its normal process. The State Water Control Boards regulations include requirements for public comment and that final decisions move forward in a timely manner.

She said state administrative code regulations do not allow for delaying or halting the current process.

The concept of timely action is generally found in numerous programs administered by DEQ under regulations adopted by the board, Regn said.

Aaron Ruby, a spokesman for Dominion, said no one can honestly say the process is being rushed or that it hasnt been rigorous or transparent.

The Army Corps and Virginia DEQ are comprehensively reviewing every aspect of this project to ensure it meets the highest standards for the protection of water quality, Ruby said. There isnt a single aspect of the project that isnt being thoroughly scrutinized.

That line of argument is small comfort to opponents like Sligh, a former DEQ engineer.

Theyve been dragged kicking and screaming to do more, he said. Doing better than the pitiful job that youve done in the past is nothing to brag about.

Sligh blames McAuliffes early cheerleading for the projects for putting the states regulatory agencies in a tight spot, noting that DEQ has never seriously considered rejecting the certifications.

McAuliffe put a thumb on the scale, Sligh said. Maybe he didnt realize it or know, but he did and he has to recognize thats the case. It does not come down to the governor calling David Paylor and saying, Approve this thing. Thats not the way it works. When the governor comes out full bore for something, the people in the agency say, Gosh, what happens if we reject this thing? Is that even on the table? ... Only the governor can fix this. In essence, he has to give DEQ permission to their job.

McAuliffes office did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

But Paylor, in a June interview, rejected the idea that the governors pipeline support unduly influenced the DEQ permitting process.

Governor McAuliffe, and I can list other governors as well, never asked me to do anything other than comply with the law and protect the environment, Paylor said. And he relies on us to determine what that is.

***

Earlier this month, the Southern Environmental Law Center opened a new front in the battle against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, filing testimony with the State Corporation Commission on Dominions long-range forecast for electric demand and how the utility would meet it, called its Integrated Resource Plan.

Experts who testified on behalf of the environmental groups the law center represents said the ACP, far from lowering electric bills as the company has contended, will cost Dominions ratepayers between $1.6 billion and $2.3 billion more if the pipeline is built.

Will Cleveland, an attorney for the law center, said Dominion has failed to perform any analysis about whether the pipeline is needed to continue to provide reliable electricity to its customers in Virginia. At the heart of the SELCs argument is the fact that about 97 percent of the ACPs capacity is subscribed to subsidiaries of the large utilities behind the project, Dominion and Duke Energy.

Regardless of whether the Virginia gas-fired plants they operate use the ACP gas, Dominion will pay itself back for part of the more than $5 billion cost of building the pipeline through fuel charges tacked onto Virginia customers bills, Cleveland said.

The ACP gas, he added, will almost certainly be more expensive than existing sources because of the included cost of building the pipeline.

Normally, Virginia Power Services Energy Corp., the subsidiary of the regulated utility that purchases gas and signs capacity contracts for the utility, has no reason to contract for capacity it does not need. With Dominion shareholders standing to earn a handsome return on the pipeline, it has every incentive to do so, Cleveland said.

Theres no prudency in the capacity they have reserved because theres no risk. ... They dont lose any money doing it, he said.

Although the commission does not have an up or down vote on the pipeline, it does approve whether the utility can pass the costs on to its ratepayers. It will hold a hearing on Dominions integrated resource plan in September.

We are trying to demonstrate that Dominion is planning on building a $5 billion capital asset with ratepayer money and no risk to the shareholders and no analysis of whether this is a necessary investment, Cleveland said. If they build it, they will pay themselves back even if they never use it. Thats crazy to me.

Ruby, the Dominion spokesman, said the company remains confident that the pipeline will save Virginians money and added that the SELC analysis is clearly based on flawed assumptions and questionable data.
The second of two state police pilots killed when their helicopter crashed after monitoring street violence in Charlottesville between white supremacists and counterprotesters a week ago was remembered Saturday by friends, family and Virginias governor for his quiet commitment to duty and leading the departments air wing more by listening than talking.

A funeral for Lt. H. Jay Cullen  one day after services for his copilot  ran about two hours in the packed sanctuary of the Southside Church of the Nazarene, to which the service was moved from the Cullen familys Methodist church to accommodate the overflow turnout. At least 1,200 people attended, including hundreds of police officers from as far away as California and Texas, as well two former governors, state legislators, judges and Cabinet secretaries.

Col. W. Steven Flaherty, the state police superintendent who met Cullen 17 years ago, said aviation was Cullens passion and that he insisted on flying last Saturday because of his familiarly with the computerized video equipment the department used to coordinate the police response to the violence in Charlottesville. It included the death of a counterprotester allegedly mowed down by a car driven by a white nationalist who has been charged with second-degree murder.

He listened more than he talked, and when he said something, it was because he had something relevant to say, Flaherty said of Cullen, adding  to knowing chuckles that rippled across the sanctuary  that the 48-year-old officer who joined state police in 1994 also could make his point with a wry smile.

Cullens funeral was a moving blend of emotion and precision, opening and closing with the moan of bagpipes and snap of snare drums played by officers from Virginia and other states. After seven state police pallbearers bore Cullens cremated remains to a gray hearse, Gov. Terry McAuliffe presented a folded Virginia flag to Cullens widow, Karen, who quietly sobbed.

Police helicopters from nine states flew over the church one by one, the thwack-thwack-thwack of their rotors a tribute to Cullen.

Also  as is the custom at a police funeral  the fallen officers badge number is called, approximating the end-of-shift protocol when a trooper goes off duty. Three times, Nancy Parker, a dispatcher in the Richmond division of state police, called Cullens badge number, 71, before announcing, no contact. The ritual was broadcast by radio across the division, which included the state police aviation division Cullen joined in 1999.

In addition to McAuliffe and his wife, Dorothy, the Cullen funeral was attended by Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, the Democratic nominee for governor; Attorney General Mark Herring; former governors Tim Kaine and Jim Gilmore; House Majority Leader M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights; Ed Gillespie, the Republican gubernatorial candidate; and Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, R-Fauquier, her partys nominee for lieutenant governor.

McAuliffe, among several chief executives flown by Cullen, said that Cullen  a lean, cycling enthusiast, the husband of a cancer-surviving school teacher and the father of two teenage sons  was a silent giant and a serious, safety-conscious pilot with whom the politician shared a love of dogs and sports.

It wont be the same when I step into that helicopter without Jay in the right front seat, with Cullen on the back of his helmet, said McAuliffe, who described himself and the first lady as heartbroken over the deaths of Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates.

A funeral for Bates, a former member of McAuliffes security detail, was held Friday at St. Pauls Baptist Church in Henrico County.

McAuliffe said that on Friday night he gathered with officers from across Virginia and other states in a Shockoe Bottom nightspot favored by Bates for an Irish wake for the two Irishmen, hoisting glasses of Jameson whiskey to the troopers. The governor later tweeted photographs of the gathering.

Cullens funeral in Chesterfield County  it followed the shootings of six police officers in Florida and Pennsylvania, two fatally  is the latest in a painful continuum for Virginia State Police. Since April 2016, two troopers have been shot and killed during operations in Richmond  one at a bus station; the other at a public housing community. Bates and Cullen died when their Bell 407 helicopter, Trooper One, crashed and burned west of Charlottesville.

The cause of the crash has not been determined. The aircraft was heavily damaged in 2010 when it lost power shortly after takeoff in Abingdon. There was no immediate indication whether the accident seven years ago  neither the pilot nor co-pilot was injured  will be considered by the National Transportation Safety Board in its investigation of the fatal crash.

The last 16 months have been awful, said Wayne Huggins, a former superintendent who is executive director of the Virginia State Police Association . Now this  and compounded by all thats going on. I dont know if state police, in its 85 years, has had a more excruciating time.

During Huggins six years as superintendent, three troopers were killed on duty.

Will Payne, an airline pilot from rural upstate New York with whom Cullen roomed at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., 30 years ago, said he and his friend shared numerous adventures, whether flying seaplanes, skiing or  on impulse, while eating pizza  deciding to drive Paynes oil-leaking Chevy pickup truck nonstop from Florida to Cullens family home in Leesburg to haul back living room furniture for their student flat.

Cullen is not the first college friend Payne lost to an air accident. Cullen and Paynes other roommate, John Lee, was killed 18 years ago.
It was 2015, just before the visit of Pope Francis to the United States, and the Most Rev. Francis Xavier DiLorenzo, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, was telling a Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter how he welcomed the 40 priests from abroad who served in his diocese.

He asked each a question: Where do you get water?

Invariably, the priests  from places like the Philippines and African nations  would respond that clean water was hard to find in their native lands.

These are people, now, the bishop said. This isnt some 1949 story. This is a 2015 story, and you see all this and you say, Theres something a little cockeyed about this world.

I mean, were able to do all these wonderful things (with iPads and other devices) and you cant get the distribution (of water) a little bit better?

Issues like the dearth of clean water, which Francis was talking about, should be a call to service for all Catholics, he said, noting that the Francis Effect might help energize Catholics into action. You have a problem with poverty. Do something about it.

Bishop DiLorenzo, who as the dioceses 12th bishop spoke out about issues ranging from poverty to immigration and sought to return diocese values to a more conservative bent, died late Thursday night in a Henrico County hospital at the age of 75. He had a history of health problems, including a minor heart attack in 2001. He was hospitalized in 2004 for a heart catheterization.

His body will go to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, 800 S. Cathedral Place in Richmond, at 3 p.m. next Thursday, Aug. 24. Visitation will follow, and vespers will be at 7 p.m.

The cathedral doors will be open and the bishop will lie in state throughout the night Thursday. The doors will close at 9 a.m. on Friday and reopen at 10 a.m.

A funeral Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Friday, Aug. 25, at the cathedral. He will be entombed in the Cathedral Crypt. A reception will follow at the Altria Theater.

Named bishop of the Richmond Diocese on March 31, 2004, by Pope John Paul II, he was installed in a ceremony May 24, 2004. The diocese covers 36,000 square miles in central and southern Virginia and Virginias Eastern Shore. In 2015, it comprised 236,061 Catholics, 142 parishes, 22 elementary schools, six high schools, 87 priests, 59 retired priests, 15 permanent deacons, six religious brothers and 139 religious sisters, according to the diocesan website.

At his installation, he said he would base his leadership upon a 2002 statement of faith developed by ministries across the state that pointed to a return to traditional values. He said another top priority would be upholding the churchs anti-abortion stance and promoting social justice issues with parishioners and government representatives.

Within a few months, he appointed a diocesan theologian and began rolling back some of the more liberal policies of his predecessor, the late Bishop Walter E. Sullivan.

Bishop DiLorenzo suspended the dioceses Sexual Minorities Commission, the first official group reach-out to gay and lesbian Catholics created during the late 1970s. In 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide, he said in a joint statement with Bishop Paul S. Loverde of Arlington that they were deeply distressed by this decision which fails to uphold marriage as the union which unites one man and one woman. This fundamental institution, grounded in natural law, predate any religion or nation.

His dismissal from a diocesan commission of an advocate for ordaining women as priests produced controversy.

He was among other conservative bishops who sparked protests in 2004 against numerous Catholic lawmakers they accused of defying church teaching in their policymaking. In 2016, he was among Virginia bishops who released a statement slamming Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Catholic, over previous actions upholding gay rights and access to abortion and suggesting that Virginia maintain the death penalty.

At the time, Bishop DiLorenzo said he would not refuse to give Communion to a lawmaker who believed in abortion rights, but he would have reservations about it.

Going to Communion says something, the bishop said in a 2004 interview. Communion has a meaning that says you are completely in union with the pope. ... If you are welcomed into a family, there is a culture or set of values you need to be comfortable with.

He worked in partnership with Loverde to establish the Virginia Catholic Conference to advance the mutual public policy interests of the two dioceses.

Under Bishop DiLorenzos leadership, they developed a five-year pastoral plan to address interchurch collaboration. Priests from Africa and Asia were invited to serve in the Richmond Diocese.

He promoted the goals of the McMahon-Parater Education Foundation in making Catholic schools available, accessible and affordable to all Catholic parents and their children.

During his tenure, chancery offices formerly on the Virginia Commonwealth University campus moved to the Diocesan Pastoral Center in western Henrico.

Bishop DiLorenzo increased a focus on reaching those who dont believe and those who had left the church, recruiting priests and raising donations. He reiterated that the church holds that every person is a child of God and possessed of inalienable rights, including life, food and other basic needs.

The diocese established the Diocesan Mission Grant program to provide supplemental financial resources for parishes in areas where there were few Catholics and limited resources.

It also retooled the Annual Diocesan Appeal to focus on supporting vital ministries such as cultivating the next generation of Catholic leaders, seminarian education, health insurance for retired priests, and emergency assistance through the Fuel and Hunger Fund.

Born April 15, 1942, in Philadelphia, he was the eldest of three children. After a Catholic education that culminated in graduating from St. Thomas More High School, he enrolled in 1960 at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, just outside Philadelphia.

He was ordained to the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia on May 18, 1968.

After serving in pastoral and education assignments until 1971, he served as parochial vicar of St. Joseph Parish in Warrington, Pa., and chaplain at Archbishop Woods High School for Girls in Warminster, Pa.

Bishop DiLorenzo taught biology and religion at Cardinal Dougherty High School in Philadelphia before being sent to Rome for continued studies in 1971. His specialty was moral theology, which deals with church teaching on social issues, medical and sexual ethics, and individual moral virtue in the sense of how a Catholic is to act as contrasted with what a Catholic is to believe.

He earned a license in sacred theology in 1973 from Accademia Alfonsiana and a doctorate in 1975 in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum).

After teaching in Pennsylvania for a time, he returned to St. Charles Borromeo Seminary as a vice rector in 1983 and later served as rector.

Ordained to the episcopacy in 1988, he served as auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Scranton, Pa., and was bishop of the Diocese of Honolulu before coming to Richmond.

Survivors include a sister, Anita Lawler; and a brother, Paul DiLorenzo.
White supremacists from dark corners of the internet planned their now-notorious descent on Charlottesville for months.

It ended in civil unrest, a car attack, a helicopter crash and, all told, three deaths.

What follows is an account of how the events of last weekend unfolded, as told by the protesters who massed in opposition, the white nationalists who planned it, the state officials charged with managing it all, and the residents of Charlottesville who watched as their progressive college town descended into chaos.

The interviews have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

I. We knew we had a recipe for violence

Charlottesville resident and fringe-right activist Jason Kessler submits an application on May 30 to hold a special event in Emancipation Park, a small square in the center of the city. He charges the $25 application fee to his credit card.

Under the line asking for a description of the event, he writes in shaky block letters: Free speech rally in support of the Lee Monument.

The city had voted to remove the statue of Confederate Civil War Gen. Robert E. Lee in February.

Kesslers application comes about 15 days after prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer led a torch-lit rally around the statue and a month before the KKK held a 40-person rally there.

A reviled figure in the town for his offensive and fringe beliefs, Kessler begins heavily promoting the event among white nationalist, racist and Nazi groups on the internet and in speeches. Posters list a half-dozen prominent white supremacist figures as speakers.

Kessler, June 25 rally in Washington, D.C., in front of the Lincoln Memorial: Lincoln was a traitor. Our entire country would be better off if the South had won the Civil War. Now the same carpetbagging cowards that call us racist are trying to tear down our monuments.

I cant go anywhere in my hometown without these (expletive) radical communists following me everywhere and hounding me. OK, well you didnt like that the alt-right came to Charlottesville? Well Im going to bring back the alt-right and anyone whos brave enough to stand together against censorship of free speech.

Brad Griffin, 36, of Eufaula, Ala., a spokesman for the League of the South, which he describes as a Southern nationalist organization that stands up for the rights of white Southerners: Jason Kesslers idea was that he was going to invite all these different groups to come to Charlottesville to protest the removal of the Lee monument. It started off as a heritage issue.

Col. Steven Flaherty, Virginia State Police superintendent: The Virginia Fusion Center (the states criminal and terrorist threat monitoring service) went into hyperdrive mining intelligence, monitoring the groups, monitoring any information we could to determine who may come and what they were planning.

A.C. Thompson, a ProPublica reporter who has been covering white supremacy and hate crimes for the past year: When I was reading the white supremacist websites and listening to the podcasts, I could tell they were on board to push this rally in a big way.  Weve documented a spike in anti-Semitism, a spike in racist graffiti. A real, intense xenophobia. And a connection to Trump. A swastika painted next to a Trump sign. Or somebody saying, Trump is going to get rid of you.  Theres a feeling that they have the blessing of a sitting president.

Charlottesville Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy, who introduced the proposal to remove the Lee statue and is the City Councils sole black representative: Every day they say something online. They send out some kind of idle threat. Theres not a day that goes by they dont say something crazy. In my personal opinion, if we werent doing something right, they wouldnt be so upset.

Emily Gorcenski, Charlottesville resident, anti-fascist activist: Being a local activist, it was pretty much the first and last thing on my mind for nine weeks. We made a concerted effort to get the permit revoked. There was quite a bit of preparation.

Colonel Flaherty: The white supremacists were promoting people bringing guns. We knew that there were many groups on the left that had promoted violence of one nature or another. So we knew that we had a recipe for a significant amount of violence.

Preparations on all sides mount in the days leading up to the rally.

State Secretary of Public Safety Brian J. Moran: It became clearer and clearer that this was a significant threat. At some point, the attendance estimate reached 700. We brought (Gov. Terry McAuliffes) chief of staff to the Fusion Center on July 27 to brief him. The state police provided us with enough information to take the unprecedented action of mobilizing the National Guard in preparation for a civil disturbance before it happened.

Colonel Flaherty: The Thursday and Friday before in Richmond, all of the troopers tried on their equipment. They went over the citys plan. They were planning their mobilization.

Gorcenski, anti-fascist activist: I have a pretty standard load out for actions like this. I tend to be very self-sufficient. So I carry things like bandages, water, Gatorade, food, sunscreen, milk in case chemical agents come out. I was also armed, so I was carrying a handgun at the time.

Pastor Viktoria Parvin, St. Mark Lutheran Church in Charlottesville: We didnt expect it to be violent.

Griffin, League of the South: We only brought like maybe five or six shields with us. They were designed in case we were in the park and anybody in the crowd would lob projectiles. But the vast majority of us came in without knives, no one on our side brought guns because we had agreed with the police that we would come in unarmed because the police told us they would guarantee our security.

Trace Chiles, East Coast Commander of the Fraternal Order of Alt- Knights, which arrived outfitted in body armor, many carrying guns: It is our mission to stop Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

Mike Peinovich, host of The Right Stuff white nationalist podcast, Aug. 8: Cargo shorts, flip-flops and a tank top might not be the way you want to go. Bring whatever you need that you feel you need for your self-defense and third-party self-defense of other people that might not have anything. Now Im not telling anybody to do anything illegal. I dont want anybody breaking any laws, but I am saying do what you need to do for the security of your person at this point.

Dr. Michael Williams, trauma surgeon and administrator at the University of Virginia Medical Center: We were told by the police there would be between 5,000 and 6,000 people. This was very intense. The recurring theme at the hospital was, 'This is not a drill.' We deliberately slowed the elective operating schedule for the roughly five days before the event and opened up around 70 beds. Typically we are at or near capacity.

Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail Superintendent Martin Kumer: We had about 80 beds at the jail reserved in the event of a mass incarceration.

Colonel Flaherty: There was a lot of discussion: Should they be let in with guns and weapons? The items they brought in to the park werent illegal to possess, so there really was not a reasonable way to limit those items.

On Aug. 7, City Manager Maurice Jones sends a letter revoking the permit for the rally unless it is moved from the small, downtown square around the Lee statue to a much larger, open park about a mile north, McIntire Park. The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia files a federal lawsuit on Aug. 10 arguing the rally was moved not because of concerns over size and safety, but over the content of the protest.

Charlottesville City Manager Maurice Jones letter to Kessler: Holding such a large rally in Emancipation Park poses an unacceptable danger to public order and safety.

Virginia ACLU Director Claire Guthrie Gastanaga: No one who possibly knows our organization would think it wasnt a difficult decision (to represent Kessler). We never had a legal fight about where the rally should be, we simply said, when you make decisions, there is a process you have to follow and you have to do it right.

At 9:30 p.m. the day before the rally, U.S. District Judge Glen Conrad rules in favor of Kessler because the city took no similar action to revoke permits issued for a counterprotest several blocks away, writing in his ruling, "The disparity in treatment between the two groups with opposing views suggests that the defendants' decision to revoke Kessler's permit was based on the content of his speech rather than other neutral factors that would be equally applicable to Kessler and those protesting against him."

Around 10:30 p.m. Friday, word of a militaristic, torch-lit procession on U.Va.s campus spreads rapidly.

Colonel Flaherty: We had some information that Mr. Kesslers group was either going to burn a cross or do this torch march or do whatever it was. We didnt know where it was going to start.

Thompson, ProPublica: Each group has leaders, theyre getting directions by radio. A truck pulls up with all the torches. I thought, 'This is a level of organization I havent seen in a long, long time.' This frankly far outstrips the organizational capacities of the old racist movement.

U.Va. professor Larry Sabato: When we saw the lights coming, I knew it was going to be bad. We went around gathering students  some came to the basement of (my house on the Lawn), others went with friends or met up with parents who were still in town for move-in day. They were very nervous about it all. One asked me if this happens a lot at U.Va., and I told him it was the first time Id seen anything like it in my 47 years here.

Secretary Moran: I drove by the Rotunda and sure enough, I saw torches. I ran over and theres a building that looks down at the Thomas Jefferson monument and theres a large brick patio and thats where the torch assembly, thats where they assembled.

Sabato: The group was reciting Hitlers slogans.

Joe Montoya, who lives outside of Charlottesville, and was leaving a multifaith service on campus: We could hear: 'Blood and soil, well take our streets back,' a lot of anti-Jewish things. I came there to worship God and was terrorized. We had to go through a back alley to escape the church and had a police escort. They screamed terrible things at me.

The group surrounds a small crowd of about 20 counterprotesters who had linked arms surrounding a monument to Thomas Jefferson. University police said they were told the march would take a different route, and are nowhere in sight at the beginning of the confrontation.

Griffin, League of the South: When everyone arrived at the statue, there was a small group there led by Emily Gorcenski who were encircled.

Gorcenski, anti-fascist activist: The Nazis surrounded us very quickly. I stood face to face with a man wearing a swastika pin shouting in my face. I was ready to die that night. I figured that was just how it was going to go. Earlier in the day I had written my final messages to the ones I loved in case I didnt make it through the weekend. I dont know who threw the first punch. When it got violent, the circle shifted to one side and we were able to run.

Sabato: There werent enough counterprotesters there to be able to do the Nazis any harm. They were outnumbered 10 to 1. The students who linked arms around the statue of Jefferson were very brave. Our dean of students got in the middle of it and was struck with a torch  he got a cut on his arm.

Griffin: They lunged with pepper spray. It descended into a brief fight after that with torches.

Gorcenski: We lost. We got our asses handed to us. It was a pretty dark night. I thought that was the end of America that night. Nobody came to help us.

Secretary Moran: It was exactly what like youd see in a World War II video of Nazi Germany. I had never seen anything like that. It just shakes you. It was surreal to see. And the youth, how young these people were. I was just bracing for what might unfold the next day.

II. What are you going to do, not defend yourself?

Vice Mayor Bellamy: I spoke at a 6 a.m. sunrise service and helped lead the march from First Baptist. I led some chants: 'No hate; No fear; White supremacy isnt welcome here.' Things like that. Then I went to a location I cant disclose.

Colonel Flaherty: We did an orientation for our people at 6:30 a.m. at the John Paul Jones Arena, gave them a little intelligence brief to let them know we had the potential for violence, that while precious few of us were from there or ever lived there, that Charlottesville was our city that day.

Secretary Moran: I was in the park standing there with state police and this heavily armed (militia) comes up. I approached one man and he said, Youve got to talk to my commanding officer. Im thinking, What? They were behaving as though they were military. The night before was chilling, but then seeing this was like, 'Oh, boy.'

Jeanne Pupke, senior minister of First Unitarian Universalist Church: We walked uphill arm in arm, singing  'This Little Light of Mine', 'Oh, Freedom' - prepared to be arrested when we arrived to blockade the park. We expected the police would turn us away, but they didnt. They stayed behind their barricades.

Griffin, League of the South: The Nationalist Front had gathered in a parking garage. And we were going to come in together. We were going to march in together in a column because that was the safest way to do it.

Thompson, ProPublica: By the way they came in formation and the amount of clubs, weapons, banners with big old poles on them, I thought, 'This is likely to be a very violent day.'

Pupke, minister: After I took my place on the stairs leading up to the park a group of about 30 young men with shields pushed their way through our line. The Antifa folks didnt like that and got upset. They leaned forward, then the melee.

Montoya, counterprotester: It horrified me to see crowds of Neo-Nazis yelling despicable things. I ended up standing next to an Episcopalian bishop. He asked me, 'What are they chanting?' And I had to turn to this holy man and say, 'Theyre chanting "f---ing f-----s."'

Pastor Parvin: The white nationalists were so young. They called me old something. They were laughing, like they were going to a party.

Thompson, ProPublica: What I saw, frankly, was counterprotesters occasionally wanting to get into skirmishes with the neo-fascists and the racists. And, frankly, most of the time the white supremacists were really getting the better of that - being much better at dispensing violence than the counterprotesters.

Gorcenski, anti-fascist activist: Was there willing combat? Yeah, there was willing combat. Because one side was f---ing Nazis. They came, and we knew that they were coming with weapons, because they spent nine weeks telling people they were coming with weapons. What are you going to do, not defend yourself? Let them march through town?

Ryan Kelly, former staff photographer, The Daily Progress: People were wailing on each other with sticks and flags and shields.

Trace Chiles, Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights: How long after being hit with human feces and other objects does it take for any man to defend himself? I know you aren't possibly implying that we should allow it, considering the police did nothing?

Colonel Flaherty: There was some criticism that there were spot fights and confrontations going on in the crowd. And (police) did nothing. Well, we cant rush into the crowd. Only fools rush into a crowd. We needed to make sure we were set up as we trained to do and we can methodically move that crowd out and disperse them.

Griffin, League of the South: Let me distinguish between the counterprotesters. There were some of these clergy people and they were inside the park and they were having a little prayer circle, and everybody was leaving them alone.

Montoya, counterprotester: The worst thing I saw were white supremacist hordes surrounding clergy  They were throwing water balloons full of urine. When they charged toward us, the counterprotesters intervened. I dont think I would be here today if it werent for them.

Thompson, ProPublica: We witnessed one instance where a battalion of white supremacists encountered an older group of counterprotesters. They were like give-peace-a-chance, middle-aged and senior citizens kind of folks. And the white supremacists just absolutely pummeled them.  Police were just watching it happen.

Colonel Flaherty: Remember, the rally wasnt scheduled to start until noon. Around 10:30, quarter to 11, somewhere around that time, as you were starting to see (chemical) spray and throwing different things, we started moving the National Guard in closer. We started suiting up our tactical field force so they could get in position. We had people in the crowd, police that were indistinguishable in the crowd; we needed to get them out of harm's way.

Secretary Moran: At 11:30, bottles were being thrown back and forth. There was the escalation of violence and thats when the governor declared a state of emergency and we mobilized the tactical team to clear the park. The state police rolled in a BearCat (armored vehicle). State troopers yelling into a bullhorn to disperse. And, actually, a majority of the crowd actually dispersed at that point. Some remained. The tactical team had to push them out of the park. We gave them 11 minutes.

Griffin, League of the South: I saw what looked like smoke come up. And so thought to myself, 'Well, maybe the riot police have dispersed the violent Antifa.'  Around that time, we heard over the speakers that we were being declared an illegal assembly and had to disperse.

Secretary Moran: I thought it went pretty well. We secured it.

Colonel Flaherty: As far as our performance in Emancipation Park, I couldnt be prouder. Had we been able to call the end of the day at about 1:30 or so, while unfortunately there had been 15 or so people who suffered injuries, it had been a successful event, because we dealt with the problem, cleared the problem. No property damage. Minor injuries in what could have been an extremely violent day.

III. Be advised, multiple pedestrians struck.

Pushed from the park, bands of counterprotesters and rally attendees scatter in all directions. A large contingent of white nationalists walks the mile to McIntire Park, where the city had initially wanted to move the rally, and hears speeches from Spencer and former KKK leader David Duke.

Downtown, a group of over 100 counterprotesters snakes through the streets around the mall chanting.

Kristen Marie, Richmond resident, counterprotester: I was just following the crowd. Apparently we were all just marching to where the Nazis were gathering. There was no alt-right. No police. Nothing was really happening. Everything felt fine. There was no violence. Everyone was in a good mood and smiling. Then I heard screeching tires and felt the wind from the car as it went by.

Kelly, former Daily Progress photographer: (The car driver) reversed up the hill so he could come barreling down at a higher speed. I absolutely remember the sound of when he hit the crowd  the thumps, and sounds, and things like that. It sounded like a car wreck, but there were just so many human bodies involved. It was unlike anything Id seen or heard.

Gorcenski, anti-fascist activist: I saw it push all the other vehicles forward. I saw people screaming. People getting pushed forward. I ran toward the car and pulled my gun because I was afraid hed get out and start shooting.

Marie, counterprotester: It didnt even occur to me that it was an attack until he started reversing to escape.

Colonel Flaherty: The helicopter was above it, so we had real-time, live view of it in the command post. We knew immediately.

Dr. Michael Williams, trauma surgeon: The radio sounded: 'Be advised, multiple pedestrians struck. 30 to 40 causalities. More information to come.'

Heather Heyer, 32, is killed as she crosses the street.

Sec. Moran: I knew this was about to go public and the public was just going to be shaken. I texted to the governor. I think I told him, Horrible Twitter video of car slamming people and then another car backs off. I dont know what I was texting. He has been arrested. Video likely to be on CNN soon. I wanted to prepare him for that.

Marie, counterprotester: The victims were in shock. I remember this one girl looking around. Shes like, Wheres my phone? And Im looking at her leg and its like twisted and blood everywhere.

Col. Flaherty: The helicopter stayed with the car, Trooper-Pilot (Berke) Bates and Lt. (Jay) Cullen. They followed it and then the sheriffs department made the stop. We watched that unfold from the downlink.

James Alex Fields Jr., 20, of Ohio, is arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

Secretary Moran: There were still protesters all over. There were still these white supremacists all over the city. Thats the problem with an urban environment.

Colonel Flaherty: You immediately start thinking about the criminality of it. Is this a solitary event or is there potentially another person thats ready to run into the crowd somewhere else? Is this individual a lone wolf?

Marie, counterprotester: The street medics marching with the protesters reacted instantly. It was amazing to see people working together. The cops didnt show up for, it felt like, 15 minutes. Im sure it was less. But it felt so long. I called 911 and the dispatcher didnt seem to know about it.

Dr. Williams, trauma surgeon: Ms. Heyer was the first patient to arrive. We were triaging patients outside at the traffic circle and in the lobby. Based on acuity they were labeled green or red. We did that for, I dont know how long we were at that. But it seemed like forever. And at one point, the flow of patients stopped. Roughly 11 of 19 patients, not including Ms. Heyer, went through a trauma resuscitation protocol.

IV. "He was trying to gain control of it."

Just before 5 p.m., the Virginia State Police helicopter piloted by Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates falls into the woods and erupts in a fireball just outside of town. It was one of two state police helicopters monitoring the event. There was no distress call.

Robert Noll, a nearby resident: I was doing some yard work and about to have a beer. There had been helicopters flying over all day, but it made a pop, pop, pop sound like it was missing an engine. I saw the pilot was struggling to gain control of it.

Col. Flaherty: We had been communicating from the command post with Trooper 1, thats the call sign for the helicopter.  We were trying to call him. There was no contact.

Sec. Moran: Time stood still waiting.

Noll: It was just above the tree line and it appeared to invert. I just remember it fell tail down and then you heard this gross sort of thud. It wasnt a boom. It was a thud.

Col. Flaherty: We were all just hoping wed hear Jay Cullen come back on the air.

Sec. Moran: Im Catholic. There were a lot of crosses being  (begins crying)  Im sorry.

Bates and Cullen both die in the crash.

V. I forgive them.

Gorcenski, anti-fascist activist: The thing we had known would happen, happened. I dont know that there are words that describe the rage, the frustration, the sorrow from being there and watching it happen, when this was the literally the last nine weeks of my life.

Chiles, Fraternal Order of Alt- Knights: Overall, it was a success against Antifa and BLM. But, sadly, a loss as well, as someone, whether guilty themselves of protesting illegally or not, lost their life. No one wants that. Charlottesville has the blood of Heather on their hands as well as the police and the governor of this state.

Griffin, League of the South: There were hundreds of riot cops, state troopers and everything. They could have easily, easily prevented what happened and they didnt. And that is a scandal. If Heather Heyer had complied with Governor McAuliffe's orders and dispersed like the rest of us did, she would be alive today. Similarly, if the streets had been properly barricaded as they were supposed to be, she would also be alive today. There are many questions which need to be answered.

Marie, counterprotester: We walked back around the mall area to see what was going on and see if we could find our friends. Everything had died down. It was really a somber field around downtown and they had stationed riot police around downtown. It was intimidatingly somber.

Colonel Flaherty: I traveled to meet the widows of Bates and Cullen. I got home around midnight.

Gorcenski, activist: We fell back to a safe house in a group of eight people in formation with someone watching behind us. Through the streets of Charlottesville, we had to walk like a military unit.

Marie, counterprotester: We left at 5. Heard that there was a fatality on the way back. Thats when it hit. It was mostly a silent car ride. I got home. I sat and just bawled for hours. I didnt eat.

Secretary Moran: On the drive back, I was still trying to understand that weekend. What these young men, what possibly has happened in their lives that they think  that they would embrace white supremacy or the Nazi flag.

Montoya, counterprotester: I think they latched on to something thats given them what they think they need, and theyre poisoned. I forgive them. I forgive the people who murdered Heather and spewed hate at me. I dont understand why they did it, but I forgive them.

Kessler, organizer, attempts to hold a press conference Sunday: (Inaudible over shouting of large crowd. A man runs up and punches Kessler, who is then chased away.)

Vice Mayor Bellamy: The vigils Ive seen, the 5,000 people on the U.Va. Lawn. Those things leave me encouraged, and I know that were going to be fine. More united. Stronger than ever. Its already happening.
The mother of Heather Heyer, the woman killed in Charlottesville last weekend, said she has no plans to speak to President Donald Trump after he equated protesters like her daughter with the white supremacists who had marched on the city.

After what he said about my child, and  its not that I saw somebody elses tweets about him, I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters like Ms. Heyer with the KKK and the white supremacists, Heyers mother, Susan Bro, told Good Morning America on Friday.

You cant wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying Im sorry, Bro said. Im not forgiving for that.

Bros comments marked a sharp, personal response to Trumps statement that both sides were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville that erupted when counterprotesters confronted white supremacists and neo-Nazis who had marched there for a rally.

Do they have any semblance of guilt? Trump asked of the counterprotesters. Do they have any problem? I think they do.

Trump had also expressed kind words for Heyer, tweeting that she was a truly special young woman.

Bro said that she initially missed the first call from the White House because it appeared to come during Heyers funeral on Wednesday, four days after she was killed in what federal officials say may have been a terrorist attack as well as a hate crime. Bro said three more frantic messages from press secretaries followed throughout the day Wednesday, but she said she did not immediately respond because she was home recovering from the service.

It was not until Thursday night that Bro said she was able to actually watch the news and, she said, see a clip of Trumps comments.

Im not talking to the president now, she said Friday. When asked what message she might have for Trump, Bro said: Think before you speak.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Bros remarks.

Bro told MSNBC on Thursday that she had received death threats since speaking about her daughter at Heyers memorial service in Charlottesville on Wednesday.

They tried to kill my child to shut her up, but guess what, you just magnified her, Bro had said during the service.

She told MSNBC that the death threats are tied to what Im doing right this second.

Trumps first remarks on Charlottesville, delivered Saturday after Heyer was killed, prompted a backlash when he denounced hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides and did not single out white supremacists or neo-Nazis.

On Monday, Trump then called out those groups by name, saying that racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs. Bro released a statement that day thanking Trump for his words of comfort and denouncing those who promote violence and hatred.

However, a day later Trump returned to his declaration that both sides were to blame. Trump also offered kind words for Heyer and thanked Bro for her statement about him.

The White House has not explained why officials waited four days before trying to connect Trump with Heyers relatives. In November, after a San Antonio police officer was shot and killed, Trump  then the president-elect  called his relatives the next day. Trump also met with the victims of an attack at Ohio State University carried out by a Somali refugee.

At Tuesdays news conference, Trump did not say whether he will travel to Charlottesville and also said he had not spoken with Heyers family. When asked when he would reach out, the president did not directly respond, instead thanking Bro again for her statement.
Update: 12:25 p.m. Saturday

Jurors late Friday night acquitted Waverly's mayor of three remaining election fraud charges against him.

Jurors deliberated for 27 minutes, before coming back at 11:02 p.m. to find Mayor Walter J. Mason not guilty of the three final election fraud charges, said Joe Morrissey, the mayor's defense attorney.

The jury verdicts were the final step in dismissing 12 felony election fraud charges against Mason, 70. Joel Branscom, the special prosecutor in the case, made a motion to dismiss one of the charges towards the beginning of Friday's proceedings, and he instead presented evidence on the 11 other charges. Shortly after 6 p.m., Sussex Circuit Court Judge W. Allan Sharrett dismissed eight charges finding there wasn't enough evidence. The judge's decision left the three charges that resulted in the jury acquittals.

"The charges never should have been brought against him in the first place," Morrissey said on Saturday morning.

Branscom, the commowealth's attorney of Botetourt County, said on Saturday that his case was hampered by the fact that his witnesses, while testifying, didn't repeat the same stories that they had told the Virginia State Police and the prosecutor.

Earlier:

The mayor of Waverly went on trial Friday to face 11 felony charges of election fraud.

The indictments in Sussex County Circuit Court accused Walter J. Mason, 70, of making false statements or entries on absentee ballot applications and of violating other procedures for absentee voting. Judge W. Allan Sharrett threw out eight of the charges just after 6 p.m., finding that there wasnt enough evidence to support them.

Proceedings on the three other charges continued into Friday evening; the outcome was not available by press time.

The mayor, who has maintained his innocence, pleaded not guilty to the 11 charges at the start of Fridays trial. Those charges involved the votes of six residents in a May 2016 election that Mason won in a four-way race.

Joel Branscom, the commonwealths attorney for Botetourt County and the special prosecutor in the case, said there were multiple problems with the half-dozen absentee ballots that Mason collected in the run-up to the election.

The votes were from people who indicated on the ballot that they couldnt get to the polls because they were disabled, Branscom told jurors in an opening statement. But some of them were indeed capable of making it to the polls, the prosecutor said.

Thats part of the problem, Branscom said. They were getting those applications (for absentee ballots) when they shouldnt have.

There were other problems with the ballots Mason collected, Branscom said.

After a voter fills out an application for a ballot, the voter receives the actual ballot in the mail later, and Mason came to collect them from six voters. Beyond the voter, a witness is required to sign the envelope in which the ballot is sealed, essentially vouching that the witness saw the voter cast the ballot, Branscom said.

But there were cases where the witness listed on those envelopes was not present to watch the ballots being cast and placed in the envelope, Branscom said.

Im not here to say Mr. Mason is a bad man, Branscom said. This is a violation of law that occurred.

The results at the actual polls were close on Election Day, with Masons second-place challenger, Susan Pope Irving, collecting 153 votes at precincts and Mason receiving 141, the prosecutor said.

But Mason prevailed by winning the lions share of the absentee ballots cast: Mason garnered 61 of those votes while Irving received five, according to the Virginia Department of Elections. His final margin of victory was 44 votes.

I dont know if this would have changed the outcome of the election if there were no cheating going on, Branscom said.

But Branscom said it wasnt his job to prove whether thats the case. Ultimately, what the case revolved around, he said, was whether the procedures for absentee ballots were properly followed.

Its about the integrity of the process, Branscom said.

Joe Morrissey, Masons defense attorney, flatly rejected that there was any cheating on his clients part. All the voters in question wanted to vote for the mayor and did so, Morrissey said.

The integrity of the system was pure and pristine, and it worked out the way the people, the voters wanted, Morrissey said. (Mason) did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing.

Morrissey said the allegations dont entail any accusations that dead people voted or anyone voted twice.

In the end, Morrissey said, Mason won fair and square by undertaking the hard work of door-to-door electioneering.

He just outworked everybody, Morrissey said.

On the issue of witnesses signing ballot envelopes, Morrissey noted that Mason himself was qualified to sign as a witness when he went to pick up the ballots from the absentee voters. In the end, Mason chose to have others witnesses sign, the defense attorney said.

Fridays proceedings moved slowly, as some voters gave testimony that contradicted their statements to Virginia State Police, or they had trouble recalling certain details of the mechanics of applying for the ballots and later giving them to Mason.

William Jenkins, the general registrar for Sussex County, said that in late April  just before the May 3 election  the eventual second-place finisher approached him with concerns about Mason. Irvings complaint was that Mason was collecting absentee ballots from people who didnt need to vote absentee as a result of a disability, Jenkins said.

Jenkins said he checks for certain red flags in an absentee ballot application, such as whether the voter signed it, whether theres a signature for a witness and whether the address is correct. But said he does not probe much further into whether the information is correct, noting that he is not an investigator.

I am not encouraged at all to call up each person and say, Is your back hurting? Jenkins said.
Catholics are mourning the passing of The Most Rev. Francis X. DiLorenzo, the 12th bishop of Richmond. The bishop passed away late Thursday night at St. Marys Hospital.

Pope John Paul II appointed Bishop DiLorenzo to the Diocese of Richmond in 2004. The appointment was warmly received by faithful Catholics weary of the ultra-progressive policies of his predecessor, the late Bishop Walter E. Sullivan.

DiLorenzo was well-known for a strong record of orthodoxy and his insistence upon a return to conservatism for the diocese. While a majority of the faithful approved of his actions, the bishop sparked controversy among the left and the LGBT community when he suspended the dioceses Sexual Minorities Commission. Sullivan had established the group to reach out to homosexual Catholics in the area.

DiLorenzo was a strong conservative, yes, but he held a deep and abiding love for all of Gods children. The words he wrote in a January 2016 Op/Ed column for this newspaper define his beliefs and remain especially pertinent today: There is no place among those who claim to follow Christ for unjust discrimination or hatred toward any group of people. Christs love is a love inspired by grace; not self-centered but universal in its scope; forgiving; and sacrificial, even to the point of death. We must love everyone, without exception.
An international team of scientists based in Oregon just produced some truly extraordinary news  far more important than whatever spills out next from President Trumps Twitter account. I speak of the recent modification of the genomes of 42 viable human embryos  an event likely to influence human societies for centuries to come.

This news likely catches most of us off guard, but scientists have seen it coming for years. One question now takes center stage: Will the long-term consequences of this discovery be good or bad?

The best path to an answer is to learn the science behind it and withhold judgment for now, not simply to rely on a gut reaction.

Many feel a visceral dread that scientists have awakened a monster  move over, Frankenstein, designer babies are the future!

To others the news triggers a raw fascination that humanity will now make a great leap forward  scientists can stamp out all remaining human diseases, and we will inherit the keys to immortality!

Which of these two responses has more legitimacy? Have we opened a treasure box, or Pandoras box?

I submit both sides need to take a deep breath, think deeply about the relevant science, and then keep their eyes and ears wide open before passing judgment. It will be months and likely years before we can adequately evaluate either possibility.

***

Science thrives on precision, and in this case it is important to understand precisely what happened.

All human embryos possess a gene called MYBPC3 that controls development of heart muscles. Like all genes, MYBPC3 consists of a precise sequence of G, C, T and A nucleotides. The sequence is 20,000 letters long  roughly five times the length of this column.

Some human embryos possess a mutated version of the gene. Mutant sequences differ by just a handful of letters  like a long essay with a few spelling errors. Whoever inherits the mutant sequence develops abnormally thick heart muscles  a condition that forms the leading cause of death among young athletes.

Potential parents with this condition have a 50 percent chance of passing on the mutant gene to their offspring. For decades health professionals have wondered how to fix the spelling errors so the sequence would precisely match the normal gene.

Enter CRISPR  a revolutionary technique pioneered by scientists about a decade ago. CRISPR allows scientists to edit precisely the nucleotide sequence of any portion of the genome  kind of like copying and pasting within a word-processing document.

In every organism it has been tried, CRISPR has worked. Because the molecular structure of human genes is indistinguishable from genes of other organisms, scientists never doubted CRISPR would work on humans.

The only meaningful barriers were the Institutional Review Boards and other ethics committees that stand as gatekeepers for all human-based research.

These committees warmed to the potential benefits of genetically altering human embryos and have devised ways to minimize potential fears.

For example, the MYBPC3 gene study was not provided any government funding, and it used only embryos not destined for implantation in a uterus.

Researchers also succeeded in modifying just the targeted MYBPC3 gene without any collateral damage to other genes. In addition to this summers study, CRISPR research on human embryos is taking place in the UK, Sweden, and China.

And so the era of genetic modification of humans begins.

***

If you are one of those reacting with revulsion, you should ask yourself not only, What might result? but also What is likely to result?

The history of technology is replete with discoveries that initially sparked fear and terror, but ended up becoming routine components of human society.

Early satellites elicited prophecies of chaotic government surveillance, but they also led to unforeseen boons, such as mobile phones, improved weather prediction, and incredibly precise maps. Likewise, the editing of human genomes might produce dramatic benefits beyond what we perceive today.

Or perhaps not. New technologies are often a mixed bag. Nuclear technology from the Manhattan Project ended World War II and introduced a carbon-free energy source, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unmistakable tragedies, and no one is excited about a nuclear North Korea.

Regardless of how you feel about the editing of human genomes, I advise everyone to use this opportunity to learn science.

Amazing science education resources are available, such as RadioLab, hhmi.org, and just about any science museum.

Understanding the DNA that makes your body tick could prove far more important for your welfare than perusing the ups and downs of an ever-changing news cycle.
Editors note: In place of Charles Krauthammer, who is on vacation, we are substituting a column by David Ignatius, also with the Washington Post Writers Group.

WASHINGTON

Intelligence officers sometimes talk about blowback, when covert actions go bad and end up damaging the country that initiated them. A year later, that is surely the case with Russias secret attempt to meddle in the U.S. presidential election, which has brought a string of adverse unintended consequences for Moscow.

The Kremlin is still issuing cocky statements accusing the U.S. of political schizophrenia in its response to Russian hacking. And there are vestiges of the triumphal tone I encountered in Moscow early this summer  a sense that America is in decline and that a mistreated but resurgent Russia is in the drivers seat. But Russias confidence must be flagging.

Interference in the U.S. election has created new antibodies to Russian power: America is angry, Europe is newly vigilant, and Syria and Ukraine are becoming quagmires. Moscow remains a dangerously ambitious revanchist power, but its geopolitical goals look harder to achieve now than they did a year ago.

The basics of Russias covert operations were best summarized in a Jan. 6 report by the U.S. intelligence community: President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russias goals were to denigrate Hillary Clinton and help ... when possible Donald Trump. A broader aim was to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order.

So, hows it going for the folks at Lubyanka Square? Well, Trump was certainly elected, though the factors driving the U.S. vote were much deeper than Russian trolls and bots. And theres definitely disarray in the global order. But since Trumps inauguration, the world has begun moving in reverse from what Moscows active-measures specialists must have hoped.

Lets take a brief inventory of this global resilience:

Russian meddling has produced a strong bipartisan counterreaction from Congress. Last months overwhelming passage of new sanctions against Russia showed how Putins assault on U.S. politics has united otherwise polarized legislators. Russia is once again a toxic word in American politics, as Russian commentators are lamenting. It may take many years to recover. And Putin has nobody to blame but himself.

European politics similarly has been galvanized by Russias attempt to manipulate debate. The populist firestorm the Russians were secretly fanning  which engulfed Britain in the Brexit vote  has been damped. The moderate center has held in the Netherlands, France and Germany. Russias covert support for right-wing nationalists has partially deflated those movements. To be credible, European politicians left and right are voicing their independence from Moscow.

Russias internet manipulations have spawned a new push by companies and civil society groups to combat such fake news. One example is the online dashboard created by the German Marshall Funds Alliance for Securing Democracy. It monitors 600 Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations to collect a regular summary of trending hashtags, topics and URLs. (Note: Im a GMF trustee.) The world is forewarned now, and partially forearmed.

Internet and social-media companies are seeking technology solutions to bots, trolls and fake news. Facebook plans to identify dubious articles and steer them to independent fact-checking organizations, which will warn users if supporting evidence cant be found. Google is creating new algorithms to identify reliable sources from the billions of pages it indexes. Such private-sector efforts are the best hope for sustaining a fact-based electronic environment.

Investigations have exposed groups and companies with alleged links to Russias hacking campaign, such as WikiLeaks. The Russia-WikiLeaks connection is explored in a new edition this month of The Red Web, the superb book by Russian investigative journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan. Among their claims is that WikiLeaks moved at least part of its web hosting to Russia in August 2016.

More heat: A New Yorker piece this week by Raffi Khatchadourian challenges WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges denials of Russian involvement in the release of hacked documents. And The New York Times reports that a Ukrainian hacker known as Profexer, who may have helped write code used by the Russian covert operators, may now be talking to the FBI. The active-measures structure is weakening.

Putins problem is that he overreached. His dislike of Clinton and enthusiasm for Trump led him to violate the cardinal rule of covert action  namely, make sure it stays covert. As Putin discovers anew every day, secret influence operations backfire if theyre exposed. Revelations compromise sources and methods, including the cut-outs who masked Russias hand.

Putin, the ex-KGB officer, should appreciate the paradoxical lesson of this spy story: In the internet era, deception may be amplified. But eventually the truth will out.
NEW YORK, N.Y.  President Trump has refused to unequivocally condemn the white supremacists and Nazis who came to Charlottesville and the University of Virginia to terrorize and proselytize. The president also accused those who would remove Confederate monuments, such as the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, of attempting to change history and culture. In doing so, Trump earned the gratitude of David Duke, former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who thanked the president for his honesty and courage.

It is worth remembering that 63 years ago U.Va. hosted a series of seminal lectures that refuted much of the racist cant and false history that Trump now defends. In the midst of American apartheid, these lectures correctly traced the origins of what became known as Jim Crow, and they now explain Trumps craven and ignominious response to acts of racism and domestic terror.

The orator was Professor C. Vann Woodward  a white, Arkansas veteran of World War II  who had worked with the NAACP and other historians to write briefs that supported the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In 1954, a few months after school segregation was ruled unconstitutional, Woodward came to U.Va. to give three nights of lectures that drew upon the same well as his work on Brown.

In Maury Hall, not far from where Heather Heyer was killed on Saturday in an act of domestic terrorism, Woodward dismissed the mistaken belief that codified segregation was a perpetual feature of the South. Woodward chronicled the rise of what we know as formal Jim Crow: the post-Reconstruction, discriminatory laws created by racists, opportunistic politicians, and fearful voters.

In front of an integrated audience, Woodward detailed how African-Americans were systematically stripped of their franchise and other rights gained during Reconstruction. For example, it was not until 1898, 33 years after the Civil War, that South Carolina legally segregated train cars. By 1915, Jim Crow had exponentially expanded, and South Carolinas laws prohibited whites and African-Americans from sharing the same lavatories, toilets, drinking water buckets, pails, cups, dippers, or glasses. Furthermore, in Louisiana in 1896, there were 130,334 African-American voters, and in 1904, there were 1,342.

The Lee monument that Trump now defends as one of our beautiful statues was erected in 1924, a time when white supremacists were engaging in rampant terrorism, when membership in the Ku Klux Klan was reported to be 5 million, and when, in some states, Jim Crow had been extended to many facets of public life. The Lee monument  placed in the midst of a public park  was a clarion notice of white supremacy. Contrary to the presidents recent admonition, there is nothing foolish about citizens and elected officials taking deliberate, educated, and well-considered steps to remove it.

Woodwards lectures were reprinted as The Strange Career of Jim Crow, a book that Martin Luther King Jr. called the historical bible of the civil rights movement. Over the years, Woodward revised and expanded The Strange Career, to address historical developments such as the Commonwealth of Virginias dishonorable leadership in the massive resistance to desegregation, and the panic of white retreat in the North that led to de facto segregation of residence[s]  and schools.

Throughout The Strange Career, Woodward acknowledges the political opportunists in the North and the South who gave tacit or vocal approval to Jim Crow and the suffering of millions. For example, Woodward notes how President Woodrow Wilson benefited from the robust support of Southern progressives who used racism as a foundational principle, and President Dwight D. Eisenhowers preference for state over federal action in the face of indefensible, gross violations of civil and human rights.

It is clear that Trump falls in line with many other American demagogues who courted, appeased, or ignored racists to seize and retain power. Decades ago, by hosting Woodward, U.Va. played a role in dispelling the lies that supported segregation and caused irreparable harm to generations of Americans.

Now, after white supremacists have hijacked Charlottesville and U.Va. as a canvas for terrorism and hate, Trump is weaving another false history that enables violence and prejudice. It is a false history that disrespects the memory of Heather Heyer, a victim of terrorism. It is a lie that underwrites, shelters, and encourages white supremacist organizations. For Trump, any short-term political gain will be shallow, and the long-term, damaging effects on the republic will be profound.
RICHLAND, Ky.

Several months after losing her state legislative seat representing a district outside of Lexington in Madison County, Rita Smart still feels the pinch of the loss.

A former Democratic member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, Smart is sitting in the parlor of the beautifully appointed bed and breakfast, The Bennett House, that she owns and runs with her husband. She says: It was tough. I lost by 76 votes. Her voice trailed off at the mention of the remarkably close totals.

By all accounts, she was a competent legislator. She is a small business owner and previously spent three decades working for the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture.

She is polite, circumspect, and bewildered. I just cannot understand how I lost, she said.

In truth, she didnt  her party did. The Democratic Party brand has suffered broadly in the middle of the country in the past few years, largely on the backs of its pull left under the presidency of Barack Obama. While progressivism fit well for Democrats in urban areas, it fell flat and was widely rejected in places like Madison County.

It is not that voters liked or loved Republicans or found them more virtuous; it is that they found Democrats less aligned with their values, more likely to look down their nose at them and not at all interested in listening to their plights.

Republicans at least made it OK to be in a church pew every Sunday, own a gun for protection and hunting, and not share all of their money with everyone else.

Kentucky Republicans were handed a bucket of ice water last fall when they won the state House in a landslide that fit in nicely with their previous wins in the governors office and the majority in the state Senate.

The last time Republicans held the majority in the Kentucky House was in 1921. Before the Democrats lost it last fall, it was the last lawmaking chamber in the South still controlled by a Democratic majority.

Smart wasnt the only one to lose her seat. The speaker of the Kentucky House lost, along with 15 other incumbent Democrats. This was an honest-to-goodness wave election in this state, preceded by wave elections in 2010 and 2014 that placed Republican majorities in state legislative bodies across the country, as well as in the U.S. House and Senate. Democrats have lost more than 1,100 legislative seats since 2009.

That is a lot of voter angst toward one party. The question is, when will the Democrats be ready to learn from it? The answer is unclear. Activists in the party seem more than happy to keep going left, but do they go at their own peril? They seem to believe that Hillary Clinton was rejected because she was not left enough, ignoring the fact that most of the middle of the country where the election was won and lost is pretty moderate.

Smarts loss to Republican C. Wesley Morgan last year was not about her not representing her state and her district well; it was about the image the national party projects, and voters in the middle of the country have been rejecting that for nearly a decade.

The Democrats currently lack the ability to win back power because their concentration of power is located in 94 counties across the country, according to an analysis by Dave Wasserman, U.S. House editor of The Cook Political Report.

If the Democrats were to branch out and employ a message and language that suit voters in Madison County, representatives like Smart would still be working in the state legislature  and likely continuing to do a good job.

They still havent found their center nearly one year after Donald Trump stunned most Democrats. If they find it, Republican seats will start to winnow away. If not, the Republican Party will still chip away at seats like Smarts in every state across the country.
Jaising argued that the 10-year-old cannot take care of the baby by herself.

By Harish V Nair: Denied permission to abort her 32-month-old foetus owing to the grave threat to her life, a 10-year-old rape survivor delivered a baby on Thursday. On Friday, senior lawyer and noted human rights activist Indira Jaising moved the Supreme Court seeking at least a Rs 10 lakh compensation for the girl saying "She was just a kid and cannot look after the baby without major financial assistance and proper rehabilitation". A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta sought the view of the Centre, administration of Chandigarh to where she belonged and the district legal services authority and posted the matter for further hearing on August 22.

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Jaising also cited the case in which the Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Bihar government to pay Rs 10 lakh compensation to the destitute woman, who was allegedly raped and not allowed to abort her 26-week pregnancy after a medical board's opinion.

On July 28 the apex court refused the plea of the girl, impregnated after she was repeatedly raped by her uncle, to undergo abortion citing "grave threat" to her life. The court took the decision after considering a report to this effect submitted by medical board set up by Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh on the directions of the court. "The medical board is satisfied that it will be neither in the interest of the child or the live foetus, which is approximately 32-week-old to order abortion", said the bench.

The CJI also raised concern with Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar that such cases were piling up in the apex court and "that too when time is too short for us to decide". The Chief Justice told the Centre that till the time bill for extending the legal limit of abortion was pending some alternative mechanism should be there at state level for medical tests.

The long-awaited Medical Termination of Pregnancy (Amendment) Bill, which contemplates the extension of the legal limit for abortion from the present 20 weeks to 24, is pending since June 2014. The Act does not allow a woman to abort if her pregnancy crosses 20 weeks.

However, the courts have made a few exceptions lately where grave risk to life and health of the mother or the foetus was medically established. The shocking and rare medico-legal case "has left many medical experts dumbfounded" because of her age, the counsel for the girl had told the apex court.

Also read: Chandigarh: 10-year-old rape survivor denied abortion by SC gives birth to a girl

Also read: Delhi: Minor girl killed by jealous male friend

Also read: Top lawyer denies Home Ministry claims that she misused foreign money

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By Sen. Tim Kaine

Last Saturday, America and the world were confronted with scenes of neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and other white supremacists terrorizing the citizens of Charlottesville. Ostensibly protesting the locally elected governments democratic decision to remove a monument of Robert E. Lee, the ralliers chanted racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic messages having nothing to do with statues or heritage. They came to spew hate.

And it was more than just words. Heavily armed militia members intimidated local citizens. A mob beat Deandre Harris unconscious. A white supremacist intentionally drove his car into a crowd of people, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of others who came to stand up for love and tolerance. And the ensuing chaos resulted in the deaths of Virginia State Police officers Berke Bates and Jay Cullen as they worked to restore peace.

As I attended the memorial services for these brave Virginians, each killed standing up for Virginia values of equality and order, I sought to understand this grievous attack on our commonwealth. And more importantly, I sought to determine how we must respond to it.

The events in Charlottesville did not occur in a vacuum. Our commonwealth knows well the pain of racism and division. The arrival of shackled Africans in Virginia in 1619 began the monstrous institution of slavery in our country. Richmond became the capital of an insurgent breakaway nation dedicated to the maintenance of slavery and the principle of white supremacy. And when slavery collapsed, succeeding generations embraced Jim Crow and Massive Resistance rather than living in accord with the principles we hollowly proclaimed to be self-evident.

Thank God recent decades have shown a Virginia willing to confront the evils of the past and put them behind us. We were the first state in the South to pass a fair housing law. We became the first state to popularly elect an African-American, the grandson of a slave, to lead our commonwealth. When Governor Wilder declared that he was a son of Virginia, he spoke volumes about our pain and our progress. Our strong support in two elections for our first African-American president showed our determination to move ahead. And what an irony that our determination to face forward and find progress is what finally connected us in an authentic way with our Founders professed values of the equality of each person.

Today, we are more truly a commonwealth than we have ever been. We dont just mouth the word equality  we strive to extend its promise to all regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender or sexual orientation. Virginia is for lovers  not haters. We are not yet where we need to be, and painful inequities persist. But we no longer accept, rationalize or relish those divisions. Instead, we endeavor to close them.

This determination to put away the bigotry of the past draws white supremacists to raise their voices and fists against us. I saw this in Richmond as a City Council member and mayor when we were building statues of Arthur Ashe and Abraham Lincoln, or renaming bridges originally named for Civil War generals in honor of civil rights heroes. So often, these moves to more fully account for our citys history were most opposed by outsiders like David Duke. They nurture bitter fantasies about the past, and they cannot accept that we are moving ahead.

That was the attitude that animated so many who descended on Charlottesville last weekend. They see Virginia as a museum piece and are unwilling to accept our progress. It demonstrates the falsity and futility of their twisted ideology.

This explanation of why hatred chose to reveal its ugly face here also tells us what we must do. Keep moving forward. Celebrate that we have finally grasped the deep meaning of the equality promise and endeavor to be the nations best exemplar of it. Show that we can overcome hatred with love, division with community, and bigotry with brotherhood.

We have to grapple with the painful message sent by any celebration of the Confederacy in our wonderfully diverse 21st century America. I am glad that Mayor Stoney has opened that dialogue in our city. And the dialogue should not only be about subtraction  what should be removed  but also about addition. Whose stories have we ignored? Why do the four years of the Civil War rate so much more attention in this history-obsessed commonwealth than the 250 years of blood sacrifice experienced by the hundreds of thousands of slaves who lived in, built up, and were sold through our state?

And since history, in Faulkners words, is the effort to create a usable past, how can a more accurate accounting of the past be made useful in addressing current inequities in income, education, incarceration, and health?

Our best response to the hatred we saw on display in Charlottesville is for us to accelerate our passion and progress. We should commit  as civil rights marchers did:

Aint gonna let nobody turn me round

Turn me round, turn me round

Aint gonna let nobody turn me round

Im gonna keep on walkin

Keep on talkin

Marchin into freedom land.
Virginia and the United States may be headed for another warmer-than-normal autumn, with falls usual chill buoyed by some milder patterns.

Although temperatures are still hitting the lower 90s here, the start of climatological fall is just two weeks away on Sept. 1. That three-month climatological season includes all of September, October and November.

On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its fall forecast, along with an update on the planets abnormally warm temperature in July.

According to the NOAA analysis, last month was the second-warmest of any month globally dating to 1880, second only to July last year.

Temperatures across North America were significantly warmer than normal, but parts of Africa, Australia and the Middle East observed their warmest July on record, and its consistent with a warming climate.

Global temperatures were pushed higher by the El Nino, and now that were not in an El Nino it is unusual that were still near a record high in terms of global temperature, said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA.

This year is on pace to be one of the top three warmest years for the planet in the industrial era, behind 2016 and 2015.

Based on computer models and the warm ocean temperatures, the September-to-November temperature outlook favors warmer-than-normal conditions across the United States, with even higher odds for warmth across Alaska, the desert Southwest and New England.

Of course, chilly weather will inevitably settle into the area, but when the entire fall is averaged together, its more likely to be a warm one compared with the 30-year average.

Theres a less obvious signal for precipitation trends, but the Gulf Coast is favored for above-normal rainfall.

The El Nino-La Nina cycle is currently neutral, and its unlikely that either will emerge and strongly influence our weather over the next several months.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
By PTI: (Eds: Updating with Rahul reax and additional quotes)

Gorakhpur (UP), Aug 19 (PTI) Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today took a jibe at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi over his visit here, saying the yuvraj (prince) sitting in Delhi cannot make Gorakhpur a picnic spot.

Gandhi hit back at Adityanath after visiting the family members of the victims, describing the deaths of children at a state-run BRD hospital here as "government made tragedy". He said the chief minister should not try to cover up the matter. The Congress also returned the fire, saying the eastern UP town was not a "picnic spot" but "a spot of virtual murder".

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The chief minister targeted Gandhi while launching a cleanliness campaign in the district to tackle the deadly encephalitis outbreak in the wake of death of 71 children at the BRD hospital here.

"I feel that the shehzada sitting in Lucknow ..yuvraj sitting in Delhi will not know the importance of this cleanliness campaign. They will come here to make it a picnic spot, we cannot permit it," the chief minister said taking a dig at Gandhi, hours before the Congress leaders visit to Gorakhpur to meet the families of the victims.

"If someone gives an open challenge to the self-respect of the people of Gorakhpur and eastern UP ...they will themselves come forward to fight such dreaded diseases through their awareness," Adityanath stressed, launching the Swachch Uttar Pradesh - Swasthya Uttar Pradesh campaign here. After meeting family members of victims, Gandhi said government should take action and not try to cover up the matter as "it is absolutely clear that oxygen shortage and laxity were the reasons for the tragedy."

"All those whom I met told me that oxygen shortage led to the death of their children. Many families were given ambu bags (a manual resuscitator) and they pumped it for hours...it is very clear that it government-made tragedy," he told reporters.

"The chief minister should not try to cover up (the matter) and action should be taken against the guilty. This is my message," he said.

"I have come to this hospital earlier too and told Prime Minister Narendra Modi through the media that this hospital needs money as there are too many shortages, but no action was taken," he rued.

"Modiji speaks of new India (but) this kind of new India we do not want, we want hospitals where poor people take their children (for treatment) and come back happily," he said.

He also complimented the media for raising the issue.

"...I want to thank them for this (highlighting the issue)...it is not a matter concerning Uttar Pradesh but is a national tragedy, it is indicative of health care of the country, we cannot work in this manner," he said.

Hitting back at the chief minister for his barb, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said the chief minister was the Lok Sabha member from Gorakhpur where the tragedy took place, and accused him of reducing the debate over medical negligence to such "cheap politicking". "He has insulted the sacred memory of those helpless and poor children who died, by reducing the debate to such cheap politicking as a picnic spot," he told reporters in Delhi.

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Gorakhpur was not a picnic spot, instead it "has been turned into a murderous spot by utter negligence, lack of accountability and total callousness," Singhvi alleged.

"It is a spot of virtual murder. The chief ministers statement is objectionable and insulting," he added. Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee(UPCC) president Raj Babbar said the chief ministers remark only reflects the pettiness and panic that Rahul Gandhis visit will ensure justice to the victims.

"The chief minister took no action and he wants to divert the issue...he is belittling the position that he holds by such petty statements...Rahulji has come here to share the the pain of the poor...but asking why he has come only indicated the pettiness of the chief minister and panic that his visit will ensure justice," he said.

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Babbar along with other senior leaders including Ghulam Nabi Azad and RPN singh accompanied Gandhi. The Congress vice-president visited the villages to meet families of the children who lost their lives and assured full support besides taking up the matter with officials concerned to check the recurrence of the deadly disease.

The Congress has targeted the Aditynath Government over the deaths following allegations that the children who were critically ill succumbed due to oxygen shortage. Expressing the hope that the cleaniness campaign will be successful in checking encephalitis, Adityanath also accused the previous governments of depriving the people of the state of basic facilities for their vested interests. Meanwhile, SP leader Akhilesh Yadav took a dig at the chief minister over his cleanliness drive.

"Khokle vaade aur halki bayanbazi se kab tak Janata Ko bahlayega, aise banega swachch UP- swastha- UP" (how long will you befool the people through hollow promises and petty statements , will this make the state clean and healthy), he tweeted.PTI SAB SMI SKC GSN GSN

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Help has finally arrived for the aging Poff Federal Building, possibly Roanokes tallest man-made eyesore.

Five years ago this November, a crew sheared off its original brickwork after the discovery of a bulge on the buildings west side. A safety measure, that action exposed a gray surface at least 75 feet across and more than 200 feet tall. The bare face looms over Franklin Road, which carries 5,600 vehicles a day, and blemishes the federal courthouse, which also houses the U.S. Marshals Service and Department of Veterans Affairs.

After a study and a couple of government funding cycles, authorities drew up a plan to fix things. Hoar Construction of Birmingham, Alabama, agreed in 2016 to recover the bald face and rebrick the identical east side. It has come to Roanoke with a team both human and robot. A local example of robots in the work place, an automatic bricklayer will set about 40 percent of 470,000 bricks ordered from Belden Brick Co. in Ohio, said Hoar project manager Bill Lampkin.

The government plans to spend $7.5 million for the new brick exterior and about another $8 million on unspecified security improvements and repairs to the attached nonpublic parking garage, which became decrepit and unsafe, a victim of water-driven deterioration. Those expenditures will push the cost of upgrades to the 42-year-old building to about $80 million over the past five years.

The brick machine and its indefatigable mechanical arm can lay 400 bricks an hour, exceeding the output of three veteran masons. Housed in a console about the size of a large desk, it takes orders pecked into a tablet computer while deployed from an elevated platform hugging the wall.

Its scary how cool this thing is, Brian Fenner, a sales manager at Belden, said of the Semi-Autonomous Mason, or SAM.

When its compressed gas engine starts and its laser lights up, its already calculated where every single brick needs to go to be perfectly in line.

A crew member loads brick into the machine. SAM grips a single brick, applies a coat of mortar dispensed from a reservoir in its hold and sets the brick in line. But the joint is never perfect until struck by an actual mason assigned to the crew, the final step.

Advocates note that the robot cannot work alone and unattended; they call it a tool to enable masons to accomplish more with less bodily wear and tear. The U.S. General Services Administration, the buildings landlord, said the job will require up to 20 masonry craft personnel at one time.

Unions have reckoned with the arrival of automatic bricklayers to more jobs sites and even trained members to run them, but still cringe over what it represents. Craftsmanship is how you do it with your hands, not pushing buttons on a machine, said Roy Holt, a union bricklayer and Virginia field representative with the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 8.

However, the construction trades face a shortage of skilled masons, Holt said. Because of reduced apprenticeship opportunities, too few people have taken up the craft to replace those, like him, at retirement age. An increase in unskilled or poorly trained workers finding work in the trade has also depressed wages, Holt added.

The expanded use of SAM, which is made by Construction Robotics in New York, is a sign of the times, Holt said.

The robot and crew are expected to complete the job this fall, GSA spokesman Nick Smith said. The new brick, like the old, is brown with matching mortar.
DURHAM, N.C. (AP)  Duke University removed a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee early Saturday, days after it was vandalized amid a national debate about monuments to the Confederacy.

The university said it removed the carved limestone likeness early Saturday morning from Duke Chapel where it stood among 10 historical figures depicted in the entryway. Another statue of Lee was at the heart of a violent protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly a week ago.

University president Vincent Price said in a letter to the campus community that he consulted with faculty, staff, students and alumni about the decision to remove the statue. Officials discovered early Thursday that the statue's face had been damaged by vandalism.

"I took this course of action to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university," Price said in the letter.

Durham has been a focal point in the debate over Confederate statues after protesters tore down a bronze Confederate soldier in front of a government building downtown. Eight people have been charged with tearing down the statue during a protest on Monday.

Hundreds marched on Friday through downtown Durham in a largely peaceful demonstration against racism, leading to an impromptu rally at the site where the bronze statue was toppled.

Other monuments around the state have been vandalized since the Charlottesville protest. There have also been calls to take down a Confederate soldier statue from the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Gov. Roy Cooper has urged the removal of Confederate monuments from public property around the state, though his goal would be difficult to achieve because of a 2015 state law restricting their removal. Duke is a private university and outside the scope of that law.
CHARLOTTESVILLE  Families waited in traffic on Alderman Road and carried luggage and containers into University of Virginia residence halls Friday morning, the first day of move-in weekend.

On the surface of the pavement, chalked messages directed families to student-living spaces and offered encouragement.

Some of the messages contrasted what neo-Nazis and white nationalists expressed during a torchlight march on the university Grounds the night before the Aug. 12 deadly political rally in Charlottesville.

The messages reflected the spirit of a candlelight march that community members held Wednesday evening to unite the city and take back the university.

When they go low, we go high, said a chalk message quoting former first lady Michelle Obama. A quote from the Dalai Lama said, Our prime purpose in this life is to help others.

Another message, the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., written in blue, yellow, purple and white: Our lives begin to end when we become silent on the things that matter.

Although many of the families were focused on the experience of settling their offspring into the college community, the messages were reminders of what took place last weekend, when a young woman and two police officers died in incidents that followed the Unite the Right rally.

It created an extra layer of anxiety for me as a parent knowing I was going to drop my kid off a week later, but it feels like the community has pulled together and sort of has everything together, said Suzanne Abbot, mother of first-year student Gunther Abbot.

Im not feeling weird about it or scared, she said.

I was proud of the counter-protesters, to be honest with you  not the violence, though, or the guys in the conflict. But there were thousands of people here to say we dont like this in our town, including an awful lot of UVa students, said Larry Angel, who, with other family members, was dropping off his daughter Savannah.

Ive never been concerned about Charlottesville or UVa, he said. This is a great town.

Wearing a T-shirt that read Hoos Against Hate, while helping families move their children into the dorms, UVa Class of 2003 graduate Meghan Waters said last weekend was devastating for the community.

It came as a huge shock because our community has always been welcoming of different cultures and religions, said Waters, who majored in African and African-American studies. Its always been a melting pot here.

She added: I believe in our university and its progress. 

Several new students showed little sign of distress about the recent events.

Asked why he chose to enroll at UVa, Gunther Abbot proudly said that its the best school in the state, hands down.

I knew this was something that didnt represent the school or Charlottesville, said Sarah Kiscaden, of Richmond. It could have happened anywhere.

Originally from Chicago, Kiscadens mother said political rallies, even ones involving neo-Nazis, have happened in her hometown.

I think the school did a great job of communicating with incoming students and parents to allay any kind of anxieties, Mary Kiscaden said.

The university has suffered from waves of bad press from numerous incidents in recent years: the killings of Yeardley Love, Morgan Harrington and Hannah Graham and scandals such as the UVa boards attempt to remove President Teresa Sullivan, an explosive and later debunked Rolling Stone article and controversial Alcoholic Beverage Control arrests.

But Sarah Kiscaden said none of that ever deterred her from applying to UVa.
Jurors will be allowed to hear that a man accused of stabbing two people in Roanoke County was reportedly shouting Allahu akbar during the attack, per a judicial ruling made Friday.

Jury selection in the case of Wasil Rafat Farooqui, 21, is scheduled to get underway Aug. 28. During a pre-trial motions hearing in Roanoke County Circuit Court, defense attorney Neil Horn sought to exclude any mention of the Arabic term that translates to God is great.

Invoking the phrase in court will inflame racial and religious stereotypes, he argued, and unduly prejudice the jury.

This is like kryptonite, he said.

Commonwealths Attorney Randy Leach, in turn, said Farooqui repeatedly shouted the phrase during the attack.

Jurors are entitled to hear how events unfolded without having them sanitized, he said.

Horn worried the prosecution would try to use the phrase to build an argument that Farooqui had terrorist sympathies.

Absent any other evidence, the term alone shouldnt be allowed as the basis of that argument, he said, calling in an expert witness, University of Virginia professor Mehr Farooqi, who testified that while the phrase has been wrongly linked to violence it is also a common and benign term in Muslim countries used most often to express praise or appreciation.

Farooqi (no relation to Wasil Farooqui) also testified that the religious and cultural practices of South Asia are distinctly different from that of the Middle East.

Wasil Farooquis parents are from Pakistan. He was born in the United States.

On cross-examination, Leach asked the professor if circumstances could change the intent of the term. Using it during a worship service, for example, would lend itself to one interpretation, he said, while shouting it while slashing two people with a knife points to another.

Horn quickly objected to that question.

Judge James Swanson said arguments about the significance of the term and what, if anything, it suggested about Farooquis state of mind were questions of fact that should be weighed at trial by the jury.

He indicated he was loathe to usurp the jurys role on that point or declare that they would be incapable of assessing the evidence responsibly.

Horn will be allowed to quiz potential jurors about their attitudes toward Muslims, mental illness and other issues during the selection process.

In prior motions, the defense has indicated Farooqui has a mental illness and his sanity is expected to be a key issue at trial.

Both sides agreed Friday that potential jurors will be interviewed in small groups to facilitate the more detailed questioning.

Horn withdrew earlier motions asking for access to federal files about Farooqui or to require that local prosecutors reveal how they obtained Farooquis past psychiatric records.

He told the judge hes since been advised that the federal courts have a separate process for handling such requests and that local authorities confirmed they had a search warrant for Farooquis medical records.

The warrant didnt turn up on an initial inquiry because it had been filed without a name attached, he said.

Farooqui sat silently with his chin resting on one hand for most of Fridays hour-long hearing. He spoke only once when the judge asked him if he understood that afternoons proceedings.

Yes, your honor, I do, he said.

Hes facing two charges of aggravated malicious wounding in an August 2016 attack on a couple who were stabbed at their Branbury Lane apartment complex.

Local authorities said the assault, which the victims survived, appeared to be random. According to a search warrant, Farooqui told a detective that he had been hearing voices urging him to attack someone.
DUBLIN  A growing effort to entice students in the New River Valley to locally pursue an education beyond high school has reached Pulaski County.

New River Community College announced Thursday it will receive a $25,000 grant from the Randolph House Foundation to kick-start a fundraising push for scholarship dollars designated specifically for students from Pulaski County.

The Randolph House Foundation is a nonprofit charitable foundation that supports various entities in the county such as the YMCA, Adult Daycare Center and County Theater.

The donation is the latest in a string of funds offered by local municipalities and charitable organizations throughout Southwest Virginia to NRCCs Access to Community College Education program.

Started in Giles County, the partnership is now progressing in Montgomery, Floyd and Pulaski counties and the city of Radford. It makes access to college available debt-free to qualifying high school, home-schooled and private school graduates from those areas.

We want our Pulaski County students to have the same opportunities to participate in this excellent program, said county Commonwealths Attorney Mike Fleenor, treasurer of the Randolph House Foundation. With this first donation, we challenge other charitable organizations, individuals and the Pulaski County Board of Supervisors to step up and participate as well with their monetary support.

Angie Covey, who runs NRCCs ACCE foundation, said she is confident local units of government in Pulaski will subsidize the programs latest edition, which will need $200,000 raised by year one of enrollment.

Everywhere we have gone throughout the region informing local boards about this, they have been thrilled to participate, Covey said. The return on investment is there. If these students receive the education here, they can re-enter the workforce in Pulaski County.

Students must meet certain criteria to qualify for ACCE funding. ACCE covers tuition on the condition that participants complete the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid), graduate high school with a minimum 2.5 GPA, and perform 80 hours of community service a year.

It is set up to close that financial gap, Covey said.

NRCC, the main campus of which is located in Dublin, has seen increased enrollment in its workforce development program, which offers short-term courses in trade jobs and other professional certifications.

We are very excited to lead the community with our pledge, Fleenor said. We look forward to working with [NRCC] to bring this program to fruition.
Allegedly over 200 cows died of starvation at a government-aided gaushala in Rajpur's Durg district.

Trenches were dug to bury the dead cows lying around. (Picture for representation)

By Hemender Sharma: A government cattle shelter turned into a death trap for cows in Chhattisgarh. In yet another incident of neglect in cow shelters, allegedly over 200 cows died of starvation at a government-aided gaushala in Rajpur's Durg district.

The shocking incident has revealed blatant cruelty where the cows were left to starve with no fodder and water for 48 hours.

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All fingers are pointing towards BJP leader Harish Verma, the moderator of this cow farm. Rajpur residents and state officials blame Verma for the deaths of the cows.

Accused of serious carelessness, Verma has now been arrested. Verma, who holds the post of vice-president in Jamul Municipality, has been booked under sections 4 and 6 of Chhattisgarh Agricultural Cattle Preservation Act 2004, under section 11 of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 and section 409 (criminal breach of trust) of the IPC, the IG said.

The leader has however, dusted off all allegations and claimed otherwise.

Speculations are rife that the cows were burried in many trenches in a bid to cover up the the severe incident of neglect.

Residents say they found trenches with 10 to 15 cows buried in each of them.

Rajpur's Sarpanch Pati Sevaram Sahu alleged that he found many trenches were being dug to bury the dead cows lying around, which made them suspicious.

Outrage however against the BJP leader hasn't yet cooled down with Opposition alleging that the shelters are facing neglect and the money to be spent on fodder being siphoned off.

Also Read:

Bihar: Cow vigilantes demanding mob justice attack police after 7 were arrested for killing calf

Haryana: 25 cows die at govt-run shelter due to improper facilities, lack of food

Also Watch:

Chhattisgarh: 200 cows starve to death due to lack of proper care in a gaushala

--- ENDS ---
CHARLOTTESVILLE  Charlottesville police have charged James Alex Fields . with five more felonies related to the fatal car crash on Aug. 12 that killed one and injured 19 others after a white nationalist rally.

According to a release, Fields now faces two additional charges of malicious wounding and three additional charges of aggravated malicious wounding. Hes already been charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and one count of hit-and-run.

The victims related to these charges suffered serious injuries and in some cases permanent physical disabilities, said Lt. Steve Upman in the release.

The investigation into the deadly crash remains under investigation by Charlottesville police, the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Upman said in the release that they are still investigating the egregious assault of Deandre Shakur Harris, a young man who sustained a head wound during the aftermath of Saturdays failed white nationalist rally. He asked that anyone with information related to the incident to email cvillerally@charlottesville.org.

Meanwhile, the FBI is trying to identify individuals spotted with Fields before he rammed his car into a crowd of protesters last Saturday.

Two sources have confirmed that FBI officials recently spoke with workers at the Shell Station on Preston Avenue and reviewed video footage taken from the gas station. The footage allegedly shows Fields with an unknown number of people not long before 1:40 p.m. on Saturday, the recorded time of the fatal crash. The FBI is working to identify the people with Fields, said the sources.

When reached, an FBI spokeswoman said she could not discuss or confirm anything related to the investigation.

An employee with Reids Super-Save Market said he could not comment on whether FBI officials had visited the store, which sits across the street from the Shell Station on Preston Avenue.

An employee of the Wendys that sits on the corner of Preston Avenue and 4th Street Northwest said that her store had been visited by FBI officials.

While the fast food eatery does not have exterior cameras facing Preston Avenue, the employee said, she gave FBI officials the descriptions of a group of men she described as neo-Nazis who had jumped a man in their parking lot at some point before the fatal car crash.

The employee said the neo-Nazis had assaulted a man with their flags, and that the FBI officials were attempting to identify them. She added that she did not recall seeing Fields among the group.

Employees at other area stores said they had not been contacted by the FBI.
CHATHAM  The back gate to Chatham Hall usually remains locked, but the normally peaceful fields off of Chalk Level Road were the gathering point for law enforcement officers while searching in the sweltering humidity for an escaped inmate from the Pittsylvania County Jail.

Human and canine officers spent Friday searching the woods behind Chatham Hall for James Herron Jones, 38, accused of escaping from the Pittsylvania County Jail in Chatham at 6:36 a.m. while unloading a truck as part of his duties working in the jail kitchen.

Jones escaped wearing jail-issued white clothing, said investigator Devin Taylor.

Authorities described Jones as 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs roughly 180 pounds.

There was an armed guard on one side of the vehicle and inmate Jones ran from the enclosed area in the back of the jail, Sheriff Mike Taylor said during a press conference.

Law enforcement was notified of the escape, and dispatchers used the reverse-911 system to call everyone in Chatham to inform them about the situation.

Jones was spotted at least twice Friday morning, Taylor said, and K-9 units picked up a strong trail, in the woods at the private school Chatham Hall.

There were several other sightings throughout town that officers either could not confirm or their K-9s could not find a trail.

Investigators and deputies have been out interviewing family members and anyone we think may have some reference to where Mr. Jones may be holed up, and encouraging him to turn himself in, Sheriff Mike Taylor said.

The Pittsylvania County Sheriffs Office was aided by Halifax County, Henry County, Campbell County, the town of Chatham and the Virginia State Police. The commonwealths attorney also helped throughout the day.

Cierra Fitzgerald, head of security with Chatham Hall, said authorities used all-terrain vehicles to criss-cross the schools 362 acres of woodland walking trails and equestrian stables.

Police arrived at the school around 7 a.m., and scoured the grounds until roughly 3 p.m. under a baking sun that swelled temperatures to 93 degrees.

Chatham Hall Rector Suzanne Walker Buck was seen bringing coolers filled with ice and water to officers decked in bulletproof vests and pant cuffs tucked into combat boots.

Students do not begin arriving at Chatham Hall until Tuesday, but Buck said that staff was asked to keep an eye out for the escaped inmate while staff not already on campus were told to stay home.

School security swept and secured all of the main buildings on campus.

Buck said that Jones did not have a known connection to Chatham Hall.

Chatham Elementary, which is a two-mile drive from where police gathered, did not go into a lockdown, but did have a sheriffs deputy outside the school.

Administrative Assistant Debbie Haymore said that all doors around the school are locked from the inside, and visitors have to be buzzed into the school.

Sheriff Taylor said that law enforcement planned to scale back the search after people returned home from work, so officers could be ready to respond in case area residents found anything amiss at home such as a break-in or a car missing.

The search would continue in full force Saturday morning, Taylor said.

Jones, of Dry Fork, was indicted on July 28 for a third offense of domestic assault and battery, online court records show.

He was arrested Aug. 9 and is scheduled for a hearing in Pittsylvania County Circuit Court on Tuesday. A trial is set for Sept. 27.

Previous charges included abduction and statutory burglary in 2011.
Encouraged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech to embrace Kashmiris, a four-member delegation reached the Kashmir Valley today to meet members of civil society and Sufi clerics.

Shahid Siddiqui is one of the members of the delegation.

By Pooja Shali: Encouraged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech to embrace Kashmiris, a four-member delegation reached the Kashmir Valley today to meet members of civil society and Sufi clerics. Calling it a citizen initiative, these members also intend to meet traders there, people of the Bar Association, Ulemas and other factions.

The delegation comprises senior journalist and former Member of Parliament from Rajya Sabha Shahid Siddiqui, Defence Expert Qamar Aaga, retired High court Justice Ishrat Masroor Quddosi and former BJP leader M J Khan.

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Since it is not constituted by the Union Government and unlike the interlocutor group of 2010, the members call this attempt a citizen initiative.

Speaking from the ramparts of the Red Fort during Independence Day celebrations, PM had said, "The problem will be solved neither by abuse nor bullets but only by embracing all Kashmiris."

OURS AN INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE, HAVE SUPPORT OF NGO LEHER: SHAHID SIDDIQUI

Speaking to India Today over the phone, Shahid Siddiqui confirmed the names of all four members and said, "This is an individual initiative of four people. We also have the support of NGO Leher. We welcome anyone who wishes to speak to us. We will head to charar-e-sharif today and Anantnag tomorrow. South Kashmir is tense currently so we will plan to meet people there too."

The delegation is on a two-day visit and aims to not stay confined to one venue. The members are preparing to meet people in different areas.

Siddiqui added, "Our intention is to meet clerics and Sufi leaders, not necessarily political voices. We want to make it seem a citizen initiative and listen to different voices beyond mainstream political voices. We may also submit a report to the government once we return, with probable solutions."

ALSO READ |

Bullets or abuses won't solve Kashmir problem, we must embrace its people: PM Modi

Kashmir terror funding: NIA raids 12 locations linked to businessman Watali

Will find a solution to Kashmir issue, Naxalism by 2022, says Home Minister Rajnath

ALSO WATCH VIDEO | PM Modi's call to embrace Kashmiris fails to impress Opposition

--- ENDS ---
By Halford Ryan

Ryan taught Southern oratory and American public address at Washington and Lee University (1970-2010) and lives in Lexington.

I consider the American Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The Continentals rebelled against the King, the Confederates against the Union. King George invaded the colonies, President Lincoln the South. The King lost, the Confederates lost.

Confederate States of America provisional president Jefferson Davis delivered his first inaugural address on February 18, 1861, in Montgomery, Alabama. Davis offered the proverbial carrot or stick. He wanted the CSA to be allowed peaceably to pursue our separate political career. But, he warned the CSA would appeal to arms and invoke the blessings of Providence on a just cause. Davis positioned the North as the would-be aggressor. He implored God and Providence four times to support the South.

For his first inaugural address, March 4, 1861, Lincoln addressed a divided nation. Lincoln could let the seven seceded states go, or force their return to the Union. Lincoln followed Davis earlier gambit by depicting the Confederacy as the would-be aggressor: The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. Lincoln mentioned God once with a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land. Both Davis and Lincoln put God in a quandary, for God could not satisfy both presidents.

Lincoln assiduously avoided assailing the South. Davis obliged Lincoln by ordering Confederates to fire on Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861. They reasoned that Lincoln would deploy the army to suppress the rebellion. Lincolns militarism would then motivate the Upper South to join the Confederacy. Their strategy worked. Four Upper South slave states, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, seceded after Fort Sumter and after Lincolns subsequent call to arms, April 15, 1861, to suppress said combinations. The CSA now composed eleven states. Neo-Confederate fake facts can be forthwith exposed.

A furtive fake fact on the Confederate flag is thirteen stars. The truth would be eleven stars for eleven states.

In the Union, no entity was a sovereign state. Only the federal government of the United States of America was sovereign. The Civil War should have ended Southern pipe dreams about state sovereignty, although neo-Confederates still peddle that fake-fact fantasy.

The hoary defense of hearth and home is counterfeit. President Davis CSA was the aggressor. As for Virginia, her voters adopted an Ordinance of Secession on May 23, 1861. On July 21, 1861, Federal troops initially invaded Virginia at the First Battle of Bull Run. By that time, Virginia had already seceded and had already joined a Confederacy that had already waged war on the Union. Only by an abuse of logic and language can neo-Confederates claim that the War Between the States was a defensive war. But, neo-Confederates still fan the flames for that fake fact.

One cannot peruse neo-Confederate writings without encountering the sentimentality of brave, good men who fought for the CSA. Their braveness and goodness is intended, somehow, to exculpate them.

The aggressors in the American Revolution and the Civil War are similar. The British fired the shot heard round the world on April 19, 1775, at Lexington, Massachusetts. The Confederates fired the first shot at Fort Sumter. One may reasonably infer that God does not look kindly on aggressors, because both lost.

The Great Seal of the United States, adopted in 1782, figuratively closes this essay. The Latin phrase of annuit coeptis, in conjunction with Gods all-seeing eye atop a pyramid (check out the reverse of a $1 bill), is loosely translated as He smiles on the undertaking. Below the pyramid is the Latin motto of novus ordo seclorum, which means a new order of the ages. The new American undertaking could not be fully realized until no one was a master and no one was a slave. God favored the Continentals in 1776 and the Federals in 1865.

God did not succor the South, nor coddle its Confederacy, nor boost its brave, good men in grey. Why, then, do neo-Confederates still venerate veterans, as well as their Lost Cause, on whom God did not then bestow His blessings? Neo-Confederates still foist the fake fact that God was then on the Souths side.

By the same logic, neo-Confederates might reckon that Reconstruction was the Souths due recompense. For, as Lincoln quoted Psalm 19:9 in his second inaugural address, The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. And that is not a fake fact.
By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 19 (PTI) The Congress today charged the BJP with ignoring the death of several cows at a cowshed run by a party leader in Chhattisgarh and asked whether Chief Minister Raman Singh would impose death penalty on "one of their own" as he had sought earlier.

At least 27 cows had died at a government-aided cow shelter in Durg district of Chhattisgarhrun by one Harish Verma, who was arrested yesterday, local police had said.

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Referring to the Chief Ministers comments earlier this year, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said gauraksha (cow protection) has been reduced to killing of innocents, mostly of minority community.

"If this is the new definition of gauraksha, I suppose everybody should ignore this terrible event (of cows death in Chhattisgarh)...because double standards is the definition of the BJP," Singhvi told reporters here.

The Congress leader said "if I recollect, no less than death penalty was demanded more than once by the chief minister of Chhattisgarh."

"We will hang those who kill cows," the Chief Minister had said in April this year, a day after BJP-ruled Gujarat passed a stringent law, making cow slaughter punishable with a life term.

Singhvi said the BJP government will not act against "their own" in this case because "double standards is the definition of the BJP". PTI SKC SRY ARC

--- ENDS ---
Heres something thats not happening in Roanoke. We dont have any protests over our Confederate statues.

Theres an easy explanation for why Roanoke isnt seeing the protests that have engulfed other cities.

We dont have any Confederate statues  at least if you stick with the dictionary definition of a statue to mean a representation of a person.

Many Virginia courthouses have the stereotypical statue of a Confederate soldier out front. Roanokes courthouse has a modern art sculpture that looks like a loaf of French bread.

This raises a curious historical question: Why doesnt Roanoke have any Confederate statues? Thats an easy question to ask, but a harder one to answer, because its asking about the absence of something. Its hard to look up the date that a statue wasnt built or read old newspaper clips about something that didnt happen.

One possible  but hardly complete  answer is that Roanoke has a history thats unique by Virginia standards. We werent here during the Civil War. Big Lick was. But Roanoke wasnt. Roanokes founding was tied to the Industrial Revolution  and the arrival of the railroad.

Roanokes early history was marked by successive waves of immigrants  such as the Greeks and Lebanese whose heritage we still celebrate today in the annual Roanoke Greek Festival (coming up in September) and the annual Lebanese Festival (held every June). Today we think of Appalachia as being almost entirely white, and thats true, but Appalachias big population boom in the late 1800s and early 1900 was fueled by immigration. Roanoke was part of that, which probably meant we werent that interested in putting up statues to people that the citys residents didnt know. Still, Roanoke was not exactly Cleveland, which had so many immigrants  especially immigrants who couldnt speak English  that in 1916 it was called a foreign city.

So we ask again: Why didnt Roanoke put up any Confederate statues? Many of the Confederate statues across the South werent put up in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, but the early 1900s  one of two great waves of statue-building in the South, both of which coincided with unhappy social events. In the 1900s, that was a rollback of Reconstruction-era civil rights and the imposition of Jim Crow laws.

Roanoke in the 1920s was hardly perfect  it was, of course, a segregated city. And there was a very visible Ku Klux Klan. However, the city was also home to a thriving African-American business community that stood out enough that it attracted the pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. He wanted to be closer to Southern markets, and Roanokes budding black prosperity made the city a logical base of operations, according to his biographer, Patrick McMilligan.

The reaction from Roanokes white business community was also noteworthy: Even the white-dominated Association of Commerce gave Micheaux an official welcome and in time the civic organization would schedule private screenings of the Roanoke films for local white businessmen at the citys white theatres,  McGilligan writes in Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only. Its possible that Roanoke was simply more interested in other things  such as making money  instead of re-fighting the Civil War. Remember, too, that, in the context of Virginia, Roanoke was always somewhat out-of-step on racial issues  in a good way. When Virginias integration crisis came in the 1950s, it was politicians from Roanoke who were among the strongest voices against massive resistance.

Over the years, Roanoke did name some public spaces after Confederate figures. It just didnt put up statues.

In 1918, the city renamed a school on Franklin Road as Lee Junior High School. When the city built a new middle school in Southeast in 1923  note the problematic date  that school was named Stonewall Jackson Junior High School. The Lee school later came down to make way for the Poff Federal Building, but Stonewall Jackson Middle School remains. Its one of four schools in Virginia named after the Confederate general.

In 1961, Roanoke dedicated a patch of land and sidewalk across from the Municipal Building as Lee Plaza. That date coincides with another wave of Confederate-naming across the South. Yet once again Roanoke did not erect a statue. However, the United Daughters of the Confederacy did put up an obelisk dedicated to Lee, and that marker falls under the calls from Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam to take down monuments that are meant to honor the Confederacy.

That obelisk is so hidden by crepe myrtles that few people realize its there, which is likely why its prompted little comment. When there are events in Lee Plaza, they take place at the other end  by the citys War Memorial, which makes no mention of the Civil War. Its toll of names begins with World War I. Even the dedication of that obelisk did not occasion the kind of grand public ceremony that marked Confederate monuments in other cities. The lone newspaper coverage at the time was a single photograph in The Roanoke Times, which shows the president of the Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and a small crowd of women who were in town for the UDC convention.

The only other Confederate markers in the city are a granite marker on Brandon Avenue that notes the official name for U.S. 11 is Lee Highway  and a headstone-like monument in Fairview Cemetery, which doesnt really qualify as a public space. The reality is Roanoke simply hasnt put up many statues, period. We apparently only have four, and only two of those bear the likeness of an actual historical figure. There are generic statues to fallen firefighters and police officers. Then theres the Martin Luther King Jr. statue, with its impressive audiobank of excerpts from his speeches. Roanokes fourth statue isnt even outdoors, or full-size. However, in the lobby of the Performing Arts Center at the Berglund Center youll find a small depiction of Gibson Morrisey, founder of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra.

Public safety workers, a civil rights leader, a musician  those are Roanokes only statues. There are probably other statues we ought to put up, but no bronze men on horseback we should take down.
Friday's cold front has brought in some drier air that will make it feel a bit more comfortable outside this weekend despite highs near mid-August norms in the mid 80s to near 90. A much stronger cold front is due by midweek, and may introduce another period of cooler than normal temperatures to end the month. More on that in a bit.

For eclipse-viewing purposes in Southwest Virginia on Monday, this front and its dry air is a couple days early for optimal conditions. Moisture will be starting rebuild by Monday, with a few more puffy cumulus clouds and perhaps even some scattered late-day showers and storms. Still, it is unlikely that it will be cloudy the entire time from shortly after 1 p.m. to near 4 p.m. Monday, so viewing conditions look generally pretty good for our region. As the map above shows, much of the totality path from southern Illinois to western North Carolina looks good to very good, for those who will be traveling there. Beware of potential traffic congestion and hot temperatures in these areas.

When the next cold front arrives at midweek, there may be some strong to severe thunderstorms on Wednesday, as the front slams into hot and more humid air. Tuesday may be our hottest day of August 2017, possibly some low to mid 90s in the Roanoke area and points south and east. Behind the front, much cooler and drier air moves in for late week, with possibly some days ahead that struggle to make 80. Another big southerly dip in the jet stream will bring August to a close the way much of the first half was, with normal to below-normal temperatures.

Tropical Storm Harvey in the Caribbean is no threat to the U.S., but another system to its northeast might be nearing the Southeast U.S. coast next week, though it will probably get bumped out to sea by the next cold front.

Enjoy the eclipse, SAFELY (pinhole projector, approved solar filter eclipse glasses, welder's shield No. 14, or look for the crescents of light on the ground underneath the trees). I may make some short updates the next couple days, but will rejoin the weather blog in full again middle of next week.
Pulling up private schools that have been served show-cause notices for overcharging students, the Delhi govt has warned it will take over 449 of them if they do not refund the extra fees within 2 weeks.

By India Today Web Desk: Pulling up private schools that have been served show-cause notices for overcharging students, the Delhi government has warned it will take over 449 of them if they do not refund the extra fees within 2 weeks.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, in a press conference in nearly four months, said that his Aam Aadmi Party government did not intend to "interfere", but would surely "discipline" the schools, if needed.

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The schools are among those identified by a committee headed by Justice Anil Dev Singh as having overcharged parents in the name of implementing recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who was also present, said that the show-cause notices were served four days ago with a deadline to respond within two weeks.

PRIVATE SCHOOLS WON'T BE ALLOWED TO FLEECE STUDENTS: SISODIA

"The schools will not be allowed to fleece students like they used to do under previous governments by being hand-in-glove with politicians."

"Some of them are doing good work. But if they don't implement the recommendations of the panel's report, we will take them over as a last resort," Kejriwal said.

The panel, formed last year, had scrutinised a total of 1,108 private unaided schools.

Kejriwal said that among the schools that had not rolled back the fee hike, one had a surplus of Rs 15 crore while another had a surplus of Rs 5 crore.

"I hope we don't have to take over. Today, we intend to send out a message to the managements of those schools to implement the recommendations", Kejriwal said.

Sisodia said the government was keeping a watch on everything and would verify cases where schools had claimed to have returned fees.

ALSO READ |

Kapil Mishra mocks Kejriwal on Delhi CM's birthday with 'Sonu' song parody

Delhi: Government school to grant admission to 24 kids who knocked CM Kejriwal's door

Kejriwal says AAP will support Gopalkrishna Gandhi in vice-presidential polls

ALSO WATCH VIDEO | Kapil Mishra tries to meet Arvind Kejriwal at janta darbar

--- ENDS ---
(Agencia CMA Latam) - Argentina will soon resume importing pork from the United States for the first time since 1992, according to reports.

The announcement came a few days after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited Argentinean President Mauricio Macri in Buenos Aires.

According to a White House statement, the United States is the world's leading exporter of pork, and this agreement opens a potential market of $ 10 million per year for American pork producers.

Argentina has blocked imports of pork from the United States since 1992, citing animal problems. Under the terms of the agreement, all fresh, chilled and frozen pork and pork products from United States animals will be eligible for export to Argentina.

Also, the White House said that the United States remains focused on expanding trade in other agricultural products between both countries, particularly beef, poultry and fresh fruits.

by Agencia CMA Latam

For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com

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Floods have submerged NH-28A at various places, snapping links of Motihari with Bettiah and Raxaul.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: The flood situation in Bihar's East Champaran deteriorated further on Friday as flood water entered Motihari town creating panic amongst the residents. Overnight rains led to further swelling of the Burhi Gandak river in Motihari after which water made its way into the town.

Dr Rajesh Asthana, a noted physician in town, woke up to a rude shock in the morning to find his house submerged under water by at least 2 feet.

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"When we woke up in the morning we saw that flood water had entered our house. In all the rooms the water had entered and we don't know how to stay in such condition," said Dr Rajesh Asthana, a local in Motihari.

It is notable that water in Burhi Gandak river flowed above the danger mark and showed no signs of declining. The flood water also submerged NH-28A at various places, snapping links of Motihari with Bettiah and Raxaul. Due to NH-28A getting submerged under water, essential items like cooking gas cylinders loaded in trucks halted at Motihari, unable to navigate to Bettiah and Raxaul. Several locals from nearby villages also came to the NH where the truck had stopped, battling the flood, to take delivery of the cooking gas cylinders.

"I have come carrying empty cylinder on my shoulder for 10 kms to take delivery of the new cylinder. There is crisis of cylinder as the trucks are unable to go to their destination," said Rajesh Kumar, a local.

With the death toll in the Bihar flood rising to 119 and more than 90 lakh people displaced, the woes for the flood affected people is unlikely to end soon.

AIR FORCE IN RESCUE AND RELIEF OPERATIONS

Indian Air Force helicopters are in action to conduct extensive flood relief operations in Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh since the last four days. The choppers are operating from Gorakhpur airbase.

A total flying effort of 58 sorties has been undertaken till date to provide relief to the flood-affected areas. 23 tonnes of food packets have been dropped in various parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

(Additional inputs from Manjeet Singh Negi)

Also read:

Bihar floods: Railway tracks go 4 feet under water in East Champaran

Bihar floods: Death toll rises to 98, exams postponed, trains cancelled

Also watch:

Bihar: Viral video shows how 3 of a family get washed away with a bridge in Araria

--- ENDS ---

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By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 19 (PTI) The Congress today hit back at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for targeting Rahul Gandhi over his visit to Gorakhpur, saying the eastern Uttar Pradesh town was not a "picnic spot", but "a spot of virtual murder".

AICC spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said the chief minister was the Lok Sabha member from Gorakhpur where the tragedy took place, and accused him of reducing the debate over medical negligence to such "cheap politicking".

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"He has insulted the sacred memory of those helpless and poor children who died, by reducing the debate to such cheap politicking as a picnic spot.

"I will leave for the people of India to judge whether in an anxiety to score political point over Rahul Gandhi, has he not reduced this whole, serious, terrible and tragic episode to a farce and grossly insulted the memory of those children," he told reporters.

Singhvi was responding to the remarks made by Adityanath after launching a cleanliness campaign in the district to tackle the deadly encephalitis outbreak in the wake of death of 71 children at BRD Medical College.

"I feel that the shehzada sitting in Lucknow ..yuvraj sitting in Delhi will not know the importance of this cleanliness campaign. They will come here to make it a picnic spot, we cannot permit it," Adityanath said, referring to Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Gandhi.

Gorakhpur was not a picnic spot, instead it "has been turned into a murderous spot by utter negligence, lack of accountability and total callousness", Singhvi alleged.

"It is a spot of virtual murder. The chief ministers statement is objectionable and insulting," he added.

The Congress leader said it was the spot where hundreds of children seemed to be dying, whereas "business as usual" was the answer charted out by the entire Yogi Adityanath government.

Hitting back at the chief minister for his barb, Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar said it only reflected the "pettiness" and "panic" over Gandhis visit.

"The chief minister took no action and he wants to divert the issue...he is belittling the position that he holds by such petty statements...Rahulji has come here to share the the pain of the poor...but asking why he has come only indicated the pettiness of the chief minister and panic that his visit will ensure justice," Babbar said.

Babbar, along with other senior leaders including Ghulam Nabi Azad and RPN Singh, accompanied Gandhi.

The Congress vice-president visited the villages to meet families of the children who lost their lives and assured full support, besides taking up the matter with officials concerned to check the recurrence of the deadly disease.

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The Congress has targeted the Yogi Adityanath government over the deaths following allegations that the children who were critically ill succumbed due to oxygen shortage. PTI SKC SMN

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United Nations, Human Rights experts who are in Samoa for a 10-day fact-finding mission, have concluded an open dialogue on taboo subjects, the meaning of the Samoan way of life (Faasamoa) and ensuring womens rights to equality within the family.

The Working Group yesterday held a press conference at Taumeasina Island Resort and presented the media with the preliminary report on numerous issues pertaining to the rights of women.

The delegation is led by Kamala Chandrakirana, who currently heads the U.N. Working Group on Discrimination against Women.

Another Human Rights expert, Eleonora Zielinska said they visited Apia and the villages of Poutasi and Vavau.

Consultations was held with representatives of the Salani, Sapoe, Utulaelae, Siuniu, Salesatele, Salelesi communities as well as Government officials, representatives of State institutions, civil society organizations, individuals, religious leaders and academics.

Chandrakirana said: We welcome the adoption of laws that honour Samoas constitution and international human rights obligations regarding discrimination against women and gender-based violence, in particular the criminalization of domestic violence, the legal guarantee of employment equality, and the constitutional requirement for minimum quotas of women in parliament.

However, these laws cannot be fully effective unless womens sexual and reproductive rights are met and they are economically empowered.

Furthermore, it was pointed out that addressing the root causes of violence against women will require a major shift in cultural perceptions about women and their place in society.

The experts said many Samoans had been profoundly shocked by a recent government report revealing the scale of gender-based violence.

Ms. Chandrakirana points out the significant efforts have already been put into changing cultural perceptions, with encouraging results, but major leaps are still necessary.

There is still a huge need for open dialogue on taboo subjects and on the meaning of the Samoan way of life (faasamoa) and ensuring womens right to equality within the family.

This cannot happen without the leadership of government and other local stakeholders, including community and religious leaders, alongside women and men at all levels of society, she said.

According to Ms. Chandrakirana, Samoa is only at the beginning of a long journey.

There is a sense of urgency in making necessary reforms in the nations laws, policies and institutions to address these changes, while tensions and contradictions in social, cultural and political practice abound.

With a growing youth population, this is the right time to fully honour womens rights by ending gender-based violence, while tackling some of the misunderstandings about human rights, recognizing that family life is at the core of Samoan society.

The experts urged new policies including a state-sponsored social welfare system, full support for women and girls who had suffered sexual or physical violence, and better funding for the civil society groups making an immense contribution despite limited resources.

The Working Group will present as full report including recommendations to the UN Human Rights Council in June 2018.
Vaiala Beach School students really know their Science, and whats more, they can tell you all about it.

This is the second year that the school has held a Science Fair and the quality of all their projects has really impressed the judges, the teachers, parents and peers.

There were 75 entries from Years 5, 6, 7 and 8 and each were given a timeframe of ten weeks to complete their projects.

Annie Meredith, the Year 8 teacher and organizer of the event was really proud of the students achievements.

This is the second year we have had the Fair and we have extended it and made it better than last year.

The quality of work is better this year because now they have had a years experience of working on projects so its definitely improved.

This years Science Fair was held over two days and what we did on Wednesday, was that all the students presented their projects to the panel of judges. That was just for our students, we didnt invite parents, so it was just for us.

Last year, the Fair was only on one day and they didnt really have a lot of time to talk about their work because it was just such a busy day so whats happened this year, on Wednesday every child stood up saying This is my project, I had to find out this ., you know that kind of stuff.

The students stood by their projects and all the younger students came up and again, they had to explain their project. We even got adults coming in.

The judges were just so impressed with the quality so it was really great.

According to Annie, there is no doubt that these students will be some of Samoas scientists in the future considering the quality of their work witnessed by the judges and everyone else who attended the event.

These are the future scientists of Samoa, Annie said confidently.

I would like to do it again and then approach some other schools and do a combined Samoan schools competition, I would love that to happen. I would also like to see it get more sponsorship.

This is a celebration of Science and students exploring parts of everyday life. It is about learning but more importantly sharing with others what you have found out. For students to stand by their projects and explain to teachers, parents and their peers what they have discovered, is when the learning becomes real. Students were proud of their work and some are already talking about what they will do next year.

The judges were just as excited as the school to see how well the kids had worked to put their projects together and presented it extremely well to the public.

Christine Tuioti, a technical officer at Samoa Conservation Society who was one of the judges said, As someone who works in the environmental organization, its really good to see the line of thinking and Ive mentioned this yesterday after the presentations.

It was great to see that youre growing from your experiences.

Fellow judge, Cherelle Jackson from Conservation International, agreed commenting that the standard of the Year 7 projects were very high and it was not easy to pick the winner.

Principal, Lorraine Williams said she was proud of every students science project; whether they had received an award or not. In her eyes, every student deserved prizes for their work because they were really good.

One of the Year 7 students, Rosa Meredith was delighted with this years Science Fair and she is ready for next year.

I like the Science Fair because I like doing a big project.

Usually in school we have to write a story but I like doing the Science Fair because we get to actually get to do it and I like presenting my work. I have already started thinking a bit about what Im going to do next year.
A work release programme is in the pipeline for inmates in Samoa, says the Minister of Prison and Correction Services, Tialavea Tionisio Hunt.

In an interview with the Samoa Observer, Tialavea said the issue has been discussed amongst the stakeholders and its something the government is seriously looking at.

It will allow certain inmates who are sufficiently trusted or can be sufficiently monitored, to leave the confinement of prison to work at a place of employment and return to the prison when their shift is completed.

There are numerous benefits from this programme. This will allow gradual reintegration of inmates back into the community, they will be gainfully employed they can save some money and its mainly for rehabilitation and then reintegration into society, said Tialavea.

However one major hiccup is the lack of legislation that would allow this type of programme to be implemented.

There is no law which legally allows inmates to be released so that is something we have to work on, he said.

This work release programme was developed in New Zealand as well as American Samoa and other countries around the world and I dont see why we cant have it here.

This is a form of rehabilitation for the inmates.

We are looking at allowing them to leave the prison at 6am and return back to prison at 6pm, he said. This not only benefits the inmate, but also the prison, because we are looking at gaining some revenue from this.

The inmate is allowed to work, and on pay day, he or she gets 50% of the wages and the prison gets the other 50%. The funds will be additional income and its a win-win situation for all parties involved.

The Minister made it clear they will not just allow any inmate on the work release programme.

An inmate must meet established criteria in order to be considered for work placement. The inmate must have a clean disciplinary report and their crime must also be classified as one for community custody. In addition, the inmate must be trustworthy.

Yes this is a risk that we will take each day but thats how things work. Decisions are risks and risks are a must - not only for the good of the programme and the inmates but also the Prison Service, said Tialavea.

In overseas countries which have incorporated this programme, although community work would be too mild a sentence for crimes of great magnitude, the programme can be included as part of the overall package of convict rehabilitation and restoration.

The appeal of community work/release lies in the greater public support it gets and also from the fact that such a programme does not impinge on human rights considerations and the basic dignity of the sentenced individual, while at the same time guaranteeing the safety and protection of the civil society. These are some of the strengths of community work programmes.
The Samoa Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with the Samoa In-country Training Programme of the Oloamanu Centre for Professional Development and Continuing Education of NUS, hosted a 5 half day course on Credit Management and Debt Recovery this past week.

The training was delivered by Susan Piket of Barbican Training Center in New Zealand.

There were 21 participants from various businesses who took part and many gave positive feedback.

Retta Maua of Skyeye found the training to be very helpful, it gave me some ideas on how to do my job better.

The trainer was well prepared and I look forward to more training opportunities.

Elena Tuala of the Development Bank of Samoa stated, It was a great opportunity to share knowledge with people from different organizations to help develop new ideas  it also provided networking opportunities.

I was satisfied with the training and I hope to be selected to attend more in the future.

The Samoa In-Country Training Program Manager, Sooialo Sydney Faasau congratulated the participants on completing the course. Lemauga Hobart Vaai CEO of the Samoa Chamber of Commerce encouraged participants, to utilise the weeks training and activate what they have learnt in the work place.

The Samoa Chamber of Commerce and Industry would like to acknowledge our development partners, NZMFAT and AUSDFAT, through the Samoa Education Sector Plan budget support to the NUS, as well as the SICTP Manager, Sooalo Sydney Faasau and his team for making this training possible.
Till yesterday, the death toll in the BRD hospital was 71 and were said to have been due to various causes including encephalitis and an alleged shortage of oxygen.

By India Today Web Desk: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has arrived in Gorakhpur in connection with the deaths of children in the BRD medical college hospital where the toll has gone up to 72 since August 7.

Till yesterday, the death toll in the BRD hospital was 71 and were said to have been due to various causes including encephalitis and an alleged shortage of oxygen.

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Six encephalitis-related deaths were reported between August 12 and August 14, while five encephalitis-related deaths were reported from August 15 to August 16.

Earlier, UP Health Minister Sidharth Nath Singh had said that 60 children died due to various diseases since August 7.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is also on a one day visit to Gorakhpur to inaugurate 'Swachch Uttar Pradesh - Swasthya Uttar Pradesh campaign' which will be carried out between August 20-25 in all the districts.

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has suggested a CBI probe be conducted into the children deaths along with all the other ongoing probes to ascertain the reasons leading to the tragedy.

Also Read:

From the Magazine: Gorakhpur hospital tragedy: What killed those 70 children?

Gorakhpur hospital deaths: Inquiry report blames oxygen supplying firm, 2 doctors

--- ENDS ---
The president and owner of McDonalds Restaurant, Tautolo Aogaleatu Charlie Tautolo is a man on a mission.

There is currently one McDonalds in Samoa located in the heart of Apia. However Tautolo intends to add three more including one in Savaii. They are also expanding their restaurant in Apia.

We are expanding it to reflect the latest global model of McDonalds, making it a 121-seat eatery.

We will have a McCafe inside and we are looking at remodeling and replacing all the equipment to reflect the latest model of McDonald restaurants globally.

We will install new equipment for the kitchen and it will be a made-for-you on the spot type of restaurant upon completion of the refurbishment, said Tautolo.

We never cook the meat unless its ordered, that is how the new system will work. And this will eliminate waste of food and also the customer will have a hot, fresh burger, he said.

That is not all.

McDonalds will soon open a second restaurant at the Faleolo International Airport.

We have got a piece of land there and we will have a free stand type of restaurant where the public can place an order through the window.

And this is due to space constraints inside the airport.

We cannot open a big one, nonetheless that restaurant will be open 24-7, explained Tuatolo.

The target of the new branches once it opens will offer options for customers on that side of the island as well as those in Savaii, said Tautolo.

They are also looking at having a further restaurants in Salelologa and Vaitele.

These are the future plans of McDonalds restaurant, he said.

Regarding the renovations, which Tautolo said they will take up to seven months to complete.

Tautolo bought the Apia McDonalds Restaurant from Joe Keil and hes also the owner of two McDonalds in American Samoa.

This week, Tautolo donated $100,000 to the SAMoa Events Inc., to assist with expenses for the upcoming pageant where there are nine contestants vying for the Miss Samoa 2017 crown.
A young couple who spent almost three weeks in Samoa says theyve had the best holiday.

Michael Obrien and partner Georgina Valention heard about Samoa by word of mouth.

It was through some friends that have nagged at us to come and visit.

Also we have already been to Raro and Fiji, so when we planned our holiday we were looking for a place that we had never been before and so we wanted to try something different.

We wanted to see more about the culture and find out a little bit about the history of Samoa.

To be honest we hadnt heard about it until we came to New Zealand so we thought wed just check it out before we go back to England.

Mr. Obrien also offered some advice for the tourism industry.

A little bit that needs to be improved are the buses, he said.

Just to make sure that they go all the way around the island. I mean the buses in town are fine but the ones that go through Lalomanu didnt really get us to where we wanted to go.

So I think that needs to be improved. Its not a major thing but some people expect more when they come around the Pacific to visit.

Also the fales booking system needs to be tidied up because a lot of them are advertising but it seems like old school with the phones and stuff. Weve gone to some fales that we can just get on facebook and message them and they pick us up.

Those small things we reckon need a little bit of improvement but thats it!

Nothing else.

Weve had a really good experience and weve loved it. We are really happy that we came.

After three weeks, the couple will be departing today.

And one of the things they will miss, is the food.

Palusami did it for them, they said.

In fact pretty much all the local food delighted them.

We loved the Samoan food. We developed a taste for the taro chips but we really loved the palusami, said Ms. Valentino.

We havent really had any grilled fish so maybe the resorts can provide more seafood as well because this is one of the tourists favorite foods - fish.

We also loved the bananas and the Masi Popo.

Part of our trip was a couple of days in Savaii where we hired a scooter and just stopped at places along the way.

We saw most of the island and we had a good holiday.

We have friends in New Zealand who weve told about our trip and now they want to come over to get the best feeling and relax here in Samoa.
It is hard to believe that its 2017 and the lack of water and electricity still exists in Samoa

The question is:

Why has this become a common issue these days?

For Gaoa Semi, 50 of Tuanai Tai, knows it well because his family experiences the same issue.

Mr. Gaoa told the village voice, he can live without electricity but for water, it is a must.

The 50 year old expresses his concerns to the Village Voice, about living in forestry area without water.

This has been happening for a very long time now; to be honest it has become very tiring

Most of us living in the coastal part of the village have plantation in the forestry area.

And this is where we get most of our earnings from, our plantation. Therefore, how can we develop our agricultural estate if we dont have water, said the concerned citizen.

Something has to be done.

Moreover, the 50 year old elaborated on how their Village Mayor and Member of Parliament have sent a request to government for water supply long time ago. However, up till now, they still havent got any answers from them.

Our pulenuu requested the government to fix our water pipes, to allow the government water to reach our homes in the forestry areas.

And to date, we have not heard from the government. This is their priority, yet it appears our plea has fallen on deaf ears.

It is very disappointing because we have been waiting for years for a miracle to happen, he said.

For Gaoa the plantation is what his family relies on most of the time. Water is vital, it is a daily necessity and people need it for living in this world and so as plants.

In order for their crops to grow well, water is very much needed.

Well I dont really care about not having electricity because there are many other ways to get the light in the dark.

I wish I could say the same for water. Water is vital to me and my plantation.

We have been urged by the government to utilize the lands yet they are not doing their part.

According to Gaoa, their only option to get water is the rain or fetches it from families living in the coastal area of the village.

As you can see, Im getting old and my strength is not the same. I hope the government will consider our plea on this newspaper and act accordingly, said Gaoa.
The Minister of Public Enterprises, Lautafi Fio Purcell has leapt to the defence of the Samoa Airways logo following criticism and numerous public complaints.

Citing costs and priority spending, Lautafi reassured the public that they will change their opinions once they see it on the tail of the plane.

The logo of Samoas new international airline was revealed two weeks ago and it is a picture of a coconut tree.

Responding to the Sunday Samoan questions, Lautafi said: We dont have money to spend on expensive aircraft paint. We are saving those funds for operation costs."

However the logo on the airplane will be much more effective and eye catching than the logo itself, once its painted on our newly-leased plane.

Regardless of what people are nagging and complaining about, they will have a different opinion once this logo is slapped onto the tail of the plane."

The coconut, signifies the Pacific. Although our national flower is the teuila, but we have opted for the coconut, because this showcases all of the Pacific Islands."

We want to portray the Pacific and attract more tourists, because in their minds, they want to hang under swinging palm trees and that is our coconut trees."

No one knows what a Teuila is, so again, its all about prioritizing what is more important and that is to provide an adequate service to our people through our new airline."

We cannot do that if we spend $100,000 USD on one paint, because that is how much it cost, said the Minister.

Lautafi reiterated, We would rather spend money in the service department than to try and please everyone who is complaining about the plain looking logo.

He told the Sunday Samoan, the airplane is leased and once the lease expires, they have to repaint the whole plane back to its original colour and again, the costs are relatively high.

So we dont want to spend so much money on it, he said.

The Minister admitted that an explanation should have been offered to the public regarding the concept of the logo, however due to time constraints, they didnt do that.

The Minister also confirmed Samoa Airways tickets are currently up for sale. Samoa Airways first international flight taking to the skies on 12 November, 2017.

An official with Samoa Airways told the Sunday Samoan the minimum cost of a one colour paint job for a 737 will run in excess of $150,000 USD. Aircraft paints are highly specialized and cannot be compared to the paint used to paint vehicles or buildings.

These paints are applied to the exteriors and are designed to be airborne."

There are also aircraft pre-treatments, topcoat / basecoat / clear coat paints, primers etc. things the public dont understand about yet they are complaining too much. These are issues they have no clue about, said the Samoa Airways official.

As reported earlier, the logo which acknowledges the airlines origins and links, features an adapted version of the iconic coconut tree which since 1959 had been the symbol of the National Carrier.

In a press statement issued by Samoa Airways, claims they are the first and still the only carrier in the South Pacific to use the coconut tree in their branding.

In the past, copra was a key part of Samoas economy and today the humble coconut and its numerous value-added by-products together with tourism, play a vital role in Samoas social and economic development."

For Samoans, the coconut tree has its many uses and like the growth trajectory of the tree of life, it also represents the resilience and versatility of Samoans to punch above their weight and proudly take their place on the global stage.

To visitors, the coconut tree invokes images of warm tropical weather, beautiful beaches and a luxuriant Pacific environment which Samoa has in abundance.

Combined with its age-old culture and way of life, its these simple pleasures and authentic experiences which draw many visitors to Beautiful Samoa.

These key elements provide the basis for Samoa Airways aspirations which are to build a solid foundation for the National Airline enabling it to compete successfully on the global stage, to connect the global Samoan diaspora to the motherland and to be a major player in driving tourism growth, in collaboration with key partners, through the promotion of Samoa as a premium visitor destination.

The airlines logo prominently features SAMOA and uses the three colours of the Samoan flag.
The Chinese Embassy hosted a farewell reception for 22 students who have been awarded scholarships to study in China.

Samoas Chinese Ambassador, H.E. Wang Xuefeng congratulated all the students who are making the journey to China to further their studies in universities in various cities.

You have won the scholarship with your hard work and your academic excellence, Mr. Xuefang said.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Samoa for the strong support and assistance in the implementation of the Chinese Scholarships programme over the years."

This year, just as every year in the past, the best candidates for the scholarships have been selected.

Both China and Samoa attach great importance to education and the practical cooperation in the field of education.

The government of China has been granting scholarships to Samoan students since 1982."

Up to now, Chinese Government have supported over 230 Samoan students on full scholarships to gain their degrees in China, said the Ambassador.

Apart from the scholarships, China has been actively engaging in the development of human resources and has provided a large number of training opportunities for Samoa every year, he said.

One of the students, Bertha Amosa thanked the government of China on behalf of the students for all the opportunities afforded to them.

These golden opportunities are the fruition of each of our dreams and goals as we enter adulthood to attain what we want in life, said Bertha.

The Chinese government will never be forgotten in our hearts and we will love China like our own country as it will be our home and our people for the next five years.
Samoa Breweries hosted a tasting of their newly-available alcoholic product called MONI at their headquarters at Vaitele on Friday.

MONI consists of five different flavours including, Le Moana (Blue), Le Afi (Red) , Le La (Yellow), Le Mauga (Green) and Le Masina (White).

The new product will diversify the options Samoa already has available and will add that extra, island flavour.

According to staff, the different colours to choose from, have their own meanings.

Blue shows strong desire to influence others so that they lead more significant lives. People who choose blue do well motivating and interacting with others and also seek harmonious relationships, are true romantics who believe in love that lasts forever.

Red is a single most dynamic and passionate colour and symbolizes love, rage and courage and the desire to experience the fullness of living leads to constant activity.

Yellow is truly joyous and radiant colour.

It signifies communication, enlightment, sunlight and spirituality. Choosing yellow means you are Intellectual high imaginative and idealistic, you have a cheerful spirit and an expectation of greater happiness.

And if you are always seeking knowledge and understanding, Green is the right one for you.

Goodness purity and innocence comes from White because it seeks excellence and enlightenment in all values. And just as black signifies total absorption, white is total reflection.

The five different flavours are now distributed and available at many of Samoa Breweries outlets shops and supermarket in the country at very affordable prices.
Ive always admired Mazdas engineering grit. Its masterminds of drivability and function always find a fresh algorithm between the rock and a hard place.

Some of this problem solving is felt in the almost all-new 2017 CX-5 SUV. The substantial midcycle refresh of Mazdas top-selling model marks the models second generation. The new CX-5 has about the same footprint as before but is a hair longer, lower and wider while rolling on the same 106.2 inch wheelbase. It is in the compact class but feels midsize for cabin roominess.

Mazda says it left no bolt unturned (more than 250 fixes) in updating the 2017 CX-5. Some of refinements include more  much more  soundproofing materials, a 15-percent stiffer chassis and a suspension recalibrated for a more compliant ride with less road noise transferred to the cabin.

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A much quieter cabin comes from new door and window seals, tighter fitting window channels, a tighter gap between lower door and body and a felt-lined plastic undercover. There is a more sound-absorptive headliner and more insulation behind door panels, roof-support pillars and inside the rear hatch. There also is more out-of-sight carpet coverage and a sound blocker between the back seat and cargo cover. Its all about the conversation between front- and back-seat occupants.

The windshield pillars were pulled back by about an inch and a third (35mm) for greater visibility over the fenders in cornering  and for seeing pedestrians in crosswalks. Sightlines are good over the hood and fenders and what cant be seen over the shoulder is visible on the rearview camera with guidance lines.

There are more soft-touch materials and a more premium appearance and feel to the materials. But it is still a working environment to haul kids and cargo without crying over scratched plastic or spilled coffee.

The five-seat CX-5 is sold in three trim levels with front- or all-wheel drive, a 187-horsepower, 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine and a six-speed automatic transmission. Starting prices range from $24,985 to $31,635 for the Grand Touring AWD; pricing includes the $940 freight charge from Hiroshima, Japan.

The front-drive Grand Touring tester was $32,785 with four option groups.

All models also get Mazdas G-Vectoring Control, a sophisticated stability system that uses software to control spin-outs by modulating throttle input, engine braking and steering-angle sensors. Youll appreciate this system when making a too-hot exit into a big loop. The system helps keep the front tire patch in control and prevent a spin out due to lack of grip.

I like the larger displacement of the engine (vs. turbocharging a smaller engine) because the acceleration is unhesitating and the transmission gives eager and easy shifts when power is needed. Fuel economy estimates are 24 mpg city, 31 highway and 27 mpg combined, on 87 octane. I was averaging almost 27 mpg in a week of driving. The 14.8-gallon tank (15.3 on AWD models) will allow a 400 mile cruising range.

There is a stronger sense of control behind the wheel, not that the previous model felt flimsy. Steering, braking and acceleration all work together for absolute response  from pedal down to cornering control. Four-wheel disc brakes have confident grip from 11.7-inch vented front rotors, 11.9-inch solid rotors rear. The turning circle is a little wide at 38.7 feet but still competitive with others in the segment.

The chassis has good bones that wont rattle your bones. Some Mazda suspensions can be sporty firm and while I expected more of the same on this CX-5 it was a credible formula of around-town comfort, forgiving highway smoothness and surprisingly capable cornering (for an SUV). Even the front-drive models ride high, but the big air space between the top of the tire and the fender wheelhouse did not predispose it to tippiness in turning or braking. Thats the finesse of Mazda engineering.

Front seat space is roomy with a tall 39.3 inches of headroom (or 39.7 without the moonroof). The driver faces a quick read of the three-gauge layout and confidence is communicated from the sturdy, three-spoke steering wheel, with controls for phone, cruise and the onboard computer. The front doors have a grab point ideally placed for maximum leverage. Fabric-wrapped visors have extenders and covered, lighted mirrors.

Sightlines are open over the fender and not restricted over the shoulder, but the broad angle of the rearview mirror is a big help when backing up.

The broad center console has an open bin with a 12-volt plug for charging and a central controller to dig deep into music, phone, navi and other car settings. It can be a distracting struggle to page through, such as when seeking a radio channel. But there are dials and buttons for temperature-fan-vents and audio volume.

The center console has pint-sized storage and a pair of USBs with another 12-volt plug. But the console is positioned far back in the console so its not comfy for all and could benefit from a sliding top, though it likely would interfere with access to the smallish cup holders.

The back seat doors open wider (re-engineered) for more foot space on entry-exit and more elbow room to wrestle a childs car seat into the safe position. The 60/40 split back seat reclines and has very long legroom of 39.6 inches. New this year are rear AC vents and two rear USB ports, tucked away in the fold-down rest, but a grab tab would help to pull-down the armrest.

The cargo area has 30.9-59.6 cubic feet of space, which translates to an area that is 40 inches wide, by 31 inches tall by about 5 1/2 feet of length.

Every carmaker has an entry in this compact SUV crossover category now. Mazdas differentiator is the same as it as for all Mazdas: sporty driving  but now the CX-5 is just a little sweeter to drive.

2017 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring FWD

Body style : compact 5-seat, SUV crossover, in front- or AWD

: compact 5-seat, SUV crossover, in front- or AWD Engine : 187-hp, 2.5-liter 4-cylinder; 185 lb.-ft. torque at 3,250 rpm

: 187-hp, 2.5-liter 4-cylinder; 185 lb.-ft. torque at 3,250 rpm Transmission : 6-speed automatic

: 6-speed automatic Fuel economy: 24/31/27 mpg city/hwy/combined; 87 octane

SPECIFICATIONS

Fuel tank : 14.8* gal. *15.3 AWD

: 14.8* gal. *15.3 AWD Cargo space : 30.9-59.6 cu. ft.

: 30.9-59.6 cu. ft. Front head/leg/shoulder room : 39.3*/41/57.1 in. *39.7 without moonroof

: 39.3*/41/57.1 in. *39.7 without moonroof Rear head/leg/shoulder room : 39/39.6/54.8 in.

: 39/39.6/54.8 in. Length/wheelbase : 179.1/106.2 in.

: 179.1/106.2 in. Curb weight : 3,527 (3,655 AWD) lbs.

: 3,527 (3,655 AWD) lbs. Turning circle : 38.7 ft.

: 38.7 ft. Tow capacity: 2,000 lbs.

FEATURES

Standard equipment includes : smartkey locking with push-button ignition, rearview camera, parchment-colored leather-trimmed upholstery, 19-inch alloy wheels, eight-way power drivers seat with lumbar, 6-way manual front passenger seat, LED fog lights and taillights, 7-inch color touchscreen, navigation system, command control knob, Bluetooth phone and audio, 4 USB port (2 front, 2 rear), carpeted floor mats, electric parking brake, heated side mirrors with turn signals, power liftgate, 19-inch alloy wheels, radar cruise control

: smartkey locking with push-button ignition, rearview camera, parchment-colored leather-trimmed upholstery, 19-inch alloy wheels, eight-way power drivers seat with lumbar, 6-way manual front passenger seat, LED fog lights and taillights, 7-inch color touchscreen, navigation system, command control knob, Bluetooth phone and audio, 4 USB port (2 front, 2 rear), carpeted floor mats, electric parking brake, heated side mirrors with turn signals, power liftgate, 19-inch alloy wheels, radar cruise control Safety features include: 6 air bags, ABS with brake-force distribution and brake assist, stability and traction controls, hill-start assist, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, lane-departure warning, lane-keep assist, Smart City brake support

PRICING
A woman who police say was under the influence of alcohol was injured early Saturday morning after crashing her car into two wooden utility poles in Escondido, police said.

The solo-vehicle crash happened about 2:45 a.m. on West Mission Avenue between Metcalf Avenue and Rock Springs Road, Escondido police Sgt. Chris Leso said.

The impact sheared both poles off, and the wreckage came to rest against a third pole.

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The street was shut down for much of the morning so that San Diego Gas & Electric workers could de-energize the electric lines and begin repairs on the electrical system.

The woman, whose name was not released, will face DUI and possibly other charges. She was taken to a hospital for treatment of numerous non-life threatening injuries, police said.

jharry.jones@sduniontribune.com; 760/529-4931; Twitter: @jharryjones
A longstanding proposal to trade city property along Carlsbad Boulevard for nearby land at the South Carlsbad State Beach campground is about to get another look.

City and state officials have talked about the idea before as a way to realign that section of Carlsbad Boulevard, also known as Highway 101, to the east to protect the road and the campground from high tides and the rising sea level. The trade also could improve access to the campground, consolidate a patchwork of separate properties and help create a linear city park along the coastal strip.

The land swap is back on the table, Mayor Matt Hall said during a City Council meeting Tuesday. We would like to get it done.

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This time freshman Councilwoman Cori Schumacher proposed the idea as a way to protect the state campground from coastal erosion. The average sea level at Carlsbad is expected to rise as much as 1.6 feet by 2050, and 6.6 feet by 2100, according to a city report.

Schumacher suggested the City Council appoint two of its members to an ad hoc committee that could work out the swap with state Department of Parks and Recreation officials. Her motion failed, but the council asked city staffers to review the history of negotiations with the state and return in less than three months with a report.

State parks officials also see a land swap as a way to protect this important campground from coastal erosion, said Robin Greene, San Diego district superintendent for the department.

We are definitely open to improving our communications and our relationship, Greene said. We are interested in looking at all the options.

One option may be for the state to buy the property it needs for the campground if no trade can be worked out, she said.

The campground is on a narrow strip of land at the edge of tall, eroding bluffs between the Pacific Ocean and Carlsbad Boulevard. Just north of the campground, the road runs closer to the beach and high tides have eroded parts of the western shoulder in recent winters.

Most of the state-owned land proposed for the swap is in four unconnected chunks near the Palomar Airport Road intersection with Carlsbad Boulevard. Some of the properties are separated by the freeway-like approach ramps to the intersection that could be replaced by stop signs or a traffic circle if the highway were realigned.

The city-owned property stretches in a long narrow strip from the Palomar Airport Road intersection to south of Avenida Encinas. Some of that property would allow the campground to spread east from the eroding bluffs.

Another idea the city has talked about is a narrow linear park along Carlsbad Boulevard from the Encina power plant south to the city border at Leucadia. That proposal also could benefit from a land swap.

The state parks department owns about six of Carlsbads seven miles of coastline, including the campground on the citys southwestern end and the beach along the seawall between Oak and Tamarack avenues. Some of the coast along the Terramar neighborhood at the end of Cannon Road and nearly a mile from Oak Avenue to the Oceanside border are private property, although all the beach below the mean high tide line is public.

Since 2014, the city has had an agreement with the state to maintain the blufftop landscaping, the slope, public restrooms and other facilities on state property between Oak and Tamarack avenues.

That agreement is up for renewal and is expected to continue.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehl
Next March, a functioning miniature memory village for Alzheimers and dementia patients will open inside a Chula Vista warehouse. The 1950s-style Glenner Town Square, where patients will be able to shop, eat and interact with staff in the elaborate adult day care center, may be the first of its kind in the nation. It wont be the last.

This week, the creators of Glenner Town Square announced a development agreement with a Solana Beach partnership that plans to build as many as 100 more Town Squares in cities around the country in future years.

Michael Larkin, co-managing partner of Village Holdings LLC, said he and his partner, Bob Mueller, plan to open two more Town Squares next year in San Diego County. After that, theyll open about two to three of the $3 million centers each year, starting on the West Coast.

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Larkin said he and Mueller see a huge and growing need for elder-care options. More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimers disease, but thats figure is forecast to grow to as many as 16 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimers Association.

Glenner Town Square is the passion project of Scott Tarde, CEO of George G. Glenner Alzheimers Family Centers, a 35-year-old San Diego company that operates adult day care centers in Chula Vista, Hillcrest and Encinitas.

He describes Town Square as the new frontier for care of the elderly with memory-robbing diseases. Using the recognized technique known as reminiscence therapy, staff will move groups of elderly participants through the interactive village for guided interactions that spark and engage their long-term memories.

The 8,500-square-foot village  which will be constructed inside a 20,000-square-foot light industrial building with 24-foot ceilings on Main Street in Chula Vista  will include 13 storefronts surrounding a faux grass-lined park with benches.

Each 3-dimensional building will offer patients interactive experiences. Visitors can watch an old movie while munching fresh-popped popcorn inside the cinema, have a hot lunch in a 50s-style diner, browse books in the library, shop for handbags in the boutique, tinker on a real 1959 Ford T-Bird at the auto shop, cuddle shelter dogs at the pet store, and get a checkup from a real nurse and visit swaddled baby dolls in the nursery at the hospital.

To heighten the memory experience for the visitor, the local Town Squares will have San Diego-specific features, like a roof dome resembling Balboa Parks Museum of Man and an area designated as Old Town.

The interiors of each storefront will feature decor reminiscent of 1953 to 1961. Most of the elderly Alzheimers and dementia patients served by Glenner are in their 80s, and their most stable memories are those they acquired when they were 25-35. For these people, walking through an idealized San Diego from their prime years will generate positive recollections.

The first completed storefront, City Hall, looks like the 1938-era San Diego County Administration Center, and inside its doors, visitors can page through a set of leather-bound encyclopedias and tap on an old manual typewriter.

The lightweight but hyper-realistic storefronts and interiors are being built by San Diego Opera Scenic Studio. Since 1965, the operas master carpenters, metalworkers and painters have built more than 100 productions for San Diego Opera and other companies worldwide.

Although San Diego Opera recently announced plans to sell its scenic studio in Barrio Logan, the company said it plans to lease back a portion of the space for special projects like Glenner Town Square and scenery and prop work it does for trade shows like Comic-Con.

Tarde said Thursday that he envisions San Diego Opera building and shipping the scenery for all of the future Town Squares. Most of the sets will be generic, but some storefronts will be designed with memorable architectural features unique to each city.

San Diego Opera spokesman Edward Wilensky said the contract fulfills two major goals  to expand outreach to the community and to provide a stable revenue stream for the arts company, which survived a near-shutdown in 2014.

Glenners partnership with Larkin and Mueller grew out of the nonprofits boards desire to keep its resources focused on senior care rather than fundraising and construction. Under the agreement, Village Holdings will underwrite the expense of buying or constructing the warehouses that will house Town Squares. Glenner officials will lease and staff the centers once they open.

Tarde said Glenner has provided Village Holdings with an initial list of 50 locations for future centers, all but 10 in California. He said these cities were chosen, in part, because of their high cost of living.

People want to stay home longer and their adult children are looking for ways to lengthen the runway of their parents finances. Lots of families, given the choice, will keep their loved ones in their homes if they have a care option for their parents during the days when theyre at work or need a respite, Tarde said.

Larkin and Mueller, who both live in Solana Beach, have worked together on several development projects over the past six years, including a senior living complex thats now in the early stages of planning. Mueller has been in real estate development for 30 years. Larkin specializes in financing. He has worked in the past for Escalate Retail, GERS Inc. and General Electric.

Raising $300 million for 100 Town Square projects is achievable, Tarde and Larkin said, because the concept is so unique and the need is so great.

Once the doors are open, I know people will become believers, Tarde said. Ive seen what happens. Ive seen the reactions people have. Its very powerful.

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
The GJM chief and other leaders have been booked under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

By Indrajit Kundu: Just days after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh appealed to all stakeholders to kickstart a dialogue process to end the Gorkhaland impasse, fresh violence has broken out in the Darjeeling hills.

Following the incident, police booked Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) chief Bimal Gurung along with leaders Prakash Gurung, Praveen Subba and others. An FIR was filed at the Darjeeling Sadar Police Station.

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The GJM chief and other leaders have been booked under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

On Friday, a Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) party office was set ablaze in Lebong. In a similar incident, a state forest department office and bungalow was also set on fire in Badham Tam area.

Incidentally, residents in the hill town woke up to a loud explosion late on Friday night.

According to the police, a suspected Improvised Explosive Device (IED) went off near the old supermarket area damaging a few shops. However, no one has been injured in the incident.

Police have cordoned off the site of the explosion this morning and forensic teams have been sent to ascertain the nature of blast. The blast was said to be of a very high intensity.

"Our team reached there, and we are now inquiring about the incident. We think an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was used and we have received some technical inputs," said Darjeeling Police Superintendent Akhilesh Chaturvedi.

Incidentally, soon after the blast the GJM condemned it by terming it a well planned conspiracy to tarnish the Gorkhaland movement.

"We demand an impartial investigation by a high level enquiry committee. This is a conspiracy to tarnish the GJM leadership and disturb peace and law and order in the hills," a GJM statement said.

Meanwhile, it's been two months since the state government decided to suspend mobile internet services in the hills on June 19.

Also Read:

Gorkhaland stir: West Bengal Police digs who all GJM leaders called while Darjeeling burned

Gorkhaland unrest: Rajnath Singh appeals GJM to call off Darjeeling bandh

Darjeeling unrest: Gorkha Janmukti Morcha puts children at forefront in protest rally, yet again

ALSO WATCH | Gorkhaland Agitation: Mamata Banerjee government issues orders for mandatory attendance in offices

--- ENDS ---
With apologies to Winston Churchill: If the British Empire should last a thousand years, people will still say the Victorian Era was its funniest hour.

Not that those decades of repressive moral standards, rigid class barriers and rampant imperialism were necessarily such a pip to live through.

But theres plenty of comedy to mine from the fussy fashions (and attitudes) and foppish personalities of the time, and thats the territory Lambs Players Theatre artistic leader Robert Smyth goes tallyho-ing through with his breezily entertaining staging of Nell Benjamins The Explorers Club.

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Benjamin, whose other credits include the lyrics for Legally Blonde and the upcoming Mean Girls musical, sets the play in an ultra-stuffy London mens club, circa 1879.

Mike Buckleys sublime set design turns the place into the ultimate Victorian man cave, with acres of burnished, chocolately wood adorned with exotic animal skins and fronted by an elegant bar stocked with oodles of booze.

The joint is populated by a gaggle of scientists and self-styled thinkers who tell stories of supposed expeditionary glory, but seem more comfortable savoring cigars and brandy in their velvety smoking jackets (much credit to Jeanne Reith for the rich period costumes).

Lucius Fretway (Fran Gercke) is the clubs dithering president pro tem, in the absence of the allegedly heroic Harry Percy (Ross Hellwig), whos off to find the East Pole.

Professor Cope (Brian Mackey) is an excitable snake authority; Professor Walling (Omri Schein) is an even more excitable guinea-pig specialist; and Professor Sloane (Paul Eggington) is an archeo-theologist, by which expertise he has decided the Irish are actually the biblical Lost Tribes of Israel.

Their reaction when Sloane tells them that news forms one of the plays gleefully absurd plot machinations, as the club suddenly becomes the center of a brewing international incident.

Of maybe more concern to the members, though, is that Lucius wants to admit a new member, Phyllida Spotte-Hume (Jessica John), who  in addition to being an expert on the mysterious NaKong people of Nahatlabong  also happens to be a lady.

The mens dismissiveness toward her finds ideal comic expression in a crack by Percy, once he returns: They get these little whims. Thats why we call them women.

Phyllida, as it happens, has brought along a member of the NaKong: The blue-skinned Luigi, played to amusing effect by a near-silent John Rosen, stalking around in dreadlocks. (It should be said theres a vague, lingering discomfort to the plays inclusion of a stereotypical primitive, even of blue hue, set amid a cast with no actual actors of color. But a probing look at colonialism or viewpoints on race isnt really the plays aim.)

John is ideal as the savvy Phyllida as well as her conniving countess twin, who pops in later; Charles Evans Jr. also gets fine comic mileage out of a couple of characters, including an explorer turned deadly monk named Beebe; and Brian Salmon steps in skillfully as the uppity queens man Humphries.

Its a well-acted show all around, with moments of winning stage business (check the running gag of Luigi slinging drinks right off the bar into the lunging grasp of the club members).

But its Hellwigs Percy  whose noble Shakespearean namesake belies his not-so-intrepid exploits  who kind of steals the thing with his clueless, creed-free enthusiasm.

Hes just the man you want along when the East Pole calls.

The Explorers Club

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays (plus 2 p.m. most Wednesdays); 8 p.m. Fridays; 4 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Through Sept. 24.

Where: Lambs Players Theatre, 1142 Orange Ave, Coronado.

Tickets: $24-$72

Phone: (619) 437-6000

Online: lambsplayers.org

jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @jimhebert
A former Navy captain pleaded guilty in San Diego federal court Friday to accepting bribes in the sprawling Fat Leonard corruption scandal, the latest of nearly two-dozen current or former officers and officials ensnared in the wide-ranging probe.

Jesus Vasquez Cantu, 59, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit bribery, admitting he accepted gifts from Leonard Glenn Fat Leonard Francis, the ship servicing contractor who orchestrated a decades-long scheme that corrupted officers and defrauded the Navy out of millions of dollars.

In a plea agreement he acknowledged that in 2012 and 2013, when he served as Deputy Commander for the Military Sealift Command in Singapore, he accepted gifts of fancy meals, posh hotel rooms and the services of prostitutes all paid for by Francis, chief executive of Glenn Defense Marine Asia.

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In return Cantu gave Francis proprietary Navy information and advocated on behalf of Glenn Defense inside the Navy.

That work included giving Francis internal Navy information on another ship servicing company that competed with Francis. He also labored to get the Navy to approve some Glenn Defense charges for a 2013 port visit in Thailand that some in the service were disputing, and providing him with the proprietary, internal daily cost to the Navy for operating a Military Sealift Command ship at sea.

Cantu, who lives in Silverdale, Wash., is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 9. The charge carries a maximum term of five years in prison, but he is likely to receive less than that.

His lawyer, Douglas Applegate, did not respond to a message seeking comment.

In 2007, Cantu served as the assistant chief of staff for the Navys Seventh Fleet. In his plea he acknowledged that from February 2007 to July 2007 he was part of a group of officers who accepted bribes of meals, hotel stays and prostitutes from Francis that totaled $135,000.

The plea agreement only refers to others but in a news release the U.S. Attorney in San Diego said that Cantus 2007 conduct was linked to an indictment unveiled in March that charged nine officers with bribery, conspiracy and other charges.

That group included retired Rear Admiral Bruce Loveless. All nine officers have pleaded not guilty.

The fleet patrols a huge part of the western Pacific Ocean, including southeast Asia where Franciss company worked in a network of ports.

Francis was arrested in 2013 and soon after pleaded guilty. Prosecutors say the corpulent businessman masterminded the scheme, which involved targeting and bribing Navy officials, then getting them to use their influence to get Navy ships to visit ports Francis controlled.

Once there he would systematically overcharge the Navy for all manner of services, from sewage disposal to fresh water, ground transpiration security and fuel. Hes acknowledged defrauding the Navy of $35 million.

So far 29 people, including 21 current or former Navy personnel, have been charged in the investigation, and 19 have pleaded guilty.

Twitter: @gregmoran

greg.moran@sduniontribune.com
So far, the story has belonged to the sharks.

Saturday was the 71st anniversary of the cruiser Indianapolis sinking. This tragedy is best remembered now  if remembered at all  for its role in the movie Jaws, when Quint (Robert Shaw) tells a grisly tale of sailors adrift for days in the Philippine Sea, some torn apart by frenzied sharks.

The "Indianapolis" monologue from "Jaws"

While Steven Spielbergs hit concentrated on a relentless man-eater, a new documentary by San Diegos Sara Vladic and Melanie Capacia Johnson focused on dauntless men.

They asked if I would be the one to tell their story, Vladic, 37, said of the Indianapolis crew, whose reunions she has attended since 2001. I said yes.

I had no idea what kind of undertaking that would be.

One measure of this tasks scope: Fifteen years later, the documentary Vladic directed and Johnson produced is finished.

USS Indianapolis: The Legacy, to be shown Sept. 14 at the Museum of Photographic Arts, draws on interviews with 100-plus survivors of the doomed warship. Hit by two torpedoes soon after midnight on July 30, 1945, the heavy cruiser sank in 12 minutes. About 200 sailors and Marines went down with the ship. Those who escaped the wreckage drifted for days in shark-infested waters.

View the Video Trailer: USS Indianapolis_ The Legacy

Of the 1,196 crew members, only 316 were rescued. Two of those died in hospital.

News of the worst disaster in the U.S. Navys history was withheld until Japans surrender more than two weeks later. While survivors were honored with a parade in San Diego, the Indianapolis ordeal was largely overlooked in a triumphant post-war America. Spielbergs 1975 thriller revived interest in the story, yet many elements  the ships valiant history, the crews courage, its skippers controversial fate  were obscured by images of dorsal fins and blood billowing beneath the waves.

Its important that people get past the Jaws monologue, said Richard Hulver, an historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command.

The Indianapolis becomes synonymous with shark attack, but this was a U.S. warship that is there for the entire Pacific War. In a way, it bookends World War II.

The Legacy, say those who caught it at this years Indianapolis reunion, restores the human element to this yarn.

It was really good, said Harold Bray Jr., 89, the youngest of the dwindling band of survivors.

Mystery crate

Members of the ships crew pose in the well deck, during World War II. Photograph was taken prior to her final overhaul (completed in July 1945), as life rafts are of a different pattern than carried after that overhaul. Photograph was received by the Naval Photographic Science Laboratory on 24 August 1945. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.

This story has been told and re-told numerous times, including Dan Kurzmans 1990 book, Fatal Voyage, and the 1991 made-for-TV movie, The Mission of the Shark. (A new film awaits a distributor: USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, with Nicholas Cage as the cruisers commanding officer, Capt. Charles McVay III.)

Launched in 1931, the 610-foot vessel was the 5th Fleets flagship for most of the war. Its guns shelled Japanese troops on the Aleutians, Kwajalein, Saipan, Peleliu, Tinian, Iwo Jima. Off Okinawa, it lost nine men and part of its fantail to a kamikaze attack.

The ship limped to Californias Mare Island for repairs, then embarked on a secret mission. In July 1945, it delivered a heavily guarded crate to U.S. airmen on Tinian. Sailors speculated about the mysterious contents. Was it a vat of whiskey? A Cadillac? 20,000 rolls of toilet paper?

They were all wrong. The crate held key components of Little Boy, the atomic bomb that within days would destroy Hiroshima.

Mission accomplished, the Indianapolis resupplied in Guam, then voyaged toward the Philippines. Halfway there, it was ambushed by the Japanese sub I-58.

The ship died so suddenly, 200 or more men went down with it. The rest leapt  or just stepped  over the side. I didnt jump off the ship, one survivor confesses in The Legacy. The ship left me.

No one could have predicted it at the time, but roughly 600 men who abandoned the Indianapolis would die in the water, victims of drownings, exposure, thirst and schools of sharks. The others, some in rafts and many supported only by life vests, waited and waited  almost five days total  for rescue.

I lost a lot of good friends, Bray said. The Navy kind of dropped the ball and lost a lot of innocent kids for no reason.

Those reasons also puzzled Sara Vladic, who as a Rancho Bernardo teen saw a documentary about the war. The Indianapolis received a passing reference  the focus, naturally, was on the sharks  but it was enough to capture the girls attention.

How could this happen? she wondered.

A better project

Melanie Capacia Johnson (left) and Sara Vladic produced the documentary USS Indianapolis: The Legacy.  Howard Lipin (Howard Lipin)

Growing up, Vladic had many interests. She surfed, competed on the Rancho Bernardo High School water polo and diving teams, loved movies, was fascinated by religion and history.

I really love history, I always have, she said. For me, every part of history has religion embedded in it.

At Pepperdine University, she studied film and theology. After graduating in 2001, she pursued the Indianapolis story, tracking down a survivor and his wife, Paul and Mary Lou Murphy of Colorado. They invited her to that summers reunion.

She attended and was soon immersed in the survivors stories. I started talking to them on the phone, quite a bit, she said. At the time, there were more than 100. They kind of became like grandparents to me.

These elderly men suffered nightmares of sharks circling rafts, tearing into screaming seamen, scraping against dangling legs  I was walking on their backs, one told Vladic. They also remember comrades uniting to fight the predators, protecting each other, sharing precious bites of food, sips of water, words of encouragement.

Their ordeal, many say, is often misrepresented. Mission of the Shark, a Shark Week staple, is especially reviled. A terrible, terrible movie, Bray said. All the facts were messed up.

Vladic, though, spent years interviewing the survivors, checking and re-checking her facts. Weve been friends for many years, Sara and our whole group, Bray said. Sara has worked on this for a long time.

This was a self-funded project, though, so Vladic couldnt work on it full time. She took other jobs with low-budget, lower brow movies. As production coordinator on horror flicks Transamerican Killer and Dark Moon Rising, she gained experience while making money and contacts.

Among the latter: Johnson, a Rancho Penasquitos native and the daughter of a Navy veteran. The two women met in the Nevada desert, working on a cinematic disaster  It was so bad, Johnson said  and dreaming of something better.

As it happened, Vladic had a worthy project in mind.

I was enthralled, Johnson said, so moved by her passion for this project.

Unlikely champion

The Indianapolis story exerts a magnetic pull on many people, in part due to the tragic fate of the ships skipper.

A court-martial convicted McVay of hazarding his ship by not zigzagging the night of the attack. He did not, noting that visibility was poor and his orders stated he was to zigzag at his own discretion. Moreover, the Japanese submarine commander  flown to the States to testify  insisted he would have sunk the ship regardless.

The Navy, too, seems to share some of the blame. Before the cruisers final voyage, McVays request for an escort was denied. Information about enemy submarine activity in the area was not shared with the ship.

And why did it take so long to rescue the survivors? Crew members insist the ship sent out a distress signal as it took on water.

Survivors of the Indianapolis are taken to hospitals after their rescue in August 1945. Out of 1,196 crew members, only 316 were rescued nearly five days after the ship went down in shark-infested waters.

Naval historian Hulver is equally adamant that there is no record of any such signal being received.

Some argue that McVay was shabbily treated, that the humiliation of his court-martial caused him to take his own life in 1968.

One of the things that is often overlooked, Hulver said, is that the board unanimously recommends that Capt. McVays sentence be remitted, and he retires as a rear admiral.

In death, McVay found numerous champions. Perhaps the most unlikely was Hunter Scott, a seventh-grade honor student from Florida whose history project made a case for the captains exoneration. Historians and lawmakers took notice, and Hunter eventually testified before Congress.

While McVays conviction remains on his official record, a congressional resolution signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000 termed this a miscarriage of justice that was not morally sustainable.

Like the captain, the crew had its share of post-war difficulties. The men, what they had to go through after they came home, the PTSD, said Johnson, the producer. Some of them even hadnt told their story to anyone until they spoke to Sara.

Vladic ended with 170 hours of video, which she trimmed down to a 98-minute film. Many of the men in The Legacy have since died. Only 23 survivors remain alive.

When we are watching this, said Peggy Campo, the daughter of a survivor, we are seeing so many friends who are part of this story who are now gone. Its emotional, heartbreaking, to watch this.

Were really grateful that Sara has put together this wonderful account.

While crew members continue to disappear  nine died between the 2015 and 2016 reunions  more elements of the story are emerging. This month, Hulver unearthed evidence that the Indianapolis was sunk farther west than previously believed.

Finding this wreck, though, remains a daunting task. The ocean floor there is more than 3 miles below the surface, pocked with peaks and valleys.

Its kind of the Rocky Mountains of the Pacific, Hulver said.

Sharks still patrol these waters, but historians and The Legacy urge us to look deeper.

For many people that Jaws monologue is what gets them going toward the story, Hulver acknowledged. As you are getting into the story, its such a compelling story  and its got something for everybody in it.

Its a tragic loss. Then you start you start listening to the survivors, the lessons they teach about what happens on your worst day and how you band together to survive.
The buzz of a motor overhead at nearly 11:30 p.m. was the tip-off.

A remote-controlled drone flew over the border fence from Mexico, heading for San Ysidro, while a Border Patrol agent listened and watched. He radioed ahead to other agents to be on the lookout for the small aircraft.

Ten minutes later, federal authorities had busted what they say is their first confirmed case of drug smuggling by drone in San Diego County.

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Late on the night of Aug. 8, agents arrested a man carrying a bag full of methamphetamine  more than 13 pounds valued at an estimated $46,000. They found the drone stashed under a bush near Servando Avenue and Valentino Street, authorities said Friday.

This is a new method were seeing, Border Patrol supervising agent Mark Endicott said.

Weve had some success on the ground when it comes to [catching] smugglers of humans and controlled substances. So transnational organizations are looking for other ways to get their product into the country.

After his arrest in San Ysidro last week, Jose Edwin Rivera, 25, told investigators he had smuggled drugs by drone into the U.S. from Mexico five or six times since March, according to a criminal complaint filed in San Diego federal court on Aug. 9. He said he usually turned the drugs over to a man at a San Ysidro gas station, pocketing $1,000 on delivery.

The complaint said Rivera told a Border Patrol agent and a Homeland Security agent that he would normally communicate with contacts in Mexico for instructions after retrieving the drone and drugs. He said he expected to do so on Aug. 8, but was interrupted by his arrest.

Rivera remains in jail on a charge of importing a controlled substance. He has pleaded not guilty.

While the drone smuggling arrest is a first in San Diego County, a 2015 case in Imperial County was the first in the Southwest region involving an unmanned aerial vehicle. Two men pleaded guilty to flying 30 pounds of marijuana over the border to Calexico.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

pauline.repard@sduniontribune.com

Repard writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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In January of 2012, I wrote about one mans search for meaning in his life.

He wanted to stop feeling self-pitty  for the loss of his job, his house foreclosure and bankruptcy.

He wanted to break out of his daily routine, open his arms and give the world a big embrace of thanks  thanks for such things as the air we breathe, the love of family, friendships, good health, kids laughter, strangers smiles, sunshine, raindrops, fragrant flowers, all the perks of life we take for granted.

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I realized that life was a gift, and everything that happens to us is either a blessing or a lesson, said Dave Block, then 47.

He created a Facebook page, The Gratitude Guy. He enlisted folks to film a YouTube video on being grateful, convened a grat pack of friends, taped interviews with celebrities on the subject and for a year added daily passages to his blog: mygratitudelife.com.

Such noble ideas are usually short-lived. So I was surprised when I heard from Block this week, five and a half years after my initial interview and nearly eight years after his life-changing decision.

Turns out, he did fall off the gratitude band wagon in mid-2013 when he was laid off again, mired in debt and broke up with his girlfriend. But he since has put his life back on track and returned to being a cheerleader for positive thinking and spreading his attitude of gratitude.

Block is promoting opportunities for people to learn how to be more grateful through videos, his eBook (Catch Gratitude), art, music, products (a rubber gratitude ball) and activities.

He is selling tickets to his first Gratitude Tour on Sept. 23. Block invites participants to meet a charter bus for a day dedicated to building relationships, discussing gratitude, experiencing laughter yoga, taking a mindfulness walk, meditating, practicing acts of kindness and performing a volunteer service.

Life can feel like a grind. It can feel like an endless to-do and to-be list, he says. Whats missing most is the grateful joy for being alive.

Through his efforts, Block hopes people will become more self-aware, more optimistic and fulfilled. A check of his LinkedIn page shows more than 10,000 followers, with endorsements by several, so people must be tuning in.

Block doesnt regret starting on his crazy-sounding journey eight years ago. He posted this week: I can honestly say that my life has changed for the better since making the commitment to be grateful everyday.

David Glanzer, spokesman for San Diego Comic-Con International, has been with the nonprofit educational group for more than 30 years. (Nelvin Cepeda/SDUT)

Comic-Con update: The search is moving ahead to hire an executive director for the new San Diego Comic-Con International museum that is taking over the former Hall of Champions in Balboa Park.

Candidates are awaiting interviews, said David Glanzer, spokesman for the annual convention, and they hope to have someone in place by November.

The museum will be far more than an archive of the convention that began here in 1970 and has grown to a four-day action-packed extravaganza attracting more than 130,000 fans. It will showcase art, pop art and pop culture. Its form, however, will largely depend on the vision and guidance of the chosen director.

No opening date has been set yet, Glanzer added, noting that they want to do the job right, not fast.

San Diego isnt alone in suffering a shortage of eclipse glasses. In this Aug. 17 photo, hopeful eclipse-watchers line up outside the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City in hopes of getting eclipse glasses from its gift shop. (Scott Sommerdorf / AP)

Eclipse frenzy: I knew I was in trouble when a downtown 7-Eleven clerk answered the phone Thursday and, instead of Hello, simply said: Were out of eclipse glasses.

I asked how she knew what I was calling about. She only assumed, she explained, because of the deluge of identical queries she had gotten all day. At least she was more polite than the previous three downtown 7-Elevens, where store clerks either picked up the phone and hung up without a greeting or didnt answer at all. Walmart and Toys R Us were also sold out of the glasses and a local Best Buy reported they had never stocked them.

I resorted to Amazon Prime online, which prides itself in quick delivery, but the only reasonably priced glasses wouldnt arrive until two days after the solar eclipse. On eBay, one seller offered a paper version of the ISO-rated American Paper Optics glasses, which normally sell for $1, for $999.95 plus $23.95 expedited shipping. Ill pass, thank you.

There are plenty of instructions online for creating your own pin-hole viewers. Then again, as one colleague said, Relax, we probably wont be able to see much anyway because of the marine layer.

At the Fleet Science Center in Balboa Park  which sold out of eclipse glasses last Monday  spokesman Nathan Young says they are live-streaming NASAs real-time Aug. 21 eclipse coverage on big screens and inviting the public to eye the sun through solar telescopes, special cameras and pinhole viewers. (He suggests using a kitchen colander at home).

Those lucky owners of eclipse glasses have plenty of time to share, Young says, because the eclipse starts at 9:07 a.m., reaches its peak of 58 percent coverage in San Diego at 10:23 a.m. and ends at 11:46 a.m.

The Science Center is located half-way between marine layer and clear sky territory, Young says, so were crossing our fingers.

diane.bell@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1518

Twitter: @dianebellSD

Facebook: dianebell.news
As a journalist, I like to think I know a little something about the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Like most students in the United States, I studied the Bill of Rights in grade school and learned the First Amendments protections by rote: freedom of speech, religion, assembly, petition and the press. (That last one is now my bread and butter.)

In later years, I dove a little deeper by reading landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions in college like Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, in which the court found in 1969 that black armbands worn to protest the Vietnam War were protected symbolic speech.

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That was the same year the court decided Brandenburg v. Ohio, and determined that government could not punish public speech, including that of KKK leader Clarence Brandenburg at a 1964 Klan rally, unless it is directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to spur such action.

Im no constitutional scholar, but I do know that protections exist even for hateful speech, the kind reported extensively in the aftermath of the white nationalist rally last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., where ensuing violence claimed the life of 32-year-old counter-protester Heather Heyer.

Even though most Americans would agree that the racist rhetoric spewed by Neo-Nazis, the KKK and other hate groups is vile and unsettling, many of us would likely also agree that it, too, must be shielded by the First Amendment to avoid creating an environment ripe for censorship and censure.

There it is, folks, the slippery-slope argument. End of story.

Well, not quite.

Im getting sort of sick and tired of all the absolute-constitutional-rights talk. Theres nothing absolute about constitutional rights, said Justin Brooks, a professor at California Western School of Law in San Diego.

Brooks said as much in a post he shared on Facebook last week, along with a photo of tiki-torch bearing white nationalists gathered on the University of Virginia campus. He added, Hate speech should not be protected speech.

The post attracted many responses and prompted a robust debate among friends and colleagues. It also prompted a call from the Union-Tribune.

Brooks said he disagrees with the U.S. Supreme Court, which has long held that there is no general exception for hate speech under the First Amendment, but has identified a few well-defined and narrowly limited exceptions that include obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement and true threats.

(The court) has drawn the line  you have to be inciting violence in order for it to be restricted, Brooks said. What bothers me about this discussion is it doesnt recognize how hurtful some of that hate speech is. At a certain point, speech can actually cause harm to individuals.

He said he understands the fear many Americans and the courts feel about the prospect of regulating hate speech, because defining it is subjective. But he argued that it is possible to draw a narrow definition that regulates public displays of hate, based on race, gender, nationality, ethnicity and sexual preference.

There is no doubt that the hate speech promoted by the KKK and Nazis causes harm to the members of our community who are targeted, Brooks said. Therefore, it is appropriate to regulate that speech.

He didnt need social media to know his views on the subject are unpopular, particularly among others in legal community. (See: slippery slope.)

Recently, the American Civil Liberties Union represented Jason Kessler, organizer of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, in a lawsuit to keep the far-right groups permit to protest at a downtown park.

In response to criticism, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero wrote a statement explaining the nonprofits decision to represent white supremacist demonstrators in court. In it, he acknowledged that speech alone can have hurtful consequences, but argued that the airing of hateful speech allows people of good will to confront the implications of such speech and reject bigotry, discrimination and hate.

Preventing the government from controlling speech is absolutely necessary to the promotion of equality, he wrote.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield
When San Diego County went looking for grant funds to help build a 300-bed jail for juveniles, officials argued that the 1950s-era Juvenile Hall on Meadowlark Lane was strained to the breaking point.

There is literally no more room at the inn, the county warned in a grant application in 1999 seeking $36 million in construction funds for what would become, in 2004, the East Mesa Juvenile Detention Facility.

And things were only going to get worse: At the time, the county estimated it would need 1,284 beds to house all its juvenile offenders by 2015.

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But today, there is plenty of room at the inn  so much so that whole sections of the countys two juvenile halls are periodically shuttered, because there is no one to put there.

And contrary to those dire predictions of 1,200 spaces for delinquent youths, the number of juveniles in custody in the countys network of juvenile halls and camps is a fraction of the estimate penciled out in the grant application.

In 2015, the average daily population in the juvenile halls and youth camps was 445 -- nearly two-thirds less than predicted.

The dwindling population of juvenile hall is part of a broader and deeper decline in juvenile crime that has accelerated markedly since 2010  in San Diego and numerous counties across the state.

That decline  measured in arrest rates, the number of youths supervised by county probation officers, and held in juvenile halls  has been driven by a broad change in approach over the past decade.

Instead of the increasingly harsh juvenile measures of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which lowered the age for children to be tried as adults and locked up youths for minor crimes, probation departments have embraced a system that emphasizes early intervention, evidence based risk assessment of youths, a strong tilt toward rehabilitation and away from incarceration.

By almost any measure the shift has had enormous effect.

The number of youths under supervision of the county Probation Department declined by 39.5 percent between 2012 and 2016. The juvenile arrest rate in the county declined 53 percent from 2011 to 2015, according to data compiled by the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG).

Similar declines occurred in Los Angeles (58 percent) Riverside (54 percent) and Orange (55 percent) over the same period.

San Diegos juvenile hall population plummeted 48 percent since 2012. Thats a trend echoed across the state.

Data from the Board of State and Community Corrections shows that at the end of 2015, the most recent year data was available, juvenile halls in two-thirds of counties in the state were less than half full.

Yet while welcoming the declines, juvenile justice experts who have long toiled to reform the system said they dont know, precisely, what has driven down the numbers so much.

The philosophical shift away from lock-em-up policies is certainly a significant part of it, but they said more study has to be done.

The most interesting story in California criminal justice policy is what has happened to juvenile crime and incarceration, said Joan Petersilia, a Stanford University law professor and co-director of the Criminal Justice La Center there. We have the most innovative policies anywhere, but the least amount of data to assess how they are working.

REALIGNMENT

Even without hard data there is some agreement about what is likely behind the drop in juvenile delinquency.

While youth crime has been declining for years, a decade ago California dramatically changed its approach in a series of new laws, chief among them the sweeping juvenile justice realignment bill.

Among other things, the bill mandated that youths convicted of nonviolent crimes could not be sent to the overcrowded and violent state juvenile prisons. Instead they had to be taken care of by counties -- and the realignment legislation gave counties funding through special block grants to spend on juvenile justice.

In San Diego and other counties, that money has been deployed into an array of community based programs that provide alternatives to simply locking youths up in juvenile halls or sending them to youth detention camps. San Diego received about $9 million this year, about 15 percent of the departments $60 million budget for juvenile services.

When a juvenile is arrested or detained by police officers on the streets, they can be referred to diversion programs or other alternatives to going into custody.

And even if the officer decides to take the youth to juvenile hall, probation officers there can make their own assessment and steer the case away from detention and to community supervision.

Probation officers and social workers gauge the level of risk a youth presents using assessment tools, then design a program of supervision, case management and other services, funneling low-risk youths into diversion programs instead of custody.

There is a lot more emphasis on looking at what we can do better than what we have done in the past to address the needs of these youth, and balancing that with public safety said Superior Court Judge Carolyn Caietti, presiding judge for the juvenile courts.

That was the approach taken with Carlos, a 17-year-old National City youth arrested for battery June 27 after getting into an altercation with his father. He is not being fully identified because it is the policy of The San Diego Union-Tribune not to identify juveniles charged with crimes unless they are tried as adults.

Instead of being taken to Juvenile Hall, Carlos went to a licensed foster care family that participates in the countys cool beds program. It provides short term foster care of up to two weeks for youths who have trouble at home and in their families.

Once there he was placed in Alternatives to Detention run by South Bay Community Services, part of the network of programs set up to keep youths out of custody.

He was taken to school every day and picked up. He got a case manager, individual and family therapy, and worked at the groups offices in Chula Vista daily.

Two months later, he said he gets along far better with his family, has caught up on school work, and is more positive about what lies ahead.

I feel like Im in a great position, he said, adding a stint in Juvenile Hall likely would not have been as good. Juvenile Hall puts you in a bad place, you get bad habits and a bad state of mind. You wouldnt learn anything.

Its a sharp turnaround from the late 1990s and early 2000s, when some criminologists forecasted a coming wave of juvenile crimes  a generation of super predators who would have to be dealt with harshly.

That ushered in a series of changes to juvenile law. The state lowered the age that youths could be prosecuted in the adult system  where prison sentences are much harsher  from 16 to 14 years old.

San Diego county was in the forefront of those changes. The first youth under 16 to be tried for murder as an adult was Tony Hicks, a then -14-year-old convicted for shooting Tariq Khasima to death and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 1996.

The youngest girl ever tried as an adult was Escondido 15-year-old Danielle Barcheers, serving a life sentence along with her teenage boyfriend for murdering his aunt in 1997.

Then, in 2000 voters approved Proposition 21, a sprawling anti-crime measure that contained major changes in juvenile law.

Prosecutors were empowered to file cases against youths charged with murder or some sex offenses directly into adults court  bypassing the decades-old procedure where a juvenile court judge determined if a youth would be sent to adult court or not

It also made detention in juvenile halls mandatory for youths charged with any one of 30 designated crimes  a step that filled halls across the state with first-time offenders and seasoned delinquents alike.

The measure was challenged by the family of a Rancho Penasquitos youth who was one of eight teens charged in a rampage through a migrant workers camp in July 2000. The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the measure and the direct filing provision.

Less than a decade later state policy began to turn away from that, as costs for detaining thousands of youths mounted and youth crime rates trended down. Critics of the draconian measures then are now feeling vindicated.

There were some irresponsible, very alarmist predictions then, said Mike Males, a researcher at the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice. I think what we can now say is, it is not necessary to lock up kids to have lower crime rates.

DOES IT WORK??

Instead, the juvenile system has shifted away from what Chief Probation Officer Adolfo Gonzalez described as the old-style hook-em-and-book-em mentality. That philosophical shift has impacted some school districts too, like San Diego Unified.

The district has embraced restorative justice ideas that emphasize rehabilitation and offenders making amends with victims. In 2012, the district adopted policies that discouraged school officials from calling police for low-level offenses, and directed school police to use arrest only if absolutely needed.

As a result arrests in the district  which in the past likely would have shuttled youths into detention, court and probation  have dropped, from 669 in 2012-13 to 222 last year.

The drop in school arrests illuminates a key question  is youth criminal behavior declining? Or are policies that deflect youths from being channeled into the system of custody or probation responsible too?

Males is one of those who welcome the change, but want more study to find out what really is working.

Id like to be the person who comes up with the answer about why juvenile crime has declined in south central LA, east Oakland, Marin  all these areas have had huge declines, are so different from each other, and are doing different things.

Deputy District Attorney Lisa Weinreb, who heads the juvenile division, said the shift of assessing youths and steering those who are low or medium risk to diversion and rehabilitation is responsible for the decline.

I dont believe it is because there is less juvenile crime, she said. What has been a bigger push is not to bring as many youths into the juvenile justice system. We are not bringing kids into the system who do not need to be there. So the only kids being detained in the juvenile halls are the high risk and high need kids.

Some data shows the new approach works. South Bay Community Services is a countywide nonprofit that provides services for children families and youths  and is the coordinator for the countywide Alternatives to Detention program for youths.

The program oversees low-risk youth in the system, providing home confinement monitoring, family counseling, anger management and other rehabilitative services.

Last year some 500 youth went through the program, and 89 percent had not reoffended six months after leaving, according to Executive Director Katherine Lembo. She credited the use of more sophisticated assessment tools and emphasis on evidence-based practices that zero in on programs and services that are most effective in improving behavior.

We knew it wasnt working, lowering the age and all that, she said. A kid shoplifts. Should we really put them in the hall and take them through the system?

The answer is increasingly no. And that is starting to change the very landscape of juvenile justice.

The county is in the early stages of planning a redevelopment of the aging Kearny Mesa juvenile justice center. It will likely replace the grim, 1950s-era juvenile hall with a campus that reflects the new, less punitive approach.

Thats not all. In 2015 the state made a conditional award to the county of $4.5 million in construction funds, to build a new building for youths confined at the East Mesa hall. But in April, Gonzalez wrote a letter to the state explaining the county was rethinking its long term facilities needs in light of the Kearny Mesa project  and the continued decline in custodial youth.

The letter formally relinquished the $4.5 million. The county, the chief wrote, wouldnt be using the money.

Twitter: @gregmoran

greg.moran@sduniontribune.com
By PTI: Peshawar, Aug 19 (PTI) A local leader of hardline Islamic party Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) was today shot dead by unidentified gunmen near a mosque in Pakistans restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The assailants on a motorcycle fired at Maulana Syed Attaullah Shah as he came out from the mosque after early morning prayer in Dera Ismail Khan city, police said.

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The gunmen managed to flee from the scene.

No one has yet claimed the responsibility for the attack.

A contingent of police reached the scene and started investigation after collecting evidences from the spot. PTI AYZ AJR ZH

--- ENDS ---
A small pharmacy in Utah and a doctors office in Tennessee have been implicated in an alleged kickback scheme that used San Diego County Marines to defraud the militarys health insurance provider out of at least $67 million, according to court records filed in San Diego by federal authorities.

The allegations add to a growing number of investigations into fraudulent prescriptions of compound medications  high-priced drugs custom-made by pharmacists to tailor to a patients specific needs. The investigations have led to arrests in similar cases across the country and a change in how TRICARE  which serves 9.4 million active, retired and reserve military and their families  bills for such drugs.

The loss to the government has been huge, federal authorities allege.

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In just the first four months of 2015, the costs of claims to TRICARE for compounded drugs surged to more than $1 billion, according to the insurer. Federal investigators say in court documents that a chunk of those claims came from a pharmacy in Bountiful, Utah, that was issuing prescriptions to patients in Southern California.

No arrests have been made in the San Diego-based investigation, which is ongoing. But federal authorities described their investigation in a sealed search warrant affidavit filed in March that was obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune and a complaint filed publicly Thursday by the U.S. Attorneys Office as part of a civil asset forfeiture case against a Tennessee couple.

The couple and their lawyers did not respond to requests for comment Friday. A Defense Health Agency spokesman said Friday he could not discuss an ongoing investigation.

The pharmacy at the center of the probe was formerly known as The Medicine Shoppe, a franchise opened by noted compound pharmacist Kort Delost in 1993. The former president of the Utah Pharmacist Association and Young Pharmacist of the Year for Utah sold the business in 2014 to two people, who are identified in court documents only by the initials T.S. and W.W.

The pharmacy, in the town just north of Salt Lake City, had a license to ship medications to California, according to the complaint.

When the new owners took over, claims to TRICARE for compounded drugs skyrocketed, according to the search warrant affidavit written by a special agent for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

In 2013, the pharmacy filled 218 compounded prescriptions for TRICARE patients. The number of such prescriptions grew to 541 in 2014 and, in just the first four months or so of 2015, the number soared to 4,637 prescriptions, eliciting $67.3 million in reimbursement claims, the affidavit states.

The vast majority of the prescriptions were authorized by emergency room physicians who served as medical directors for Choice MD, a medical practice in Cleveland, Tenn., owned by Jimmy and Ashley Collins, the court documents allege. The practice offers everything from primary care to therapeutic massage to Botox, according to its website. The physicians are not named and only referred to by their initials, S.V. and C.L. One of the doctors also signed off on prescriptions written by a nurse practitioner, the complaint states.

Authorities say The Medicine Shoppe billed TRICARE for 2,721 compound prescriptions authorized by S.V. from December 2014 to May 9, 2015, resulting in more than $47 million in reimbursements. During the same period, the doctor wrote three non-compounded prescriptions for TRICARE patients.

Authorities dont specify the types of compounded drugs, but some were in cream form.

Investigators say the specialized drugs went to a network of Southern California Marines who were recruited by fellow Marines to participate in a medical study. The Marines were paid $100 to $300 a month to talk to the doctors over the phone in a telemedicine exam, the affidavit states. TRICARE allows telemedicine consultations, but they must be held in places such as a doctors office, not at home.

Investigators tracked some $45 million linked to The Medicine Shoppe that moved around in bank accounts owned by the Collinses and several entities in their control, including $4.4 million allegedly paid to unnamed recruiters during the first half of 2015, the affidavit states.

Prosecutors allege the Collinses laundered the illegal proceeds by buying four properties in Tennessee, including a farm and a shopping cener called Colony Square, for a total of nearly $5.7 million.

Prosecutors are now trying to seize the properties in a civil action.

In a motion asking a San Diego judge to dismiss the forfeiture, lawyers for the Collinses complained that the details of the allegations were sealed, making it difficult for them to respond to the claims of wrongdoing. The judge ordered the government to file the allegations publicly, which prosecutors did late Thursday.

In the motion to dismiss, the lawyers also denied their clients were involved in any kind of healthcare fraud.

Claimants specifically refute any and all allegations that they or the Defendant properties were ever involved in any type of criminal activity within the Southern District of California, the motion states.

Concerned about the sudden rise of claims for compounded medications, the Defense Health Agency, which manages TRICARE, conducted an audit and on May 9, 2015, began to deny payment for non-FDA approved compound ingredients.

Claims for compounded medication from The Medicine Shoppe dropped after that, from 105,200 in April 2015 to 41,800 the next month. Prescriptions from the two doctors in Tennessee also stopped, investigators said.

In mid-2015, The Medicine Shoppe changed its name to Prescriptions Plus Pharmacy. A photo on the pharmacys Facebook page shows workers changing out the sign on the building front, with the announcement: New name, same great people! Beginning a new chapter.

The pharmacy changed hands again in October 2016 and has been renamed Bountiful Drug, recapturing the pharmacys original name when it opened in 1910.

The new owner, pharmacist Mary Rogers, said Friday the business is not associated with the old owners and that she was not permitted to discuss the investigation.

After TRICAREs May crackdown, arrests and criminal prosecutions followed nationwide.

In one announced in October, the FBI and Defense Criminal Investigative Service arrested nine people in connection with a $100 million fraud run out of Texas. A company, CCMGRX, was accused of marketing compounded pain and scar creams to military members and disguised the patient payments as part of a patient study.

And on Friday, in a separate investigation, the operator of a pharmacy in St. Augustine, Fla., pleaded guilty to filling fraudulent compounded medications to recruited patients, offering them access to anything in the store for their cooperation, such as gift baskets, chocolate and deodorant, Florida prosecutors said. The pharmacist admitted to billing TRICARE $1.9 million for the prescriptions.

Retired Rear Adm. James Johnson of San Diego, who was the director of TRICAREs western region more than a decade ago, said he got a glimpse into the recent compounding scheme a few years ago when a doctor friend in Los Angeles asked him to investigate a telephonic seminar hed been privately invited to. The doctor gave Johnson a special invite code and he listened in. The anonymous sales pitch described how to evaluate military members suffering from chronic pain over the phone and prescribe them compounding creams at an astronomical profit.

I said this sounds really suspicious and bogus, recalled Johnson, who serves of the Governors Military Council. I warned that a bunch of people would be going to jail who are behind this.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
As community college students across the county return to classes Monday, more are enrolling in career education courses following a statewide push to increase the workforce and create pathways to better-paying jobs.

The effort, funded by an annual $200 million investment from the state, has brought San Diego County community colleges about $31 million over the past two years to beef up and promote area career education courses.

The local money has been used to hire an agency to help advertise courses and expand programs in various ways, including purchasing a plane for aviation students at Miramar College.

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Several campaign are underway, said Jack Beresford, director of communications and public relations for the San Diego Community College District. Fall semester starts Monday, and were actively marketing for new and returning students to enroll in career-education classes.

Van Ton-Quinlivan, vice chancellor for workforce and economic development of California Community Colleges, said the system is trying to address a projected shortfall of one million workers in whats known as the middle-skills area over the next decade in California.

Middle-skill job require more than a high school diploma but not a university degree, she said. Those jobs pay a good wage, and community colleges students can earn certificates or pick up skills needed to be hired in those positions through career education programs.

This is part of the economy thats less well-known, and thats why we have to get the word out about career education, Ton-Quinlivan said.

The goal is to increase the number of students in career-education classes by 20 percent each year, she said.

Statewide, the effort has involved working with various industries to identify in-demand jobs community colleges can help fill. Those include advanced manufacturing, clean energy, health, global trade and logistics, and information and communication technologies.

A complete list of in-demand careers and other information to help students learn about career education programs is available at the California Community Colleges Doing What Matters website, https://www.doingwhatmatters.cccco.edu/.

The community college system also is promoting more than 200 career education programs at 114 campuses through a video that will be played over social media, in theaters and other places. The video can be seen at https://www.doingwhatmatters.cccco.edu.

The system also has created a mobile app called Here to Career, which helps students explore certificates and degrees that are available within a 50-mile radius of their home.

Individual schools also are spreading the word about their own programs. City College in the San Diego Community College District, for example, has a website with information on 31 programs. It can be found at https://sdcity.edu/careers.

Gov. Jerry Brown and state legislators agreed to fund $200 million annually for the Strong Workforce Program in 2016. Of that money, $16 million has come to the region annually over the past two years.

The San Diego Community College District has received about $3.5 million a year, said Stephanie Bulger, vice chancellor of instructional services at the district.

The unemployment rate is low, but there are people working two or three minimum-wage jobs, Bulger said. This is a way of getting to them.

Among those being targeted is the population called opportunity youth, or people who are 16 to 24 years old not in school and unemployed.

Thats a population we are focusing on and interested in attracting to some of these opportunities to help them make a better life for themselves, she said.

At Miramar College, also in the San Diego district, public information officer Stephen Quis said the school received $770,000 in Strong Workforce grants for the 2016-17 academic year, and enrollment in career education jumped 10 percent in the first year.

The money helped pay for more instructional lab technicians in five programs and helped buy equipment for classes for emergency medical technicians and in diesel and fire technology. Aviation students are getting hands-on training at Montgomery Field with a new single-prop airplane also bought with money from the program, he said.

Within the same district, City College has new certificate programs in cyber security, global developmental studies, digital and freelance photography, special-effects makeup and other fields.

In East County, Cuyamaca College offers career education programs in cyber security, business information and robotics, and Grossmont College has several health care, business, child development, computer science, culinary arts and law enforcement career education programs, and is working on several new career education programs including: drone programming, cybersecurity, social media and craft brewing.

In North County, MiraCosta College has career education courses in cyber security and computer sciences, and Palomar College has expanded its public works management program and offers courses in water/waste water technology.

At the other end of the county, Southwestern College has a new sustainable energy studies program that will prepare students to take the California Home Energy Rating System level 1 and the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners exams.

This story has been updated to include more information about career education programs at Grossmont College. A previous version incorrectly stated the school offered diesel and welding programs.

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gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

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The brother of a leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel was indicted on drug smuggling charges Friday, a day after he was arrested at the border in Nogales, Ariz, the U.S. Attorneys Office in San Diego said.

A grand jury indictment filed in San Diego federal court accuses Alvaro Lopez Nunez, 38, and five close associates of doling out drugs to smugglers and smuggling the narcotics into the U.S. themselves from May 2005 to August 2016.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested Lopez Nunez at a port of entry in Nogales on Thursday, the U.S. Attorneys Office said. He was indicted in a federal court in Tucson on Friday and is expected to be extradited to San Diego to face the charges.

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His arrest comes on the heels of the July 27 arrest of his nephew, Damaso Lopez Serrano, also known as Mini Lic and said to be the godson of Mexican drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. Lopez Serrano, 29, turned himself in to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the border in Calexico and faces the same drug smuggling charges as his uncle.

An associate, Nahum Abraham Sicairos Montalvo, is also charged in the federal indictment filed in August of last year. The 29-year-old man was arrested by Mexican authorities on July 31, according to Mexican news reports.

Three other defendants are considered fugitives, the U.S. Attorneys Office said.

In May, Lopez Nunezs brother, Damaso Lopez Nunez, was arrested by Mexican authorities at a high-rise tower in Mexico City. The father and son both are charged with drug smuggling charges in a separate case out of Virginia.

The father, known as El Licenciado, or the graduate, was reputed to one of Guzmans top leaders in the Sinaloa cartel. He is expected to be extradited the U.S. to face the charges in Virgina.

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The buzz of a motor overhead at nearly 11:30 p.m. was the tip-off.

A remote control-operated drone flew over the border fence from Mexico, heading for San Ysidro while a Border Patrol agent listened and watched. He radioed ahead to other agents to be on the lookout for the small aircraft.

Ten minutes later, federal authorities had what they say is their first confirmed San Diego case of drug smuggling by drone.

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Late on the night of Aug. 8, agents arrested a man carrying a bag full of heroin  more than 13 pounds valued at an estimated $46,000. They found the drone stashed under a bush near Servando Avenue and Valentine Street, authorities said Friday.

This is a new method were seeing, Border Patrol supervising Agent Mark Endicott said.

Weve had some success on the ground when it comes to (catching) smugglers of humans and controlled substances. So transnational organizations are looking for other ways to get their product into the country.

After his arrest in San Ysidro last week, Jose Edwin Rivera, 25, told investigators he had smuggled drugs by drone into the U.S. from Mexico five or six times since March, according to a criminal complaint filed in San Diego federal court on Aug. 9. He said he usually turned the drugs over to a man at a San Ysidro gas station, pocketing $1,000 on delivery.

The complaint said Rivera told a Border Patrol agent and a Homeland Security Investigations agent that he normally would communicate with contacts in Mexico for instructions after retrieving the drone and drugs. He said he expected to do so on Aug. 8, but was interrupted by his arrest.

Rivera remains in jail on a charge of importing a controlled substance. He has pleaded not guilty.

While the drone smuggling arrest is a first in San Diego County, a 2015 case in Imperial County was the first in the Southwest region involving an unmanned aerial vehicle. Two men pleaded guilty to flying 30 pounds of marijuana over the border to Calexico.

Endicott said there have been seven known drone incursions into the U.S. across San Diego and Imperial counties. Five were last year. The two this year include this months incident. In the six prior cases, he said, agents either lost sight of the drone or it flew back to Mexico.

Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego, said a few years ago a methamphetamine-laden drone was launched in Tijuana but never made it across the border before Mexican authorities stopped it.

That was a sign they were going to possibly use drones in this area, Mack said.

She said a special air unit of HSI works smuggling cases involving planes, ultralight aircraft and drones.

The goal would be to work as quickly as we could to identify the organization behind the smuggling, Mack said.

Acting U.S. Attorney Alana Robinson said law enforcement has known about drug-smuggling drones for a number of years.

Their advantage to the smugglers is that they can operate the devices from Mexico, out of reach of U.S. prosecutors. Drawbacks, Robinson said, are that drones are noisy and have a limited carrying capacity.

The concern though is as technology improves, particularly in the area of how quiet a drone can be and the life of the battery, Robinson said. That can be more of an issue.

She said a drone that can carry a dozen pounds or more is, on the scale of things, on the small side compared to drug loads found in airplanes, semi-truck trailers and cars.

Its a concern, Endicott added. I wouldnt call it an epidemic. We want to eliminate the threat before it becomes one.
Five days after President Trump took office, he signed an executive order that promised a swift, sharp crackdown on illegal immigration  immediate construction of a massive border wall, quick hiring of 5,000 new Border Patrol agents and stepped-up deportation of undocumented migrants.

Beginning today, the United States of America gets back control of its borders, Trump declared at the Jan. 25 ceremony at the Department of Homeland Security, which controls federal immigration agencies.

Seven months later, construction of the wall has yet to begin, the number of Border Patrol officers has actually dropped by 220, and immigration agents are on track to deport 10,000 fewer people this year than in President Obamas last year in office, the latest figures show.

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To be sure, part of Trumps crackdown is showing dramatic results. Illegal border crossings are down 22% compared with last summer. Arrests of people in the country illegally have surged 43% since January, including longtime residents who bought homes, paid taxes and raised families here.

The sharpest increase in arrests was of undocumented migrants without criminal convictions  24,189 under Trump, nearly three times as many as Obama in the first seven months of last year.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say the slower pace in deportations  from 240,000 last fiscal year to an expected 230,000 this year  is misleading. Sarah Rodriguez, an ICE spokeswoman, attributed the shift to fewer people being caught and sent back at the border. Removals from inside the country have surged.

But other pledges that Trump made the keystone of his campaign have stalled, or even slid backward, a reflection of the gap between his broad promises and the practical reality of remaking the governments vast immigration enforcement apparatus.

The challenges are especially steep at the long-troubled Border Patrol, the nations largest law enforcement agency. Operating from boats, planes, cars and horses, the green-uniformed Border Patrol officers hold the front line to secure the 2,000-mile Southwest border.

After the terrorist attacks of 2001, Congress doubled the size of the Border Patrol to more than 20,000 to enhance border security. But hampered by poor morale, hiring problems and high attrition, as well as rampant corruption, the agency hasnt met that goal since 2013.

Staffing has drifted downward since 2010, and the agency now has about 2,000 vacancies  with 220 fewer agents than when Trump took office, records show.

More importantly, based on current attrition and hiring rates, the agency would need to screen about 750,000 applicants to meet Trumps goal of hiring 5,000 qualified agents, according to a July report by the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security.

Theyre going to have a tough time because they hardly have anyone in the pipeline right now, said Victor M. Manjarrez Jr., a retired Border Patrol supervisor who studies border issues at the University of Texas at El Paso. They dont even have enough to cover attrition.

Linda Jacksta, an assistant commissioner in charge of human resources at Customs and Border Protection, parent agency of the Border Patrol, said officials are determined to reverse that slide. But she said they probably wont do so before 2018.

The Border Patrol now has a goal of hiring 500 officers next year, she said, and is trying to recruit former military and law enforcement officers to join the ranks.

Its a corner that we have been trying to turn for the past two years, Jacksta said. The low hiring numbers this year doesnt really reflect where were headed, she added.

Getting there wont be easy. Most applicants wash out in a gantlet of screening reviews and tests  drug tests, fitness tests, a background criminal investigation and a polygraph test.

One reason: Drug traffickers have repeatedly bribed or otherwise compromised Border Patrol officers. More than 170 officers have been arrested and convicted of corruption in recent years, including some caught working for the Mexican drug cartels they were supposed to be fighting.

Many of the agencys hiring troubles are of its own making, according to a series of stinging internal audit reports that describe a hiring process mired in inefficiency.

Another inspector generals report in July found that the agency spent more than $5 million giving polygraph tests to applicants who had already admitted in their job interviews to crimes or other conduct that disqualified them.

For example, applicants admitted to illegal drug use, drug smuggling, human trafficking and to having close personal relationships with people who commit these crimes, said an inspector generals report on Aug. 4.

One applicant admitted to participating in the gang rape of an unconscious and intoxicated woman, but the examiner went ahead with a five-hour polygraph exam anyway, the report said.

The governments requirement that each applicant pass a polygraph test also has long hindered hiring at the Border Patrol. In recent years, more than 70% of applicants flunked the lie detector test.

Former agency leaders say the tests werent done properly, producing failure rates far higher than at other law enforcement agencies.

In response, both the House and Senate recently passed bills to allow the agency to skip the test for some applicants, including former police officers or members of the military.

Some present and former agency officials think thats a bad idea. During the last hiring surge, in the mid-2000s, the agency had trouble maintaining hiring standards and corruption soared.

If we had our druthers we would have hired slower, said David Aguilar, a retired Border Patrol chief. We were using literally every background investigator who could conduct investigations, and that was still not enough. It was a very hairy time.

In Texas, one agent was arrested with his brothers and charged with killing and beheading a man on the orders of the Sinaloa drug cartel. He was acquitted of murder in January but convicted of working for the drug organization.

When you have cases like that, what happens is it causes you to be a lot more cautious in what youre doing, said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing agents. You dont want to make the same mistakes and let the same people in.

A bigger problem may be keeping up with people leaving.

In a 2016 survey of job satisfaction in federal agencies, Customs and Border Protection ranked 291 out of 305 agencies, even with a slight improvement in the scores. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the group that handles deportations, came in at 299.

Were putting a burden on the taxpayers that is exponential because of this continual hiring, Judd said, adding that it costs about $100,000 to hire and train an agent.

When we lose that agent, thats just $100,000 down the drain that were going to have to spend again, he said.

Jacksta said that the attrition rate has dropped in the last two years and that other trends are moving in the right direction. The average time to hire an agent was once 469 days, she said, leading many to just bail out and get new jobs.

She said thats been cut to about 160 days. The agency has seen an increase in applicants and lower rates of people dropping out or flunking the tests, she said.

Trumps promised border wall, still a staple applause line at his political rallies, has become a headache for the administration.

He not only failed in his attempts to persuade Mexico to pay for the wall, as he repeatedly vowed. Trumps request to Congress for $1.6 billion to start construction of 74 miles of barrier wall passed the House in a defense bill but probably will be stripped out or trimmed back in the Senate.

And the bulk of the massive project has been hung up in routine federal contracting delays, the kind of problems Trump said would be history as soon as he brought his experience as a real estate developer and negotiator to the White House.

Customs and Border Protection had plans for contractors to begin putting up prototypes in San Diego this summer. But the plans have been put on hold until at least November because of protest from other bidders.

Trump, at least in public, isnt deterred. Our borders are far tougher than ever before! he said on Twitter on Friday.

joseph.tanfani@latimes.com

Twitter: @jtanfani

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Imagine going to spend a day at the beach with friends or family, looking to recharge your batteries at some of Californias most treasured destinations.

But before you hit the sand, you encounter razor wire. Or a locked gate. Or an oddly placed boulder. Or steps leading into what appears to be a private shower. Or a bunch of no parking and no trespassing signs.

Until recently, too many California beachgoers ran into those obstacles  and more  because nearby property owners were unlawfully blocking public access to the coast and California authorities hands were tied in trying to fix the problem. Thanks to a new law, thats changing.

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In 2014 the Legislature and Governor Brown gave the California Coastal Commission the authority to fine property owners who intentionally block public access to the coast. That authority was included in the 2015-2016 state budget, based on legislation I had written in 2013 to achieve the same goal.

Previously, the Coastal Commissions only leverage against homeowners blocking beach access was litigation, which wealthy beach house owners and coastal homeowner associations could drag out for years in court. That left beachgoers at the mercy of phony signs, padlocked gates, chains and other illegal impediments meant to mislead and intimidate people from gaining their rightful access to public beaches.

The tools used to block beach access are as creative as they are cynical. Most people dont think to challenge whether a no parking or no trespassing sign is legally legitimate. And, if someone walks up to steps that appear to lead into a private shower, they would most likely think they had stumbled upon private property, not a cleverly  and unlawfully  disguised point of public access. And what parent would want to risk their kids (or dogs) getting harmed by razor wire, as visitors along the Santa Monica Mountains coastal trail encountered?

Now, landowners who illegally block the beach will get 30 days to fix the problem and remove whatever obstacle they erected or face fines.

Fortunately, under the new law, property owners are now channeling their creative energies into settling instead of obstructing, and just the threat of fines has meant we have been able to resolve several long-standing violations without having to actually levy any fines.

In Pacific Beach, a homeowners association along Riviera Shores finally agreed to install new access signs at both street and beach level last month after years of back-and-forth with the Coastal Commission over being out of compliance with the law. These access points are particularly important to accommodate beachgoers in this high-density neighborhood.

And in La Jolla, Coastal Commission enforcement staff found back in 2012 that required public access signage had not been installed on a winding pathway through a large residential complex. That path leads to Horseshoe Reef, a sandy beach that boasts excellent fishing and surfing. Without appropriate signage, there is little to no chance that a potential beachgoer would know of the opportunity for public access. When the Coastal Commission notified the homeowners association about its new enforcement power, the association committed to installing signs within 30 days of Coastal Commission staffs signoff on the signs design and location.

In Malibu, less than six months after we gave the California Coastal Commission the authority to assess fines, the long-standing chained and locked gate to famous Paradise Cove Pier has been opened, exorbitant walk-in fees have been dropped and misleading signs have come down, allowing surfers and beachgoers unrestricted access to the beach and waves.

In Avila Beach, the barbed wire, locked gates and no trespassing signs along the popular Ontario Ridge Trail to Pirates Cove have all been removed.

All these cases and many others along the Southern, Central and Northern California coast were long-standing disputes that have been resolved without a single dollar in fines having to be levied.

San Diego has more than 70 miles of amazing coastline that is a benefit to residents and a magnet for visitors. The entire California coast is an iconic symbol of the Golden State and is integral to our economy and our lifestyle. This time of year, millions of our neighbors to the North and East look out of frosted windows over snow-piled drives and dream of California beaches. Our giving this important enforcement tool to the California Coastal Commission is helping keep that dream alive  and open to everyone.
President Donald Trump faced such strong criticism for his unforgettably and unforgivably poor response to the horrific violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this week that not even the firing of his chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday will be enough for millions of Americans to turn the page.

Were going to win so much you may even get tired of winning, Trump said 15 months ago.

Just plain tired, maybe.

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Still, many millions of Americans are steadfast in their support for the president, either because of his title or because of his promises. Now, one of his biggest promises  that Americans would win with the economy  is being tested. Since Trump took office, the S&P 500 Index is up 7 percent, but thats less than a third of the 25 percent gain the index achieved during Obamas first seven months. The bigger economic test began this week.

For months, Trump has ripped the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement as the worst trade deal ever made by any country. Yet he hasnt ripped it up. In April, after talking with both Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by phone, Trump announced that he would renegotiate NAFTA rather than terminate it. Those talks began Wednesday in Washington, D.C., and are expected to last months off and on with the goal being a renegotiated pact before national election campaigns begin in earnest in Mexico and in the U.S. next year.

This week the mayors of San Diego and Tijuana pleaded with many other political and business leaders for negotiators from the U.S., Mexico and Canada to preserve and modernize NAFTA instead of junking it and jeopardizing the national economies of a continent. Mexican trade is a focus.

Clearly, the NAFTA negotiations present a president in need of a big policy victory with a bigger opportunity than before. The stakes were already high, following Washingtons health care debacle and weeks of White House aide departures. This is a test of the presidents negotiation skills that he almost cant afford to fail. White House priorities include reducing its trade deficit with Mexico, expanding manufacturing and improving working standards.

In few places will NAFTA negotiations be followed as closely as here, where the commercial exchange between Tijuana and San Diego is valued at $2.1 million a day. Trade among the U.S., Mexico and Canada has quadrupled since NAFTA took effect in 1994, surpassing $1 trillion in 2015, according to Reuters. Yet there are winners and losers, and Trump keeps blasting the agreement for fueling American job losses and a trade deficit with Mexico.

Last year, per federal data, the U.S. had a $55.6 billion goods and services trade deficit with Mexico and a $12.5 billion surplus with Canada. At $502.3 billion, the overall trade deficit last year marked the 42nd consecutive year that the U.S. has had a deficit. Gerald Ford was president for our last surplus.

Improving NAFTA is entirely possible. The creation of presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the deal was adopted well before Americans fell in love with smartphones, electronic commerce or electric cars. The world just isnt the same. Frankly, multilateral free trade deals have improved it.

Lost in this discussion so far is that the NAFTA renegotiation is subject to a vote by Congress, where another major Trump campaign promise  to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act  flailed like a dying fish for weeks before running out of oxygen in the dead of night. At some point, Trump will need to show that he can work with Congress, not just criticize its biggest names on Twitter.

Unlike with the health care debate, these negotiations are his alone. His team has to convince two nations and then Congress, and that may be a tall order. Is the president up to the challenge or will another one of his big campaign promises collapse?

Is Trump a deal maker or a deal breaker?

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion
We have to be tolerant of all perspectives

I suppose it is mandatory now that everybody take the pledge, so here it is: I hate white supremacists, racists, anti-Semites and all their ilk.

However, I also hate hypocrites: Those who demonstrate, but who would prohibit demonstrations by groups they dont like; those who deplore violence, except against those they hate; law-abiding citizens who applaud the vandalizing of unpopular public monuments; those who hate the haters.

So I guess I must hate myself for saying so. Hate is an ugly word. Tolerance is better.

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Thomas W. Schoene

La Jolla

Free speech and hate speech arent the same

When American entered World War II and began the campaign against Germany, many had only a vague idea of the nature of the Nazi regime. At Auschwitz a GI inspecting the death camp reportedly said that until then he didnt really understand what he was fighting for.

In the end, hundreds of thousands of heroic Americans gave their lives to destroy the greatest evil the world has ever known, which established a totalitarian state, dreamed of enslaving inferior races, and put to death six million innocent people.

Violence is not acceptable, but the people in Charlottesville who fought the resurgence of this evil in America by publicly demonstrating against neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan, are heroes, too. Except in the morally-muddled world of Donald Trump.

Andrew Crane

Escondido

Trump showed support for purveyors of hate

President Trumps inflammatory, hateful and divisive rhetoric incites and gives license to domestic terrorism by inspiring alt-right-wing, white supremacist hate groups like neo-Nazis and the KKK to terrorize others with impunity.

He must forcefully condemn and prosecute violent members of these groups now before we end up with a domestic version of Nazi Germany or Vladimir Putins Russia.

David White

Carlsbad

Letters and commentary policy

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy. You can email letters@sduniontribune.com or leave a comment below.

Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.

Related: Steve Bannon out as Trumps chief strategist
In Health care reform will work if Trump abandons sabotage (Aug 10), Sen. Dianne Feinstein makes a salient argument for immediate action to stabilize the individual market: the CBO confirmed this week that eliminating cost-sharing reductions would lead to a double-digit increase in insurance premiums in 2018.

However, we would prefer that her argument for bipartisan, transparent Affordable Care Act reform went further. Physicians, who work with patients on the front lines of this debate, should be given an active role in crafting more effective health policy.

Legislators would do well to carefully listen to stakeholders and adopt bipartisan reforms in order to maintain the gains made by the ACA and prevent the loss of access to care that repeal without replacement, or the collapse of the exchanges and unbearable premium increases, would incur.

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Closed processes never develop the needed compromises on major legislation that create workable, long-term solutions.

Mazer is president-elect of the California Medical Association.

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.

Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.
By PTI: Mumbai, Aug 19 (PTI) The Hotel and Restaurant Association of Western India (HRAWI) today urged the state government to allow bars and pubs to operate at least until 3 am.

The request by HRAWI comes in the backdrop of Maharashtra governments decision to allow eateries to operate for 24 hours.

"For several years now, we have been asking the government to extend the closing hours of restaurants and revive the night life in Mumbai.

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"This move will allow people to step out for a cup of coffee, a dessert or even a post-midnight snack without having to think twice. Other than this, the decision will also encourage tourism related activities in the state and especially in Mumbai," HRAWI President Dilip Datwani said in a release issued here.

However, he said, the government should reconsider allowing bars and discos to remain open till 3am, which have been left out of the ambit of the new 24 hour rule.

Maharashtra Government passed a bill in the state assembly last week, which will allow around one lakh registered restaurants to remain open for 24 hours.

It would also allow malls, restaurants, multiplexes and other retail establishments to remain open 24X7.

However, it does not apply to bars, pubs or discotheques.

While Maharashtra has taken the lead in passing the bill, the HRAWI hoped that the adjoining states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat and the union territories of Daman, Diu and Silvassa too will amend their law soon.

"There are over one lakh restaurants in the state and even if restaurants in the tourism hotspots decide to operate 24X7, then it could easily create additional employment opportunities for at least two lakh people," Datwani added. PTI SM RMT

--- ENDS ---
Mitt Romney, a 2012 presidential candidate and occasional La Jolla resident, is the latest high-powered politician in the Republican Party condemning President Donald Trump after a press conference during which he blamed many sides for violence despite the presence of white supremacists among the protesters.

Romney took immediate issue with the presidents statements on Tuesday, issuing a tweet directed at him.

But now hes taking his criticism of the president to the next level.

Romney released a more than 400 word plea to Trump on Facebook on Friday calling on him to apologize to the American people and acknowledge he was wrong.

RELATED: Arnold Schwarzenegger blasts Trump, urges him to 'terminate hate'

Even leaders of the U.S. military are making clear statements to condemn hate, racism and anti-Semitism, Romney points out, and Trump should too.

Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn, Romney said.

Read his full message to the president below.

I will dispense for now from discussion of the moral character of the president's Charlottesville statements. Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn. His apologists strain to explain that he didn't mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.

The leaders of our branches of military service have spoken immediately and forcefully, repudiating the implications of the president's words. Why? In part because the morale and commitment of our forces--made up and sustained by men and women of all races--could be in the balance. Our allies around the world are stunned and our enemies celebrate; America's ability to help secure a peaceful and prosperous world is diminished. And who would want to come to the aid of a country they perceive as racist if ever the need were to arise, as it did after 9/11?

In homes across the nation, children are asking their parents what this means. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims are as much a part of America as whites and Protestants. But today they wonder. Where might this lead? To bitterness and tears, or perhaps to anger and violence?

The potential consequences are severe in the extreme. Accordingly, the president must take remedial action in the extreme. He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize. State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville. Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis--who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat--and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute. And once and for all, he must definitively repudiate the support of David Duke and his ilk and call for every American to banish racists and haters from any and every association.

This is a defining moment for President Trump. But much more than that, it is a moment that will define America in the hearts of our children. They are watching, our soldiers are watching, the world is watching. Mr. President, act now for the good of the country.

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @abbyhamblin
The firing of chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday is just the latest in a growing list of officials from President Donald Trump s administration who have been let go or who have resigned since his inauguration in January.

That another key player from the Trump inner circle left so soon after the firing of White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci  he lasted just 11 days after being hired to replace Sean Spicer  inspired memes and talk among Americans about the administrations high rate of turnover.

The list, indeed, is long.

RELATED: Steve Bannon, Trump's 'alt-right' adviser, fired from White House

There is also a new cast that has been introduced since Trump took over the White House. Most notably, and most recently, former Security of Homeland Security John Kelly was brought in as chief of staff on July 28 to help rein in and reorganize the White House. He replaced someone who was let go, too.

So we decided to take a look at all the major members of Trumps administration that have left since he became president seven months ago. Here we go.

Acting attorney general Sally Yates , Jan. 30

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates on May 8, 2017. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Yates was fired from the position of acting attorney general by Trump after she refused to enforce his new travel ban back in January.

The acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, has betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States, said the White House statement on her firing.

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn , Feb. 13

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Feb. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Flynn resigned after it was revealed he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about communication he had with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. He admitted as much in his resignation letter.

I have sincerely apologized to the president and the vice president, and they have accepted my apology, Flynn wrote. I am tendering my resignation, honored to have served our nation and the American people in such a distinguished way.

FBI Director James Comey , May 9

Former FBI Director James Comey on June 8, 2017. (REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo)

The firing of FBI Director James Comey was perhaps the most controversial of all, as it came after revelations President Trump had asked him to drop the federal investigation into Flynn as part of the ongoing Russia probe.

Communications Director Michael Dubke, May 30

Former White House Communications Director Mike Dubke on April 20, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Michael Dubke served as communications director under Trump for a while but handed in his resignation letter on May 18. He stayed on as part of the administration until the end of the presidents first foreign trip, however.

He told CNN he was resigning for a number of reasons  for personal reasons.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer, July 21

Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on July 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Spicer resigned and was quickly replaced by Sarah Huckabee Sanders as press secretary.

I can say that he understands that the president wanted to bring in and add new people to the team, and Sean felt like it would be best for that team to be able to start with a totally clean slate, Sanders said of Spicers exit.

Chief of Staff Reince Priebus , July 28

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus on July 15, 2017. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

President Trump announced that Gen. John Kelly would be taking the position of chief of staff via Twitter on July 28, and the world shortly found out afterward, again via tweet, that Priebus was out.

The president wanted to go a different direction," Priebus told CNN. "A president has a right to hit a reset button. I think it's a good time to hit the reset button. I think he was right to hit the reset button."

Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, July 31

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci on July 21, 2017. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

After John Kelly came aboard as Trumps new chief of staff, it was a quick goodbye for Scaramucci.

He was forced out of the White House after a dramatic interview with The New Yorker in which he insulted his coworkers in a profanity-laced rant.

Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Aug. 18

Former chief strategist Steve Bannon on June 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

President Donald Trump fired his far-right adviser Steve Bannon during a week in which the president faced intense and increasing pressure to distance himself from far-right groups following the violent events of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Read all about his firing here.

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @abbyhamblin
President Donald Trump may have had his worst week in office to date, one week after hinting at nuclear war with North Korea.

The political firestorm that followed his response to the violent events of Charlottesville, Virginia, was so disastrous that Trump increasingly found himself on an island apart from arts and business leaders (whose councils he disbanded or were terminated by their members), other politicians ( Democrats and Republicans alike) and even top advisers like Steve Bannon (who he fired) and Carl Icahn (who resigned).

Worst week ever? Dont take our word for it  CNNs Chris Cillizza said it, NBCs Chuck Todd said it, even Fox News Bret Baier said it.

If youve yet to catch up on how Trumps terrible week in office unfolded, or if youre not yet convinced that things were that bad, heres a daily breakdown of how his week went from bad to worse. Judge for yourself.

Saturday, Aug. 12

Trump was roundly criticized after he did not specifically condemn white nationalists and other hate groups for the violence that erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, as many expected he would. Instead, he blamed many sides for the violence that ended with one woman dead and others injured.

Related: Parents of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer issue emotional call to action

Sunday, Aug. 13

Trumps silence spoke volumes as people close to him denounced hate groups and others blasted his statement. Ivanka Trump specifically condemned racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazis in a tweet.

Later, one by one, criticism of Trumps remarks began to line up. Criticism came from Democrats and Republicans and even Anthony Scaramucci , who briefly served as the White House communications director.

I wouldnt have recommended that statement. I think he needed to be much harsher as it related to white supremacists, Scaramucci told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News.

Monday, Aug. 14

Three CEOs from major companies quit Trumps advisory manufacturing council in response to his failure to condemn white supremacists after the events of Charlottesville. Among them was the CEO of pharma giant Merck, Kenneth Frazier, who Trump personally later blasted on Twitter.

Following some criticism, Trump then issued a revised statement to denounce hate groups, specifically.

Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans, Trump said.

Trumps attempt to save face was short-lived, however, because ...

Tuesday, Aug. 15

 In a combative press conference at Trump Tower in New York, Trump doubled down on his earlier remarks that blamed both sides for the violent events in Charlottesville  white nationalists and counter protesters alike  and went so far as to say there were some very fine people on the two sides.

Related: Watch President Trump's combative news conference on Charlottesville

Top members of the Republican Party, and even the top commanders of his military, took issue with Trumps defense of white supremacists.

Wednesday, Aug. 16

As more CEOs abandoned his manufacturing council, Trump elected to disband two economic advisory councils he had packed with prominent business leaders. If the move didnt signify an actual weakening of his economic agenda, it showed at least a fraying connection between the president and members of big business.

Thursday, Aug. 17

In the face of mounting criticism, Trump weighed in again on the aftermath of Charlotte Thursday, to defend Confederate landmarks, using the same arguments white supremacists and some other people espousing Southern pride or a desire to protect history have offered in protest of their removal.

Specifically, Trump lamented the history and culture those statues represented.

That same day, Trumps approval ratings slipped further  55 percent of Americans disapproved of his Charlottesville response, according to a CBS News survey. (It should be noted that a YouGov survey this week found that Americans see statues of those who fought for the Confederacy positively, and another poll by NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist found 62 percent of Americans said Confederate statues should remain.)

Even the head of Fox News parent company, James Murdoch, wrote in a memo: I cant even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis.

Friday, Aug. 18

To cap a tumultuous week, Trump suffered two major losses to his circle of key advisers.

Related: Steve Bannon, Trump's 'alt-right' adviser, fired from White House

First, Trump fired Bannon, his chief strategist, White House adviser and a far-right white nationalist, after facing pressure to distance himself from right-wing groups. Then, billionaire Carl Icahn quit his post as special regulatory adviser to the president following accusations that he was profiting from his White House role.

Also, an arts council disbanded en masse in a letter whose first words of every paragraph were an acrostic that spelled, Resist.

Additionally, pastor A. R. Bernard became the first member of Trumps evangelical board to abandon the group, citing a deepening conflict in values between myself and the administration.

Whew! What a week!

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 Poway Unified School District Board of Education approved a resolution on Aug. 10 initiating the elect trustees by district.

The district was one of many to receive a receipt of demand under the California Voting Rights Act of 2001. Under this demand, the district will have to convert from an at-large election system to a by-district system.

This system would divide the district into five areas, with a trustee (board member) being elected from each area. The district must complete this process by Nov. 9 and it will be used in the next election in November 2018, when three of the five board members will be up for re-election. All three of the board members up for election live in Rancho Penasquitos, which means depending on how the areas are drawn, they could fall within the same area.

The board voted unanimously to approve the resolution, though Vice-President T.J, Zane said he was doing so begrudgingly. He said after the meeting that this change was a tide you cant stand against.

The resolution directs the superintendent or her designee to immediately initiate the legal and regulatory process, including hiring legal counsel and demographic experts.

It also authorizes the superintendent or her designee to carry out required public hearings on the drawing of the trustee areas before the Nov. 9 regular school board meeting.

Dates for public hearings have not yet been set, said Board President Michelle OConnor-Ratcliff.

Board member Kimberley Beatty said in an email, I voted in favor of our school district moving from an at-large voting system to a by-district voting system in order to comply with the California Voting Rights Act. I also believe that creating five trustee areas in our 100-square-mile district will have the added benefit of creating stronger connections between our board and our community, since each community will have their individual representative to connect with. This will also likely increase the diversity of thought and input on the board.

The board also:

 Heard a fiscal crisis and management assistance team report from California School Information Services. The report was a review of the districts special education system. The district will use the report to make overhauls to special education.

 Approved a change to the agenda of future meetings, which will include moving public comment up higher on the agenda so the public does not have to wait as long and moving the superintendents report and the board reports to the end of the meeting.

 Approved the hiring of James Jimenez, the new associate superintendent of personnel support services, and five new principals, who will be working at Westview High School, Black Mountain Middle School, Canyon View Elementary School, Del Sur Elementary School and Sunset Hills Elementary School.

Email: news@pomeradonews.com
By PTI: Mumbai, Aug 18 (PTI) Budget carrier IndiGo today cancelled 84 flights as it grounded more of its Airbus A320 planes over issues relating to availability of engines.

The InterGlobe Aviation-run IndiGo, which had grounded nine A320 neo (new engine option) planes due to issues regarding its Pratt & Whitney engines in June quarter, has grounded four more aircraft taking the total number of AOG (aircraft on ground) to 13, aviation sources told PTI.

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Of these, 11 aircraft (VT-IFC, VT-IXN, VT-ITB, VT-ITS, VT-ITF, VT-ITM, VT-ITP, VT-ITJ, VT-IFM, VT-ITO and VT-ITG) are grounded in Delhi, while one plane each has been grounded at Hyderabad and Chennai, the sources said, adding 84 flights were cancelled today. IndiGo, which is the countrys leading air carrier, however, released two statements to explain its position. It said there is no "new development" pertaining to the grounding of neos. In the first statement, IndiGo said that its eight neos are grounded and it had already factored in the impact of the grounding of these planes in its July-September schedule.

"This is to clarify that our 8 neos are grounded. Our schedule was planned in the month of June itself pertaining to non-availability of these aircraft for the month of July, August and September. The affected passengers have already been accommodated with suitable options," it said.

In the second statement, the airline said four of its Airbus 320(current engine option-ceo) aircraft are "grounded" due to the engines being stuck at the Customs.

"We are awaiting certain clarifications post the implementation of GST, which has led to unplanned flight cancellations. All passengers have been informed of the changes and accommodated accordingly.

There is no new development pertaining to the grounding of neos. As mentioned in our June earning?s call, there were instances where 9 neos were grounded due to inadequate spare engines. At present, 8 neos are grounded because of the unavailability of spare engines. These have already been factored in our revised schedule which was finalized in June and there are no additional flight cancellations on account of these neos," it said.

According to the sources, a total of 667 flights were cancelled by IndiGo between June 21 and July 3 this year, with 61 flights cancelled on June 27 alone, due to the grounding of its planes.

IndiGo President Aditya Ghosh had during the post-Q1 earnings call on July 31 said that "regrettably, there have been days when we have had to ground as many as nine A320 neos due to lack of spare engines. While we do receive certain compensation from Pratt and Whitney for these groundings, the operational disruptions are quite challenging and we are not happy with that situation."

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A text message sent to the Director General of Civil Aviation, B S Bhullar, seeking response to a query whether the DGCA was considering grounding of the entire Airbus A320 neo fleet with P & W engines, did not yield any response.

The aviation regulator had earlier this month expressed its concern over grounding of the A320 PW neo engine-powered aircraft, which are currently being flown by IndiGo and GoAir, and the inconvenience to the passengers after it reviewed the progress made by the US engine maker in fixing the glitches.

The meeting was attended by representatives from P & W, European aircraft major Airbus as well as from IndiGo and GoAir.

In March, the DGCA had asked the engine maker to fix the issues related to its engines powering A320 neo planes of the two budget airlines. PTI IAS RAM GSN GSN

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I think that America has it all wrong. I spent the first 30-ish years of my life eating my largest meal in the evening  dinner or, if you are from the south USA, supper. Lunch was a quickya grab-on-the-run, a filler meal.

True to my American nature, I didnt think much about it or wonder if that was how things were done in the rest of the world. It wasnt until I started traveling that I realized that it wasnt the norm. Many countries  in fact most, I think, take their biggest meals at mid-day or early afternoon.

Whether its to fuel the afternoons work or because people take a few hours off in the heat of the afternoon to feast and rest, it makes perfect sense. AndI love it.

Especially the feast and siesta part.

In Belize, lunch is often the big meal. The busiest time by far is Noon to One. Some businesses  like govt offices or shops  close during that time for lunch hour. And if you get to some of the most popular local delis after those hours  the daily special (whether its Escabeche, pig tail or Black Soup) can be sold out.

There is even MORE of a reason to love your lunch these days. With the growth of our island  both in popularity and population  we have SO many choices. An overflow of options. An abundance of alternatives.

To highlight just some of it, here is what I ate just this week on Ambergris Caye. If you had shown me this list 10 years agowhen I first moved to San PedroI wouldnt have believed it.

An ode to my favorite meal and the massive DELICIOUS selection that we have in San Pedro.

Fry Fish at Lilys Treasure Chest  This is the best fish Ive ever tasted. Seriously. Somehow Lilys Treasure Chest on the beach in downtown San Pedro has perfected fried fish. Flavorful batter and moist and flaky every single time. The portion is huge, the fries are always well done and crisp

Or choose a big heap of rice and beans.

We often split a plate  especially when it is conch season. Their conch ceviche is my favorite in a town that has perfected ceviche.

Ohand the view is not bad either.

Grab one of Reginas paletas on your way back to the street  super refreshing after lunch.

Double Scoop Waffle Cone at The Truck Stop

Not your traditional lunch but I see nothing wrong replacing a meal with ice cream now and again. Especially when its one of the DELICIOUS homemade waffle cones from Cool Cone at the Truck Stop.

Double scoop of Chocolate Brownie and Cookie Crumble  a uber creamy flavor with cinnamon and graham cracker chunks.

Tuesday Pig Tail Special at Brianas Deli

Deli in Belize means something very different than it does in NYC  where the delicatessen specialized in made-to-order sandwiches.

Here a deli makes local food  often with a daily special that is generally set for the day of the week. My favorite deli is Brianas on the Back Street. I eat here about two days a week  and my GO-TO dish is Rice and Beans  leg meat.

A heaping plate of stew chicken, rice and beans, cole slaw, fried plantain and served with a small dish of onions and habanero (you can see it next to my pigtail below).

But I SWOON for this Tuesday special  PIGTAIL. A flavorful, salty equivalent to the popular US ham hock or pig knuckle. Its rinsed and boiled to remove a bunch of the salt and used for flavor. (Ive actually cooked it  see below)

The meat  while not the best looking  is so rich and porky. Its heaven.

And this abundance of split peas, coconut rice. fried plantain and DUMPLINGS is like a starch tranquilizer dart. Think Thanksgiving afternoon after the big event. What I wouldnt give to be immediately airlifted to my bed.

So good. Zzzzzzz.

I also flip for the Meat Balls on Wednesday.

Baguette Sandwich at Delices de France

A French baker at a French bakery in San Pedro? YES! And a serious serious one. The baguette sandwiches are to die for. I especially love the ham and cheese. A schmear of good butter, light on the ham and cheese, the ham providing the necessary salt and romaine lettuce.

I never wanted lettuce in a sandwich until now. Its what romaine is made for! It provides just a tiny amount of greenand bittera bit herbaciousand sighperfect.

Sushi Fixe Prix at Jyoto

This may be the craziest addition to our collective lunch choice so far! I mean..SERIOUSLY?!?!?!? Fresh sashimi or nigiri FOR LUNCH? A Japanese chef in San Pedro?

I have lots more to say about Jyoto at Mahogany Bay but for now? Wow.

So just a little preview

Prices in Belize dollars and include tax. This was my birthday meal  my actual bday being overshadowed originally (and literally) by the August 21 eclipse and now by Tropical Storm Harvey.

Here is Jyotos facebook page. And there is lots more to come on that later.

AND, if youd like to hold onto this post for some idea later, feel free to PIN it.
Call it magic or sleight of hand, Jadugar Gang is infamous for robbing people in mere seconds. Watch them robbing a man in Mumbai in broad daylight.

By Saurabh Vaktania: Mumbai Railway Police Crime Branch has arrested the members of the infamous Jadugar Gang today.

As their name suggests, they steal people's purses and wallets using slick trickery, or which some would call magic.

A senior police officer said, "The gang has spread all over India. They have cases registered against them in Jaipur, Bengaluru and Lucknow. In Mumbai, they have cases registered at Borivali, Malad, LT Marg and many more. The gang uses code language to communicate. The victim among the gang is called Dhurr."

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MODUS OPERANDI

The gang always travels in a group of about 10.

A police officer said that they are very good at identifying their target. They zero down on people who have money and gold valuables.

Once they identify the target, they signal the other gang members saying 'Dhurr' and the target is robbed in no time.

The gang ensures there is enough crowd around the target. Then they snatch the bag while others cover it and then pass it on to another member. It is done in mere seconds.

Police officials said that there are many such gangs active in the city but Jadugar Gang has the maximum cases registered against them.

They have now been arrested and an investigation has been launched to identify other gang members.

WATCH: Jadugar gang caught on camera robbing Mumbai man in broad daylight

FYI || Watch: 2 men lob hand grenade at bank in Uttar Pradesh, flee with Rs 3 lakh ||

FYI || UK bank heist: Watch robbers steal ATM using industrial truck to go through walls of bank ||

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FLORENCE, S.C.  Highland Park United Methodist Church Senior Pastor Mike Henderson said one thing the Florence church is good at is accepting people wherever they are when they walk through the doors. The church has accepted that its job is to love people and Gods job is to change them.

For the last 60 years, Highland Park United Methodist Church, located on Second Loop Road, has accepted people from all backgrounds into its church family. This Sunday at its 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. services, the church will celebrate its 60th anniversary.

Highland Park United Methodist Church was established on Aug. 25 1957, and in the spring of 1959, the Lazar family of Florence granted property on Second Loop road to the charter members and family, according to the churchs website. They took the property and formed the church.

In the early days of Highland Parks existence, Clyde Nance said, it was an up and down church and then it hit a flat for a while. When the DuPont plant moved into Florence, it gave the church the boost it badly needed. But when times were rough financially, the women in the church assisted.

The women are really responsible for keeping this church going with all the bazaars, bake sales, everything they did forever and ever or we would not have made it, Nance said.

Bill Buckner started attending Highland Park about 47 years ago when he and his wife, Catherine, moved from Atlanta. Highland Park was the only church they attended in Florence because it was in their neighborhood. Buckner said that through the years, the church has grown and become more cosmopolitan.

When Brittany Waller and her family started attending Highland Park three years ago, she noticed it to be welcoming.

It was nice to walk in and see kind of a very good variety of people, Waller said. Theres definitely diversity here in terms of backgrounds, which was very nice.

Over the years, the church has added a kindergarten program, increased its technology and established a vibrant missions program, among other things. Henderson said the churchs unofficial motto is were the hands and feet of Christ.

Ill also say that we are a place that other groups come. Lighthouse Ministries does their Working Mothers program here, Henderson said. Red Cross has used us as an emergency shelter for those who were hit both during the floods during Hurricane Matthew and again when they had the big fire at the apartments down the road.

The church was also one of first from the area to assist victims in Nichols after Hurricane Matthew.

Henderson said Highland Park does big things to make it a center of community ministry and outreach. A lot of people know about Highland Park because of the youths pumpkin sales each year. Dalton Prosser, a youth at the church, said many people call Highland Park the pumpkin church because of the pumpkins that can be seen for sale outside the church in the fall.

But what most people dont know is the money that the kids raise from those pumpkins all goes to helping folks at Christmas, Henderson said. So its a big mission program for them.

Tim Shannon, who is the confirmation leader at the church, said one of the things the youth really enjoy is getting $500 Target gift cards to spend on a family.

From their hard work with the pumpkins, now they turn around and serve others, Shannon said. Thats one of their favorite times of the year.

Member Janet Lewis, who was the director of the churchs kindergarten for several years, said the churchs community involvement has grown over the years, and a lot of that is due to Hendersons leadership. Kim Bonnoitt echoed that and said Henderson has been very active in the churchs involvement with the weekly Parking Lot Mission, which provides breakfast on Saturdays to people in need.

Its not about just our church. Its about spreading the gospel and being the hands and feet of Christ, Bonnoitt said. I Just think that says a lot, and I think that weve all  its inspired us.
By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 19 (PTI) Homebuyers in Noida who booked properties with the real estate firm Jaypee Infratech today staged a protest against the company at Jantar Mantar and demanded the government to set a deadline for the delivery of their booked units.

Scores of protesters raising slogans against the company also tried to march towards the Parliament building but were stopped by the police.

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Speaking to media persons, the protesters said they were waiting for delivery of their homes booked with the company for years and now they wanted the government to set a deadline by which they will take possession of the properties .

"A large number of homebuyers are waiting for several years but there is mo hope that it will be done any time soon. Now, we want the government to give a deadline by which homes will be delivered to us by the company," said one of the protester, Neeta Linz.

Jaypee Group could not be reached for comments. Calls made to its executive chairman and CEO Manoj Gaur remained unanswered.

The company, which is developing about 32,000 flats and plots across various projects in its township Wish Town here, has been facing protests and litigation from homebuyers due to huge delays in completing the projects.

The protesters were detained by the police as they tried to march towards the Parliament building, and were taken to Mandir Marg police station from where they were released later. PTI VIT JM

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FLORENCE, S.C.  Roll out the yoga mats.

Flowtown Yoga has opened its own location in the heart of downtown Florence at 152 S. Dargan St. The yoga studio held its grand opening celebration on Saturday, featuring free yoga classes, music and mimosas.

Flowtown Yoga is open Monday through Saturday and offers 14 to 17 classes each week at various times to fit anyones schedule. The earliest class time begins at 5:30 a.m. and the latest class starts at 7 p.m. Flowtown Yoga also offers a variety of classes for both beginning students to the more advanced participants.

Veronica Robertson, owner of Flowtown Yoga, said she and her team of experienced, certified yoga instructors are excited to supply Florence with a yoga studio where participants of all ages and skills levels can come, practice yoga and feel at ease.

I have participants from 16 years old to 72 years old, Robertson said. It doesnt matter your age, fitness level, your size, your knowledge of yoga. Its really a practice for anybody and everybody.

Robertson started Flowtown Yoga in February within the Shine and Shout Yoga Wellness Center on West Palmetto Street. Robertson said she worked as a yoga instructor for Shine and Shout before getting the chance to run her own business out of Shine and Shout's studio. Once she began offering classes and marketing her business, Robertson quickly realized yoga was more popular in Florence than she had anticipated.

It was a market that hadnt been really tapped into, Robertson said. I realized there is room for this in Florence. People are interested.

Robertson went from offering just four classes per week to 14 and the number of participants joining classes went from 50 to more than 250 people. Robertson watched her small business flourish and she knew her studio would have to grow to meet the demand.

The idea of being downtown was very appealing and I finally decide I was going to take the risk, Robertson said. Its crazy. Its been a pleasant surprise and a blessing.

During Flowtown Yogas grand opening in downtown, every class was fully booked, which was a promising sign for Robertson and her budding business. Robertson said she hopes she can continue this string of success and share her passion for yoga with the Florence community.

Yoga is about just feeling great with yourself and your whole being: mind, body and spirit, Robertson said. There is no judgment or expectation. Youre welcome here just as you are.

For more information about Flowtown Yoga or to sign up for a class, visit flowtownyoga.com.
FLORENCE, S.C.  With sweat dripping, volunteers moved mini fridges, microwaves and boxes of ramen into dorms during move-in day on Saturday morning at Francis Marion University.

A total of 575 students moved in, with 475 coming in as first-year students and 100 as transfer students.

Some students were excited about their newfound freedom while others were savoring the last few moments with their families.

Ill probably cry like a baby when my mom leaves, said freshman Anaiah Davis.

Still, Davis smiled as she unpacked pineapple cups and strategically placed her tropical-themed decor on her side of the dorm.

Her mother, Chavonne Bell, said she is close with her daughter, but she knows college will be a memorable experience.

I have the feeling shes going to get really busy, and were not going to talk as much, Bell said. We expect to make several trips back and forth.

Davis moved into a dorm where last years Resident Assistant of the Year resides. Resident assistant Bejal Patel said she chose to be a freshmen resident assistant again because freshmen are less established and willing to try new things. She said the first weeks are critical for them to get connected to campus life.

If they dont find a friend within one to two weeks, they usually get depressed, Patel said.

Patel is already planning activities such as a campus tour and game night.

While some students commute home every day, Cheryl Tuttle, director of housing and residence life, said living on campus allows students to take part in residential programming and campus life with more ease.

Students who depart campus after classes for the commute home often miss out on the fun, Tuttle said. Students who are more involved in campus life are typically more successful students.

Patel said finding friends on campus is more than a social experience. She said it keeps her and others focused and motivated academically.

Francis Marion faculty, staff, alumni and upperclassmen volunteered their time and muscles to welcome the students to their new home.

Charles Marshall who serves on the Alumni Association board said he enjoys giving back to the school that gave him a special undergrad experience and makes move-in day an annual event.

Its more of a community than a school, Marshall said.

The community vibe is what brought freshman student Sarah Evans to Francis Marion. Its small but not too small, Evans said. Im looking forward to meeting new people and being out on my own.

Sporting T-shirts from organizations, many upperclassmen connected with incoming students who were interested in joining their groups.

Evans said she is interested in joining a sorority, and she met students from the Alpha Delta Pi sorority who invited her to a Greek Life meet and greet.

During the days events, Dr. Fred Carter, school president, and Dr. Peter King, provost, served hot dogs and cold drinks to those who were hungry and thirsty from work.

Returning students moved in to their apartments on Saturday afternoon, and classes will begin on Monday evening.
Over 32,000 home buyers of Jaypee Infratech, which was declared bankrupt, were affected due to the delayed possession.

By Abhishek Anand: Scores of home buyers of Jaypee Infratech affected by delayed possessions staged a protest at Jantar Mantar on Saturday and threatened to commit suicide if the government does not help.

Over 32,000 home buyers of Jaypee Infratech were affected due to the delayed possession.

"During the partition of our country we were robbed and migrated. Now we are again being robbed by the builders, and the government is turning a blind eye," said SK Suri, a senior citizen and a home buyer.

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About 100 home buyers gathered at the Jantar Mantar on Saturday morning with placards and started shouting slogans against the builders, government and the Noida and Greater Noida authorities. They had planned to march till the PM's residence but permission was not granted by the police.

"Since nobody is hearing us, we feel like committing suicide like the farmers are doing. I am a retired man and I have invested all my life's saving for a flat. Now I am living in a rented accommodation. Is there any law in this country for us," said SK Sharma, a home buyer.

The bank, which had given loan to the Jaypee group had recently moved a petition for Jaypee Infratech's insolvency, following which a series of protests erupted.

"If the government doesn't listen to us, we will continue our protest and will show them our power in next elections," said Aditya Mann, a home buyer.

Also Watch: Bankrupt Jaypee Group faces heat by Noida home buyers waiting for their dream house

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Rival JD-U camps headed by Nitish and Sharad Yadav are holding parallel meetings in Patna today. A resolution to join the NDA has been passed by Nitish Kumar-led JD-U.

By India Today Web Desk: While rival Janata Dal (United) camps headed by Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav are holding parallel meetings in Patna, the Nitish-led JD-U faction has passed a resolution to join the NDA.

The Sharad Yadav faction has attacked the Nitish camp for walking out of the Mahagathbandhan alliance with the RJD and Congress in the state.

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A national executive committee meeting of the JD(U) has been called at its national president and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's official residence where the party is expected to formally accept the invitation to join the BJP-led NDA.

Loyalists of Sharad Yadav, who has opposed joining hands with the BJP, are also holding a programme called the 'Jan Adalat' at S K Memorial Hall.

The two meetings make it evident that battlelines within the JD(U) are drawn and the party may be heading for a vertical split. JD(U) principal secretary general K C Tyagi has, however, maintained that there is no split and that Yadav "has left voluntarily".

We want it on record that though Sharadv Yadav Ji does not agree with party's decisions but there is no rift in the party: KC Tyagi, JDU pic.twitter.com/5WMca0Qc7R- ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

Tyagi said, "The national executive meeting at the One Anne Marg residence of the chief minister is the party's official programme."

JD-U meeting of Nitish Kumar faction begins in Patna.

The party was originally set to hold its national executive in Delhi on July 23-24 last. But the date was changed to August 19 and the venue was shifted to Patna.

When asked what the agenda of the national executive meeting was, Tyagi said it would put its stamp of approval on the party's Bihar unit decision to break away from the Grand Alliance and form a government with BJP "in the interests of the state".

'JD-U's BIHAR UNIT WAS IN FAVOUR OF ENDING MAHAGATHBANDHAN'

Kumar clarified that he had walked out of the Grand Alliance of the JD(U), RJD and Congress according to the wishes of the party's Bihar unit.

The JD(U) is registered with the Election Commission as a regional party of Bihar, he had said.

"The national executive would also give its consent to the invitation of BJP chief Amit Shah to the JD(U) to join the NDA fold," Tyagi said.

Shah had extended the invitation when Nitish Kumar had met him in Delhi recently.

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Some other amendments in the party constitution would also be taken up, Tyagi said, but refused to divulge the details of the same.

When asked about "Jan Adalat" which would also be attended by Sharad Yadav, Tyagi said that it was not an official programme of the party.

Bihar JD(U) chief spokesman Sanjay Singh said "we have nothing to do with the Jan Adalat programme."

RIVAL JD-U FACTIONS IN POSTER WAR

A poster war has erupted here with the two rival groups publicising their respective programmes.

The posters by rebel JD(U) leaders led by ousted party parlimentary board chief Sharad Yadav make clear their stand against Kumar's decision to sever ties with Grand Alliance partners - RJD and Congress.

"Jan Adalat ka Faisla - Mahagatbandhan Jaari hain (Jan Adalat's decision is that the Grand Alliance is continuing", the posters say. They carry photographs of Sharad Yadav, JD(U) Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar Ansari and former state minister Ramai Ram, who was suspended by Bihar JD(U) chief Basistha Narayan Singh.

Sharpening the attack on Nitish Kumar, Ansari asserted in Delhi that those opposed to the Bihar chief minister represented the "real" JD(U), and added "Nitish represents BJP Janata Dal".

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He refused to acknowledge a "split" in the party and said that there was "sharp resentment" among JD-U workers on the removal of Sharad Yadav as the leader of party MPs in the Rajya Sabha for questioning Nitish Kumar's decision to form an alliance with the BJP.

Ansari said all the leaders of the party, including Sharad Yadav, would discuss the goings-on in the JD(U) at the convention and later visit the flood-affected areas of Bihar.

WHAT DO SHARAD YADAV's LOYALISTS SAY

Ansari said that their meeting was being held to honour people's mandate given to the Mahagatbandhan in 2015. Ansari said that he, along with Sharad Yadav, would arrive in Patna for the programme on Saturday morning.

#SharadYadav arrives in #Patna amid slogans in his support & against Bihar CM Nitish Kumar; will hold a 'Jan Adalat' pic.twitter.com/K1vJw2Fril- ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

"I and Sharadji had thought of attending the national executive meeting and give our opinion against dumping of the Grand Alliance and joining hands with BJP.

"But they (Nitish Kumar group) could not wait even till August 19 and suspended me and removed Sharadji from the post of parliamentary party chief, which is undemocratic", Ansari said.

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Another Sharad Yadav supporter Vijay Verma, who was among 21 JD(U) leaders suspended recently, said, "Our programme is to strengthen secular forces in the country."

The rebel JD(U) programme follows a mega meeting of anti-BJP parties held recently in the national capital, which they said, was to save the "composite culture" of the country.

The party's former national general secretary Arun Kumar Srivastava, who was expelled after the JD(U) legislator in Gujarat voted against the NDA candidate in the recent vice-presidential polls, said in Delhi that the rebels could approach the Election Commission to claim the party's name and symbol in case of a split.

"Although I do not think Nitish will claim the party symbol because he has no love for the party or its symbol, we will definitely approach the Election Commission in case there is a need to do so," he said.

Srivastava also claimed that all the state party units, except those in Bihar and Jharkhand, were supporting Sharad Yadav and those opposed to Nitish Kumar.

"We have received support letters from presidents of 14 state units who are opposed to the JD(U) alliance with BJP. They expressed their willingness to attend the Patna convention but may not be able to do so since it is being held at short notice," he said.

He accused Nitish Kumar of not honouring the "democratic norms" in removing party leaders without seeking explanation.

"I was not served any notice or asked for any explanation. The same happened with Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar and 21 other leaders who were removed in Bihar," he claimed.

Srivastava also attacked Tyagi for siding with Kumar and his decision to go with the BJP, saying he was doing so for the "lust of power".

(WITH INPUTS FROM PTI)

ALSO READ |

Poster war in Patna as Nitish, Sharad convene meeting on Saturday

With Sharad Yadav in revolt, JD-U national executive to consolidate Nitish's position

Nitish would have become Manmohan Singh of UPA-2 had we continued with Mahagathbandhan, says JD-U's KC Tyagi

ALSO WATCH VIDEO | Sharad Yadav's divorce with Nitish imminent. Marriage with Lalu on cards?

WATCH VIDEO | Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav ready for show of strength at parallel meetings in Patna

--- ENDS ---
By India Today Web Desk: Khatron Ke Khiladi 8 contestant actor Shantanu Maheshwari, who's seen doing daredevil stunts in the show with ease will showcase his romantic side in the upcoming Bollywood special episode. The actor will get to have his Gerua moment with a pretty Spanish girl.

Shantanu will recreate the magic of Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol's iconic dance move, while Khatron Ke Khiladi host Rohit Shetty will show them what was his job when the song was being shot. Rohit will hold the girl's pallu and fan it and tell them that he had to actually hold Kajol's pallu to get the moment right.

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A source close to the show said, "The girl was quite impressed with his cute smile, charm and the way Shantanu taught her the bollywood dance steps. She was even looking quite embarrassed post the dance as she wasn't happy with the way she had danced, but Shantanu very sweetly complimented her on her dancing skills, while the other contestants cheered them on."

The episode will be aired today on Colors.

Also read: Khatron ke Khiladi contestant Shibani Dandekar raises temperature in bikini; see pic

Watch our khiladis bring out their filmy side while #RohitShetty puts them through a series of Bollywood inspired stunts. #FilmyKKK8 @shantanu.maheshwari A post shared by Colors TV (@colorstv) on Aug 18, 2017 at 11:35pm PDT

--- ENDS ---
ANGARA CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE EMPLOYMENT ASSISTANCE FOR DISPLACED MARAWI WORKERS

Senator Sonny Angara has urged the public employment service offices (PESOs) in neighboring areas of Marawi City to be at the forefront in providing employment assistance to displaced workers due to the ongoing conflict.

"Hanggat hindi pa pinahihintulutang makabalik ang mga residente ng Marawi, mananatili silang walang hanapbuhay at kita. Dapat ay aktibo ang mga PESO sa rehiyon sa pagbibigay ng tulong na makapasok sa trabaho ang mga displaced worker upang mapunan ang pang-araw-araw na pangangailangan ng kanilang pamilya," said Angara, vice chairman of the Senate labor committee.

Since violence erupted on May 23, around 400,000 people have been displaced, with many living in host communities or in evacuation centers across Mindanao.

Most of the displaced families took refuge in neighboring communities in Lanao Del Norte, Iligan and Cagayan De Oro.

Angara has worked for the passage of Republic Act 10691 that strengthens the PESO Act to ensure that all provinces, municipalities, cities and other strategic areas throughout the country will have their respective public employment service offices.

"Dahil sa batas na ito, lahat ng Pilipinong nangangailangan ng trabaho ay mayroon nang matatakbuhan para sa mas mabilis at epektibong job facilitation services. Dapat ay bigyang prayoridad ng PESO ang ating mga kababayan na napilitang lumikas ng Marawi at makitira sa kanilang mga kanas o kaibigan sa ibang parte ng Mindanao," he said.

The senator likewise lauded the Department of Labor and Employment for allocating P30 million for its Tulong Pangkabuhayan sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced (TUPAD) workers program, which now provides emergency employment assistance to nearly 2,300 displaced workers.

Worker beneficiaries of TUPAD shall be provided with short-term employment, and will receive P338 per day for 30 days of rendering work or service particularly on social community and agro-forestry projects.
Press Release

August 19, 2017 Minority senators demand an end to drug killings The minority bloc demands that the Senate stand in solidarity against the senseless killings that claimed over 80 Filipinos, including a 17-year-old Grade 11 student Kian Loyd Delos Santos, in just 4 days. Sen. Sonny Trillanes said he will call for an all-Senators caucus on Tuesday to bring to the fore the alarming resurgence of drug related killings by the PNP. "Sobra na. Maling mali na talaga to. I cannot, in conscience, let this pass. The Senators should have a united stand to stop this," declared Trillanes. Shocked by the death of an innocent teenager in Caloocan City, Sen. Bam Aquino insists that the government rethink its strategy, saying the poor and helpless are casualties in this war while those involved in big drug cases are accorded due process. "I plan to file a resolution kasi nakababahala na talaga iyong news reports," said Sen. Aquino. "We cannot tolerate the alarming police impunity in the country. We need to investigate these killings of alleged drug suspects including a Grade 11 student in police operations," Sen. Franklin Drilon echoed. Drilon earlier questioned Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre at the 2018 budget hearing for their failure to investigate extra judicial killings, with only 37 of about 4,000 deaths related to the anti-drug campaign were investigated. Meanwhile, Sen. Francis Pangilinan was enraged that the poor are marked as a target while more than P6 billion worth of illegal drugs can slip past the Bureau of Customs (BOC) unnoticed. "Ang ugat ng problema sa droga ay doon nakita sa pagpuslit ng tonetoneladang shabu sa BoC ng mga sindikato kasabwat ang mga opisyal ng gobyerno," said Pangilinan. Sen. Risa Hontiveros urged the government to stop the extrajudicial killings, saying the Duterte administration cannot kill its way out of the drug problem. "We refuse to accept these killings as normal," said Hontiveros. Sen. Leila de Lima also criticized Duterte for praising the deadly Bulacan raids, which killed 32 people, saying, "Those are clear words of a deranged mind. If you say that it's good to kill 32 people a day - that's a deranged mind." Over 80 of our countrymen were killed in Manila, Bulacan and in the Camanava (Caloocan-Malabon-Navotas-Valenzuela) area in the span of 4 days, all in the name of the PNP's anti-drug and anti-crime operations.
Press Release

August 19, 2017 Recto: Digong seeks P422 M for single gov't website to let people get permits, services online Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto is backing President Duterte's request to Congress to appropriate P422 million "for the development of a centralized portal allowing individuals to make transactions - from filling out forms to payment - online." The chief executive made the pitch in his Budget Message for Fiscal Year 2018, which serves as his cover letter explaining the highlights of the P3.767 trillion spending bill he has asked Congress to approve. Duterte said a "National Government Portal" is needed because "our citizens deserve first class service." The NGP will "eliminate the need to physically go to offices or visit multiple agencies' website to perform transactions," Duterte said in his message to lawmakers. Funding for the project, according to the President, "will ensure a 100 percent production-ready NGP, migrate 100 percent of public documents into the gov.ph portal, allow 10 percent integration of Government Web Hosting Service (GWHS)." It will also "provide 10 percent accessibility of top 10 eServices, and make 40 percent of common and shared services available through the portal," Duterte explained. Recto said there is no doubt that all parties in the House and in the Senate will approve the presidential request. "Kung kulang pa, dapat dagdagan," Recto said, baring his intent to ask officials of the Department of Information and Communications Technology if the funding as recommended by the Budget department is enough to ensure a full early rollout. "We should spare no funds in giving our people the best anti-red tape app," he said. "This is also what they want. In this digital age, they're saying that they're tired of going from one office to another in the maze that is the bureaucracy to secure one permit. They want their fingers on their smartphones to do the walking," Recto said. Recto said Duterte also announced the ramping up of the Integrated Business Permits and Licensing System (IBPLS) to integrate barangay clearances building permits and sanitary permit processing systems into the business permitting systems of LGUs. The program, costing P56 million, will be deployed to 40 LGUS, Duterte said in his Budget Message. According to the DICT, the NGP is a single window containing all online information and operational infrastructures, and public services of the government. Using the internet as an aid, it aims to provide a one-stop-shop of online government services to the public sector and private businesses, the DICT said in a paper submitted to Congress. If Congress will approve NGP funding, Recto said "we will demand that what DICT promised, 'that citizens need not physically go to government offices to perform typical transactions, such as applying for a driver's license, filing of taxes, and renewing of passport,' will indeed be fulfilled." According to Recto, the DICT has guaranteed that citizens will "just have to go to the portal, log in with their Single Sign On (SSO) credentials, search for the services they want to avail, and complete the transactions - from filling out forms to payment - online." The DICT has promised a portal content that is "first and foremost citizen-centric." To be efficient in providing a communications link, the NGP will focus on grouping content according to what citizens need like "Tax and Payments", "Clearances, Forms, and Licenses", "Pension", "Transport, Fares and Prices" and "Food and Agriculture," the DICT said. "This what we need--a combined Google, and Waze for a public wanting to get data or service from the government in a manner that is fast, and in many cases, free," Recto said. The DICT has a proposed budget of P6.9 billion for 2018, P1.7 billion of which is for installation of 5,308 free WiFi hotspots in public places. Recto is principal author of both the DICT Law (RA 10844) and the Free Wifi in Public Places Act (RA 10929).
The woman alleged that the man passed lewd comments to which she objected and complained to the gym trainer.

By India Today Web Desk: A case of molestation has been registered against a man for brutally assaulting a woman at a gym in Madhya Pradesh's Indore.

In a shocking CCTV footage shared by ANI, the man can be seen punching and kicking the woman. The man is seen getting ready for exercise when the girl standing behind him says something. The man turns around and punches her straight in the face. The reason: She alleged that the man passed lewd comments to which she objected and complained to the gym trainer.

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The man also kicks the woman after which, other gym members rush to restrain the attacker.

#WATCH Man punches & kicks a woman at a gym in #Indore after she complained about his behavior during workout #MadhyaPradesh pic.twitter.com/eFQWUrMlbz- ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

The accused, Puneet Malviya is a resident of Mandsaur district. The incident took place on Thursday evening.

The police is investigating the case and trying to trap Puneet, who fled away following the incident. "A case of assault and molestation has been registered and we are investigating," Shashikant Kankane, DSP was quoted as saying by ANI.

Meanwhile, gym trainer Ranit Sonane said that the accused escaped following the incident adding that the CCTV camera would help nab him.

Also Read:

Caught on camera: Saree of 5-star hotel employee pulled by security manager in Delhi

Watch: Man caught assaulting fasting Muslim woman colleague in Karnataka

Also Watch:

Staffer of 5-star hotel molested by security manager in Delhi's Aerocity

--- ENDS ---
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Of all the groups that arrived in Gold Rush San Francisco, the Jews who fled a legacy of oppression in Europe may have experienced the most remarkable success.

In their Central European homelands, these German speakers had been confined to ghettos, prevented from marrying and barred from professional occupations. When they got to California, former peddlers, petty traders and craftsmen found a land where they were free to prosper  and in the years to come, they created some of the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the state.

Many of the Jews who were to become merchant princes of San Francisco came from the same small region: Upper Franconia in German-speaking Bavaria. Indeed, several grew up in the same small town. Three men who would become business titans in San Francisco  William Haas, Isaias Wolf Hellman and Isaac Walter  were childhood friends who all came from the same rural town of Reckendorf, population 1,000. The most famous of them all, Levi Strauss, grew up in the town of Buttenheim, just 20 miles from Reckendorf.

The story of Haas, who built one of San Franciscos most storied residences, the still-standing Haas-Lilienthal House on Franklin Street, is typical. Haas grew up in a society where the anti-Semitic bigotry that dated from the Middle Ages was still present. Bloody anti-Jewish riots had taken place as recently as 1819, and Jews were oppressed by punitive taxes and an infamous law called the Matrikel, which allowed only the oldest son in a Jewish family to marry.

Starting in the 1840s, these repressive laws led to a wave of German Jewish immigration to the United States. No fewer than 200,000 German Jews would leave for what was known as the Golden Land.

The climate did improve  as Fred Rosenbaum writes in Jewish Americans: Religion and Identity at 2007 Franklin Street, the Matrikel and most other discriminatory laws were abolished in 1861. Like Hellman and Walter, Haas received a fine education at a Jewish primary school in Reckendorf, then an even better one at a secondary school in nearby Bamberg.

Haas arrived in San Francisco in 1868 and went to work for Haas Bros., the wholesale grocery company started by his older brother, Kalman, who had arrived in 1851. Like many other Jews during the Gold Rush, Kalman had realized that staying in San Francisco and opening a business  mining the miners, as the expression went  offered better prospects than heading to the gold fields.

William Haas started out as a clerk, then became a salesman, then a partner. His living conditions improved accordingly. When he arrived, he sometimes slept on a shelf in the store. Within two years, he bought a modest house worth $1,000. In 1886, he spent more than $18,000, not including the land, to build his ornate Victorian mansion on Franklin Street.

The Haas family was part of a new German-Jewish aristocracy, most from Bavaria, made up of several dozen families. This commercial elite, which emerged in San Francisco faster than anywhere else in the country, was filled with names that are still famous today  both because of their successful businesses and their philanthropic largesse.

Most of them made their fortune in dry goods or clothing. The most famous clothing kings were Levi Strauss and his brother-in-law, David Stern, whose company patented and manufactured the riveted pants that are today the most famous and best-selling line of clothing in the world. Other dry goods magnates included William Steinhart, Louis Sachs and Lazarus Dinkelspiel.

German Jews established most of the citys leading department stores, including Raphael Weills White House, Isaac Magnins I. Magnin and Solomon Gumps eponymous store. Produce and tobacco kings included Haas, Frederick Castle, Joseph Brandenstein and Moses Gunst.

Simon Koshland ran a wool empire, and Louis Sloss and his brother-in-law Lewis Gerstle founded the Alaska Commercial Co., which controlled the market in salmon and seals. Aaron Fleishhacker made his pile in cardboard boxes, while Anthony Zellerbach made a fortune in paper. Bankers included Isaias Hellman and Philip Lilienthal.

Just as remarkable as the meteoric success of San Franciscos Jews was the fact that they encountered very little anti-Semitism  far less than in New York and other U.S. cities. The reason was simple. San Francisco was a brand-new city, devoid of a status quo. There was no establishment to draw up ranks against perceived outsiders; everyone was an outsider.

In the frenzy of the Gold Rush, the ethnic, class and social distinctions that loomed large on the East Coast vanished. All nations having come hither, shades of color, of belief, peculiarities of physique, of temper and habit were less distinctly marked, historian Hubert Bancroft wrote in California Inter Pocula.

Bancroft also noted that the entire raison detre of the Gold Rush, the desire to get rich quick, undercut one of the traditional sources of anti-Semitism, the belief that Jews were grasping and greedy.

Gold was here, and in common with the gentiles Jews loved gold, he wrote. Money was the humanizing bond. ... Christian and Jew loved money.

The casual use of anti-Semitic tropes was acceptable and well-nigh universal in the United States at the time, but in San Francisco, such offensive attitudes seem to have been mostly rhetorical. Indeed, Jews were widely admired as upstanding citizens and leading businessmen.

In 1858, Steamer Day  the much-anticipated, carnival-like day when the Pacific Mail Steamer arrived with mail from the East Coast  was actually postponed by the city because it fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Its hard to imagine this taking place anywhere else in the country.

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.

The next Portals will explore the manners and mores, and the city-changing philanthropy, of San Franciscos Jewish elite.

Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco, awarded the Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: metro@sfchronicle.com

Trivia time

Previous trivia question: Who happily strummed a guitar as he strolled down Haight Street on Aug. 7, 1967?

Answer: George Harrison.

This weeks trivia question: What percentage of San Franciscans voted for Donald Trump in the November presidential election?

Editors note

Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Gary Kamiyas Portals of the Past tells those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Franciscos extraordinary history  from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond. His column appears every other Saturday, alternating with Peter Hartlaubs OurSF.
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SALINAS  Etched on the official map of Monterey County, along a stretch of Highway 68 surrounded by lettuce fields, is a striking relic of Americas past: the community of Confederate Corners.

The name of this unincorporated area  which announces itself on Google Maps and MapQuest, Foursquare and Waze  dates to the aftermath of the Civil War, when two army captains from the South resettled their families here. The moniker remains today in the U.S. Board on Geographic Names database.

But theres little controversy about the name. Thats mostly because few in the county, if any, use it.

Never heard of it, said Max Miller, 44, who works at Santa Maria Seeds, one of a handful of businesses in the area.

Some other parts of the nation marked by remnants of the Confederacy, the group of secessionist states that fought to preserve slavery, have actively sought to shed such associations, especially after deadly violence exploded from a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

But this swath of farmland 2 miles south of downtown Salinas appears to have already lost its name, at least unofficially, to the dustbin of history. The nod to the plantation South appears to have been neglected into oblivion.

As a tractor held up cars on the highway outside his warehouse, Miller ducked into his small office, decorated with two mounted deer heads, and used his computer to pull up the unexpected, and unsatisfying, Wikipedia entry for Confederate Corners.

My dad was a history teacher, he said. You would have thought I would have known something about this.

Mike Franscioni, 73, a grower whose family began running cattle in the Salinas Valley in the 1800s, was passing through in his pickup. He hadnt heard of the name, either.

I got a friend who might, Franscioni offered. Hes older than I am.

But Jerry Carlsen, 85, also had little to provide.

I heard the name used many years ago, maybe sometime in the 50s, Carlsen said. As time goes by, you forget stuff.

While the use of the name seems to have died out long ago, some stories behind it remain.

Rafael Casillas, 43, who owns the Beacon gas station and a market that sells $2 tacos to farmworkers, was surprised to get a question about Confederate Corners. But he responded quickly, pointing outside to a rundown barn within a chain-link fence.

An old man used to come in  hes dead now  and tell stories about that place, Casillas said. They used to gather there and talk about what was going on.

Who did?

Confederates, Casillas said.

A couple of residents and merchants in the area had heard similar tales.

There was a group of ranchers here who were Southern sympathizers, said Kris Darch, 56, owner of the Feed Trough Feed Store. Some of those guys actually wanted to split California into north and south.

Its no coincidence, Darch said, that the 36th parallel, which notoriously divided the nation between slave-owning states and free states before the Civil War, passes through Monterey County.

Those guys were nut jobs, probably, Darch said.

The legends surrounding Confederate Corners appear to be rooted in fact, but to what degree remains uncertain.

I dont know if they were still talking about secession when the town was settled, said Meg Clovis, who retired in May as the countys historian after 36 years. But clearly, the people coming here from the South must have held on to some of their beliefs.

County archives suggest the families of two Confederate army captains came to the area in the 1860s and were followed by a handful of other Southerners after their homeland was ravaged by war. They gave the area its name.

Several maps from the period list Confederate Corners, which today marks the junction of Highway 68 and Hitchcock Road. So does the countys oldest surviving precinct map, which dates to 1898 and is on display at the elections office in Salinas.

According to Clovis, the early settlement included a general store, blacksmith shop and one of Californias largest wagon-making factories. But the only building still standing from the era is the old barn next to the gas station, Clovis said. Today, there are no signs, plaques or other markers bearing the name.

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.

Exactly when people stopped calling the place Confederate Corners is unclear. But in 1947, author John Steinbeck used the place as inspiration for the fictional town Rebel Corners in his novel The Wayward Bus.

Though the name faded over the decades, the federal Board on Geographic Names, which is responsible for standardizing U.S. locations, adopted it in 1981. The agency was upgrading its database at the time and found Confederate Corners on U.S. Geological Survey maps, where it had been included since 1910.

Still, most people today consider the spot to be part of south Salinas.

Nobody says, I live in Confederate Corners, said Monterey County native Chris Lopez, who wouldnt have known about the site if it werent for Google Maps. Its a dot that comes up and kind of catches your eye.

Lopez is among many who find the areas link to the South surprising, and the name off-putting. But as long as the name isnt commonly used, some said, its not much of a problem.

A 2015 California bill by state Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda, sought to prohibit public property from being named after anything associated with the Confederacy.

The proposed legislation, however, may not have affected federally identified places. In any event, it was watered down and then ultimately vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown, who wanted to leave naming decisions to local officials. Still, two high-profile Southern California schools that motivated Glazers effort, both named after Gen. Robert E. Lee, voluntarily changed their identities.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names said its open to altering the names of federally designated places and has, in fact, changed some racially charged names. But it has never received a petition regarding Confederate Corners.

The head of the Monterey County branch of the NAACP, Regina Mason, said enshrining a Confederate name was a tacit validation of racism that lingers in California.

Given whats happening in the country right now, I think this could be become an issue, Mason said. I would like to see it changed.

Still, as Mason steered the conversation from Confederate Corners to the inequities facing many of the countys poor rural residents, she seemed to suggest there were far bigger issues that demanded her time.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander
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Renting out motel rooms in Oregon for $1,000 a night that normally go for $71 isnt the only way some folks are turning a buck on Monday mornings solar eclipse. Theres also the shady world of counterfeit eclipse shades.

People with souls darker than the shadow of the moon have shamelessly been selling low-quality eclipse-viewing glasses that could damage the eyes of anyone who uses a pair to take in the celestial spectacle.

An eclipse of the sun isnt particularly rare, and neither are the stern warnings not to look at it without proper protection. Whats new is the demand for eclipse safety glasses that has apparently spawned a market in fakes.

Amazon has issued a recall of many of the solar eclipse viewing glasses sold by vendors over its site. The online retailer wont say how many pairs its recalling or how widespread the problem might be.

The company has offered refunds to customers. Amazon has not received confirmation from the supplier of your order that they sourced the item from a recommended manufacturer, the company wrote in an email. We recommend that you DO NOT use this product to view the sun or the eclipse.

Amazon did not return requests seeking comment.

Hindsight is 20/20, and thats also the kind of vision you wont have, ophthalmologists say, if you view the eclipse through the fake filters.

Amazon is not the only vendor suspected of selling iffy eyeware.

Buyers have been told that eclipse glasses were safe if there was an ISO (International Organization for Standardization) number printed on them. But then counterfeiters began printing the ISO number onto unsafe glasses sold online  which means the counterfeiters counterfeited the number designed to thwart counterfeiters.

It is no longer sufficient to look for the ISO logo on eclipse glasses and filters, said Susanne Medeiros of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

Dark sunglasses, even very dark ones, even two pairs of very dark sunglasses worn over one another  are not good enough either, experts said. The same goes for any number of homemade eclipse-viewing materials, according to the American Astronomical Society.

Filters, smoked glass, photographic or X-ray film, space blankets, potato chip bags, DVDs, and any other materials you may have heard about for solar viewing are not safe, the society said in a statement.

Although such materials might seem to be dark enough, the society said, they arent.

While youre enjoying a comfortable view of the dim sun, solar infrared radiation could be cooking your retina, the society said. And you wouldn't know till later, because your retinas don't have pain receptors. Only after the eclipse, when you notice blind spots or other vision problems, would you realize youd made a catastrophic mistake.

Amy Osborne/Special To The Chronicle

Seventy-one years ago, a 9-year-old San Francisco boy looked at a solar eclipse through a smoked piece of glass. He lost almost all the vision in the eye he used to view the solar blackout, according to ophthalmologist Russell Van Gelder, of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and it never came back. That patient, who requested anonymity, is not alone. The condition is called solar retinopathy, and theres absolutely nothing an eye doctor can do for it, Van Gelder said.

The sun puts out an enormous amount of energy, Van Gelder said. Thats why you can take a magnifying glass on a sunny day and burn a hole in a leaf. Youre doing the same thing to your retina if you look at the sun  youre literally burning a hole in it.

Selling fake eclipse glasses is as low as it gets, Van Gelder said, something like selling fake medicine.

There are people out there looking to make a quick buck, he said. Its really a terrible thing.

Glasses now being sold on Amazon are said to be safe. But its unlikely a pair bought now would arrive in time for the big event. The eclipse is scheduled to take place in San Francisco on Monday from 9:01 a.m. to 11:37 a.m., one performance only. San Francisco will see a partial eclipse, in which about three-fourths of the sun will be in shadow. The closest place to see a total eclipse is central Oregon, land of the $1,000 motel rooms.

And as the hour draws near, the online price for the safety glasses is creeping sky high as well. Some eclipse glasses that used to go for a buck or two are selling for $20, take it or leave it. Their frames are made of card stock, also known as paper. Many Amazon vendors say they are sold out of eclipse glasses at any price.

In San Francisco, the store at the Exploratorium science museum at Pier 15 received a fresh shipment of 3,000safe eclipse viewing glasses this week. They sold out in less than two days, at $2.75 a pair.

How can you tell if your eclipse glasses are safe? If you can see anything through them besides the sun, said Van Gelder, they arent.

They should be like a blindfold, he said.

It doesnt take long to do irreversible damage, said Dr. David Hwang, an ophthalmology professor at UCSF. Solar retinopathy can occur from only a few seconds of viewing a partial solar eclipse.

Eye doctors could have quite a number of cases after Monday from eclipse watchers who fail to take the warnings seriously, he said.

If youre not sure about your eclipse glasses, it would be better not to take a chance, he said. The damage is real, and theres nothing you can do afterwards.

Theres no real way to know whether a pair of eclipse glasses is safe without testing them with a piece of lab equipment known as a spectrophotometer, which most people dont have lying around the house.

Also safe for viewing an eclipse are No.14 welding glasses. But not all welding glasses are No.14 welding glasses, and most people dont weld.

As for eclipse profiteering, it seems that everybodys getting into the act  even the post office.

The U.S. Postal Service is selling a heat-sensitive eclipse forever 49-cent postage stamp which does something that no other U.S. postage stamp has done: If you put your finger on the picture of the darkened sun on the front of the stamp, the image turns into a picture of the full moon.

The postal service figures that many collectors will keep the stamps as collectors items instead of using them for postage, enabling the postal service to pocket as profit almost all of the 49 cents.

With Mondays eclipse having been on the calendar for centuries, authorities have had time to prepare. The partially darkened sun will mean that solar energy collectors will absorb less energy. Matt Nauman, a spokesman for the Pacific Gas and Electric Co., said the utility figures it will lose 2,600 megawatts in California, enough to power 650,000 homes, but that other energy sources such as hydroelectric will kick in to make up the difference.

Meanwhile, millions of people are just as ready for the sun to quit its fling with show business and get back to normal.

A sunset, say eclipse killjoys, is more beautiful than a solar eclipse, and one of them is scheduled every evening. No special glasses required.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF
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In the aftermath of a violent protest in Charlottesville, Va., that left three dead and thrust neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalists back into the public eye, tech companies big and small have turned their back on far-right extremists by cutting off access to revenue and canceling service  effectively banishing them to the far corners of the Internet.

The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, went offline. PayPal stopped transactions that benefited hate groups and their supporters. And OkCupid revoked the dating privileges of known white supremacists.

While some antiracist activists and tech leaders applauded the impact the digital ice-out would have on extremists reach and revenue, others worried that tech firms may have gone too far: Could they do the same to any group that challenges popular ideals or opposes the interests of Silicon Valley?

The same policies against hate speech or hate groups or terrorist propaganda that are leading companies to take down the Daily Stormer and its folk are routinely used against groups on all sides of the political spectrum that dont advocate violent ideology whatsoever, said Emma Llanso, the director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Any tool that enables censorship online can be used against potentially everyone  regardless of ideology.

White nationalists and free-speech activists have begun building alternatives to the mainstream Internet in an effort to operate outside the rules and norms of Silicon Valley, on networks where hate speech and extremist organizations can exist unchecked.

But there are significant drawbacks, said Cody Wilson, who helped to create Hatreon, an alternative to the better-known Patreon, a website that allows content creators to receive financial support from users.

No one truly wants to rebuild 20 years of Internet infrastructure so they dont have to engage in these full-scale social purges, said Wilson. Theres not a lot of money or talent behind the so-called alt-tech. This isnt a thing where were like, Oh, were going build a whole new world. It doesnt work that way.

Wilson doesnt align himself politically with white nationalists or far-right extremists. But he believes that they, too, should have a forum to express themselves.

Hatreon, which has about 1,000 users, was booted off of its infrastructure provider, DigitalOcean, Friday amid a widespread purge of hate groups from the Internets most prominent gatekeepers.

Several online civil rights groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology and San Francisco advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have questioned the power of big tech firms and cautioned those who cheer the dismantling of Nazi websites that they could be next.

After terminating its contract with the Daily Stormer, Matthew Prince, the CEO of website security firm Cloudflare, said in an interview with TechCrunch that the power Internet companies have is troubling, and without a system in place to regulate decisions that result in censorship, its unlikely those decisions will be made objectively.

Privately owned tech companies are not subject to the First Amendment, which ensures the right to speech free from government censorship. Most, instead, operate in accordance with their own terms of service.

But even then it can be hard to tell whether a company is implementing its rules fairly or singling out certain people or groups that it may not like, Llanso said.

We need more transparency across the board, she said. Its kind of hard to talk about content moderation when we still dont have very good information about what social media platforms are actually doing.

Even the open Web, a supposed free-for-all, has posed challenges for far-right groups. GoDaddy and Google refused to manage the Daily Stormers Internet domain, forcing it to bounce around to several different domains  including one on the dark Web and another in Russia  before resurfacing with the unlikely address dailystormer.lol through the domain registrar NameCheap.

NameCheap did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though the companys terms of service explicitly outlaw hate sites.

Discord, a voice chat service popular among video game enthusiasts that had been instrumental in organizing far-right extremists, axed several accounts, chat rooms and servers affiliated with neo-Nazi sentiments or white nationalist groups.

Google also banned social network Gab, billed as the far-rights version of Twitter, from its Android app store Thursday.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Our online community leans libertarian, small-c conservative, and anti-corporatist left, Gab spokesman Ustav Sanduja wrote in an email.

Since then, the social network has raised $400,000 from its users, Sanduja said, pushing its total contributions since July to more than $1 million. Gab, which has 207,000 users, was founded by Bay Area entrepreneur Andrew Torba, who considers the social network a haven for Internet separatists.

Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and Facebook have long been the subject of criticism both for suspending and banning accounts because of the content they publish on those sites and also for not doing enough to combat hate speech and harassment.

Facebook and YouTube have recently announced plans to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to better identify  and more quickly suspend  groups that promote hate speech and white nationalist ideologies on the social networks.

We all felt this righteous indignation after what happened (in Charlottesville), and fair enough, Hatreons Wilson said. But look, if some radical San Francisco LGBT group got kicked off the Internet for violating terms of service, we would all be having a very different conversation.

Marissa Lang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mlang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Marissa_Jae
By PTI: in HP

Shimla, Aug 19 (PTI) Around 18.6 lakh children in Himachal Pradesh would be covered under the single shot Measles-Rubella (MR) vaccine campaign, officials said today.

The Measles Rubella (MR) vaccination was added to Indias Universal Immunization Programme (UIP) in February. The vaccine replaces the two doses of measles vaccines given at 9- 12 months and 16-24 months of age.

advertisement

"2,760 teams will vaccinate 18.6 lakh children in 23,780 sessions all over state," State Immunization Officer Mangla Sood said at a workshop on the vaccination campaign.

Pradeep Haldar, Deputy Commissioner in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, said, "Through full immunisation coverage, we can make sure the benefits of life-saving vaccines reach every child. The Measles-Rubella vaccine, which will be provided free of cost in schools, health facilities and outreach session sites during the campaign, is another such step toward achieving our goals."

Sonia Sarkar, Communication Officer, UNICEF India, in a statement said the medias support was necessary "to ensure that every child is immunised".

The first phase of the MR campaign was conducted in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Puducherry and Lakshadweep and around 3.3 crore children were vaccinated.

The second phase of the campaign will involve eight states, out of which the campaign has already started in five. PTI Corr GVS GVS

--- ENDS ---
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Wells Fargo is trying really hard to win back customers after the company admitted that employees created up to 2 million fraudulent accounts.

As evidence of the companys commitment to transparency and good intentions, CEO Tim Sloan has consistently pointed to what he called an exhaustive and independent investigation led by the board of directors.

But the San Francisco banking giant will never be able to move beyond the scandal, because the board inquiry was neither exhaustive nor independent. We know this because there have been wave after wave of fresh revelations of misconduct that have spread beyond the original account-opening scandal.

For this reason, former Federal Reserve official Elizabeth Duke, who will become Wells Fargo chairwoman in January, should order another review, this time led by a credible outside figure with experience in law enforcement, financial regulation or  better yet  both. The company should also hire an independent accounting firm to conduct a forensic audit.

Wells Fargos board and management team have taken many actions in response to its retail sales practices issues, including changes in senior leadership, executive accountability actions and numerous steps to ensure we make things right with our customers and other stakeholders, spokesman Ancel Martinez said in an email. This work continues and remains a core part of our efforts to build a better Wells Fargo.

Another investigation will no doubt cost a lot of money and time. But Wells Fargo could have avoided this had the company done it right the first time. The previous investigation, supervised by a four-member board committee, hired the Shearman & Sterling law firm to assist the inquiry. Stuart Baskin, a Shearman partner, is defending those four directors against a shareholder lawsuit filed by prominent Burlingame attorney Joe Cotchett against the Wells Fargo board, which immediately raises the question of how independent the firm can be.

The resulting 113-page report completely exonerated the board, which is highly convenient for the directors who paid for it. Former CEO John Stumpf, who was forced to resign, bore much of the blame.

Clearly, you have to blame it on someone, said Wayne Guay, a professor of accounting and an expert of corporate governance at the University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School.

The inquiry focused on only one division, retail banking, even though the board said the decentralized structure of all of the companys businesses prevented top executives from detecting wrongdoing. Finally, the report covered a limited time period; we now know allegations of fraudulent accounts surfaced as far back as 2001.

The board should have examined the entire enterprise, said Clifford Rossi, a former chief risk officer at Citigroups consumer lending unit who now teaches finance at the University of Maryland. Otherwise, you get this drip, drip of possible misconduct that was not covered by the report.

For years, Wells Fargo outpaced competitors in revenue growth, he said. That makes you wonder what else employees did to goose sales, Rossi said.

Cotchett filed court documents in April, detailing a scheme in which Spanish-speaking employees would visit places they knew were frequented by undocumented immigrants (including construction sites and a 7-Eleven), drive them to a branch and persuade them to open an account. Some employees allegedly gave the immigrants $10 apiece to start an account. The events described in the declaration go back a decade.

Additional claims of wrongdoing have emerged. Based on company documents obtained in discovery, attorneys who filed a federal class action lawsuit against Wells Fargo estimate that there may have been 3.5 million fraudulent accounts, almost double the banks original estimate. (The company said the estimate was hypothetical.)

Wells Fargo also recently determined that the bank charged 800,000 car loan customers for auto insurance they did not need. Another lawsuit claims that the bank reordered customers transactions to collect more overdraft fees.

Its death by thousands of cuts, Rossi said.

Just by virtue of its size, Wells Fargo faces lots of lawsuits, and not all of the accusations are necessarily true. But given the current environment, any new allegation of fraud undermines the boards and the companys credibility, especially when it claims that directors had laid such issues to rest.

Bank boards primarily exist to protect management, said Richard Bove, a bank analyst with Vertical Group. They have done an extraordinarily bad job. I cant imagine anyone whom I would trust less to safeguard my money than a board.

Thats why Duke should appoint a prominent outside person to run a more credible review.

Companies have often looked to notable names to lead investigations. Uber went big when it faced allegations of sexism and mismanagement, hiring former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holders firm in February. In 2012, Best Buy had a former U.S. attorney and the former director of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission investigate allegations of misconduct against former CEO Brian Dunn.

Wells Fargos situation is more serious than that of Uber or Best Buy, because the banks scandal involves the way it treated its customers, not just the companys culture or a wayward CEO.

Until the board commissions a credible outside investigation, Wells Fargo will continue to be dogged by a scandal it could have laid to rest a while ago.

Thomas Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: tlee@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByTomLee
People who have applied for Social Security Disability Insurance and been turned down twice are having to wait a record number of days to get a hearing in front of a judge and receive a decision.

The average wait time is 596 days or 19 months, up from 545 days in September and only 353 days in 2012. The backlog of cases pending a hearing stands at about 1.1 million, up from 700,000 in 2010.

Those who ultimately win their case can get federal disability benefits, known as SSDI, dating back to five months after the date of their original claim. (Some can get benefits retroactive to their original claim, if they can prove they were disabled before they filed it.)

People who cant work and have no other source of income while awaiting a hearing can face extreme financial hardship, even bankruptcy. Even if you are not disabled now, this could happen to you one day, said Mary Dale Walters, a senior vice president with Allsup, a company that helps people get these benefits. If you have been paying Social Security taxes and become disabled, you are entitled to the benefits.

The Social Security Administration blames the backlog on Baby Boomers moving into their prime disability years, an increase in claims filed during the recession and staffing shortages.

News reports about disability insurance fraud  such as a 2013 episode of 60 Minutes  make it seem like benefits are easy to get. President Trumps budget director, Mick Mulvaney, has suggested that some recipients arent really disabled and the government could save billions by pushing them back into the workforce.

In reality, getting disability benefits can be arduous, and only about 37 percent of former workers who apply end up getting them.

To qualify, you generally must have worked and paid Social Security taxes for at least five of the past 10 years, or four of the past eight years if you are younger than 30, Walters said. More than a third of applicants are denied for this and other technical reasons separate from medical conditions.

If you are working and earning more than $1,170 per month (or $1,950 if blind), you generally wont qualify.

Finally, you must be unable to engage in substantial gainful activity due to a medically determinable physical or mental impairment that has lasted or is expected to last at least one year or to result in death, Social Security spokeswoman Patricia Raymond said in an email.

In 1960, the most common reason people were awarded federal disability payments was for problems of the circulatory system, such as heart disease and strokes. In 2015, the most common impairment (suffered by 36.3 percent of those awarded benefits) was for diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue, such as muscular dystrophy, arthritis, bursitis, carpal tunnel syndrome and tendinitis. The next biggest group (15.1 percent) got benefits for mental disorders.

Your monthly benefit amount depends on your earnings history. The maximum this year is $2,687, but the average is $1,170. If you are getting workers compensation benefits, they will be deducted from your disability payment. Once you reach your full retirement age (66 to 67), you will move from disability to Social Security retirement benefits.

Most people who apply for federal disability have already exhausted unemployment and short-term state disability benefits, Walters said.

The process starts with an initial application. It takes about four months on average to get a decision unless you have one of about 250 compassionate allowance conditions  such as Lou Gehrigs disease and stage four cancers  in which case you could get an answer very quickly. Only about a third of applicants get their initial application approved.

If you are rejected, you have 60 days to ask for a reconsideration, then wait another four months on average for a decision. Only 12 percent of people who ask for a reconsideration get approved.

If you are turned down again, you have 60 days to request a hearing in front of an administrative law judge. The average wait time  between applying for a hearing and getting a judges decision  ranges from 11 to 26 months, depending on location, but averages 19 months nationwide (and in the Bay Area).

The percentage of people who apply for a hearing and win has fallen to 46 percent from 64 percent six years ago, Walters said. One reason: Since March, judges can now give equal weight to the applicants doctor and to a second opinion from a doctor appointed by Social Security. Previously, they gave more weight to the applicants doctor.

Many people who were denied benefits on the first and second go-rounds win at the hearing phase, because the hearing process uncovers detailed and complete medical evidence, and sometimes individuals medical conditions deteriorate, Raymond said.

From the the date of their initial application, many people end up waiting for 2 years or longer for a judges decision.

George Chris Parker of San Francisco was diagnosed with Klippel-Feil syndrome, which involves the abnormal joining of spinal bones in the neck, as a child. I was totally normal through my 20s, I had a career (in real estate) and everything, he said.

About four years ago, he started having numbness in his arms and now has spinal stenosis. It doesnt just affect your spine. Its a debilitating chronic pain disease, Parker said. I have to take medication through the day. I have trouble sitting and standing. I have doctors appointments all the time.

Parker lost his job as a part-time real estate assistant in 2014 but did not qualify for short-term disability from the state. He filed for Social Security disability in October and was rejected in February. The reason, he said, is that hes only 36.

Its harder to get approved if youre under 50 than over 50, said Walters, whose firm is representing Parker.

He was rejected a second time in June and filed for an appeals hearing in July. He could be waiting more than a year and a half for a decision.

Meanwhile, Parker is living in a 250-square foot subsidized apartment. He gets food stamps, and his boyfriend helps with cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping. His parents are helping out financially, but it has been getting to be a bit of a burden on them, he said.

Parker, who filed for bankruptcy during the recession when the homes he owned fell in value, said he might have to file again.

In January 2015, Social Security developed a plan to reduce the hearing backlog. It included expanding the use of video hearings and hiring at least 250 additional administrative law judges (plus support staff) each year in fiscal 2016, 2017 and 2018. Its goal was to reduce the waiting time to 270 days by the end of 2020.

It hired 264 judges in 2016, but added only 30 in fiscal 2017 (which ends next month) because of hiring freezes in the agency and throughout the federal government, Raymond said.

People can pursue disability claims on their own or hire an attorney or company like Allsup or Myler Disability to help. Their fee is limited to 25 percent of the past-due benefits you are awarded, up to a maximum of $6,000. If you dont win, they dont get paid.

Kathleen Pender is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: kpender@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kathpender

Top disability states

States with the highest percentage of people receiving federal disability insurance payments.

State % on disability West Virginia 8.9% Alabama 8.4 Arkansas 8.4 Kentucky 8.1 Mississippi 7.9 Maine 7.7

Bottom disability states

States with the lowest percentage of people receiving federal disability insurance payments.
Its comforting, in these polarized times, to look forward to a rapidly approaching event the whole country can agree on.

The eclipse.

Its all good news, starting with the fact that we can all agree the eclipse is happening. There havent been any shouts of fake news about the eclipse. No one has refused to believe its happening because the scientists said so.

Whew.

The entire country is eagerly awaiting Monday, Aug. 21. The moon will pass between the sun and the Earth, blocking all or part of the sun as it moves over the United States.

According to NASAs website, the first point of contact will be in Lincoln Beach, Ore., at 9:05 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, and totality  the soul-tingling moment when the moon blocks out the sun completely  will be at 10:16 a.m. The stars will come out. It should be glorious.

From there the eclipse will pass over the continental U.S. in a thin band of dark light. It leaves the U.S. near Charleston, S.C., at 2:48 Eastern Daylight Time.

There hasnt been a total solar eclipse visible in the country since 1979, and a total eclipse that crosses the entire continental U.S. is even rarer.

So plenty of people are planning to make the most of it. Tourism officials are reporting a bonanza of visitors and their dollars in the cities and towns where the eclipse will be visible. Many campgrounds in the eclipses path have been fully booked for years.

Sadly, I wont be among these eclipse tourists.

Ill be right here in California, which isnt in the path of the total eclipse. Ill spend Monday working away on a computer. Same as every day.

I do plan to watch the eclipses path on the live stream the Exploratorium has created in partnership with NASA. (Watch along with me at www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse)

Ill probably go outside, too, for the few minutes when were likely to see the most.

In San Francisco, well be able to see about 75 percent totality if we have clear skies, said Rose Petroff, project coordinator for the Exploratoriums Teacher Institute. So its definitely worth going outside. Just make sure you wear the protective eclipse glasses! The peak time in San Francisco will be 10:15 a.m.

While the eclipse is happening, Ill think about how happy I am to be living right now  in a time where weve learned enough about the astronomy behind a total eclipse to be thrilled, not terrified, by one.

Many ancient cultures had myths about eclipses, and all of them were wild. In China, it was said that a dragon had devoured the sun; Mayans blamed snakes for gobbling it up. Vikings blamed the phenomenon on giant wolves racing across the sky, chasing the sun and the moon.

To be fair, there were a few places where a solar eclipse was seen as an auspicious event  the Tahitians, for one, believed it represented an amorous moment between the sun and the moon. (Tahiti just zoomed to the top of my list of vacation spots; the island sounds much more relaxing than fighting all of those eclipse tourists on the highway anyway.)

But for the most part, an eclipse was seen as a portent of doom, and we take that forward with us into these times. The trippiest moment in the book of Revelation, a book thats pretty much all trippy moments, comes after John of Patmos has watched the six seals on the book of judgment tear open. The sun darkens, the earth shakes, and the worlds kings leave their thrones.

In fact, if there is a common denominator around eclipse history, all around the world, its that theyve historically been seen to be particularly dangerous for leaders who have lost their popularity among the populace.

The list of leaders who left the stage around the time of an eclipse is a long one. The death of the Prophet Mohammeds son, Ibrahim, allegedly coincided with an eclipse in 632. Louis the Pious, Charlemagnes son, died in the aftermath of eclipse terror in May 840, and Englands King Henry I died shortly after an eclipse that supposedly had ill portents in 1133. Louis XIV, the Sun King, died shortly after an eclipse in Paris.

Coincidence?

Scientifically, Im sure it is.

But you never know.

As happy as I am that we can now understand eclipses as scientific phenomena, its also fun  and wise  to appreciate our collective cultural memory of the eclipse as something with the power to unleash unexpected cosmic forces, wild turns of events that can be neither delayed nor denied.

Well see what happens.

Wear your glasses, and enjoy the show.

Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @caillemillner
Seven years after opening his tiny corner bakery, LAcajou , owner Matthew Roder is ready to expand.

The South of Market bakery and cafe, which makes a mean cheddar-chipotle scone breakfast sandwich, is set to take open a second location in the Oakland Hills neighborhood of Woodminster.

Roder, who moved to Oaklands Laurel District last year, says hes been looking to grow his bakery and cafe for the past couple of years.

Part of the draw for this spot on Woodminster Lane, which is currently home to Woodminster Cafe, says Roder, is that it offered such a contrast to his San Francisco shop (which is located at the corner of Ninth and Bryant streets, or as Roder calls it, the most busy intersection imaginable).

Though a little more off the beaten path, Roder thinks the new location will prove to be a draw for folks heading to nearby Joaquin Miller Park or hikes in the Oakland Hills.

The new location, which is roughly 1,300 square feet and will have more room for customer seating, will be a similar concept to the SoMa original. Thanks to the spaces kitchen coming with a full hood and ventilation system, the plan is to offer a more expanded menu. Inspired by recent travels to the South of France, Roder wants the cafe to capture the casual fare and lively atmosphere of the bouchon-style restaurants he experienced in Lyon.

Roder also wants to ramp up production retail baked goods, like loaves of bread, to cater to the residents of the neighborhood. While theres currently no beer and wine license for the space, he hopes to add eventually add that as well.

According to Roder, he will take over the space from Woodside Cafe on October 1 to begin some minor cosmetic upgrades. He hopes to softly open about a month later.

To start, the cafe will be open for breakfast, lunch and weekend brunch, with expanded hours until about 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. to follow.

Stay tuned for more details as they become available.

LAcajou Bakery, 5020 Woodminster Lane, Oakland. https://www.lacajou.com

Sarah Fritsche is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: SFritsche@sfchronicle.com Twitter/Instagram: @foodcentric
A little over a year ago, actor and filmmaker Justin Chon posted a video on his YouTube channel, titled, I HATE RACIST ACTING ROLES. Chon filmed himself in his car, having just walked out on an audition after hearing from other Asian American actors who had just exited that the casting agency was belatedly asking for a fake Asian accent.

Aside from an admittedly regrettable decision of adopting a fake Chinese accent in a series of T-Mobile commercials early in his career, Chon, 36, has avoided stereotyped or cringingly racist roles. But as one of a few Asian American actors to have maintained a career (Twilight, 21 & Over), Chon sees a greater responsibility than simply walking away from an audition room.

If Im going to say something about our current state of representation in American media, Ive got to back up my talk, and I have to actually do something about it, Chon says by phone from New York, the day after his new film, Gook, opened the New York Asian American Film Festival. The movie also can count audience awards at Sundance Film Festival and San Franciscos CAAMFest among its many honors this year.

Gook, the second film that Chon has written and directed, not only gives center stage to Asian and African American leads, but also explores one of the most complex modern racial dynamics, between the Korean and black communities in South Central Los Angeles during the 1992 riots.

Opening in Bay Area theaters on Friday, Aug. 25, Gook takes place a day after the Rodney King trial verdict, focusing on the relationship between an 11-year-old black girl (Simone Baker) and two Korean brothers (Chon and David So) struggling to keep their shoe store afloat in a predominantly black area.

Leading up to 2017, the 25th year since the riots, Chon had heard of films covering the events in the works. Once I started seeing they were actually going to be made, and I got my hands on the scripts, it was very apparent that the Korean experience wasnt going to be authentically told, he says.

Chon remembers watching the news coverage while his father, Sang Chon, who plays a prominent role in the film, left their house on the last night of the riots to protect the familys shoe store that had been looted. But, he says, his film is not a dissection of wrongs or rights, nor a story about picking sides.

The riots serve as the backdrop  primarily glimpsed in footage on television screens  for a film about friendship and family amid escalating tensions. I dont care about showing riot footage because for that you can watch a documentary, Chon says.

For Chon, to tell of a certain experience  a notion that often becomes a pitfall for films that pigeonhole characters into representations of an entire race  is to simply give the real subjects a voice and humanity.

For instance, that means depicting Korean American blue-collar men fighting to survive, as opposed to the sometimes emasculated or crudely ethnic characterizations of Asian males in film and television.

And although Chons characters buck stereotypes, they are not defined by their victimhood. Instead theyre understood through a snapshot, a day in their lives that happens to culminate in dramatic circumstances attached to race. In this way, Gook draws parallels to Spike Lees Do the Right Thing  an essential film in any discussion of race, Chon says, but also one he specifically avoided rewatching before filming his own vision.

My ultimate goal with the film is not to tell you what to think, but to create a conversation, Chon says. Part of that conversation might force a reckoning with realities past and present, and racial histories beyond Los Angeles.

Samuel Goldwyn Films

The films title, a Korean word that became a racial epithet during the Korean War and a general slur against Asians and Asian Americans, is not used for shock value, Chon says. Instead, its a sort of reflection of America  the Korean word itself translates, in a tragic twist of irony, to country. The discomfort of the title for viewers is purposeful.

The connotation and the reason they feel uncomfortable is something that America created, not us Asian Americans, he says.

Chon sees the film as relevant as ever, 25 years after the riots.

But if Gook remains a current picture of racial tension, its existence as a film about Asian American men and African Americans at least might show progress toward better cultural representation. The audience-voted awards Gook has won should indicate as much, Chon says.

Yet Chon, who partially crowdfunded a measly budget to make the film, appears passionately dissatisfied about the pace of progress. People complain about whitewashing and underrepresentation, but when there is a voice or a tangible thing that can be made to counter that argument, I dont understand why people dont support it, he says.

Its that attitude that made him walk away from an audition room and make a film that helps break the dam.

Its undeniable that its a lot better than it was 10 years ago, thats a fact, Chon says. Are we where we want to be? No! But I think were on the right track.

Brandon Yu is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: byu@sfchronicle.com

Gook (R) opens Friday, Aug. 25, at Bay Area theaters.
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Stephen Bannon, the former right-wing editor who became one of President Trumps top aides, was unceremoniously dropped from his post of power Friday, a victim of the growing uproar over the presidents political comments this week about white nationalists and his own abrasive style.

While the 63-year-old Bannon had long been rumored to be a politically dead man walking, Fridays announcement came after days of fevered speculation about his fate, with nameless aides  no friends of the presidents chief strategist  telling reporters that Bannons exit had become not a question of if, but of when.

There were few answers in the brief, boilerplate statement White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released shortly after 1 p.m., eastern time.

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steves last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.

Bannon was quick to deny he was fired, saying in an interview Friday with the Weekly Standard magazine that he had always planned to leave this month, which marks a year after he took over as director of Trumps presidential campaign. He said he discussed his resignation with Trump and his new chief of staff, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, on Aug. 7.

He may have jumped before he was pushed, however, since Kelly has been talking about his vision for a completely reorganized White House staff, which probably would not have included Bannon and other current aides.

Within hours of the announcement, Bannon was back at his old job as executive chairman of the online Breitbart News.

Now Im free, he told the Weekly Standard. Ive got my hands back on my weapons. ... I am definitely going to crush the opposition.

While Bannon, long seen by many as the presidents link to the dark side of American politics, may be gone, opponents looking for instant change at the White House are likely to be disappointed.

Bannon was the shadow, but Trump was the person casting the shadow, said John Pitney, professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California.

The immediate Democratic reaction recognized that Trump is still president, and his policies havent changed.

There is one less white supremacist in the White House, but that doesnt change the man sitting behind the Resolute desk, the Democratic National Committee said in a statement.

Steve Bannons firing is welcome news, but it doesnt disguise where President Trump himself stands on white supremacists and the bigoted beliefs they advance, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi added in a statement.

Bannons ouster raised worries among conservatives, who believe he is another victim of what they see as Trumps move away from the populist stands and everyman appeal that carried him to victory in November.

Earlier this week Richard Viguerie, a longtime conservative activist, fired out a letter calling on conservatives to build a groundswell of support behind Bannon to prevent the start of a complete purge of conservatives from the White House staff.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

There wasnt much time for that support to develop, Viguerie said ruefully in an interview Friday.

That cake was already baked, he said. Trumps new chief of staff, Kelly, and others want to clean house of anyone who was a Trumpite.

It doesnt look good for conservatives, Viguerie added. Its not a disaster, but it is concerning.

But Trump himself had given clues that Bannon was on the way out.

At the same impromptu Tuesday news conference where the president argued that some very fine people joined the white supremacists and neo-Nazis at last weeks deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va., Trump also argued that Bannon was a latecomer to his campaign team and declined to give his aide a vote of confidence.

Well see what happens with Mr. Bannon, he said.

It was almost certainly Trump who decided that Bannon had to go, said David Caputo, president emeritus and political science professor at Pace University in New York.

It was Trumps decision, he said. I dont think the new chief of staff has the trust to be allowed to do it at this point, although he may have made the recommendation.

The move was typical Trump, Caputo said, firing Bannon in an effort to shift the discussion away from the deluge of criticism he received for his response to the Charlottesville rally, and his continuing effort to cast blame on both the right-wing marchers and the protesters who showed up to oppose them.

As the boss at Breitbart, Bannon was happy to boast in July 2016  a month before he joined the Trump campaign  that the news site was the platform for the alt-right, a loosely defined group on the far right with links to ideologies like white nationalism, isolationism, anti-Semitism, nativism and anti-Muslim views.

Bannon used his ties to get those groups behind Trump, where they played a part in his stunning victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

While Bannon didnt join the campaign until I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries, as the president said Tuesday, Trump dubbed him one of the best talents in politics when he brought him in last August to take over a campaign that was lagging behind Clinton.

After the victory, Trump named him his chief strategist and senior counselor and an equal partner to then Chief of Staff Reince Priebus as the presidents top aides. Priebus was pushed from his White House post last month.

Bannons power waned after those heady early days as Trumps top policy maven, but few suggested he didnt speak with the presidents voice.

His ouster, Caputo said, was about personality and style rather than policy differences. He was never enough of a team player.

Bannon also made the mistake of outshining the president in the press, which is a bad move in almost any administration but can be a firing offense when the president is as obsessed about his media image as Trump.

Trump reportedly was furious when Bannon, crowned the Great Manipulator, appeared on the cover of Time magazine in February, with a story that suggested he was the second most powerful man in the world.

NBCs Saturday Night Live took that image  and the presidents anger  a step further in skits that portrayed Bannon as a Grim Reaper-like figure who had the bigger desk in the Oval Office and whom Trump humbly addressed as Mr. President.

Bannon initially irritated Trump by upstaging him, said Pitney of Claremont McKenna, but he added to that by continually clashing with other top White House aides, including Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law.

A new book, The Devils Bargain, by Joshua Green, didnt help Bannons future when it suggested he deserved the credit for pulling disaffected young white men to Trumps banner.

An interview this week with the liberal American Prospect magazine was probably the last straw, as Bannon slammed his rivals in the administration, dismissed alt-right types as clowns and losers, and suggested that Trump wasnt being realistic when he talked of a military solution to the dispute with North Korea.

The question now is which way does Bannon jump? As he goes back to Breitbart, he can either continue the sites current role as a cheerleader for Trump and his policies or he can take the opportunity to score points against the people he believes forced him out because they opposed his populist vision for a Trump presidency.

If theres any confusion out there, let me clear it up: Im leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents  on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America, Bannon said in an interview with Bloomberg.

But Bannon, who has said that he believes Trump is being pushed toward the center by mainstream Republicans inside and outside of the White House, has not said whether those opponents of Trump  and himself  will be on his target list.

Joel Pollak, a senior editor at large for Breitbart, may have given a clue with a tweet he posted shortly after Bannons departure was announced.

#WAR, it read.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth
The craziness of the past two weeks  erratic even by the standards of the Donald Trump presidency  has intensified concerns about Trumps fitness for office and what it would take to remove him from the White House. Trumps saber rattling with North Koreas equally insecure, impulsive leader and unhinged combativeness when challenged about his unwillingness to unequivocally condemn white supremacists has left a growing legion of critics to worry about his capacity to lead in a crisis.

None was more direct than Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, who suggested it was time to consider the 25th Amendments provisions that allow for a quick transfer of power from a president who is physically or mentally incapacitated.

I dont think we can allow this president to continue to spin out of control like this and ignore it, Speier said by phone last week. Hes been in office seven months, and the cringe factor has grown to the point where youre afraid to even pick up your phone in the morning to see whats happened overnight.

Its a tall order. Vice President Mike Pence would need to enlist a majority of Cabinet members (eight of 15) to invoke the 25th Amendment. Its hard to imagine Pence turning against the man who elevated him to the national stage. If Trump resisted  is there any doubt?  a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate would be required to uphold his ouster.

So why would Speier bring up such a long shot? For one, she is worried that his intemperate ways and lack of seasoning and judgment could lead this nation into war or other disasters. As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, she has traveled abroad and heard firsthand the nervousness that Trump is inflicting on our allies. Beyond that is the practical angle: Silence equals complicity.

You cant invoke the 25th Amendment until you talk about it, Speier said.

I had the chance to raise the subject with three other congressional Democrats from California last week, one by phone and two in hour-long editorial board meetings. While none went as far in raising the specter of the 25th Amendment, all echoed these themes:

Trump is proving himself unfit for office.

Impeachment is not likely to happen in a Republican Congress, almost no matter what Special Counsel Robert Mueller or the House and Senate investigations uncover.

Constituents are worried  and engaged  as never before.

It takes a toll on people. I see it in my constituents: Theyre embarrassed, they feel ashamed, theyre unsettled, theyre worried, theyre anxious, theyre angry, said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto.

Its affecting how people sleep, its affecting how people eat, its affecting their well-being, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank. As ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff has an inside view of the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, much of which he is not at liberty to discuss. He did say this: Americans need to be patient. Its going to take time to sort it all out.

He also cautioned that even if evidence of impeachable offenses resulted, the trigger point for action will be political: namely, can Republican members go back to their districts and convince their constituents that this is not just an attempt to nullify an election. A move to impeach would have far more credibility if the effort was led by a Republican Congress, Schiff told our editorial board. And that would take evidence of malfeasance well beyond anything that has surfaced to date.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Dublin Democrat who also serves on the Intelligence Committee, said every single day he shows us more and more of why he is unfit to be president  but rarely more than in Trumps session with reporters Tuesday, in which a rattled and recalcitrant president backtracked from his canned statement the day before about the white supremacists show of hate in Charlottesville, Va.

This was the first major test of an event that came out of the blue, Swalwell said. It was a moment that clearly showed us he was not fit to be president. He showed us who he really was.

Or, as Speier put it, He was almost like an animal that has been put in a corner, throwing out his claws and lashing out at people. He makes you fear whether he has the capacity to make the appropriate decisions on whether or not to push that button.

Swalwell shares Speiers concerns about Trumps capacity, but he recognized the futility, at least for now, of counting on a Republican vice president or Congress to intervene. He said the focus in Congress should be to assert its role as a co-equal branch of government and put guardrails in place to block Trumps worst impulses that could result in war or other disastrous policies. Swalwell, for example, was encouraged by the overwhelming passage of legislation that included escalated sanctions against Russia that Trump opposed.

All four Democrats cited another cause for optimism: an unprecedented surge of citizen engagement since the Trump election. Town halls are drawing unusually large crowds. Emails and phone calls are flowing at unseen levels.

I have to tell you that I draw a great deal of hope and sustenance from whats taking place in civil society across our country, Eshoo said.

Then again, there are limits to the influence of blue-state California, and the deeper-blue Bay Area, in what Eshoo predicted would be seen as a dark time in the history of our country. At least until the 2018 midterm elections, and perhaps beyond, the fate of Trumps presidency rests with Republicans. For all his faults, Trump represents the first opportunity in eight years to sign GOP bills into law, and they wont give that up lightly. Theyre not likely to abandon the president en masse until they are convinced that his sinking numbers are pulling them under.

I think at some point the ice will crack under their feet, Eshoo said.

Theyre not close to there yet. But the faint creaking is growing louder after Charlottesville.

John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicles editorial page editor. Email: jdiaz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnDiazChron

The 25th Amendment

The idea for a constitutional remedy for an incapacitated president was pushed by President Dwight Eisenhower after he had endured a heart attack, a stroke and a major surgery. Congress proposed the amendment in 1965, and it was ratified in February 1967. Heres how it would work in the case of a president who was unwilling or unable to recognize his or her inability to discharge the powers and duties of the office:

The vice president and a majority of Cabinet members would declare the president to be incapacitated, and would notify leaders of the House and Senate. The vice president would then take command.

The sidelined president could at any point reclaim the office by declaring that he or she was able to perform his duties. The vice president and Cabinet would have four days to challenge that assertion. If they did, Congress would have 21 days to act (with the VP in power during the interim).

The president would resume power unless two-thirds in both the House and the Senate found him or her unable to handle the office.
Stephen Bannon, President Trumps chief strategist and an architect of his winning 2016 campaign, has left the White House.

Pugnacious and unapologetic about his controversial beliefs, Bannon was also a lightning rod for outside criticism of the Trump administrations goals and policies.

As publisher of Breitbart News, Bannon was excellent at elevating a message. However, empowered at the White House, this hard-right nationalist message was both divisive and dangerous. Bannon was embraced by white supremacists, including David Duke. At Breitbart, he railed against globalists. In the White House, he declared that the Trump administration was in an unending battle for the deconstruction of the administrative state.

Bannons message is looking less attractive to the country after a week of racial unrest and a morally vacuous response from President Trump.

Three of Trumps advisory councils disbanded after their private-sector members either resigned en masse or threatened to do so: the Manufacturing Council, the Strategic & Policy Forum, and the Arts and Humanities Committee.

According to Gallup, Trumps job approval rating was at 34 percent over Aug. 11-13  the lowest rating yet, by some measures.

Adding to the pressure, Bannon was engaging in a very public feud with his own colleagues in the administration.

Bannon had a long-running battle with Trumps national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, and had been feuding with Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, since the spring. He was also rumored to have displeased the boss by failing to brush off a series of media profiles describing him as the brains behind the Trump operation.

Bannon now joins a long list of ex-Trump administration employees. He also returns to Breitbart News, where he declared Friday that the Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over. He darkly hinted to the Weekly Standard that he would now be free to speak his mind, and seemed to embrace the label Bannon the Barbarian.

He wont be missed. But with every firing, the danger for Trump grows. Soon there will be no one left to blame for the chaos, the moral vacuum, and the disarray in the White House but the executive at the top.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.

Major resignations and firings

JULY and AUGUST: Steve Bannon (chief strategist), Anthony Scaramucci (communications director), Reince Priebus (chief of staff), Sean Spicer (press secretary), Walter Shaub (Office of Government Ethics director)

MAY: Mike Dubke (communications director), James Comey (FBI director)

JANUARY and FEBRUARY: Sally Yates (acting attorney general), Mike Flynn (national security advisor)
While lauding the patriotism of the people of Kargil and the environment of peace and tranquillity in Kargil, she said that Kashmir was in dearth of a similar peace.

Mehbooba Mufti today visited Kargil for the first time after entering into an alliance with the BJP

By Ashraf Wani: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti today visited Kargil for the first time after entering into an alliance with the BJP in the state. While talking about the present socio-political scenario of the state, Mufti said that the coalition with BJP was to facilitate the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir.

Giving her remarks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech, she said that she saw the reflection of Atal Bihar Vajpayee in Modi. "As the Prime Minister has spoken about embracing the people of Kashmir, we hope that Modi jee will come with a sound policy on Kashmir and will keep his promise. After the end of Kargil war, then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee initiated a peace process by doing cease-fire with Pakistan, but unrest still prevails on border areas in Jammu and Kashmir. We hope that the present Prime Minister will walk on the same path and initiate a peace process between the two countries and in Kashmir," said Mufti.

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While lauding the patriotism of the people of Kargil and the environment of peace and tranquillity in Kargil, she said that Kashmir was in dearth of a similar peace.

"I witnessed school children welcoming us with happiness, our children in Kashmir are lacking this sense of happiness due to conflict and the unrest. Kargil region can be considered as hub of cultural and religious pluralism and also a centre of peace in the state," she said.

Mehbooba Mufti, talking about the opening of Cross LoC routes, said that opening the routes can initiate a process of trade in the region and Jammu-Kashmir can further reclaim its status of Gateway to the Central Asia.

"Opening strategic routes is in our agenda of alliance and we will put our best efforts to open strategic routes like Kargil-SKardu and Turtuk-Khaplu road so that the trade and peace process will begin here," she said.

Mufti added that late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had a soft corner for the people of Kargil and promised to boost tourism activities in the district. Mega projects like construction of Zojila Tunnel and Kargil Zanksar highway are already in consideration for the same.

Speaking on the occasion, Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh said that the coalition would bring a new phase of development in Kargil. "I applaud the patriotism and sacrifice of the people of Kargil. I appreciate the the way they have defeated the nefarious designs of anti-national think tanks. We will initiate 10 developmental projects in the future and it is in our consideration," Nirmal Singh said.

Minister of Works and development Naeem Akhtar said that the tendering process has been completed and the construction of tunnel on Zojila will start from five different places and a mega project of 4200 crore has been allocated for connecting two lane Kargil-Zanskar highway.

Also Read:

Mehbooba Mufti meets PM Narendra Modi, Rajnath over Jammu and Kashmir unrest

Watch Video: Stone pelters systematically incited in J-K; Vajpayee era talks only option: Mehbooba Mufti

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For a complicated policy problem, the California housing crisis can be explained simply: People want to live in California, and Californians dont want them to.

A powerhouse economy, along with a forgiving climate and other less tangible attractions, has sustained high demand for California housing across the decades. But the states residents and their elected representatives have collectively engineered an equally impressive suppression of the housing supply that, particularly in the Bay Area and coastal Southern California, has only deepened in recent years.

For every 1,000 residents California has gained since the 1970s, it has produced only 325 homes, a report by McKinsey & Co. noted, which is less than a third of New Yorks pace and half of New Jerseys. To match the number of homes available per person in those states, both of which have relatively limited housing supplies for their populations, California would need another 2 million. To match the national average, it would need 2.5 million.

The most widely felt consequence is that, as the state Legislatures nonpartisan research arm put it, Housing is more expensive in California than just about anywhere else: The median home price of more than half a million dollars is twice the national average, and rents are at a similar premium. The states homeownership rate ranks last in the nation, and, when housing and other costs of living are considered, its poverty rate ranks first. Nearly half the countrys unsheltered homeless live here.

Having long ignored or enabled the forces that created the housing shortage, the Legislature will try to confront them when it reconvenes Monday. The most important and controversial legislation under consideration, Senate Bill 35, would require cities that havent met housing needs to expedite approval of multiunit residential developments that meet zoning and other conditions. Authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, the bill aims to eliminate some of the myriad opportunities for the states cities and towns to prevent homes from being built. As such it would represent the Legislatures first serious attempt to address the housing crisis where it lives.

Even when new housing doesnt face the kind of fierce local opposition that greeted large-scale development proposals in Bay Area communities such as Brisbane and Los Gatos, residential construction proceeds haltingly in California, if it proceeds at all. While one survey found that the average U.S. building permit is issued in 4 months, the Legislative Analysts Office reported the typical wait is seven months in the Bay Area and more than a year in San Francisco.

Even within the group of highly regulated cities, the Bay Area stands out, said UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti, who has studied and written extensively about housing supply restrictions.

Opposing development makes sense for incumbent homeowners, whose property grows more valuable as the shortage worsens. They have often been joined, in what Moretti called a bizarre alliance, by renters and activists who attribute rising rents in poorer neighborhoods to development  even though its the overall lack of new construction that drives gentrification. By excluding people from the Bay Area and other regions where jobs and income are plentiful, local restrictions lead to a loss of income on a statewide and national scale while shifting wealth from workers to landowners. Thats why it makes sense for us as a state to step in, Moretti said.

SB35 has come closer to doing so than a comparable proposal by Gov. Jerry Brown last year partly because legislative leaders and the governor are coupling it with bills enabling billions in government spending on affordable-housing programs, a more popular approach among the Legislatures ruling Democrats. But as the Legislatures own researchers have noted, the scale of these programs  even if greatly increased  could not meet the magnitude of new housing required. Based on past results, for example, a $3 billion bond measure under consideration wouldnt produce enough homes to close a years worth of the continuing gap between the demand for and construction of new housing.

The bill has also won support through a number of concessions that make it more difficult to predict its impact. It could slow the projects it means to expedite, for instance, by requiring builders to pay union-set wages. And it leaves local governments with too many options for stalling the sort of developments its supposed to enable.

Its difficult to project which places this will be a useful tool and how easy it will be for cities to get in the way of it, said Kristy Wang, community planning policy director for SPUR, a San Francisco urban planning think tank that supports the measure. In some ways, its circumscribed so tightly that a lot of cities dont have a lot to worry about.

The bills reliance on existing local zoning and the states assessment of regional housing needs could also limit its ability to dramatically increase development, said Nicholas Marantz, an assistant professor of urban planning and public policy at UC Irvine. Still, Wang said, it could make a significant impact by giving more local officials a sort of excuse to approve housing under state duress.

It will probably take this reform and more to change a local political calculus that treats housing largely as a burden to be resisted. While it goes without saying elsewhere, much of California has to be convinced that, as Wang put it, Housing is a good thing.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.

Legislature returns Monday  its time to act

Pass Senate Bill 35 to expedite approval of appropriate multifamily housing development, and rein in local government obstructionism. This is the most significant step lawmakers can take to accelerate housing construction.

Get rid of counterproductive provisions that drive up costs of new housing, such as union-pushed prevailing wage requirements. The housing shortage needs to be treated as a crisis that demands political courage.

Fund affordable housing to complement market-rate development, keeping in mind that easing private construction is the priority.

Consider further reforms that give local governments incentives to approve housing and reduce pointless barriers to building in developed areas.

Tell your legislators what you think: Find names and contact information for your state Senate and Assembly representatives at http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov.

Plans in the balance

California legislators have yet to take assertive action on the housing crisis. As the session nears a close, heres what remains in the hopper:

Speed development: Senate Bill 35, by Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would expedite approval of urban, multiunit residential developments that conform to zoning, affordability and other standards in communities that arent meeting local housing needs.

Fund affordable housing: Senate Bill 2, by Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, would add fees of up to $225 per real-estate transaction to raise $250 million a year for affordable-housing programs. Senate Bill 3, by Jim Beall, D-San Jose, would ask voters to approve $3 billion in borrowing for those programs.

Dwelling on negatives

Californians myriad reasons for opposing new housing in their communities range from the familiar to the innovative.

Character study: Proponents of the citys small-town feel have played a big role in stalling a Brisbane development, The Chronicle reported recently. We would like to exist as we have existed in the character of our community, said resident Clara Johnson.

This land is jobs land: In rejecting proposed teacher housing this month, San Jose officials argued that the land had to be reserved for commercial uses. City officials said converting jobs land to housing sets a dangerous precedent, the Mercury News reported.

Shadow of a doubt: San Francisco officials required a redesign of a proposed South of Market apartment complex, The Chronicle noted in May, after neighbors and advocates complained that it would increase the amount of shadow cast on a nearby recreation center by one percentage point.

Creative differences: Oakland activists successfully demanded a $100,000 concession from a developer proposing to build an apartment tower on a downtown parking lot, the San Francisco Business Times reported last year, because it would obscure a mural.

With apologies to Potter Stewart: A Planning Commission member struggling to explain why a mixed-use development would not suit Los Gatos was quoted by the Silicon Valley Business Journal as saying, Id rather go to the Supreme Court definition of pornography: I dont know what it is, but I know when I look at it. It (the proposed development) doesnt look like anything Ive seen in Los Gatos. ... I cant connect the dots between the subjectivity and the data, but it doesnt look like anything Ive seen in town.
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Home-SF, the new city law that allows builders to increase height and density in exchange for providing more affordable housing units, is moving from the conceptual to the real.

The owner of the site of the Lucky Penny, the Laurel Heights 24-hour greasy spoon that attracted generations of night owls with its patty melts and hash browns, plans to build 121 units of housing at 2670 Geary Blvd., the curved lot at the busy corner of Masonic Avenue. The Lucky Penny closed in 2015.

The unit count represents a dramatic increase from the 21 units allowed under the current zoning. The developer, a subsidiary of Presidio Bay Ventures, had been frustrated for years by the zoning, which only allows one unit of housing for each 600 square feet of surface. Presidio Bay first explored building a mix of housing, medical office and retail, but the concept was not economically feasible, said Cyrus Sanandaji, a managing partner.

The company then worked on legislation that would have allowed 98 units through the creation of a special use district. But in May the Board of Supervisors passed Home-SF, and its guidelines allowed for 121 housing rental units in a 10-story building. The project will go to the Planning Commission for approval on Sept. 7.

We are proud to be able to put together the first Home-SF project at a time when the housing crisis is only getting worse, Sanandaji said. These are going to be very affordable housing units  our idea was to develop a project that is accessible to all at the middle-income level.

The housing density law, which took two years to craft, allows developers to build taller and denser residential structures in exchange for making 30 percent of the units affordable.

Supervisor Katy Tang first proposed the city density law in 2015 as a means to produce more homes for middle-class families who dont qualify for federally subsidized housing, but the bill died in the face of opposition from both her progressive colleagues, who criticized it as a developer giveaway, and from westside homeowners, who said it would cause new real estate projects to flood their neighborhoods.

But Tang managed to revive the law this year, amid increased interest in helping the teachers, firefighters, nonprofit workers and small business owners who are increasingly unable to afford housing in San Francisco.

The Lucky Penny development will have 41 affordable units, compared with just three if the original 21-unit project had gone forward.

Its incredibly exciting to see that Home-SF is actually being utilized, that it wasnt just a symbolic exercise, Tang said. I think well see more developers come in with Home-SF projects, particularly in transit corridors like Geary, where the zoning is not favorable for new housing.

City planners are hoping that Home-SF will eventually spark the creation of 15,000 units, 5,000 of which would be below market rate, including some set aside for families earning from 90 percent to 130 percent of the area median income, which for a family of four is between $103,750 to $155,650.

While the Lucky Penny is the first project to seek a density increase under Home-SF, others are in line. Supervisor Ahsha Safai, who worked with Tang on the legislation, said the owner of the former Joes Cable Car burger joint on the corner of Mission Street and Silver Avenue, will likely use the law to increase a proposed project from a dozen units to 40 or 50.

It would be a wasted opportunity to have a site like that, in this housing crisis, and just develop 11 or 12 units on that prominent a corner, Safai said.

At a time when many new developments are dominated by studios and one-bedroom units, Home-SF also seeks to carter to families by requiring that 50 percent of the units be two bedrooms or more.

We need to continue to find creative and common-sense solutions for affordable housing, and Home-SF is the latest program that will provide the hard-working people of this city the homes they need, Mayor Ed Lee said.

AnMarie Rodgers, senior policy director at the Planning Department, said the Lucky Penny project is exactly the sort of outcome that Home-SF was crafted to produce.

This is boon to people who are struggling  especially families, Rodgers said.

Carly Grob, housing implementation planner withe Planning Department, said several other developers, including one with a project on 40th Avenue in the Sunset District, are redesigning already approved projects to increase density under Home-SF. Those projects will have to go back before the Planning Commission for new approvals, but the process would be streamlined.

For Laurel Heights, which has not seen a major housing project in more than a decade, the Lucky Penny project will bring new residents and increased pedestrian traffic. Also coming are the redevelopment of both the UCSF and California Pacific campuses on California Street, though both are years away.

Not much has come out of the ground in that area. Its areally underserved area in terms of housing, Sanandaji said.

And while its unlikely that an old-school diner will open in the 1,800 square feet of ground floor retail, there will be some homage to the Lucky Penny in the development.

Were still toying with ideas, Sanandaji said.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
Dozens of soldiers, some as young as 11, sported the blue uniforms of Union soldiers as they stood at attention for the raising of the United States flag at Fort Point on Saturday.

The Civil War re-enactors marched into the fort for Living History Day, just one week after violent riots broke out on the other side of the country over the plan to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

White supremacists took to the streets of Charlottesville, Va., and the University of Virginia campus on Aug. 12 to protest the statues removal from a city park. Residents, civil rights leaders and onlookers took to the streets in counterprotest. One woman died in the riots.

The events in Charlottesville reignited a national conversation about the appropriateness of Confederate monuments in cities nationwide.

But the national debate didnt sway any plans for the re-enactment at Fort Point.

For Austin Bettencourt, 22, the point of Saturdays re-enactment was education.

It was the most defining war in our history, he said. It was what cemented the American mentality: We are a nation, a unified country.

Bettencourt has been re-enacting the Civil War for 12 years. He said the annual event at Fort Point is meant to show a soldiers daily life. No battles were fought at the fort or near San Francisco, but Union soldiers underwent vigorous training to prepare for battle.

Bettencourt dressed in a Union uniform Saturday, but most of his ancestors fought on the Confederate side. No matter which side they fought for, he said, its important to honor their sacrifice.

The perseverance and the strength they had is beyond admirable, he said. And thats something that needs honoring, no matter what.

The plans for Fort Points construction in 1853 were signed by Jefferson Davis, then the U.S. secretary of war. Davis went on to become the president of the Confederate States of America.

That connection surprised San Rafael resident Joe Ridout, who brought his two daughters, Sierra, 4, and Ruby, 2, to the re-enactment. In light of the ensuing national debate, Ridout said, it was interesting to see the stark connection Fort Point has to the Confederacy.

But re-enactments are not political one way or another, he said.

I think its a great way to introduce history on a face-to-face level, he said.  I wanted these two little ones, who just came upon this world, to see something thats been here for so much longer.

Re-enactor Jamin Gjerman said Civil War re-enactments are different from monuments erected of Confederate generals, but they havent been immune from protests.

Gjerman, 23, has been re-enacting Civil War battles since he was 11, and said people have come out to protest events in the past, especially the use of Confederate flags.

He said it could get worse in light of the events in Charlottesville, but he plans to continue for the educational value of re-enactments.

It gives people a way to experience things in context that you would never get the chance just studying it, he said.

Many of the re-enactors are part of formal groups who travel around the state to play out battles and daily soldier life, sometimes for weeks at a time. Bettencourt said they study and research for hours to keep it as educational as possible and focus on the soldiers.

To re-enact the Civil War is to honor them the best we can, he said. Were not trying to make a political statement, were just telling it how it is.

Alison Graham is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: agraham@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @alisonkgraham
Town hall: Rep. Ro Khanna, D-San Jose, hosts a town hall meeting from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday. Multipurpose room, Berryessa Community Center, 3050 Berryessa Road, San Jose. Information: https://khanna.house.gov/about/events/august-23-2017-town-hall-meeting

Peoples budget: A discussion of progressive, alternative budget priorities on the state and federal levels from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Unitarian Universalist center, 1187 Franklin St., San Francisco. Information: www.facebook.com/pdasanfrancisco

Abortion rights: Protest outside San Francisco Hall of Justice in opposition to antiabortion advocates David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, who are charged with felony invasion of privacy for allegedly secretly recording conversations with abortion providers. Protest is at 9 a.m. Thursday at 850 Bryant St. in San Francisco. Information: www.facebook.com/events/334516040331105

Freedom rally: A day of freedom, spirituality, unity, peace, and patriotism, sponsored by Patriot Prayer. Event is at 2 p.m. Aug. 26 at Crissy Field in San Francisco. Information: http://bit.ly/2w5rOLn

Pride Parade: Rise Up contingent invites people to march with it in the Silicon Valley Pride Parade. Assemble at 8:30 a.m. Aug. 27 at southwest corner of St. James Park, St. John and First streets, San Jose. Information: www.facebook.com/groups/riseupforjustice

Virginia candidate: The Sister District Project is raising funds for Kathy Tran, who is running for the Virginia House of Delegates, by hosting a discussion with Rita Bosworth, the Sister District Project founder, and former Assemblyman Ted Lempert. The event is from 7 to 9 p.m. Aug. 31 at the Half Moon Bay Brewing Co., 390 Capistrano Road, Half Moon Bay. Information: www.goo.gl/d2KVLu

Town hall: Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, holds a town hall at 7 p.m. Sept. 15 at Dance Palace, 503 B St., Point Reyes Station.
For years, police in California and New Hampshire knew Robert Bob Evans was a killer, murdering and dismembering his wife in a home outside Richmond decades after presumably killing an unidentified woman and three young children in New Hampshire.

They just never knew his real name.

He was actually Terrance Peder Rasmussen, New Hampshire authorities announced Friday.

Law enforcement officials believe the discovery of Rasmussens identity is a breakthrough in the decades-old murder mystery of the four victims in Allenstown, N.H.

Using DNA with living relatives and comparing fingerprints connected with aliases, police pieced together the identity of the man as well as much of his whereabouts from his birth in 1943 to his death in 2010 in a California prison. But they are hoping that the public release of Rasmussens name will help fill in holes from his timeline, including substantial time spent in the Bay Area in the 1970s, to help identify the nameless woman and children.

Rasmussen used several aliases, in addition to Evans, including Curtis Kimball, Jerry Gorman, Gerald Mockerman, Gordon Jenson and Lawrence William Vanner while living in California during the 1980s. He died in 2010 while serving a life sentence for his wifes murder. He was listed by the California state corrections department as Kimball.

Police believe Rasmussen killed the woman and three girls in New Hampshire, one of whom was his biological daughter, stuffing them in metal drums on a rural property. Police found the first barrel with two victims in 1985 and the second with the other two in 2000. Its unclear when they were killed.

New Hampshire authorities also believe Rasmussen is responsible for the death of another woman, Denise Beaudin, 32, who disappeared after leaving with him for what police believe was a cross-country trip.

Rasmussen was convicted of only one murder, however, that of his wife, Eunsoon Jun. Contra Costa County police in 2002 found her partially dismembered body under a pile of cat litter. In 2003, he pleaded guilty to her murder.

Jun was his second wife. His first wife, along with their children, are alive, police said.

According to the New Hampshire Attorney Generals office, Rasmussen served in the U.S. Navy in California from 1962 to 1967 and lived in Santa Cruz, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties from the early 1970s until his arrest in 2002.

He was employed as an electrician and handyman while in California.

In a timeline provided by the authorities, Rasmussen moved to Redwood City in 1970 and worked as an electrician in Palo Alto.

In 1974, he visited his first wife and children in Arizona, accompanied by an unidentified woman. Investigators are particularly interested in whom he was traveling with at that time.

By 1986, Rasmussen was living in Santa Cruz County, working in a Scotts Valley RV park under the name Gordon Jenson, and after several years of unknown whereabouts, he was again in California, living as Vanner.

Police ask anyone with any information about Rasmussen to contact New Hampshire State Police-Cold Case Unit at (603) 223-3856 or coldcaseunit@dos.nh.gov.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
A blaze in Yosemite National Park forced residents of the small Mariposa County community of Wawona to evacuate Saturday, officials said.

The South Fork Fire, which began last Sunday east of the town, has burned 2,903 acres, according to federal fire officials. The fire picked up overnight because of windy conditions and has caused officials to order residents and visitors in Wawona to leave.
A pathbreaking new study of online conversations among economists describes and quantifies a workplace culture that appears to amount to outright hostility toward women in parts of the economics profession.

Alice Wu, who will start her doctoral studies at Harvard next year, completed the research in an award-winning senior thesis at UC Berkeley. Her paper has been making the rounds among leading economists this summer and prompting urgent conversations.

David Card, an eminent economist at Berkeley who was Wus thesis adviser, said she had produced a very disturbing report.

The underrepresentation of women in top university economics departments is well documented, but it has been difficult to evaluate claims about workplace culture because objectionable conversations rarely occur in the open. Whispered asides at the water cooler are hard to observe, much less measure.

But the intersection of two technological shifts has opened up new avenues for research. First, many water cooler conversations have migrated online, leaving behind a computerized archive. In addition, machine-learning techniques have been adapted to explore patterns in large bodies of text, and as a result, its now possible to quantify the tenor of that kind of gossip.

This is what Wu did in her paper, Gender Stereotyping in Academia: Evidence From Economics Job Market Rumors Forum.

Wu mined more than 1 million posts from an anonymous message board frequented by many economists. The site, Economics Job Market Rumors, began as a place for economists to exchange gossip about who is hiring and being hired in the profession. Over time, it evolved into a virtual water cooler frequented by economics faculty members, graduate students and others.

Wu set up her computer to identify whether the subject of each post is a man or a woman. The simplest version involves looking for references to she, her, herself or he, him, his or himself.

She then adapted machine-learning techniques to ferret out the terms most uniquely associated with posts about men and about women.

The 30 words most uniquely associated with discussions of women make for uncomfortable reading.

In order, that list is: hotter, lesbian, bb (Internet speak for baby), sexism, tits, anal, marrying, feminazi, slut, hot, vagina, boobs, pregnant, pregnancy, cute, marry, levy, gorgeous, horny, crush, beautiful, secretary, dump, shopping, date, nonprofit, intentions, sexy, dated and prostitute.

The parallel list of words associated with discussions about men reveals no similarly singular or hostile theme. It includes words that are relevant to economics, such as adviser, Austrian (a school of thought in economics) mathematician, pricing, textbook and Wharton (the University of Pennsylvania business school that is President Trumps alma mater).

More of the words associated with discussions about men have a positive tone, including terms like goals, greatest and Nobel. And to the extent that there is a clearly gendered theme, it is a schoolyard battle for status: The list includes words like bully, burning and fought.

In her paper, Wu says the anonymity of these online posts eliminates any social pressure participants may feel to edit their speech and so perhaps allowed her to capture what people believe but would not openly say.

In order to more systematically evaluate the underlying themes of these discussions, Wu moved beyond analyzing specific words to exploring the broad topics under discussion.

This part of her analysis reveals that discussions about men are more likely to be confined to topics like economics itself and professional advice (with terms including career, interview or placement).

Discussions of women are much more likely to involve topics related to personal information (with words like family, married or relationship), physical attributes (words like beautiful, body or fat) or gender-related terms (like gender, sexist or sexual).

In an email, David Romer, a leading macroeconomist at Berkeley, summarized the paper as depicting a cesspool of misogyny.

To be sure, the online forum Wu studied is unlikely to be representative of the entire economics profession, although even a vocal minority can be sufficient to create a hostile workplace for female economists.

Janet Currie, a leading empirical economist at Princeton (where Wu works as her research assistant), said the findings resonated because theyre systematically quantifying something most female economists already know. The analysis speaks volumes about attitudes that persist in dark corners of the profession, Currie said.

Justin Wolfers is a New York Times writer.
NEW DELHI  India Inc. suffered a new blow Friday when the CEO of one of the countrys leading technology outsourcing companies suddenly resigned, a surprise move he attributed to a continuous drumbeat of distractions and negativity.

The departure of the executive, Vishal Sikka, from Infosys comes just months after a struggle at the top of the Tata Group, a powerful Indian conglomerate, focused attention on a variety of problems in the countrys corporate governance and culture.

Both companies symbolized a shift in Indias business mind-set in recent decades, as they looked overseas to court clients and deals. Their success in recent years has come as Indias overall economy has seen faster growth.

Their more recent struggles, however, have also held similarities, with both companies being caught in battles between the goals of their original founders and a new generation of executives.

Sikka took over as the chief executive of Infosys in 2014, coming from the software company SAP and making it the first time the company looked beyond its original founders to fill the top job.

Established in 1981 by seven engineers armed with just $250, Infosys now has about 200,000 employees and reported revenue of $2.6 billion in the three months through June.

It has steadily expanded by offering software outsourcing services, arguing that it saves money for major companies and allows them to operate more efficiently. The majority of its revenue now comes from the United States, where Sikka pledged this year to hire 10,000 U.S. employees.

Sikka was credited with helping bolster the companys revenue, sending its shares sharply higher. But he nevertheless found himself criticized by the founders of Infosys, including Narayana Murthy, a longtime former chairman and chief executive, particularly over levels of executive pay.

That criticism came to a head Friday, when Sikka suddenly announced he was resigning.

Sikka will stay on as executive vice chairman, and the companys chief operating officer, U.B. Pravin Rao, will take over as interim chief executive. Infosys said it planned to have a new chief executive in place by the end of March.

Hari Kumar is a New York Times writer.
A man involved in a standoff of more than five hours in Fairfield on Thursday was arrested and faced several charges following the incident, including threatening a police officer and reckless discharge of a firearm.

Steven James Douglas, 31, was taken into custody after being forced out of the home when police deployed tear gas, police spokesman Sgt. Jeff Osgood said in a statement.

The incident started just after 3 p.m. on the 1400 block of Michigan Street. Police, responding to a report of a disturbance in the home, heard gunshots coming from the backyard. They set up a perimeter and urged nearby residents to shelter in place.

Douglas mother, who was outside the home when police arrived, was escorted to safety. Another female, Douglas girlfriend, remained in the home during the standoff, Osgood said.

Crisis negotiators communicated on and off by phone with Douglas, who at times threatened to kill himself or force others to kill him. He also threatened to shoot at a California Highway Patrol helicopter patrolling above the home.

Douglas refused to comply with police demands and after an extended period without communication, a SWAT team deployed the tear gas. Douglas and his girlfriend finally emerged from the home just before 8:20 p.m. They were treated at the scene for exposure to the gas.

The girlfriend was released without charges.

Douglas was booked into Solano County Jail and also could face charges of probation violation and shooting at an inhabited dwelling.

Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker
One police officer was killed in the central Florida town of Kissimmee on a night when at least four officers were shot in the state, officials said.

The Kissimmee police chief said another officer there was injured and three suspects were in custody.
By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 19 (PTI) State-run telecom firm MTNL said it has increased 3G mobile internet data limit by up to three times in the same price for its pre-paid customers.

"Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) has decided to offer up to three times free data on existing prepaid 3G data coupons available in the market," the public sector firm said in a statement.

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The company announced that customers buying its Rs 99 data coupons will get 1.5 GB data with a validity of 30 days against 500 MB earlier. Similarly Rs 19 coupon will now provide triple data at 750 MB.

The scheme has been in effect from August 7, the company said.

MTNL customers recharging with Rs 319 will get 2 GB of 2G or 3G data everyday, unlimited free calls on MTNL network in Delhi and Mumbai and daily free 25 minutes on other networks, with a validity of 28 days, the statement said. PTI PRS SBT

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While filming in the San Francisco Ferry Building on Friday, television host Andrew Zimmern made sure to stop and smell the fungi.

The foodie, best known for his Travel Channel show "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern," worked his way through the San Francisco landmark as a camera crew trailed behind.
BOSTON  Tens of thousands of demonstrators, emboldened and unnerved by the eruption of fatal violence in Virginia last weekend, surged into the nations streets and parks Saturday to denounce racism, white supremacy and Nazism.

Demonstrations were boisterous but broadly peaceful, even as tension and worry coursed through protests from Boston Common, the nations oldest public park, to Hot Springs, Ark., and to the bridges that cross the Willamette River in Portland, Ore. Other rallies played out in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Memphis and New Orleans, among other cities.

The demonstrations  which drew 40,000 people in Boston alone, according to police estimates  came one week after a 32-year-old woman died amid clashes between white nationalists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va., and they unfolded as the nation was again confronting questions about race, violence and the standing of Confederate symbols.

President Trump, who has faced unyielding, and bipartisan, criticism after saying there was blame on both sides in Charlottesville, wrote on Twitter on Saturday that he wanted to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!

He also wrote: Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before!

It was an abrupt shift in tone. The president posted earlier Saturday that it appeared there were many anti-police agitators in Boston.

Law enforcement officials were on alert throughout the day, wary of being seen as irresolute and ineffective after the protests in Virginia turned into running street battles and became fatal when someone drove a car through a crowd. Officers in riot gear sometimes faced off with demonstrators to maintain order. There were scattered scuffles and arrests; in Boston, the site of the largest of the weekends protests, police said there had been 33 arrests, mostly involving charges of disorderly conduct.

In Dallas, where a gunman killed five police officers who were protecting a protest in July 2016, authorities formed a barricade around Saturdays demonstration site with buses and dump trucks. As sunset approached at a Confederate monument in the city, people engaged in shouting matches, while state troopers stood guard and helicopters flew overhead.

Katharine Q. Seelye, Alan Blinder and Jess Bidgood are New York Times writers.
CHICAGO  Two employees of elite universities charged in the fatal stabbing of a 26-year-old hairstylist were returned to Chicago early Saturday to face charges of first-degree murder in the brutal killing.

Chicago police escorted fired Northwestern University Professor Wyndham Lathem, 43, and Oxford University financial officer Andrew Warren, 56, from the Bay Area, where they surrendered peacefully on Aug. 4 after an eight-day, nationwide manhunt. Detectives were questioning the men Saturday. They could appear in court as early as Sunday.

The men are accused of killing Trenton James Cornell-Duranleau, a Michigan native who had been living in Chicago, last month in Lathems high-rise Chicago condo.

Chicago police have said Cornell-Duranleau suffered more than 40 stab wounds, including mutilations, to his upper body. Authorities say the attack was so violent the blade of the knife they believe was used was broken.

They found Cornell-Duranleaus body July 27 after the buildings front desk received an anonymous call that a crime had occurred on the 10th floor. He had been dead more than 12 hours. By then, authorities say Lathem and Warren had fled the city. According to autopsy results released Friday by the Cook County medical examiners office, Cornell-Duranleau had methamphetamine in his system at the time of his death.

Police say Lathem and Cornell-Duranleau, who moved to Chicago from the Grand Rapids, Mich., area about a year ago, had a personal relationship, though they have not described the nature of it or a motive for the attack.

Its unclear what the relationship was between Lathem, Cornell-Duranleau and Warren, whos British. He arrived in the U.S. three days before the killing, after being reported missing in Great Britain.

After the killing, Lathem sent a video to friends and relatives apologizing for his involvement in the crime, which he called the biggest mistake of my life.

Sara Burnett is an Associated Press writer.
Im what you call an eclipse chaser.

Its a self-appointed title, one shared by people like me, people who spend all their vacation time and travel money to observe these indescribable phenomena. On an eclipse website I run, I host a log that allows people to record how many of these events theyve seen. The top chaser on the site has witnessed 33 total eclipses to date.

Why do we do it? For most of us, it is something of an obsession. Each time is familiar yet new, and always breathtaking. Theres almost a religious epiphany that occurs. Its like the eye of God looking down on you.

Because of that, I dont have a favorite eclipse among the many Ive seen. All of them are different, and all of them are great.

The day before and again the morning of an eclipse, I spend the time in nervous anticipation that something could go wrong. Every cloud I see could be an advance scout for an army of them coming over the horizon. Wind changes are a big deal. Small alterations in humidity are noted. Should we move? Should we set up here? Will it be clear?

In the moments before first contact  the point when the moon touches the solar disk for the first time  my anticipation grows. Then comes that first little dark edge across the sun. That little bite confirms that all the calculations made of time and place are right. Relief.

Slowly the moon covers the last of the bright sun and the light falls off quickly. Sunset colors fall across any clouds that may be in the sky. If you are looking in the right direction and have a great view, you might even see the moons shadow racing across the land toward you. Or you might see shadow bands moving across a flat area, vaporous ghosts making the light shiver around them.

And then the eclipse goes total. Its dark, yet not pitch-black. The horizon glows. Bright stars appear. The sky takes on a deep blue color. And where the sun once shone is a black circle surrounded by a shiny white corona  the circle of solar gases. Its a magical eye floating in the sky. Streamers of light extend like glowing hairs. Time seems to flip into hyperdrive. But before you know it, the eclipse is ending.

The finale is the best part. It lasts just a few seconds. The solar disk peeks out. The light from that one speck of sunlight quickly overwhelms the corona, an effect known as the diamond ring.

While every eclipse shares these features, a serious eclipse chaser can look at a photograph of any one he or she has seen and say, for example, Oh yeah, thats from the 1983 eclipse in Indonesia. How do they know? Well, because each corona is different from every other.

Most chasers will tell you their first eclipse was the best. I was in elementary school when I got involved with the local astronomy club at Youngstown State University. In 1970, some members came back from observing an eclipse on the East Coast and talked about what a great experience theyd had. The director of the university planetarium said he would organize a cruise to intercept the next total eclipse in 1972, when I would be 13 years old. I begged my parents, and they agreed we would go.

My parents and I watched that eclipse in middle of the North Atlantic. The next year, we went to Western Africa to see one. We didnt see another until 1980.

I was lucky in my profession, using my computer science and engineering degrees to start my own business in 1985. That gave me flexibility, and whenever it was economically feasible, Id go to see the next eclipse. When my wife and I were first getting serious, she found a book at my place  a NASA publication of upcoming eclipses, with a sticker on the front reading Bills travel guide. Fortunately, she was eager to travel along.

So we kept chasing eclipses, and when we had kids, we dragged them along. On Monday, our grandson, born just in November, will be with us to see this eclipse. So the eclipse-chasing Kramers are now a four-generation tradition.

Over more than four decades, Ive witnessed eclipses in four of the seven continents  Asia and Europe along with North America and Africa.

Still, Ive missed a few. Sometimes its a question of weather  or common sense. In 2015, there was an eclipse in March visible from Svalbard, a frozen archipelago near the North Pole. I skipped that one.

Amazingly, Ive never been clouded out and unable to see an eclipse. Germany in 1999 was the closest Ive come, but its never actually happened. (Knock wood.)

Eclipses create unique communities, bringing together professional astronomers and amateur chasers like me. Theres a lot of cooperation and citizen science. On Monday, the Citizen CATE experiment will collect video recordings of the eclipse from people across the U.S., so scientists can watch about two hours of inner corona dynamics. We also meet at conferences. There, a grad student might ask a chaser like me to try to photograph a particular aspect of a coming eclipse. The amateur can send in the pictures and get a mention in a scientific paper.

This eclipse, though, will be more about fun than science, an event Ill share with just friends and family. But my preparation has been methodical. Two years ago, my wife and I drove the predicted eclipse path all the way from Wyoming to Kentucky to determine the optimum viewing location. Our chosen spot: just north of Nashville.

Of course, if the weather doesnt look very good the night before (Ill use satellite data to check), well hit the road to find a better spot.

Im looking forward to this one in particular because many in our group have never seen an eclipse. Its always gratifying to hear their reactions immediately after the sun goes dark. Its nothing like you described, they often say.

Well, yeah, but how does one adequately describe an eclipse? After 45 years of chasing them around the globe, I still havent really found the words.

The best I can do is answer what is often the next question, the question I love the most: Whens the next one?!

Bill Kramer, 58, lives in Jamaica most of the year. He wrote this article for Zocalo Public Square. He maintains a website all about his passion: www.eclipse-chasers.com

Editors note: On Monday at around 10:15 a.m. PDT, parts of the contiguous U.S. will fall in the path of a total eclipse of the sun for the first time since 1979. For many, it will be their first and perhaps only chance to witness the rare occasion when the paths of moon and sun are in alignment and the new moon covers the view of the sun from certain parts of Earth.

But not for Bill Kramer. The retired computer engineer will log his 17th total solar eclipse Monday and his 26th solar eclipse overall. Hes been fascinated with them since he was barely a teenager. Here is his story.
1 Polanski case: A Los Angeles judge on Friday denied the impassioned plea of Roman Polanskis victim to end the criminal case against the fugitive director. Judge Scott Gordon ruled Polanski must appear in a Los Angeles court if he expects to have his four-decade-old case resolved. Gordons ruling follows a fervent request by Samantha Geimer to end a 40-year sentence she says was imposed on both perpetrator and victim. Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with Geimer when she was 13. He fled the country on the eve of sentencing in 1978. Polanskis attorneys have failed to persuade judges to sentence him in absentia for the 42 days he was incarcerated for psychological testing before he fled. Geimer has long supported Polanskis efforts but made her plea in court for the first time in June.

2 Wildfires: One of several wildfires burning in Montana destroyed two homes Friday after jumping control lines as firefighters braved another day of high temperatures, gusty winds and low humidity. The homes, southwest of Lolo, were among 750 residences evacuated after the fire, started by lightning in July, blew up late Wednesday. The blaze has burned nearly 30 square miles of forest. In Californias, crews fighting a fire in Yosemite National Park were trying to guide the flames away from the small town of Wawona (Mariposa County). The fire has closed campgrounds and trails in the park, but authorities have not ordered anyone to leave.
In a horrific incident, a 16-year-old boy stabbed a 70-year-old woman in Dharavi of Mumbai. He hit her on the head with a bat and later he put a detergent mix in her mouth. The boy used to visit the old woman's house to have food.

By Saurabh Vaktania: In a shocking incident, a 16-year-old boy brutally assaulted a 70-year-old woman in Dharavi locality of Mumbai. Police said that boy used to visit the victim's residence for meals.

On Saturday, the boy allegedly tried to rob her off her gold ornaments. Sensing trouble the woman tried to evade the attempt and the boy later began assaulting and stabbed her.He not only stabbed her, at first he tried to strangle her. The accused later put scissor in her mouth and a detergent mix. The boy went on to stab the woman multiple times and even hit her on the head with a bat.

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After the brutal and inhuman assault, the woman identified as Savitaben Kariya (70) is currently battling for life at a hospital in Sion. Savitaben lives with her son and daughter-in-law at Chitrakut society in Dharavi.

The accused 16-year-old also resides in the same building. The accused father owns a jewelry shop. Dharavi Police said that the boy was a regular visitor to Savitaben's residence. He ate at Savitaben's residence and both the families were known to each other.

HERE IS HOW IT HAPPENED? On the day of the incident Savitaben was alone at her residence when the boy visited her. He reportedly went to have food. When Savitaben went to the kitchen to fetch food, the boy got the opportunity to steal cash and gold ornaments that were kept in a cupboard. However, the boy was caught red-handed by the woman. Fearing that his deed will be exposed, the boy decided to kill her. Police said that the boy locked the door from inside and later took an iron rod and kept hitting Savitaben till she lost consciousness. Savitaben, however, was still breathing and this is when the boy got a pair of scissors and began stabbing her on the mouth. He did not stop there and brought a detergent mix and poured it into her mouth. The brutality did not stop there, he later got a kitchen knife and stabbed the woman multiple times. Despite the battering and bludgeoning, Savitaben was still moving and breathing. The boy later got a washing bat and hit her on the head multiple times in rage. After making sure the woman was dead, the boy locked the door from outside and went home. Incidentally, the boy's parents helped him clean his blood-stained clothes and helped him have a bath. The incident came to light in the evening when Savitaben's son Kamlesh returned home. The woman was soon rushed to a local hospital in Sion. Savitaben suffered brutal injuries and deep cuts on her head. Police said that nearly 180 stitches were taken. Doctors said that her condition is extremely critical. After the incident came to light, Dharavi police registered case and as the boy is minor he has been sent to children remand home. The cops may arrest boy's parents for attempting to destroy the evidence. "How can one become so brutal. The boy used to have food at her place every day. He should not be treated as minor and should be hanged for this act," said a distraught neighbour.

FYI || Watch: Hands folded, tears rolling down, kid begs for mercy as woman reprimands, assaults ||

FYI || Brutal: Saudi Police thrashes 2 Pakistani transgenders to death for cross-dressing ||

--- ENDS ---
Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal United (JD-U) today passed a resolution to join the NDA. The resolution was adopted by the party's national council which met today in Patna.

By Anand Patel: Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal United (JDU) has made a comeback to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). A resolution to this effect was adopted by the party's national council which met today at the chief minister's residence in Patna.

The decision was taken even as the rebel JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav held a parallel function to show his strength in the state capital. Sharad camp has been opposing Nitish Kumar's decision to form an alliance government with the BJP.

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With the JD-U now having returned to the NDA fold, its MPs will soon be inducted into the Union Council of Ministers. Moreover, the Bihar Chief Minister may even be given a key role in the NDA. He is tipped to become the co-convener of the BJP-led alliance. JDU has 2 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 7 out of its 9 Rajya Sabha MPs are with Nitish Kumar.

POSTER WAR BETWEEN RIVAL JD-U FACTIONS TAKES UGLY TURN

Meanwhile, a poster war in Patna city between the two JD(U) factions took an ugly turn when about a dozen bikers broke security cordons and managed to reach Rajendra Chowk just outside the chief minister's residence where a meeting of the JD-U national executive committee was underway.

Patna: Supporters of Sharad Yadav & RJD protest outside CM Nitish Kumar's residence, where JDU National Executive Meet is taking place. pic.twitter.com/PE8TzNkQGp- ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

The workers backing Sharad Yadav were raising JD-U flags and shouting slogans against Nitish. The bikers clashed with JD-U workers, who alleged that these were, in fact, RJD workers disguised as Sharad Yadav's supporters.

#Bihar: Security outside CM Nitish Kumar's residence in Patna increased after demonstration by Sharad Yadav & RJD supporters. pic.twitter.com/VRDXhMv7En- ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

Talking to the media, Patna city Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj said that an inquiry had been launched into breach of security and CCTV footages were being examined to ascertain the identity of the bikers and where they came from.

Meanwhile, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav has hit out at Bihar BJP leader Sushil Modi, calling him a cheat and a 'lootera'.

Sushil Modi bhari lootera hai anap shanap baaten karta hai, half-pant pehenta tha tab se janta hun: Lalu Prasad yadav, RJD pic.twitter.com/kMUOIX6Krw- ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

CONDOLENCE MOTION ON GORAKHPUR DEATHS PASSED IN SHARAD YADAY's MEETMeanwhile, a condolence motion was passed in the meeting of the Sharad Yadav camp to condole deaths of the children killed in Gorakhpur and in the floods in Bihar.

While the meeting of the Sharad Yadav camp had started, JD-U MP Ali Anwar reminded that a motion to condole death of flood victims should ne passed first and then this was done.

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"Our target and agenda is not any person (Nitish and PM Modi), but the country is seeing farmers, who predominantly feed the population, commit suicide."

"I appeal to the Muslims. There is fear among Muslims today. Dalits are insecure. There is massive turmoil in the country's universities today. Nitish is looking like a dwarf today who once attained a high stature when he became the chief minister of the Mahagathbandhan in 2015."

Sharad Yadav said, "There is unemployment in the country today. Youths are having no work. PM promised in 2014 that 2 crore people would get jobs but till date nothing has happened. In democracy, what one says and promises is important. Farmers are committing suicide in thousands. In the name of love jihad, people are being killed today."

"Since the split of the Mahagathbandhan, I have been touring the entire country, which is in a difficult situation today. The flood situation in Bihar is also very bad. In the last 70 years, the situation in the country has not changed."

In Una, Dalits were beaten for skinning cows. This is the state of affairs in the country".

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(WITH INPUTS FROM ROHIT KUMAR SINGH)

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Sharad Yadav, Nitish camps hold parallel meetings in Patna; JD-U passes resolution to join NDA

With Sharad Yadav in revolt, JD-U national executive to consolidate Nitish's position

Poster war in Patna as Nitish, Sharad convene meeting on Saturday

WATCH VIDEO | Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav ready for show of strength at parallel meetings in Patna

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LOWER TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP)  A driver was forced to gun his engine and jump a drawbridge that began rising as he crossed it with his family.

Terence Naphys, of West Deptford Township, had paid the toll to cross the Middle Thorofare Bridge with three family members in his vehicle on Aug. 1. The bridge links Cape May with the Wildwoods near the Jersey shore.

As he was crossing the steel grate, it began to rise 3 to 6 feet because a vessel was trying to cross, police said.

"My wife said, 'I think the bridge is opening,'" Terence Naphys told KYW-TV in Philadelphia.

"He accelerated, and of course then we landed with a big impact on the concrete on the side," said Jackie Naphys.

Police said the landing caused minor damage to his vehicle. No one was hurt.

Authorities said the operator of the bridge was to blame for the scare.

"An employee for the Cape May County Bridge Commission stated that a large vessel was approaching the bridge and they had no contact with that vessel due to their radio being down," police said in their report.

The bridge tender told police he activated the bridge's lights and gates in anticipation that all vehicles would be clear. However, he wasn't sure because of sun glare.

Terence Naphys said he would never cross the bridge again.
By Rohit Kumar Singh: Former national president of Janata Dal United (JD-U) and MP Sharad Yadav on Saturday called on a convention titled "Jan Adalat Ka Faisla" in Patna as a parallel to National Executive meeting of JDU chaired by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Speaking on the occasion, Sharad Yadav accused Nitish of conspiring to throw him out of the party and make him homeless.

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"I have built JDU and there are some people now who want to throw me out of my party and make me homeless", said, Sharad Yadav, former JDU National President.

The meeting which was attended by suspended JDU leader Ali Anwar Ansari and expelled party leader Ramai Ram saw Sharad slamming Nitish for snapping ties with Mahagathbandhan and allying with BJP to form the govt in Bihar. Sharad said that Nitish may have changed his political path but he still remained with the Mahagathbandhan.

"I have no complaint against any individual but I am hurt that the mandate of the people given to Mahagathbandhan in 2015 has been insulted. I appeal to the people to continue with the Mahagathbandhan at the lowest level," said Sharad Yadav.

Sharad said that Nitish might have walked out of the Mahagathbandhan, he is trying his level best to bring all opposition parties on a common platform and launch a Mahagathbandhan at the national level once again, ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

"The Mahagathbandhan which was formed in Bihar was to be replicated on the national platform but now that the Bihar model has flop, I am once again trying to build a Mahagathbandhan and bring all opposition parties on board", said the former National President of JDU.

Also Read

Sharad Yadav, Nitish camps hold parallel meetings in Patna; JD-U passes resolution to join NDA

Nitish Kumar led-JD(U) joins NDA; supporters of Sharad Yadav, RJD protest outside Bihar CM's residence

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By PTI: Ahmedabad, Aug 18 (PTI) Senior NCP leader Praful Patel today admitted that one of the two party MLAs had voted for the BJP candidate in the recent Gujarat Rajya Sabha election.

He, however, dismissed the Congress allegation that both the NCP MLAs in Gujarat had voted against its candidate Ahmed Patel in the August 8 polls.

The former Union minister said while Jayant Patel alias Bosky had voted for Ahmed Patel, the political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, another NCP MLA, Kandhal Jadeja, voted for the BJP in the election to the Upper House of Parliament from Gujarat.

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"The NCP was very clear from the beginning that both of our MLAs will vote for Ahmed Patel and the whip was issued accordingly. However, Jadeja defied it and voted for the BJP, whereas Bosky stuck to the party directive," Patel, the NCP in-charge for Gujarat, said at a press conference here.

Asked if the party was mulling any action against Jadeja, he said it was an "internal matter of the NCP".

Ahmed Patel won the cliffhanger of the election with 44 votes after the Election Commission (EC) invalidated the votes of two rebel Congress MLAs, who had allegedly showed their ballots to BJP president Amit Shah.

Congress sources had said Patel won the polls on the votes of the 43 party MLAs and the lone JD(U) MLA in the Gujarat Assembly, Chhotu Vasava, and not on the votes of the NCP MLAs.

The narrow margin of Patels victory amidst the see- sawing number game and cross-voting has, however, soured the relations between the Congress and the Sharad Pawar-led party.

The NCP, last Friday, skipped a meeting of opposition parties convened by Congress president Sonia Gandhi to express its displeasure over the allegations levelled by some Congress leaders that the two Gujarat MLAs of the party had not voted for Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha election.

Asked about a possible alliance with the Congress for the Gujarat Assembly polls due later this year, Patel said a decision to that effect would be taken by the NCP high- command.

"The NCP was part of the Congress-led UPA government in the past. We had entered into a pre-poll alliance with the Congress for the 2012 Gujarat Assembly polls. We may enter into an alliance again if the Congress approaches us," he said.

Meanwhile, senior Congress leader Arjun Modhwadia alleged that the NCP did not stand by his party when it needed its support.

"The Rajya Sabha election was a fight to save democracy. Just like some others had come forward to support us, the NCP too should have stood by us. However, it was unfortunate that the NCP failed to do its bit, which was very disheartening for us," he said. PTI PJT PD NSK RC

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This story orginally appeared on Latitude 38.

You've all heard of 'Semesters at Sea', where college students spend four months on the ocean as an alternative- learning environment. As parents-to-be rather than college students, we spent two of my three trimesters at sea.

It all started with my missing a period at Tabuaeran (aka Fanning) Island 900 miles south of Hawaii. Anyone who has been there knows it's not the place to find a pregnancy test kit. The stores are small huts that are only open when the owners feel like opening them, and they only sell goods such as our, rice (usually with weevils), corned beef hash, single cigarettes, and pens and paper to school kids.

See Also: Mistaking S.F. for the Tropics.

Concerned that I might be pregnant, I tried not to think of all the raw ahi sashimi I had been eating for the past few days, or the beer, liquor and kava I had been consuming in celebrating our second time cruising the Pacific. Until we knew for sure whether I was pregnant, I decided to switch to cooked fish and juice.

As days passed, I felt more positive about being pregnant, but really wanted a test to be certain. But winds were strong from the SSE, and we wanted to wait until they turned more easterly to make our trip from Fanning to Niue/Tonga/Samoa  we weren't sure where we would land  more pleasant. We ended up departing from Fanning on June 19.

On our sail down we talked about the three possible countries we might land at in 10 days to two weeks' time. Did Niue have a hospital or just a clinic? I thought I'd read American Samoa's maternity ward was under construction, but wasn't sure. Would Vava'u's pharmacy have an ultrasound machine? The answers to most of our questions were mere speculation, since the cruising guides do not address those who need prenatal care.

I was sick pretty much every day of the passage. For someone who had already logged 13,000 ocean miles sailing from California to Hawaii to New Zealand to French Polynesia and back to Hawaii, and had never been seasick, I was pretty sure I had morning sickness. All the many forms of ginger I had onboard were no match for my daily nausea.

It didn't help that we had to cross the Intertropical Convergence Zone, which featured days of squalls. After crossing the equator to the South Pacific, we were greeted by the South Pacific Convergence Zone. We again had squalls for days, and when we weren't dodging squalls, we had either no wind or 30 knots.

See Also: Best Windsurfing in the Bay?

It seemed like one of the longest passages of our lives, although we had done some that were twice as long. We arrived in Neiafu, Tonga, on the morning of the Fourth of July  only to find it was a national holiday. No, they weren't celebrating America's Independence Day, but rather the Prince's birthday. Everything was closed.

We returned to the pharmacy on the 5th to buy a pregnancy test. We went to the nearby Mango Cafe to use the Internet and drink soda until I had to pee. Soon the time came for me to go.

"So this is it!" Chris said, looking around the Mango Cafe and at the boats moored in the water just in front of us. "This is where we find out if we will be parents!"

After three minutes in the bathroom, I ran out waving the indicator stick. "We're having a baby!" I hugged Chris.

We returned to the pharmacy to make an appointment with the doctor who, because of a lack of government funds, only works three days a week. We met Kiwi Dr. Julie, last name unknown, who was to be the general practitioner for the town for the next few months. Luckily she was an OB-GYN, so she was able to answer all of our questions.

Our main concerns were Zika, and what I could eat. We learned that Zika hadn't really been present in Vava'u, but nonetheless decided it would be best for me to cover up for the first 18 weeks of pregnancy just to be safe.

We also learned that I couldn't eat a lot of foods  lunch meats and soft cheeses among them  due to Listeria bacteria. Since we were on an island that got its food from a bigger island, which in turn got its food from New Zealand, the doc told us to be extra, extra careful with any meat and cheeses we bought. Most of the meat is frozen when it leaves New Zealand, defrosts en route to Tongatapu, is refrozen to be shipped to Vava'u, and then is more likely defrosted and refrozen once again. Perhaps you have enjoyed the well-known Tongan delicacy known as 'Square Chicken'.

So we had to skip purchasing all meat and cheese while in Tonga. Anyone who has been pregnant can understand how hard this was for me. Luckily Chris is great at spear fishing, so he was able to provide protein in the form of goat fish, parrot fish, grouper and other local fish.

The highlight of our visit with Julie was when she rolled out the ultrasound. "I think this thing works!" she said.

Since she had only been in Tonga a few days, I was her first patient who needed the machine. I plugged it in for her, she booted the system, and then scanned my belly. After 312 weeks of wondering, we finally had certainty. Julie showed us an ultrasound of a tiny  about the size of a grape seed  future sailor. We could see the tiny heart beating. It finally felt real.

Julie told us the next milestone in prenatal care was the 18th-week anatomy scan. This is a more in-depth ultrasound that will show us the baby's vital organs and make sure everything is forming as it should. But Julie was not sure if there was a doctor in Vava'u that could perform the scan. Our other options were flying to Tongatapu or Fiji.

While at the hospital, we inquired about this scan, and we were told to find Dr. Atomi, again last name unknown. We were led to another room with a sign that said 'X-ray' on it. We knocked and waited. The same woman in a coat from before walked by. "Just knock and go in," she said. Things are different in Tonga.

We entered and found the doc sitting at a desk looking at an X-ray. We introduced ourselves, explained that I was expecting, and wanted to know if she could do the anatomy scan.

"Sure!" she said happily. "I have the machine right here. It can show me everything. Just come back any day in October after 1:30 p.m. I will remember you." We were sure she would remember us, as she couldn't be seeing many palangi couples.

So far our journey in pre-natal care in Vava'u had been quite adventurous. While on the surface the pharmacy and hospital may have seemed less organized than in the States, we were able to speak directly to the doctors and nurses. As everyone knows, this is something that is nearly impossible to do in the average health care system in America.

In the States, we typically would have had to sit in urgent care or an emergency room for hours, and then pay a huge co-pay to be able to get seen. And then possibly receive a bill for what our insurance didn't cover. It might have even taken weeks to get an appointment with an OB-GYN in our insurance network. The access to professionals in Tonga to answer our questions was refreshing.

At this point we had spent 80 pa'anga on our first pharmacy visit, 142 on blood tests, and 30 for prenatal daily supplements. That's a total of $175 US dollars. Considering we didn't have health insurance care in Tonga, this was a bargain.



It was about this time that we hauled our boat out at the boatyard in Vava'u. We needed to redo the bottom paint and put in some new bronze thru-hulls. Due to my pregnancy, we decided I should stay away from sanding, painting, and anything that involved harsh chemicals. So I kept Chris fed and did what small projects I could. Unfortunately, deep cleaning the head and holding tank were tasks that I was allowed to do.

Fortunately, I was offered a job back in the States for four weeks, so I left Chris to finish the bottom while I flew home to make some money. Chris painted a surprise message for me on the bottom on the hull. Upon my return to Tonga, we went snorkeling. While inspecting Chris' handiwork on the bottom paint, I found the surprise message  his marriage proposal! Being six months pregnant with his child, I decided to say 'yes'.

Lila Shaked, Latitude 38

One day after I returned to Tonga to see, while snorkeling, Chris' marriage proposal written in anti-fouling paint on the bottom of Privateer, we attended a bonfire party on the beach. While dancing the night away, I ran into Dr. Julia, who told me the doctor who was to do the anatomy scan the following week no longer did them. Not the best news to get at a rave. Luckily, I had options.

Some new mothers in Vava'u told me they'd flown to Tongatapu to get scans there. I called the doctor, who referred me to a second doctor who did scans at the radiology department at Vaiola Hospital in Tongatapu.

When I got off the plane, a taxi driver asked which guesthouse I was going to. When I told him why I was headed to the hospital, he got excited and led me to his car. He told me that his four kids had all been born in the hospital. When I told him I'd call him when I was done, knowing it might, as in the States, take all day, he laughed and said he'd wait.

After 20 minutes I was back in the cab! I had been taken straight to the doctor, who knew who I was from my luggage. She immediately got started with the ultrasound machine, and went over each item one by one, and gave me the diagnosis; the baby was healthy.

The next big event in our pregnancy was our passage from Tonga to New Zealand. It's one of those passages where cruisers often spend more time talking about the best time to take off than they do on the actual passage. In all fairness, the trip from Vava'u, Tonga, to Opua, New Zealand is about1,000 miles, so it can take a full-keel double ender such as our Privateer at least nine days. And in November, a gale typically blows from west to east between Tonga and NewZealand every 7-10 days. So we had to expect we'd get hit.

We typically don't do deadlines when planning a passage, but as I was 6.5 months pregnant, we felt I needed to get to New Zealand sooner rather than later. Though chances were low, women have gone into labor at seven months. We had the book Where There is No Doctor on board. The four-page section on how to deliver a baby was less than comprehensive. And Chris didn't feel comfortable if he had to follow the " five easy steps".

We had an amazing rhumbline sail until the wind died 250 miles from New Zealand, at which point we decided to motor. After about 30 minutes the engine made a strange sound and died. We did all the troubleshooting we could before deciding it was a problem we couldn't solve at sea. So we waited for wind. And waited and waited. After five days we got a puff, the start of the wind that would take us all the way to the Quarantine Dock in Opua.

After getting settled into Opua, we were quickly able to find a pair of midwives in New Zealand who had dealt with foreigners in the past. I explained that sometimes I could be on the boat in Opua, or Paihia, or Russell, depending on the weather, and wouldn't know until the day before the appointment. The midwives were completely understanding, even when I had to cancel appointments because it was too rough to make the 30-minute row to shore.

Instead of meeting in the comfort of a house for my checkups, we met in the computer room of the Bay of Islands Cruising Club, outdoor cafes, or the grassy lawn near the library. I always brought my yoga mat along so I could lie out while the midwife took my vitals, measured my tummy, and felt the baby.

New Zealand is very into natural births. While I was hunting for a house to have a home birth in, both my midwives insisted that we could give birth on the Privateer! In fact, I think they were excited to add a boat to their list of places they have delivered.

As my pregnancy progressed, we learned that mine was a high-risk, and we would have to deliver at the hospital in Whangarei, about an hour away from Opua. We would still try for a natural birth, but would be in a hospital in case any complications arose.

We spent weeks 34-38 on a mooring in Opua near the boatyard. While Chris worked to keep up our cruising kitty, I stayed busy doing yoga, walking, and just passing time in the amazing Bay of Islands.

As I was tying up my dinghy on the wharf one day, a woman came up to me and asked which boat was mine. I thought I was in trouble for using the wrong dock for my dinghy. "No," she laughed, "I've been watching you dock here for over a week now and I just wonder how far you have to row!"

She went on to explain that she was a paramedic, and couldn't help but keep an eye on a pregnant woman rowing a dinghy. Along with being a paramedic, she was also the manager of the boatyard. She insisted we get a slip for the final weeks of my pregnancy. She was able to help us get all set up, even when Bay of Islands Marina claimed they had no slips available.

In all our time cruising we had never paid for a slip. But we figured this was a month that it would be worth it. While I had never been in labor, if it were to happen while Chris was at work, I would probably have found myself rowing to shore between contractions. So we figured we could afford the slip for one month.

I went into labor on the boat at 1 a.m. on February 21. After a quick car ride and 22 hours, our little boy Chance entered the world. Incredible!

Thanks to the extreme generosity of a Northern California couple who have circumnavigated, we were given the use of their New Zealand home for the first two month's of Chance's life. Then family came to visit and help us get started.

Wethree of us noware now moving back onto the boat and prepping for our next crossing  from New Zealand up to Tonga.

Lila Shaked, Latitude 38

Having a baby in New Zealand was a wonderful experience. Several Maoris have walked right up to us and asked if they can hold our child. We love to let them, and pass our child off to as many strangers as possible. We know this will only be more and more common as we return to the islands around Fiji and Tonga.

One of the most interesting things that I found as a pregnant American in New Zealand was how easy it was to get the predicted cost of my medical care in advance. New Zealand has free health care for all of its citizens, so while hospitals, birthing centers, and midwives all charge fees, they have a set price list nationwide, and they bill the government. The price list is just one page long, and the items include: first trimester prenatal care, home labor and birth, hospital birth, C-section birth, and so forth. Each item has an exact cost that does not vary. As an American, I was shocked!

While we were deciding if we would have the baby in the United States or New Zealand, I spent days trying to speak with my insurance company in Hawaii to get any sort of idea of what a birth would actually cost me. But to no avail. If we'd wanted to travel to California to be closer to family for the birth, I would have been 'out of network' and thus not necessarily covered by my insurance company.

We did the math, including the price for hauling the boat out in New Zealand or Tonga, paying for six months in a yard and flights for us round-trip from New Zealand or Tonga to Hawaii or California. And a big X factor was not being able to get an actual estimate of how much a birth in the US would cost. Then we looked at our little one-page piece of paper from the New Zealand government, with the exact prices of a birth, and decided this was the way to go. My final bill for the birth was one page long, and the total came to $5,000. Not bad for being a country with the second-best-ranked maternity care in the world. While there were many things we enjoyed about our trimesters at sea  cheap costs, easy availability of doctors, etc.  there were definitely cons as well. When I did turn up in New Zealand, I handed my midwives my paperwork from Tonga showing my scan results and blood tests in Tonga. While it was clear I had no hepatitis, HIV, and such, the tests didn't actually say what my blood type was, and my rubella results were sent in a separate email where the doctor just wrote, "Negative!" My midwives made it clear that these results would not fly in New Zealand, and I needed to be retested.

The most important thing that we took away from this experience was seeing the cruising community come together, as they always do, and offer to help us in any way needed during our pregnancy and afterward. Boat neighbors assured us their VHF would always be on in case we needed to contact then while we were still on the mooring. Complete strangers who resided in Opua offered us cars in the event that we needed to go to the hospital before we had our rental car sorted out. And an amazing pair of cruisers we had never met offered us their home in New Zealand for the first few months of Chance's life!

We look forward to this same community helping us raise our little boy and being a part of his life at sea.




Manuel Sulzer/Getty Images

One person was injured and 10 displaced--including residents and animals--in a fire that started this morning in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, fire officials said.

The one-alarm fire was reported at 10:59 a.m. in the 2500 block of Washington Street, across from Alta Plaza Park.
Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation (JKNSF) held a massive rally in Jandali area of PoK to demand freedom from Pakistan.

This is not the first time that reports have emerged from the troubled region.

By India Today Web Desk: A massive rally has been organised by the Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation in Jandali area of PoK (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) to demand freedom from Pakistan.

Local leader Liyaqat Khan said, "Pakistan sends terrorists here to ruin this peaceful place". In a video shared by ANI, the protestors are seen raising pro-freedom slogans and raising banners to demand freedom from Pakistan.

#WATCH: Pro-freedom slogans raised at a rally by J&K National Students' Federation in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir's Jandali. pic.twitter.com/ZrDdjDTZvQ- ANI (@ANI) August 19, 2017

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This is not the first time that demands of freedom from Pakistan have been raised from the troubled region. In the past as well, anti-Pakistan protests have taken place across Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The Pakistani forces have been accused of committing human rights violations and inflicting atrocities on the people of PoK.

On April 24, 2017, hundreds of locals in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir's Kotli area took to the streets to protest against the forcible land-grabbing by Pakistan Army. The protesters raised anti-Pakistan army and anti-Pakistan government slogans.

On February 5, 2017, Islamabad observed the annual Kashmir Solidarity Day in support of the Kashmiri people. Enraged at Pakistan's high-handedness and denial of basic human rights in their region, PoK residents took to the streets to express their ire at the corridors of power in Islamabad.

PoK residents claimed that the Pakistani government, via its intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the administration, was committing atrocities on innocent citizens.

On October 22, 2016, Kashmiris across PoK held a protest demanding immediate withdrawal of the Pakistani forces from their territory.

The Pakistani Army on October 22, 1947, disguised as tribal invaders, attacked Jammu and Kashmir, killing thousands of people. The tribals, known as Kabailies, were employed by Pakistan to change the demography of Jammu and Kashmir by executing genocide on the people. It was an attack by Pakistani Pathans on the Kashmiri people.

On October 24, 2015 as well, a 'Black Day' was observed in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). An 'anti-Pakistan' protest was organised by the National Students Federation.

In April, 2016, anti-Pakistan protests erupted in various parts of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) over Islamabad's discrimination in employment to local youth.

The protesters raised issues regarding lack of jobs in PoK where the Pakistani youth were being preferred to Kashmiri youth.

About 100 individuals owing allegiance to Jammu and Kashmir National Students Federation (JKNSF), along with some members of Jammu and Kashmir National Awami Party (JKNAP), carried out a demonstration rally in Muzaffarabad area of PoK, condemning the oppressive rule by Pakistani authorities and the local PoK government.

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The protesters carried placards which read "Kashmir Bachanay Nikley Hain, Aao Hamaray Saath Chalo".

PoK has witnessed a series of protests by residents in the past against the Pakistan government for the atrocities and human rights violation by Pakistani forces.

Also Read:

Anti-Pakistan protest erupts in PoK, students demand independent Kashmir

Watch:

Massive protest rally demanding freedom from Pakistan held in PoK

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The video shows leaders of both the factions fall on Sasikala's feet a week after Jayalalithaa's death.

By Pramod Madhav: Jaya TV the channel of late chief minister Jayalalithaa and which is known to be a mouthpiece of AIADMK took a dig on the two faction leaders O Panneerselvam and E Palaniswami by releasing a video.

Although nothing is embarrassing for the ministers of present AIADMK, the video shows how the whole lot fell on Sasikala's feet, a week after Jayalalithaa's death.

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Events unfolded in such a way that the then Presidium Chairman Madhusudhanan is seen with open hands pleading to Sasikala asking her to please guide the party. "Chinnamma please protect us," he said.

Madhusudhanan was accompanied by Sengottaiyan, the present education minister, who is also seen pleading Sasikala with his hands folded.

The next visual shows the ministers led by former chief minister O Panneerselvam paying homage to Jayalalithaa's picture and then make a 180 degree turn and fall on Sasikala's feet.

Sasikala, who addressed as 'Chinnamma', is seen trying to stop him from doing so. OPS is followed by Dindigul Srinivasan and EPS who also touched her feet.

LEADERS QUEUE BEFORE SASIKALA

Municipality and Corporation Minister SP Velumani, Finance and Fisheries Minister Jayakumar, Electricity Minister Thangamani, Law and Prison Affairs Minister CV Shanmugam are seen dutifully repeat the gesture, all falling on Sasikala's feet. In fact, Social Welfare Minister Saroja was seen clenching Sasikala's hands as she was crying uncontrollably.

Food Minister Kamaraj, Milk and Dairy Products Minister Rajendra Balaji, Higher Education Minister KP Anbazagan, Industries Minister MC Sampath, Handlooms Minister OS Manian, Housing and Urban Development Minister Udumalai Radhakrishnan and Revenue Minister RB Udhayakumar are all seen falling on Sasikala's feet.

In the next clip, Sasikala is seen standing in the middle and the ministers take turn and fall on her feet wherever she turned.

The video was allegedly released in a crucial moment when Forest Minister Dindigul Srinivasan commented that Sasikala lost her 'Chinnamma' tag in six months due to the political developments in the State. However, hours later the video was removed by the channel.

TTV DHINAKARAN VS SRINIVASAN

Irked by his comments TTV Dhinakaran advised the minister not to talk in such manner. "I know how he was falling on her feet. Imagine what would happen to his image if I released such picture?" asked TTV Dhinakaran in a veiled attack on Srinivasan.

In his response, Srinivasan said that he unaffected and that he too has pictures of TTV Dhinakaran falling on his and Sengottaiyan's feet.

It is a fact that AIADMK has an odd culture of doing 'Sashtanga Namashkar' in front of Jayalalitha's feet with OPS being the champion. But now making this a threshold to mock each other, the factions has only aided in amusing the public.

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Also Read:

AIADMK merger delayed once again, differences remain between OPS-EPS camps

Was Jayalalithaa killed? Sasikala involved? Tamil Nadu CM orders probe as demanded by OPS

AIADMK merger plans move on, E Palaniswami meets PM Modi in Delhi

WATCH | Palanisami orders probe into Jayalalithaa's death, Veda Nilayam to be converted into memorial

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By PTI: Bengaluru, Aug 19 (PTI) A senior Karnataka Administrative Service Officer has alleged that he was "pressured" by Anti- Corruption Bureau officers to give a statement against BJP Karnataka unit chief B S Yeddyurappa in connection with a case regarding alleged illegal land denotification.

The officer in a letter to Karnataka Governor Vajubhai Vala and Chief Secretary Shubash Chandra Khuntia also claimed that since he refused toheed to the "illegal" demands by the officers, he wasarrayed as an accused in the case.

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H Basavarajendra, Deputy Secretary Mines, Investigation Cell and Sugar, in the letter, urged them to look into the matter immediately and protect his interests.

When contacted, there was no immediate response from the ACB.

The ACB had registered a case againstthe former chief minister in connection with denotification of over 257 acres of land in Dr K Shivaram Karanth Layout in northern Bengaluru.

It was based on a complaint filed bymember of a social organisation Jana Samanya Vedike.

Yeddyurappa was asked by the ACB to appear before it today for questioning but sought 10 days time to do so.

Sources close to Yeddyurappa said he would move the Karnataka High Court, seeking quashing of the case.

Basavarajendra was Special Land Acquisition Officer at Bengaluru Development Authority when the alleged denotification took place during Yeddyurappas chief ministership.

Basavarajendras letter has come at a timewhen the BJP and Yeddyurappa have alleged that the ACB is being usedby the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government to targetthe party in retaliation to the recent Income Tax department raids on Energy Minister D K Shivakumar.

Yeddyurappa has been accused of denotifying 257 acres from the preliminary notification of 3,546 acres meantto form Dr K Shivaram Karanth Layout bypassing the denotified committee approval.

Rejecting the BJPs charge of government using ACBagainst the party leaders, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah saideveryone is equal before the law.

"Can anyone purposefully file an FIR? There arecourts... based on the CAG report a complaint was given, basedon the complaint they (officials) investigated and filed an FIR. Everyone has to abide by the law," he toldreporters in Tumkuru.

"Is there any one above the law? Everybody is equal before the law, whether it is Yeddyurappa or anyone else," he added.

Hitting back at Yeddyurappa for threatening to put him behind bars, Siddaramaiah saidhe was making such statements out of "frustration" as FIRs had been registered against him.

Siddaramaiah alleged that all these activities started after BJP President Amit Shah during his three-day visit to the state chided party leaders for "not being active" and cautioned them that the party would "not do well" in the 2018 assembly polls.

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Yeddyurappa had yesterday "vowed" to put Siddaramaiah behind bars by "exposing scams", "once the BJP comes to power in thestate". PTI KSU RA APR TVS KIS

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By PTI: By Lalit K Jha

Washington, Aug 19 (PTI) The entire Presidents Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, that includes Indian-Americans Jhumpa Lahiri and Kal Penn, has resigned over President Donald Trumps controversial remarks after the racist violence in Virginia.

In a letter signed by 16 of 17 committee members, including author Lahiri and actor Penn, Trumps decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change has also been cited as a reason for their resignation.

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Significantly, their resignation letters main six paragraphs spell out "r-e-s-i-s-t".

"Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too," said members of the presidential advisory committee who resigned yesterday.

Trump, while commenting on last weekends "Unite the Right" gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, had blamed "both sides" for the violence that left an anti-racism activist dead.

All the members who resigned were appointed by Trumps predecessor Barack Obama.

The White House, in a statement, said Trump had already decided not to renew the executive order for the Presidents Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH), which expires later this year.

"While the committee has done good work in the past, in its current form it simply is not a responsible way to spend American tax dollars. The PCAH merely redirects funding from the federal cultural agencies that answer directly to the President, Congress and taxpayers. These cultural agencies do tremendous work and they will continue to engage in these important projects," it said.

In its letter, members of the presidential committee said reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following Trumps "support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville."

"The false equivalencies you push cannot stand," said the letter released to the press.

"Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background, or identity is un-American. We have fought slavery, segregation, and internment. We must learn from our rich and often painful history," the members said in the letter.

Noting that art is about inclusion and the humanities include a vibrant free press, the members alleged that Trump had attacked both.

"You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding.

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"The administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Act, and attacked our brave trans service members. You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country," they said in the letter.

Underscoring the importance of open and free dialogue, the members said the actions and words of the president are pushing further away from the freedoms they are entitled to.

"Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions. We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic," the members wrote in the letter.

Earlier this week, two business advisory councils were also disbanded as members left in protest.

Among others who resigned were Paula Boggs, Chuck Close, Richard Cohen, Fred Goldring, Howard L Gottlieb, Vicki Kennedy, Anne Luzzatto, Thom Mayne, Eric Ortner, Ken Solomon, Caroline Taylor, Jill Cooper Udall, Andrew Weinstein, George Wolfe and John Lloyd Young. PTI LKJ CK ASK AKJ ASK

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BARCELONA, Spain  A cell of at least nine extremists meticulously plotted to combine vehicles and explosives in a direct hit on tourists and managed to carry off most of their deadly plan, killing 14 people, authorities said Friday. Police in Spain and France pressed a manhunt for any remaining members of the group, which Islamic State claimed as its own.

Only flawed bomb construction avoided a more devastating attack, authorities said after taking a closer look at a blast Wednesday evening in the Spanish town of Alcanar that was first written off as a household gas explosion. At least one person was killed and several injured in the home where police said the deadly plan took shape.

Eighteen hours later, a rented van veered into Barcelonas crowded Las Ramblas promenade, swerving along the walkway Thursday and killing 13 people.

Armed with an ax, knives and false explosives belts, attackers drove a second vehicle to the boardwalk in the resort town of Cambrils early Friday, fatally injuring one person. Five of those attackers were shot to death.

Among them was 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, according to a Spanish police union official, confirming Spanish news reports. Several Spanish news outlets cited police sources as saying he was the driver of the van in Barcelona. Oukabirs name was first on a document listing four suspects sought in the attacks, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The arrest order was issued throughout Spain and into France, according to the Spanish official and a French police official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the document. They did not say what became of the other three men listed, who ranged in age from 18 to 24. All had roots in Morocco, and only Oukabir was born in Spain, according to the document.

Earlier in the day, Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont said at least one terrorist is still on out there. We do not have information regarding the capacity to do more harm.

The French official said Spain had flagged a rented van that was believed to have crossed the border to the north.

Moussa Oukabirs brother Driss Oukabir was arrested Thursday after he went to police to report his stolen identity documents were those found in the van abandoned on the historic Las Ramblas promenade, Spanish media reported.

The brothers were born and raised in Ripoll, a quiet, upscale town of 10,000 tucked into hilly Catalan heartland and dominated by the imposing tower of the Monesteri de Santa Maria. The dented door to the familys first-floor apartment swung open Friday; the home was empty.

Neighbors said they were shocked by the news of Moussa Oukabirs involvement. One teenager, who identified himself only by his first name, Pau, said they played together when they were younger and he was a good boy.

Authorities said the two attacks were related and the work of a large terrorist cell that had been plotting for a long time from the house in Alcanar, 124 miles down the coast from Barcelona. The house was destroyed by a butane gas explosion Wednesday night that killed one person. One of those injured in the blast was taken into custody.

Senior police official Josep Lluis Trapero said police believed the apparently accidental explosion prevented the suspects from carrying out a far deadlier attack.

Police said they arrested two people Friday, after the two arrests a day earlier. In custody are three Moroccans and one Spaniard, none with terrorism-related records.

We are not talking about a group of one or two people, but rather a numerous group, regional Interior Ministry chief Joaquim Forn told Onda Cero radio.

The sheer size of the cell recalled the November 2015 attacks in Paris, in which trained Islamic State attackers struck the national stadium, a concert hall, and bars and restaurants nearly simultaneously. Since then, the extremist group has steadily lost ground in its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria, most recently with its defeat in Mosul.

This shows there is no correlation between what is happening over there with Daesh and the operational capacity of the group, said Jean-Charles Brisard, a French security analyst, using another name for the group.

Spanish authorities had not yet drawn any direct links between Islamic State extremists and the suspects in the Spanish attacks, but the possibility that members of the Spanish group could still be at large was chilling. Those who have survived prior attacks have nearly always ended their lives with new bloodshed and a hail of police bullets.

There is the danger they will not let themselves get caught and will do something dramatic, said Alain Chouet, a former French intelligence official.

Amid heavy security, Barcelona tried to move forward Friday, with the Las Ramblas promenade quietly reopening and King Felipe VI and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy joining thousands in a minute of silence in the citys main square.

I am not afraid! I am not afraid! the crowd chanted in Catalan and Spanish.

But the attacks unnerved a country that hasnt seen an Islamic extremist attack since 2004, when al Qaeda-inspired bombers killed 191 people in coordinated assaults on Madrids commuter trains. Unlike France, Britain, Sweden and Germany, Spain has largely been spared from attacks in recent years, thanks in part to a crackdown that has netted about 200 suspected jihadis.

The Islamic State group said on its Aamaq news agency that the Barcelona attack was carried out by soldiers of the Islamic State in response to its calls for followers to target countries participating in the coalition fighting the extremist group in Syria and Iraq.

Lori Hinnant, Joseph Wilson and Ciaran Giles are Associated Press writers.
1 Finland stabbings: A man stabbed eight people Friday in the western city of Turku, killing two of them, before police shot him in the thigh and detained him, officials said. A suspect  who police said was a youngish man with a foreign background  was being treated in the citys main hospital but was in police custody. Security was increased across the Nordic country, said Interior Minister Paula Risikko. Police said the man is likely to have acted alone though it was not possible to completely rule out that other people were involved. Finlands top police chief said it was too early to link the attack to international terrorism.

2 Nazi rally: Police in the German capital of Berlin are bracing for a protest by far-right supporters Saturday, intended to commemorate the death of Adolf Hitlers deputy Rudolf Hess. Police said organizers expect 500 people to attend the neo-Nazi march in the citys western district of Spandau. Hess received a life sentence at the Nuremberg trials for his role in planning World War II and died at Spandau prison on Aug. 17, 1987. Allied authorities ruled his death was suicide, but Nazi sympathizers have long contended he was killed and organize annual marches in his honor. Saturdays march and the police preparation have drawn greater attention after last weekends violence at a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va.
JOHANNESBURG  In a tit-for-tat dispute, Zimbabwe blocked flights by South Africas government-owned airline on Saturday amid tensions over allegations that Zimbabwes first lady assaulted a young model at a luxury hotel in Johannesburg.

Zimbabwes action followed the grounding Friday evening of an Air Zimbabwe flight at Johannesburgs main international airport after South African authorities concluded it was not in compliance with civil aviation rules. Both countries said they imposed restrictions because planes did not have a foreign operators permit.

South Africas government, meanwhile, said it had not yet decided whether to grant the Zimbabwe governments request for diplomatic immunity for Grace Mugabe, who has not commented on the allegations against her. The outspoken wife of President Robert Mugabe has been criticized for a fiery temper and lavish shopping expeditions, but her rising political profile has some asking whether she is maneuvering to succeed her husband.

There was no sign of Grace Mugabe at a regional summit that Zimbabwes 93-year-old president attended Saturday in South Africas capital, Pretoria.

Gabriella Engels, 20, has claimed that Grace Mugabe on Sunday night whipped her with an extension cord, cutting her forehead. Lawyers for Engels have threatened to go to court if immunity is granted.

Foreign ministry spokesman Nelson Kgwete said in a text message that South Africa was still considering the request. Decision yet to be made, Kgwete said.

South African police have issued a red alert at borders to ensure Grace Mugabe doesnt leave undetected. Police also say their investigation is complete but needs a government decision on the immunity appeal.

State-owned South African Airways said Zimbabwe had placed restrictions on its operations. A flight from Zimbabwes capital to Johannesburg was unable to take off Saturday morning, and another flight from Johannesburg to Harare was canceled.

The scandal over Grace Mugabe is a sensitive issue for South Africa as it weighs the possible diplomatic fallout from Zimbabwe if it acts against the first lady  and the likely outrage at home if it grants immunity and allows her to leave. South Africa is home to several million Zimbabweans.

Christopher Torchia is an Associated Press writer.
SEOUL  Americas annual joint military exercises with South Korea always frustrate North Korea. The war games set to begin Monday may hold more potential to provoke than ever, given President Trumps fire and fury threats and Pyongyangs as-yet-unpursued plan to launch missiles close to Guam.

The Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills, which will run through Aug. 31, will be the first large-scale military exercise between the allies since North Korea successfully tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and threatened to bracket Guam with intermediate range ballistic missile fire earlier this month.

Despite some calls to postpone or drastically modify drills to ease the hostility on the Korean Peninsula, U.S. and South Korean military officials say the long-scheduled exercises will go ahead as planned.

The drills, which began in the 1970s and will involve 17,500 American troops and 50,000 South Korean soldiers this year, consist mainly of computer simulations aimed at honing joint-decision making and planning and improving command operations.

About 25,000 U.S. service members joined last years UFG drills. An official from U.S. Forces Korea, who declined to be named citing office rules, said the number of participating American troops can change depending on how training events are designed and that the lower number this year doesnt represent an effort to downsize the drills.

The United States and South Korea also hold larger war games in the spring, called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, which involve live-fire exercises and training with tanks, aircraft and warships.

Theres speculation that the allies might try to keep this years drills low-key by not dispatching long-range bombers and other U.S. strategic assets to the region. But that possibility worries some, who say it would send the wrong message to both North Korea and the South, where there are fears that the Norths advancing nuclear capabilities may eventually undermine a decades-long alliance with the United States.

If anything, the joint exercises must be strengthened, said Cheon Seongwhun, who served as a national security adviser to former conservative South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Impoverished North Korea hates the drills in part because it must frequently respond with its own expensive displays of military might.

During last years drills, the North successfully test-fired for the first time a submarine-launched ballistic missile ruler Kim Jong Un then praised as the success of all successes. Shortly after the drills, the North carried out its fifth and biggest nuclear test, which it claimed was of a standardized warhead that could fit on a variety of its rockets.

During this years war games in March, North Korea launched four extended-range Scud missiles into the sea in what it described as a rehearsal for striking U.S. military bases in Japan.

Its almost certain that this years drills will trigger some kind of reaction from North Korea. The question is how strong it will be.

Some experts say North Korea is mainly focused on the bigger picture of testing its bargaining power against the United States with its new long-range missiles and likely has no interest in letting things get too tense during the drills. But others think the North might use the drills as an excuse to conduct another ICBM test or maybe even act on its threat to lob missiles into the waters near Guam.

Kim Tong-Hyung is an Associated Press writer.
By PTI: Aurangabad, Aug 19 (PTI) A scuffle broke out during a general body meeting of the civic body here today after two AIMIM corporators refused to stand up when Vande Mataram was played.

The meeting of the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), ruled by the Shiv Sena-BJP combine, started in the afternoon with the national song, Vande Mataram.

After the song was played, the Sena and BJP members objected to the two members of the All India Majlis-e- Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), a Hyderabad-based party led by Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi, not standing up when the national song was being played.

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They shouted slogans and demanded action against the two corporators. Things took an ugly turn when the members of the ruling alliance got into a scuffle with the AIMIM members.

There were no reports of anyone getting injured in the melee, but a few microphones were reportedly damaged.

Amid the bedlam, Mayor Bapu Ghadamode suspended the two AIMIM members for the day and adjourned the proceedings for an hour. The pandemonium continued when the house re-assembled, leading to another adjournment.

The AIMIM, with 25 members, is the largest opposition party in the AMC.

Later, talking to reporters, the mayor said, "The general body meeting started with Vande Mataram, but two AIMIM members did not stand up when the song was being played.

"The Sena and BJP members demanded their suspension. I suspended them and asked them to leave the House. Instead, they attempted to rush to the Well and were stopped by the members of the ruling alliance. The AIMIM members also attacked those who demanded their suspension."

Meanwhile, AIMIM MLA Imtiyaz Jaleel said one of the party corporators did not stand up when the national song was played, adding that an explanation would be sought from him.

"We have 25 corporators in the AMC and 24 of them stood up when the song was played. For the last two-and-a-half years, our corporators have always stood up whenever the national song was played at general body meetings," he added.

The MLA from Aurangabad Central told PTI that the corporator, who did not stand up when Vande Mataram was played, did so as a "mark of protest" as he wanted to submit a request to the mayor, who refused to listen to him.

"It is our party policy that whenever the national song is played, everyone should stand up in respect. The recitation of Vande Mataram is, however, not mandatory," he said.

Jaleel described the entire episode as a "drama staged by the ruling alliance to skirt a discussion on the important issues" of this central Maharashtra city.

"Nonetheless, we will seek an explanation from the corporator," he said. PTI CORR MM RSY RC

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By PTI: Srinagar, Aug 19 (PTI) Security forces today launched multiple cordon and search operations spread across 10 villages of Shopian district in south Kashmir as part of the latest offensive against militancy, officials said.

The security personnel cordoned off Dangam, Wangam, Zainapora, Mantribug and several other adjoining villages following information about presence of militants in the area, a police official said.

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He said searches were in progress but "no contact has yet been established with the militants" in these villages.

The official said cordon and search operations were also in progress in five other areas in south Kashmir, outside Shopian district. PTI MIJ RT

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By PTI: govt

New Delhi, Aug 18 (PTI) The Union health ministry today asked Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain and all central government-run hospitals to set up designated swine flu wards and issue an advisory to chemists across the city to ensure adequate stock of drugs to treat vector-borne diseases.

Health Minister J P Nadda asked hospital authorities to ensure that adequate number of isolation wards were available and protocols for ventilator management were followed.

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"This time, swine flu cases are being reported. We have asked the Delhi health minister and all central government hospitals to ensure that there are designated swine flu wards.

"However there is no need to panic as all patients suffering from swine flu (H1N1) do not require hospitalisation," he said, after charing a high-level meeting to review preparedness for prevention and control of vector- borne diseases such as dengue, malaria, chikungunya and swine flu in Delhi.

Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain, Mayors of three municipal corporations and medical superintendents of central government hospitals in Delhi, along with senior officials from the Union health ministry and the Delhi health department, participated in the meeting.

Nadda laid emphasis on the critical importance of prevention of vector-borne diseases and stated that all stakeholders including the government of Delhi, municipal corporations, resident welfare association, NGOs and the people had an important role to play in prevention of breeding of the vectors that cause these diseases.

"A strong awareness campaign is very effective for educating people to keep their home and surrounding areas free of water clogging," Nadda said and urged Jain to launch a house-to-house information, education, and communication (IEC) campaign for creating widespread awareness.

"When people are equipped with proper information, they are capable of preventing such diseases and also seeking timely medical intervention," he said.

Nadda also suggested that the Delhi government organises a workshop for all agencies concerned and stakeholders to sensitise them on the protocols for prevention and management of vector-borne diseases that normally see a spike during the monsoon.

He assured support of the Union health ministry in all efforts of the state government to build their capacity. He added that master trainers that had received training last year and this year should be engaged to build the capacity of other health workers too, he stated.

Nadda highlighted the importance of maintaining adequate quantity of testing kits, drugs among others at the government hospitals and chemists.

"The minister (Nadda) basically asked us (MCD) to focus on building greater awareness so that the threat of vector- borne diseases can be warded off by prevention. He also asked us to conduct workshop for councillors and we have decided to hold the programme," North Delhi Mayor Preety Agarwal said.

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The meeting, she said, lasted for about 30 minutes.

"The north corporation would hold the workshop on August 23. Experts from the Centre and other departments would be participating in it," she said, adding that councillors are the nearest local contact persons for people, and therefore "we decided to work on this suggestion".

She said, the other two corporations, SDMC and EDMC, also have decided to hold the workshop.

"During the meet we also raised the issue of overlapping of jurisdiction, which sometimes hinders work. For instance, places where parks are under the MCD but roads surrounding it or drains nearby it, fall under the PWD jurisdiction.

"The Delhi heath minister also said that prevention has to be the watchword. Dengue and chikungunya (aedes agypti) mosquitoes breed in clear water and, coolers and other spots in households are generally the place where the breeding is found so people must be made aware about prevention," she said.

Also, water tankers leave behind puddle which are potential ground for breeding, hence, if the piped water supply can be improved, another causing factor can be mitigated.

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Over 130 fresh cases of dengue have been reported last week in Delhi, taking the total number of people affected by the vector-borne disease this season to nearly 500 till August 12, according to a municipal report released today.

The number of people affected by malaria this year till August 12, has climbed to 385, while the figure for chikungunya stands at 283.

The city reported 753 cases of swine flu till August 6, while another 175 cases in the national capital were traced to neighbouring states and four deaths due to this disease. PTI PLB KND TDS SMN

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By PTI: (Eds: Adds details of Sharifs letter to NAB)

By M Zulqernain

Lahore, Aug 18 (PTI) Ousted Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his two sons today failed to appear before the top anti-graft body, which wanted to interrogate them over money laundering and corruption charges revealed by the Panama Papers.

On July 28, a five-member Supreme Court bench disqualified Sharif from continuing in his office for possessing a work permit at the firm of his son in the UAE.

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The court also ordered the NAB to investigate money laundering and other corruption charges against Sharif, his children, son-in-law Safdar and federal finance minister Ishaq Dar, a relative of Sharif, in light of the report of the Joint Investigation Team.

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) following a Supreme Court order had issued summons to Sharif and his sons - Hussain and Hasan - to interrogate them at its Lahore office over their offshore properties revealed last year by the Panama Papers leak.

A 10-member NAB team had reached Lahore from Rawalpindi to record the statements of the Sharifs, but they did not turn up before the office closed at 3 pm local time, a NAB official told PTI.

"Sharif and his sons were supposed to join the investigation today here in Lahore office but we are informed by the office of Sharif that he is not coming. No reason has been given to us," the official said.

He said the NAB would issue second summons to them in two weeks.

A leader close to the Sharif family denied receiving any summons. "Nawaz Sharif and his sons had not yet received the NAB summons. Sharif will only decide whether or not to appear before the NAB after receiving the summons," Senator Pervaiz Rashid told PTI.

Sharif wrote a letter to NAB, saying he would join its investigation after the Supreme Courts decision on his review petition against its July 28 verdict which disqualified him.

"Nawaz Sharif has written to the NAB that he will join its investigation once his plea to grant stay to investigation against him in the Panama Papers case is decided by the apex court," Sharifs political secretary Senator Dr Aasif Karmani told PTI.

He dispelled the impression that Sharif was not cooperating with the NAB.

"Nawaz Sharif never evaded accountability. He had gone through accountability on several occasions in the past and this NAB investigation is nothing new for him," he said.

The 67-year-old three-time prime minister has denied any wrongdoing. Last week, Sharif held a defiant roadshow with thousands of supporters from Islamabad to Lahore to project his political strength after the Supreme Court verdict.

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One of the three applications Sharif filed in the Supreme Court calls for staying "further implementation of the judgement till a decision on the review petition is taken".

The apex court is likely to take up Sharifs review petition early next month after judges return from vacation.

Sharif has expressed serious concerns on the NAB investigation, saying it was unprecedented for a Supreme Court judge to supervise NAB proceedings against him and his family members to get a "desired result".

"Sharif has also been advised by some of his party members to boycott the NAB investigations. He would not get any relief as it has already been decided to grill him," the PML-N leader said on the condition of anonymity.

The NAB said it will issue second summons to the Sharifs if they do not join the investigation after the first summons.

The third and final summons will be issued next month if there is no compliance even after the second summons, it said.

Sharif, his sons, daughter Maryam, son-in-law Safdar and relatives Ishaq Dar and Tariq Shafi - face several cases, including over the Al-Azizia Steel Mills, the Hill Metal Establishment and Hudabiya Papers Mills. PTI MZ ASK ABH AKJ CPS

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When Assistant Professor of Anthropology Bernardo Rios was walking through the Tang Teaching Museum, he paused at a series of posters spread on a table. I couldnt put my finger on it at first, he explains; the colors, words, and lettering had touched him in an emotional way. These stunning posters were designed by Corita Kent, an artist and designer who was inspired by political and social turmoil of the 1960s in southern California.

Rios discussed his decade of work understanding immigrant populations from Oaxaca, Mexico, with members of the Tang staff, noting that Kents social justice work through art paralleled the passion he discovered by developing a program for a migrant community from Oaxaca in Saratoga Springs.

When the Tang staff offered to support this collaborative research initiative, Rios immediately thought of recent graduate Lisa Moran 17, who couldnt say no to the project. "This is such a unique combination of all my interests and such a cool opportunity" she says. As a double major in Spanish and anthropology with minors in art history and Latin American studies, Moran had the opportunity during her college career to visit Bolivia twice and develop two documentaries about visual components to womens rights movements. She also took Visual Anthropology with Rios at Skidmore, which made researching Kents work a complimentary opportunity.

Skidmores collaborative research program is an experience that many students take advantage of. Students partner with faculty members from five to 10 weeks not only in the stereotypical science lab setting, but studying in the field that most interests them. Read More

Throughout the summer, Rios and Moran feel, they only scratched the surface on what they soon determined was relatively new research in the field. They investigated a connection between Kents work and Chicano communities, discovering biographies of many of her students, some of whom were involved in those communities. For example, Kents student Karen Boccalero, was integral in founding Self-Help Graphics in east Los Angeles for Chicano art.

We were told basically this research does not exist. It made it that much more exciting, Moran explains.

"One of the things I really like about the collaborative research opportunities at Skidmore is that it provides us a space to allow a creative product to emerge says Rios. I think our project is an example of if you put people in a room with different backgrounds, ideas, and Identities, and allow them some resources, you never know what can happen."

Moran says she "realized how passionate I was about this art and social justice theme" over the course of the summer. Now teaching fifth grade math in New York City, she hopes to investigate how education, art, and social justice can transform a community.

Although the summer and the collaborative research project is over, Rios plans to continue his investigation. He will likely publish his and Morans findings and present them at the annual conference of the National Association for Chicano and Chicano Studies.
South-Delhi based CA Sachin Jain was in for a shock when he advertised to sell his property but was told by a property dealer that his house had already been sold to him by his tenant.

When Sachin Jain tried to sell his GK II flat (left) this month, a property dealer told him that the same flat had been sold to him by Narinder Singh Narang last year.

By Shashank Shekhar: A south Delhi-based Chartered Accountant has registered a case against his tenant for allegedly grabbing and selling off his Greater Kailash II flat to a builder.

According to complainant Sachin Jain, a resident of Malviya Nagar, he bought a 300 square yard property from BDR builder private limited in July 2015, which is also duly registered with sub-registrar office at Hauz Khas.

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Soon after the purchase, Jain leased the property to Narinder Singh Narag for a period of two years on a monthly rent of Rs 62,500. Jain, in his FIR at the CR Park police station, said that things remained smooth for six months after which Narang stopped paying the rent. "We got a lease deed registered and for six months Narang paid us the rent through cheques. When Narang's family defaulted payment, we sent them a court notice in February 2016, and in April 2016 a case was filed at Saket court. In October, the court directed Narang to pay us the rent for 10 months, for which they paid us Rs 6.25 lakh after the court's intervention," Jain told Mail Today.

Jain claims that Narang requested the court to allow them to stay in the property as the lease deed was for two years, that is, till July 2017. But the real shock for Jain came in August 2017 when he advertised to sell the property. "I got a call from a property dealer who identified himself as Subhash Arora. He claimed that the same property was sold to him by Narang in March 2016. While scanning the document, I found that Narang had forged the documents and sold my house to Arora," Jain said. When Mail Today contacted Narinder Singh Narang, he claimed that the property belongs to him and the charges against him are frivolous.

However, he could not furnish documents related to the property and declined to give an official comment. Property dealer Arora, who bought the house from Narang is also puzzled about the ownership and is planning to approach the police to investigate the matter.

Police has registered an FIR against Narang and are scanning the document to establish ownership. "We are checking the record with several government offices to verify the real owner of the property. Jain has furnished all the documents related to the case, but Narang is yet to give documents," said a senior police officer.

Another senior officer said that Narang's family used to live on the first floor of the building from 1995 to 2014. His brother was living on the ground floor. It was in 2014 that Narang sold the house to BDR Builders, who further sold the 300 square yard first floor property to Sachin Jain after a year-and-half of purchase. In his complaint, Jain also alleged that the Narangs have abused and threatened him with dire consequences if he pursues the matter further.

Also read: Are Income Tax consultants charging 25 per cent on TDS refund?

Also read: Sheikh marries minor: Practice continues in Hyderabad even 26 years after Ameena case

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By PTI: Hyderabad, Aug 19 (PTI) The Telangana government has announced a slew of sops, including capital subsidy, to boost the textiles and apparels sector in the state.

The sops are part of the Telangana Textile and Apparel Incentive Scheme 2017 announced by the TRS government with an aim to attract investments and generate job opportunities for the local population.

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According to a government order (GO) issued last night, the capital and operational incentives for the textiles and apparels industry will be applicable for both new as well as existing units for the next five years.

"The incentives proposed hereunder shall be operative for a period of five years from the date of notification and will cover all new and existing units.

"While the government is keen to encourage industry with the primary objective of attracting investments and generating employment opportunities for the local population, it is hereby clarified that it expects the industry to provide a fair and decent wage to the workforce," the GO said.

The government said units not adequately compensating the workers will face action.

"If it is brought to the notice of the government that the workers are not being adequately compensated, or are exploited, then it shall have the right to terminate the approvals granted and recover the monetary value of the incentives accorded till then," the GO said.

It said VAT/CST/SGST reimbursement is available for tax collected on end product/intermediates within the entire value chain (from cotton to garment and made ups) to the extent of 100 per cent for a period of seven years from the date of commencement of commercial production. Or up to realisation of 100 per cent fixed capital investment the eligible fixed capital investment, whichever is earlier.

Existing units which undergo expansion/modernisation/ diversification will be entitled to get similar benefits under this clause, it added.

A capital subsidy of 25 per cent will be provided for conventional textile units and 35 per cent for technical ones involved in production of medical textiles, geotextiles, agrotextiles and protective clothing, among others.

For units established with an investment of Rs 200 crore or above or providing more than 1,000 jobs, the incentives will further be customised, the GO said. PTI GDK RSY RDS

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An interviewer from Buzz Feed asked him if that was a risk, and he replied, "Why not?" going on to agree with the view that "once you remove that vital element of it being a man/woman thing, and you just say love is love etc, then basically you open the floodgates to anything". This is madness, Senator Abetz. I reckon I speak for both gay and heterosexual Australian men when I say that if it is allowed, the belle of the ball in the marriage stakes will be the Sydney Opera House, which comes complete with her own wedding dress, and I will personally fight the uppity Tom Ugly Bridge if he thinks he is a chance with her ahead of me. In any case, one of the twitterati notes the Sydney Harbour Bridge looks at least eight months pregnant out of wedlock, and that would never do. (Centrepoint Tower is, of course, the obvious suspect.) Now, as for those of you who say you love both the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, and want to marry both, Eric and I just knew you'd say that! You disgust us! It is to be a union of one man, and one building. And by "a building", Senator Hanson wants it noted that certainly doesn't mean mosques, just on principle! Two Nations party?

Speaking of Senator Hanson, again, could the temporary solution to the citizenship imbroglio be for her One Nation mob to move further to the back bench  or maybe right out the back to the toilets, or their natural home, in the gutter  while all those parliamentarians under a cloud until the High Court decides on their future, form their own group called Two Nations? Just a thought! Joke of the Week A Presbyterian church calls a meeting to decide what to do about its squirrels. After prayer and consideration, the congregation concludes the squirrels are predestined to be there and it shouldn't interfere with God's divine will. At the Baptist church in the same town, the squirrels take an interest in the baptistery. The deacons meet and decide to put a water slide on the baptistery and let the squirrels drown themselves. The squirrels like the slide and, unfortunately, know instinctively how to swim so twice as many squirrels showed up the following week. The Catholic Church community comes up with a very creative strategy. The Catholics baptise all the squirrels and consecrate them as members of the church. Now they only see them at Christmas and Easter.

Taking the Catholic lead, at the Jewish synagogue they take the first squirrel and circumcise him. They haven't seen a squirrel since. Quotes of the Week "She's proved that Australians do have something to fear. They have her to fear." Senator Jacqui Lambie about Senator Pauline Hanson and her burqa stunt in Parliament this week. I keep trying not to warm to Senator Lambie, but she makes it ever harder. Her comments on the RSL this week, also spot on. "Shell-shocked, of course."

Barnaby Joyce on finding out that he was a New Zealand citizen. He looked it. "He is qualified to sit in this house and the High Court will so hold." Malcolm Turnbull defending Barnaby Joyce, saying in Parliament what, if he said it outside, would surely see him held in contempt of the High Court for pre-judging their decision? "It's very hard to reconcile having a day of national celebration when one whole section of the population feels excluded." Amanda Stone, Mayor of the City of Yarra, on why her council has decided not to mark Australia Day in future.

"If the Foreign Minister won't be able to work with the New Zealanders, how will the Foreign Minister work with the Deputy Prime Minister?" ALP's Tony Burke after Julie Bishop's carry-on about New Zealand. "It is racist, far-right violence and clear, forceful action must be taken against it, regardless of where in the world it happens." German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks out against the gathering of American Nazis and others at Charlottesville. "There is blame on all sides, on all sides ..."

President Donald Trump refuses to point the finger at Nazis. "Trump comments were good. He didn't attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us ... No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him." White supremacist publication Daily Stormer, beloved by American Nazis, responds to Trump's comments on Charlottesville. "I have spoken to a number of high-ranking courtiers who made it clear that preparations for a transition are moving ahead at pace." Daily Mail royal commentator Robert Jobson on reports that QEII is preparing to hand over to KCIII.
From architects to bar staff, Australians involved in managing crowds will be urged to plug security into their everyday thinking to prevent terror attacks under a national strategy that will embed long-term changes into the country's public spaces.

The major blueprint gives detailed advice to owners and operators of places that attract crowds on how to cut the risk of car and truck attacks, homemade bombs, knife and gun assaults and chemical attacks.

The strategy, which Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will unveil on Sunday, follows a rising tide of mass-casualty attacks particularly in Europe and comes just days after the latest carnage in Spain. An Australian seven-year-old boy is missing after a van ploughed down a popular tourist boulevard, killing at least 14 people.

Underscoring the shift in thinking that will be needed for what the government says will be an enduring threat, the strategy covers everything from building designs that incorporate decorative barriers, to encouraging venue staff to have prearranged messages and codes to communicate during a terror attack.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Damukana Sogavare with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Nick Warner, the head of the intelligence agency ASIS, warned Mr Sogavare of Australia's concern during a visit to capital Honiara in June. Huawei is a commercial company but has remained under a cloud because of its possible links to the Chinese government. The US Congress found five years ago that Huawei "cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems". Plugging into Australia's backbone. Huawei Australia's director of corporate affairs Jeremy Mitchell said in response to detailed questions sent by Fairfax Media that "Huawei won an open tender with the best product and the best team to deliver the project".

He added that the firm was a leading telecom provider in the world and "has and will always comply with local laws and regulations". But a spokeswoman for the Asian Development Bank said it was forced to withdraw approval for a $23 million loan  nearly a third of the total cost of the project  because "the Huawei contract was developed outside of ADB procurements processes". She said the bank received no information about who the other bidders were and "on that basis, ADB could no longer be involved and therefore cancelled the project in May 2016". The Solomons Parliament's public accounts committee meanwhile has produced a report  provided to Fairfax Media  noting allegations that "Huawei Technologies ... had promised the Prime Minister a political donation of $40 million [$A6.5 million] for the award of the contract". "If true, this is a corrupt and criminal offence and the committee calls on the [Royal Solomon Islands Police] to conduct an urgent investigation into this," the report said. "The committee is of the view that this is the main reason for the government to bypass procurement requirements in favour of the company Huawei."

The head of that cross-party committee, Rick Houenipwela, is a respected MP and opposition finance spokesman who has previously been the country's central bank governor and a senior official at the World Bank. "It's a very frustrating situation," he said. "We've raised those concerns and we still have those concerns ... Why did the government take the stand to just select Huawei and not do a normal tender?" Allegations of the political donation have been circulating for some months in Honiara and have appeared in local news reports. Mr Sogavare has made the counter-claim that the political donation was actually paid to Sir Thomas Chan, the ethnic Chinese businessman who is chairman of Mr Sogavare's United Democratic Party. Mr Chan has described those claims as "an absolute lie". He did not return repeated phone calls last week. Fairfax Media sent written questions to Mr Sogavare's office more than a week ago but as of Saturday had not received answers.

Fairfax Media asked the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force a week ago whether they were investigating the claims. On Friday a spokesman replied to Fairfax Media asking for a copy of Mr Houenipwela's committee's report. A spokesman for the Attorney-General's Department said the Solomon Islands Submarine Cable Company had not applied for a submarine cable installation permit. Any application would be "considered on its merits" and the department would consider "matters of international law, native title and national security", he said. Experts said Australia was right to have security concerns around critical infrastructure Huawei is involved in Australian communications in various ways, but involvement in backbone infrastructure is regarded as a more significant security risk.

Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said plugging it would be a "high priority" for China, allowing bulk collection of data on the cable itself but also potentially allowing "one more vector" for sabotage in a security crisis. "They'd be looking at a way of getting any backdoor into Australia's infrastructure and systems," he said. He added that China was more broadly aiming to weaken Australian and American relationships in the Pacific region and increase its own influence there including through infrastructure development. Chinese telco firms have substantial involvement elsewhere in the region. Huawei Marine is also laying a 5500-kilometre undersea cable network to service Papua New Guinea and connect it internationally via Indonesia. The Australian Financial Review reported in 2012 that the federal government was investigating Huawei Marine over its involvement in a planned undersea cable between Perth and Singapore. That project did not go ahead.
His obsession with birds stretches back to a childhood in western Sydney during which he developed an affinity for animals. "I grew up with kangaroos in the backyard, in what is now high-density urban housing," Stojanovic says. "I remember echidnas in Fairfield!" A pet cockatiel led to a pair of lovebirds, and then "it just spiralled out of control  we ended up with a backyard full of creatures". After completing his master's in wildlife health and population management on shorebirds at Sydney University, he ended up in Tasmania studying swift parrots with the ANU. He spent weeks at a time camped in remote forests, climbing tall eucalypts to observe the parrots in their nests. Stojanovic later bought a house in a valley south of Hobart and, once his PhD was complete, continued to work with the ANU and local researchers studying Tasmanian birds. By the end of today, he hopes to have a better idea of how many OBPs have committed to breeding this season and where they've decided to lay their eggs. He will be checking the nest boxes around Melaleuca with Shannon Troy, a wildlife biologist for the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and the Environment (DPIPWE). He shuffles into a climbing harness, heavy with clinking gear. Mimicking the placement of natural nest hollows, the wooden nesting boxes have all been installed at least four metres above the ground which, while leaving the parrots less vulnerable, can make it difficult for researchers to see what's happening inside them. Each box is about as big as a milk crate, with a circular hole cut in front to provide access for the birds, and a landing perch. A sloping roof attached by a hinge allows researchers to easily access the box and, where necessary, clean them out. Wildlife biologist Shannon Troy checks a nest box at Melaleuca. Credit:James Da Costa The first set is close to the bushwalkers' huts, high in a Smithton peppermint eucalypt. A faded line of surveyors' yellow string hangs from the tree. Stojanovic ties his climbing rope to the string with a bowline and a few half-hitches, and uses it to haul the rope up and over a high branch near the boxes, before shimmying up the tree to investigate. The OBPs rely on the boxes, and a series of supplementary feed stations at several locations around the Melaleuca settlement, that are maintained by DPIPWE-managed volunteers. Changing fire regimes have led to decreased availability of parrot food in the environment surrounding Melaleuca  the buttongrass moorlands require frequent burning to provide enough seed to meet the OBP's needs. The highly localised nature of the parrot population makes it relatively easy to keep tabs on individual birds; by the time they migrate to the mainland, the parrots could be spread across more than a thousand kilometres of coastline. Finding them there offers worse odds than a needle in a haystack.

In the second box, Stojanovic strikes gold. "Two eggs!" he shouts. They are plain white and a few centimetres long. Once he is done examining the nest, he tosses down a pair of blue surgical gloves before his descent. The team is scrupulous regarding hygiene, and with good reason. Over the last few years, outbreaks of psittacine beak and feather disease have affected both captive and wild OBP populations. The disease causes malformations in the growth of parrots' beaks and feathers, affecting their ability to fly and feed themselves  often a death sentence for a migratory bird. As a precaution, researchers thoroughly clean equipment and wear sterile gloves in an attempt to ensure that they aren't transferring any pathogens between nest boxes. The next box has no eggs, but does have OBPs keeping an eye on it. The Melaleuca real-estate market is tight for hollow-nesting birds. In the next eucalypt, tree martins  sleek, swallow-like birds  have begun piling nesting material into the box. They'll sometimes build nests on top of OBP eggs, or even over live chicks. Stojanovic has ethics clearance from ANU and the Tasmanian government to remove the relatively common martins' nests when no young are present. "Watch your eyes!" he calls, and moments later the air is filled with a glittering, dusty rain of dried mud and eucalypt leaves. It's not only natives that compete with the parrots for nests. Stojanovic hauls a dead starling out of the next box, its carcass crawling with maggots. Starlings are an invasive pest, known to attack OBP nestlings, and this one was shot by professional marksmen employed by the Tasmanian government to protect the OBPs. Sometimes, even native species are removed to give the OBPs a better chance of survival. We'll fly back to Hobart with a live green rosella which was monstering the much smaller OBPs at the feed tables. Currawongs  large, black birds with adventurous appetites  sometimes poke their beaks into nest boxes, behaviour that will earn them a bullet if the shooters see them. Snakes are also very interested in baby birds, which is why most of Melaleuca's nesting trees are ringed with cummerbunds of slick, black plastic, often greased to further inhibit incursions. But some of the greatest challenges to their survival are linked to their annual migration. Between the parrots and their mainland winter foraging grounds in Victoria and South Australia lies Bass Strait, one of the world's wildest stretches of water, and possibly many an OBP's early grave. The birds are so small and travel so far that researchers are loath to weigh them down with radio trackers. "We don't know where they die," Troy says, "Only that they don't come back."

By the end of this first day's work, the team confirms that at least eight pairs of OBPs are around Melaleuca, half of whom are already sitting on eggs. Most include captive-bred females, recently released to address a gender imbalance in the wild population. But while Stojanovic acknowledges the importance of the captive-breeding program, he's adamant that any salvation of the species must come from the wild. The low return rate for wild-born birds is worrying enough  in a normal year, only one in two wild fledglings will come back from their first migration. But for captive-bred birds, the rates are awful. Just one in 10 makes it back to breed after release. He says, "That's why we're going down this path of making sure that wild nests produce as many kids as possible, because at least then, they have a fighting chance." Operation OBP plans to use the money from the crowd-funding campaign to trial new conservation techniques in the field. Stojanovic hopes that these measures will boost numbers of wild-born birds sufficiently to form the basis of a sustainable orange-bellied parrot population in their native habitat. But not everyone within the ecological science community agrees with Stojoanovic's approach. David Bowman, a professor of environmental change biology at the University of Tasmania, is convinced that the parrot is doomed. "The species is going to go extinct [in the wild]  I suspect the drivers of extinction have not been fully understood," says Bowman. "Conserving a rare migratory bird species in the wild is a unsustainable objective." He believes the species is destined to survive only in zoos and other breeding facilities, arguing that this is the best we can offer many species threatened with extinction. "All wildlife species are under stress because of climate change, and novel interventions to salvage biodiversity are becoming much more mainstream. The 'preserved in the wild' gold standard for conservation is an outdated and unrealistic objective." (He may be right," says Stojanovic, "but there's a lot more that can be done before we give up on them.") During December, Stojanovic flies from Hobart to the south-west every few days, first counting eggs, then measuring the growth of the tiny, blind hatchlings that emerge. Part of the initial super-intervention plan was to top up wild nests with eggs from the captive-bred population. However, with insufficient time to manage biosecurity concerns regarding egg transfer, and to ensure that the hatch times of the captive and wild birds align, the government's parrot keepers decide that rather than transfer eggs, they will send baby birds instead.

January 15, 2017 On the morning of the translocation, Stojanovic collects five chicks from the Hobart Wildlife Centre, carefully transferring them in three modified eskies into the back of a waiting chopper. In the back of the helicopter, Troy and Stojanovic sit side by side, nursing the makeshift transport boxes, anxiously monitoring the baby birds. The chopper is faster than the regular plane, allowing the scientists to disembark at Pandora Hill less than an hour after they climbed aboard. Half the team are offloaded here, but the youngest hatchling, which is just a day old, will be transferred to a nest at Melaleuca. Stojanovic briefs Matt Webb on how best to handle the tiny creature  "don't pick her up, just roll her into your hand, then gently roll her under the female"  before stomping off across the sodden buttongrass, carefully negotiating branch "bridges" across creeks with the esky in hand. Soon he's at the base of the first nesting box, which already holds three wild-born chicks. He climbs the tree in less than a minute, and inserts the chick and returns to ground within two. By the time that Stojanovic returns to the Melaleuca settlement, Webb's chick has been welcomed by the female parrot, Nora. She had laid four eggs but all were infertile, a problem commonly seen in captive-bred birds. Had the eggs been viable, they would have hatched today. "She accepted the chick right away," says Webb, obviously relieved. The ecologists are shaky with emotion  they couldn't have asked for a better result. The same cannot be said elsewhere. Two other translocated chicks were placed into nest boxes already containing wild nestlings. By the time the team returns to check on the nests that afternoon, one chick is already dead  possibly due to aggression from the parent birds, says Stojanovic. Despite the death, the team is cautiously upbeat. No one has ever successfully fostered an OBP chick into a wild nest, so even with the loss, the translocation is a step forward.

Over the next few days, however, things start to go downhill. One of the translocated chicks is found cold and unfed in its foster nest. It's moved immediately to join one of the other captive-bred birds, but doesn't survive the day. Not long after, news emerges of a "mortality event" at the Hobart Wildlife Centre. Since New Year, 16 orange-bellied parrots have died. If whatever is killing them is contagious, it could also threaten the wild population. Dejan Stojanovic and his PhD student Ross Crates carefully measure orange-bellied parrot nestlings. Credit:Nicole Gill By the time Stojanovic flies into Melaleuca the next day, all bar one of the translocated chicks are dead. The survivor is the tiny one snuggled under Nora. She is later named Matilda. Stojanovic sends me camera phone footage of her; eyes still closed, fuzzy and squeaking, muddling around among the infertile eggs still in the nest. "Just too alive!" I hear him say, his voice catching slightly. The pathology results still aren't available, so no one knows if the translocated chicks have carried death with them into their foster homes. A few days later, the government publicly identifies the killer. The chicks that died were infected by Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium that has previously caused OBP deaths at two mainland breeding facilities. It seems like everything that could go wrong just has. But two days later, Stojanovic calls again. "You won't fing believe this. Green Shed is on fire." Green Shed is a building used by the Parks and Wildlife Service to house their earth-moving machine at Melaleuca. It's within 10 metres of two active OBP nests. We're at the airport within the hour.

When we arrive at Melaleuca, we find the fire extinguished and the nests intact. But that doesn't necessarily mean the birds are safe. Stojanovic starts laughing slightly hysterically as the ruined shed comes into view. Half the roof is gone, and the digger is a blackened mess. The young parrots in one box have safely fledged but the remaining nest contains a younger chick, the sole survivor of a clutch in which two other nestlings have recently died. The chick is not being fed by its parents  it's likely that the fire and associated palaver have spooked them. Stojanovic quickly mixes up some supplementary feed, and ignoring its protestations, shoves a blunt-ended crop-needle into the nestling's beak, filling its crop with the sticky white fluid. This should be enough to keep it going for a few hours, and hopefully to give its parents time to calm down and return. But they don't. Not that day, nor that night. Stojanovic feeds the chick again in the morning, and we all watch for the parent birds. By the time we are due to leave that afternoon, they still haven't reappeared. The pilot is ready to take off, but Stojanovic is torn. The odds are slim after this time that the parrot parents will reappear, but unwilling to create another aviary bird, the ecologist cannot bring himself to remove the chick. We leave him behind, watching the nest box, and fly east under a darkening sky. The next day, he reluctantly relocates the nestling to Hobart. Stojanovic calls two days later. "Everything is dead," he says, despondent. Dejan Stojanovic checks an active orange-bellied parrot nesting box by a historic bushwalkers' hut at Melaleuca. Credit:James Da Costa The nestling he rescued has died. Pathology tests will show that the chick and its dead nest-mates were all infected with the Pseudomonas bacterium, contracted from seed prepared at the Hobart Breeding Facility. The bacterium has become resistant to the disinfectant used to sterilise the seeds and flourished in the warm dampness of the seed-sprouting tray. After years spent trying to keep the OBPs in the best possible health, the parrot keepers at the facility are devastated.

A few weeks earlier, I had asked Stojanovic when, if ever, he'd give up on the species. Already exhausted by a sleepless week, the parrot biologist had blinked back tears. "If none of them came back," he said. "If there were none in the wild." I don't say anything to him on the phone, but it's starting to feel like we may be about to cross that threshold. Not quite yet, though. At Melaleuca, the deadly bacterium doesn't appear to have spread to all of the nests despite the reliance of OBPs on the feed tables, and many chicks have successfully fledged. Even better, Matilda is going strong. She's just opened her eyes, and we watch her grow over the next few weeks as she sprouts pinfeathers, passing through what Stojanovic affectionately refers to as "peak ugly". By mid-February, she is on the cusp of fledging, and the parrot scientists return to take her final measurements. Stojanovic ascends the tree and stretches a surgical glove over the entry hole to the nest box  at a month old, Matilda is quite capable of prematurely launching herself out into the great unknown. He props one foot against the smooth upper bark of the eucalypt and reaches into the box. Matilda's rasping squawks broadcast her annoyance clearly to onlookers. He pops her into a calico bag and places it carefully into his climbing bag, before sliding back down to the ground. The chick has changed beyond recognition. When she arrived, Matilda was just a day old, a tiny, cottonwool gargoyle of a creature. I was sure she wouldn't survive. Now she's almost as big as her mother. Stojanovic turns her over, exposing a dull blush of orange at her vent, smudged into the yellow of her belly feathers. "Definitely a girl!" he says, smiling. He measures her head, bill, wings and tail, then slips her into a ziplock bag to be weighed on a tiny set of scales. She sits quietly in the bag as the scientists note her growth and then perches for a moment on Stojanovic's finger, allowing the assembled throng of scientists and visitors to snap photos of this very special bird. "We might not stop OBPs from going extinct [in the wild]," says Stojanovic. "They may be too far gone. But we need to learn from this, so we can do better for the next species on the brink."

February 18, 2017 No one is there to witness it when Matilda fledges a week later. But a motion-sensing camera taped to a nearby branch captures her maiden flight. Matilda cautiously makes her way to the nest box entrance. She still looks very young, with googly black eyes, yellow beak, and traces of baby fluff clinging like lint to the tips of her olive-green feathers. At the threshold, she pauses. She swings her head, taking in the surroundings, then shuffles to the other side of the perch for a different perspective. She looks unconvinced. Like a cuckoo-clock bird, she retreats into the darkness of the wooden box. She cannot know how bleak the odds against her surviving are, and even if she did it would make no difference. Barely half an hour later, she returns to the entrance to consider her options. But the wind has lifted and ready or not, the breeze sweeps her off the landing platform and she tumbles backwards off the perch, out of sight. A newly banded orange-bellied parrot nestling. Credit:Nicole Gill May 8, 2017
Speaking at the Mail Today Femail Summit, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi argued against triple talaq and said that it not only infringed upon the right to equality to women but also termed it as a social evil.

By Siddhartha Rai: Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Friday he wants the controversial practice of triple talaq to be abolished as it infringes upon the right to equality of women and puts them at a severe disadvantage. Naqvi was speaking at the first edition Mail Today's Femail Summit, a conclave dedicated to the women of the nation.

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The triple talaq is a Sharia law practice which allows men to end a marriage, simply by saying "talaq" to their wives three times in succession.

While many Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia have outlawed the custom for years, India- home to the world's third-largest Muslim population- continues to allow it. The Supreme Court is hearing a batch of petitions opposing triple talaq, after women complained that they had been divorced via Facebook and WhatsApp. "I am not a talaq specialist. I have never done talaq and I don't intend to do it ever," Naqvi said in a light-hearted way to begin with, coming to the more serious aspects of the instant divorce custom that the Narendra Modi government has promised to do away with, an attitude that has caused consternation among the more conservative sections of Muslim society and the clerics in particular.

Several political observers have pointed out that the BJP garnered a massive chunk of votes from Muslim women that, among other things, accounted for its sweeping majority in the UP Assembly polls this year. "Our Constitution guarantees gender equality and a sweeping equality for all: high and low, man and woman. This right to equality must be held sacrosanct for all and all must respect it. This nation runs on a Constitution, not on shariat or any other religious textbook. This practice is inhuman, unconstitutional and is a social evil," Naqvi said.

'TRIPLE TALAQ, A SOCIAL EVIL'

The senior minister of the Modi council, who has held several party positions too in the past, put forth before the audience a kind of "secular" argument in favour of the abolition of this "social evil" as he called it. "This country has not seen socio-religious reforms for the first time. Child marriage was abolished. Even then naysayers had cried 'religion in danger' and that it was tinkering with the religious sentiments of the people. They said it must not be abolished as it was part of established tradition dating back to hundreds of years, but it happened. Similarly, when sati was abolished, a section said it was an attack on religious sentiments of people. A big campaign too was launched against the move, but it was made illegal. In the same way, triple talaq too must be abolished and a positive step should be taken towards social reform."

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The national Law Commission last year sought public views on whether to abolish the custom, triggering a debate between politicians and religious leaders. The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), a non-governmental body which oversees the application of Muslim personal law, has resisted any ban on triple talaq while arguing that this is a religious matter and not for the courts. Naqvi also made a strong pitch for reservation for women in educational institutions.

"We are in the process of opening nearly 100 schools on the lines of 'Navodaya Vidyalayas' across the nation for minorities where 50 per cent of the seats would be reserved for girls. Of all the scholarships given by my ministry, we have reserved 40 per cent for the girl child. We have ensured that all skilling programmes that we run, through NGOs or as government enterprise, have at least 40 per cent of participation from women. There are schemes in which minorities have 75 per cent job reservation and we have ensured that 50 per cent of these go to women." Talking about the skilling initiatives of the ministry, Naqvi said the motto was Madad Hamari, Manzil Aapki (our help, your ambition).

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"In the past three years we have tried for bringing about empowerment without appeasement as the Narendra Modi government is committed to bring happiness and prosperity for everyone who is poor. The next motto is Education, Employment and Empowerment. This is what we are doing and intend to further do for mainstreaming the minorities in India."

Also read: Telangana: Muslim college principal heckled by ABVP, RSS men

Also read: We're Muslims first, Indians later, says Samajwadi Party leader Maviya Ali

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A former director of hit Australian television shows Offspring and Rake, Kate Dennis has been nominated for an Emmy for her directorial work on the television series of the moment, The Handmaid's Tale. Sydney born and bred, Dennis moved to Los Angeles two years ago. She's home again briefly to film a new ABC-TV crime drama, Harrow.

You started your career in the 1990s, as an assistant in the camera department on Australian films such as The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Babe.

TV director, Kate Dennis: "I was lucky to arrive in Hollywood when theyre trying to give women more work," she says. Credit:Paul Harris

Yes, I spent five years clapping two bits of wood together! I always felt that for somebody who wanted to direct, I spent way too long crewing. But now, living in the US, all that work on films like Babe, as well as on Cliffhanger, At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, has paid off. Some of them were very successful there, so it gave me something to talk about when being interviewed. Also, the technical skills you learn growing up in that crewing world are invaluable when you're under the immense pressure of a TV set.

Since coming to LA you've directed all sorts of TV, such as the comedy I'm Dying Up Here, the dramas GLOW, Suits and TURN: Washington's Spies, and, of course, The Handmaid's Tale.
Now she faces her biggest challenge: being the most present mother possible while still pursuing her acting career and providing for her family. Teresa says she dreamt of being a mother even as a little girl pushing around her eight dolls in a pram from the Salvos. "I've always been incredibly maternal," she says. "It was just me and Mum growing up, [so] I filled my time being a little nurturer." After her parents split when she was three years old, she continued to see her father but lived primarily in public housing in Adelaide with her mother, who suffers from mental illness. While some children would struggle with this instability, Teresa appears unscathed. "It was all I knew," she shrugs. "My mum was so fun. She'd turn off all the lights and me and my girlfriends would hide and she'd run through the house and scare us. She'd take me to concerts, and let me dress her up, and be in my plays. "She was like having a best friend; she gave me a lot of freedom. Even though as an adult I can look back and think, 'Oh, that was a pretty different experience,' I'm so grateful for every aspect of it."

Despite her positive view of her childhood, Teresa admits she was drawn to acting partly because of the escapism it offered. Her life took a radical turn at 18, when she was cast in the high school suicide drama 2.37. The film received a standing ovation at its Cannes premiere and her performance was nominated for an AFI Best Actress award. She went on to appear in a string of movies including December Boys with Daniel Radcliffe, Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and Wish You Were Here with Joel Edgerton. But it was stop-start for a while, with just as many flops and cancelled projects as successes. Teresa assumed she'd eventually give up acting to become a drama teacher, midwife or paramedic. Then came the 2013 zombie hit Warm Bodies, which confirmed her as an actor, both in the public's mind and her own. "I started doing more than one movie a year, I started gaining momentum. That's when I realised, 'Oh, I guess I don't get to go back to Adelaide and have that life.' " Top and skirt by Louis Vuitton. Credit:Corrie Bond

That same year, she married American independent filmmaker Mark Webber (they met via Twitter), on a beach in Mexico. Australian actor Phoebe Tonkin was her bridesmaid (other famous gal pals include Megan Gale, Lara Bingle and Bella Heathcote). Bodhi Rain was born in 2014 and Forrest Sage arrived last December (her sons' names are inscribed on a gold plate which hangs around her neck). She also has a stepson, Isaac Love, from Mark's first marriage. She'd like at least two more children, possibly three, and has just assembled a "manifest board" covered with pictures of girls. "It's my favourite thing in the world to just be with my children and learn from them every day," she says. Meanwhile, her career has flourished, with roles in films such as the remake of Point Break, Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge and most recently, the critically acclaimed Berlin Syndrome. But beneath her chilled-out demeanour today, Teresa is feeling conflicted. After a year as a stay-at-home mum, she's about to re-enter the workforce. The family is moving to Cardiff, in Wales, where she will be filming a TV series for six months of the year. While she's excited abut the change, and appreciative of the steady income television work brings, she's anxious about relinquishing her cherished role as primary carer and handing those duties over to her husband and mother.

"I've just come off a year of not working and it's been lovely because I'm the person who's with them from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep. Now I'm having to wrap my head around the idea of sharing those responsibilities. I want to be there for all of the moments." She's relished being back in her home town, where she's just a regular mum doing the school run and organising play dates. She bought the four-hectare Adelaide Hills property from her father a few years ago, and the family has been splitting their time between it and their home in LA, with Bodhi and Isaac attending schools in both places. "When I'm here I don't have to do work, I don't talk about work, I get to fly under the radar mostly and just be a mum. It's completely refreshing, a nice escape from LA." A happy sense of calm permeates the house. Stepmum Kaaren is making pizza in the farmhouse kitchen, Mark brings Bodhi and Isaac home from their Montessori school, and Teresa's mother Paula tends to Forrest when he's not being breastfed. Paula is clearly a vital support for Teresa, yet despite their close relationship, mother and daughter don't see eye-to-eye on everything. Paula is a devout Catholic who attends Latin Mass every day; she named her daughter after Mother Teresa and sent her to a Catholic school. When Teresa was in her mid-20s, Paula sat her daughter down to talk about her faith, which now leans towards a New Age spirituality.

"She would have loved it if I had become a nun," Teresa explains. "I said, 'I have my own version of church and I still pray, it just looks a little bit different from what yours does.' "I let her know how grateful I was that she instilled such beautiful morals in me. But to me, the wonderful thing about the way I was brought up is that it really revolved around love and that's what I have held on to. It's about being the most loving person you can be." As a vegan, co-sleeping mother who breastfeeds on demand and is into crystals and star signs, Teresa could easily be pigeon holed as a hippie earth mother, particularly when she talks about being "in harmony" with her kids, "collective consciousness" and "manifesting your dreams". She runs a wellness blog, Your Zen Life, and a parenting blog, Your Zen Mama, where, among other things, you can read detailed descriptions of her sons' births. But, as her affable husband says, all human beings are contradictions of themselves. Teresa admits her default personality is Type A  at odds with her desire to be "in flow" with her kids and life in general, and a source of conflict with Mark, the pair often butting heads when she's too controlling. "It is my tendency to want to organise and arrange and sort and have a plan," she says. "Any time I feel myself doing that, I always just try and observe that I'm in that mindset and rein it back in."

Boss by Hugo Boss knit and skirt; Louis Vuitton boots. Credit:Corrie Bond Confirming her A-list status, Teresa is to be announced as the newest Audi Ambassador at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week at the island's luxury resort, Qualia. She joins Hugh Jackman and Chris Hemsworth in representing the brand, and follows in the footsteps of Asher Keddie and Naomi Watts. Teresa laughs that the appointment is particularly apt because her waters broke in an Audi as Mark was driving her to the hospital for Forrest's birth. "It's the funny story in our family  I almost gave birth in an Audi. Had to get that one cleaned!" she jokes. More seriously, Teresa says she's pleased to be associated with a company that strongly supports women in the creative arts. A dozen years after she laid down the law with those Hollywood talent managers, Teresa no longer sees her life as a battle between the competing roles of actor and mother  it's more an exercise in uniting them. "It will be nice to get back to doing things for myself but I'm nervous about getting into the schedule of working so much and I'm nervous about having to navigate my feelings about not being the one to pick Bodhi up from school," she admits.
Bronwyn Atherton spent more than eight years in Santa Monica prison in Peru after being convicted of drug trafficking. But Atherton decided to travel nonetheless. "I've always been a drifter, so I went to Europe for a couple of weeks and then to Mozambique," she says. A month after her arrival her passport and precious photos of her son were stolen. "There's no Australian consul in Mozambique so I had to travel to South Africa. I got a temporary passport at the border, and the consul leant me $200 when I got there. It took three months to get my new passport so I hitchhiked around South Africa while I was waiting. So much crazy stuff happened during that time. Bronwyn Atherton with her friend Diana Black in Ulladulla. Indeed, it was a chance encounter in South Africa that led to her eventual incarceration.

"I was in a cafe in Pretoria and this guy came up to me and said, 'You look like you like to travel. I'm into trafficking gold, diamonds, marijuana, cocaine. Would you be interested in bringing something across the border?' " Atherton says. "I couldn't believe I was actually hearing someone say this. I was like, 'What the hell?' " she says. "I said no to everything, but eventually said maybe I'll bring marijuana with me on a bus to Swaziland. "I was on self-destruct mode. I was running, running, running. I got on a train and as soon as I said 'yes', I couldn't get off." 'Things can always get worse' Atherton went on a wild six-month journey, traversing three continents and 22 countries, had a gun held to her head and was raped  twice. In the meantime, she discovered that the man who had raped her in Australia had infected her with HIV.

"I thought, 'I've lost everything, my boy, my health, it couldn't get any worse'  or so I thought. I learnt, unfortunately, that things can always get worse." Marijuana was replaced with cocaine. "Eventually two friends did a mule run with cocaine and landed safely, so I did it a week later. I was told I was getting nine kilograms, which would have meant two-and-a-half years in jail, had I been caught. But I ended up getting 17.4 kilograms." In October 2008, she was given a bag that weighed 46 kilograms in a taxi in Lima, Peru, en route to Jorge Chavez international airport. "Every voice in my head was telling me it was insanity, but I did it anyway. "The security guard came straight up to me and asked me to open the bag, which I didn't have a lock for. Then they pulled me into a small room and someone stuck this poker through the bag and I could see that there was cocaine at the end of it." The bag contained two pillowcases full of cocaine as well as jumpers, cushions, blankets and all the things you'd need if you went to jail. "They knew that I had to buy everything once I got to jail, so they wanted to do the 'decent' thing and set me up," she says.

"It was surreal. I just went through the motions," says Atherton. "They didn't launch a big investigation, they weren't out to find the guys who put me up to it." She was charged with trafficking 17.4 kilograms of pure cocaine. "I pleaded guilty. There was only a hearing, not a trial. I got 14 years." After 15 days in a holding cell, she was sent to Santa Monica women's prison in Chorrillos, a suburb of Lima, Peru. 'I knew what I was doing' Unlike Schapelle Corby, who returned home in May this year after nine years in Bali's Kerobokan prison after being caught with four kilograms of marijuana in Bali in 2004, Atherton arrived home to no fanfare, no flashing lights, no paparazzi.

"That's what happens when you're guilty. Like, I knew what I was doing, I don't deny that, but I wasn't in a position where I made good decisions," she says from her childhood home in Ulladulla earlier this week. "I wouldn't have done it if I was healthy. Things like that don't happen to mentally healthy people. I needed to heal, I was damaged," she says. "I feel bad for Cassandra Sainsbury," says Atherton about the 22-year-old Australian facing several years in prison after being caught with six kilograms of cocaine in Colombia's El Dorado airport in April this year. "People don't know the difference between criminals and people who make mistakes. "[In prison] I was surrounded by very violent women, women who killed their own children. Most of the mules I met aren't like that. They just made a mistake. A really, really stupid one." Atherton was granted her freedom after eight years and two months. "I was released in December 2016 and spent the last seven months in Lima, waiting patiently to get my documentation to fly home." She was let out early due to health reasons. She says she would probably not have survived another year. "The battle for my early release was long and hard fought in the Supreme Court [in Peru], which took a lot out of me."

Throughout her time in prison, HIV weakened her immune system and she required constant expensive medication. "I was sick all the time, either food poisoning or other diseases which spread in prisons. Also my mind was shattered." Despite this, Atherton says she gained a lot spiritually from prison and insists that hers is not a sob story. "I don't want a pity party. I'm just having a full human experience  and many people suffer far worse than I do. I have used this time to heal my broken spirit and broken mind, so it hasn't been a waste of time. It's been a long journey that I'm still on, and I don't feel like a victim. I want people to know who I am as a person. I am not my mistake, my prison sentence or my illness." She says that she is thankful to the people who helped her during her prison years. "People I never met supported me financially and filled out petitions to ensure my early release," she says. Atherton's mother set up a Facebook page for her, and a petition for an early release. She received letters and money from people all around the world. Everything cost money in prison  toilet paper, food, hot water, drinking water  so she couldn't survive without donations.
Barcelona: Hopes are fading for missing seven-year-old Australian boy Julian Cadman after Spanish authorities revealed they were not searching for any missing children.

Julian has not been seen since the terror attack on Las Ramblas on Thursday night, while his mother remains in a serious condition in hospital.

His father, Andrew Cadman, arrived in Barcelona late Saturday afternoon after making the long flight from Sydney.

He was met by Australian consular staff at Barcelona airport and driven straight to the Ciutat de la Justicia. According to the Catalan government, the Ciutat de la Justicia is where victims of the Las Ramblas attack are being identified by forensic experts.
An Australian Modern Slavery Act, modelled on the UK laws of the same name, is supposed to help combat this. Proposed legislation announced last week will compel large companies to report annually on their efforts to safeguard supply chains from slavery, with the details placed on a public repository. In theory, it means that supermarkets stocking the fruit Bani's workers picked would have needed to audit the farms on which they worked, hopefully detecting and deterring the exploitation. Some Australian companies claim to already do this but with mixed results, partly because evidence of exploitation can be hard to detect. Justice Minister Michael Keenan wants large companies to make annual Modern Slavery Statements. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Take, for example, a winter jacket bought at your local retail chain. The label might say "made in Japan" but in pursuit of cheap labour, the fabric might come from child labour in India, the buttons from a sweat shop in China, the zipper from Taiwan. Just last year, Fairfax Media exposed Rip Curl selling supposedly Chinese-made ski jackets that were made in North Korea, where workers are routinely exploited.

Melbourne University researcher Kate Nicholl warns that complex, offshore supply chains expose many Australian businesses to the possibility they are benefiting from slavery. Most welcome the idea of a Modern Slavery Act with an anti-slavery commissioner to investigate complaints, but as Nicholl and others told a parliamentary inquiry this month, its effectiveness depends on the detail. One concern about the UK legislation is that the reporting threshold for companies sits at 36 million  the equivalent of about $58 million. So when Justice Minister Michael Keenan announced on Wednesday that only large companies with yearly turnovers of at least $100 million may be required to make annual "slavery statements"  without penalties for non-compliance or a clear commitment for an independent watchdog  many were unimpressed. Human trafficking expert Anne Gallagher warns that any Act that merely tacks onto Australia's existing and poorly enforced human trafficking and workplace laws will fall short of expectations. After all, Australia has slavery provisions in the Commonwealth criminal code, yet according to the government's own figures, 604 trafficking and slavery-related cases were investigated or referred between 2011 and 2016  and only seven convictions were made.

Former Cambodian slave Sophea Touch gave evidence to a modern slavery inquiry in Melbourne this month. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui National Union of Workers of president Caterina Cinnani says part of the problem is that victims often won't complain for fear of reprisals. A Modern Slavery Act could help  since the introduction of the UK legislation in 2015, there has been a 63 per cent increase in the number of victims coming forward  but as Cinnani points out: "Laws made to protect workers fall apart if they can't be enforced." The need for better protection was also a common theme among the victims Fairfax Media spoke to for this feature. Among them was was 28-year-old Amin*, a Rohingya worker who endured slave-like conditions on an asparagus farm in Melbourne for a boss who withheld his pay and threatened to beat him with stick when he begged for his money. Another was Sophea Touch: abandoned by her parents at the age of four; put to work selling cakes in a Cambodian village; abused and starved by the families who traded her. Years later she managed to escape with the help of Australian charity Hagar, but her story  tearfully recounted this month before a modern slavery parliamentary inquiry  will haunt her forever. "Every day I lived with fear," she says. "I felt so hopeless."

And then there's Filipino housekeeper Aurora**, who arrived in Canberra with the hope of a new job working for a foreign diplomat. But as authorities would later hear, the employer took her passport, prevented her from speaking to anyone or leaving the house, and paid her only $300 a month to work from Monday to Sunday, between 6am to 10.30pm  much less than the $2500 a month stipulated in her contract. "Even when I went to throw the garbage out, I had be accompanied by his wife. I was like a prisoner," she says. Human trafficking advocacy group Project Respect has joined the chorus of those demanding new laws aimed at people who knowingly or recklessly use or employ trafficked workers. Human trafficking is an ongoing problem in the sex industry. Credit:Janie Barrett By scouring online brothel reviews, Project Respect has found anecdotal evidence of brothel clients suspecting sex workers are trafficked but failing to act on this suspicion. One brothel user said that despite having such a concern of an Asian sex worker, he still "banged her rotten."

Stronger evidence that employers may be turning a blind eye to human trafficking has emerged in sex slavery prosecutions arising from inquiries by the federal police. On Victoria Street in Richmond, a few hundred metres from Vietnamese soup kitchens and upmarket bars, is the Candy Club brothel. While there is no evidence the women at the Candy Club are trafficked, the venue's madam, Lin Gao, was implicated in a major sex trafficking inquiry by the federal police in 2012 involving a South Melbourne brothel. Despite this, the Victorian government continues to license Gao's Richmond brothel. When called this week by Fairfax Media, Gao refused to talk. But as a small business owner, she won't be bothered by the Coalition's proposed reforms. Back in Canberra, momentum is building  but how bold will Australia be? Business leaders such as billionaire Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest this week trumpeted a proposed anti-slavery regime based on supply chain transparency. Labor spokeswoman Clare O'Neil welcomed the step but warned that without penalties and an independent watchdog, any plans would be toothless.
A fire on Sydney's Northern Beaches has been contained following the efforts of over 80 firefighters.

NSW Rural Fire Service were called to a structural fire on a property along Oxford Falls at 7pm on Saturday night.

Over 80 firefighters responded to the fire in Oxford falls. Credit:Top Notch Video

The Rural Fire Service were assisted by NSW Fire and Rescue and attempted to bring the fire under control but were unable to stop the collapse of the structure.

Neighbouring properties were thought to be under threat but the fire was brought under control.
"I'm not talking about the teachers or garbage collectors or care workers here, I'm mainly talking about corporate lawyers, consultants or bankers," he said. James Arvanitakis, a professor at Western Sydney University, said his previous career in the finance industry was profitable "but I didn't feel it was meaningful in many ways". Credit:Ben Rushton He pointed to a survey of British workers that found more than one-third believed their job was meaningless, while 40 per cent of Dutch workers expressed similar dissatisfaction with their jobs. Working hard is considered a virtue but Bregman said productivity and longer work hours do not go hand-in-hand; a conclusion he said was made by the cornflakes magnate WK Kellogg in 1930 when he introduced a six-hour work day at his factory. Rutger Bregman, the author of Utopia for Realists, said working less hours would reduce stress and workplace accidents. Credit:Maartje ter Horst

A 23-month experiment with a six-hour work day, beginning in 2015, at a Swedish elderly care facility resulted in improved health outcomes and efficiency among nursing staff, but opponents raised concerns about the cost. James Arvanitakis found working less improved his productivity when he returned to work in the finance sector after taking time off to travel. When I talk about the 15-hour work week, I'm talking about doing less paid work that we don't really care about so that we can do more things that are actually valuable. Historian Rutger Bregman. "I found myself more efficient and productive in three days than what I was in five days," he said. "I think a lot of jobs can be sliced down in that way. I think we do spend a lot of time doing things like writing reports that no one will read." Arvanitakis, now a professor at Western Sydney University's Institute for Culture and Society, spent 10 years working up to 12 hours a day in the finance industry before turning to research and teaching.

"My previous work was profitable but I didn't feel it was meaningful in many ways," he said. "I didn't ever feel there was a huge value to a lot of what I was doing." The benefits of less work Bregman's notion of a shorter work week is not designed to provide more time to sit on the couch massaging the remote control. "When I talk about the 15-hour work week, I'm talking about doing less paid work that we don't really care about so that we can do more things that are actually valuable," he said. "Whether it's volunteer work or caring for our kids or elderly. We need to update our idea of what work is." He said shortening the work week, in tandem with implementing a universal basic income, would offer people the freedom to decide what to do with their life while providing a level of financial security.

Bregman said working fewer hours would reduce stress and workplace accidents. He also said countries with shorter working weeks had less income inequality and greater gender equality. It sounds costly and unrealistic but Bregman said a reduction in work should be a political ideal. "Then, we can curb the work week step by step, trading in money for time, investing more money in education, and developing a more flexible retirement system and good provisions for paternity leave and childcare," he writes in Utopia for Realists. In the past, influential thinkers such as Keynes and science-fiction author Isaac Asimov believed boredom would be one of the great challenges of the future. Instead, Bregman writes: "We aren't bored to death; we're working ourselves to death. The army of psychologists and psychiatrists are fighting not the advance of ennui, but an epidemic of stress." Working harder to consume

Average weekly full-time hours worked by Australians have increased since 1985 from 36.4 to 38.6 for women and from 39.5 hours to 42.3 hours for men, according to Troy Henderson, a PhD candidate in political economy at the University of Sydney. "The slight fall in average hours is wholly explained by a significant increase in part-time work." Henderson pointed to a number of reasons why the fall in working hours had stalled in recent decades, including the stagflation recession in the mid-1970s, increased globalisation of trade, rising unemployment and insecure work. "Free market fundamentalism reinforced the 'work ethic' and the power of employers to dictate terms to workers," he said. "But the main reason is that capitalism  without resistance from other social forces  has a strong bias towards taking the benefits of productivity growth in the form of more consumption rather than more leisure." A 15-hour work week might sound like a fantasy, but Henderson said: "In rich countries we no longer send 10-year-olds down coalmines. We have weekends. Paid annual leave. Public holidays. And age pensions. Change that seems 'utopian' today can be taken for granted 20 or 50 years later." Henderson said a shorter work week and universal basic income were "utopian-pragmatic" reforms.
A man was caught driving with almost five-times the blood-alcohol limit twice in less than six hours on Friday, according to police.

It will be alleged the man swerved between lanes, crossed onto the wrong side of the Bruce Highway and tailgated other drivers, all while a young child was in the passenger seat.

The accused allegedly returned two blood-alcohol readings of almost five-times the legal limit. Credit:Marina Neil/Fairfax Media

Police said officers initially intercepted a vehicle on the Bruce Highway at the Glass House Mountains about 3pm after it crossed onto the wrong side of the road towards an oncoming police car.

The driver allegedly returned a blood-alcohol reading of .242 at Landsborough Police Station and was charged with drink-driving.
Hundreds of people have marched through the centre of Perth in a 'snap rally' to support the 'yes' vote in the plebiscite on same sex marriage.

Holding placards and banners with messages like 'love is love' and 'trans and proud', the small crowd gathered with just a week's notice, massing in Forrest Place on a rainy Saturday afternoon.

The crowd in Forrest Place. Credit:David Allan-Petale

A rally supporting same sex marriage is also being held in Bunbury in the South West.

In Perth, after a number of speakers from The Greens and the LGBTQI community addressed the gathering, the crowd marched through the city to the CFMEU's Trades Hall on Beaufort Street.
By PTI: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Aug 19 (PTI) US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has formally initiated an investigation of Chinas intellectual property practices under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which will seek to determine if Americas largest trading partner has been engaging in unfair practices.

"After consulting with stakeholders and other government agencies, I have determined that these critical issues merit a thorough investigation. I notified the President that today I am beginning an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974,"Lighthizer said.

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China is Americas largest trading partner, with annual trade in goods and services worth about USD 663 billion.

In a memorandum on August 14, President Donald Trump had directed the USTR to do so.

The memorandum had emphasised that "the US is a world leader in research-and-development-intensive, high-technology goods," and that "violations of intellectual property rights and other unfair technology transfers potentially threaten US firms by undermining their ability to compete fairly in the global market."

It further noted that Chinas conduct "may inhibit US exports, deprive US citizens of fair remuneration for their innovations, divert American jobs to workers in China, contribute to our trade deficit with China, and otherwise undermine American manufacturing, services, and innovation."

According to USTR, the Chinese government reportedly uses a variety of tools, including opaque and discretionary administrative approval processes, joint venture requirements, foreign equity limitations, procurements, and other mechanisms to regulate or intervene in US companies? operations in China, in order to require or pressure the transfer of technologies and intellectual property to Chinese companies.

Moreover, many US companies report facing vague and unwritten rules, as well as local rules that diverge from national ones, which are applied in a selective and non- transparent manner by the Chinese government officials to pressure technology transfer, it said.

Secondly, the Chinese governments acts, policies and practices reportedly deprive US companies of the ability to set market-based terms in licensing and other technology- related negotiations with Chinese companies and undermine US companies? control over their technology in China.

For example, the Regulations on Technology Import and Export Administration mandate particular terms for indemnities and ownership of technology improvements for imported technology, and other measures also impose non-market terms in licensing and technology contracts.

The Chinese government reportedly directs and/or unfairly facilitates the systematic investment in, and/or acquisition of, US companies and assets by Chinese companies to obtain cutting-edge technologies and intellectual property and generate large-scale technology transfer in industries deemed important by Chinese government industrial plans, it said.

According to USTR, the investigation will consider whether the Chinese government is conducting or supporting unauthorized intrusions into US commercial computer networks or cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets, or confidential business information, and whether this conduct harms US companies or provides competitive advantages to Chinese companies or commercial sectors.

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In addition to these four types of conduct, interested parties may submit for consideration information on other acts, policies and practices of China relating to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation described in the Presidents Memorandum that might be included in this investigation, and/or might be addressed through other applicable mechanisms, Lighthizer said. PTI LKJ ZH

--- ENDS ---
Oakland, California: Last weekend, when a 27-year-old bike messenger showed up at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, he came ready for battle.

He joined a human chain that stretched in front of Emancipation Park and linked his arms with others, blocking waves of white supremacists -- some of them in full Nazi regalia -- from entering.

Antifa members protest in Berkeley California. Credit:New York Times

"As soon as they got close," said the young man, who declined to give his real name and goes by Frank Sabate after the famous Spanish anarchist, "they started swinging clubs, fists, shields. I'm not embarrassed to say that we were not shy in defending ourselves."

Sabate is an adherent of a controversial force on the left known as antifa. The term, a contraction of the word "anti-fascist," describes the loose affiliation of radical activists who have surfaced in recent months at events around the United State, the world, include Australia, and have openly scuffled with white supremacists, right-wing extremists and, in some cases, ordinary supporters of President Donald Trump.
Not everyone in Silicon Valley agrees with how major tech companies have grappled with white supremacy in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a major player in debates over civil liberties and digital privacy said in a blog post Thursday that Google and GoDaddy booting a far-right website from their services was "dangerous" and not the right way to fight extremism.

Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Credit:Tribune

"All fair-minded people must stand against the hateful violence and aggression that seems to be growing across our country," the EFF wrote. "But we must also recognise that on the Internet, any tactic used now to silence neo-Nazis will soon be used against others, including people whose opinions we agree with."

To illustrate its point, the EFF noted that in the civil rights era, it was the NAACP's right to express its views that came under attack.
Barcelona: The man behind the Barcelona terrorist attack on Thursday may still be alive and on the run, Spanish police believe after piecing together new clues about the terror cell responsible.

Police revealed the 12-strong terrorist group behind this week's attacks in Barcelona and nearby Cambrils had been planning an even bigger atrocity involving explosives.

Flowers, messages and candles form a memorial tribute to the victims of terrorists. Credit:AP

Younes Aboutaaqoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan man, was said to be the last member of the group still at large on Friday night.

Police were working on the hypothesis he was the driver and "material author" of the murderous attack on Las Ramblas, Spain's worst terror attack in a decade, El Pais newspaper reported.
This is the first time that the modified Gulfstream V, which carries sensors and equipment for atmospheric research, will study space. "The camera will be right here looking straight up," said Lussier, pointing to a specially made porthole in the top of a plane. "We'll be able to see the whole eclipse through this window." From their eye in the sky, the researchers will experience totality, the point at which the moon completely blocks the sun, for about four minutes, while those below will see about 2 minutes. The scientists will use the extra time, and a large device known as a spectrometer, to observe the sun's corona, the sheath of plasma surrounding our star. The corona is visible from Earth only during a total solar eclipse, and scientists use the phenomenon to study its properties. Because of technological advances in the past few decades, this eclipse offers scientists the chance to observe the corona in the infrared spectrum, which may reveal insight into the sun's magnetic fields. The data could help answer a long-standing puzzle: Why does the corona burn at millions of degrees Fahrenheit, much hotter than the sun's surface?

Jenna Samra, a doctoral candidate in applied physics at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is a lead researcher on the project and helped design the device. She is looking to identify five lines of infrared emissions that are created when electrons in the corona bump into charged particles in the plasma, potentially freeing other electrons. "If we see them it's going to eventually give us a way to measure the magnetic field," she said. That could be used to make a future instrument that observes the magnetic field. That's important, she said, because it could one day help scientists better predict space weather. When the sun's magnetic field lines twist and then snap, they can launch billions of tons of plasma across the solar system. One such powerful ejection in 2012 could have been catastrophic to our power grid had it hit the planet. Samra will be on the plane, well above pesky clouds or storms, as well as most of the water vapour in the atmosphere, which strongly absorbs the infrared radiation. The plane will fly from southeast Missouri, across Kentucky and finally to Tennessee. Her flight may sound exhilarating, but Samra said she will most likely be unable to see the actual eclipse because of its angle above the horizon. "It's the first of its kind," said Scott McIntosh, the director of the NCAR High Altitude Observatory. "Should it be successful on August 21, it opens the door for a brand-new platform for eclipse science."

The Gulfstream V will not be the only jet chasing the total solar eclipse. Two WB-57F aircraft operated by NASA and outfitted with nose-mounted high-tech telescopes will take off from Houston and fly over Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee, each chasing about 3 minutes of totality and clear views of the corona. Only two people will be aboard each jet: the pilot and a sensor equipment operator who will be running the cameras. Amir Caspi, an astrophysicist with the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder and the principal investigator for the project, will be watching from a control room in Houston. "This will be my first eclipse, and I don't get to see it," said Caspi. "I get to watch it on TV." By spying on the sun's outer atmosphere through two telescopes, one that uses a green filter and another that detects infrared radiation, Caspi and his colleagues hope to better understand the corona's structure and why it is so hot. "We don't see a big tangled mess of magnetic fields," Caspi said. "We see organised loops and arcades unlike in our modelling, where everything looks like it's very tangled and snarled ... like bed hair in the morning, and not like a freshly combed head of hair."

The cameras aboard the planes will take high-definition images of the sun 30 times per second. One telescope will observe green emissions from ionised iron atoms in the sun's outer atmosphere. Caspi and his team will use that equipment to search for magnetic waves in the corona as well as evidence of nanoflares, which are tiny explosions in the sun's atmosphere. Both may hold clues to understanding how the corona gets superheated. As an added bonus, half an hour before and after totality the planes will turn their infrared observations to Mercury to gather insights into the tiny planet's composition. Charged Particles While the planes set their sights on the sun, plenty of scientists on the ground will be focusing on the Earth during the eclipse.

One area of particular interest is the ionosphere, a region in the upper atmosphere that is home to the International Space Station and through which signals pass from communications and Global Positioning System satellites that billions of people rely on. The eclipse will provide an opportunity for researchers to investigate how the ionosphere reacts to cosmic disturbances. In a way, the ionosphere breathes, said Greg Earle, a professor of electrical engineering at Virginia Tech. During the day, the sun's ultraviolet light helps produce trillions of charged particles floating in the upper atmosphere, causing the ionosphere to "inhale" and get bigger. At night, it exhales and loses density. Scientists have constructed models that show how these changes occur every day. But "the eclipse is like a punch in the face", Earle said. It will shut off the sun and create a disturbance that the ionosphere does not normally experience. That interests scientists like him because it provides an opportunity to test the accuracy of their models.

"The eclipse is a particularly strong example, for a brief period of time, of space weather," said Philip Erickson, a space scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Haystack Observatory. Unlike solar flares or coronal mass ejections, an eclipse is an easily predictable event that produces a relatively small disturbance. According to existing models, the one next week will create a large hole in the ionosphere that will travel over most of North America over the course of two or three hours, creating nighttime conditions in the upper atmosphere. "We're interested in how deep this hole is and how it will recover after the spot moves on," he said. During the eclipse, scientists like Erickson and Earle will use a suite of tools, from powerful radars and orbiting satellites to GPS sensors and ham radios operated by citizen scientists. Erickson said they are laying the groundwork to make it possible in the future to more accurately predict the kind of havoc that major space weather episodes can cause in the ionosphere, which would allow us to better protect the critical technology that orbits our planet.
Finnish police are investigating a fatal stabbing attack in Turku as "murders with terrorist intent" and said the suspect is an 18-year-old Moroccan national.

Two Finnish citizens died and eight others, including an Italian and two Swedes, were injured in the attack late Friday,the National Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Saturday. The man, who wielded a knife, is now in a hospital but authorities have yet to confirm whether he was working alone.

Memorial candles at the Market Square for the victims of Friday's stabbings in Turku, Finland. Credit:AP

Four people were arrested overnight in connection with the incident, Newspaper Yle reported on Saturday.

Interior Minister Paula Risikko described the events as "shocking" at a press briefing on Friday. Officials will do their best to uncover the motives behind the crimes, she said.
Beirut: The Lebanese army has launched an offensive against an Islamic State enclave on the northeast border with Syria, a Lebanese security source said, as Hezbollah and the Syrian army announced an assault from the Syrian side of the border.

The Lebanese army was targeting Islamic State positions near the town of Ras Baalbek with rockets, artillery and helicopters, the source said.

Hezbollah fighters stand near a four-wheel motorcycle near the Lebanon-Syria border. Credit:AP

The area is the last part of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier under insurgent control.

"We started advancing at 5 am (1200 AEST)," the Lebanese source said.
Max de Rekeniere, 56, is taking part in a trial of a ground-breaking new treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Credit:Justin Gage This is not an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind scenario. It's not like the memory is erased. But it is - hopefully - dulled, drawn of venom and immediacy. More than 80 people were killed and dozens more injured in Nice when a truck deliberately drove into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day. Many more were left traumatised. And some, like de Rekeniere, are still crippled by PTSD. A man cries as he prays by a memorial to victims of this month's Barcelona attack. Credit:AP Terror attacks leave a cruel, lingering penumbra of mental harm. Three months after the Paris attacks of November 2015, more than 1000 people had sought psychological support.

According to an article in The Lancet in July, one-third of people involved in a terror attack either as direct victims, family members, or first responders are likely to develop PTSD. Of those, one-third will not have recovered after 10 years. New research into post-traumatic stress is concerned with propranolol, a chemical at work in the brain. Credit:Boston University via AP De Rekeniere says he began to feel "broken inside". "After a few days everything collapsed in my life. It's like I was in the dark for three months. I don't have the possibility to talk. I was very, very bad." July 2016: A woman searching for her son in the aftermath of the Nice terrorist attack. Credit:AP

He couldn't work. Still today he doesn't like to go into the city of Nice. He fears crowded streets. When the sound of summer fireworks reaches his home from the coast he can feel himself tensing up. Vivid nightmares, night after night, drag him back to scenes he wishes he could forget. And perhaps Dr Alain Brunet can help him do that. Brunet is a Canadian expert in PTSD, who for several years has been developing a new treatment using propranolol. In late 2015 he was getting excited about data from a trial, formally published this year, which had extremely promising results in humans.

And then terrorists rampaged through central Paris. "I have a number of acquaintances there, the events really impacted me," Brunet says. "So I started contacting friends and colleagues over there and said to them: 'We really need to do something [about] all the suffering'." He proposed a new trial of his technique. He flew to France and presented it to the authorities and  eventually  won approval and funding. Since last June they have treated 175 patients, from the Paris and then the Nice terror attacks, using his method. In the year that the project has still to run, he hopes to recruit around 300 in total. Brunet explains that a memory blocked from reconsolidating will be "perhaps not forgotten completely  that's not the result that we're getting  but some components or some aspects of it will be degraded".

"We're interested mostly in the emotional component of the memory. Recalling a memory under a reconsolidation blocker [means] the memory is less emotionally intense." In his early animal research they found they could block memories in a single session. In humans it sometimes works that quickly. But for memories that are extremely traumatic, to obtain a strong clinical result they need to do it six times. So people like de Rekeniere, once a week for six weeks, take the drug, write down their nightmare then recite it. Brunet says the beauty of the treatment is not just that it works  there are other treatments, particularly cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), that work well. But CBT requires a lot of expertise, he says. It's a sophisticated treatment that requires years of training. His method, by contrast, can be taught to any clinician  and in the case of a mass attack that left hundreds or thousands traumatised, it could be widely and quickly deployed.

"We are still collecting data," he says. "It's obviously difficult  but [CBT] treatment involves talking about your trauma, there's no way around that. So the treatment we propose is not more difficult than any other but it's much shorter. "Generally by the second or third treatment session they already see a difference and by the fourth treatment session very often they will sometimes say, 'I am reading this scenario, I am reading this script and it feels like it happened to someone else'. "It's quite a powerful experience to witness. I am completely thrilled by it." Dr Jennifer Wild is a clinical psychologist at Oxford University, researching memory, PTSD and anxiety disorders. She says the treatment that works best for PTSD is trauma-focused CBT  in her experience about 80 per cent of patients recover within six to 12 weeks.

She says understanding memory is the key to understanding PTSD. "It's the worst moments that usually come back to mind rather than a complete narrative of the event," she says. "The way people think about the trauma and its aftermath also leads to a sense of current threat." People with PTSD are unable to learn that they are safe again. Because of the nature of the memory and the way they think about it and react to it, it is as if they are trapped in their terrifying past. So trauma-focused treatments, says Dr Wild, seek to "elaborate" the memory, updating it with new information. They actively try to trigger the trauma memory, to help patients discriminate between the memory and what is going on now.

"If the patient thought they were going to die and now they know they didn't die, when they get to that point in the trauma where they're talking about what happened and they have the thought that 'I thought I was going to die', we would then have them say 'and now I know I didn't die, I'm safe, I still see my kids'. So the memory gets updated." She says the propranolol approach is "an interesting one"  though she has reservations. "While propranolol may block the recurrence of the memory it doesn't actually change the meaning for somebody, which is what our trauma-focused treatments are doing," she says. "So if you reduce the memory you're not going to necessarily change the meaning. I'd be really interested in these trials once they have results, it'd be really interesting to look at." Dr Wild is not the only person to express reservations about the use of propranolol in modifying memory.

In 2009 a team from the University of Amsterdam made worldwide headlines with a study in which they used the drug to apparently "cure" arachnophobia, by eliminating the fearful response associated with images of spiders. At the time, the mental health charity Mind issued a statement saying it was "fascinating research that could transform the treatment for phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder". But they added: "We should also exercise caution before heralding this as a miracle cure. Eradicating emotional responses is clearly an area we would need to be very careful about. "It could affect people's ability to respond to dangerous situations in the future and could even take away people's positive memories  we would need to see much more research into the risks and benefits of this treatment before it becomes a reality." Dr Brunet's technique is not the only new PTSD therapy to come to light recently. Scientists in Japan are developing "fMRI decoded neurofeedback", which uses a computer to analyse brain activity in real time, and tries to find moments when fearful memories are activated so they can be "overwritten" with a reward.

In this way, patients needn't even recall their trauma in order to have it dulled. However, the technique is at a very early stage of development. In Australia, earlier this year the Phoenix Australia Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health at the University of Melbourne announced a new trial of an intensive PTSD treatment program, recruiting current and former Australian Defence Force members. That program involves an intensive, two-week period of treatment, which the researchers believe may provide equal or better mental health outcomes than current 10-week therapies. Chief investigator Professor David Forbes says even the best PTSD treatments available were not a solution for everyone. "We need to develop and test new and innovative approaches to help those not benefiting from current approaches," he says. "The outcomes of this trial will help not just the military and veteran community, but also other Australians with PTSD as we improve PTSD treatments for everyone."

Rick Corey is a close friend of Max de Rekeniere. Though they live on different continents, they talk almost every day. He says that before the Nice attack de Rekeniere had been "an adventurer". He had saved up money working as a butler in Paris, Monaco and London, and was "like a tiger in a cage" waiting for the next opportunity to travel. But when they spoke after the attack "he was crying like I heard no one cry before", Corey says. "Max was not to be the same, maybe ever again." Corey heard from de Rekeniere after each of the treatments from Brunet's program. After the first session, "Max told me that he cried the whole time".

After the second "he told me that it felt like someone took a knife and pushed it into his stomach". But after the fourth, last week, Corey believes "Max was a lot better. To me at least." "He talked more freely. He listened to me. He was concerned for me and my feelings. "My friend Max was coming alive again." De Rekeniere is not sure.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Customer Service Mobile Academy, (CSMA) an affiliate company of Training Professionals International Firm, confirmed that they have been elated with registration numbers and anticipate surpassing their enrollment goals for this years conference. CSMA in partnership with the Holland Houses will host the First Annual St. Maarten Customer Service Week Conference on, September 4-8, 2017 at the Holland House.

CSMA reports that attendance numbers are high and the conference has many local organizations registered. It was also reported that companies from Statia, Saba, Anguilla and many other neighboring islands have registered. The conference will offer attendees accredited Customer Service courses with approved curriculum and global accreditation, all attendees will receive a certified certificate of completion internationally recognized.

CSMA, is a mobile Customer Service training company that brings accredited Customer Service courses to the front door of organizations. CSMAs mission is to raise the bar for Customer Service Excellence, particularly in St. Maarten. CSAM achieves their mission utilizing a mobile philosophy by conveniently facilitating Customer Service courses on-site at organizations saving businesses money, time and conveniently allowing employees to attend valued trainings without leaving their jobs.

Dr. Gittens, President & CEO of CSMA stated: The First Annual St. Maarten Customer Service Week is a pivotal event in St. Maartens History. This conference will showcase that St. Maarten as a major advocate for Customer Service Excellence and position the country as leader in fostering Customer Service education. The First Annual St. Maarten Customer Service Week is a unique conference, participants will be engaged in interactive conversations, networking, cooperative and collaborative learning exercises and gain a global perspective on the Service Industry at large.

For more information on the conference call 526.2052 or Register @ Academycsma.com or email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
By PTI: By Lalit K Jha

Washington, Aug 19 (PTI) A bipartisan group of seven US lawmakers have expressed concern over human rights violations in Pakistans Sindh province and urged the State Department to place it on priority during interactions with the country.

The lawmakers wrote a letter dated August 17 which was addressed to acting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia Alice G Wells and US ambassador to Pakistan David Hale.

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"We write to express our concerns about human rights violations in the Sindh province of Pakistan. With the US undertaking a review of policy towards Pakistan, and the recent political leadership changes in that country, we urge you to place a priority on human rights and democracy in your interactions with the government of Pakistan," said the letter by Congressmen led by Brad Sherman, Chair of the Congressional Sindh Caucus.

Other signatories to the letter were Carolyn Maloney, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Adam Schiff, Barbara Comstock, Trent Frank, and Dana Rohrabacher.

"We urge you to work with the government of Pakistan to seek the release of persons held on false charges in Sindh, to protect religious freedoms of the Sindhi people, to end the forced conversions of minority Sindhi girls and women, and to take stronger steps upholding human rights in Sindh," it said.

Noting that the people of Sindh face religious extremist attacks, the Congressmen said Sindh has historically welcomed peoples of all faiths and ethnicities, and is home to significant communities of Christians, Sufis, and Hindus.

"While the numbers are unclear, reports suggest that every year, over 1,000 girls and young women in Pakistan, including many in Sindh, are forcibly converted upon marriage. The Pakistani government has not done enough to stop this practice, and reform measures are circumvented or not enforced," they wrote. PTI LKJ KJ ZH KJ

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James Krauseneck maintained his innocence at the sentencing Monday and was supported by his daughter, Sarah, who was 3 at the time and saw her deceased mother, Cathleen Cathy Krausneck, 29, a Macomb County native.
Claudettes release new album with show at The Acorn in Three Oaks

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By PTI: New Delhi, Aug 19 (PTI) A high-level Uzbek delegation, led by its foreign affairs minister Abdulaziz Kamilov, will be on a four-day visit to India starting tomorrow to discuss wide-ranging issues, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

Kamilov will meet his Indian counterpart Sushma Swaraj, apart from Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu.

The delegation will also comprise Elyor Ganiev, Minister for Foreign Trade of Uzbekistan, senior representatives from the Government of Uzbekistan, and chairmen and representatives from several government associations and corporations.

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The visit of the delegation is taking place following the recent discussions between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the President of Uzbekistan, in Astana on the sidelines of the SCO Heads of States meeting.

Both leaders had decided to further strengthen and expand bilateral cooperation in all areas, particularly trade and economic.

"The Uzbek delegation leader and members have a series of meetings and interactions planned for the next four days," the ministry said in a statement.

The ties between the two countries were elevated to the level of Strategic Partnership during the visit of late Uzbeki President Islam Karimov in 2011.

This year, the two sides are celebrating 25 years of establishment of diplomatic relations. PTI PR SMN

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Algiers, August 19, 2017 (SPS) - Speaker of the National Council of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), Khatri Addouh, said on Wednesday in Algiers that Algeria's position on the Sahrawi cause is "firm and constant," emphasizing the importance of joint action between the two countries and the consolidation of bilateral relations in all fields.

Following a meeting with Speaker of the Council of the Nation, Abdelkader Bensalah, Khatri Addouh said that "the meeting with Abdelkader Bensalah has been an opportunity to discuss bilateral and common issues."

He said that "the latest developments of the Sahrawi issue have been at the center of discussions".

Algeria's position on the Sahrawi cause is "firm and constant in all the circumstances," he said stressing the importance of joint action between Algeria and Western Sahara and the consolidation of bilateral relations between the two countries in all areas.

Addouh also said that he and the president of the Senate discussed the long-standing bilateral relations as well as the means for consolidating them.

"Our two countries are bound by common actions in the service of the peoples of the region and in favor of peace". (SPS)

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New York (United Nations), August 19, 2017 (SPS)  Former German president Horst Koehler has been officially named as new UN envoy for Western Sahara, with the mission of reviving talks between Morocco and Polisario Front Polisario, the UN said in a communique.

The choice of Horst Koehler, 74, was announced early June by the UN. He replaces American Christopher Ross, who had resigned in April over years of tensions between the UN and Morocco over this territory, occupied for more than 40 years by Morocco.

Economist and former banker, Koehler served as president of Germany from 2004 to 2010 after heading the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and chairing the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

The Security Council adopted in April a resolution urging Morocco and the Polisario Front to resume negotiations, which have deadlocked since 2012.

Since 1966, Western Sahara has been included on the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, therefore eligible for the implementation of UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 on Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.

It is the Last colony in Africa, occupied since 1975 by Morocco, supported by France.

Several UN-brokered rounds of negotiations between the parties to the conflicts (Polisario/ Morocco) were organized on the organization of a self-determination referendum for the Sahrawi people. (SPS)

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Algiers, August 19, 2017 (SPS) - Algeria welcomed Thursday, through the spokesperson of the ministry of Foreign Affairs Abdelaziz Benali-Cherif, the appointment of Horst Kohler as the personal envoy of the United Nations Secretary General for Western Sahara, reiterating its support to the UN efforts for a just and lasting political settlement the provides for the auto-determination of the Sahrawi people

Algeria welcomes the appointment of Horst Kohler as the personal envoy of the United Nations Secretary General for Western Sahara, said Benali Cherif in a statement to APS.

It takes this opportunity to reiterate its support to the UN Secretary General and to its personal envoy for a just and lasting political settlement that provides for the auto-determination of the Sahrawi people, in conformity with the relevant resolutions of the Security Council, he underlined.

The spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry added that Algeria expresses the wish that the appointment of the new personal envoy of the Secretary General could contribute in the resumption of negotiations between the two parties in conflict, Morocco and the Polisario Front, for the completion of the decolonization process of the Western Sahara territory. (SPS)

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Connecticuts health care industry has a strong hiring pulse.

The field added more than 1,000 positions last year, one of the largest jumps during that period among the states economic sectors, according to the state Labor Departments latest Economic Digest. A need to staff growing outpatient operations is driving the growth, which health care executives said they expect to continue as their organizations serve rising numbers of patients outside hospitals.

We have added positions to prepare for and support the growth of our practice, said Sally Frank, chief operating officer of Orthopaedic and Neurosurgery Specialists, which has offices in Greenwich and Stamford.

Demand for outpatient care

Hiring has been particularly brisk in the southwestern corner of the state. Western Connecticut Health Network  which runs Norwalk, Danbury and New Milford hospitals  has brought in some 1,400 people for new and existing positions since October. The new hires have included primary care physicians, physician assistants, nurses and supporting clinical and administrative staff including home care, coders and patient financial analysts.

Western Connecticut Health Network now employs about 6,000.

In Fairfield County and other parts of the state, the job creation has concentrated in outpatient services. Health care organizations throughout the state last year added about 1,100 outpatient posts, an increase of 1.3 percent. Employment in hospitals and nursing-residential facilities was basically flat.

Throughout the state, health care providers are expanding their outpatient ranks to support new facilities.

On adjacent lots on Long Ridge Road, the Stamford Health and Yale New Haven Health systems have both opened outpatient centers during the past two years.

More than 90 employees staff the Stamford Health complex. The Yale New Haven Health center operates with 57 employees and another 18 doctors are based there part time.

Systemwide, Yale New Haven Health employs about 22,000, adding about 1,400 positions between 2015 and 2016.

The trend is going to outpatient facilities, said Melissa Turner, Yale New Haven Healths vice president of talent acquisition. And for some people, outpatient care provides an attractive work-life balance because theyre working more regular hours Monday through Friday.

Officials at Stamford Health were not available for comment this week.

Among other recent outpatient additions, Stamford Healths 97,000-square-foot Integrated Care Pavilion on the Stamford Hospital campus and Yale New Haven Healths Womens Cardiovascular Center on Valley Drive in Greenwich both opened last year.

Smaller health-care groups have also ramped up their hiring. ONS has added 35 jobs since the beginning of the year; 27 of those positions focused on physical therapy.

There is an extra challenge with being a premier practice, Frank said. The people we hire have to perform at a superior level.

Another independent health-care practice, Advanced Radiology, has also grown significantly to supporting its imaging centers. It now employs about 200, compared with some 170 about five years ago. It opened its seventh complex, in Wilton, earlier this year.

This is patient driven, Dr. Mary Cooper, senior vice president of clinical services at the Connecticut Hospital Association, said in an interview earlier this year. All of us want the availability of high-quality care thats convenient. None of us want to spend time away from families, jobs and other commitments by being an inpatient in the hospital.

Health care wages ran close to the states overall 2016 average of about $70,000. Employees in outpatient care earned an average of about $67,000 last year, a 2 percent increase over the equivalent amount in 2015. Hospital staff received about $66,000 on average, a 1 percent gain over the previous years level.

More growth

Local health care executives expect hiring to maintain its current pace in the foreseeable future. Western Connectiut Health Network officials said they plan to add positions in the areas that have seen the most growth in the past year.

We are investing in health and wellness, leading population-health management, adopting new technologies and system capabilities and advancing innovative research for optimal health outcomes for our communities, said Cathy Frierson, WCHNs senior vice president of human resources.

Advanced Radiology CEO Clark Yoder said he anticipates the contingent at the new Wilton center growing from about a half-dozen to 10 by the end of the year to accommodate expanded hours there.

ONS also plans to hire more staff. Following up the expansion earlier this year of its Stamford center, it is opening at the end of this month offices in Harrison, N.Y.

Amid the proliferation of outpatient services, health-care executives said hospital personnel would remain indispensable.

The trend is going to outpatient facilities, but we still have in-patient care to keep top of mind, Turner said. We are mobilizing to meet the needs of patients in both clinical settings.

pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott
When asked about the accountability of leaders hiding behind the garb of patriotism, Shukla removed his mic and furiously walked out of the studio.

By India Today Web Desk: BJP leader Prem Shukla today lost his cool while speaking to India Today's journalist. When asked about the bedlam that took place at the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) over national song Vande Mataram, Shukla fumed and lashed out at the journalist.

When asked about the accountability of leaders hiding behind the garb of patriotism, Shukla removed his mic and furiously walked out of the studio.

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Shukla was agitated when the journalist asked him about the significance of national song and the trust of voters.

Upon being asked if the current trend of politicising the national song is against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's idea of development for all, he said that all those people defending such people are anti-nationals.

The journalist countered Shukla by saying that politicians are only emphasising on national song but are not working for the respective constituencies.

When asked if all the politicians harping the tunes even know the true meaning of Vande Mataram, Shukla turned furious and hurled abuses.

When asked if he understood the meaning of the national song, Shukla simply threw away the mic and walked out.

Shukla even went on to tarnish All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) party calling them hooligans.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE AMC MEETING

On Saturday, a scuffle broke out during a general body meeting of AMC after two AIMIM corporators refused to stand up when Vande Mataram was played.

The meeting of the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), ruled by the Shiv Sena-BJP combine, started in the afternoon with the national song, Vande Mataram.

After the song was played, the Sena and BJP members objected to the two members of the All India Majlis-e- Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), a Hyderabad-based party led by Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi, not standing up when the national song was being played.

They shouted slogans and demanded action against the two corporators. Things took an ugly turn when the members of the ruling alliance got into a scuffle with the AIMIM members.

Amid the bedlam, Mayor Bapu Ghadamode suspended the two AIMIM members for the day and adjourned the proceedings for an hour. The pandemonium continued when the house re-assembled, leading to another adjournment.

The AIMIM, with 25 members, is the largest opposition party in the AMC.

Later, talking to reporters, the mayor said, "The general body meeting started with Vande Mataram, but two AIMIM members did not stand up when the song was being played.

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SENA, BJP DEMAND SUSPENSION OF AIMIM LEADERS

"The Sena and BJP members demanded their suspension. I suspended them and asked them to leave the House. Instead, they attempted to rush to the Well and were stopped by the members of the ruling alliance. The AIMIM members also attacked those who demanded their suspension," added the Mayor.

Meanwhile, AIMIM MLA Imtiyaz Jaleel said one of the party corporators did not stand up when the national song was played, adding that an explanation would be sought from him.

"We have 25 corporators in the AMC and 24 of them stood up when the song was played. For the last two-and-a-half years, our corporators have always stood up whenever the national song was played at general body meetings," he added.

With inputs from PTI

Also Read:

Several Agra madrasas celebrate Independence Day, but no Vande Mataram

We're Muslims first, Indians later, says Samajwadi Party leader Maviya Ali

UP's Yogi Adityanath wants madrasas in state to record August 15 celebrations on camera

WATCH: BJP leader loses cool, tells India Today journalist to 'Shut Up' over Vande Mataram controversy

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Google Street View

STAMFORD  Police have released the identity of a pedestrian struck and killed late Thursday night on High Ridge Road.

Sanh Truong, 89, of Square Acre Drive in Stamford, was not in the crosswalk when he was hit by a 2008 Toyota Prius while crossing from west to east near the Burger King restaurant and the intersection of High Ridge and Olga Drive, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The floods mean a worrying situation for jawans of the Border Security Force posted on outposts in West Bengal's Malda district.

Boats have become the only way of patrolling the borders in these areas. (Credits: Bhaskar Roy)

By Manogya Loiwal : Incessant rains have wreaked havoc across districts in north Bengal with flash floods and landslides disrupting normal life. The floods mean a worrying situation for jawans of the Border Security Force (BSF) posted on outposts close to the Bangladesh border in West Bengal's Malda district.

With their camps under water, their task of keeping out infiltrators is doubly difficult these days. Several border out posts including Jagjiwanpur, Tikapara, Kutadaha and Harishchandrapur borders are submerged in water due to the flood situation in the state.

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Boats have become the only way of patrolling the borders in these areas.

(Credits: Bhaskar Roy)

At the Neetpur BSF camp close to the Bangladesh border, floods have submerged the area to an extent that even the arms and the ammunitions have been damaged.

The BSF however, continues to assist local people who have been facing immense hardships while preventing infiltration from across the Bangladesh border.

Around 15 lakh people have been hit by the floods in Coochbehar, Dakshin Dinajpur, Uttar Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and Malda in north Bengal since July 21.

About 789 relief camps have been set up and reportedly, 3,00,089 people are putting up in them.

(With inputs from Bhaskar Roy)

Also Read:

Also Watch:

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A week into the disaster in North Bengal, flood victims have started lashing out against the Mamata Banerjee administration for its failure to provide essential supplies.

In Ratua, angry flood victims came out on the streets to protest. (Courtesy: Bhaskar Ray)

By Indrajit Kundu: Even though water has begun receding in various flood affected districts of north Bengal, there is a severe crisis of relief material, especially in Dinajpur and Malda. With road and rail links paralysed in many parts, government help is yet to reach as lakhs take shelter in makeshift camps without food or clean drinking water.

A week into the disaster in north Bengal, flood victims have started lashing out against the Mamata Banerjee administration for its failure to provide essential supplies.

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On Friday, locals in north Dinajpur's Itahar ransacked a Block Development Office (BDO) and looted a government godown in Sreepur area.

After losing all their belongings to the raging flood waters, desperate victims ran away with whatever little essential items they could fetch- tarpaulin, food grain etc.

In neighbouring South Dinajpur, angry locals beat up members of the Chakvrigu panchayat under Balurghat sub-division. Villagers allege that they have received no relief material for several days despite repeated pleas with the local administration.

"Has any minister or official been seen on the ground? People have been pushed to the brink," alleged Md Salim, CPI(M) MP from Raiganj in North Dinajpur.

"This is a national disaster and yet this state government is not even terming it a calamity, because if they did so, they will be held accountable on the expenditure incurred from the emergency fund. One can't tackle such a crisis with mid-day meal and ICDS food," the MP said, lashing out at the Mamata Banerjee administration.

In Malda, fresh incidents of inundation have been reported as water from north and south Dinajpur is flowing into the district.

The Fulhar and Mahananda rivers are flowing above the danger level. Harishchandrapur, Ratua, Chanchal, Gazole, Bamongola, English Bazar blocks are the worst affected. National Highway (NH) 34 has opened partially but NH-81 still remains inundated.

In Ratua, angry flood victims came out on the streets to protest. "The embankment is leaking since the past three days but despite our repeated pleas the government has not done anything," alleged Md Safir Alam, a local villager.

In English Bazar, local municipality run by the ruling Trinamool Congress has appealed to NGOs to come and help. "We held a meeting with local NGO's so that they can help in distributing relief and dry food," said Nihar Ranjan Ghosh, the municipality chairman.

Amidst the unfolding crisis, Bengal irrigation minister Rajib Banerjee has blamed the state's geography for the disaster. "Geographically speaking, Bengal is in a disadvantage as its situated in the lower basin and thus the excess water from Nepal and Bihar keeps entering the state. We are doing everything possible on a war footing to meet the challenge," he said. Interestingly, during the first phase of floods in south Bengal last month, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had blamed the centre accusing the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) of releasing excess water into Bengal from Jharkhand.

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A week into the disaster in north Bengal, flood victims have started lashing out against the Mamata Banerjee administration for its failure to provide essential supplies. On Friday, locals in north Dinajpur's Itahar ransacked a Block Development Office (BDO) and looted a government godown in Sreepur area. After losing all their belongings to the raging flood waters, desperate victims ran away with whatever little essential items they could fetch - tarpaulin, food grain etc.

In neighbouring South Dinajpur, angry locals beat up members of the Chakvrigu panchayat under Balurghat sub-division. Villagers allege that they have received no relief material for several days despite repeated pleas. "Has any minister or official been seen on the ground? People have been pushed to the brink," alleged Md Salim, CPI(M) MP from Raiganj in North Dinajpur.

"This is a national disaster and yet this state government is not even terming it a calamity, because if they did so, they will be held accountable on the expenditure incurred from the emergency fund. One can't tackle such a crisis with mid-day meal and ICDS food," the MP said, lashing out at the Mamata Banerjee administration.

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In Malda, fresh incidents of inundation have been reported as water from north and south Dinajpur is flowing into the district. The Fulhar and Mahananda rivers are flowing above the danger level. Harishchandrapur, Ratua, Chanchal, Gazole, Bamongola, English Bazar are the worst affected blocks. National Highway (NH) 34 has been opened partially but NH-81 still remains submerged under water.

In Ratua, angry flood victims came out on the streets to demonstrate. "The embankment is leaking since past three days but despite our repeated pleas the government has not done anything," alleged Md Safir Alam, a local villager.

In English Bazar, local municipality run by the ruling Trinamool Congress has appealed to NGOs to come and help. "We held a meeting with local NGO's so that they can help in distributing relief and dry food," said Nihar Ranjan Ghosh, the municipality chairman.

Amidst the unfolding crisis, Bengal irrigation minister Rajib Banerjee has blamed the state's geography for the disaster. "Geographically speaking, Bengal is in a disadvantage as its situated in the lower basin and thus the excess water from Nepal and Bihar keeps entering the state. We are doing everything possible on a war footing to meet the challenge," he said.

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Interestingly, during the first phase of floods in south Bengal last month, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had blamed the centre accusing the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) of releasing excess water into Bengal from Jharkhand.

(With inputs from Bhaskar Ray and Bhabananda Singha)

Also Read:

Border outposts submerged as Bengal floods worsen, patrolling gets tougher

600 Indians from flood-hit West Bengal take shelter in Bangladesh

Also Watch:

Northeast battles flash floods: Assam worst-hit with 44 deaths, innumerable displaced

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By PTI: Bhopal, Aug 18 (PTI) External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today underlined the need of involving the youth in political, economic and social spheres for sustainable peace and prevention of conflicts.

Swaraj, who was addressing the valedictory function of the five-day India-Asean Youth Summit here, invoked Lord Buddhas peace message, saying it was relevant even in the 21st century.

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"Lord Buddha said, there is no higher bliss than peace. Towards attaining this bliss we need to empower our youths who have a critical role in preventing conflicts and ensuring sustainable peace," she said.

"Youth are agents of change and critical actors in preventing conflict and building peace. Furthermore, when youths are excluded from political, economic and social spheres and processes, it can be a risk factor for violence and conflict," she said.

"Therefore, identifying and addressing the social exclusion of young people is a must for sustaining peace," the minister said.

Referring to transformation in Buddhas life, who was born a prince and raised as a prince with all the worldly comforts, Swaraj said, "This transformation came when he was young, as young as you all are. Siddharth himself became the change and as Lord Buddha devoted himself to bring about a change for betterment.

"Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the twenty first century as it was two-and-a-half millennia ago."

"The middle path shown by Buddha, speaks to all of us. Its universality and timeless nature runs through ASEAN nations and India as a common thread," she said.

The youth have immense transformative powers and youthful energies harnessed and leveraged in the right direction can indeed put the world on course to a more sustainable future, the minister said.

"Today, the youth must reason why, debate, discuss and actively participate in shaping the discourse on polity, governance and sustainable development agendas," she said.

"It is heartening that our youth has engaged actively in debate and discussions over the past few days on a wide range topics including Innovation and Entrepreneurship, digital and IT connectivity, UN Sustainable Development Goals, and on the ways and means to enhance India-ASEAN ties," she said.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has decided to hold a youth summit in all the international summits, Sushma said.

She said that the Bharatiya Pravasi Divas was held annually, but now it is being organised every two years. During this event one day is reserved for a youth summit, Swaraj said.

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The India-Asean Youth Summit was held to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-India dialogue partnership.

It was jointly organised by the Ministry of External Affairs, India Foundation and the state government on the commemorative years theme Shared Values, Common Destiny.

More than 200 delegates from Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and India participated in the summit. PTI LAL MAS RMT ANB

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KIMBALL  Bess Streeter Aldrich visited Kimball to speak with authors about her thoughts on life, family, writing and living your dream.

Cheryl Paden spoke to authors and attendees at the Six Corners of Nebraska - Southwest Panhandle event celebrating Nebraskas 150th birthday. The event was organized by the Nebraska Writers Guild, which hosted a day of author readings and presentations. Paden prepared her presentation specifically for the event and spoke as Aldrich.

Aldrichs grandfather came across the prairie on a wagon train. Her father, James, began his prairie life in a log cabin. Although Aldrichs parents, James and Mary, started out as farmers, she never lived on the farm. As the youngest of eight children, Aldrichs family lived in town by the time she was born. Her mother and father had Aldrich later in life. Her father was 55. Her mother was 46. Her family affectionately called her Bessie.

With seven older brothers and sisters, I had a lot of bosses, she said.

Reading was always one of Aldrichs loves. She would sink into the cushions of the familys overstuffed chairs and lose herself in the stories.

The characters to me were as close and friendly as my neighbors, she said.

Sometimes, she would hid a book under her apron and tell her mother she was going upstairs to make the beds. She could read there undisturbed as it took a long time to make so many beds in the home.

Aldrich also spent a lot of time outdoors. Her mother taught her all the names of the flowers. She used this knowledge later on in her writings, especially the scents, when she described prairie flowers.

Even the description of scents is one of the most powerful tools of memory, she said. You deepen your reader into your story.

She sold her first story at 14 and won a camera.

Thats when I first tasted blood, Aldrich said. The intoxication of seeing my name in print made me want to do more.

Her next story was about love and intimacy. Though she had never experienced it, she won fifth prize.

I had a sneaking suspicion there were only five entries, she said.

Aldrich graduated from high school in 1898 and attended the Iowa State Teachers College. She graduated in 1901 with a Bachelors degree in Didactics. That meant, she was to teach, but with a moral instruction as an ulterior motive.

She moved to Elmwood, Nebraska with her husband, Charles, but was hesitant to leave everything that was familiar to her. She was heartbroken, but it taught her to understand how pioneer women felt, leaving behind everything they knew.

While at home with her daughter, Mary, Aldrich entered a writing contest in the Ladies Home Journal. She wrote it in long hand as Mary slept. In her spare time, she went to the bank where Charles worked and typed on their typewriter until an employee needed it. Eventually, Charles bought her a second-hand typewriter.

Although the contest was called off, the editor liked the story and wanted to use it in the magazine. She was paid $175.

Mother told me to look at it again, she said. There must be a decimal point and it was only $1.75, but there wasnt.

Aldrich thought she had it made. Her published stories proved she could write. She felt she had arrived. When the rejection came back, she felt it was a slap in the face. She used all the excuses a writer does when they are rejected, but the truth is something else.

The first lesson is, you have to work to be a successful writer, she said. Writing is sheer labor.

From that point on, she worked hard to be a better writer. Charles encouraged her writing. He told her perhaps one day, she would be the familys breadwinner.

The First World War came and went. The roaring twenties were in full swing. Aldrich began a new story as soon as she finished the last. The final draft of her novel was on its way to the publisher. Everything was going well for the Aldrich family. Then, while she was at home, Charles became ill at church. He died on May 3, 1925. He was only 53. They youngest was only 5. Aldrich now had to be the breadwinner for the family.

That day affected the rest of my life, she said. I was mighty glad I had that talent for writing because it was going to be the bread and butter for us.

She wondered if shed ever be able to write again. It was a year before she finished another short story. But with four children and a desire to send them all to college, she reworked some short stories and began writing a book.

For the rest of her life, Aldrich wrote back to those who wrote her. She gave advice for those seeking it. Write for the sake of writing, for the joy of the work and living up to ones own ideals. Write with no thought to please anyone except yourself. When she followed this advice, she sold more of her work.

There are no shortcuts, she said. There are no alternatives to plain, hard work.

She also advised to never be discouraged even if you receive a rejection.

Even after great success, I got rejection letters, she said. One (story) sold after being sent out to 29 magazines.

She also didnt see a negative in being paid for what you write.

There is no reason why art and checks should be considered oil and water, she said.

She was once paid $1 for a picture game for the Omaha World Herald. She accepted sums large and small.

A good businesswoman knows how to keep her name and material in the public eye, she said.

Through it all, Aldrich always got on with the business of living and making a living. Aldrich wrote what she knew in the hope readers could understand the difficulties of the day and the struggles and strength of the pioneers. One piece of Aldrichs advice is still true today.

Regardless of the popular literary trend of the times, write the thing which lies closest to your heart, Aldrich said.

Paden is from Fremont and writes inspirational and devotional works.

Bess Streeter Aldrich's advice holds true 63 years later
SCOTTSBLUFF  The 18th Street Farmers Market in Scottsbluff is hosting and extended market on Saturday with eclipse-themed items.

If theres one farmers market you dont want to miss, this would be the one. The market typically hosts 20 to 25 vendors each week, but this weekend, there will be 50 vendors to meet nearly everyones needs. Vendors will not only line 18th Street, they will also be in the vendor parking lot to accommodate all the vendor booths.

K&P Welding has created metal yard art incorporating the state of Nebraska and the eclipse. Joyces Jewels has created special jewelry to celebrate the eclipse. Popular candle maker Start A Fire will have a special eclipse scent. There will also be other eclipse related items for sale. All items are limited and will only be sold that day at the farmers market.

With extended hours of 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., on Saturday, market managers Amanda and Skyler Walker have also been working with the NEXT Young Professionals who will be hosting its annual Beer and Wine Fest at the same location just a few hours after the market closes.

Theyve been extremely helpful and easy to work with, Skyler said. They will start to set up some things where we are not going to be a little before we finish up.

Regular vendors are used to shutting down quickly, but with the new and extra vendors, cleanup is expected to take a little longer than usual.

Many of the vendors expressed an interest in working at the Saturday, Aug. 19 market to celebrate locally grown food and handmade items as well as the eclipse.

A lot of it was through word of mouth, said Amanda.

The Walkers participate in a lot of shows around the valley and have been networking with others and talking about the farmers market.

There will be extra picnic tables this week so marketgoers who purchase food can sit, relax and listen to Perfect Blend playing in the park next to the market. The market will be hosting its family fun day Saturday, hosted by the Early Development Network.

Its a really good time to come down, shop around and play some games.

The 18th Street Farmers Market in downtown Scottsbluff runs every Saturday, 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., from June 3 through Sept. 30. The Aug. 19 market will run from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information or to become a vendor, email scottsblufffarmersmarket@gmail.com.
On any given day, a forecast of partly cloudy skies probably doesnt raise any eyebrows.

When thousands of visitors travel to the community to enjoy a solar eclipse, some may be concerned.

Meteorologist Tim Trudel of the National Weather Service in Cheyenne said that the forecast generally is that the sky cover looks to be between 30 to 50 percent late morning and early afternoon on Monday.

Does that mean that eclipse views will be hampered?

Not necessarily, he said. What we are seeing is some high clouds. There is a chance of some mid-altitude clouds, but were not seeing anything that are low, low-stratus clouds or fog. There are no indications of that.

However, like any forecaster, Trudel cant 100 percent guarantee there wont be clouds hampering our views as the eclipse moves through its path of totality. With the cirrus clouds expected, we generally can see the sun very well through it. Cirrus clouds are those thin and wispy clouds we see in the sky.

Weather should be good on Monday, especially around noon.

We are expecting it to be dry, with no chance of precipitation, Trudel said. Later in the afternoon, there could be thunderstorms developing.

Temperatures will be pretty warm, with forecast temperatures around the upper 80s to the low 90s.
This week, I am leading a trade mission to Canada. The importance of Canada as a trading partner that is helping grow Nebraska cannot be overstated. Canada is Nebraskas largest export market and fourth largest agriculture export market. In 2016, total agricultural exports from Nebraska to Canada equaled an estimated $468 million out of a total agriculture export value of $5.4 billion. In addition to our important trade relationship, Nebraska and Canada are both celebrating our 150th birthdays this year, a special occasion which we will be highlighting along the way!

Our historic partnership is why I chose to lead what is quite possibly the first-ever, Governorled Nebraska trade mission to Canada. Why travel to Canada when Nebraska already has such a great relationship? We cannot take our best customers for granted. Appreciation is one of the most important aspects of any partnership, so we are taking the time to thank our largest export market for their business while solidifying our current relationships with government officials and investors. This mission can also help open new doors and new opportunities for Nebraska ag producers and businesses looking to grow.

The timing of this trade mission is critical, as negotiations between the United States, Canada, and Mexico are set to begin on the modernization of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA has been pivotal to growing Nebraska agriculture, our states number one industry. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, exports from Nebraska to free-trade agreement markets grew 104 percent from 2005 to 2015, with growth in NAFTA trade far outpacing our trade with other partners. As NAFTA negotiations have begun, Nebraska ag producers and I have been working together to showcase how critical this agreement is to the future of the farm families who help grow our state.

This week, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Economic Development, as well as ag producers will be joining the mission. During our visit we will share the story of Nebraska and the high quality commodities produced by our farm and ranch families with current and potential investors.

While in Canada, we will sit down for a roundtable discussion with the United States Consul General for Toronto, as well as a reception and meal featuring Nebraska beef that will be hosted by the Minister Counselor for Agricultural Affairs. Nebraska beef products are Nebraskas number one agricultural export to Canada, totaling $138.2 million in 2015.

My cabinet directors and I will also have the opportunity to meet directly with the Minister of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs. This meeting will provide us an opportunity to share our thanks for the market access Nebraska products enjoy in Canada as well as a conversation about future growth opportunities.

Additionally, we plan to meet with the Canadian Pork Council and the Canadian Cattlemen Association at the U.S. Embassy. Pork is Nebraskas third highest agricultural export to Canada, providing $61.3 million of exports. We look forward to sharing Nebraskas beef and pork story with these two organizations.

During the trade mission, participants will also receive a number of briefings on trade issues. The Nebraska Department of Agriculture is hosting a workshop on the Safe Foods for Canadians Act. This workshop, which is also open to Canadian businesses, will allow for an open discussion about how the Act will change the way we export food products to Canada. During visits with the U.S. Consulate in Toronto and the US Embassy in Ottawa, the delegation will learn more about Canadas economic and social structures and how those affect the Nebraska manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

Trade missions like these have allowed Nebraska to build on relationships that have been helping grow our state for 150 years. Nebraska has achieved great growth through trade over the years because of an ongoing commitment by our agriculture and business communities to raising Nebraskas international profile. As work begins on modernizing NAFTA, it is more important than ever that we demonstrate our appreciation for our states largest customer, and this trade mission will help do just that. If you have any questions about the trade mission or any other matter, I hope you will contact my office by emailing pete.ricketts@nebraska.gov or calling 402-471-2244.
The Scotts Bluff County Democratic Party recently hosted its annual summer picnic and held a donation drive to collect comfort items for veterans at the Western Nebraska Veterans Home.

Collected items included toiletry supplies, gift cards to local retailers and MP3 players and music download cards to provide music therapy to veterans who have Alzheimers. Democrats also hosted a similar drive to collect supplies for veterans at their Quarterly NDP State Central Committee meeting held in Chadron in June.

Bryon Line, chair of the Nebraska Democrat Party Veterans & Families Caucus joined those in attendance to speak about veterans issues and provide caucus updates.

The Scotts Bluff County Democrats will be hosting another donation drive to support local veterans in the early fall.
SCOTTSBLUFF  Potters Wheel Ministries will celebrate 28 years of serving the community with an anniversary celebration Saturday.

The event will be from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 19. and include food, refreshments and live music.

Potters Wheel Ministries (PWM) is a non-denominational ministry founded in 1989 for the purpose of glorifying our Lord, Jesus Christ, by serving the local community. Currently, it operates a jail/prison outreach, sober living for men (sl4men), community food pantry, distribution center, and a community store.

Craig Collins, PWM Board President, said, I am excited about our upcoming celebration. This is an event where the entire community can rejoice, as everyone seems to have a stake in this ministry. People invest themselves in PWM because they want to be a part of something that is good and right and true. God has blessed PWM in many ways over the past twenty eight years. Blessings come through the leadership and vision of our executive directors.

Tony Bergmann, PWM executive director, said: I am honored and humbled to play a small role in what we do here at Potters Wheel. We assist more than 3,500 individuals annually with food and household items, free of charge. Thats approximately 10 percent of our population, and that is without any government funding whatsoever.

Volunteer opportunities are available at Potters Wheel Ministries for those who would like to use their gifts and talents to benefit those in need in the community. For further information, call 308-633-2888 Ex. 105; email pwmsb@mail.com; or check out the ministry out on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pwmsb.
As hes done dozens of times before, Don Ficken hands a small Styrofoam ball impaled on a stick to a volunteer from the audience.

This time, its a little girl from a day camp in Ellisville. About 70 squirmy campers are gathered in a room at the recreation center, where Ficken has set up a projector with a screen showing a map of the United States.

He patiently shows the girl how to move the ball, which represents the moon, in front of the projector. And as she does, Ficken narrates.

Its starting to get dark, Ficken says. The stars come out! The planets come out! The birds are starting to go to sleep!

He explains the moon will cover the sun, something that happens only about once in any one spot on the Earth every 300 years. This is a big deal. You have to be in a very lucky spot to see this.

And thats whats going to happen August 21.

Ficken, 65, now the head of the St. Louis Eclipse Task Force, didnt even know until a couple of years ago that the eclipse was coming. Until 2008, the semi-retired businessman hadnt even looked through a telescope. The task force first met in 2014 and has grown to include more than 300 members from dozens of cities, schools, libraries and government entities to plan for and educate people about the total solar eclipse.

Cartographer Michael Zeiler of Santa Fe, N.M., has traveled the country selling his customized eclipse maps. He worked closely with Ficken, speaking during a June eclipse expo Ficken and the task force organized and providing a giant eclipse map for them to take to schools and community groups.

So many of the activities in the St. Louis area would have not have happened without Dons energy and initiative, Zeiler said. He has incredible enthusiasm, and hes a super-nice guy.

St. Louis Eclipse Task Force members have heard theyre the largest and most organized group like it in the country. But Ficken is willing to give other people the credit.

Its like being a CEO, Ficken said about running the task force. You dont know everything. You know other people who know things.

Its like running a business, but you dont get paid.

The affable, organized Ficken sharpened his skills as an executive for Brown Shoe and Meridian Enterprises, where he oversaw acquisitions and worked to improve profitability. For years, he worked 12-hour days. It wasnt until 2008, when he decided to focus more on his company that provides a format for online training programs, that he and his wife, Donna, decided to go on a little trip to Trout Lodge. There, he visited their library and checked out a book on the planets. He had never thought much before about how the universe worked, much less how a shadow could cross his place on the planet. You start making sense of things, he said.

Not long after that, Ficken bought a telescope and joined the St. Louis Astronomical Society. He bought a second telescope, and returned with it to the lodge. He set it up outside. Before he knew it, he had a line of people wrapped around the side of the building, wanting to take a peek. I thought, This is kind of cool.

He built a relationship with the lodge, and the club helped the lodge upgrade its own telescopes and set up an astronomy program. He began doing more with the club around the area. The more I did programs, the more I learned, the more I got comfortable, he said.

In 2014, he and some club members drove to Columbia, Mo., for a national American Astronomical Society convention. It was there they first learned about the Great American Eclipse.

I realized this thing is too big for our club to handle, he said. On the drive back, they hatched a plan. We need to recruit schools, cities  its too big for any of us to do. If we collaborate, we can make this happen.

Thus the birth of the St. Louis Solar Eclipse Task force, which has held monthly meetings since. They discuss everything from NASA-spearheaded eclipse experiments to lesson plans for children to where to rent portable toilets.

I hate to say this, Ficken said. But this is a big business deal.

Anyone who has seen a business hawking eclipse glasses, T-shirts, beer, soda, wine and even ice cream sundaes would agree.

Working with schools and communities has been much different than working with businesses, Ficken said. Cities have to go through a budget approval process. Schools have to make scheduling decisions, and decide whats safe and provide the best educational experience for their students. Hes lost count of the presentations hes done for schools and groups this year, noting he sometimes does as many as three a day.

Ive helped people make money, Ficken said. Now its more about the kids and safety.

Ficken and the task force have spearheaded a Solar Glasses for Kids Program, which has solicited applications from area schools for free viewing glasses. As of last week, they approved 374 applications for 154,000 free viewing glasses.

Jim Small, the president of the St. Louis Astronomical Society, notes that Ficken got Mastercard to donate 50,000 of those glasses. One of the things Dons really good at is how to approach organizations with things, he said.

The society adapted about 100 professional-quality telescopes for library patrons to check out, and this year made them fit for solar eclipse viewing. Most of the work got done assembly-line style in Fickens garage in west St. Louis County. They acquired 13 solar telescopes for area library use.

Despite all that work, Ficken just has one frustration.

Theres so little knowledge out there, he said. If theres any frustration its that I cant get around to everybody.

On eclipse day, Ficken and his wife plan to be in Festus, at the citys gathering in West City Park. (Thats what he told me, said a supportive and tolerant Donna Ficken, who plans to bring some crochet and Soduku puzzles.) Its his hometown, so its a circling back of sorts. If the weather looks bad, hell travel within reason. He isnt sure what to expect. Hell set up a telescope and a tent and do some outreach but will savor the parks 2 minutes and 36.2 seconds of totality.

He compares the eclipse hype to the Super Bowl. Lots of people get excited, even if youre not a fan. And if youre there for the commercials and not just the main event? Well, thats OK, too.

I think the thing we got out of this is a lot of community and a lot more science awareness, and people realizing that science is pretty awesome, said Ficken. And if the clouds come in and cover it? Well, thats science, too.
On a very hot afternoon in July  the day the temperature hit 108 degrees  I decided to go for a walk in Forest Park.

I entered the park at Skinker Boulevard and cut into Kennedy Forest. I was walking east along the trail that leads to the back of the Art Museum when I saw a fellow approaching me. He was heading west. He was an old man. About my age.

Perhaps like me he finds the heat cleansing. Or maybe he, too, likes to recall hot days from the past. At any rate, I felt a certain kinship with him, and as we approached each other, I gave him a friendly wave. He nodded back. A moment after we passed each other, he called out to me.

Hey, he said.

I stopped and turned around.

He propositioned me. He was very straightforward.

No, I said, shocked and indignant. I quickly walked away.

One of the nice things about walking is you think. At least you do if you dont wear headphones. I dont, so I thought about my strange encounter. It was as if I had stepped into the past. Valley Drive, the road through Kennedy Forest, a road that no longer exists, was once a place where gay men stopped and met other gay men.

Those were the days when gay men were mostly closeted. That is, they posed as straight people. Romantic encounters were often furtive and took place in public parks.

The police departments vice squad was on the job. Undercover detectives arrested gays for indecent exposure, prostitution and lewd and indecent behavior. The newspaper used to publish the names and addresses of the men who were charged.

I wrote some of those stories.

A little cog in the big wheel is what I was, and like the other cogs, I could easily justify what I was doing. Citizens complained. The police had to do something. My colleagues and I had to report it. Names and addresses were part of the public record.

One story, written by a colleague in 1989, was headlined: Homosexual activity is targeted. The story began, A quiet battle is being fought among police, homosexuals, bird-watchers and St. Louis officials over control of one of the citys most valuable pieces of real estate  Kennedy Memorial Forest in Forest Park. So far, the homosexuals appear to be winning  although police last week began an undercover operation to halt overt homosexual activity  .

Occasionally, there was a mini-scandal. In 1988, then Circuit Attorney George Peach was criticized when he dismissed charges against a 70-year-old Roman Catholic priest who was among 25 men arrested on suspicion of soliciting an undercover vice squad detective in Tower Grove Park.

It made no difference to me that he was a cleric, Peach said. It did make a difference that he is 70 and has no arrests and has given us assurance that he will get psychiatric help.

Peach said his office had made similar deals in the past, but he could give no specifics. The newspaper did not publish the name of the priest.

Lt. Col. Jim Hackett, then acting police chief, supported the circuit attorneys decision. Im sure a lot of thought went into Peachs decision, and Im sure he made the right decision.

Occasionally, there was a mystery. The longest-standing mystery involved a pair of vice detectives  partners, a man and a woman  who were both promoted to sergeant and transferred out of vice. They later became lieutenants, then captains, then majors and then lieutenant colonels. They were both able and competent, but still, everybody wondered, Who had they stumbled upon? Who had that kind of clout?

Those days are gone. We are more tolerant than we used to be. Not just concerning sexual orientation, either. Were better at racial matters. I thought about that when I read a recent column by Tony Messenger. He wrote about former Municipal Court Administrative Judge Gordon Schweitzer, who has been replaced by Mayor Lyda Krewson. Schweitzers daughter was campaign manager for Treasurer Tishaura Jones, who ran against Krewson in the Democratic mayoral primary this spring.

Thats politics. New mayors appoint new people. But consider this: Gordon Schweitzers dad defeated Virvus Jones in the Democratic primary for sheriff in 1984. That was during the days when the city had two parties  the Black Democrats and the White Democrats. During that campaign, Schweitzers dad complained that younger black people dont realize theres a turn for everybody. I think theres more impatience in the black community than before.

Thirty-three years later, his granddaughter was campaign manager for Tishaura Jones, who is Virvus Jones daughter.

We move forward, albeit slowly. Most of us, anyway. The old man in Kennedy Forest is still wandering in the heat, lost in the past.
Cancer doctors in St. Louis are ready to use a new therapy using a patients own blood to fight their disease.

The therapy, called CAR-T, for chimeric antigen receptor T-cell, involves removing immune cells from the blood, reprogramming them genetically to find and destroy cancer cells and then returning the immune cells to the patient. So far, the therapy has been tested on patients with hard-to-treat advanced blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma that kill more than 58,000 Americans a year.

In one small study sponsored by Novartis Pharmaceuticals, 52 of 63 pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia went into remission after undergoing CAR-T therapy. The 11 other patients died, seven from the cancer and four from side effects of the treatment.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer, can be effectively treated with chemotherapy, but survival rates drop below 30 percent if the patient relapses. Candidates for CAR-T therapy include an estimated 600 children each year who relapse or do not respond to traditional chemotherapy.

At least 16 of the 20 people who have received CAR-T therapy for leukemia or lymphoma through clinical trials at Washington Universitys Siteman Cancer Center have seen their cancers disappear after treatment.

Ive never seen anything in cancer history with that kind of response, said Dr. Armin Ghobadi, an assistant professor in oncology at Washington University. These are the basically bad, incurable, deadly, unstoppable cancers and patients usually die quickly when we dont give them this treatment.

If approved as expected by the Food and Drug Administration, CAR-T therapy could be available locally within a year. Currently no patients at St. Louis Childrens Hospital qualify for the therapy, but patients are expected to come from neighboring states, said Dr. Robert Hayashi, director of hematology/oncology at the hospital.

This advancement is significant and has already demonstrated that it can be an effective form of therapy, Hayashi said. The ability of being able to show a clear success opens the door in terms of what other cancers can benefit from this exact same strategy.

So far the therapy has shown the most effectiveness in cancers of the blood. Another small trial in China involved 33 out of 35 patients experiencing remission from relapsing multiple myeloma, a plasma cancer, after receiving CAR-T therapy.

For decades, scientists have tried to corral the bodys immune system to fight cancer the way it attacks harmful bacteria or viruses. The immune system has a harder time recognizing cancer cells, allowing them to grow. Re-engineering immune cells to fight cancer cells is like turning on the cars headlights at night, Ghobadi said.

A main challenge with CAR-T therapy is the length of time it can take to reprogram the patients blood cells  up to three weeks. Researchers are studying ways to reduce the time frame, including engineering universal CAR-T cells derived from donor blood or umbilical cord blood.

CAR-T therapy is expected to cost up to $500,000 for a one-time treatment. Scientists at Washington University are working to engineer the cells in-house, which could lower the price.

The side effects of the treatment can be severe as the immune system is amplified to fight cancer. A complication called cytokine release syndrome can cause life-threatening reactions including brain swelling. In early studies, one-third to one-half of patients treated with CAR-T therapy developed the syndrome. Because patients will need to be closely monitored, drug companies will limit the treatments availability to a few dozen cancer centers nationwide, including Siteman.

Marie Miceli, 64, was one of the first to be treated with CAR-T cell therapy in a trial at Siteman after several rounds of chemotherapy and a stem cell replacement failed to knock out non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

A year later, Miceli is in remission and just celebrated the birth of her fourth grandchild. Miceli, a real estate agent and branch manager at Berkshire Hathaway in St. Louis, said she was blessed to receive the experimental treatment.

You have to trust those doctors and have faith, she said.
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Twenty-eight residents have been moved out of a private nursing home  due to concerns over their safety.

New Park House in Trentham, which provides care for up to 95 older people, has been forced to close its nursing unit.

It comes after the facility was placed under review by Stoke-on-Trent City Council , the Care Quality Commission and other agencies.

Council officers raised concerns that residents' care needs were not being met following a visit, which was followed by a CQC inspection on August 10.

This led to all nursing unit residents being moved to alternative accommodation while the review continues. But social care residents remain at the Chivelstone Grove home.

A spokesman for Stoke-on-Trent-based SafeHarbour, which runs the home, said the company was 'devastated' and 'heartbroken' that the action had been necessary, and admitted that it had let its residents and staff down.

It is understood that nursing unit residents and their families were told last Friday that they would have to move out of the home by Monday afternoon.

Some of the nursing unit residents had been living at New Park House for as long as 17 years.

A CQC spokesman said: "CQC carried out an inspection at New Park House in Trentham on August 10 following concerns which had been highlighted. As a result CQC has taken action to protect the safety and welfare of people using nursing services at the home. We have been working closely with our colleagues in the local authority during this time with regard to people who were receiving nursing care at the service. Meanwhile, we continue to monitor the home.

"All CQC's action is open to appeal."

SafeHarbour runs seven nursing and residential homes in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, Shropshire and Leeds.

Residents at New Park House include some whose care is funded by the city council or Staffordshire County Council.

The SafeHarbour spokesman said: "We are devastated that we have been unable to meet the very complex needs of our nursing residents. The chief inspector of the regulator CQC, Andrea Sutcliffe has, herself, said: 'The job we are expecting nursing homes to do is ever more complex and ever more difficult.'

"Recruitment and retention of nursing staff has been a particular difficulty, trying to compete with the NHS who themselves are at crisis point. This in no way excuses our shortfalls and we as a company have let a lot of wonderful people down as well as our valued staff.

"We have tried our very best but have been found wanting. We are heartbroken to lose our dear friends, one lady has been with us for 17 years, and relatives with whom we believe we have had excellent relations. We will continue to provide outstanding care for our residential residents."

The home received a 'requires improvement' rating from the Care Quality Commission following an unannounced inspection in May.

Inspectors found that the service 'was not consistently safe', and the risk of harm to people was not always assessed in a timely manner.

But the quality had improved since the previous inspection in December, when safety was found to be 'inadequate'. The home had been moved out of special measures, but the inspectors said further improvement was required. The inspector noted that two new managers were in post who had yet to register with the CQC.

A city council spokesman said: "During one of our quality monitoring visits, we had concerns about care standards in the nursing unit of the home. As a result we contacted the Care Quality Commission (CQC) who then carried out an inspection on August 10.

"Since then, we have been working alongside CQC and a number of agencies to review care provided at the home and this support is continuing. Alternative accommodation has been sourced for those residents at the home who receive nursing care, and families have been fully involved in the process."
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Drink-driver Diana Pelse was nearly three times the legal limit when she collided with a taxi before continuing her journey to the supermarket.

The 32-year-old had drunk three glasses of wine in a Tunstall pub before driving along Scotia Road towards Burslem.

But as she did her Nissan Leaf collided with a taxi travelling in the opposite direction. She continued to Morrisons on Festival Park and the cabbie followed.

Police arrived and the officer could smell alcohol on the defendant's breath.

She provided a positive roadside breath test and was taken to custody. She was breathalysed and gave a reading of 96 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath, against the legal limit of 35.

Now Pelse  a Latvian national who came to the UK in 2009  has been handed a community order and hit with a two-year driving ban.

Prosecutor Steve Knowles told North Staffordshire Justice Centre the defendant collided with the taxi on August 1.

Mr Knowles said: "She said he was driving fast. She drove to Morrisons at Festival Park and was followed by the taxi driver. They both waited for the police to attend.

"The officer spoke to the defendant and he could smell alcohol. She was asked if she had had a drink and she said, 'Yes, one glass of wine'.

"She provided a positive roadside sample. She was arrested and taken to custody. She was breathalysed and gave a reading of 96 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath, against the legal limit of 35."

Pelse, of Bucknall, pleaded guilty to drink-driving.

Tony Cooke, mitigating, said the defendant is not a regular drinker. She was feeling low on the day as her mum is ill in Latvia and she cannot afford to travel home to see her. She went to a pub and drank three glasses of wine.

The defendant told a probation officer who interviewed her she is ashamed of her actions and is upset she has let her family down.

Magistrates sentenced Pelse to a 12-month community order with a requirement to complete the drink impaired drivers' programme.

She was fined 40 and ordered to pay 135 costs and an 85 surcharge. Her ban will be reduced by 26 weeks if she completes a drink-drivers' rehabilitation course.
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Gulf War veteran David Wintle stole 5,000 from his vulnerable adoptive dad.

The 46-year-old  who has battled a drug addiction for nearly 20 years  transferred the cash from Stuart Wintle's bank account to his own.

But the 78-year-old's daughter discovered the theft after finding a letter from the bank about the account address being changed to the defendant's.

She notified the bank and the police. And when the defendant tried to withdraw cash the machine swallowed his card. Staff kept him at the bank until police arrived.

Now Wintle has been handed a suspended jail sentence at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court.

Prosecutor Joanne Barker said pensioner Stuart Wintle had dementia but was still in control of his finances. His daughter dealt with his post and raised the alarm after noticing the bank account address had been changed.

Miss Barker said: On May 20 the defendant went in the same branch of the bank and told staff his card had been swallowed in the machine outside. He purported to be Mr Wintle and handed over documents. He tried to get them to deal with him as if he were Mr Wintle.

The account had been frozen. Staff kept the defendant at the bank until police arrived. He was arrested.

Inquiries revealed the defendant had changed his father's bank details to his own in April 2016. He then transferred 5,000 to his own bank account."

The court heard Mr Wintle senior died in November, before the defendant was charged.

Wintle, of Knutton Lane, Newcastle, who has 16 previous convictions for 26 offences, pleaded guilty to theft of a credit balance.

Paul Cliff, mitigating, conceded the theft was a breach of trust. He told the court that Wintle had started to experiment with drugs after he served in the first Gulf War.

He said: He has had a problem with substance abuse for the best part of 20 years. He is now prescribed methadone."

Mr Cliff added that the defendant now plays a prominent role in his biological father's care.

Judge David Fletcher sentenced Wintle to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years, with a rehabilitation activity requirement for 30 days and a one year drug rehabilitation requirement.

Judge Fletcher told the defendant: This was a mean offence. It involved your father who had a particularly hard time dealing with your demands during the period you became addicted to drugs. He must have been downtrodden by the constant requests by you to assist. You took it one stage further and the transfer of the 5,000 took place."
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A teenager has spoken of the terrifying moment a stolen vehicle crashed head-on into her car while her two young nephews sat in the back seat.

Rosie Turner and Francesca Haynes were travelling back to Bradwell from McDonald's in Goldenhill when the collision occurred in Reginald Mitchell Way at around 8.20pm on Thursday.

Nineteen-year-old Rosie spotted a car, coming in the other direction, attempt to overtake two vehicles before colliding with the two cars she was following.

After hitting the second car, the bronze Ford Focus, which was stolen in a burglary in Hanley on Thursday afternoon, then spun into her Renault Clio.

The driver and passenger of the stolen vehicle then fled the scene  reportedly laughing  prompting the police helicopter to be called in to assist with the search.

Now Rosie is urging witnesses to come forward in the hope the two people in the stolen car can be apprehended.

She said: "We were just driving along the road and then next minute I saw a car start to overtake multiple cars on the other side of the road.

"It hit oncoming traffic and smashed into the two cars in front of me. It smashed the car immediately in front of me into the bridge which caused it to turn into me.

"We just got out of the car. The kids were screaming in the back seat. It just looked like a scene off the telly. It was terrifying.

"The two in the stolen car just got out and started laughing, then they just ran. I just want to see them caught. There were kids in our car and they didn't stop, even though they knew they'd done it, it's not right.

"The fact it is a stolen car makes things worse. It means there won't be any compensation for any of us. Our car is most likely going to be written off so we'll end up out of pocket."

Both Rosie and Francesca were taken to the Royal Stoke University Hospital, as well as a man in his 50s, who had been travelling in the second car to be hit.

The man was an off-duty police officer, who had to be cut free from his car due to the damage caused.

A West Midlands Ambulance Service spokesman said: "We received five calls reporting a four-car road traffic collision, the first of which was at 8.20pm.

"Three ambulances, a paramedic officer, a BASICs doctor and a community first responder attended the scene.

"One of the patients, a 19-year-old woman who had been driving one of the cars, was suffering from pelvic and knee pain. She was fully conscious and had been able to get out of the car herself.

"She was immobilised and taken to Royal Stoke. A woman in her 20s, a front seat passenger, was suffering with neck pain. She was given pain relief and taken to hospital.

"A man in his 50s, another driver, had to be cut out of his car due to the damage caused. Part of the car was cut away and he was able to get himself out.

"He had suffered an arm injury, but was immobilised and also taken to hospital."

Staffordshire Police are now appealing for witnesses to the crash, as well as anyone with relevant information, to come forward.

A spokesman said: "A bronze Ford Focus was travelling from the A500 onto Reginald Mitchell Way when it was involved in collisions with a Renault Clio, Vauxhall Insignia and Vauxhall Corsa.

"It is believed the Ford Focus may have been travelling from the A500 on the wrong side of the road towards Goldenhill and the other vehicles have swerved to avoid collision and suffered damage.



"Anyone who witnessed the incident or has information is asked to call Staffordshire Police on 101, referring to 804 of August 17."


According to Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), General Joseph l. Votel, Commander United States Central Command (US CENTCOM) along with his delegation me Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Friday. Matters of professional interest with special focus on security situation in Afghanistan were discussed during the meeting.

General Qamar Javed Bajwa highlighted the importance Pakistan accords to its relations with US, particularly security cooperation and efforts towards regional stability.

COAS further said that Pakistan has undertaken operations against terrorists of all hue and colour.

General Bajwa reiterated his commitment to work in close coordination with Afghan security forces and US-led Resolute Support Mission (RSM) for improved security environment in Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

"More than financial or material assistance, we seek ack of our contributions & sacrifices, and understanding of our challenges" COAS.(2of2) pic.twitter.com/HsTnqZqrFX  Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor (@OfficialDGISPR) August 18, 2017

While referring to Afghanistan and Pak-US relations, COAS said that no other country has more interest for prace in Afghanistan than Pakistan.

Commander USCENTCOM and delegation met COAS. "No other country has more interest for peace in Afghanistan than Pakistan", COAS. (1 of 2) pic.twitter.com/GQ5dEzbLGd  Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor (@OfficialDGISPR) August 18, 2017

General Bahwa further said that more than financial or material assistance, we seek acknowledgement of our decades contributions towards regional peace and stability, understanding of our challenges and most importantly the sacrifices Pakistani nation and its security forces have rendered in fight against terrorism and militancy.

US ambassador to Pakistan David Hale was also present during the meeting.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged the large Turkish diaspora in Germany to vote against Chancellor Angela Merkel in the upcoming German elections, calling the party led by the chancellor "enemies" of Turkey.

"I am calling on all my countrymen in Germany: the Christian Democrats, SDP [the Social Democrats], the Green Party are all enemies of Turkey. Support those political parties who are not enemies of Turkey," Erdogan told reporters after Friday prayers in Istanbul.

He accused those parties of being involved in "aggressive, disrespectful attitudes against Turkey."

The Turkish president said, "I invite them to teach a lesson to those political parties at the ballot box."

Germany is set to hold parliamentary elections on September 24, with Chancellor Merkel running for a fourth term.

Berlin has slammed Erdogan for "interference" in Germany's elections, condemning his statements as an attempt to incite Germans against each other.

"That is an unprecedented act of interference in the sovereignty of our country," German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel told the RedaktionsNetzwerk media group on Friday.

"Erdogan's interference in Germany's electoral campaign shows that he wants to incite people in Germany against each other," he added.

Merkel has said there would be no expansion of the European Union's customs union with Turkey or a deepening in the EU-Turkish relations, remarks which have angered Ankara.

Erdogan said on Friday that Merkel's comments showed Germany had become a country that violates the European Union's body of law.

Relations between Turkey and Germany began to deteriorate after a failed coup in Turkey in 2016. Germany has repeatedly criticized Ankara's crackdown on the suspects of involvement in the coup, saying the Turkish government has acted beyond the rule of law.

Turkey defends the crackdown and insists that the government in Berlin has failed to properly condemn the coup.

Ankara also accuses Berlin of giving sanctuary to outlawed Kurdish militants and allowing their sympathizers to stage anti-Turkey rallies across Germany.
Egypt has blocked access to the website of media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), adding the organisation to a growing list of restricted online sites in the North African country.

The Paris-based group said Thursday its website was blocked on August 14, shortly after it had issued a statement condemning the ongoing detention of an Egyptian photojournalist.

"This is the first time that the RSF site has been blocked in Egypt, Alexandra El Khazen  the head of RSFs Middle East desk  said, according to Middle East Eye.

This extensive digital blackout in Egypt is not just a grave attack on freedom of information. It [is] also indicative of a fear on the part of the regime that an informed public could pose a threat to its stability, the publication added.

Egypt has blocked more than 100 websites since May, including media sites seen as critical of the government.

Rights groups have repeatedly accused former army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of stifling dissent.

In the 2017 press freedom index published by MSF, Egypt ranked 161st out of 180 countries.
Noa Gur Golan is currently being held in a military prison near Haifa, having been detained for more than 30 days. She is being held in a room with nine other women and is only allowed to see her family once every two weeks.

Israel expects all Jewish, Druze and Circassian Israeli over the age of 18 to do their military service, with women being conscripted for two years and men two years and eight months.

Ms Golan's brothers, aged 29 and 24, have completed their service with the Israeli Defence Force.

She had sought to avoid military service on the grounds of her being a pacifist, but her plea has been rejected in the two hearings she has had so far, the Independent reported.

Ms Golan made her plea in an open letter which she wrote before refusing to be drafted.

Having experienced the 2014 Gaza war and worked with children, her eyes had been opened to the kind of atmosphere children in this country grow with. An atmosphere full of hate and fear. They grow up in a reality where violence is the norm.

Her views had also been influenced by spending two years at a sixth form college, the United World College of the Adriatic, where she and a Palestinian girl from Hebron were both awarded scholarships.

The love I feel towards my friends from my city Netanya is identical to the love I feel towards my friends from Hebron," she wrote.

"With this in mind, I have realised that I will not agree to take part in the oppression of another nation, that I do not believe in building walls but building bridges.
Central Bank takes umbrage over former ICTA CEO Canageys claims By Bandula Sirimanna How was a developer for the NPP picked even before government approval? View(s): View(s):

Sri Lankas Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) appears to have ignored a request from the Central Bank (CB) made more than a year ago  in mid-2016  for details of the controversial National Payments Platform (NPP) even though the banking regulator is the authority under which such a mechanism must function.

While ICTA CEO and Managing Director Muhunthan Canagey quit on Friday, August 11 in a furore over the NPP and related matters, the CB has been raising concerns over the ICTA role in NPP for several months, saying it should be properly regulated and cannot operate independently as sought to by the ICTA.

The CB issued a strong statement on Tuesday challenging assertions from Mr. Canagey over the NPP but the banking regulator also appeared to be contradicting its own statements made earlier.

On Tuesday the CB said it had requested more information about the NPP when it was presented on May 13, 2016 at the Central Bank, and the request was made in order to gather details on system development, operation manuals, system security, compliance with system standards and the external system audit framework. This request was made in an attempt to gather further knowledge regarding the NPP, so that the CB could make an informed decision on its feasibility. However, there has been no response regarding these concerns from ICTA, to date.Therefore, the CB is not in a position to comment on the viability of the NPP in the absence of a response from ICTA, as the concerns raised have an impact on customer, transaction and information security, the statement said.

However in an August 2016 story, the Business Times quoted CB Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy as telling reporters that the regulator will examine every detail in the NPP before giving the go-ahead. He added that Deputy Governor P. Samarasiri, under a cloud over his close association with former Governor Arjuna Mahendran and the Treasury bond scam, had been appointed to oversee the implementation of the NPP.

It was unclear whether Mr. Samarasiri had pursued the matter or held discussions with ICTA officials. The NPP was seen as the baby of Mr. Canagey who faced accusations that ICTA was overstepping its boundaries by not operating the platform under the direct supervision of the Central Bank.

The under-fire ICTA CEO said he was resigning at the behest of President Maithripala Sirisena, who had been informed as such by Minister of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure, Harin Fernando. Details of his resignation and reasons were unusually revealed in an open letter on the CEOs Facebook page. The Minister, in comments made to a newspaper, rejected the claim saying at no time had the President made such a request.

The former CEO raised a few eyebrows last month when a media release was issued saying that a company that he had founded named Duo World had listed its shares on the New York OTC Markets. In that company, his name was given as Muhunthan Canagasooryam. (See picture above)

Tuesdays statement was a response from the CB to what it perceived as inaccurate statements by Mr. Canagey.

We wish to explain that the NPP or any payment platform needs to be regulated as is done in other parts of the world, since they significantly impact the financial stability of a country. The regulators role is important to ensure that the platform and associated systems contain the required security Department of Payments and Settlements measures to protect the interests of the public and to maintain the stability of the financial system as a whole, the CB statement said.

The CB said it was committed to the further development of payment systems in the country and had no intention of hindering the promotion of digitisation of the economy, a claim made by Mr. Canagey.

I will never be part of aiding and abetting any fraud or corruption or delay in any implementation of digitalisation of Sri Lanka, the former ICTA CEOs letter had said.

Interestingly while Mr. Canagey says on his post that the resignation comes after I questioned on the issuing of spectrum worth US$25 million to Maharajas during the current presidents term of office without any public auction or tender. The spectrum should have been used for digitisation, the open letter has no reference to this allegation.

The NPP has been steeped in drama with the former CEO backed by former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake in the formers endeavour to push through the NPP sans CB sanction.

In its earlier August 2016 story on the issue, the Business Times said that it found that in September 2015, Transact Lanka (Pvt) Ltd, a mobile payments and funds transfer service provider, was awarded a contract by ICTA to develop the new payments platform which would enable Sri Lankans to make cash payments for all government related payments including Customs duties, port charges, revenue license, taxes, etc.

While there is no record of an ICTA announcement in September, Transact Lanka issued a media statement on September 9, saying: ICTA has awarded and granted it permission to operate the Lanka Government Payment Service (LGPS) Web Portal to enable citizens to make cash-based payments for all government related payments.

The newspaper report said Transact Lanka had said this service is due to be launched in 1Q/2016 (between January-April). It was the 2016 budget presented in November 2015, two months after a developer was appointed, that spoke of the introduction of the National Payment Platform (NPP) enabling the public to transfer funds from any of their bank accounts through the mobile phone for the payment of goods and services using their NDI. The National Payment Platform will bring in savings for the government by increasing efficiency thereby reducing cash movement and the cash float in the market, the paper reported.

On July 12, 2016, 10 months after ICTA had found a developer for the NPP, the cabinet approved the introduction of a NPP to facilitate digital commerce and online transactions. The ICTA was directed to implement the NPP with the CB facilitating its implementation. The Business Times then asked: What was the process of selection of Transact Lanka; were tenders called; who were the other bidders; was the CB involved in the selection of Transact Lanka, if not why; were some the questions raised by sections of the IT community. An analyst was quoted as saying, How was the developer of this platform already selected if cabinet approval was given in July 2016 on a budget proposal made in November 2016?

Asked for a response at that time, Wasantha Deshapriya, Secretary of the Ministry of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure, said the selection was made after bids were called by ICTA. He said while the CB was not involved in the process initially, some adjustments were being now made on the directions of the CB, though the latest missile from the banking regulator implies that it was not involved at all in the NPP.

The CB release on Tuesday further said:

It has been also stated in the press that the NPP is primarily a platform for messaging which may include a payment request. However, the CB wishes to emphasize that services such as payment messaging, will also fall under the scope of a payment transaction, and therefore be subject to regulation by CB. Further, as the NPP constitutes an amalgamation of payments and settlement systems, it will inherently need to be under the regulation and supervision of CB.

For regulatory purposes, the CB designs policies and implements them at the national level to facilitate the overall stability of the entire financial system by promoting safety, accuracy and efficiency of the payment system, and controlling the associated threats. The CB strongly believes that in order to implement a digital economy, it is important to encourage innovations. However, it is also important to adhere to the prevailing regulations in order to maintain and promote a secure, efficient and effective payment system environment for the long term sustainable development of the nation. Accordingly, the Central Bank will continue to maintain the integrity of the payment system to ensure the economic growth of the country through a stable financial system.
Government suspends ICTAs NPP By Bandula Sirimanna View(s): View(s):

Sri Lankas controversial National Payment Platform (NPP) developed by the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) has been suspended.

This follows allegations against the agency that it took arbitrary action in handing over its operations to private companies without Central Bank regulation.

National Policies and Economic Affairs Deputy Minister Dr. Harsha De Silva told the Business Times on Friday that he has directed ICTA chairperson Chitranganie Mubarak to immediately suspend all activities relating to the NPP.

He said that he has ordered to conduct an in-depth investigation into the whole process of the NPP development and submit a report as soon as possible following the resignation of ICTA CEO Muhunthan Canagey this week.

Dr. De Silva emphasised that the Central Bank has not given power to ICTA with regard to the digitalisation of countrys payment operations.

No private company has been given approval to operate the NPP, and no legal agreement has been signed so far with regard to this, he pointed out.

According to ICTA, eight companies initially agreed to test the NPP software but that number reduced to three companies: Transact Lanka Pvt Ltd, Payment Services Pvt Ltd and Total Pay Pvt Ltd. The NPP is now in the final stage of testing.

While Transact Lanka Pvt Ltd was selected in September 2015, the other two firms were selected only recently, a development known only recently and earlier unannounced.

These three companies have been given the status of Digital Instruction Providers for NPP and many such providers could be allowed as it deals with messaging via mobiles phones on Internet which may include a payment request, ICTA sources said.

Many messaging platforms are currently in operation in the country carrying messages from a sender using a device to the intended receiver who operates a system.

However the fact that the NPP would also deal with cash payments was spelt out clearly in a media statement issued by Transact Lanka on September 9, 2015. ICTA has awarded and granted it (Transact Lanka) permission to operate the Lanka Government Payment Service (LGPS) Web Portal to enable citizens to make cash-based payments for all government related payments, that statement said.

According to ICTA sources, the NPP is also a similar open platform to facilitate digital commerce and online transactions.

According to Cabinet approval given to implement the NPP, ICTA has been directed to implement this platform with the Central Bank facilitating its implementation.

ICTA has very limited powers under the Information and Communication Technology Act, No. 27 of 2003 to implement projects and give inputs to policy formulation.

According to the Payments and Settlements Act, the Central Bank shall be the authority responsible for the preparation of a plan for a national payment system and therefore ICTA cannot take arbitrary actions without the knowledge of the countrys monetary regulator, informed sources said.
Japanese consortium breaks Central Expressway impasse By Bandula Sirimanna View(s): View(s):

The long-drawn impasse in the commencement of the third section of the Central Expressway (CE III) has ended with the Sri Lanka Governments decision to allow two Japanese companies to form a consortium to carry out construction work.

Considering the recommendation made by the Japanese Government and the Cabinet Committee on Economic Management (CCEM), the government has given the green light to Taisei Corporation and Fujita Corporation to establish this consortium, Highways and Higher Education Minister Lakshman Kiriella told the Business Times this week. He noted that the two Japanese companies have entered into a basic understanding in formulation of this grouping to build the 32.5 km stretch of road from Pothuhera to Galagedara.

The two Japanese companies have sent their letters of intent and proposals to the Highways Ministry, he said. Funding for the project is from the Japanese Government based on a yen loan equivalent of US$1 billion from Tokyo Mitsui Banking Corporation for the tender exclusively for Japanese/Sri Lankan companies (prime/sub-contractors). The Japanese Embassy of Sri Lanka shortlisted and nominated three Japanese companies in June 2016 and requested the Road Development Authority (RDA) to select the best company which is commercially most competitive. The companies were Taisei Corporation, Penta Ocean Construction Co. Ltd and Wakachiku Construction Co. Ltd.

Despite these three companies being nominated, they failed to present their bids on time and the selection process got prolonged and more than four extensions were offered. Finally the RDA refused to extend the deadline and only Taisei Corporation submitted its bid and that too without a bid bond.

Taiseis bid was Rs. 159 billion as the quoted price for the 32.5 km stretch. There were objections against the tender process and questions were raised about the absence of the bid bond as well as the unrealistic price quoted by the selected bidder. The Japanese Embassy and the Sri Lankan Prime Ministers office then intervened and cancelled this tender.

This offered an opening to Fujita Corporation, a fully owned subsidiary of Daiwa House Group of Japan. The introduction of Fujita resulted in them quoting a lower figure of Rs. 147 billion for the contract offering a major saving for Sri Lanka. Fujitas bid is supported by their Indian office and many local construction companies. However only the bid offered by Taisei Corporation was being negotiated without considering Fujitas offer until the Japanese Government intervened in June this year. Considering a letter submitted by Secretary to the Prime Minister Saman Ekanayake on the Japanese Governments recommendation, the Highways Ministry and Cabinet Appointed Negotiation Committee (CANC) was directed by the CCEM to re-consider the bid of Fujita Corporation. As a remedy to the inordinate delay in the commencement of the project, the CCEM has recommended to provide an opportunity to these two companies to form a consortium on terms and conditions agreeable to them as well as the governments of Japan and Sri Lanka.
Maliban launches new kids-learn ABC biscuit View(s):

Maliban, Sri Lankas famous biscuit brand, recently launched a new custom-made biscuit for children, helping to learn the ABC alphabet while munching away.

The Maliban ABC Learnies Biscuit which contains Folic Acid, Iron and Calcium is a nutritious snack for the growing age group.

In a media release, the renowned brand said the company  together with the launch  organised a spelling activity using the alphabet-shaped biscuits for kids in the age group of 3 years and above at the La Petite Fleur House of Children Ratmalana on August 7. The event saw over 200 kids entertained for over an hour with many engaging activities along with sing-along and dancing activities, making it a memorable ending of the school term.

Speaking of the launch, Samantha Pushpakumara, Category Manager of Maliban, noted, The ABC Learnies Biscuit is the first of its kind in Sri Lanka. We wanted to make learning more engaging and what better way to have biscuits spell out your favourite words. These biscuits will make mothers and teachers lives so much easy in terms of feeding and also teaching at the same time.

A spokesperson for La Petite Fleur House of Children said the organisation was set up in 1992 and currently accommodates over 226 kids from the age group of 2.5 years to five years. We are grateful to Maliban for sharing with us this new experience and making it a memorable end of second term for our children.

La Petite Fleur is a family of three schools: Ratmalana Montessori House of Children, Galle Montessori House of Children, and the LPF Academy, Dehiwala. The montessori is based on a philosophy created by the Founder-Directress, Ms. Bernadine Anderson, while the academy follows the Cambridge curriculum using a holistic approach toward all-round development of the child.

Maliban is a privately held limited liability entity with a team of over 1,250 employees. The company is managed by a board of directors and the current Chairman A.G.R. Samaraweera who has led the company for the past four decades, the media release said.
PIA pays back $2 mln in A330 aircraft wet lease arrears View(s):

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has paid US$2 million to SriLankan Airlines recently as delayed payments and lease installments inclusive of extra flying hours of A330 aircraft wet leased to Pakistans national carrier in August last year, a senior official closely connected to PIA disclosed.

This settlement of arrears was made, more than four months after the return to SriLankan Airlines of the Airbus A-330 aircraft, he said.

The wet lease deal by Sri Lankas national carrier at an astronomically high rate is shocking; Pakistan media reports quoted a PIA official as saying.

SriLankan Airlines was levying PIA a rate of $8100 per hour under the lease agreement which is a very high amount, he said. The normal charge is about $6000 per hour.

Someone in the middle has got a massive cut from this unfavourable deal for PIA, the Pakistani official said.

The Pakistani carrier had reportedly faced a financial loss within four months of its inauguration of its premier service to London, he revealed.

The PIA administration had to pay $8,000 per hour a day for six months for the aircraft that was taken over on lease for its premier service at a cost of over $19 million, the final payment in arrears being $2 million.

PIAs former Chief Executive Officer (CEO), a German national Bernd Hildenbrand has failed to return to the country to face corruption charges after being permitted to go abroad by the Pakistani government.

He was removed from his post in April on charges of causing the flag carrier losses totaling millions of dollars due to alleged corruption arising out of the SriLankan Airlines deal.
UK University collaboration explores IOT security solution View(s):

A consortium of network security engineers from the UK and India drawn from academia and industry are exploiting the possibilities within blockchain architecture to provide security in Internet of Things (IOT) applications for healthcare data sharing.

A media release issued by City, University of London Communications Department, quoted Professor of Network Engineering at City, University of London, Prof. Muttukrishnan Rajarajan, a UK-based member of the consortium as saying:

Our consortium will be exploring the use of a privacy-preserving blockchain architecture for IoT applications in healthcare data sharing, using attribute-based (ABE) encryption to provide greater security for the devices. Due to low voltage powering many devices drawn together by the IoT, the use of these devices are frequently compromised by their lack of sophisticated security measures.

The research comes against the backdrop of the recent WannaCry ransomeware attack of May 12, 2017, which severely crippled operations of the UKs National Health Service causing it to run some of its services on an emergency-only basis during the attack.

The IoT refers to a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human and human-to-computer interaction, the release said.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology (DTL), which keeps a permanent, tamper-proof listing of records. The blockchain maintains the records, or blocks of information, through a peer-to-peer network; there is no central control and everyone in the network shares control of the data.

Prof. Rajarajan was quoted as saying that the use of blockchain technology in the IoT has three main security advantages:

The sensor data generated by IoT devices will be rigorously verified by a number of data miners in the blockchain network for legitimacy before being accepted which will mitigate several security attacks including data manipulation;

Once the data is accepted and appended to the blockchain the data will not be intercepted; There is no central authority or storage sever and therefore the trust of each node will be built by reputation:

If there is a malicious node propagating false data it can be identified by data miners and the reputation of the node will be damaged.

Prof. Sudip Misra of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur is also a member of the collaborative research project.
Dayas title change request irks Premier View(s):

Primary Industries Minister Daya Gamage thought the name of his Ministry was not stylish enough, or perhaps lacked sufficient lustre to get things going.

So he appealed to President Maithripala Sirisena to change the title of his portfolio and the Ministry to that of Eastern Regional Development. Other than the name change, Mr Gamage told the President that he was not seeking any extra pay or perks. He was happy to work with the existing facilities afforded to him. The matter was under active consideration when Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe learnt from another UNP minister that Mr Gamage had sought a change. He was naturally angry not just because he was not told, but such a change would have sparked off other problems for the Premier.

One such instance would be diluting the responsibilities of Regional Development Minister Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka. At present, all regional development activity is vested in his Ministry. Moreover, changing the title and not vesting any new responsibilities, it was pointed out, could lead to abuse of that office. Why Minister Gamage wanted a name-change was curious, to put it mildly.

Premier Wickremesinghe raised issue with President Sirisena. He said it should not be done for many reasons. The President had agreed that if the Premier did not wish that to happen, he would not go ahead with the change.

Daya Gamage, a businessman in the apparel and construction industry before he became minister, bankrolled the cash-strapped United National Party (UNP) when it was in the Opposition. He represents the Ampara District as MP.

As if the President and the Prime Minister do not have enough headaches already.

Outgoing Navy Chief new CDS, Crisantha seeks no extension

Outgoing Navy Commander Vice Admiral Ravi Wijegunaratne will be appointed Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) next week.

To be promoted Admiral, he will head the Joint Operations Headquarters (JOH), the combined apparatus of the security forces and the Police.

On Monday (tomorrow), the present CDS, General Crisantha de Silva, will retire from the post after a short tenure. The former Army Commander thus ends a 38 year military career. He was appointed Commander on February 22, 2015. He relinquished office on June 27, 2017 after an extended term and became CDS.

According to official sources, Gen. de Silva said in a letter to the President that the current extension of service granted to him will end on August 21. I am of the humble opinion that requesting a third extension is unfair as Your Excellency has already granted me sufficient extensions of service to serve the Nation and the Sri Lanka Army, he has said. Presidential Secretary Austin Fernando has replied that the President has praised his contribution and expressed his thanks for the service rendered to the Army and the country.

Gen. Silva met President Maithripala Sirisena, who is also the Minister of Defence and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, to convey that he would relinquish office.

Vice Admiral Ravi Wijegunaratne, who was appointed Navy Commander on July 11, 2015, is being succeeded by Rear Admiral Travis Sinniah. He is to be promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral.

Finance Ministry wins back Lotteries Boards

President Maithripala Sirisena has restored the National Lotteries Board and the Development Lotteries Board under the Finance and Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera. These two institutions were taken away from the Finance Ministry and placed under the Foreign Ministry when Ravi Karunanayake was sworn in as the Minister. Mr Karunanayake resigned last week.

His successor, leading lawyer and a former Attorney General Tilak Marapana assumed duties on Friday. In addition to the foreign affairs portfolio, Mr Marapana will also continue as Minister of Development Assignments. For the lotteries board, new directorates are to be named after the present directors have been told to step down.

Diplomats told to hunt for foreign investors

An advisor, who once worked in the Finance Ministry and later moved to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, it has now come to light, was at the centre of a storm among Sri Lankan envoys overseas. Insiders say he succeeded in sending out at least four different circulars. At least one of them, they point out, was historic in post-independent Sri Lanka.

The circular laid down the number of FDIs (or Foreign Direct Investment) which each envoy would have to bring to Sri Lanka every month. It was on the basis of the grading of the missions. Even the less important one had two a month.

A witty Foreign Ministry official said that it was like asking Sri Lankan envoys to go behind would-be investors when ensuring the environment and stability in the country  one of the most essential factors for FDIs  is not within their capability. What would our envoy in Cuba do? Can he ask Cuban businessmen to invest in Sri Lanka when the communist country itself is cash strapped? Que Sara Sara, he said laughingly.

Another circular asked envoys to send in a daily report on developments in their countries of posting, with a weekly roundup thereafter.

Cabinet approves cancellation of Airbus deal

Public Enterprise Development Minister Kabir Hashim last Tuesday won covering approval from the Cabinet of Ministers for the SriLankan Airlines cancellation of the deal for three Airbus A-350 aircraft.

The move comes nearly a year after the SriLankan Airlines paid out more than US$ 146 million as cancellation charges for the lease of the aircraft. The payments were made after an agreement was signed in October last year. Mr Hashim told ministerial colleagues that the amount of compensation was US$ 98 million. However, the amount stated in the agreement is more than US$ 146 and he gave no explanation for it.

However, he declared that the SriLankan has got into a financial mess as a result of the actions of the previous Mahinda Rajapaksa regime. President Sirisena asked him to hold a news conference and explain this aspect to the people.

Envoys wont meet as Ravi planned

A planned meeting next month of Sri Lanka envoys serving in overseas diplomatic missions has been cancelled.

A circular informing the envoys that the meeting has been put off was the last official document signed by outgoing Foreign Secretary Esala Weerakoon.

He has since been succeeded by Prasad Kariyawasam, former Sri Lanka Ambassador to the United States.

The meeting of envoys was proposed by the then Foreign Minister Ravi Karunanayake.

PMs big HIT to boost engineering and business studies

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe wants to establish a non-profit Higher Institute of Technology (Guarantee) Ltd.

Its main task would be to negotiate with leading universities worldwide to set up in Sri Lanka an Engineering School, a Business School and an Entrepreneurship cum Commercial Innovation Centre.

Among the leading institutions to be consulted are the University of California, Berkely and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The proposed company is to be incorporated under the Companies Act No 07 of 2007.

Ten companies which are top performing business ventures in Sri Lanka have agreed to provide financial support for the project.

Premier Wickremesinghe will appoint a Board of Directors comprising three persons  former Treasury Secretary and currently Adviser to the PM Charitha Ratwatte, Senior Advisor, Dr Nalin Walpita and a representative of the private sector concerns.

Top state legal eagle questioned by politicos

A top rung state legal eagle was summoned recently by Yahapalanaya leaders for a discussion on delays in dealing with cases involving corruption.

There were some embarrassing moments too. Some of the lesser rungs in the good governance system kept firing questions at him and began making a list of requests.

The questions related to dealing with their opponents and the delays encountered in taking action against them.

Wildlife officers to be armed

Sustainable Development and Wildlife Minister Gamini Jayawickrema Perera wants Wildlife Conservation Departments field officers be issued with weapons, like in the case of Police officers. At present such officers are issued with weapons only if they possess a Watchers permit to use firearms.

Watchers permits are issued, particularly to those employed in estates, to use firearms (shotguns) whilst the weapon is issued in the name of the owner.

Probe on former ministers company

A former ministers company has allegedly amassed Rs 12 billion through bond issues as a primary dealer.

Officials say that a Central Bank investigation is under way into the activities of this company.
Foreign Ministry plays deaf and dumb View(s):

The ruling Unity Government has always paraded the Right to Information (RTI) law as one of the jewels in its crown. Though the crown has been shedding some of its lesser jewels like a shaken tree drops its fruit, the RTI Act was shepherded through parliament and nurtured with care as with a new born baby.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was one of its early advocates and was trying hard to turn it into law since the turn of this century. I remember when I came to Colombo to help the London-based Commonwealth Press Union stage its conference in Sri Lanka in 2003, Ranil Wickremesinghe as chief guest promised to introduce a freedom of information law which was already in the making under his direction.

Unfortunately his government fell and the draft bill that was been readied at the time went into limbo until under the previous government opposition MP Karu Jayasuriya tried to resurrect it introducing a private members bill.

Despite some of its defects, the RTI law stands tall and has been hailed as one of the best laws of its kind. It is not necessary here to reiterate the value of such a law unless it is to educate some in the foreign ministry that right to information has come to be recognised and accepted as a fundamental right without which freedom of speech and expression would be far less meaningful even though it is constitutionally guaranteed.

Suffice it to say democracy functions more effectively when the public is informed and the activities of government are transparent, accountable and open to public scrutiny, not when petty bureaucrats try to undermine a major achievement of the government for which the media and public campaigned vigorously.

The gathering momentum of a political maelstrom in Sri Lanka in the last few months has now shaken the unity government to its core. It is fast losing the unity it proclaimed with jubilation two years ago as politicians of different hues try to devour each other and more recently chew their own.

These swirling political developments lapped up by a public thirsting for this theatre of tragedy and farce as political parties threaten to bring down their own ministers, have overshadowed other happenings that would otherwise have gained more prominence and public attention.

Early this month the new Minister of Finance and Mass Media Mangala Samaraweera addressing a gathering at the Sri Lanka Press Institute made some observations on how the media should function in this day and age.

Always interested in the observations of Minister Samaraweera though one does on occasion disagree with him on foreign policy issues he seemed to have a grasp of the needs of media and their professional practitioners. That is why one was sorry his address did not get wider coverage in the local media. Unfortunately I could not lay my hands on his speech to see where it was headed rather than make assumptions from the few paragraphs reported in a website.

The headline to Minister Samaraweeras address quoted him saying that journalists are duty bound to report news without fabrication. The brief report ended with these words by Samaraweera: Journalists must work to uncover the truth and work with ethics in this new age of media technology.

One need not quarrel with that except uncovering the truth is a fundamental of journalism and remains a permanent verity not limited to the new age of media technology. Uncovering the truth often blocked by over-zealous bureaucrats and political lackeys, is a basic function of the media.

Minister Samaraweera surely knows that it takes two to tango. Uncovering the truth becomes a much harder task and one wrought with danger in authoritarian and repressive societies in which journalists have paid with their lives or with years of incarceration and torture to achieve the very thing that Samaraweera expects journalists to do.

In a democracy which the yahapalana government says it has resurrected and where a right to information law has been constitutionally protected uncovering the truth should be easier if information in the hands of the state and state bodies is made available to the public. In short state institutions and those bodies covered by the RTI Act are legally bound to provide the information sought by the public.

This is hardly a case of seeking the acquiescence of reluctant bureaucrats and others in possession of such information. It is an issue of officials responding readily and truthfully to required information that does not transgress restricted provisions as set out under the Act.

Petty bureaucrats shuffling files around, especially when they don the garb of diplomats remind one of Isabellas words in Shakespeares Measure for Measure: but man, proud man/ Dressd in a little brief authority.

However much Minister Samaraweera might exhort the media not to fabricate news and to uncover the truth it would defeat the purpose of ethical journalism if officialdom tries to suppress information, prevaricate and procrastinate as the Foreign Ministry tried to do when I raised some questions relating to the functioning of our overseas missions that come under its purview and the ministrys rules and regulations with regard to the transfer of diplomats and their extension of service at the behest of their superiors or others.

The six questions I posed had nothing to do with Article 5 of the Act which restricts, if not prohibits, the release of certain categories of information. The questions arose because of widespread comments and criticisms circulating in Sri Lankan diaspora organisations which reflected negatively on the government and the country.

The questions were forwarded to the Spokesperson of the ministry, the acting Director-General of Public Communications who had perforce to refer them to the relevant divisions. More importantly they were sent to the ministrys Information Officer nominated under the RTI Act.

While there is no need to repeat the questions though the contents of these questions were very much at the heart of public discussion here and elsewhere, the answers came back through the Information Officer. They were monosyllabic responses so reminiscent of answers tabled by ministers in parliament, and very assertive.

It was clear that the ministry  in this case the Director-General of the Overseas Administration Division to which the queries had been forwarded  was in total denial though at least two of the replies were not correct. In fact the Sunday Times of 25th June said this in its Cafe Spectator column under the headline Diplomats tussle draws big boss retort.

It was the intervention of the big boss of the land that has prevented the change in the status quo of a Sri Lanka diplomatic mission in Europe. Feuding in that mission are the number one and two. Insiders say that the tussle has been going on ever since the numero uno turned up and assumed duties. The crisis reached a climax last week.

This was when the numero uno declared that there would be no option other than give up the posting. This is if the number two is not removed forthwith. An angry big boss at home said that it was wrong to dictate terms to his Government. Those posted should be willing to work with others who were also representing Sri Lanka, he said.

This newspaper scrupulously avoided mentioning which particular mission was involved only referring to a diplomatic mission in Europe. But, as Sri Lankans say knowing people know that it was not a mission in continental Europe. Most importantly neither President Sirisena nor his media division denied what the Sunday Times wrote though the ministry replying through the DG/OAD seems to feign ignorance of what had been going on for some time under their noses, so to say, and it should have been aware of it.

Surely the President would not have intervened if the entire episode had been fabricated as the ministrys denials implied.

In answer to Question 6, the OAD wrote authoritatively that the Ministry will decide on all transfers and extensions for officers and will not be influenced by any Head of Mission.

This is an untruth if ever there was one. My five and a half years in two postings provided clear evidence this is not true. Heads of Missions and others have intervened not only in the transfers but in obtaining extensions of service. The Foreign Ministry is not the final arbiter in all cases as the DG/OAD makes out.

This question was sent to test the veracity of answers supplied to questions asked under RTI law. Since the reply was so obviously wrong I wrote back to the Information Officer RTI asking whether it was the consistent policy of the ministry that it alone makes all decisions relating to transfers and extensions because there have been horrendous cases of arbitrariness and abuse over the last decade or more.

But the pundits that supplied the answers and the RTI Information Officer seemed to have taken a vow of eternal silence for I had no response at all to the supplementary questions.

Despite several reminders the ministrys panjandrums quickly adopted the postures of the three proverbial monkeys. The OAD seemed to have gone into slumber having probably exhausted its capacity to concoct answers. The OI/RTI who should have replied to me under the law when I asked him as late as this month to let me know whether the ministry intended to reply or not seemed to have fallen back on that old wise saw that silence is golden. It appears that deadlines matter little though the Act has set time limits.

If this is how officials of a ministry that should know better treat the right to information law proudly flaunted by government then what is one to expect from small state institutions and bodies which are congenitally lethargic and nonchalant in dealing with public requests and needs.

I took up this issue because it concerns two ministries  foreign affairs and mass media. Now that the MFA has got itself a new minister who is a respected and experienced lawyer and a seasoned diplomat as the new ministry secretary they should act to ensure that RTI works. It should not be left to diplomatic bureaucrats to find ways to cover their faux pas.

But release of information and responding to media queries should not stop at the ministrys door. Since Sri Lankan missions abroad are an extension of the ministry then they are bound-morally at least  to respond to media and public inquiries for information. The more important missions at least should assign officials to act as spokespersons or information officers without adopting a philistine hostility to the media.
Major corruption cases: Wheels of justice begin to grind following Presidents outburst By Our Political Editor View(s): View(s):

Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe under heavy fire; UNP takes unanimous decision for his removal, but minister remains defiant

Sirisena seeks former AG Marapanas advice on how to expedite cases; Consultation with CJ and AG proposed

President takes more control of economy by setting up NEC; SLFP ministers meet business community

Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) ministers launched their own drive last Wednesday to woo the business community as they moved for an increased role in economic development.

It came just 24 hours after the Cabinet of Ministers approved a recommendation by President Maithripala Sirisena to establish a National Economic Council (NEC) of Sri Lanka. For more than two weeks, Sirisenas Cabinet Note had been on hold until Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who chairs the Cabinet Committee on Economic Development (CCEM), discussed the matter with Sirisena.

With that over now, ministers decided that the Secretary to the President and the Secretary to the Prime Minister would meet to formulate how the CCEM will function vis-a-vis the National Economic Council, which will become the supreme body for formulating economic policies and development. The two senior officials are expected to define how CCEM discussions and decisions would finally be channelled through the new Council.

As exclusively revealed in the Sunday Times (Political Commentary) on July 30, the NEC will be a professionally-managed, high level, national advisory institution reporting directly to the President It will consist of various divisions in charge of the key economic areas related to development plans and priorities of the Government. The NEC will make recommendations to the Cabinet of Ministers on economic policy, Sirisena noted. Chaired by the President it will include the Premier, their respective Secretaries, the Finance Minister, Secretary to the Cabinet, Governor of the Central Bank, Treasury Secretary and Secretary to the Ministry of National Policy and Economic Affairs. Ahead of the presidential election in January 2015, Sirisena pledged to establish a National Economic Planning Council. He then said it would not act on pecuniary considerations but out of love for the country. Later, during his visit to Bangladesh in July, in his talks with Prime Minister,Sheikh Hasina, he studied their model of the NEC and how it functioned.

The new drive of the SLFP ministers was launched when each of them invited their own stakeholders to take part in what was termed an evening of fellowship for two hours at the Galle Face Hotel. The invitations were in the name of Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva as Senior Vice President of the SLFP. The idea, as one SLFP minister explained, was to have a sizeable segment of the business community backing them, much the same way they supported the United National Party. He said the President hoped to have an ongoing dialogue with them.

President Sirisena told those present that in the past he had not got directly involved in economic development activities. As a result, even the SLFP ministers were not fully involved. He said now that the NEC was being set up, the position would change. Both the SLFP and the UNP, he said, would be able to work together and move in one direction. The meeting with select invitees of the business community comes ahead of next weeks SLFP 66th anniversary sessions. After the ministerial meeting last Tuesday, Sirisena chaired a discussion with senior SLFP ministers on plans for these sessions. Also taking part was former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. It came amidst speculation that some MPs now backing former President Mahinda Rajapaksa would attend. However, Joint Opposition leaders dismissed the report saying there was no truth.

Corruption debate

If the move to set up a National Economic Council was one of the important decisions last Tuesday, the ministerial session was not devoid of the controversy over corruption that is plaguing the ruling coalition. That the election pledges to deal with those of the previous regime were delayed, the Ravi Karunanayake saga had turned the searchlight inwards. When it came to Any other business, it was Sustainable Development and Wildlife Minister Gamini Jayawickrema Perera, a senior UNPer, who set the ball rolling. He said it was very embarrassing for everyone to face the public. So many promises were made to deal with corruption and now they could not go back to their electorate. His speech was to trigger off a lengthy discussion.

Law and Order Minister Sagala Ratnayake said there were 87 cases related to corruption pending whilst action had been taken in courts in respect of 12. He said in the coming weeks, more prosecutions would be carried out. Ravi Karunanayake, who resigned last week from the post of Foreign Minister, said he set a new political culture by quitting. There are people in the UNP whose feelings are with the Opposition. The delays in prosecuting those in the Opposition, particularly those connected to former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and members of his family, some ministers noted, were inordinately delayed. Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, in a bid to ward off suggestions that it was his Ministry that was responsible for inaction, was to make clear that the Attorney Generals Department was not under his control. Moreover, setting up of Courts dedicated to dealing with only cases related to corruption, required a constitutional amendment. Both President Sirisena and Premier Wickremesinghe remained silent as the discussion continued.

Sirisena then intervened to say that he should ask Tilak Marapana, who had been a former Attorney General, for his views. It was only this week that Marapala, Minister of Development Assignments was named the Minister of Foreign Affairs replacing Ravi Karunanayake, who resigned last week amidst an alleged bribery scandal. He opined that if the Government takes up with the Chief Justice and the Attorney General the need for a High Court to devote its attention to cases involving corruption, the process could be speedier. He cited an instance where the accused in the VAT fraud case were tried before a High Court which sat daily. That was how that case was concluded in two years, he pointed out. The VAT scam case was the result of one of the biggest fraud inquiries in Sri Lanka and the documents ran into more than 4,000 pages. Senior State Counsel Bhuvanaka Aluvihare (now Judge of the Supreme Court) prosecuted whilst Tilak Marapana PC (now Foreign Minister) defended the suspects. Sirisena declared that steps should be taken towards adopting the same method.

Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka warned that the allegations of corruption were very serious and had come at a time when the Government was to face local and provincial elections. He said the Government would learn a big lesson if serious attention is not paid to the issues arising from the situation. By delaying or ignoring high profile cases, Ranawaka said, they were strengthening unnecessary forces. To make matters worse, the people were now thinking that they were being victimised to cover up the Governments own shortcomings.

In fact, former President Rajapaksa said in a statement this week that the corruption of what he called the the Yamapalana government comes to light in dramatic and unexpected ways. T hey are engaged in a desperate attempt to deflect public attention by hauling members of my family to the CID and FCID. The extent of the panic in the Yamapalana government is evident in the shrill announcement that special courts will be established to hear cases involving the Rajapaksas. This is in complete violation of the constitutional provisions relating to the equality of all persons before the law and the presumption of innocence. Even if such a special court is set up, what is the evidence that can be placed before this court? The government claims that properties worth Rs. five billion belonging to members of my family had been seized by the state or courts of law. This is a complete falsehood...

Minister Ranawaka told the Sunday Times yesterday that the Commission of Inquiry now probing the Central Bank bond scam did not have teeth, was a misconception. They (the Commission) could recommend to the Attorney General to take legal action if anyone was found to have violated the law. In such a situation, it was up to the AG to seek the help of state investigative agencies if necessary. The AG should file civil cases for the revenue loss and also recommend proper guidelines for the future, he said.

PM meets AG

Wednesdays news briefing following the Cabinet meeting saw Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne, the official spokesperson, announcing that there would be Trial-at-Bar at the High Courts to try cases related to corruption. His own ministerial colleagues were to later contradict his assertions. He said, If we converted one or two High Courts into Trial-at-Bar, we can have one Trial-at-Bar in the morning and the other in the evening. So, four cases could go on simultaneously. This has happened before. This, and increasing the number of High Courts dont need any amending of the Constitution. All it needs is the approval of the Chief Justice. If the Attorney General and the Chief Justice can agree to this, it can be done. This will clear up the doubts people have as to when the thieves will be caught.

On Wednesday, Premier Wickremesinghe held a meeting with Attorney General Jayantha Jayasuriya at Temple Trees to discuss follow-up action on the ministerial discussions. Present on the occasion was Minister Rajitha Senaratne. The Premier also sought from the AG a schedule of the pending cases and how his department chose to proceed with them.

The snowballing effect of President Sirisenas remarks at a Cabinet meeting last month that the UNP leadership stalled high profile cases involving the former President, members of his family and associates continues to reverberate. There appears to have been considerable soul searching by the party hierarchy over those responsible and what form of action should be initiated against them. It is in this backdrop that a group of UNP back-benchers supported by seniors collected signatures for a Vote of No-Confidence in Parliament on Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe. It was not only over his remarks against the Hambantota Port project with the Chinese, which he vowed to take back one day, but also covered other reasons. As revealed in these columns last week, Premier Wickremesinghe persuaded those sponsoring the Vote of No Confidence not to proceed. He said that it required approval of the Working Committee and himself as the leader of the party.

When the Working Committee, the main policy making body of the party, and the Parliamentary Group met at a joint session at UNP headquarters Sirikotha on Thursday morning, moves against Rajapakshe dominated the discussion. This time, Ashu Marasinghe MP proposed and Sydney Jayaratne MP seconded a motion to remove Rajapakshe from his portfolio as Minister of Justice. The accusations listed against him in the motion were:

He failed to introduce new laws to prevent bribery and corruption in keeping with the United National Front manifesto.

He failed to introduce new laws to re-acquire monies illegally gained by persons.

The Minister has been criticised by the public for the failure to ensure justice to them due to the delay in hearing criminal cases.

The actions of the Minister of Justice have eroded the popularity of the United National Party among the public.

Hence, the motion said, the UNP Working Committee and the UNP MPs have lost confidence in Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe.

There is little doubt that it was Rajapakshes responsibility, as the Minister of Justice, to have enforced some of the promises in President Sirisenas pledge for a Compassionate Government and a Stable Country during the presidential election. One promise was to make Constitutional provisions for the establishment of a powerful AntiCorruption Commission which is capable of finding out technical, managerial and financial corruption without any political interference in its activities. Another was to strengthen and activate the Commission to Inquire into Allegations of Bribery and Corruption by making it an independent Commission recognised by the Constitution. Sirisena pledged that action would be taken to reinforce corruption prevention structures in accordance with the Anti-Corruption Charter of the United Nations to which Sri Lanka is a signatory.

Follow up measures on such matters, no doubt, fell on the Ministry of Justice. That there has been no such action for the past two and half years is one thing. On the other hand, Minister Rajapakshe ran into a storm of controversy over his personal friendship with businessman Nissanka Senadipathi when controversies over his firm Avant Garde Maritime Services cropped up, something the Minister initially denied till Minister Sarath Fonseka released some damning photographs of the Minister and the wealthy businessman on holiday together overseas. The Minister also kept saying he had no powers to have the Rajapaksas arrested, which though factually correct, fuelled speculation that he was protecting them.

The question that begs answer is why Government leaders paid no attention to Rajapakshes serious lapses in the past two and half years. Despite ministers raising issue at Cabinet meetings and MPs shouting in Parliament against delays in cases against Avant Garde amassing wealth through a sole monopoly for maritime security, which Rajapakshe stoutly defended, action was not forthcoming in the past. Moreover, civil society groups which backed the present government at the polls, also demanded last year that Rajapakshe be removed. It fell on deaf ears then. It is clear the wheels of justice or the troubleshooting has begun to move only after Sirisena admonished the UNP leadership.

At the joint UNP Working CommitteeParliamentary Group meeting on Thursday, speaker after speaker was bitterly critical about Minister Rajapakshe. It began with Deputy Minister Ajith Perera, one of the principal movers of the earlier No-Confidence Motion planned in Parliament against the Minister. He was critical about Rajapakshes contradictory views which brought embarrassment to the party. Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera, who made clear, it was not a personal issue, was emphatic that it concerned the party and the well-being of the Government. Other speakers included, Sarath Fonseka, John Ameratunga, Nalin Bandara, Ruwan Wijewardene, Sydney Jayaratne, Harsha de Silva, Ranjan Ramanayake, Ananda Aluthgamage, Ashoka Abeysinghe, Chandima Gamage and Eran Wickremeratne. The only support for Rajapakshe came from Minister Daya Gamage who pleaded that his colleagues case be considered sympathetically.

Rajapakshe to fight back

When it came to the end of the discussion, leader Wickremesinghe wanted to know whether there were any persons against the motion. Wickremesinghe made no move to lay-by the motion. Amidst the silence, the motion was carried unanimously. In a move that surprised many of those who attended the joint Working Committee-Parliamentary Group meeting, Wickremesinghe named a three-member Committee to forward to him a report on the discussions, including the resolution, and recommend what action should be taken. The Committee is headed by Mangala Samaraweera and includes party general secretary Kabir Hashim and Ravi Samaraweera. He has sought the report to be handed over to him as early as tomorrow (Monday) since he is expected to discuss the issue with President Sirisena. Should the Committee recommend Rajapakshes removal as Justice Minister, a position which has become somewhat irreversible after the resolution adopted at the joint meeting, such a course of action can only be taken by the President. This again is based on the recommendation of the Prime Minister.

During Thursdays joint meeting, Rajapakshe was on the back foot, denying he told newspapers in interviews that he would take back the Hambantota Port.

Retorting to the response was Ashu Marasinghe, who moved the resolution against him. He asked the Justice Minister why he had posted the full text of the interview in the Lankadeepa in his Facebook account. Rajapakshe did not answer. In an interview with our sister newspaper Lankadeepa , Rajapakshe declared he would not stop short of taking back the Hambantota Port through legal means. Noting that it cannot be done by force, he declared, when asked whether he would quit the Government, Hitiyath Ekai, Nethath Ekai or no matter whether he remains or not. He has said elsewhere, that the country was bigger than the government to him.

When the joint meeting at Sirikotha ended, Wickremesinghe had a one-on-one meeting with Rajapakshe. No details of what they discussed were available. According to a well-informed UNP source, leader Wickremesinghe could take a conciliatory approach to the issue only if Rajapakshe would publicly express his regrets and apologize for his lapses. That way, it will become clear that the party as a whole was not responsible for scuttling or slowing down any probes and the public will get a clearer picture, the source said.

However, Rajapakshe, a source close to him said, was in a defiant mood. He is neither going to resign nor offer apologies, for he has done no wrong, the source said. He would, of course, not want to be equated with Ravi Karunanayake who also took up a similar position, before he eventually resigned last week. Rajapakshe has taken up the position that if he, as a Presidents Counsel, was not fit to be a Justice Minister, who then would be suitable. He will choose his next step only after the form of action that would be taken against him was known to him, the source disclosed.

Rajapakshe yesterday attended religious ceremonies at the Malwate Temple in Kandy. In a Video posted later on his Facebook, he said he had no intention of quitting the Cabinet and declared the allegations against him were false. He said it was only the President who can decide whether he could be removed.

PC elections

Contrary to expectations, Tuesdays weekly meeting of ministers did not discuss matters relating to elections to three Provincial Councils (PC) whose terms end this year. It was only the previous week the Cabinet decided on a recommendation by Premier Wickremesinghe to introduce a Constitutional Amendment to hold all PC elections on the same day. For this purpose a 20th amendment has been formulated. However, thereafter the SLFP Central Committee decided unanimously not to put off PC polls. Some Central Committee members, who are Ministers and MPs, even declared that they would vote against such amendments.

Official Government spokesperson (representing the SLFP), Dayasiri Jayasekera told Wednesdays post Cabinet news briefing that no one should misinterpret the 20th Amendment as an attempt to postpone PC polls. That is our stand as a Government, he said. Jayasekera added: No proposal was presented to the Cabinet on postponing Provincial Council elections. That has to be stated very clearly. The proposal was regarding holding all PC Elections on a single day. That is something all of us have been discussing. The Elections Commissioner has stated that holding a single PC Election costs Rs. 800 million. As such, holding such elections on a staggered basis is an enormous problem and also causes issues for Government officials. On the other hand, all political parties have to set up camp in these areas during election time. This causes rifts and even clashes in some cases. It was as a solution to all these issues that a proposal was made to hold all PC Elections on one day. This was brought as a separate proposal. At no point did we envisage to postpone an election. Decisions regarding this matter can be taken in future.

At the same time, it must be pointed out that we changed the electoral system for the local council elections. As such, it is our stand that these changes must also be effected for the PC elections before they are held. The SLFP voted for the 19th Amendment to the Constitution expecting the passage of the 20th Amendment later on. Therefore, it isnt enough that the system is amended for the local council polls. They must be effected for the PC polls as well. No one should misinterpret this as an attempt to postpone PC elections. We discussed this at our Central Committee meeting and we agreed unanimously that this amendment should not be used to postpone elections. That is our stand. As a Government, we also didnt bring this amendment (20A) to postpone elections, but to ensure that they are held on a single day.

Last weeks reference in these columns about the Chairman of the Elections Commission (erroneously referred to as Commissioner of Elections) Mahinda Deshapriya writing to President Sirisena has drawn a response. Rajan Hoole, a member of the Elections Commission in a letter to the Sunday Times says; The post of Election Commissioner (Commissioner of Elections) was abolished by the Nineteenth Amendment and replaced by the Election Commission consisting of its Chairman and two members of whom I am one. We function as a team, most of the time with full unanimity. We are the Election Commission but are often mistakenly referred to as the Elections Commission because, presumably, we replaced the Commissioner of Elections. The letter you refer to was drafted together by all three of us sitting down at a Commission Meeting and signed by all three of us, not just the Chairman. We said a lot more in our two page letter.

Election Commission Chairman Deshapriya this week told a gathering at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute for the awarding of its National Diploma in Politics and Political leadership that The Election Commissions position is that the postponement of elections or extension of the term is not healthy for a good democracy. If you are a good leader take responsibility and give the praise to others.

On Tuesday, the Memorandum of Understanding between the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the United National Party (UNP) will come to an end.

Nevertheless, the two sides will continue as a coalition. President Sirisena is on record saying the matter would be reviewed by December 31. With their relations taking a downward trend, how the two sides will fare until the deadline remains a focal question.
The great Cabinet free-for-all View(s):

It has been a long tradition of parliamentary democracy stemming from the Westminster system that while ministers in the Cabinet can express their views freely and without fear within the Cabinet room and even take pot shots at those gathered round the cabinet table, they must hold their peace and speak in one unified voice once a Cabinet decision has been taken. The cardinal rule being that they shall not take the coarse linen of their disagreements and give it a public washing.

Its an indispensable tradition vital to the proper functioning of Cabinet Government at optimum level. Within that political conclave of the Cabinet, they can speak their minds freely, dissent freely and vote freely but once the white smoke has emitted through the funnel of the Cabinet spokesmans mouth to announce that a Cabinet decision has been taken then all ministers must keep their lips sealed, hold their peace and even defend it in public, if called upon to do so  whatever their personal views may be on the matter  even if they are vehemently opposed to it.

If the decision runs contrary to their principles, if their conscience pricks in defending the indefensible or  as its the growing trend in Lanka  if its against their business interest often camouflaged in the patriotic vestment, then they must resign forthwith from the Cabinet and retire to the backbenches from which vantage position they are to free to blast any Cabinet decision to their hearts content and stab their ministerial members as their blood lust demands.

For backbench MPs are not bound by collective responsibility and are free, within the out of bounds limits declared by the party chief whip in the interest of the party, to speak their minds freely. That is their privilege. But not so for those holding Cabinet rank. For the privilege of being a Cabinet minister accompanied as it is with all the perks and privileges such high office endows them with, they are bound by the unwritten code of ministerial conduct: Collective responsibility. That is their bondage. The price they must pay if they wish to retain their Cabinet seats. And bask in the sunny uplands of power.

During the Rajapaksa regime, no minister flouted this hallowed principle. Perhaps they had no principles to entertain, no consciences to prick and no different business interest to pursue on their own. Perhaps collective responsibility was maintained because of collective interest. But no matter. Then Cabinet ministers spoke in one voice in the public domain. Whatever the means through which this was attained, the principle of collective responsibility was effectively maintained. They played as a team with the singular purpose of playing to win under the captains watchful eye. No one dared to indulge in one up-manship and risk being sent off the field.

But since the advent of Sirisenas Yahapalana government, there has been instances of ministerial rumblings in the outer jungles where this time-honoured concept stood on the threshold of being transgressed. But strangely, the head of Cabinet Sirisena and the first among equal Wickremesinghe looked askance whenever it was on the brink of being breached.

As a result what started off as a trickle was in danger of turning into a flood. Funnily enough neither the President nor the Prime Minister had thought it prudent to crack the whip and to shepherd the pampered Boer goats into their pen and warn the elite herd that if they dared to bleat out in the open grazing lands, they would be mutton by morning.

With such tolerance seemingly displayed to the behaviour and speech of some much-talking Cabinet ministers playing truant, it became inevitable that the Maithri-Ranil Cabinet was sounding more and more, like an ill tuned cymbal to the great Lankan public ear. With the conductors baton waves ignored, the orchestras stringed instruments vibrated at a different pitch, the percussions played at a different tempo and the flutes and reeds went their own way; and the sound of music emitting from the Cabinet ensemble became increasingly discordant and cacophonous, more like a choir singing flat.

In recent months, we have seen the likes of Arjuna Ranatunga, Champika Ranawaka and Dayasiri Jayasekera, all Cabinet ministers, pontificate on the basis of patriotism, the imprudence of giving the Chinese ginseng rejuvenated Hambantota Port  which has now become a harbour of contention  to the Chinese to own and run with a free hand.

But it was before the Cabinet had taken a decision on the matter; and thus though they may be guilty of breaching Cabinet secrecy by nailing their different coloured flags to the mast and thus making a public spectacle of their opposition to what was being proposed in the Cabinet, they cannot not be charged for transgressing their duty to adhere to Cabinet responsibility since the Cabinet had still not come to a decision.

On July 25, the Cabinet finally came to a decision to give the Hambantota project to the Chinese on 99-year lease, Hong Kong style. Four days later it signed the official documents and formally handed over the ancient port of Magampura.

Ports Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe announced that under this agreement, 1,115 hectares land area in Hambantota Port would be leased out to China Merchant Port for 99 years for US$ 1.12 billion. He said that CM Port would hold 70 percent of the total share while the Sri Lanka Ports Authority would hold the balance, 30 percent. He further assured that the sole responsibility and authority in relation to national security would be with the Government of Sri Lanka.

On August 1, the Cabinet approved the agreement for the second time. Ports Minister Samarasinghe told a news briefing that President Maithripala Sirisena and Cabinet ministers submitted further amendments before the agreement was finally approved. He said: The President wanted to include a clause allowing for amendments in the future. The Finance Minister proposed that both parties to the agreement must be under obligation to all the clauses of the agreement. The Attorney General introduced amendments to strengthen the hold by the Sri Lanka Ports Authority.

Then along came Wijayadasa to queer the pitch by going public with his much-vaunted patriotic opposition to the Hambantota Port being officially given to the Chinese. It won him the untold praises of the Rajapaksa fraternity who raised him to patriotic status on par  though not on the same plane, of course, as the ultimate patriot Mahinda R who had first invited the Chinese into Lanka, for that would have been wee too much of patriotism for a blue now turned green chameleon party hopper to bear and hold but a rung or two lower with a Weerawansa or a Gammanpila, perhaps.

It even invoked the untold blessings of the Asgiriya Mahanayake Thera to swoon over Wijayadasas love for country and his love for Buddhism. As the Most Venerable Mahanayake Thera, Dr. Dhammananda, said on Wednesday, the Maha Sangha throughout the history of Sri Lanka had always defended persons who protected country and Buddhism. Defenders of the faith and protectors of the nation from invading Chinese it seemed sufficed to grant immunity to all who donned patriotisms shining armour.

But not everyone thought so. Especially not the rank and file of the UNP members. They were not amused, to say the least. With only two and a half years to go before UNP mettle would be tested in the furnace of a people choice in the 2020 elections, they fretted to see in Wijayadasas arrogance to flout collective cabinet responsibility and attempt to be a martyr in Rajapaksa eyes and a Keppetipola in Asgiriyas priestly esteem, the opening of their early political graves.

The Maithri-Ranil coalition had rode to power solely on one simple slogan: Give us the vote and we would bring to justice all those in the Rajapaksa regime who had plundered the national coffers. But even after two and a half years have lapsed, the coalition government has not been successful in bringing one mega robbing crook to the courts of justice. Of course there have been the regular auditions conducted at the FCID offices where the potential big stars had been placed on the casting couch and given the usual run over. But despite the many appearances, none had still been chosen to play the lead roles. Coming soon to a court near you has still not come but remains only a next attraction.

In such a backdrop what do the UNP MPs have to say to the electorate come next elections? What do Maithri and even Ranil have to tell the nation? Are they to say, vote for us for another term and we promise you we will bring the Rajapaksa rogues to justice, even though after five years we failed to bring even one, not even a sprat?

No wonder the UNP rank and file have raised their sarongs in protest against one of their own members  though an SLFP pole vaulter  and sought last week to bring a no-confidence motion against him. Against who? No less a person than the Minister of Justice Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe. The two main charges levelled against him was his alleged delay in bringing the Rajapaksa regimes rogues to justice and his violation of the principle of collective responsibility as a member of the present Cabinet.

Ironically, what would have been heaven sent to the joint opposition to see an SLFP turncoat now a UNP member and a minister of the Sirisena Cabinet to boot shown the exit door by his own UNP members, was spurned by the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led coterie who announced that they would not be supporting the no-confidence motion. Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe holds the same opinion about the Hambantota port deal as we, the former President Rajapaksa said last Sunday in Kandy.

But the UNP fold remained undeterred by the joint oppositions lack of enthusiasm. Though the accusation that Wijeyadasa had tarried in his position of Justice Minister to bring the culprits to book, they were on a better ground to nail him with the charge of transgressing the principle of collective responsibility.

Two weeks ago, in an interview with the Irdia Lankadeepa, the Sinhala stablemate of the Sunday Times, he had allegedly attacked the Cabinet decision taken on July 25th to hand over Hambantota Port to a Chinese company on lease for 99 years. He had allegedly said that handing over a public asset to the Chinese was a wrong and, in kingly or presidential manner, assured the public that he would not rest until he regains its ownership on behalf of the people.

On Thursday, the UNP working committee and the parliamentary group met at Sirikotha, the UNP headquarters, to discuss the matter with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe presiding. With the accused Rajapakshe baited in the UNP den, the meeting turned out to be a stormy affair. UNP ministers and other MPs gave him hell fire over comments he had allegedly made on the controversial Hambantota port deal, after the Cabinet had approved it.

Many demanded his resignation. Rajapakshe got a roasting, skewered on a spit, rotisserie style. It was clear that he had lost the confidence of his own party comrades. It was soon resolved that a committee be appointed to decide whether Justice and Buddha Sasana Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe should be allowed to remain in the Cabinet or not.

In his defense, Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe stated that

as far as the alleged delay was concerned, there were procedures and regulations to be followed and he was not in a position to expedite legal action arbitrarily;

as far as criticising the Hambantota Port deal after the Cabinet had taken a decision on it, his comments had been taken out of context. And it was not a criticism but a comment made to retrieve a national asset. According to Wijeyadasa, it seemed that there was no collective responsibility in the Cabinet anymore.

It was finally decided that they would all wait the special committees report on Monday and Rajapakshe announced he would make a special statement thereafter in Parliament.

Now the question turns on what would be the contents of his special statement tomorrow in Parliament.

Would he draw his guns from his legal holster and come out firing and shoot a detailed explanation for his actions, reminiscent of the way he stood his ground when after defending Avant Garde boss Senadhipathi in Parliament without revealing his close friendship with him, and refused to resign  unlike Tilak Marapana did when it emerged that Senadhipathi had been his client  even after photographic evidence emerged of Wijeyadasa and his family spending a Los Angeles holiday with Senadhipathi and his family, replete with Disneyland and Mickey Mouse and stretched limo travel with bubbly on tap, but dug his heels and refused to budge from his front stall seat in Parliament? Or will he do a Ravi K, and serenade his exit with the wails of a dying bird on swan lake?

Perhaps it will be better for him this Sunday morn when his mind still ponders upon which avenue to take  to stay rooted in contempt or leave with some honour intact  to peruse again the 800-year old Magna Carta from which, three months ago in a television interview, he quoted to justify the laws delay, that one shall only be judged by ones peers. And then wonder whether his peers collective judgment declares in one voice from the very bowels, we beseech thee, go?

Sirisena has no power to expedite corruption probe, says Wijeyadasa Though it may not hold water, Wijayadasa Rajapakshe, of course, has put forward a theory why President Sirisena or Prime Minister Wickremesinghe is powerless to order the snail pace crackdown on corruption to be executed expeditiously.

He expounded his theory why justice cannot be hurried and why delay is inevitable in a television interview on May 8 this year.

He said, its the duty of the Government to provide security to Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa. But if they have done wrong, if they have robbed, if they have murdered people, then the law will operate. But, according to Wijeyadasa, President Maithripala Sirisena has no right to put the operation in motion. Neither does Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe possess that power. Neither does he, Wijeyadasa, as Justice Minister, have that power. Only the police have that power. And the police, at the level in which they can amass the evidence, must do their task. He went on to amplify his position and said: If anyone says that this process must be expedited and to hear the cases within two or three months and hang the lot, and that there is evidence  if somebody brings the evidence then the police and Attorney General will do it tomorrow. The condition in the Magna Carta of 1215 AD is today present in every constitution in the world, namely that no person should be punished by anyone other than by a competent court. The Magna Carta is 800 years old and every nation follows this principle.

The Magna Carta  the mother of all civil rights charters  came to being as a result of an agreement signed between King John and a group of English barons in response to years of the kings misrule and excessive taxation. The Lankan public must be grateful to Mr. Rajapakshe that in seeking refuge in this 800-year document to justify why the due process cannot be hurried and the public perforce must suffer its delay even though tardiness can lead to a denial of justice. Out of the 65 articles in the Magna Carta he has referred to Article 39 which state No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. But of course times have changed and the pronouncement under the Magna Carta that one must be judged by his peers is no longer strictly adhered to with trial by jury going out of fashion; and as for judgment by the law of the land, if the present law or any law to be introduced provides for the establishment of a special court of corruption, to cut down on the laws delay, will it not be in keeping with the Magna Carta dictum that one must be judged according to the law of the land? If the Magna Carta was to be taken as sacrosanct and held to be inviolate from any change, then would Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe in his role as Lankas Minister of Justice be urging us all and advocating the proposition that the 54th Article of the Magna Carta, namely, No one shall be arrested or imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman, for the death of any other than her husband, should also be followed sans question? What is, however, more curious is his belief that the President Maithri or the Prime Minister Ranil or he Rajapakshe, as the Justice Minister, has not in his power to ask that criminal cases be expedited and that the power to do so lies in the hands of the Inspector General of Police and that it is up to him and to his police force to gather the evidence as best as they can and then tender it to the Attorney General to file indictments. But is that so? Does he seriously expect the elected president and the elected government to remain impotent if the IGP tolerates his coppers dragging their feet? President Sirisena was elected by the people on his promise to bring the Rajapaksa regime rogues to justice. Is it realistic to expect the President not to act and spur the police who, incidentally, come under his portfolio of defence merely because his justice minister canvasses a different view and quotes from the 800-year-old archaic Magna Carta? Does not the peoples will impel the president to do his duty when he finds apathy institutionalised and justice crawling at snail pace? Is the president to remain idle twiddling his thumbs, hoping against hope the Lankan copper will do the needful? That raises the next curious question? Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe says the power to bring crooks to book lies in the hands of the police and the police alone; and that they, at their own level, must come up with the evidence to forward to the Attorney General to press charges.

Has he taken leave of his legal senses to imagine that the crackdown on the Rajapaksa regime and the evidence necessary to gather to file charges in a criminal court, are not as simple and easy as nabbing the grease yaka in Ratnapuras Kahawatte area who preyed on several women a few years ago? Doesnt this presidents counsel turned politician fail to distinguish the difference? Miss the point? That it involves great expertise and requires great resources to probe an international web of mega corruption, the magnitude of which the nation has never witnessed before? That to merely adopt a high flown stance and say its up to the police to do their job is to take flight from the actual ground situation and venture into a La La Land of make believe? And to leave the President playing the fiddle while all of Lanka  except perhaps the fifty or so Joint Opposition members, their families and their closeted cronies  demand Sirisena to keep his presidential vows and get cracking on corruption pronto? Double quick?
Neo-colonial powers exploit Indo-Pakistan rift View(s):

Both India and Pakistan celebrated their 70th anniversary of Independence from British rule, and with it marked the same number of years of hostility, suspicion, rage and arguments over the disputed territory of Kashmir, the departing rulers left behind after partitioning the sub-continent.

Such is their animosity towards each other that both countries are armed with nuclear weapons to defend themselves. Without an amicable settlement of their differences, SAARC, the South Asian regional grouping of which they are member-states remains stuck in the mud, unable to get economic cooperation moving for the upliftment of the millions living in the region, for bilateral issues have been left out of its Charter.

Without the resolution of these longstanding thorny bilateral issues, SAARC is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

As one may see it from afar, the two countries, both dear friends of Sri Lanka and its people, need to overcome the divide and rule legacy left behind by the colonial masters. Instead, they are drifting towards post-colonialism  Pakistan towards China and India towards the United States. There are countries exploiting the current impasse over Kashmir and feeding on the India-Pakistan rift.

Sri Lanka in years gone by, especially during the tenure of Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike took a proactive role in international affairs. Given her closeness to the political leadership of both countries, she was eminently qualified to have made an effort to play honest broker in reaching some settlement, but maybe she too felt it was too much for her to undertake.

With SAARC incapacitated in negotiating a diplomatic breakthrough, the unlikely resolving of that vexed issue, two of Sri Lankas good friends in the region, it seems, will go their own way, drifting more and more apart bringing benefit only to neo-colonial geo-politics much to the detriment of those in this neck of the woods.

Mutual survival may keep both parties together

The two-year marriage of convenience finally comes to an end tomorrow, and with no immediate plans for any extension of the bond (no pun intended), the political future of the National Unity Government of President Maithripala Sirisenas SLFP and Prime Minister RanilWickremesinghes UNP shall remain in a state of animated suspension.

The country and those watching overseas will also remain in a state of suspense not knowing the course the Government will take. The President has called for an unofficial extension till the end of December at least to get the Budget through. One thing is for sure though, mutual survival will keep both parties together despite the sparring, for as long as it takes.

There was great anticipation that the electoral toppling of the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government in January 2015 would usher in a National Government between the two main protagonists in Sri Lankan politics. The alliance was announced even before the Parliamentary elections of August that year, but when neither party obtained an absolute majority it also became a political necessity for both.

The UNP leadership eyed a two-thrids majority to bring in a new Constitution and relative political stability as they embarked on taking the reins and running the country with the PM at the helm. Unfortunately, along the way things went awry. A cabal forming themselves into a CCEM (Cabinet Committee on Economic Management) seemingly sidelined not only the Cabinet, but also the President  or so the President felt.

That was fodder for SLFPers on the Presidents side to pump him with the suggestion not to trust the UNP. And so the mutual trust at the beginning turned to mutual distrust. In the meantime, the pro-Sirisena SLFP Ministers began publicly criticising the UNP. Even if it didnt have the imprimatur of the President directly, it certainly had his concurrence indirectly as he began to assert himself. One of the earliest indications was last June (2016) when he put his foot down and insisted on sacking the then Governor of the Central Bank in the face of the PMs direct intervention to save him.

That incident should have sent a signal to the UNP hierarchy that it was not a mere bone of contention between the two leaders, but more so, that the President was not willing to be a lame duck President but rather wanted to pursue his own agenda. Read into this, the President deftly ignored the nations agenda by appearing to renege on an election promise to abolish the Executive Presidency.

He would state that through the 19th Amendment he was arguably the only Executive President in the world to voluntarily shed his powers, something he probably rues having done while the UNP at the time ran the show and he set his sights on the 2020 Presidential election for a second term.

The kambaadili as they say in the local language, meaning tug-of-war has seen the Yahapalana (good governance) regime turn the administration of the country from the expectant politics of results to the politics of conflict. The pro-Rajapaksa SLFP camp is stirring the pot on the sidelines and the JVP is adding spice and coriander to the brew.

The great hope that the economy would take off with Western aid, assistance and investments by the countries that made no bones in wanting the Rajapaksas ejected from office did not materialise. The new Government of 2015 eventually had to continue with the Rajapaksa mantra of seeking financial assistance from India and China in what is turning out to be a volatile issue for the future.

Is the country so divided on SLFP-UNP lines, or is it just the politicians dividing the country for their own political gain? The way some frog jump from one party to another doesnt seem to indicate theres that much ideological differences between the two parties. Still, many believe the dichotomy in the current leadership is that the President lives in the 1970s and the PM in the 2050s.

For the present, the National Unity Government is floundering. This is not about the achievements or otherwise of this Government, for there are some pluses. It is about the experiment in the UNP-SLFP partnership. The end is nigh in their relationship and the journey they began only two and a half years ago is on the rocks. The Government will not necessarily fall. Self-preservation of their offices will be the glue that will bind them together.
Cinematic battle against climate change An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power View(s): View(s):

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, follow up sequel to 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, former United States Vice President Al Gores mission to battle climate change will be released on August 25at Liberty By Scope Cinemas.

A decade after An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change into the heart of popular culture, comes the riveting and rousing follow-up that shows just how close we are to a real energy revolution. Vice President Al Gore continues his tireless fight travelling around the world training an army of climate champions and influencing international climate policy. 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.

Paramount Pictures and Participant Media Present an Actual Films Production of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk. The producers are Jeff Skoll, Richard Berge and Diane Weyermann and the executive producers are Davis Guggenheim, Lawrence Bender, Laurie David, Scott Z. Burns and Lesley Chilcott. Cinematography is by Jon Shenk, the editors are Don Bernier and Colin Nusbaum and the music is composed by Jeff Beal.

In 2006, when Vice President Al Gore became the focal point of the Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth, he was the quintessential man at a crossroads etching a new path in the wake of the gruelling and controversial presidential election of 2000, which ended in an unprecedented Supreme Court decision. Needing to move forward meaningfully, Gore exited the political stage and followed his gut and his heart into uncharted territory. He threw everything he had  all his energy, intellect, drive and voice  into one almost overwhelmingly huge issue that had long lit a fire within him: confronting the increasingly alarming prospect of a global climate crisis that could literally threaten the end of human civilization.

At that time, the climate crisis was itself at a crossroads. Scientific consensus was coalescing around what the full human, economic and planetary costs of climate change might be if the world made zero effort to cut manmade greenhouse gas emissions. The far-reaching scope of the threat was just breaking through to the public  and the fossil fuel industry was putting up serious resistance.

But that was then. And in the 10 years since, so very much has changed.

The inspirational story of just how amazingly far the battle to halt climate change has come  and why Gore now says the momentum is unstoppable  forms the core of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power. The film sets off in a fresh direction to become an inside view of positive change-in-the-making, as it reveals how Gore has faced off against fierce forces and has weathered disappointments  only to rebound and magnetize a groundswell of people ready to take on the most momentous human quest of our time.

The sweeping transformations since 2006 have taken place on personal and global levels. Gore has become a uniquely post-political figure, pursuing ideas larger than any party or office; An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power and other media have woven climate change into the cultures very fabric; and when it comes to halting spiking mercury, big concepts are in the offing.

A low-carbon economy is emerging at an unprecedented pace, propelled by innovative technologies and growing economic upsides. In fact, 2016 marked an all-time high in investments in renewable energy across the globe.

Action is now taking place where despair threatened to reign. The groundbreaking Paris Agreement of 2015 has unified the world to tackle greenhouse gas mitigation. Developing countries are leap-frogging inefficient old grids and coal fuels for sustainable alternatives. Most tellingly, Gore is no longer the voice in the wilderness calling to be heard, but the loudest and clearest in a symphony of rising voices, from all nations, walks of life and political stripes, determined to make profound alterations in record time.
Diving into young minds with Drama Quintet By Purnima Pilapitiya Sashi Mendis and her students will present a series of five original plays View(s): View(s):

If youve ever watched a play produced by the Sashi Mendis Studio of Drama and Speech, the performances, over 90% of the time are a curious mix of originality, reality and large doses of imaginations. Over 14 years her plays have opened new worlds, invented new phrases and words and opened the eyes of audiences to the obstacles and darker side of childhood and growing up.

This September, Sashi and her senior students will present Drama Quintet. The show is a follow up of Drama Quartet which took the stage a few years ago. Suitably titled, Drama Quintet will find her older students performing a series of 5 original plays, ranging from comic, brutal to thought provoking coming of age stories devised by her and her crew of teenage thespians.

While the school has put on productions regularly (last years Plays Parade was their last production) this year her seniors will take the stage alone without the usual mix of age groups joining them, save one very special performance by the juniors.

The writing process started last year and has been a process of brainstorming of ideas, improvising scenes and writing and re working them along the way. As the ideas flow and change, Sashi admits to many instances where storylines begin in one direction only to move in a complete opposing side once they begin devising.

As always, Sashis plays keep close to the issues and real life scenarios of her young scriptwriters and their peers. One such piece is A Boy in the Picture. A be careful what you wish for type scenario, a 16 year old boy literally escapes into a fantastical world through a picture. Facing quirky characters along the way, including Jenistronomous his quest for his family and identity lead him to find more than what he was looking for.

As always her plays are those very closely tied to reality, despite the mind boggling characters and equally indescribable worlds they live in. But plays such as Where Have All the Flowers Gone and Ask Dr. Benjamin are a tad closer to the growing pains of the Sri Lankan teenager. The title Where Have All the Flowers Gone is taken from the classic folk song that found its way into literature syllabuses in schools. One of the evenings darker, more reflective pieces, is based on the psyche and emotions of a Sri Lankan soldier and a rebel fighter fighting in the war. The drama, which will use music too also hopes to touch its audience on a more universal level, with references to the history of war and the reality of the hardships felt by people in war torn regions.

Ask Dr. Benjamin in contrast, is one of the shows goofier plays. Meet Dr. Benjamin, who uses his educameter to gage stress and trauma levels in his patients at his clinic. The patients are all students and set against elements of fantasy, the play while funny has a serious undertone- a criticism of the issues of the education system of Sri Lanka. Exploring the effects of tuition and exams, this play, Sashi reveals is based on her real life students issues.

While most of their work is a dive in to the mind of a child or teenager, The Day that Brian Died, is a play that will resonate with many of the adults in the audience. What starts off as two strangers, both eccentric outsiders meeting at a funeral transforms into a unravelling of events which make them question life, reality and the need to strike a balance in the world they live in. Like all Sashi and her students plays- theres a message, if not something to think about.

Drama Quintet presented by the Sashi Mendis Studio of Drama and Speech will take place from September 2  3 at the Punchi Theatre. Tickets are priced at Rs. 1000 and Rs. 600 (balcony). Tickets can be purchased at the Punchi Theatre or by calling 0777009258.
WRITE: A network for emerging young writers By Joshua Surendraraj View(s): View(s):

Do you remember the days when youve created something beautiful, but had no way of sharing it with the world? That time when you felt so strongly about something, which you wanted to express, be it through a story or a poem but didnt have a platform to? Well this is your chance.

WRITE magazine is a platform solely dedicated for budding writers between the ages of 16 and above, to publish their work. It was launched last Friday (11) at the Lakshman Kadiragamar Institute, Colombo 07.

It is true what they say about your washroom being your thinking room, the chairman of WRITE, Shehara Willie began. She explains that, just last year, the idea had hit her while she was in the shower. This was just following a weekend workshop on creative writing, which Shehara had attended.

I called my good friend Oshanthaka Cabraal, who had also taken part in the workshop with me and he was delighted with the idea, she recalls. The pair had met up on October 31, last year (2016) to set up the initial plan for the magazine. This was the beginning of a long and beautiful journey.

Their main objectives were to promote the field of literature as a path for expression and enlightenment and to inculcate a love for writing and the performing arts. Aside from these, they also hoped the magazine would become an islandwide publication, which creates a network of diverse individuals and connects the different experiences of Sri Lankans. Basically a bridge between the differences and the path of diversity and reconciliation, Shehara says.

The primary purpose of WRITE is to express, enlighten and empathise. It features poetry, short stories, one act plays, monologues and open letters, all of which aim to fulfil this purpose.

Initially the team had received over 115 submissions, out of which two had been from Johannesburg, South Africa and Chennai, India. This had given them the idea to use the magazine to serve as a global network for writers one day.

The first edition of Write comes packed with 35 submissions that truly portray the talent of Sri Lankas younger generation. Here we find writers touching upon different issues, out of which the most common was the trauma associated with ones self and their relationships with others.

The team behind the magazine comprises individuals from different walks of life, who have come together through their mutual love for English literature, we find out. They have been guided by Professor Maithree Wickremesinghe and Professor Rajiva Wijesinha.

As the team pointed out, Professor Rajiva himself had initiated a similar project in the past titled The New Lankan Review. The first edition of the magazine also features an interview with the professor, on the importance and status of English creative writing in Sri Lanka.

Aside from this, WRITE also publishes a theatrical review on The Taming of the Shrew, which took place at the Lionel Wendt last month. This is a part of its Reviews and Previews of Performing Arts section.

Shehara explains that they hope to publish the magazine on a quarterly basis. She adds that her team has also reached out to schools, universities and bookshops from across the country, calling out for writers.

WRITE magazine definitely seeks to fill out that void, which most writers face today and in doing so, it also encourages individuals to create more.

To submit articles for their next issue contact :

Email  write3e@gmail.com

Contact no- 077500838/0775180804

Address- No.60, Hill Street, Dehiwala.

The magazine is priced at Rs. 400 and could be purchased from Barefoot Colombo and Expo Graphic (Battaramulla and Kandy)
50,000 brick houses for North, East By Sandrasan Rubatheesan Govt. heeds protests by Tamil parties and residents View(s): View(s):

The Government will construct 50,000 brick and mortar type houses in the Northern and Eastern Provinces under a new project.

The prospective owners will decide the kind of housing they prefer. Tenders will be called for construction work that would accommodate local participation, V. Sivagnanasothy, Secretary to the Ministry of National Integration and Reconciliation, told the Sunday Times. His Ministry will oversee the implementation.

The new move comes amid protests both by Tamil political parties and Northern residents over the construction of houses using prefabricated material. The French firm Arcelor-Mittal is building 6,000 of these houses at an estimated unit cost of Rs. 1.5 million. This project has been backed by Resettlement Minister D.M. Swaminathan. Earlier the company was to build 65,000 prefab houses.

The brick-and-mortar houses were the result of a recommendation to the Cabinet of Ministers by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. It was earlier approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Management (CCEM).

Mr. Sivagnanasothy said issues related to housing in the North were a priority issue since thousands were rendered homeless  the result of the separatist war. During a visit to the North, Premier Wickremesinghe said the people in the area had told him they preferred brick-and-mortar houses and not prefabricated ones.

The National Integration and Reconciliation Ministry Secretary said that lists of houses destroyed or damaged in the Northern and Eastern Provinces had been compiled by the Divisional Secretariats. He said the project would be helpful particularly to small and medium construction companies. Besides providing employment, it would also give them the experience to undertake other projects in the two regions.
Indian military team where IPKF men fell View(s):

A senior Indian military delegation, now on an official visit, yesterday paid homage at an abandoned memorial site built for fallen Jawans of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) which operated here from 1987 to 1990.

The memorial located in a private farming land off Kalviyankaadu in Kopay was revived by the Sri Lanka Army following a request by the Indian Consular Generals office in Jaffna, Military Spokesman Roshan Seneviratne said.

The three-member Indian military delegation headed by Lieutenant General P.M. Hariz, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Southern Command of the Indian Army, laid floral wreaths in memory of the soldiers who died in a battle between IPKF and the LTTE in the area.

The army had informed the owner of the land about the commemoration preparations, and cleaned the marshy lands where a tomb had been put up during the presence of the IPKF.

A Commanding Officer (CO) and four IPKF soldiers were killed when they came under an LTTE attack.
Japanese bikes will roar again after tax slash View(s):

Prices of small trucks and single cabs are to come down by as much as Rs. 300,000 following the vehicle tax revisions announced on Thursday, while there will also be a substantial reduction in the prices of motorcycles, especially Japanese bikes below 150cc.

Vehicle importers said they would be able to once again import Japanese motorbikes after the tax concessions. Many had been unable to do so thus far due to the 90 percent valuation duty imposed on motorcycles. The duty was removed on Thursday. Under the revised structure, the motorcycle duty will be based on the engine capacity, provided they are less than 150cc.

We have not been importing Japanese bikes since the previous duty valuation came into effect. The cost was far too high, Indika Sampath Merinchige, President of the Vehicle Importers Association of Sri Lanka told the Sunday Times. As such, with these tax concessions, the people will again be able to purchase good quality Japanese products and the market share of Japanese vehicles will increase.

Describing the move to revise vehicle taxes as a good beginning, Mr Merinchige said they hoped the Government would revise vehicle taxes further in the upcoming budget given that prices of many vehicles after taxes made them out of reach for most people.

Prasad Kulathunga, an importer of Japanese vehicles, said he still did not foresee a big market for Japanese motorbikes. While the removal of the 90 percent duty is most welcome, prices of Japanese motorbikes, given their better quality, will still be a lot higher than those imported from India, he said. As such, he said they did not hold out high hopes of a large vehicle market for Japanese motorbikes.

Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry yesterday clarified that the removal of the 10 percent Telecommunications Levy imposed on data services would apply to both prepaid and postpaid customers.

A Ministry official said the removal of the levy, effective from September 1, applied to both services as part of the tax concessions announced by Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera.
Legal recognition for electronic signatures, records View(s):

Legal recognition is to be given to electronic signatures, electronic records and issue of any official document in electronic form. This will come through legislation to be introduced in Parliament on Tuesday.

The legislation will come by way of amendments to the Electronic Transactions Act to give effect to the United Nations Convention on

the use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts.

The amendments to the 2006 Act will boost online as well as cross-border trade in keeping with the Conventions objective of using electronic communications for the formulation of contracts between parties whose places of business are in different states.

The Bill will be presented by Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure Minister Harin Fernando.
Norwegian vessel to dig up fish life, marine eco system data in Sri Lanka By Malaka Rodrigo View(s): View(s):

The Norwegian research vessel RV-Dr Fridtjof Nansen will sail into Sri Lankan waters next year to help assess fish stocks. The methods and timeline of the survey was finalised this week at a three-day workshop involving fisheries experts from Sri Lanka, Norway, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

This 550-foot long vessel which is 200 feet wide, can carry 45 persons  crew of 15 and 30 scientists. It has 16 wet and dry laboratories.

The ship is owned by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and is jointly operated by the Institute of Marine Research of Norway, and FAO to help developing countries improve their fisheries management.

In a two-year survey, it will study the status of marine resources including fish stocks and investigate stocks of unexploited/underused fishery resources on the continental shelf and slope. The last such assessment was done by the vessel of the same name from 1978 to 1980.

The first Nansen research vessel was launched in 1975. It was named after Dr. Fridtjof Nansen; a Norwegian explorer, scientist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The first research vessel operated until 1993. The second ship too was named as Dr. Fridtjof Nansen and served until late 2016.

Third Dr. Fridtjof Nansen ship due in Sri Lanka was launched in March this year by Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg. Addressing a reception this week, Norwegian fisheries biologist Jens-Otto Krakstad explained that the ship is one of most advanced research vessel in the world with multi-disciplinary research capabilities.

Though the project will mainly assess fish stocks, the state of the marine ecosystems and other parameters such as oceanic oxygen levels, salinity, PH levels etc. too will be measured. Identifying the impacts of climate change on ecosystem structure and productivity is one of the objectives of the Nansen project. The oceanic pollution and amount of plastic debris will be measured.

The survey will be funded by Norway and implemented with the collaboration of Fisheries Ministry, NARA (National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency), FAO and the Norwegian Centre for Development Cooperation in Fisheries.

Sri Lankan scientists will be involved. Dr Palitha Kithsiri of NARA said this would be an opportunity to learn and understand modern oceanic research technologies.

To date the vessel has carried out surveys in over 60 countries and collected vast amounts of data, according to an FAO brochure. In all the surveys, scientists from the beneficiary countries have received hands-on training in survey design, implementation, analysis and report writing. On average, there are eight to 10 surveys a year over 270 survey days involving about 80 participants from developing countries, the FAO brochure says.

The Ambassador of Norway to Sri Lanka and Maldives, Thorbjrn Gaustadsther said the vessel will make it possible to significantly step up Norways assistance for ecosystem-based marine management in developing countries. He said Norway is willing to assist Sri Lanka in developing sustainable fishing practices.
Plastic industry claims and lobbying intensify, but regulator insists ban stays By Chrishanthi Christopher View(s): View(s):

Some progressive restaurant operators are embracing the ban on polythene by using alternatives, while others say they are unprepared for the ban next month. Polythene manufacturers are continuing to lobby in the media and elsewhere to protect their interests ahead of September 1 and force the government to back down.

The All Ceylon Apana Salawa Sangamaya said alternatives are limited, saying materials such as banana leaves are not widely available.

The group claims that using thicker lunch sheets cost three times more and the cost will have to be passed on to consumers.

The Polythene Manufacturers and Recyclers Association said talks are continuing with the Central Environment Authority on using oxo-biodegradable polythene, president, Anura Wijethunge said.

He charged that the government was listening to multi-national companies with their own agendas.

But the plastic industry has also been accused of promoting its own agenda. Major multinational chemical companies are backing this industry, including as sponsors.

The industry is now promoting through the media, the so-called oxo-biodegradable polythene and claim the material degrades quickly. They are lobbying for a five-year transition period and argue that the lunch sheet ban is impractical. They are also using academics to present a favourable message in the media.

On its Facebook page the polythene makers have announced a protest on Monday from Peoples Park at 1:30pm.

Sri Lanka meanwhile, is grappling with millions of metric tonnes of plastic waste. Each Sri Lankan wastes more plastic every day than an individual in China, international studies show.

Sri Lankans and NGOs believe prevention of plastic waste is better.

The CEA is insisting on hydro biodegradable polythene, but manufacturers suggest oxo-biodegradable polythene is easy to manufacture and cost-effective. It will cost only 10% more than polythene bags and lunch sheets available, Mr Wijethunga said.

He said most manufacturers are concerned. This is the preparatory season for the year-end where huge orders come for Christmas and new year festivals.

Wijethunga claimed some manufacturers will have to close.

Meanwhile, popular takeaway food outlets have a mixed reaction to the ban. While many popular outlets refrained from comment, others said they are optimistic that the government will backtrack.

Central Environment Authority, director general, J M U Indraratne insisted that it is not the case and the ban on polythene will start on September 1. There will be no change in the decision, he said.

But Kushmi Foods believes in a U-turn. The manufacturers are talking and we hope for a change in the decision, director Jayantha Bogawatte said.

The Pagoda Tea Room, general manager, Edwin Gunasekera, said the outlets will use food grade brown paper bags and laminated food grade brown paper as lunch sheets. They are in use in many countries. We are trying our best to conserve the environment, he said.

The material is being used in the new branch in Moratuwa. We might start using it in all our outlets even before September, he said.

Manufacturers of food grade brown paper bags say order books are filling up.

W U Seneviratne & Co, chairman, Seneviratne said: There is a demand and we are unable to meet the requests. If this continues we are ready to expand.

OXO-BIODEGRADABLE PIECES REMAIN IN ENVIRONMENT Referring to so-called oxo-biodegradable or oxo-degradable by manufacturers, the European Union has cautioned that it is not what it promises to be. They do not bio-degrade. Instead they break down into small pieces.These, in fact, increase pollution of the environment, the EU explains.In bags made of these materials, additives are incorporated into conventional plastics. Because of the additives, the plastic breaks down over time into small particles which remain in the environment, the EU warns. It can thus be misleading to refer to such bags as biodegradable as they may not be a solution to littering and may, on the contrary, increase pollution.Spain has announced a ban on lightweight oxo-degradable bags from 2018 to comply with an EU directive to reduce the use of lightweight plastic carrier bags. France has also banned these.Oxo-degradable plastic carrier bags shall mean plastic carrier bags made of plastic materials that include additives which catalyse the fragmentation of the plastic material into micro-fragments, the EU explains.
Reporting rape: PCCSL urges strict adherence to Editors Code View(s):

The Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka Secretariat (PCCSL) has called upon newspaper editors and journalists to adhere to the spirit of the Editors Code in the publication of photographs of rape victims, identifying them and their places of residence and giving excessive details in reporting the crime and subsequent court proceedings.

The PCCSL Secretariat in a statement issued this week said it had received complaints from the general public objecting to what they say is insensitive coverage of these cases, particularly the Punguduthivu rape and murder of a schoolgirl.

The statement added that the PCCSL Secretariat had referred these complaints to the editors of the concerned newspapers subscribing to the self-regulatory system with reference to the provisions of the Editors Code on General Reporting, Writing and Privacy.

These provisions relate to dealing with social issues of a particularly shocking or emotionally painful nature  such as atrocity, violence, drug abuse, brutality, sadism, sexual salacity and obscenity  the press taking special care to present facts, opinions, photographs and graphics with due sensitivity and discretion, subject to its duty to publish in the public interest.

The statement said the onus of showing how the Public Interest is served is with the newspaper.

In reporting accounts of crime or criminal case, publications shall not name victims of sex crimes, unless it is both legally permitted and in the public interest, the statement added.

The PCCSL Secretariat has pointed out to editors that particular care should be taken to ensure that in cases involving grief or shock, inquiries and approaches are handled with sensitivity and discretion.
Restoring that hidden heritage Well-known for her work in architectural conservation in India, Abha Narain Lambah who delivered this years Geoffrey Bawa lecture, talks to Shakya Wickramanayake View(s): View(s):

Regarded as one of the foremost conservationists in the sub-continent, Archt. Abha Narain Lambah muses that her favourite projects have been three Buddhist sites, namely the Maitreya Buddha Temple in Ladakh, the Ajanta Caves and Bodhagaya. I must have some Buddhist karma to get work with all these beautiful sites, she quips. Regarded as one of the foremost conservationists in the sub-continent, Archt. Abha Narain Lambah muses that her favourite projects have been three Buddhist sites, namely the Maitreya Buddha Temple in Ladakh, the Ajanta Caves and Bodhagaya. I must have some Buddhist karma to get work with all these beautiful sites, she quips.

Delivering the annual Geoffrey Bawa lecture on July 28 at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, she credited Bawa as one of the reasons she decided to become an architect.

Having received her Masters degree in architectural conservation from the School of Planning & Architecture, New Delhi, Lambah has worked tirelessly for the past 22 years to conserve the architectural heritage of both Indias colonial and pre-colonial past. Her work has been far-ranging across India from Bodha Gaya and Ajanta, to the Royal Opera House in New Delhi and the University of Mumbais Convocation Hall.

In 2007 Lambah won the UNESCO Asia Pacific Heritage Conservation Award Of Excellence for her restoration work on the Maitreya Temple in Ladakh, India. This ancient temple made of mud and wood, dating back to the 16th Century, was placed on the watchlist of the 100 most endangered buildings by the World Monument Fund in 2000 and 2002. Situated in a high altitude desert region which is prone to huge drops in temperature (minus 30 degrees at times),the task was not easy. The harsh winters meant that work could only take place between May and October of each year, resulting in the project taking three years to complete.

Yet with no electricity, running water, or roads aside from footpaths, Lambah persevered using local labour, materials and techniques to restore the temple and prevent its collapse. Youre not just conserving a building, but an identity; a way of life, she explains.

Lambah was later appointed to work on the management plans for the Ajanta caves and Bodha Gaya. During this time she began to question whether a South Asian Charter to conservation should be formulated, especially in relation to religious and sacred sites, instead of relying on Western Charters. The dilemma faced during the formulation of the management plan for Bodha Gaya when a group of Thai donors proposed to gold plate the amlak of the Mahabodhi Temple, makes a case for the adoption of the charter. The issue which arose from the proposal was whether a world heritage site should be changed for reasons not concerned with safety or extending its lifetime. To allow the alteration would be to go against the charters on conservation and the principles of conservation.

The management committee did allow it. The reasoning behind this decision Lambah explains, is because the temple is what she calls a living tradition, and to prevent these changes would be to freeze it in time. How far do you go as a trained professional and where do you step back and let faith take over? she asks; a question she says she still hasnt found the answer for.

Her approach to conservation, especially of our colonial past is that of preservation, accessability and adaptive reuse. According to Lambah, historical buildings shouldnt be put into isolated pockets, as this disconnects it from people. Instead you must weave in its relevance and create public engagement. This can be achieved by adaptive reuse, explains Lambah bringing in examples of Museum Cafes and the repurposing of disused industrial buildings as a school a concept which has been embraced by Sri Lanka in the recent years with projects such as Trace City, the Dutch Hospital and the Race Course shopping complexes.

Lambah says the concept of contextual architecture that Geoffrey Bawa introduced to Sri Lanka has meant that the design voice in the island has not been consumed by commercial chaos and urban confusion that present day Indian cities have succumbed to. Therefore in this respect Lambah believes India has much to learn from Sri Lanka.

The lack of funding, the push and pull between development and conservation and myopic urban planning has led to cities such as Mumbai losing a large portion of its colonial architectural heritage, she feels. Determined to prevent further degradation to Mumbais colonial heritage, Lambah together with volunteer groups and NGOs took up the challenge to reclaim their heritage. With virtually no government support, they started on a grassroot level, and began negotiating with shopkeepers in the commercial district to alter and adapt their signboards so as to allow the detailed facades of the old Victorian buildings to be seen. These simple changes were transformational. Emboldened they began collecting funds to restore the outer facades as well as the interiors of public buildings including the Public Library. With just a change of lighting, re-routing of wires, the elimination of old furniture and fixtures as well as removing layers of old paint these dilapidated public spaces were transformed to spaces one would typically see in Europe. Its mostly about undoing the wrongs done, she humbly says with regard to restoring colonial buildings. What is required she says is mostly community engagement, and that the rest will follow.

Lambah is unfazed by the fact that she is a woman in a male dominated industry, believing that she faces the same challenges anyone else would in the industry  I never felt as if I was privileged or under privileged, she says. Once you remove the gender distinction from your mind, so will others, respecting you for your work and abilities rather than judging you based on your gender. An outlook that has served her well as over the yearsshes been awarded the Sanskriti Award, Eisenhower Fellowship, the Attingham Trust Fellowship and Charles Wallace Fellowship and has been a consultant to ICCROM, UNITAR, World Monuments Fund, Global Heritage Fund, Archaeological Survey of India and various state governments and organizations. She has also authored various books on Architectural History & Conservation, including A Citys Legacy:The Indian Navys Heritage in Mumbai and Conservation After Legislation: Issues for Mumbai, among others.

Her firm has won eight UNESCO Asia Pacific Awards for heritage conservation and having achieved so much already, Lambah says that she is at that point in her career where she should pause and re-evaluate the work shes done. But with her idols like Charles Corea, Joseph Stein and Bawa, who worked well into their 80s, she has no intention of stopping anytime soon.

For a detailed report on the lecture delivered by Architect Abha Narain Lambah at the Geoffrey Bawa Memorial Lecture check our website www.sundaytimes.lk
Showing the world we too can write science fiction By Smriti Daniel A blogger-turned self-taught writer, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne talks about his novel Numbercaste and a genre of fiction thats still up and coming among Sri Lankan writers View(s): View(s):

By all accounts, Yudha-njaya Wijeratne should simply have not been able to find the time to write Numbercaste. As he began work on the draft, he was juggling a full-time job at WSO2, and was simultaneously educating himself. His online course schedule alone included Data Science courses from Johns Hopkins, Greek and Roman myth from the University of Pennsylvania, and Literature from Vanderbilt.

Im largely self-taught, which means I have to constantly keep learning things I dont know, the author tells the Sunday Times. Finally, blogging at Icaruswept (icaruswept.com) ensured he was already doing a fair bit of writing.

All this meant that I was juggling a certain state of near-exhaustion on my weekdays, says the author, admitting that going to bed at 2 a.m. wasnt unusual.

Out of this hectic schedule, Wijeratne managed to produce Numbercaste. A book that is as much about our present as it is about our future, this is a staggeringly ambitious novel. Little eludes Wijeratnes gaze as he grapples with the implications of emerging technologies, socio-cultural phenomena and political movements.

As a writer of science fiction, Wijeratne joins a small group of Sri Lankans working in the genre. Noting that it has long been one dominated by Americans, Wijeratne says he believes writers such as himself bring a different perspective to the work, not least in their willingness to set stories in places outside the US.

Our stories hop through China, through India  and we dont have problems critiquing freedom and democracy delivered at the end of a machine gun, he says. We dont stick to In God we trust narratives. We have Gods, plural. We have other systems of thought, and what we think is a more balanced perspective, because we consume media and data from all over the world.

Hes also fascinated by what his friends and peers are attempting with science fiction: Right now, we  my fellow Sri Lankan authors and I  are approaching it from the perspective of lets show the whole goddamned world that we can create as well as anyone else out there. Thats how you have Mandy Jayatissa being the only Sri Lankan author to wield steampunk, and Navin Weeraratne to write rocket science so well grounded theres links to research papers at the back of his books.

Sitting down with the Sunday Times, Wijeratne went on to talk about some of the key ideas in his own work. Below are excerpts from the interview:

What was it like making the transition from blogging to writing a full-length book? In the transition from fact to fiction, were you carrying along many of the same interests and obsessions?

The blogging really helped with the actual act of writing. Over the ten years or so Id built up this writing muscle that I could just flex and sprint for pages on end, and I didnt really realize that until I started working on the book. It was second nature by then.

The bad news was that my thinking was that of a blogger. A novel is a different beast  you need to think in terms of three hundred pages, of plot, of progression, of how the characters evolve. Theres no easy reward of writing a blogpost and hitting publish. So I really had to learn that from scratch; Numbercaste was just a bunch of disconnected scenes  like little thousand-word Polaroids of moments in the book  until I figured out the craft of weaving them together.

I was used to the act of writing something in a blaze of thought, hitting publish, and sitting back and watching it go viral. There wasnt that easy endorphin rush.

What is the number? Would you talk about the real world influences that shaped the concept, and how it evolved in the course of your writing this book?

The Number is, very simply, PageRank for people. What it does is distil a persons social influence into a single, measurable metric.

Where would we get the data? I kept thinking of Facebook. George Orwell dreamed of a state monitoring all its citizenry. We tell the entire world what we think: where we are: who were with: how we feel: on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Its the inverse of 1984. The perfect place to go to for the data needed.

Voila. The Number.

Im not the only person to think of this. China is actually doing it.

In 2010, the local government of Suining (a county north of Shanghai) apparently started awarding points for behaviour  things like winning an award  and deducting points for things like getting in jail. People who scored well apparently got all sorts of perks.

The project was a failure. Even state-owned newspapers criticized the system. The Beijing Times, interestingly, compared it to the good citizen certificates Japan issued to Chinese citizens during Japans wartime occupation of China (1930s to 1940s).

Nevertheless, China is, as far as I know, on track to have this up by 2020.

Which is why China, in Numbercaste, has this system in place. Its a real-world thing. I came across this (China) in 2016, with that Independent article, and I was at once both elated and terrified. Happy, because clearly Id got the concept right. Terrified, because its on its way. And I wrote China into the narrative the moment I had done my reading from Chinese newspapers and had an idea of what they were building.

Unlike a lot of science fiction that is set far into the future, one of your key characters Julius Common, the charismatic CEO of NumberCorp, was born in 2000. What challenges did this offer you when you set about constructing a world dominated by Num-berCorp?

It actually made things a lot easier. The 2000s are an era I can very clearly remember, so I had the background all there: I could focus on writing Common as a person, as a digital native. Everything up to my 2020 predictions are basically based on grounded stuff  Pentagon reports, the String of Pearls Theory, the greater sense of where were heading economically.

I guess the real challenge is predicting things that happened after that and still keeping it grounded. The technologies, the economics, the works. I enlisted the aid of two good friends  Nisansa Dilushan de Silva and CD Athuraliya. Nisansa, who lectures at Moratuwa, and now is in Oregon, is extremely well versed in histories (both real and fictional worlds) and economic trends. CD, a fellow Big Data researcher at Lirneasia, runs an AI startup. Once Id finished the manuscript, they were able to add the gaps in my knowledge, especially when it came to niche political and technological trends.

Its clear why this fictional world could be a frightening one,

but what would make it great to live in?

Well, its a different system of life.

Julius intended the Number to make the world fairer. And it has been. Politicians are held accountable. Corruption is almost dead. Its a new era of transparency. And, if you look at the world today, money is pretty much the be-all end-all  if you had the fortunes of a Rothschild, or a particularly corrupt Sri Lankan politician, youd be sorted for a long, long time.

The Number balances things. The artist can now be as important as the billionaire. The scientist who toils in silence is now as well-known as the socialite. The civil servant is as popular as the Instagram celebrity.

The flip side of that is, it is an algorithmically enforced caste system of sorts. But isnt society today the same thing? We just havent replaced the humans with computers yet.

Finally, could you talk about how you marketed this book? Youve built a base of dedicated readers, something many new writers couldnt help but envy

Firstly, I would say, social media. Secondly, other authors. By the time I was finished with this I had published The Slow Sad Suicide of Rohan Wijeratne, which shot right to the top of #1 in Amazon in scifi and lit-fic in the first week of release. That perked interest from the scifi community and got me in touch with many interesting peers in scifi, especially in the indie community. We form tightly knit groups and share and celebrate each others works. So I was soon being approached by their fans, and vice versa.

Thirdly, a mailing list. I gave Rohan away free to people, with one caveat: give me thy email and Ill give you my book. I worked with other authors from around the world who were doing this. A thousand or so of the most hardcore scifi fans joined, and that formed the beginnings of a fanbase. Its very small, but theyve been the ones who make that first purchase and write that first review on Amazon. That really matters.
Tea and intrigue; its all here View(s):

This 254-page book about the history of Ceylon tea was sent to me as an email attachment to download and read on a screen, in the fashion of those who use devices to read, instead of being able to hold the actual book in ones hand. The disadvantage of this screen version of the book, certainly for a reviewer and I suspect for a regular reader too, is not being able to judge the worth and heft of a volume and flick through pages to select and underline choice bits at random.

 So for a preliminary insight into the book I had to rely on the Contents Page. This promises chapters covering the familiar ground to fans of this countrys tea such as: The Rise and Fall of King Coffee; Transition to Tea; Globalising Ceylon Tea; A Planters Life; Ties to Home, etc., concluding with the dour chapter title, The Scottish Effect.

It was only when I looked at the list of illustrations that I became intrigued and recognised the vast range of the authors research. One photo caption reads thus: Certainly Ill never marry a black,a quote from a letter by the books hero, James Taylor, under two photos from Taylors own photo album. The authors claim the photos are of the Tamil girl believed to be Taylors partner. I scrolled down immediately to Page 144 where details of Taylors sex life are revealed, even if derived from speculation.

The authors cite a contemporary newspaper report of Taylors will as saying that funds were to be left to the mother of his children. But since Taylor was unmarried, this suggests either an actual or anticipated fruitful liaison with a female partner. However, the authors are adamant that Taylor had children as they assert: What is incontrovertible is that Taylor had children and a native partner.

After this astounding revelation, the authors confess to being unable to trace any descendants of the supposed children, dismissing claims by some purported descendants as their genealogy indicates instead that they are connected to two other Taylor brothers in Ceylon at the time: John and William Taylor who worked on the Wanarajah and Darawella estates.

Who knew Taylor had two brothers in Ceylon? Did he? The secret aspect of Taylors private life, drawn from the text below a photo caption, made me scroll back to the beginning of the book to see what other new information about Taylor, tea and empire, the authors have found.

The four pages of acknowledgements, where Anselm Perera of Mlesna Tea is especially thanked, includes historians, librarians and even the authors driver, are given as evidence of their thorough research both in archives and in Sri Lanka. There are dozens of footnotes at the end of each chapter and the bibliography extends over 17 pages, listing scores of sources and books, including The Growing Years which I wrote in 2004 commemorating 150 years of The Planters Association of Ceylon. This made me realise before reading the book that it purports to be a magisterial volume.

The authors wrote this book after seeing the correspondence of James Taylor, stating: These collected sources are by far the richest archive we have come across for a 19th century migrant of humble origin from Scotland. They claim proudly that: this book is the first large-scale study of James Taylor and is the only one to use his extant correspondence from beginning to end.

One could almost accuse the authors of name dropping when they include names of hundreds of people as sources; perhaps to give weight to the books credentials as the definitive version of Taylors life and Ceylons tea. But never mind the footnotes, this is a story fascinating in all its detail.

Taylors early life in Scotland is rigorously dissected so that his later life  and regular letter writing  is seen in perspective, observing that Taylor emerges as a disgruntled and sullen teenager. They add that:a mix of frustration but acceptance of his lot would continue throughout his life.

 The authors run through the growing of coffee in Ceylon citing its success on the influence of Britons who had planted in Jamaica, and that Tamils from India took work on the estates that Sinhalese were reluctant to do. They note that coffee was still thriving in 1875 when there were: 1,215 plantations in Ceylon with an estimated extent of 270,000 acres. Seven hundred and fifty British managers and 200,000 Indian Tamils and their families were employed. At that time only 560 acres were devoted to tea. It was from 1879 that the blight that destroyed coffee took its devastating hold.

Taylors natural skill as an agronomist led to him experimenting with different crops on different fields, which resulted in the now-famous first planting of tea at Loolecondera. The Transition to Tea chapter covers much of which is familiar, but also records Taylors frustration at being passed over as an official trade commissioner to India, something which, the authors suggest, motivated him to make a name for himself by being the first to plant tea. The book surprisingly reveals that Taylors first clearing of land and planting of tea in 1867 completely failed to grow. He is rightly recognised, however, as the pioneer planter of tea in Ceylon.

The growth and popularity of Ceylon tea is covered extensively before the book veers off to recount a planters life. In Taylors case this meant combating the natural elements, snakes and disease and tending (and later neglecting) his beard as well as building an impressive bungalow. His poor financial situation is probed as is his social life, including visits to and by other planters and their drinking habits. The authors quote a letter from Taylor musing that heat must have dried up or melted my bump of amativeness for I dont care a penny for ladies.

It was in another letter that he stated: Ill never marry a black and am not sure if a white would suit However, in the chapter on Cross-Cultural Contact we learn that Taylor was keeping a written track of the menstrual cycles of a girl called Paarvathy who ran off Sept 25th 1872 and suggests that the reference to Paarvathys sister (born in May 1865) may have been to his daughter. It adds enough spice to this story of tea and planters to keep the reader engrossed. While Taylors father repeatedly urged him to return home to Scotland to marry, he resisted the idea.

His death is covered in the chapter Triumph and Tears and here the authors speculate on how he died, doubting that it was through the stated dysentery, coincidentally occurring a few days after he had been dismissed following 40 years of service. Surprisingly they dont suggest it was murder (although they report one attempt on his life), dismiss suicide, and plump for a broken heart.

 The book ends with a chapter delving into the Scottish influence in Ceylon, noting it was once called a Scottish colony. It includes a chart showing the family trees of the related Taylor, Moir and Stiven families of Scotland. Curiously, the aforementioned William Taylor is shown as James half-brother and there is no mention of John Taylor whom the authors claim was another brother.

Since this book is published in England by the University of Manchester, its contribution to international appreciation of the history of Ceylon tea is significant. It will have greater impact in promoting Ceylon tea worldwide than the local commemorations of the current sesquicentenary. If you ever want to buy a book on Ceylon tea, its doubtful you would find one as intriguing and detailed as this.

Book facts Tea and Empire: James Taylor in Victorian Ceylon By Angela McCarthy and T. M. Devine, published by Manchester University Press, July 2017.(25) Reviewed by Royston Ellis
When the geeks come out to play By Shakya Wickramanayake View(s): View(s):

Come be yourself goes the official slogan of Lanka Comi Con 2017. In its third year, the convention dedicated to comic books, science fiction/ fantasy film and literature, invites geeks and nerds of all ages, ethnicities, and languages to join in and let their inner geek loose. Whether that means coming dressed as your favourite superhero or villain or setting down for a round of Cards against humanity, dabbling in some fan art or engaging in geek-dom discussions, Lanka Comic Con is open to it all.

Lanka Comic Con began as a side event at Gamer.lks Gaming Convention, the SLGC. With just 500 square feet of space, the Geek Club of Sri Lanka attempted to launch the countrys first ever comic book and science fiction convention in 2015. We were not sure how many people to expect. We thought wed get about 150 people, says Thilani Samarasinha, one of the clubs founder members and an organizer of Lanka Comic Con. But to their amazement over 600 turned up, some 170 in costume!

Their second convention at the J. D. A. Perera Gallery attracted as many as 3000 people. It was packed, Thilani explains, so much so even the venues air conditioning system couldnt take the load. This year, theyve chosen the Sri Lanka Exhibition and Convention Centre (SLECC) as the venue and with over 40,000 sq feet of space, area wise this years convention will be 80 times its original size.

But to understand how Lanka Comic Con came to be, you have to look at the beginnings of the Geek Club of Sri Lanka, the founders of the convention. Without any forums or events, it was easy to believe that there was no comic book, anime or sci-fi following in the island.Up until 2011 Thilani thought so too. An ardent comic book fan she would religiously visit the Vijitha Yapa bookshops in search of comics, and it was only on an email she received about new releases that she saw close to 20 others copied in. Excited to know that there were others like her, the idea of bringing together all these comic book fans took root.

It was with the intention of creating a community that Navin Weeraratne and Thilani started the Facebook group Geek Club of Sri Lanka and it soon had a following of over 14,000. On the last Saturday of each month, members meet to talk about comics, discuss fan fiction and play tabletop games. It was during one of these Geek Meets that they first toyed with the idea of a Sri Lankan comic book convention. The rest, as they say, is history.

So what can we expect from this years Comic Con? Aside from the usual tabletop games, cosplaying and geek merchandise, the event will feature martial arts demonstrations; a few local Science fiction films, in both English and Sinhala; a two hour performance by rock band Stigmata and several panel discussions from topics of how ebooks are helping Sri Lankan authors to go global to the art of miniature figurine design.

For children attending the event, there will be a range of activities to keep them busy and entertained  a Lego play area, and DIY activities such as Build your own space dinosaur.

In an attempt to inspire and instil a love of science in children, the organizers have decided to run some science experiments to demonstrate a few principles of physics and chemistry.

The organizers maintain that this is not an event exclusively for English Speakers, as some have perceived it to be. In fact in order to be more inclusive theyve pushed hard towards making it a tri-lingual event, and have done so by including a panel discussion in Sinhala and featuring films, books and comics written in the Sinhala and Tamil languages at the event and on their website. Yuval Harari said three things unite humans, money, government and culture. And here were uniting people around the geek culture, explains Navin Weeraratne, one of the organizers of Lanka Comic Con. He goes on to say that whats unique about comic book and sci-fi culture is that its non political in its nature yet at the same time paradoxically political in its substance. Pointing out that even their logo for the event by virtue of being tri-lingual and in the colours of the national flag, is a statement of sorts.

The convention has also helped vendors increase their customer bases, as well as meet the market better. Now many of which started as an online store or a stall at Comic Con have gone on to set up shop  Yamato One, which sells anime and manga merchandise; Red Dot Geek, an online comic book store; and Collectique, a shop for toys and collectibles.

The Asus Lanka Comic Con 2017 is on August 26 (from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.) and 27 ( from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ) at the Sri Lanka Exhibition and Convention Centre. Admission is Rs 100 for each day and free for children under 12. For more information check out their website www.lankacomiccon.lk or their event page

on facebook.
Can South Korea save the day? By Katharine H.S. Moon, Exclusive to the Sunday Times in Sri Lanka View(s): View(s):

CAMBRIDGE  As North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trumps war of words escalates, Independence Day celebrations  commemorating the Korean Peninsulas 1945 liberation from Japanese colonial rule  are unfolding in both North and South Korea. The occasion underscores not just the shared history between the two countries, but also the Souths unique qualifications to bring about a peaceful resolution to the current military standoff.

As much as Kim may enjoy threatening the most powerful country in the world, the United States has never been North Koreas primary target. On the contrary, the Norths real objective has always been to ensure the survival of the Kim regime and, in the longer term, to secure the reunification of the Korean Peninsula under that regimes leadership. South Korea thus faces the most acute danger, and has the strongest incentive to alleviate tensions with the North.

That goal will not be advanced by South Koreas annual joint military exercise with the US, Ulchi-Freedom Guardian (UFG), which is geared toward preparing both countries for a conflict with the North. On the contrary, with sabre-rattling between North Korea and the US at an all-time high, the exercise  which will begin on August 21  could escalate the conflict dramatically.

Even in normal times, North Korea reacts angrily to UFG. Last year, it tested its fifth nuclear device just after the exercises were held. But now that North Korea is overtly threatening to launch missiles at the US territory of Guam, and being further provoked by Trump, its response to another round of UFG could be less symbolic, and far more devastating.

If North Korea lashes out, the strategy of deterrence that underpins the US-South Korea alliance will have been fatally undermined. Deterrence means using a credible threat of serious punishment to prevent an opponent from initiating military engagement. And yet North Korea has already dismissed Trumps threats as a load of nonsense. If this months war games trigger a military confrontation or an outright exchange of fire, deterrence will officially have failed.

The problem is that, even if Trump and Kim recognise the corner into which they have painted themselves, neither has the political space to backpedal on their threats without risking serious domestic and international humiliation.

Worse still, both leaders lack credibility in the eyes of the other, and of the world. Chinas leaders have long viewed Trump as unreliable, or bu kaopu. Now, Trumps emotional response to North Koreas actions has further reinforced that assessment, and given Chinese leaders even less of a reason to get involved in the drama. Even Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been Trumps most steadfast supporter among East Asian leaders, is wary of the domestic political consequences of Trumps brinksmanship.

Of course, Japan, as North Koreas ultimate historical enemy, would have no leverage over Kim anyway. The only country with the credibility, leverage, and motivation to lead the way toward a peaceful resolution to the current crisis is South Korea. But South Korea has so far straddled the line between antagonism and diplomacy.

On the one hand, South Korea agrees with Trump on the need for tougher sanctions and military readiness, including full deployment of the US anti-ballistic missile defence system, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD. On the other hand, it has indicated that it would be willing to engage in joint military talks and diplomatic dialogue with North Korea, and it even invited Kims government to participate in a joint Independence Day celebration. (The North refused, citing the planned UFG.)

South Korea now needs to take a stronger approach. Rather than shove a weak opponent into a corner and risk them lashing out, South Korea should formally request an indefinite postponement of this years UFG, which would be counterproductive and is not essential at this time. The US and South Korea already held massive joint exercises involving about 320,000 troops  more than six times the combined troop strength of the planned UFG  in March and April of this year, and in 2016.

During that period, the US also deployed a strike group, including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, to the region, saying that it would counter reckless acts of aggression with whatever methods the US wants to take. The US also docked one of the largest nuclear-powered submarines in the world, the USS Michigan, in South Korea, and held decapitation exercises to prepare troops to infiltrate North Korea and eliminate Kim and his ruling cohort.

Simply put, this months UFG exercises are far from critical to the US-South Korea alliance. By suspending them, South Korea would have an opportunity to pursue inter-Korean military-to-military dialogue with the North, while reinstating basic communications channels, including hotlines, which were cut off early last year. The South should also urge its northern counterpart to coordinate the commemoration of Independence Day, a near-sacred day for all Koreans, as a symbolic gesture of a unified Korean past and possible future.

To be sure, South Korean President Moon Jae-ins administration has already made such overtures, and to no avail. But it may be more successful if it can use a postponed UFG as leverage. In the event, South Korea would emerge as a legitimate broker in the conflict between the US and North Korea, rather than as a US lackey, as the Kim regime likes to view it. That would greatly improve the prospects of a future negotiation among the three actors, once things have cooled down.

South Korea, with its affinity to both the US and North Korea, is uniquely suited to defuse the current situation. The stakes are too high for it not to try.

(The writer is a non resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and is Wasserman Chair of Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College.)

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2017.www.project-syndicate.org
Dambulla heritage site and UNESCOs double standards Dr. Susantha Goonatilake Temples should have tourist collections: Not Archaeology and Tourism Authorities View(s): View(s):

There is confusion, downright lies, and kowtowing to the West in the recent public discussions on Dambulla temple and its Pin Pettiya. The culprits are various uninformed personnel in the tourist and archaeological authorities. And the politicians, current and former, are not to blame.

The battle was for the collections from tourists at Dambulla, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Dambulla complex was started around the 3rdand 2nd centuries BCE and restored and enlarged upon many times by ancient kings and their dayakas. The last restoration was by Kirti Sri Rajasinha in the 18th century.

A report a few days back of the oldest habitation of Australia 80,000 years ago makes my position clear. The Australian aborigines are not heir to a written tradition or a sophisticated system of thought, like Buddhist Sri Lanka. But shaming our unthinking experts, the Mirarr aborigines insisted that excavation was done under Mirarr control. They laid down the ground rule [according to the report] that Mirrar people own this country, and that they had total control over the archaeology dig and the artefacts discovered. Under the agreement with the archaeologists, the aboriginal community could stop the archaeology whenever the Mirarr wished and the agreement allowed them to enter into discussion from a position of control. They maintained This is Mirarr home, we need to protect it.

We have, for thousands of years, looked after and repaired our Buddhist sites like the Atamasthana and Solosmasthana in addition to many lesser sites like Dambulla. Following that tradition, the Ruwanveli Seya, the central stupa for Theravada was restored in the early 20th century. A local bookstraight out of the colonial world significantly titled Unmaking the Nation, while denouncing our anticolonial resistance and the Buddhist revivaldenies the historical importance of Anuradhapura. British colonials are here named as discoverers of Anuradhapura and, nationalists who used Anuradhapura for the anti-colonial project are depicted as villains. The likes of Albert Memmi and Frantz Fanon would have easily recognised the authors mentality as from their descriptions of the colonised in their seminal books, The Colonizer and the Colonized and Black Skin, White Masks.

The seeming unmaking attempt at Dambulla began under the label of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I have been a member of a couple of global UNESCO committees (for example in the preparation for the Decade of Culture, one on the Future of Science and Culture and the History of Humanity project). And I do know that UNESCO decisions are subject to geopolitical transactions. That UNESCO shadow had fallen on Dambulla and on the many large sites in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa and other equally ancient sites, not included in the UNESCO list.

Geopolitics and heritage sites

What are indeed UNESCO World Heritage sites? Their beginnings are in the effort in the 1960s to rescue the ancient monuments of Egypt being flooded by the Aswan Dam. Monuments were now removed from their original places which would go underwater and reassembled on higher ground. A parallel would be the rescue of our Gedige complex whose site went underwater under an irrigation project and was later reassembled on higher ground. A similar exercise occurred when in 1960s the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam of India was completed, inundating the ancient Nagarjunako, a Buddhist site of circa the 3rd century ACE. These were relocated on higher ground, principal among the relocated sites is the Sinhala Vihara dedicated to Sinhalese monks.

Following the Egyptian rescue, UNESCO began the list of World Heritage Sites divided into natural and cultural sites. Here geopolitics has prevailed and many of the UNESCO sites are from the West. There is a huge under-representation of heritage sites outside of Europe. Analysis done seven years ago showed that more than 50 percent of the sites are in Europe and North America while 9 percent are in Africa and 7 percent in the Arab countries. The designated cultural sites in Sri Lanka are therefore only six from hundreds of our ancient sites.

Let me list a few UNESCO sites of the West and its rich allies that are a contrast to our predicament. There are many ruins of the Roman and Greek periods, mostly buildings once dedicated to their earlier religions, now in regions, later replaced by Christianity. In Germany, there are many operational Christian churches in the UNESCO list. Included are also buildings related to the Christian reformer Martin Luthers birth house, in addition to Luthers death house. Whole European towns which are continuously repaired are included in the UNESCO list. There are UNESCO designated irrigation systems, including one in Germany built between the 16th to 19th centuries with its set of reservoirs, dams, ditches and other adjuncts. Other UNESCO approved irrigation systems include one in China begun in the 3rd century BCE and an irrigation system in Oman dating back to 500 ACE. And included in Japan, among many ancient temples are the Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range. This site includes Koyasan, the central temple of Shingon Buddhism.

The selection of the international sites by UNESCO is done with advice from the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). Its more recent Nara Document legitimises the practice of periodic dismantle, rebuilding, repair and re-assemble of ancient sites. In Europe, the cathedrals and towns included in UNESCO are continuously repaired; so are designated temples in Japan. How UNESCO sites are selected elsewhere could easily be found by googling UNESCO sites.

If a reader is mystified by ancient sites and archaeology, rest assured, with a university first year science background, it is easy to understand, but not so easy to practise. What is required in archaeology is a large amount of patience for careful excavation, knowledge of science-based dating like those involving carbon-14 and thermo-luminescence, pollen analysis and similar approaches used in archaeology. Most of our archaeologists would not be direct practitioners in these science-based efforts, but send their samples to labs either in Sri Lanka or abroad. Several other approaches used elsewhere are not known or used in Sri Lanka. If you find the above a bit confusing, do not worry, you are in the excellent company of some local archaeologists. Let me explain.

Story of Giri

Our Postgraduate Institute of Archaeological Research (PGIAR) should be the parallel of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine. In an international conference at the Bhikshu University in Anuradhapura there was a presentation in Sinhala by a monk on his excavations at Abhayagiri. He began by relating how the name was derived from Giri the Jain monk. His Sinhala presentation was translated for the Indians in the audience by the chairman of the sessions, the PGIAR director. Unfortunately, the director was unable to translate this well-known story of Giri. I did translate and asked the director why he did not know this background known to every child. The directors learned response was I do not pretend to be a historian. A few months ago, the same director who publicly said he did not know history and who is expected to defend our traditions, had given a talk at a New Delhi University on Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Stupas. There he had allegedly attacked our Buddhist monks using the most obscene language. The enraged Sri Lankan students present had complained to our High Commission (the students sent details of the incident to our Royal Asiatic Society, RASSL). If this was the Director of Post Graduate Medicine or for that matter any doctor and not the Director of Postgraduate Archaeology, there would be a judicial case for malpractice, but not in our archaeology. Surely, you may ask, there must be academic fora in archaeology where these issues are argued out.

There is indeed the annual sessions of the Archaeology Department which begins with all attendees reciting Buddhist precepts, the first time I have seen a religious ceremony for an academic event. I have attended a couple of these events and as I was then the president of RASSL, I was also asked to light the ceremonial lamp. These conferences are mostly a transmission belt for information, and not for significant debate. Let me give two examples: one, a session which I chaired which had a paper by an employee of the Galle Maritime Museum. After encouraging the audience to respond, I later asked her why unlike maritime museums elsewhere, our museum was only projecting foreigners coming to us, and did not emphasise us going to the external world. Her totally irrelevant response was that my wife had taught her. Another instance was where I presented a PowerPoint on archaeology being falsified by LTTE supporters including depicting the Buddhist ruins near the Trincomalee hot wells as built by Ravana. Ravana as the hero of the Ramayana myth was invented in the 1930s by South Indian Tamils for their then separatist project. I also presented how the Jaffna Archaeological Museum which depicted mostly the 1917 findings of an RASSL expedition in Jaffna was deliberately falsified. The chairperson did not allow any discussion on the topic. And when I suggested that he could end the formal sessions but allow for informal discussion, he said no. I could give many other easy to understand examples.

At my suggestion, the RASSL Annual Research Sessions began to be organised, and has about 20 to 30 presentations on archaeology each year where discussions are encouraged. At one of these sessions, a group presented an expansion of a paper which had been given to the Medical Section A of the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science. Their expanded paper compared the physical stature of ancient Sri Lankans with those of modern Sri Lankans as well as of Veddahs. When they submitted the paper for publication to the RASSL journal, the two Sri Lankan reviewers, one a well-known pre-historian and the other an anatomist, rejected the paper. Realising its path-breaking potential, I sent the paper to a leading expert on the topic in the US and a fellow member of the World Academy of Art and Science. He came back saying the paper was indeed acceptable and good but required some tweaking. There are many other instances, but I would complete by the example of a good physical archaeologist Conningham who without understanding what Anuradhapura with its tall structures stood for, compared it with the human sacrificing structures of the Mayas and our irrigation with that of Cambodia which had different characteristics. Finding nobody responding to his misinterpretations I did correct him in the British journal which first published his.

Why these major errors are taking place is because there seems to be no significant interaction between different disciplines and when interacting with foreigners, our archaeologists seem to be overawed by them. The contrast is with our medical doctors whose different disciplines are linked to international standards and when a problem case arises, they interact using their different disciplines. The current SAITM debate is on its presumed lack of trained staff.

With this brief indicative background of the chequered nature of our archaeology, and having examined UNESCO sites elsewhere, can we comment on our sites chosen and not chosen.

A co-founder of UNESCO, the science historian Joseph Needham, had recognised our ancient interconnected irrigation as a pioneering example in the world. But a German irrigation system from the 16th century is recognised while our more than 2000-year-old system is not. The houses of birth as well as of his death of the Christian reformer Martin Luther are recognised, but not of our Dimbulagala Kassapa who was our reformer under Parakramabahu and whose influence spread to Southeast Asia deeply changing their beliefs. The Kii Mountain Range in Japan with its centre of Shingon Buddhism (whose roots can be traced back to Abhayagiri through Amoghavajra) is recognized, but only the forest area of the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka is a declared UNESCO site  not Sri Pada located within it. Dambulla is recognised but not, like the numerous sites in Rome and Greece, the many other ancient sites in Sri Lanka including the Solosmasthana. And, as important, not the very many sites in Southern and Eastern Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka, since the 3rd century BCE, has been the oldest continuous Buddhist majority country, and so what is excavated are part of our living legacy. Our UNESCO designated sites have been used for collecting money from tourists. But it is not UNESCO, ICOMOS, our Archaeology Department or the tourist authorities that own our UNESCO sites including potential sites, but us Sri Lankans. Monies collected from them should be given to temple complexes themselves to develop them and other sites, with, if they wish, technical help from archaeologists. Such monies collected should definitely not be given to the tourist authorities because they have been promoting non-existent Ravana sites instead of Buddhist sites. This would be like promoting the goals of the LTTE.

The RASSL invited the tourist authoritys Ramayana man for a technical conference on his invented Ramayana sites, but did not attend. An intellectual ally of the tourist authority, a lorry driver was, in the meantime, disfiguring inscriptions to depict this Ravana fairytale. Advocating the LTTEs Ravana as truth, is ideologically equivalent to the LTTE attack on the Maha Bodhi. Recently in a tourist promotion in Hyderabad, our Tourism Promotion Bureau was promoting the fictitious Ramayana Trail ignoring the nearby ancient Sinhala Vihara and other Sri Lanka related connections in the region from the 3rd century to at least the 14th century. Our recent tourist boom has seen many articles in the international media, including in India, and none writes about the fictitious Ravana sites of the unread and deluded man helping promote LTTE goals.

Conclusion: Our temple authorities should collect the tourist money and use that to rebuild sites in Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa like how they do for ancient sites in Japan and Europe. They should have nothing to do with our tourist authorities keen on promoting a pro-LTTE agenda. They should also debar from Buddhist sites travel agents promoting that LTTE agenda. In addition, they could hire nationalist experts who would promote Buddhist tourism, like they do in India, and who would lobby in UNESCO for other Buddhist sites. In addition, these experts and private tourist companies should encourage tours to the many other heritage sites outside of the UNESCO ones.
Online Legal Information for Judges and Lawyers in the Information Age View(s):

The following is an edited version of the Justice J.F.A.Soza Memorial Oration 2017 delivered by Presidents Counsel K. Kanag-Isvaran at the Sri Lanka Judges Institute on August 11.

Your Lordship the Chief Justice, Hon. Minister of Justice, Hon. Justices of the Supreme Court, Hon. President of the Court of Appeal, Hon. Justices of the Court of Appeal, Hon. Judges of the Civil Appellate, High Court, Hon Judges of the High Court of the Republic of Sri Lanka, and of the Provinces, Hon. Judges of the District Courts, Hon. Judges of the Magistrates Courts, Mr. Ruwan Fernando, in his capacity as the Director of the Sri Lanka Judges Institute, the Board of Governors of the Judges Institute, Mr. Harsha Soza, Presidents Counsel, Distinguished Invitees, Ladies and Gentlemen, good afternoon.

It is a singular honour and privilege to me to be offered this opportunity to address so distinguished an assembly of the most eminent judicial minds of the Republic. The guardians of the portals of the rule of law.

Todays function has a triple significance  firstly, it commemorates the memory of Justice J.F.A. Soza, unquestionably one of Sri Lankas great legal minds of recent times, remembered with affection and admiration for his contribution to the countrys jurisprudence  attested by his numerous judgments and legal writings, and his contribution to legal reform  he was instrumental in drafting the The Code of Criminal Procedure 1979.

Secondly, it marks the launch of the fourth volume of the Judges Journal. Thirdly, today also witnesses the landmark launch of the online legal database of the Sri Lanka Judges Institute  SLJI NET.

I am sure Justice Soza, who was also a Director of the Institute, and the progenitor of many cutting edge and frontier pushing innovations in field of judicial remedies, like mareva injunctions and Anton Pillar orders will be loudly applauding the Institutes journey into the exciting world of legal cyberspace.

Joseph Francis Anthony Soza, born in 1917, educated at Maris Stella College, Negombo, after an illustrious academic and extra curricular achievement, crowned himself with two degrees from the University of London  the Bachelor of Arts, Degree and the Bachelor of Laws, Degree and had himself admitted as an Advocate of the Supreme Court of Ceylon in the year 1948. He joined the judiciary in 1957 as a Supernumerary Magistrate and progressed without blemish in his judicial career and with excellence, retiring as a Judge of the Supreme Court in the year 1984, a judicial career spanning 27 years.

Even after retirement he remained active, as the Editor-in-Chief of the Sri Lanka Law Reports, a Director of the Sri Lanka Judges Institute, Chairman of the Human Rights Task Force, and Chairman of the Sri Lanka Foundation. He was a much sought after Arbitrator in commercial arbitrations as well for several years.

In the year 1991 Justice Soza, as the first Director of the Judges Institute, launched the first volume of the Judges Journal, expressing the hope in his editorial that the Journal will truly become the voice of the Judges in due course.

Today it speaks for the fourth time. I wish it every success.

Justice Soza contributed a few articles himself to the Journal, one of which is the much cited article on The Interim Injunction in Sri Lanka. In that he deals

with mareva injunctions and Anton Pillar Orders, new common law instruments fashioned by the English judiciary to meet the exigencies of the times, Lord Denning being in its vanguard.

It is therefore a matter of great pride to the judiciary of Sri Lanka that Lord Denning himself having perused the Justice Sozas article wrote him a letter in 1992 in which he had this to say  I congratulate you on it you have expounded the law clearly and accurately. I am much impressed.

Scholarship, clarity of thought and expression were Justice Sozas forte.

It is therefore befitting that todays milestone  the launch of the of the online legal database  SLJI NET  should coincide with the Justice Sozas Memorial.

The online legal database is a leap into the future.

We are half way through the second decade of the twenty first century. We have well and truly entered the new millennium. The Industrial Revolution that began three centuries ago has given way for the industrialised world, to the Information age. The birth of the information age is earth shaking in terms of how we work, transmit, store and retrieve information.

The world is changing due to the rapid proliferation of electronic information and increasing interdependence amongst individuals, multi-national companies, and governments arising from a global market place. This presents novel and unique legal challenges that previously did not exist. These challenges compel us to

re-think deeply how we resolve legal conflicts.

Today litigation transcends geographical boundaries. Commercial globalisation has given rise to a complicated matrix of legal, technology and compliance requirements. This complex international interconnectivity has driven a

dramatic expansion in volume of data created and stored in an electronic format, commonly referred to as Electronically Stored Information.

The ease with which electronic information/data is created, replicated, transmitted and stored  unconstrained by traditional geographic borders- places profound stress on traditional legal notions of custody and control.

Laws made in the age before personal computers and the internet are now severely outdated.

Websites, social networks, email, text messaging, computer-generated or stored documents and the like constituting new communications technologies challenge evidentiary rules grounded in a more tangible former reality. Authentication of such evidence is perhaps the most difficult challenge to courts seeking to determine its admissibility.

Due to the enormous growth in electronic correspondence, electronic writings (known as e-evidence) have evolved into a fundamental pillar of communication in todays society.

Electronic communications have revolutionized how the world does business, learns about news and shares news, and how it instantly engages with other actors across the globe. It is said that ninety one percent of todays online adults use some form of electronic communication regularly in their everyday lives. No wonder then, that various forms of electronic evidence are increasingly being used in both civil and criminal litigation.

During trials, judges are often asked to rule on the admissibility of electronic evidence. How the court rules on questions of admissibility could substantially impact the outcome of a civil lawsuit or determine the difference between conviction or acquittal of a defendant.

As courts continue to grapple with this new electronic frontier it is important to stress that electronic evidence is subject to the same rules of evidence as paper documents. However, the unique nature of e-evidence, as well as the ease with which it can be manipulated or falsified, creates hurdles to admissibility not faced with other evidence.

In our law admissibility of electronic evidence is governed by the Evidence Ordinance and the Electronic Transactions Act No. 19 of 2006 as amended. But there are hardly any decisions by the superior courts, other than the one by Justice K.T. Chitrasiri that I know of, to guide one in the application and or interpretation of the provisions of the latter Act. Where then is guidance to be sought? Online legal database?

Because e-evidence is subject to manipulation and questions of authorship are often hotly disputed, the requirement to authenticate is usually the most difficult to overcome.

Let us look at some of the categories of electronic evidence with which some of the Judges of the original courts, especially in the criminal filed, might have encountered. Examples would include,  Website Data, Social Network Communications and Postings, Email, Text Messages, and Computer Stored/Generated Documents and the like.

According to newspaper reports the Bond Commission is reputedly dealing with thousands of pages of text messages. All these pose unique problems and challenges for proper authentication and therefore deserves independent consideration.

Information appearing on private, corporate and government websites is often proffered as evidence in litigation. Printouts of web pages will be required to be

authenticated as accurately reflecting the content and image of a specific web page on the computer.

But private websites are not self-authenticating and therefore require additional proof of the source of the posting or the process by which it was generated. Perhaps a webmaster might be required to establish that a particular file, of identifiable content, was placed on the website at a specific time. This may be done through direct testimony or through documentation, which may be generated automatically by the software of the web server.

In jurisdictions elsewhere the most common method of authenticating website data is to have a competent witness testify that he typed in the URL of the website; that he logged onto the site and viewed what was there; and that the exhibit (printout) fairly and accurately reflects what the witness saw. This is of course no different than that required to authenticate a photograph or other demonstrative exhibit.

Email and text message evidence also raises novel authentication issues. The general principles of admissibility are essentially the same since text messages are a distinctive type of electronic evidence, namely, the use of a cell phone to send personalized electronic communications. Text messages sent between cell phone users are treated the same as email for purposes of authentication.

Typically such messages are admitted on the basis of identifying the author who texted the proffered message. However, mere ownership of the phone that originated the message is not sufficient. As in authentication of email, authorship can be determined by the circumstances surrounding the exchange of messages; their contents; who had the background knowledge to send the message; and whether the parties conventionally communicated by text message and the like.

It appears that like email and social media, text messages also have certain self-authenticating features. As we know, email messages are marked with the senders email address, text messages are marked with the senders cell phone number, and Facebook messages are marked with a user name and profile picture. But given that such messages could be generated by a third party under the guise of the named sender, the majority of jurisdictions have not equated evidence of these account user names or numbers with self-authentication. Likewise even though text messages are intrinsic to the cell phones in which they are stored, cellular telephones are not always exclusively used by the person to whom the phone number is assigned.

Consequently such indicia can only be used as circumstantial evidence of authenticity to be considered, along with other circumstantial evidence, in the totality of the circumstances.

Online search of other jurisdictions also show that certain basic characteristics are reckoned in determining whether text message evidence has been properly authenticated. For instance, these will include an examination of the sequential consistency with another text message sent by the alleged author (based on the text message number); the authors awareness, shown through the text message, of details of the alleged authors conduct; inclusion in the text message of similar requests that the alleged author made by phone, email, or other media during the time period; and the text messages reference to the author by the alleged authors nickname and the like.

This of course throws up another rule of evidence you might well re-call. The Best Evidence Rule.

The best evidence rule applies when a party wants to admit as evidence the contents of a document at trial, but the original document is not available. The party must therefore provide an acceptable excuse for its non-production. If the

document itself is not available, and the court finds the excuse provided acceptable, then the party is allowed to use secondary evidence to prove the contents of the document and have it as admissible evidence.

A recurring factual in scenario in e-evidence involves situations where copied or transcribed text messages are sought to be led in evidence, only to realize thereafter that the texts have been purged by the carrier. Transcripts made by law enforcement officers at the time the cell phone is seized are often proffered as evidence of the messages and must be authenticated as an accurate transcription. Such transcriptions of text messages have been held not to violate the Best Evidence Rule if the proponent satisfies that originals are lost or have been destroyed, unless the proponent lost or destroyed them in bad faith. Guidance on these matters of evidence have necessarily to be culled from decisions obtained from online legal databases and applied locally as persuasive authorities and or arguments.

Take for example computer stored documents.

Computer-generated material is the product of the machine itself (not a person) operating according to a program. When a computer is simply used as a typewriter, computer-stored documents may be authenticated by a percipient witness or by distinctive characteristics that establish a connection to a particular person. The mere presence of a document in a computer file will constitute some indication of a connection with the person or persons having ordinary access to that file.

The process of authentication may also involve a description of the system or process to produce a particular result, and evidence showing that the process or system produces an accurate result. If the computer is performing more complex manipulations a more elaborate foundation may be required. Testimony about the computer equipment, the hardware and software, the competency of the

operators, and the procedures for inputting data and retrieving the output may be necessary, particularly if these elements are challenged. Authenticity may also depend on the accuracy of the process that generates the computer documents.

Then there enters the Advocates bugbear  hearsay. Even after properly authenticating an e-evidence exhibit, there is a difference between computer-stored and computer-generated documents/statements. Computer-stored documents are entirely statements by persons and, if offered to prove their truth, can be considered hearsay. But computer-generated materials are not statements by persons, but rather are the product of the machine itself operating according to a program. So they do not fit the definition of hearsay. A point worth remembering.

All these are challenges confronting lawyers and Judges in the information age.

Let me turn to another area of cutting edge technology and its use as evidence in court proceedings.

Recently, I had occasion to use Google maps in a fundamental rights application to demonstrate what was alleged by the Petitioners to be an encroachment into a reserved forest by unauthorized persons  an act declared by law to be illegal. Nobody objected to it. But the question is, was it admissible as evidence?

Google maps are the product of the information age. As indeed Wikipedia. They are sources of information and factual data available on the Internet. Are they admissible in a court of law? How do you prove their authenticity ? Or should you be permitted to call in aid other principles from the law of evidence? Can, for instance, judicial notice be taken of them? Or rather ought not judicial notice be taken of them?

The Evidence Ordinance section 56 says No fact of which the court will take judicial notice need be proved.

Let us visit the fundamental rights jurisdiction again. Very often in school admission cases where distances from a school matter cannot Google mapping technology which is admittedly an accurate measure of distances be accepted as a readily provable fact? Cannot the judge take judicial notice of this readily provable fact?

In several jurisdictions computers are a common sight in courtrooms. Judges sit behind screens. Laptops and tablets are available in court to counsel. Answers to factual questions that arise in court are now just one search away. Can information sources from government websites, mapping services or official reporting agencies, including reports of cases in the SLJI NET website admissible under the judicial notice doctrine?

This is an important issue to be addressed going forward  and will impact vastly on delivery of justice and management of judicial time.

The ever-evolving technological medium identifying websites and information sources is bound to expand in the coming decades. Elsewhere, if not in Sri Lanka at present, judges, lawyers and litigants are already relying on search engines to find facts, investigate witnesses, and prepare their cases before trial. Jurors have taken to researching through the Internet, and judges are resolving questions through independent Internet research.

What we must be looking at here is a new framework to be designed to organize and categorise the potential information sources. The boundless avenues for fact finding presented by the Internets vast repository of information requires us to look at sweeping away evidentiary hurdles that might frustrate efforts to bring

information obtained on the internet into the court room. We must revisit evidentiary rules which make little sense when applied to facts gleaned online.

I believe that evidentiary hurdle to the admission of online sources based on the hearsay rule can be swept away by taking judicial notice of information contained on pertinent websites which can be considered to be extremely reliable, highly relevant and unobjectionable. Judicial notice provides a sensible path through this legal obstacle course.

I ask why not, when we happily rely on the information in our daily lives when we drive around using the Google maps, where ever in the world !

I must therefore commend to the members of the Judges Institute to lead the way in formulating a framework for the application of judicial notice in the information age and help realise the Justice Sozas dream of becoming the voice of the Judges in the cause of justice in the information age. It will help increase predictability and consistency in judicial rulings, because information technology will continue to revolutionize how the world does business and how individuals instantly engage with other across the globe.

E-evidence is undeniably a critical new evidentiary frontier which has left both judges and attorneys struggling to understand how the admissibility of this new information fits into existing legal paradigms. Despite this uncertainty, one thing is clear, it is that the use of e-evidence will continue to play an ever-increasing critical role in both civil and criminal litigation. Because e-evidence can have a substantial impact at trial, it is vitally important for attorneys and the court to stay in touch with ongoing legal and technological developments.

There is no better way to do it than go online, and innovate new paradigms to meet new challenges in the delivery of justice.

It is the duty of any judicial system to prepare and meet these challenges. And at the same time it is the duty of the Judiciary to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by information technology to offer a professionally excellent service to the community.

Nothing less is expected of you.

Thank you.
The following day, the 79-year-old Karroubi, who is taking medication for heart problems, was taken to hospital as a result of high blood pressure. While there, at least two regime officials visited him and had conversations with him about his demands. Later on Thursday, Karroubis family announced that he had ended his hunger strike after receiving assurances that the intelligence agents would be removed from his home.

The CHRI article on this situation suggested that the Rouhani administration might take further action and push for the fulfillment of Karroubis second demand. This optimism was apparently based on the growing expressions of support for Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard, both of whom have also been subject to house arrest since 2011. This focus is not only coming from the overwhelmingly pro-democracy population of Iran, but also from certain Iranian legislators and other politicians.

Though now banned from the public eye because of his status as a reformist figurehead, former President Mohammad Khatami has demanded that Rouhani take a more assertive stance on the house arrests, which were major reformist talking points in Rouhanis campaign and arguably helped him to secure electoral victories both in 2013 and this past May. However, the CHRI points out that Khatami has publicly acknowledged the Iranian president does not have the power to end the house arrests on his own.

Rouhani himself acknowledged this fact soon after winning his second term in office. In speeches immediately following his victory, he indicated that freedom for Karroubi and Mousavi would depend in large part upon institutions like the judiciary, which has been accused of being increasingly beholden to the hardline paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. These comments clashed with Rouhanis statements on the campaign trail suggesting that a stronger mandate for his second term could lead to follow-through on the promises of freedom for the political prisoners.

Accordingly  and contrary to the optimism expressed by the CHRI  other outlets like The Guardian have reported that there is no indication that any elements within the Iranian regime have responded to Karroubis demand. Furthermore, Karroubi himself expressed an upsettingly realistic attitude about his prospects when issuing the demand. His wife has told reporters that he does not expect a fair trial, and yet will respect the verdict, as long as the trial is conducted publicly.

In reporting upon Karroubis initial announcement of his hunger strike, Iran News Update indicated that there was a possibility of this opening up the elderly leader to additional pressure by the regime. The announcement of intelligence agents removal is perhaps a hopeful sign, but there is absolutely no guarantee that the regime will actually follow through on the promise. In other instances, officials have made the barest compromises with hunger strikers in order to convince them to bring an end to protests that had attracted a significant amount of public attention.

In various cases, the regime has gone on to renege on its promises, leading groups like the CHRI to the conclusion that political prisoners had been tricked into ending their protests before they could achieve their goals. This language has been applied to the cases of civil rights activists Ali Shariati and music distributors Mehdi and Hossein Rajabian, among others.

Even if Tehran does remove surveillance devices from Karroubis home in line with his demands, it is possible that this could be seen as an opportunity for authorities to engage in additional abusive activity as long as Karroubi remains under indefinite detention. The trend of arbitrary an extraneous punishment for political prisoners is certainly ongoing. On Friday, another CHRI report highlighted the case of Reza Shahabi and explained that he had recently been ordered to return to prison to serve the months the he had spent on medical leave from a prison sentence that had since expired.

Only after complying with the initial order was Shahabi told that he would be serving an additional year on the basis of his alleged involvement in a 2014 clash between prisoners and guards, in which Shahabi himself was injured after prison authorities raided a ward full of political prisoners. On August 9, Shahabi began a hunger strike in protests against this unlawful sentencing, illustrating the apparent fact that when a hunger strike like Karroubis ends, another is never very far behind.

Naturally, figures like Shahabi cannot be expected to receive the same level of nationwide attention as figures like Karroubi. But some hunger strikers do indeed achieve national renown and spark solidarity protests, especially when the act of self-starvation stretches on for weeks. At the beginning of this year, for instance, dozens of people assembled outside of Evin Prison to demand action on his case after the hunger strike by human rights activist Arash Sadeghi exceeded 70 days. The outcry compelled regime authorities to grant conditional release and a case review to Sadeghis wife, whose arrest in October had sparked his hunger strike.

Of course, the promise of a judicial review is scarcely a compromise, and it is rare that Iran releases a political prisoner ahead of schedule or even demonstrates a commitment to taking legal proceedings seriously. The countrys legal system is subject to frequent international criticisms for carrying out unfair trials which bar political prisoners from access to their lawyers and result in guilty verdicts after only minutes-long trials behind closed doors.

These unfair trials have gained particular international attention in recent months when they have been directed against Western nationals accused of spying. The latest such figure to be made publicly known is Xiyue Wang, a US citizen and Princeton University researcher who has been sentenced to 10 years in prison on the basis of his copying documents from a library as part of his research. On Friday, Reuters reported that Wang had been denied an appeal request, thus casting doubt not only on his prospects for a fair hearing but also on the Rouhani administrations promise of moderation in the form of engagement with the wider world.
Illness, ill-feeling and protest  thats the fall-out from the bad water dumped into the reticulation system in the small western bay towns of Paengaroa and Pongakawa this week.

Its also left residents demanding answers and reassurances from the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, and the community Facebook page boiling over with complaints.

I am not going to pay my water bill, says Ross Phillips of Pongakawa. Fairs fair.

My son went upstairs for a shower one evening and next minute hes screaming my heads burning, my backs burning, says another affected resident Michelle Mohi of Paengaroa. And I am going whaaaaat? That was Monday night about 8.30pm and she had to rinse her son off with milk and juice. Anything out of the fridge.

It made me feel dizzy, queasy and tired the first time round says Gaylene Conroy. And I am feeling ill again.

This weeks bad water didnt affect Carrie Kidd this time. But its the councils approach; they dont tell anyone the water is bad, we have to find out the hard way. And the hard way was when she bathed five-month-old son Quinn a few months ago and he broke out in a full body rash.

He had sensitive skin anyway but the water just set his treatment back to square one.

According to the council what happened this week is believed to have been caused by a section of water line that had been out of commission being re-commissioned without adequate flushing.

This led to a body of water with higher than normal pH entering the main system, affecting some properties in Paengaroa and Pongakawa. On Tuesday morning the council advised residents it was aware of the issue.

It also advised consumers to test their water and if it felt slimy they should run their taps for several minutes. If left running most home systems would flush within 10 minutes. And then what people probably needed to hear most  Water with high pH is not unsafe, but can cause discomfort to people with sensitive skin, says the councils utilities manager, Kelvin Hill.

Thats because the water is amore alkaline than it should be.

And its not the first time. Carrie says high pH levels were present on March 24, again on April 4 and then again Monday night. There was stuff floating on the surface  like petrol floats on water. And all they tell us is if its oily, dont use it. Well, we are paying for our water and its really annoying. We are paying for something we cant use.

Out at Pukehina Gaylene says she was suffering another bout of queasiness, dizziness and tiredness for the second time this year. At first she thought it was a bug, now she blames the bad water. I didnt see a doctor because I thought I was being overly-dramatic. But now I learn a lot of people were feeling the same way.

An advisory from Toi Te Ora Public Health confirms the main concern with the pH level was a skin irritation in some people.

However Gaylenes disappointed because she says she trusted someone with her health. Who is responsible? Who can reassure us this wont happen again?

On Monday night on SH2 at Pongakawa Ross Phillips domestic water supply felt slimy. It feels like the surface layer of your skin has been worn off, like if you use oven cleaner without wearing protective gloves.

He says he was told that by the time the alarm went up about the pH levels, the water had been dumped into the system and there was no control over where it went or who got it.

People should be warned. Better still, turn the supply off. If no water comes out of the tap, no harm done.

But if the water that comes out of the tap looks like any other water, Ross says you fill a glass and drink it. You arent rubbing it on your hands to test the pH levels first.

Hes told council that until it comes back and explains the whole story, how it happened, why the levels were so high without any notification and what its doing about the problem, then he wont be paying his water bill. And theyre not going to do that!

On Monday night, as soon as the problem occurred, the council did arrive with supplies of bottled water. They were well-received.

Because I am certainly not drinking the water, says Michelle. Here in Paengaroa we have always been complaining about the crap water. She says their kettles corrode faster than anywhere and the water is so hard is stains baths, taps and toilets.

Then another council advisory Wednesday night. Residents unsure about their water quality are being advised to do a precautionary flush of their homes systems.

Thats after investigating reports of disparity in water quality in areas neighbouring Pongakawa and Paengaroa. There was flushing in Pukehina and Maketu on Wednesday to remove pockets of higher pH, and Maketu pH levels have remained within acceptable levels since Monday.

We want to reiterate that if you are unsure about the water in your home system, of if you think it feels slimy, flushing or emptying your water cylinder by running water for 10 minutes should resolve this problem, says the councils Kelvin Hill.
Around $6 million will be invested to build more new classrooms at Tauranga Boys College and Te Kura o Matapihi.

Associate Education Minister Tim Macindoe visited Tauranga Boys College yesterday to make the announcement that Tauranga Boys College will receive 9 extra classrooms and Te Kura o Matapihi 3 extra classrooms.

This extra investment will go on top of the $33 million already announced through Budget 2017 in the Bay of Plenty region.

Tim says they are focusing heavily on schools across the Bay of Plenty to keep up with the rapidly growing area and to accommodate their growing rolls, both now and in the future.

"A schools physical environment can support and inspire students success, and enable them to achieve, says Tim

The new classrooms will feature high-quality lighting, acoustics and ventilation, as well as the latest digital infrastructure to support digital learning.

"This significant investment in the Bay of Plenty region is keeping true to our commitment to invest in areas of New Zealand experiencing high growth."

The Budget 2017 has provided the Bay of Plenty region with a new school and a school expansion in Papamoa and 27 new and replacement classrooms at six other schools.

This investment also builds on the $23.2 million provided for through Budget 2016 for 14 roll-growth classrooms and a brand new school, taking the total Bay of Plenty investment over the past two Budgets to over $60 million.

Overall, Budget 2017 is investing $456.5 million in education infrastructure which takes our total commitment to school property nationwide to over $5 billion in recent years," says Tim.
An artists move to the Coromandel transformed her style in her latest exhibition Retrospective.

Charlotte Giblins art exhibition, Retrospective is a snapshot in time of her journey of new beginnings in a new country, a new town (Whitianga) and a new way of seeing the world.

In the last five years Charlotte has learnt more than just painting, she has gained a deeper appreciation and connection with the light, beauty, colour and landscape that is the Coromandel.

In the last five years my painting has transformed from an illustrative graphic style to bold abstract-realism, driving a whole new chapter of my development and growth as an artist, says Charlotte.

My background as a potter, painting animated characters on hand-thrown domestic ware, led perfectly to my earlier illustrative paintings, and this combination of creative disciplines has taught me to take off my blinkers and to see differently.

She says her latest landscape paintings are a mixture of textural areas and smooth sections, allowing her to draw together her creative history.

These artworks, which verge on abstraction, are autobiographical, describing Charlottes physical and spiritual journey.

I feel like I am now looking at the world in a whole new way. My creative confidence has grown and so has that of my drawing and painting students, many of whom had never drawn before  and have subsequently discovered artistic skills that have helped them to blossom in ways they never imagined.

Charlotte has always been involved with a broad range of creative and artistic disciplines, such as, art administration, curatorial work, retail and private tuition.

Charlottes art education in the UK was grounded in drawing and painting, and during her intensive pre-University Art Foundation Course she discovered a new passion for sculpture and 3D forms.

From here Charlotte specialised in ceramics and completed a BA(Hons) Degree in Cardiff, Wales, before setting up and running her own handmade pottery business (Bouncing Pig Pottery) for 10 years.

In April 2014, Charlotte stepped aside from art administration to concentrate fully on her own creative projects.

Charlotte moved to New Zealand with her Kiwi partner at the end of 2009, and became the inaugural Director of the Wallace Gallery in Morrinsville, a position she held until May 2012, when she moved to Whitianga. Here Charlotte returned to her painting while working as Administrator for the Mercury Bay Art Escape Trust.

In the Coromandel, she is best known for her local landscape paintings, which illustrate her adventures around the Peninsula, many of which have been published as part of a continuing Road Trip series in Coromandel Life magazine, and feature in Charlottes popular book Wandering Under Big Skies.

Charlottes first painted self-portrait (done in 2015, after a gap of 20 years) was a Finalist in the Adam Portraiture Awards 2016, in Wellington, and toured New Zealand for 18 months.

Im hugely grateful for all the support I have had here in Whitianga and love the connection that I have with my audiences through the Big Skies illustrative paintings and Wandering under Big Skies book. Its always lovely to see locals and tourists gain so much pleasure from reading it.

The free exhibition will be held onSaturday, August 19 to Monday, August 21 at the Art Centre in Whitianga from 10am until 3pm each day.
A crash between two cars is blocking one of the lanes on Cameron Road, near Tauranga Boys College.

The crash is causing motorists to drive along the median strip to avoid the collision.

Police are attending to the accident.

We will update this story as soon as more information is available.

At the scene?

Call 0800 SUNLIVE or email photos to newsroom@thesun.co.nz
The Iranian regime is curtailed from developing nuclear weapons by the Iran Nuclear Deal, but experts believe the regime is still seeking them, and the secrecy behind its nuclear program leaves us in the dark as to how far theyve proceeded. Nuclear development is said to be conducted in deep underground bunkers.

The regime in Tehran has many sophisticated ballistic missiles that are already capable of carrying warheads. According to reliable intelligence, the regime previously acquired at least six Raduga KH-55 Granat nuclear capable cruise missiles from Soviet officials in the Ukraine, but these KH-55s are several years past their service life, havent been properly maintained, and can only be launched from Russian Tupolev bombers, which the IRGC does not possess. Its believed that these missiles were acquired to use as a blueprint to enable Iran to speed up its own missile program.

In 2006, it was reported that Iran received 18 ballistic missiles from North Korea, which are able to carry a nuclear payload. These missiles, called BM-25s by the North Koreans, have a range of 4000 km, can be transported by road, and are launched from a heavy off-road MAZ-537 transporter-erector-launcher (TEL). The launcher can travel over rugged terrain.

On February 18th, 2010, an IAEA report said that Iran was believed to be working on a miniaturized warhead in secret. Allegedly, with the aid of North Korean scientists, the Iranians conducted tests at the Parchin military facility, developing designs aimed at miniaturizing nuclear implosion devices to be fitted to a Shahab-3 re-entry vehicle. To create a warhead small enough to fit into the nosecone of a missile, advanced technology is needed to convert enriched uranium into a metal that can be shaped into a dense spheroid. It is now believed that Iranian scientists have mastered this technology.

Iran has successfully test-launched its Shahab-3 missile, which has a range of 1,280 kilometers, as well as the Sejil 2. Both missiles are said to be capable of carrying a nuclear payload.

Tehran has accelerated its production of all major military equipment and defense systems. In April 2014, under Hassan Rouhani, Irans Defense Ministry announced the delivery of a large quantity of indigenous missiles to the countrys armed forces.

Government reports were announced on Press TV, saying that Irans Aerospace Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps  the Khatam Al-Anbiya Air Defence Base  had taken delivery of Qadr (Able), Quam (Uprising), Fateh (Conqueror) 110, Khalij-e-Fars (Persian Gulf) ballistic missiles, as well as a Mersad air defense system. This proves that sanctions imposed by the West have done little to stop Irans weapons industry or slow down the activity of its military sites.

Iranian Defence Minister, Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan, made it clear during the handover ceremony, that Iran will continue to boost the deterrence and defense capabilities of its armed forces and that Iran was more than capable of meeting the demands of its military. He also said that sanctions imposed by the West have had no effect on curtailing the countrys defense sector.

The new hardline Trump administration wants to get rid of the Iranian nuclear deal, and has accused Iran of financing military support for terrorists and militias. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson made a statement supporting a peaceful transition of government in Iran. This statement was interpreted by the Iranian regime as a Trump administration policy statement for regime change.

Iran ignored US criticism of its missile testing, and the US Senate voted for legislation to place additional sanctions on Iran. In response, the Iranian parliament allotted a massive increase in the IRGC budget, as well as the nations missile defense program. an additional $26m would be allocated to Irans ballistic missile program, according to sources within the administration. The regime claimed that the increases were due to Americas aggressive behavior in the region and its hostile policies towards Iran.

Iran and North Korea have already collaborated on missile development and nuclear technology. Iranian officials are believed to have been in North Korea to witness the launch of the latest intermediate ballistic missile, which is reported to be capable of carrying a large-size nuclear warhead.

A North Korean delegation attended the inauguration of Hassan Rouhani on August 3. The chairman of the Supreme Assembly of North Korea, Kim Yong Nam, stayed on in Tehran for talks with the Iranian regime. The tension between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un has reached a crisis point, so this meeting can only result in heightened tension.
They gave me a thousand dollars, says Mount Maunganui College student, Annabelle Stewart, who now has a flash new Bach Stradivarius professional trumpet in her sights.

UmmI suspect it was $2000 Annabelle. Yes, the Tauranga Harbour City Lions definitely gave her $2000.

Oh my goodness, says a speechless 16-year-old. It was morning when she rang and I must have misheard her. Oh my goodness.

Throw in the $1200 from a benevolent The Weekend Sun reader after her story appeared in the newspaper recently, plus the $700 savings already in her account, and the new trumpet Annabelle needed but couldnt afford is definitely now a happening thing.

That particular person mentioned he had been involved in music and brass banding, and he had been a music teacher whod supported other people. I am humbled.

Annabelle already has a trumpet but its no longer up to the job. The valves keep sticking no matter how much I oil and clean them. There is an issue with the slides and the air is leaking. In non-music parlance, her trumpet is knackered, broken, finished. But Annabelle is now playing in an orchestra, is auditioning for a university music degree in two or three weeks and desperately needs a new instrument. But the $5000-6000 price tag for a new professional trumpet was beyond her.

The Lions heard about her difficulty and next moment shes playing that extraordinarily difficult Concert Etude by Goedicke for the Lions at their mid-winter Christmas dinner. Then they quizzed about her about her music and her career. And that all translated into an outpouring of Christmas goodwill and the $2000 cheque from Lions was in the mail.

Its quite humbling the support I have had, says Annabelle. If people can support people they do. Its quite wonderful. And it makes me wonder what I would do if I was in the position to help others.

Annabelle is planning to leave school a year early to do her music degree next year. Having the right equipment will help me as a player get there. It would lift me to new levels. Her present trumpet is too tired to do any lifting. But theres a Bach Stradivarius professional trumpet, ideal for playing in orchestras and at uni, sitting in the Vanguard Orchestral musical store in Wellington.

Itll last me 10 years plus.

Annabelle just needs to give it another run. And if the numbers stack up, her music career is very definitely back on song. I am very, very grateful. Thank you so much.
Howdy, folks, and welcome to another winter Sunday  the penultimate winter Sunday, in fact, which is a blessing for those craving springs sweet caress.

The weather today is for showers, easing by afternoon, with a high of 15 degrees and a low of seven.

Its perfect weather to stay indoors and contemplate the ancient and mystical art of poetry. The Tauranga Writers group is holding a focus session with Shona-Ellen Barnett and Jenny Argante on the reading and writing of poetry. The event is described as a preparatory workshop in anticipation of National Poetry Day this coming Friday, when local poets will be reading their work to the public at Mount Social Club.

Come along and find out more about what makes a good poem at the Alzheimers Society House, 116 13th Ave, from 2-4pm. Entry is $5 on the door.

Elsewhere we have the usual markets and religious events that seem to prefer Sundays  find out more about them below:

WHATS ON  Sunday, August 20:

A Healing with OEFT

Heal your illness at the emotional level. Grindz, 50 First Ave 12:30 Coffee. 1 - 2:30: Tuition + Practice Optimal EFT. Koha. Info at www.eventspronto.co.nz/meaningfullife

Accordion-Keyboard Oldtime Musicmakers

At Welcome Bay Hall 3rd Sunday every month 1-4pm. All welcome. $3 entry and Ladies a plate please. Contact Ces or Joy 544 3849

Bay Bible Fellowship/Lords Day

Join us for our Worship service at 1 Peter 3:10-12. Pastor Lincoln Forlong. All welcome. Welcome Bay Primary School Hall, 309 Welcome Bay road. 10.00am. Visit us at www.bbf.net.nz

Bible Seminars

Sunday 1:45pm at Greerton Senior Citizens Hall, Maitland St, Greerton. The Good news Jesus taught Interactive, Q & A. All welcome. Refreshments provided. Vic 543 0504

Croquet

Every Sun, Tues & Fri at Tauranga Domain, Cameron Rd 12.45pm. Beginners welcome. Peter 571 0633

Czech and Slovak Club Tauranga

Czech School and Playgroup 10am - 12noon, Tauranga Boys College, Devenport Rd, guests welcome!

Farmers Market - Mount Mainstreet

Held every Sunday 9am - 1pm rain or shine! Right in the middle of Mount Mainstreet at Phoenix Car Park, Maunganui Rd. www.mountmainstreet.nz

Historic Village Market

Every 1st and 3rd Sunday monthly 8am - noon, wet or fine. Inquiries: hvm@lionsclubs.org.nz A Bethlehem Te Puna Lions Club Project.

Home Computer Club Inc.

Meets at Arts & Crafts Centre, Elizabeth St. West, on last Sun of month, from 9:30 am until 12:30 pm. More info Ph 544 2067

Introduction to Buddhism classes

Join us for a ten week course based on the DVD Discovering Buddhism. Facility donation/Koha of $5 gratefully received. Email buddhismbop@gmail.com for details

Quakers in Tauranga

In hall behind Brain Watkins House, cnr Elizabeth St/Cameron Rd 10am for an hour of mainly silent worship followed by tea/coffee & talk. 544 0448 www.quaker.org.nz

Radio Controlled Model Yachts

Meet Sun 1.30pm & Thurs 1.30pm at pond behind 24 Montego Drive, Papamoa to sail Electron & similar 3ft long yachts, for fun. Adult beginners welcome. Graham 572 5419

Spiritual Centre Psychic Cafe

There will be no Psychic Cafe meet this Sunday, because the hall has been pre-booked. Next event first Sunday of September, 3rd September, 2017. www.psychiccafe.nz

Sunday Funday

Games & activities for the whole family at Greerton Aquatic & Leisure Centre 12-3pm. Parents & caregivers are welcome & encouraged to participate. BBQ hire $15

TePuke Country Music Club

AGM 11am followed by club day 1pm. At Citizens & RSA Club. Gayle 573 8255

The English Cantata

Le Mont Baroque Flute, Recorder, Soprano, Organ, Harpsichord, Piano - 2.30 pm St Peters Anglican Church, 15 Victoria Rd, Mount. $20. School children free.

The Tauranga Kennel Assn.

30 Aug at Ribbon Parade at Waipuna Park, Kaitemako Rd, Welcome Bay. Entries taken from 9am Judging starts 10am Open to all Purebred dogs. Public welcome. Tauranga Friendship & Social Club Walks, dinners & outings for over 60s. Barbara 544 7461

Toastmasters Corkers Club

Meets once a month 3rd Sunday 2pm at Zone Cafe, Bayfair join our happy group Phone text 021 044 5 654

Wellness Art Workshop

With Mira Corbova/ Professional Artist & Inspirational Tutor: 13, 20 & 27 Aug, 11am-2pm @ The Art Lounge, 32 Devonport Rd, Tauranga Info/To Book: theartloungenz@gmail.com www.theartloungenz.com
The search for two men missing in Tongariro National Park continues, with 101 people assisting with the operation yesterday.

The searchers, most of whom are volunteers, travelled from as far as Auckland and Wellington to help out.

Most of them are expected to continue assisting today.

The Police National Dive Squad also completed a thorough search of the Mangoatawai Stream and the area which joins the Tongariro River.

Based on yesterdays search, Inspector Tony Jeurissen says further plans are being put in place.

Unfortunately, the two men have still not been found but searchers remain determined to find them," he says.

As a result of everyones relentless focus, we continue to find items of interest.

A beanie was found today, providing another clue for the search management team.

These small developments keep everyone going each day, says Tony.

With the continued dedication from all the volunteers, we will bring these men home to their whanau.

I am so grateful for the enthusiasm from so many people all week and for the ongoing support from Ngati Tuwharetoa.

Police and LandSAR teams will continue with the search today.
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While the closing of pubs has become a common sight in the past decade, the sudden closure of Surrey's favourite Inns isn't a totally new phenomenon.

Since 2010 parts of Surrey have lost a quarter of their pubs and bars , but this is a comparatively low figure compared to one parish at the start of the 20 century.

The villages of Great and Little Bookham have four pubs between them now, but at one point there were fears that every pub in the parish could close thanks to one wealthy woman who made it her goal to turn the villages dry.

Mary Chrystie lived in the Bookhams for most of her life, from the age of 20 in 1858, until she died in 1911 and, according to the book 'Mary Chrystie and Her Family' by Judith Witter, she was a strong supporter of the Temperance Movement".

The Temperance Movement was a fierce social movement against the consumption of alcohol, which began in America after the revolution in the late 18 century, and later spread to Britain and Ireland.

(Image: Judith Witter/Leatherhead & District Local History Society)



Thanks to Ms Chrystie, the Bookhams' working class men started to run out of places to drink and unwind after a hard day's labouring.

During her life she succeeded in closing at least five pubs in the two villages: The Saracen and Ring Inn on Leatherhead Road; The Fox Ale House in Little Bookham Street; The Halfway House in Great Bookham; The Childs Hall pub in Lower Road; and The Kings Arms in Church Road.

She also set about building her own hotels where alcohol was forbidden.

Tony Matthews, of the Leatherhead & District Local History Society, said "Mary Chrystie was one of Bookham's most significant historical figures. Her battle against drunkenness was motivated by a missionary zeal to help the poor.

"While some residents may have opposed her closing of local pubs, her legacy continues today through the Chrystie Recreation Ground, the former Victoria Hotel, and several eye-catching cottages.

"Overall, she was a force for good in Bookham."

Ms Chrystie was able to buy up so many pubs thanks partly to inheriting at least 52,856 from the estates of eleven relatives which, in today's money, is over 6.1 million.

The first pub to bite the dust was the Saracen and Ring Inn on Leatherhead Road which she bought in 1895 and turned into a private house called Grove Cottage.

According to Linda Heath in the book 'Bookham and Fetcham', the building had been a pub since Tudor times and was known as The White Hart until 1775. It was then that Viscount Downe bought it and renamed it to commemorate an ancestor who fought in the crusades, apparently killing a Saracen and a lion before presenting the lion's paw to the king in exchange for a ring.

Ms Chrystie had already built Merrylands Hotel in Little Bookham, opposite the train station, in 1885, which was used as a munitions factory in World War One.

After the conversion of the Saracen and Ring Inn, she built the Victoria Hotel in 1896 just further down the then-Guildford Road, which is on the corner of the High Street and is today the premises of Fine Fettle Multi-Healthcare.

In 1901 Ms Chrystie purchased The Fox Ale House, demolished it and replaced it with Little Bookham's village hall in 1912.

Next up was the Halfway House  also used as a dairy  which was turned into a private home by 1904.

The same fate befell The Childs Hall in 1903. She also bought The Kings Arms, which she turned into a bakery until it became a shop in 1905. It is now the site of John Wadsworth estate agents.

(Image: Judith Witter)

By the time of the philanthropist's death, the Windsor Castle in Little Bookham had also closed, but that cannot definitely be attributed to her. It reopened by 1913 under the Weale family and remains a pub today.

These closures left Little Bookham without a pub for several years while in Great Bookham, only brewery-owned pubs survived, such as Grade II listed The Anchor.

Remnants of the good that Ms Chrystie did for the villages include Chrystie Recreation Ground, which she built and which Bookham FC now use, as well as organising an annual summer fete and fancy dress balls.

Cunningly, she has also managed to ensure that certain places in the Bookhams remain free of the sale of alcohol to this day.

According to Judith Witter: "Part of [Ms Chrystie's] legacy she left in Bookham was to write into her will that all the land she owned, including property, should have a covenant written into the deeds meaning they cannot sell alcohol."

So if you buy one of the homes at Victoria Cottages or in Fife Way, for instance, you won't ever be able to turn your shed into a micropub.
The initial stages of the search process for Southwest Virginia Community Colleges (SWCC) new president are underway. As Dr. J. Mark Estepp prepares to retire as SWCCs president on December 31, 2017, the College and the Virginia Community College System will conduct a nationwide search for his replacement.

Southwest invites the community to provide input into the selection of the next SWCC president by participating in a brief, web-based survey. The survey can be found on the Colleges homepage at sw.edu. Responses will become part of the material considered by the Southwest Virginia Community College Local Board in the search process. The survey will be available from 8:00 a.m. August 16 through the 11:00 p.m. August 20, 2017.

Southwest Virginia Community College was founded in 1967 and is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary milestone. Over the course of five decades, the college earned its place as the number one college the residents of its geographic region chose to attend. For SWCC, being number one means being committed to bringing the best educational experience possible to the people of Buchanan, Dickenson (partial), Russell, and Tazewell Counties.
Black bear sightings are becoming more common even in Smyth Countys towns. While some folks enjoy seeing the wild animals, other people arent pleased, especially after repeat visits to a home or neighborhood. Sometimes, bears can make a nuisance of themselves, but officials say ways exist to curb those behaviors.

Earlier this month, Avery Cornett advised his peers on the Marion Town Council that residents keep bringing nuisance bears in the town to his attention.

Cornett was concerned that some of the bears are getting used to people.

He encouraged people to secure their garbage and put it out for collection at the last possible time.

Police Chief Rex Anders has also urged citizens to not leave dog and cat food sitting outside and to ensure that their trash is in a secure container. He additionally advised citizens to leave bears alone.

The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries notes that Virginia is home to a healthy population of black bears  one of our biggest conservation success stories. Black bears are found almost everywhere throughout the commonwealth, so it is common for people to live, work and play in bear country. It is incredibly important for people to learn the facts about black bears and to know what they can do to prevent conflicts. In this way, we can make sure we keep bears wild and coexist in this beautiful state for generations to come.

The DGIF offers these additional tips when a bear is spotted in a neighborhood:

 Secure garbage in bear-resistant trash cans or store it in a secure building.

 Keep your grill clean.

 Remove bird feeders if a bear is in the area.

 Dont put meat scraps in a compost pile.

 Make sure your neighbors are following the same recommendations.

The DGIF website also advises that if you encounter a bear:

 Do not run. Running could prompt the bear to chase. If in a group, stay together and make sure that your dog stays leashed.

 If the bear hasnt seen you, calmly leave the area, while making a bit of noise so the bear will not be surprised by you.

 If the bear has seen you, back away slowly while facing the bear. Speaking softly may also let the bear know you mean no harm.

 In the unlikely event that a black bear attacks you, fight back. Black bears have been driven away with rocks, sticks and even bare hands.

To learn more about bears, visit www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/bear/.
Malware targeting Linux systems is growing, largely due to a proliferation of devices created to connect to the Internet of Things.

That is one of the findings in a report WatchGuard Technologies, a maker of network security appliances, released last week.

The report, which analyzes data gathered from more than 26,000 appliances worldwide, found three Linux malware programs in the top 10 for the first quarter of the year, compared with only one during the previous period.

Linux attacks and malware are on the rise, wrote WatchGuard CTO Corey Nachreiner and Security Threat Analyst Marc Laliberte, coauthors of the report. We believe this is because systemic weaknesses in IoT devices, paired with their rapid growth, are steering botnet authors towards the Linux platform.

However, blocking inbound Telnet and SSH, along with using complex administrative passwords, can prevent the vast majority of potential attacks, they suggested.

New Avenue for Hackers

Linux malware began growing at the end of last year with the Mirai botnet, observed Laliberte. Mirai made a splash in September when it was used to attack part of the Internets infrastructure and knock millions of users offline.

Now, with IoT devices skyrocketing, a whole new avenue is opening up to attackers, he told LinuxInsider. Its our belief that the rise were seeing in Linux malware is going hand in hand with that new target on the Internet.

Makers of IoT devices havent been showing a great deal of concern about security, Laliberte continued. Their goals are to make their devices work, make them cheap, and make them quickly.

They really dont care about security during the development process, he said.

Trivial Pursuits

Most IoT manufacturers use stripped down versions of Linux because the operating system requires minimal system resources to operate, said Paul Fletcher, cybersecurity evangelist at Alert Logic.

When you combine that with the large quantity of IoT devices being connected to the Internet, that equals a large volume of Linux systems online and available for attack, he told LinuxInsider.

In their desire to make their devices easy to use, manufacturers use protocols that are also user-friendly for hackers.

Attackers can gain access to these vulnerable interfaces, then upload and execute the malicious code of their choice, Fletcher said.

Manufacturers frequently have poor default settings for their devices, he pointed out.

Often, admin accounts have blank passwords or easy-to-guess default passwords, such as password123,' Fletcher said.

The security problems often are nothing Linux-specific per se, said Johannes B. Ullrich, chief research officer at the SANS Institute.

The manufacturer is careless on how they configured the device, so they make it trivial to exploit these devices, he told LinuxInsider.

Malware in Top 10

These Linux malware programs cracked the top 10 in WatchGuards tally for the first quarter:

Linux/Exploit, which catches several malicious trojans used to scan systems for devices that can be enlisted into a botnet.

Linux/Downloader, which catches malevolent Linux shell scripts.Linux runs on many different architectures, such as ARM, MIPS and traditional x86 chipsets. An executable compiled for one architecture will not run on a device running a different one, the report explains. Thus, some Linux attacks exploit dropper shell scripts to download and install the proper malicious components for the architecture they are infecting.

Linux/Flooder, which catches Linux distributed-denial-of-service tools, such as Tsunami, used to perform DDoS amplification attacks, as well as DDoS tools used by Linux botnets like Mirai.As the Mirai botnet showed us, Linux-based IoT devices are a prime target for botnet armies, the report notes.

Web Server Battleground

A shift in how adversaries are attacking the Web has occurred, the WatchGuard report notes.

At the end of 2016, 73 percent of Web attacks targeted clients  browsers and supporting software, the company found. That radically changed during the first three months of this year, with 82 percent of Web attacks focused on Web servers or Web-based services.

We dont think drive-by download style attacks will go away, but it appears attackers have focused their efforts and tools on trying to exploit Web server attacks, report coauthors Nachreiner and Laliberte wrote.

Theres been a decline in the effectiveness of antivirus software since the end of 2016, they also found.

For the second quarter in a row, we have seen our legacy AV solution miss a lot of malware that our more advanced solution can catch. In fact, it has gone up from 30 percent to 38 percent, Nachreiner and Laliberte reported.

Nowadays, cyber criminals use many subtle tricks to repack their malware so that it evades signature-based detection, they noted. This is why so many networks that use basic AV become victims of threats like ransomware.
Health officials in the United Kingdom are doubling down in their efforts to reduce childhood obesity. Their new plan is to lessen children's caloric intake by reducing the amount of calories in food items most eaten by children.

The Next Stage

UK Department of Health and Public Health England recently announced the next stage of their serious efforts to combat childhood obesity. What they plan to do is to set targets to reduce the amount of excess calories in popular food items. This includes ready-to-eat meals, burgers, pizzas, and other savory food items.

To clarify, accepting and following the target caloric reductions will be merely voluntary for the food industry. However, officials at the government's advisory board are prepared to legislate accordingly should they refuse to respond.

Included in the plan is the $6.4 million funding for a new obesity policy research unit at the University College London. The research unit will be conducting comprehensive studies on childhood obesity, which is a problem for 1 in 3 children who are either overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school.

Following Sugar Reductions

The latest initiatives to reduce calorie intake follow in the footsteps of previous efforts to reduce sugar in food products. As it stands, the Soft Drinks Industry Levy has already been passed into law, with a comprehensive sugar reduction program set to take effect by 2020, the main point of which is to reduce 20 percent of sugar content in food items by the set target date.

Authorities pushed through with the new calorie intake reduction program because although sugar reduction was a significant first step to remedying the problem of childhood obesity, they believe that calorie overconsumption will continue to be a problem if not tackled with further action.

Caloric Overconsumption

In the press release, the DoH and PHE stated that adults are currently consuming an average of 200 calories over the suggested daily calorie consumption, and what's worrying is that children are closely following in the adults' footsteps especially since food sources are more accessible than before.

Currently, more and more children in the UK are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, some of them as young as 7 years old. What's more, it is estimated that 40,000 deaths in the UK can be attributed to being overweight or obese.

"We will work with the food companies and retailers to tackle this as the next critical step in combating our childhood obesity problem," said Duncan Selbie, PHE chief executive.

Childhood Obesity In The United States

Since the 1970s, the rate of childhood obesity in the United States has more than tripled. About 1 in 5 children between the ages of 6 and 19 are obese.

Some causes of obesity pointed out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention include genetics, metabolism, eating and physical activity behaviors, social and individual psychology, and other environmental factors.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced that one of the largest near-Earth asteroids will safely fly past the planet on Sept. 1 at a distance of 7 million kilometers.

NASA says the next time the 4.4-km large asteroid Florence will fly close to Earth again will be after the year 2500, which is why scientists are keeping tabs on the celestial body for the upcoming flyby.

Scientists are already preparing ground-based radars to be able to study asteroid Florence up close.

Near, Far, Wherever They Are

Some may be curious as to why astronomers are hyped over asteroid Florence's flyby, especially since Asteroid 2012 TC4 will be skimming past Earth only 44,000 km away on Oct. 12, but NASA scientists explain that it's not only the distance but the size difference between the two space rocks that makes it exciting.

"While many known asteroids have passed by closer to Earth than Florence will on Sept. 1, all of those were estimated to be smaller. Florence is the largest asteroid to pass by our planet this close since the NASA program to detect and track near-Earth asteroids began," NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) manager Paul Chodas explains.

While Asteroid 2012 TC4 may be seen with the naked eye because of its close proximity to Earth when it passes, anyone would be able to spot asteroid Florence with a small telescope even if it is millions of kilometers away because that's just how big it is.

"[Its] visible magnitude of 9 is really bright. Every amateur astronomer will be able to see it," European Space Agency's Near Earth Object segment co-manager Rudiger Jehn said.

Anyone who is interested to observe asteroid Florence should be able to find it somewhere along the constellations Piscis Austrinus, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Delphinus from around Aug. 29 to Sept. 8.

Below is NASA's GIF representation of asteroid Florence's flyby.

Asteroid Florence Was Not An Italian Discovery

Asteroid Florence was first discovered in 1981 by American astronomer Schelte Bus who was, at that time, working at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia.

Asteroid Florence, named after the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, has been classified as a potentially hazardous near-Earth object. That may or may not be half of a binary system.

Asteroid Florence's flyby on Sept. 1 will help scientists determine if it really has a satellite and learn more about its binary system.

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Top 5 Vendors in the Global Motors and Actuators Market in Industrial Robots from 2017 to 2021: Technavio

Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recent global motors and actuators market in industrial robots 2017-2021 report. This market research report also lists eight other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170818005181/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global motors and actuators market in industrial robots from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Competitive vendor landscape

According to the research analysis, the global motors and actuators market in industrial robots, witnesses intense competition among the key vendors, who are constantly trying to provide innovative motors and actuators for industrial robot manufacturers. These vendors provide full-fledged customer services and support. They also assist in training the employees to operate the industrial robots. Vendors are providing customized industrial robots and motors for the end-user applications. They also hire professionals to test the feasibility of the robots and analyze the products on a timely basis. There is increased investment by the vendors in R&D to strengthen their product portfolio in the highly competitive environment.

According to Raghav Bharadwaj Shivaswamy, lead automation analyst from Technavio, "The motors and actuators market in industrial robots in China is dominating the global market. With the increase in shipment and sales, the global market for motors and actuators is expected to surge from this region. The market in other APAC countries like Rep. of Korea, Japan, and India wil witness a steady growth during the forecast period. The developing countries in this region have an increased need for factory automation to leverage their profits and provide better quality products, which augurs well for the growth of the market."







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Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free.

Technavio market research analysts identify the following key vendors:

ABB

ABB provides motion, robotics, industrial automation, electrification products, and power grids to various end-user segments. ABB has its presence in more than 100 countries and provides customized services to different process and discrete industries. ABB focuses on the following strategic areas maintaining a competitive position in terms of product offerings with modern designs, consulting, and advanced software-based services.

Applied Motion Products

Applied Motion Products is a manufacturer and provider of motion control products. It provides servo motors, stepper motors, drives, gearheads, motor controllers, and power supplies to different industrial segments. It also offers customized and standard products to various end-users.

FAULHABER

FAULHABER provides small and miniature drives, motion controllers, DC-micromotors, brushless motors, servo components to various application areas like robotics, medical and laboratory technology, aerospace and automation technology. It serves automation requirements of various industries, such as aerospace, robotics, optical systems, healthcare, and laboratory technology.

Nippon Pulse (News - Alert)

Nippon Pulse is a manufacturer and supplier of motion control products and has a wide range of motion control solutions. It provides stepper motors, servo motors, controllers, drives, and linear shaft motors to various end-user industries. The company provides motion control solutions to industries that require high-precision products.

Schneider Electric (News - Alert)

Schneider Electric offers automation systems and solutions under its industry division. Distributors account for most of the company's sales revenue under indirect sales channels. The company provides integrated energy management solutions. It serves various markets, such as energy and infrastructure, data centers and networks, buildings, residential, industries, and machines.

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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 [email protected].

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170818005181/en/
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
CHARLESTON -- Members of Chapter KQ, P.E.O., met recently to present an award to Bridgette Jones. She has received a grant from the P.E.O. Program for Continuing Education Project to be used for needed materials and supplies as she completes her master's degree in School Counseling at Eastern Illinois University.

P.E.O. (Philanthropic Educational Organization), one of the pioneer societies for women, was founded in 1869 on the campus of Iowa Wesleyan College and has become an international organization of more than a quarter of a million members in chapters in the U.S. and Canada. The P.E.O. sisterhood is passionate about its mission of promoting educational opportunities for women. P.E.O. makes a difference in women's lives by helping educate them through scholarships, grants, awards, and loans, and by motivating women to achieve their highest aspirations. Since 1973, the Program for Continuing Education of the P.E.O. International has awarded over $52.6 million to women who return to school to complete their education.
American Legion Auxiliary Liberty Unit 289 President Sarah Wyckoff called to order the Aug. 8 Unit meeting. The members sang in unison God Bless America. Roll call was taken with all officers present.

The Strasburg Hog Roast is Saturday, Sept. 9. Unit members volunteered for the shifts they wanted to work.

The following cards were signed: a get well card for Unit member Marilyn Montgomery, a get well card for past Department President Ramona Henricks, a happy birthday card for Unit member Betty Rosine who is celebrating her 90th birthday, a thank you card to Dana Anderson and Karen Anderson for their donations to the Mary Anderson Memorial Scholarship, and a thank you to Kay Dust for her monetary donation to the Unit.

Cinda Held, Linda Oakley, and Jill Layton reported on the 2017 Department of Illinois American Legion Convention held in July in Springfield. Sarah Wyckoff carried the 19th District colors during the procession. Strasburg was very humbled, yet proud, when they brought home the following awards:

History Committee (formerly Cavalcade of Memories) Best Narrative  Jill Layton

Dorothy Hinson Plaque for Unit with highest numerical gain in Junior membership by July 1  Strasburg Unit Membership Chairman Bonnie Lawrence

Beulah M. Unfer plaque to Children & Youth Chairman Jamie Brown for Best Overall Report

Runner up for the Pats Sole Sister Community Service Plaque  Unit Chairman Jill Layton

Roses for Remembrance Shining Star Junior Activities Plaque  Unit Chairman Linda Oakley

1978 Sluggers Plaque for Best Overall Legislative Report  Pam Hutton-Campbell

Runner up for the Pro Bowlers Plaque for Best Unit History  Jill Layton

VA&R  Homeless Veterans  Jill Layton

National Security Best Unit Report - Jill Layton (Jills Unit report was submitted to National for competition)

Best Unit Pressbook  Linda Oakley

Strasburg sponsored the following students who won a Department scholarship: Haley Mettendorf won a Past President Parley Nursing Scholarship, and Josh Layton won a Mildred R. Knoles Scholarship.

Layton advised the Unit members of a Legion/Auxiliary member benefit. As a benefit to all Legion and Unit members, Legionnaire Insurance Trust Company has $1,000 accidental death benefits. It is no cost to the members, as it is included in their dues. To sign up, members should go to: https://www.thelit.com/no-cost-legioncare. They will need their Legion/Auxiliary member number. When a reply email is received, that should be printed and put with the members death benefit information.

Linda Oakley and Cinda Held will be attending the National American Legion Auxiliary Convention in Reno, Nevada. All members were advised that National will be seeking a dues increase.

Membership Chairman Bonnie Lawrence reported on the membership dues which are beginning to be received for the 2017-2018 Auxiliary year.

The Unit members discussed the upcoming school year. Pam Hutton-Campbell was given $150 to purchase school supplies for students in need and take to school. The Unit members will also bring art supplies to give the Stewardson-Strasburg art teacher for the Give-10-to-Education program.

As the Units September service project, they will assemble bags for the local law enforcement agencies. The October service project will be the veterans needs drive.

The following dates were put on the Auxiliarys calendar:

Saturday, Sept. 23  19th District Fall Convention at Champaign Unit 24

Saturday, Oct. 14  National Mission Training and National Junior Conference at Springfield

Friday, Oct. 27  Annual Halloween Soup Supper

Sunday, Nov. 5  November Toy & Tool Sale

Saturday, Nov. 11  Strasburg Santa Brigade

Sunday, Dec. 3  December Toy & Tool Sale

Friday, Dec. 15  Strasburg Auxiliary Christmas Store, 8 a.m.  4 p.m

Saturday, Dec. 16  Strasburg Auxiliary Christmas Store 8 a.m.  noon, with Santa.

19th District President Cinda Held was honored to serve as the Installing Officer of the Strasburg Unit 289 2017-2018 officers. They are: President Sarah Wyckoff, Vice President Bonnie Lawrence, Secretary and Historian Jill Layton, Treasurer Linda Oakley, Chaplain Holly Giertz, and Sgt-at-Arms Pam Hutton-Campbell.
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The world faces the prospect of more tension with China over trade, security and human rights after Xi Jinping awarded himself another five-year term as leader of the ruling Communist Party and called for self-reliance in technology, a stronger military and protection of core interests abroad. At a party congress, Xi gave no sign of plans to change the "zero-COVID strategy that has frustrated Chinas public and disrupted business and trade. He called for faster military development and announced no change in policies that strain relations with Washington and Asian neighbors. Xi is tightening control at home and trying to use Chinas economic heft to increase its influence abroad.
With memorials and symbols of the Confederacy under renewed fire, several top national Democrats have joined Louisiana Congressman Cedric Richmond in calls to clear Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol building, taking aim at the bronze and marble figures of major military and political leaders of the rebellion against the United States.

But alongside the likes of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler in the Capitol's Statuary Hall stands a Louisianian whose ties to the Confederacy are far less prominent: Edward Douglass White Jr.

Richmond, a New Orleans Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, didn't single out White by name in brief remarks Monday on the Capitol's collection of statues. Nor did House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker, both of whom issued calls of their own on Thursday. Each described the dozen statues of men who served in the Confederacy as monuments to slavery and white supremacy.

And while the figures of those more completely associated with the South's failed rebellion have attracted much of the attention, the statue to White  who fought on the losing side of the Civil War as a teenager before rising to chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court  may also be in the crosshairs.

"We will never solve America's race problem if we continue to honor traitors who fought against the United States in order to keep African Americans in chains," Richmond told ABC News on Monday. "By the way, thank God, they lost."

A spokeswoman for Richmond said his comments applied to "all members of the Confederacy" when asked specifically about White.

Historians, though, said White's legacy is marked far more by his political rise after the Civil War  a close ally of Gov. Francis T. Nicholls, White briefly served on the state Supreme Court and in the U.S. Senate. White served 27 years on the U.S. Supreme Court until his death in 1921.

Announcement of 'significant update' on Beauregard monument cancelled, New Orleans group says The announcement of a "new legal development" over New Orleans' removed PGT Beauregard monument has been cancelled, according to an announcement Tuesday morning.

White is also honored with a statue in front of the Louisiana Supreme Court building in New Orleans on Royal Street, erected not long after his death.

The selection of statues in the U.S. Capitol is controlled by state governments under current rules, with each state allowed to send monuments to two prominent former citizens to the hall, though action by Congress could change the procedure.

A spokeswoman for Richmond said the Black Caucus doesn't have plans to push legislative action, noting that Republican leaders in the House  who've fought previous efforts to remove Confederate statues  would need to back any attempts at changing the rules.

The son of a former Louisiana governor and Lafourche Parish sugar plantation owner, White was 16 years old and studying at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., when Louisiana voted to secede from the United States. He hurried home and, by most accounts, promptly joined the Confederate army, rising to the rank of lieutenant before being captured at the Battle of Port Hudson, although the exact details of White's war record are in dispute.

White was still six months shy of his 20th birthday when the Civil War ended.

After the war, he began to practice law before playing a prominent role among the "Redeemer" politicians whose rise to power in the 1870s brought about the end of Reconstruction and returned Louisiana to rule under white Democrats.

"He was a Redeemer and proud of it, like many of the men of his generation and his class," said Larry Powell, a Tulane University historian.

He was serving in the U.S. Senate when President Grover Cleveland tapped him for the U.S. Supreme Court.

White's record during his time on the high court is both complicated and voluminous  he is perhaps best known for crafting one of the bedrock principles of American anti-trust law, 'the rule of reason,' and authored a major unanimous decision striking down the use of "grandfathering" by Southern states to strip blacks of voting rights.

But his vote with the majority in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896  which upheld racial segregation  casts a shadow on his legacy.

Charlottesville mayor calls for swift removal of Lee statue RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  The mayor of Charlottesville on Friday called for an emergency meeting 

In the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the Supreme Court upheld New Orleans' law racially segregating streetcars, rejecting a challenge to the racist law by Homer Plessy and the Comite des Citoyens. White also cast votes in a number of subsequent decisions upholding racial segregation, including Berea College v. Kentucky, which allowed the state to force the previously integrated school to exclude black students.

"He certainly was a white supremacist and he certainly was a conservative," said Jonathan H. Earle, a LSU historian.

"But he's not Nathan Bedford Forrest," Earle added, referring to the Confederate cavalry commander who was a prominent early member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Louisiana placed the statue of White in the Capitol in 1955, joining a far more famous Louisianian  Huey P. Long  whose statue was sent to Washington in 1941.

White's arrival in Statuary Hall came less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, unanimously voted to overturn Plessy in the case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which found segregated public schools to be unconstitutional.
I, along with 99 percent of Americans, am very disturbed by the tragic events in Virginia over the last several days. However bad things were 
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump's racially fraught comments about a deadly neo-Nazi rally have thrust into the open some Republicans' deeply held doubts about his competency and temperament, in an extraordinary public airing of worries and grievances about a sitting president by his own party.

Behind the high-profile denunciations voiced this week by GOP senators once considered Trump allies, scores of other, influential Republicans began to express grave concerns about the state of the Trump presidency. In two dozen interviews with Associated Press reporters across nine states, Republican politicians, party officials, advisers and donors expressed worries about whether Trump has the self-discipline and capability to govern successfully.

Eric Cantor, the former House minority leader from Virginia, said Republicans signaled this week that Trump's handling of the Charlottesville protests was "beyond just a distraction."

As Charlottesville controversy swirls, Louisiana leaders condemn hate groups but largely dodge Trump As President Donald Trump faced a barrage of criticism over his comments on deadly violence 

"It was a turning point in terms of Republicans being able to say, we're not even going to get close to that," Cantor said.

Chip Lake, a Georgia-based GOP operative who did not vote for Trump in the general election, raised the prospect of the president leaving office before his term is up.

"It's impossible to see a scenario under which this is sustainable under a four-year period," Lake said.

Charlottesville mayor calls for swift removal of Lee statue RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  The mayor of Charlottesville on Friday called for an emergency meeting 

Trump's handling of the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, has shaken his presidency unlike any of the other self-created crises that have rattled the White House during his seven months in office. Business leaders have bolted from White House councils, wary of being associated with the president. Military leaders distanced themselves from Trump's assertion that "both sides"  the white supremacists and the counter-protesters  were to blame for the violence that left one protester dead. And some members of Trump's own staff were outraged by his combative assertion that there were "very fine people" among those marching with the white supremacists, neo-Nazis and KKK members.

Importantly, the Republicans interviewed did not line up behind some course of action or an organized break with the president. Some expressed hope the recent shakeup of White House advisers might help Trump get back in control of his message and the GOP agenda.

Still, the blistering and blunt statements from some Republicans have marked a new phase. Until now, the party has largely kept its most troubling doubts about Trump to whispered, private conversations, fearful of alienating the president's loyal supporters and upending long-sought GOP policy goals.

Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a foreign policy ally of the Trump White House, delivered the sharpest criticism of Trump, declaring that the president "has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to" in dealing with crises.

Corker's comments were echoed in the interviews with two dozen Republican officials after Trump expressed his views in Tuesday's press conference. More than half spoke on the record, while the others insisted on anonymity in order to speak candidly about the man who leads their party and remains popular with the majority of GOP voters.

A handful defended Trump without reservation. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, an early supporter of the president, said he "proudly" stands with Trump and said he was succeeding despite a "constant barrage of negative attacks from the left."

But others said recent events had shifted the dynamic between the president and his party.

"I was never one that was convinced that the president had the character to lead this nation, but I was certainly willing to stand by the president on critical issues once he was elected," said Clarence Mingo, a Republican state treasurer candidate in Ohio. "Now, even where good conservative policies are concerned, that progress is all negated because of his inability to say and do the right things on fundamental issues."

In Kentucky, Republican state senator Whitney Westerfield called Trump's comments after the Charlottesville protests "more than a gaffe."

"I'm concerned he seems to firmly believe in what he's saying about it," Westerfield said.

Trump has survived criticism from establishment Republicans before, most notably when GOP lawmakers across the country distanced themselves from him in the final weeks of the campaign following the release of a video in which the former reality television star is heard making predatory sexual comments about women. Many of those same lawmakers ultimately voted for Trump and rallied around his presidency after his stunning victory.

GOP efforts to align with Trump have largely been driven by political realities. The president still commands loyalty among his core supporters, though some recent polls have suggested a slight weakening there. And while his style is often controversial, many of his statements are often in line with those voters' beliefs, including his support after Charlottesville for protecting Confederate monuments.

Brian Westrate, a small business owner in western Wisconsin who is also chairman of the 3rd Congressional District Republican Party, said Trump supporters long ago decided to embrace the unconventional nature of his presidency.

"I don't think that anything has fundamentally changed between now and when the election was," he said. "The president remains an ill-artful, ill-timed speaker who uses Twitter too often. That's not new. ... The president is still the same guy and the left is still the same left."

Some White House officials do privately worry about slippage in Trump's support from congressional Republicans, particularly in the Senate. GOP senators couldn't cobble together the 50 votes needed to pass a health care overhaul and that same math could continue to be a problem in the fall, as Republicans work on reforming the tax code, which is realistically the party's last opportunity to pass major legislation in 2017.

Tom Davis, a Republican state senator representing a coastal South Carolina district, said that when Trump can move beyond the crisis of the moment, he articulates policies that could help the country's economic situation. But Davis said Trump is also part of the reason not much progress has been made.

"To his discredit, he's been maddeningly inconsistent in advancing those policies, which is part of the reason so little has been accomplished in our nation's capital these past six months," Davis said.

Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist who most recently tried to help Jeb Bush win the 2016 GOP presidential primary, said the early optimism some Republicans felt about their ability to leverage Trump's presidency has all but evaporated in the days following the Charlottesville protests.

"Most party regulars have gone from an initial feeling of guarded optimism that Trump would be able to stumble along while Mitch (McConnell) and (Paul) Ryan do the big lifting and pass our Republican agenda to a current feeling of deep frustration and despair," Murphy said.
The first couple to wed under ACT same-sex marriage laws in 2013 have endured years of legal uncertainty about their union and fear the voluntary postal survey won't deliver clarity for the country.

Joel and Alan Player tied the knot in a moonlit ceremony under the National Carillon on December 7, 2013.

Joel and Alan Player were the first same-sex couple married in 2013 before the ACT's same-sex marriage laws were overturned. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Within days their marriage was formally annulled after the High Court struck down the ACT's same-sex marriage laws.

"We had a commitment ceremony in 2009 as originally we thought that was all we'd be able to get," Alan said.
Ninety per cent of Australians think science has made life easier but nearly half of us feel that change has come too quickly.

The ANU was commissioned by the federal government to survey 1203 Australians about their views on science and science-related matters such as vaccinations, genetically modified foods, fracking and climate change.

Australians think science is more than alright.

The Australian Beliefs and Attitudes Towards Science Survey revealed more than 70 per cent of people felt at least "fairly well informed" about science, and 80 per cent said the benefits of science were greater than any harmful effects.

Australians overwhelmingly consider scientists to be people who, along with doctors and farmers, contribute most to the wellbeing of our society.
Emily Quinn Smyth's enthusiasm for science is contagious and the hearing impaired UTS masters student has her sights set on completing a PhD soon.

This week the 23-year-old Sydney-sider had the ear of several parliamentarians as she made a speech about the lack of scientific vocabulary in Australian sign language, or Auslan.

Emily Quin Smyth delivered a speech at Parliament House on Thursday and put forward a case to create new Auslan signs for science learning. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong

Emily was 15-months-old when doctors confirmed she was profoundly deaf and two when she received a cochlear implant.

On a field trip with fellow ecology masters students Emily was discussing common communication challenges faced by people who are deaf or hard of hearing, when she had a light bulb moment about how different things would be if she was an Auslan speaker.
CHARLESTON -- A man faces the possibility of up to 15 years in prison after he admitted plans to sell methamphetamine.

Kevin P. Hickman will be evaluated for a treatment program, however, and the program could be one of the requirements of his sentence if he receives probation.

Hickman, 52, for whom court records list an address of 214 Walnut Ave., Charleston, pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver.

He was accused of having the drug with plans to sell it on Feb. 11 of last year.

With no agreement on a sentence, Coles County Circuit Judge Brien O'Brien scheduled Hickman's sentencing hearing for Oct. 25.

In addition to the regular pre-sentence investigation to check criminal history and other factors, O'Brien ordered an evaluation for the Treatment Alternative for Safe Communities program.

The TASC program focuses on determining and counseling needed to end criminal behavior and could be one of the terms of a probation sentence.

A conviction for the offense to which Hickman pleaded guilty can bring a prison sentence of four to 15 years or up to four years of probation.

Assistant State's Attorney Joy Wolf is prosecuting the case and attorney Todd Reardon represents Hickman.

In other cases in court recently, O'Brien also accepted guilty pleas from:

George A. Davis, 45, whose address on record is in Sullivan, to a misdemeanor theft charge alleging he took possession of a pickup truck to which he wasn't legally entitled in Mattoon during September of last year.

A felony charge of possession of a stolen vehicle was dismissed and Davis was sentenced to two years of court supervision. That means he won't have a record of a conviction if he completes it successfully.

Davis took possession of a truck belonging to a deceased acquaintance because he thought there were no other heirs, according to Assistant State's Attorney Rob Scales who prosecuted.

Davis then tried to get the title to the truck by stating in an application that he was entitled to the truck when he actually knew that wasn't certain, Scales said.

O'Brien accepted a plea agreement that Scales and Public Defender Anthony Ortega recommended.

Gabriel L. Teat, 21, whose address on record is in Chicago, to a trespassing charge alleging he entered an apartment on Bostic Drive in Charleston on March 20, 2016, and threatened people there.

Teat was placed on probation for two years and also agreed to waive extradition to Miami-Dade County in Florida, where he faces a forgery charge.

O'Brien accepted the agreement that Scales and Assistant Public Defender Jesse Danley recommended.

Krystyna R. Anderson, 29, who listed an address of "homeless" in Mattoon, to a charge of possession of another person's debit card.

Anderson admitted using the card after taking it from a vehicle on July 20. Terms of her two-year probation sentence included an evaluation for substance abuse treatment.

Scales and Ortega recommended the plea agreement.
The federal aviation authority is getting at least one complaint every week from Canberra residents about the use of drones in the capital.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has said it was regularly receiving complaints about drones flying close to houses in residential areas.

CASA said it's receiving one complaint every week from Canberra residents about drone use. Credit:Joe Armao

A spokesman for the authority said the number of complaints has surged since CASA established an online form to report potential illegal drone use.

"We're currently getting about one complaint per week from the ACT about drones," the spokesman said.
They're supposed to make beaches safer but shark nets are responsible for killing 151 of Australia's most precious marine creatures.

The annual NSW Shark Meshing Program runs from September to April, and last year nets from Newcastle to Wollongong ensnared 301 non-target marine creatures and killed 151.

NSW's shark netting program was responsible for 151 sea creature deaths. Credit:Paul Johnston

Among the dead were two endangered Loggerhead and Leatherback Sea turtles, four Green turtles and two Hawksbill turtles.

An Australian fur seal was killed, along with two common dolphins, two indo-pacific bottlenose dolphins and 45 protected rays.
The popularity of drones and increase in their use in the territory is an issue that needs careful investigation.

While there are guidelines put in place by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority dictating where and when drones can be flown, it is unlikely that users are aware of them.

And even if private citizens flying drones do know the rules there is little reason for users to abide by them.

As there are limited ways of monitoring drone use it is hard to imagine residents will be punished for breaking the rules except in high visibility instances.
A patient is treated by paramedics after an overdose. Credit:Nine News And why should they care if their ultimate market is naive drug users too trusting to think the little satchels they are about to swig are filled with something you wouldn't use to clear blocked drains. The profits are staggering, the health risks alarming and the official response (so far) disturbing, for drug dealers are exploiting a legislative loophole that simply must be closed. Ambulance crews attend about 10,000 illicit drug-related incidents a year in Victoria. Credit:Nine News In recent times we have read about multiple drug overdoses at city nightclubs and large dance parties put down to a "bad batch" of GHB. Don't believe it for a moment. It is actually Bute but as the solvent mimics GHB once ingested, the toxicology tests do not show the initial substance swallowed.

A more accurate test is to look at police seizures to show what is on the street. In the past three years police have seized just 10 millilitres of GHB. At the same time they have seized 14 tonnes of Bute  or more than a million times more Bute than GHB. Effectively, there is no GHB in Victoria but a flood of Bute marketed as Liquid E. And, as the case with most illicit substances, the profits are insane. You can buy 200 litres of Bute for about $2000 and then sell a litre bottle to drug dealers for about $1000. They then sell it in three-millilitre soy sauce containers for $7 to $15 at a huge mark up. Anomaly in laws So how does the loophole work? While it is illegal to possess Bute for human consumption under state law, it is not illegal to import it for industrial purposes under Commonwealth law. Which means any knucklehead with a keyboard can set themselves up as a drug distributor by going online and ordering from one of dozens of Chinese manufacturers.

It also means that while you can be charged for having a soy sauce container of the stuff in King Street, you can drive a truckload down the Tullamarine Freeway without as much as a speeding ticket. There was the case of a career drug trafficker caught with several illicit products including 40 litres of Bute. While there is no doubt it was destined for the party scene, he argued in court it was intended for legitimate industrial purposes. Because his previous convictions could not be admitted, the jury swallowed the story just as clubbers swallowed his drugs. Then there is the modest-level drug dealer working out of Narre Warren. Busted with a small amount of what he thought was GHB, he was surprised when police tests showed it was Bute. He did some research and soon emailed a test order to a Chinese manufacturer and sure enough it turned up as promised. And so he sent a second order for 200 litres that arrived without delay. So our low-level ice dealer registered himself as a cleaning company, leased a warehouse and began to import tonnes of the stuff despite having no clients, no equipment and no idea about the cleaning business.

When he was arrested (after selling an undercover policeman three litres for $3000 and bragging he was selling "heaps of the stuff") he had $200,000 sitting in a bank account. And he was just a dope. Imagine the profits for any dealer with a brain bigger than a cuttlefish? In Europe and Britain, Bute-like solvent of choice is GBL (known as coma in a bottle) but in Australia that can be imported only on licence and is strictly controlled. And yet Bute is allowed in with fewer border checks than Croatian goat cheese. Market 'huge' And so law enforcement has come up with an informal deal. When Australian Border Force officers come across a big and unexplained importation of Bute they contact Victorian Drug Taskforce detectives who wander out to destroy it. They are finding it virtually daily  and that is when they are aren't specifically looking for it because it is not a prohibited import. As one drug detective said, "We are awash in the stuff. Pull over an ice dealer and he will also be carrying Bute. The market is huge."

Nightclub operators have considered recruiting volunteer first aid workers inside the venues, and some have established recovery rooms for the incapacitated. So what can we do? First the federal government must make Bute a substance that can be imported only on licence for legitimate industrial purposes. (Although some argue there are alternative products that don't mimic GHB and would be used in a nightclub to only repair barstools.) As Assistant Commissioner (Crime) Steve Fontana says, "It should not be this easy to import a substance that is this dangerous. We need to stop it before it gets into the country." Secondly, the state government can make selling more than two litres the offence of trafficking a large commercial quantity with the maximum penalty of life. There is a great deal of twaddle spoken about drugs, with alarmists suggesting anyone who has ever popped a pill will turn into a raving werewolf trying to bite the tyres of any passing vehicle.

But consider the facts. Ambulance crews attend about 10,000 illicit drug-related incidents a year in Victoria  most of them suspected overdoses. Police are required at nearly 3000, with about 6000 taken to hospital. About 4000 are found collapsed or distressed in a public space, and 15,000 people end up at a hospital after taking illicit drugs. If 40 people were admitted to hospital tomorrow with food poisoning, it would be front-page news and would result in some form of inquiry involving stern-faced officials in lab coats. But when the same number turn up every day due to drugs, it no longer invokes even a shrug of the shoulders. The Australian Criminal Intelligence Wastewater Drug Monitoring program is showing heavier use of drugs than previous survey-related research, with a city-country divide (meth in the bush and coke in big smoke). It would seem you can take the piss in a survey whereas they take it in a sewage sample. There are more than 100,000 drug seizures in Australia every year and the market continues to grow, which shows enforcement alone will never work. And the next big thing, the experts predict, will be Carfentanil  a Chinese product 10,000 times more powerful than morphine. Used to sedate fully grown elephants, it's little wonder it is leaving stupid human users stone dead  with a spate of fatal overdoses reported in Canada and the US.
The federal government should be commended not only for seeking to reduce slavery in the international supply chains of Australian companies, but for its attempt to do so without imposing undue red tape and heavy-handed bureaucracy on business. The Coalition plans to introduce legislation to compel companies with an annual turnover of more than $100 million to report each year on whether any of their suppliers use slave labour, and what the Australian management is doing to eradicate the pernicious practice.

The move, which broadly mirrors the UK's Modern Slavery Act of 2015, comes after the joint standing committee on foreign affairs and trade examined the issue at the request of Attorney-General George Brandis.

Labor claims the proposed law is insufficient because it has no penalties. The effectiveness of the law, should it pass, will need to be closely monitored. Should a lack of penalties indeed undermine the law, it can be amended. It is better to start softly, and rely on consumers and investors to reward companies that can show they are clean of slavery, and to shun those that can not.

There is profound need for change. Slavery is the world's second-biggest illicit market, behind drugs, with an estimated 45 million children, women and men treated as commodities (average price about $90). Two-thirds of the slave trade happens in our region, and across most forms of labour, particularly sex work, fishing, construction, hospitality and textiles.
Remember the ABC is one of two or three most trusted and respected institutions in Australia. Its role should not be bartered to appease a marginal party and buy votes to achieve a political aim. Gael Barrett, North Balwyn One standard for all The requirement for fairness and balance at the ABC is clearly aimed at what is broadcast to the audience. It should not matter whether the media organisation is publicly or privately owned if it is the audience experience that matters. If the ABC is to be compelled to be fair and balanced, so should all the other media organisations. Then we might have the balanced information we need for productive democratic debate, which would enhance public policy decision-making.

Strait-jacketing the ABC while allowing the Murdoch media behemoth to expand would have the opposite effect. Denny Meadows, Hawthorn FORUM Is this actually us? The most inhumane treatment of the refugees ("No man's land", The Sunday Age, 13/8) should shame us deeply as Australians. Never in my lifetime could I have believed what we have perpetrated in the denial of their human rights and the suffering they continue to endure.

Our family welcomed two young people seeking asylum over the last four years. Both these young men, because they were given a chance, are now working and contributing to our society in a constructive way. At an early age these young men had already accumulated so much loss, that most of us can hardly imagine. They are so appreciative of that chance given to them. They continue to be part of our family and always will be. Judith Morrison, Mt Waverley Shameful and unfair We pride ourselves on a system of justice in which people accused of crime are given a fair trial. Yet, refugees who have committed no crime, whose suffering is sometimes beyond our comprehension, are locked up in far-flung regions, for indeterminate periods, stretching into years. They are deprived of the usual medical, legal and vital aids we have come to expect in our society. We dare to call ourselves civilised and progressive, in the face of criticism from humanitarian organisations. Government ministers should hang their heads in collective shame, but they are not alone. The silence regarding the plight of refugees in government, in the media and on our streets has led to this illogical, expensive, harsh and inhumane policy.

Irene Goldwasser, St Kilda Let them come in The account of the dire situation on Manus Island shone a much-needed light on the continuing abuse and mistreatment of refugees and asylum seekers. No real attempt has been made to resettle these mostly genuine refugees and it's been four years. Instead this government tries to pretend they are not Australia's responsibility. As Eve Fisher's powerful article showed, we are failing in the most basic way to protect vulnerable people in a hostile environment. How many more deaths must there be before action is taken? For once I agree with Donald Trump who, after Malcolm Turnbull himself stated they were "good people", said "Why not let them into your society then"? Why not indeed.

Marian Smedley, Torquay Simplistic approach Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's accusation of the Greens party as "the party for paedophiles" was way out of line and an egregious transgression from reasoned and intelligent discussion about a complex issue. ("Twiggy snaps, branding Greens the party for paedophiles", The Sunday Age, 13/8) Mr Forrest's well-intentioned proposal for a cashless debit card as a strategy to contain "substance abuse in remote Indigenous communities", is simplistic and in practical terms, a one-size-fits-all policy proposal to an issue that is complex and multilayered. Making decisions as to what's best for people should be entrusted to the leaders in the respective communities themselves who are best placed to know what's good for them and their communities, less billionaire commentary aside.

Jelena Rosic, Mornington Policy paradox Greens Senator Rachel Siewert is opposed, quite possibly with good reason, to the cashless card debit plan for remote communities. In attacking Andrew Forrest for his advocacy of it she is quoted (The Sunday Age, 13/8) as saying, again entirely reasonably, "none of us has a monopoly on the truth and grown-ups should be able to respectfully disagree about how best to tackle difficult situations". In her next sentence she says, "I will not be dignifying his absurd and offensive comments any further."

Has political debate in Australia become so debased that the total contradiction this remark embodies has become the norm, and that debate, in fact, means exactly the opposite? Or am I missing something in seeing this as a disturbing paradox and the cause of so many of the difficulties we face in effective policy development? Michael Liffman, Middle Park The new crusades In its bid to enlarge its membership the Liberal Party ("The crusade to bring down Safe Schools", The Sunday Age, 13/8) seems prepared to embrace every right-wing group it can find.

A parent at our school from one of these Christian groups has made a number of requests over the years, such as suggesting the school remove books about fairies and witches as such subversion was indoctrinating people into the ways of occult groups. Anne Maki, Alphington Open up the mind It was refreshing to read Conal Hanna's acknowledgment that not everyone who has a view on marriage equality different from those he calls the "globalists" is a bigoted "deplorable" ("Win over the middle and we win the debate", The Sunday Age, 13/8). Of course, Hanna's recommendation that the globalists should practise "respect and humility" when engaging with those who hold differing views would mean more if it was accompanied with an assurance that the globalists might also be open to change their minds once they consider the counter-arguments.

Entering a public debate with a closed mind smacks of the intolerance the globalists often accuse others of exhibiting. Rod Wise, Camberwell The issue is legal The Reverend Lisa Stewart's letter (The Sunday Age, 13/8) concerning "God's love" in relation to marriage equality was read and re-read a number of times but still did not make any sense. For the sake of discussion; even if one accepts the concept of a God, then being open to that deity's "new ways of love taking shape in the world" is a meaningless expression.

Reverend Stewart went on to ask if marriage equality fitted Jesus' pattern of love; another expression which makes no sense given that "pattern of love" is meaningless. Marriage equality is a legal, not religious, issue. Doug Shapiro, Doncaster East The PM's stand Of course Malcolm Turnbull would consider Bill Shorten the most dangerous Labor leader ever. Unlike previous Labor leaders Mr Shorten is actively advocating against everything Mr Turnbull stands for. Of course we all know now that that everything Mr Turnbull stands for is Malcolm Turnbull being PM.

Phil Bennett, Brunswick Whose values? So Malcolm Turnbull thinks Yarra Council is utterly out of step with Australian values. As a fourth generation Australian-born citizen, I think that what we are doing on Nauru and Manus is not in keeping with my Australian values. While creating prison islands might be part of our colonial history, we have hopefully left that in our past. It is just wrong to keep people, including young children, who have sought safety on our shores, imprisoned on islands. Yarra Council has expressed what a large percentage of the community feel and have helped support a discussion on why we choose a date that was the beginning of so much pain for Indigenous people and celebrates a past where we treated both convicts and Indigenous people cruelly. Instead of the PM castigating Yarra Council, he could show some leadership by working to find a day that will allow us to celebrate with pride instead of brushing aside the suffering of so many. Marg D'Arcy, Kew East

Distract and lose Distraction 1. It's all a conspiracy by the Labor Party, in particular by Senator Penny Wong and her senior staffer in collusion with the opposition party in New Zealand. Distraction 2. Threaten to expose all those members on the Labor side who might have dual citizenship. Distraction 3. Attack the City of Yarra and its decision on Australia Day. (What a lucky break that one came up.) If these don't work, what's next? Distraction 4. Announce to North Korea that our armed forces are "locked and loaded".
Another leading light is Joshua Becker, an American father who, with his wife, writes a popular blog called "Becoming Minimalist" in which he recently shared his "7 reasons to minimise your kitchen".

If you've not heard of it, you soon will, with the announcement this week of an upcoming Australian tour by the movement's two handsome leaders, Americans Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus.

Over a year ago, I wrote of my enthusiasm for the teachings of Japanese tidying guru Marie Kondo, who advises discarding every possession that does not "spark joy". It lead to me discarding about 20 garbage bags of "stuff".

In it, he suggests discarding all duplicates (how many spatulas do you really need?), ridiculous kitchen gadgets (avocado-saver anyone?), moving less frequently used, bulky appliances into other storage and clearing counter tops entirely.

He cited the research of famous food psychologist and behavioural economist Brian Wansink of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab. The 2016 study "Clutter, Chaos and Overconsumption: The role of mind-set in stressful and chaotic food environments" showed people were more susceptible to snack on highly calorific foods in times of stress if they were in a chaotic environment.

Researchers put 101 female undergraduates in two different kitchen-like environments  one tidy and one strewn with pots and dishes. Participants were then given one of three written assignments, one which prompted them to recall a stressful time, one a calm time and one neutral. They were then left alone for 10 minutes to complete a "taste-test" of three bowls of food  cookies, crackers and carrots  in which they were asked to comment on their tastiness. Oh and they were allowed to help themselves to as much as they liked while at it.

In the tidy kitchen environment, there was no difference between participants who had been put into a stressed or non-stressed frame of mind.
Australia's Catholic church is threatening to fire teachers, nurses and other employees who marry their same-sex partner if gay marriage is legalised, in a dramatic move led by the country's most senior Catholic.

Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart, speaking exclusively to Fairfax Media, pointedly warned the church's 180,000 employees they were expected to uphold its teachings "totally", and defiance would be treated "very seriously".

"I would be very emphatic that our schools, our parishes exist to teach a Catholic view of marriage," he said. "Any words or actions which work contrary to that would be viewed very seriously.

"Our teachers, our parish employees are expected totally to uphold the Catholic faith and what we believe about marriage. People have to see in words and in example that our teaching of marriage is underlined.
Nick Xenophon has confirmed he holds dual British citizenship and may not be eligible to sit in Parliament, becoming the seventh MP whose position has fallen under a cloud.

Though born in Adelaide, Senator Xenophon's father Theo was born in Cyprus, which remained a British colony until 1960. He migrated to Australia in 1950, where Senator Xenophon was born.

Travel documents show Theo came to Australia on a British passport. As a result the UK considers him a "British overseas citizen", a class of citizenship that confers few rights on the holder.

Senator Xenophon said the citizenship category was "useless" except to his "political opponents" who he said had worked hard to use it to remove him of Parliament.
'Australia's involvement in the liberation of East Timor in 1999 was one of the more noble things our country has done in many years': former Australian prime minister John Howard. Credit:Maya Vidon Nor did I understand the Orwellian advice we received later that day: there was a ban on anyone in the Timorese government talking publicly about the need for a maritime boundary to close the Timor gap. During that first visit, Prime Minister Gusmao hosted an official dinner for Bracks at his residence at Balibar, half an hour's drive from Dili along a treacherous winding road. We stopped on the way at a small village clinging to the side of the mountain so that his wife, Kirsty Sword Gusmao, could show us her plans for a new school and a modest museum at the site of a memorial commemorating the bond between Australian soldiers and their Timorese supporters during World War II. I recalled the powerful ads that ran on Australian television in the lead-up to Anzac Day in 2005. In the ads, Australian veterans who had served in Timor called on the Australian government to stop stealing Timor-Leste's oil and gas and explained that they owed their lives to the people of East Timor. Australia buries expert advice

Australia and Indonesia held exploratory seabed boundary talks between 19 and 24 March 1970. Australia's negotiating position was set out in a McMahon Cabinet submission dated 27 February. Article 6 of the Convention on the Continental Shelf provides that a median line boundary should apply where the "same continental shelf" was "adjacent to the territories of two or more States whose coasts are opposite each other". The DFA was aware that Indonesia would be seeking a median line boundary in accordance with the convention. Australia sought to avoid a median line boundary by arguing that it did not share the "same continental shelf" with Indonesia. Australia claimed the Timor Trough, a deep channel running parallel to the Timor coast about 30 to 50 nautical miles offshore, marked the edge of Australia's continental shelf. The existence of the Timor Trough, according to McMahon, meant "the question of fixing a common boundary in the Timor Sea does not really arise". The question of whether the Timor Trough marked the edge of Australia's continental shelf was by no means clear and was debated by geologists at the time. The contrary view was that the trough was just a dint in Australia's continental shelf, which in fact extended beneath the island of Timor. If Australia's continental shelf did extend beneath Timor, then Article 6 of the convention would apply. Australia would be required to negotiate a median line boundary with Indonesia, and the permits issued north of the median line would be invalid. Advice from Australia's own expert body indicating the Timor Trough did not mark the edge of Australia's continental shelf would have been explosive. Sandwiched between the draft and final versions of McMahon's submission on a DFA file on "continental shelf boundary negotiations" is a Bureau of Mineral Resources report titled The Timor Trough  A Summary of Current Geological Knowledge. The paper, dated February 1970, concluded that there was "no evidence of oceanic crust in the floor of the Timor Trough and hence no evidence to suggest there is any continental margin between the Sahul Shelf and Timor". If, as the paper seemed to be saying, the Timor Trough did not mark the edge of Australia's continental shelf, Australia had no basis for its claim to sovereignty beyond the median line in the Timor Sea. Australia's core argument at the talks about to commence with Indonesia would be undermined.

Professor Mike Sandiford and Dr Brendan Duffy, geologists from the University of Melbourne, confirm that the Bureau of Mineral Resources was telling Australia's negotiators that there was no strong geological reason to refute Indonesia's claim of a common continental shelf between Timor and Australia. They say the weight of geological opinion, then and today, describes the Timor Trough as a buckling of Australia's continental shelf, which extends beneath the island of Timor. So expert geological opinion backs the position put by Indonesia. But the bureau's report is not discussed in McMahon's Cabinet submission. I found another copy of the bureau's report on a file dealing with Australia's negotiations with Portugal in 1974. There was a DFA covering note dated 5 March 1970 addressed to Laurence McIntyre and Kenneth Bailey, who were leading Australia's Timor Sea boundary negotiations with Indonesia. It simply stated: "Please find attached a paper prepared by the Bureau of the Mineral Resources at your request on the geology of the Timor Trough . . . This paper was originally sent to the Department on 18 February but was evidently not received." This covering note has ticks next to McIntyre's and Bailey's names, indicating that this time, at least, it was received by them. While the report may not have been received in time for inclusion in McMahon's submission, it was certainly received before the start of the negotiations with Indonesia on 19 March. Yet in his opening address at the explanatory talks with Indonesia, McIntyre completely ignored this advice from Australia's expert geological body, and instead mounted the argument that the Timor Trough marked the edge of Australia's continental shelf, and should therefore be the boundary. And in Australia's public opening address at the UN Australia Timor-Leste Compulsory Conciliation in August 2016, Australia was still claiming that the "physical continental shelves of Australia to the south and Timor-Leste and Indonesia to the north . . . are separated by the Timor Trough". Australia's claim to oil and gas fields north of the median line is built on a chimera. On a false premise that  remarkably  still underpins Australia's claim beyond the median line today.

The Independent Adversary Indonesia's decision to allow, after twenty-four years, a vote of self-determination in East Timor has been attributed to a variety of factors, including the fall of Suharto, the Asian financial crisis and the mistaken belief that the Timorese would vote to stay with Indonesia. Former Australian prime minister John Howard claims Australia was primarily responsible for East Timor's independence. Howard devotes a chapter of his autobiography to this: "When asked to list the achievements of my prime ministership of which I am most proud, I always include the liberation of East Timor in 1999." In 2015 Howard wrote, "Australia's involvement in the liberation of East Timor in 1999 was one of the more noble things our country has done in many years. It directly led to the birth of a very small country whose people remain very grateful for what we did." Howard's assessment of the significance of Australia's role in the liberation of East Timor has been embraced by the DFA. East Timor in Transition 1998-2000: An Australian Policy Challenge was published by the DFA in 2001.

It was launched by Downer and purportedly published to provide a "full and balanced account of Australia's response to the extraordinary foreign policy challenge of East Timor". While the Downer Compilation, which was being prepared simultaneously, had a veneer of academic respectability, with an expert review panel and involvement of the Opposition, as Clinton Fernandes notes, East Timor in Transition was produced by a "team of departmental officers who had worked on East Timor over the period'' so that "those who had implemented policy were assessing their own performances within the covers of a book they had themselves written, using material they had themselves selected''. Like the Downer Compilation, East Timor in Transition does not comment on the relationship between Australia's interest in oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea and its foreign policy response to the events across the Timor Sea. There is no discussion of the fact that if East Timor became independent, the 1989 Timor Gap Treaty between Australia and Indonesia dividing up oil and gas resources would cease to exist and Australia would need to negotiate a new treaty with an independent East Timor. Under this scenario an independent East Timor was a serious threat to Australia's access to oil riches  all of which were on the Timorese side of the median line. Australia's interest in oil and gas in the Timor Sea is mentioned once in the 312 pages, in a six-line section titled "Timor Gap Treaty". The brief discussion skates over the enormous diplomatic effort required by the DFA and Alexander Downer to keep Australia's claim north of the median line alive. The Australian government records from 1998-99 are still in the closed period. I have little doubt there are files discussing legal advice that an independent East Timor would have rights to oil and gas resources to the median line in the Timor Sea  and what this meant to the Australian treasury.

Australia and Indonesia made $US1.1 million from oil royalties from the Timor gap in 1998 and the figure for 1999 was predicted to rise to $US2.2 million. But that was peanuts compared with the billions in taxes and royalties expected to flow into Australian government coffers when ConocoPhillips' Darwin LNG plant was operational and Woodside's massive Greater Sunrise field developed. It is not surprising, therefore, that Australian officials were far from enthusiastic about moves at the UN to facilitate negotiations between Portugal and Indonesia about the future of East Timor. Events moved fast. In 1998 the National Council of Timorese Resistance, the Timorese leadership, was formed and Xanana Gusmao elected president. In January 1998 the ALP's shadow foreign affairs minister, Laurie Brereton, pushed through a reversal of party policy to again support self-determination for the people of East Timor. The ALP also recommended renegotiating the revenue-sharing arrangements under the Timor Gap Treaty. Downer visited Indonesia in July and pushed a plan for East Timor's "autonomy" within Indonesia, to be followed by a review of the status of East Timor at some unspecified point in the future. He said Australia wanted "Timor to remain a part of Indonesia" as a "vote on self- determination would only lead to renewed civil war in the territory". A key meeting, not discussed in East Timor in Transition, occurred in August 1998. Gusmao secretly met with BHP's senior representative in Indonesia. According to petroleum geologist Geoffrey McKee, the meeting was part of a deliberate tactical shift by the Timorese leadership to "rob the Australian government, editorial writers, and the Timor Gap contractors of reasons for arguing that independence in East Timor would 'tear up the Timor Gap Treaty"'.
CHARLESTON (JG-TC) -- A school bus driver received a traffic citation after an accident with another vehicle in Charleston earlier this week.

The bus driver, Jacquelyn C. Colet, 70, of 530 Reynolds Drive Lot 123, Charleston, was ticketed for improper backing, according to a Charleston Police Department news release.

The accident occurred about 2 p.m. Wednesday at the intersection of Fourth Street and Maple Avenue, the release said. The other vehicle, driven by Christina Price, 1404 Monroe Ave., Charleston, was stopped behind the bus, it said.

There were 12 students from Jefferson Elementary School on the bus at the time but there were no injuries, according to Charleston school district officials.

The bus was with Illinois Central School Bus, the transportation service that the school districts employs.
Show stopper ... Lou Kenny at this year's Melbourne Fashion Festival. Credit:Lucas Dawson Photography Like it or not, the appearance of older models in runway shows generates news headlines because it's still not the norm. And Adams doesn't think it ever will be. "I'm a businesswoman. Brands have to make money, we know who they design for. We know about beautiful young skin and lithe bodies, so realistically there will never be an even balance," she said. "I cynically think this is flavour of the year, or maybe the decade but I don't think we are reinventing the wheel here. It's buzzwords to me in the same way 'heroin chic' was the buzzword 10 years ago." Linda Rodin was one of the older models who featured in Karen Walker's eyewear campaign. Credit:Ari Seth Cohen

Melbourne Fashion Festival chief executive Graeme Lewsey sees it a little more optimistically. He said the progress made in ethnic diversity over the past decade is proof of what's achievable when it comes to age diversity. I cynically think this is flavour of the year, or maybe the decade but I don't think we are reinventing the wheel here. Sarah Jane Adams, jewellery designer and model "It's progressing in the right way. We're not there yet but I don't think anyone is there yet," he said. The Festival, as well as next month's City of Melbourne-run Melbourne Fashion Week both have diversity at the core of their values. But the number of older models on the runways can still mostly be counted on one hand. Anneliese Seubert, one of Australia's biggest exports during the 1990s' supermodel era, said older models are valued for both their experience and their "relatability" to consumers.

Model Anneliese Seubert was part of the 1990s' supermodel era and now mainly works in Australia. Credit:AAP Now in her mid-40s, Seubert thinks the fashion industry is succeeding in its bid for greater age diversity. "[People] like to see a bit of themselves in it. Everyone is buying [the clothes]  it's not just skinny 17-year-olds buying it. Everyone's got to get dressed," she said. While casting at least one older model in shows is becoming more commonplace, designers still face accusations of tokenism. New Zealand designer Karen Walker, who has used women aged 80-plus in several campaigns, said the casting of older models has to be done with integrity.

More than an accessory ... Iris Apfel, 94-year-old American style icon. "A lot of brands have done it and it's hard to tell if it's the new norm or tokenism or a trend people feel they should be jumping on. That's with age, gender, or anything that's beyond the 'predictable' look," she said. "I always find it slightly jarring when it's just one of the 'other'. Go hard or don't bother." In 2013 and 2015, Walker recruited Ari Seth Cohen, the US-based creator of the Advanced Style blog, to help cast two of her campaigns. Cohen, who Vogue's Vanessa Friedman has credited for helping drive interest in older fashion models, said the "clinical or depressing" stereotype of the "little old lady" is being challenged.

"Now you see ads for banks and you see women who are living their lives to the fullest  there's a cooler image of ageing," Cohen told Fairfax Media. Yet brands still struggle with how to use older models so they don't appear like "accessories". "The way brands use older women could use a shift. The way they are used is a trend  [95-year-old fashion icon] Iris Apfel did a campaign surrounded by young people. Why couldn't it just be her?" he said. Cohen, 35, said images of older models can be "powerful" but he can't understand why they still generate so many headlines.

Yazemeenah Rossi, 60, pulls ballet-inspired poses in a swimwear photo shoot in 2016. Credit:The Dreslyn "The reason I did [Advanced Style] was to change people's view of ageing but I asked why I even had to do that. It should just be the norm," he said. "There's a lot of power in showing an older woman. It's not only inspirational, it's aspirational. "When you have a wonderful older model, younger people can look at that person and think, 'I can't wait to get older, I can't wait to be as free as that person.' Now older people can look at that image and say, 'Wow, I can continue to be that person I always was'." Cohen has worked with Adams and the two have formed a close relationship. He said the applause for her at the David Jones show is because she's "badass" rather than an acknowledgment of her age.

"They're [older women] not doing it for other people. It's an expression of who they are. It's not a self conscious thing. It's not to impress someone. Or to wear the latest whatever. That knowledge of who you are comes out. And you can feel it." Walker thinks the extra applause given to older models is proof that the "job" of age diversity still "isn't done". "Until none of it warrants comment, the conversation should keep going. Until people don't feel the need to give that extra applause, it's still a work in progress." Although Adams describes herself as "anti-fashion", she relished her catwalk debut.
Ipswich's planning and development committee chairman Andrew Antoniolli is leading the count in Saturday's byelection to choose the city's newest mayor to replace Paul Pisasale.

While his main rival and acting mayor Paul Tully made a strong comeback, Cr Antoniolli finished the night 3646 votes in front. Seventy-five per cent of the vote had been counted.

Strong contender Cr Andrew Antoniolli and wife Karina vote early on Saturday. Credit:Alli Grant

The vote for a new mayor is being held because Mr Pisasale resigned on June 6 and faces charges including extortion.

As voting closed for the night to choose the city's new mayor, Cr Antoniolli, who has 34.72 per cent of the vote, is still leading in the byelection.
Two men have been killed in a crash at a racing track in Ipswich.

It is believed a car left the track and crashed into a wall about 8.40pm at the Queensland Raceway course in Willowbank on Saturday night.

Queensland Ambulance Service medical director Dr Stephen Rashford said the car caught fire and the two occupants were trapped inside during what he described as "an absolute tragedy".

Despite the best efforts of track rescue teams and emergency services, who managed to free the two victims from the wreckage, the 32-year-old driver and his 41-year-old passenger died at the scene.

It is understood the crash happened during a Roll Racing event at Queensland Raceway, not the Race Ya Mate event at nearby Willowbank Raceway as reported by other publications.
The cave in Sumatra that Dr Kira Westaway and her colleagues were able to locate after an exhaustive search. This month, the peer-reviewed journal published the paper and beneath its dry, technical prose lies a ripping yarn involving modern Australian science, treks through Indonesian rainforests, a dogged refusal to take no for an answer, and a fax machine. Focus on new mystery In fact, what the scientists have been able to find is 20,000 missing years. 'We found the missing 20,000 years': Dr Kira Westaway at Macquarie University's 'Homo floresiensis' display. Credit:Louie Douvis

When research was published in July definitively dating Aboriginal occupation of a site in Kakadu to 65,000 years ago  18,000 years earlier than previously thought  the discovery threw a new mystery into sharp focus. How did they get there? The dominant theory  known as the "recent single origin hypothesis"  holds that Homo sapiens migrated from Africa around 100,000 years ago and then spread through Asia, eventually reaching every continent except Antarctica. The incisor and molar discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1890. The Kakadu findings, however, threw a significant chronological spanner into the works. People were living there, at the Madjedbebe rock shelter, 65,000 years back, yet no one had ever found incontestable evidence that humans reached the islands of south-east Asia, the only route to Australia, before 60,000 years ago. It was Dr Westaway and her co-authors who have found the missing piece of the puzzle.

Several sites in Indonesia have produced fossils of Homo erectus (the first, appropriately enough, unearthed by Dubois in 1891) and, of course, in 2004, sensationally, researchers found Homo floresiensis, the "hobbit". Could Hooijer's conclusions about the teeth found in 1890 be wrong? Could the Lida Ajer teeth belong to either of these species, rather than humans? Dr Westaway got hold of detailed scans and images from Holland and went over them with, um, a fine-toothed comb. She confirmed his conclusions. Her next proposition was logical enough: dating the rock layer in which Dubois found the molar and incisor, as well as the orangutan teeth and (hopefully) others newly discovered at the same spot, would provide, for the first time, an exact date for when humans had lived in the cave. There was just one problem: no one knew where it was. Undaunted, Dr Westaway and colleagues headed off. "It was really full on," she laughed. "We went over there, and we thought it would be really easy. We thought, it was only 100 years ago, the locals would still have word-of-mouth and know which cave was Lida Ajer.

"But it was really difficult. We went to a number of sites and they weren't right. Then we had some weird stories about the cave being in the lowlands and used to house buffalo. That wasn't right, either. "So we had a few days of just running around in circles and not getting anywhere." Exasperated, Dr Westaway had an idea. She contacted a colleague, Dr Gerrit van den Bergh from Wollongong University, who in turn got in touch with the Eugene Dubois Foundation and asked for the original notebook. Pages from it were duly faxed to Sumatra. "It was a really small cross on a really big map," said Dr Westaway, "but we started looking more determinedly." A couple of days later, they were successful. "It was my Eureka moment. As soon as I saw the entrance and the big calcite column inside I knew it was exactly the place Dubois had drawn in his notebook." After that, it was all as simple as fieldwork up a mountain in a jungle can be. Fossils and rock samples were sourced, and later dated using several methods involving luminescence and isotope decay.

And thus, eventually, after several years, rejections and rewrites: the bombshell. The teeth were between 73,000 and 63,000 years old  more ancient by many millennia than all other human remains found in south-east Asia. "We found the missing 20,000 years," said Dr Westaway. And that wasn't all. Palaeoanthropologists have always assumed that ancient humans migrating into new territory stuck to the coast, where open land and food are plentiful. Whoever lost Dubois' teeth had been living in enclosed rainforest  where food is scarce and mostly at the top of tall trees. It is by far the earliest evidence for humans living in this type of environment. And  the cherry on the cake  the upper range of Dr Westaway's dating leaves plenty of time for continued migrations to reach the Northern Territory. Loading
How do you pronounce "splue"? What about "meve" or "zued"?

These are some of the made-up words grade 1 students could soon have to pronounce as part of the federal government's proposed new phonics test.

But the initiative has reignited the reading wars, with principals and literacy experts divided on whether the test is a good measure of children's reading skills.

Victorian Principals Association president Anne-Maree Kliman is concerned that the test focuses on decoding words without context.
There is no minimum security standard for Victorian sporting stadiums, shopping centres and universities, police have revealed, following another mass-casualty terrorism attack targeting a crowded public space.

Assistant Commissioner Ross Guenther, the head of Victoria Police counter-terrorism command, said the Crowded Places Security Advisory Group, comprising security, industry and community representatives, were working on establishing the standard, to reduce the risk of a terror attack in the state's busiest places.

Anti-terror bollards have been installed around Southern Cross Station. Credit:Larissa Ham

Mr Guenther said that there was no intelligence to suggest an attack was more likely in Australia after the Islamic State-inspired killings in Barcelona, when a van was used to drive down a busy tourist strip.

But he said it was impossible to rule out a similar terror attack occurring in Melbourne.
Housing groups have long called for change to end the exploitation of vulnerable residents. (Picture supplied by residents of rooming houses in Melbourne to the Tenants Union of Victoria.) He hopes, however, that the new laws are matched with a renewed vigour for enforcement, helping to weed-out the illegal operators and protect those who feel they have little choice but to live in their houses. "The treatment from management was horrible, they only cared about rent and nothing else," Shahram, who did not wish to be identified, said. "They could not be possibly any worse and they have given me psychological scars I'm still suffering from." Shahram lived for more than two years in a house operated by the network. Tenancy advocates estimate the network control as many as 100 registered and unregistered properties across Melbourne.

Shahram says the four-bedroom property had six people in it in when he left, all of whom were paying at least $200 a week for a room. The house had one toilet, a broken fridge in a small kitchen, and no laundry. "I had been a victim of robbery (twice), burglary (endless times), violence, assaults resulting in an intervention order, constant drug abuse and drunkenness. "I didn't experience even one single day without some serious issue." Operators and managers have had since April to apply for a licence under the new Rooming House Operators Act.

Anybody convicted or found guilty of serious criminal offences within the last 10 years will be refused a licence. The fit and proper person test is likely to rule out George Maatouk, who is one of the great survivors of the network despite a slew of past criminal convictions. But it appears his presence in the industry will continue, regardless of the new restrictions  he recently became the sole director of two companies suspected of supplying rooming houses. This time last year, he had only recently completed a prison term. Maatouk managed a Brunswick rooming house where two people died in a fire in 2006, and has repeatedly been linked to troubles within the sector since. Maatouk and three friends were considered the tsars of a rooming house empire at the time of the fire, with control of as many as 150 properties through several different companies.

An inquest into the deaths heard the Brunswick rooming house was linked to a company which was earning $40,000 a week operating 60 properties. The multi-million dollar empire had reportedly grown to more than 220 properties by 2009. Last August, Maatouk was jailed for trafficking ecstasy, and possessing ice and a machete, while on bail. He had previously been sentenced to jail terms in 2006 and 2010, which were either suspended or served via a correction order. But, despite his criminal history, he became the sole director of DS Leasing and SLM Housing in April, company records show.

Tenancy advocates claim the group, through DS Leasing, is attempting to circumvent the tightening of regulations in the sector by operating share houses, which are unregulated, rather than rooming houses. Mr Maatouk does not appear on the public register of licensed operators, and it is unclear whether he has applied for a licence. The Tenants Union of Victoria visited an unregistered rooming house property in June which they were referred to by a resident. The man had been moved from one unregistered property, operated by DS Leasing, to another, owned by SLM Housing. Signs posted in the second property incorrectly stated it was not a rooming house, the Tenants Union claimed, and residents indicated to them they may have had to sign joint leases to live there.

The contact for the house was a man who had been replaced by Mr Maatouk as a director only weeks earlier. Calls to Mr Maatouk's lawyer were not returned. A search of the rooming house public register reveals about 30 properties operated by companies linked to him or the network, but dozens more are suspected to either be unregistered or not been listed on the site. Tenants Union of Victoria chief executive Mark O'Brien said criminal rooming house operators were running properties that were unsafe, insecure and unaffordable. He said criminal operators continued running rooming houses even though the Rooming House Operators Act had been introduced to crack down on those who repeatedly dodged the law.

"We are hopeful that once fully implemented, the licensing requirements will capture unscrupulous operators who continue to profiteer from vulnerable residents," he said. Minister for Consumer Affairs Marlene Kairouz said the fit and proper person test was specifically designed to protect vulnerable rooming house residents from dodgy operators. "Consumer Affairs Victoria will be out in force later this month inspecting every rooming house where the operator hasn't applied for a licence and taking appropriate action. "If a rooming house needs to close, residents will get time and support to find new homes." A spokesman for Consumer Affairs Victoria said rooming house operators had been given "ample time" to understand the new regime before the laws came into place in April, so they could determine to leave the sector or re-organise their affairs to ensure they are eligible.
A South African national has been caught attempting to smuggle six kilograms of cocaine into Australia through Perth's International Airport.

The 32-year-old woman arrived in Perth on Friday night on a flight from Johannesburg, and was selected for a baggage search, police said.

The woman was caught with six kilograms of cocaine. Credit:AFP

Australian Border Force officers found six suspicious packages hidden inside books, which were then tested, and came back positive for cocaine.

The woman was arrested by Australian Federal Police, who charged her with importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug - an offence which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
London: The main route to Europe is experiencing one of its longest lulls since the migration crisis began in 2014.

Just more than 4000 migrants have reached Italy from Libya since mid-July, about a fifth of the number during each of the equivalent periods of 2014, 2015 and 2016, according to the Italian Interior Ministry.

An Italian paramedic helps a migrant as 402 migrants disembark from the Britain Royal Navy's ship Echo in the harbour of Brindisi, Italy, in June. Credit:ANSA/AP

The lull provides rare respite for Italy, where migration -- and the centre-left government's response to it -- may prove to be a defining factor in a general election in the coming months.

After the European Union reached a deal with Turkey early in 2016 to try to stop migrants reaching the Greek islands in the Mediterranean, Italy once again became the main gateway to Europe -- an unwanted title that it has held for most of the 21st century.
The solar minimum is a period in which there is lower solar activity in the 11 cycles of the sun. During this time, sunspots and solar flares diminish for a 12-month period. Solar flares are not to be correlated with climate change. However, in June there were readings from on top of the Greenland Ice Cap at 7,000 feet above sea level that were 13.5 C lower than the average for June, while in June, July, and beginning of August, the weather temperatures are more like those of of Canada, not like the Dog Days of late summer of my childhood where I sunburned so easily.

The readings on top of the Greenland Ice Cap at 7,000 feet above sea level were 13.5 C lower than normal. This does not mean global warming is wrong or right. It is a sign of the solar minimum as are the Antarctic Ice Cap winter readings. Melbourne, Australia, on the south coast of Australia and central Australia are having a colder than normal winter but the rest of Australia is warmer and drier.

The Earths axis is currently tilted at 23.26 degrees from vertical but varies between 22.5 and 24.1 degrees much like the planet Mars is tilted at 25 degrees from vertical so it has seasons like Earth. The tilt reflects in the latitude of the Arctic Circle at 23.26 minus 90 degrees or latitude. It is reflected in the Tropic of Cancer (June astrological sign) 223.26 degrees above the equator and 22.3 south of the equator called Capricorn (September astrological sign). These correspond to the predominant prevailing winds, so the United States is in the predominately temperate zone between the Arctic and Cancer latitudes and westerly winds, while the Arctic has predominantly Nnortheasterly winds. That hit the center part of the United States in the winter of 1977-78 when temperatures dropped to -64 F. chill factor with high winds that cause snow drifts, and motor oil turned into a consistency grease that kept snowplows in the garage.

On the day I tried getting to town, my car piled up on a snow drift and I had to walk back to my house almost a mile away. Frozen cheeks and I went to bed, while one woman had her car stalled four miles east of Sullivan and died in the snow walking back to Sullivan. A Mattoon woman had her car stalled near Coles Station and managed to get to a house in Mattoon and spent three months in the hospital.

The cause of the strong winds and extreme cold was the hotspot in the Japanese Current that crosses the Pacific to San Francisco where the evaporation by the sun causes salinity in top layer of the current, and this then sinks coming in contact with fresh water and sinks with cooler water coming to the surface.

The jet stream that precedes a cold front hit this warm spot of the Japanese Current and shot north into Alaska and the northeasterly winds over the Greenland Ice cap plunged the intense cold down into Central Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

Snow fell for the first recorded time in the mountains of Jamaica which is south of tropical Cuba. Fidel wasnt sharing weather reports with the US so dont know the exact effect this cold was having on Cuba.

Now the melting water from Greenland affects the Gulf Stream that warms Europe in a like manner of the Japanese Current that affects the West Coast. There the cooler waters of the south current make Southern California dry, and cooler waters going north to Oregon, Washington (state), and British Columbia bring rain for the coastal areas to the mountains and the waters are teeming with fish and salmon. Dry spells do occur and this years dry spell for Portland was a record 51 days.

Back to the melting snows of the Greenland Ice Cap, the saline water of the Gulf Stream sinks in such a huge amount, it pulls the Gulf Stream to warm Iceland (land of volcanoes, geysers, and hot springs to warm the houses of 350,000 Icelandic population, a nation so well endowed with brainy people they kicked out the government that allowed the bankers to mortgage everyone to to the hilt in Iceland).

But going back to the Greenland effect of the heavily saline Gulf stream, the salt water sinks to the bottom which is frigid and flows southward to the Antarctic. As fish sink downward to this current, they are caught up and when the current hits the rise of the ocean floor at Antarctica the creatures of the Antarctic sea have a feast on natural refrigerated sea life.

With the approach of the Monday eclipse of the sun, it will cross Carbondale and here northward to the Dakotas. Will the alignment of the sun and moon together, will it affect the New Madrid fault or Yellowstone volcano that is being watched by the US Geological Service? As I explained to my students, the planet Mars has about the same pull of gravity as the person sitting three feet away from them. Gravity is well known but is the weakest force of all forces we know. So, no effect.

Weather observers are not making any predictions about weather this fall but there are some who are warning that the fall will be wet and beans and corn harvested will need more time in grain driers as a result. That means more gas for the driers and higher costs for the farmer. So higher food costs and higher fuel costs with petroleum exporters cutting back on production to get more profit.

And as a Russian nuclear analyst, Sergei Iskov, has recommended sending a nuclear bomb into Yellowstone Volcano to cover about half of the US with ash as the financial embargoes on Russia have affected the international currency transactions by removing MasterCard and Visa from Russia, he recommended it as the US is meddling too much in Russias internal affairs. The good news is that Mr. Putin isnt giving Sergeis advice any attention, but this writer views it as the end of the world as French scientists measured in 2015 the temperature of the liquid iron of the upper mantle of the Earth's core at 6,500 C, 1,000 C. hotter than the surface of the sun. It is kept in place by 2.2 million atmospheric pressures.

This writer, I look for dried weather and a good harvest, but taking the warning made by others is a good precaution.
Helsinki: A Moroccan man who was arrested for killing two women in a knife rampage appeared to have targeted women in Finland's first terrorism-related attack, police said.

The 18-year-old suspect, arrested in the city of Turku following the attack in which eight other people - six of them women - were wounded, arrived in Finland last year as an asylum seeker, police said. Police shot the suspect in the leg before his arrest.

A makeshift memorial for the victims of the stabbing attack at the Turku Market Square in Finland. Credit:AP

Police also arrested four other Moroccan men over possible links to him and issued an international arrest warrant for a sixth Moroccan, they said.

The manager of the Red Cross reception centre in Turku, where flags flew at half-mast on Saturday, said the suspect was an asylum seeker. "I cannot comment on [his] application's outcome," Heimo Nurmi said.
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
Startups often find it challenging to convince traditional lenders to invest in their companies. Through an initiative called Catalyst, Union Bank & Trust in Lincoln is working to change that.

As FinTech continues to blow up, how do we use some of the new thought processes for underwriting? said Tullen Mabbutt, Catalyst business banking advocate. Were approaching it with an innovative mind set.

Catalyst is best known for its meeting and conference space in Lincolns Haymarket district, available for use free of charge by startups and entrepreneurs. But Mabbutt says its much more than that.

One of the wins is connecting people. Thats what we look to do a lot, he said. We connect them to the startup community at large and all the resources that exist outside of what we do.

Consulting and educational programs for startups and entrepreneurs are also available.

We do a lot of education out of the space, Mabbutt said. Workshops for entrepreneurs, lunch-and-learn speaker series, stuff like that.

Catalyst has strong support from the companys ownership, and leadership from Stephanie Dinger, Union Banks vice president of small business. Dinger is also an entrepreneur, co-owner of Lincoln startup Powderhook with husband Eric.

Im a banker but also a business owner, she said. Ive been able to bring a unique perspective that gives me credibility with people because I can see both sides.

Having two people dedicated to small businesses and a willingness to look at small -- and sometimes risky -- deals is unusual in the banking industry.

Ive worked with a lot of different bankers over the years, Dinger said. Most banks route through commercial lenders who like larger deals.

So why, in a traditionally conservative industry, is Union Bank taking this on?

Its a long-term play for sure, Dinger said. We have the ability because ownership believes in the community. They will look at things that others wont.

Community building is an important aspect of the Catalyst initiative. But there are business reasons as well.

We want to start that relationship, Mabbutt said. It may not pay off today or tomorrow, but we raise the tide for all boats. That comes directly from our ownership.

Dinger doesnt keep regular bankers hours, which builds loyalty.

My jobs not 8 to 5 because thats not when theyre thinking about their banking, she said. Im going to devote hours and lose money because I know they will be loyal to me. Ive had customers say I will be a lifer with you regardless of where I go.'

Being accessible and taking the time to listen is key.

New companies are craving information, empathy and knowledge, Dinger said. Thats been the most fun part. The value I add to a $10,000 deal is priceless.

Sometimes a bank loan isnt the best option, and Catalyst often provides referrals to other resources.

Were not pressured that much as bankers so were able to stand still, listen to them and review all their options even if its not bank debt, Mabbutt said. Well say, Heres what we can do, and take the extra step to call someone like Community Development Resources or Invest Nebraska.

Mabbutt has seen the startup community in Lincoln blossom since Catalyst opened, and growing collaboration with Omaha.

Omaha and Lincoln have grown with the number of companies and resources between the two communities, he said. The landscape continues to change, and there are a number of pockets that are undiscovered.

And an awareness is developing of what the Silicon Prairie is all about.

Its interesting when I talk to people totally outside the tech startup scene, Mabbutt said. People know what the Silicon Prairie is. Now its a thing even if people cant put their finger right on it.
College Station police have arrested three people in separate incidents of fraud or forgery, including one woman accused of writing herself checks from an account belonging to the restaurant where she worked.

According to College Station police, detectives were contacted in November 2016 on a report that an employee who worked in accounts receivable at Wings N' More was possibly stealing money. Detectives were provided with credit card statements, copies of checks and a resignation letter from the employee, 32-year-old Nicole Danielle Wall of Conroe.

In December, authorities were provided with an audio recording where Wall's husband said she had admitted to him before resigning that she had been using a credit card and checks without authorization. Wall's husband also said he had noticed she had recently made abnormally large purchases from a wholesale store in Conroe.

Police received credit card statements and receipts in April, and evidence showed Wall would make purchases on the company card in 2015 and 2016, and instead of buying supplies for the restaurant, she would buy gas and food for herself, according to a police report. Authorities say she would also make purchases on her own credit card, then write herself large reimbursement checks from the restaurant. It is believed Wall stole more than $2,500. She was arrested Thursday.

Wall is charged with three counts of credit card abuse and theft over $2,500, all state jail felonies. Each charge is punishable by up to two years in a state jail. She was released from the Brazos County Jail on $8,000 bond.

In another case, College Station police say a delivery driver from a local pizza restaurant called officers just before midnight Wednesday and said a customer had paid him $45 with two counterfeit $20 bills. Authorities responded to a motel in the 2000 block of S. Texas Avenue and spoke with the driver, who showed police the money. According to a police report, the money was clearly counterfeit, as it had been printed on printer paper and had a disproportionate image structure with duplicate serial numbers. Police made contact with Donald Rodney Howard, 47, who was described by the delivery employee.

The report states that Howard allowed police into his motel room, where they found pizza crust in the trash and pizza boxes. Throughout the room were several printers, stacks of paper, a straight-edge paper cutter and ink cartridges. Authorities also searched Howard's phone and found his most recent search on Google was for the image of a $20 bill. An additional fake $20 bill was also found in the room.

Howard is charged with two counts of forgery of a financial instrument, a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He is being held in the Brazos County Jail on $8,000 bond. Howard is also being held on a forgery warrant out of Harris County.

On Thursday afternoon, College Station police responded to a motel in the 2500 block of S. Texas Avenue as part of an investigation into a case of driving while under the influence of drugs. Authorities determined the man in that case was staying with several others at the motel and police wanted to search his room for more potential drugs.

When police knocked on the door, 19-year-old Terran Sterling answered, and police immediately noticed he had a crumpled check in his hand. The check appeared to be from Baylor University and was made out to a woman. A police report notes that when officers entered, they found a printer and blue check stock paper. Representatives from a Waco bank and from Baylor University were contacted, who said the checks were not connected to the bank nor the school.

A search warrant was obtained and police say they found six credit cards under various people's names.

Sterling is charged with fraudulent use of identifying information, a state jail felony. He was released from the Brazos County Jail on $8,000 bond.
College Station police are looking for two men believed to have been involved in a robbery at a motel.

Authorities were called to a motel in the 300 block of Texas Avenue around 2 a.m. Friday after an employee reported being robbed at gunpoint.

Police said two men took money from the register, from a woman's purse and a man's wallet. No injuries were reported.

Both men are described as black and 5 feet 9 inches tall. One man had a red mask.

Anyone with information is asked to call police at 764-3600.
San Antonio resident Sharon Benita Holland will return to her hometown today for a reception and discussion regarding her recently donated doctoral dissertation to the Brazos Valley African American Museum in Bryan.

"I'm excited to share my experience and my life, and hopefully that will encourage other people to do the same," Holland said of the three-hour reception beginning at 1 p.m. today at the museum at 500 E. Pruitt St.

Holland donated a copy of her doctoral dissertation to the museum earlier in the summer; the Brazos County Commissioners Court issued a resolution at a weekly meeting in June acknowledging the donation, stating that it "serves as an example in the community for the level of education that's obtainable by all citizens."

Holland grew up in Bryan's Castle Heights community, graduating from Bryan High School in 1975. She enlisted in the Air Force after graduation, where she served for 23 years. Holland began taking courses online while serving, eventually earning her doctorate of education from Lamar University in December 2015. A copy of her dissertation -- "A Phenomenological Inquiry of African-American Students' Barriers and Strategies for Enrollment in Advance Placement Programs" -- will be available today at the reception, and it will be on display in the museum sometime thereafter, said museum Curator Oliver Wayne Sadberry.

"She found other ways of getting that college education," Sadberry said of the three degrees Holland earned as a result of entering the Air Force. "I was really impressed by that whole process. The more people that can understand and appreciate [her path], it might encourage them."

Holland said her dissertation's focuses on identifying the barriers African-American students face in enrolling in Advanced Placement courses. She said the results of her research emphasize the importance of early childhood education in pre-kindergarten classes and pre-AP courses in intermediate and middle schools. She said she interviewed many high school students who said they were frustrated that they didn't know they had to take pre-AP courses earlier in their academic careers to qualify for AP courses in high school.

"No matter how smart they are, they're not eligible to enroll, so they miss an opportunity," said Holland.

Holland said the implications of her research are important for parents, teachers and students.

"She gained some insight into how students can be helped in that process," Sadberry said, referring to African-American students' pursuit of AP courses during their time in high school.

Sadberry said today's reception is the latest in a monthly author series at the museum; next month's author is Estelle Adams, who will be discussing her new book about growing up as an African-American in Wheelock.

Sadberry said the decision to bring authors to the museum allows community members to hear many authors' viewpoints on life and success, which he said is valuable because writers, like painters, "express life in totally different ways."

"I think what we're trying to do is touch every possible heart we can," said Sadberry.
One Brazos County constable was terminated and one chose to retire after an official says they disregarded an order to wear bulletproof vests during a recent event at the Texas World Speedway.

According to Precinct 2 Constable Don Lampo, constables in his precinct are required to wear the vests when working off-duty security at certain events. Lampo regulates which events will require the safety measure.

On July 2, the two constables were providing security at the Four Horseman Trail Ride and Campout event at the Texas World Speedway. During the event, a man was shot and wounded. According to Lampo, he had instructed the men to wear their bulletproof vests at the event, and they disregarded the orders.

The identifies of the men are not being released, but one has worked in law enforcement for 30 years and chose to retire. The one who was terminated has worked in law enforcement for at least 19 years, eight of which were with the constables office. The two were given the choice Friday morning to retire, resign or be terminated.

Bulletproof vests are given to Precinct 2 constables free of charge. The office acquired the vests after receiving a grant from the National Rifle Association.
With 43 years of law enforcement service behind him, Capt. Bill May of the Blinn College Police Department has seen a lot of things change.

In fact, he said the world around him has evolved so much, it's time to leave his job to the younger incoming officers. At a retirement party hosted in May's honor Friday, both new Blinn officers and veterans from the post joined together in unison and raised their glasses to the man who has protected Texans for more than four decades.

May has worked for the Blinn College police for exactly 20 years, always in a position of leadership, but in recent years at the helm of the organization. He, along with faculty member Kim Boetger, created the college's Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT), which has been duplicated in colleges and universities across the state. May said the system has been used to clear the Bryan campus for emergencies only twice in his tenure, a testament to how safe a place Blinn is.

"Working at Blinn College is the best job I've had my whole life," May said. "I haven't been shot at once, and I've only had to break up two fights that weren't even really fights. Imagine going into a biker bar in the 1970s."

May referenced the life he had before Blinn, when he worked as an undercover agent for the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. In the 1970s and 1980s, he would strive to break up prostitution and drug rings, and put a halt to illegal gambling and bootlegging.

"I had a lot of covert operations back then that were exciting -- kinda, sorta, maybe," May mused. "We'd have to sit down and talk about those, because it would take awhile."

At May's retirement party, hosted at the Phillips Event Center in Bryan, several of his fellow officers shared memories of high-octane escapades from days gone by. Two of May's counterparts at Blinn College, a recently retired officer and a current sergeant, had followed May to Blinn after working with him in other police agencies during the '70s and '80s.

Eddie Lohse, who recently retired from Blinn's police force, has known May since working alongside him in the late 1970s. Lohse relayed to party guests that as an experienced pilot, he taught May how to fly planes, and the two used to pose as crop dusters undercover to retrieve drugs from criminals. The friends have been in bar fights and shootouts together, often serving side-by-side.

"I say, 'Good luck, cowboy,'" Lohse said. "We've been through a lot. He's a good cop and I respect him. He's someone I look up to."

Sgt. Robert Donahoo, who still serves with Blinn, said he met May in 1980 when with the TABC.

"A true story: We were working together one night in College Station watching this big grocery store, looking for minors buying beer," Donahoo said as he sipped a drink at the party. "We were in the parking lot and this guy pulled up in front of us, and he ran his car into our car. The guy jumped out and ran up to Bill and said, 'You parked wrong!' Needless to say, Bill exploded. I don't remember the charge, but that guy went to jail that night."

A younger police officer, Joe Espinosa, has been at Blinn College for less than two years. He told the party crowd that May, Lohse and Donahoo were constantly overflowing with exciting stories at the office.

"I just want to know after listening to their stories -- how are those three still alive?" he asked, causing the roomful of guests to laugh.

Grizelda "Z" Martinez, May's administrative assistant at Blinn for 17 years, said she doesn't know what to expect now that he is retiring at the end of the month. His leadership is all she's known working at the college.

"Bill has been a wonderful boss for these 17 years. He's seen me have all of my children," she said. "He's wonderful to work for."

Now that May is leaving, instead of a new captain taking charge of the Bryan campuses, Martinez said two sergeants at the department will lead the police force. May's retirement is a symbol of a metamorphosis happening at the school.

"Right now Blinn is going through a lot of changes," she said. "It's just the way the world and society are now."

May said he made the decision to retire because he reached an epiphany that so much had changed in policing, he couldn't keep up. Lohse agreed that a lot is different in 2017, though he said it isn't necessarily a bad thing.

"Policing has changed a lot," he said. "People are different, technology is different, everything is different. We used to write search warrants on the backs of paper bags, now they're typed up on the computer."

More than he'll miss high-speed chases and gun battles from his TABC days, May said he's going to miss Blinn's students and faculty. They are what motivated him and mattered to him during those relatively quiet years, he said.

May was given various presents and a shadowbox with his police badges and gun. Throughout the cake cutting and gift presentation Friday afternoon, May hugged one of his seven grandchildren close. He told The Eagle as he looks for a new job, he will also be spending time teaching his grandkids skills such as camping and fishing.

"Every boy should know how to cook, and every girl should know how to hunt." he said.
Two members of a white supremacist gang were sentenced to 13 and 15 years in prison on Friday for a 2016 carjacking in Burleson County.

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks sentenced Roy Ates Jr., a 40-year-old College Station man, and Chad Ryan Smith, a 32-year-old Somerville man, to 180 months and 160 months, respectively, in federal prison. Sparks also ordered the two men be placed on supervised release for three years after getting out of prison.

According to court records, Smith and Ates assaulted an African American man in his vehicle after he had driven to a Somerville residence on July 2, 2016. Ates brandished a knife and cut the man's hand, an injury that required several stitches. The defendants took the man's car and drove to a remote location in Lee County, where they forced the victim to leave his vehicle. Ates and Smith then returned to Burleson County in the victim's vehicle.

"The United States Attorney's Office is committed to identifying, apprehending and prosecuting violent criminals in an effort to deter crime and protect the citizens of our communities," U.S. Attorney Richard L. Durbin, Jr. said in a statement.

Ates and Smith were arrested by federal authorities on April 25. They have been in federal custody ever since.
A man died and a woman was injured in an accident near Whiteclay Thursday after the two were reportedly returning from Rushville with alcohol, according to a release from the Sheridan County Sheriff's Department.

Francis Ray Rencountre, 46, was driving on 325th Trail, a county road six miles south of Whiteclay, when the vehicle went off a bridge into a ravine and rolled, killing Rencountre and injuring a female passenger.

The passenger was taken to Pine Ridge Hospital, the release said. Her condition is unknown at this time.

Investigators believe the two had driven from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to Rushville to buy alcohol and were on their way back when the accident happened.

Alcohol is believed to have contributed to the accident, the release said.

The accident came days after the Nebraska State Patrol concluded a six-week enforcement campaign targeting drivers in Sheridan County that led to two arrests for drunken driving, according to a State Patrol news release.
January 06, 1942 - July 29, 2017

Surrounded by his loving family, Thomas Beavers Sander, passed away peacefully at the age of 75 on Saturday, July 29, 2017 after a courageous battle against lung cancer and ALS.

Tom was born on January 6, 1942 in Hillsboro, Texas to parents Nell Ruth (Cain) Beavers and Thomas Claude Beavers. He was adopted at the age of eleven by his aunt Marjorie and her husband Willie F. (Deeda) Sander, who lived in Hearne, Texas.

Although not his biological father, many of Deeda's traits were passed to Tom, such as integrity, honesty, strong work ethics, a deep sense of caring, and love to his family and country. Unique to Tom's own personality were his dry sense of humor, his uncompromising loyalty, and his ability to get only one word into an emotional speech before getting teary-eyed.

Tom grew up and lived in Texas until he joined the United States Navy in San Diego, California, where he learned computer programming on IBM mainframes which would serve as the foundation for his career. After four years in the Navy, he was hired by IBM as software engineer. Tom briefly returned to Texas to complete his B.A. in Business at Texas Christian University, and later returned to IBM in Palo Alto, California. In 1978, he joined IBM in San Francisco. In 1981, Tom took an international assignment with IBM in Germany, where he met his wife-to-be, Gerda, and her young son, David. In 1986, after Tom's international assignments ended, the newly formed family moved from the United Kingdom to the United States and settled in Saratoga, California.

Tom loved living life, and was a model husband and father. He enjoyed traveling, rock and roll, fine wine (especially prosecco), Southern and Italian cooking, fast cars, friends, and most of all, family. Tom is survived by his wife of 32 years, Gerda, his son David (with wife Christie), sister Nancy Coe (with husband Larry), step-sister Kay Tidemann, sister-in-law Ursula Porebski (with husband Nicolaus), many aunts and uncles, many nieces and nephews, and countless friends in Texas, California, and Germany. Tom was preceded in death by both his biological and adoptive parents.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you donate to the ALS association at ALSA.org.
President Donald Trump has been condemned widely and appropriately for reacting to the Charlottesville, Virginia, horror with remarks about both sides and for comparing Confederate generals to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and for reacting to white supremacist terrorism by saying there is another side.

Sure, Ive been critical of the lefts antifa tactics to counter fascism. (Among other things, they enabled the white nationalists to cry victimhood in Charlottesville.) But the time to critique the left fringe is not after someone with vile racist views has just murdered a protester. That moment is the appropriate time to condemn white supremacist ideology, denounce the murderer, and express the hope that the nation can learn to live together better as we mourn our dead.

This should go without saying, but apparently it doesnt, so there, I said it. And a lot of Republicans expressed that appropriate sentiment. House Speaker Paul Ryan, for example, tweeted: We must be clear. White supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity.

And there you have it: The leader of the House has taken a stand against Trump. When I retweeted Ryan, people demanded to know: So what is he going to do about Trump?

A lot of liberals wanted to know how Ryan was going to stop Trump from saying things such as this. Republicans have learned that they cant. The party has, after all, tried to stop Trump from Trumping. It has tried surrounding him with party stalwarts who could advise him not to say things such as this. It has tried condemning his most offensive and un-American utterances. It has tried making fun of his hands. None of it seems to have made much impression on Trump.

Our system of government leaves Congress with few levers to pull once sweet reason and appeals to the presidential self-interest have failed. If Trump wants to see how much lower he can push his approval ratings, there is little his party can do to stop him.

They can impeach him, of course. But what would you put in the articles of impeachment? In a press conference on August the 15th, President Donald J. Trump said the wrong thing?

His response was hideous, but I have a tough time making it fit any reasonable definition of high crimes and misdemeanors.

While the Framers had a pretty good idea of what constituted such an offense, they dont seem to have given anyone besides Congress the power to decide exactly what circumstances constituted a high crime and misdemeanor. As far as I can tell, the Congress of the United States can impeach a president because they dont like the way he combs his hair, and all the rest of us could do is write indignant letters to our local representative.

But in practice, Congress is limited by both political expediency and a due respect for the delicacy of our political institutions. If Republicans impeach Trump over a news conference, indignant voters will turn the nation blue at the next election. But even if the GOP were willing to make that sacrifice for America, its not clear that America would benefit, even if you think Trump is the worst president in the history of our nation.

As Ive written before, Washington elites stepping in to remove Trump because they dont like what he says would validate exactly the complaints that led to his election in the first place. Voters knew that he said things such as this, and voted for him anyway. Removing him for such a reason would call the democratic legitimacy of the government into question.

The damage to our institutions even might well be deeper than the damage that Trump is doing with his incompetent administration and polarizing rhetoric. Especially if this becomes a precedent for future presidencies under perpetual threat that a restive Congress will decide to give the vice president a try.

At the point where, say, two-thirds of the country wants him removed, then Congress has the ability, and probably the duty, to do so. And given that the public is now about equally split on the question, we may get there.

But at the moment, Paul Ryan, like the rest of us, can do very little except watch in horror, and try to stand up for the good when our president wont.

Megan McArdle is a Bloomberg View columnist. She is the author of The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success. Email her at mmcardle3@bloomberg.net.
Confederate monuments and statues belong in museums

As a descendent of Confederate soldiers -- one who fell at the Battle of Chickamauga -- I grew up steeped in the stories of our noble Lost Cause.

Over time, however, I have come to learn more of the real history of the Civil War and its aftermath. To equate Confederate leaders with our American Revolutionary heroes is unconscionable. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, despite their flaws, created a nation and wrote foundational documents that later would be used to promote not only the end of slavery but notions of equality for countless others.

Jefferson Davis, Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee and other Confederates subverted those ideals in the defense of slavery. Lee was a particularly cruel slave master, breaking up families and resorting to physical punishment. His actions in war led to the deaths of thousands on both sides. He refused to exchange black Union soldiers taken prisoner.

After the war, Ulysses S. Grant found him to be stubbornly unhelpful in reconciliation. Under his tenure as president of Washington University, students were implicated in rapes of freed female slaves and in lynchings.

Why would anyone build monuments to such a man? Most were put up in the early part of the twentieth century in a time of Jim Crow, public lynching, and mass rallies by the Ku Klux Klan. They were a deliberate affront to African Americans and a reminder of the terrorism that accompanied white supremacy.

Their place is in museums along with explanations of their true purpose, not in the public square. If we want something in bronze and granite to mark that dark period of our history, we should have a monument to the dozens of victims of lynching right here in the Brazos Valley.

JERRY WAGNON

Anderson

Non-medical people have no say on opioid use by others

This will supplement Glen Highfill's letter (Eagle, Aug. 16). My doctor has prescribed an opioid medication for me due to extreme back pain. This is a necessity for me to maintain a normal life.

My medications have no affect on anyone else. I do not appreciate some non-medical person telling me and my doctor how to medicate my condition.

I served six years in the United States Marine Corps and have 24 years experience as a police officer. I have seen all kinds of drug addicts and I have no use for any of them.

This opioid crisis these bleeding hearts who want to save the users from doesn't exist. We always have had criminals using drugs and always will. The users take all the drugs they can get their hands on at one time so they can get high and, although it is illegal and a police problem, they do this of their own free will. And they probably will commit another crime in order to get more illegal drugs.

We who have a legitimate use for opioids and obtain them legally for medical use as prescribed by a doctor do not deserve to have their lives interfered with by non-medical persons who have a misguided sense of what their duty is.

I intend to write my senators and representative in Congress asking them to limit the interference of non medical persons in the controlling or the dispensing of any medication

CHARLES PAYNE

Bryan
NORWALK  A Norwalk woman who left her dog in a hot car while she went shopping is now facing animal cruelty charges, police said.

Norwalk Animal Control was called to the Walmart on Connecticut Avenue around 5 p.m. Friday after a concerned motorist noticed a dog locked inside of a car.

Police said when they arrived, the dog showed visible physical indications of stress.

Though the cars windows were cracked and the sunroof was left open, animal control officers said that the car was somewhere between 96 and 99 degrees.

According to the Center for Disease Controls website, even when it feels cool outside, cars can heat up to dangerous temperatures very quickly. Leaving a window open is not enough  temperatures inside the car can rise almost 20 degrees Fahrenheit within the first 10 minutes, even with a window cracked open.

As officers were about open the vehicle to free the animal, the cars owner  25-year-old Jennifer Smith  exited the store.

Smith told police that she had only needed a few items inside of the store, and had run in for 10 to 15 minutes.

Smith was charged with cruelty to animals. She was released on a promise to appear in court on Aug. 29.

ptomlinson@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2570; Twitter: @Tomlinson_PE
NORWALK  Mayor Harry W. Rilling has joined mayors from across the nation in condemning violence, extremism and bigotry by adding his name to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL-US) Conference of Mayors Compact.

The compact reads in part: ...our diverse and pluralistic nation has endured and thrived for centuries because we have been able to reject the forces of extremism and bigotry that could tear us apart ... In the face of challenges and division, we have stood together  Americans of different races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, nationalities, and political persuasions.

The compact notes that in recent years, cities have undertaken efforts to integrate immigrants into their communities and have adopted a variety of policies to include equitable treatment of LGBT residents.

Rilling has gone on record numerous times in support of the Norwalk immigrant community as well as speaking out in opposition to hate and bigotry.

We want our residents to feel comfortable in Norwalk and to be able to report crimes and to know they can have a relationship with our police department, Rilling said at an April roundtable meeting with local Latino leaders.

At a National Day of Prayer ceremony in May Rilling said the following:

We are going through some very challenging times. One only has to take a look around the world and see what is happening and say that if prayer is ever needed it is certainly needed now, Rilling said. Not only in our city and our state and indeed our country, but around the world  with so much chaos and turmoil and hate and bigotry. We need to stand together.

While Rilling has often spoken out against racism and bigotry against migrants and minorities, some have questioned his reluctance to declare Norwalk a so-called sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants. Local leaders across the country have grappled with the issue as President Donald Trump has threatened to withhold or revoke law enforcement grant money from communities that refuse to cooperate with federal efforts to find and deport immigrants in the country illegally.

Stand Up Norwalk, a citizens group seeking to protect undocumented immigrants and guard against discrimination, met with the mayor and Common Council leaders in March to discuss their agenda and push for a resolution directing local law enforcement officers to disregard federal immigration policies. But thus far, no such resolution has passed.

The Anti-Defamation League and The United States Conference of Mayors launched the initiative to fight extremism and bigotry and to promote the fundamental principles of justice and equality that define America, according to a prepared statement from the ADL.

The compact has 10 key components and by signing, Rilling has promised the following:

Expressly rejecting extremism, white supremacy and all forms of bigotry.

Denouncing all acts of hate wherever they occur.

Ensuring public safety while protecting free speech.

Calling for fully-resourced law enforcement and civil rights investigation of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.

Elevating and prioritizing anti-bias and anti-hate programs in schools.

Bringing together civic and community leaders to build trust.

Celebrating diversity, promoting inclusivity and challenging bias.

Promoting law enforcement training on response to and reporting of, hate crimes and domestic terrorism.

Encouraging residents to report hate incidents and crimes.

Maintaining civil rights enforcement and strengthening hate crime laws.

Following last weeks violence in Virginia, several Westport officials signed a petition requesting Trump publicly and entirely disavow white supremacy.

Westport First Selectman Jim Marpe, Selectman Avi Karner and Selectwoman Helen Garten signed the Anti-Defamation Leagues petition for Trump to denounce white supremacy Tuesday.

The White Houses repeated failure to stand up to white supremacy and other forms of domestic extremism emboldens and allows its perpetrators to increase their visibility, the petition reads.

The selectmen signed the petition a few days after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday turned violent.

The Unite the Right demonstration was in response to possible efforts to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, from Emancipation Park in Charlottesville.

Steve Ginsburg, director of ADLs Connecticut region, said he is concerned about the spread of the white supremacy ideology and the violence that can accompany it.

We are encouraged, however, by the denunciation of hate from elected officials across the country  including all three of Westports selectmen, Ginsburg said. Leaders speaking clearly against bigotry help set the standard for our communitys response.

Tara ONeill contributed to this story.
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WESTPORT  After a brief pause to consult with his fellow town leaders, First Selectman Jim Marpe has opted to comply with with a request for town finance information from the state.

The request came in an Aug. 2 letter addressed from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to Office of Policy and Management Secretary Benjamin Barnes and then passed on to municipal leaders. In it, towns were asked for financial information, including the balance of general and unassigned funds. Initially, Marpe paused to speak with first selectmen from other towns and evaluate how to respond.

We concluded theres no reason to not provide the basic information they were looking for, he said.

The reason for his hesitation stemmed from the governors initial budgetary proposal to shift one-third of teacher pension costs to municipalities; Connecticut has yet to set its budget amid legislative discord and a looming deficit. The budgetary situation spurred concerns that the state might be trying to identify communities that had the financial ability to take on a fiscal burden, Marpe said, but he and colleagues concluded the state already has that knowledge.

Marpe is providing the information requested alongside a short explanation of how Westport calculates its fund balances. Because the purpose of the request is not entirely clear, he said if the state requested detail, the town would address it accordingly.

Wilton First Selectman Lynne Vanderslice also opted to provide OPM with the requested financial data. In her letter to Barnes, Vanderslice outlined the steps the town has taken as it awaits a budget from Hartford that will likely result in deep cuts in state funding.

The town, she said, has implemented a hiring freeze and has instructed department heads to halt all non-essential spending. Our Town has been proactive in our efforts to exercise fiscal responsibility, she said, before criticizing the state government for having not fulfilled its obligations.

As a result of the States financial mismanagement, Wilton town employees now fear layoffs, she said. Wilton residents now fear that their homes will lose value because the State may pass its unpaid bills onto the Town.

In New Canaan, First Selectman Robert Mallozzi III said they will not be complying with Barnes request.

They want to raid our good balance sheet, its very clear to me, Mallozzi said. The state is trying not to reward financially responsible towns.

Darien is taking an in-between route compared to Westport and New Canaan.

Darien First Selectman Jayme Stevenson said they will comply to a degree, adding it was unlikely the town would provide any future projections to the state.

We will give factual information as our fund balance stands today, but given uncertainties of funding cuts from the state and other things we might be required to pick up, I dont want to make any projections about our future fund balance, Stevenson said.

Dariens Education Cost Sharing grant was eliminated entirely for the first time last year, and this year, the town faces a potential bill in the ballpark of $5 million if Malloys plan to shift teachers pension costs back to municipalities is accepted.

Westports ECS grant, a payment of state aid made annually to the town for education, was cut to $0 in Malloys latest executive order outlining plans for ECS payments if the states budget is not set by the time theyre due in October.

Westport and other affluent towns portion of aid had been dwindling in recent years and the total cut was anticipated, as the state has struggled to address its budget deficit and agree on a two-year spending plan.

New Canaan is another of the affluent towns that expects to receive no ECS money, which was why the first selectman was unconcerned about the consequences of not heeding the governors request.

Whatre they going to do? Say, Mr. Mallozzi, if you dont comply, were not going to fund your town anymore? Theyve taken away $4 million this year and next year were not projected to get any aid, Mallozzi said.

Justin Papp contributed to this report.
Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., is applauding the Trump administrations finalizing of an agreement to restore trade access for U.S. pork to Argentina for the first time since 1992.

Smith said that is good news for Nebraska agriculture.

The value of Nebraskas hog industry in 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was $720 million. The state ranked sixth in the nation in hog and pig numbers in 2016 and sixth in hog slaughter at 7.987 million head.

In June, U.S. beef producers gained access to Chinas market, bringing an end to a 14-year ban, said Smith, who added that it is vital that the U.S. continue working to increase market access for producers.

Smith serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade, and is the founder and co-chairman of the Modern Agriculture Caucus. He also recently introduced a resolution in the House in support of negotiating a trade agreement with Japan.

Gov. Pete Ricketts also said the deal to reopen Argentina to U.S. pork exports is good news, which will help grow agriculture and the pork industry in Nebraska.

Greg Ibach, Nebraska Department of Agriculture director, said the Argentina deal is a new opportunity for Nebraska pork producers  Other countries in Central and South America have already shown strong demand and this can only enhance the sales in the region.

Al Juhnke, executive director of the Nebraska Pork Producers Association, said the opening of pork markets such as Argentina helps our Nebraska pork industry by providing additional customers for our products.

According to the National Pork Producers Council, the U.S. pork industry, which has been the worlds largest exporter of pork during the last 10 years, depends on exports for growth. NPPC said that pork exports added $50, representing 36 percent of the $140 average value of a hog, to every U.S. hog marketed in 2016.

According to the USDA, Argentina has blocked imports of U.S. pork since 1992, citing animal health concerns. With the new agreement, all fresh, chilled, and frozen pork and pork products from United States animals will be eligible for export to Argentina.

Argentine food safety officials will visit the United States to conduct on-site verification of our countrys meat inspection system, after which U.S. pork exports will resume pending resolution of any outstanding technical issues.

According to the U.S. Meat Export Federation, Brazil is currently Argentinas primary supplier of imported pork and will likely export about 32,000 metric tons of pork to Argentina this year, valued at about $95 million. Argentina is 90 percent self-sufficient in pork production, but based on past performance, the Argentine pork market has room for further import growth, as imports were as high as 47,000 metric tond in 2011.

USMEF said that after importing very low volumes from 2012 through 2015, the countrys imports rebounded last year to nearly 27,000 metric tons. Brazil captured more than 90 percent of the market, with the rest provided by European suppliers  mainly frozen pork from Denmark and cured products from Spain and Italy. This upward trend in imports has continued in 2017, as Argentinas imports through May were up 75 percent year-over-year in volume and nearly doubled in value.

USMEF said that Argentinas per capita pork consumption has grown rapidly over the past several years, increasing 57 percent since 2011 to an estimated 13.5 kg this year, based on USDA estimates. This compares to beef consumption at 56.7 kg and poultry at 43.9 kg, but beef consumption is well off its highs of the early 2000s and poultry consumption has increased by only 18 percent since 2011.

USMEF expects there will be demand in the Argentine market for U.S. pork  such as hams, picnics and trimmings  to be used as raw material for further processing, but also sees potential to build demand for U.S.-produced processed products.
Runza donating portion of sales to public library

Runza Restaurants will conduct the 15th annual Great Books for Great Kids fundraiser Aug. 29.

When customers eat at either Runza location in Grand Island  1812 N. Webb Rd. or 2004 S. Locust St.  that day, Runza will donate 10 percent of sales to the Friends of the Grand Island Public Library to purchase books for the childrens and teen collections.

Runza Restaurants has been a longtime supporter of reading.

Reading is vital to lifelong success and provides an excellent opportunity for families to spend time together, said Becky Perrett, director of marketing for Runza National. Donating funds for books and promoting literacy is an important endeavor for children and the community.

For more information, contact Kim Mettenbrink at (308) 385-5333, ext. 112, or Celine Swan at (308) 385-5333, ext. 104, or email to giplfoundation@gmail.com.

Computer business has new location, new focus

COR Managed Services in Grand Island is now located at 1028 N, Webb Road, Suite E.

Formerly known as Computers on the Run, the business will now be focusing on commercial clients, no longer offering retail sales and residential services.

COR Managed Services provides its business customers with managed computer services, threat monitoring and backup management. The business, owned by Doug Cramer and Brandon Flodman, has been operating in Grand Island since 2004.

Free training in estate, charitable gift planning set for Sept. 27

The 25th annual Estate and Charitable Gift Planning Institute, offered at no cost for accountants, attorneys, financial advisors, trust officers and insurance professionals, is being hosted by the Grand Island Community Foundation on Sept. 27.

Sponsored nationally by the Salvation Army and broadcast live from the Minneapolis Convention Center, the seminar will be shown locally from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Tom Dinsdale Automotive Community Meeting Room, 1708 S. Webb Road. Lunch will be provided.

This professional seminar is offered at no cost and qualifies attendees for CEU credits: Nebraska CLE: 4.5 hours (includes 1 ethics); CFP: 5 hours; CPE: 6 hours (includes 5 tax and 1 ethics); CTFA: 5.75 hours; and IMCA: 5 hours includes 1 ethics (for all three certifications).

The Grand Island Community Foundation is sponsoring this opportunity to provide information for philanthropic planning beneficial to individuals and our community as a whole. Event sessions include strategies to ensure estate plans remain up-do-date with client needs and in compliance with current estate and tax law, best practices for ethics for planning professionals, and charitable giving approaches for various client life and wealth stages.

For an agenda and registration, email dkellogg@gicf.org or call Diana Kellogg at (308) 381-7767 by Sept. 15.
A controversial zoning request in Hall County will come before the Hall County Board of Supervisors at its meeting Tuesday morning.

The request is to rezone nine lots on 55 acres in the Prairie Creek Meadows Subdivision, located south of 1-R Road and east of Webb Road, from an A-1 Agricultural Primary to Planned Unit Development (PUD).

The county board will hold a 9:30 a.m. public hearing, then discuss the rezoning request and consider taking action on it.

Regional Planning Director Chad Nabity previously told The Independent the current zoning allows for one lot per 20 acres. However, the zoning change would allow for nine houses on 55 acres.

Nabity said this is similar to what was done for Amick Acres in Doniphan and for Bellamys Subdivision west of Cairo.

It is the primary way we can do that large lot (and) develop acreage development in Hall County, he said earlier this month. It is creating a PUD. You look at access, you look at drainage, you look at how well the septic will work, and all of those things as part of that.

The Regional Planning Commission approved the measure on Aug. 2 on a close 4-3 vote.

Those who spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting spoke about how the subdivision would change their livelihood with a house on each side of their land and also raised concerns about the floodway on the property, which led to the close vote with the Planning Commission.

As you move farther to the east, the elevation will drop, Nabity told the Planning Commission at its Aug. 2 meeting. On one side of the road, it is 1861.1 (feet) and on the other side of the road it is 1860.5. So, from one side of the road to the other, the base flood elevation dropped by six-tenths of a foot.

The county board will also receive an update from board Chairwoman Pam Lancaster on her visit with State Auditor Charlie Janssens office regarding an Aug. 8 vote by the board to approve a change order to the Federal Building at the corner of Second and Locust streets.

The board voted 4-1-2  with Supervisors Lancaster and Karen Bredthauer abstaining and Supervisor Gary Quandt voting no  to approve a change order that includes HVAC rerouting, adding a fire strobe to the breakroom and a restroom exhaust rerouting.

Supervisor Jane Richardson, who chairs the countys Facilities Committee, told the board Aug. 8 that the committee had given the go-ahead for the HVAC portion of the change order, since it was not a big dollar amount and would further delay the project if it was not approved.

The net deduction for the HVAC was $1,428, the net deduction for the plumbing was $233, utilizing the existing VAV had a net addition of $2,115 and adding a fire strobe to the breakroom was a net addition of $408. The total net addition to the project contract was $862 with the approved orders.

Bredthauer, Lancaster and Quandt questioned whether the Facilities Committee was authorized to pre-approve the change order without approval of the entire county board. Lancaster said she would abstain from voting and would refer the matter to Janssens office and let it decide what Hall Countys process should be for having a committee approve a change order up to a certain amount in order to have the matter resolved.

In other action, the county board will:

 Consider approving a memorandum of understanding between Hall County and the city of Grand Island for the 2017 Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program Award and authorize Lancaster to sign the agreement. According to the Grand Island City Council agenda memo for its Tuesday meeting, the grant is for $19,440, with $14,580 going to the city of Grand Island and $4,860 going to Hall County.

 Receive an update on the Federal Building project.

 Discuss and consider approving appointments and reappointments to the Hall County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners.

The Hall County Board of Supervisors meets at 9 a.m. in the Hall County Administration Building.
The Nebraska Wanderfreunde Trailblazers walking club brought people from several states and Canada to explore the Grand Island area during the solar eclipse weekend.

The club started Friday night with a social and a walk around historic downtown Grand Island. Its based in Omaha and is associated with the American Volkssport Association, which is Americas Walking Club.

Sandy Spaulding, committee chair for the Trailblazers, said the club has planned an entire weekend out of the eclipse. On Saturday, the people participating in the weekend walks will go to the Crane Trust Nature Center and swim at the YMCA. Saturday night, theyll go to the Sherman Ranch for a star party. Sunday includes walks in Aurora and on the Dark Island Trail, and Monday will start at Hall County Park and end at Stuhr Museum for the Gem Over the Prairie eclipse event.

We just decided to have a whole weekend of sky, Spaulding said.

The event was advertised in the clubs national magazine, which may explain the geographics of people who came.

Les Yother is a member of the Kansas Jaywalkers club in Leavenworth. Hes participating in the Trailblazers weekend event and has been to Grand Island before. When a member of the AVA, people go to several walking events around the country and can get stamps in a book.

My wife loves to get stamps, Yother said.

Participants got to choose to walk a 5K or a 10K around Grand Island, both starting at St. Marys Cathedral. The 5K went down Division Street, over through Pier Park to the post office downtown, then back to the Cathedral.

Walkers came from places like Council Bluffs, Alabama, San Antonio, elsewhere in Texas, Kansas and Canada.

Spaulding said walking is more than just that. She said the national club and the Trailblazers offer a social aspect. The clubs motto is fun, fitness and friendship.

It brings people together, Spaulding said.
A hearty Saturday Salute goes this week to the 1,028 volunteers who have worked so hard to complete the citywide cleanup organized by Clean Community System to get ready for the Nebraska State Fair.

The last of the crews will be out picking up trash again this weekend, so motorists should be aware to watch out for them when driving around town.

With the Nebraska State Fair just a week away, you still can assist in our efforts by making sure your business or home is litter free, said Denise McGovern-Gallagher, CCS executive director. Take pride in our community. If you see litter along the sidewalk, street, or on your property, stop and pick it up.

This is an annual project as Grand Island comes together to make sure the community is clean and welcoming for the thousands of people who will be here every days of the State Fair. This wouldnt be possible without so many people taking time out in their already-busy schedules to participate in the cleanup.

Survey puts focus on public input

We also salute the Grand Island Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (GIAMPO) for its work to survey the community in order to design a bicycle and pedestrian network for the Grand Island area.

The survey will be available online through Sept. 29. Links to English and Spanish versions of the survey can be found at www.walkbikegi.com. Paper copies of the survey are also available in the Public Works suite at Grand Island City Hall, 100 E. First St.

The purpose of the bicycle and pedestrian master plan is to assess the existing conditions and opportunities, develop a system that expands routine bike and pedestrian transportation/recreation use, and recommend a sequence of future bicycle, pedestrian and trail projects.

It is important that this plan is drawn up with the wishes of local cyclists and walkers in mind. This survey is a way for them to be heard and the responses will be included in the master plan final report.

HHD product of forward thinkers

And a big salute also goes to the community leaders who were responsible for the creation of Husker Harvest Days, which is observing its 40th year in Grand Island this year.

Husker Harvest Days was an outgrowth of a Grand Island Chamber of Commerce committee. Dick Good, the chambers executive director at the time, had a vision of a working farm show where the University of Nebraska and equipment manufacturers would exhibit and demonstrate the latest ideas and equipment to farmers to determine whether what they should incorporate into their operations.

Don Reynolds, who was chairman of the chambers ag committee at the time, traveled with Ken Gnadt and Jack Martin to Fort Dodge, Iowa, to visit the Farm Progress Show there. They were impressed and the idea of a working farm show in Central Nebraska began to gain momentum.

After a piece of land was located, the nonprofit Agriculture Institute of Nebraska was formed to organize and run the show and Nebraska Farmer provided $300,000 in development costs.

Nebraska Farmer became responsible for the show and Agriculture Institute of Nebraska became responsible for farming the ground for its field demonstration. Ernie Dobesh farmed the site for several years before Roger Luebbe took over the responsibility, which he continues today with his son.

Over the years, Husker Harvest Days has continued to grow and has gained an international reputation as the worlds largest totally irrigated working farm show, featuring the latest equipment, supplies and technologies available to producers, along with field demonstrations and crop technology exhibits.

Husker Harvest Days has been a favorite of both farmers and non-farmers for its 40 years in Grand Island. We have only named a few of the people who were involved in starting and growing the event over the years. But because of the vision and hard work of so many people, we will be able to see the latest in agricultural technology and equipment again Sept. 12-14 at the HHD site.
It's not over. Thousands of uncounted ballots remain in Bucks, Montco

Bucks County officials do not anticipate all ballots cast Tuesday will be counted - or not - until next week. Leaving House key races in limbo
Bill Haine announced this week that he will not seek another term in the Illinois Senate.

The Alton native turned 73 on Aug. 8, and earlier this year he was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma. In a news release, Haine said he plans to serve out his current term.

It has been my honor to represent the people of the Metro East region. They are my neighbors, my friends, the people of the communities of my life. I have always tried my best to serve them, and I hope I have done a good job, said Haine, who was born in Alton and lives around the corner from his boyhood home.

The good Lord gives us a finite amount of time on this Earth. I believe the time has come for me to find a new adventure and for someone else to take up the challenge and honor of serving the people in the Illinois Senate.

Edwardsville is the city where Haine laid much of the groundwork for what would become a nearly 15-year tenure representing the 56th Senate District.

In 1978, Haine was elected to the Madison County Board, and in 1988 he became Madison County States Attorney, working out the Madison County Administration Building in downtown Edwardsville.

In 2002, he was appointed to fill the state senate seat held by the Evelyn Bowles, who was announcing her retirement. That 56th Senate District includes all or parts of Glen Carbon and Edwardsville as well as Alton, Bethalto, Collinsville, East Alton, Elsah, Godfrey, Granite City, Rosewood Heights and Wood River.

During his tenure, Haine was the legislative architect of a plan to modernize the levee system in the Metro East region. He helped win state investment in maintaining and expanding the SIUE campus, and maintain and expanding Interstate 255. He also led a successful effort to protect the states Road Fund from being raided for non-transportation-related spending.

Haine was also a supporter of concealed carry. In 2013, he and 40 other senators voted to override Gov. Pat Quinns veto and enact Illinois first concealed carry bill.

Haine sponsored, negotiated and helped win approval of the states medical marijuana law that balanced compassionate use with stringent standards and regulations, according to the news release from Haines office.

Haine has long prided himself on his knowledge of history. During debates in the senate, he often sprinkled his comments with references to Roman emperors, the Founding Fathers, and popes.

In September of 2012, Haine came to Edwardsville City Park to join other dignitaries in a ceremony to rededicate the century-old Madison County Centennial Monument.

Others spoke of Madison Countys rich history. Haine focused on the countys historically strong agricultural economy, which began in Alton and was based on river traffic, trade and commerce. The early pillars, he told the crowd, were commerce, early manufacturing and agriculture.

By the 1980s, industry in Madison County had begun to flourish. The impetus for that growth was the Illinois Terminal Railroad, he told them. The railroads tracks followed the river from East St. Louis through Madison County and connected with tracks in Missouri. It was a huge Midwestern railroad that marketed industrial sites, just as Interstate 255 is being used today to market warehouses and subdivisions along that ribbon of commerce, Haine told the gathering.

Haine and his wife Anna have seven children and 32 grandchildren. His future plans, according to the news release, include spending more time with all of them.
The opening of a STEM center at the Mannie Jackson Center for the Humanities, planned for mid-September, has been pushed back to Nov. 1.

Plans for a Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics hub adjacent to the MJCH have been around for years. The project seemed to be rolling along as late as mid-June when the Madison County Board approved a resolution for a $100,000 loan to the MJHC. But Chairman Kurt Prenzler said Tuesday that MJCH Executive Director Ed Hightower had actually requested that the funding be in the form of a grant.

Thats not what was requested for that project, so were working with the county to be supportive, Prenzler said.

Prenzler has submitted a resolution to the County Board that was approved at Wednesdays meeting to rescind the June resolution.

Said Hightower: Our thought was that it was not going to be a loan. We were working to get a grant from the county, and as we looked at all the details, it was just not something that we were interested in. So we made the decision and communicated that.

As far as any changes to the construction plans, only the timeline and the funding source have changed. Hightower said that funding has recently been lined up in the form of grants that will allow the approximately $100,000 project to move forward.

Everything else will continue the same, he said.

Both Hightower and Prenzler say they look forward to continuing with plans to provide a STEM hub in Edwardsville.

On Tuesday afternoon, Hightower was talking with representatives with AAIC Architects about plans for the new building, which will be adjacent to the Mannie Jackson Center, on North Main Street.

The building itself, he said, is in excellent shape overall. What needs to be done now is to retrofit the interior to meet the needs for SIUEs STEM staff coming in there. The plan, Hightower said, is also to house a coordinator of SIUEs STEM program in the new building.

Several other entities will also be housed in the new STEM hub, including a few employees from the Madison County Regional Superintendent Bob Daibers office. Some of those employees have been communicating with local school districts about a timeline for moving into the STEM building.

The STEM hub has been reaching out to all schools in Madison County with a focus this year on Madison, Venice, Granite City and Alton. Once the program is up and running, other schools will be added, Hightower has said.

MJCH also has plans to partner with Lewis and Clark Community College.

Now that funding in the form of grants is in the works, MJCH will be reaching out to get three bids for the retrofitting and construction work.

Prenzler said Tuesday that he is looking forward to working with the MJCH to meet their funding needs. But in what form that takes, were not exactly sure at this time, he said.

Hightower said that he has received just so many positive comments about using this as a STEM hub for the area.
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Glen Carbon officially has a yoga studio.

Vive Yoga Studio, located at 5 Glen Ed Professional Park, is the first yoga studio to open in the Glen Carbon area. The studio opened on June 12.

Adjacent to Unfried Chiropractic, owner Felice Anthony Thomas said the studio came about after being approached with the idea of moving the studio into a wellness center.

Honestly, the space, we were introduced to the chiropractor upstairs (Andrew Unfried). It was honestly his idea to have this whole business be a wellness center. So with the chiropractor, massage therapist upstairs  he wanted a yoga studio downstairs and we were lucky enough to be able to take over the space to start that idea, Thomas said.

The studio offers classes daily, ranging from Vinyasa Flow, Beginners Flow, Hatha and Power Yoga. Thomas said the studio has something for all levels of yoga practitioners to enjoy.

We have classes daily, Monday through Saturday. We have 9 a.m. classes Monday through Friday; 6 p.m. classes Monday through Thursday, she said.

Co-owner Alexis Young said after wanting to name the studio Vivacious, both she and Thomas decided to shorten it to appeal to a larger crowd.

Felice (Thomas) kind of thought it was a little feminine - kind of going towards just women and we want to be an all-people studio. So it kind of shortly became Vive. I looked it up and it actually has its own meaning, which means life. So we kind of went for it, Young said.

The studio offers a variety of yoga for different levels. For beginner yogis, Beginners Flow offers a full-body routine for those just starting out.

If youve done yoga before but are still just getting started as a yogi, the studio recommends signing up for Vinyasa Flow or Hatha yoga classes, which focuses on foundation-building and utilizing every muscle through movement and breathing.

Power Yoga is also offered and although it is suitable to all levels of yogis, the 60-minute class is a strong, fast-paced class designed to build heat and strength while using the full body.

The studio recommends those that take this class feel confident, safe and strong throughout classic sun salutation.

Young said regardless of yoga experience, she wants everyone who attends a class to feel welcome and comfortable.

I hope that people take away a sense of community. We want people to feel comfortable here; we want them to know that its a place where they can feel safe and practice and get to know new people, Young said.

Occasionally, the studio also offers kids yoga classes as well, which consists of a six-week series for children ages five through 12. Parents are also welcome to join.

Thomas said she has been a yogi for quite some time before starting up the studio, and hopes to share her passion for it with others.

I have been practicing yoga for 10 years and did my teacher training about four years. Its just something that I fell in love with, both from a physical workout standpoint as well as a mental standpoint. Its just made so many changes in my life, as far as health goes, Thomas said.

The studio is currently offering a special  30 days for $30. They also have class passes.

A five-class pass is $65, a 10-class pass is $120 and a 20-class pass is $200.

Studio memberships are also available.

Young said ultimately what separates the Vive Yoga Studio from surrounding competition is not only the services the studio offers, but also its unique ambiance.

I think (customers) fall in love with us as instructors and what we have to offer them. They like our personality, our class  they love the ambiance of the studio. Its just a nice, great studio. Honestly, weve put a lot of work into it and were really proud of it, Young said.

To purchase a class pass, a studio membership, or to learn more about Vive Yoga Studio, visit its website at www.viveyogi.com, or search Vive Yoga Studio on Facebook.
As you walk around the Nebraska state capitol in Lincoln, the southeast corner of 16th and H streets presents three spectacular houses. The house directly on the corner was built by W.H. Ferguson and is currently owned by the state.

The house is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a frequent site for receptions and dinners, but its original owner, once noted as one of the most important capitalists and industrialists in Nebraska, is little known locally today.

William Henry Ferguson was born in 1856 in Earlville, Illinois. At 19, Ferguson moved to York County, Nebraska, in a covered wagon where he became a farm hand. Observing farming and its allied businesses, he moved to Aurora in 1881 where he worked as a grain buyer saving nearly everything he earned. The following year he moved to Waco, again as a grain buyer and, in 1885 acquired the local elevator. In 1886, Ferguson also acquired the Aurora elevator.

Ferguson moved his office to Hastings, married Myrtle Likes and was elected to the Hastings city council in 1887. Their son, Richard F., was born in 1890 and the following year a second son, Robert Likes Ferguson, was born.

Additional grain elevators were purchased, with virtually all of them constructed of wood set directly on the ground. Since treated lumber did not exist, they began to rot at the bottom. The solution was to literally jack the structures up and set brick foundations under them.

As the number of elevators grew, so was the need for bricks. When the Hastings brickyard attempted to raise its prices above the agreed upon amount, Ferguson quietly went to the brick manufacturers local bank, bought up its loans and became the brickyards owner.

The Klose family of Hastings owned part interest in the Stockwell Brick Works near Lincoln at what would ultimately become part of Yankee Hill. Ferguson then traded his interest in the Hastings brickyard for partial interest in Kloses Lancaster County operation. He then proceeded to buy the balance of Kloses interest, giving him total ownership of the plant. In 1900, Ferguson established Western Brick & Supply Company at Hastings with a sales office in Lincoln.

In 1903, Ferguson moved his family to 330 N. 14th St. in Lincoln. For a time, he also maintained a residence on Old Cinder Road (now named Calvert Street) near Coddington, north across the street from the stockyards boarding house and directly east of the brickyards. At that point, Ferguson owned more than 90 Midwest grain elevators, including one in Lincoln on the northeast corner of 6th and G streets.

George Hascall organized Beatrice Creamery in 1904, with financing provided by Ferguson, who was also a major stockholder. Within a few years the creamery business required one of the two men to spend several days a week in Chicago. At first they traded off but Ferguson preferred to live in Lincoln so a coin was flipped to see which one would move. Ferguson won with Hascall moving to Evanston, Illinois. Ferguson built a new house in Lincoln.

In 1906, Ferguson sold 60 of his more than 100 grain elevators to Updike Grain Co. allowing him to finance his entry into and spend more time in the milling business.

Two years later, as Lincoln began to outgrow its high school building at 15th and N streets, Ferguson -- at one point president of the Lincoln School Board -- wrote a controversial editorial encouraging the building of a new high school at 22nd and J streets. Strong opposition claimed it was too far east of the city.

The Cleveland architectural firm of Searles, Hirsh & Gavin was hired to build the new Ferguson house at 16th and H streets in 1908 with construction beginning the following year. Completed in 1911, the house featured steel girders, with 16-inch thick walls of St. Louis cold-pressed brick and stone in a Renaissance Revival design and cost a staggering $30,000.

With all business interests operating smoothly, Ferguson became interested in irrigation, power generating, banking, ranching and a system of 52 wholly-owned farms.

In 1916, a second mansion of sorts was built on Madeline Island in the Apostle Islands on Nebraska Row as a summer house.

Ferguson died in his Lincoln home Nov. 12, 1937, with corporate interests assumed by his son Robert, which at one point included grain elevators, farmland, Woodlawn Dairy, Yankee Hill Brickworks, Capital Beach Amusement Park, Beatrice Foods, Lincoln Traction Company and diverse banking interests.

It's an amazing record for a man, who was also instrumental in introducing winter wheat and alfalfa as crops, yet remains today unknown except for his Lincoln house now owned by the state primarily as offices.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, August 19, 2017 11:05 1912 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ad1e13f 1 Art & Culture regional-language,Bahasa-Indonesia,language Free

The Education and Culture Ministry is said to have identified 646 regional languages, according to the ministry's Language Agency head Dadang Sunendar.

"We have already identified 646 regional languages. In the next two months, we estimate the number will increase," said Dadang in Jakarta on Friday as quoted by Antara news agency.

The identification of the nation's many languages is part of an effort to discover how many regional languages exist in Indonesia. Several of the languages are said to have gone extinct as they are not used anymore, including Hoti, Hukumina, Hulung, Serua, Teun, Palumata, Loun, Moksela, Nakaela and Nila  all found in Maluku. Some Papuan languages like Saponi and Mapia have also reportedly vanished.

The ministry is currently holding a language ambassador contest in a bid to preserve Indonesia's regional languages. This year, each province is encouraged to send two language ambassadors.

Read also: Yogyakarta airport promotes Javanese language to highlight local wisdom

"To become a language ambassador is not easy. Other than having to be able to speak Bahasa Indonesia fluently, they also have to have mastered regional and foreign languages," said Dadang.

Of course, all language ambassadors would have to be able to use regional languages found in their respective provinces. Dadang said they would receive language training for one week prior to representing their provinces.

"It's quite a challenge. We could not run the campaign alone. We have to collaborate with parents, teachers and the media," Dadang added.

South Kalimantan Language Ambassador, Muhammad Andri HF, said the province was home to 18 regional languages, but that the most popular language currently used was Banjar. "We try to preserve [regional] languages. We don't want them to become extinct," he said. (kes)
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) London  Sat, August 19, 2017 10:00 1912 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ad19d16 2 People Malala-Yousafzai,Oxford-University,Twitter Free

Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban for advocating education for girls in her native Pakistan, announced Thursday she has won a place to study at Oxford University.

"So excited to go to Oxford!!" the 20-year-old posted on Twitter, along with a picture of the message she received confirming her acceptance on the philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) course.

The announcement came on the day that students across Britain received the results of their A-levels, exams taken at the end of secondary school.

Yousafzai did not reveal her results, but said: "Well done to all A-level students -- the hardest year. Best wishes for life ahead!"

So excited to go to Oxford!! Well done to all A-level students - the hardest year. Best wishes for life ahead! pic.twitter.com/miIwK6fNSf  Malala (@Malala) August 17, 2017

Read also: Taylor Swift donates to sexual assault charity

She was just 15 years old when she was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in October 2012 as she traveled by bus home from an exam to her village in the Swat valley.

She was flown to the central English city of Birmingham for treatment, and has lived there with her family ever since, continuing her education and activism.

Yousafzai was granted the Nobel Peace prize aged 17 in 2014 along with India's Kailash Satyarthi for their championing of children's rights.

In July, she opened a new Twitter account on her last day of school, an experience she described as "bittersweet".

"I know that millions of girls around the world are out of school and may never get the opportunity to complete their education," Yousafzai wrote.

But she said she was "excited" about her future and promised to continue "fighting for girls".

PPE is a prestigious course that has produced many British politicians and world leaders, including late Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
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Linkedin Linda Yulisman (The Jakarta Post) Tarempa, Anambas Islands  Sat, August 19, 2017 20:08 1911 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ad3053a 1 Business Anambas-Islands,Letung-Airport,overhaul,tourism Free

The Anambas Islands in Riau Islands province is set to finish the expansion of its only commercial airport, Letung Airport on Jemaja Island, in September.



The airport's runway will be extended to 1,430 meters from 1,200 meters as part of an effort to boost tourism.

Letung air transportation head Ariadi Widiawan said on Friday that with the completion of the overhaul, the airport would be able to welcome more small-sized aircraft, such as the ATR 72, a twin-engine turboprop airliner.



"We plan to open flights from Letung to Batam and from Letung to Ranai [in Natuna Islands]," he said.

Read also: Things to do while holidaying on the Anambas Islands

At present, private carrier Susi Air is the only airline that flies from Letung to Tanjung Pinang, the capital of Riau Islands, once a week, carrying a maximum of 15 passengers.

Other flights are run by chartered airliners that typically serve tourists from overseas.

In addition to Letung Airport, the Anambas Islands also has a special airport, Matak Airport on Palmatak Island. It is operated by oil and gas firm Medco E&P Natuna Ltd. The airport supports operational activities of Medco, local firm Star Energy Group Holdings and British oil firm Premier Oil.

With additional flights, the local government hopes to draw more tourists to the region, Ariadi said.



It was also seeking to improve ferry services connecting Jemaja with other islands, he added.



Poor infrastructure has affected tourism in the Anambas Islands, which comprise 255 islands that are famous for its beautiful lagoons and pristine coral reefs.






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Linkedin Yanan Wang (Agence France-Presse) Beijing, China  Sat, August 19, 2017 09:56 1912 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ad1941e 2 World crime,China,murder,writer Free

Life may be stranger than fiction for an award-winning Chinese crime writer who has been arrested in connection with a quadruple-homicide that took place more than two decades ago.

For 22 years, police in eastern Zhejiang province tried to crack the cold case of how a family ended up dead in the guesthouse they ran.

They filled stacks upon stacks of notepads with possible suspects and leads, only to learn earlier this month that the answer may have been hiding in plain sight at the local bookstore.

According to a police statement, Liu Yongbiao, a 53-year-old author, was arrested last week at his home in neighbouring Anhui province along with a villager with the surname Wang.

They have been charged with and confessed to the murders.

Authorities told The Paper, a Chinese publication, that Liu remarked as he was being handcuffed: "I've been waiting for you here all this time."

Liu, who was a member of the prestigious Communist Party-led China Writers Association, worked with one of the country's largest publishing houses and had a novel turned into a television series.

In the preface to his novel "The Guilty Secret," according to The Paper, the writer revealed that he was working on a sequel starring a wordsmith who commits a series of murders but is never caught.

The book's planned title was "The Beautiful Writer Who Killed".

The gruesome nature of Liu's own alleged crime would have provided ample fodder for his story.

On the evening of November 29, 1995, police said, two men checked into a guesthouse in Huzhou, a picturesque city on the Yangtze Delta, with the intention of executing a robbery.

They ended up bludgeoning to death the couple that owned the guesthouse and their grandson as well as another guest.

With authorities lacking advanced forensic technology at the time, they had just one thing to go on: the guesthouse staff's recollection that the two men spoke in heavy Anhui accents.

Then, nearly 22 years later this August, police said they made a "breakthrough" in part due to DNA testing, which pointed them to Liu and Wang.

At the time of Liu's arrest, he was editing a student paper and running a literature course, Chinese media reported.

Liu's students told the Beijing News that he never talked about his personal life.

Fang Ming, whom Liu tutored in writing from the sixth grade to the eighth, remembered his teacher as a solemn man.

"(Liu) was a very serious person," Fang said.

"He rarely smiled and often criticised his students. Though he never raised his voice, he always wore his disappointment on his face."

Liu described himself as a "man of the countryside," Chinese media reported, having grown up poor in a village where his education ended after high school.

One of the officers who arrested Liu told The Paper that he handed him a letter addressed to his wife.

"I've been waiting for this day for the last 20 years," the letter said. "Today there is finally a conclusion. I can finally be free from the mental torment I've endured for so long."

Topics : crime China murder writer
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Linkedin Chris Lefkow and Jerome Cartillier (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Sat, August 19, 2017 08:43 1912 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ad181a1 2 World trump,White-House,presidency,nationalist,Racism Free

Donald Trump parted ways with his controversial chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday as the White House reels from the fallout over the president's response to a violent white supremacist rally.

But the 63-year-old Bannon -- a hero of the so-called "alt right" but bete noire of centrists whose departure caps one of the most disastrous weeks of the young presidency -- vowed to keep fighting for Trump's agenda from outside the White House.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Bannon made clear he remained fully committed to the nationalist-populist policies that carried Trump to power.

"If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents -- on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America," said the far-right firebrand.

Within hours of his departure, Breitbart News -- the provocative right-wing outlet which Bannon headed before joining Trump's team -- announced he had returned to his former home, as executive chairman.

"The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today," declared Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow.

Bannon's presence at the White House had been contested from the start, and with Trump under fire for insisting anti-racism protesters were equally to blame for violence at a weekend rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, the president faced renewed pressure to let him go.

Trump, who rose to political prominence by casting doubt on whether Barack Obama, America's first black president, was born in the United States, did condemn neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan on several occasions this week but many across the political spectrum say he did not go far enough.

Trump was at meetings with his national security advisers at the presidential retreat Camp David to discuss the situation in Afghanistan when the White House announced Bannon's departure.

The White House did not specify whether he had resigned or -- as was widely reported -- been forced out.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."
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Linkedin Djemi Amnifu (The Jakarta Post) Kupang  Sat, August 19, 2017 13:22 1912 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ad26dbb 1 National HTI,Kupang,Nusa-Cendana-University,#Perppu Free

Four lecturers and students at the state-run Nusa Cendana University (Undana) in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, have been identified as being connected with the disbanded Islamist organization Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI).

"It is not ethical to mention their names. The point is I have summoned and questioned them," Undana rector Frederik Benu told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Frederik said that, during the questioning, all four claimed they had only received invitations for a pengajian (Islamic learning forum) from the HTI back in 2012 without knowing what the organization was and whether the organization intended to change the state ideology of Pancasila.

"It happened several years ago. But I asked them to make written statements that they were not part of the management or supporters of the HTI. I will hand over the statements to the Research, Technology and Higher Education Minister [Muhammad Nasir]," he said.

Read also: I don't have face of a dictator: Jokowi

Previously, Frederik said he would expel lecturers and students who were involved in the HTI.

"If you cannot accept diversity, leave this university, leave this nation," he said, adding that he had received notification from the ministry over the presence of HTI supporters at the university.

There are some 28,000 students in the university, Frederik said.

The government has launched an intensive crackdown on state officials known to be HTI supporters since the Law and Human Rights Ministry announced it had disbanded the organization in July. (ecn/bbs)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, August 19, 2017 17:36 1912 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ad2ed13 1 Politics #RegionalElections,GolkarParty,Idrus-Marham,#2018RegionalElections,#GolkarParty Free

The Golkar Party is set to announce the candidates it will endorse for the 2018 regional elections near the end of August.

Golkar secretary-general Idrus Marham said the party's central executive board was giving the party's regional chapters more time to have discussions on political matters, especially regarding the formation of coalitions at the regional level.

Golkar will formally announce the candidates between Aug. 28 and 29, he said in Bogor on Friday as quoted by kompas.com.

As many as 171 provinces, regencies and cities will elect local leaders simultaneously in June next year.

Idrus said that Golkar believed the country should be developed together and that, therefore, the party has asked all regional chapter leaders to have political discussions with other parties.

Although Golkar has enough [legislative] seats to endorse its own candidates, we will forge coalitions, depending on [the political situation] in each region, he said.

Read also: TNI commander Gatot moves closer to Muslim groups

The party has so far strongly indicated it would support the candidacy of Purwakarta Regent Dedi Mulyadi, who is also the chairman of Golkar's West Java chapter, to run for West Java governor.

However, Idrus said that the final decision had yet to be made because of ongoing political developments in the country's most populated province. (ecn/bbs)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, August 19, 2017 15:42 1912 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ad2bb40 1 Politics setya-novanto,Golkar,corruption,Judicial-Commission,corruption-eradication-commission,KPK Free

A number of Golkar Party members grouped under the Golkar Party Youth Movement Group (GMPG) plan to meet the Judicial Commission to report alleged misconduct by Golkar chairman and House of Representatives Speaker Setya Novanto.

The group alleges that Setya, who is currently a suspect in the e-ID corruption case, had a meeting with the Supreme Court leadership in Surabaya, East Java, to discuss Setya's legal position.

"We will go to the Judicial Commission on Monday to discuss the information we have received about the meeting," the group's coordinator, Ahmad Doli Kurnia, said as quoted by kompas.com.

Doli said the group was concerned that Novanto could have been attempting to influence the judiciary over Setya's alleged involvement in the high-profile case.

He added that the group would also visit the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to express support for the commissions handling of the case.

Read also: Key witness in e-ID graft case dead: KPK

Last Tuesday, the group went to the Supreme Court to meet chief justice Hatta Ali to ask for clarification about the alleged meeting. However, Hatta was not available to meet them.

Setya was named a suspect by the KPK, last month, in the case that has also implicated dozens of other politicians and reportedly caused Rp 2.3 trillion (US$172.7 million) in state losses.

Setya has repeatedly denied all allegations.

Party secretary general Idrus Marham said the group's move would denigrate the image of Golkar.

"If you want to salvage the party then your moves should not harm the party," he said. (ecn/bbs)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, August 19 2017

The Jakarta administration is set to provide English-language training for residents of Thousand Islands regency in North Jakarta to prepare them to welcome foreign tourists.

The head of the Jakarta Tourism and Culture Agency, Tinia Budiati, said the training center and tourism certification unit of the agency would be in charge of training the residents.

The unit aims to train the residents to welcome guests and teach them simple English conversation skills, Tinia said on Friday as quoted by kompas.com.

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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Turku, Finland  Sat, August 19, 2017 11:38 1912 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97ad1ed66 2 World terror-attack,finland,stabbing,police,security,Barcelona-attack Free

Police shot and wounded a suspect after a stabbing spree in which a man killed two people and wounded six others in the Finnish city of Turku.

Within hours of the attack on Friday the force had announced increased police patrols across the country.

"There are eight victims in the stabbing. Two dead and six injured," Turku police tweeted after the assault in a market square. A hospital official told journalists that all the victims were adults.

Police shot a suspect in the thigh minutes after the attack at another square nearby, arresting him and confiscating his knife.

His identity has not yet been established, police said late Friday, nor was the motive for the attack clear.

Police described the suspect in custody as "a young man of foreign origin", providing no other details except to say they were collaborating with the Finnish Immigration Service.

While security forces wrote on Twitter that police were "looking for other possible perpetrators", police told journalists it was likely there was only one attacker.

Police assured Turku residents the city was safe on Friday evening.

The stabbing spree comes with Europe on high alert a day after drivers slammed vehicles into pedestrians in two attacks in Spain, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 100 others. The Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack.

In Turku, images of a body covered in a white blanket were published on some online news sites, including the local daily Turun Sanomat.

The attack took place in the heart of the port city in southwestern Finland, just after 4:00 pm (1300 GMT) in a bustling neighbourhood.

"The perpetrator stabbed two people on the market square, one of whom came to the aid of the other," police told reporters.

"Then the perpetrator left the square to a busy street and stabbed more people."

Police arrested a suspect minutes later.
A tarp is now covering two Confederate flags hanging from the windows of a residential building on East 8th Street, at Avenue D. This photo was taken Friday afternoon by George Cohen.

Controversy erupted last week when neighbors began complaining about the flags, which have been on display for at least several months. The events in Charlottesville, Virginia prompted some locals to speak up, and in one case, to throw rocks at the windows. Cops and the building super at 403 East 8th St. tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the man living in the apartment to remove the flags. Neighbors have said the resident is mentally unstable. He also displayed an Israeli flag in one of the windows.

EV Grieve reported Friday:

This afternoon, workers dropped a black tarp from the roof over the windows on Eighth Street displaying the Confederate and Israeli flags. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the tarp  building management or concerned neighbors.

DNAinfo added:

A woman who answered the phone at the buildings management office, Yassky Properties, could not confirm whether it had covered the windows. The buildings property manager did not return a message seeking comment, though he said on Thursday that management was trying to resolve the issue.

NY1 reports that a neighbor tried to break into the apartment where the flags are displayed Friday evening:

The suspect, who identified himself to NY1 as Darren Keen, was arrested on the Lower East Side around 9 p.m. Friday. Police say officers heard the sound of broken glass at a building on East 8th Street near Avenue D. When they went to investigate, the NYPD says they found a trail of blood leading to the next building and up to Keens apartment. Police say Keen admitted to breaking a window and was taken into custody.

Earlier Keen told NY1, Im going right now to the hardware store and Im going to pull those tarps up and Im going to paint a giant Wu-Tang logo on those tarps right now. Keen said he moved to New York from Nebraska to escape racism. I came out here because I wanted to, I reject all that, he explained. And honestly, yeah, seeing this here again now, this reminds me of the reasons, why did I move out here then if Im going to have to see a Confederate flag?

UPDATE 5:07 p.m. According to multiple reports, the tarp and the flags ae now gone.

UPDATE 8/21 DNAinfo reports that the property owner has gone to court in an effort to evict the rent-sabilized tenant:

William Greens glowing display of two Confederate battle flags in the windows of his top-floor apartment at 403 E. Eighth St. have posed a clear and present danger to the building and the surrounding community by sparking violence and mayhem, says the complaint filed Saturday by property owner 113 Avenue D, LLC in New York State Supreme Court.

You can read the full article here.
(front page)

Coal miner deaths rise as bosses push more speedup

The first seven months of 2017 have seen a dramatic rise in deaths of miners on the job in U.S. coal mines after several years when they had been declining as the industry contracted. By Aug. 5, 11 miners have died, more than the eight killed in 2016.

Many are new miners, or experienced miners working in new coal mines. Five were in their early 30s or 20s. Four had spent less than a year at the mine, one only a few days. A number were experienced miners, but because of bankruptcies, closures and the downturn in coal production had recently taken jobs in new mines.

The majority of the deaths have been in the eastern coalfields, five in West Virginia alone.

There has been a sharp drop in the number of union-organized mines in the last couple decades, as the mine bosses in search of profits have pushed hard for speedup and corner-cutting on safety.

Ray Hatfield Jr., a 23-year veteran in the mines, was six months into his latest job when he was crushed to death in a Kentucky mine Jan. 26. The Mine Safety and Health Administration said his death was preventable, citing a number of safety violations at the mine.

Hatfield was working in a deathtrap, with not even minimal safety requirements being met, Tony Oppegard, an area attorney who represents mining families, told the press. This is what a lot of Appalachian coal miners have to put up with.

Patricia Silvey, the deputy assistant secretary of labor, said MSHA will respond by organizing visits to mines, reviewing training programs and observing young miners on the job.

The United Mine Workers of America said the initiative falls far short of what is needed, noting federal inspectors who conduct such training visits are barred from punishing the mine if they spot 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, union President Cecil Roberts wrote in a recent letter to MSHA. The union also pointed out that at union mines, a union representative would not be required to accompany inspectors on these visits.

When you let up on enforcement and you want to coddle operators and ask them to comply and assist them with complying, instead of making them comply, UMWA spokesman Phil Smith told the media, you will inevitably see an increase in bad accidents, bad injuries and fatalities.

To my way of thinking, new miners are not getting enough experience; theyre just getting turned loose. There should be more on-the-job training, Wilson Maxwell, president of UMWA Local 8982 at the preparation plant for the Oak Grove mine in Alabama, told the Militant in a phone interview. In June Marius Shepherd, a 32-year-old miner involved in preshift examinations there, was killed in a train haulage accident underground. He had only been at the mine a short period of months, and didnt have any experience on the haulage, Maxwell said.

When he started in the mines, Maxwell explained, I didnt run a piece of equipment for a year. Nowadays, with a few days of experience, they have workers running equipment. He criticized MSHAs plans for mine visits that bar inspectors from writing up violations, saying, If there is a danger, something should be done.

The rise in coal mine deaths occurs as coal production is increasing for the first time in years. E&E News, which describes itself as an organ for energy and environment professionals, wrote that the uptick in coal production has led to a handful of new mine openings and more shifts at existing mines. But the downturn saw many ex-miners leave for new jobs or new towns, with only red hats [inexperienced miners] to take their place.

Coal production is up 15 percent in the first six months of 2017 after record low production last year. Prices for natural gas  the main competitor of coal for power plants  are up and demand for export coal in China has increased. This has led to new hiring.

A year ago many of the big coal producers were in bankruptcy. Since then, the two top companies, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, have restructured and are trading on the stock exchange again.

And theyre taking steps to boost profitability at the expense of miners life and limb. High-cost coal mines are being shuttered while operations are moved to low-cost regions, Wall Street investment firm Zacks.com said.





Related articles:

On The Picket Line

No coal miner has to die!

Frame-up trial against Quebec rail workers to begin Sept. 11







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(front page)

SWP talks with workers in Va. about racist actions

In response to recent developments in Charlottesville, Virginia, and furor in the liberal media portraying workers who voted for President Donald Trump as the social base of racist and right-wing activity in the U.S., members of the Socialist Workers Party have been knocking on doors in Charlottesville and around the country to discuss the issues with working people.

SWP member Ned Measel met David Slezak at his home. He is a retired teacher in Charlottesville who now serves meals at a homeless shelter across the street from the park where the Aug. 12 confrontation took place. I had to listen all day to chants  blood and soil, build the wall, Jews will not replace us, and f--k the faggots, he said, referring to the ultra-rightists. I saw some of them had machine guns. He showed Measel some photos of armed white supremacists he took with his phone.

Slezak wanted to discuss broader politics in the U.S. today. Im a socialist. What do you think of Bernie Sanders? he asked. Sanders doesnt present a course forward for the working class. He is seeking to take over the Democratic Party and give it a more radical reform program in hopes of shoring up the capitalist system, said Measel. Working people need to build their own party, a party like the SWP, that can lead workers and their allies in struggle against the ravages of the capitalist crisis today and chart a course to take political power out of the hands of the capitalist class. Thats what the Cuban people did in their revolution, something working people here need to emulate.

Variety of opinions about statue

People had a variety of opinions about the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in downtown Charlottesville that the City Council wants to take down. The statue is historical and its never bothered anyone, so it doesnt need to come down, Rae Dawn, 15, told Measel on her doorstep. This view was shared by a number of others, both Blacks and Caucasians, talked to by SWP members.

Unlike in Charleston, South Carolina, where 50,000 people marched in 2000 demanding the Confederate battle flag be taken down  leading to its removal from the state Capitol building  or where thousands gathered in July 2015 to see that same flag entirely removed from the Capitol grounds after white supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed nine African-American worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, there is no broad movement of workers in the streets of Charlottesville demanding the statue of Lee be removed.

In Charleston, West Virginia, about 150 people protested at the state Capitol Aug. 13 demanding the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson. A handful of members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans counterprotested, saying the statue was a historical site. The next day Socialist Workers Party members and supporters from the Washington, D.C., area knocked on doors in Huntington, West Virginia, where President Donald Trump recently held a rally attended by thousands of working people.

Most of the workers they met, both Caucasian and Black, said that they had voted for Trump.

People say that this is a part of history, but its about bad history, said Shawn Tackett, 42, an unemployed construction worker, who was remodeling his home. The Civil War was fought to abolish slavery. The reasons they are for fighting for the monuments are wrong.

Team members showed him Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by SWP National Secretary Jack Barnes, which describes Radical Reconstruction following the Civil War, the Black-led working-class movement that overthrew Jim Crow segregation in the 1960s and the significance of the 2000 protests against the Confederate battle flag in Charleston.

Thats why struggles over state governments displaying the Confederate battle flag, or over statues or holidays in tribute to political or military leaders of the slaveholders rebellion, continue to have weight in the class struggle many decades  indeed almost a century and a half  after it was routed in a bloody civil war, Barnes writes in the Workers Power book.

SWP members and supporters are stepping up efforts to meet with workers on their doorsteps and introduce them to Are They Rich Because Theyre Smart? and The Clintons Anti-Working-Class Record, also by Barnes, and Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? by SWP leader Mary-Alice Waters, and to increase the circulation of the Militant.

Ive been to four funerals in the last week and a half, said Tackett, talking about the opioid epidemic in West Virginia, where the drug overdose death rate is the highest in the country.

We can solve it, said SWP member Glova Scott. Drug use and crime decline when workers go into struggle against the economic, social and moral disaster wrought by capitalism, thats what happened during the big battles that overthrew Jim Crow. Its through these kinds of struggles that working people will gain the strength and self-confidence to take political power and finally get rid of this dog-eat-dog capitalist system.

In the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle, Mary Martin, SWP candidate for Seattle mayor, and SWP member Edwin Fruit met Lahtavia Mitchell, 26, who works as a housekeeper. Its sad that people can feel totally comfortable expressing hatred and prejudice for others, she said. On the other hand I see people feeling totally able to express their anti-racist stance too.

The historic gains of the powerful movement that overthrew Jim Crow cannot be turned back, Martin said. It still reverberates today. There is more fraternization among workers who are Black and workers who are Caucasian than ever before. The working class is less racist than ever before in U.S. history. Mitchell got a Militant subscription to follow politics and the activities of the SWP.

SWP members in New York put all other activities aside Aug. 14 to join in a number of actions in the area to protest the killing of Heather Heyer by a white supremacist in Charlottesville and discuss the road forward for the working class.

SWP leader Roger Calero said he met Fredy, a construction worker who came to Trump Tower to see what was happening with the demonstrations. After an hour of discussion on a wide variety of political questions, Calero told the Militant, Fredy got a copy of the paper. He said he had a friend he thought would also like to talk with the SWP. We plan for the three of us to get together and talk more, Calero said.

SWP member Lea Sherman took part in a rally of some 125 people outside the Church of the Mediator in the Bronx that evening. They had an open speakers platform so she addressed the crowd. There is much carnage on the working class, she said, including unemployment, the opioid crisis, no health care, cop violence, never ending wars. Neither the Democrats nor Republicans have any solutions. The road forward is the working class taking power. That is the road of the Cuban Revolution.


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Workers, youth build Cuba Che brigade, youth festival in Russia

In less than six weeks, delegations of workers and youth from countries around the world will be heading to Cuba for the Oct. 1-15 In the Footsteps of Che International Brigade. Others will be attending the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students in Sochi, Russia, Oct. 14-22. Both gatherings will bring together anti-imperialist fighters, supporters of the Cuban Revolution and others who want to learn about struggles of working people around the world and how to strengthen their political work when they return home.

So far more than 60 youth, workers and others from the U.S. have sent in applications, and people continue to sign up for the brigade. Participants will visit places where Che Guevara led battles in the Cuban Revolution and meet with veterans of those struggles. They will talk with leaders of Cubas mass organizations and do agricultural work.

I am a worker 100 percent, Alex Calvo, 26, from Far Rockaway, Queens, told Val Johnson, his neighbor, and Roger Calero, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party in New York Aug. 15. I am interested in seeing what a group of people can do when they have mankind in their best interest. He was referring to the Cuban peoples internationalist contributions, including providing free treatment in Cuba for more than 20,000 victims of the Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Calvo filled out his application for the brigade and sent $200 toward travel expenses.

Joel Britton, a member of the SWP from Oakland, California, who is going on the brigade, told the Militant about the interest in the Cuban Revolution he and other party members found when they went to Hollister, California, in June to express solidarity with members of the Teamsters union at San Benito Foods on strike there.

When they first heard about it, two of the leaders of the militant cannery workers strike were attracted to the idea of the brigade, he said. The strikers kept up effective picket lines for a week, won solidarity from workers in the area and won a $1-an-hour wage increase.

We explained how working people took power in Cuba nearly 60 years ago and remain in power with a revolutionary leadership. And that workers should emulate their example in order to be free of the exploitation and oppression we live with under capitalism, Britton said. One of these strikers has applied to participate in the brigade.

Six people from western New England have joined the brigade. The Greater Hartford Cuba Coalition organized an Aug. 15 fundraising picnic to help cover airfare and other expenses. A few years ago a friend of mine went to Cuba and said I must go and see for myself, Pat Fontes, who has been active in anti-war and social justice fights for 40 years, told those at the event. I want to see how they are building a socialist society.

So far $427 has been raised, nearly half the Coalitions goal of $1,000.

The Che brigade is being organized by the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP). It is named for Ernesto Che Guevara, a central leader of the Cuban Revolution and of efforts to aid workers and farmers worldwide to follow its example. Che fell in combat 50 years ago helping to lead a guerrilla struggle against the military dictatorship of Rene Barrientos in Bolivia.

Some 20,000 delegates from over 120 countries are expected at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Russia. One hundred have signed up to go from the U.S. The festival provides an opportunity for anti-imperialist fighters to meet each other, share experiences and discuss and debate how to advance social struggles worldwide.

Those who join the Che brigade or the World Festival in Sochi will have the opportunity to organize reportback meetings to share what theyve learned.

To sign up for the brigade, contact the Chicago Cuba Coalition at (312) 952-2618 or ICanGoToCuba@gmail.com.





Related articles:

1961 literacy drive key to advance of Cuban Revolution







Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home




This week's questions:

Q: Which two U.S. presidents had ties with Clayton K. Yeutter, in whose name the Institute of International Trade and Finance is being launched?

Q: Where would one find busts of Nebraska Hall of Fame inductees?

Q: In what year did 7th- and 8th-grade students at Lincoln East Middle School moved to the newly-built Lux Middle School?

Q: Who was the first homecoming king in the history of Lincoln Pius X High School?

Answers to last week's questions:

Q: Who was selected recently to be the newest inductee into the Nebraska Hall of Fame?

A: Thomas Rogers Kimball, who administered the construction of the State Capitol building. He moved to Nebraska in 1871.

Q: How many meals were provided by the Food Bank of Lincolns BackPack Program last year?

A: 589,345.

Q: In what year was the Nebraska Cancer Research Center formed?

A: 1984.

Q: Over the last five years, how many cases have been cleared due to anonymous tips submitted to Lincoln-Lancaster County Crime Stoppers?

A: 1,134. The tips have resulted in 1,420 arrests.
Nobility of an agencys mission is no justification for a lack of transparency. The University of Nebraska's Board of Regents have defended their practice of not specifically accounting for the universitys use of state taxpayer dollars.

Unlike the regents, I have not spent decades in public office; I am currently in my third year as a member of Nebraskas citizen Legislature and of its Appropriations Committee.

It is precisely my experience as a citizen and a taxpayer that compels me to ask a question that seems so common sense: How are the public dollars of the third-largest expense in the state General Fund spent? Because I am not desensitized to the act of spending millions of dollars of other peoples money, I believe accountability requires knowing with confidence which programs receive state funds and in what amount.

It is the perspective from my 900-square-foot farmhouse in rural Heartwell --not a large law firm or corporate office -- which informs the questions I ask as a member of the Nebraska Legislature.

Greater than half a billion dollars are invested in the university annually by Nebraskans, representing more than $300 for every man, woman, and child in the state. For a family of four, that totals $1,200 every year they do not get to choose how to spend.

This is money earned by Nebraskans that they do not get to use for child care, vacations, retirement investment and home upgrades. They have a right to know how those dollars taken from their household budget are spent. Minimizing the publics right to know as about paper clips and rolls of toilet paper disrespects the generous commitment every Nebraskan, regardless of economic status, has made in the people, infrastructure and tradition of the University of Nebraska.

Lawmakers should focus on the big picture. However, from a distance, it can be easy to forget the policy picture is more like a mosaic or a Monet. Made up of individual pixels, each represents a taxpayer and a family. I encourage all taxpayers to access the university budget documents and inspect them. The thousands of pages do not provide a clear line of sight for taxpayers and lawmakers between their investment and its return. The Nebraskans who pay those bills are lost in the cacophony of commingled general funds.

I was taught partial budgeting by University of Nebraska faculty member Dr. Gary Rupp, yet the process of accounting for tax dollars is characterized as burdensome by the regents. Federal grant dollars received by the university are not commingled and are accounted for separately. Donors would hope their restricted funds are not dumped into an indiscernible pool, but rather are invested correctly in the initiatives to which they were intended.

Accounting practices that segregate income streams are common. Every nonprofit that has ever received state and federal funds tracks those dollars to their point of use. Any farmer who has rented ground on shares from a landlord has separately accounted for crop inputs.

Principles of good business management use partial budgeting to track the impacts of different enterprises in a business to analyze productivity and efficiently invest revenue. Keeping track of half a billion taxpayer dollars should never be characterized as red tape. It is good, accountable government.

I completely agree with the questions posed by the regents, as they are the very questions I have been asking: What activities should be funded by the state and what shouldnt the state support? What are the best opportunities to use valuable taxpayer dollars to grow Nebraskas economy and quality of life? What do we want the future of our state to look like?

None of these questions can be answered without clear data as to how state funds are used. As I was taught by Dr. Rupp, you cannot manage what you do not measure. Without specific information about how state tax dollars are used, we cannot ensure the most value from our public investment. We are simply throwing money into a pot and hoping it has the intended result.

I have been overwhelmed by Nebraskans from across the state who share my concern. Like me, they support the University of Nebraska and its mission. Nevertheless, the authority to spend public dollars comes with the responsibility to provide a full, accurate, and transparent accounting of their use.
Gabrielle Chanel was born in the French town of Saumur during the summer of 1883, into humble beginnings.

Chanels recounts of her childhood are largely fabricated and hide her tragic upbringing. Abandoned by her father following her mother's death, Chanel spent six years in an orphanage, where she developed her skills in sewing.

It wasnt until 1910, at the age of 27, that Chanel opened her first shop, under the guise of Chanel Modes. However, it was not the Chanel we know of today; it was a millinery, producing hats for the Parisian elite.

Salvador Dali and Coco Chanel, 1938. A post shared by Legendary Smokers (@vintage_smokes) on Aug 3, 2017 at 1:23pm PDT

By 1913, she had opened her second store and introduced a sportswear collection. Many deemed the collection revolutionary and have credited it as changing womens relationships with their bodies and their way of life.

French women were captivated by Chanel's work and imitated it far and wide.

By 1915, she had opened her first couture house.

A post shared by Gemma Louise May (@gemmalouise_may) on Jul 30, 2017 at 1:01am PDT

Only 8 years after opening her first store on Rue Cambon, Chanel acquired the premises of 31 Rue Cambon, which remains to be her flagship store.

She is believed to have invented the concept of a modern boutique here, by displaying and arranging garments in her shop windows. Rue Cambon is the new home for Chanel boutiques and by 1935, she owned 5 stores on the street.

A post shared by Adriana Grisafi (@adriana.grsf) on Aug 4, 2017 at 10:13am PDT

No. 31 was home to another famous Chanel number. That's right, No. 5.

The fragrance, so called No. 5 because it was the fifth scent presented to her, was launched in 1921, but was actually created by elite perfumer Ernest Beaux.

Chanel No. 5 is still highly regarded as the ultimate symbol of femininity' though Chanel continued to release multiple staple fragrances throughout the decade.

A post shared by History of Taste (@history_of_taste) on Jul 23, 2017 at 12:26pm PDT

During 1924, following a trip to Scotland, Chanel discovered tweed. The fabric inspired her now iconic women's suits.

It seemed a tough act to follow, however, two years later Chanel went on to launch her unrivaled statement piece: the little black dress. American Vogue described the piece as the frock that all the world will wear.

With global domination looming, film producer Samuel Goldwyn invited the seamstress to create outfits for the leading ladies in Hollywood, further propelling her reputation.

However, as war broke out in 1945, only one of her Rue Cambon stores remained open; the iconic No. 31. Perfumes and accessories were in high demand from American soldiers wishing to send something back to their sweethearts. Her reputation did, however, take a hit due to her affiliation with Nazi officials, with some even believing her to have been a Nazi agent.

It wasn't until 1954 that Chanel fully returned to fashion, inspiring a second fashion revolution. Iconic staples of the period include the 2.55 bag and the only masculine fragrance to be made in Chanels life time - Pour Monsieur.

Business boomed throughout the sixties and welcomed the launch of the fragrance No.19.

Coco Chanel passed away on January 10th 1971, aged 87, leaving behind a legacy of fashion firsts and iconic looks.

Celebrated in art galleries and wardrobes alike, Coco Chanel changed the face of modern fashion reigning as the Queen of Couture from the first little black dress, to Gabrielle (their first fragrance in 15 years, due to be released this Autumn).
Dating website OKCupid has given a life-long ban to a man identified as a white supremacist and who attended the rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which ended in deadly violence.

OKCupid acted swiftly to remove Christopher Cantwell minutes after he was identified as a user of the service.

We were alerted that white supremacist Chris Cantwell was on OkCupid. Within 10 minutes we banned him for life.  OkCupid (@okcupid) August 17, 2017

Writing on Twitter, OKCupid said: We were alerted that white supremacist Chris Cantwell was on OKCupid. Within 10 minutes we banned him for life.

There is no room for hate in a place where you are looking for love.

There is no room for hate in a place where you're looking for love.  OkCupid (@okcupid) August 17, 2017

Cantwell, of Keene in New Hampshire, was featured in a Vice News documentary about the Unite The Right rally which left one counter-protester dead, with many more injured. Two police officers also died in a helicopter crash.

The former IT worker describes himself as a white nationalist who voted for President Donald Trump. He has a podcast and blog that promote his views.

OKCupid has asked its members to report other users who are involved in hate groups.

If any OkCupid members come across people involved in hate groups, please report it immediately https://t.co/K6PTo8Rtlr  OkCupid (@okcupid) August 17, 2017

Earlier in the week, Facebook banned Cantwells Facebook and Instagram accounts as well as a page linked to his podcast for being in violation of its polices on hate speech and organisations.

His YouTube account has been terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy prohibiting content designed to harass, bully or threaten.
A US doctor has received messages of support after taking to Twitter to speak about the racism she confronts at her hospital.

Esther Choo, from Oregon, shared her experience about white nationalists visiting her hospital and refusing to accept her care.

1/ We've got a lot of white nationalists in Oregon. So a few times a year, a patient in the ER refuses treatment from me because of my race.  Esther Choo (@choo_ek) August 13, 2017

In a 10-tweet thread, Choo wrote: Weve got a lot of white nationalists in Oregon. So a few times a year, a patient in the ER refuses treatment from me because of my race.

I dont get angry or upset, just incredulous over the psychology of it. The conversation usually goes like this Me: I understand your viewpoint. I trained at elite institutions & have been practising for 15 years. You are welcome to refuse care under my hands, but I feel confident that I am the most qualified to care for you. Especially since the alternative is an intern.

Choo goes on to say that they usually end up going for the white intern.

Breathtaking, isnt it? she continued. To be so wedded to your theory of white superiority, that you will bet your life on it, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary?

(Megaflopp/Getty Images)

Sometimes I just look at them, my kin in 99.9% of our genetic code, and fail to believe they dont see our shared humanity.

But Choo adds that she doesnt let the hate get to her anymore, saying: I used to cycle through disbelief, shame, anger.

Now I just show compassion and move on. I figure the best thing I can do is make sure their hate finds no purchase here.

Her message her received a lot of support on Twitter and many praised her for her compassion and being an inspiration.

I have had very similar experiences in Nashville, Tennessee. Thank you for speaking out Dr. Choo. It means a lot for all of us.  Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) August 14, 2017

I live in Oregon and would 10/10 times receive care from you or anyone qualified to do so regardless of race. What a sad place we are in  A (@zabrazig) August 14, 2017

Your compassion shines through.  Isabel Jordan (@seastarbatita) August 14, 2017
Part 2 of 3Seafood is the citys speciality (Ceviche is the iconic dish) but really you cant go wrong whatever you eat. Cartagenas food is a fusion of flavours from Colombia, the Caribbean, Europe and beyond, and some of the best chefs in the world have restaurants here.Fair warning, some of my recommendations dont quite fit the student budget as I decided that I wanted to splurge and try a few of the best restaurants in the city while I was there - but fear not, you can also get fantastic meals in Cartagena for less than a fiver!Cartagena takes breakfast/brunch to a whole new level and it is all amazingly affordable. My favourite places were:In the Colombian coastal heat lunch is a lifesaver, and there are so many great spots to quench your thirst and your rumbling stomach, from grab and go eateries to eclectic restaurants. Some of my favourites were:A few other lunch places that were recommended to me but I didnt get a chance to visit are Cevicheria Chipi Chipi, Espiritu Santo and La Mulata.All of the lunch places Ive recommended are really affordable, however, some of my dinner recommendations are definitely for treating yourself (Ill mark the expensive ones with a star). Even though you might be tempted to eat your fill at breakfast and lunch, save your appetite for dinner to experience taste sensations like youve never imagined. Here are my favourites:is the best ice cream in the city and the perfect treat in Cartagenas humid hot weather. They make all their ice cream every day on-site and they have been featured in Conde Nast and visited by Barack Obama himself!, located on the historic city wall, is the best place to relax with a drink and watch Cartagenas dramatic sunsets, but get there early because it is very popular and often fills up before sunset. If youre looking for good bars and cocktail places check out: Bar del Sur, Alquimico, Sunset gastro lounge and La Jugada.
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Last week, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry sent an email regarding his signature on a congressional promise for civil discourse. In my opinion, he has no credibility in such a commitment with Donald Trump as the leader of his party.

Over the past decades, political operatives have helped create the climate where verbal monsters, like Trump, thrive. Many in his base and party follow his lead with hate speech towards innocent, upstanding Americans.

And now, what do I see? I see death and violence on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.

People representing the diverse majority of this country stood up against hate speech toward innocent and upstanding Americans. It appears a hater drove a car through them to shut them up.

Words have meaning. Words inspire action. Actions can be deadly.

So here are my words to all United States politicians, federal, state and local: Clean up your act. Signatures on documents are meaningless in light of words and actions.

Speak out forcefully against carefully crafted, coded pronouncements of bigotry and prejudice and threats. They fan the flames of hatred. Charlottesvilles tragedy was fueled by such pronouncements from people with power and authority.

Denounce your colleagues when they degrade women, attack minorities and ridicule the needs of the diverse majority of Americans who work hard and barely survive on the wages they are being paid.

Put the message of that civil speech document into practice, and then maybe Ill consider a signature on such a document as sincere.

Cathy Lohmeier, Lincoln
Tabitha Meals on Wheels are delivered to people who cannot prepare their own meals for health-related reasons. The basic menu, listed below, includes bread, margarine and milk. To order meals, get more information or volunteer, call Tabitha Meals on Wheels, 402-486-8589, or call 402-484-9669 for a prerecorded message on menus and program updates.
RACINE  On a day that Atrium residents filed 67 claims totaling more than $7 million in an ongoing receivership case, all sides agreed in court Friday that investigation needs to be undertaken into what happened to residents entrance deposits, and other questions.

About 60 Atrium residents and a few family members nearly filled the courtroom of Racine County Circuit Court Judge David Paulson for a 25-minute hearing on an objection filed by five Atrium residents. They demanded proof that the corporation, consisting of the Atrium and Bay Pointe, was truly insolvent. They also objected to having the Atrium of Racine listed for sale, as receiver Michael Polsky maintains is necessary and appropriate.

Paulson allowed the listing of the Atrium for sale to proceed. But he and Polskys representative, attorney C.J. Murray, both agreed there are records to be examined and questions to be answered.

Murray said most of those records are currently at the Atrium, 3900 N. Main St., and under the control of Watertown-based Marquardt Management Co., the company that was managing the Atrium and Bay Pointe and which filed for receivership.

The 74-unit Atrium, a senior-living facility, and 40-unit Bay Pointe, an assisted-living center at 3950 N. Main St., make up the nonprofit Atrium of Racine, which went into receivership in late May.

The receivership appears to threaten the ability of Atrium residents to recoup the entrance fees they paid when they signed contracts to live there. Those amounts were as high as $111,000 or more in some cases.

For the previous year, Marquardt had managed the Atrium and Bay Pointe. Marquardt agreed to operate them, and three other properties, following the financial collapse of the former Lincoln Lutheran of Racine. One of those properties, The Atrium at Becker-Shoop, 6101 16th St., Mount Pleasant, was closed in early June.

Examing the records

Attorney John Becker, representing the handful of Atrium residents who filed the objection, said, We would not object to the listing if certain information was provided. The residents have not been provided with any financial information in this matter. They want the receiver to conduct some of the investigation of records, he added.

Residents retain all their rights, Murray said but added, Frankly, the receiver would have to undertake significant expense to find some of this information out.

Becker said the residents have someone who could examine the records to save cost in doing that.

Thats kind of where I was going, Paulson said. To see if we could work out a procedure that would not involve tens of thousands of outside dollars to review whats here.

Attorney Randall Crocker, representing Atrium resident the Rev. Ross Henry Larson, said he thinks the residents entrance deposits constitute trust funds and should be traced.

Murray suggested it might make sense to give the lawyers involved seven to 10 days to work out a procedure for reviewing the records. I believe our interests are truly aligned in this situation, he said. The receiver has a duty to creditors and the clients of this counsel here as well.

Entrance fees in mind

The 67 claims filed Friday pertained to the entrance fees, Paulson said.

The court sees that everyone is concerned about: What happened to the money? he said. And now all sides have some representation which will allow some discovery to go forward.

The concern I have about the listing agreement is: I dont want to get on a rolling stone going downhill, Paulson continued, where we approve a listing agreement, and then all of a sudden you have a price, and all of a sudden we lose track of the fact that in the background weve got $7 million in entrance fees out there that we arent dealing with.

Were going to move forward, Paulson said, but I also take attorney Murray at his word that all of this discovery will be available and that counsel will work towards answering the concerns of all the people who are here.

Without going into too much detail, the judge said, it certainly does raise a question as to when these entrance fees were started to be depleted and why we are here today, and whats happened in between.

Im not overruling any of the objection, Paulson said, because they all remain viable.

The next hearing in the case was set for 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 6.


Liberian legislature must ensure Lands Rights Act protects rural landowners

Statement Issued By Global Witness



The Perspective

Atlanta, Georgia

August 18, 2017 Global Witness calls upon the Liberian legislature to pass a Land Rights Act (LRA) that protects the land rights of rural Liberians and reject any versions of the LRA that strip rights from these communities.

Jonathan Gant, Global Witness campaigner said: The LRA, if passed, should recognise that communities own their land and ensure local communities  and only local communities  have the power to say where their lands are and how they should be managed.

Global Witness believes that any Act that does not protect the ownership and management rights of rural landowners should be rejected by the legislature. If the legislature passes a law that does not protect these rights, the law should be vetoed by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

The LRA is one of the most important laws the Liberian government could pass.

Approximately 70 per cent of Liberias population  3.3 million people  live in rural areas and own the land upon which they depend under systems of customary laws that are based on collective ownership. (1) However, for generations the Liberian government has failed to recognise this ownership, treating rural people as squatters rather than landowners, and allocating immense natural resource contracts on their land.

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During the countrys lengthy civil war, this included logging contracts allowing companies to strip the peoples forests and abuse local populations. Following the war, the government awarded contracts covering some 20 per cent of the country, including a large palm oil plantation to Golden Veroleum, which resulted in community protests. (2)

The LRA could change this by formally recognising that rural communities own their land under customary law. In doing so, the Act could give communities legal standing to consent to the award of new government contracts, empowering them to make decisions about how their land should be used. The Act would also help people living in existing concessions, strengthen their bargaining position as companies like Golden Veroleum seek to expand their operations. The LRA could serve as a way for communities to improve their lives, allowing them to use land as a means of obtaining credit with a legally-recognised asset as collateral.

Unfortunately, the Liberian legislature has not made a full version of the law it is currently considering publicly available. As such, it is not clear whether the LRA, if passed, will recognize customary ownership and ensure that it is local communities who are the ultimate mangers of their land. Global Witness believes that, if the LRA is to genuinely promote land ownership of rural communities it must be commensurate with Liberias 2013 Land Rights Policy and the draft LRA submitted to the legislature in 2014. (3)

It is deeply troubling that the Liberian legislature has not published a complete draft of the Act it is considering and it should do so immediately, said Jonathan Gant. If the legislature is hiding changes it has made to the Act that would disempower rural landowners, then the LRA must be rejected.

What is your take? Please post your comments below:


RACINE  Modine Manufacturing Co. has brought forth some significant changes during the past two years, and theyve made the Racine-based company stronger, healthier and more profitable.

In October 2015 Modine, which specializes in thermal management systems and components, announced a new strategic plan to reduce costs, diversify its products and grow the company, as well as a stock buyback of up to $50 million.

The plan was unveiled on the heels of a quarterly earnings report showing an operating loss, sagging sales and a net loss per share of 47 cents.

But all of those measures have gone the other way in less than two years. For the fiscal quarter that ended July 31, sales are up by half from the previous year, the share price is higher by more than half, and adjusted operating income is up by 62 percent.

At the time of that 2015 announcement, Modine CEO and President Tom Burke presaged the stock price surge when he said: Our Board of Directors and management team believe that our stock is undervalued based on our confidence in the future of our business and in our ability to execute  the strategic initiatives we have laid out.

On Thursday, Burke was asked if hed call what has happened in the intervening 22 months a complete turnaround. Id call it a robust turnaround, yes, he replied. Its obviously being recognized by shareholders.

Youre never done, in business, of course, Burke added. Youre always moving to the next level.

The largest reason for the stock price surge, Burke said, has been the $422 million acquisition and successful integration of Luvata Heat Transfer Solutions last year, a purchase that closed Nov. 30. Since that purchase, Luvata, which was based in Memphis with 21 locations worldwide, is now the Commercial and Industrial Solutions division for Modine, 1500 DeKoven Ave.

As a percentage of sales, that was a big deal for us: about a 40 percent increase in sales, Burke said.

Luvata  the largest acquisition in Modines 100-year history  was the worlds largest global producer of heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment and industrial coils, with approximately $500 million in annual sales.

Since that acquisition, Burke said, Modine has had direct feedback along the lines of: You can prove you can do a big deal. More than half of business acquisitions dont deliver on expectations, he said, but Luvata, now CIS, has.

Diversification, reorganization

Burke explained that CIS sells components that go into products such as large supermarket refrigeration units, made by companies including Trane and Lennox. It supplies thousands of customers globally and doesnt depend on a small number of them for a large percentage of sales.

In contrast, the top 10 customers of Modines vehicular thermal solutions, or VTS, division account for more than 60 percent of sales, Burke said. So, CIS provides a large dollop of the diversification that was one of the companys strategic initiatives starting in late 2015.

(The former Luvata leadership team from Memphis is moving to Racine, Burke said, to join the coil-related team here.)

In April, Modine reorganized into three distinct global businesses: VTS, the largest segment of net sales; CIS, second-largest; and building HVAC systems.

Modine has consolidated three regional vehicular businesses into one, under the oversight of Holger Schwab in Germany. Burke said that move is expected to pay dividends for its core business so it can, for example, better allocate capital to where it is needed most.

Community impact

Burke likes talking about Modines positive impact on the local community. Currently a local employer of 530 people, Modines campus is its global headquarters and its North American epicenter for design, testing, research and development. Local functions include several types of engineering, accounting, finance, IT, operations, manufacturing, procurement, human resources, sales and marketing.

By equally matching employee contributions to United Way of Racine County, Modine has given more than $2 million to United Way over the past five years. It offered that match all the way through the Great Recession, he noted.

And Modine supports  even rewards  its employees for their various volunteer activities, Burke said.

The healthier our company is, the more we can contribute to our community, said Burke, 60, who says he is nowhere near wanting to retire. The No. 1 job is to make sure the company is doing well.

The numbers say Job 1 is under control.
STURTEVANT  The state Legislatures Joint Committee on Finance has scheduled a hearing on Tuesday to discuss the Foxconn incentives bill recently passed by the Assembly 59-30.

The committee plans to discuss the creation of an electronics and IT manufacturing zone, which is part of the $2.85 billion Foxconn incentives bill, during the hearing at Gateway Technical Colleges SC Johnson iMET Center, 2320 Renaissance Blvd., Sturtevant.

I dont foresee any issues in joint finance, said state Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine. Im very confident that we will have a bill that will pass.

Wanggaard speculated that the state Senate could vote on the Foxconn bill either the week before or the week after Labor Day, which is Sept. 4.

Wanggaard said he was happy to see the Assembly Foxconn bill pass, particularly with bipartisan support from Democrats from Racine and Kenosha.

They all understand this is going to be huge for us here, Wanggaard said. The growth that well have immediately with (the Foxconn facility) locating specifically here in the district, but its going to be the whole state that is going to be lifted up.

For years, Wanggaard said, young adults have been leaving the state for more prosperous areas and he hopes that will change.

Its going to draw young people to come here instead of going to Silicon Valley, Wanggaard said. This is cutting-edge technology that is going to be around here for 50 years.

Taxpayer protections

State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, has questioned parts of the bill regarding protection for tax payers in the event Foxconn leaves after a few years.

Wanggaard said Foxconn will only receive the incentives in the bill if it lives up to its side of the agreement.

Its in the bill that they need to produce those jobs and keep them here, Wanggaard said. There will be protections in the bill.

During the Assembly special session on Thursday, Democrats repeatedly mentioned an economics report that stated if the incentives bill passed, Wisconsin would not be fully paid back until about 25 years.

Wanggaard said the state routinely establishes tax incremental districts throughout the state to spur economic development and this wouldnt be much different.

We do that to encourage economic development in the different towns and villages and cities  and they all take advantage of that, Wanggaard said. And that payback period is lots of times 20 years, and in some cases weve had to do enabling legislation to extend it to 30 years so they (municipalities) would be able to go through the process of paying that back.

Budget awaits

When asked when the Legislature would focus more on the 2017-19 biennial budget, Wanggaard said immediately.
Joseph E Stiglitz, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2001, for his theories in economics, worked for the World Bank from 1997 to 2000 as senior vice-president and chief economist.

Before he left, he wrote Globalisation and its Discontents and subsequently, Making Globalization Work. During 1993 to 1997, he was in the White House, as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, under President Clinton.

He described the years at the White House as tumultuous, because the 1997-98 East Asian financial crisis pushed a few of the most successful developing countries into unprecedented recessions. He asserted the developing countries did not always do their best to redeem the uncertainty and instability in an uneasy world.

In fact, Stiglitz was convinced that advanced industrial countries through international organisations like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank were not doing all they could to help countries that needed them. He felt that IMF programmes worsened the East Asian crisis. The former Soviet Union suffered in its transition to shift from communism to a market economy.

In his books he wrote convincingly because Stiglitz had a unique advantage of seeing policies formulated within the White House and the World Bank where he worked alongside developing countries to make strategies to enhance growth and reduce poverty. As an economic theorist he spent nearly 40 years in understanding the strengths and limitations of the market economy.

During his years in Washington he travelled the world and interacted with many government leaders. Those interactions helped him assess the successes and failures . The essence of globalisation is the process by which businesses develop and in turn, start expanding on an international scale. President Clinton asked Stiglitz to continue working at the White House but he declined as he thought it was unfair that in a world of richness and plenty, so many should live in poverty.

He knew that the World Bank would provide a platform from where he could protect the interests of developing countries. He visited countries where poverty was increasing. China entered the global scenario as a major manufacturing economy and India succeeded in outsourcing; this has compelled changes in global policies and thought.

For example, we are well aware of President Trumps stringent visa rules for Indias IT professionals wishing to work in the US. However, Stiglitz cautions that Economic success requires getting the balance right between the government and the market. He questions the service governments should provide.

Should there be public pension programmes? Should they encourage certain sectors with incentives? What regulations should they adopt to protect workers, consumers and the environment? But Stiglitz has observed that as globalisation has been pushed it has become more difficult to find the requisite balance.

He asserts that pushing its interests, globalisation need not be bad. It does not have to increase inequality or advance corporate interests at the expense of the well being of ordinary citizens.

Stiglitz recalled how the UN and different NGOs had gathered in Mumbai in January 2004, for the World Social Forum. There were debates about how to restructure institutions that run the world, and how to rein in the power of the United States.

The concern was globalisation and that change was imperative. It was summed up by the motto of the conference  Another world is possible. Activists at the meeting heard about the promises of globalisation  that it would improve the lives of everyone. Unfortunately the reality was something different.

Some were doing very well while others wereworse off. Participants felt that globalisation was a part of the problem. Economic globalisation entails the combination of the international flow of ideas and knowledge, sharing cultures, and the concern for our environment.

Above all, the great hope for globalisation is that poorer countries will be given access to overseas markets, open borders for people to travel abroad to get educated and offered work, and to send home their savings to help their families and fund new businesses.

Stiglitz has defined these wonderful advantages of globalisation and its tremendous potential to benefit both the developing and developed world. But he asserts that proof is overwhelming that globalisation has failed to live up to this potential. He has expressed that the problem is not with globalisation itself but the way it is being managed.

He traced the first major protest against globalisation in Seattle, US in 1999. That brought about an awareness of globalisations problems. Factory workers in America sensed their jobs were being threatened by competition from China and farmers in developing countries saw their work threatened because of subsidised crops from the US.

At the end Stiglitz rationalises that Democratising Globalisation is essential. The international community can certainly create the environment for development but the benefits of development must be shared by all including developing countries themselves.

Adam Smith, in his book, Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, writes of the invisible hand, when he refers to an unseen mechanism that maintains equilibrium between the supply and demand of resources. That invisible hand could manifest itself if countries worked in harmony enabling globalisation to succeed.
UNION GROVE  When most people move into a new house, it probably can be safely presumed that they dont want to dig up the previous owners dead grandfather in the backyard.

Situations like that, however remotely likely, is something Union Grove village officials found themselves discussing last week as they delved into the topic of green burial.

It was never, ever on my radar as something we might discuss at a meeting, Village Clerk-Treasurer Jill Kopp said.

Green burials, which involve minimal to no bodily preservatives, allow corpses to decompose naturally back into the earth in a more eco-friendly manner. They have become more popular in the United States since the first modern green cemetery was opened in 1998, but the Union Grove Village Board is not sure if it wants to allow green burials to be performed on residential property.

Its kind of strange if you sell your house with Grandpa Jack out back, Kopp joked.

The issue has not yet come up in Union Grove. But Kopp said she heard about green burials after another municipality had deliberations on home burials when a couple wanted to bury a 24-week-old fetus in their backyard.

The couple eventually buried the fetus in a cemetery, Kopp added.

Union Groves Administration Committee discussed the issue on Aug. 14, and Kopp said most committee members seem to be against the idea. Green burials lack of preservatives could make bodies prime targets for animal scavengers to dig them up, Kopp cited as one concern.

A pre-emptive ban could potentially avoid any issues down the road, but Kopp said trustees want to learn more about the process and how other municipalities handle the matter before coming to any decisions.

There are currently four green cemeteries in Wisconsin and, as of a 2014 survey by the National Funeral Directors Association, 21.4 percent of cemeteries offered a natural burial option  a big leap from 11.1 percent in 2011.
The Janata Dal-United led by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday virtually put rebel leader Sharad Yadav on notice, hinting at action against him if he attends the RJD rally on August 27.

JD-U General Secretary K.C. Tyagi told reporters that the party has not acted against Yadav for his anti-party activities because of his seniority and long association with the party.

If he attends RJD chief Lalu Prasads rally here on August 27, then he will cross the Lakshman Rekha, he said, and hinted at action against Yadav.

Tyagi said that Yadav has left the party on his own and is no longer with us, emotionally or physically.

Speaking to reporters after the partys national executive meeting at the Chief Ministers official residence here, he accused Yadav of indulging in anti-party activities by holding separate meetings with his own supporters and RJD members.

He claimed Yadav has always taken a stand against Nitish  whether it is on demonetisation, surgical strikes and womens reservation. He always took a different stand and went to the extremes.

Tyagi justified the partys decision to remove Yadav as leader in the Rajya Sabha.

Tyagi maintained there was no split as the entire JD-U was with party president and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

There is no division or split in the JD-U.

Tyagi said heads of 16 state committees were with Nitish Kumar, contrary to claims made by the rival group.

He said in Bihar all 71 party MLAs, 30 MLCs and two Lok Sabha MPs and most of the Rajya Sabha MPs were with Nitish Kumar-led JD-U, except Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar.

Tyagi also formally announced the partys decision to join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

A resolution to join the NDA was unanimously approved in the meeting, a senior party leader said. From today, we have become part of the NDA.

The JD-U now has two factions: one led by Nitish Kumar and the other by senior party leader and former party president Sharad Yadav, who also held a meeting with party leaders and workers here on Saturday.
Two AIMIM corporators were suspended amid a ruckus after they refused to stand up when Vande Mataram was sung at the start of the days proceedings in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation on Saturday.

Protesting against this, ruling Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party corporators rushed to the well of the house and raised loud slogans against the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) duo who remained seated when the song was being rendered.

This quickly degenerated into a slanging match between the ruling and the Opposition corporators with fisticuffs, yanking off of microphones from tables, breaking fans and damaging under furniture and fittings in the assembly hall.

Some of the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance corporators strongly objected as the AIMIM corporators remained seated during Vande Mataram and raised slogans of Bharat Mata Ki Jai, and If you want to live in this country, you will have to sing Vande Mataram, and flung their shawls around in the hall.

Amid the continuing fracas, AMC Mayor Bhagwandas Ghadamode (BJP) adjourned the proceedings twice and announced the suspension of the two AIMIM corporators for a day, before adjourning the house for the day.

AIMIM MLA Imtiaz Jaleel said there is no law mandating people must stand up during the singing of Vande Mataram, though it is a tradition that is respected.

However, we are very clear that whenever Vande Mataram is rendered we must stand up, Jaleel said, adding he would seeks details of the incidents in the AMC house from his party corporators.

The AIMIM is the largest Opposition party with 25 corporators while the ruling Shiv Sena has 29 and the BJP 22. The other Opposition parties include eight from the Congress, three of the Nationalist Congress Party and 24 independents/others in the 113-member AMC house.
Superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Saturday extended his support to the upcoming 48th edition of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), and says Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani is taking relevant steps to make the gala the most inclusive forum for Indian cinema.

Irani on Saturday said that she is looking forward to the presence of the superstar at the event, which is held annually in Goa. The 48th edition will be held from November 20 to 28.

Great endeavour by I&B Minister Smriti Irani to make IFFI the most inclusive, relevant forum for Indian cinema. My unwavering support to you, Shah Rukh posted on Twitter.

To that, Irani responded: I am grateful for the industrys overwhelming support, SRK look forward to seeing you at IFFI 2017.

Last year, the 47th edition of the IFFI came to a close with Iranian film Daughter coming away as the festivals best film. Over 300 films from 90 countries were screened at the nine-day event.

Nearly 4,500 delegates were present at the event last year to participate in IFFI, which is reckoned as one of Asias oldest film festivals.
Rivers have played a vital role in creating; sustaining and promoting ethnic cultures in the small towns and villages they flow along.

As part of the UK India Year of Culture, UK and India-based artists have been working together to produce ten large silk flags, during a residential workshop in Murshidabad, as part of the Silk River project, which celebrates the unique relationship between communities along the Thames in the UK and the Hooghly in West Bengal.

Tagore has created beautiful lyrics for songs that dwell on different aspects of the river. One among them goes, Ogo Nodi Apon Begey Pagol Para that translates roughly as, Oh Dear River, that flows on its own volition, wildly. Or, that immortal song belted out by the late Hemanta Mukhopadhyay for the film Siddharthathat went, O Nodirey, Ekti Kotha Shudhai Shudhu Tomarey (Oh My Dear River, I just want to ask you one question.).

There is no end to the songs and poems, stories and lyrics that have been created around the river as a physical reality of our environment and as a metaphor for the endless flow of life and love. But most importantly, it is as an agency for the sustenance of traditional arts and crafts in cities and small towns.

As part of a year-long programme marking the 70th anniversary of Indian independence and the cultural relationship with the UK, Kinetika has created Silk River, an ambitious project, which explores the unique relationship between London and Kolkata through artistic exchange between communities along the Thames Estuary and Hooghly River.

Ali Pretty, Kinetikas artistic director, is collaborating with associate artistic director Ruchira Das (Think Arts, India) and an international team of artists, writers and photographers to capture and interpret the experience of journeying along the two mighty rivers. Working together, they will gather, share and retell stories of such riparian communities by representing them onto 20 hand-painted Murshidabad silk scrolls.

Silk River involves organisations in UK and West Bengal who work in heritage, culture, craft, tourism and education. We are delighted that this exciting project is part of the UK India Year of Culture, which seeks to showcase innovative and creative work from both countries, building deeper connections between communities, says Debanjan Chakrabarti, director, British Council East and North-east India.

Pretty will be attending the launch at Buckingham Palace and is delighted that Silk River is part of this prestigious celebratory year, It was my first visit to India in 1984 that inspired me to work in the arts, using them as a tool for social change and community development. Silk River will build on my experience over the last 30 years by bringing together communities from the UK and India for a meaningful exchange of stories and ideas.

Across 2017, top UK business and arts institutions will partner with their Indian counterparts to strengthen cultural and economic ties between the two nations, and showcase British and Indian creativity on the global stage.

The Murshidabad district of West Bengal is well-known for producing quality silk. The history of silk weaving in this region goes back to the early 18th century during the Mughal rule in India, when the Nawab of Bengal, Murshidkuli Khan, shifted his capital from Dhaka (in present day Bangladesh) to a town on the east of the Bhagirathi river, and named it Murshidabad after himself.

The Nawab brought with him from Dhaka, the famous art of baluchari weaving, which consisted of weaving elaborate themes depicting the lives of the nawabs on silk sarees.

The art was patronised by the Mughals, and continued to flourish during the earlier part of the British rule in India. Then a flooding of the Bhagirathi river in the 19th century caused the baluchari weaving trade to shift from Murshidabad to Bishnupur (in the Bankura district of West Bengal).

Today, Murshidabad continues to be home to some of the important silk weaving clusters in the state producing fine silk sarees, shirts and plain silk fabric. Government initiatives are afoot to support handloom weavers and help make them more competitive relative to other silk producing regions in India.

The silk sarees from Murshidabad are fine, light-weight and easy to drape. They are adorned with a variety of printed designs, both modern and traditional, and are good for formal as well as casual wear. Batik-painted designs are also popular on these sarees.

A special type of silk saree from Murshidabad is the garad saree  fine, white or off-white sarees with a plain body and simple coloured borders. A film, directed by Steve Shaw, which documents the work of a team of UK artists working with a team of Indian artists to produce 10 large silk flags during a residential workshop in Murshidabad, was screened at Nandan III recently. The Kolkata flags were on display at the event.

The film detailed the minutest features of the project with workers and trainees talking of the wonderful experience they had during the workshops. Pretty says, Silk River transposes Kinetikas walking, talking and making model to an international context for the first time  a tool for reimagining the relationship between India and the UK and changing our perception of our place in the world. I am excited to collaborate with a team of talented artists and producers from both countries to create new artworks on Bengali silk and connecting thousands of people through what promises to be an extraordinary journey.

Among other organisations that have come forward join this ambitious venture with long-term aims and aspirations are  Think Arts, Rural Crafts and Cultural Hubs West Bengal; Co-ordinated by Banglanatak on behalf of the Government of West Bengal, Unesco, Crafts Council of India (West Bengal), Murshidabad Heritage Development Society and the British Council. Silk River will culminate in two performative walks  along the Thames from 15 to 24 September and along the Hooghly from 6-17 December.

Those interested can participate in a unique 12-day International Residency that has been created especially for the Silk River project. One is free to join a group of contemporary artists, historians, writers and musicians from UK and India, where one can engage in the following interactions and events:

Engage with local artisans and communities along the way

Participate in curated events comprising of talks, workshops and film screenings

Exchange skills with each other

Have the opportunity to create an artistic response, either individually or collectively.

Traversing a journey from Azimganj, Murshidabad to Botanic G
In response to the violence perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the American town of Charlottesville, the speechwriter of former President George Bush is said to have remarked that one of the difficult but primary duties of a political leader, indeed the Head of State, is to speak for the nation in traumatic times. By that token, Donald Trumps words were wholly inadequate, almost perfunctory.

The ugly incident in Virginia last weekend can be contextualised with the fundamental malaise of racism that has deep historical roots; Charlottesvilles expression of white nationalism of the neo-Nazi variety has served to extend the loop that was manifest in Barack Obamas time, notably in Ferguson, St Louis and St Bernadino. It would be useful to recall that the original United States of America was founded on white supremacy.

Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf had praised Americas institutional racism as a model from which Nazi Germany could learn. Only in the post war period was meaningful racial equality pursued by the perceived land of the free.

Last Saturdays mayhem was both the same and different. Whereas such outrages were invariably perpetrated by white policemen on black citizens, the extremist mobilisatiion in Virginia was the outcome of an individuals expression of an extreme form of mental aberration. Arguably, the distorted variant of nationalism is of a piece with the US Presidents bizarre perception. Not that America has not changed over the past 60 years.

Pre-eminently, it has elected a black President, equal rights and equality have been enforced at any rate theoretically. Ergo, the show of strength by the neo-Nazis and white supremacists at Charlottesville warranted a robust condemnation from the President not a feeble response to an ugly truth.

That truth has tragically been airbrushed, and of a piece with that evasive response was last Wednesdays statement that both sides are to blame. The alienation of the black shall fester still. As President, Trumps primary duty was to uphold equality and be explicit about the racist violence that had roiled Virginia.

Far from it. It will not be easy for the White House to dispel the dominant impression that he has played to the gallery of the white supremacists.

The least that was expected of him was to proclaim what has been called the  indivisibility of equality and tolerance before the law. By compromising on one of the thorniest issues at stake, he has binned the certitudes of a theoretically libertarian state. He was almost deliberately economical with the truth when he remarked that the violence in Charlottesville came from many sides.

He has failed to stand up against racists and those who promote racial violence. And that succinctly is the tragedy of America.
With most of the terror funding routes of Pakistan getting virtually choked following the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) arresting some separatist leaders and their aides for interrogation in the case, Pakistan is now trying to create unrest in the Kashmir valley by joining the separatists in raising the issue of Article 35A.

The Kashmir centric parties, including the ruling PDP, National Conference and also the Congress, CPI-M and the separatists have already been trying to create fear among the common Kashmiris on the alleged attempts of the Centre to scrap the Article 35A of the Constitution that provides powers to the state legislature to define the permanent residents of J-K.

In an apparent support to the Kashmir centric parties and separatists on the issue, Pakistan has interfered in the internal affairs of India by raising the issue of Article 35A and accusing India of trying to alter the demography of Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistans foreign office Spokesperson Nafees Zakria on Thursday accused India of trying to alter the demography of Jammu and Kashmir by diluting the Article 35A.

The puppet prime minister of the Pakistan occupied Kashmir (POK), Raja Mohammad Farooq Haider, also last week accused India of conspiring to change the demography by settling non-state subjects in J&K.

While making such allegations, the POK prime minister, who was parroting his bosses in Islamabad, has tried to mislead the people and did not utter a single word about Pakistan having already allowed China to change the demography of the POK by allowing it to build the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that cuts through the entire length and breadth of the Occupied Kashmir. Haider has been facing violent protests in POK for remaining a mute spectator to the onslaught of Chinese army personnel who were forcibly occupying the agriculture lands of residents of POK for the CPEC.

Such protests were recently witnessed in Muzaffrabad, capital town of the POK, and also in Gilgit, Baltistan and other areas of POK where the highway is being constructed.

Not only the Kashmir centric parties but a senior BJP leader and former union minister, Yashwant Sinha, knowing well that the Supreme Court was currently hearing a petition on scrapping the Article 35A and the centre has no role to interfere in the matter, on Friday targeted the centre by asking it to clear its stand on the issue. Sinha is camping in Srinagar with his team to meet the separatists and a cross section of political leadership for peace talks.

Separatist Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who was after about two months yesterday allowed to address the gathering in the Srinagars Jamia Masjid during Friday prayers, warned that Kashmir will not accept any tinkering with the Article 35A. He also targeted the NIA for raiding the premises of separatist leaders and arresting them in the terror funding case.
Many companies make the assumption that cash can fetch the results that they want from their workforce. Whether it is employees clocking in overtime to wrap up a project or achieving their sales targets, cash incentives seem to be a favourite motivator in the corporate climate.

While this may be the reason most people pull themselves out from bed to get to work every day but it is not always the best idea when it comes to motivating or recognising employees. Incentives are taken as a granted portion in the employee compensation structure, as something that they are entitled to. Heres why organisations should shift their focus from cash incentives to rewards, to have the desired impact on their workforce.

To understand the best means to motivate and influence employees, its important to gain an understanding of how they work and make choices. Our actions and behaviours are governed by the decisions we make, and these decisions are steered by rational thoughts and emotions. While a lot of us would like to believe that we make rationally steered decisions, and more so when it comes to workplace dynamics, the truth is in fact otherwise.

According to the Behavioural Economics, 77 per cent of our behaviour is driven by emotions and 23 per cent by rational thoughts. While incentives may seem like a rational pick, non-monetary rewards make an emotional connect with employees. If done right, it will not just motivate to achieve targets, but can also be used to align their behaviour in line with corporate values. Often, there is a say-do gap between what people say they would like to do versus their actual actions.

To apply this in the context of workplaces, while cash or cash equivalents like vouchers may seem like what motivate employees to work harder in theory, it is non-monetary rewards such as merchandise or experiences that work in reality.

Data are presented from six experiments in a study by Victoria Shaffer, Ph D, and Hal Arkes, PhD in 2009 in the US, demonstrated preference reversals for cash versus noncash incentives. When given a hypothetical choice between, participants chose the cash incentive.

However when asked to evaluate them separately, they gave higher ratings to the non-cash incentive. These findings were replicated with real monetary incentives. Preference reversals were partially dictated by the type of non-cash incentive offered.

Employees receiving rewards from an incentive programme reported that recipients of non-cash awards would enjoy their reward more and would be more likely to tell their friends about it. When the value of rewards up on offer is greater, the efforts that individuals put in to earn it, is greater too. Rewards also have a hedonic angle to them which makes them far more exciting to earn than incentives.

Focus on what your employees need versus what they say/think that they want. Non-cash rewards such as luxury merchandise and experiences can motivate and engage employees better than cash awards. Incentives such as vouchers can often backfire, simply because at the end of the day, they feel transactional, as if they were a purchase, rather than a reward. Employees may start comparing the value of the voucher being offered, causing some of them to feel as if they are not appreciated enough, causing their motivation to take a hit.

Even with employees who are not undermined by comparisons, the emotional connect that cash rewards create is short-lived. This is just a means for employees to purchase something, when compared to a hot-air balloon or fine dining experience which would make them feel as if the organisation has treated them to the exclusive, special well-deserved reward to recognise for their good work. Non-monetary rewards offer lesser leeway for comparisons among employees, and will not undermine their motivation as cash incentives would.

Behavioural economics principles reveal why non-monetary rewards are more effective than cash incentives in the long run. Non-monetary rewards like experiences are hedonic. Non-monetary rewards rake in points for sociability as they give employees bragging rights, unlike cash incentives. Not everyone would go around their social circles bragging about the thousands they got as cash incentives, when compared to an experiential reward they received from an employer.

Organisations today need more than just a traditional incentives structure to drive tangible results and retain employees. Non-monetary rewards need to be at the centre of the employee strategy to have a sustained, positive impact on employee motivation, productivity and loyalty. A well-rounded programme that rewards employees to recognise their efforts is the key to organisational success in the long run.

(The writer is managing director, BI Worldwide India)
MOUNT PLEASANT  With the prospect of Foxconn building a major facility in southeastern Wisconsin  and very possibly in Mount Pleasant  village officials are planning to create the position of project director to handle business related to the project.

On Monday, the Village Board is scheduled to meet in closed session to iron out details of the project director position, which will include a job description and salary. According to Mondays agenda, the board is scheduled to reconvene in open session to consider any motions regarding what was discussed during closed session.

Village President Dave DeGroot said the village needs someone to handle the increased development interest in the area related to the prospect of Foxconn, a Taiwanese manufacturing and technology company, coming to the area.

It has everything to do with Foxconn, along with the related supply chain thats coming with it, DeGroot said. (The project director) that were looking at is going to become an essential part of our development team and (the position) will possibly, probably, last as long as the project itself.

DeGroot said the project director position will be full time and also will assist Tim Zarzecki, the villages police chief who is serving as interim village administrator.

Tim needs help and he has to get his head back into the Police Department, DeGroot said. This person will be able to take a good chunk of that (administrator) workload as well.

Although Foxconn officials have not announced the location of the proposed Wisconsin facility, DeGroot said its either going to be in Mount Pleasant or in Kenosha County. Meanwhile, the village needs someone to handle the business interest that have begun to come to Mount Pleasant.

As we get further and further into this project, regardless of whether we land the mothership (Foxconn) or we get a bunch of the satellite supply chain work, we need to start ramping up to deal with the onslaught of developer inquiries as they locate within the village, DeGroot said. Regardless of where they land, theres going to be a huge ecosystem of new business and manufacturing the likes of which we have never seen.

Administrator update

DeGroot said that while officials were looking for a new village administrator, they came across a candidate who would have been an ideal administrator but the individual is a little bit better suited for a project director sort of position.

Whomever might be selected for the project director post, that person also will carry out some village administrator duties, DeGroot said.
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 ...
Just want to give a huge shout out to Faye Miller and Clare Thornley for their Lavender Acres "day at the farm." It turned out to be an afternoon of pure joy. I have never seen such a clean farm in my life. All the people were warm and friendly and they even had a shuttle to take you from the parking field to the farm. I did not expect to see so many vendors with such beautiful goods. The chocolate honey butter and the homemade soft vanilla caramels were to die for.
Admitting state-run banks will need to take some haircut on their exposure to some of the stressed assets, Reserve Bank of India Governor Urjit Patel has called for their recapitalisation to strengthen balance sheets.

As of March 31, the gross NPAs of the banking system stood at 9.6 per cent and stressed advances ratio was at 12 per cent, which is a matter of concern, said Patel. Around 86 per cent of the gross NPAs are accounted by large borrowers (those with aggregate exposure of Rs 5 crore or more).

The RBI had in June identified 12 large accounts to be referred to the National Company Law Tribunal under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC).

The governor said a swift time-bound resolution or liquidation of the stressed assets would be critical for declogging the bank balance sheets and efficient reallocation of capital. The government and the central bank are in dialogues to prepare measures that will allow state-run banks to shore up capital.

"The measures could include a combination of capital raising from the market, dilution of government holding, additional capital infusion by the government, merger based on strategic decision and sale of non-core assets," informed Patel. Banks will have to incur some losses on some of the stressed assets, even as they are taken up for speedy resolution under the IBC.

"The success and credibility of all the resolution efforts would be critically contingent on the strength of public sector bank balance sheets to absorb the costs. It is clear that PSBs will need to take haircuts on current exposures under any resolution plan agreed within or outside the IBC," said Patel.

Ratings agency Crisil recently said banks may have to take a haircut of 60 per cent, worth Rs 2.4 lakh crore, to settle 50 large stressed accounts with debt of Rs 4 lakh crore. These 50 companies are from metals (30 per cent of the total debt), construction (25 per cent) and power (15 per cent) sectors and account for almost half of the more than Rs 8 lakh crore NPAs in the banking system as of March 31, it said.

It is estimated that banks may have provisioned for 40 per cent of this exposure.
ABCDFor long it has been recognised as an abbreviation for American Born Confused Desi. So when an invite came up for the launch of a book titled ABC Desi From India with Love, with the cover depicting a big blue baby Krishna, a peacock feather adorning his crown, it seemed apparent that it was about the religious takes of an ABCD.

It was when author Priti Paul spoke about her book that it became clear that it is actually about A B C D... up to Z. She spoke about her disenchantment with the idea of children today reading the same kind of books that she did as a child, and possibly her mother as well, to learn the letters of the English alphabet and about being inspired by the way similar books were in France. But to make them relevant to children today, and especially the children in India, C was not only for car, but also cow. Q was for Queen, but Jhansi Rani. Paul spoke about Y for Yoga, and Make in India etc.

What makes the book even more appealing is the artwork done by the Bollywood poster painters on large canvases. She has got them to do it all, with possibly the only change being that there is a lot of white space around instead of the typically covered canvas. Priti is happy that she was able to delayto an extentthe death of such poster paintings.

Her sons, who grew up in Marrakesh, are as much her inspiration and part of her ideation. This coupled with inspiration from France, made it ideal that her book launch was hosted at the French Embassy by Alexandre Ziegler, the Ambassador of France to India.

The book is hardly about ABCD. At Rs 6,000, anyone who can buy it can understand cat and yatch, and does not need to be shown a cow or yoga. But it is definitely a collector's itema book of art.

Anita Ratnam during her performance

The book was adapted delightfully in a neo-Bharatanatyam fused with a theatre performance by Anita Ratnam, who brought the letters of the alphabet to life in a fun-packed interactive manner.
The Union Home Ministry feels that illegal migrants in the country are more vulnerable to getting recruited by terrorist organisations. Besides being a burden to the limited resources and infringing on rights of Indian citizens, they pose a tough security challenge.

This has been cited as the primary reason by the Ministry of Home Affairs for asking all states to identify and deport Rohingyas belonging to the Rakhine state of Myanmar on a war footing.

Days after the ministry issued its advisory to states, the issue has blown up on its face. The National Human Rights Commission has jumped into the fray taking serious note of the matter and issued a notice to MHA. For the NHRC, the matter isn't just related to security concerns, but the rights and liberties of people who had taken refuge in India after suffering atrocities. The human rights body has raised a red flag saying such people continue to face the danger of persecution if they return to their native country.

There is nothing wrong in the advisory. We need to take care of our security concerns. We have not said anything against any human rights issues, a home ministry official told THE WEEK.

Even as the issue is likely to draw attention with human rights groups protesting such a move by the NDA government, the question is whether the MHA has a roadmap as to how it would go about deporting them.

The home ministry has put the ball in the court of the state governments for now.

It is for the states to act. We are only sensitising the states. Law and order is a state subject, the official said.

There are states like Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Hyderabad where Rohingya Muslims have been residing for several years after fleeing from Myanmar when violence broke on in the western Rakhine state.

The home ministry, however, is showing the rulebook to states to implement its advisory. Firstly, it says that the state police has the power to arrest a foreign national staying illegally in India under section 4 of the Passport Act. Secondly, it says that any foreign national exceeding his stay in India can be proceeded against under section 14 of Foreigners Act. The same section applies for those who have entered the country without valid documents. Thirdly, the MHA says that detection and deportation of Rohingyas is a continuous process and states must identify them and take action without delay . The letter has been marked to chief secretaries and DGPs of all states. Simultaneously, the ministry has also asked Intelligence agencies to keep a watch on the Rohingyas to ensure no untoward incident takes place in the country.

With no refugee policy in place, it will be the call of each state government as far as their identification and deportation is concerned. Even if they get deported, they may come back. We possibly can't expect to push them across, said a government official. It will require some intense diplomacy with Myanmar to officially send them back. It may also have to rope in Bangladesh to help deal with the influx.

Incidentally, India is also becoming home for Hindus and Sikhs who have faced atrocities and sought refuge in India. They are part of the minority community in countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh. But in the absence of a refugee policy, it is turning back others like the Rohingyas. Is it time for New Delhi to become a signatory of the 1951 Convention on Refugees and also the 1967 Protocol which governs how distressed refugees are treated in nations where they seek asylum?
BJP president Amit Shah has said his party has not come to power for mere five or 10 years, but at least 50 years and called upon workers to strengthen the party and take it to every part of the country.

Shah also said that though the BJP appears to be at its peak with a majority government at the Centre and 1,387 MLAs in states the workers feel the party has still a long way to go.

"Today, we have a majority government at the Centre with 330 MPs, and also have 1,387 MLAs in different states. The party appears to be at its peak, but dedicated workers feel we have a long way ahead," a BJP release on Saturday quoted Shah as saying at a meeting with partymen.

"We have not come to power for 5-10 years, but at least 50 years. We should move forward with a conviction that in 40-50 years we have to bring major changes in the country through the medium of power," Shah said.

He was addressing the Madhya Pradesh BJP's core group members, office-bearers, MPs, MLAs and district chiefs, among others, at the party headquarters here yesterday.

Shah arrived Friday on a three-day visit to Madhya Pradesh for meetings with the BJP workers and office-bearers besides participating in various programmes as part of his 110-day nationwide tour.

The BJP president reminded the activists that the party has become a political force to reckon with due to hard work, dedication and sacrifice of its leaders over the years.

Today the BJP has become a party of 10-12 crore members because of many stalwarts who have dedicated their lives in building and strengthening the organisation, said Shah, according to the release.

"We have to ensure no place in the country is left where we don't have our flag. For this, we have to strengthen the organisation further," Shah said.

"Character is the basis of our foundation," he said, and called upon the BJP workers to ensure the party is present in every (polling) booth, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Kamrup to Kutch.
The national convention of the Janata Dal (United) on Saturday endorsed its president Nitish Kumar's wish to formally join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, thus making the U-turn complete four years after the party quit the alliance.

This formal entry into the NDA fold will now allow the JD(U) to join the Modi government at the Centre. BJP chief Amit Shah was quick to welcome Nitish Kumar saying it was a beginning of a new era. It is a personal victory for Shah as the party had lost the state elections in 2015 under his watch. BJP now has an upper hand in Bihar. Contesting 2019 Lok Sabha elections would be lot easier.

Now, barring Delhi, BJP under Shah has managed to form governments in all major elections.

Being part of the NDA means Nitish would no longer be talked about at the national level as it was before. In NDA, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the supreme leader where other leaders are not expected to occupy same mind space in public.

By entering NDA, Nitish Kumar has ensured for himself an unhindered tenure till 2020, but set in motion a process of slow waning away of his party's influence, with Sharad Yadav chipping away.

Yadav had held a parallel meeting to assert his difference over the Nitish Kumar leaving the grand alliance with Lalu Prasad Yadav. He is now planning to stake claim over the name and the symbol of party by approaching the election commission.

Sharad Yadav had been emboldened after good attendance at his save composite culture conclave in Delhi. Yadav is playing his cards with care. His utterances showcase his differences with Nitish faction, but also not going the whole distance to be expelled by the party.

All 71 MLAs and 30 MLCs, and 16 of 19 office bearers are with us. There is no split in party, JD(U) general secretary and Nitish loyalist K.C. Tyagi said. He warned Yadav against joining hands with the corrupt RJD.

It is yet to be seen how much damage can he inflict on Nitish's faction. Electorally strong Yadavs may side with him, while the dalits with Nitish. Known for his bluntness, Sharad Yadav is expected to work for opposition unity at the national level.
Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice.
A unique collaboration between space scientists and healthcare professionals is set to take the country closer to the goal of error-free healthcare. The first step in this direction is Health Quest, a new set of guidelines for critical care units and emergency departmentswhere a single mistake can cost a lifein hospitals across the country. These guidelines are the result of a joint effort between experts in space technology at Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and healthcare professionals from organisations such as the Association of Healthcare Providers India (AHPI), Consortium of Accredited Healthcare Organisations, National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers, Society for Emergency Medicine, India (SEMI), and the Indian Society for Critical Care (ISCCM).

Data from developed countries suggests that nine out of every 100 patients who are hospitalised encounter medical error-related events. However, similar data from the country is not available, even as experts reckon the numbers would be higher. When I discussed concerns about human and equipment error with Dr K. Kasturirangan, former chairman, ISRO, he said that the errors were unacceptable, and that healthcare institutions should be akin to the launch of a space vehicle, where there's no room for error. So we thought of this unique idea of adopting the best practices from ISRO for the two units of emergency departments and critical care, Dr Alexander Thomas, president, AHPI told THE WEEK.

To reduce errors and improve patient outcomes, certain systems are followed in hospitals all over the globe, said Dr J.V. Peter, professor and head of medical intensive care, Christian Medical College, Vellore. Checklists are maintained, and hierarchies among staff and standard operating protocols are followed to minimise errors. In India, too, a need to define certain processes was felt, and ISRO's zero error technology provided a good model to emulate.

However, as Peter explains, there are differences between hospitals and space stationsunlike machines which can be 'cloned', every individual is unique genetically and in their response to illness. Hence, treatment needs to be individualised. Also, unlike in space technology, domain experts in medicine are expected to possess knowledge from other specialties too. So we took only certain principles of design, conformance and performance from space technology, that could be incorporated in healthcare systems, said Peter.

The guidelines designed hence define the minimum standards of equipment in these units, address aspects of manpower, and define norms around quality such as keeping device-associated infections under control, among other processes. When compared with hospitals in India, however, transparency around infection rates and death rates in critical care units is an issue, said Peter.

Many of ISRO's best practicesfor instance, conducting surprise auditsmight help ensure that processes are followed, said Peter. Now, the guidelines will be circulated through the network hospitals associated with AHPI, SEMI and ISCCM.

If the rate of medical errors is reduced by even 1-2 per centbecause of this project being in the initial stagesit will still create a significant, positive impact on the effectiveness of patient care and safety in the country.
With China breathing down Indias Chickens Neck, which connects the northeastern states to the rest of the country, the Narendra Modi government is working hard to stabilise the sensitive northeast. It is working on a Naga peace plan, which could be announced by Modi during his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort, much like former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi announced the Assam accord in 1985.

There were a series of meetings in July between the prime ministers interlocutors and the largest Naga insurgent outfit, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (IM), and the two sides are learnt to have agreed on the principle of shared sovereignty. The Doklam standoff with China has given a push to the negotiations, which formally began with the signing of a framework agreement with NSCN leaders Isak Chishi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah on August 3, 2015, said a home ministry official.

The talks had been going on at a slow pace as the government was looking at a date by the end of the year to announce the final accord with an eye on the assembly elections due in February. But the Chinese threat has given a new urgency to the talks.

I have information that China was supplying arms and ammunition to NSCN(IM) leaders. We must not allow China to stoke unrest in the northeast. Bringing the NSCN(IM) and other insurgent groups to the mainstream will be a very positive development, said M.L. Kumawat, former special secretary (internal security).

According to sources, the NSCN(IM) has submitted its final draft to the government. The draft is being prepared for a final accord, now it all depends on the right moment, said an official. The government is determined to finalise the accord this time as any delay will bring another bout of uncertainty with the framework agreement entering its third year, said the official.

The governments interlocutor R.N. Ravi and the NSCN(IM)s negotiator Muivah and his team are aware of this. Muivah is being assisted by Antony Shimray, against whom the National Investigation Agency had filed a case of smuggling arms from Chinese dealers. He is out on bail and is on a peace mission. We are reaching out to all stakeholders in the northeastern states, Shimray told THE WEEK over the phone from a remote corner in the northeast.

The government and the NSCN(IM) want other Naga factions, especially groups like the Naga Ho Ho and the NSCN(KN) to come on board. Their representatives are travelling to far-flung villages on the Myanmar border, meeting tribal and village heads and convincing them of the need for an accord, and explaining to them what shared sovereignty could mean.

Alezo Venuh

Complete and separated sovereignty, which the Nagas had demanded in the past, is ruled out. It was a demand which had the support of China. In the 1960s and 70s, NSCN(IM) leaders had gone to China for training. At a recent closed-door meeting with government representatives, Muivah and another Naga leader, V.S. Atem, spoke about their experiences back then. We were then living in China. Being devout believers, we were keen to build our own church. It took us six months to even get a clearance, they said.

To ensure shared sovereignty, the final accord will entail a modification of Article 371 (a) of the Constitution and permit the transfer of powers from the Centre to the state on certain items. The constitutional and administrative amendments are expected to transfer the right to explore oil and natural gas, coal, minerals, forest and other natural resources to the states domain. Entries in the concurrent list of the Constitution which deal with the transfer of property other than agricultural land, matters related to vagrancy, nomadic and migratory tribes, religious institutions and protection of wild animals will also be transferred to the state list.

The main demand of the Nagas has been for a separate Nagalim, which, along with Nagaland, includes the hill districts of Manipur, parts of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh and large swathes of territory in Myanmar. Under the accord, autonomous hill district councils will be set up for the four Naga-inhabited districts of Manipur. These districts will get financial autonomy, as funds will be released by the Centre to the chairmen of the councils and then to the district collectors. The arrangement would be on the lines of the Bodoland Territorial Council. With the BJP in power in Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, integration should not be much of a problem. These states will be allowed to send members to an expanded legislative assembly of Nagaland, which will see the number of seats going up from 60 to 75.

Negotiations are also on regarding the demand of the Nagas for a role in manning the eastern borders. A territorial army for the armed Naga cadres is in the cards. Their induction into the paramilitary forces is also being considered. A rehabilitation package is in the works for those who were fighting for a cause, said a source.

In the run up to the implementation of the accord, Nagaland may see an interim government comprising a composite cabinet of the democratically elected leaders as well as the underground NSCN(IM) leadership. It will last for six months, after which elections will be held. The implementation of the provisions of the accord will start subsequently, posing a real test for the NSCN(IM) and the government.

During Ravis last visit, we made it clear that we did not want to wait till the next general elections. On August 3, we have completed two years of the framework agreement. We are quite hopeful that a final settlement will come about soon, said R. Chuba Ozukum, president of the Naga Ho Ho. He said the ceasefire pact could not go on forever and if no settlement was reached, both sides should be willing to abrogate the pact.

But Chuba remains positive and so do other leaders. The government has said the final settlement will be inclusive, which means that all should be part of it, said Alezo Venuh, envoy of the collective leadership of the GPRN/NSCN, another insurgent group. There have been many accords and agreements in the past, but they never bore fruit as they were done without proper consultation. I am sure the government of India is aware of it.
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Investors around the world were sent on a roller-coaster ride yesterday as crisis engulfed the White House and terror struck in Europe.

Shares in Asia and Europe were on the slide as continuing fears that Gary Cohn, one of the key driving forces behind Donald Trumps economic policy, could resign.

In the UK, the FTSE 100 was dealt a double whammy as the tragic terrorist attack in Barcelona held back sentiment in the UK tourist market.

Spooked: Concerns about Donald Trumps presidency have put markets under a fair bit of pressure

In particular, worries that fewer holidaymakers will be taking to the skies in the wake of the attack walloped airlines as markets opened, although many of the stocks recovered some of these initial losses throughout the day.

At market close, Ryanair had fallen 1.6 per cent, or 0.3, to 18.6, EasyJet was down 0.9 per cent, or 11p, to 1290p, and British Airways owner IAG had declined 2 per cent, or 12.5p, to 611.5p.

But Wall Street pared early losses later in the day after President Trump removed controversial chief White House advisor Steve Bannon  a key player in the Presidents shock victory in last Novembers election  from his post.

The FTSE 100 fell 0.9 per cent, or 63.89, to 7323.98, taking its total loss for the last two sessions to 1.2 per cent.

Shares across the travel sector fell as investors worried about the impact of the Barcelona terror attack on tourism.

The chief worry for European investors was that Cohns resignation would stop Trump from delivering his ambitious corporate tax cuts and $1 trillion infrastructure spend, which were set to send US markets through the roof.

Ex-Goldman Sachs banker Cohn  who is reportedly mulling resignation over the US Presidents divisive response to violence in Virginia  is seen as a linchpin of Trumps ailing US administration and has led fiscal reform so far.

Trumps economic and infrastructure policy was the key driver behind the original Trump Trade which saw markets soar following his election.

As a result, Laura Lambie, senior investment director at Investec, said any failure by Trump to meet spending promises could turn the so-called Trump bump recently hitting markets into a full-blown slump.

STOCKWATCH: SR MARINE Maritime products firm SRT Marine Systems will carry out the worlds biggest single deployment of maritime monitoring devices across a European waterway. It has received an order for 200 of its AIS Aids to Navigation devices, which are used to enhance control of ship traffic, monitor the location of buoys, and keep track of the local maritime environment and weather. Its products were selected after more than a year of evaluation. Shares rose 6.1 per cent, or 2p, to 35p.

One of the worst affected stocks in the UK was Ashtead, which rents out construction and industrial equipment to the US construction market. Shares fell 0.6 per cent, or 9p, to 1571p.

On the other side of the fence, Randgold Resources was one of just four FTSE 100 risers after the price of gold hit $1,300 per ounce for the first time since November.

This came as nervous investors clambered into the traditional safe haven asset. Randgold shares rose 1.2 per cent, or 90p, to 7495p.

The US Food and Drug Administration extended the use of AstraZenecas Lynparza drug for women with ovarian cancer.

The drug can now be used by patients with ovarian cancer who have responded to platinum-based chemotherapy in tablet rather than capsule form. Shares fell 0.8 per cent, or 34p, to 4447p.

Rival Hikma Pharmaceuticals declined further after posting a profit warning and failing to tell investors when its key generic version of asthma drug Advair will be released, following a delay in May.

Analysts at HSBC cut the stocks target price to 1060p from 1410p and shares fell 6 per cent, or 71p, to 1119p, making it one of the worst performers on the FTSE 350.

Construction supplies company SIG languished as analysts at Liberum hammered the nail in with a sell rating on the back of a poor set of first half results earlier this month.

Liberum said SIG, which saw profits fall 20 per cent in H1, has become unattractive due to investors pushing up its share price by putting too much faith in the ability of Meinie Oldersma, who was appointed boss in March, to drive a turnaround. Shares edged down 0.8 per cent, or 1.4p, to 177.1p.
MBABANE  It was free-for-all as government distributed 379 set-top boxes for inmates, army, police and two government ministries.



Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Minister Dumisani Ndlangamandla said these were not the only entities to get free gadgets as plans were underway to distribute same to all chiefs countrywide.

We do not want our chiefs to be adamant of what is happening in the country because they are significant figures and the pillars of society, he said.



The minister said his office was responding to requests made by the security services and the two ministries where they also stated the number of gadgets they desired.

The Correctional Services had the highest request for 166 followed by the police who requested 60 gadgets.



The two ministries; of health and education asked for 57 and 56 gadgets respectively while the army asked for 40.

Speaking on behalf of all the recipients was Correctional Services Deputy Commissioner Phindile Dlamini who touched on the importance of dissemination of information.



blackout



She said the gift from government would mark an end to a long blackout following the transition to digital migration.

Our facilities remained down and we are happy now that our visitors will have television again as another source of information, she said.

Dlamini said the police and soldiers also spent most of their time at work so they will be able to monitor what is going on in the country through television.

After the presentation, the audience was taken through orientation on how to reconnect the gadget.



The minister emphasised on the importance of engaging a qualified technician for this saying the ministry has even decided to offer its technicians for free to individuals who may have difficulty connecting.

We are aware that some people rush to conclude that there is no signal in some areas yet the problem is that they are unable to connect the gadgets, he said.

Technician Vusigama Khumalo took the officials through a tour to the transmission room where they learnt on the operations.



They were also told that out of the 20 channels that are available on the new system they had only nine running, including two radio channels.
MBABANE  When the cat is away, the mice will play. This adage rang true for a group of close to 20 pupils who threw a mega house party, as per an invite from a friend whose parents were not home.

Alcohol flowed like the Nile River, according to a witness who described yesterdays scene as chaotic.



The pupils from one of the popular schools in the capital city came in a Toyota Quantum and were in a very excited mood.

They reportedly entered the friends house and partied hard, such that one would have mistaken the house for the nearby watering hall at Checkers.



Patrons of the nearby drinking spot watched in awe as the pupils partied all day, from around 10am, until the police came to spoil things for the already drunken male and females pupils.



Festival



The yard resembled a youth college festival yet these were high school pupils, said an eyewitness to the events as they unfolded.

So serious was the drinking binge that the schools head teacher even arrived after she was alerted of what was taking place in that house, as both boys and girls were reported dead drunk without a care in the world.

Onlookers are said to have expressed concern as to what else was taking place inside that house.



The activity outside the house, which is by the roadside, was a shadow of what was taking place inside. What sold out the pupils from what was their definition of fun was when one girl was discovered to be dead drunk by her father after she decided to go home, leaving her peers behind in the late afternoon.



Her parents are said to have given their daughter a good hiding for coming home drunk and demanded answers as to where she got all the alcohol that led her to such a drunken stupor.

During the beating, she is said to have opened up and led her parents to the house.



The parents were dismayed when they were led by their daughter to the house. Bakhandza kuyi-chaos, narrated another of the witnesses. That was when the schools head teacher was called, as well as the police.

The police arrived in a kombi and van and rounded up everyone and took them to the Mbabane Police Station. It was after 4.30pm when the pupils were dropped at the police station, alighting from the police van.

They carried their backpacks and also in their possession was a blue drum, believed to have been carrying some of their beverages. They were not in school uniform though.


LUVE  While bankers and police concentrated on yesterdays strike, a gang of four thugs saw an opportunity to commit the perfect crime.



The four balaclava-wearing robbers, who were armed with rifles and pistols have bombed First National Bank (FNB) and SwaziBank automated teller machines (ATM) at the same time and got away with approximately E500 000 from one of the ATMs, while it could not be ascertained how much from the other.



The incident took place at Luve at around 3:30am yesterday. The distance between the ATMs is about 150m. The fact that the robbers executed the bombings almost simultaneously, shows that this was a well-planned mission, according to insiders.

The robbers are said to have divided themselves into two groups. In each of the groups, one was armed with a rifle while the others were carrying a pistol and the device used to cause the explosions.

According to an insider, the first group stood next to the FNB ATM housed by Luve Cash and Carry Supermarket, while the other group rushed to the SwaziBank ATM.



When the security guard saw them digging a hole in the wall housing the ATMs using a long iron rode to plunge the explosive, which later blew the wall open, he bolted while shouting for help.

After hearing his colleague scream, another guard who was off duty but resides by the supermarket, rushed out of his house and found his co-worker in full sprint.



As he asked what was happening, he heard a loud sound and did not stop for an answer as he also took to his heels, almost outpacing his colleague, who told him that there were robbers bombing the ATM.

He said while running for cover, the security guards came across a neighbour who also heard the explosion coming from the supermarkets and also joined them in full sprint after being informed that there were people bombing the ATMs.



The other group, who robbed the SwaziBank ATM, found that there was a Toyota Quantum kombi which was parked near it and they used their guns to break two of its windows to check who was inside.

They found the security guard, who tried to remain out of sight but was unsuccessful as they ordered him to lay face down inside the kombi and he complied.

When they bombed the ATM, the frightened security guard jumped out of the kombi through the broken window and fled the scene, according to the insider.
His Majesty King Mswati III with other heads of State during the 37th Ordinary Summit for Heads of State and Government yesterday.

PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA The Kingdom of eSwatini has set an encouraging pace on deliverables on the SADC objectives during her tenure as chairperson.



His Majesty the King has thrown the challenge to the new chairperson of the regional body South African President Jacob Zuma to do better.



He presented the challenge, though diplomatically, when delivering the keynote address at the 37th Ordinary Summit for Heads of State and Government yesterday.

With everyones support, I have no doubt that the new chair will run with the vision of our founding fathers with even greater vigour, said the king.



His Majesty said leaders were confident that South Africa, under the leadership of President Zuma, would lead the organisation to greater heights.

We pledge our unfettered and unwavering support to you President Zuma, the in-coming chair of SADC, he emphasised.

The king called upon his fellow heads of state and government, to render the same support given to him and the kingdom of eSwatini during the countrys tenure of office.

This support he said, had helped Swaziland achieve significant progress.



Among the key milestones for the country were;

* Hosting the energy investment forum which played a pivotal role in bringing together the public and private sectors, as well as financial institutions, to put into action the 2016 summit theme,

* Vigorously promoting of industrial development which led to the launch of the SADC University of Transformation.



* Contributing to the conclusion of the strategic and operational plans for SADC that are now readily available at the secretariat and member state level, from which the region can draw some regional projects, and

* The development of the Regional Agricultural Fund, for financing the implementation of the SADC agriculture programme.



His Majesty said While we have achieved certain milestones, there is still a lot more work to be done. To the incoming chairperson, the king said he had full confidence that President Jacob Zuma would keep the momentum regarding the resolve to mobilise resources and finance SADC projects that contribute to a vibrant economic environment.

He emphasised the need to expedite processes to bring into reality what was started regarding the agreed SADC Regional Development Fund.












MBABANE  It might have been a perception that the competition between Swazi MTN and Swazi Mobile will result in acrimony between the two mobile companies and indeed the true sign of the bad blood has since emerged.



Apparently, Swazi MTN wants nothing with anyone who has links with Swazi Mobile regardless of what that person has to offer  even a prayer. This was evidenced by the alleged axing of Pastor Sikhumbuzo Shongwe from the SWAMA Awards Programme. Shongwe was supposedly lined up to dedicate the SWAMA Awards to God through a word of prayer just like he did when the awards were launched at Esibayeni Lodge earlier in the year.



However, he was removed from the programme at the eleventh hour allegedly for being involved in the launch of Swazi Mobile Expirience Centre at The Gables in the morning of the previous day (Friday). The SWAMA Awards event was held on Saturday, August 5, 2017.



Former Minister and Endzingeni Member of Parliament Lutfo Dlamini is the president of the association and he was reached for comment. Impeccable sources confided to the Times SUNDAY that the pastor was set to mark the starting of the event with a word of prayer but was allegedly removed due to the fact that he had suspected ties with Swazi Mobile.



Our sources went on to point out that the pastors Facebook page had coments where the pastor publicly declared his support for the new mobile company. What made matters worse was the fact that on the same day of the event, Sikhumbuzos picture appeared in the Swazi News publication which was captured during the Swazi Mobile Expirience Centre opening in Ezulwini. Ironically, he also had the slot with us to open the awards with a prayer, the source said.



The Times SUNDAY also learnt that a meeting was held prior to the event where it was concluded that the pastor be withdrawn. One of the sources said it was also feared that Shongwe might utilise the chance or the platform to promote the new mobile company at the detriment of the host  Swazi MTN. If things went wrong by allowing Sikhumbuzo to take part in the line-up, we were going to be asked as to why we allowed a Swazi Mobile ambassador to open an important MTN event, said the source.



When the pastor was contacted, he wondered how this publication had got hold of the matter. However, he did confirm that the incident happened and said they (him and his wife) were very disappointed.

Shongwe pointed out that as a couple, they had bought new outfits for the event since they knew that they were invited for the event. Even at the launch of the awards at Esibayeni Lodge, I was appointed for the same role and I was told that even on the day of the main day, the programme would remain the same, but on the night I was told that I would not be part of the line-up, explained Sikhumbuzo.
Deluged

On Thursday, Sunita Rai of Itahari Submetropolitan City, Gairigaun-4, spent the whole day digging through her home, now caked with a thick layer of mud and debris.
MBABANE  The senior police executives who allegedly instructed the four standing trial junior officers to allegedly illegally delete ex-convicts criminal records remain free and are at work due to the DPPs offices temporary decision.



As the suspended police officer Lucky Obama Matsenjwa remains incarcerated and his three co-accused colleagues are suspended from work, the senior officers are enjoying their freedom and are on full pay, for now.



It should be noted though that the senior officers have not be charged as yet but were implicated in Matsenjwas court case.

National Commissioner of Police Isaac Magagula, during an exclusive interview on Thursday, told the Times SUNDAY that it was the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) who decided not to charge the senior police officers.

The police chief said the DPP was aware of the names of the senior police executives allegedly involved in the fingerprints scandal because they (police leadership) submitted a dossier of documents to the DPP and it was him (DPP) who elected not to charge the high-ranking officers.



The DPP at that time was Nkosinathi Maseko who has since been promoted to the position of High Court Judge. The acting DPP is now Phila Dlamini.

Thursday was the first time that Magagula admitted to knowing the identities of some senior police executives alleged involvement in the illegal removal of the fingerprints records belonging to ex-convicts.

The senior police officers are alleged to have instructed their juniors responsible for the criminal data system to delete criminal records belonging to their relatives.



After the DPP had seen the document, he said he knew everyone who is involved in the matter but wont name them as yet. He said he would approach the matter in his own professional way. He said sometimes it was better not to bundle people together in a case depending on the status of the investigations and the facts. He said sometimes it is better to tackle one case and complete it before tackling the other one. He said this openly, Magagula said.

The office of the DPP has already indicated that the names of the senior officers have been forwarded to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).



Magagula said just as indicated by the DPPs office, the names of all the police officers allegedly involved in the scandal were known and would be dealt with, whether they were senior or junior.

We know who is involved. I wont hide that there are senior officers involved. But the DPP has said he will deal with the current case first and then focus on the other one (involving senior cops). Nothing is being hidden, time will come. Let us be patient and see what happens to the current case, he said.
Displaced CNP rhino rescued from India

A one-horned rhino from the Chitwan National Park, which was swept away by the Rapti river flood on August 11, has been rescued from Bagaha area in India on Friday.
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By Naeisha Rose

Lisa Ray, a single mother in Jamaica with multiple sclerosis, has been through many hurdles over the past eight years, but she refused to let them stop her from living a full life.

In 2008, the former Wall Street broker and comedy promoter noticed she was displaying slurred speech, and suffered from dizziness and problems with balance. After doing independent research, she self-diagnosed herself with multiple sclerosis, an unpredictable disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain to the body, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Rays primary care physician dismissed her symptoms as not being serious enough to be a result of the degenerative disease.

I asked him if he thinks its MS, and he said no, Ray said. So I just kind of went on with my life.

The active mom would go on to spend her free time volunteering at her church with the choir, and teach kids how to write poems at the youth ministry of Bethel Gospel Tabernacle in Jamaica.

When she wasnt volunteering, she would travel frequently with her son, Bryce, to the Caribbean so they could have mother-son bonding time.

The vacations became less common as she started to feel numbness in her right wrist, and endured more loss of balance in 2009. Two different neurologists had her go through MRIs, a biopsy and EMG nerve tests, but neither found anything wrong with her, according to Ray.

I figured it was old age, maybe Im just getting older, said Ray, who was 44 at the time. But then I sprained my ankle and it never got better.

A podiatrist told her she had a torn ligament and that her foot would eventually get better, she said.

Her ankle did not get better and she ended up with drop foot, a condition where you have to drag the front of your foot. It is a usually a system of an underlying neurological, muscular or anatomical problem, according to the Mayo Clinics website.

While she was worried about losing her job in finance during the economic recession in the 2000s, she was also seeing a third neurologist who wanted to make sure she didnt have a stroke.

I didnt want to take time off, Ray said. No one was saying I had anything.

In 2010, she saw a second foot doctor who said her drop foot was coming from her back. Later that year, she was laid off and the podiatrist referred her to a spine specialist.

He said if I didnt have a surgery, I would be crippled, Ray said.

Two discs were removed from her back, but she still had drop foot, more falls, and now a back brace.

In 2014, after seeing two more neurologists who didnt find anything wrong with her, she fell entering the building where her sons high school graduation was held. She later had to use a walker.

A year later, a chiropractor helping her with back spasms diagnosed her with multiple sclerosis. She stubbornly went to see a sixth neurologist at Complete Neurological Care in Valley Stream and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis again by a physicians assistant, who told her she never needed her spinal discs removed.

He said I shouldnt have had that back surgery, Ray said. He did my blood work and said we are going to do this, this and this.

In February, 2016, Ray went to Weill Cornell Medicine and was diagnosed a third time with multiple sclerosis and finally received treatment. Today, she does physical therapy to help with her condition and receives monthly infusions of the medication Tysabri, intravenously.

Since her diagnosis, she has worked on a book of inspirational poems that she is in the process of publishing. She is also producing a one-woman show to address issues that teens face. She is also dating.

A year ago I couldnt be in crowds, Ray said. Now Im living my life. No more suffering in silence.
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By Naeisha Rose

Every summer, around 300 students apply for a paid internship at the American Museum of Natural History. Approximately 200 will make it to the interview phase, and only 10 percent of applicants are selected for the coveted spots.

Matthew Lloyd, 19, from St. Albans, is one of the lucky few to have spent his summer at the Museum Education and Employment Program and constructed his own tour.

Its challenging to get in, said Nick Martinez, the manager of Internships and Youth Community at the museum. When I interviewed him, he had a lot of energy and he was really enthusiastic, and those are things that we look for in people that apply to the program because you are going to be working with visitors and camp groups.

The Stony Brook student was extremely excited when he found out that he would be joining the MEEP program at the museum.

I was definitely very happy, Lloyd said. Im very interested in paleontology, geology and all of the natural sciences, and Ive always adored this place as a child and I love the museum. Its one of the places that I enjoyed going to on school trips and with family.

At the MEEP program, Lloyd designed and conducted his own creative tour for campers and tourists from around the world. For the Age of Dinosaurs exhibit, he explained the diverse environments in which dinosaurs lived and he talked about iconic species like the Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops.

I took it head on, Lloyd said. I think that it was really cool that I can make up a tour about the things that I was interested in and that Im passionate about, and display that interest to other people.

Martinez said he was impressed by Lloyds tour.

The tour that he designed was really, really great and the dinosaurs are always a big hit, Martinez said. His tour was engaging.

Lloyd made $12 an hour, 20 hours a week, and said he will use his earnings towards college costs. As a New Yorker attending a SUNY school and a resident assistant, his tuition is covered by the states Excelsior Scholarship. He gets to live for free on campus, but he helps out other students on campus without pay.

I make my own food on campus and with this, I will have money to buy groceries, toiletries, supplies and books, so it really helps me out with expenses, Lloyd said.

Lloyd also made many contacts at the museum before finishing his internship Saturday, which could come in handy in the future.

I made plenty of great connections having worked at this museum, Lloyd said. I can tell people that may want to hire me to be a research assistant that I worked at the American Museum of Natural History.  My parents are really proud of me and they tell people my son is working at the museum. 
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By Naeisha Rose

Three correction officers who worked at Queens Detention Facility in Jamaica were arrested for allegedly smuggling contraband to at least nine inmates and accepting bribes of over $4,725 through wire transfers and cash from 2016-17, according to the United States Attorneys Office of the Southern District.

Saquan Williams, Jabar Allen and Shawn Pettigrew were charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and to introduce contraband into prison, a crime that comes with a five-year prison term.

They were also charged with bribery, which carries a 15-year prison term, according to the United States Attorneys Office in the Southern District of New York.

The correction officers allegedly trafficked marijuana, cigarettes, cash, cell phones, tobacco and a MP3 player into the private facility, located at 182-22 on 150th St., at least 17 times. They also allegedly smuggled Patron tequila and K2, a smokeable synthetic cannabinoid, according to Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the district.

The three suspects were allegedly given the items by non-incarcerated friends and relatives of the inmates in the Bronx and Queens, and allegedly took cash before and after a transfer of goods. They also allegedly received wire transfers from New Jersey, according to Kim.

As alleged, these correction officers abused the public power entrusted to them by taking bribes to smuggle contraband, including drugs, into a jail that housed federal inmates, Kim said. Corruption of those who work within our criminal justice system, including officers at a private detention facility, cannot be tolerated and must be rooted out, as it undermines the public faith in the system and betrays the trust of all fellow officers who dedicate themselves to the proper administration of justice.

The trio allegedly ran the items undetected for about a year by hiding them in camera blind spots, such as bathroom urinals, inside pails and in slop sinks, according to Criminal Investigator Stefano Braccini of the USAO for the Southern District, who questioned the inmates involved.

The Department of Justices Office of the Inspector General assisted in the investigation. The Offices Public Corruption Unit will further handle the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Thomas McKay and Max Nicholas are in charge of the prosecution, according to Kim.

The three suspects were released on a $100,000 bond. Each had to surrender their travel documents and cannot travel outside of the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York.

Their arraignment has not been scheduled yet, according to a spokeswoman of the Southern Districts USAO.
Anti-fascist activists gathered in the Berlin suburb of Spandau on Saturday to protest against a vigil by about 250 neo-Nazis commemorating the 30th anniversary of the death of Nazi convict Rudolf Hess.

The neo-Nazis planned a march from the suburb\s station to the former Spandau Prison where Hess, an early ally of Germany\s wartime dictator Adolf Hitler, served out the life sentence he was handed down at the post-war Nuremberg war crimes trials.

Far-right activists held up banners reading "I regret nothing" and hoisted the red, white and black flag of Hitler\s Third Reich as about 1,000 police looked on.

Neo-Nazis commemorate the 1987 prison suicide of Hitler\s one-time deputy every year, but this gathering has drawn more attention after a far-right march in Charlottesville, Virginia this month that led to the death of a young woman and drew international criticism.

Many anti-fascist protesters said the vigil in Germany should have been barred.

"It\s appalling that in the year 2017, Nazis can openly go on the streets for this deputy of Hitler," said Gerhard Sattler, a protester. "This is impossible. The whole of German society must stand up against this."

The crimes of the wartime regime are a matter of great sensitivity in Germany, where symbols of the Nazi regime, such as the swastika flag, are banned and where education about the dangers of totalitarianism and racial politics are a staple of the school curriculum.

But Berlin\s senator for interior affairs said banning this gathering would have been impossible to reconcile with the political freedoms of a democracy.

"I would have been delighted with a ban," said interior affairs senator Andreas Geisel. "But we looked very closely at the matter and concluded that unfortunately arseholes also get to benefit from democratic freedoms."

Hess, who was the last war criminal in Spandau Prison when he died aged 93, was appointed Hitler\s deputy when the Nazis came to power in 1933, a position he retained until 1941, when he flew solo to Britain, believing Hitler wanted him to negotiate a peace between the two warring sides.

He spent the rest of the war in prison in Britain before being convicted of crimes against the peace at the Nuremberg military tribunal.

SOURCE: REUTERS
Global IME provides Rs6.5m to flood victims

Global IME Bank has contributed Rs6.5 million to the Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund to provide aid to victims of the floods in the countrys southern Tarai belt.
ALBANY -- A 36-year-old city man was sentenced to eight years in state prison on a sexual assault charge, Albany County District Attorney David Soares said.

Daniel Garrand had been found guilty in 2016 of engaging in forcible sexual activity with a woman he knew at an Albany residence. He was convicted in June 2017.
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Washington

Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled chief strategist who helped President Donald Trump win the 2016 election by embracing their shared nationalist impulses, departed the White House on Friday after a turbulent tenure shaping the fiery populism of the president's first seven months in office.

Bannon's exit, the latest in a string of high-profile West Wing shake-ups, came as Trump is under fire for saying that "both sides" were to blame for last week's deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Critics accused the president of channeling Bannon when he equated white supremacists and neo-Nazis with the left-wing protesters who opposed them.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, press secretary. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."

Trump had told senior aides that he had decided to remove Bannon, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion. But a person close to Bannon insisted that the parting of ways was his idea and that he had submitted his resignation to the president Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week. The move was delayed after the violence in Charlottesville, Va.

The loss of Bannon, the right-wing nationalist who helped propel some of Trump's campaign promises into policy reality, raises the potential for the president to face criticism from the conservative media base that supported him.

Bannon's many critics bore down after the violence in Charlottesville. Outraged over Trump's insistence that "both sides" were to blame for the violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally, leaving one woman dead, human rights activists demanded that the president fire nationalists working in the West Wing. That group of hard-right populists in the White House is led by Bannon.

Tuesday, Trump refused to guarantee Bannon's job security but defended him as "not a racist" and "a friend."

"We'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon," Trump said.

Bannon's dismissal followed an Aug. 16 interview he initiated with a writer with whom he had never spoken, with the progressive publication The American Prospect. Bannon mockingly played down the U.S. threat to North Korea as nonsensical: "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us."

He also bad-mouthed his colleagues in the Trump administration, vowed to oust a diplomat at the State Department and mocked officials as "wetting themselves" over radically changing trade policy.

Of the far right, he said, "These guys are a collection of clowns," and he called it a "fringe element" of "losers."

"We gotta help crush it," he said in the interview, which people close to Bannon said he believed was off the record.

Privately, several White House officials said that Bannon appeared to be provoking Trump and that they did not see how the president could keep him on after the interview was published.

By Friday night, Bannon was back at the far-right Breitbart News, chairing an editorial meeting at the organization he helped run before joining Trump's campaign and where he can continue to advance his agenda.

Bannon's departure was long rumored in Washington. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who was brought on as chief of staff for his ability to organize a chaotic staff, was said to have grown weary of the chief strategist's long-running feud with Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser.

One White House official, who would not be named discussing the president's thinking, said Trump has wanted to remove Bannon since he ousted Reince Priebus as his chief of staff three weeks ago; Bannon had been aligned with Priebus. But Trump changed his mind as several defenders of Bannon warned the president that he risked losing supporters who saw Bannon as a conduit of their views.

Since then, Kelly has been evaluating Bannon's status. The president and Kelly have talked over the past several days, and Bannon had planned to put his resignation in motion in the coming days, this person said.
A federal appeals court has upheld the states denial of water permits needed to build the proposed Constitution gas pipeline that would run through Central New York into Schoharie County.

The federal government had earlier approved the line contingent on permits from the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation needed for crossing streams and wetlands. That permit was denied so the developers sued in federal court.
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New York

Transit officials have decided to alter subway station tiles that have a cross-like design similar to that of the Confederate flag.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is modifying the tiles at the 40th Street entrance to the Times Square subway stop to avoid any confusion about their meaning, MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said in a statement.

"These are not Confederate flags" Ortiz said. The red, white and blue tiles installed decades ago are "based on geometric forms that represent the 'Crossroads of the World,'" he added.

The decision comes in the wake of the deadly rally over a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va., which has caused communities across the nation to remove Confederate memorials and symbols.

Earlier this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other politicians pressed the U.S. Army to rename two streets named for Confederate generals Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson on an Army base in Brooklyn. The Army said the streets were named for the generals "in the spirit of reconciliation" and to recognize them as individuals.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has gone even further by announcing plans to conduct a review of all of the city's public art and statues to identify "symbols of hate" for possible removal. The mayor singled out a sidewalk plaque commemorating Nazi collaborator Philippe Petain located on the "Canyon of Heroes"  the 13 blocks of Broadway in Lower Manhattan where ticker tape parades are held  as a likely candidate.

Both Cuomo and de Blasio have also called for removal of busts of Lee and Jackson featured at the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at Bronx Community College.

"Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson will be removed from the CUNY hall of great Americans because New York stands against racism," Cuomo tweeted.

The MTA didn't say how the tiles would be changed or when the work would begin.
Govt decides to accept foreign aid

The government has decided to accept foreign aid and support for the management of recent floods that have killed at least 135 people, mostly in the Tarai.
Across 12 states, from Oregon to South Carolina, on Monday, the moon will completely block out the sun in a highly anticipated total solar eclipse  the first such eclipse to traverse the continential U.S. since 1918. In the Titusville region, about 77 percent of the sun will be blotted out by the moon.
[August 18, 2017] DOLLAR GENERAL INVESTIGATION INITIATED by Former Louisiana Attorney General: Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC Investigates the Officers and Directors of Dollar General Corporation - (DG)

Former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., Esq., a partner at the law firm of Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC ("KSF"), announces that KSF has commenced an investigation into Dollar General Corporation (NYSE: DG). Throughout the year 2016, Dollar General executives caused the Company to misrepresent the true negative effect that reductions of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ("SNAP") benefits would have, and were having, on the Company's present and future revenue, net income and earnings growth, resulting in the Company's stock trading at artificially inflated prices throughout much of 2016. When the truth was finally revealed, on August 25, 2016, Dollar General's stock collapsed over 17%, instantly wiping out more than $4 billion in shareholder equity. Thereafter, Dollar General and certain of its executives were sued in a securities class action lawsuit charging them wth failing to disclose material information, violating federal securities laws.



KSF's investigation is focusing on whether Dollar General's officers and/or directors breached their fiduciary duties to its shareholders or otherwise violated state or federal laws. If you have information that would assist KSF in its investigation, or have been a long-term holder of Dollar General shares and would like to discuss your legal rights, you may, without obligation or cost to you, call toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or email KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn ([email protected]).

About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC KSF, whose partners include Former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is a law firm focused on securities, antitrust and consumer class actions, along with merger & acquisition and breach of fiduciary litigation against publicly traded companies on behalf of shareholders. The firm has offices in New York, California and Louisiana. To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170818005566/en/

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[August 19, 2017] Wreckage from the USS Indianapolis Located in the Philippine Sea 72 Years after It Was Torpedoed and Sunk During Final Days of World War II

SEATTLE, Aug. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Wreckage from the USS Indianapolis was discovered on Aug. 18 by the expedition crew of Research Vessel (R/V) Petrel, which is owned by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen. The Indianapolis was found 5,500 meters below the surface, resting on the floor of the North Pacific Ocean. "To be able to honor the brave men of the USS Indianapolis and their families through the discovery of a ship that played such a significant role during World War II is truly humbling," Mr. Allen said. "As Americans, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the crew for their courage, persistence and sacrifice in the face of horrendous circumstances. While our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue, I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming." The Indianapolis was tragically lost in the final days of World War II when it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the early morning hours of July 30, 1945. The Indianapolis sank in 12 minutes, making it impossible to deploy much of its life-saving equipment. Prior to the attack, the Indianapolis had just completed its secret mission of delivering components of one of the two nuclear weapons that were dropped on Japan. Of the 1,196 sailors and Marines onboard, only 317 survived. "Even in the worst defeats and disasters there is valor and sacrifice that deserve to never be forgotten," said Sam Cox, Director of the Naval History and Heritage Command. "They can serve as inspiration to current and future Sailors enduring situations of mortal peril. There are also lessons learned, and in the case of the Indianapolis, lessons re-learned, that need to be preserved and passed on, so the same mistakes can be prevented, and lives saved." "For more than two decades I've been working with the survivors. To a man, they have longed for the day when their ship would be found, solving their final mystery," said Capt. William Toti (Ret), spokesperson for the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. "They all know this is now a war memorial, and are grateful fo the respect and dignity that Paul Allen and his team have paid to one of the most tangible manifestations of the pain and sacrifice of our World War II veterans."



As the naval flagship of the Fifth Fleet, the sunken Indianapolis was the object of many previous search efforts. Mr. Allen had recently acquired and retrofitted the 250-foot R/V Petrel with state-of-the-art subsea equipment capable of diving to 6,000 meters (or three and a half miles). "The Petrel and its capabilities, the technology it has and the research we've done, are the culmination of years of dedication and hard work," said Robert Kraft, director of subsea operations for Mr. Allen. "We've assembled and integrated this technology, assets and unique capability into an operating platform which is now one among very few on the planet."

The other key factor in the discovery was information that surfaced in 2016 by Dr. Richard Hulver, historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command, which led to a new search area to the west of the original presumed position. By finally identifying a naval landing craft that had recorded a sighting of the USS Indianapolis the night that it was torpedoed, the research team developed a new position and estimated search, which was still a daunting 600 square miles of open ocean. Allen-led expeditions have also resulted in the discovery of the Japanese battleship Musashi (March 2015) and the Italian WWII destroyer Artigliere (March 2017). His team was also responsible for retrieving and restoring the ship's bell from the HMS Hood for presentation to the British Navy in honor of its heroic service. Mr. Allen's expedition team was recently transferred to the newly acquired and retrofitted R/V Petrel specifically for continuing exploration and research efforts. The 16-person expedition team on the R/V Petrel will continue the process of surveying the full site as weather permits and will be conducting a live tour of the wreckage in the next few weeks. The USS Indianapolis remains the property of the U.S. Navy and its location will remain confidential and restricted by the Navy. The crew of the R/V Petrel has been collaborating with Navy authorities throughout its search operations and will continue to work on plans to honor the 22 crew members still alive today, as well as the families of all those who served on the highly decorated cruiser. For more information, contact:

[email protected], 206-342-2230 The following link provides visual assets, materials and video interviews from: Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen

Director of subsea operations for Mr. Allen, Robert Kraft

Director of the Naval History and Heritage Comment, Sam Cox

Naval Historian Dr. Richard Hulver

B-roll of the R/V Petrel in its search for the U.S.S. Indianapolis

Historic photos of the U.S.S. Indianapolis The following links are recommended resources provided by Dr. Hulver and provide the history of the USS Indianapolis. Naval History and Heritage Command's USS Indianapolis Page

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/disasters-and-phenomena/indianapolis.html

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/disasters-and-phenomena/indianapolis.html USS Indianapolis Photos -- Imagery in this section can be attributed to "U.S. Navy Photo Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command" or "U.S. Navy Photo."

https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/us-navy-ships/alphabetical-listing/i/uss-indianapolis--ca-35-.html

Photos -- Imagery in this section can be attributed to "U.S. Navy Photo Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command" or "U.S. Navy Photo." https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/us-navy-ships/alphabetical-listing/i/uss-indianapolis--ca-35-.html Indianapolis Bibliography

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/loss-of-uss-indianapolis-ca-35/bibliography.html About Paul G. Allen Four decades after co-founding Microsoft, entrepreneur and philanthropist Paul G. Allen is still exploring the frontiers of technology and human knowledge, and acting to change the future. Mr. Allen is working to save endangered species; combat climate change; improve ocean health; share art, history and film; develop new technology; tackle epidemics; research how the human brain works; and build sustainable communities. Mr. Allen is deeply committed to honoring our past and the lessons it provides to our future. He has created public spaces including the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Collection, MoPOP and the Living Computer Museum + Lab where people learn and interact with historic, cultural and musical heritage. The inaugural Seattle Art Fair helped put the city on the map as one of the premier art destinations in the country. He also thinks globally, making impact investments that will help developing countries expand their health and infrastructure and nurture a diversified economy. Many of his ventures were seeded in his youth, and reflect the depth and diversity of his passions. Honoring his father's service in World War II, Mr. Allen is especially interested in collecting and protecting the artifacts that speak to the heroism and service of that day. His recently acquired Research Vessel Petrel provides a platform to search for historic artifacts that have been lost at sea. To learn more, visit PaulAllen.com. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wreckage-from-the-uss-indianapolis-located-in-the-philippine-sea-72-years-after-it-was-torpedoed-and-sunk-during-final-days-of-world-war-ii-300506832.html SOURCE Paul G. Allen

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Powerball numbers for Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022

Here are the winning Powerball numbers and results for the lottery jackpot drawing on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022.
Insurers told to settle flood damage claims

The Insurance Board (IB) has instructed insurance companies to settle claims for damages caused by the recent record floods which submerged large parts of the country, particularly the southern Tarai plains, as soon as possible.
Lessons learnt?

This week, the government imposed restrictions on non-governmental agencies and private individuals from dispensing relief materials to those affected by the floods that have inundated large ports of the Tarai without coordination with the authorities.
Kansas City Democracy Doesn't Stop Rigged Toy Train Streetcar Expansion

Kansas City Mayor And Council Stay Winning Amid Culture War Distractions

In The End, Congressman Cleaver Outlasts Ousted Alt-Right Steve Bannon

In another tumultuous week for Prez Trump, we continue our news workout into the night and not only offer tribute tobut also compile this weekly list of local winners.Take a look:The Streetcar doesn't respect local elections,despite a recent vote calling for a full stop withoutvoter approval.Some denizens of the Council are putting up a good fight against a rigged airport vote and they deserve credit for that . . .Last year. . . Today, with Bannon out, like it or not. The Congressman earned another victory in his opposition of the current administration.As always, this list has been compiled according toand it's a weekly comprehensive guide to local powerful people.
A man was fatally shot in front of a house late Thursday in Independence, police said. Police officers were called at 10:49 p.m. to the 1500 block of South Pearl Street and found a 33-year-old man dead from a gunshot wound, authorities said. Police identified him as Christopher L. King.
Celebrate Kansas City Bus Stop Tech

Smarts kiosks planned for Kansas City bus stops | Blog | Ride KC They're one of the hottest advancements in transit and they'll start cropping up along RideKC routes in a matter of months. The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority Board of Commissioners has approved the installation of 66 Smart City kiosks, similar to what you see along the downtown streetcar line.

More Rigged Airport News

KCI selection committee meets to continue comparing project proposals A selection committee that is reviewing new terminal proposals for Kansas City International Airport met Friday but made no decision, and the timing of a recommendation remains uncertain. "The reality is, we've still got a lot more work to get done," said City Councilman Jermaine Reed, one member of the selection committee.

Midtown Kansas City Cleanup

Large tree blocks northbound lanes of Southwest Trafficway near 35th Street KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A large tree fell into the northbound lanes of Southwest Trafficway in Kansas City Friday afternoon. The tree blocked the northbound lanes and a portion of one southbound lane near 35th Street. Police diverted northbound traffic onto side streets. It's unclear what caused the tree to fall.

Local Troops Still Shipping Out

Ceremony held for 30 members of Army National Guard going to Afghanistan A ceremony for 30 men who will be shipping off to Afghanistan for Operation Freedom's Sentinel was held on Friday. They are members of Bravo Battery, 2nd battalion of the 130th Field Artillery, so their role will be to provide rocket and missile fire.

Reality TV Competition

Kansas City Finals start time and live stream American Ninja Warrior is racing along towards the start of the National Finals. Only two more cities remain before we know every Ninja who will take their shot at Mount Midoriyama. Up next is Kansas City. These City Finals promise to be thrilling.

Kansas City Lights And Pollution

As Far As the Eye Can See (Hint: It's Not Far) As it happens, the stars have aligned between curiousKC and the historic astronomical event coming Aug. 21. Just as our region was preparing for the full lunar eclipse, Kansas Citian Clark Johnson wondered if there is any local regulation of light pollution. Johnson asked curiousKC: "Is there an ordinance for reducing light pollution?"

This Series Is The Season

Kansas City Royals: Division is on the line in series against Cleveland The 2017 season hasn't gone according to plan so far for the Kansas City Royals, but even despite their recent struggles, the boys in blue are still in the running for the American League Central division title. Right now, the Royals are five and a half games out of first place, which isn't insurmountable by any means.

We dedicate the early part of the day to Danica hotness as we start the morning with these Kansas City MSM links. Checkit:is the song of the day and this is thefor right now . . .
Dr. Ernest Evans: Violence By Domestic Groups in the US

The tragic events in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017 have once again brought to the forefront the issue of violence by extremist groups in US history. In the 1960s black radical Stokely Carmichael used to say: "Violence is as American as cherry pie" (Apple pie would have been a better example, but his point stands!!) There has been a great deal of politically motivated violence in US history. And extremist groups on both the left and the right have often been willing to use violence to achieve their goals.It is important to recognize that most of the politically motivated violence in US history has been "pro status quo" violence--violence designed to uphold the status quo rather than violence to further social change. And in the more than two centuries of the American Republic there have been a number of targets of such "pro status quo" violence.A heavily disproportionate amount of this "pro status quo" violence has been directed at black Americans trying to achieve racial equality. The Reconstruction Era (1865-1877) was one of the most violent periods of American history as efforts to make the newly-freed slaves first class citizens met with massive resistance by the white majority. In terrible massacres like the 1873 Colfax Massacre in Louisiana (in which 153 people died) the black population of the South was terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists organizations into accepting second class citizens--they were not to become full citizens until the 1960s. And, it is now largely forgotten, but in the period of the civil rights movement from 1955 to the death of Dr. King in 1968 some several hundred people were murdered by the Klan and similar organizations in an effort to preserve racial segregation.Another target of such "pro status quo" violence has been new immigrants. In the years since its founding the US has seen waves of immigration from parts of the world not represented among the original population--and these new immigrants have often not been welcomed by the native population. The large Irish immigration of the 1840s and 1850s (sparked by the Potato Famine of 1845-1853) led to a lot of violence against Irish-Americans. When immigrants from China and Japan began to arrive in the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries they were often subjected to violent attacks in the places where they settled. In Los Angeles in 1943 there were several days of rioting targeting Mexican immigrants--the infamous "Zoot Suit" riots. In 1965 the US changed its immigration laws to end the national quotas that had severely restricted immigration to the US from Third World countries--the resulting large wave of immigration from Third World countries has sparked a lot of violence against these new immigrants.There has also been a lot of violence against movements working for economic change. The US has had a very bloody history of labor relations--with strikes often being violently put down and with labor organizers being murdered. And groups pushing for radical change like the Industrial Workers of the World and the Communist Party have often been targeted for violence.In one respect the history of violence in America has been quite different from most other nations, and that is the issue of violence against people of different religions. Such violence has been rare in the US--although not entirely absent. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon faith, was murdered by a mob that considered his church to be a perversion of Christianity. Leo Frank, the Jewish owner of a factory in Atlanta, Georgia, was falsely accused and convicted of raping and murdering a young girl in 1913--and then was lynched by a mob in 1915 when the governor of Georgia courageously commuted his death sentence. And in the aftermath of the tragedy of 9/11 there have been a number of acts of violence against American Muslims and Sikhs. (Sikhs are not Muslim but are often mistakenly identified as such.)In the past several decades we have begun to see a new form of violence by the extreme right; namely violence by anti-government militants. Such violence began to take place as, starting with the Vietnam War and Watergate the American people's trust in the good faith of their government declined sharply. By the early 1990s, with the Ruby Ridge incident of 1992 and the Waco incident of 1993, many Americans began to conclude that their government was illegitimate and had declared war on its own people. The Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 is only the most spectacular action by these anti-government militants--as several articles in 2015 by Judy Thomas of the Kansas City Star show, in the past several years several dozen people have been murdered by anti-government militants.Now, while violence by the extreme left has been a lot less common in US history than violence by the extreme right, there have been a number of cases of violence by left-wing extremists. In the 1870s in the coal fields of Pennsylvania a group called the Molly McGuires carried out a number of acts of violence against mining companies and their employees. In 1910 a radical labor leader bombed the offices of the Los Angeles Times--21 people died in this explosion. In 1920 an anarchist exploded a bomb on Wall Street--38 people were killed. In 1901 an anarchist successfully assassinated President McKinley--and in 1933 an anarchist unsuccessfully tried to assassinate President-Elect Roosevelt. (He did, however, kill Mayor Cermak of Chicago.)In the years of the Vietnam War there were a number of violent groups on the extreme left such as the Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Panthers. While these groups got a lot of publicity and did carry out a number of acts of violence, they were never able to get the mass base of support that enables revolutionary movements to grow and flourish.In conclusion, in the Administration of President Trump violence by extremists on both ends of the spectrum has become a most serious issue. The election of Trump showed that there are a lot of Americans who are upset with the changes in our society in the past several decades--and the first few months of his Administration have led to a counter-mobilization of Americans afraid that Trump will undo the gains they have made in recent years. The deep anger that has been expressed in the several days since the tragedy in Charlottesville shows that America right now is deeply polarized--and that polarization could lead to a great deal of violence.#########
What appears to be a hammer and sickle and various letters, some of which are almost illegible, were spray painted in red onto the monument.





The exact time the vandalism happened, who did it, and how many people did it are unknown.

Just was we predicted yesterday morning . . .Take a look:Deets:Sad thing here is that this kinda negates a protest coming up tomorrow given that opponents of the memorial were unwilling to obey the rule of law and instead took matters into their own hands.Curious to know what TKC readers think about this . . .You decide . . .
'I hope Trump is assassinated': A Missouri lawmaker's Facebook comment leads to calls for her resignation A Missouri lawmaker started the day by making a comment on Facebook that would soon lead to calls for her resignation and even catch the attention of the Secret Service. Two days after President Trump once again blamed " both sides " for violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Democratic state Sen.

She has refused to apologize TWICE . . . The Guv wants her gone and Missouri Democrats don't seem to be willing to fight her her. Check the roundup. Make a prediction and we'll award TKC bonus points to the winner:
The first trailer of the new film The Killing of a Sacred Deer by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has been released.

The trailer burns with a cold intensity, as cryptic scenes from the film play over a girls a capella rendition of Ellie Gouldings pop hit Burn, film critic Hoai-Tran Bui of slashfilm.com notes.

The movie reunites Lobster (the directors previous, critically acclaimed film) star Colin Farrell with his The Beguiled co-star Nicole Kidman, who plays the wife to Farrells renowned surgeon.

I dont understand why I should have to pay the price, why my children should have to pay the price, Kidman stresses to Dunkirks Barry Keoghan in the trailer. Keoghan responds: Its the only thing I can think of thats close to justice.

The movie follows Farrells character as he forges a bond with an enigmatic young man (Keoghan) that results in tragedy, with an apparent curse from the boy causing the surgeons patients to become partially paralyzed.

Several scenes of the patients eerily contorting their bodies through stark hospitals flash through the trailer, lending a horrific atmosphere to the slow-burn of a preview.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this year, where it was nominated for the Palme DOr and hailed by critics as Sophies Choice as a suburban horror movie.

The jury handed Lanthimos and the films co-writer, Efthymis Filippou, its Best Screenplay award, which he shared with You Were Never Really Here writer-director Lynne Ramsay.

The film is programmed for a US release in mid-October and for a UK release in mid-November.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Christophe.Finot License: CC-BY-SA

Source: greekreporter.com
Strategic & Political analyst Panagiotis Karampelas published the following article recently in protothema.gr:

"The Fethiye Mosque (Gr.:  ) is located in Athens right under the Acropolis. After being used as a storage for local ancient artifacts, it was decided by the Greek Ministry of Culture back in 2010 that it should be renovated and to be used for various cultural activities and of course to be open to visitors.

But is it here that this little story ends?

No. This is where it begins And the reason for this is that the renovation of the Mosque was a long standing demand of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Of course, what he wanted was for it to actually be used again as a Mosque officially, which is not the case right now.

Anyone, with good intentions, who reads this could very well ask:

Whats so special about this specific Mosque that has turned into a bilateral issue between Greece and Turkey?

The answer lies at the very beginning of the Mosques history itself.

The Mosque was built by the orders of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the 2nd the Conqueror to give thanks to Allah for helping him conquer Constantinople in 1453. The Mosque officially opened when the Sultan visited the (conquered, of course) Athens.

One doesnt have to be an avid reader of strategy or history to understand the connotations as well as the semiology behind this specific Mosque. In the hands of a megalomaniac wannabe-Sultan, this could be as good as a weapon!

This is what Erdogan had in mind when he insisted to various Greek governments to open the Fethiye Mosque. Such a building, with the history it carries, reopening again under the shadow of the Greek and European symbol of democracy, the Parthenon, would be a victory by itself.

And this is exactly what we gave him: A Victory!

Of course, one could argue that it will not be used as a Mosque, but as a place for cultural events and a place for tourists to visit.

However, it would be really naive for anyone not to see how this can, and eventually will, change. The first Turkish or Muslim in general that will start praying in there is going to turn it practically into a Mosque. When Muslim tourists will start protesting against western tourists and Greek visitors for not taking off their shoes as it is accustomed by the Muslims in Mosques, that is when it will turn into one. Because whoever will try to stop them, will give the perfect propaganda ammunition to Turkey to say to the world: See what the bad Greeks are doing? Is this your democracy Europe? The Human and Religious Rights are being oppressed blah-blah-blah.

For Turkey, this is a win-win situation!

Well done Mr. Erdogan. Well played"

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: R4BIA.com License: CC-BY-SA

Source: protothema.gr
Let there be light

Whos afraid of the dark? Or rather who does not have the fear of facing the star-lit night, staring at them in deafening silence in the midst of their utter loneliness? The breeze caressing ones shin like a cat brushing past with its fluffy tail, the wind howling, two shiny eyes fixing a gaze on you.
New Democracy criticized the government on Friday over its handling of Canadian miner Eldorado Gold

Greek main opposition New Democracy criticized the government on Friday over its handling of Canadian miner Eldorado Gold, saying SYRIZA's efforts to present itself as investment-friendly is "turning into a theatre of the absurd".

"The show 'SYRIZA is friendly to investments' is turning into a theater of the absurd, discrediting the country worldwide and jeopardizing thousands of jobs," ND noted in a press release.

"The government has declared war to the largest, direct investment in the country for its own ideological obsessions. It got to the point that the company is asking from [...] Mr. [Defence Minister Panos] Kammenos to withdraw the offensive things he said. And then Mr. Tsipras will go to the Thessaloniki International Fair and speak about development," it continued.

The government has announced it will start an arbitration process with the company over its expansion plans in Greece.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Source: ANA-MPA
A tavern owner in Volos, Central Greece, fired shotgun shots in the air on Thursday, in order to scare away three tax auditors who fined him 500 euros for a series of tax violations, according to the following article by greekreporter.com:

The three officials entered the tavern premises last Thursday afternoon to audit the owner. They found that there were several tax law violations and fined the owner 500 euros, but did not proceed with shutting down the business for 48 hours, as a new bill dictates.

Nevertheless, when the three tax auditors started to leave, the tavern owner followed them with a shotgun and threatened them by shooting in the air, protesting the fine imposition.

Police were tipped off immediately and arrested the tavern owner for illegal firearm possession.

Greek Deputy Finance Minister Katerina Papanatsiou commented after the incident: With regard to the new incident of violence and the threats against employees of the Agency for the Research and Safeguarding of Public Revenue in the course of their duties, which happened yesterday in the Volos region, tax audits will continue with the same intensity and pace in all regions Of Greece, aiming at combating tax evasion.

Tax authorities and their employees will continue their work, even though some insist on tactics and perceptions of the past, continuing to regard tax evasion as the norm, she added.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Nikolaos Vergos License: CC-BY-SA

Source: greekreporter.com
With two back-to-back heat waves last month, temperatures reached almost 46 degrees Celsius

Last month was the hottest July since 1880, according to Greek official data, with NASA records indicating that, on a global level, July was one of the hottest months on record.

With two back-to-back heat waves last month, temperatures reached almost 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 Fahrenheit) on Crete.

In early July we recorded a very significant heat wave with very high temperatures, Greek meteorologist Dimitris Ziakopoulos told Kathimerini.

This summer was significantly hotter than previous ones, he added, noting that sweltering conditions continued through July and into August.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: Artemis Katsadoura License: CC-BY-SA

Source: ekathimerini.com
Irans local cloud providers that operate using/reselling global products must integrate with telecom players for infrastructure, and European/Indian IT solution providers to enhance portfolio capabilities, a report said.



The report titled Iran Cloud Computing MarketMacro Outlook and Technology Trends, 2017 from growth partnership company Frost & Sullivan examines critical aspects for investing in and entering the Iranian cloud market.



The study highlights industry verticals to target in order to create distinctive positioning to enter the public, private and hybrid, infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), product-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud markets.



The nascent Iranian cloud computing market offers immense potential for future growth. This is subject to a sturdy understanding of the countrys long-term economic development, and information and communication technologies (ICT) investment plans. The biggest challenges to deployment are low internet speed/connectivity as well as ease of doing business for outsiders due to poor security measures. Also, most infrastructure is acquired illegally. Hence, collaboration with the government or large telecom players will be critical to market entry and growth.



The outsourcing culture has been low in Iran, and market entry policies and regulations are still vague, said digital transformation consultant Gowtham Bandi. Until there is improvement in infrastructure and government assistance, it will be tough for international players to establish a foothold in the Iranian cloud market. To start with, non-core business applications like web hosting and mails will help create an ecosystem to host/implement other solutions.



International players will have to overcome several issues to gain a foothold:



 Copyright is a challenge in Iran, resulting in a barrage of illegal software that can potentially hamper the growth of SaaS;

 There is a lack of foresight and awareness on the telco side in terms of the benefits and opportunities the cloud presents;

 Preference for local vendors is higher due to better local market requirement understanding;

 Lack of knowledge about the cloud results in virtualisation being mistaken for the cloud; and

 Small budgets, numerous sanctions, and political uncertainty restrain investments.



The hybrid cloud segment holds massive opportunities, driven by demand from the small and medium enterprises sector. Creating robust infrastructure and addressing security concerns will be vital for success.



New business models are being developed to create revenue opportunities through the cloud, noted Bandi. This will help them achieve a strong competitive standpoint against established players in the Iran cloud market.  TradeArabia News Service
Telecom provider Viva Bahrain has been named Asias Best Employer Brand Award 2017 in Le Meridien, Singapore, making it the only Middle Eastern telecom company recognized at this level for its HR value proposition.



This award, which comes on the heels of the GCC Best Employer Brand Award 2016 and GCC Excellence in Talent Management Award, further qualifies Viva for the World HR Employer Brand Awards 2018.



The award credits Vivas employee empowerment strategy that fosters aspirations, concerns and interests of its talent whilst providing opportunities for development of capabilities for its employees. It also comes to recognize Vivas strong legacy of supporting the development of the local talent pool through multiple initiatives, events, trainings and programs.



Its a great honour to receive this award which will only strengthen our resolve to work with more dedication towards our HR value proposition, said Mohammed Al Khushail, chief human resource officer at Viva Bahrain.



We will continue to focus on serving great employee value, investing in the right areas and creating the perfect nurturing and motivating workplace for talent.



The Asia Best Employer Brand Awards is organized by Employer Branding Institute and Stars of the Industry Group, and endorsed by Asian Confederation of Businesses.  TradeArabia News Service
MCC board approves $500m grant for Nepal

Nepal has achieved another key milestone in securing a grant of $500 million (approximately Rs51.5 billion) from the United States, as the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an independent US government agency working to reduce global poverty through economic development, has approved the proposal to extend financial support to the country.
Meagre ration infuriates flood survivors

A litre of bottled water, a small bucket with beaten rice, a packet containing 1kg of savoury snack Dalmoth, and a sheet of tarpaulin were what each flood displaced families of Rautahats Fatuwa Bijaypur Rural Municipality received as relief from the state on Friday, a week after the disaster.
Bengaluru, August 18

Talking candidly after quitting global software major Infosys as its Chief Executive and Managing Director, Vishal Sikka on Friday said it was difficult to deal with unending allegations and said he has not decided his future plans yet.

It was difficult to deal with continuous allegations and noise. At some point you realise it is taking a heavy toll on the company and also personally. It is an untenable situation, Sikka said from California via video conferencing.

In a dramatic development, Sikka resigned citing personal and negative remarks made against him. His resignation was accepted and he was appointed Executive Vice-Chairman till a new CEO and MD takes over by March 31, 2018.

As you know I started three years ago on this journey. Infosys is more than a company, it is an iconic institution, Sikka told the media.

Terming it a sad day for him, Sikka said in many ways his resignation would help things to improve in the company. I signed up for the technological change and got the company back to growth...I got to the point that was difficult to deal with. There was continuous noise about the same things over and over again, recalled Sikka.

He said he did not think on what he would like to do next after quitting Infosys. We came to the conclusion that I will stay on as Executive Vice-Chairman, help in transition with UB Pravin Rao as the interim CEO, he noted.

Admitting that the personal attacks had hit the morale of the employees, Sikka said over the past many months and quarters, the company had been besieged by false, baseless and malicious charges.  IANS
Tribune News Service

Panchkula, August 18

In an attempt to provide safe atmosphere to women in the city, the Panchkula police launched Sakhi project here today. Under the project, two-wheelers will be driven by women police officers and the pillion rider will also be women cops.

The recent stalking incident in Chandigarh had made national headlines in which Haryana BJP chiefs son was arrested by the UT police.

Haryana DGP BS Sandhu today flagged off five such two-wheelers, which will move around the city, especially in the markets, to keep an eye on anti-social elements, people who harass women and snatchers.

Earlier, Sandhu inaugurated the new building of the women police station in Sector 5 here today. Sandhu said Gulabi Mahila Thana (pink-coloured building of the women police station) would facilitate women to lodge their complaints conveniently and without any fear. The building of the women police station had been given a pink colour to differentiate it from other police stations, he said.

He said being located at the centre of the city, it would be convenient for women to reach the women police station.

Earlier, the women police station was in Mansa Devi Complex, which was in the corner of the city and was not easily approachable for complainants. As women were facing problems, the decision to construct new building was taken. Though the women police station had already started functioning, it was inaugurated today.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 18

While the UT police are still clueless about the accused who raped the 12-year-old girl at the Children Traffic Park in Sector 23 here, the police are relying on the dump data of mobile phones to track the accused. Meanwhile, the victim was again counselled at the PGI today.

The 12-year-old girl student of a government school in Sector 23 here was waylaid and raped at knife-point by a middle-aged man, suspected to be a drug addict, at Children Traffic Park in Sector 23 here, on August 15.

Police sources said the dump data of mobile towers was being analysed to get a clue in the case. At present, there is no headway in the case, the sources said.

The victim was again counselled for several hours today. The police sources said the victim was not able to narrate the entire incident that took place, following which she was being counselled.

The victim is in trauma after the incident, said a police official. The police are questioning more suspects in the case. Several persons, including drug addicts, are daily questioned regarding the case.

Boundary wall of rape victims school repaired

Following the rape of 12-year-old girl, it was highlighted that how her schools wall in Sector 23 was in dilapidated condition. The girl was to enter from the broken wall. But on Friday, the wall had been repaired.

There are schools in the city where either the boundary wall does not exist or require repairs. In 2016, a circular was issued to all schools for fixing the boundary walls. The Education Department has now decided to reiterate the order once again.

We will issue the directions. We are in touch with chief engineer for boundary walls, said Rubinderjit Singh Brar, Director, School Education.

Earlier, Education Secretary BL Sharma had asked Brar to ask all schools about the state of boundary walls. He had also ordered that a copy of guidelines of the CBSE about the height of the wall be sent to all the schools.
Mohit Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 18

A day after a 10-year-old rape victim gave birth to a girl child at the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Sector 32, another teenage victim of incestuous rape is awaiting delivery.

The 15-year-old, who was raped by her elder brother twice at their house in Sarangpur village, is all set to deliver a child.

She will be shifted to the PGI in a couple of days and will be kept in the hospital till her delivery.

Sources said the PGI had formed a board of doctors to examine the health of the rape victim, who is now over eight months pregnant. The sources said most likely, the delivery would take place next week through the C-section.

For us, each case is equally important. After the 10-year-old gave birth to a girl child, our department is ready for another challenging teenage delivery, said a woman official of the Social Welfare Department.

Sharing the plight of the incestuous rape victim, she said the family had decided to part ways with the girl in July after it was discovered that the victim was over seven months pregnant and the rapist was none other than her brother.

On July 16, the police had registered a case and soon after, the victim had recorded her statement before a local court.

The sources said the girls mother had passed away a few years ago. Following her mothers death, the victim was looking after the house and used to cook food for the family.

As she used to remain alone at home, she became the subject of incestuous rape.

She reportedly did not share the matter with other family members fearing that it would cause social embarrassment. By the time the pregnancy was discovered, it was too late to terminate the pregnancy, said the official.

While the accused was arrested, the girl was rescued by the Chandigarh Child and Women Development Corporation. Ever since the girls family has not visited her once. Similarly, the victim also does not want to visit her house for fear of social embarrassment, said one of the officials.

Harjinder Kaur, chairperson of the Chandigarh Commission for Protection of Child Rights (CCPCR), said the teenage rape victim was under their custody for nearly a month.

Sources said the department had hired four attendants who would take care of the newborns.

To be shifted to PGI

She will be shifted to the PGI in a couple of days and will be kept there till her delivery. Sources said the PGI had formed a board of doctors to examine the health of the rape victim, who is now over eight months pregnant.
Nepals battle for souls

Ram Maya Sunar had two miscarriages. Then she had a daughter, who died of pneumonia when she was one. My second child died from tuberculosis at just six months.
Mohit Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 18

While the 10-year-old rape victims parents refused to take a glimpse of the newborn, the Child Welfare Committee and Social Welfare Department received a large number of calls from people wanting to adopt the child.

Since Friday morning, people from the country and abroad are dialing the child helpline and asking for the legal procedure to adopt the newborn.

Harjinder Kaur, Chairperson of the Chandigarh Commission for Protection for Child Rights (CCPCR), said there were set guidelines for the adoption of a child. Once a child is declared legally free for adoption, details, including the certificate and medical report, are uploaded on the website of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), she said.

She further said that in this case, they were hopeful that the child would get foster parents in less than a year. In the meantime, the Social Welfare Department has hired four women attendants to look after the child.

Sources said members of the Child Welfare Committee had visited the hospital this evening to complete formalities of surrendering the child to the state adoption agency.

The girls parents will be educated about applying for surrender under the Juvenile Justice Act. In this case, since the parents have already given in writing that they do not want to keep the newborn, we will counsel them about the process, says Neil Roberts, the committee chairperson.

10- year-old suffers from high BP

The 10-year-old mother continued to remain in the intensive care unit (ICU) due to high blood pressure and hypertension. There were rumours that the victim had come to know about the delivery of the child and was upset on being declined to meet the child.

Prof Dasari Harish, HoD, forensic medicine and head of the 10-member committee of the GMCH- 32, put all these rumours to the rest. Prof Harish said the girl was barely 10-year-old and such complication post-delivery are natural.

He maintained both mother and child were being given the possible best treatment. He said the newborn was still kept in the neo-natal ward of the hospital. On the second day, the newborn was fed through the milk bank of the hospital.

Adoption process

As per the online process, details of children are sent to selected parents according to their demands. They are given 48 hours to confirm. After receiving confirmation, the case goes to the district court through a specialised adoption agency. Soon after the case goes to cthe ourt, the child can be handed over to parents for pre-adoption foster care.
S Nihal Singh

S Nihal Singh

AN attempt to denigrate Jawaharlal Nehru, the maker of modern democratic India, has been put in high gear with the installation of the new President of the ruling BJPs choice, Mr Ram Nath Kovind. In his inaugural address, he pointedly omitted Nehru in recalling the good and the great of the Independence movement while elevating the Sangh Parivar ideologue, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, to rub shoulders with Mahatma Gandhi

The Sangh Parivars problem with Nehru is an old one because everything he stood for  a cosmopolitan mind open to ideas and ideals, whatever their source, and a nationalism rooted in secularism  is anathema to the Parivar. That the Congress he led fell short of these ideals is another matter.

Starting with the young, the BJP-led government would rather make Nehru a non-person in common with the practice of traditional Communist regimes which made persons not in favour disappear from historys pages. But since Nehru played such a key role in modern Indian history, the BJP is indoctrinating the very young unfamiliar with the Independence struggle that he did not exist.

The Sangh Parivars dilemma is that since its own movements played such a peripheral part in the freedom movement with its ambivalent postures towards a free India  the RSS was in the doghouse for a time in newly-independent India  it has no Independence icons. Apart from appropriating Mahatma Gandhi and Sadar Vallabhbhai Patel, the number two to Nehru, among others, it is hoping that the makers of the Parivars ideology, such as it is, will serve the purpose of markers in the New India it wants to create.

The BJPs victory in the 2014 general election, thanks largely to RSS cadres and Mr Narendra Modis effective campaigning and planning, was for the RSS manna from heaven. It had come to power at the Centre for the first time under its own steam. The leader chosen by the BJP was cradled in the RSS and the road thus opened was too tempting not to move towards realising its dream of a Hindu India.

The contours of the RSS ideology as it is shaping up is becoming clearer even if Mr Modi has to trim it at the edges to rule over a diverse country. RSS ideologues start on a defensive note in the face of historical evidence that in recent centuries, India has been ruled by a succession of Muslim rulers, despite stubborn pockets of heroic resistance. Then came the British who ruled over India for two centuries forming their own Indian army and giving what Napolean called toys  titles big and small  to those who would help the imperial power.

One lesson the RSS has drawn from this history is to pretend that the Mughal period did not exist. The other was to imbibe a culture of physical fitness employed figuratively by the obligatory morning drill wearing khaki shorts (now changed to trousers) and using staves for guns.

The RSSs second defence mechanism was to create history of a golden age of renaissance in ancient India, with planes flying, operations being performed for head transplants and various forms of modern technology already prevalent in the blessed land of old India.

These sentiments underpin the RSS philosophy that India has to teach the world, not learn from it. It follows therefore that the narrow form of nationalism it espouses is the best in the world. And since all these virtues spring from the sagacity and penance of Hindus, they should lay down the law. After all, in their view, all minorities are converts from Hinduism.

To rule a country as ethnically and religiously diverse as India on the basis of this foundation of beliefs he largely shares is Mr Modis problem. His difficulties mount as cow vigilantes murder and run riot behaving as if the Hindu rashtra had already arrived. No wonder that Muslims in particular are feeling insecure, as retiring Vice-President Hamid Ansari took pains to point out distressing BJP supporters, including his successor.

The anti-Nehru campaign gathers force in the meantime. The Nehru memorial is to house representations of all former Prime Ministers. Cultural and social research organisations have acquired pro-BJP heads contributing their might to embellishing the myths of the glories of India.

India is not singular in this retro movement. US President Donald Trump is one example and two European countries have also shown the way. Hungary under the leadership of Mr Viktor Orban is a believer in an illiberal democracy. Poland with its new conservative party in power is making short work of its impartial judicial system. They are both members of the EU, which is seeking to discipline them, to little effect thus far.

In India, preparations for the 2019 election will decide the pace at which the Hindutva movement will spread. The BJPs singular fixation is to win the remaining states. Witness the extraordinary step by Mr Modi in seeking to bring Tamil Nadus two AIADMK factions together even as rival Sasikala is cocking a snook at the process from her Karnataka jail cell. Mr Nitish Kumar is already in the net at the expense of the Bihar grand coalition and is now being asked formally to join the National Democratic Alliance.

The Sangh Parivar believes that the momentum is with it as the date for the next general election approaches. Removing Nehru from the pedestal he rightly occupies as the key maker of modern India has to be demolished, BJP president Amit Shah recently damning him for borrowing Western ideas. The danger for the BJP is that Nehrus legacy still lives and is part of national consciousness.

The stance of President Kovind in prioritising Sangh Parivar philosophy, despite his disavowal of party loyalties, will be determined by his future moves. Promoting Deen Dayal Upadhyaya as a national icon is in his brief. If the Sangh Parivar is allergic to Nehru, he should not lend his voice to a partisan agenda.
Tribune News Service

Rohtak, August 19

Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu was today shown black flags by some villagers, including women, at Titoli village in the district where he had gone to attend a blood donation camp.

The irate villagers, who were protesting against non-release of youths arrested for violence during the Jat quota agitation in February last year, also heckled the ministers cavalcade and raised slogans as he was departing from the venue.

Capt Abhimanyu had lost his house, but the (Jat) community lost 18 children during the agitation. He (Abhimanyu) is not withdrawing the cases registered against our youths, who are languishing in jails. We will continue to oppose him, said Jaiveer Kundu, one of the protesters.

Earlier, the minister inaugurated the blood donation camp organised by the Jai Ma Beriwali Welfare Trust and encouraged donors by affixing badges on their shirts and presenting certificates to them.

Capt Abhimanyu, while talking to mediapersons, said the BJP government has rectified the situation arising due to poor financial management by the previous Congress regime in Haryana.

I am ready for an open discussion with any representative of the Opposition at any platform, he added.

Baba Kalidas, Rohtak Zila Parishad chairman Balraj Kundu, local BJP leaders Ram Avtar Balmiki, Dharambir Hooda and Sanjay Kundu were present.

Protest wasnt against Finance Minister: ZP member

Rohtak Zila Parishad member Sanjay Kundu, who belongs to Titoli village, said that Capt Abhimanyu had come to the village on his invitation and the protest by a group of villagers was not against him.

They have some personal animosity against me and hence they wanted to disrupt the programme. However, other villagers did not allow them to do so, Kundu said in a statement issued on Saturday evening.

He said villagers extended a warm welcome to Capt Abhimanyu, who announced Rs 11 lakh for the Trust and financial support for the construction of a yagyashala in the village.
Ravi S.Singh

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 19

Former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today played down his recent meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid speculation on his possible political moves.

Modi stopped in the central hall of Parliament to meet Hooda on the concluding day of the monsoon Session recently. He was on his way from the Rajya Sabha to his office in Parliament.

The interaction between the two leaders was brief but the surprise element was Modi veering to catch up with the Congress leader after spotting him in the central hall. They reportedly interacted in Gujarati.

Hooda said, There was no political angle to the meeting. We know each other personally. We used to sit close to each other during official meetings of Chief Ministers in Delhi.

The seats of Chief Ministers are arranged according to the alphabetical order of states. G stands for Gujarat and H stands for Haryana.

On interaction with Modi in Gujarati, he said, I am conversant with the language. I was in Sainik School at Jamnagar (Gujarat) before migrating to Karnal for further schooling.

However, speculation on the meeting and Hoodas moves refuses to die, especially in the wake of the BJPs campaign to expand its footprints across the country. The reason for it has a political context. The BJP does not have a strong Jat leader in its ranks, and many see Hooda could be its possible big catch.

Jats are scattered over nine states, albeit they are demographically influential in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Delhi. Considering that BJP president Amti Shah lays much stress on micro management of votes, the party casting a net has a political logic.

Hooda has also a pedigreed political and nationalist lineage flowing from his father and grandfathers contributions to the Independence movement. Many in the BJP appreciate Hooda for his governments stand in the case of Samjhuata Express blast near Panipat. The state police had concluded that the crime was a handiwork of elements across the border. The Hooda government had recommended to the Central government for a higher probe as the crime had angles beyond the states frontiers.

When the NIA took over the case, Hindutva terror behind the crime got injected into the narrative.

The line taken by the Haryana Police during the Hooda government gels with the line of the investigation under the NDA.

Besides, the perception in the political circles is that the BJP has not been able to make a mark in Haryana even though it formed the government on its own for the first time in the last Assembly elections.

On the contrary, reports suggest that Hoodas Kisan Panchayat aimed at the Central and state governments drew good crowds in Haryana, even in the areas dominated by non-Jats.

New political equation may shape up: Dahiya

Sonepat: Jai Tirath Dahiya, Congress MLA from the Rai Assembly constituency in the district, has said the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in the central hall of Parliament on Thursday has political meaning. Dahiya has said whenever two top political leaders meet, they discuss politics as there is nothing permanent in politics. "There is no doubt that such a high-level meeting can give birth to a new political equation and it should not only be treated as a formal meeting," he added. He said the BJP leadership had been trying to bring Jat leaders into the party's fold in the state as well as deal with the issues of Jats. Dahiya added Congress MLAs from Haryana had met Kamal Nath, in charge of party affairs in the state, and urged him to change HPCC president Ashok Tanwar. Kamal Nath had assured them of change in the party set up. Hooda had earlier met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in this regard but so far the state party leadership has not been changed, he said.oc

Tanwar unhappy with Rai MLA's remark

Chandigarh: Haryana Congress president Ashok Tanwar on Saturday took exception to the reported statement of Rai MLA Jai Tirath Dahiya about the political significance of Bhupinder Singh Hooda's meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Tanwar said Dahiya's statement was against the party's constitution and amounts to gross indiscipline on the part of the Congress legislator. "I will take up the matter with the party top leadership," Tanwar said here. TNS

Capt Yadav seeks disciplinary action against Dahiya

Rewari: Senior Congress leader Capt Ajay Singh Yadav has demanded disciplinary action against Rai MLA Jai Tirth Dahiya for his remarks against state Congress president Ashok Tanwar in Sonepat on Friday. The party top leadership should take disciplinary action against Dahiya for terming Tanwar as a weak state president of the party as well as seeking his removal from the post. Such statements are unfortunate and may demoralise party workers. It necessitates action against the MLA to maintain discipline in the party, said Yadav.  TNS
Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, August 19

Rice millers and exporters today urged the state government to reduce the market fee from 4 per cent to 2 per cent to ensure ease of doing business. They said the relief would not only check tax evasion but also help in bringing transparency. They demanded abolition of electricity fee of Rs 170 per Kv per month and urged the government to charge Rs 5 per unit from them.

Rice millers and exporters across the state held a state-level meeting here today on the sidelines of Food Show India-2017 and an award ceremony for contributions to the growth of the rice industry.

Vijay Setia, president of the All-India Rice Exporters Association (AIREA), raised the demand for 2 per cent reduction in the market fee. He said, We dont want complete exemption from tax or fee as we know it is necessary for the development of the nation. But we want it halved to provide relief to the industry.

Setia said the government should allow all commission agents to procure paddy from farmers, which would also promote the genuine billing system.

Hansraj Singhal, president of the Haryana Rice Millers and Dealers Association, raised the issue of the charge of Rs 170 per Kv per month and termed it as a burden on them. He said it was a fixed charge and the government should abolish it. Instead the government should charge Rs 5 per unit from the millers.

Ajay Sharma, managing director of Lama Rice, counted the challenges facing the rice industry and said the export of Indian rice was increasing due to its high quality and packaging. There is need to educate farmers about the appropriate use of pesticides and fertilisers. Companies dealing in pesticides and fertilisers should come forward to educate farmers.

Jewel Singla, chairman of the association, urged the Union government to grant interest free loan up to Rs 10 crore to every miller to upgrade their mills.

Tushar Aggarwal, project head of the food show, said they organised such events to make the millers and the exporters aware about the latest technologies of the rice industry.
Tribune News Service

Solan, August 19

As many as seven persons, including a woman and a child, travelling on a tractor-trailer, were trapped as the water level in the Yamuna at the Rampurghat area of Paonta Sahib in Sirmaur district increased around 5:30 pm today.

Being the confluence of the Giri and the Yamuna, the area witnessed a rise in the level of water following heavy rain since last night. Water had also been released from the Jatton barrage into the river. The trapped people, all of whom were migrants, were working at a stone crusher and engaged in the mining activity when the mishap occurred.

The local administration with the help of NGO activists, however, managed to rescue the people before the water level could wash away the tractor, said DSP Pramod Chauhan. He said fire tenders as well as policemen also helped to rescue the trapped people after nearly an hour.

Mining Officer Suresh Bhardwaj said he had warned the people engaged in mining activity to desist from undertaking any such activity in this season when the river was in spate.
Tribune News Service

Mandi, August 18

In an oblique reference to his old arch rival in the party Sukh Ram, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh condemned the culture of Aya ram- gaya ram. Targeting his detractors within the party the Chief Minister said that he is a Congress man and will remain so. Without naming anyone, Virbhadra said that he is unlike others, who shun party for self gains. He said, I am not Aya ram-gaya ram.

Sukh Ram had left the Congress and gave a chance to the BJP to form the government in year 1998. Sukh Ram parted ways with the Congress and formed his own party Himachal Vikas Congress (HVC). However, he later merged the HVC with the Congress.

Virbhadra also targeted the BJP over Kotkhai gang rape issue and said the party had tried to politicise the issue for political gains.

Addressing the party workers former Telecom Minister Sukh Ram said that he brought a revolution in telecommunication sector across the nation which benefited Himachal Pradesh immensely.

Earlier BJP had no influence in the state but it was in the year 1998 when I gave support of my party HVC that the BJP succeeded in forming the government. He added that the BJP should not forget that it was a Congress man, who gave the BJP a chance to come in to power in the state.
Tribune News Service

Shimla, August 19

Justice Kurian Joseph, Supreme Court Judge, today said as long as there was an independent judiciary, there was no threat to anyone from the so-called fundamentalists and no feeling of insecurity among any section of society.

Delivering a lecture as part of the series on Different Facets of Indian Constitution at the High Court her, he said secularism was the tilak of the Constitution of India. Hinduism is a way of life which encompasses and endorses all religions and Bharat has welcomed and embraced every religion, he said. The lecture was organised by the HP State Legal Services Authority.

Irrespective of the fact that a majority population practises Hinduism, Bharat has welcomed all religions and given two religions, Buddhism and Jainism, to the world, he said. The Hinduism has always protected the minorities and safeguarded all other faiths and, as responsible citizens, each one of us must stand up against all such forces who try to divide India, said he.

Justice Kurian Joseph said the beauty of society was that it had never been parochial and always respected the right to freedom of speech and expression. He added that the Constitution recognised the role of religion in moulding the character of a person and making him a civil person who was not uncouth or barbaric.

My Bible, as an Indian citizen, is the Constitution, he said. The so-called talk of feeling of insecurity among a section of society was partly created by the media. If we keep thinking there is insecurity, it will only grow. So there is no reason for anyone to think that there is insecurity in the minds of any section, he said.

He also stressed the need for a debate on morality in the media. It is difficult to be a conscientious journalist these days just the way it is difficult to be an independent judge. It is a big struggle, he said. Replying to a query on the moral education in institutions, Justice Kurian Joseph said he was very much in favour of it being part of curriculum, but it had to be secular morality.

He also inaugurated the six-storeyed complex of Lawyers Chambers for 280 advocates adjacent to the High Court. Acting Chief Justice Sanjay Karol said Justice Kurian Joseph, who had remained the Chief Justice in Himachal for three years, always stressed that justice must be guided by mercy. You always motivated everyone to be guided by compassion and empathy and spare a thought for the downtrodden and underprivileged, said Justice Karol.

He said the HP State Legal Services Authority had undertaken several programmes like afforestation and pre-litigation mediation.
Dipender Manta

Tribune News Service

Mandi, August 18

The Congress tried to put up a united show here today in the presence of AICC general secretary and Himachal Pradesh Congress in charge Sushil Kumar Shinde, who said the Congress was united to take on the BJP in the upcoming Assembly elections due at the end of the year.

Health Minister Kaul Singh Thakur, Excise and Taxation Minister Prakash Chaudhari, Rural Development Minister Anil Sharma, chief parliamentary secretaries Mansa Ram and Sohan Lal, Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee president Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, former Telecom Minister Sukh Ram were present on the occasion. Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh accompanied Shinde on the stage.

Talking to reporters Shinde claimed that the Congress was united to defeat the BJP in the forthcoming Assembly elections for which he is visiting each district to analyse the situation.

He refrained from giving a direct reply to thequery over partys CM candidate but indirectly indicated that the Virbhadra would lead the election campaign.

He said ever since after he took charge of the Congress in the state, the differences within party leaders had been reduced and all workers were working collectively to strengthen the party.

Shinde indicated that he had succeeded in improving the sour relations between Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee chief Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, who were earlier busy in targeting each other.

He said the Congress workers would take the development message of the state government at grass root level, adding that the party was united. Every party worker had the right to vent grievances at party forum.

The ticket will be allotted on the collective recommendation of the state government and party organisation.

He called upon party workers to work hard to ensure the win of Congress in the election.

Health Minister Kaul Singh Thakur said there was need to forget individual differences and unite for the sake of the party. The Congress had undertaken big development in the state and there was wave in favor of party.

Rural Development Minister Anil Sharma also spoke. Excise and Taxation Minister Prakash Chaudhari advocated that there is need to give free hand to the Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh to ensure the win of party.

Sukhu told party workers that the elections would be a litmus test for them and they will have to work hard for the success of party.
Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, August 18

The two-day visit of the Congress general secretary Sushil Kumar Shinde to politically significant Kangra district having 15 Assembly segments brought to the fore deep divide in state Congress that could cost the party dear in the forthcoming Assembly elections. Though Shinde tried to bring warring factions together, sources here said that the effort did not yield much result.

The sources here said that Shinde called a meeting of Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and transport and technical education minister GS Bali on August 17 and tried to bring truce between two leaders. However, the meeting failed to yield any results. The Chief Minister ensured that almost all the Congress MLAs and leaders from Kangra district with the sole exception of GS Bali attend the workers meeting at Dharamsala. Virbhadra did not attend the workers meeting organized by GS Bali in Nagrota Bagwan. The sources here said that earlier the Chief Minister was to attend the police passing out parade at Daroh battalion at 2 pm. However, the program was rescheduled to 11 am just to make sure that the Chief Minister does not attend the workers meeting held at Nagrota Bagwan, the Assembly constituency of GS Bali.

The sources here said that barbs were exchanged between the Bali and Virbhadra Singh camps late in the Kangra district Congress meeting held yesterday late in the evening at Kangra.

The Chief Minister openly attacked his detractors in party in presence of Shinde and termed them as black and while crows in a meeting of party workers held at Dharamsala. He even appealed to the Congress workers to ensure defeat of such leaders.

Bali organized a rally in his constituency for Shinde to prove his strength in the district. The rally became a platform for Congress leaders of Kangra who were feeling discriminated by the Chief Minister camp. In the rally zila parishad member from Jawalamukhi, Ruma Kaundal alleged that OBC leaders were discriminated against in the present congress government. Nikhil Rajour, former MLA and brother of Rajya Sabha member Viplove Thakur, also vented ire against the Chief Minister.

HPCC president Sukhwinder Sukhu, who was targeted by the Chief Minister, maintained a low profile during the workers meeting. He was supported by GS Bali who said Sukhu should be respected. In return Sukhu also termed GS Bali as future of Congress in the state.

Due to intense infighting in the Congress, Shinde issued measured statements in Kangra. He stopped short of stating that the party would declare Virbhadra Singh as a CM candidate in the forthcoming Assembly elections in the state but termed him as tallest leader of party.
Positive environment building up for elections: Mahato

Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJP) presidium member Rajendra Mahato has said a positive environment for election is building up.
Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, August 18

Members of the National Commission for Schedule Tribes led by their chairman Nand Kumar Sai visited Dharamsala today to probe the alleged lathi charge on Gaddis, a scheduled tribe of Himachal, by the police. The members met the leaders of Gaddi community at Circuit House and then visited Naddi where the police lathicharged the protesting Gaddis on August 9.

While talking to newsmen, Nand Lal said the way police took action against Gaddis reminded him of the British Raj. Such brutality was unleashed by police only during the British rule. Strict action would be taken against those responsible for atrocities on the Gaddis, he said.

The police had resorted to lathi charge after the Gaddis allegedly tried to stop the cavalcade of Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh who had gone there to lay foundation of a development project of Dal Lake. The Gaddis were protesting against the statement of the Chief Minister issued in Una district. Wile taking a jibe at state BJP president Satpal Satti, the Chief Minister had said that even Gaddis have presidents. The Gaddi community took the statement as an insult.

Ever since the statement was issued, the Gaddis have been holding protests. Being an election year the BJP has grabbed the issue and its senior leaders like former minister Kishan Kapoor and vice president of ST cell of BJP Trilok Kapoor have led many protests.

Trilok Kapoor moved the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes against the police lathi charge. The commission also recorded the statements of the Gaddis who suffered injuries in the lathi charge and visited the spot also.

The commission has summoned the district police officers, Home Secretary, Chief Secretary and the DGP tomorrow.
Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 18

In a significant development, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat will review the security scenario in eastern Ladakh over the weekend.

His visit comes after Indian and Chinese troops clashed at a spot, north of the Pangong Lake in eastern Ladakh, on August 15. A subsequent meeting of the military commanders of the two countries resolved to work at the existing peace mechanisms.

The Army Chief will be briefed by the Leh-based 14 Corps Commander on Sunday. The Northern Command chief, entire top brass of the 14 Corps and the local Indian Air Force Commander of the Leh air base shall be part of the review.

Eastern Ladakh, part of J&K, shares a 826-km frontier with China and is geographically defined as the area from Karakoram Pass in the north to Demchok in the south-east of the Ladakh region.

An Indian assessment is that the Karakoram range in the country could be the possible military target for China. It can threaten New Delhis hold over Siachen as well as cut off the Depsang plains and Daulat Baig Oldie, an advanced landing ground for aircraft at 16,200 feet.

In the past four-five years, Indian troops have been added to prepositioned locations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the name for the de facto border.

Additions to mechanised forces and artillery guns have been made, backed by the T-72 Russian-origin tanks. The plateaus interspersed in the folds of the major mountain ranges  the Greater Himalayas, Karokaram, Ladakh and Zanskar  are ideal tank country, flat with ample places to hide in the folds of the valleys.

The latest Indian stance along the Line of Actual Controlis not akin to Jawaharlal Nehrus failed 1960-1961 forward policy, but it mandates holding claims line along the Line of Actual Control.

The forward policy, as explained by Neville Maxwell in his book Indias China war, entailed taking up permanent positions along the high ridgelines of eastern Ladakh as per Indias perception of the boundary of 1954. The latest Indian positions are more in line with maintaining the sanctity of the Line of Actual Control.

On maiden trip, Prez to visit Ladakh on Monday

New Delhi: In his maiden domestic tour, President Ram Nath Kovind will visit the Ladakh region on Monday where he will present the Presidents Colours to battalions of the Ladakh Scouts, an infantry regiment of the Army. Sources said President Kovind would visit a meditation centre after the award ceremony. The Presidents Colours is one of the greatest honours bestowed upon a unit in recognition of its exceptional service rendered by it to the nation, both during war and in peace. IANS
QUOTE: Trust deficit between India, its neighbours

We had issues with China in the past because we share long un-demarcated border with China. We will resolve the China issue diplomatically. Our neighbours are looking at us with suspicion because of the size and economy. There is trust deficit between India and its neighbours. It is not only with China and Pakistan, but with our others neighbours as well. I ajm a strong advocate of peace with Pakistan, but that peace should be with dignity.

- Yashwant Sinha, former Union Minister

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 18

Former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha, accompanied by Sushobha Barve, executive director, Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation, Air Vice Marshal (Retd) Kapil Kak and senior journalist Bharat Bhushan, met Governor NN Vohra here today.

Sinha and his team are visiting the Valley to talk to the leaders of various parties and groups about the issues facing J&K.

Sinha shared his experiences with the Governor, who stressed the importance of the regional parties in J&K and all the stakeholders, particularly the civil society, playing a lead role in securing the restoration of peace and normalcy in the state.

Sinha, who is currently on a peace mission to Kashmir, said the Central government should immediately clear its stand on Article 35A of the Constitution, which confers special status to the residents of J&K.

Later, during a talk on Indias foreign policy: Opportunities and challenges for next decade organised by the Centre for Research and Development Policy, Sinha said it would be difficult to predict a winner in a 20 to 40-hour-long war between India and China.

The 1962 war was a full-fledged one and that is why India lost. However, the 1967 war at Nathula was a short war, so India won. You cant predict who wins in 20-40 hours war. Next time it will be a smaller war and we will win, Sinha said.

He said the present crisis between India and China at Doklam was not the first of its kind.

We had issues with China in the past because we share long un-demarcated border with China. We will resolve the China issue diplomatically, he said.

Sinha added that China was involved in war mongering while India had exercised restrain in Doklam.

Talking about Kashmir, Sinha said he was a strong advocate of peace with Pakistan, but that peace should be with dignity.

However, on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, he said where sovereignty issues were involved, India could not join such forums because it would tantamount to surrendering the sovereignty.

He said the countrys neighbours were looking at us with suspicion because of the size and economy. There is trust deficit between India and its neighbours. It is not only with China and Pakistan, but with our others neighbors as well, he said.
New Delhi, August 18

Kashmiri businessman Zahoor Watali, arrested by the National Investigation Agency for allegedly collecting money from Pakistan-based terror outfits for Hurriyat leaders, was today sent to 10-day custodial interrogation by a city court.

District Judge Poonam A Bamba allowed the agencys plea for custody after it said that the accused was required to be confronted with evidence in the case in which Altaf Ahmed Shah, son-in-law of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, and six others were earlier arrested by the agency.

The judge said it was her considered opinion that ends of justice would be met by granting 10 days of police custody to enable the NIA to interrogate the accused.

The court is understood to have been told that during the in-chamber proceedings by the probe agency it had found various suspicious documents from the accused during the searches, including details of bank accounts and cash received by him from various terror outfits.

Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, appearing for the agency, sought his custody for two weeks. He is believed to have said during the hearing that the entire racket was spread outside the country and the accused was required to be confronted with various incriminating documents and taken to various places in relation with the ongoing probe.

The NIA also alleged that the accused was not cooperating in the investigation.

The defence advocate opposed the NIA application saying that the accused was a reputed businessman and a senior citizen who had always cooperated, court sources said.

Watali was arrested here yesterday by the agency for the alleged involvement in the case. Earlier, the agency had carried out raids on his premises and that of other suspects.

The NIA had said in a statement on June 3 that it had searched Watalis house in Srinagar and seized incriminating documents pertaining to financial transactions and land deals.

The NIA had earlier arrested Geelanis son-in-law Altaf Ahmed Shah, popularly known as Altaf Fantoosh, and six others who are currently in judicial custody in the case.  PTI

Got money through Pak High Commission

Zahoor Watali, who has been sent to custody for 10 days on Friday, used to get the money for separatists through Dubai, Pakistan and even the Pakistan High Commission in India, NIA sources said. Watali used to provide money to separatist leaders and got 8 to 9% commission, said an NIA source. Watali used the money for terror funding in Kashmir as well as create wealth for himself and has several crores property in Kashmir and Gurugram, the source added. ANI

Wani to be produced in court today

New Delhi: Close aide of separatist Shabir Shah and an alleged hawala dealer Mohammad Aslam Wani will be produced before a Delhi Court today in connection with the Jammu and Kashmirs terror funding case. The Delhi Court on August 14 had extended Enforcement Directorates remand of Wani by six days in the terror funding case. ANI
Tribune News Service

Kargil, August 19

Appreciating the recent statement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Kashmir, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, while addressing a PDP gathering here, said Kargil was a symbol of peace in the state and promised to open the cross-border routes and also to strengthen tourism and developmental activities in Kargil.

Mehbooba Mufti visited Kargil for the first time since the establishment of the alliance. She was accompanied by Minister for Power Naeem Akhter and Minister for Education Syed Altaf Bukhari.

While talking about the present socio-political scenario of the state, Mehbooba said the coalition with the BJP was to bring peace process in Jammu and Kashmir. On the speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Independence Day, she said she saw the reflection of Vajpayee in Modi.

As the Prime Minister talked of rethinking about Kashmir and to hug the people of Kashmir, we hope that Modi will come with a sound policy on Kashmir and keep his promise. After the end of the Kargil war, then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee initiated a peace process by continuing ceasefire with Pakistan in 1999, but unrest still prevails in border areas in Jammu and Kashmir. We hope that the present Prime Minister will walk on the same path and initiate the phase of peace process between the two countries and in Kashmir, the CM said.

She said the opening of the cross-LOC routes could initiate a process of trade in the region and Jammu Kashmir could further reclaim its status of the Gateway to Central Asia. Opening strategic routes are in our Agenda of Alliance and we will make our best efforts to open strategic routes like Kargil-Skardu and Turtuk-Khaplu roads so that the trade and peace process begin here, she said.

Mehbooba added that late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had a soft corner for the people of Kargil and promised to boost the developmental and tourism activities in Kargil and in this process mega projects like construction of Zojila tunnel and Kargil-Zanksar highway were already under consideration.
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 18

The Supreme Court asked the Centre, Army, J&K Government and the CBI to respond to a petition challenging a Jammu and Kashmir High Court verdict upholding the Armys decision to close the proceedings against its men allegedly involved in the March 2000 Pathribal encounter in which five civilians were killed.

Acting on a petition filed by family members of those killed in the encounter, a bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra asked the Centre, Army, J&K Government and the CBI to file their responses in six weeks.

The petitioners contended it was a fake encounter as forensic tests contradicted the claims that those killed were Pakistani terrorists. This was established in a subsequent CBI probe which found five Army men responsible for the killings, they submitted.

Maintaining that those who were killed were local villagers, they alleged that the encounter was staged by the Army to save their face in the view of public criticism of their operational efficiency and lack of control in the area in the wake of Chittisinghpura massacre.

The Army had closed the case for want of evidence against the accused and the J&K High Court had on April 27, 2016, summarily dismissed the victims plea.

As the petitioners counsel Nitya Ramakrishnan raised questions over the closure of the case by the Army, Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh said the government would file its response.

The original claim that is where foreign militants were killed in an encounter has been exposed as a lie by the scientific reports of two impartial and highly regarded forensic institutes. The dead men are the kin of the petitioners as the DNA examinations by the Centre for DNA and Fingerprinting Diagnostics, Hyderabad, and Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata, reveal. Therefore, the case is one of a cold-blooded murder as found by the CBI, the petitioners submitted.

Yet the Army by resort to the special procedure under the Army Act and Rules has declared it to be a case of no evidence, where the finding has been arrived at in a wholly opaque process and in the face of established record, the petition read.

The petitioners contended that the March 25, 2000, encounter must be tried under the open system of the general criminal law, for the Army had resorted to impunity in this regard.

What the petitioners contend
Amarjot Kaur

A four-kanal house, numbered 57, in Chandigarhs posh Sector 5 caught the UT administrations attention somewhere in 2014, says Deepika Gandhi, director at Le Corbusier Centre and Chandigarh Architecture Museum. By then, the residential building designed and owned by Chandigarhs first chief architect and town planning advisor Pierre Jeanneret, had served as home to several bureaucrats who had tampered with its original architecture.

It took us more than three years to bring the house back to its original formthat meant digging out old pictures and texts, even letters belonging to Pierre Jeanneret just to get the basic idea of how the house looked like. Also, the pictures we had were black and white, so getting the colours right was also a tricky part, says Gandhi while highlighting the preliminary glitches of restoring the house that became the Pierre Jeanneret Museum this March. Its first floor comprising two rooms will soon be open for the public to stay there, informs Gandhi.

But we wont just give it to anyone, considering how people had tampered with its architecture before, so this proposal is still underway, she adds. We want to make museums more interactive with public and financially viable too. Either CITCO or the department of tourism will take a call on this. Dedicated to the memorabilia and achievements of Jeanneret, the house is the only residential building in the city that has been converted into a museum.

Brick by brick

It took me six months just to collect data, drawings and old pictures. Some, I got from the Department of Urban Planning, while others I got from Foundation Le Corbusier in Paris, says Gandhi. Elaborating on damage repair, she lists the horizontal bands along with windows had been broken, the windows were reversed (they were to open inwards) and the brick jaalis had been plugged in by bricks. In fact, the entire fireplace was hidden behind a wall. We figured that out with the help of a photograph. While reconstructing it, there was a difference of three inches that a junior engineer suggested was because those days old bricks were used. He brought one and it fit like a glove, she says.

At present, the museum reflects Pierres personal expressions and vocabulary of architecture that romances latticed brickwork. With its foyer being the cynosure leading a spiral staircase to the first floor, and introducing visitors to Pierres reflections of beauty in line, shape, and form, also opens into his office and his drawing room on the ground floor. Along with blueprints of several buildings, are Pierres handwritten letters to Jawahar Lal Nehru, and others written to his cousin Le Corbusier, among those he wrote to MS Randhawa talking about his problems with the government machinery. At the fireplace, we found Prithviraj Kapoors note about Panjab Universitys library written in Punjabi that reads:

Akkhaan, dil, tey dimag vaastey

Channana ik tha tey vekhna hove

Tah is liberarych aa jave banda

Ajj itthey aake bada hi aanand mileya.

amarjot@tribunemail.com

Know Pierre Jeanneret

He remained in Chandigarh from February 1951 to August 1965, and designed most of the government housing, schools, colleges, shopping centres, Gandhi Bhawan, Panjab University, and other infrastructure besides supervising the implementation of Le Corbusiers designs of the Capitol Complex, Museum and Art Gallery, College of Art, City Centre, etc. Such was Jeannerets love for the city that as per his will his ashes were immersed in the Sukhna Lake of Chandigarh after he died in 1967.

During his stay in Chandigarh he lived in a self-designed house number 57 in Sector 5, from December 1954 to August 1965. Le Corbusier too used to stay in this house during his visits to Chandigarh every year.
Mona

Nature and seasons, celebrations and demonstrations, rural and urban life come together in some 110 frames as the Photojournalists Welfare Association puts up a three-day photo exhibition at Punjab Kala Bhawan-16. On the World Photography Day, that falls today, one can see frames from work and leisure moments of Tricity photojournalists.

The special guest gallery has pictures from Punjabs Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and governor VP Singh Badnore. While the formers frame captures wild life in its regal glory; nature and tradition come together in the latters picture. Veteran lensmens clicks also dot this wall. And among these 100 frames, one glimpses life in its full flavour. A farmer sowing paddy; one rider holding reins of four horses, a lovely view of citys own Eiffel Tower replica; colourful, crowded railway station teeming with people; a funeral matching steps with a political rally; a confused donkey as laughing police men close the road with barricades; a young boy saluting his father who lies covered in Tricolour; our MP Kirron Kher trying to get on the swing; flood, snow, rain... you will see different moods and different shades.

While every reporter in media works in a particular beat, we have to be like a general physician  master of every discipline, shares Akhilesh Kumar, president of the association. And this is what this immensely talented group takes pride in. With a camera in every hand now, courtesy deep penetration of mobile phones today, the competition with citizen journalists is something that these veterans take in their stride.

Yes, everyone is clicking pictures today and we are more than happy taking workshops to share the knowhow of composition, angle and technicalities with amateur photographers.

This exhibition is also tribute to late S Paul. Inaugurated by Captain Amrinder Singh, the exhibition will conclude on August 20. A total of nine veteran photojournalists - Swadesh Talwar, Karam Singh, Manjit Singh, T. S. Bedi, Anil Puri, R. P. Sharma, Hari Shankar, Narbada Shanker and Santokh Singh will be felicitated with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the occasion.

On at Punjab Kala Bhawan-16 till Sunday
Ratna Raman

Ratna Raman

AS school-going children, we were routinely instructed to stop fiddling and sit at our desks quietly. Fiddling refers to the inconsequential fidgeting (shuffling, restless movement) that is so charming in small humans and animals. However, young adults who fiddle (verb) with things or fidget continue to annoy adults in control.

On hearing that Nero fiddled while Rome burnt I wondered idly as to why he would behave in such a petty manner in the wake of the large fire engulfing Rome. Learning that a fiddle (noun) was a colloquial term for the bow-stringed violin, and that Nero was an accomplished musician, required a fresh pair of eyes (careful re-examination).

Fiddle is a homonym that is also synonymous with any act of fraud, confidence trick, flimflam or ruse. The verb fiddle could refer variously to playing the violin, fidgeting and include acts of defrauding.

Nero performed in public on the lyre, was a patron of the arts and sculpture. He enjoyed chariot-racing and encouraged sport and rebuilt Rome after the fire. He sanctioned new buildings, sheltered the poor and fed the needy. However, he is accused of executing family and friends and persecuting Christians to the point of death. Such readings of this flamboyant last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty are reportedly biased. Fearing political vendetta, Nero chose an ignoble end by ordering an attendant to take his life.

The expression Nero fiddled while Rome burnt draws attention to the impropriety of attending to inconsequential detail and remaining oblivious to the urgent task at hand. When cities burn, first citizens, such as chief ministers and heads of state, must be around, fire-fighting. Emperors, of course, were often whimsical, but modern political leaders bound by the constitution (body of laws) seldom put out fires literally or metaphorically.

Constitution (Latin constituere; to establish, to Middle English; body of laws) isalso a homonym. Everyone desired a robust constitution (physical health). When the human psyche was discovered, mental health was constituted as significant and constitution became indicative of both physical and mental well-being. Water is constituted by (composed of) two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen, and this is its chemical constitution.

In the context of nations and politics, the constitution is a body of fundamental principles based on which nations, states and other organisations are governed. Hard-wired (permanently connected) constitutional laws must be treated with reverence. Actions violative of (infringing upon) the Indian Constitution can only imperil (put in danger) civil society.

The death of over 70 children in a government hospital was identified as a natural calamity in an address to the nation on Independence Day. We should have collectively observed a few minutes of silence to grieve over these deaths and reached out to anguished parents. Instead, preparations for large-scale Janamashtmi festivities were announced and the public was informed that deaths due to encephalitis were routine in Gorakhpur.

In UP and MP, madarsas were ordered to provide selfies of Independence Day celebrations, as their aadhar to nationalism. The government-run Prasar Bharati blacked out the public address of Tripuras CM. Fiddling with the constitutional rights of Indian citizens is actionable (reason to take legal action). Such fiddling continues to precipitate (trigger) unsurmountable crises, ensuring that history repeats itself.
Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 18

The proposal to put in place a centralised examination system for the selection of subordinate court judges today met with vehement opposition from certain states, including West Bengal and Kerala, which said the move was against the basic structure of the Constitution.

During the hearing on a PIL seeking streamlining of judicial appointments in subordinate courts, senior counsel Rakesh Dwivedi told a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar that any such centralised system would dislocate the scheme for appointment of subordinate court judges provided under Article 233.

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According to Article 233, appointments, postings and promotions of district judges in any state have to be made by the Governor in consultation with the respective High Court. He said the term appointment was a comprehensive expression that included the entire process and it has to be construed like that only. There should be a detailed discussion. Let it go to a Constitution Bench. There should be no hurry, Dwivedi told the Bench.

As the court talked about a large number of vacancies in subordinate courts, Dwivedi said there were huge vacancies even in high courts. Should we change the collegium system? he wondered. What you are proposing is a fundamental revolution In such a system, states may not have a voice It will affect the federal structure, the states counsel had told the Bench last month. Dwivedis submissions were supported by senior counsel Joydeep Gupta, representing Kerala, who said any centralised system would violate basic structure of the Constitution.

As arguments remained inconclusive, the Bench said it would hear the matter on Monday and Tuesday in the post-lunch session. A decision can be expected before August 27 when CJI Khehar is due to retire.

While most states and high courts have agreed to the proposal, many others have opposed the proposal. Some southern states have raised concern about language and implementation of their state specific reservation policy in any such centralised system of selection of subordinate court judges.

The Bench has repeatedly clarified that all state-specific rules and reservation policy would continue to be adhered to even after coming into effect of the centralised examination system. The new system was primarily aimed at doing away with the inordinate delay in judicial appointments in subordinate courts, it said.
Prez calls for prioritising rescue works

President Bidhya Devi Bhandari has withdrawn the attention of political leaders over the issue of rescue and relief to floods and landslides victims, constitution amendment and foreign policy.
Ashis Ray in London

Foreign correspondents assigned to India falling in love with beautiful Indian women is not an uncommon occurrence. One such instance was of Charles Wheeler, later knighted, of the BBC being swept off his feet by an irresistible Dip Singh, niece of the delightfully unsparing writer Khushwant Singh. The union has led to Britains current foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, being an in-law of India.

Joining BBC in 1947, Charles Wheeler was posted to South Asia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Among the stories he covered was the Dalai Lamas daring escape from Tibet to India in 1959. A brilliant broadcaster, he passed away in 2008. The Indian Journalists Association in Europe posthumously conferred a lifetime achievement award on Wheeler in 2012. His two daughters, Marina, a barrister, and Shirin, a BBC correspondent in Brussels, received the honour. This week, the relationship was further consolidated with Marina being accompanied by her husband Boris Johnson to a dinner to celebrate IJAs 70th anniversary  a commemoration set rolling in February by the Indian Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley.

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On May 29, 1947, a group of farsighted Indian foreign correspondents in London established IJA. Sir Harold Wilson, twice elected a Labour Party prime minister in the 1960s and 1970s, once wrote to it, stating: I must record the great debt both India and Britain owe to your Association, which does so much to enable our people to understand each other, and by so understanding, come even closer together.

Johnsons colourful criticism of foreign leaders haunted his early days at the foreign office. But he remains among Conservatives a likeable character the city of London loves to describe as a heavy hitter. A robust political campaigner, he was twice elected Londons mayor the biggest direct election in Europe for an individual after the French presidential poll. For years publicly enigmatic on Brexit, he finally took the plunge to tilt the scales in its favour. Having won the 2016 referendum, though, he came a cropper in a bid for the Conservative partys leadership. He was, however, saved from potential wilderness by the successful candidate, Theresa May, who unexpectedly handed him the plum post of foreign secretary.

He arrived at the IJA function retaining his trademark, ruffled blond hair. In contrast, Marina, prim and proper, was attired in a gorgeous salwar-kameez  stitched from one of her mothers saris she confided to a correspondent.

The buzz among 150 attendees was: what will he say in his speech? In a three-hour tour-de-force at the dinner table, he regaled guests sitting beside him with his inherent, no-holds-barred humour. He also noticeably spoke with warmth about his Indian relatives and with wisdom about India.

The British foreign office is a laboratory of diplomatic communication; and the wordsmith in Johnson appears to have fallen in line with such speak. There was an unmistakable message for media pressured by money and muscle power. He advocated a free, independent and intrepid media. Tell truth to power, Johnson roared, let your sunlight disinfect the darkest places in our countries and across the world. It was just the thing a newsman believing in liberty wanted to hear.

He did not spare his hero of Oxford days and about whom hes written a biography, Britains wartime prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill. When he persistently and balefully prophesied disaster for Indian Independence or swaraj, he was more spectacularly and utterly wrong than he had ever been before, he admitted, thereby pressing the right button for Indian patriots.

To the Indian establishment, he said: 70 years after Indian Independence, its an astonishing community of values between our two countries. We are shoulder to shoulder with India in tackling the threat of extremist terrorism. Music to Indias ears.

He stressed on the importance of a future free trade deal, lacing jest with seriousness. It would be a fine thing if the 150 per cent tariff on Scotch whisky could be reduced, so that the vast number of Indian Scotch whisky drinkers in India, including members of my family, can enjoy the king of whiskies. He charmingly asked: Isnt that a humane thing?

About the nuclear rattling by North Korea, Johnson declared: We will work with our friends in India I hope to persuade our friends in China. It is in the Chinese governments hands to exercise that economic pressure on Kim Jong-un to achieve the diplomatic resolution that we need. This in a climate of Indias standoff with China was Ravi Shankar on the sitar for South Block.

Theres a tendency in Indias Ministry of External Affairs to undervalue Britain. As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council alone, it is more than important. India undoubtedly has a friend in Johnson at the foreign office. It now needs an ally at Downing Street to realise former prime minister David Camerons dream of a special relationship.

(The writer is president of Indian Journalists Association in Europe)
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 18

The Congress today demanded a Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe into a new revenue intelligence report that holds a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises guilty of over valuating electricity equipment to artificially inflate power tariffs at home.

Senior Congress spokesperson Ajay Makan, quoting from a May 2014 report of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence said, There was over-valuation of imported coal to the tune of Rs 29,000 crores, power plant equipment to the tune of Rs 9,000 crores and compensatory tariff awarded to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore. This comes to Rs 50,500 crore and this over invoicing means higher tariffs for people.

The DRI report Congress quoted is about gross over valuation in the import of goods by Maharashtra Eastern Grid Power Transmission Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises. The report says, Intelligence developed by Mumbai zonal unit of the DRI indicated that various entities of Adani group were indulging in gross overvaluation of imported goods (zero or low duty rated) to siphon off money abroad from public listed companies.

Congress besides seeking a CBI probe in the matter also asked the Centre to immediately reduce the power tariff for consumers at the rate of Re 2 per unit, saying the over invoicing by Adani and 40 other firms the DRI is investigating has led to this inflated cost of power for people.

The Congress said it would soon petition the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission to order reduction in tariff on account of over invoicing of products by power companies. Asked why the Congress did not raise the alleged scam earlier since the DRI report dates back to May 15, 2014, Makan said the report had entered public domain only two days ago.

Makan was quoting from a publication of the DRI report in an international newspaper though he admitted that the UPA government had on February 5, 2013, initiated an inquiry into the practice of over-invoicing on import of electrical equipment and machinery by a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises.
New Delhi, August 19

The Congress today accused the ruling BJP of throwing all constitutional norms to the winds by reemploying two Gujarat cops post-superannuation despite the fact that the duo was facing murder charges in the past.

NK Amin and TA Barot, who faced trial in encounter cases of Sohrabuddin and Ishrat Jahan, were reemployed by the Gujarat Government on contract for a year after the two retired. The duo had to however resign from their respective positions on Thursday after the Supreme Court intervened on a petition by another Gujarat police officer challenging their re-induction into the service.

These two cops, Amin and Barot, faced serious charges of murder. Both were reemployed on contract after recently retiring. The move reveals the BJPs utter disregard for the law, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said today.

Amin, a former SP at Mahisagar in Gujarat, retired in August and was reappointed on contract. Amin spent eight years in jail in Sohrabuddin murder case. Although he was discharged in this case later, he never faced departmental inquiry. Amin, however, continued to face trial in the Ishrat Jahan encounter, Singhvi said.

Amin was recently also named in a recent Congress petition to the Election Commission alleging attempts by the BJP government in Gujarat to abduct a party MLA on the eve of Rajya Sabha poll.

About Barot, Singhvi said he was reemployed as the DSP in Western Railways at Vadodra after he retired. Bharot is facing trial in the Ishrat Jahan and Sadiq Jamal encounters.  TNS
Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 18

A day after a 10-year-old rape survivor from Chandigarh delivered a child, the Supreme Court today issued notices to the Centre and the Union Territory on a plea by senior counsel Indira Jaising (appointed amicus curiae on March 27, 2015) demanding compensation.

"A 10-year-old mother cannot look after the child. Nothing has been paid to her so far," Jaising told a Bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur that asked the National Legal Services Authority and the Chandigarh District Legal Services Authority to respond.

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She said the authorities insisted that compensation would be given only after a charge-sheet was filed in the case. "That is no answer ... What they say is absurd, the Bench said.

Jaising pointed out that another Bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra had ordered the Bihar Government to pay Rs 10 lakh to a 35-year-old HIV positive rape survivor whose unwanted pregnancy could not be terminated owing to the delay in the decision-making process.

It is just and necessary that the victim girl is rehabilitated with change of identity, her education be completed, and she is rehabilitated and be integrated with society for which adequate compensation is required to achieve this aim, read Jaising's plea.

She said the compensation should be for all means including, not restricted to, her education, post- therapeutic care, vocation and rehabilitation.

It is, therefore, necessary that the girl-child be provided with an amount of Rs 10 lakh of which Rs 3 lakh may be directed to be deposited forthwith, whereas the balance amount of Rs 7 lakh may be deposited in an interest-bearing fixed deposit amount that may be utilised for the welfare of the minor girl, the plea further read.

Jaising said the minors parents wanted to give the child away in adoption so that they do not live with the trauma of rape of their 10-year-old daughter. She demanded a fast-track trial under POCSO on a priority basis and a competent support person for the girl during the trial.

She requested that the identity of the child and her parents was protected and that there was no media reporting of the trial.

The Supreme Court had on July 28 dismissed the plea for permission for terminating the girl's 32-week-old pregnancy after a board of doctors from the PGIMER, Chandigarh, opined against it. The minor was allegedly raped by her uncle.

Under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, a woman is not permitted to abort her foetus after the pregnancy crosses 20 weeks, unless the mothers life is at risk.

Beeline for adoption

Chandigarh: The Child Welfare Committee and the Social Welfare Department on Friday received numerous calls, some from abroad, from those wanting to adopt the girl child. Harjinder Kaur, Chairperson, Chandigarh Commission for Protection for Child Rights (CCPCR), said: We are hopeful the child will get foster parents in less than a year. The Social Welfare Department has hired four women attendants for the newborn. Meanwhile, the 10-year-old mother continues to be in the ICU because of high blood pressure. TNS
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 18

Amid the continuing stand-off on Doklam, India today reiterated it will continue to engage with China to arrive at a mutually acceptable solution while emphasising that peace and tranquillity on the border is an important pre-requisite for smooth bilateral relationship.

In response to a question, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Raveesh Kumar underscored New Delhis standpoint on the issue that remains unresolved since India prevented Chinese troops from building a road in the tri-junction border with Bhutan.

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Reacting to reported incident between Indian border personnel and Chinese troops in Ladakh on August 15, the spokesperson said without elaborating on its nature, Such incidents are not in the interest of either side.

Under the existing agreed system in place, he said two border personnel meetings took place at Chushul and Nathu La between the Indian border guards and Chinese troops.

When a correspondent referred to the incident as stone pelting, the spokesperson clarified he was not confirming it to be either stone pelting or use of rods.

Published reports said troops on either clashed with fisticuffs and stone-pelting resulting in some personnel receiving injuries after land-based patrols on either side came face to face north of Pangong Tso lake in Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.

To a question on the current floods in eastern parts of India and sharing of hydrological data from China, Kumar said although the arrangement was for Beijing to share data on flow of rivers Brahmaputra and Sutlej between May 15 and October 15, no data has been received this year till now.

He, however, said non-sharing of such data by China could not be linked to the current standoff as there could be technical reasons for it.
Mumbai, August 19

The Bombay High Court has stepped in to ensure that an amount of $5,00,000 that was inadvertently credited to an account operated by two Mumbai-based businessmen 16 years ago, is finally returned to the bank.

An international bank had mistakenly transferred the sum into the account of Sharad Agarwal and Atit Agarwal.

In an order passed on August 4 this year, Justice Suresh Gupte held that it was clear that the amount had been credited accidentally, and restrained the businessmen from selling off their assets or creating any third party rights on all immovable properties that they own in India.

The directions came on a suit filed by the bank, BNP Paribas, against the Agarwals. As per the suit, In November 1999, the two businessmen opened a Swiss bank account with BNP Paribas. In September 2001, the bank mistakenly credited an amount of USD 5,00,000 to this account.

The Agarwals realised the bank's mistake and promptly emptied their account. In 2003, the bank's auditors realised the mistake and directed the two men to return the money.

When they refused to do so, the bank sent them a legal notice and registered a criminal complaint against them in Geneva.

The Agarwals, however, failed to respond to the summons sent to them by the Swiss authorities. And in 2008, a Geneva court ordered that the duo return USD 5,00,000 in question, pay an interest of 5 per cent on the amount, and that they also pay an additional USD 39,000 as the legal fees incurred by the authorities.

When the duo failed to follow the court's order, the bank filed a suit in the Bombay High Court.

The bank sought that the duo be directed to act in accordance with the Swiss court order. It also sought that till the final hearing of the suit in the Bombay HC was completed, they be restrained from selling or disposing of their assets and properties to ensure that they do not shift their assets out of the country and evade payment to the bank.

Sharad and Atit Agarwal in turn challenged the suit on the ground that while they were based in Mumbai for business purposes, they were citizens of Caribbean nations Belize and Grenada, respectively.

They also argued that the Swiss court order was an ex-parte one since they were not present in the court at the time, and that the limit of three years that the Indian law fixed for such recoveries to be made, was already over.

Justice Gupte, however, held that the Geneva court's order was passed on merit, and that since they operated a business out of the city, they came under the high court's jurisdiction.

He also held that considering the two realised the bank's mistake and still "wiped off their Swiss account", there was every chance that they would try to "shift their assets out of India to defeat the dues payable to the bank".

Justice Gupte has now posted the matter for final hearing. He, however, granted four weeks to the Agarwals to file an appeal against the order.  PTI
Dehradun/Bathinda, Aug 19

A Gentleman Cadet of the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun, Deepak Sharma (22) of Bathinda, reportedly died of exhaustion during a 10-km cross-country race, a regular feature of the IMA training, on Friday. Six other cadets collapsed too.

At 2 pm, the cadet fainted in Badshahi Bagh area neighbouring UPs Saharanpur district, a few kilometres from the final destination. He was administered first-aid. As his condition deteriorated, he was rushed to the nearest Lehman Hospital in Vikasnagar where doctors declared him brought dead.

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The body was sent to Coronation Hospital, Dehradun, for postmortem. The status of the other six cadets could not be ascertained, but an officer claimed they were not in the Military Hospital this morning. The Army has ordered a court of inquiry to ascertain facts and fix responsibility.

The incident turns focus on the level of fitness of cadets as well as the training methods and conduct of instructors.

In Bathinda, the deceaseds brother-in-law, Dr Rajiv Kapila, claimed Deepak was physically fit and could not have collapsed. His camp started on August 14. A day earlier, he sounded cheerful over the phone.

Deepak had joined the IMA in January after completing studies at GNDU.  TNS
Bengaluru, August 18

Infosys Ltd, in a surprise announcement, said Vishal Sikka has resigned as CEO citing a stream of distractions and disruptions in recent months, pushing down shares of the second-largest Indian IT services firm almost 8 per cent on Friday.

UB Pravin Rao, Infosys Chief Operating Officer, was named interim Managing Director and Chief Executive. Rao will report to Sikka, who will take the executive vice-chairman role until a permanent CEO takes charge, which should be no later than end-March 2018, Infosys said.

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The move comes after a protracted war of words between Infosys and its founders and some former executives, who were unhappy with various decisions taken by the board.

The founders, who still own 12.75 per cent of Infosys, have in the past questioned a pay rise granted to Sikka and Rao as well as the size of severance payouts given to others, including the companys former finance head Rajiv Bansal.

In his resignation letter, Sikka said: Over the last many months and quarters, we have all been besieged by false, baseless, malicious and increasingly personal attacks.

This continuous drumbeat of distractions and negativity... inhibits our ability to make positive change and stay focused on value creation, Sikkas letter added.

A former member of the executive board at German software firm SAP, Sikka took the top job at Infosys in 2014, becoming the first CEO of the company who was not also one of its founders. Sikka, a professional manager with a charismatic manner, was known for frequently wearing black t-shirts and a blazer, in contrast to his suit-clad peers.

Infosys shares fell as much as 7.6 per cent to a more than one-month low of Rs 943. There is some level of uncertainty as we wait till the new CEO and managing director comes in, and it does put the company in some form of uncertainty in terms of strategy, said Apurva Prasad, analyst at HDFC Securities, adding the stock reaction was more to do with uncertainty.

Sikkas resignation comes at a time when Infosys, like others in the more than $150 billion Indian IT services industry, is battling a slowdown in new deals from western clients and bracing for changes to visa rules in the United States, its top market, that could hike costs and dent profits.

Infosys is likely to struggle to reach its ambitious $20 billion revenue target by 2020 in what Sikka has previously described as a challenging environment out there. Reuters
Jitendra K Shrivastava & Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

Patna/New Delhi, August 19

The Janata Dal (United) led by Nitish Kumar today formally joined the NDA, returning to the BJP-led alliance four years after it snapped 17-year-old ties with the saffron party.

The decision was announced after the JD-U passed a resolution at a meeting of the national executive chaired by party president Nitish Kumar in Patna.

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Nitish had resigned as the Bihar CM on July 26, dumping the grand alliance with the RJD and Congress to stitch a new alliance with the BJP and was sworn in as the CM for the sixth time.

A disgruntled Sharad Yadav, one of the founding leaders of the JD-U, skipped the meeting. Instead, he attended the Jan Adalat Sammelan organised by another faction of JD-U in Patna. He said he was with the grand alliance in public interest.

Sharadji has every right to put forward his disagreement but should not go with Lalu (Prasad Yadav). If he attends RJDs anti-BJP rally on August 27, we will lose faith in him, JD-U spokesperson KC Tyagi said.

He said all 71 legislators, 16 panels and chiefs of other states except Kerala were with Nitish. In a veiled attack on Sharad Yadav, Nitish Kumar said: One needs two-third majority to split a party. If anyone has the strength and dares to break my party, they should do it.

Lalu, not one to remain silent, said: Nitish should now contest on the BJP symbol. The original JD-U is with Sharad Yadav.

Meanwhile, an expansion of Prime Minister Narendra Modis Council of Ministers appears next on the cards.

If the current formula based on the strength of the allies is adopted, the JD-U would land up with a Cabinet position. It has two MPs in the Lok Sabha and 10 in the Rajya Sabha, including Sharad Yadav.

However, given Nitish Kumars importance in Bihar and his expected contribution in building positive perceptions for Modi, his party may get a better deal  two ministers of state along with a Cabinet portfolio.

Besides, with AIADMK factions finalising a merger in a day or two, there is speculation that the combined AIADMK may also board the NDA juggernaut and could be considered in the reshuffle.

Accommodating the JD-U or AIADMK should not be a problem as many ministers currently hold dual charge.
Lucknow, August 18

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today asserted that by 2022, a solution would be found to the Kashmir problem as also other problems like terrorism, Naxalism and North-East insurgency.

There are a lot of problems  terrorism, Naxalism, Kashmir problem. Much is not needed to be said about these problems. But I can assure you this much that by 2022, we have pledged to create a new India... so a solution will be found to all these problems before 2022. We want to assure the countrymen on this, he said.

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Rajnath Singh was addressing a programme here titled Sankalp se Siddhi  New India Movement (2017-2022) Naye Bharat kaa nirmaan.  PTI
SC orders govt not to adopt one-door policy

The Supreme Court on Friday issued an interim order to the government to not implement its earlier decision to adopt one-door policy in relief distribution to flood victims.
Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, August 18

Taking forward his partys mission 2019, BJP president Amit Shah has called a meeting of the chief ministers of party-ruled states.

Sources said party chiefs of the non-BJP ruled states would also attend the meeting, which is likely to take place on Monday evening.

They said CMs and the state chiefs had been asked to give a presentation on how they plan retain the partys existing Lok Sabha constituencies in their respective states and win the 120 seats Shah is believed to have shortlisted to achieve a record victory margin in 2019.

While a majority of these 120 constituencies are in states West Bengal, Odisha, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and the Northeast where the partys position is still weak, apparently some of them also belong to the kitty of its allies. Largely, these are the seats where the BJP has never won, or at best came second.

Shahs roadmap for a bigger victory margin in 2019 includes active participation of Central ministers and leaders. Expectedly, CMs and state heads would be asked to launch intensive campaigns to propagate development works of the Modi government, activate cadres and assist in tapping these 120 seats.

To increase base, Shah has been assessing organisational strength of the party in all states. Though he has been holding such review meetings with CMs on a regular basis, this one coincides with the reality check he has been undertaking ahead of the 2019 poll.

It goes without saying that the next two years are critical for the party. Seven states  Gujarat, HP (November-December), Meghalaya (February) Karnataka (April-May next year), MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan (September-October 2018)  will also go to polls before the 2019 LS poll. Four out of these seven are currently with the BJP, which is battling massive anti-incumbency to retain them.
Yash Goyal

Jaipur, August 18

As a sequel to meetings with the Gurjar Arakshan Sangharsh Samiti (GASS), the Vasundhra Raje government has agreed to raise the Other Backward Class (OBC) reservation limit by 5 per cent, from 21 to 26 per cent, to give a fresh quota privilege to five communities of Gurjars, Banjara, Rebari, Gardia Lohar, Raika and six of their sub-castes.

The GASS led by Col Kirori Singh Bainsla and CMs four envoy ministers signed an agreement to the effect in presence of Chief Minister Raje here last night.

A notification would be brought and a new Bill covering this provision would be tabled in the Assembly next month, Arun Chaturvedi, the Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, said.

At present, the OBC quota limit is 21 per cent, for SCs 16 per cent and STs 12 per cent  a total of 49 per cent as per the guidelines of the Supreme Court. Now, this bar would cross 54 per cent.

The Special Backward Classes (SBC) Act providing 5 per cent separate quota to Gurjars and others was struck down by the High Court last year, and hence it has no constitutional approval now, the minister said.

Recently these five castes and six sub-castes were again inducted into the OBC category by bringing a Bill in the Budget Session of the Raje government.

When quizzed on the SC directions not to cross the quota limit of 50 per cent, the minister said, We have consulted legal experts and will draft the Bill accordingly, so that it can withstand scrutiny by any court.

The SC allows overall reservation to go beyond 50 per cent under special circumstances, as has been done in some states, including Tamil Nadu, where it touched 69 per cent, he defended.

In the last 10 years, the state government (Congress and BJP) had brought three legislations to grant 5 per cent separate quota to Gurjars and four other communities through SBC, but the court rejected it twice in 2009 and 2016.
Shahira Naim

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, August 19

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday attacked Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi party national president Akhilesh Yadav for turning Gorakhpur into a picnic spot.

He was speaking at a function at a Dalit basti in Andhyari Bagh in his constituency of Gorakhpur while inaugurating the Swachh UP, Swasth UP campaign (Clean UP, Healthy UP).

Lucknow mein baitha shehzada aur Delhi mein baitha yuvraj is swachch abhiyaan ke mahatva ko nahi jaan payega. Gorakhpur unke liye picnic spot banney iski ijazat hamey nahi deni chahiye. (The princes sitting in Lucknow and Delhi do not understand the importance of the cleanliness drive. We should not allow them to make Gorakhpur a picnic spot).

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Attacking the state governments of the past 12-15 years for ruining institutions in the state for their selfish motives by institutionalising corruption, CM Yogi said this had kept people deprived of facilities.

I started a movement against encephalitis. I drew the attention of every government to sanitation and clean drinking water, he claimed.

In spite of being 5-time MP from Gorakhpur he (UP CM) did nothing for the hospital: Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad in #Gorakhpur pic.twitter.com/DKYfoScuqr  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) August 19, 2017

He pointed out that his government had started a massive immunisation drive against the disease vaccinating 98 lakh children in 38 districts.

Blaming the earlier governments for not paying attention to cleanliness causing the deaths due to Japanese Encephalitis and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), he urged the common people to connect with the Swachh UP, Swasth UP campaign which he launched from Gorakhpur on Saturday.

According to him, if the people treat it as their campaign and not the BJP governments programme, eastern UP could get rid of diseases like dengue, encephalitis, kala azar and swine flu.

Delhi mein baitha koi yuvraj swachhta abhiyan ka mahatv nahi jaanega. Gorakhpur unke liye picnic spot bane uski ijazat nahi deni chahiye: CM pic.twitter.com/lCUNOxM9N1  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) August 19, 2017

Yogi virtually putting the responsibility of the recent death of 30 children within 48 hours at Gorakhpurs Baba Ram Das Medical College hospital at the doorstep of the previous governments comes in the wake of his asking his cabinet colleagues to strongly counter the oppositions propaganda on the issue during the cabinet meeting earlier this week.

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi is also visiting Gorakhpur on Saturday where he would meet the family members of children who lost their lives at the BRD Medical College. He is scheduled to visit the college later in the day.
Rajneesh Lakhanpal

Our Legal Correspondent

Ludhiana, August 19

The Punjab Vigilance Bureau today filed a closure report on the alleged multi-crore City Centre scam, giving a clean chit to Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, his son Raninder Singh and 30 other accused.

The defence counsel said a copy of the report would be given on September 2  the next date of court hearing.

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The VB filed the report in the court of Sessions Judge Gurbir Singh on the basis of further investigation on the application of one of the accused, Chetan Gupta of New Delhi. It claimed that no wrong was done and figures of loss to the state exchequer were imaginary.

The closure report relies heavily on the findings of arbitrator Justice RC Lahoti (former Chief Justice of India) in favour of Delhi-based company Today Homes, stating there was no illegality and infirmity in the contract and that the company be compensated.

As per the report, several witnesses had been intimidated into giving a statement against the accused while several had claimed not to have made any statement to the VB in 2007. One such witness was BR Bajaj, former Principal Secretary, Local Bodies.

There was no deal, the report said, between Capt Amarinder and Today Homes, which had got the contract from the Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT) for the City Centre project comprising shopping malls, multiplexes, apartments, a helipad and a parking slot.

Evidence collected during further investigation made it clear that as CM, Capt Amarinder only acted in public interest with no malafide intention whatsoever.

Rather, he had taken several steps as per the law for removing irregularities after eliciting the opinion of the then Chief Secretary and Advocate General, the report says.

Neither the then LIT chairman, late Paramjit Singh Sibia, nor any member of the Trust had been found to have taken a bribe from Today Homes, as mentioned in the challan, the report claimed.

Capt Amarinder had ordered a probe into the alleged scam in September 2006 on the basis of media reports but after a change of government, an FIR was filed in March 2007. Subsequently, the VB booked 36 persons. The 106-page charge-sheet mentioned 152 witnesses. It was filed along with more than 10,000 documents on December 12, 2007. Although the prosecution concluded its arguments in 2012, no charges had been framed.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 19

The Punjab government on Saturday clarified that kurki stood abolished with the amendment of the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961, and no amendment was needed to the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887, for the purpose.

A clarification to this effect was issued by a government spokesperson in reaction to reports in a section of the media saying that kurki had not been eliminated in the absence of amendment to the Punjab Land Revenue Act.

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The spokesperson pointed out that the said Act prescribes the procedure to be followed in recovering arrears of land revenue, which involves summary proceedings, for which the tehsildars concerned are empowered. In many special legislations, including the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961, it is stated that the procedure for recovering the arrears as prescribed in the Land Revenue Act will be followed.

The spokesperson explained that for recovering the arrears under the Land Revenue Act, the competent authority is required to declare the amount due as arrears of land revenue under the relevant provisions of the special legislation. Thereafter, a reference is made by the tehsildar to recover the same, in keeping with the provisions of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887.

In view of the above, it is not necessary to amend the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887, to give effect to the amendment of the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961, whereby Section 67-A has been omitted, said the spokesperson.

With necessary amendments to delete Section 67-A of the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961, having already been notified, the Assistant Registrar Cooperative Societies can no longer refer loan recovery cases of the Cooperative Banks to the tehsildar for their recovery as arrears of land revenue, it has been further clarified.

As far as recovery of arrears of loans of the Commercial Banks is concerned, the state government is pursuing the matter with the government of India since the subject relates to the latter. The spokesperson said the state government was trying to persuade the central government not to undertake kurki of the farmers' land for recovery of outstanding agricultural loans.

According to the spokesperson, for the recovery of loans raised by the farmers from non-institutional resources, including arhtiyas, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh has appealed to the arhtiyas not to resort to kurki.

The spokesperson, however, pointed out that there was no record of these loans either with the government or with any of its agencies since these informal moneylenders do not file any return or reference with any government agency.
Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 18

The state governments move to delete a clause in the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961, has failed to end kurki (auction) of mortgaged land of farmers. Reason: the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1887, has not been amended; the Act still allows for the recovery of arrears of land revenue.

The land of indebted farmers is still being attached and the Revenue Department is ordering auction of lands.

Several instances of protests by farmers are being reported after the department ordered auction of farmland, following farmers inability to repay their loans to either arhtiyas or other financial institutions.

Farmer organisations and Opposition parties have started blaming the Congress government for misleading defaulting farmers by claiming that their mortgaged lands cannot be auctioned off. They say Sections 65 to 77 of the Punjab Land Revenue Act provide for harsh measures for attachment of land, property, detention and sale of land of a defaulter, to recover dues.

Sukhbir Singh Badal, SAD president, moved a private members bill in the Vidhan Sabha  the Punjab Land Revenue (Amendment) Bill, 2017. It seeks the abolition of these Sections in the Punjab Land Revenue Act, which could help save farmers land from being auctioned off.

Sources say that by repealing Section 67-A of the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, the government only withdrew the powers from the Registrar, Cooperative Societies, to recover dues as arrears of land revenue.

In May, the Revenue Department had cautioned the government against amending the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act. It contented that banks may go slow on lending if the recovery provisions were diluted.

There are other laws that aid in the recovery of dues from borrowers such as the Punjab Public Moneys (Recovery of Dues) Act, 1983. Banks are recovering dues under provisions of this Act as well. The department, too, had mentioned this in its letter to the Chief Secretary while opposing the amendment to the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act.

Farm leaders to the rescue in Sangrur

On June 19, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh informed the Vidhan Sabha that his government had decided to repeal Section 67-A of the Punjab Cooperative Societies Act, 1961, which provides for kurki (auction) of farmers land. However, there have been several attempts at auction that have been prevented by farmers unions:

March: BKU Ugrahan prevented the auction of land of farmer Balwant Singh in Sangrurs Kheri village.

June: Auction of same land prevented in Kheri village.

July 30: Auction of a widows land prevented the fourth time in Ealwal village.

August 8: Auction of a farmers land prevented in Mander Khurd village.

August 17: Auction of land prevented in Dhilwan Pindi village.
Our Correspondent

Abohar, August 18

Two Congress activists, who were allegedly shot at by a Youth Akali Dal (YAD) leader late last evening, have succumbed to their injuries. The incident took place at Paradise Mall on the college road here.

Gurmeet Singh (30) of Kundal village died on the way to Sriganganagar last night, while Surinder Bhambhu (28) of Basant Nagar died today.

Vishu Kamboj (31), a former vice-president of the YAD (Malwa zone), told the city police at the Civil Hospital here that he was in his shop at the mall when Kundal village sarpanch Jagdaman Singh Minku, Surinder Bhambhu, Gurmeet Singh, Baldev Singh and four unidentified persons reached there and attacked him with sharp-edged weapons. He took shelter in a shopping complex and opened fire with his licensed revolver in self-defence, he claimed.

Vishu alleged that the assailants wanted to settle a score with him for supporting SAD BC wing state vice-president and Pattisadiq village sarpanch Prithvi Raj, who was recently attacked near the Panchayat Samiti office here. On the basis of his statement, the police registered a case under Sections 307, 324, 323, 506, 148 and 149 of the IPC last night against Minku and others.

The police today recorded the statement of Minku, who along with his three accomplices had been admitted to the Civil Hospital after the clash. Minku said they had gone for shopping in the mall, where Vishu resorted to unprovoked firing.

A case has been registered against Vishu, Prithvi Raj, his son Vijay Kumar, Kundal ex-sarpanch Jasbir Singh and Bhagirath of Tajapatti village under Sections 302, 307 and 120B of the IPC.

DIG Rajinder Singh visited the scene of the crime today along with SSP Dr Ketan Baliram Bhagat and SP Amarjit Singh Matwani.
Monica Arora

Shailesh BRs work is perhaps the most unconventional and unexpected that you may have seen amongst contemporary artists in the recent times, and that is what makes it all the more engaging and awe inspiring. He draws inspiration from several concepts in Sanskrit, a language he studied and mastered for some 14 years during his early childhood. His creations reflect the rural upbringing and simplicity of life as in his village, where even an electric bulb was regarded as a huge miracle.

In an interview during a Khoj workshop in 2015, Shailesh had articulated, I do not know how to work, but I sure can create for my own and from my own.A post-graduate from Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda, the artist uses the ordinariness of mundane objects to turn their notion or existence around.

He recently put up his first solo show at the Vadhera Art Gallery in New Delhi as part of Foundation for Contemporary Indian Art (FICA)s Emerging Artist Award Programme. This show was known as Tarka, being derived from Tarka Shastra or the art of debating, enquiring and logical reasoning as prescribed in ancient Sanskrit philosophy. Through his myriad creations, he has questioned the origin, life journey and end of several objects and that is what draws onlookers to this unique body of work.

Occupying centre piece at the exhibition was the Kshir Dhara, a series of sculptures that explore repeated actions whilst performing religious ceremonies such as the grinding of chandan on a slab or application of tilak on the forehead. These are used as metaphors in sculptures made from material such as wax, motor, sandalwood, honey, motor, water, milk, copper.

Created from rubber, motor, iron was The Tongue, a set of kinetic sculptures that represents the various sensory functions and organs of the body that pertain to sensations of touch, taste, smell, sight and so on. Similarly, the Hot Tongue, comprising of plaster, coil and iron mesh, seems to be a satirical statement on the art of glib talking and nonsensical jargon, which is innately ingrained in the political and bureaucratic machinery.

The most evocative of all creations was the Philosophy Machine. Essentially a wooden rotating disc fitted with lamps arranged in a circle, it has a gas flame pipe to light the lamps at one end and a blower pipe to extinguish them. This remarkable creation is a representation of the circle of life and is a stunning commentary on the fact that death is inevitable.

Philosphy Machine Drawings was a series of 48 drawings. These inhabit little corners at the gallery and are mostly arranged as asymmetrical drawings on vintage, sepia-tinted and yellowing paper that appear as blueprints or pages from a novella or a personal diary or an old school examination. In most, there is no attention paid to any spelling or grammatical errors and reflect a childlike innocence with several drafts, cuts, scratches and random musings. Also, the 46 tongue drawings are an extension of the sculpture and endeavour to decode the tongue as an organ of taste, articulation and hence, as an allegory for human emotions, sensory as well as of the mind faculties.

Its almost as if he had taken tiny bits of childhood memorabilia and when he saw similar objects during adulthood, he re-interpreted those in a completely different manner and re-arranged the conventionality and typicality associated with them.
Chantal Da Silva

Britains first black Shakespearean actor has been honoured with the unveiling of a blue plaque in Coventry. Ira Aldridge became manager of the Coventry Theatre in 1828, after impressing the citys residents with his acting talent on a tour.

The actor, who died 150 years ago, put on performances that are believed to have inspired the people of Coventry to petition Parliament to abolish slavery.

Aldridge was honoured by the city of Coventry, with the Lord Mayor Tony Skipper unveiling a blue plaque celebrating his legacy as the UKs first black theatre manager.

Its very important, Professor Tony Howard, who leads Warwick Universitys Multicultural Shakespeare project.

Hes been admired and respected for a long time as the first black Shakespearean actor, but many people are less aware of the fact that he had also been the first black theatre manager.

The ceremony marked the 150th anniversary of his death and was attended by actor Earl Cameron, who is widely celebrated as one of the first black actors to break the colour bar in the UK.

Cameron was also trained by Aldridges daughter Amanda and was invited as a guest of honour at the plaque unveiling.

Aldridge was born in New York in 1807 and worked as an actor in the US until the 1920s when he migrated to England after being brutally beaten in racist attacks.

He rose to fame in the UK, managing to break down racial barriers, playing principal roles, including Romeo, Hamlet, Othello and later on, King Lear.

The actual theatre that Aldridge managed was demolished long ago, but the permanent memorial will mark the site where it would have stood.

Its a reminder of the fact that cities come and cities go; they go through periods of strength and depression. Thats why we have to honour those moments, when people do the unexpected, Professor Howard said.

I think the city is very proud and very happy, he added.

Aldridge has already been honoured with a blue plaque in the London borough of Bromley at a home where he once lived as part of the English Heritage scheme.

The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeares globe will also be honouring the actor with an event called Against Prejudice: A celebration of Ira Aldridge on September 19.

 The Independent
Eesha Duggal

There are two types of people in the world  the doers and the rest. Times when Mother Earth is witnessing abnormal climatic conditions and concrete jungles are fast replacing the green cover; some doers are working relentlessly to make things better for themselves, the rest and the rest of the rest. They are the ones who cared to stop by, smelled the roses, ploughed their own fields, then someone else's till their acts became contagious and sparked a movement. Here's to the everyday eco-heroes who refused to be non-participants, who started as one-man armies, faced the heat and still ushered in positive changes. Now in the latter part of their lives, these persons promise to leave the world a greener and finer place.

Jungle all the way

Jagat Singh Chaudhary, a BSF soldier, had just been home on leave in the fall of 1973 when a village woman, out to get fodder, fell down a mountain and sustained fatal injuries. The incident might have been unfortunate in every way, but it wasn't anything new for Kot Malla and many other villages of Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand, where trekking to treacherous heights for essentials like water and fodder was part of every woman's daily routine.

The incident kept the young soldier up all night. The rest of his holidays were spent finding ways to improve the plight of the womenfolk of his village. Little did he know that what he would eventually start as an unfeigned attempt to provide respite to his fellow villagers would one day earn him a special name.

Chaudhary decided to grow plants on a wasteland his father owned, which was not just barren, but also uneven and stony. In 1980, he decided to hang up his boots and started cultivating these two barren hectares. Since no water was available in the vicinity, Jagat would walk 3 km daily, carrying water pots on his shoulders. His unbridled enthusiasm was infectious. Many others were inspired to go the Jungli way. Jungli was the name villagers gave the retired soldier.

After turning an unyielding land into a jungle of mixed plants, Jungli started planting cash crops such as ginger, turmeric, pulses, vegetables and herbs, which not only benefited the environment, but also provided livelihood to people.

Suman Saurabh, a Delhi university student, made Junglis work the focus of his post-graduation thesis. There are very few people who're doing the real work. I came to know about Jagat sir from my professor. A visit to his jungle in Rudraprayag was so inspirational that I decided to study it further, maintains Suman.

In 2007, Chaudhary was invited by HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar, to develop a model forest on the campus, which he did till 2010.

Hes been undertaking plantation activities using wood, stone and pit technology. Now 70, Jungli says he wants to save the future generations from the ill-effects of environment change; thats why all the efforts.

Chamba's Chipko campaigner

Sunderlal Bahugunas Chipko Movement of 1981 offered meaning and purpose to many people across the country. Though working for the cause of environment since 1973, the movement marked an important event in the life of Kulbhushan Upmanyu of Kamla village in Chamba, Himachal Pradesh, who marched from Kashmir to Kohima as part of the movement.

After school, Upmanyu decided to cultivate a piece of land in his village. A small field could not contain this young mans dream, who refused to turn a blind eye to the problems his fellow villagers faced. Soon, he formed a development group with other villagers in 1973, where they addressed issues of villagers without any government help. He started working towards making the village self-sustainable.

What Bahugunas movement gave Upmanyu was a reason to concentrate on forests. He soon became a frontline campaigner in spreading awareness on forest conservation. That time, pine and eucalyptus plantation was under way on a large scale in Himachal, a dangerous practice which was set to jeopardise the ecosystem of the region and put villages in a major fodder crisis. Upmanyu stood up against the destructive move and launched a campaign. His consistent efforts bore fruit and after a seven-year fight, eucalyptus plantation was banned on the government land across the state and pine plantation was majorly discouraged. Owing to his endeavours to protect forests in the years to follow, oaks and rhododendron were declared protected in Himachal.

It's important to focus on two things  plantation and systematic waste disposal. In plantation, we have to bring in more multi-purpose species and avoid pine and eucalyptus. There's also a need to learn the scientific ways of garbage disposal. The authorities should adopt the European model of waste disposal, which almost eliminates the chances of pollution, says Upmanyu.

I have always been interested in forestry. About five-six years ago, I met Upmanyu ji and joined him. He's been working for the preservation of forests for decades and his contribution is inspirational, says Ranjeet of Chamba.

For many years, Upmanyu has been running an NGO  Himalaya Bachao Samiti. He now usually takes up advocacy work, but that, by no means, stops him from daily escapades into the wild.

The eco-warrior from Marathaland

When Ravi Purandre landed in India after spending the prime years of his life in the Gulf, he threw away his passport to purposely banish the temptation to travel any further.

Besides the warmth and love of his family, returning home to Pune also meant starting anew and finding a job. While still looking for one, he would unpremeditatedly wander off to Hanuman Tekdi  a bleak and lifeless hill, which had long been a haven for gamblers and drunkards.

The year was 1999, the hill was barren and Purandre had an idea whose time had come. He wanted to make Hanuman Tekdi green. He started planting saplings on the hill. Soon he met Srikant Paranjpe, who had already been working in this direction. Together we started planting saplings and making trenches to harvest rainwater, says Purandre, as he recalls the onset of the journey.

One day, I saw NCC cadets practising for the RD parade at the Symbiosis College ground. When you have an unwavering commitment to your work, it's almost impossible not to connect it with everything you see. So yes, I saw these spirited children sweating it out and realised there was little that could match their verve and vibrancy. I wanted to rope in children and bring them to the hill for helping us. But above all, I believed that we, adults, had a responsibility that ran deeper than our subjective goals. It is not only wise, but also indispensable to inculcate regard and respect for nature in our young ones, he asserts.

Pune schools and colleges, too, realised there was a wide scope for EVS activities at the once insipid Hanuman Tekdi. We'd have youngsters working, laughing and eating together all day. It never felt like work, says Purandre.

All along, the facelift of the hill was a matter inspiring enough to pique the curiosity of Pune residents, who now started dotting the hill for their walk.

In 2004, his group started getting support from the Pune Municipal Corporation.

Moving ahead, we started making coco peat using a shredder, which I, being a mechanical engineer, designed myself. Once crushed, coco peat is used for mulching. It retains moisture like nothing else. A complete waste for the city, coconut shells were a treasure for our plants, explains an innovative Purandre.

Pune had been facing a problem of leaf litter for a long time. Purandre came to the rescue, yet again. Two years ago, we created six tonnes of best-quality compost using leaf litter, putting an end to the problem. Our target is to make 30 tonne compost by the end of this year and I am confident that we'll find the first-of- its-kind leaf shredding solution in India, he asserts.

Eighteen years have passed since Purandre and his team started rainwater harvesting and plantation on the rocky Hanuman Tekdi. Today, the hill is unrecognisable with green cover over 60 acres. Three heart attacks and a bypass surgery has failed to shake Purandre's resolve. Every morning, he walks up the hill, his steps hard to match, while children from nearby schools flock the area to assist him. Is it work? Its not, they know.
Traffic congestion at TIA stokes safety concerns

Air traffic controllers (ATCs) and pilots are bracing themselves for the upcoming peak travel season which begins in September as record high aircraft movements have been projected.
Pushpa Girimaji

Is it true that the Reserve Bank of India has amended the Banking Ombudsman Scheme to expand its jurisdiction? If so, can you please give some details?

Yes, the 2017 amendment to the Banking Ombudsman scheme has widened the scope of the scheme and brought under the ambit of the Ombudsman, a number of hitherto excluded issues pertaining to the banking operations.

To be more specific, the amendments finally provide for redress of a large number of highly vexatious problems faced by bank customers in recent years such as fraudulent withdrawal of money through electronic banking as well as stolen and cloned debit and credit cards, besides mis-selling of insurance, mutual funds and other investment products. Similarly, the amendments have also brought under the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman issues such as erroneous reporting of credit information to the Credit Information Bureau and the failure to rectify such factual inaccuracies. These are all issues on account of which consumers have for long suffered not just financial loss but also harassment and mental anguish. And in the absence of any redress at the ombudsman level, they have had to fight long battles before the consumer court. Finally, consumers can seek resolution of their disputes in these matters through the Ombudsman.

The revised ombudsman scheme, which came into effect from July 1 this year, includes in the list of Grounds for complaint, non-adherence to the instructions of the Reserve Bank vis-a-vis mobile banking/electronic banking services in respect of delay or failure to effect online payment or fund transfer and unauthorised electronic payment/fund transfer . Similarly, one can complain against banks for sale of unsuitable, improper financial products such as insurance and mutual funds, besides lack of transparency in such sale and delay in facilitating after sales service.

Another positive change brought about in the Ombudsman Scheme is the provision to award compensation for harassment and mental anguish, besides loss of the complainants time and other expenses, up to a limit of Rs 1 lakh. Despite the low limit, I really welcome this because earlier the Scheme provided for such compensation only in cases of credit card operations. So, extending this to all complaints is really good. Second, the compensation awarded for any loss suffered as a direct consequence of the banks omission or commission (or the pecuniary jurisdiction to pass an award) has been raised from Rs 10 lakh to 20 lakh.

Are there any pre-conditions that one must remember while filing a complaint before the Ombudsman?

One of the most important conditions is the requirement of the complainant going to the Ombudsman only after exhausting the complaint redress system available with the bank. The Scheme requires the complainant to first write to the bank (preferably the nodal officer) and approach the ombudsman only if there is no response within a month or if the response is not satisfactory. Consumers must remember this because a number of cases before the Ombudsmen are rejected for this reason.

Otherwise, filing a complaint before the Ombudsman is easy  you can even send it electronically. You do not need any lawyer and the process of resolution of the complaint is very simple. First and foremost, the Ombudsman will try to promote a settlement through conciliation or mediation between the parties and if it is agreeable to the complainant, will pass an order. If not, the Ombudsman will pass an award after giving both the parties an opportunity to present their case. One can also file an appeal against the order of the Ombudsman before the Appellate Authority.

The complaint has to be filed before the Ombudsman under whose jurisdiction the bank branch concerned is situated. However, in case of credit card and other types of services with centralised operations, a complaint can be filed before the Ombudsman under whose territorial jurisdiction the billing address of the complainant is located. You can get the details of the scheme as well as the addresses of the 20 Ombudsmen in the country from the website of the Reserve Bank of India.
Neha Kirpal

Water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink. These oft-repeated lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner hold true in these times more than they ever did. Water is scarce, and not just in the third world. Its repercussions are being experienced across the globe. This is what a group of 25 young high school students  20 from the US and five from rural and tribal communities in India  found out while travelling through Delhi, Agra and Ladakh in a unique learning through travel programme recently. The programme, spread out over three weeks in July, aimed to make potential future leaders socially, culturally and responsibly global citizens.

Leadership collective 360Plus, theatre group Junoon and travel services provider Voygr brought together the teenagers from more than 15 diverse geographies and demographics. The theme for the year was climate change, its affects and global challenges. This was the first year that Indian students participated along with students from the US.

The group first embarked upon heritage walks around old Delhi. During the old Delhi tour, they were taken to the fascinating Ugrasen ki Baoli. A step well that is used to hold water for villagers, the baoli has been around for about six centuries. Fascinated by the structure, Daviontea Bass, a student from Chicago, did a little research for herself and shared it with us. Baolis were made around the country in hotter places because people needed a cool place to chill, swim, sleep and eat, she observed and was surprised that they were still functioning.

There were the usual tourist spots too, but not without that twist of education. Take the trip to Taj Mahal, for instance. Farhan Mashud, a student from New York, was fascinated to discover the importance of water in building and maintaining the structure of the historic monument. It was interesting to know that the monument was built on wells that contained water and were filled with wood. This is said to have increased the life of the wooden foundation, he said.

Two artist facilitators travelled throughout with the students and took them through art processes and workshops that stimulate enquiry, reflection, exploration, perspective and expression. Sanjna Kapoor, co-founder Junoon, said, To get a chance to work with this group of youngsters and artists together to explore the implications of climate change in our lives is a beautiful way of creating learning opportunities.

While they had heard about how climate change is directly affecting Ladakh in a session on climate change with environmental activist Dr Vandana Shiva, it was only after a visit there that they realised what it meant. Ladakh, with decreasing snowfall, melting glaciers and prolonged summers, is one of the frontiers of the climate change debate.

After acclimatising to the altitude, the group got to spend some time at the eco-friendly Students Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) campus. Located on the banks of Indus river, the mountainous Hemis National Park in the background and a clear night sky, it made for the perfect place to live in the midst of nature. Here, students from the Leadership Collective gave talks, presentations and English conversation classes to local students.

The group noticed that the river was swollen by seasonal snowmelt and its chocolate colour was indicative of pollution. However, when the students tested a water sample from the river, it was negative for nitrites, nitrates and had healthy levels of iron and hardness. It was refreshing to see that even though access to water is rapidly changing in the region, the river continues to remain relatively pristine.

Through the three-and-half week journey, the group experienced bonding, learning and contemplating together on themes that impact the world. From changing spring sources in rural California, seminars about green economics in San Francisco, the drying of the Agressan ki Baoli in Delhi and the staining of the Taj Mahal in Agra, the students were able to see the connections and maybe find some answers too.
Kanika Kalia

There is no doubt that Iceland is one of the most beautiful and traveller-friendly destinations in the world. Its dynamic landscape, mystery of geysers, legends of Vikings and beauty of northern lights has captivated travellers for years now. While most people visiting Iceland straightway shoot to the Golden Circle and south Iceland, the Snaefellsnes peninsula in west Iceland is truly a hidden gem just waiting to be explored. Why Snfellsnes? Well for starters, it is a true testament to Icelands dynamic nature. It has almost everything that Iceland has to offer: breathtaking landscapes, alluring seascapes, lava fields, glacier, abandoned farms, and great hiking trails. No surprise that its often called Iceland in a nutshell. It makes for a great destination for a day trip (and even multiple if you have time). This is a much-less visited corner of Iceland compared to the typical touristy areas of the South Coast, and that being said, you will have some areas exclusive to yourself. Now, of course, in winters trying to explore this whole area in a day is literally like racing against the time. But if you have made up your mind and set off for a day of exploring, these tips will help you in planning.

Rent a car at the airport in Keflavik. This is the most convenient way of exploring the area. Though there are some tour companies that offer day trips to Snaefellsnes Peninsula , it will be best to drive it by yourself and do it at your own pace.

Depending on the number of days you intend to spend, base yourself out of Reykjavik.

According to google maps, the entire loop starting and ending at Reykjavik is almost about 500 km and takes six hours if you drive non-stop. But since there are so many scenic viewpoints and you are bound to make frequent stops, it will easily take 10-12 hours to explore the peninsular region.

For all you winter explorers, start your day early so that you may cover maximum in daylight.

There are not many restaurants in this area, so do not forget to pack lunch.

Fill your gas tank as and when you see a gas station. In winters, not all gas stations are open and you may not find one for hours.

Make sure you keep an eye on the weather and road conditions.

If you take the route via Hvalfjordur bay, you will have to pay the toll 100ISK. You can pay by card or in cash.

Things to see:

You can drive through Snaefellsnes Peninsula starting from Reykjavik in clockwise or anti-clockwise direction, provided you reach the Kirkjufell mountain before sunset to enjoy a gem of the view. For this sole reason, it is recommended to drive anti-clockwise in winters. But Kirkjufell is not the only thing to see in this area. Here is list of stoppages you can make in your journey.

Mt. Helgafell: An easy 15-20 minute hike up Mt. Helgafell will reward you with a beautiful view. Legend says if you hike up Mt Helgafell keeping mum and not looking back, your three wishes come true. Definitely worth a try.

Eldborg volcanic caldera: A dirt road from the highway will take you to the closest parking spot near the crater. From there, it is about 15 to 20 minutes hike up.

Geruberg Basalt Columns: The beautiful hill gives an illusion of being on the sets of Game of Thrones. These basalt columns are natures masterpiece and give an illusion of castles fortification.

Bjarnarhofn Shark Museum: This museum is not like any ordinary museum at all. What makes it unique? Well coupled with randomness and shabby appearance, this place will tell you about an intriguing Icelandic snack, fermented shark, called hakarl. Of course, you cant leave the place without trying this peculiar delicacy.

Berserkjahraun (Lava field): While driving on Route 54, you will see lava field on both sides of the road. The landscape is breathtaking. To enjoy the beauty of these lava fields, you have two options. You can park your car somewhere near Berserkjahraunvegur road and go for a long walk. Or you can take a dirt road and explore it by car. If you do it by car, make sure your car has good tyres.

Vatnshellir: The 8000-year-old volcanic cave is bound to leave you speechless. There is only one way to explore this cave, and that is taking a group tour. In winters, this place often gets closed.

Kolgrafarfjordur Fjord: This fjord is known for the maximum concentration of marine life. In year 2003-4, there had been an incident of mass death of marine life in this fjord because of lack of oxygen and since then, it has been a popular stop for visitors. The area is beautiful and definitely worth spending some time and taking beautiful pictures.

Kirkujafell Mountain: The Kirkujafell Mountain is the climax of journey of Snaefellsnes Peninsula. It is the most photographed mountain of Iceland. When you reach this spot, you will understand Gods perfect set up: waterfall, mountain, sea  all in one sight. And if you are lucky, you will also find Icelandic horses running in the barn. Keep in mind that parking lot is small at this spot, so it does take some amount of waiting as this place remains crowded. For photographers, you will have to be in line to get the chance to photograph the mountain from the perfect angle.
Harish Khare

Most of us in India may not be much aware of the drama that has taken place in an American town called Charlottesville. This town recently became the staging ground for what the American media calls the white supremacist violence.

Since the Civil War in the 1860s,

the American society has always entertained a red neck fringe  white Americans who remained unreconciled to the very idea of giving the black Americans any kind of respect and equality. KKK  Ku Klux Klan  has been the most infamous organised expression of this bigotry.

Donald Trump got himself elected President of the United States by deliberately pandering to this lingering white resentment. To this soft bigotry, he dangerously added the toxic slogan of America First a xenophobic invitation to hold and blame the outsiders for the white Americans miseries and misfortunes.

That was politics. And that is what all demagogic politicians all over the world do  appeal to our baser instincts, incite us to hate our neighbours.

Once Trump got elected, it was widely hoped  inside and outside the United States  that he would sober down. Therefore, when Charlottesville happened, the expectation was that the American President would be unsparing in his condemnation of the white supremacist violence.

Instead, he appeared to be siding with the violent goons. Expectedly, he was denounced by his political rivals as well as by most of the saner civil society groups.

But it was the reaction of the business leaders in America that should be of interest to us here in India. Corporate America stood up to the American President and told him that it was unworthy of him to fail to denounce the violence. One corporate leader after another resigned, in protest, his seat on the Presidents advisory councils; all that an embarrassed Trump could do was to disband those bodies.

A typical reaction came from Jeff Immelt, chairman of General Electric; he had his company put out a statement criticising President Trump: The Presidents statements were deeply troubling...GE has no tolerance for hate, bigotry, racism, and the white supremacist extremism that the country witnessed in Charlottesville.

Bravo.

Can we imagine a similar forthright stand by any of our corporate leaders in defence of basic constitutional values?

I am afraid, not. The reason is simple: our corporate houses have never practised clean businesses nor acquired an ethical voice that would enable them to stand up to the politician. Even the best of our so-called entrepreneurs are aware of their vulnerabilities  and, these vulnerabilities are self-inflicted because of their greed, dishonesty, and illegalities. Perhaps each Indian corporate leader is content to prefer expediency over ethics.

No society can achieve genuine progress, peace or national glory if its business community does not become a site and a source for good moral conduct. The American corporate leaders are quick to realise that if the demagogues are allowed to have a run of the place, they would end up reopening the settled equations and arguments which underwrite the societys compact and cohesion.

Any genuine business leader in India ought to feel that he and his company have a stake in the rule of law, a lawful society, and a just and fair social order. And, that he has an obligation to stand up to any demagogue who threatens to introduce violence and venom in our society.

********

Last Sunday, The Tribune focussed on the memories of Partition by way of observing the 70th year of our Independence. That has prompted very many readers to send in their own personal recollections of what happened to them or their loved ones in those trying days, immediately after August 15, 1947.

Those were horrible, horrible days. The writ of the government on both sides of the border simply did not run. And, each family, each clan and each village was left to its own devices. A delirium of madness had swept over the land.

What I find remarkable and reassuring in these communications from The Tribune readers is that each one of them is anxious to tell a tale of a good deed done to them by a neighbour or a friend or even by a total stranger of the other faith.

Perhaps, the most touching tale is narrated by Mohinder Pratap Chand who informs us that he has been a Tribune reader for 63 years. He is a much-honoured and much respected author in our region. It appears that in 2010, he had managed to visit his ancestral home near Lahore. He produced a booklet about his two-week stay and the warm hospitality he received in Pakistan.

Chand sahib was kind enough to send me a copy of this booklet. He ends the book with a reference to eminent Pakistani writer Saqib Zirvis experience of the Partition. Zirvi recalled how a Sikh friend saved his life. It seemed a mob was chasing Zirvi and he took shelter in his friend Sardar Gurmukh Singhs house. When the killers came hunting to Gurmukh Singhs house, the good Sardar made Zirvi lie alongside his ailing wife and covered the two with a blanket. The marauders were invited to see how there was only the unwell wife. His wifes face was partially visible from the fringe of the blanket. Those cruel-hearted slayers could never have thought even in their dream that a non-Muslim, a Sikh would make such a unique sacrifice for a Muslim friend, he remarks.

Such tales are a reassuring reminder to everyone in both India and Pakistan to never again let the politicians instigate religious frenzy in pursuit of their lust for power.

********

T he stunningly beautiful book-cover arrests the eye. A scene of a snow-covered Bhimkali Temple at Sarahan in Himachal Pradesh brings alive the spiritual tranquillity of this magnificent place of worship. But what attracted me to legendary photographer Ashok Dilwalis latest book was its title, So Said the Wise.

An extremely presumptuous title, I would say. Who is the wise one? And, who gets to decide as to who is wise. And this is a question that cannot be easily answered, certainly not in these turbulent times, when we are busy judging our national geniuses by new standards, and are rewriting our national history, and replacing our national icons.

Ashok Dilwali is a master-photographer of the Himalayas. He has a perceptive eye and understands the cameras creativity. And, in this book he has sought to blend the visual with inspirational voices. Without making any claims to being a historian or a philosopher or a political ideologue, he has put together a list of thinkers and social reformers who have given our civilisation its coherence and its spiritual energy.

No one can quarrel with the list. Gautam Buddha. Meerabai. Pandita Ramabai. MG Ranade. Mirra Alfassa (the Mother). Chanakya. Sant Eknath. Rabindranath Tagore. Keshub Chandra Sen. Bulleh Shah. Thiruvalluvar. Swami Chinmayananda. Sivananda Saraswati. Nizamuddin Auliya. Jiddu Krishnamurti. Abdul Kalam Azad. Gopal Krishna Gokhale. S. Ramanujan. Osho. Moinuddin Chishti. Mirza Ghalib. Jyotirao G. Phule. Guru Nanak. Gandhi. Nehru. Periyar. Swami Prabhupada.

And, many more.

This simple compendium is a yet another reminder of how blessed this land of ours has been, how it has been enriched by the teachings and wisdom of these seers and gurus. This list gives us a glimpse of our composite culture and how the wise from each generation and each religion helped society find its way out of confusion and confrontation.

A reader can open this brief book at any page and get a glimpse of the true Indian genius. Shree Narayan Guru, the saint-reformer, says: Men may differ in their faiths, their languages and their modes of dressing; but there can be no evil in inter-dining and intermarriage, because all belong to the same kind of creation.

It is a welcome antidote to all the anger and all the animosity that is being sought to be injected in our body politic in the name of nationalism.

********

P oor Ms Priyanka Chopra! The young lady is being aggressively rebuked on the social media by the new nationalists for not wearing a sari or a salwar-kameez in her Independence Day post! These indeed are demanding times.

Well, well, well! Time for a hot cup of coffee.

kaffeeklatsch@tribuneindia.com
Bhanu P Lohumi in Shimla

It was well past midnight on August 12. It was cold, rainy. Bus passengers from Chamba to Manali and from Manali to Katra were busy sipping much-needed tea at Kotropi village (near Mandi), some 150 km from Manali. The buses were parked in opposite direction. Suddenly, a monstrous mass of mud and silt crashed down a hill and pounced upon the waiting buses. Huge rock pieces tore down the vehicles as the accumulated debris tossed the hangers-on into a jabbing judder. The bus drivers had turned on the ignition key in a hurry to escape. But it was too late.

The earth had shaken. Screams followed as the landslide devoured 47 people. A shallow pond reportedly formed around the twisted, buried vehicles.

Yet the tragedy is incomplete: though almost all know why a part of the hill collapsed, none has the will to find ways to stopping a recurrence.

Some villagers told a team of geologists that they had noticed some boulders falling that day. Many villagers living along the highway in that section had vacated their homes, says Tek Singh, a former village head from neighbouring Urla. The rocks above the road had cracked and seepage was visible.

Mandi deputy commissioner Sandeep Kadam said the rubble of the landslide blocked the adjacent stream. This led to creation of an artificial pond. It has been cleared.

Three days later the National Remote Sensing Centre (ISRO, Hyderabad) came out with graphic details about what exactly happened at Kotropi at Pathankot-Nauni National Highway 154. In 'geological assessment' it said: The area is in a thrust contact between the Shivaliks and the Shali group of rocks consisting mainly of dolomites, brick red shale, sandstones, purple clay and mudstones. The hardness of these rocks is in general less. These have been subjected to deformation by the thrust in the area, making them highly prone to landslides. In simple terms, the thrust is aggravated by erosion of the upper soil crust because of activities such as road construction, making the hills unstable. An incessant rain further robs the slope of its strength. Result: landslides.

The report also notes deep incision of the tributaries suggesting that some of the lineaments could be neotectonically active since there are near the main boundary thrust that separated the Shivalik.

The hill vulnerability has increased many times in the recent past. The factors cited are: reckless development activities, deforestation, unscientific road construction, terracing, water intensive agricultural practices, and encroachment on steep hill slopes.

The recent landslide is a grim wakeup call as the landslide recurred after 20 years. The report of geologist is awaited, but the locals blame post-construction haphazard debris disposal and a fragile mountain terrain. This is despite a clear warning from a Central government-sponsored study on Spatial Distribution and Concentration of Landslides released in 2003. The report said over 97% of the total geographical area of Himachal is landslide-prone. Here are a few instances:

1989: 40 people were killed in a landslide at Matiana on Hindustan-Tibet Highway in Shimla district. Buses had to be stopped as rocks continued to roll down before an entire hill had collapsed.

1995: Landslide killed over 60 people in the Luggar-Bhatti area of Kullu district. This landslide led to the accumulation of rubble 200-m long and 100-m high. The tragedy had struck in the morning rush hours when labourers, engaged by the PWD to clear the bank road leading to Manali, were at work. Almost all labourers, mostly Nepalese, and a few school children were killed.

1993: Landslide blocked the Sutlej near Jhakri on Hindustan-Tibet Highway. A huge lake was formed which took nearly six months to drain out even as the threat of flash flood loomed.

The frequency of manmade landslides has increased. For instance, along the Shimla-Parvanoo Highway, where the road is being widened to four lanes the danger is from near-vertical passage, deforestation and lack of plantation.

National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) general manager in Himachal Gursewak Singh Sangha says heavy rains are the biggest threat in areas where construction activity is going on. We have asked geologists to suggest ways to prevent the hills from sliding.

Shimla, too, is also sinking at several places due to digging of slopes for construction and infrastructure development. The retention policy of the state government to regularize illegal construction on as is where is basis is a widely seen as a betrayal of environmental and modern living commitments.

A survey of the sub-strata strength assumes immense significance because Shivalik hills are made up of rocks such as sandstone, shale and clay. We have suggested measures taking into account the types of rocks, says geologist Rajnish Sharma. We always send a geological report of a forest land whenever PWD writes to us about any road construction.

Geologists have warned that slopes more than 45 degrees should not be cut. High-retaining breast walls are usually recommended to reduce the landslide damage, says special secretary revenue and disaster, DD Sharma.

For new constructions/widening of roads attempts should be made to keep old passages open. This can help in stabilizing the strata, says RS Sood, prominent city planner and a retired IAS officer.
PK Jaiswar in Amritsar

For 58-year-old, 'A' (name withheld on request), it all started when he was only nine years old. First it was bhang, then alcohol, and then, synthetic drugs. My mother punched herself in her stomach, cursing god why she had to carry me in the womb.

Today, 'A' sits in a group of drug addicts, not as a victim, but as a counsellor. He is part of Narcotics Anonymous (NA), a group that works as addiction recovery group, founded in 1953 in the US. He is celebrating his 22nd birthday  the day when he last had drugs.

Things were so bad for him that one day his wife along with their daughter decided to end life, fed up as they were by his addiction and resultant daily clashes. A neighbour had sold off his house over the same problem. The very idea of financial penury and the cumulated effect on children had frightened me, he tells the group.

The law sees drug addiction as a crime, society terms it as evil and religious heads describe it as a sin. More than anything else, addiction is a disease that needs everyone's help for cure, he says.

Similar is the story of 'B'. He is in 17th year of his recovery period. He is now a struggling actor and wants to make some name in Punjab's thriving film industry.

Dr Jaswinder Singh, an anaesthetist, has written two books of short stories highlighting rampant drug abuse. He says NA meetings across the globe have helped thousands of people to keep off drugs. He has treated many youths who connected with the group.

There are several people in Punjab who have gone through the agony and are coming forward to fight drug dependence. Deepak, a local resident, does not conceal his identity. I want victims of drug addiction to make up their mind to kick the habit. These people need motivation so that they return safely from the drug trap, he said. A wholesale dealer in medicines, he fell victim to heroin addiction and lost all his earnings.

Deepak counsels such patients at Swami Vivekanand De-addiction and Rehabilitation Centre at Government Medical College in Amritsar. He is a peer educationist.

Young Navtej Singh is yet another example of selfless service. He along with his mother runs an NGO Nashiyan Virudh Lok Jagriti Sanstha. Belonging to an Army family of Sudhar Raiputa village, he says he has the spirit to fight drug addiction. He, too, has been associated with Swami Vivkanand De-addiction Centre for several years, persuading the affected youth from rural areas to join the centre. My family supports the cause. We keep aside a part of our earnings for our mission to create awareness. He was honoured at the Independence Day celebrations for his contribution.

Dr PD Garg, head Psychiatry department in Government Medical College, says NGOs and self-help groups play a vital role in the treatment of drug patients. Regular counselling is a vital part of the treatment. Involvement of families, friends and teachers is necessary, says Dr Garg. These NGOs work as link workers who identify drug users and bring them to the hospital for treatment.
Jasmine Singh in Amritsar/Tarn Taran

Ajit Singh runs a private school in Maqboolpura, a village off Amritsar. He is well aware of the notoriety linked to this village of the widows  a hated moniker that tells volumes about the drug epidemic gripping the state. The stain is difficult to wash off our collective memory despite so many positive changes in the village. Education is a basic tool helping kids from addicts families to deal with the problem. We realize such children are the prime victims of the dangerous situation, he says. He and his wife also offer vocational training to girl students so that they can earn a livelihood without being distracted to drugs.

Has it all changed, even a bit? Outside the school in the narrow lanes as the day draws on, Ajit Singhs picture of a changing Maqboolpura wears the same deserted look as it has over the past few years: a few children play with old rubber tyres, some old women sitting outside their houses, heads hanging low. But there are no young boys or men around. Go to that corner of this lane, says an elderly Deedar Singh, you would sure find some young boys huddled together, having alcoohol (adulterated spirits). Deedar says he lost his family members to drugs and has now decided to go on a hunger strike if the government doesn't listen to him. I have seen more than 200 drug-related deaths in the last one year in this village of over 10,000 people, says Deedar.

Maqboolpura is a village where addicts take all kinds of drugs, but it is the adulterated synthetic alcohol substitute developed from chemicals that has emerged the most common addiction.

During the Punjab election campaign in 2017, Aam Aadmi Party convener Arvind Kejriwal visited the village and promised to eradicate drug trafficking in two months if his party came to power. Chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh, too, had promised the same in just four-weeks. What has happened to the promises?

If anything has changed in Maqboolpura, it is the price of drugs, which has shot up in a few months. Many young boys in this village have either died because of drug overdose or they are struggling with menial jobs, barely surviving with drugs, says Deedar. He has no good words for either the school or any other effort in tackling the problem. His response is cynical: School vich bache paddey ne, unha nu ki pta nashe da, thode wade ho lain do, fer dekhna (what do the school kids know of drugs? Let them grow up and then we will see).

Deedar says absence of job opportunities has lured youngsters into drugs. A small-scale industrial hub, Focal Point, is located near Maqboolpura. It has mainly cold storages and units engaged in manufacturing spray pumps. But Maqboolpura villagers have had no facility to train them in elementary skill development so that they can apply for jobs. Training would-be workers is not our job. And even if we do have, who knows the person turns out to be an addict or a peddler. We cannot put our running business in danger, says Pratap, a local businessman.

Agriculture is out of the question as the villagers have no land holdings. A private company official gives us a blank look when we tell him that we are from Malqboolpura. They look at us with suspicion, says a villager.

Deedar and several others cite deep-rooted politician-police nexus for the never-ending drug inflow. You may see an odd naaka here, but you would never hear about the police having arrested a drug dealer. You will only hear about a poor addict getting caught with one gm chitta or for taking alcohol, says Deedar.

An elderly woman, Swaran Kaur, recently lost her son in an accident while he was ferrying drugs. People fear the wrath of politicians and the cops. Police do minute laugi, mainu andar sutan ch jey main drugs bare boleya (the police would take minutes to arrest me if I talk about drugs.

Advocate Kuljeet Singh Malawali, an RTI activist from Amritsar, says the drug situation continues to be very critical. For instance at Signal Basti, Ward No 1, Patti (Tarn Taran). Patti is located 45 km from Amritsar. As per the RTI filed by Mukhtiar Singh Patti, president, Anti Drugs Organization Punjab, Tarn Taran ranks number two in the category of highest drug addicts in Punjab with a total of 1,54,414 addicts in 2014-15. Mukhtiar Singh, a government employee, lost his 27-year-old son to drugs. He wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking to arrange a shroud of his son. First the Akalis denied rampant drug racket and substance abuse in Punjab and now the Congress is doing the same, says Mukhtiar.

As per his RTI, there are 39,54,168 people directly or indirectly affected by drug addiction in Punjab. The number is increasing with each passing day. He suggests that the death certificate should carry drug overdose in the column under 'reason for death.' He also insists on sharing the names and age of young boys who died from drug overdose recently. Many among these victims are teenagers. Such information may prompt the authorities to be more serious about destroying the drug chain.

Navpreet Kaur, a resident of the Basti, has seen her husband selling off all household items to get drugs. She sees him using injections everyday but there is nothing she can do because the private de-addiction centres demand Rs 60,000 and more while the government-run are totally useless.

Navpreet and many like her do not know how to handle this deadly problem. If we inform the police about a drug peddler, instead of catching him, they pass on the information to the peddler who then threatens and harasses us, says a woman.

Residents in Maqboolpura and Patti hold police responsible for growing substance abuse. The police side with the drug mafia and let them off the hook, says Mukhtiar.

Senior Superintendent of Police Darshan Singh Mann says people are coming forward to share information about drug availability. It is because of people's support that we smashed the biggest drug racket in Tarn Taran, where peddlers crushed capsules and added heroin into them for sale.

Mann claims to have broken the backbone of drug mafia in Patti. We have sealed four illegally running medical stores in Khemkaran. We have 89 cases registered under the NDPS Act. We recovered over 2kg heroin, 5.480kg opium, 250kg poppy husk, and 6,60,500 capsules and tablets (Alparax, and Taramadol). Ours is a continuous drive as we all know this problem cannot be rooted out in a day.
IT will be remembered that Lord Ronaldshay recently explained that his order for prohibiting the Calcutta Town Hall meeting was due to his anticipation, right or wrong, that inflammatory speeches would be made. This explanation casts an undeserved aspersion on public leaders who have never once been proved to have made or even accused of making inflammatory speeches. The Governor of Bengal was, therefore, not justified in imagining that responsible public men, who convened the meeting in question, would do anything unlawful. It at any time the speakers at a meeting made objectionable speeches, it is open to the authorities to prosecute the men and prove their offence in a law court, instead of judging the same upon one-sided representation.
Dehradun, August 18

Seventeen persons, including five children, were taken ill after chlorine gas leakage from a cylinder at a water works unit of Uttarakhand Jal Sansthan, a senior police official said.

The police rushed to the spot immediately and threw the leaking cylinder into water to neutralise it, SP (City) Pradeep Kumar Rai told PTI.

People living in the water works area, including children, mostly sleeping at that hour, were taken to different hospitals in the city after they complained of difficulty in breathing and some of them especially children even fainted, the SP (City) said. Altogether 17 persons were hospitalised of which eight were admitted to Mahanth Indresh Hospital, five to Max Hospital and four to CMI Hospital, the SP said.

However, all of them are out of danger with a majority already discharged from the hospitals, he said.

The managing director of Jan Sansthan said an inquiry was being conducted into the gas leak at the water works.

Residences of officials of the Jal Sansthan are located close to the water works at Dilaram Chawk.

Probe panel formed after patients denied treatment

A three-member committee headed by Dr Navin Baluni, Health Adviser to the CM, will probe into allegations that staff at Doon Government Medical College and Hospital denied treatment to patients who had been exposed to chlorine gas, which leaked at water works near Dila Ram Bazar.

Dr KK Tamta, CMS, Doon Government Medical College and Hospital issued show-cause notices to the Emergency Officer, a nurse and a pharmacist for dereliction of duty. I am surprised by the attitude of the staff on duty, the entire hospital has centralised oxygen supply and two separate dengue and H1N1 wards have been set up, which were empty at that time. The patients could have been kept here. I do not buy the contention of the doctor, Tamta told the Tribune.Later, a team of senior doctors, including Health Adviser Dr Navin Baluni visited the hospital following which the probe was recommended.A total of 10 patients were taken to Doon Government Medical College and Hospital, but the Emergency Medical Officer on duty refused to treat the patients stating lack of adequate beds with oxygen supply. These patients were then admitted to CMI and Indresh Hospital, which are private hospitals.Three children were still undergoing treatment this morning.  PTI/TNS

Kids sleeping at the time of incident

People living in the water works area, including children, mostly sleeping at that hour, were taken to different hospitals in the city after they complained of difficulty in breathing and some of them especially children even fainted, the SP (City) said. Altogether 17 persons were hospitalised of which eight were admitted to Mahanth Indresh Hospital, five to Max Hospital and four to CMI Hospital, the SP said. All of them are out of danger with a majority already discharged from the hospitals, he said.
Dehradun, August 18

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi today called upon party workers in to focus on Mission 2019. He stated this during a brief interaction with party leaders at Jollygrant airport here. Rahul Gandhi was in Dehradun to attend a function at the Doon School, his alma mater.

He said communal forces were trying to disturb the social fabric of the country and the time had come to fight them.

State Congress president Pritam Singh, who led the Congress leaders in welcoming Rahul Gandhi, apprised him of the political scenario in Uttarakhand and the natural disasters, which recently rockedthe state. Former Chief Minister Harish Rawat, Leader of the Opposition Indira Hridyesh, and MLAs were present to welcome Rahul.  TNS
Karachi, August 19

Ruth Katherina Martha Pfau, a German physician and nun known as Pakistans Mother Teresa was on Saturday accorded a full state funeral, a first for a Christian woman in the Muslim-majority country.

Pfau, 87, died on August 10 after spending 57 years working to eradicate leprosy, tuberculosis and other diseases in Pakistan.

Pfau, born in Leipzig in 1929, arrived in Karachi in 1960 en route to India and volunteered at a local leprosy colony.

While in Karachi, she became depressed at the state of the care given to patients whose hands and feet she said had become nutritional supplement for the rats, according to the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centres (MALC) website.

She decided to stay in Pakistan as a health care worker and established the first Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre here.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had earlier announced a state funeral for Dr Pfau, saying: The entire nation is indebted to Ruth Pfau for her selflessness and unmatched services for eradication of leprosy.

Pakistani military personnel carried the casket containing Dr Pfaus body into St Patricks Cathedral in Karachis Saddar area.

Her casket, draped in the national flag of Pakistan, was given a 19-gun salute, with contingents of all three armed forces present on the occasion.

After her final rites were performed, the coffin was taken to Gora Qabaristan, Karachis oldest graveyard, where she was laid to rest.

The burial ceremony was attended by many dignitaries, including President Mamnoon Hussain, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, Sindh Governor Muhammad Zubair and Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa.

The Foreign Office said in a statement that Dr Pfau made Pakistan her home and was a proud Pakistani.

The entire Pakistani nation pays homage to Dr Pfaus extraordinary work. She will always be fondly remembered. We have lost a national hero. May she rest in eternal peace, the statement said.

This was the second state funeral to have taken place in Pakistan in past 29 years, with the last one accorded to late philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi last year.

The prayers service for Dr Pfau was attended by hundreds of people, including staff members of the Dr Marie Adelaide centre who wept as the last rites were performed.

Sindh Chief Minister Shah later announced that the state-owned and -run Civil Hospital in Karachi would be renamed the Dr Ruth Pfau hospital in honour of the late German national who was given Pakistani citizenship in 1988.

Dr Pfau was also awarded several civil awards for her services for leprosy patients and due to her efforts the World Health Organisation declared Pakistan a leprosy-free country in 1996.

She also provided training to doctors to tackle the disease and helped Pakistan establish a National Programme for bringing this disease under control.

Her organisation now runs 157 leprosy control centres, with more than 800 staff members, according to MALC. PTI
Washington, August 18

With Stephen Bannon, the worry always was that he could be even more disruptive to President Donald Trumps White House from outside than he was within.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

In the hours following his firing on Friday, those fears seemed warranted, as the conservative voices who viewed Bannon as one of their own howled in rage over Trumps decision to fire his chief strategist.

The reaction was most notable from Breitbart News, the hard-right news site that Bannon ran before he joined Trumps presidential campaign last year.

WAR, tweeted one of the sites editors, Joel Pollak, who published a piece questioning whether Trump would now move in a more moderate direction with Bannon out of the White House.

Steve Bannon personified the Trump agenda, Pollak wrote.

Bannon rejoined Breitbart as executive chairman only hours after his firing was announced. He is now expected to use it as a platform to blast those within the White House - and perhaps Trump himself - when they dont hew to the fiercely nationalist policies Bannon advocated as an inside adviser.

As Trumps chief strategist, Bannon fought numerous battles with senior Trump aides and top Republicans in Congress over the administrations policy agenda.

Breitbart frequently backed him up, ripping establishment Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan, blaming them for obstructing Trumps agenda.

More recently, the site trained its fire on Trumps national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, after he removed officials who espoused Bannons foreign-policy world view.

In recent days, Bannon had told friends he is worth tens of millions of dollars, is a worldwide leader in the populist-nationalist movement that propelled Trump to power, and could go back to Breitbart, which he refers to as a killing machine, or perhaps other endeavors financed by the family of hedge-fund tycoon Robert Mercer, his longtime ally.

Steve has a powerful voice, and hes going to keep that voice up, said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign adviser and Bannon friend. Hes going to continue to promote policies that got Donald Trump in the White House.

Bannon had clashed with the likes of Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, and Jared Kushner, a Trump adviser and the presidents son-in-law, both of whom favored more business-friendly, mainstream economic policies on trade, taxes, and other matters.

While Bannons ouster may mean a short-term win for the relative moderates in the West Wing, those he dubbed the globalists, it does not mean that policy battles on national security, immigration and the economy will dissipate.

Trump has a shown a proclivity for seeking counsel from former advisers such as Corey Lewandowski and Newt Gingrich and from conservative pundits such as Sean Hannity. The outspoken and provocative Bannon could join their number.

And there remain other White House officials sympathetic to Bannons world view, such as domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller.

Even so, Bannons absence will be felt.

Trump is always going to be Trump on immigration, trade, and foreign policy. But Steve was the highest-ranking adviser who shared Trumps world view. With him gone, theres not a replacement for that voice in internal debates, one administration official said.

I think people have always overestimated how influential anyone can be on Trump. But without Steve constantly pushing back on every policy idea coming from the so-called globalists, its easy to see how they could have a chance to start winning more policy battles.

Mike Cernovich, an alt-right activist and personality, suggested to his more than 300,000 followers on Twitter that Bannon was sacked to ensure that the White House raises troop levels in Afghanistan, which Bannon opposed.

This is a full-on coup now, guys, Cernovich said in a posted video.

Beyond Breitbart and the alt-right, some more traditional conservative groups were also concerned about the implications of Bannons departure.

Twenty Republican grassroots leaders, including longtime activists Richard Viguerie, Jenny Beth Martin, and Ginni Thomas, wrote to Trump earlier in the week urging him to keep Bannon on.

We will miss Steve Bannon in the White House because he helped President Trump keep many of the promises he made on the campaign trail, Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, said in a statement after Bannons ouster.

But she also reiterated her support for the president, saying he is his own man.

If Bannon has anything to do with it, he will push to make sure that Trump stays that way.

But some supporters still worried that the radical agenda Bannon fought for could be at risk.

Its a sad day for the movement, Nunberg said. I think it will end up being a mistake. Reuters
Barcelona, August 18

The driver of the van that ploughed into crowds in Barcelona on Thursday, killing 13 persons, was one of five men shot dead by the police in a Catalan seaside resort hours later, two Spanish newspapers reported on Friday.

There was no immediate confirmation of the reports.

Josep Lluis Trapero, police chief in Spain's northeastern region of Catalonia, had said earlier that it was possible, but not confirmed, that the driver was among those killed. The driver abandoned the van and fled on Thursday after speeding along a pedestrianised section of Las Ramblas, the most famous boulevard in Barcelona, leaving a trail of the dead and injured.

It was the latest of a string of attacks across Europe in the past 13 months in which militants have used vehicles as weapons  a crude but deadly tactic that is near-impossible to prevent and has now killed nearly 130 people in France, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Spain.

Suspected jihadists have been behind the previous attacks. Islamic State said the perpetrators of the latest one had been responding to its call to target countries involved in a US-led coalition against the Sunni militant group.

Hours after the van rampage, the police shot dead five persons in the Catalan resort of Cambrils, 120 km down the coast from Barcelona, after they drove their car at pedestrians and police officers. The five assailants had an axe and knives in their car and wore fake explosive belts, the police said. A Spanish woman was killed in the Cambrils incident, while several other civilians and a police officer were injured.

The police have arrested four persons in connection with the attacks  three Moroccans and a citizen of Spain's North African enclave of Melilla, Trapero said. They were aged between 21 and 34, and none had a history of terrorism-related activities. Authorities have issued arrest warrants for four further suspects in connection with the two attacks, a judicial source said, declining to give their names.

La Vanguardia, a Barcelona-based newspaper which said it had obtained an internal document from the investigation, said the four being sought were all of Moroccan origin and aged between 17 and 24.

One of those being sought by police is called Moussa Oukabir, a police source said, but it was unclear what his suspected role may be. Aged 17 or 18 and of Moroccan origin, he is the younger brother of one of the men arrested on Thursday, according to Spanish media reports.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco sent his condolences to Spain, and US President Donald Trump spoke to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy from aboard Air Force One.

Police chief Trapero said the two attacks in Catalonia had been planned for some time by people operating out of the town of Alcanar, southwest of Barcelona. Alcanar was the scene of an explosion in a house shortly before midnight on Wednesday, which police are now linking to the attacks.

The van attack was the deadliest in Spain since March 2004. Of 126 people injured in Barcelona and Cambrils, 65 were still in hospital and 17 were in a critical condition. The victims came from 34 countries, ranging from France and Germany to Pakistan and the Philippines.  Reuters
Helsinki/Turku, August 19

The Finnish police said on Saturday that an 18-year-old Moroccan man arrested after knife attacks that killed two persons in the city of Turku appeared to have specifically targeted women and that the spree was being treated as terrorism-related.

The suspect arrested on Friday after being shot in the leg by police had arrived in Finland last year, they said, adding they later arrested four other Moroccan men over possible links to him.

Due to information received during the night, the Turku stabbings are now being investigated as murders with terrorist intent, Crista Granroth from the National Bureau of Investigation told a news conference.

While the identity of the victims has not been disclosed by authorities, the police said the attacker appeared to have targeted women during the stabbing spree in downtown Turku, a city of just under 200,000 people in southwest Finland. It seems that the suspect chose women as his targets, because the men who were wounded were injured when they tried to help, or prevent the attacks, Granroth said.

Both of those killed in the attack were women, as well as six of the eight wounded, she added. The two who died were Finns and an Italian and two Swedish citizens were among the injured.

Finnish broadcaster MTV, citing an unnamed source, said the main suspect had been denied asylum in Finland. The police said only that he been part of the asylum process.

Flags were at half mast on Saturday across Finland, whose Security Intelligence Service (SIS) raised the terrorism threat level in June to elevated from low, saying it had become aware of terrorism-related plans.  Reuters

8 hurt in IS-claimed Russian knife attack

Moscow: Eight persons were wounded in a knife attack in the Russian Siberian city of Surgut, local criminal investigators said on Saturday, adding that the attacker had been shot dead by the police. The militant Islamic State group, monitored in Cairo, said one of its fighters had carried out the attack, though a Russian law enforcement spokeswoman would not comment on whether police regarded the incident as terrorism related.
Beirut, August 19

The Islamic State group on Saturday claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in Spain and stabbings in Russia, in statements carried by the jihadists' propaganda agency.

Attacks by the soldiers of the caliphate in Spain... led to the deaths and wounding of more than 120 people from the states of the Crusader alliance," Amaq said in a statement on its Telegram account.

Islamic State said its fighters "ran over several Crusaders with a truck in the coastal town of Cambrils".

Eight hours after a deadly van attack on Thursday afternoon that left 13 people dead in Barcelona, an Audi A3 car rammed into pedestrians in Cambrils, 120 km (75 miles) south of Barcelona.

Police killed the five attackers, some of whom were wearing fake explosive belts.

Six civilians and a police officer were wounded in the second attack and one woman later died of her wounds, Spanish authorities said.

Amaq later also claimed an attack by a knifeman in Russia's far north who wounded seven people on Saturday before being shot dead.

"The executor of the stabbing operation in the city of Surgut in Russia is a soldier of the Islamic State," Amaq said.

Islamic State, which once controlled a self-declared "caliphate" across large parts of Iraq and Syria, has suffered major military losses in both Arab states this year.

It has called for attacks against Western and other states taking part in the US-led coalition fighting against it, as well as on Russia, which has sided with the Damascus regime in battling the jihadists.  AFP
Washington, August 18

A statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was defaced at North Carolinas Duke University and there were more arrests on Thursday over the toppling of a similar statue as communities in the US South faced a contentious debate over such divisive monuments.

The discovery came as President Donald Trump stoked the controversy over the statues, echoing white nationalists by decrying the removal of what he said were beautiful monuments to the pro-slavery Confederacy.

The statue of Lee at the Duke Chapel in Durham, North Carolina, was found early on Thursday with its nose and other facial features chipped off, the university said in a statement. Lee led the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.

The university said that surveillance camera footage was being reviewed for clues as to who was behind the attack on the statue, which stands by the chapel entrance. Security around the site is also being stepped up.

A fresh debate over Confederate symbols has roiled the United States since Saturdays violence during a protest by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, against the removal of a Lee statue in which one woman died.

Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer is due to make an announcement on Friday about the statue, public safety at future events, and the legacy of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who was killed, Signers office said in a statement.

Also in Durham, four people surrendered on Thursday to face rioting and other charges stemming from the toppling of a statue of a Confederate soldier by protesters there, the Durham County Sheriffs Office said in a statement. That brought the number arrested in connection with Mondays toppling to eight.

More than 100 people, meanwhile, staged a peaceful demonstration at the local courthouse, the sheriffs office said. Many of them claimed they were involved in Mondays action and demanded to be arrested too, according to local news reports and footage posted on social media.

Deputies did not arrest rally participants who approached them claiming responsibility for the destruction of a historical statue, the sheriffs office said in its statement.

In Helena, Montana, the city council voted on Wednesday to remove a Confederate fountain from a park. Democratic Governor Steve Bullock said the decision marked the removal of the last monument to the Confederacy in the northwest Rocky Mountains.

San Diego city officials on Wednesday also removed a plaque to Confederate President Jefferson Davis from a downtown plaza, local media said.

In Arizona, tar and feathers coated a monument for the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway, about 40 miles east of Phoenix, local TV news footage showed.  Reuters

The battle over statues
Bangkok, August 19

A South Korean man accused of duping over 20 Thai women into forced prostitution in his home country has been arrested in Bangkok, an officer said on Saturday.

Kim Hyoung Joon, 39, is believed to be part of a transnational gang funnelling Thai women into the sex trade in South Korea, and his arrest follows efforts by Bangkok and Seoul to dismantle the group.

The Thai police said Joon promised women jobs as masseuses in South Korea. But upon their arrival they were instead forced into sex work by pimps who seized their passports and blocked any attempts at escape.

More than 20 women have been lured by this gang over the past two to three years, said Songsak Raksaksakul, the deputy director of Thailands Department of Special Investigations (DSI).

Most of the victims are between ages 25 and 40, he added.

Joon was arrested at his Bangkok apartment on Thursday and charged with human trafficking.

Thai and South Korean authorities are coordinating to track down a woman who they believe was Joons Thai accomplice and has fled to a neighbouring country.

In February, South Korean police arrested eight other suspects and rescued several Thai victims.

Thailand is a notorious source, destination and transit hub for human trafficking operations that shift vulnerable women, men and children into sex work and other forms of forced labour.

In May, US authorities charged 21 people, including 10 Thai nationals, for running an international criminal enterprise that trafficked hundreds of Thai women into brothels across America. AFP
Kandahar, August 19

Taliban insurgents attacked a police checkpoint in the southern Helmand province, killing five Afghan cops, provincial police officials said.

General Abdul Ghafar Safi, the provincial police chief, says six other policemen were wounded in the attack late yesterday in Nawa district, where clashes were still underway early today.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yusouf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack.

In the neighbouring Uruzgan province, the Taliban attacked a checkpoint in the provincial capital, Tarin Kot, killing a policeman and igniting clashes that killed 15 of the insurgents, according to Dost Mohammad Nayab, spokesman for the provincial governor.

The Taliban have stepped up their attacks since the US and NATO formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014. In an open letter to US President Donald Trump last week, the insurgent group reiterated its calls for the withdrawal of all remaining US troops.  AP
Washington, August 19

Ousted White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon today said the Trump presidency that the right-wing conservatives helped make a reality is over and the President would now be moderated by the Republicans.

Bannon, who headed the controversial right-wing website Breitbart News before joining the Trump administration, also denied that he was fired from the key position.

Hours after he left the White House, 63-year-old Bannon returned to Breitbart News as its executive chairman and also chaired the companys evening editorial meeting yesterday. The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over, he told the conservative outlet Weekly Standard.

We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. Itll be something else. And therell be all kinds of fights, and therell be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over, said Bannon, who is generally perceived as the driving force behind Trumps nationalist ideology.

Bannon says that his departure was voluntary, and that he had planned it to coincide with the one-year anniversary of his joining the Trump campaign as chief executive, on August 14, 2016.

On August 7, I talked to [Chief of Staff John] Kelly and to the President, and I told them that my resignation would be effective the following Monday, on 14th, he said. The former White House chief strategist said the fight is just the beginning. I feel jacked up. Now Im free. Ive got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, its Bannon the Barbarian. I am definitely going to crush the opposition. Theres no doubt... he said.

Bannon predicted that Trump would now be moderated by the Republicans. I think theyre going to try to moderate him. I think that...his (Trumps) actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think youre going to see a lot of constraints on that. It will be much more conventional, Bannon said.

Buoyed by Bannons return, Breitbart News CEO and President Larry Solov said: Breitbarts pace of global expansion will only accelerate with Steve back. The skys the limit.

Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow said: the populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today and the magazine gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders in a brief statement did not explain the reasons for Bannons departure. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steves last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best, Sanders said.  PTI

Battles he won

Energy and environment: Bannon was a top Trump administration critic of the international Paris Climate Agreement, along with Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. They helped persuade Trump to announce in June that the US would withdraw from the pact struck in 2015 by nearly 200 countries. Trumps daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who were not fans of Bannon, wanted Washington to stay in the pact. Bannon also opposed government support of green energy, which he called madness and a carbon tax on fossil fuels.

Travel Ban: Bannon was a driving force behind Trumps travel ban. It barred US entry by people from several Muslim-majority countries. The ban was announced by Trump, but poorly implemented. It immediately caused nationwide protests and confusion and was challenged in the courts, where it is still tied up, making it so far a partial win for Bannon.

Battles he lost

Syria strike: Bannon opposed an April military strike ordered by Trump against a Syrian air base in response to what the Trump administration and US allies say was a poison gas attack by Syrias military in which scores of civilians, including many children, died. Trump has since touted his decision to carry out the strike as a bold one in contrast to former President Barack Obama.

NAFTA: In line with Bannons position, Trump initially threatened to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement. But then the President backtracked and said he was willing to renegotiate the trade pact with Canada and Mexico.
Washington, August 19

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has formally initiated an investigation of Chinas intellectual property practices under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which will seek to determine if Americas largest trading partner has been engaging in unfair practices.

After consulting with stakeholders and other government agencies, I have determined that these critical issues merit a thorough investigation. I notified the President that today I am beginning an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, Lighthizer said.

China is Americas largest trading partner, with annual trade in goods and services worth about $663 billion.

In a memorandum on August 14, President Donald Trump had directed the USTR to do so.

The memorandum had emphasised that the US is a world leader in research-and-development-intensive, high-technology goods, and that violations of intellectual property rights and other unfair technology transfers potentially threaten US firms by undermining their ability to compete fairly in the global market.

It further noted that Chinas conduct may inhibit US exports, deprive US citizens of fair remuneration for their innovations, divert American jobs to workers in China, contribute to our trade deficit with China, and otherwise undermine American manufacturing, services, and innovation.

According to USTR, the Chinese government reportedly uses a variety of tools, including opaque and discretionary administrative approval processes, joint venture requirements, foreign equity limitations, procurements, and other mechanisms to regulate or intervene in US companies operations in China, in order to require or pressure the transfer of technologies and intellectual property to Chinese companies.

Moreover, many US companies report facing vague and unwritten rules, as well as local rules that diverge from national ones, which are applied in a selective and non- transparent manner by the Chinese government officials to pressure technology transfer, it said.

Secondly, the Chinese governments acts, policies and practices reportedly deprive US companies of the ability to set market-based terms in licensing and other technology- related negotiations with Chinese companies and undermine US companies control over their technology in China.

For example, the Regulations on Technology Import and Export Administration mandate particular terms for indemnities and ownership of technology improvements for imported technology, and other measures also impose non-market terms in licensing and technology contracts.

The Chinese government reportedly directs and/or unfairly facilitates the systematic investment in, and/or acquisition of, US companies and assets by Chinese companies to obtain cutting-edge technologies and intellectual property and generate large-scale technology transfer in industries deemed important by Chinese government industrial plans, it said.

According to USTR, the investigation will consider whether the Chinese government is conducting or supporting unauthorised intrusions into US commercial computer networks or cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets, or confidential business information, and whether this conduct harms US companies or provides competitive advantages to Chinese companies or commercial sectors.

In addition to these four types of conduct, interested parties may submit for consideration information on other acts, policies and practices of China relating to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation described in the Presidents Memorandum that might be included in this investigation, and/or might be addressed through other applicable mechanisms, Lighthizer said. PTI
1. Yes. The ordinance goes against state law and is not in the best interest of the cities.

2. Yes. At the very least, it should be amended to give police officers some discretion.

3. No. Voters approved the ordinance by large majorities; the councils cant ignore that fact.

4. No. The petition process has to be given a chance to work. Leave the ordinance alone.

5. Unsure. Its hard to say how the cities should move forward regarding the ordinance.

Vote

View Results
San Francisco: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to take two months of paternity leave when his second daughter is born. Zuckerberg had also taken two months leave when his first daughter, Max, was born in 2015. Facebook offers up to four months leave for new parents. It can be split up throughout the first year of a childs birth. IANS

No to bid by Polanski rape victim to end case

Los Angeles: A judge has rejected a request by the woman who was raped by director Roman Polanski 40 years ago to have the criminal case against him dismissed, saying the court could not dismiss a case merely because it would be in the victims best interest. Samantha Geimer, who was 13 when she was sexually assaulted in 1977, said Polanski had apologised years ago. The director spent 42 days in pre-trial custody. He then fled the US. Now 84, he has never returned. Reuters

South Koreas Poop School to change name

Seoul: A South Korean elementary school whose name means shit has decided to adopt a more fragrant moniker, school officials have said. Many Korean names and words are based on Chinese characters, so when rendered in the Hangul alphabet they can have the same spelling, but multiple meanings. So is the case with Daebyun Elementary School in Busan as human faeces is first thing that comes to mind when Koreans hear the name. AFP
The Oklahoma unemployment rate climbed a tenth of a percentage point to 4.4 percent in July.

It had remained at 4.3 percent for four straight months. However, the state added about 10,200 jobs between June and July and about 18,000 jobs from July 2016 to July 2017, according to a news release from the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission.

Economist Lynn Gray with the OESC said the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesnt consider the uptick to be significant.

The BLS does not consider the rate increase to be significant in a statistical sense as the increase is mostly due to rounding. The estimated number of unemployed Oklahomans grew by 242 during the month, he wrote.

Gray also noted that the Oklahoma economy is picking up.

Oklahomas high payroll jobs mark was 1,674,800 in Jan. 2015.  Since that time we have added 20,300 in the recovery to July 2017s level of 1,667,000. If this estimate holds we would be only 7,800 jobs from a complete recovery by this measurement.
STILLWATER  A Payne County judge on Friday decided how to distribute the more than $100,000 remaining from Adacia Chambers car insurance policy.

Chambers drove into a crowd during the 2015 Oklahoma State University homecoming parade. Farmers Insurance Co. asked the judge earlier this year to choose how her liability coverage should be divided among the dozens of victims.

Associate District Judge Stephen Kistler was tasked with disbursing the money among more than 50 individuals and about a dozen medical care and insurance providers listed in the initial petition. Ultimately, 15 individuals were awarded amounts between $2,500 and $16,679.

The judge didnt disburse any money to individuals who either didnt appear for Fridays hearing, abandoned their claim or withdrew their claim.
State Rep. John Bennett, who has long attacked the Oklahoma Muslim community, apparently posted on social media that if America is removing Confederate monuments in light of the Civil War, it also should remove mosques because of 9/11.

Anna Facci, government affairs director for the Oklahoma Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, responded in a statement:

We are deeply disappointed once again to see a bigoted, anti-Muslim post from Rep. Bennett, who has wasted taxpayer money and time on blatant attacks on the Oklahoma Muslim community since 2013.

CAIR said Bennetts post has been taken down.

Bennett, R-Sallisaw, did not respond to a Tulsa World request for an interview, but he told an Oklahoma City television station that he did post the statement and that he was not taking it down.

Everyone is so politically correct (that) they focus on this instead of the real issues, he said in a statement.

These Civil War monuments should stand and be a constant reminder to never go back to that, he said. Those were dark days for America. The Civil War monuments are something we should learn from. Its absurd to try to take Civil War statues down.

We need to toughen up as Americans and do whats right for all Americans. People are causing a divide, and to take down historical monuments is way out of the ballpark ridiculousness.

The CAIR statement notes that Bennett has called Islam a cancer that needs to be cut out of the nation and that repeated attempts by CAIR members to have an open conversation with him have failed.

CAIR nationally has called removal of Confederate memorials a fitting response.
While Mondays eclipse will reduce the sun to a thin crescent in the Oklahoma sky and block roughly 90 percent of the sunlight, Tulsans will have to drive at least 290 miles north if they want to experience a total eclipse.

The northern and extreme eastern suburbs of Kansas City will see the sun almost completely blocked. But St. Joseph, Missouri, an hour north of Kansas City, sits smack in the middle of the zone of totality, a 70-mile-wide ribbon that will stretch across 14 states from Lincoln Beach, Oregon, to Charleston, South Carolina. St. Joseph, a town of less than 130,000 residents, will experience totality for nearly three minutes and expects to draw as many as half a million visitors.

This is our Super Bowl, said Beth Conway, a spokeswoman for the visitors bureau who explained that the crowds will be spread among several festivals, including one downtown and one at the towns Rosecrans Memorial Airport. We are basically being told this is our only chance to bring in that number of people, Conway said.

While Kansas City wont experience a total eclipse, officials have planned dozens of watch parties and expect tens of thousands of people to attend events at Independence Square, Union Station and City Market. State tourism officials, however, warned people back in June that hotels were getting hard to find. So anybody making last-minute plans should expect to stay well outside the zone of totality. Unless they bring a tent. Tourism websites still show several camp grounds with vacancies north of Kansas City.

They should also expect lots of traffic with the eclipse turning into a major tourist attraction for parts of Kansas and Missouri. And cell-service providers have cautioned people to expect slow service in the zone of totality, not because the eclipse itself will interfere with signals but because millions of people will be trying to send photos all at once.

In fact, 12 million people live within the zone and another 88 million live within 200 miles of it, making it the biggest public space-science event since the moon landings, said Angela Speck, a professor of astrophysics and director of astronomy at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where she is co-chairing a national task force on the eclipse.

People travel all over the world to see these things, Speck said in a recent press release from Missouri tourism officials. The difference for this particular eclipse, she said, is that there are no borders and nothing to stop anyone in the U.S. traveling to the path of totality.

Drivers will notice the eclipse in Oklahoma, too, where the sky will basically resemble dusk for several minutes during the middle of the day.

As spectacular as this once-in-a-lifetime event will be, if you happen to catch a glimpse of it while behind the wheel, by all means, dont turn your eyes away from the road, said Chuck Mai, a spokesman for AAA Oklahoma. In fact, AAA recommends staying off the road during the eclipse.

In Tulsa, the eclipse will start at 11:39 a.m. and reach maximum coverage at 1:08 p.m. before the sun completely emerges from the moons shadow at 2:37 p.m.

Significant watch parties in Tulsa will include events at Turkey Mountain at 6850 S. Elwood Ave., The Boxyard shopping center at 502 E. Third St., the Guthrie Green at 111 E. Brady St. and the Tulsa Childrens Museum at 560 N. Maybelle Ave.
Last weekends events in Virginia continue to reverberate across the nation and Oklahoma. In 2017, its hard for many Americans to believe there could be a rally involving white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klansmen. As a nation, we have made so much progress on race since the days of separate but equal and three-fifths of a man, but clearly our journey is not complete.

The supremacy of any race over another is not only immoral, its contradictory to the fundamental idea of America and our Declaration of Independence, which affirms that all men are created equal. America and the Allied forces fought and soundly defeated Nazism in World War II at a high cost to our country and the world. Over the past few weeks, I have read an excellent book on the rise of the Nazis in pre-war Germany. History proved the madness of Hitler and his Aryan ideology. No one should be so foolish to celebrate Hitlers morally depraved philosophy.

Yet, Americas foundation is rooted in free speech, freedom of association, and the right to peacefully protest, even if a belief is wrong and foolish. But, a civilized and peaceful society should be unequivocal in our denunciation and rebuke of the ideology of race supremacy, without hesitation. For those of us who believe that every person is created in the image of God and each person has inherent value, racial intolerance is especially offensive.

I was disheartened to see people of all ages participating in Charlottesvilles white supremacist rally and to see the Oklahoma 46 flag flying in the middle of the crowd. The multi-generational hatred expressed for Jews, African-Americans and a multiracial national culture was another painful reminder that race is still an issue in America. It is imperative that we keep talking about race and act on solutions that will eradicate this evil.

Thankfully, the vast majority of Americans are rightly repulsed by racial hatred. Like Heather Heyer, who was murdered in Charlottesville, many young people are quick to point out injustice and act against it. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. challenged the nation to overcome hate with love.

Breaking the chain of racism and isolation involves love and action, not just concern.

After the police shootings last summer in Dallas, Minnesota and Louisiana, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and I challenged our constituents and people all across America to address racial tensions by engaging people of another race over meals in their home. We call it Solution Sundays. A national conversation on race will not occur at a rally or a big event, since in a crowd we can talk about each other, but not really to each other. I believe that national conversations are really millions of individual family and friend conversations, typically over a meal, in our home.

If it seems too simple and obvious, let me ask you this question: When is the last time you or your family had dinner in your home with a person or family of another race? Friendships and understanding happens when we engage and learn from each others cultures and experiences. To say it simply, we will never get all our issues on the table, until we get our feet under the same table. Changing the status quo starts by changing the conversations and examples of race in our own homes.

Before serving in Congress, I served families in full-time youth ministry for more than two decades. I can say without question, that parents have the greatest influence on their childs view of the world. But, with the expansion of the internet and social media, there are unfortunately vast ways for people to be exposed to radicalization and hate-filled views. Parents should be engaged in what their kids see and participate in. You are their role model.

As a side note, there is also another cultural trend that has led many in our nation to self-segregate, not based on race, but based on ideology. After two centuries, we are making progress on race, but we seem to be rapidly losing our melting pot of ideas. Our current culture encourages people to listen only to people who share their values, philosophy and ideas, then dismiss or belittle anyone who disagrees. Social media has become a fortress for social reinforcement instead of a place to exchange ideas.

Call me old fashioned, but I believe you should have conversations with people who think different in the hope of winning them over to your side or learning how you were mistaken. Screaming angry obscenities at people simply because they think different only incites violence and hatred, it does not solve any problems.

We have different viewpoints, cultures and faiths. But, as Bill and Melinda Gates say, All lives have equal value. Valuing the life of each person, no matter their age, disability, national origin or background, can make a radical statement. Our differences are what give us a unique story to tell; a story that is part of the fabric of this nation. We should embrace and celebrate our ethnic and cultural diversity instead of using it as a wedge to divide us. An appreciation for human dignity is one of the greatest legacies we can leave for our children and grandchildren.

Congress has many important issues to address, but we cant pass legislation to force racial unity and trust. Unity and trust must be accomplished in our local communities, churches, and families. Sharing meals and spending quality time with people of a different race allows us to listen to the experiences of others. As my friend Tim Scott often says, You cant hate what you know.

On May 31 and June 1, 1921, in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, thousands of individuals were murdered, injured or unjustly incarcerated simply because of the color of their skin. Churches and homes were burned to the ground and a vibrant and entrepreneurial business district was destroyed in the worst race riot in American history. Our past longs for a present generation that will work for renewal in our national struggle against racism, equal opportunity, and justice.

To help our state and nation remember, a 1921 Tulsa Race Riot Centennial Commission has been created, of which I am a member. The commissions purpose is to teach people about the Race Riot; remember its victims and survivors; and encourage sustainable entrepreneurship in the community. While some may want to forget the Tulsa Race Riot, I believe there is something we can learn from the past as we look toward the future. In 2021, the entire nation will ask the pragmatic question, What has changed in 100 years?

It is easy to shrink back from controversial topics like race or our differences. But to ensure we never return to the racial sins of the past, we must teach, we must listen, we must lean in, we must remember, and we must engage each other as neighbors, friends and fellow Americans who love this country. Anger and ideological isolation will not solve our problems, love and knowledge will.

Hatred is not a political issue. Democrats and Republicans worked together to pass the Civil Rights Act, and it was a Republican President named Abraham Lincoln who changed the course of race relations in America forever. No one should defend the sins of our past, and we cannot wipe out the facts of history, but when the children in our community need a role model for the future, lets determine to be that role model.

Let me ask you again: When is the last time you or your family invited a person or family of another race to your home for dinner? Next Sunday, over a meal at your home, would you be part of the solution?

James Lankford, a Republican, is the junior U.S. senator from Oklahoma.
The Alaskan summer sky dims only slightly as Airmen and aircraft from a myriad of countries pack up their gear, preparing to depart for their respective homes.



Approximately 1,500 personnel and more than 100 aircraft from the United States, Japan, Republic of Korea, Denmark, Thailand and other nations participated in more than 300 flight hours of challenging training during RED FLAG-Alaska 17-2.

June 7, 2017 - Pilots listen to a mass briefing during the large force exercise Red Flag-Alaska 17-2 at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. U.S. service members from all branches and several air forces from other countries including the Royal Thai, Republic of Korea, Japan Air Self-Defense Force, Finland, Denmark and Israel's air forces. They worked together to improve their tactical fluidity as they work cohesively, executing the objective. Exercises of this nature are vital to maintaining peace and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific theatre and signifies our continued commitment to the Pacific. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Sadie Colbert) We flew a lot, said Capt. Brian Farmer, Delta-Flight Commander of the 25th Fighter Squadron and A-10 pilot. Just being able to integrate with a large force exercise and seeing the integration execution between escorting, suppression of enemy air-defenses, airlifts and everything else coming together was a great experience.



RF-A is a Pacific Air Forces-directed field training exercise for U.S. and international forces flying under simulated air combat conditions. It is conducted on the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex with air operations flown primarily out of Eielson Air Force Base and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.



Maj. Ito Kei, a pilot in the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, found value in the expansive training range. The training areas in Alaska are really huge, so we can fly with fewer restrictions compared to Japan. And in the areas, there are assets such as ground to air missiles and bombing ranges. So under this environment, we can train ourselves more practically.

June 12, 2017 - Republic of Korea Air Force, U.S. Air Force and Japan Air Self-Defense Force members begin mission planning during RED FLAG-Alaska (RF-A) 17-2 at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. RF-A is a two-week, multilateral large force exercise with many other nations, including Denmark, Finland and Israel, who participate to better overall tactics as one cohesive unit. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Sadie Colbert) The size and scope of the airspace, combined with fewer restrictions, allows pilots to realistically employ their aircraft and execute tactics as they would in war, said Maj. Zach Fennell, a 353rd Combat Training Squadron range division assistant director of operations. These things are what separates RED FLAG-Alaska from other exercises.



The expansive training range allows for a full-scale integration of all multinational forces in attendance.

June 16, 2017 - U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, Lt. Col. Ryan Ley, assigned to the 14th Fighter Squadron prepares for a flight on an F-16 during RED FLAG-Alaska 17-2 June 16, 2017, at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. RED FLAG-Alaska provides an optimal training environment in the Indo-Asia Pacific Region and focuses on improving ground, space, and cyberspace combat readiness and interoperability for U.S. and international forces. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Haley D. Phillips) One of the big lessons we get out of Red Flag is learning how to integrate with other assets, so when you go into a combat scenario its not the first time youve worked with that country, service or airframe, said U.S. Air Force Maj. Randey Kinsey, a 353rd CTS range division assistant director of operations. It gives you a better idea of what the capabilities of their personnel and their equipment.



Capt. Jun-Mo Yang, a KF-16 pilot in the Republic of Korea Air Force, echoed this sentiment. The exercise is important in the sense that we get to experience beforehand scenarios that are similar to ones that we will face during wartime. Additionally, the ROKAF and USAF pilots build friendships and trust that will be most critical in executing future combined operations.

June 19, 2017 - U.S. Air Force F-16 fighting falcon assigned to the 36th Fighter Squadron takes off during RED FLAG-Alaska 17-2 at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. RED FLAG-Alaska provides an optimal training environment in the Indo-Asia Pacific Region and focuses on improving ground, space, and cyberspace combat readiness and interoperability for U.S. and international forces. (US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Sean Carnes) The exercise, while beneficial for aircrew members of many nations, also had benefits for the flightline personnel of all the participating countries. Senior Airman Eric Florez-Meza, an F-16 avionics technician for the 36th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, said he had the experience of his professional lifetime.



Not only did I learn new things, but I also got to participate in debriefings and directly interact with the pilots, Florez-Meza said. It gave me better insight in what they do. It was an amazing experience.

June 20, 2017- U.S. Air Force Capt. Sean Knowles, A-10 Thunderbolt II pilot assigned to the 25th Fighter Squadron, is hoisted into a U.S. Air Force HH-60 Pave Hawk for a downed pilot scenario during RED FLAG-Alaska 17-2 at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. RED FLAG-Alaska provides an optimal training environment in the Indo-Asia Pacific Region and focuses on improving ground, space, and cyberspace combat readiness and interoperability for U.S. and international forces. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Haley D. Phillips) Overall, the participants enjoyed RF-A, and they thanked their Alaskan hosts for the opportunity.



Setting everything up and putting everything together with the amount of units Eielson and Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson accommodated for, I would say both bases did a really good job with this exercise, Farmer concluded. By U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Sadie Colbert

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Copyright 2017 Comment on this article | Our Valiant Troops
The majority of teenagers aren't wearing their contact lenses correctly, according to new data released by the CDC. 85% of teens admit to having at least one bad habit, meaning they are at a high risk for serious infection.

Doctor Nicole Collins says teens are busy, especially as they head off to school. "I would say adolescence as well as college age is a challenge."

New data shows at least a third of teenagers sleep in their contacts, which even one night could lead to a nasty infection. "It's just kind of a lottery, that if you are lucky enough some people come in and sleep in them, and they haven't had any challenges. But, it takes one time for you to have a really bad eye infection, and sometimes worst case scenario it could mean a corneal transplant."

While it may seem minor, you shouldn't forget to wash your hands before changing them, and don't wear them longer than you're supposed to. "Everybody has a phone these days, and our whole lives are in them, and so to just set an alarm when you put the contact lens in. If it's a two week disposable, or a monthly disposable that it alerts you to change that contact lens out as a reminder so you don't have to remember it, because there is a lot more going on in those individuals lives."

Taking good care of your contacts will prevent infections that could lead to long term problems. For teens especially, Doctor Collins says those once a year check-ups are important because they can catch other health issues before they become a problem.

Data shows a lot of teens leave their contacts in while swimming and showering, which is a bad habit too. The germs in the water can be carried into your eyes.
But the 63-year-old Bannon - a hero of the so-called "alt right" but bete noire of centrists whose departure caps one of the most disastrous weeks of the young presidency - vowed to keep fighting for Trump's agenda from outside the White House.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Bannon made clear he remained fully committed to the nationalist-populist policies that carried Trump to power.

"If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents - on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America," said the far-right firebrand.

Within hours of his departure, Breitbart News - the provocative right-wing outlet which Bannon headed before joining Trump's team - announced he had returned to his former home, as executive chairman.

"The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today," declared Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow.

Bannon's presence at the White House had been contested from the start, and with Trump under fire for insisting anti-racism protesters were equally to blame for violence at a weekend rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, the president faced renewed pressure to let him go.

Trump, who rose to political prominence by casting doubt on whether Barack Obama, America's first black president, was born in the United States, did condemn neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan on several occasions this week but many across the political spectrum say he did not go far enough.

FIVE TOP AIDES OUT

Trump was at meetings with his national security advisers at the presidential retreat Camp David to discuss the situation in Afghanistan when the White House announced that Bannon was leaving.

The White House did not specify whether he had resigned or - as was widely reported - been forced out.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."

Bannon joined the Trump campaign less than three months before the November 2016 vote and was credited with playing a major role in the upset victory over Hillary Clinton.

He went on to become the nucleus of one of several competing power centers in a chaotic West Wing, and reportedly fell into disfavor for allegedly leaking stories about colleagues who he felt did not sufficiently adhere to his populist agenda.

The president's new chief of staff, Kelly, a no-nonsense former Marine general, had reportedly warned he would not tolerate what he saw as Bannon's behind the scenes maneuvering.

And Trump was reportedly furious about an interview in which his aide contradicted his own position on North Korea.

Since taking office in January, Trump has lost five top aides: Bannon, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, press secretary Sean Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus and communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

'APOLOGISE'

The latest departure came as former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney added his voice to those criticizing the president over last weekend's events, telling Trump in a Facebook post he was facing a "defining moment" and needed to apologize "for the good of the country."

The woman whose daughter was killed when an avowed white supremacist rammed his car into protesters in Charlottesville said she would not meet with Trump following his comments equating the likes of her daughter with white supremacists.

"You can't wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying 'I'm sorry,'" Susan Bro, the mother of 32-year-old victim Heather Heyer, said in an interview on ABC.

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger warned Trump he has "a moral responsibility to send an unequivocal message that you won't stand for hate and racism."

And James Murdoch, the chief executive of 21st Century Fox whose tycoon father Rupert has been a Trump ally, pledged to donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, which combats anti-Semitism.

"What we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people," Murdoch said.

R-E-S-I-S-T

In other developments on Friday, a statue of a US Supreme Court justice who was behind a racist ruling was taken down in Maryland and all 16 members of a presidential committee on arts and the humanities resigned to protest what they called Trump's "hateful rhetoric."

The statue of justice Roger Taney is the latest monument to topple in a growing campaign to remove symbols of the pro-slavery Confederacy.

Trump called the movement "foolish" on Thursday and said US culture and history were being "ripped apart."

In the letter to Trump announcing their mass resignation, the members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities said "ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions."

The first letter of each paragraph spelled out the word "R-E-S-I-S-T."
The location of the Cai Lay Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) toll station on National Highway No 1 was appropriate, according to Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Ngoc ong.- Photo zing.vn

The official made the declaration at a feisty meeting on Thursday, which featured pointed questions from local media on the toll station in Tien Giang Province.

The toll station was temporarily suspended from operation on Tuesday due to strong opposition from drivers on August 13 and 14, only two weeks after it opened on August 1 with fees set at VN35,000 ($1.5) to VN180,000 ($7.8), depending on the vehicle.

Drivers complained that the location of the toll station was inappropriate. The station is located on National Highway No 1 but collects fees for a 12-km bypass of the Cai Lay Town and some drivers only travel on the highway not the bypass.

To protest the fees on August 13, drivers used small notes to pay the fees, causing traffic jams for hours at the toll station, reported Giao thong (Transport) online newspaper.

Speaking at the meeting, ong said the toll stations location belonged to a project with two components. The first component was to improve the quality of a 26.4-km section of National Highway No 1. The second component was to construct the 12-km bypass of Cai Lay Town.

During the approval process of the project, the ministry received approval from the provincial Peoples Committee, the provincial Peoples Council, the provincial delegation of National Assembly deputies and the Ministry of Finance for the location of the toll station, he said.

Nguyen Van Huyen, General Director of the Directorate for Roads of Viet Nam, said the ministry had to combine the two components into a project to ensure the feasibility of the project, as no investor would pay for the bypass as a separate project.

Additionally, road maintenance fees currently being collected from road users were not enough to maintain national highways, he said.

About VN10 trillion ($440 million) is collected for the road maintenance fund each year, while about VN23 trillion ($1.01 billion) is needed to maintain the national highway system, according to Huyen.

If the location of the toll station is not set here, the project would still be on paper, he said.

Reduce fees

In response to the strong opposition of drivers, the ministry on Wednesday worked with the provincial administration and decided to reduce fees by half for vehicles of transport companies in Phu Nhuan, My Thanh Nam, Binh Phu and Phu An communes in Cai Lay District from September 10. Other vehicles in the four communes will be exempt from the fees.

Therefore, the question becomes how long the payback period for the project will take, with period originally scheduled to be about six years.

Nguyen Danh Duy, head of the ministrys Public-Private Partnership Department, said the payback period would be re-calculated based on the number of vehicles using the station.

If the fees were reduced, the payback period was estimated at 12-14 years, he added.

The period would be adjusted every two years after the ministry re-checked the number of vehicles passing through the station, he said.

Still dissatisfaction

Nguyen Van Thanh, chairman of the Viet Nam Automobile Transportation Association said the project also improved the quality of the 26.4-km section of the National Highway No 1, so they established the toll station on the national highway instead of the bypass.

But its inappropriate, he said.

A BOT project meant the road was newly built, but the investor only upgraded a section and built another road then collected under the BOT project, causing the anger of road users, he said.

Furthermore, the fees were believed to be too high for a two-lane road just running 12km, at VN35,000 ($1.5) to VN180,000 ($7.8), while a 40km stretch on the Trung Luong-HCM City Highway with six lanes only costs VN40,000 ($1.7).

Thanh said road users still wanted the ministry to move the toll station to the bypass.
The wreckage of the car that Britain's Princess Diana was travelling in along with Dodi Al-Fayed, in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris in 1997. (Photo: AFP/Pierre Boussel)

The wreckage of the car that Britain's Princess Diana was travelling in along with Dodi Al-Fayed, in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris in 1997. (Photo: AFP/Pierre Boussel)

A book titled "Qui a Tue Lady Di?" (Who Killed Lady Di?), published in May, revealed that the Mercedes 280 had a previous owner and had been stolen twice before the fateful night of August 31, 1997, when Diana was killed along with her new Egyptian lover Dodi Al-Fayed.

Their chauffeur Henri Paul, who was found to have an excessive amount of alcohol as well as anti-depressants in his blood, also died, while Diana's bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones was badly injured and has little recall of the accident.

The car's first owner, advertising tycoon Eric Bousquet, bought it in 1994.

It was stolen three months later, then found in a field near Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport with signs that it had rolled several times, according to the book by journalist Jean-Michel Caradec'h.

It was deemed a "wreck" and Bousquet was reimbursed by his insurer. But the car was then overhauled and in 1996 went on sale at a Mercedes dealership in Paris.

Etoile Limousine bought it for around 40,000 (US$47,000) and then leased the car to the Ritz Hotel in Paris for use by its VIP guests.

The Ritz, owned by the Al-Fayed family, is where Diana and Dodi dined just hours before the accident.

The head of Etoile Limousine, Jean-Francois Musa, told AFP that he was told the car had "been used by a Mercedes France executive" when he bought it.

But the high-end limousine company "realised very soon that there was a problem, that the car handled very badly at speeds higher than 70 to 80 kilometres per hour (43-50 mph)," Musa said, adding that the firm sent the car back to Mercedes to resolve the problem.

SECOND THEFT

The vehicle was stolen a second time four months before the accident and then abandoned on a motorway.

It underwent 17,000 worth of repairs before rejoining the Etoile Limousine fleet and the Ritz garage where it was selected to chauffeur Diana.

The car was clocked hurtling along at between 126 and 155 kph when it entered the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris where it crashed.

Dodi's billionaire father Mohammed Al-Fayed in 2008 abandoned his bid to prove that the British secret service was behind the deaths with the blessing of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, to prevent Diana marrying a Muslim.

Al-Fayed also implicated Diana's ex-husband Prince Charles, former prime minister Tony Blair, journalists and newspaper editors.
Finnish police patrol in front of the Cenral Railway Station in Helsinki on Aug 18, 2017. (Photo: AFP/Linda Manner)

Finnish police patrol in front of the Cenral Railway Station in Helsinki on Aug 18, 2017. (Photo: AFP/Linda Manner)

Within hours the force had announced increased police patrols across the country.

"There are eight victims in the stabbing. Two dead and six injured," Turku police tweeted after the assault in a market square. A hospital official told journalists all the victims were adults.

Police shot a suspect in the thigh minutes after the attack at another square nearby, arresting him and confiscating his knife. His identity has not yet been established, police said late on Friday, nor was the motive for the attack clear.

Police described the suspect in custody as "a young man of foreign origin", providing no other details except to say they were collaborating with the Finnish Immigration Service.

While security forces wrote on Twitter that police were "looking for other possible perpetrators", police told journalists it was likely there was only one attacker.

Police assured Turku residents the city was safe on Friday evening.

The stabbing spree comes with Europe on high alert a day after drivers slammed vehicles into pedestrians in two attacks in Spain, killing at least 14 people and injuring more than 100 others. The Islamic State (IS) militant group has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack.

In Turku, images of a body covered in a white blanket were published on some online news sites, including the local daily Turun Sanomat.

POLICE PATROLS STEPPED UP

The attack took place in the heart of the port city in southwestern Finland, just after 4pm (1300 GMT) in a bustling neighbourhood.

"The perpetrator stabbed two people on the market square, one of whom came to the aid of the other," police told reporters. "Then the perpetrator left the square to a busy street and stabbed more people."

Police arrested a suspect minutes later.

One victim died at the scene and the other in hospital, police said. Bystanders had rushed to the scene to help the victims.

"I saw an old woman, I tried to help her. She was bleeding all over her body," Wali Hashi, who witnessed the attack, told AFP. "She was wounded to her neck with the knife ... I took her aside."

Another witness, who did not want to give his name, told public television YLE: "A young woman screamed really loudly at one corner of the square. We saw a man on the square, with a knife in his hand and he was waving it."

Police said the suspect in custody was being treated in hospital.

Central Turku - located about 140 kilometres (90 miles) from the capital Helsinki - was swiftly cordoned off and stores and restaurants closed.

Police also tweeted that they had raised their emergency readiness across the country after the stabbing, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more police on the streets.

"The number of patrols is being increased, information gathering is intensified," they wrote.

Investigators from Finland's National Bureau of Investigation were also examining surveillance camera footage from the scene.

'WHAT WE'VE BEEN AFRAID OF'

Prime Minister Juha Sipila tweeted that his government was "following the situation in Turku closely and the police operation underway".

Turku mayor Aleksi Randall said in a statement it was "difficult to understand that such violence would happen on this scale in Turku. "Occurrences that have been all too frequent in Europe and around the world have now arrived here, which is what we've been afraid of, too."

Police were still refusing to confirm for sure that the stabbing had been terror-related. "At this stage of our investigations we can't say if it is a matter of terrorism," police told a press conference.

In June, Finland's intelligence and security agency Supo raised the country's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second notch on a four-tier scale.

It said it saw an increased risk of an attack committed by IS. "Supo has become aware of more serious terrorism-related projects and plans in Finland," it said.

"Foreign terrorist fighters (who have) left from Finland have gained significant positions within IS in particular and have an extensive network of relations in the organisation," it said in its June assessment.

In 2012, Finland's then-prime minister Jyrki Katainen escaped a knife attack in Turku while campaigning for municipal elections.

The man who approached him carrying a knife was found to be psychologically disturbed and no charges were brought against him.
Although cryptocurrencies have been studied and argued for a long time, they are just now becoming known as financial tools t
Photo: Colin Hutton/BBC/Colin Hutton

The future is female  and very timey-wimey. Deviating from the tradition of having a male play Doctor Whos titular role, the BBC announced last month that Jodie Whittaker would be portraying the franchises 13th incarnation of the Doctor in all of her sonic-screwdriver glory. Most people were happy. Others werent. Regardless, Whittaker will be taking over the role from Peter Capaldi at the end of this years Christmas Special, and slowly but surely, previous companions on the series have been voicing their support for the casting decision. Jenna Coleman, who portrayed the feisty Clara Oswald alongside #12 Capaldi and #11 Matt Smith, has now become the latest to do just that. Jodie is such a clever actress, she told The Telegraph. I cant wait to see what she does. I just want to hear her speak. Its a really exciting time. In fact, almost all of the modern Doctor Who companions have been vocal about their happiness for Whittakers casting, as evidenced below, thanks to social media.

YES  xx  Billie Piper (@billiepiper) July 16, 2017

B O O M  Change isn't a dirty word!!!!  #Doctor13 https://t.co/TNmw2qnD1W  Freema Agyeman (@FreemaOfficial) July 16, 2017

Yes Jodie.  Arthur Darvill (@RattyBurvil) July 16, 2017

Karen Gillan, meanwhile, said she was so excited with the choice of Whittaker, while Catherine Tate advised people to get over it if they werent happy that it was a woman. The Who-niverse is strong here.
Photo: Angus Young/Channel 4

Save for the people who like to scream but what about The Office!, the history of America trying to adapt popular British television shows in recent years has been abysmal at best. One of the shows trying to defy this recent trend was the wonderful and long-running Peep Show, which Starz announced it would be adapting into an across-the-pond sitcom in 2016, minus its lead U.K. stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Peep Shows creators, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, were onboard as consulting producers to give the adaptation some clout, but despite those initial were excited! statements from the duo and Starz, there hasnt been a peep about it since the initial announcement about 13 months ago. And do you wanna know why? Because this kind of adaption is tough, folks, and Bain and Armstrong learned it the hard way. In a new interview with Digital Spy, Bain explained that Starz ultimately turned it down after failing to get Peep Show into the right groove for audiences.

I think adaptations to America are really hard, Bain explained. The exceptions  the ones that work, like The Office  are much more rare, because youre trying to change a show and keep it the same at the same time, which is quite weird. He also said that replacing the red-hot chemistry of Mitchell and Webb helped put the nail in the American coffin: With Peep Show, we wrote the characters for Mitchell and Webb  we met them first and designed some characters that theyd be funny playing. When you have to change the cast, thats a really big issue, I think. With this bust, Bain also suggested that he wont try working on any more adaptations in the future. Its like, Ive already eaten that meal once, he said, I dont necessarily want to eat it all over again.

Believe it or not, Peep Show has now tried to come overseas three times, with one of them even getting to the pilot stage with The Big Bang Theorys Johnny Galecki. (Watch it here if you dare.) Maybe take the hint, you head honchos in the TV industry: Nobody wants to see this show adapted.
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Well, this doesnt exactly come as a surprise, does it now? After a flurry of 2017 honorees voiced their intention to either skip or protest this years Kennedy Center Honors, the New York Times is reporting that President Trump and his wife, Melania, will not attend the December ceremony at all  despite the custom dictating that the presidential couple host it. Each year, the Kennedy Center honors the careers and achievements of artists who have helped shape cultural life in the United States with a weekend that includes celebrations and events, a White House statement on Saturday said. The president and first lady have decided not to participate in this years activities to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction. First lady Melania Trump, along with her husband President Donald J. Trump, extend their sincerest congratulations and well wishes to all of this years award recipients for their many accomplishments. Its like the Correspondents Dinner all over again!

In an additional statement, the Kennedy Center said that it respects the decision made today by President Trump, and that by choosing not to participate in this years Honors activities, the administration has graciously signaled its respect for the Kennedy Center and ensures the Honors gala remains a deservingly special moment for the honorees. We are grateful for this gesture.

This years Kennedy Center honorees are LL Cool J, Norman Lear, Lionel Richie, Carmen de Lavallade, and Gloria Estefan, who are all being recognized for their distinctive contributions to American culture. Lear previously commented on how he will not attend the pre-ceremony reception at the White House, owing to Trumps reluctance as president to fund the arts. Estefan, meanwhile, said she would attend but promised to make a strong statement to Trump at the ceremony, while de Lavallade will be protesting the event and not attend at all. LL Cool J and Richie have yet to publicly comment on the extent of their Kennedy Center involvement.
Whitney Richter, a familiar face at the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, has decided to resign as business development and marketing manager at the chamber to take a position at Baylor University, she said in an email.

She will become the spokesperson for the Office of the Vice Provost of Research at Baylor and will work closely with the Baylor Research and Innovation Collaborative, or BRIC.

Richter said in her letter to friends and colleagues that the BRIC is an economic development staple in the Greater Waco community, and I am eager to work collectively with you to develop an ongoing innovation economy to further drive economic impact in the region.

Richter said by phone she enjoyed her five-year tenure at the chamber and looks forward to collaborating with chamber officials and business leaders.

To some, Richter was best known for her monthly presentation of a snapshot of local economic trends by Amarillo-based economist Karr Ingham. She spoke to invited business and community leaders who gathered at the First National Bank of Central Texas, a co-sponsor of Inghams report with the Tribune-Herald.

Kris Collins, senior vice president of economic development for the Waco chamber, will present Inghams findings at future meetings.

Accounting merger

Two local accounting firms will merge effective Sept. 1, said Mike Reitmeier, president of Jaynes Reitmeier Boyd & Therrell, in a press release.

The merged practice of JRBT and Coker, Wommack & Company will employ 106 professionals and will retain the JRBT name.

The addition of Tony Wommack, Burl Coker and their team helps us to better serve our growing practice, Reitmeier said in the press release. The combination of CWC with our firm increases the pool of talent, opens access to new markets and expands our capabilities in the fast-growing niche of bank consulting services. We view this merger as a significant benefit for clients of both firms, as well as our employees.

Mission Waco

Supporters will gather at North 15th Street and Colcord Avenue on Tuesday morning to dedicate a new greenhouse for Mission Wacos Urban REAP project next to the Jubilee Food Market.

Tours start at 9:30 a.m., and ceremonies follow at 10.

The Green Mountain Energy Sun Club broke ground for the project earlier this year, and now we are just a few days away from the grand opening of Wacos first fully sustainable greenhouse, Sun Club spokeswoman Megan Talley wrote in a press release.

A $234,000 grant from the Sun Club helped Mission Waco create an aquaponics greenhouse, a solar power system, a rainwater catchment and purification system, composing capabilities and a training center next to the Jubilee Food Market, Talley said in an interview.

Speakers Tuesday will include Mission Waco executive director Jimmy Dorrell, Sun Club executive director Jason Sears, elected officials and Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce representatives.

Building permits

Several building permits for noteworthy projects were issued during the past couple of weeks, according to the local office of the Associated General Contractors of America. They include:

Retail shell for the new La Madeleine restaurant planned for Central Texas Marketplace, $500,000 estimated cost

New deck at Buzzard Billys restaurant, 100 N. Jack Kultgen Expressway, $400,000 estimated cost

Finish-out work for a new business called Cyclebar, 2324 Marketplace Drive near Central Texas Marketplace, $260,000 estimated cost

Relocate Caribbean Tan to inside Titan Fitness, 201 Hewitt Drive, Suite 135, $40,000 estimated cost

Expansion of OReilly Auto Parts at 2304 Franklin Ave., $300,000 estimated cost

Creation of office space for Kunkel Construction, 1224 Austin Ave., no estimated cost given.
Another civil trial resulting from claims following the devastating April 2013 West Fertilizer Co. explosion has been canceled, as parties continue to work to resolve lawsuits that remain pending.

The trial that was set to start Monday is at least the fourth trial date canceled in Wacos 170th State District Court because confidential settlements were reached before trial.

Judge Jim Meyer has set another trial date for Jan. 16, which will include as plaintiffs the city of West and West Rest Haven, a nursing home destroyed in the blast that left 15 dead, scores injured and a large portion of the city devastated.

Waco attorney Steve Harrison, who serves as spokesman for the plaintiffs, said about 75 percent of the 215 claims filed after the blast have been resolved.

We are looking forward to the January trial in hopes that this could bring some final resolution to all the cases, Harrison said. It has been a long process because it is a serious product liability case. The mere fact that there was such a large number of people who were killed and injured and the vast amount of property damage has resulted in a process that is longer than a typical case.

Harrison said most of the settlements have involved defendants CF Industries and El Dorado.

Defense spokesman Carlos Balido, who represents CF Industries, did not return a phone message to his office.

Besides El Dorado and CF Industries, other defendants involved in the litigation include International Chemical Co. and Adair Grain Co.

The defendants either manufactured or sold the fertilizer that caught fire and exploded, decimating the close-knit northern McLennan County community.

Those settled cases that were set for trial Monday involved a number of families whose members suffered severe injuries and property damage to their homes.

Besides the city and the nursing home, plaintiffs set for trial in January also include at least 10 insurance companies asserting subrogation claims and other residents who were hurt, Harrison said.

All 15 of the wrongful death cases have been settled, he said. Harrisons firm represented 78 plaintiffs, and all of them have been settled except for the city of West and West Rest Haven, he said.

The lawsuits allege the nitrogen-based fertilizer was defectively designed, manufactured and marketed.

They also allege that defendants were negligent in the way the product was distributed and by failing to provide adequate warnings of the fertilizers danger in the event of fire.

The defendants have denied the allegations.

Trial dates in the West cases were delayed for a time after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced last year that they determined the fire at West Fertilizer was intentionally set.

Defendants in the cases asked for delays, saying the ATF announcement could change the nature of the entire litigation and that they would have to gain access to ATF investigative files before the civil cases could proceed.

The ATF denied the requests, saying they could not divulge the product of their ongoing investigation. The defendants sued the ATF in federal court, and a federal judge ordered that some materials could be released.
Road projects are planned for all four of McLennan Countys precincts in the upcoming year, and conditions of county-maintained roads vary widely, according to the annual road report commissioners recently completed.

In addition to road condition and construction updates, the report also states more than 900 traffic signs across the county went missing or were damaged in the past year.

Road-condition ratings for the state-mandated reports are left to commissioners discretion because there are no set standards, County Administrator Dustin Chapman said.

Precinct 1

Precinct 1 is in the beginning phases of a project to widen, expand and update Surrey Ridge Road. Engineers completed the design phase and are working to secure needed right-of-way. The project is expected to cost more than $4.4 million. Surrey Ridge is one of several road projects the county if funding with a series of bonds.

Precinct 1 has 216 county maintained roads covering almost 239 miles. Paved roads cover 187 miles, and all-weather limestone gravel roads cover 52 miles, according to the report.

Precinct 1 Commissioner Kelly Snell gave the precincts roads, culverts and bridges an overall rating of fair. Snell projected $850,000 will be needed for maintenance in the upcoming fiscal year.

The report also states 257 traffic control devices have been defaced or torn down in the past year.

Work is also continuing on the 12th Street bridge, which has been down for about two years. The project is expected to cost more than $500,000, and a grant will cover most of the cost. The countys contribution is projected to be $18,000.

Crunk Bridge has also remained down for about a year and was recently approved for a Texas Department of Transportation program, with the county set to cover 3.8 percent, or $21,255, of the total cost.

Precinct 2

Precinct 2 Commissioner Lester Gibson listed several projects necessary to bring overall road conditions from passable to good.

Projects include work on Old Waco Road and County Road 578 at Tehuacana Creek.

Old Waco Road could cost about $2.3 million per mile depending on design and hurdles to construction, according to the report.

Major culvert installations are nweeded for multiple areas, including Rattlesnake Road, Kensington Road, South Carpenter Street, and East Old Axtell Road, the report states.

Precinct 2 has 220 county maintained roads covering almost 212 miles. Paved or chip-sealed roads cover 128 miles, and all-weather limestone gravel roads cover 84 miles.

Gibson projected $1.4 million will be needed for maintenance in the upcoming fiscal year.

Precinct 2 was the only precinct to not report any traffic control devices defaced or torn down.

Precinct 3

Moving Precinct 3 road conditions to higher rating will require work on several roads, including Jerry Mashek Drive, Old Dallas Road and John Nors Road.

Precinct 3 Commissioner Will Jones rated roads as passable, average or under current repair, according to the report.

Were always working on a bunch of roads out there, Jones said. Were trying to get them in as good a condition as we can.

Precinct 3 has 255 county-maintained roads covering almost 236 miles. Paved roads cover 183 miles, and all-weather limestone gravel roads cover 53 miles.

Jones projected $2.6 million will be needed for road maintenance in the upcoming fiscal year.

There were 157 traffic control devices defaced or torn down over the past year, according to the report.

Its crazy the amount of signs we go through a year, Jones said. People steal those things like crazy. Its really sad. Were constantly putting back up.

Precinct 4

Preparation has started for major work on Speegleville Road and Chapel Road in Precinct 4. The cost of both projects will be covered by the same series of bonds covering the Surrey Ridge Lane project in Precinct 1. The three projects may cost more than $30 million.

Precinct 4 has 401 county-maintained roads covering 394 miles. Paved roads cover 354 miles, and all-weather limestone gravel roads cover 40 miles.

Precinct 4 Commissioner Ben Perry said the precinct uses a software system to rate roads. The system accounts for a roads age, dates of maintenance and other factors Perry said. He rated condition of the precincts roads as good, according to the report.

My guys do a really good job of staying on top of keeping our roads in shape and in good repair, he said.

Perry projected $1.26 million will be needed for road maintenance in the upcoming fiscal year.

The report also states 500 traffic control devices were defaced or torn down in the past year.

Theres a lot of signs that come up missing, and its a huge issue, Perry said. If you dont get it replaced in a timely manner and something happens, you could have a liability.
Beverly Jean Hannon

August 25, 1922 - July 29, 2017

Beverly Jean Foster Hannon, born August 25,1922, married Fagan Hannon in 1942 in Waco, Texas. Fagan died May 14, 1979. One of four Foster kids. Parents were W.S. and Vera Foster who also lived in Waco when she got married.

Beverly attended Sul Ross, South Junior, West Junior, and graduated from Waco High in 1942. She worked at Southern Bell Telephone Co., from 1942 to 1951 where they had Hello Girls. Afterwards she transferred to the Veterans Hospital and worked there for 30 years, she was in charge of telephones. She retired March 19, 1981.

Off and on over the years she volunteered at the Waco Citizen Newspaper office helping her dad, her brother, Bill Foster and his wife, Camelia. When Beverly was about three, her dad made a deal to buy Quannah Observer, so they traveled there. After that they got in their touring car, 7 miles from Red River and drove all the way to McAllen, 7 miles from Rio Grande, where he was involved in more newspapers.

Her mother, Vera, was always at their side. Back in Waco her Dad got involved in newspaper again. Beverly was kept by her mother as she worked at the Waco Press office. All her life Beverly seemed to be called on to help others as a caregiver. Her mother-in-law was sick for 13 years. Her Dad fell ill and had to be treated at the VA in Temple. She made regular visits there. Her sister-in-law, Camelia Rentz Foster had developed heart trouble and had to have hospital care. Again, Beverly was there to help. Camelia was editor of the Waco Citizen Newspaper, so Beverly began helping out at the newspaper. At a convention in San Antonio, Camelia had a second heart attack and had to stay in the hospital for a week. This meant Beverly was going back and forth to take care of business. Camelia died at the age of 55 then things really got compounded. Her brother had to take on more duties.

Somewhere along the years Sam Naive came into the picture as a freelance photographer. Sam and Beverly became working friends, but soon he became sick and again she became as caregiver for him, as he continued to take medicine and get all kinds of help for his diabetes. In 2009 this has kept her busy, between taking care of him, helping out at the office and taking care of her two houses. With all this going on she really didn't have time to retire again and travel like she and her husband Fagan did in earlier years. Fagan liked motor sports, having a motor cycle and a boat, also had a ham radio and joined that club. They went to Indianapolis races a couple of times.

She was preceded in death by her father and mother, W.S. and Vera (Chadwick) Foster and brother Brady Foster.

Mrs. Hannon is survived by her brother in Waco, Bill Foster; and a sister in Fort Worth, Barbara Sutter; Judy and Joe Willoughby, Peggy and Jim Shaw; Bobby and Suzanne Joyce; and numerous nieces and nephews. She was a member of Highland Baptist Church. Graveside services were held for Beverly at Oakwood Cemetery with Curtis Holland as officiant.

Memorial may be made to your favorite charity.
The federal government is expected to score a $10 billion windfall over the next decade after multinational oil giant Chevron abandoned an appeal against the Australian Tax Office in the High Court.

In a settlement believed to be worth more than $1 billion, the US company's case hands Australian authorities a precedent that will shape all future tax arrangements for multinational resources companies.

The decision has been described by the Tax Office as "one of the most important decisions" in corporate tax history and brings to a close one of the largest corporate tax matters before the ATO.

"The ATO's initial estimates are that the Chevron decision will bring in more than $10 billion dollars of additional revenue over the next 10 years in relation to transfer pricing of related party financing alone," said Financial Services Minister Kelly O'Dwyer.
The Turnbull government has had plenty of faux crises in the year since it was re-elected with a majority of one, but now it has a real one on its hands.

Not that the people could care less. The Parliament this week has been a nonstop parade of pissantery. The electorate had already lost interest in Malcolm Turnbull, was uninspired by Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, and grudgingly curious about what Pauline Hanson and the fringe parties could offer. This week all three did a first-rate job of demonstrating how second-rate they are.

Turnbull confirmed his weakness by showing that he was prepared to stand down one cabinet minister over the dual citizenship matter but lacked the courage to apply the same principle to another, bigger one. Matt Canavan dumped, Barnaby Joyce defended. And to cover the failure, he sent his Foreign Affairs Minister out to confect outrage at Labor over "Kiwis under the bed", as Penny Wong put it. If Julie Bishop is, as I suggested last week, sometimes overlooked, this week she was a little overcooked.

Shorten reaffirmed that he was more interested in a fight than a fix, escalating the citizenship fight to full-on fisticuffs rather than seeking a bipartisan solution to a pan-parliamentary governance problem.
The survival prospects for the Turnbull government continue to narrow, with another key crossbench member of Parliament withdrawing support.

Rebekha Sharkie of the Nick Xenophon Team said that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull needed to stand aside from his cabinet two ministers with citizenship problems, pending a High Court ruling on their eligibility.

Ms Sharkie told Fairfax Media on Friday that "I am quite frustrated with the Prime Minister" for retaining in cabinet Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Regional Development Minister Fiona Nash.

Mr Turnbull was showing "disrespect to the Australian community" and she has decided she will no longer support the government on the survival matters of confidence and supply.
As she sheltered from the wind to eat lunch on the Cronulla beachfront, Paris Smith had a strong view about One Nation leader Pauline Hanson wearing a burqa in federal Parliament.

"An absolute joke," she said. "Disgusting and ridiculously offensive."

The 19-year-old restaurant worker, a former student at Cronulla High, was just as vocal about Senator Hanson's call for the burqa to be banned.

"People should be allowed to do what they want to do," she said. "If they want to wear a burqa, they can wear a burqa.
Ken Barber says running his SMSF has estate planning benefits. Credit:Wolter Peeters But some people have been "sold" into opening their own funds and are likely regretting it. Although SMSFs have been around for decades, several years ago the Tax Office clarified the rules about funds borrowing to invest. Since then, more trustees have been putting mortgaged investment property into their funds. It's created an opportunity for property spruikers to target DIY super fund trustees without much in super savings to borrow large amounts of money in order to buy sub-investment grade properties inside their super funds. Large fines

Starting up your own super fund can be very rewarding for those who are motivated and want to take control, but there are responsibilities. While help can be brought-in to help run the fund, the responsibilities cannot be outsourced. Fines of tens of thousands of dollars for breaches of the rules can be issued by Tax Office, which regulates SMSFs. Andrea Michaels, a lawyer and managing director of NDA Law, who specialises in tax and super, says DIY funds can be great for those who are prepared to put in the work. "But they are not for everyone," she says.

"You need to know the regulatory framework and you need to be interested and spend the time on the investment side of it also." Costs The administration costs include things such as the annual audit, tax return and SMSF Supervisory Levy. There are likely to come to about $2000 a year if using a fund administrator; likely more if using an accountant. Then there are the investment costs, which will vary greatly depending on the mix of investments.

The costs of acquiring and maintaining an investment property will be much greater than investing in direct shares, for example. Michaels says the minimum amount needed to keep the costs reasonable is probably $500,000. However, it depends. A couple of higher earners, for example, who are making contributions to their super in excess to their compulsory contributions could start with less as they will build the balance quickly, she says. Loss of protections Anyone thinking of starting their own fund should be aware that they will not have the protections provided to members of large funds.

For example, DIY super funds are outside the federal government's scheme that compensates members of a large fund in the event of theft or fraud. DIY super funds are also outside of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal, where disputes over, say, who receives a death benefit are resolved at no cost. Michaels says that the only recourse for parties to disputes concerning DIY funds is through the courts. Insurance There are potential disadvantages with DIY fund when it comes to life insurance.

Large funds are bulk buyers of death and total and permanent disability insurance, called "group" insurance. Premiums can be very low and acceptance for cover, automatic, at least up to a certain amount of cover. Buying life insurance as a trustee of a DIY fund usually means buying "personal" insurance. It's likely to be more expensive and will probably involve a medical examination or, at least, a medical history to be provided to the insurer. It could mean cover is denied. A CoreData survey of trustees of DIY funds in 2012 found many retained a small balance in their large funds to obtain the life insurance benefits.

Large funds respond Large super funds have been making direct investments, such as shares, available to their members, in part to help retain those members with higher account balances from leaving to set-up their own funds. Kirby Rappell, the research manager at SuperRatings, estimates about 45 per cent fund members are in a super fund that offers direct investments. These can include Australian shares, listed investment companies (LICs), exchange traded funds (ETFs) and term deposits. Some funds have extended the list to included managed investments in hard-to-access asset classes.

For example, the fund for the construction industry, CBUS, offers two managed funds. One invests in office, retail and industrial property. The other invests in infrastructure assets like airports, roads and ports. Wind ups It is usually not too onerous to wind up a fund but it can be complicated by interpersonal issues. Michaels says there are life's events, such as illness, divorce and separation and death, where the fund may have to be wound up. While it will be part of the split of the property it can be difficult when the two former partners are not talking to each other.

"Any decisions about the funds will need agreement and they will both have to sign the paperwork," she says. A 61-year-old retiree posted on the internet forum Whirlpool in 2015 that he had only about $50,000 left in his DIY super fund. "We know we had bad advice starting an SMSF, but the annual fees are now around $2000. We need to preserve what little money we have," he wrote. It usually does not cost very much to wind up a fund, but as he had not lodged a tax return for the fund for the previous three years, he was up for a big bill to have the fund closed. Estate planning advantages

Barber is interested in investing, takes a long view and likes to keep it simple. He's invested mostly in shares and bonds. His exposure to Australian and overseas shares is through low-cost exchange traded funds (ETFs), which are listed on the Australian sharemarket and track or mirror the returns of sharemarkets. "The main advantage for me is not so much tax, as there are other ways to do that," he says. "It's because of the neatness of having it one place and there are some estate planning advantages." Estate planning is a complex area but, basically, Barber likes the clarity and certainty for the beneficiaries of the estate that his DIY fund provides. Barber has a corporate trustee for the fund of which he and his wife are directors. It costs a little each year to maintain the corporate trustee.
Children from remote West Australian Aboriginal communities are prostituting themselves to score drugs and alcohol, a police officer has told an inquest.

Detective Sergeant Tania McKenzie, who has worked in Kununurra since 2015, gave evidence to a coronial investigation into a cluster of suicides by 13 young indigenous people in the Kimberley.

It's mistaken to think young people can't be lonely because they are surrounded by school-mates and use social media.

The officer told the inquest that kids in the region are having sex at a very young age, which becomes a "massive issue" when they become addicted to illicit substances.

"It is accepted in a lot of places you will get paid for sex," she told WA Coroner Ros Fogliani.
A third student at Perth's Waldorf School has been infected with measles the day after the health department held a free clinic offering the vaccine to students.

The school became the centre of a possible measles outbreak two weeks ago when an unvaccinated year 10 student returned from Italy with the disease, prompting the health department to warn possibly half of the students at the Steiner school had not been vaccinated.

The schools principal Jean Michael David has resigned after it was revealed he stood as a candidate for the Victorian 2014 election on an anti-vaccination platform.

Free on-site measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations were given to students on Thursday, following the resignation of the schools principal Jean Michael David after it was revealed he stood as a candidate for the Victorian 2014 election on an anti-vaccination platform.

AAP
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By The Associated Press

Aug. 19, 2017 | LOUISVILLE, KY

By The Associated Press Aug. 19, 2017 | 08:27 AM | LOUISVILLE, KY

Kentucky's Democratic Attorney General says public universities could have problems with their accreditation if the state's highest court does not rule in his favor.



Andy Beshear argued before the state Supreme Court on Friday that it was illegal for Republican Gov. Matt Bevin to abolish and replace the University of Louisville's board of trustees with an executive order last year. If the court upholds the order, Beshear said the state's public universities won't be free from the type of political influence that most accrediting bodies require.



Bevin's attorney Steve Pitt called that argument "poppycock." He asked the court to dismiss the case because the state legislature has passed a law replacing the university's board. He said the governor's order is not in effect and there




IN THIS HARVEST SEASON, TRUMP PROPOSES DRASTIC CUT-BACKS IN IMMIGRATION; MEADOWS SUPPORTS "GUEST WORKER" PROGRAMS

MEADOWS SUPPORTS "GUEST WORKER" PROGRMS FOR LOCAL AGRICULTURE

HE ALSO SUPPORTS PRESIDENT'S TRUMP'S "...MISSION TO PUT AMERICA FIRST..."

As the crop harvesting season here in Henderson County is reaching its peak hundred...if not thousands...of immigrants are helping harvest everything from apples, to beans, o tomatos hundrends of acres of in fields here in Henderson County.

And a while back, Preident Trump got the attention of local growers by proposing to cut legal immigration in the United States in half.

Understanding the impact this could have on local agriculture, WHKP News asked Western North Carolina Congressman Mark Meadows how he felt about the President's proposal to cut legal immigration back so drastically. Here is Congressman Meadow's response:

"Congressman Meadows has long believed that our country's history of legal immigration is fundamental to what America is--a nation of tremendous talent, diversity, and global competitiveness. Right at home, our immigrant community has been a critical part of Western North Carolinas economy, and we remain firmly committed to solutions such as guest worker programs that allow for a thriving labor force.

While there is a need for common sense reform to our legal immigration system, our primary focus is on solving the problem of illegal immigration through solutions like increased border security, workplace enforcement, and others. We look forward to continuing our support of the President in his mission to put America first and rebuild our economy for the forgotten men and women.

It is not clear what the next step will be in the President's plan to cut back legal immigration, but some local growersl, like local immigration reform leader Bert Lemkes of Trihistil and Van Wingerden's, have indicated to WHKP News they plan to be in Washington D.C. soon to discuss the issue and to further pursue meaningful reforms that will not cripple local agriculture...which relies heavily on immigrant labor to plant, care for, and harvest the crops that make up Henderson County's agriculural industry.

By Larry Freeman
Minnesota will move forward with the tax credits for Minnesotans working in Wisconsin, but shelve a reciprocity agreement with that state.

Last session the Legislature passed a law to provide refundable income tax credits to those residents for taxes paid in Wisconsin, while working on the a potential reciprocal agreement for Wisconsin residents working in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Department of Revenue has now judged that based on this new law, a reciprocity agreement would not be in the best interest of Minnesotans.

Department of Revenue commissioner Cynthia Bauerly noted that an agreement would force Minnesota to collect more than $105 million annually from Wisconsin since more Wisconsin residents work in Minnesota than Minnesotans work in Wisconsin  which could put Minnesota at risk of not getting paid by Wisconsin.

Rep. Greg Davids, R-Preston, who introduced the tax credit bill in the House, said he was glad to have a workable plan in place after years of attempting to renegotiate with Wisconsin without success.

The tax credits will keep around 20,000 people from paying more income taxes. Southeastern Minnesota, especially Houston County, has the largest number of people working in Wisconsin of any part of the state.

This way, people arent penalized, Davids said.

While people will still have to file two income tax returns  one of the downsides of not reaching a proper reciprocity agreement  the tax credits are already included on the tax forms and will be applicable this coming tax season.

Davids said that despite the many Minnesotan government agencies working toward an agreement, including the governors office, the Department of Revenue and the Legislature, Wisconsin just couldnt put it together with us.

Sen. Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, said in a statement after the decision that despite not reaching a reciprocity agreement, the credits were a positive, collaborative accomplishment.

While I was a strong advocate for a new income tax reciprocity agreement between the two states, the new tax credit will help these workers keep more of their hard earned money, Miller said in the statement.

The predicted cost of the tax credit will be about $8 million for the 2017 tax year. It will be paid from the states general fund and be distributed by the Department of Revenue much like a tax refund.

Around 80,000 workers travel between the states  about 56,000 are Wisconsin residents working in Minnesota and 24,000 Minnesotans who work in Wisconsin.

Lawmakers have been working at renegotiating since Gov. Tim Pawlenty ended reciprocity with Wisconsin in 2009, following years of haggling over payments and timing.

Wisconsin had been late with payments for taxes prior to Pawlenty canceling the arrangement, and since that time the states have been unable to come to an agreement to reinstate the reciprocity arrangement.

Wisconsin eased the tension in 2011 when it paid Minnesota $59.7 million.

Wisconsin had made concessions, agreeing to pay Minnesota quarterly estimates instead of a settlement after tax season, and cooperated in studies  released in 2013  of the numbers of residents crossing state lines for work and the revenue impact on both states.

In 2015, the last year they tried to negotiate a new deal, a Minnesota demand for a $6 million payment to recoup what it projected as lost revenue in a new deal was a deal-breaker.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue study in 2013, that $6 million was created when some Minnesota residents ended up paying higher taxes to the Minnesota. Minnesota has a limitation on the credit for taxes paid to other states, which Wisconsin doesnt have.

Wisconsin, for its part, said at that time it should only be required to pay the amount of income taxes from Minnesota residents, which they estimated to be $69 million.
BROWNSVILLE, Minn.  On Aug. 18, 2007, around the time Lynn and Sharon Partington tucked their grandson into bed, it started to rain.

Sheets of water pounded the roof and streamed down the Partingtons floor-to-ceiling windows. Thunder, like the steps of God, sent recurrent tremors through the darkening countryside.

It seemed all the world was drenched and trembling. But Sharon couldnt be bothered.

There was little to distinguish this storm, she thought, from the storms that come and go every summer in this part of the country. Sharon expected to wake up the next morning to find her trees and her flowers dripping themselves dry, the sun burning away in its usual place.

But it wouldnt stop raining.

Just after midnight, Lynn and Sharon got a call from the neighbors. They needed a hand at their house, in the basement. It was filling up with mud and water  and fast.

Lynn shrugged into a raincoat, grabbed a shovel and headed over.

He was halfway there when a bolt of lightning split the sky. It illuminated houses and trees and the highway that runs between the bluffs and the Mississippi River.

Then, up on the bluff, there was a crack.

I knew exactly what it was, Lynn said. I ran for my life.

Its been 10 years since the Partingtons and their riverfront dream home were swallowed up by a wave of mud, trees and debris. The mudslide left Lynn and Sharon without a home and, for a while, without a clear sense of purpose  among the families most devastated by a storm that rocked so many.

In the weeks that followed, Lynn and Sharon felt as if they were once again in their 20s, when they started their lives together with nothing but a 55 Pontiac and a pile of wedding presents.

They lost almost everything in the mudslide.

Practical things like clothes, furniture and vehicles. Sentimental things like old photos and antique clocks.

Lynn and Sharon had worked most of their lives, on teacher salaries, to build the house they had always wanted  a place reminiscent of a lodge, with a wrap-around deck and a great stone chimney.

Then, in seconds, it was gone.

Discussing the storm recently at their new place  a home that Lynn says will never truly feel like one, despite the family photos and inspirational signs hanging on the walls  Lynn and Sharon couldnt help but shake their heads and lament their losses.

We were in our 60s, and we had to start completely over, Lynn said. How do you do that?

There were so many times I wondered to myself: What was our sin? What did we do? What do we do now? said Sharon, who describes herself and her husband as loyal Christians. I wouldnt say it shook our faith, but there were all these questions.

Austin, their grandson, remains haunted by the events of that night.

Sleeping in an upstairs bedroom, he was thrust awake by a surge of air that lifted his mattress  and him  and hurled it against a wall. He was 9 years old at the time of the storm, and at 19, hes still afflicted with nightmares and flashbacks.

Hes getting better, Sharon said. But it will always be with him.

The Partingtons memories from that night are as sharp and clear as their grandsons.

Just as Lynn remembers the flash of lightning, like daylight, and the sound of the splitting bluff, Sharon remembers standing in the kitchen, watching a mass of mud rush toward her.

I was looking out the window, and everything was tan, she said. You couldnt see anything  just tan.

Sharon was launched through the air and into the living room. She landed on a coffee table and must have been knocked out, she said  the passage of time is a little hazy.

She remembers lying there, in the rubble, believing she might have been buried alive. Then, through the debris and the watery darkness, she saw a light.

Climbing what she thought was the staircase  it was actually the railing of that staircase  she reached her grandsons room. Furniture was smashed. Doors were ripped from their hinges.

Austin! she cried. Austin!

The boy wasnt in his room.

Austin! she screamed.

Sharon later learned that Lynn had returned to the house, ripped a piece of siding from a wall, and pulled his grandson to safety.

Hearing his wifes voice, Lynn called Sharon to the same opening. With some tugging, he managed to squeeze her through.

The family was together again. Intact.

But their house wasnt.

The Partingtons smashed and shredded belongings were strewn across the yard. Their roof was resting in the highway. Their great stone chimney was reduced to dust.

Miraculously, the family says, Sharon was the only one with significant injuries  fractured vertebrae and a deep cut on her right forearm. The rest of that night, for her, was a bright blur of ambulance and hospital lights.

But she wasnt alone.

Austin, the grandson she feared she had lost, spent those gauzy hours curled up next to her.

We lost all our stuff, Sharon said at the time, in a story that ran in the Daily News. But not the stuff that counts.

The Partingtons received widespread attention in the days after the flood. Their story was chronicled by local news outlets as well as CNN, ABC News and Good Morning America.

Lynn and Sharon were inundated with phone calls from family and friends. Letters  some from perfect strangers  also poured in.

There was one, Sharon can remember, from a woman who had survived Hurricane Katrina two years earlier.

Reading her letter, it was obvious that she didnt have much, Sharon said. She still gave us $100, so we could get by.

The Partingtons needed all the help they could get.

As was the case with many flood victims, none of the Partingtons losses were covered by insurance. Their house was paid off and extensively insured  they even had an add-on for earthquakes, in case the long-dormant fault lines along the Mississippi ever ruptured.

But their policy said nothing about mudslides.

Weve gotten that question so many times, Lynn said. We didnt get anything.

Instead, Lynn and Sharon watched as men shoveled up the rubble that used to be their home, watched as they loaded it onto trucks and carried it away.

For two months, they stayed with their daughter in Onalaska, picking up the pieces of their shattered lives.

Family photo albums were among the few things the slide did spare. Lynn and Sharon collected all of the photos one day and arranged them on their daughters driveway, letting the sun dry them out  a soggy collage of happier times.

What we saved amounts to peanuts, Lynn said. None of the dishes matched. Everything was wet, broken, chipped. It was just ... .

But friends and neighbors came to the aid of the Partingtons, helping the couple in ways big and small.

Lynns dentist cleaned his teeth at no charge.

A family friend let Lynn and Sharon drive his car until they could buy their own.

And the Partingtons church and community helped raise money for the couples empty pockets.

Destroyed home and all, Sharon said, we had so much to be grateful for.

In October 2007, two months after the storm, Lynn and Sharon moved into the house where they live today. They filled it with donated furniture, and planted trees and shrubs where there had been only grass.

There were no birds when we moved here, Lynn said. Now, we hear the birds and appreciate just being alive.

The Partingtons live quiet and normal lives  you wouldnt know their world was once damaged beyond repair, because they dont talk much about it.

They spend a lot of time on the Mississippi, boating and fishing and sunbathing.

They entertain their children and grandchildren.

They take vacations to Florida.

As much as she can, Sharon  who takes anxiety medication and gets nervous during thunderstorms  visits cancer patients at Gundersen Lutheran in La Crosse. She sees her life through the proper lens, she said, when she meets people with even harder lots in life.

No matter what, she said, theres always someone who has it tougher than you do.

It can be just as easy to lose perspective.

The effects of the storm are all around the Partingtons. Ever-present.

They see its strength in the bend of a floor lamp, in the dents that riddle pots and pans.

Boxes, unopened since the move, sit like cardboard monuments in the basement.

And Sharon carries with her a constant reminder  a fat, white scar that runs down her right forearm.

When it was healing, I always used to show it to Austin, she said. God allows bad things to happen in this world. But He puts the miracle of healing in all of us.

More and more, Lynn and Sharon think not about everything the slide took  but about everything the slide spared.

They have their photos. And a fleet of hand-carved loons. And a set of glassware thats been in their family for generations.

And they have their lives.

We were so lucky to spend 17 years in that house, Lynn said. Not many people get to live out their dream.
JUNEAU  Dylan Graf, a 17-year-old Beaver Dam boy, pleaded no contest Friday to charges in a threatened school shooting at Beaver Dam High School.

Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Steven Bauer found Graf guilty of a felony count of party to a crime of terrorist threats and a misdemeanor charge of unlawful use of a computerized communication system.

Bauer followed a plea agreement and placed him on a deferred prosecution agreement for the terrorist threat charge and sentenced him to a year of probation for the computer charge.

As conditions of Grafs probation, Graf must perform 25 hours of community service, maintain full-time employment or attend school full time, and pay court costs.

Graf is also not allowed to have contact with Beaver Dam Unified School District properties.

Graf and two other boys sent a Beaver Dam High School assistant principal an email that said in part, I plan to enter the proximity of your board of education tomorrow with hatred within my grasp. With a pistol in one hand, and the button that shall set off several explosive materials in the other. I hate all of youDont try and stop me; theres no way to find out who I am. I advise you to be prepared tomorrow. Ill be executing my plan during the fifth period. So long and goodnight.

The threat resulted in the entire school district being closed May 5.

Graf was charged along with two 15-year-old boys, one from Beaver Dam and another from Las Vegas. The juveniles cases are being handled in the juvenile court systems of Wisconsin and Nevada. Juvenile proceedings are not public.

Beaver Dam Schools will address threats with future students during orientation at the school, Dodge County District Attorney Kurt Klomberg said.

This incident will be an example of why it is important not to do something like this, Klomberg said.

The school district held expulsion hearings for both local boys in May.

Klomberg consulted with Superintendent Steve Vessey about possible outcomes for the offenders. Klomberg praised Vesseys decision to close the schools on the day of the threat.

The No. 1 priority of our schools is to keep students safe, Klomberg said. When it comes to the safety of our childre,n we err on the side of caution.

Defense attorney Sylvie Dahnert Dahnert said Graf never met the boy from Nevada before and encouraged the others not to go through with the plan before hanging up.

The other two boys kept calling back and calling back, and he answered the phone, Dahnert said. This is a way that he will pay back to the community, have a criminal conviction, conditions to follow for a year, but at least he wont have the lifelong stain on his record of being a convicted felon at the age of 17.

Graf made a short statement to the court, saying, I am sorry I did this to Beaver Dam schools.
A Fort Atkinson contractor pleaded no contest to a felony theft charge Friday and was ordered to serve up to three years on probation.

David K. Hall, 63, was charged with a single count of theft by contractor with a restitution amount totaling $18,682. The victim told authorities that in 2015 she had paid Hall $9,000 for work on Aug. 20 and $5,620.60 on Sept. 9, according to court documents.

It started off good, he seemed like a really nice guy, said Dawn Wiegand of Pardeeville after Fridays sentencing. Then it just started that I was seeing his work and they were really bad cuts  stuff that I could have done if I wanted to do it myself  and when I confronted him about it, he just said, Itll be fixed, itll all be fine.

Between August and September of 2015, Wiegand said that work slowed to the point that Hall was not showing up and at the same time, she was discovering that he had a record of questionable service under alternate names.

There are a lot of people who keep taking him to small claims, because he keeps it under $5,000 and they win, but he filed bankruptcy on them, said Wiegand.

The breaking point she said, was when she received a call from a lumber company saying that Hall had taken out an $8,000 loan and if payment was not made, a lien would be placed against her house. She called the Columbia County Sheriffs Office and a deputy took Hall into custody.

A Columbia County deputy spoke with employees at a Whitewater lumber company who reported that Hall ordered nearly $8,000 of building materials delivered to the home in Pardeeville. The shipment arrived Sept. 2, though the company never received payment.

I showed him my checkbook and the registry, she said of her meeting with the officer, and he said, Im going to go arrest him, thats not right.

Hall was arrested Nov. 23, 2015, and was released the next day on a signature bond.

The general contractor had contracted either a supplier or a sub-contractor and if any of them dont get paid they can file a lien against the property, said Pat Whiting, general counsel for the Associated General Contractors of Wisconsin, explaining that a property cannot be sold until outstanding accounts are settled with those parties.

Ideally, a general contractor would then have to defend against any threatened liens, according to Whiting. If youre a general contractor it is a good rule of thumb to pay your suppliers and if you are a sub-contractor or a supplier it is good to keep all your paperwork in order, because unfortunately these kinds of things do happen.

Hall appeared in court Friday and was offered a withheld sentencing with three years of probation and a possibility of early discharge if he avoids any new charges and pays restitution in full. In May, $3,000 was paid toward the debt.

I had been hoping we could continue this a little bit longer, because I have more money coming in, Hall said.

Assistant District Attorney Troy Cross said the restitution paid to date has been woefully under what had been hoped for, accounting for less than 20 percent of the total owed. Cross said Hall was given an additional 90 days to pay the full restitution and avoid a felony conviction.

It is now time for Mr. Hall to put up or shut up, said Cross. There is still quite a bit of restitution left and the state is not looking for any jail time because, frankly, I dont think it is needed yet.

Wiegand stood up in court to remind Judge W. Andrew Voigt that a lien remains on her house, preventing her from selling it or even hiring another contractor to make repairs. Originally, she had hoped to have wheelchair accessibility added so that her son could get from the houses deck to a fire pit and a splash pad in the yard.

Voigt described the situation as challenging for all those involved, though particularly for Wiegand who is stuck with her house and what she describes as partial work done by Hall that she hates.

I dont think putting you in jail is going to solve this, said Voigt to Hall.

Voigt approved the agreement as proposed with up to three years of probation depending upon restitution and DOC input.

I can tell you with a measure of certainty, as you close in on the end of those three years, said Voigt, if you still owe restitution, the Department of Corrections is going to let me know that, and we will be back here and rest assured I am likely to extend your probation as long as necessary.
Science and social studies will be reinstated at the elementary levels in the Portage Community School District this year.

Curriculum Director Peter Hibner said Thursday the district is very excited about the change that school leaders expect will strengthen hands-on learning for children in kindergarten through sixth grade.

For the past few years, what wed attempted to do was teach social studies and science content as part of our literacy block of time, Hibner said. What we found was  and our teachers did their best  that we didnt have consistent delivery of that content across all classrooms and grade levels.

Elementary students now will receive 30-minute blocks each day for social studies or science. Alternations between content  science or social studies  will vary classroom to classroom, depending on the units, buildings or teachers. One particular science unit, Hibner used as an example, might take a week or more, depending on the unit and grade level.

The change is a result of much discussion by an ad-hoc K-5 Study Committee made up of teachers from each grade level, Hibner said. To support implementation of the programs, teachers will receive training in new curriculum resources.

Science and social studies are core subject areas at the middle and high school levels, Hibner said, so the change is intended to better prepare elementary students as they advance in grades. Eliminating that block of time  done six years ago in an attempt to allow for better outcomes in reading and writing  proved challenging. Elementary teachers would infuse science and social studies into the block of time for literary instruction, though the lack of consistency among all classrooms made the process confusing.

This will be easier to do if you think about it as a teacher: its very clear for them now; theyll access the resources and focus on (the specific curriculum). Its a lot easier when that time is blocked out.

Determining if state assessments confirmed or denied that this change was needed is hard to say, Hibner said, since so many factors go into those.

Last November the Department of Public Instruction released report cards for districts that had placed Portage in the category of meets few expectations  and school leaders believe state scores arent where we want them to be across all subject areas.

Weve taken a lot of feedback from our staff, and we heard from parents too. Its hard for (parents) to comprehend: How are my kids getting this (instruction) when its not on the daily schedule? Hibner said.

Prior to the change, the way science and social studies had been taught in Portage elementary schools was hard to conceptualize for parents.

In all fairness, some kids felt they werent learning some of those outcomes wed targeted in those areas. So based on all the feedback, were very excited about (the change).

Hibner emphasized that a big factor in the change is student engagement. So if its science, he used as an example, leaders want students taking an inquiry-based approach, doing hands-on learning in labs or virtual labs, doing experiments. Likewise, in social studies leaders want students to learn through project-based learning.

In 2017-18 there will be many projects, a lot of performance tasks for kids, and Hibner said he thinks students will find this to be an exciting part of their day.

Aligned with Common Core

District Administrator Charles Poches said the changes were put in place by the Study Committee led by Hibner and did not require school board approval. Any changes that align with the Common Core, which the board approves each year, are not subject to board approval since the Common Core establishes the expectations.

This is the product of a lot of hard work by staff, Poches said. Regarding whether science and social studies had initially been taken out of elementary schools due to increased state testing requirements in reading and math, Poches said the approach then was the same as now, in terms of finding where we can make the most impact in student learning.

I just think its great that its back in there, said Board President Steve Pate. We want kids exposed to as many opportunities as possible.

This says a lot about our staff because its a huge job to make such changes, Pate added.

The numbers

Though Hibner and others in the district are not happy with state scores, that data is just one piece, Hibner said.

Our kids are capable (of doing better) and were capable of helping them perform at higher levels, he said.

Students are assessed by the state in science and social studies only during fourth and eighth grades. Recent state numbers for Portage in science and social studies werent anything extraordinary compared to the other subject areas.

Hibner noted the method of state testing has changed in recent years, going from the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concept Exam  utilized through the 2014-15 school year  to the Forward Exam in 2015-16. Numbers across the state dropped with the change.

According to DPIs WISEdash website, in 2015-16, 54 percent of Portage fourth-graders scored at or above proficient in science and 56 percent did so in social studies, outperforming statewide averages of 52 percent in science and 54 percent in social studies. That same year, 47 percent of Portage eighth-graders scored at or above proficient in science and 53 percent did so in social studies, compared with statewide numbers of 52 percent in science and 52 percent in social studies.

In 2014-15, prior to the switch to the Forward exam, 83 percent of Portage fourth-graders scored at or above proficient in science and 94 percent did so in social studies, compared with statewide numbers of 80 percent in science and 91 percent in social studies on the WKCE exam. That same year, 79 percent of Portage eighth-graders scored at or above proficient in science and 81 percent did so in social studies, compared with statewide numbers of 81 percent in science and 84 percent in social studies.

Visit wisedash.dpi.wi.gov/Dashboard/portalHome.jsp and use the WSAS drag-down menu at the top left to compare testing in individual schools side-by-side with the statewide numbers.

We attempted to teach social studies and science content as part of our literacy block of time. What we found was  and our teachers did their best  that we didnt have consistent delivery of that content across all classrooms and grade levels. Peter Hibner, Portage Community School District




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Central America includes seven nations: Nicaragua, Belize, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The region sits on an area of 196,127 square miles and has an estimated population of 46,761,485. Seven cities in the region have been identified as being most significant in the politics, economy, and culture of the region. Cities of Central America experience multiple issues related to urbanization, and these cities are struggling to cope with urban migration as rural immigrants seek better economic opportunities. For example, Tegucigalpas infrastructure is struggling to keep up with its population growth and the result is dense urbanization and poverty. Crime is another concern in Central America. San Pedro Sula held the title of the murder capital of the world, until Caracas assumed the title in early 2016. The city had a total of 187 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2013.

7. San Jose

San Jose is the capital and the largest city in Costa Rica. The city is located in the central valley of the western province of Costa Rica, and the name San Jose translates to Saint Joseph, in honor of Joseph of Nazareth. The city is the seat of the national government of Costa Rica and the focal point of economic and political activity in the country. The city is also the country's major transportation hub.

According to 2013 figures, the city had a population of 1, 275,000 inhabitants, which is 30% of Costa Rica's total population. The metropolitan area of San Jose covers an area of 17.2 square miles. San Jose is one of the safest and least violent cities in Central America. In 2016 the was named the Ibero-American culture capital. According to the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index 2012, San Jose was named the 6th most important destination in Latin America, and was also ranked as the 15th fastest growing city by cross-border spending. The city of San Jose is made up of 11 districts, also known locally as distritos, and they include Zapote, San Sebastian, San Francisco de Dos Rios, Pavas, Merced, Redonda, Uruca, Mata, Hospital, Hatillo, Carmen, and Catedral. These districts are further subdivided into smaller neighborhoods that are locally known as barrios.

6. Panama City

Panama City is the largest and the capital city of the Republic of Panama, and has a population of 1,400,000, which represents about 37% of the countrys total population. The city was founded in the 16th century by Pedro Arias Davilla, a Spanish conquistador, and served as the starting point for subsequent expeditions that conquered the Inca Empire in Peru. The city also served as a stopover point in one of the most significant trade routes in the history of the American continent. Currently, the city is the administrative and political center in the country, and is located at the entrance of Panama Canal, on the Pacific Ocean. Panama City is also an international hub for commerce and banking, and is widely known as one of three "Beta level cities" in Central America. Tocumen International Airport in Panama City is the busiest and largest in the whole of Central America, which offers daily schedules to major cities around the world. International Living Magazine listed the city among the top five places to retire. The city was also selected as the American capital of culture in 2003, alongside Curitiba in Brazil.

5. San Pedro Sula

San Pedro Sula has a population of 1,600,000, which represents approximately 21% of the total population of Honduras. The city was founded in 1536, but did not experience high population growth until the 19th century. The city was responsible for two-thirds of Honduras' GDP in 2011. San Pedro Sula, along with the rest of the nation, is yet to fully recover from the severe devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

4. Tegucigalpa

Tegucigalpa has a population of 1,819,000, which represents about 24% of the total population of Honduras. The city's history began in 1578, when it was claimed by Spanish explorers. It was adopted as the capital on October 30, 1880. Tegucigalpa's economy features commerce, tobacco, sugar, construction, textiles, and services. The industrial products produced in the region include plastics, ceramics, tires, plywood, farm machinery, metalwork, glass, paper, and lumber. The city hosts both local and international financial institutions.

3. Managua

A total of 1,918,000 residents lived in Managua in 2012. That population represents 34% of Nicaragua's total population. Managua's history dates back to 1819, when it was established as a Pre-Columbian fishing settlement. After adopted as Nicaragua's capital in 1852, the city experienced extensive urbanization and developed into a hub for services, governance, and infrastructure. After it was damaged by floods, an earthquake, and a massive fire in the 1936, the city was rebuilt. Today, Managua has governmental stations, apartments, galleries, museums, monuments, and squares.

2. San Salvador

San Salvador has a population of 2,415,217, which makes up 39% of El Salvador's total population. The city's metropolitan area attracts 70% of the country's public and private investment. The economy of San Salvador is primarily dependent on the retail and service sectors. Since the U.S. dollar circulates in the El Salvadorian economy, the city receives significant foreign investment. The city operates as the financial, political, educational, and cultural hub of El Salvador.

1. Guatemala City

Guatemala City has a population of 5,700,000, making it Guatemala's largest city. Its population accounts for 26% of Guatemala's total population, and ranks as the most populous Central American city. The origins of the Guatemala City region can be traced back to when the Mayans established a city at Kaminaljuyu, while Spanish colonizers built a small town, which was named the capital city in 1775. After Central America's independence from Spain, the city was made the capital of the United Provinces of Central America in 1821. Presently, the city's thriving economy facilitates the immigration of populations from rural areas of Guatemala. In addition to the home of the country's central bank, Guatemala City has headquarters of banks such as CitiBank, Banrural, Banco Promerica, and Banco Internacional. The city boasts of the largest market for goods and services in the country, and thus attracts large public and private investments.
Eric Camilli held a comfortable lead in WRC 2 at ADAC Rallye Deutschland on Saturday night.

The Frenchman recovered from clutch problems in his Ford Fiesta yesterday to move ahead of long-time leader Jan Kopecky when the Czech driver lost time with a puncture. Camilli starts Sundays finale with a 1min 12.2sec advantage.



Kopecky had led the asphalt encounter since the opening kilometre on Thursday night but had to stop and change a puncture during this afternoons speed test on the abrasive Panzerplatte tank training roads.



It cost more than 90sec and the Skoda Fabia R5 driver dropped behind Camilli and title-chasing team-mate Pontus Tidemand. He clawed back to second during the final two tests, despite a further flat.



Despite his big lead, Ford Fiesta R5 driver Camilli was cautious. Were happy to lead tonight but we need to continue in the same way tomorrow. Its not finished, he said.



Kopecky headed Tidemand by 11.2sec and if the Swede holds position he will clinch the WRCs principal support category title at tomorrow afternoons finish. He also punctured, the flailing rubber damaging his Fabias bodywork as he pressed on to the finish.



Gus Greensmith was fourth, the Fiesta man climbing from seventh during a clean run save for two overshoots. Quentin Gilbert was fifth in another Fabia, despite a spin, with Teemu Suninen completing the top six, 6.5sec behind the Frenchman.



Suninen was another to puncture. The Finn lost almost 2min 30sec and his title hopes are hanging by a thread.



Local hero Marijan Griebel fell back after puncturing and crashing into a ditch, while Pierre-Louis Loubet also spun off the road and Yoann Bonato was sidelined with a broken clutch.



Head to WRC+ to see the latest onboard and video reports from ADAC Rallye Deutschland.

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Indian supporters of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) spoke to students in city colleges during the campaign for a forthcoming public meeting in Chennai, the Tamil Nadu state capital, on August 27. The meeting will discuss the growing danger of war against China in South Asia and the political strategy required to mobilise the international working class to prevent this catastrophe.

Across the Indo-Pacific region, the US is accelerating its political provocations and military build-up against China. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has transformed his country into a frontline state against China and further integrated the military into Washingtons geo-strategic agenda.

American warplanes and warships are now permitted to use Indias military bases and ports and the Modi government is backing aggressive US operations against China in the South China Sea. India has also expanded its relations with key US allies in the Asia Pacific, such as Japan and Australia.

Tensions have also intensified between India and China, both nuclear-armed powers. The recent intervention by Indian troops to stop road expansion work by Chinese workers in the Doklam plateau, a disputed border region between Bhutan and China, poses the danger of military conflict.

ICFI supporters campaigned at a number of Chennai colleges, including Presidency, Pachaiyappa and the Ambedkar Arts College, as well as several workplaces and neighbourhoods.

There is a growing hostility among students to the US-led war drive and New Delhis support for Washington. Students opposed the huge amounts of money being spent by Modis Bharatiya Janata Party-led government on the military build-up against China and Pakistan and the intensifying attacks on the living standards of working people.

Robin, a Presidency College student, said: I oppose this war drive by the Modi government. If the war were to erupt, it would lead to devastating consequences. The government claims that any war would be to defend the Indian people but what we see is an increasing deterioration in peoples living standards through government cuts to subsidies for food, education and health care.

How can the government talk about defending the people when it is intensifying its attacks on the people? They want to divert the anti-government opposition of the people through this war mongering.

Robin said no Indian political party was discussing the dangerous consequences of the war. He wanted to know why the ICFI was the only organisation fighting against the imperialist war drive. After campaigners told him about Socialism and the Fight against War, the ICFIs statement in 2016, Robin said he welcomed the fight for a worldwide anti-war movement and agreed to attend the public meeting.

Praveen told ICFI supporters that he was concerned by the escalating government attacks on freedom of speech. When students protest they are charged under the Goondas Act and if you fight for the cause of the people you face sedition charges. All power is in the hands of the government.

The Goondas Act, which was imposed by British colonial rulers in 1923, gives the Indian government and police extraordinary powers to detain anyone deemed to be a member of a gang and hold them without bail for up to a year. The legislation was used to suppress anti-colonial struggles.

Prem, a first-year BCom student, said: If war broke out [between India and China] the people of both countries would suffer because it has the potential to become a catastrophic nuclear world war. Im aware of Indias close military relations with America and also learnt about the Malabar naval exercises that India jointly carries out with America and Japan.

Prem denounced the Modi governments social attacks on Indian workers and the poor. He referred to the demonetisation of 1,000- and 500-rupee notes, and the governments false promises to give 1.5 million rupees to every poor man in India after it confiscated black money. He said Indias Congress Party and the BJP both served the interests of the capitalists.

Hari, a BSC Botany student, said: I oppose war because innocent people will be killed. When the US dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, innocent people were killed.

Hari also opposed the government attack on democratic rights and added: When we supported Jallikattu [a protest against the banning of centuries-old bull-taming contests], the police brutally attacked us. Also Valamathi, a female student, was arrested under the draconian Goondas Act because she campaigned to mobilise students and people against the harmful Hydro Carbon project in Neduvasal village, in southern Tamil Nadu.

Payas, a first-year BSC student at Ambedkar Arts College, said: I strongly oppose this war drive. Unlike the previous war, which was fought with conventional methods and using rifles and military tanks, this impending war will involve nuclear weapons and cause enormous destruction. The people will be forced to pay for this war through additional taxes.

Payas opposed the Modi governments discriminatory attitudes toward Muslims. Muslims are being told that they cannot eat beef, he said. Modi should not interfere in the very fundamental rights of the people. What people want to eat is their choice.

Ganesh also spoke out against war. I think you are right in calling for the unity of Indian, Chinese and Pakistani workers against their respective capitalist governments, he said. Im also against the recent police killings of farmers in Madya Pradesh and the government attacks on Muslims and Dalits.

Jaheer, a BA Economics student and a member of the DYFI, the youth wing of the Stalinist Communist Party Marxist, said: You call for the unity of Indian workers with the international working class but the DYFI has declared support to the Indian government in the event of a war with China. Id like to know more about your world party.

Sreenivasan, a Pachaiyappa College student, explained that he learnt about the growing war tensions between India and China, and India and Pakistan, and the joint naval exercises by India, Japan and America through the media. I agree that the Indian and Chinese armies are not seeking to protect the interests of the people in both countries.

We see before our eyes how the police ruthlessly attack students and people when they get involved in protests. Indeed if the police could not handle the situation, they would bring in the military to suppress these struggles.

Ayiyanar, another Pachaiyappa College student, said India and China boast about their strong armies but any future war will not only be a catastrophe in this region but for other countries in the world as well. The people in the region must unite to stop this happening, he said.

The Chennai public meetingOppose the US-led imperialist war drive!will further develop this crucial discussion.

Date and time: August 27, 10 a.m.

Address: First Floor, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy-Nagammai Education and Research Trust (opposite the HPM Paradise Kalyana Mahal)

277/2 Chennai-Thiruvalluvar High Road, Ambattur, Chennai-600098
Ford Motor Company recently settled harassment claims with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) for $10.1 million over complaints by female autoworkers that they were sexually and racially harassed by company supervisors and union officials at two Chicago-area plants.

For the second time in two decades, Ford faces a class-action lawsuit by female autoworkers over an environment where they routinely faced sexual harassment, intimidation and violence. While the company ignored their claims, the workers also faced retaliation from management as well as from officials of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 551 if they complained or reported harassment incidents to higher-ups or the EEOC.

The conditions faced by these workers today hearken back to the 1930s in the United Statesprior to the formation of the UAW and the mass industrial unionswhen workers labored under conditions of extreme exploitation and industrial slavery. In the 1930s, female autoworkers were often sexually assaulted or propositioned for sexual favors to ensure job security or advancement. Today, the unions such as the UAW work hand-in-glove with management in recreating such an oppressive climate of industrial servitude, sexual harassment and violence.

While the EEOC noted that there was systematic sexual and racial harassment of female workers at Fords Chicago assembly and stamping plants, and that such conduct violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the settlement it worked out with Ford is essentially toothless.

The EEOC case is separate from the womens lawsuit. In fact, Ford is citing the EEOC settlement in an attempt to quash the lawsuit. Keith Hunt, the attorney representing the plaintiffs in the case, told the Chicago Tribune that the settlement amounted to little more than a backdoor deal to circumvent the class-action process.

The lawsuit filed by Hunt in November 2014, virtually identical to one he filed against Ford in the late 1990s, included more than 30 women. Hunt presented evidence that sought to demonstrate a pattern and practice of abuse at the two Chicago Ford plants from 2012 to 2014. During that period, more than 1,500 female workers who worked at both the assembly plant in Chicagos south side and the stamping plant in Chicago Heights were subject to sexual abuse and racial harassment.

The suit notes that, in 1997, 14 women filed a class-action lawsuit against Ford. In 1999, the EEOC attempted to reach a settlement with Ford requiring the company to pay $9 million towards training and compensation for the victims. The EEOC created a Conciliation Agreement that recommended workplace monitoring for three years.

However, the workplace atmosphere of harassment did not change in the years following the first settlement. The lawsuit states bluntly: Ford is a recidivist offender that has willfully ignored the issues and evidence raised in prior litigation and EEOC findings and has failed to take measures to eradicate known discrimination and harassment from the workplace.

The pattern and practice of abuses against female workers detailed in the suit included sexual assault and attempted rape; requests for sexual favors in exchange for job advancement; unwelcome touching, groping and sexual advances; being subjected to jeers, lewd comments and sexual suggestions as well as abusive and misogynistic comments against female workers by supervisors; and pornographic imagery displayed in the plant that was humiliating to women.

Additionally, male supervisors and union officials offered better tasks to female employees who submitted to sexual advances and all kinds of punishment and retaliation if they did not submit. The suit claims that Ford was aware of and routinely turned a blind eye to these abuses.

Supervisors were also known to have organized parties on- and off-site where strippers and prostitutes were present, and managers engaged in sexual and lewd acts in front of other employees. Tickets were also sold to such events during working hours. The suit also notes that such practices go back as far as the 1980s and 1990s, when managers used their offices, parking lots and the roofs of the plants to engage in sexual activity with female workers.

The sexual exploitation of employees, the suit adds, also created a tense atmosphere for workers.

The conflict of interest was so brazen that superintendents and human resource managers routinely engaged in sexual acts at work, making it impossible for women to report sexual harassment or discrimination by supervisors. Some workers who complained to the EEOC were warned that if they did not stop complaining they would be terminated.

Effectively, Ford and the union created a regime of retaliation against workers who complained. Various forms of retaliation detailed in the suit included threats and acts of termination; denial of overtime; denial of bathroom breaks; being forced under the supervision of their sexual abusers; being sent home without pay and suspension of their shifts; less desirable work offered as punishment; not providing workers with adequate medical care when they are injured; increased performance scrutiny; being moved to less desirable shifts; surveillance and stalking of workers homes by union and management officials; and assaults and physical violence. The hostile work environment has affected more than 1,000 women.

Among the cases cited in the lawsuit, Jacqueline Barron was denied bathroom breaks when she denied the sexual requests of a supervisor. When Barron complained, she was told to watch her back. When she complained to Natalie Dahrenger in Labor Relations, Dahrenger refused to listen to her and told her to return to work. When Ford became aware that Barron had filed a sexual harassment charge in January 2014, they fired her. In addition to losing her job and income, she continued to suffer from emotional anxiety and psychological distress.

Among those included in the suit were leading union officials such as Allen Coby Millender, chairman of UAW Local 551. Millender was accused of sexually assaulting numerous female autoworkers in the plant. When Millender discovered that autoworker Helen Allen had brought a lawsuit against Ford and named him, he publicly shamed her in front of over 200 workers, many of them union bureaucrats. Following this incident, Allen faced vandalism of her car and at her lunch area, with images of phalluses drawn to harass and humiliate her.

Millender also threatened to move a worker to an overnight shift if she did not lunch with him in his office and submit to his sexual advances. Millender was temporarily suspended by Ford following the suit, but was reinstated with the help of UAW Vice-President Jimmy Settles in 2015.

Millender would go on to represent Local 551 in bargaining talks in which the UAW rammed through a sellout contract against a near-rebellion by autoworkers in 2015. Ford workers at the plant rejected the contract by more than two to one. The UAW used lies, intimidation and voter fraud to push through the concessions contract and impose the dictates of management upon workers, including the maintenance of the hated two-tier system. Since then, autoworkers throughout the country have faced speed-ups, long hours and further exploitation by the auto companies.

The sexual assault of female workers is part of a broader assault on autoworkers in which they live under conditions of a management dictatorship in the workplace. When women reported they were being abused, supervisors and Labor Relations figures frankly replied, Ford doesnt care about workplace relations. Ford only cares about the bottom line.

A worker with five years at Chicago Ford spoke to the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter, noting, I dont think Ford or the UAW cares about sexual harassment. There was an incident I witnessed where a couple had an argument and the guy hit the woman and then followed her to her department and hit her in front of a supervisor.

This was a little bit after Ford said it had a zero tolerance policy. The guy was eventually reinstated and came back with all his seniority. And now all of a sudden he is a group leader. What does that say about the claim they are a zero tolerance company if he can do that and they bring him back?

There were rumors of union reps and higher-up union officials taking advantage of female employees. There is a general feeling of disgust that you are somehow part of all this. It is BS that this is going on. There is this whole image of Ford as a company, but the reality is different.

He spoke about the conditions at Ford, The union just seems to be a secretary for the company. When it comes to the issues that matter, they are not fighting. They have a bargaining team that doesnt even bargain for us.

It is not a two-tier system any more, it is six tiers. You have the legacy workers, then the in progression workers. Then there are long-term supplemental and short-term supplemental And they also have part-time supplemental, who work three days a week.

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[15 July 2015]
In a gratuitous anti-Muslim stunt that provoked widespread public revulsion, Pauline Hanson, leader of the xenophobic One Nation party, wore a burka during question time in the Australian Senate on Thursday.

Hansons donning of the full-length Islamic covering was the crudest expression of a protracted campaign, spearheaded by the major political parties, to demonise Muslims, as part of a broader effort to whip-up nationalism and jingoistic backwardness.

In the Senate, Hanson reiterated her partys call for the burka to be banned. She repeated her unsubstantiated claims that the veil was a security threat and attempted to link the garment to terrorism.

Underscoring the transparently racist character of One Nations anti-Muslim agitation, Hanson told Sky News the burka endangered social cohesion and was confronting and un-Australian.

No less obscene than Hansons actions was the response of prominent representatives of the Liberal-National Coalition government and the Labor Party.

Political figures who have witch-hunted Muslims, refugees and other oppressed sections of the working classin order to legitimise Australias participation in US-led wars in the Middle-East, justify the erosion of basic democratic rights, and divert attention from the social crisis caused by their pro-business policiesadopted a hypocritical posture of moral outrage.

Leading the way was Attorney-General George Brandis, who decried Hansons actions as appalling. Outlining his real concerns, Brandis told the Senate that as attorney-general, intelligence and police officials had told him it is vital for their intelligence and law-enforcement work that they work cooperatively with the Muslim community.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull echoed Brandiss comments at a media conference on Friday. Our best allies, our indispensable allies in the battle against Islamist extremism, against Islamist terrorism, is the Muslim community, Turnbull stated.

Standing alongside Turnbull was the director-general of security, Duncan Lewis, an ex-military officer who commands the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). [T]he association we have with the broader Muslim community, is central to our business, Lewis said.

In other words, the governments main fear is that by crudely demonstrating the anti-Muslim sentiment promoted by the entire political establishment, Hanson is jeopardising the operations conducted by successive governments to cultivate a network of community leaders, police informants and undercover agents to monitor, harass and persecute workers and young people of the Islamic faith.

Hansons stunt also threatens to create difficulties for the governments collaboration with Muslim-majority states, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia, in the US-led predatory wars in the Middle-East, including the illegal bombing campaign against Syria.

Brandiss comments in the Senate were universally hailed by his nominal political opponents. Labor and Greens senators responded with a standing ovation.

Labor Senator Penny Wong congratulated Brandis. Greens leader Richard Di Natale told the attorney-general: On behalf of the Australian Greens, I want to thank you for showing leadership in this chamber.

The absurdity of these congratulations is made plain by that fact that three years ago, Brandis declared in the Senate that people do have a right to be bigots, during debates on racial discrimination legislation.

Those comments in 2014 were part of an ongoing promotion of racism and backwardness by the government, especially directed against Muslims, which is aimed at cultivating a right-wing base of support to offset its deepening political crisis.

More broadly, for more than 15 years, Labor and Liberal-National governments alike have used the bogus war on terror as the pretext for participating in criminal wars in the Middle East, and eviscerating fundamental civil liberties.

The same Coalition and Labor politicians who feigned outrage at Hansons actions are responsible for such crimes as the 16-year occupation of Afghanistan and the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was based on lies and resulted in the deaths of up to a million civilians.

Labor and Coalition governments also have pushed through raft after raft of anti-terror laws. These have handed the police and the authorities powers to carry out raids and detentions without charge, abrogate the rights to assembly and protest, and spy on virtually all communications.

This has been accompanied by continuous scare campaigns waged by the major parties in collaboration with the gutter press over the alleged dangers posed by Islamic extremism. These campaigns have amounted to the demonisation of the entire Muslim population.

At the same time, the policies of Labor and the Coalition have transformed Australia into a world model for governments seeking to persecute refugees and prevent them from exercising their right to seek asylum. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton last year summed up the filth accompanying this policy. He slandered refugees as illiterate and innumerate, claiming they would languish on unemployment benefits and steal Australian jobs.

While the Greens claim to oppose aspects of this agenda, Di Natales fawning response to Brandis underscores their support for the entire framework of national security. The Greens have enabled the passage of key aspects of the anti-terror legislation, and propped up the 2010-2013 Gillard Labor government as it expanded the powers of the police, deepened Australian involvement in US-led wars and ramped-up the persecution of refugees.

Another aspect of the glaring hypocrisy in response to Hanson is that both Labor and the Coalition closely collaborate with One Nation. The xenophobic party has been the most consistent backer of the governments legislative agenda, voting for 74 percent of its policies between August and December last year. This support has been crucial because the government lacks a majority in the Senate, the upper house of parliament.

This week, the government reportedly signed a deal with One Nation to push through media reform legislation to boost the profits of corporate media empires. This will include a competitive neutrality inquiry into the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, demanded by One Nation, aimed at forcing the public broadcaster to toe the government line and give greater weight to Hansons xenophobic statements.

Labor also has worked closely with Hanson. In February, Hanson said she was in constant contact with Labor leader Bill Shorten, saying: He picks my brains for policies. Labor has campaigned around the slogan of Australians First this year, scapegoating foreign workers for mounting poverty and joblessness, and calling for the expansion of reactionary tariffs and other economic nationalist measures.

The record makes clear that Hanson is the diseased by-product of the policies implemented by Labor and the Coalition.

To the extent that One Nation has been able to win limited support from the most disoriented and oppressed sections of the population, that has been the result of incessant media promotion, and Hansons ability to capitalise on opposition to the pro-business agenda imposed by successive governments.

At the same time, the emergence of right-wing and populist parties, seeking to divert anger over inequality and poverty into reactionary and nationalist channels, is a result of the deepening social crisis. Responsibility for this lies above all with Labor and the corporatised trade unions, which have overseen an unending assault on the jobs, wages and social conditions of the working class over the past three decades.

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[16 September 2016]
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) will hold a public meeting in Jaffna on August 26 to discuss the degeneration and crisis of the Tamil bourgeois nationalist parties and the necessity to build a revolutionary party based on socialist internationalism.

All the Tamil capitalist partiesthe Tamil National Alliance (TNA), Tamil Peoples National Front, Tamil Peoples Forum, Eelam Peoples Democratic Party and Tamil United Liberation Fronthave been discredited among working people.

The TNA acts as a de-facto partner of the pro-American Sri Lankan government and supports US and Indian geo-political interests, with the other Tamil political parties following the same line. Terrified by working-class unrest, the TNA has united with Colombo, which has used military-police repression against striking workers, as highlighted during the recent petroleum workers strike. In the islands North and the East, the TNA backs the military occupation and the governments repressive measures.

Nervous about what this exposes about Tamil nationalism, some leaders of these parties and the media have begun a debate about the need for a new Tamil political leadership. This is aimed creating fresh political traps for workers, poor and youth.

Workers and youth must break from every faction of the Tamil bourgeoisie, reject Tamil nationalism and learn lessons from the defeat of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The SEP and its forerunner, the Revolutionary Communist League, has a long record of fighting against anti-Tamil discrimination and the Colombo governments wars. The democratic rights of Tamil people can be established only in the unified struggle of Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala workers across ethnic lines and for socialism.

The SEP, which bases itself on Leon Trotskys program of Permanent Revolution, is fighting for a Sri Lanka Eelam Socialist Republic as part of struggle for socialism in South Asia and internationally. We invite workers, youth, students and intellectuals to attend the meeting and participate in this vital discussion.

Meeting venue: Weerasingham Hall, 2nd floor, Jaffna.

Date and time: Saturday August 26, at 3p.m.
Talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) got under way in Washington Wednesday with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer pledging to push for sweeping changes to the 23-year-old trilateral agreement.

Speaking at a press briefing following the first meeting of US, Canadian and Mexican negotiators, Lighthizer bluntly laid out the Trump administrations aggressive America first approach, which aims to establish a North American protectionist trade bloc dominated by the US. Praising Trumps economic nationalist agenda, which has also been fully endorsed by the trade union bureaucracy, Lighthizer declared, I want to be clear: He is not interested in a mere tweaking of a few provisions and a couple of updated chapters. We feel that NAFTA has fundamentally failed many, many Americans and needs major improvement.

Throughout last years election campaign, Trump denounced NAFTA as the worst agreement ever and earlier this year even toyed with the idea of pulling the US out of the agreement, only withdrawing the threat after eleventh-hour appeals from Canadian and Mexican politicians, some of his economic advisers, and corporate lobbyists.

The tough rhetoric notwithstanding, the main target of the protectionist and nationalist agenda being pursued by Trump is not Mexico and Canada, but Washingtons chief global economic and geopolitical rivals: China and Germany. This is underscored by the US main goals of the renegotiation, which include adopting provisions to guard against currency manipulation, state-owned enterprises and state subsidies to certain industries. Lighthizer also made clear Wednesday that a concerted effort will be made to increase the percentage of a product that must be manufactured in North America, the so-called rules of origin, in order for it to be sold tariff free in a NAFTA country. Currently, 62.5 percent of cars and other vehicles must be built in the three NAFTA members.

All of these measures are aimed at China. Trump has repeatedly denounced Beijing as a currency manipulator and has launched an investigation into the alleged dumping of steel into the US market. The crackdown desired on state-owned enterprises is primarily aimed at preventing Chinese companies from accessing investment opportunities in North America.

But far from being a defensive strategy, Trump and Lighthizer hope that the new NAFTA will form the basis for the projection of US economic power around the world, and in the Asia-Pacific and Europe in particular. Recent years and months have seen a rapid breakdown of the post-war economic order, and the opening up of deepening economic and geopolitical tensions, including between long-term allies such as America and the Western European powers. Throughout the summer, Washington and Berlin have been trading increasingly aggressive statements. This reached a high point after the US Congress unilaterally imposed sanctions on Russia which threatened to hit European firms, especially in the energy sector, prompting the European Union to announce that it would adopt counter-measures if any of its companies are adversely affected.

The growing economic tensions point to a revival of the same fundamental divisions that emerged during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when competing trade blocs reverted to beggar-thy-neighbour protectionist measures and in the process paved the way for the explosion of imperialist rivalries in World War II.

While conflicts do exist over Trumps brazen attempt to revise NAFTA in the interests of corporate America, Canadian imperialism and the ruling class in Mexico are on board with Trumps protectionist agenda. The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has gone out of its way since January to build close working relations with Trump, declaring its readiness to participate in a North American protectionist trade bloc and step up military and security cooperation with Washington by modernizing NORAD.

Canadian negotiators are reportedly considering the adoption of a more openly hostile stance towards China and other potential rivals so as to enable Trump to claim victory in the negotiations. According to the Globe and Mail, the newspaper of Canadas financial elite, agreeing to more stringent measures to prevent market access for goods produced outside of NAFTA countries would allow Trump to present this to his far-right base as a victory and remove the need for the adoption of a specifically US quota for manufactured goods, a provision which Lighthizer appears to favour. The Globes Campbell Clark admitted that consideration was being given to use NAFTA as a tool against those other countries, before noting, You could imagine how it might be of interest to Mr. Trump, if he could tell American workers that he had turned NAFTAa term many Americans see as a synonym for unfair tradeinto a tool to fight unfair competition from Chinese makers of steel or plastics or machinery.

Mexican officials indicated they could accept such a strategy last month following the release of the US objectives for the NAFTA talks. It was suggested that the Mexican government would consent to stricter controls on imports because it would enable the country to expand its manufacturing of electronic goods rather than import them from China.

However, significant internal divisions among the three countries could hamper this approach. Lighthizer insisted that Washington wants to eliminate the trade deficit with Mexico, while both Canadian and US corporate interests are keen to take advantage of the talks to exploit the opening up of Mexicos multi-billion dollar energy sector.

The Trump administration also wants to do away with the dispute resolution mechanism, referred to as Chapter 19. Under this regulation, a binational panel of judges issues a binding ruling on trade or investment disputes that arise between two NAFTA members. The Canadian government has said in no uncertain terms that the retention of this provision is one of its central goals, since it has enabled Ottawa to block US trade actions. Ottawa would also oppose national rules of origin.

Another potential irritant is almost certain to emerge over Canadas supply management system, under which the amount of dairy and poultry products is regulated to guarantee prices. The US will push to remove or at least loosen such controls, with Lighthizer pledging Wednesday to open up new markets for US agricultural products.

For her part, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland is hoping to get Washington to agree to open government contracts to Canadian firms and make it easier for professionals to travel across NAFTA borders.

NAFTA is without doubt a reactionary agreement, which has benefited the major corporations in the US and Canada, and helped enrich the fabulously wealthy ruling elites in all three countries. In Mexico, NAFTA led to the destruction of the livelihoods of many small farmers and agricultural workers, and created sweatshop labour conditions in auto and other manufacturing industries. As talks got under way in Washington Wednesday, thousands of farmers and workers marched in Mexico City, calling for the repudiation of NAFTA.

In the US and Canada, the corporations, with the full backing of the trade union bureaucracy, used the threat of outsourcing to ram through successive wage and benefit cuts on the working class to boost corporate profits.

Working people throughout North America cannot defend their interests by lining up with their own bourgeoisie. The only way to oppose rapidly accelerating social inequality, and the assault on decent-paying and secure employment is through the adoption of an internationalist and socialist programme. Only on this basis can the vast globally-integrated productive processes be used to meet the needs of the great majority of the population, rather than the profit interests of a tiny minority.

But it is precisely such a perspective which the trade unions adamantly oppose. The union bureaucracies in Canada and the US have seized on the NAFTA talks to whip up virulent nationalism, sowing the fatal illusion that workers can best secure their interests by calling for Ottawa and Washington to adopt economic nationalist and protectionist measures.

Jerry Dias, head of Unifor, the largest private-sector union in Canada, has twice met with Trumps commerce secretary, the corporate raider Wilbur Ross, to press his case that Mexican workers are to blame for the devastating decline in workers wages. Speaking from Washington, where Dias and fellow union bureaucrats are advising the Canadian negotiating team, he abandoned all restraint by openly arguing for the defence of corporate Canadas interests. We have a lot to offer so we ought not to go in concerned about what the American or the Mexican governments are going to do and the positions they're going to take, he proclaimed. We should be bold in our convictions and stand firm.

For its part, the AFL-CIO released a petition appealing to Lighthizer to stand firm in the negotiations. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka only reluctantly resigned from one of Trumps advisory councils this week in the wake of Trumps defence of the neo-Nazi rampage in Charlottesville, while other union leaders like the Steelworkers Leo Gerard and UAWs Dennis Williams have fully embraced Trumps economic nationalism.
Trumps firing of his fascistic chief political strategist Stephen Bannon marks a new stage in the bitter factional conflict within the American ruling elite.

The dismissal came three days after Trumps press conference on Tuesday, in which the president defended the Nazi and white supremacist demonstrators who rampaged through Charlottesville last weekend. Trumps remarks triggered an unprecedented political crisis in Washington. Powerful sections of the ruling elite fear that the self-exposure of the US president as a fascist sympathizer is severely damaging the credibility of the United States internationally and creating the conditions for social explosions at home.

On Thursday, the pressure on the White House from within the state and the corporate establishment reached a new pitch with a public email rebuking Trump from James Murdoch, chief executive of 21st Century Fox and son of Trump ally Rupert Murdoch. Also on Thursday, New York Republican Congressman Peter King called for the firing of Bannon, and Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, questioned Trumps stability and competence.

Wall Street, nervous over reports that Trumps chief economic adviser, former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, was considering resigning, fired a shot across the administrations bow with a broad stock market sell-off. The Dow fell 274 points on Thursday, its biggest one-day loss in three months. Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange cheered Friday when news broke of Bannons removal.

The decision to fire Bannon was made by Trumps recently appointed White House chief of staff, retired Marine General John Kelly. The forces leading the push within the administration included Kelly; National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, an active duty general; Defense Secretary James Mattis, a retired general; former Goldman executive Cohn; and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil.

The direct control of the military in alliance with Wall Street over the affairs of state has, if anything, been increased.

Internecine conflicts within the ruling class have raged since Trumps inauguration, centering on differences over US imperialist foreign policy. The Democrats and a section of Republicans have lined up with dominant factions of the military and intelligence apparatus to demand that Trump take a more aggressive line against Russia and more rapidly escalate the wars in Afghanistan and Syria.

The announcement of Bannons removal came as Trump was meeting with his top generals and intelligence officials at Camp David to discuss their proposals for an increase in US troop levels in Afghanistan. Trump, backed by Bannon, has up to now resisted the Pentagon plan.

On Wednesday, the liberal American Prospect magazine published an interview with Bannon in which he boasted of his plans to purge opponents at the State and Defense departments, attacked Cohn by name for pulling back on trade war against China, and dismissed US war threats against North Korea, saying, Theres no military solution, forget it.

The following day both Tillerson and Mattis issued statements reiterating Washingtons readiness to carry out a nuclear attack on North Korea.

A significant section of Wall Street bankers and corporate CEOs, many of whom have disassociated themselves from Trumps pro-fascist remarks, see the removal of Bannon as a step toward reining in the factional warfare within the administration and between Trump and the Republican Congress. They see this as essential to carrying out Trumps pledges to slash corporate taxes, remove business regulations and provide a profit windfall in the guise of infrastructure reform.

There is nothing progressive or democratic about the concerns motivating the generals, Wall Street bankers and Democratic and Republican politicians who pushed for Bannons removal. All of the vying factions within the ruling class are agreed on the need to intensify the attack on the living standards and social conditions of the working class. Trumps own efforts, in alliance with Bannon, to build up a fascistic base are fundamentally directed toward the violent suppression of working class opposition.

Bannon, who immediately resumed his post as head of the fascistic Breitbart News, will continue to exercise significant political influence over the Trump administration. He told Bloomberg News that he will be going to war for Trump against his opponents, adding, Im now free. Ive got my hands back on my weapons.

As for Trump, he is doubling down on his efforts to whip up extreme right-wing elements. He is proceeding with plans to hold a rally next Tuesday in Phoenix, Arizona, at which he is expected to announce a pardon for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who led a witch-hunt against immigrant workers and was convicted of contempt of court for defying a judges order to stop illegally detaining Hispanics.

The danger of world war, the growth of poverty and social inequality and the destruction of democratic rights will not be halted by palace intrigues or cabinet shakeups. Neither Trump nor Bannon are the cause of political reaction and the growth of far-right forces. They themselves are noxious manifestations of the crisis and decay of American and world capitalism.

There is no faction of the capitalist class that is capable of offering policies to address the urgent concerns of working people for jobs, education, pensions, health care, peace and basic rights. The Democratic Party has presided no less than the Republicans over nearly half a century of social reaction. Its main concern is to divert social anger away from a struggle against capitalism and channel it behind nationalism, trade war and expanded military aggression around the world.

The only progressive basis for opposing Trump is the independent mobilization of the working class in opposition to the entire political establishment and the capitalist system it defends.
Hamid Shamshiripour, a 31-year-old Iranian man imprisoned by the Australian government for nearly four years on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, died in unexplained circumstances on August 7 in Lorengau. His body was found near a transit centre where the refugee detainees are now being forced to relocate.

Shamshiripours preventable death is the result of the brutal policies pursued by successive Liberal-National and Labor governments in Australia to repel all asylum seekers, under the reactionary banner of border protection. His fate also highlights the terrible conditions into which the detainees are being thrust in the East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre (ELRTC).

The Australian-funded and controlled Manus Island detention centre is set to be closed by October 31, after being ruled illegal by the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Supreme Court last year. The remaining detainees are being forced into the less secure ELRTC, despite determined protests by the detainees, who fear for their safety.

Even though refugees are still living in the detention centre the Australian government has started shutting off the power and removing basic amenities. In response to the detainees protests it has threatened police violence.

Shamshiripours death is the fifth to occur among Manus Island detainees since Australias Greens-backed Labor government reopened the detention camp in 2012. In July 2013, Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that none of the hundreds of refugees incarcerated on Manus Island or Nauru, the site of the Australias other remote offshore facility, would ever be permitted to live in Australia.

Rudd declared: Asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia. Less than a month later, in August 2013, Shamshiripour was imprisoned on Manus Island, where he would languish until his death, almost exactly four years later.

Shamshiripour was a musician who loved to play the guitar and write music. According to his friend Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish-Iranian journalist imprisoned on Manus Island, his music and lustre for life began to disappear while imprisoned in the centre. Over time, Boochani wrote in an article for the Huffington Post, Hamid the musician began to disappear, he was becoming a different person. His mental health was deteriorating rapidly.

Shamshiripours story is one of immense psychological suffering, as well as abuse at the hands of guards, paid for and overseen by the Australian government. Documents obtained by Buzzfeed reveal that when Shamshiripour first arrived on the island his mental health was deemed average. He was previously a heating and cooling system technician in an oil refinery and had dreams of finishing his studies to become an IT technician.

He arrived at the Manus Island centre with a serious knee injury that remained untreated. By December 2013, his knee had swelled and locked up. He reported that the pain kept him up at night and he walked with a limp. He did not receive a cortisone injection for his knee until February 2014, six months after arriving at the island. Case notes around this time also noted Shamshiripour was having nightmares and was feeling stressed about his family.

Boochani wrote that while living in the detention centre, Shamshiripour got into an argument with Wilson Security, the firm hired by the Australian government to guard the facility. Wilson Security reported him to the local police who beat him in a confinement room before sending him back to the centre, heavily sedated. According to reports, this experience had a profound effect on Shamshiripours psychological wellbeing.

Later Shamshiripour was in another incident with Wilson Security in which the officer was trying to force him to go to bed by pushing him into a room, but he resisted and pushed the officer back. This resulted in Shamshiripour being prosecuted and imprisoned for 36 days. According to Boochani, that was because the International Health and Medical Services (IHMS) refused to confirm he had psychiatric problem. The IHMS is another company contracted by the Australian government, supposedly to provide medical treatment for those imprisoned in the camps.

Shamshiripour was then transferred to the ELRTC at Lorengau, the major town on Manus Island. Through this process Shamshiripour deteriorated further. Boochani recounted that he would talk incessantly, not allowing others to sleep and occasionally strip down to his boxers and walk down the main road of Lorengau.

Most of the time he was hungry and homeless, Boochani noted. The small children mocked him and annoyed him. Some refugees, local people and police would beat him because of his mental health condition. Most would run away from him because of his behaviour.

Questions remain over Shamshiripours death, which PNG police rapidly declared a suicide. Some asylum seekers on the island fear Shamshiripour was murdered and are calling for an independent investigation and autopsy. There have been numerous incidents of asylum seekers at the ELRTC being beaten, robbed and abused at the hands of local police.

I feel like trash in limbo, refugee Abdul Aziz Adam told Fairfax Media. We are expendable to your government. All we are looking for is shelter and a safe place. Adam said at least nine people had been attacked with machetes and bashed in recent weeks alone.

Australias Liberal-National government, like its predecessors, treats the refugees with contempt, intent on punishing them in order to deter any asylum seekers from trying to reach Australia. It is currently threatening any refugee who refuses to relocate to the ELRTC with being excluded from a supposed US agreement to take detainees from Manus Island and Nauru.

This US deal has always been a cruel hoax, as confirmed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulls recently leaked phone conversation with US President Donald Trump. Turnbull reassured Trump that a quid pro quo deal that Turnbull struck last year with Barack Obama, agreeing to take a number of Latin Americans detained in US refugee camps, did not oblige the US to take a single person from Manus Island or Nauru.

The agreement, Turnbull explained, does not require you to take 2,000 people. It does not require you to take any  Every individual is subject to your vetting. You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting  The obligation is to only go through the process.

In the conversation Turnbull also voiced his support for the Trump administrations initial anti-Muslim travel ban, which sought to halt travel to the US from six countries, including Iran, Shamshiripours home country. We are very much of the same mind, he told Trump. Speaking of the 12,000 carefully-vetted Syrian refugees the Australian government had agreed to allow into the country, he said 90 percent would be Christians. It will be quite deliberate.

Successive Australian governments, both Labor and Liberal-National, have pioneered the systematic abuse, torture and discrimination of asylum seekers. As the global refugee crisis worsens, other governments are emulating these methods.

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[3 January 2017]
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A Florida missing child alert has been issued for 1-year-old Royalty Hinson.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement described the child as a 1-year old-black female, around 2 feet 2 inches tall and 23 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.

They say she last seen in the area of 5000th block of NE 88th Avenue in Lauderhill.

The child may be in the company of Kamey Nesbitt, a black female, 34 years old, 5 feet 7 inches tall, 145 pounds, black hair, brown eyes, who was last seen wearing a blue shirt and beige shorts.

They may be traveling in a 2015, champagne-colored Nissan Versa, Florida tag number HGKE16.

If you have any information on the whereabouts of this child please contact the Lauderhill Police Department at 1-954-497-4700 or 911.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A Tallahassee mother is behind bars, accused of hitting her 4-year-old daughter in the face with a belt's buckle.

Shanterria Sampson has been charged with one count of child abuse.

On Monday, a Tallahassee Police officer was contacted about a child abuse investigation by a Department of Children and Families (DCF) Child Protective Investigator (CPI).

The investigator told the officer he saw the injuries on the 4-year-old and was requesting a police report.

During a medical evaluation of the child in question, investigators found marks beneath her eyes, beneath her chin, on her neck, and on the back of her leg.

A probable cause document says that when officers made contact with a woman who often babysits the 4-year-old, she told them that she received a call from Sampson Saturday evening.

She said that Sampson told her that she had just "beat" the 4-year-old for kicking her brother out of a swing. She told officers that Sampson continued to call her over the weekend, "asking if she should 'beat' [the child] again."

When Sampson brought the child over on Sunday, the woman says she saw the mark below the child's eye and asked what happened.

The probable cause document says the child tried to answer the woman, but Sampson spoke over her, claiming the injury was from the child scratching herself.

When asked what happened to her eye, the 4-year-old told investigators that her mother had hit her with a belt, which was consistent with what the child told the woman who kept her on Sunday.

Sampson denied the allegations when interviewed, according to the probable cause document, saying that she spanked the child on the buttocks with a belt after the 4-year-old pushed her brother out of his swing.

She said that after the spanking, the child got frustrated and scratched her own eye, leaving two marks. Later, while playing, the child fell on the floor, Sampson told officers, causing the marks to her chin.

Sampson stated that the belt's buckle never hit the child.

A medical examiner later told investigators that the injuries to the 4-year-old were not consistent with Sampson's story, stating that the injuries looked like the child had been hit with a belt buckle.

The examiner, according to documents, noted bruising to the back of the child's leg, also consistent with being hit with a belt.

Officers wrote that the evaluation "yielded positive findings for abuse."

Based on the investigation, Sampson was arrested for child abuse on Wednesday. She remains in the Leon County Jail.

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WAKULLA COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - The family of a Wakulla County man who was murdered three years ago is remembering his life this week.

Jody Kilgore would have turned 53 on Tuesday.

Kilgore was found stabbed to death outside his home on October 6th, 2014.

It's still a mystery who killed him and his family says they won't stop looking for answers.

"You never know when your life is going to end, but nobody would ever dream of Jody getting hurt like he did," said Jody Kilgore's mother.

Gladys Kilgore still can't believe anyone would murder her only son.

Jody Kilgore was a proud father and grandfather, well loved by his family and community.

"Nobody knows what kind of loss that can be until you have to go through it, and I hope nobody else has to," said Gladys.

Big Bend Crime Stoppers and the Wakulla County Sheriff's Office have increased the reward amount to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest in this case.

In a statement, Crime Stoppers says, "We've been around for 33 years for a reason. We ask that people put themselves in the victim's place. Wouldn't you want someone to come forth with information?"

"I will not stop," asserted Gladys. "I refuse to sink."

The Sheriff's Office says there's an active investigation into Kilgore's murder. The sheriff says his team will continue to support this family in a case that's rocked this community.

"No stone will go unturned until we find justice for Jody and for his family," said Jared Miller, the Wakulla County Sheriff. "I want to bring some closure to the family, to this community and to the citizens of Wakulla County."

"There's no words in the world to ever say how much I miss him -- and I always will," Jody's mother said. "But I'll never give up, Jody. Never."

The family will celebrate Jody's life tomorrow evening at Spring Creek, by releasing 200 sky lanterns.

Find out more from Big Bend Crime Stoppers here.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Parents and students are raving about a new learning center for autistic students in Tallahassee.

The Inspire Autism Academy is wrapping up it's first week.

It's the first academy of its kind to serve moderate to high-functioning students on the autism spectrum.

Nathan Moore is the seventh grader who used to dread going to school.

"I just hated it, I absolutely hated it," said Moore. "There were a lot of bullies. There were sometimes mean teachers."

Now, Nathan is one of eight students who attend the Inspire Autism Academy instead of going to a mainstream school. The tuition is fully funded by a state scholarship. Nathan's mother is one of the academy's administrators, helping guide parents through the education process.

"We serve the moderate to high-functioning end of the spectrum. Those kids tend to get put into the mainstream classes and fall through the cracks," said Jean Moore, Nathan's mother.

At the Inspire Academy, students get one-on-one attention from a teacher who understands how the students' disabilities affect their learning.

"The teacher sits down with the parents and really plans out what their goals are for their child and then tailors the curriculum to that individual kid," said Jean Moore.

"Here, the teachers are strict when we need it and isn't strict when it's not necessary and it's just really fun and nice," explained Nathan.

On top of the classroom, this center has a library and a sensory room. Parents are also connected with therapy services as part of their child's education.

Since the center is so new, they're only taking 15 children for this first year. There are still a few spots open.

For more information on how to apply, click here.

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(WTXL) - The Challenger Learning Center says they are receiving more than 100 phone calls and 50 to 60 social media messages after residents are concerned they got unsafe glasses to see the eclipse.

Michelle Personette, executive director of the CLC, says they got their glasses in 2016 from the Tallahassee Astronomical Society via The Astronomical League, Rainbow Symphony and Lunt Solar Systems. They are approved to be safe.

To find out if your solar viewer is not safe, visit the American Astronomical Society's website.

In the meantime, staring directly at Monday's eclipse without the proper eye protection will harm your eyes.

Eye doctors recommend you buy eclipse glasses or hand-held solar viewers that meet with international safety standards.

According to a South Georgia optometrist, staring directly at the eclipse will damage your vision without you feeling it.

Dr. Kelly Cleary, O.D., of Albany Vision Source: "So permanent vision lost can occur quickly, instantly. It is not worth the risk."

The partial eclipse in the Big Bend and south Georgia area will happen Monday from approximately 1 in the afternoon until just after 4 p.m.

The peak will be around 2:40 for just a few minutes.

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.
The skinheads had been hanging around Southeast Pine Street for months. Groups with names like the Preservation of the White American Race and East Side White Pride had been recruiting teenagers from Portland's metal-music scene throughout 1988.

Skinhead culture blended nearly unnoticed into the punk aesthetic. A few skinheads had been charged with assaults early in the year. But the city's refugee coordinator told WW that spring that the racist gangs didn't pose a threat to new immigrants.

Then skinheads went after Mulugeta Seraw.

Seraw, 28, had come to Portland from Ethiopia to study business at Portland Community College. He sent money he made as an Avis airport bus driver to his family.

In the early hours of Nov. 13, 1988, skinheads brawled with Seraw and two friends, also Ethiopians, outside Seraw's apartment at Southeast 31st Avenue and Pine Street.

Steven Strasser and Kyle Brewster kicked Seraw and the other two with steel-toed shoes. A third swung a bat into Seraw's skull: Twenty-three-year-old Ken Mieske, a metal-band frontman known as Ken Death. Mieske had become a local star in late 1987 in an experimental semi-documentary, "Ken Death Gets Out of Jail," by an up-and-coming filmmaker named Gus Van Sant.

The killing forced Portlanders to confront the white supremacists in their midst. "It pulled the curtain back about Portland's racial reality," says Randy Blazak, a Portland State sociology professor and chairman of the Coalition Against Hate Crimes.

Mieske and his two co-defendants took plea bargains. But the real court fight was just starting.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate-group watchdog, filed suit in Multnomah County Circuit Court against a California white supremacist named Tom Metzger. Metzger, a TV repairman, had been recruiting Portland skinheads to his organization, White Aryan Resistance, in hopes of sparking a race war.

In October 1990, a jury decided Metzger had incited the Portland skinheads and awarded Seraw's family $12.5 million. The verdict bankrupted Metzger's organization. The verdict also helped set the legal precedent that hate groups could be held liable for inciting violence, even if they hadn't directly committed the assault.

For Portland residents, the verdict reassured them the threat came from the outside. The actual lessons from Seraw's murder are less clear.

In her 2003 book, A Hundred Little Hitlers, Elinor Langer wrote that Mieske committed the murder fueled as much by drink and a culture of street fighting as by white supremacist ideology. "Like certain noxious sulfurs bubbling up at times from beneath our Northwest volcanoes," Langer wrote, "it was a spontaneous eruption. The death of Mulugeta Seraw did not need an 'outside agitator' to explain it."

Mieske died in prison of hepatitis C in 2011. Brewster is out of prison, still proclaiming racist beliefs. Strasser quit the white supremacist movement while serving his sentence.

James McElroy, the SPLC lawyer who led the fight against Metzger, adopted Henock Seraw, Mulugeta's son. Henock became a commercial airline pilot.





From the archives:









WWeek 2015
CLIFFDELL, Wash.  Closures continue across Central Washington as officials monitor and fight several wildfires from Union Creek to Cle Elum.
United States National Security Advisor Herbert Raymond McMaster held security-related discussions in the White House overnight Thursday with an Israeli delegation headed by Mossad Director Yossi Cohen.

During the talks, the two sides discussed the ceasefire in Syria, Israeli requirements to repel Iranian presence in Syria and the damage caused to Hezbollahs capabilities to threaten stability in the region.

Among the high-ranking American officials who participated in the talks was President Trumps special Middle East Advisor Jason Greenblatt.
It seems to me that the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's detractors overly-criticized him following his speech in last week's support rally, organized by his emissaries. Netanyahu's text was familiar; He has been playing it for two decades. His convinced remained convinced, and his critics had no choice but to shout.

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However, in contrast to the past, this time Netanyahu's remarks about the "left-wing media" kept journalists and other public opinion leaders awake at night, worryng that his statements could lead to the assassination of a journalist who has been critical of him. They found a link between the incitement in the days before the assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and the current Netanyahu-led incitement against the media. I, howefver, suggest we all relax. It is possible to believe that our democracy is not in danger and no that journalist is marked as a target for assassination.





Netanyahu (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Even in the hostile atmosphere that currently exists, it is our job as journalists to continue to do our job without fear and without bias. I have no doubt that Netanyahu's close associates at times enjoy walking on the edgefor example, when one of them decides to start collecting on journalists for a rainy daybut our response must be one: We are not afraid.

MKs Nava Boker (L) and David Bitan, who organized the rally in support of Netanyahu (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

I also would like to address another issue that arose from Netanyahu's speech. With a firmness that we know only from his speeches about the Holocaust and the Iranian threat, Netanyahu protested the "persecution" of the media for his wife Sara. "They will not tell the public that she supports sick families, Holocaust survivors, cancer-sick children and lone soldiers," he cried out. "Instead, they prefer to deal with truly important matters, such as the proper procedure for replacing a light bulb, food deliveries (referring to an NIS 11,000 bill Sara Netanyahu submitted for food deliveriesed), and the cup of tea given to her fatherthat 97-year-old righteous man who was on his deathbed. What a disgrace."

This is not, however, about a cup of tea, but about seemingly proven suspicions that the Netanyahu family included the salary of the Nepali worker hired to take care of Mrs. Netanyahu's father among the expenses of the Prime Minister's Residence. Tens of thousands of shekels, which were supposed to be paid by the Netanyahu couple, were paid from the state treasury. In other words, what is acceptable to all of us in terms of ensuring the well-being of our parents or those closest to us at the end of their lives does not apply to the Netanyahu couple. For them, we have to pay for the care of Sara's father.

And so, it is not about their cup of tea, but about all of ours. Many of us, even those who do not vote for the Likud, are familiar with the painful and burdensome reality of accompanying sick or elderly family members, helping them and providing them with optimal care. How many families in Israel cannot afford to pay for the employment of a foreign worker for an elderly or sick parent at the end of their lives?

The Netanyahus (Photo: Kobi Gideon, GPO)

Fortunately for Prime Minister and Mrs. Netanyahu, the law in Israel does not permit the publication of the disputes discussed in family court. As such, one can only hint that if the public were to be exposed to the court discussions between Sara Netanyahu and her brother Hagai Ben Artzi, it would add new meaning to the concept of shame. The odor that wafts up from the conduct of the Netanyahus with their own family members was, at the very least, supposed to obligate them to behave more modestly. So it is not all about a cup of tea, food deliveries, or the persecution of the Netanyahu family, but about their behavior, whose repercussions will, as it stands today, be decided by the court.
The mayor of Charlottesville on Friday called for an emergency meeting of state lawmakers to confirm the city's right to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, a request that was swiftly rejected by the state's governor.

Mayor Mike Signer said recent clashes over race and the Confederacy had turned "equestrian statues into lightning rods" and urged Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe to convene a special session of the General Assembly.

Signer's statement came nearly a week after white supremacists descended on the city and violently clashed with counter protesters. One woman was killed Saturday when a car plowed into a crowd of people there to condemn what is believed to be the largest gathering of white supremacists in a decade.

"We can, and we must, respond by denying the Nazis and the KKK and the so-called alt-right the twisted totem they seek," Signer said in a statement.
The Lebanese army launched an offensive on Saturday against an Islamic State enclave on the northeast border with Syria as Hezbollah simultaneously announced an assault on the militants from the Syrian side of the border.

The Lebanese army was targeting Islamic State positions near the town of Ras Baalbek with rockets, artillery and helicopters, a Lebanese security source said. The area is the last part of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier under insurgent control.

The operation by Hezbollah and the Syrian army was aimed at Islamic State militants in the western Qalamoun region of Syria, Hezbollah said, an area across the frontier from Ras Baalbek.

A Hezbollah statement said the group was meeting its pledge to "remove the terrorist threat at the borders of the nation" and was fighting "side by side" with the Syrian army. It made no mention of the Lebanese army operation.
Edna Hajaj, a resident of Be'er Sheva in her 50s, planned to go with her husband to eat in the center of Barcelona in the last hours of their vacation, when they found themselves facing Thursday's attack, in which 14 people were killed and roughly 130 were injured.

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"We arrived in Barcelona on Sunday, and yesterday was supposed to be our last day there. Before we went out to eat, we decided to go to the market located next to a kosher restaurant," recalls Hajaj. "Just as we entered, in a matter of a minute or two, we heard a squeak and things being dragged. It took us one second to understand this was an attack.





Civilians fleeing from the scene of the attack in Barcelona (Photo: AP)

"We did not know where it came from, we did not know where to run and what to do. During my escape I fell and a lot of people fell on me, a lot, and they simply trampled me. By the time my husband dragged me back I had already been hit in the ribs, my toes were broken. People shouted and fell on each other, it was terrible. "

Crowd flees following Barcelona attack

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Hajaj did not even have time to take her belongings from the hotel because the entrance was blocked, so she traveled from the scene of the attack to the airport and from there she flew to Israel and landed at 6 am on Friday. She was treated at Soroka Medical Center on Friday and was later released.

The day after the attack, Barcelona mourns (Photo: Reuters)

"If my husband was not there, they would have trampled me. So many people fell on me that I could not even get up," she said. "We're glad it ended this way and no worse."

In what the Foreign Ministry is calling a "statistical miracle," no Israelis were listed among the attack's victims.
Given Germany's grim history as the home of National Socialism and the efforts it has made since then to atone for its genocidal past, it might seem surprising that far-right extremists who glorify a dead Nazi official are allowed to march in his honor this weekend.

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Police in Berlin have given far-right extremists permission to hold a 500-person strong rally commemorating the death of Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess in the city's western district of Spandau.

Neo-Nazis demonstrate prior to a commemoration march for Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess (Photo: AP)

But there's a catch.

Police have told organizers they can march, but they're not allowed to glorify Hess, who died at Spandau prison 30 years ago. The neo-Nazis are allowed to bring banners: but only one for every 50 participants. And military music is strictly forbidden, unless a court overturns that rule before Saturday's march.

Such restrictions are common in Germany and rooted in the experience of the pre-war Weimar Republic, when opposing political groups would try to forcibly interrupt their rivals' rallies, resulting in frequent bloody street violence, said Sven Richwin, a Berlin lawyer.

The exact rules differ according to the circumstances, but police in Germany generally try to balance protesters' rights to free speech and free assembly against the rights of counter-demonstrators and residents, he said.

"Anything intimidating is 'verboten,'" Richwin told The Associated Press on Friday.

The rules mean that shields, helmets and batons carried by far-right and Neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville last weekend wouldn't be allowed in Germany. Openly anti-Semitic chants would prompt German police to intervene, although efforts would be made to detain specific individuals rather than to stop an entire rally, said Richwin.

Left-wing groups expect about 1,000 people to attend counter-protests Saturday in Spandau.

Hess, who received a life sentence at the Nuremberg trials for his role in planning World War II, died on Aug. 17, 1987. Allied authorities ruled his death a suicide, but Nazi sympathizers have long claimed that he was killed and organize annual marches in his honor.

The marches used to take place in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where Hess was buried until authorities removed his remains.

In 2014, residents and former far-right extremists got donors to pledge 10 euros ($12.50) toward a Nazi rehab program for every meter that the Hess supporters marched. The stunt and similar ones elsewhere in Germany have since collected tens of thousands of euros to help people leave Germany's neo-Nazis scene.
Mourners on Saturday attended a state funeral for Ruth Pfau, a German physician and nun who earned international acclaim as "Pakistan's Mother Theresa" by devoting her life to the eradication of leprosy in the Muslim-majority nation.

Pfau died on Aug. 10 at age 87 in the southern port city of Karachi. State-run television broadcast live footage of her casket being carried by a military guard at the city's St. Patrick's Cathedral. She was to be buried at a nearby cemetery later Saturday.

Pakistani politicians, military officials, members of civil society and hundreds of supporters attended the service and paid tribute to her.

Martha Fernando, who worked with Pfau at her Marie Adelaide Leprosy Center, said the German physician's death was a great loss to humanity. "There is no one like her and there won't be any replacement to her. We pray to God to send people like her again to this world so that they could continue serving people," she said.

Pakistan suffered high rates of leprosy up until the mid-1990s. Pfau played a key role in efforts to bring the disease under control.
Eight people were injured in a knife attack in the Siberian city of Surgut, Russian media agencies reported, citing the spokesman for the local office of the Russian law enforcement committee.

"A man was running along the main streets stabbing people", TASS reported.

The law enforcement committee said on its web site "the attacker has been killed."
Boston has granted permission for an event that organizers are calling a free speech rally but that some people fear is actually a white nationalist rally similar to the one that erupted in violence in Virginia last weekend.

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The permit for Saturday's event on Boston Common comes with severe restrictions, including a ban on backpacks, sticks and anything that could be used as a weapon.

Anti-white-nationalism counterprotestors (Photo: AFP)

Barriers will separate participants from a planned counterprotest that its organizers are calling a "racial justice solidarity march," saying they expect as many as 20,000 to 30,000 people to join them.

Boston-area leaders of Black Livers Matter said Friday that they dont buy claims that the rally planned for Saturday is not about white supremacy.

The counterprotesters plan a 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) march from Roxbury to the Common. Another counterprotest group is planning a separate Stand for Solidarity rally near the Common.

"We don't want a repeat of what happened in Charlottesville," Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said. "Boston is too united. We have a city that doesn't tolerate hatred and bigotry, and we wanted to make it clear to both groups."

Photo: AFP

Bostons mayor and police commissioner say about 500 officers are being deployed to make sure there is no violence involving people attending a free speech rally and planned counterprotests this weekend.

Mayor Marty Walsh said Friday that officials will not tolerate any incitements of violence at the rally planned for Saturday on Boston Common.

A woman was killed Saturday in Charlottesville when a car plowed into counterprotesters at a Unite the Right rally attended by neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said the city will do what is necessary to head off violence initiated by either side.

"We are going to have a zero-tolerance policy," the Democratic mayor said. "If anyone gets out of controlat allit will be shut down."

He said in a separate interview that he does not expect violence.

Candles adorned with the face of Heather Heyer, the Charlottesville victim (Photo: AFP)

The permit granted Wednesday is for 100 people and a two-hour rally from noon until 2 pm, with a two-hour setup and an hour-long breakdown time.

John Medlar of the Boston Free Speech Coalition thinks as many as 1,000 people could show up.

"There are a lot of variables we simply can't account forwill the extra controversy drive people away or make it even more popular?" he said.

The group said on Facebook that it is not affiliated with the Charlottesville rally organizers in any way.

"We are not associated with any alt-right or white supremacist groups we are strictly about free speech," the group said.

Despite this, Mayor Walsh and other critics say many of the speakers invited to the rally spew hate.

Counterprotestors near a Holocaust memorial (Photo: AFP)

Christopher Cantwell, a self-described white nationalist who attended the rally in Charlottesville, told The Associated Press on Thursday that he was contacted by a member of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force about helping defuse any violence in Boston. He said he knew of no plans for anyone attending the rally to ferment violence but they would defend themselves if attacked.

"He wanted to avoid that rally from turning into another Charlottesville," Cantwell said of the task force member. "I told him I don't know who is organizing the Boston rally but that if I found out anybody on the al-right was planning on initiating force against anybody that I would absolutely tell him.

"Every alt-right rally I've been aware of or I've been part of, the people go there prepared to use force to defend themselves if necessary because people attack us," he said.

Cantwell, who lives in Keene, New Hampshire, said he can't attend the Boston rally due to what he said were outstanding legal issues stemming from violence he was involved in during the Charlottesville rally.

"I wouldn't go anyway because I can't carry a gun in Boston and people want to hurt me," he said.
Zimbabwe blocked flights by South Africa's government-owned airline on Saturday as tensions rose over allegations that Zimbabwe's first lady assaulted a young model at a luxury hotel in Johannesburg.

South Africa's government said it had not yet decided to grant the Zimbabwe government's request for diplomatic immunity for Grace Mugabe, who has not commented on the allegations.

Local media reported that Mugabe was expected to attend a regional summit with 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, in what would be her first public appearance since the alleged assault Sunday night. But there was no sign of her as of midday.

Twenty-year-old model Gabriella Engels has claimed that Grace Mugabe whipped her with an extension cord, cutting her forehead. Lawyers for Engels have threatened to go to court if immunity is granted.
A member of the Presidium of the Bayit Yehudi Party, Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, who was considered one of the most important rabbis in the religious Zionism movement, announced that he was resigning from the party because of the employment of a lesbian speaker by the Party chairman and Minister of Education, Naftali Bennett.

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About a month ago, Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Brit Galor Peretz, media advisor to Minister Bennett, was raising her two children together with her female partner Adi.





Bayit Yehudi chairman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

Glor Peretz decided to come out as gay following the controversy that broke out after the state announced it would not allow single-parent couples to adopt children.

Her partner Adi wrote a moving post on Facebook, in which she said: "My name is Adi, and my love is called Brit. We have two children, one born exactly a month ago. Two children we chose to bring to the happy and good world. Two children we chose to build a family with. Two children can show you what a happy childhood looks like when you look into their eyes. When you look at them you see a home filled with smiles and confidence, a home filled with love and respect, a home filled with warmth and good words and optimism."

Following the post, Bennett supported his spokesperson: "I appreciate people for their character and not for their sexual orientation."

Brit (L) and Adi, in a picture with their eldest child, from Adi's Facebook post

But in the Jewish home, not everyone welcomed the gay speaker.

On Tuesday, Rabbi Rosen, head of the Zomet Institute and a member of the party presidium, sent a letter to the heads of the Jewish home explaining that he had decided to resign because a lesbian speaker could not represent a religious party.

"I expressed a critical position on the chairman for turning his back on the party on issues of religion and state and leaving this arena solely for the ultra-Orthodox," wrote Rosen. "It's no wonder they hire a gay person as party speaker.

"I have nothing against it or against them, but I think that this community is wrong and defiant and that outwardly expressed homosexuality is an impossibility in a party that purports to represent religious Zionism."

Rosen's announcement stirred up a storm within the party and even drew comments from outside it. Minister Bennett uploaded a photograph of a Yedioth Ahronoth article about it to his Twitter account and wrote: "Anyone who thinks that I should discriminate against a person because of his sexual orientation, gender or color will encounter a total refusal. A human being, every man, is created in the (lord's) image."

Rabbi Yisrael Rosen (Photo: Oren Cohen)

Sources in the Religious Zionism movement claimed yesterday that Bennett does not hesitate to confront his voters on issues of principle: "This is a step of genuine leadership, which does not try to please its constituency. Bennett is aware of the political price he is liable to pay, but he is doing what is right in his opinion."

Bennett's reaction drew many comments from people within his party and from outside it.

Former Education Minister Limor Livnat (Likud) expressed strong support of Bennett: "Way to go Minister Bennett!! Much respect!! Where are the masses of members of the gay community? Show your support. Clearly. And Loudly."

MK Merav Ben-Ari (Kulanu) wrote about Bennett's comments on Twitter: "A proper and important tweet. Not surprised, truth be told, after the support to Igy (the Israeli Gay Youth organization) and the introduction of Hoshen (a non-profit LGBT education organization) to schools."

Meanwhile, the extremist elements in the Bayit Yehudi Party expressed opposition to Bennett's liberal line.

MK Moti Yogev told Army Radio that he "would not employ a lesbian spokeswoman."

Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel also attacked Bennett for his attitude toward the gay community, saying that "Bennett will not find voters among the hipsters in Tel Aviv, nor will he find them among same-sex couples."
European nations were hit by a series of violent and deadly attacks over the weekend. These include, in chronological order: an explosion on Wednesday night in the Spanish town of Alcanar, where one person died and seven were injured, and which is believed to be linked to the following day's attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils; a vehicular attack on Friday in the city of Barcelona that killed 13 and injured over 100; another vehicular attack on Friday in the Spanish town of Cambrils where one person died and six were injured; a stabbing attack in the Finnish city of Turku that killed two and injured eight; and a stabbing attack in the Siberian city of Surgut, in which seven people were injured.

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Listed below are the latest updates on these incidents:

ISIS claims Cambrils attack, celebrating wounding 120 'Crusaders and Jews' in Spain

The Islamic State (also known as ISIS) announced Saturday that it is also responsible for the terrorist attack in the Catalan town of Cambrils, which took place on Friday, a few hours after the terrorist attack in the heart of Barcelona. "We murdered and wounded more than 120 Crusaders and Jews," a statement from the Sunni terror organization read.

Barcelona protest rally the day after attack (Photo: Reuters)

Meanwhile, the police search for the terrorist who raided and murdered 13 people on Wednesday in Barcelona continued. Spanish authorities estimate that the main suspect is Younes Abu Yaqub, a 22-year-old Moroccan of Moroccan origin, whose image was published yesterday in Spanish media.

"Calling upon Allah and putting their faith in Him, several Jihad fighters went out on Thursday, as two security units simultaneously attacked concentrations of Crusaders in Spain," the Sunni terrorist organization said. "The Jihad fighters in the first unit attacked a Crusader concentration with a vehicle in La Rambla Boulevard in Barcelona. They also ran over two policemen at a roadblock. Then broke into a pub near La Rambla Square, killing and abusing the Crusaders and the Jews who were present.

Photo: MCT

"At the same time, a second unit ran over several Crusaders by truck in the coastal town of Cambrils," continued the terror group's statement. "(Overalled), the blessed attack caused the deaths and injuries of more than 120 citizens of countries taking part in the Crusader coalition."

Russia skeptical knife attack led by ISIS

A knife-wielding man went on a stabbing rampage Saturday in a Siberian city, wounding seven people before police shot and killed him. ISIS initially claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that the stabber was "an Islamic State soldier." Yet Russian authorities seem to find this possibility unlikely.

Russia attacker (covered in white sheet in the background) after being shot and killed (Photo: EPA)

A statement from Russia's Investigative Committee said the mid-day attack on a central street in Surgut said the suspect had been identified as a resident in his early 20s. It said information was being sought on his psychiatric condition, suggesting authorities did not suspect terrorism as the likely motive.

Photo: AP

The statement gave the number of victims at seven, down from an earlier tally of eight.

Four of the wounded were in serious condition, the state news agency Tass reported, citing regional health official Vladislav Nigmatulin.

Photo: EPA

Surgut, with a population of about 320,000, is an oil- and gas-producing center some 2,100 kilometers (1,300 miles) northeast of Moscow.

Finland stabbing seen as 'act of terror'

Finnish police are investigating Friday's knife attacks that killed two and wounded eight in the city of Turku as terrorism-related crimes, they said on Saturday.

The suspect arrested on Friday was an 18-year-old Moroccan, police said, adding that the two people killed were Finns and an Italian and two Swedish citizens were among the injured.

Turku, Finland, the day after the attack (: )

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The attacks shocked the Nordic country where violent crime is relatively rare and which has been named as the world's safest place to visit by the World Economic Forum.

Following the attacks on Friday, police shot the suspected attacker in the leg and arrested him.

"Due to information received during the night, the Turku stabbings are now being investigated as murders with terrorist intent," the National Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

Finnish security forces (Photo: Reuters)

Security was reinforced nationwide with increased patrols and more surveillance in case more people were involved.

"First thing we heard was a young woman, screaming like crazy. I thought it's just kids having fun ... but then people started to move around and I saw a man with a knife in his hand, stabbing a woman," said Laura Laine, who was sitting in a cafe during one of the attacks.

"Then a person ran towards us shouting 'he has a knife,' and everybody from the terrace ran inside. Next, a woman came in to the cafe. She was crying hysterically, down on her knees, saying someone's neck has been slashed open."

Photo: Reuters

The police arrested a number of people during the night as part of their investigation.

Local media said the police raided an apartment in the eastern Turku suburb of Varissuo, which is home to a large immigrant population and located about 7 kilometers from the market square where the attack took place.

The arrested suspect had been in Finland for only a short time before the attack, Helsingin Sanomat newspaper reported. The police will hold a news conference at 1100 GMT.

Four of the wounded were still in hospital, three of them in intensive care, while the other injured persons would be sent home on Saturday, the hospital said.

Emergency teams rush to the scene of the attack (Photo: EPA)

Flags were at half mast on Saturday across the Nordic country whose Security Intelligence Service (SIS) raised the terrorism threat level in June to 'elevated' from 'low', saying it had become aware of terrorism-related plans in Finland.

Turku, Finland, the day after the attack (Photo: AP)

Leaders of Turku's Iraqi and Syrian community condemned the attacks and said they would hold a rally of solidarity in the city's main square. An anti-immigration group was planning a demonstration in Helsinki.

The SIS has said anti-immigration groups have been on the rise in the country after it received about 32,500 asylum seekers during the migration crisis in 2015.

Photo: Reuters

"Terrorists want to pit people against each other. We will not let this happen. Finnish society will not be defeated by fear or hatred," Interior Minister Paula Risikko said on Twitter.
The Dallas Morning News reported a crew of city workers went to Lee Park early Saturday to power-wash the spray-painted word "Nazis" off of the statue, one of three Confederate monuments in the city. A police spokeswoman says extra patrols will be in the park to prevent further vandalism.

City officials have been discussing whether to remove or relocate the city's Confederate statues, a conversation hastened by violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend.

The city's four black city councilmen held a joint news conference Friday to say they supported removing the statues as a way to start healing the city's racist past.
The terrorist who attempted to stab a Border Policeman on Saturday near Tapuach junction in the West Bank was shot and killed.

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The terrorist was a 17-year-old Palestinian Qutaiba Zahran from the West Bank city of Tulkarm.

Zahran

Zahran reportedly approached a group of IDF Border Policemen stationed at Tapuah Junction, holding what appeared to be a bag, Police Spokeswoman Luba Samri said, and the troops then called on him to stop.

The knife held by Zahran during the attack (Photo: Police Spokesperson's Unit)

"The suspect suddenly whipped out a knife and accosted one of the troops. Other troops then opened fire and neutralized the suspect," Samri said.

Zahran died shortly after being shot.

Following the attack MDA paramedics, with the assistance of an IDF medical force, provided medical administered treatment to the policeman, who was lightly injured in his leg during the attack.

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the teenager had been killed. There was no other comment from Palestinian officials.
The terrorists who carried out the dual vehicular attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils on Friday were apparently out to cause an even greater attack, which was seemingly scrapped due to an explosives malfunction at their lair in the town of Alcanar on Wednesday night: according to Spanish news sites, the terrorists planned on taking three trucks loaded with explosives and combustible gas and use it to destroy one of Barcelona's most recognizable symbolsthe Sagrada Familia church, designed by Antoni Gaudi.

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Members of the terror cell planned on detonating one truck in La Rambla Boulevard, a second at Gaudi's church and a third at the city's port. To set off the trucks, they planned on using acetone peroxidea highly-combustible explosive material also known as "the Mother of Satan." The same substance was used during the multi-site terror attack that hit London in July, 2005.

Spanish security forces search rubble in Alcanar building (: )

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Their master plan, however, was accidentally thwarted a day before it was set to be carried out, after some of the explosives went off Wednesday night in the building where they were being stored.

Gaudi's Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona (Photo: Getty Images)

The gas explosion in Alcanar was initially misconstrued as a domestic accident. Only later did authorities realize that the building was packed with butane canisters and including over 20 drums of gas and TATP explosives.

Initially, only one person was believed to have been killed in Wednesday's blast. But officials said DNA tests were underway to determine if human remains found there Friday were from a second victim. A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators believed a Moroccan imam, Abdelbaki Es Satty, might have been the second victim of the house explosion.

The building in Alcanar and one of the gas containers found after the explosion (Photos: EPA, Agencia Efe)

Police are now focusing on links with his Moroccan collaborators and the missing imam believed to have radicalized them. Es Satty has yet to be found, and the president of the mosque where he preached said he had not seen him since June, when he announced he was returning to Morocco for three months.

Meanwhile, the police search for the terrorist who raided and murdered 13 people on Wednesday in Barcelona continued. Spanish authorities view the main suspect as 22-year-old Moroccan Younes Abouyaaquoub, whose image was published on Friday in Spanish media.

Even with Abouyaaquoub still at large, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido declared the cell to be "broken" after five members were killed by police early Friday in a shootout, four were taken into custody and one or two were killed in Alcanar's house explosion on Wednesday. He said there was no new imminent threat of attack.

Younes Abouyaaquoub, one of the suspected terrorists in Friday's attacks (Photo: AFP)

The manhunt has spanned Spain and southern France, with French police carrying out extra border checks on people coming from Spain.

Police also conducted a series of controlled explosions Saturday in Alcanar.

The name of the lone suspect at large, Abouyaaquoub, figures on a police list of four main suspects sought in the attacks. All on the list hailed from Ripoll, a quiet, upscale town of 10,000 about 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Barcelona.

The home of Moroccan Imam Abdelbaki Es Satty (Photo: AFP)

The list was issued throughout Spain and into France, according to a Spanish official and a French police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the document.

The French official said Spain had also flagged a Kangoo utility vehicle that was believed to have been rented in Spain by a suspect in Thursday's Barcelona attack that might have crossed the border.

Abdelbaki Es Satty's home (Photo: Reuters)

Also named on the list is 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, whose brother Driss reported his documents stolen to police in Ripoll. Ripoll's mayor confirmed the documents were found in one of the vehicles used in the attacks.

The brothers were born and raised in Ripoll, where the family's first-floor apartment was searched Friday. No one was home.

The Islamic State group initially claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack. In a new statement Saturday, it also claimed the attack early Friday in Cambrils, in which five extremists mowed down people along the boardwalk before police killed them.
At least one person was killed and several others were injured on Saturday in renewed clashes between Palestinian security forces and Sunni Islamists in Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, local sources said.

Saturday's clashes broke out after fighters belonging to the mainstream Palestinian group Fateh, led by Palestinian Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, fired at a district where the leader of an Islamist group was believed to be taking cover. Scores of families were forces to flee the area. The fighting began on Thursday after the leader of an armed faction sympathetic to the Islamist Badr group fired at the headquarters of a joint security force comprising the main Palestinian factions.

In April seven people were killed in clashes in the camp between the Badr group and the joint security force after it deployed there. Lebanon's Palestinian camps, which date back to the 1948's War of Independence, mainly fall outside the jurisdiction of Lebanese security services. There are some 450,000 Palestinian refugees living in 12 camps in Lebanon.
If you are one of the good folks who have contacted me about one thing or the other the past few weeks I probably havent gotten back to you  for which I apologize.

Ive also been noticeably absent (by Leonard Anderson who mentioned it) in this, my assigned corner of Page 3 for a couple/three Saturdays, too.

There is no excuse, however there is a reason; two reasons to be precise.

First, I literally dropped off the grid during a weeks fly-in fishing to northwest Ontario where (praise the Lord) nary a single pulse of cell phone reception exists.

Our troupe of nine wilderness adventurers departed York at 4:30 a.m. Friday, July 21 and returned home 4-ish on Friday afternoon, July 28.

Then followed two days of unpacking and healing my substantial nether region from 1,000-plus miles north followed by five days jackknifing this 6-4, 266-pound carcass into a wee fishing boat and then 1,000-plus more miles back home. Two days was not enough to smooth out the vertabratorial kinks. We know this because Im still walking like Walter Brennan all this time later, though I am dragging that one leg a bit less each day.

Enough or not, two days had to suffice because the following Monday I had to swan dive straight into the York County Fair.

My job description these past 25 years at fairs in Frontier, Gosper, Dawson, Hamilton, Fillmore, York and likely others in Nebraska that dont come to mind just now, plus Park County in the far upper-left corner of Wyoming is pretty simple: Be there.

And be there I was for cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, dogs, pedal tractor pullers, Pioneer Family award winners, antique tractors, 4-H Cafe pie and more each day of the 2017 York County Fair.

So a second week in succession bit the dust and, just as in the case of Canada, the fair gobbled up a weekend, too.

I am getting back to you good folks best I can, which introduces a whole other hindrance  and this ones permanently incurable.

As the sand flows relentlessly from my Hour Glass of Life it becomes ever more difficult to catch up.

Youve heard the tired, used-up old saying: The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

Well thats me.

I must beg patience: I still hold out hope that you are somewhere under this avalanche of hand-scrawled notes and printed email messages  some so dated theyre pre-Canada for crying out loud.

And so onward I plod, tunneling upward through the morass, searching for that news idea I think I remember you sent maybe, as I strain to reach the light.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-18 23:09:49|Editor: yan

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HONG KONG, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- There are "many opportunities" for China and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to cooperate on the Belt and Road Initiative, based on shared humanitarian principles and the common goal for peace and prosperity, a regional official of the ICRC said Friday.

"The ICRC is present and active in 40 countries along the Belt and Road. We can find ways of cooperation for the benefits of people in these different countries," Arnaud de Baecque, deputy regional director for Asia and the Pacific of the ICRC, said in an interview with Xinhua.

Describing the Belt and Road Initiative as "a large project concerning so many countries and all about peace and prosperity", de Baecque said the ICRC and China have "many opportunities" to work together because of the same humanitarian principles, such as impartiality, neutrality and independence.

"China is more and more present in the field in many places with the ICRC, not only in Asia but also in Africa," he said.

"The dialogue we have on these different issues is a good way to keep the ball rolling between different aspects that are taken into consideration."

During his first visit to the Hong Kong Red Cross (HKRC) as a regional official of the ICRC, de Baecque gave a speech Thursday at the HKRC headquarters, talking about the humanitarian dimension of the Belt and Road, as well as the ICRC's engagement with China on the initiative.

"Of course the Belt and Road is about infrastructure, development and business opportunities' increase, but there is always a humanitarian component, because some of the countries are hosting populations that have humanitarian needs," he told Xinhua.

As for the ICRC's potential contribution to the Belt and Road, de Baecque said it can help with the stability of relevant countries through emergency humanitarian assistance to people affected by conflicts or violence on the one hand, and play a role in these countries' long-term development on the other hand, especially in areas with long-lasting conflicts where a development agency would not be able to enter and work.

"In many places with protracted conflicts, the ICRC used to have an immediate action during an emergency phase and then leave and let other players come to do the reconstruction or development work," he said, "Now we realize that we need to have a role which is partly emergency humanitarian work and partly development."
Peshawar: A local leader of hardline Islamic party Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) was on Saturday shot dead by unidentified gunmen near a mosque in Pakistan's restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The assailants on a motorcycle fired at Maulana Syed Attaullah Shah as he came out from the mosque after early morning prayer in Dera Ismail Khan city, police said.

The gunmen managed to flee from the scene.

No one has yet claimed the responsibility for the attack.

A contingent of police reached the scene and started investigation after collecting evidences from the spot.
Patna: Nitish Kumar-headed Janata Dal (United) on Saturday passed a resolution to join BJP-led NDA.

The resolution was moved by senior party leader KC Tyagi at the national executive committee meeting of the JD(U) at Kumar's official residence. It was approved by all invited members.

"A resolution that the JD-U will join the BJP-led NDA was unanimously approved in the meeting," a senior party leader said.

The national executive gave its consent to the invitation of BJP president Amit Shah to the JD(U) to join the NDA fold, on a day when former party president Sharad Yadav, along with party's Rajya Sabha member Ali Anwar Ansari, is organising a 'Jan-Adalat Sammelan' here.

Supporters of Sharad Yadav and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) staged protest outside CM Nitish Kumar's residence, where the national executive meet was taking place.

Following the protest security was increased outside CM's residence.

Shah had extended the invitation when Kumar had met him in Delhi recently.

Meanwhile, JD(U)) leader KC Tyagi said that senior leader Sharad Yadav has every right to put forward his points of disagreement with the alliance, but he shouldn't attend RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav's programme as it will break their trust.

"Sharad Yadav is invited for the JD(U) national executive meet and he can sort out differences, but he shouldn't attend Lalu Yadav's programme. We will lose our faith in him, if he does so. He is one of the founders of the party, therefore, he can put forward his views in the meeting," Tyagi told media here.

JD(U) president Nitish Kumar on July 26 snapped ties with the Grand Alliance of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress.

The JD(U) has 12 members in Parliament, two in the Lok Sabha and 10 in the Rajya Sabha.

Its leader in the Rajya Sabha Sharad Yadav has rebelled against the alliance with the BJP but apparently does not enjoy much support among other party's lawmakers.

Earlier this week, the party suspended its 21 party leaders, including some former minister and former MLAs, for supporting former party chief Sharad Yadav during his three-day visit to the state.

The JD (U) also removed Sharad Yadav -- who opposed the party's decision to ally with the BJP in Bihar -- as their leader in the Rajya Sabha and replaced him with RCP Singh.

Yadav has voiced his opposition to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's decision to walk out of the Grand Alliance -- that comprised the JD-U, RJD and the Congress -- and join hands with the BJP to form the government in Bihar.
New Delhi: A forensic team would visit the suite in a five-star hotel where Congress leader Shashi Tharoor's wife Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in 2014, to collect further evidence, a Delhi court was informed on Saturday.

The information about the proposed visit of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) team was disclosed to the court by the hotel management which has sought its de-sealing of the suite here Pushkar had died under mysterious circumstances.

Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmender Singh also pulled up Delhi Police for delaying the de-sealing of the suite while referring to an order passed on July 21 by his predecessor asking it to de-seal the occupied premises within four weeks.

The advocate, appearing for the hotel, said it had received a letter yesterday from the police saying that the CFSL team would visit again the suite on September 1.

"Why did you take two months to inform the hotel that you will need more time," the court asked the police.

The court, however, allowed police plea seeking one more opportunity for filing of the compliance report in the court regarding de-sealing of the suite. It directed the agency to file the report on September 4.

The court had on July 21 ordered de-sealing of the suite within four weeks, saying the hotel could not be put to unending hardship due to laxity on part of the police.

The court had, however, said the probe agency would be at liberty to visit the suite before filing of the compliance report in the court regarding de-sealing of the suite.

The police was also allowed to take out the articles lying inside the suite with due care for the purpose of investigation.

The court noted that no offence was found on part of the hotel and no police official had visited the suite for over a year.

The police had said in its earlier status report that it was not able to reach a definitive conclusion so far regarding cause of Pushkar's death.

The hotel had submitted before the court that locking of the suite was creating sanitary and cleanliness issues for it. The hotel had claimed that due to the sealing of the suite, which costs between Rs 55,000 and Rs 61,000 a night, it had suffered a loss of over Rs 50 lakh in the last three years.

It claimed that a number of times, police and forensic teams had visited the suite and it was no longer required to be kept sealed.

"The hotel continues to suffer loss with each passing day. The continuous sealing of the suite is also affecting the use of other rooms/suites on the same floor," it had said.

Pushkar was found dead in the suite of the South Delhi hotel on the night of January 17, 2014. The suite was sealed on that night itself for investigation.

An FIR was registered by Delhi police on January 1, 2015 against unknown persons under IPC section 302 (murder).
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New Delhi: Days after encephalitis claimed lives of over 70 children at BRD hospital in Gorakhpur, an infant on Saturday died in a government hospital in national capital due to alleged failure in oxygen supply, family members said on Saturday.

According to the family, the baby was born on Monday at the Rao Tula Ram Hospital. The infant's condition deteoriated all of a sudden due to breathing issues.

Immediately after doctors were called to provide oxygen, it was discovered that the baby had already died.

A complaint has been filed with the Delhi Police.

"Our baby had breathing issues. Doctors were called. But it was too late," the infant's father Brijesh Kumar Singh, said alleging that the hospital lacks oxygen cylinders.

However, the hospital has denied the allegation. It said the cause of death was breathing issues.

The body has been sent for post-mortem.

(With inputs from IANS)
New Delhi: A three-member panel, formed by Centre to probe the deaths of over 70 children at the BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur has indicated serious irregularities. The team comprised of Dr Harish Chellani, a paediatrician at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital, Dr NK Agarwal, Deputy Commissioner, Immunisation, Health Ministry, and Dr Sushma Nangya of Lady Hardinge College mentioned that proper hygiene norms are not being maintained at the hospital.

Currently, there is suboptimal care with regard to asepsis routines (handwashing, use of disinfectants, cleaning of bassinets after discharge or death of neonate), gross overuse of antibiotics and intravenous fluid therapy as well as poor nutritional support in form of enteral feeding Deaths early after admission (within 12 hours) were just 11%, with 25% within 24 hours of admission and another 25-35% deaths occurring in the next 24 hours. This indicates that nearly 50% deaths are occurring within 48 hours of admission, implying both suboptimal stabilisation at peripheral units and poor care after admission in the BRD Medical College, leading daily The Indian Express quoted the report.

The panel also mentioned that the hospital has an acute shortage of trained doctors. Newborns are being put in danger as the hospital has allowed untrained nurses to look over them. As per the report out of 31 only three nurses working in the neonatal department are trained in Facility Based Newborn Care (FNBC).

The overall strength of faculty and junior residents (pursuing MD) including non-academic JR (junior residents) seems reasonable. However, the number of senior residents (post-MD residents) is grossly inadequate being 4 against 12 vacancies and they need to be on the floor to provide 24/7 cover and not just during routine hours. It is these post-MD senior residents who take decisive actions as regards patient care and make a significant difference to the quality of care provided to patients," the report further stated.

Deaths early after admission (within 12 hours) were just 11%, with 25% within 24 hours of admission and another 25-35% deaths occurring in the next 24 hours. This indicates that nearly 50% deaths are occurring within 48 hours of admission, implying both suboptimal stabilisation at peripheral units and poor care after admission in the BRD Medical College, the panel said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) yesterday said that its fact-finding team had found oxygen supply was interrupted for a short while on the night of August 10 at Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College in Gorakhpur, leading to more deaths. The IMA, which had called a suo motu inquiry into the deaths of over 70 children, said its team found out that the liquid oxygen supplier of the hospital had not been paid his dues since the last five months and cleanliness of the hospital was also unsatisfactory.

"Presence of dogs and rats in hospitals is not acceptable by any standards in the hospital premises. The hospital was handling these cases and other critically ill patients much more than its capacity. There is no facility in Gorakhpur and nearby districts to manage encephalitis," said the report by a three-member IMA team.

It also found that no alert was issued by the hospital administration regarding shortage of oxygen, addding that the treating doctors should have been alerted seven days before that a fresh oxygen supply would not be received. According to the IMA, there are many other discrepancies in the health system of Uttar Pradesh such as ICUs in 10 districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh do not function because of lack of staff and other resources.

(With inputs from agencies)
Lucknow: Addressing a programme on building a 'new India' here, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said that solution to the Kashmir problem, terrorism, naxalism, northeast insurgency will be found before 2022.

Speaking at the programme 'Sankalp se Siddhi', Singh asserted that country is facing problems of terrorism, naxalism, Kashmir problem and northeast insurgency but a solution to these problems will be found before 2022 as Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government has pledged to make a new India by 2022.

"There are a lot of problems like terrorism, naxalism, Kashmir problem and northeast insurgency. There is no need to tell you much about all these problems. But, I want to assure you that if we (Government) has adopted a resolution for a new India by 2022 then I want to assure countrymen that a solution to all these problems will be found before 2022," Rajnath stated.

The Union Home Minister's assertion comes in the backdrop of the National Investigation Agency's (NIA's) crackdown on Kashmiri separatists.

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.

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.

On Friday, one Zahoor Ahmad Watali, a close aide of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, was sent to 10-day NIA remand in connection with the terror funding case.

According to a NIA source, Watali used to get the money through Dubai, Pakistan and even Pakistan High commission in India and worked as a conduit for separatists from more than 10 years.

The NIA source added that Naseem Geelani, son of Syed Ali Shah Gilani, also received money from Pakistan and Dubai for terror funding.

Another Kashmiri separatist Kashmiri separatist Shabir Shah is under Enforcement Directorate (ED) net. On August 9, Shah was sent to a 14-day judicial custody by a court here in a decade-old case of money laundering for alleged terror-financing.

(With inputs from ANI)
New Delhi: Permanent Account Number (PAN) contains details including date of birth, name, permanent address and an unique PAN number assigned to an individual, issued by Income Tax department. Recent amendments regarding PAN has made it a primary requisite as an ID. The 10-digit alphanumeric PAN number allotted to a person is used to link all of his/her financial transactions particularly tax payments, income tax return, wealth tax return.



But a situation that adds to the anxiety of the people is  Is it important to get the PAN migrated, in case of shifting to another state?

Yes, it is essential to get it migrated to the new Assessing Officer (AO) that enables the processing of the return filed by the assessee according to the new address.

Here are the key pointers, how to get your PAN ID migrated.



Approaching to initiate the process: The PAN migration application has to be filed to the current AO, who at present holds the dominion of your PAN. The process demands a request of PAN transfer. The request has to be entered by the new AO (destination AO, according to the change in residence).



Confirming the jurisdiction of new AO: It can be viewed on the official website www.incometaxindia.gov.in.

Visit the site, and you will get the designation and contact number of the officers mentioned in the 'Field Offices' column.

(Note: People who are serving in the Armed Forces, the PAN is generally as per their office address or the recent place of posting. Nevertheless, PAN should be transferred to the jurisdictional AO in their hometown (or the place of settlement) after retirement.)



After filing application: Once the source AO allows the transfer request, PAN transfer request will reach to source Commissioner of Income Tax for confirmation. To recall, the PAN remains stuck in the transfer process, unless the source officer accepts the transfer request. The destination AO is not responsible for any tax- related transactions done by you, unless the PAN gets migrated.



Confirmation of migration of PAN: Visit the website www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in and move to 'KNOW YOUR JURISDICTIONAL AO' column. You can verify the current status of PAN using these instructions.



PAN migration mobile app: Income Tax department's newly launched mobile Aaykar Setu provides the option of PAN migration.
New Delhi: Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) leader Bimal Gurung has written to Home Minister Rajnath Singh regarding an FIR filed against him on suspicion of the deadly bomb blast in Darjeeling, on Friday.

Condemning the attacks and writing about the FIR Gurung said, "Last night, ie 18th of August, a blast of unknown nature occurred in Darjeeling town, and before anyone can even come to terms with the nature of the blast, the Darjeeling police have rushed in to file an FIR against the GJM President Bimal Gurung and other GJM leaders."

The letter further said the GJM is wondering as to how it is possible that an FIR be filed this early, in such a serious matter, while the investigations have not yet begun.

"In filing the FIR this early, without proper investigations, the Bengal government has revealed their own hidden agenda of entrapping the GJM leadership on another series of trumped up charges," Gurung wrote.

He further said that the blast site is situated right next to the Darjeeling Sadar Police station, and currently heavy police force has been deployed in the entire Darjeeling region.

"So how is it possible that the police wouldn`t or didn`t see someone planting a bomb in the middle of the night, so close to their own premise? It is either a case of gross incompetence on their part, or a case of fake blast planted by state agents to frame the GJM leadership," the GJM leader wrote.

He further said that the West Bengal government has repeatedly tried to paint GJM's movement as "anti national" and adding, "Earlier Mamata Banerjee accused us of being hands in gloves with the insurgents from North East, when we asked her to provide proof of the same, she simply couldn't, as she didn't have any proof to give."

He also alleged that Mamata Banerjee later said that the Gorkhaland movement is being supported by China, and the Nepal Maoists, saying that "Once again the entire Gorkhaland Movement Coordination Committee (and not just the GJM) asked for proof, and once again the Bengal government failed to provide any proof. We, therefore, suspect that this blast is the handy work of the Bengal government to bring disrepute to the Gorkhaland cause and our leaders, and to portray our movement as being anti-National."

He also added that since the blast is a national security issue, they kindly request the Home Minister to constitute a High-Level Enquiry Committee immediately, to be comprised of National Investigative Agency (NIA), with a Supreme Court judge monitoring the entire investigations, so as to ensure fairness of the investigations.

"Sir, being a part of the NDA alliance and also loyal subjects of India, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has always believed in demanding our rights peacefully and in a democratic and constitutional manner. Thus this brazen attempt at criminalizing the GJM leadership has caused great anguish to the entire Gorkha population living across India," he said.

The GJM leader further requested that an enquiry be constituted at the earliest, and adding that justice and fairness be provided to the Gorkha's.

"More importantly, I also request you to expedite the talks on Gorkhaland issue, so that a permanent resolution to our issues in the form of a Gorkhaland state is arrived at the earliest," he said.
Barcelona: 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, the prime suspect in Barcelona attack has been shot dead by police in the nearby seaside town of Cambrils, authorities confirmed last night.

The twin attacks in the Catalan capital were a reaction to air strikes in Syria, ISIS claimed, despite Spaniards refusing to take part in air bombing campaigns in 2015.

Hours after the Barcelona attack, a lone police officer shot dead four of the five suspects who were in a car that was driven into pedestrians in Cambrils.

Earlier, the police force for Spain`s Catalonia region confirmed that four suspects were shot dead, and a fifth, who was wounded and arrested, has died during the anti-terror operation in the resort town of Cambrils and the explosive belts they were carrying have been detonated by the force's bomb squad.

Six by-standers were wounded, one critically and another seriously. A police officer was also lightly injured in the counter-terror operation.

One of the suspects involved in the Barcelona attack was found dead in a car three kilometers from where police officers tried to stop him by firing at the vehicle he was in.

Two suspects, one from Morocco, one from the Spanish enclave of Melilla, were arrested in connection with the Barcelona attack, Catalan Police Chief Josep Lluis Trapero said.

At least 14 people were killed and more than 100 were injured on Thursday when a van crashed into a crowd that regularly throng Barcelona`s Las Ramblas boulevard, a destination popular with tourists.

(With inputs from ANI)
Washington: Donald Trump is weighing his options on formulating a new US strategy in South Asia with the focus on Afghanistan, the White House has said, after the President held a key meeting with his national security team.

Trump would take a final decision on this at an appropriate time, the White House said, without divulging the details of the meeting during which Trump was briefed by his national security team.

"Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders. Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan," Trump tweeted after the meeting at the presidential retreat at Camp David, a picturesque resort in Maryland.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the President was briefed extensively by his national security team on a new strategy to protect America's interests in South Asia.

"The President is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time," Sanders said in a statement after

Besides the National Security Adviser Lt Gen H R McMaster, the meeting was attended by Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of national Intelligence Daniel Coats, and President's top Adviser on South Asia Lisa Curtis.

Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, attended the meeting through a secured video conference.



The administration has said its Afghanistan strategy will be determined by a review of its approach to the broader region, including Pakistan and India.

Meanwhile, Senator Lindsay Graham, in a statement, urged the US President not to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

"If we were to pull all our troops from Afghanistan it would be a disaster for our national security interests and set the stage for another 9/11 on American soil," Graham said.

Graham hoped that Trump, unlike his predecessor, will not put US military in a bad spot in Afghanistan.

"He should give them the tools and support they need to confront the rising terror threats in Afghanistan. Today, our diplomatic efforts are non-existent in Afghanistan and the same is true in neighbouring Pakistan," Graham said.
Moscow: Russian police said on Saturday that "terrorism" was not the main angle of the investigation after identifying the attacker who stabbed seven people on the streets of a far northern city of Surgut.

"The version that the attack was a terrorist one is not the main one," the interior ministry's press service in the Khanty-Mansi region told the Interfax news agency, saying that the attacker had been identified and may have suffered from psychiatric disorders.

A knife attacker stabbed eight people on the street in Russia's far northern city of Surgut before being shot by police, investigators said Saturday.

The male attacker "carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds to eight" while "moving along central streets of the city" at around 11:20 am local time (0620 GMT) said Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes.

It said that armed police then arrived and used their weapons on the attacker and "liquidated" him.

The incident took place in a city some 2,100 kilometres (1,330 miles) northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.

While two of those stabbed were rushed to a hospital in a serious condition, another five are said to be in a stable condition, the government of the Khanty-Mansi region said in a statement.

It called for calm over the incident, saying that "in the interests of public calm and also of the investigation, citizens and media are recommended to use reliable information in assessing the situation until all the circumstances are established."

(With Agenvy inputs)
Istanbul: Turkish security forces on Saturday killed one suspected member of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group and detained four more said to have been planning a bomb attack in the country, local authorities said.

Turkish forces in the southern Hatay region bordering Syria stopped a vehicle carrying five suspected IS members after receiving intelligence "they had come to our country to carry out a bomb attack", the regional governor`s office said.

It said that four of the suspects gave themselves up but security forces opened fire on the fifth individual after he failed to heed warnings to surrender and attempted to attack them.

Identified as a Syrian national, he later died in hospital despite efforts to save his life, the statement said.

The nationalities of the four detained suspects were not made clear.

The statement said intense investigations were continuing into the incident but did not say if any explosives were found in the vehicle.

Turkey was hit by a succession of attacks in 2016 that left hundreds dead in the bloodiest year of terror strikes in its history.

The attacks were attributed to IS jihadists as well as the outlawed Kurdistan Workers` Party (PKK) who have battled the Turkish state in an insurgency lasting more than three decades.

In one of the bloodiest strikes, a jihadist gunman opened fire on an elite nightclub in Istanbul just 75 minutes into New Year`s Day in 2017, killing 39 people, mainly foreigners.

There has since been a lull in similar attacks, but tensions remain high and Turkish police launch raids almost daily against suspected IS cells across the country.

A 24-year-old Turkish police officer was stabbed to death in Istanbul last weekend by a suspected IS member who had been arrested on suspicions he was planning a suicide attack.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 19, ARMENPRESS. One police officer was killed and three were wounded in the 2 shootings in Florida, Associated Press reports.

The shooting took place in the city of Kissimmee. Three of four suspects in the Kissimmee shooting were arrested.

US President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Rick Scott extended their condolences to the family of the killed police officer.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 19, ARMENPRESS. Armenia, as part of North-South international transportation corridor, is a bridge for Iranian businessmen to enter Eurasian and European markets, Iranian President's advisor and secretary of Free Zones Coordination Council Akbar Torkan said, IRNA reports.

Armenia is a country with bright future, and its officials on economic and commercial affairs have perfect development programs up to 2035, Torkan said at the meeting with Iranian businessmen living in Armenia.

He called on the Iranian public and private sectors to use the chance to make investments in Armenia and run a business with that country, at the same time using Armenias geographical position for entering the Eurasian 180-million and European markets, as well as exporting the Iranian goods and services to those markets.

The delegation of the Iranian Aras free trade zone led by Akbar Torkan arrived in Armenia on three-day visit. During the visit the delegation met with minister of economic development and investments Suren Karayan, minister of energy infrastructures and natural resources Ashot Manukyan, Vice Prime Minister, minister of international economic integration and reforms Vache Gabrielyan. Suren Karayan and Akbar Torkan signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at outlining the main cooperation directions in the fields of free trade zones between Armenia and Iran, in particular, promoting the Meghri free economic zone and Aras free trade zone, as well as developing close mutual partnership.
YEREVAN, AUGUST 19, ARMENPRESS. The number of people visiting Armenia for medical tourism has increased this summer compared to previous years, Hayk Yenokyan - Head of plastic and maxillofacial surgery service in Mikaelyan Institute of Surgery, told a press conference on August 19, reports Armenpress.

Medical tourism is an established field in Armenia and the tourism flow for this purpose is increasing every year. Many tourists arrive in Armenia to receive medical service, and they are not only people with Armenian origin, but also with different nationalities. Compared to previous years when only Diaspora-Armenians were visiting for this purpose, now tourists of different nationalities also arrive in Armenia. The geography is quite big, people from Sweden, Denmark, other European countries, Iran, the UAE arrive in Armenia for medical tourism, he said.

He informed that tourists in Armenia are mainly interested in nose surgery among plastic surgeries. According to him, foreign partners already accept that Armenian doctors exceeded everyone in terms of nose surgery. If you do a surgery for many times, you become more skilled, Yenokyan said.

He added that Armenia manages to keep competitive price for plastic surgeries. Hayk Yenokyan said compared to Europe and the US the plastic surgeries in Armenia are much more affordable.

Psychologist Lilit Khachatryan said people visit Armenia not only for dentistry and plastic surgeries, but also for psychological consulting. Armenians mainly from Israel, Belgium, England and Russia arrive for psychological consulting.










A day after an internal email by a Google employee was leaked to the press, a combination of ideological intolerance and scientific illiteracy led Google to fire James Damore for "perpetuating gender stereotypes." On the day he was fired, Quillette.com published several brief essays by academics on the science of sex differences, mostly vindicating his characterization of the relevant data. That night, hackers shut down the website, presumably to prevent readers from learning the truth: that there are average differences between men and women, that these differences are partly rooted in biology, and that these differences have predictable social consequences.How did we get here? Why would such a carefully worded dissenting opinion earn someone so much scorn from the public, misunderstanding by the media, and a pink slip by the company he works for? How could an employee who expresses skepticism about a company's policy, but doesn't violate the company's policy in any obvious way, be fired? And why would activists think it's okay to use force to shut out dissenting voices on a website like Quillette?The problem begins in universities, where radical ideas are promoted and lauded as "progressive" and students are taught what to think instead of how to think.Universities are populated by professors who are promoted based on increasingly specialized scholarship that is often inscrutable to outsiders. Few faculty are hired or recognized for their ability to bring insights from different fields together and help students see the big picture.More importantly, while some universities nominally promote "critical thinking," this phrase has come to mean the study of bizarre subjects like "critical theory" that use bombastic and abstruse language to criticize Western civilization. Thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, Newton and Darwin, are cast aside in favor of Foucault and Derrida, Lacan and Zizek. What most of us mean by "critical thinking" is that students should be taught how to challenge authority in a disciplined way by recognizing common biases. This includes, for example, understanding how statistics can be misused to fool us into accepting conclusions too readily , and becoming aware of how our political commitments can impede our ability to accept scientific evidence that suggests small but significant biological differences between sexes and races.The point of a liberal education was supposed to be to bring familiarity with the ideals of the Enlightenment, the principles that guide scientific research, and the foundational texts that made the modern world. But this ideal is now considered quaint, and is increasingly rejected as an oppressive force rather than the foundation of a free and prosperous society.Moreover, students are taught that political speech with which they disagree is "violence" that should be shut down at all costs. They avoid uncomfortable topics by retreating to "safe spaces" on campus and shout down speakers who do not toe the far left line. Too many administrators and faculty promote such behavior. Those who dare to disagree-like Allison Stanger and Bret Weinstein-are run off campus.It is no surprise, then, that corporations are increasingly populated with young adults who do not know how to handle political views or scientific claims they have been taught are out of bounds of public discussion. When Google's diversity officer replied to James Damore's email, it was an incoherent affirmation of the company's diversity policy, coupled with an accusation of sexism. It didn't even attempt to cite reasons why the science Damore mentioned was wrong, or why his political views about diversity policy were misguided. It just asserted they were, and then used that assertion the next day as a pretext to fire him. This is what we get when university professors abuse their power and attempt to turn students into pawns in their political game, rather than autonomous agents with the capacity (but not yet ability) to think for themselves.Journalists, and, by extension, journalism schools, are also to blame. A common route to writing for newspapers and blogs these days is to get an undergraduate degree in English or journalism, and then cover stories in politics that touch on economic controversies, developments in science, environmental issues like global warming, and international affairs like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.Journalists can't possibly know even a small fraction of what they need to in order to cover these topics, so they depend on experts. Good journalists exhibit epistemic humility, and commit themselves to deferring to a range of different experts in a particular field-in this case, for example, evolutionary psychologists and neuroscientists who study the science of sex differences.But this approach is increasingly unprofitable for journalists to the extent that there is an arms race to get a story out as quickly as possible in order to maximize clicks. Even when journalists are under less time pressure, the increasing consumer demand for articles that reflect their political preconceptions makes it difficult for responsible journalists to cash in on their talents by publishing a balanced account of a story.So it is no surprise that the immediate reactions to "Google Gate" tended to use emotionally-charged words and assumptions that are inconsistent with the best available science on sex differences.Some of the earliest headlines exhibited equal parts scientific ignorance and progressive bias in the use of language. When Gizmodo first published the email, the author omitted references contained in the original email and referred to it as an " anti-diversity screed " rather than an objection or an argument. Britain's most popular newspaper, the Guardian, ran a popular story entitled " Google's Sexist Memo Has Provided the Alt Right with a New Martyr ."To describe a classical liberal who supports moderate efforts at diversity as a "martyr for the alt right" is to engage in guilt by association. And describing the author as a "sexist" simply because he believes in small average differences between the sexes contributes to a tendency to over-extend the term "sexist" so much that it drains the word of any moral bite . If believing in average differences between the sexes makes us sexists, then every rational person is a sexist. The best evidence is that there are small average differences in capacities , and large average differences in interests When Steven Pinker published The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature in 2002, a common reaction to it was "come on, nobody actually believes the view Pinker is criticizing." This was the reaction by the eminent philosopher from UNC-Chapel Hill and Cambridge University, Simon Blackburn.It now appears that Pinker was not only describing reality, but writing a prophesy. If anything, the dogmatic commitment to the view that individual and group differences are purely the result of socialization or bias has increased over the past decade or so, despite the fact that evidence to the contrary is accumulating fast.Universities typically begin their freshman orientation programs with bias training, and an assigned book or set of readings that emphasize the oppressive nature of Western civilization. Rather than celebrating Western achievements like religious toleration, constitutional democracy, and the scientific revolution, many faculty members and training programs focus on the wrongs committed by Europeans against other groups. Never mind that morally objectionable practices like slavery and colonialism were commonplace around the world and throughout history by nearly every society with powerful weapons and technology. Focus on recent sins in the West, and then use them to explain all achievement gaps.Two concepts are especially prominent in these readings and bias training seminars: stereotype threat and epigenetics. Stereotype threat occurs when members of a group perform worse on a task after being presented with information that their group tends to do that task poorly. Epigenetics is the idea that a stressful environment can produce chemical changes that alter the expression of genes, which, proponents say, might account for why some groups perform worse than others. Yet the evidence that stereotype threat can explain achievement gaps is weak, and the use of epigenetics to explain group differences is even more tenuous.At the bottom of these trends is a fundamental change in universities' understanding of their own mission. The search for truth, wherever it may lead, has been replaced with a definite, inflexible worldview. Universities have abandoned their commitment to reason, evaluation of evidence, and freedom of conscience.
Renewable energy advocates differ on benefits of 'stakeholder-driven' House Bill 589



Peter Ledford, general counsel of the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association, discusses renewable regulatory reform at Wednesdays North Carolina Energy Policy Council meeting. (CJ photo by Dan Way)

Recently enacted North Carolina renewable energy regulations to control costs and help green energy flourish will be a model other states embrace. Or don't.Green energy leaders had differing levels of enthusiasm for House Bill 589 Wednesday during a North Carolina Energy Policy Council meeting chaired by Lt. Gov. Dan Forest. They all agreed, though, that lawmakers should revisit some of its energy policies, including a moratorium on wind energy projects.Rep. John Szoka, R-Cumberland, a principal sponsor of that Competitive Energy Solutions for North Carolina bill, led a panel discussion about the renewable energy reform. He said the stakeholder-driven process - including representatives of utilities, energy producers, environmental groups, and business organizations - improved the legislation, but it's far from perfect.The most important - and challenging - piece of the legislation changed state rules for implementing the federal Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act, Szoka said. The PURPA act requires public power plants to purchase electricity from renewable producers, but states have wide latitude in complying with the law.North Carolina set up some of the nation's most favorable terms for renewable companies, but those raised ratepayers' costs, and posed other problems for electric utilities. North Carolina has 60 percent of the nation's facilities that qualified for PURPA contracts, and more solar output from PURPA generators than 46 other states combined.H.B. 589 was intended to scale back the state's generous allowances under PURPA.Ken Jennings, renewable strategy and policy director for Duke Energy, said H.B. 589 still will allow solar output to grow between 200 and 300 percent over the next few years, while saving customers more than $800 million.That savings will be generated by new features allowed under the regulatory reform such as competitive bidding to purchase lowest-cost energy, and buying only from areas of the state where it is needed to meet local demand. That reduces stress on personnel and equipment, Jennings said.A Duke Energy analysis found the utility is paying $55 to $85 per megawatt hour to buy solar power, even though the actual cost is $35. Why? The state's PURPA compliance rules forced utilities into long-term, fixed contracts. So as the cost of renewable energy dropped, the utility was hemmed into a non-negotiable contract at a much higher payout.Brian O'Hara, senior vice president of Chapel Hill-based Strata Solar, the state's largest developer of commercial-scale solar installations, said his company benefited handsomely from the state's PURPA laws, but there was a down side.he said. Strata Solar's market began to stagnate as PURPA-eligible projects sprang up everywhere. That led to the need for H.B. 589 to channel projects away from areas where they were not needed, due either to lack of demand, or an oversupply.O'Hara said. Virginia and Georgia are examining North Carolina's reforms for their own states, he said."This is not a cure-all" that every state should jump on, countered Chris Carmody, executive director of the North Carolina Clean Energy Business Alliance. "This is an important pivot" into the future.Carmody took a swipe at government-regulated electric utility monopolies, and their shareholders' demands. He said H.B. 589's reforms are merely a starting point. Incentives need to be changed so the state doesn't get mired in a costly, obsolete regulatory straitjacket while the renewable energy industry undergoes rapid change.and states with stingier incentives erred, said Peter Ledford, general counsel of the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association.He said forcing providers to buy renewable energy under PURPA regulations is "very much a free-market principle."Ledford lamented that the end of state renewable tax credits "pretty well devastated" the rooftop solar industry. A provision in H.B. 589 allows homeowners to lease solar panels on their homes instead of owning them. Ledford said that will inject a needed boost to the residential solar market.
What Do Schools Teach about N.C. Monuments and Statues?

With news that a few socialist punks toppled a Confederate memorial statue in Durham, I thought it would be a good time to review what N.C. public school students learn about monuments and statues.The social studies standards for fourth grade, which introduce students to the history, geography, and people of North Carolina, require teachers toAside from a high school elective course on civil liberties and civil rights, no other grade or course is required to include discussions of monuments and statues. Certainly, teachers in other grades and courses may choose to do so if it helps them to meets state standards in their respective grades and subjects.The two examples cited in the state's social studies standards are the statue of the Confederate soldier outside the Old State Capitol building in Raleigh and the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk. The standards say that the Confederate statue is significant because "it represents the confederacy and honors the lives of the southern men who fought for the Confederacy." The Wright Brothers National Memorial is noteworthy because it "serves to acknowledge where the 'first flight' is believed to have taken place and honor the innovation of the first successful aircraft built by Orville and Wilbur Wright." I suspect that most teachers use the above examples, mostly because the social studies standards document provides links to helpful resources and lessons for each.But teachers are not obligated to use the landmarks mentioned in the standards. For example, it is possible that some teachers choose to highlight the statue that was vandalized in Durham this week. This flexibility allows teachers to select monuments and statues located in their communities. There is, however, a major drawback to this arrangment. In most cases, the public does not have access to the content of teachers' lessons, activities, or materials. So, it is impossible to know what teachers are teaching about the incident in Durham or North Carolina's monuments and statues generally.Moreover, the state does not report the results of fourth-grade social studies exams because they are used exclusively for teacher evaluation. The released test for fourth-grade social studies does not include a reference to a monument or statue. Instead, the tests ask students to read a passage about the Nash-Hooper House in Hillsborough and select the answer that best summarizes its historical significance. A whopping 71 percent of the students selected the correct answer.Even so, it may be difficult for fourth graders, among others, to fully understand why someone would want to deface or wreck a monument or statue. When asked about the toppling of the statue in Durham, my fifth grader couldn't quite grasp why a group of angry socialists would choose to engage in criminal activity to destroy it. He saw the statue primarily as a physical object, not necessarily a symbol of ideologies and values. For most children, a statue is a statue. For most adults, a statue is a statement.
Be a competitive applicant for admission as a freshman in the fall semester into a baccalaureate program at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University or North Carolina Central University (in-state and out of state students are both eligible)

Be a United States citizen or permanent resident

Be on course to graduate from high school in the spring semester prior to college admission

Minimum 4.0 or higher on a 4.0 scale cumulative GPA

Minimum 1280 (new)/1200 (old) SAT or 28 ACT

Show exceptional qualities of character and leadership

Be significantly involved in extracurricular activities

Demonstrate a strong commitment to service

Maintaining a 3.5 cumulative GPA annually

Full time enrollment each semester

Earning a minimum 30 credit hours each academic year

Maintain membership and active participation in the University Honors Program

Contact: Joshua N Ellis

Joshua N Ellis jnellis@northcarolina.edu

CHAPEL HILL Students will soon be able to apply for the Cheatham-White Scholarship, a newly established merit-based scholarship program for incoming freshmen attending North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University or North Carolina Central University beginning in the fall of 2018.The program will provide an outstanding educational experience for students who are exceptional scholars, versatile and well-rounded individuals. Cheatham-White Scholars will represent students with a broad range of interests, proficient in areas of both the arts and sciences, demonstrate leadership potential and a strong commitment to service. The state budget recently approved by the General Assembly provides funding for up to 20 Cheatham-White scholarships at each university.The scholarships are named in honor of Henry Cheatham and George White, African Americans who represented North Carolina in Congress around the turn of the 20th century. Cheatham, an educator who founded an orphanage for black children, won election in 1890 and 1892. White, an attorney who studied at Howard University, won the same 2nd District seat in 1896 and 1898.said UNC system president Margaret Spellings.Each recipient is awarded a fully funded four-year scholarship that covers the cost of full tuition, student fees, housing, meals, textbooks, a laptop, supplies, travel, and personal expenses. Each scholarship also provides four summers of fully funded enrichment and networking opportunities that may include international travel and study.To be eligible for nomination as a potential Cheatham-White Scholarship candidate, a candidate must:Candidates for Cheatham-White Scholarships shall be selected on the basis of academic merit, honorable character, outstanding leadership potential, and a demonstrable commitment to service. Financial need shall not be a consideration.Yearly renewal of the scholarship requires:All North Carolina high schools are eligible to nominate students to be considered as a candidate(s) for the Cheatham-White Scholarship. Nomination packets are currently being mailed out to high schools now.Application forms for the Cheatham-White Scholarship will be available online starting on September 1, 2017. The deadline to apply is November 1, 2017. Additional information about the program can be found online by visiting the websites for North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University or North Carolina Central University.
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.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teen wielding a knife on Saturday in the occupied West Bank, police said. A 17-year-old Palestinian approached a group of Israeli paramilitary policemen stationed at a West Bank junction, holding what appeared to be a bag, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said, and the troops then called on him to stop. "The suspect suddenly whipped out a knife and accosted one of the troops. Other troops then opened fire and neutralized the suspect," Samri said. The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the teenager had been killed. There was no other comment from Palestinian officials. A wave of Palestinian street attacks that began in 2015 has slowed but not stopped. At least 268 Palestinians and one Jordanian citizen have been killed since the violence began. Israel says at least 179 of those killed were carrying out attacks while others died in clashes and protests. Forty-three Israelis, two U.S. tourists and a British student have been killed in Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car-rammings. Israel blames the violence on incitement by the Palestinian leadership. The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, says desperation over the 50-year occupation of land sought by Palestinians for a state is the cause. Palestinians want to establish an independent state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. The last round of peace talks broke down in 2014. (Reporting by Maayan Lubell and Ali Sawafta; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Crowds filled the street at Plaza St-Hubert as international superstar Wyclef Jean took the stage in Montreal in a surprise show Friday afternoon.

In the set, Jean, who is originally from Haiti, addressed the scores of Haitian nationals seeking asylum by crossing the border into Canada outside ports of entry, following the threat of their protected status in the U.S. expiring next year.

"To the refugees that's in the dome, Donald Trump made a promise," Jean sang in a freestyle, alluding to the U.S. president's campaign trail assertion last year in Miami that he wanted to be Haitians' "greatest champion."

"Please, Donald Trump, keep your promise because the refugees can't go back home. I mean, out in Haiti, they can't take 50,000 people after the earthquake," he rapped.

Jean referred to the number of Haitian nationals under the temporary protected status (TPS) in the U.S., which was granted following the 2010 earthquake that ravaged much of the small country and killed more than 200,000 people.

The name of the hip-hop group Jean rose to fame with, The Fugees, comes from the word "refugee," which he told Rolling Stone in 1996 was used derogatorily towards Haitian-Americans.

The award-winning musician also sang about the recent white supremacists rallies in the U.S. in the jam, telling the crowd "I love Canada, the people are so nice. I love America, but things are crazy right now."

He shared the stage along the plaza strip with musicians Marie-Josee Lord and Melanie Renaud, near the intersection of St-Hubert and St-Zotique streets right beside Kwizinn Restaurant.

They sang hits including No Woman, No Cry and Maria, Maria.

The City of Montreal's 375th committee announced earlier in the day the musician would be performing at Plaza St-Hubert at 4 p.m as a part of its anniversary celebrations.

Jean will also be performing Saturday as part of Montreal Symphonique at 9 p.m. at the intersection of Pine and Parc avenues.
By Natalia Zinets KIEV (Reuters) - The Ukrainian central bank said on Friday it had warned state-owned and private lenders of the appearance of new malware as security services said Ukraine faced cyber attacks like those that knocked out global systems in June. The June 27 attack, dubbed NotPetya, took down many Ukrainian government agencies and businesses, before spreading rapidly through corporate networks of multinationals with operations or suppliers in eastern Europe. Kiev's central bank has since been working with the government-backed Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and police to boost the defenses of the Ukrainian banking sector by quickly sharing information. "Therefore on Aug. 11..., the central bank promptly informed banks about the appearance of new malicious code, its features, compromise indicators and the need to implement precautionary measures to prevent infection," the central bank told Reuters in emailed comments. According to its letter to banks, seen by Reuters, the new malware is spread by opening email attachments of word documents. "The nature of this malicious code, its mass distribution, and the fact that at the time of its distribution it was not detected by any anti-virus software, suggest that this attack is preparation for a mass cyber-attack on the corporate networks of Ukrainian businesses," the letter said. Ukraine - regarded by some, despite Kremlin denials, as a guinea pig for Russian state-sponsored hacks - is fighting an uphill battle in turning pockets of protection into a national strategy to keep state institutions and systemic companies safe. The state cyber police and Security and Defence Council have said Ukraine could be targeted on Aug. 24 with a NotPetya-style attack aimed at destabilizing the country as it celebrates its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union. (Writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Mark Heinrich)
The Yukon Socio-Economic Assessment Board is recommending a wind-turbine project proposed near Kluane Lake be approved, despite some "significant" concerns about killing birds.

YESAB took 71 days to review the Kluane N'Tsi (wind) Energy Project and recommend approval with conditions.

The decision bodies for the project are the territorial government and Nav Canada, the owner of Canada's civil air navigation system.

The Kluane First Nation is proposing to build three wind turbines with a combined capacity of 285 kW.

The installation would provide power to Burwash Landing and Destruction Bay.

YESAB's decision paper notes the turbines would prevent the use of about 160,000 litres of diesel per year which is nearly a third of the diesel used to generate power in those communities.

The turbines would be installed between the Alaska Highway and Kluane Lake. They would be visible from the Alaska Highway five kilometres away from Destruction Bay and 10 kilometres away from Burwash Landing.

Blades in migration corridor says Canadian Wildlife Service

YESAB's assessment does acknowledge the potential for 'significant' loss of local birds. However it believes this can be mitigated.

A submission from the Canadian Wildlife Service says the turbines' location is important.

The federal department's submission says the proposed site is "adjacent to wetland/lagoon habitat that appears to be attracting and concentrating birds." It notes the area called the Shakwak Migration Route is "a major migration corridor for migratory birds." This includes golden eagles which are a species of concern.

Several species-at-risk also frequent the site near Kluane Lake. These include the olive-sided flycatcher, horned grebe, red-necked phalarope, rusty blackbird and peregrine falcon.

The White River First Nation also voiced concern the "project may lead to significant number of bird and bat strikes," citing a concern for brown bats.

Story continues

Yukon wildlife biologist Dave Mossop was involved in the research. He has said the proposed location was moved back from the lakeside citing concerns and has said the total impact on wildlife would likely be negligible.

Guy wires, not blades, are the main concern

The Kluane First Nation has committed to making guy wires visible, "whether with brightly coloured paint or flagging

tape to reduce the number of collisions."

YESAB notes that "such measures appear to be effective, at least in part, in reducing bird mortality."

A design change could potentially eliminate this concern entirely. YESAB notes that "an alternative turbine may be procured that does not require guy wires," and would significantly reduce the impact on wildlife.

Another request from the Canadian Wildlife Service is to reduce the turbines' illumination and safety lights.

The department says bright lights attract birds to the structures and requests that lights be used "only as required for safety by Transport Canada."

The site already has a meteorological tower installed. YESAB notes the tower's guy wires have already snagged a few birds.

"Guy wires can be a greater cause of bird mortality than the turbines themselves," notes the review board.

Kluane First Nation would be the owner

No one from the Kluane First Nation was available for comment.

The First Nation has proposed to be the project's sole owner, but has not disclosed plans for funding.

The project would be smaller than a proposed three-turbine project being proposed for Whitehorse's Haeckel Hill which would stand 20 metres taller and generate much more electricity.
President Rodrigo Duterte (left) and President Joko Widodo

Jakarta. The number of suspected drug dealers killed by Indonesian police has more than tripled so far this year from the whole of 2016, activists said on Wednesday (16/08), raising concerns the country may be headed towards a bloody Philippines-style war on narcotics.





At least 60 suspected dealers have died so far this year, up from last year's 18, Amnesty International said.





"While Indonesian authorities have a duty to respond to increasing rates of drug use in the country, shooting people on sight is never a solution," said Usman Hamid, director of Amnesty International Indonesia.





The rights group added that all the deaths involved police allegedly acting in self-defense or because the suspects resisted arrest, but that no independent investigations had been conducted.





A spokesman for the national narcotics agency said officers had to prioritize their own safety and those of others if there was resistance from drug dealers.





"If firearms are used, it's because of the consideration of personal safety of the officers and others at the scene," Sulistiandriatmoko said in a text message.





He declined to comment on the number of deaths.





Authorities estimate there are around 6.4 million drug users in the country of 250 million people, and the use of crystal methamphetamine has soared in recent years.





President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has called for a "merciless" crackdown on the narcotics trade, which he believes has reached full-blown emergency status.





"We have firmly declared a war against drug dealers who are ruining the future of our younger generation," Jokowi said on Wednesday in a state of the nation speech marking the 72nd anniversary of independence from Dutch colonialists.





Jokowi has also told law enforcement officers to shoot drug traffickers if they resisted arrest.





The chief of anti-narcotics police, Budi Waseso, told Reuters last month that Indonesia would not replicate the bloody war on drugs in the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte, though he praised its aims.





More than 8,000 people have died in the Philippines' war on drugs since Duterte took office last year, a third in raids and sting operations by police who say they acted in self-defence.





Duterte has refused to back down despite overwhelming international criticism.

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Anngela Fader Sampler turned 40 this year, but the milestone was bittersweet  its now been 30 years since her mother was strangled to death near Lake Worth.





But the sad anniversary comes with a fresh hope for justice for Dana Faders loved ones because her alleged killer, Rodney Clark, finally is set to stand trial. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in a case that had gone cold for over two decades.





Were ready for some kind of closure, said Sampler, a southeast Tennessee resident speaking also for her younger brothers, Kolby and Johnny, who were 5 and 3 when they lost their mom. Whether its life in prison, death, just to know hes going to pay for his crime.





Its the first death penalty case to be tried in Palm Beach County since Florida got a new death penalty law in March, and for more than three years before that. Unanimous jury votes are now required to impose a death sentence.





The case against the Mississippi man, 50, didnt emerge until 2012, and that was six years after detectives reopened the long cold case hoping for a DNA match to evidence collected from the crime scene.





In late 2012, investigators using a national DNA database matched Clarks DNA  he was by then a convicted sex offender  to a blood and semen stain found on Faders dress. Clark also could not be excluded from the DNA from the pillowcase, according to a report.





Finally, Clarks palm print was matched to one taken from the outside right rear window of Faders sedan.





Located in Jackson, Miss., Clark told detectives he lived in Palm Beach County in 1987 but denied ever knowing or coming in contact with Fader, having sexual relations with her or being in her car.





Clark was arrested on the murder charge and extradited to South Florida in 2013.





Seven days of jury selection wrapped up Friday afternoon, and opening statements are set for 9 a.m. Monday. Circuit Judge Charles Burton told the panel of a dozen jurors and two alternates to expect the trial to take two weeks.





Before they reach a potential sentencing phase, prosecutors Aleathea McRoberts and Reid Scott first need to obtain a first-degree murder conviction of Clark.

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Sun Sentinel, Marc Freeman, August 18, 2017
Former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal is hoping that the time is finally right for the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the death penalty unconstitutional again.





Katyal, now a Hogan Lovells partner in Washington, filed a certiorari petition with the court on Monday in an Arizona death-row case, asking the court to decide whether "the death penalty in and of itself violates the Eighth Amendment, in light of contemporary standards of decency."





If the court grants the case, it will add to the high court's blockbuster docket of upcoming cases for the fall term, on issues ranging from political gerrymandering to President Donald Trump's immigration travel ban.





The Arizona case is titled Hidalgo v. Arizona. The main flaw in the Arizona death-penalty statute, Katyal wrote, is that so-called "aggravating factors" have been added over the years to the point where 99 percent of those who commit first-degree murders are eligible to be executed.





"The Arizona death penalty statute is deeply unconstitutional, as it does not in practice narrow who is subject to the death penalty," Katyal said, adding that "the death penalty as a whole, after decades of experience, is flatly unconstitutional as well."





One of Katyal's arguments is that with the sharp drop in death sentences and executions nationwide, capital punishment has become "a rare and freakish punishment" that the Eighth Amendment forbids.





The brief notes that only 31 people were sentenced to death last year, down 90 percent from 20 years before.





Citing Gregg v. Georgia, the 1976 Supreme Court decision that reinstated the death penalty after it was suspended in 1972, Katyal wrote that "Greggs hope that the punishment of death could be administered rationally and in accord with legitimate penological purposes has proved to be empty, a fatal mistake which this court must now correct."

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The National Law Journal, Tony Mauro, August 15, 2017
As Pakistan celebrates its 70th anniversary as an independent state, 24 British politicians, led by Labour MP Siobhan McDonagh, have written to the Pakistani government urging it to repeal its blasphemy laws, which have been used to persecute humanists and religious minorities. Humanists UK , which is part of the End Blasphemy Laws coalition, has welcomed the letter.





Siobhan McDonagh, also chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Ahmadiyya Muslims, stated that the Pakistani government has consistently committed discriminatory acts against minority religious groups, including denying religious freedom, harassing, violently persecuting, and sometimes, carrying out death sentences. The letter also states that the current use of these laws stands in painful contrast to the vision of Pakistans founders.





Blasphemy laws were first introduced into what is now modern-day Pakistan in 1860 by the British, during the period of colonial rule in India. They continued to form part of Pakistans law after the creation of the country in 1947 following the partition of India, which was marked by widespread religious violence. Under the military government of General Zia-ul Haq in the 1980s these laws were expanded, culminating in 1986 when the death penalty was introduced as a punishment for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.





Recent years have seen many humanists and others persecuted under the laws. Taimoor Raza was handed a death sentence in June for a Facebook post. In April, humanist Mashal Khan was murdered by a mob of fellow University students for alleged blasphemy. And in January, five bloggers were abducted by security services, only to reappear weeks later following accusations of torture.





Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson commented, Laws against blasphemy are a denial of freedom of religion and belief and of freedom of speech and expression. For far too long, humanists and others have faced severe persecution in Pakistan, and we are delighted to see these politicians take a stand to try to force change.

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Giang Kim Dat, Tran Van Liem and Tran Van Khuong

But without a major overhaul of the country's public sector, stern sentencing may be only cosmetic, analysts say.





A court of appeals in Hanoi on Friday upheld the death sentences against two executives from the corruption-hit shipping industry after convicting them of pocketing nearly $12 million in deals made between 2006 and 2008, the latest punishment meted out as the ongoing crackdown on the public sector is widening.





At the first trial in February, Giang Kim Dat, the former sales manager of the troubled shipbuilder Vinashinlines, and Tran Van Liem, the company's former CEO, were sentenced to death for stealing more than VND260 billion ($11.65 million) from the company between 2006 and 2008.





In February, the firms former accountant, Tran Van Khuong, also got a life sentence for abetting the embezzlement, while Dats father Giang Van Hien received 12 years in prison for money laundering. Friday's appellate court upheld all these sentences.





According to the indictment, Dat siphoned off the money from 16 deals to buy or lease old vessels. He also advised Liem on how to buy and lease ships and colluded with foreign partners to rig prices for personal gain.





The investigation found that Dat paid Liem $150,000 and Khuong $110,000 in the scam. The rest of the embezzled money was transferred to multiple bank accounts in Hiens name, who used it to buy houses and cars.





After his wrongdoings were discovered, Dat fled abroad and was arrested in July 2015 following an international arrest warrant.





Vinashinlines is a subsidiary of Vinashin, a shipping behemoth that racked up debt of $4.5 billion in 2010 before being restructured into the Shipbuilding Industry Corporation in 2013.





The Vinashinlines case is one of six serious corruption and economic mismanagement cases the government planned to bring to trial by the end of March 2017. The others involved violations at Agribank, OceanBank, VietinBank, the Vietnam Waterway Construction Corporation and a public development fund in the northern province of Bac Ninh.





However, authorities have failed to bring these cases to a close.





The trial took place in the context of Vietnam's widening crackdown on corruption and malfeasance at the much-cosseted yet inefficient public sector.





But analysts say infrequent but harsh punishment can only serve as a deterrent to contain large-scale corruption in the short run. They say without a major overhaul of the state sector, which has proved a drag on a once-thriving economy, corruption will remain endemic.





"Evidence from all over the world suggests the death penalty is not a deterrent to grand corruption," said Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the University of New South Wales in Australia.





"The death penalty for high level corruption might win some publicity and approval from the public. But this feeling wears off when large scale corruption continues," Thayer said.

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At the release of the State Departments annual report on international religious freedom, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson decried the lack of religious liberty in many parts of the world:

Religious persecution and intolerance remain far too prevalent. Almost 80 percent of the global population lives with restrictions on or hostilities to limit their freedom of religion.

Secretary Tillerson cited a number of the countries whose populations live with such restrictions and hostilities, including Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan. He noted too that ISIS is responsible for genocide against Yezidis, Christians and Shia Muslims in areas it controls or has controlled. And he spoke of the grave violations of religious freedom in Iran:

In Iran, Bahais, Christians, and other minorities are persecuted for their faith. Iran continues to sentence individuals to death under vague apostasy laws. Twenty individuals were executed in 2016 on charges that included, quote, waging war against God. Members of the Bahai community are in prison today simply for abiding by their beliefs.

The State Department report notes that Iran has been designated a Country of Particular Concern for 17 years  most recently in February 2016  because of the Iranian governments toleration of or engagement in particularly severe violations of religious freedom. It cites the human rights NGO United for Iran which says there were 198 political prisoners incarcerated on charges of waging war against God, 31 for insulting Islam and 12 for corruption on earth.

The State Department also noted other abuses of religious freedom in Iran in 2016: among them, the death of a member of the Gonabadi community of Sufi dervishes days after he was detained by plainclothes policemen in Tehran; the arrest of a Sunni Baluchi girl for criticizing religious ceremonies on social media; the ongoing imprisonment of Mohammad Ali Taheri, the founder of a spiritual healing movement; the disproportionate levels of detention for Christians, as well as their severe physical and psychological mistreatment; the continued harassment of the Sabean-Mandaean and Yarsan religious communities.

Secretary of State Tillerson said that [n]o one should have to live in fear, worship in secret, or face discrimination because of his or her beliefs. The United States will continue to give voice to all those -- in Iran and worldwide - who seek to live their lives peacefully in accordance with their conscience.
U.S.-Vietnam defense cooperation is growing. In a recent meeting, U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Vietnamese Defense Minister Ngo Xuan Lich discussed further steps in their mutual defense relationship and regional security issues, including freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

Notably, both leaders agreed to work toward a first-time visit of a U.S. aircraft carrier to Vietnam to expand naval cooperation. It would be the first such visit since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. President Donald Trump discussed the possibility of a carrier visit with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc when they met at the White House in May.

Defense cooperation between the United States and Vietnam are increasingly important for enhancing regional and global security in the Asia-Pacific region, said the Pentagon in a press release. The U.S. recently transferred a former Coast Guard cutter to Vietnam to help the country improve its maritime law-enforcement capabilities, according to the Pentagon.

The United States and Vietnam have found common ground in recent years over Chinas provocative claims and actions in the South China Sea. China, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian countries have competing claims to islands in the area, as well as maritime areas and the natural resources within them, including fish and potentially oil and gas reserves.

While the U.S. takes no position on sovereignty claims over any part of the South China Sea, the U.S. has a national interest in respect for international law, including freedom of navigation and other lawful uses of the sea. There are concerns that China could eventually seek to dictate, in a manner inconsistent with international law, which vessels would be allowed to sail or fly there.

U.S. forces operate in the Asia-Pacific region on a daily basis, including in the South China Sea. All operations are conducted in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows.

The US-Vietnam relationship will continue to be built on common security interests, including freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Secretary Mattis welcomes Vietnam's engagement and growing leadership in the Asia-Pacific region.
After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings  though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.



Jen Johnson, CTU, Local 1 in Substance


A man is attended to by emergency services after the attack JUAN BARBOSA

More information All 15 victims of the Catalonia terrorist attacks identified by police

Please note: this story is no longer being updated. For the latest news on the victims, see here.

Thursdays terrorist attack in Barcelona took place on the citys iconic La Rambla promenade, a cosmopolitan area visited by tourists from all over the world. Alongside the four Spanish citizens officially confirmed as killed thus far, the terrorists also took the lives of two Italians, two Portuguese citizens, a Belgian, a US citizen, a Canadian and two people with Argentinean citizenship.

Among those killed and injured in the attack, and among the missing, there are people from at least 35 countries. Below is a list containing information on the victims of the attack.

Italy. Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni has confirmed two Italians died in the Barcelona attack. The first Italian to be confirmed dead was Bruno Gulotta, 35, originally from Legnano, near Milan. He was on holiday with his partner Martina, 28. He placed himself in front of the children and was run over, his wife was reported to have said.

The second Italian victim was Luca Russo, 25, an engineer who lived in Bassano del Grappa, some 100 kilometers west of Venice. He was walking on La Rambla with his girlfriend, who was injured but not seriously.

Germany. Early reports from the German government indicate 13 German citizens were injured in the attack, some of them seriously, according to local media citing sources in the German Foreign Ministry. The same sources did not rule out that Germans may have been killed. TV channel ZDF reported three Germans had died, citing security sources.

A woman places flowers on the La Rambla promenade in honor of the victims of the attack in Barcelona MANU FERNANDEZ (AP)

Belgium. The death of one Belgian was confirmed by the Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister Didier Reynders. The ministry said the victim was a woman and that consular officials were in touch with two other Belgians hospitalized after being injured in the attack, one of them seriously.

The mayor of Tongeren near the Dutch border said the Belgian woman killed was a resident of the town. Local media in Belgium have identified her as 44 year-old Elke V., on holiday in Barcelona with her husband and two teenage children. It is not known if they were among the injured.

Portugal. The prime minister of Portugal, Antonio Costa, has confirmed a second victim from the country. On Friday he said a 74-year-old woman from Lisbon, in Barcelona on vacation, had died. On Saturday, it emerged her granddaughter, aged 20, initially reported as missing, had also died.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian condemned the attack as an act of cowardice

United States. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed on Friday that a US citizen had died. The deceased was later identified as Jared Tucker, who was celebrating his first wedding anniversary with his wife.

France. French Foreign Mminister Jean-Yves Le Drian confirmed in a statement that 26 French citizens were injured in the attack. The French Foreign Ministry said 11 French people had been injured seriously, a figure that French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb elevated to 17.

Australia/UK. Australia said eight of its citizens had been affected by the Barcelona attack. Four were injured, among them a woman traveling on a British passport who has been hospitalized with serious injuries.

On Sunday, Catalan officials confirmed that a seven-year-old BritishAustralian boy, Julian Cadman, had died in the Barelona attack. Julian had earlier been reported missing by his grandfather who posted a photo on social media and said that the boy had been on La Rambla at the moment of the attack with his mother, one of those injured.

Canada. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that one Canadian had died and four others had been injured.

Colombia. The Colombian foreign ministry said that one of its citizens had been injured and one was still missing.

Cuba. Four Cubans were injured in the Barcelona attack and a fifth was lightly injured in the later attack in the resort town of Cambrils. That person had already left hospital, according to the official Cuban website Cubadebate.

Ecuador. The foreign ministry of Ecuador said two people from the country had been lightly injured and were now out of danger. Their names were given as Katty Vargas Bonilla, in hospital under observation, and Carmen Judith Romero, who has been released from hospital and is now back at home, according to the government.

Argentina. The Argentinean Foreign Ministry has said two women with double nationality have died. One of them was SpanishArgentinean Silvina Alejandra Pereyera, 40, who had lived in Barcelona for over a decade. The other victim was Carmen Lopardo, 80, who was born in Italy but emigrated to Argentina more than 60 years ago. The following Argentinean citizens were also listed as injured: the tourist Maria Cristina Deambrosi, aged 60, and Pablo Sebastian Abecasis, 67, a resident of Catalonia.

Venezuela. Two Venezuelans have been injured: Alyaris Vargas and Alejandra Roa, according to Venezuelan daily El Nacional citing consul Ricardo Capella.

Honduras. One Honduran was injured, the consul for the Central American country confirmed. Dayana Pagoada was admitted to Barcelonas Hospital Espiritu Santo and has now been released.

Peru. One Peruvian was injured. The countrys foreign ministry has not released that persons identity but the individual is now at home and out of danger.

English version by George Mills.

https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/08/21/inenglish/1503316337_044260.html
Younes Abouyaaqoub, en una imagen cedida por la policia.

More information Chief suspect in Barcelona terrorist attack killed by Catalan police

Police in Spains Catalonia region are now focusing their search for the driver of the van used in the terror attack in Barcelona on Thursday that killed at least 13 people and left over 100 injured on one person: Younes Abouyaaqoub.

Abouyaaqoub was born on January 1, 1995 in the Moroccan town of M'rirt, home to around 35,000 people, some 230 kilometers from Rabat and located south of the highway that links the city of Fez and the Moroccan capital.

Until Thursday, Abouyaaqoub lived a seemingly normal life in the small town of Ripoll, a community in the foothills of the Pyrenees of some 10,000 people. He went to high school in the town and his neighbors said his circle of friends was not limited to Moroccans.

Police sources say documents relating to Abouyaaqoub were found in a second van located by the Catalan regional police force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, in the town of Vic, some 70 kilometers from Barcelona and 30 kilometers from Ripoll.

Police are working on the theory that after an explosion on Wednesday night in a property in Alcanar in Catalonas Tarragona province, Abouyaaqoub split from the rest of the terrorist cell numbering some 12 people and carried out the van attack on Barcelonas La Rambla boulevard before fleeing the scene.

Abouyaaqoub went to high school in Ripoll and neighbors say his circle of friends was not limited to Moroccans

Police are also investigating whether it was Abouyaaqoub who hijacked a white Ford Focus that failed to stop at a police roadblock on Barcelonas Diagonal avenue on Thursday at 7.45pm. One Mossos d'Esquadra officer suffered a broken leg after being run into during the incident.

Shortly afterwards, a person was discovered dead as a result of injuries inflicted with a bladed weapon in the same vehicle three kilometers away in the Barcelona locality of Sant Just Desvern.

Investigators believe the hijacker of the vehicle fled after abandoning the car, leaving its owner seriously wounded on the rear seat.

The owner of the Ford Focus has now been identified as Pau Perez, a 34-year-old who lived in the town of Vilafranca del Penedes in Barcelona province and worked in Barcelona city.

Perez was returning to Vilafranca around 7pm on Thursday evening when he was attacked, stabbed and his car stolen.

Initially, counter-terrorist sources said that Abouyaaqoub had died. Late on Friday, however, police said he was still alive and was now one of the chief suspects in relation to the Barcelona terror attack.

Earlier, 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, who was one of five terror suspects killed by police in the Catalan resort town of Cambrils after a second attack there early on Friday morning, had been named as the chief suspect, but the focus of the investigations has now turned to Abouyaaqoub.

According to French daily Le Parisien, French security forces have been told by Spanish police to be on the lookout for a white Renault Kangoo has that crossed the SpanishFrench border.

English version by George Mills.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 19

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the opening of the newly reconstructed day nursery-kindergarten No.4 in Goygol district.

The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the official opening of the day nursery-kindergarten, and then toured it.

The reconstruction of the two-storey building started in July, 2015, and ended in July, 2017. The 100-seat day nursery-kindergarten has a canteen, bedrooms, a music hall and a medical center. All rooms are supplied with the necessary equipment. All conditions were created here for children.

Large landscaping work was carried out in the yard of the day nursery-kindergarten.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 19

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has attended the inauguration of a 100-seat orphanage-kindergarten in Samukh, whose construction was initiated by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation.

The head of state cut the ribbon symbolizing the opening of the orphanage-kindergarten.

The two-storey building covers an area of 1,135 square metres. All conditions were created here for children.

All rooms are supplied with the necessary equipment. Excellent conditions are also created in the gym and canteen.

Playgrounds were built and amusement facilities were installed in the yard of the orphanage-kindergarten.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 19

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

Azerbaijans insurance company Bashak Inam, in the order of priority, will be able to return its funds placed in the Zaminbank OJSC, which is in the process of liquidation, the company told Trend.

As you know, a part of our funds, in the amount of 1.7 million manats, were placed in Zaminbank, which is currently in the process of liquidation. We intend to return our funds, but we will be able to receive them only in the order of priority, since after the revocation of its license the bank was declared bankrupt and couldnt pay our money, said the company.

It should be noted that as of August 7, the Azerbaijan Deposit Insurance Fund (ADIF) paid about 72.2 million manats to the insured depositors of the bank. This means that ADIF, which is the first in line of the creditors list, will have to receive this amount, after which it will begin paying off the liabilities to other creditors.

It should be recalled that Bashak Inam is also preparing for voluntary liquidation. In February 2017, the shareholders of the company appealed to the Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FIMSA) regarding its liquidation, and FIMSA responded positively to this request.

Currently, Bashak Inam expects the approval of a plan for voluntary liquidation from FIMSA.

According to FIMSA, Bashak Inam collected insurance premiums in the amount of 20,500 manats, while payment of claims totaled 44,490 manats in 1H17. It should be noted that the collection of insurance premiums was carried out by the company only in January and February 2017.

Currently, 22 insurance companies (including Bashak Inam) operate in Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug.17

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Peru is working on making visa issuance procedure for Azerbaijani citizens more expedite, Charge d'Affaires e.p. of Peruvian embassy in Baku Luis Chang Boldrini said in an interview with Trend.

"Travelling to the other country is turning each time easier. There are many airlines with which you can now fly with only one stop or maybe two if you want a cheaper fare. With regard to visa issuance for citizens of our countries, Peru is now included in the e-visa program that allows Peruvian passport holders to obtain a visa electronically. Peru does not have an e-visa system, but we are already working to make the process of visa issuance for Azerbaijani citizens more expedite and less expensive," said the diplomat.

He pointed out that Peru and Azerbaijan share common elements in their touristic offer and the two countries have most of their touristic potential still unexploited.

"Rich history that backs to thousands of years and nature are important for both countries. We are also rich in traditions and cultural expressions like folklore, dances, cuisine and textile art. We can share our experience and cooperate to strengthen our capacity and market skills. For example, Peru can cooperate with Azerbaijan sharing the experience we acquired building our National Brand, which is now one of the most valuable in the world and permits identify any product or service related to our country easily with Peru," said Boldrini.

The diplomat noted that the two sides are now working on a tourism agreement that will establish a solid base for the cooperation between the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism of Peru and the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture and Tourism in the fields of inter-institutional cooperation, capacity building and cooperation in international organizations.

"We believe that tourism is one of the best ways to bring people together and create strong links. From our side, to promote awareness and interest in Peru, we are already working to organize a Peruvian cuisine festival to show our food traditions and how they have evolved to turn to be one of the most famous in the world now. Two Peruvian restaurants "Central" and "Maido" were named within the best 10 of the world according to the prestigious British "Restaurant" magazine, which is voted by renown chefs, restaurant owners and cuisine critics. Virgilio Martinez, chef of "Central" was named this year as the best chef in the world," he added.

Boldrini said he believes that Peru has much to offer to Azerbaijani travelers and vice-versa.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 19

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Since early 2001 until August 1, 2017, the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) has received $125.718 billion as part of the project of developing the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) block of fields in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, a source in SOFAZ told Trend.

"In January-July 2017, SOFAZ received $3.609 billion within the ACG project," said the source.

The contract for developing the ACG field was signed in 1994. The proven oil reserves of the block near 1 billion tons.



The shareholders of the project are BP (operator, 35.78 percent), Chevron (11.28 percent), Inpex (10.96 percent), AzACG (11.65 percent), Statoil (8.55 percent), Exxon (8 percent), TPAO (6.75 percent), Itocu (4.3 percent) and ONGC (2.72 percent).

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Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Aug. 19

By Demir Azizov  Trend:

The Senate (upper house) of Uzbekistans parliament will hold its next meeting on August 24, said the Senates press service.

The meetings agenda includes consideration of several laws, including the law On the dissemination of legal information and access to it, On protecting children from information that is harmful to their health and others.

Meanwhile, the issues of attributing the Toitep, Yangiyul and Okhangaron cities of the Tashkent region to the category of cities of regional subordination will be discussed at the meeting.

Other issues related to the competences of the Senate will also be discussed at the plenary session.

Uzbekistans bicameral parliament  the Supreme Assembly  was created in 2005. Its legislative chamber permanently has 150 MPs.

The upper house - Senate has 100 MPs elected in equal numbers, i.e. six MPs from the Karakalpakstan Republic, provinces and the city of Tashkent. Sixteen more members of the Senate are appointed by Uzbek president from among the most distinguished citizens.

The Senate meetings are held in case of necessity, but at least three times a year.
Tehran, Iran, August 19

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran has exported four shipments of crude oil from the oil layer of South Pars since the country started tapping the layer in March.

Since March 19 when Iran started tapping the layer, it has exported 2 million barrels of oil from it to East Asian market, SHANA news agency reported August 19.

The in situ oil of this layer is estimated at above 6 billion barrels, 10 percent of which is extractable regardless of new recovery methods.

The layer is planned by the Iranian Oil Ministry to be offered for investment. The Danish Maersk is deemed to have a high chance for winning its development opportunity.
Saudi Arabia's central bank said on Saturday it had not banned trading of the Qatari riyal since Riyadh cut diplomatic ties with Doha, and said visiting Qatari citizens could exchange their currency, Reuters reported.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic and transport ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing Doha of backing terrorism, which Qatar denies. Riyadh ordered the expulsion of Qatari citizens from its territory.

Riyadh exempted Qataris traveling on the annual Muslim haj pilgrimage to Mecca from its expulsion order. Pilgrims from Qatar began arriving in Saudi Arabia on Thursday.

"Qatari nationals can exchange the Qatari riyal normally through licensed banks and money changers, in addition to using ATMs," the central bank said in a brief statement.

Saudi commercial bankers told Reuters in June their central bank had issued informal guidance deterring Saudi financial institutions from doing new business with Qatari banks.

Many Saudi and UAE banks have pulled deposits from Qatar since the diplomatic rift, bankers say. As a result, foreign customers' deposits at banks in Qatar shrank to 170.6 billion riyals ($46.9 billion) in June from 184.6 billion riyals in May.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 19

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

The United States Secretary of Defense James Mattis will visit Turkey on Aug. 23, the Turkish media reported, Aug. 19.

During the visit, Mattis will meet with Turkeys Minister of National Defense Nurettin Canikli. The two sides are expected to discuss the settlement of the Syrian crisis and the fight against the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) terrorist organization.

The conflict between Turkey and PKK, in which the latter demands the creation of an independent Kurdish state, has continued for more than 30 years and has claimed more than 40,000 lives. United Nations and European Union both list PKK as a terrorist organization.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag on Saturday condemned German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel for what he deemed were disrespectful statements regarding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Anadolu reported.

Speaking to reporters in central Turkeys Yozgat province, Bozdag said the comments pronounced by the German official were "disrespectful, insolent".

Erdogan on Friday called on Turkish-origin German citizens not to vote for Chancellor Angela Merkels Christian Democrats, Martin Schulzs Social Democrat Party (SDP) or the Green Party because he said they showed an anti-Turkey stance.

The German foreign minister criticized the Turkish presidents remarks saying they constituted an interference in the German general election, which is scheduled to take place on Sept. 24.

Our honorable presidents call [was aimed at] those Turkish-origin [voters] who obtained citizenship in Germany and acquired the right to vote there, not other German citizens, said Bozdag

This is very clear, but despite this, there are statements [from the German side] that are very disrespectful, insolent and surpassed the boundary of modesty. I want to say that I condemn those statements [...].

He also accused German politicians, as well as the country state-run broadcasters, of backing the "no" campaign -- not supported by the Turkish government -- during the referendum campaign.

Key FETO suspect said to be in Germany

Turkey voted on April 16 to approve changes to the countrys constitution which would usher in an executive presidency.

Bozadag also said Berlin was clearly protecting the PKK terrorist group and that Germany had become a safe haven for the members of the Fetullah Terrorist Organizaion (FETO).

[The PKK] carries out all kinds of propaganda there, said Bozdag.

The PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and EU -- resumed its decades-old armed campaign in July 2015 and have claimed 1,200 lives, including members of security forces and civilians.

Bozdag said Berlin had yet to react to the 4,500 dossiers handed by Ankara regarding the PKK terrorists activities in Germany.

He also said Ankara had not received a response from German authorities over the alleged presence of a key suspect in last year's attempted coup.

Turkey has asked Germany to investigate media reports that Adil Oksuz was living in the country, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Wednesday.

Adil Oksuz is said to be the civilian leader of air force personnel loyal to FETO, which Ankara accuses of staging the July 15 putsch attempt.

Earlier this week, Ankara had issued a diplomatic note to Berlin asking whether Oksuz was in Germany.
KYODO NEWS - Aug 18, 2017 - 11:27 | Japan, All

Some 10,000 fireworks were set off Thursday evening at a beach within the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage-listed Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range.

The organizers said 120,000 people were treated to the rare pyrotechnic display including fireworks.



The fireworks were set off from rafts on the sea during the event in Kumano in central Japan's Mie Prefecture

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Shares of Allegiant Travel Company ALGT tumbled to a 52-week low of $119.05 during the trading session on August 17. However, the figure recovered marginally to close the trading session at $119.45, down 3.2% from the closing price of August 16.

Why the Decline?

Last month, this Las Vegas, NV-based company reported disappointing second-quarter 2017 results on the bottom-line front. Its earnings of $2.94 per share missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 2 cents, and declined 20.11% from the year-ago figure due to higher costs.

Cost per available seat miles (CASM), excluding fuel, increased 13.2% in the quarter. The new pilot agreement contributed to the increase in the metric. In fact, the company inked many labor deals in the recent past leading to a spike in labor costs. This, in turn, has been hurting the bottom line for quite some time.

In fact, this dismal performance is likely to continue in the third quarter as well. The company expects CASM to grow in the band of 16% to18% in the quarter. The metric is anticipated to increase in the 10% to 12% range for full-year 2017.

Moreover, the guidance for the quarter with respect to total revenue per available seat miles (TRASM: a key measure of unit revenue) is disappointing. Allegiant expects third-quarter 2017 TRASM in the band of - 0.5% and +1.5% compared with the figure in the year-ago quarter. The projection compares unfavorably with 3.1% improvement registered by the metric in the second quarter of 2017.

Apart from the earnings miss, the companys July traffic report was disappointing with load factor (percentage of seats filled by passengers) declining.

Notably, the key metric at this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company fell 80 basis points year over year to 88.8% as capacity expansion outweighed traffic growth for the month. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Lacklustre Price Performance

Shares of the company have performed disappointingly so far this year. The stock has declined 27.2% against the industrys gain of 11.2% on a year-to-date basis.

Story continues

Certainly Not a Broker Favorite

Given the challenges faced by the company, it is natural that the stock is not a favorite of brokers right now. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the third quarter has moved down 24% to $1.52 in the last month, due to multiple downward revisions. Also, for full-year 2017 the same descended 5.5% to $9.33.

Given the wealth of information at the disposal of brokers, it is in the best interests of investors to be guided by broker advice and the direction of their estimate revisions. Notably, the direction of estimate revisions serves as an important pointer when it comes to the price of a stock.

Stocks to Consider

Investors interested in the Airline industry may consider Delta Air Lines, Inc. DAL, SkyWest, Inc. SKYW and Ryanair Holdings plc RYAAY . All the three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1.

Shares of Delta, SkyWest and Ryanair have gained more than 29%, 23% and 61% in the last year.

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CEOs needed to walk away from Trump to protect their brand: Former CEO

The CEOs who abandoned President Donald Trump's business councils had to think of their companies first, former LVMH CEO Mark Weber told CNBC on Thursday.

Top business executives disbanded the Strategy & Policy Forum on Wednesday in response to Trump's reaction to the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Several CEOs also quit the president's manufacturing council before Trump dissolved it.

In an interview with " Closing Bell ," Weber said it was time for them to walk away.

"It's unfortunate. These people came to Washington trying to help the government. What's going on now, they can't. So they have to walk away because their No. 1 priority is to protect the brand they represent," he said.

Trump's remarks about the rally over the weekend have been widely criticized . On Tuesday, he blamed "both sides" for the violence that left one person dead and several others injured.

He also said some of the people participating in the rally, which featured swastikas and chants of "Jews will not replace us," were only against the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Then on Thursday, he tweeted against removing the "beautiful" Confederate statues and monuments .

Ben Baldanza, former CEO of Spirit Airlines, agrees that executives need to do what is right for their companies.

"Two things that businesses don't like are uncertainty and distraction and Washington is sure supplying plenty of both of those things right now," he told "Closing Bell."

He hopes Trump and his advisors stay close to the business community because if the president is unable to get the support he needs for his pro-growth agenda, "that's going to make it a very difficult time for American business and the economy."

In fact, just because CEOs are publicly distancing themselves from the president doesn't mean Trump still can't call them for advice, Weber noted.

Story continues

"Publicly, these folks may not want to put their name out here. Privately, how can you refuse the president of the United States and turn your back on the country? It just won't happen," he said.

 CNBC's Jacob Pramuk contributed to this report.





More From CNBC


Corporate America is acting swiftly amid the ongoing political firestorm over race relations sparked by a white nationalist rally in Virginia last weekend that turned fatal.

Several companies and corporate leaders have publicly condemned the actions and ideology of hate groups. But at least 11 firms have gone a step further, making concerted efforts to ensure their services are not being used by the people espousing those philosophies.

The list is expanding quickly, with more corporate leaders choosing to take a stand every day. But as of now, heres whos telling hate groups to take a hike.

GoDaddy

Shortly after neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer posted an article denigrating counter-protester Heather Heyer, who was killed in Charlottesville, the Web hosting company gave the site 24 hours to move its domain to another provider. The Website chose -- but didnt stay there for long.

Google

The Internet giant quickly stopped providing service to The Daily Stormer, citing its terms of service. The domain was registered with Google shortly before 8 a.m. California time; the company announced plans to revoke it at 10:56 a.m. The group later tried to have a Russian Internet server host the site, but even that was short-lived, as Roskomnadzor, the Russian governments media and telecommunication watchdog, ordered its removal.

Apple

The tech giant has reportedly disabled Apple Pay support for websites that sell neo-Nazi paraphernalia, including clothing with Nazi and white pride logos and a bumper sticker which reportedly showed a car hitting stick figure demonstrators, apparently a reference to the way in which Heyer was killed. Apple CEO Tim Cook has also criticized President Trump for failing to strongly condemn the hate groups.

Cloudflare

The worlds preeminent provider of protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks has said it will no longer defend The Daily Stormer. The company says it has taken steps to ensure the site can never sign up for Cloudflares services again. We could not remain neutral after these claims of secret support by Cloudflare, said CEO Matthew Prince in a blog post.

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Airbnb

Days before the Charlottesville rally, Airbnb stood up to hate groups, canceling the accounts of attendees who had rented lodging in the area, citing its terms of service. In a follow-up statement, CEO Brian Chesky said The violence, racism and hatred demonstrated by Neo-Nazis, the alt-right, and white supremacists should have no place in this world . . . Airbnb will continue to stand for acceptance and we will continue to do all we can to enforce our community commitment.

PayPal

White nationalist groups, including white supremacist Richard Spencers National Policy Institute, reportedly used the payment service prior to the march in Charlottesville. As of Wednesday, the donation page for that group was unable to accept donations via PayPal.

Regardless of the individual or organization in question, we work to ensure that our services are not used to accept payments or donations for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance, PayPal said in a statement. This includes organizations that advocate racist views, such as the KKK, white supremacist groups or Nazi groups.

Discover Financial Services

The credit card processor has terminated merchant agreements with hate groups following this weekends violence, it said in a statement. "The intolerant and racist views of hate groups are inconsistent with our beliefs and practices. While we do not share their opinions, we recognize their right to voice them, no matter how reprehensible we find them," the company said.

Visa

The credit card company announced Wednesday it was ceasing financial service support with a number of sites that had ties to hate groups as part of a broader review. However, the company said that it does not "restrict transactions that are legal and involve free speech or lawful expression of views, even if we may find the organization or its positions to be offensive."

Spotify

The streaming music service removed dozens of white supremacist bands after learning of their presence in its catalog. The company says its urgently reviewing other possible offenders as well. Spotify noted its policy that Illegal content or material that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like is not tolerated by us.

Discord

This chat application was a favorite of white supremacists before Charlottesville. But on Monday, the company shut down a hate group server and related accounts, including those associated with Spencer and his website.

We will continue to take action against white supremacy, Nazi ideology, and all forms of hate, the company said in a statement on Twitter.

GoFundMe

The fund raising site shut down a campaign to raise financial support for James Fields, the man accused of driving his car into counter-protesters Saturday and killing Heyer. The company says none of the campaigns, which number fewer than 10, have raised any money and it continues to keep a close eye out for other attempts.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
White nationalists carry torches on the grounds of the University of Virginia, on the eve of a planned Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. August 11, 2017. Alvarez/News2Share via REUTERS

A prominent Internet rights group has condemned Google and GoDaddy for refusing to manage the domain registration for the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization that defends digital civil liberties, issued a blistering statement on Thursday slamming the domain gatekeepers for using their power to silence speech.

After Heather Heyer was killed in Charlottesville, The Daily Stormer ran a post mocking her for her physical appearance and using various offensive epithets. This prompted widespread outrage on Twitter, and led GoDaddy to investigate and, ultimately, ban The Daily Stormer for violating its terms of service.

Following this, the neo-Nazi site attempted to register a domain with Google, but that attempt was quickly blocked as well.

Though many around the web were pleased to hear these companies were making an effort to eliminate hate speech from the web, the EFF claims taking such actions sets a dangerous precedent.

"Because Internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world," the EFF's post explains.

Though it harshly condemns hate speech of any kind, the EFF's post goes on to argue that domain suspension is too broad of a weapon to use against hate speech, because it "makes everything hosted [on the domain] difficult or impossible to access," and has a high likelihood of blocking speech that wasn't targeted.

The main concern expressed by the EFF is that eliminating websites full of hate speech is a slippery slope.

"We might well face a world where every government and powerful body would see itself as an equal or more legitimate invoker of that power," the statement reads. "That makes the domain name system unsuitable as a mechanism for taking down specific illegal content as the law sometimes requires, and a perennially attractive central location for nation-states and others to exercise much broader takedown powers."

Story continues

Following Google and GoDaddy's decision to drop The Daily Stormer, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince decided to drop them as a customer, after which the website was soon hit with a DDoS attack. Prince said it made him "deeply uncomfortable" to know he had so much power to limit speech.

"The ability of somebody to single-handedly choose to knock content offline doesn't align with core ideas of due process or justice," Prince told Business Insider on Wednesday. "Whether that's a national government launching attacks or an individual launching attacks."

The Daily Stormer was briefly hosted on a Russian server, but was kicked off of that as well. Founder Andrew Anglin announced on the Gab social network that the site would take refuge on the dark web.

Read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's full statement here.

NOW WATCH: Heres how drastically cell phones have changed over the past 40 years





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(Adds end of hunger strike)

ANKARA, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi called off his hunger strike on Thursday after authorities accepted one of his demands and withdrew security agents from his home where he has been held since 2011, his website said.

Karroubi was hospitalised earlier in the day shortly after launching a hunger strike to demand a public trial and withdrawal of security men from his residence, which is under 24-hour surveillance by the powerful Revolutionary Guards.

Karroubi's son, Mohammad Taghi Karroubi, confirmed the report, saying via Twitter: "My father has called off his hunger strike after ... the withdrawal of the agents from his house."

"Officials have also promised to take measures regarding my father's demand for a public trial," Karroubi's son wrote.

Opposition leaders Karroubi, Mirhossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard have been confined to their homes for six-and-a-half years after calling for rallies in solidarity with pro-democracy uprisings then shaking Arab countries.

They have never been put on trial or publicly charged. Both Karroubi, 80, and Mousavi, 75, suffer from ailments partly associated with their age. Karroubi has been hospitalised twice in recent weeks and underwent heart surgery.

Karroubi's website, Sahamnews, had quoted the Shi'ite cleric's wife, Fatemeh Karroubi, as saying that he would refuse "to eat or drink until his demands are met".

Karroubi and Mousavi ran in what became a disputed 2009 election that returned hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power and triggered mass protests ultimately crushed by the elite Revolutionary Guards and its affiliated Basij militia.

Dozens of political activists, lawmakers, journalists and artists have urged pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani to fulfill a campaign promise to get the opposition leaders freed.

Some insiders say that Iran's top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, opposes their release and a public trial.

Story continues

"He does not expect a fair trial but wants it to be public and would respect the verdict," Karroubi's wife told Sahamnews on Wednesday.

"Such a level of surveillance has never been seen before or after the (1979 Islamic) revolution ... He wants the authorities to announce when they will hold a public trial."

The Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) called on Wednesday for the immediate release of "ailing political leaders" in the Islamic Republic.

"Karroubi's life is in danger and the state, which has detained him without trial, is responsible for whatever happens to him while he is in its custody," CHRI executive director Hadi Ghaemi said in a statement. (Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Mark Heinrich)
Hope Hicks, 28, may be named President Donald Trumps White House communications director shortly. But before joining Trumps campaign, she had no political experience.

Hicks was born in Greenwich, a town of 60,000 on the southwest tip of Connecticut thats a favorite spot for hedge-fund headquarters.

She was a model, actress, and lacrosse player as a child, before getting her English degree at Southern Methodist University.

Hicks didnt intend on playing such a large role in a presidential campaign, instead falling into the gig through a job at the Trump Organization.

But she now finds herself as one of Trumps youngest advisers, serving as his new interim communications directorin the White House.

And Hicks has been with Trump  to use his words  from the beginning. She stuck on his campaign through several staff revamps, including two high-profile changes at the campaign-chair position.

Heres what we know about Hicks.

Hicks and her sister, Mary Grace, were successful teen models. Hicks posed for Ralph Lauren and appeared on the cover of It Girl, a spin-off of the best-selling Gossip Girl book and TV series.

Source: New York Times

Hicks first brush with the Trumps came in 2012 when she was at the public-relations firm Hiltzik Strategies working on Ivanka Trumps fashion line. Trumps eldest daughter hired Hicks away in 2014 and she became an employee of the Trump Organization.

Congrats to my brilliant, kind & wickedly funny friend Hope Hicks on being named to the @Forbes #30Under30 list! https://t.co/s3YO9Eq83Z  Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) January 4, 2017



Sources: New York Times, GQ, NYMag

Hicks met patriarch Trump and quickly earned his trust, Ivanka Trump told The New York Times for a June 2016 profile on the spokeswoman.



Source: New York Times

Story continues

In January 2015, Trump called Hicks into his office on the 26th floor of Trump Tower and told her she was joining his presidential campaign. I think its the year of the outsider. It helps to have people with outsider perspective, Hicks said Trump told her.

Hope Hicks, press secretary for President-elect Donald Trump's campaign, exits an elevator in the lobby at Trump Tower in New York, NY on Wednesday, Jan. 04, 2017.

Source: NYMag

Hicks didnt have any political experience, but her public-relations roots run deep. Both grandfathers worked in PR, and her father, Paul, was the NFLs executive vice president for communications and public relations. He was also a town selectman from 1987 to 1991. Greenwich proclaimed April 23, 2016, as Paul B. Hicks III Day.

Hope Hicks, aide to President Donald J. Trump, takes a picture on the West Front of the Capitol after Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, January 20, 2017.

Source: Town of Greenwich, GQ

Hicks started working on what would become Trumps campaign five months before Trump announced his presidency, after he famously rode a golden escalator down to the lobby of his tower on June 16, 2015.

That makes Hicks the campaign staffer who has persisted in Trumps inner circle the longest. She outlasted his first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and several senior advisers.

White House adviser Hope Hicks (L-R), Chief White House Strategist Steve Bannon, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and senior adviser Stephen Miller, walk across the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Saturday, April 29, 2017, to board Marine One helicopter and join President Donald Trump for the short flight to Andrews Air Force Base, Md., before traveling to Harrisburg, PA., for a rally. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

People close to her describe Hicks as a friendly, loyal fighter. Trump has called her a natural and outstanding.

UNITED STATES - FEBRUARY 28: Hope Hicks, communications aide for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, attends a campaign rally at Madison City Schools Stadium in Madison, Ala., February 28, 2016.

While reporters who have worked with Hicks say shes polite, they have expressed frustration that she was often unreachable on the campaign trail, not responding to requests for comment, or denying access to the candidate.

She said her mom, Caye, told her to write a book about her experience with Trump, like Primary Colors, the fictional novel depicting President Bill Clintons first presidential campaign. You dont even know, she said she told her mother.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, center, talks with his press secretary Hope Hicks during a tour of the Flint Water Plant and Facilities, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2016, in Flint, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Source: NYMag, Primary Colors

During the campaign, Hicks spent most of her days fielding reporters requests and questions  even reportedly taking dictation from Trump to post his tweets.

Sources: NYMag, NYT

During the campaign, Hicks stayed in a free apartment in a Trump building, though shed often go home to her parents house in Connecticut when she could.

Hope Hicks, press secretary for the Trump campaign, gets into an elevator at Trump Tower, November 15, 2016 in New York City.

These days shes in DC. Trump named her his assistant to the president and director of strategic communications in December.

Source: Trump administration

Read More: Trumps chief of staff jokes: Best job I ever had was as a sergeant in the Marine Corps

She still flies below the radar, directing the spotlight back on Trump. The then president-elect called her up to the microphone to speak at a Thank You rally in December.

Its been said she can act as a sort of Trump whisperer, understanding his many moods and professionally executing what needs to be done. She still only calls him Sir or Mr. Trump.

Sources: New York Times, GQ, NYMag

If the acting thing doesnt work out, I could really see myself in politics, Hicks told Greenwich Magazine when she was 13. Who knows.

Sources: New York Times

Read More: Kellyanne Conway and other women reveal what its like to work in Trumps White House

In June, the White House released salary info for 377 top staffers. Hicks gets paid the maximum amount that any of Trumps aides receive: $179,700.

Source: The White House

Hicks is making as much as Trumps former chief of staff Reince Priebus, chief strategist Steve Bannon, former press secretary Sean Spicer, senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and communications official Omarosa Manigault.

Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway depart the Blair House in Washington, DC on Friday, Jan. 20, 2017.

Source: The White House

Some family members and friends have expressed concern that Hicks is so closely tied to a president whose policies and statements are unpopular with a significant number of Americans, but are confident that shell come through unscathed.

Sources: New York Times, GQ

There is just no way that a camera or an episode or a documentary could capture what has gone on. There is nothing like it, Hicks told Marie Claire in June 2016. It is the most unbelievable, awe-inspiring thing.

Source: Marie Claire

In August, Trump asked Hicks to be the new interim White House director of communications, a job that Michael Dubke, Sean Spicer, and Anthony Scaramucci held and left in Trumps first six months in office. The White House will announce who will serve in the job permanently at the appropriate time.

Hope Hicks, adviser to President Donald Trump, walks to her seat before the start of the daily briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 14, 2017.

Sources: Daily Caller, New York Times, CNN

The 28-year-old Hicks is the youngest communications director in history.

Sources: Daily Caller, New York Times, CNN

This article originally appeared on BusinessInsider.com
President Trumps embarrassing breach with the nations business leaders was a long time coming. Trumps talk of reworking trade deals makes them nervous. Most of them disagree with his efforts to reduce immigration, because they need the workers. When Trump uttered incendiary remarks following the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, the dam broke and a critical mass of CEOs finally started to quit Trumps White House advisory councils  which Trump promptly shuttered.

But there will be a detente, because Trump and Americas CEOs still have one important thing in common: They all favor tax cuts, especially a reduction in the corporate rate, to bring it more in line with the lower tax rates in other developed countries. If anything, Trumps need to sign a tax bill has intensified, since so many other parts of his agenda are going astray. And the departure of Stephen Bannon, Trumps controversial chief strategist, may signal that Trump himself is moving a bit more toward the mainstream.

Trump has undoubtedly harmed his political standing with repeated blunders, such as his implied defense of white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville. Republican members of Congress are increasingly bold in criticizing Trump, with Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee even questioning Trumps stability. But Trump doesnt need much political strength to give CEOs what they want. All he needs is a pen to sign a tax-cut bill, assuming Congress is able to produce one.

And the Republican Congress really needs to produce a tax-cut bill. This will be difficult for sure, since various GOP factions will insist on favored policies at odds with what other factions want. But tax cuts, unlike health reform, are a staple of the Republican playbook, and there are several detailed plans the GOP can use as a starting point.

Republicans cannot run for reelection in 2018 having captured all of government, and tell their base weve accomplished nothing, says Tom Block, Washington policy strategist for investing firm Fundstrat. Theyve got to pass a tax bill before the primary season starts. That means by spring of 2018.

Story continues

Additional matters likely to create a stir

Theres other complicated business to get done first  raising the debt ceiling, always a contentious issue, and then passing a budget for fiscal year 2018, which begins October 1. Those efforts will produce fireworks and scary headlines, but deals are likely on both matters. Republican leaders in the House and Senate will then turn to tax cuts, perhaps using portions of a bill drafted last year by House Speaker Paul Ryan as a framework.

As a candidate, Trump called for sweeping changes that would lower tax rates for nearly everybody, reduce seven tax brackets to three and cut the corporate rate from 35% to 15%. Change of such magnitude almost certainly wont happen. Instead, the corporate rate will probably fall to something like 25%, with a moderate reduction in corporate-tax loopholes, to appease Democrats whose support will probably be necessary to pass a bill. There could be modest cuts for middle-income taxpayers. Cuts for the wealthy are unlikely, since that would alienate Democrats.

Meanwhile, concern over the departure of top Trump aides like Gary Cohn, chairman of Trumps National Economic Council, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, are probably overblown. Both men are Jewish, and rumored to be distressed at Trumps reluctance to condemn anti-Semitic protesters in Charlottesville. Rumors that Cohn was considering quitting led to a market selloff on August 17. Markets recovered somewhat when the White House officially batted down the rumor. Yet worries persist that Trump would come unhinged if Cohn and other moderate money men were to leave his side.

Markets arent that fragile. They might be overvalued, which is a different matter, but markets have recovered time and again from political scares, helped along by the fact that no president wants to trigger or oversee a market wipeout. It also helps that fundamentals such as corporate profits, employment and consumer spending are stable and in some cases strong. CEOs dont have to like Trump, or even agree with him, to get what they want from his administration. All they have to do is let Trump be Trump.

Confidential tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com. Encrypted communication available.

Read more:

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman
U.S. President Donald Trump says "many decisions" have been made during a meeting with his national security advisers, including on the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan.

Trump tweeted on August 19 about the meeting the previous day at the presidential retreat in Maryland, saying, "Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented Generals and military leaders.

Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan," he added.

It was unclear what decisions were made and when they will be announced.

Speaking after the August 18 meeting at Camp David, the White House said Trump had made no decision on committing more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the talks focused on developing "a new strategy to protect America's interests in South Asia."

"The president is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time," Sanders said.

The administration has been beset by internal difference over what to do in Afghanistan. National security adviser H.R. McMaster, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and other military leaders back a modest increase of between 3,000 and 5,000 U.S. troops from the current 8,400 level.

But "antiglobalists at the White House, who were led by chief strategist Steve Bannon before he was pushed out on August 18, advocated withdrawing U.S. forces, officials said.

Bannon did not attend the meeting at Camp David, which was attended by Mattis, McMaster, Vice President Mike Pence, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Other options which officials said were discussed included maintaining the current number of troops or even reducing that number by a small amount and adopting a new strategy focused on counterterrorism operations enhanced by drone strikes and intelligence gathering.

The options of withdrawing or reducing troops might come as a surprise in Afghanistan, where Mattis earlier this year told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that the United States has a sustained commitment to the war-torn country.

Mattis seemed confident of winning the internal administration debate before the Camp David meeting, telling reporters in Washington on August 17 that "we are coming very close to a decision."

At meetings with advisers earlier this year, media reported that Trump voiced frustration at the stalemate in fighting with the Taliban despite 16 years of war effort -- something that U.S. intelligence agencies in May said might not change even with a small increase in U.S. troops.

Officials said the decision on what to do in Afghanistan has also been complicated by internal differences over whether the United States should take a harder line toward Pakistan for failing to shut down Afghan Taliban sanctuaries and arrest Afghan extremist leaders.

U.S. officials say the Afghan Taliban are supported by elements of Pakistans military and top intelligence agency, a charge Islamabad denies.

Reuters reported that under one proposal outlined by U.S. officials, the United States would begin a review of whether to designate Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism unless it pursues senior leaders of the Afghan Taliban and the allied Haqqani network, considered the most lethal Afghan extremist group.

Such a designation would trigger harsh U.S. sanctions, including a ban on arms sales and an end to U.S. economic assistance for Pakistan.

Officials said another option under consideration at the White House is a proposal by Erik Prince, the founder of the former Blackwater military contracting firm and the brother of Trumps education secretary, Betsy DeVos. Prince wants to replace U.S. forces in Afghanistan with contractors who would be paid to train Afghan forces and help them fight the Taliban.

Prince has promoted his plan in media interviews, but officials said McMaster, Mattis, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, and retired Marine General John Kelly, the presidents chief of staff, oppose the idea.

Military and intelligence officials are concerned that a withdrawal or reduced presence of U.S. forces would enable the Taliban to win the current standoff and would allow Al-Qaeda and a regional affiliate of the Islamic State extremist group to use Afghanistan once again as a base for plotting attacks on the United States and its allies.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican and advocate of a stronger U.S. role in Afghanistan, is urging Trump to "listen to his generals. At the end of the day, Afghanistan is about American homeland security -- not building empires."

Last week, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (Republican-Arizona) also came out in favor of a beefed up U.S presence in Afghanistan, expanding the U.S. counterterrorism effort, and providing greater support to Afghan security forces.

"We are losing in Afghanistan, and time is of the essence if we intend to turn the tide," McCain said.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters
bkpolymers1617 wrote:

Aeronautical engineer: Often when a person is disappointed that a social issue has not been solved, she will say we can put a man on the moon, but we cannot and then mention that issue. What these people overlook is that landing a man on the moon is a much less complicated task than they realize . The moon travels a fixed, predictable orbit and obeys the laws of physics. Landing a man on the moon only required scientists to synchronize two objects, the moon and the space shuttle. Many social issues are far more complex than putting a man on the moon, as they require the synchronizations of millions of people and their competing interests.





In the aeronautical engineers argument, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?

a) The first is the conclusion of the argument; the second is evidence for that conclusion.

b) The first offers a belief that undermines a commonly held view; the second provides justification for that commonly held view.

c) The first outlines the authors unconventional stance on an issue; the second provides justification for that stance.

d) The first is an opinion that the author uses to undermine a commonly held view; the second is the author's conclusion.

e) The first is a belief that the author uses in support of his conclusion; the second is evidence that supports that conclusion.

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:

With boldface Critical Reasoning questions, it is imperative that you understand the argument as a whole. Challenge-level problems often include a good deal of nuance in the non-bold type, rewarding those who digest the entire argument rather than simply race to the bolded areas.Here you should take a moment to reflect on what the author is really trying to convey. The author discusses both the moon landing and the challenge of solving social issues, all under the context of the common phrase "we can put a man on the moon, but we cannot _____." Importantly, the author's conclusion must therefore encompass both items: it's essentially "solving social issues is harder than you think, whereas landing a man on the moon is easier than solving those issues would be."For this reason, choice A is incorrect. The conclusion isn't merely about travel to the moon being easier than one would think - it must also include the challenge related to solving social issues.Choice B is also incorrect. While it accurately describes the first boldfaced section (which is, indeed, a belief that undermines a commonly-held view), the second portion clearly does not support that view. That commonly-held view is "landing a man on the moon is hard" whereas the second boldfaced section is evidence for "solving social issues is hard."Choice C is similarly wrong. While the first portion - landing a man on the moon isn't as hard as people think - could certainly be described as an unconventional belief, the second doesn't support that view. It supports the second half of the author's conclusion, about solving social issues.Choice D also starts out with a quality description of the first boldfaced portion, but the second is incorrect: the second boldfaced section supports the author's main point, but it is not the author's main point.Choice E is correct. Remember, the author's conclusion is essentially the first half of the last sentence, "many social issues are far more complex than putting a man on the moon." So the first boldfaced portion certainly works as a belief he uses support for that conclusion, as he believes that moon travel is easier than people think. And the second is justification for the second half of that conclusion, as he details reasons that social issues are challenging to solve. Both halves of choice E are correct descriptions, so choice E is correct._________________
Re: One legacy of Madison Avenues recent campaign to appeal to people fif [ #permalink

eyunni wrote:

One legacy of Madison Avenues recent campaign to appeal to people fifty years old and over is the realization that as a person ages, their concerns change as well.



(A) the realization that as a person ages, their

(B) the realization that as people age, their

(C) to realize that when a person ages, his or her

(D) to realize that when people age, their

(E) realizing that as people age, their

Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:

Concepts tested here: Meaning + Pronouns + Awkwardness/Redundancy

A:

B:

Correct.

in the process of

C:

at that point in time when

in the process of

D:

at that point in time when

in the process of

E:

Hence, B is the best answer choice.

Dear Friends,Here is a detailed explanation to this question-Understanding the intended meaning is key to answering this question; the intended meaning of this sentence is that legacy of Madison Avenues recent campaign to appeal to people fifty years old and over is the realization that people's concerns change in the process of the people aging. "when" is used to refer to a point in time.This answer choice incorrectly refer to the singular noun "a person" with the plural pronoun "their".This answer choice correctly refers to the plural noun "people" with the plural pronoun "their". Further, Option B uses the phrase "as people age", conveying the intended meaning - that people's concerns changethe people aging. Additionally, Option B is free of any awkwardness or redundancy.This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "when a person ages"; the use of "when" incorrectly implies that people's concerns changethe people age; the intended meaning is that people's concerns changethe people aging; remember, "when" is used to refer to a point in time. Further, Option C uses the needlessly indirect phrase "to realize", leading to awkwardness. Moreover, Option C uses the needlessly wordy phrase "his or her", leading to redundancy and further awkwardness.This answer choice alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "when people age"; the use of "when" incorrectly implies that people's concerns changethe people age; the intended meaning is that people's concerns changethe people aging; remember, "when" is used to refer to a point in time. Further, Option D uses the needlessly indirect phrase "to realize", leading to awkwardness.This answer choice uses the needlessly indirect construction "realizing", leading to awkwardness.All the best!Team_________________
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By Damali Muhkaye

The ministry of agriculture has declared Uganda free of Avian flu (H5N1), a virus that affects both wild and domestic birds.

The first-ever outbreak of the deadly Avian flu was reported in the country in January 2017 following multiple tests at both agricultural and human health laboratories.

Addressing journalists at the Media Center, the state minister for agriculture Christopher Kibazanga said the announcement has been made after the ministry undertook surveillance control measures and laboratory samples collected tested negative since March 2017.

He said the governments of Kenya, Tanzania, Southern Sudan and Rwanda with the exception of DR Congo have helped Uganda in the fight against the virus.

Following the outbreak, all the neighbouring countries slapped a ban on Ugandas poultry products but Kenya has now partially lifted the ban while other countries are yet to take any positive action.

10,000 wild birds are estimated to have died while 50,000 domestic birds are estimated to have been lost to bird flu.
New York, Aug 16(Just Earth News): The Central African Republic (CAR) has spiralled into violence and remains one of the worst countries in the world to be a child and aright now there are few eyes looking at them and few hands trying to help,a the United Nations children's agency said on Tuesday.





The past year, and especially the last quarter, has seen a dramatic increase in violence, Donaig Le Du, spokesperson for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), told reporters at the regular press briefing in Geneva.



There are now an estimated 600,000 internally displaced people, up from 440,000 at the end of April  a big increase in the past 2-3 months, she continued, pointing out that 600,000 was the April 2014 count, right after the peak of the crisis.



And there are still 480,000 CAR refugees in neighbouring countries. So out of an estimated population of a little over five million, one in five is either a refugee or displaced, half of them children, Le Du added.



UNICEF noted that as the country spirals into violence, Bangui, the capital, is quiet.



The roads are bad, and with the rainy season and insecurity, it becomes nearly impossible to travel. There is limited cell phone coverage, the spokesperson explained.



She gave the example of six Red Cross volunteers whose deaths were not reported until after took two weeks after they were killed in Gambo earlier this month.



Two-thirds of the country is controlled by armed groups



Beyond Bangui, two-thirds of the country is controlled by armed groups.



In the cities and villages that were recently affected by violence, that means that schools are closed. That teachers don't dare to go to schools. Several NGOs [non-governmental organizations] have retreated, which means no health care. Supplies are looted  at one health centre, solar panels were stolen from solar fridges for example, which means no immunizations, Le Du elaborated.



Horrendous reports on children's rights violations have surfaced over the past months and weeks.



Precise numbers are impossible to know but we know for a fact that children have been killed; there have been incidents of sexual violence, and that recruitment into armed groups is happening. But there are less direct violations with lasting consequences  having to flee or take refuge in the bush; having no education or health care, she said.



One specificity of the CAR conflict shows little fighting between armed groups, which instead attack civilians on the other side and increasingly target the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSCA) and humanitarian actors.



An open letter to the UN Secretary-General from major international NGOs identifies the CAR as the most dangerous country in the world to deliver humanitarian assistance  with the world's highest level of violence against humanitarian workers, accounting for one-third of all incidents targeting aid workers.



The CAR is also the world's least developed country, placing 188th out of the 188 countries on the Human Development Index.



But the world cannot abandon CAR's children  and right now there are few eyes looking at them and few hands trying to help, Le Du concluded.



As of end-July, UNICEF's $46.3 million humanitarian appeal for CAR children was 42 per cent funded. Having been revised up to $52.8 million, it now has a 63 per cent funding gap.



Photo: OCHA/Yaye N. Sene







Source: www.justearthnews.com










New York, Aug 18(Just Earth News): For deliberately attacking religious and historic buildings in Timbuktu, Mali, the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday issued to Malian Islamist a nearly three million euros Reparations Order, due on 16 February 2018.

The Chamber highlighted the importance of cultural heritage and stressed that, because of their purpose and symbolism, most cultural property and cultural heritage are unique and of sentimental value, said the Court, based in The Hague and the world's only permanent war crimes tribunal.

Their destruction thus carries a message of terror and helplessness; destroys part of humanity's shared memory and collective consciousness, and renders humanity unable to transmit its values and knowledge to future generations, it added.

ICC Trial Chamber VIII issued the Reparations Order in the case of The Prosecutor v. Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, concluding that Al Mahdi is liable for 2.7 million euros (roughly $3.2 million) in expenses for individual and collective reparations to the Timbuktu community for intentionally directing attacks against religious and historic buildings in that city.

Noting that Mr Al Mahdi is indigent, the Chamber encouraged the Trust Funds for Victims (TFV) to complement the reparations award, directing it to submit a draft implementation plan for 16 February 2018.

Covering the three categories of damage to the attacked historic and religious buildings; consequential economic loss; and moral harm, the ICC stated: Reparations may assist in promoting reconciliation between the victims of the crime, the affected communities and the convicted person.

Reparations for site rehabilitation and wider Timbuktu community

Reparations are to be collective for rehabilitation of the sites and for the community of Timbuktu as a whole to address the financial loss and economic harm as well as the emotional distress suffered as a result of the attack. It may also include symbolic measures  such as a memorial, commemoration or forgiveness ceremony  to give public recognition of the moral harm suffered by the Timbuktu community and those within it, the ICC statement elaborated.

The Chamber also ordered individual reparations for those whose livelihoods exclusively depended upon the attacked buildings and those whose ancestors' burial sites were damaged in the attack.

As a symbolic measure, the Chamber ordered the Registry to post an excerpt of the video of Al Mahdi's apology, which it considers genuine, categorical and empathetic on the Court's website.

Given the specific nature of the case, it also ordered one symbolic euro to be received by the Malian State and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Upon subsequent approval by the Chamber, the TFV will identify projects and discrete implementation partners for the Chamber's final approval.

On 27 September 2016, Trial Chamber VIII  composed of Judge Raul C. Pangalangan (Presiding), Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua and Judge Bertram Schmitt  unanimously found Al Mahdi to nine years in prison for committing a war crime by deliberately destroying in 2012 nine mausoleums and the secret gate of the Sidi Yahia mosque in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Timbuktu in Mali.

Photo: ICC-CPI

Source: www.justearthnews.com
3 A young Greater Flamingo named Squish struts in its booties made by keepers to protect its feet from the hot ground at the Jurong Bird Park in Singapore.


Once again, terrorists have used vehicles to carry out deadly attacks  this time in Spain.

At least 14 people were killed in two attacks in different areas. More than 100 others were injured.

On Thursday, a van struck a crowd on a busy street in the Spanish city of Barcelona. The attack took place on Las Ramblas, a road leading from the center of the city to the coast. The area, which has many stores and restaurants, was filled with people enjoying a summer day.

Police said the driver of the vehicle fled on foot.

The second attack happened early Friday about 130 kilometers south of Barcelona in the seaside town of Cambrils. Attackers drove a passenger car into a crowd, killing one person and injuring at least five others.

Police said they killed five attackers after the incident in Cambrils. Spanish officials said it appeared the attackers had explosives tied to their bodies, but the bombs turned out to be fake.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the latest violence.

Officials said at least four suspects  three Moroccans and a Spaniard  were arrested.

One of the arrests was made in Alcanar, a town south of Barcelona. Police said one person was killed in an explosion at a home there on Wednesday. The area is being studied for possible links to the other attacks. Police reportedly believe people at the home may have been preparing an explosive device.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the latest attacks showed that the fight against terrorists is a global battle. He noted that, in his opinion, terrorism is Europe's biggest problem.

The killings in Spain followed several deadly attacks in Europe in recent years, several of which also involved vehicles.

In June, three attackers drove a van into people walking on the London Bridge. The attackers then stabbed people in nearby bars. A total of eight people were killed and more than 40 others injured.

Another attack in London took place in March near Britains parliament. In that incident, a car struck people walking on Westminster Bridge. Five people were killed and over 20 others injured. One of the dead was a policeman, who had been stabbed.

In April, attackers used a truck to kill five people in Stockholm, Sweden.

In December 2016, another truck drove into a crowded Christmas market in central Berlin, killing 12.

Five months earlier, an attacker drove a large truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the French city of Nice. Eighty-six people were killed.

A vehicle also was used last weekend to attack protesters in the American city of Charlottesville, Virginia. A man described by a former teacher as a supporter of the American Nazi Party drove his car into the crowd. One woman was killed in the attack. Two Virginia state policemen responding to the violence died in a helicopter crash.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English. His report was based on stories from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

fake  adj. not real, false

bar  n. place where people go to socialize and drink


The World Health Organization (WHO) says breastfeeding is very important for the health of babies.

WHO officials say mothers milk should be the only food given to babies during the first six months of life. They advise that breastfeeding should continue in children up to two years of age. But that can be difficult for working mothers around the world.

In Uganda, parliament is supporting the act of breastfeeding by providing a free day care center for female lawmakers and the women who work for them.

Ugandas parliament has more than 150 women legislators. Many of them are at the age when they can give birth. Because of this, parliament members, including male legislators, have taken steps to help female members deal with their full-time job and motherhood.

Legislator Taaka Agnes Wejuli sends her four-month-old son to the parliamentary day care center.

When I am coming very early, I dont even have to bathe my baby. I just get him out of sleep, put him in his car seat, lock the vehicle and we run up to hereI attend committee meetings. I attend (the) plenary in the afternoon, so I am always there, all the time.

The Speaker of Ugandas Parliament, Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga, opened the parliamentary center almost two years ago.

The center has a room with cooking equipment, areas for babies to sleep and play, and a room for breastfeeding mothers. This room, Kadaga says, has helped female lawmakers stay active in parliament and solved many problems for them.

In the past, one would either have to leave parliament and go back home, depending on where she lives, that would take time, said Kadaga. Either she would have to do part of the work, or abandon the work altogether and come back tomorrow because the traffic alone, if you are traveling back and forth between the city and your home, it takes time.

Two women supervise the center, which is open to both parliamentarians and the women who work for them. Sheeba Namara takes her three-month-old baby to the center. She says it is good to know her child is so near.

Just the comfort of being at work yet at the same time knowing that your child is safe and you can walk in anytime, is really the best service that could ever do.

The World Health Organization rates countries on policies that support breastfeeding in its Global Breastfeeding Scorecard. It says Uganda is among 23 countries where more than 60 percent of babies are fed only their mothers milk during the first six months.

Ugandan health officials say there are still many things that can be done to help mothers. These include enacting policies aimed at supporting breastfeeding and babies health.

Officials also say policies to let women more easily balance work and family responsibilities are also needed.

Im Anne Ball.

Halima Athumani reported this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted the report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

_________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

bathe  v. to wash (someone) in a container filled with water : to give a bath to (someone)

plenary  adj. describing a full meeting of all members of a group

abandon  v. to leave suddenly or without notice

afternoon  n. the middle part of the day

back and forth  adv. between two places or people

comfort  n. a state or feeling of being less worried, upset, frightened, etc., during a time of trouble or emotional pain

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The United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) says more than 500,000 children in Libya are in need of some kind of humanitarian assistance.

The UN agency notes that migrant children passing through Libya are especially at risk of abuse.

Competing governments have sought to control the North African country since the fall of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in October of 2011. There is no sign the fighting, displacement of people and economic problems will end anytime soon.

Libya is a stopping point for African migrants on their way to Europe. Many go there in hopes of finding a boat to take them across the Mediterranean Sea.

But UN officials say the crisis in Libya has affected a large number of children. Geert Cappelaere is UNICEFs regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

In Libya, we estimate today a third of the population is under the age of 18, he said. Two million children do live in Libya of which a quarter  500,000  are estimated by UNICEF to be facing dire humanitarian need.

Cappelelaere says conditions in Libya have affected children in many ways.

The access to schools has been hampered. But (this) also, definitely, has affected the quality of the education children are having, he says. We have important numbers of children usually in conflict situations that have been suffering of a type of social consequences of the conflict. Children that have been separated from their families.

UNICEF says 315,000 children in Libya need help getting an education. In addition, the group says 200,000 need access to safe drinking water.

Adding to the difficulties are tens of thousands of migrants from countries south of the Sahara desert. They are fleeing conflict, drought and poor economic conditions. Many have crossed the desert with the goal of reaching Europe.

However, crossing the Mediterranean usually involves working with smugglers, who often put too many people into small, weak boats.

The International Organization for Migration reports that about 117,000 migrants have arrived in Europe this year. However, the group also notes that more than 2,400 have died trying to get there.

Cappelaere says migrant children face many dangers.

We see an important number of these children arriving in Libya separated from their families, says Cappelaere. Being unaccompanied. We know that several hundred of these children have ended up and are ending in detention facilities.

The aid group Oxfam is made up of many charitable organizations. On August 9, Oxfam released a report about the problems facing migrants leaving Libya. The report presents migrant stories of killings, rape, torture and detention in Libya.

In one example, a Senegalese teenager was reported to have said he was kept in a room that was full of dead bodies.

Cappelaere says the children of migrants often face abuse.

Children are, of course, very much exposed to violence and exploitation by those who are trying to make big money out of the migration crisis. So, children who are affected by migration are indeed particularly vulnerable, he said.

However, the UNICEF official says there have been some successes in Libya. About 1.4 million children have been vaccinated against polio by UNICEF and its partners, including some Libyan national groups.

Cappelaere praises the health workers in Libya, especially those who continue working after their medical centers have been attacked.

UNICEF plans to have all its international staff working full-time in Libya by October. The crisis had forced many workers to leave or operate out of Tunisia.

Cappelaere says the increase in workers would permit UNICEF to assist 1.5 million children. But, he notes, the agency needs additional money to carry on its work. He says UNICEF has asked for $15 million for Libya this year, but remains about six million dollars away from that goal.

Im Mario Ritter.

Joe De Capua reported this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted his report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

migrant  n. people who move from place to place, usually for economic reasons

dire  adj. causing fear or worry

hamper  v. to interfere with, to slow down

access  n. permission or ability to enter or use something

consequences  n. results of some action

smuggler  n. someone who takes things or people from one country to another secretly or illegally

unaccompanied  adj. not with anyone else, alone

facilities  n. building or equipment used for a specific purpose

vulnerable -adj. easily hurt emotionally or physically

staff  n. the workers responsible for the operations of an agency or business

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General Robert E. Lee, who led the Confederate Army during the United States Civil War, died in 1870. But in some ways, he lives today.

Americans are having a heated debate about whether to remove statues of Lee and other Confederate heroes from public places. In comments to the press on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that by removing them, Youre changing history. Youre changing culture.

Trump did not explain what he meant by culture. But a recent poll of Americans found that 54% of Americans overall see Confederate statues as symbols of Southern pride.

The poll also found that about a quarter of Americans see the statues as a symbol of something else: racism.

Unlike any other country in the world

The U.S. has at least 700 statues honoring the Confederacy across the country. They recall the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s.

In that conflict, 11 Southern slave-holding states withdrew from the Union. They formed their own government, called the Confederacy.

The Confederacy protected the rights of states to make their own laws, including those permitting slavery. At the time, 90 percent of black people in the U.S. were enslaved.

After four years of bitter fighting, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered and effectively ended the Civil War.

The Confederate states re-joined the Union. And, about three years later, the country approved an amendment to the Constitution that legally ended slavery across the country.

Minisha Sinha is a historian at the University of Connecticut. She says Americans monuments to the Confederacy are unusual for several reasons.

First, Sinha says, unlike any other country in the world, the U.S. actually has statues commemorating people from the South who committed treason against the U.S. government.

Second, she says, the Confederacy was based on the belief of white peoples superiority over black people. For example, the vice president of the Confederacy, Andrew Stephens, wrote, "Our new government is founded upon  the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

As a result, says Sinha, Confederate heroes are not innocuous markers of American history.

In fact, these figures represent a short-lived nation that was in rebellion against the United States, and that really stood for slavery and white supremacy.

The Confederacy in the 20th century

But in the decades following the Civil War, some Americans perceptions of the Confederacy changed.

In 1915, a woman writes why she has joined an organization called the Daughters of the Confederacy. The writer describes a Southern culture, or way of life, characterized by bravery, honor, glory, and lady-like behavior. She says she is honoring her ancestors struggle in the Civil War.

She writes, I do not consider the cause which he held so dear to be lost or forgotten. Rather, I am extremely proud of the fact that he was a part of it and was numbered among some of the greatest and bravest men which any such cause ever produced.

Historian James Oliver Horton was a professor at George Washington University. He says historians in the later 20th century find overwhelming evidence that slavery really was a central cause of the Civil War.

In his essay The Civil War Remembered, Horton writes, When southern whites in the 19th century spoke of the southern way of life, they referred to a way of life founded on white supremacy and supported by the institution of slavery.

Most Confederate monuments were not built after the Civil War

Modern historians find additional evidence that public statues of Confederate forces are more complicated than they might appear.

Notably, most Confederate monuments were not built immediately after the Civil War. The majorities were built at the turn of the 20th century and in the 1950s, when some white Americans were protesting strongly against increasing the civil rights of black Americans.

Historian April Holm at the University of Mississippi writes, Most are not Confederate-era monuments, as I have seen them called. These are primarily Jim Crow-era monuments. Jim Crow refers to laws and sanctions aimed at ethnic discrimination, especially against African-Americans. As an era, it lasted from the late 1800s to the mid-1950s.

This dispute is not new

The dispute over whether to remove Confederate monuments from public places has flared up many times in Americans public conversation.

In 2015, lawmakers in South Carolina  which had been the first state to withdraw from the Union in 1860  voted to remove the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol grounds.

The decision followed the shooting of nine African-American people in a South Carolina church by a young white man. The shooter said he was motivated by his anger at African-Americans.

Polls this week suggest very few Americans who want to preserve Confederate memorials support extreme racist views.

One woman who rallied last weekend to keep the statue of Robert E. Lee in a public park told the New York Times that she and her friends were simply gun-loving defenders of free speech  who had no interest in standing with Nazis or white supremacists.

What might be more important in America's different perceptions of the Confederate monuments is political affiliation. Democrats are about evenly divided on keeping or removing the statues.

But a majority of Republicans  the party to which President Donald Trump belongs  strongly favors keeping the statues in place.

Interestingly, one opponent of memorials to the Confederacy is Robert E. Lee himself. Several years after the Civil War, he warned against raising monuments to the Confederacy. He wrote, "I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife.

I'm Caty Weaver.

Kelly Jean Kelly wrote this story for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

negro - n. old fashioned term to describe a black American. It is no longer used in modern American English.

innocuous - adj. not likely to offend

perception - n. the way you think about or understand something

flare up - v. to happen suddenly and unexpectedly
HIV infecting a human cell. Credit: NIH

Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a novel method of tracking HIV infection, allowing the behavior of individual virionsinfectious particlesto be connected to infectivity.

The findings could help lead to the development of novel therapies for HIV prevention and treatment by providing a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of HIV's lifecycle.

The paper was published August 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It has become routine to visualize the movement and progression of individual virions in cells, but the relevance of these observations was previously unclear, as many virions are defective or do not progress to make further copies of themselves.

"This approachand the ability to say 'that virion infected that cell'will help bring clarity to the field," said principal investigator Thomas Hope, a professor of cell and molecular biology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "It allows us to understand what the virus really needs to do to infect a cell. It gives us new details, like where in the cell it happens and the timing of specific events. The more we know about the virus, the better our chances are to stop it."

During the course of infection, HIV fuses onto a target immune cell and delivers its capsida cone that holds the genetic material of the virusinto the cell's cytoplasm. From there, the capsid disassembles through a process called "uncoating," which is crucial to the synthesis of viral DNA from its RNA genome and the hijacking of the cell's functions.

But the specific details of uncoating have been controversial, with two groups of thought. One believed that uncoating takes place late at pores, allowing factors to enter the nucleus. A second camp showed data suggesting that uncoating takes place early and in the cytoplasm.

In part, the uncertainty persisted because previous methods in HIV research have been unable to distinguish between viral particles that actually lead to infection of the cell, and those that are irrelevant.

In the current study, the team of scientists used a novel live-cell fluorescent imaging system that allowed them for the first time to identify individual particles associated with infection.

In this case, they utilized the approach to monitor how the HIV capsid uncoats in the cell at the individual particle level. They demonstrated that uncoating leading to infection occurs early in the cytoplasm, around 30 minutes after cell fusion.

The finding is just one example of novel discoveries about HIV that might now be possible with the imaging system.

"Being able to connect infectivity of individual particles and how they behave in the cell to infectionwhich is what we really care aboutis going to have a big impact on the field," Hope said. "The system can now be used to resolve other controversies in HIV biology and to determine which potential targets for drug development are most relevant."

The study has implications in the wider field of virology research as well.

"Theoretically, you could apply this technique to the study of any fluorescently-tagged virus," explained first author Joao Mamede, a post-doctoral fellow in Hope's laboratory.

In future projects, Hope's research team plans to continue to leverage the method to study infection in later stages of the HIV lifecycle.

"We want to understand all the details, from when the virus fuses, to the point where it integrates and starts to make new viruses, to the last phase," explained Hope, also a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and of the McCormick School of Engineering. "We need to understand what's going on, so we can find the Achilles' heel of the virus and use it as a drug target."

More information: Joao I. Mamede et al. Early cytoplasmic uncoating is associated with infectivity of HIV-1, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Joao I. Mamede et al. Early cytoplasmic uncoating is associated with infectivity of HIV-1,(2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1706245114
Scanning electron microscope image of Vibrio cholerae. Credit: Wikipedia

The cholera outbreak in Yemen is overwhelmingly affecting rebel-controlled areas due to Saudi-led airstrikes and blockades, according to a letter by researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), published in The Lancet Global Health.

Their new analysis finds that eight out of ten of Yemen's cholera deaths occur in rebel-controlled areas.

The researchers combined WHO's latest cholera data with data that mapped areas of government and rebel control, and found that the cholera outbreak disproportionately affects areas controlled by Houthi rebels.

They found that 77.7 per cent of cholera cases (339,061 of 436,625) and 80.7 per cent of deaths from cholera (1,545 of 1,915) occurred in Houthi-controlled governorates, compared to 15.4 per cent of cases and 10.4 per cent of deaths in government-controlled governorates.

1.8 per cent of the population in Houthi-controlled areas have contracted cholera, compared to 1.0 per cent in government-controlled areas. 0.46 per cent of those who contracted cholera died in Houthi-controlled areas, compared to 0.30 per cent in government-controlled areas.

Jonathan Kennedy, Andrew Harmer and David McCoy from QMUL write: "Both sides have been accused of disregarding the wellbeing of civilians and breaching international humanitarian law. But the government and Saudi-led coalition that supports it command far greater resources. As a result, Houthi-controlled areas have been disproportionately affected by the conflict, which has created conditions conducive to the spread of cholera.

"Saudi-led airstrikes have destroyed vital infrastructure, including hospitals and public water systems, hit civilian areas, and displaced people into crowded and insanitary conditions. A Saudi-enforced blockade of imports has caused shortages of, among other things, food, medical supplies, fuel and chlorine, and restricted humanitarian access.

"As the Saudi-led coalition has played a key role in the collapse of health, water, and sanitation systems in rebel-controlled areas, it is bizarre that UNICEF recently published a press release welcoming Saudi Arabian 'generosity' after the Kingdom donated US$67 million to the cholera response in Yemen."

Jonathan Kennedy from QMUL added: "Saudi Arabia is an ally of the UK and USA. American and British companies supply Saudi Arabia with huge amounts of military equipment and their armed forces provide logistical support and intelligence. This backing has made the Saudi-led airstrikes and blockade possible, and therefore the UK and USA have played a crucial role in creating conditions conducive to the spread of cholera."

In June 2017, UNICEF and WHO released a statement declaring that Yemen is "facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world". While they acknowledged the outbreak was caused by the civil war that began in 2015, they did not suggest that one party is more responsible than another or that one side is more affected by the outbreak, stating "cholera has spread to almost every governorate".

The new analysis is published as the UN marks World Humanitarian Day, a yearly tribute to aid workers, and aimed to rally support for people affected by crises around the world. Yemen has been described as the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time.

More information: Jonathan Kennedy et al, The political determinants of the cholera outbreak in Yemen, The Lancet Global Health (2017). Jonathan Kennedy et al, The political determinants of the cholera outbreak in Yemen,(2017). DOI: 10.1016/S2214-109X(17)30332-7
All eight South African Airways flights between Harare and Johannesburg were canceled on Saturday when the Zimbabwe government demanded a foreign operators permit, a day after an Air Zimbabwe plane was grounded in the South African city for similar reasons.

The decisions to halt the flights came as Zimbabwe seeks diplomatic immunity in South Africa for President Robert Mugabes wife, Grace, after she was charged with assault in Johannesburg. The Wednesday request is being considered, officials said. On Friday, the state-owned Airports Co. of South Africa blocked an evening Air Zimbabwe flight to Harare after authorities asked for the airlines foreign operators permit.

They also imposed similar decisions on us yesterday and an Air Zimbabwe plane was grounded, Joram Gumbo, Zimbabwes transport minister, said by phone on Saturday. Weve also taken a similar decision, in line with international practices, but we hope that the issue will be resolved soon.

SAA has activated recovery plans with every effort being made to assist hundreds of stranded passengers, spokesman Tlali Tlali said by text message. In an interview on SABC television he said the costs of the canceled flights couldnt yet be calculated. The dispute led to cancellation of flights by Johannesburg-based Comair Ltd.

South Africa Transport Minister Joe Maswanganyi plans to meet with aviation agencies soon to discuss the grounding of the Zimbabwe flight, which failed to comply with rules for producing the foreign operating permit, his office said.

Diplomatic Impasse

The grounding of planes is a diplomatic impasse over the assault charges against Grace Mugabe, the Democratic Alliance, a South African opposition party, said in an emailed statement. It seems that tensions between Zimbabwe and South Africa are mounting. The Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba must urgently and publicly address these concerning incidents and confirm that the SAA passengers and crew in Zimbabwe are safe.

Comair, which operates between South Africa and Zimbabwe under a franchise agreement with British Airways, also stopped its Saturday flights.

We have learnt that there is a possibility of South African operated airlines being grounded in Zimbabwe and as a precautionary measure have decided to temporarily suspend our services to the country while the matter is being resolved by the authorities, according to an emailed company statement.

SAA asked the South African government for 10 billion rand ($760 million), as part of a recapitalization plan aimed at returning it to profit, the finance chief said last month. The airline has failed to make a profit since 2011 and this month said its in a liquidity crisis because its trying to meet its debt obligations.
Reuters: U.S. to demand EU colleagues to continue aid to Kyiv at G20

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Yeni Safak: Turkey increases sales of winter products, blankets in EU by almost third since beginning of year

Fox News: Trump has been silent on social media for over 24 hours amid Republican failures

Lebanon extradites to Iraq relative of Saddam Hussein

Financial Times: Kyiv plans to nationalize more private companies

U.S. Senate declares 'death' of Republican Party after congressional elections

Head of U.S. Customs resigned

President of Georgia Zourabichvili says about 100 thousand Russians settled in country

CNN: Democrats to retain control of Senate after congressional elections

Alen Simonyan: We are truly and sincerely committed to the peace agenda

Artak Beglaryan: Genocidal purpose is apparent

French maritime services rescue more than 140 migrants trying to swim across English Channel

Biden says he is satisfied with results of midterm elections in U.S.

Slovenia holds second round of presidential elections

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Macron confirms France's readiness to support normalization of relations between Yerevan and Baku

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Is Jordan country that has not supplied arms to Armenia?: 'The press usually has reliable information'

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Pashinyan: If the state interferes with the exchange rate unnecessarily, the economy will only suffer

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Biden has no plans to meet with Saudi crown prince at G20 summit

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The fourth annual Blue Harbor Craft Beer Festival will take place on Saturday, Sept. 23 at the Blue Harbor Resort and Conference Center, 725 Blue Harbor Dr. in Sheboygan.

Attendees at the festival can indulge in beer samples from more than 30 breweries while enjoying an early autumn view of Lake Michigan.

Participating breweries include Toppling Goliath (Decorah, Iowa), Half Acre (Chicago, Ill.), Karben4 Brewing (Madison, Wis.) and local brewers 3 Sheeps Brewing Company (Sheboygan, Wis.), 8th Street Ale Haus (Sheboygan, Wis.), Plymouth Brewing (Plymouth, Wis.) and new to the local line-up Switch Gear Brewing (Elkhart Lake, Wis.). Among newcomers to the festival are City Lights Brewing Co. (Milwaukee, Wis.), Bells Brewery (Kalamazoo, Mich.), Stone Arch Handcrafted Beers (Appleton, Wis.) and Capital Brewing (Middleton, Wis.).

Among the offerings, guests will find traditional favorites along with barrel aged beers and seasonal and special offerings including Oktoberfest, chocolate porter, pumpkin ale, blueberry vanilla porter as well as a variety of ciders.

According to James Owen, co-founder of local brewery 3 Sheeps Brewing Company and Blue Harbor Craft Beer Festival co-sponsor, the event has a very impressive list of top craft breweries and beers in one location and in one event.

"A major reason for establishing this festival was to showcase Sheboygan as a major destination for craft beer," notes James Owen, festival co-sponsor and co-founder of 3 Sheeps Brewing Company. "We're excited that attendees of all palates will be able to sample great beers that they otherwise perhaps wouldn't be able to try," said Owen.

Festival features

Friday, Sept. 22 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Beer BBQ featuring food and beer pairings with Johnsonville Sausage

The event will take place at the 3 Sheeps Brewing Co. tap room where four food selections will be expertly paired with 3 Sheeps brews, including new release Paid Time Off. Tickets are $25 and benefit Safe Harbor of Sheboygan Co.

Saturday, Sept. 23 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

VIP Event Experience

Guests can chat with area brewers while enjoying exclusive limited-edition beers with culinary pairings and small plates designed by the culinary teams at Blue Harbor Resort. Included in the VIP experience is early entry into the Craft Beer Tasting and a special VIP room. Tickets are $75 and include include early entry into the Craft Beer Tasting and a special VIP room as well as admission to the Grand Tasting.

Saturday, Sept. 23 from 1 to 4 p.m.

Grand Craft Beer Tasting

Attendees can sample more than 100 beers and ciders from over 30 breweries while enjoying live music by the Honey Goats. Concessions and retail items will also be available for purchase.



Tickets to the Blue Harbor Craft Beer Festival events can be purchased at www.Xorbia.com.
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Bedazzled HiHat is ready to fill your glass with holiday spirits

When was the last time you've been to HiHat on Brady Street? December is the perfect time to visit "Snow Days at HiHat."
The head of an Islamic police brigade deployed by jihadists controlling a northern Mali city in 2012 was jailed for 10 years Friday, after being convicted of crimes that included cutting off the hands of suspected thieves. Aliou Mahamar Toure had denied a long list of offences, as he stood trial in Bamako, having been accused of endangering state security and aggravated assault. "The court finds the accused guilty of all charges," said the verdict after the one-day trial. Rights groups had earlier said the charges -- among them he was said to have whipped women for not wearing sufficiently conservative clothing -- did not reflect the gravity of his offences. Toure, the feared former "Islamic police chief" of the city of Gao, was arrested in December 2013 by the Malian army. He had spread terror in Gao as one of the most high-profile faces of Al-Qaeda offshoot MUJAO (the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa). Victims gave gruesome testimony in court to the jury, which Toure listened to with his head bowed. "He didn't want to release them, he himself cut off their hands and feet. Afterwards he paraded around with the hands and feet," one witness said, describing the fate of his brother's four children. One person recounted being arrested and drugged by Toure and his henchmen after being accused of stealing. "They cut off my right hand," the victim said. Toure took the stand wearing a traditional white robe in the presence of at least eight of his victims, an AFP journalist at the court said. He told the jury he had not cut the hands and feet himself. "It was the Mauritanian, Algerian and Sahrawi jihadists who were cutting hands," Toure, a Malian national, said. At one point Toure said he was "very ill" and asked to be allowed to sit down. Rights groups including the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its Malian equivalent said the charge sheet did not mention war crimes or torture, offences they believe Toure committed in his role. Toure was also convicted of firearms offences and of criminal conspiracy. Jihadists hijacked a rebellion led by Tuareg separatists in northern Mali to take over key cities until a French-led intervention removed them in early 2013, though they remain active in the area. Toure was the most senior Malian among the ranks of jihadists in Gao, where many were foreigners. His trial came the day after war crimes judges in The Hague found another Malian jihadist liable for 2.7 million euros ($3.2 million) in personal damages for destroying the northern city of Timbuktu's fabled shrines in 2012.
Dogan Akhanli, a German intellectual of Turkish origin who writes on Turkey's record on human rights, was arrested in Spain on Saturday at Ankara's request, the foreign ministry said in Berlin, adding that it opposed any extradition of the writer. The arrest was initially announced by German Green MP Volker Beck, who described it as a politically-motivated move by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A foreign ministry official later confirmed the arrest. The ministry has asked Madrid not to extradite Akhanli to Turkey, and that its embassy be allowed to provide consular assistance "as quickly as possible," the official said. The Spanish interior ministry could not immediately be reached for comment. Akhanli's local newspaper, the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger in western Germany, said the Turkish-born writer was arrested in the southern Spanish town of Grenada on Saturday morning. The accusations against him were unknown. Spanish police had a so-called red notice -- an alert circulated by Interpol that is roughly equivalent to an international arrest warrant. Akhanli's website says he was born in northeastern Turkey in 1957, moved to Istanbul at the age of 12 and was held as a political prisoner from 1985 to 1987, when he was tortured. He moved to Cologne in the 1990s, was stripped of his Turkish citizenship and became a German citizen in 2001, it says. The arrest shows that Erdogan is seeking to "extend his power beyond his country's borders, to intimidate critics and to pursue them around the world," Beck charged. Akhanli has written about the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who was murdered in 2007, and about the killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Turkish empire. Between half a million and 1.5 million Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1917 -- a bloodletting that Armenia and Western historians describe as genocide. Turkey vehemently objects to the term. It argues that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up and sided with invading Russian troops. Akhanli was arrested in 2010 on his arrival in Istanbul airport for alleged implication in an armed robbery in 1989. He was released four months later and then declared innocent, before a court of appeal ordered new proceedings against him. German Green MPs took up his cause, saying he had been a victim of political persecution. Relations between Germany and Turkey have been at a nadir since a failed putsch against Erdogan in July 2016. Turkish accusations include the charge that Germany has given refuge to wanted Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants and suspected coup plotters. Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yucel, the Istanbul correspondent of newspaper Die Welt, has been held in jail in Turkey since February ahead of trial on terror charges.
Afghan security forces were on high alert Saturday as the war-weary country, reeling from a number of high-profile deadly attacks, marked its independence day with muted celebrations. There was an increased police presence in the capital Kabul where President Ashraf Ghani hosted a private ceremony for Afghan dignitaries. "All of our police units are on the highest state of alert and they are placed everywhere across the city," Kabul police spokesman Abdul Basir Mujahid told AFP. "We have increased the number of police checkpoints in and around the diplomatic quarters (too)," he added, amid fears that the Taliban would mark the anniversary with a large-scale attack. August 19 commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919, which granted Afghanistan full independence from Britain, although the country was never part of the British empire, after three bloody wars. While Afghanistan's red, black and green tricolour flag adorned many Kabul streets, the day was largely going unobserved by ordinary Afghans, who are frustrated by the deteriorating security situation and the lack of progress by the US-led international coalition forces. As in recent years there are no public ceremonies planned in the capital. The city has been on edge since a massive truck bomb ripped through its diplomatic quarter during morning rush hour on May 31, killing about 150 and wounding around 400 people, mostly civilians, in an unclaimed attack. Taliban insurgents are currently at the peak of their summer fighting season and have launched several deadly assaults around the country in recent weeks. Ghani welcomed dozens of Afghan officials for a morning ceremony at the presidential palace and laid a wreath at the independence minaret inside the defence ministry compound. "A very happy Independence Day to everyone in AFG," Ghani said on Twitter. "This day was earned with lots of sacrifices. We must pay homage & celebrate this legacy." - Trump mulls next step - While some Afghans changed their Facebook profile pictures to the Afghan flag or to Amanullah Khan, the king who secured Afghanistan's independence, others lamented that the fight against the Taliban, now in its 16th year, meant there was little to celebrate. "What independence day are we talking about when we are still at war with terrorism and don't seem to be winning against it?" one user wrote on the social media site. The day got under way as US President Donald Trump wrapped up a meeting of his national security team at Camp David on Friday as he tries to forge a new strategy for Afghanistan. Trump must decide if he wants to continue on the current course, which relies on a much reduced US-led NATO force to help Afghan partners push back the Taliban, or try a new approach, such as sending more troops or even withdrawing altogether. General John Nicholson, the top US commander in Afghanistan, offered his congratulations on "98 years of independence". "We look forward to many years of continued friendship and cooperation," he said in a statement. Afghan pop star Aryana Sayeed, who has been likened to Kim Kardashian for her skin-tight clothing and selfies, has said she will stage a concert despite threats from conservatives who oppose women performing in public. "The concert will one hundred percent be held on Saturday evening," she told Tolo News late Friday.
OSLO (Reuters) - Qatar expressed concern about the safety of its citizens in Saudi Arabia following the reopening of the countries' border enabling Qataris to attend the annual haj pilgrimage in Mecca. Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said during a visit to Norway that Saudi authorities had yet to respond to queries from the Qatari Ministry of Islamic Affairs regarding the security of Qatari citizens during haj. "The level of tension between the two nations, the language and the tone of the Saudi media spreading hatred against Qatari people represents a great concern for us," he told a news conference. "Those people crossing the border right now are under the responsibility of the Saudi authorities for their security and safety," he said, adding that "more than 100" citizens had crossed since the border was reopened. (Reporting by Gwladys Fouche; editing by John Stonestreet)
By Kay Johnson ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The chief of the U.S. Central Command visited Pakistan on Saturday, as President Donald Trump's administration debated the future of its relations with Islamabad, part of a review of the war in neighbouring Afghanistan. General Joseph Votel met Pakistans powerful army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and toured an area where the Pakistani military fought a campaign to drive out Islamist militants, according to the U.S. embassy and Pakistans military press office. "Military cooperation, and even stronger cooperation with Pakistan, is very important, and we deeply appreciate the hospitality and willingness to continue an honest and open relationship," Votel was quoted as saying by the embassy. Votel stressed that Pakistani soil should not be used to plan or conduct terrorist attacks against its neighbours, the U.S. embassy said. The U.S. relationship with Pakistan has been under scrutiny in Trumps lengthy review of a new strategy and troop levels in the fight against Taliban and other Islamist militants in Afghanistan. U.S. officials say the Afghan Taliban are supported by elements of Pakistans military and top intelligence agency, a charge Islamabad denies, pointing to its own losses fighting Taliban-allied militants in North and South Waziristan. Under one proposal, the United States would review whether to designate Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism unless it pursued senior leaders of the Afghan Taliban and the allied Haqqani network, considered the most lethal Afghan extremist group, U.S. officials said. Such a designation would trigger strong U.S. sanctions, including a ban on arms sales and an end to U.S. economic assistance. Others argue that nuclear-armed Pakistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan, is too crucial to the wars success to completely alienate. Washington and Islamabad have long had had a rocky relationship, including over 2011s secret U.S. raid inside Pakistan that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 2001 attacks in the U.S. It was the Taliban's hosting of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan that led Washington to invade to topple the-then Afghan government in 2001. In 2016 a U.S. drone strike killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour as he was traveling by car in southwestern Pakistan. Islamabad has denied sheltering either Bin Laden or Mansour. (Editing by Andrew Bolton)




Ive never seen anybody air so high or travel so far in this thing, and judging by the natives reactions to Ravens head high halfpipe frontside airs, in all their years of Romford localising they hadnt either.

As if boosting airs of this nature wasnt physics-defying enough, Raven was somehow following this number up by gifting the opposite wall with backside tailblock. Figuring out controlling his speed there was harder work for him than either of the tricks combined.

If anybody else hit the opposite wall after landing a frontside air like this, theyd be faced with a long walk back to the park from neighbouring Hornchurch.
Link Wrays 1958 instrumental Rumble is a seminal work of American popular music, one of those songs thats so fundamental that even if you dont think you know it, trust me, you do. Rumble was one of the first rock n roll songs to feature guitar distortion, as well as one of the first to feature what would come to be known as power chords, two qualities roughly akin to being one of the first paintings to feature paint. It hit No. 16 on the Billboard charts despite being banned from many radio stations, a stunning achievement for a song that doesnt even have lyrics. The late 1950s were a messy, unruly time for rock n roll: For every great record there were countless retreads and novelty songs to sift through, as an industry that didnt understand the music itched to cash in before it inevitably fizzled out. Every now and then, though, a thunderbolt broke through, and one can only imagine what it was like hearing Rumble for the first timeJimmy Page and Iggy Pop are just two musicians whove described hearing the song as a genuinely life-changing experience.

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Hardly anyone who heard Rumble in 1958 would have known that its creator was Native American. Frederick Lincoln Link Wray Jr. was born in North Carolina in 1929 to Shawnee parents. Twelve years after his death in 2005, Rumble is now the namesake of a rollicking if somewhat uneven documentary film about the history of Native American contributions to popular music. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, directed by Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana, tackles a long, illustrious, and sorely undertold story, and as such offers some much-needed shading to a history thats still too often framed in stark polarities of black and white.

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The music of the United States has been marked by the sounds and contributions of its indigenous people for as long as that music can be said to have existed. The earliest European colonists thrilled and trembled at the American music they heard upon their arrival. In the late 19th century, white American art music composers sought to mine Native American sources in what came to be known as the Indianist movement. And some of the earliest ethnographic uses of sound recording were deployed to record Native American songs, dances, chants, and rituals, a practice so widespread that illustrations of Indian people were sometimes used in advertisements for phonographs.

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Rumble offers some much-needed shading to a history thats still too often framed in stark polarities of black and white.

Rumble takes place in the aftermath of this history, although the last example is briefly referred to in a prologue at the beginning of the film. Featuring an incredible array of interviews with Indian and non-Indian luminaries such as the Bands Robbie Robertson (Mohawk), Redbones Pat Vegas (Shoshone), Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree), George Clinton, Steven Tyler, Martin Scorsese, and Cyril and Ivan Neville, Rumble often feels like at least two movies in one. The first is an attempt to pinpoint the various and far-flung Native American tributaries that have flowed into American popular music; the second is an attempt to shed light on individual musicians of Native American descent whose contributions to that music have been sorely overlooked or misunderstood. It is more successful in the latter configuration than in the former, although this is perhaps because the former is far too complex and elusive a topic for a single film.

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The individual artists that Rumble highlights are enormously consequential to American music, starting of course with Link Wray himself. Theres Mildred Bailey, who grew up on a Coeur DAlene reservation in Idaho and became one of the greatest and most important vocalists in prewar American jazz. (Tony Bennett is featured in the film, proclaiming Bailey as one of his formative vocal influences.) Theres Jesse Ed Davis, born in Oklahoma to a Comanche father and Kiowa mother, who would go on to become one of the most sought-after session guitarists of his generation, playing with John Lennon, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Jackson Browne. These figures are more than worthy of full documentaries entirely to themselves. Another artist featured in the film, Delta blues pioneer Charley Patton, whose grandmother was thought to be Cherokee, is quite simply one of the most important musicians of the 20th century and probably worthy of at least a hundred such films.

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Pattons segment also illustrates some of the films shortcomings, particularly its quixotic and quasi-musicological quest to uncover the Native American roots of modern popular music. This type of sleuthing is always tricky and rarely all that satisfying, and the films lengthy theorization that the melismatic style of Pattons singing and the intricate rhythms of his guitar playing are direct retentions of his Cherokee ancestry feels flimsy at best. Melisma and polyrhythms are common to many musical traditions, including those of the black American South, where Patton spent his life as an itinerant musician under the constant threat of Jim Crowera racial violence. The film doesnt mention the prominence of such musical characteristics in West African traditions, nor does it mention Pattons well-established influences and mentors such as Henry Sloan and Willie Brown, both of whom were black. Neglecting this context runs the risk of suggesting that Pattons musical style was acquired through something like biological transmissionan old-fashioned notion, indeedas well as potentially muddying the still-charged question of whom the black American blues tradition rightly belongs to. (My answer remains black Americans.)

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Of course, there was a tremendous amount of musical and cultural overlap between black American communities and Native American communities in the American South, particularly during slavery, when Native communities (and later, reservations) often served as harbor for fugitive enslaved people. Rumble addresses this at some length, but it still feels like a shame that the film doesnt dwell in it more, or in the extraordinarily polyglot story of American popular music more generally. One can certainly do justice to the enormous role of Native American musicians in American music by telling the stories of those individual musicians and their various unique circumstances, rather than getting caught up in dubious retention theories. American popular musics source material is a beautiful mess thats almost always impossible to disentangle, with contributions from Africans, Europeans, Native Americans, Cubans, Mexicans, Jamaicans, Minnesotans, Chicagoans, and countless other self-defined peoples and cultures.

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Rumble is best when it lets this very impossibility take center stage. Toward the films end we get the story of the Native American rock and pop band Redbone, who had a Top 5 Billboard hit in 1974 with Come and Get Your Love. Its a killer song, with an ebullient melody, pristine vocal harmonies, and a dancing, bubbling rhythm section. It wouldnt be out of place on an album from the same period by Earth, Wind & Fire, or the Bee Gees, or Big Star. The movie gives us footage of the bands performance on the television show Midnight Special, which the band begins by conducting a Native American dance ritual in full traditional dress before effortlessly segueing into a note-perfect live performance of Come and Get Your Love. And at that moment it feels like something much bigger than the film itself comes entirely together: four men on a stage, being musicians, being Indians, being Americans, playing rock n roll.
The last 15 years of investments in Slovakia have covered sectors producing rubber and plastic products, metal products and motor vehicles.

The construction site of a brand new plant of Jaguar Land Rover near Nitra. (Source: TASR )

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More than a year has passed since the referendum on the United Kingdoms exit from the European Union, yet no one can be sure of its impacts. Due to uncertainty, British entrepreneurs in Slovakia and Slovaks in the UK today need to prepare for potential risks.

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Though citizens of both countries may return to their homelands when the actual separation occurs, entire companies that depend on profits from operations will be rather limited in their activities and development. Some manufacturing companies with sales on the European continent will give preference to their continental sites, according to Peter Kremsky, executive director of the Business Alliance of Slovakia (PAS).

Some shared business service companies, mainly those offering services to banks and financial institutions, will move part of their activities to less expensive locations in the euro area, Kremsky told The Slovak Spectator.

Slovak cities with shared service centres, like Bratislava and Kosice, may reap the benefits of such a development, Kremsky said.

Since 2002 the state-run Slovak Investment and Trade Development Agency (SARIO) has helped bring a total of 21 British investment projects to Slovakia at a value of 1.484 billion, generating 3,949 jobs. Today the business service company Dun&Bradstreet records 405 companies in the country with a parent company in the UK.

Biggest construction in Nitra

Investments over the last 15 years in Slovakia have gone to sectors producing rubber and plastic products, metal products and motor vehicles.

The statistics include the 1.4 billion investment by the British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) that is, despite the Brexit referendum, currently building a new plant near Nitra with an expected start of operation in autumn 2018.

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Read also: Inspection uncovers illegal employment at Jaguar Land Rover in Slovakia Read more

British Ambassador to Slovakia Andrew Garth thinks that JLR has been very clear from the very beginning that the result of the referendum was not going to play a role in their decision to invest in Slovakia. The investment volume linked to this project does not stop with the assembly plant itself, he said.

Several of JLRs UK suppliers are also considering establishing a presence in Slovakia to support JLR here, Garth told The Slovak Spectator.

One of JLRs main suppliers, Horiba Mira, has already considered the construction of a test and development centre at the airport in the spa town of Piestany. The investment would significantly help that airport that the authorities threatened to close in 2016 due to its debts of 1.7 million, the Sme daily reported.

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Read also: British company is interested in loss-making Piestany airport Read more

Of the other British companies operating in Slovakia, SARIOs spokeswoman Simona Ceresnikova mentions chemical producer DS Smith; automotive supplier Arlington Automotive; service centre Insignia; metal engineering company KMF Slovakia, and pharmaceutical company Innopharma.

Garth pointed to Tesco, which employs over 10,000 people across Slovakia, and that regularly invests into its operations.

Slovaks focus on exports

Similarly, approximately 30 Slovak companies currently have a branch in the UK, according to Igor Skocek from the press department of the Slovak Foreign Affairs Ministry.

The Slovak embassy in London considers the largest investor to be real estate developer HB Reavis, which has been in the UK since 2013. After the referendum, the company managed to sell its first development project, 33 Central, to the American bank Wells Fargo, Skocek said.

It was one of the largest commercial real estate acquisitions in London after Brexit, worth 300 million pounds, Skocek told The Slovak Spectator.

Slovak businesses in the UK also include exporters in engineering, mining, metallurgy, clothing and the beverage industry, as well as providers of finance and IT services.

The entry of JLR and the weakening of the pound after Brexit has also affected trade between the two countries. While exports from the UK make up 3 percent of the total Slovak imports, Slovak exports to the UK are less than 7 percent of the countrys total exports, the HNonline.sk website reported.

No impact on global players

Over the next 10 years, the number of foreign direct investments in the UK may fall by 22 percent, according to an analysis by the Centre for European Performance. Martin Vlachynsky, an analyst with the INESS economic think tank, however, does not assume that any of the sense-making scenarios will affect the global corporate players.

If the reason for the arrival to the UK was an effort to enter the global market, Brexit would not affect companies decisions, Vlachynsky told The Slovak Spectator, adding that it could instead make the entry more difficult for small and niche-focused entrepreneurs.

SARIO expects stabilisation of companies positions on the EU markets when the UK leaves the group thanks to the benefits of the common market. Ceresnikova noted that the EU will still remain the UKs most important trade partner.

Attracting people back

The investment agency, together with the Labour and Foreign Affairs ministries and some companies, are currently preparing a plan to persuade Slovak citizens working in the UK, mainly those affected by Brexit, to come back home.

The project focuses on information about prospective job opportunities available in Slovakia, especially in the service sector with higher added value, said Ceresnikova. Though the agency should kick off a pilot project in summer 2017, it remains in the preparation phase aiming at the projects concept, appearance and functionality.

Unlike employees, companies are making decisions based mainly on profitability, according to business experts. If the changes bring a loss of business and lower the return on investment, Slovak companies will certainly think about optimising or even shutting down their British activities, Kremsky said.

Bilateral trade between the countries will face an additional cost item that can consist of compliance costs, or also tariffs, Vlachynsky said.

Slovak potential

In the future, Slovakia may attract not only domestic companies but also foreign investors looking for a new location, a favourable geographical position, a stable political and economic situation and high labour productivity, said Ceresnikova. The effect of the referendum on companies depends on the business model and supply chains.

Being the second largest economy in Europe, the UK is a good market for Slovak goods, for Slovak companies to raise finance and use it as a stepping stone to global markets, according to Garth.

Despite the uncertainty, the UK continues to receive significant investment from local and overseas firms, Ambassador Garth emphasised.
Most Slovak museums and galleries are closed on Mondays, but the Slovak National Museum  SNM  decided to present some of its branches.

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After open-air museums, it now mostly opens castles and mansions.

From the mediaeval castle of Cerveny Kamen (Red Rock) or the Museum of the National Council in Myjava through picturesque Bojnice Castle and the Museum of Toys at Modry Kamen (Blue Stone) castle, all the way to the vast Spis Castle, Betliar manor house and gothic gems of Levoca, holiday-makers as well as locals can now pay a visit also on Mondays, SNM informed.

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Some museums have already been opened on Monday, including the Museum of Jewish Culture in Bratislava, its branch  the Holocaust Museum in Sered  and the ethnological Museum of the Slovak Village in Martin, as well as the Museum of Roma Culture in the same town, the Museum of Ukrainian Culture in Svidnik and the Museum of Ruthenian Culture in Presov. Monday open hours will continue until the end of August.

More updated information can be found at www.snm.sk.
The award is not only a big thank you gesture but also a call for everybody to forget about their comfort and think about how they can help the world become a nicer place, said the Slovak president.

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President Andrej Kiska granted a state award in memoriam to Carlo Orlandi for saving 500 Jewish refugees in the Aegean Sea during World War II, 260 of whom were Slovaks.

The Medal of the President of Slovakia was given to his grandchildren in late September 2016.

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Many probably ask the question what our role in life is, how we are supposed to live it, who the hero of these days is, Kiska said, as quoted by the SITA newswire. I think we should think about the actions of people who tried to answer the question of life and death. Who tried to answer the question whether they should help and risk their own lives or stay somewhere safe, in comfort, without caring about others?

The award is not only a big thank you gesture but also a call for everybody to forget about their comfort and think about how they can help the world become a nicer place, Kiska added.

During his visit to Italy, the Slovak president met with his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella and President of the Italian Senate Pietro Grasso. He also attended the opening of the exhibition of Slovak Gothic art titled The Treasures of Slovakia.

At meetings with top Italian representatives, Kiska stressed that Italy is a country that is not only a partner, but also a friend.

It is a country we share a lot with, the president added, as quoted by SITA.

Moreover, it is a country for which the migration crisis is an everyday reality.

In my talks with President Mattarella, we discussed a lot about how to face the migration crisis, Kiska said, as quoted by SITA.

In his opinion, it is important to assure people that things are under control and there is no danger.The president stressed that the European Union is not only about business, but also about solidarity.

It is our moral duty to think not only about people escaping death but also solidarity within the EU, Kiska continued, adding that the refugees coming to Italy are the refugees of us all. The EU will certainly handle this problem together.
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Everest Re Group, Ltd., through its subsidiaries, provides reinsurance and insurance products in the United States, Bermuda, and internationally. The company operates through Reinsurance Operations and Insurance Operations segments. The Reinsurance Operations segment writes property and casualty reinsurance; and specialty lines of business through reinsurance brokers, as well as directly with ceding companies in the United States, Bermuda, Ireland, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The Insurance Operations segment writes property and casualty insurance directly, as well as through brokers, surplus lines brokers, and general agents in Bermuda, Canada, Europe, South America, Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands. The company also provides treaty and facultative reinsurance products; admitted and non-admitted insurance products; and property and casualty reinsurance and insurance coverages, including marine, aviation, surety, errors and omissions liability, directors' and officers' liability, medical malpractice, mortgage reinsurance, other specialty lines, accident and health, and workers' compensation products. In addition, it offers commercial property and casualty insurance products through wholesale and retail brokers, surplus lines brokers, and program administrators. Everest Re Group, Ltd. was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda.
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The Chinese electronics multinational  Xiaomi Inc. is going to officially launch its keenly awaited Redmi Note 5A on 21st August. While today, the firm is starting the pre-orders for its middle-ranged Redmi 4 with the starting price of Rs. 6,999, and the Redmi 4A for Rs. 5,999 in India, the launch of Redmi Note 5A will add another feather to the cap of this Chinese conglomerate. Ahead of the official China launch, the CEO of Xiaomi  Lei Jun also has posted a series of spectacular images of the approaching Redmi Note 5A, which have given some glimpse of the upcoming handset.

Redmi Note 5A is the successor to companys popular budget phone  the Redmi 4A which was launched in March this year. In an official event on Thursday, the Chinese company confirmed that the much-awaited smartphone the Redmi Note 5A would hit the market on August 21, at 7:30 PM in an event in China. For now, Xiaomi is planning to make its upcoming smartphone available only to the Chinese market. However, soon they will bring the handsets to other markets including India in the coming months. As shown in the pictures, posted by Xiaomi CEO, the Redmi Note 5A is expected to come in four colour variants including grey, gold, pink, and white.

Though the specs and features of the phone are yet to be revealed officially, the latest listing of the phone on Chinese certification site TENAA has given us some hints about the premium specs of the phone. According to TENAA listing, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5A is likely to bear a 5.5-inch full-HD (10801920 pixels) display. Under the hood, it will be powered by Snapdragon 425 processor, coupled with 2GB of RAM. On the storage part, the phone will boast a16GB of inbuilt storage with an expandable storage option of up to 128GB. With dual-SIM support, Redmi Note 5A is also expected to run on Android 7.1.1 Nougat with MIUI 9.

On the camera department, Redmi Note 5A is listed to host a 13-megapixel camera with LED flash in the rear panel, alongside a 5-megapixel front camera. Moreover, an infrared sensor is also listed to come with the upcoming handset of Xiaomi. Measuring 153.376.37.31mm and weighing roughly 150 grams, the phone is expected to be backed by a 3000mAh battery. As per pricing, the Redmi Note 5A is likely to be tagged with CNY 999 (nearly Rs. 9,600) and will be available in the market from Monday itself.
DUBAI, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell (LSE: 0LN9.L - news) has lifted a cargo of 600,000 barrels of crude oil from Libya's Zueitina port, its first from the war-torn north African country in 5 years, two industry sources told Reuters on Saturday (Shenzhen: 002291.SZ - news) .

"Libya is a significant resource holder and Shell (LSE: RDSB.L - news) International Trading and Shipping Company Ltd (STASCO) has a history marketing Libyan crudes," a Shell spokesperson said.

"We welcome new business opportunities with Libyas National Oil Corporation (NOC). However, we don't comment on specific trading deals," the spokesperson added. (Reporting by Rania El Gamal and Ahmed Ghaddar; Writing by Noah Browning; Editing by Toby Chopra)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told staff in an email - seen by Reuters on Friday - that everyone must stand up and condemn hate, as President Donald Trump faces a backlash for his response to violence at a protest by white nationalists. Trump blamed both sides for clashes in the southern college town of Charlottesville in Virginia last weekend, where white nationalists were protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. A woman was killed when a suspected white nationalist plowed his car into a crowd. "Those who march spewing hate are few, but loud. We must denounce them at every turn, and make them feel like they are on an island and isolate them the same way they wish to isolate others," wrote Haley, a member of Trump's cabinet, in the email sent Thursday to staff at the U.S. mission to the United Nations. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, said the "horrible acts" seen in Charlottesville "took me back to sad days dealing with the Charleston tragedy in 2015." Haley attracted national attention when she secured the removal of the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's capitol grounds after a white supremacist killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston. "People aren't born with hate. We all have a responsibility to stand up and condemn it," Haley wrote in the email to staff, which did not refer to Trump. "While we should respect diversity of viewpoints, it is incumbent on us to challenge hate with the values we cherish. And it is incumbent on us to never, ever countenance violence as we do so," she said. Trump has alienated Republicans, corporate leaders and U.S. allies, rattled markets and prompted speculation about possible White House resignations with his comments since the violence in Charlottesville. On Monday, Trump bowed to political pressure and denounced neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan by name, but on Tuesday he again inflamed tensions by insisting counter-protesters were also to blame and that there were "very fine people" among both groups. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and several top U.S. military officers have since broadly condemned racism. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres in a Twitter post on Tuesday said that racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia were "poisoning our societies," adding: "We must stand up against them. Every time. Everywhere." (Editing by Richard Pullin)
INDIANAPOLIS  Mel Riegsecker, the founder and chairman of Blue Gate Hospitality in Shipshewana, was named this years recipient of the Will Koch Indiana Tourism Leadership Award.

Riegsecker was presented with the award Friday by Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, who oversees the Indiana Office of Tourism Development. The award announcement was part of the annual Hoosier Hospitality Awards at the Indiana State Fair.

A LaGrange County native, Riegseckers father was a farmer and repaired harnesses, but Riegsecker had no desire to go into the family business, according to a press release issued by Friday by the Office of Tourism Development.

Riegsecker started making miniature horse-drawn carriages, buggies and other vehicles, and that hobby turned into a bustling business. Today, it includes the Blue Gate Restaurant and bakery, the 350-seat Blue Gate Theater, an inn, an event center and much more.

Mel Riegsecker helped shape Shipshewanas tourism profile, Crouch said in the news release. He had a vision, and now Blue Gate Hospitality hosts over a half a million visitors every year.

Riegsecker continues to be a dedicated tourism and business leader in his community, and he gives his wife, June, and others credit for his success along the way.

Its a very humbling experience, Its a tremendous honor to be selected, Riegsecker said in the news release. I feel undeserving. I couldnt have done it without the Lords help and a lot of really, really great people.

The Will Koch Indiana Tourism Leadership Award is presented annually and is the highest tourism honor given by the state. The award is named for the late Will Koch, longtime owner and president of Holiday World & Splashin Safari.

Nominations for the Will Koch Indiana Tourism Leadership Award are submitted by community leaders and members of Indianas travel, tourism and hospitality industry. Submissions are reviewed by an eight-member panel comprised of representatives from Purdue University, the Indiana State Fair, Holiday World & Splashin Safari, Grow INdiana Media Ventures, the Indiana Restaurant and Lodging Association and state tourism leaders.

Mel Riegsecker sets a high standard for outstanding accomplishments in economic and community development through the Indiana tourism industry, Mark Newman, executive director of the Office of Tourism Development said in the news release. His passion and dedication is an excellent example to us all and an honorable choice for the states highest award.

Crouch and the Office of Tourism Development also presented 19 representatives of the tourism industry with the Hoosier Hospitality Award for their high level of service in tourism-related jobs at hotels, restaurants, attractions and other destinations. Those winners included Tiffany Conrad and Dave Fox of the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site near Rome City.
By Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Prak Chan Thul PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - No sooner had the 11-storey apartment building in Phnom Penh's affluent Tuol Kouk district been finished than dozens of young Chinese men and women moved in loaded with desks and laptops, said neighbours. "I thought they were moving an office in," said Eng Somnang, 20, who owns a noodle soup shop directly opposite and watched them arrive early this month. Police in the Cambodian capital accuse them of doing exactly that: setting up a criminal call centre with more than 200 Chinese nationals to carry out a telephone and internet scam on victims in China. Police raided the building on Wednesday to stop what they said was the latest operation of a type that has duped people out of billions of dollars - with scammers operating from countries that have good internet access and relaxed visa rules. From a balcony of the building in Phnom Penh, some of the suspects told Reuters they had not been given food and police were not allowing them to leave. One of the suspects, Fang, 30, from China, said she came to Cambodia on a tourist visa. She said there were more than 200 people inside the building but declined to answer questions about what they had been doing there. Police said they had arrested 225 Chinese nationals, 25 of them women, on suspicion of using internet voice calls for an extortion scheme. They will be sent to China to face justice, police investigators said. Since 2011, Cambodia has deported 800 people from mainland China and Taiwan, arrested on suspicion of telecoms scams. Neighbours in Tuol Kouk, dotted with large villas, described the occupants of the building as quiet. They said it had been rented out to tenants for $25,000 a month. The owner was not available to comment. WARY The occupants kept to themselves, venturing out only at night to get food, neighbours said. "They were mostly men, some women. Maybe 20, 23 years old. Young," said Eng Somnang. "When people delivered food to them they were not allowed inside." In the past, Chinese fraud suspects have often entered Cambodia on tourist visas, said Uk Haisela, chief of investigation at Cambodia's immigration department. The victims of the scammers were often civil servants and retired officials from mainland China, he said. One of the suspected telephone fraudsters who Uk Haisela interrogated said he made up to $70,000 per week. Uk Haisela said victims ere sometimes blackmailed and the suspects used Cambodia because it was easy to stay in the country and internet speeds were fast. Cambodia was able to track the gangs with help from China, he said. "China sends IP addresses to us ... Once we make arrests, we report to the Chinese embassy," Uk Haisela told Reuters. China's Foreign Ministry said there had always been close cooperation with Cambodia. "China appreciates Cambodia's cooperation with China on jointly cracking down on telecoms fraud and other cross-border crime," it said in a statement. The scams have become a headache for both China and Taiwan, bringing cooperation between them, but also objections from Taiwan because of the deportation of suspects from the self-ruled island to face trial on the mainland. Suspected scammers have been arrested elsewhere in Asia and Asia. This month, 77 Chinese fraud suspects were sent to China from Fiji. More than 150 were detained in Indonesia over a scam that police said had netted about $450 million. Scammers choose countries where they think law enforcement is weak and governments are unlikely to see them as a priority, said Lennon Chang, a criminologist and expert in telecoms fraud at Monash University in Melbourne. "We might be able to call them criminal nomads," he told Reuters, saying they moved every couple of weeks. The fraudsters sometimes posed as officials and tricked people into disclosing bank account details, he said. "The leaders are not easy to discover. All are young kids. Even if the crime syndicates are discovered and dissolved, the leaders will be able to start a new group in a short period of time." (Additional reporting by Yimou Lee in BANGKOK and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Matthew Tostevin and Robert Birsel)
By Thomas Escritt BERLIN (Reuters) - German-Turkish author Dogan Akhanli was arrested in Spain on Saturday after Turkey issued an Interpol warrant for the writer, a critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, fanning an already fierce row between the NATO allies. The arrest of the German national in Granada was part of a "targeted hunt against critics of the Turkish government living abroad in Europe," Akhanli's lawyer Ilias Uyar told magazine Der Spiegel, which first reported Akhanli's detention. A German foreign office official said Germany was in touch with Spanish authorities demanding that Berlin be involved in any extradition proceedings and insisting that no extradition should take place. Any country can issue an Interpol "red notice", but extradition by Spain would only follow if Ankara could convince Spanish courts it had a real case against him. Ties between Ankara and Berlin have been increasingly strained in the aftermath of last year's failed coup in Turkey as Turkish authorities sacked or suspended 150,000 people and detained more than 50,000, including other German nationals. "This is a development of dramatic significance," said Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz at a campaign rally. "As part of his (Erdogan's) paranoid counter-putsch, he is reaching out for our citizens on the territory of European Union states." Schulz, who seeks to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel in elections on Sept. 24, called for talks on Turkey joining the EU's customs union to be suspended, saying that Erdogan was "every day testing the limits of how far he can go." The German Journalists' Union warned journalists critical of Ankara to have German police check their Interpol records before travelling abroad. "To our knowledge, our colleague has done nothing wrong," said Frank Ueberall, the union's president. Merkel has been cautious in her criticism of Erdogan despite Ankara's arrests of Germnan citizens. Critics say she is beholden to him because Turkey stands in the way of another wave of Syrian war refugees arriving in Europe, as they did in 2015, endangering her politically. Akhanli, detained in the 1980s and 1990s in Turkey for opposition activities, including running a leftist newspaper, fled Turkey in 1991 and has lived and worked in the German city of Cologne since 1995. On Friday, Erdogan urged the three million or so people of Turkish background living in Germany to "teach a lesson" to Germany's main parties by boycotting them in the elections. (Reporting By Thomas Escritt; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
By James Pomfret and Venus Wu HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong's legal chief denied any "political motive" in seeking jail for three young pro-democracy activists on Friday, responding to a Reuters report that he had overruled other legal officials who had initially advised against pursuing the case. An appeals court on Thursday jailed three leaders of the Chinese-ruled city's democracy movement, Joshua Wong, 20, Alex Chow, 27, and Nathan Law, 24, for six to eight months, dealing a blow to a youth-led push for universal suffrage. Several protests by their supporters are planned in coming days. They had been convicted of unlawful assembly related to months of mostly peaceful street protests that gripped the city in 2014 but failed to sway Communist Party rulers in Beijing in their call for full democracy. The trio had already been sentenced last year by a district court in the former British colony to non-jail terms including community service, but the Department of Justice applied for a review, seeking jail terms. Reuters reported that Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen had ignored the advice of several senior prosecutors in the Department of Justice in pushing for jail terms. Yuen said differences of opinion could be constructive. "I believe everyone will understand that any entity, including a government department, in discussing something, will sometimes have a consensus, and sometimes there are different opinions," he told reporters. "I hope everyone can understand that the main point is not whether there was any difference in opinion, and actually sometimes having a difference in opinion is a good thing, because if everyone has the same opinion then you can't have a constructive discussion." Yuen added there "hasn't been any political motive at all" in the case. China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said in response to the sentences that "no one can use the excuse of so-called democracy and freedom to carry out illegal violent acts". INTERNATIONAL CONCERN But the sentencing has stoked broader international fears for Hong Kong's constitutionally enshrined freedoms, part of a "one country, two systems" deal under which the British returned the territory to China in 1997, as well as perceptions of political meddling. Hong Kong enjoys a free, highly respected judiciary, unlike on the mainland where the Communist Party controls the courts which rarely challenge its decisions. "We are concerned by the decision of the Hong Kong authorities to seek a tougher sentence," said Kristin Haworth, a spokesperson for the U.S. Consulate General Hong Kong and Macau. "We hope Hong Kong's law enforcement continues to reflect Hong Kong's high degree of autonomy and remains apolitical." U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called the re-sentencing of the trio "unjust". "This injustice offends the basic notions of freedom and democracy and deserves the swift and unified condemnation of the international community," she said in a statement.US senator and once presidential hopeful Marco Rubio, together with representative Chris Smith, also criticized what they called the "shameful" sentencing. Their statement drew ire from the Chinese Foreign Ministry's representative office in Hong Kong. "We ask the U.S. government to follow the basic principles of international relations, and oppose and stop the aforementioned congressmen's speech and action that oppose China and stir up troubles in Hong Kong," the office said in a statement. Britain said it was vital Hong Kong's young people had a voice in politics and it hoped the sentencing would not discourage legitimate protest. The office of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen expressed "much regret" over the sentence. China's conservative state-run tabloid, the Global Times, welcomed the jail terms, saying "the law has shown its authority". "This sentence will be a milestone in Hong Kong's governance. From now on people who protest violently can be given a guilty sentence following this precedent, and they will need to go to jail," the newspaper wrote. The jail terms disqualify Wong, Chow and Law from running for the financial hub's legislature for the next five years. Law had been the city's youngest ever democratically elected legislator before he was stripped last month of his seat by a government-led lawsuit. The three plan to appeal. (Additional reporting by Gao Liangping and Christian Shepherd in Beijing, and Jessica Macy Yu in Taipei and; Editing by Nick Macfie)
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Venezuela's former top prosecutor Luisa Ortega arrived in Colombia on Friday, migration authorities in Bogota said, after she was fired by a controversial new legislative superbody and said she feared for her life. Ortega broke with socialist President Nicolas Maduro in late March and became a vocal critic of his unpopular government, eventually going into hiding after the newly elected constituent assembly fired her earlier this month. The assembly fired Ortega during its first session on Aug. 5, but she and some governments in the region have refused to accept the body's decisions. "This afternoon the attorney general of Venezuela Luisa Ortega Diaz arrived from Aruba in a private plane to Bogota's airport and completed the corresponding migration process," Colombia's migration agency said in a statement. She was accompanied by her husband, the legislator German Ferrer, the statement added. It was not clear whether the couple were seeking asylum in Colombia. The 59-year-old told Reuters in an interview this month that she feared the government would "deprive me of my life." Her replacement, ex-human rights ombudsman Tarek Saab, this week outlined corruption accusations against Ortega and her husband. The couple are accused of running an "extortion gang" and funnelling profits into an account in the Bahamas. More than 120 people have been killed during often violent unrest against Maduro's government over a crippling economic crisis and what opponents call his increasingly authoritarian rule. Colombia is among the Latin American countries which have roundly criticized Maduro, while also condemning a suggestion by U.S. President Donald Trump that a military intervention was an option to solve the crisis. South American trade bloc Mercosur said on Friday they will not recognise any measures taken by the constituent assembly. Ortega's chief of staff did not respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Sandra Maler)
The following companies are subsidiares of Nokia Oyj: AO Nokia Solutions and Networks, ATG Germany GmbH, Aircom International, Alcatel - Lucent, Alcatel Centroamerica S.A., Alcatel IP Networks Limited, Alcatel Lucent, Alcatel Lucent Middle East North Africa DMCC, Alcatel Lucent Teletas Telekomunikasyon A.S., Alcatel SEL Unterstutzungs GmbH, Alcatel Submarine Networks, Alcatel Submarine Networks Brazil Ltda., Alcatel Submarine Networks Denmark ApS, Alcatel Submarine Networks Hong Kong Limited, Alcatel Submarine Networks Marine, Alcatel Submarine Networks Norway AS, Alcatel Submarine Networks UK Ltd, Alcatel Submarine Networks USA Inc., Alcatel de Venezuela C.A., Alcatel-Lucent Angola Limitada, Alcatel-Lucent Benin SA, Alcatel-Lucent Centro Caribbean Holding Limited, Alcatel-Lucent East Africa Limited, Alcatel-Lucent India Limited, Alcatel-Lucent International, Alcatel-Lucent International Holdings Inc., Alcatel-Lucent Managed Solutions India Private Limited, Alcatel-Lucent Nigeria Limited, Alcatel-Lucent Pakistan Limited, Alcatel-Lucent Participations, Alcatel-Lucent Participations Chine, Alcatel-Lucent Portugal S.A., Alcatel-Lucent RT International B.V., Alcatel-Lucent Saudi Arabia Co. Ltd., Alcatel-Lucent Services International B.V., Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell Information Products Co. Ltd., Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (Cabo Verde) Lda, Alcatel-Lucent Trade International AG, Alcatel-Lucent UK Limited, Alcatel-Lucent Ukraine SC, Alcatel-Lucent Vietnam Limited, Amber Networks Inc., Antelec, Apertio Ltd., Avvenu, Bell Laboratories Inc., C-Dot Alcatel-Lucent Research Centre Private Limited, Camilec, Comptel, Comptel Communications EOOD, Comptel Communications Holdings Limited, Comptel Communications India Private Limited, Comptel Communications Limited, Comptel Communications Oy, Comptel Communications Sdn Bhd, Comptel Oy, Comptel Palvelut Philippines Inc., DeepField, Diamond Lane Communications, Digiskin UK, DiscoveryCom Inc., Dopplr, ETA Devices Inc., Eizel Technologies, Elenion Technologies, Elenion Technologies LLC, Enpocket, Epistrophe Limited, Europe*Star Limited, Evolium, F5 Networks Inc., Hunan Huanuo Technology Co. Ltd., IRIS Service Delivery UK Ltd, IRIS Telecommunication Austria GmbH, IRIS Telecommunication France, IRIS Telecommunication GmbH, IRIS Telecommunication Poland sp. z o.o., IRIS Telekomunikasyon Muhendislik Hizmetleri A.S., InTalk Corporation, Intellisync Corporation, Intellisync LLC, Ipsilon Networks Inc., LCC International's U.S., LLC "Nokia Solutions and Networks Ukraine", Loudeye Corp., Lucent Technologies GRL LLC, Lucent Technologies Investment Co. Ltd., Lucent Technologies Nanjing Telecommunications Co. Ltd., Lucent Technologies Networks (Thailand) Limited, Lucent Technologies Nicaragua S.A., Lucent Technologies Philippines Inc., Lucent Technologies Qingdao Telecommunications Enterprises Co. Ltd., Lucent Technologies Qingdao Telecommunications Systems Ltd., MRAC Inc., Matra Nortel Communications, Mesaplexx Limited, MetaCarta Inc., Metrowerks Corporation, Mformation Software Technologies India Pvt Ltd, Motally, NE-Products Oy, NGI Industrial (NGI), Nakina Systems, Nassau Metals Corporation, Navteq, Network Alchemy Inc., Nokatus Insurance Company Designated Activity Company (DAC), Nokia (Shanghai) Enterprise Management Co. Ltd., Nokia (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Nokia Apps Distribution LLC, Nokia Arabia Limited  100.0, Nokia Asset Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Nokia Bell NV, Nokia Canada Inc., Nokia Costa Rica S.A., Nokia Denmark A/S, Nokia Display Technics GmbH i.L., Nokia Dominican Republic S.A.S., Nokia Egypt S.A.E., Nokia El Salvador S.A. de C.V., Nokia Electronics Bochum GmbH i.L., Nokia Federal Solutions LLC, Nokia Hong Kong Limited, Nokia India Private Limited, Nokia Innovations Japan G.K., Nokia Innovations Oy, Nokia Innovations US LLC, Nokia Investment Management Corporation, Nokia Investments Oy, Nokia Ireland Limited, Nokia Jamaica Limited, Nokia Kunststofftechnik GmbH i.L., Nokia Networks (Chengdu) Co. Ltd., Nokia Networks S.R.L., Nokia New Zealand Limited, Nokia Operations de Guatemala S.A., Nokia Operations de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Nokia Paraguay S.A., Nokia Puerto Rico Inc., Nokia Services Pty Limited, Nokia Services and Networks Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Nokia Shanghai Bell (Hong Kong) Limited, Nokia Shanghai Bell Co. Ltd., Nokia Shanghai Bell Lao Sole Co. Ltd., Nokia Shanghai Bell Philippines Inc., Nokia Shanghai Bell Software Co. Ltd., Nokia Siemens Networks Afghanistan LLC, Nokia Siemens Networks Algerie SARL, Nokia Slovakia A.S., Nokia Solutions Networks Iletisim A.S., Nokia Solutions and Networks (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks (Suzhou) Supply Chain Service Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks AB, Nokia Solutions and Networks Argentina S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Asset Management Oy, Nokia Solutions and Networks Australia Pty Ltd, Nokia Solutions and Networks B.V., Nokia Solutions and Networks Baku LLC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Bangladesh Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Bolivia S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Branch Operations Oy, Nokia Solutions and Networks CCC, Nokia Solutions and Networks CJSC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Chile Ltda., Nokia Solutions and Networks Colombia Ltda., Nokia Solutions and Networks Czech Republic s.r.o., Nokia Solutions and Networks EOOD, Nokia Solutions and Networks Ecuador S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Ethernet Services Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks GmbH & Co. KG, Nokia Solutions and Networks Hellas Single Member S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Holding Osterreich GmbH, Nokia Solutions and Networks Honduras S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks India Private Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks International Holding GmbH, Nokia Solutions and Networks Investment (China) Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Israel Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Italia S.p.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Japan G.K., Nokia Solutions and Networks Kazakhstan LLP, Nokia Solutions and Networks Kft., Nokia Solutions and Networks Korea Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Kuwait Company W.L.L, Nokia Solutions and Networks LLC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Lanka (Private) Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks MEA FZ-LLC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Management GmbH, Nokia Solutions and Networks Morocco SARL, Nokia Solutions and Networks Myanmar Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Nederland B.V., Nokia Solutions and Networks Nicaragua S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Nigeria Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Norge AS, Nokia Solutions and Networks Oy, Nokia Solutions and Networks OU, Nokia Solutions and Networks Pakistan (Private) Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Peru S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks Philippines Inc., Nokia Solutions and Networks Portugal S.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks S.R.L., Nokia Solutions and Networks S.p.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks SIA, Nokia Solutions and Networks Schweiz AG, Nokia Solutions and Networks Serbia d.o.o. Beograd, Nokia Solutions and Networks Singapore Pte. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks South Africa Pty. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Sp. z.o.o, Nokia Solutions and Networks System Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Taiwan Co. Ltd., Nokia Solutions and Networks Tanzania Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Tashkent LLC, Nokia Solutions and Networks Technical Services Vietnam Company Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks TraffiCOM Kft., Nokia Solutions and Networks Tunisia SA, Nokia Solutions and Networks UK Limited, Nokia Solutions and Networks Venezuela C.A., Nokia Solutions and Networks d.o.o., Nokia Solutions and Networks d.o.o. Banja Luka, Nokia Solutions and Networks d.o.o. Sarajevo, Nokia Solutions and Networks do Brasil Telecomunicacoes Ltda., Nokia Solutions and Networks telekomunikacijske resitve d.o.o., Nokia Solutions and Networks Osterreich GmbH, Nokia South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Nokia Spain S.A., Nokia Technologies (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Nokia Technologies (UK) Limited, Nokia Technologies Oy, Nokia Technology Center Philippines Inc., Nokia Technology GmbH, Nokia Teknologia Oy, Nokia Training Center Russian Federation, Nokia Transformation Engineering & Consulting Services Spain S.L.U., Nokia UK Limited, Nokia US Holdings Inc., Nokia Unterstutzungsgesellschaft GmbH, Nokia Uruguay S.A., Nokia West and Central Africa SA, Nokia of America Corporation, Novarra Inc., OOO Nokia Solutions and Networks, OOO RTK  Network Technologies, OZ Communications, OZ Communications HK Limited, P.T. Lucent Technologies Network Systems Indonesia, PT Nokia Solutions and Networks Indonesia, Pishahang Communications Networks Development Company (Private Joint Stock), Plazes, Plum, R.F.S. (UK) Limited, RFS Brasil Telecomunicacoes Ltda, RFS Holding GmbH, RFS India Telecom Private Limited, RFS Italia SRL, RFS Radio Frequency Systems (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., RFS Radio Frequency Systems (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Radio Frequency Systems (Africa) Pty Ltd, Radio Frequency Systems (S) Pte Ltd, Radio Frequency Systems France, Radio Frequency Systems GmbH, Radio Frequency Systems Inc., Radio Frequency Systems Pty Limited, Radio Frequency Systems de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Ramp Networks Inc., Redback Networks Inc., Rooftop Communications Corporation, SAC AE Design Group Inc., SAC Wireless, SAC Wireless LLC, SAC Wireless of CA Inc., SRA Computer C.V., STC, Sega.com Inc., Smarterphone, Societe de Telecommunication Camerounaise  Sotelcam, Space Time Insight, Symbian Limited, Symbian Ltd, Tahoe Networks, Taiwan International Standard Electronics Limited, Technophone Ltd, Telekol Group, Trolltech (Qt Development Frameworks), Twango, UAB Nokia Solutions and Networks, Unium, User Interface Design, Vertu Holdings Oy, Vienna Systems Corporation, Western Electric Company Incorporated, Western Electric International Incorporated, Withings, Zyzyx Inc., bit-side GmbH, cellity AG, earthmine, and gate5 AG.

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Phillips 66 operates as an energy manufacturing and logistics company. It operates through four segments: Midstream, Chemicals, Refining, and Marketing and Specialties (M&S). The Midstream segment transports crude oil and other feedstocks; delivers refined petroleum products to market; provides terminaling and storage services for crude oil and refined petroleum products; transports, stores, fractionates, exports, and markets natural gas liquids; provides other fee-based processing services; and gathers, processes, transports, and markets natural gas. The Chemicals segment produces and markets ethylene and other olefin products; aromatics and styrenics products, such as benzene, cyclohexane, styrene, and polystyrene; and various specialty chemical products, including organosulfur chemicals, solvents, catalysts, and chemicals used in drilling and mining. The Refining segment refines crude oil and other feedstocks into petroleum products, such as gasolines, distillates, aviation, and renewable fuels at 12 refineries in the United States and Europe. The M&S segment purchases for resale and markets refined petroleum products, including gasolines, distillates, and aviation fuels primarily in the United States and Europe. This segment also manufactures and markets specialty products, such as base oils and lubricants. The company was founded in 1875 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
At a time of political change, one thing is clear and consistent: Americans strongly support saving the open spaces they love.

Since 1997, Mississippi Valley Conservancy has been doing just that for the people of southwest Wisconsin.The conservancy announced last week that it has renewed its land trust accreditation  proving once again that, as part of a network of only 389 accredited land trusts across the nation, it is committed to professional excellence and to maintaining the publics trust in its conservation work. Additionally, the conservancy was awarded a special commendation for its Project Evaluation Worksheet. The commission will use this worksheet as an example of excellence to all land trusts nationwide.

Renewing our accreditation shows Mississippi Valley Conservancys ongoing commitment to permanent land conservation in Southwest Wisconsin, said Carol Abrahamzon, executive director. We are a stronger organization than ever for having gone through the rigorous accreditation renewal process. Our strength means the bluffs, forests, streams, prairies, and farms of the Driftless area will be protected from development, forever. Places for birds, butterflies, bees, and children to live, grow and thrive, forever.

The conservancy had to provide extensive documentation and undergo a comprehensive review as part of its accreditation renewal. The Land Trust Accreditation Commission awarded the renewed accreditation, signifying its confidence that the conservancys lands will be protected forever.

Accredited land trusts must renew every five years, confirming their compliance with national quality standards and providing continued assurance to donors and landowners of their commitment to forever steward their land and easements. Almost 20 million acres of farms, forests and natural areas vital to healthy communities are now permanently conserved by an accredited land trust.

As an accredited land trust, Mississippi Valley Conservancys mission is to preserve our bluffs, farm fields, wetlands, prairies and streams in the Driftless Area. The Conservancy serves the Wisconsin counties of Buffalo, Crawford, Grant, Jackson, La Crosse, Monroe, Richland, Trempealeau and Vernon. The staff of conservation and land management experts works with landowners who voluntarily participate in conservation agreements and land acquisition efforts. The Conservancy also owns and manages nature preserves to enhance biodiversity and provide habitat for declining species. The organizations outreach team provides environmental education in efforts to enrich our local communities.

It is exciting to recognize Mississippi Valley Conservancy with this distinction, said Tammara Van Ryn, executive director of the commission. Accredited land trusts are united behind strong ethical standards ensuring the places people love will be conserved forever. Accreditation recognizes Mississippi Valley Conservancy has demonstrated sound finances, ethical conduct, responsible governance, and lasting stewardship.

Mississippi Valley Conservancy is one of 1,363 land trusts across the United States according to the most recent National Land Trust Census, released December 1, 2016 by the Land Trust Alliance. This comprehensive report also shows that accredited land trusts have made significant achievements.

Accredited land trusts have steadily grown and now steward almost 80 percent of conservation lands and easements held by all land trusts. Accredited land trusts protected five times more land from 2010 to 2015 than land trusts that were not accredited. Furthermore, accreditation has increased the publics trust in land conservation, which has helped win support for federal, state and local conservation funding measures.

A complete list of accredited land trusts and more information about the process and benefits are detailed at www.landtrustaccreditation.org.
DXC Technology Company, together with its subsidiaries, provides information technology services and solutions primarily in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It operates in two segments, Global Business Services (GBS) and Global Infrastructure Services (GIS). The GBS segment offers a portfolio of analytics services and extensive partner ecosystem that help its customers to gain rapid insights, automate operations, and accelerate their digital transformation journeys; and software engineering, consulting, and data analytics solutions that enable businesses to run and manage their mission-critical functions, transform their operations, and develop new ways of doing business. It also uses various technologies and methods to accelerate the creation, modernization, delivery, and maintenance of secure applications allowing customers to innovate faster while reducing risk, time to market, and total cost of ownership. In addition, this segment offers business process services, which include integration and optimization of front and back office processes, and agile process automation. The GIS segment adapts legacy apps to cloud, migrate the right workloads, and securely manage their multi-cloud environments; and offers security solutions help predict attacks, proactively respond to threats, and ensure compliance, as well as to protect data, applications, and infrastructure. It also provides IT outsourcing services to help customers securely and cost-effectively run mission-critical systems and IT infrastructure. In addition, this segment offers workplace services to fit its customer's employee, business, and IT needs from intelligent collaboration; and modern device management, digital support services, and mobility services. DXC Technology Company is headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia.
VIROQUA  Vernon County residents are no strangers to flooding, and 10 years ago the area was hit by one of the worst.

Described at the time as a 1,000-year flood, the rains that fell Aug. 18-19, 2007, left a wake of destruction. Damages reached $50 million, the Vernon County Broadcaster reported at the time.

At 7 a.m., Aug. 19, more than 9 inches of rain had fallen in Viroqua, all in the span of several hours; nearly a foot of rain hit Stoddard. Throughout the county, bridges and roads were washed out or covered by mudslides.

In Chaseburg, Bob and Jan Hill were accustomed to rising water, but they were petrified when the water rose so fast they were forced to carry their 12-year-old daughter to safety through waist-high water in the dark of night.

Jan Hill was watching the end of the Green Bay Packers game on TV, while monitoring the weather warnings rolling across the screen.

They listed the towns of Westby, Viroqua, Coon Valley and others, but never Chaseburg, Hill said.

Once flood waters receded, the Hills returned to their home to find the waters had strewn mud-caked personal items everywhere and a slippery mass of mud covered the floor. A waterline mark was visible along the white walls of their house.

A state of emergency was declared, and Vernon Countys Emergency Operations Center stayed open 11 straight days. In the decade since that flood struck, numerous high-water events have kept the realities of flooding  damage to public property, difficult and sometimes dangerous road travel, isolated communities, contaminated drinking water and power outages  afloat in the lives of county residents.

But the spate of floods over the past decade has strengthened the regions response capabilities and mitigation efforts, officials said.

Vernon County as a whole has gotten better at dealing with the floods, said Vernon County Sheriff John Spears. The first initial floods were devastating, referring to 2007 and 2008. It was an all-hands-on-deck situation. Days off and vacations were cancelled, everyone pitched in.

But through it all, lessons were learned.

We know more now what our areas of priority are, the dangers, Spears said. The citizens are more aware of it  They basically self-evacuate when they hear the predictions.

Spears added, As a whole, the county board and towns are quicker to respond to do their part.

The county has taken steps to harden infrastructure against flooding  such as the Readstown bridge on Hwy. 14, which already needed repairs and was raised to allow additional flood waters to pass below, or the spillway at Runge Hollow on Hwy. Y.

Many areas, including Readstown and Runge Hollow, are identified as problem areas, said Phil Hewitt, Vernon County highway commissioner. His crews, year after year, have to contend with the same locations that are repeatedly inundated with flood water.

Repairing the same spots on an almost-annual basis is a morale killer, Hewitt said, But it is what it is. We do what we do.

Throughout the years, his crews have learned how to fight the fight, Hewitt said, which in large part includes reinforcing roads with riprap, rocks that act as armor against rushing water.

Another tactic is to construct roads with known flood paths in mind, thereby mitigating damages.

Unfortunately were getting pretty good at it, pretty efficient. Last flood, Im confident we couldve sat down and identified 90 percent of the places that were going to get bad, Hewitt said in reference to the most recent flooding in July.

He added, Weve learned from all the issues.

Other notable mitigation efforts include working with residents and businesses within flood plains, like near Runge Hollow and in Viola, Avalanche, La Farge and Readstown, said Chad Buros, emergency management coordinator for Vernon County.

Buying out homes, moving businesses, raising homes  Thats helped, Buros said. I know thats helped to minimize the damage.

Buros worked at the Viroqua Fire Department and as a hazardous-material responder when the 2007 flood hit. He said removing homes from dangerous floodplains protects residents and emergency personnel  the firefighters, police officers and medical technicians who may be called on to rescue people trapped inside their houses.

Buros added, They deserve credit for doing their part.

But according to Buros, the countys towns and villages proved they can adapt to difficult circumstances.

The communities are getting so used to (floods) that they know how to handle things quicker, faster, maybe evacuating the area, Buros said. Now its just like its another day, because its happened so many times in the last ten years that we know the drill  Im proud of all of them to respond like that.

Private and public damage estimates from the recent July flood are about $750,000, a much-decreased value from 10 years ago. The federal government is slated to visit Vernon County soon, Buros said, and will issue a preliminary damage assessment.
The following companies are subsidiares of General Motors: 2140879 Ontario Inc., ACAR Leasing Ltd., ACF Investment Corp., AFS SenSub Corp., APGO Trust, Adam Opel GmbH, AmeriCredit, AmeriCredit Financial Services Inc., Annunciata Corporation, Argonaut Holdings LLC, Astyx Inc., BOCO (Proprietary) Limited, Banco GM S.A., Boco Trust, BrightDrop LLC, BrightDrop Solutions LLC, BrightDrop Vehicle Distribution LLC, CHEVYPLAN S.A. Sociedad Administradora de Planes de Autofinanciamiento Comercial, Cadillac, Cadillac Europe GmbH, Carve-Out Ownership Cooperative LLC, Chevrolet Deutschland GmbH, Chevrolet Otomotiv Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Chevrolet Sales (Thailand) Limited, Chevrolet Sales India Private Ltd., Chevrolet Sociedad Anonima de Ahorro para Fines Determinados, Controladora General Motors S. de R.L. de C.V., Cruise, Cruise LLC, Cruise Munich GmbH, DCJ1 LLC, DMAX Ltd., Dealership Liquidations Inc., Delphi Energy and Engine Management Systems UK Overseas Corporation, EDS (Electronic Data Systems), GCAR Titling Ltd., GM (UK) Pension Trustees Limited, GM Administradora de Bens Ltda., GM Asia Pacific Regional Headquarters Ltd., GM Components Holdings LLC, GM Corretora de Seguros Ltda., GM Cruise Holdings LLC, GM Defense LLC, GM Eurometals Inc., GM Finance Co. Holdings LLC, GM Financial, GM Financial Bank, GM Financial Canada Leasing Ltd., GM Financial Colombia Holdings LLC, GM Financial Colombia S.A. Compania de Financiamiento, GM Financial Consumer Discount Company, GM Financial Holdings LLC, GM Financial Insurance Company, GM Financial Mexico Holdings LLC, GM Financial de Mexico S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.R., GM Financial del Peru S.A.C, GM Global Technology Operations LLC, GM Global Tooling Company LLC, GM Global Treasury Centre Limited, GM Holdings Australia Pty Ltd, GM Holdings U.K. No.1 Limited, GM Inversiones Santiago Limitada, GM Investment Trustees Limited, GM Korea Company, GM LAAM Holdings LLC, GM Mobility Europe GmbH, GM Personnel Services Inc., GM Philippines Inc., GM Protections LLC, GM Regional Holdings LLC, GM Retirees Pension Trustees Limited, GM Speciality Vehicles UK Limited, GM Subsystems Manufacturing LLC, GM Technical Center Korea Ltd., GM-DI Leasing LLC, GMAC Administradora de Consorcios Ltda., GMAC Prestadora de Servicios de Mao de Obra Ltda., GMCH&SP Private Equity II L.P., GMF Funding Corp., GMF Global Assignment LLC, GMF International LLC, GMF Leasing LLC, GMF Wholesale Receivables LLC, General Motors (China) Investment Company Limited, General Motors - Colmotores S.A., General Motors Advisory Services LLC, General Motors Africa and Middle East FZE, General Motors Asia LLC, General Motors Asia Pacific Holdings LLC, General Motors Asset Management Corporation, General Motors Australia Pty Ltd., General Motors Australia and New Zealand Pty Ltd., General Motors Auto LLC, General Motors Automobiles Philippines Inc., General Motors Automotive Holdings S.L., General Motors Belgique Automobile NV, General Motors Chile Industria Automotriz Limitada, General Motors China LLC, General Motors Daewoo Auto and Technology CIS LLC, General Motors Egypt S.A.E., General Motors Europe Limited, General Motors Financial Chile Limitada, General Motors Financial Chile S.A., General Motors Financial Company Inc., General Motors Financial of Canada Ltd., General Motors Global Service Operations Inc., General Motors Holden Australia NSC Pty Ltd., General Motors Holdings LLC, General Motors IT Services (Ireland) Limited, General Motors India Private Limited, General Motors International Holdings LLC, General Motors International Operations Pte. Ltd., General Motors International Services Company SAS, General Motors International Services LLC, General Motors Investment Limited, General Motors Investment Management Corporation, General Motors Investment Participacoes Ltda., General Motors Investments Pty. Ltd., General Motors Israel Ltd., General Motors Japan Limited, General Motors LLC, General Motors Limited, General Motors New Zealand Limited, General Motors New Zealand Pensions Limited, General Motors Overseas Commercial Vehicle Corporation, General Motors Overseas Corporation, General Motors Overseas Distribution LLC, General Motors Peru S.A., General Motors Research Corporation, General Motors South Africa (Pty) Limited, General Motors Taiwan Ltd., General Motors Technical Centre India Private Limited, General Motors Treasury Center LLC, General Motors Uruguay S.A., General Motors Ventures LLC, General Motors Warehousing and Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., General Motors de Argentina S.r.l., General Motors de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., General Motors del Ecuador S.A., General Motors do Brasil Ltda., General Motors of Canada Company, General Motors-Holden's Sales Pty. Limited, Global Services Detroit LLC, Grand Pointe Holdings Inc., Grand Pointe Park Condominium Association, IBC Pension Trustees Limited, Lease Ownership Cooperative LLC, Lidlington Engineering Company Ltd., Limited Liability Company "General Motors CIS", Maven Drive LLC, Millbrook Pension Management Limited, Monetization of Carve-Out LLC, Motors Holding LLC, Multi-Use Lease Entity Trust, North American New Cars LLC, Omnibus BB Transportes S. A., OnStar Connected Services Srl, OnStar Egypt Limited, OnStar Europe Ltd., OnStar Global Services Corporation, OnStar LLC, OnStar de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., P.T. G M AutoWorld Indonesia, P.T. General Motors Indonesia, PIMS Co., PT. General Motors Indonesia Manufacturing, Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center Company Ltd., Prestadora de Servicios GMF Colombia S.A.S., Rapid Motor Vehicle Company, Reliance Motor Car Company, Riverfront Holdings III Inc., Riverfront Holdings Inc., Riverfront Holdings Phase II Inc., SAIC GM (Shenyang) Norsom Motors Co. Ltd., SAIC GM Dong Yue Motors Company Limited, SAIC GM Dong Yue Powertrain Company Limited, SAIC GM Wuling Automobile Company Limited, SAIC General Motors Corporation Limited, SAIC General Motors Sales Company Limited, SAIC-GMAC Automotive Finance Company Limited, SAIC-GMF Leasing Co. Ltd., Servicios GMAC S.A. de C.V., Shanghai OnStar Telematics Co. Ltd., Sidecar Technologies, Ultium Cells LLC, Vehicle Asset Universal Leasing Trust, WRE Inc., and Zona Franca Industrial Colmotores SAS.

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SANTA FE  For Pat Pruitt, winning Best of Show at the 96th annual Santa Fe Indian Market for his zirconium and titanium sculpture, combining modern technique and design with the shape of a traditional pueblo pot  was trippy.

Im blown away, said the Laguna Pueblo artist when given the honor by Southwestern Association for Indian Arts leader Dallin Maybee.

Pruitt spent nearly 800 hours on the sculpture titled Sentinel v1.0, submitted it and hoped for the best.

I dont think we ever create to say, I want to try and win this,' Pruitt said when accepting his award Friday afternoon at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. We create out of the passion of our hearts, to be able to do what we do in the matter that we do it. Its such a blessing.

He told the Journal he created his vessel as a way to honor his first Indian Market 10 years ago. That year, he made a smaller, stainless steel piece. He wanted to explore the art form again with new materials and new techniques hes picked up since then.

The shows Best of Youth winner was also non-traditional, a Post-It note paper sculpture by 17-year-old Rain Scott (Navajo) called Splendor of the Peacock. His father, artist Raynard Scott, accepted the award because Rain had to be at school in Arizona.

He said his son spent two years after school and on weekends putting together the mostly-orange paper peacock, and was astonished by it the first time his son showed it to him. Its a testament to the passion and time the artists put into their pieces, he said. Rains art will be on display at his fathers booth this weekend.

Other market winners include:
SANTA FE  Damian Herrera, accused of killing five people in June shooting rampage, is no longer at the Rio Arriba County jail, but his new accomodations arent being disclosed.

An employee in the jails administration office confirmed Friday that Herrera, facing charges of killing three family members and two complete strangers he encountered afterward, had been moved from the Tierra Amarilla facility, but he referred all other questions to jail director Larry DeYapp.

DeYapp and District Attorney Marco Serna didnt return messages Friday. Herreras attorney, Todd Farkas, wouldnt comment on Herreras whereabouts.

On Tuesday, Rio Arriba County released jail phone calls where Herrera told a family member that hes not feeling well and needs to be in the hospital instead of jail. KOAT-TV reported Wednesday that a judge  presumably state District Judge Jennifer Attrep , who has been assigned to the case  ordered Herrera to be taken to Las Vegas for evaluation of his physical and mental health. Online court records dont indicate that such an order was filed.

A receptionist at the state Behavioral Health Institute in Las Vegas, N.M., the states only public mental health facility, said she was not authorized to confirm whether Herrera is a patient there. Herreras sisters told television reporters in June that Herrera was suffering from mental illness.

Herreras lawyers filed a motion July 20 to have Herreras case transferred from Espanola Magistrate Court to District Court that said psychologist Susan B. Cave had evaluated Herrera at the Rio Arriba jail and found that he was not competent to stand trial. Municipal Judge Joseph Madrid signed an order to transfer the case to District Court the next day.

Herrera had two reported incidents at the Rio Arriba jail, one where he tried to exit through an outside door from the kitchen and another where he attacked a guard with a flashlight after locking another guard in his cell.

Herrera is accused of killing his brother, mother and stepfather at their La Madera home before killing a Tres Piedras man in his driveway and killing another man at a gas station in Abiquiu, all on June 15.
Crimes are being committed in the United States every time there is an election. In states across America there are plenty of illegally registered voters on the rolls, and a good portion of them are casting ballots. Some are not citizens of the United States. Others flaunt the law and vote in more than one state or vote after posing as a registered voter who is dead.

These are facts. This is voter fraud, folks. So dont let those who pooh-pooh the existence of voter deception tell you otherwise.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a group that proclaims it is dedicated to election integrity, reports that Virginia quietly struck 5,556 non-citizens from its voting rolls between 2011 and last May. Why were those people registered, I wonder? And how did 1,852 of them proceed to cast a total of 7,474 illegal ballots during various elections?

And get this, Terry McAuliffe, the democratic governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, refused to sign a bill earlier this year that would have investigated areas where voter rolls had more registered voters than eligible citizens. Why would a public official hesitate to take steps to uncover potential voter fraud?

Maybe theres something to the idea that most non-citizen voters are minorities and minorities most often vote for Democrats. Maybe thats why it is mostly Democrats who sneer at the idea that there is a problem and something should be done to determine exactly how widespread it is. Instead, like one-time presidential candidate and self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, they deny the facts and conjure up conspiracy theories.

At a time when we already have one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major country Republicans are working overtime trying to make it harder for poor people, people of color, older people and young people to vote, Sanders said.

Please, can someone tell me how cleaning up the voter registration rolls will stop any legally eligible voter from voting for the candidate of their choice? Thats like saying if authorities investigate possible bank fraud charges it will keep people from being able to make transactions at the bank. That makes zero sense to me.

And realize Virginia is not the only place in which voter deception has been uncovered.

North Carolinas voter rolls were so out of whack a few years ago that the Board of Elections found 35,750 residents were registered to vote both there and in another state  and had voted in both places in the 2012 general election! In addition, officials had to admit that more than 13,000 dead people were registered to vote and the names of at least 81 of them were recently used to cast illegal ballots.

Yet some still insist there is no meaningful voter fraud in America. I would argue that any illegally cast ballots should raise major red flags and spark automatic investigations and prosecutions.

In Southern California last spring, investigative reporter David Goldstein of KCBS was able to do what election officials were apparently unable or unwilling to. He identified at least 265 dead voters in his area of the Golden State, many of whom had cast ballots year after year. For the record, most had been registered as Democrats; 86 of them were Republicans.

In Ohio earlier this year, at least 821 non-citizens were discovered illegally registered to vote, and more than 100 of them had recently cast tainted ballots. Ohios Secretary of State, Jon Husted, points out, When you consider that in Ohio we have had 112 elections decided by one vote or tied in the last three years, every case of illegal voting must be taken seriously.

Given that America now has 200 million registered voters, are the cases cited here a drop in the bucket? Yes. But we really have no idea how many of those 200 million people should not be on the rolls. We dont know how widespread the problem is because no one has ever really looked into it.

In May, President Trump appointed a bipartisan commission to study the issue of election integrity, but it is already being attacked as unnecessary and, as the League of Women Voters president put it, will likely undermine our elections by spreading falsehoods. The commissions work is condemned before it even starts.

One side says voter fraud is nonexistent, yet there is proof it exists. When confronted with the facts they switch tracks and proclaim the problem really isnt that bad. They maintain their political foes are up to no good and their real goal is voter suppression. I suppose they also worry that the sun may not come up tomorrow.

It all comes down to one common-sense question: How many illegal votes are OK with you? I say the answer should be none. Or as close to none as we can possibly get.

Diane@DianeDimond.com.
On Aug. 29, 1948, the upper Midwest was in the middle of a heat wave. The forecast for the La Crosse area that day was for nearly clear skies with a few showers possible. This is the weather report that Northwest Airlines Flight 421  flying from Chicago to Minneapolis  received.

But an unexpected storm was brewing.

At about 5 p.m., people in Winona, Minn., were staring at the sky, watching a growing thunderstorm approach. The storm grew more intense as it came toward them, with thunder and lightning that was not a part of the initial forecast. It was on this day that Northwest Airlines Flight 421 crashed just outside of Winona.

The aircrarft, a Martin 2-0-2, was a little under a year old. It was a newer, more modern model, which offered extras such as reading lights and air conditioning. The flight had an experienced pilot, Robert Johnson, and co-pilot, David Brenner. Johnson had flown more than 5,000 hours, and Brenner, a native of La Crosse, served as a pilot during World War II.

A total of 33 passengers boarded the plane expecting to land in Minneapolis a couple of hours later. It departed from Chicago at 3:50 p.m., and the plane reached its planned altitude of 8,000 feet as it went over Wisconsin. A little after an hour into the flight, the Martin 2-0-2 reported its position, which was over La Crosse. During what would be the airplanes last check-in, the pilots voice was calm.

The plane descended, continued its course and encountered the unexpected storm. According to eyewitnesses, the aircraft was spotted below some of the clouds before flying into the edge of the storm. Within seconds, bystanders witnessed the plane falling from the sky. Local farmers claimed the plane barrel-rolled out of the sky even though winds were light.

Winona patrolman Ed Hittner responded to the call of the fallen flight. He waded into the water after finding a wing in a marsh. It was there where he met up with Jack Volkel, a pilot, who recognized the type of plane and understood its significance. Immediately, Volkel checked whether any flights were missing.

The plane was torn into about four pieces. Parts of the wreckage were found as far as seven miles away from the crash site in a Winona ballpark. It has been estimated that as many as 20,000 people came to the crash scene to offer help.

All of 33 passengers and four crew members died in the crash.

At first, many guessed the plane had been struck by lightning, but the Martin 2-0-2 actually had a structural flaw in its left wing, causing the plane to crash less than five miles northwest of Winona. An investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board determined the crash was caused by a series of fatigue cracks in the wing. The Board requested all Martin 2-0-2 planes to fly at lower speeds and have more frequent inspections.

This object shown here is the cap from a Bosch Type ZEV magneto, which was part of the plane that crashed outside of Winona decades ago. A magneto is a generator that uses magnets to create an alternating current. The Martin 2-0-2 aircraft had two Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp Propeller engines. Many of the Pratt & Whitney engines used the Bosch Type ZEV magneto.

The site of a violent event often brings out a dreadful fascination in people, and it brings a powerful sense of the brevity of life. Many of the visitors to the crash site might have taken away small souvenirs such as this magneto. They were relics saved by someone to remind them of the terrible event they witnessed.

La Crosse County Historical Society records state this artifact came from Joseph Verchota, who was the mayor of La Crosse from 1923 to 1928, 1931 to 1934 and 1939 to 1946. Verchota died in January 1949, just four months after the plane crash, so it is likely the magneto was among the objects donated by his estate. We have no information about he possessed it.

It can be viewed in our online collections accessible from our website, www.lchshistory.org.
Progressives used to pressure U.S. corporations to cut back on outsourcing and on the tactic of building their products abroad to take advantage of inexpensive foreign workers.

During the 2012 election, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney as a potential outsourcer in chief for investing in companies that went overseas seeking cheap labor.

Yet most of the computers and smartphones sold by Silicon Valley companies are still being built abroad  to mostly silence from progressive watchdogs.

In the case of the cobalt mining that is necessary for the production of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, thousands of child laborers in Southern Africa are worked to exhaustion.

In the 1960s, campuses boycotted grapes to support Cesar Chavezs unionization of farm workers. Yet it is unlikely that there will be any effort to boycott tech companies that use lithium-ion batteries produced from African-mined cobalt.

Progressives demand higher taxes on the wealthy. They traditionally argue that tax gimmicks and loopholes are threats to the republic.

Yet few seem to care that West Coast conglomerates such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Starbucks filtered hundreds of billions in global profits through tax havens such as Bermuda, shorting the United States billions of dollars in income taxes.

The progressive movement took hold in the late 19th century to break up corporations that had cornered the markets in banking, oil, steel and railroads. Such supposedly foul play had inordinately enriched robber baron buccaneers such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan.

Yet today, the riches of multibillionaires dwarf the wealth of their 19th-century predecessors. Most West Coast corporate wealth was accumulated by good old-fashioned American efforts to achieve monopolies and stifle competition.

Facebook, with 2 billion monthly users, has effectively cornered social media.

Google has monopolized internet searches  and modulates users search results to accommodate its own profiteering.

Amazon is Americas new octopus. Its tentacles incorporate not just online sales but also media and food retailing.

Yet there are no modern-day progressive muckrakers in the spirit of Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris and Lincoln Steffens warning of the dangers of techie monopolies or the astronomical accumulation of wealth. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook are worth nearly $1 trillion each.

Conservatives have no problem with anyone doing well, so their silence is understandable. But in the Obama era, the nation received all sorts of progressive lectures on the downsides of being super-rich.

Obama remonstrated about spreading the wealth, knowing when not to profit and realizing when one has made enough money. He declared that entrepreneurs did not build their own businesses without government help.

Yet such sermonizing never seemed to include Facebook, Starbucks or Amazon.

The tech and social media industries pride themselves on their counterculture transparency, their informality and their 1960s-like allegiance to free thought and free speech. Yet Google just fired one of its engineers for simply questioning the company line that sexual discrimination and bias alone account for the dearth of female Silicon Valley engineers.

What followed were not voices of protest. Instead, Google-instilled fear and silence ensued in the fashion of George Orwells 1984.

On matters such as avoiding unionization, driving up housing prices, snagging crony-capitalist subsidies from the government and ignoring the effects of products on public safety  such as texting while driving  Silicon Valley is about as reactionary as they come.

Why, then, do these companies earn a pass from hypercritical progressives?

Answer: Their executives have taken out postmodern insurance policies.

Our new J.P. Morgans dress in jeans and T-shirts  like the late Steve Jobs of Apple or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook  appearing hip and cool.

Executives in flip-flops and tie-dyes can get away with building walls around their multiple mansions in a way that a steel executive in a suit and tie might not.

The new elite are overwhelmingly left-wing. They head off criticism by investing mostly in the Democratic Party, the traditional font of social and political criticism of corporate wealth.

In 2012, for example, Obama won Silicon Valley by more than 40 percentage points. Of the political donations to presidential candidates that year from employees at Google and Apple, over 90 percent went to Obama.

One of the legacies of the Obama era was the triumph of green advocacy and identity politics over class.

No one has grasped that reality better than the new billionaire barons of the West Coast. As long as they appeared cool, gave lavishly to left-wing candidates, and mouthed liberal platitudes on global warming, gay marriage, abortion and identity politics, they earned exemption from progressive scorn.

The result was that they outsourced, offshored, monopolized, censored and made billions  without much fear of media muckraking, trust-busting politicians, unionizing activists or diversity lawsuits.

Hip billionaire corporatism is one of the strangest progressive hypocrisies of our times.
Touch not that statue of Robert E. Lee in lovely Charlottesville, Va. Let it stand, keep it handsome and dignified, but around it place plaques telling the curious that the man memorialized there was a traitor to his country who went to war so that white people could continue to own black people  to take their women and sell their children, rip apart families and, if need be, take the lives of the recalcitrant or the rebellious. Lee is not a man to be honored. He is, though, worthy of remembering.

Lee should be recalled as a slave owner who would not give them up. He should be remembered as one who felt so keenly about slavery that he renounced his commission in the U.S. Army and enlisted in the Confederate one, whose purpose was to keep emancipation at bay. I have the late Elizabeth Brown Pryor, author of Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters, to thank for setting the record straight. As I wrote in 2011, Pryors essay for The New York Times gave us a Lee who is at odds with the one of gauzy myth. He was not, as I once thought, the creature of crushing social and political pressure who had little choice but to pick his state over his country. In fact, various members of his own family stuck with the Union.

When Lee consulted his brothers, sister and local clergymen, he found that most leaned toward the Union, Pryor wrote. At a grim dinner with two close cousins, Lee was told that they also intended to uphold their military oaths.  Sister Anne Lee Marshall unhesitatingly chose the northern side, and her son outfitted himself in blue uniform. Pryor noted that some 40 percent of Virginia officers would remain with the Union forces.

So what is so honorable about Lee? What is so honorable about leading your men into a war that cost more than 600,000 lives and whose purpose was to retain slavery? Whats a black person gazing upon a Lee statue to think? Here is a man who, had he won, would have kept that black persons ancestors in chains  grandparents going back not all that far, maybe only five generations, as these things are reckoned. This is like my having to gaze on a statue of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, an outstanding military leader in World War II, whose brilliance enabled the Germans to murder even more civilians. In the end, he turned against Hitler and was made to commit suicide. He didnt manage to kill Hitler. He did manage to kill countless others.

But it is the Germans, in the end, who know how to memorialize the unpardonable. Berlin today is replete with monuments and memorials to the Holocaust, even cobblestones bearing the names of murdered Jews and sunk into the streets where the Jews once lived. The basement of the building that housed the Gestapo and the SS has been retained and converted into a museum called the Topography of Terror. It was once used for torture and executions. It is now used to educate. Millions have visited it. Few have forgotten it.

Elsewhere in Germany, former concentration camps are open to be viewed. I have seen most of them, each time wondering and marveling at the German families who tour the place, thinking  thinking what?

I make no comparison between the Holocaust and American slavery. Both are blights on the two nations. Both say something about Germans and Americans that needs to be confronted. Germany has done so. We are only very slowly beginning to. Keep the Lee statue. The old general still has work to do.

E-mail: cohenr@washpost.com. Copyright, Washington Post Writers Group.
The Bosque School kicked off the academic year with a celebration of its new, state-of-the-art science center Wednesday.

The $1.75 million, 10,850-square foot facility  named for longtime Bosque School supporters Rod and Mary Kay Pera  includes specialized labs for physics, biology, chemistry and interdisciplinary science, as well as an independent research project area.

Were very proud, Head of School Billy Handmaker told the Journal. We have students doing amazing work in science, and they need a space to support them.

Bosque School, a private college preparatory institution, is located on 45 acres adjacent to the Rio Grande near Montano Road, providing opportunities for hands-on environmental research. The roughly 500 students in grades 6 to 12 take science courses that emphasize critical thinking, laboratory work and experimentation, rather than rote memorization.

Bosque facilitates the love of learning, especially through science, said Anabella DeLoach, 17. Ive really enjoyed it, and it has given me so many opportunities, both here and in out in our larger community.

DeLoach will graduate in the spring with seven science courses and emergency first responder training through the schools Medical Reserve Corps, a service learning group.

She said is thrilled to have the chance to use the new science center facilities.

The building was completely renovated and redesigned in less than five months under the supervision of RMKM Architects and Reid & Associates contracting. Roughly $27,000 in donations funded new LED lighting throughout the science center, courtesy of NICOR, and an IDEUM touch board, donated by Angela Arzave and James Spadaccini.

When I started we were in the smaller science building, we were sharing classrooms with other classes, so teachers didnt necessarily have all the room and all of the equipment they would really want to make it the best class possible, DeLoach said. All of the classrooms are amazing now.

Biology teacher Holly Briggs called the space warm and inviting, with plenty of room and excellent equipment.

This is the perfect way to start off this school year with this building, she said.

On Wednesday, Briggs began her advanced biology class with a survey to find out what the students would like to study this year.

We are leaning toward problem-based learning, which is letting the students sort of lead the learning, Briggs said. We gear our teaching toward what they need and what questions they have.

Katie Elder, a 2008 graduate, said she discovered her passion for science at Bosque School.

Now she is passing on that love to a new generation.

Elder works for the Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program, a joint effort coordinated by the University of New Mexicos Department of Biology and the Bosque School. She helps students gather data about the Rio Grande, which is used by UNM scientists.

One of the great things about Bosque School is that students get the chance to do real research projects and ask real questions, said Elder, who studied wildlife conservation and marine biology at Humboldt State University in Northern California. It helped me realize this is what I want to do.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales, after recent local controversies over race and deadly violence at a white supremacist rally in Virginia, says he has a plan to address Santa Fes own complicated history with race and memory head-on  including with an inventory and review of historic monuments and markers.

Gonzales issued a long statement late Thursday that touches on continuing opposition by some Native Americans to an annual public re-enactment of the Spanish reoccupation of Santa Fe in 1692, 12 years after the Pueblo Revolt forced the Europeans out of northern New Mexico.

I dont think any government can lead or solve this alone, said Gonzales, who himself once portrayed Spanish leader and territorial governor Don Diego de Vargas in the Entrada re-enactment as part of Fiestas de Santa Fe.

These conversations are difficult and require all of us to participate, he said. In doing so  we can heal and grow stronger.

Indian protesters and others contend the Entrada ritual  scheduled this year for Sept. 8 on the Plaza  whitewashes and celebrates conquest by violence and the threat of it. The events supporters say that in an era of warfare, there was a peaceful moment when de Vargas re-entered Santa Fe and that the Entrada script has been changed to reflect Indian concerns.

Gonzales wants a review of all city support for events or organizations that celebrate or recognize historic events or people, including funding and logistical help.

Gonzales, amid movement to take down Confederate monuments around the country, also said he has asked the city manager to report on all city property that holds memorials, monuments, or markers of historic events or people, to be followed by a public comment process.

Santa Fes monuments include a statue of de Vargas in Cathedral Park. There is also an equestrian statue of early Spanish colonial governor Don Pedro de Peralta downtown.

But Gonzales, in previous interviews, has singled out two obelisks for concern  one that serves as a war memorial at the center of the citys historic Plaza. The other is outside the federal courthouse, apparently on federal property, that honors Kit Carson, the frontiersman, scout and Indian fighter who led a deadly forced march of Navajo people from their homeland to the Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico.

Most inscriptions on the 1868 Plaza obelisk honor Union soldiers who fought in area Civil War battles. But on one side of its base, the inscription originally read: To the heroes who have fallen in various battles with savage Indians in the Territory of New Mexico. The word savage was chiseled out years ago, and authorities never moved to repair it.

Gonzales said hes not asking for any city monuments to be removed or local events to be canceled.

What we are asking for is an inventory of monuments, an inventory of events that are city supported, and allow for a community conversation to do a check-in, he said in an interview, to (ask) are there monuments that we need to acknowledge or (that) symbolize a time of oppression that could be harmful and hurtful?

Words matter, monuments matter, and events matter.  Were a community that is strong enough to address them (with) honor, said Gonzales, who hasnt announced whether he will run for a second mayoral term next year.

City Councilor Ron Trujillo, who is running for mayor in 2018, said hes concerned that any discussion of the Entrada should have been started earlier and not less than three weeks before Fiestas.

He referred to a resolution presented to the City Council about three years ago regarding the event that was never followed up on.

Gonzales acknowledged that completing an inventory and discovering a pathway forward for the Entrada will not happen before this years event. In the meantime he wants to have space for non-violent protest. The Red Nation group has already posted online notices calling for protests again at this years Entrada.

Trujillo  who also has portrayed de Vargas at Fiesta  said he supports open dialogue as long as it includes people from all sides, mentioning both Native American and Hispanic groups.

Each statue represents history in this great community, but each monument could be offensive to some group or organization, he said. If that dialogue is going to take place, it has to be with everyone.

Gonzales spoke at a rally against racism Monday night that filled the Plaza with about 1,500 people. Several people chanted Abolish the Entrada at the end of the rally.

Elena Ortiz, from Ohkay Owingeh, has been part of the Entrada protests in the past. She said Friday that she is skeptical about much resulting from the mayors effort and that Gonzales has never been willing to take a side on the Entrada controversy. He would have to admit that he participated in something thats inherently racist, she said.

Ortiz also said it would take jumping through a lot of hoops for monuments to come down. If it happens, I would be super-supportive, and I would be willing to get out there with sledgehammer and help, she said.  Im just skeptical that anything is going to come of it. I would be really happy to be wrong.

There are no Confederate monuments in Santa Fe. The nearest is a small marker honoring Texas Confederate volunteers at Pecos National Historical Park, which includes a Civil War battlefield, about 30 miles to the east. A marker honoring Union volunteers from Colorado stands next to the Confederate slab. Another for New Mexico Union volunteers is planned.
WASHINGTON  The city of Albuquerque has no plans to change its policies regarding detainment of suspected criminals who may be in the city illegally, but it still hopes to participate in a U.S. Department of Justice program aimed at reducing crime, according to a letter the police chief sent to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week.

The letter from Chief Gorden Eden was a response to U.S. Justice Department letter earlier this month that threatened to withhold federal law enforcement resources from the high-crime cities of Albuquerque, Baltimore and both Stockton and San Bernardino in California if they didnt better cooperate with federal authorities on detainment procedures.

The Justice Department letter referred to Albuquerque and the other municipalities as sanctuary cities. Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry has strongly rejected that characterization.

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 needed to prove by Friday that they were complying with federal directives regarding the detainment of foreign nationals arrested for crimes. That includes agreeing to detain them for 48 hours. Albuquerque and other cities and counties around New Mexico contend that they dont have the resources to detain those suspected of being in the country illegally who are otherwise free to be released on bail or their own recognizance, arguing that is a federal job.

Eden also noted that Albuquerque does not operate a jail but Bernalillo County does.

The City of Albuquerque does not have an ordinance, rule, regulation, policy, or practice that is designed to impair or restrict (the Department of Homeland Securitys) access to information regarding the scheduled release date and time of an alien in Bernalillo Countys custody when DHS requests such notice in order to take custody of the alien, the chief wrote to Sessions. Because the City of Albuquerque does not operate or manage a correctional or detention facility, it does not control the date and time of release of individuals in custody.

Berry told the Journal on Friday that the city allows federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers to maintain an office to check the immigrations status of arrestees at a transport center in Albuquerque but that they havent taken advantage of the opportunity in recent months.

We want the support of the Department of Justice, we want to be involved in the program, and we are interested in the grant money, Berry said. On whether or not we have put in policies and procedures that prevent them from doing their work, that is a definitive no. The city of Albuquerque is not a sanctuary city, based on the questions they are asking. We feel like we are ready and capable to get this additional training to keep our community safe.

Berry stressed that the funding the Justice Department is offering is not dedicated or required to be used for enforcing immigration laws and would not be used for that purpose.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

The presidential search at the University of New Mexico is moving full speed ahead despite a new faculty push to extend Chaouki Abdallahs time at the helm.

Rob Doughty, UNM Board of Regents president, said Friday in a statement that the hunt for the schools next president is progressing exceptionally well and the search committee had reviewed applications from a group of highly talented candidates with a wide range of experience and backgrounds. He said the finalists probably will visit campus in October.

We are excited for the future of UNM, and can look forward to the announcement of the next President in November, Doughty wrote.

Doughty, chairman of the presidential search committee, issued the update just three days after UNM faculty senate President Pamela Pyle told regents that faculty senators overwhelmingly favored keeping Abdallah, the interim president, in place through the spring of 2019. Thats a year longer than his current contract.

Speaking during Tuesdays Board of Regents meeting, Pyle said she polled members after hearing repeated faculty member concerns about how a lack of institutional continuity might affect UNM at a critical, challenging juncture. She cited UNMs coming accreditation review, a pinched budget and the necessary re-evaluation of the university model in a changing world. Faculty satisfaction, she said, is also at an all-time low.

Sixty of 67 members responded, with 57 supporting an extension of Abdallahs service. Pyle called the level of participation unprecedented, with 40 generally considered a high number.

This means to us that our representative body believes that interim President Abdallah has the skills, experience and the best interests of the university at heart to help steer us into more desirable waters, she said.

She added, This is no reflection on a possible new president; simply on a need to provide more stable footing before handing off the reins to another leader.

Pyles remarks generated little regent discussion during the meeting.

Asked for comment about the faculty senates position on Friday, Doughty deferred to his written statement about the progress of the presidential search.

Abdallah, meanwhile, called the result an honor.

During a brief conversation with the Journal after Tuesdays meeting, he said that he would consider staying interim president longer but that it really depends on a lot of things  some personal, some not.

But by Friday, he struck a slightly different tone.

While honored by the vote of confidence of the faculty senators, I look forward to welcoming a new president to UNM at the earliest possible opportunity, he said in a prepared statement.

Abdallah, who has been at the helm since January, has steadfastly maintained that he has no interest in being UNMs permanent president.

UNM is seeking a replacement for Bob Frank, who announced last year that he would not seek a new contract. He stepped down in December after 4 years on the job. Nobody has held the position for more than five years since Richard Peck, who served from 1990 to 1998). Counting interim presidents, Abdallah is the seventh man to lead UNM in the past 19 years.

Doughty last fall named about 20 people, from both inside and outside the university, to a presidential search committee. UNM also retained a search firm at a cost of $111,000. The committee recommends semifinalists to the Board of Regents, which must choose and publicly announce at least five finalists. The regents ultimately pick the president.

One known candidate is New Mexico Higher Education Secretary Barbara Damron, who confirmed to the Journal earlier this summer that she had submitted a resume and cover letter to the search firm.

Frank received an annual salary of $362,136. UNM is paying Abdallah $315,087 annually during his interim presidency.
MORA  After a teenage boy died before an ambulance could get to him, Mora County Ambulance must now prove to the state of New Mexico that its capable of responding to medical emergencies.

More than a dozen other patients in need of emergency transport were also left stranded since last October. The Public Regulation Commission is keeping an eye on the county ambulance service by demanding a monthly status report that will show the time and date of every ambulance call and response.

A frantic relative called 911 on May 31 when 15-year-old Nazareth Lara was crushed under a truck at a work site. Lara died instantly and a Mora County ambulance never arrived. Instead, an ambulance from San Miguel County showed up nearly 40 minutes after the accident, KOB-TV reported Tuesday.

The television station reported no one from Mora County Ambulance could respond because their primary driver could not leave his small children home alone and the secondary driver wasnt scheduled.

Every minute counts when an ambulance is called, PRC member Valerie Espinoza said last week during a hearing in Santa Fe. That determines if that person survives.

Now the ambulance service must explain to the PRC why it was unable to show up to more than a dozen emergencies like Laras.

The state Department of Public Safety accused Mora County of not being available to pick up patients at least 10 times between October and November 2016. During a snow storm in December, DPS officers were forced to take injured drivers and patients to the hospital themselves.

Mora County Ambulance has told state regulators it is understaffed, with only three employees.

County attorney Michael Aragon said he plans to hire several more paramedics as the county reprioritizes its budget.

The ambulance service has until November to make changes. If not, the commission has the power to fine the ambulance service or revoke its certificate.
LONDON  Budget carrier Jet2 says it has asked French aviation officials for clarification as to why a flight from Spain to Britain was apparently tracked by military aircraft.

Passengers on flight LS1204 from Malaga to Birmingham say they saw the military plane shadowing the aircraft for about 15 minutes Friday.

The airline says in a statement Saturday that it was awaiting clarification from the French air traffic authorities, as to why a military aircraft was apparently tracking our aircraft.

One passenger, Sarah Hatfield from Quarry Bank in the West Midlands of England, says the fighter jet was so close I could read the writing on its tail fin.
BARCELONA, Spain  Two days after a devastating vehicle attack on one of Europes most iconic tourist destinations, many questions remained as Spanish authorities continued a manhunt for a 22-year-old missing member of the cell of suspected terrorists responsible for the brutal assault that killed 14 and injured more than 100 others.

Unlike other vehicle attacks Europe has endured in the last two years  in Nice, Berlin, Stockholm and London  Thursdays in Barcelona and the one early Friday in the nearby seaside city of Cambrils displayed an unusual degree of sophistication and coordination. Authorities are investigating what they believe to be a terrorist cell of at least 12 members with possible bases in different locations across the region of Catalonia.

But the Spanish government was quick to insist on Saturday that the situation was under control. Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido Alvarez said that the 12-person cell had been dismantled, and the government ultimately declined to raise the national alert level from four to five, the highest-possible classification.

Inspector Albert Oliva, chief spokesman for the national Catalan police, said the local police force spearheading the investigation here, however, cast doubt on the governments proclamation. We must remember who is the leader of the investigation, he said in a news conference, highlighting the work that remains to be done. Oliva then said that police home raids had failed to produce the missing suspect. When asked about the potential for another attack still to come, he said the prospect was unlikely but could not be deemed impossible.

Although police shot dead five suspects early Friday morning and have since arrested four others, many loose ends still remain.

For one, there is the rare social uniformity of the suspects backgrounds: most of the 12 people identified as members of the cell come from the same small town near the French border, almost all are of Moroccan immigrant origins and all are under the age of 35.

Then there are the puzzling logistics. The suspects ultimately struck three different locations in quick succession  one by accident. Propane and butane canisters that police believe the suspects intended to detonate in Barcelona exploded prematurely in the city of Alcantar on Wednesday, killing at least two and injuring 16. On Thursday, the driver who then struck Barcelonas most famous promenade was somehow able to escape from the scene on foot. The same suspect may then have been among the group of five that committed a second vehicle attack just hours later in Cambrils, police believe  a distance some 70 miles to the southwest.

The missing suspect is Younes Abouyaaqoub, according to Catalan police officials cited in Spanish media. Police believe he left Las Ramblas after the rampage, hijacked a car after killing the driver, and drove out of the city. Police found a dead body with multiple stabbing wounds in an abandoned Ford vehicle outside the city, which they believe to be connected to the attack.

Finally, there is the question of motive. Shortly after the twin attacks, the Islamic State, through its Amaq News Agency, claimed responsibility for the carnage, heralding the suspects as soldiers. On Saturday, however, the terrorism group issued a second, expanded statement  a statement that ultimately contained glaring factual errors. Many security analysts interpreted the mistakes as evidence that the caliphate, in the midst of major territory losses in the Middle East, may have been trying to overstate its influence overseas.

For answers, all eyes have now looked to Ripoll, the quaint, picturesque town in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where the majority of the young suspects were based.

Interviewed on Saturday in Ripoll, Ibrahim Aallaa is the father of two young men implicated in the attacks: Said Aallaa, 18, and Youssef Aallaa, 22.

He said he had seen media reports that Said was among the five shot by Spanish police early Friday morning in the midst of the Cambrils attack. He assumed his older son, Youssef, was killed, as well. A third son, Mohammad, was the registered owner of the Audi A3 used as a weapon in the Cambrils attack and has since been taken into police custody, his father said.

Aallaa told The Washington Post he believed Youssef may have been radicalized by a local imam. Early Saturday, police reportedly raided the home of an imam in Ripoll whom they suspected to be among the dead in the Alcanar explosion, according to the Spanish newspaper El Pais. Oliva, the police spokesman, did not provide details on that raid.

He changed, the elder Aallaa said. My son would tell me, Father, you have to pray. You have to follow Islam. 

Youssef, he said, was a problematic child. The boy was aggressive and fought in school, Aallaa recalled.

Youssef would disappear for days at a time, his father said, adding that he last saw his son a month ago. He suspects that Youssef got his brother Said involved in the attack, the father said.

As to the question of Islamic State inspiration: I never heard them speak of the Islamic State or Syria, he said.

So far, the degree of real involvement by the terrorist group remains unclear. In recent months, the Islamic State has asserted responsibility for international attacks that it did not actually orchestrate, as investigators concluded was the case with the attack on a Manila casino in early June.

In the groups expanded statement on the Barcelona attacks, for instance, the text notes that the attackers stormed a bar with their light weapons near Las Ramblas square, torturing and killing the Crusaders and Jews inside. No bar was stormed, the weapon employed in the attack was a van and victims were attacked indiscriminately rather than selected on the basis of religion or race.

For some analysts, the errors indicated that the Islamic State may not deserve credit. Others said that the group has made mistakes in the past, and has corrected them in due course, which may still be the case regarding Barcelona. Spanish investigators also reportedly uncovered traces of triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a trademark explosive of the group, while investigating the site of Wednesdays explosion in Alcanar.

Jean-Charles Brisard, a leading security analyst and the director of the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, said the important point was the potential for the group to inspire future attacks even as its own territory crumbles from within.

[Barcelona] states for me that the situation on the ground in Syria and Iraq is clearly disconnected from the capacity of the Islamic State and its militants abroad, he said in an interview. Theres no correlation between the two. What we see in Spain is specific to Spain, but it tells us that the threat is intense all over Europe.

In Finland, two people were killed and six others wounded in a stabbing Friday in the southwestern city of Turku, police said. On Saturday, authorities began investigating the incident as terrorism, after Finnish intelligence services had joined the investigation.

Aallaa said almost all of the suspects in the recent Spanish attacks were teens and young men of Moroccan descent from Ripoll, noting brothers from three local families appear to have been involved. In the Finish case, the lone suspect fit a similar profile: he was 18, and also Moroccan.

Aallaa said that his son Youssef also had books he kept hidden that he would often study with friends. Youssef and others rented a small apartment in Ripoll, which Said apparently left Thursday afternoon a few hours before the Barcelona attack, the father said. Said has been unreachable since.

Meanwhile, Barcelona and the nation beyond continued to mourn the diverse, multinational group of 14 victims  including at least one American  massacred in the heart of this city and in nearby Cambrils.

On Saturday, Spains King and Queen visited victims of the attack in hospital, and Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau opened a book of condolences at city hall, where residents could pay their respects.

We are closer than ever, she told reporters Saturday. I stand with all officials and citizens to condemn this terrorist attack, and we are together with all families of the victims, as well as those who remain in serious condition fighting for their lives.

  

Booth, Mekhennet and Raul Gallego Abellan reported from Ripoll, Spain. Angel Martinez in Madrid contributed to this report.
The death of more than 30 children due to lack of oxygen at a medical college Gorakhpur has shocked the country. While the news has grabbed national attention it reveals a serious crisis in the UP state health department. News18 India carried out an expose revealing the deep rooted corruption in the states medical system.

Under its special investigation - Operation Mrityudata, News18 Indias undercover team contacted two top officials of the Uttar Pradesh Medical Department who revealed how top medical officials are involved in corrupt practices. The channel reached out to Dr. Sanjay Khattri of King George's Medical University, Lucknow who divulged dirty secrets of various medical colleges in the state. He revealed a multi-crore scam in the sale and purchase of medicines at hospitals in which even top officials like CMO and CMS are involved. He claimed that the medicines purchased by medical colleges are sourced locally from a store for a commission. Dr. Khatri said that the purchase of medicines is also only on documents, but in reality, the medicines never reach the hospitals. He also revealed how poor patients are not only prescribed expensive medicines but are also forced to purchase them from local stores as the hospitals do not carry those medicines. The doctors receive commissions for such medicines from the local stores then.

In a big reveal, Dr. Khattri claimed that the fire incident which took place on 15th July in the trauma centre of KGMU was arson by some officials to wipe the evidence of a big scam regarding the AC plant.

The next official that the channel contacted was Dr. O.P. Shah, Additional Director of the State Health Department, posted in Mirzapur. On the spy cam, Dr. Shah divulged how most government doctors have private practices. He had sent a list of 19 such doctors to the UP government two months ago but did not get a response. Dr. Shah revealed the existence of a fixed price amounting to almost Rs. 55 lakhs in big cities to obtain the post of CMO in the state. He also told the channels team that almost all purchases  ambulances, machines & medicines are riddled with bribery and corruption in the state health department.
Today, Woot is selling off a number of Galaxy Tab S3 9.7s for just $519. This is down from its regular price of just $599. Which makes it one of the very few price drops since the device went on sale earlier this year. Woot is also offering up a $20 Google Play credit for all purchases of the Galaxy Tab S3 9.7, making this a bit sweeter of a deal.

The Galaxy Tab S3 9.7 is Samsungs latest flagship tablet. This has a 9.7-inch Super AMOLED display. Its powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor along with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage as well. Additionally, it has audio that is tuned by AKG, which gives the user a great audio experience, especially when watching movies and such. Since Samsung now owns HARMAN, the company behind AKG, it makes sense that Samsung would include its tech in the Galaxy Tab S3.

Theres free shipping and no taxes here on the Galaxy Tab S3 9.7, so youre paying $519 out the door. This is only available until around midnight tonight, or until its sold out. Itll likely sell pretty quickly, so if you are interested in picking up the Galaxy Tab S3 9.7, youll want to do soon, as its unclear how many units are actually available.
Google has started experimenting on fresh subscription solutions meant to help news publishers gain more readers who are willing to pay for their content and consequently increase their revenues, according to a report by Bloomberg. Among the first batch of publishers who are now working with the search giant to test the new tools includes The New York Times and Financial Times, which both offer subscription content to readers. While there seems to be a small number of content providers that are taking part in the test, Googles vice president for news Richard Gingras was quoted as saying the Mountain View, California-based company is discussing potential business partnerships with more publishers who seek to increase their subscription base.

The subscription tools work by letting readers view premium news stories from publishers without showing a paywall to them at first, meaning that they can gain free access to articles that otherwise require a fee. This feature is called first click free, and, according to the report, Google has overhauled the system so that readers who access premium content through the search engine could read the article without charge. Part of the test also is to examine various solutions of the publishers that they can potentially use to initiate online payment systems as well as gain more readers. While it remains unclear how the online payment should work, Gingras revealed that Googles mobile payment solutions and targeting tools would play crucial roles in the effort. It is not clear, however, what kind of revenue sharing agreement Google and publishers would adopt. Using the new subscription tools, publishers will be able to decide on the amount that readers must pay for subscription charge.

In addition to Google, another internet giant that has also been developing solutions catered to publishers in recent times is Facebook, which rolled out an extension in May of this year to its Instant Article SDK. The goal was to quickly convert from the Instant Article format to Googles Accelerated Mobile Pages and Apple News formats that enable publishers to create mobile-friendly content more easily and to enable websites and ads to load faster across platforms.
SUV

Naturally, road tester Mike Quincy is not Chris Harris, so you're not going to get shots of the Stelvio going sideways on a frozen lake. But this isn't the Quadrifoglio performance model; it's the normal one with the 2-liter turbo engine.Still, Alfa Romeo packed a lot of character into its off-roader, not to mention the most powerful engine in the class with 280 horsepower. It's all about delivering a tactile feel and letting the family man enjoy his grocery shopping trip.According to CR, the turbo engine feels strong and has a characterful sound to it. The 8-speed automatic also does the job, but it seems the much smaller company couldn't do the tuning for the smoothness you see on some other cars that have it.The ride feels stiff but less so than the Porsche Macan and Jaguar F-Pace , so Alfa Romeo has found a happy medium. It was a wise decision on the Italian automaker's part not to focus on cornering to the cost of comfort.The interior isn't such a happy story, as the editor points out numerous flaws. The infotainment system is flawed in almost every way, while a lack of adjustability in the seats is also criticized. Interestingly, the editors preferred the more aggressively bolstered seats of the Stelvio Ti.Reliability and the relatively unknown brand (amongbuyers) could also hurt the Stelvio. Thankfully, Consumer Reports actually bought a $51,000 example, so we should soon see if it's as bad as other Fiat-Chrysler cars.Something else we want to point out is that the crossover segment doesn't actually value fun, and this prompted companies like MINI and Volkswagen to focus primarily on features and space. So while it stays true to the Alfa Romeo core values, the Stelvio might not be what people are after.
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska has been trying to understand last weekend's violence in Charlottesville, much like the rest of the country. Between his talks with constituents one of whom is a self-described Trump supporter who told Sasse "we should admit that the President has done a bad job getting us through this"  and his discussions with family, Sen. Sasse has a prediction for what's next: By equalizing the "alt-right" and "alt-left," Trump's comments could lead to future clashes because his lousy responses don't calm tensions between the groups.

Key quote: "What will happen next? I doubt that Donald Trump will be able to calm and comfort the nation in that moment. He (and lots of others) will probably tell an awful combination of partial truths and outright falsehoods. On top of the trust deficits that are already baked so deeply in, unity will be very hard to come by."

Why it matters: Sen. Sasse has never liked Trump. He's consistently stood up to him, calling him a "megalomaniac strongman" and refusing to say whether or not he even considers Trump an adult. But his public (and blunt) Facebook message against Trump's handling of Charlottesville reflects a larger trend of Republican lawmakers distancing themselves from the president after his week of flip-flopping on whether to denounce violent white nationalists.

Other highlights from Sasse's post:

"I expect that violence will come when white supremacists and the alt-right fight anarchist groups aligned with the extreme left."

"Besides ability and temperament, I also worry that national unity will be unlikely because there are some whispering in the President's ear that racial division could be good politics for them."

Why it really matters: September is just a few days away and Trump will need to push forward (and pass) various important legislation that will require the support of Republican lawmakers. (Think: increasing the debt ceiling, passing a budget to avoid a government shutdown, moving ahead on and introducing a proper tax reform plan, possibly revisiting the health care repeal.) Trump willingly ostracized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake when he repeatedly attacked them on Twitter. But reactions like Sasse's show that other Republicans, who Trump hasn't targeted in recent weeks, are now choosing to alienate themselves from the president after months of seeing how little he values words and uniting the country.
The hire of Anthony Scaramucci set off a chain of events that changed the makeup of the White House staff. Lingering tensions, factions and alliances had already laid much of the groundwork, but Scaramucci's entrance served as the catalyst.

As Axios' Jonathan Swan put it: "Jared and Ivanka brought Mooch in to get rid of [Reince Priebus] and [Steve Bannon]. He did it in a gorier and more chaotic way than anyone expected. He took out Reince and his extreme disruption appears to have catalyzed the reordering of the West Wing and increased urgency to getting rid of disruptive forces internally."

The events:

July 21: Anthony Scaramucci hired as White House communications director.

Anthony Scaramucci hired as White House communications director. July 21: Sean Spicer, who had objected to Mooch's hiring, resigns as press secretary. Sarah Sanders is named as replacement.

Sean Spicer, who had objected to Mooch's hiring, resigns as press secretary. Sarah Sanders is named as replacement. July 25: After Scaramucci vowed to rid the White House of leakers, assistant press secretary Michael Short is forced out.

After Scaramucci vowed to rid the White House of leakers, assistant press secretary Michael Short is forced out. July 26: In a profanity-laced interview with the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, Scaramucci rips chief of staff Reince Priebus as a paranoid leaker.

In a profanity-laced interview with the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza, Scaramucci rips chief of staff Reince Priebus as a paranoid leaker. July 28: Trump announces in a Friday late-afternoon tweet that Priebus is out as chief of staff. Priebus and Bannon both worked to prevent Scaramucci's hire.

Trump announces in a Friday late-afternoon tweet that Priebus is out as chief of staff. Priebus and Bannon both worked to prevent Scaramucci's hire. July 28: Former DHS Secretary Gen. John Kelly named new chief of staff.

Former DHS Secretary Gen. John Kelly named new chief of staff. July 31: John Kelly's first day as chief of staff. Kelly is intent on ushering in a culture of discipline and organization, leaving freelancers like Scaramucci and Bannon at risk.

John Kelly's first day as chief of staff. Kelly is intent on ushering in a culture of discipline and organization, leaving freelancers like Scaramucci and Bannon at risk. July 31: Scaramucci pushed out.

Scaramucci pushed out. August 12: Axios' Jonathan Swan reports that Trump believes Bannon is behind damaging leaks, putting his job in jeopardy.

Axios' Jonathan Swan reports that Trump believes Bannon is behind damaging leaks, putting his job in jeopardy. August 16: Hope Hicks assumes communications director duties.

Hope Hicks assumes communications director duties. August 18: Steve Bannon out as chief strategist.

Lasting effects:
19 August 2017 10:05 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has congratulated President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Mohammad Ashraf Ghani.

On behalf of the people of Azerbaijan and on my own behalf, I extend my sincere congratulations to you and your people on the occasion of the national holiday of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan  Independence Day, President Aliyev said in his congratulatory letter.

I believe that traditional friendship and cooperation between Azerbaijan and Afghanistan will continue developing and expanding in the best interests of our nations, noted President Aliyev.

On this remarkable day, I wish you robust health and success in your activities, and the friendly people of Afghanistan peace and prosperity, added the president.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
19 August 2017 12:05 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Turkey and Russia agreed upon the landfall of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters Aug. 18, TASS reported.

"A point to the north of Kiyikoy settlement was discussed initially. The agreement was reached about it and Turkish partners confirmed. This is the most efficient and optimal in terms of economy and geography," Novak said.

Gazprom also sent its environmental impact assessment (EIA) to Turkey for review and approval, the minister said. "It was posted on the website and discussions are underway. We hope the final conclusion on it will be approved in near future," Novak said.

The Turkish Stream extension is discussed on a going basis with consumers interested in receiving Russian gas, the minister said. "The most important is to obtain confirmations from the European Union and the European Commission concerning these projects, to have guarantees for execution of these costly infrastructural projects," Novak noted.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
19 August 2017 11:37 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Turkeys new military operation in Syria, directed against terrorist organizations, has been prioritized on the days agenda, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said, the countrys media reported, Aug. 18.

Yildirim noted that, any threat directed against Turkey from the territory of Syria will be reflected.

He added that, such organizations as YPG (Kurdish Peoples Protection Units) and PYD (Democratic Union Party) are terrorist groups.

Turkey has been deploying military equipment to the border with Syria since June 21. Military equipment is dislocated in Turkeys south-central province of Kilis, which borders Syrian territories controlled by the YPG and PYD.

On Aug. 24, 2016, Turkish Armed Forces, with the support of the Syrian opposition, has launched the Euphrates Shield operation against the IS militants and liberated the city of Jarabulus, as well as the city of Al-Bab in northern Syria.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
19 August 2017 10:15 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The number of people killed in the recent attacks in Spain's Catalonia reached 15, Sputnik reported, citing local media.

On Thursday, a van hit pedestrians in Barcelonas central Ramblas area. Later in the day, a Ford Focus hit policemen near the central Diagonal avenue in the city, while media reported that its driver was killed by police.

However, as La Vanguardia newspaper reported, police confirmed Friday that the person, whose body was found in the Ford, was an innocent victim, which brought the death toll of attacks in Catalonia to 15.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Ways Onam Festival Is Celebrated Faith Mysticism oi-Lekhaka

Onam or the Harvest festival is the National festival of Kerala. It is the biggest festival of Kerala and people of all ages take an active part in celebrating this festival. No matter which community the people belong to, they celebrate this festival with great pomp and excitement, thereby drawing people from in and around the world. The festival of Onam is celebrated according to the Malayalam Calendar, also referred to as the Kolla Varsham.

The very first month is Chingam, and this is the time when Onam is celebrated. According to the Gregorian Calendar, the Chingam month generally falls during August to September. The Onam Carnival continues from four to ten days. The first day is known as the Atham and the tenth day is known as the Thiruvonam. Grand feasts, folk songs, beautiful dance forms, elephant processions, a variety of games, boat races, etc. are part of the Onam festival. The Indian Government has promoted the harvest festival of Kerala internationally. Also, now, the "Tourist Week" is celebrated in Kerala during the celebrations of this dynamic festival. Not only domestic tourists but also foreign tourists visit Kerala to witness Onam.

The Names of the harvest festival

Onam is vibrant and colorful and it has two names in Kerala- Thiruvonam and Sravana Utsavam. Onam not only has names but also there are various rituals as well as traditions for all the ten days of the celebration. Many events are also celebrated. These rituals and events make the harvest festival so special. Thiruvonam is the tenth day of the Onam festival and is considered to be the most significant day. Onam is celebrated on the day of a full moon during the months of August to September. This asterism is considered to be very holy for Vishnu, and since the great demon King Mahabali was Lord Vishnu's devotee, this day became very holy for everyone in Kerala.

Modern Celebrations of Onam

Onam is well known for a number of rituals. There are many rituals that include the Onasadya, the Pookalam, the Elephant procession, and the Vallamkali boat race.

Onasadya

Onasadya is a grand feast in which the meal is prepared that has four to five vegetables. The dish is served on banana leaves. People from in and around the world visit Kerala for this delicious Onasadya during Onam and they relish it for many more years after that.

Pookalam

Pookalam is made by the women of Kerala. Beautiful and intricate designs are made out of different colored flowers, and they are spread on the floor or used to decorate the front doors of the house. This tradition is very popular in Kerala. Pookalam is prepared on all the ten days of the celebrations of Onam.

Vallamkali Boat Race

The Vallamkali Boat Race is also known as the Snake Boat Race. This race is one of the most entertaining facets during the Onam festival. Kerala promotes the Snake Boat Race as a tourist attraction, and people from in and around India come to see this spectacular event. Vallamkali Boat Race is an event whose popularity has been soaring over the years. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had even instituted trophy for the winner of the Boat Race.

The Elephant Procession

The Elephant Procession takes place in a place known as Thrissur. The majestic animals are adorned with jewelry and flower and are made to parade. The elephants even interact with the people who have come to see the procession.

The ten days of Onam are immense fun, and the people celebrate it with enthusiasm and excitement. Visiting Kerala during the celebration of Onam is the best idea.
From  72 per night

6.3 Review score 571 reviews

I took the family on a little get away for the weekend and would highly recommend staying at here! The property looked great and was kept up, I've stayed here a few times in the past and have felt with Chris at the front and he has always been, very helpful,nice, and knowledgeable about the area and things to do. The room was very nice and clean. The property is nice and quiet, I didn't hear anyone or outside noises. The most exceptional feature is the pool and hot tub that is indoors! They were super nice and clean! The kids really enjoyed them, and we will definitely be back!
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South American market movements

18 August 2017

South American cement markets have experienced diverse year-to-date trends, with lacklustre performances from Brazil and Colombia contrasting near-term prospects in Peru and a recovery in Argentina.



Brazil: pressures continue

Subdued economic activity and the uncertain political environment in Brazil have resulted in continued pressures for the domestic construction and cement markets. Earlier this week, data from SNIC, Brazil's national cement industry association, showed domestic cement sales in the first seven months of 2017 fell by 9.1 per cent YoY to 30.7Mt. In the 12 months ending July 2017 sales totalled 54.3Mt, down 9.8 per cent YoY. Including imports, consumption contracted by 9.7 per cent in the 12 months to the end of July 2017.

Paulo Camillo Penna, president of SNIC, said the recent figures are in line with expectations for the period. A better performance is expected in the coming months as traditionally the country sees higher consumption towards the end of the year. For 2017 SNIC anticipates that sales will fall by between 5-9 per cent. However, long-term prospects for the region's largest cement market remain positive, driven by the countrys continued housing shortage and the huge infrastructure gap to close.

Colombian challenges

In Colombia construction activity over the first half of 2017 has been negatively affected by a difficult economic environment and rains in several parts of the country. The National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) reported a 5.8 per cent drop in volumes for the industry in 2Q17.



In its second-quarter results, Colombias cement market leader Cementos Argos achieved a 6.9 per cent YoY increase in cement dispatches, which compares favourably with the overall industry performance, but revenues (-15.3 per cent) and EBITDA (-52.3 per cent) were dragged down by lower cement prices, which bottomed between April and May 2017. Going forward Argos is expecting flat volumes in the second half.



Cemex Latin American Holdings also saw a sharp first-half decline in Colombia, its biggest contributor, in terms of turnover (-14.3 per cent), EBITDA (-47.9 per cent), grey cement deliveries (-5 per cent) and the average cement price (-20 per cent in local currency terms). For the remainder of 2017, the company is expecting Colombia to show the weakest performance within its LatAm division with no volume improvement anticipated this year.



On a more positive note, Fitch Ratings stated in its new report on the Latin America cement sector that Colombia should benefit from announced 4G projects "which reached financing agreements and should be immune to the government's weakening fiscal situation and resulting pressure on commercial construction."



Peruvian prosepects

Peru's cement consumption is forecast to increase in 2017 following two years of decline. However, for the first seven months of 2017, domestic dispatches reached 4.618Mt, down 16 per cent YoY when compared with a volume of 5.499Mt in 7M16, according to the countrys cement association, Asocem. Domestic dispatches did edge up by 0.6 per cent YoY in July 2017 to 0.777Mt . Domestic supply was supplemented by 100t of imported cement and 44,400t of imported clinker.

Looking ahead, reconstruction works following El Nino damage, along with infrastructure investments totalling US$20-40bn set to be carried out before the end of 2018, are expected to boost cement consumption. Fitch highlighted Peru as one of the region's few bright spots and expects demand to accelerate going forward. The rating's agency writes: "Peruvian cement fundamentals remain strong on President Kuczynski's business-friendly and open-market policies. Preventing political opposition from derailing the administration's infrastructure push will be crucial."

Argentine recovery

Argentina, South America's second-largest economy, is emerging from its deep recession and is poised to see its strongest growth in six years in 2017, according to Morgan Stanley. Construction activity has increased, mainly helped by capital outlays, which represent 13 per cent of the 2017 government budget. Growing tourist numbers have led to a welcome uptick in hotel construction while the country is expanding its freight transport network as well as its tunnel links with neighbouring Chile.

Following a decline of 10.8 per cent last year, cement sales have largely been rising through 2017, with the exception of February. In the first seven months of this year demand advanced by 10.3 per cent YoY to 6.5Mt. Importers enjoyed a bountiful seven months as import volumes rocketed from 2944t in 7M16 to 36,858t one year later, according to cement industry association AFCP. Total cement dispatches rose 10.2 per cent from 5.9Mt in 7M16 to 6.5Mt in 7M17.

With economic forecasts positive, Argentina's construction activity is expected to increase by 1.6 per cent in 2017 and by 2.2 per cent in 2018. The ensuing benefits from the reactivation of public and private investment are likely to see cement consumption gradually increase over the 2017-18 period, reversing the loss recorded in 2016 and recovering some lost ground.



Published under
Hawking slams UK Government for health service crisis

Physicist Stephen Hawking has criticised the British government for causing a crisis in the state-run National Health Service (NHS), saying it had to be protected from becoming a profit-making US-style system.

Writing in the Guardian newspaper, the British cosmologist, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease aged 21, also accused Britain's health minister of cherry-picking scientific evidence to justify policies.

'The care I have received since being diagnosed with motor neurone disease as a student in 1962 has enabled me to live my life as I want, and to contribute to major advances in our understanding of the universe,' wrote Hawking, author of the bestselling book A Brief History of Time.

Founded in 1948, the NHS is a source of huge pride for many Britons who are able to access free care from the cradle to the grave, but in recent years tight budgets, an ageing population and more expensive, complex treatments has put the system under huge financial strain.

Hawking, a supporter of the opposition Labour Party, said the NHS was 'a cornerstone of our society' but was in crisis created by political decisions.

It was also facing a conflict between the interests of multinational corporations driven by profit and public opposition to increasing privatisation, he said.

'In the US, where they are dominant in the healthcare system, these corporations make enormous profits, healthcare is not universal, and it is hugely more expensive for the outcomes patients receive than in the UK,' he wrote.

'We see the balance of power in the UK is with private healthcare companies, and the direction of change is towards a US-style insurance system.'

Last year, English doctors staged their first strikes in four decades over government plans to reform pay and conditions as part of moves to deliver what it said would be a consistent service seven days a week as studies showed mortality rates were higher at weekends when staffing is reduced.

However, Hawking, who communicates via a cheek muscle linked to a sensor and computerised voice system, said Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt had cherry-picked research to justify his arguments.

'For a scientist, cherry-picking evidence is unacceptable. When public figures abuse scientific argument, citing some studies but suppressing others to justify policies they want to implement for other reasons, it debases scientific culture,' he wrote.

Hunt responded on Twitter saying no health secretary could ignore the evidence.

'Stephen Hawking is brilliant physicist but wrong on lack of evidence 4 weekend effect,' Hunt wrote.
'Midnight Texas' season 1 episode 5 release date, spoilers: Manfred faces his mysterious past, Bobo confronts biker gang

In the next episode of "Midnight Texas," psychic Manfred Bernardo (Francois Arnaud) will encounter the person he has been avoiding from the start. Meanwhile, Bobo Winthrop (Dylan Bruce) will come face-to-face with the dangerous biker gang.

The trailer was released for episode 5 of "Midnight Texas" which shows Manfred finally meeting the mysterious Hightower (Christopher Heyerdahl). Prior to that, he tells Creek (Sarah Ramos) that he needs to leave Midnight to keep his fellow residents safe from danger. However, she tells him that he doesn't have to run.

It appears Creek was able to change his mind as Manfred and Hightower will apparently get to talk with each other. Hightower warns him, "If you do what you said you'll do, I'll let you live. But if not." Bernardo doesn't comply as Hightower raises shards of glass with his telekinetic power to attack the psychic.

The character of Hightower has been teased a number of times in previous episodes when Manfred would receive phone calls from the ominous person but never respond to them. It remains to be seen what Hightower wants him to do and what made Manfred flee the powerful being.

According to the synopsis for "Unearthed," Creek and Olivia (Arielle Kebbel) will agree to help Manfred take on Hightower. However, they will learn the surprising truth as to why Manfred has been evading his past and might not appear to be the person he claims to be.

Meanwhile, Bobo will face the dangerous biker gang Sons of Lucifer and may possibly put Fiji Cavanaugh (Parisa Fitz-Henly) in harm's way.

In the previous episode, it was revealed that Bobo was once associated with the gang but disavowed them. He roughed them up at the pool tables in the bar and warned the gang not to get close to him or his friends. However, it appears his warning fell on deaf ears as the gang will confront Bobo in the next installment.

"Midnight, Texas" season 1 episode 5 will premiere this Monday, Aug. 21, at 10 p.m. EDT on NBC.
Spanish police still searching for Barcelona attack van driver

Spanish police were on Saturday searching for the driver of a van that ploughed into a crowd in Barcelona, killing 13 people, in one of two deadly attacks in Catalonia carried out by a network of suspected Islamist militants.

The van driver has yet to be identified, police in the northeastern Spanish region said late on Friday, but said it seemed increasingly unlikely that he was one of five suspects shot dead in a Catalan seaside resort.

The driver abandoned the van and fled on Thursday after speeding along a section of Las Ramblas, the most famous boulevard in Barcelona, leaving a trail of dead and injured among the crowds of tourists and local residents.

Another woman died after a car rammed passersby in the resort town of Cambrils in the early hours of Friday, before police shot dead five attackers who were wearing fake explosive belts and had an axe and knives in the vehicle.

Police have arrested four people in connection with the attacks - three Moroccans and a citizen of Spain's North African enclave of Melilla.

Another three people have been identified but are still at large. Spanish media said two of them may have been killed in Alcanar, where a house was razed by an explosion shortly before midnight on Wednesday, while one suspect, named by El Pais newspaper as Younes Abouyaaqoub, was still sought by police.

Spanish police declined to confirm his identity. They believe the house in Alcanar was being used to plan one or several large-scale attacks in Barcelona, possibly using a large number of butane gas canisters stored there.

More than 100 people were injured in the Las Ramblas attack, many of them foreign tourists visiting Barcelona during the peak of the summer season.

In the past 13 months, militants have used vehicles as weapons to kill nearly 130 people in France, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Spain.

The Spanish government will decide on Saturday whether to raise its security alert one notch to the maximum level, which could involve armed forces being deployed to help patrol cities and vulnerable areas.

The Mediterranean region of Catalonian is thronged in the summer months with tourists drawn to its beaches and the port city of Barcelona's museums and tree-lined boulevards.

Of the 14 dead in the two attacks, five are Spanish, two are Italians and there is one Portuguese, one Belgian, one Canadian and one US citizen, emergency services and authorities from those countries have confirmed so far.

Spain's King Felipe and Queen Letizia were due to visit the injured  who are of many different nationalities ranging from France and Germany to Pakistan and the Philippines and are in various Barcelona hospitals  on Saturday.
Stephen Hawking Visits The Vatican To Discuss Origin Of The Universe

Atheist physicist Stephen Hawking has told scientists at the Vatican in Rome why he believes that before the universe suddenly came into being, there were no boundaries, no time  there was absolutely nothing at all.

The Bible teaches that God created the heavens and earth out of nothing.

Most scientists believe it took many billions of years to create everything in the world today, although some Christians interpret the Bible to believe it took God just six days.

Hawking was speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome at a plenary session on science and sustainability.

He said that he and a colleague had worked out the physical conditions of the very start of the universe.

He said that space and time would have had no boundaries.

Hawking said: "With James Hartle from the University of California, I worked out what physical conditions the early universe must have, if space time had no boundaries in the past.

"Our model became known as the No-Boundary Proposal. It says that when we go back toward the beginning of our universe, space and time become fuzzy and cap off, somewhat like the south pole and the surface of the earth. Asking what came before the Big Bang is meaningless according to the No-Boundary proposal, because there is no notion of time available to refer to. It would be like asking what lies south of the South Pole."

Dr Vanderlei Bagnato, of the University of Sao Paolo in Brazil, told Rome Reports: "He was very clear in saying that some few things are missing. We still need to prove a few things to somehow close his ideas about the origin of the universe.

"I think it was a very nice lecture and he made a big effort to transmit to us, physicists and non-physicists, this idea of importance. Of building up the blocks of knowledge to understand how everything starts."

Pope Francis spoke with the scientists including Hawking this morning.

The aim of the gathering was to examine the effect of the latest scientific advances on sustainable development.

Pope Francis told them: "It falls to scientists, who work free of political, economic or ideological interests, to develop a cultural model which can face the crisis of climatic change and its social consequences, so that the vast potential of productivity will not be reserved only for the few."

He called for international norms to be set to safeguard the created order.

"It has now become essential to create, with your cooperation, a normative system that includes inviolable limits and ensures the protection of ecosystems, before the new forms of power deriving from the techno-economic model causes irreversible harm not only to the environment, but also to our societies, to democracy, to justice and freedom," he said.
The following is an editorial from the Racine Journal-Times

The proposal for a massive, and possibly transformational, new electronics manufacturing campus by Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn in southeastern Wisconsin is still being fleshed out  along with details for an equally massive state subsidy to bring the project to fruition.

The Foxconn complex  at a still-to-be designated site in Racine County or Kenosha County  could bring an estimated $10 billion investment to the area, generate 3,000 to 10,000 jobs and generate local payrolls estimated at $800 million a year.

By any stretch of the imagination, those are heady numbers. Foxconn could transform the economy of Racine County and put it in the forefront of electronic manufacturing in a newer, cleaner version of its old heavy-manufacturing heydays.

Understandably, a project of such proportions has triggered broad-based enthusiasm from the governors office, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, state higher educational campuses and business leaders.

Just as predictably, it has triggered some fledgling criticisms over how far the state should roll out the red carpet with regard to giving Foxconn financial incentives and smoothing the construction timetable by easing environmental regulations.

Remarkably, some of that tut-tutting over environmental concerns is coming even before a site has been finally identified  with some arguing a project of this size should get more environmental scrutiny, not less.

That has not convinced Gov. Scott Walker, who broadcast his position last week at a stop in Eau Claire. Theres a whole lot of people out there scrambling to try and come up with a reason not to like this, Walker said, I can tell you, thats fine, but I think they can go and suck lemons. The rest of us are going to cheer and figure out how we can get this thing going forward.

As proposed by the state, Foxconn would be designated as being in an electronics and information and technology zone, which would mean some air and water quality standards would be relaxed, and a full environmental impact statement would not be required by Wisconsin  although a less burdensome one would have to be completed for the federal government.

That would, for instance, allow Foxconn to fill in some wetlands during construction of its campus  isolated bodies of water that are not connected to a stream, lake or navigable river. But, as outlined recently, the company would also be required to create off-setting new wetlands at a ratio of two to one. Thats more than required under current state law.

The issue of environmental regulation will be clearer within the next few weeks, when a final site is identified. The area reportedly under consideration for the 1,000-acre campus in Racine County would seem to us highly suitable for an electronics campus and would, we hope, have a minimal impact on air and water standards here.

Yes, that will need some vetting, but as state Department of Natural Resources spokesman Jim Dick said last week, the proposed legislation related to Foxconn does not give a company within electronics and information technology zone(s) a free pass on the environment.

Thats exactly the right direction the state should take. Foxconn will not get carte blanche on environmental impacts of its project, but given the enormous economic impact of this development for southeastern Wisconsin, those reviews should be expedited, and in some cases eased if that is appropriate.
In the marketplace, traditionally understood, when a company produces a poor product or mistreats its customers, it faces market disciplinenew ones come in and steal market share. Thats the theory, at least.

Too bad its not true right now, at least not on the Internet.

Google and Apple, with a combined 98 percent market share in mobile-phone operating systems, have banned Gab, an upstart Twitter competitor with a free-speech policy quaintly modeled on the First Amendment itself, from their app stores. Google cited hate speech as its reason for exclusion; Gab doesnt censor. What few people yet understand is that Google and Apple have used their duopoly status to revoke the First Amendment on mobile phones. Because the Internet is now majority mobile, and a growing majority of all web traffic comes from mobile devices, the First Amendment is now effectively dead in the mobile sphere unless policymakers act to rein in the tech giants who serve as corporate gatekeepers to digital speech.

Twitter ran into controversy last year when it was accused of censoring conservative voices. Gab founders Andrew Torba, an alumnus of Silicon Valleys prestigious Y Combinator accelerator, and Ekrem Buyukkaya saw a market opportunity for a competitor focused on free speechnot just for conservatives but for dissidents globally. Last August, they launched Gab, a Twitter-like app where, according to company spokesman Utsav Sanduja, Whatever is permissible under the First Amendment is what Gab allows onto its site.

Gab grew slowly but has now reached over 200,000 usersa substantial number, though tiny compared with Twitter. It generated modest revenue through a freemium model, wherein users could pay to upgrade to a Pro level. Gab pulled off a coup by raising $1 million through crowd-funded investment. The company says that it is planning an Initial Coin Offering with its own digital currency based on the Ethereum standard. In short, Gab is a real company, with legitimate founders, a business strategy, revenue, more than 200,000 users, and seven-figure funding.

Apple and Google dont agree. Gab built an app for Apples iOS operating system, but Apple wouldnt approve it. This means that iPhone and iPad users cant use the Gab app because users cant install applications on those devices unless Apple approves them. Gabs Android app was available through Googles app store until yesterday, when Google banned it, citing violations of its hate-speech policy. In order to be on the Play Store, social networking apps need to demonstrate a sufficient level of moderation, including for content that encourages violence and advocates hate against groups of people, a Google statement read. This is a long-standing rule and clearly stated in our developer policies. While Android users can install unapproved apps, its a cumbersome process, and being kicked out of the app store reduces the apps reach.

No doubt, a number of far-right groups have found a home on Gab. I tried Gab myself when it first came out, finding it functionally an interesting mix of Twitter and Reddit, but with too many far-right users for my taste. So I dropped it. Gab also courted trouble with provocative moves like publicly announcing a job offer for James Damore after Google fired him and taunting Silicon Valley after its crowd-funding success. It also uses a green frog as its logo. Gab claims that this is not the controversial Pepe the Frog, identified with the alt-Right, but rather inspired by the plague of frogs from Exodus. Even if this is true, the logo choice seems like a deliberate provocation.

But its difficult to credit Gab as a white-supremacist site when its cofounder is a Turkish Kurd and Muslim. Buyukkaya, who says Ive never supported Trump for a minute in my entire life, is concerned about speech repression in his part of the worldfor good reason, as Turkey is infamous for its violations of free speech and for locking up journalists. Gab spokesman Sanduja is a South Asian Hindu from Canada.

Gab points out that other major social-media platforms have hosted ISIS activity, and child-porn rings, facilitated drug dealing, and carried live streams of murder, torture, and other crimes. Yet all are still allowed by Google. Google itself actually hired Chris moot Poole, founder of the notorious website 4chan, known not just for offensive speech but also for the distribution of hard-core pornography. Police have made multiple child pornography arrests associated with 4chan. There remain multiple 4chan apps in Googles app store.

At a minimum, Apple and Googles decisions about offensive app behavior are arbitrary. This is a problem the market cant easily solvebecause there is effectively no market. Both the Apple and Google app stores are private markets owned by those companies, which act as their effective governments. You cannot easily start a new mobile business without their permission. If your app follows the First Amendment, theres a good chance that youll be rejected. Regardless of how one views Gab or any other application or group, two Silicon Valley companies should not be the governors of the mobile Internetwhich, in due course, may be indistinguishable from the Internet itself.

The mobile-Internet business is built on spectrum licenses granted by the federal government. Given the monopoly power that Apple and Google possess in the mobile sphere as corporate gatekeepers, First Amendment freedoms face serious challenges in the current environment. Perhaps it is time that spectrum licenses to mobile-phone companies be conditioned on their recipients providing freedoms for customers to use the apps of their choice.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
watch now

Employers eager to recruit and retain skilled workers in a tight labor market have about 1.34 trillion reasons to expand their benefits package to include assistance in helping employees repay their student loans. That's the mountain of student loan debt being carried on the financial shoulders of 44 million Americans. And no surprise, the bulk of those would indeed love for the boss to kick in and help pay it back. More than 80 percent of workers with student loans surveyed by IonTuition said they would like to work for a company that provides a student loan repayment benefit. IonTuition, a fintech company focused on services to help borrowers manage their repayments, mostly surveyed millennials.

It's going to take a change in the tax code to see large growth in the benefit. Chris Walters CEO, Gradfin

Yet there is plenty of reason to suspect older workers would be eager for the perk, too. According to Federal Reserve data, borrowers at least 40 years old have a not-small $450 billion in student loans to pay off. A big part of that older cohort are parents who borrowed through the federal PLUS program or took out private student loans. The benefit is still clearly in the early adopter stage with just 3 percent of firms surveyed by AonHewitt currently offering student loan repayment assistance. AonHewitt says an additional 5 percent of surveyed companies say they are likely to add the benefit and 24 percent are moderately interested in adding the benefit. "Employers are incredibly curious and engaged around the issue given all the news about student loan debt," said Balaji "Raj" Rajan , chief executive officer of IonTuition. He said IonTuition fields two or three inquiries a day from companies interested in adding student loan repayment assistance. A few big old-line firms including Aetna, Fidelity, PwC and Penguin Random House have begun to contribute to employees' loan payments. Earlier this summer, the city of Memphis, Tennessee, announced it will contribute $50 a month toward employees' student loan repayment.

Adoption of the benefit is more common among smaller and mid-size companies with nimbler decision trees and the need to position benefits as a competitive edge in recruiting, according to Meera Oliva, chief marketing officer at Gradifi, a subsidiary of First Republic that provides a student loan benefit platform for employers, including PwC and Penguin Random House. Gradifi has more than 140 employer clients offering repayment assistance and is adding a half dozen or more monthly. "The bulk of our business is companies coming to us, not the other way around," Oliva said. An employer contribution of $50 or $100 a month is common among the first movers. That can indeed be a big help, as IonTuition reports that about three-quarters of borrowers make monthly payments of $300 or less. Employer contributions go toward principal repayment. Gradifi's website includes a free tool for employees to see how an employer assist can aid employee financial wellness. For instance, someone aiming to pay off $35,000 in debt over 10 years might be able to shave off 2.5 years and save some serious coin in the process:

Waiting on Washington
President Donald Trump greets members of the US military alongside Defense Secretary James Mattis (C) following a meeting at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, July 20, 2017. Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

As President Donald Trump recently declared the U.S. is "getting very close" to a strategy aimed at turning the tide of Afghanistan's prolonged and bloody conflict, there's more at stake than just military victory. The Trump administration is under increasing pressure to sway the course of the war, which has claimed the lives of more than 2,000 U.S. soldiers and left at least 20,000 wounded. "We must face facts; we are losing in Afghanistan, and time is of the essence if we intend to turn the tide," Sen. John McCain said this month, after announcing he would introduce a new Afghan strategy. Since 2001, the U.S. has spent an estimated $714 billion in war and reconstruction in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon's Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) July report. That comes to about $3.9 billion a month to run the Afghan war. Trump is seeking a military win in Afghanistan, but American efforts there may yet reap financial gains. Afghanistan possesses rare minerals crucial for industrial manufacturing, including copper, gold, uranium and fossil fuels  making the country ripe for development that can boost the economy and fund its reconstruction. In a partial survey conducted by the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, the country's mineral wealth is estimated at $3 trillion, more than enough to compensate for the war's cost. The U.S. president has previously expressed interest in Afghanistan's vast mineral deposits as a tool for stabilizing the country. The White House is considering sending an envoy to Afghanistan to explore mining possibilities, the opening salvo in what is likely to be a long-term effort to harness the country's natural resources. "Since the Afghanistan mission is predominantly seen from a military point-of-view in the U.S., I am assuming that it was meant to draw attention to other opportunities and facts that offer strategic and win-win prospects," Afghan government spokesperson Javid Faisal told CNBC in an email.

View of a gold mine in Nor Aaba, Takhar province, Afghanistan. Omar Sobhani | Reuters

Batteries and natural gas

Stephen Feinberg, the billionaire financier who owns the military contractor DynCorp International, is informally advising Trump on Afghanistan, according to a report in The New York Times, which said the company may potentially play a role in safeguarding American mining operations. "We have no expectation of supporting commercial mining programs, but continue to work at the direction of the U.S. government," a DynCorp representative told CNBC. DynCorp has operated in Afghanistan since 2003, providing aviation, logistics, training, intelligence and operational solutions where needed. Yet while Trump is looking at the possibility of the U.S. cashing in on the poor war-torn country, others have already started. Northern Afghanistan is rich with natural gas reserves and has attracted Russia's attention for decades. During the Soviet invasion, Russia laid the framework to control Afghanistan's natural gas but abandoned the effort after the Taliban seized control of the country. Last month, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani spoke with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier about lithium deposits in Helmand province, which could be put to work by European companies. The element is a key ingredient in rechargeable batteries used in smartphones and electric cars, and for its part Germany is eyeing Afghan lithium for its automobile industry. Elsewhere, China has taken the lead in exploring its neighboring country's natural resources. In February, CNBC reported that China's Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) is planning to extract $100 billion worth of copper from Afghanistan. Back in 2007, the company leased land near Kabul for $3 billion. At one point, the Taliban had given the project a green light. However, the project has been delayed because archaeologists discovered a 5,000-year-old Buddhist city in the exact location that holds the world's second-largest copper deposit.

Brent Huffman | Saving Mes Aynak.

In the award-winning documentary film "Saving Mes Aynak" director Brent Huffman shows how China's copper ambitions, along with the corruption in the Afghan government, are threatening to erase the priceless cultural heritage and history of Afghanistan. "American investment could potentially be worse," Huffman told CNBC recently. He added that money from the sale of the mining rights could "solely benefit a very small number of corrupt officials," a legitimate fear given Afghanistan's checkered history with what the Brookings Institution recently called "predatory crime and corruption." In response, government spokesperson Faisal told CNBC that the country "will do everything possible to fight corruption, be transparent, accountable and stay within the bounds of laws governing mining." He added that China's Mes Aynak project is now on hold. The stalled Chinese mining project partly reflects a volatile security situation that has persisted since the invasion nearly 16 years ago. According to the United Nations, civilian deaths are at a record high since the conflict began, while the U.S. has suffered new military casualties. Meanwhile, the Taliban has been gaining ground and there is also a growing ISIS presence in Afghanistan amid a rash of suicide bombings and beheadings.

The Taliban connection
The bitcoin offshoot surged Saturday to a record high in high trade volume, helped by strong demand from South Korea and digital currency "miners" who found the offshoot more profitable to mine.

Bitcoin cash, an alternative version of bitcoin launched by a minority of developers on Aug. 1, climbed 44 percent to $996.92, according to CoinMarketCap. That's the highest bitcoin cash has ever traded in its less than three weeks of history, and a jump of almost 374 percent from its low of $210.38 on its first day of trading.

Bitcoin cash traded off that high at $944.45 in mid-morning trade, still less than a quarter of the original bitcoin's price.

Bitcoin cash seven-day performance and trade volume

Source: CoinMarketCap

After stagnating interest in the first two weeks of its existence, the bitcoin offshoot began climbing late last week after digital currency "miners" on Wednesday mined an eight megabyte bitcoin cash block. That demonstrated bitcoin cash could fulfill its promise of faster transaction speeds, which is determined by block size. The original bitcoin has a one megabyte block size and is set for an upgrade to a two megabyte block this fall.

The gains in bitcoin cash's price and built-in protocols that gradually reduce the difficulty of mining the digital currency have made the offshoot more attractive to miners. Bitcoin cash is now 69 percent more profitable to mine than the original bitcoin, according to data analysis from Coin Dance.

Digital currency miners often switch their mining power among different currencies depending on their relative profitability.

Relative profitability of bitcoin cash vs. bitcoin

Source: Coin Dance

Bitcoin cash's 24-hour trade volume of nearly $4.4 billion topped bitcoin's roughly $3.4 billion and that of another digital currency, ethereum, at $918 million, according to CoinMarketCap.

South Korean exchanges Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit dominated trade activity, with Bithumb alone accounting for $1.7 billion of trade volume, CoinMarketCap data showed. At the overnight peak, trade in the South Korean won contributed to nearly half of bitcoin cash trade volume, according to CryptoCompare. Trade in won for the original bitcoin accounted for only 10.5 percent, the site showed.

Investors in bitcoin at the time of the Aug. 1 split into bitcoin and bitcoin cash should have received an equivalent amount of the bitcoin offshoot. However, major digital currency storage and exchange site Coinbase plans to add support by Jan 1, 2018, after initially saying it would not support the alternative digital currency.

The original traded about 0.6 percent lower near $4,133 after hitting a record high of $4,522.13 Thursday, according to Coin Desk. Bitcoin has more than quadrupled in value this year.

Ethereum , traded 2 percent lower to $290.01, still up more than 3,000 percent this year, according to CoinDesk.
Boxed CEO Chieh Huang says the company's biggest challenge in its early days was not having enough manpower.

"When we used to have those deluge of orders, we used to empty the entire corporate office, get a bus, and bring them here to the fulfillment center," Huang says.

Boxed packages and ships bulky items to customers directly from its warehouses, and is taking on the likes of Amazon and Costco .

The company started in 2013, in Chieh's parents' garage. Since then, it's expanded to four fulfillment centers and has turned to automation to help it keep up with demand. Boxed just finished fully automating its headquarters in Union, New Jersey, and saw its picking productivity increase by 600 to 700 percent.

Surprisingly, the company was able to keep its entire workforce thanks to retraining.
Students of Marilyn School Of Dance recently returned from the 2017 Chicago National Association of Dance Masters Summer Dance Workshop.

CNADM is an annual event where students perfect their technique and performance skills while dance professionals hone their teaching technique, educational theory and personal dance development. During the eight days, five different events took place. Students had the option of attending ballet forum, dance and more and student session. Dance professionals were involved in teacher training and convention.

Suzanne Swanson Wagner, owner and artistic director of MSD, attended with 11 of her students: Kaitlyn Austin, Jessica Dreier, Alauna Eckelberg, Kyrah Eckelberg, Ellie Eswein, Carly Martin, Shelby Perez, Grace Rezin, Livia Rezin, Paige Sheldon and Natalie Zeps.

CNADM is a great learning experience that I look forward to attending every year, said 13-year-old Sheldon.

Eleven-year-old Eckelberg said, The classes pushed me to be a better dancer, but they were fun. The teachers were all nice and helpful. Im looking forward to next year.

Swanson Wagner is a member of CNADM, which means she has passed a membership exam and adheres to the associations standards and code of ethics. She has been a member for over 30 years and a board member for the last 12 years. She has received both her Certified Dance Educator and Master Dance Educator certifications through CNADM.

CNADM summer workshops were highlighted by two performances. The first was during the annual awards banquet. This years recipient of the Artistic Achievement Award was Tom Alexander, a performer, teacher and choreographer extraordinaire who has worked both nationally and on cruise ships. Martin was excited to work with Alexander and perform in the dance and more production number to Favorite Shirts by Haircuts 100. Dance and more is for maturing dance students considering the pursuit of a professional dance career.

I really enjoyed being able to work with the fantastic faculty that the CNADM association brought in, Martin said. It was an amazing experience to be able to take class in a professional setting with nationally known dance instructors.

The second performance was the ballet gala. The gala is the culmination of the five days of preparing students for newly commissioned ballets in a performance setting. Austin was featured in a pointe variation from Paquita choreographed by Meg Paul. Austin was one of four selected for this honor out of 80 participants.

Zeps was honored with a ballet forum merit scholarship from the Marjorie Duckett Scholarship Fund.

Student honors award recipients from MSD included Eckelberg, Perez, Rezin and Zeps. These students demonstrate their knowledge of dance through written, oral and demonstrative examination.

The student session was highlighted by the student competition. MSD received gold and platinum trophies. Soloists included:

Eswein  Platinum for Roxanne, choreographed by an MSD alumni and instructor Annaliese Wagner

Martin  Platinum for I Dont Know What Id Do Without You choreographed by MSD instructor Amanda Konsitzke

Zeps  Gold for Celloopa choreographed by alumni Abby Skowronski.

Two MSD students also competed solos with their own choreography and both received platinum awards  Sheldon for A Quiet Darkness and Carly Martin for Break the Silence.

MSD group pieces were Danse Espagnole, a ballet-pointe piece receiving a gold, and American In Paris, a ballet piece receiving a platinum. Both were choreographed by Swanson Wagner.

Eswein was the CNADM student session Merit Scholarship winner.

CNADM is an amazing and unique experience, Eswein said. You get so close with everyone, and its a whole lot of fun. You learn so much from technique to choreography. It really helped me grow as a dancer and a person.

Swanson Wagner said, I look forward to returning to Tomah from the CNADM dance workshops feeling re-energized and excited to bring cutting-edge choreography back to my students. Dance is ever-changing. The only way to keep up with it is continued education. CNADM caters to my desire for strong technique and innovative instructional ideas.

Since 1950 MSD, LLC has offered dance education and performance opportunities for aspiring dancers. Classes offered include jazz, ballet, tap, hip hop, lyrical, modern, Irish and early childhood development. Classes are offered for all levels of dancers, from beginners to advanced, two year olds to adults. To learn more, visit marilynschoolofdance.com or call 608-372-7488 or email dance@marilynschoolofdance.com to schedule a studio tour.

The Chicago National Association of Dance Masters is a non-profit educational association whose purpose is to serve the needs of dance educators. Since 1912, CNADM has provided continuing education workshop classes for dance teachers and their students throughout the U.S. To learn more, visit cnadm.com.
After a day of mostly peaceful protest, President Donald Trump told marchers that he applauded them for speaking out against bigotry and hate. But only after he also called out "many anti-police agitators" for their actions.

A right-wing group had planned to protest in Boston Common Saturday, but broke up their rally prematurely as thousands over counterprotestors overwhelmed their event.

Trump praised the Boston Police Department and Mayor Marty Walsh for how they handled a controversial "Free Speech Rally" and thousands-strong counterprotest Saturday.

The counter-protest reportedly drew at least 30,000 people occasionally erupted into confrontation, and almost 30 arrests were made, according to the Boston Globe.

Hours after the sparsely attended rally ended, the Boston Police Twitter feed reported individuals near a "sit-in" protest close to the intersection of Tremon and West were throwing rocks, urine, and other projectiles at officers.

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At least one public transit station had been shutdown, according to the Boston Transportation department.

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The event was held a week after a white supremacist march and counter-protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, ended in bloodshed.

Trump said in a tweet Saturday afternoon that he saw many "anti-police agitators" in coverage of the event and praised the police for looking "tough and smart."

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The president went on to thank law enforcement and Boston's mayor for a "great job."

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He later tweeted that the "country has been divided for decades," that sometimes protest is necessary in order to "heel" (sic).

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He then resent the tweet with the proper spelling of the word "heal."

A law enforcement official told the Associated Press earlier Saturday that there were about 20 arrests, but no serious injuries were reported during the event.

Many counterprotesters still remain in the area, including a few who were among people chanting "Black Lives Matter" who burned a confederate flag, AP reported.

The "Free Speech" rally itself was sparsely attended, according to Boston.com. Barely 20 people were reportedly seen attending the rally in Boston Common, which had a permit to go until 2 p.m.

According to multiple reports, the few "Free Speech" protesters in the park left around 1 p.m. local time, escorted by police. It's unclear if there are other events being held elsewhere in the city.

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The "Free Speech Rally" organizers have publicly distanced themselves from the white supremacist groups that marched in Charlottesville last week.

Hundreds of counter-protesters had surrounded the perimeter of the park in downtown Boston during the rally.

Boston's Walsh on Friday had urged counter-protesters to stay away from the event, arguing that their presence would simply draw more attention to the far-right activists. But on Saturday, the mayor was seen walking with the march, and later attended a rally called West Broadway Unity Day in South Boston, according to Boston.com.

Organizers of the "Free Speech" rally had denounced the violence and racist chants of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" protest.

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"We are a coalition of libertarians, progressives, conservatives, and independents and we welcome all individuals and organizations from any political affiliations that are willing to peaceably engage in open dialogue about the threats to, and importance of, free speech and civil liberties," the group said on Facebook.

The event's scheduled speakers include Kyle Chapman, a California activist who was arrested at a Berkeley rally earlier this year that turned violent, and Joe Biggs, formerly of the right-wing conspiracy site Infowars.

At least 500 police officers, many on bicycles, were on hand to keep the expected crowd of a few hundred people at the "Free Speech" rally separate from thousands attending a counter-protest by people who believe the event could become a platform for racist propaganda.
There are growing concerns large-scale war games planned next month by Russia with its neighbor Belarus could be a cover for something very sinister by Vladimir Putin  perhaps another Crimea.

There is alarm in Europe that the Russian president could use the military exercises as a sort of Trojan horse or pretext for an annexation of Belarus, a former Soviet republic. Putin has had an increasingly acrimonious relationship with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, particularly since Russia annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

"Russia is billing it as modest exercises under 13,000 troops, but everything points to probably the largest military exercise in post-Soviet history," said Leon Aron, resident scholar and the director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

According to Aron, these types of exercises preceded Russia's invasion and later conflict with Georgia, a former Soviet republic that before the war was getting closer to Washington. Similarly, Russia used military exercises as a cover for its assault on the former Soviet republic of Ukraine.

Russia insists its quadrennial Zapad (or Russian for west) joint military drills scheduled Sept. 14-20 will include 12,700 troops and are designed to "test military coordination." However, the New York Times reported last month the entire exercise could involve up to 100,000 people when also including "security personnel and civilian officials."

"We urge Russia to share information regarding its exercises and operations in NATO's vicinity to clearly convey its intentions and minimize any misunderstandings," Pentagon spokesman Johnny Michael told CNBC.

Playing out in the background, though, are concerns from Estonia and its other Baltic NATO neighbors that the Russian 2017 Zapad military exercises have a hidden agenda.

Indeed, Vice President Mike Pence during a recent visit to Estonian capital of Tallinn said: "Russia seeks to redraw international borders by force, undermine democracies of sovereign nations and divide the free nations of Europe."

In April, Reuters quoted then-Estonian Defense Minister Margus Tsahkna as saying his country and other members of NATO obtained intelligence that Russia planned to send troops and resources to Belarus and that when they leave, they will not remove all the equipment and leave some permanent forces behind.

"For Russian troops going to Belarus, it is a one-way ticket," Tsahkna told Reuters. "This is not my personal opinion, we are analyzing very deeply how Russia is preparing for the Zapad exercises."

Tsahkna also was quoted as saying Moscow asked for about 4,000 rail cars to Belarus to transport tanks and other military hardware for the war games. German reports have indicated that is 1,000 more rail cars than the 2013 Zapad.

"Unfortunately, the Russians have a big habit of actually doing operational activities under the guise of war games," said James Carafano, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, the Washington think tank. "This goes back to the days of the Soviet Union. So it definitely makes people nervous."

Carafano, who advised the Trump transition team on foreign policy, said the upcoming Zapad military maneuvers also are drawing attention because Russia is getting out from having to invite outside observer nations by claiming it will have less than 13,000 soldiers in the drills. Also, by holding several smaller drills at once Moscow skirts the international treaty known as the Vienna Document and could potentially have the 100,000 people.

"We defer to Russia obviously for anything specific to their military exercises and posture," the Pentagon official said. He also indicated Russia has "conducted several large-scale snap exercises along NATO's eastern flank with little to no notice and in a non-transparent manner."

Then again, Russian media claim Baltic states of Lithuania and Latvia  two former Soviet Republics now part of NATO  are sending observers to the upcoming drills. CNBC reached out to NATO for comment.
An Ohio man allegedly used the allures of a romantic relationship to get a woman who worked at a California credit union to open nearly $3 million in fraudulent lines of credit that led to more than $1.2 million in losses, according an FBI cybercrimes investigator.

Phillip Cook, 50, of South Euclid, Ohio, was arrested July 28 by U.S. Marshals and remains in federal custody on a criminal complaint filed by the FBI in California. Cook will be asking a federal judge in Cleveland next week to reconsider his detention and an order to transport him to California to face charges.

In November 2014, Indira Mohabir, 41, of La Habra, Calif., was working as a business loan processor for then Western Federal Credit Union, which changed its name in 2016 to the $2.7 billion UNIFY Financial Federal Credit Union in Torrance. Around that time, she became involved in an online relationship with Cook. Mohabir was charged last year with financial institution fraud, conspiracy to commit financial institution fraud and unauthorized issuance of credit union obligations.
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I love county fairs. I love the sights, sounds, smells and the tastes of the fair. Moreover, I love all the people. Adorable little kids wander around with snow cones. Grandparents catch up on family news. Hardworking 4-Hers show cattle, cakes and cookies.

I especially love the opportunity for conversations with voters about whats important. The relaxed atmosphere of the fair invites good conversations about whats going on and how our state should help.

Cookies, roads and health care took up much of my conversations.

Several home bakers spoke with me about a recent court decision that found a group of home bakers could sell cookies and cakes at a local farmers market. But the court decision did not apply to all of our states home bakers, which frustrated Charlene of Hixton and Ashley of Merrillan.

Charlene told me home baking will come to a screeching halt if lawmakers dont pass legislation called the cookie bill. The proposal, which I support, allows people to sell up to $25,000 of baked goods at farmers markets. I voted in favor of this bill in committee and in the full Senate. However, for reasons unknown, the Assembly wont take up the bill.

Ashley has sold home baked goods for over a decade. The cinnamon rolls at Mollys cafe in Black River Falls were her creation. She pointed out that we give people a choice when they can pick up fresh baked goods made that day.

Several bakers invited me to the Jackson County Farmers Market by the Lunda Center on Thursday from 2-6 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Bad roads were also on peoples minds. Due to no increase in road aid from the state, Jackson County officials were forced to turn black top roads back to gravel. One man told me, Weve got to fix the roads. We cant keep borrowing money and sending it to southeast Wisconsin. Roads are the backbone of Wisconsin. He read my column about increasing the gas tax by a nickel. My mom said to raise it by 12 cents, he directed me.

Health care was a hot topic too.

Bobby from Eau Claire shared her concerns about chronically ill patients she works with struggle to get needed care. She told me how the type of insurance a patient has can dictate what care they receive, not the doctors orders. If you have regular Medicare or Medicaid, you can get the treatment you need, she said. But if you have another insurance  that is paid for by Medicaid or Medicare  you have to go through this long prior authorization process.

Bobby also pointed out that people cant afford the premiums, the deductibles. We need a one-payer system that puts everyone on the same level playing field.

I heard over and over again stories about the middle class feeling squeezed.

People shared their struggles in daily life, such as a woman whose nine-year old son kept trying to pull her away. His two front teeth were missing. She signed up for food stamps after her partner was injured and couldnt work. Trying to keep her family fed meant trips to the food pantry.

I also met people reaching out to help those less fortunate. Donna spends her life helping foster children. Thirty-eight percent of kids in foster care end up homeless. Half of children who are homeless used to be in foster care, she told me. She started her own nonprofit called Network for Youth to help foster kids.

I talked with Tena, who is just as passionate about the mission to rescue people from the destructive path of addiction. She started a group called #StoptheStigma.

We ask no questions. We make no judgements. We meet our people where they are. We save people one individual at a time, she said. Tena is Ho-chunk. Many of her fellow workers are also Ho-Chunk.

She emphasized that, our people are everyone suffering from addiction We speak up for all who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.

The county fair is a snapshot of our lives; people facing struggles and people who are the heroes; people who make our communities great and so special. It is always an honor and joy for me to engage with them in conversation.
NCI Building Systems, Inc. designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets metal products for the nonresidential construction industry in North America. It operates in four segments: Engineered Building Systems, Metal Components, Insulated Metal Panels, and Metal Coil Coating. The Engineered Building Systems segment offers engineered structural members and panels; and self-storage building systems under the Metallic, Mid-West Steel, A & S, All American, Mesco, Star, Ceco, Robertson, Garco, Heritage, and SteelBuilding.com brands to builders, general contractors, developers, and end users directly, as well as through private label companies. The Metal Components segment provides metal roof and wall systems, metal partitions, metal trims, doors, and other related accessories for use in new construction, and repair and retrofit applications; roll-up doors; and interior and exterior walk doors under the MBCI, American Building Components, Eco-ficient, Metal Depots, and Doors and Buildings Components brands to manufacturers, contractors, subcontractors, distributors, lumberyards, cooperative buying groups, and other customers. The Insulated Metal Panels segment offers insulated metal panels for architectural, commercial, industrial, and cold storage end-market applications under the Metl-Span and CENTRIA brands. The Metal Coil Coating segment engages in cleaning, treating, and painting flat-rolled metals in coil form, as well as in slitting and/or embossing the metal, before the metal is fabricated for use by industrial users. It also cleans, treats, and coats heavy and light gauge metal coils for use in construction products, heating and air conditioning systems, water heaters, lighting fixtures, ceiling grids, office furniture, appliances, and other products; and provides toll coating and painted metal package services under the Metal Coaters and Metal Prep brands. NCI Building Systems, Inc. was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
The following companies are subsidiares of Cummins: Anvl, Apollo FC Holdings Ltd., Atlantis Acquisitionco Canada Corporation, Atlantis Holdco UK Limited, Brammo, CIFC Worldwide Partner C.V., CMI Africa Holdings BV, CMI CGT Holdings LLC, CMI Canada Financing Ltd., CMI Canada LP, CMI Foreign Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings B.V., CMI Global Equity Holdings C.V., CMI Global Holdings B.V., CMI Global Partner 2 C.V., CMI Global Partners B.V., CMI Group Holdings B.V., CMI Group Holdings Cooperatief U.A., CMI International Finance Partner 1 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 2 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 3 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 4 LLC, CMI International Finance Partner 5 LLC, CMI Mexico LLC, CMI Netherlands Holdings B.V., CMI PGI Holdings LLC, CMI PGI International Holdings LLC, CMI Turkish Holdings B.V., CMI UK Finance LP, CMI UK Financing LP, Cherry Island Renewable Energy LLC, Consolidated Diesel Company, Consolidated Diesel Inc., Consolidated Diesel of North Carolina Inc., Cummins (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Cummins (Xiangyang) Machining Co. Ltd., Cummins Africa Middle East (Pty) Ltd., Cummins Afrique de l'Ouest, Cummins Americas Inc., Cummins Angola Lda., Cummins Argentina-Servicios Mineros S.A., Cummins Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Cummins Aust Technologies Pty. Ltd., Cummins BLR LLC, Cummins Battery Systems North America LLC, Cummins Belgium N.V., Cummins Botswana (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins Brasil Ltda., Cummins Burkina Faso SARL, Cummins CDC Holding Inc., Cummins CV Member LLC, Cummins Canada ULC, Cummins Caribbean LLC, Cummins Center of Excellence Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Centroamerica Holding S.de R.L., Cummins Child Development Center Inc., Cummins Colombia S.A.S., Cummins Comercializadora S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Corporation, Cummins Cote d'Ivoire SARL, Cummins Czech Republic s.r.o., Cummins Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Diesel International Ltd., Cummins Distribution Holdco Inc., Cummins EMEA Holdings Limited, Cummins East Asia Research & Development Co. Ltd., Cummins Eastern Marine Inc., Cummins Electrified Power Europe Ltd., Cummins Electrified Power NA Inc., Cummins Emission Solutions (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Emission Solutions Inc., Cummins Empresas Filantropicas, Cummins Energetica Ltda., Cummins Engine (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine (Shanghai) Trading & Services Co. Ltd., Cummins Engine Holding Company Inc., Cummins Engine IP Inc., Cummins Engine Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Engine Venture Corporation, Cummins Enterprise LLC, Cummins Filtration (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtration GmbH, Cummins Filtration IP Inc., Cummins Filtration Inc., Cummins Filtration International Corp., Cummins Filtration Ltd., Cummins Filtration SARL, Cummins Filtration Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Cummins Filtros Ltda., Cummins Franchise Holdco LLC, Cummins Fuel Systems (Wuhan) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Americas Inc., Cummins Generator Technologies Germany GmbH, Cummins Generator Technologies India Private Ltd., Cummins Generator Technologies Italy SRL, Cummins Generator Technologies Limited, Cummins Generator Technologies Romania S.A., Cummins Generator Technologies Singapore Pte Ltd., Cummins Ghana Limited, Cummins Ghana Mining Limited, Cummins Global Financing LP, Cummins Global Technologies LLP, Cummins Grupo Comercial Y. de Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Grupo Industrial S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Holland B.V., Cummins Hong Kong Ltd., Cummins India Ltd., Cummins Intellectual Property Inc., Cummins International Finance LLC, Cummins International Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Cummins International Holdings LLC, Cummins Italia S.P.A., Cummins Japan Ltd., Cummins Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins LLC Member Inc., Cummins Ltd., Cummins Maroc SARL, Cummins Middle East FZE, Cummins Mining Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Mobility Services Inc., Cummins Mongolia Investment LLC, Cummins Mozambique Ltda., Cummins NV, Cummins Namibia Engine Sales and Service PTY LTD, Cummins Natural Gas Engines Inc., Cummins New Zealand Limited, Cummins Nigeria Ltd., Cummins Norte de Colombia S.A.S., Cummins North Africa Regional Office SARL, Cummins Norway AS, Cummins PGI Holdings Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (China) Co. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (S) Pte. Ltd., Cummins Power Generation (U.K.) Limited, Cummins Power Generation Deutschland GmbH, Cummins Power Generation Inc., Cummins Power Generation Limited, Cummins PowerGen IP Inc., Cummins Research and Technology India Private Ltd., Cummins Romania Srl, Cummins S. de R.L. de C.V., Cummins Sales and Service Korea Co. Ltd., Cummins Sales and Service Philippines Inc., Cummins Sales and Service Private Limited, Cummins Sales and Service Sdn. Bhd., Cummins Sales and Service Singapore Pte. Ltd., Cummins Sinai ve Otomotiv Urunleri Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Cummins South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Cummins South Pacific Pty. Limited, Cummins Southern Plains LLC, Cummins Spain S.L., Cummins Sweden AB, Cummins Technologies India, Cummins Trade Receivables LLC, Cummins Turbo Technologies Limited, Cummins Turkey Motor Guc Sistemleri Sats Servis Limited Sirketi, Cummins U.K. Holdings Ltd., Cummins U.K. Pension Plan Trustee Ltd., Cummins UK Global Holdings Ltd., Cummins UK Holdings LLC, Cummins Vendas e Servicos de Motores e Geradores Ltda., Cummins Venture Corporation, Cummins West Africa Limited, Cummins West Balkans d.o.o. Nova Pasova, Cummins XBorder Operations (Pty) Ltd, Cummins Zambia Ltd., Cummins Zimbabwe Pvt. Ltd., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Costa Rica S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica El Salvador S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Guatemala Ltda., Distribuidora Cummins Centroamerica Honduras S.de R.L., Distribuidora Cummins S.A., Distribuidora Cummins Sucursal Paraguay SRL, Distribuidora Cummins de Panama S. de R.L., Dynamo Insurance Company Inc., Efficient Drivetrains, Efficient Drivetrains (Beijing) New Power Technology Co. Ltd., Efficient Drivetrains (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Hilite International, Hydrogenics, Hydrogenics Corporation, Hydrogenics Europe N.V., Hydrogenics GmbH, Hydrogenics Holding GmbH, Hydrogenics USA Inc., Markon Engineering Company Ltd., Nelson Burgess Ltd., Nelson Industries, Newage Engineers GmbH, Newage Ltd. (U.K.), Newage Machine Tools Ltd., OOO Cummins, Petbow Limited, Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) B.V., Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) Ltd., Power Group International Ltd., Quickstart Energy Projects SpA, Shanghai Cummins Trade Co. Ltd., TOO Cummins, Taiwan Cummins Sales & Services Co. Ltd., Worldwide Partner CV Member LLC, Wuxi Cummins Turbo Technologies Co. Ltd., Wuxi New Energy Automotive Technologies Co. Ltd., and ZED Connect Inc..

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PLDT Inc. provides telecommunications and digital services in the Philippines. It operates through three segments: Wireless, Fixed Line, and Others. The company offers cellular mobile, Internet broadband distribution, operations support, software development, and satellite information and messaging services; and sells Wi-Fi access equipment. It also provides fixed line telecommunications services; business infrastructure and solutions; intelligent data processing and implementation, and data analytics insight generation services; and information and communications infrastructure for Internet-based services, e-commerce, customer relationship management, and information technology (IT) related services. In addition, the company offers managed IT outsourcing, Internet-based purchasing, IT consulting and professional, bills printing and other related value-added, and air transportation services; distributes Filipino channels and content services; and provides full-services customer rewards and loyalty programs. Further, it engages in the sale of mobile handsets, broadband data routers, tablets, and accessories, as well as provides domestic leased lines and alternative messaging solutions, such as over-the-top services, social media, and messenger application. As of December 31, 2021, it had 71,221,952 mobile broadband subscribers; 3,619,372 fixed line subscribers; and 2.8 million broadband subscribers. The company was formerly known as Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company and changed its name to PLDT Inc. in July 2016. PLDT Inc. was incorporated in 1928 and is headquartered in Makati City, the Philippines.
Wisconsinites at the YMCA, at church, and community events from Viroqua to Black River Falls frequently come up to me frustrated about the huge role powerful special interests and their secret money have in our election process. I share their frustration.

The problem was made significantly worse with the Supreme Courts Citizens United decision, which made it legal for dark money and large corporations to anonymously help political candidates. Allowing for the American public to be kept in the dark about who is funding the campaigns of elected officials further erodes the political process in our country.

I have always believed strongly that Wisconsinites and all Americans should have access to information about who is contributing to their elected officials and political candidates. To meet this goal I voluntarily publish every contribution I receive, no matter how large or small, and I have encouraged my colleagues to voluntarily publish their contribution records as well.

But unfortunately, many of my colleagues still do not disclose every donor to their campaign, and they keep thousands of donors secret. In order to bring transparency and light back into our political system I have introduced the Campaign Transparency Act. This bill would require all campaigns to follow my lead and disclose the identities of ALL people who contribute to their campaign.

At a time when hardworking people feel that they are losing their voice in our political process we need to take swift action to return at least a bit of transparency to the process. I will continue to work with anyone who is willing to fix our broken political system and increase transparency.

Democrat Ron Kind, La Crosse, represents Wisconsins Third Congressional District.
The following companies are subsidiares of Pfizer: AH Robins LLC, AHP Holdings B.V., AHP Manufacturing B.V., Agouron Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alacer, Alpharma Holdings LLC, Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alpharma Specialty Pharma LLC, Alpharma USHP LLC, American Food Industries LLC, Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc., Angiosyn, Array BioPharma, Ayerst-Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, BIND Therapeutics Inc., BINESA 2002 S.L., Bamboo Therapeutics, Bamboo Therapeutics Inc., Baxter International - Marketed Vaccines, BioRexis, Bioren, Bioren LLC, Blue Whale Re Ltd., C.E. Commercial Holdings C.V., C.E. Commercial Investments C.V., C.P. Pharmaceuticals International C.V., CICL Corporation, COC I Corporation, Catapult Genetics, Coley Pharmaceutical GmbH, Coley Pharmaceutical Group, Coley Pharmaceutical Group Inc., Continental Pharma Inc., Covx, Covx Technologies Ireland Limited, Cyanamid Inter-American Corporation, Cyanamid de Argentina S.A., Cyanamid de Colombia S.A., Distribuidora Mercantil Centro Americana S.A., Encysive Pharmaceuticals, Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc., Esperion LUV Development Inc., Esperion Therapeutics, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals Inc., Farminova Produtos Farmaceuticos de Inovacao Lda., Farmogene Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Ferrosan A/S, Ferrosan International A/S, Ferrosan S.R.L., FoldRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Foldrx Pharmaceuticals, Fort Dodge Manufatura Ltda., G. D. Searle & Co. Limited, G. D. Searle International Capital LLC, G. D. Searle LLC, GI Europe Inc., GI Japan Inc., GenTrac Inc., Genetics Institute LLC, Greenstone LLC, Haptogen Limited, Hospira, Hospira (China) Enterprise Management Co. Ltd., Hospira Adelaide Pty Ltd, Hospira Aseptic Services Limited, Hospira Australia Pty Ltd, Hospira Benelux BVBA, Hospira Chile Limitada, Hospira Deutschland GmbH, Hospira Enterprises B.V., Hospira France SAS, Hospira Healthcare B.V., Hospira Healthcare Corporation, Hospira Healthcare India Private Limited, Hospira Holdings (S.A.) Pty Ltd, Hospira Inc., Hospira Invicta S.A., Hospira Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, Hospira Ireland Sales Limited, Hospira Japan G.K., Hospira Limited, Hospira Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Hospira NZ Limited, Hospira Nordic AB, Hospira Philippines Inc., Hospira Portugal LDA, Hospira Produtos Hospitalares Ltda., Hospira Pte. Ltd., Hospira Pty Limited, Hospira Puerto Rico LLC, Hospira Singapore Pte Ltd, Hospira UK Limited, Hospira Worldwide LLC, Hospira Zagreb d.o.o., ICAgen, Idun Pharmaceuticals, Industrial Santa Agape S.A., InnoPharma, InnoPharma Inc., International Affiliated Corporation LLC, JMI-Daniels Pharmaceuticals Inc., John Wyeth & Brother Limited, Kiinteisto oy Espoon Pellavaniementie 14, King Pharmaceuticals Holdings LLC, King Pharmaceuticals LLC, King Pharmaceuticals Research and Development LLC, Korea Pharma Holding Company Limited, Laboratoires Pfizer S.A., Laboratorios Parke Davis S.L., Laboratorios Pfizer Ltda., Laboratorios Wyeth LLC, Laboratorios Wyeth S.A., Laboratorios Pfizer Lda., MTG Divestitures LLC, Mayne Pharma IP Holdings (Euro) Pty Ltd, Medivation, Medivation Field Solutions LLC, Medivation LLC, Medivation Neurology LLC, Medivation Prostate Therapeutics LLC, Medivation Services LLC, Medivation Technologies LLC, Meridian Medical Technologies Inc., Meridian Medical Technologies Limited, Monarch Pharmaceuticals LLC, Neusentis Limited, NextWave Pharmaceuticals, NextWave Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, P-D Co. LLC, PAH USA IN8 LLC, PF Americas Holding C.V., PF Asia Manufacturing B.V., PF PR Holdings C.V., PF PRISM C.V., PF PRISM Holdings S.a.r.l., PF Prism S.a.r.l., PFE Holdings G.K., PFE PHAC Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Pfizer Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Wyeth Holdings LLC, PFE Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) LLC, PHILCO Holdings S.a r.l., PHIVCO Corp., PHIVCO Holdco S.a r.l., PHIVCO Luxembourg S.a r.l., PN Mexico LLC, PT. Pfizer Parke Davis, Parke Davis & Company LLC, Parke Davis Limited, Parke Davis Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Parke-Davis Manufacturing Corp., Parkedale Pharmaceuticals Inc., Peak Enterprises LLC, Pfizer, Pfizer (China) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Pfizer (Perth) Pty Limited, Pfizer (Thailand) Limited, Pfizer (Wuhan) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer AB, Pfizer AG, Pfizer AS, Pfizer Africa & Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Veterinarian Products & Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer Anti-Infectives AB, Pfizer ApS, Pfizer Asia Manufacturing Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Asia Pacific Pte Ltd., Pfizer Atlantic Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Australia Holdings B.V., Pfizer Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Pfizer Australia Investments Pty. Ltd., Pfizer Australia Pty Limited, Pfizer B.V., Pfizer BH D.o.o., Pfizer Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer Biofarmaceutica Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Pfizer Biologics (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Pfizer Biologics Ireland Holdings Limited, Pfizer Biotech Corporation, Pfizer Bolivia S.A., Pfizer Canada Inc., Pfizer CentreSource Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Chile S.A., Pfizer Cia. Ltda., Pfizer Colombia Spinco I LLC, Pfizer Commercial Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Commercial Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Commercial TRAE Trading Kft., Pfizer Consumer Healthcare AB, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare GmbH, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare Ltd., Pfizer Consumer Manufacturing Italy S.r.l., Pfizer Corporation, Pfizer Corporation Austria Gesellschaft m.b.H., Pfizer Corporation Hong Kong Limited, Pfizer Croatia d.o.o., Pfizer Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Development LP, Pfizer Development Services (UK) Limited, Pfizer Domestic Ventures Limited, Pfizer Dominicana S.R.L, Pfizer ESP Pty Ltd, Pfizer East India B.V., Pfizer Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer Egypt S.A.E., Pfizer Enterprise Holdings B.V., Pfizer Enterprises LLC, Pfizer Enterprises SARL, Pfizer Europe Finance B.V., Pfizer Export B.V., Pfizer Export Company, Pfizer Export Holding Company B.V, Pfizer Finance Share Service (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Financial Services N.V./S.A., Pfizer France International Investments, Pfizer Free Zone Panama S. de R.L., Pfizer GEP S.L., Pfizer Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer Global Supply Japan Inc., Pfizer Global Trading, Pfizer Group Luxembourg Sarl, Pfizer Gulf FZ-LLC, Pfizer H.C.P. Corporation, Pfizer HK Service Company Limited, Pfizer Health AB, Pfizer Health Solutions Inc., Pfizer Healthcare Ireland, Pfizer Hellas A.E., Pfizer Himalaya Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Holding France, Pfizer Holding Ventures, Pfizer Holdings Corporation, Pfizer Holdings Europe Unlimited Company, Pfizer Holdings G.K., Pfizer Holdings International Corporation, Pfizer Holdings International Luxembourg (PHIL) Sarl, Pfizer Holdings North America SARL, Pfizer Hungary Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Inc., Pfizer Innovations AB, Pfizer Innovations LLC, Pfizer Innovative Supply Point International BVBA, Pfizer International LLC, Pfizer International Markets Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer International Operations, Pfizer International S. de R.L., Pfizer International Trading (Shanghai) Limited, Pfizer Investment Capital Unlimited Company, Pfizer Investment Co. Ltd., Pfizer Investment Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Ireland Investments Limited, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 1 LLC, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 2 LLC, Pfizer Ireland Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer Ireland Ventures Unlimited Company, Pfizer Italia S.r.l., Pfizer Italy Group Holding S.r.l., Pfizer Japan Inc., Pfizer LLC, Pfizer Laboratories (Pty) Limited, Pfizer Laboratories Limited, Pfizer Laboratories PFE (Pty) Ltd, Pfizer Leasing Ireland Limited, Pfizer Leasing UK Limited, Pfizer Limitada, Pfizer Limited, Pfizer Luxco Holdings SARL, Pfizer Luxembourg Global Holdings S.a r.l., Pfizer Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer MAP Holding Inc., Pfizer Manufacturing Austria G.m.b.H., Pfizer Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland Grundbesitz GmbH & Co. KG, Pfizer Manufacturing Holdings LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Manufacturing LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Services, Pfizer Medical Technology Group (Belgium) N.V., Pfizer Medicamentos Genericos e Participacoes Ltda., Pfizer Mexico Luxco SARL, Pfizer Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pfizer Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Animal Health and Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer New Zealand Limited, Pfizer Norge AS, Pfizer North American Holdings Inc., Pfizer OTC B.V., Pfizer Overseas LLC, Pfizer Oy, Pfizer PFE ApS, Pfizer PFE AsiaPac Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Pty Ltd, Pfizer PFE B.V., Pfizer PFE Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Belgium SPRL, Pfizer PFE Brazil Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE CIA. Ltda., Pfizer PFE Chile Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Colombia Holding Corp., Pfizer PFE Colombia S.A.S, Pfizer PFE Commercial Holdings LLC, Pfizer PFE Croatia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer PFE Finland Oy, Pfizer PFE France, Pfizer PFE Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Ireland Pharmaceuticals Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco 2 S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Pfizer PFE Limited, Pfizer PFE Luxembourg S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Mexico Holding 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE Netherlands Holding 1 C.V., Pfizer PFE New Zealand, Pfizer PFE New Zealand Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Norway Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE PILSA Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Peru Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Peru S.R.L., Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer PFE Private Limited, Pfizer PFE S.R.L, Pfizer PFE Service Company Holding Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer PFE Singapore Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Singapore Pte. Ltd., Pfizer PFE Spain B.V., Pfizer PFE Spain Holding S.L., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding 2 S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Switzerland GmbH, Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 2 B.V., Pfizer PFE UK Holding 4 LP, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 1 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 2 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 4 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 5 LLC, Pfizer PFE spol. s r.o., Pfizer PFE Ilaclar Anonim Sirketi, Pfizer Pakistan Limited, Pfizer Parke Davis (Thailand) Ltd., Pfizer Parke Davis Inc., Pfizer Parke Davis Sdn. Bhd., Pfizer Pharm Algerie, Pfizer Pharma GmbH, Pfizer Pharma PFE GmbH, Pfizer Pharmaceutical (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceutical Trading Limited Liability Company (a/k/a Pfizer Kft. or Pfizer LLC), Pfizer Pharmaceuticals B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Global B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Korea Limited, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals LLC, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Pfizer Pigments Inc., Pfizer Polska Sp. z.o.o., Pfizer Private Limited, Pfizer Production LLC, Pfizer Products Inc., Pfizer Products India Private Limited, Pfizer Research (NC) Inc., Pfizer Romania SRL, Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A. (Belgium), Pfizer S.A. de C.V., Pfizer S.A.S., Pfizer S.G.P.S. Lda., Pfizer S.L., Pfizer S.R.L., Pfizer SRB d.o.o., Pfizer Saidal Manufacturing, Pfizer Sante Familiale, Pfizer Saudi Limited, Pfizer Seiyaku K.K., Pfizer Service Company BVBA, Pfizer Service Company Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Services 1, Pfizer Services LLC, Pfizer Shared Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Shareholdings Intermediate SARL, Pfizer Singapore Holding Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Singapore Trading Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Spain Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Specialties Limited, Pfizer Strategic Investment Holdings LLC, Pfizer Sweden Partnership KB, Pfizer TRAE Holdings Kft., Pfizer Trading Polska sp.z.o.o., Pfizer Transactions Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Transactions LLC, Pfizer Transactions Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer Transport LLC, Pfizer Ukraine LLC, Pfizer Vaccines LLC, Pfizer Venezuela S.A., Pfizer Venture Investments LLC, Pfizer Ventures LLC, Pfizer Worldwide Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Zona Franca S.A., Pfizer spol. s r.o., Pharmacia, Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc., Pharmacia & Upjohn Company LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn S.A. de C.V., Pharmacia Brasil Ltda., Pharmacia Hepar LLC, Pharmacia Holding AB, Pharmacia Inter-American LLC, Pharmacia International B.V., Pharmacia LLC, Pharmacia Limited, Pharmacia Nostrum S.A., Pharmacia South Africa (Pty) Ltd, PowderJect Research Limited, PowderMed, Purepac Pharmaceutical Holdings LLC, Redvax, Renrall LLC, Rinat Neuroscience, Rinat Neuroscience Corp., Roerig Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Roerig S.A., Sao Cristovao Participacoes Ltda., Searle Laboratorios Lda., Serenex, Servicios P&U S. de R.L. de C.V., Shiley LLC, Sinergis Farma-Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Site Realty Inc., Solinor LLC, Sugen LLC, Tabor LLC, The Pfizer Incubator LLC, Therachon, Thiakis Limited, Treerly Health Co. Ltd, US Oral Pharmaceuticals Pty Ltd, Upjohn Laboratorios Lda., Vesteralens Naturprodukter A/S, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AB, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AS, Vesteralens Naturprodukter OY, Vicuron Holdings LLC, Vinci Farma S.A., W-L LLC, Warner Lambert, Warner Lambert Ilac Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Warner Lambert del Uruguay S.A., Warner-Lambert (Thailand) Limited, Warner-Lambert Company AG, Warner-Lambert Company LLC, Warner-Lambert Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Warner-Lambert S.A., Whitehall International Inc., Whitehall Laboratories Inc., Wyeth (Thailand) Ltd., Wyeth AB, Wyeth Australia Pty. Limited, Wyeth Ayerst Inc., Wyeth Ayerst S.a r.l., Wyeth Biopharma, Wyeth Canada ULC, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare LLC, Wyeth Europa Limited, Wyeth Farma S.A., Wyeth Holdings LLC, Wyeth Industria Farmaceutica Ltda., Wyeth KFT., Wyeth LLC, Wyeth Lederle S.r.l., Wyeth Lederle Vaccines S.A., Wyeth Pakistan Limited, Wyeth Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Company, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals FZ-LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Limited, Wyeth Puerto Rico Inc., Wyeth S.A.S, Wyeth Subsidiary Illinois Corporation, Wyeth Whitehall Export GmbH, Wyeth Whitehall SARL, Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) Limited, Wyeth-Ayerst International LLC, and Wyeth-Ayerst Promotions Limited.

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An expert on Medicare and related health insurance options with the state of Wisconsin will be holding a Basics of Medicare seminar on Wednesday, Aug. 23 at 1:30 p.m., in Conference Room at the Vernon County Sheriffs Department.

The presentor will be Sam Johnson, an Insurance counselor at the Medigap Helpline. The presentation is a Medicare overview touching on all the various options people may haveSupplements, Advantage, EGI, COBRA, Medicare A and B, Part D, SeniorCare and other creditable coverage, and the Extra Help program or Medicaid.

The seminar is ideal for people who will be turning 65 in the upcoming months and will be newly eligible for Medicare, but it will also be helpful to any Medicare beneficiary who has questions or concerns about the complicated Medicare options and benefits, Johnson said.

The presentation is open to the public. All information will be neutral and unbiased, with no selling or endorsements of any plans or products.

The seminar is sponsored by the Aging & Disability Resource Center of Vernon County, where Benefit Specialists are available locally as a resource on Medicare and other public programs.

For more information on the seminar or to make an appointment with a Benefit Specialist, contact the ADRC in Viroqua at 608-637-5201 or toll-free at 1-888-637-1323.
The Indian Air Force had sternly opposed the Army's acquisition of helicopters for nearly two years now, as the Air Force is supposed to be in-charge of all aerial warfare. However, the Army's argument was that it should have full command and control on tactical air assets, so that they can be deployed alongside the strike corps without even a slight delay, while the IAF can concentrate on its larger, strategic role.

The Army already has in its arsenal, two helicopter squadrons, operating ageing Russian made Mil Mi-25 and Mi-35 helicopters, the earliest of which was made in 1972. It is obvious that the Army would want to replace them as soon as possible. The approval received from the Defence Acquisitions Council on Thursday will soon re-equip the Army to take on the enemy with a modern, state-of-the-art attack helicopter.

The Indian Air Force will take deliveries of the 22 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters starting July 2019. The helicopters are fully-specced variants, equipped with 812 AGM-114L-3 Hellfire Longbow missiles, 542 AGM-114R-3 Hellfire-II missiles, 245 Stinger Block I-92H missiles and 12 AN/APG-78 fire-control radars.

These are some of the most modern and sophisticated weaponry in today's time and age. The same is used by American forces too. Immediately after the IAF completes taking delivery of the AH-64E Apache, the Army would be next in line, adding a third attack helicopter squadron.

About the AH-64E Attack Helicopter:

The AH-64E Apache is a state-of-the-art attack helicopter manufactured by American aviation giant Boeing. The helicopter first made its debut in 1975, bring manufactured by Hughes Helicopters. The rights to manufacture were later taken over by McDonnell Douglas in 1984 before Boeing took over in 1997. Over 2,000 AH-64s have been produced till date, in its various iterations over time.

The AH-64E' is the latest and most advanced iteration of the helicopter, after all, it is the latest one in the line-up of AH-64s, coming after A', B', C, and D'. Boeing conceptualised the next iteration of the AH-64 in 2014, called the AH-64F, which is forecasted to replace the current one by 2040.

The AH-64 Apache is a legend of sorts among the aviation fraternity, having played a vital role in big international conflicts. American AH-64s have served in the invasion of Panama, in the Gulf war, in the Kosovo war, in the Afghanistan campaign, and also in the Iraqi war. Israel used the Apache in its military conflicts in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip while British and Dutch Apaches have seen deployments in the Afghani and Iraqi wars.

One of the revolutionary features of the Apache is its helmet mounted display involving the Integrated Helmet and Display Sighting System (IHADSS). The pilot or gunner can aim the helicopter's 30 mm automatic M230 Chain Gun to the position they are looking at. So, all they have to do is look at the target and fire. The avionics also features advanced night-vision systems.

DriveSpark Thinks!

The list of advanced features on this helicopter is almost endless, and it is indeed a huge advantage for Indian troops to have such a machine on our side. Having it serve in both the Indian Air force and also the Indian Army is even more advantageous for our defence forces.

While the Army can use their Apaches to back up the ground troops in known areas of conflict, the Air Force can use them to provide emergency backup. For example in the current scenario, If the helicopters were already here, the Indian Army could position a few of their choppers at Doklam, amidst the stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops. The Air Force on the other hand could take care of areas in Kashmir and Rajasthan, bordering Pakistan.
DHAKA  Bangladesh textile and apparel companies have reportedly drawn up new proposals to launch their own factory inspection and remediation initiative  similar to those currently been run by overseas interests such as the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Safety and the Alliance for Worker Safety.

The new move to strengthen workplace safety in the Bangladesh apparel sector via a local organisation is consistent with the Bangaldesh Accords own objectives, which hopes that a Bangladesh-based regulatory body will take over its work by 2021.

The Accord recently announced a 3-year extension of its tenure in Bangladesh, which was opposed by garment makers in the country.
Smallpox is an infectious disease caused by variola virus that has killed millions of people over the centuries. The disease is characterized by the growth of innumerable bumps that cover the entire body of the patient. The disease is fatal in 30% of cases, but this rate is much higher for hemorrhagic smallpox and flat-type smallpox.

Vaccination against smallpox throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was successful and contributed to the eradication of the disease in 1977, after a successful worldwide campaign (1967-1977) coordinated by the World Health Organization. The vaccine was developed by British physician Edward Jenner in 1796 and the virus circulating in the vaccine was named as vaccinia virus.

Cowpox virus, a cousin of variola virus, causes a mild smallpox-like disease in cows. The story goes that Jenner was told that milkers who acquired the "cow-version" of smallpox were immune to the human version of the disease. Thus, one day Jenner decided to perform a risky experiment. The researcher took pustular material from the lesion of a milker and used it to inoculate a young boy. If the hypothesis that previous cowpox infection protected humans from smallpox proved right, then the boy would not develop smallpox when later challenged with smallpox pustular material. Sure enough the young boy remained immune to smallpox and the experiment was a milestone in the history of the smallpox vaccine. Following this success, vaccination (from the Latin vacca meaning cow) was adopted worldwide as the main strategy to prevent smallpox.

According to this historical account, we could logically expect that the virus found in today's smallpox vaccine would be cowpox. But in fact this is not the case. Virtually all batches of modern smallpox vaccine contain no cowpox virus, but instead what is called vaccinia virus. Full-genome sequencing has revealed that the two viruses are quite different and that one could have not mutated into the other. How to explain, then, that a vaccine originally developed using what was supposedly cowpox virus shows no trace of it? Where and when did the mix-up occur?

It is known that natural cases of cowpox were quite rare in Jenner's time, which may have prompted him to perform the same experiments in humans using horsepox-infected pustular material. Did Jenner in fact play with horsepox virus as well as cowpox virus? If so, what was the role of horsepox virus in the development of the smallpox vaccine? And how to explain the observation that horsepox virus and the Brazilian smallpox vaccine bear great similarity ? The fact that vaccinia virus may cause horsepox in horses adds to the confusion.

These and many other questions surrounding the birth of what is considered the most successful vaccine ever developed are explored in a new study entitled "Revisiting Jenner's mysteries, the role of the Beaugency lymph in the evolutionary path of ancient smallpox vaccines" and conducted by Clarissa Damaso, a professor at the Instituto de Biofisica Carlos Chagas Filho at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The study, published on the 18th of August in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, is an in-depth investigation of the mysteries associated with the development of smallpox vaccine, and a rich account of how the vaccine lymph was spread worldwide. According to Damaso, "the intense mixing and exchange of several smallpox vaccine samples that occurred during the 19th century has resulted in an intricate and complex evolutionary relationship involving different types of viruses and lymphs that we are still trying to understand."

Combining the use of modern technology and access to historical records may eventually shed light on all the ingredients added to this mysterious recipe that has no doubt saved millions of people worldwide.

###

The study was supported by CNPq, Capes, and Faperj, in Brazil.
As conditions warm, fish and wildlife living at the southern edge of their species' ranges are most at risk, according to Penn State researchers who led a major collaborative study of how wood frogs are being affected by climate change.

However, determining which species and which populations are in danger of declining or disappearing is not simple or straightforward, according to researcher David Miller, assistant professor of wildlife population ecology, College of Agricultural Sciences. Local and regional precipitation trends are nearly as important as temperature in determining the fate of many animals, he explained, and that's especially true with moisture-sensitive creatures such as amphibians.

Miller's lab spearheaded the study that included 14 universities, the U.S. Geological Survey, and several other state and federal agencies, looking at long-term monitoring data from 746 wood frog populations in 27 study areas, from Tennessee to Canada. The research focused on how climatic variation affected population growth rates and how these relationships varied with respect to long-term climate.

In many of the wood frog populations studied, researchers found evidence of interacting temperature and precipitation influencing population size, such as warmer summers having less of a negative effect in areas that received more precipitation. Some of the findings, which were published early online today (Aug. 19) in Global Change Biology, were expected, but some were counter-intuitive, Miller noted.

As anticipated, researchers saw wood frog populations that seemed to be suffering from warmer than normal summer temperatures in hotter areas in the southern part of the range. Similarly, they found higher than average rainfall in areas that typically experience lower annual rainfall saw positive effects on wood frog population growth.

But other results were contrary to expectations, such as positive effects of higher than normal rainfall in wetter parts of the range and positive responses to winter warming, especially in milder areas. In general, researchers found wood frogs were more sensitive to changes in temperature or temperature interacting with precipitation than to changes in precipitation alone.

Northward shifts in wildlife ranges may be expected in coming years or decades, noted lead researcher Staci Amburgey, a doctoral degree student in ecology, but that trend may depend nearly as much on demographic weather patterns as warming temperatures. And in the case of wood frogs, other factors are also at play.

The study's results suggest that sensitivity to changes in climate cannot be predicted simply by knowing locations within the species' climate envelope, she pointed out. Many climate processes did not affect population growth rates as expected, based on range position. Processes such as species interactions, local adaptation and interactions with the physical landscape likely affect the responses researchers observed.

"Wood frogs are really broadly distributed, so I don't think the species is going to be declining anytime soon," said Amburgey, who started studying amphibians when she was an undergraduate and master's degree student at Colorado State. "But having said that, it appears that populations in the southern portion of the wood frog's range are vulnerable if we have more hot, dry summers. Certainly frogs in the southern part of their range are more sensitive to hot years than frogs farther north, where the conditions will not push their physiological tolerances."

This study was novel because researchers did not simply document where wood frogs exist and where they do not, Amburgey explained. Instead, they analyzed reproduction rates by counting egg masses in spring pools to determine where the amphibian's populations were growing or declining -- trying to determine how each population was responding to year-to-year differences in climate.

Wood frogs are an ideal species to study to develop predictions about how animals will respond to warming conditions, Miller believes. They are cold-weather frogs with a range that extends farther north than other amphibians. As such, they have evolved with some amazing adaptations, not the least of which is the ability to survive freezing solid in winters.

"In a warming world, wood frogs at the southern end of their range may be in trouble," he said. "By freezing solid, they thrive as far north as Alaska. They spend winters near the surface, and they are one of the first species to come out when things thaw. Then they head immediately to small wetlands in the forest that tend to dry out during the summer to breed, and their tadpoles develop really quickly and get out into the woods early. They are an important part of our forested ecosystems in the Northeast and a truly unique species."

###

The Amphibian Decline Working Group supported by the U.S. Geological Survey's John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis supported this work.
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critic's rating: 4.0/5

Bareilly Ki Barfi Review

Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Rajkummar Rao, Kriti Sanon, Pankaj Tripathy, Seema Pahwa



Director: Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari



Quick take: A quirky comedy that will leave you happy



Rating: 4/5

Director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari wowed us with the powerful film with a bang on message about education for girls  Nil Battey Sannata -- and she's whipped up another neat gem in Bareilly Ki Barfi. The film, which is based on the French novel The Ingredients Of Love by Nicolas Barreau picks up just the right rhythm at the beginning and doesn't lose it till the end.





Bitti Mishra ( Kriti Sanon) is a happy-go-lucky girl who is the apple of her father's eye. Like most Indian mothers, Bittis mother too wants the darling daughter to get hitched to a good guy soon. Bitti wants a partner who understands her and more importantly, who accepts her the way she is. She feels she's found that special someone when she reads a book called Bareilly Ki Barfi and finds herself described in the pages. She longs to meet the writer, whom she feels is her soulmate and her search makes her cross the paths of two men  Chirag Dubey, played by Ayushmann Khurrana, who owns a printing press and Pritam Vidrohi, the supposed writer of the book, played by Rajkummar Rao. A love triangle ensues and whether true love triumphs or not forms the crux of the film.





The writing is the soul of the film and full marks to Nitesh Tiwari and Shreyas Jain for coming-up with a top-notch screenplay and some crackling dialogue. Even when the proceedings go slack, the wordplay perks them up. They are colloquial and authentic and bring on the most laughs. Ashwiny had shown that shes a sensitive director in Nil Battey Sannata. Here, the story is more lightweight but even in a comedy the director has managed to add an emotional punch. The best scenes of the film are those involving Kriti Sanon and Pankaj Tripathy, her father. They dont speak much out-loud but even their silences and gestures reveal all about the bond they share. And the scenes between Tripathy and Seema Pahwa, who plays his wife, are a hoot too. You laugh when we see him conversing with the fan in the night as she snores away to glory and yet you do notice the affection beneath the indifference. Care has been taken to maintain a small town milieu. The setting, the art direction, the background score, the sound design all make you believe youre sneaking a peek into real lives than watching a film.





Kriti Sanon has grown leaps and bounds as an actor here. Shes comfortable playing a small-town girl who is content to rebel in her own small ways but who loves her parents and neighbourhood too much to consider running away for good. Ayushmann Khurrana suits the part of a forlorn lover who isnt sure he can handle heartbreak a second time. But the actor who walks away with the barfi is Rajkummar Rao. Hes too good as the friend who is cajoled into becoming a rowdy and his transformations from an introvert into an extreme extrovert both in terms of body language and speech patterns are spot on. Pankaj Tripathy and Seema Pahwa also shine as the bickering husband and wife. Mention must also be made of Javed Akhtar who has narrated the film superbly.

All-in-all, Bareilly Ki Barfi is a good second film from Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari and gives her a chance to prove her versatility. Watch the film for some good, clean fun. It will give you ample laughs throughout and youll walk away from the theatre with a satisfied smile on your face...
Padmavati Was First Offered To Salman Khan & Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

As per a report in Open Magazine, Padmavati was first offered to Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan years back.

Recommended Video Salman Khan REJECTED working with Aishwarya Rai in Padmavati ; Here;s why | FilmiBeat

The Ugly Breakup Played Villain

However, things failed to materialized due to their infamous public fall-out.

SLB Still Had Hopes

Despite of all this, filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali still hoped to make Padmavati with Salman and Aishwarya.

He Reached Out To Them

Reportedly, the filmmaker got in touch with the stars to check if they were still willing to do the film.

Ash Would Have Agreed

Much to the surprise of everyone, Aishwarya would have agreed to do the film.

But

She wanted Salman Khan to play the role of Alauddin Khilji, the main antagonist as Rani Padmavati and Khilji have no scenes together in the film.

Salman Khan Wasn't Happy

As expected, Salman Khan declined the film.

He Wanted To Romance Ash

A source close to the actor informed the magazine that Salman was more than happy to be a part of the film if it was a love story. He was adamant to recreate his magical chemistry of Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam with Aishwarya. So he didn't settle for a film where he didn't get to romance her.
While the stock market has been riding high this year, there are still pockets of value. Among those, the market's rally seems to have forgotten top-tier energy infrastructure companies Kinder Morgan (KMI 2.69%), Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), and Enterprise Products Partners (EPD 0.12%). All three have all fallen since the start of the year despite making significant progress on their value-creation initiatives. As a result, investors can pick up any one of these three great stocks on sale.

Mission accomplished

The stock price of natural gas pipeline giant Kinder Morgan (KMI 2.69%) has declined about 10% this year to less than $19 per share in recent days. At that price, Kinder Morgan trades at just 9.5 times the $1.99 per share in distributable cash flow (DCF) it expects to produce this year. That's an embarrassingly cheap valuation for the company considering that it has cost as much as 20 times DCF in the recent past and typically trades at a mid-teens multiple.

One of the reasons the stock is so cheap is that Kinder Morgan got itself into some financial trouble a couple of years ago after a combination of too much debt and the crashing of the oil market put the company at risk of losing its treasured investment-grade credit rating. To avoid that fate, the company slashed its dividend and used that cash to finance growth projects as it worked to repair its balance sheet. While it took the company nearly two years to shore up its financial situation, it recently announced a massive 60% dividend increase for 2018 and plans to deliver 25% increases in 2019 and 2020. However, despite the promise of higher shareholder returns in the future, the stock hasn't taken off, which means that investors buying today can get this great dividend growth stock while it's still on sale.

Finally turning the corner

Midstream giant Energy Transfer Partners also had its share of troubles during the recent oil market downturn. Cash flow had been on a steady decline due to the impact lower oil and gas prices had on its volumes and margins. However, the company finally turned a corner in the second quarter, posting robust DCF growth thanks to the recent completion of several strategic initiatives. Meanwhile, it has more growth projects coming down the pipeline, which should increase cash flow and improve its leverage ratio.

That said, despite all this progress Energy Transfer Partners' unit price has fallen 23% this year, which has had the opposite effect on its distribution yield, which now stands at a gaudy 11.2%. When a payout gets into the double digits, it's usually a sign of danger because the market believes that a dividend cut might be on the horizon. However, that doesn't appear to be the case at Energy Transfer Partners, since its coverage ratio was 1.18 times last quarter, which is a vast improvement from prior years thanks to the company's decision to merge with a sibling company to improve its coverage and leverage ratios. On top of that, Energy Transfer Partners has benefited from some financial support from parent company Energy Transfer Equity (ET -0.97%). While that parental support will dwindle next year, Energy Transfer Partners should be able to overcome that obstacle because it's on pace to complete several major expansion projects this year that would fuel significant earnings and cash flow growth, as long-term, fee-based contracts underpin those assets. In fact, Energy Transfer Partners expects those projects to produce low-double-digit annual distribution growth over the near term.

A high-end yield

Natural gas liquids giant Enterprise Products Partners hasn't had the financial troubles of its peers. As a result, it has continued to steadily increase its distribution to investors, and recently notched its 52nd consecutive quarterly increase. However, despite that steady performance, units have fallen about 7% this year even though the market has touched new all-time highs and the company has grown both cash flow and its payout. Due to those factors, units currently yield 6.5%.

Meanwhile, Enterprise Products Partners will likely continue increasing its payout over the coming years. That's because it not only boasts one of the strongest financial profiles in the sector, but it has $9 billion of expansion projects under construction and more in development. This outlook suggests that investors buying today can lock in a high yield as well as enjoy steady raises for at least the next several years.

Get paid to wait

The sell-off in these pipeline giants this year gives investors the opportunity to lock in an excellent starting yield, which should rise over time as these companies make progress on their growth plans. On top of that, all three companies should deliver healthy capital appreciation in the future not only as their valuations revert to the historical norms, but as their expansion projects fuel healthy earnings growth. That combination of growth and income has the potential to drive market-smashing returns over the long run.
Comparing your savings to those of your peers may help keep you on the right track to securing a worry-free retirement, and thanks to number crunching by Fidelity Investments, we now know that the average American's balance in retirement accounts is roughly $100,000.

Digging into the numbers

Fidelity Investments is one of the nation's biggest investment companies. It's home to 15.1 million 401(k) accounts and 8.8 million IRA accounts. Its perch provides an excellent view of the progress Americans are making in saving money for retirement, and based on its latest figures, there's reason for optimism.

According to their analysis, the average 401(k) plan participant has successfully salted away $97,700 as of June 30. Meanwhile, the average balance of an IRA stands at $100,200. In both cases, these amounts are nicely higher than their levels last year. The average 401(k) and IRA balance has grown 9.6% and 11.8% over the past 12 months, respectively.

Account Q2 2017 Q2 2016 Q2 2012 401(k) $97,700 $89,100 $73,000 IRA $100,200 $89,600 $73,300

What's driving balances higher?

The majority of the growth in average account balances is due to a stock market that's marched significantly higher. However, accounts are also going up because people are steadily increasing their contributions.

In the 12 months through June 30, the S&P 500 returned 17.9%, and as a result, the stock market's rally accounts for 72% of the increase in account balances. Meanwhile, employees contributed an average of $5,850 to their 401(k), up 4% from this time last year.

The increase in contributions could be due in part to employers increasingly including auto escalation features in their retirement plans. Auto escalation allows workers to set and forget increasing how much of their salary they set aside in their 401(k) plan, and it's a great way to give retirement savings a booster shot.

Typically, workers are enrolled in plans at a contribution rate of 3% that's unlikely to provide a sizable retirement nest egg. Increasing the contribution rate, however, can be challenging for many workers who are trying to balance their budgets, and as a result, too many workers leave their rate untouched. By automating the process, second-guessing that could otherwise keep someone from contributing more to their account can be eliminated, and if the increase is set at a reasonable 1% annually, the impact on a person's monthly budget is modest.

Balances may also be benefiting from more workers taking advantage of catch-up contributions. Workers age 50 and up can contribute an additional $1,000 per year to either a traditional or Roth IRA and an additional $6,000 per year to a 401(k) plan. In 2017, someone age 50 or older can set aside $6,500 in an IRA and $24,000 in a 401(k) plan.

Account balances have also increased because of wage growth. According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics' average hourly and weekly earnings report, the typical private worker earned $26.36 per hour in July, up from $25.71 on year ago.

Looking ahead

Stock market tailwinds aren't likely to prop up account balances forever, but long-term investors have historically been rewarded for staying the course with their investments and avoiding market timing. If history is any indicator, stock markets will retreat at some point, but when they do, it should be viewed as an opportunity to increase contributions to retirement accounts, not decrease them. While there's no telling what average retirement balances will look like next month, next quarter, or next year, steadily increasing investments to retirement accounts have been the biggest driver of their growth over time.
Samsung Galaxy Note 8 appears on the online store before launch News oi -Vijeta Samsung Galaxy Note 8's U.S. unlocked version may be revealed with the carrier version. Galaxy Note 8 will boast dual camera setup making it the first device from Samsung to house the feature.

Samsung has listed the U.S. unlocked Galaxy Note 8 on its online Samsung store page for consumers in the States. The product link is however inactive currently and the price for the device has not been mentioned either.

There have been numerous rumors and leaks related to the device and it doesn't seem that speculations will find rest until the Galaxy Note 8 is finally showcased next week in New York. Well, not all rumors and leaks were gibberish, at least not the leaked brochure for the device. The same brochure is also seen on the Samsung Store page in the U.S.

This confirms that the device will ship with 64GB of in built storage with the base model. Samsung may also release U.S. unlocked device alongside carrier versions which means users outside of the U.S. may get their hands on it as early as possible. Although looking at the release of earlier flagships it seems unlikely. Samsung Galaxy S8's unlocked version was released after a month of release of the carrier version. Similarly, Galaxy S7's unlocked version came out three months after the release of carrier version.

The design for the device had already been revealed in leaks. The specifications for the device have already been speculated to be at par with Samsung Galaxy S8. The key feature of Galaxy Note 8 is the dual camera setup that it will supposedly offer. Note 8 will be Samsung's first device with dual rear camera setup.

The device will come with curved edges and Super AMOLED display.

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Haiti - Canada : More than 6,400 Haitians have illegally crossed the Quebec border !





Thursday morning in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, border village a few kilometers from the border post, the Chief Superintendent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Claude Castonguay revealed at a joint press conference that since early June, an unprecedented number of people, more than 7,500 had been intercepted after illegally crossed the border between Quebec and the United States to Roxham road. 85%, or nearly 6,400 people (including nearly 500 children) are of Haitian origin.



Only for the first two weeks of August, 3,800 people were intercepted in Canada against 2,984 in July and "only" 781 in June...



Representatives from the Canada Border Services Agency and of the Immigration and Refugee Commission, present at the conference insisted that the border crossing was not "a pass for Canada," they stated that if after analysis of the file, it is showing that the applicant does not need the protection of Canada, that person will be returned to his country of origin. Recalling that refugee status is granted to those fleeing war, persecution and terror in their country.



Louis Dumas, Director General, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, bounds in the same direction noting that "[...] enter outside the border crossings is illegal and gives no guarantee to remain in the country," recalling that barely 50% of Haitian asylum seekers had been successful in Canada in recent years.



According to Stephane Handfield, a lawyer specializing in immigration, Haitian families who will see their asylum application refused, risks being separated. He explains that children born in the United States of Haitian parents are US citizens and Canada must, according to law, send parents back to Haiti and children in the United States, an unacceptable situation for families...



The camp at the border currently accommodates nearly 1,200 people and many children who stay on average 2 to 4 days before being transferred to temporary accommodation in Montreal.



Claude Castonguay said that the rate of illegal migrants arriving daily from the United States is relatively constant and varies between 200 and 300 every day 5 to 10% are children.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21788-haiti-politics-haitian-migrant-file-end-of-mission-in-canada.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21774-haiti-flash-the-canadian-army-builds-a-border-camp-for-haitian-migrants.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21762-haiti-quebec-two-haitian-ministers-on-mission-in-montreal.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21748-haiti-montreal-nearly-2-400-haitians-seeking-asylum-ceci-calls-for-help.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21717-haiti-flash-waves-of-haitian-refugees-unprecedented-in-quebec.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21037-haiti-flash-extension-of-tps-procedures-to-follow.html



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Ambassador of Haiti to the OAS recalled

On Wednesday, the Ambassador of Haiti to the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS), Jean Victor Harvel Jean-Baptiste, appointed in 2016 under the Privert Transitional Government to replace Ambassador Edmond Bocchit, was recalled by the Haitian Chancellery. Leon Charles, the Minister Counselor at the Permanent Representation of Haiti to the OAS in Washington DC, will assume his acting position pending the appointment of a new Ambassador.



Barcelona attack, message from Moise

Following the attack of Barcelona, Spain, which killed 14 people and wounded over 100, the President Jovenel Moise sent his deepest condolences to the families and relatives of the victims...



Haiti excluded from a world report

The recently published World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017 does not include Haiti because Haiti has not met the minimum requirements, just as Guinea, Guyana, Myanmar, Seychelles and Swaziland "For this reason, these economies are not included in this year's edition of this report."



Minister of Economy defends his budget in the Senate

On Thursday, Patrick Salomon, Minister of the Economy and Finance, gave the reasons for the 2017-2018 budget law in the Senate. This new stage follows the favorable vote obtained in the Chamber of Deputies where the draft budget law obtained a favorable vote https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21758-haiti-politics-finance-bill-2017-2018-voted-almost-unanimously.html . Preliminary discussions took place between the Minister and Senators Herve Fourcand, Nahoum Marcellus and Sorel Jacinthe, before the quorum was reached and the session opened by Youri Latortue.



Moise inspects work at the airport

Thursday, President Jovenel Moise went to Toussaint Louverture International Airport to inspect the modernization and rehabilitation work in progress https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-21771-haiti-politics-follow-up-of-works-at-the-toussaint-louverture-international-airport.html



Installation of the Deputy DG to the UCREF

Jean Claudy Pierre, the Director General of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security (MJSP) acting on behalf of Minister Heidi Fortune, has installed Ronald D'Mezart as head of the Central Financial Intelligence Unit (UCREF), an institution under the authority of the MJSP. He succeeds to this postion to Me Clevens Sanon.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Hyderabad : In a shocking incident, a 16-year-old girl has been married to an elderly man from Oman, Ahmed, 65. The minors mother, Syeeda Unnisa, a resident of Nawab Saheb Kunta, on Wednesday lodged a complaint with police pleading the girl be brought back to India from Muscat.

Unnisa charged her husbands sister Ghousia and her husband Sikander for getting the girl married to the sheik, who had come to Hyderabad before Ramzan. Unnisa said she had refused to allow her daughter to be married to the sheik, but Sikander had got a qazi to perform the wedding at a hotel at Barkas.

The sheik is saying he had bought my daughter for Rs 5 lakh. He said this was paid to Sikander. Only if this amount is paid, he said he would send my daughter back to India, Unnisa said in the complaint lodged with the Falakunuma police on Wednesday. Sikander allegedly showed the minor girl videos about a lavish lifestyle she might lead in Oman if she married the sheik.

After the marriage, the Omani national had stayed at a hotel for four days with his minor bride. After that, she was left at the house of Sikander at Teegalkunta.The Omani national then left India. Sikander himself arranged passports and other documents for the girl to fly to Oman. Syeed Unnisa said she had been paying repeated visits to the house of Sikander to get her daughter back.

I am being threatened when I ask him to get my daughter back, Syeeda Unnisa said. She met ACP, Falaknuma, Mohd Tajuddin Ahmed and urged that the culprits be booked and the girl brought back to India.

Source : TOI
Helsinki : At least three people were killed in stabbing attacks in Finland and Germany on Friday, a day after over a dozen people were massacred in terror attacks in two Spanish cities, media reports said.

Two people were killed and six were injured in a stabbing spree in the Finnish city of Turku on Friday, police said, after officers shot one suspect and warned several others could be at large.

There are eight victims in the stabbing. Two dead and six injured, Turku police tweeted.

Police shot one suspect in the legs and arrested him. Security forces wrote on Twitter that police were looking for other possible perpetrators.

In the western German city of Wuppertal, one man was killed and another injured in a stabbing incident.

The attacker was still on the loose, the police said.

We can confirm there has been a deadly crime. One man has died and another man is in hospital, a German police spokeswoman told AFP.

The police said they were hunting for one or more assailants, but could not immediately provide more information about the circumstances of the attack.

The stabbing happened at around 1245 GMT in the citys Elberfeld area.

The death toll in a double attack in Spain rose to 14 on Friday, as the country reeled from the two vehicle rampages that saw drivers plough into pedestrians in Barcelona and Cambrils, another seaside town.

The emergency services said a woman injured in the Cambrils attack has died, bringing the total to 14 in both attacks.

Earlier in the day, the Spanish police said that they had shot dead four suspected terrorists and left another injured, who later succumbed to his injuries early Friday in Cambrils.

The regional government of Catalonia, where both Barcelona and Cambrils are located, also confirmed the incident, which police had earlier qualified as a possible terrorist attack.

Claiming the attack, jihadi-affiliated news agency Amaq said the attackers were soldiers of Islamic State.

Were united in grief, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said in a televised address after rushing to Barcelona, the biggest city in Catalonia, a region in Spains northeast whose separatist government is defying Madrid.

Above all, were united in the firm intention to defeat those who want to take our values and way of life from us, Rajoy added.

US President Donald Trump condemned the terror attack and said the United States will do whatever is necessary to help, adding: Be tough & strong, we love you!

French President Emmanuel Macron  whose country has witnessed a series of bloody jihadist atrocities including a truck rampage in Nice in July 2016 that killed 86 people  said his thoughts were with the victims of the tragic attack.

The Nice carnage and other assaults including the 2015 shootings and bombings on Paris nightspots were claimed by the Islamic State, but it is believed to be the first Islamic States claim of an attack in Spain.

Catalonia has the highest concentration of radicalised Islamists in the country along with Madrid and the Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla in northern Morocco.

Source : Zee News
Mumbai, Aug 19 (IBNS) : A day after the exit of Vishal Sikka as CEO, the Infosys Board on Saturday approved a share buyback programme of up to Rs 13,000 crore, reports said.

Infosys, India's second biggest IT firm, said that it would buy back shares up to Rs 13,000 crore at a fixed price of Rs 1,150 per share.

The buyback comes in the wake of the resignation of Vishal Sikka, who was embroiled in a feud with the company founders. Sikka cited "continuous stream of distractions and disruptions" among reasons for quitting- a development that augured crisis in the prestigious organisation, headquartered in Bengaluru.

Sikka's resignation did not augur well for Infosys with the company shares crashing by 9.6 per cent in a single day with investors selling off scrips.

The buyback is a way of rewarding shareholders in an efficient and cost-effective manner. A buyback allows companies to invest in themselves.

Buyback leads to a reduction of the number of shares outstanding on the market, which in turn increase the proportion of shares a company owns.
On August 5, 2017, the Taliban and Islamic State (IS, formerly, Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, also Daesh) jointly massacred 50 men, women and children in the remote Mirzawalang village of Sayad District in northern Sar-e-Pul Province. The majority of those killed were Shias. Most were shot but some were beheaded.

On August 1, 2017, a suicide bomber stormed into the largest Shiite mosque, the Jawadia Mosque, opening fire on worshippers before blowing himself up, killing 29 people and wounding another 64 in Heart, the capital city of Herat Province. The attack was later claimed by IS.

On Jul 24 2017, 24 civilians were killed and 42 were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Kabul city. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing.

On July 1, 2017, Taliban insurgents killed 13 people in an attack on a mosque in the Chemtal District of Balkh Province.

On June 22, 2017, 38 people were killed and 60 were wounded when a car bomb exploded close to the Kabul Bank branch in Lashkargah city, the provincial capital of the Helmand Province.

On 31 May, 2107, in the deadliest incident documented since 2001, 180 civilians were killed and nearly 500 were injured in a truck bomb attack in Kabul city.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in its Mid-year Report released on July 17, 2017, shows a two per cent increase in civilian deaths between January 1 and June 30, 2017, as compared to the same period last year. According to the report, a total of 1,662 civilian deaths were confirmed between January 1 and June 30, 2017. UNAMA emphasized that extreme harm to civilians continued amidst a worsening toll from suicide attacks, with greater impact on women and children. According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), another 154 civilians have been killed across Afghanistan since July 1, 2017, (data till August 13, 2017).

Meanwhile, the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) in its most recent quarterly report based on data provided by United States Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A) and Resolute Support, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'s mission in Afghanistan, on July 30, 2017, asserted that the Afghan Government continues to cede "less vital areas" in order to "prevent defeat." According to the report, the Taliban continues to control 11 Districts and influences 34 of Afghanistan's 407 Districts (11 percent), while the Afghan Government controls 97 Districts and influences 146 (60 percent). Twenty-nine percent of Afghanistan's Districts remain contested. According to SIGAR, Kunduz Province has the largest percentage of Districts under Taliban control or influence (five of seven). Uruzgan (four of six Taliban controlled or influenced) and Helmand (nine of 14) round out the top three.

Worryingly, on August 10, 2017, Afghan Ministry of Defense (MoD) spokesman Dawlat Waziri stated, "More than twenty terrorist groups are fighting in Afghanistan and regional intelligence services are supporting them."

The current authorized strength of Afghan National Defense Security Force (ANDSF) is insufficient, at 352,000, including 195,000 Afghan National Army (ANA) and 157,000 Afghan National Police (ANP). Moreover, corruption in general has hampered successes of the ANDSF missions in their fight against insurgents. Addressing the first ever conference on the Government's campaign against endemic corruption in security agencies, on August 8, 2017, President Ashraf Ghani declared that no one, including him, would interfere in appointments within security organizations. Similarly, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Abdullah Abdullah stated, at the same conference, "The sale of equipment and weapons is shocking. The law should be enforced equally on all. If any neglect occurs, be sure the people will think the law has been abused."

Having gained strength over the last one year with the integration of several al Qaeda affiliates, the Taliban show no willingness to enter into negotiations with the Afghan Government. The Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in its latest report on July 6, 2017, noted, "Despite several regional and international efforts, the Taliban continue to be reticent and currently do not demonstrate a willingness to enter into negotiations with the Government of Afghanistan." The report further alleged that the Taliban continued to benefit from safe havens in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, which enables their fighters to rest and recuperate.

Earlier, a June 2017 US Department of Defense Report asserted, "Afghan oriented militant groups, including the Taliban and Haqqani Network, retain freedom of action inside Pakistani territory and benefit from support from elements of the Pakistani Government. Although Pakistani military operations have disrupted some militant sanctuaries, certain extremist groups such as the Taliban and the Haqqani Network were able to relocate and continue to operate in and from Pakistan."

Further, unveiling the role of Pakistani Islamists in Afghanistan, Esmatullah, an insurgent belonging to the Punjab Province of Pakistan, arrested in the southeastern Paktia Province of Afghanistan, confessed on August 8, 2017, that he was attracted to insurgent groups and was trained by Lashkar-e Jhangvi (LeJ), Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), all Pakistani terrorist formations. According to Esmatullah, the Islamist leaders, Mawlavi Sahak of LeJ, Mawlavi Iqbl of SSP and Dr. Shukor of JeM were luring volunteers to terrorist camps under the name of jihad, claiming that Muslims were being cruelly suppressed in Afghanistan, and their lives, properties, and dignity were at risk.

Meanwhile, Political fractures continue to weaken the National Unity Government (NUG) as the Taliban insurgency expands and the IS strengthens its foothold. Indeed, parliamentary and council elections have been a headache ever since a disputed 2014presidential vote that saw the creation of the NUG led by former rivals President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah. There have been disagreements between the Ghani and Abdullah camps and issues around voter registration, electoral fraud and security. Further, on July 1, 2017, leaders from three mainstream Afghan political parties, including Jamiat-e-Islami, Hizb-e-Wahdat-e-Islami and Junbish-e-Milli agreed to form a new coalition. Jamiat-e-Islami, led by Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Salahuddin Rabbani, has been one of the main critics of President Ashraf Ghani, alongside Junbish-e-Milli and Hizb-e-Wahdat-e-Islami which are, respectively, led by the first Vice President General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Second Deputy of the CEO, Mohammad Mohaqiq. The formation of the political front has attracted mixed reactions from the Government, political parties and leaders.

As the war gets worse and most foreign troops are long gone, the combination of unending violence and lack of economic opportunity has displaced many Afghans. OnAugust 3, 2017, Sayed Hussain Alami Balkhi, Minister of Refugees and Repatriation, stated, during a Press Conference in Herat city, that about 27,000 families or 153,000 people had been displaced across the country due to the war and insecurity since the beginning of 2017, until August. In 2016, more than 660,600 civilians fled their villages and homes. The recent attacks on civilians added to decades of armed conflict and insecurity, have taken their toll on the population's mental health. Health experts have voiced concern about the high prevalence of mental health conditions among Afghans, and the lack of community-based mental health services for those with psychosocial disabilities.

Out of people's growing frustration with the NUG, a civil movement called 'Uprising for Change' was born in Afghanistan. The movement was established in the wake of a string of security incidents in Kabul, especially the May 31, 2017, truck bombing that killed 180 people. On June 1, 2017, the Joint Working Group of Civil Society Organizations, an umbrella for around 25 organizations, came together in Kabul. On June 2, 2017, hundreds of protestors from different groups and affiliations marched in Kabul. They condemned the attack and accused the Government of failing to provide security for the population. On June 3, 2017, a statement was issued by the protestors demanding that the international community recognize the May 31 bombing as a crime against humanity and act firmly against local and foreign supporters of terrorism. It also demanded the resignation of the President and the CEO, the dismissal of the National Security Adviser, the head of the Intelligence and the Minister of Interior. Once again, on July 27, 2017, members and supporters of the 'Uprising for Change' movement took to the streets of Kabul to protest against the Government demanding the resignation of Government leaders and key security officials. They asked the international community, specifically the United Nations to intervene and prevent Government leaders from taking extrajudicial steps, accusing them of seizing power by force.

Rising insurgency and a fraught political transition are exacerbating an already pervasive sense of insecurity about Afghanistan's future. Meanwhile, the initiation of a new social movement in the country may be more vulnerable to various forms of manipulation from the old and resourceful mujahedeen parties, as well as the experienced opportunism of the political class. An alarming situation appears primed to get worse.
Srinagar, Aug 19 (IBNS): The Government forces launched search operations in nine villages of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday morning, media reports said.

The nine villages where the search operations were launched by the police, Army and Central Reserve Force jointly include Chakoora, Mantribug, Zaipora, Pratabpora, Takipora, Ranipora, Ratnipora, Dangam and Wangam.

The areas where the search operations are going on have been cordoned off.

More updates are awaited.
Image: twitter.com/SharadYadavMP

Patna, Aug 19 (IBNS): Ever since Janata Dal (United) co-founder and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar severed all ties with the 'mahagathbandhan' (the Congress-JD(U)-RJD coalition) grapevine had it that the former's own party is heading for a split and with parallel meeting called by both Kumar and Sharad Yadav in Patna on Saturday, the rumours have slowly started to take shape into reality.

Yadav is Nitish Kumar's long-time aide and co founder of the JD(U), albeit the less popular one.

Kumar has called for a national executive committee meeting of the JD(U) at his official residence, where he and his supporters are likely to join the NDA formally.

Yadav, who detests the move, has called for a separate meeting, Jan Adalat, at S K Memorial Hall.

Even though the in-house battle is evident, JD(U) principal secretary general K C Tyagi has maintained that no such development has taken place and that Yadav has left voluntarily.

"The national executive meeting at the One Anne Marg residence of the chief minister is the party's official programme," Tyagi was quoted as saying in the media.

The inclusion is held as Kumar's homecoming as he was earlier affiliated with the NDA and left it after the BJP went ahead and declared Nerendra Modi as the Prime Ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections.

Riding on the Modi wave, the BJP swept the polls later.

However, Kumar managed to level the competition after the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah led BJP failed to capture Bihar a year later.

The grand alliance won it comfortably with Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD emerging as the highest gainer.

However, Nitish Kumar was sworn in as the Chief Minister, while Lalu's son Tejaswi Yadav joined the cabinet as Kumar's deputy.

The exclusion of the latter a month ago created the rift, resulting in Kumar changing alliance and joining the BJP-led NDA.

Kumar, who is known to be a critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has however praised him in recent times, calling him a true leader.

He has also predicted that it will be impossible for the opposition to take down Modi in the upcoming 2019 general elections.
Gorakhpur, Aug 19 (IBNS): Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath launched a scathing attack against Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi over his criticism of the state Government's health policy after large number of children died at a state-run hospital in Gorakhpur due to alleged lack of oxygen supply, media reports said on Saturday.

Adityanath made the comment while launching the 'Swachh Uttar Pradesh, Swasth Uttar Pradesh' campaign in Gorakhpur ahead of the Congress VP's scheduled visit to the place on Saturday.

Though media reports said the death of around 70 children occurred due of lack of oxygen supply, the Yogi government considered Encephalitis as the main reason behind the tragedy.

Speaking about combating Encephalitis, Adityanath was quoted by the TOI as saying: "I started movement against Encephalitis; when it comes to it, prevention is better than cure and it starts with sanitation."

"Encephalitis breeds in filth. The previous regime is responsible for the deaths due to Encephalitis" the CM added.

Taking a dig at the Congress VP, Adityanath said: "There's a 'yuvraj' (prince) sitting in Delhi, who doesn't understand the significance of a Swachhta Abhiyan. There's no valid reason why he should be permitted to turn Gorakhpur into his picnic spot."

The UP Chief Minister has come under fire from several opposition parties, who raised questions about his management skills.

Addressing a rally in Bengaluru on Wednesday, Rahul Gandhi said, "The BJP believes that there are enough private hospitals for the rich and so they aren't bothered about government hospitals."

Opposition leader and Congress supremo Sonia Gandhi too had condemned the incident.

A case has also been registered by a couple who hail from Bihar after they lost their child.

Baba Raghav Das Medical College is the biggest state-run hospital in Gorakhpur where the deaths had occurred, which also happens to be UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's Lok Sabha constituency.



Image: Official Facebook page of Yogi Adityanath.
Chennai, Aug 19 (IBNS): The O Paneerselvam camp has hinted that there is no immediate merger in AIADMK, according to NDTV.

The OPS camp said the cadres won't accept E Palaniswamy as the Chief Minister of the state.

After the demise of former TN CM J Jayalalitha, the AIADMK was divided into camps in a bitter power struggle. While one camp is led by Paneerselvam, TN CM E Palaniswamy heads the other.

While O Panneerselvam was the interim CM of the state after Jayalalitha's death, AIADMK general secretary VK Sasikala wanted to become the CM.

Though Sasikala was later convicted in her disproportionate assets case and was jailed, her fielded member E Palaniswami became the CM of the state.

Both Palaniswamy and Paneerselvam met Prime Minister Narendra Modi individually recently to discuss about the Tamil Nadu politics and merger of the AIADMK.



Image: Official Facebook page of O Paneerselvam


Patna, Aug 19 (IBNS) : A truncated Janata Dal (United) under the leadership of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday adopted a resolution to join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, reports said.

The resolution was passed at the national executive meeting of the Nitish faction of JDU at Nitish Kumar's official residence.

According to reports, the party is expected to formally accept the invitation to join the BJP-led NDA.

The party virtually split into two after Nitish Kumar pulled out of the alliance with the RJD and Congress to form a new Government in the state with the support of the BJP.

The Sharad Yadav faction, which is opposed to the move is also holding a parallel meeting at S K Memorial hall.

Sharad Yadav says Nitish Kumar has betrayed the people's mandate by r walking out of the Mahagathbandhan.
Gorakhpur, Aug 19 (IBNS) : Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday met the families of children who died in the BRD hospital tragedy that kicked up a huge uproar across the country, media reports said.

Gandhi was accompanied by Congress Rajya Sabha leader Ghulam Nabi Azad.

More than 70 children, including newborns, died over ten days in the state-run hospital due to alleged disruption of oxygen supply.

The BJP-run state Government, however has dismissed the allegation.

The Government has suspended the principal and the doctor in charge of the ward. A probe has also been ordered.

In spite of being five-time MP from Gorakhpur, he did nothing for the hospital, The Indian Express quoted Azad as saying while speaking to reporters.

He obviously referred to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Adityanath had earlier lashed out at Gandhi, saying he will not allow Gorakhpur to become a picnic spot of opposition leaders.

He also criticised the previous Governments led by Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati for the condition of the state.

"A shehzada sitting in Lucknow and a yuvraj sitting in Delhi cannot understand the importance of cleanliness," he said hitting out respectively at Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi.
Srinagar, Aug 19 (IBNS): Suspected militants shot dead a ruling Peoples Democratic Party worker at Dailgam area of South Kashmir's Anantnag district, police said on Saturday.

According to reports, militants opened fire upon the PDP worker Mohd Isaaq Parray from point blank range in Dailgam village of Anantnag town and left him seriously injured.

He was shifted to nearby hospital in serious conditions where doctors declared him brought dead on arrival.

Soon after the incident, a joint team of Army, SOG and CRPF launched a man hunt to nab the assailants.
New Delhi, Aug 19 (IBNS): Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Uma Bharti took a high level meeting to review the flood situation in the country and the actions being taken at the national level in New Delhi on Saturday.

The officers briefed her about the flood situation in various parts of the country and the pro-active actions taken by the concerned organisations under the Ministry in mitigating the effect of floods.



The Minister was briefed that Central Water Commission (CWC) had taken pro-active steps during the floods by way of issuing around 3200 flood forecasts to all concerned user agencies which have been extremely beneficial to the district administration in timely evacuation and saving of lives of millions of people.

Further, the Ministry has issued seven specific district-wise advisories on anticipated floods and dam-wise advisories for water release wherever applicable to facilitate early NDRF/SDRF deployment and operation of reservoir gates. Another significant step taken by the Ministry, since June 2017 is that three day advance flood advisories based on rainfall-runoff model have been made available for all the 19 river basins online, for the benefit of all stakeholders.



The Minister directed that all the concerned organizations under the Ministry shall extend all possible help to the flood affected people.

She directed that CWC, GFCC and Brahmaputra Board, in consultation with the related Central Ministries and State Governments, shall undertake an exercise to identify and map reaches vulnerable to erosion and landslide along the banks of the rivers and suggest possible remedial measures



Bharti emphasized that long-term solution to mitigate flood and droughts lies in the interlinking of rivers along with building of large storages.

She said Ministry has obtained all clearances for Ken-Betwa Link Project in MP and UP. The Minister was pleased to state that Uttar Pradesh Government has conveyed its support to Ken Betwa river interlinking project and the response of Madhya Pradesh Government is expected to be received soon. The Government of India is eager to implement this first river interlinking project for the benefit of the people of Bundhelkhand region.



The DPR of Damanganga-Pinjal link and Par-Tapi-Narmada interlinking projects are in advanced stage. Further, the Kosi Mechi link and Kosi-Ghagra link envisaged in the Himalayan region would greatly attenuate high flood intensity in the Ganga Basin.



The Minister said Government of India is having continuous dialogue with the Government of Nepal at various levels to mitigate devastation caused by the flood from the rivers coming from Nepal through planning of various storage dams jointly viz. Pancheshwar Multipurpose Project on river Sarada; Sapta Kosi High dam Project and Sun Kosi Storage-cum- Diversion scheme are proposed in the Sapta Kosi Basin. In Brahmaputra Basin, a Committee of the Ministry has assessed storage requirements of 9.2 BCM in Siang, 0.6 BCM in Dibang, 1.61 BCM in Lohit and 1.91 BCM in Subansiri sub Basins. A proposal for construction of single-stage Siang Upper Multipurpose Storage is under active consideration of the Ministry.



The Minster will visit Uttar Pradesh on 21st August and Bihar on 25th August for discussions on flood related issues with the State Governments. She is also planning to visit Uttarakhand in connection with India-Nepal Pancheshwar Multipurpose project. Meanwhile,Dr. Amarjit Singh,Secretary, MoWR, RD & GR is already on a visit to Assam for the survey of flood affected areas.
Guwahati, Aug 19 (IBNS): After unearthing the BG Bonded warehouse tax evasion scam, Assam excise department has started a special drive across the state to detect all illegal activities.

A six member special team of Excise Intelligence Bureau (EIB) has started the drive in all three districts in Barak Valley from Aug 18.

We have found such types of illegal activities including tax evasion cases in Cachar, Karimganj district. These activities run by some liquor baron with the help of some officials. We will continue the drive across the state, a top official of EIB said.

Two excise officials Amarendra Nath and Pranjal Bora were recently arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Assam police in connection with the multi crore rupees BG Bonded Warehouse scam.

The CID team also arrested liquor mafia Rajesh Jalan, Bonti Gogoi Pegu (who granted bail by the Guwahati High Court) in connection with the tax evasion scam.

Meanwhile, Assam excise minister Parimal Suklabaidya said that, it is true that, illegal activities are still continued in the state and the department is trying to detect it.

If any official of Excise department has found his involvement into the illegal activities, then the department to take stern action against him, the Assam minister said.

Parimal Suklabaidya, who took charge of the excise department a year ago, further said that, to curb the huge smuggling of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) from the neighbouring states like Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya to Assam, the excise department has taken appropriate measures and several illegal liquors were seized in past a year.

We are going to change some sections in the Assam Excise rules and to change some bailable sections to non-bailable. It would likely to be placed before the next state cabinet, Suklabaidya said.

The department had collected Rs 799.53 crore revenue which jumped to Rs 966.33 crore in 2016-17 and targets Rs 1393 crore in the current fiscal.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Mumbai, Aug 19 (IBNS): Union Minister of State for Minority Affairs (Independent Charge) & Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Saturday said here that the Central Government had completed all the entire process related to Haj 2017 well in time to ensure best facilities to Haj pilgrims.

Naqvi flagged off the first batch of 300 Haj pilgrims from Mumbai at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport here on Saturday.



He congratulated to Haj pilgrims and extended best wishes to them for their pilgrimage. A total of 5600 Haj pilgrims are going to Haj this year from Mumbai.



Naqvi said that Haj 2017 has been completely successful till date as the Central Government had completed preparations for Haj this year well before in time to ensure smooth pilgrimage.



The Minister said that new Haj Policy 2018 will be finalised very soon and Haj from next year will be organised according to this new Haj policy. The new Haj policy is aimed at making Haj process transparent and smooth.



Naqvi also said that reviving the option of sending Haj pilgrims through sea route also is part of the new Haj policy. Sending pilgrims through ships will help cut down travel expenses by nearly half as compared to airfares. It will be a revolutionary, pro-poor, pilgrim-friendly decision. The practice of ferrying Haj pilgrims between Mumbai and Jeddah by waterways was stopped from 1995.



Naqvi said that another advantage with ships available these days is they are modern and well-equipped to ferry 4,000 to 5,000 persons at a time.

They can cover the 2,300-odd nautical miles one-side distance between Mumbai and Jeddah within just two-three days. Earlier, the old ships used to take 12 to 15 days to cover this distance.



Haj 2017 started with departure of Haj pilgrims from various embarkation points across the country on 24th July.

Saudi Arabia has increased annual Haj quota of India by 34,005. After significant increase in Indias Haj quota by Saudi Arabia Government, a total of 1,70,025 people have been going to Haj pilgrimage this year from India out of which 1,25,025 pilgrims are going through Haj Committee of India while 45,000 people are going through Private Tour Operators from 21 embarkation points.



During first phase of Haj 2017, about 85,000 Haj pilgrims have gone to Saudi Arabia. In the first phase, Haj pilgrims went from embarkation points in Delhi, Gaya, Goa, Gauhati, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mangalore, Srinagar and Varanasi.



In the second phase, Haj pilgrims will go from Bangalore, Bhopal, Ranchi, Nagpur, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Cochin, Chennai, Aurangabad, Ahmedabad and Indore. The second phase will end on 26thAugust.




Darjeeling, Aug 19 (IBNS): At least one person was killed and several others were injured after two major explosions rocked Kalimpong Police Station area at Mela Ground area in West Bengal's Gorkhaland agitation hit Kalimpong district on Saturday night, reports said.

According to sources, the first explosion was reported at around 10:35 pm. in front of the police station and the second blast was heard at 11:40 pm. near the main entrance of the police station.

The hills of Darjeeling and Kalimpong are roiled by an ongoing violent agitation for a separate state of Gorkhaland for the Gorkhas who are ethnic Nepalese.

A local police official told IBNS that one jawan of Central paramilitary force, a state police constable, one home guard and a civic volunteer were rushed to Kalimpong Sub-Divisional Hospital. The civic volunteer was pronounced dead in hospital.

"The first high intensity explosion, which took place at Kalimpong Police Station at around 10:35 pm, shook the entire area and it reportedly left at least on civic volunteer dead," the police official said.

A source said that the dead civic volunteer has been identified as Rakesh Routh (31).

A senior official of Kalimpong district police said that a heavy police force along with Central paramilitary forces have been deployed at the scene.

Earlier on Friday midnight, another high intensity IED explosion was reported from Chowk Bazar area in Darjeeling district.

After beginning probe into the matter, Darjeeling district police have booked three top Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) leaders, including Bimal Gurung, Pravin Subba and Prakash Gurung, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

GJM chief Bimal Gurung, however, denied his party's involvement in the incident and demanded NIA investigation into the matter.

More details awaited.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)


On August 2, 2017, unidentified militants killed Kuki National Liberation Front (KNLF) 'general secretary', Lalmoi Haokip aka Tonglenlal, at Tuibong Bazar in Churachandpur District. KNLF is one of fifteen constituents of the Kuki National Organisation (KNO), which is maintaining a Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement with both the Union and State Governments since August 22, 2008.

On July 27, 2017, a civilian, identified as Thangkhanlun Taitom, was allegedly tortured and killed by Zomi Re-Unification Organisation (ZRO) militants, for 'stealing', in the New Lamka area of the District. ZRO is one of eight constituents of the United People's Front (UPF) which is under SoO agreement with the Union and State Governments since August 22, 2008.

On April 29, 2017, suspected People's Liberation Army (PLA) militants attacked a General Reserve Engineering Force (GREF) water bowser (tanker) killing two local labourers at Beheng near Border Pillar 41 along the Indo-Myanmar border in the Churachandpur District.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) at least five persons, including three civilians and two militants, have died in the Churachandpur District in the current year (data till August 13, 2017). During the corresponding period of 2016, only one fatality (a militant) was reported. In fact, through 2016, it was the only fatality the District recorded, the lowest ever recorded, on year on year basis, since 2000; and matched in 2011 when one civilian was killed.

Over all fatalities after registering continuous increases since 2012, recorded a sharp decline through 2016, but are again on the rise in the current year. The comparatively high number of civilian killings, three, in the current year is worrisome. Significantly, it is the highest number of civilian fatalities recorded during this period (January 1 to August 13) in the District since 2008, when four civilians had died, with the exception of 2015, which also saw three civilian fatalities during this period.

Also disturbing are the fratricidal turf wars between militant groups. Out of 33 militants killed since August 22, 2008 (the date of the signing the SoO agreement), at least 13 were killed in internecine clashes. Another twelve were killed by SFs; one militant was lynched by local people; and the circumstances of the death of the remaining seven could not be ascertained.

The District of Churachandpur, with an area of 4,750 square kilometers, came into existence in the year 1969. Churachandpur was previously known as Manipur South District, and shares its borders with the Tamenglong, Bishnupur, Senapati and Jiribam (earlier part of Imphal East District) Districts of Manipur; the Cachar District of Assam; and the Champhai and Kolasib Districts of Mizoram. Churachandpur District also falls along the India-Myanmar International border, sharing its borders with the Chin region of Myanmar. 'Sandwiched' between these areas, many of which are facing their own sets of insurgency-related problems, Churachandpur provides a perfect setting for insurgency to thrive, serving as a critical transit route for several insurgent groups. The Mizo National Front (MNF), which had launched an armed rebellion against the Government of India on February 28, 1966, had also used this District as a transit route for its operations. That rebellion came to an end with the MNF signing an Accord in 1986. Even Meitei groups such as the PLA, Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP), Kanglei Yowel Kanna Lup (KYKL) and United National Liberation Front (UNLF), have occasionally used the District as a transit from Myanmar to India and vice versa.

The insurgency in Churachandpur, was led by Kuki-Zomi tribal groups who claimed to 'protect and promote' the interests of their community with the proclaimed objective of creating Zalengam (Land of freedom), a separate Kuki-Zomi State. Apart from Churachandpur, Kangpokpi District (earlier in Senapati District), some parts of the now-reorganized Senapati District, Tamenglong, Chandel and Ukhrul Districts, are included in the imagined Zalengam 'State'.

In the late 1980s, KNO and the Kuki National Front (KNF) were leading the insurgency in the District. Later, they were joined by their own splinter groups (these two formations faced multiple splits) and by smaller tribal groups like the Hmar, Paite and Kom. Further on, there was a process of consolidation within the various groups and two principal formations emerged - KNO and United People's Front (UPF). KNO accounted for 15 constituent groups: Kuki National Army (KNA), the armed wing of KNO; Kuki National Front - Military Council (KNF-MC); Kuki National Front - Zogam (KNF-Z); United Socialist Revolutionary Army (USRA); Hmar National Army (HNA); United Komrem Revolutionary Army (UKRA); United Minorities Liberation Front (UMLF); Zou Defence Volunteers (ZDV); Kuki Liberation Army (KLA); Pakan Reunification Army (PRA); Kuki Revolutionary Army (KRA); United Old Kuki Liberation Army (UOKLA-Khoipu-Maring); United Tribal Liberation Army (UTLA); and Kuki National Front-Samuel (KNF-S). Similarly, UPF comprises eight groups: Kuki National Front (KNF); Zomi Revolutionary Organisation (ZRO)/Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA); Kuki Revolutionary Army-United (KRA-United); Zomi Defence Force (ZDF), United Kuki Liberation Front (UKLF), Kuki Revolutionary Front (KRF), Zomi Defence Volunteers (ZoDV); and Hmar People's Convention-Democratic (HPC-D).

Significantly, the tripartite SoO agreements, between the Union Government, State Government and, separately, the two conglomerates - UPF and KNO - were signed on August 22, 2008, and included an understanding that all the parties involved would abide by the Constitution of India and commit themselves to the territorial integrity of Manipur.

Since then, the SoO agreements have been periodically extended, most recently for another year during tripartite talks held in New Delhi on August 9, 2017. Though the talks did not touch upon any political agenda, it is reported that 'political dialogue' would be held with the Government of India's interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma, who is likely to arrive at Imphal 'soon' (no time frame is specified). In 2016, the Union Government had held two rounds of talks with KNO and UPF. During the first meeting, KNO and UPF leaders had stated on June 15, 2016, that the 'central core demand is for political settlement within the Indian Constitution in accordance with Article 3, for a statehood that comprise the lands in the hills of Manipur for which the Chieftains possess legal land titles'. The second round of tripartite talks was held in New Delhi on October 19, 2016. No details were published regarding this round of talks.

Meanwhile, the State's 'territorial integrity' continues to remain sacrosanct for many. United Committee Manipur (UCM), a citizen's organisation spearheading the campaign for safeguarding Manipur's territorial integrity, cautioned both the Central and the Manipur Governments against "bargaining" on the State's boundary. Elangbam Johnson, president of UCM, declared, on August 8, 2017, "The agenda should not include creation of a Kuki State. If the agenda include division of Manipur in any form representatives of the Manipur Government should walk out of the talks."

On December 9, 2016, the Manipur State Government announced the formation of a new District - Pherzawl - which was carved out of Churachandpur District. The Pherzawl District compromises Pherzawl, Thanlon, Parbung, Tipaimukh and Vangai Range sub-divisions, which were earlier part of Churachandpur. It is believed that the step was primarily driven by the need to increase the District's developmental prospects. Infrastructural augmentation and a robust law and order mechanism would impact significantly on such prospects.

The situation in Manipur has shown gradual improvement over the longer time-frame, but remains fragile. In particular, it is vulnerable to political destabilization and the endemic inefficiency and corruption of successive governments.
Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world today. But unbridled tourism has also created problems with growing resentment among local residents as well as allegations of damage to the environment, writes Ranjita Biswas

Have you been jostled by hordes of visitors while trying to get a better view of the artefacts in the beautiful Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg? Have you been to Venice recently and smelled the rotting water? Or think of the hill stations in India now, most of which are wilting under the pressure of thousands of feet with people enjoying the summer holiday with nary a thought before throwing an ice-cream cone or a plastic bag on the sidewalk.

According to the latest World Tourism Barometer report of UNWTO (UN World Tourism Organisation), international tourist arrivals grew by 3.9% to reach a total of 1,235 million last year. Some 46 million more tourists (overnight visitors) travelled internationally in 2016 compared to the previous year. It was also the seventh consecutive year of sustained growth following the 2009 global economic and financial crisis. And, 300 million more international tourists travelled the world last year as compared to the pre-crisis record in 2008.

Tourism has shown extraordinary strength and resilience in recent years, despite many challenges, particularly those related to safety and security. Yet, international travel continues to grow strongly and contribute to job creation and the wellbeing of communities around the world, said UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai.

Indeed, tourism has been one of the fastest growing industries worldwide in the past couple of years. The tragic incident in Barcelona recently when 13 people were mowed down and more than a hundred injured by a rampaging vehicle in the popular Las Ramblas area also in a way demonstrates the diversity of the nationals who go on holidays as the list of the countries affected show.

But there has been a downside too to burgeoning sector. Unbridled tourism has created tension among local residents in some of the most popular destinations in the world in the recent past. And they have been striking back with anti-tourism protests. In Spain, for example, which saw a some 75.6 million tourists in 2016. In Barcelona, protest group Arran, the youth wing of the radical CUP (Popular Unity Candidacy) have been vehemently opposing cheap- to- rent houses alleging they spoil the neighbourhoods and the environment alike.

The Venetians too have been demonstrating against unrestrained tourism in the last few months. The romantic city on the Italian lagoon sees more than 20 million visitors a year. Add to it the huge cruise ships anchoring to let hundreds of leisure travelers a day to explore the city. The local populace is only 55,000 in number. No wonder, tired of losing their neighbourhood ambience , some even pushed to the fringe of the city by aggressive real estate developers, more than two thousand locals recently marched through the city putting their feet down and demanding that the mayor and local government take action and they can get their city back.

Popular destinations in India too have seen deterioration to local environment with increasing foot fall. With an expanding middle class and more disposable income in hand, domestic tourism has seen a surge in the last few years. As a result, local residents, be it in Darjeeling, Shimla or Mussoorie, mourn the loss of their habitat and point out that irresponsible tourists spoil the very ambience of the hills stations where they rush in to escape the summer heat.

Rifai in an interview to media on the subject said that the people wanting to travel is not at fault, which is natural; rather the need of the day is the manage growth in a sustainable manner which the local authorities need to look into. Among measures UNWTO recommends to achieve it is taking into account the needs of the local community.

Striking a balance between the number of visitors who bring in revenue to the local market and make it sustainable is a tightrope walk, no doubt. But economists and environmentalists say that with policies with a long term view and concerted efforts by local authorities can manage to do so in a better way.

Bhutan, the kingdom at the Himalayan foothills, is often showcased as an example of this point of view. The countrys long-term strategy of controlled tourism with a focus on sustainability and quality has earned it praise worldwide. In the process, it has also been able to retain the pristine beauty of the land and its cultural ethos. The happiest country in the world, according to a survey measured on its Gross National Happiness, introduced a framework for the development of tourism in 1974. With a high-value, low-volume focus its aim was to control the type and quantity of tourism right from the beginning. Even UNWTO recognised this step as commendable.

Of course, it has also meant that Bhutan remains a rather expensive destination for the average tourist. But then, uncontrolled tourism would have destroyed the very character of this tiny kingdom. One has to make a choice.

Meanwhile, the mayors office in Venice plans to introduce a ban on new tourist accommodation by this summer end. In addition, there would be monitoring agencies to check overcrowding and pinpoint areas that see high concentration of visitors.

Rome recently announced a ban on eating near its numerous beautiful fountains or paddling in the water. Milan too has taken steps to preserve its old quarters from getting spoiled by insensitive tourism.
New York, Aug 19(Just Earth News): Civilians in conflict are not a target, top United Nations officials on Friday stressed at a special event marking World Humanitarian Day, which honours aid workers and pays homage to those killed in service, while also drawing attention to the millions of people on Friday living in war zones.

For the millions of people caught in conflict, struggling to find food, water, and safe shelter; who have been driven from their homes with little hope of return; whose schools have been bombed; and who await life-saving medical care  we cannot afford to fail, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, urging each person and country to stand in solidarity with civilians in conflict.

Standing at Headquarters in New York alongside UN aid workers and staff who lost colleagues in war zones, the Secretary-General lent his support to the #NotATarget, campaign, which highlights the need to protect civilians caught in conflict, including humanitarian and medical workers.

Joining Guterres to mark World Humanitarian Day, which is officially commemorated on 19 August, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien spoke of the challenges faced by aid workers around the word.

Last year, 288 aid workers were targeted in 158 attacks. In the past three months alone, relief workers have been shelled and shot at, kidnapped and killed in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria, he said. This is blatantly unacceptable.

Earlier in the week, the UN and partners launched the #NotATarget petition urging global leaders do more to ensure the rules of war are upheld and civilians are protected in armed conflicts.

With more than 10,500 signatures, the petitioners demand that world leaders do more to protect people trapped in conflicts, with a particular focus on those living in urban areas, children, targets of sexual violence, forcibly displaced people, humanitarian workers and health workers.

The petition will be presented to the Secretary-General during the high-level General Assembly, which opens on 12 September this year.

The UN General Assembly designated 19 August as World Humanitarian Day in 2008, selecting the date to coincide with the anniversary of the deadly 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad.

Originally coined by Medecins Sans Frontieres in 2015, the #NotATarget hashtag is being used in the World Humanitarian Day digital campaign this year to call for action on behalf of all civilians trapped in conflicts.

Photo: UN News/Paulina Carvajal

Source: www.justearthnews.com
Turku, Aug 19 (IBNS): At least two people have reportedly died while six others have sustained injuries in a stabbing case in south-western Finland's Turku city, reports said.

Police officials were quoted in the media as saying that the suspected attacker was shot in the leg and nabbed.

Officials added that even though they know the identity of the attacker, they will not reveal it now.

One among the deceased was a woman.

Police have also confirmed that all the casualties were adults.

Forces later raided an apartment and made a number of arrests overnight, the BBC reported.

"We are investigating what their role is in this. Whether they had something to do with this act, or if they were just involved with this person," Finnish news agency SST quoted detective superintendent Markus Laine as saying.

The raid took place in the Varissuo area of the city, which is home to a large number of immigration population.

Describing the incident, an eyewitness told BBC, "I saw police shoot a person, a man I think. People were running and there was talk about a knife attack, possibly multiple perpetrators."

However, Finnish authorities have said that it was too early for them to treat the incident as a terror attack.

Authorities also said that the attacker had likely acted alone.

The Finland attack took place just 24 hours after an attack claimed 13 lives in Spain's Barcelona.

Condemning the Finnish stabbing spree, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said, "We strongly condemn this unprovoked attack which comes only 24 hours after the horror that unfolded in Spain."

Image: Wallpaper
Turku, Aug 19 (IBNS) : The Finnish police on Saturday said they have identified an 18-year-old Moroccan teenager as responsible for Friday's stabbing spree that left two people dead.

"The act had been investigated as murder, but during the night we received additional information which indicates that the criminal offenses are now terrorist killings," media reports quoted the police as saying.

The suspect's "identity is known to the police. He is an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen," a statement said.

At least two people were killed as several were stabbed in south-western city of Turku on Friday. The attack left eight others injured.

South-West Finland police r tweeted that they shot the man who attacked several people.

The attacks on Thursday in Barcelona were also carried out by a Moroccan-born terror cell, which left 14 dead.

Police say both stabbing victims in Turku were Finnish, among eight injured were two Swedes and one Italian.
image: clubofpictures.com

Washington, Aug 19 (IBNS): US President Donald Trump's Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has been sacked from his post, media reports quoted multiple White House officials as saying.

Officials told CNN that the move to ouster Bannon had been in preparation for almost two weeks and while he was handed the option of resigning, the Chief Strategist was ultimately forced out.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later confirmed the news.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," Sander's statement read.

According to reports, Bannon had fallen out of favour with the US President, who he had contradicted once during an interview about the America-North Korea conflict.

Interestingly, Bannon, who joined Trump last year, is the man behind the US President overt display of nationalism.

Speaking to The Weekly Standard after his firing on Friday, Bannon said, "We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency."

He added, "But that presidency is over. It'll be something else. And there'll be all kinds of fights, and there'll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over."

Bannon, who is from the conservative Breitbart News Network, returned to the role of executive chairman and chaired the evening editorial meeting, reports added.

image: clubofpictures.com
Toronto, Aug 19 (IBNS): A Toronto woman who is facing terror charges in an alleged attack at a store of the Canadian Tire has been ordered by a judge to appear in the court on Monday, media reports said.

The judge even ordered the woman should be forced to appear in the court if she refuses.

The order came after the 32-year old woman, Rehab Dughmosh, refused to leave her cell and appear in the court on last Thursday.

Dughmosh is facing 21 charges which also include attempt to murder three people with an aim to benefit a terror group, report said.

Police alleged that woman has threatened the Canadian Tire employees and a customer in June. She is accused of attempting to murder the people by taking out a knife from under her clothes but the store staffs restrained her.



(Reporting by Suman Das)
On Wednesday, August 16, at about 7am, a convoy of unmarked federal vehicles rolled up in West Oakland and a dozen or more agents jumped out, demanding entry into a Latina home. The agents only identified themselves as a "special unit" and said that they were investigating a family-owned cleaning business. The owner of the house and business is a legal US citizen, although some at the house are more recent migrants from Guatemala who have fled violence in their homeland. After handcuffing and detaining the family for over four hours, the agents quickly left and 21-year-old Laura came out to speak to the crowd of supporters and media that had gathered out front.

(video 15:44)Visibly shaken, tears in her eyes, wearing a bathrobe, and holding her young son, I called out to Laura that she did not have to talk to the TV cameras that were rushing toward her. She said she did want to speak. Still, I will not print her or any family members' full names here in order to protect their privacy.Laura felt compelled to offer another side to the story after Oakland police issued a press statement claiming the raid was related to child sex trafficking, completely slandering the family with a blatant falsehood. OPD had to justify why it was involved at all after word of the raid blew up across social media , surely much to their chagrin. Oakland's city council approved legislation in July rescinding the department's authorization to work with ICE on immigration matters, and yet, there was OPD assisting an ICE raid in August. Feeling the heat, OPD got out a statement insisting that they were only there for traffic control, that it was not an immigration enforcement action, throwing in an over the top allegation against the family in time to hit the noon television news broadcasts that day.Of course, the corporate media ran with the salacious allegation that ICE was serving a warrant in an investigation into the sexual trafficking of minors. OPD later updated their press release to read "human trafficking" instead, but the damage was done and multiple outlets have yet to correct their stories online. Even with the update, however, labeling the raid as related to the somewhat less monstrous crime of human trafficking is still hyperbolic in that it stirs images of modern day slavery in the public imagination.Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) was far more reserved than OPD, releasing no details: "Special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations are executing a federal search warrant this morning as part of an ongoing criminal investigation."Laura's entire family was handcuffed for hours, save for her very young son. ICE woke the family up and controlled everything that happened in her home from about 7am until they hurried away at 11:20am. The house was thoroughly searched. Property was removed in numerous boxes.From her vantage point during her detainment, Laura was unclear at first who was taken from her home by ICE. To witnesses in the street, it appeared a woman with a blanket over her head was arrested and removed. No woman was arrested, but ICE did removed two men (one with blanket). It was Laura's adopted brother and her sister's husband who were taken away. Neither have had previous problems with the law since being in the United States.One of the two men was released later that day. The other remains in custody despite no charges having been filed. The only apparent issue is his lack of documentation. Immigration lawyers are currently working to establish a bond and secure his release.Laura speaks about the danger faced by family members in Guatemala and the difficulty in legally seeking asylum in the U.S.. receiving no sympathy from American officials. Laura's sister was stabbed 13 times in Guatemala and ended up coming to the U.S. without authorization. Her brother also came without documentation after the majority of his friends were murdered in Guatemala.OPD insisted it was a criminal investigation and not a deportation matter, but no arrests were made related to the supposed investigation and two people were removed from their home, one arrested due to immigration issues.See a report by Darwin BondGraham on the Oakland ICE raid for more details, including a statement by ICE and the updated one by OPD trying to explain their participation despite the recent City Council voted to rescind authorization for collaborating with ICE and HSI.
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.
Burma Analysis: Did Advisory Commission Remedy Rakhine States Conflict?

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrives at Sittwe airport, Rakhine State, Myanmar, as he visits in his capacity as the Myanmar government-appointed Chairman of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, December 2, 2016. / Reuters

YANGON  The mandate of the nine-member Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, led by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, will expire at the end of August, after being established by the National League for Democracy (NLD) government one year ago.

Kofi Annan will come to Myanmar next week and is scheduled to conduct several meetings in Naypyitaw, including with State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, in preparation to publish the commissions final report, according to member Al-Haj U Aye Lwin.

The commission has been tasked with uncovering lasting solutions for conflict-torn Rakhine State and addressing deep wounds felt by Buddhist and Muslim communities in the region.

It is comprised of three members from the international community, including Mr. Annan, and six from Burmatwo Buddhist Arakanese members, two Yangon-based Muslim members and two government representatives. A memorandum of understanding between the State Counselors Office and the Kofi Annan Foundation was agreed upon regarding the work of the commission, but details of that arrangement were not made public.

The Commissions Burdens

Since its formation, the commission was subjected to several objections from political parties, mainly the Rakhine State-based Arakan National Party, as well as the Union Solidarity and Development Party. Protests against the commission, largely by members of the Arakanese public, called for its dissolution, claiming that outsiders were interfering in Myanmars internal affairs.

In Oct. 2016, just over one month after the establishment of the commission, Muslim militants carried out coordinated attacks on three border outposts in northern Rakhine States Maungdaw Township, looting firearms and leaving nine policemen dead.

The army responded by launching a months-long clearance operation in northern Rakhine State, hunting for suspects in Muslim villages throughout the township.

The mission forced nearly 70,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, and the UN estimates that around 1,000 were killed. International rights groups have accused soldiers of abuses ranging from arson to rape to extrajudicial killings and torture.

Myanmar authorities have rejected the allegations and blamed crimes on militants. During the clearance operations, they said in June that eight soldiers had been killed, along with 80 suspected militants. An additional 485 people were detained.

The October attacks targeted armed policemen but escalated the mistrust between the Muslim and Buddhist communities, especially in Rakhine State. This reporter visited several Muslim villages in northern Maungdaw Township last year, and saw that many had been emptied and abandoned, and others had been completely turned to ash.

Occasionally, women and children were present in the villages, but fled when encountering a stranger, even when shown a journalists identification card.

The Buddhist Arakanese, the majority in the state but a minority in its northern region, said they were terrified of future attacks. Village administrative officials deployed lookouts at night, and avoided passing through Muslim villages alone as they traveled toward towns like Maungdaw.

This was the context presented to the Rakhine State Advisory Commission.

Government Shield

The Kofi Annan-led delegates paid visits to several Rakhine State townships in late November 2016, including some villages in Maungdaw, where rights abuses were reported during clearance operations.

After conducting meetings with State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, army commander-in-chief Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing and several heads of Union ministries, Mr. Annan received questions from the press in Yangons Shangri-la Hotel on Dec. 6, 2016.

Reporters asked whether he witnessed evidence of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the self-identifying Rohingya minority, as members of the international and Rohingya communities have accused Myanmar of perpetrating.

Genocide is a very serious charge that requires legal review and judicial determination. It is not a charge that should be thrown around loosely, Mr. Annan said.

His response proved helpful to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in particular, who is confronted with the issue of Rohingya persecution whenever she travels abroad. In a rare interview with the BBC during an official visit to the UK in April 2017, journalist Fergal Keane raised questions concerning security forces crackdown in Maungdaw.

She replied, I dont think there is ethnic cleansing going on. I think ethnic cleansing is too strong an expression to use for what is happening, adding that she saw a lot of hostility.

It is Muslims killing Muslims as well, if they think they are co-operating with the authorities, the State Counselor said.

During an interview with The Irrawaddy in July, Myanmar Presidents Office spokesman U Zaw Htay admitted the advantage of appointing high-profile peace envoy Mr. Annan to the commission.

Whenever there is an accusation from the international community, we say we are taking action in line with the recommendations of the Kofi Annan commission. The commission is serving as a shield for us, U Zaw Htay said.

Encouraging Developments

After seven months, the commission released its interim report in March 2017, recommending that the government lift restrictions on access for media and relief organizations in northern Rakhine State.

Mr. Annan acknowledged that the crisis facing the region had changed since Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had founded the advisory commission, but promised to continue the delegations objectiveto find peace and development for Rakhine State.

Three commission members went to neighboring Bangladesh and visited Coxs Bazar and Teknaf district, where thousands of displaced Rohingya were living in dire conditions.

The commission urged the government to form a joint committee with the Bangladeshi authorities to oversee the return of refugees and to prevent human trafficking.

The interim report also recommended the closure of all internally displaced peoples (IDPs) camps in Rakhine State, and a specific timeframe for the completion of the citizenship verification process for eligible and stateless Muslims.

Moreover, the commission specifically urged the authorities to grant freedom of movement and provide access to education for citizens. Yet according to the commission, only 2,000 local Muslimsout of more than one million, regionallyhave been granted recognition as citizens.

Authorities Actions, Continued Challenges

Selected media houses have since been sent to the conflict areas twice under the supervision of government officials and border police. The Daw Aung San Suu Kyi-led government has closed IDP camps in Ramree and Kyaukphyu townships in accordance with the recommendations.

However, the governments implementation process has lacked transparency. Authorities moved nearly 130 ethnic Kaman Muslims from Ramree camp to Yangon by providing air tickets, cash assistance of 500,000 kyats for each family and an additional 100,000 kyat per family member, without arranging housing or employment.

In early April 2017, Myanmars National Security Advisor U Thaung Tun said that the government planned to invest US$140 million in health and education facilities in northern Rakhine State and would also employ more Muslim staff members in these sectors.

He did not elaborate on the timeframe for implementation of the move, but said it would occur in line with the recommendations of the advisory commission.

Meanwhile, challenges in Rakhine State continue to multiply. On August 3, seven ethnic Mro farmersa sub-group of the Buddhist Arakanesewere found dead of gunshot and machete wounds, suspected of being killed by Muslim militants. The army responded by deploying several hundred soldiers to the Mayu mountain range in search of insurgents along the border.

International organizations are asking the Myanmar government to collaborate with a fact-finding mission mandated by the United Nations Human Rights Council, formed with three international experts to investigate allegations of rights abuses by security forces during clearance operations in Rakhine State. Thus far, the government has refused to allow the delegation in to the country.

The Final Report

Al-Haj U Aye Lwin, a Myanmar Muslim representative on the advisory commission, told The Irrawaddy that the government needs to invest in developing a greater harmony between the two communities in order to have peace and stability in Rakhine State.

To combat fears, stereotypes or misjudgments about different religious communities, the commission has also urged the government to educate the public on the basic tenets of Myanmars various religions. U Aye Lwin added that the commission members found some people were unfamiliar with the teachings of their own religions.

Moreover, the commission encourages the simultaneous implementation of both peace and development initiatives, and decentralized resource sharing between the Union government and Rakhine State.

U Aye Lwin pointed out that one of the main challenges for the Arakanese community are the high numbers of young people leaving the state in search of job opportunities elsewhere, including countries abroad; implementing peace and development projects in the area could also serve to address internal migration issues.

Arakanese commission member Daw Saw Khin Tint said that during its tenure, the delegation has documented every incident they were able to in Rakhine State to create an overall picture of the context.

She acknowledged that a lack of collaboration from the Rakhine [Arakanese] side is one of the weaknesses in our report.

The commissions final recommendations, U Aye Lwin said, promise to be fair.
News Myanmar Retains Tough Clause in Communications Law Despite Calls for Repeal

A campaign promoting press freedom in Mandalay. / Zaw Zaw / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  Myanmars Parliament on Friday made minor changes to a controversial telecommunications law, amendments rights monitors say will do little to address concern the law is used to curb criticism of the authorities and reporting of corruption.

The recent arrest of several journalists has raised fears that free speech is under pressure in Myanmar, even under a government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who led efforts to end decades of military rule and won a landmark election in 2015.

Under the amendments approved on Friday, judges can release on bail those charged under the law. Also, only people directly affected by an alleged offence, or those with the permission of an affected person, can press charges under the law, first introduced in 2013.

The maximum prison sentence was also cut to two years from three.

But the laws most contentious clause, which broadly prohibits the use of the telecommunications network to extort, defame, disturb or intimidate remains in place.

Freedom of expression is still being threatened as long as clause 66(d) exists, said activist Maung Saung Kha, who was jailed for six months for defamation under he law, referring to the contentious clause.

Suu Kyis National League for Democracy holds majorities in both houses of parliament meaning the amended law is likely to be enacted soon.

Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, had called for the clause to be repealed. In a joint statement in June, they said the law had increasingly been used to stifle criticism of the authorities.

Many of todays members of parliament and local leaders from the NLD spent many months or years in prison for speaking out for human rights and democracy during the military regimes, so why is the party falling so far short of fixing the problem? said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

But some members of party have defended the law as useful for curbing hate speech and false news as social media use has dramatically grown since the onset of reforms in 2011.

A senior party member, Han Tha Myint, said a majority of parliamentarians liked the protection against online criticism the law provided.

I dont mean theyll sue everybody who criticizes them, but they like this, said Han Tha Myint referring to clause 66 (d).

According to the advocacy group Research Team for Telecommunications Law, 17 journalists have been charged or arrested under the law since Suu Kyis government took power last year.
News This Week in Parliament (August 14-18)

An opium field worker (R), sits next to a Taang National Liberation Army soldier (L) destroying poppy plants in Mantong Township, northern Shan State, in January 2014. A Lower House parliamentarian from Karenni State asked on Friday in the legislature about government plans for alterative livelihoods for poppy growers. / Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

Monday (August 14)

In the Lower House, in response to a question by Dr. U Saw Naing of South Okkalapa Township, Deputy Minister for Education U Win Maw Tun replied that his ministry, in accordance with the national education strategy (2016-2021), will provide greater access to free compulsory primary education for children across the country depending on the funds available in the years to come.

The Lower House also approved the proposal of Tanai Township lawmaker U Lin Lin Oo, urging the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation and the Kachin State government to confront illegal gold and amber mining in the Kachin townships of Tanai and Hpakant.

During the discussion, military parliamentary representatives defended the armys planned operations targeted at gold and amber mines operated by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).

In the Upper House, in response to a question by U Khin Maung Latt of Arakan State (3) about two missing villagers in Rathedaung Township, Deputy Minister for Home Affairs Maj-Gen Aung Soe, replied that the Tatmadaw, border police and local police force have stepped up clearance operations in the Mayu mountain range.

The Upper House approved a proposal by U Aung Thein of Bago (12) urging the Union government to take legal action against gambling centers operating disguised as amusement centers in major towns across Myanmar.

Tuesday (August 15)

There was no parliamentary session on Tuesday.

Wednesday (August 16)

In response to a question from Salingyi Township lawmaker U Win Thein Zaw, Deputy Defense Minister Maj-Gen Myint Nwe replied that his ministry had no plans to relocate the controversial sulfuric acid factory in the township. The factory supplies acid for the China-backed Letpadaung copper mines.

The Lower House approved a consideration of the proposal of Paung Township lawmaker Daw Mi Kon Chan to abolish community-based rural electrification committees, formed under previous governments to help villages generate electricity on a self-reliant basis, after she claimed that there have been many cases of committee members misappropriating funds raised for supplying electricity.

In the Upper House, lawmakers discussed the proposal of Arakan National Party MP U Khin Maung Latt which urged the Union government to identify and take action against militants active in Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships under the 2014 Counter-Terrorism Law.

State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been holding talks with military leaders about whether to label the militants in northern Rakhine State as terrorists, according to government spokesperson U Zaw Htay.

The Upper House approved amendments to 1993 Narcotic and Psychotropic Substance Law. The amendments include replacement of jail sentence with 240 to 360 hours of community service.

Thursday (August 17)

There was no parliamentary session on Thursday.

Friday (August 18)

In the Lower House, Loikaw Township lawmaker Daw Khin Sithu asked if the government would find alternative sources of livelihoods for poppy growers as a national duty concerning drug elimination in the country. Deputy Home Affairs Minister Maj-Gen Aung Soe said that a pilot project to provide alternative sources of livelihoods for poppy growers is being implemented until 2020 in the PaO Self-Administered Zone. He added that social and economic development projects will be carried out in states as part of a national development plan to help poppy growers find other sources of income.

The Lower House approved consideration of a proposal from Daw Khin Saw Wai of Rathedaung Township which urged the Union government to implement better administrative and security measures in northern Rakhine State in response to killings in the area.

In the Upper House, lawmakers continued their debate on U Khin Maung Latts proposal which urged the Union government to identify and take action against militants active in Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships under the 2014 Counter-Terrorism Law.

The Upper House also approved the bill amending the Telecommunications Law, which allows for bail to be granted for the defendant.
Guest Column Breaking the Devils Silence: Sexual Violence in Myanmar

Introducing sex education in school is a controversial issue in Myanmar. / Reuters

Reported rape cases have sky-rocketed in recent years in Myanmar, with the majority of rape survivors being under-aged girls. According to the national police records, there were approximately 1,100 reported rape cases in 2016, 670 of which involved victims who were underage girls. These statistics make clear that we need to address sexual violence against girls in Myanmar society from multiple levelslegislation and policy work is critical, but so is changing norms around sex, sexuality, and womens rights.

There is no direct definition of the word rape in Myanmar language but it can be translated as ma dain. In Myanmar society, the word ma dain is a very nasty word and is commonly used as an excuse to restrict the public life of girls and women. The World Health Organization defines rape as forced or coerced sex; the use of force, coercion or psychological intimidation by one person that requires another person to engage in a sex act against her or his will, whether or not the act is completed.

There are a wide range of topics to be taken into account if we want to address the current sexual violence against girls. The following sections underscore that we need to consider Myanmar culture and context concerning womens rights and sexuality, evaluate current efforts, and find the gaps.

Victim Blaming Attitude

Myanmar is a deeply patriarchal and conservative country where families of rape survivors hesitate to seek help and justice because there is a risk to ones reputation that comes with sexual abuse. Many people still believe that part of the reason why rape occurs is due to the actions of the victimthat rape is the victims fault. Even though many people acknowledge that the perpetrators are solely responsible for their actions, the label of rape survivor brings with it social stigma. The rape victim carries the scar for the rest of their life. Given the depth of this shame, many people believe that the recent spate of rape cases is only the tip of the ice-berg, given that many rape cases go unreported due to stigma around sexual violence.

Introducing Sex Education

Talking about sex in public is a social taboo in Myanmar society, and introducing sex education in school is a controversial issue. Myanmar parents feel it is unsuitable for children to know about sex from a very young age. Yet, many progressive thinkers believe that the conservative culture ignores the evil knocking at girls doors.

A rape case in Ayeyarwaddy division where a 36-year-old teacher raped two of his students14- and 15-year old girlshas signaled the need for sex education in the school. He has been given a 40-year sentence by the court. Although many people agree with this sentence, the case still begs the question of how often such justice is actually pursued. Two years ago, a well-known Myanmar actor was charged with a life sentence for killing a female employee. But the news, months later, that his life-sentence was reduced to a 10-year sentence underscores the impunity with which men harm women, and the way they perceive the laws in place to penalize such actions.

Attempts to Hold Perpetrators Accountable

It is the perpetrators who must be held accountable for their actions, and the perpetrators who must pay the price for their actions. Not our girls.

In 2013, and 2015, U Thein Nyunt, a Member of Parliament introduced the death penalty for those convicted of raping children under 16. His attempts twice ended in failure. In November 2016, 500 people assembled in Yangon demonstrating for death penalty for the perpetrators, with the general public joining the campaign and expressing their anger towards the recent increase in rape cases.

Distrust Towards Current Judicial Practice

The years under the military regime corrupted Myanmars pillar of justice: the judiciary. The lack of an independent judiciary under military rule has bred a culture of impunity for many years. Rape survivors and their families express distrust towards judges and the wider system because they face long proceedings in court cases, and corruption in the judicial system. Therefore, the system itself is discouraging victims and their families from seeking justice, as opposed to protecting them. A situational analysis on gender equality and womens rights in Myanmar highlighted this distrust towards the legal system, describing it as the root cause of unwillingness to report rape.

Child Law Reforms

The 1993 Child Law did not mention child rape. However, rapists of children and adults can incur a seven-to-10-year jail term under section 376 of the Penal Code. In November 2016, the Myanmar government revised the law to increase the punishment from 10 years to a life-sentence, along with a monetary fine for rape of a minor. However, this revised law has not yet materialized on the ground. In the law, the punishment for rape ranges from 10 years imprisonment to a life sentence, but sentences are always shorter than the 10 year minimum, say lawyers and activists. Nevertheless, the current 1993 law deals broadly with the care, education and protection of children. There needs to be a specific child law against sexual violence.

Extensive Research

In 2015-16, a demographic and health survey took place across the states and regions, and it included questions on sexual violence. The study interviewed 632 girls aged 15-19 and found that 1 percent of that age group had experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, with 0.7 percent responding that they had experienced sexual violence in the past 12 months. In 2014, a qualitative study by Gender Equality Network that included interviews with 40 women from Yangon, Mandalay and Mawlamyine showed the seriousness of the problem, as half of the sample said they were raped or sexually assaulted in the past. While valuable, these two reports deal broadly with other research questions and therefore, a specific research study on sexual violence for the general population is critical at this stage to understand why this is suddenly on the rise.

More Work on Psychological Consequences

Consequences of sexual violence, such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are substantial, yet, as important as it is to care for the physical consequences and unwanted pregnancies, the psychological well-being of survivors of sexual abuse is paramount. There has not been much work that focuses on long term psycho-social effects of such violence on survivors. A study by Gender Equality Network said that the extent to which victims deal with the consequences also has an impact on their sexual reputation. Yet, just as more research is needed on sexual violence, more work needs to carry out to find out what coping strategies victims depend on, and what services might be made available for them.

Improving laws and court proceedings is not enough to address the issue. We must also teach the younger generation to have respect for both sexes, and to reject unjust actions. This is a step towards creating a better society. Simply raising awareness is not enough. Society as a whole is responsible for changing the victim-blaming attitude and the double standards for women that are prevalent in Myanmar.

Aye Thiri Kyaw researches gender, womens rights, health, and violence against women. She is a co-author of Behind the silence: violence against women and their resilience in Myanmar, and recently co-authored a journal article in Gender and Society. She studied Health Social Science at Mahidol University, Thailand.

This article originally appeared in Tea Circle, a forum hosted at Oxford University for emerging research and perspectives on Burma/Myanmar.
The security researcher, who claimed recently to have found code written by Briton Marcus Hutchins that was used in the Kronos banking trojan by a third party, now says this code predates both Hutchins and the unknown third party that used it in Kronos.

In an analysis done for security company Malwarebytes, researcher hasherezade wrote that Kronos had been first advertised on the black market in 2014 by someone calling themselves VinnyK and communicating in Russian.

This predates Hutchins' claim, made in 2015, that someone had made use of code, that he wrote for a hooking engine, in malware.

Thank you for the feedback  so, the hooking trick described by MalwareTech was not his idea and the #Kronos didn't copied from him https://t.co/EUdnWYgqms  hasherezade (@hasherezade) August 18, 2017

Hutchins, who gained the attention of the world when he stopped the spread of the WannaCry ransomware by accident in May, was arrested by the FBI in Las Vegas on 2 August after he had boarded a plane to leave the US.

He had gone to the US to attend the annual DEFCON security conference.

The chargesheet against him said he had written and helped distribute Kronos along with an unnamed co-conspirator.

It might be worth noting that nothing on my github was invented by me, they are all PoCs of existing methods.  MalwareTech (@MalwareTechBlog) August 18, 2017

After a detailed technical analysis of how Kronos works, hasherezade wrote that the hooking engine used in malware was similar to the engine that Hutchins had described on his blog.

"Looking at the hooking engine of Kronos we can see a big overlap, that made us suspect that this part of Kronos could be indeed based on his ideas," the researcher wrote.

"However, it turned out that this technique was described much earlier (i.e. here, //thanks to @xorsthings for the link ), and both authors learned it from other sources rather than inventing it.

"An overall look at the tricks used by Kronos shows that the author has a prior knowledge in implementing malware solutions. The code is well obfuscated, and also uses various tricks that requires understanding of some low-level workings of the operating system.

"The author not only used interesting tricks, but also connected them together in a logical and fitting way. The level of precision lead us to the hypothesis, that Kronos is the work of a mature developer, rather than an experimenting youngster."

Hutchins was granted bail on 14 August after a court appearance during which he pleaded not guilty to all six charges levelled against him. He is set to face court again in Milwaukee in October.
When is a bug not a bug? When Microsoft decides to make an unannounced, uncontrollable feature which takes away existing functionality, putting another nail in Edge's coffin vs. Chrome and Firefox.

I received a new laptop yesterday. I'd previously enjoyed a Lenovo Carbon X1 1st generation ultrabook years ago, and yesterday gratefully picked up my new fifth generation model. Still super-slim, still super-fast.

Yet, while busily installing all my applications, tools and settings, and synchronising Dropbox and email I noticed something was not right.

My user icon had not reappeared. Nor had my Microsoft Edge bookmarks and settings come back. Windows apps kept prompting me to sign-in.

Under Settings / Accounts / Sync your Settings the option to synchronise my Windows 10 settings across devices was off, and worse, it was greyed out. It was simply disabled. I could not turn this on. The page prominently stated in red I needed to add a Microsoft account to enable synchronisation.

However, Settings / Email & app accounts showed my Microsoft account. Clicking Help and browsing simply said to enable sync, be sure to add a Microsoft account here. I was doing everything according to normal, and I was doing everything according to the available documentation.

I reached out to Microsoft for help. Technician Melvinson M on service request 1395388007 remotely connected, then without asking chose to perform a system restore to the earliest possible time he could - wiping out all my installs. I was horrified by this digital vandalism. Of course, this did not solve the problem and was a lazy first step. Thankfully, System Restore works both ways, so I was able to revert back again! Phew!

Even so, I still had non-functioning sync. Yet, I fixed it, and you can too.

First, why did this break? The answer is because Microsoft chose to remove this functionality. Of course, without informing users, without updating the messages on their Sync your settings screen, without updating online documentation, and without informing their own support desk.

To be very specific, this problem arises from the circumstance where you have a domain-joined Windows 10 computer running Windows version 1703 aka the Creator's Update.

If you have an older version of Windows 10 you may not see this problem. If like me, you take delivery of a new computer with a fresh installation of the current version of Windows 10 you will see this problem.

If you do not use your Windows 10 device in a corporate environment you will not see this problem.

If, however, you use your computer connected to a corporate domain then you will experience it.

Information can be found on Microsoft's Feedback app where a Microsoft Technician named Anand N states,

"In the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, domain joined users who connected their Microsoft Account (MSA) could roam settings and data between Windows devices. Many IT Pros told us that this functionality was not consistent with their policies for managing information owned by the organization. They did not want their PCs roaming to an individuals personal cloud. A group policy to prevent users from connecting their MSAs did and does exist, but this setting also prevents users from easily accessing their personal Microsoft services. To address IT Pro concerns, we removed the ability for domain joined machines to roam with an MSA. Enterprises can still enable Enterprise State Roaming with Azure Active Directory."

In essence, Anand says Microsoft deliberately removed the ability to sync settings between Windows 10 computers for domain-joined machines in the Creator's Update.

Unsurprisingly, the response from those, like me, who spent time and effort trying to diagnose a problem - which should have been explained somewhere, at the very least on the Sync your Settings screen itself - is negative.

"Another example of a lazy decision by Microsoft, Some ITPro's support syncing for domain joined devices, why has Microsoft not made this a GPO setting that allows both use cases? We are getting very concerned about changes that Microsoft make that impact this operating system - Short Sighed Microsoft Engineers?"

"I don't understand how, in the world of BYOD and working from home, this could possibly be a good decision.By all means, as already stated, add the GP to enable/disable this feature, but to kill it completely, c'mon Microsoft! It's either roll back to 1607 or stop using Edge. In fairness, I preferred the whole sync desktop/favourites/settings and have used this feature since it was first introduced way back with Win 7 - or was it Vista....!"

"Fix the GPO and the behavior. I don't want ESR via AAD only."

"This is just ridiculous. If you're going to add this sort of block you have to make it easy to re-enable this. Requiring Azure AD is just silly. This is a hugely valuable feature for some folks."

"Reeks of a sleazy sales pitch for migrating to Azure AD instead of running in house DCs. Fix the behavior properly, don't cripple it entirely."

"This is fixing a problem with a sledge hammer instead of a simple switch. Please create a GPO setting to control this behavior so that the many of us who rely on this synchronization can use it."

"So frustrating. I really wish you would be a little more strategic about the changes you make to Windows. There are many of us out here that depend on it for revenue."

"After spending hours trying figure this out I find it is a feature and not a bug. This will be the last straw for me with Edge. I will now welcome Chrome on all 10,000 devices in my network. People being able to get to their shortcuts is important in todays multi-device world. Microsoft needed to control this with GPO and document the issue."

"Stupid decision! Why not make the administrator the one that takes this decision instead of Microsoft! (I bet you broke this and cant fix it  this really sounds like a bad excuse)"

"This has broken Edge for me. I can't move my favorites from my old computer to my new computer without this feature. At least I can sync my Chrome bookmarks."

"I don't understand why this can't be put into a GPO. I just spent 3+ hours troubleshooting this only to discover it's not a bug, but a feature! I WANT my users to be able to roam with MS Account...."

"I too object to this new behavior. I did a clean install on Creator's Edition to get rid of a lot of debris which had accumulated over the years. Now I am locked out of my MSA. This should have been a new policy which could be set by people with the right authority. Now I have to consider another complete clean install of Win 10 and then an update to Creators Edition. Please consider adding this as a policy, even if it defaults to the new behavior. Please advise."

And on and on. The comments all agree that Microsoft has made a change which has disrupted many workers who use Microsoft sync for many valid reasons. The change was not documented, not even in the very "Sync your Settings" screen, and certainly, Microsoft's own technicians are unaware of it.

What can you do? There are three options.

One is to abandon Microsoft Edge and stick with Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. After all, synchronisation works perfectly still within these apps.

Second, if you can, perform a clean install of Microsoft Windows 10 build 1607, set up your sync settings, then upgrade. Testing shows this feature successfully remains if you have it in place before upgrading to the Creator's Update.

Thirdly, export a registry key from an existing computer that still has this sync enabled if you have one.

Fortunately, I still have my previous laptop and this worked for me.

Using RegEdit, navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\IdentityCRL\StoredIdentities. You should find your Microsoft account listed as an entry under this, and under that, the Security Identifier - or SID - for your domain-joined account. Export the entire Microsoft account registry branch under StoredIdentities.

Move this to your new computer, then import into your registry. Double-check your SID is correct, though provided you've signed in with the same Active Directory account, then it should be. You can confirm by browsing further down the registry under HKEY_USERS and noting the SID there.

Viola! Open Settings/Accounts/Sync your Settings again and this time it is all open, enabled and manageable. You will not be able to sync passwords until you verify your identity on the new computer but that's a trivial, and routine, exercise.

Oy vey! Thanks for nothing, Microsoft.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Steve Bannon by his own admission promoted the Breitbart webzine as a mouthpiece of white supremacism, in an attempt to create a new, well-educated and well-dressed version of seedy racism. The Republican Party had since the Nixon Strategy of the 1970s played on a soft version of white resentment, but used dog whistles and kept the Klan and the Neo-Nazis at arms length. Bannons plot to have the white grievance branch of the party take it over in a way resembles the way the Evangelicals gradually took over the GOP. Since white evangelicalism is often imbued with a dose of white supremacy, there was even a chance that Bannon could coopt them.

White grievance drove Bannons major policy proposals cutting way back on immigration and especially from non-English-speaking countries, banning Muslims from coming into the country at all, and a neo-mercantilism in which the US would provoke a trade war with China.

In his American Prospect interview, Bannon disingenuously called the white supremacists losers. He was thereby attempting to escape the blame for Charlottesville, but it wont work. Everyone knows he whipped up the fervor of the far right and made it a constituency for Trump, one that previously presidents since 1932 have avoided.

Bannon urged a disentanglement of the US from the Middle East and a turn inward. Hence his interest in having the US military withdraw from Afghanistan in favor of Erik Princes private army, which used to be called Blackwater. Since Blackwater extensively contributed to making the Bush occupation of Iraq a huge disaster, putting Prince in charge of Afghanistan is unwise. In any case, with Bannon gone, that decision will likely be made by generals Mattis and McMaster, at Defense and the NSC respectively, and they appear to be considering a troop escalation. The are the anti-Bannon.

Although Bannon appears to have argued for withdrawing from the JCPOA (Iran deal), it likely was in quest of less globalism and a way of dumping Iran in Europes lap rather than because he wanted a military confrontation with Iran.

Rex Tillerson at State, H. R. McMaster at NSC and Jim Mattis at Defense are all in favor of keeping the Iran deal in place, and it is hard to see what force could now overrule them (Pompeo at CIA is an outlier on this issue and not as powerful as the generals because of Trumps deference to the military).

Bannons suspicion of the gung-ho hawks in Washington extended to the North Korea issue, where, he proclaimed, there is no military solution. But one of the reasons Bannon wanted to play down that issue is that taking the N. Korea crisis seriously requires Washington to engage positively with China.

Instead, Bannon wanted to cut N. Korea loose, so as to have a clear shot at China. Bannon did not want to negotiate with China, he wanted to force it to stop what he sees as unfair trade and currency policies. He did not want to be beholden to Beijing to deal with North Korea, hence his declaration that the latter problem was insoluble and certainly by military means.

Bannons plan for a trade war with China is opposed inside the White House by those Bannon called globalists, including WH economic adviser Gary Cohn, by Jared Kushner, and by key cabinet members.

So the foreign policy winners of Bannons departure are China and Iran. You could say Afghanistan has won something if it wont be made into the equivalent of a privatized American prison. But the war there isnt going well for Kabul and a small US troop escalation cant address the problem. Nor can the status quo hold. I think Mattis and the others are afraid that the Taliban could sweep into Kabul and take back over the country, which would be rather a black eye for the Trump administration.

-

Related video:

Steve Bannon Out At White House | MSNBC
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IMEMC |  

Israeli occupation authorities are prepared to impose massive fines on Palestinians who commemorate the Israeli occupation of Palestine, a report revealed on Tuesday.

An Arab member of the Knesset said, according to Days of Palestine, that occupation authorities have decided to fine institutions which rent out space for events organized by non-Jewish citizens, which the state regards as illegal.

The Israeli measure is against the simplest basics of democracy and free speech, explained Jamal Zahalkeh MK. It is racist because it targets Arab citizens and their institutions.

On Sunday, the Israeli Culture and Sport Minister, Miri Regev, and Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit met and agreed on how to implement the so-called Nakba Law which first surfaced in 2011.

It stipulates that any institution in receipt of government funds will be fined up to three times of the said funds if it rejects Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; incites racism, violence or terrorism; supports armed resistance or terrorist acts against Israel; or commemorates Israels independence day as Palestinian Nakba Day.

Israel Hayom said that Regev asked for the meeting after reports about an event hosted by a Jaffa theatre in honor of former Joint Arab List MK Basel Ghattas, who was indicted of smuggling telephones to Palestinian security prisoners.

Regev and Mendelblit, the newspaper said, agreed that complaints about alleged violations of the Nakba Law, by public institutions, would be passed on to the finance ministry, which would have a week to respond on whether a given incident in fact violates the law.

Via IMEMC



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Al Jazeera English: Palestinians mark 69th Nakba anniversary with rallies
This file photo taken on March 13 shows White House chief strategist Steve Bannon as U.S. President Donald Trump (out of frame) speaks to the press before a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House in Washington, DC. / AFP-Yonhap



US president's strategist talks of USFK withdrawal

By Jun Ji-hye

U.S. President Donald Trump's key adviser says he would be open to a potential deal in which the United States removed its troops from South Korea in exchange for China persuading North Korea to freeze its nuclear programs.

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon also said there was no military option to counter North Korean threats.

His statements are provoking controversy in and outside the country because they stand in contrast to decades of U.S. policy, only confusing Washington's Asian allies amid the evolving nuclear and missile threats from Pyongyang.

Bannon made the remarks in an interview published on Wednesday by American Prospect, during which he explained his trade strategy to win the "economic war" with China.

He claimed issues related to the Korean Peninsula were just a "sideshow" in this war.

"We're at economic war with China," Bannon told the liberal media outlet. "One of us is going to be a hegemony in 25 or 30 years and it's going to be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they're just tapping us along. It's just a sideshow."

Noting that a potential deal to withdraw U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) from the Korean Peninsula in exchange for a verifiable freeze in the North's nuclear buildup seemed remote, Bannon said there was no reason not to push for tough economic sanctions against Beijing because China was not expected to do much more about the North.

He then made another controversial statement, saying, "There's no military solution (to North Korea's nuclear threats), until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons."












If you're not one of the 12 million people who live within the approximately 70-mile-wide (113 kilometers) path of totality, or one of the 1.85 million to 7.4 million people expected to travel to that path, there are still ways to watch the eclipse live. [Total Solar Eclipse 2017: Everything You Need to Know]

NASA will host two live streams: One will follow the eclipse across the U.S.; the other will broadcast from Carbondale, Illinois, a spot that will be in the path of totality for the 2017 eclipse and also the 2024 eclipse.

You can also check the Live Science website and follow @LiveScience on Twitter for photos and around-the-clock coverage of the total solar eclipse.

NASA's Eclipse Across America livestream will last from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. EDT. This video will offer fantastic views from 12 locations, including from airplanes, ground telescopes and 57 high-altitude balloons.

To get another perspective, you can view NASA's Live from Carbondale livestream, which lasts from 11:45 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. EDT. Once you tune in, you will be able to watch live coverage of the eclipse, interviews with scientists, telescope feeds and educational activities; you can also participate in social media chats.

Beach just north of Newport, Oregon: 10:15 a.m.

Madras and Warm Springs, Oregon: 10:19 a.m.

Stanley, Idaho: 11:28 a.m. MDT

Mackay, Idaho: 11:30 a.m. MDT

Weiser, Idaho: 11:25 a.m. MDT

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming: 11:35 a.m.

Pavillion, Wyoming: 11:38 a.m.

Alliance, Nebraska: 11:49 a.m.

Lincoln, Nebraska: 1:02 p.m.

Troy, Kansas: 1:05 p.m.

Atchison, Kansas: 1:06 p.m.

Kansas City, Missouri: 1:08 p.m.

Murphysboro, Illinois: 1:19 p.m.

Makanda, Illinois: 1:20 p.m.

Carbondale, Illinois: 1:20 p.m.

Marion, Illinois: 1:20 p.m.

Paducah, Kentucky: 1:22 p.m.

Franklin, Kentucky: 1:26 p.m.

Clarksville, Tennessee: 1:25 p.m.

Nashville, Tennessee (at the state capitol): 1:27 p.m.

Clayton, Georgia: 2:35 p.m.

Bryson City, North Carolina: 2:35 p.m.

Murphy, North Carolina: 2:34 p.m.

Greenville, South Carolina: 2:38 p.m.

Charleston, South Carolina: 2:46 p.m.

A map showing the path of totality for the Aug. 21, 2017 total solar eclipse (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/SVS/Ernie Wright)

And if you're curious about why the path of totality moves from west to east, how the unusual darkness will affect solar energy, how to explain the eclipse to kids or how ancient people viewed eclipses, we've got your back.

REMEMBER to never look directly at the sun during most of an eclipse, or at any other time, without proper protection. Only during the very brief period of totality are you safe to gaze at the sun with the naked eye, because the moon's shadow has completely blotted out the light. But at all other times, looking directly at the sun can harm your eyes. You must wear solar eclipse viewers; sunglasses won't do the trick. Here's a visual step-by-step guide (and a video) for how to make your own viewers.

Original article on Live Science.
District Chief Executive for the Lambussie District, Iddrisu Braimah Wikana

19.08.2017 LISTEN

The Wa Municipal and Lambussie District Assemblies are in the lead of organising town hall meetings in the Upper West Region.

The initiative which was launched in the Tema Metropolitan Assembly on august 1 is expected to be held in all Metropolitan Municipal and District Assemblies(MMDAs) across the country by the Ministry of Information in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development whose core mandate is to empower the Ghanaian people through the dissemination of relevant information in order to enable them understand the governance process and also get enlightened about the policies and programmes of the government.

The prerogative of these meetings is to provide equal opportunity for office holders to meet the Ghanaian citizenry and discuss issues of national interest that affect the social wellbeing of the people.

Bennin Douri Issifu, the Upper West Regional Information Officer revealed that 50 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies(MMDAs) had been selected for the month of August of which five districts in the Upper West Region are inclusive namely Wa, Daffiama-Bussie-Issa, Nadowli-Kaleo, Lawra and Lambussie districts respectively.

He called on all participants not to be spectators but citizens who should contribute meaningfully during open forum such that feedback would be sent back to government for policy redirection and implementation which will inure to their needs and preferences.

The District Chief Executive for the Lambussie District, Iddrisu Braimah Wikana reiterated governments commitment to delivering on its mandate and fulfilling the promises made to Ghanaians.

He highlighted some of the flagship policies and programmes that the Akuffo-Addo led NPP administration has been implementing since they assumed office.

He said government's Planting for food and Jobs policy was already creating employment for the youth as many farmers are already engaged by the policy and the implementation of the fertilizer subsidy program have enticed farmers to farm more and was optimistic that the policy was going to yield desired results. He emphatically stated that the policy was open to all who wish to farm and therefore urged participants to make good use of the opportunity.

He however lamented that some people, for their parochial interest have started smuggling the subsidized fertilizer into Burkina Faso to make make money and has therefore vowed to deal with anyone who is caught in such an act.

"How can you smuggle something which belong to others to sell and claim you are rich?" He quizzed

He advised the public to reveal to information about culprits who engage in such acts to the police for the law to take its course.

He also called on all citizens to support government's one village one dam policy of which plans are far advanced towards its implementation. He urged them to take full advantage when the policy is implemented so as to enable them engage in all year round farming.

Hon. Braimah indicated that the one district one factory policy which is aimed at bringing industrialisation to the door steps of the Ghanaian people would be implemented as government has already budgeted an amount of GHS 453 Million Ghana Cedis to that effect.

He therefore urged small scale businesses within the district to submit their proposals towards the implementation of the policy for consideration.

On the Free Senior High School policy, the DCE revealed that about 26% of pupils who write BECE in the Lambussie district are unable to continue their education at the Senior High School level due to the fact that they can't raise money to pay their fees.This he believes will be a thing of the past with the introduction of the free SHS policy of the government in September.

At a similar meeting in the Wa municipality, the Municipal Chief Executive, Moomin Issahaku Tahiru revealed that preparations are underway for the construction of new roads to ensure the free movement of vehicles and to ease pressure on the major roads in town which will also help reduce accidents in the municipality.

He also indicated that engineers are currently conducting feasibility studies to ensure the expansion of some major roads in town to include bus stops and pedestrian walk ways.

He also highlighted some of flagship policies and programs of the Npp administration including; Planting for Food and Jobs, One District One Factory Policy, One Village One Dam Policy, Free Senior High School Policy, National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme, Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme, Business Enterprise and Development, Sanitation among others.

Speaking to the Media after the meeting, the MCE when asked said they were putting measures to improve the security situation as robbery attacks have taken a center stage in the municipality in recent times.

The most recent were the attacks on some custom officials at the Pet Vero Guest House and some officials of the Miss Ghana Beauty Peagent at the Blue Hill Hotel.

The MCE emphasized his commitment to fighting crime in the municipality as he has warned party loyalists and relatives never to call on him to intervene in criminal cases at the Police Station.
Pretoria (AFP) - Zimbabwe's first lady Grace Mugabe, who is seeking diplomatic immunity for an alleged assault in South Africa last weekend, is due to attend a regional leaders' summit in Pretoria on Saturday.

The wife of President Robert Mugabe is accused of attacking a 20-year-old model with an electrical extension cord in a Johannesburg hotel where the Mugabes' two sons were staying.

South African police said she was expected at the two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting that opens at 9:30 am (0730 GMT), with a "first spouses programme" starting at noon.

A closing ceremony on Sunday afternoon includes partners of the heads of the states from the 15 member nations.

Officials were unable to provide details about the spouses' programme or confirm if Grace Mugabe was expected to appear in public during the meeting.

She has claimed diplomatic immunity after allegedly assaulting Gabriella Engels nearly a week ago -- the reason for which is not known.

The South African foreign ministry confirmed to AFP on Friday that the immunity application was under consideration.

South African model Gabriella Engels has accused Grace Mugabe of attacking her with an electrical extension cord in a Johannesburg hotel.

Engels -- who has registered a case of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm -- appeared at a press conference on Thursday, wearing a large plaster on her forehead.

Disputed immunity

Lawyers who have taken up her case told reporters that she was offered cash to make the incident "go away" but that she refused and is determined to press charges against Grace Mugabe.

Willie Spies, one of the lawyers, said that if diplomatic immunity was granted they would consider bringing an urgent court application to halt the decision.

The 52-year-old Zimbabwean first lady was in South Africa reportedly to have her ankle treated following a minor accident last month.

Her husband -- 41 years her senior -- flew into the country late Wednesday, the day after she failed to attend an agreed meeting with South African police over the alleged assault.

Zimbabwean officials have declined to comment on allegations against the first lady or her immunity claim. She has not been seen since the incident.

South African police have said they are on high alert to prevent her leaving the country, with an arrest warrant also reportedly being considered.

Grace and Robert Mugabe's two sons Robert Jr and Chatunga live in Johannesburg, where they have a reputation for partying, while the couple also have an elder daughter who lives in Zimbabwe.

The incident has threatened to create diplomatic friction between South Africa and neighbouring Zimbabwe, who have strong political and economic ties.

Grace Mugabe regularly speaks at rallies in Zimbabwe and is seen as one potential successor to take over from her increasingly frail 93-year-old husband.
Bangassou (Central African Republic) (AFP) - Jonas Ngobo can still clearly see the bloodshed and devastation left when rebels attacked a Red Cross health centre in the Central African Republic where he worked.

"I was among the dead and injured", the 54-year-old Ngobo said.

Six of his colleagues died in the violence in the southern town of Gambo, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, when members of a group called the Union for Peace in Central Africa (UPC) invaded the facility.

The UPC is part of a Muslim-majority rebel coalition called the Seleka which briefly held power when it deposed President Francois Bozize in 2013 before they themselves were overthrown by a military intervention led by former colonial ruler France.

Those events sparked some of the bloodiest sectarian violence in the country's history as mainly Christian militias sought revenge.

Christians -- who account for about 80 percent of the population in the Central African Republic -- organised vigilante units dubbed "anti-balaka" (anti-machete), in reference to the machetes used by Seleka rebels.

"Everyone thought the hospital was a safe haven," Ngobo, who managed a wing in the hospital, said. "People crowded in thinking they were under the protection of the Red Cross."

"When they arrived, one of the Seleka took his knife to cut the Red Cross flag. With rifles, machetes and bows, they slaughtered people. They attacked on the inside, on the outside, inside every office. They broke all of the doors," Ngobo said

"When they arrived, one of the Seleka took his knife to cut the Red Cross flag. With rifles, machetes and bows, they slaughtered people. They attacked on the inside, on the outside, inside every office. They broke all of the doors".

The August 5 attack in Gambo, which lies about 450 kilometres (280 miles) from capital Bangui, began around noon (1100 GMT), Ngobo said, when the Seleka invaded the town in the hopes of retaking it from anti-Balaka fighters.

"They kept going until 4pm before withdrawing. We found dead and injured people in town. By nightfall, the city was deserted. Everybody had fled to the forest," Ngobo said.

He was taken hostage by the rebels and forced to treat wounded fighters for about five hours before he was taken back to the hospital.

They "told me not to move," he said. "About 11pm, I fled into the forest, helping injured people flee to Bangassou" -- about 75 kilometres east.

Ngobo has since settled in Loungougba, about 50 kilometres from Gambo toward Bangassou.

"Some people took a week to get here and still some others are just now arriving," he said, adding that he believes 32 people died inside the hospital and in the town.

'Signs of genocide'

Some 180,000 people have been driven from their homes in the Central African Republic this year, bringing the total number of displaced to well over half a million, according to the UN

On the border with DR Congo, Bangassou and the surrounding region has in recent weeks become the epicentre of the unrest in the Central African Republic.

At least 60 people have been killed -- including the six Red Cross aid workers -- in fighting between armed groups in Ngaoundaye and Batangafo in the north, Kaga-Bandoro in the centre and Alindao and Gambo to the south, witnesses told AFP.

Three Moroccan peacekeepers with the MINUSCA force were killed in an ambush there in July, while six others were killed in May.

Those crimes were committed by anti-Balaka fighters, the UN said.

Aid workers have also been targeted in the fighting, which could force them to withdraw from especially violent areas, aid groups said Tuesday in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urging immediate action to stem the violence.

The groups said that at least 821 civilians have been killed this year, while some 180,000 people have been driven from their homes, bringing the total number of displaced in the Central African Republic to well over half a million, according to the UN.

UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien has warned that renewed clashes showed "early warning signs of genocide" and has also urged immediate action.

Pope Francis has called for an end to "all hate and violence" in the country as well.

The UN peacekeeping mission has 12,350 troops and police on the ground in the country to help protect civilians and support the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadera, who was elected last year.

'Why do they hate us?'

Chronology of the violence in the Central African Republic since 2013

Soldiers from Morocco, Gabon and Bangladesh are stationed in the Bangassou area -- which is still controlled by pro-Christian militias -- where hundreds of Muslims have taken refuge inside a seminary.

They are afraid to leave.

"Why do they hate us? Why do they do this to us?" said Djamal Mahamat Salet, the son of the city's grand imam who was killed in May by anti-Balaka fighters. "Women are attacked, children are slaughtered".

The city is now virtually deserted, particularly the administrative sector, because of the thousands of people who have fled to neighbouring DR Congo.

According to Spanish priest Juan Jose Aguirre however, the markets are slowly coming back to life, though he crossed the southern border last week to deliver his homily to thousands of Central African refugees in DR Congo.

More than 10,000 people have arrived in the country since last week in the town of Yakoma, the UN aid agency said.


President Akufo-Addo received four new envoys at the Flagstaff House yesterday.

They were the new British High Commissioner to Ghana, Iain Walker; his colleague from Angola, Augusto da Silva Cunhu; that of Burkina Faso, Pingrenoma Zagre, and the Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana, Femi Michael Abikoye.

The envoys presented their letters of credence to the president.

Welcoming them, President Akufo-Addo talked of the strong links that exist between Ghana and the respective countries, especially the United Kingdom [Britain].

He, therefore, expressed the hope that going forward, the envoys would help pursue programmes and policies that would ensure the mutual benefit of their respective citizens.

The president recalled how Ghana gained independence from British colonial rule in 1957 and the various stages that the country went through to its current state, saying, Today, we are a strong growing democracywe are an open society  a country where individual rights and liberties are respected, a country which recognizes the importance of freedom.

We treasure our relationship; we've found a way to turn what was an unequal relationship to an equal relationship of partners.

He continued, You are welcome here; we are hoping that your presence here is going to continue to enhance the relationship between our two countries, strengthen especiallyties and bonds that exist between us.

As a country that is charting a path expected to lead to rapid growth of its economy create jobs, President Akufo-Addo told the British High Commissioner, We are counting on receiving increasing British investments in our country, just like we are also looking at heightening trade between Ghanaian businesses and UK firms.

Mr Iain Walker pledged his government's commitment to Ghana.

We see your ambition and will match this with action, not words. Where you ask us, we will help you drive reform  practical, pragmatic change to demonstrably improve the business environment. And I commit that I will persuade more UK businesses to invest and partner Ghanaian firms to create jobs and prosperity for both Ghana and UK, he promised.

On his part, the Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr Femi Abikoye pledged that I wish to solemnly assure your Excellency that during my tenure of office, I will exert my efforts to expand and deepen friendship and mutually-beneficial cooperation, enhance mutual understanding and friendship between our governments and peoples to propel Nigeria-Ghana relations to new height.

Their colleagues from Angola and Burkina Faso also gave similar assurances.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent
LEXINGTON  Excitement is building for a once in a lifetime opportunity of experiencing a total solar eclipse.

Lexington Public Schools is prepared for Mondays total solar eclipse with a pair of eclipse safe viewing glasses for each student and teacher.

The eclipses timing coincides with the first day of school for some students  those who attend Bryan and Pershing elementary schools  but the planning to participate was initiated a year ago and education about the event started before school let out for summer vacation.

During the spring semester, high school students in honors science classes designed three levels of brochures about the eclipse to share with elementary, middle school and high school teachers and students. The information was translated into Spanish and Somali.

"Thats why we did it so early, so the information could get to them before summer," said student Anely Jimenez, entering her senior year.

She said she spoke with Mariana Lazarova, who is the director of the UNK Planetarium to get information.

Nia Martinez, also a senior, said she did most of her research by digging on a NASA website.

Both said they are excited for Monday.

"This really cool event is happening in Nebraska. It doesnt happen very often in the place we are at," said Martinez. "Eclipses do happen frequently, but eclipses like this (being in the path of totality) dont happen often."

Jimenez said she realized how unique it was by doing research. The last time there was an eclipse in the Kearney area was nearly 100 years ago and the next total eclipse in the United States will be in 2024, except it will only be visible from Texas to Maine, not Nebraska.

"Take advantage of the opportunity to see it," said Jimenez. "Unless you travel a lot you probably wont see a lot of eclipses."

Martinez said her dad is very excited about the event and ordered glasses. When he learned she would get viewing glasses from school he said he would share the extra pair with someone else.

High school science teacher Crystal Klein said she suggested to Superintendent John Hakonson that the school district should buy eclipse glasses for the "big event in 2017" a year ago in August. She happened into Hakonson again at parent/teacher conferences in October and again asked about the glasses emphasizing the "once in a lifetime" nature of the event. Hakonson said to get a price quote.

Klein ordered 3,000 pairs of glasses in January, only to realize that was only enough for students. Another 500 pairs of glasses were ordered to have enough for teachers and staff.

Each school was given the appropriate number of glasses and is planning their own event, said Hakonson.

"We will let the kids view it and do it in a safe way," he said. "We have the viewing glasses that meet the standard for looking at the sun."

Hakonson said he hopes it will be a day marked in students memories in a positive way, recalling specific historic events of the past. "I hope this will be something they will remember, and say, Hey, I was in school when we watched the solar eclipse from the playground," said Hakonson. "I hope this is a good thing."

A letter dated July 14 was sent to parents in advance of the start of school, informing them of the districts plans. "On August 21, 2017, parts of Nebraska will be in the path of a total solar eclipse. This is the first time since 1918 that a solar eclipse will be visible on a path across the entire continental United States," the letter states in part.

The letter discusses risks in viewing the eclipse with the naked eye, saying that is only safe when the moon completely covers the disk of the sun. At any other time it is not safe to view the eclipse without the proper precautionary measures.

Parents have the option of whether a child participates and those who do not feel comfortable allowing a child to take part are permitted to withhold the child from all or part of school that day. The letter notes that if a child attends school, he or she will be included in the eclipse viewing activities.

A week ahead of the eclipse, Hakonson said he had not been contacted by any parents wishing for their child or children to opt out.

Klein said students at Lexington High School students will head out to Ray Ehlers Stadium at about 12:25 p.m. and remain outdoors until 1:20 people for an hour of viewing time. At that location, totality will occur at between 12:56:28 and 32. It will last 1 minute 11 seconds to 1 minute 14 seconds.

White sheets will be laid on the track to try to help students be able to see a phenomenon called shadow bands that looks like a swarm of moving snakes. This occurs in the moments just before and after totality. Student photographer Jose Romero will try to capture a video of the phenomenon.

"It will be exciting, but somewhat tedious," said Klein of eclipse watching. She said even if the day is overcast the sky will still go completely dark.

"We are super lucky. This is about as far south as you can get for totality," Klein said of being in Lexington. She advised that people out at the lake or towns further south should drive north if they want to see the total eclipse. "Otherwise its like getting second in a race," she said of viewing a partial eclipse

.
The Member of Parliament for Tamale Central, Inusah Fuseini has declared his support for the prosecution of officials suspected to have committed corrupt acts while serving in the Mahama administration.

This comes a day after Deputy Attorney General, Joseph Kpemeka indicated that officials suspected of corrupt acts in previous administration will soon be put before court.

Some of these persons who have been daring us on TV or radio have questions to answer in court, Mr. Kpemka revealed.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Fuseini supported this call saying, If you are in public office and you misconducted yourself in public office which is bordering on corruption or any other matter , you should be prepared to answer for it. If they [NPP government] come to the conclusion that the person is found culpable then that person must pay a price for it.

He was however quick to remind the NPP government to abide by the laws in prosecuting these officials.

The legal ethics particularly binding on lawyers of the court requires that when they are preparing their cases for court, they go to court before they speak so I am just saying that the ethics of the profession requires that you go to court, prosecute the persons you feel are corruptThey [corrupt officials] also have the opportunity because the constitution guarantees them some rights. The sanction regime is defined by law and so whatever sanctions should be imposed, will be imposed by law, he said.

Mr. Inusah indicated that Mr. Kpemka's threats to prosecute corrupt NDC officials do not come as a surprise to him since other appointees had earlier indicated that they are preparing dockets for the prosecution of former government officials who misconducted themselves.

The Mahama administration was rocked with a number of corruption cases including the GHC3.2 million bus branding, GYEEDA and the Subah scandals.

The then opposition NPP, promised the creation of the Special Prosecutor Office which would deal with the various corruption cases.

Government is expected to begin the prosecution of corrupt officials in the Mahama administration in October.

Mr. Kpemka who made this revelation on Point Blank segment of Eyewitness News on Thursday said: By October when we start moving to court with some of the cases, Ghanaians will know that we are serious and we are ready to fight corruption as a canker in this country and uproot it once and for all.



By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana

Follow @EfeAnsah
The acting National Chairman of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Freddie Blay has asked heads of state institutions to be patient as government is at various stages of constituting their boards.

According to him, the process requires time so government can adhere to the constitutional provisions.

Speaking to Citi News in Takoradi, Mr. Blay who is also the board chair of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation GNPC explained that I will understand why some of the institutions are complaining, but the constitution sometimes requires some of these boards to have government representation

But the boards must also come out with their selected individuals who should be part of the board. The process is like that. The list has to go to the Council of State for their views and so forth. But soon all the boards will be reconstituted and all will be happy with it.

Some technical universities have been complaining of the effect of the lack of boards in place to help the running of their institutions.

The agitations from the TTUs increased when the boards of some public universities were recently inaugurated.

However, Mr. Blay noted that is not just the Technical Universities that are left but also some other equally important ones as banks. It takes a little time for some of such composition of their boards and governorship to take place because it goes through some procedure and therefore I will plead with them to be a little patient. We will do it such that we will all be happy with it.



By: Obrempong Yaw Ampofo/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Former Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC), Kwadwo Afari-Gyan and other employees of the commission were among a group of 40 people who benefitted from the auction of vehicles belonging to the EC in 2013 at very ridiculous prices.

The EC disposed of 40 vehicles after a decision had been taken by the management, headed by Dr Afari-Gyan, to auction them so that some employees could purchase some of them by way of motivation.

The lowest price was GH749 and the highest being GH3,745.

Dr Afari-Gyan grabbed a 2008-model Nissan Urvan mini bus for a paltry GH2,675.

This came to light when officials of the commission, led by the embattled Chairperson, Charlotte Osei, appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament yesterday to answer queries raised in the 2015 Auditor-General's report. It indicated that at the time of the audit the commission had auctioned 40 vehicles but details of the vehicles were not provided to enable the auditors know the cost and the accumulated depreciation.

The commission, according to the report, raised only GH83,000 from the auction of the 40 vehicles but failed to provide the list of the vehicles so auctioned.

The EC chairperson was supported by one of her deputies, Amadu Sulley. The two were recently in the news for openly berating each other over allegations of corruption and abuse of office.

At the sitting yesterday, Mr Amadu Sulley, Deputy Chairman of the commission in-charge of Operations and his boss provided a detailed information on the auctioned vehicles, including all the beneficiaries and the prices they were sold for.

Most of the vehicles were manufactured in 2007 with Dr Afari-Gyan taking home the 2008 model which was purchased by the EC at GH34,358.

A 2007 double-cabin Nissan pick-up with registration number GV 48 Y, was also sold to one Saeed Mohammed at the cost of GH749.

The highest-valued auctioned vehicles were sold to two individuals  George Boison and Modestar Asungunah  at the cost of GH3,745 each.

The vehicles were two Peugeot Boxer mini buses manufactured in 2007 and were each bought at GH96,015 by the EC.

Two others  Augustine Okrah and Dongyile Guri  purchased double-cabin Nissan pick-ups at GH1,070; but the original price was GH18,683 each.

Christiana Bosompem also bought a vehicle at GH2,000 and later topped it up with GH140. The EC officials did not disclose which vehicle it was.

A member of the PAC, Ras Mubarak, wanted to know whether Saeed Mohammed, who bought the Nissan pick-up, was an employee of the commission, but the chairperson could not supply the answer, saying unless she verified from the commission's records.

The chairman of the committee, James Klutse Avedzi, asked whether it was a deliberate policy for the commission to auction its vehicles to employees.

Responding to the chairman's question, Mr Amadu Sulley said it was not a deliberate policy and that the auction is open to the public and interested employees are asked to participate.

He said usually, it is the employees who are about to retire from the commission or those who have already retired that are encouraged to participate in the auction as a form of motivation to them.

He said all the employees are made to go through the normal process before the vehicles are auctioned to them.

The PAC chairman asked Mrs Charlotte Osei  who could not provide the names of the auctioneers, the date on which the auction was done as well as the official advertisement announcing the intended auction  to provide those important information to the committee to help in its work.

By Thomas Fosu Jnr


The Police at Sowutoum in the Ga Central Municipality of the Greater Accra Region have arrested a 48-year-old Nigerian for allegedly stabbing a man he claims to be a thief.

Thompson Peter allegedly stabbed Misbau Amadu, 27, in the head with a knife after a confrontation at his residence at about 10:00 pm last Thursday.

The victim was rushed to the Mary Lucy Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival by the doctors.

Inspector Kwabena Danso, Deputy Accra Regional Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), said the suspect was arrested immediately the police received information about the attack.

Narrating the incident to DAILY GUIDE, Inspector Danso, said a week ago, Thompson Peter lodged a complaint at the Sowutoum Police Station that Misbau Amadu had broken into his apartment and stolen some items.

After taking the statement of Thompson, the PRO said the police proceeded to the residence of Misbau Amadu with the intent of inviting him to the station to help investigate the claim but he was not available.

On Thursday morning, Thomson reported that he had spotted the supposed thief in the area and so a detective was dispatched to the place but he was not seen.

Thompson said at about 9:00 pm last Thursday, Misbau came to his (Thomson's) house, armed with a knife to attack him for reporting the case to the police.

In the course of the fight, Thompson said he overpowered Misbau and stabbed him in self-defence.

The matter is still under investigations, Inspector Kwabena Danso posited.

( [email protected] )

By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey


MEMBERS of the Concerned Communicators for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) have claimed that their colleagues have been hostile to them because they are unemployed.

A statement signed by the convener of the group, Michael Agornugah, indicated that they had spent all their meagre resources to call into radio programmes to promote the NDC's agenda but the leadership of the party had turned a blind eye to their plight.

They claim that all efforts to solicit assistance from party executives in order to make ends meet, especially after the party's defeat in last year's polls, had been futile.

The group noted that unlike the NDC, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), through the first lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo, is resourcing party communicators to enable them explain government's policies and programmes to the masses.

The statement pointed out, Some of our party leaders even insulted us because they do not see the importance of the work we have been doing for the party.

Going forward, we are saying that we will not allow any leader to insult us again. Our concerns are numerous and if things are not done properly, we will let the whole country know about it and it will affect us all.

According to the statement, We are calling on the leaders of the party to help us because we are suffering too much. Some of our partners are not in good terms with us because they are of the view that we are doing useless work.

Our resources that would have been used on our families have been used to buy recharge cards for our phones to call into political shows in order to propagate the party's good messages and yet some of our leaders will sit somewhere and denigrate us.

We want our leaders to look at what the NPP leaders did to their callers and do same to us.

BY Daniel Bampoe
Two persons have been confirmed dead following a fuel tank explosion at Delta Agro Limited, a soap manufacturing company at the Heavy Industrial Area of Tema.

One person died on the spot while the other passed on upon arrival at the Tema General Hospital where he was rushed to for medical attention.

The only survivor among the three persons contracted by the company to do some fabrication work on the reservoir which sends fuel to machines at the factory is responding to treatment at the Lagoon Hospital in Tema.

The bodies of the two persons  aged 39 and 45 years  have been deposited at the morgue of the Tema General Hospital, pending autopsy.

DAILY GUIDE gathered that the welders were doing hot fabrication on the fuel tank at a time when there was built-up pressure in it and so it exploded.

It is reported that this is the second time such an incident has occurred in the company, with both incidents recording casualties.

A man, who claimed to be the administrative manager of the factory, told DAILY GUIDE at the scene that three persons were cleaning an oil tank, which contained sludge when the explosion occurred.

According to him, When we got to the scene, according to the workers, they were trying to de-sludge it. So in the course of trying to de-sludge it, they had to cut an area to enable the process to be easily done; then all of a sudden, the thing exploded.

Second in-command at the Tema Regional Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Timothy K. Affum, explained that his outfit received a distress call about the explosion at the company.

I must say there was no fire, there was only an explosion at the company. At exactly 10:31 this morning, we received report of an emergency so when we got to the company, we realised that it was one of their tanks containing dirty oil they used to power some of their machines that had exploded.

Our investigations revealed that they were doing some hot works at the time and they were virtually done with it, because what they were doing at the time of the explosion was grinding to ensure that the outer side of the tank was smooth when the explosion occurred, he indicated.

He advised factory management in the area to always adopt safety measures to ensure the protection of lives and property.

As at the time of leaving the place, security service personnel and officials from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had travelled to the place to assess the situation.

From Vincent Kubi, Tema

C


Vodafone Ghanas commitment to the cultural heritage of Ghana was in full swing during the just ended Asafotufiami festival by the Chiefs and people of the Ada traditional area.

The telecommunication company donated an amount of GHC15,000 to reflect a commitment todeepen ties in the communities in which it operates.

The weeklong festival, which ended on August 10th 2017, was also to commemorate 80-years since the celebration was instituted by the Chiefs and people of the traditional area.

Commenting during the donation, Agnes Emefa Essah, Sales and Marketing Director at Vodafone Ghana said:

This country has a wealth of rich tradition and cultural heritage and its always an honor to be part of this. We are a company that has deep roots in the history of this country and we see platforms like the Asafotufiami festival, as a perfect avenue to fully show our commitment.

A representative of the Traditional council expressed deep appreciation to Vodafone for the gesture and was confident that the partnership will continue for years to come.

The Asafotufiami festival is an annual celebration of the people of Ada Traditional area in the Dangme East District, held in the first week of August. It usually attracts about three million people every year.
19.08.2017 LISTEN

At some sort of parliamentary interface affair hosted by the academic community of the Ho-based Evangelical Presbyterian University, National Democratic Congress Member of Parliament for Tongu-North, Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa, was reported to have castigated the Akufo-Addo Administration for being uninspiringly slow to ship relief supplies to the victims of the massive mudslide that ravaged the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown. This natural disaster is reported to have killed as many as 400 residents, with some 600 still reported to be missing (See Governments Response to Sierra Leone Uninspiring  Minority Ghana News Agency / Modernghana.com 8/18/17).

Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa, the ranking member of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, who mordantly decried President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addos participation, together with other major African leaders, in the removal of the former Gambian dictator, President Yahya Jammeh, also described as utterly embarrassing the call by the Akufo-Addo government for Ghanaians to donate items of clothing, and other essentials, for onward transmission to the government and the mudslide victims of Sierra Leone.

Now, this self-righteous posturing and rush-to-judgment of the former Atta-Mills Deputy Information Minister is rather infantile and very comical, to speak much less about the downright cynical because even as we speak, some 24 hours later, Vice-PresidentMahamuduBawumia is reported to be headed to the Sierra Leonean capital with relief supplies estimated to be worth at least $ 1 million (See Bawumia Set for Sierra Leon with $ 1 Million for Disaster Victims MyJoyOnline.com 8/18/17).

The reader should also compare the preceding response of the Akufo-Addo Administration to the response of the government of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, late, of which Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa was a key operative, some 6 or 7 years ago, when a massive earthquake struck the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince and its immediate environs. Back then, the National Democratic Congress-led government did absolutely nothing, Nada, as Spanish speakers are wont to say, to help alleviate the plight of the approximately half-million people directly affected by the quake.Actually, what President Atta-Mills had reportedly said then was that Ghana would contribute relief supplies at the appropriate time.

It is also interesting to hear Mr. Okudzeto-Ablakwa castigate the key operatives of the Akufo-Addo government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for being slow to respond to the Sierra Leone disaster, when one reckons the fact that the capstone foreign policy agenda of both the Mills and Mahama tandem governments of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) was to doggedly pursue an insular policy of hermetic non-interference in the potentially far-reaching activities of neighboring countries in the West African sub-region.

And so then-President Atta-Mills maintained a deathly silence while hundreds of thousands of Ivorians were slaughtered by both sides of the civil war-wracked regime of then-President Laurent Gbagbo. It would be then-main Opposition Leader and now-President Akufo-Addo who would make diplomatic overtures for cessation of hostilities. Dzi Wo Fie Asem, or Mind-Your-Own-Business, President Atta-Mills would snap at any of his most ardent and notable Ghanaian critics, largely members of the then New Patriotic Party opposition who had called for some form of humanitarian intervention in the Ivorian conflict.

We must also recall cynical attempts by then-President Mahama to facilitate the entrenchment of the Jammeh dictatorship in The Gambia, in the wake of a popular coup detatthat rocked the jaded dictator, in the lead-up to Ghanas 2016 general election. Having lost a democratically credible election in his own strip-mall country, Mr. Jammeh flatly refused to stand down, after having conceded defeat.President Mahama would also attempt to intervene in a popular street uprising that led to theoverthrow of Burkinabe dictator Blaise Campaore. I mean, the NDC leadership may be anything but humanitarian and/or conscientious.

Even at home, in Ghana, the policies of the so-called Social Democratic leaders of the National Democratic Congress have been anything but socially democratic. Indeed, virtually every single poverty-alleviation program put in place by government, such as the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the School Feeding Program and LEAP has been both initiated and implemented by New Patriotic Party-led governments, namely, by former President John Agyekum-Kufuor and, presently, President Akufo-Addo.

Maybe before calling the response of the key operatives of the Akufo-Addo Administration to the Sierra Leone disaster into question, the former Education Minister second-bananas ought to have informed Ghanaians about the level and magnitude of emergency relief supplies bequeathed the erstwhile Mahama-run National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) to the Akufo-Addo-run present-day NADMO. The details of what Mr. Ablakwa comes up with would better inform the reader about the integrity and credibility of the critic on this present subject.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
The President and Spiritual Leader of the Tijaniya Muslim Council of Ghana (TMCOG), Sheikh Abul-FAidi Abdulai Ahmed Maikano, last week led a delegation to pay a courtesy call on the United States Ambassador to Ghana, Robert P. Jackson in his office in Accra.

The Public Relations of TMCOG, Abubakar Baba Yara, stated that their activities were founded by the first Imam of the Ghana Armed Forces Sheikh Abdulai Ahmed Maikano.

He disclosed that there are two annual events initiated by the noble Sheik which is been continued by His successor after his demise.

"These events attract hundreds and thousands of people from far and near each year. Mr Abubakar didn't miss the fact that the president has now taken another step in ensuring the teeming youth are engaged in Skills Training and Entrepreneurship.

This, he said, will help them acquire vocation rather than be lured into acts which fall short Of the teachings of Islam.

The spiritual leader said what he wants to achieve more is building modern schools from creche as well as basic, secondary and tertiary levels to give more opportunities to children to acquire education to the highest level.

"We would therefore like to appeal to your high office to come to our aid and assist us relaize this dream," the concerned Muslim leader humbly appealed.

On his part, Ambassador Robert Jackson praised Khalifa for the good work he is doing for humanity. He assured him of their support in the field of education, skill training and Agriculture.

The council took the opportunity to invite him to this year's Maulid at Prang in the Pru district of the Brong Ahafo region which is slated for 4th November, 2017.
19.08.2017 LISTEN

Founder of Celltel Limited, which is today called Kasapa Telecom Limited, Prince Kofi Kludjeson said he is in the process of taking over the dying company, rebranding it to Celltel and reviving it to take its place of pride in Ghana's telecom industry.

He was speaking on KofiTV, following a report by Adom News that he current operators of Kasapa Telecom under the brand name Expresso, Sudan Telecom (Sudatel) have announced that they owe zero per cent shares in the company.

Sudatel stated clearly on page nine of its 2016 Third Quarter Financial Report dated September 2016, and published November 2016 on its website that in 2015 its shares in Kasapa Telecoms was 82%, but shares held in 2016 was 0%.

The company had earlier reported that it sold 18% shares to an unknown buyer for $5million under a shares purchase agreement (SPA) in 2013, and the remaining 82 per cent shares had been transferred to an escrow agent pending the fulfillment of the conditions set out in the SPA for onward transfer to the mystery buyer.

But now it is reporting zero per cent shares but failed to state if the mystery buyer had paid for the remaining 82% shares and how much they paid.

However, Prince Kofi Kludjeson said his checks showed that the company had not been sold to anyone but the 0% shares reported by Sudatel was just a strategy for them (Sudatel) to walk away for the "illegality" they had engaged in since July 2008.

"The only entity we know made an attempt to buy the company was the Jospong Group of Companies but I personally met Dr. Joseph Agyepong and he assured me he had backed out of the deal," he said.

He explained that there are no records at National Communications Authority (NCA) to show Sudatel owns Kasapa Telecom and there are no records at the Registrar General's Department to show there is any company called Sudatel or Expresso in Ghana.

Without mentioning any names, he said "This is all one big illegality some people here and abroad connived to engage in but all that is coming to an end because now the company is registered in its original name which is Celltel Limited and I am still the owner."

Kofi Kludjeson observed that since people conspired and used foul means to take the company away from him, things have not been well with them because "you cannot deny a company of its vision bearer and think the company will survive."

"I am not surprised at what is happening to Kasapa because companies thrive, first and foremost, on the spirit of the vision bearer before the right principles will work; but when the spirit of the founder is taken out of the company, the company dies and slow death," he argued.

Indeed, since Sudatel took over, they have not been able to recapitalize the company, and as a result, the company has declined into insignificance over the past nine years and that has been characterized by frequent change of Managing Director, consistent monthly decline in customers, huge and numerous debts and months of unpaid salaries.

Meanwhile, the company's long line of creditors, including real estate owners, devices dealers, vendors, utility service providers and others have been chasing the company for debts.

The sole CDMA player also continues to lose hold of its stake in the market as customers continue to abandon the network by the day due to bad service. As of April 2017, it subscriber level had declined to a paltry 23,264, from about 400,000 at the time Sudatel took over.

Recently, recharge card retailers likened Expresso Ghana to the embattled microfinance company DKM, because the retailers said they invested heavily into Expresso products and now it has become bad debts for them because no one is buying those products and Expresso has also refused to take them back and refund their moneys.

But Kludjeson said all that is about to change because he has engaged a number of renowned international partners and signed agreements that will see a rebranding of Kasapa/Expresso back to Celltel and a quick revival of the company beginning from next year.

"We have engaged Foxcom of Apple devices fame as our device partner; Cisco will be our network partner, Hughes will provide nationwide satellite network, Google will provide fibre and National Information Technology Agency (NITA) will host our data centre," he said.

He noted that the new Celltel will still operate the 028 prefix and use the affordable device strategy to spread prepaid affordable wifi across the country, beginning with district assemblies, government agencies and some private organizations, like the media, whose workers work regularly with handheld devices and data.

"We have signed agreements to build wifi networks in areas where there are schools (universities) and offices where data usage is key to their work and daily lives.

"The plan is to sign on at least one million people in the first year and give them all Celltel and KQ (Kludjeson Quality) branded affordable devices, which they will pay for in monthly installments for three years then they get to own the devices, but keep honoring the service contract," he said.

Regarding the liabilities of Kasapa Telecoms, Kludjeson said he has engaged a transactional advisor to assist on how to settle the workers and also deal with the liabilities of the company to clear their path for the new page.

He however stated that there is no plan to lay any worker off, but their salary arrears will be paid and they will be engaged to apply their skills at running the network which is now backed by the spirit of the vision bearer.
COZAD - The 38th Annual Cozad Chamber of Commerce Farmer and Businessman Appreciation BBQ was held Tuesday evening at the Cozad Elks Club.

The event was organized by the Cozad Chamber and its agriculture committee, in collaboration with Nadine Berke, Ann Smith and Judy Eggleston.

Cozad Chamber Executive Director Sandy Bappe also recognized the efforts of Barb Batie, who provided photography and organized the slideshows for the event.

The master of ceremonies for the event was Chuck Birgen, an agriculture committee member with First Bank and Trust. Pastor Doug Smith of Cozad United Methodist Church gave the invocation.

Bappe gave a brief update on the formation of a Barn Quilts of Dawson County trail. She heralded the efforts of Julie Geiger and Laurie Yocom, members of the chambers tourism committee, to research, draw attention and organize the formation of a barn quilt trail county-wide.

"They (Geiger and Yocom) felt it was a good fit for Cozad. Why not make it a county wide attraction?" Bappe said about organizing the barn trail to include Lexington, Cozad, Gothenburg and rural areas.

Anyone who wants to buy, make or hang a barn quilt and needs help is encouraged to contact the Cozad chamber at 308-784-3930.

Judy Eggleston, the former director of the Cozad Community Foundation, talked about the importance of local donations in funding the Agriculture Future of America (AFA) scholarship, which provides $4,200 in scholarship funding and leadership training to a local graduating senior going into an agriculture major.

The 2017 AFA Scholarship recipient, Leah Treffer, personally spoke and thanked the Cozad community for donating to the scholarship.

Treffer said she would study biology at Nebraska Wesleyan University.

"I hope to go on to graduate school, do research in the science side of livestock development," Treffer said. She plans on becoming a genetic biologist specializing in cattle.

Dannyl Bromander, last years AFA scholarship recipient, also spoke at the event.

"I cannot thank you enough for donating to this scholarship. One thing that sticks in the back of my mind is its not what you know but who you know. (The AFA leadership conference) helps you develop your connections, you get so much more out of it than you could ever imagine," Bromander said.

After years of organizing and collaborating with Cozad Community Schools, agriculture committee members with the chamber were happy to introduce the Cozad High Schools newly hired FFA teacher, Rebekah Spader.

Spader said she was very excited to start the school year and an FFA program at Cozad High School. She said she was actively involved in FFA when she was in high school.

The Cozad FFA chapter will look to co-op and collaborate with the Elwood FFA chapter, she said.

The Agriculture Service Award, traditionally given to an employee who "goes above and beyond the call of duty," according to Bappe, was presented to Mitch Ziebell with Darr Feedlot.

Ziebells life was filled with agriculture work, from helping his father with fences, to farming with Jeremy Geiger and Gary White, to taking care of sick cattle at Darr Feedlot, Bappe said.

According to the award speech read by Bappe, Ziebell has worked as a flagger, on a turkey farm and with the Kugler Bull test. He has been actively involved in the community through the American Lutheran Church, the Nebraska Pony Express Association and the Cozad Pony Express.

John Schroeder of Darr Feedlot said of Ziebell, "Mitchs humble and kind demeanor shows his love for the cattle, the industry and for people."

"As a cattleman, Mitch has a keen ability to see cattle needs. He is one that can pull sick cattle and treat them properly back to health. He is also one that thinks ahead and takes care of cattle needs, to prevent sickness from happening. Consumers can trust that he does all of this in a way that is proper for the cattle and the customer he is working for," Schroeder said.

The 2017 Farm Family of the Year Award was given to the Alan and Delores Hueftle family.

The family has maintained a thriving operation for 60 years that has included dairy cows, hogs, a feedlot, cowherd and backgrounding mixed with row crops, according to the award speech read by Bappe.

In May of 1984, Greg Hueftle, son of Alan, worked with his father in farming for a year before renting his own land close to the family operation. Greg lives close to family with his wife Renee.

Hueftle gave some comments after receiving the award on behalf of his family.

"I want to thank the Cozad Chamber and Barb Batie, who took the time to take the pictures. In this business, the first thing you need is a wife, you have children, a banker that will stick with you, and you need hired help," he said.
19.08.2017 LISTEN

An Accra based Non-Governmental Organisation, Divine Group International Foundation (DGIF) which established its clinic facility last month at Ablekuma Fanmilk in Accra has organised free birth certificates for all children under one year at the facility.

The project, which was in partnership with the Ga Central Municipal Assembly, happens to be the flagship project of DGI Foundation.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the foundation Mr. Ebenezer Kofi Adu-Lartey stated that the programme was to increase fresh birth registrations from 0-12 months and also as social intervention to help everyone has an identity card.

The programme saw a total of 42 birth certificates being issued to all newborn babies for free. Having obtained prior approval from the Ga Central Municipal Chief Executive, Hon. Dr. Emmanuel Lamptey, the information Van from the Municipal Assembly moved round the various neighbourhoods within the municipality, informing and educating the community members about the impending exercise.

The Births and Deaths registry Department of the Ga Central Municipal Assembly uploaded the information of babies after manual registration unto the National Data platform.

Meanwhile, officials from the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) renewed NHIS cards for babies and other cardholders. In all, 120 NHIS cards were renewed.
19.08.2017 LISTEN

The Ashanti Regional NPP Chairman, Benard Antwi Boasiako, popularly known as Chairman Wontumi, put it aptly when he opined that the NDCs proposed school of ideology will only produce well-drilled propagandists.

In fact, I share Chairman Wontumis sentiments on the NDCs proposed ideological school. As a matter of fact, Ghana cannot afford anymore trained propagandists. Indeed, such a communist venture will only upset the democratic ambiance we are enjoying at the moment.

It is true that the NDC Party was founded on communist ideals. Thus the party thrives on vile propaganda.

It is,however,worthy of mention that the founders of the NDC Party, who gleefully staged a series of coup detats, rather chose communist approach to ensuring sanity to the system, hence exterminating innocent people without any provocation whatsoever.

Apparently, some schools of thoughtcontend that coup makers take their inspirations from communism.

As a matter of fact, Ghanas revolution days under the founders of the NDC Party could be likened to: in the China of the Great Helmsman, Kim Il Sungs Korea, Vietnam under Uncle Ho and Cuba under Castro, Ethiopia under Mengistu, Angola under Neto, and Afghanistan under Najibullah.

Some experts observe that Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of humiliations and inexplicable murders than any other political ideal or movement, including Nazism (Stephane Courtois 1999).

Take, for example, in their fiendish attempt to get rid of the alleged sleazes and corruptions back then, the NDC founders resorted to propaganda, and, many innocent Ghanaians were unjustifiably murdered or tortured mercilessly for apparent minimal offences.

Regrettably, through vile propaganda, market women were stripped naked in the public and whipped mercilessly for allegedly hauling their products or selling on high prices.

While their male counterparts were barbarically shaved with broken bottles and whipped for offences that would not even warrant a Police caution in a civilized society.

As if that was not enough, their sheer propaganda led to the barbaric murder of three eminent high court judges and a prominent retired army officer on 30th June 1982 for carrying out their constitutionally mandated duties.

Regrettably, when the communist enthusiasts founders of the NDC Party burst onto the scene, they exhibited their propagandistic gimmickry and tempestuously murdered people with more than two cars.

Moreover, through propaganda, the NDC founders shamefully exhibited their communist ideals by going into war with business men and women in the country.

Ironically, they resorted to propaganda and replaced our educational system with that of a communist model.

Hypocritically, after messing up our educational system, they turned around and sent their children abroad to study in what they saw as a superior educational system.

Clearly, the NDC faithful have a penchant for slyly resorting to disinformation metastasising, or to put it euphemistically, systematic propagation of propaganda.

It is, however, worthy of note that the meaning of propaganda traces its roots to the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide- a committee of Cardinals founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV to oversee the spread of Catholicism abroad, by any means necessary.

Consequently, the word propaganda came to mean the concerted effort to spread any belief the communist Propagandists are associated with. Therefore propaganda is regarded as "a deliberate attempt to alter or maintain a balance of power that is advantageous to the communists.

Propaganda may also be defined in its most neutral and simple sense as the persuasive dissemination of particular ideas or material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause.

In other words, propagandism is the systematic propagation of a doctrine or information reflecting the views and interests of those propagating such information or doctrine.

Moreover, the experts contend that a message can be classified as propaganda if it suggests something negative and dishonest.

In any case, it should never be a surprise to see a party whose founders have an inborn proclivity for communist ideals to seek to establish school of communism with a view to producing more trained propagandists to proselytise and hoodwink unsuspecting electorates.

We must, however, not lose sight of the fact that most wars, crimes and genocides which were perpetrated against humanity were expedited through the use of propaganda aimed at securing popular support for illegal and violent action.

Apparently, this can be witnessed continued in the past and in the modern era. For we can sadly point to the Nazi hate speech which preceded the Holocaust, the Radio and Television hate speech which preceded the Rwandan Genocide and al-Qaeda hate speech which preceded the attacks on World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001.

In hindsight, we can infer that uncontrolled propaganda could spell doom for a nation,so, it is necessary and proper for the government to do everything in its power to restrict any ideological institute that can promote vile propaganda.

Strictly speaking, freedom of opinion and expression is not an absolute right in national and international jurisprudence. In fact, this right, like others, may be restricted to protect and balance other rights and interests. However, it is the complexion and the degree of these restrictions that is often contended in extant human rights and security jurisprudence.

Take, for example, Article 20(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) requires states to prohibit propaganda: Any advocacy of national, tribe, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Even though some experts contend that restrictions on hate speech can be justified, Article 20(2) has proven highly controversial and is variously criticised as being overly restrictive of free speech or as not going far enough in the categories of hatred it covers.

In so far as Article 20(2) does not obligate states to prohibit all negative statements towards national groups, tribes, races or religions, if a statement constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, it must be condemned in no uncertain terms.

Actually, the two known restrictions on the right to freedom of expression are: The prohibition of advocacy of any national, racial or religious hatred and the prohibition of propaganda.

Nevertheless, the prohibition of propaganda is not innately contradictory to the right to freedom of expression.

The right holder, however, has to be cognisant of the duty and obligations which are encapsulated in the international human rights instruments.

Interestingly, however, while propaganda for genocide is codified as an international crime, the propaganda for the incitement to aggressive war is not.

Nevertheless, incitement to commit an illegal act is in itself illegal under international law.

Furthermore, incitement, instigation, abetment and solicitation are all common to various criminal codes world-wide.

These are generally considered "inchoate offense[s]" or "a step toward[s] the commission of another crime, the step itself being serious enough to merit punishment.

In the English common law for instance, there are three general inchoate offenses: 1) attempt; 2) conspiracy; and 3) incitement.

 Incitement conveys a "general label to cover any use of words or other device by which a person is requested, urged, advised, and counselled, tempted, commanded, or otherwise enticed to commit a crime."

In sum, let us all come together and say no to the institute of propagandism.

K. Badu, UK
19.08.2017 LISTEN

Sometimes it is pretty hard to understand the motivation that drives some of the members of our nation's political class. Take the New Patriotic Party's (NPP) obsession with dividing up some of Ghana's existing regions. What is the point in balkanising our homeland Ghana so? Haaba.

In one breath the government in power talks (sensibly) about the need to cut costs in the public-sector - and getting value for money in all government expenditures (a fantastic nation-building idea). Yet, that selfsame government is also bent on embarking on the creation of yet more regions - a needless and expensive enterprise that will only increase the burden on hapless taxpayers and revive unnecessary ancient tribal rivalries: a threat to the stability of our country if ever there was one. Ebeeii.

Why - and to what big-picture grand-idea-end one wonders? This is the 21st century: It is an initiative that simply doesn't make sense - unless of course it is driven entirely, as some allege, by the same secret tribal-supremacist agenda that motivated the leadership of the colonial-era pro-Akan political organisation, the murderous National Liberation Movement (NLM) of infamy.

The question is: Why are some NPP members' collective worldview still influenced by that vile and violent colonial-era political grouping whose leaders (and their political progeny since independence in 1957) always sought to dominate Ghanaian society by stealth - because in their view dominating our nation and lording it over the masses was (and is) their birthright? What perfidy. Breaking up some of Ghana's regions makes no sense at all from a national cohesion standpoint in the digital age. It is like chasing fool's gold - and the political equivalent of seeing a mirage as the discovery of a new source of water in a parched landscape.

As an old wag I know said to me a few days ago: "Kofi, in an age when thousands of young Ghanaians take online degree courses from universities located in faraway places such as the U.S., whiles others too even trade online serving consumers living in nations across the vast expanses of some of the world's oceans, the curious argument that breaking up some of our ten regions will save ordinary people from having to cover great distances in order to access public services, makes little sense.

No deep thinker will agree with those making that argument. And, furthermore, nothing good will ever come out of it, for sure." That is a bit extreme perhaps - but he might have a point. The question is: Are those who support the idea of breaking up some of Ghana's existing 10 regions - because in their view it will eliminate the need for ordinary citizens to cover great distances to access public services there - wrong to support the policy of breaking up those existing regions?

Perchance are they making an egregious error of judgement in so doing? Or, worst of all, is the motivating factor really the furtherance of a secret tribal-supremacist agenda set by some of those now ruling our country - as some of its more cynical critics allege?

Whatever be the case, surely, we must not allow the balkanisation of our homeland Ghana by any group of politicians in the united African nation of diverse-ethicity that President Nkrumah of blessed memory bequeathed to Ghanaians?

Food for thought
As has been the case, governments across the world are required to promote the agenda for development by making life easy for the people. To meet the growing needs of the people in Ghana, succeeding governments havebeen pushing for the execution of infrastructural developments that include roads, educational institutions and health facilities.

However,succeeding governments were not allowed to shoulder the nations development agenda all alone. Apart from known major European donor agencies, one organization among many localNon-Governmental Organizations that has become prominent in humanitarian activities in Ghana is Islamic Council for Development and Humanitarian Services [ICODEHS].

For the past three decades, it has succeeded in providing many communities in Ghana with clinics, schools mosques, orphanages andis providing support for many orphans with cash, food and clothing and assistingthem to pursue education.

The organization which begun as a Book Development council has written many books to educate people young and old to appreciate morality through Islamic laws and principles. ICODEHS has gone further to sponsor a radio program on MARHABAFM every Sunday night, to educate people on moral development using Islamic principles using texts from the Sunni [activities] of Prophet Mohammed as narrated by his followers and from books written by Sheikh Mustapha Ibrahim Chairman of ICODEHS.

Due to its remarkable service to the nation and its people especially the needy, ICODEHS has won many national and international awards which were received by its Chairman Sheikh Mustapha Ibrahim. ICODEHS has also been granted permission to extend its humanitarian services to other African countries like Nigeria, Togo and Senegal.

The latest remarkable service ICODEHS has just provided the people of Accra is free eye screening and surgery at the clinic of the organization at Akweteman in Accra.

According to informed sources, this is not the first time the council has carried out eye treatment and free medical care to the needy in Ghana, saying that it would be continued periodically using local doctors and nurses with funds from Dubai Charity Society.

Apart from the free medical service, ICODEHS has also extended potable water to many communities through the digging of boreholes and wells. The newest of this is a well fitted with hand pump which was dug with funds from RAF and commissioned for use by the people of Faadi in the Ashanti Region.

The beneficiaries of the project were delighted because water from the well would serve their needsof clean water needed for cooking and drinking and for ablution. The magnanimity of ICODEHS wasalso extended towards providing girls and ladies in Accra with sewing machines and refrigerators to meet their needs.

The beneficiaries were delighted becausewhile the sewing machines would help the girls be able to pursue the vocations they learnt from school, the beneficiaries of the deep freezers would fill them with soft drinks and sachet water for sale and use them in creating ice blocks for sale. The items were provided with funds from the Red Crescent Society of United Arab Emirates [UAE]. ICODEHS has also provided free school uniforms with hijab to some female students.

ICODEHS has also supported the people of Sekondi Zongo tocut the sod for the construction of a clinic. The sod was cut by the Deputy Regional Imam of Western Region Mohammed Sani Abdulai to be built by ICODEHS with funds from the Red Crescent Society of the UAE. Apart from the clinic to be built in Sekondi a new Mosque would also be built at Akwatia Line Kumasi under the supervision of ICODEHS with funds from the Red Crescent Society of UAE.

Apart from the above projects five newly built mosques by ICODEHS were commissioned for use by Muslims at Kpatuya and Sali Fongboth in the Northern Region, Alhaji Jibril Mosque in Dambai in the Volta Region; Senti in Ssissala East in the upper west region and Namboo Sambolga in the Upper East Region. All the mosques were built to provide the people in the localities with descent and spacious places of worship.
Teachers in the Senior High Schools (SHS) have been urged to encourage their students, especially the girls, to do more research work as part of their curriculum in the secondary education level.

This will help the students master the courses they pursue in their schools and also make them think innovatively which is the way to go.

At Aburi during the grand finale of the 2017 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) competition organised by the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE)-Ghana, Richard Amoani,the Programmes Officer of the Forum, who spoke exclusively to www.ghananewsarena.com, categorically stated that students easily identify problems but lack the ability or the wisdom to invent solutions and therefore believes that research would make them think critically if encouraged.

The STEM competition, which started in 2015, this year saw 10 SHS participating, including, the Diaspora Girls SHS, Adonten SHS, Aburi Girls SHS, Aburi Prebyterian SHS and Methodist Girls SHS.

The others were Benkum SHS, Nifa SHS, Okuapeman SHS, West African SHS and Odorgono SHS.

After the innovation competition which saw the representatives of the schools inventing innovative projects of their own; two schools, Odorgono and Aburi Presbyterian SHS emerged winners and would be representing Ghana at the sub regional level in Lusaka-Zambia on August 22, 2017.

The two schools won the day by using Nim tree extracts to prepare preservative for dry maize and using herbs to prepare insecticide for killing bedbugs respectively.

The Forum for African Women Educationalists was established in 1993 by some prominent women Educationalists in Africa with the aim of enhancing the girl-child education in the continent.

Realising that the area of Science, technology, engineering and mathematics had been dominated by males, the Forum instituted the STEM to encourage girls to venture into those perceived difficult programmes to bridge the huge gap.
In the past couple of days, the media; radio, television and all the social media platforms have been engulfed with the news of License for Teachers. This phenomenon had attracted diverse and dissenting views from people knowledgeable in the affairs of education and educational practices in Ghana and elsewhere in the world.

Leaders in the top hierarchy in the educational set up especially the Teacher Unions had vehemently rejected the idea proposed by the government. Again, these Leaders who are abreast with best practices in educational matters had expressed their opinions on the likely consequences both negative and positive this policy and initiative will bring to bare to the life of the Teacher and the total process of education.

It is to be noted that while licensing the work of the Teacher portends considerable advantages best known to the authorities initiating the whole agenda and process, it has serious consequences and flaws. For instance, the authorities think probable benefit may include a better managed and regulated profession to ward off the chaffs and to prevent haphazard entry of pupil Teachers whom many think lack the bedrock of teaching methods and classroom management.

The authorities however had refused to factor into their policy the promising negative consequences of the licensing of the Teacher. Teaching may not be done properly just because the instructor holds a license. Licensing is just a document that may not have any beneficial consequences on the processes of learning and acquiring knowledge. If the rigorous cognitive process Teachers go through in acquiring their professional training is not enough and does not sufficiently address the need of the service then a license is just below the requirement. Given the scanty time and nature acquiring the license will take, it is better the authorities think of it again.

The effect of the policy on performance has been stated clearly to the stakeholders of education in the country. What is its impact on performance of the Teacher? Licenses do not guaranteed an increased in performance of the Teacher. The possession of a drivers license by a driver who has no vehicle is worthless. Teaching and Learning Materials for schools in Ghana should rather be sought. Most of the Schools in Ghana have no ICT laboratories and textbooks. The authorities should think of the flaws associated with someone holding a license in a public institution without the appropriate and adequate Teaching and Learning Materials (TLMs). What use is of a license when textbooks and TLMs are lacking and inadequate where available.

Lets think of the whole process again and factor in the inputs of all stakeholders in the educational sector in Ghana. Licenses to be issued should not be considered as a panacea to solving the learning problems in the educational sector in Ghana. The policy must be reviewed extensively.

Emmanuel Kwabena Wucharey.

B. A I.D.S - Economics and Entrepreneurship Dev

Diploma in Education- Winneba.

MBA- Finance (KNUST)
Pretoria (AFP) - Zimbabwe's first lady Grace Mugabe failed to appear Saturday at a summit in South Africa attended by her husband, an event overshadowed by her effort to obtain diplomatic immunity over assault allegations.

The wife of President Robert Mugabe has not been seen since she was accused of attacking a 20-year-old model with an electrical extension cord last weekend in a Johannesburg hotel where the couple's two sons were staying.

South African police had said she was expected at the two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting that opened with a "first spouses programme".

But the 52-year-old was not among the first ladies in reserved seating at the foot of the platform where several heads of state spoke. Her husband, in a black suit and beige scarf, was among eight regional leaders present.

Neither South Africa's foreign ministry or the police said where the Zimbabwean first lady was, after it emerged that two aircraft were barred from leaving Johannesburg and Harare.

One was owned by Air Zimbabwe, the company regularly used by President Mugabe, and one by South African Airways (SAA).

The first flight could not take off Friday night from Johannesburg International Airport, as it lacked an "international permit to operate", according to South Africa's civil aviation authority.

The same regulation affected South African Airlines, whose flight SA025 was supposed to leave Harare on Saturday at 7:00 am (0500 GMT), but was held on the ground before being cancelled.

"In more than 20 years of operations in Zimbabwe, this is the first time we have been asked for this document," SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali told AFP.

The regional summit's closing ceremony on Sunday is also scheduled to include partners of the heads of state for its 15 member nations.

Mugabe's wife has claimed diplomatic immunity after allegedly assaulting Gabriella Engels nearly a week ago.

Grace Mugabe, the wife of Zimbabwe's longtime leader, is seeking diplomatic immunity over an alleged assault in South Africa

South African police have said they are on high alert to prevent her leaving the country, with an arrest warrant also reportedly being considered.

"We are awaiting the outcome of the request," a police spokesman said, referring to Mugabe's effort to obtain diplomatic immunity.

Engels -- who has registered a case of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm -- appeared at a press conference on Thursday, wearing a large plaster on her forehead.

Disputed immunity

Lawyers who have taken up her case told reporters she was offered cash to make the incident "go away" but that she refused and is determined to press charges against the Zimbabwean first lady.

Willie Spies, one of her lawyers, said that if diplomatic immunity was granted they would consider bringing an urgent court application to halt the decision.

South African model Gabriella Engels has accused Grace Mugabe of attacking her with an electrical extension cord in a Johannesburg hotel

Grace Mugabe was in South Africa reportedly to have her ankle treated following a minor accident last month.

Her husband -- 41 years her senior -- flew into the country late Wednesday, the day after she failed to attend an agreed meeting with South African police over the alleged assault.

Zimbabwean officials have declined to comment on allegations against the first lady or her immunity claim. She has not been seen since the incident.

Grace and Robert Mugabe's two sons Robert Jr and Chatunga live in Johannesburg, where they have a reputation for partying, while the couple also have an elder daughter who lives in Zimbabwe.

The incident is a diplomatic headache for South Africa and Zimbabwe, neighbours with strong political and economic ties.

Grace Mugabe regularly speaks at rallies in Zimbabwe and is seen as a potential successor to her increasingly frail husband.
19.08.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Aug.18, GNA - The Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College has, for the first time, offered training in counter terrorism to help the Military deal swiftly against terrorism.

The training was handled by resource persons from the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom and the Defence Section of the British High Commission.

Students from African countries including Nigeria, Mali, La Cote d'Avoire, Senegal, Benin and Togo were part of the 11 and 18 months course, who graduated on Friday.

Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawuma, the Special Guest of Honour at the graduation ceremony of Course 38, expressed optimism that the knowledge acquired would go a long way to prepare them towards the fight against terrorism.

Terrorism, he said, in all its forms and manifestation, had often eluded state security agencies and the perpetrators targeted very sensitive areas to cause maximum fear and panic.

'For the students from countries like Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire and Mali this was not very new to you, as your countries have experienced different acts of terrorism.

'For the Ghanaian officers, you are aware that one of the problems we are facing as a nation is the issue of illegal mining, also known as 'galamsey'.

'Some of you may be needed to assist in this fight. Should you find yourselves involved in this fight, consider it as a national issue and do your best to safeguard the environment,' the Vice President said.

He said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had pledged his unflinching support to end the menace of galamsey and urged the security agencies and all well-meaning Ghanaians to support the worthy course.

Vice President Bawumia gave the assurance that Government would continue to support the College with the requisite resources to ensure that the African Study Tour came off every year to give them the necessary exposure.

He urged the Minister of Defence and the Staff College Control Board to continue to explore more avenues for resources to support the College as they had done in the past in order to meet the challenges of current defence management.

He urged the grandaunds to be guided by loyalty and integrity, saying; 'You are required to remain trustworthy and faithful to the Service and the nation at all times'.

Vice President Bawumia noted that integrity demanded that they remained honest and truthful to themselves, the Military High Command and the nation in all circumstances.

He said these important virtues should guide them in their professions and serve as embodiment of themselves, adding; 'As leaders, your emotional intelligence is key in order to reap the best out of those you lead since that is the simplest way to succeed'.

The Vice President commended Major D. A. Bondah of the Ghana Army for winning the Honour Graduate Award and said it should spur him to work harder to achieve greater heights in the future.

He also congratulated graduands from other African Countries who participated in the course and urged them to work hard to contribute their quotas towards regional cooperation and integration.

The Staff College has, over the years, carved a niche for itself as a centre of excellence in Africa for the training of middle and senior level officers for staff, command, and leadership roles in their various armed forces and allied security institutions.

GNA

By Godwill Arthur-Mensah, GNA
19.08.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Aug. 18, GNA - The chiefs and people of Osu on Friday participated in a five-hour health walk through some streets of the town as part of activities to mark this year's Homowo Festival, which comes off on Tuesday.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after the walk, Nii Okwei Kinka Dowuona VI, the Paramount Chief of Osu, urged the people to take a day in a week to exercise.

He described the walk as very exciting and encouraging and said even though people had busy schedules, a day's exercise would go a long way to boost their health status.

Nii Kinka Dowuona said as part of the celebrations, the community would undertake a clean-up exercise on Saturday.

He said on Monday there would be a Homowo Homecoming where Osu citizens in the Diaspora and some communities in the country would converge at the Chief's Palace whilst others would display their farm produce in a procession.

On Tuesday, Nii Kinka Dowuona said he would sprinkle the traditional meal; 'Kpokpoi' as he visits principal homes and shrines.

Nii Ako Nortei IV, the Osu Mankralo, said the walk was a wakeup call on the people to celebrate the Festival in love, happiness and unity.

GNA
19.08.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Aug. 19, GNA - Papa Owusu-Ankomah, says Ghana's 60th anniversary celebration is an opportunity for Ghanaians to reflect on their past, assess how far they have come as a country, and envision the legacy to bequeath to the next generation.

Mr Owusu-Ankomah, Ghana's High Commissioner to UK and Republic of Ireland, said Ghana has championed Africa's unity and integration through the past 60 years and was presently one of the few countries which allowed Africans free entry into the country without issuance of visas.

A press release issued by EMH Global on behalf of the High Commission, said Mr Owusu-Ankomah made the statement at a special event hosted by the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London to celebrate [email protected], and UNESCO Decade for People of African Descent 2015 - 2024.

The event was held under the theme: 'Ghana- A nation in retrospective', and was aimed at looking retrospectively at Ghana, a nation that over the last 60 years had shaped a modern vision, and established Ghanaians as trend-setting 'Afropolitans'.

The evening activities helped review and contextualise Ghana's history, heritage, culture and future.

The V&A Museum founded in 1852 is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects.

He said Ghana has lived up to its trail-blazing credentials and was now globally recognized as an African country that had a stable multi-party constitutional democracy with a vibrant media and a strong and active civil society.

He, however, reminded all that there was still more work to be done, as democracy was work in progress.

Touching on Ghana's ambition to enjoy the dividends of the democratic enterprise in the form of employment for our youth, increased incomes and improved standards of living, the High Commissioner said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has committed himself to leading Ghana to build a resilient economy that rewards hard work and excellence, and supports innovations which is critical for her development.

Papa Owusu-Ankomah said among other things, the focus, was on adding value to Ghana's primary products to move the country 'beyond aid to trade'; premised on a major anti-corruption agenda with a robust enforcement of laws and regulations along with penalties for their breach or non-compliance.

Lord Paul Boateng of Akyem and Wembley, a former UK Labour party politician and former British High Commissioner to South Africa, expressed gratitude to the V&A museum and the event team led by Janet Browne, Programme Manager- African Heritage and Culture at the museum, for putting together an excellent event.

Lord Boateng reminded all present that the V&A museum was filled with rich African cultural artefacts that were forcefully taken from Africa; thereby stripping Africans of their ancestral heritage.

Regardless of this, Lord Boateng maintained that Africans had proud memories of their ancestors and heritage which had caused them to continually produce some of the finest brains who have influenced and continue to influence change across the world.

The festival was attended by people from all walks of life, including Mrs Augusta Owusu-Ankomah, wife of the High Commissioner and representatives of Ghanaian traditional chiefs in London and representatives of the Ghana Christian Council, UK.

The festival featured a rich array of learning activities, music, performances, and artisans, including London based Ghanaian cultural troupe MIISHEJELOI (meaning bringers of happiness), Angus Patterson, Senior Curator of Metalwork whose presentation was on Ashanti Goldweights and Regalia from the Wolseley invasion of Kumasi in 1874, and Christopher Lutterodt-Quarcoo, Designer, Director and Writer who staged 'Undoing Africa', a critical simulation developed in response to Kwame Nkrumah's 1963 call that 'We Must Unite Now Or Perish'.

Others are Peter Ashan, Gallery Educator who explored the 18th century 'man-about-town' William Ansah Sessarakoo; sold into enslavement in Barbados; James Barnor and Ed Otchere, Photographers who presented a special 'Ever Young' pop-up photo salon and recorded oral history; Natalie Fiawoo, Black Cultural Archives Project Co-ordinator who shared a story of kings, family ties & colonial rule in Keta; and Chef Zoe Adjonyah, founder of 'Ghana Kitchen', who shared how she re-discovered her heritage through her grandmother's recipes.

GNA

By Belinda Ayamgha, GNA
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Most illegal lotto operators in the country have expressed immense confidence in the National Lottery Authority in its quest to register unlicensed operators.

They believe that, the move by the National Lottery Authority to legalized their operations by registering all illegal and unlicensed operators in the country will better place them in their business.

The National Lottery Authority recently embarked on a series of activities to rope in unlicensed operators popularly called Banker to Banker.

The latest of such innovations was a stakeholder consultative forum between the Authority and the lotto Operators.

Some of the participants, who spoke exclusively to Citi News, expressed their willingness to embrace the proposals of the NLA in sanitizing the lotto business.

The Chief Executive Officer of one of the illegal lotto companies, Super 4 Intelic David Offei Agyekum said his outfit will gladly admit the scheme of the NLA.

Super 4 Interlic is a private lotto company and we operate illegally but with the opportunity, NLA has offered us, I believe very soon our license will be issued, then we operate within the law, he said

He further called on his counterparts in the illegal business to take advantage of the opportunity availed them by NLA to legalize their operations.

Mr. Offei Agyekum however, cautioned the Authority to do due diligence to issuing licenses to prospective companies.

The Director-General of the National Lottery Authority Kofi Osei Ameyaw who spoke to the media on the sidelines of the stakeholder's forum said, the engagement between the NLA and the operators has generated positive results so far.

He said the Authority will roll out more platforms to interact with the operators to ensure that a greater percentage of them are formalized.

He added that we will have to do our background checks, so that those who have been convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction won't not be suitable to be issued a license.

The forum was used to register over two hundred illegal lotto operators at the national level while efforts is also made to register more at the regional level.



By: Anass S. Seidu/Citifmonline.com
The Police has arrested a Nigerian national for allegedly stabbing a 27-year-old man to death during a confrontation.

The Nigerian, Peter Thompson, had accused the deceased of stealing a mobile phone.

The incident occurred at Lorm-Nava, a suburb of Sowutuom in the Greater Accra region which resulted in a reprisal attack on Friday.

The Deputy Regional PRO of the Ghana Police Service, Inspector Kwabena Danso, confirmed the stabbing incident to Citi News and noted that the police was already investigating the theft accusation that sparked the confrontation.

It happened on Thursday evening and what we can say is that there was an accusation of theft the Nigerian national made against the deceased which the police was investigating and that particular evening, the deceased confronted the Nigerian national and was able to stab him.

Following fears of reprisals attacks, the Police has since moved in to restore calm and protect lives and properties.

Inspector Kwabena Danso noted that the suspect is currently assisting with investigations and the police is in firm control of the situation.



By: Pius Amihre Aduku/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Turku (Finland) (AFP) - Finnish police said Saturday that a Moroccan asylum seeker deliberately targeted women in a stabbing spree that left two dead and is being investigated as the country's first terror attack.

Police shot and wounded the knife-wielding suspect, detaining him minutes after Friday's rampage at a busy market square in Turku, southwestern Finland.

Eight other people were injured, among them six women, police said.

Finland raised its emergency readiness after the attack, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.

"We think that the attacker especially targeted women, and the men were wounded after coming to their defence," superintendent Christa Granroth of Finland's National Bureau of Investigation told reporters.

Four Moroccan citizens were arrested in a Turku apartment and refugee reception centre overnight. They have links to the suspect, but police have not yet established whether they were connected to Friday's attack.

The stabbings were initially probed as murders but further information received meant "the offences now include murders with terrorist intent," police said in a statement.

Officers identified the main suspect as a 18-year-old Moroccan citizen who arrived in Finland in early 2016 and sought asylum. His name was not disclosed, nor his motive known.

"We tried to talk with the attacker in hospital but he didn't want to speak," Granroth said.

The suspect is being treated for a gunshot wound to the thigh.

Media reports said his asylum request had been rejected but police would not confirm this, saying only that his case had been processed by migration authorities.

Police said they were examining whether the suspect had any link to the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for twin terror attacks in Spain on Thursday and early Friday.

"Whether or not there is a connection to IS will be one of the main focuses of the investigation," Finnish intelligence agency SUPO director Antti Pelttari told reporters.

Barcelona link?

Police said they had issued an international arrest warrant for another person outside Finland, who is believed to be dangerous.

Police were also probing whether there was a link to the vehicle attacks in Barcelona and another Spanish seaside resort that killed 14 people and wounded around 100 others.

Most of the suspects in those attacks were also Moroccan citizens. "Of course this is something we are going to investigate," Granroth said.

Among the eight injured in Turku were an Italian national, a Swede and a Briton. The rest were Finns.

In June, SUPO raised Finland's terror threat level by a notch, from "low" to "elevated", the second on a four-tier scale.

It said at the time that it saw an increased risk of an attack committed by IS, noting that foreign fighters from Finland had "gained significant positions within IS in particular and have an extensive network of relations in the organisation."

The agency said it was closely watching around 350 individuals -- an increase of 80 percent since 2012.

Experts were cautious about drawing any links between the attack and Islamist extremism.

"But if it is related, this is pretty much a continuation of the easy-to-use blatant attacks that Europe has seen," terrorism researcher Leena Malkki from the University of Helsinki told public broadcaster YLE.

Flags at half-mast

Flags flew at half-mast across Finland on Saturday.

A demonstration in memory of the victims was held at the market square where the attack took place, organised by Iraqis, Turks and Syrians.

An anti-immigration group, Finland First, also demonstrated at the scene, but police kept apart the two groups, who numbered around 300. No violence was reported.

On Sunday, a minute of silence will be held at 0700 GMT.

Finland, with 5.5 million inhabitants, saw a record 32,500 migrants seek asylum in 2015.

That number fell to around 10,000 last year, after Finland, like its Nordic neighbours, tried to discourage asylum seekers by tightening rules and reducing social benefits.
Pretoria (AFP) - Zimbabwe's first lady Grace Mugabe failed to appear Saturday at a summit in South Africa attended by her husband, an event overshadowed by her effort to obtain diplomatic immunity over assault allegations.

The wife of President Robert Mugabe has not been seen since being accused of attacking a 20-year-old model with a electrical extension cord last weekend in a Johannesburg hotel where the couple's two sons were staying.

The case has become a media spectacle, with protesters gathered outside the summit, some brandishing placards that read "Grace, disgrace."

The alleged assault is a political headache for South Africa and Zimbabwe, close neighbours with deep economic and historical ties.

The matter also appears to have spilled into aviation, with South African Airways abruptly announcing that it was halting flights to and from Zimbabwe in a decision that followed flights being cancelled overnight after a dispute over permits, officials said.

Police had said Grace Mugabe was expected at the two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting that opened with a "first spouses programme".

But the 52-year-old wife of Zimbabwe's leader was not among the first ladies in reserved seating at the foot of the platform where several heads of state spoke. Her husband, 93, in a black suit and beige scarf, was among eight regional leaders present.

Police on high alert

Neither South Africa's foreign ministry or the police said where the Zimbabwean first lady was, after it emerged that two aircraft were barred from leaving Johannesburg and Harare.

One was owned by Air Zimbabwe, the company regularly used by President Mugabe, and one by South African Airways (SAA).

The first flight could not take off Friday night from Johannesburg International Airport because the airline lacked an "international permit to operate", according to South Africa's civil aviation authority.

The same regulation affected South African Airlines, whose flight SA25 was supposed to leave Harare on Saturday at 7:00 am (0500 GMT), but was grounded before being cancelled.

"In more than 20 years of operations in Zimbabwe, this is the first time we have been asked for this document," SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali told AFP.

The regional summit's closing ceremony on Sunday was also scheduled to include partners of the heads of state for its 15 member nations.

Mugabe's wife has claimed diplomatic immunity after allegedly assaulting Gabriella Engels nearly a week ago.

Grace Mugabe, the wife of Zimbabwe's longtime leader, is seeking diplomatic immunity over an alleged assault in South Africa

South African police have said they are on high alert to prevent her leaving the country, with an arrest warrant also reportedly being considered.

"We are awaiting the outcome of the request," a police spokesman said, referring to Mugabe's effort to obtain diplomatic immunity.

Engels, who has filed a case of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, appeared at a press conference on Thursday, wearing a large plaster on her forehead.

Disputed immunity

Lawyers who have taken Engels's case told reporters she was offered cash to make the incident "go away" but she is determined to press charges against the Zimbabwean first lady.

Willie Spies, one of her lawyers, said that if diplomatic immunity was granted they would consider bringing an injunction in court.

South African model Gabriella Engels has accused Grace Mugabe of attacking her with an electrical extension cord in a Johannesburg hotel

Grace Mugabe was in South Africa reportedly to have her ankle treated following a minor accident last month.

Her husband flew to the country late Wednesday, the day after his wife failed to attend an agreed meeting with South African police over the alleged assault.

Zimbabwean officials have declined to comment on the allegations against the first lady or her immunity claim.

Grace and Robert Mugabe's two sons Robert Jr and Chatunga live in Johannesburg, where they have a reputation for partying.

Grace Mugabe regularly speaks at rallies in Zimbabwe and is seen as a potential successor to her increasingly frail husband.
The Adaklu District Assembly can now boast a substantial Chief Executive after assembly members have overwhelmingly endorsed the Presidents latest nominee, Phanuel Kadey Donkoh.

His approval on Friday was the fourth in series of attempts to get Presidents nominee approved by the assembly after two nominees were rejected.

The first nominee, Josephine Ohene-Boateng was outrightly rejected by assembly members. The second, Kate Ametepe also a female couldnt meet the percentage requirement.

Hon Donkor after a failed attempt was granted a second chance to secure his nomination.

At the end of the election conducted in the District Assembly Hall today, Mr Kadey Donkoh polled 14 out of the 18 valid votes cast representing a 77.7 percent approval.

The Deputy Volta Regional Minister, Mr Maxwell Blagoggie who was accompanied by the Deputy Interior Minister, Henry Kotei has expressed his appreciation to the people for finally approving the Presidents representative.

Phanuel Kadey Donkoh is a teacher by profession and 33 years of age. He is said to be one of the youngest Chief Executives to have been appointed. Until his approval, the Regional Coordination Council was playing an oversight responsibility for the administration of the area.

In his acceptance speech, the District Chief Executive has promised to work closely with stakeholders in the area to enhance the governments development agenda.



By: King Nobert Akpablie/citifmonline.com/Ghana
The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has said it would not countenance any action or practices by medical doctors likely to impact negatively on quality healthcare delivery in the country.

Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Director-General, said that it was quite worrying that some public sector doctors and dentists, who are on full time appointment by the government, have in recent times developed the penchant for spending part of their official working hours to work in private health facilities.

Some of these medical and dental practitioners even go to the extent of referring patients to their private facilities, he said stressing that the GHS was taking the necessary steps to stem such unethical conduct.

Dr Nsiah-Asare, who was addressing an oath-swearing and induction ceremony for the School of Medical Sciences, Dental School and the School of Veterinary Medicine of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), cautioned practitioners to uphold the code of conduct of the medical profession.

He said doctors and dentists who are keen to work in private practice could team up with colleagues with the similar desires to establish private health facilities in order to work as full time private practitioners in needy and deprived communities.

The ceremony was held under the joint supervision of the Ghana Medical and Dental Council and Veterinary Council of Ghana, and had a total of 241 newly-qualified doctors, including dental and veterinary surgeons, taking the Hippocratic Oath.


Many discerning Ghanaians will agree that governments of the day ought to protect Ghanaian entrepreneurs from unfair competition from foreign businesses - which is the plea from Mr. Joseph Adjapong the CEO of the Jospong Group: in reacting to the negative publicity generated by the mandatory annual towing fee levy imposed on vehicle owners.

It is a real pity that Mr. Agyepong did not seem to understand the underlying reason for the public outcry by motorists against the deal between the previous government and his Road Safety Management Services Limited (RSMSL) that resulted in the passage of the Bill imposing that nandatory towing fee levy into law.

What would have been a much better PPP deal would have been one in which broken down vehicles are either repaired by agents of the towing company wherever they develop faults at to enable them resume their journeys again, or towed to the RSMSL's certified agents' repair workshops to be repaired.

Above all, to say that his business model for the RSMSL is similar to the now underfire Uber - a U.S. domiciled company with a global footprint accused of so many negative management practices some bordering on the criminal - was most unfortunate. No PR professional worth his or her salt would have made such a statement at this moment of what is a potentially existential crisis for RSMSL.

Incidentally, Mr. Adjapong would be wise to leave all such responses to the professionals he employs, to carry out delicate reputational damage limitation tasks, when controversy erupts over the business deals he does with governments of the day. As a wag I know said to me: "Yes, Mr. Adjapong is right in making the point that he is welcomed outside Ghana.

Is he not a perfect crony-capitalist bankroller for the leaders of those nations where he operates in Africa - whose cowed citizens would never dare challenge any law passed to enrich their leaders and their crony-crony capitalist bankrolling pals. Ebeeii?" No doubt some might also say that that it is a harsh judgement on the nature of Mr. Adjapong's long-term strategy for winning government contracts.

Perhaps, looked at in detail, they might actually be right. Who knows? However, whatever Mr. Adjaping says, clearly, it is not in the national interest for our leaders to be beholden to their crony-capitalist pals - who as a result of the power and influence they wield in Ghanaian society (because they have so many of our leaders in their very deep pockets), are able to lobby for the passage of legislation that increases their already high net worth yet further into the stratosphere, at the expense of Mother Ghana.

Alas, what Mr. Adjapong succeeded in doing in his public response to the many criticisms of the mandatory road toll levy, was to paint a picture of a crony capitalist profiting mightily from the socialisation of private risk. Yet, the plain truth is that our nation does not need such iniquitous public private partnership (PPP) deals.

What Mother Ghana needs are entirely private-sector funded, win-win PPPs, in which the private-sector bears all the risks in exchange for protected market access opportunities.

As a remedy to cure the clearly defective law that was allegedly passed because Mr. Adjapong was a crony-capitalist pal of the previous regime - who also apparently bankrolled other individual politicians from across the spectrum - the government must renegotiate the deal with RSMSL so that it is restructured not on the discredited Uber's business model, but that of the UK's Automobile Association (AA) and Royal Automobile Club (RAC), as regards the benefits it offers vehicle owners who pay it.

FinaIly, after the present mandatory PPP towing fee levy deal with RSMSL expires, only widely advertised and transparent self-funded PPP bids from companies across the globe (with Ghanaian partners), ought to be entertained for all PPP deals in Ghana. Enough is enough. Period. Haaba.
When a very frustrated Sydney Casely-Hayford lost his temper not too long ago and publicly stated a sentiment shared by many discerning Ghanaians in private, he was actually expressing the national mood - in as far as some of the rather curious crimes-humanity-laws passed over the years by various Parliaments since 1992 represent.

In a nation full of fence-sitting moral cowards and hypocrites we get the laws we deserve - laws full of loopholes through which our perfidious vampire-elites manoeuvre and navigate their way out of every conceivable infraction of our benighted nation's mostly-porous laws that they happen to be guilty of. Unfortunately, it has resulted in many of the members of Ghana's ruling elites thinking that this is a nation of jam-packed with stupid and foolish people.

Yet, the opposite is true: As an old wag I know put it succinctly, "Kofi, ordinary Ghanaians aren't fools. It just so happens that ours is a byzantine system underpinned by many 'stupid' laws full of loopholes that enable powerful and greedy high net worth rogues to participate in the brutal gang-rape of Mother Ghana, and get away with same.

Does that not effectively mean that some of those we elect to represent us in Parliament who pass those 'stupid' laws are aiding and abetting the crimes of the nation-wreckers gang-raping Mother Ghana?" Perhaps it is unfair for any Ghanain citizen to say so - but it is also hard to overlook the 'stupidity' of dubious laws such as that classic example: the fraudulent sale and purchase agreement for the Volta Aluminium Company Limited (Valco) to a non-existent International Aluminium Partners (IAP), which was railroaded through Parliament under a certificate of urgency, during the golden age of business for Kufuor & Co - despite the loud protestations of the purported IAP joint-venture partners, Norske Hydro of Norway and VALE of Brazi, both of which insisted that they had entered into no such agreement to purchase Valco.

Amazing. So those who rail against the passage of 'stupid' laws do have a point: If truth be told, it is a nefarious practice that is actually ruining our nation. Finally, one also needs to make the point that if invited by Parliament - as a result of this particular blog post - I'd be happy to list many of the 'stupid' laws passed by the geniuses we have elected to represent us in Parliament, over the years.

On the other hand, as someone who despises hypocrisy, depending on my state of health - which is rather poorly at the moment unfortunately - I might opt to simply defy Parliament if invited to justify my remarks: by ignoring any summons to appear before the House and ask them to do their worst. Ghanaians are a free people not the slaves of our nation's ruling elites. Haaba.

Ya bremu! Parliament cannot intimidate a free people in whom soveriegnty resides under our system - by trying to gag all those who dare to criticise them when all that such brave and patriotic citizens are doing amounts to merely obeying the constitional edict that enjoins all Ghanaians to speak out against corruption. Passing 'stupid' laws full of sundry loopholes that enable well-connected rogues to dupe our nation and get away with it, does amount to egregious corruption. Full stop. To rail against that publicly is definitely not insulting Parliament. We rest our case.
"The Gomoa East District Assembly in the Central Region of Ghana has large arable land for Agro- businesses, farm tourism, Agro-proccessing facilities and above all flexible tax/ levy payment system for potential investors who would like to invest in the District ", the DCE, Hon. Benjamin Kojo Otoo has disclosed.

At a business forum held at Gomoa Buduburam for the business community in the district, the DCE noted that the Assembly was ready to partner private businesses to create jobs for the teeming unemployed youth to reduce poverty.

" The Gomoa East District Assembly recognizes local economic development as bthe key strategy to stimulate local economy for job creation, poverty reduction and business growth.

As a district, our major priority is to implement programs and policies of His Excellence Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo led NPP government.

We have all it takes to host all of them especially One District One Factory. In fact, the Assembly has received over four proposals from potential investors to established their businesses and to create jobs"

The Gomoa East DCE further stated " The Assembly is ready to facilitate acquisition of land for investors.

I therefore employ potential investors both home and abroad to come to Gomoa East District to establish their businesses and to improve the lives of the people.

It is not our wish to chase people for payment of fees and levies but to partner the private sector to create jobs towards poverty eradication "

The Member of Parliament for Gomoa East, Hon. Kojo Asomanyi told the business community that the forum was to create space for them to operate to enhance economic growth.

The Gomoa East District Co-ordinating Director, Mr. Emmanuel Baise said the forum was to sensetize the participants to understand and appreciate business and investment opportunities in the GomoaEast District and policy direction of the Assembly on local anf foriegn sector development.

He further stated that the vision of the District Assembly was to become a first class and citizen focused local government authority in the country.

Mr. Emmanuel Baise announced that the Assembly has acquired a 50-acre land to be used as Technology/Artisan Village to host various businesses adding that electricity and water supply has been provided.

Participants were drawn from Agro businesses, manufacturing industries, agro processing companies, hoteliers and others.
Protesters demanding LGBT rights and protections in their home country of Ghana say insults and threats will not stop them from continuing their activism in Winnipeg.

"We are fighting for our rights. No one can ever stop us. We will continue doing what we are doing," said Sulemana Abdulai. "They cannot scare me."

Abdulai, a refugee claimant from Ghana, walked into Manitoba from the U.S. earlier this year to avoid being turned back by border guards at the official port of entry. He has been protesting the criminalization of same-sex relationships and treatment of LGBT people in his birth country during the multicultural Folklorama festival in Winnipeg.

Wearing pink shirts that say "Ghana pavilion" on the front and "LGBTQ equal rights now" on the back, Abdulai and others have created an unofficial Ghanaian pavilion with the sole purpose of raising awareness of the persecution of people for their sexuality in the West African nation.

They are also collecting signatures for a petition addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding Canada take a larger role in advocating for LGBT people in Ghana. More than 5,000 people have signed already.

"In Ghana you are not safe," Abdulai said. "They don't accept the LGBTQ at all. They are treating them like animals."

Sulemana Abdulai and supporters have collected more than 5,000 signatures on a petition that asks Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to demand Ghana protect the rights of LGBT people. (courtesy Sulemana Abdulai)

While Abdulai said Winnipeggers have been largely very supportive of the protest, he has been threatened and insulted with regards to his advocacy work.

He has been confronted by Ghanaians in Winnipeg who have harassed him and others for defending gay rights, he said.

And a Ghanaian news story published Thursday about the protests saw hundreds of negative comments.

"Fire burn u all and ur entire families," one Facebook comment said.

"These are the people ISIS should be beheading every day not innocent Christians," another said.

"Some of them are even saying they will come down and kill us," Abdulai said.

He said he was not surprised by the hatred, and it only pushes him to continue to advocate for fellow Ghanaians suffering persecution for their sexuality.

And in Winnipeg, Abdulai feels protected.

"In Canada  you can only talk. You can't do nothing to me," he said.

The Ghananian protestors will continue to collect signatures for their petition outside the Winnipeg Convention Centre, which hosts some of the Folklorama pavilions, until Saturday.

After Folklorama ends, Abdulai will meet with Queer People of Colour Winnipeg to talk about other ways to continue to pressure the Ghanaian government to decriminalize same-sex relationships and grant equal rights to LGBT people.
Koforidua, Aug. 19, GNA - Technical University Teachers Association of Ghana (TUTAG) has given government a one week ultimatum to establish governing councils for the technical universities in the country else they would 'advice themselves'.

When pressed to explained the action they intend to take should government fail to respond to their request, the General Secretary of the Association, Mr David Worwui-Brown, who addressed a press conference organized by the Association the 33rd Annual Congress at the Koforidua Technical University, said there are many options available for the Association and they would follow due process.

He said the actions of government are a clear demonstration of lack of interest in technical education.

The General Secretary said whiles the Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh promised in April that the Governing Councils of all the Technical Universities would be inaugurated by the end of June this year, as at August not even one has been inaugurated for any of the Technical Universities.

The Association said government has established Governing Councils for some public universities in the country.

Mr Worwui-Brown said information available to the Association indicates that the list for

the Governing Councils of the various Technical Universities are ready and what is left is for government to add his four nominees to each of the lists submitted for the establishment of the councils.

The General Secretary of the Association said the unavailability of Governing Councils for the Technical Universities is hindering the ability of the universities to graduate students or admit fresh students and determine the fees to be paid by students.

He said without such councils, the Technical Universities cannot promote lecturers who are due for promotion or recruit new lecturers to replace those that have retired.

The Association called on the government to also conclude the process of converting the remaining Polytechnics into Technical Universities and these are the Bolgatanga and Wa Polytechnics.

GNA
Substandard raw materials used for production is the cause for the near collapse of the Kumasi Shoe Factory, Deputy Minister of Defense, Hon. Major (Rtd) Derek Oduro has revealed.

Bad or inferior raw materials are bought for production to boots for the security to walk into water and bad weather conditions that is why nobody is coming to order, he revealed.

The factory has been set up and the equipment are there but where to get quality raw materials to produce quality boots and other leather works is the problem now, the Nkronza North lawmaker explained.

The Deputy Minister, expressed disappointment over the state of the ailing factory during a tour where he saw only 49 workers at post.

According to him, it was anticipated that anticipated over 300 workers are employed promising that government will revamp the factory to a certain standard where quality raw materials will be imported for protection.

Background

The shoe factory was the footwear division of the erstwhile Ghana Industrial Holding Corporation (GIHOC), established by the first President of the country, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah in 1960. It was to produce boots for personnel of the public security services and the general public.

Following the overthrow of Dr Nkrumah, the company collapsed and was revived in November 2012 through collaboration between a private investor, Czech-based Company, Knights, and the Defence Industries Holding Company (DIHOC) of the Ministry of Defence.
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To further protect the integrity of our editorial content, we keep a strict separation between our sales teams and authors to remove any pressure or influence on our analyses and research.

Read our editorial policy to learn more about our process.
'The big truck is still on ...
Stock Photo Gas pump View Photos

Sacramento, CA  Three counties report they have reached the needed number of valid signatures to trigger a recall election that could remove a Southern California senator from office and, in turn, end a Democratic supermajority in the California Legislature.

Counts released Friday showed that more than the 63,000 signatures required to recall Democratic Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton have been obtained. Newmans vote in favor of raising the states gas tax prompted the move. Details on the tax can be found in an earlier story by clicking here. Those pushing for the recall include the California Republican Party, anti-tax advocates and talk-radio hosts who are critical of Newmans vote. Democrats claim that many people were tricked into signing the petition, believing it would instead launch a referendum to repeal the gas tax.

The signatures results must be certify in 10 days by Democratic Secretary of State Alex Padilla, and then Governor Jerry Brown is required to schedule an election within 60 to 80 days.
South Fork Fire burning in Yosemite National Park View Photos

Yosemite, CA  The community of Wawona is being evacuated due to the flames from the South Fork Fire burning in Yosemite National Park.

The blaze is burning near the South Fork of the Merced River; approximately one mile upstream from Swinging Bridge and has grown by nearly 500 acres overnight to 2,903 with just 10 percent containment prompting the evacuations. Park Fire officials attribute the acreage hike to downdraft winds from thunderstorms. Those forced out of the homes are in the areas east of Highway 41 along Chilnualna Falls Road and Forest Drive, including the Big Trees Lodge. Additionally, the area is closed to visitors and guest. Park fire officials say residents and visitors must evacuate by 4 p.m. today. A Red Cross Shelter has been set up at Tenaya Lodge located at 1122 Highway 41 in Fish Camp. A community meeting that was schedule to be held in Wawona has been moved to the Tenaya Lodge and begins at 6:00 p.m.

Park fire officials report that crews are continuing to work on containing spot fires that were sparked late Friday afternoon and evening. Additionally, air and ground resources are being utilized to hold the western and southern flanks while monitoring the northern and eastern edges.

There are currently 528 personnel assigned to the fire including 13 hand crews, 7 helicopters, 11 engines, and 3 air tankers. The estimated blaze containment is Sunday, September 3.
Top Nigerian artist Falz famed for hits like Jeje, Soft Work and Soldier returns to Coke Studio Africa for a second time this year, paired alongside Ugandan legendary artist Bebe Cool, who makes his anticipated debut on the show this year.

Last year Falz was paired with Tanzanian rapper Joh Makini and the two produced great covers of each others songs and an original track You Dey Hot.

While speaking exclusively at the shows Behind the Music Studios in Nairobi during the shows recording, Falz said: It feels very good to work with Bebe Cool. He is a very cool guy a very chill guy. So far, we have a good working relationship and we are getting along well. I am looking forward to learning more from him about his culture and language thats what is most exciting about this Coke Studio experience.

On top of the music collaborations, the two will also participate on Coke Studios Food Culture Exchange segment.

Falz and Bebe Cool will be produced by top Nigerian music producer GospelOnDeBeatz. Falz revealed some info on his collaboration with Bebe Cool: Expect a lot of fire. Bebe Cool is a huge dancehall artist and I am a hip hop artist so that fusion is going to be electric! Both Bebe Cool and Falz will also feature in a special Coke Studio dubbed The Global Fusion Edition alongside Coke Studio Africas international guest star  the American Pop/R&B star Jason Derulo and 8 other talented African stars. They include Dela (Kenya), Mr. Bow (Mozambique), Joey B (Ghana), Betty G (Ethiopia), Jah Prayzah (Zimbabwe), Shekhinah (South Africa), Locko (Cameroon) and Denise (Madagascar).

This year Coke Studio has merged Coke Studio Africa and Coke Studio South Africa into onebigger and better Coke Studio Africa 2017. The show promises to be a melting pot of music talents bringing together renowned music producers and top-notch artists drawn from various parts of the continent. The merger increases the number of participating countries to 16, up from 11 in previous edition.

[Sponsored]

Source: Legit.ng
- Adesina said the President will address Nigerians in a live broadcast on Monday, August 21

- The presidential aide said the president also thanked all Nigerians for their prayers for his recovery

- The president is expected to arrive later today, Saturday, August 19

President Muhammadu Buhari is expected back in Nigeria today, Saturday, August 19.

This was revealed by presidential spokesman Femi Adesina in a short statement.

The statement read:

"President Muhammadu Buhari returns to the country later today, after receiving medical attention in London.

READ ALSO: Nigerians react as pastor Adeboye visits President Buhari in London

"The President had left the country on May 7, this year, after handing over power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has functioned as Acting President since then.

"President Buhari is expected to speak to Nigerians in a broadcast by 7 a.m on Monday, August 21, 2017.

"He thanks all Nigerians who have prayed ceaselessly for his recovery and well-being since the beginning of the health challenge."

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android and read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that on the same day he received Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), President Muhammadu Buhari also received some other important guests at the Abuja House in London.

The second guest was former presidential aspirant in the 1993 general elections Bashir Tofar who ran under the National Republican Council (NRC).

Watch this Legit.ng TV video of Nigerians saying what they want President Buhari to do as he returns from his medical vacation abroad

Source: Legit.ng
- After 105 days away from work, President Muhammadu Buhari is set to return

- His official residence Aso Rock Villa is preparing in earnest to welcome him

- Members of the internal and external security of the villa were seen conducting rehearsals

The announcement of President Buhari's imminent return has generated a lot of excitement all over Nigeri and the presidential villa at Aso Rock, Abuja is not left out.

The presidential villa is reportedly with activities as staff and security personnel are making last minute preparations to receive him.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Buhari is expected to arrive the Nnandi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja at 3.00 p.m, Nigerian time.

Below are some pictures of those awaiting his arrival:

The Guard of Honor waiting to receive President Buhari. Source: Twitter, Garba Shehu

READ ALSO: BREAKING: President Buhari set to return to Nigeria

Lai Mohammed, Rochas Okorocha among others waiting for Buhari Source: Twitter, Laurestar

There are also reports that other itinerary members of staff in the presidency are also on standby, while security vehicles and personnel attached to the presidents convoy had since left for the airport to receive the president.

Members of the presidential guards brigade were seen moving toward the airport after conducting rehearsal at the arcade in Abuja.

President Buhari is expected to make a national broadcast to Nigerians on Monday, August 21 at 7a.m.

Meanwhile, Femi Fani-Kayode, a former aviation minister and foremost critic of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, has reacted to the return of the Nigerian leader.

PAY ATTENTION: Watch more videos on Legit.ng

Fani-Kayode praised the anti-Buhari protesters who organised a vigil in London on Friday, August 18 for reportedly 'chasing' the President from his London 'hideout'.

Watch this Legit.ng video to see what Governor Ortom earlier said of President Buhari's return:

Source: Legit.ng
- The minister of information Lai Mohammed has reacted to President Muhammadu Buhari's return

- Mohammed said President Buhari came back stronger and healthier

- He also said he is grateful to God for Buhari's return

The minister of information Lai Mohammed on Saturday, August 19, said that President Muhammadu Buhari came back to Nigeria stronger.

Speaking to Channels Television after receiving the president alongside the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja, Mohammed said: "The president is stronger, firmer and healthier."

READ ALSO: LIVE UPDATES: Buhari arrives Nigeria after 105 days in London (photos, video)

Mohammed also he was grateful to God for the president's return.

Legit.ng earlier reported that President Muhammadu Buhari arrived the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport at about 4.36 pm on Saturday, August 19.

READ ALSO: BREAKING: President Buhari lands in Nigeria (photos,video)

The historic return comes after President Buhari spent 105 days in London for an undisclosed ailment.

He was received by the vice president Yemi Osinbajo, the chief of staff, Abba Kyari, and other presidential aides and dignitaries.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android and read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

The president's arrival to Nigerian was met with huge welcome from many Nigerians especially those from Northern extraction.

Watch this Legit.ng TV video of Nigerians telling President Buhari what they want him to do for them on his return:

Source: Legit.ng
- The Senate President has welcome President Muhammadu Buhari

- Bukola Saraki thanked Almighty Allah for bringing Buhari back whole

- He also said he expects the legislature and the executive to collaborate on presentation, consideration and signing of the 2018 budget

The Senate President Bukola Saraki has welcomed President Muhammadu Buhari who just returned to Nigeria from London.

Saraki is a welcome message thanked Almighty Allah for bring the president back whole.

He said it was clear President Buhari would return soon when they met two days ago in London.

Saraki said: "Now that President Buhari has returned home, both branches of the government, both the executive and the legislature must continue to sync our policy and legislative objectives to strengthen our economy through the diversification of our revenue stream."

READ ALSO: LIVE UPDATES: Buhari arrives Nigeria after 105 days in London (photos, video)

He also said such collaboration will help to create access to capital development.

"We must also tackle the unemployment problem head-on.We must do this by working together," Saraki said.

The Senate President further added that in the following weeks the Senate will be looking forward to the viement request by the presidency which is before the National Assembly.

READ ALSO: The President is stronger, firmer and healthier - Lai Mohammed reveals after welcoming Buhari

He also said the Senate is looking forward to an early presentation, consideration and passage of the 2018 budget.

Saraki also commended vice president Yemi Osinbajo who acted as the Acting President during President Buhari's absence.

PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android and read best news on Nigerias #1 news app

Legit.ng earlier reported that President Buhari arrived Nigerian from London on Saturday, August 19.

The president's arrival comes after he spent 105 days on a medical vacation in London.

Watch this Legit.ng TV video of Nigerians reacting to President Buhari return:

Source: Legit.ng
Older smokers are usually more set in their ways, but a dollar increase in cigarette prices makes them 20 percent more likely to quit, a new Drexel University study found.

The study, published in Epidemiology, used 10 years of neighborhood-level price data to determine how it affected nearby smokers, focusing on those who skewed older.

"Older adult smokers have been smoking for a long time and tend to have lower rates of smoking cessation compared to younger populations, suggesting deeply entrenched behavior that is difficult to change," said Stephanie Mayne, PhD, the lead author of the study who is a former doctoral student at Drexel and now a fellow at Northwestern. "Our finding that increases in cigarette prices were associated with quitting smoking in the older population suggests that cigarette taxes may be a particularly effective lever for behavior change."

Taking a look at the local relationship between smoking habits and cigarette prices is an understudied but important area to look at, according to the senior author on the study, Amy Auchincloss, PhD, associate professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health.

"Results on this topic primarily have come from population surveillance," she said. "But we had neighborhood tobacco price data and could link that to a cohort of individuals who were followed for about 10 years."

Smoking cessation remains an important focus of public health efforts since it remains the largest preventable cause of death and disease in not just the United States, but the world.

The cohort Mayne and Auchincloss looked at included smokers ranging in age from 44 to 84 and stretched across six different places, including the Bronx, Chicago, and the county containing Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Data were taken from the study population between 2002 and 2012 as a part of the Multi-Ethnic Study of Artherosclerosis (MESA).

In addition to finding that current smokers were 20 percent more likely to quit smoking when pack prices went up by a dollar, Mayne and Auchincloss' team showed that there was a 3 percent overall reduction in smoking risk.

However, when the data was narrowed to heavy smokers (defined as smoking more than half a pack a day), there was a 7 percent reduction in risk. When prices increased by a dollar, heavy smokers also showed a 35 percent reduction in the average number of cigarettes they smoked per day, compared to 19 percent less in the overall smoking population.

"Since heavy smokers smoke more cigarettes per day initially, they may feel the impact of a price increase to a greater degree and be more likely to cut back on the number of cigarettes they smoke on a daily basis," Mayne said.

While the data focused on a population older than 44, Mayne believes the price effect may be "similar or possibly stronger in a younger population."

"Some research suggests younger adults may be more price-sensitive than older adults," she pointed out.

Something she found, though, was that smoking bans in bars and restaurants did not appear to have any effect on smoking behavior in the study population. Although more research is likely necessary to see why that is and whether it's true -- Mayne will soon publish a study devoted to that -- one possible explanation is that the economic pressures of a cigarette price increase provide a stronger incentive to quit than placing limits on smoking in public places.

Mark Stehr, PhD, an associate professor in Drexel's School of Economics who also served as a co-author on the study, also had a thought on the bans' effect.

"A ban may be circumvented by going outside or staying home, whereas avoiding a price increase might take more effort," he pointed out.

Based on results from this study, raising cigarette prices appears to be a better strategy for encouraging smoking cessation across all ages.

"More consistent tax policy across the United States might help encourage more older adults to quit smoking," Mayne said.

"Given our findings, if an additional one dollar was added to the U.S. tobacco tax, it could amount to upwards of one million fewer smokers," Auchincloss said. "Short of federal taxes, raising state and local taxes and creating minimum price thresholds for tobacco should be essential components of a comprehensive tobacco control strategy - particularly in places with high tobacco prevalence.
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
Chinas high-speed railway grid of four east-west lines and four north-south lines has basically been completed.

At the end of 2016, Chinas high-speed rail network stood at 22,000km.

According to a comprehensive transport plan approved earlier this year by the State Council, Chinas cabinet, the high-speed rail network will reach 30,000km by 2020. This will effectively double the grid network already created so that there will be eight east-west and eight north-south lines.

Accelerating railway development, particularly investment in the central and western regions, is key for Chinas strategy to stabilize growth, adjust economic structure, increase efficient investment and expand consumption, the plan says.

Besides these major lines, China is planning some short-distance lines to add to the high-speed network by 2020. When the 2020 target has been reached, more than 80% of cities with a population of more than one million will be served by high-speed train.

Chinas investment in railway fixed assets stood at Yuan 801.5 billion ($US 118bn) in 2016, according to the Ministry of Transport. Fixed asset investment includes capital spent on infrastructure, machinery and other physical assets.

This year fixed asset investment will be at the same level as in 2016, with the government setting a target of Yuan 800bn, according to China Railway Corporation (CRC). China plans to invest Yuan 3.5 trillion in railway construction during the 13th Five-Year Plan covering the period 2016-2020. China spending about $120 billion per year on internal high speed rail projects and will likely spend several hundred billion dollars on a Transasia high speed rail network.

According to the revised plan, the total length of high-speed lines will be further extended to reach 38,000km by 2025, and 45,000km by 2030. China will also have even more extensive subways systems within cities and regions.

Chinas next-generation Fuxing or Rejuvenation high-speed train made its debut on the countrys busiest high-speed route, the Beijing  Shanghai line, in June. The new train, which has been developed from the widely-used Hexiehao (Harmony) train, has a maximum design speed of 400km/h and can operate at 350km/h. Besides the higher speed, it is more spacious, has a longer design lifecycle, and should be more reliable than previous generations of Chinese high-speed trains.

Fuxing will be Chinas prime high-speed export train in the future, says Mr He Huawu, CRCs chief engineer. The model can be adapted to various situations, including extreme climates.

China and Indonesia signed an EPC deal in April to build a high-speed rail link between the capital Jakarta and Indonesias fourth largest city Bandung. The line, with a maximum design speed of 350km/h, will be operational in three years time and will cut the journey time between the two cities from more than three hours to just 40 minutes.

The deal was the first full-package overseas high-speed project using Chinese technology, design, engineering, equipment, management and personnel training.

China is pushing forward with high-speed railway projects in Russia. CRC, Russian Railways (RZD), Chinese train builder CRRC and a Russian railway company have signed a letter of intent to build a 762km railway between Moscow and Kazan, with a designed maximum speed of 400km/h and an operating speed of 360km/h. China is also actively seeking high-speed railway deals in Malaysia, Britain and the United States as it looks to export its expertise around the world.

This Belt and Road effort with hundred of billions of dollars in funding will likely result in a significant buildout of the Transasia-Europe high speed rail network by 2030.
Recently the University of California, Berkeley welcomed about 300 peoplescientists, CEOs, farmers, regulators, conservationists, and interested citizens to discuss CRISPR-CAS9 genetic modification.

Agricultural Genetic modifications of the past were to commodity crops like corn and soy to improve their pest resistance or boost yields. It was a convenience item for farmers and a profit center for corporations. In order for gene-edited foods to avoid the same fate, companies like Monsanto, Dupont Pioneer, and Cargill, who have already licensed Crispr technologies, will need to provide a more tangible value than corn you can spray the bejeezus out of. Like say, extra-nutritious tomatoes, or a wine with 10-times more heart-healthy resveratrol and fewer of the hangover-causing toxins.

Crisprs co-discoverer Jennifer Doudna discussed the importance of coming to what she calls a global consensus on appropriate uses for gene editing technologies. And in her opening address on Wednesday, the standing-room-only auditorium heard a line shes trotted out many times before. Ive never seen science move at the pace its moving right now, Doudna said. Which means we cant put off these conversations. The conversations happening at CrisprCon were all the right ones. But action, whether in the form of regulations, laws, or other populist social contracts, still feels a long way off.
Lockheed Martin will unveil its next generation air and missile defense radar demonstrator at the annual Space & Missile Defense Symposium this week in Huntsville, Alabama. The active electronically scanned array (AESA) Radar for Engagement and Surveillance (ARES) is a representative full-scale prototype of the technology to support a modern, 360-degree capable sensor that the U.S. Army will use to address current and emerging air and ballistic missile threats.

This fractional array is representative of Lockheed Martins potential Lower Tier Air & Missile Defense Sensor solution, built on a modular and scalable architecture to scale to the Armys requirements, once finalized, to replace the aging Patriot MPQ-65 radar. The array on display in Huntsville will be used to mature technology and verify performance to ensure uniform 360 degree threat detection and system performance.

Incremental upgrades to the existing Patriot radar no longer address current sustainment issues, current threat performance shortcomings, or provide growth for future and evolving threats, said Mark Mekker, director of next generation radar systems at Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin is prepared to offer a next generation missile defense system that will leverage advances in radar technology to provide a modular, scalable architecture and reduce the total cost of ownership well over its 30 year lifecycle.

Lockheed Martins active electronically scanned array (AESA) technology incorporates gallium nirtride (GaN) transmitter technology and advanced signal processing techniques including recently developed and proven 360 degree sensor/fire control algorithms based on advanced threat sets. These technologies and concepts have been fully integrated into both demonstration and production systems resulting in the industrys first fielded ground based radars with GaN technology.

The AESA technology is also in use in the AN/TP/Q-53 radar system, which Lockheed Martin designed, developed and delivered to the Army on an urgent need timeline in under 36 months, and which continues to be scaled to address emerging threats.

Our solution for the U.S. Armys new air and missile defense sensor is not a new-start program. Its a combination of technology maturation over several years and includes capability leveraged from our current development programs and battlefield-proven radars. We rely heavily on our modern radar systems such as the Q-53 and the Long Range Discrimination Radar to rapidly bring low-risk, proven technology to the warfighter, Mekker said. We look forward to the opportunity to participate in this competition that will ultimately drive up performance and reduce costs for the U.S. Army.
Richard B. Spencer Montana

Prominent leader of the white nationalist movement.

America was, until this last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance and it belongs to us.

Nov. 19, 2016, at the annual conference of the National Policy Institute.


Free vector graphic: Soldier, Peace, Helmet, Man - Free Image on ...593 -- 720 - 34k - png

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The institution of war is deeply ingrained in American culture. Backed by the greatest armed might ever assembled, America's capacity for war serves today as a primary tool of U.S. foreign policy. Whether brandished as a threat or actually applied, America's military power gives it great leverage in contests with other developed nations for strategic advantage on the world stage. Emboldened by its power, the U.S. can freely pursue opportunities to strengthen its security standing and economic potential with little fear of repercussions from any negative impact on strategic rivals. At the same time, as demonstrated with great clarity by the talking heads on America's cable news channels--predominantly CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC--American militarism is entirely outside the bounds of mainstream critique. It is instead an integral part of a national culture characterized by hypocritical self-righteousness and quick demonization of those who seriously challenge any aspect of it. As a consequence of this, the readiness to resort to armed force is so embedded in America's leadership elite, and the large segment of the populace still in step with it, that many people, regardless of their position on particular war-and-peace issues, accept as a given that predilections to war are embedded in the human genotype and therefore ineradicable.

Why I Believe War Can Be Ended

Based on my own belief that war and the threat of war always result in more bad than good, I participated in a spring, 2017 online study course conducted by the global anti-war activist organization World Beyond War. From information I gleaned there, I became convinced that militarism and war-making are neither the constructs of inherent human impulses, nor impossible to eradicate as social institutions. Here are four main reasons I came to those conclusions:

1) Making war is not an impulse inscribed in man's DNA. Scientists have determined the following: that man is not descended from killer apes, as was once believed; that the earliest human communities, extending over tens of thousands of years, show no evidence of attacks by one group on another; and that nations and cultures have abolished war in the past. As the prolific anti-war activist/author/speaker David Swanson has pointed out, Japan abolished war for centuries before its reintroduction from the West--a cultural shift that now seems once again underway.

2) The predilection to war is not instinctual, but a cultural meme that has a far greater influence on the nation's leadership elite than on ordinary citizens. Clearly, that is because Washington politicians, including the President, along with the defense establishment, weapons makers, and the mainstream media, all benefit in their career aspirations from working together to keep the deadly game going. Most ordinary citizens also lend their support, influenced by parents, schooling--even churches, and by the absence of any cultural inducement to challenge authority and march to the beat of a different drummer.

3) Because the nation's leadership elite has a vested interest in supporting war, it is highly unlikely that even the most compelling arguments against war will turn them into allies. The hope for doing that lies with ordinary citizens, who take their cues from the leaders but don't share either their vested interest in war or their rationalized conviction that war is part of what makes the world go round. The hope is that, over time, a critical mass of ordinary Americans can be convinced to accept, and then join in promoting, the compelling arguments that show war to be an atrocity that can and must be ended. If that happens, the politicians--who live for re-election--might well take heed and begin to rein in the defense establishment, the weapons manufacturers, and the mainstream media who march to their tune.

4) According to science journalist John Horgan, author of The End of War (2012), wars today are most commonly waged by advanced military powers against small groups of sectarian insurgents, religious extremists, and terrorists. Horgan projects that such conflicts will persist well into the future, but believes there are methods short of war, such as "police work" and "non-violent actions" (explained later in this article), that can prove effective in defusing them and opening the way to negotiated settlements. In my opinion, such alternatives to traditional war-making should be brought directly to the attention of the American Congress and the defense establishment in the form of expert testimony. The point would be to make sure that leaders responsible for war have no rational excuse for rejecting non-violent alternatives that are workable and effective, and also plainly more civilized and humane. It is arguable that successful efforts to end war will depend foremost on the success achieved by a mass anti-war movement in turning ordinary citizens from passive supporters of war to politically active opponents prepared to vote for anti-war candidates. It is also important, however, to make politicians aware that non-violent alternatives to war can actually work. That would provide them a politically safe and convincing rationale for leaving behind the venal and bloody realities of traditional militarism to pursue instead the humane goal of a binding international agreement to end all war.

It's Time To Replace "Peace through Strength" with "Strength through Peace"

For my own part, I find it hard to imagine any war--even plausibly defensive war--in which the in-your-face negatives inherent in it don't always outweigh the claimed higher purposes the "good guys" are fighting for. As already noted, I see militarism, both the continual preparation for war and war itself, as the response to a cultural meme, or shaping value. In America, that meme expresses itself in such notions as "Nice guys finish last" or Vince Lombardi's "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." As applied to foreign policy, it is framed by the slogan "Peace through Strength"--which, in practical terms, means a relentless push for strategic dominance (maximum economic and military advantage).

Since memes are ingrained cultural dispositions, however, and not based in biological instinct, I believe a well-organized mass anti-war movement can over time turn on its head the now dominant value of "Peace through Strength." What I'm looking for, as did Dennis Kucinich in his final presidential run in 2008, is "Strength through Peace." With that slogan as a motivating meme, our foreign policy would no longer be driven by the imperatives of strategic dominance, but by the empathetic impulse for creative collaboration with our neighbors around the world, aimed at ensuring every individual physical security and the freedom to pursue his or her own happiness.

Motivated by the value "Strength through Peace," we might well come to regard war as equivalent to murder, and to see rational compromise, not superior power, as the only viable solution to international conflicts. I wish that meme had already been dominant when President Trump threatened "fire and fury" against a desperate dynastic leader in North Korea who seeks to preserve his self-myth of personal power while fearing every day that those who wield the armed might of America are bent on depriving him of it. Wouldn't an iota of human empathy and reasoned understanding on our part--translated, perhaps, to a withdrawal of the latest hit-to-kill missile interceptor system in South Korea and a paring down of our military exercises with that ally--go a long way toward abating Kim Jung Un's fears and bellicose threats? Instead, given our continuing barbaric belligerence, all we have and can expect to have is the looming threat of heartless war with, this time, possibly cataclysmic consequences. In the end, a sound case can be made that war is not only unjustified as a first resort; it is not justified even as a last resort. This is made clear in two sentences from the book War Is a Lie (2010), whose author, David Swanson, is now director of the global anti-war activist organization World Beyond War.

The first sentence to which I have reference is this: "Any nation that chooses to fight a war wanted to fight a war, and was itself--therefore--impossible for the other nation to talk to." The second sentence elaborates on that point and expresses succinctly the nature of the "lie" David expounds. It reads: "Examine any war you like, and it turns out that if the aggressors had wanted to state their desires openly, they could have entered into negotiations rather than into battle. Instead, they wanted war--war for its own sake, or war for completely indefensible reasons that no other nation would willingly agree to." I've by now assimilated these points in words of my own that will serve in the future as my own conceptual frame for opposing war in any circumstances. The words are these: "No country that fights a war can claim it had no other choice. It can always choose not to do so, and seek first to negotiate the best possible terms to prevent impending aggression, or, if necessary, combat enemy occupation by peaceful resistance. No matter how great the compromise required, such a course will always be less bad, when weighed against the killing, suffering, social chaos, and moral degradation resulting from war, than any conceivable benefits to be gained by winning the war."

In his book War No More, the Case for Abolition (2013), Swanson offers three reasons why he believes war can be ended: first, that international disputes can be resolved in a plethora of ways without a resort to war; second, that war-making is not indigenous to human nature, but a culturally-based idea that is provisionally accepted within a society when sanctioned by its leaders; and, third, that, just as particular circumstances within a given cultural context can give rise to the idea that war is an acceptable means to resolve sectarian or national conflicts, so too can particular circumstances within the same cultural context give rise to the rejection of that idea.

I'm also intrigued by Swanson's call in the same book to keep the faith that war can in fact be ended, no matter what the contrary evidence. Toward that end, he pushes the idea of "innovative imagining"--a mindset that, unlike "wishful thinking," is grounded in reality. Precisely because war is only a motivating idea, or cultural meme, Swanson reminds us, and not an instinctual behavior, it will last only as long as the people allow it to last. That's the reality against which "innovative imagining" can prove effective. Even if it could be proved (and it has already been convincingly disproved) that no society has ever existed without war, Swanson argues, we should never give up the notion that our society can be the first to abolish it. We need to maintain a belief in our free will and capacity to avert war, since preparing for war because we've always done so in the past only makes it more likely.

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"The larger and more urgent crisis is that a white supremacist sympathizer is the president of the United States.

By Jake Johnson, staff writer

"The problem was never just Steve Bannon. It was and always will be Donald Trump."

That's how Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) responded to news that Friday would the last day on the job for Trump's top political strategist.

Others echoed Sanders on the heels of the breaking reports, saying that while Bannon's departure is a welcome step, the fight against white nationalism is far from over.

"Bannon has unquestionably been a driving force behind the racial turmoil that threatens to tear this country apart. Such a divisive figure has no place in the White House," Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement.

"While it is appropriate that Steve Bannon go, his departure is not enough," Clarke concluded. "The Trump administration must end its pursuit of policies that promote the marginalization of minority communities which emboldens the very white nationalists who descended on Charlottesville last weekend."

Echoing this argument, UltraViolet said on Friday: "Good riddance Steve. The larger and more urgent crisis however is that a white supremacist sympathizer is the president of the United States."

Friends of the Earth also weighed in:

Bannon is OUT! A victory for all decent people who choose love over the hate and racism in Trump's White House. https://t.co/uaGGH2Dqt1 -- Friends of the Earth (@foe_us) August 18, 2017

It is unclear whether Bannon resigned or if Trump, who has of late been under pressure to remove the "nationalist wing" of his administration, ultimately decided to fire him.

The New York Times summarized:

"The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Mr. Bannon. The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Mr. Bannon for some time. As of Friday morning, the two men were still discussing Mr. Bannon's future, the officials said. A person close to Mr. Bannon insisted the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7."

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In a recent column, I celebrated the phenomenon of "Social Preferencing" and the boost Charlottesville gave to an online, crowdsourced, social media version of it, @YesYoureRacist," which makes it easy for everyone to "ostracize a Nazi."

That column received quite a bit of pushback from readers with a darker view of the situation, pointing to the likelihood of shattered innocent lives (due to mistaken identity or intentional fraud) and predicting an era in which unpopular views are suppressed by the digital equivalent of lynch mobs.

Those readers are right: Both scenarios are indeed playing out even as I write this.

University of Arkansas professor Kyle Quinn received death threats and demands that he be fired after he was mistakenly identified as one of the "white nationalist" marchers in Charlottesville. He's still dealing with the fallout. Presumably others are in the same boat. But mistaken identities and false accusations are not unique to social media. They're just magnified by it. And the tools which create that magnification can also be used to correct the errors and falsehoods. This is just a matter of scale, not a new or insoluble problem.

On the other hand "guilty" individuals like Christopher Cantwell and organizations like the Daily Stormer web site are losing access to their soapboxes (and their livelihoods) as they're dropped by web hosts (GoDaddy), payment processors (PayPal), social media outlets (Facebook and Twitter), intermediary utilities (Cloudflare) and even, in Cantwell's case, dating sites (OKCupid).

As vociferously as I disagree with people like Cantwell and organizations like the Daily Stormer, I agree that this is a problem.

It's not a problem with the Wakfer model of Social Preferencing, which explicitly calls for "accessible personal disclosure" of the kind being prevented by these exclusions from, effectively, the public square. But it's a problem nonetheless.

While the actions of these large firms are not, strictly speaking, censorship (the parties involved are not owed platforms by any particular providers and are free to seek the services they need elsewhere), it's a simple fact that they hold market positions which can at least temporarily create the same effect. They are using those positions to create that effect.

John Gilmore famously noted that "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Libertarians like me view the market in much the same way. This situation is a practical, nuts and bolts test of those views. There's a great deal riding on the outcome.

If GoDaddy, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal et al. are in effect creating damage to the public square -- and I say they are -- can the Net and the market effectively route around that damage?

Usable publishing platforms (Diaspora, Steemit, Minds.com, Gab.ai, and so on) and processors (Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies) are already in place and there's nothing to stop others from launching.

Will the big players pay a preferencing price (to the benefit of those other platforms) for their attempts to decide for us what and whom we may view and hear? Here's hoping they do.
From Mondoweiss

For a long time, liberalism and Zionism have gotten along fine in America -- just look at the Democratic Party and its love for Israel. But Charlottesville represents a crisis for liberal Zionists. When they condemn white nationalism in the U.S. and celebrate Jewish nationalism in Israel, the contradiction is obvious to all.

Just consider three prominent voices. Wolf Blitzer of CNN, the liberal Zionist group J Street, and blogger and Democratic Party thinker Josh Marshall.

--Wolf Blitzer has condemned the "racism and hatred" of Charlottesville and his show has served that good cause.

But Blitzer once published a book in which he promoted one piece of Zionist propaganda after another and denounced Palestinian views of the conflict as "spurious myths." It is a "myth" that Arab civilians were "massacred" at Deir Yassin, a "myth" that Palestinian refugees "were the major victims of the 1948 war," and a "myth" that "Jewish atrocities" caused the Palestinians to flee. From Blitzer's book on the refugees:

"The startled Jewish community declared: 'We did not dispossess them; they themselves chose this course.'"

These are all grotesque falsehoods or distortions of the truth to deny war crimes, typical of AIPAC, the lobby group Blitzer was working for when he put the book out. (Deir Yassin was an Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem that Israeli militias cleared in April '48 for strategic and nationalist purposes, killing over 100 Palestinian civilians; the outrage caused terror throughout Jerusalem.)

To this day, Blitzer frequently airs Israel's defenders, rarely puts on its critics; and he attacked Jimmy Carter when he dared to say Israel was practicing apartheid.

--The liberal Zionist group J Street has taken a prominent role in condemning white nationalists.

Meanwhile, its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, brags about his father's "service" in the Irgun establishing the state of Israel-- without noting that the Irgun was a terrorist Jewish militia, linked to the massacre of Palestinians in Deir Yassin and other ethnic cleansing operations.

--Josh Marshall of TPM has been a tribune of warnings about the real-and-present dangers of Trumpism:"a President driven by white racial grievance" has detonated a bomb of "white supremacist violence" hatred that will keep bursting.

Marshall is married to an Israeli and proudly named his son in 2006 after an Israeli general:

"His full name is Samuel Allon Marshall. ... The name means 'Oak' in Hebrew. And it was also the name of Yigal Allon, after whom he is also named, who was one of the founders of and later the commander of the Palmach, the elite commando unit of the Haganah, the predecessor of the IDF."

Yigal Allon was the general who carried out David Ben-Gurion's more-or-less explicit orders to expel Palestinians from the incipient state of Israel in 1948. Famously he emptied Lydda and other areas near the Israeli airport of Palestinians. "IDF commander Yigal Allon asked Ben Gurion 'what shall we do with the Arabs?' Ben-Gurion made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, 'Expel them'." [John Pilger, and Ari Shavit too.]

Josh Marshall is wired inside the Democratic Party and tries to maintain order over Israel inside the party. He does so by avoiding the issue as much as he can lest it divide the base, by pointing out Israeli atrocities only when they're glaring, and when push comes to shove, characterizing anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism.

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From The Guardian

The Department of Justice wants 1.3 million IP addresses of people who visited distruptj20.org. Is reading about protest illegal now?

In an unprecedented and dangerous move, Donald Trump's justice department is threatening to violate the first and fourth amendment rights of over a million people by issuing an overboard surveillance request aimed at identifying alleged anti-Trump protesters.

The justice department is demanding that web hosting provider DreamHost hand over, among many other things, 1.3m IP addresses -- essentially everyone who has ever visited an anti-Trump protest site called disruptj20.org that was organizing protests surrounding Trump inauguration in January.

Dream Host revealed the surveillance demand on Monday on their blog, also saying they were going to court to challenge the order. Dream Host called it "a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority" and explained that the "information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution."

As the Guardian noted on Monday, the justice department has already "aggressively prosecuted activists arrested during the 20 January protests in Washington DC," at one point in April indicting "more than 217 people with identical crimes, including felony rioting."

This includes many people who claim they were just in the vicinity of property damage and had nothing to do with it -- and even some journalists. There is also solid public evidence that Facebook received some extraordinary legal orders related to the events as well and are fighting them in court.

Here's how the website disruptj20.org described its mission:

"We're planning a series of massive direct actions that will shut down the Inauguration ceremonies and any related celebrations -- the Inaugural parade, the Inaugural balls, you name it. We're also planning to paralyze the city itself, using blockades and marches to stop traffic and even public transit. And hey, because we like fun, we're even going to throw some parties."

Now, it's possible the site's operators were suggesting they were planning on engaging in at least some civil disobedience that the government would consider illegal. But, as EFF's Mark Rumold said on Monday: "This [the website] is pure first amendment advocacy -- the type of advocacy the first amendment was designed to protect and promote."

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From Counterpunch

"I came to this march for the message that white European culture has a right to be here just like every other culture," a white nationalist protester in Charlottesville told Newsweek. But, he claimed, he's "not an angry racist."

White nationalists often use this messaging. They claim they aren't racists; they just want to celebrate white European culture and heritage.

What's unreasonable about that, they say? Shouldn't every group of people be allowed to celebrate their own culture?

There are two problems here.

One is historical baggage. History doesn't have many examples of people innocently "celebrating white European culture," but it does have an awful lot of examples of ugly and sometimes violent racism perpetrated by white people of European descent. Slavery. Jim Crow. Lynchings. Hitler.

That isn't to say that Americans of European heritage don't have a culture to celebrate. Not at all.

They just generally celebrate it based on national traditions and not in a generic, pan-white-people sort of way. You might celebrate Irish culture on St. Patrick's Day, for example. Or you could celebrate French culture on Bastille Day with French wine and food.

In America, we celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks and Thanksgiving with turkey. But these holidays are for all Americans, not just the white ones.

America has never been a white country. It was once entirely populated with Native Americans. Then the first Europeans arrived, and they soon brought the first enslaved Africans. All of those groups, as well as all of the people who followed later, contributed to making our country and our culture what it is today.

Second, the goal of "celebrating white European culture" is a thinly veiled lie.

It's a lie because the marchers were carrying Nazi flags, flags associated with the genocide of 6 million Jews and countless others the Nazis wanted to remove from humanity's gene pool.

It's a lie because the marchers were carrying Confederate battle flags, the flag of a people willing to fight to the death for their right to enslave other human beings.

It's a lie because the marchers were marching alongside KKK members, whose organization have terrorized and murdered people in the name of white supremacy for over a century.

And it's a lie because the people who are supposedly simply celebrating their own lily white skin and its culture frequently and routinely make disgusting racist remarks about people of color.

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From Wallwritings



Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton

(Image by Gage Skidmore) Details DMCA



To hold, or not to hold, a Trump rally in Phoenix next Tuesday: that is the question Donald Trump should be asking himself right now.

The Mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, Greg Stanton, (above) has asked President Trump to postpone his campaign-style rally scheduled for the Phoenix Convention Center, on Tuesday, August 22, because "our nation is still healing from the tragic events at Charlottesville."

Trump has said he wants to pardon former Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio. If that is Trump's intention for the Phoenix rally, the Mayor said, "then it will be clear that his true intent is to enflame tensions and further divide our nation."

To hold or not to hold, is the Hamlet-like question Trump must ask himself.

On Wednesday, "A senior Trump campaign adviser told ABC News, "Barring any unforeseen events between now and then, there is no chance we will delay the rally."

There is good reason to assume Trump chose Phoenix for next Tuesday's rally for the sole purpose of enflaming his shrinking base with his pardon announcement.

Trump signaled that intent when he told Fox News in an interview this week that...

...he may pardon former metro Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who recently was convicted in federal court for disobeying a judge's order to stop his traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. A federal judge ruled in 2013 that Arpaio's officers had racially profiled Latinos. Arpaio, 85, is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 5, and faces up to six months in jail. Attorneys who have followed the case doubt someone his age would be incarcerated, however.

Mayor Stanton, noting that the site of the rally was "a public facility and open for anyone to rent -- and that includes the Trump campaign," wants the rally canceled.

The Mayor added that if it is held, he is "focused on making sure the event was safe for everyone."

The Trump campaign's announcement that the rally will not be postponed, came a day after Trump drew near universal outcry after saying "both sides" were to blame for a deadly weekend of protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups clashed with counter protesters.

In Hamlet's soliliquity, he was contemplating his own suicide. It begins:

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3D Monument Avenue General Robert E. Lee

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I was a Fulbright professor of journalism in 1991, posted for a year in the Graduate School of Journalism at China's prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai.

Over the year I made many friends among the faculty and especially among my graduate students, many of whom had been democracy activists, either in Beijing or in Shanghai, during the events of the Tiananmen occupation and eventual crushing of that movement. during 1989, two years before my arrival.

At the time I was in China, there were very few statues of Mao Zedong, the celebrated leader of the victorious Chinese Communist revolution. Because of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and earlier anti-rightist campaigns he had orchestrated, his reputation had understandably and deservedly suffered badly.

As a result, while Mao's statues had been ubiquitous all over China only a decade earlier, by the time I arrived (20 years after having graduated with a degree in Chinese language and plans to go to China to witness and write about the "glories" of the Cultural Revolution), I found in Shanghai only two statues of the Chairman -- one inside the entrance gate to Tongji University, a technical school, and and one inside the front gate of Fudan University.

The Tongji statue had a younger Mao posed in a romantic stance waiving to his people. The Fudan statue had a more forbidding statue, quite tall, featuring the chairman in his formal Mao suit, feet together, and arms clasped behind his back, looking sternly down at the viewer. The statue had been designed to look even bigger and more imposing than it was by the enlargement of the feet and the bottom of the legs, with the body shrinking to a much too small head at the top to give the illusion of height.

I asked a friend, a Fudan professor who had lived through the anti-rightist campaign of the '50s as well as the Cultural Revolution, why those two statues had been left standing, while all the others seemed to have been eliminated in Shanghai and most of China.

He smiled wanly and said, using a very Chinese turn of phrase, "They left the statues so we would never forget...and so that we would never forget."

I puzzled over his words for a moment and then I got it. He meant that the Party officials who run the two universities, which had been hotbeds of rebellion in 1989 and of democracy activism in earlier years, wanted their faculties and students both remember the excesses of Mao's Cultural Revolution (by then Mao was a very controversial figure among the Chinese people, revered as almost a god by some, and reviled by others), and also to remember what can happen to those who stand against the Chinese state and the absolute authority of the Communist Party.

The monuments to the Confederacy in the US are much the same as those Mao statues in Shanghai. After the massive suffering and death caused by the Cultural Revolution and other Maoist campaigns during the years after 1949, many people in China didn't want to be reminded of it all by having to look at monumental edifices glorifying the man responsible for those events. But of course there were many who also thought of Mao as the father of their country and revered him, sometimes, as with the cab drivers who would ride with a red-and-gold framed photo of Mao hanging from their rear-view mirror as a good luck charm, treating his image almost like an image of Buddha or Guanyin.

My own feeling is that statues honoring the generals of the Confederacy, and the CSA's president Jefferson Davis are not just an outrage -- these guys are all traitors to the United States, and were fighting not for "states' rights" as often alleged by their defenders, but for the preservation of the vile and absolutely indefensible institution of slavery -- but are an insult to any black resident of the city in which they are allowed to continue to stand.

As two of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson's great great grandchildren recently stated in a letter to the mayor of Richmond, VA published also in Slate magazine [2], the Confederate statues erected in the south are not about glorifying heroes of some virtuous battle, but rather were erected later in the 19th Century and on, after Reconstruction had ended, in an era when white supremacy was resurgent -- with the violent help of the Ku Klux Klan, a tsunami of lynchings, and the introduction of segregation and poll taxes to keep black people in their "place," terrified, and out of political and economic power.

The two brothers, Jack Christian and Warren Christian, in calling for the removal of Confederate statues including those of their famous/infamous ancestor Gen. Stonewall Jackson, write:

Instead of lauding Jackson's violence, we choose to celebrate Stonewall's sister--our great-great-grandaunt--Laura Jackson Arnold. As an adult Laura became a staunch Unionist and abolitionist. Though she and Stonewall were incredibly close through childhood, she never spoke to Stonewall after his decision to support the Confederacy. We choose to stand on the right side of history with Laura Jackson Arnold.



They go on to write:

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Readings for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time: IS 56:1, 6-7; PS 67: 2-3, 5, 6, 8; ROM 11: 13-15, 20-32; MT 15: 21-28.

"Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon." Those are the words addressed to Jesus in today's gospel reading. They come from a woman whom the evangelist, Matthew, remembers as "Syrophonecian".

An uncharacteristically narrow-minded Jesus has his own name for the woman and her daughter. He calls them "dogs" -- b_tches, really. That's the term for female dogs, isn't it?

We'll come back to that in a moment.

For now, note that "Syrophonecian" meant the woman was not a Jew. She was a native or inhabitant of Phoenicia when it was part of the Roman province of Syria. She was living near the twin cities of Tyre and Sidon -- a gentile or non-Jewish region of the Fertile Crescent where Matthew takes trouble to locate today's episode. That would have made Jesus' petitioner what we call a "Palestinian" today.

No doubt you're surprised at Jesus' rough and disrespectful language towards the woman and her child. I am.

As I said, at first he gives no reply at all; he ignores the two females completely. If Matthew's account is accurate, in his silence Jesus showed himself to be captive to his own cultural norms. It was inconceivable in Hellenistic antiquity for a strange woman to directly approach a man the way the woman in this story did. Above all, it was so for a non-Jewish woman to directly address a Jewish man. In other words, Jesus' silence shows him a captive to his patriarchal "honor culture."

But then, as I said, it gets worse. When the woman insists, Jesus implicitly at least uses that term that women find so offensive. He says, "I have been sent for the lost children of Israel ... it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to a pair of b_tches."

Is that a sneer I see on Jesus' face?

In any case, the reply seems out of character for Jesus. In fact, such dissonance has led many scholars to reject the saying as inauthentic -- or as though Jesus were only pretending to be hard to test the woman's faith. Whatever the case, Jesus' words only echo the rabbinic saying of the time, "He who eats with idolaters is like one who eats with a dog."

Can't get much more chauvinist than that, can you? Foreigners' religions are nothing but "idolatry." Foreigners themselves are filthy animals.

Do you know anybody that thinks like that? I mean, we still haven't outgrown such narrowness, and disrespect any more than this stony Jesus apparently had.

But then the woman disarms the Master completely, even as he turns his back on her. Listen to her words. Unfazed in her desperation before this peasant faith healer, she blurts out, "Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters."

Silence.

We can almost see Jesus stop in his tracks. He shakes his head ruefully and turns back. We can almost hear him stifle a laugh as he exclaims, "O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish."

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From pixabay.com: Free vector graphic: Fascism, Nazi, Swastika, Symbol - Free Image

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There's a lesson here about the notion of "the right to free speech" that I discuss further in my longer article here.

The "Daily Stormer" prominently displayed swastikas and was over the top racist:

It argued that black people were animals and not human beings. It advised anyone who had a problem with a black person's behavior to call the zoo to come and deal with "it."

It argued that Jews (whom it portrayed with classic anti-Semitic big-nosed evil caricatures) were BIOLOGICALLY driven to be the enemy of white people and therefore Jews need to be excluded from white society.

About Charlottesville, it said that the real tragedy wasn't that Heather Heyer was killed (they liked that fact), but rather that the wonderful car that struck her was so terribly damaged.

Every issue of the "Daily Stormer," however, carried a little "boilerplate" paragraph stating that it did not support violence. Cute, uh?

The effect of the paper's online speech was, clearly, to give ideological confidence and emotional encouragement and organizational unity and implicit prompting to people to commit violence against blacks and Jews simply because they were black or Jewish.

The "Daily Stormer" was written carefully enough so that a top notch lawyer probably would have been able to make a case in a court of law that the paper never actually _explicitly_ said that anybody should commit an act of violence.

Nevertheless, the web hosting companies that removed the "Daily Stormer" from the web did so on the grounds that it promoted violence.

Let us, purely for the sake of argument, assume that the "Daily Stormer" never explicitly advocated violence, ok? It STILL should have been shut down. Here's why.

The "Daily Stormer" was using speech to help people commit--or get ready to commit--racist violence. Speech is an extremely important part of doing. There is no sharp line between speech and doing.

Virtually everything that human beings do that requires two or more people acting in concert requires the previous use of speech to come up with and articulate the idea and to decide that it is a good idea and to plan how to execute it.

This is why the "freedom of speech" principle, "I oppose what you are saying but will defend to the death your right to say it" sometimes means--in practice--"I oppose what you are doing but I will defend to the death your right to do it." It's a stupid principle!

This "freedom of speech" principle means, in the case of the "Daily Stormer,": "I oppose your using online speech to promote and facilitate and help encourage racist violence by giving racists greater confidence that they are right and that they are not alone so they will violently attack blacks and Jews, but I will defend to the death your right to use online speech to promote and facilitate and help encourage racist violence by giving racists greater confidence that they are right and that they are not alone so they will violently attack blacks and Jews."

Some mistakenly think that the only way to protect free speech for good purposes is to defend free speech for bad purposes. This false view is based on the fairy tale that there is a neutral power in society above us all that enforces speech rules without any regard for the content, and that the only choices available are a) speech rules that give everybody free speech so good speech will be possible or b) speech rules that restrict everybody's speech and thus make good speech more restricted or even impossible.

But there is no such "neutral power" making speech rules without regard to content. The real power is the dictatorship of the rich, and it makes speech rules that ensure that the rich remain in power.

The way to ensure that good speech is possible is to fight TO MAKE GOOD SPEECH POSSIBLE; not to fight to make racist speech possible (as if the rich don't already guarantee all the racist speech they need to keep us divided racially.)

Does this mean we should stop anybody from speaking if we disagree with them? NO. I discuss this my longer article. What it means is that when it comes to any particular use of speech, our response to it has to be determined by THINKING, not by reflexively and unthinkingly invoking a one-size-fits-all "freedom of speech" principle that is stupid.
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"The bottom-up revolution is fueling tremendous change in politics, commerce, and how people relate to each other. Rob Kall's book Bottom-Up provides a powerful guide to how organizations can understand and tap bottom-up's power. "



Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, after 5 days of a terrorist attack which occurred on the 13th of August at a restaurant in Burkina Faso has sent a heart-warming message to the people.



In a Twitter post which was released on the 17th August 2017, President Akufo-Addo commiserated with the affected families and to the government of Burkina Faso.



"I send my deepest sympathies to the affected families and to the government and the people of the brotherly nation of Burkina Faso., he tweeted.



Suspected Islamist militants killed at least 18 people leaving several others injured during a raid on a restaurant in Burkina Faso's capital overnight, but security forces shot dead both attackers and freed people trapped inside the building.



Burkina Faso, like other countries in West Africa, has been targeted now and again by jihadist groups. Most attacks have been along its remote northern border with Mali, which has seen activity by Islamist militants for more than a decade.



However, Ghanaians reacted to the tweet of the President in a state of shock as they couldn't understand why the post came in late.

Source: Ghanaweb.com









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The death toll from devastating floods in Sierra Leone has climed to more than 400 people with hundreds still missing in the stricken capital.



Burials and recovery efforts continued on Friday amid the threat of further disaster.



The Red Cross put the death toll at 409 after flooding and mudslides shook Freetown on Monday morning.



"Today we are counting more than 400 people dead," Elhadj As Sy, secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, told reporters in Geneva.



Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva, said the toll "may rise", noting the number of people still missing.



The UN humanitarian agency said it still hopes to find survivors "but the chances are getting smaller every day".



Large-scale burials have begun as an estimated 600 people remain missing. People continue to search through tons of mud and debris amid the remains of mangled buildings.



Sobbing and covering their noses from the stench, relatives stepped around corpses lying on the ground outside the morgue, which was overwhelmed, as the sheets covering them were lifted.



"I came to identify my uncle in particular, but I couldn't find him," said 30-year-old Hawanatu Sesay, after her turn came to look through the morgue.



"Let his soul rest in peace," she said through tears.



At least 100 children killed



Al Jazeera's Ahmed Idris, reporting from Freetown, said some people have lost hope in finding the bodies of their relatives.



"There is that sense of hope among people that some of the bodies can be found and will be given a decent burial, but there are also people who have lost hope that their relatives have been buried without a proper procedure," he said.



"We are talking about hundreds of people who are missing, so the operation now will be focused on the areas that were destroyed by the mudslide."

Source: Aljazeera









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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"The Leading Pharmaceutical Company has Announced an Important Plan to Establish In Uzbekistan In The Forthcoming Days"

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Oddway International

sales@oddwayinternational.com

+91-9873336444 Oddway International+91-9873336444

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-- Oddway International has announced that it will meet the needs of large, medium, small businesses and individuals in the Uzbekistan Federation for their pharmaceutical requirements. Oddway International is a global popular exporter, distributor, trader and wholesaler of medicines all over the world and the company is known for its fair prices. Oddway International has a strong and independent infrastructure making it one of the world's largest and most popular export houses."Our goal is to maintain a healthy, safe and accessible relationship with our customers and can be manifested by the excellent satisfaction they experience as they are with us. We ensure that different ingredients are delivered on time to meet all our customers' requirements, "said Oddway International's spokesman, who spoke about the new expansion of the global company.The export house has a very strong ethical code and no compromises in the quality of its products. Each shipment is adequately checked by experts. The company distributes a large number of medicines as well as life-saving medications in hospitals and medical shops around the world. In addition, the company reaches users from small to medium and large, and the export house is well equipped to handle orders of all kinds for any known disease and illness. From Kidney Disease to Oncology, Arthritis to Hepatitis, HIV / AIDS to Women's Health, and many other diseases that have been offered by Oddway International have proven to be the most effective medication for all.Oddway International has established itself over the past decade as a reliable name in the pharmaceutical industry. With its wholesale mechanism, sales network, logistics infrastructure and supply chain management, the company has satisfied a large number of customers in Uzbekistan. The company's opinion is brilliant and the evaluations of the patrons reflect the performance stories and the belief that they have in the company. From Samarkand to Bukhara and Nukus to Namangan the products are popular and ever more demanding in Uzbekistan. For more information about Oddway International, visit their website at http://www.oddwayinternational.com
For the longest time, Nicole Krauss says about Forest Dark, her fourth novel, I didnt know how to end it.

She looks relaxed, happy, as if shes just returned from vacation, and is actually only days away from a trip to Israel, where she spends a few weeks every summer, and where most of Forest Dark (Harper, Sept.) is set. I feel in Israel that you live constantly in the sense of the reality of life.

Its an enigmatic statement, with its implication that reality and life dont always coalescebut it makes perfect sense in the context of our conversation about her new work. Forest Dark is her most cerebral book yet; it tackles questions of faith and identity, as well as Freud and Kafkas conception of unheimlich, a kind of anxiety inspired by the uncanny sensation of recognizing something youve never seen before. (Kafka is a major player in the novel.)

Were at a cafe near her house in Park Slope, Brooklyn; Krauss arrived within a minute of our arranged time and will leave after exactly one hour has passed. Its muggy, the temperature is in the 90s, and there is no air conditioning, but Krauss doesnt seem to notice. As we talk she leans across the table. When she says something, she says it with her entire body, lifting her arms, using her hands to underscore a point, as if words can be touched, as if they take up physical space. I actually couldnt stomach the idea of writing a novel in the way that it had been written before. I just couldnt. I wanted something fresh. And what I love about being a novelist is how endlessly elastic the form is. It really does beg to be invented every time you write it, Krauss says.

She talks about the period of time between books, and the significant pressure that naturally follows a writer who has reached her level of critical and commercial successher books have been translated into more than 35 languages, her novel Great House (Norton, 2010) was a finalist for the National Book Award, and shes been named one of the New Yorkers 20 under 40 and a Granta Best Young American Novelist. The History of Love (Norton, 2005), her second novel, is an international bestseller with a fan base so passionate that Krauss has met people who have named their daughters after Alma, one of the novels central characters. (It helps that Alma is a pretty name, Krauss jokes.) I think that the burden of maintaining an audience that youve been lucky enough to develop is problematic. And if youre writing to maintain that audience, in some way youre writing to please. And the moment you do that, youve lost your freedom.

Freedom is a central theme in Forest Darkartistic freedom, freedom from domestic routine, freedom even from the limits of perception. Before I wrote The History of Love I was in a similar kind of period, and I think pressure almost had to build up in order for there to be enough urgency that writing then became what it has always been for me, which is this kind of escape or liberation into change. A different way of thinking, or seeing.

Forest Dark is a braided narrative, alternating chapters between two very different characters. The story opens with Jules Epstein (I was always interested in looking at him slightly from the outside, Krauss says), a wealthy New York lawyer. After the death of his parents, Jules begins giving his fortune away in bits and pieces before disappearing to Israel in search of something deeper than himself. Then we switch to a narrator, Nicole, a Brooklyn novelist suffering from writers block, a disintegrating marriage, and a sense of alienation from her daily life with her two young children. She, too, goes to Israelto the Tel Aviv Hilton, a hotel shes visited every year since birthin search of a story. Both Jules and Nicole encounter characters who will lead them on journeys of metamorphosis. In Nicoles case, this transformation is inspired by a master of the subject, Kafka himself, whose story, Forest Dark implies, defies history. If this sounds complicated, it both is and isntthe prose is clear and propulsive, and the deeper questions come upon the reader suddenly, like getting swept up in an uncontrollable current.

Krauss is not coy about the novels parallels to her life. In terms of this obsession with writing about the Tel Aviv Hilton, that really did happen to me. Like her character Nicole, Krauss grew up going to the hotel. As she wrote Forest Dark, she began to channel memories, letting go of the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. Theres a vivid scene early in the novel in which Nicole is watching TV and thinks she sees herself in the studio audience; later, Nicole and her brother are playing a game in the Hilton pool when she seemingly conjures a ruby earring. Both are situations that Krauss herself experienced. But thats not why I think its interesting. Theres something in me thats really exhausted by the laws of reality that were asked to accept and how thin they are. So much of writing this book is trying to provoke questions about the ways in which we wholesale agree to believe in a certain reality. At every turn, the novel challenges the reader to consider multiple possibilities existing simultaneously, so that the narrative structure, even as it contains Jules and Nicoles stories, feels limitless. Its liberating to read, just as, according to Krauss, it was liberating to write.

As Nicole travels to Tel Aviv in search of her story, and eventually deep into the Israeli desert, seeking answers to the mystery of Kafkas life and death, she begins to dismantle the trappings not only of her former life, but of her very self. Krauss hopes that the story is radical for women. This book is about what it is to arrive at a certain point in your life. Youre still young, and youre a mother, and youre a wife. No matter how intelligent you are, and no matter how many books youve read about other choices, you find yourself in a place where you are absolutely limited by these roles. A break is neededlike into formlessness for a minute before you are going to have to assume another form. And once you know how to break it, you break it. I ask her if there are ways of being awake to that kind of transformation, and how essential it is to making art.

Traveling helps, she says, movement in general. I know it sounds silly, but just moving, something like dancing, I find is a really, really important thing for me. Were just so used to limiting ourselves to a certain position or perspective.

In the middle of the book, Nicole describes a dance class held in an old yellow school in Tel Aviv with window frames painted sky blue. The teacher encourages the students to feel small collapses inside as they move, collapses that are invisible on the outside. Krauss was in such a classes when she found the ending for Forest Dark. When you move it shakes up thought, Krauss says. Your access to things changes. And there was this moment in class where I was suddenly able to paint just that last bit, like it was already there.

Julie Buntin is the director of writing programs at Catapult and the author of the novel Marlena (Holt, Apr. 2017).
EveryLibrary, the Chicago political action committee dedicated to generating local- and state-level voter support for librarians and libraries, has teamed with Follett, the largest provider of educational materials and technology for K12 schools in the U.S., in a partnership focused on school library advocacy. Follett, headquartered in Westchester, Ill., is providing funding for EveryLibrarys expanded school library advocacy focused in six states and for its new activist website, SaveSchoolLibrarians.org. Follett and EveryLibrary announced their alliance and the launch of the website on June 19, just before the American Library Associations annual conference.

It all started with a conversation I had with [EveryLibrarys executive director] John Chrastka, says Nader Qaimari, president of Follett School Solutions. Though Follett has been doing a lot of advocacy on the national levelincluding its work on the Future Ready Libraries Initiative and, along with other corporations, petitioning Congress to save IMLS fundingChrastka offered another avenue to explore. When we spoke to John, he explained his efforts were a little different and more focused at the local level, Qaimari says.

Chrastka believed that the partnership would be a good fit. Weve admired Folletts support for library advocacy for a long time, he says. We approached them with this opportunity to move from advocacy to activism, and they were very responsive.

Follett is a very good partner in this, Chrastka continues. With their Future Ready initiative work they are already helping to teach the skills to be a good school librarian, the competencies to become a great school librarian, and how to map ones library programming mission to the school districts priorities. Once librarians have completed the professional development that Follett provides, Chrastka notes, we want to help make sure those folks are employed and they have a budget that supports those goals.

At the outset, the combined efforts of both organizations will center on Illinois, Florida, Montana, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Washington State.We picked those states because we knew they had specific issues around funding and support of libraries, Qaimari says. And we thought it would be good to start small.

Folletts financial support means that EveryLibrary can now work with several state-level school library associations on much more strategic projects, according to Chrastka. That work will include restoring librarians to their schools and supporting lobbying efforts at the school board level and the superintendent level for the state library associations goals: to see better collections and programming budgets for school libraries.

Chrastka outlined some of EveryLibrarys planned efforts, beginning with Illinois, where a Rally to Restore Illinois School Librarians took place June 23 in downtown Chicago, during the ALA convention. Reports from 2012 indicated that the number of dedicated librarians in Chicago public schools was close to 450 at that time. During the 20162017 school year, DNAinfo reported, there were only 218 dedicated librarians in 178 CPS schools (36 percent of schools, according to CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner), or, according to the Chicago Teachers Union estimate, closer to 160 librarians in 661 schools (or about 24 percent of schools).

The rally was a project of a restoration task force that EveryLibrary and the Illinois School Library Media Association (ISLMA) had been collaborating on for a few months. We are working with ISLMA on school-board level outreach to districts that have eliminated all their librarians, Chrastka says. We will make the case to restore those positions and to improve their collections and programs budgets.

According to Qaimari, the ISLMA rally had a really good turnout. They got some coverage out of it, which was really the goal there. And Chrastka stresses that its too early to say whether weve won or lost because the budget decisions were trying to influence are budgets that happen in the 20182019 school year.

Citing another example, Chrastka says, Were kicking off a project with the Florida Association of Media Educators working on six school districts, to focus on their 20182019 budgets. We will do SaveSchoolLibrarians.org digital advocacy through petitions and email campaigns in five districts that have challenges, and another one that has a clear and present danger of losing all its librarians.

Chrastka has just begun talks with the Montana Library Association, but he believes that, in that state, we will be targeting funding priorities. Montana has a better-than-average legislative environment, where school librarians are in the law, theyre in the code, and were looking to advance a budgetary discussion there in conjunction with the [Montana Library Association] in support of our colleagues there.

In the state of Pennsylvania, Were rolling out a project thats helping to support the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association, Chrastka says. There is a bill thats currently in Harrisburg that would require school librarians in schools of a certain size. They are trying to get it passed this season, and were helping to bring out the public around that. Also, EveryLibrary will be doing some district-level advocacy across the Commonwealth.

In Nevada, EveryLibrary worked with the Nevada Library Association and the Clark County School Librarians Association on a bill during the most recent session of the state legislature. Senate Bill 143 mandates that every school in Nevada have a library and a certified librarian to run it. According to a March report on Nevada Public Radio, 44 schools in Clark County dont have a certified librarian, and one school doesnt have a library at all. It was the first year the bill was introduced and we built up some political capital,Chrastka says. Were going to spend the next several months in advance of the next legislative session building additional political capital among the public and doing some other training work with advocates and activists in the school librarian community, starting with the Nevada Library Association and Mountain Plains Library Association Joint Conference this fall. Chrastkas colleague Patrick Sweeney, EveryLibrarys political director, will be providing in-person training at the conference in October.

Chrastka says that the scope and particulars of the project in Washington, in partnership with the Washington Library Association, are still being finalized.

One Click, Many Voices

The second integral piece of the Follett-EveryLibrary partnership is the website, SaveSchoolLibrarians.org. According to Chrastka, the new site was created as a response to increased demand for advocacy. He says that EveryLibrarys work over the past 18 to 24 months has largely involved assisting school communities when theres been a threat to a school librarians job, or the budget is being cut in a way that isnt fairly applied across the boardthe library is being targeted. To date, EveryLibrary, through its action.everylibrary.org site has helped support 22 such challenges and, Chrastka notes, Weve helped the local librarian or librarians see their jobs secured in about half of those cases. I wish it was 100%, but were batting .500 right now.

However, he stresses, The need hasnt diminished. We wanted a site that is dedicated to helping to fix the funding formula problem. Chrastka believes SaveSchoolLibrarians.org is a step toward doing that. He says that he frequently sees a disconnect in school districts across the country. Superintendents, principals, and school boards say that they want effective schools that are focused on student achievement, and then they get rid of school librarians and defund programs and collections, he says. Were dedicating this site and the resources behind the site to work on particular problems: somebodys job is under threat, somebodys collection or budget is going to get cut, somebodys library is going to get zeroed out, he says.

Folletts financial participation is fueling the site. The point of the site, Qaimari says, is to give communities the tools they need, and the road map, to actually influence change within their community, so that they can accomplish what theyre trying to accomplish.

Qaimari thinks the biggest issue that library advocates are facing right now is that most people are not aware. When he learned his young sons school in Illinois cut its librarian, he says, I wasnt even aware, and I work in the industry, so it mattered to me. But most people wouldnt even know that thats a big deal. He continues, My son, who is five, came home with a book that was written for an eighth grader. Qaimari wondered why a librarian gave his son that book, and when he asked who the librarian was, he found the school no longer had a librarian. Qaimari points up the efficacy of the website: I just looked on SaveSchoolLibrarians.org and almost 1,700 emails have already been sent to [Chicago mayor] Rahm Emanuel around this specific initiative because we created this site. Its important for us to get the info out there as quickly and as broadly as we can.

Tackling the problem from all sides is essential, according to Qaimari. If you attack it at the national levelreframe what the school librarians role is, the perception of themthen, at the local level, talk about the effect school librarians have on the local community and how they can help the community, those two things eventually meet, and hopefully that leads to positive change.

At this very early stage, Qaimari has been impressed with where the new partnership is headed. This is our pilot year, he says. EveryLibrary is trying a number of different things to see what works. Once we identify different opportunities that are actually making an impact, then well probably throw more resources and effort behind those.

And Chrastka warns that the current political climate makes EveryLibrarys and Folletts efforts more important than ever. In the DeVos and Trump era, theyve told us very clearly that decisions about school funding are devolving to the states and localities, he says. So instead of having one spinning plate shaped like Congress, weve got 50 spinning plates shaped like state legislatures and, God help us, thousands of them potentially at the school district level. This is the work thats necessary in this new political reality. Looking ahead, he says, Were really trying to find the right level of support from inside the industry in order to do this. Follett is an early supporter of ours that adds real capacity. We want to prove the concept of what were doing.

Chrastka has a gauntlet to throw down. I would like to challenge the publishing community to look at its own advocacy agenda for libraries and to see whether this focus on solutions at the local and state level resonates with them, he says. If they are looking at the landscape of how things are happening with this federal government and national policy, and they understand that multistate solutions are the future, wed really like to talk.
Shannon McClintock Miller is a former K12 district teacher librarian who is now an international speaker and consultant specializing in education, librarianship, and technology. Among her many other credentials, Miller is the spokesperson for the Future Ready Library and Project Connect initiatives advocating for librarians as district leaders who teach digital literacy and technology skills to students.

Joyce Valenza is a former K12 teacher librarian and currently an assistant professor in the master of information degree program at Rutgers University. Valenza writes frequently for several library and ed tech publications, and is the first-ever recipient of AASLs Social Media Superstar Leadership Luminary Award.

Miller and Valenza, who are friends, are both passionate about using tech in the classroom. We asked them to chat about some of their favorite methods for doing that and share the tools and products they like best.

Miller: Every year there are more and more amazing digital tools and apps that pop up in the educational world. Whats your approach to using these digital resources in meaningful ways? And, how do you keep up?

Valenza: Ive always been a bit of an explorer when it comes to technologies, especially those that help learnersas AASL advisesthink, create, share and grow. Lately, Ive been thinking that there is such a thing as tool literacy. As a high school librarian, I loved being able to engage learners with the right tools for inquiry, workflow, creativity, communication, and participation. But more than that I wanted them to develop the chops to independently and creatively choose and use available digital tools.

As so many of us are discovering, folks need help understanding their choicesthey need to see quality dashboards that organize the new options into genres. They need to consider colors available for blending on their digital palettes. We want to model for students and for parents and teachers what it means to manage your information lifefor accessing content, yes, but also for facilitating creative, effective, ethical workflow.

Thats where the practice of digital or social media curation comes in; thats the importance of app smashing, or understanding that the power of these new tools used in concert is far greater than the use of one individual tool. In the same way so many of us find it anathema to tell students go to page 351 in your text and answer the even-numbered questions, Id find it ridiculous to suggest students open Voicethread and respond to a prompt in a prescribed way. Id want students working independently or collaboratively to begin to make those choices themselves, to understand that digital tools have both affordances and constraints, and to understand the buckets or categories or genres of tools, just as I want them to understand the realms of their information choices.

So we begin to curate or build collections of digital tools and resources for our users to select to meet their different needs. Those needs might be different for different learnersconsider all of the apps that now support autistic and dyslexic learnersand for different grade and ability levels and for a variety of information and communication needs. Its a translation of service. Its collection development, access, equity. And its about engaging with and understanding community needs.

Miller: I love this thought, Joycetool literacy. It is definitely a skill and an area we must wrap our heads around as we gain knowledge about all of the digital tools and apps we have access to within the world of education. It can be overwhelming at times, but I find it so exciting and fun to discover new technologies, especially those that possess the potential for creativity, collaboration, communication and, of course, connecting to one another in unique and engaging ways.

Valenza: So, Shannon, you present these tools to groups of teachers and librarians all the time and you regularly blog about integrating new technologies into K12 education. How do you stay ahead of the curve?

Miller: I have a lot of ways I keep up with all of these digital resources. First, I do a lot of reading and research almost every day. Second, being part of the AASL Best Websites Committee, this is a passion of mine, and that list is one of my favorite places to go for new websites and apps. I have go-to blogs that I read; people and conversations I follow on Twitter (including #tlchat, #edtech and #futurereadylibs); and I find tons of ideas and inspiration at the conferences and workshops I attend, from Facebook friends, and within groups such as the Future Ready Librarian group on Facebook, which is my favoriteit is not only useful for learning about new tools and apps; there is always someone willing to help and share ideas on how to use these new discoveries too.

And dont forgetone of the most important keys to keeping up is also being able to organize, collect, and share all of these new digital tools and apps too!

Valenza: I am glad you brought that up. Our ability to curate plays a part in managing the flood of digital tools and apps for our communities. I recently created a poster about the growing number of ways school librarians curate digital tools using digital tools. (Curation Situations: Let Us Count the Ways) .

Collection is so much more than the books you buy. It is about what you point to and make discoverable. Curation is the story you tell around the digital resources you collect. Its your anywhere, anytime instructional voice. Its about engaging with your community at their point of need. We can organize new types of collections for our users and model a new type of information behavior. For instance, we are currently and happily faced with an abundance of OER [open educational resources] content available through an array of portals. The challenge: how will we connect this bounty with our purchased content and meaningfully direct the flow to our communities, ensuring return on investment and equitable access?

LibGuides is one of several of my go-to curation platforms. We pay for it and it is a kind of industry standard, so I dont think its going to go poof anytime soon. I have become agile about curation migration, but its never pretty to be forced to suddenly leave a virtual homeland.

Traditional reading lists, consisting of links, no longer do the job for me or my students. We prefer more interactive learning playlists. My go-tos are LessonPaths, Pearltrees, Pinterest, Goodreads, and YouTube, as well as our growing social catalogs. So, Shannon, what are your favorite curation platforms?

Miller: I was hoping youd ask me this next! I have always enjoyed the process of bringing together digital resources and tools. I think we all do. As we curate, it is also important for us to have tools that are the perfect fit for us and our school community. It is essential for us to teach our students and teachers to use curation platforms and techniques too. In fact, as Future Ready Librarians, we lead in the selection, integration, organization, and sharing of digital resources and tools to support transformational teaching and learning and develop others digital curation of others.

First, there is a new platform I have been using that fits our curation needs and I am crazy about it! It is called Collections and can be found in Folletts Destiny Discover platform. Collections enables us to curate collections of resources, create more collaborative opportunities between the teacher and teacher librarians, find what others have created to use as our own, and so much more, including being able to share these rich, beautiful collections of resources with your district and publicly, too.

Second, as you know, I love Symbaloo! It is such a handy tool for curation. I can access my Symbaloo webmixes anywhere, and it is super easy to bookmark anything I find on the web. Being the librarian in a 1:1 school where students have a mix of laptops, iPads, and personal devices, Symbaloo became the toolbox for all of our resources. Now with Collections being part of Destiny, I can add my Symbaloo webmixes, creating another way to assist patrons in locating the information and resources they need.

I love using Pinterest, Diigo, and Padlet as curation platforms, too.

Last week I was asked at a workshop: If you had to pick one curation platform, what would it be? My response: I couldnt use just one, because each has a certain purpose, audience, and specialization that I need. Plus, I curate in different platforms to also see what others are curating there too.

Miller: Joyce, you are working with our next-generation librarians. What does it look like with pre-service students?

Valenza: I am so conscious, in my position in an MI program, that I am preparing the next generation of public, academic, and school librarians. I want them to be excited. I want them to be agile. I want them to make discoveries that will engage and support their communities needs and passions. I want them to connect the tools they already use to powerful practice. I want them to play and explore and scout for their communities. And I want to model for them the dispositions of a forward-thinking library leader and information professional. Its been my goal to create immersive, authentic, interactive learning experiencesto create learning communities, to connect students with each other and the world beyond their classrooms.

One project students tend to remember is the opportunity to meet exemplary practitioners in our growing Voices of Search and Voices of Literacy video anthologies. I welcome students to my leadership and management class with a Thinglink interactive hyperlinked video that connects them to the geography of our digital landscape. Weekly visits via Hangouts allow students to engage in conversations with prominent scholars, authors, practitioners, and each other. Web conferencing is critical in building our community. Our video visits with experts, saved as YouTube playlists, become a kind of alternate textbook or anthology. Whenever possible, assessments engage students in building products with real-world audiences and impact; that will serve them as they move into practice. Students participate in Pinterest safaris and choose their own readings from digital learning playlists. We have class hashtags and connect those with the established hashtags of our online communities of practice. Each class also has a Google+ community and a LibGuide that they can follow and contribute to, long after the time restriction of a semester is past.

Miller: Joyce, lets not forget to mention our desert island tools. What could you not live without?

Valenza: Its going to be a crowded island, Shan! I teach online, and I want my adult learners to understand that its not about where we learn, its about how we learn. We learn connected.

I couldnt live without Flipgrid for building relationships and community. The video/voice platform with virtually no learning curve keeps responding to the needs of educators. Its helped my classes get to know each other, connected us with global partners, and changed the way we approach our discussions, elevator pitches, case studies, and practice interviews. It allows us to connect with students across the globemost recently with a class in Australiaand it allows me to bring a variety of voices into my presentations. My students regularly brainstorm and reflect on Padlet. I use Smore to host both our announcements and our popular Copyright-Friendly Toolkit.

I cant remember a day when I didnt use Canva or Picmonkey for handy design work or image editing, and I am loving the Adobe Spark suite for design and storytelling. My students rely heavily on Adobe Spark Video. And then there are tools for screencasting, explaining, interactive video, and poster-making. I love that we have suites of collaborative tools for workflow. I dont think it would be possible for me to teach without Google Apps or some equivalent tools that follow me around on my various devices and on which I can create with others. And I am excited about the possibilities we are now seeing for virtual-reality field trips that allow students to feel physically present as they investigate and interact with places they might never geographicallyor historicallyexperience.

Miller: Naturally, we have several favorite desert island tools in common! Now, where do I start?

I couldnt live without Buncee! I love this digital creation and presentation tool and how it brings learning to life. I have watched students of all ages become more engaged and excited about learning while using Buncee to create and demonstrate what they know. Also, as a librarian, I use it for branding, signage, book labels, newsletters, and so much more. If you are looking for a special project to be part of this fall, please check out the Global Dot Day Buncee Project. You will find a Buncee here explaining everything you need to know. We would love to have you and your students join us.

Padlet is another one I suspect we both couldnt live without. With Padlet I can create an online bulletin board to gather and share information for any topic. Images, links, videos, voice and more can be added to the boards and individual notes too. I use Padlet for so many things: collaborating on projects with teachers, connecting students to others halfway around the world, crowdsourcing ideas, and even sharing books for special literacy events such as Dot Day and Poetry Month. It also serves as one of my favorite curation tools, especially with the Shelf Format, which allows you to stack content in a series of columns. I just used this feature when creating and curating the Future Ready Librarian Resources Padlet.

I am crazy about Skype in the Classroom and all of the resources it contains. Not only can we connect with other classrooms and libraries, we can also find virtual field trips, guest speakers, games of Mystery Skype, lesson plans, and so much more. To bring my first graders to a zoo in Canada to visit the penguin department or to the pyramids in Egypt would never happen without Skype. It changed the way I taught and the way my students learned. And it gave the little town I taught in a voice and face throughout the world.

And of course I also cant survive without Google Apps (what did we do before Google Docs and Slides?), Instagram, Smore, and so many more. This could be a whole conversation in itself!

Miller: I am sure we both have our little tricks for keeping up. As I mentioned earlier, I visit favorite blogs, follow conversations and people on Twitter, attend conferences and workshopsdont forget all of the awesome online professional development events tooand love being part of the Future Ready Librarians Facebook Group, which I learn so much from every day. What are yours, Joyce?

Valenza: I use Common Sense Media for reviews, but for current awareness, and for their lists, I set up feeds and alerts. I make discoveries on Twitter and Scoop.it nearly every day. I regularly check out a handful of blogs, including Richard Byrnes Free Tech 4 Teachers and Monica Burnss Class Tech Tips. Jane Harts annual Top Tools for Learning list allows me to examine trendswhich tools are advancing and declining in popularity. I also follow and share with my classes blogs from the school library and ed tech worlds.

Valenza: Shannon, weve largely been talking about digital tools for workflow and creativity. We havent even mentioned how were using new tools to create reading cultures!

So many game changers offer opportunities for our readersvisits with authors, authors on Twitter, great Pinterest reading suggestion lists, book suggestion engines, book bloggers, online reading communities, connected book clubs, global reading celebrations, archives of book trailers, to say nothing about the new and emerging containers for story! Its hard to imagine not connecting books with the digital.

Miller: Yes, this is one of the best parts of libraries todaythe online reading culture we can create and bring to our students.

Over the years I brought hundreds of authors, illustrators, experts, and, most of all, other students and teachers into our library and classrooms through Skype, Google Hangouts, and other platforms. We connect using tools like Edmodo, Padlet, Buncee, Google Docs, Flipgrid, KidBlog, Twitter, and Facebook. Our students even created their own online reading community within our school using Biblionasium, which is the Goodreads for kids. The skys the limit with the access we have to the world outside of the walls of the library now. I love the reading culture these technologies create.

As these connections are made, it is often helpful to focus around special reading and library celebrations throughout the year. I have created a Google Doc of events and links for each month. You can find it here.

Miller: Joyce, what a wonderful exchange about integrating apps and digital tools into our libraries, schools, and the lives of our students. We both love this topic so much and sharing and learning through conversations like this has always been one of my favorite things as a librarian. Thank you again, my friend.
It was in March 2017 that Liana Levi, of the independent French publishing house that bears her name, came to Sandra and Sandro Ferri with Disoriental, a debut novel by Negar Djavadi, a French-Iranian screenwriter. Levi and the Ferris, owners and publishers of the Italian press Edizioni E/O and the founders of Europa Editions in the U.S./U.K., knew each other from Paris (where, coincidentally, the long-married Ferris met). Sandra Ferri was immediately taken with Disoriental, which had been published in France in August 2016: I fell in love with this funny and moving novel, which is a pleasure to read and full of charm. The story of a young girl and her family is placed at the core of this exploration of Iranian history, which, at last, thanks to this endearing novel, Ive been able to understand a little better. It is also a very effective tale about relationships: between sisters, between youth and tradition, between husband and wife, between the culture of the west and the east. E/O bought Italian rights, and Europa bought U.S./U.K. rights, with Sandra Ferri serving as editor of the Italian edition.

Rachael Small, director of publicity at Europa, is the U.S. editor. After reading Disoriental in May 2017 in its original language (Small is not only fluent in French but passionate about it), she asked to do the translation review for the English-language edition. It was Small who brought me the manuscript after a casual conversation about forthcoming books. Her enthusiasm was not misplaced. Disoriental is the kind of book that reminds me why I first became a reader, she told me, to see the world through the eyes of others and delight in the beautiful possibilities of language. Djavadi has created a narrator whose voice is approachable and edgy all at once, and Tina Kover [who translated from the original French] has brilliantly rendered that voice in an English so clear and natural that you feel as though you are sitting with your dear friend Kimia over coffee, listening to her tell stories. These interweaving family stories made me laugh and thinkand, Small admits, cryin the most beautiful way.

Before coming to Europa, Small was a freelance translator from French and Spanish; shes lived in Paris and Mexico City. And though she came to publicity as a way of breaking into publishing, her goal is not to edit exclusively; she enjoys the personal interactions of publicity, and from my conversations with her, and after reading Disoriental, I can tell you shes a talented editor and a talented publicist.

For me, Disoriental is exciting as a novel in translation and as a novel by a woman; its touching and perceptive, and yes, funny, but also a story told with a gimlet eye, with a studied insight. Ive always loved literature in translation; for a while I rebelled, convinced I should only read books in their original languages (which severely restricted my reading), but, fortunately, that edict expired. Its especially fortunate, because otherwise I would have missed Disoriental, my latest I love this book and cant put it down. (Im a little stunned and also thrilled that this column is delivering these heartbreaking novels.) The author came to France as a young girl, and, for a bit of exotica, her bio says that she crossed the mountains of Kurdistan on horseback with her mother and sister.

The novel reflects Djavadis family history and also the history of Iran, which is told in scattered footnotes and folded into the story. The novels narrator, Kimia, a wildly modern woman, is introduced while she is waiting in a fertility clinic in Paris. She speaks directly to the reader, describing the Sadr clan, her origins, and her close relatives: her grandmother (Sometimes, in the middle of Parisian crowds, sitting in a cafe or on a folding seat in the metro, in a century driven by technology and machines, I catch myself thinking about how my grandmother was born in an andarouni.... Im the granddaughter of a woman born in a harem); her many uncles, known by their birth order, Uncle Number One, Uncle Number Six; her activist, dissident, journalist father, who opposes both the shah and Khomeini; the effect of blue eyes being introduced into the gene poolher son, her prince with the eyes of Light, was a personal gift from the All-Powerful; and the family servant, Bibishe had invented her own language, a strange muddled mixture of Persian and the Mazandarani dialect, watered with liters of saliva that built up in her mouth, and which she occasionally swallowed in one gulp like a hard-boiled egg.

Djavadi captures the culture of Iran, her tone clever and amusing and uncritical. Read Disoriental, and, like Sandra Ferri, you will gain some understanding, as when Kimia tells us: Iranians dont like silence. This tendency to make endless small talk, to throw sentences like lassoes into the air to meet one another, to tell stories which, like Russian matryoshka dolls, open to reveal other stories, is, I suppose, one way to deal with a fate made up of nothing but invasions and totalitarianism.

Or when she explains sexuality in Iran in the 1970s and a womanizing doctor who, having studied in France, was famous for introducing the French word vagin to designate that intimate part of the female anatomy that Persians, prudish and reserved, never mentioned by name.... With their mouths full of pastry and saffron pistachios, women talked to each other about their vagin; first giggling, then blushing.

The novel has its serious side, addressing homosexuality, the conflict between liberalism and conservatism in Iran dating back to the beginnings of the 20th century, the intervention of England and the U.S. in their greed for Irans oil. But the beauty of Disoriental is most importantly its sure-footed storytelling, its captivating characters, and its surprising ending.

Disoriental will be published in Italy in September 2017 and in the U.S. and U.K. in May 2018. As of April 2017, the French edition has sold 65,000 copies and is still selling well. Its received prizes in France and garnered positive press. French Elle calls it the revelation of the new season; Le Monde, a voice that enchants us as much as it grips us. As of this writing, rights have been sold to Germany (Beck, publishing October 2017) and Spain (Malpaso, published April 2017).

This article was corrected to fix a typo in the headline.
Security forces are on high alert across Afghanistan, as the country marks the 98th anniversary of its independence from Britain.

The celebrations this year are occurring following a number of high-profile attacks in the country and as the U.S. administration is trying to forge a new strategy in the 16-year war against the Taliban.

Afghan pop star Aryana Sayeed went ahead with a charity concert in Kabul on the evening of August 19 despite threats from conservatives who oppose women performing in public.

More than 1,000 people gathered at the five-star Hotel Inter-Continental amid tight security to attend the performance.

I'm going to try to give a smile to my fellow Afghans, and give them a good time, and try to change their mind, and take their tension away for at least an hour or two, Sayeed told RFE/RL on August 17.

August 19 commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919, which gave Afghanistan complete independence from British rule after three wars. Although Britain controlled Afghanistan's foreign policy for 40 years following the end of the second Anglo-Afghan War, Afghanistan was never part of the British Empire.

Earlier in the day, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani laid a wreath at the Freedom Minaret inside the Defense Ministry compound in Kabul during a ceremony attended by cabinet members and other government officials.

Ghani also welcomed dozens of Afghan dignitaries and family members at the presidential palace to mark the anniversary, and later traveled to the western city of Herat, where he inaugurated two factories and addressed both troops and ordinary Afghans.

"A very happy Independence Day to everyone in AFG," Ghani wrote in a message on Twitter. "This day was earned with lots of sacrifices. We must pay homage & celebrate this legacy."

There is an increased police presence in Kabul, which has been on edge since a massive truck bomb ripped through its diplomatic quarter on May 31, killing about 150 people. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

"All of our police units are on the highest state of alert and they are placed everywhere across the city," Kabul police spokesman Abdul Basir Mujahid told AFP.

"We have increased the number of police checkpoints in and around the diplomatic quarters [too]," he added, amid fears that the Taliban would mark the anniversary with a large-scale attack.

Taliban militants are currently at the peak of their summer fighting season.

In the southern province of Helmand, officials said clashes with Taliban militants killed at least five police officers and wounded five others late on August 18. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Nawa district.

The Taliban also attacked a checkpoint at Tarin Kot, the capital of the neighboring Uruzgan Province. One police officer and 15 militants were reported killed in the fighting, while three officers were wounded.

The celebrations this year are also occurring after President Donald Trump met with his military advisers at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland on August 18 to discuss a U.S. strategy in South Asia.

On August 19, Trump tweeted about the meeting, saying, "Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan."

It was unclear what decisions were made and when they will be announced.

Speaking after meeting at Camp David, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump had made no decision on committing more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

"The president is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time," Sanders told reporters.

There are currently some 8,400 U.S. and 5,000 NATO troops supporting Afghanistan's security forces in the fight against Taliban and other militants.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson conveyed his congratulations to Afghanistan on the eve of the anniversary of the countrys independence from Britain, saying, "Our strong friendship with Afghanistan is based on our mutual dedication to helping the Afghan people secure a safe and prosperous future."

"Afghanistan has made significant economic, political, and social progress in the last 16 years, and we bear witness every day to the Afghan peoples dedication to building a more democratic and peaceful country," a statement said.

"The Afghan spirit of resilience and courage in the face of adversity continues to guide the people of Afghanistan toward a better future," it added.

With reporting by AFP and AP
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, under fire in Germany for accepting Russia's nomination to join the board of its Rosneft oil giant, has dismissed the criticism as politically motivated.

The move comes amid rising public concern about potential attempts by Russia to interfere in elections on September 24 in which German Chancellor Angela Merkel is running for another term. Rosneft is the target of Western sanctions over Moscow's aggression in Ukraine.

Schroeder, who has called Russian President Vladimir Putin his close friend, defended his decision on August 17 and said it would not damage his Social Democratic Party, where some members have distanced themselves from him over the matter.

"I don't think my post will have a negative impact on the election. Germans have a big interest in having sensible ties with Russia," he told Swiss newspaper Blick in an interview.

"This is a political campaign for Mrs Merkel. People want to help her by slandering me," he said. "I would like to help improve relations between Russia and the EU."

Schroeder, who was chancellor from 1998 to 2005, said he knew his decision would cause a stir but he had not expected such "one-sidedness" in media coverage.

Based on reporting by Reuters and Blick newspaper
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
The Russian military said it will conduct joint military maneuvers with countries in Central Asia in response to regional threats arising from the war in Afghanistan.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting with Russia's top military brass in Moscow on August 18 that the conflict between Afghan government forces and the Taliban poses a threat to Central Asia's stability.

Shoigu said that Russia will hold joint war games later this year with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Russia has military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

He said that as part of efforts to prepare for potential threats, Russia staged joint maneuvers with Tajikistan earlier this year. The drills in July involved launches of the Iskander-M missiles, one of the most advanced weapons in Russia's military arsenal.

Based on reporting by AP, TASS, and Interfax


Mourners attended a state funeral for Ruth Pfau, a German-born nun who earned international acclaim as Pakistans Mother Teresa after devoting her life to helping Pakistan eradicate leprosy.



Pfau, 87, died on August 10 at a hospital affiliated with her Marie Adelaide Leprosy Center in the southern city of Karachi.



State-run television broadcast live footage of her casket being carried by a military guard at the citys St. Patrick Cathedral. She was to be buried at a nearby cemetery later in the day.

Pakistani politicians, military officials, members of civil society, and hundreds of supporters paid tribute to her at the service.

Pfau arrived in Pakistan in 1960 and devoted the rest of her life to treating leprosy throughout the country.

She established 157 centers to treat people infected with leprosy, later expanding her efforts to aid tuberculosis patients.

State funerals in Pakistan generally are held for soldiers killed in war or for government leaders.

Based on reporting by AP and dpa
Armed clashes with Taliban militants have killed at least five policemen in Afghanistans southern Helmand Province, police officials said on August 19.

General Abdul Ghafar Safi, the provincial police chief, said at least six other policemen were wounded in the attack late on August 18 in Nawa district. Clashes were still ongoing early in the morning on August 19.

Taliban spokesman Qari Yusouf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Taliban control at least 80 percent of Helmand Province and have intensified attacks on security force bases and checkpoints.

The Taliban also attacked a checkpoint in the provincial capital, Tarin Kot, in neighboring Uruzgan Province.

One policeman and 15 Taliban insurgents were killed, according to a spokesman for the provincial governor. Three other policemen were wounded.

The Taliban has stepped up attacks across the country in recent months.

In an open letter to U.S. President Donald Trump last week, the Taliban called for the withdrawal of all remaining U.S. troops.

Some 8,400 U.S. service members remain in Afghanistan after most NATO forces pulled out in 2014.

Based on reporting by AP
The new U.S. special envoy for efforts to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Kurt Volker, will travel to Minsk where he will meet with a representative of the Russian government to "discuss Russian-Ukrainian relations" on August 21.

Volker then will travel to Vilnius, Lithuania, to meet with senior government officials to discuss "the way forward in Ukraine," the State Department said on August 18.

The U.S. statement did not identify the Russian representative but earlier this month Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Russian state TV that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told him that Volker will meet with Vladislav Surkov, the Russian envoy for the Ukraine crisis, in the nearest future.

On August 23, Volker will also travel to Kyiv, where he will join U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in meetings with senior Ukrainian government officials to discuss "the next steps in diplomatic negotiations to restore Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the department said.

Mattis's talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak will likely center on the country's standoff with Russia, whose 2014 seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and backing of separatists in the east of the country have led to U.S. and EU sanctions targeting Moscow.

Russia denies backing the separatists despite substantial evidence of such support.

Volker told Current Time TV last month that the Trump administration is considering sending Kyiv weapons to help government forces defend themselves against the Russia-backed separatists.

Volker told the Russian-language network, which is run by RFE/RL in cooperation with Voice of America, that he did not think arming Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons would "provoke Russia to do more than they are already doing."

U.S. media reported on August 6 that the Pentagon had recommended sending a package of lethal defensive military aid to Ukraine worth about $50 million.

The weapons package would reportedly include Javelin antitank missiles, which Kyiv has long sought to defend against Russian-made armored vehicles operating in rebel-held areas.

Based on reporting by TASS, AP, and Reuters


Ezequiel Pereira detailed how he found the security bug in Googles AppEngine server while he was in winter vacation. According to him he got bored one day and through trial and error he was able to discover a point of access to part of internal Google infrastructure. With this security hole found he could do things like accessing the dashboard for Googles technology support team without being authenticated.

Googles Vulnerability Rewards Program Technical Lead, Eduardo Vela, explained that the company found a similar bug which was recently fixed. However, Ezequiel Pereira, of Montevido, discovered a part that wasnt fixed correctly. As a result he was able to grant himself access to Googles AppEngine. The 17-year-old high school student, who received his first computer only at the age of 10 through a government program, received an email letting him know he won the $10,000 award while riding the bus home from school.

Google Bug Bounty program, last year in review

When asked about how he feels Ezequiel responded: The thing I love of computers is that they are capable of doing everything if you give them enough resources and you know how to tell them to do anything Homework is boring. Looking for bugs is fun.
The Cassini spacecraft orbited Saturn from June 30, 2004, until Sept. 15, 2017, when the probe ended its life with a plunge into the ringed planet's atmosphere.

This intentional death dive was performed to make sure Cassini never contaminated a potentially habitable Saturn moon, such as Enceladus or Titan. [Cassini's Saturn Crash 2017: 'Grand Finale' at the Ringed Planet]

The mission is known for discoveries such as finding jets of water erupting from Enceladus, and tracking down a few new moons for Saturn.

Cassini is a joint project among several space agencies, which is a contrast from the large NASA probes of the past such as Pioneer and Voyager. In this case, the main participants are NASA, the European Space Agency and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (the Italian space agency).

Development history

Cassini was the first dedicated spacecraft to look at Saturn and its system. It was named for Giovanni Cassini, a 17th-century astronomer who was the first to observe four of Saturn's moons  Iapetus (1671), Rhea (1672), Tethys (1684) and Dione (1684).

Before this spacecraft came several flybys of Saturn by Pioneer 11 (1979), Voyager 1 (1980) and Voyager 2 (1981). Some of the discoveries that came out of these missions included finding out that Titan's surface can't be seen in visible wavelengths (due to its thick atmosphere), and spotting several rings of Saturn that were not visible with ground-based telescopes.

It was shortly after the last flyby, in 1982, that scientific committees in both the United States and Europe formed a working group to discuss possible future collaborations. The group suggested a flagship mission that would orbit Saturn, and would send an atmospheric probe into Titan. However, there was a difficult "fiscal climate" in the early 1980s, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory noted in a brief history of the mission, which pushed approval of Cassini to 1989.

The Europeans and the Americans each considered either working together, or working solo. A 1987 report by former astronaut Sally Ride, for example, advocated for a solo mission to Saturn. Called "NASA's Leadership and America's Future in Space," the report said that studying the outer gas giant planets (such as Saturn) help scientists learn about their atmospheres and internal structure. (Today, we also know that this kind of study helps us predict the structure of exoplanets, but the first exoplanets were not discovered until the early 1990s.)

"Titan is an especially interesting target for exploration because the organic chemistry now taking place there provides the only planetary-scale laboratory for studying processes that may have been important in the prebiotic terrestrial atmosphere," the report added, meaning that on Titan is chemistry that could have been similar to what was present on Earth before life arose.

Cassini's development came with at least two major challenges to proceeding. By 1993 and 1994, the mission had a $3.3 billion price tag (roughly $5 billion in 2017 dollars, or about half the cost of the James Webb Space Telescope.) Some critics perceived this as overly high for the mission. In response, NASA pointed out that the European Space Agency was also contributing funds, and added that the technologies from Cassini were helping to fund lower-cost NASA missions such as the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Pathfinder and the Spitzer Space Telescope, according to JPL.

Cassini also received flak from environmental groups who were concerned that when the spacecraft flew by Earth, its radioisotope thermoelectric generator (nuclear power) could pose a threat to our planet, JPL added. These groups filed a legal challenge in Hawaii shortly before launch in 1997, but the challenge was rejected by the federal district court in Hawaii and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

To address concerns about the spacecraft's radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which are commonly used for NASA missions, NASA responded by issuing a supplementary document about the flyby and detailing the agency's methodology for protecting the planet, saying there was less than a one-in-a-million chance of an impact occurring.

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, passes in front of the planet and its rings in this true color snapshot from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ring plane. It was taken on May 21, 2011, when Cassini was about 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Titan. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

Launch and cruise

Cassini didn't head straight to Saturn. Rather, its mission involved complicated orbital mechanics. It went past several planets  including Venus (twice), Earth and Jupiter  to get a speed boost by taking advantage of each planet's gravity.

The nearly 12,600-lb. (about 5,700 kilograms) spacecraft was hefted off Earth on Oct. 15, 1997. It went by Venus in April 1998 and June 1999, Earth in August 1999 and Jupiter in December 2000.

Cassini settled into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. Among its prime objectives were to look for more moons, to figure out what caused Saturn's rings and the colors in the rings, and understanding more about the planet's moons.

Perhaps Cassini's most detailed look came after releasing the Huygens lander toward Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The lander was named for Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who in 1654 turned a telescope toward Saturn and observed that its odd blob-like shape  Galileo Galilei had first seen the shape in a telescope and drew it in his notebook as something like ears on the planet  was in fact caused by rings.

The Huygens lander descended through the mysterious haze surrounding the moon and landed on Jan. 14, 2005. It beamed information back to Earth for nearly 2.5 hours during its descent, and then continued to relay what it was seeing from the surface for 1 hour 12 minutes.

In that brief window of time, researchers saw pictures of a rock field and got information back about the moon's wind and gases on the atmosphere and the surface.

This first panorama of Titan released by ESA shows a full 360-degree view around the Huygens probe. The left-hand side shows a boundary between light and dark areas. The white streaks seen near this boundary could be ground 'fog', as they were not immediately visible from higher altitudes. Huygens drifted over a plateau (centre of image) and was heading towards its landing site in a dark area (right) during descent. (Image credit: ESA/NASA/University of Arizona.)

Magnificent moons

One of the defining features of Saturn is its number of moons. Excluding the trillions of tons of little rocks that make up its rings, Saturn has 62 discovered moons as of September 2012. NASA lists 53 named moons on one of its websites.

In fact, Cassini discovered two new moons almost immediately after arriving (Methone and Pallene) and before 2004 had ended, it detected Polydeuces. [Gallery: Latest Saturn Photos from NASA's Cassini Orbiter]

As the probe wandered past Saturn's moons, the findings it sent back to Earth revealed new things about their environments and appearances. Some of the more notable findings include:

Saturn has not gone ignored, either. For example, in 2012, a NASA study postulated that Saturn's jet streams in the atmosphere may be powered by internal heat, instead of energy from the sun. Scientists believe that heat brings up water vapor from the inside of the planet, which condenses as it rises and produces heat. That heat is believed to be behind jet stream formation, as well as that of storms.

Mission extension and end

Cassini was originally slated to last four years at Saturn, until 2008, but its mission has been extended multiple times. Its last and final leg was called the Cassini Solstice Mission, named because the planet and its moons reached the solstice again toward the mission end. Saturn orbits the sun every 29 Earth-years. With Cassini's mission lasting 13 years, this meant that the spacecraft observed almost half of Saturn's seasonal change as the planet went around its orbit.

In 2016, the spacecraft was set on a series of final maneuvers to provide close-up views of the rings, with the ultimate goal of plunging Cassini into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017. This strategy was designed to protect Enceladus and other potentially habitable moons from the (small) chance of Cassini colliding with the surface, spreading Earth microbes.

Major milestones of the finale included:

Ring-grazing orbits: Every week between Nov. 30, 2016, and April 22, 2017, Cassini did loops around Saturn's poles to look at the outer edge of the rings, to learn more about their particles, gases and structure. It also observed small moons in this region, including Atlas, Daphnis, Pan and Pandora.

On April 22, 2017, Cassini made the final flyby of Titan. The flyby was done in such a way to change Cassini's orbit so that it began 22 dives (once a week) between the planet and its rings. This was the first time any spacecraft explored this zone, and it entailed some risk because the orbit brought it between the outer part of the atmosphere and the inner zone of the rings (where it is at risk of striking particles or gas molecules).

On Sept. 15, 2017, Cassini made a suicidal plunge into Saturn, taking measurements for as long as its instruments could make communications back to Earth.

Some of the science Cassini performed during this period included creating maps of the planet's gravity and magnetic fields, estimating how much material is in the rings, and taking high-resolution images of Saturn and its rings from close-up.

The spacecraft made an interesting discovery from its new vantage point. It found that Saturn's magnetic field is closely aligned with the planet's axis of rotation, which baffled scientists because of how they think magnetic fields are generated  through a difference of tilt between the magnetic field and a planet's rotation. As of late July 2017, however, scientists planned to gather more data to see if perhaps Saturn's internal processes confused their measurements.

Cassini's legacy

Shortly after the spacecraft's demise, Cassini mission planner Erick Sturm told reporters he planned to write a report about what he and his team learned after operating a mission for such a long time. While enthusiasm kept the scientists going through the long years (which sometimes required working during the holidays or in the middle of the night), engineering was also key.

Kim Steadman, an engineer on the Cassini team for 14 years, said that redundancy was essential. She said that a reaction wheel and some of the probe's thrusters failed during the mission, which would have meant the spacecraft couldn't point its instruments to collect data, or communicate with Earth through pointing its antenna at the planet. However, Cassini's mission continued because it had backups.

The team plans to issue the report to help with future spacecraft planning; one of those recommendations might be including a gas gauge. Cassini died with about 1 percent of its fuel left, but lead propulsion engineer Todd Barber told Space.com that he had a tough time estimating how much fuel was left in Cassini; he had to do so through various indirect methods. This meant that during the final months, Barber was slightly nervous about maneuvers requiring propulsion, since there was a margin of error for his calculations and didn't know if there was enough fuel remaining to carry them out.

The mission may be over, but science results will continue to flow for decades because not all of the information has been analyzed yet. NASA also continued to release new photos from the spacecraft even after Cassini had died. In late September 2017, for example, the agency sent out a photo of Enceladus  a target of high interest due to the many geysers on the moon's surface.

There also are several other early-stage missions in the works to fly to Saturn. While these missions are years away  if they are ever approved  they represent scientific interest in Saturn and its moons, and their design is based on Cassini's discoveries. Specifically, five Saturn-related concepts are contending for the next New Frontiers mission, a program that in past years yielded the New Horizons Pluto spacecraft, the Juno Jupiter orbiter, and the asteroid-return spacecraft OSIRIS-REx. The five proposals are:

SPRITE (Saturn Probe Interior and Atmosphere Explorer), which would deliberately fly into Saturn's atmosphere to look at its composition and structure for roughly 90 minutes. Cassini lasted only a couple of minutes during its plunge, but it was not designed for this work.

Oceanus, which is designed to look at Titan's potential for habitability by examining organic molecules "through the methanologic cycle and assessing exchange processes between the atmosphere, surface and subsurface," according to a project description presented at the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.

Dragonfly, which would make periodic flights in Titan's atmosphere to look at organics on its surface, in several locations.

Enceladus Life Finder, which would fly through plumes multiple times to collect and characterize the molecules that are there  particularly complex organic compounds that could indicate precursors of life.

Enceladus Life Signatures and Habitability, of which little has been released publicly. It may be targeting the plumes of Enceladus, which were examined periodically by Cassini during flybys.

The winning candidate among the 12 proposed New Frontiers missions (the other missions target Venus, the moon or comets) will be selected in mid-2019 for launch no later than 2025. However, there is a semifinal selection; NASA will select two or three of these proposals before then for further study, ahead of making the final decision.

Additional resource
Editor's note: This story, originally posted on April 8, was updated Aug. 19 with additional resource links for the total solar eclipse.

The highly anticipated total solar eclipse on Aug. 21 may be spectacular, but it won't last long.

The duration of totality, as experienced by observers on the ground, tops out at a few precious minutes for all total solar eclipses, and some don't even last that long.

This brevity is rooted in the movement of the dark shadow of the moon known as the umbra, for when you are inside the umbra, the entire solar disk of the sun appears to be covered by the dark disk of the moon. (Don't worry; we'll get to details about the Aug. 21 event. But first, some eclipse basics.) [Where to See the 2017 Total Solar Eclipse, State by State]

The umbral shadow is projected out into space by the moon and is shaped like a long, tapering cone. That shadow cone is about 235,000 miles (378,000 kilometers) long. But the moon's average distance from Earth is about 239,000 miles (385,000 km).

Here's a Timeline of When the 2017 Solar Eclipse Begins and Ends

Here Are the Best Maps of the 2017 Solar Eclipse (and a Printable Poster)

So, in order for the umbra to touch the Earth, it must be closer than the average Earth-moon distance. But even when the moon is at the closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit, the umbra is but a dark "dot" measuring no more than 170 miles (274 km) across. And many times, the shadow width is considerably smaller than that. During the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse, for example, the shadow will average only about 68 miles (109 km) wide.

The other thing to take under consideration is the speed of the shadow. During its orbit around Earth from west to east, the moon moves at an average speed of 2,288 mph (3,683 km/h). Because the natural satellite is traveling in an elliptical orbit, the moon's speed is not constant; the object moves faster when it's closer to Earth.

The moon's shadow moves at the same speed as the moon itself. So one might think that during a solar eclipse, the speed of the moon's umbra on the Earth would average close to 2,300 mph (3,700 km/h).

The moons shadow on Earth, as seen by the NASA-NOAA Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft during the total solar eclipse of March 8-9, 2016. (Image credit: NASA/DSCOVR-EPIC Team)

Complicating factors

But it's not as simple as that for two reasons:

1) The Earth is rotating on its axis in a west-to-east direction.

2) The Earth is a sphere.

In the first case, since Earth is turning in the same direction that the moon is traveling, any particular spot on Earth's surface is, in essence, "racing" the moon's shadow across the globe during a solar eclipse. And how fast any particular spot on Earth moves depends on its location: The planet spins fastest at the equator: 1,037 mph (1,670 km/h).

Even there, Earth's rotation is less than half the speed of the moon's shadow, so the shadow will win every race. Nonetheless, along the equator and at tropical latitudes, because the rotation of the Earth can stay with the moon's shadow for a greater length of time, the ground speed of the moon's shadow is noticeably less than the shadow's actual speed through space. [Amazing Total Solar Eclipse Photos Show 'Black Hole in the Sky']

Let us say, for example, that the moon's shadow is moving west to east along the equator at an average speed of 2,288 mph (3,683 km/h). But Earth's rotational speed at the equator makes the ground speed of the shadow 1,251 mph (2,013 km/h). Some military jets have actually flown faster than this and are capable of outracing the moon's shadow for short distances.

In fact, in the past, aircraft have been used to stay within the umbra for long periods of time, thereby lengthening the duration of totality. On June 30, 1973, scientists aboard a prototype Concorde 001 supersonic jet stretched the length of a total solar eclipse to an incredible 74 minutes, while those stationed on the ground experienced totality for a maximum of 7 minutes and 4 seconds. (This latter figure was still extraordinary, just 28 seconds less than the longest duration of totality possible for a ground-based observer.)

Uphill, then downhill

The other thing to consider is that the moon's shadow is being projected not onto a flat surface, but onto a sphere (Earth). Near the middle of the totality path, the shadow is moving at its slowest along the surface of the planet. But at the very beginning of the totality path, and at the very end, the shadow is striking Earth at a very oblique angle; at these points, the shape of the shadow on Earth resembles an extremely elongated oval, or even a cigar.

In fact, at the moment that the shadow is just moving onto (or off of) the Earth's surface, it is traveling at infinite speed, because at these points the axis of the lunar shadow cone is tangent to the globe of the Earth. When the shadow begins to move onto the Earth's surface (at local sunrise), its speed begins to slow as it travels, in essence, "uphill," over the curve of the Earth. Later, as the shadow begins to move toward the end of its path (at local sunset), its ground speed increases as it moves "downhill" along the curve of the Earth, ultimately sliding completely off the planet's surface.

On March 8, 2016, I was one of 163 lucky passengers on board an Alaska Airlines 737-900 jet, which intercepted the moon's umbra over the Pacific Ocean en route from Anchorage to Honolulu. When the shadow enveloped our aircraft, we were 700 miles (1,130 km) north of Honolulu and very close to the sunset point of the eclipse path.

In fact, the shadow was already beginning to slide off the Earth's surface as totality ended for us. At that moment, the shadow was moving at a speed of about 8,000 mph (12,900 km/h). [Incredible Solar Eclipse View Shot During Alaska Airlines Flight (Video)]

The Aug. 21 total solar eclipse

The upcoming total solar eclipse on Aug. 21 marks the first time that the umbral shadow will cross the lower 48 United States from coast to coast in 99 years. During this landmark event, when the shadow arrives at the coast of Oregon, it will be moving at 2,240 mph (3,600 km/h), which, coincidentally, is very close to the average orbital speed of the moon around Earth.

The moon's shadow, however, will still be approaching the midpoint of its path, and still climbing along the bulge of the Earth. The lowest speed will take place in Tennessee, to the southeast of the point of greatest eclipse (the instant at which the axis of the moon's shadow is closest to the center of the Earth); the speed there will be 1,323 mph (2,129 km/h).

The maximum duration of totality for this eclipse will be 2 minutes and 40 seconds. After the shadow passes through the midpoint of the eclipse path, it will begin to accelerate as the slope of the Earth curves away from it; the shadow will then be moving downhill, ultimately sliding off Earth's surface over the waters of the eastern Atlantic Ocean. As the umbra bids a fond farewell to the United States at the coast of South Carolina, the shadow will be moving at 1,354 mph (2,179 km/h). See the table below for eclipse characteristics at various spots along the path of totality.

How the total solar eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017 will vary according to viewing location along the path of totality. (Image credit: Joe Rao/Space.com)

In short, the moon's umbral shadow will take a "leisurely" trek across the United States, covering 2,496 miles (4,017 km) in just 90.7 minutes, whizzing by at an average speed of 1,651 mph (2,657 km/h).

And that's why the total phase of a solar eclipse cannot last very long!

Editor's Note: Space.com's Night Sky columnist, Joe Rao, will be giving a presentation about the upcoming total eclipse ("How to Survive the Aug. 21 Total Solar Eclipse") on Sunday (April 9) at 2:45 p.m. at the Northeast Astronomy Forum (NEAF), which will be held this weekend at the SUNY Rockland Community College in Suffern, New York. NEAF features displays of telescopes, telescope accessories and other astronomy-related products, as well as presentations by scientists and skywatching experts. For more details about NEAF and a full schedule of events, go to: http://www.rocklandastronomy.com/neaf.html.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer's Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for Verizon Fios1 News, based in Rye Brook, N.Y. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
If you want a job protecting Earth from threats from outer space  or even protecting Mars from us  NASA has an opening for you  sort of. The job of planetary protection officer generated quite a bit of buzz last week, when the public learned that a role seemingly out of a science fiction novel was actually a bonafide NASA job. But the position has nothing to do with protecting Earth from little green men, but a whole lot to do with important interplanetary science.

A primary task of the officer is to make sure that during NASA missions earthly microbes don't contaminate potentially habitable environments. And should a mission bring back samples from outer space, the officer is tasked with making sure that dust, or rocks, or whatever is brought back from outer space doesn't contaminate us.

John Rummel, a biology professor at East Carolina University, held the position twice, first between 1990 and 1993 and again from 1998 to 2006.

"The planetary protection job was mostly challenging in that it was not just important for each mission to do the right  required by requirements  thing, but to know why they were doing it, and why it was important to do a good job," Rummel said. "From that aspect, the job was definitely worth it. But as to 'rewards,' those were mostly internal.

Rummel explained that the planetary protection office reports to the associate administrator for each mission, who oversees the cost of the project. That means recommendations made by the officer are often judged in the context of whether or not they will cost the administrator more money  a vexing problem many of us might easily understand from our own work experiences.

RELATED: The Mars Colony of the Future Could Be Powered by This Advanced Microgrid

Rummel's time as planetary protection officer coincided with the restart of NASA's Mars program.

After the successful twin Viking landings of the 1970s, a few famous searching-for-life experiments came up empty. NASA shifted its attention to other locations in the solar system, and Mars didn't get a launch opportunity until the failed Mars Observer mission in 1992.

A slew of missions followed, however, including the Mars Pathfinder mission that made it all the way to the surface in 1996 and deployed a mini-rover  Sojourner. Several other landing and orbiting missions followed  some successful, others not.

Those missions wouldn't have been possible without the approval of the planetary protection officer, who ensured that Sojourner and other Martian spacecraft were sterile enough to prevent microbes from taking root in potentially life-friendly areas. One of Rummel's first tasks in 1990 was to look at the risk of contamination on Mars and how scientific understanding had changed since the days of the Viking missions.

"I knew people would like to go back and land on Mars, but I also knew we didn't have current advice," Rummel said.

So he assisted in the drafting of a 1992 report  Biological Contamination of Mars. The report concluded that a large part of the surface was "extremely inhospitable to terrestrial life" and for that reason, future missions would not need to be sterilized as much as the Viking missions.

But changes in landing technology meant that NASA had to be extra mindful of different scenarios for its missions. Pathfinder, for example, was supposed to fall to the surface using airbags. If the airbags failed, the mission would need to withstand a fall and possible burial in the soil of up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) without exposing possible Earth microbes to the Martian environment.

NASA has seen extensive evidence of briny water flow in recurring slope lineae, which are features that develop on the slopes of craters. Rummel, among others, speculated about recurring slope lineae as early as 2002. While researchers have long observed the formations, it was only in 2015 that NASA had strong enough evidence to say the formations are probably due to liquid water on the surface.

Rummel warned against sending Curiosity to investigate a nearby recurring slope lineae. The materials on the rover's surface could not be thoroughly sterilized with UV radiation due to their properties. And inside the rover is a warm electronics box that could melt any ice with which the box comes into contact.

RELATED: NASA Center Shows Off Sleek New Mars Rover Concept Vehicle for Astronauts

Rummel was also part of early-stage planning for a "sample return" mission to bring pieces of Mars back to Earth, in collaboration with the French space agency CNES. While that mission never went forward, NASA has left the door open for future sample return missions. The next Mars rover, called Mars 2020, is expected to leave "caches" of interesting material behind for future missions to potentially pick up and bring back to Earth, when we presumably know a little more about how to protect ourselves.

Of course, Mars wasn't the only target of note back in the 1990s when Rummel began his work. NASA already had a Jupiter probe  called Galileo  and was about to launch Cassini, which has now been orbiting Saturn since 2004. Those missions confirmed some intriguing Voyager mission results from the 1970s and 1980s, showing that some of the moons are icy and potentially habitable.

Rummel remembers modifying the planetary protection plan for Galileo as evidence emerged that a liquid ocean might lie underneath Europa's icy surface.

At the end of Galileo's mission, an option was included to deliberately crash the probe into Io or Jupiter, just in case it happened to fall into Europa, damaging a potentially habitable environment underneath the ice. Because the mission planners were uncomfortable with changing Galileo's orbit to fall into Io, they went for a Jupiter extermination  collecting science all the way down.

NASA said the job posting has generated "a lot of excitement," including from Jack Davis a fourth grader from New Jersey and self-described "Guardian of the Galaxy." In a letter to the agency, Davis said he was fit for the job because his sister thought he was an alien, among other qualifications.

Although the planetary protection officer is no intergalactic warrior, it's a position that clearly provokes the imagination of skywatchers young and old.

Originally published on Seeker.
Madrid, July 30, 2017 (SPS) - The Grand Canary City Council, headed by the political parties of the Canary Islands and the Socialist Party (PSOE), rejected during its plenary meeting on Friday the decision of Morocco to delimit its maritime borders off the Canary Islands by integrating the waters of Western Sahara, said the head of international solidarity, Carmelo Ramirez.

This decision "seriously affects the Canary Islands by the proximity of Western Sahara, about 100 kilometers, with the consequences it can have on the economy and the stability of the territory of the islands," Ramirez said. He also referred to the probable existence of rare hydrocarbons and minerals such as tellurium in the waters between the Western Sahara and the Canary Islands "which arouses interest in Morocco, He underlines.

The Government of Morocco seriously infringes international law since the territorial waters of Western Sahara do not fall under its sovereignty, as it is considered a non-autonomous territory illegally occupied by Morocco.

In its motion the Council of Grand Canary emphasizes that the Moroccan decision "violates several resolutions such as UN resolution 1514 which recognizes the right of self-determination of the Sahrawi people and several other resolutions of the UN Security Council which recognize the right of self-determination of the Sahrawi people in addition to the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union which has excluded trade agreements between the EU and Morocco which are not applicable to Western Sahara. "These repeated violations of international law," Ramirez said, "demand a response from the UN and the EU, which must force the Moroccan government to abide by the rules."

While rejecting in its motion this Moroccan decision, which includes the territorial waters of Western Sahara, which is not within its sovereignty, the Council of Grand Canary demands the Spanish government to "denounce this situation and force Morocco to comply with international law".

The approved motion also urges the Government of the Canary Islands to "monitor this issue closely" and calls for respect for the rights of the Sahrawi population, in particular its request for a referendum on self-determination. The text adopted by the Grand Canary Council also calls on Morocco to "stop violating the human rights of the Sahrawis living in the occupied territories and stop the plundering of the natural resources of Western Sahara".



At the beginning of July, the Moroccan government approved a bill and a decree to delimit the maritime border off the Canary Islands by integrating the waters of Western Sahara. This decision unilaterally initiated by Morocco has been strongly criticized and denounced by many personalities and Spanish political parties. (SPS)

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H undreds of far-right extremists have marched in Berlin in honour of the 30th anniversary of the death of top Nazi Rudolf Hess.

Around 500 marchers were met with a similar number of counter-demonstrators, with both groups separated by hundreds of heavily armoured police.

Berlin police spokesman Carsten Mueller said authorities imposed a number of restrictions on Saturday's march to ensure it passes peacefully.

Police told organisers they could march but were not allowed to glorify Hess, who died at Spandau prison.

The neo-Nazis were also allowed to bring banners, but only one for every 50 participants.

Supporters of far-right wing and neo-Nazi organisations march through Berlin / EPA

Such restrictions are common in Germany and rooted in the experience of the pre-war Weimar Republic, when opposing political groups would try to forcibly interrupt their rivals' rallies, resulting in frequent violence.

The exact rules differ according to the circumstances, but police in Germany say they generally try to balance protesters' rights to free speech and free assembly against the rights of counter-demonstrators and residents.

Counter-protesters attend a demonstration against a gathering of far-right organisations commemorating the 30th death anniversary Rudolf Hess / EPA

The rules mean that shields, helmets and batons carried by far-right and Neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville in the US last weekend would not be allowed in Germany.

Openly anti-Semitic chants would prompt German police to intervene, although efforts would be made to detain specific individuals rather than to stop an entire rally, police say.

Left-wing groups expect about 1,000 people to attend the counter-protests.

Hess, who received a life sentence at the Nuremberg trials for his role in planning the Second World War, died on August 17 1987.

Allied authorities ruled his death a suicide but Nazi sympathisers have long claimed he was killed and organise annual marches in his honour.

The marches used to take place in the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel, where Hess was buried, until authorities removed his remains.
A new exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of Mr Benn will display never-before-seen animation cels from the original television programme.

The first book featuring the iconic fancy-dress enthusiast was published in 1967 and a television series followed in 1971. Despite only 13 episodes being produced, the series ran twice a year  with episodes in different orders  for two decades.

In addition to a number of sketches, illustrations, and pieces of concept art the Illustration Cupboard Gallery is also displaying animation cels previously hidden away in the filmmakers studios and released now for the first time.

Mr Benn made his first appearance in Mr Benn  Red Knight, and would go on to feature in four more books by the illustrator David McKee.

Each story involved Mr Benn visiting a fancy-dress shop, trying on a costume and being transported into a series of adventures, from becoming a knight, an astronaut, and even a prison convict. The mysterious fez-wearing shopkeeper always comes to get him at the end and he leaves the shop with some kind of memorable souvenir.

He reflects everybodys dreams and desires, a little bit of escapism, said John Huddy, founder of the Illustration Cupboard Gallery.

Watch the video above for a sneak peek at the animation cels, which demonstrate the meticulous style of animation used in the television series.

The exhibition runs until September 16 and David McKee will be attending a book signing event at the gallery on August 23.

For more information click here.
A cash-in-transit security guard was rushed to hospital after he was attacked and robbed outside a south London supermarket.

Police were called to a Tesco superstore, in Croydon Road, in Elmers End, at 12.02pm on Saturday to reports of a robbery.

On arrival they found the security guard suffering injuries to their face, a police spokesman said.

The robber fled with a stolen cash box, which has not been recovered by police.

The security guard being taken into an ambulance after the robbery / Elliot Wagland

One witness told the Standard he was told the security guard was attacked as he transferred money from the cash point into his van.

A Met spokesman told the Standard it is not yet known how serious his injuries are, but that there is nothing to suggest they are life-threatening or life-changing.

He told the Standard: We were called at 12.02pm to reports of a robbery at Elmers End.

Nothing indicates firearms were used. A cash box was stolen but recovered nearby by officers.

No arrests have been made.
A south London beauty salon has been forced to close after hundreds of people flocked to noisy all-night raves after hours.

Z&S Hair and Beauty, in South Norwood, was slapped with a three month closure order by Croydon Magistrates Court after residents complained the venue was holding weekly parties.

Furious neighbours reported music blasting out to the council and complained of noisy revellers spilling out onto the street between 11pm and 7am during the unlicensed events.

Police officers discovered huge speakers embedded into the wall of the salon, on South Norwood High Street.

Shut down: The salon is boarded up by police / Twitter/South Norwood Police

They said the building was predominantly being used as a nightclub.

A bar had been set up in the corner of the shop alongside DJ decks and music equipment, the court heard.

The salon was handed the closure order on August 8.

Councillor David Wood, deputy cabinet member for communities, safety, and justice, said: The three-month closure of this premises will bring much needed respite to the local community.

This unlicensed use of the property had to be stopped and Im pleased our team took the necessary steps to ensure peace can now be brought back to the area.
A war of words today escalated between Professor Stephen Hawking and the Health Secretary over the future of the NHS.

Jeremy Hunt accused the leading physicist of "pernicious falsehood" over his claims the Conservatives were putting the health service in crisis.

Prof Hawking, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in 1962, said he "would not be here today if it were not for the service" and attacked the Health Secretary for "cherry-picking" favourable evidence while suppressing contradictory research in order to suit his argument.

Last night the Health Secretary praised the "brilliant physicist" while rejecting his criticism.

But on Saturday afternoon the row continued, with the MP for Surrey West suggested Prof Hawking was deliberately ignoring the evidence.

He tweeted: "Most pernicious falsehood from Stephen Hawking is idea govt wants US-style insurance system. Is it 2 much to ask him to look at evidence?"

"NHS under Cons has seen more money, more docs and more nurses than ever in history. Those with private med insurance DOWN 9.4% since 2009!"

Prof Hawking, who is director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, had earlier warned that Mr Hunt's actions were harmful at a time when public support for science is "more important than ever".

He wrote: "Hunt had cherry-picked research to justify his argument. For a scientist, cherry-picking evidence is unacceptable.

Stephen Hawking: The Cambridge scientist is a lifelong Labour supporter / AFP/Getty Images

"When public figures abuse scientific argument, citing some studies but suppressing others to justify policies they want to implement for other reasons, it debases scientific culture.

"One consequence of this sort of behaviour is that it leads ordinary people to not trust science at a time when scientific research and progress are more important than ever."

Mr Hunt used his drive to create a seven-day NHS as one of the main reasons for reforming junior doctors' contracts - which led to the biggest walkout of doctors in NHS history.

Warning "we cannot lose" the NHS, the lifelong Labour supporter attacked Tory policies such as the public sector pay cap, the new contract and removing the student nurse bursary.

Strike: Changes to junior doctors contracts sparked major walk-outs / PA

He said the health service was being pulled in different directions by multinational corporations driven by profiting from NHS privatisation and the public, which favours a publicly funded health service.

"The NHS is in a crisis, and one that has been created by political decisions," he wrote.

"These political decisions include underfunding and cuts, privatising services, the public sector pay cap, the new contract imposed on junior doctors, and removal of the student nurses' bursary.

"Political decisions such as these cause reductions in care quality, longer waiting lists, anxiety for patients and staff, and dangerous staff shortages."
A Lidl deal on cheap fizz has uncorked frenzied excitement among Prosecco-lovers.

The budget supermarket is selling bottles of the Italian sparkling wine for just 3.33 next weekend as part of a Bank Holiday offer.

Cases of Allini Prosecco containing six bottles are set to go for 20 on August 26 and 27, shaving about 50 per cent of the regular price of 5.79 a unit.

The one-off deal sparked excitement online after it was flagged up by a Facebook group called Prosecco Watch.

Social media users chipped in describing the offer as the bargain of the century, while one suggested it was the only reason Im looking forward to the Bank Holiday weekend.

One mother labelled the cut price bubbly a school holidays survival kit.

As the deal went viral, one Twitter user even tweeted Lidl directly to demand that shops make sure they are ready to be deluged by thirsty Prosecco customers next weekend.

Britons are the worlds biggest consumers of Prosecco, with around a third of all bottles produced last year being drunk in the UK.
T he UK terror threat is rising as a result of Islamic State losing territory in Syria and Iraq, the Security Minister has said.

Ben Wallace said extremist are either unable to get out to the region to join IS, or have come home and are trying to inspire homegrown fanatics to carry out attacks.

The terror group has already lost its base in Iraq, Mosul, and is facing an international coalition-backed offensive in Raqqa, Syria, which was described by former prime minister David Cameron as "the head of the snake".

Mr Wallace told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I think the threat is still increasing, partly driven by the fact Isis is collapsing in Syria and people are either unable to get out there to fight for Isis and so they look to do something at home, or also because people have come back and tried to inspire people with their stories and tales of the caliphate.

"I think those two things mean that the threat is to some extent increasing."

Mr Wallace rejected suggestions that the Government's voluntary anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent, could be made compulsory.

It comes after Simon Cole, the police lead for Prevent, said there needs to be a debate about introducing an element of compulsion for certain groups, such as returnees from Syria.

Responding, Mr Wallace said Prevent is under review all the time and revealed plans to release more information about its operations to boost public understanding.

But the Security Minister went on: "I'm not sure at the moment that compulsion is the right thing to do, I think the first thing to do is get everyone on board with it.

"That includes people like the NUT and all these people that have campaigned against it.

"There's no ifs and buts nowadays, if we're going to stop these people who use everyday items such as vehicles and kitchen knives to murder people on our streets, we are going to have to all engage together with Prevent and we are having real success when we do that."

He added: "I think it's time for all of us to put a shoulder to the wheel on Prevent and move it along."
T he family of a seven-year-old boy missing since the Barcelona terror attack have launched a desperate appeal to find the youngster.

Relatives of Julian Alessandro Cadman - who is understood to be a dual British-Australian national - have flown to the Spanish city to search for the seven-year-old.

His grandfather launched an emotional Facebook appeal on Saturday, after the seven-year-old became separated from his mother during the attack.

Fourteen people were killed when terrorists mowed down pedestrians on Las Ramblas and the seaside resort of Cambrils on Thursday.

Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks 1 /18 Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks Spanish policemen patrol the streets after five terrorists were shot dead in the seaside resort of Cambrils EPA Forensic police officers at the scene in Cambrils where suspects were shot dead AFP Police officers stand next to the van involved on an attack in La Ramblas in Barcelona AP A woman displays a candle next to first flowers and a message to the victims on August 18, 2017 on the spot where yesterday a van ploughed into the crowd, killing 13 persons and injuring over 100 on the Rambla boulevard in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle next to first flowers and a message to the victims on August 18, 2017 on the spot where yesterday a van ploughed into the crowd, killing 13 persons and injuring over 100 on the Rambla boulevard in Barcelona. AFP/Getty Images Police officers check the area after towing away the van which ploughed into the crowd, killing at least 13 people and injuring around 100 others on the Rambla in Barcelona, on August 18, 2017 AFP/Getty Images Armed police stand in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017 AFP/Getty Images Armed police officers patrol a deserted street in Las Ramblas, in Barcelona, on Friday morning. AP The terrorists car, which flipped after crashing at the scene in Cambrils, before the occupants were shot dead EPA Injured people after a van crashed into pedestrians in a terror attack in Las Ramblas, Barcelona EPA Terror attack: Paramedics treat the injured in Barcelona AP An injured person is carried in Barcelona, Spain, AP Police direct crowds on Las Ramblas AP Paramedics treat victims injured when a van ploughed into pedestrians in Barcelona EPA Onlookers flee the scene of the terror rampage in Barcelona EPA Police officers cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain after a van mowed down pedestrians in a terror attack AP Police officers cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain after a van mowed down pedestrians in a terror attack AP A person is stretched out of a mall by medical staff members in a cordoned off area near Las Ramblas AFP/Getty Images

Julian's father and grandmother are travelling to Spain from Australia as they await news, family member Debbie Cadman said.

Grandfather Tony Cadman has urged people to share a photograph of Julian on Facebook.

He wrote: "My grandson, Julian Alessandro Cadman, is missing. Please like and share. We have found Jom (my daughter in law) and she is (in a) serious but stable condition in hospital.

"Julian is seven years old and was out with Jom when they were separated, due to the recent terrorist activity. Please share if you have family or friends in Barcelona."

In the photograph, Julian is wearing a jumper with a crest that says Chiddingstone Nursery, which is a nursery school in Kent.

A woman lays tributes to the victims of the Barcelona terror attack / AFP/Getty Images

On Saturday the Philippines government said a seven-year-old child who is missing following the attack is the son of a 43-year-old Filipino woman who had been living in Australia.

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Sarah Arriola said the woman was with her son in Barcelona to attend the wedding of a cousin from the Philippines.

Ms Arriola said the woman, who was seriously injured, became separated from her child in the attack, and her British husband is headed to Barcelona to try to find his son.

After Mr Cadman made a plea for information, Prime Minister Theresa May said UK authorities were "urgently looking into reports" that a child, who has dual British nationality, is missing.

On Saturday Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, without naming the child, asked people to pray for a young Australian boy who is missing in the wake of the attack.

He said the boy's mother was badly injured and is in hospital.

"All of us as parents know the anguish his father is going through, and his whole family is going through, as they rush to seek to find him in Barcelona," Mr Turnbull added.
A British man knifed while he helped victims of a suspected terror attack in Finland has insisted he is no hero.

Two Finnish women were killed in the knife rampage in the south-western city of Turku, 90 miles west of Helsinki, on Friday.

Seven people were injured, including Briton Hassan Zubier, who was reportedly stabbed as he tried to help other victims.

Today he told the BBC from his hospital bed: "I am not a hero. I did what I was trained for. I did my best and more."

Mr Zubier, reportedly a Kent-born paramedic who now lives in Sweden, spotted a man stabbing a woman as she lay on the ground and raced over as fast as he could.

He told Swedish newspaper the Expressen: "I rushed to help her and I tried to stop the blood flow, while others gave her heart and lung assistance."

But the woman's injuries were so severe that she died in his arms.

Four Finns, an Italian and a Swede were also injured in the attack, which Finland's Security Intelligence Service said was "a likely terror act".

Fatal stabbings in Finland probed as murder with possible terror motive

Police said the suspect, an 18-year-old Moroccan asylum-seeker, who was shot by officers and arrested, appeared to have targeted women.

Four other Moroccans have been arrested.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spokeswoman said: "Our staff have offered support to a British man following an incident in Finland."
P olice in Finland have said they are treating stabbings in the city of Turku as a terrorist attack.

Two people were killed and six others were injured after a terrorist went on a knife rampage in the south-western city on Friday afternoon.

Police said the attacker, who was shot in the leg and taken into custody following the stabbings, was an 18-year-old Morrocan.

Officers raided a flat and made a number of arrests on Friday night.

Finland Stabbings Map

Eyewitnesses described seeing a suspect brandishing a knife and hearing a woman scream during the attack on Friday.

It comes after 14 people were killed after terrorists mowed down pedestrians on Barcelona's Las Ramblas and the seaside town of Cambrils in two separate attacks on Thursday.

"Due to information received during the night, the Turku stabbings are now being investigated as murders with terrorist intent," the National Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

Following the attacks on Friday, police shot the suspected attacker in the leg and arrested him.

Laura Laine, who said she was about 20 metres away when the stabbing took place, told YLE: We heard that a young woman was screaming. We saw a man on the square and a knife glittered."

Another witness, Jesse Brown, told the BBC: "I saw police shoot a person, a man I think. People were running and there was talk about a knife attack, possibly multiple perpetrators."

Police added they know the identity of the Morrocan held, but have not yet released it.
A British man was among those injured when a suspected terrorist went on a stabbing rampage in the western Finnish city of Turku, the Government has said.

Two Finnish citizens were killed in the knife attack, while the injured included an Italian, a Swede and a UK citizen, local police said.

The British man is believed to have sustained minor injuries during the incident in the city of Turku, 90 miles west of the capital, Helsinki.

Police confirmed this morning the attack is being treated as an act of terrorism.

Police officers gather at the site of a multiple stabbing on the Market Square in Turku / EPA

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) spokeswoman said: "Our staff have offered support to a British man following an incident in Finland."

A tweet sent by the British Embassy in Helsinki said: "We have been in touch with the British National and offered consular support."

The suspect, an 18-year-old Moroccan citizen whose identity is known to police, was shot by officers and arrested.

Police said he is being investigated for murder with possible terrorist intent.

Four other men have been arrested, while an international warrant has been issued for another suspect.
T he father of a British-born seven-year-old has arrived in Barcelona as hopes fade that he will be found safe and well after being caught up in the terror attack on Las Ramblas.

Andrew Cadman was pictured with a police escort as he made his way to his wifes bedside after she was seriously injured when a van ploughed into crowds of people on the busy central promenade on Thursday.

His seven-year-old son Julian Cadman, who was born in Kent before moving to Australia, became separated from his mother Jumerie as the vehicle zig-zigged through pedestrians, killing 13 and injuring more than 130 others.

Since then British officials have described him as missing but on Saturday Spanish police tweeted: Neither were we searching nor have we found any lost child in the Barcelona attack. All the victims and injured have been located.

According to newspaper El Pais, Barcelonas regional Los Mossos dEsquadra police force said that Julian Cadman had been on their list of victims and injured from the start.

Julian Cadman was one of 13 people killed when terrorists mowed down pedestrians on Las Ramblas / PA

But following the attack on the bustling central promenade on Thursday afternoon, the boys family appealed on social media for help tracking down the youngster who they said was missing.

The boys grandfather, Tony Cadman, originally from Dorset but who now lives in Australia, shared a photo and wrote on Facebook: My grandson, Julian Alessandro Cadman is missing. The post has since been taken down.

There has been no official comment on his condition.

At least 14 people were killed and more than 100 injured in twin terror attacks in Spain, with those affected hailing from all over the world.

Citizens of 34 countries were caught up in the atrocities in Barcelona and nearby Cambrils, including England, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Australia, Canada, the United States, France and China.

Catalan authorities said they have identified eight victims of the attack in Barcelona as an Italian, two Portuguese, three Spanish, one Spanish-Argentine and an American.

The victim of the second assault in Cambrils has been identified as a Spanish woman.

Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks 1 /18 Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks Spanish policemen patrol the streets after five terrorists were shot dead in the seaside resort of Cambrils EPA Forensic police officers at the scene in Cambrils where suspects were shot dead AFP Police officers stand next to the van involved on an attack in La Ramblas in Barcelona AP A woman displays a candle next to first flowers and a message to the victims on August 18, 2017 on the spot where yesterday a van ploughed into the crowd, killing 13 persons and injuring over 100 on the Rambla boulevard in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle next to first flowers and a message to the victims on August 18, 2017 on the spot where yesterday a van ploughed into the crowd, killing 13 persons and injuring over 100 on the Rambla boulevard in Barcelona. AFP/Getty Images Police officers check the area after towing away the van which ploughed into the crowd, killing at least 13 people and injuring around 100 others on the Rambla in Barcelona, on August 18, 2017 AFP/Getty Images Armed police stand in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017 AFP/Getty Images Armed police officers patrol a deserted street in Las Ramblas, in Barcelona, on Friday morning. AP The terrorists car, which flipped after crashing at the scene in Cambrils, before the occupants were shot dead EPA Injured people after a van crashed into pedestrians in a terror attack in Las Ramblas, Barcelona EPA Terror attack: Paramedics treat the injured in Barcelona AP An injured person is carried in Barcelona, Spain, AP Police direct crowds on Las Ramblas AP Paramedics treat victims injured when a van ploughed into pedestrians in Barcelona EPA Onlookers flee the scene of the terror rampage in Barcelona EPA Police officers cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain after a van mowed down pedestrians in a terror attack AP Police officers cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain after a van mowed down pedestrians in a terror attack AP A person is stretched out of a mall by medical staff members in a cordoned off area near Las Ramblas AFP/Getty Images

Family members or government officials have said another two Italians, a Belgian and a Canadian are also amongst the dead following the attack in Barcelona.

Among those identified are Italian Bruno Gulotta, 35, who was on holiday with his partner and two children when attackers struck.

Belgian Elke Vanbockrijck, 44, was also holidaying with family when she was mown down on Las Ramblas.

Spain's king and queen visit Barcelona terror attack victims 1 /6 Spain's king and queen visit Barcelona terror attack victims Royal visit: King Felipe and Queen Letizia speak to patients AP Comfort: King Felipe takes the hand of a boy who was injured when a van ploughed into crowds on Las Ramblas REUTERS Warm welcome: The royal couple were greeted by medical staff at Barcelona's Hospital del Mar REUTERS Figureheads: The Spanish head of state and his wife tried to comfort survivors REUTERS Security: Police took no chances as the royal couple toured the wards AP Bedside visit: King Felipe and Queen Letizia spoke to some of the 130 injured in the van attack AP

Californian Jared Tucker, 42, has been confirmed as among those killed in the deadly truck attack, according to his father Daniel.

He told the New York Daily News: "We just got the text - Jared's body was identified at the morgue by his wife. It's just something we really just don't understand. I don't know what else to say."

The American was reportedly on an anniversary trip with his wife.

Catalan police have said the terror cell behind the attacks has now been "completely dismantled", although a manhunt continues for Moroccan Younes Abouyaaqoub in connection with the incident.
P olice in Spain have denied media reports that a British-Australian boy caught up in the Barcelona terror attack has been found, saying they are inaccurate.

Seven-year-old Julian Cadman was reported to have been located in hospital after being injured in the Barcelona terror attack on Thursday.

Catalan Police denied the reports in a series of tweets on Saturday, saying they were never looking for and therefore could never have found the boy. No official information about his condition was given.

Tweets from the Los Mossos d'Esquadra force read: "There are many who ask for specific information about the Australian child. Communicative priority over victims is to family members.

Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks 1 /18 Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks Spanish policemen patrol the streets after five terrorists were shot dead in the seaside resort of Cambrils EPA Forensic police officers at the scene in Cambrils where suspects were shot dead AFP Police officers stand next to the van involved on an attack in La Ramblas in Barcelona AP A woman displays a candle next to first flowers and a message to the victims on August 18, 2017 on the spot where yesterday a van ploughed into the crowd, killing 13 persons and injuring over 100 on the Rambla boulevard in Barcelona AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle next to first flowers and a message to the victims on August 18, 2017 on the spot where yesterday a van ploughed into the crowd, killing 13 persons and injuring over 100 on the Rambla boulevard in Barcelona. AFP/Getty Images Police officers check the area after towing away the van which ploughed into the crowd, killing at least 13 people and injuring around 100 others on the Rambla in Barcelona, on August 18, 2017 AFP/Getty Images Armed police stand in a cordoned off area after a van ploughed into the crowd, injuring several persons on the Rambla in Barcelona on August 17, 2017 AFP/Getty Images Armed police officers patrol a deserted street in Las Ramblas, in Barcelona, on Friday morning. AP The terrorists car, which flipped after crashing at the scene in Cambrils, before the occupants were shot dead EPA Injured people after a van crashed into pedestrians in a terror attack in Las Ramblas, Barcelona EPA Terror attack: Paramedics treat the injured in Barcelona AP An injured person is carried in Barcelona, Spain, AP Police direct crowds on Las Ramblas AP Paramedics treat victims injured when a van ploughed into pedestrians in Barcelona EPA Onlookers flee the scene of the terror rampage in Barcelona EPA Police officers cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain after a van mowed down pedestrians in a terror attack AP Police officers cordon off a street in Barcelona, Spain after a van mowed down pedestrians in a terror attack AP A person is stretched out of a mall by medical staff members in a cordoned off area near Las Ramblas AFP/Getty Images

"Neither we were searching nor we have found any lost child in the Barcelona attack. All the victims and injured have been located."

Spanish newspaper El Pais had said the missing boy had been found in hospital.

The national publication claimed the Los Mossos d'Esquadra force said they had informed his father "from the first moment".

It was unclear what this meant regarding the fate of the seven-year-old.

British officials still fear the child may have been caught up in the attack on Las Ramblas which claimed 13 lives and left 130 injured.

He is thought to have become separated from his mother as a van ploughed into crowds on the busy central boulevard.

His mother Jomarie Cadman was found in hospital in a serious but stable condition, but the boy's family are behind a desperate appeal to locate him.

Grandfather Tony Cadman posted a photo of his grandson on Facebook and wrote: "My grandson, Julian Cadman, is missing. Please like and share. We have found Jom (my daughter in law) and she is (in a) serious but stable condition in hospital.

"Julian is seven years old and was out with Jom when they were separated, due to the recent terrorist activity. Please share if you have family or friends in Barcelona."

A Foreign Offices spokesman said: Our thoughts are with the victims of these terrible attacks and the people of Spain.

We are currently assisting a small number of British people affected and are working to find out if any more need our help. We have deployed additional staff to Barcelona and have offered support to the Spanish authorities.
E ight people were injured after a knifeman "wearing a fake suicide belt" went on a frenzied stabbing rampage in Russia.

The attacker was shot dead by police after apparently stabbing passersby in the central city of Surgut at about 11.20am local time on Saturday.

The injured people have been taken to hospital, where two are in critical condition, the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Witnesses have told Russian media agencies the attacker appeared to be wearing a fake suicide belt as he began his horrific rampage.

Police are working to establish a motive for the attack.

The stabbings took place in the central Russian city of Surgut / Google Maps

Russia's Investigative Committee said armed police "liquidated" the attacker shortly after he stabbed eight people.

A spokesman said: "In the interests of public calm and also of the investigation, citizens and media are recommended to use reliable information in assessing the situation until all the circumstances are established."

It comes after two people were killed when a knifeman went on a rampage in the city of Turku, in Finland, on Friday.

Police have since confirmed the incident is being treated as a terror attack.

Surgut is a Russian city about 1,330 miles northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region. It has a population of about 350,000.

ISIS have since taken responsibility for the attack, but Russian authorities are yet to comment.
D onald Trumps fired chief strategist Steve Bannon has vowed to go to war with the US Presidents opponents after he was ousted from the White House.

The divisive strategist, who rose from the Trump campaign to a top White House post, has returned to his role as executive chairman of Breitbart News, which he led before joining the campaign.

The 63-year-old was sacked from the White House on Friday having been accused of voicing anti-Semitic and white supremacist views.

Mr Bannon was a key player in Mr Trumps America First campaign, but is believed to have angered moderates in the White House.

Crisis: Donald Trump with members of his top team at the White House, including Steve Bannon / Reuters

He told Bloomberg politics he would continue to fight the same fights from outside the administration.

Mr Bannon said: "If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents - on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America.

The controversial strategists turbulent tenure was marked by the departure of much of Mr Trump's original senior staff.

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn; press secretary Sean Spicer; chief of staff Reince Priebus and communications director Anthony Scaramucci have all left the White House.

Mr Bannon pressed the president to enact some of his most contentious campaign promises, including a travel ban and pulling out of the Paris climate change agreement.

The US President has now forced out his hard-line national security adviser, his chief of staff, his press secretary and two communications directors.

Former campaign strategist Sam Nunberg said: "It's a tough pill to swallow if Steve is gone because you have a Republican West Wing that's filled with generals and Democrats,". "It would feel like the twilight zone."

Mr Bannon's nationalistic, outsider conservatism served as a guiding force for Mr Trump's rise to office.

Without him, Mr Trump's agenda is in the hands of more moderate advisers, including his son-in-law, oldest daughter and an economic adviser Mr Bannon slammed as "globalist".

Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr Bannon and chief of staff John Kelly, only recently installed, agreed that Friday would be his last day.

"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," she said.

Mr Trump has recently downplayed Mr Bannon's role in his campaign and avoided an opportunity to express confidence in him publicly.

"He's a good person. He actually gets very unfair press in that regard," he said earlier this week. "But we'll see what happens with Mr Bannon."
T he terror cell responsible for attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils has been broken up, Spanish authorities have said.

Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido declared police have dismantled the "terrorist cell from Barcelona", and said no new attacks were imminent.

He said they will be maintaining the country's terrorist threat alert at level four and security at popular events and tourist sites around the country would be reinforced.

Meanwhile Spanish police hunting for the driver of the van used in the Barcelona attack are focusing their efforts on a 22-year-old Moroccan national, according to reports.

Younes Abouyaaqoub is said to be at the centre of the investigation into the massacre on Las Ramblas that left 13 dead and nearly 130 injured.

Younes Abauyaaqoub: the alleged terrorist suspect wanted in connection with the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils / EPA

According to Spanish newspaper El Pais, police in Catalonia said they were searching for the man, who is understood to be a key member of a jihadist cell of 12 people.

On Friday it emerged that another suspect Moussa Oukabir, who is thought to have rented the van, was among five men shot dead as they launched a second attack in the coastal town of Cambrils.

The teenager, said to be 17 or 18 years old, is suspected of using his brother's documents to hire the vehicle that ploughed through pedestrians in the tourist hotspot on Thursday evening.

He reportedly died along with Said Aallaa, 19, and Mohamed Hychami, 24, who were part of a group that mounted a similar attack in Cambrils that left one woman dead and six people injured.

The identities of the other two dead jihadists are yet to be confirmed by police.

Minute's silence held in Barcelona to honour terror attack victims

Four men, aged 21, 27, 28 and 34, who were arrested in connection with the attack remain in custody.

Three are Moroccan and one Spanish, and police said none of them was previously known to the security services for terror-related reasons.

Moussa Oukabir's older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reported to be one of those detained.

Some 34 nationalities were among almost 130 people wounded in the attacks in Las Ramblas and in Cambrils, which lies around 70 miles to the south west.

The victim of the second assault in Cambrils has been identified as a Spanish woman.

Relatives of a seven-year-old who became separated from his mother during the Barcelona attack are continuing to appeal for information.

The father and grandmother of Julian Alessandro Cadman are travelling to Spain from Australia as the wait for news continues, family member Debbie Cadman said.

Speaking after the family's initial plea for help, Prime Minister Theresa May said a child with dual British nationality was believed to be among those unaccounted for.

Four Australians were injured in the attack, the country's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said.

Pedestrians flee from terror in Barcelona

Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau said one Canadian was killed and four injured during the attacks.

Vancouver Police Department confirmed the Canadian killed in the attack was Ian Moore Wilson.

A statement released by his daughter Fiona, a staff sergeant in the force, said he was a "much-loved husband, father, brother, and grandfather" and was compassionate, adventurous and generous.

Authorities said 54 people injured in the attacks were still in hospital on Saturday, with 12 in a critical condition and 25 in a serious condition.

It comes after police revealed the terrorists behind the rampage were preparing bigger attacks, with a suspected gas explosion on Wednesday at a house in Alcanar believed to have robbed the killers of materials to use in larger-scale operations.

Reports from Spain had earlier suggested the terror cell may have been planning an attack using gas canisters.

Catalan regional police official Josep Lluis Trapero told reporters on Friday: "We think they were preparing at least one or more attacks in Barcelona.

"The explosion in Alcanar at least avoided some of the material they were counting on to carry out even bigger attacks than the ones that happened.

"Because of that the attack in Barcelona and the one in Cambrils were carried out in a bit more rudimentary way than the one they had initially planned."

Police are also looking for a white Kangoo vehicle which is believed to have been rented by the suspects and could have crossed the border into France, according to French media.

The attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils took place around eight hours apart on Thursday afternoon and in the early hours of Friday.

In an echo of the London Bridge attack in June, Catalonia president Carles Puigdemont said the five terrorists in the Cambrils car were wearing fake suicide belts when they were stopped.

Police revealed that an axe and knives were also found in the vehicle, with one of the latter used to wound one person in the face before the terrorists were gunned down.

Barcelona came to a halt at noon on Friday as a minute's silence was observed in the Placa Catalunya, close to the scene of the attack, followed by applause for the victims.
A n American man celebrating his wedding anniversary has been named as the latest victim of the Barcelona terror attacks.

Jared Tucker, 42, from California, was among 13 people killed when a terrorist ploughed a van into crowds on the busy shopping street of Las Ramblas on Thursday.

He had reportedly left his wife to find a toilet in a nearby restaurant moments before the attack.

Next thing I know theres screaming, yelling, his wife Heidi Nunes, 40, told NBC News. I got pushed inside the souvenir kiosk and stayed there hiding while everybody kept running by, screaming.

His family confirmed on Friday that Mr Tuckers body had been identified. Its just something we really just dont understand. I dont know what else to say, said his father, Daniel Tucker.

Bruno Gulotta, 35, is understood to be among the victims

Another victim was a 35-year-old Italian man, Bruno Gulotta, who had reportedly been holding his sons hand as they walked along Las Ramblas before the terrorists struck.

His wife Martina, who was carrying their one-year-old daughter in a sling, pulled their son to safety at the last second, Italian media reported.

Mr Gulotta was a marketing and sales manager at Tom's Hardware and is understood to have been a resident of Legnano, north-west of Milan.

Tom's Hardware announced his death on its website and paid tribute to Mr Gulotta, saying that everyone who came into contact with him were impressed with his kindness and professionalism.

Luca Russo, 25, was on holiday with his girlfriend

Luca Russo, 25, an engineer from Padua, in Italy, was confirmed among the dead. He was on holiday at the time of the attack alongside his girlfriend Marta Scomazzon.

Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni tweeted about both Mr Gulotta and Mr Russo, saying that Italy will gather tight around their families.

Ian Moore Wilson, who died in the Barcelona terror attack, with wife Valerie / PA

Ian Moore Wilson, from Canada, was confirmed dead by his daughter. Fiona Wilson said in a statement that her mother Valerie also needed urgent medical attention and aftercare.

"My dad's passing leaves an immense void in our tight-knit family. He was desperately loved by us all and will be dearly missed," Wilson's statement read.

Elke Vanbockrijck was on holiday with her family / AP

Also among the dead was Elke Vanbockrijck, a 44-year-old Belgian who had been on holiday in Barcelona with her husband and two sons.

Spaniard Francisco Lopez Rodriguez, from Granada, died at the scene after being hit by the van in Las Ramblas, his niece said on Twitter.

Victim: Francisco Lopez Rodriguez pictured shortly before the attack on Las Ramblas / Twitter

Raquel Baron Lopez posted a series of tweets in the aftermath of the attack as the family desperately tried to find him, but confirmed news of his death on Friday.

It is believed Mr Rodriguez was walking with four other family members at the time of the attack.

Pepita Codina, 75, also died in the attack, according to the mayor of Hipolit de Voltrega, a small town near Barcelona where she was from. Xavier Vilamala posted messages of condolence on Twitter and Instagram.

An Argentine-Spanish woman called Silvina Alejandra Pereyra, aged 40, was also reported to have died in Barcelona, as well as Carmen Lopardo, an Italian native who had lived in Argentina for 60 years.

Spain terror attacks: What we know so far

Ana Maria Suarez was the sole fatality of the attack in the seaside resort of Cambrils, bringing the overall death toll up to 14.

The 61-year-old, from Zaragoza, north east Spain, was with her husband and sister, who were both injured in the attack, according to Radio Television Espanola.

The Spanish Royal Family Twitter account confirmed her death, offering their thoughts to her family.

A seven-year-old boy from Australia with British relatives was still among the missing on Saturday missing, as the family of Julian Cadman flew out to Barcelona in search of him.
A rnold Schwarzenegger has given Donald Trump a scathing lesson in what he should have said in his press conference following the deadly Charlottesville clashes.

The Terminator star condemned the Presidents comments before offering his own alternative response to the white supremacist march.

Trump drew fierce criticism when he said there was "blame on both sides" for the violence, which culminated in the death of Heather Heyer, 32, after a car crashed into anti-fascist demonstrators.

Speaking in a derisive video clip, Arnie said: There are not two sides to bigotry. There are not two sides to hatred. And if you choose to march with a flag that symbolises the slaughter of millions of people, there are not two sides.

Arnold Schwarzenegger laughs at the nodding Trump toy on his desk

The only way to beat the loud, angry voices of hate is to meet them with louder, more reasonable voices.

And that includes you, President Trump.

He then offered his alternative speech. As President of the United States, and as a Republican, I reject the support of white supremacists, he said.

The country that defeated Hitlers armies is no place for Nazi flags.

The party of Lincoln wont stand with those who carry the battle flags of the failed Confederacy.

Finally, turning to the nodding Trump toy on his desk, he asked: Was it that difficult?
T he woman sexually assaulted as a child by renowned director Roman Polanski said she suffered "tears and disappointment" after a judge refused her plea to end the 40-year-old rape case.

Samantha Geimer, who is now 54, told the Los Angeles Superior Court that she has forgiven the Oscar-winning filmmaker for the sex abuse she suffered when she was only 13.

She pleaded with the judge to stop her suffering as an "act of mercy" by ending the attempt to bring Polanski back to the United States for sentencing.

Polanski fled to France after being accused of drugging and raping Ms Geimer in 1977.

Samantha Geimer talks to the media after appearing for a motion hearing at at Los Angeles Superior Court / AP

He had admitted statuary rape and served 42 days in prison, before leaving the country over concerns his plea bargain deal would not be upheld.

On Friday, Polanski's 84th birthday, Los Angeles Superior Court's Judge Scott Gordon dismissed the director's motion to drop the case and said he must return.

Ms Geimer, 54, had long forgiven Polanski, but made her first testimony in court in his favour in June.

After the ruling, she wrote on Facebook: "I have braced for this, but still it's a heavy blow on my hopes, I will push on despite my tears and disappointment."

Judge Scott Brown dismissed the victim's plea to end the case / AFP/Getty Images

Judge Gordon found the case cannot be rejected "merely because it would be in the victim's best interest", adding that her testimony was "dramatic evidence" of the persisting damage Polanski caused.

"As eloquently described by Ms Geimer, his conduct continues to harm her and compounds the trauma of the sexual assault committed against her that gave rise to this case," he said.

Polanski, who won a best director Oscar for The Pianist, has been in self-imposed exile since he fled the States in 1978, fearing a judge would extend his sentence after he served 42 days in jail.

Ms Geimer said she had hoped the judge would find he had served enough time already, or could be sentenced in his absence.

Harland Braun, Polanski's lawyer, said he was "disappointed but not surprised" by the latest ruling and said his client would not be returning.

Polanski pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of having unlawful sex with Ms Geimer in 1977 after allegedly plying her with champagne and a sedative at the Hollywood Hills home of Jack Nicholson, who was not there at the time.

Prosecutors dropped charges of rape and sodomy against Polanski, who is currently living in Paris, France.

The judge's decision comes days after a third woman, named only as Robin, came forward to accuse him of assaulting her as a minor.

She told a press conference that she was "sexually victimised" by the director at the age of 16 in 1973.
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Thirty four local residents in a rural cabinet in Western Bay of Plenty District can now access improved broadband, after a recent Chorus upgrade.

Under the Governments Rural Broadband Initiative and Chorus own separate cabinet upgrade programme, this latest work means Chorus has now upgraded 44 cabinets in Western Bay of Plenty District.

Chorus Network Strategy Manager Kurt Rodgers says he looks forward to residents and businesses receiving better broadband performance as a result of the upgrades.

Unreliability in particular, and slow internet speeds have been a source of concern and frustration for businesses and residents in these areas, so its great to be able to provide substantially-improved infrastructure.

Consistent and reliable broadband speeds at any time of day over fixed line will provide quicker upload and download speeds of all types of digital multimedia. Enhanced video conversations with friends, family and business associates is another advantage.

More importantly, the upgraded cabinets are fibre fed which means people are connected to a congestion free network with no data caps.

Before the cabinet upgrades, residents and businesses in these areas could generally only access broadband speeds of 5Mbps or less.

Following the upgrade, residents and businesses should now be able to experience speeds of up to 25Mpbs on ADSL2.

About 80 per cent of customers are able to upgrade to VDSL broadband for even faster internet. Average speeds on VDSL connections is 45Mbps.

Theres absolutely no doubting the benefits of reliable connectivity to the lives of rural New Zealanders. Were passionate about ensuring as many Kiwis as possible have access to this world-class technology, he says.
Musicians invited to perform at Gospel Jamboree

TWIN FALLS  The Twin Falls Community Church of the Brethren invites everyone to a Gospel Music Jamboree from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Saturday at 461 Filer Ave. W. There will be music and free hot dogs, chips and drinks. If you would like to perform or have a group that would like to perform, please join us. Be sure and bring your lawn chair. For more information, call Rena Holderreed at 208-543-9203 or 208-420-0971.

National Back to Church Sunday

BURLEY  National Back to Church Sunday is being held at 10:45 a.m. on Sept. 17 at First Presbyterian Church, 2100 Burton Ave. in Burley. This years theme is A Place to Belong, which encourages people to seek out their local church as a place for fellowship, community, sanctuary and respite. There will be a special coffee/fellowship time after the service. All are welcome.

Ascension Reads meets Thursday

TWIN FALLS  Ascension Episcopal Church welcomes The Rev. Lea Colvill as guest celebrant for the service of Holy Communion at 9 a.m. on Sunday. Colvill is the new priest at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Hailey and also part-time childrens librarian at the Hailey Public Library.

Childcare will be available from 8:45 a.m. until after the worship service. Following the worship service, Ascension Cafe, the adult discussion group, will continue a six-part discussion of The Lords Prayer. The Steamed Pudding Committee (Pudding Heads) will meet at 11 a.m. to plan the 2017 fundraiser.

Ascension Reads will meet from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday at the church to discuss Wishful Thinking  A Seekers ABC by Frederick Buechner. This short book redefines words commonly used and too-familiar in church environments with humor and insight. All are welcome to join the discussion. For information call 208-733-1248.

Ascension Episcopal Church at 371 Eastland Drive N. is handicapped accessible. For more information, go to episcopaltwinfalls.org or call 208-733-1248.

Register for Voice Against Violence retreat

JEROME  The United Methodist Magic Valley Ministries 2017 Fall Retreat will feature Voice Against Violence. Topics covered in the retreat include domestic violence and the trauma it causes, services provided by Voices Against Violence and volunteer opportunities. Speakers will include Donna Graybill, executive director of Voices Against Violence, Katelyn Schwennen, counselor and Jessi Boyer, volunteer coordinator. The retreat is from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 16 at the Jerome United Methodist Church, 211 South Buchanan in Jerome. Cost will be $10 and lunch will be provided. To RSVP, please contact the Rev. Penny Hodges at 208-308-0609 by Sept. 14.
With such a great salvation given to those who trust in Jesus Christ as Lord, many live the Christian life just with what they receive from Christ, not understanding that there is a personal cost to follow Him. I am not talking about salvation here; salvation is all about Jesus. I am talking to those of you who proclaim Jesus as Lord: As He saves you, you are called to live a life set apart for His kingdom, to consider the cost to follow Jesus. The verse that echoes in my heart is Matthew 16:24, where it says, Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. This verse is foundational when it comes to Christianity and discipleship under Jesus Christ. It drives straight to the heart and tests the commitment level of the Christian. In essence, Jesus is asking, Are you sold out for Me? He is talking about total commitment. It is interesting that it was spoken to His disciples, but it makes sense, since they were going to be heralds of the gospel of grace. And if there was ever a group that needed commitment it was going to be this ragtag group of hand-picked disciples.

Jesus question also has great implications for you and me today. He begins by saying, If anyone wishes to come after Me This is a question of discipleship, of being a Christian. It has an evangelistic tone here and is calling to all those who wish to follow Christ. What comes next is a three-fold commitment on behalf of the follower of Jesus. There are three imperatives, three must-dos. The first is that he must deny himself Jesus calls for self-denial, which is harder than you think. We are very selfish people. We like to sit on the throne of heart and dictate direction and do what we want. Not so for the follower of Jesus Christ. The word deny means to disown, so Jesus is telling the believer to disown himself. It could be translated, Let him refuse any association or companionship with himself. It makes sense, because, regarding salvation, there really wasnt anything we could do in our flesh to please God. On our own we cant earn salvation, so it makes sense that Jesus doesnt want us to run our own Christian life. He kicks us off the throne of our heart and says, This is my seat. He becomes the director. Dont think that is bad, beloved; it is not. This great Lord and Savior has bought you with His blood and caused you to receive forgiveness and experience grace. He, the Great Shepherd of your soul, would never lead you down a path of unrighteousness or evil. It should be easy for a Christian to say yes to Jesus. But it is hard. Why? Because our flesh wants to do something other than what Jesus calls us to do (Romans 7:18). But let me ask you, when you sit on the throne of your life, how well do you lead it down the path of righteousness and for the Kingdom? I know the answer: Not very well. As matter of fact, we often fall flat on our faces. Jesus exhortation is simple: Deny yourself.

The second imperative is to take up his cross This might seem odd at first, but once we understand it, it guides our living. The cross, as you know, was a symbol of pain, suffering and death. Jesus injunction here calls for a willingness to follow Christ even if leads to death. Does He want total commitment? You bet. Taking up ones cross means to stand for His truth and endure persecution, rejection, shame, suffering, and, yes, even martyrdom for His sake. Oh, beloved, with such a jello-like Christianity surrounding us today, consider the cost of following Jesus. Be so branded with His Word engraved on your heart that you bleed the Scriptures and live in His power. By the way, Luke 14:27 adds a wonderful word here. Luke doesnt just say, . . . take up his cross, but, . . . take up his cross daily. Its a way of life for us  every day. That is who you are. A committed Christian denies himself and takes up his cross daily for the sake of Christ and His Kingdom. Does that call for loyalty? You bet. Does it involve self-sacrifice? Absolutely.

Finally, the third imperative for considering the cost of following Jesus as a true disciple is to follow Me. Simply put, following Jesus is your way of life. It is about submitting your will to His. Paul would say it this way in Galatians 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Is following Christ your normal pattern of life? When situations arise, do you search the Scriptures for truth and direction? Are you so devoted to Christ that it flows through your actions? That, beloved, is what it means to follow Christ. It means that He and His Word are authoritative in your life. Remember, He is your Lord and Savior for a reason. So, kick yourself off the throne of your heart and allow Jesus to sit there. You do that by denying yourself, picking up your cross, and following Him.

Now go start living for Jesus.
Carissa Steinburg of Boise is one of many family members mourning the death of Jared Tucker, killed in Thursdays terror attack in Barcelona, Spain.

Steinburg is Tuckers niece. Tucker, a father of three, and his wife, Heidi Nunes-Tucker, were celebrating their honeymoon in Spain, according to the Associated Press. The State Department released Tuckers name Friday; his father, Dan Tucker, later spoke at length about the incident to ABC News.

Tucker, 42, and Nunes-Tucker, 40, are from Lafayette, Calif., according to the AP. As of Friday, he was the only American identified as a casualty in the attack.

You never in a million years think terrorism will hurt your family, Steinburg wrote on her Facebook page Friday. Well, I regret to inform you that my uncle Jareds name has been released as among the deceased from the Barcelona terrorist attack yesterday. His soul mate, his daughters, and loving family are left behind in this terrible tragedy.

She thanked a bystander whom she said tried to save Tucker, and linked to a GoFundMe page set up to gather donations for Tuckers family and to provide information about his death.

In total, 13 people were killed in Barcelona when a van veered into a crowded promenade, while another died in a separate attack in the nearby resort town of Cambrils. As many as 100 were injured, according to the AP. Spanish authorities said citizens from 34 different countries were among the dead and injured.

As of Friday, authorities said the attacks were the work of a cell of at least nine extremists. Their plans also originally included the use of a bomb, but flawed construction meant the explosive went off early, destroying a home used to plan the attacks and killing at least one of the people inside it.
OAKLEY  Detectives say an Oakley man tried to rape a 15-year-old girl at her home.

Riley Thomas Mitchell, 24, is charged with two counts of felony lewd conduct with a child under 16, one felony count of attempted rape, felony battery with the intent to commit a serious felony and misdemeanor false imprisonment.

The girl told Cassia County Sheriff detectives that Mitchell was at her home and went into her bedroom on Dec. 10.

She asked him if he was going to be sleeping in one of the other bedrooms at the house and he told her no, yours.

The girl said Mitchell pushed her to the floor and tried to kiss her but she was able to get out from under him. He then grabbed her in a hug with his left arm and undid his pants with his other hand.

The girl told police she tried to get away but Mitchell overpowered her and repeatedly tried to undress her as she fought back.

A preliminary hearing is set for Sept. 15 in Cassia County Magistrate Court.
TWIN FALLS  Traffic counts are higher than a year ago on major routes to Idahos path of totality  but as of Friday afternoon, things arent as bad as expected.

Idaho Transportation Department has set up 24 traffic counters across the state to monitor congestion leading up to Mondays total solar eclipse  expected to draw up to a half-million people to Idaho. Results compiled from 11 a.m. Thursday to 11 a.m. Friday show higher traffic volumes, but no major shift in which direction the vehicles are going.

Agencies that were preparing for the worst were relieved to see things running smoothly so far.

Im a little surprised the numbers arent higher, ITD Public Involvement Coordinator Adam Rush told the Times-News.  but its still only Friday.

ITD has reported no major traffic jams.

When compared to the same day a year ago, the Banks-Lowman Highway had a 35 percent increase in traffic during the 24-hour period ending Friday morning. U.S. 93 at Craters of the Moon had a 29 percent increase in traffic, with 2,470 vehicles. Near Rogerson on U.S. 93, the increase was only 12 percent.

On Idaho 75 near Hailey, 18,390 vehicles brought a traffic increase of 6 percent.

It may not be exactly even, but what were seeing is not one lane is backing up more than the other, Rush said.

The only road that showed fewer vehicles than a year ago: U.S. 20 at Targhee National Forest, with a 7 percent drop.

Traffic counts will be updated at 2 p.m. daily at itd.idaho.gov/news/solar-eclipse-traffic-counts/. Driving conditions are posted at hb.511.idaho.gov.
Last week, everyone held their breath while U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traded verbal fireworks.

The president threatened to rain fire and fury the like of which the world has never seen onto the rogue state. Not to be outdone, the North Korean leader took the unprecedented step of unveiling a plan to launch missiles to within a few kilometres of Guam, a major U.S. military outpost in the western Pacific.

Markets shuddered as the war of words escalated. Stocks from Wall Street to Hong Kong tumbled while gold ratcheted higher, as it always does in times of high drama. Was this to be the Cuban missile crisis of our generation?

One worried reader wrote to ask: On the assumption that Donald Trump is going to start a war, what is a prudent approach to investing in my RRIF? Are there military stocks or ETFs that will benefit from his insanity?

Well, for starters, Trump is not insane. Yes, hes unpredictable and there are a lot of things about the man that people dislike. But hes not certifiable and, fortunately, some cooler heads around him have helped to ease the Korea rhetoric. Of course, it may all flare up again, but for the moment we seem to have pulled back from the brink.

That said, our readers question is still valid. How do you protect your portfolio during periods of escalating tension? And are there potentially profitable investments you should consider when times get tough?

The first casualty in times of crisis is typically the stock market. Investors tend to overreact to the events of the day and the greater the perceived threat the higher the impact will be. This time around, reaction was fairly mild. During the height of the U.S.-North Korea verbal exchanges, world stock markets retreated but did not go into free fall. That showed that investors were concerned but not panicky. They took some profits, hunkered down for a few days, bought some gold, and watched. When the bombast toned down, they went back into stocks.

The message is obvious: keep your wits about you, whatever the situation. Dont pick up the phone and sell all your holdings because some politician blows off steam, even if he is the U.S. president. (And with this president, we should expect a lot more of this in the next few years.)

Of course, that assumes that your portfolio has been well-constructed to begin with. Our reader says his assets are in a RRIF. That means he is older, so his allocation is probably weighted toward fixed-income securities, such as bonds and GICs. Stocks should normally make up no more than half of the assets in a RRIF, and the older you are the lower that percentage should be. If thats the case, then our reader should not be worried about his position.

But what about his second question? Are there military stocks or ETFs he could consider buying? The answer is a qualified yes. Socially responsible investors can stop reading now, but if you have no qualms about putting some money into the armaments industry, you should take a look at the iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense ETF, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ITA.

No matter what happens with North Korea, the U.S. is planning to invest billions of dollars in upgrading its military in the next few years and the companies in this fund are going to be the beneficiaries.

The portfolio consists of 39 stocks. The largest single position is in Boeing, which makes up almost 11 per cent of the fund. Other large holdings include United Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Rockwell Collins.

There are other defence ETFs available, but this one is the largest, with almost $3.7 billion (U.S.) in assets. It has been the best performer in this group so far in 2017 with a year-to-date gain to Aug. 14 of 20.65 per cent. The management expense ratio is 0.44 per cent. The fund makes quarterly distributions, which have totalled $1.57 per unit over the last 12 months for a yield of 0.9 per cent.

Heres the caveat: even if investing in weapons of war doesnt bother you, this ETF is not cheap. Defense stocks have moved up significantly in recent years  the fund was showing a five-year average annual compound rate of return of 22.8 per cent as of the end of July. So youre not getting in on the ground floor  investors have already made some pretty fat profits on these stocks.

That said, in these uneasy times this is a sector you may want some exposure to. Ask your financial adviser.

Gordon Pape is editor and publisher of the Internet Wealth Builder and Income Investor newsletters. His website is BuildingWealth.ca. Follow Gordon Pape on Twitter at twitter.com/GPUpdates

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MORIYA, JAPANThousands upon thousands of cans are filled with beer, capped and washed, wrapped into six-packs and boxed at dizzying speeds  1,500 a minute, to be exact  on humming conveyor belts that zip and wind in a sprawling factory near Tokyo.

Nary a soul is in sight in this picture-perfect image of Japanese automation.

The machines do all the heavy lifting at this plant run by Asahi Breweries, Japans top brewer. The human job is to make sure the machines do the work right, and to check on the quality the sensors are monitoring.

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Basically, nothing goes wrong. The lines are up and running 96 per cent, said Shinichi Uno, a manager at the plant. Although machines make things, human beings oversee the machines.

The debate over machines snatching jobs from people is muted in Japan, where birth rates have been sinking for decades, raising fears of a labour shortage. It would be hard to find a culture that celebrates robots more, evident in the popularity of companion robots for consumers, sold by the internet company SoftBank and Toyota Motor Corp, among others.

Japan, which forged a big push toward robotics starting in the 1990s, leads the world in robots per 10,000 workers in the automobile sector  1,562, compared with 1,091 in the U.S. and 1,133 in Germany, according to a White House report submitted to Congress last year. Japan was also ahead in sectors outside automobiles at 219 robots per 10,000 workers, compared with 76 for the U.S. and 147 for Germany.

One factor in Japans different take on automation is the lifetime employment system. Major Japanese companies generally retain workers, even if their abilities become outdated, and retrain them for other tasks, said Koichi Iwamoto, a senior fellow at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry.

That system is starting to fray as Japan globalizes, but its still largely in use, Iwamoto said.

Although data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show digitalization reduces demand for mid-level routine tasks  such as running assembly lines  while boosting demand for low- and high-skilled jobs, that trend has been less pronounced in Japan than in the U.S.

The OECD data, which studied shifts from 2002 to 2014, showed employment trends remained almost unchanged for Japan.

That means companies in Japan werent resorting as aggressively as those in the U.S. to robots to replace humans. Clerical workers, for instance, were keeping their jobs, although their jobs could be done better, in theory, by computers.

That kind of resistance to adopting digital technology for services also is reflected in how Japanese society has so far opted to keep taxis instead of shifting to online ride hailing and shuttle services.

Still, automation has progressed in Japan to the extent the nation has now entered what Iwamoto called a reflective stage, in which human harmony with machines is being pursued, he said.

Some tasks may be better performed by people, after all, Iwamoto said.

Kiyoshi Sakai, who has worked at Asahi for 29 years, recalls how, in the past, can caps had to be placed into machines by hand, a repetitive task that was hard not just on the body, but also the mind.

And so he is grateful for automations helping hand. Machines at the plant have become more than 50 per cent smaller over the years. They are faster and more precise than three decades ago.

Gone are the days things used to go wrong all the time and human intervention was needed to get machines running properly again. Every 10 to 15 minutes, people used to have to go check on the products; there were no sensors back then.

Glitches are so few these days there is barely any reason to work up a sweat, he added with a smile.

Like many workers in Japan, Sakai doesnt seem worried about his job disappearing. As the need for plant workers nosedived with the advance of automation, he was promoted to the general affairs section, a common administrative department at Japanese companies.

I remember the work being so hard. But when I think back, and it was all about delivering great beer to everyone, it makes me so proud, said Sakai, who drinks beer every day.

I have no regrets. This is a stable job.

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Unnoticed by passersby and often unmarked by plaques, numerous Toronto addresses with big parts to play in cultural history sit mostly uncelebrated. In our series Local Legends, we tell you about them and put them on your mental map.

In the early 1970s, actress Lynne Griffin was in her early 20s and establishing herself as an ingenue type on Toronto and Stratford stages, in the early days of Canadian theatre. After coming off of the world premiere of David Frenchs family drama Leaving Home at Tarragon Theatre, Griffins next project introduced her to a new group of sisters in a stately home not far from the Tarragon, in the neighbourhood of St. Clair Ave. W. and Avenue Rd.

I remember it as a very, very friendly place. That was one of the fun things about working on a project over a number of weeks, you really get to feel like those people were part of your family. Especially when youre going to a house every day, it really starts to feel like your family home, Griffin told the Star.

Griffins new family included Olivia Hussey, Margot Kidder, Andrea Martin and more, as well as the film director Bob Clark. Before the successes of A Christmas Story and Porkys, Clark had recently moved to Toronto from the United States and was making his first Canadian feature film.

Griffin remembers enjoying the opening party scene, which was largely unscripted and unfolded much like a real sorority-house yuletide soiree, including her first onscreen kiss with actor Art Hindle, who played her characters boyfriend.

Of course, anyone familiar with Clarks 1974 seminal Canadian horror film Black Christmas knows that wintertime cheer doesnt last long in this sorority house. Disturbing calls harass the sisters and get increasingly unhinged, until the young women start disappearing one by one  attacked by an unknown man who hides in the homes attic, placing phone calls from within the house itself. Griffin plays Claire, the films first victim, whose grisly death by plastic bag has since become the poster image of Black Christmas and an unforgettable moment in horror-film history.

I think I got the part because I was a good swimmer and I could hold my breath for a long time, Griffin said, laughing. Besides that opening party scene, her work was done in the attic, where Claires body is infamously kept sitting in a rocking chair in front of a small circular window that looks out onto the homes front yard on Clarendon Cres.

We filmed entirely in the house. It was so cool the way it was laid out; it had every kind of wonderful potential for a horror movie, Griffin said.

Its very big, its on a very private street, the architecture and style of the house matches the other University of Toronto locations that (Clark) was shooting. It does seem kind of the perfect house to use for his setting, said Paul Corupe, editor of Canuxploitation.com.

The dark polished wood and its contrast to its Christmas lights decorating the banisters, the large staircase, the trellis on the side of the house that the killer climbs to enter it, the square wooden crawl space to access the attic: all of these elements are now signature to Black Christmas, a modestly budgeted Canadian film that inspired the slasher genre.

Previously, a lot of the things we associate with slasher horror  the guy in the mask with the knife, hiding in the house, killing off teens one by one  they were percolating in different areas at the time. But Black Christmas was one of the first films to actually coalesce these elements into what eventually became the slasher formula, Corupe said.

He further noted that a conversation between Clark and John Carpenter is said to have inspired Halloween when Clark said if he ever did a sequel to Black Christmas, which he didnt plan on doing, it would be set with the same killer returning to the same house on that holiday.

I dont think wed have final girls the way we do now without Black Christmas, said Alex West, a horror film critic and co-host of the podcast Faculty of Horror, referring to Husseys character Jess, the films main character, whose pro-choice opinions and independence were a noteworthy portrayal of young womanhood in a 1970s slasher film.

Theres a claustrophobic, gothic sense to it. Its not at summer camp or that suburban cul-de-sac, it feels like a very tactile place where these young modern women are trying to figure out their lives for the first time. Theyre surrounded by this Victorian manor, which dominates them with all of these dark corners and crevices where people can hide, she said. There is a really distinct contrast between the characters values and the esthetic quality of the house.

The quality of the film and its portrayal of womanhood is partly why Black Christmas has recently enjoyed a resurgence in popularity among younger horror fans in the last decade.

Once Facebook came around, people started to rediscover the film and fans started to rediscover the people who were in Black Christmas, said Griffin, who now attends two to three conventions a year to meet fans of the film (sometimes posing with a plastic bag, striking the iconic pose).

I dont know if there was that huge a market for horror movies at the time; these films were very much under the radar. They were new. People were used to watching (Disney) every Sunday night.

Though it had moderate box-office success, Black Christmas is a cult favourite, playing at the Royal Cinema every December as a holiday tradition. Thats something that the current owners of 6 Clarendon Cres. may not appreciate, given the privacy of the street that the house is on and the pristine neighbourhood around it. But it still draws a few ardent fans to view the house for themselves.

Its just a house in the middle of the street. Its not a house on a hill, its in a community. When you look at the house, its this big beautiful home I could only really ever dream of affording, but theres just still an eerie quality; you could definitely still pick it out. But that might be because I associate it with the film so strongly, West said.

Corupe, on the other hand, prefers to leave the filmed version untarnished in his memory. Sometimes you visit those movie locations and they dont seem quite so ominous as you imagined. Seeing it in broad daylight in July might not produce the same effect.

Griffin has only visited the house once since wrapping the film, in a walk-through with Hindle for the 25th-anniversary DVD release. But she still has only fond memories of the experience.

Maybe its time for another visit, she said. Not to go up to the attic, though.

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The door handles crafted from full-size axes are the first signs that Paris Surf is unlike anything else in town.

That out-of-place vibe deepens once you step in to the crazy-beautiful mix of hipster flare, 90s neon and California cool.

There is a stuffed Buffalo head rearing out of the wall. Premium denim and bright T-shirts are stacked on rustic wood shelves. Fifty-nine chandeliers hang mishmash from the ceiling, lighting the space, a combination clothing store, pizzeria, coffee shop, juice counter and neighbourhood bar.

I brought California to Paris, Ont., says Chip Foster, owner of Paris Surf. Walk in and youre in Venice Beach. The environment is sick. We didnt hold out on anything.

Yes, this is that Chip Foster, identical twin brother of Pepper Foster, who together formed the now-famous Chip & PepperChip & Pepper apparel brand long adored by celebrities, including Jessica Simpson, Bruce Springsteen and Naomi Campbell. In 1991, the duo starred in the popular Chip and Peppers Cartoon Madness Saturday mornings on NBC. That was the gig, Foster says, that changed their lives.

Born and raised in Winnipeg  he has lived in L.A. for more than 30 years  Foster, 53, has ties to Canada with a cottage in Lake of the Woods, near Kenora, and now with these new roots in Paris.

Foster says his ex-wife, who is Canadian, (they were married 14 years) left Malibu so she could enrol their three children in a private school near Paris and he, not wanting to miss out on his kids lives, followed along.

In some ways, Foster sees Paris Surf, quietly launched at the end of 2016, as a clubhouse for his kids, a place where they can eat pizza and hang out while their dad travels.

Im like a rock star; I live a great life, Im always getting on a plane, Foster says. This is a little space for them that has a little bit of me.

Paris Surf is also a new and exciting brand for Foster, one that he wants to see expand beyond its small town location. Paris, located in the County of Brant, has a population of about 12,000.

For now, the store  sandwiched between a florist shop and a house wares store, and across the street from a lonely looking LCBO  is the only place you can buy the Canadian-made apparel, stitched from Canadian-made fabric and emblazoned with the Paris Surf logo. The trucker hats and toques are popular items. So, too, are the Chip Foster jeans (these are made in the United States and overseas) that come in a multitude of washes and styles and cost between $200 and $400.

Foster, of course, wants you to buy the clothes. He designed them  and the logo  with a particular esthetic in mind.

We made all that stuff very old school; 80s collars, the sweatshirts a little bit bigger, everything is up a size, he says in his growly near-shout of a voice. Its a great place to get a uniform of cool  K-O-L, KOL!

But he also wants you to stay for the pizza. After all, he went to New York City to learn how to make the thin crust creations from scratch.

Ive spent my life designing clothes. But I wanted to do something fresh . . . so I decided, Im going to make pizza! I went and learned from the best.

Theres cheeseburger pizza, Philly cheese steak pizza, chicken Caesar salad pizza. My mouth is watering talking about them. The BLT pizza is the best. It is deadly.

Foster is over-the-top enthusiastic about Paris Surf. He bounds through the restaurant, greeting people with a smile and a handshake and insisting on holding the camera for selfies with happy customers.

This is the way he wants his brand to reach the world, whispering out on social media, slowly creating its own organic buzz (this is Fosters first media interview about Paris Surf). That is, until he hosts Paris Surfs big coming out party with Jason Priestly, Ryan Gosling and other Canadian celebrities.

Im waiting for the right time. Wait til you see the guest list. Its going to be epic.

Since making it big in the early 1990s, Foster and his brother have opened more than 200 Chip & Pepper stores around the world, including New York City, L.A. and London, England. So, why this new store  beautifully curated and the first to serve food and drinks  in small-town Ontario? And why call it Paris Surf when the nearest ocean is hundreds of kilometres away?

I knew this town was hot, he says. Theres the Grand River; the area is an unbelievable place to hang out. And, I dunno, Paris needed a surf shop.

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It is pretty and quaint and parts of town have an old-world charm.

But Paris, Ont., is not named for Paris, France.

The origins of this small town, about an hours drive west of Toronto, are much more prosaic. Nearby deposits of gypsum, a mineral used to make Plaster of Paris, are the reason for its name.

The gypsum mines are gone, but Paris past is still visible in its historic downtown, slate-roofed churches and collection of cobblestone buildings crafted in the 1800s from smooth round rocks pulled from the two rivers that flow through town.

Its these two rivers  the Grand River and the Nith River  which people love most about Paris.

Every view has an allure, says long-time Paris resident and well-known Toronto interior designer David Powell. Most small towns in southern Ontario are flat, but Paris is in a bowl, captured by its hills and rivers.

As summer wanes, hop in your car for one more city escape and enjoy a lazy day in Paris. Paddle down the Grand River and stroll along the smaller, swifter Nith. Sit on a patio and wander the downtown. Relax, slow down and enjoy the views.

A peaceful paddle

The water is blue, the tree-lined banks are lush and, best of all, the slow current of the Grand River will easily carry you downstream.

Its like nature on cruise control, says Tim Nemec, a Brampton native who, along with his girlfriend, Brooke Percy of Burlington, spent a peaceful three hours on a recent Saturday gliding down the river in a red canoe.

The pair rented their gear from Paris-based Grand Experiences Outdoor Adventure Company and paddled from the hamlet of Glen Morris, about 10 kilometres north, to a portage at Paris picturesque Penmans Dam.

Its beautiful and so, so peaceful, says Percy, minutes after stepping on the river bank. Its like going back in time.

That stretch of the Grand River is an ideal trip for all paddlers, no matter their experience level, says Jamie Kent, owner of Grand Experiences, which has been outfitting paddlers, bikers and hikers for 20 years.

Its a gem for nature lovers, he says, listing the sights that include a 300-year-old sycamore tree, osprey and bald eagles diving for fish, and an island with a small beach perfect for a shoreline rest.

Kent says paddlers are in awe as they pass by The Three Sisters, a trio of massive stone pillars that once supported the Great West Railway Bridge that was built around 1850 to span the Grand River.

People also love seeing Paris from the river as they near the end of the trip, he says. You see the old buildings along Grand River St., almost like they are sitting half in the water.

After your morning paddle, head to the nearby Paris Wincey Mills Co. for a much-needed meal. Bring a bag so you can buy snacks to take home, too.

The Wincey Mills

Once, it was a bustling complex of textile mills powered by water rushing through a mill race and emptying into the Nith River.

Now, all that remains of the Paris Wincey Mills Co., which operated from about 1889 until 1959, is a single building recently transformed into a commercial and community space reminiscent of Torontos St. Lawrence Market.

In 2014, the shuttered building  it had been a multi-storey Canadian Tire complete with auto service bays  caught the eye of Walter Koppelaar, who with his brother, bought it before taking a look inside.

We liked the town, we liked the building, says Koppelaar, CEO and chairman of Walters Inc., a Hamilton-based structural steel manufacturer. The factories used to be the centre of the community in Paris; we wanted to bring a little bit of that back.

As you wander the new Paris Wincey Mills Co., which opened in 2016, its easy to spy hints of its industrial past in the exposed brick walls, original main-floor windows and towering timber framing.

The year-round market, open three days a week (but not Sundays), offers opportunities for make-your-own picnics with a meat counter, cheese shop, bakery and a stall selling local fruits and vegetables. Other vendors sell upscale grilled cheese sandwiches, crepes and empanadas. Blue Dog Coffee Roasters, open six days a week, brews good coffee and serves soups, salads and sandwiches.

Emery Silva, owner of Bird and Bee Vintage Co., brings a bit of Paris historical past to her tiny market shop that showcases antiques and vintage-inspired trinkets, along with her handmade bow ties and glittery flapper-style hair accessories.

On a recent Saturday, Silva is in her shop, painting greeting cards of Paris landmarks, finishing each with strokes of gold leaf.

Theres a romance here, she says of the town she loves. It feels a little old world and at the same time it feels alive.

Downtown delights

After youve filled up on food, its time to take to the streets.

Head to Grand River St. N. and keep an eye out for the Alexander Graham Bell plaque. It commemorates the place where he received the worlds first successful long-distance telephone call on Aug. 10, 1876.

Admire, too, John M. Halls The House of Quality Linens, which has been in business for more than 120 years.

Then head to Green Heron Books  all lazy days require a good read  stopping to browse along the way.

Browsing for books

Green Heron Books seems more like a friends cosy library than a store.

Everything is hand-picked, says owner Roy Skuce, gesturing around his store thats been in Paris downtown for 15 years. It really is my labour of love.

The books  a mix of new and almost-new  are arranged on wooden shelves, clustered by genre and author. There are cook books and art books, non-fiction narratives and childrens stories, along with poetry, history and sections featuring local authors and Indigenous authors.

Skuce, who seems to have read each book, whether brand-new bestseller or well-loved classic, often uses coloured sticky notes to point out books he likes best. A yellow one, stuck near a row of books by Alice Munro, states: Our Canadian Nobel Prize Literature Laureate. Its decorated with a tiny hand-drawn maple leaf.

Where does Skuce suggest you go to read your newly bought book?

Somewhere near a river, of course.

No matter where you end up, the views are wonderful.

The other river

In Paris, the Grand River often gets most of the fuss with its sweeping views, cascading dam and towering rail bridge that evoke the towns industrial past.

But many locals will tell you that their favourite river is the Nith, a meandering, smaller thing that empties into the Grand River, near the south end of downtown.

A five-minute walk from Grand River St. N., will take you to an arcing footbridge over the Nith River that leads to Lions Park. Here, you can follow a footpath along the Nith to find a place to sit back and read. Its not well-advertised, so ask a local to point you in the right direction.

Patio time

A relaxing day should end with a relaxing drink, whether a tall iced tea or a long cold pint.

So before you head home, make your way back to Grand River St. N., to find a patio that overlooks the Grand River. There are a few options, but Stillwaters Plate & PourStillwaters Plate & Pour has two outdoor levels, with the top showcasing one of the best views in downtown.

As you sip, watch for a Via Train to trundle across the CN rail bridge. At dusk, Penmans Dam is lit in white and coloured lights, creating one last lovely view to see in Paris.

Correction  August 23, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the year in which Alexander Graham Bell made the worlds first successful long-distance phone call.

Daytrippin: A lazy day in Paris

CN Tower to Paris: 110 kilometres

Alternate transportation: Take the Via Train from Union Station to Brantford (about $60, round trip, for an Escape Fare). Call Grand River Cab ahead of time to book a taxi ride from the train station to downtown Paris ($25 each way).

Budget: About $240, including: gas for a small car, $25, canoe for two down the Grand River, $90, lunch for two at the Paris Wincey Mill Co., $30, a book from Green Heron Books, $20, dinner and drinks for two overlooking the Grand River, $75.

Souvenir: Emery Silvas hand-painted cards of Paris, $5, found at Bird & Bee Vintage Co. You will have taken photos of Paris famous sights; these gilded beauties are to frame or share with friends.

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Allan Gray and his family were in a Las Ramblas restaurant in Barcelona on Thursday when they heard a loud crash and saw crowds of panicked people rushing to the back of the building.

Amid the commotion, the Mississauga man ran with his wife and two daughters into an adjoining hotel where they huddled on an upper floor for the next five hours, flinching at the sound of gunshots and wondering whether movements in the stairwells were people trying to find safety or a potential terrorist about to launch another attack.

Gray, 50, said that the scariest part of the entire ordeal was not knowing what was going on.

Everybody was panicking . . . we just didnt know what was going to happen, Gray told The Canadian Press in an interview Friday. Every little movement, every little bang was just horrific

Read more:

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Deadly terror attack strikes the heart of Barcelona

People werent sure whether gunshots heard were coming inside the building, and were terrified that there might be a shooter in the hotel, Gray said.

His daughter, Daniela Gray, said that she was preparing for the worst

For many hours we were terrified that there was someone inside or that there was going to be an explosion of some sort, the 24-year-old said.

Among the 13 people killed in the Barcelona attack was Canadian Ian Moore Wilson, according to a family statement. As many as 100 were injured, including four Canadians. No details about those who were injured or their conditions were released.

As the hours passed, the Gray family learned more about what was actually happening through social media.

At one point, Allan Gray said he looked outside the hotels window to see what was going on and got a view of the aftermath of the attack.

There was a woman on the ground that was hurt, another persons legs not moving, and a little boy who was lifeless on the ground, he said. It was horrific.

The family of four took shelter in the hotel until a police officer escorted them out of the area to safety.

Gray said theyre still reeling from the events a day after the attack, and described an empty feeling to Barcelonas previously jubilant streets.

The partys basically been shut down, he said. It just seemed quiet out there and in a sombre mood.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Friday Canadian authorities always step up vigilance at home when an attack like this happens elsewhere.

When an event like this occurs extra special attention is focused on it so Canadians can be assured that their police and their security services are taking every necessary step to keep Canadians safe, he said, during an event in Regina.

Spanish authorities said the back-to-back vehicle attacks  as well as an explosion earlier this week in a house elsewhere in Catalonia  were related and the work of a large terrorist group.

Anca Gurzu, a Canadian from Ottawa, was in a nearby neighbourhood when the Barcelona attack took place, but only realized what was going on after receiving a frantic call from a friend.

(The police) were just everywhere, they were walking with their guns, and it was a bit surreal, said Gurzu, who went to the scene of the attack about two hours after it took place to see what was going on.

She said the residents of Barcelona remained defiant in the face of the violence, and that thousands of mourners gathered in the citys main square on Friday to observe a minute of silence and march through the citys streets.

People laid candles on the street beside bloodstains on the pavement where victims had been hit, she said.

The crowds chanted I am not afraid! I am not afraid! as they marched through the streets.

Outside the main strip where the attacks occurred, Gurzu said the citys residents are making an effort to try and go about their lives normally.

People are trying to just move on.

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DIEPPE, FRANCEVeterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr is leading a Canadian government delegation to France to mark the 75th anniversary of the Dieppe raid during the Second World War.

The raid, launched on Aug. 19, 1942, would prove to be the bloodiest single day for Canadas military in the entire war.

The Prime Minister released a statement Saturday to honour the hundreds of Canadians who lost their lives in the battle.

Of the nearly 5,000 Canadian soldiers who took part in the ill-fated mission, more than half became casualties, and 916 would die on the rocky shore of Puys Beach on the northern coast of occupied France.

Read more: Bitterness lingers 75 years after Dieppe: My father always felt that they had been sacrificed

Shackles, pebbles and posters: The Raid on Dieppe in 10 objects

The beach landing was supposed to happen under the cover of darkness, but the Canadians, along with 1,000 British and 50 American soldiers, were late arriving on shore, and as the sun rose they were left exposed to withering fire from German troops on the cliffs above.

Justin Trudeau said the loss at Dieppe taught Allied forces valuable lessons, which he said helped to turn the tide of the war on D-Day less than two years later.

As we commemorate the Dieppe Raid at events in Canada and France, I ask all Canadians to honour the people who gave so much at Dieppe, as well as their families at home who suffered the loss of their loved ones, Trudeau says.

Governor General David Johnston noted that this year marks the centennial anniversary of two great victories for Canada  the battles at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele in the First World War  but its equally important to remember the losses, like the one at Dieppe.

We must never forget the terrible cost of armed conflict and ensure that future generations remember, lest we repeat the mistakes of the past, Johnston said in a statement.

Ceremonies honouring the soldiers sacrifice are being held Saturday in Dieppe, Montreal, Calgary and on Sunday in Dieppe, New Brunswick.

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At first glance, there are the visible signs marking the presence of a happy kid. A large height-marker with a cartoon giraffe plastered on a wall. Fourth, fifth and sixth birthday cards mounted side-by-side. Dozens of photographs of a young boys many silly faces, everywhere you look.

Then there are the signs of loss youd have to be looking for to notice. A bicycle with the training wheels still on. The pristine white floor that he used as his dry-erase-marker canvas. His most prized possessions  two paper models of TTC vehicles and a stack of identical transit route maps  packed in a plastic grocery bag.

Everything about this simple, clean home points to the presence of an adored kid who should have grown many inches taller, celebrated many more birthdays and lived to express awe at the TTC subway.

Simon, a healthy six-year-old boy, was taken from his mother when he died in an apparent murder-suicide on July 31.

Simon and his father, Zlatan Cico, 58, were pronounced dead in Cicos East York apartment last month. Though Simons parents were separated and he lived with his mom full time, he sometimes stayed with his father on weekends.

Police said the day after they were found that they were not looking for any other suspects in the case. Neighbours who knew the father and son were shocked by the event.

Simons mom, whose name the Star agreed not to publish to protect her privacy, dedicated every year of Simons too-short life to giving him every opportunity she could. Now she, with the support of her friend Glenn Watson, is trying to raise money to lay him to rest in a nice place.

The pair recently launched a campaign on GoFundMe with the goal of raising $20,000 that they say will go to Simons burial costs. As of Thursday afternoon, they have reached about 15 per cent of their goal.

I just feel he is so innocent. I couldnt protect him, Simons mom told the Star in an interview this week at her dining table in the Scarborough home she shared with her son, while Watson sat beside her.

So I want to try my best to give him a nice place to rest.

Simon was his moms only family in Canada, and Watson described her devotion to the boy as absolute.

Everything is for Simon, Watson said. And, as she says, it was hard to protect him from a threat that you wouldnt think he needed protecting from.

They want Simon to be remembered as the boy they knew: curious, sweet, and well-behaved.

His favourite thing in the world was the TTC.

Every kid in his classroom, they all know Simon loves the subway, loves the TTC, Simons mom said. He would pick up a new subway map whenever he could  no matter how many he already had  and used the floor in their living room to draw out the routes with dry-erase markers.

Sometimes I tolerate and I let him do it, and sometimes I just mop that, she said.

Simons memory for transit routes surprised even bus drivers, as he effortlessly rhymed off where each route was headed. His collection of route maps and paper TTC models will go with him in his coffin.

Simons mom described him as an exceptionally gentle, well-behaved kid.

My friend had a little baby and the baby was five months, six months. Simon just like, touched the baby gently, looked at the baby, she said.

Even when she asked him to do something he didnt want to do, hed agree without protest.

Not like some children, who would say no, I dont want to do that. He just listened  he just understood.

She believes that we can learn from Simons simple, happy nature.

Hes happy easily, she said. Something  even just some small thing  can make him very happy. Hes not greedy.

He also came up with the code word toy to ask Glenn to take him for ice cream  a treat his mom seldom allowed. She was undeceived.

A meal from McDonalds or a covert cup of ice cream was enough to put a huge smile on Simons face. The thought led the mom to think about lifes joys  large and small  that she wasnt yet able to give Simon.

Top of the list was a long-anticipated trip to China, scheduled for next month. He began to ask his mom to take him when his other Chinese friends told him stories about travelling there.

I said if you go to China, they have long trains  much faster much nicer, Simons mom said. She and Simon would have made the long journey together, and visited her family for the first time since he was a baby.

His ticket will go unused, and now she just hopes to be able to bury him somewhere close enough to her home to visit on birthdays and holidays.

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David Sinnah woke up to a phone inundated with messages Monday morning.

During the night, mudslides triggered by heavy rainfall killed more than 300 in Freetown, capital city of his native country of Sierra Leone.

Its very awful, very sad, said Sinnah, president of the Sierra Leonean Canadian Union of Ontario-Umbrella.

I heard from friends and other family members; most of them were affected because I know some of them live around that area.

Read more:

Sierra Leone mudslides death toll now above 450, UN says

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While his immediate family members are OK, one friend who was out of town at the time lost everyone: a wife and four kids.

The Sierra Leonean community in Toronto has already mobilized, setting up a website where people can donate to a Sierra Leone Flood Relief fund. There will also be a fundraiser picnic this Saturday. Money will go to the Red Cross and government support teams working on the ground, Sinnah said.

The West African nation was devastated by the Ebola virus just a few years ago. The Red Cross estimates at least 600 people are currently missing and rescue workers are still digging out bodies.

Many people live in slums close to the sea, with poor drainage systems. Unregulated houses built on hilltops, as well as deforestation for fire wood and charcoal, contribute to the risk of mudslides.

Ive never seen anything like it, said Abdul Nasir, program co-coordinator for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

A river of mud came out of nowhere and swallowed entire communities, just wiped them away.

On Thursday, as officials struggled to keep up with burials, more people were evacuated due to the risk of another mudslide.

Sinnah said most people have now left the affected area, in the west end of the capital city, but the situation is still very urgent as many people have been left homeless.

They need food, water, he said. Its still raining.

With files from The Associated Press

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Refugee claimants stuck in Canadas growing backlog have a chance to get their cases heard speedily  if they can afford to take the Immigration and Refugee Board to court.

The Star has learned that at least a dozen asylum cases in which claimants took the board to court, including some that have been in the queue since 2012 and earlier, have been scheduled for hearings by the board since July.

By giving the asylum-seekers their long-awaited hearings, the board avoided the possibility the Federal Court would make a ruling in relation to its handling of the backlog.

Critics say timely processing of asylum claims should not be available only to those who pursue legal action against the government.

Those who have money can go to the expensive litigation and may be able to get a resolution for themselves, said lawyer Raoul Boulakia, who represented two of these asylum claimants, a Sri Lankan man and a woman from Burundi.

But this is not the answer for the vast majority of refugees in the backlog who dont have the money or are too afraid to litigate against the Canadian government.

There are some 5,500 so-called legacy asylum claims, those that were filed before 2012 reforms that required new cases to be heard within 60 days. While the refugee board has focused on the new claims, the legacy cases were put on the back-burner. Even some of the new cases have been delayed, meaning the backlog has continued to grow.

Exacerbating the situation is the surge of asylum seekers crossing the border via the United States since President Donald Trump came into power.

The board declined to comment on the litigation, saying it doesnt comment on individual cases or private proceedings.

Board spokesperson Anna Pape said the refugee backlog stood at 25,365 in June 2017 and is currently growing at a rate of about 1,000 cases per month.

Over the past 18 months, the (board) has been facing mounting workload pressures amid a rising intake of refugee claims and fixed output capacity. These pressures have led directly to lengthening processing times, she said.

So far, Ottawa hasnt provided additional funding to the board, which has the capacity to hear about 21,000 claims a year.

In 2015, some frustrated claimants in the backlog initiated whats known as mandamus litigation with the Federal Court of Canada in an effort to challenge the inaction of the board on their files and order officials to adjudicate their cases.

The backlog has created tremendous hardship for some claimants, who are often separated from their families and cannot plan their lives without permanent status.

Legal Aid Ontario does not usually cover mandamus litigation, but it did fund some of the claimants  from Afghanistan, Burundi, Congo, Eritrea, Guinea, Namibia, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Turkey  represented by Boulakia and the Refugee Law Office in Toronto. There were also similar cases handled by other lawyers.

One of Boulakias clients, Ingrid Ntahigima, was a member of the Movement for Solidarity and Democracy, an opposition party in Burundi. She fled to Canada and made an asylum claim in October 2012 due to political persecution.

For years the refugee board didnt hear her case, despite her repeated pleas and a psychiatric report that showed she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder due to trauma in Burundi and severe depression as a result of the inability to get her asylum resolved.

I didnt have any option. I felt so powerless. I didnt see any hope. I didnt see any future, said the 25-year-old from Bujumbura, who works as a customer service representative. She paid more than $3,000 for the litigation out of her own pocket.

The wait wasnt necessary. They wasted five years of my life. I understand there is a process, but this is peoples lives. Five years is a long time. It should not be that way. It is just unfair.

In July, the refugee board agreed to schedule the asylum hearing for Ntahigima and the other litigants. After previewing the womans file before the hearing, a refugee judge decided to grant her asylum status immediately because she had such a strong claim. Once she was given a hearing date, her court case was over.

The violence that reigns in Burundi includes acts of violence motivated by ethnic hatred against the Tutsi minority. Since the claimant is identified as being an opponent of the current regime, she risks being targeted, arrested and abused by the Burundian authorities, wrote adjudicator Robert Riley in his asylum decision.

The political opinion of the claimant, combined with her ethnicity, establishes a nexus to the (United Nations) Convention refugee definition.

While Ntahigima is relieved that she can now move on with her life, she feels the delay was unnecessary.

Justice delayed is justice denied, said Ntahigima, who is trying to save up money to apply for permanent residency and continue her university education, hopefully pursuing a degree in international studies and business.

Im happy I was granted (refugee) status and can now move on with my life, but it is an injustice if you dont have the money to sue or are too afraid to raise your voice.

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During the waning days of the Second World War, Jewish groups and intelligence officials received word that Adolf Hitler had ordered the remaining concentration camps dynamited upon the approach of American and Russian liberators so that every last Jew would go down with the Reich. Months earlier, a Swiss-based rescue committee  led by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman named Recha Sternbuch  had enlisted the former fascist president of Switzerland, Jean-Marie Musy, to negotiate with SS chief Heinrich Himmler, on behalf of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis.

Their goal was to cultivate his delusion that the Western Allies would be open to Himmlers dream of a separate peace so that the West would ally with the Nazis to turn against Joseph Stalin and stamp out Bolshevism. The precondition to such an alliance, they insisted, was to defy Hitler and end the extermination of the Jews.

Newly discovered archival evidence suggests that this elaborate deception, abetted by the Vatican, was likely the catalyst for Himmlers unexplained decree in November 1944 to halt the mass exterminations and destroy the Auschwitz-Birkenau murder apparatus. But despite this monumental breakthrough, the Jews of Europe were not safe yet. Far from it. The Final Solution had come to an end, but the Holocaust continued as the next six months saw tens of thousands more perish from death marches, hunger and disease. Now, as the Reich crumbled around him and the Nazis faced imminent defeat, Hitler had vowed to finish the job of extinguishing the remaining Jews of Europe.

With time running out, Himmlers Finnish osteopath Felix Kersten  with the aid of Swedish intelligence  arranged one of historys most extraordinary and unlikely encounters. On April 21, 1945, a secret meeting took place deep inside Germany between Himmler and a World Jewish Congress official, Norbert Masur, who was tasked with convincing the SS chief to countermand Hitlers diabolical order.

No date had yet been set for Masurs meeting. During the first two weeks of April, he met a number of times with Kersten and [Swedish foreign minister Christian] Gunther to formulate a strategy for the coming negotiations. The priority, they agreed, would be to hold Himmler to his recent promise to prevent the dynamiting of the camps and to surrender the remaining concentration camps to the Allies intact. Masur was given a list of names of prominent women confined in the Ravensbruck camp, including Gemma La Guardia Gluck, sister of the half Jewish New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, a close friend of President Roosevelt.

The Americans had been exerting particular pressure for her release. Finally, on the morning of Thursday, April 19, Masur got word that he would be received by Himmler later that day or Friday at the latest. A plane was waiting at the airport to take him and Kersten from Stockholm to Berlin. When they took off shortly after 2 p.m., they were the only passengers on the aircraft, which sported a large swastika on its fuselage.

Kersten slept during most of the flight while Masur contemplated the unbelievable turn of events. Only a few days before, he had been a mid-level official safe from the inferno raging through Europe. All day, he had sat in an office reading reports about the desperate plight of his people and crimes so horrific that he could barely breathe, never dreaming that he would one day have a chance to confront the perpetrator. He would later describe what went through his mind as he embarked on the journey: For me as a Jew, it was a deeply moving thought that in a few hours, I would be face to face with the man who was primarily responsible for the destruction of several million people.

As the plane neared Berlin, he thought of one of the reports he had read earlier that week. It was a detailed account by the Soviet army of what they had found when they liberated Auschwitz three months earlier. Though most of the inmates had been evacuated before the Soviets arrived, the Germans had left behind thousands of prisoners too sick to be moved. They told a story so frightening, so ghastly, that many of their liberators at first thought them delusional. Like [Jewish Agency rescue committee representative Hillel] Storch, Masur wondered how he could remain gracious when confronting the purveyor of this nightmare. It was a question that occupied him throughout the four-hour flight.

The plane landed at Berlins Tempelhof Airport shortly after 6 p.m. and a group of police officers were waiting on the airfield. As Kersten and Masur disembarked, the police greeted them with words long familiar to the masseur: Heil Hitler. Masur swallowed nervously, then took off his hat and curtly responded, Good evening. He had passed his first test of diplomacy. One of the officers handed Kersten a safe conduct pass for Masur, which had been signed by Gen. [Walter] Schellenberg.

The staff car Himmler had promised to send had not yet arrived. As the pair sat impatiently in the waiting room of the terminal building, they heard a crackle from the loudspeaker. Suddenly a voice boomed. It was Joseph Goebbels, Germanys propaganda minister, whose fanatical celebration of Nazism was familiar to all Germans: Rejoice, people of Germany, the voice said. Tomorrow, April 20, is the birthday of the beloved Fuhrer.

A chill went through Masur. He knew the German people had no reason to rejoice for the madman who had led them to such misery. Finally, an SS car arrived to take them to Kerstens Harzwalde estate 80 kilometres away. As they passed through Berlin, they witnessed a scene of utter devastation. Night had fallen and blackout conditions were in effect. Through the darkness, their eyes were drawn to row upon row of blackened shells  buildings that had been destroyed by relentless bombings by the Allied squadrons. The ruins of the houses were like ghosts, Masur recalled.

Within a few hours, the skies overhead would fill with planes ready to resume their deadly night missions. The two men were anxious to reach the safety of Kerstens estate. Normally, the journey would have taken just over an hour, but their path was constantly impeded by rubble and bomb craters. Twice they had to disembark to push aside huge concrete slabs that blocked their path. When they finally exited the city two hours later, they heard the ominous wail of an air raid siren signalling the imminent arrival of the bombers.

Twenty minutes outside Berlin, the car was stopped by an army patrol. Despite his safe conduct pass, Masur was terrified. What if they were to recognize his distinct Jewish features? His fears proved unfounded. The patrol simply ordered them to put out their headlights to avoid attracting the attention of enemy aircraft. Behind them, they could see the sky above the city alight with the explosions of falling bombs. Masur did not know whether to cheer on the Allied bombers or fear for his own safety.

As they passed through the town of Oranienburg, Masur was again reminded of the terror of the concentration camps. Here, in one of the first SS camps, a number of his relatives had been interned for their political affiliations in the months after Hitler took power, before Masur negotiated for their emigration to Sweden.

Finally, close to midnight, the car arrived at Harzwalde  Kerstens lavish estate and hobby farm. They were met by Kerstens sister Elizabeth, who showed the exhausted Masur to his room. After their guest retired, the Kerstens discussed arrangements for closing up the estate. Kersten planned to return to Stockholm immediately following the talks with Himmler. With the Soviets closing in, he knew they would not be safe in Germany. The Russian army would be anxious to exact retribution on anybody associated with the Nazi leadership and, despite his work on behalf of humanity, the doctor feared he would be stained by Himmlers crimes. In addition, he had carried arms against Russia as a Finnish officer in 1919. The Soviets, he knew, had long memories.

Meanwhile, despite the exhausting journey, Masur tossed and turned upstairs. That night I was not able to sleep, he recalled, not because of the constant noise from the planes but tension at the thought of meeting with Himmler, the feeling that possibly the destiny of thousands of Jews were dependent on my words.

Knowing he would likely never return, Kersten thought sadly of how much he would miss the estate where he had spent so many happy times. He gazed into the woods where he loved to hunt deer and remembered an outing with Himmler years before. Himmler never could understand Kerstens passion for deer stalking, and the doctor would never forget Himmlers ironic words that day: How could you find any pleasure, Herr Kersten, in shooting from behind cover at poor creatures browsing on the edge of a wood . . . Properly considered, its pure murder.

Just after 2 a.m., Schellenberg arrived to brief Kersten on recent events. He brought mixed news. The week before, Allied troops had liberated Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald, two of Germanys largest concentration camps. Himmler, defying Hitlers order, had kept his promise to surrender the camps intact, although Schellenberg had to intervene at the last minute to stop a planned evacuation of Buchenwald ordered by [Ernst] Kaltenbrunner. When the Allies arrived, they found a white flag flying from the water tower. As a result, Schellenberg reported, the party leadership was furious. Hitlers top lieutenant, Martin Bormann, was demanding that Himmler obey the Fuhrers instructions. If the regime fell, the reasoning went, as many of its enemies as possible should be liquidated in the process.

Kersten realized that his written agreement with Himmler the month before was worthless when put up against the Reichsfuhrers fear of Hitler. Kersten knew that Himmlers spinelessness before the Fuhrer could jeopardize all his efforts. Late into the morning, Kersten and Schellenberg discussed strategy. Schellenberg proposed an idea he thought might work if Himmlers nerve failed. The essential thing, he said, is to get Himmler to confirm the promises he made you in my presence. In that case, even if he goes back on his word after you have left and gives orders for the extermination, [Himmlers adjutant Rudolf] Brandt and I will take the necessary steps to see the orders are not passed on.

At 9 a.m., while the two were still talking, Masur came downstairs, where Kersten introduced him to Schellenberg. As Elizabeth served breakfast, the intelligence chief explained that Himmler had been detained in Berlin over plans for the celebration of Hitlers birthday that evening. After the planned birthday dinner, he would get to Harzwalde as quickly as possible. Masur couldnt help but be struck by the almost comical irony. Hitler should have only known that Himmler, after the birthday party, would be negotiating with a Jew! he thought.

After hours of waiting, Kersten too had almost given up hoping Himmler would come. He was just thinking of retiring for the night when, at precisely 2:30 a.m., the Finn heard the sound of a car coming down his driveway. He stepped outside to see Himmler getting out with his adjutant, Brandt. Anxious to gauge the Reichsfuhrers mood, Kersten asked his sister to show Brandt inside so he could have a private talk with his patient.

It was a warm spring night. In the moonlight, as they stood on the porch outside, Kersten could see that Himmler was wearing his full military uniform, covered with military decorations. Each one, he reflected, represented some act of brutality in the name of the Reich. Kersten recorded this talk in his diary: I asked Himmler to be not only amiable but magnanimous towards Masur. Not the least important factor in considering Masurs requests was the chance to show the world, which had been so disgusted by the harsh treatment accorded to the Third Reichs political enemies, that this had been reversed and humanitarian measures undertaken. It was of the first importance to produce such evidence, otherwise history would make a one-sided judgment on the German people. Various earlier talks had shown me how receptive Himmler was to this type of argument. Himmler promised to do all he could towards granting Masurs requests. His actual words were: I want to bury the hatchet between us and the Jews. If I had had my own way, many things would have been done differently... When they finished conversing, Kersten showed Himmler into the house where Masur waited with Schellenberg. Kersten made the introductions.

Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler . . . Herr Norbert Masur, delegate of the World Jewish Congress. The two men sized each other up. Once predator and prey, they were now in the refuge of Kerstens neutral estate. There was an uncomfortable silence, the only sound the crackling of the flames in the giant fireplace. Finally, Himmler said, Good day. Im glad youve come.

Thank you, Masur responded coolly.

Excerpted from In the Name of Humanity by Max Wallace. Copyright  2017 by Max Wallace. Published by Allen Lane Canada/Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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BARCELONA, SPAINA cell of at least nine extremists meticulously plotted to combine vehicles and explosives in a direct hit on tourists, and managed to carry off most of their deadly plan, killing 14 people, authorities said Friday.

Police in Spain and France pressed a manhunt for any remaining members of the group, which Daesh claimed as its own.

Only flawed bomb construction avoided a more devastating attack, authorities said after taking a closer look at a blast Wednesday evening in the town of Alcanar that was first written off as a household gas explosion. At least one person was killed and several injured in the home where police said the deadly plan took shape.

Eighteen hours later, a rented van veered into Barcelonas crowded Las Ramblas promenade, swerving along the walkway Thursday and killing 13 people including a Canadian, Ian Moore Wilson of Vancouver. Four other Canadians were among the 100 or so people injured in the attack.

Armed with an axe, knives and false explosives belts, attackers drove a second vehicle to the boardwalk in the resort town of Cambrils early Friday, fatally injuring one person. Five of those attackers were shot to death, among them 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, according to a Spanish police union official.

Oukabirs name was first on a document listing four suspects sought in the attacks, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation. The Barcelona-based La Vanguardia newspaper, Spanish national broadcaster RTVE and other outlets cited police sources as saying he was the driver of the van in Barcelona.

The arrest order was issued throughout Spain and into France, according to the Spanish official and a French police official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the document. They did not say what became of the other three men listed, who ranged in age from 18 to 24. All had roots in Morocco; only Moussa Oukabir was born in Spain, according to the document.

Earlier in the day, Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont said at least one terrorist is still on out there. We do not have information regarding the capacity to do more harm.

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The French official said Spain had flagged a rented van that was believed to have crossed the border to the north.

Moussas brother, Driss Oukabir, was arrested Thursday after he went to police to report his stolen identity documents were those found in the van abandoned on the historic Las Ramblas promenade, Spanish media reported.

The brothers were born and raised in Ripoll, a quiet, upscale town of 10,000 tucked into hilly Catalan heartland and dominated by the imposing tower of the Monesteri de Santa Maria. The dented door to the familys first-floor apartment swung open Friday; the home was empty.

Authorities said the two attacks were related and the work of a large terrorist cell that had been plotting for a long time from the house in Alcanar, 200 kilometres down the coast from Barcelona. The house was destroyed by a butane gas explosion Wednesday night that killed one person. One of those injured in the blast was taken into custody.

Senior police official Josep Lluis Trapero said police believed the apparently accidental explosion prevented the suspects from carrying out a far deadlier attack.

Police said they arrested two people Friday, after the two arrests a day earlier. In custody are three Moroccans and one Spaniard, none with terrorism-related records.

We are not talking about a group of one or two people, but rather a numerous group, regional Interior Ministry chief Joaquim Forn told Onda Cero radio.

Spanish authorities had not yet drawn any direct links between Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, extremists and the suspects in the Spanish attacks, but the possibility that members of the Spanish group could still be at large was chilling. Those who have survived prior attacks nearly always ended their lives with new bloodshed and a hail of police bullets.

There is the danger they will not let themselves get caught and will do something dramatic, said Alain Chouet, a former French intelligence official. Amid heavy security, Barcelona tried to move forward Friday, with the Las Ramblas promenade quietly reopening to the public and King Felipe VI and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy joining thousands in a minute of silence in the citys main square.

I am not afraid! I am not afraid! the crowd chanted in Catalan and Spanish.

Authorities were still dealing with the Barcelona van attack when police in Cambrils, 130 kilometres to the south, fatally shot the five attackers who had plowed into tourists and locals with their car near the towns boardwalk. Forn said the five were wearing fake bomb belts.

One woman in Cambrils died from her injuries and five others were wounded, Catalan police said.

The Islamic State group said on its Aamaq news agency that the Barcelona attack was carried out by soldiers of the Islamic State in response to its calls for followers to target countries participating in the coalition fighting the extremist group in Syria and Iraq.

Islamist extremists have targeted Europes major tourist attractions in recent years. Rented or hijacked vehicles have formed the backbone of a strategy to attack the West and its cultural symbols. Barcelonas Las Ramblas is one of the most popular attractions in a city that swarms with foreign tourists in August.

The dead and wounded in the two attacks came from 34 countries.

Rajoy called the killings a savage terrorist attack and said Spaniards are not just united in mourning, but especially in the firm determination to beat those who want to rob us of our values and our way of life.

U.S. President Donald Trump personally offered his condolences to Rajoy and pledged to support Spanish authorities in their investigation and in bringing the perpetrators to justice, the White House said Friday.

Makeshift memorials grew along Las Ramblas after it reopened to the public, albeit under heavy surveillance and an unusual quiet.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered his condolences to the families and friends affected by the terrorist attack, calling it a senseless loss of so many innocent people.

We must stand firm against the spread of hate and intolerance in all its forms. These violent acts that seek to divide us will only strengthen our resolve, Trudeau said.

With files The Canadian Press

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BOGOTAVenezuelas ousted chief prosecutor and her husband  two of President Nicolas Maduros most outspoken critics  fled the country and landed Friday afternoon in Colombia, authorities said.

Luisa Ortega Diaz and German Ferrer arrived in Bogota aboard a private plane travelling from Aruba, Colombian Migration authorities said.

No immediate details were provided on whether the couple is seeking asylum, with officials only confirming that Ortega had completed the corresponding migration process.

Ortega and Ferrer have long been aligned with Venezuelas ruling socialist party but recently broke with Maduro, publicly denouncing his push to convene a constitutional assembly that was installed in early August and is now governing with virtually unlimited rule.

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One of the assemblys first acts was to remove Ortega and appoint one of Maduros key allies, Tarek William Saab, as the nations new top law enforcement officer.

On Thursday, the government-stacked Supreme Court ordered Ferrer under arrest, a day after Saab accused him of orchestrating a $6 million (U.S.) extortion ring that allegedly occurred under Ortegas watch.

Ferrer denied the accusations and many believe they are politically motivated.

In June, the Supreme Court barred Ortega from leaving the country and ordered her bank accounts frozen as part of its investigation into a complaint filed by a pro-government lawmaker that accused her of acting as an opposition leader and requested a probe into her mental insanity.

Univision reported Friday that Ortega and Ferrer fled in a speed boat to Aruba, which lies a short distance to the northern coast of Venezuela.

Authorities have not yet confirmed how she arrived to the Caribbean island.

The couples whereabouts had been unknown for several days, but earlier Friday Ortega surfaced online, addressing a gathering of Latin Americas prosecutors in Pueblo, Mexico.

Ortega told the regions prosecutors that Maduro removed her in order to stop a probe linking him and his inner circle to nearly $100 million in bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

Odebrecht officials have admitted to paying almost $100 million in bribes to Venezuelan officials in exchange for contacts.

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BEIRUTThe U.S.-backed Lebanese army launched a long-awaited offensive on Saturday against Daesh militants holed up in a remote stretch of northeastern Lebanon, just as a separate offensive by the Hezbollah militia and the Syrian army got underway right across the border in Syria.

The offensive is the biggest military operation launched by the Lebanese army since the Syrian rebels and extremists began infiltrating parts of northeastern Lebanon after the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011, and, if successful, will enable Lebanon to reassert control over all of its borders.

The battle is fraught with sensitivities, however, because of the duelling roles played by the U.S.-backed Lebanese force and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which operate alongside one another as both allies and rivals in Lebanons complicated political landscape. Hezbollah is a partner in Lebanons coalition government, from which the Lebanese army takes its orders.

But their sponsors put them at opposite ends of a wider spectrum of geopolitical rivalries playing out in Lebanon and across the Middle East  between the United States and Iran.

This is a fight the historically weak and divided Lebanese army cannot afford to lose, said Aram Nerguizian in an analysis for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies late last month.

Failure, or the risk of it, would only bolster Hezbollahs argument that it and Iran are indispensable to Lebanons stability, he said.

The Lebanese army insisted that there was no co-ordination with the Hezbollah and Syrian forces, whose operation was confined to the Syrian side of the border. The Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia has been fighting for years alongside the Syrian army in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Lebanese army troops launched their assault at dawn near the towns of Ras Baalbek and Qaa, located in rugged, mountainous terrain that has been under Daesh control since 2014, said Brig.-Gen. Ali Qanso at a news conference at the Defence Ministry, north of Beirut.

There is no co-ordination, neither with Hezbollah nor with the Syrian army, he said. The Lebanese army launched its operation first, he said, pounding militant positions with rocket and artillery fire starting at 5 a.m.

Hezbollah issued a separate statement saying that it began its offensive early Saturday, with no mention of the Lebanese army operation.

The issue of co-ordination between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah is sensitive because of the extensive military aid Lebanons army receives from the U.S., which considers Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization.

More than $1.5 billion in U.S. military aid has come to Lebanon over the past decade, including supplies of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, surveillance drones, attack aircraft and helicopters that account for 80 per cent of the military equipment in use by the Lebanese army, according to a fact sheet provided by the U.S. departments of Defence and State. U.S. military personnel have trained 32,030 Lebanese troops, nearly half of the strength of the army, it said.

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SAN DIEGOA 25-year-old U.S. citizen has been charged with using a drone to smuggle more than 5.9 kilograms of methamphetamine from Mexico by drone, an unusually large seizure for what is still a novel technique to bring illegal drugs into the United States, authorities said Friday.

Jorge Edwin Rivera told authorities that he used drones to smuggle drugs five or six times since March, typically delivering them to an accomplice at a nearby gas station in San Diego, according to a statement of probable cause. He said he was to be paid $1,000 for the attempt that ended in his arrest.

Border Patrol agents in San Diego allegedly saw the drone in flight on Aug. 8 and tracked it to Rivera about 1,830 metres from the Mexico border. Authorities say agents found Rivera with the methamphetamine in a lunch box and a 0.6-meter drone hidden in a nearby bush.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in a recent annual report that drones are not often used to smuggle drugs from Mexico because they can only carry small loads, though it said they may become more common. In 2015, two people pleaded guilty to dropping 12.7 kilograms of heroin from a drone in the border town of Calexico, California. That same year, Border Patrol agents in San Luis, Arizona, spotted a drone dropping bundles with 13.61 kilograms of marijuana.

Alana Robinson, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, said drones havent appealed to smugglers because their noise attracts attention and battery life is short. Also, payloads pale compared to other transportation methods, like hidden vehicle compartments, boats or tunnels.

As technology addresses those shortcomings, Robinson expects drones to become more attractive to smugglers. The biggest advantage for them is that the drone operator can stay far from where the drugs are dropped, making it less likely to get caught.

The Border Patrol is very aware of the potential and are always listening and looking for drones, Robinson said.

Benjamin Davis, Riveras attorney, declined to comment. Rivera is being held without bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 7.

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Federal regulators are playing a game of catch-up when it comes to monitoring the legal and tax effects stemming from the explosion of investment in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which has more than doubled in price in the last three months to more than $4,000.

In July, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an investigative report that determined digital tokens sold by a virtual organization known as the DAO were securities. Also last month, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network took down one of Bitcoin's largest and oldest exchanges, BTC-e, and penalized it $110 million for violating anti-money laundering laws.

"What you're seeing now is the next round of regulatory guidance, and in a sense, starting to fill in some of the gray areas and the gaps that have emerged given the pace of development in this area," said Alan Cohn, of counsel at Steptoe & Johnson LLP and former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. "You're seeing an advance in the regulatory framework evolving around this new asset class."

The first round of regulations on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies took place between 2013 and 2015, when officials several measures to define the rules of the space. FinCEN set out guidelines for applying anti-money laundering and fraud laws in 2013, and in 2014, the IRS declared Bitcoin would be treated and taxed as property. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2015 defined Bitcoin and digital currencies as commodities.

Now, a renewed effort is underway to define the legal and regulatory parameters of the arena.

The SEC's July report served as a warning shot to market participants that offers and sales of digital assets, known more commonly as initial coin offerings (ICOs), might be subject to federal securities laws.

FinCEN's action against BTC-e also included the arrest of one of its operators, Russian national Alexander Vinnik, who has been tied to Mt. Gox, an exchange that went under in 2014 after hundreds of bitcoins housed there were stolen. Vinnik was arrested in Greece at the request of U.S. law enforcement officials and indicted by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of California.

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The IRS has been trying to compel U.S.-based digital currency exchange Coinbase to turn over information on its customers to identify those not paying capital gains taxes. And the CFTC recently granted trading and clearing platform LedgerX permission to register as a swap exchange facility and derivatives clearing organization.

Representatives from FinCEN, the SEC and the IRS declined to comment.

"We're at a point in the regulatory environment where there's guidance out there, but it's not well established," said Rob Long, partner at Bell Nunnally & Martin LLP and former attorney at the SEC, Department of Justice and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

The SEC, which provided guidance on the DAO token, has left open to interpretation how the agency might treat other ICOs moving forward. There are already over 1000 digital assets being tracked by website Coin Market Cap.

"The problem is that while the SEC gave us in their report clarity about what would definitely qualify as a security, they didn't tell us whether some other kinds of tokens, maybe those kinds of tokens that have utility, are clearly not securities," said Jerry Brito, executive director of public policy advocacy group Coin Center. "We're hoping that the SEC at some point will issue some guidance."

The disclosure language used by issuers and the motivations of investors -- namely, whether the coins they're buying they're reselling for profit or they have some functional utility -- are helpful guidelines in deciphering whether a coin might be considered a security, said Greg Xethalis, counsel at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP.

"Enforcement staff will likely look harder at token sales that sell tokens without an existing platform for their use, feature suspect or misleading disclosure language, and eschew the constantly evolving best practices," he said.

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It's unlikely Bitcoin or Ethereum, another popular cryptocurrency, would be considered a security, but there are wrinkles, Xethalis said.

"Bitcoin can be classified by different regulators in different ways when used for different purposes," he said. "In its native form, it is most appropriately considered a commodity or commodity money; however, it can be rejiggered as a security under certain circumstances."

Investors in ICOs run a heightened risk in an already volatile arena. While those holding coins deemed unregistered securities by the SEC wouldn't be subject to criminal punishment, they could see their investments plunge in value. "The question is not what happens to the money, it's what happens to the value of the token," Brito said.

Investors evaluating Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies should take a hard look at the evolving regulatory environment before diving in. They should opt for U.S.-registered exchanges if possible and make sure they understand what their tax obligations are and how to approach them.

"Unlike a typical broker you might use to buy and trade stocks, you can't necessarily rely on an exchange to give you a full accounting of your gains," Brito said. "You have to keep account of that yourself and report that yourself to the IRS."

Cryptocurrencies are a volatile asset, with Bitcoin's volatility about six times that of the S&P 500. There are no fundamentals, there's no government backing, and the current ICO market is essentially the Wild West.

"Cryptocurrency prices are extremely volatile. Huge, rapid price swings are common," Long said, noting that Bitcoin's price is up about $600 from a week ago, but the increase and more could be erased, or not, by tomorrow. "[It's a] wild ride."

"Investors really need to be very careful," said Duke University business professor Campbell Harvey. "Be sure when you do this that you're willing to lose everything you put in."

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Editors' Pick: Originally published Aug. 18.
Avangrid, Inc., an energy services holding company, engages in the regulated energy transmission and distribution, and renewable energy generation businesses in the United States. The company operates through Networks and Renewables segments. It is involved in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity; and distribution, transportation, and sale of natural gas. The company also operates renewable energy generation facilities primarily using onshore wind power, as well as solar, biomass, and thermal power. It delivers natural gas and electricity to residential, commercial, and institutional customers through its regulated utilities in New York, Maine, Connecticut, and Massachusetts; and sells its output to investor-owned utilities, public utilities, and other credit-worthy entities. In addition, the company generates and provides power and other services to federal and state agencies, as well as institutional retail and joint action agencies; and delivers thermal output to wholesale customers in the Western United States. It owns eight electric and natural gas utilities, serving 3.3 million customers in New York and New England, as well as owns and operates 8.8 gigawatts of electricity capacity primarily through wind power in 22 states. The company was incorporated in 1997 and is headquartered in Orange, Connecticut. Avangrid, Inc. is a subsidiary of Iberdrola, S.A.
MarineMax, Inc. operates as a recreational boat and yacht retailer and superyacht services company in the United States. It operates through two segments, Retail Operations and Product Manufacturing. The company sells new and used recreational boats, including pleasure and fishing boats, mega-yachts, yachts, sport cruisers, motor yachts, pontoon boats, ski boats, jet boats, and other recreational boats. It also offers marine parts and accessories comprising marine electronics; dock and anchoring products that include boat fenders, lines, and anchors; boat covers; trailer parts; water sport accessories, which comprise tubes, lines, wakeboards, and skis; engine parts; oils; lubricants; steering and control systems; corrosion control products and service products; high-performance accessories, including propellers and instruments; and a line of boating accessories, such as life jackets, inflatables, and water sports equipment. In addition, the company provides novelty items, such as shirts, caps, and license plates; marine engines and equipment; maintenance, repair, and slip and storage accommodation services; and boat or yacht brokerage services, as well as charters yachts and power catamarans. Further, it offers new or used boat finance services; arranges insurance coverage, including boat property, disability, undercoating, gel sealant, fabric protection, and casualty insurance coverage; and manufactures and sells sport yachts and yachts. Additionally, the company operates vacations in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. It also markets and sells its products through offsite locations and print catalog. The company has 79 retail locations in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. MarineMax, Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is based in Clearwater, Florida.
Next week, Samsung executives will take the stage at a press event in New York to unveil the next generation of the Korean company's supersize Note smartphone. This isn't gonna be just any old product launch; a lot is riding on this particular phone.

Samsung almost had a winner on its hands with the Note 7, a feature-packed phone that dazzled critics  until it turned into a literal garbage fire. Now, Samsung seeks to recapture the pre-recall magic with the Note 8.

(Image credit: Concept Credit: Benjamin Geskin)

Samsung faces two hurdles with this launch. First, the infamous recall has made the Note a punchline, and the company needs to turn that around by executing its next Note perfectly. The second challenge is timing: The Galaxy Note 8 is heading to market just weeks before Apple takes the wraps off its 10th anniversary iPhone, and the buzz surrounding that device is already deafening.

So what can Samsung do to take on Apple and prove to the world that the Galaxy Note 8 is a must-have? We have some ideas.

Be flawless

Samsung has mostly recovered from the dragging its reputation took last year. The company apologized for the Note 7 debacle and hired independent investigators to figure out why the batteries were exploding. The company then committed to more stringent standards to prevent future disasters, including an eight-point battery safety check for every phone. Though people still joke about the Note 7, no one expects Samsung's future devices to catch fire, especially after the Galaxy S8's smooth launch earlier this year.

Only time will tell if there are any huge issues with the Note 8.

"If Samsung stays core to quality, to great execution and delivery of this product, I think they can definitely go head-to-head with the new iPhone," said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, who analyzes the personal technology industry.

(Image credit: Evan Blass/Twitter)

Only time will tell if there are any huge issues with the Note 8. But in addition to delivering a flawless phone, Samsung needs to innovate. The Note lineup is where the company tends to level up with cutting-edge features. The S8 incorporated some of the Note 7's technology, like the iris scanner, and now the Note 8 needs to push it forward.

"Last year, the [Note] 7 really raised the bar as far as what the Note represented as a phone," said Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst for market research firm Creative Strategies. "It was all about the bigger screen, and then the [S] Pen was really a differentiator. Last year, we saw that this was a broader device, and it became the flagship product for Samsung. It was a shame that  they ended up recalling the phone and not actually taking advantage of the broader appeal of the device. This year, that's what they need to build on and make the device a more all-around flagship product.

Sell the story

The Note 8's long-rumored dual-lens camera would be one example of innovation  sort of. Samsung wouldn't be the first smartphone-maker to incorporate two rear lenses. The Note 8 wouldn't even be the first Android phone to include a dual-lens system, and that technology is already surfacing in budget Android phones such as ZTE's $130 Blade Z Max.



According to a new SurveyMonkey study of 1,000 smartphone owners, 45 percent of people who currently own a Samsung device said they would think about buying a Note 8.

So Samsung needs to be clear about how the Note 8's camera will make a difference. Apple used the iPhone 7 Plus' dual-lens camera with portrait mode to convince people they needed a larger, more expensive phone, Milanesi said. Samsung could do the same.

(Image credit: Bixby on a Galaxy S8. Credit: Samsung)

Samsung also needs to improve its personal assistant, Bixby, which stuttered at launch and has failed to impress. Cozza said Samsung needs "to build experiences around their devices" and "articulate the value" of what it's offering. The company obviously knows how to cram every hot new feature into its flagship devices, but illustrating scenarios in which those features would be useful for the average consumer and marketing the hell out of them? Not so much.

Appeal to fans

Because of itssize, price and stylus integration, the Note 8 will be a niche device, analysts say. As such, Samsung's core market for the device is its existing fans and people looking for a larger premium Android phone. The Note 8 is rumored to have a 6.3-inch display.

According to a new SurveyMonkey study of 1,000 smartphone owners, 45 percent of people who currently own a Samsung device said they would think about buying a Note 8. Even people who bought the Note 7  who might be expected to feel burned by the company (literally or figuratively)  are willing to give the company another chance, as 80 percent still consider the company reliable.

(Image credit: Galaxy Note 7. Credit: Jeremy Lips/Tom's Guide)

But the Note isn't a "churner device," Milanesi said. In other words, it's not a phone that could convince people to switch operating systems  especially not with the iPhone 8 around the corner.

"It's still going to be hard for Samsung to win over iPhone users," she said. "There are still a lot of jokes about explosions and how hot they [Note 7 phones] get. The Apple core base take advantage quite glibly of instances that Apple competitors are faced with. I see this as more of an opportunity  to put more pressure on [Google's upcoming second-gen] Pixel to come out and raise the bar.

Googles Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones offer what most consider a purer version of Android, as close to stock as you can get, but theyre close to a year old and lack many of the hardware and software features Samsung has added to its phones over the last 18 months.

Samsung might not appeal to iPhone users or Android purists with the Galaxy Note 8, but the company could win in other ways by redeeming its Note brand and moving the smartphone industry forward. Your move, Google.
The newly established Fujairah Terminals, under the management of Abu Dhabi Ports, welcomed its first container feeder vessel, the Dubai Alliance.



This is the first ship to arrive at the terminal, which is wholly owned by Abu Dhabi Ports, the master developer, operator and manager of commercial and community ports within the emirate of Abu Dhabi, Fujairah Port and Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (Kizad), following the signing of a concession agreement with the Port of Fujairah in June this year, reported Wam, the Emirates official news agency.



Following the signing of the 35-year concession agreement with the Fujairah Port, that granted Abu Dhabi Ports exclusive rights to develop port infrastructure and undertake operations for containers, general cargo, RoRo and cruise ships, Fujairah Terminals was established and took over management of the terminals from Fujairah Port Authority from August 1.



Captain Mohamed Juma Al Shamisi, CEO of Abu Dhabi Ports, said: "We are marking the beginning of a new era for both Abu Dhabi Ports and the Port of Fujairah under the new management of Fujairah Terminals. The investment in port infrastructure will go a long way to strengthening development and operation of ports and terminals across the UAE and its contribution to the growth of a diversified, knowledge-based economy highlighting Fujairahs strategic role in the UAEs maritime and trade growth, bringing about a marked increase in vessel calls, such as the Dubai Alliance and many more to come."



Dubai Alliance is a vessel under Star Feeders LLC, a specialist short-sea common carrier container feeder service that operates a feeder network between UAE ports. The ship called at Fujairah Terminals to deliver a container for local industries and to receive containers for onward shipments.



Upa Jayalth, general manager for Operations at Star Feeder and Nirmil Perara, general manager for Sales and Marketing at Star Feeders, met with Fujairah Terminals General Manager, Naser Al Busaeedi, to express their support and commitment to working with the newly established Fujairah Terminals.



Al Busaeedi said: "Through the planned infrastructure investment and sharing of best practices by Abu Dhabi Ports, we are confident we are embarking on a new journey that will bring about a positive outlook for the port and the emirate of Fujairah as a whole. Using our experience and best practices gained from managing and running major ports like Zayed and Khalifa Ports, we intend to bring these valuable learnings to Fujairah Terminals and use existing commercial and business synergies to increase our value offering to our customers and simultaneously boost efficient trade.



Under the agreement with the Port of Fujairah, Abu Dhabi Ports is granted the exclusivity to enhance existing infrastructure in addition to managing all Container, General Cargo, RoRo and Cruise Ships in the Port. In addition, the company will retain the exclusive management of Container Business throughout the emirate of Fujairah for Container business.



Further terms of the agreement include enhancing the Ports ability to cater to larger vessels through the deepening of berths and building almost 300,000 sq m yard of storage space, as well as a 1km quay. Abu Dhabi Ports will also invest in new and advanced technological equipment to increase operational efficiencies and services.



Fujairah Terminals is expected to play a complementary role in maritime shipping activities at Khalifa Port and Zayed Port.
The Airports Authority has successfully carried out a simulation of a crash landing at Piarco.
Militants launched 25 attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in ATO area in Donbas over the past day. Three Ukrainian soldiers were wounded.

This is reported by the ATO press center.

In Mariupol direction, militants used 82mm mortars to launch attacks on Ukrainian troops near Chermalyk (31km north-east of Mariupol). In addition, militants shelled ATO positions near Pavlopol (30 km northeast of Mariupol), Lebedynske (16km north-east of Mariupol) and Shyrokyne (20km east of Mariupol). One Ukrainian serviceman was wounded as a result of enemy shelling in Vodiane area (16km north-west of Donetsk).

The tensest situation was observed in Donetsk direction, where illegal armed formations used mortars and grenade launchers to shell Ukrainian positions in the industrial area of Avdiivka (18km north of Donetsk).

In Luhansk direction, ATO troops came under grenade launchers fire in Novooleksandrivka (65km west of Luhansk) and Novozvanivka (70km west of Luhansk).

ish
Congos Prime Minister Clement Mouamba on Thursday resigned along with the rest of his cabinet, days after veteran President Denis Sassou Nguesso called for new leadership.

The Central African nation has been struggling with economic woes since the 2014 drop in oil prices as the drop reduced export revenues and increased public debt.

In his address to the nation during the countrys 57th independence anniversary on Tuesday, Denis Sassou Nguesso, 73, acknowledged the real and worrying economic situation the country is currently facing and called for new leadership.

The crisis into which Congo has been plunged since 2014, with all of the exporters of commodities, notably oil, continues to generate harmful effects, he said.

Budgetary receipts and public investments are falling constantly. Almost all sectors of the national economy are affected by the recession.

The public debt of Congo, a small country of 4.5 million people, represents 117 percent of its GDP, according to the International Monetary Fund, which recently said that Brazzaville had hidden part of its debt from the IMF.

As a reminder, President Nguesso has ruled the oil-rich nation for 31 of the last 36 years. In 1992, Nguesso was defeated in a presidential election after assuming power in 1979. However, he took power again in 1997 following a brief civil war in which his forces defeated then-President Pascal Lissouba.
Germany allocates an additional humanitarian assistance in the amount of EUR 1 million to Ukraine under the UNHCR program.

This is stated on the website of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Kyiv.

"This year, Germany again provides non-refundable aid worth EUR 1 million to support the humanitarian activities of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)," the report reads.

The aid is provided in the framework of the project "Protection and Assistance to Internally Displaced and Other Vulnerable Persons Who Suffer from the Crisis in Ukraine". The project is directly aimed at that part of the population that is suffering from the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.

ish
There have been no Ukrainians among those killed or injured as a result of armed attacks in the Finnish city of Turku.

The Department of Consular Service of the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine informed this on Twitter.

"The Finnish police reported that there were no Ukrainians among the victims as a result of tragic events in Turku on August 18," the report reads.

As reported, Finnish police said two people were killed and six injured on Friday, August 18, after a stabbing attack in the city of Turku. The police said they could not confirm if the attack was terror related. The suspected assailant was shot in the leg and taken into custody.

ish
A meeting of President Petro Poroshenko and Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak with U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis can positively influence the future of anti-Russian sanctions, as well as the situation in the conflict zone in Donbas and Crimea.

Deputy Minister for Temporarily Occupied Territories Heorhiy Tuka said this in comments to 112 Ukraina TV Channel.

According to Tuka, Mattis's visit to Ukraine is of a political nature, but we can expect from its results a progress in the settlement of the conflict in Donbas and in the issue of Crimea's return.

"I hope that this will lead to the strengthening of our Armed Forces, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, help the United States put pressure inside the country on the forces that are interested only in business interests and that lose due to the imposition of sanctions on Russia," he said.

Tuka noted that quick decisions on the Ukrainian issue after the meeting of Mattis with Poroshenko and Poltorak should not be expected, including in the provision of lethal weapons.

As reported, on Independence Day, August 24, President Petro Poroshenko will hold talks with U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who will arrive in Kyiv to participate in celebrations.

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BUILDING THE LA RAZA 'The Race' WELFARE STATE ON MIDDLE AMERICAS' BACKS: Months ago, the Biden administration publicly defended their proposal to begin providing federal identification cards to border crossers and illegal aliens who they plan to release into American communities. The goal of the proposal is to make securing public benefits easier.
It's pronounced AN-ti-fa  short for anti-fascists  and it is arguably either a violent far-left militia or a group of human rights activists so dedicated they will risk life and limb to protect democracy.

Their participation in the Charlottesville protest last Saturday may have been behind President Donald Trump's assertion that many sides contributed to the violence that left three people dead.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides, Trump said at a press conference hours after the violence occurred. On many sides, he repeated.

Visibility has grown

The antifa in the United States have grown more visible over the past year, coinciding with the rise in visibility of the white nationalist movement, or alt-right. Experts say antifa groups are not centrally organized, and their members may espouse a number of different causes, from politics to race relations to gay rights. But the principle that binds them  along with an unofficial uniform of black clothing and face masks  is the willingness to use violence to fight against white supremacists.

The antifa have their fans among some peace-loving activists. The prominent writer, academic and activist Cornel West attended the Charlottesville events and praised the antifa for protecting nonviolent activists.

If it hadn't been for the anti-fascists protecting us from the neo-fascists, he told the Washington Post, we would have been crushed like cockroaches.

Open to violence

Mark Bray, lecturer at Dartmouth College and author of the upcoming Antifa: the Anti-Fascist Handbook, writes, Anti-fascists argue that after the horrors of chattel slavery and the Holocaust, physical violence against white supremacists is both ethically justifiable and strategically effective. ... They put forth an ethically consistent, historically informed argument for fighting Nazis before it's too late.

But the antifa's openness to violent tactics has also left them vulnerable to criticism from both left and right, in particular from President Donald Trump.

You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, Trump said Tuesday during a news conference. What about the alt-left? They came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right. Do they have any semblance of guilt?

Group's use of violence rejected

The Anti-Defamation League, which describes its mission as fighting the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all, has spoken out against antifa actions. Oren Segal, director of the League's Center on Extremism, told CNN that his organization opposes antifa's use of violence.



It helps the white supremacists narrative of victimization become a more effective talking point, he said.

The conservative National Review magazine labeled antifa a vague and dangerous ideology in a June 2017 article about the movement. But Segal argued on CNN, there's extremist ideology and then there's extremist tactics.

Threat puts stop to parade

While debate continues over antifa tactics, antifa protesters are a dependable presence at conservative events. They protested last year at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio; at a Washington, D.C. alt-right conference in November 2016; at the Trump inauguration in January; at a string of protests in Berkeley, California, in February, March and April; at a conservative rally in Portland, Oregon, in June; and at the Charlottesville event last weekend.

A Portland, Oregon, parade was canceled in April after two antifa groups announced their intention to protest the participation of the local Republican Party in the festivities. Following those announcements, the business association sponsoring the parade received an anonymous email threatening that 200 people would rush into the parade to attack local Republicans.

Explaining the parade cancellation, Rich Jarvis, spokesman for the Rose Festival Foundation, told The Oregonian newspaper: If we can't provide safety for our fans, there's no use in trying, he said. Our official position is, we're extremely sad about this.
The news that White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was leaving the Trump administration was made public Friday afternoon. By evening, he was back at work at his old job.

Bannon left the White House and went directly to the Breitbart News Network, the ultra-conservative online publication he led before joining Donald Trumps presidential campaign a little more than a year ago.

The website announced that Bannon returned as Executive Chairman of Breitbart News Friday afternoon and chaired the companys evening editorial meeting.

He took over leadership of Breitbart following the death of its founder, Andrew Breitbart, in 2012. With Bannon at the helm, Breitbart News took on a more nationalistic slant, appealing to the alt-right movement.

Bannon is credited with helping Trump win the White House by pushing a populist, nationalist message after joining the campaign. But following the election, Bannon clashed with other powerful West Wing figures, including Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

In interviews following his departure, Bannon  using the same bellicose language that became the hallmark of Breitbart News under his watch  said he looked forward to taking on those he feels are standing in Trumps way.

If theres any confusion out there, let me clear it up: Im leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents on Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate America, Bannon told Bloomberg News.

I feel jacked up, he said during an interview with The Weekly Standard. Now Im free. Ive got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, its Bannon the Barbarian. I am definitely going to crush the opposition.
Police said they arrested 27 people Saturday in a day of protests in Boston, Massachusetts, where an estimated 40,000 people gathered, a week after a march by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulted in three deaths.

Police Commissioner William Evans said the 27 people were arrested for charges that included assault and battery on police officers. Three people were wearing ballistic vests, and one of those was armed, the commissioner said.

The arrests came after a free-speech rally had ended and counterprotesters began dispersing, flooding the streets near the Boston Common.

News video showed officers in riot gear clashing with counterprotesters as the officers attempted to herd them in one direction.

Watch: Boston Still on Edge Even With Nonviolent Protest

A VOA reporter said guests at her hotel were asked at one point to stay inside because of protesters filling the surrounding Washington and Tremont streets. The reporter could see about 100 protesters from her window, chanting "our streets."

The thousands of leftist activists marching Saturday heavily outnumbered those attending the free-speech rally featuring right-wing speakers, which was scheduled in July by a group calling itself Boston Free Speech.

VOA's Celia Mendoza reports from Boston

John Medlar, one of the group's organizers, told multiple media outlets the rally would not welcome white supremacists, and he has denounced racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

"We absolutely denounce the KKK, neo-Nazis, ID Evropa, Vanguard  all these legit hate groups. We have nothing to do with them and we don't want them here," Medlar told the NBC-TV affiliate in Boston.

IN PICTURES: Dueling rallies in Boston

Photo Gallery: Dueling Protest Groups Hold Rallies in Boston Conservative free speech advocates and left-wing counterprotesters are holding dueling rallies in the East Coast city of Boston as police say they will not tolerate violence from either side. Share on Facebook

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Boston granted a permit for the free-speech rally to be held in a downtown park from noon to 2 p.m. EDT, with a maximum of 100 people, though far fewer people showed up. The rally dispersed about 1:30 p.m.

Despite the group's rejection of white supremacists, ANSWER Coalition Boston, a local chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement, planned a counterdemonstration, which it dubbed "Fight Supremacy," to oppose the free-speech rally.

Boston officials put a plan in place to handle the dueling rallies in order to avoid the violence seen last weekend in Charlottesville, which left one woman dead after a white nationalist protester allegedly drove his car into a group of counterprotesters.

No major violence was reported during the Boston rallies, though TV news video showed several groups of counterprotesters surrounding men wearing pro-Donald Trump clothing and shouting obscenities.

VOA's Carolyn Presutti Reports From Competing Boston Rallies

In another incident, an elderly woman was hit and dragged to the ground by a counterprotester who tried to rip from her hands an American flag she was waving. The counterprotester ran away and the woman was helped up by others in the crowd.

WATCH: Thousands Gather in Boston for Competing Protests

President Donald Trump noted the incident on Twitter and commended police officers for their handling of the situation.

Prior to the event, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said more than 500 police officers would be on hand to keep the peace, and certain items were to be banned from the protest site.

"No weapons, no backpacks, no sticks,'' Walsh said. "We are going to have a zero-tolerance policy. If anyone gets out of control  at all  it will be shut down."

Protests were also held elsewhere across the U.S., including in Austin and Houston, Texas; Durham, North Carolina; and Laguna Beach and Venice, California.

VOA's Celia Mendoza contributed to this report.
On World Humanitarian Day, Saturday, the United Nations called for a stop to the deliberate targeting of civilians and humanitarians who risk their lives to help desperate men, women and children caught in war.

To mark this years observance, the U.N. is focusing on violence against health care workers and facilities, and its implications for the population.

In kicking off the days event, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said The health of humanitarian workers who set out to aid, heal and protect these people are themselves deliberately targeted for attack.

Staff are killed, wounded and detained, he said. Aid and medical supplies are looted and obstructed; health clinics and hospitals are damaged and destroyed.

The United Nations reports there were 302 attacks on health care workers in 2016, including 418 deaths and 561 injuries in 20 countries. Most occurred in Syria.

In the first three months of this year, the U.N. reports 88 attacks, 80 deaths and 81 injuries in 14 countries. Syria, which is in its sixth year of war, recorded 58 attacks.

One of the shocking things about the last two or three years is the amount of attacks on hospitals, said Mona Rishmawi, Chief of the Rule of Law, Equality and Non-Discrimination Branch in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

One of the fundamentals of international humanitarian law is that the sick and wounded are protected," said Rishmawi. If you attack those who are working with the sick and wounded and the infrastructure, actually they are denying them a big part of protection and that is very serious.

Rishmawi spoke to VOA about her own brush with death on August 19, 2003. On that day, the United Nations office in Iraqs capital, Baghdad, was bombed, killing the head of mission Sergio Vierra de Mello and 21 others.

Rishmawi was working as de Mellos human rights agenda adviser. She said she survived the terrorist attack because she was late for a meeting with him.

I feel quite lucky that I actually survived the attack and was able to help a few others around me at that moment and I think that was important,

These experiences never really go away, she said.

Rishmawi, who was injured and hospitalized, said she did not talk a lot about her experience. When pressed on the issue, she seemed hesitant to describe herself as suffering from survivors guilt.

My husband was also there, so I felt a huge responsibility also towards our families We did not realize how dangerous it was," she said. I had this sense of -- I would not say guilt -- but a sense of responsibility towards our elderly mothers, our family. And, of course the families of the others."

De Mello and his staff arrived in Baghdad on June 2, 2003, about one month after President George W. Bush declared Mission Accomplished on the war in Iraq. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, which began March 20, 2003, had lasted 21 days.

Rishmawi said the U.N.s mission to help formulate a vision for the future of the country was cut short when a foreign suicide bomber destroyed the Canal Hotel, taking the lives of 22 people and injuring many more.

She said August 19 was the day when the United Nations lost its innocence. She told VOA the fatal explosion was a turning point in the United Nations mission.

She added that the organization shut down its open line of communication with the people it served and became more protective.

It was the first time we realized that we could be targeted for something very, very serious, she said. So, I think the U.N. basically started to take more precautions about how to deliver some of its work and how to deliver humanitarian, particularly humanitarian assistance to the people who are most in need.

Five years after the tragic event, the General Assembly adopted a resolution designating August 19 World Humanitarian Day to pay tribute to aid workers who risk their lives in the service of others.

Rishmawi said it is important to shed light on the extent of suffering inflicted on people in conflict by the deliberate targeting of hospitals and health care workers and to make the perpetrators accountable for their crimes.

While acknowledging the difficulty in bringing war criminals before a court of law, she said ultimately justice would not be denied.

Even if it is delayed, things will happen. That is what we learned from Latin America. That is what we learned from years of war, said Rishmawi. People do not forget what happened to them. They might tolerate it for a while, but the moment they stand up, they do not forget.
A landslide in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo most likely killed more than 200 people, based on estimates from the number of households submerged, the vice governor of affected Ituri province said Friday.

The landslide struck the village of Tora, on the shores of Lake Albert, a seismically active zone in the western Rift Valley, on Thursday.

"There are many people submerged whom we were unable to save," Pacifique Keta, the vice governor of Ituri province, told Reuters by telephone. "The rescue is very complicated because there are mountains everywhere, which makes it very difficult to have access."

Many parts of west and central Africa are vulnerable to landslides, because land is heavily deforested and communities crowd into steep hillsides.

On Friday, Sierra Leone buried 461 victims of a mudslide that swept away homes on the edge of Freetown, the capital, and 600 more people are missing.

Eastern Congo has the added risk of being on a seismic fault line, which means it frequently suffers earthquakes and sometimes volcano eruptions.

Keta said the toll was an estimate based on the number of households submerged and the population of the households.

"We are trying to enhance the emergency response. The aid agencies and MINUSCO [the U.N. peacekeeping force] are there to evacuate bodies and any survivors as quickly as possible," Keta said.
Police in Spain and France continued their search Saturday for a 22-year-old Moroccan national whom they believe is at the center of Thursdays terror attack in Barcelona.

Police believe Younes Abouyaaqoub to be the leader of a 12-person jihadist terror cell responsible for the van ramming attack that killed 13 people and left more than 130 others injured.

Though Abouyaaqoub is still on the run, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido called the terror cell broken, with five of its members killed by police, four more in police custody and at least two more killed earlier in the week in an accidental explosion.

The four jihadists arrested by police are between the ages of 21 and 34, and all but one of them are Moroccan. The other is Spanish.

He said he doesnt believe another terror attack to be imminent.

A total of 14 people were killed in the twin terror attacks  13 in Barcelona and one in Cambrils, where a car was driven into a crowd of pedestrians before police shot and killed the five suspects after they left the vehicle.



Spanish media had reported that one of the suspects shot to death in Cambrils, 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, was believed to be the driver of the van in Barcelona. But during an interview with local TV late Friday, a police official said it appeared unlikely that Oukabir drove the van.

Moussa Oukabirs older brother, Driss Oukabir, is reportedly one of the jihadists detained by police.



Police also believe that the group may have had a larger attack planned, but an accidental explosion at a home suspected of being used by members of the group may have thwarted the plot.
@WilliamEMarch

State Sen. Tom Lee, R-Thonotosassa, appears to have stirred a hornets nest by announcing publicly that he intends to run for state chief financial officer in 2018.

Its long been known that Lee wanted to run for the office -- he ran in 2006 -- and hes made it no secret that he was considering it.

Still, many political insiders expected Lee would eventually decide to run for re-election to his state Senate seat instead of starting a primary fight with the current CFO, Republican Jimmy Patronis. Gov. Rick Scott appointed Patronis to the vacant post in June and solidly backs Patronis to run to hold it in 2018.

But without filing officially, Lee told a local reporter this week he intends to run  and did so on the day before attending a high-profile public event with Scott and Patronis in Brandon.

Awkward.

On Friday, Lee stood with Patronis, Scott and other Republican luminaries at Brandon Honda, while Scott and Patronis touted Scotts election-year proposal to make it harder for the Legislature to impose tax or fee increases.

Then a reporter asked Scott about the CFO race and about Lees announcement, and Scott made it clear where his loyalties are.

Ive known Jimmy for a long time, he said. I appointed Jimmy because I think hes going to do a really good job as CFO. I know hes concerned about whether hes going to run or not. If he runs Ill be a big supporter  Ill do everything I can to see that he wins.

Patronis hasnt said whether he intends to run in 2018 to hold onto the CFO post, but hes acting like a candidate.

He recently founded an independent political committee, Treasure Florida, and Scott will headline a fundraiser for that committee in Orlando in September.

Lee, however, has a substantial head start over Patronis in both statewide name recognition and money  nearly $2 million in his own committee, The Conservative.

Scott, of course, is expected to run for the U.S. Senate next year.

In the past, Lee and Scott have been allies. Scott appointed Lees wife, Laurel Lee, to a circuit judgeship in 2013, and Lee took over the Hillsborough County Republican Party, a time-consuming and thankless task, during Scotts 2014 re-election campaign.

However, the relationship has been less smooth lately. In the 2016 legislative session, Lee opposed Scotts plans for public school funding, and in the 2017 session, Lee was considered an ally of House Speaker Richard Corcoran, who clashed with Scott over economic incentives.

Lee sought the appointment as CFO, but Scott picked Patronis instead.

Also attending the Brandon event were a couple of the local state House members whod be interested in running to replace Lee in the Senate if he vacates his District 20 seat to run for CFO, Ross Spano of Dover and Danny Burgess of Zephyrhills.

They and Shawn Harrison, R-Tampa, all said theyd be interested if Lee left the seat vacant.

That means dominoes lined up to fall. If one or more of the GOP House members run, it will set off a scramble in GOP-leaning East Hillsborough to replace them. If Harrison runs, it would open up a House seat in a swing district that could easily go Democratic.
A stabbing attack carried out Friday by an 18-year-old Moroccan migrant in Finland is being investigated by Finnish authorities as a likely terrorist act, officials said.

Speaking Saturday with reporters, Pekka Hiltunen, a spokeswoman for the Finnish Security Intelligence Service, told reporters the agency was investigating the suspects ties to the Islamic State group, as IS has previously encouraged this kind of behavior.

Police have not released the name of the suspect in the stabbing attack. On Friday, the asylum-seeker stabbed nine people in the small city of Turku, leaving two of the victims dead. He apparently was targeting women, in particular.

"We think that the attacker especially targeted women, and the men were wounded after coming to the defense of the women," Finland's National Bureau of Investigation superintendent, Christa Granroth, told reporters.

Four other Moroccan men were also detained by police in connection with the stabbing, though it is unclear what their relationship is to the attacker.

The attacker was shot in the leg by police shortly after the attack took place, and he is now in the hospital under police watch.

Security was heightened at Helsinki airport and at train stations in response to the stabbings.

The Security Intelligence Service raised the terrorism threat level in June after becoming aware of terror-related plots in the usually peaceful country.

Turku is located about 140 kilometers west of the capital of Helsinki.

The stabbings occurred as Europe remains on high alert while it grapples with a spate of terrorist attacks, including two this week alone. At least 14 people were killed and 100 others injured Thursday in Spain after drivers mowed down pedestrians in two separate attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.



Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack in Barcelona.
Fitch Ratings has upgraded Greece's credit rating from CCC to B-, a one-notch improvement that still leaves the bonds issued by the crisis-battered country well below investment grade.

The ratings agency said Friday that the outlook of the Greek economy was positive and that it expected talks with the country's international creditors to be concluded "without creating instability."

A Fitch statement added that other European countries using the euro currency were expected to grant Greece substantial debt relief next year. It said that would boost market confidence and help Greece finance itself directly by issuing bonds after its current bailout program ends in a year.

Fitch said Greece's political situation had become more stable and that there was "limited" risk of a future government reversing bailout-linked austerity and reforms.
Lebanons U.S.-backed army Saturday announced the start of a long-awaited military campaign to clear Islamic State militants from a remote corner near the frontier with Syria, an offensive that seeks to end a years-old threat to neighboring towns and villages.

The Lebanese Hezbollah group and the Syrian army announced a simultaneous offensive to clear IS militants from the Syrian side of the border, in the western Qalamoun mountain range.

The campaign will involve cooperation between the two sides, although Lebanese authorities insist they are not coordinating with Syrian President Bashar Assads government. Hezbollah has been fighting alongside Assads forces since 2013.

The announcements were made Saturday by the Lebanese commander Joseph Aoun on Twitter, and the Central Military Media outlet, associated with the Syrian government.

The presence of extremists in the border area has brought suffering to neighboring towns and villages, from shelling to kidnappings of villagers for ransom. Car bombs made in the area and sent to other parts of the country, including the Lebanese capital, Beirut, have killed scores of people.

The army has accumulated steady successes against the militants in the past year, slowly clawing back territory, including strategic hills retaken in the past week.

Lebanon has been spared the wars and chaos that engulfed several countries in the region since the so-called Arab Spring uprisings erupted in 2011. But it has not been able to evade threats to its security, including sectarian infighting and random car bombings, particularly in 2014, when militants linked to al-Qaeda and IS overran the border region, kidnapping Lebanese soldiers.

Lebanese politicians say IS controls an area of about 300 square kilometers (115 square miles) between the two countries, around half of which is in Lebanon.

The area stretches from the Lebanese town of Arsal and Christian villages of Ras Baalbek and Qaa, to the outskirts of Syrias Qalamoun region and parts of the western Syrian town of Qusair, which Hezbollah captured in 2013.
Senior U.S. military leaders said Friday that Iraqi forces are largely set for their next major campaign against Islamic State extremists after closing out the wrenching nine-month battle to retake the city of Mosul.



Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said he sees the Iraqi assault on the IS-held area of Tal Afar unfolding relatively soon. The upcoming fight follows weeks of Iraq regrouping troops and repairing equipment and weapons after recapturing Mosul in July.



I cant say that we replaced every single damaged or broken vehicle or rifle or machine gun, said Townsend, whose forces are aiding the Iraqi military. But, he insisted: Theyll be ready enough.

On to Tal Afar



Tal Afar and the surrounding area are among the last pockets of IS-held territory in Iraq after victory was declared in Mosul, the countrys second-largest city. Tal Afar is west of Mosul and about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of the Syrian border. It sits along a major road that was a key IS supply route.



Mosul took a heavy toll on Iraqi forces. As many as 1,400 troops were killed and more than 7,000 wounded, and the Iraqi military has proceeded methodically since its biggest success to date. Just three years ago, its soldiers were chased by the Islamic state group from much of the battlefield.



The last days of Mosul looked like Iwo Jima to me, Townsend told a small group of reporters.



In the end, it took bulldozers plowing ISIS fighters under the rubble, he recalled, using multiple different acronyms for the extremist group. Iraqi infantry men advanced beside the bulldozers, shooting and throwing grenades at Daesh fighters popping up out of the rubble.



Iraqi Humvees emerged shot up, their glass windows spider-webbed with bullet marks and shrapnel, their weapons worn out or destroyed.

Equipment replaced, repaired



In the weeks since, much of the Iraqis equipment has been repaired or replaced, said Gen. Joseph Votel, Americas top Middle East commander who spent the last few days in Iraq.



I think they are ready, Votel told reporters Friday, echoing Townsend. The key priority, he said, is ensuring the Iraqis maintain momentum and have a good battle plan, and that the U.S.-led coalition is prepared to support them.



Votel met with Iraqi military and political leaders in Baghdad and with Kurdish Peshmerga leaders in Irbil, in northern Iraq. He was ensuring U.S. military advisory teams are with the right local units to provide the best support, intelligence gathering, surveillance and advice.



Iraqi military leaders said Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has approved their combat plans. The fight will involve a broad spectrum of forces, including the Iraqi Army, counterterrorism troops, police and a group of mainly Shiite, Iranian-backed militias.

Next big fight starts soon



The fight will start in the next few days, Iraqi Brig. Gen. Yahia Rasool told reporters. Speaking through an interpreter, he said officials believe there are between 1,400 and 1,600 IS militants in the Tal Afar area. Many are foreign fighters, he said.



Rasool said the various Iraqi forces have largely encircled Tal Afar.



I dont think it will be tougher than the battle of Mosul, taking into consideration the experience we got in Mosul, he said



Townsend said the fight for Tal Afar will be a microcosm of Mosul, with parts easier and others equally difficult.



Its smaller and there are fewer bad guys, Townsend said. But for the Iraqi security force member or policeman or infantry man or special forces soldier whos attacking, it wont be easier. Hes going to be facing a determined ISIS fighter dug into Tal Afar, determined to fight to the death.
Ahmad Alkhald, a Syrian national from Aleppo who played a key role in the Islamic State (IS) terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, has been identified as a specially designated global terrorist by the United States, the U.S. State Department said.

The designation Thursday  which also included an Iraqi national who has provided close protection to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the IS leader in Iraq and Syria  imposed strict sanctions on the individuals and prohibited any dealings with them.

Alkhald is an IS bomb maker and the terror group's explosives chief who helped carry out the November 2015 attacks in Paris and the March 2016 attacks in Brussels, the State Department statement said.

The series of the deadly terrorist attacks on several public places killed 130 people in Paris and 32 in Brussels.

Alkhald reportedly traveled to Europe, where he made the explosive vests used in the Paris attacks.

Island a gateway to Europe

According to French media, he crossed into Europe via the Greek island of Leros in September 2015. The island has been a gateway for some other IS attackers who have reportedly sneaked in among Syrians seeking refuge in Europe in the aftermath of the country's civil war.

Alkhald returned to Syria shortly before the Paris attacks and continued helping other IS plots in Europe, including the March 2016 attacks in Brussels.

Alkhald is wanted internationally and a European warrant for his arrest has been issued, the statement said.

Al-Baghdadi's protector

Abu Yahya al-Iraqi, also known as Iyad Hamed Mahl al-Jumaily, was the second individual identified as a specially designated global terrorist in Thursday's statement.

Al-Iraqi is a senior IS figure close to al-Baghdadi, the terror group's leader. He is reportedly a key IS leader in Iraq and Syria and has played a major role in providing security for al-Baghdadi.

The designation notifies the U.S. public and the international community that Alkhald and al-Iraqi have committed or pose a significant risk of committing acts of terrorism, the State Department said.

The statement said the designation and action by the State Department would help expose and isolate the two men, and help law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and around the world in their efforts against them.

A response to 9/11 attacks

Specially designated global terrorist (SDGT) is a designation established by the U.S. government in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks. Individuals designated as SDGTs are believed to pose a threat to U.S. national security by committing acts of terrorism.

The State Department has placed 272 individuals from different terrorist entities on the designation list, including 20 IS leaders and operatives.

These designations are part of a larger comprehensive plan to defeat [IS] that, in coordination with the 73-member global coalition, has made significant progress toward this goal, the State Department said.
Recent terror attacks claimed by the Islamic State militant group in Afghanistan indicate an increase in the atrocities it's committing against civilians and a deliberate attempt to wreak havoc and spread fear among noncombatants in the country.

Since its emergence in 2015, the extremist group has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly attacks across Afghanistan and has been accused of indiscriminately attacking civilians in general and the Shi'ite minority in particular.

On Monday, the terror group claimed responsibility for a deadly attack that occurred last week in Afghanistan's northern Sar-e-Pul province, killing about 54 Shi'ite Muslims, including children and elderly, in the Mirza Olang region.

Afghan officials said Wednesday that local police had discovered several mass graves in Sar-e-Pul province, containing the bodies of the Mirza Olang massacre.

In early August, the group attacked a Shi'ite mosque in western Herat province, killing and injuring dozens of worshippers.

In July 2016, IS claimed responsibility for attacking a rally of peaceful protesters in Kabul, killing more than 80 and injuring dozens more.

IS weakening?

Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan policy forum in Washington, said the increase in IS attacks in Afghanistan and the terror group's targeting of civilians illustrate weakness rather than strength.

"[IS] is intent to show that it's still relevant and dangerous in Afghanistan, even as its fighters are targeted by airstrikes, and even as its brutalities discredit it in the eyes of Afghans," Kugleman said. "On the contrary, we should read it as an effort on the part of an insecure IS to show that it still has clout."

Farooq Bashar, an Afghan analyst in Kabul, agreed with Kugleman's analysis and added that part of the increase in IS attacks is related to continuing White House deliberations about what course of action the U.S. will take in Afghanistan.

Bashar said he thought IS wanted to pose itself as a relevant group with which to to be reckoned.

"Islamic State is a new phenomenon in Afghanistan and by targeting Afghan civilians, it wants to demonstrate to the U.S. and the world that it has a strong presence in Afghanistan and the region," Bashar said.

Increasing pressure

Initially based in southern parts of eastern Nangarhar province, IS's Khorasan branch, also known as ISIS-K, emerged in early 2015 in the mountainous areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan to cover those nations and "other nearby territories." The group is trying to expand to mountainous parts of the adjacent Kunar and Nuristan provinces, which share a border with Pakistan.

In addition, the terror group recently has made inroads in the country's northern Jawzjan and Sar-e-Pul provinces.

Most of the IS fighters are former members of the Pakistani Taliban group (TTP), many of whom belong to the Orokzai tribe in Pakistan, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

A number of Central Asian militants in Afghanistan, who previously were associated with al-Qaida and Taliban, have joined the IS cause. Some Afghan militants also have joined the terror group for financial incentives.

In recent months, U.S. and Afghan forces have been engaged in joint counterterrorism operations against IS in eastern Afghanistan, killing hundreds of its fighters, including several of its senior commanders.

American and Afghan military forces have promised to eliminate IS in Afghanistan in 2017.

Atrocities in Nangarhar

Initially emerging in the Achin district of eastern Nangarhar province, IS has attacked villages in several other districts there, targeting local residents and elders deemed repugnant to its extremist ideology, local Afghan officials told VOA.

An IS video in 2015 showed horrific killing of a dozen local men from the Shinwari tribe in Nangarhar, who were blindfolded by IS fighters before being blown up by bombs buried underneath them.

Last summer, IS militants launched a massive assault on various parts of Kot district in Nangarhar province, which resulted in the deaths of dozens of villagers.

Niaz Bibi, a mother of 12 in the remote village of Qalajaat, watched as IS fighters invaded her home and killed five of her nine sons because they were affiliated with the local police force.

"They first shot my sons and then beheaded them in front of me," Bibi told VOA in a telephone interview at the time.

In October 2016, the group overran several checkpoints operated by militias in Nangarhar's Pachiragam district, killing dozens of local militia members and civilians in the region, local tribesmen and authorities told VOA.

The terror group on many occasions also has abducted local villagers.

A group of women who were captured by IS fighters in Nangarhar in early 2016  they were held captive for more than four months before they were released as part of a prisoner-swap deal negotiated by tribal elders in the region  told VOA that IS starved them in dark cells.

"They kept beating us and telling us that they would kill us because we had become Kaafir [non-Muslim]," one of the women told VOA.

Keeping schools shuttered

The group also has forbidden state-run and private schools from operating in areas under its control, depriving tens of thousands of students from school.

The terror group reportedly has warned girls in northern Jawzjan province, who make up 40 percent of the 18,000 enrolled students, not to attend schools. It requires schools in areas under its control to adopt IS curriculum, and it forces parents to send their children to a growing network of religious seminaries run by IS.

"IS fighters use local madrassas [seminaries] as military centers where they teach militancy, conduct military training and plan their activities," Abdul Zahir Haqqani, director of religious affairs in Nangarhar, told VOA in November 2016.
A Los Angeles judge has denied the impassioned plea of Roman Polanskis victim to end the criminal case against the fugitive film director.

Judge Scott Gordon ruled Friday that Polanski must appear in a Los Angeles court if he expects to have his 4-decade-old case resolved.

Gordons ruling follows a fervent request by Samantha Geimer to end a 40-year sentence she says was imposed on both perpetrator and victim.

Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with Geimer when she was 13. He fled the country on the eve of sentencing in 1978.

Polanskis attorneys have failed to persuade judges to sentence him in absentia for the 42 days he was incarcerated for psychological testing before he fled.

Geimer has long supported Polanskis efforts but made her plea in court for the first time in June.
Kenyas opposition coalition has filed a petition at the Supreme Court challenging the re-election of incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta.



The petition was filed 90 minutes before the deadline and includes more than 25,000 pages in an affidavit.

Speaking after filing the petition the lead lawyer and opposition politician James Orengo described the just concluded election as a sham and said he has evidence to prove it.

This petition has been prepared meticulously, and the major consideration which constitutes the theme of this petition that this election is sham and a sham because the evidence that we presented before this court, the court is going to consider is from all over the country," he said. "Nearly every indiscretion and malpractice that was carried out in this election has been covered with this petition.

The opposition has refused to concede defeat. Kenyatta who got 54 percent of the vote was officially declared the winner.

The opposition alleges the electronic results transmission system was hacked, which created inaccurate voting result. The allegation is denied by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, which was in charge of the ballot count.

In 2013 opposition leader Raila Odinga challenged Kenyatta's win in the Supreme Court and lost.

Omari Dunstan is an advocate of the high court. He says this legal case is different from the previous challenge.

The court of 2013 did not have a chance to listen and hear the evidence that was supposed to be heard, so the court made that decision to the exclusion of that evidence," he said. "Now Raila Odinga delayed to file his case all his evidence are there. The expectation of the Kenyans this time and the type of publicity the matter has taken is totally different, so this matter is a fresh new issue although the actors are the same.

As part of an effort to make the election free, fair and credible, unlike 2013, laws were adopted to improve the electoral process using technology.

The technology was used to identify voters and submit voting results.

The court also ruled in 2013 that the result announced at the polling stations were final. In this election, the electoral commission was mandated to announce the final result after verifying all the forms from more than 40,000 polling stations across the country.

Electoral law expert Barasa Nyakuri says the judges will look into whether the electoral laws were followed.

The key areas the judges will be looking at whether the electoral law and process were followed. Then whether there were any substantive irregularities in the process," said Nyakuri. "These regularities include undercasting or overcasting for a particular candidate, if they can prove that the forms that existed, forms 34A and 34B, were doctored. That can also be another area of concern.

On Monday, the electoral agency responded to the opposition request that they were not able to provide all the 34A forms from the polling stations three days after announcing Kenyatta was the winner.

Failure to produce and upload all the result forms on their website on time has raised questions about the credibility of the process.

The hearing of the case begins Thursday. The court is expected to make its ruling on September 1.

Kenya's constitution says if the court upholds Kenyatta as the winner, he will be sworn in within seven days. If the court rules in favor of the opposition, fresh elections will be held in 60 days.
Left-wing activist groups, including Black Lives Matter and Antifa, have announced plans to protest an event that its organizers are calling a free speech rally Saturday in Boston, as a response to the violence in Charlottesville last weekend.

The free speech rally in the East Coast state of Massachusetts was organized in July by a group calling itself Boston Free Speech, which says it is made up of a coalition of libertarians, progressives, conservatives and independents.

WATCH: Boston Prepares for Rallies

John Medlar, one of the groups organizers, has told multiple media outlets the rally will not welcome white supremacists, and he has denounced racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

"We absolutely denounce the KKK, neo-Nazis, ID Evropa, Vanguard  all these legit hate groups. We have nothing to do with them and we dont want them here, Medlar told NBC Boston.

Descriptions of event

While the Anti-Defamation League said the event, as it has been announced, is not a white supremacist event, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said some of the event's speakers "spew hate."

"They have the right to gather no matter how repugnant their views are," Walsh said. "We're going to respect their right of free speech. In return they must respect our city."

On its Facebook page, the free speech coalition said those in its group are dedicated to peaceful rallies and are in no way affiliated with the Charlottesville rally last weekend.

Despite the groups rejection of white supremacists, ANSWER Coalition Boston, a local chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement, has announced plans to hold a counterdemonstration, which it has dubbed "Fight Supremacy," to oppose the free speech rally.

In a post on the Fight Supremacy Facebook page, the group repeatedly refers to the free speech rally as a gathering of white supremacists and said it has a moral obligation to confront bigotry.

Prevailing political realities have emboldened overt white supremacists to openly intimidate vulnerable communities, and subject them to unchecked fragility and hatred, it said. We believe those committed to anti-racism work have a moral obligation to unapologetically confront and oppose these violent and threatening displays when they occur.

The Fight Supremacy rally isnt solely geared toward disrupting the free speech rally, though. Its organizers posted a laundry list of issues they hope to tackle, including income inequality, anti-immigration initiatives, and racist police officers, among other things.

The individuals and institutions most effective in harming black and brown people do not carry torches or wear white hoods. Instead, they aggressively patrol our neighborhoods, enforce laws unequally, systematically impose poverty, and suppress the voices and needs of oppressed communities, the group said.

Permit for rally

The free speech rally was granted a permit from the city of Boston to hold its rally in a downtown park from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, with a maximum of 100 people.

The Black Lives Matter protesters have not acquired the permit necessary to hold a rally, although its organizers say they expect thousands of people to attend.

It went from a few hundred to well over 1,000, to now roughly 3,000 pretty quickly. There are about 10,000 interested in our event, according to Facebook, organizer Nino Brown told NBC News.

Brown noted that the left-wing group Antifa is expected to make an appearance at the rally Saturday, and he welcomed their support.

Though we dont agree with Antifas tactics and strategy and adventurism, we respect their willingness to put their bodies on the line to fight fascists, he said.

In a post on its Facebook page, the Boston Antifa group wrote, Guess what, Boston? You'll be seeing us all over town for a while and promised to give right-wing terrorism no platform.

Boston officials say they are prepared to handle the dueling rallies Saturday, and have a plan in place to avoid the violence seen last weekend in Charlottesville, which left one woman dead after a white nationalist protester allegedly drove his car into a group of counterprotesters.

Police presence

Mayor Walsh said more than 500 police officers will be on hand to keep the peace and certain items will be banned from the protest site.

No weapons, no backpacks, no sticks, Walsh said. We are going to have a zero-tolerance policy. If anyone gets out of control  at all  it will be shut down.

Boston Police Commissioner Billy Evan said officers would be working with the crowd real closely, and that the city has been coordinating with organizers of the free speech rally in advance to ensure there is no violence.

"I hope anyone who protests and is marching is doing it for the right reason," Evans said. Unfortunately, I think there's going to be a few troublemakers here."

He also criticized the media response to the planned event because the frenzy over the last six days has portrayed the rally like a showdown.

The free speech group held a similar rally in May in Boston that went largely unnoticed. A few hundred people attended the rally and it attracted a small crowd of protesters.

Celia Mendoza contributed to this report from Boston.
A U.S. Navy captain has admitted to accepting bribes in the form of lavish hotel rooms and prostitutes from a Malaysian businessman nicknamed Fat Leonard, joining nearly two dozen current and former Navy officials who have been charged in what is being called the maritime branchs biggest corruption case.

Capt. Jesus Vasquez Cantu, of Silverdale, Washington, entered his guilty plea Friday in federal court in San Diego.

Cantu says Leonard Glenn Francis paid for prostitutes, hotels and drinks at karaoke bars in exchange for proprietary Navy information that benefited Francis Singapore-based firm, Glenn Defense Marine Asia. The company provided fuel and other supplies to ships in the Pacific.

So far, 28 people have been charged in the case, including 21 current and former Navy officials.

Francis is awaiting sentencing.


@PatriciaMazzei @AmySherman1

Democratic Senate candidate Annette Taddeo has denounced as false an explosive Spanish-language radio ad from Florida Republicans casting her as  wait for it  a tax-hiker, job-offshorer, Colombian-guerrilla sympathizer and Fidel Castro apologist.

The ad reflects a tried-and-true campaign tack in Miami politics: paint your opponent as soft on Cuba, or soft on Communism.

Particularly offensive to Taddeo is the suggestion that she wanted to legitimize the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Taddeo was born in Colombia and fled as a teenager after the FARC captured her father, an American military veteran, at the family ranch.

How dare my opponent, lobbyist Jose Felix Diaz, use our communitys painful history for political gain? Taddeo said in a statement. My father was kidnapped by the FARC and my family had to flee Colombia because of our safety.

She will face Diaz, a state representative, and independent candidate Christian He-Man Schlaerth in the special Sept. 26 Senate District 40 election to replace Republican Sen. Frank Artiles, who resigned in disgrace in April.

The ad claims that when [former President Barack] Obama insisted on a peace plan in Colombia that would legitimize the FARC, Taddeo put partisanship over everything else to support it.

More here.

Listen to the radio ad here.

Photo credit: Emily Michot, Miami Herald staff
Six U.S. police officers were shot, two fatally, in three incidents Friday night in the states of Florida and Pennsylvania.

In the central Florida city of Kissimmee, two officers responded to a threat of suspicious activity, and shots were fired when they were confronted with an armed suspect. Officer Matthew Baxter died shortly after the confrontation, and Kissimmee police said Sergeant Richard "Sam" Howard died Saturday afternoon.

The Kissimmee Police Department's Twitter feed quoted Police Chief Jeff O'Dell as saying, "Looks as though it may have been an ambush."

President Donald Trump, on a working vacation at his Bedminister, New Jersey golf club, tweeted condolences to the Kissimmee Police Department early Saturday morning.

Kissimmee police later arrested and charged Everette Glenn Miller, 45, with first degree murder. O'Dell said it appeared Miller did not have a significant criminal background.

O'Dell said three other people were questioned in the Kissimmee shootings and no other charges were expected.

Meanwhile, two officers were shot responding to a call about an attempted suicide in a house in the northeastern Florida city of Jacksonville, about 150 miles north of Kissimmee.

One of those officers was in critical condition and the other was in stable condition. Police shot and killed the suspect in that shooting.

Two troopers in the northeastern state of Pennsylvania were shot following an incident at a store in the Fayette County borough of Fairchance.

Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Melinda Bondarenka said both officers were stable and alert.
Every private member of the U.S. presidential advisory committee on the arts has resigned to protest President Donald Trumps response to white nationalist violence in Virginia.

Seventeen members of the Presidents Committee on the Arts and the Humanities said in a resignation letter Friday, The false equivalencies you push cannot stand.

The letter was in response to Trumps comments Tuesday that both sides were to blame for the violence at last Saturdays white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Three people died in connection with the rally, and 19 others were injured.

James Fields Jr. was charged with several felonies, including second-degree murder in the death of Heather Heyer. He allegedly used his car to run over a group of protesters.

The arts committee is an advisory body on cultural issues composed of 12 federal agency heads and 17 scholars and artists. The members who resigned included actor Kal Penn, artist Chuck Close, and author Jhumpa Lahiri.

The administrations refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred only further emboldens those who wish America ill, the letter reads.

Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions, it said. Supremacy, discrimination and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values.

The advisory panel was created by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1982. All of the current private members had been appointed by former President Barack Obama.

The resignations followed the disbanding of two presidential business advisory councils Wednesday after most of their members left in protest against Trumps response to the violence in Charlottesville.
When the ebola crisis erupted in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent staff to help West African countries contain the pandemic. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded research and supported pharmaceutical giants to produce a vaccine that would save lives but not turn a profit.

In his budget proposal, President Donald Trump seeks big cuts in spending on global health research. Those cuts could affect work being done to end malaria and AIDS and protect against other infectious diseases.

Trumps proposed 2018 budget calls for an 18 percent funding cut for NIH and a 17 percent cut for the CDC.

Impact on health security

If these cuts as proposed were enacted, it would have severe impact on health security, said Stephen Morrison, who heads the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Watch: Proposed US Budget Cuts Could Have Severe Impact on Health Security

And in the long run could be costlier because its far cheaper to be ready for a disease outbreak than to fight one once it starts, Jami Bay Nishi of the Global Health Technologies Coalition said.

The National Academy of Medicine put out a report estimating that responding to a pandemic threat costs $60 billion, she said. Yet, ongoing investment in preventative research in attempts to mitigate against a future threat is $1 billion per year.

U.S. investments, Nishi said, have produced malaria drugs that have saved 750,000 lives and an inexpensive meningitis vaccine that has prevented nearly 400,000 deaths.

The NIH has been instrumental in the fight against AIDS and malaria. AIDS deaths are now close to half of what they were in 2005, according to the U.N. AIDS agency, and researchers seem to be closing in on a malaria vaccine.

In addition, large pharmaceutical companies, like Johnson and Johnson, need the government to back research, especially for drugs for low-income countries. said Jamie Taylor of Johnson and Johnson.

We cant do it on our own, and thats definitive, she said.

If cuts become routine

But, Morrison observed, the presidents budget request isnt a done deal.

Hes not going to get all that he wants, but hes going to get something, he said.

The main problem, as Morrison and others see it, is if budget cuts continue, the U.S. will lose its position as a world leader in medical research, and the world will be more vulnerable to the spread of infectious disease.

Elizabeth Cameron, from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, says bioterrorism could also become a greater risk to the U.S.

(Its) absolutely vital that we get to a point where were able to respond to any disease threat that comes our way no matter how it comes our way, Cameron said.

And, finally, Nishi argues, U.S. research and development (R&D) creates jobs that would be lost by budget cuts.

U.S. government investments in global health R&D not only save millions of lives around the world, but they support U.S. jobs, the U.S. economy and U.S. health security, she said.

But the secretary of the Health and Human Services Department thinks budget cuts can be made without any loss of research.

I think what the budget is trying to do, in the first step in this process, is trying to bring focus to the kinds of things that we ought to be able to do to get a bigger bang for our buck, said Dr. Tom Price, secretary of HHS.

Congress will tackle these issues when the lawmakers return from their summer recess in September.
A prosthetic hand is a critical tool that allows amputees to find normalcy in their lives, but some elements, such as complete freedom of movement and sensations of touch, are not the same as a real hand.

Theyve come a long way and they have a long way to go, said amputee Charity McFarland, who lost her left hand in a car accident almost four years ago.

McFarland said of the accident, All I saw were lights and I basically was trying to avoid getting hit, but then the accident happened, so it was like a rollover. They told me that I rolled over three times."

An estimated 1.7 million people in the U.S are missing a limb, according to research at Rice University in Houston.

While existing prosthetic limbs allow amputees to regain some of their abilities, there are very few devices that provide sensory feedback for the users.

Researchers from Rice University, the University of Pisa and the Italian Institute of Technology are working to allow amputees to better perceive what their prosthesis is doing.



McFarland heard about the research and volunteered to help. The focus of the research is to create what are called haptic devices to better replicate a biological hand for amputees.



Haptics is anything that has to do with the sense of touch. Any textures that you discern or even the ability to realize that youre making contact with something. How much pressure youre putting on it, if its slipping, all of those are haptic sensations, said Rice University graduate student Janelle Clark, who was one of the researchers who measured how well test subjects could distinguish the sizes of objects grasped by a prosthesis with and without haptic feedback.



The tests include a rocker placed onto the subject's remaining limb that moves back and forth and stretches the skin so the person can sense what the prosthesis is doing. The amount of stretch correlates to how opened or closed the prosthetic hand is on the user.

The idea behind the research that were doing here is to create haptic devices that are simple, theyre intuitive, theyre not going to break and so that people can start to have an understanding of whats going on with their prosthetic without looking at it all the time," Clark said.



Researchers found blindfolded test subjects were able to more than double their ability to distinguish the size of objects grasped with a prosthetic hand when they received haptic feedback from a skin-stretch device.

McFarland, however, wasnt one of them. I still wasnt able to sense what it was doing completely, she said.

This is going to be a long-term project... to create some sort of artificial hand that has the same capabilities, but maybe there are other changes in the short term that would also be appreciated," Rice researcher Clark said.



For now, McFarland says she would appreciate a prosthesis that looks like a hand and allows the fingers to move and the wrist to bend and rotate just like a real hand.
The majority of deaths from Yemen's cholera outbreak have occurred in rebel-controlled areas cut off from supplies due to airstrikes and blockades by a Saudi-led military coalition, according to research published on Friday.

The study by London's Queen Mary University found eight out of 10 cholera deaths took place in regions controlled by Iran-backed Houthi rebels who have fought a two-year war against Saudi-aligned forces backing Yemen's government.

Yemen is battling against the "world's worst cholera outbreak", according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

More than half a million people have been infected with cholera since the epidemic began four months ago and almost 2,000 people have died, the WHO said on Monday.

"Saudi-led airstrikes have destroyed vital infrastructure, including hospitals and public water systems, hit civilian areas, and displaced people into crowded and insanitary conditions", Jonathan Kennedy, Andrew Harmer and David McCoy, the study's researchers, wrote.

The Saudi ministry for foreign affairs did not immediately respond to written questions or telephone calls

Yemen's devastating civil war has pitted a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia against an Iran-backed armed Houthi group, and economic collapse has made it difficult to deal with disease outbreaks such as cholera and mass hunger.

The study compared data from the WHO with maps of government-controlled and rebel-controlled areas.

The researchers found 78 percent of cholera cases and 81 percent of deaths from cholera occurred in Houthi-controlled regions. Only 10.4 per cent of deaths occurred in government-controlled areas.

The researchers said the Saudi-led coalition was responsible for the deadly outbreak, by causing shortages of food, medical supplies, fuel and chlorine, and restricting humanitarian access.

Each day there are more than 5,000 new cases of cholera, which causes acute diarrhea and dehydration, in Yemen where the health system has collapsed after more than two years of war, according to the WHO.

Cholera, spread by ingestion of food or water tainted with human feces, can kill within hours if untreated. It has been largely eradicated in developed countries equipped with sanitation systems and water treatment.
A Russian court has banned the Jehovah's Witnesses' translation of the Bible following a drawn-out legal battle, another blow to followers of the pacifist Christian sect who have been branded extremists and driven to practicing their faith underground, as in Soviet times.

The Jehovah's Witnesses' parent organization in Russia and 395 regional branches were formally placed on the Justice Ministry's list of extremist groups Aug. 17, a procedural move following the Supreme Court's decision to ban the group's activities and seize its property earlier this year.

In a separate case that same day, a court in the northwestern border town of Vyborg banned the New World Translation of The Holy Scriptures, the group's version of the Bible. Several other publications by the Jehovah's Witnesses, including a brochure, The Bible  What Is Its Message?  were also labeled extremist.

The case against the religious group's Bible dates to July 2015, when a shipment of the books from Finland was stopped at the border and impounded by customs officials on suspicion of extremism.

Ban to be challenged

The ban on the Bible used by the Jehovah's Witnesses has not come into legal force, as the group intends to challenge the ruling in a regional court.

"Soon it will be illegal not only to gather [to worship], but also to read," said Yaroslav Sivulsky, a member of the European Association of Jehovah's Christian Witnesses, adding that the court proceedings felt like theater.

"Whatever our lawyers said, it was as if the ruling was already known," he said.

The Jehovah's Witnesses international headquarters in New York decried the ruling.

"Just how far will Russia's resistance to religious freedom go? We certainly hope that respect for sacred texts will prevail when we pursue this case on appeal," said spokesman David Semonian in comments circulated by the group's press service.

The statement said the court ruling contradicts legislation signed by President Vladimir Putin in 2015 stipulating that sacred texts such as the Bible and Koran cannot be labeled extremist.

'Not a Bible'

The statement said the court relied on the findings of an expert panel that determined the book is not a Bible.

The Moscow-based Sova Center, which monitors the misuse of extremism legislation, criticized the "invalidity, helplessness, and glaring absurdity" of the panel's findings.

"It's just a typical translation," Aleksandr Verkhovsky, Sova's director, told RFE/RL. "It differs a little, of course, in language. There is always a variation between translations. It is not fundamentally different [from other versions of the Bible]."

He added: "It's written in more modern language, and there is a certain difference [in the translation] which reflects their religious beliefs. Some things are written, for instance, with a small letter, not with a big letter. Or where different names for God are used, [the Jehovah's Witnesses] write Jehovah everywhere. That's the level [of variation that] we're talking about."

Conservative Victory

The Jehovah's Witnesses, known universally for their door-to-door proselytizing, are viewed with suspicion in Russia for their rejection of military service and voting. Their refusal to take blood transfusions has seen them accused of being a threat to themselves, their children, and public safety.

The Jehovah's Witnesses were persecuted in the Soviet Union, most severely under Josef Stalin. After the Soviet collapse, tight restrictions on religious groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses were suddenly relaxed, leading to a surge in popularity for the Orthodox Church and other religious and faith groups.

Russia's Jehovah's Witnesses are estimated to number 175,000 today.

The group was driven underground this year after the Supreme Court labeled them extremists, Sivulsky said. "When the ruling came into full force after July 17, then of course everyone without exception stopped gathering in big groups because it is a criminal offense. No one is consciously trying to be accused of criminal activity," he said.

The Supreme Court ruling stipulates that all property belonging to the Jehovah's Witnesses' organization should be seized by the state, although Sivulsky said this provision had not yet been implemented. "We haven't seen any action on this. [But] it's a question of time."

The banning of the group fits into a broader conservativism advocated by Moscow in a rejection of liberal Western values. It has also been seen as a victory for conservative factions of the Russian Orthodox Church, which view the Jehovah's Witnesses' rejection of elements of mainstream Christian doctrine as a threat.

However, Vsevolod Chaplin, the ultraconservative former church spokesman, disapproved of the banning of the group in comments to the NTV channel on August 17.

"Perhaps it would be better to keep them in the field of play to keep an eye on how they are developing so as to perhaps restrict it in its extreme activities," he said.
African Union and Somali government forces have captured the town of Bariire, a strategic militant base in the south of the country, officials and witnesses said Saturday.

Commanders said the Islamist al-Shabab group fled following heavy fighting outside the town in which the joint troops approached from three directions.

Bariire was one of al-Shabab's strongholds in the south and only 45 kilometers (27 miles) from Mogadishu, the country's capital.

"The joint troops attacked the town from three directions, forced the militants to flee and secured its control," Abdinasir Alim Ibrahim, a district commissioner in nearby Afgoye, told VOA's Somali service. "Hopefully, the next target will be Toratorow, and then we will proceed to other towns and cities controlled by the militants."

Seven civilians were reportedly killed and four injured when a minivan they were traveling in ran over a land mine as they fled the town. But Ibrahim could confirm the deaths of just four civilians and injuries to three others in the incident.

Witnesses told VOA on condition of anonymity that they saw about a dozen military personnel supporting the Somali and AU forces as they moved into the city.

Somali government officials confirmed the involvement of the non-African foreign personnel in the attack, but they declined to comment on their nationalities.

US deployment

In April, dozens of American soldiers were deployed to Mogadishu to train and equip Somali and AMISOM (African Union Mission in Somalia) forces.

Somalia's defense ministry said the U.S. team  mainly based at Baledogle airfield, a former Somali air force base in Lower Shabelle region  has assumed the role of training and equipping the Somalia National Army, and also is advising and assisting troops in their operations against the militants.

Despite facing pressure from Somali government forces backed by AU troops and American advisers, al-Shabab still controls towns in south and central Somalia, and also continues to maintain a strong presence in many rural areas.

Bariire has been a key target for Somali and AU troops. Militants have used the city as a military base from which to organize attacks they carry out in Mogadishu, and to run courts in which they impose strict Sharia, or Islamic law.

"They had courts where they forced people in the region to submit their civilian cases, and they also had an administrative office that organizes attacks against the Somali people, so the town's fall is strategically important for us," said Ibrahim.

In May, a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed and two troops were wounded in a raid on an al-Shabab militant compound in the town, in what appeared to be the first U.S. combat death in the African country since the 1993 disaster portrayed in the film Black Hawk Down.

The White House has granted the U.S. military broader authority to carry out strikes in Somalia against al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab, the latest sign President Donald Trump is increasing U.S. military engagement in the region.
U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Joseph Votel has concluded two days of talks with civilian and military leaders in Pakistan, underscoring the need for the two countries to work together to ensure greater regional security ad stability.

Military cooperation, and even stronger cooperation with Pakistan, is very important, and we deeply appreciate the hospitality and willingness to continue an honest and open relationship, a U.S. Embassy statement issued Saturday quoted the general as saying.

We are extraordinarily pleased to continue these enduring relationships, Votel said.

Pakistans army also flew Votels delegation to North Waziristan, a remote mountainous tribal district near the Afghan border that until recently had been condemned as an epicenter of international terrorism.

The Pakistan military says sustained counterterrorism operations have cleared most of the tribal district, however, and authorities are currently in the process of resettling civilians uprooted by the conflict.

General Votel arrived in Pakistan on Friday as U.S. President Donald Trump was meeting with his top national security officials to discuss proposals about how to win the protracted war in Afghanistan.

U.S. and Afghan officials contend that Taliban insurgents and their Haqqani network ally are using Pakistani soil to plan insurgent activities.

In his discussions with Pakistani leaders, he [Gen. Joseph Votel] emphasized that all parties must work to ensure that Pakistani soil is not used to plan or conduct terrorist attacks against its neighbors, the statement from U.S. Central Command reads.

Votel met with Pakistan Prime Minster Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and other senior members of Abbasi's cabinet before concluding his tour.

On Friday, the U.S. general held crucial talks with Pakistan army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa that focused on the security situation in Afghanistan.

More than financial or material assistance, we seek acknowledgement of our decades-long contributions towards regional peace and stability, understanding of our challenges, and most importantly, the sacrifices Pakistani nation and its security forces have rendered in the fight against terrorism and militancy, Bajwa told the visiting American commander.

Cutting U.S. military aid to Pakistan to punish it for sheltering Taliban and Haqqani militants is among options the Trump administration reportedly is considering while preparing a new Afghan war strategy to break the stalemate with the Taliban.

Islamabad denies charges it is allowing insurgents to use Pakistani soil for attacks in Afghanistan, saying it is working for the stability and peace in the neighboring country in its own national interest.

"Pakistan had an important stake in peace and stability in Afghanistan as Pakistan has suffered the most due to conflict in that country," an official statement quoted Abbasi as telling the U.S. delegation.
U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon Saturday, tweeting that working with Bannon was "great," while once again disparaging former Democratic presidential opponent Hillary Clinton.

"I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against crooked Hillary Clinton  it was great! Thanks S."



Vice President Mike Pence also recognized Bannon Saturday on Twitter, thanking him for serving with "distinction."

"Steve served @Potus Trump with distinction. I value his friendship and contributions. Thank you, Steve!"



The White House Friday afternoon said Bannon was leaving. By evening, he was back at work at his old job at Breitbart News Network.

Bannon left the White House and went directly to Breitbart, the ultra-conservative online publication he led before joining Trump's presidential campaign a little more than a year ago.

The website announced that Bannon "returned as Executive Chairman of Breitbart News Friday afternoon and chaired the company's evening editorial meeting."

He took over leadership of Breitbart following the death of its founder, Andrew Breitbart, in 2012. With Bannon at the helm, Breitbart took on a more nationalistic slant, appealing to the alt-right movement.

Bannon is credited with helping Trump win the White House by pushing a populist, nationalist message after joining the campaign. But following the election, Bannon clashed with other powerful West Wing figures, including Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

In interviews following his departure, Bannon  using the same bellicose language that became the hallmark of Breitbart News under his watch  said he looked forward to taking on those he feels are standing in Trump's way.

"If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents on Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate America," Bannon told Bloomberg News.

"I feel jacked up," he said during an interview with The Weekly Standard. "Now Im free. Ive got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, 'it's Bannon the Barbarian.' I am definitely going to crush the opposition."
U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that his administration has made decisions on how to deal with the 16-year war in Afghanistan.

One day after meeting at the Camp David presidential retreat with his national security team to consider strategic options, Trump tweeted, Important day spent at Camp David with our very talented generals and military leaders. Many decisions made, including on Afghanistan, he wrote, without providing details.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday that a new strategy would protect Americas interests in the South Asian region and that details would be forthcoming.

The president is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time." She did not specifically mention Afghanistan.

Fridays meeting was the most recent in a series of high-level talks on a broader security strategy for Afghanistan and the greater South Asia region. Finalizing a strategy has been delayed by internal differences.

Among the attendees were Vice President Mike Pence and Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Without offering hints, Mattis told reporters Thursday in Washington he anticipated a decision on the new approach to the war, the longest in U.S. history, would be made in the near future.

Before a new strategy is adopted, the administration has said it would review its approach to the broader South Asia region, including Pakistan and India. Options include sending thousands of additional troops to the war-torn country or withdrawing them altogether, leaving private military contractors to help manage the country's tenuous security situation.

After years of extensive support from the U.S. and other NATO member nations, the Afghan military is still struggling to resist the Taliban, which recently made advances in Afghanistan and the Pakistan border region. U.S. generals have described the conflict as a "stalemate."

The U.S. Defense Department approved a plan months ago to send about 3,800 additional troops to assist the Afghan army, but some White House officials questioned whether more resources would be effective.

Trump authorized Mattis to determine troop numbers in Afghanistan, but several months later, allied troop levels remain unchanged. About 8,400 U.S. troops and an estimated 5,000 NATO troops are in the country, serving primarily in advisory and training capacities. The U.S. also maintains a force in Afghanistan that is tasked with fighting terrorist groups, including Islamic State and al-Qaida.

Mattis has said he would commit to troop level adjustments after the administration agrees on a coherent strategy for Afghanistan and the broader region, including Pakistan's dealings with terrorist groups.

Rand Corporation South Asian expert Jonah Blank said intelligence reports he has received suggests an increase in troops is the currently the administration's most favored option.

"It sounds like the administration is leaning towards a modest increase in troop levels, perhaps between 3,000 and 5,000 troops ...without a termination date for their stay," Blank said.

Blank predicted a modest troop increase would not "change the overall trajectory of the war" given the failure of a collective effort to end the long-running conflict.

The founder of the Blackwater security firm, Erik Prince, and DynCorp owner Stephen Feinberg last month offered proposals to the White House to use contractors instead of U.S. troops.

But increasing numbers of influential Afghans are concerned private firms would not be accountable. They are concerned using contractors risks a reoccurrence of the heinous acts Blackwater Security Company guards committed in Afghanistan and Iraq about a decade ago.

The ability to reverse course in Afghanistan has been hindered by the government's struggles to stop Taliban advances without assistance. The Taliban now controls almost half the country, according to the latest report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Afghan forces are also fighting an IS affiliate that has gained a foothold primarily in eastern Afghanistan, presenting an additional challenge without prospects of a near-term solution. This week, a U.S. soldier was killed and nearly a dozen others injured in a clash with the IS affiliate.

Members of Congress have expressed frustration over the long-running war and the lengthy administration search for a new strategy to break the stalemate.

Republican Senator John McCain declared last week that "America is adrift in Afghanistan."

"Nearly seven months into President Trump's administration, we've had no strategy at all as conditions on the ground have steadily worsened," added McCain, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCain has proposed an expansion of the U.S. counterterrorism operation and additional support for the Afghan military.

More than 15 years ago, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Islamist Taliban regime for giving al-Qaida a refuge to plot the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the U.S.

There is no sign to the end of the war. U.S. intelligence agencies determined in May that conditions in Afghanistan would almost certainly worsen through next year, even if the U.S. and its allies provided a modest increase in military assistance.
Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly met Saturday to reject the pro-government constituent assembly's proclamation of lawmaking authority a day earlier.

Outspoken opposition spokesman Freddy Guevara, the vice president of the National Assembly, on Saturday condemned the constituent assembly's power grab, and the body itself, as "null." He accused the pro-government assembly of acting to approve contracts and secure international financing in the midst of a national economic crisis, and he warned that congress wouldn't back agreements that violated the Constitution.

The National Assembly made its declaration of resistance in the presence of foreign diplomats from the United States, Britain, Mexico and Spain. The United States has rejected the authority of the constituent assembly and President Donald Trump, in a surprise move, last week even talked about the prospect of military intervention.

Lawmaking power

Saturday's meeting came in response to Friday's move by the constituent assembly, which gave itself the power to pass laws, seizing legislative power from the opposition-led congress.

The constituent assembly unanimously passed a decree enabling it "to legislate on matters directly aimed at ensuring the preservation of peace, security, sovereignty, the socioeconomic financial system, the purposes of state, and the preeminence of Venezuela's human rights."

While the decree did not explicitly dissolve congress, it stripped away the already diminished powers of the body.

The president of the constituent assembly, Delcy Rodriguez, said, "We are not going to allow more distortions, more deviations aimed at attacking Venezuela's state of law. The constituent [assembly] is here to bring order."

After the decree was passed, opposition lawmaker Omar Avila denounced the decision, stressing that the constituent assembly had not provided any solutions to the problems of everyday people.

"The constituent [assembly] is not meant to govern, it is not even meant to act as judges, acting and chasing those who think differently," Avila said.

Venezuela's opposition-led congress already has little power in the country as the Socialist-dominated Supreme Court has stripped it of many of its functions and overruled most of the laws it approved since the opposition took control last year.

Opposition leaders refused Friday to swear an oath of loyalty to the constituent assembly, which they have warned would crush dissent in the country.

International condemnation

The election of the assembly last month was boycotted by the opposition and triggered international condemnation. The body is charged with rewriting the country's 1999 constitution and has given permission to President Nicolas Maduro to rule by decree.

Maduro defends the all-powerful constituent assembly as the country's only hope for peace and prosperity.

As the constituent assembly continues to increase its powers, both the opposition and ruling leadership work to organize gubernatorial elections set for October.

The National Election Council's president, Tibisay Lucena, announced that the ruling and opposition parties had each registered more than 200 candidates for the upcoming elections.

On the streets of Venezuela's capital, opinions varied on whether to participate in elections.

Sanchez said government officials "have lost the notion of where they are standing and the historical moment," but he said elections are part of the constitution. "This is nothing new," he said.

Ricardo Moros of Caracas said, "I would not like to participate for the simple reason that I feel betrayed. To participate would be to give the go-ahead to the government."

'Duty to participate'

Political analyst Tony Tover told VOA that it in times of crisis, it is better to participate.

"We are in a dictatorship, we are not under a rule of law," he said. "Now, the elections of governors are constitutional, and therefore we democrats have the duty to participate."

Months of nearly daily protests against Maduro have left more than 120 people dead and hundreds more injured or jailed.

The opposition has blamed Maduro's policies for the economic crisis in the country. The government has argued that the opposition is working with the United States to violently overthrow the president.
Venezuelas ousted chief prosecutor and her husband  two of President Nicolas Maduros most outspoken critics  fled the country and landed Friday afternoon in Colombia.



Luisa Ortega Diaz and German Ferrer arrived in Bogota aboard a private plane traveling from Aruba, Colombian migration authorities said in a statement. The couple didnt request asylum, according to a senior Colombian official speaking on condition of anonymity because hes not authorized to discuss the politically sensitive case.



Ortega and Ferrer have long been aligned with Venezuelas ruling socialist party but recently broke with Maduro, publicly denouncing his push to convene a constitutional assembly that was installed in early August and is now going about the task of upending Venezuelas institutions.

Politically motivated accusations



One of the assemblys first acts was to remove Ortega and appoint one of Maduros key allies, Tarek William Saab, as the nations new top law enforcement officer.



On Thursday, the government-stacked Supreme Court ordered Ferrer placed under arrest, a day after Saab accused him of orchestrating a $6 million extortion ring that allegedly occurred under Ortegas watch.



Ferrer denied the accusations and many believe they are politically motivated.



In June, the Supreme Court barred Ortega from leaving the country and ordered her bank accounts frozen as part of its investigation into a complaint filed by a pro-government lawmaker that accused her of acting as an opposition leader and requested a probe into her mental insanity.



Univision reported Friday that Ortega and Ferrer fled in a speed boat to Aruba, which lies a short distance off the northern coast of Venezuela.



The couples whereabouts had been unknown for several days, but earlier Friday Ortega surfaced briefly, addressing by phone a gathering of Latin Americas prosecutors in Mexico.

Ortega alleges Odebrecht coverup



Ortega told the regions prosecutors that Maduro removed her in order to stop a probe linking him and his inner circle to nearly $100 million in bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. In a plea agreement with the U.S. Justice Department last year, the company admitted paying bribes to officials throughout Latin America in exchange for lucrative contracts.



Ortega denounced the government takeover of the prosecutors offices and said many of her colleagues have faced persecution.



Ortega first spoke out against Maduro in late March following a Supreme Court decision to nullify the opposition-controlled congress. She denounced the decision as a rupture of the constitutional order. The decision was later reversed amid widespread international criticism, but sparked a protest movement that has left more than 120 dead.



Maduro and his allies have frequently lashed out against Ortega, accusing her of being part of an opposition effort to overthrow Maduro. Diosdado Cabello, the leader of Venezuelas socialist party, has repeatedly referred to her as the traitor prosecutor.
Zimbabwe's government has announced that President Robert Mugabe's birthday will now be a public holiday. The announcement is the latest in a series of efforts to secure the longtime leaders legacy.

Most cities and towns in Zimbabwe have a road named after President Robert Mugabe. In Harare, the public square that most political parties use for rallies also bears his name.

Earlier this month, Zimbabwes cash-strapped government announced that it is setting aside $1 billion to establish the Robert Gabriel Mugabe University.

It seems that is not all.

Home Affairs Minister Ignatious Chombo announced Friday that every February 21st, the birthday of Mugabe, will now be a public holiday.



President Mugabe has exhibited the following values that any fair-minded Zimbabwean would want their youths to emulate: self-sacrifice, selflessness, patriotism, hard work, principled leadership, respect for others, compassion and empathy, among others, he said.

However, analysts see the move as more of the political jostling that began in earnest last year over Mugabes succession.

Rejoice Ngwenya, a political analyst and opposition supporter in Harare, said "we have always been expecting it because the degree of drooling and praise-singing in ZANU-PF has reached unprecedented proportion."

"And I feel that citizens need to be given an opportunity to discuss this before it is legislated," he continued. "... The disadvantage of an authoritarian regime is decisions are taken unilaterally. So it means that very soon we are going to be having a Robert Mugabe everything.

The 93-year-old leader has said he will run for another term next year. However, he has made at least three trips abroad for medical reasons this year and there has been concern about his health.



One faction of the ruling Zanu-PF is backing first lady Grace Mugabe to succeed her husband. The other faction led by Vice President Emerson Mnangagwa seems to have lost steam this month when its leader was airlifted to neighboring South Africa for medical treatment following suspected food poisoning.



Meanwhile, the Zanu-PF has sought to further consolidate power in the executive with parliament passing a constitutional amendment in late July allowing the president to hand pick all top judges. This would include the chief justice of the Supreme Court who rules on any election disputes.



The new amendment reversed a provision of the constitution passed in 2013 by popular referendum that required all top judges to be selected through public interviews conducted by Zimbabwes judiciary service commission.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa has granted diplomatic immunity to Zimbabwe's first lady, Grace Mugabe, allowing her to return to Harare and avoid prosecution for the alleged assault of a 20-year-old model, a security source said on Friday.

South African police had put border posts on "red alert" to prevent Mugabe fleeing and indicated she would receive no special treatment in the case involving Gabriella Engels, who says Mugabe whipped her with an electric extension cable.

A security source, however, said immunity had been granted. The source also said Grace Mugabe had failed to turn up at a Johannesburg court hearing on Tuesday, as agreed with police, because of concerns she could be attacked.

The alleged assault -- Engels said it occurred on Sunday evening as she waited with two friends in a luxury Johannesburg hotel suite to meet one of Mugabe's adult sons -- is a diplomatic nightmare for South Africa.

The country has a difficult relationship with its northern neighbor. It is home to an estimated three million Zimbabwean exiles who regard President Robert Mugabe as a dictator who has ruined what was once one of Africa's most promising democracies.

But although he is also widely reviled in the West, Mugabe is still seen by many Africans as the continent's elder statesman and a hero of its anti-colonial struggles.

A senior government source said on Friday there was "no way" Grace Mugabe, 52, would be arrested because of the diplomatic fallout that would ensue from Zimbabwe.

Indeed, the 93-year old president himself arrived two days early in Pretoria for a regional southern African summit this week to help resolve his wife's legal problems.

The government source accepted the view widely held by legal experts that Grace Mugabe was not entitled to immunity because she was in South Africa for medical treatment, and said the government was expecting her immunity to be challenged in court.

However, the source said Pretoria justified its decision because of other countries in southern Africa that supported South Africa's ruling ANC in the long struggle against apartheid would also see Grace Mugabe's prosecution as a betrayal.

"There would obviously be implications for our relations with Zimbabwe. Sadly the other countries in the region are watching us and how we are going to act," the source said, asking not to be named.

"What is likely to happen is that she will be allowed to go back home, and then we announce that we've granted diplomatic immunity and wait for somebody to challenge us."

South Africa's foreign ministry spokesman declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

"DISGRACE"

Engels' mother Debbie, who released photographs of her daughter with gashes to her head requiring 14 stitches, said it would be "very sad" if Grace Mugabe was allowed to leave.

However, her daughter's legal team -- which includes Gerrie Nel, the prosecutor who secured a murder conviction against Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius -- would counter such a move, she said.

"Gerrie Nel and the team have contingency plans," she told Reuters, without elaborating. "They will run with it."

Afriforum, an Afrikaans rights group that Nel joined in January after quitting as a state prosecutor, said it would be illegal for Pretoria to give Mugabe immunity and branded the plans a "disgrace".

"The government has two responsibilities: one, to protect its own citizens and two, to act according to the law. And the granting of diplomatic immunity would transgress the law," chief executive Kallie Kriel said.

Harare has made no official comment on the saga and requests for comment from Zimbabwean government officials have gone unanswered. The South African government has restricted all official comment to the police ministry.

The Engels incident is not the first time Grace Mugabe -- who is lauded in official Zimbabwean media as "Mother of the Nation" - has been in legal hot water.

In 2009, a newspaper photographer in Hong Kong said Grace and her bodyguard had assaulted him. Police said the incident was reported but no charges were brought.
Business

Two of the White Houses top corporate advisory groups disbanded in a direct affront to President Trump, as the fallout from his controversial statements about who was to blame for violent protests involving white supremacists in Charlottesville cascaded beyond Washington. The exodus of business advisers comes as a stinging rebuke to the president, who had sold himself as a businessman whose dealmaking prowess would pay off for companies and workers. It also stands as a remarkable breach in relations between Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, and a business community that historically has had an ally in the GOP. Condemnations from business leaders, representing all corners of American industry, were striking for the ways they personally critiqued Trump for failing to attempt to unify the country in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville last weekend.

The Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and Susan G. Komen joined a growing exodus of organizations canceling plans to hold fundraising events at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, deepening the financial impact to President Trumps private business amid furor over his comments on Charlottesville.

Mylan has finalized a $465 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, resolving claims that it overcharged the government for its EpiPen emergency allergy treatment, which became the center of a firestorm over price increases.

Discover Financial Services said it is ending merchant agreements with extremist organizations that incite violence, while Visa has cut ties with several sites as it undergoes a broader review.

Vanguard Group said it has urged companies to disclose how climate change could affect their business and asset valuations, reflecting how the environment has become a priority for the investment industry. Vanguard manages about $4 trillion and is often the top shareholder in big U.S. corporations through its massive index funds, giving it a major voice in setting corporate agendas.

Uber agreed to protect data and audit use of rider information to settle a federal government complaint that it deceived customers.

Huntington Ingalls Industries will pay $9.2 million to settle civil charges that it violated the False Claims Act by overbilling for labor on U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships, the Justice Department said.

Obamacare supporters scored a victory as health insurer Centene decided to dramatically expand in Nevada, filling in rural counties that were at risk of having no health insurance options under the Affordable Care Act next year. Facebook will spend $750 million on a new data center in central Ohio. The 22-acre center is expected to employ 100 people to start.

Walmart said food sales had grown to their highest level in five years, as Walmart expands its grocery business both in stores and online by adding more organic produce.

Deals

Target, looking to improve its digital business amid increased competition from Amazon.com, agreed to acquire a software company that manages local and same-day deliveries. The discount chain is buying Grand Junction, a start-up that links retailers and other distributors to a network of more than 700 carriers.

Transitions

The American workplace is grueling, stressful and surprisingly hostile. So concludes an in-depth study of 3,066 U.S. workers by the Rand Corp., Harvard Medical School and UCLA. Among the findings: Nearly 1 in 5 workers  a share the study calls disturbingly high  say they face a hostile or threatening environment at work, which can include sexual harassment and bullying. Workers who have to face customers endure a disproportionate share of abuse. Nearly 55 percent say they face unpleasant and potentially hazardous conditions.
Carl Icahn relinquished his role as special adviser to President Trump on regulatory reform on Friday afternoon, capping a tumultuous week for the presidents circle of business counselors.

But Icahn did not say he was stepping down because of the uproar over last weekends march and violence in Charlottesville. Instead he said he stepped down to avoid turf conflicts with Neomi Rao, the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and to avoid conflicts of interest over regulations that affect an oil refining company he owns.

In May, five Democratic members of the Senate asked the Environmental Protection Agency for information about Icahns business interests. But Icahn denied any conflict.

Indeed, out of an abundance of caution, the only issues I ever discussed with you were broad matters of policy affecting the refining industry, he said in a letter posted online. I never sought any special benefit for any company with which I have been involved, and have only expressed views that I believed would benefit the refining industry as a whole.

Yet Icahn had strong views on a regulation that was hurting his company, CVR Energy. Oil Daily, a trade publication, said on Aug. 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency is planning to reject a regulatory change that Icahn had long sought.

Under a 2007 law designed to promote ethanol use, refiners must blend mandated levels of renewable fuels like ethanol into gasoline. Refiners that dont do the required blending themselves must buy credits, on open markets or from other refiners.

Flucturating prices for those credits were hurting refiners like Icahns. His two refineries were expected to pay more than $200 million to fulfill their obligations.

In his letter on Friday, Icahn hinted that he, like the other top corporate executives who resigned from their advisory roles, had had little contact with Trump himself. He wrote, I sincerely regret that because of your extremely busy schedule, as well as my own, I have not had the opportunity to spend nearly as much time as Id hoped on regulatory issues.
Nine of 16 big-ticket charity events for the upcoming social season at President Trumps Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., have been canceled. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

Another Palm Beach charity announced Saturday that it was canceling plans to hold a gala at President Trumps Mar-a-Lago Club  the ninth to cancel a big-ticket charity event at the club this week.

The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, a charity focused on the ritzy islands architectural landmarks, had planned to hold a dinner dance at Mar-a-Lago next March. The foundation was a new customer for Trumps club, and a potentially lucrative one: It spent $244,000 on rent and food on a previous gala at another site, according to tax filings.

But on Saturday, the foundation said it would find another venue.

Given the current environment surrounding Mar-a-Lago, we have made the decision to move our annual dinner dance, Amanda Skier, the foundations executive director, said in a written statement. She did not say which venue the foundation would use instead.

That decision meant that Trumps club had lost nine of the 16 galas or dinner events that it had been scheduled to host during next winters social season in Palm Beach. At least three other groups have also canceled charity luncheons there this week.

These losses could reduce the clubs revenue by hundreds of thousands of dollars by each event, and deny President Trump his dual role as president and host to the islands partying elite. If he returns to the club for weekends next winter, the president could often find its grand ballrooms quiet and empty.

These cancellations all followed the presidents remarks on the march of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Va., in which the president said their side had included some fine people.

On Friday, the Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and Susan G. Komen joined the growing exodus of organizations canceling plans to hold fundraising events at the club.

Susan G. Komen, the nations largest breast-cancer fundraising group, said it would seek another venue after hosting its Perfect Pink Party gala at Mar-a-Lago every year since 2011.

The Salvation Army, which has held a gala at the club every year since 2014, said in a statement that it would not hold its event there because the conversation has shifted away from its mission of helping those in need.

And the American Red Cross said it would cancel its annual fundraiser at the club because it has increasingly become a source of controversy and pain for many of our volunteers, employees and supporters, the charity said in a statement.

In a letter to staff Friday, Red Cross chief executive Gail McGovern said, The Red Cross provides assistance without discrimination to all people in need  regardless of nationality, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or political opinions  and we must be clear and unequivocal in our defense of that principle.

[Three fundraising giants cancel plans for galas at Mar-a-Lago]

Trumps club earned between $100,000 and $275,000 each from events of similar size in the past.

But the cancellations also reveal a widening vulnerability for Trump, who, unlike past presidents, refused to divest from his business interests when he joined the White House.

The Trump Organization has not responded to requests for comment.

The charitable groups join three other large event cancellations from Thursday: the Cleveland Clinic, the American Friends of Magen David Adom and the American Cancer Society, which cited its values and commitment to diversity in its decision to abandon the club.

Some of the clubs most notable local boosters, with long fundraising histories and deep Palm Beach roots, were also in outright rebellion Friday against the club. Lois Pope, a Mar-a-Lago member and philanthropist who heads the Lois Pope Life Foundation and Leaders In Furthering Education, said she had told her foundations board to move its well-known December gala from the club.

The hatred, vitriol and anti-Semitic and racist views being spewed by neo-Nazis and White Supremacists are repugnant and repulsive, Pope wrote in a statement. And anyone who would demonstrate even a modicum of support for them by insisting that there are good people among them is not deserving of my personal patronage or that of my foundations.

One of the cancellations cut close to home for the Trumps. Big Dog Ranch Rescue said Friday it would no longer hold an upcoming event at the club and would instead move it to the groups facility nearby. Trumps daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was scheduled to co-chair the event.

The Autism Project of Palm Beach County also said Friday that it is not planning on hosting an event at the club, President Richard Busto told The Post Friday. The local group has held Renaissance Dinner galas at Mar-a-Lago every year since at least 2008.

The Ryan Licht Sang Bipolar Foundation also announced Friday it had canceled its annual medical briefing luncheon at the club and will move it to another venue.

We stand with the community, the foundations co-founder, Dusty Sang, told The Post Friday. I think people are standing up for what they believe.

Another group, the Unicorn Childrens Foundation, said it is currently exploring other options for a previously planned luncheon at Mar-a-Lago and would make its final decision next month.

The groups cancellations follow rebukes from business executives this week, who heavily criticized Trumps comments that white supremacists and counterprotesters equally shared the blame for a deadly weekend in Charlottesville.


People play with the kinetic sand exhibit at Artechouse in Southwest Washington. The risk of contracting germs by touching pathogen-rich communal objects can be overestimated by many, but it is not nonexistent. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

If you touch museum interactive screens, wash your hands afterward. Thats what experts say in an era when museum visitors are increasingly encouraged to handle iPads and other interactives. Staffers tend to clean those daily at best, although researchers have found that digital screens may harbor more bacteria than toilet seats.

There are plenty of documented cases of infections likely being transmitted by objects, such as rails, phones and clothing, says Jonathan Eisen, a microbiology and immunology professor at the University of California at Davis School of Medicine.

Many overestimate the risk of contracting germs by touching pathogen-rich communal objects, but it is important to realize it is not zero, Eisen says. After swiping a screen, museum visitors should wash their hands with soap and water before touching their mouths, eyes or noses. They should also avoid touching their organs directly to the screens.

That is, dont lick the museum iPad or screen, Eisen says.

Parents might want to avoid having young children  who cant help touching their eyes, noses or mouths  touch germy objects. During flu season, maybe museums should wash shared objects more often than otherwise, Eisen says.

Christopher Mason, an associate professor at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York who has studied subways and high-trafficked public spaces in dozens of cities, is less concerned. You are effectively just shaking hands with more people, he says. And Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Healths National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, cautions about driving yourself a little bit to anxiety worrying about things like hotel door knobs.

You can get around all of this by just washing your hands as frequently as you can, Fauci says. Im sure theres a finite risk, probably extremely small.

But even slight risks are scary, notes Neal Johnson, chair of the American Alliance of Museums media and technology professional network and senior digital projects manager at the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.



Screens give details about items on display at the National Museum of the American Indian. Researchers have found that digital displays may harbor more bacteria than toilet seats. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

Nobody wants to be responsible for spreading the next epidemic, he says.

At the Newseum in Washington, everything is wiped down  especially the current virtual-reality Berlin Wall interactive display, says Scott Williams, the chief operating officer. Museums know most visitors arent going to want to put something on their ears unless its been insanely cleaned, he says. (Williams keeps wet wipes at his desk and cleans his phone constantly.)

During flu season, the Newseum washes devices that visitors handle on a daily basis, Williams says. Thats also the policy at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, the International Spy Museum and the National Building Museum. At the Smithsonians museums, there is nothing special about the way we wipe screens, spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas says. Its the same as you do at home.

Visitors to the National Museum of Natural History can handle about 50 interactive screens, says Elizabeth Musteen, chief of exhibit production. The museum uses screens where necessary to tell certain stories, as in the ocean chemistry display. If you say the words ocean chemistry visitors are like, Im on vacation!  she says.

Musteen, who has worked at the museum for 21 years, often sees parents pull children away from interactives. People cant resist touching a screen, she says. And some are so conditioned to touch screens that she sees them touch non-interactive displays.

About 30 percent of the museums 7 million visitors each year tend to interact somewhat with touchable screens, she estimates, and about 10 percent use them for long enough to gain significantly meaningful experiences. Thats 700,000 people each year touching screens, which Musteen says are typically cleaned every morning.

We do try to mitigate the germ issue, she says. I think a lot of people dont think about it, like they dont think about trying on a pair of sunglasses at Target.

Musteen has asked her young children not to put their heads in those viewing stations at other museums. But when there was a flu outbreak and she and colleagues worried that theyd have to restock hand sanitizer dispensers regularly at the museum, that proved unfounded.

The cynics among us thought theyd be empty every 30 minutes, but they werent, Musteen says. When the museum opens its May 2018 exhibit Outbreak, there will be touch screens and hand sanitizer dispensers, she says.

At the National Gallery of Art, acoustiguides are cleaned after each use, and the media team cleans exhibition touch screens during daily rounds, with thorough cleanings weekly as needed, spokeswoman Anabeth Guthrie says.

Building Museum staffers clean iPads daily with wipes we get from Staples, spokeswoman Emma Filar says. Workers are directed to keep an eye on surfaces like iPads to clean as needed during the day and they talk to materials manufacturers about how to clean objects in exhibitions, such as its 2015 installation The Beach and its current Wright on the Walls show.

At the Capitol Visitor Center, the maintenance staff cleans screens every evening, and we have Purell stations around the building, says Laura Trivers, a spokeswoman.

The Spy Museum staff hasnt had great luck with iPads and recently retired a display, says youth education director Jacqueline Eyl. People want an experience thats unparalleled in everything they do today in their leisure time, especially with ticket prices, she says.



A visitor uses a virtual reality headset to interact with Arcade at the American Art Museum in 2016. Museums clean interactive devices regularly, but not necessarily after each use. (Bruce Guthrie/Smithsonian Institution)

Eyl is skeptical of virtual reality interactives in museums due to germs. I dont want to have to clean the goggles, she says. The headphones are kind of use at your own [risk]. . . . Theres a certain grodiness that you have to think about with high visitation and germs.

Changes in cleaning routines during flu season havent come up at the museum, which has an enclosed air vent through which visitors crawl. I suppose maybe they should, Eyl says.

Johnson, of the Austin museum, is less concerned about VR displays. When he goes to trade shows, Johnson often sees the people running virtual reality stations conspicuously wipe helmets after each use. Ive never heard anybody else worry about it until now, he says.

At this years South by Southwest conference, which was dominated by virtual reality, that wasnt the case. I didnt see a single wipe down in between uses, and I didnt see anybody who cared, he says.

But germs have the Newseums Williams wondering if museums should encourage visitors  when possible  to download extra content onto their phones. That way, theyre using their own devices, he says.

Several museums staffers questioned the practicality of cleaning screens after each use, but thats just what happens  with bleach-free Lysol or Clorox wipes  with the iPads that the Detroit Institute of Arts staffers hand out to visitors at the museums Rivera Court. And with other tools, spokeswoman Christine Kloostra says, attending staff is known to periodically clean those devices in the midmorning or afternoon downtime.
The visitors began arriving early last Friday night at St. Pauls Memorial Church across the street from the Rotunda at the University of Virginia. Doors opened at 7:30 and within minutes some 600 people filled the pews and lined its walls. Many others were turned away. They had gathered for an interdenominational prayer and song service presented by Congregate Charlottesville, a collection of local clergy organized in opposition to the white nationalist rally planned for the following day in Emancipation Park.

Less than a mile away, another large group was coming together that evening on the university campus. At a darkened Nameless Field, about 300 white nationalists and Nazi supporters formed a long column, two by two, and held unlit tiki torches. Many wore khakis and polo shirts and Make America Great Again hats. They were preparing for a march through the campus that they intended as a show of force and a rally cry for their white power cause.

The church service began at 8 p.m. Sitting in the pews were clergy members from all over the country who had paid their way to come to Charlottesville to support those protesting against the Unite the Right rally. There were many local residents on hand as well, including long time activists with experience in civil rights rallies and newcomers who wanted to voice their opposition to what they saw as an ugly threat to their city.

[Ad to air in Charlottesville: White supremacy does not belong in White House]

We wanted to have a service that demanded in the name of God and people of conscience that white supremacy must be overcome if America is going to have a successful future, said Seth Wispelwey, a local minister who organized the event along with his wife Tracy Howe Wispelwey, also a minister, and Brittany Caine-Conley.

Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer and his wife sat near the front of the church. Former mayor Kay Slaughter was on hand as were Harvard professor and civil rights leader Cornel West and television journalist Katie Couric, a University of Virginia graduate who was working on a long-form report for National Geographic television about the national debate over statues, memorials and the naming of buildings. Following the weekends events, she released a gripping report that captured the tension leading up to the Charlottesville showdown and its violent outcome.

The service began with a quintet of young women singing and the people in the church clapping along. There was a welcome from St. Pauls rector, Rev. William Peyton and a reading of statement of support from the National Council of Churches. Muslim, Jewish and Christian faith leaders spoke to the predominately white audience in front of them.

At that time, most in the church had no idea that the large group of white nationalists had formed just a short walk away and were then lighting their torches. Hey kike!, one snarled at a reporter who walked down the line taking photos. F--- you, faggot! yelled another. As they climbed the steps leading out of Nameless Field, they let loose a loud roar that was soon followed by chants of Our blood, our soil! and Jews will not replace us!

[Recounting a day of rage, hate, violence and death]

In the church, Traci Blackmon, a minister from St. Louis delivered a barnburner of a sermon, said Jalane Schmidt, a University of Virginia professor and one of the leaders of those protesting the rally. It was just a raucous service. Clapping and singing and a feeling that we would not be deterred.

Mayor Signer looked down at his phone and left soon after. He had received word, he said later, that a federal judge had ruled against the citys effort to move the following days rally to a city park outside of the citys bustling downtown district.

But the spirit inside the church didnt dampen. The singing and the songs continued. Wade in the Water, This Little Heart of Mine, Oh Freedom!. Jamie Ross, a local documentary filmmaker, was moved by the camaraderie and shared sense of purpose.

It was galvanizing, she said. It was so well put together and very clearly gave people strength and hope.

Meanwhile, the marchers continued their rapid trek across the university campus, their torches a line of fire as they hurried in formation past the schools iconic buildings. At times running to keep in formation they passed. The campus was almost entirely empty and silent except for the marchers and their threatening chants.

Inside the church, the first messages began to reach clergy members via text and Twitter about the fast-approaching group of marchers. There was confusion at first. Wariness and fear. No one knew where the marchers were headed or what they intended, but they didnt need to be reminded of recent and distant attacks by white supremacists on houses of faith.

People were scurrying around trying to find out if the protesters were coming toward the church, said Couric. There was a lot of fear that they were going to walk right across the street to the church.

The service concluded and from the pulpit, Peyton addressed the crowd, alerting them to potential trouble from protesters.

I think its a good time for a prayer for our enemies, he said. God called us to the hard work of loving our enemies. Lead them and lead us from prejudice to truth. Deliver them and deliver us from hatred, cruelty and revenge.

[Charlottesville hopes to wash away the stains of hate]

There was no panic in the church, but it was a very tense and kind of trepidatious environment toward the end, Couric said. You couldnt help but think about churches in Birmingham and other places that have been targeted so it was definitely worrisome.

Inside of St. Pauls Blackmon, who had given her sermon, tweeted: They are coming for the church! Police all around. They wont let us go outside. Yall these KKK are marching with torches!

For Ross, the filmmaker, images flashed in her head.

I kept thinking of movies where the Nazis round up all the people into the church or the synagogue and blow it up, she said. And I kept thinking were all sitting here and those guys are out there.

By then the marchers had reached the Thomas Jefferson statue in front of the Rotunda and just across University Avenue from the church. There, a small group of students linked arms around the statue determined to face down the mob.

Surrounding the students, the marchers began chanting Our streets! and White Lives Matter! Then chaos. Punches and pepper spray. Bodies tumbling. Torches thrown at the statue and the students circled around it.

In the church, everyone was told everyone to shelter in place. A few organizers pushed to have people in the church rush across and help the students, but the decision was made to stay put.

[Being in Charlottesville broke my heart. It also filled me with hope.]

As I think about relaying an invitation to confront a mob to a full church of mostly untrained people and many children, I imagine mostly bad outcomes, Willis Jenkins, a University of Virginia professor and one of the organizers providing security at the church, wrote in a message he sent on Wednesday And yet, he wrote, I am personally haunted that I did not go to assist those students.

As quickly as the melee erupted, it was over. Marchers returned to Nameless Field, stuffing their extinguished torches in garbage cans on the campus. Volunteers in the church left to help those near the statue who had been Maced.

The worshipers who had gathered two hours earlier for an evening of prayer and song went home to prepare for the following day.

Arelis Hernandez contributed to this report.
Former District of Columbia Councilmember Michael A. Brown , who served time in prison for taking more than $50,000 in bribes in an undercover FBI sting, is supposed to lead ethics courses for city workers. (Molly Riley/AP)

Former D.C. Council member Michael A. Brown, who recently finished serving time in prison for accepting bribes, is preparing to deliver a series of speeches about ethics to government employees.

The arrangement, brokered by the Districts Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, has prompted a question from some city officials: Are you kidding?

Brown, who was released from federal custody less than three months ago, must now fulfill an agreement he worked out with the ethics board in 2015 as part of his punishment for violating the citys code of conduct.

That agreement, separate from the plea deal Brown negotiated with the U.S. attorneys office, mandates that he conduct 12 live, in-person presentations in which he will educate government employees on the risks inherent in engaging in unethical conduct.

As observers of former mayor Marion Barry Jr.s ups and downs could attest, the Districts political cycle of wrongdoing and contrition can spin fast enough to induce motion sickness. But the speed of Browns turnaround  one proposal on the table would have him featured as a speaker at the citys Ethics Day training sessions this October  is giving pause to some newer ethics board members who were not around when Brown originally negotiated his duties as an instructor.

I can see The Washington Post cartoon now, said Carol Schwartz, a member of the ethics board and a former council member. Maybe some time way off in the future, if he led a straight-and-narrow, appropriate life  great. Id feel differently, she said. Theres a history here, and its too soon to know if he could be a teacher for ethics.

Schwartz, along with ethics board chair Tameka Collier, an attorney for the U.S. Air Force, expressed concern at a meeting last month about the suggestion by the boards staff to include Brown in the Ethics Day lineup.

It is shocking enough to draw attention, Collier said at the meeting. My only concern is obviously making sure that the focus is not him, but ethics. Collier did not respond to requests for comment last week.

Shock was an accurate description of the reaction to Browns new duties from Dorothy Brizill, a longtime citizen watchdog of D.C. city hall.

Why dont we just have a group session? Well bring in Kwame Brown and well bring in Harry Thomas Jr., Brizill said, referring to two of Browns former council colleagues. In 2012, Thomas admitted to stealing more than $350,000 from District-funded youth programs. Kwame Brown pleaded guilty the same year to a felony bank fraud charge.

Im from the old school, where a teacher in front of a class is like a preacher in front of the pulpit, Brizill said. A certain moral authority goes along with it. A certain prestige goes along with it. That should not be accorded to someone like Michael Brown.

Brown, 52, admitted in 2013 to taking $55,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as contractors trying to do business with the city. He accepted some of the money  which he was secretly recorded referring to as a piece of the piece, a phrase that immediately found its place in the Districts crowded annals of political corruption  in a Washington Redskins mug.

Brown, who was granted special permission by a judge to travel to Long Island to get married in June, briefly spoke to a reporter over the phone last week.

Im looking forward to it, he said of his upcoming presentations to government workers.

He referred further questions to his attorney, who did not return calls.

Brian Flowers, the interim director of the ethics board staff, said the agency was reviewing its options for fulfilling the deal with Brown in light of board members concerns.

It doesnt look good for Ethics Day, Flowers said of the likelihood of Brown appearing at the event. One alternative the ethics staff is considering, he said, is for Brown to appear in some type of video that would be played for District workers.

Robert J. Spagnoletti, the former D.C. attorney general who approved Browns settlement with the ethics board when he was its chairman, did not return calls.

Georgetown University Law Center professor Paul Butler said that while Browns speaking gigs are likely to draw guffaws, they are in line with a trend in thinking at the vanguard of criminal justice reform: constructive programs and opportunities for people leaving prison.

It is easy to spoof what hes doing, but I do think its part of this trend of respecting and trying to ease the transition of people back into the community, Butler said.

The idea of someone who has just been incarcerated as having something important to share is, I think, a useful concept. We often want to continue to punish people after theyve served their time.
FREMONT, Calif.  When Moina Shaiq realized even her friends were scared to ask her about her religion for fear of offending her or sounding uneducated, she put an advertisement in a California newspaper: "Questions and answers about being Muslim."

The ad offered ideas for questions: Are women oppressed in Islam? What is the Islamic view of terrorism? How does Islam view other religions?

She set up shop at a coffee house in the San Francisco Bay Area city of Fremont, hoping for good attendance, but brought her laptop to do some work in case no one showed. To her surprise, about 100 people turned out that day last year, and her "Meet a Muslim" program was born.

"It was over overwhelming," said Shaiq, a mother of four and grandmother. "Fremont is so diverse, you will see women in hijab on the streets all the time. I didn't think people here would be interested or even need to know about Muslims."

Shaiq has spoken since about being Muslim and answered questions at dozens of libraries, pizza parlors and coffee shops in the San Francisco Bay Area. She recently expanded Meet a Muslim to churches, service clubs and private homes, and traveled to Arizona and Atlanta with the program.

She gives the talks once or twice a week on her own time and her own dime to break down stereotypes.

Similar programs emerged after 9/11, when many Muslims felt the need to engage with their fellow Americans to dispel negative perceptions of their faith. They've seen a resurgence with a recent uptick in anti-Muslim crimes.

Earlier this year, for instance, Muslim and former U.S. Marine Mansoor Shams traveled the country with a sign that read "I'm a Muslim and a U.S. Marine, Ask Me Anything." In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mona Haydar and her husband set up a booth outside a library in 2015 with coffee, doughnuts and a sign that stated "Ask a Muslim." Other such events have taken place on U.S. college campuses.

Shaiq said she started her program to educate people about her faith and culture while addressing people's misconceptions and stereotypes.

She explains the importance of the hijab (head scarf) or niqab (face covering), the differences between Sunnis and Shias (the two main sects of Islam), the rights of women in Islam, and what it's like to be an American Muslim today.

At a recent Rotary club meeting in Fremont, a man asked how she thinks people can combat Muslim extremism.

"This is where you start," Shaiq said. "You understand what the faith is."

Recent anti-Muslim incidents across the U.S. include arson attacks, vandalism, harassment and school bullying. In May, authorities in Portland, Oregon, say a man killed two men and wounded a third after they tried to stop his anti-Muslim tirade.

Shaiq herself has faced threats at her events. One man in Atlanta warned he would "slit her throat" if she said something he didn't like. He listened to the discussion, never asked a question and then left.

"That was scary," Shaiq said.

Muslim leaders consider the incidents part of a deeply alarming trend that came to the forefront in last year's presidential election with far-right activists portraying Islam  and all Muslims  as a threat.

They see echoes of these far-right views in President Donald Trump's efforts to ban entry into the U.S. from six Muslim-majority countries and in his claims of dangers posed by immigrants and Muslim refugees.

Initiatives like Meet a Muslim are important at "this time of heightened fear and xenophobia," said Zainab Arain, who works to monitor and combat Islamophobia with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based Muslim advocacy group. "An effective way to push back against that, especially at a local level, is to gather people and have them get to know one another."

Some American Muslims, however, have struggled to see the benefit of these efforts when they see community members having the same conversations they had almost 16 years ago.

"It's just not a good use of time. The likelihood of changing a bigot's mind is so low," said Asha Noor, a racial justice activist based in Detroit.

Instead, Noor and other critics say the focus should be on policy change.

For Shaiq, her program is about sharing a message of love, compassion and peace.

Attendance at her talks spikes following news events that include Muslims, and the discussion often gets spirited, even tense and angry.

"I want to proactively educate my fellow Americans that Muslims are humans just like they are," Shaiq said. "They have the same needs as anyone else."
Ryan Sawyers, chairman of the Prince William County School Board, has started raising funds to change the name of Stonewall Jackson High in Manassas, Va., named for the Confederate general. (Gabriella Demczuk /For The Washington Post )

Outrage over the violence and hate on display during a rally of white supremacists and white nationalists last weekend in Charlottesville has reenergized efforts nationwide to strip Confederate symbols out of American public life  including from the names of public schools.

School officials and community members across the country have invoked the Charlottesville events  which left three people dead  to call for renaming schools in Dallas and Oklahoma City. The movement is resonating especially in Virginia, the scene of much of the Civil War.

Some in Arlington County are calling for officials to rename Washington-Lee High School, whose campus sits not far from the home of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. And a school board member in Prince William County has begun raising funds to strip the name of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson from two schools.

A graduate of Lee-Davis High, which calls itself the Home of the Confederates, has begun a petition to rebrand his alma mater. That school, near Richmond, is named for Lee and Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederacy.

Our school should not use the same names and symbols as violent extremist groups, Ryan Leach, who is a 2010 graduate of Lee-Davis, wrote on Facebook.

[From Charlottesville: Recounting a day of rage, hate, violence and death]

The campaigns come as cities weigh the removal of statues and monuments honoring Confederate figures  a move President Trump has denounced as the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.

[Trump said hes sad to see Confederate statues coming down. Descendants of Confederate leaders disagree.]

Data on school names from the National Center for Education Statistics show that at least 138 public schools nationwide in 2015-16 were named after Confederate leaders or for counties that bear the name of those leaders, including Lee, Jackson and Davis. They are largely concentrated in the South.

But the figure is probably an undercount of the Confederate imprint on school names, because it does not include less-prominent Rebel figures.

Schools named after Confederate leaders underwent soul-searching two years ago, after white supremacist Dylann Roof massacred nine black parishioners in a Charleston, S.C., church. San Diegos Robert E. Lee Elementary, for example, was named Pacific View Leadership Elementary.

[Nearly 200 schools are named for Confederate leaders. Is it time to rename them?]

Dallas Independent School District in Texas  home to several schools bearing Confederate names  is among those reevaluating those names in light of the Charlottesville events.

Dallas school board member Miguel Solis, who wants to change those names, said he was shocked at how youthful many of the white nationalists in Charlottesville seemed. Roof was in his early 20s at the time of his attack.

It is not okay for new generations to continue to cling to a dark moment and time in American history . . . and to have symbols that they can continue to rally around to help preserve a dark ideology, Solis said. We need to do something about it.

Dan Micciche, president of the Dallas school board, wrote on Facebook that he supported Soliss proposal.

Over the weekend, we witnessed in Charlottesville a terrible tragedy caused by white supremacists, he wrote. There is no place for the violence and hatred we saw on display this weekend.

Last year, the Dallas board approved the renaming of John B. Hood Middle School  named after a Confederate general  to Piedmont G.L.O.B.A.L. Academy in response to concerns from the community.

Officials in Oklahoma City are considering renaming four schools that bear Confederate names. Superintendent Aurora Lora said renaming a school can cost up to $75,000  a significant burden at a time when the states schools are already struggling with cut-to-the-bone budgets. But in a statement posted on the districts website, she said it is clear that the historical names of some of our facilities are not names that reflect our values in 2017.

Virginia, home to the capital of the Confederacy, has at least 19 schools named for Confederate generals. That will soon change. Last month, the Fairfax County school board last month voted to change the name of J.E.B. Stuart High, which was originally named for a Confederate cavalry officer. The county also has a high school named for Lee, but the board has not moved to rename it.

[A Virginia school board votes to change name of J.E.B. Stuart High]

Those who back changing names argue that they were originally chosen in decades past to send a message to black students that they were not welcome. Many of the schools opened prior to court-ordered racial integration and served only white students.

In Arlington, a school board meeting Thursday night opened with a moment of silence for those who were killed and injured in Charlottesville. Barbara Kanninen, the boards chair, said that the events raised important questions about how to name schools.

Its time to talk about the names of our schools, and what they mean, and why they matter. It is time to talk about the values these names reflect and the messages we are sending to our children, Kanninen said.

Community members pleaded with the board to change the name of Washington-Lee High.

Marc Beallor, a retired union organizer and member of the activist group Indivisible Arlington, told the board it was improper to honor Lee alongside President George Washington.

It emits the hypocritical and shameful message of moral equivalency between those who fought for freedom and those who fought for slavery, said Beallor.

He added: Let us act now in the memory of Heather Heyer, who gave her life in this cause, referring to the woman who was fatally struck by a car Saturday in Charlottesville.

In Prince William, a school board member has called for stripping the name of Stonewall Jackson from two schools near Manassas, scene of the 1861 battle where the Confederate general, born Thomas Jonathan Jackson, earned his moniker. School board member Ryan Sawyers is raising funds from private donors to pay for the name change.

Sawyers said he was moved to start the campaign by last weekends events and wants to send a message that Virginia has evolved.

This is certainly a nonviolent way to say that Virginia is moving on from its segregationist and racist past, Sawyers said.

But there are plenty of people in the county who want the name to stay.

Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, said the school was named for Stonewall Jackson because . . . he was a good and honorable and noble man. Stewart has threatened to reduce the school systems funding if the proposal by Sawyers is approved.

This is just political correctness run amok, Stewart said.
Rachel Olson, a first-year student from Virginia Beach at the University of Virginia, puts away shoes as she arrives in her dorm. (Norm Shafer for The Washington Post)

Rachel Olson laughed with her new roommate as they unpacked the bins and bags crammed into their tiny dorm room at the University of Virginia.

It was just a week earlier that Olson, a first-year student who is biracial, was tracking news of hundreds of white nationalists and white supremacists marching with torches through the heart of the campus, shouting racial slurs.

Now, she needs to make this place home.

It was scary, Olson said Friday. In those moments, broadcast around the world, you really saw what was going on in peoples heads. They said what they were thinking, finally.

That brought another revelation for the 18-year-old from Virginia Beach. We, as U-Va. students, can help change that, because were the future. . . . Were the new generation.

Rachel Olson, center, a first year student at the University of Virginia, talks to her friend Marcus Temple, left, who came to help her move and her roommate Jordan Benderoth, at right. (Norm Shafer for The Washington Post)

Starting college is an anxious time for many students, with questions about leaving home, meeting strangers and becoming independent. But at U-Va. this year, the tensions are far more visceral, the unknowns far more stark. The need to make this place their own is even more crucial.

There were reminders everywhere of the influx of white nationalists to Charlottesville last weekend, and of the attack on counterprotesters that killed a woman named Heather Heyer and hurt many others. There were signs, too, of optimism and resolve for unity.

[Recounting a day of rage, hate, violence and death]

A purple poster displayed in the bookstore says simply Heather. Professors are busy revising syllabi, many changing the first class into one to talk it out. Alumni volunteering to help new students wore T-shirts that proclaimed: Hoos Against Hate.

Last weeks violence touched everyone. A mother who is white said she choked back tears when she first saw the flames on television. Her son Bryce Griffin, 18, of Potomac Falls, said his parents asked him if he was scared, if he still wanted to go to U-Va.

But for many of those in the Class of 2021 who are not white and Christian, coming to U-Va. took courage.

They have fears both immediate and long-term.

University of Virginia alumni Haike Giragosian, class of 2000 and Greg Jackson, class of 2007, joke on Friday as they write letters of advice to incoming freshman at Alumni Hall. (Norm Shafer for The Washington Post)

These people may come back, said Erica Stephens, an African American student who grew up in Vernon Hill in rural southern Virginia. They could be all around us  we dont know.

Many of the 3,800 or so first-year students dreamed of this school for years. Olson fell in love with it in eighth grade, after visiting Thomas Jeffersons Monticello, coming to the campus he founded and seeing the Rotunda he designed. I dont know if you can explain, just like a feeling of, you belong somewhere, Olson said.

But I came here, and it felt like home.

Bryan Lopez, 18, a Mexican American who grew up in Waco, Tex., learned to love it this past year as he realized its school of architecture, its history and its close community were exactly what he wanted.

All have had their ideas of the school shaken this past week.

[Thousands light candles at U-Va., reclaiming their campus]

Every person who Ive run into, Lopez said, my instructors, my friends, every interaction has been, Are you still going to go there, with everything that goes on there? 

Jhanya Williamson, 17, an African American from the Bronx, said one relative tried to talk her out of coming.

Stephenss mom asked if she was sure she had chosen the right college.

Lopezs mom, after hearing news about the hatred and violence, saw his list of school supplies when she came home one day from her job as a restaurant cook. She joked that he wouldnt be needing them  because he wouldnt be going to U-Va. There is worry there, for sure, Lopez said.

Group chats among the Class of 2021 students of color suddenly got real.

It's terrifying, Williamson was thinking. Im going to be living there in a week  is this going to keep happening?

Very rarely had Lopez ever felt unsafe because of his race. But now, things that I felt when I was a child and didnt understand are coming back. That, honestly, is a scary regression.

He kept asking his new roommate, who is from Charlottesville, if this was normal, if racism was common here.

[After clashes with white nationalists, U-Va. employee suffers stroke]

Lopez worried that the community he admired  the sense of trust embedded from the honor code, the sense of respect, the desire to give back  would be broken apart. Stephens wondered if the applicant pool would change. What if people with white-supremacist thoughts were drawn to the school, and minorities were deterred? Without the diversity it has now, she said, that would basically ruin the U-Va. I know. I dont want that to happen.

This week, as the first shocks wore down, fear was countered by anger and defiance, by courage and hope.

Im afraid, Lopez said, but I dont have the luxury of fear. Thats what theyre trying to instill in us.

Im not going to let fear overtake my experience there, Williamson said.

In recent days, these strangers, almost-friends and soon-to-be-classmates pulled together in online conversations. Were all just really trying to stick together and make some positive out of this whole experience, Stephens said. I know there are some who are fearful and scared and they just dont know what to think. Thats where the rest of us come in  just hold each other, hug each other, build each other up with words  because thats basically all you can do.

This isnt U-Va., they reassured each other. This isnt Charlottesville, either.

Olson never regretted choosing U-Va., she said. I just knew it was going to be a more difficult transition.

Her mother Trina Olson Keeny, who is African American, said: I trust the faculty and the administration of the University of Virginia. Theyve done an incredible job communicating how safe our children will be, and how hatred and prejudice will not be tolerated here.

The Class of 2021 at Dartmouth College sent a letter to U-Va.s first-year class, rejecting bigotry and sending support, an effort joined by other colleges across the country. Let love be the torch that guides you, Dartmouth students wrote. They quoted Jefferson: In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

[New students at Dartmouth and other colleges write U-Va.]

U-Va. has a complex history with race. It was built on Jeffersonian ideals and built in its early years by enslaved people. Over time, the public university has seen racist incidents, ever-growing diversity and attempts to better recognize the role of slavery. Earlier this year, the school announced plans for a large and prominent memorial to the contributions of slaves.

In the last five years, minority enrollment has grown significantly. The school is still majority white. Nine percent of the Class of 2021 identified as black or multiracial.

This week the community tried to reset the normal rhythms of the school year. Lines of cars and vans snaked into town, stuffed with families and plastic tubs full of clothing and sheets.

Everyone here is nice, Olson said.

Greg Jackson Jr., 32, of the District, who graduated from U-Va. in 2007, helped organize an open letter to the new class from black alumni. He said he wanted to show them their safety is a priority for the university and that alumni would hold the school accountable.

Quentin Washington, 34, of New York, a 2004 graduate, said the newcomers struck him as resilient. Theyre just so confident in themselves, he said.

A small group of alumni crowded around a table Friday writing notes to first-years on U-Va. stationery, giving advice  Be sure you get on the right bus, said Haike Giragosian, 39, who graduated in 2000  and joking about whether they should include tips on streaking the Lawn.

Stephens said seeing thousands fill the campus Lawn for a candlelight gathering Wednesday night, and reclaiming the space and their community, made her certain her class will turn all that hate around.

I hope the world will, she added. Its not a U-Va. problem or a Charlottesville problem  its a societal problem.

Olson and her roommate, Jordan Benderoth, began to move in Friday morning, unpacking bedding, sweaters and a string of lights.

Benderoth, 18, from Virginia Beach, brought the mini fridge and the coffee machine. Olson brought the printer and the Magic Bullet blender. Rachel, you are crazy, Benderoth said, as they started on a massive load of clothes.

Maybe that night, they said, theyd swing by the cookie place. Maybe on Saturday, theyd help one of Benderoths friends move in, too.

They were settling in. But not settling.

My class is a generation of changers, Olson said. Were going to change ourselves to be more loving people, to be examples to follow.

Svrluga reported from Washington.
Amid last weeks violence in Charlottesville, a journalist alleges she was punched in the face and thrown to the ground, according to a criminal complaint she filed after the incident.

Taylor Lorenz, a journalist for the Hill, was live-streaming from the scene Aug. 12 when a 21-year-old man started screaming for her to stop recording, she said in her written testimony.

So far, this year has seen 15 cases of physical attacks on journalists, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which documents press-freedom abuses in the United States.

The man, identified as Jacob Leigh Smith of Louisa, Va., was arrested the same day and charged with assault and battery.

Smith was scheduled to appear in court Friday after being released on a $1,000 secured bond. He is not allowed to leave Virginia under his bail conditions. His next court appearance is scheduled for Sept. 25.

During the incident, Smith allegedly punched Lorenz in the face, knocked the phone out of her hand and threw her to the ground, she said. He repeatedly threatened her, she added.

I was so scared. This man is dangerous, she wrote.

In the video posted on the Hills Facebook page, Smith can be seen coming up to Lorenz and asking her to stop recording, before knocking the phone out of her hand. Stop the f---ing recording! he screamed at her.

The alleged assault occurred about 15 minutes after rallygoer James Alex Fields Jr. is accused of driving his silver Dodge Challenger into a crowd of people, killing Heather Heyer, 32, of Charlottesville, and injuring 19 others.

[A neo-Nazis rage-fueled journey to Charlottesville]

According to the press-freedom tracker, another reporter, Christopher Schiano, was attacked in the head with a tiki torch in Charlottesville last Friday. Two journalists were also attacked Sunday in Richmond and Asheville, N.C., while covering demonstrations related to the unrest in Charlottesville.

The tracking project is funded in part by a $50,000 contribution to the Committee to Protect Journalists by Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.). The donation was made as part of a legal settlement with Ben Jacobs, a reporter for the Guardian who Gianforte had body-slammed in May during his congressional campaign.

Jacobs glasses, broken during the assault, were loaned to the Newseum in June.
VIRGINIA

Man Tasered after attempted carjacking

A Virginia man was Tasered Friday after police said he drove his vehicle into several others at a Fairfax shopping center, attempted to carjack a vehicle, and stole a security guards car.

According to police, a robbery report sent officers to the 7400 block of Little River Turnpike in Annandale. Officers learned that a man, had driven his car into others near the shopping center, then ran before trying to carjack a woman, county police said.

The man got into an altercation with a security guard during which he cut the guard with a knife, police said. Police said he stole keys to the guards vehicle, which he drove around the parking lot, hitting other cars and the Safeway supermarket. Police say the man resisted as they tried to apprehend him and had to be pepper-sprayed and Tasered. He was identified as Kelly Christopher Robinson, 35, of Triangle, Va.

 Justin Wm. Moyer

Corrective action order in sexual assault case

Federal officials say Old Dominion University must take corrective action in response to a complaint accusing the school of mishandling the response to a womans sexual assault.

A U.S. Department of Education official told the womans lawyers it identified certain serious shortcomings in ODU campus safety operations and compliance with a federal law. The department says it will work with ODU to ensure corrective action is taken.

The woman said campus police prevented her from getting a medical exam to preserve rape evidence until after almost eight hours of interrogation. The university said it cannot comment because it hasnt been contacted by the Education Department.

 Associated Press

THE DISTRICT

Man dies after leaping from bridge into traffic

A man was killed Thursday night when he apparently jumped from a pedestrian overpass on to the Anacostia Freeway in Northeast and was hit by a vehicle whose driver did not stop, D.C. police said.

Police said the man apparently jumped near Polk Street. His name was not given.

 Peter Hermann

Teen girls charged in 2 a.m. gun holdup in SE

Two teenage girls who were out at 2 a.m. Tuesday were not necessarily helped by being with an older teenager, based on a D.C. police report.

A robbery was reported in the 3400 block of Minnesota Avenue SE, police said. They said cash, and cellphones were taken from two victims and a gun was shown.

Police said a 14-year-old girl, along with two 13-year olds, were arrested shortly afterward, and all were charged with armed robbery.

 Martin Weil
Correction: Earlier versions of this story misstated the percentage of Maryland registered voters who said in a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll that they would support Gov. Larry Hogan if he ran for second term in 2018. Forty-one percent of registered voters said they would do so. The article has been corrected.

Gov. Larry Hogan (R) told a group of county leaders here on Saturday that he signed an executive order to create a statewide land-use plan that, unlike a highly criticized development plan set by his predecessor, seeks input from local and county officials.

As I have traveled across Maryland, local elected officials have repeatedly asked for a plan that better reflects the needs of our state, Hogan said. One that will improve coordination between state agencies and local governments, support thoughtful growth and infrastructure planning, stimulate economic development and revitalization in existing and planned communities.

Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), who had not seen the details of the order, said Hogan has done a very good job of reaching out and coordinating with local officials.

I look forward to seeing the details of what he is suggesting, he said. I think its a good step for all of us.

Hogans speech capped off the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference, a four-day annual gathering of state and county officials where talk of the deadly violence in Charlottesville and the decision to remove the Roger B. Taney statue from the State House grounds in Annapolis largely overshadowed discussion of next years high-stakes gubernatorial race.

Candidates seeking the 2018 Democratic nomination for governor, many of whom are largely unknown throughout the state, made the rounds during the convention, meeting with potential donors and trying to connect with and build support from elected officials from across the state.

Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, who is considering a bid for governor, was seen early Friday morning huddled in a booth at a local diner with U.S. Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md). The site of the pair  Kamenetz a likely Hogan challenger and Brown the candidate who was upset by Hogan in 2014  left many speculating about their discussion.

Was Kamenetz asking Brown for campaign advice on what not to do, one person joked.

Kamenetz said Saturday it was just two old friends catching up.

Rumors also swirled over the weekend after Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery) was seen in what several described as an awkward, tense exchange with Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) during a fundraiser for another senator. Earlier in the day, Madaleno criticized Miller on Facebook for defending Taney, the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision, and refusing to vote as a member of the Maryland State House Trust to remove the statue.

Several people said they thought the two were talking about the statue. Madaleno said Saturday that they were not.

Hogan, who spent some of his time answering media questions about his change of mind over the statue, was largely in campaign mode, using most of the time pressing palms, attending fundraisers and taking pictures.

While walking the boardwalk, flanked by about a dozen members of his staff, Hogan was stopped by Alexandro Bonilla, 36, of Clarksburg. Bonilla asked Hogan if he would take a picture with his family. Very good job, Bonilla repeated as he shook Hogans hand.

Bonilla, a Democrat, said hes been impressed with the governor and could see himself voting for him. We just need him to continue to work for the school system, his wife interjected.

Many Democratic elected officials said the gubernatorial race, which includes candidates who range from veteran politicians to people who have never run for elected office, remains wide open. With 10 months until the June 2018 gubernatorial primary, they say they have yet to see a candidate move ahead of the pack.

Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery) said she is waiting to see which candidate shows an ability to raise money, to put together a strong operation, and to galvanize Democrats, independents and possibly even some Republicans.

Despite Hogans strong popularity, Democrats said they remain encouraged that they could win back the governors office.

A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll earlier this year found that support for Hogans reelection lags behind his approval ratings. Hogan held a 65 percent approval rating in March, but just 41percent of registered voters said they would support him for a second term and 37 percent said they preferred a Democrat.

Its clear that the right Democrat can beat Hogan, but its still unclear who the right Democrat is, Del. Eric D. Luedtke (D-Montgomery) said.

Most of the Democratic candidates, who have officially launched their campaigns, attended the conference. They include: Madaleno, Prince Georges County Executive Rushern L. Baker III, attorney Jim Shea, and tech entrepreneur Alec Ross.

Krishanti Vignarajah, a onetime policy director for former first lady Michelle Obama, and Ben Jealous, the former NAACP president, who held a fundraiser in New York City with David Chappelle on Friday night, did not attend.
Arthur J. Finkelstein, whose sharp, relentless attack ads helped elect dozens of conservative political candidates in the United States and abroad and made him a kingmaker in Republican circles for decades, died Aug. 18 at his home in Ipswich, Mass. He was 72.

The cause was metastasized lung cancer, his family said in a statement.

Mr. Finkelstein cultivated an image as a reclusive, behind-the-scenes figure, seldom granting interviews and rarely drawing attention to himself in public  all of which lent him a mystique as a pollster, campaign manager and ruthless operative in electoral politics.

He became a prominent political power broker in the 1970s who helped propel the careers of Republican senators such as James L. Buckley (N.Y.), Jesse Helms (N.C.), Orrin G. Hatch (Utah) and Alfonse DAmato (N.Y.), as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Finkelsteins influence extended to two generations of Republican political consultants who launched their careers on his campaigns.

Mr. Finkelstein was considered a master at developing simple campaign messages, which were repeated in such a steady barrage of negative television commercials that he was sometimes called the merchant of venom. As much as anyone, he was responsible for making the word liberal a political slur.

Arthur Finkelstein, right, with Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) in 1998. (Gary Maloney)

He was also something of a political conundrum  especially after it was revealed in 1996 that his private life as a gay man was in sharp contrast to the views of some of the conservative firebrands he helped elect. Helms, for instance, often railed against the homosexual movement, which he said threatens the strength and the survival of the American family.

In 1996, New York Times columnist Frank Rich described Mr. Finkelstein as someone who sells his talents to lawmakers who would outlaw his familys very existence.

Mr. Finkelstein was credited with helping raise Ronald Reagans national profile during the 1976 Republican primary campaign. Ultimately, the nomination went to President Gerald R. Ford, who lost the general election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

Reagans insurgent campaign against a sitting president laid the groundwork for his overwhelming presidential victory in 1980. Mr. Finkelstein was seen as one of several GOP strategists, including Roger Ailes, Lee Atwater and Charlie Black, who were instrumental in helping shape what became known as the Reagan Revolution.

Without Arthur Finkelstein, Ronald Reagan might never have become president of the United States, historian and Reagan biographer Craig Shirley wrote on the website of National Review magazine in January 2017.

During Reagans eight years in the White House, Mr. Finkelstein was an informal adviser to the administration and managed congressional and gubernatorial campaigns across the country.

He uses a sledgehammer in every race, political scientist Darrell M. West told the Boston Globe in 1996. Ive detected five phrases he uses  ultraliberal, superliberal, embarrassingly liberal, foolishly liberal and unbelievably liberal.

1 of 66 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Notable deaths so far this year View Photos Remembering those who have died in 2017. Caption Remembering those who died in 2017. Mamie Peanut Johnson Mamie Peanut Johnson, the first female pitcher in the Negro leagues, died on Dec. 18. Read the obituary: Mamie Peanut Johnson, hard-throwing woman in baseballs Negro leagues, dies at 82 Katherine Frey/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Mr. Finkelstein was 25 when he helped Buckley, a registered member of New Yorks Conservative Party, win a six-person race for the Senate in 1970. Two years later, Mr. Finkelsteins polling and political guidance helped Helms become the first Republican elected to the Senate from North Carolina since the 19th century.

As other victories piled up, Mr. Finkelstein became one of the GOPs top campaign masterminds and the chief strategist of the National Conservative Political Action Committee. In 1980, his efforts helped defeat such longtime Democratic stalwarts as Sens. George S. McGovern (S.D.) and Birch Bayh (Ind.).

Mr. Finkelstein was also the architect of DAmatos unexpected 1980 Senate victory in New York, where he upset four-term incumbent Jacob K. Javits in the Republican primary.

Following Mr. Finkelsteins recommendation, DAmato  who once trailed in the polls by more than 60 points  made Javitss little-known diagnosis of Lou Gehrigs disease an issue in the campaign. One often-aired commercial, reportedly written by Mr. Finkelstein, ended with the line, And now, at age 76 and in failing health, Jacob Javits wants six more years.

DAmato won a three-way general election against Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman and Javits, who entered the race as a third-party candidate after his loss in the primary. DAmato, who went on to serve three terms in the Senate, once said that Mr. Finkelsteins political skills are second to none.

In 1994, Mr. Finkelstein was the driving force behind Republican George E. Patakis upset victory over New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and devised the campaigns inescapable slogan: Too liberal for too long.

Dozens of well-known Republican political operatives worked on campaigns with Mr. Finkelstein over the years, including Ari Fleischer, Roger Stone, Alex Castellanos, Frank Luntz, Beth Myers, Tony Fabrizio, Gary Maloney and Larry Weitzner.

In National Review, Shirley, the Reagan biographer, called Mr. Finkelstein simply the greatest and most controversial, the most ethical and most successful political consultant and pollster in the history of American politics.

Others were not so charitable.

He makes James Carville look like Mary Poppins, GOP stategist Mike Murphy told The Washington Post in 1996, referring to Bill Clintons 1992 campaign manager. He has contempt for a lot of the party establishment. He is brilliant, crazy and secluded.

A 1996 CNN report described Mr. Finkelstein as the stuff of Hollywood: A man who can topple even the most powerful foes, yet so secretive that few have ever seen him.

He registered at hotels under assumed names and avoided photographers.

While directing Netanyahus successful campaign for Israeli prime minister in 1996, he described his approach to politics in a rare interview with the New York Times magazine.

I think Im the playwright or the director, and not the actor, he said. And the actors need to be onstage, not the director. And I think its absurd that people who do what I do become as important, as celebrated, as the ones who are running.

Arthur Jay Finkelstein was born May 18, 1945, in Brooklyn and grew up in Queens and later Levittown, N.Y. His father was a cabdriver.

Mr. Finkelstein adopted hard-line conservative views early in life and, in his teens, supported the 1964 presidential bid of conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.).

While attending Queens College, a branch of the City University of New York, he worked on a radio program with author Ayn Rand, whose writings have had a strong influence on generations of conservative and libertarian thinkers.

After graduating in 1967, Mr. Finkelstein worked in the computer department of NBC News. When he began his career in politics, he used polling results to build campaign themes around voters social, financial and emotional needs.

Mr. Finkelsteins office in Irvington, N.Y., was managed by his brother Ronald Finkelstein, but he lived for many years in Ipswich and Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

In 1996, Boston magazine noted that Mr. Finkelstein was gay and lived with a longtime partner, Donald Curiale, and their two daughters. When Mr. Finkelstein and Curiale were married in 2005, few if any of his political clients attended the wedding.

Survivors include his husband, of Ipswich and Fort Lauderdale; two daughters, Jennifer Delgado of Danvers, Mass., Molly Baird-Kelly of Alpharetta, Ga.; two brothers; and a granddaughter.

After engineering Netanyahus victory in Israel in 1996, Mr. Finkelstein increasingly concentrated on international elections. He helped Ariel Sharon become Israels prime minister in 2001 and was active in electoral campaigns in Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Kosovo, Ukraine and other countries.

Mr. Finkelstein said he considered himself a libertarian, and the candidates he supported in the United States were exclusively Republicans.

The political center has disappeared, he told the Israeli newspaper Maariv in 2004, and the Republican Party has become the party of the Christian right more so than in any other period in modern history.

As the party swung further to the right, Mr. Finkelstein did not acknowledge any role he may have played in that shift. But in another respect, his political instincts proved prophetic, more than a decade before the 2016 presidential election.

In terms of the Republicans, he quipped to Maariv in 2004, Hillary Clinton is a wonderful candidate for the presidency.
Ms. Suleiman tosses roses on a Syrian flag during the White Wave anti-violence campaign in Paris in 2012. (Thibault Camus/AP)

Fadwa Suleiman, a Syrian actress who rose to the world stage with a campaign of protest against President Bashar al-Assad, risking her life to decry his regimes atrocities and to promote unity among the divided Syrian people, died Aug. 17 in Paris.

She had cancer, according to the Agence France-Presse. Ms. Suleiman was widely reported to be in her mid-40s, but her exact age could not immediately be confirmed.

In the Syrian civil war that has taken 400,000 lives since it began in 2011, Ms. Suleiman was an eloquent and unrelenting voice of peaceful resistance  a rare female front-line dissident who attracted international attention for her activism.

Were a civilized and peaceful nation, she told Reuters in 2012. We cannot let the regime with a simple ploy make us slaughter each other to justify its existence.

Like Assad, she belonged to the Alawite Shiite sect. Their shared religious identity amplified the poignancy of her appeals when she denounced Assad for pitting Shiites against Sunnis, attempting to malign the resistance as a group of rogue Islamists.

Everyone was saying that salafist Sunnis were going to attack the Alawites, she told the AFP in 2012. I, an Alawite woman, got up on the stage and declared that we were all united against the regime.

She traced her anger at Assad to his governments repression of artistic freedoms, once remarking that everywhere you go, even a theater or a film company, you feel you have entered a security branch. In 2011, she traveled to the insurgent stronghold of Homs, where she appeared in an anti-Assad demonstration aired on television by Al Jazeera. Her family disowned her.

She had come to the city knowing, she said, that from that point forward, she was destined either for prison or for execution.

I dont care what happens to me, the Australian newspaper quoted her as saying. Freedom has its price and we all have to chip in.

Ms. Suleiman evaded arrest by going into hiding, while continuing to distribute her calls for peace. She was a haunting presence on YouTube and remained a powerful moral voice for her cause, although followers could no longer see her in person.

The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, which announced her death, described her as one of the symbols of the Syrian revolution, having led the protests and sit-ins against the Assad regime and chanted the first slogans for freedom.

By 2012, Ms. Suleiman concluded that she could no longer safely remain in Syria. She reportedly escaped by foot to Jordan before traveling to Paris, where she lived in exile until her death. She was immediately recognizable for her shorn hair, an outward sign of her protest and, perhaps, everything she and her country had lost.

1 of 66 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Notable deaths so far this year View Photos Remembering those who have died in 2017. Caption Remembering those who died in 2017. Mamie Peanut Johnson Mamie Peanut Johnson, the first female pitcher in the Negro leagues, died on Dec. 18. Read the obituary: Mamie Peanut Johnson, hard-throwing woman in baseballs Negro leagues, dies at 82 Katherine Frey/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

She said she could not abide the violent direction the uprising had taken, telling the AFP that she was bitter to see a peaceful revolution turn into a civil war. Assad, who is backed by Russia, remains in power.

Ms. Suleiman was born in Aleppo. She told Reuters that she studied theater because she saw it as a guarantor of the freedom to think and to express oneself.

After attending the Higher Institute for Dramatic Arts in Damascus, she acted on stage and television, displaying early on a social conscience. Her credits included a stage production in Damascus of Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House and the Syrian television show Small Hearts, in which she played an orphanage teacher.

A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

In exile, Ms. Suleiman wrote a book of poetry, When We Reach the Moon. A war correspondent, Janine di Giovanni, interviewed her at a cafe in Paris and found her in a state of melancholy.

The life of someone in exile is always hard, more so when your country is in the midst of war and you are outside it, watching through a frosted-glass window, di Giovanni wrote in the book The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria.

Running her fingers through the hair she had willingly and somehow symbolically cut off, di Giovanni wrote, Ms. Suleiman said she would not go home until Syria was a country she once again could recognize.
It was a disturbing sight on a July morning on a popular walking and biking path in Northeast Washington. A person told police about having seen a man raise his arm at another man walking two dogs. The person heard two gunshots, police were told, and saw the dog walker fall face to the ground.

The shooter then shot the youngest of the two dogs, police said in a court affidavit that describes accounts from witnesses in detail. The dogs body was found near its felled owner. The other dog took shelter in the trees along the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail east of East Capitol Street.

Police on Thursday arrested Wandell Roy, 41, of Northeast, and charged him with first-degree murder while armed. An arrest affidavit filed in court says the alleged shooter may have acted at the behest of a member of the victims stepfamily embroiled in a dispute.

The account is based on one tip to a homicide detective briefly noted in the affidavit. But it appears from the court document that the 8:30 a.m. July 26 shooting of Victor Noel Williams, 37, was not random. Police said Williams was shot once in the back and then again in the head as he lay on the walkway.

His relatives could not be reached for comment on the arrest and affidavit.

[Man fatally shot along Riverwalk Trail in Northeast Washington]

At a court hearing Friday, Roy was ordered detained pending a hearing Aug. 28. His attorney could not be reached for comment.

A fatal shooting is unusual on a trail that soon will allow people to travel along both banks of the Anacostia River, from the fish market to Nationals Park to Anacostia and the National Arboretum.

In all, three people including a jogger found the body. One told police the alleged shooter sped by him on a red Nishiki bicycle. Police said the other witnesses gave similar descriptions of the suspect, his clothing and the bicycle.

Authorities got a break Aug. 1 when patrol officers stopped a man, identified as Roy, as he was walking in the travel lanes of the Anacostia Freeway, the affidavit states. As police drove him home, the affidavit says, Roy told them he had been hit in the head with a gun during a robbery on the trail. Police said he had stitches in his head.

Police said he told them he had been trying to buy a dog when a robber attacked him and then used a .40 caliber handgun to kill the small dog and the dogs owner, police said.

But the court document states police discovered Roy had been treated for his injury before the shooting and that details about the caliber of the gun used in Williamss shooting and details about the dogs had not been released publicly as police searched for suspects.
A District man charged in the killing of a transgender woman in Montgomery County last April was sentenced to 30 years in state prison on Friday.

Judge Marielsa Bernard of Montgomery County Circuit Court imposed the maximum sentence for second-degree murder on Keith C. Renier of Southeast, according to Ramon Korionoff, a spokesman for the Montgomery County States Attorneys Office.

Renier, then 21, of Fort Dupont Terrace fatally stabbed Keyonna Blakeney, 22. Blakeney was found dead of multiple stab wounds in the Red Roof Inn on Shady Grove Road in Rockville on April 16, 2016.

Five days earlier, police records in the District and Maryland show, Renier had pleaded guilty to pulling a knife on a Metro platform, in a case with a simple assault and weapon charge. Renier was awaiting sentencing in a District case, and on April 25, 2016, he was sentenced to probation and ordered to attend anger management classes.

[Man charged in fatal stabbing had pleaded guilty to brandishing knife on Metro platform]

Keith Renier (Montgomery County Police)

In Blakeneys killing, court documents show Renier arrived at the Red Roof Inn along with a second suspect via an Uber car arranged and paid for by Blakeney. A confidential informant told detectives the second suspect had arranged to meet Blakeney under the false pretense of a date and instead intended to rob her with Reniers help. Court documents said the room in which Blakeney was found dead appeared to have been ransacked.

Police in court files said the second suspect knew Blakeney and that one of his relatives had dated her.
A pedestrian was struck and killed by a vehicle on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway late Friday night, U.S. Park Police said Saturday.

Park Police spokeswoman Sgt. Anna Rose said the crash happened about 10 p.m. in the area of Maryland Route 450, which intersects the parkway near Bladensburg.

Police did not release identity of the victim Saturday afternoon. The circumstances of the crash were not immediately known.

Rose said the parkway was closed for about three hours while authorities investigated the crash. According to WTOP-FM Traffic, northbound travel was diverted for a stretch from Maryland Route 202 until Route 450.

The driver remained at the scene, Rose said. It was not immediately known whether police would pursue charges.
Prince Georges County police arrested Antonio Williams, 25, in the murder of three young girls found dead in Clinton, Md., Aug. 18. Williams has been arrested on three counts of first-degree murder and other related charges. (WUSA9)

Prince Georges County police arrested Antonio Williams, 25, in the murder of three young girls found dead in Clinton, Md., Aug. 18. Williams has been arrested on three counts of first-degree murder and other related charges. (WUSA9)

Antonio Williams was supposed to be caring for his 6-year-old sister and two young cousins as his mother worked an overnight shift as a nurse. Instead he methodically killed each girl as they lay in a single bed in a Maryland home, Prince Georges County police said.

The mother, Andrena Kelley, returned to the Clinton residence early Friday morning to find the gruesome scene, the bodies of her daughter, Nadira Janae Withers, 6; and visiting cousins, Ariana Elizabeth DeCree, 9; and Ajayah Royale DeCree, 6, brutally stabbed in a basement bedroom.

Williams, 25, made no attempt to flee, later confessing what he had done, police said at a Saturday news conference offering details about the crime. But as of Saturday, police said there was still a mystery at the heart of the case: What prompted Williams, who marked his birthday Saturday, to carry out such horrific slayings?

Investigators said they were still probing for a motive.

Williams spared the life of his 2-year-old sister, who was found unharmed in the home, police said.

[Man arrested after three girls found dead in Prince Georges home]

The killings shook even hardened officers and first responders, Assistant Prince Georges County Police Chief Hector Velez said at a Saturday news conference. Counselors were made available to them.

Incidents like these are not easy to handle, Velez said. As parents, aunts, uncles and siblings of young children, it hurts us as well. Our initial thought is to want to hug our children, but we know we have to put those feelings aside and remain steadfast in finding who the killer is and telling the story that these three children cannot tell.

That story began shortly around 7:30 a.m. Friday, when Kelley returned to the gray single-family home in a quiet neighborhood. She called 911 to report finding the girls unresponsive.

Police officers soon arrived, and the girls were declared dead at 7:46 a.m., police said.

Investigators are still trying to determine when exactly the stabbings took place, and autopsies are being performed on the bodies.

All three girls were found lying in a single bed suffering from puncture wounds and lacerations, said Prince Georges County Police Capt. Anthony Schartner at the news conference. He added later: Mr. Williams was the only adult at the time in the home.

A Prince Georges County police car blocks Brooke Jane Drive, where three young girls were slain in Clinton, Md. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)

Police said the DeCree sisters were visiting for the summer from Newark. Their mother and Nadiras mother are first cousins.

Police said they had not had contact with Williams before the incident and had never been called to the address in the 6400 block of Brooke Jane Drive, where the girls were found dead. Williams has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and other related charges.

Relatives of the girls declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

A woman who answered a call to a number connected to Witherss father said they were not ready to speak about the loss of the children.

Right now, were very distraught, she said.

On Saturday, a note addressed to the media sat outside the door of an address associated with the Withers family, asking for time to grieve.

Our hearts are extremely heavy during this time, read the note signed The Withers Family.

An online wedding page showed Nadira Withers had served as a flower girl at her fathers wedding last summer. In a photo, shes smiling, her hair styled in a bob, and her hand resting across her heart.

The mother of the DeCree girls did not respond to a request for comment, but a video message that appeared to be from her was posted on the womans Facebook page on Saturday.

Hug you alls loved ones tonight, the woman said in the video. Hold the people you hold close tonight because I never thought I would really say this and mean this. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Its not guaranteed for you. Its not guaranteed for me, so if we leave with a message of just love who you love. Let go of those . . . family grudges. Let go of those friend grudges. Just let go . . . because your family may not be here tomorrow.

On Saturday, red crime scene tape still wrapped around the carport of the brick home where the girls were killed.

Pink Barbie curtains draped a window inside the home, which remained sealed under police custody.

The shock of the crimes continued to rattle the community.

Camri Thomas, 23, arrived at the home on Saturday afternoon to drop off flowers at the growing memorial of pink and yellow bouquets at the familys mailbox.

Thomas said that she didnt know the family but that Clinton is a tightknit community horrified at the violence that cut short the lives of three promising little girls.

For three young girls to be murdered like that is heartbreaking, Thomas said. We have been thinking about it all day. We havent been sleeping.

Next-door neighbors Marjorie and Middleton Russell remained in shock Saturday morning.

What can you say? Marjorie Russell said. They were here and happy and going and the next thing theres tragedy.

Marjorie Russell said the children came out every morning to play and enjoyed being outside wading in the swimming pool or bouncing on a trampoline. The family had moved in only this summer, she said.

They were loud, but they were loud because they were happy, Marjorie Russell said.

As the community continued to understand the violence, a question continued to hang.

I just want to know. Marjorie Russell said, Why?

Keith Alexander and Peter Hermann contributed to this report.


James A. Fields Jr., fourth from right in front row, holds a black shield Aug. 12 in Charlottesville. (Go Nakamura/AP)

Late in his senior year of high school, James A. Fields Jr. was excitedly mapping his future, hoping to join the Army right after graduation. Although his political and social views ran counter to American values  he much preferred authoritarianism and the racial purity dogma of the Third Reich  Fields looked forward to soldiering in democracys most powerful military.

Thats how Derek Weimer, his favorite teacher in 2015, remembers it.

Then one day in that spring semester, Fields told Weimer that the Army had turned him down for a reason related to his psychiatric history, Weimer recalled this week. Weimer wasnt surprised by the rejection, he said, because Fields had confided to him a year earlier that he suffered from schizophrenia and was being treated with drugs to control his illness.

James Alex Fields Jr., 20, is accused of driving his car into a crowd of people protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. (Elyse Samuels,Sarah Parnass,Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

Now Fields, 20, is charged with a deadly act of automotive fury amid the violent clashes Aug. 12 between white-nationalist demonstrators and counterprotesters in Charlottesville.

Weimer, a former officer in the Kentucky National Guard who taught Fields in a class called Americas Modern Wars, had encouraged his military aspirations and tried to steer him away from neo-Nazism.



Derek Weimer, Fieldss history teacher at Randall K. Cooper High School in Union, Ky., says he tried to dissuade him from his fascination with Hitler and neo-Nazi philosophy. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

He talked about being an infantryman or possibly a military policeman, Weimer said. He wasnt really an emotional guy, so he wasnt super in the dumps about the Armys decision. He was just like, Hey, they turned me down. He said he had a history of taking antipsychotic meds, and the way his recruiter explained it, he had to be off those meds for a certain amount of time before theyd consider him.

Weimers recollection offers the most specific public clue thus far about the mental state of the driver accused of purposely accelerating his 2010 Dodge Challenger across a crowded pedestrian mall and ramming another car, sending bodies flying during the civil unrest in Charlottesville. A 32-year-old counterprotester, Heather D. Heyer, was killed and 19 other victims were injured during a day of rage that has consumed the nation and the Trump administration for a week.

As for Fields, who had recently moved to an inexpensive apartment in Ohio, his turbulent formative years in northern Kentucky were marked by reports of abusive behavior toward his disabled mother and a marginal existence since graduating from high school.

At least four times when the boy was in the eighth and ninth grades, Florence police were summoned to his home, mostly by his frantic mother, Samantha Bloom, an IT specialist. It was just the two of them living together, and young James, among other incidents, was reported to have spat in her face, smacked her head with a phone and frightened her with a foot-long knife, according to records of the 911 calls.

[Very threatening: Mother of Charlottesville suspect called 911 twice]

Neighbors, in interviews, similarly described a troubled youth who treated his mother cruelly. Bloom, who now lives in Ohio, did not respond to repeated visits and phone messages from The Washington Post. She has told other journalists that she was in the dark about her sons extremist beliefs. But many people were aware of his infatuation with Hitler, including a group of 20 classmates, three teachers and parent chaperons who traveled to Europe right after graduation. It was no secret, one chaperon said. At one point, the group toured Dachau, where thousands of Jews were killed.



The scene after Fields allegedly crashed his car into a crowded pedestrian walkway Aug. 12 in Charlottesville. (Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)

Fields eventually did get into the Army, in August 2015, but the Pentagon said that he was discharged from active duty after four months. The reason is unclear.

He found a job as a security guard, making $10.50 an hour, and was on vacation when he was arrested in Charlottesville, charged with second-degree murder and ordered held without bail by a judge. His employer, Securitas Security Services, said he was promptly fired.

Even some white nationalists, fellow travelers, disavowed him.

View Graphic Symbols and slogans in Charlottesville

The Charlottesville rally was organized by right-wing groups to fight the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, and a widely publicized photo taken that day shows Fields posing near the monument with a gaggle of self-proclaimed fascists, members of Vanguard America. Fields and the others are clad in de rigueur baggy khakis and white polo shirts, and each is holding a shield bearing a logo of crossed bundles of sticks, an ancient Roman symbol of strength and the Vanguard America emblem.

Only Fieldss shield is upside down.

The driver of the vehicle that hit counterprotesters today was, in no way, a member of Vanguard America, the fascists later declared.

[A day of rage, hate and violence and death in Charlottesville]

By then, it was over. Fields, as police tell it, had positioned his gray, two-door muscle car on a narrow street, aiming it at a crowd about 30 yards away as he stomped on the gas pedal at 1:40 p.m., and soon, everyone knew his name.



Locals look at vintage cars near the Florence Mall in Florence, Ky., where Fields grew up. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Always alone

Boone County, the Kentucky suburb where Fields grew up, is a heavily Republican expanse of middle-class America layered with strip malls and look-alike subdivisions just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Trump won 68 percent of the Boone vote.

The countys biggest city is Florence, a bedroom community of 32,000 residents. There, in 2005, Bloom bought a condo in Meadows at Farmview, a complex of gabled, multistory brick dwellings built in a vaguely Tudor style. James, her only child, was 8 at the time.

They lived on Mistflower Lane. In an interview last week, one of their former neighbors, Adolph Dunsing, 91, a retired Marine who served in the South Pacific during World War II, recalled sitting on his second-floor balcony more than a decade ago, watching the boy play by himself in a parking lot.

The kid had a two-wheeler bicycle, and he used to ride it back and forth out there, Dunsing remembered. There seemed to be few if any other youngsters who were Jamess age. I felt sorry for the kid, Dunsing said. He looked like he was always lost. Always quiet and always alone.



Adolph Dunsing lives in the condo building where Fields stayed for many years with his mother. He remembers the youthful Fields as a loner. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

If James was not already a disturbed child, he would soon become one. For Bloom, a single mother, the anger roiling in her son and his eventual outbursts of violence were just the latest in a litany of personal travails dating to her own youth.

When she was 16 and living with her mother, Judy Bloom, her father showed up one August night at the apartment mother and daughter shared, according to 1984 news accounts. After murdering Judy with a shotgun blast, Marvin Bloom fatally turned the 12-gauge on himself. Samantha was unharmed.

Her son never met his own father, James Alex Fields, who died in a traffic accident caused by a drunk driver five months before James Jr. was born on April 26, 1997.

As for Bloom, she is paralyzed below the waist from an injury in a different car crash. She was in a wheelchair when she purchased the Mistflower Lane condo for $120,000  and a decade later, long after the housing bubble had burst, she would sell it at a 20 percent loss.

Neighbors there described Bloom as an unfailingly kind and patient parent despite her difficult circumstances.

She was a good mother to him, one elderly woman recalled. She tried, bless her heart.



The pool area at the Kentucky condo complex where Fields lived for many years with his mother. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Afraid of him

Shortly after 11 a.m. on Nov. 20, 2010, Bloom, fearing for her safety, wheeled herself into a bathroom in her third-floor condo, locked the door and dialed the Florence Police Departments emergency line.

As she described her distress, a 911 call-taker typed all-caps notes that were relayed to a patrol officer headed for Mistflower Lane:

13 YO MALE TOOK CALLERS PHONE SMACKED CALLER IN THE HEAD. ... IS THE SON. . . . PUT HIS HANDS OVER HER MOUTH. . . . ON MEDS TO CONTROL TEMPER. . . . STARTED BECAUSE CALLER TOLD HIM TO STOP PLAYING VIDEO GAMES TOLD HER THAT HE WOULD BEAT HER UP WAS RESTRAINING CALLER EARLIER SAYS SHE IS AFRAID OF HIM. . . .

Three months after Bloom told police that her son was behaving violently and that she had locked herself in a bathroom, she dialed 911 again to report that James had run off. Early-morning temperatures in Florence that Sunday, Feb. 20, 2011, were hovering just above freezing.

HE HAS STILL NOT RETURNED HOME AND THE MOTHER IS CONCERNED ABOUT HIM SINCE HE IS IN SHORTS AND A TSHIRT, a 911 operator wrote. About two hours later, at 7:47 a.m., police got another call from Bloom: IS HOME NOW MOTHER SAID HE IS WALKING AROUND THE HOUSE LETHARGIC. . . . NOW BOY SAID HE WOULD RUN IF POLICE ARRIVE. . . .

The elderly woman, who lives with her husband two floors below Blooms former condo and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that when Bloom would ask James to take out the trash, he occasionally would hurl it off their balcony instead.



Eric Schuster was a neighbor of Fields and his mother. He also remembers Fields as unsociable. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

He would stand outside the car while Sam was loading up her wheelchair, and watch, the woman recalled.

The Blooms had two of the cutest dogs, she said. And hed pull them on a choker. Id say, Dont do that, youre hurting them! Hed say, Mind your own business, lady. 

The boy would sometimes scream at his mother in the parking lot, according to the woman and her husband. At one point during Fieldss teen years, Bloom seemed to be physically and emotionally exhausted, she said.

A 911 call from Bloom at 4:38 a.m., Oct. 9, 2011:

HER JUVENILE SON . . . HAS ASSAULTED HER IN THE PAST, BUT NOT ASSAULTED HER TONIGHT BUT HE IS BEING VERY THREATENING TOWARD HER THE MOTHER IS IN A WHEELCHAIR DOESNT FEEL IN CONTROL OF THE SITUATION AND IS SCARED. . . .

Samantha Bloom, Fieldss mother, made several 911 calls about incidents involving her son. (The Toledo Blade)

Officers responded to the calls but made no arrests, the records show. But then, on Nov. 2, 2011, an acquaintance of Blooms reported that James had brandished a 12-inch knife in the condo.

14 YOM HERE BEEN THREATENING MOM, SPITTING IN HER FACE AND HAS HX OF BEING VIOLENT TWDS HER PUSHING HER THEY WANT TO TAKE HIM TO BE ASSESSED AT HOSP, a call-taker typed, apparently while speaking with a social worker. MOM IS SCARED HE IS GOING TO BECOME VIOLENT HERE AND AFRAID TRANSPORT BY HERSELF IN HER VEH.

The notes continued: MOTHER SAID LAST NIGHT HE WAS STANDING BEHIND HER with a knife. HE DIDNT THREATEN WITH KNIFE, BUT SCARED MOM TO DEATH NOT KNOWING IF HE WAS GOING TO DO SOMETHING.

This time, the teen was arrested and sent to a juvenile detention center.

During one stretch, Fields was gone from the complex for several months, separated from his mother, the elderly neighbor said. And then she got him back.



Randall K. Cooper High School in Union, Ky., where Fields spent his junior and senior years. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

A fixation on Hitler

At Boone Countys Randall K. Cooper High School, Weimers five-month-long course on Americas Modern Wars focused largely on the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, with only about a week devoted to World War II.

But the teacher said Fields was fixated on Hitlers conquest of Europe, and wrote a three-page homework paper that extolled Nazi ideology and the prowess of the Fuhrers armed forces.

Even before then, Weimer said, he had been well aware of Fieldss racist and anti-Semitic beliefs from private discussions he had with Fields during his junior year, when the troubled teenager was in Weimers World Civilization class.

James had a lot of really radical notions in his head, said Weimer, 46, and he was really tightly wound around them.

Weimer, who had become something of a confidant for Fields because of their shared interest in military history, considered this a teaching opportunity.

I was always challenging his thoughts, he said. Always, Hey, James, cmon, lets talk about these things. 

It was during one such conversation that Fields described his mental instability, Weimer said: He was pretty matter-of-fact. He just told me that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was getting help.

To Weimer, the mention of a psychosis provided a possible explanation for Fieldss mysterious absence from school during part of his freshman and sophomore years at Cooper High, which has 1,200 students.

Weimer tried to be encouraging with Fields about his condition.

My thought was, My God, what a hammer blow in life,  he said. My reaction was, as a teacher, I said: Okay, lets make this positive. So you have this challenge. And you may have to take meds. But this is something you can rise above. People can deal with this successfully. 



The downtown area in Florence, Ky., is small, quaint and quiet. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Last year, in a job transfer, Bloom moved from Florence to Maumee, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo. After his brief stint in the Army, Fields joined her there, then rented a place of his own in Maumee, a $450-a-month one-bedroom in a complex called Oak Hill.

Residents stood in clusters outside this week, remembering not the man, who was a stranger to them, but his big loud ride, his tricked-out Challenger, purchased with money left in trust for him by his dead father. It was now a wreck, now evidence, now an alleged murder weapon.

Tinted windows; the wheels had spikes on em, one woman said.

Probably thought it looked cool, looked badass, whatever, added another. All youd hear is vroom.



CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article described Vanguard Americas emblem as a logo with a battle ax. The description of shields used in Charlottesville has been updated.

Hauslohner reported from Kentucky. Duggan, Gillum and Davis reported from Washington. Alice Crites, Julie Tate, Arelis R. Hernandez, Steve Friess, Taylor Bach and Jim Higdon contributed to this report.
Crews work on the final touches of the portion of Beach Drive that closed to traffic last fall, between Tilden Street NW and Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. It will reopen on or about August 28. (Luz Lazo/The Washington Post)

When a newly reconstructed portion of Beach Drive reopens at the end of the month, the road will be so shiny and smooth, drivers might almost forget about the painful year-long closure.

But the work isnt over. More detours and closures are on the way.

The reopening of the two-mile segment, on or about Aug. 28, will mark completion of a third of a three-year project to rehabilitate the 6.5-mile Beach Drive, a busy commuter thoroughfare that runs through Rock Creek Park in Northwest Washington. In the past year, 1.82 miles in the southernmost portion of the route was rebuilt. There are still two years and 4.6 miles to go.

Construction will move to the middle section of the roadway this month, marking the beginning of another year of detours for drivers around another closure  from Tilden Street to Joyce Road, adjacent to Military Road.

Its time for people to start preparing, said Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service, which is in charge of the project. There will be an adjustment period just like last fall.





[Beach Drive rehab gives us a taste of a painful full roadway shutdown]

The thousands of vehicle that use that portion of the road  as many as 15,000 daily  will need to divert to other already-clogged arteries such as Connecticut Avenue and 16th Street NW. For example, drivers coming from Maryland on southbound Beach Drive will need to exit onto Military Road, turn left on Nebraska Avenue, take a left on Connecticut Avenue and another left on Tilden to continue their trip on Beach Drive.

Pedestrians and bicyclists will also have to adjust. Over the next year they wont be able to enjoy this section of Beach Drive, which closes to vehicular traffic on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays so bikers, hikers and joggers can use it.

The road will be an active construction zone and will be closed to everyone, Anzelmo-Sarles said. So it is a great time to explore other trails in the park.

Finding alternate routes ahead of the closures is a good bet for commuters. The D.C. Department of Transportation plans to adjust the timing of traffic signals at dozens of intersections to ensure better flow. But drivers should anticipate heavier traffic on nearby corridors, officials say, and be patient the first few weeks as the new traffic patterns settle in.

Jim Stockmal, a Dupont Circle resident who uses Beach Drive daily to get his children to school at St. Johns College High School on Military Road, adjusted his route in the past year to go around the first closure near the National Zoo. Now that the work is moving north and closer to the school, he is once again testing alternatives. No route is ideal, he said.

I am going to have to leave earlier, he said. Not a very popular option with his two boys.

[The misery of life in a construction disaster zone]

The reopening of the first completed section  which officials say will happen during the last week of August  however, brings relief for commuters who use one of the busiest corridors in the city. Before the shutdown, 26,000 cars traveled that section daily, and many had to divert to already congested Connecticut Avenue and 16th Street.

At 1 p.m. Sunday, the National Park Service will welcome neighbors and other road users for a car-free party at the National Zoo entrance on Beach Drive.

They will notice new pedestrian infrastructure, including a new stairway and crosswalk leading into the zoo at Harvard Street, with a flashing signal for drivers and a pedestrian push-to-walk button.

Drivers will notice the beautiful, smooth new road surface, Anzelmo-Sarles said. During the road reconstruction, crews dug about a foot-and-a-half down to build a new surface and installed a drainage system that will help prevent erosion and keep the road drier.

Drivers can say goodbye to potholes and puddles, she said.

The nearby trail used by thousands of bicyclists and joggers also got a makeover. Portions that were six feet wide are now eight feet, and the narrow sidewalk inside the tunnel close to the National Zoo expanded from two feet to five feet. A guardrail adds an extra level of protection for pedestrians in that stretch.

Katie Harris, trail coordinator for the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, said the trail improvement is a major milestone and makes the Rock Creek Park Trail a safer, more enjoyable, and more feasible route for those who walk and bike.

The three-year reconstruction project is on track to be completed in fall 2019, the National Park Service says.

What the project entails

The details: Beach Drive is getting a complete makeover. Crews will excavate the area and put in a new gravel base before laying asphalt. Bridges will be rehabilitated and parking areas rebuilt. New traffic safety features such as guardrails and centerline rumble strips to keep drivers from drifting into oncoming traffic will be added. Storm drainage is also being improved.

Timing: The first segment of the project took about year, a few months more than anticipated. The second closure, from Tilden Street to Joyce Road, is set to begin at the end of the month. That work is split into two segments. The first, between Tilden Street and Broad Branch Road, is expected to take three to six months. Work between Broad Branch and Joyce roads will continue for an additional six months.

After this closure, the construction will move to the final section, between Joyce Road and the Maryland border.

Non-vehicular access: Cyclists and pedestrians will not be allowed on Beach Drive during the rehabilitation of the second phase. This will be a major change from a Park Service tradition to close the road from Broad Branch Road to Military Road to vehicles on weekends and holidays to give pedestrians access to the park.

Driving across Rock Creek Park: Traffic on Tilden Street will be able to get across Rock Creek Park, but there may be more delays in that area. If you plan to drive on the part of Beach Drive that will remain open, detours will send you to Tilden Street after the closures begin. Similar delays could take place on Military Road, where southbound Beach Drive drivers will find detour signs to get around the closure.

Traffic-mitigation efforts: Besides encouraging commuters to find alternative routes and ways to get around, city transportation officials are taking measures to improve traffic flow in corridors including Connecticut Avenue and 16th Street NW. Officials said they are making minor adjustments to signal timing at 30 intersections to assist with traffic detours in the adjacent network and modifying signal sequencing at three intersections: Connecticut Avenue and Tilden Street, 16th Street and Arkansas Avenue, and Beach Drive and Tilden Street. DDOT will deploy traffic-control officers at key intersections near the project.

For more information: The Park Service will have construction updates on the projects website (go.nps.gov/beachdrive). Commuters are also urged to sign up for updates through Nixle, a free tool that allows information to be sent via text, email, social media and the Nixle mobile app.
Lt. H. Jay Cullen, 48, was killed in a helicopter crash Aug. 12 in Charlottesville amid clashes between white-supremacist groups and counterprotesters. (Virginia State Police/Virginia State Police)

CHESTERFIELD County, Va.  Mourners filled the Southside Church of the Nazarene in Chesterfield, Va., on Saturday to remember Lt. H. Jay Cullen, the Virginia State Police trooper who died in a helicopter crash while patrolling the skies during a white nationalist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville last weekend.

More than 1,000 people gathered at the funeral for Cullen, 48, remembering him as an avid outdoorsman, devoted family man and skilled pilot who listened more than he talked, and wouldnt have preferred to be anywhere else as he watched over last Saturdays demonstrations.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said he considered Cullen, the man who flew him and his family for the past few years, part of his family. When McAuliffe would climb into the helicopter, he recalled, hed slip on his headset and say Jay, if you need me Ill jump up front.

No governor, Ive got this handled, Cullen would reply, McAuliffe recalled to mourners laughter.

Dorothy and I are heartbroken, McAuliffe said. Itll never be the same when I step into that helicopter and not see Jay in that front right seat with Cullen on the back of his helmet.

1 of 16 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  See photos from the funerals of the troopers killed in Charlotteville View Photos Virginia State Police Trooper Pilot Berke M.M. Bates and Lieutenant Pilot Jay Cullen were laid to rest this weekend. Caption Virginia State Police Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates and Lt. Jay Cullen were killed Aug. 12 when their helicopter crashed while monitoring the violence during the Unite the Right rally in Charlotteville. Aug. 18, 2017 Firefighters from Henrico and Chesterfield counties raise a large U.S. flag in front of Saint Pauls Baptist Church ahead of the funeral for Virginia State Police Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates in Richmond. Bates and Lt. Jay Cullen were killed when their helicopter crashed into a wooded area while they were monitoring the violence during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue.

He was a serious, safety-conscious pilot and when the two did talk, Cullen was quick to mention his two sons, McAuliffe said.

When I do get into that helicopter I will think of Jay and Ill think what a silent giant he was, McAuliffe said. He was the best of the best of the Virginia State Police.

It was the second time this week that the law enforcement community gathered to honor a colleague who died in the crash. The funeral for Trooper-Pilot Berke Bates, 40, took place Friday in Richmond.

The Bell 407 helicopter crashed hours after a car allegedly driven by Nazi enthusiast James Alex Fields Jr., 20, plowed into a crowd of counterprotesters Saturday, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19. Fields was charged with second-degree murder.

[A neo-Nazis rage-fueled journey to Charlottesville]

The three deaths last Saturday devastated Charlottesville, where officials said they never wanted the white supremacists to march on their town.

Still, theres nowhere else Cullen would have rather been, as other officers were on the ground during a day full of clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters, said Col. W. Steven Flaherty, Virginia State Police superintendent.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe hands Karen Cullen, the widow of Lt. Jay Cullen, a flag during his funeral. (Alexa Welch Edlund/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)

He believed in his mission to protect and serve, Flaherty said.

Flaherty described Cullen as an excellent listener, making him an exceptional leader, as well as a man with unwavering integrity, he said.

Flaherty said they relied on Cullen for his expertise and experience, and discussed personnel and equipment with him.

Cullen never came to a meeting without his reams of research and documents, to support whatever opinion or point he was going to make, Flaherty said.

Cullen graduated from the Virginia State Police Academy in May 1994 and joined the Virginia State Police Aviation Unit in 1999, becoming commander last February.

At his funeral, Cullens younger brother recalled how they liked escaping into nature, whether it was the bluffs of the Mississippi River or a fishing pond behind their house in Leesburg, Va. They loved each others company, Glenn recalled, and Jay was always his big brother and rock.

They joked together, and shared memories biking, skiing and tubing with the kids at their parents lake house in Tennessee, Glenn said. He called his brother a role model to his own daughters.

He was such an incredible presence to his family and all of those around him and this is a testament to that today. I will miss him tremendously and my family will as well every single day, Glenn Cullen said. Jay will never be forgotten, and I am so incredibly proud of the legacy he leaves behind.

A friend, Will Payne met Cullen 30 years ago this month as they were starting out at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. Their friendship blossomed from adventures snorkeling and body surfing and talking about their adult lives.

He was happy, he was humble, and he never asked anyone for anything, Payne said.

Whenever Cullen and his longtime friend would catch-up on the phone, Payne could tell Cullen was happy with his life.

Payne said he heard all about the familys basketball games and bicycle races over the years. And when Cullen talked about his two sons, Ryan Cullen, 17, and Max Cullen, 14, he dripped with pride, Payne said.

Anyone that knows Jay and Karen and their family, you know that their relationship and their family is built on true love and so much laughter, Payne said, and it just breaks my heart that they lost happily ever after.

Law enforcement officers from 22 states attended the ceremony, including a large contingency from Charlottesville. Along with McAuliffe, Sen. Tim Kaine attended the funeral, as did several state officials.

The service included bagpipes and prayers while the lights dimmed. Mourners stood with one another and joined in singing Amazing Grace.

As the bagpipes played in tribute, helicopters buzzed overhead. Then, a final roll call was issued for unit 71, as his wife Karen cried.

Broadcast for the entire Richmond division, officers, family and loved ones heard Cullens badge number 71 called before Rest in Peace, Jay. Well miss you.
Public events

AUTHOR TALK and signing by Chris Kelly, author of "America Invaded: A State by State Guide to Fighting on American Soil," from the colonial period to the present, 2 p.m., Rocky Mountain Museum of Military History, Building T-316, Fort Missoula. Call 549-5346.

MISSOULA FARMERS MARKET, 8 a.m.-12:30 p.m., north end of Higgins Avenue. Visit missoulafarmersmarket.com.

MISSOULA PEOPLE'S MARKET, 9 a.m.-1 p.m., West Pine Street.

CLARK FORK MARKET, 9 a.m.-1 p.m., 225 S. Pattee St., Riverside parking lot below Higgins Avenue Bridge. Call 396-0593.

MISSOULA PUBLIC LIBRARY, 301 E. Main St., 721-2665: Family storytime, 10:30 a.m.; open hours in the MakerSpace, 2-6 p.m.

HAMILTON FARMERS MARKET, 9 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Bedford Street. Call 961-0004.

Organizations

AA MEETINGS: Missoula Early Sunrise Group (C/H) Discussion, 6:30 a.m., Unity Church, 546 South Ave. W.; Polson Early Birds (C/H) Living Sober Study, 7 a.m., Polson Alano Club, 8 Third Ave. W.; Missoula Keep It Simple (C/H), 7:30 a.m., University Congregational Church, 401 University Ave.; Missoula Sunrise Group (C/H) Discussion, 8 a.m., Unity Church; Missoula High Noon Group (O/H) Discussion, noon, First United Methodist Church, 300 East Main St.; Trout Creek Happy Hour (O/H) Discussion, 6 p.m., Cabinet Mountain Church, 3006 Highway 200; Polson 12 x 12 Study (O/H) Discussion, 7 p.m., Polson Alano Club; Missoula Group (O/H) Discussion, 8 p.m., Radio Central Bldg., 127 E. Main; Missoula Chapter Nine Group (O/H) Discussion, 8 p.m., First Christian Church, 2701 S. Russell St.; Missoula Young Guns in Sobriety (O) Discussion, 10 p.m., First Presbyterian Church, 201 S. Fifth St. W. Visit aa-montana.org/ or call 888-607-2000.

PUZZLE CLUB, a brain injury support group, 9 a.m., Black Cat Bake Shop, 2000 W. Broadway. Call 406-544-6629 or 406-549-2146.

MISSOULA DUPLICATE Bridge lessons, 9 a.m., 2825 Stockyard Road Suite I-3. Visit missoulabridge.com.

AL-ANON New Hope Family Group, 9:30 a.m., St. Patrick Hospital Broadway Building, 500 W. Broadway, Duran Learning Center; SOS Al-Anon Family Group, noon, First United Methodist Church, 300 E. Main St. Call 1-888-425-2666 or visit mt.al-anon.alateen.org.

Coming soon

CHILD CARE RESOURCES' Training "New Provider Orientation/Early Childhood Essentials," Aug. 29, 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. or 4:30-6:30 p.m. Free. Register at childcarersources.com/registration.
Capital Weather Gangs Angela Fritz explains how math is used to determine the timing and location of the total solar eclipse crossing the U.S. on Aug. 21. (Claritza Jimenez,Daron Taylor,Angela Fritz/The Washington Post)

Capital Weather Gangs Angela Fritz explains how math is used to determine the timing and location of the total solar eclipse crossing the U.S. on Aug. 21. (Claritza Jimenez,Daron Taylor,Angela Fritz/The Washington Post)

This ones different. This ones somehow bigger and brighter, eclipsing all previous eclipses. Theres a total solar eclipse roughly every 18 months somewhere on the Earth, but the United States shares Mondays spectacle with no other country (not for nothing is it branded the Great American Eclipse of 2017). Many of the total eclipses in recent years have happened in remote parts of the planet, and eclipse chasers have had to travel to desolate atolls and guano-covered rocks amid lonely seas. This one saunters down Main Street. The path of totality  the 70-mile-wide strip of America from Oregon to South Carolina in which the moon will, for a couple of minutes, block the sun  crosses the homes of an estimated 11 million people.

The sun and the moon havent changed, but Americans have. Weve never been so populous, so mobile, so digitally wired, so GPS-savvy and so ready for a big event that has nothing to do with Washington politics.

The eclipse will attract hardcore eclipse chasers who have been prepping for years and who know all the lingo about the diamond ring, the Bailys beads, the First Contact and the Second Contact and the Third Contact, etc. But this time theyll have to take evasive action to avoid the crowds of eclipse rookies  the improvisers who perhaps havent quite grasped that totality is not when you put the eclipse glasses on, but when you take them off.

They probably dont even know the difference between the umbra and the penumbra! [Pause while reporter Googles this.]

Here in the high desert of central Oregon, the focal point of Eclipse Mania is the town of Madras, population 6,200. This weekend the town expects roughly 100,000 visitors. This place is just about perfectly situated on the centerline of the path of totality, and most importantly, its climatologically gifted in late August, having a lower probability of cloud cover than any other place in America along the eclipses path.

1 of 52 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Anticipation builds in U.S. for solar eclipse View Photos Millions of people are expected to watch as the eclipse cuts a path of totality 70 miles wide across the United States from Oregon to South Carolina on Monday. Caption Millions of people watched as the eclipse cut a path of totality 70 miles wide across the United States from Oregon to South Carolina on Monday. Aug. 21, 2017 The total eclipse of the sun is seen in Hopkinsville, Ky. Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

The problem is smoke. You can see a long tongue of smoke extending from the Cascades, coming from a wildfire near a small town called Sisters. Its wildfire season, so this is all completely normal  except that on Monday, anything that interferes with eclipse perfection will be completely unacceptable.

The smoke situation will probably be just fine. Thats the official word from experts monitoring the situation. The wind is supposed to shift this weekend and ensure blue skies. But make no mistake, the standards for this eclipse here in the Oregon desert are astronomically high.

Lupe Enriquez, 33, the barber at the Bada Bing Barber Shop, said he senses a divine element at work here in his home town: God wanted me to see it. First hand. Front-row seat.

The state expects an influx of 1 million people. Already theres been a 15-mile backup on a country road leading to a remote lake in mountains east of here, where a total-immersion music festival called the Symbiosis Gathering is expected to draw more than 30,000 authentic seekers of awe and truth and beauty, as the events website puts it.

In Madras the big camp-out began several days ago. Just north of town is a vast field that suddenly has a population of many thousands. Its called Solartown. The RVs are in one area, the luxury tents in another. The beige canvas tents go for $1,500 each for the weekend  pre-positioned, with cots. Theyre clustered in orderly rows as if part of a military encampment.

We dont care if we never leave this campsite, said Kathleen Spencer, 62, of Whittier, Calif., who drove here with her husband, Carl, 68, and massive supplies of bacon, hamburger meat and hot dogs, 10 gallons of water, a gas stove, flashlights, head lamps, a solar-powered cellphone charger and playing cards.

Solartown should not be confused with Solar Port, an RV and tent complex near the airport, or with Solarfest, a festival at the fairgrounds that has featured Native American drummers, gospel and country music, and, on Saturday, a string of tribute bands (Foreigner, Aerosmith, Pat Benatar, Heart).





Visitors have been warned that there could be an apocalyptic lack of decent cellphone coverage (in other words, Eclipsemageddon.) Traffic is a serious concern, as there are only a couple of ways in and out of town. State officials warn that on Eclipse Day, it could take seven hours to drive what would normally be a one-hour distance on roads leading to Madras.

Lysa Vattimo, the solar eclipse plan facilitator for Madras, points out: Its not like the Olympics, where money is pouring in and you get to widen your roads.

Locals have prepared for the influx as if an earthquake is about to hit, stocking up on food and water and gasoline. And entrepreneurs are renting out their farms and ranches as campsites. Downtown, Black Bear Diner owner Joe Davis has simplified his menu and added extra capacity, boasting, Ive got enough food for five weeks.

Connie Damberger, 55, a resident for three-and-a-half decades, stopped by the art studio of Mayor Royce Embanks and questioned him about whether some of this eclipse-generated local revenue could be used to pave the road in front of her house. The mayor said no. The revenue from renting campsites at the airport will be used for cleanup, he said.

Damberger said she has mixed feelings about the eclipse: Its good. I just hope people go when theyre done. I like my small town!

The eclipse is geographically generous: Everywhere in the continental United States will have at least a partial eclipse. One does not need to travel to the ballyhooed path of totality to see the celestial event. Dark-filtered eclipse glasses (cheap-looking things akin to what you might wear in a 3-D movie) are absolutely necessary to avoid eye damage.

Even in a partial eclipse, the moon and sun demonstrate an extraordinary coincidence of scale: The sun is about 400 times wider than the moon but about 400 times farther away. From our perspective, theyre matching orbs. And an eclipse is one of those events that absolutely will go off on schedule, down to the second.

Its inevitable. Its celestial mechanics, and we have no control over that. And this is how we understand how vast the universe is, and we are so insignificant, said Kate Russo, a psychologist and eclipse chaser who is the author of the book Being in the Shadow.

The experts have been emphatic that, compared with a partial eclipse, totality provides a soul-stirring grandeur. Grasping for a metaphor, we might say the difference is night and day.

Russo, 44, plans to lead an expedition of eclipse chasers by gondola up the slope of Grand Teton in Wyoming, right in the path of totality. Russo said the vantage point will permit a contemplation of the movement of the moons shadow across Teton Valley as it heads to the east.

I always say to people, Look above you, and around you, and within you,  she said. Just be there. You dont need any other special equipment.

Ryan Milligan, a solar physicist affiliated with the University of Glasgow, said hell observe from a ranch near Alliance, Neb., and is determined to avoid the disaster he experienced in 2015. That year he journeyed to the Faroe Islands to see a total eclipse, only to miss it when clouds rolled in.

He later learned he could have driven to a clear spot. At the crucial moment, he froze.

Im kicking myself to this day, he said. They dont call it eclipse chasing for nothing. You cant sit around and wait for it to come to you. You have to be prepared to move.

To move or not to move: Thats the question as Eclipse Day gets close and people scan the weather reports and the wildfire news. And theres another issue, a subtle one: What do you do if youre in the path of totality but not very close to the centerline of that path of totality? The closer you are to the center, the longer the moons full shadow passes over you.

This area is in the center of totality, Amy Mullen, 39, of Portland, said as she sat in the dwindling shade of her tent at Solartown. Right here I think its going to be two minutes and 9 seconds.

The difference is only a matter of seconds, but the situation can generate Totality Envy.

Consider the case of Christopher and Diana Rulon, retirees from Albany, N.Y. They went to their first solar eclipse in Australia in 2012 and had a classic cloud catastrophe. Clear skies, the moon comes in, and right before totality, a cloud blots out the show.

Its going to come again. Keep it on the bucket list, and well try it again, Diana remembered saying after the disappointment.

So theyre here, in an RV, but in a location south of Madras where totality will last only 1 minute and 40 seconds, they say. Should they move? Get another 20 seconds or so? Risk calamitous traffic jams?

Fortunately there was an expert at the Solarfest who could help them out: Dean Pesnell, a NASA solar physicist. Hes a veteran eclipse chaser. This weekend hes dispensing expertise at the fairgrounds.

Stick with what you got, he advised the Rulons: The extra 20 seconds is probably not going to be worth the hours of traffic.

Pesnell describes an eclipse as a group experience: If youre there with your family, try and talk about what you see. Everybody sees it a little differently. Do you see things coming out of the top of the sun? Do you see things coming out of the bottom of the sun? Try and work with each other.

But about those wildfires: Around Madras, the smoke is noticeable on the horizon, at times completely obscuring the magnificent volcanic cone of Mount Jefferson to the west. But the sky directly overhead has been clear and blue. By the time the moon starts to pass in front of the sun on Monday, itll be well into the morning, the sun high in the sky. Totality starts at 10:19 a.m. here.

Farther south, the big Cascade fire has sent a shelf of smoke over the town of Redmond. A lingering haze could create an eclipse buzz kill, but the state Department of Environmental Quality expects the wind to shift this weekend. Greg Svelund, a spokesman for the department, said winds should blow the smoke to the west before Eclipse Day. Cross your fingers, he said.

Other than smoke, the weather forecast is immaculate: Nothing but brilliant sunshine is expected Monday.

Until the moon makes its move.
At 72, I may be six times the age of KidsPosts target audience, but I am a regular reader. The Aug. 7 Chip Says has two errors. The Badge of Military Merit may be considered this countrys first military award, but military awards date to antiquity. Because the medal was not awarded again for about 150 years, it would be misleading to call it the oldest military medal still being awarded.

And it is not given to someone who showed extreme bravery. Current criteria for the Purple Heart provide that it is awarded to members of the U.S. military who are wounded in action against an enemy of the United States, or as a result of an act of such enemy, provided such would necessitate treatment by a medical officer.

This is in no way meant to belittle those who have received the Purple Heart. They deserve our countrys gratitude. During my service with the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1970, I was fortunate not to meet the criteria for award of the Purple Heart.

Bill Landau, Potomac
One person was killed and 19 were injured amid protests of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. Heres how the city became the scene of violence. (Elyse Samuels,Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

One person was killed and 19 were injured amid protests of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. Heres how the city became the scene of violence. (Elyse Samuels,Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)

Theres something demoralizing about having to make the case that you matter.

Yet somehow, its all Ive been doing since Friday night when the events in Charlottesville began.

It leaves little time to process my own hurt and fear as a black person in a profoundly racist moment. Instead, I must go on the offensive. How can I convince the skeptics and equivocators, my friends and neighbors, that yes, the concerns of Americans with darker skin or Jewish surnames are as important as their own? But someone has to do it, or this will happen again.

The necessary tactics are obvious and tiresome. By now I can rattle off the most common almost without thinking.

There is the patient arguing of facts that should be indisputable: No, the Klan members and neo-Nazis marching with torches and shields are not equivalent to the clergy, ordinary citizens, activists and even anti-fascists who protested against them. No, there werent many sides that were equally violent. In fact, violence  the belief that people of color are inferior and should be removed to create a white ethnic state  is the animating philosophy of the white supremacists marching in front of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lees statue. Opposing that violence is in no way comparable to the violence itself, and it is disgraceful of the president to say so.

There are the appeals to reason, grown tedious for having been so often repeated: No, taking down a monument is not an erasure of history. No, it is not a slippery slope from removing mutinously erected statues of Lee to dynamiting monuments to George Washington. No, even if all the Confederate monuments disappeared overnight, we would not as a country forget that the Civil War ever happened or what it meant. After all, we still have books and museums and cemeteries and preserved battlefields and structural inequality.

Then there are the analogies, the individual stories, all the more painful for being constantly retold: No  I cant just get over it, because I cant just take off my dark skin, which permanently marks me as the other. No, they arent just statues: They bring up personal, painful memories of current racism and marginalization  shall I recount those for you, again? Yes, the fact that Charlottesvilles marchers were willing to mow down protesters and kill an innocent person feels existentially threatening to me, a black woman, the sort of person who is their real target.

Ill do it, of course. Ill have the argument, invite the debate, slowly spell it out in a measured tone. Because through a thousand arguments on Facebook and Twitter, through opinion pieces and face-to-face conversations, someones mind might be changed.

Wajahat Ali, a political commentator, Emmy-nominated producer, playwright and attorney, tells the scary story of America today. (Adriana Usero,Kate Woodsome/The Washington Post)

Even so, the more I explain, the more depressing it becomes. Because there is little so disheartening as having to argue for why your friends, neighbors and countrymen should care about your life. To ask politely why you arent valued and propose that they reconsider.

Because thats really what it comes down to, isnt it? Does our nation care about its blacks, its Jews, its people of color? How much are their comfort and their safety worth? Are they worth more than the satisfaction that comes with being able to make a dig at identity politics and your left-leaning movement of choice? More than a flag or statue that you have some pleasant association with, if any at all? More than your unwarranted commitment to defending an obviously incompetent president? More than the minuscule possibility that hiding out in a pack of Nazis might have been one very fine person who shouldnt be tarred with the same brush?

Each time I allow myself to argue with an obdurate, defensive person about what happened in Charlottesville, or about what Confederate statues mean and why they should go, my own question becomes more obvious. Why would so many Americans rather undergo one million mental contortions than admit that someone elses safety matters? Why is it so hard for you to care?

The answer, I think, is not one that Ill like. But perhaps you can take up the burden of explaining that to me.
After a successful emergency sealift from a beachhead at Dunkirk, these British and French soldiers arrive safely at an unknown British port, in June 1940. (Associated Press)

One of the Aug. 12 Free for All letters about the battle at Dunkirk, Missing in action: Context, by Steven Shore, said, Historians still dispute why the Wehrmacht allowed the Dunkirk pocket to remain open as long as it was.

As explained in the definitive Hitlers Generals (1989), edited by distinguished historian Correlli Barnett, German dictator Adolf Hitler issued an order to halt the armours advance and leave it to the Luftwaffe to finish off the enemy. This statement is footnoted to Colonel-General Franz Halders war diary, published in 1962. He and other German generals had explained this situation to senior Allied prisoners shortly after Dunkirk and to Allied interrogators immediately after World War II.

The reason: After the German ground forces smashing successes against the French and British armies in May 1940, German air force commander Hermann Goering had demanded that his Luftwaffe be allowed to destroy the remnants of those armies. His aircraft did exact a frightful toll on men and the evacuation ships and craft in their air attacks, but failed in their effort to annihilate those troops.

Norman Polmar, Alexandria
WHEN PRESIDENT TRUMP appointed Stephen K. Bannon to a senior position in his White House shortly after last years election, we thought it was a bad sign. Given Mr. Bannons career as a far-right media entrepreneur, one who trafficked in inflammatory racial resentments and grandiose schemes for radical political disruption, his elevation, we wrote, sent a highly negative signal to all those Americans who did not support Mr. Trump for president but have been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in deference to the legitimacy of his election.

Now Mr. Bannon is out, fired from the White House apparently at the behest of the chief of staff, John F. Kelly. If his arrival sent a negative signal about the direction of the Trump presidency, does his ouster send a positive one?

Yes, and no. There is value in the pushback, both from inside the White House and outside, that contributed to Fridays denouement. It is at least conceivable that both policy and process will improve with Mr. Bannon no longer among the personnel who are responsible for both. Mr. Trumps instincts, with respect both to what government should do and how it should do it, are bad; yet Mr. Bannons function seems to have been to reinforce those instincts. There is some reason to hope that the more moderate, stabilizing figures around the president  that is, the officials with whom Mr. Bannon did relentless bureaucratic battle  may now have more influence. That is all to the good, because even those of us who disagree with most of what Mr. Trump says have an interest in preserving basic stability and functionality at the top level of government.

Yet Mr. Trump is still president. And he still does what he feels like doing, to include standing before television cameras and pronouncing on the moral equivalency of neo-Nazi marchers and those who marched against them. Mr. Bannon might have encouraged those tendencies, but he did not create them. His departure removes a cause of embarrassment (and a constant source of political harassment) for mainstream Republicans in the House and Senate  but it does not end their moral dilemma. They are still committed to a party headed by someone who said, and believed, the things he said about Charlottesville. For his part, the presidents acquiescence in Mr. Bannons firing is not a sign that he is rethinking his approach to government. Rather, Mr. Bannons usurpation of the limelight, by agreeing to be the subject of a best-selling biography, seems to have been the last straw.

In that sense, the ultimate benefit of Mr. Bannons departure may be to clarify the lines of accountability. Mr. Bannon endlessly provoked and infuriated the presidents critics, across the political spectrum, yet he also functioned to distract them. President Bannon was not only a myth but also a smokescreen. Personnel is, indeed, policy, and the personnel at the very top remains the same as it has been since Jan. 20.
Regarding the Aug. 16 front-page article Trump again blames both sides :

I was a preschooler in Germany at the end of World War II. My generation learned the horrific history of the Nazis and how they pulled a whole country along with them. The shame and guilt continue to lie heavily on my generation. Now, as a longtime citizen of the United States, I watched in horror the events in Charlottesville. But more chilling were the words of the president.

I can only imagine how descendants of slaves, Holocaust survivors and their descendants felt hearing the president equate those who had the courage to oppose with those who marched with the Nazi salute, the Nazi flag, torches, the Ku Klux Klan and the others Mr. Trump called fine people who marched along with them.

I felt the beginning of Nazi history repeating itself.

It is not enough for our representatives to denounce the alt-right. They must find the moral backbone to denounce those leaders, including the president, who have made excuses for the movement and its hateful ideology. They must refuse to be associated with the presidents party if it continues to value reelection chances and passage of its agenda over what is morally right and if it continues to tolerate this president, who has demonstrated that he lacks the moral authority to lead this great country. The danger is too great.

Ute ONeal, Potomac

I admit what happened at Charlottesville and especially President Trumps Tuesday rant put a genuine temporary scare in me, reminding me vaguely of my earliest childhood memory: Nazi hordes with banners and flags marching down Unter den Linden in Berlin, singing anti-Semitic, nationalistic songs (similar to those chanted by demonstrators in Charlottesville). The Weimar Republic leaders just stood by making excuses, so when I heard Mr. Trump blaming both sides, it really hit me. Only later, when I heard and saw the critical reactions to his diatribe, did I relax, confident that as a people and nation we are strong enough to resist and protect ourselves against this example of extremism.

Hans N. Tuch, Bethesda

Why should white-nationalist leaders take President Trumps criticism seriously? He says that he wants to talk to his base directly, often through Twitter. So racist leaders will never believe him unless he makes a middle-of-the-night tweet that attacks them as #FailingWhiteNationalists and #CrookedRacists and #FakePatriots and ends it with his usual Sad!

But because he hasnt, he probably never will.

To adapt Mr. Trumps words: #FakeCriticism. Also: Sad! Except not so much sad as a horrifying stain on his presidency.

James Adler, Cambridge, Mass.
THE TERRORIST attacks in Spains Catalonia region superficially resembled the car assaults that have murdered random pedestrians in Nice, Berlin, London and Stockholm in the past 13 months. Yet this plot was on another scale. Rather than a solo operation, the attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils were carried out by a cell of at least eight to as many as 12 people, authorities said. Fourteen people died, along with five of the attackers, and 126 were injured  but the carnage could easily have been worse. Police now believe that a house that was destroyed in an explosion before the attacks contained propane canisters the terrorists intended to use in the attacks. And the quick response by officers in Cambrils likely saved many lives.

Investigators still had much to learn Friday about the participants in the attack and where they came from. Several were reported to be Moroccan nationals, while another was from Melilla, a Spanish exclave adjacent to Morocco. But the Islamic States claim of credit seemed plausible. It suggested that even as their self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria crumbles, the jihadists still have the capacity to sponsor sophisticated attacks deep inside the West.

The assaults have failed to intimidate governments and citizens elsewhere in Europe, and so far Spain  which withdrew its forces from Iraq not long after another major terrorist attack in 2004  appears to be no exception. Thousands of people gathered Friday in the iconic Las Ramblas district in Barcelona, where a van had wreaked havoc Thursday afternoon, to chant I am not afraid in Catalan. Despite deep differences between the provinces leaders, who aspire to make Catalonia an independent state, and the central government in Madrid, the local government was reported to be collaborating closely with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who quickly traveled to Barcelona. Journalists reported that vacationers in bathing suits were back on the beach in Cambrils just hours after the second attack early Friday morning.

If there doesnt seem to be a danger of capitulation to the terrorists, there is nevertheless a risk the Islamic State will achieve one of its major aims: isolating Muslim communities in the West and fomenting prejudice or even violence against them. In that sense, the extremists have an ally in President Trump, who responded to the Catalonia attacks with a tweet that simultaneously slandered one of Americas most renowned generals and suggested that the appropriate response to Radical Islamic Terror was war crimes. Mr. Trump cited a false story he has previously told about Gen. John J. Pershing, who the president said ordered the massacre of Muslim insurgents in the Philippines in the early 20th century with bullets dipped in pig blood.

Nothing of the kind occurred. But if attacks like those in Spain lead to lawless violence by U.S. or European forces or crude insults to Muslim communities, not just the Islamic State will be to blame.
Pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong, right, and Nathan Law, left, speak outside the high court in Hong Kong on Thursday. They were sentenced to six to eight months in prison. (Vincent Yu/Associated Press)

IN 2014, as Hong Kong erupted into protests calling for free elections, Joshua Wong emerged as the face of the citys pro-democracy Umbrella Movement. Just 17 years old at the time, he led demonstrators as they marched on a fenced government square and organized weeks of sit-ins thereafter. In the years since, he has continued to champion democratic reform, establishing a student-led political party that won a seat on the legislative council. Apparently, this was more than Beijing and the pro-China local government could bear: On Thursday, Mr. Wong and two other activists, Alex Chow and Nathan Law, were sentenced to six to eight months in prison for their role in the peaceful protests.

Thursdays ruling overturns lighter penalties handed down last year. Mr. Wong and Mr. Law were initially sentenced to community service, and Mr. Chow was given a suspended sentence. That the Hong Kong government pressed forward with prosecution was troubling enough, but its decision to appeal the original penalties and push for jail time is particularly vindictive. It is also politically self-serving: Hong Kong law prohibits people sentenced to more than three months in prison from running for office for five years. By cracking down on three rising political stars, the pro-Beijing establishment has managed to cripple its opposition and discourage further criticism.

The sentences send a chilling message that speech and assembly are only permitted in the city if they support the status quo. This strikes at many Hong Kong residents deepest fear: that the local government has become an extension of Beijing. When Hong Kong was officially transferred from British to Chinese rule in 1997, it was on the condition that China would allow the city a measure of autonomy and democracy. Hong Kong has long prided itself on its independent judiciary and system of self-rule. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that the local leadership is willing to jettison these principles.

Over the past three years, Beijing and its loyalists in Hong Kong have restricted the field of candidates allowed to run for chief executive; reached across borders to detain five Hong Kong booksellers who stocked politically sensitive books; cracked down on street protesters calling for democracy; and stacked the deck to elect a pro-China leader, Carrie Lam, who trailed in public opinion polls. Most recently, Chinese lawmakers reinterpreted Hong Kongs charter to disqualify four pro-democracy legislators for peacefully protesting during their swearing-in ceremony. Thursdays decision should not be seen in isolation but as part of Hong Kongs rapid descent into political repression.

What is especially sad about this crackdown is that it is so self-defeating: Both China and Hong Kong would benefit from a city that upholds the rule of law and promises a stable environment for investment. The more Hong Kong embraces authoritarianism, the less vibrant and prosperous it will be.
Then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton watches President Bill Clinton pause as he thanks those Democratic members of the House of Representatives who voted against impeachment on Dec. 19, 1998. (Susan Walsh/Associated Press)

In the Aug. 13 Arts & Style article Mining real life for drama, which was about upcoming TV programs that are based on real events, I was bothered by gratuitous politically correct statements inappropriate to the piece. For example, under Monica Lewinsky American Crime Story series, the article said: As The People v. O.J. Simpson did for Marcia Clark, we can expect American Crime Story to examine the sexism behind Lewinskys public shaming.

Um, what? Are you kidding me?

That is quite a statement, and I strongly disagree with it. Many would disagree. There wasnt any shaming of Lewinsky because she was a young woman. Then-President Bill Clinton was dragged through a ludicrous impeachment process, and the GOP did its best to humiliate him. (Of course, he helped in this regard.) Nobody forced Lewinsky to engage sexually with the president. She decided to do that on her own. There are consequences to ones actions.

I watched the People v. O.J. Simpson series very closely and loved it. I have no idea what sexism Clark went through. A couple of people told her to change her hair? That makes them sexist? Nobody is allowed to ever comment on anothers appearance and make a helpful suggestion? And if they do, this automatically makes them sexist? That is absurd.

I encourage The Post to keep P.C. ideological views out of its articles and features. Just tell us about what programs we can expect in the fall, if thats what the subject of the piece is. Its great to make the stories colorful and/or humorous, but they should not be a platform for ones biases.

Andrew D. Kaplan, College Park
Joshua A. Douglas is a law professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law who specializes in election law and voting rights. He is the co-editor of Election Law Stories.

As President Trump continues to peddle his debunked theory that millions of illegal ballots in the 2016 presidential election cost him the popular vote, his commission on voter fraud is wasting federal resources to figure out just how many noncitizens voted in our federal and state elections.

But amid all the falsehoods, there has actually been some positive news for some legal noncitizens: They are gaining the right to vote in some places.

In November, San Francisco voters approved Proposition N, which grants the right to vote in school board elections to noncitizen parents and guardians living in the city. The noncitizen voters must be at least 18 years old and cannot be in prison or on parole for a felony conviction. The law goes into effect for the November 2018 school board election.

The theory behind expanded voting rights for noncitizens is to enfranchise people who have a direct stake in school policies. As San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu (D)  himself the son of immigrants  explained: One out of three kids in the San Francisco unified school system has a parent who is an immigrant, who is disenfranchised and doesnt have a voice. Weve had legal immigrants whove had children go through the entire K-12 system without having a say.

San Franciscos expansion of voting rights follows the actions of several other cities. For years, Takoma Park has allowed noncitizens to vote in all city elections. In December, the Hyattsville City Council unanimously voted to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. This should affect about 15 percent of Hyattsvilles 18,000 residents. Some Massachusetts towns, such as Amherst and Cambridge, have passed resolutions to support noncitizen voting in local elections, though the changes cannot go into effect unless the state legislature approves them.

In fact, noncitizen voting has a storied history in the United States. From the nations founding until the 1920s, many states allowed noncitizens to vote in all elections. States amended their laws in the aftermath of World War I to take away voting rights, yet noncitizens still could participate in various city and school board elections in many areas. For example, noncitizens could vote in New York City school board elections until 2002, when the city dissolved the elected school board. For the past few years, New York City has debated whether to enfranchise the citys 1.3 million legal noncitizens for all city elections.

Local laws and policies affect noncitizens every day. Efforts to give legal noncitizens voting rights are significant because they help provide a voice to those with a vested stake in their communities, as well as a sense of belonging. Allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections could actually increase the likelihood that they seek full citizenship. Meanwhile, federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, so granting voting rights for only local elections will not deter them from seeking their citizenship and the full rights it entails.

Beyond the effects on a few cities and towns, the expansion of noncitizen voting also tells a broader story of voting rights, and its not all doom and gloom. There have always been various measures to restrict voting rights, but advocates are also seeking ways to expand the electorate. Local expansions of voting rights are key to those reforms.

Of course, the mere fact that some places are extending the right to vote to previously disenfranchised groups does not mean that all cities and towns must do so or that the prohibition on noncitizens voting in federal elections is necessarily wrong. This is a question for each community to make for itself. The point instead is that noncitizen voting in local elections is not radical or far-fetched. And it helps them feel like part of their communities.

The story of expanded voting rights for noncitizens provides an important counterweight to the current anti-immigrant sentiment and voter suppression measures sweeping across the country. It shows that there are communities that are actively seeking to expand democracy. That activity should grow.

Legal noncitizens have been part of the American fabric since its beginning. That reality continues, even in the face of the Trump administrations crackdown on immigration. Giving legal noncitizens voting rights in local elections presents a small path forward to recognize and expand the melting pot that makes America great.
President Trump speaks to members of the media in New York on Tuesday about the protests in Charlottesville. (Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

On Thursday, the president mourned not the tragic loss of life of a human being, Heather Heyer , at the alleged hands of a Nazi sympathizer, but the possible loss of beautiful statues and monuments in the aftermath of the events in Charlottesville, because we cant change history  [ President defends Civil War symbols , front page, Aug. 18]. While we cant change history, we should at least understand it.

After the Civil War brought slavery to an end in 1865, a belief in white supremacy was still widely shared among white Americans. In 1896, the doctrine of racial separation was sanctioned by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson . (Separate but equal really meant white supremacy, because separate facilities either did not exist or were not close to equal.) As was the case with the vast majority of statues and monuments honoring leaders of the Confederacy, the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville was erected at the height of the Jim Crow era and a resurgent white-supremacy movement in the country, being commissioned in 1917 and completed in 1924. Just one year after the statue was completed, more than 30,000 white supremacists were cheered on as they marched through our nations capital.

It is not denying or changing history to remove statues that were erected to honor white supremacy. It is a small step toward elevating our shared humanity instead of exploiting our chance differences.

Martin Walsh, Washington

Thank God for President Trump and his honesty. He is absolutely right that there were two bands of thuggish jerks in Charlottesville last weekend, and a review of the available video shows that the so-called counterprotesters were also prepared for violence.

I am stunned at the extraordinary bias shown by the mainstream media  including The Post  and their failure to denounce the brutes of the left equally and as well as the brutes of the right. Indeed, the alt-left protesters in Charlottesville reminded me very much of the extremists who rioted in Portland, Ore., when their anointed candidate lost the presidential election.

Mr. Trump is not dividing the country by himself. He has all sorts of help from wackos who have more to gain from conflict than collaboration.

I would like to see the Justice Department and Congress investigate where the hate groups on both sides are getting the money to send hundreds of people flitting off in style and comfort to any hot spot in the country. It is vital to learn who is financing their extremism.

Louis H. Knapp, Winchester, Va.

One of my relatives is commemorated by a statue in the middle of Lebanon, Tenn. Brig. Gen. Robert Hatton may have done some good things in his brief life as a husband, father, lawyer and congressman. Indeed, he did speak out against Tennessee seceding from the Union, and, as a result, was burned in effigy in the same town square where his statue stands today.

However, when Tennessee left the Union, he joined the Confederate army. He died in battle in 1862. Fifty years later, in 1912, the statue was erected to commemorate his service to the Confederate cause. Thats what the statue says. Thats why it must come down. Its a 20th-century homage to the fight to preserve slavery and white supremacy. It has no historical value. We have not forgotten slavery or the Civil War, and we continue to suffer from the curse of both.

Deborah Whitley Smith, Kensington

During what must be wrenching days for principled White House staffers, I am grateful for the Aug. 17 editorial The morality of damage control stating that Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster should be thanked rather than condemned for not abandoning ship.

I only wish that E.J. Dionne Jr. had taken that editorial to heart before he condemned staffers for staying with the administration in his Aug. 17 op-ed, Why does the GOP still stick with Trump?

Its easy to stick around when things are going well. Its important for effective, decent leaders to stick around when ignorance and chaos are on the loose.

David McAuley, McLean

The subheadline on the Aug. 16 editorial Mr. Trump gives comfort to racists said When its president is so morally obtuse, the nation can only weep. I disagree. Weep yes, but then, organize.

Organize against the hatred. Organize against those who spew it and the political leaders who either condone or actively support it  yes, that includes President Trump. The question, Where were the good Germans?, was asked many times during Hitlers rise in Germany and later by historians. We cannot afford the same question. The good Americans must stand up, and they must do so now.

Amy Isaacs, Chevy Chase

Regarding the Aug. 15 editorial Speaking truth to power:

The problem, as so well said in AMCs Revolutionary War-era espionage series Turn: Washingtons Spies, is that speaking truth to power works only when power values truth.

Jean Waterman, Washington
British politicians are familiar with the term reshuffle, when senior figures in the government switch portfolios or get tossed out or brought into the government. And theyre also very familiar with coalition governments, when ruling governments divide jobs and authorities between two or more parties. American politicians could find study of both concepts useful. The executive branch has completed a major reshuffle over the past month. If the White House can match that with a smart policy push, the coalition between the Trump White House and the Capitol Hill GOP, though battered, could come together again quickly out of shared self-interest.

Ive been arguing for months that what we have in Washington is a coalition government between President Trump, his team and his core voters, and congressional Republicans led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.). The bridge between the coalitions halves has often been kept open by the vice president, but the president himself has proven adept at quietly working with coalitions many elements. Both the president and vice president can now spend some of the balance of the summer ensuring that it is indeed open and that there is traffic flowing in both directions.

As for the reshuffle, the exit of Stephen K. Bannon completes a restructuring of the West Wing that began almost as soon as the president took office and is now apparently complete. Like the physical renovation of the West Wing, it was noisy and not very attractive but necessary. The partnership between the executive- and legislative-branch Republicans simply could not have lasted without changes in the administration.

Six months in, the president has assembled the best national security team of my lifetime, led by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. While his communications team remains somewhat in flux, interim communications director Hope Hicks has been at the presidents side since the beginning of his campaign and enjoys his confidence. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is growing in confidence and command of the press briefing room. Vice President Pences new chief of staff , Nick Ayers, a capable staffer liked by all sides of the GOP, will be an invaluable resource not just to the vice president but to the presidents entire senior executive team.

On the domestic policy front, senior economic adviser Gary Cohn and White House Counsel Don McGahn, along with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, are firmly in control of the domestic policy process. Committed reformers such as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price are in strong and stable positions now as staffing of political appointees accelerates. (I leave out Rex Tillersons State Department, where there remains an extraordinarily high degree of instability.)

On the Hill, the congressional GOP is hungry for more success beyond the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. The Veterans Affairs reform bill and 14 Congressional Review Act laws , while enormously significant, were low-profile victories. The filling of dozens of additional federal court vacancies behind Gorsuch is getting organized and moving forward finally, and dozens of confirmations, particularly of the key circuit court openings, and perhaps the end of the anti-constitutional blue slips are crucial wins within reach too. But what is needed above all is either a tax bill or resurrection of a health-care fix. Slashing the corporate tax rate is probably the easiest (and perhaps most economically significant) bit of legislation to accomplish, but so too must arrive the repeal of the Budget Control Act, which has devastated national security via the sequester and hamstrung a key Trump promise  that of a 355-ship Navy. Both the corporate tax cut and repeal of the BCA are worth daring the Democrats to shutter the government over, as voters understand both are crucial to the well-being of the country.

A grand bipartisan agreement on infrastructure and immigration is within reach as well. Senators enjoying the presidents confidence such as Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) can team with reasonable senators across the aisle such as Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) and Angus King (I-Maine) to draft a genuine breakthrough bill: one that delivers much-needed sanity to legal immigration goals, a legal form of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and of course infrastructure funding, including a long, strong border fence  the visible expression of a genuine commitment to border security. Infrastructure funding  which is mostly block-granted to county governments  allows federalisms beauty to work and puts Americans to work on needed projects quickly, and, if drafted the right way, wont be as ineffective as 2009s stimulus.

The last ingredient in a successful reset will be the presidents rhetoric. He gave great speeches in Saudi Arabia and Poland on crucial issues of Islamist extremism and the inherent goodness of the West. Now he needs to give some key addresses at home, about American equality and the essential demands of citizenship, including an iron commitment to the rule of law and respect for constitutional norms. He needs scribes who can help the president craft messages not in 140 characters but 40 or so minutes that raise the eyes of Americans to the wins for all Americans on the board and to shared goals of economic and national security for all Americans. There are already some talented writers in the Old Executive Office Building. Put them to work.

Trumps strategic resolve must be to focus on a legislative agenda that does fit in 140 characters  a cut in the corporate tax rate, repeal of the defense sequester, a bigger Navy, a real border fence, a legal-immigration overhaul and originalist judges  combined with continued, reiterated strategic clarity toward the Islamic State, Iran, North Korea, Russia and China. If he works with his partners in Congress, these are all doable. And the team to help the president do it seems, finally, to be in place.
Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in his Aug. 4 letter that the United States will never default on its debt. Perhaps he meant to add again.

In the War of 1812, William Barclay Foster was appointed a deputy commissary of purchases at Pittsburgh to the Pennsylvania Brigade and acted in the capacity of assistant commissary. After the British burned Washington and their navy fired cannons on St. Michaels, Md., the British headed for New Orleans. Foster received orders to send clothing, blankets, guns and ammunition to relieve Maj. Gen. Andrew Jacksons army. Without money available, Foster bought the supplies on his own credit. The supplies arrived in New Orleans three days before the British. Without those supplies, the Americans might have lost the Battle of New Orleans.

When the federal government settled the bill, Foster was $2,704.90 short; Congress had refused to approve certain funds advanced. A jury found for Foster, and the judgment still stands unpaid on the records of the U.S. Court at Pittsburgh. Perhaps Mulvaney could arrange payment, including compound interest for the 194 years that the government has been in arrears.

Thomas S. Evans, Alexandria
Wes Moore is the chief executive of the Robin Hood Foundation, one the nations largest anti-poverty groups, and the author of The Other Wes Moore.

My grandfather was born in South Carolina, the child of Jamaican immigrants who were new to the United States. When he was just 6, he and his parents fled back to Jamaica. They were chased away by the Ku Klux Klan.

But my grandfather, the Rev. Dr. James Thomas, was the proudest American I have ever known. He refused to let hatred dictate his life, and he vowed to return to the United States. He moved back here with his new wife and became the first black minister in the history of the Dutch Reformed Church. More importantly, he was a fixture and a leader in his community in the Bronx for more than 30 years.

He died in 2005 while I was serving in Afghanistan, and I wonder what he would have to say about the resurgence of white supremacy today, the horror of the hatred wielded by groups who tried to keep my family out of this country, but I think I know the answer.

Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, who was killed on Aug. 12 in Charlottesville while protesting white nationalists, urged others to fight injustice and speak up. (The Washington Post)

He had this sermon that has always stuck with me. He talked about life as a relay race. Our job, he would say, is to carry the baton as far as we could and then pass it on. He most often told this story in the context of Moses bringing the people to the banks of the Jordan River, but no farther. Ive always thought about it in terms of the role my grandfather played after my father died when I was 4. My grandparents welcomed my two sisters, my mother and me into their modest Bronx home when we had to move from Maryland to survive. When other black boys around me fell to drugs or to the failed crime policies of the 1980s and 90s, Papa Jim kept me safe.

I cant help but think about the baton sermon in the beautiful life of Heather Heyer, the woman who was killed allegedly by a white supremacist in Charlottesville.

At her memorial service on Wednesday, her mother, Susan Bro, told us how to honor her daughters legacy: Find whats wrong. Dont ignore it, dont look the other way, she said. You make a point to look at it and say to yourself, What can I do to make a difference? 

Thats how Heather carried her baton. She went out into the street when she saw white supremacists invade her community. She did not just stand up for what was right, she gave her life for it.

Id rather have my child, her mother said, but by golly, if I gotta give her up, were going to make it count.

Those words hit me so hard  I know that sentiment so well. As a U.S. Army paratrooper and captain with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan  notably, the famed unit that played an important role defeating fascism in World War II  I know that on the battlefield, politics disappear, and all soldiers fight for the man or woman to their left and right.

We need to carry that approach, that level of love, to the fight against inequality that is happening all around us. This is a definitive moment for our country. We can look beyond the politics of divisiveness and hatred that seek to dominate this moment. We can look to the moments we have seen that remind us of our countrys greatness  stories of love and community that stretch from fighting holes in Afghanistan to communities such as Charlottesville.

We are all affected by the hatefulness, anger and divisiveness, especially many of the 45 million Americans living in poverty today who feel hopeless and under siege. Some politicians have fanned a narrative that they are lazy and unwilling to work. Critical programs such as Medicaid and Pell Grants, designed to give them a chance at a better life, are under threat.

At the anti-poverty group Robin Hood, were looking for the most innovative solutions to fight poverty. Were working with communities, the public sector and social entrepreneurs.

And as we are out in these communities that have been chronically and generationally neglected, we see how fear and uncertainty are growing. Our work and our voice must rise to meet that fear. But we know that we cant do it alone. We need you. This is no time to stand by while so many are hurting.

In my America, our lives are all intertwined; our fates depend on one another. In moments of crisis and peril, we do everything we can to save each other. We shoulder one anothers pain. And we acknowledge, respect and work toward solving whats causing that pain in the first place. The baton is now in our hands. How we run this leg of this race will define the country our children will inherit. Our future depends on us doing the right thing, right now.
Nathan A. Jones, the author of the Aug. 5 Free for All letter A few words not fit to print, complained about reading direct quotes from Anthony Scaramucci and worried that his children might read these quotes. He is missing a wonderful teachable moment. Sometimes you can judge a person by what they say and how they choose to say it. I applaud The Post for reporting Scaramuccis comments accurately, thereby letting us learn the facts and teach our children well.

Gordon Wallace, Burke

I was chagrined to read the letter in the Aug. 5 Free for All shaming The Post for printing a four-letter word regularly heard on many middle school playgrounds and more than a few elementary school playgrounds.

I belatedly congratulate The Post for vividly reproducing the essence of Anthony Scaramuccis quasi-psychotic tirade. It was newsworthy; the decision to print was made by adults. I abhor the hypocrisy in American culture whereby humans can be graphically depicted being shot, butchered or blown up, but the sight of a female breast or a common curse word is considered something that will turn our youths into foul-mouthed sexual deviants.

Stephen D. Cohen, Bethesda
Evidence is piling up that Donald Trump does not really want to be president of the United States.

He certainly doesnt look happy in the job. In his previous life, Trump met whomever he wanted to meet and said whatever he wanted to say. But like all presidents, he finds himself ever more isolated, and his displeasure shows on his face. The loneliness of the job  which so many of his predecessors have ruefully reported  is wearing on him.

And its more than that. Past presidents also tell us that no one can fully appreciate the dimensions of the job in advance. With no previous political experience, Trumps learning curve has been even steeper than usual, and the more he sees of the job, the less he wants to do it. He balks at the briefings, the talking points, the follow-through.

He was drawn to the fame of it, as he once told me aboard his private jet. Its the ratings . . . that gives you power, then-candidate Trump explained. Its not the polls. Its the ratings. He loves being the most talked-about man on Earth.

But unlike reality TV stars, presidents arent famous for being famous. They command the worlds attention because they are the temporary embodiments of Americas strength, aspirations and responsibilities.

At the end of his contentious Aug. 15 remarks about the violence in Charlottesville, President Trump touted his winery there and incorrectly called it "one of the largest wineries in the United States." (The Washington Post)

It is a paradoxically self-effacing fame. The job demands that hugely competitive, driven, ambitious individuals  for thats what it takes to win the job  inhabit a role that requires them to be something other than nakedly themselves.

As some Trump associates tell it, he never intended to be elected. But having won the part, he doesnt want to play it, a fact irrefutable after Charlottesville. Rather than speak for the nation  the presidents job  he spoke for Trump. Rather than apply shared values, he apportioned blame.

The presidency calls for care and cunning. All successful presidents have known when to say less rather than more. George Washingtons second inaugural address was 135 words long. President Abraham Lincoln often disappointed clamoring crowds, telling them that the risk of a wrong word made it too dangerous for him to deliver a speech. President Ronald Reagan was famous for cupping his ear and shrugging as he pretended not to hear an untimely question.

Did these men ever itch to win an argument, as Trump did in his Tuesday news conference, with such disastrous results? Of course they did. But a president cant indulge such impulses.

Discipline in thought and speech is the machinery by which a president leads a free people. He hasnt the power to purge his enemies or censor the press. His strength rests on his ability to persuade. His power grows through a record of hard-won results. He seeks friends and respect, not enemies and outrage. Between fired aides (strategist Stephen K. Bannon got the boot Friday) and fleeing allies, Trump is losing friends faster than a bully at a birthday party.

Reflecting more and reacting less: Thats how a president gets through all seven days of a week supposedly focused on infrastructure without having his advisory council on infrastructure implode. With enough of that focus and discipline, a president might eventually foster an infrastructure bill  an actual law with real money behind it, something more than bluster  that creates jobs and feeds progress and raises spirits.

Its hard work. As shareholders in this enterprise, Americans are asking what disciplined, focused labor Trump performed to pass a health-care bill. What hard ground has he plowed, what water has he carried, to grow the seeds of tax reform?

From North Korea threats and Charlottesville blaming to his chief strategist's firing, President Trump packed a lot of headlines into his stay at his New Jersey golf course. Here's a look at what he got up to during his "working vacation." (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

The presidents job is to understand that the world has plenty of troubles in store for this nation. His role is not to add to their number. There will be moments when the president must stir us up, so in the meantime, his task is to keep us calm.

If Trump were still in private business, he would have no trouble diagnosing this situation. A serial entrepreneur like Trump learns to recognize when a venture isnt panning out. Over the years, he splashed, then crashed, in businesses as diverse as casinos, an airline and for-profit seminars. His willingness to fish has always been matched by a willingness to cut bait.

Or, as a veteran boss, he might see his predicament as a personnel move that hasnt clicked. Trump has made many, many hires over his career, and some (as recently as Bannons) dont work out. Not a good fit, the saying goes.

The presidency is not a good fit for Trump. Its a scripted role; hes an improviser. Its an accountable position; hes a free spirit. Yes, the employment contract normally runs four years. But at his age and station, whats the point of staying in a job he doesnt want?

Read more from David Von Drehles archive.
Michael Eric Dyson is a sociology professor at Georgetown University and the author of Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America.

After eight years of Obama, America was not ready to declare a cease-fire in the perpetual war over race, Peter Baker writes in Obama: The Call of History, his compelling and concise survey of the first black presidents two terms in office. If anything, it seemed to be escalating again.

Journalism may be historys first draft, but Bakers words might qualify as prophecys first blush. To be sure, it wasnt hard to see that Barack Obamas successor, Donald Trump, would plumb the depths of racial animus to paint his twisted vision of America. Hed offered us a foreboding sketch of his insidious views when he hatefully scorned Obama, arguing that he wasnt a true American, saying, with no proof, that Obama was a Kenyan citizen, a Muslim interloper who was not to be trusted.

But little prepared us for the full bore of Trumps belligerent bigotry, the stunning scope of which swept into full view this past week when he drew false equivalence between white supremacists in Charlottesville and their vigilant protesters. Baker argues that Obamas scorn for Trump grew more visceral in the final days of the [2016] campaign and that it was hard [for Obama] to picture a President Trump.

Yet Obamas initial reluctance to address race, the outlines of which Baker briefly traces, left an interpretive void that was grievously, and gleefully, filled by his successor, who is all too eager to ply his poisonous perspective. Baker argues that Obama picked up the pace of race talk in his second term, but it may have been far too little, far too late. When it came to race, Obama, as he did in his foreign policy, led from behind.

While speaking on health insurance reform, President Obama responded to a question at his prime time news conference July 22, 2009, about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black Harvard professor, at his own home over the weekend. (The Obama White House)

Baker, the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, spends the bulk of his book writing about Obamas accomplishments  getting the economy on good footing after the greatest financial collapse since the Depression, bailing out the automobile industry, passing a health-care overhaul, killing Osama bin Laden  and his virtues, above all a self-discipline that, for all the controversies, allowed him to emerge from eight years in office without a hint of personal scandal. The book is both a compelling biography and a coffee-table, large-format work with beautiful photography commemorating the Obama years.

Baker also tackles the former presidents idiosyncrasies, including a much-discussed antipathy to politics, symbolized in an aloofness that spoiled his chances of backroom glad-handing and arm-twisting. And Baker touches on Obamas flaws, not least his inviolable  and unwarranted  belief that his oratory could inspire people from opposite ends of the political spectrum to forge bipartisan agreement. That idea quickly dissolved into rancorous resistance from Republicans during his tenure.

Baker tries to be fair about the matter: He measures the racial hostility Obama faced, while noting that presidents including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also had their share of hatemongers and conspiracy theorists.

But Obamas time in office evoked a unique hatred that undoubtedly rested in race, if not alone, then at least primarily. No amount of ideological dispute or partisan disagreement could account for the relentless assault on his being president and on his being as president  there was an ontological raid on the idea that a body and brain like his should exist and have the nerve to darken the Oval Office. Obama tapped something deep and enduring in the American soul  some positive valve of renewable hopefulness that was improbably pitched against the horizon of American cynicism. By the same token, he pushed racial levers and buttons that seemed to irrationally infuriate and unite masses of white folk in opposition to his cause. Despite the celebrated multiracial coalition he summoned, the majority of white America never cast a vote for Obama.

As much as it acknowledged his genius, this nation also punished Obama for existing at all. It viciously took him to task for being cosmopolitan and having political couth. Sure, like most presidents, Obama may have been arrogant, as Baker notes, but it was partly a redemptive self-confidence that hoisted a faltering nation atop his thin shoulders. Yet many white Americans resented him for saving them, resented him for holding our fragile union together until it was, alas, fractured into a million prejudiced pieces by an inept caricature of a leader who is allergic to gravitas.

No matter the warts and blemishes Baker explores  Obamas continuation and expansion of Bushs use of drones and his massive deportation of immigrants suggest he didnt deserve a Nobel Peace Prize  there is little denying that Obama remains a remarkable figure, a dignified embodiment of the decorum that ought to attend the presidency.

And yet, as much damage as Trump has wrought, as perilous and vexing as his bitterly ignorant views on race manage to be, Obama must be held to account for failing to sow as widely as he might have the seeds of racial justice. Thats in part because he truly believed he was the smartest man in the room when it came to race  he was high on race-neutral policies that he thought would tame a skeptical public and raise black boats as the nations tide of prosperity rose. He kept his own counsel and refused to listen to challenging black voices that attacked his willfully oblivious or naive views.

But there were more sinister undertones to Obamas rhetoric, more flaws in his outlook, than Baker acknowledges. Obama often enough lashed black folk in public  belittling Morehouse College graduates in a commencement speech, blaming black people for using poverty as an excuse to commit crime in his address at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, needling black members of Congress with the condescending exhortation to stop complaining, take off their bedroom slippers and put on their marching boots. Obama could identify what he thought of as black pathology in remorselessly granular detail. Yet he could hardly utter a discouraging word to white America, wouldnt dare take the same liberties with them as he did with his own.

That seems to make sense  you can say to your kinfolk what you cant say to company  except it doesnt, because Obama went out of his way to proclaim himself not black Americas president but everybodys president: everybody, it seemed, except black folks. The paradox is that he was our benighted symbol of progress, yet his greatest swagger may have flashed as he reprimanded rather than represented us.

Trump is a churlish, indecent man. He is a pitiful president who amplifies racist ignobility and echoes the harangues of the brutish bigots who declare their hate as a tarnished badge of courage. As Bakers eloquent account of Obamas sometimes majestic, always complicated presidency makes plain, Obama is a brilliant, decent and sometimes noble man who graced his office with intelligence and humanity, qualities that fled the scene when he left the White House.

It is a shame that he failed to engage race with the sensitivity, balance, candor, intricacy, insight and enormous comprehension of which he was capable. There were dire consequences when a man of superior talent failed to talk about race  though, it must be admitted, his supporters did him no favor by saying he was hemmed in and couldnt speak about such things because it would upset white folk. That ignores how Obamas very being, his very breath, his very body, upset white folk.

Obamas refusal to admit that  and therefore, to offer our fatally fractured country the tough wisdom he might have given us had he surrendered the fantasy of massive white support  is a national tragedy. More tragic still is that his unwillingness for much of his term in office to talk about race left a derisive vacuum for a village idiot to slip right in and willingly spew vile unlearnedness. Baker may be right that Obama detested Trump as the 2016 campaign wore on, but the first black president must reckon with the fact that he helped put the greatest threat to his legacy in office.
Naval researchers announced Saturday that they have found the wreckage of the lost World War II cruiser USS Indianapolis on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, 72 years after the vessel sank in minutes after it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.

The ship was found almost 31/2 miles below the surface of the Philippine Sea, said a tweet from Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul G. Allen, who led a team of civilian researchers that made the discovery.

Historians and architects from the Naval History and Heritage Command in the District had joined forces with Allen last year to revisit the tragedy.

The ship sank in 15 minutes on July 30, 1945, in the wars final days. It took the Navy four days to realize that the vessel was missing.

About 800 of the crews 1,200 sailors and Marines made it off the cruiser before it sank. But almost 600 of them died over the next four to five days from exposure, dehydration, drowning and shark attacks. Nineteen crew members are alive today, the Navy command said in a news release.

The Indianapolis had just completed a top-secret mission to deliver components of the atomic bomb Little Boy to the island of Tinian. The bomb was later dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

In a statement on its website, the command called the shipwreck a significant discovery, considering the depth of the water.

While our search for the rest of the wreckage will continue, I hope everyone connected to this historic ship will feel some measure of closure at this discovery so long in coming, Allen said in a statement. His research vessel, Petrel, has state-of-the-art subsea equipment that can descend to depths like those at which the ship was found.

The cruisers captain, Charles Butler McVay III, was among those who survived, but he was eventually court-martialed and convicted of losing control of the vessel. About 350 Navy ships were lost in combat during the war, but he was the only captain to be court-martialed. Years later, under pressure from survivors to clear his name, McVay was posthumously exonerated by Congress and President Bill Clinton.

The shipwrecks location had eluded researchers for decades.

The coordinates keyed out in an S.O.S. signal were forgotten by surviving radio operators and were not received by Navy ships or shore stations, the Navy command said. The ships mission records and logs were lost in the wreck.

Researchers got a break last year, however, when Richard Hulver, a historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command, identified a naval landing craft that had recorded a sighting of the Indianapolis hours before it was sunk. The position was west of where it was presumed to be lying. The team was able to develop a new estimated position, although it still covered 600 square miles of open ocean.

The ship is an official war grave, which means it is protected by law from disturbances. Naval archaeologists will prepare to tour the site and see what data they can retrieve. No recovery efforts are planned.

Hulver and Robert Neyland, the commands underwater archaeology branch head, wrote on the website that there remains a lot we can learn.

From the sinking to the battle damage and site formation processes, we hope to gain a better understanding about the wreck site and how we can better protect USS Indianapolis to honor the service of the ship and crew.
President Trump decided to dismiss Stephen K. Bannon, after weeks of White House upheaval and racial unrest. The ousted chief strategist returned to Breitbart News on Aug. 18. (Peter Stevenson,Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

President Trump decided to dismiss Stephen K. Bannon, after weeks of White House upheaval and racial unrest. The ousted chief strategist returned to Breitbart News on Aug. 18. (Peter Stevenson,Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Stephen K. Bannon thought hed only serve a year as the presidents chief political strategist. Rumors of his imminent sacking arose every few weeks. In April, the rumor that hed be plucked off the National Security Council actually proved true.

But even with the news Friday that the key Trump adviser was out of the White House , the leaders of the alt-right, which Bannon elevated and then denounced, predicted that their movement would continue.

Im sad to see Bannon go, but I was never sure who Bannon was ideologically and politically, said Richard Spencer, the white nationalist who popularized the term alt-right to rebrand the white nationalist movement. Hes a fighter, to be sure, and a populist in a basic sense, but what he actually believed was never clear.

Bannons detractors thought they knew what he believed. They pored over books he praised, especially the 1973 anti-refugee book The Camp of the Saints. They shuddered at how he called the news site he will return to lead, Breitbart, a platform for the alt-right, with verticals on black crime and paranoia about unchecked immigration.

Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor whom Bannon helped turn into a transgressive campus celebrity, said time will tell whether the Trump administration will drift into turpitude without Steve around.

The Post's Dan Balz says the firing of chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon simultaneously changes everything and nothing for the Trump administration. (Bastien Inzaurralde,Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)

[Steve Bannon says rivals wetting themselves, calls supremacists clowns, contradicts Trump on N. Korea]

Steve is far more dangerous and powerful outside of the White House now. And I think he will be happier, too. I cant wait to see Bannon the Barbarian viciously crush his enemies from whatever perch he believes he will be most effective from, Yiannopoulos said.

For Democrats, the removal of Bannon isnt enough. In statements Friday, Democratic lawmakers were sure to bring up the presidents comments on the violence in Charlottesville, and mention that the Trump administration still included Attorney General Jeff Sessions and immigration policy adviser Stephen Miller.

Steve Bannons firing is welcome news, but it doesnt disguise where President Trump himself stands on white supremacists and the bigoted beliefs they advance, said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Its good news that hes not in the White House, said Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.), who has sought Bannons firing since November. But I dont think anyone should have any illusions that now that Steve Bannon is gone, the president is going to take very different positions. These are the presidents positions. These are the presidents policies. They remain.

A Nazi sympathizer, Klan defender, and supremacist protector should not be President of the greatest country in the world, said Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.) in a statement, who was first to introduce articles of impeachment against Trump.

No member of Trumps administration worried liberals as much as Bannon. They shared photos of the strategist looking particularly unkempt. The Onion portrayed Bannon as a ghoulish fairy tale villain, with a headline announcing that he had burst into millions of spores upon his departure.

Anthony Atamanuik, a Trump impersonator who hosts the weekly Comedy Central satire The President Show, cast the actor John Gemberling to play Bannon as a shambling, wide-eyed slob.

I conceived him as your friend who breaks out the Ouija board at the seance, Atamanuik said. He was the guy who came up with theories about aliens building the pyramids, because he could not entertain the possibility that they were built by black or brown people. I think we did something accurate without knowing it  we had Trump being scared of him.

Progressive activists were genuinely scared of him. The first #FireBannon signs appeared at rallies the day after Trumps presidential victory. At some rallies, the chant No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA was altered to squeeze in a mention of Bannon. The chants never went away, and this week, many of the post-Charlottesville protests and vigils featured calls for Trump to fire Bannon.

The progressive group Daily Action organized at least 44,000 calls to the White House demanding Bannon be removed; Color of Change, which has organized advertiser boycotts of Breitbart and other news sites, got close to 100,000 people to sign anti-Bannon petitions.

His record made him such a clear figure of what Trumps policies would mean for people, explained Rashad Robinson, the executive director of Color of Change. We wanted to say to members of Congress, who were seeking to treat this administration as normal, that theyd be held accountable for doing business with people like this.

The success of those left-wing protests left a bitter taste for Bannons alt-right defenders. As the Bannon news circulated on Reddit and 4chan forums, Trump fans veered between rationalization (He will return to Breitbart in a civilian capacity in order to fight in the culture war) and depression (Why would you contact a leftist columnist and give an unsolicited interview in which you kill your reputation and give the media an angle on you?).

Vox Day, an alt-right activist and science fiction author, argued that Bannons enemies had missed the real reason he was terminated. Bannons nationalism, for all the hate it drew, put him on the opposing side of neoconservatives  the war hawks that the left used to hate.

Hes not a bureaucrat, and the kind of strategic advice he offers Trump can just as easily be provided from outside, Day said. My one concern is that this could mean that the military interventionists are going to get their way in Syria, Venezuela and North Korea. I suppose well find out soon enough.

Mike DeBonis contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost
They were important men  tall and imposing, well-dressed and well-connected, used to giving orders and getting respect. One was a white-haired army general, the other a wealthy entrepreneur  both members of the Afghan elite long considered too powerful to touch.

But last week, Gen. Mohammad Moeen Faqir, the former commander of embattled Helmand province, and Abdul Ghafar Dawi, the director of a large fuel company and other businesses, chafed in silence as prosecutors in an anti-corruption court charged them with embezzlement and abuse of authority.

The two brief trials, which concluded with prison terms and large fines imposed on both men, were among a clutch of high-profile anti-corruption cases brought by the Afghan government in recent weeks. The other convicted defendants included prison officials who made deals to release inmates early, bank officials who made loans with fake collateral and senior military officers who schemed to steal thousands of gallons of generator fuel.

Together, the cases are part of an accelerating campaign, headed by Attorney General Farid Hamidi, to convince the Afghan public and Afghanistans foreign backers that the government, plagued by a raft of other problems, is making significant progress in efforts to end an entrenched culture of impunity and entitlement among the countrys military and civilian elites.

When we started out, everyone was skeptical. Now they are starting to believe, said Hamidi, who was appointed 18 months ago by President Ashraf Ghani. These cases show that money and power are not a guarantee. We face many difficulties, but we are committed. We still do not have complete justice in Afghanistan, but we no longer have complete impunity.

Business owner Abdul Ghafar Dawi testifies in his own defense at his trial on embezzlement and corruption charges. (Pamela Constable/The Washington Post)

Hamidis efforts have met with dramatic setbacks. One was the unsolved double murder of two police investigators on their way to work at the Anti-Corruption Justice Center. Another was the defiance of Abdurrashid Dostum, the countrys first vice president and a former militia boss, who was accused of ordering the rape of a political rival last year. Dostum refused to be questioned by Hamidis office and fled to Turkey, where he remains in self-imposed exile.

[Dostum is known for brutality. But he may have gone too far.]

There have also been complaints that Hamidi was failing to go after the most influential Afghans linked to corruption, and that the effort was politically motivated or aimed at distracting the international community from the governments failures. But such criticism has diminished as prosecutors have worked through several hundred cases, taken prominent people into custody for trial and sent some of them to prison.

To date, Hamidis aides said, 1,097 cases have been tried in three anti-corruption courts, 468 people have been sent to prison, and repayments and fines totaling more than $14million have been ordered. In the generator-fuel scheme, two army colonels were sent to prison for 18 and 20 years and fined more than $1.5 million.

This is unprecedented, said Kawun Kakar, managing partner of a private law firm in Kabul. After years in which nobody, not a deputy minister or a general, has been tried or convicted of corruption, in the past year there have been a number of high officials and well-connected people convicted. It is a very stark contrast. Even if progress has been slow, he added, they are laying the groundwork for larger, more organized cases with even wider implications.

Rohullah Abed, executive director of the justice center, where the trials took place, put it another way. When powerful people see us coming, they are a little afraid now, he said.

[Afghan president is under siege as violence, joblessness persist]

They also fight back, hiring multiple defense lawyers, packing courtrooms with supporters and rebutting charges with an array of arguments. During their recent trials, both Faqir and Dawi seemed confident and relaxed, exchanging nods and smiles with co-defendants and lawyers as they listened to the proceedings, and greeting well-wishers during court breaks as guards with handcuffs hovered at a respectful distance.

In both cases, the defendants and their attorneys also made emotional pleas for leniency or dismissal based on their many years of contributions to Afghanistans economic development and national defense  character portraits that contrasted sharply with the grubby accusations against them.

Faqir, who served in the military for 38 years before his arrest, was charged with abusing his authority by appropriating military vehicles for his personal use and ordering 30 active-duty soldiers to serve as guards and drivers at his private homes. He and several other officers were separately charged with embezzlement for keeping large amounts of cash that had been intended to be used to purchase food for combat troops under his command.

My client has risked his life. He has fought terrorists and Taliban. . . . It was not a vacation, declared Faqirs attorney, Abdul Jalil, arguing that he deserved to have his home and family protected and that there was nothing abnormal about the practice. To go after high-value figures is not good for the country, he added.

In the end, the three-judge panel sentenced Faqir to nine years in prison and ordered him to repay $1.2 million for the military rations.

The case against Dawi, one of the most successful and politically connected business owners in Afghanistan, was more complex. At the heart of the prosecution were charges going back a decade, alleging that his company manipulated bids and contracts for aviation fuel and facilities, establishing a monopoly in collusion with transportation officials. Dawi was also charged with defrauding several other oil companies and embezzling $16 million in loans from Kabul Bank by creating 17 front companies that never repaid them.

Dawis lawyer, Najla Rahil, presented an exhaustive defense, arguing that the prosecution was biased and conspired with Dawis business competitors, and that the case was a contractual and civil dispute rather than a criminal matter. The Dawi Oil company, she argued, preserved a bright history in our country as Afghanistan emerged from years of conflict and isolation, virtually reviving its ruined aviation industry and investing where no one else would.

We rebuilt an airport that was destroyed after 30 years of war, protested Dawis top lieutenant, Mohammad Asghar Ghiasi.

The judges listened politely until every defendant and lawyer had spoken. When they returned from deliberating, they ordered both Dawi and Asghar to be imprisoned for nine years and pay multimillion-dollar fines. Asghars two daughters rushed over and hugged him, weeping. Dawi, struggling to keep his composure, turned and faced the courtroom wall.

Read more

A much-feared Taliban offshoot returns from the dead

These ex-warlords are promising Afghanistans salvation

The Taliban is sowing terror in remote, new areas of Afghanistan

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Authorities in Spain have arrested four suspects after two terror attacks killed 14 people and injured dozens Aug. 17-18. (Sarah Parnass,Patrick Martin,Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

Authorities in Spain have arrested four suspects after two terror attacks killed 14 people and injured dozens Aug. 17-18. (Sarah Parnass,Patrick Martin,Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

The Spanish interior minister boasted Saturday that the terrorist cell that had carried out attacks in Barcelona and a nearby seaside village has been completely dismantled. But in the mountain town where the conspiracy was born, people wanted to know how it all had started.

At the center of the mystery here: How did a dozen young men from a small town  some friends since childhood  come together to plot in secret and carry out the deadliest terrorist attack in Spain in more than a decade, considering some were barely old enough to drive and most still lived with their parents.

As many as eight of 12 young men named as suspects in the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils are first- and second-generation Moroccan immigrants from the picturesque town of Ripoll, perched high in the forests at the edge of the Pyrenees, a two-hour drive on the highway from Barcelona.

Parents of the young men here told The Washington Post they fear their sons were radicalized by a visiting cleric who spent the last months praying, preaching  and possibly brainwashing gullible youngsters who spoke better Spanish than Arabic.

[Questions abound as Spanish officials investigate terrorist attacks]

A majority of the suspects in the Barcelona attacks are from the small mountain town of Ripoll, in northern Spain. Among the suspects are two brothers, Said and Yousseff Aallaa. (Raul Gallego Abellan/The Washington Post)

Others were not sure what drove the young men to such extreme violence. One assailant drove a white rented van down a crowded pedestrian boulevard in Barcelona, killing 14 and seriously wounding scores. Five others attacked police and bystanders after running a checkpoint. Two other suspects, still unidentified, were blown up in an explosion at a house being used by the cell to make a bomb, which authorities say was to be deployed in a major attack.

Spanish authorities said Saturday that they are searching for Younes Abouyaaqoub, a 22-year-old Moroccan-born man from Ripoll, who they now believe drove the van.

As of Saturday night, some of the families with sons in the terror cell said they had not been definitely informed by authorities if, how or where they died.

Some questioned how the young men could have organized themselves. Who is behind all this? Who is the big fish? said Rashid Oukabir, a cousin of 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir, a member of the cell who was killed by police after their car rammed officers.

Its impossible these kids did all of this on their own, he said. Who helped them?

Local Moroccan immigrants drinking tea and watching cable news at the Cafe Esperanza wondered aloud how the youths could have turned so quickly toward violence.

They were nerds, said one man who knew them.

They werent all nerds, said another.

One was a skilled soccer player.

Another might have smoked hash.

Ibrahim Aallaa is the father of two young men implicated in the attacks: Said Aallaa, 18, and his brother, Youssef Aallaa, 22.

He said he assumed both were dead.

A third son, Mohammad, 27, was the registered owner of the Audi A3 used in the Cambrils attack. He is in police custody, his father said.

Aallaa told The Post that he believed Youssef may have been radicalized by an imam in Ripoll, where a generation ago the first Moroccans came to work in the forests cutting trees or in the fields harvesting crops.

Aallaa said he did not know the clerics name.

[Van plows into crowd in Barcelona, killing 13; second, related attempt is thwarted]

In Ripoll on Saturday, national Catalan police searched the abandoned apartment of a part-time Muslim preacher named Abdelbaki Essati, who had served in a local mosque.

According to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, police were looking for DNA samples from the apartment because they suspected that Essati might have been one of the two men killed in Wednesdays explosion.

Albert Oliva, a regional police official, declined to provide details on the cleric during a news conference Saturday.

The elder Aallaa said that his son Youssef had changed in recent months, that he had become more strict in his religious practice and more judgmental.

My son would tell me, Father, you have to pray. You have to follow Islam. 

Youssef, he said, was a problematic child. The boy was aggressive. He fought in school, Aallaa recalled.

He opened the door to his tiny room, where he slept on a mattress next to his brother Said. There were religious texts and some free weights for bodybuilding  and that was it.

Recently, Youssef would disappear for days at a time, his father said, adding that he last saw his son a month ago. He thought he was working in a nearby town.

He suspects that Youssef got his brother Said involved in the attack, the father said.

I never heard them speak of the Islamic State or Syria, he said. Not anything like that, ever.

Hafida Oukabir said she saw her younger brother Moussa hours before the Barcelona attack. She did not notice anything new or different. If he had undergone some dramatic change, it was hidden from her, she said.

My brother didnt change, Hafida insisted.

Moussa Oukabir went to Friday services at the mosque but did not pray every day. In the days before the attacks, he was laughing, going out. If I would have seen any changes or had the suspicion of anything, we would have gone to the authorities. But nothing pointed at this.

Hafida said the tightknit Moroccan community, especially the families, are now focusing on who may have radicalized the youths.

What I think happened is that someone must have brainwashed them, she said. Do you really believe a 17- or 18-year-old, who was born here and grew up here, would think about killing people? No, no  somebody must have played with their minds and used them.

[In Barcelona, five minutes of pure panic and absolute terror]

The Islamic State had earlier claimed that its soldiers carried out the attacks in Spain, but the level of involvement by the terrorist group remained unclear.

Aallaa said that his son Youssef had books he kept hidden that he would study with friends. When police raided the home, they took away old mobile phones and a laptop.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, as news broke that Moroccan immigrants from Ripoll were responsible, many in town swore that relations between the Muslim newcomers and the established Catholic residents were calm and respectful.

But as the first arrests came to Ripoll, some locals jeered at the detainees, threatening them.

There also was graffiti spray-painted near one of the mosques that read Moors out!  a reference to Moroccan immigrants.

Over the past two days, stickers also appeared on street signs reading enough Islamization with a picture of a mosque and a line drawn across it.

Irene Payet, 64, lives in the same building as the Aallaa family. She is also a local politician. Payet said she believes the Moroccan immigrants are coddled by the government, given rights and benefits they have not earned.

These people, they are radicals, so I am not surprised they do this, she said. These people should be pushed aside. They are not ready to live in our society.

Payet gestured toward the floors above her apartment.

Im sleeping with the enemy, she said.

Raul Gallego Abellan contributed to this report.

Read more

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The pigeons make me feel free: An old pastime thrives in a Palestinian refugee camp

Trapped between Israel and Hamas, Gazas wasted generation is going nowhere

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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President Trump listens as he is introduced to deliver a speech July 6 at Krasinski Square at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. (Evan Vucci/AP)

In a verdant German village, a church bell that bears a swastika tolls. Above the symbol is an inscription: All for the Fatherland, Adolf Hitler.

When the Nazi iconography was discovered this summer in Herxheim am Berg, some called for the bells removal, others for its protection as a relic of a shameful national history. The village is still deciding what to do.

Germans have a word for coming to terms with the past, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. The word, coined after World War II, has no equivalent in the English language, no analog that might inform the anguished American debate over Confederate monuments  whose defenders include not just torch-wielding neo-Nazis in Charlottesville but also President Trump.

On a continent riven in the last century by two world wars, genocide and a battle of ideas waged across the Iron Curtain, European nations have accepted the burden of curating the tortured landscapes of their past. Symbols  insignia, flags, monuments  have become explosive at moments of regime change, as shifts in political power alter the cultural currents of the day. East-west friction particularly marks the conflict over remembrance in Europe, from de-Nazification in the Cold War era to contests today over commemoration of communisms past.

To some extent, Germany is an exceptional case, said Arnd Bauerkamper, a historian at the Free University in Berlin. Only the abandonment of Nazi ideology, and the clear break with the Nazi past, enabled integration into the West  membership in NATO, German reunification. There never was such a decisive break with Confederate ideas in the United States.

But addressing monuments to people, parties and movements that have fallen into disrepute has not been simple in Germany, or elsewhere in Europe. And while memorials to victims now predominate, particularly here in the former capital of the Third Reich, continuing strife over names and symbols illuminates the continents enduring divisions.

A statue of Franz Joseph I again occupies a prominent position in Prague, a century after Czechoslovak independence made the commemoration of an Austro-Hungarian emperor unthinkable. Other figures remain unpalatable. For years, Czech officials have debated what to do with the plinth once supporting a statue of Joseph Stalin that weighed 17,000 metric tons, destroyed in 1962 as the Communist Party line turned against the Soviet dictator.

Jirina Siklova, a Czech sociologist active in the dissident Charter 77 movement, said the site remains indelibly linked to Stalin.

It is stimulation for an explanation of this man, she said. Without this statue of Stalin, and without the liquidation of this statue, the new generation and tourists wouldnt remember this period.

Hungary has removed Communist-era statues from their pedestals and placed them in Memento Park, an open-air museum outside Budapest. Lithuanias Grutas Park is similar.

This has not quieted dispute over public memorials, however, particularly as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has pursued nationalist politics. A monument unveiled in 2014 to mark the 70th anniversary of Hungarys invasion by Nazi Germany was dedicated to the victims of the German invasion. Critics said it obscured Hungarys involvement in the annihilation of its Jewish citizens.

This year, activists threw paint-filled balloons at a Soviet memorial in Freedom Square in Budapest, in protest of perceived Russian influence in Hungarian affairs.

Jakub Janda, deputy director of the Prague-based European Values Think-Tank, said Russian influence is inseparable from a new effort by Czech communists to commemorate Communist-era border guards, who once policed the countrys frontier with West Germany and Austria. Josef Skala, vice chairman of the Czech Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, said memorializing the guards is part of an effort to demonstrate that Czechoslovakia, in addition to the Soviet Union, was a victim in the Cold War.

I, personally, and the party I belong to do not like rewriting history, Skala said. We did not initiate the Cold War. We made mistakes, yes, but we were defending our interests.

Antipathy to Russia in Polands ruling nationalist party, Law and Justice, has created a new row over Communist-era monuments in the former Soviet satellite state. The Polish government has set out to remove 500 Soviet monuments, as Russian senators call on President Vladimir Putin to respond with sanctions.

Statues of Stalin and Vladimir Lenin have also been toppled in Ukraine, as part of pro-Europe revolutionary activity that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

Still another approach is that of Romania, which last year unveiled a new sculpture  depicting three wings pointing to the sky  that honors those who died fighting Communist rule in Romania and Bessarabia.

The German capital is a tableau of conflicting impulses. An underground transit station was renamed for Karl Marx in 1946  not in the Communist east but in West Berlin. Parts of the Berlin Wall remain in place, including at Checkpoint Charlie, a major tourist destination. Two years ago, the head of a giant Lenin statue was exhumed and exhibited in Berlin.

The European Union in 2005 dropped proposals to ban both Nazi and communist symbols, due to concerns for freedom of expression as well as disagreement over the scope of the prohibition. Still, many European nations bar the use of totalitarian symbolism. In parts of Eastern Europe, bans expressly extend to communist iconography. In Germany, only the prohibition on Nazi symbols and signals is unambiguous; tourists from across the globe have recently learned that giving the Nazi salute is forbidden.

Many sites associated with the Nazis stand today as haunting museums. Other structures have been demolished to thwart neo-Nazi pilgrimages. A prison that housed Nazi war criminals was razed in 1987, its materials ground to powder and scattered in the North Sea.

But purging Germany of Nazism was not as swift as severe legal codes might suggest. Nor were the countrys motives as pure, said Jacob S. Eder, a scholar of German history and Holocaust memory at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena.

Its important to avoid making the mistake of thinking that now because every German city has some kind of memorial or museum to the Nazi past, that this was an easy process, Eder said. Its actually quite the opposite.

Certain debates, he said, still confound the public. Parade grounds in Nuremberg where Hitler held massive rallies lie in disrepair. The question is what to do with it and whether to let it just decay, Eder said.

Controversy in the 1990s and early 2000s marked the conceptualization of the Holocaust memorial in the heart of Berlin.

People considered it a mark of shame, Eder said  an argument revived this year by Bjorn Hocke, a state leader of Alternative for Germany, a far-right party poised to enter the German Parliament for the first time in elections next month. It was the government of Helmut Kohl that pushed for this monument, not out of a sense of moral responsibility but much more a political necessity, to improve Germanys reputation abroad.

From the beginning of the postwar era, as West Germany rebuilt under the Marshall Plan, external pressure guided de-Nazification.

Our deliverance from the Nazi period wasnt a development within Germany, but we were forced by the Allied forces to become a civilized nation again, said Volker Beck, a Green Party lawmaker who heads the Germany-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group.

The process was faltering, as ex-Nazis sometimes found their way into power, said Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, author of The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism.

But the thing that kept West Germany in the American orbit  and committed to de-Nazification  was fear of the Soviet Union, he said. There was no such fear in the American South.

Marshall aid to reconstruct Western European economies hinged on strict conditions to adopt democratic policies. By contrast, a decade after the Civil War, as federal troops were withdrawn from the South, the decrees of Reconstruction went unenforced.

Luisa Beck contributed to this report.



Read more

How other countries have dealt with monuments to dictators, fascists and racists

Trumps use of Confederate statues as a wedge issue underscores Bannons influence

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Memorial candles were left at the Turku Market Square for the victims of Friday's stabbings. (Lehtikuva/Reuters)

Authorities in Finland said Saturday they were investigating a fatal stabbing attack in a southwestern city as terrorism.

Two people were killed and eight others wounded Friday when an 18-year-old Moroccan man went on a stabbing rampage, police said. He was shot in the leg by police and was being treated in intensive care.

The attack unfolded in Turku, about 100 miles west of Helsinki, jolting a continent still learning the full extent of a terrorist strike targeting Spain, where police were trying to piece together details of two deadly vehicular assaults and an explosion at a house that police said had been used by the attackers.

[Spanish probe points to wider network in attacks; American among dead]

The Islamic State claimed links to the attacks in Spain, the nations worst in more than a decade.

Police in Finland initially said they did not believe the stabbing was related to terrorism. However, Finlands National Bureau of Investigation took control of the case and was investigating with the assistance of Finnish security services.

Saying new information had emerged overnight, police in southwest Finland said Saturday the stabbings were being investigated as murders with terrorist intent. The investigative bureau said it had reason to believe the attack was planned in advance but did not offer further details.

Security services said it was the first suspected terrorist attack in Finland, and that the overall risk level remained relatively low.

Police said the suspect had arrived in the country as an asylum seeker last year. Four other suspects, also Moroccan citizens, were arrested in connection with the stabbings, police said, and there was an international search warrant for a sixth suspect.

The two people who died of stabbing wounds were Finnish women, police said. Among the injured were a Swede, a Briton and an Italian.

Finlands prime minister, Juha Sipila, offered condolences to relatives of the victims and called the days events tragic. The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, also weighed in to condemn the attack, saying its gravity was heightened by the attacks in Spain hours earlier.

Security was tightened across the country, including at airports and train stations. National Police Commissioner Seppo Kolehmainen warned civilians that they might see armed security personnel in the streets.

A video circulated Friday on Twitter in which users said a man could be heard crying Allahu akbar, but others replied saying that the shouts were Finnish for watch out. An eyewitness told Turun Sanomat, a Turku-based newspaper, that she was buying potatoes in the market square when she saw people running and screaming. Among the victims, she said, was a woman with a small child.

Also Friday, police in the western German city of Wuppertal were searching for one or more suspects in a stabbing that left one person dead and another wounded, though the case was being treated as a homicide and is not linked to terrorism, police said.

Read more:

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The U.S.-backed Lebanese army launched a long-awaited offensive on Saturday against Islamic State militants holed up in a remote stretch of northeastern Lebanon, just as a separate offensive by the Hezbollah militia and the Syrian army got underway right across the border in Syria.

The offensive is the biggest military operation launched by the Lebanese army since the Syrian rebels and extremists began infiltrating parts of northeastern Lebanon after the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011, and, if successful, will enable Lebanon to reassert control over all of its borders.

The battle is fraught with sensitivities, however, because of the dueling roles played by the U.S.-backed Lebanese force and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which operate alongside one another as both allies and rivals in Lebanons complicated political landscape. Hezbollah is a partner in Lebanons coalition government, from which the Lebanese army takes its orders.

But their sponsors put them at opposite ends of a wider spectrum of geopolitical rivalries playing out in Lebanon and across the Middle East  between the United States and Iran.

This is a fight the historically weak and divided Lebanese army cannot afford to lose, said Aram Nerguizian in an analysis for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies late last month.

Failure, or the risk of it, would only bolster Hezbollahs argument that it and Iran are indispensable to Lebanons stability, he said.

The Lebanese army insisted that there was no coordination with the Hezbollah and Syrian forces, whose operation was confined to the Syrian side of the border. The Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia has been fighting for years alongside the Syrian army in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Lebanese army troops launched their assault at dawn near the towns of Ras Baalbek and Qaa, located in rugged, mountainous terrain that has been under Islamic State control since 2014, said Brig. Gen. Ali Qanso at a news conference at the Defense Ministry, north of Beirut.

There is no coordination, neither with Hezbollah nor with the Syrian army, he said. The Lebanese army launched its operation first, he said, pounding militant positions with rocket and artillery fire starting at 5 a.m.

Hezbollah issued a separate statement saying that it began its offensive early Saturday, with no mention of the Lebanese army operation.

The issue of coordination between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah is sensitive because of the extensive military aid Lebanons army receives from the United States, which considers Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization.

More than $1.5 billion in U.S. military aid has come to Lebanon over the past decade, including supplies of tanks, armored personnel carriers, surveillance drones, attack aircraft and helicopters that account for 80 percent of the military equipment in use by the Lebanese army, according to a fact sheet provided by the U.S. departments of Defense and State. U.S. military trainers have trained 32,030 Lebanese troops, nearly half of the strength of the army, it said.

The latest delivery, eight Bradley fighting vehicles, came just days before the offensive was launched, and top U.S. military officials, including Central Commands Gen. Joseph Votel, endorsed the armys battle against militants with a visit to the area in June.

The Lebanese Army remains one of our most capable and efficient partners, he said, according to comments quoted by a Lebanese army statement. We are proud of our support for it as the sole defender of Lebanon.

The aid has gone a long way toward turning Lebanons historically weak and politically divided army into an effective fighting force, but the battle ahead is nonetheless a challenge. The Islamic State has controlled the area for three years and knows the forbidding terrain well, said Qanso, the Lebanese army general.

Though there are only about 600 militants in the 46-square-mile area, they are hiding in networks of caves dug into the mountains and are expected to use suicide attacks to defend their territory, Qanso said.

Haidamous reported from Washington.

Read more

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Displaced Syrian families who fled Raqqa wait to receive private tents after arriving at the Ain Issa camp in July. (Hussein Malla/AP)

Fleeing terror in the Islamic States last Syrian strongholds, tens of thousands of civilians have become stranded in harrowing conditions across barely functional displacement camps.

As the militant groups grip in Syria crumbles and U.S.-backed forces push through its de facto capital, Raqqa, about 40 camps across the countrys northwest host between 2,000 and 10,000 people, with more arriving every day.

For one young couple escaping Raqqa, the journey to a displacement camp took more than 10 hours on foot through 110-degree heat. For those with larger families  many carrying infants or parents on their backs  the journey stretched to weeks.

Conditions are very shocking, said Ingy Sedky, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Some of the worst Ive seen.

On arrival, newcomers in some camps said they found neither a place to sleep nor a doctor to assess their needs. They were depleted from days of dehydration on top of months of fear under Islamic State rule.

[The Islamic State is fighting to the death as civilians flee Raqqa]

I arrived and I just fell down. The water they revived me with was dark with oil, so I just lay there on the ground exhausted and humiliated, said one woman who arrived in the eastern al-Arisha camp on Thursday. She asked that her name be withheld out of concern for her husbands safety in an Islamic State prison in the western province of Deir al-Zour.

Aid workers say that at least some of the nearby camps are without basic medical services. Water is limited as temperatures soar and few have electricity or toilets. The consequences can be deadly.

On a recent visit to the largest camp, Ain Issa, Sedkys delegation met a father whose newborn had died because of a lack of medical care in the heat. It was heartbreaking. He kept pulling out his phone to show us photographs, she said.



Children wait for their families to be processed in a transfer tent after arriving at the Ain Issa camp in July. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been displaced from Raqqa. (Hussein Malla/AP)

More than 200,000 people have fled Raqqa since April as a U.S.-backed offensive edged first through the surrounding countryside and then toward the city center. Tens of thousands have also fled the area around Deir al-Zour, where the U.S.-led coalition is launching heavy airstrikes and Syrian-backed forces are pushing through the provinces western countryside.

To reach the larger and better-equipped displacement camps, the new arrivals often move first through what are known as transit points  camps where Kurdish fighters from the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces attempt to screen out Islamic State militants by confiscating identification cards.

[Journey to the front lines in the fight against ISIS]

Aid workers say the process is chaotic and confusing. When newcomers arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs, they can be stranded for weeks without explanation.

Muhammed, a 29-year-old from the western Deir al-Zour countryside who asked that his second name not be used because of safety concerns, said he slept in the open air at the al-Karama camp for four days as his documents were checked.

Doctors express particular concern for the psychological welfare of children who have escaped. Their faces are just frozen. They dont cry, they dont laugh. Its a shocking thing to witness, said Rajia Sharhan, a pediatrician with the United Nations childrens agency, UNICEF.

According to Doctors Without Borders, some civilians have spent weeks nursing battle wounds behind front lines. Escapees and activists still living under Islamic State rule report that services have deteriorated as the groups finance sources dry up and U.S.-led coalition combing raids hit vital infrastructure, including hospitals.

Inside Islamic State-held Raqqa and Deir al-Zour, food prices are rising rapidly, leaving many families with little to survive on. Escape often depends on a smuggler charging hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, a price that depletes resources to a level that means those who flee often have little left.

The people who end up in these camps have done so because they have no choice, said Vanessa Cramond, the northern Syria coordinator for Doctors Without Borders. The challenge is big enough when were treating people arriving during the summer months. Were really struggling to meet needs now and I fear for what lies ahead when the temperatures drop.



People walk the dusty corridors of the Ain Issa camp. (Hussein Malla/AP)

Zakaria reported from Istanbul.

Read more

Syrias Assad has become an icon of the far right in America

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A majority of the suspects in the Barcelona attacks are from the small mountain town of Ripoll, in northern Spain. Among the suspects are two brothers, Said and Yousseff Aallaa. (Raul Gallego Abellan/The Washington Post)

A majority of the suspects in the Barcelona attacks are from the small mountain town of Ripoll, in northern Spain. Among the suspects are two brothers, Said and Yousseff Aallaa. (Raul Gallego Abellan/The Washington Post)

Two days after a devastating vehicle attack on one of Europes most iconic tourist destinations, many questions remained as Spanish authorities continued a manhunt for a 22-year-old missing member of the cell of suspected terrorists responsible for the brutal assault that killed 14 and injured more than 100 others.

Unlike other vehicle attacks Europe has endured in the last two years  in Nice, Berlin, Stockholm and London  Thursdays in Barcelona and the one early Friday in the nearby seaside city of Cambrils displayed an unusual degree of sophistication and coordination. Authorities are investigating what they believe to be a terrorist cell of at least 12 members with possible bases in different locations across the region of Catalonia.

But the Spanish government was quick to insist on Saturday that the situation was under control. Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido Alvarez said that the 12-person cell had been dismantled, and the government ultimately declined to raise the national alert level from four to five, the highest-possible classification.

Inspector Albert Oliva, chief spokesman for the national Catalan police, said the local police force spearheading the investigation here, however, cast doubt on the governments proclamation. We must remember who is the leader of the investigation, he said in a news conference, highlighting the work that remains to be done. Oliva then said that police home raids had failed to produce the missing suspect. When asked about the potential for another attack still to come, he said the prospect was unlikely but could not be deemed impossible.

[People from 34 countries were hurt or killed in the Spain attacks. Here are their stories.]

Police in Barcelona separated nationalist demonstrators from anti-fascist marchers the day after an attack killed more than a dozen people. (The Washington Post)

Although police shot dead five suspects early Friday morning and have since arrested four others, many loose ends remain.

For one, there is the rare social uniformity of the suspects backgrounds: Most of the 12 people identified as members of the cell come from the same small town near the French border, almost all are of Moroccan immigrant origins and all are younger than 35.

Then there are the puzzling logistics. The suspects ultimately struck three different locations in quick succession  one by accident. Propane and butane canisters that police believe the suspects intended to detonate in Barcelona exploded prematurely in the city of Alcantar on Wednesday, killing at least two and injuring 16.

On Thursday, the driver who then struck Barcelonas most famous promenade was somehow able to escape from the scene on foot. The same suspect may then have been among the group of five that committed a second vehicle attack just hours later in Cambrils, police believe  a distance about 70 miles to the southwest.

The missing suspect is Younes Abouyaaqoub, according to Catalan police officials cited in Spanish media. Police believe he left Las Ramblas neighborhood after the attack, hijacked a car after killing the driver, and drove out of the city. Police found a dead body with multiple stab wounds in an abandoned Ford vehicle, which they believe to be connected to the attack.

Finally, there is the question of motive. Shortly after the twin attacks, the Islamic State, through its Amaq News Agency, asserted responsibility for the carnage, heralding the suspects as soldiers. On Saturday, however, the terrorism group issued a second, expanded statement  which ultimately contained glaring factual errors. Many security analysts interpreted the mistakes as evidence that the caliphate, in the midst of major territorial losses in the Middle East, may have been trying to overstate its influence overseas.

[American confirmed dead after Barcelona terrorist attack shatters honeymoon]

So far, the degree of real involvement by the terrorist group remains unclear. In recent months, the Islamic State has asserted responsibility for international attacks that it did not orchestrate, as investigators concluded was the case with the attack on a Manila casino in early June.

In the groups expanded statement on the Barcelona attacks, for instance, the text notes that the attackers stormed a bar with their light weapons near Las Ramblas square, torturing and killing the Crusaders and Jews inside. No bar was stormed, the weapon employed in the attack was a van and victims were attacked indiscriminately rather than selected on the basis of religion or race.

For some analysts, the errors indicated that the Islamic State may not been directly involved. Others said that the group has made mistakes in the past, and has corrected them in due course, which may still be the case regarding Barcelona. Spanish investigators also reportedly uncovered traces of triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a trademark explosive of the group, while investigating the site of Wednesdays explosion in Alcanar.

[French mayor who witnessed carnage seeks to make Europes streets safer]

Jean-Charles Brisard, a leading security analyst and the director of the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism, said the important point was the potential for the group to inspire future attacks even as its own territory shrinks.

[Barcelona] states for me that the situation on the ground in Syria and Iraq is clearly disconnected from the capacity of the Islamic State and its militants abroad, he said in an interview. Theres no correlation between the two. What we see in Spain is specific to Spain, but it tells us that the threat is intense all over Europe.

Barcelona and the nation beyond continued to mourn the diverse, multinational group of 14 victims  including at least one American  massacred in the heart of this city and in nearby Cambrils.

On Saturday, Spains king and queen visited victims of the attack in hospital, and Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau opened a book of condolences at city hall.

We are closer than ever, she told reporters Saturday. I stand with all officials and citizens to condemn this terrorist attack, and we are together with all families of the victims, as well as those who remain in serious condition fighting for their lives.

Booth, Mekhennet and Raul Gallego Abellan reported from Ripoll, Spain. Angel Martinez in Madrid contributed to this report.

Was the Charlottesville car attack domestic terrorism, a hate crime or both?

In France, murder of a Jewish woman ignites debate over the word terrorism

An attack on Muslims leaving a mosque in London is exactly what ISIS wanted

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Democracy, the Olympic Games, and thick and creamy yogurt are among Greeces greatest contributions to humanity. And when it comes to the latter, the Greek ministry of agriculture is sick of impostors. The country wants people to know true Greek yogurt is made in Greece and prevent anyone making it elsewhere  in Europe, at least  from calling it Greek.

The ministry of agriculture has assembled a group that plans to apply to register Greek yogurt in the European Union Register as a term with a protected geographical indication (PGI) or protected designation of origin (PDO), according to DairyReporter.com.

If accepted, it would prohibit companies in other countries from calling their yogurts Greek.

Mike Groll / The Associated Press Files Chobani Greek Yogurt is all ready to go at the Chobani plant in South Edmeston, N.Y. Yogurt makers in North America can get away with marketing products as Greek.

The initial process for making Greek yogurt and regular yogurt is the same, but the difference lies in the texture: Greek yogurt is strained to remove liquid, making it thicker and creamier and giving it more protein and fewer carbohydrates per serving. But some brands dont follow this technique, and take shortcuts by adding thickeners and protein. Last year, a dispute between Greece and the Czech Republic over the latters Greek-style yogurt resulted in a scolding from the European Commission. Using the term Greek yoghurt for products produced outside Greece would deceive consumers and would create unfair competition in the EU market, one EU official noted to Euractiv media group.

But those rules wont apply in the United States, where makers are free to label their yogurt as Greek (and where the distance from Greece makes consumer confusion less likely). There are dozens of Greek yogurts in North American grocery stores, from popular brands such as Chobani, Yoplait, Dannon and Fage (a Greek company).

Greek yogurt became a huge hit in the United States 10 years ago, when consumers gravitated toward it for its protein, probiotics and good fat. Its rise to prominence in American grocery stores was meteoric: Chobani saw its sales go from more than US$3 million to more than US$1.1 billion in its first five years. The brand overtook Yoplait, which is owned by General Mills, last year to become the countrys biggest yogurt brand. The yogurt category is worth US$84 billion globally.

But the U.S. market for yogurt has been waning recently. General Mills reported a 20 per cent drop in yogurt sales in March. Millennials are gravitating toward convenience yogurt drinks, rather than spoonable yogurt, according to consumer research firm Mintel. And Greek yogurt is being challenged by other, more exotic yogurts.

Havent you heard that Icelandic yogurt (fun fact: technically, its cheese!) is the hot new thing? No, actually, were all about French yogurt now. What is French yogurt? Its a yogurt that comes in a cute glass pot, with a cute brand name  Oui  made by Yoplait.

According to The Associated Press, the company says there is no official definition for French yogurt, though one thing that distinguishes Oui is it is cultured in its own glass pot rather than in large batches.

The story is enough to hook yogurt-weary consumers. Because thats the key to winning the yogurt wars, as Charles Duhigg wrote in the New York Times: Yoplait has finally figured out how to look beyond the data and embrace the narrative. Yoplait may have figured out how to fake authenticity as craftily as everyone else.

And that narrative is why its important to Greece that everyone knows: Greek yogurt is made in Greece.

 Washington Post
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Police have confirmed the body of a 16-year-old who went missing on Aug. 15 after entering the Red River has been found and identified.

Although police have not released the name, due to his age, the Free Press has confirmed it is the body of Jeremy Malish David, who according to witnesses had attempted to swim across the river on Tueday morning.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Members of Drag the Red and the Bear Clan gather under the Harry Lazarenko Bridge Friday after a body was found in the Red River.

Officers conducted an extensive search during the week, with the assistance of WFPS Water Rescue and River Patrol and Winnipeg Police Dive Unit. Several Bear Clan members were also involved in the search on both sides of the river.

The body was recovered at approximately 9 a.m. on Friday.

Police spokesman Const. Jay Murray said no foul play is suspected at this time, pending an autopsy on Monday.

Murray warned the Red is a dangerous body of water for anyone attempting to swim across.

That river can be deceiving, Murray noted. Theres no telling what can happen when you try to swim across. Underneath the current is very strong.

A ceremony was held on Friday with family members and volunteers from Bear Clan Patrol and Drag the Red. Five members of the Bear Clan were on the Drag the Red boat that located the body floating on the river, just north of the Harry Lazarenko (nee: Redwood) bridge.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / FREE PRESS FILES 'Weve been part of many searches that have ended tragically for the families. This is the second time that weve found a body. Its tragic,' Bear Clan patrol co-founder James Favel said after David's body was found in the river.

Its horrible, Bear Clan co-founder James Favel told the Free Press on Saturday. Weve been part of many searches that have ended tragically for the families. This is the second time that weve found a body. Its tragic.

The 17th (of August) was the three-year anniversary of Tina Fontaines body being pulled from the Red River. We had a vigil for her on Thursday. And then Friday morning were pulling a 16-year-old boy out of the river. Were sick of that. I wonder when its going to stop. Its a little overwhelming.

Favel said no direct family members attended the ceremony, noting that the young man was in care of Child and Family Services.

Favel added that the boy was known not to be a strong swimmer.
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OTTAWA  The federal Conservatives are pushing the Liberals to drop their welcoming tone on asylum-seekers entering Canada outside border posts, saying its leading to an out-of-hand situation in Manitoba and Quebec.

Federal data released Thursday suggest the number of asylum seekers from the U.S. who are crossing into Canada near Emerson jumped slightly in July, but almost fourfold within a month in Quebec.

The RCMP data showed 88 interceptions in Manitoba, bucking a three-month gradual decline from the peak of 170 crossings in March. In Quebec, more than 3,800 people have crossed irregularly so far this month.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Melissa Renwick Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

While Ottawa insists it can handle the influx, Portage-Lisgar MP Candice Bergen said the prime minister needs to stem the flow with some tough talk.

Justin Trudeau has created this problem with an irresponsible tweet back in January, Bergen said Friday, referring to a message of open arms the prime minister posted amid U.S. airport chaos over U.S. President Donald Trumps so-called Muslim ban.

Since then, more than 11,000 people have crossed outside of the border stations at places such as Emerson to claim asylum through a legal loophole.

Though the number of such claimants rose during former U.S. president Barack Obamas increased deportations, theyve further intensified under Trump.

Since 2004, the Safe Third Country Agreement has forbidden most people from making an asylum claim at the Canada-United States land border. But a 1951 United Nations agreement prohibits countries, including Canada, from prosecuting or deporting people who cross in order to make an asylum claim.

Critics say that provides an incentive for people to cross along remote, unpatrolled parts of the border before reporting themselves to Canadian police.

At least one woman died of hypothermia in May while attempting the crossing from Minnesota. Bergen said the situation has only got worse since then, with the army setting up processing camps in Quebec.

The Liberals have to send a strong, clear message this is illegal and that it needs to stop. And in fact, what theyve done is the opposite. Theyre basically setting up shantytowns in Quebec to house these people, and its not fair for these individuals. It puts them in harms way.

At a Thursday news conference in Quebec, the Liberals announced a task force to deal with the situation.

Its important Canadians know that this is a situation that, yes, is out of the ordinary, but is very much under control, Transport Minister Marc Garneau told reporters.

But Bergen said shes expecting the problem to grow around Emerson: Manitoba wasnt even mentioned and the fact that Manitoba is also dealing with this issue  the strain that its putting on social-service resources in Manitoba, housing, all kinds of demands on these services in Manitoba.

With a years-long backlog for refugee hearings, Bergen said the Liberals should come up with a second tier for those who crossed from the U.S. irregularly, so that those not likely to gain status can be deported earlier on. Most of those crossing into Quebec are Haitians, only half of whom tend to be granted asylum. (In Manitoba, many have been from Ghana and Somalia.)

However, refugee advocates note the current backlog was caused in part by scheduling issues from a 2013 reform of the asylum-hearing system that sought to fast-track hearings for citizens from lower-risk countries.

A recent report suggested the backlog could reach 11 years, if left unaddressed.

Bergen also slammed the government for the lack of public data about how many people who make irregular crossings are detained for either health or security reasons. The Free Press asked the Canada Border Services Agencys Manitoba division for this data Thursday afternoon, but had not received any by Friday evening.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
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OTTAWA  Manitoba senators have clinched a legal victory in their dramatic standoff with the federal Liberals, after a scathing court ruling Friday slammed Ottawas delays in fixing sex discrimination in the Indian Act.

A Quebec judge has given the government until Dec. 22 to pass Bill S-3, which would restore Indian Act status and benefits to some women who married non-First Nation men, as well as their descendants.

In granting a second extension, the judge ordered Ottawa to move quickly when Parliament sits next month, more than two years after a court ruled the act unconstitutional.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Sen. Marilou McPhedran wants Bill S-3, which would fix lineage provisions in the Indian Act, to apply dating from 1876.

The delays incurred to date certainly exceed what can be deemed as reasonable, the ruling reads. The time for Parliament to act is now ending.

The bill has moved slowly as senators, led by Manitoba Sen. Marilou McPhedran, pushed to have it include more people.

It is heartening to see some movement, McPhedran said. Further delay in eliminating discrimination makes all of us complicit in these human rights violations.

The federal Liberals tabled Bill S-3 in November 2016, after an August 2015 court case found the policy violated charter rights. The original legislation would fix the lineage provisions of the Indian Act for those who lost their status from 1951 onward, and their descendants.

But McPhedran amended the bill last month to apply to cases dating to 1876, as First Nations activists have long demanded. The government stripped that amendment, saying it would lead to a sudden onslaught of people registering with First Nations groups.

Instead, the Liberals said they wanted to first offer status to roughly 35,000 Canadians under the 1951 law, and then lead a consultation process to find ways to fix earlier cases. Indigenous groups have expressed cynicism over the proposal, noting the issues faced multiple court cases over at least four decades.

The government somehow thinks it makes sense to consult on whether or not Canada should continue to be in violation of international human rights law and the Constitution, McPhedran said.

The Liberals stripped McPhedrans amendment this spring, which senators threatened to bring back through procedural moves last used in the 1940s. On the last day before Parliaments summer break, the government suddenly took Bill S-3 off the Senates agenda.

Since then, multiple senators have voiced support for the amendment, and McPhedran says that includes all five who represent Manitoba.

McPhedran noted Fridays ruling didnt paint the dispute as an impasse, as previous judges have done.

They are not only urging that Parliament make this a priority they are expressing good faith that Parliament will do so.

The Senate sits for 12 weeks before rising Dec. 22 for the winter break.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said her government welcomes the extension, because it would have otherwise stopped the Indian registrar from issuing status cards.

The government remains committed to passing legislation expeditiously, wrote her spokeswoman, Sabrina Williams.

But Saskatchewan Sen. Lillian Dyck blames the delay on bureaucrats. She noted Fridays court ruling said children born without Indian status are missing out on benefits such as dental coverage, or support for pursuing post-secondary education.

This is a black-and-white issue, said Dyck, who is Indigenous. (Senators) are supposed to be defending the rights of minorities and people who are vulnerable, and whos more vulnerable than Aboriginal women and children?

The Free Press reported last week Ottawa has commissioned a demographer to probe how multiple versions of the bill would play out  including McPhedrans amendment. It would also explain how many Manitobans could be eligible for Indian status. But Dyck said bureaucrats should have done that years ago.

Theyve bungled this whole thing for so long, she said. They have to get it right this time, or theyre going to look like theyve totally messed up.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca

August 18 court ruling, granting extension to fix Indian Act sex-discrimnation
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The sun, the earth, the moon and you will perfectly align on Monday morning.

At least thats how Brenden Petracek, president of the Winnipeg chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, heard the solar eclipse described before.

When you think about it, its just by chance that our moon is the right size, its situated in the right position, our sun is the right sizeeverything matches up just perfectly for this to happen.

JUSTIN SAMANSKI-LANGILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Brenden Petracek, president of the Winnipeg chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, poses with one of his telescopes. Petracek is driving to Nebraska to see the total eclipse.

Around 11:30 a.m., the moon will start to pass between the sun and the earth, reaching a 70 per cent partial eclipse around noon.

In Winnipeg, there will be no noticeable effect on the brightness of the sun, but you can still look up with your protective eyewear and see the moon taking a chunk out of the sun, said Petracek.

The last total solar eclipse in Winnipeg occurred in 1979, but they happen every year, often in parts of the world where there isnt much of an audience.

What makes this one special is that its a total solar eclipse thats going from coast to coast through the United States.

If youre thinking of making a last-minute trip to the path of totality, a narrow strip of land in the U.S. between Oregon and South Carolina where sky-gazers can catch the total eclipse  think again.

Everythings been booked up solid for a year. I was reading online yesterday that you probably cant even rent a car in Portland right now. Airbnb places are going for thousands of dollars a night.

Petracek is driving to Nebraska to see the total eclipse, where the sky will darken, stars will appear, the temperature will drop and Petracek will really take in the amazing astronomical rarity that is a solar eclipse.

For a special eclipse experience in Winnipeg, the University of Manitoba and The Manitoba Museum will host free viewing parties, providing people with telescope viewings, live streams of the total eclipse, and the all-important solar glasses.

Regular sunglasses dont block enough light to protect the eyes from permanent damage, unfortunately, suppliers of solar glasses in Winnipeg have already sold out their stock.

"Our 52 stores and website were well-stocked with thousands of pairs of solar shades but last-minute demand has truly been astronomical " said Beth Merrick, a spokesperson at Mastermind Toys.

JUSTIN SAMANSKI-LANGILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Petracek, with a pair of solar eclipse viewing glasses, says in Winnipeg, there will be no noticeable effect on the brightness of the sun, but you can still look up with your protective eyewear and see the moon taking a chunk out of the sun.

With millions of people in the path of totality and millions more with access to online streaming, a recent National Geographic article suggests Mondays solar eclipse will be the most witnessed sky-watching event in human history.

Thats saying something, given that humans have been observing eclipses for centuries, regarding them as superstitious symbols and opportunities for scientific study.

In 1919, the eclipse was instrumental in the first test of Albert Einsteins general theory of relativity.

This year, NASA is funding a handful of projects to study the sun and its effects on earth.

I think its (solar eclipses) are just a wonderful example of how humans have grown to understand the universe and our place in it, said Petracek.

Its a really beautiful mix of science and the human spirit.

The next total solar eclipse visible in Canada is predicted for April 2024.

keila.depape@freepress.mb.ca
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Winnipeg Police has reported that a missing 73-year-old male who had been reported missing, has been found safe.

Franjo Sankovic was last seen on Friday at approximately 7:30 p.m. at a residence in the Heritage Park area of St. James-Assiniboia.

Winnipeg Police thanks the public for their assistance in this matter.
Opinion

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Canadas national parks are having a big year. Its both a blessing and a curse.

In July, the parks and historic sites saw nine per cent more visits than they did in 2016, which experienced 24.6 million visits for the year. And that was a big jump from the 23.2 million in 2015.

In one important way, increased park visits is good news: getting out and experiencing the parks raises awareness among Canadians about the value of wild spaces. New Canadians, in particular, are taking advantage of this years free admission and are discovering our countrys breathtaking natural beauty. You could argue that experiencing the wild outdoors is part of becoming fully Canadian  although its more authentic in winter at -40.

Jeff McIntosh / The Canadian Press Parks Canada prepared for a record number of visitors to the country's national parks this year, including Banff National Park, pictured here.

Yet the steady and relentless increase in people coming to our national parks is also changing the very nature of the park experience. One need only wind through the crowds on the main commercial streets in the mountain park towns of Banff or Jasper or stand in line to view the falls at Johnston Canyon to realize the sleepy bucolic days of yore are gone and likely forever.

On the August holiday weekend, Waterton Lakes National Park did something it had never done before: closed its gates to prevent more visitors from entering. In the view of park officials, the park had reached capacity. This phenomenon is likely to become more common.

A lot of environmental groups have expressed concern about the effect of Parks Canadas decision to offer free admission this year. The anticipated rush of people into our parks, they fear, will increase the risk of encounters with wildlife  creatures that are already challenged by encroaching humanity.

In its recent report on the state of Canadas parks, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (which, full disclosure, I volunteer for) urged Parks Canada to refocus on its priority mandate of nature conservation. It sounded the alarm over Parks Canadas increased focus on tourism and marketing, increasing visitation and revenue generation. This shift in priorities has resulted in developments being approved behind closed doors, with inadequate regard for how they impact on parks ecological integrity or for public input, the report stated.

Yet, in spite of the hype over the free passes, I would argue this year is not the big worry. In fact, the number of visits are projected to fall somewhat short of Park Canadas unofficial estimate of 27.3 million. The bigger worry is the long-term trend, as Canadas population continues to grow.

One need only look to our southern neighbour to see what the future might look like. Famous parks, such as Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, are virtual freeways of humanity during the peak summer months. Yellowstone saw 4.3 million visitors last year, and the Grand Canyon saw 5.9 million. Total U.S. national park attendance in 2016 was 325 million.

Just south of Waterton Lakes, the U.S. sister park, Glacier, is also experiencing a record year for attendance: one million visits in July alone, and two million so far this year  fully 17 per cent more than at the same point last year. And unlike Parks Canadas free year, the U.S. parks are only offering 10 days of free admission.

If the U.S. experience tells us anything about our own situation, it is that as population grows, the craving to escape the urban concrete jungle will just keep getting stronger. We need to plan for this influx of new visitors, not by barring the gates but by finding ways to manage the increase. It may be time to consider banning vehicles in more popular park areas and providing shuttle services, for example. And, of course, the number of parks and protected spaces also needs to increase.

Those of us who have enjoyed the solitude of our parks for decades dont love the idea of having to share them with more people. Its pretty clear, however, that more people  a lot more  will be on those hiking trails, regardless of whether they are promoted through marketing.

This is not just a challenge for Parks Canada. Catherine McKenna, the federal minister of Environment and Climate Change, also needs to devote some of her busy agenda to figuring out how to ensure the next generation of Canadians can enjoy our wild spaces as much as we have.

Doug Firby is president of Troy Media Digital Solutions and publisher of Troy Media.

 Troy Media
Opinion

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Somewhat lost in the mayhem this past week surrounding United States President Donald Trumps grotesque flirtations with white supremacists and neo-Nazis was a modest, related uprising in Canada.

In the space of just a few days, the Rebel Media, a far-right website founded two years ago out of the ashes of the short-lived Sun News Network, has imploded under the weight of its own foolish attempts to find sense in the blatantly nonsensical alt-right movement.

The implosion began Monday, when Brian Lilley  a conservative broadcaster of some notoriety and co-founder of the Rebel  suddenly resigned. In a Facebook post, Lilley said he made his difficult decision because, in its coverage of the events in Charlottesville, Va., the Rebel had become far too sympathetic to the goals of U.S. white nationalists.

Jeff McIntosh / The Canadian Press Rebel Media founder Ezra Levant has been in damage-control mode this week after co-founder Brian Lilley resigned due to The Rebels coverage of the events in Charlottesville, Va.

Although Charlottesville prompted his resignation, Lilley was only reacting to something that had been building for some time. In its relatively brief lifespan, the Rebel demonstrated an increasing willingness to defend the ideas expressed in the farthest-right niches of this and other countries. That willingness and sympathy was never more clear than it was in the aftermath of Charlottesville, a unite the right protest that was punctuated by a self-styled Nazi sympathizer driving his car into a crowd of opposing demonstrators, killing a 32-year-old woman and seriously injuring many more.

At the epicentre of Lilleys concern was correspondent Faith Goldy, one of this countrys most notorious right-wing commentators.

An articulate and charismatic media personality with a penchant for dancing the thin line between rational and irrational, Goldy reported from Charlottesville first-hand. In the course of her dispatches, Goldy argued the events in Charlottesville were evidence of a rising white racial consciousness that was going to change the political landscape in America. She also went to great lengths to laud the 20-point meta-political manifesto composed by white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, a document that included calls to organize states along ethnic and racial divides and celebrates the superiority of White America. Goldy described Spencers manifesto as robust and well thought-out.

After she was summarily eviscerated on social media for expressing sympathy for Spencer and the other white supremacists, she posted a video rebuttal on the same Monday that Lilley announced his resignation.

Goldys forceful defence and the opinions she expressed about the issues that motivated the organizers should be required viewing for anyone looking for insight into the long-term goals of the white nationalist movement: transforming the unambiguous hatred that motivates the alt-right and the white nationalist movement into something that resembles rational political debate.

In the opening moments of her video, Goldy denied the suggestion that just because she sympathizes with some of what the Charlottesville organizers have said, she is a white supremacist, a racist, or a neo-Nazi. At the same time, however, Goldy conceded she does not bathe in the guilt of white tears and that she is an opponent of state multiculturalism and cultural Marxism, all terms that fall easily into the lexicon of white nationalism. And she made an appearance in a podcast broadcast by the Daily Stormer, a notorious and unabashed neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic and white supremacist website.

Goldy is hardly alone in her work to legitimize white extremism. The campaign to sell hate as a political movement is present in the articulate rantings of Spencer, the tweets written by former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke and in Trumps ill-conceived efforts to defend all of them.

All last week, Trump attempted to assign blame, with his frequent references to many sides, to the violent counter-demonstrators who came to Charlottesville to confront the racist protesters. He also repeatedly attempted to get the public to buy into the fiction that there are rational moderates operating behind the grotesque facades of organizations that are, objectively, all about hatred.

Not everyone protesting in Charlottesville was a white supremacist, Trump argued, implying along with Goldy that some of those who campaign for white supremacy  and all that it implies  should be considered crusading politicians and not criminals.

The fact that Trump, Goldy and the organizers of the Charlottesville protest choose to wrap themselves in more elegant terms such as white consciousness does not change who they are or what they represent. It certainly does not give them the right to call themselves a political movement.

Now, back to Canada and the self-destruction we are witnessing at the Rebel. Its important to remember that although Goldy and other Rebel commentators are obsessed with the activities of the alt-right in the U.S., the underlying sentiments that drive that movement are alive and well in Canada.

That does not mean the Canadian cousins to the alt-right personalities are comfortable with the relationship. Ezra Levant, co-founder of the Rebel along with Lilley, has been working overtime to distance himself from the alt-right. He fired Goldy three days after her video rebuttal, fearing she had created the misconception that the Rebel was in league with the Charlottesville Unite the Right organizers.

Like Goldy, Levant posted a video explaining why the Rebel is not an online collection of white nationalist sympathizers. However, like Goldy, the more Levant talked, the more he made it clear that while he might reject alt-right tactics, he is more than a little sympathetic to alt-right ideas.

In his video, he also tried to equate the violence of the alt-left and its flagship movement, Antifa, as the equivalent of the alt-right movement, describing Charlottesville as a clash between two extremist street gangs. He claimed that leftist agents provocateur had likely infiltrated Charlottesville with Nazi flags and paraphernalia to discredit the Unite the Right march and that it was the violence perpetrated by leftists and its flagship group, Antifa, that had cultivated broader support for the alt-right.

In one of his final definitive statements, Levant theorized that the gross majority of the supporters of Black Lives Matter, a movement sparked by incidents involving police shootings of unarmed black suspects, are actually white. And that BLM was really the mirror image of the alt-right.

Its not surprising that after Levant posted his video, the Rebel continued to disintegrate. Prominent contributors have jumped ship, conservative politicians are publicly denouncing the site and vowing never to appear as guests again, and corporate advertisers are scurrying to end their support.

While it still breathes, the great value of the Rebel is to remind Canadians that although we have not witnessed a tragic event like Charlottesville, we still boast some of the same kinds of people with the same kinds of twisted thoughts.

Yes, the agents of hate, ignorance and intolerance are alive and well and posting videos right here at home.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
US President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday designed to cut down the environmental review process required for infrastructure projects. The order, titled Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure, represents yet another measure which will slash regulations in favor of corporate profits.

The orders claim that environmental protections will be maintained is a fraud. Taken in the context of the recent crackdown on protests over the building of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline on tribal lands in North Dakota, the new measure is a thinly-disguised boondoggle for massive deregulation and tax cuts.

This latest executive order underscores the true nature of Trump's so-called infrastructure plan, in which the allocation of $1 trillion in federal funds will go not to rebuilding the country's crumbling roads, railways and bridges, but to the banks and major corporations whose high-profile energy development projects such as oil and gas pipelines will receive heavy federal subsidies while being fast-tracked through the already lax process of environmental review.

The order also calls for the formation of a Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC) whose role is unclear. The thrust of the order points to an undermining of long-standing federal agencies, in keeping with Trumps overall push to fill key administration positions with various businessmen and financiers. Both the council and steering committee will undoubtedly serve as a wedge to fast-track large-scale developments by major energy corporations while further eradicating the few remaining environmental regulations in place.

A fact sheet issued on Thursday to supplement Trumps order decried regulatory red tape that ensures that infrastructure projects are held up for years at significant cost to [the US] economy. It announced a two-year window to process environmental documents for major infrastructure projects. The order specifies that final decision making will be handed to the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), giving it the power to mediate disagreements between federal agencies.

One particularly controversial component within the order is the removal of a provision implemented under the Obama administration to protect roads and buildings from climate change-related flooding. The measure, known as the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, had required strict building standards for all federal projects to reduce the risk from rising sea levels. Public structures such as subsidized housing and water treatment plants were to be built at least two feet above the 100-year flood standard. Structures of vital importance, such as hospitals, were required to be built three feet above the line.

The elimination of the flood prevention provision comes in the wake of the latest flooding disaster in New Orleans, Louisiana on August 5, dubbed by city workers and residents as a mini-Katrina. The disaster was the second of its kind in under a month, characterized by a 100-year flooding event exacerbated by the failure of 16 of the citys 121 pumps.

New Orleans Democratic Mayor Mitch Landrieu has seized the opportunity to privatize the city-run Sewerage and Water Board (SWB). Just one year before, Baton Rouge, Louisianas capital located just one hour to the north of New Orleans, was hit with a 1,000-year flooding event with catastrophic consequences.

The Army Corps of Engineers released a report following the catastrophe of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, showing that 31,000 miles of the North Atlantic coastline were at risk from rising sea level-related flooding. This accounts for almost 2 million homes worth a combined $882 billion, according to an analysis by Zillow utilizing data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The White House seeks to enforce the new order under threat of economic strangulation. Agencies are instructed to streamline their own environmental review processes and hold their officials accountable. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will develop a two-year government-wide modernization goal aimed at slashing federal agencies and deregulating the environmental review process as a whole. In addition, the OMB will create a performance accountability system to track the activities of the agencies under its purview. Agencies that refuse to comply with the order, or exhibit poor performance, will be subject to severe budget cuts and could even be fined.

Though the long-term effects of the executive order are not yet clear, there are potentially a massive number of jobs and programs on the chopping block included under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

The NEPA review process typically consists of multiple components, such as wetland delineation and protection, endangered species protection, and protection of areas of historic or prehistoric significance. The latter part is known as cultural resources management (CRM), which ensures that archaeological sites are properly identified, investigated and protected ahead of development projects. There are currently 1,300 CRM firms in the United States that employ more than 10,000 professionals, such as archaeologists, architects, architectural historians, and historians.

A report given by the American Cultural Resources Association (ACRA) in late 2016 following Trumps election warned of the need to be ready for proposals to weaken existing CRM regulations in the environmental review process. The report quoted Trumps election transition teams pledge to identify and eliminate unnecessary regulations that kill jobs and bloat government. The report also notes the Republican party platforms aim to modernize the permitting process under [NEPA] so it can no longer invite frivolous lawsuits, thwart sorely needed projects, kill jobs, and strangle growth.

Trump stated with confidence that the plan is likely to garner support from the Democratic Party. [I]nfrastructure is something that I think well have bipartisan support on, he said. I actually think Democrats will go along with the infrastructure. Given the record of the Democrats, his assessment is fundamentally correct.

Trumps latest executive order is part of a process of streamlining federal permitting and environmental review that began under Bush and continued under Obama. Each successive administration has drawn the process closer and closer to mere rubber stamping, with the increasing possibility of its dissolution altogether.

In 2001, Bush issued Executive Order 13212 titled Actions To Expedite Energy-Related Projects. The order called for a Task Force to monitor the pace of Federal agencies to accelerate the completion of energy-related projects. Obama continued the process by issuing Executive Order 13604, Improving Performance of Federal Permitting and Review of Infrastructure Projects, which formed an interagency steering committee which created an online Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard designed to cut the time and cost behind environmental reviews.
Asia

South Korea: Hyundai Motor workers continue strike action

Hyundai Motor workers downed tools at its Ulsan plant for two hours at the early and late shifts on Monday in their second partial strike since negotiations failed with management over wage increases and job security. The action followed two-hour strikes during each shift on August 10. They threatened to extend the strikes to four hours each shift on Thursday and Monday.

Auto unions at Hyundai Motor and sister company Kia Motors, which are affiliated to the Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU), want the monthly basic wage increased by 154,883 won ($US136) and 30 percent of the companys 2016 full-year net profit as a bonus. On Wednesday, Hyundai offered workers a bonus of 200 percent of their monthly salary along with a reward of 1 million won.

Some 72 percent of Kias 28,200 workforce voted to strike but have not yet taken action.

An overwhelming majority of GM Koreas 11,000-strong workforce voted in July in favour of striking. The GM union wants the same pay rise as Hyundai and Kia workers, plus 500 percent of their basic wages or 4.25 million won as a bonus. Other demands include the implementation of a salary system instead of hourly wages and an 8+8 shift schedule, with an eight-hour second shift.

Meanwhile, unionised workers at Renault Samsung Motors voted for a walkout following stalled negotiations for increases in pay and benefits.

Burmese factory workers demand higher minimum wage

About 2,000 garment workers from factories in Yangon, Bago and Thanlyin Industrial Zones demonstrated at Hlaing Thayar township on August 13 demanding the daily minimum wage be increased from 3,600 kyat ($US2.63) to 5,600. Protesters complained that they had been asking for 5,600 kyat since 2013 but the government approved only 3,600 kyat, and then failed to review the rate in 2015 as demanded by law. Workers decided to protest after the government announced that the daily wage would be established in 2018 instead of this year.

Workers also called on the government to provide social welfare housing because they are being charged up to 60,000 kyat a month for a nine-square metre room with no facilities. They also want the right to form unions and penalties to be imposed on employers who ignore arbitration council rules and orders.

A spokesperson from the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society said that most young people chose to work in foreign countries because Burmas wages are so low. Many employers only pay 1,700 kyat per day to interns.

Cambodian garment workers strike

Over 1,000 garment workers from the Korean- and American-owned International Fashion Royal walked off the job on August 12 over the factorys alleged use of an immigration police officer to intimidate workers. They were still on strike on Monday.

A Workers Friendship Union Federation spokesman said that the strike was connected to a dispute which began in May when the Kmart supplier tried to fire the factory union delegate. Workers were demanding maternity benefits, an additional 1,000 riel ($US0.25) for lunch allowance, and overtime meal allowances.

Workers claimed that management temporarily hired an immigration police officer who tried to break up the union by intimidating workers. The recent strike erupted after the officer was rehired as head of human resources and began sacking administration staff.

India: Nagaland paper mill workers end protest

Workers from the shuttered mill of the state-owned Nagaland Paper and Pulp Company lifted their three-day blockade of National Highway NH-61 on Sunday. The blockade ended after government officials and the mill authority gave a non-binding assurance to release pending salaries and examine workers other demands.

The paper workers want immediate rehabilitation of the mill; payment of salaries outstanding since November, release of gratuity and terminal benefits for dead and superannuated employees, and implementation of the 2007 pay-scale currently paid to Hindustan Paper Corporation workers. The protesters said the mill was the only heavy industry in the state and the community needed work.

State and local government officials claim they need one month to arrange a meeting with the ministry to discuss workers demands.

Jammu and Kashmir land development employees on hunger strike

Jammu Development Authority (JDA) workers have been holding a protest hunger strike since August 10 over a list of long pending demands. Over 20 workers are demonstrating outside the JDA Complex in Jammu. A spokesman for the JDA Employees Union has threatened to fast until death if the workers demands are not met.

Workers want qualifications for daily wage workers, consolidated and sanitation workers, recruitment rules and positions for helpers who have passed the eligibility test and other demands.

India: Haryana domestic workers on strike

Around 500 domestic workers in Gurgaon, an industrial and financial hub in the National Capital Region (NCR), went on strike on August 13 for higher wages. The workers are mainly employed in new residential estates in the NCR.

The Gharelu Kamgar Union said these workers want their poverty wages increased from 1,500 to 3,500 rupees per day to bring them in line with domestic workers in other sectors in the NCR.

The union spokesperson said that domestic workers also face irregular wage payments, unscheduled extensions of working hours and arbitrary pay cuts. More domestic workers are expected to strike if their demands are not met.

JK Tyre factory workers win recognition of their union

JK Tyre factory management in Kanchipuram District, Tamil Nadu has agreed to negotiate with the workers preferred factory union and reinstate 27 probationary workers who were dismissed during the strike.

Around 600 workers at the factory struck on July 24 to demand recognition of their union, which is affiliated with the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). There are an estimated 1,500 workers in the factory, including 420 permanent workers, 250 probationary workers and 250 trainees as well as contract workers.

The workers grievances ranged from low wages, excessive productivity demands and lack of amenities on the shop floor. They complained that even when production targets are met management demands that they continue working.

Workers with six years experience only receive about 16,000 rupees a month, minus 400 rupees in company deductions for transport and the canteen. Workers are not paid overtime for attending management meetings at the end of shifts.

Pakistan: Faisalabad power loom workers locked out

Thousands of power loom workers from 17 industrial centres in Faisalabad have been locked out since August 7 after factory owners ignored a district commissioners order that loom workers wages be increased by 10 percent. The order was in response to several weeks of protests and strike action by power loom workers. Workers are also demanding health and social security benefits, better working conditions and facilities.

On Monday, factory owners told a 14-member committee meeting that they would not increase monthly wages and the factories would remain closed. Workers are protesting outside the deputy commissioners office, demanding that the government force owners to implement the pay increase.

Pakistan: Punjab sugar workers strike

Over 400 Adam Sugar Mills workers in Chishtian, Punjab province have been on strike for four weeks for a pay rise. Workers current monthly pay is just 8,000 rupees ($US75.92). Strikers have accused management of forcing them to sign a 17,000-rupee pay slipwages that they do not receive.

Police attack Bangladeshi garment workers

Police used teargas and batons against hundreds of garment workers in Gazipur while they demonstrated outside their factories on Sunday. Workers from Union Garments and Union Knitwear factories walked out after management failed to keep a promise to pay four months outstanding wages. Factory authorities claimed they could not pay wages because of financial problems but made another promise to pay arrears on August 16.

Australia and the Pacific

Queensland: Glencore mine lockout extended

Multinational mining giant Glencore is continuing to lockout 190 Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) members at its Oaky North underground coal mine in Central Queensland. The CFMEU members have been locked out since June 9, following limited industrial action over an enterprise agreement (EA). The lockout was due to be lifted on July 28.

The workers began rolling four-hour stoppages on May 10, after rejecting the companys proposed EA. The union alleged that Glencore has stripped away 50 percent of working conditions from a version of an agreement that the Oaky North workforce previously rejected overwhelmingly. The CFMEU wants 3 percent annum pay increases but indicated it would accept a two-year pay freeze if the current enterprise agreement was rolled over.

Last month, Glencore brought in a replacement, contract-based workforce and has used staff employees to maintain production. It claimed the mine was maintaining normal production.

Newcastle port workers on strike

Maritime Workers Union (MUA) members at Qube Ports Newcastle, north of Sydney, walked off the job for 48 hours on Thursday in protest against a proposed enterprise agreement (EA) from the company, which includes a 10.5 percent wage cut.

The action, by 30 permanent and part-time workers at Qubes Kooragang Island terminal, follows the imposition of work bans earlier in the month that have been extended for another two weeks. These include working only seven-hour shifts, no extensions and no overtime.

Negotiations for a new EA began in 2015 when the current agreement expired. Qube claims that the wage cut is to bring Kooragang terminal workers into line with its main competitor, Newcastle Stevedores, which are on lower pay scales previously agreed to by the MUA.

An MUA spokesman claimed that Qube intends to terminate the existing workplace agreement and cut wages and existing entitlements by forcing workers onto the industry award. He alleged that Qube was holding secret meetings with workers, offering them permanent positions if they accepted the 10.5 percent wage cut. If they failed to accept the offer they would face a 20 percent pay cut.

Victoria: Visy launches lawsuit against workers

Cardboard box manufacturer Visy is taking legal action against the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) and 69 workers at the companys Dandenong plant in Victoria. Visy is suing for compensation and seeking fines, claiming the workers took illegal strike action last month.

In late July, employees refused to work compulsory overtime after Visy announced a provocative new alcohol and drug policy. Visy claimed the overtime ban was illegal strike action and suspended two AMWU delegates. Half the plants workforce struck on July 31 in protest over the suspensions.

The company then secured interim orders from the Fair Work Commission and the federal court issued injunctions against the AMWU, its officials and four union delegates. The strikers returned to work on August 8 when the company threatened to sack them. At a federal court hearing on Wednesday, Visy was directed to serve a statement of claim by mid-September and for the union's officials and workers to file a defence by October.

Queensland aged care workers protest

Workers and local residents demonstrated outside the Blue Care's Pioneer Lodge aged care facility in Bundaberg, north of Brisbane, on Tuesday following the sacking of a number of qualified nursing staff.

Blue Care, an agency of UnitingCare Queensland, announced last month that it would sack 11 enrolled nurses, claiming it was due to federal government funding cuts.

The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) claimed that while Blue Care was sacking qualified nurses it was advertising for minimally trained personal care workers to replace them. The ANMF said rosters for qualified nurses at all three of Blue Cares facilities in Bundaberg had also been cut.

South Australian truck drivers protest

Around 100 truck drivers and other transport workers demonstrated outside supermarket giant Aldis Adelaide distribution centre in Regent Park on Wednesday. Transport Workers Union (TWU) members accused Aldi of endangering the safety of its truck drivers. Workers chanted Safe Rates and pointed out that last year Aldi attempted to pay truck drivers less than their already low rate by misclassifying them in an enterprise agreement.

A TWU spokesman claimed transport workers in Aldis supply chain were under constant pressure from the supermarket giant, leading to trucks not being maintained, drivers forced to speed, work long hours and skip mandatory rest breaks. About 150 drivers and supporters demonstrated in Fremantle, Western Australia in May over the same issues.

Solomon Islands bridge workers protest

Fourteen workers employed by a contract company to maintain the Aimana Bridge in West Kwai set up a roadblock at the bridge on August 11 in a dispute over unpaid wages. The maintenance workers said they would not allow traffic to pass until wages outstanding since June were paid.

Vanuatu TV broadcasting workers demand entitlements

Former staff members from the Vanuatu Broadcasting and Television Corporation have launched legal proceedings to recoup about $US500,000 in salaries and benefits they allege their former employer failed to pay. The 14 workers allege that the corporation made incorrect calculations, depriving them of overtime payments and pension contributions.

Nine other employees, who are now working under a special contract for the corporation, have also made claims in court over the issue.
On August 12, 25-year-old Richard Hubbard III was pulled over in the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio, for allegedly running through an intersection. A search of the vehicle Hubbard was driving showed the owner to have a suspended license.

The encounter was supposed to be a routine traffic stop, but escalated to violence when an officer threw Hubbard to the ground and punched him repeatedly before arresting him on charges of driving with a suspended license and resisting arrest.

A bystander captured a video of the incident, which has had over seven million views on Facebook. A child can be heard asking his mother, What are they doing?

The Euclid police have said little of the incident. In a local statement, they claimed that a violent struggle ensued after Hubbard refused orders to face away from the arresting officer.

The dash-cam footage released shows an entirely different story. It opens with a squad car pulling over Hubbard and a female passenger. After a brief conversation about the car and Hubbards license, the officer tells Hubbard to step out and face away from me.

Seconds later, without clear provocation, the officer shoves Hubbard against the car and grabs him by the arms. The two tumble into the center of the street, falling onto the pavement. A second officer is seen rushing to help his partner. The passenger gets out and asks Hubbard to let them do what they do.

After slamming Hubbard to the ground, the arresting officer can be seen punching him several times. In contrast to the police statement about Hubbard resisting arrest, the footage shows Hubbard only lying on the ground attempting to block the officers blows with his arms.

The video continues with Hubbard telling officers he didnt have a gun on him when one comments about him reaching down. As Hubbard lies on the ground in handcuffs, one officer presses Hubbards face against the asphalt while the arresting officer punches him in the back of the head. Moments later, more police officers arrive and handcuff the passenger. What am I under arrest for? she asks. The video ends with the two being taken away.

Police officials have not identified the officer, but said he has been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.

Maplewood, New Jersey police seen herding teenagers

A New Jersey teenager has filed a lawsuit after claiming he became the victim of police brutality even while following officers orders.

Jason McDougal, a recent high school graduate, said he was following orders when Maplewood police slammed him to the ground, sprayed him with mace, and punched and kicked him, all while using racial slurs.

The incident occurred early in the morning on July 5, 2016, after McDougal and his friends had been out watching a firework show. A video of the incident was only released this year, after the community went to court to demand it be made public.

The video shows dozens of officers surrounding a group of teens, forcing the group to move in a particular direction. An officer can then be seen violently shoving McDougal, 16-years-old at the time, to the ground, while other officers are seen rushing to help apprehend him.

The group of teens complained that officers were attempting to force them into the neighboring community of Irvington.

Police reports from the night of the incident include charges of disturbing the peace and resisting arrest, but those reports came after the confrontation. McDougals representatives say there is nothing to suggest the cops had to be called to the scene, because the teens were walking home and not causing trouble.

McDougal and his family are filing a federal civil rights complaint, claiming that their past efforts to get justice have been unsuccessful.

The Essex County Prosecutors Office looked into the case, and decided not to pursue charges against the officers after an eight-month investigation.
Well before the facts of Thursday's horrific terror attack in Barcelona are clearly established, Spain's right wing Popular Party (PP) government is pressing to deploy the army inside the country. This would be the first time that the army was deployed inside Spain since the country was ruled by the fascist regime of Francisco Franco, which took power via a 1936 military rebellion and a bloody three-year civil war.

Yesterday, Interior Minister Ignacio Zoido announced that he would for now keep the terror alert at level four on Spain's five-point scale. However, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's PP government is summoning a defense council to discuss raising the terror alert to five, indicating a very high and immediate danger of terrorist attack and allowing for the domestic deployment of the army.

The Spanish army is already preparing for the move to alert level five. El Confidencial reported yesterday that Defense Minister Dolores Maria Cospedal had given the general staff concrete orders to be ready to deploy troops inside Spain within days. Cospedal had previously said in an interview with COPE radio that if the terror alert level were raised to five, the army would intervene and it would be totally normal.

The deployment of the army in Spain would not be aimed at preventing future attacks like the latest atrocity in Barcelona. Rather, the PP aims to impose martial law and shift political life in Spain far to the right. It aims to strangle workers struggles and settle its disputes with the pro-austerity Catalan regional government in Barcelona, which erupted in June after Barcelona scheduled a referendum on Catalan independence from Spain for October 1, along right-wing lines.

Less than two full days since the Barcelona attack was claimed by the Islamic State (IS), with many details of how they unfolded still unknown, the most serious questions are already raised about how the attacks were allowed to proceed. The CIA had sent warnings two months ago to the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan regional police, reporting that La Rambla was a terrorist target. On July 30, an IS-linked Twitter account announced an imminent attack in Spain.

Nonetheless, security was not apparently raised on La Rambla, even though Catalonia is known to be a center of jihadist activity in Spain. Spain's state-linked think-tank Real Instituto Elcano noted, in a report published last year titled The Islamic State in Spain, that Spain's National Court and Spanish security forces have an extremely preventive strategy involving mass surveillance of the Muslim population in Catalonia. Nonetheless, a large IS terror cell was allowed to prepare a major attack undisturbed.

It now appears that the attack was a botched attempt to prepare an even larger atrocity. Police suspect that a gas explosion late Wednesday at a house in Alcanar, a small town 224km from Barcelona, was in fact an accident during the preparation of bombs that were to be loaded into two vans rented in Santa Perpetua de Mogoda. This forced the terror cell to go into action immediately, before they were discovered. They drove one van into the crowd on La Rambla avenue in Barcelona Thursday at 4:50 p.m., killing 14 and wounding 126, with 17 still in critical condition.

Another car forced a police checkpoint on Diagonal Avenue in Barcelona around 8 p.m., hitting three policemen, and was shot at by police. A man was found dead in the back seat of the car, but with stab wounds, not bullet wounds, according to the Mossos d'Esquadra. It remains unclear whether this was related to the La Rambla attack.

After midnight on Friday morning, police shot and killed five suspected terrorists in Cambrils, as they tried to drive their Audi A3 through a police checkpoint and then assaulted civilians with knives and axes. A woman has since died of injuries sustained during this assault.

The five men killed by police in Cambrils were identified as Moussa Oukabir, 17, believed to be the driver of the van in Barcelona; El Houssaine Abbouyaaqoub, 19; Omar and Mohamed Hychami, 21 and 24; and Said Aallaa, 19. All were Moroccans living in Spain. There are reports that Younes Abbouyaaqoub, 22, El Houssaine's brother, may have escaped and crossed the border into France, driving a Renault Kangoo van.

It is astonishing that, despite mass state surveillance, such a massive undertaking as the Barcelona-Cambrils attack could be prepared under the noses of Spanish police and the Mossos d'Esquadra. It is still unclear how this was possible. However, it appears that a major factor was the growing conflict between Madrid and Barcelona. Amid fears that the Catalan referendum might lead to conflict between the Mossos and Spain's Guardia Civil, anti-terror collaboration between Catalan and central-Spanish law enforcement largely collapsed.

Catalan police unions are now sharply criticizing Madrid, accusing it of undermining the Mossos. Zoido denied them the right to hire 500 new agents, in what union official Imma Viudes told Publico yesterday she believed was a clear act of reprisal for the scheduling of the Catalan independence referendum. Perhaps more significantly, according to police union official Sergi Miquel, Madrid also denies the Mossos access to Europol and other international police databases.

These points underscore the fraudulence of the PP's drive now to impose martial law on the pretext that it is waging an all-out war on terror. Islamist networks in Europe are in fact trusted tools of European foreign policy, dispatching thousands of fighters to NATO wars for regime change in Syria and across the Middle East under the protection and the watchful eyes of the intelligence services. The so-called war on terror overwhelmingly is used as a pretext for the ruling elites to impose unpopular wars and austerity policies despite mass opposition.

Powerful factions of the Spanish ruling elite are seeking to use the attack to settle accounts with the Catalan bourgeois separatists in Barcelona. The pro-social-democratic daily El Pais, in its editorial titled Attack in Barcelona, bluntly demanded that the separatists drop the referendum: An attack of this magnitude should be a wake-up call that brings back to reality the Catalan political forces that, from the Govern, the Parlement, or the Catalan independence movements have made the secessionist illusion the sole activity of Catalan political life in recent years.

Officials in Madrid are doubtless asking themselves whether it would be easier to block the secession of Catalonia if not only the Guardia Civil, but also the Spanish army itself could be deployed to Barcelona.

Above all, however, the deployment of the army inside Spain would be aimed at the working class. Amid explosive social tensions in Spain, with unemployment at 18 percent and 40 percent among youth, it would only be a matter of time before the army was turned against the workers, as it was in the 1930s.

The Barcelona attack itself has already been used against workers struggles. The Stalinist Comisiones Obreras (Workers Commissions) union bureaucracy reported that due to the terror attack, a security workers strike for better pay and conditions at Barcelona's El Prat airport would be called off. Should the army be deployed amid a hysterical law-and-order atmosphere, it will no doubt play a similar function as the security forces in the French state of emergency, which were used to assault and intimidate protesters against last year's pro-business labor law reform.
The number of people fleeing barbaric violence in South Sudan, internally displaced or leaving the country, is now over 4 million according to recent figures published by the UN.

As a measure of the severity of the crisis, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that on average 1,800 South Sudanese have arrived in Uganda every day over the past twelve months, desperately fleeing the destruction caused by the civil war in their country.

The new high of 4 million internally and externally displaced since the civil war began in 2013 parallels the situation in Syria, where 11 million have been externally and internally displaced by civil war, making the overall refugee crisis worldwide the largest and most dire since World War II.

Uganda, which shares its northern border with South Sudan, is host to the greatest number of refugees, with over one million currently residing in the country. Another one million have fled to countries in the surrounding region, scattering across Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Two million more remain internally displaced in South Sudan, either homeless or residing in squalid and overcrowded conditions in multiple makeshift camps set up by the UN around the country.

During a June visit to the largest refugee camp in the country at Bentiu, Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, spoke of the misery experienced by the displaced, The international neglect that you see here is matched nowhere else in the world. Wherever you look there are dead ends."

The UN agency says it has a shortfall in funding, and is operating on around 20 percent of what it says is necessary to deal with the horrific refugee emergency in South Sudan.

The conditions confronting South Sudans population are breathtakingly horrific, and have taken a heavy toll.

The destruction wrought by nearly five years of civil war has resulted in an outbreak of cholera ravaging the country.

Infrastructure, including hospitals, clinics, schools, and sanitary water facilities have been demolished, and entire villages and municipalities have been razed. This has left millions afflicted or susceptible to disease, and has led to a lack of access to critical life-saving medical services.

More than 50,000 have been killed, and many thousands more have been injured and maimed since the beginning of the conflict.

Rapes, mutilation, and torture are a common occurrence, with the conflict taking on an ethnic dimension, as militants belonging to one tribal clan have been encouraged by militia leaders to target their perceived rivals in another.

Stalking the crisis like a dark cloud is the historic famine sweeping the continent with South Sudan directly in its path, with the potential to exacerbate the already catastrophic situation to a new level of deprivation for the masses. According to the UN, more than 100,000 are in immediate danger of starvation, and the famine is estimated to affect 4.9 million men, women and children, 40 percent of the countrys total population.

According to UNHCR, the surge of refugees flowing into countries of the surrounding region threatens to severely impact the host countrys ability to cope with such a mass exodus. It is estimated that the funding necessary in the short term is around $1 billion, with much more projected in the future.

The dire consequences of the criminally underfunded budget available to cope with the refugee emergency has been exposed in Uganda. The large numbers fleeing from South Sudan to Uganda are putting a strain on Kampalas ability to deliver critical health care and adequate education, with many left deprived of medical services due to overcrowded hospitals and classrooms.

The dire situation in South Sudan is a crime for which responsibility can be traced back to Washington, D.C. and its subservient partner governments in Europe.

In 2005, after over two decades of civil war between the government of Sudan and rebel militants in the south, the Bush administration together with its European partners successfully negotiated a peace agreement between the principals of the conflict, the Al-Bashir government in Khartoum and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), the gang of separatist militants in the south which sought independence from Khartoum.

The main component of the agreement for bringing an end to the conflict was a clause agreed to by both parties that called for the creation of an independent South Sudan, which after six years saw its realization in 2011.

For its part, Washington worked to carve out the new nation state as part of its East Africa strategy, which consisted of isolating the Al-Bashir regime in Khartoum, which is perceived as an obstacle for Washingtons hegemonic aims for the region. Secondly, but of greater importance, the US sought to neutralize the substantial economic influence of China in Sudan where Beijing has overseen massive investment in the development of oil resources and extraction infrastructure.

Making clear Washingtons aims in South Sudan is the fact that after its creation, Khartoum lost 75 percent of its oil reserves to its new southern neighbor, causing China to lose billions, including its drilling facilities located on the border cutting across the Upper Nile region in an area with the largest oil deposits.

The assortment of killers and criminal misfits Washington backed as its representatives with the formation of the Salva Kiir government in Juba was a fragile coalition from the beginning, fraught with a tenuous power sharing agreement between bitter rivals Kiir and Riek Machar, who was installed as Kiirs vice president.

The rivalry of the two has its roots the Second Sudanese Civil War, when Machar broke away from the SPLM, led by John Garang and in which Salva Kiir was a rising power. Machar formed a separate militia, with both Machar and the SPLM declaring war on each other. After years of protracted conflict between the two militias, in 2002, Machar reconciled with Garang and rejoined the SPLM.

The South Sudanese Civil War began in 2013 between factions supporting president Kiir on the one side and vice president Machar on the other, after Machar led an attempted coup. American imperialisms criminal operation has reached its bloody apogee with the utter devastation of South Sudanese society.

In addition to Washingtons hand in choreographing the slaughter in South Sudan are Africoms increased military operations in the region, in which Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia function as proxies in furtherance of US economic objectives in Africa.

Kenya is currently engaged in a war on the population of Somalia on behalf of its patrons in Washington, and Uganda is a key ally of the US in lending its military bases, armed forces, and logistical support, including allowing the US to utilize a section of the international airport at Entebbe for its drones which carry out their deadly airstrikes in Somalia and surveillance missions across Africa. Ethiopia is also a key ally, lending unequivocal support and its armed forces as proxies for Washingtons bloody operations.
The Trump administration and Pentagon have taken multiple steps in recent days to strengthen Washingtons military-strategic alliance with India.

These moves are manifestly aimed at encouraging India to hold fast to its hardline stance in the current dispute with China over control of the Doklam Plateaua ridge in the Himalayan foothills that both China and Bhutan, a tiny Himalayan kingdom that New Delhi treats like a protectorate, claim as their sovereign territory.

For the past two months Indian and Chinese troops have been arrayed against each other eyeball-to-eyeball on the Doklam Plateau, while New Delhi and Beijing have exchanged bellicose threats and taunts, and ordered their militaries to ready for war.

India has moved thousands of troops to forward positions along its northeastern border with China, placing them on a high-alert No War, No Peace status, and undertaken emergency purchases of munitions, spare parts and other war materiel.

China has reportedly deployed fighter jets to Tibet and surface-to-air missile batteries near its border with the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and sent additional blood stocks to Tibet, in anticipation of casualties.

Washingtons intervention in the conflict, even if at present only indirect, greatly heightens the danger that a border clash between India and China, themselves both nuclear powers, could rapidly escalate and draw in the US and other regional and imperialist powers with catastrophic consequences for the people of Asia and all humanity.

On Tuesday, the White House announced that, during an Indian Independence Day telephone conversation between President Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the US and India agreed to enhance their military-security cooperation across the Indo-Pacific region.

As a first step, the two countries will elevate their strategic consultations by establishing a 2-by-2 ministerial dialogue, involving their foreign and defense ministers. This set-up is akin to that which the US has with its principal treaty allies in the region, Japan, Australia and the Philippines.

The next day, Washington announced it has designated Hizbul Mujahideen, an Islamist militia opposed to Indias rule over disputed Kashmir as a foreign terrorist organization. Not surprisingly, this move was warmly welcomed by Indiawhich claims Pakistan government-backed terrorism is the principal, if not sole, reason for the mass alienation and opposition to New Delhi in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valleyand condemned no less sharply by Islamabad.

Yesterday, a 2-by-2 meeting between US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and their Japanese counterparts, respectively Taro Kono and Itsunori Onodera, decided that the US and Japan will work together to advance trilateral and multilateral security and defence cooperation with other partners in the region, notably the Republic of Korea, Australia (and) India.

This was presented as a response to North Koreas refusal to cede to US demands that it unilaterally cease nuclear-weapon and ballistic-missile tests. However, the North Korean crisis, which the Trump administration has systematically enflamed since coming to office eight months ago, is above all driven by American imperialisms drive to strategically isolate, encircle, and bully China, Pyongyangs northern neighbor and principal ally.

As part of its ever-deeper integration into Washingtons military-strategic offensive against China, India has taken to parroting the US line on North Korea, depicting this small, impoverished country as a unique threat to world peace, when it is Washington that over the past quarter-century has illegally invaded one country after another.

Ominously, Modi has aligned India with Trumps reckless threats to rain unprecedented fire and fury on North Korea. According to the readout of their August 15 conversation, Prime Minister Modi thanked President Trump for his strong leadership uniting the world against the North Korean menace.

For the past decade-and-a-half, a central strategic goal of Washington, whether under a Democratic or Republican administration, has been to build up India as a counterweight to China and harness it to US strategic aims. Not only does India share a nearly 3,500 kilometre-long border with China and possess one of the worlds largest armies. It also geographically dominates the Indian Ocean, whose sea-lanes bear most of the oil and many of the other resources that fuel Chinas economy.

During the three-year rule of Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India has been transformed into a veritable frontline state in the US offensive against China. India now allows US warplanes and battleships to make routine use of its military bases and ports, shares intelligence with the Pentagon on Chinese ship and submarine movements in the Indian Ocean, and has dramatically expanded bi-lateral and tri-lateral military-strategic ties with Japan and Australia.

In an interview with the Press Trust of India last weekend, the head of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, reiterated the importance the Pentagon accords to India, declaring the US is ready to help India modernise its military. The admiral lauded the recent joint US-Indian-Japanese naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal, adding that if Australia were added to the annual Malabar exercisemaking it a quadrilateral exercise of the US and the states that are the pivot of the Pentagons strategy to militarily confront and defeat Chinait would be even better.

Washingtons moves to bolster ties with India come in the wake of calls from various strategists of US imperialism for the Trump administration to make clear that it stands with India in the current border crisis with China, even if for diplomatic reasons it continues to publicly maintain that the US has no position on who is the rightful owner of the Doklam Plateau.

Particularly significant in this regard was an article penned by the longtime CIA operative and Obama administration official Bruce Reidel titled, JFK stopped a China-India War. Can Trump? The nuclear stakes are much higher now. The article argues that it was President John Kennedys dispatching of the US Air Force to resupply the Indians and an aircraft carrier battle group to the Bay of Bengal that caused China to unilaterally end the 1962 Sino-Indian border war and withdraw from its conquests in northeast India.

While Reidel urges the Trump administration to be ready to mount a diplomatic offensive to prevent the outbreak of a conflict that could have potentially enormous consequences for the world, his implicit argument is that Washington must come to Indias military support so as to help it stare down Beijing and, if need be, bloody it on the battlefield.

For his part, Richard M. Rossow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a major US think-tank, is urging the Trump administration to recognize that in sending its troops into foreign territory to stand up to China, New Delhi is realizing the hopes that American imperialist strategists have long placed in it.

War, Rossow concedes, may not be desirable, but Washington must recognizewe just received a loud, clear signal that India is ready to take important steps to contribute to the US-led global order, and it should strengthen our resolve to further deepen our emerging security partnership.

Japan, American imperialisms most important Asian ally, has gone even further than the US in backing Indias stance on the Doklam Plateau dispute. Thursday, Japans ambassador to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, defended the intervention of Indian troops on territory to which it has no legal claim, saying India has a treaty understanding with Bhutan. He also suggested, without naming Beijing, that its attempt to expand a road on the disputed plateau was tantamount to unilaterally trying to change the status quo by force.

In the hope of supplanting China as the principal cheap-labour supply-chain hub for Western capital and advancing its own great power ambitions, the venal Indian bourgeoisie is serving as a satrap for American and Japanese imperialism in their drive to re-subjugate China.

The Chinese regime, which represents the oligarchs that emerged from the restoration of capitalism in the Peoples Republic, has no progressive answer to the relentless offensive being mounted against it.

Organically incapable of making any appeal to the anti-war sentiment of the people of Asia and the world, it oscillates between seeking an accommodation with Washington and whipping up bellicose nationalism and engaging in its own militarist actions.

A recent article in the South China Morning Post cited Peoples Liberation Army sources as saying war was increasingly likely, but that the Chinese military believes the conflict can be limited to the eastern sector of the Indo-Chinese border and last no more than a week or two.

But as the developments of recent days have underscored, a border war could rapidly involve other powers, starting with US. Even if such a catastrophe were averted and a clash between India and China limited to a border war, it would have calamitous consequences for working people around the world.

Whatever its outcome, such a war would only strengthen imperialism.

A Chinese victory would only cause the Indian bourgeoisie to cement its place in a US-led NATO-type alliance against China. Moreover, Germany, Japan and the other imperialist wars would use the events in the Himalayas as a pretext to accelerate their plans for rearmament and war.

In the event China suffered a defeat, US imperialism would seize on the opportunity to intensify its reckless military-strategic offensive against China. Meanwhile, the Modi government, flush from reversing the humiliation of 1962, would step up its efforts to bully Indias neighbors into recognizing it as the hegemon of South Asia and whip up a climate of bellicose nationalist euphoria to intensify the assault on the working class and drive Indian politics still further right.

There is, however, an antipode to the war drive of the bourgeoisie. Recent decades have seen the growth of a massive working class in India and China. It is this mighty social force, which has no interest in the capitalist struggle for profits, resources and strategic advantage, which must be mobilized along with workers in the US, Japan, and around the world in an anti-war movement aimed at liquidating the source of warcapitalism and the outmoded nation-state system in which it is historically rooted.
A team of detectives is searching for a suspect in the savage killing of a Tennessee school girl.

This is a horrible, brutal thing, Metro Nashville Police Sgt. David Kautzman said at a press conference on Tuesday. Ive never seen anything this brutal in my entire career.

The mother and siblings of 12-year-old Yhoana Arteaga found her unresponsive when they entered their Goodlettsville home at 6:45 p.m. on Aug. 10, according to authorities. Paramedics responding to a 911 call were unable to resuscitate the child and she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Yhoana, who was a seventh-grade student at Liberty Collegiate Academy in Nashville, is described as kind, polite, caring, fun, intelligent and beautiful on a GoFundMe page created to help cover her funeral expenses.

She will be remembered as a wonderful daughter and great friend to all who knew her, the page says.

Autopsy confirms that 12 yr old Yhoana Arteaga was murdered Thur evening inside her family's 1229 Old Dickerson Pike mobile home. pic.twitter.com/El18luoNxN  Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) August 11, 2017

On the day of her death, the preteen had been home alone, recovering from a leg injury she sustained while roller-skating. The girls mother last saw her alive at about 12:30 p.m. when they ate lunch together before her mom returned to work, police said.

Later that day, at about 5:30 p.m., the mother received a text message from Yhoanas phone. The message, according to investigators, said someone was knocking on the door of their home at the Hillview Acres Mobile Home Park.

What happened to Yhoana after that text was sent is numbing to consider, according to authorities.

An examination of the crime scene, as well as autopsy results, shows that Yhoana was brutally murdered, Metro Nashville Police spokesman Don Aaron said in a press release this week. Without being overly specific, there was blunt force trauma to her body.

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There was no sign of forced entry into the residence, leading police to suspect that Yhoana knew her assailant or that her assailant somehow knew she was home alone.

Investigators arent revealing whether the girl was sexually assaulted, but authorities have said her clothing was in disarray.

The killer knows what he did, Aaron said at the press conference. There are details of the scene being withheld to help police vet tips.

A prayer vigil has been planned for 8 p.m. Thursday, outside Yhoanas home at 1229 Old Dickerson Pike. An organization that supports the families of murder victims, Partners in the Struggle, is hosting the event, according to Chattanoogas WRCB-TV.

Anyone with information in the killing of Yhoana Arteaga is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 615-742-7463. Callers can remain anonymous.

We believe there are persons in this community who have knowledge of a person who may be responsible for this, Aaron said. Perhaps the person responsible has spoken to others, has bragged. If thats the case, please, for the familys sake, for the sake of this 12-year-old deceased girl, let us know.

David Lohr covers crime and missing persons. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow him on Twitter.

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Frances Presidents wife Brigitte Macron spurred conversation when her husband Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency, thanks to their age difference: shes 24 years his senior.

But now, shes speaking frankly about the importance of the relationship that has launched her onto the global stage.

There are times in your life where you need to make vital choices, she said in a new interview with ELLE France regarding her choice to later pursue the relationship with Macron, after first meeting when he was a student at a school where she taught. And for me, that was it. So, what has been said over the 20 years, its insignificant.

Of course, we have breakfast together, me and my wrinkles, him with his youth, but its like that, she said of their age difference. If I did not make that choice, I would have missed out on my life. I had a lot of happiness with my children and, at the same time, felt I had to live this love as Prevert used to say, to by fully happy. (Prevert was a 20th century French poet and screenwriter.)

As for the age difference, he said If I was 20 years older than my wife, nobody would think for a single second that we couldnt be legitimately together, he told Le Parisien. Its because she is 20 years older than me that a lot of people say, this relationship cant be tenable, it cant be possible.'

He has also discussed why Brigitte has been a critical shaping force in his life. To Brigitte, always present and even more, without whom I wouldnt be who I am, he said after winning the election. She will be next to me because she has always been next to me, he was later quoted as saying, according to Forbes.
In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, right-wing groups have cancelled rallies around the country. But that hasnt stopped the counter-protesters from showing up.

In New York, dozens of people took part in a rally outside Googles corporate campus. Right-wing organisers had intended to protest there in defence of a Google employee who was fired after writing a memo criticising the companys diversity policy. The protest organisers, however, cancelled the rally days before, citing alt left terrorist threats.

Instead, more than 50 demonstrators filled the streets outside Google on Saturday, carrying signs reading Racism is not patriotism and White nationalism is terrorism.

The protests were held following Donald Trump's comments about the violence in Charlottesville (Emily Shugerman)

Kia Niambi, one of the protest organisers, said the protest was motivated in part by the white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville the weekend before.

I know that people have a lot of the same mindset, but you think that no one else thinks like you," she explained.

So you need to create a platform that everyone can come together on, so that we can all speak out and make sure that people know that this is not ok, and that we are going to change it.

She added that the message remained the same whether the right-wing protesters turned out or not.

Its not about them, she said. We still have a message that we want to put out there. And we need everyone to know that this is not going to fly.

The protest, organised by three young women of colour, drew a large, diverse crowd to Manhattans wealthy, Chelsea neighbourhood. One family travelled from the neighbouring borough of Queens with mother, father, and daughter in tow.

The mother, Angela Powers, said she had marched for civil rights in Queens in the 1960s.

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I think its been a lot of years and not enough change since I was 25, she said, looking at her daughter, Danielle. Now I have a 25-year-old. I thought we would be further.

That was a common sentiment at the rally, where protesters chanted, among other things: No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA.

The cheers were a stark contrast from those that had rang out in Charlottesville the week before, where tiki-torch bearing marchers chanted about blood and soil.

Herb Powers travelled from Queens to join the protest (Emily Shugerman)

Matthew Dominguez, a Brooklyn resident, said those very chants had shocked him into action today.

In this day and age, the mere fact that Im standing in New York City having to protest Nazis, the fact that I have to be protesting white supremacy  that there's even this feeling that this fringe group of white supremacists even matters  is so upsetting, he said.

Meanwhile, in Boston, conservative protesters were vastly outnumbered by counter-protesters at their "free speech" rally in Boston Common. According to police, between 15,000 and 20,000 counter-protesters turned out, compared to a few dozen rally participants.

President Donald Trump condemned the counter-protesters in a tweet, calling them "anti-police agitators". (He later appeared to backtrack, adding that "many" of the protesters were "speaking out against bigotry and hate".)

In New York, however, protesters extolled the need for peaceful protest.

"I feel like we all need to have a voice and say that what's going on isnt right," said Catherine, a Queens resident and DREAMer  the beneficiary of an Obama-era policy that allowed undocumented minors to stay in the country.

"If we dont [speak out] then its going to get worse, and we cant let it get worse," she added. "Thats what happened in Nazi Germany. People didnt have a voice, and look where that led them."
Republicans 2012 presidential nominee writes on Facebook that Trumps comments caused racists to rejoice and minorities to weep

Mitt Romney said Trumps comments after violence in Charlottesville had caused the vast heart of America to mourn. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, warned of an unraveling of our national fabric on Friday as he excoriated Donald Trump over his defence of people involved in a neo-Nazi rally.

Nearly a week after white nationalists led a bloody protest against the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee, Trump continues to face backlash for blaming both sides for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Senior Republican officials, titans of business, military leaders and even members of his own administration have rejected Trumps view of the events and his attempt to draw moral equivalence between white supremacists and anti-racist counter-protestors.

On Friday, Romney wrote in a Facebook post: Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn.

His apologists strain to explain that he didnt mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.



Romney called this a defining moment for Trumps presidency and urged him to apologize for his comments, which white nationalist leaders cheered as a validation of their antisemitic and racist ideology.

The potential consequences are severe in the extreme, Romney said. Accordingly, the president must take remedial action in the extreme. He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize. State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville.

Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis  who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat  and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute. And once and for all, he must definitively repudiate the support of David Duke and his ilk and call for every American to banish racists and haters from any and every association.

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During remarks on Friday, the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, delivered a forceful condemnation of racism and bigotry, declaring: Hate is not an American value.

The remarks were the sharpest yet from a member of Trumps administration, drawing a clear contrast with the presidents insistence that there were fine people among the white supremacists who chanted Jews will not replace us and carried torches that evoked imagery from KKK rallies in decades past.

We do not honor, nor do we promote or accept hate speech in any form, Tillerson told an audience of diverse students at the state department. And those who embrace it poison our public discourse and they damage the very country that they claim to love. So we condemn racism, bigotry in all its forms. Racism is evil; it is antithetical to Americas values. Its antithetical to the American idea.

On Thursday, the Republican senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senates only black Republican, said Trumps response complicates this administrations moral authority. And Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, an ally whom Trump considered for secretary of state, warned that our nation is going to go through great peril if Trump was unable to deliver a clear message condemning the racism and antisemitism on display in Charlottesville.

The fallout continues, as Trump on Thursday weighed into the debate over whether to remove monuments and statues of Confederate leaders, decrying efforts to remove the memorials as foolish.

On Friday, the remaining members of the presidential advisory panel on arts and humanities resigned in response to Trumps comments. In a statement, the commission said, Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville.

The first letter of each paragraph of the commissions statement spells RESIST, a rallying cry among activists opposed to Trump and his agenda.

Also on Friday, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi endorsed a resolution that would censure Trump for his defense of white supremacists following the violence in Charlottesville.

The presidents repulsive defense of white supremacists demands that Congress act to defend our American values, she said in a statement. With each passing day, it becomes clearer that the Republican Congress must declare whether it stands for our sacred American values or with the President who embraces white nationalism, she continued.

Democrats will use every avenue to challenge the repulsiveness of President Trumps words and actions.
Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump parted ways with his controversial chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday as the White House reeled from the fallout over the president's much-criticized response to a violent white supremacist rally.

But the 63-year-old -- whose departure caps one of the most disastrous weeks of the already chaotic young Trump administration -- vowed to keep pushing the president's right-wing agenda, as he returned to his former home at the ultra-conservative Breitbart News.

"If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents -- on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America," the hero of the so-called "alt right" told Bloomberg News within hours of leaving the White House.

Bannon's departure amounts to a nod to members of Trump's government and Republican Party who grew increasingly frustrated with the anti-establishment firebrand.

It remains to be seen what role the serial provocateur -- who was credited with a major role in Trump's upset election victory -- will continue play from outside the White House.

In comments to the Weekly Standard, he made clear his commitment to the nationalist-populist "movement" that carried Trump to power.

"The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over," Bannon said. "We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It'll be something else."

Bannon's presence in the West Wing had been contested from the start, and with Trump under fire for insisting anti-racism protesters were equally to blame for violence at a weekend rally by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, the president faced renewed pressure to let him go.

- Five top aides out -

Trump, who rose to political prominence by casting doubt on whether Barack Obama, America's first black president, was born in the United States, did condemn neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan once this week. But the next day he reverted angrily to his initial stance -- effectively setting a moral equivalence between the white supremacists at the Virginia rally and anti-racism counter demonstrators there.

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"Steve Bannon's firing is welcome news, but it doesn't disguise where President Trump himself stands on white supremacists and the bigoted beliefs they advance," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

Bannon was the nucleus of one of several competing power centers in a chaotic White House, and reportedly fell into disfavor for allegedly leaking stories about colleagues who he felt did not sufficiently adhere to his populist agenda.

Trump's spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced on Friday that the president's new chief of staff John Kelly and Bannon had "mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," adding: "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."

Kelly, a no-nonsense former Marine general, had reportedly warned he would not tolerate what he saw as Bannon's behind the scenes maneuvering.

And Trump was reportedly furious about an interview in which his aide contradicted his own position on North Korea.

Since taking office in January, Trump has lost five top aides: Bannon, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, press secretary Sean Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus and communications director Anthony Scaramucci.

- 'Apologize' -

The latest departure came as former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney added his voice to those criticizing the president over last weekend's events, telling Trump in a Facebook post he was facing a "defining moment" and needed to apologize "for the good of the country."

The woman whose daughter was killed when an avowed white supremacist rammed his car into protesters in Charlottesville said she would not meet with Trump following his comments equating the likes of her daughter with white supremacists.

"You can't wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying 'I'm sorry,'" Susan Bro, the mother of 32-year-old victim Heather Heyer, said in an interview on ABC.

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger warned Trump he has "a moral responsibility to send an unequivocal message that you won't stand for hate and racism."

And James Murdoch, the chief executive of 21st Century Fox whose tycoon father Rupert has been a Trump ally, pledged to donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, which combats anti-Semitism.

"What we watched this last week in Charlottesville and the reaction to it by the President of the United States concern all of us as Americans and free people," Murdoch said.

- R-E-S-I-S-T -

In other developments Friday, a statue of a US Supreme Court justice who was behind a racist ruling was taken down in Maryland and all 16 members of a presidential committee on arts and the humanities resigned to protest what they called Trump's "hateful rhetoric."

The statue of justice Roger Taney is the latest monument to topple in a growing campaign to remove symbols of the pro-slavery Confederacy.

Trump called the movement "foolish" on Thursday and said US culture and history were being "ripped apart."

In the letter to Trump announcing their mass resignation, the members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities said "ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions."

The first letter of each paragraph spelled out the word "R-E-S-I-S-T."
In the wake of the attacks in Charlottesville, Virginia, this week and a wave of criticism against President Donald Trump, at least one betting site says the chances of Trump getting impeached or resigning have never been higher. Paddy Power offered odds of 2/1 for Trump to be impeached this year.

The odds come following Tony Schwartz's prediction that the president would resign by the end of the year. Schwartz, who ghost wrote Trump's 1987 memoir "The Art of the Deal," took to Twitter Wednesday to say Trump would likely leave office himself to save face.

"Trump is going to resign and declare victory before Mueller and Congress leave him no choice," said Schwartz. "Trump's presidency is effectively over. Would be amazed if he survives till the end of the year. More likely he resigns by fall, if not sooner."

Paddy Power said Schwartz's prediction signaled the change in odds.

"Tony Schwartz spent 18 months with Trump when helping ghost-write his memoir and while that must have been totally unbearable, it also means he knows The Donald pretty well," the betting site said. "After an awful week for the president that has seen other issues like North Korea pushed into the shadows, it's no surprise punters are latching onto the fact Trump might call it a day."

The president came under fire this week for what many felt was an inadequate response to the violence in Charlottesville. After a counter-protester was killed while opposing an alt-right rally, Trump said there was "blame on both sides."

"I will tell you something," he said at a press conference Tuesday. "I watched this very closely, much more closely than you people watched it and you have, you had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I'll say it right now. You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent."

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White House officials and Trump himself defended the comments, but the backlash was swift and fierce. Former Vice President Al Gore called on the president to resign. A number of administration officials resigned from their posts in protest over Trump's response. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's rabbi publicly denounced the remarks in a letter to their congregation.

A poll released Thursday by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 40 percent of Americans supported impeaching Trump. The numbers mark a 10 point jump from February. Seventy-two percent of Democrats said Trump should be impeached, while 38 percent of Independent's supported impeachment. Only seven percent of Republicans, however, said the same.

"Trump must be isolated," Schwartz said Wednesday. "Resistance every day. The end is near but must keep pressure high."

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Photo credit: Ford

From Road & Track

Mark Fields, Fords successor to the brilliant Alan Mulally, was unceremoniously removed from his CEO position by a restive board and a gaggle of Ford family members.

They were frustrated with reduced earnings, but more so with a stock price stuck in low two digits. Mark was a talented Ford lifer: bright, experienced, and personally charming, with an outstanding record of achievement in every assignment he held. Blessed with a good feel for product, he reestablished Fords lead in full-size pickups, outmaneuvered GM by introducing Transit vans to North America, oversaw a nascent turnaround of Lincoln, and produced a newly styled Mustang, which is cleaning the Camaros clock where it counts: with customers. He learned the One Ford mantra from Mulally (admittedly, a hard act for even the best to follow).

But none of that is enough in an era where Wall Street uses the peripatetic Elon Musk as the standard by which automotive CEOs are measured. Great new cars are no longer enough, nor is the pell-mell shedding of unprofitable operations (as GM has tried, with no measurable impact on its stock). Face it: Tesla is exciting. Multibillion-dollar lithium-ion gigafactory! Tunnels under Los Angeles! (Earthquakes, anyone?) Manned flights to Mars! Now, thats the stuff the newly minted Harvard MBA analysts understand. Sizzle and aroma. The steak cant be far away. Okay, so Tesla is hopelessly unprofitable, the cars reliability unproven, compared with those built by the dreary legacy automakers. None of that matters: Musk, the ultimate pitchman, draws an irresistible vision of the transportation future. Teslas stock defies gravity and all conventional business logic. Ford shareholders, holding $11 shares, naturally became envious.

The legacy automotive CEOs, trained to under promise and over deliver, warned by generations of corporate counsel to avoid getting crosswise with the Securities and Exchange Commission by making irresponsible statements that could mislead investors, do their best to adapt to the fast-changing environment. They buy ride-share companies, invest in digital mapping, tout upcoming electric, autonomous cars. But it doesnt move the stock price.

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Its sad, in a way. Exercising all the judgment and caution of someone entrusted with billions of dollars of shareholders money is no longer enough. The old saying ultimately, the fundamentals will prevail is still true, but shareholders dont want to wait for ultimately. Todays automotive CEO has to be part sound leader, part P. T. Barnum ringmaster. He or she needs to be a vocal personality in the mold of the unforgotten Lee Iacocca.

Time to shed some of the caution and misgivings, time to display 1000-mile- range electric concept cars (No firm production plans, but were definitely considering it). Time to say, Let Musk tunnel. Were investing in autonomous quadcopters. Poor Mark Fields, a good legacy CEO, was no longer a fit in a world where promise and hype outclass perseverance and financial performance. Best of luck to his successor.

Bob Lutz has been The Man at several car companies. Ask him about cars, the auto industry, or life in general.

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Counter protesters vastly outnumbered the

As the official start time of the contentious Free Speech Rally in Boston approached, the winner in the battle of words between organisers and counter-demonstrators had already been determined.

If hateful speech aimed at Jewish people or minorities was chanted at Boston Common park, it was not audible at one of the largest rallies being held just one week after the deadly demonstrations in Charleston, Virginia, where neo-Nazis marched bearing torches, and where one woman was killed.

Instead, an estimated 15,000 counter-protesters dominated the air with anti-Nazi and anti-fascist chants.

When it comes to free speech, there is strength in numbers. The small group of free speech demonstrators crowded in the stone veranda in the centre of the Boston Common park  a few dozen people separated from the thousands of counter-protesters by a heavy police force, barriers, and hundreds of feet of open grass  did not have it.

Shame! the crowd chanted at one free speech demonstrator, who later identified himself only as Joe, as he tried to gain access to an entry route patrolled by police that led to the veranda.

Nazi scum, f*** off, others chanted, telling the right-wing crowd inside the veranda to get out of Boston.

While Mr Trump tweeted that there were many anti-police agitators, conflict between counter-protesters and law enforcement was somewhat minimal in the early afternoon, then appeared to escalate somewhat after both sides had spent hours in the hot summer sun.

The Boston Police Department tweeted to ask that protesters stop throwing urine, bottles, rocks, and other projectiles at its officers.

Counter-protesters clash with Boston Police outside of the Boston Commons and the Boston Free Speech Rally in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., August 19, 2017 (Reuters)

Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! the President tweeted.

I want to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!

Mr Trump claimed the US had been divided for decades in another tweet that had to be reposted twice because of spelling errors that saw the President originally urge America to heel.

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Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before! he eventually wrote.

In the week since a suspected white supremacist killed a woman in Charlottesville after a violent rally that pitted neo-Nazis, white supremacists and members of the Ku Klux Klan against counter-protesters including anti-fascist activists, America has grappled with its ugly history of racism and how that history fits into present day.

Mr Trump, who initially released a statement condemning bigotry and violence after Heather Heyer's death, later appeared to avoid condemning white supremacy during an impromptu press conference. Instead, he insisted that both sides in Charlottesville were to blame for violence.

That rollback of condemnation by the President has outraged both conservative and liberal voices in the US, with many making public statements condemning Nazis, fascism, and racist speech. But, with the violence in Charlottesville still fresh in the American psyche, officials in cities holding rallies this weekend were concerned that that anger would spread.

Show me the bodies. Show me the [white supremacists] who were ran over in Charlottesville James Tazelaar, 25, told The Independent. Mr Tazelaar had come to the rally with a black shield hed fashioned at home and adorned with anti-white supremacy messaging. I have no intention of starting violence. I brought a symbol of protection, not a symbol of aggression.

But "free speech" protester Joe, who faced down the chants of shame, said the rage he heard in those voices was unsettling and worrisome. He was worried for his life, and it did not matter how much sage counter-protesters burned, or how many messages of love they scrawled on cardboard.

We were, like, this close to getting killed, Joe told The Independent of the counter-protesters yelling at him and his companions after police had escorted him around the demonstration in the veranda to a side street. Police had not allowed him or his companions, one of whom was black, and another Latino, to join the demonstrators on the veranda

It was unclear why they were not allowed to join the rally when they showed up at noon, the official start time, but Joe and those with him blamed Mayor Marty Walsh, who had sent in 500 police officers and encouraged people not to show up fearing a repeat of Charlottesville.

A further 200 police officers were reportedly on call.

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans told reporters there had been very little damage to property though some officers were hit by plastic bottles containing urine.

We did not want what happened in Virginia to happen here, he said.

He confirmed there were 27 arrests

The counter-protests overall appeared to be peaceful, even if there were tense moments that flirted with the line of violence. As a free speech rally-goer attempted to leave the park at one point, a group of counter-protesters followed the individual, throwing fruit and beverages. A police van was dispatched to pick up the individual  it was not clear if they had been arrested or if the police had responded for their safety. Those police vans could be seen sporadically responding to situations throughout the day.

Overall counter-protesters were peaceful and somewhat united. Chants of black lives matter permeated the park, and activists discussed the needs of their communities, including adequate child care, healthcare, and schools.

I want to stand on the side of justice, Julius Wayne Dudley, 72, said when asked why he had attended. Mr Dudley, who came from Georgia, said he had marched with Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s and was encouraged by the young counter-protests even if he was saddened that the simmering racism in America had resurfaced. It makes my heart feel like my life has been worth living.

Fifteen-year-old Tony, whose last name is being withheld by The Independent because he is a minor, said that the protests make him  whose family comes from Mexico and Guatemala  feel as though hes not alone in Mr Trumps America, which has seen a crackdown on immigrants.

Its good to know that the community is standing up for everyone, Tony said. Were not alone.
The number of counter-protesters far outnumbered the far right demonstrators: AP

Far-right demonstrators in Boston appeared to be greatly outnumbered by their opponents - perhaps as much as ten to one - as the city braced for two competing rallies.

The Mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, issued an appeal to the many thousands of people taking part in the two events to be peaceful and show respect.

I ask everyone to be peaceful today and respect our city. Love, not hate. We stand together against intolerance, said Mr Walsh. We will not tolerate violence or property damage of any kind.

I ask everyone to be peaceful today and respect our City. Love, not hate. We stand together against intolerance.  Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) August 19, 2017

The events were taking place a week after clashes at a white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, that resulted in more than 20 people being injured and one young woman, Heather Heyer, being killed. A 20-year-old man has been charged with her murder.

The protests appeared to be overwhelmingly peaceful, although CNN said that police arrested eight anti-fascist protesters after briefly clashing with police.

Police have arrested at least 8 people who appear to have been counter-protesters at the Boston Free Speech rally https://t.co/R6ntuzihI6 pic.twitter.com/BqZWIT8Jdw  CNN (@CNN) August 19, 2017

Donald Trump has found himself under intense criticism for his slow response to the events in Virginia and his suggestion there was blame on many sides, rather than an unequivocal criticism of the neo-Nazis and racists who were present.

In Boston, hundreds of police officers were positioned around a park where one group planned to hold a so-called Free Speech rally with right-wing speakers. Thousands of counter-protesters who believe the event could become a platform for racist propaganda, were gathering about two miles away with plans to march on the rally, according to the Associated Press.

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Police officers placed barricades to prevent vehicles from entering the park, the nations oldest. To keep the two groups separate, they also built a cordon around the site of the rally.

Organisers of Saturdays rally in Boston have denounced the white supremacist message and violence of Charlottesville and said their event would be peaceful.

The point of this is to have political speech from across the spectrum, conservative, libertarian, centrist, said Chris Hood, an 18-year-old Boston resident who stood among a crowd of a few dozen people who planned to join the Free Speech rally.

"This is not about Nazis. If there were Nazis here, Id be protesting against them.

In addition to the Boston rally and counter-march, protests were also expected in Texas, with the Houston chapter of Black Lives Matter holding a rally to remove a Spirit of the Confederacy monument from a park and civil rights activists in Dallas planning a rally against white supremacy.
Boston Police Commissioner William Evans, left, with other officers along barricades on the Boston Common on Saturday - Getty Images North America

Organisers of a free speech rally in Boston on Saturday are warning far-Right groups to stay away amid growing fears of a repeat of the violent clashes that led to the death of a protester in Virginia last weekend.

The national director of the Ku Klux Klan has said members are expected to turn out for the event, due to start on Boston common at midday.

And police, already preparing for the presence of thousands of counter-protesters, said they were stepping up their vigilance in the wake of Thursdays terrorist attack in Barcelona.

The result is a city preparing for the worst.

John Medlar, of Boston Free Speech which is organising the rally, said he was as shocked and horrified as anyone else at the violence in Charlottesville when white supremacist groups protested the removal of Confederate statutes commemorating the Civil War.

White supremacists stand behind their shields at a rally in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017 Credit: Reuters

We are afraid some of the groups that caused trouble might come up here and cause more trouble, he said.

The Boston group held a similar rally in May but this weekends event has come under intense scrutiny after neo-Nazi groups and counter-protesters clashed in Charlottesville.

A 32-year-old woman died when a car drove into a crowd sparking a week of debate about race relations, freedom of speech and Americas tempestuous political climate under Donald Trump.

Mr Medlar said the roster of speakers included libertarians from both Left and Right but insisted there was no place for groups such as the KKK.

We dont think the KKK is the type of group that will defend the first amendment rights of black people, so we dont want them at our rally, he said, referring to the part of the US constitution that guarantees free expression.

Several of the most inflammatory speakers have already dropped out. Gavin McInnes, who describes himself as a Western Chauvinist and heads a group called the Proud Boys, said this week would no longer be attending.

Among the confirmed guests are Joe Biggs, who used to work for the conspiracy-mongering website Infowars, as well as Shiva Ayyadurai, a scientist who claims to have invented email and is now running for the Senate.

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Mr Medlar said he had been working with city authorities to ensure the day would go off peacefully.

A planned march has been cancelled and police are setting up physical barriers and a neutral zone to separate counter-protesters from the rally.

Several thousand people are expected at the rival Fight Supremacy rally. It was planned as a response to the Charlottesville unrest but, coming at the same time as the free speech rally, now raises the prospect of fresh clashes between the two sides.

Mr Medlar said he had considered cancelling but realised people might still show up anyway. The responsible course, he added, was to work with city authorities on ensuring an orderly event.

No-one will be able to bring anything that can be used as a weapon, he said.

Charlottesville far-right protest

In Charlottesville, armed militias linked to both Left and Right made use of Virginias open carry laws to patrol the area carrying assault rifles.

About 500 police officers will be on the streets to maintain order. They are planning to close some roads to vehicle after of the car attacks that killed Heather Heyer in Charlottesville and 13 in Barcelona.

"We all know the tragedy that happened in Barcelona. That only makes us more vigilant," said William Evans, Boston Police Commissioner.

At the same time, Thomas Robb, of the KKK, told the Boston Herald that he expected members to attend.

"I don't think they're going to cause a disturbance," he said. "Our members don't stand out, they don't walk around giving Nazi salutes, they might be your next door neighbour or Cub Scout leader."
Former Montana legislator Wesley Prouse is out of jail after agreeing to release financial documents related to penalties from a political corruption lawsuit.

Prouse has a week to produce financial documents showing whether he has the wherewithal to pay a $59,066 penalty owed to the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices. The Shepherd man was jailed for civil contempt Tuesday after refusing to produce the records, which he had originally been ordered to deliver in May.

Prouse was implicated in a 2010 campaign scandal in which Republicans aligned with the National Right to Work Committee received thousands of dollars of unreported political support. Eight corporations affiliated with the National Right to Work Committee offered Prouse and others a host of campaign services including campaign management, voter data, opponent attack mail and promotional material including letters to voters.

The voter letters were written by employees in Right to Work's Virginia headquarters based on profiles submitted by the candidates, according to former employees testifying in the trial of fellow Republican candidate Art Wittich, of Bozeman.

A legislator in the 1990s, Prouse had been representing himself until late in week when Missoula attorney Quentin Rhoades took up his case.

Mr. Prouse intends to comply with the court order. He has been without council and so he probably didnt understand the extent of the circumstances he faces legally, Rhoades said. Ill be able to guide him through that process.

The corporations involved were classified as tax-exempt nonprofit groups that can campaign on issues, but are legally forbidden from campaigning for candidates, or coordinating with candidate campaigns. The key nonprofit involved in the scheme was Western Tradition Partnership.

Former Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl sued nine of the Republicans implicated in the scandal, including Prouse. Several of the candidates were elected to the Montana Legislature, but Prouse wasnt. He finished third in a 2010 four-candidate primary race won by Alan Olson.

Prouse reported receiving only $261 in campaign donations for the primary, according to Motls investigation. The candidate also reported spending no money during his campaign, but received roughly $9,000 in campaign services.

A couple of the GOP candidates reached settlements with Motl and lawsuits are ongoing for three others, including Wittich, who has appealed his case to the state Supreme Court after losing at the District Court level.

Rhoades represented Wittich in District Court. Republicans have balked at the lawsuits brought by Motl, arguing that during Motls tenure no Democrats were sued for campaign violations. Rhoades said Prouse was suspicious about the lawsuit against the Shepherd lawmaker, considering it partisan.

Mr. Prouse is justifiably suspicious of the system because there was a small handful of about 20 candidates and consultants who were sued by Mr. Motl. And there were a small handful of people who were affiliated with Right to Work, Rhoades said. They also voted against confirming Mr. Motl in the Legislature.

They were the only people in the history of Montana who were sued by the Commissioner of Political Practices and so Mr. Prouse is suspicious.

Prouse served in the 1998 Legislature and was not in office when Motl became commissioner. Others in the lawsuit were Republicans Scott Sales and Ronald Murray, of Belgrade; Wittich, of Bozeman; Dan Kennedy of Billings; Joel Boniek and Pat Wagman, of Livingston; and Mike Miller, of Helmville.

Many of those candidates, when settling lawsuits brought by Motl, agreed that they broke state campaign law.
Mr Bannon is no longer working for the West Wing: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

An editor at Breitbart says that his publication is going to war with the White House now that former chief strategist Steve Bannon is out of the picture.

Joel Pollak, an editor for Breitbart in California, made the statement with a simple tweet, after it was announced that Mr Bannon had tendered his resignation to Donald Trump.

#WAR, Mr Pollak wrote, echoing similar sentiments reportedly made by people connected to Breitbart.

That harsh response is apparently in response to a significant shift in power away from anti-globalists  a group of which Mr Bannon is a member  and so-called globalists like Mr Trumps son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner. Throughout Mr Trumps presidency, Mr Bannon and Mr Kushner have reportedly battled for influence over their boss.

"It's now a Democrat White House," a Breitbart source reportedly told journalist Gabriel Sherman.

Mr Bannon had pushed for nationalist policies, and was generally opposed to military intervention in Syria. Mr Kushner and his circle, on the other hand, have argued that military intervention in Syria is necessary to punish the Syrian regime for alleged use of chemical weapons.

News of that infighting had previously led individuals affiliated with the far-right Breitbart news site to claim that firing Mr Bannon would lead to open warfare between the website and Mr Trump.

It would be open warfare from the outside in, former Breitbart employee Kurt Bardella said in April.

And all of the sudden the pages of Breitbart, who have been incredibly generous to Donald Trump to say the least, will start turning their fire on him or, at the very least, assign blame saying Trump betrayed the conservative right because of Jared Kushner and liberal Democrats inside the White House have turned them against us, he said.

It is unclear if Mr Bannon will choose to return to Breitbart now that he has left the White House.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 43-year-old California man on a delayed honeymoon was among the 13 people killed when a van plowed through a popular pedestrian area in the Spanish city of Barcelona, his family said on Friday. Jared Tucker and his wife had gone to Barcelona to celebrate their first anniversary in the form of a belated honeymoon. Walking in the area of the famous Las Ramblas boulevard on Thursday, he had gone to find a restroom when he was struck down by the van, his wife Heidi Nunes Tucker told KGO television in San Francisco. "Pray for Jared and his family, pray for Barcelona, but most importantly pray that we can some day rid ourselves of the hate that takes our loved ones before their time," Tucker's family wrote in a statement posted on the Gofundme fundraising website. Relatives started the fundraising effort to assist his family with living and educational expenses. Tucker lived in East Bay suburbs of San Francisco and is also survived by three daughters, KGO reported. Earlier in the day, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed that an American citizen had been killed, but gave no other details. The rampage through one of Spain's most popular tourist areas was the latest of a string of attacks across Europe in the past 13 months in which militants have used vehicles as weapons - a crude but deadly tactic that is near-impossible to prevent and has now killed nearly 130 people in France, Germany, Britain, Sweden and Spain. Suspected jihadists have been behind the previous attacks. Islamic State said the perpetrators of the latest one had been responding to its call to target countries involved in a U.S.-led coalition against the Sunni militant group. The driver of the van may still be alive and at large, Spanish police said on Friday, denying earlier reports he had been killed. Five would-be attackers were shot dead by police in a seaside town. (Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Mary Milliken)
Forests in Canada are ablaze, with 2.2 million acres going up in flames so far this year in British Columbia alone. These fires, and others in the Yukon and Northwest Territories, have been belching smoke into the air, in some cases up to 8 miles high.

Once in the atmosphere, weather patterns are causing the wildfire smoke to converge into a blanket so thick it's blotting out the sun across northern Canada. This smoke is working its way to the high Arctic, where it could speed up the melting of sea and land ice.

According to NASA, the smoke has set a record for its thickness, and has been especially dense across the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut provinces.

SEE ALSO: Summer on steroids: Fires, devilish heat waves, and floods

Never mind the upcoming total solar eclipse  in some places, the smoke is so thick it could turn day into night, according to Mike Fromm of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

Theres that much aerosol in the air, Fromm said, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. Aerosols are small particles, such as soot or volcanic ash, that reflect incoming sunlight.

Aerosol index across Canada during the past several days.

Image: NASA Earth Observatory images/Colin Seftor.

According to Colin Seftor, an atmospheric researcher for NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, on August 15, the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) on the Suomi NPP satellite recorded aerosol index values as high as 49.7. This was more than 15 points higher than the previous record, which was set in 2006 by fires in Australia.

Aerosol index records were also set on August 13 and 14, NASA reported. Although the Suomi NPP satellite is quite new, the satellite aerosol index dates back to the Nimbus-7 satellite in 1978, giving scientists a longer data set.

According to NASA, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured particularly heavy smoke obscuring a wide swath of northern Canada as of August 15, 2017.

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Another satellite image, this time from the Aqua satellite, shows smoke billowing north from areas near Lake Athabasca. The fires in British Columbia were intense enough to produce numerous pyrocumulus clouds, which are essentially firestorms that tower into the sky, resembling thunderstorms.

Such clouds can vault smoke high into the atmosphere, all the way to the stratosphere, where it can linger for days or longer.

The Canadian fires are important for several reasons. First, they signal the transition to a more combustible future in the Far North, as climate change makes conditions more conducive to large wildfires.

Smoke forecast with rectangle showing the area of smoke transport into the Arctic.

Image: copernicus/ECMWF

Second, they are ideally located to directly feed smoke toward vulnerable Arctic sea ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet. In addition to altering the heat balance of the atmosphere, the smoke can deposit dark soot particles on the ice, which hastens melting by lowering the reflectivity of the ice and causing it to absorb more incoming sunlight.

Studies have tied the increasing number of large fires in parts of Canada and the U.S. to global warming. In fact, the level of fire activity across the boreal forests, which stretch from Alaska to Canada and around the top of the world to Scandinavia and Russia, is unprecedented in the past 10,000 years, according to a study published in 2013.
White supremacists carry a shield and Confederate flag as they arrive at a rally in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 12, 2017. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Belinda Kennedys Alabama Flag and Banner, founded in 1985, had always sold Confederate battle flags. The company had marketed stock that it bought from manufacturers, but it had never been a huge income generator. Custom flags, especially oversize U.S. flags, table covers and banners were more important to the small companys bottom line.

In a typical year, I would say, wed sell maybe in the hundreds [of Confederate flags]  not that many, she recalled in an interview with Yahoo News. That was before the shooting in the church.

By the shooting, Kennedy meant the June 2015 day when white supremacist Dylann Roof gunned down nine African-Americans after joining their Bible study at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C. A photograph of Roof clutching a black handgun and holding a small Confederate battle flag fueled a backlash against symbols of the secessionist South. But the backlash also triggered a bonanza for flag sellers like Kennedy.

Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner, stands by Confederate flags in the manufacturing area at her store on April 12, 2016, in Huntsville, Ala. Kennedy said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 20,000 flags last year and about 12,000 of those were confederate flags. (Photo: Ty Wright/Getty Images)

The anti-Confederate movement gained new strength this week after neo-Nazi and white supremacist demonstrators, some waving the Confederate battle flag, staged a rally in Charlottesville, Va. One white nationalist allegedly drove his car deliberately into a crowd of peaceful protesters, killing Heather Heyer, 32.

After the violent Charlottesville clashes, cities across the country have started reassessing their monuments to the Confederacy, which formed to protect and maintain the U.S. institution of slavery. Several cities have already opted to remove their Confederate statues.

The Charleston massacre sparked a similar wave of change in the Confederate flag industry. After the mass shooting, major retailers  Amazon, eBay, Sears, WalMart  said theyd stop selling the rebel flag. In the America of 2017, you cant buy Confederate battle flag bikinis on Amazon, though you can listen to songs about the women who wear them via the companys streaming service.

The online auction site eBay, which connects individual buyers and sellers, uses a range of tools to keep out the Confederate flag.

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We take proactive measures to identify listings that violate our policies, including but not limited to, keyword filters and automated monitoring tools, an executive with the company told Yahoo News. Additionally, every listing has a Report This Item link, allowing our community members to alert us to listings for our review and removal.

But its challenging, explained the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Some sellers dont know about the ban. Others take steps to try to circumvent it  on the day Yahoo News spoke to the eBay official, someone was trying to sell a Confederate flag but had put it up in the Books category in an apparent attempt to skirt the restrictions.

This undated photo that appeared on Lastrhodesian.com, a website investigated by the FBI in connection with Dylann Roof, shows him posing for a photo holding a Confederate flag. (Photo: Lastrhodesian.com via AP)

The National Park Service joined in, announcing that its gift shops would no longer carry stand-alone items that only featured the flag. At the Gettysburg gift shop, this meant pulling just 11 out of 2,600 items sold at the Civil War battle site.

The countrys oldest and largest flag manufacturers also enlisted, opting to stop making the banner.

Annin Flagmakers was founded in 1847 and supplied Union forces with the U.S. flag during the Civil War, according to Mary Repke, the companys senior vice president of sales and marketing. But until the Charleston shooting, it also had sold some Confederate battle flags, mostly to Civil War reenactors, she told Yahoo News.

It made up, like, 0.00001 percent of our total volume, Repke said. Annin today sells at least 10 million U.S. flags per year, and 20 million flags total when you add international, military, religious and other banners. But no Confederate battle flags, with the exception of those included in state flags.

Flags are very powerful symbols, and clearly this flag has become a symbol of a negative aspect of our countrys past, Repke said. For some people, it represents something very negative and hateful.

Dropping the flag was also an easy call for Valley Forge Flag, which had never sold that many anyway, according to Reggie VandenBosch, its vice president of sales.

It was a fraction of a percent [of revenues]. It was even, like, not even one-tenth of 1 percent, he told Yahoo News.

Repke and Vandenbosch both told Yahoo News that Chinese flagmakers have largely filled the vacuum.

Theyre relatively easy to find via the online retail giant Alibaba, though consumers have to know to search for Confedrate flag, not the correctly spelled Confederate flag, which turned up no results at the time this story went live.

Two young women wear Confederate flag bikinis during the annual Summer Redneck Games, July 9, 2011, in East Dublin, Ga. (Photo: Richard Ellis/Getty Images)

But most U.S.-based companies that hawk flags online arent manufacturing them.

After U.S.-based manufacturers stopped making them, most of the public, the general public, would buy from [online] sites, said Repke. Thats not a domestic flag; thats usually an import from China or someplace. Mostly China.

That raises the possibility that some of the self-described nationalists in Charlottesville may have been waving a Confederate flag made in Shanghai.

With the U.S. flag, the consumer is very concerned that it be made in the United States, understandably, said VandenBosch. But with the Confederate flag, the priority for most is to find it as inexpensively as possible.

That hasnt deterred some producers. An online search turned up a handful of independent seamstresses who appear to run their businesses out of their homes. One, in South Carolina, sells a 36- by 54-inch battle flag for $325 on her Dixie Memories site, where visitors are met with a brass band version of Dixie, essentially the Souths anthem.

I dedicate my work to heroes of all races, including African-Americans, Asians and Hispanic, who wore the gray, she says on the main page. We have only love for others whose skin color is different from our own. (Historians have largely dismissed revisionist accounts claiming that there were significant numbers of nonwhite Confederate soldiers.)

Efforts to reach the Dixie Memories flagmaker were unsuccessful.

But for Kennedy of Alabama Flag and Banner, cheap Chinese flags are part of the problem. I dont want to sell a $4 flag, she said. Theirs is a lower-quality flag.

The decision to start producing Confederate battle flags in-house, with a staff of just a dozen seamstresses, came shortly after Roofs rampage.

What happened to us was, when Wal-Mart and Amazon took everything with a flag off the shelves, suddenly our inventory emptied. Anything with a Confederate battle flag went out the door, Kennedy said. Buyers were seemingly worried that items bearing the flag would go extinct.

Employees Lottie Penick, left, and Melissa Hodnett iron stars onto a United States flag at Annin Flagmakers in South Boston, Va., July 6, 2016. (Photo: Gerry Broome/AP)

Seizing the business opportunity, she went to place flag orders with major manufacturers, only to be turned away  they had already decided to stop making the emblem. So she worked out how to make them in-house.

The response was astronomical, Kennedy said. We were shipping to Japan, we were shipping to Canada, to Australia, to all 50 states. During that whole crazy period [in the shootings aftermath], we were selling in the thousands.

In 2017, shes back to a normal shipping level, and though she wouldnt disclose a precise number, the Confederate banner isnt a bestseller. Historical flags are the stepchildren of the flag industry, she quipped.

Kennedy said making the flag is all about history and noted that she had two great-great-grandfathers who fought in the war on the Southern side.

Taking down monuments and taking down flags, its not a solution for fighting racism, she said. We need to look at our history, learn from our history, and appreciate where we are now.

The battle flag wasnt that popular after the Civil War, according to author and historian David Goldfield, author of several books about the conflict.

It was used mostly on ceremonial occasions in the South  Confederate Memorial Day, veterans reunions, and, occasionally political rallies  for several decades after the Civil War, he told Yahoo News.

South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond raises his hands over his head in response to a tumultuous ovation accorded him by delegates to the Dixiecrats States Rights Convention in Birmingham, Ala., on July 17, 1948. (Photo: AP)

The real revival of the flag occurred from 1948 onward. In that year, a group of Southern politicians broke from the Democratic Partys strong civil rights stance in the Truman administration and established the Dixiecrats, said Goldfield. At their convention in Birmingham, Ala., the flag came out in full force, and became even more popular with the advent of the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Clearly, the flag symbolized white supremacy and defiance of the federal government  pretty much what it symbolized during the Civil War.

Although some supporters of the flag will tell you it stands for states rights or individual freedom, not slavery or white supremacy, Goldfield said, these arguments would have come as a surprise to Confederate leaders.

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United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Children are particularly vulnerable in the conflicts raging around the globe, according to a draft UN report that specifically pointed the finger of blame in Yemen at the Saudi-led coalition.

The draft of an annual UN report on the impact of armed conflict on children lists the countries and entities accused of recruiting child soldiers and using children as weapons of war.

"I am highly concerned by the scale and severity of the grave violations that were committed against children in 2016, which included alarming levels of killing and maiming, recruitment and use and denial of humanitarian access," Secretary General Antonio Guterres says in the draft seen by AFP.

The UN chief said minors often fell prey as well to sexual violence and abduction.

The report found some 4,000 verified cases of rape last year by government troops in conflicts around the world and more than 11,500 rapes by non-government armed groups.

He called on the parties to conflicts around the world to do more to protect children, singling out the plight of Yemeni minors, where a Saudi-led Arab military coalition has stepped in on behalf of the government.

More than 8,400 people have been killed and 47,700 wounded since Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened.

The United Nations has called Yemen "the largest humanitarian crisis in the world."

The report also made particular mention of Somalia and Syria, two nations where the use of forced military conscriptions more than doubled last year compared to 2015.
The Department of Justice wants 1.3 million IP addresses of people who visited distruptj20.org. Is reading about protest illegal now?

Its not just a gross Fourth Amendment privacy violation, but free speech rights as well. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

In an unprecedented and dangerous move, Donald Trumps justice department is threatening to violate the first and fourth amendment rights of over a million people by issuing an overboard surveillance request aimed at identifying alleged anti-Trump protesters.

The justice department is demanding that web hosting provider DreamHost hand over, among many other things, 1.3m IP addresses  essentially everyone who has ever visited an anti-Trump protest site called disruptj20.org that was organizing protests surrounding Trump inauguration in January.

Dream Host revealed the surveillance demand on Monday on their blog, also saying they were going to court to challenge the order. Dream Host called it a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority and explained that the information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution.

As the Guardian noted on Monday, the justice department has already aggressively prosecuted activists arrested during the 20 January protests in Washington DC, at one point in April indicting more than 217 people with identical crimes, including felony rioting.



This includes many people who claim they were just in the vicinity of property damage and had nothing to do with it  and even some journalists. There is also solid public evidence that Facebook received some extraordinary legal orders related to the events as well and are fighting them in court.

Heres how the website disruptj20.org described its mission:

Were planning a series of massive direct actions that will shut down the Inauguration ceremonies and any related celebrationsthe Inaugural parade, the Inaugural balls, you name it. Were also planning to paralyze the city itself, using blockades and marches to stop traffic and even public transit. And hey, because we like fun, were even going to throw some parties.

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Now, its possible the sites operators were suggesting they were planning on engaging in at least some civil disobedience that the government would consider illegal. But, as EFFs Mark Rumold said on Monday: This [the website] is pure first amendment advocacy  the type of advocacy the first amendment was designed to protect and promote.

But more importantly, think about who would be affected by this legal order: anyone merely searching for information on protesting 100% legally before the inauguration, news buffs curious about what events were happening in Washington DC on inauguration day, journalists looking for what events to cover, even Trump supporters wondering what the opposition is planning.

What the Department of Justice is saying, essentially, is that people dont have the right to read anything related to civil disobedience without fear that the government will attempt to identify them and potentially put them under surveillance.

Its not just a gross fourth amendment privacy violation, but free speech rights as well. The constitution not only guarantees the right to free speech, but also the freedom of association and the freedom to read information otherwise protected by the constitution. Anyone who visited this site were clearly within their rights to do so, and to think that the government could gather information on them is chilling to the core.

If this extraordinary broad legal order was allowed to stand, Jeff Sessions and the justice department could extend the same type of legal order to a whole host of situations.

What if they wanted to track down immigrants who look at websites describing how to avoid suspicion? Or monitor websites that organize Black Lives Matter protests or anti-fascist actions? Or any other website that argues that a law is unjust and should not be followed? Or what if they issued a court order to the Guardian or the New York Times asking for every visitor to their secure tips page that may or may not have sent them a leaked document?

The list goes on and on. This legal order could be a weapon that could open up all sorts of rights violations by Sessions and the Trump administration. It should be strongly protested not just in court, but in public and the halls of Congress in the strongest terms possible.
Photo credit: Getty Images

From Woman's Day

When a 30-year-old Australian woman recently went to the hospital over some serious stomach pains, she never expected it would turn out to be a medical nightmare. Doctors say that they found a piece of dental wire stuck inside the woman's small intestine, according to a case published in the journal BMJ Case Reports on Aug. 7. The strangest part of this ordeal? The patient hadn't worn braces for 10 years.

Initially, the doctors at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital believed the woman's discomfort had to do with her gallbladder and sent her back home, CNN reports. But, after returning two days later with much more pain, the woman received a CAT scan, which revealed a piece of dental wire, nearly 3 inches long, piercing various parts of her intestine. The penetration of the wire resulted in volvulus, a rare condition that occurs when the intestine twists around and causes bowel obstruction.

"I think it was probably just sitting there in her stomach the whole time, and then when the small bowel was punctured, that's when the pain started," Dr. Talia Shepherd, one of the treating physicians of the patient told CNN.

Luckily, the doctors performed an emergency surgery to remove the dental wire. They assume the piece has been inside the woman for nearly a decade, even if she doesn't recall swallowing any part of her braces.

Former brace faces shouldn't worry though-it seems like this case is just a bizarre occurrence."The chances of swallowing a wire from your braces is very low," Dr. Shepherd added. "There might be a higher chance if you're sedated and undergo a dental procedure. But this is a very unusual case."

(h/t PopSugar)

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Miami (AFP) - Eclipse-chasers are a dedicated crew of scientists who travel the globe to catch a few moments in eerie darkness, and even after seeing dozens of eclipses, they say they can't get enough.

Also known as "umbraphiles," these self-described addicts live their lives in pursuit of the intense experience of falling under the Moon's shadow.

"The sudden onset of twilight was so surreal and so electrifying," recalled Fred Espenak of the first total solar eclipse he saw in the United States back in 1970.

"It is such an incredible, sensory-overload kind of event," he told AFP.

Once it was over, he said he "immediately started thinking about future eclipses."

Espenak, now 65, is a retired NASA astrophysicist who goes by the moniker "Mr. Eclipse."

He has been to 27 eclipses, and seen 20 of them -- cloudy weather interfered with the rest.

Each one is unique, he says -- the way the twilight falls in the middle of the day, casting shadows on the Earth; hearing birds return to their nests; feeling the temperature suddenly drop.

The most memorable, he says, was an eclipse he traveled to in India in 1995 with about 35 other people.

One of the women in the group became overwhelmed -- she said she'd waited 25 years to see an eclipse, and wept over how it had gone by so fast, lasting just 41 seconds.

"We stayed in contact," Espenak said. "And to make a long story short, we got married."

When the so-called Great American Eclipse marches across the country on Monday, Espenak plans to be in Wyoming, operating 17 different cameras.

His advice for first-time eclipse-watchers?

"Don't do what I do. Don't take any pictures. Just watch it and enjoy it. There is so much to see," he said.

- World record-holder -

Most people who see an eclipse will experience just a minute or two of darkness, but in 1973, Donald Liebenberg set a world record when he rode the Concorde jet and chased an eclipse at supersonic speed.

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From the cabin of the aircraft at an altitude of 60,000 feet (18,200 meters), his view of totality -- when the Moon's shadow completely blocks the sunlight -- lasted 74 minutes.

"The corona is so brilliant especially when you are above most of the water vapor and the other scattered light problems in lower altitudes," he said, recalling the deep purple sky.

Now 85, Liebenberg has spent more than two and a half hours of his life in totality, longer than anyone else on the planet.

He has traveled to Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa and Zambia, among other places, and seen 26 eclipses so far.

"Looking forward to the 27th," said Liebenberg, an adjunct professor at Clemson University in South Carolina.

"This one is special in the sense that it will occur over my house. I will be in my driveway instead of traveling thousands of miles."

- Frequent flyer -

Glenn Schneider, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, saw his first total eclipse when he was 14, and recalls a sensation of being frozen in time.

"I realized that this was the start of something that had changed my life, that I was going to have to see the next one. And the next one," he said.

"It almost sounds like it is an addictive phenomenon and it is. You should warn people of that."

Total solar eclipses happen on average about every 16 months somewhere on Earth.

Schneider has missed only a handful.

He still laments "the one that got away" -- an eclipse he missed in 1985 that brushed the coast of Antarctica.

But he has managed to get himself in the Moon's umbral shadow 33 times so far.

"I save my frequent flyer miles for eclipses," he said.

And now, the time between eclipses is "sort of a mundane reality," he said.

He has plans for every future eclipse, including one at sunrise over New York in May 2079 when he would be 123 years old.

"I don't think I am going to make it but I've left information for my daughter for her to go and see it," he said.

For Schneider, it's not just the view, or the scientific interest he has in the phenomenon.

"We are talking about a very visceral, emotional connection," he said.

"You really get a sense of celestial mechanics in action."

Espenak agreed.

To experience an eclipse "gives you a sense of perspective that you don't get any other way," he said.

"How insignificant we are compared to the whole system. How inconsequential some of the struggles we have with politics and the nonsense going on in our daily lives," he added.

"When the grand scheme of the solar system is played out in front of us, it's a humbling experience."
President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, with, from left, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Press Secretary Sean Spicer and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Jobs in Donald Trump's administration increasingly appear to come with an expiration date.

The long-rumored departure of White House strategist Steve Bannon has added to a growing list of former aides who have left their jobs less than a year into the Trump administration, demonstrating the turmoil of an administration that has lurched from crisis to crisis.

A photo that began circulating widely in response to news of Mr Bannon stepping down helps illustrate the rate of turnover.

Taken in January, the image depicts Mr Trump encircled by a ring of staffers. Of the six men featured in the image, only two - Mr Trump and Vice President Mike Pence - remain.

First to go was former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who was fired after it emerged that he had lied about contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

He was followed by former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who resigned the post in June after having generated controversy with some of his statements to reporters.

After that came erstwhile Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, a representative of the Republican Party establishment who was ousted in July amid infighting between different factions in the administration.

And the image does not capture the full extent of the changes that have roiled the administration so far.

Not pictured is short-lived Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, who survived for less than two week; KT McFarland, who served as a deputy national security advisor; and Rich Higgins, a member of the National Security Council who was removed after penning a conspiratorial memo that warned of dark forces arrayed against Mr Trump.
By Gabriel Stargardter MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's foreign minister is in Havana hoping to persuade Cuba, one of Venezuela's top allies, to help resolve the tense political situation in the beleaguered South American nation, according to a senior Mexican official briefed about the trip. The minister, Luis Videgaray, has not gone empty-handed, according to the official and a document seen by Reuters, and has agreed with Havana's request to expand a credit line with Mexico's state-owned Bancomext bank from 30 million to 56 million euros as a gesture of goodwill. Cuba uses the credit line to pay for key imports. "The foreign minister is going to say, 'We want to solve the situation in Venezuela. How do we do that?'" the official said. "He's going to see what the Cubans' view is, and how we can soften or manage the transition in Venezuela and its impact on Cuba." Mexico may struggle to convince Cuba to join its effort. Venezuela is Cuba's closest strategic and ideological ally, and has showered the island with billions of dollars of cheap oil and aid since the turn of the century. Mexico, on the other hand, has flip-flopped in its relationship with Cuba, with former President Vicente Fox famously snubbing Fidel Castro at a summit, a move that pleased the United States but damaged Mexico's regional influence. Cuba has been loathe to support regional, U.S.-backed efforts to pressure the government of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro into restoring democratic order after months of deadly protests. Still, Mexico, which has ditched years of isolationist foreign policies to lead Latin American diplomatic efforts to pressure Caracas, believes there won't be a peaceful transition in Venezuela without Cuba's help, the official said. AIM OF VISIT If Cuba accedes to leaning more heavily on Venezuela, it would be a massive blow to Maduro, and could prompt some other smaller island allies of Venezuela in the Caribbean to follow Havana's lead, the official added. Maduro was in Havana this week, and although there are diplomatic channels between the two countries' embassies, Videgaray is expecting to have Maduro's own views communicated to him by Cuban officials. The purpose of the trip is also to assure Cuba that Mexico will step in to support the island nation if Venezuela collapses. The provision of Mexican oil is not officially on the table, but the official said he thought that could be offered in the future. For Mexico, the best-case scenario for Videgaray's trip would be that Cuba publicly recognizes that the situation in Venezuela is untenable, and releases a statement critical of the Maduro regime, urging some form of transition, the official said. However, the official feared Cuba could just as easily reiterate its support for Maduro, and say any resolution to the tense political situation must be negotiated via the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a regional bloc founded in Caracas. "The Cubans are very ... unpredictable," the official said. "They always do what they want." 'RESPECT' After Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos visited Havana late last month, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, a senior Cuban communist party figure, reiterated support for Maduro. "Cuba ... has absolute respect for the sovereignty and autodetermination of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela," he said. Mexico has chosen to lead regional efforts against Venezuela as part of its efforts to secure a favorable renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States, Mexican and U.S. officials say. The diplomatic efforts, largely through the Organization of American States (OAS), are seen as win-win for Mexico, as they please Washington and incur limited domestic political cost. Videgaray, accompanied by the head of Bancomext, arrived in Havana on Thursday and was scheduled to leave later on Friday. Speaking at a news conference alongside his counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez, in Havana on Friday, Videgaray said he hoped trade between the two countries will continue to grow. "Bilateral relations are developing well, and in constant progression," Rodriguez told reporters. "We note that there is great potential in every area to keep developing them." The foreign ministries of Mexico and Cuba and the information ministry of Venezuela did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Bernadette Baum)
The Montana Department of Revenue will continue to fight a court ruling that money from a tax credit program can benefit religious schools.

District Judge Heidi Ulbricht ruled in May that the department incorrectly excluded religious schools from the program, which is funded by donations that can be offset by up to $150 in nonrefundable tax credits. The 2015 bill that created the program limited its annual tax credits to $3 million.

The department filed its appeal with the Montana Supreme Court on Thursday.

The bill was the first time Montana had dipped a toe into school choice, a catch-all umbrella for programs that allow public money to be used to pay for the education of students in nonpublic schools.

Legislators who supported the bill were irate when the department announced the rule banning religious schools, and three parents whose children attend Stillwater Christian School in Kalispell challenged the rule with the help of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm.

The department said an institution controlled by any church or religious sect could not be considered a "qualified education provider," arguing that the state constitution prohibits appropriations to faith-based schools.

In March 2015, District Judge David Ortley granted a preliminary injunction to prevent the department from implementing the rule.

Ulbright found that the program is funded through tax credits, not appropriations, and the constitution does not address the use of tax credits. "Nonrefundable tax credits simply do not involve the expenditure of money that the state has in its treasury," Ulbright wrote.

The notice filed Thursday merely informed the state Supreme Court of the department's appeal, not its grounds for appeal.
By Sarah N. Lynch and Lisa Lambert WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cities across the United States are seeking ways to head off the kind of violence seen in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend when white nationalists and neo-Nazis clashed with counter-protesters over the planned removal of a Civil War-era statue. As they step up efforts to pull such monuments from public spaces and brace for a right-wing backlash, municipalities are re-evaluating their approaches to crowd control, permits, weapon regulation and intelligence gathering. White supremacists have been emboldened by statements from President Donald Trump. A potentially volatile demonstration with mostly right-wing speakers is set for Saturday in Boston, with other events coming in days ahead. "When you have an environment of anger and people carrying weapons, and a president that is tossing gasoline on that, I think that America should be deeply concerned," said Corey Saylor, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which tracks Muslim hate groups. Mayors face a tug-of-war between ensuring public safety and respecting Americans' cherished constitutional freedoms of speech and assembly, said experts and local leaders. The balancing act is further complicated by the right to carry guns, and even concealed weapons, in many states and cities. "Certainly we recognize everyones First Amendment right to freedom of speech, but were also dedicated to freedom from fear," said Allison Silberberg, mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, a city near Washington, D.C., that has long struggled with what to do about a Confederate statue in the middle of a major road. Silberberg said she is looking forward to the result of a review of how Virginia cities handle permits for demonstrations that was ordered by Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe after Charlottesville, where right-wing marchers had a permit. Many expect McAuliffe's review will lead to stricter limits on who can march and where. The mayor of Charlottesville, where a young woman was killed by a man who crashed his car into a crowd, has called for legislation to let local governments ban openly carrying guns at public events. In Boston, authorities have granted a permit for a "Free Speech" rally on Boston Common and a counter-rally expected to draw a larger crowd. Police there have barred demonstrators from bringing sticks, bats or backpacks, as they did in Charlottesville. More than half of U.S. states allow people to attend rallies with firearms, and some allow keeping those guns concealed, said Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, an organization of police department heads. Such policies put police in the position of keeping track of demonstrators and counter-demonstrators, while also "waiting for that first shot to go off," he said, a nearly impossible job. Some cities, but not all, prohibit the other types of weapons used last weekend, such as the long sticks disguised as sign holders that turned into batons, he said. Police departments' main tool for preventing clashes is the process for evaluating whether to grant a demonstration permit. It gives cities some ability to discern possibly violent intentions, plot march routes to steer adversaries away from each other and restrict weapons, Stephens said. The Lexington, Kentucky police department is "doing a lot of intelligence sharing" with federal and state law enforcement, said spokeswoman Brenna Angel. That resulted from a report that a right-wing group planned a rally in Lexington over the possible relocation of two Confederate monuments. Such memorials to those who fought for the Confederacy and the preservation of slavery in the U.S. Civil war are seen by some Americans as offensive and by others as symbols of Southern heritage. Anger on both sides over Confederate symbols is only the latest symptom of rising U.S. political polarization that sometimes escalates from peaceful protest to public violence. As recently as the 1990s, white nationalist groups held demonstrations in small towns that were spectacles but usually peaceful, said Will Potter, a University of Michigan fellow and journalist who tracks domestic terrorist groups and civil rights. More recently, he said, right-wing groups have taken to carrying guns and marching in bigger cities. "It's just escalated in the last few months: the rhetoric of these groups, their affiliations with the White House... and the shows of force on the streets," he said. Michael German, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who is now a fellow at the New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said he first saw a shift in 2016, when violence broke out in Sacramento at a neo-Nazi rally. Earlier this year, he noted, there was fighting at a handful of pro-Trump rallies between alt-right extremists and anti-fascist, or "antifa," counterprotesters. In many cases, German said, local police did not do enough to intervene. The current atmosphere is bringing together the ideological and violent wings of white supremacism "in a dangerous way," he said. (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Kieran Murray and Lisa Shumaker)
(Corrects Corker quote in paragraph 4 of Aug. 17 story to show he said "stability" not "ability," error first appeared in Update 4) By Steve Holland and Susan Heavey BRIDGEWATER, N.J./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump decried on Thursday the removal of monuments to the pro-slavery Civil War Confederacy, echoing white nationalists and drawing stinging rebukes from fellow Republicans in a controversy that has inflamed racial tensions. Trump has alienated Republicans, corporate leaders and U.S. allies, rattled markets and prompted speculation about possible White House resignations with his comments since Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which came in the aftermath of a white nationalist protest against the removal of a Confederate statue. Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, questioned Trump's capacity to govern. "The president ... has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful," said Corker, who Trump had considered for the job of secretary of state. Corker said Trump needed to make "radical changes." Trump unleashed attacks on two Republican U.S. senators, Jeff Flake and Lindsey Graham, in a series of Twitter posts on Thursday, raising fresh doubts about his ability to work with lawmakers in his own party to win passage of his legislative agenda, which includes tax cuts and infrastructure spending. He took aim at the removal or consideration for removal of Confederate statues and monuments in a long list of cities in California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas, as well as Washington, D.C. "Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can't change history, but you can learn from it," Trump wrote on Twitter, refusing to move past the controversy. "Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!" Trump said. He was referring to two Confederate generals in the Civil War that ended in 1865, and to early U.S. presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves but whose legacies are overwhelmingly honored. Opponents call the statues a festering symbol of racism, while supporters say they honor American history. Some of the monuments have become rallying points for white nationalists but also have the support of some people interested in historical preservation. Trump also denied he had spoken of "moral equivalency" between white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members who clashed with anti-racism activists in Charlottesville. COHN RUMORS U.S. stocks suffered their biggest drop in three months on Thursday as the turmoil surrounding the White House sapped investor confidence that Trump's ambitious economic agenda would become reality. Equity index futures fell a bit further after the close of regular trading, with S&P 500 emini futures heading into the overnight trading session about 2 points lower. The U.S. stock market has not followed a 1 percent-down day with a second straight day of losses since Trump was elected in November, so Fridays session is being watched as a significant test of the markets resilience. Amid the controversy, the White House knocked down rumors that Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn might resign. An official said Cohn "intends to remain in his position" as National Economic Council director at the White House. Trump announced the disbanding of two high-profile business advisory councils on Wednesday after the resignation of several corporate executives over his Charlottesville remarks. On Thursday, a White House official said Trump had dropped plans for an advisory council on infrastructure. In another indication of businesses not wanting to be associated with the president, the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic canceled a planned 2018 Florida fundraiser at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Florida resort, where it had held such events for seven straight years. Spokeswoman Eileen Sheil said the Cleveland Clinic considered "a variety of factors" in deciding to cancel an event that typically generates $1 million a year. The clinic's chief executive, Toby Cosgrove, was a member of a one of the two councils that disbanded on Wednesday. James Murdoch, chairman of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc and son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, slammed Trumps response to Charlottesville in an email to friends and pledged to donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, the New York Times reported. James Murdoch wrote that Trumps comments should "concern all of us as Americans and free people," the Times said. Twenty-First Century Fox owns Fox News Channel, a favorite with Trump and his conservative supporters. 'HATE-FILLED INDIVIDUALS' The Charlottesville violence erupted when white nationalists marched to protest against the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. A 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when a man described as a white nationalist crashed his car into the counter-protesters. Trump has blamed the Charlottesville violence on not just the white nationalist rally organizers but also the counter-protesters, and said there were "very fine people" among both groups. He also expressed distaste for removing Confederate statues in a heated news conference on Tuesday. After Trump blasted Graham on Twitter, the senator who was one of Trump's rivals for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination fired back. "Because of the manner in which you have handled the Charlottesville tragedy you are now receiving praise from some of the most racist and hate-filled individuals and groups in our country. For the sake of our Nation - as our President - please fix this," Graham said. "History is watching us all." Another Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, also said on Twitter: "Anything less than complete & unambiguous condemnation of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK by (Trump) is unacceptable. Period." Graham had said on Wednesday Trump's remarks at his news conference the day before had suggested "moral equivalency" between the white nationalists and anti-racism demonstrators and called on the president to use his words to heal Americans. "Publicity seeking Lindsey Graham falsely stated that I said there is moral equivalency between the KKK, neo-Nazis & white supremacists and people like Ms. Heyer. Such a disgusting lie. He just can't forget his election trouncing. The people of South Carolina will remember!" Trump wrote. In a separate tweet, Trump called Flake "WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He's toxic!" and appeared to endorse Kelli Ward, Flake's Republican challenger in his 2018 re-election race. Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, called for the immediate removal of Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol. U.S. Senator Cory Booker, also a Democrat, said he would introduce legislation so that could be done. "There is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country," Pelosi said in a statement. A spokesman for Republican U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said it was up to U.S. states to determine which statues were displayed on their behalf in the Capitol building. (Reporting by Steve Holland and Susan Heavey; Additional reporting by Makini Brice, Richard Cowan, Caroline Valetkevitch, Deena Beasley and Gina Cherelus; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Francis Kerry, Howard Goller, Grant McCool and Paul Tait)
By Thomas Escritt BERLIN (Reuters) - German-Turkish author Dogan Akhanli was arrested in Spain on Saturday after Turkey issued an Interpol warrant for the writer, a critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, fanning an already fierce row between the NATO allies. The arrest of the German national in Granada was part of a "targeted hunt against critics of the Turkish government living abroad in Europe," Akhanli's lawyer Ilias Uyar told magazine Der Spiegel, which first reported Akhanli's detention. A German foreign office official said Germany was in touch with Spanish authorities demanding that Berlin be involved in any extradition proceedings and insisting that no extradition should take place. Any country can issue an Interpol "red notice", but extradition by Spain would only follow if Ankara could convince Spanish courts it had a real case against him. Ties between Ankara and Berlin have been increasingly strained in the aftermath of last year's failed coup in Turkey as Turkish authorities sacked or suspended 150,000 people and detained more than 50,000, including other German nationals. "This is a development of dramatic significance," said Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz at a campaign rally. "As part of his (Erdogan's) paranoid counter-putsch, he is reaching out for our citizens on the territory of European Union states." Schulz, who seeks to replace Chancellor Angela Merkel in elections on Sept. 24, called for talks on Turkey joining the EU's customs union to be suspended, saying that Erdogan was "every day testing the limits of how far he can go." The German Journalists' Union warned journalists critical of Ankara to have German police check their Interpol records before traveling abroad. "To our knowledge, our colleague has done nothing wrong," said Frank Ueberall, the union's president. Merkel has been cautious in her criticism of Erdogan despite Ankara's arrests of Germnan citizens. Critics say she is beholden to him because Turkey stands in the way of another wave of Syrian war refugees arriving in Europe, as they did in 2015, endangering her politically. Akhanli, detained in the 1980s and 1990s in Turkey for opposition activities, including running a leftist newspaper, fled Turkey in 1991 and has lived and worked in the German city of Cologne since 1995. On Friday, Erdogan urged the three million or so people of Turkish background living in Germany to "teach a lesson" to Germany's main parties by boycotting them in the elections. (Reporting By Thomas Escritt; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Jamoneisha, whose face was discoloured and swollen by the boiling water, now looks back to normal and says she feels

An 11-year-old girl has made an incredible recovery after a friend poured boiling water over her face at a sleepover.

Jamoneisha Jamoni Merritt was rushed to hospital with horrific burns after Aniya Grant Stuart, 12, splashed scalding water onto her while she slept at a house in the Bronx, New York, on 7 August.

Aniya was charged with felony assault after the incident, which was said to be a "prank" gone horribly wrong.

Jamoneisha was taken to intensive care at Harlem Hospital Centre and spent 11 days being treated for second-degree burns over 85% of her face before she was discharged on Friday.

The upbeat youngster, whose face was discoloured and swollen by the boiling water, now looks back to normal and says she feels "great" following her return home.

Now Im dancing and listening to music, she told New York Daily News.

Jamoneisha will still need to take time off school and avoid spending time in the sun while burns to her arms and shoulders continue to heal.

She says Aniya and two other girls told her they would prank her if she fell asleep shortly before the alleged assault.

"I didnt know what they was gonna do but I felt tired," Jamoneisha told New York Daily News.

So after I was dancing I just sat on the couch and I fell asleep.

The child said when the water was poured onto her I was screaming because it burned, it burned, it burned, it burned.

Police are looking into whether the incident was inspired by a YouTube trend known as the "Hot Water Challenge", where children throw boiling water over unsuspecting friends.

Aniya reportedly tried to kill herself with a knife after she saw the injuries she had inflicted on her friend.

She was treated for her injuries in a separate hospital and kept on suicide watch.

Aniya's mother Shernett Panton, who held ice on Jamoneisha's burns, said: They always prank each other. My daughter was sleeping and Jamoni poured cold water on Aniya. My daughter was like, "OK, if youre going to do a prank on me, Im going to prank you back.

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But my daughter  I dont know what she was thinking  boiled hot water and poured it on Jamoneisha's face.

What she did was really wrong, but its too much right now. My daughter is 12. Everybody makes mistakes.

Jamoneisha's mother Ebony Merritt said her daughter is often targeted by bullies.

She claimed Ms Panton helped Aniya and her friends to "cover their tracks" after the incident and called for them all to be arrested, telling New York Daily News: "The mother is just as involved as the other kids.

This happened at 4am. but they didn't come to my house until 5:30. That means she was there for an hour and a half while they were trying to cover their tracks.

The proud mother posted pictures of Jamoneisha relaxing at home after she was discharged from hospital.

Ms Merritt wrote on Facebook: She's in good spirits. Shes great she want[s] to thank all of y'all for the love that you showed her.

More than $22,000 has been raised for Jamoneisha's ongoing medical costs through a GoFundMe page.
Pretoria (AFP) - Zimbabwe's first lady Grace Mugabe failed to appear Saturday at a summit in South Africa attended by her husband, an event overshadowed by her effort to obtain diplomatic immunity over assault allegations.

The wife of President Robert Mugabe has not been seen since being accused of attacking a 20-year-old model with a electrical extension cord last weekend in a Johannesburg hotel where the couple's two sons were staying.

The case has become a media spectacle, with protesters gathered outside the summit, some brandishing placards that read "Grace, disgrace."

The alleged assault is a political headache for South Africa and Zimbabwe, close neighbours with deep economic and historical ties.

The matter also appears to have spilled into aviation, with South African Airways abruptly announcing that it was halting flights to and from Zimbabwe in a decision that followed flights being cancelled overnight after a dispute over permits, officials said.

Police had said Grace Mugabe was expected at the two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) meeting that opened with a "first spouses programme".

But the 52-year-old wife of Zimbabwe's leader was not among the first ladies in reserved seating at the foot of the platform where several heads of state spoke. Her husband, 93, in a black suit and beige scarf, was among eight regional leaders present.

- Police on high alert -

Neither South Africa's foreign ministry or the police said where the Zimbabwean first lady was, after it emerged that two aircraft were barred from leaving Johannesburg and Harare.

One was owned by Air Zimbabwe, the company regularly used by President Mugabe, and one by South African Airways (SAA).

The first flight could not take off Friday night from Johannesburg International Airport because the airline lacked an "international permit to operate", according to South Africa's civil aviation authority.

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The same regulation affected South African Airlines, whose flight SA25 was supposed to leave Harare on Saturday at 7:00 am (0500 GMT), but was grounded before being cancelled.

"In more than 20 years of operations in Zimbabwe, this is the first time we have been asked for this document," SAA spokesman Tlali Tlali told AFP.

After an "emergency meeting" late Saturday, however, the transportation ministry said both Air Zimbabwe and SAA had submitted the required documents, potentially signalling a resumption of flights.

The regional summit's closing ceremony on Sunday was also scheduled to include partners of the heads of state for its 15 member nations.

Mugabe's wife has claimed diplomatic immunity after allegedly assaulting Gabriella Engels nearly a week ago.

South African police have said they are on high alert to prevent her leaving the country, with an arrest warrant also reportedly being considered.

"We are awaiting the outcome of the request," a police spokesman said, referring to Mugabe's effort to obtain diplomatic immunity.

Engels, who has filed a case of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, appeared at a press conference on Thursday, wearing a large plaster on her forehead.

- Disputed immunity -

Lawyers who have taken Engels's case told reporters she was offered cash to make the incident "go away" but she is determined to press charges against the Zimbabwean first lady.

Willie Spies, one of her lawyers, said that if diplomatic immunity was granted they would consider bringing an injunction in court.

Grace Mugabe was in South Africa reportedly to have her ankle treated following a minor accident last month.

Her husband flew to the country late Wednesday, the day after his wife failed to attend an agreed meeting with South African police over the alleged assault.

Zimbabwean officials have declined to comment on the allegations against the first lady or her immunity claim.

Grace and Robert Mugabe's two sons Robert Jr and Chatunga live in Johannesburg, where they have a reputation for partying.

Grace Mugabe regularly speaks at rallies in Zimbabwe and is seen as a potential successor to her increasingly frail husband.
Afghan security forces were on high alert Saturday as the war-weary country, reeling from a number of high-profile deadly attacks, marked its independence day with muted celebrations.

There was an increased police presence in the capital Kabul where President Ashraf Ghani hosted a private ceremony for Afghan dignitaries.

"All of our police units are on the highest state of alert and they are placed everywhere across the city," Kabul police spokesman Abdul Basir Mujahid told AFP.

"We have increased the number of police checkpoints in and around the diplomatic quarters (too)," he added, amid fears that the Taliban would mark the anniversary with a large-scale attack.

August 19 commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi in 1919, which granted Afghanistan full independence from Britain, although the country was never part of the British empire, after three bloody wars.

While Afghanistan's red, black and green tricolour flag adorned many Kabul streets, the day was largely going unobserved by ordinary Afghans, who are frustrated by the deteriorating security situation and the lack of progress by the US-led international coalition forces.

As in recent years there are no public ceremonies planned in the capital.

The city has been on edge since a massive truck bomb ripped through its diplomatic quarter during morning rush hour on May 31, killing about 150 and wounding around 400 people, mostly civilians, in an unclaimed attack.

Taliban insurgents are currently at the peak of their summer fighting season and have launched several deadly assaults around the country in recent weeks.

Ghani welcomed dozens of Afghan officials for a morning ceremony at the presidential palace and laid a wreath at the independence minaret inside the defence ministry compound.

"A very happy Independence Day to everyone in AFG," Ghani said on Twitter.

"This day was earned with lots of sacrifices. We must pay homage & celebrate this legacy."

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- Trump mulls next step -

While some Afghans changed their Facebook profile pictures to the Afghan flag or to Amanullah Khan, the king who secured Afghanistan's independence, others lamented that the fight against the Taliban, now in its 16th year, meant there was little to celebrate.

"What independence day are we talking about when we are still at war with terrorism and don't seem to be winning against it?" one user wrote on the social media site.

The day got under way as US President Donald Trump wrapped up a meeting of his national security team at Camp David on Friday as he tries to forge a new strategy for Afghanistan.

Trump must decide if he wants to continue on the current course, which relies on a much reduced US-led NATO force to help Afghan partners push back the Taliban, or try a new approach, such as sending more troops or even withdrawing altogether.

General John Nicholson, the top US commander in Afghanistan, offered his congratulations on "98 years of independence".

"We look forward to many years of continued friendship and cooperation," he said in a statement.

Afghan pop star Aryana Sayeed, who has been likened to Kim Kardashian for her skin-tight clothing and selfies, has said she will stage a concert despite threats from conservatives who oppose women performing in public.

"The concert will one hundred percent be held on Saturday evening," she told Tolo News late Friday.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Steve Bannon was forced out of the White House after he labelled members of the white supremacist movement "clowns".

Mr Bannon downplayed the danger posed by Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi sympathisers and revealed his ambition to dominate anti-Trump groups focused on "race and identity" in an interview with left-wing magazine The American Prospect on Tuesday.

The Breitbart News boss's combative remarks came as Republicans and Democrats called for him to be removed from his post following Donald Trump's controversial response to the Charlottesville attacks which left one dead and dozens injured on 12 August.

Asked about racist elements of the far-right, Mr Bannon said: Ethno-nationalism, it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.

These guys are a collection of clowns.

He said of the Democrats: "The longer they talk about identity politics, I got em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.

Mr Bannon initiated the interview by calling The American Prospect days after Mr Trump declined to give assurances about the future of his role as chief strategist.

He appeared to be at odds with the President's stance on North Korea, claiming any threats of military action against Kim Jong-un's regime were unrealistic.

"Forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul dont die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I dont know what youre talking about, theres no military solution here, they got us," he said.

In his comments on China, Mr Bannon claimed he was moving people around the Trump administration to tackle what he described as an economic war with the Asian superpower.

"I'm changing out people at East Asian Defence; I'm getting hawks in," he added.

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"I'm getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State. Thats a fight I fight every day here. Were still fighting.

Were at economic war with China. Its in all their literature. Theyre not shy about saying what theyre doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and its gonna be them if we go down this path."

The right-wing ideologue, who helped the president win support from the "alt-right" during his election campaign, subsequently claimed he did not realise his comments were "on the record".

Following his departure from the Oval Office on Friday, Mr Bannon said the Trump presidency was "over".

The media mogul was considered a key influencer during Mr Trump's "America first" campaign and his early days in the White House, and was briefly awarded with a seat on the National Security Council's principals committee, the top interagency group overseeing national security.

His nationalist stances on issues like immigration, trade and society were reflected in Mr Trump's speeches and policies, and are widely seen as having drawn together the New York billionaire's support base after he joined the struggling campaign as chief executive last August.

But once in power he was forced to compete for influence with other advisers including members of Mr Trump's family.

Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, seen as being able to soften the President's tone and actions, both occupy official White House posts.

Mr Bannon failed to cling on to power during a turbulent period in the White House with a series of resignations and sackings at the highest level.

Mr Trump removed both Reince Priebus, his then chief of staff, and Anthony Scaramucci, briefly his communications director, in the space of four days.

Sean Spicer, who was Mr Trumps press secretary, resigned in apparent protest at Mr Scaramuccis appointment.
President Donald Trump likes a good war of words with foreign leaders. And besides the North Koreans, the leadership in Iran makes a first-rate target for him. After all, one of his signature campaign pledges was to undo the 2015 nuclear deal that Barack Obamas administration signed with Tehran and five world powers.

Since Trumps earliest days in office, he has kept alive the threat that he might unilaterally withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a multilateral agreement unanimously endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. This represents a challenge to Trumps counterpart in Tehran, President Hassan Rouhani, who made the deal his administrations central accomplishment and is now banking that the U.S. president will stick to it despite Trumps rhetoric.

But Rouhani cant let Trumps threats go unanswered. On Aug. 15, he warned that if Trump imposed new sanctions, Iran could turn the nuclear clock back to where it was prior to the 2015 deal and could do so not within months and weeks, but in a matter of hours and days. In Washington, this was interpreted to mean that Tehran might undo all the concessions it made during the negotiation process and, in a bat of the eye, move back to the edge of a nuclear weapons capability.

Iran has its own merciless politics, and Rouhanis gambit is an effort to prevent Trumps denunciations of the deal from acting as an anchor around his neck. At worst, U.S. opposition to the deal could hinder his domestic agenda and serve as ammunition for members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other hard-liners, who never believed that Washington would keep its end of the bargain. For Rouhani, the nuclear agreement was never an end in itself: Its successful implementation was to be the catapult that would propel him to the highest office in the Islamic Republic. He clearly seems loath to let Trump push him off his path.

No doubt, the recently re-elected Rouhani has greater political ambitions left in him. It is a safe bet to assume he is already eyeing the top job in the regime, the position of supreme leader.

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The incumbent, 78-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has no plans to go anywhere just yet  but Rouhani has to start preparing the ground if he is serious about taking Khameneis post when the current supreme leader dies. In this jockeying for power, and with Trumps threats in the background, Rouhani has no option but to up the rhetorical ante to mollify his right flank. For Rouhani, appearing soft in the face of Trumps warnings is tantamount to political suicide.

Nonetheless, the Iranian presidents statements on the future of the nuclear deal are carefully considered. They in no way indicate that Iran intends to abrogate the nuclear agreement at the first opportunity. In fact, the unanimous view across the Iranian political space is that Trumps aim is to goad Tehran to walk away from the deal on its own.

As Ali Shamkhani, the head of Irans Supreme National Security Council, put it, Trump is laying a trap, and Iran will not fall for it. Elsewhere, in an explicit signal to the Europeans, China, and the Russians, Shamkhani also said that Iran is not willing to keep JCPOA at any cost, for JCPOA is valid only if all parties continue to respect it.

Iran wants to press the other parties to the nuclear deal to do their utmost to minimize the damage that may arise from American resistance. This is most evident in Tehrans insistence that the major economic powers in Europe and Asia ignore Trumps call to shun the Iranian economy. In other words, Tehran is engaging in its own systematic goading of international public opinion by trying to isolate Trump. As long as all the other signatories to the deal continue to abide by it, the Iranians will have no urge to walk away. Nor does the leadership in Tehran believe that Trump will have the political capital, at home or on the international stage, to mobilize support for renewed sanctions on Iran.

On Aug. 15, Rouhani made another point that did not receive as much attention as his remarks about turning back the nuclear clock. He said criticism inside Iran about the 2015 deal has subsided. He is right, and it is an important point. He is no longer depicted as the father of a deal that was meant to produce sanctions relief but that his hard-line foes said was a pledge that was dead on arrival. With the Iranian presidential elections over, the hard-liners are instead turning their condemnation to Trump for his anti-deal posturing.

What should Washington make of this political convergence in Tehran? Its important not to get too excited: Yes, Rouhani and even his most ardent critics agree that the nuclear deal is both a reality and worth saving. But whether this confluence amounts to a new trajectory in Iranian politics remains to be seen.

Here is what we do know. Rouhanis landslide election victory on May 19 was made possible only because Irans vast reformist-minded voter class opted to come out and cast a vote. The almost 24 million who backed him, many reluctantly, wanted to empower the president to forge ahead with bold policies that pressed for the release of political prisoners and increased representation for women and religious minorities. After all, that is what he promised as the incumbent candidate.

But so far Rouhani has shown no appetite for boldness in his second term. Instead, he appears to be doubling down on his first-term playbook  recognizing that change in the Islamic Republic can only be instituted by co-opting the supreme leader and not by attempting to force an agenda on Khamenei.

This is already evident. Just look at the makeup of Rouhanis cabinet nominations, which are up for confirmation this week. Not only did Rouhani reportedly seek Khameneis approval before the list was sent to the parliament for confirmation, an unusual step and one that contravenes the constitution, but his nominees are hardly of the reformist ilk. Mohammad Khatami, the elder of the reformist movement, who had backed Rouhani, was forced to publicly remind the president about his campaign promises.

Meanwhile, in his inauguration speech on Aug. 5, Rouhani avoided any topic that might dismay Khamenei. There was no mention of freeing political prisoners or questioning the vast powers of the IRGC or its military interventions in Syria and Iraq. Rouhani focused on assuring that there are no serious splits inside the regime and dismissed the idea of duality of power in Tehran as merely a myth. Foreign businesses, he said, should feel safe investing in Iran.

The head of the IRGC, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, did not attend the inauguration  perhaps a signal that contradicts Rouhanis attempt to prove Iranian politics is in harmony. It isnt, but Rouhani is not the only one who wants to move the political pendulum toward the center.

Khameneis own recent appointments also suggest a desire to strengthen the nucleus of the regime by keeping both reformists and the far-right out of key positions. His appointments this week to the Expediency Council, an organ that mediates between the elected parliament and the unelected Guardian Council, were devoid of both radical reformists and any candidates from the far right.

The fact that Khamenei and Rouhani are acting in concert is not coincidental and should not come as a surprise. Neither man is interested in major disruptions inside the regime. Meanwhile, a feasible strategy for Rouhani, as he looks to make himself into the inevitable choice for the top job when the day arrives, is to broaden his base.

Rouhani successfully cajoled reformist voters to pull the lever for him in the last presidential election  but, going forward, this is not the constituency that he needs the most. If he hopes to rise to the Islamic Republics top post, he needs to move toward the political center and even further to the right, where he will find the IRGC and other hard-liners. Rouhanis calculated war of words with Trump has to be seen in this broad context: Iran is unlikely to violate the nuclear deal as long as the EU, Russia, and China stick to it, but threatening to walk away will help the Iranian presidents political strategy at home.

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
BERLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's finance minister said the European Commission's demand that Dublin collect up to 13 billion euros ($13.8 bln) in back taxes from Apple was unjustified, in an interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) newspaper. The European Commission ordered Apple to repay taxes to Ireland after ruling last year that the U.S. technology company paid so little tax on its Ireland-based operations that it amounted to state aid. In the interview, extracts from which the FAZ published on Wednesday, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said the tax rules from which Apple benefited had been available to all and were not tailored for the U.S. technology giant. They did not violate European or Irish law, he added. The Irish government has said it will collect the money pending an appeal of the ruling by Apple, but Donohoe said it was not Dublin's job and the request was not justified. "We are not the global tax collector for everybody else," FAZ quoted him as saying. The money is currently being deposited in escrow. Donohoe also distanced himself from French and German proposals that the EU do more to prevent Chinese investors from buying strategically important European companies, saying this would endanger Europe's reputation for openness. "We must be very careful not to endanger our reputation as advocates for free trade," he said. He also appeared lukewarm on proposals by French President Emmanuel Macron for a euro zone budget and finance minister, saying the bloc's focus for the next two years should be further developing its banking union. (Reporting By Thomas Escritt, Editing by Michelle Martin and Susan Fenton)
Steve Bannons run as the White Houses chief strategist ended Friday, delivering a major victory to his growing list of opponents within President Donald Trumps administration, including son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Related: Why Did Steve Bannon Leave Trump's Staff? 4 Reasons For Strategists' Exit

The differences between the two, which led to months of reports of a simmering feud, was laid bare over the past week. Bannon was said to have been rejoicing at President Donald Trumps press conference Tuesday, in which he blamed both sides for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, during a white nationalist rally. Kushner is an Orthodox Jew.

Ivanka Trumps husband is also a moderate who has donated to Democrats and is at home among the corporate elite as the son of a New York real estate magnate. Bannon, on the other hand, is a former publisher for Breitbart News, which he called the platform for the alt-right, an umbrella term that encompasses white nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism. He detests the establishment and has said that he wants to bring it crashing down.

During one of their heated conversations, Bannon told Kushner, according to an April New York Times report: Heres the reason theres no middle ground: Youre a Democrat.

Bannon and Kushner were locked in a perennial battle for the ear of Trump, fighting to win the battle of influence over matters such as whether to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.

Bannon, Kushner

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

It is exactly that kind of squabbling that General John Kelly has reportedly been trying to eradicate since he became the presidents chief of staff late last month. Kelly was keen to gain control of the flow of information to the president and diminish the aides and family members vying for his attention. Bannons removal makes that task easier.

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A statement from the White House press secretary said Kelly and Bannon had mutually agreed that Friday would be Bannons final day.

It is a victory, too, for Trumps national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who only a couple of weeks ago appeared like he might be on the way out himself. Breitbart had published a series of negative stories about McMaster, thought by many to be at the direction of its former publisher. But rather than ousting McMaster, the stories appear to have backfired on Bannon, with Trump thought to be angry at his chief strategists undermining of members of his administration.

Last but not least, Bannons ouster is good news for Mike Pence, Trumps vice president, who represents the political establishment toward which Bannon had so much antipathy.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Lebanese army found a surface-to-air missile (SAM) in a weapons cache left by Nusra Front militants after it took over some of the jihadists' positions in northeast Lebanon, a Lebanese security source said on Friday. The cache also included U.S.-made so-called TOW anti-tank missiles, the source said. Photographs of the cache sent by the security source showed large numbers of shells and rockets. There have been sporadic reports throughout Syria's six-year-old civil war of rebel groups gaining access to SAMs. Last year the Syrian government said rebels had used one to shoot down a jet, but insurgents said they had downed it with anti-aircraft guns. The Nusra Front was the official branch of al Qaeda in Syria until it changed its name a year ago and broke formal allegiance to the global jihadist network. It held a pocket of territory straddling the border between Syria and Lebanon until a Hezbollah offensive last month that forced it to accept evacuation to a rebel-held part of Syria. Lebanon's army has taken over the positions that Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi'ite group allied to the Syrian government, took from the Nusra fighters last month. The Lebanese army is also preparing for an offensive against the last militant presence in the mountainous border area, an Islamic State pocket near to the one previously held by Nusra. (Reporting By Angus McDowall; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
By Tom Perry and Angus McDowall BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Lebanese army launched an offensive on Saturday against an Islamic State enclave on the northeastern border with Syria, as the Lebanese Shi'ite group Hezbollah announced an assault on the militants from the Syrian side of the frontier. The Lebanese army operation got underway at 5 a.m. (0200 GMT), targeting Islamic State positions near the town of Ras Baalbek with rockets, artillery and helicopters, a Lebanese security source said. The area is the last part of the Lebanese-Syrian frontier under insurgent control. A security source said the offensive was making advances with several hills taken in the push against the militants entrenched on fortified high ground, in outposts and in caves. An army spokesman said a third of the area in the hands of the militants was so far now recaptured since the offensive began with twenty militants killed in either direct combat, shelling or aerial strikes. Ten soldiers were injured. "The army has succeeded in eliminating a very large part of their men and equipment. We have tightened the noose around them and they have become much weaker," Colonel Nazih Jraish told reporters. The operation by Hezbollah and the Syrian army targeted the area across the border in the western Qalamoun region of Syria. Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV said that its fighters were ascending a series of strategic heights known as the Mosul Mountains that overlook several unofficial border crossings used by the militants. A Hezbollah statement said the group was meeting its pledge to "remove the terrorist threat at the borders of the nation" and was fighting "side by side" with the Syrian army. It made no mention of the Lebanese army operation. The Lebanese army said it was not coordinating the assault with Hezbollah or the Syrian army. SENSITIVE Any joint operation between the Lebanese army on the one hand and Hezbollah and the Syrian army on the other would be politically sensitive in Lebanon and could jeopardize the sizeable U.S. military aid the country receives. Washington classifies the Iran-backed Hezbollah as a terrorist group. "There is no coordination, not with Hezbollah or the Syrian army," General Ali Kanso said in a televised news conference, adding that the army had started to tighten a siege of IS in the area two weeks ago. "It's the most difficult battle so far waged by the Lebanese army against terrorist groups - the nature of the terrain and the enemy," he said, characterizing the 600 Islamic State fighters in the area as 600 "suicide bombers". In a recent speech, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Lebanese army would attack Islamic State from its side of the border, while Hezbollah and the Syrian army would simultaneously assault from the other side. A commander in the military alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad said that "naturally" there was coordination between the operations. Last month, Hezbollah forced Nusra Front militants and Syrian rebels to leave nearby border strongholds in a joint operation with the Syrian army. The Lebanese army did not take part in the July operation, but it has been gearing up to assault the Islamic State pocket in the same mountainous region. Footage broadcast by Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV showed the group's fighters armed with assault rifles climbing a steep hill in the western Qalamoun. It also later showed a group of Islamic State fighters who had allegedly handed themselves over to their forces. The Lebanese Shi'ite group has had a strong presence there since 2015 after it defeated Syrian Sunni rebels who had controlled local villages and towns. Many rebels, alongside thousands of Sunni refugees fleeing violence and Hezbollah's control over their towns, took shelter on the Lebanese side of the border strip. Hezbollah has provided critical military support to President Bashar al-Assad during Syria's six-year-long war. Its Lebanese critics oppose Hezbollah's role in the Syrian war. Northeastern Lebanon was the scene of one of the worst spillovers of Syria's war into Lebanon in 2014, when Islamic State and Nusra Front militants attacked the town of Arsal. The fate of nine Lebanese soldiers taken captive by Islamic State in 2014 remains unknown. Hezbollah and its allies have been pressing the Lebanese state to normalize relations with Damascus, challenging Lebanon's official policy of neutrality toward the conflict next door. (Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Editing by Andrew Bolton and Richard Balmforth)
The death of the 13 North Atlantic right whales in the past few months has raised concern over the future of the endangered species, only around 500 of which exist in the world.

The latest death was reported from about 160 miles east of Cape Cod by the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday.

This was the third right whale death in the U.S. waters this summer and comes a week after the last death was reported in Marthas Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Moreover, Canadian authorities have documented 10 dead whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence since June 7.

With over two percent of the population dead within a matter of months, conservation groups and marine scientists have called for tougher measures to prevent ship strikes and entanglements  which have caused most whale mortalities on record  in the United States and Canada.

In fact, preliminary results of necropsies performed on some of the dead whales this summer indicate three of them suffered from internal bleeding typical of blunt force trauma consistent with a ship strike.

Dr. Kimberley Davies, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University with Chris Taggart, a renowned biological oceanographer at the university have developed the Whales, Habitat and Listening Experiment (WHaLE) project to study the impact of vessel strikes on the whales.

WHaLE uses acoustic technology, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and an existing marine tracking infrastructure to focuses on where the whales are and why. The project also charts ocean conditions present where right whales congregate.

People want answers. They want to know why the right whales are dying and how to stop it, Dr. Davies said. The right whale research community is collecting some of the data required to try and answer those questions. But its going to take time.

However, biologist Regina Asmutis-Silvia of the Plymouth, Massachusetts-based group Whale and Dolphin Conservation said time was of the essence in making sure that the species doesnt go extinct.

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This level of deaths in such a short time is unprecedented, she said. I just dont know that right whales have time for people to figure it out. They need help now, she told Associated Press this week.

The U.S. and Canada have taken measures with a focus on protecting right whales.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has put in force a host of new methods, including surveillance flights along the Gulf of St. Lawrence coastline and closing a snow crab fishing area, said Sarah Gilbert, a spokeswoman for the department. The Canadian government has also announced new speed restrictions for ships, something which has been implemented in the U.S. too.

Dr. Davies said these measures reflected how serious the issue was but emphasized the importance of getting the science right before large-scale, permanent measures were taken.

She said her project will eventually collect enough data to better understand the distribution of right whale prey fields and the boundaries of their habitats among others.

When youre trying to decide where a closed off area should be, it should encompass not only where youre seeing the whales today, but where you might expect them to be over longer time and space scales, Dr. Davies said.

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If you waited until just a few days before the eclipse to get protective glasses or a filter, your chances of tracking them down now are pretty slim. Instead of frantically trying to find an ISO compliant vendor online and paying for rush shipping you might want to consider making your own viewer. But remember anything you make at home will not be suitable for looking directly at the eclipse or the sun, ever. Homemade products will instead let you see a projection of the moon eclipsing the sun.

The option of a pinhole projector means you can experience the eclipse without looking at the sun with glasses or a filter. This can be good for children viewing the eclipse who may try to remove their glasses before totality is reached or who might not get their glasses back on by the time the sun peaks back out. Looking at the eclipse without protection can cause eye damage, sometimes permanent. Just like you would never look directly at the sun on a normal day, dont try to during the eclipse either.

2017 total eclipse

Photo: NASA

How to make a projector for solar eclipse viewing:

There are a few ways you can make a pinhole projectors and you can even try using some household items you have instead of getting crafty for your eclipse day.

The classic pinhole projection is a good method to use and you only need a few items to make it, NASA has a video on its site that gives good directions for this. First youll need a cardboard box, a cereal box is perfect. Cut a piece of paper to fit the bottom of the box and tape it inside the box on the bottom, the part that is flat on a surface when the box is standing up. Then seal the top of the box and cut rectangular squares out of each top corner then cover one of these rectangles with aluminum foil and put one hole in the center of the foil. When viewing the eclipse turn your back to it and have the aluminum foil face it so that the sunlight can get through the hole you poked. Look through the empty rectangle you made on the other side of the top to watch the light get eclipsed by the moon. This type of projector is good because theres no outside light for your eyes to take in.

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Other methods include putting a single hole in a piece of flat cardboard and holding it over a white piece of paper or surface during the eclipse, this will have a similar end result as the pinhole projector made from a box but allows multiple people to view at once.

You can even use a pasta colander, one that has holes in it not made of metal mesh, and just hold that above a surface in direct sunlight during the eclipse.

There are a few retail stores NASA recommends that carry eclipse glasses and filters, but by now they might be sold out, especially if you dont live in the path of totality. Those stores include 7-Eleven, KMart and Hobby Town. You can check a full list of retailers on NASAs website.

If you wont be in line with the total solar eclipse or you cant get outside for the event, there will be plenty of live streams available. NASA will be live streaming the eclipse from a variety of view on and off the ground to a number of social media and streaming sites. This is another safe option for small children who might be finicky and try to steal a look at the sun.

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A Missouri lawmaker is in hot water after reportedly posting to social media about her wish to see President Trump's White House tenure meet a premature end.

I hope Trump is assassinated! state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Democrat from University City, reportedly wrote in a Facebook exchange Thursday morning.

Read: Cops: Man Arrested for Election Night Tweet: 'My Life Goal Is to Assassinate Trump'

By the afternoon, top members of her own party were calling for her resignation.

I condemn it," U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill said. "Its outrageous. And she should resign."

U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, (D-St. Louis) said: Calling for the assassination of the president is a federal crime" and called Chappelle-Nadal "an embarrassment to our state. She should resign immediately.

And Missouri Senate Democratic Caucus leader Sen. Gina Walsh said Chappelle-Nadal "should be ashamed of herself for adding her voice to this toxic environment.

As other leaders assailed her, Chappelle-Nadal admitted in an interview that she had, in fact, written the post but quickly deleted it.

I didnt mean what I put up," she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Absolutely not. I was very frustrated. Things have got to change. It was in response to the concerns that I am hearing from residents of St. Louis. I have deleted it, and it should have been deleted, but there is something way more important that we should be talking about.

Despite her remorse, the lawmaker stated outright that she plans to serve out her term.

Watch: Who Is the 20-Year-Old Man That Wanted to Assassinate Donald Trump

I am not resigning," she said. "What I said was wrong, but I am not going to stop talking about what led to that, which is the frustration and anger that many people across America are feeling right now."

The St. Louis field office of the U.S. Secret Service said they are looking into the matter.

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Watch: Staging of Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar' Features 'Trump' Getting Assassinated

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Ms Chappelle-Nadal became a leading critic during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri after the police killing of Michael Brown: YouTube

A US state senator is being investigated by the Secret Service for saying she hopes President Donald Trump will be assassinated.

Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a Democrat state senator from Missouri, made the remarks on her personal Facebook page but then later deleted them.

The politician said I hope Trump is assassinated! in response to a post suggesting Vice President Mike Pence would try to oust Mr Trump from the Oval Office.

The Secret Service said they are looking into the comments and say all threats against the President will be subject to investigation.

For more news videos visit Yahoo View, available on iOS and Android.

Ms Chappelle-Nadal, who gained prominence for criticising the Ferguson police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, has since deleted the comment and apologised.

But the politician, who has been an outspoken activist while in the Legislature, has been insistent she will not be stepping down over the furore and said her comment was borne out of frustration with the current political landscape.

She also said she was frustrated with the presidents response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

I am not resigning. When people of colour are respected by this White House and they are willing to do real work, I'll sit down with them. People are traumatized! she said on Twitter.

She told the St Louis Post-Dispatch: "I didn't mean what I put up. Absolutely not. I have deleted it, and it should have been deleted.

"I am not resigning. What I said was wrong, but I am not going to stop talking about what led to that, which is the frustration and anger that many people across America are feeling right now."

The comments about assassination have drawn swift condemnation from Republicans and fellow democrats and some have called for her to step down,

Stephen Webber, the chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party, said the remarks were indefensible and the party will absolutely not tolerate calls for the assassination of the president.

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Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill said: I condemn it. Its outrageous and she should resign.

Ms Chappelle-Nadal, who has been subject to frequent vitriolic abuse from Trump supporters online, became a leading critic during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri after the police killing of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black resident who was unarmed when fatally shot by an officer in 2014.

The politician, who is from the St. Louis suburb of University City, took part in protests against the fatal shooting and was among the protesters who were tear-gassed by law enforcement officials.

She argued institutional inequality was a critical issue which lay behind the civil unrest in Ferguson and had contributed to heightened tensions between police and the community, saying: "I have to tell you that there has been systematic racism, institutionally in state government for decades, including my own state party, she said. People are angry, and they are hurt, and theyre trying to figure out: how are they going to receive justice?

Johnny Depp was also recently forced to apologise for joking about assassinating President Trump, saying his remarks were in poor taste.

Speaking during an appearance at Glastonbury music festival, the Pirates of the Caribbean actor publicly pondered how long it had been since an actor had killed a US president.

"I apologise for the bad joke I attempted last night in poor taste about President Trump," Depp said in a statement.

"It did not come out as intended, and I intended no malice. I was only trying to amuse, not to harm anyone."
A man was arrested after allegedly stabbing his sister and two cousins to death in a Maryland home on Friday while he was babysitting them.

Police identitied the girls on Saturday morning as Ariana Elizabeth DeCree, 9; Nadira Janae Withers, 6; and Ajayah Royale DeCree, 6.

Antonio Williams, 25, of Clinton, has been arrested on three counts of first-degree murder and other related charges in the slaying of the girls. Williams is the brother of Withers, police said.

A video message that appeared to be from the mother of the DeCree girls was posted on the womans Facebook page on Saturday, according to the Washington Post.

Hug you alls loved ones tonight, the woman said. Hold the people you hold close tonight because I never thought I would really say this and mean this. Tomorrow is not gauranteed..."

Williams was reportedly babysitting the girls but when a relative returned home from work at 7:30 a.m. she found the girls suffering from stab wounds in a basement bedroom, police.

A 2-year-old child was also reportedly found in the home, but was unharmed.

Williams, 25, was taken into custody by local police late that night in connection with the gruesome slayings. He allegedly stayed at the scene of the crime after the killings and later told police he stabbed the girls while they were laying in bed.

Read: Teen Mom Facing Charges After Baby She Abandoned in Trash Bag Survives 3 Days: Cops

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"We are now in the midst of a major investigation into what happened to these children and who killed them," police department spokeswoman Jennifer Donelan said earlier Friday.

Read: Woman Fatally Shoots Wife in the Face, Gets Charged With Murder: Authorities

This is one of the the most difficult scenes that our officers arrived on, Donelan said.

Relatives of the victims are being contacted and counseling has even been offered to officers who responded and found the bodies, NBC reported

Watch: Teens Charged With Murder After Killing Man Who Responded To Craigslist Ad: Cops

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By Felix Onuah ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari returned home on Saturday from three months of medical leave in Britain where he received treatment for an unspecified ailment. Buhari's leave, which began on May 7 and was his second this year, left many in Nigeria questioning whether he was well enough to run the country. The refusal of officials to disclose the nature of the ailment has led to speculation about the illness. Dressed in a dark kaftan and Muslim prayer hat, the 74-year-old Buhari walked unaided from his plane - holding rails on either side of him - after it landed at the international airport in the capital, Abuja. He was greeted by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has acted as interim leader, and was accorded a military salute. He made no statement and immediately traveled to the presidential villa. Buhari, who took office in May 2015, handed over power to Osinbajo in his absence to allay concerns of a void at the helm of Africa's biggest economy. "President Buhari is expected to speak to Nigerians in a broadcast by 7 a.m (0600 GMT) on Monday, Aug. 21," his spokesman, Femi Adesina, said in a statement on Saturday. Buhari's absence sparked numerous protests, including demands that Buhari should resign, as well as calls for more transparency about the president's condition. The All Progressives Congress (APC), the party of president and his deputy, praised the vice president's contribution. In a statement, it said Osinbajo had delivered "competent leadership in the absence of President Buhari and especially commends him for his effort to unite the country and drive the recovery of the national economy". Osinbajo's actions included overseeing the creation of a market-determined foreign exchange window that helped push share prices to near three-year highs. He also announced the legalizing of illicit refineries in the Niger Delta, the OPEC member's restive southern oil hub. The move calmed tensions and prompted regional leaders to abandon a threat to pull out of talks with the government aimed at maintaining the peace that has this year halted attacks on energy facilities which in 2016 cut oil production by more than a third. The medical leave was Buhari's second break for treatment in Britain this year after a spell of two months from January. Buhari reduced his working day to a few hours after returning on March 10 to Nigeria from his first stint of medical leave, diplomats and government sources said. Little was seen of Buhari during his second stint in London. The first photograph of him was released on July 23, nearly 80 days after he left. The frequency of images released increased in the last few weeks with Buhari appearing in photographs with visiting Nigerian state governors, the archbishop of Canterbury and the OPEC secretary general. (Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Edmund Blair and Richard Balmforth)
In the face of a dismal steelhead run, Idaho canceled its harvest season this fall and instead will implement rules allowing only catch and release.

Washington is expected to announce similarly restrictive measures in the coming days, likely marking the first time in decades that catch-and-keep steelhead fishing will not be allowed on the Snake River and its tributaries. The move is a gut punch for fishing-related businesses from outfitters and guides who make their living helping people catch fish to businesses  like tackle shops, hotels and restaurants  that count on an influx of anglers and their cash each fall and winter.

I just lost 70 percent of my income for my year, said Toby Wyatt, owner of Reel Time Fishing at Clarkston, Washington. Its probably the biggest blow Ive ever had in my career as a guide.

The Lewis Clark Valley Chamber of Commerce announced it canceled its annual Snake-Clearwater Steelhead Derby that serves as both a fundraiser and a way to showcase the fishing opportunities and other amenities of the valley to people who come from out of town to participate in the weeklong event. Chamber President Kristin Kemak said the chamber will look to hold an alternative event that highlights other outdoor opportunities.

Kemak and Wyatt both said they understand why the states are moving to restrict harvest and believe its the best way to protect the health of future fishing seasons.

I 100 percent agree with it, Wyatt said. I know its not the states fault at all. Its just a combination of drought conditions and The Blob in the ocean.

Riggins Mayor Glenna McClure was less understanding and said she would have liked fisheries managers to wait before implementing restrictions that are sure to hurt small towns like hers.

For the economy of Riggins, that will just kill this little town, she said. People dont come here to catch and release. They come here to catch and keep.

This fall will mark the second year in a row that A-run steelhead have performed poorly. Last year the run comprised of fish that generally spend just one year in the ocean tanked. Biologists blamed low flows in the Snake and Columbia rivers when the fish migrated to the Pacific Ocean as juveniles, and The Blob  a strange mass of warm water that enveloped the near coastal waters off of Oregon and Washington.

The poor return of A-run steelhead in 2016 signaled a likely poor run of B-run steelhead this year. Those steelhead generally spend two years in salt water and experienced the same poor river and ocean conditions in 2016. The larger B-run fish are just starting to enter the Columbia River and fisheries managers dont know yet if their prediction will play out.

But they are reeling from the number of A-run steelhead counted to date at Bonneville Dam. Fisheries managers expected a down year but hoped it would best the 2016 run by a wide margin. So far the opposite is true. The run is amongst the lowest on record at Bonneville and the lowest ever at Lower Granite Dam on the Snake River.

Before the run began, fisheries managers estimated 112,100 A-run steelhead would pass Bonneville Dam this year. They now expect only about 54,000 including 21,000 wild fish.

Joe DuPont, regional fisheries manager of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at Lewiston, said just 3,300 Idaho-bound hatchery steelhead have been counted at Bonneville and only 6,600 are expected. Of those only about 4,600 will make it back to Idaho.

Hatcheries in the state need 2,680 steelhead for spawning. However, DuPont said many of the 4,600 A-run steelhead will return to places they cant be trapped and its not unusual for more than half of the returning hatchery steelhead to be harvested during fishing seasons.

As such, we need to restrict harvest to ensure we keep our hatcheries full, he said.

DuPont said biologists will closely monitor both the A-run and B-run, and if numbers pick up its possible that harvest could be reopened in select areas. He said he is confident the catch and release regulations are sufficient to protect wild fish that are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

I can tell you we have had many catch and release fisheries across the state of Idaho where fish rebounded and flourished, he said. Catch and release fishing has proven to be a successful technique to help rebound fisheries that have declined for various reasons.

The emergency rules took effect Friday. The main catch-and-keep steelhead season on the Snake and Salmon rivers doesnt open until Sept. 1, but a short section of the Clearwater River, from its mouth to Memorial Bridge at Lewiston, opened Aug. 1.
Asylum seekers sit in front of their tent in a temporary camp in Quebec, which has seen a surge in asylum-seekers, on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2017: Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press via AP

The number of asylum seekers illegally crossing the US border into Canada has tripled amid an influx of Haitians.

Apprehensions of asylum-seekers by authorities soared from 884 in June to 3,135 in July, according to government data.

Most of those contacts occurred in Quebec, where the Canadian military has constructed a camp to accommodate the volume of mostly Haitian refugees making the crossing.

In contrast to America, where Donald Trump has followed through on campaign vows to tighten immigration laws by seeking a halt on refugee entries and advocating a drastic cut in legal immigration slots, Canada has taken a more welcoming stance.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has openly embraced refugees, and the government has characterised a rising ceiling in the number of immigrants allowed in as a boost to the economy. An online ad from a Canadian law firm seeks to attract customers with the line Illegal in the US & Afraid? Immigrate to Canada.

But a hoax may have played a part in the growing number of Haitians arriving in Canada, with an erroneous message claiming that Canada was openly encouraging refugees from the impoverished nation to emigrate.

In the aftermath of a devastating 2010 earthquake, tens of thousands of Haitians living in the United States have been shielded from deportation by the governments grant of temporary protected status.

In May the Trump administration decided to extend that protection for another six months. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly made it clear at the time that the window for Haitians to remain was closing, saying in a statement that the six-month period should allow people to make necessary arrangements for their ultimate departure from the United States.
Jerusalem (AFP) - A Palestinian teenager who tried to attack an Israeli border guard in the occupied West Bank with a knife on Saturday was shot dead, an Israeli police spokeswoman said.

She said the 17-year-old attacker approached a group of border guards and pulled a knife from his bag to attack one of them, and another guard opened fire on him.

The Palestinian health ministry identified the teenager as Qoteiba Yussef Zahran from the Tulkarm region in the northern West Bank.

The Israeli spokeswoman said one of the border guards suffered a slight leg injury during the incident, but did not say clearly if he had been stabbed by the Palestinian.

Israel's public radio said the guard was the victim of "friendly fire".

A wave of unrest that broke out in October 2015 has killed more than 294 Palestinians or Arab Israelis, 47 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.
Vice President Mike Pence is a big fan of his boss, and on Thursday he found yet another way to praise President Donald Trump: Pence compared him to President Theodore Roosevelt.

Specifically, Pence said Trump has the vision, energy, and can-do spirit that Roosevelt had.

Two peas in a pod: President Theodore Roosevelt, left, and President Donald Trump, right. (Photo: Getty)

Once youve stopped rolling your eyes, you can read the full tribute, reported by the Chicago Tribune:

In President Donald Trump, I think the United States once again has a president whose vision, energy and can-do spirit is reminiscent of President Teddy Roosevelt. Then, as now, we have a builder of boundless optimism, who seeks to usher in a new era of shared prosperity all across this new world.

This comparison might seem deeply flawed, but it is pretty spot-on in some ways.

Take both presidents records on race, for example. Trump spent the weekend facing criticism for saying there was violence on both sides of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left one woman dead. He doubled down on those comments in the following days, suggesting that there were very fine people among protesters marching with torches and neo-Nazi regalia, and lamented a growing movement to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces.

History has not looked kindly on Roosevelts racist statements. He referred to white Americans as the forward race, and believed that it was white peoples responsibility to raise the status of minorities through training the backward race[s] in industrial efficiency, political capacity and domestic morality.

One way these two are not alike? Roosevelt is considered by some to be a war hero for his role in the Spanish-American War. Trump, in contrast, had five military deferments during the Vietnam War  but he still has strong opinions on those who have served. Hes also happy to take credit for the Panama Canal, constructed partly during Roosevelts presidency.

Another fun comparison is that Roosevelt used to use the word bully as a congratulatory exclamation. Thats not exactly how we use it now, but its still a word many associate with the president.

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Also on HuffPost

A man holds up a sign during a protest against racism gathered in front of the White House, on August 14, 2017 in Washington, DC.

Protestors rally on Fifth Avenue near Trump Tower.

Hundreds of protesters gather outside of Trump Tower.

A woman raises her fist at the front of a march down Washington Avenue to protest racism and the violence over the weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Protestors rally on Fifth Avenue near Trump Tower ahead of President Donald Trump's arrival, August 14, 2017 in New York City.

Supporters of anti-Trump protestors hold up signs inside Trump Tower ahead of President Donald Trump's arrival, August 14, 2017 in New York City.

Pedestrians walk past a 15-foot tall inflatable rat in the likeness of U.S. President Donald Trump at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street up the road from Trump Tower, August 14, 2017 in New York City.

A President Donald Trump supporter (left) argues with anti-Trump protesters as they gather outside of Trump Tower.

Protestors rally on Fifth Avenue near Trump Tower.

Hundreds of protesters gather outside of Trump Tower.

Protestors rally on Fifth Avenue.

A man holds up a sign during a protest against racism in front of the White House.

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The sight of torch-wielding, chanting white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, jarred the country over the weekend, a national distress that only deepened when a counter-protester died and 19 others were wounded in a car attack there on Saturday. An alleged white supremacist, James Alex Fields Jr., has been charged in that attack.

White supremacy  the view that white people are racially superior  and neo-Nazism are nothing new, of course. But recent research suggests the ideologies are becoming louder. A 2016 report from George Washington University's Program on Extremism, for example, found that white nationalist organizations have seen their follower numbers on Twitter grow by more than 600 percent since 2012. These groups had 3,542 followers collectively in 2012. That number had risen to 25,406 by 2016.

What drives these hateful ideologies? New research suggests that tendencies toward aggression and "dark triad" personality traits (Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism) are more prominent among supremacists who identify with the political movement known as the alt-right than in the general public. (Machiavellianism is a tendency to manipulate other people for one's own gain.) But ultimately, racial extremism may be about belonging, other research shows. The community aspect of white supremacy is so strong that even a person who finds they have nonwhite ancestry can be embraced, another new study reveals. [7 Reasons America Still Needs Civil Rights Movements]

"Racism and racial beliefs generally aren't based on logic, at least not in the sense of an objective scientific logic," John Cheng, a professor of Asian and Asian-American studies at Binghamton University in New York, told Live Science in an email. "As beliefs, they are the products of individual and collective psychology. In other words, people have a way of believing what they want to believe."

The process of radicalization

The recent prominence of white supremacists as a political force seems inextricably tied to the rise of Donald Trump: On white supremacist networks on Twitter, users focused on retweeting content about two primary topics: "white genocide" and Donald Trump, the George Washington University's report found. In the wake of the Charlottesville events, movement leaders like David Duke praised Trump's statements that decried violence on "both sides."

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"Thank you, President Trump, for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa," Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, tweeted, referring to Black Lives Matter and anti-fascist protesters.

There are political grievances driving the modern white supremacy movement, said Sammy Rangel, a social worker and co-founder of "Life After Hate," a group that seeks to help people shed white supremacist ideologies. When talking with "formers," or people who have left white supremacist groups, Rangel and his colleagues hear two familiar reasons for joining those groups, he told Live Science.

The first is anger over affirmative action policies, which these groups view as oppressive and unfair to white people. The second is resentment over concepts like "white privilege," which makes people feel as though they have to own the shame and guilt of their ancestors' actions.

Arguments over affirmative action and white privilege are fairly standard political debates, but for those who cross the line into visiting Stormfront (a neo-Nazi internet forum) or tweeting Nazi memes, such grievances are a first step toward looking for scapegoats, Rangel said. Politicians stoke the flames by grandstanding about immigrants or "making America great again," he said. [11 Immigrant Scientists Who Made Great Contributions to America]

"That's all stuff that is selling these ideas as valid," he said. "You hear it from somebody very influential, so it must be true," he said, describing the thoughts such people may have.

And then there is personal vulnerability, Rangel said. Nascent supremacists are like atoms missing a proton, he said. They're lacking something socially or emotionally, and white supremacist organizations step in to fill the void.

These people "are vulnerable to receive the message of these ideological projects, these narratives," Rangel said. "It's an easy fit into that need-structure they have. Through getting that need met, they start to feel empowered. Their sense of adventure is activated. They're becoming part of something bigger and more meaningful than themselves."

This isn't a one-step process, Rangel said. Usually, there's a phase of grooming, followed by increasing pressure to take action.

"You need to be an activist, but they have equated activism with violence, so if you're not being violent, you're not really being an activist," Rangel said. [10 Historically Significant Political Protests]

The power of racial division

Race is a deep-seated and powerful concept in American history, said Rangel, who survived a race riot while imprisoned in the early 1990s. As such, race is an easy crystallization point for hate and violence. And dehumanization of other races seems to be an attitude that's important in differentiating white supremacists from other Americans, and even from other members of the alt-right. [What Is the Difference Between Race and Ethnicity?]

University of Arkansas psychology professor Patrick Forscher and professor of management and organization Nour Kteily from Northwestern University in Illinois surveyed self-proclaimed members of the alt-right and compared their attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and personality traits with people who did not identify as alt-right. The alt-right is a loosely defined movement of people who generally support white nationalism, protectionist policies and right-wing populism. Because there is no one definition of alt-right, Forscher and Kteily asked people if they personally considered themselves part of that group. They also asked people to define "alt-right," and threw out the surveys of those who gave nonsensical answers or definitions copy-pasted from Google results.

Overall, the researchers found that alt-right members are more likely to self-report aggression (committed both in person and online) and that they are higher in negative personality traits, especially psychopathy, a trait defined by antisocial disorder and lack of empathy.

Alt-righters were also more Machiavellian, or willing to manipulate others for their own gain, and more narcissistic than the non-alt-righters. In addition, alt-righter were more likely to dehumanize minority groups as well as political groups like government workers or journalists, Forscher told Live Science.

The research was preliminary and could not fully represent the entire alt-right movement. Survey respondents consisted of 447 alt-right adherents and 382 non-adherents, all recruited online. Nevertheless, the researchers found an intriguing schism among the alt-righters. Most of them clustered into two groups: Two hundred and twenty-six endorsed a set of attitudes and beliefs that the researchers dubbed "populist." These people were more concerned about government corruption than the rest of the alt-righters were. Another 217 skewed more "supremacist," the researchers found. This group was simply more extreme in many ways, Forscher said.

"They are higher in the motivation to express prejudice; they dehumanize other groups to a greater extent; they are higher on the dark triad traits, and they report behaving aggressively toward others to a greater extent," Forscher said.

It's not clear to what extent these people represent those who marched in Charlottesville, or whether "populist" alt-righters transition into "supremacist" alt-righters with greater involvement in the movement, Forscher said. The new study has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal but has not been published. A preprint is available online, however. Forscher said he hopes that continuing research will help uncover new ways to lead people out of the white supremacist mindset.

"The people in the alt-right sample in general  and in particular, it seems, in the supremacist cluster  reported doing things that are bad," Forscher said. "They are reporting harassing others. They're reporting doxxing others [revealing personal information about people online], and they have a bunch of characteristics that are associated with aggressive behavior.  I think we need to think pretty seriously about how to prevent things like what we are seeing in Charlottesville."

The challenge of changing attitudes

Moving people out of the white supremacist mindset is not easy. Another study that has not yet been published but that was presented on Monday (Aug. 14) at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Montreal shows just how hard it can be: Even when racists find out that they are not entirely white, that study found, they maintain their racism, the study found. [How to Talk About Race to Kids: Experts' Advice for Parents]

The research focused on the white supremacist site Stormfront, which requires its users to be entirely European and without Jewish ancestry. (Of note, a study published in 2013 revealed that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically European.) The site started in 1996 and includes user forums, making it a long-term peephole into the minds of avowed white supremacists.

Aaron Panofsky, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles' Institute for Society and Genetics, was studying online participation in science along with his colleagues when he got a tip that white supremacists on Stormfront were posting and discussing results of genetic ancestry tests, some of which showed that the users were not quite as "white" as they'd hoped. Panofsky and his team combed through the site to analyze more than 3,000 individual posts that were responding to 153 different individuals writing about their genetic tests.

About a third of these posts were users celebrating that their tests had showed them to be, indeed, of European ancestry. Those posts usually got a few congratulatory responses. Another third were people posting their results without comment, which could get congratulatory responses or could fall into the third category, depending on what the results were. The third category consisted of people posting "disappointing" results that showed them to have non-European ancestry in their genetic backgrounds.

Surprisingly, for a group of people who value racial purity, the Stormfront users almost never sought to drum these posters out of town. Overwhelmingly, they came up with ways to reject the tests rather than the person who took them.

"My advice is to trust your own family tree genealogy research and what your grandparents have told you, before trusting a DNA test," one user reassured a disappointed poster.

Sometimes, users rejected genetic ancestry tests wholesale, calling them a Jewish conspiracy to make white people doubt their genetic heritage. Other users promoted the "mirror test." Do you see a white person when you look in the mirror? Great, you're white.

In other cases, users supported the concept of genetic testing as a whole, but used sophisticated scientific arguments to reject specific results. For example, they might argue that a test showed a person as having Native American ancestry not because they really did have that ancestry, but because the Native Americans used as the reference point for the test had picked up some European DNA along the line. That's a real scientific challenge to genetic ancestry testing, but exaggerated for white supremacist purposes, Panofsky and his colleagues wrote in a draft of their paper submitted for peer review.

"These criticisms are very sophisticated," Panofsky told Live Science. "They are technically based  but they are often a slightly off-kilter interpretation, an off-label interpretation."

It's similar to the way that deniers of evolution have built an entirely parallel, pseudoscientific system to bolster the concept of intelligent design, Panofsky added.

The point, Panofsky said, is that white supremacists aren't ignorant or dumb; they're capable of grasping quite complex arguments in order to support their pre-existing worldview. They're also capable of putting the community and closeness of Stormfront ahead of genetic information they'd rather ignore, he said.

"What Stormfront is giving a lot of people is a place to meet people and have friends," Panofsky said. "A lot of the stuff on there is dating advice and 'how do I deal with my family' and all this stuff. Someone might not meet the ideological criteria, but they're meeting the community criteria."

There was not a single case in which a user posted that genetic testing had made them see the error of their white supremacist ways, Panofsky said.

In fact, pulling people away from white supremacy doesn't start with arguing, challenging or presenting them with inconvenient facts about their own ancestry, Life After Hate's Rangel said. The first step toward rehabilitation, he said, is a genuine desire to understand what got that person to the point of believing in the ideology.

"I'm not there to challenge you. I'm there to listen. I'm there to share space with you," Rangel said of his work with people struggling with how and if to leave the movement. Eventually, Rangel will challenge the beliefs, he said  but only in an atmosphere of genuineness and compassion. The other key, he said, is re-creating an environment of social support and meaning.

"I have to help them fulfill their needs, the same needs they went to that group for," he said. "We have to help replace some of what is going to be taken away."

Original article on Live Science.

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Abuja (AFP) - The 106 Nigerian schoolgirls no longer in captivity by Boko Haram jihadists fighting against western-style education will all go to university from September, the country's minister for women's affairs said Friday.

One of the girls required a prosthetic leg following her ordeal, several needed surgery for injuries and four babies have been born as a result of their detention, Aisha Alhassan said in a statement.

The Islamist militants seized 276 schoolgirls from the remote northeast Nigerian town of Chibok in April 2014, triggering global condemnation and drawing attention to the bloody Boko Haram insurgency.

Former US first lady Michelle Obama led a worldwide social media campaign under the banner #BringBackOurGirls to raise awareness of the group's plight.

All 106 girls who either escaped or were released or rescued from their captors "will be resuming school at the American University of Nigeria foundation school in September 2017," said Alhassan.

Twenty-four girls who had managed to escape were already studying courses at the institution and will be joined by the rest of their freed classmates in the new school year.

The freed girls, who are all in good health, have received extensive trauma counselling since regaining their freedom.

"Previously frequent incidents of flashbacks, insomnia and nightmares have now been successfully brought under control," said Alhassan.

"The girls have become survivors and heroes in their own right."

In their quest to create a hardline Islamist state, Boko Haram, whose name roughly translated from Hausa means "Western education is sin", has waged a relentless campaign against education in northeast Nigeria.

Along with attacks on schools, thousands of women and young girls have been abducted during the eight-year insurgency, which has left at least 20,000 people dead and displaced more than 2.6 million.
A man armed with a knife has attacked pedestrians in the Russian city of Surgut -  /Youtube

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has claimed responsibility for a stabbing attack in Russia that has left two people in a serious condition.

The knife attacker stabbed eight people on the street in Russia's far northern city of Surgut before being shot by police, investigators said Saturday.

Isil's Amaq news agency claimed responsibility for the attack on Saturday.

The male attacker "carried out attacks on passers-by, causing stab wounds to eight" while "moving along central streets of the city" at around 11:20 am local time, said Russia's Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes.

It said that armed police then arrived and used their weapons on the attacker and "liquidated" him.

The incident took place in a city some 1,330 miles northeast of Moscow in the oil-rich Khanty-Mansi region.

Two of those stabbed are in a serious condition while five more are in a stable condition, the government of the Khanty-Mansi region said in a statement, calling the attacker so far "unidentified."

It called for calm over the incident, saying that "in the interests of public calm and also of the investigation, citizens and media are recommended to use reliable information in assessing the situation until all the circumstances are established."

However, Russian police initially said that terrorism was not the main angle of the investigation after identifying the attacker.

"The version that the attack was a terrorist one is not the main one," the interior ministry's press service in the Khanty-Mansi region told the Interfax news agency, saying that the attacker had been identified and may have suffered from psychiatric disorders.
White House terrorism advisor Sebastian Gorka could be the next one to leave the White House, sources have said: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Sebastian Gorka could be nex to leave Donald Trump's administration after his ally Steve Bannon was fired, it has been claimed.

Mr Gorka, who previously worked with Mr Bannon at Breitbart News, is another key figure of the Trump's administration populist stance.

Two sources with knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg he could be removed from his counter-terrorsim advisory role to Mr Trump in a move which could suggest White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is looking to root out Mr Bannon's allies and any officials prone to sparking public controversies.

Mr Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, joined the White House at the end of last month in a bid to get President Trump's legislative agenda back on track and bring order to what has been widely reported as a chaotic White House, with internal feuds and departures dominating media reports.

While the White House is riven by scandals, not least the investigation into whether Mr Trump's campaign officials colluded with Russia before last year's election, Mr Kelly may want to crack down on officials leaking details of White House conflicts to journalists.

Mr Gorka recenlty came under the spotlight when, during an interview with the BBC, he dismissed the idea that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would discuss military matters with North Korea as "nonsensical".

He made the comments after Mr Tillerson sought to downplay the escalating crisis and suggested there was still the possibility of dialogue between the two countries. He later accused the media of distorting his comments.

Like Mr Bannon, Mr Gorka is a far-right nationalist and, along with Stephen Miller, a senior policy advisor involved in shapinig Mr Trump's immigration policy. Hhe has come under growing scrutiny after the rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville turned violent.

In an interview with Breitbart News Daily three days before the violence in Charlottesville, Mr Gorka accused the media of focusing too much on white supremacists.

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Its this constant, Oh, its the white man. Its the white supremacists. Thats the problem. No, it isnt, Maggie Haberman, Mr Gorka said, referring to the prominent New York Times reporter.

John Weaver, who worked on John McCain's presidential campaigns and as an advisor to Ohio Governor John Kasich, who ran against Mr Trump in the Republican primaries, previously said the trio of Mr Bannon, Mr Gorka and Mr Miller should leave the White House.

Before Mr Bannon's departure was announced, Mr Weacer tweeted: "Bannon, Gorka, Miller and others must go. Period."

Later, he tweeted: "I have this vision of Gorka hiding under his desk, clutching his cereal box, Hungarian white nationalist medals and his Risk pieces."

Longstanding tea party activist Debbie Dooley previously told The Independent a decision by Mr Trump to purge the White House of Mr Bannon, Mr Gorka and Mr Miller would be "a slap in the face" to the President's base of supporters.
By Tom Polansek CHICAGO (Reuters) - South Korea lifted a ban on imports of U.S. poultry and eggs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Thursday, allowing American farmers to resume sales to the Asian country that suffered an egg shortage caused by its worst-ever bird flu outbreak. South Korea was importing more U.S. eggs earlier this year as it fought its own outbreak of bird flu. But in March, the country limited U.S. poultry imports after the first U.S. case of bird flu of the year was detected on a commercial chicken farm in Tennessee. Prior to that, Americans "were putting table eggs in there like they were going out of style," said Jim Sumner, president of the U.S. Poultry and Egg Export Council, a trade group. "They are in desperate need still," he said. South Korea, Asia's fourth-largest economy, was hit hard by the deadly H5N8 bird flu strain after the first case was confirmed in November, leading to a record culling of more than 37 million farm birds, more than a fifth of its total poultry population. Last month, South Korea's government downgraded its bird flu alert by one notch from the highest level, after more than a month passed without new cases. South Korea bans U.S. poultry imports when the United States detects any cases of bird flu. The USDA is now working to convince South Korean officials to limit future restrictions on shipments to the geographic regions in which the virus is detected. "Koreas lifting of its most recent ban is an important move for our poultry and egg industries, but it is still just the first step," USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. In 2014, the last full year without any bird flu-related U.S. trade restrictions in place, South Korea purchased $122 million in U.S. poultry products, including eggs, making it the United States tenth-largest market, according to the USDA. Last year, South Koreas imports from all countries exceeded $350 million in 2016, but only $39 million came from the United States. (Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by Dan Grebler and David Gregorio)
Film festival sets volunteer meetings

People interested in volunteering to help with the Covellite International Film Festival Sept. 12-17 in Butte are invited to meet-up gatherings.

All meet-ups start at 6 p.m. in the theater, 215 W. Broadway St. They are Wednesday, Aug. 23; Sunday, Aug. 27; Sunday, Sept. 3; and Sunday, Sept. 10.

Needed are ushers, ticket takers, venue captains, runners, and people to help at various booths. Volunteering for up to two four-hour shifts will get you a VIP pass for the entire run of the festival. Volunteers will get to meet filmmakers, see great musical acts, and experience workshops that will inspire your love of film and film-making. Details: Don Andrews, don@covellitefilmfest.org.

Boulder car show is Saturday

BOULDER -- The 25th annual Boulder Area Chamber of Commerce Classic Car Show is from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 26, at Veterans Park in Boulder. Over 80 classic cars will be on display and admission is free.

The show is part of the weekend of festivities surrounding the Jefferson County Fair and Rodeo.

Anyone who is interested in participating by showing a classic car or any type of vintage car are welcome. Visit the Boulder Chamber website at bouldermtchamber.org for more details or contact Stan Renskers at 406-225-4228.

Chalk and Walk Aug. 24 in Uptown Butte

Butte-Silver Bow Parks and Recreation and Music on Main will host a free Chalk and Walk at 3 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 24, on Main Street in uptown Butte.

The Chalk and Walk is for all ages and skill sets. Every artist will have their own blank squares that they can transform into pieces of art. Butte-Silver Bow Parks and Recreation will furnish the space and chalk and artists just need imagination.

Along with the Chalk and Walk, Shane Cox will perform his magic show on the Main Stage at 5 p.m. At 6 p.m., the Jiggawatts will perform their Like Totally Awesome 80s Music. Details: 406-497-6535.

Grizzly bear lecture at Caverns

WHITEHALL  The Grizzly Returns: Becoming Bear Aware, an interpretive program on grizzlies, starts at 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 25, at Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park, east of Whitehall.

Laurie Wolf will talk about how we can safely share the Montana landscape with grizzly bears. The program will cover the grizzly bear recovery and different bear safety practices. Participants will learn to identify a grizzly bear from a black bear, how to use bear spray, and recreate safely in bear country.

Wolf, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks MT WILD education program manager, will also discuss how to minimize attractants on private lands, secure livestock, recognize bear signs, avoid and handle bear encounters, and recognize different bear behaviors. Details: 406-287-3541.

Music by the Caverns Aug. 26

WHITEHALL --The final Music by the Caverns concert for 2017 will be from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 26, at Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park, east of Whitehall.

This family-friendly event gathers the community together to support local music and Montana State Parks. The concert will highlight several local artists including Bob Ringler & Friends and Gary The Ferg Ferguson with Rick Wine and David Cogley.

Some chairs will be available to use, but guests are encouraged to bring a picnic blanket, water, and snacks or anything else they may want to enjoy a day full of music.

Schedule of artists is as follows:

10 a.m.  To be announced; 11 a.m., Rick Wine; noon, Bob Ringler & Friends: Old Time Fiddle Tunes; 1 p.m., Rock and Flower; 2 p.m., Monty Montgomery; 3 p.m., The Ferg with Rick Wine and David Cogley; Ron Jung and Donna Weldon; Shelby Hutson; and 6 p.m., Music Jam (public is encouraged to join). Details: 406-287-3541.
By Brandon Shulleeta RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) - The mayor of Charlottesville called on Friday for a special session of Virginia's legislature to let localities decide the fate of Confederate monuments like the statue at the center of a far-right rally last week that turned deadly. Mayor Mike Signer issued his appeal amid an increasingly contentious debate over what to do with memorials to Confederate figures, who fought for the preservation of slavery during the U.S. Civil war, that are seen by opponents as offensive. In what has become the biggest domestic crisis of his presidency, Donald Trump has been sharply criticized, including by fellow Republicans, for blaming Charlottesville's violence not only on the white nationalist rally organizers, but also the anti-racism activists who opposed them. "Whether they go to museums, cemeteries, or other willing institutions, it is clear that they no longer can be celebrated in shared civic areas," Signer said in a statement, referring to the statues. "We can, and we must, respond by denying the Nazis and the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) and the so-called alt-right the twisted totem they seek." A 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, was killed and several people were injured when a man crashed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters at last Saturday's rally. A 20-year-old Ohio man has been charged with her murder. Some attendees at the rally were heavily armed, and Signer said in his statement he was also calling for legislation that would let localities ban open or concealed carry of weapons at some public events. And he said he wanted to find a way to memorialize Heyer's name and legacy. Heyer's mother told a memorial service on Thursday that her daughter's killers tried to silence her. "Well guess what? You just magnified her," Susan Bro told the service. Signer said that memorial was a profound turning point for him, and that it made him realize the significance of the city's statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee had changed. "Its historical meaning now, and forevermore, will be a magnet for terrorism," the mayor said in his statement. RALLYING POINTS FOR RACISTS Also on Friday, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe signed an executive order temporarily banning protests at the Lee Monument in downtown Richmond while new regulations governing demonstrations are put in place, the governor's office said. In many places, Confederate monuments have become rallying points for white nationalists. Efforts to remove many such statues have been stepped up since the Charlottesville rally, which was called by far-right groups to protest against plans to remove the Lee statue. In Durham, North Carolina, some businesses closed early and several hundred anti-racist demonstrators took to the streets following a rumor that the Ku Klux Klan were planning to parade through the city. By mid-afternoon, however, the rumored white-nationalist march had not materialized. In Maryland on Friday, authorities took down a statue of a 19th century chief justice, Roger Taney, who wrote an infamous 1857 ruling known as the Dred Scott decision that reaffirmed slavery and said black people could not be U.S. citizens. Trump on Thursday decried the removal of such monuments, drawing stinging rebukes from fellow Republicans in a controversy that inflamed racial tensions nationwide. The mother of Heyer, the woman killed in Charlottesville, said in a television interview on Friday that after Trump's comments, "I'm not talking to the president now." "You can't wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying, 'I'm sorry.' I'm not forgiving him for that," Susan Bro told ABC's "Good Morning America." "I've had death threats already ... because of what I'm doing right this second - I'm talking," Bro told MSNBC separately on Thursday. There are more than 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces across the United States, with 700 of those being monuments and statues, the Southern Poverty Law Center said. The large majority of these were erected long after the Civil War ended in 1865, according to the center, with many going up early in the 20th century amid a backlash among segregationists against the civil rights movement. More than half a dozen have been taken down since Saturday. (Reporting by Brandon Shulleeta in Richmond, Virginia; Additional reporting by Barry Yeoman in Durham, North Carolina; Gina Cherelus in New York, Susan Heavey and Ian Simpson in Washington, and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Frances Kerry and Lisa Shumaker)
Steve Bannon returned to the far-right Breitbart News on Friday, just over one year since he left the site to lead Donald Trumps then-flailing presidential campaign and months after becoming White House chief strategist.

The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today, Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow said Friday on the site. Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda.

I feel jacked up, Bannon told Weekly Standard. Now Im free. Ive got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, its Bannon the Barbarian. I am definitely going to crush the opposition. Theres no doubt. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now Im about to go back, knowing what I know, and were about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.

While White House officials have headed to the media, and vice versa, theres no precedent for a chief strategist to resume running a news operation the same day  not to mention promising to use the outlet as a weapon against adversaries.

Bannons departure was portrayed Friday as potentially the beginning of a public battle with members of the Trump team  and perhaps even the president himself. The coverage of the West Wing shake-up at times more closely resembled that of a scene from Westeros.

Winter is here, said one source close to Bannon, evoking the Game of Thrones tagline, while another spoke of the former White House adviser now being unchained. There was even talk of revolution to come.

There was speculation that Bannon would now target the so-called globalists in the White House, such as national economic council director Gary Cohn and deputy national security adviser Dina Powell, as well as the presidents family members Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

Though Breitbart directed some criticism toward Trump following his gratuitous attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime ideological ally, the site otherwise tends to lay blame for setbacks on the White House globalists, congressional Republicans and the mainstream news media.

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The possibility of Bannon or Breitbart turning on Trump should cause concern in the White House given the outlets influence on the presidents conservative base, which has continued to support the administration even as Trumps overall approval rating reaches historic lows.

On Friday evening, Bannon told Bloomberg Businessweeks Joshua Green that if theres any confusion out there, let me clear it up: Im leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents  on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America.

Bannons clarification followed senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak tweeting earlier in the day a social media motto of late founder Andrew Breitbart: #War.

Though Pollak stressed in an interview on MSNBC that the site would continue to be at war with its running list of targets  the mainstream media, Hollywood, Democrats, the left and the Republican establishment  there was a possibility that it could also aim at the Trump administration.

If Trump sticks to positions on immigration and trade favored by his political base, Pollak said, he will continue, probably, to see positive coverage from Breitbart and from other conservative news websites and from talk radio.

But if he veers away, if he pulls an Arnold Schwarzenegger and tries to reinvent himself as a liberal, he will see that support erode very, very quickly, said Pollak, who expressed similar concern Friday on Breitbart.

Bannon seems to think the administration has already veered off course, telling the Weekly Standard that the Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.

We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency, he said. But that presidency is over. Itll be something else. And therell be all kinds of fights, and therell be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.

Several right-wing media figures on Friday rallied around Bannon, who was seen as a true believer in the populist, nationalist cause long before Trump ran for the president.

Ann Coulter suggested the president caved to media pressure in ousting the controversial adviser.

Who will media decide @realDonaldTrump has to fire next?  Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 18, 2017

Paul Joseph Watson, an Infowars editor-at-large and far-right YouTube star, tweeted that Bannon could have a far bigger influence than what he was restricted to in the White House.

Some former colleagues and critics of Bannon predicted hed direct fire back on the White House.

He will continue to use his weapon of choice, Breitbart, to attack his adversaries inside the West Wing  mainly Jared, Ivanka, Cohn, etc. He will relentlessly attack Congressional Republican leadership like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell (and Jeff Flake and John McCain), Kurt Bardella, a former Breitbart spokesman and political commentator, wrote Friday on HuffPost.

Former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro predicted Friday on Fox News that Bannons departure is going to cause a major rift between Breitbart and Trump.

He also suggested Bannons goal at Breibart would be to declare himself the conscience of the nationalist, populist movement that he helped build and to use that power to smash the president when he thinks the president is wrong.

But even if Bannon doesnt immediately go after the president, he could provoke a split in Trumps media base.

Rupert Murdoch, who owns the reliably pro-Trump Fox News and outlets like The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, and who speaks regularly to the president, reportedly urged him to fire Bannon on multiple occasions.

And now Bannon, according to Vanity Fairs Gabriel Sherman, is gearing up for war against Rupert Murdoch.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Ousted White House strategist Steve Bannon has declared the Donald Trump presidency "over", following his departure from the billionaire's administration.

Mr Bannon, a right-wing ideologue who co-founded the Breitbart News website, pronounced himself "free" and said he now had "my hands back on my weapons" at the outlet.

He and Mr Trump's new chief of staff, John Kelly, agreed he would leave the White House on Friday. Mr Bannon said he had given his resignation earlier in the month, though it was also reported that Mr Trump had decided to let him go.

He told the Weekly Standard, a conservative opinion magazine: "The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.

"We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. Itll be something else. And therell be all kinds of fights, and therell be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over."

During Mr Trump's "America first" campaign and his early days in the Oval Office, Mr Bannon was considered a key influencer and was even awarded a place on the National Security Council's principals committee, the top interagency group overseeing national security  though he was later removed.

His nationalist stances on issues like immigration, trade and society were reflected in Mr Trump's speeches and policies, and are widely seen as having drawn together the New Yorker's support base after he joined the struggling campaign as chief executive last August.

But once in power, he was forced to compete for influence with other advisers including members of Mr Trump's family. Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner  seen as being able to soften the President's tone and actions  both occupy official White House posts.

Mr Bannon said he believed the Republican Party would now begin to impose a moderating influence on the President, despite his public clashes with senior figures like Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

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He added: "The path forward on things like economic nationalism and immigration, and his ability to kind of move freely... I just think his ability to get anything done  particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, its just gonna be that much harder."

And he vowed to "crush the opposition"  liberals, the Washington and Republican "establishments"  by using the influence and reach of Breitbart.

He said: "I feel jacked up. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now Im about to go back, knowing what I know, and were about to rev that machine up."

Breitbart colleague Joel Pollak suggested the site would now go to "war" with the Trump White House following a perceived shift by the President away from the values the outlet espouses.

Mr Bannon's departure came after a liberal magazine published an interview in which he detailed his behind-the-scenes battles with opponents in the administration and appeared to contradict Mr Trump's public rhetoric on North Korea.

He told The American Prospect he was "fighting" internal opposition to his belief the US was locked in "an economic war with China".

He claimed officials at the Treasury and the National Economic Council were "wetting themselves" over his plans to address the fact that "they're crushing us". State and Defence Department staff felt similarly because they wanted China's help to reign in Pyongyang, he said.

Mr Trump has repeatedly and publicly threatened military action against North Korea if it continues to menace the US or its allies.

But Mr Bannon told the Prospect: "Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul dont die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I dont know what youre talking about, theres no military solution here, they got us."
Demonstrators gather near The White House to protest President Donald Trump's travel ban on six Muslim countries on 11 March 2017. Mr Trump took to Twitter to attack the courts and Democrats for trying to block it: TASOS KATOPODIS/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump has once again taken to Twitter in the wake of the recent terrorism in Barcelona, attacking the US courts and Democrats for undermining national security.

He tweeted: "Radical Islamic Terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary" in light of the terrorism in Spain that has resulted in at least 14 deaths and scores of injuries after a van drove into crowds in on the busy Las Ramblas street.

Mr Trump appears to be referring to his travel ban, which placed a hold on people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US.

The so-called 'Muslim ban' was upheld by the US Supreme Court on 29 June 2017. It restricted travel from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, and limits all refugee admissions for 120 days.

Mr Trump signed the executive order his first week in office and had repeatedly claimed on the campaign trail such a ban was necessary "until we know what's going on" with Muslim travellers from these countries and their supposed, possible ties with terror groups.

"The courts must give us back our protective rights," he tweeted, furthering his rhetoric that the ban is to protect the American people from extremists and acts of terror like what took place in Barcelona.

For its part, Spain's anti-immigration right wing has stayed on the "fringe" and not taken the hold that it has in the UK and France, NPR reported.

The country's history of dictatorship has not pushed economically downtrodden Spaniards to take their frustrations out on immigrants and flock to the right wing or fostered anti-Islam sentiment despite thousands of refugees and immigrants in recent years.

The City Hall in Madrid had a "Refugees Welcome" banner.

Homeland Security and law enforcement are on alert & closely watching for any sign of trouble. Our borders are far tougher than ever before!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2017

The Obstructionist Democrats make Security for our country very difficult. They use the courts and associated delay at all times. Must stop!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2017

Radical Islamic Terrorism must be stopped by whatever means necessary! The courts must give us back our protective rights. Have to be tough!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2017

He blamed "obstructionist Democrats" for "using" the courts to delay a full ruling and implementation of the ban. Many Democrats opposed the ban because it singled out one particular religious group and the administration's lack of legal reasoning for the decision to lump together Muslims and Islamist extemists.

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The highest court in the country left some lower court provisions in place, which the State department officially adopted as policy. Per US District Court Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii, refugees formally working with resettlement agencies are allowed to enter the country.

Mr Watson also ruled to expand the types of family relationships people can use to enter the US to include grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws.

The Supreme Court is expected to formally rule on the legality of the travel ban in its entirety in the fall when its next session opens.
US President Donald Trump assembled his national security team at the Camp David presidential retreat Friday to forge a way ahead in Afghanistan, almost 16 years after the war began.

Trump must decide if he wants to continue on the current course, which relies on a relatively small US-led NATO force to help Afghan partners push back the Taliban, or try a new tack such as adding more forces -- or even withdrawing altogether.

The White House released a statement Friday afternoon saying Trump had been briefed by his national security team on "a new strategy to protect America's interests in South Asia" -- indicating that no decision had yet been reached.

"The president is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had initially promised to provide a new plan for Afghanistan by mid-July.

But Trump appears dissatisfied by initial proposals to add a few thousand more troops, and the strategy has been expanded to include the broader South Asia region, notably Pakistan.

We are "coming very close to a decision, and I anticipate it in the very near future," Mattis told reporters Thursday.

Trump's generals have called the Afghan conflict a stalemate, and even after years of intensive help from NATO, Afghanistan's security forces still are struggling to hold back an emboldened Taliban.

In an early move to address the situation, Trump gave Mattis broad powers to set troop numbers in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But several months later, the level remains stuck at about 8,400 US and about 5,000 NATO troops.

Meanwhile the situation is as deadly as ever, with more than 2,500 Afghan police and troops killed between January 1 and May 8, continuing a deadly trend from previous years.

The Taliban published an open letter to Trump this week warning him against sending more US troops and calling for the complete withdrawal of foreign forces.

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"Previous experiences have shown that sending more troops to Afghanistan will not result in anything other than further destruction of American military and economic might," the letter stated.

- Private army -

Frustrated by the fragile security situation in a war that has cost more than $1 trillion in fighting and reconstruction, and more than 2,400 US combat deaths, Trump is considering a range of approaches.

One of these is a plan provided by Erik Prince, who founded the private security company Blackwater. It would replace most US forces with a private army of around 5,500 contractors who would train Afghan soldiers and join them in the fight against the Taliban.

Mattis opposes the use of private contractors except in limited cases. His own plan is centered on adding nearly 4,000 more troops and increased air power.

In a sign of Trump's frustration, the president reportedly told Mattis and General Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they should replace General John Nicholson, who heads up US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Mattis has come to his general's defense, saying this week he "is our commander in the field. He has the confidence of NATO, he has the confidence of Afghanistan, he has the confidence of the United States."

Senior Republican Senator John McCain, a longtime critic of the war-fighting policies of Barack Obama, has expressed exasperation over Trump's lack of Afghanistan policy.

McCain said if a new plan hadn't been fleshed out by September, he would offer his own -- based on the "advice of some our best military leaders" -- that he would tack onto a massive military spending bill.

The Camp David summit was also attended by Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, chief of staff John Kelly, and other members of the National Security Council including Dunford, who is traveling and tuned in via videoconference.

Kelly's son, a Marine lieutenant, was killed in 2010 in a roadside bomb blast while on patrol in Afghanistan's Helmand province.
By Jeff Mason and Steve Holland WASHINGTON/HAGERSTOWN, Md. (Reuters) - President Donald Trump fired chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday, the White House announced, ending the turbulent tenure of a rabble-rousing conservative media entrepreneur and political activist who was a darling of Trump's base. "White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best." A source familiar with the decision, which had been under consideration for a while, said Bannon had been given an opportunity to depart on his own terms. "The president made up his mind on it over the past couple of weeks," the source said. Kelly had been evaluating Bannon's role within the White House. "They gave him an opportunity to step down knowing that he was going to be forced to," the source said. Bannon damaged his standing by giving an interview to the liberal American Prospect this week in which he was seen to be undercutting Trump's position on North Korea. Bannon told associates he thought he was talking to an academic and thought he was off the record. He had told friends he could go back to the right-wing Breitbart News outlet, which he had headed before he took over as chief of Trump's presidential campaign in August 2016. (Reporting by Jeff Mason and Steve Holland; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Tim Ahmann)
Ex-Google employee James Damore made quite a disturbing false equivalency when he compared being a conservative at the tech company to being gay in the 1950s.

The engineer was fired from his job at Google after releasing a sexist, anti-diversity internal memo titled Googles Ideological Echo Chamber, calling out gender and politics in the company, writing, Googles left bias has created a politically correct monoculture. He claimed that diversity efforts, like trying to hire more female employees, have led to a discriminatory environment.

Business Insider interviewed Damore this week about the memo and his firing. During the conversation, the Harvard graduate compared being conservative at Google to the persecution of the gay community in the 50s.

My interview with Damore. Says memo actually empowered women and compared being conservative to being gay in the 50s https://t.co/BPzcvowD6e  Steve Kovach (@stevekovach) August 17, 2017

I was simply trying to fix the culture in many ways, he said. And really help a lot of people who are currently marginalized at Google by pointing out these huge biases that we have in this monolithic culture where anyone with a dissenting view cant even express themselves. Really, its like being gay in the 1950s. These conservatives have to stay in the closet and have to mask who they really are. And thats a huge problem because theres open discrimination against anyone who comes out of the closet as a conservative.

As the Human Rights Campaign notes, the 50s were one of the most conservative periods of American history and the government was attempting to stop the spread of communism. During that time, the Lavender scare witch hunt occurred, when thousands of LGBT people were targeted and fired from their jobs as they were dubbed a security risk and more vulnerable to Soviet influence.

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Twitter was not having it. And pointed out that Damore could use a history lesson.

Were you forced into electroshock therapy? No? Were you thrown out of your family? No? Did you lose custody of kids? No? Beaten? #forshame https://t.co/9xid1Xtlqc  Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) August 18, 2017

Thats right, back in the 1950s gay people were all given $160,000 a year, someone made them lunch and they got to play with Lego. https://t.co/2XLKezm7zp  Tabatha Southey (@TabathaSouthey) August 18, 2017

me when that fired Google engineer compared being a conservative at Google to "being gay in the 1950s" https://t.co/Xr3R3X8zcP pic.twitter.com/kfJ4HHunL5  shauna (@goldengateblond) August 18, 2017

Alan Turing was chemically castrated for being gay in the 1950s. Fuck this guy. https://t.co/ZuSo5AoUVh  Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) August 18, 2017

I'm trying to figure out how he thinks that's the same thing.  pic.twitter.com/csAza4lL2q  aaron jackson (@aaronjackson_co) August 17, 2017

I'm sure writing a manifesto alleging female coworkers are biologically inferior might've had more to do with it.  Robert Hallock (@Thracks) August 18, 2017

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NEW YORK, NY - CIRCA 1980: Gay Pride demonstration circa 1980 in New York City. (Photo by Arpadi/IMAGES/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - CIRCA 1980: Gay Pride demonstration circa 1980 in New York City. (Photo by Arpadi/IMAGES/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - CIRCA 1983: Gay & Lesbian Pride Parade circa 1983 in New York City. (Photo by PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images)

A gay rights march in New York in favour of the 1968 Civil Rights Act being amended to include gay rights. (Photo by Peter Keegan/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 25: Participants in the 25 April 1993 gay rights march, held back by a line of parade marshals, scream and yell at a number of religious counter-demonstrators along the parade route. Hundreds of thousands of gay men and women joined in the march and rally to demand acceptance and equal rights. (Photo credit should read ARYEH RABINOVICH/AFP/Getty Images)

View along 6th Avenue as hundreds of people march (and drive) towards Central Park in a Gay Pride Parade, New York, New York, June 26, 1975. (Photo by Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images)

JUN 25 1978, JUN 26 1978; Marchers For Homosexual Rights Gather At Civic Center Pavilion; More than 1,000 men and women participated in march from Cheesman Park to the center for their rally. The group has a platform calling for an end of alleged police harassment, leggislative support of lesbian-gay rights and an end to discrimination based on sexual preference. It also asks that homosexuals be allowed to raise children. The marchers carried signs and chanted slogans during their march, which began at about noon Sunday.; (Photo By Kenn Bisio/The Denver Post via Getty Images)

View of the gay pride parade in Boston, Massachusetts, 1977. (Photo by Spencer Grant/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, NY - CIRCA 1979: Gay Rights Demonstrators circa 1979 in New York City. (Photo by Images Press/IMAGES/Getty Images)

A crowd of gay rights protesters, including two priests, marching in the New York Gay Day Parade. (Photo by Peter Keegan/Getty Images)

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Half of all the cholera cases in Yemen are children: Getty

Britain and the US have played a crucial role in creating conditions conducive to the catastrophic spread of cholera in Yemen, according to authors of a letter published in The Lancet.

An analysis by the researchers at Londons Queen Mary University, found that eight of ten of Yemens cholera deaths occur in rebel-controlled areas. Combining the latest data from the World Health Organisation and mapping that on to areas under government and revel control, the three researchers found the cholera outbreak was disproportionately affecting areas controlled by Houthi rebels.

The rebels are the target on a two-year military campaign by a by a Saudi Arabia-led coalition that has received logistical and political support from the UK and the US. British companies have continued to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia despite growing concern about civilian casualties.

Yemen videos: The human tragedy of hunger and cholera - CARE https://t.co/W6VmKgDj8e via @careintuk  Michael K. Dixon (@OAK77uk) August 19, 2017

Both sides have been accused of disregarding the wellbeing of civilians and breaching international humanitarian law. But the government and Saudi-led coalition that supports it command far greater resources, wrote researchers Jonathan Kennedy, Andrew Harmer and David McCoy.

As a result, Houthi-controlled areas have been disproportionately affected by the conflict, which has created conditions conducive to the spread of cholera."

They added: Saudi-led airstrikes have destroyed vital infrastructure, including hospitals and public water systems, hit civilian areas, and displaced people into crowded and insanitary conditions. A Saudi-enforced blockade of imports has caused shortages of, among other things, food, medical supplies, fuel and chlorine, and restricted humanitarian access.

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Mr Kennedy said in an additional statement: Saudi Arabia is an ally of the UK and USA. American and British companies supply Saudi Arabia with huge amounts of military equipment and their armed forces provide logistical support and intelligence. This backing has made the Saudi-led airstrikes and blockade possible, and therefore the UK and USA have played a crucial role in creating conditions conducive to the spread of cholera.

In June, Unicef and the WHO released a statement saying that Yemen was facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world. Earlier this week, the WHO said more than half a million people in Yemen had been infected with cholera since the epidemic broke out in April, as the country struggled to cope with 5,000 new cases a day.

It said at least 1,975 people have now died from the acute diarrhoeal infection caused by ingestion of contaminated food or water. Last month, the organisation estimated that around half of cases and a quarter of the dead were children under the age of 15.

Last week, a draft UN report accused the Saudi military coalition of killing hundreds of children in Yemen.

The report, which has yet to be made public and could still be changed, said that 51 per cent of all child deaths and injuries in Yemen last year were the result of the Saudi-led military operation. It says the deaths were unacceptably high.

Saudi Arabia has insisted it is operating within international law.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade, which sought to stop the sale of British-made arms to Saudi Arabia, said: The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is among the worst in the world, and the bombardment is making it even worse. This couldn't have happened without the complicit support of governments like the UK, which have armed and supported Saudi forces every step of the way.

A spokesman for the UK Foreign Office said: We call on all parties to the conflict in Yemen to avoid any civilian casualties, particularly that of children, and to permit humanitarian access.
The United States Navy on Thursday announced punishments for the USS Fitzgeralds commanding officer, executive officer, and senior enlisted sailor over the mistake that led to a collision between the destroyer and a cargo ship off the coast of Japan in June. In an official statement, the U.S. Navy said the officers were relieved of their duties because they were accountable for the collision that claimed the lives of seven U.S. sailors.

Several other officers and listed watch standers have also been held accountable for the collision that took place June 17. This is not the first time the U.S. Navy has taken a strict action against commanding officer or other crew members after they were found guilty of contributing to a tragedy or not reacting appropriately to the situation.

In August 2012, the commanding officer of guided missile destroyer Porter was relieved less than three weeks after the ship collided with a Japanese oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz. He was removed "due to loss of confidence in Arriola's ability to command," a navy spokesperson had said, according to reports.

Last year in January, three U.S. Navy officers were relieved of their duties after two command boats were captured by Iran, multiple reports said.

A Navy jet pilot, Timothy Dorsey, never flew again after he was found guilty of basic error in judgment in 1987. He shot down an Air Force jet over the Mediterranean Sea and injured two people, as per the reports.

Navy officers have also faced similar punishment over misconduct. Earlier this month, two Marine cop commanders were relieved from their duty over sharing inappropriate pictures of female troops in a private Facebook group, reports said.

Various factors including the accuseds rank are considered in different cases for deciding the nature of the punishment.

The USS Fitzgerald that had 35 sailors on board was traveling at a speed of about 56 nautical miles to Yokosuk. According to the maritime rules, vessels should give way to ships that are on their starboard side (a term used for the right side of the ship) where the damage was done. This raised questions if the U.S. ship was at fault, BBC reported.

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In the official statement Commander, U.S. 7th fleet said the accident was avoidable but shipmen of both the ships showed poor seamanship. The statement further said that inadequate leadership contributed to the collision.

Cmdr. Bryce Benson was relieved due to a loss of confidence in his ability to lead." "Cmdr. Benson is being reassigned to Naval District Washington at the Washington Navy Yard, where he will have access to medical facilities in the area."

Speaking to reporters late Thursday, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William Moran said, They will be detached from the ship for cause, which is, we've lost trust and confidence in their ability to lead in those positions and they will not return to the ship.

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On the 97th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's ratification, we look back at a young politician whose unexpected vote in the Tennessee state legislature gave all women the right to vote.

The story of Harry T. Burn, the seemingly rogue 24-year-old legislator, has become a bit embellished over the years. And in fact, women had won the right to vote in some states before the 19th amendment was passed by Congress and ratified by three-quarters of the states then in the Union.

But in August 1920, the struggle between the suffrage movement (which wanted the vote for women) and powerful anti-suffrage forces had come down to a series of votes in Tennessee.

The suffrage movement had found a way to get Congress to approve the proposed 19th amendment, with the endorsement of outgoing President Woodrow Wilson (who hadnt supported it until it became needed as part of the war effort).

By the middle of 1920, a total of 35 states had voted to ratify the amendment. The problem was that 36 states were needed, and there was really only one state left where a vote could be taken that year.

Four other available statesConnecticut, Vermont, North Carolina and Floridawould not consider the resolution for various reasons. The remaining states had rejected the amendment. But Tennessee decided it would tackle the ratification vote.

Supporters from both sides camped out at a Nashville hotel and began intense lobbying efforts in what became known as the War of the Roses. Supporters of suffrage wore yellow roses in public; the anti-suffragists wore red roses.

The suffragists had lobbied Burn, the youngest member of the state house, but they were unsure of how he would vote.

They did know that any vote to bring the amendment to the floor would be too close to call, as well as the vote to ratify the amendment.

On August 18, the legislature voted on a motion to table or delay, any ratification vote. It seemed as if the anti-suffragists had enough votes to delay a 19th amendment vote after Burn arrived wearing a red rose and voted to table the amendment.

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But another representative, Banks Turner, switched sides during the roll call, leaving the vote deadlocked and moving the ratification vote forward. The suffragists would need one more vote to make the 19th Amendment the law of the land, and what happened stunned the legislature.

Early in the voting, Burn, who came from a conservative district and wore the red rose on his lapel, said in a very clear voice aye when asked if he would vote to ratify the amendment.

Burn also had a letter in his suit pocket, from his mother Febb E. Burn, in which she asked him to be a good boy and vote for the amendment. When Turner also voted in favor of the ratification, the 70-year-old battle for suffrage was over.

Link: Read The Seven-Page Letter

Lawmakers in Tennessee tried to delay the states official approval, but on August 26, 1920, the official documents arrived in Washington and they were quietly signed by the Secretary of State.

Burn later explained that he initially vote to table the vote so it could be brought back in the next legislative session. But after it came to the floor, he had several reasons to change his vote.

I knew that a mothers advice is always safest for a boy to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification, he said. I appreciated the fact that an opportunity such as seldom comes to a mortal man to free 17 million women from political slavery was mine.

Febb E. Burn then said she was pressured in person by the governor of Louisianas wife to recant the letter and say it was a fraud. She refused to do so.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
Parade, rodeo Saturday at fair

DEER LODGE -- The Tri-County Fair continues through Sunday at the fairgrounds in Deer Lodge.

Saturday the parade on Main Street begins at 11 a.m. Events at the fairgrounds include a craft bazaar, livestock showmanship, childrens pet parade, junior horse show, Pioneer tractor pulling contest, 4-H Runway Extravaganza, Mini Bronc Riding, NRA Rodeo at 7 p.m., dedication of the fair to Marty Billquist and Ghost Riders Entertainment. On Sunday, the Demolition Derby starts at 6 p.m.

Best of Show winners in the Open Class exhibits are: Clothing  Misty Jonas; Best Chocolate Chip Cookies  adult, Carol Rice; youth, Emily Rice; Bread  Sandy Morely; Apple Pie  Chassidy Walstad-Fakler; Floriculture  Sharon Fillbach, Vegetables  Zeta McArthur; Crafts (woodworking)  Michael Torpey; Photography  youth  Chelsey Chaput; adult  Kelly Weaver; professional  Tracey Hensen.

Historical park group meets Monday

A second meeting of the Butte-Silver Bow National Park Service-National Historical Park Initiative Committee starts at 5:15 p.m. Monday, Aug. 21, in Room 102 of the county courthouse, 155 W. Granite St., said Chief Executive Dave Palmer. The public is invited.

Community Band concert set Aug. 23

The Butte Community Band will hold its last concert of the summer at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 23, at the Butte Plaza Mall. Featured are Irish Tunes, marches and light concert music. Admission is free so come in out of the smoke and enjoy an evening of music. a spokeswoman said.

Bannack State Park hosts magic show

DILLON  Butte Magics Eric the Excellent & Sir James the Magnificent will perform at 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 26, at Bannack State Park, 721 Bannack Road, Dillon.

These two accomplished magicians follow in the footsteps of a long tradition of traveling magic shows, which includes juggling, sword-swallowing and fire eating. This is a great show and fun for all ages. Details: 406-834-3413.

Butte classrooms looking for volunteers

The Butte School District #1 Retired and Senior Volunteer Program is looking for new school volunteers for the 2017-18 school year.

This is an opportunity for those 55 or older to share experiences, abilities, and skill for the betterment of our children. The program offers new volunteers the choice of school and the age of the children they want to work with. The RSVP Program also provides training in the fall for new school volunteers.

Details: Cathy Pomroy at 406-533-2508 or email at cpomroy@butte.k12.mt.us.
Weather Channel founder and longtime meteorologist John Coleman has a message he'd like to share about climate change: It's not real. Coleman, who runs a blog dedicated to attempting to prove that widely-accepted climate change is the result of "bad science."

"I'm just a dumb old skeptic," the 82-year-old told My News LA Friday. "A denier, as they call me, who ought to be jailed or put to death. I understand how they feel. But you know something? I know I'm right. So I don't care."

His blog, aimed at "correcting the bad science behind the 'climate change' frenzy," details his efforts. Coleman has been critical of former Vice President Al Gore for his environmental crusade and denounced San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer's new "Climate Action Plan."

website-header-picture

Photo: John Coleman

"I think he saw money and power and I don't know what else he thought of it," Coleman said. "I can't believe he really [felt he] was going to save the city from some terrible fate."

Coleman is aware that his views might be unpopular, but he's sticking by them.

"San Diego's not going to go underwater. Period," he said. "Not in my lifetime or yours or our kids' lifetime. When the Earth ends in four and a half billion years, it probably still won't have flooded."

Also at issue for Coleman are what he calls "the damn tsunami warning route signs they put up all over the city."

"[They're] about a silly as anything I've ever saw in my life," he said. "The chance of a significant tsunami hitting Southern California is about as great as a flying saucer landing tonight at Lindbergh Field. It's just sheer nonsense."

Coleman's brainchild, the Weather Channel, tends not to agree with him. When President Donald Trump announced in June he'd be pulling the United States out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, the channel made a somewhat tongue-in-cheek political statement on its website. The Weather Channel altered its homepage at the time to feature eight prominent stories with specifically tailored headlines:

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"So, What Happens To Earth Now?" "Still Don't Care? Proof You Should" "...And More Proof" "...And Even More Proof" "Or The Imminent Collapse Of A Key Ice Shelf" "Or Antarctica Turning Green" "Or California's Coast Disappearing Into The Sea"

The channel also issued a statement in 2014 after Coleman espoused some of his views on Fox News.

"More than a century's worth of detailed climate observations shows a sharp increase in both carbon dioxide and temperature," the statement said. "These observations, together with computer model simulations and historical climate reconstructions from ice cores, ocean sediments and tree rings all provide strong evidence that the majority of the warming over the past century is a result of human activities. This is also the conclusion drawn, nearly unanimously, by climate scientists."

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White House chief political strategist Steve Bannon is reportedly no longer occupying his senior position in President Donald Trumps administration, according to reports by The New York Times and ABC News.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement saying that Bannon and Chief of Staff John Kelly had "mutually agreed" Friday would be "Steve's last day," while wishing him "the best."

Trump told senior aides that he had decided to remove Bannon but that the former Breitbart News chief had also handed in his resignation on August 7, effective August 14, the Times reported.

ABC News confirmed that Bannon had resigned and noted that August 14 was the one-year anniversary of his hiring by the president's campaign. Bannon is expected to return to Breitbart after leaving the White House, according to New York magazine.

The departure follows a review of staff by Kelly.

The reasons cited for Bannon's departure, which had long been speculated on and much fretted over because of fears about upsetting the presidents conservative base, have yet to be made wholly clear, although his tenure has been fraught with intrigue.

Bannon had done an interview with The American Prospect this week, during which he called out the U.S. militarys strategy, or lack thereof, when it came to handling North Koreas nuclear and missile programs. The former Goldman Sachs executive also told the magazine he was glad the left, or the Democrats, were playing "identity politics," which would allow him to hammer down on economic nationalism.

Bannon also caught Trumps ire after many credited him for last years election victory, rather than the president himself. Trump reportedly disliked a book that featured Bannon and the Time magazine cover that dubbed Bannon The Great Manipulator.

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Another reason could be the presidents reaction to last weekends protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, which Bannon was reportedly thrilled with earlier this week, Politico reported. During a press conference Tuesday, Trump blamed both sides rather than sticking to his outright condemnation of white supremacists on Monday. He also said that the alt-left was violent.

Noting that Bannon was not a racist and calling him a friend, Trump said during the press conference, Well see what happens with Mr. Bannon.

Feuds with other top aides, including the presidents family members, could also have played a role. Bannon had been accused of intentionally leaking to conservative outlets so they could criticize National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Bannon also feuded with Jared Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and senior adviser.

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Chanting "White lives matter!," "You will not replace us!" and "Jews will not replace us!" several hundred white nationalists and white supremacists carrying torches marched in a parade through the University of Virginia campus. (Photo: The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Over the weekend, the streets of Charlottesville filled with white supremacists and members of the alt-right movement bent on preserving a white culture and the white identity they feel to be under attack.

Their Unite the Right rally quickly devolved into violence as white supremacists clashed with counter-protestors, culminating in an attack by James Alex Fields, Jr., a 20-year-old Nazi sympathizer. Fields drove a car through the crowds, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others.

What happened in Charlottesville, according to some Christians, is the fruit of a Satanic ideology that preaches racial segregation and white dominance. These Christians claim that Satan  and not Christ, as some groups assert  is behind the movement to preserve and protect white culture against the forces of liberalism, globalization and multiculturalism.

Franklin Graham, a preacher known for espousing bigoted views toward immigrants, Muslims and members of the LGBTQ community, was quick to say Satan was behind the events in Charlottesville, though he did not refer to white supremacists specifically. In a Facebook post Sunday evening, Graham defended President Donald Trumps handling of the violence, saying Satan alone is to blame.

Really, this boils down to evil in peoples hearts, the evangelist wrote. Satan is behind it all. He wants division, he wants unrest, he wants violence and hatred. Hes the enemy of peace and unity.

In an op-ed for The Washington Post on Monday, prominent evangelical theologian Russell Moore expressed a similar read on what happened in Charlottesville.

White supremacy is Satanism, Moore asserted. Even worse, white supremacy is a devil-worship that often pretends that it is speaking for God.

Demonstrators hold shields and flags during the "Unite the Right" rally at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA on August 12, 2017. (Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The Christian gospel asserts that all nations derive from the same divine origins and that Jesus envisioned his own church as a force that would unite the globe, Moore argued.

White supremacy, he said, is fundamentally opposed to these biblical principles. And that should disturb Christians.

Story continues

Moore described the Charlottesville protesters chanting of blood and soil, a phrase inspired by Nazi ideology, as idolatry of the flesh, the human being seeking to deify his own flesh and blood as God.

The Scripture defines this attempt at human self-exaltation with a number: 666, he continued. White supremacy does not merely attack our society (though it does) and the ideals of our nation (though it does); white supremacy attacks the image of Jesus Christ himself.

This was, after all, what the Nazis were after too. Adolf Hitler himself was antagonistic toward religion, noted J. Lee Grady, former editor of Christian magazine, Charisma.

A huge majority of Germans, under the spell of this spiritual deception, supported Nazi policies, wrote Grady in an article published Wednesday. It is no surprise that many Christians in the 1940s viewed Hitler as the Antichrist.

What should trouble Christians most right now, Moore argued, isnt just the racist underpinnings of the alt-right but the fact that many white supremacists seek to promote a separate, white existence in the name of Jesus Christ.

White supremacists and alt-right advocates tend to be united around a deep belief in white difference, if not superiority, and a desire for racial segregation. Most are also aligned in their abhorrence for Judaism. Membership in some of the groups, including Identity Evropa and the National Socialist Movement, is limited to individuals who are white and non-Semitic.

Though not categorically united around Christianity, many of the alt-right and white supremacist groups that gathered in Charlottesville weave Christian language into their statements of belief. Some, like the Ku Klux Klan, assert overt Christian allegiance. As one Klan member explained his interpretation of Christian scripture to Ilia Calderon, a reporter who is black and an immigrant, the Bibles mandate to love thy neighbor applies only to thy people. In his case, he said, that means white people.

On its official website, the KKK draws a distinction between what it calls mainstream Christians and committed Christians. The former bow to liberal theology, which presents Jesus as a good man whose most important message is that we are to love everybody. The latter, with whom the KKK identify, hold fast to the belief that homosexuality is a sin, race mixing is a sin, abortion is a sin and obedience to civil authority above that of Godly authority is idolatry.

Others groups, including the Nationalistic Front and the Traditionalist Workers Party, speak of unifying the traditional faiths of the European people. Under that umbrella fall most denominations of Christianity, as well as agnostics and folk religionists.

Some groups speak more generally about family values and a shared understanding of the centrality of faith.

In fact, its in these broader descriptions of the alt-right vision that influential Christian theologian Tim Keller sees the most pernicious threat of white supremacy.

In an op-ed published on The Gospel Coalition website Tuesday, Keller wrote: Twentieth-century fascist movements that made absolute values out of Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil) ... also claimed to champion traditional family values and moral virtues over against the decadence of relativistic modern culture.

These ideologies could and can still appeal to people within American Christian circles today through online efforts to radicalize people who are disaffected by moral decline in society.

We need to make those in our circles impervious to this toxic teaching, Keller wrote, or, perhap in other words, protect them from Satan.

Also on HuffPost

A man wears a purple ribbon to remember Heather Heyer, who was killed protesting during a white supremacist rally, as he arrives for her memorial service at the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 16, 2017.

The Paramount Theater marquee bears the name of Heather Heyer.

Heather Heyer's mother, Susan Bro, walks by a picture of her daughter after speaking at her memorial service.

Mourners gather inside the Paramount Theater.

Heather Heyer's father, Mark Heyer, speaks at her memorial service.

Mourners inside the Paramount Theater wear purple, as Heyer's family had requested. Purple was her favorite color.

People line up to attend the memorial service.

Marcus Martin (center), who was injured in the same car attack that killed Heyer, leaves the memorial service.

Anna Quillon hands out purple pieces of cloth outside the memorial service.

People wore stickers and ribbons to the memorial service.

A poster announcing the memorial service.

Mia Jones shows off the "NO H8" message written on her hands.

Outside the service, people carry guns to provide security in the event of far-right protesters.

A person tapes a note to the front door of a bookstore to announce that it will close during the memorial service for Heather Heyer.

A man puts on a purple ribbon while waiting in line.

People carry bats and shields to provide security.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Update  Friday, Aug. 18 at 1:40 p.m. EDT: The White House confirmed Bannon handed in his resignation. "White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," the White House said in a statement Friday. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."

Original story:

Breaking news from Drudge Report and the New York Times Friday: White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is reportedly out of the Trump administration. The White House did not immediately confirm the rumor.

One theory claimed Bannon could have been fired was because of an interview he gave with American Prospect magazine Thursday regarding President Donald Trumps policy on Kim Jong Uns North Korea.

Theres no military solution  forget it, Bannon told the Prospect. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul dont die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I dont know what youre talking about. Theres no military solution here; they got us.

His words reportedly changed the way North Koreans viewed the U.S. The president had the North Koreans really believing they could wake up to a strike, taking out their nuclear weapons and command and control facilities. Steve just blew that out of the water, a source told News Max Thursday.

Trump Bannon

Photo: Getty Images

Bannon also told the publication the far-right was a collection of clowns and he called them a fringe element of losers.

He also had plenty to say about the left and what happened in Charlottesville. The Democrats -- the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day, Bannon said in the article. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.

Story continues

There are different reports about whether Bannon was possibly fired, or apparently handed in his resignation. Two aides told the New York Times Friday Trump made the decision to remove the man who helped him get elected.

But people from Bannons team insisted it was his idea to leave the Trump administration, with him apparently handing in his resignation Aug. 7. It was supposed to be announced Monday, but was delayed after the deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, the Times reported.

Trump defended Bannon Tuesday during a whirlwind presser. He said Bannon was not racist and called him a friend.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Follow me on Twitter @mariamzzarella

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From Woman's Day

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Le Petit Marseillais Sweepstakes: Enter beginning 12:01 A.M. (ET) on August 19, 2017, through 11:59 P.M. (ET) on October 19, 2017 (the "Entry Period"). Go to womansday.com/giveaways on a computer or wireless device and complete and submit the entry form pursuant to the onscreen instructions. PLEASE NOTE THAT YOUR ENTRY WILL NOT BE COMPLETED UNTIL YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE OFFICIAL ENTRY FORM AND ENTERED YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION. Prizes & Approximate Retail Value: Twenty-five (25) winners will receive Le Petit Marseillais Vanilla Milk Extra Gentle Shower Creme Body Wash (ARV: $4.99). Total ARV of all prizes awarded: $124.75. Any difference between the stated ARV and the actual value of the prize will not be awarded in any form.

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UPDATED with Trump tweet on Jim Acosta questions at presser: President Donald Trump took to twitter to complain about his put-upon-ness, hours after ducking questions at a presser after crying Fake News:

Made additional remarks on Charlottesville and realize once again that the #Fake News Media will never be satisfiedtruly bad people!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 14, 2017

Previous: Not long after President Donald Trump took to the podium in the White House to deliver his do-over statement about Saturdays violent white nationalist neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, he was back in front of news-TV cameras.

This time it was to capture the moment of when he signed an executive memo pushing for an investigation into Chinese theft of intellectual property from American companies. We will combat the counterfeiting and piracy that destroys American jobs, Trump said before signing the doc and holding it up for the cameras.

CNNs Jim Acosta shouted out a question as to why Trump had not on Saturday condemned the hate groups involved in the fatal Charlottesville rally, Trump shot back, They have been condemned. Then he repeated the line.

Mentioning the White House has said there would be an actual press conference today, Acosta again shouted out to Trump, Can we ask some more questions?

POTUS swaggered that it would not bother me. Except he didnt take any questions, instead attempting to bully CNNs White House correspondent, saying, I like real news, not fake news. You are fake news.

Then Trump turned his back on the cameras and beat a hasty retreat.

Story continues

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Sunday, August 20

FREE CONCERT IN PARK

The Highlands Brass will perform its There Was a Pig Went Out to Dig free concert at 7 p.m. at the Stodden Park band shell. If the weather is poor, the concert will move to St. Mark Lutheran Church, 223 S. Montana St., and begin at 7:30 p.m. Come hear music by Rossini, Beethoven, Grainger, Telemann, and others.

DEMOLITION DERBY

The Deer Lodge Demolition Derby, with more than $6,000 in prizes, will be held at the Tri-County Fairgrounds on Sunday, August 20. Gates will open at 5 p.m. with the derby starting at 6 p.m.

AT ST. TIMOTHYS

St. Timothys Summer Festival season concludes at 4 p.m. with a performance by the baroque quartet I-90 Collective. Tickets purchased at the door will be $25. Tickets purchased online or through our outlets are $20 for adults and $15 for 18 and younger. Details: 888-407-4071 (ext. 1) or visit www.sttimothysmusic.org.

FIDDLERS PLAY

The Montana Old Time Fiddlers will be jammin in their debut performance from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Bale of Hay Saloon in Virginia City. The program is free and dancing is encouraged. Guitar, mandolin, and banjo players are also welcome to participate in the jam. Details: Dave, 406-685-3481.
MUSCATINE  To John Dabeet, the world is full of connections to be had, even between countries who arent natural allies.

You dont make peace with your friend; you try to make peace with someone who is different than you. Perhaps you have major conflict with them, he said.

Dabeet, who serves on Sister Cities International  an organization dedicated to promoting citizen diplomacy among nations  wants to build bridges of peace and understanding among nations. He is particularly interested in building some bridges between the United States and his native Palestine and serves on Sister Cities International in a capacity that allows him to do exactly that.

Several years back, he helped bring together the Palestinian city of Ramallah and Muscatine. Now, he wants to do promote similar relationships between other U.S. and Palestinian cities. Last month, Dabeet traveled to Palestine to discuss the idea with officials from about a dozen cities. They all said they wanted to participate.

Despite the political climate in the United States, Dabeet said he has met some Americans who are interested in pursuing relationships with Palestinians. He pointed to Boulder, Colorado, who just recently became a Sister City with the Palestinian town of Nablus.

I find people are really thirsty to learn about other cultures and especially cultures of other countries in the Middle East, he said. So, as a matter of fact, yes, you hear that on the news, but there is a lot of thirst of people to learn about those cultures and start that relationship.

Dabeet is not blind to the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, yet he remains hopeful.

Religion, political affiliation, all this stuff can be an issue, but those are the people that we need to work with the most in order to bring peace to everyone and every nation, he said. And we cannot exclude anybody. The scary thing, the most devastating thing would be if we start excluding people.

That sister city relationship has been beneficial to both Muscatine and Ramallah. Since the relationship began in 2011, delegates from both towns have visited each other and both cities have held an exhibit of childrens drawings describing life in Ramallah.

Dabeet is about to take that relationship a step further. With a $45,000 grant he hopes to receive from the State Department, Dabeet will set up a program to connect special-needs students in Muscatine with their counterparts in Ramallah online. The program will begin in spring 2018, and Dabeet hopes to offer similar programs in other Palestinian cities down the road.

We want to connect them and get them to learn about each other, and not just learning, he said. There would be projects to work on together.
Monster Arm Wrestling

Brian Willett, 29, of Muscatine, placed first in the mens right/super heavyweight Monster Arm Wrestling contest held Sunday, Aug. 13, at the Iowa State Fair.

Bill Riley Talent Show

Lydia Fisher, 14, of Wapello, has advanced to the semifinal round in Bill Riley's 58th annual Iowa State Fair Talent Search for her tap dance routine. She was expected to perform again before Sunday, Aug. 20.

Young Judges Compete in Iowa State Fair Competition

Muscatine High School FFA team placed fifth in the 4-H and FFA judging in the Youth Livestock Judging competition at the 2017 Iowa State Fair. Team members are Tyler Moeller, Dakota Heath, Ava Darfeldt, and Grace Williams. Tyler Moeller place 10th in the individual competition.

DeVores Dairy bring home honors

DeVores Dairy competed in the Brown Swiss Dairy Cattle show judged Friday, Aug. 11, at the 2017 Iowa State Fair.

First place: Aged Cow, Steubers George Pheobe

Third place: Cow Five Years Old, Devores Titanium Reba

Fourth place: Best Three Head

Fifth place: Junior Two Year Old Cow, Devores Martini Raquel

Sixth place: Senior Three Year Old Cow, Devore Total Dawn; Junior Two Year Old Cow, Devores Martini Rayn Twin

Seventh place: Best Four Head; Junior Best Three Females

Eighth place: Summer Yearling Heifer, Devores Delite Pecca; Cow Four Years Old, Devores Goldrush Piper

Ninth place: Cow Four Years Old, Devores Total Phenomanon

11th place: Devores Delite Babette

14th place: Fall Heifer Calf, Devores Delite Phalicity

Best Feeder Calves awarded

Megan Pretz, Columbus Junction place eighth place in the Class 2 Market Heifer at the Beef Feeder Calf show judged Saturday at the 2017 Iowa State Fair.
Napa Valley College leaders who say the school is a first tier place of higher learning believe that all post-secondary students should start at NVC, even if they are planning to attend a four-year university.

A case in point is American Canyon High School graduate Destany Barnett, who discovered her interest in medicine while attending San Jose State University, but learned she would need to take her pre-med courses at a community college.

After she returned home to attend NVC, she found the support she needed to pursue her dream.

Barnett took science classes, joined the pre-med club on campus known as Dreamers of Community Change, attended pre-med classes and became one of 40 students promoted by NVC for Prep Medico, a six-week paid internship through UC Davis and Kaiser Permanente.

They selected students primarily of Latino background to learn about social justice issues and health disparities, gaining clinical experience shadowing doctors, volunteering in student-run clinics, and taking classes on biology and biostatistics, said Barnett, whose mother is Puerto Rican and whose father is African-American.

It was a very interactive and motivating program that allowed students to prepare for a career in medicine and actually envision themselves on that path, she said.

I really love medicine, and know I will become a doctor, and give back to my community by working with youth, focusing on nutrition. A lot of minorities dont have a lot of knowledge about nutrition, a topic not focused on in medical school.

Barnett plans to help all women understand their health and their bodies, and help provide a sense of connection that patients ultimately seek in their health care provider.

Barnett is now a volunteer at Kaisers Maternity Department in Vallejo, determined to finish her two years at NVC in May and get accepted at UC Davis as a Clinical Nutrition major.

Educators who know her best say Destany is destined to become a doctor.

When I came across Destany and learned of her potential and enthusiasm, I knew she would be a great candidate for a Prep Medico internship, said NVC counselor Patricia Posada, who said Destany should consider Stanford University.

Destany surpassed my expectations, collaborated and networked with Kaiser Physicians via email, attended a physicians training, attended a Kaiser Physicians Network Dinner in Fall 2016, and participated in a data extraction for Honduras Project led by a Kaiser Researcher who trained them intensely.

NVC professor Forest Quinlan agreed.

For two semesters I mentored and guided Destany through my chemistry courses, and our weekly conversations ranged from school to life to the future, said Quinlan.

What was once a quiet, unsure student has now been replaced by one of the most confident, driven, intelligent, resourceful women I have seen come through my class.

Her enthusiasm for learning and her dogged determination will ensure that she will be successful in everything she does. When I think of Destany becoming a doctor, there is no doubt in my mind.
Napas largest law firm, Dickenson Peatman & Fogarty, has made a name for itself serving the legal needs of the wine industry.

Now it plans to do the same with another controlled substance  cannabis.

Earlier this month, DP&F announced the official launch of its cannabis practice group, based in Santa Rosa. This group now offers a specialized, full-service approach to serving the business needs of clients navigating Californias complex cannabis industry.

The news of a law firm getting involved with the cannabis industry might sound surprising, but its a good fit for the firm, said representatives.

Every day, DP&F attorneys serve clients who operate in highly regulated industries, said Carol Kingery Ritter, one of the firms managing partners.

We are experts in the alcohol beverage industry and given the breadth and depth of our practice, we are set up to serve the cannabis industry seamlessly, Kingery Ritter said.

Ultimately cannabis is an ag product, Kingery Ritter said.

It wasnt a far stretch to think about taking our skills and applying it to another ag product that is having a real impact on the economy of Sonoma and Mendocino Counties.

Were in a whole new world, said Erin Carlstrom, senior counsel, who leads the DP&F cannabis practice group based out of its Santa Rosa office. She joined DP&F about a month ago.

This is real industry that deserves a sophisticated response from the professionals that serve it and a robust conversation in every community, said Carlstrom.

Carlstrom worked in cannabis compliance and land use at her previous firm, specializing in government relations and permitting.

She has ushered statewide clients through major projects, from incorporation to operations, and has been responsible for obtaining entitlements all over California.

For now, the DP&F cannabis practice remains based in Santa Rosa, and for a specific reason.

Were not trying to compete with the wine industry in Napa, said Kingery Ritter.

Were a wine law firm. Thats our bread and butter. Thats what were going to continue to do. But there is an opportunity with the cannabis industry because there are so many similarities in legal needs.

Napa is rightfully very proud and proactive of its wine (reputation), said Carlstrom. There is no intention from DP&F to ignore the importance of that reputation.

Kingery Ritter said even though the firm opened a cannabis practice, We dont want to take away from the core values and reputation of the Napa office.

But we think theres an opportunity to serve the market in Sonoma County, said Kingery Ritter. Its not very often that a product comes out of prohibition and we know a lot about how wine is treated from that lens, she said.

From what we can tell, we dont think the cannabis industry is going away, Kingery Ritter said. We expect the cannabis industry will need lawyers in the same way the wine industry needs lawyers.

At the same time, Were not trying to push an agenda or lobby or advocate, for the cannabis industry, Kingery Ritter said.

In fact, Unless Napa County decides that allowing a regulated cannabis industry, in some form, there could be no legal work to do in the area of cannabis in Napa, Kingery Ritter said.

Carlstrom said one of the biggest misconceptions is presumptions about cannabis operators or farmers.

There are operators that did bad things, such as diverting water, causing pollution or tearing down hillsides. However, The people I work with are ardent environmentalists and care about the earth and their patients.

Carlstrom said that one of the issues with cannabis today is while it is now legal in California to grow, consume, dispense and distribute cannabis, the federal government says none of that is legal.

But these operators deserve to have quality legal representation, she said.

In 50 years, we will look back on this period of time much like following the end of Prohibition, predicted Carlstrom. Decades from now, cannabis could become just another regulated crop.

Carlstrom said she can help clients negotiate with investors or become investors themselves. Others want help navigating permitting. They want to know how to protect their brands, with intellectual property. They deal with employment issues.

As they become fully legitimate, they are subject to all labor and employment regulations  all of the things any normal traditional business would have to face, said Carlstrom.

Ryan Lowther works in the cannabis practice at Farella Braun & Martel LLP. The law firm is based in San Francisco but has an office in St. Helena. The firm created its cannabis practice about four years ago, he said.

We decided to get into the industry because we saw a lot of parallels with our wine industry practice, said Lowther. Both are highly regulated, and we saw a lot of opportunity in the market.

I think its a good development that DP&F has created its own cannabis practice, he said.

Theres a lot of need for sophisticated counsel. The more lawyers that start helping clients in the industry, the better. It helps to legitimize and grow the industry.

The Farella cannabis practice has grown significantly, said Lowther.

We started with a few clients and now represent clients in all facets of the industry, from cultivators, dispensaries, testing facilities, distributors and manufacturers, said Lowther.

And we represent a lot of clients that are working within the industry but dont necessarily touch the plant. Those could include investors, software businesses, media companies and other traditional businesses that are looking for ways to interact with the cannabis industry.

Most of the cannabis practice work is done in San Francisco, he said.

We have had some clients in Napa talk to us about cultivation or some real estate plays but we havent had a lot of deals close in Napa.

I dont know if thats because the regulations up there are in flux, compared to Sonoma County.

Lowther said he thinks that in the future more legal firms will add a cannabis practice. Its a growing industry, he said. Its only going to get bigger.

Its unclear which other major Napa law firms offer cannabis industry legal services.
In our community and other communities our educational institutions are being affected by the Mascot Decolonization Movement. In as such, schools are being requested or demanded to remove Native American symbols and language used as mascots of the schools. The actions of Name Changer operators has been based on The United States Commission of Civil Rights, Appendix B (policy only), supported by and implemented by the National Congress of American Indians. Also, the "Disparaging Clause 1025 of the Patent Trademarks Office.

Name changer operators are a minority in the Native American community nationally. It is found that the Native American house is divided in this concern of Mascot Decolonization and Re-Appropriation. The majority of Native Americans against the movement believe that removal of symbols and language is "erasing" Native Americans from the view of the greater community and their/our history.

Understanding todays Native American culture and their quest for self-determination and autonomy is a complex issue and concern. It is a great struggle for them in ways that we as the greater dominant culture fail to perceive time and again. A deeper commitment to education and understanding is a prerequisite and is required.

Now consider the complexity of decolonization and what it means to Native American culture: traditional, spiritual and sacred ways, including the history of tribal people in this land, you are presented a steep learning curve, whether you have a PhD. or not.

As a concerned citizen participating in the mascot issue at Napa High School, I am a Johnny come lately participant. Yet I bring to the controversy my knowledge of Native American culture, as I am a traditional scholar of Native American Studies from Sonoma State University. Since the beginning of my interaction I have found the Board Of Education for the Napa Valley Unified School District to be lacking in perquisite knowledge and information in concern of name changer campaigns to remove the Native American symbol and language from Napa High School. I have found the superintendent to be lacking in education as well.

In fact I have seen and heard ignorance by educators, professionals in the district and name changers, on both sides of the issue. Name changing operators in this national movement isolate educators to indoctrinate those individuals into hearing only one side of the complex issue.

Following the issue, there have been changes that concern the Change the Mascot (decolonization) movement. The United States Supreme Court has struck down the disparaging clause in the Patent and Trademark law because trademarks are private and not government speech. Banning such trademarks violates the First Amendment right to free speech. That applies to common (registered) and uncommon (non-registered) trademarks.

Of note uncommon non-registered trademarks of symbols and logos are those that are held by a community and known to the community by its long association with the community. In the Supreme Court ruling, an Amicus Brief filing for the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was cited, in concern of the briefs historical communication expanding the knowledge and use of the word Redskin.

That appeal decision defeated a complaint against the Washington Redskins. This affects AB-30, approved earlier by the governor of California, and those changes in other schools. While redskin is used disparagingly, history re-accounting reveals its origin and how it is used and spoken of differently without the negative connotation.

These rulings change and enhance the free speech rights of a community. Any individual, any student, present or past has a right now at this time to file a legal complaint if they believe and feel that their right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment has been violated by the removal of a high school symbol or language that has been held in common and associated with a community for a historic time.

The Napa Valley Unified School District are working with little knowledge of the battle waging over Change the Name campaigns. The political issue should never have been brought to a campus by a teaching or counseling professional.

But what worries me the most is the lack of that crucial knowledge in understanding the complexities of the Native American world. There is a severe lack of cultural education amongst a greater group of professionals in our county educational institutions. I am concerned that Decolonization is being actively supported and taught by professionals in our school system, without an opposing perspective.

Parents, meet with your schools teachers and take interest in what is being taught or not taught in concern of Native American culture to our children.

Dalton Piercey

Napa




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Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-18 18:56:31|Editor: ying

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MADRID, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Spain's Ibex-35 index plummeted 1.41 percent on Friday morning after Barcelona's and Cambrils' terrorist attack on Thursday.

Companies belonging to the tourist sector led falls with Airline group IAG falling 2.17 percent and Spain's airport operator AENA losing 1.55 percent respectively.

Only engineering and infrastructure company Tecnicas Reunidas gained, rising 0.90 percent.

Barcelona is a major tourist destination with over 32 million people calculated to have visited the city in 2016, while Cambrils is also a tourist destination located in the coast of the Tarragona province.

However, Thursday's violence attacks on Barcelona and Cambrils might pose threat to the flourishing tourist industries there, as people would consider to avoid the areas out of safety and security concern.

On Thursday afternoon, a van mowed down people from the top of Las Ramblas, the famous street in the center of Barcelona, going across around 500 meters, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100 others.

In Cambrils, hours after the attack in Las Ramblas, Catalan police took down five terrorists. Six people were injured including three policemen during the shootout.

It was the worst attack in Spain since March 2004, when Islamist militants placed bombs on commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and wounding more than 1,800 others.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-18 22:59:44|Editor: yan

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KIRKUK, Iraq, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Seven people were killed on Friday when Islamic State (IS) militants attacked the house of a police officer in Iraq's northern province of Kirkuk, a provincial security source told Xinhua.

In the early morning, IS gunmen broke into the house of Lt. Col. Farhan al-Azzawi at a village near the town of Debis, some 40 km west of the provincial capital city of Kirkuk, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Azzawi himself was not at home during the attack, but the attackers shot dead three of Azzawi's sons, two of his nephews, and two other people were also killed at the scene, the source said.

A Kurdish security force, known as Peshmerga, arrived at the village and clashed with the attackers, killing two IS militants before the others fled the village, the source added.

Iraqi security forces have liberated Iraq's second largest city of Mosul, but the rural areas near the town of Hawijah in west of Kirkuk, the town of Tal Afar in west of Mosul, the sprawling rugged area in the eastern part of Salahudin province and the areas near the border with neighboring Syria are still under IS control.

On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi formally declared the liberation of Mosul from IS after nearly nine months of fierce fighting to dislodge the extremist militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq.
Police stand guard near the rally site in Charlottesville, Virginia, the United States, Aug. 12, 2017. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

by Matthew Rusling

WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Politically fueled violence could increase in the United States amid a rise of radical groups, experts said.

Last weekend saw violent clashes between a number of white power protesters and counter protesters in Charlottesville in the U.S. state of Virginia. Fights broke out as white supremacist protesters clashed with counter protesters, leaving both sides bloody, bruised and battered.

Reports indicated that the police were overwhelmed and backed off, leaving the two groups in a chaotic free-for-all. Suddenly, a car plowed into the counter protesters, sending bodies flying and killing a 32-year-old woman.

Darrell West, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, a U.S. public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., said the years ahead could see an increase in the number of radical fringe groups such as white supremacists, and could be "more volatile and tumultuous."

White power groups tend to comprise white, working class men, although experts say that white supremacists are a small minority of that demography and do not represent the whole.

Indeed, the white working class has been increasingly disenfranchised over the last two decades. Backing U.S. President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, it was the major force that enabled the billionaire businessman to clinch the White House.

Trump promised he would improve their lives, fix the broken immigration system, and bring back manufacturing and jobs. However, with Trump's lack of legislative success so far, the group could grow increasingly frustrated in the coming years if Trump fails to keep his words.

That, West said, could increase the number of people engaging in racism and political violence.

The liberal Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a U.S. nonprofit legal advocacy organization keeping tabs on mostly right-wing radical groups, said in a report earlier this year that the number of U.S.-based hate groups operating in 2016 rose to 917 -- up from 892 in 2015, although the list contained all hate groups, including anti-white groups comprising African Americans.

The number is 101 shy of the all-time record set in 2011, but still above historic average, the group said.

RISE OF THE RADICAL LEFT

Many on the radical right espouse racist ideals. The radical right includes groups such as the KKK, a racist organization that has murdered many African Americans in its more than 100 years of history.

Other groups are neo-Nazis -- supporters for the racist views of former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler -- and neo-Nazi skinheads, a rough and very tough group of racist street fighters that grew out of the 1970s punk music scene.

At the same time, there seems to be a growing radical left. The group Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is perhaps one of the best known. Among them are leftists and far leftists, but most members do not adhere to the official Democratic Party platform.

Antifa grabbed major headlines by throwing Molotov cocktails, destroying property and wearing black masks in Berkeley in the U.S. state of California earlier this year, when they protested Trump's supporter Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative political commentator, who was to hold a speaking event at the University of California.

Some threw rocks and fireworks at police, according to U.S. media reports.

Often such groups assemble to shut down speakers they consider "racist," although many moderates and conservatives believe the radicals wrongly apply the term to any speech they don't like, whether it is actually racist or not.

Radical left groups have staged violent protests and destroyed property in rallies against conservative speakers at universities, calling them "racists" simply because, critics say, the radicals do not approve of the speakers' message.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 00:51:09|Editor: yan

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ROME, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Italy is tightening security after Spain attacks and there would be checks on car rentals and any vans heading for Rome city centre, Ansa news agency quoted sources as saying on Friday.

According to the sources, security around Spanish targets and traditional "sensitive" areas will be stepped up. And Italy will boost security measures at sensitive targets and areas where people tend to gather after the Barcelona and Cambrils terror attacks that killed a total of 14 people, injured dozens.

Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti said attention was "extremely high" but the "threat level" had not changed. He made the remarks after a meeting of the Strategic Anti-Terrorism Analysis Committee.

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni telephoned his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy to voice Italy's condolences, friendship and solidarity over the attacks, government sources said.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella also wrote to Spanish King Felipe VI, voicing "horror and repulsion".

Spain and Italy were united in a "common pain" over the attack, Mattarella said. He voiced "great concern" over the "dramatic" attack, which was "further execrable proof of the cowardice of the terrorists".

Mattarella also said Italy was determined to work with Spain, its EU partners and the whole international community in a "fight against terrorism and all forms of violent extremism, in defence of the common values and democratic freedoms, as well as the security of our countries".
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 00:51:10|Editor: yan

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JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- South Africa's Absa bank and China Development Bank (CDB) on Friday announced the conclusion of a 100 million U.S. dollars Special Facility Agreement to fund small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in Africa.

Absa is a subsidiary of the Barclays Africa Group. The money will benefit Barclays bank's existing and prospective SME clients across the continent. The 100 million dollars will address the current funding needs, and may be increased in the future to assist with new funding opportunities within Barclays's operations, both banks said on Friday.

"We are glad to partner with CDB on this landmark transaction, which also echoes the 2017 BRICS theme of Stronger Partnership for a Brighter Future," said Craig Bond, Head of Partnerships, Joint Ventures and Strategic Alliances at Barclays Africa Group Limited.

The funding is expected to assist the African SMEs who face funding shortages. SMEs on the continent have the potential to boost economic growth and create employment.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 02:22:23|Editor: Yurou

Palestinian Secretary-General of the Presidency, Tayeb Abdul Rahim (R) meets with Wu Sike (L), then China's special envoy to Middle East, in the West Bank city of Ramallah on April, 27, 2013. (Xinhua photo)

RAMALLAH, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- China can be a honest broker in pushing forward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in light of its fair stance on the issue, a senior Palestinian official told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Tayeb Abdul Rahim, secretary-general of Palestinian Presidency and an aide to President Mahmoud Abbas, said the Palestinians are pleased that China has shown great interest in pushing forward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process stalled since 2014.

Through cooperation with the international community, China, as a great power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, can help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the two-state solution, Rahim said.

He was commenting on the four-point proposal on resolving the Palestinian issue that was put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting with his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing in July.

The proposal reiterated China's firm support for political settlement of the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution, and for the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

It also highlighted the importance of enhancing international coordination to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine, while calling for supporting Palestine's economic development within the framework of China's Belt and Road Initiative.

China also offered to host a symposium on the Israeli-Palestinian peace later this year and launch a tripartite dialogue mechanism with Palestine and Israel, in order to create necessary conditions for resuming the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and increase their mutual trust.

Rahim said that if the international community and the influential parties like China, Russia and the European Union are all united in their efforts in pushing forward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, "they would have greater influence to end the circle of talks for the sake of talks."

He noted that China has good ties with both sides of the conflict, the Palestinians and the Israelis, and its policy is largely accepted by the Palestinians and the peace forces in Israel.

"China always believes that the Palestinian issue is the root cause of the Middle East conflict and resolving it would lead to the resolution of all problems in the region," Rahim said, adding that China can play a pivotal role with its vision of resolving the problems through constructive talks.

The senior Palestinian official said the Palestinians welcome China's initiative to host a peace symposium to be attended by Israeli and Palestinian peace activists within this year.

"This initiative is accepted and welcomed as it represents support for the international efforts to push forward the peace talks that will lead to implementation of the two-state solution," Rahim said.

A just peace in the Middle East needs to be achieved to confront the rise in terrorism, because terrorists often use the subject of Israeli occupation to justify their crimes, Rahim pointed out.

But in the past 20 years, there have been just talks for the sake of talks between Israel and the Palestinians, without achieving major results. The only benefit was Israel's expansion of settlement, which damages the two-state solution, he said.

Rahim believed that China's moves will also motivate other countries to revitalize their efforts to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Rahim added.

"China can be a honest broker for its political and economic status... because it has no selfish motivation and only wants to establish stability in the region," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 02:42:31|Editor: Liangyu

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Flowers and candles are laid to mourn the victims of the terror attack on Las Ramblas street, Barcelona, Spain, on Aug. 18, 2017. The number of people killed in Thursday's double terror attacks rose to 15 on Friday. (Xinhua/Xu Jinquan)

by Yin Xia, Zhou Jun, Gui Tao,

BRUSSELS, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- On Thursday afternoon, a van mowed down people at the famous street Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Spain.

Hours later, a vehicle ran over several people in the Catalan resort town of Cambrils, about 100 kilometers southwest of Barcelona. The five alleged terrorists were taken down by Catalan police in a shootout.

The number of people killed in Thursday's double terror attacks rose to 15, the Catalan emergency services confirmed.

The fact that terrorism is rampant in Europe is a result of a series of internal and external reasons. Experts believe that European countries must stay alert in the fight against terrorism.

Europe stays united

The Barcelona attacks were the latest major terrorist attacks happened in Europe this year following London, Paris, Copenhagen and Brussels ones. These deadly attacks made Europe suffer great pains.

Leaders from European Union (EU) institutions and member states condemned the attacks, expressed condolences, and stated that Europe would stay united to fight against terrorism.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker lambasted the "cowardly" attack in a statement, saying "I send my deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims, as well as to (Spanish) Prime Minister Rajoy and the people of Spain. My thoughts are with the people of Barcelona."

He added the Commission is "at the full disposal of the authorities for any help or assistance".

Echoing Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk tweeted: "All of Europe stands with Barcelona. Our thoughts are with the victims and all affected by this cowardly attack on innocents."

European Parliament President Antonio Tajani said: "My heart goes out to the victims of the attack in Barcelona and their families. Full support to authorities. EU united in defence of peace."

Apart from this, leaders of European countries, such as Britain, France and Denmark, also expressed their support to Spain and the resolution to fight against terrorism together.

Threat high in continent

The Thursday's attacks were the most serious terrorist attacks in Spain since the Madrid train bomb attacks in 2004.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the attack in Barcelona was "jihadist terrorism", calling for a global response.

"Today the fight against terrorism is the principal priority for free and open societies like ours. It is a global threat and the response has to be global," Rajoy said at a press conference in Barcelona.

European anti-terrorism experts believed that terrorists from the Middle East, combined with the European extremists, pose increasing threat to Europe.

According to Europol's Terrorism Situation and Trend Report published in June this year, the EU is facing a range of terrorist threats and attacks of a violent jihadist nature, from both networked groups and lone actors.

The attacks in Brussels, Nice and Berlin in particular, with explosives (Brussels) and vehicles (Nice and Berlin) used to randomly kill and wound as many people as possible, again demonstrated the harm jihadist militants are able and willing to inflict upon EU citizens, legitimised by the interpretation they adopted of selectively sampled religious texts, said the report.

The report pointed out that jihadist actors can be both directed by Islamic State (IS) or merely inspired by IS ideology and rhetoric. Jihadist terrorists have been found to use a range of weapons to include bladed weapons, automatic rifles, explosives and vehicles, and are expected to continue to do so.

Perpetrators of terrorist attacks in the EU include both foreigners, of whom a number may have resided in the EU for a long time, and nationals who have grown up in the countries they attacked, it further stated.

Vigilance vital in fight against terror

Peter Neumann, German anti-terrorism expert, said that Europe countries still have deficiencies in counterterrorism cooperation. So far, the security departments of European countries have not established a database containing all terrorists across Europe available for all European countries to refer to at any time yet.

Glees, Director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS) at Britain's University of Buckingham, told Xinhua one of the big questions that needed to be answered was whether security in the tourist hot spot in Spain had been too relaxed.

"Las Ramblas is the place everyone goes to, so everything has to be set in context. We have seen two attacks in London where vehicles have been used as weapons, and similar attacks in Berlin, Nice and Stockholm. This has become an established terror tactic," he said.

"Whether this latest attack was carried out by home grown Islam idealists, or whether they came from Arab countries or Northern Africa remains to be seen," he added.

The attacks in Spain were made possible because European countries were slow to make public space safe, French specialist on terrorism Mathieu Guidere said on Friday in an interview with Xinhua.

For the French specialist, the solution lies essentially in improving the "passive defense" of Europe's urban areas where pedestrians and vehicles congregate.

"The mayors of large European cities must rethink public spaces: every time there is a sidewalk on which a car can be mounted, a pedestrian square around which vehicles circulate, concrete blocks must be placed," Guidere said.

Francesco Sisci, veteran Italian journalist, said in an interview with Xinhua that social contradictions and religious conflicts will still exist in European countries for a long time.

According to him, the European countries should take out long-term strategies to deal with terrorist attacks; first of all is to stay calm, and not to carry out high-pressure policies.

To prevent terrorist attacks effectively, European countries need to increase police and its technical means, he said, and at the same time, it is important to have the support and trust of the people.

(The story was also contributed by Larry Neild, Ying Qiang, Han Bing, Wang Qing, Li Jie)

Related:
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 03:23:01|Editor: yan

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By Gao Lu, Robert Stanton

HOUSTON, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- In order to keep students safe and sound on campus, Texas university police spare no effort to build up better relationship with the students.

As the police there believe that when the communication channel is built, their job is half done.

At colleges and universities across Texas, campus police take a proactive approach to protecting students, especially international students, said Lt. Bret Collier of the University of Houston Police Department.

"We welcome students from all over the world, including more than 800 students from China, with the primary goal to educate and keep them safe," he said. "We encourage our students from here and abroad to take ownership of their safety. If you see something, say it."

Texas Southern University (TSU) is located in Houston, in the U.S. state of Texas. As a leading producer of college degrees to African Americans and Hispanics in Texas, TSU ranks fourth in the U.S. in doctoral and professional degrees conferred to African Americans.

Except for its investment in facilities, TSU knows the importance of educating its students how to protect themselves well, especially those who just arrive.

TSU police spend a lot of time communicating with students, trying to help them trust police, call police and tell police what's going on and what's going wrong.

Fred Brown, deputy chief of university police department, told Xinhua that their vision is to do a better job with the communication of students. which is to reach out to students and build up a healthy relationship with them.

"Our goal is to invite students to help us keep them safe. If we meet them and talk to them, and they get to know us and we get to know them," he said.

Brown said the whole idea of building relationship with students is to make them feel comfortable talking with police when they notice something wrong.

"If they suspect something is wrong, they want to feel comfortable talking to us. So we have to build that relationship by introducing ourselves, let them know that we care because our main purpose here is their safety and welfare as well as faculty and the visitors that come to the Texas Southern campus," he continued.

But police say it's difficult to predict an attack by a lone assailant like Dylan Quick, who went on a stabbing spree in April 2013 at Lone Star College System in Cypress, located near Houston.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office said that Quick went on a building-to-building rampage with a razor-like knife, wounding at least 14 people before he was finally arrested. Quick was charged with felony aggravated assault in the case.

"It comes down to everyone's awareness," said Chief Bruce Caldwell of the San Jacinto College Police Department. "It's very difficult to defend against a rampage. Everybody on campus is an extension of the police department, and should report it if you see something unusual.

"It often begins with, 'He (a suspect) was acting strange all day.' If you see something like that or something unusual, it's OK to report it," Caldwell said. "We'll have an officer come out to investigate the situation."

The 30,000-student San Jacinto College system has four campuses located in and around Houston.

According to Brown, building relationship starts from the very beginning. The police department offers seminars for new students and their parents before the semester begins, telling them important information, such as the telephone number of police department and the first things to do when student feel unsafe.

"Don't necessarily call 911 because it goes straight to the Houston police department and they'll call us and it delays the time," Brown said, adding that sometimes first year student call their parents instead of calling them police when something is wrong.

"They forget to call the police. So we try to education them on that." Brown explained that such basic techniques can save lives when emergency occurs.

Brown offered some advices to new students to keep safe and sound during their studies in universities. "We always try to encourage students to walk in pairs at night times, try not to go anywhere alone and not let anybody know where you are," he said, adding that several smart phone apps are recommended to new students and their parents to download.
Fred Brown, deputy chief of the police department at Texas Southern University (TSU), is interviewed by Xinhua on July 31, 2017 in Houston, Texas, the United States.(Xinhua/Liu Liwei)

By Gao Lu, Robert Stanton

HOUSTON, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- In order to keep students safe and sound on campus, Texas university police spare no efforts to build up better relations with the students.

The police there believe that when the communication channel is built, their job is half done.

At colleges and universities across Texas, campus police take a proactive approach to protecting students, especially international students, said Lt. Bret Collier of the University of Houston Police Department.

"We welcome students from all over the world, including more than 800 students from China, with the primary goal to educate and keep them safe," he said. "We encourage our students from here and abroad to take ownership of their safety. If you see something, say it."

Texas Southern University (TSU) is located in Houston, in the U.S. state of Texas. As a leading producer of college degrees to African Americans and Hispanics in Texas, TSU ranks fourth in the U.S. in doctoral and professional degrees conferred to African Americans.

Except for its investment in facilities, TSU knows the importance of educating its students how to protect themselves well, especially those who just arrive.

TSU police spend a lot of time communicating with students, trying to help them trust police, call police and tell police what's going on and what's going wrong.

Fred Brown, deputy chief of university police department, told Xinhua that their vision is to do a better job with the communication of students. which is to reach out to students and build up a healthy relationship with them.

"Our goal is to invite students to help us keep them safe. If we meet them and talk to them, and they get to know us and we get to know them," he said.

Brown said the whole idea of building relationship with students is to make them feel comfortable talking with police when they notice something wrong.

"If they suspect something is wrong, they want to feel comfortable talking to us. So we have to build that relationship by introducing ourselves, let them know that we care because our main purpose here is their safety and welfare as well as faculty and the visitors that come to the Texas Southern campus," he continued.

But police say it's difficult to predict an attack by a lone assailant like Dylan Quick, who went on a stabbing spree in April 2013 at Lone Star College System in Cypress, located near Houston.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office said that Quick went on a building-to-building rampage with a razor-like knife, wounding at least 14 people before he was finally arrested. Quick was charged with felony aggravated assault in the case.

"It comes down to everyone's awareness," said Chief Bruce Caldwell of the San Jacinto College Police Department. "It's very difficult to defend against a rampage. Everybody on campus is an extension of the police department, and should report it if you see something unusual.

"It often begins with, 'He (a suspect) was acting strange all day.' If you see something like that or something unusual, it's OK to report it," Caldwell said. "We'll have an officer come out to investigate the situation."

The 30,000-student San Jacinto College system has four campuses located in and around Houston.

According to Brown, building relationship starts from the very beginning. The police department offers seminars for new students and their parents before the semester begins, telling them important information, such as the telephone number of police department and the first things to do when student feel unsafe.

"Don't necessarily call 911 because it goes straight to the Houston police department and they'll call us and it delays the time," Brown said, adding that sometimes first year student call their parents instead of calling them police when something is wrong.

"They forget to call the police. So we try to education them on that." Brown explained that such basic techniques can save lives when emergency occurs.

Brown offered some advices to new students to keep safe and sound during their studies in universities. "We always try to encourage students to walk in pairs at night times, try not to go anywhere alone and not let anybody know where you are," he said, adding that several smart phone apps are recommended to new students and their parents to download.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 04:59:12|Editor: Liangyu

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File photo taken on Feb. 15, 2017 shows White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon (1st R) at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States. Multiple U.S. media reported on Aug. 18 that U.S. President Donald Trump has decided to fire White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon, in a major White House shakeup. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- The White House said Friday Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon will leave his job.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," she added.

Conflicting reports have emerged regarding the details of Bannon's departure, some reports said Bannon had submitted his resignation on Aug. 7, while other reports indicated Bannon had been fired by President Donald Trump.

Controversy surrounding Bannon's role in the White House have been mounting in recent months, and was heightened after a race-related clash in Charlottesville over the weekend resulted in three deaths.

When asked about whether Bannon's position in the White House was secure Tuesday, Trump said "we'll see what happens."

Trump was reportedly furious with Bannon after he contradicted the president's view on several issues including U.S.-China trade ties in an unusual interview Wednesday with The American Prospect.

"He apparently was sidelined by Trump in the past few months and he has many opponents both in and outside of the Trump administration, so he was probably just venting his frustration by making eye-catching news," Zhiqun Zhu, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Bucknell University told Xinhua on Thursday. "In fact, he is not sure whether he can keep his job at this point."

"Bannon grossly misreads U.S.-China relations and Trump's policy towards Asia. I do not think his words about 'economic war with China' represents Trump's policy," said Zhu.

Bannon is the latest heavyweight to leave the Trump administration, after National Security advisor Michael Flynn, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Press Secretary Sean Spicer, two Communications Director Dubke and Scaramucci, and FBI Director James Comey have stepped down.

Analysts believe Bannon's departure is expected to create big ripples inside the Trump administration as this may indicate a separation between government policies and nationalistic ideas Bannon advocates.

Allies of Bannon in the administration are also expected to follow Bannon's exit, according to local reports.

Bannon, former head of right-wing media Breitbart, was recruited by Trump during the campaign, and played a major role in developing domestic and international policies for the Trump administration.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 05:09:17|Editor: Yurou

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by Gan Chun, Ying Qiang

BARCELONA, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- "I was still shaking when I got back to our house from the beach," 17-year-old Luis Ibanez said, recalling the horrific moments on early Friday morning when five terrorist suspects were gunned down by police in the small seaside town of Cambrils in Spain.

The teenager came from Madrid to spend the vacation with his family in their summer house before starting university, but experienced probably the most shocking scene in his life so far.

The attack was launched around 1:00 a.m. Friday when the five suspects drove an Audi A3 onto the pedestrian area next to the beach and ran over seven people, among whom a woman died later in the hospital.

The attack came just hours after a van rammed into the crowd Thursday afternoon in Las Ramblas, an iconic touristic street in the heart of Barcelona, some 130 km away from Cambrils, leaving at least 13 people dead and over 100 injured.

"We were at the beach and we heard the shootings. We saw the attackers' car collided with the police car," Ibanez told Xinhua.

The suspects' vehicle then overturned after the collision, while the five got out and tried to attack the police with machetes and axes, before being shot dead.

As he heard the gunshots, having no place to hide next to the coast, Ibanez ran with other panicking beachgoers to the sidewalk above, where he saw the motionless body of one of the suspects on the ground, next to a police vehicle.

"We were told by the police to return to the beach, until they came back and told us it's ok to leave and go back to our houses," said Ibanez.

According to the Spanish news agency EFE, four of the five suspects were single-handedly gunned down by a female officer who was patrolling the area.

Moussa Oukabir, a 17-year-old believed to be the van driver in the Barcelona attack, was among the suspects shot dead, Spanish media quoted police source as saying.

Another witness who refused to be named showed Xinhua shaky footage he shot with his phone, in which pedestrians were seen running down the street amid the mixed sound of screaming, police siren and consecutive gunshots.

"One of them was shot down here," the middle-aged man pointed to the ground near the entrance to the beach, where small blood stains could still be traced.

He said he had been coming to the same beach every summer for the past 20 years but never seen such a horrific scene.

However, many tourists were seen returning to the beach on Friday afternoon to resume their holidays, including Ibanez.

"I don't think the terrorists will attack again here. I will continue to do the same thing as planned," he said.

At the site where the suspects were shot, just steps away from the now seemingly peaceful coastline, parked a police vehicle, with two armed officers observing closely passers-by.

Several live trucks from different television networks were also parked nearby, with journalists from around the world waiting to get more information about the aftermath of the attack.

Spanish police believe that the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils were plotted and carried out by the same group of suspects, who were originally preparing for a "larger" attack but were forced to withdraw the plan after bombing-making attempts failed.

The Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the Barcelona attack, of which the victims are of 34 nationalities.

"The terrorists want to scare people away from Spain, but we must continue to enjoy our lives and show the world that our country is not afraid of these cowards," Alexandre, an elderly Cambrils local, told a group of reporters.
Trucks wait in the queue for border customs control to cross into U.S.at the Bridge of Americas in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, August 15, 2017. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

by Xinhua writers Guo Shuang, Huang Chao

EL CENTRO, the United States, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- For many residents who live on the U.S.-Mexico border, Arco gas station, where gasoline is roughly 20 or more cents cheaper than it is at most gas stations in Imperial County, California, is the best choice to save a couple of bucks.

Several years ago, nobody believed the gas station could be successful, because it is not located along the main street.

However, because of the rapid growth of trade between Mexico and the U.S in recent years, the gas station along with the ampm convenience store attached to it in Heber, Imperial County, which is 7 kilometers away from the border inspection station, thrived.

Thousands of vehicles now came to the gas station with 24 pumps, which run 24 hours a day, for fueling. So far, the monthly total of the gas station and ampm store has well surpassed 2 million, which was way beyond other gas stations in the region.

It is a benefit from the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Cecilia Hernandez, manager of Arco gas station, told Xinhua.

"I think NAFTA work both ways (U.S. and Mexico both benefit from each other). Because especially here in the Imperial Valley, we live right on the border, so we depend on them to be able to come here and buy goods here. They also depend on us so they can live a better life."

As the renegotiation of NAFTA is underway in Washington D.C., ordinary people living on the U.S.- Mexico border, who have benefited from NAFTA for years, held different opinions.

"For the past 23 years, it (NAFTA) has been working for America, Mexico and Canada. Every country benefits from each other. So why change something that has been working for so many years?" local resident Antonio Valenzuela told Xinhua.

Valenzuela "totally disagree" with U.S. president Donald Trump. "A new administration and a new president, doesn't mean you have to change everything," he said.

"There shouldn't be any changes to it (NAFTA), because it will only affect Mexico's economy, U.S. economy and Canada's economy," he added.

According to a recent report released by Community and Economic Development Department of the Imperial County, more than 52,000 crossing the border on a daily basis for working or shopping.

Calexico is a smaller town divided by fence with Mexicali, a Mexican city. According to the report, the Calexico/Mexicali border crossers in personal vehicles and on foot account for "a total of approximately 380 million U.S. dollars in spending on retail items and groceries in Imperial Valley."

And the total spending in Imperial County in 2016 on retail, food, and drink (spending in restaurants and bars was excluded) was 1.93 billion U.S. dollars. That means the group contributed approximately 20 percent of the total spending in Imperial County in 2016 on retail and groceries.

According to Esperanza Colio Warren, the Commmunity and Economic Development Manager, "the border crossers from Mexico spend an average of 140 U.S. dollars per week in the Imperial Vally, which equals about 7,280 U.S. dollars per person per year."

In El Centro, the largest city in the Imperial Valley, 6.8 kilometers north of Calexico, a Holiday Inn Express hotel first opened to business ten years ago. At that time, local residents here believed motels were good enough for this city, about 350 kilometers southeast to Los Angeles.

But now, with the development of border trading, El Centro is growing and getting international, with chain restaurants and supermarkets. In Calexico, many of the shop owners are Korean.

"As a matter of fact, I understand most businesses believe that NAFTA has increased export to Canada and Mexico. So that's a good thing for the United States. Here in Imperial County, it's a good thing because we have the trade that is going back and forth. We believed it has not only created jobs in Mexico, but also created some jobs in the U.S," Ralph Cordova, CEO of Imperial County, told Xinhua.

Trump, who on the election campaign trail last year called NAFTA "the worst trade deal signed maybe anywhere," has blamed the 23-year-old trade agreement for the lost of American jobs in automobile factories.

However, Raymond R. Castillo, Imperial County Supervisor, believed that U.S. benefit even more from NAFTA.

"Because the U.S. is in the middle and we have the Canadian border and the southern border with Mexico. If you look at the communities in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, it has brought a lot of jobs," Castillo told Xinhua.

According to the Imperial County Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, Mexico now is California's highest ranking trading partner. Over 30 percent of the trading products come through the two land ports in Calexico. Mexico now imports some 18.5 billion U.S. dollars of agriculture products every year, making it one of the most important markets for U.S. farmers, according to local media reports.

Many thought there was nothing much to worry about. "I think the talks of negotiating NAFTA is just what Trump wanted. He said many things that has been changed in a second," said James Lo, President of Imperial Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

Of course, NAFTA may not be a perfect trade. "There are some areas where they need tweak. In other words, there's always a way you can improve," said John R. Renison, Imperial County Supervisor.

"There's nothing wrong with looking at it, revising it and amending it. But it has to be fair. You just cannot go in there and say we are gonna throw it away. I don't think that's a solution."

Renison thought three countries should work together, and he believed "we will."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 06:05:12|Editor: Yurou

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CARACAS, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- The opposition majority in Venezuela's National Assembly (AN) said Friday it rejected the decree by the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), which dispossessed the AN of some of its powers.

"The AN leadership and deputies of the Democratic United Roundtable do not recognize or condone the dissolution that (President Nicolas) Maduro is seeking through the fraudulent ANC," wrote the opposition leadership on Twitter.

On Friday morning, an ANC decree approved "assuming functions to legislate on matters directly related to guaranteeing the preservation of peace, security, sovereignty, the socioeconomic and financial system, the goals of the state and the preeminence of the rights of Venezuelans."

This was tabled by ANC President Delcy Rodriguez, who accused the parliament of ignoring the people and seeking only to remove Maduro from office.

However, she denied the ANC was dissolving the parliament, saying that this move marked a "cohabitation."

The MUD has consistently refused to acknowledge or participate in the ANC, calling it a power grab by Maduro and his allies.

In a statement Friday it said that the ANC's decree was "void" and its acts were "illegal and unconstitutional."

The AC has called for an extraordinary session to debate the decree on Saturday at 10 a.m., at the same government palace where the ANC sits.
File photo taken on Feb. 13, 2017 shows White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States. On Aug. 18, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump decided to fire White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon, in a major White House shakeup. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- The White House said Friday Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon will leave his job.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," she added.

Conflicting reports have emerged regarding the details of Bannon's departure, some reports said Bannon had submitted his resignation on Aug. 7, while other reports indicated Bannon had been fired by President Donald Trump.

Controversy surrounding Bannon's role in the White House have been mounting in recent months, and was heightened after a race-related clash in Charlottesville over the weekend resulted in three deaths.

When asked about whether Bannon's position in the White House was secure Tuesday, Trump said "we'll see what happens."

Trump was reportedly furious with Bannon after he contradicted the president's view on several issues including U.S.-China trade ties in an unusual interview Wednesday with The American Prospect.

"He apparently was sidelined by Trump in the past few months and he has many opponents both in and outside of the Trump administration, so he was probably just venting his frustration by making eye-catching news," Zhiqun Zhu, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Bucknell University told Xinhua on Thursday. "In fact, he is not sure whether he can keep his job at this point."

"Bannon grossly misreads U.S.-China relations and Trump's policy towards Asia. I do not think his words about 'economic war with China' represents Trump's policy," said Zhu.

Bannon is the latest heavyweight to leave the Trump administration, after National Security advisor Michael Flynn, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Press Secretary Sean Spicer, two Communications Director Dubke and Scaramucci, and FBI Director James Comey have stepped down.

Analysts believe Bannon's departure is expected to create big ripples inside the Trump administration as this may indicate a separation between government policies and nationalistic ideas Bannon advocates.

Allies of Bannon in the administration are also expected to follow Bannon's exit, according to local reports.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 11:17:26|Editor: Yurou

Police officers detain the attacker who stabbed people in Turku, southwestern Finland, on Aug. 18, 2017. Several people were stabbed in downtown Turku, southwestern Finland on Friday, when more than one man mounted the attacks simultaneously. At least two died and eight others were injured, according to local media. (Xinhua/Zhilwan Pirkhezri)

TURKU, Finland, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and eight injured as an attacker stabbed crowds at two squares in central Turku in southwestern Finland on Friday, police said.

The stabber started the assault in the market square around 4 p.m. (1300GMT) local time, and then ran northwest to another square some 400 meters away, where he was shot in the leg and detained by police.

A witnesses told Xinhua that the attacker was a slim young man waving a huge knife at the corner of the market square. "People were screaming, running in all directions, and this person just continued to wave his knife and to stab people," said Kent Svensson, a tourist from Luxembourg.

"A guy took off his shirt to try to stop the blood from a person lying on the ground. And we ran into the cafe to hide. People closed the doors," said Svensson with trembling voice.

Photos taken by Zhilwan Pirkhezri and his friends showed that a victim was a mother with a small child. The woman was later seen lying on the ground covered with a white sheet, with her handbag and sunglasses by her side.

People at the market square tried to stop the stabber and threw cafe chairs in front of him, but did not manage to stop him. One of the victims was stabbed when he tried to intervene after an elderly woman was attacked.

"We were talking about the happenings in Barcelona, when we suddenly realize that it happened right in front of us," said Svensson.

The police have not defined the incident as "terrorism." At a press conference at 7 p.m.(1600 GMT), the police could not confirm a claim by a witness that the suspect shouted "Allah" during the violence, as some media reported.

Minister of the Interior Paula Risikko said at the press conference that the nationality of the suspect could not be immediately verified as the detainee was receiving medical treatment.

Turku police arrived fast on the scene and appeared in a heavy response outfit, with assault rifles visible. An alert reached the police at 4:08 p.m.(1308 GMT), and the suspect was apprehended 20 minutes thereafter.

Following the detention, police were prepared for the possibility of other attacks. Police ordered the city center to be cleared.

Turku is located in southwestern Finland and home to 187,000 inhabitants. It is a major Finnish port city connected to the Swedish capital Stockholm via passenger ferry lines.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 12:23:43|Editor: Xiang Bo

Students promote a proposal on climate change during a Model United Nation Conference in the "Youth Leadership Summer Camp for Climate Action" at the site of the Panda Solar Station, a panda-shaped solar power plant based in Datong County, north China's Shanxi Province, Aug. 12, 2017. The summer camp from Aug. 10 to 19 is hosted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in China and co-hosted by the Panda Green Energy Group. It's designed to promote youth engagement in tackling climate change and promoting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Altogether 50 students aged from 13 to 17 took part in the camp. (Xinhua/Ma Ping)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 12:27:46|Editor: Xiang Bo

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by Luis Rojas and Wu Hao

MEXICO CITY, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Mexican maize producers are worried about the future as Mexico, the United States and Canada are in the midst of renegotiating the emblematic North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Pedro Baranda, a 52-year-old small maize producer near Mexico City, is highly pessimistic. "The countryside will disappear," he said.

He says that NAFTA has not brought him any benefits. The negotiation, he believes, might kill off Mexico's suffering agricultural sector.

"The priority is being given to other things like industry, which make more money," said Baranda in an interview with Xinhua. "The free-trade agreement will benefit (large) producers, not the farmers."

For the farmer, maize is traditionally reckoned as a "seed from which generation after generation has survived." However, he now sows maize across 7,000 square meters from which he produces a ton harvest a year, bringing him a revenue of 8,000 pesos (450 U.S. dollars), on which five people live.

However, imports of U.S. maize into Mexico during 2016 stood at 13.8 million tons, according to official figures.

Baranda said farmers are well-paid in the United States, adding that the sector receives government support and planning, which does not happen in Mexico.

He was joined by Efrain Rodriguez, a Mexican miller, who told Xinhua that the increasing arrival of foreign maize into Mexico is cutting out local producers, due to its low cost and high volume.

Rodriguez said the price difference between local and imported maize can be between 4 to 5 pesos (less than 30 U.S. cents), enough to make a difference for lower-income families.

Rodriguez complained that an increase in imported maize leaves him with reduced income.

In comparison, Mexico's largest maize flour company, Gruma, reported a sales volume of 1 million tons in the second quarter of 2017. This marked a 3 percent hike year-on-year, in large part due to the U.S. market.

In July, the agricultural ministers of Mexico and the United States met ahead of the NAFTA talks and agreed to create a joint mechanism to increase trade in agricultural produce.

The trade of foodstuffs between the two sides has grown at an annual average of 8.5 percent since NAFTA took effect.

Pedro Tuesta, a Latin American economist for 4Cast Roubini Global Economics, said that "when there is a rise in trade, it is well-known that those who can produce more will benefit the most. It is a question of productivity."

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Mexico produced a record of 27.6 million tons of maize in 2016, still far from the 343 million tons in the United States.

A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the first eight years of NAFTA created 500,000 manufacturing jobs in Mexico but saw 1.3 million agricultural jobs vanished.

Laura Amezcua, head of the International Business School at Mexico's Panamerican University, said that "the problems have outweighed the benefits." Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 12:52:52|Editor: Liangyu

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PETROZAVODSK, Russia, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Republic of Karelia in Russia's northwest and Fujian province in southern China are expected to sign an agreement during the upcoming BRICS summit that could see trade bolster significantly between the two favored jurisdictions, Karelia's top official said.

"Currently, the preparation for the establishment of a friendly and cooperative partnership between the two sides has entered the final stage. Hopefully, we will sign the agreement during the BRICS summit and start to carry out joint projects as soon as possible," Artur Parfyonchikov, acting head of the Republic of Karelia, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The Ninth BRICS Summit to be held in early September in Fujian's resort city Xiamen, themed "BRICS: Stronger Partnership for a Brighter Future," will be the first summit among the BRICS members in the second "Golden Decade" of the multilateral organization.

Plans for expanding cooperation between Karelia and Fujian are based on their multiple similarities, Parfyonchikov noted.

Geographically, both are border regions. Economically, the two regions boast of rich resources in forestry, mining, tourism and other fields, and enjoy similar priorities in their respective country's national economic policy, which guarantees great potential for cooperation, he explained.

Joint projects in non-traditional industries including automation machinery, information technology, culture and education are also being explored by the two jurisdictions, he added.

In addition, the acting commissioner said Karelia has great advantages in attracting foreign investment and tourists, highlighting its well-conditioned railways, maritime and other transportation infrastructure, which efficiently connects the region to major cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg and Murmansk as well as neighboring Finland.

At present, Karelia is in talks with Chinese authorities to develop tourism projects and routes for Chinese tourists, according to Parfyonchikov.

Recalling a 50MW Beloporozhskaya hydropower plants project in Karelia launched in October last year, the first project in Russia financed by the BRICS New Development Bank, Parfyonchikov said it set an example for the pragmatic cooperation within the framework of BRICS.

"The construction of the hydropower plants is of great benefit to the local economy, and helps to boost employment as the workers involved in the construction of the project are mainly from the local community," he said.

Parfyonchikov expressed his confidence in future prospects for comprehensive cooperation among the BRICS countries, saying that BRICS provides its member countries with an efficient platform for dialogue and consultation.

"Karelia's hydropower stations project is a manifestation of the outcome of the BRICS Summit. I believe the ninth summit will enable us to take a further step ahead and open a new chapter in promoting cooperation among the BRICS countries," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 13:07:57|Editor: Yurou

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NEW DELHI, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- India's rights panel National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a notice to the federal government, seeking detailed report about its plan to deport around 40,000 Rohingya immigrants illegally living in the country, an official said Saturday.

The rights panel has sought clarification from the government after taking suo motu cognizance of media reports which said India was going ahead with plans to deport Rohingyas and started discussions with Myanmar and Bangladesh governments on the issue.

The rights panel has held that its intervention was appropriate in the matter from the human rights perspective.

"The commission has also observed that the Supreme Court of India has consistently held that the fundamental right enshrined under Article 21 of the Indian constitution regarding right to life and personal liberty, applies to all, irrespective of the fact whether they are citizens of India or not," NHRC said.

Reports said thousands of Rohingyas are currently settled across India in Hyderabad, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi-NCR, Rajasthan, Jammu, among others.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 13:53:13|Editor: Lu Hui

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by Xinhua writers Gao Pan, Jin Minmin

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer on Friday formally launched a Section 301 investigation into alleged intellectual property practices by China under a rarely used 1974 trade law, triggering concerns that Washington may unilaterally impose restrictions that would eventually hurt both countries.

"The investigation will seek to determine whether acts, policies, and practices of the Government of China related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce," the USTR's Office said in a statement.

The move comes after U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive memorandum directing Lighthizer to consider the possible initiation of an investigation, signaling his administration's tough trade stance against China.

Section 301, once heavily used in the 1980s and the early 1990s, allows the U.S. president to unilaterally impose tariffs or other trade restrictions on foreign countries. But the United States has rarely used the outdated trade tool since the World Trade Organization came into being in 1995.

"The 301 toolkit was retired for good reason. Bringing it back in 2017 is likely to be more deeply problematic to more firms in more places than many might expect," said Deborah Elms, founder and executive director of the Asian Trade Centre based in Singapore.

"It became no longer necessary really for the United States that they have to use that law, because now we have an effective dispute settlement system under the WTO," Chad Bown, a trade expert and senior fellow at the Washington D.C.-based Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Meanwhile, the global trading community had become increasingly concerned about the use of Section 301 as the U.S. government "acts as police force, prosecutor, jury and judge" in the process, Bown argued. He recommended Washington and Beijing resolve trade disputes through the WTO.

If Lighthizer did decide to go ahead with the Section 301 investigation, the United States would first consult with China and the investigation process could take as long as a year, senior administration officials told reporters last week.

Jeffrey Schott, another trade expert at the PIIE, told Xinhua that the purpose of the investigation is "to find out what the facts are and to use the process of investigation to expand bilateral consultations with China" so that there is a better understanding of each country's practices.

Schott didn't see "any immediate restrictions" being imposed on China by the United States as the USTR has to do "a lot more study" on this case.

"Whether there are restrictions or not will depend on how the study proceeds and how the bilateral consultations between the United States and China unfold over the next few months," he said.

China has urged the United States to objectively evaluate China's progress in protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) and resolve differences with China through dialogue and consultation.

"The United States should treasure the current sound Sino-U.S. economic and trade ties and cooperation momentum. Any U.S. trade protectionism move will surely damage bilateral ties and the interests of companies from both countries," China's Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Tuesday.

Lighthizer, former deputy USTR in the Reagan administration, may wish to relive the trade battle against Japan in the 1980s. However, the world has tremendously changed in the past three decades and the China-U.S. economic and trade relationship is more important than ever.

Trade and investment between China and the U.S. supports about 2.6 million American jobs, according to the U.S.-China Business Council.

"The Chinese market matters very much to the U.S. administration, much more than the Japanese market matters to the U.S.," Yorizumi Watanabe, a professor at Faculty of Policy Management of Keio University in Tokyo, told Xinhua.

"If they (the Trump administration) become very naughty and nasty against Chinese exports, then Chinese authorities would easily imagine similar sorts of restrictions (against U.S. exports), so this is kind of tit-for-tat situation," he said.

He hoped the Trump administration would be "extremely careful" about imposing new import restrictions against China.

If the U.S. side fails to respect basic facts and multilateral trade rules, and takes measures that harm bilateral economic and trade relations, "China will definitely not sit by, but take all appropriate measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests," China's Ministry of Commerce said.

Given China's role in current global supply chains, "a trade war between U.S. and China will hurt not only Chinese manufacturers, but also upstream suppliers and downstream distributors such as U.S. retailers," the Institute of International Finance (IIF), a global association with around 500 major financial institutions, warned in a recent report.

Asked about the trade investigation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday reiterated its support for an open trading and investment system and the importance of working within the multilateral framework to resolve differences.

"We believe that the multilateral trading system can be an important source of economic prosperity for all countries concerned," said Markus Rodlauer, deputy director in the IMF's Asia and Pacific Department.

Related:

U.S. formally initiates investigation of China despite worries about potential harms to bilateral trade ties

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer on Friday formally initiated an investigation of so-called China's intellectual property practices under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, despite worries about potential harms to China-U.S. trade ties. Full story

Spotlight: With trade protectionism, more benefits? Not so, experts say
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 14:28:45|Editor: Xiang Bo

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BEIJING, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- China has said it will encourage public-private partnership (PPP) in the senior care industry.

Wider use of PPP should introduce more private investment into the elder care industry, according to a document released by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

With this move, elder care services should expand and become more efficient and jobs will be created, the document said.

China had more than 230 million people aged 60 or above at the end of 2016, 16.7 percent of the total population, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. The country's elderly will account for about one-quarter of the population by 2030.

However, there were only 31.6 beds in care homes for every 1,000 senior citizens at the end of 2016, according to the ministry.

The government will also encourage the management of public elder care facilities and community elder care services by private operators, the policy document said, with elder care integrated with fitness, medical care, education and recreational services.

Authorities should increase spending, while financial institutions should support PPP projects, according to the document.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 14:38:52|Editor: An

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Hi, here's what you should know about China for the past 24 hours.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer on Friday formally initiated an investigation of so-called China's intellectual property practices under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, despite worries about potential harms to China-U.S. trade ties.

"The investigation will seek to determine whether acts, policies, and practices of the Government of China related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict U.S. commerce," the USTR's Office said in a statement.

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LA PAZ -- Bolivian Energy Minister Rafael Alarcon said Friday that Chinese company Sinohydro has won a tender to build the Ivirizu hydroelectric dam.

Sinohydro won the second tender for the project, after the first was canceled on various technical grounds.

The Ivirizu project will be developed over four years, with an investment of over 550 million U.S. dollars to bring 279.9 megawatts to the national grid once completed.

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MANZHOULI, Inner Mongolia -- At a virtual reality theater in the China-Russia border city of Manzhouli, a group of tourists experience flying over the vast Hulun Buir grasslands, diving to the bottom of Lake Baikal, and escaping the roaring bears of the Greater Hinggan Mountains.

The film, which was being shown at a local theme park, visualized the combination of Chinese and Russian attractions that make border cities like Manzhouli popular for tourists from home and abroad.

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ANTANANARIVO -- China will fund to dig 200 water wells for people in two regions in southwestern Madagascar, Madagascar's Minister of Water, Energy and Hydrocarbons Lantoniaina Rasoloelison said on Friday in capital Antananarivo.

"Madagascar plans to increase to 67 percent the access rate for drinking water for its population by 2030 in the framework of the Sustainable Development goals (SDG)," the minister said at Ivato International Conference Center during the signing ceremony for this project.

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JOHANNESBURG -- South Africa's Absa bank and China Development Bank (CDB) on Friday announced the conclusion of a 100 million U.S. dollars Special Facility Agreement to fund small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in Africa.

Absa is a subsidiary of the Barclays Africa Group. The money will benefit Barclays bank's existing and prospective SME clients across the continent. The 100 million dollars will address the current funding needs, and may be increased in the future to assist with new funding opportunities within Barclays's operations, both banks said on Friday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 14:48:55|Editor: Song Lifang

Afghan honor guards stand during the celebration of Afghan Independence Day in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 19, 2017. Afghanistan on Saturday marked the 98th anniversary of its independence from the British empire occupation.(Xinhua/Rahmat Alizadah)

KABUL, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan on Saturday marked the 98th anniversary of its independence from the British empire occupation.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani laid a wreath at the Independence Minaret during an official celebration held Saturday morning inside the country's Defense Ministry compound.

The president paid tribute to security forces who have sacrificed their lives for stabilizing peace and security as violence has been spreading across the country amid attacks by Taliban insurgents and Islamic State (IS) militants.

Earlier in the day, Afghan teenagers and youths marched by cars and bikes through the streets of Kabul while carrying national flags.

Afghan people under the leadership of then king Amanullah Khan regained independence from Great Britain on Aug. 19, 1919.

The Independence Day was also marked in some of the country's 34 provinces amid tight security.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 15:24:06|Editor: Song Lifang

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BEIRUT, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Lebanese Army commander General Joseph Aoun announced Saturday the start of an offensive against the Islamic State (IS) group close to the Syrian border in the east of the country, where the jihadists have been entrenched for several years.

"In the name of Lebanon, in the name of kidnapped Lebanese soldiers, in the name of martyrs of the army, I announce that operation 'Dawn of Outskirts' has started," Aoun said.

Lebanon's President Michel Aoun who arrived at the Army Operations Center at Yarze contacted the commander of the front in the outskirts of al-Qaa and Ras Baalbek and said: "we are looking forward to victory."

The National News Agency said that the army seized control of Tallet al-Mkhayrmeh in Ras Baalbek, and pounded the IS posts in al-Qaa inflicting casualties among the militants' ranks.

Saturday's announcement came at the same time as Hezbollah and the Syrian army announced a similar offensive to clear IS militants from the Syrian side of the border, in the western Qalamoun mountain range.

Head of the army Directorate of Orientation Brigadier General Ali Kanso held a press conference at the army headquarters in Yarze where he gave a briefing to the press about the operations of the army against IS.

He said that the operation that has been launched at dawn Saturday will end "with a clear victory against IS and the liberation of all the Lebanese grounds occupied by the terrorist organization."

Kanso denied any coordination with Hezbollah or the Syrian Army.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 15:34:09|Editor: Song Lifang

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SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- Tobacco companies have known for decades that without counseling "nicotine replacement therapy" or NTR, used by consumers to complement smoking, hardly helps smokers quit, according to a study out of the United States. What's more, American cigarette makers embraced NTR as a business opportunity.

Combined with counseling, nicotine patches, gum, lozenges, inhalers or nasal sprays - together known as NRT - came into play in 1984 as prescription medicine. In 1996, at the urging of pharmaceutical companies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed those products to be sold over-the-counter.

The tobacco industry once viewed nicotine patches and gum as a threat to their cigarette sales.

However, with formerly secret internal documents known as the "Tobacco Papers," dated between 1960 and 2010 from the seven major tobacco companies operating in the United States, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, revealed that cigarette makers had started investing in alternative forms of nicotine delivery as early as the 1950s, but stopped short because people largely regarded nicotine as harmful, and such products might have attracted the attention of FDA regulators.

Published this week in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), the study titled "Tobacco Industry Research on Nicotine Replacement Therapy: 'If Anyone Is Going to Take Away Our Business It Should Be Us'" found that in 1987, three years after FDA first approved nicotine gum as a quitting aid, the tide had turned on the public perception of nicotine; and that by 1992, the tobacco industry had determined that patches and gum by themselves do not help smokers quit.

For more than a decade, the companies did not act on this knowledge out of fear of FDA regulation. But once the federal agency started regulating cigarettes in 2009, they went all out in their bid to develop and sell NRT. The Tobacco Papers reveal that companies conjectured that their new nicotine products could successfully compete with pharmaceutical NRT and they set the goal of gaining market control of all products containing nicotine.

"It was surprising to discover the industry came to view NRT as just another product," Dorie Apollonio, associate professor in clinical pharmacy and lead author of the study, was quoted as saying in a UCSF news release. "The tobacco companies want people to get nicotine - and they're open-minded about how they get it."

Smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths every year in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and another 16 million Americans live with a smoking-related disease.

The costs of such illnesses total more than 300 billion U.S. dollars each year, when including both costs of direct medical care and lost productivity due to secondhand smoke exposure.

Clinical trials show that NRT can help people quit smoking, but only if used in conjunction with counseling and in tapering doses.

Over-the-counter availability of NRT made it easy for smokers to get a nicotine fix in non-smoking environments like offices and inside airplanes, with the net result that they were less likely to quit. And given that NRT products are widely available, one of the questions is whether they encourage nicotine abuse.

"Tobacco companies put out these (NRT) products as a way to sidestep policies, by giving people a way to 'smoke without smoking,'" Apollonio noted. "It would be interesting to see in the next 10 years if the companies come up with nicotine water, inhalers, gum, edible products - these are all on their agenda."

Alleging that NRT may normalize lifelong nicotine addiction, the authors urged that the FDA consider regulating the ways in which NRT is being marketed and its over-the-counter availability.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 15:39:15|Editor: Song Lifang

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NEW DELHI, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- India's Delhi government has threatened to take over some 449 private schools in the city if they fail to give back "excess fees" charged from students within a fortnight.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal issued the ultimatum to the private schools Friday evening after a special panel that looked into school fee hike in the Indian capital found many of them had overcharged students over the years and recommended refund of the excess money.

"We are not against private schools, there is no witch hunting. We are appealing to these 449 schools to implement the committee's recommendations and give back extra fees to students within two weeks," Kejriwal told the media.

"The Delhi government does not intend to interfere, but will surely discipline the schools if needed. I hope we don't have to take over. Today, we intend to send out a message to the management of those schools to implement the recommendations," he added.

Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia also made it clear that private schools in the city "will not be allowed to loot students like they used to do under previous governments due to political collusion."

Private schools have not yet responded to the government's ultimatum.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 16:24:35|Editor: Song Lifang

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WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal, U.S. President Donald Trump's best-selling memoir, predicted that the embattled president would resign by the year's end.

An outspoken critic of Trump's political career, Tony Schwartz told CNN news anchor and host Anderson Cooper in a televison appearance on Thursday that the "snowball" of Trump's criticism engulfing presidency "is beginning to gather momentum as it comes down the mountain."

Schwartz added that what was going on with Trump at the moment reminded him of the last days of former president Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 after his administration's attempt to cover up its involvement in the eavsdroping of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC, triggered a constitutional crisis and led to what has been known as the Watergate scandal.

"He's put himself in an isolated, no-win position. The level of his distructiveness is staggering," Schwartz said, as reflected in the president's response to the deadly racist riots in Virginia as well as his "back-and-forth" remarks on the Korean Peninsula.

Schwartz, who CNN said had spent 18 months working in collaboration with Trump on the latter's 1987 memoir, predicted earlier on Thursday via Twitter that the president "is going to resign and declare victory before Mueller and congress leave him no choice," adding that his resignation will likely happen by fall, "if not sooner."

Robert Mueller, an American lawyer and former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was appointed in May by the U.S. Department of Justice as special counsel overseeing an ongoing investigation into alleged collusion between Trump's presidential campaign team and Russia in the meddling of the 2016 U.S. election. Trump has repeatedly denounced both the collusion and the probe.

"Sitting in the background of this, Anderson, is of course Mueller's continuing investigation into Russia," Schwartz said on air on CNN.

The writer said Trump's frequent lies as president or when he ran for office are nothing new, but rather "This is a man who's been deceitful and manipulative for 50 years plus."

Schwartz told the New Yorker magazine last year that he felt "a deep sense of remorse" for "presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is" in The Art of the Deal.

Cooper has also criticized Trump several times. The president often bluntly calls out CNN for its "fake news."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 16:39:40|Editor: Song Lifang

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LAGOS, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will arrive in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, on Saturday, after receiving medical attention in London, a statement from the presidency said.

Presidential spokesperson Femi Adesina said the Nigerian leader is expected to speak to citizens in a broadcast by 7 a.m. Monday.

The president left the country on May 7 after handing over power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has functioned as acting president since then.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 16:59:49|Editor: Song Lifang

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ISLAMABAD, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Saturday expressed concern about the presence of Daesh in Afghanistan during a meeting with visiting U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander General Joseph L. Votel.

The CENTCOM commander is on a two-day visit to Pakistan. The prime minister said the presence of Daesh could threaten all its neighbours, according to the PM office.

The high level U.S. military delegation is visiting Pakistan at a time when the Trump administration is in the process of finalizing strategy for Afghanistan and the region. The policy was scheduled to be unveiled on Friday, but was postponed.

The prime minister underscored that Pakistan had an important stake in peace and stability in Afghanistan as Pakistan has suffered the most due to conflict in that country, a statement from the PM's office said.

General Votel, for his part, underscored the importance that the U.S. attaches to Pakistan and Pakistan's importance for achieving the objective of peace and security in Afghanistan. He greatly appreciated the efforts being undertaken by Pakistan in fighting terrorism, the statement said.

The prime minister agreed with General Votel on the importance of working closely to address issues of regional concerns. He also underscored that the South Asian review undertaken by the U.S. would take into account Pakistan's efforts in fighting terrorism and its commitment to peace and security in Afghanistan.

The CENTCOM chief and members of his delegation also met Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa late Friday and discussed matters of professional interest with special focus on security situation in Afghanistan, the military said in a statement.

The army chief highlighted the importance Pakistan accords to its relations with the U.S., particularly security cooperation and efforts towards regional stability, the army said.

"Pakistan has undertaken operations against terrorists of all hue and colour," Bajwa said, reiterating his commitment to work in close coordination with Afghan security forces and U.S.-led Resolute Support Mission for improved security environment in Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 17:09:57|Editor: Yamei

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DAMASCUS, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army and the Lebanese Hezbollah group on Saturday morning launched an offensive against the Islamic State (IS) group in the western Qalamoun region, in tandem with an operation by the Lebanese army on the Lebanese side of the borders against IS, a military source told Xinhua.

Dubbed "If You Return We Will Return," the operation aims to clear the badlands of the western Qalamoun region in Syria from IS, just a couple of weeks after both allies dislodged the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front from areas in western Qalamoun and the adjacent Juroud Arsal barrens on the Lebanese side of the border.

The cross-border battle was anticipated after the defeat of Nusra in border areas in both Syria and Lebanon.

In the last battle against Nusra, the Syrian army and Hezbollah were fighting on the Syrian side of the borders, and other fighters of Hezbollah were fighting on the Lebanese side of the frontier.

At the time, the Lebanese army wasn't engaged in the fight but took defensive positions in case of any attempt by the Nusra militants to carry out counter attacks

In this battle against IS, Hezbollah and the Syrian army are fighting in Syria, while the Lebanese army is fighting IS in Lebanon.

Lebanese officials said there was no coordination between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah or the Syrian army.

The army in Lebanon will have to liberate around 120 sq km from IS, while the Syrian army and Hezbollah are fighting to defeat IS in 150 sq km of border terrain.

The military source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity that the Syrian army and Hezbollah are advancing the badlands of Qalamoun against IS, mainly in the barrens of Jarajir and Qara'.

The source said that militants with IS started surrendering themselves, following the advance of the army and Hezbollah in Zamrani area in western Qalamoun.

Also, the Lebanese army was reportedly advancing in Ras Baalbek area on the Lebanese side of the borders.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 17:45:07|Editor: Yamei

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LAGOS, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will arrive in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, on Saturday, after receiving medical attention in London, a statement from the presidency said.

Presidential spokesperson Femi Adesina said the Nigerian leader is expected to speak to citizens in a broadcast by 7 a.m. Monday.

The president left the country on May 7 after handing over power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has functioned as acting president since then.

The Nigerian leader received the latest medical attention two months after his return from a similar medical vacation, the same day he received 82 Chibok Girls freed by Boko Haram.

While in London, Buhari was visited by a number of Nigerian officials, beginning with the vice-president, who first hinted Nigerians about the president's massive recovery.

Buhari had also told his visitors that there was tremendous improvement in his health, but he has learned to obey doctor's orders, rather than be the one issuing the orders.

"I feel I could go home, but the doctors are in charge. I've now learned to obey orders, rather than be obeyed," he told his visiting media team.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 18:30:22|Editor: Zhou Xin

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TURKU, Finland, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Finnish police said Saturday the suspect who mounted the multiple stabbings in Turku, southwestern Finland, on Friday was a Moroccan citizen.

Police said they are investigating two murders and eight attempted murders involved in the case and suspecting there is intent of terrorism.

The suspect, an 18-year-old man, is in intensive care at the Turku University Hospital, said the police.

Two people were killed and eight others wounded when he stabbed people at two squares in Turku on Friday afternoon.

The police said those killed were two Finnish nationals, with one Italian and two Swedes among the injured.

At a press conference on Friday evening, the police said they could not identify the nationality of the attacker and would not call the incident a terrorist attack.

Witnesses told local media that they heard the attacker shouting "Allah" while committing the violence, but police could not confirm the claim.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 18:35:25|Editor: Song Lifang

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SHIBERGHAN, Afghanistan, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- A Taliban key commander, Mullah Mohammad Rahim, was among five militants killed in Shortipa district of the northern Jawzjan province on Saturday, police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini said.

"Acting upon intelligence report, the security forces stormed a Taliban hideout in Mangjigak area of Shortipa district in the morning of today killing five rebels including Mullah Mohammad Rahim nicknamed Ata Murad and injuring six others," Hussaini told Xinhua.

Mullah Rahim had also served as the shadow district governor for Shortipa district, the official said, adding his physical elimination could be a major setback for militants in Jawzjan province.

There were no casualties from security personnel in the raid, the official said.

Taliban militants are yet to make comments on the situation.
Raila Odinga (L) sings national anthem during a special National Delegates Conference in Nairobi, capital of Kenya, May 5, 2017. (Xinhua/Allan Mutiso)

NAIROBI, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga on Friday night filed a case asking the Supreme Court to nullify President Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election.

Odinga's National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition said in a statement that the entire election is "fatally compromised."

"The entire process of tallying recording, transmitting, verifying and confirmation of results was so fundamentally flawed that you can not talk of any meaningful results." Odinga said in the petition.

The opposition leader and his running mate Kalonzo Musyoka argued the relay of the presidential election results from tallying centers did not meet the required standards of accountability, transparency and verifiability.

"The series of gaps, whether deliberate or product of negligence, frustrated the use of technology to deliver an accountable result transmission process," NASA officials said.

According to the petition, party agents especially in the Rift Valley region, the stronghold of Kenyatta and his running mate William Ruto, were removed from poll centers. Fictitious poll agents signed blank result forms while an analysis of some 25,000 result forms out of 40,833 discovered 14,000 of them had errors, which prevent them from being authentic.

Illegal voting and results also emerged from 443 polling centers, which were not officially listed as voting centers as required by the election regulations.

"Worse, the process of relaying and transmitting results from polling stations to constituency to the National Tallying Center did not meet the standard established in the Constitution: it was not simple, accurate, verifiable, secure, accountable, transparent, open or prompt," Odinga said.

Foreign observers have mostly certified the elections as meeting the international standards of fair, free, credible and transparent.

However, Odinga said the foreign observers exceeded their mandate by asking him to concede defeat way back before the final results were announced.

Odinga said his party was baffled that by the time the chairman of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Wafula Chebukati was announcing the results, some election centers with some 7 million votes, which include 11,883 polling stations, were yet to send results.

NASA officials said the IEBC Chairman confirmed days later that 5,015 forms, which represent 3.5 million votes, were also not within the Commission's possession when it declared Kenyatta the winner.

Odinga who unsuccessfully contested an election in 2013, sparking violent post-election protests, this time curtailed potential violence by resolving to take his case to court.

His decision to go to the judiciary relieved many Kenyans who feared a repeat of the violence that followed a 2007 vote when Odinga called for protests.

Judges eventually ruled in 2013 that much of his evidence was being submitted outside time limits set by the court, frustrating his supporters and sparking suspicion over the judiciary's independence.

However, he vowed on Wednesday to soldier on with his quest for a fair, just and democratic society even as he sought legal redress to electoral malpractices that denied his victory on Aug. 8 when Kenyans cast the ballot in large numbers.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 18:40:28|Editor: Song Lifang

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MOSCOW, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- At least eight people were injured in a stabbing attack by an unidentified Knife-wielding man in the Russian city of Surgut on Saturday, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

The attacker stabbed pedestrians while moving along the city's main streets at about 11:20 am local time, leaving eight people injured with wounds of varying degrees, the committee said in a statement.

All the victims have been hospitalized.

According to the committee, the attacker was killed by security forces, who had immediately arrived at the scene.

Investigators and criminologists are currently working at the scene, and a criminal case has been launched, the statement said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 18:45:36|Editor: Song Lifang

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KABUL, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan army found and defused 28 Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and landmines since within a day, the Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

"The engineering units of the Afghan National Army (ANA) neutralized 28 IEDs and landmines in different places over the past 24 hours," the ministry said in a statement.

Finding and neutralizing the home-made IEDs remain a challenge for Afghan security forces.

The Taliban militant group uses the IEDs to target security forces but the lethal weapons also inflict casualties on civilians.

More than 1,660 civilians were killed and over 3,580 others injured in conflict-related incidents in the first half of the year, according to figures released by the United Nations mission in the country.

The IED and landmine explosions are the second largest cause of civilians' casualties following ground engagements between government forces and insurgents.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 18:50:39|Editor: Yamei

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Honored guests unveil stamps issued by China Post commemorating the BRICS Summit in Xiamen, southeast China's Fujian Province, Aug. 19, 2017. China Post issued a stamp on Saturday to commemorate the BRICS Summit in Xiamen. The stamp bears logo of the summit as well as the letters "BRICS" and "2017 China". It also shows the scenic Gulangyu island, which was included into the UNESCO list last month, as well as other iconic sites of Xiamen like Xiamen University. (Xinhua/Lin Shanchuan)

XIAMEN, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- China Post issued a stamp on Saturday to commemorate the BRICS Summit in Xiamen of east China's Fujian province.

The stamp bears logo of the summit as well as the letters "BRICS" and "2017 China". It also shows the scenic Gulangyu island, which was included into the UNESCO list last month, as well as other iconic sites of Xiamen like Xiamen University.

"It shows the features of Xiamen," said Zhang Zhijun with the Xiamen branch of China Post. "With the sea we would like to imply that the summit is a new starting point for the countries to sail into a bright future."

Philatelist can buy eight-stamp sheets or individual stamps. The small sheet is made of silk, with a panorama picture of Gulangyu island by a local photographer Zhu Qingfu.

Price of one stamp is 1.2 yuan (about 18 cents).

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will meet in Xiamen in early September for the 9th BRICS Summit.

China previously has also issued stamps for the G20 Hangzhou Summit and the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 18:50:39|Editor: Song Lifang

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BARCELONA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Spanish authorities have identified the only fugitive terrorist as Younes Abouyaaqoub, local media reported Saturday.

Police are searching for the 23-year-old Moroccan in Iman De Ripoll near Barcelona. The suspect has been wanted by Interpol prior to the double-attack hit Barcelona and nearby Cambrils on Thursday and early Friday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 18:55:42|Editor: Song Lifang

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BARCELONA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Five Spanish nationals, an Italian and a Portuguese were among those killed in the double-terror attack that hit Barcelona and nearby Cambrils, the Interior Ministry of the Catalan region said Saturday.

Fourteen people died and 126 were injured between Thursday and Friday following two terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.

Six terrorists were killed either during or after the attacks, although there is still some confusion over whether the van attacker in Barcelona, is among them, said the ministry.

Confusion still reigns over the identity of the van driver. Some reports indicated that the driver is 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir who was among the five terrorists shot in Cambrils in the early hours of Friday, while others said the driver could have been Younes Abouyaaqoub, who is one of four terrorists still at loose.

In addition, 59 people remain in hospitals in Barcelona as of Saturday morning. Spanish King Felipe VI is due to visit patients in del Mar Hospital at midday.

Among those injured, 15 of them are in critical condition. Local authorities said that victims of the attack were from 34 nationalities.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 19:00:48|Editor: Song Lifang

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TEHRAN, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday said that the U.S. President Donald Trump slackens to condemn racist moves in the United States.

"Quick to insult Islam but hesitant to condemn racist terror at home," Zarif twitted on Saturday.

"Terror in name of race or religion is plain terror & represents neither," he said.

The remarks by Zarif followed Trump's mixed response to the deadly attack by a far-right rallier in Charlottesville, Virginia, last Saturday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 19:00:50|Editor: An

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KAMPALA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- A senior Ugandan official on Friday praised China for helping the east African country develop its movie industry.

"The relationship between China and Uganda has helped our country build a strong movie industry by using Chinese experts to teach our directors like Isaac Nabwana all the necessary things which helped him to create this movie," said Vincent Bagiire, permanent secretary of Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, referring to Nabwana's new release BRUCE U.

Bagiire made the remarks on Friday during the premiere of BRUCE U at Wakaliga slum on the outskirts of the capital Kampala.

The movie includes both Ugandan and Chinese actors. It was produced by Wakaliwood, a local movie company.

Bagiire said the movie industry can contribute to a more informed society and help shape attitudes and develop the minds of local viewers.

"We need to expedite the process to protect the huge potential that the industry presents to cause employment, as well as economic and cultural growth," he said.

Chu Maoming, acting Chinese ambassador to Uganda, said the two countries will continue to cooperate in a bid to develop the local film industry.

The movie tells the story of a Uganda boy and Chinese Kung Fu fan Kiwa, who accidently gets a chance to learn Kung Fu at China's Shaolin Temple.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 19:10:53|Editor: Song Lifang

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BARCELONA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish government decided to maintain its anti-terrorism alert level at 4 but to reinforce security measures at the same time, local media reported Saturday.

The decision was made during an anti-terror meeting held in Madrid chaired by Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido. During the meeting, it was decided to maintain the level of alert at 4, on a scale of 5, and security measures will be reinforced in tourist areas and infrastructures.

Zoido also said that Spanish police have dismantled the terrorist cell behind the double terror attacks.

After the meeting, the minister moved to the Moncloa presidential palace to inform Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the decision.

The number of people killed in Thursday's attacks stood at 14. As of Saturday morning, 54 injured people are still hospitalized, and 12 of them are in critical condition, according to Catalan emergency services.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari attends the third summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Tehran, Iran, on Nov. 23, 2015. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz)

LAGOS, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari will arrive in Abuja, capital of Nigeria, on Saturday, after receiving medical attention in London, a statement from the presidency said.

Presidential spokesperson Femi Adesina said the Nigerian leader is expected to speak to citizens in a broadcast by 7 a.m. Monday.

The president left the country on May 7 after handing over power to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who has functioned as acting president since then.

The Nigerian leader received the latest medical attention two months after his return from a similar medical vacation, the same day he received 82 Chibok Girls freed by Boko Haram.

While in London, Buhari was visited by a number of Nigerian officials, beginning with the vice-president, who first hinted Nigerians about the president's massive recovery.

Buhari had also told his visitors that there was tremendous improvement in his health, but he has learned to obey doctor's orders, rather than be the one issuing the orders.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 19:15:56|Editor: Song Lifang

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HO CHI MINH CITY, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City has just cracked down a drug trafficking ring which transported lab-made drugs from Cambodia to Vietnam, the municipal police announced Saturday.

The ring, led by Luu Van Chang, born in 1974 from southern Tay Ninh province, transported drugs from Cambodia via a border gate in southern Long An province to Ho Chi Minh City.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the drugs were kept by two Australian men of Vietnamese origin. In the city, one of the Australian citizens and Chang's wife transported the drugs to their customers.

The municipal police have arrested eight people, the ring's members and their customers, confiscated nearly 15,500 pills of ecstasy, and roughly 2 kg of other lab-made drugs.

According to Vietnamese law, those convicted of smuggling over 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine are punishable by death. Making or trading 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal drugs also faces death penalty.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 19:36:06|Editor: Song Lifang

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HELSINKI, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Another four Moroccans were detained and a warrant has been issued for a fifth after a young man stabbed people at the squares in the southwestern Finnish city of Turku, police said on Saturday.

The suspect, currently in hospital receiving treatment, was identified as an 18-year-old Moroccan by the police.

He allegedly mounted the attacks that left two dead and eight others injured on Friday afternoon.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 19:36:08|Editor: Song Lifang

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SANAA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Fierce ground battles have been rocking the northern part of the Yemeni northern province of Saada for the first time since the civil war erupted in the impoverished Arab country more than two years ago, provincial sources said on Saturday.

Dozens of villagers were seen fleeing their homes and farms towards southern safe districts to escape randomly artillery and tanks' heavy shelling, as well as intense airstrikes.

The ongoing battles were raging between the government forces of exiled Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi backed by warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition and their foes of Shiite Houthi rebels who seized north of the country after forcing Hadi and his internationally-recognized government into exile.

The government troops were trying to advance for the first time to control the main stronghold of the leader of Houthi group, Abdulmalik al-Houthi.

A military source said on Saturday that the "government forces have advanced deep inside the rebel Shiite Houthi key stronghold" in the northern border province of Saada as the clashes are ongoing.

He said the troops have seized control over several mountainous territories during their coalition-backed advance over the past few days, tightening siege on the militias after days of fierce battles.

The battles began last week after the government troops, backed by heavy airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition warplanes, launched a large-scale ground offensive simultaneously from three sides, advancing from nearby Saudi border region of Najran towards the north, west and east of Houthi stronghold district of Baqim.

In the operation, the military source said the troops seized control over the highlands of al-Khashm north of the district, al-Nimsa to the east and as al-Sabhan to the west, cutting off the militias' supply lines from the three sides surrounding the district.

"Baqim now is under tightened siege from the north, east and the west," said the source on condition of anonymity.

Baqim locates at the far north of Saada and is considered the northern gate to the rest areas of the province.

"The militias have retreated after suffering heavy casualties but the clashes were still ongoing," the source said without giving a specific number of losses from both warring forces.

Meanwhile, the Houthi group did not release any report on its media regarding the attack.

Saada is about 242 km northwest of the capital Sanaa, which is also under control of Houthi fighters.

Battles between the warring forces were also raging on several other front lines in nearby provinces of Hajjah, al-Jawf, al-Baydha, Shabwa and Taiz.

Yemen's internationally-backed government, allied with the Saudi-led Arab military coalition, has for more than two years been battling Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels over control of the country.

The coalition began a military air campaign in March 2015 to roll back Houthi gains and reinstate exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to the power.

The coalition also imposed air and sea blockade to prevent weapons from reaching Houthis, who had invaded the capital Sanaa militarily and seized most of the northern Yemeni provinces since late of 2014.

More than 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the war that also displaced around three million.

The impoverished Arab country is also suffering the world's largest cholera epidemic since April, with about 5,000 cases reported every day.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 19:51:11|Editor: Song Lifang

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BARCELONA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Spanish government decided to maintain its anti-terrorism alert level at 4 but said to reinforce security measures at the same time, the Interior Ministry said Saturday in a statement.

The decision was made during an anti-terror meeting chaired by Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido in the morning.

At the statement released after the meeting, Zoido said that the level 4 will be reinforced with intensified security measures in places or events with massive people, and "special emphasis" will be taken in tourism areas.

Zoido also said that Spanish police have dismantled the terrorist cell behind the double terror attacks.

The minister then moved to the Moncloa presidential palace to inform Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy the decision.

The number of people killed in Thursday's attacks stood at 14. As of Saturday morning, 54 injured people are still hospitalized with 12 of them in critical condition, according to Catalan emergency services.

Meanwhile, Spanish authorities identified earlier in the day one fugitive terrorist as Younes Abouyaaqoub.

Police are searching for the 23-year-old Moroccan in Iman De Ripoll near Barcelona. The suspect has been wanted by Interpol prior to the double-attack hit Barcelona and nearby Cambrills on Thursday and Friday.

As to the nationality of the victims, police authorities said five Spaniards, one Italian and a Portuguese are among those killed.

Victims were identified by a team comprised of members of the Catalan Institute of Legal Medicine and the Scientific police, said the Interior Ministry of the Catalan region.

Confusion still reigns over the identity of the van attack driver. Some reports indicated that the driver is 17-year-old Moussa Oukabir who was among the five terrorists shot in Cambrils in the early hour of Friday, while others said the driver could have been Younes Abouyaaqoub, who is one of four terrorists still at loose.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 19:51:12|Editor: Song Lifang

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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- As many as 70 Taliban fighters were killed and scores injured after the Afghan forces aircraft dropped bombs on a Taliban convoy in southern province of Kandahar, an official said Saturday.

The incident took place late on Friday night, when the Taliban fighters equipped with military vehicles planned to take control of Nish, Shah WaliKot and Khakriz districts of the province, General Abdul Razeq, the Kandahar provincial police chief said, adding 70 insurgents had been killed and scores including several commanders wounded.

More than 15 militants' vehicles and motorbikes were also destroyed during the raid, the official said.

Meanwhile, the Taliban outfit has disputed the report as baseless, saying only six civilians were killed in an air raid targeted parts of kariz district.

Warring sides often exaggerate the casualties of opponents on the battlegrounds. Therefore, it is difficult to verify with independent sources.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 20:01:16|Editor: Song Lifang

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HANOI, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam has so far detected over 90,600 cases of dengue fever infections this year including 24 fatalities, increasing over 60 percent and 41 percent, respectively against the same period last year, the country's Preventive Medicine Department said on Saturday.

Since the beginning of this year, the capital city of Hanoi has detected 17,365 dengue fever patients, including seven fatalities, and 85 percent of them have been discharged from hospital, according to the latest statistics from the municipal Health Department.

Due to widespread chemical-spraying and environment-cleansing campaigns in Hanoi, the number of dengue fever infections is decreasing everyday, the Health Department said, noting that it dropped from 3,076 on Aug. 14 to 2,635 on Aug. 15, and 2,588 on Aug. 16.

Most of dengue fever patients will fully recover after few days without having to be hospitalized, but few can suffer from complications which may lead to health deterioration, even death.

The current percentage of dengue fever patients who suffer from serious complications is 0.06 percent in Hanoi, 0.3 percent in Vietnam's central region and 2.8 percent in the southern region, according to the statistics from the country's health ministry.

On Saturday, many mobile phone subscribers in Hanoi received text messages from telecommunications giant VinaPhone which call for people to apply four measures to prevent dengue fever infections, namely avoiding being bitten by mosquitos, actively cleansing up waste and killing larvae, coordinating with healthcare facilities during the process of spaying mosquito-killing chemicals, and coming to the nearest medical establishments for consultation, checkup or treatment when showing dengue fever symptoms.

The ministry's Preventive Medicine Department also called for people nationwide to actively to cleanse breeding grounds of mosquitos, and use mosquito nets when sleeping.

Both healthy people and dengue fever patients should use mosquito nets when sleeping because mosquitos can bite the patients, carry the dengue virus and transmit it to healthy people through bites, or transfer the virus to their eggs and then their larvae.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 20:06:18|Editor: Song Lifang

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MOSCOW, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Russian investigators have identified a knife-wielding man who carried out a stabbing attack that left seven people injured in the Russian city of Surgut on Saturday.

"Investigators have identified the attacker now. According to preliminary information, he was a local resident born in 1994," Russia's Investigative Committee said in its latest statement.

An earlier statement issued by the committee said that the attacker stabbed pedestrians while moving along the city's main streets at about 11:20 a.m. local time (0620 GMT), leaving eight people injured with wounds of varying degrees, while the reportedly updated information said the number of injured in the attack is seven.

All the victims have been hospitalized. According to the committee, the attacker was killed by security forces, who had immediately arrived at the scene.

Investigators and criminologists are currently working at the scene, and a criminal case has been launched, said the previous statement.

Circumstances and motives of the crime are being established. Information on the man's possible mental disorders will be verified, the committee said.

"The theory that the attack was an act of terrorism is not the main one," the regional department of the Russian Interior Ministry said.

Regional authorities are assisting the injured, of whom two are in critical conditions, local health authorities said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 20:11:21|Editor: Song Lifang

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ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia aims to collect 8.53 billion U.S. dollars tax revenue in the current fiscal year 2017/18, which started on July 8, an official said Saturday.

Speaking to Xinhua, Haji Ibsa, Communications Director at Ethiopia Ministry of Finance and Economic Cooperation, said the tax revenue target is part of the East African nation's drive to become fully self-reliant on its annual budget.

"The tax revenue target will be greater by 1.1 billion U.S. dollars than the tax revenue achieved in 2016/17 when Ethiopia earned 7.43 billion U.S. dollars in tax revenue," he said.

Ethiopia also plans to earn 1.1 billion dollars in non-tax domestic revenues during this 2017/18 fiscal year.

The East African nation in recent years has been able to mobilize greater amount of tax and non-tax revenue, allowing it to cover more than 80 percent of its annual budgetary needs.

Nevertheless foreign loans and grants covered 18 percent of the 12.7 billion dollars budget for the 2016/17 fiscal year.

With its domestic financial resources capability increasing, Ethiopia has raised its 2017/18 budget by 9.6 percent to 13.9 billion dollars.

"Despite setbacks in meeting export targets, Ethiopia's domestic revenues are increasing year by year, so the new focus with development partners has shifted to assistance in technological and technical aspect," said Ibsa.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 20:16:23|Editor: Yamei

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Toy bears are seen to mourn the victims of terror attack on Las Ramblas street, Barcelona, Spain, on Aug. 18, 2017. The number of people killed in Thursday's double terror attacks rose to 14, after a woman died of injuries at the Joan XXIII hospital, the Catalan emergency services confirmed on Friday. (Xinhua/Xu Jinquan)

By Ying Qiang, Ren Ke, Tian Dongdong

BARCELONA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Perhaps the latest terrorist attacks in Spain may drive us, in an unfortunate way, to have a thorough reflection on the profound causes leading to the recurrences of similar tragedies that we failed to avoid.

Double terrorist attacks on Thursday resulted in heavy casualties in Barcelona and Cambrils. As of the press time, at least 14 innocent people were killed and over 100 others injured, plunging the usually happy Mediterranean touristic cities into deep pain of sorrow.

Over one year ago, a similar attack also claimed by ISIS took place in Nice, France, another touristic Mediterranean city, killing at least 84 and injuring 50 others.

In the past year European countries have suffered a string of terrorist attacks, from Britain to France and Germany, and now to Spain. It reminds people of a question -- why those terrorist attacks could repeat rather than being prevented?

Indeed, those perpetrations were difficult to prevent. In Nice, attackers drove big truck into the crowd and in Barcelona it was a small van. In suburb of Paris it was a car that hit soldiers earlier this month.

And in many cases ordinary tools were used in terrorist attacks, like kitchen knife involved in Hamburg supermarket assault last month and a hammer in the perpetration at Notre Dame de Paris earlier this year.

Perhaps those perpetrators attacking Paris and London were in response to the anti-terror efforts by France and Britain, but attacks to Barcelona and Cambrils were only on the purpose of spreading hate and causing panic.

The anti-terror situation is now undergoing an important change. As French newspaper La Figaro wrote on Wednesday that from 2011 to 2016, a total of 5,000 Europeans went to the Middle East to join the so-called "jihad", and as ISIS is losing bases in Iraq, about 1,000 to 3,000 Europeans will come back home, where they may launch attacks.

In addition, the lone-wolf terrorist attacks have taken place more frequently. Those "lonely wolves" do not need any commands, nor do they have organizations. They target randomly-chosen areas, a way that is extremely difficult to prevent and make all European countries vulnerable to such risks.

As many terrorist attacks in Europe in recent years were launched by perpetrators who had been already European countries' nationalities, a thorough reflection is in need to analyze the political, economic and social soils that breed this trend.

Late French philosopher Ruwen Ogien told Xinhua in 2015 that it was Europe's own social economic environment that made the soil for extremism, together with the latest development of international situation.

Besides strengthening anti-terrorist efforts, European countries need to rethink why some people who feel lost and marginalized turn to expressing their complaints with extremist actions and spreading hate.

It is impossible to make changes in a short term, and it is also a difficult task. But without doing so, Europeans may have to get prepared for living with sporadic terrorist attacks, and learn to get accustomed to the unpredictable risks in future.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 20:36:33|Editor: Song Lifang

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ROME, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Three Italians were killed in Thursday's terrorist attack in Barcelona, local media updated Saturday.

The third Italian victim was identified early on Saturday as 80-year-old Carmen Lopardo, Italian news agency ANSA reported.

She was from the southern Basilicata region, had been living in Argentina for the past 60 years, and was in Barcelona as a tourist, ANSA quoted the Argentine Foreign Ministry as saying.

The other two Italian victims are Stefano Gulotta from the northern town of Legnano and Luca Russo, a native of the northern town of Bassano del Grappa.

On Friday afternoon, a terrorist knife attack in the Finnish city of Turku left two people dead and eight injured. ANSA reported on Saturday that an Italian national is among those wounded in Turku.

A total of 14 fatalities occurred in two terrorist attacks in the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Cambrils that also hurt about 126 people of 34 different nationalities.

Thirteen people were killed on Thursday afternoon in the popular Las Ramblas area of Barcelona when a white van zigzagged at high speed down the busy avenue thronged with tourists, knocking down pedestrians.

On early Friday morning, the fourteenth victim, a woman, was stabbed when five people jumped out of a car and began attacking people at random on the seaside promenade in Cambrils, a town south of Barcelona. Spanish police gunned down all five attackers. The woman died at hospital later on Friday. Six others were also injured in the attack.

Also on Saturday, the Italian Interior Ministry announced that two Moroccan and one Syrian national have been deported for security reasons. This brings to 202 the deportations of suspected religious extremists as of January 2015, ANSA reported.

Italy's unusual policy of preventive deportation of individuals for extremist sympathies has been credited as being among the reasons why unlike other European countries it has not so far suffered terrorist attacks.

Also on Saturday, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni wrote in an editorial published on ilSussidiario.net online newspaper that "we must choose dialogue and inclusion" in order to preserve "our priceless heritage of values, ideas, and laws".

This heritage is "the basis of our living together and the fruit of many conquests, which we do not intend to give up", Gentiloni wrote ahead of a meeting on Sunday of lay Catholic movement Comunione e Liberazione (Communion and Liberation), where the Italian prime minister is to be the keynote speaker.

"Moving towards a more open and multiethnic society must not mean giving up on our security and our lifestyle," Gentiloni wrote.

Preserving this heritage "does not mean choosing the politics of nostalgia, or of walls and fear," Gentiloni wrote.

"We must respond ... by guaranteeing security and protection, recalling that true progress is that which places people's quality of life at the center," the Italian prime minister wrote.

Gentiloni wrote the op-ed before the Spain attacks, the online paper specified.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 20:36:34|Editor: Song Lifang

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ANKARA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Turkish police on Saturday detained five Islamic State (IS) suspects in the southern province of Hatay, local media reported.

Police and intelligence units launched a joint operation in the Iskenderun-Antakya highway and stopped a vehicle, according to Anadolu Agency.

Four suspects inside the vehicle surrendered to the police, but the other one attempted to attack security units, and was "neutralized" after being shot in the foot.

Three of the suspects were Turkish-origin while the other two were Syrian origin, the report said.

The road meanwhile was briefly blocked to traffic during the operation.

Bomb disposal experts conducted searches inside the vehicle but did not find any explosive material.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 20:51:47|Editor: An

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CHANGCHUN, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The administration for the much-anticipated tiger and leopard national park was officially inaugurated Saturday in Changchun, capital of northeast China's Jilin Province.

Launch of of the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park Administration is a big step forward in protection of the endangered animals, said Zhang Jianlong, head of the State Forestry Administration.

The state-owned natural resources and assets management bureau of the national park was also launched Saturday.

"The establishment of the two organizations means increased protection efforts of Siberian tigers, Amur leopards and other types of natural resources," Zhang said. "We will enhance supervision and patrol to make sure that the environment is well protected."

The Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park will cover more than 1.46 million hectares. About 71 percent of the area is in Jilin and the rest in the adjacent Heilongjiang Province.

Construction of the park is scheduled to be complete in 2020.

A contest was also started Saturday to design a logo for the park. According to Chen Xiaocai, an official with the park administration, the logo should combine images of the Siberian tiger and Amur leopard with Chinese elements.

The contest will last till September 30. The winner will receive an award of 50,000 yuan (7,500 U.S. dollars). Those who are interested can log on the park website (www.hbgyglj.com) to learn more.

Zhao Li, head of the administration, said that the national park aims to create a stable habitat for wild Siberian tigers and Amur leopards.

"It will become a good example of cross-region cooperation of wildlife protection," Zhao said.

Siberian tigers are one of the world's most endangered species. Wild Siberian tigers predominantly live in northeast China and Russia's far east. The population is below 500. The Amur leopard was put under top national protection in 1983 with only about 50 living in the wild along the Sino-Russian border.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 21:01:52|Editor: Song Lifang

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RAMALLAH, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas strongly condemned the terror attack in the Spanish city of Barcelona, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported Saturday.

"We are horrified by the brutal terror attack that took place in Barcelona. Palestine condemns this heinous terrorist attack," Abbas was quoted as saying on Friday.

The Palestinian leader also sent "deep condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to those who were wounded."

Calling Barcelona a city "very close to the hearts of the Palestinian people," Abbas expressed Palestine's solidarity with Spain's king, government and Spanish people, particularly the people of Barcelona.

A van ploughed into a busy pedestrian zone Thursday in Barcelona, killing at least 13 people and injuring over 100 others. The terror group Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the attack.

On early Friday morning, a woman was killed and six others were wounded in a knife attack by five terror suspects on the seaside promenade in Cambrils, a town south of Barcelona.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 21:19:40|Editor: An

A child reads books in a book bar at a community in Feixi County, east China's Anhui Province, Aug. 19, 2017. Feixi County plans to build 10 book bars for the public in communities. (Xinhua/Liu Junxi)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 21:22:01|Editor: Song Lifang

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ROME, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Italy is on security alert Saturday in the wake of Spain's double terror attacks that left at least 14 people dead, including three Italian nationals.

Embassies, airports, churches, and tourist destinations are among the possible targets, and are under police and army surveillance in Italy after the so-called Islamic State (IS) terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attacks in the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Cambrils, which also injured about 126 people of 34 different nationalities.

Thirteen people were killed on Thursday afternoon in the popular Las Ramblas area of Barcelona when a white van zigzagged at high speed down the busy avenue thronged with tourists, knocking down pedestrians.

On early Friday morning, the fourteenth victim, a woman, was stabbed when five people jumped out of a car and began attacking people at random on the seaside promenade in Cambrils, a town south of Barcelona. Spanish police gunned down all five attackers. The woman died at hospital later on Friday. Six others were also injured in the attack.

As Italian officials held strategy meetings and leaders issued messages of condolences to Spain and to the victims' families, pundits and experts analyzed the attacks.

"In the perverse narrative of IS, Spain exerts a historical call due to seven centuries of Muslim domination, coupled with the creation of conditions in the soft belly of Barcelona which allowed the attack to take place," Paolo Magri told Italian public broadcaster RAI in an interview.

Magri is director of an Italian think tank -- Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI).

Author and journalist Zouhir Louassini, a visiting professor from Granada University in Spain, said in a televised interview that "Spain and the Catalonia region (where Barcelona and Cambrils are located) are a hot zone, as shown by an increase in the arrests of terrorist cells there in the past three to four years".

Louassini added that IS has reached a "level of madness" in its rhetoric, proving it is in trouble following its defeat on the ground in its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul.

"They have reached a point where they are urging people to do anything at all, to kill by any means, even a knife," Louassini said, even as news emerged on Friday afternoon of two deadly knife attacks, one in the Finnish city of Turku and the other in the German city of Wuppertal.

Also speaking in an interview on RAI public TV, Associate Professor of International Relations at the Pisa-based Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Francesco Strazzari, said that "in this case we see a cell of 12 people, four of them being sought by police -- it is something certainly more highly organized than what we've seen in other European cities in the past few months."

Retired Air Force General Leonardo Tricarico, who is now the president of the Intelligence Culture and Strategic Analysis (ICSA) Foundation, told RAI that Europe will remain at risk as long as its leaders don't cooperate to fight fundamentalist terrorism together.

Italy, according to Tricarico, has so far been spared and this is down to a combination of anti-terrorism know-how accumulated during years of fighting domestic terrorism, and of capable leadership.

"What is missing is international collaboration, which is still in a very precocious phase," said the Italian general, comparing it to "a tiny mouse, which will have to give birth to an elephant sooner or later".

The perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Europe are of two kinds -- home-grown individuals who become radicalized, and returning foreign fighters, or Europeans who come home after fighting in the ranks of IS in Iraq and Syria.

Since 2011, at least 30,000 foreign fighters reached Iraq and Syria from over 100 countries, of which one-fifth came from Western Europe, ISPI said in an August 4 report.

"In the old continent, the most significant national contingents are those from France (at least 1,700 individuals), Germany and Britain (about 1,000 each), and Belgium (at least 470)," the ISPI report said.

"In comparison, Italy has an estimated 125 foreign fighters, equal to two individuals per one million inhabitants, against over 40 per million in Belgium," according to ISPI.

The foreign fighter data is important because 45 percent of the 42 terrorist attacks planned in Western Europe beginning in 2014 -- the year IS declared a so-called "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria -- saw the participation of at least one returning foreign fighter.

Although the caliphate is close to being defeated on the ground in Iraq, where Iraqi and U.S. troops re-conquered the city of Mosul after a nine-month offensive, this does not mean that IS-style jihadism is over, ISPI analysts said.

"The end of the territorial character of IS does not coincide with its end as a jihadist entity," according to ISPI.

The report pointed out that "in areas where IS has been defeated militarily, in Iraq but also in Syria and Libya, the group is still active and able to carry out insurrectional or terrorist attacks".

On a global level the group is still able to operate, both in terms of "strict terrorist acts" in Europe thanks to returning foreign fighters or radicalized Europeans, and in terms of "more complex actions such as the case of Marawi in the Philippines and the attack on the Iranian parliament in June", ISPI wrote.
ANTHONY DEKLIN | West Sepik Development Vision

WEWAK - An overpopulated urban enclave is the dominant and troubling image I am still trying to handle in my mind of the national capital I visited recently.

People were everywhere. Anywhere you looked there were people. Not busy working but loitering. Many just sat on the steps of buildings and along the streets, observing the throngs of passers-by or staring into empty space with hungry looks on their faces.

It was not the healthy look of a developing country.

The results of such overcrowding are too many to chronicle here. But to name just two: the traffic is chaotic with too many cars on too few roads, made worse by inadequate signs and faulty traffic lights.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 21:37:11|Editor: Song Lifang

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JUBA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The South Sudanese government on Saturday said it would strengthen safety of aid workers and humanitarian supplies by enhancing security and cooperation with aid organizations.

Hussein Mar Nyuot, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, told journalists during a news conference that authorities have noted with concern the difficulties aid workers and organizations endure while delivering help to South Sudan.

He said the government would adhere to all protocols governing humanitarian work.

"We in the government want to assure our partners that we stand for firm cooperation; firm coordination and we want to ensure that aid assistance that comes to our country is delivered to all our vulnerable people anywhere they are. By anywhere, we mean areas under the control of the government and areas that are still under pockets of the opposition," Nyuot said.

According to the UN, South Sudan has become a hostile environment for aid workers. Since the outbreak of civil war in December 2013, at least 82 aid workers have been killed, including 15 this year alone.

It said most of the victims are South Sudanese nationals, with more missing or in detention, and aid workers have routinely been subject to harassment and intimidation.

The UN Humanitarian Coordination Office (UNOCHA) on Friday called for an immediate end to attacks against civilians and aid workers as humanitarian efforts continue to be met with increasing access denials, killing of aid workers, and looting of humanitarian supplies.

The East African country is currently facing unprecedented levels of food insecurity, as nearly 6 million people, about 50 percent of the country's population, face severe food crisis.

Under international humanitarian law, intentional attacks against humanitarian relief personnel may constitute war crimes.

"We continue to witness increasing, deliberate and unprovoked attacks against civilians and aid workers in South Sudan. This should not be accepted as the norm," said Serge Tissot, the Acting Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan.

Nearly 630 humanitarian access incidents have been reported since January including attacks on humanitarian compounds, looting aid supplies and convoys across the country.

In July alone, 15 incidents of looting were reported across the country. Of particular concern were the six major incidents in which warehouses and trucks in transit were looted, leading to the loss of 670 tonnes of food aid in Eastern Equatoria, Lakes, Upper Nile and Warrap.

"When aid workers are endangered or under attack, millions of vulnerable people, who need food, health services, access to clean water, nutrition and education services, are deprived of the much needed help," said Tissot.

"We call upon all armed actors to stop targeting aid workers and civilians and to do everything possible to safeguard them," he said.

Responding to the concerns raised by the UN, Nyuot denied that the government has ever imposed restriction for delivery of relief assistance and movement of aid workers.

"We are not discriminating and the government doesn't impede any access of humanitarian delivery. We are neutral and we give humanitarian access to anybody because these are our own people," Nyuot said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 21:57:21|Editor: Song Lifang

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CAPE TOWN, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- South African President Jacob Zuma has accepted the resignation of Deputy Minister of Higher Education and Training Mduduzi Manana, who has been caught in an assault scandal, the Presidency said Saturday.

Zuma thanked Manana for his contribution during his term of office, presidential spokesperson Bongani Ngqulunga said.

Manana is charged with assaulting two women following an argument at a night club in Johannesburg on August 5.

The official said he attacked the two women for calling him gay.

The news about the assault has prompted calls for Manana to resign.

Manana has since apologized for the assault and appeared in court. His next court date is September 13.

South African Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said earlier a case of assault was opened against Manana.

According to Mbalula, Manana would be arrested as soon as they had gathered enough evidence.

Mbalula said Manana would not be given special treatment because he was a member of parliament.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 22:17:30|Editor: An

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by Xia Yuanyi

BEIJING, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese border troops have always been committed to upholding peace and tranquility of the China-India border areas, said a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wednesday in response to India's trespassing into the Dong Lang (Doklam) region on June 18.

Spokeswoman Hua Chunying also urged India to abide by current agreements and treaties.

However, up until now, India has not withdrawn its troops and equipment that have encroached into Chinese territory.

OLD BAG OF TRICKS

Doklam is described as a disputed territory by New Delhi, which is simply untrue.

The Convention Between Great Britain and China Relating to Sikkim and Tibet signed by both countries in 1890 delimited the boundary between the Tibet region of China and the Indian state of Sikkim, which confirmed Doklam is Chinese territory. Successive Indian governments have acknowledged the demarcation.

However, it is not really hard to understand why India has abandoned its previous position. India is again using its old bag of tricks.

"Indians have convinced themselves that if they declare a tract of territory to be Indian, it becomes Indian, which is nonsense," said Neville Maxwell, an Australian journalist who was on the ground for the British Daily The Times at the time of the Sino-Indian border conflict in 1962.

Maxwell, in an interview with Xinhua, said India has unilaterally claimed sovereignty over pieces of land along its northeastern borders, and now Doklam is next.

India has attempted to justify its incursion on the pretext of "protecting Bhutan," arguing that Doklam is Bhutanese territory.

The fact is that the Bhutanese authorities have clearly told Chinese officials that Doklam is not Bhutan's territory and expressed confusion by India's actions.

As a third party, India has no right to interfere in or impede boundary talks between China and Bhutan, nor does it have the right to make territorial claims on Bhutan's behalf.

India's intrusion into Chinese territory under the pretext of protecting Bhutan has not only violated China's territorial sovereignty, but also challenged Bhutan's independence.

Obviously, India is not only trying to change the status quo but also misrepresent the truth for its own unspoken intentions.

RECKLESS BEHAVIOR

Wang Jiangyu, an associate professor of law at National University of Singapore, said India is pursuing a hegemony strategy in the region, provoking complaints from smaller countries in South Asia, which won't dare voice their anger, fearing retaliation from India.

According to Vassily Kashin, a senior research fellow at Russia's National Research University, India's illegal trespassing into Chinese territory serves two purposes.

First, India is struggling to emerge from the shadow of China, a rising power to its north. The professor said the rapid pace of many Chinese projects throughout Asia, in particular the Belt and Road Initiative, has triggered concern of China's regional and global influence. India wrongly believes China has invaded its traditional region of influence.

Second, India hopes to maintain its stronghold in the region, Kashin said. Therefore, it needs to hide its anxiety in the face of China's rise and prove itself with resolute action. That partly explains why Indian troops recklessly trespassed into Doklam.

The aim of concocting territorial disputes is to flex its muscles against its smaller neighbors, including Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, countries where China's presence has grown in recent years.

The Chinese have long abided by the wisdom of the ancient philosopher Confucius, who said that anyone looking to help himself shall also help others. Unfortunately, India has chosen instead to hurt, not help, its neighbors.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 22:27:35|Editor: Song Lifang

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BAGHDAD, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi forces killed 66 Islamic State (IS) militants, including suicide bombers, in a mountainous area west of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

The troops, backed by the army's gunships, conducted an operation against the militants in Attshana mountain range west of Mosul. The Iraqi army killed 66 militants, many of whom were wearing explosive belts, the ministry said in a statement.

The extremist militants were preparing to move to Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, to carry out attacks against the civilians and the security forces in the city, the statement said.

On July 10, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi officially declared the liberation of Mosul, some 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, from IS after nearly nine months of fierce fighting to dislodge the extremist militants from their last major stronghold in Iraq.

The Iraqi forces, including the predominantly Shiite Hashd Shaabi units and Sunni tribal fighters, took new positions near the town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, to free the town and nearby areas from IS militants.

The Iraqi forces still have to wage more offensives to drive out IS militants from their redoubts in eastern bank of Shirqat, Hawijah in southwestern Kirkuk and the adjacent sprawling rugged areas in eastern Salahudin province, in addition to the remaining IS strongholds in the border towns with Syria in western Anbar province.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 23:23:01|Editor: yan

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PYONGYANG, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Saturday accused Japan of building a cyberspace attack force in its military under the pretext of self-defense.

The official newspaper Rodong Sinmun said the Japanese Defense Ministry is planning to boost the size and capability of its cyber unit under the excuse of self-defense against hackers.

The members of the cyber unit will be drastically increased and a department for specializing in cyber attack capability will be set up.

"Their cyber unit is not for merely protecting the computer system of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) from hacking, but for attacking the computer systems of its rivals," said the newspaper, adding that once the unit has the capability to attack, the SDF will "completely turn into the force in attack formation."

"If they are engrossed in war hysteria for re-invasion (of the Korean peninsula) while talking about the improvement of the so-called attacking capability, far from drawing a lesson from their crimes-woven past history, they will follow in the footsteps of their defeated predecessors," it said.

The Japanese Defense Ministry was mulling increasing the number of soldiers in its cyber defense unit from the current 110 to 1,000, and a new working group to study cyber warfare techniques will also be established, according to media reports last month.

The initiative is part of the Japanese government's plan to boost its cyber defense capabilities ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games, Kyodo News reported.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 23:43:07|Editor: yan

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VIENNA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and at least 40 others were injured on Friday in a violence storm in the western Austrian city of Salzburg, local media reported on Saturday.

The tragedy happened at St. Johann am Walde, in northeastern part of Salzburg, on Friday night when about 500 people were in a tent for a celebration.

The storm struck at about 10:30 p.m. local time and ripped the tent, leaving one man and one woman dead and dozens of others injured, with 10 in serious condition, according to local media.

Austrians had enjoyed nice weather for days and held festivals in the open before the storm.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-19 23:43:09|Editor: yan

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KHARTOUM, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Sudan on Saturday condemned the recent terror attack in Barcelona in Spain, Sudan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses its strong condemnation of the van terror attack which took place in the Spanish city of Barcelona on Thursday, and which resulted in the death of many civilians and injuring of dozens others," the statement said.

The ministry described the incident as "a terrible crime contradicting all humanitarian values and principles."

The ministry expressed condolences to the families of the victims and injured and to the Spanish people and government.

It renewed its rejection to all forms of terrorist attacks and to terrorizing of innocent people as a matter that is rejected by all heavenly and international laws.

It stressed Sudan's full solidarity with the Spanish government to preserve security and safety of its citizens.

The ministry further urged the international community to intensify its effort and cooperation in the face of all forms of terrorist and criminal activities.

At least 13 people were killed and 50 others injured when a van ploughed into a busy pedestrian zone in Las Ramblas tourist district of Barcelona Thursday, according to Spanish authorities.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 00:13:24|Editor: yan

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VALLETTA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Malta denied entry to and cooperation with a vessel which belongs to an anti-migrant organization, local media reported on Saturday.

"The ship is not welcome to our shores because of all that it stands for," a government spokesman informed local media, adding that the vessel never made an official request to berth in Valletta.

The ship, C-Star, belongs to an anti-immigration movement called Defend Europe, an organization set up by French, Italian and German citizens.

They released a series of tweets claiming the Maltese government had refused them entry in Malta.

"Malta, that has become the gate for illegal immigration to Europe, is closing its borders for European citizens," they added.

The C-Star crew claimed Malta had denied them fresh water and had forbidden supply vessels to engage with them.

The government spokesperson confirmed that this was the case, clarifying this was not an emergency situation.

"If the vessel was in need of humanitarian aid or was in an emergency then it would be a different situation," he stated.

Defend Europe's aim is to patrol the Mediterranean Sea to sink abandoned migrant traffic ships and watch over NGOs who they claim are smuggling hundred thousands of illegal migrants to Europe.

The group accuses migrants of "destroying European culture, tourism and security".
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 00:23:25|Editor: yan

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LAGOS, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari returns to Abuja, the country's capital, Saturday after medical vacation in London for more than three months.

He is being received by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo and other top government officials at the presidential wing of the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja.

The aircraft, Air Force 001, carrying the President landed at the Presidential Wing of the airport at exactly 4:35 p.m., local time.

The Nigerian leader left the country on May 7, for the second round of his medical treatment in London after receiving 82 rescued Chibok school girls who were abducted by the Boko Haram sect in 2014.

Buhari took a national salute from the Presidential Guards Brigade while cultural groups were also singing and dancing to welcome him back home.

He is expected to speak to Nigerians in a broadcast on Monday at 7 a.m..
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 00:33:27|Editor: yan

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By Maria Spiliopoulou

ATHENS, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Greek government welcomed on Saturday the latest upgrade of Greece's credit rating by Fitch.

The ratings agency upgraded on Friday Greece's Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Ratings to "B-" from "CCC", with a "positive" outlook, Greek national news agency AMNA reported.

According to Fitch's report, the step was made based on experts' view that the country's third adjustment program review will be completed without problems and that the EuroGroup will grant debt relief in 2018.

"The new positive outlook for the economy from the rating agencies reflects the expectations that the third review will be completed without creating instability, while the fact that there will be significant measures to alleviate Greek debt will facilitate Greece's access to markets," the Greek Finance Ministry said in an e-mailed statement on Saturday.

"The surprise step is a vote of confidence in the prospects of Greek economy. The decision will have a significant effect on markets, the Athens Stock Exchange and it will boost the return of foreign investors," Greek financial news portal "Sofokleous" commented in an article.

"Positive surprise" and "good news" were the titles of similar articles in other local financial dailies and news portals.

In July, Standard and Poor's also upgraded the prospects of Greek economy to positive giving a "B-" mark to Greece, while Moody's has also recently upgraded Greece's credit rating to "Caa2" from "Caa3", according to news portal Bankingnews.gr.
AUBURN  Chrissy Cordway and Daniela Reilly hadn't heard of Jean Wright until Saturday morning, but once they were told about her work and a memorial scholarship in her name, the duo decided to participate in an event in her honor.

Cordway and Reilly were already walking together in Hoopes Park in Auburn when a volunteer for the Jean Wright Memorial Walk/Run  which was being held at the park at that same time  told them about the event and Wright's work for women. They then decided to pay to register to walk in the event.

Cordway said she also liked that the money made from the event was going toward a Cayuga Community College scholarship in Wright's name to help women.

The scholarship was set up with money from Wright's will and will support one female student majoring in business on CCC's Auburn campus and one on its Fulton campus, said Cayuga County Community College Foundation Executive Director Guy Consentino, who said he knew Wright for several years.

Christina Cornell, who organized the event, said she met Wright through the Cayuga County Women's Republican Club in 2012. Cornell said Wright made a huge impact on her before Wright's death in December 2014.

Wright  who was one of the New York State Electric and Gas Corporation's first female executives  dedicated her life to her community and to bettering the lives of those around her, Cornell said.

"Throughout your life, you're going to meet hundreds and thousands of people. But there are going to be a select few people that no matter whether you know them five years or whether you know them 10 years or 15 years, those people are going to stay with you for the rest of your life, and Jean was one of those people for me," Cornell said.

Cornell said she believes Wright was that kind of person for others as well.

Susan Marteney, who was out participating, described Wright as a dignified, well-dressed, passionate, fairly serious woman who was able to get her point across without resorting to certain four-letter words. Wright strongly believed in women being involved in their communities and in the importance of women voting, Marteney said.

"She was a force," Marteney said with a laugh.

Marteney noted that even though she isn't a Republican, she didn't have to completely agree with Wright's politics to think the woman was a fantastic person.

Dawn Wolff, who was walking with her dog Rylee, said she wanted to come out to support the club and the scholarship despite not knowing Wright particularly well when she was alive.

Consentino said Wright was constantly donating her time, from working with Meals on Wheels to fundraising for Willard Memorial Chapel in Auburn.

"If there was a public good, she would help out," Consentino said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 00:33:28|Editor: yan

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MOMBASA, Kenya, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan police said Saturday that they are pursuing three accomplices of a wanted terror suspect who was gunned down in the coastal city of Mombasa on Friday evening.

Coast Regional Police Commander Larry Kieng told a news conference in Mombasa the three terror suspects are allies of Hussein Said Omar alias Babley who was shot dead after engaging security personnel in a shootout from his hideout before he was overpowered.

Kieng said they believe the three suspects escaped with injuries during the operation mounted by special anti-terrorism police unit on Friday evening.

Kieng added that the four were planning a major terrorist attack in Mombasa County.

"We are reliably informed the three were planning attack on Friday but our officers acting on intelligence information thwarted the imminent terrorist attack," the police commander said.

He said security have intensified intelligence gathering and patrols in the war on terrorism. The enhanced operation comes after the killing of Omar, one of the most wanted terror suspects in the country.

Omar is the logistician for the Al-Shabaab militia operating in Boni forest and is behind the killing of innocent Kenyans in Mwalei, Pandanguo and Milihoi.

He is brother to another terrorist who is also on the run by the name Dogo. Omar came to limelight in 2013 where he was involved in facilitating a group of French foreign fighters as they were running away from Al-Shabaab militant group.

He later on took up a bigger role in facilitation when his brother Ahmed alias Dogo left for Somalia and sent a cell of fighters back in late 2014.

He has been involved in various circles of financiers who supported local harakat and his brothers' needs in Somalia.

He later joined Ismael Shosi at the majengo house raid in Jan 2016 and later Junda residence of Salim Hanjaury alias Mario.

Early this year, the government released names and photos of seven most wanted members of the Jaysh Aman cell operating from Boni and placed a 20,000 U.S. dollar bounty on each.

They are Idriss Issack, Mohamed, Abdullahi Diyat alias Ubeyd, Sharif Arab, Ahmed Mohammed alias Jerry, Andikadir Haret Mohammed Yusuf Kuno alias Abu Ali and Ahmed Bashir.

Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet said the seven are believed to be operating on the Kenya-Somalia border and allegedly behind terror attacks in the Northeastern region, particularly in Mandera County.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 00:53:33|Editor: yan

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ABUJA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- A jubilant crowd welcomed Nigerian leader Muhammadu Buhari to the nation's capital Abuja on Saturday, after his medical vacation in London for more than three months.

Buhari was officially received by his vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo, who functioned as Acting President when he was on vacation.

Other top government officials also joined in welcoming the president at the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja.

The president left the country on May 7, after handing over power to Osinbajo.

The 74-year-old Nigerian leader received the latest medical attention two months after his return from a similar medical vacation, the same day he received 82 Chibok Girls freed by Boko Haram.

While in London, Buhari was visited by a number of Nigerian officials, beginning with the vice-president, who first hinted Nigerians about the president's good recovery.

Buhari, a retired Army General, had also told his visitors that there was a tremendous improvement in his health, but he has learned to obey doctor's orders, rather than be the one issuing the orders.

"I feel I could go home, but the doctors are in charge. I've now learned to obey orders, rather than be obeyed," he recently told his visiting media team in London.

Abuja, the Nigerian capital city, was set agog ahead of the president's arrival.

Many Nigerians trooped out of the major road leading to the Presidential Palace to catch a glimpse of their beloved leader. The road leading to the main airport was not left out of the frenzy either.

Upon his arrival at the airport, a short ceremony was held for Buhari. He inspected a guard of honor and proceeded to a waiting vehicle which conveyed him to the Presidential Palace.

The Presidential Palace was all activities as staff and security personnel were seen making last-minute preparations to receive Buhari.

Other itinerary members of staff in the Presidency were also on standby, while security vehicles and personnel attached to the president's convoy left earlier for the airport to receive the president.

Buhari's absence had sparked off protests both in Nigeria and London with some asking for his resumption or resignation.

The nature of the president's protracted illness is not yet known.

In June 2016, Buhari had traveled to London to check an ear infection.

The Nigerian leader is expected to speak to citizens in a broadcast by 7 a.m. Monday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 02:03:57|Editor: yan

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CHICAGO, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) grains futures have seen a week full of fluctuations, with a overall downturn prevailing.

During the trading week which ended Aug. 18, the most active corn contract for December delivery fell 9 cents, or 2.40 percent, to 3.6575 dollars per bushel. A bearish report of U.S. Department of Agriculture was believed to be the main factor for the fall.

Apart from the USDA report on Monday mentioning better corn crop conditions, the favorable weather in leading agricultural State of Iowa added more pressure on corn futures.

Addition pressure came from South American corn exports, which were ramping up.

The good news for corn was that the ethanol market remained strong in the U.S. Ethanol plants, using corn as raw material, responded to the recent boost in production margins, producing nearly record-high ethanol in recent weeks.

December wheat delivery this week suffered a three-straight-day sharp decrease, but managed to recover some losses in the end.

Ample world supplies and fund selling contributed to the downturn. Traders were talking about record-high combined Ukraine/Russian production, though logistic issues might prevent Russia from exporting more than 29-31 million metric tons of wheat. That's roughly the volume of last year.

Price is another factor. Gulf wheat of the U.S. is the world's cheapest supply, on a FOB basis. A weak U.S. dollar will help American farmers export more.

November soybeans went down 7.25 cents this week, or 0.77 percent, to 9.3775 dollars per bushel.

Brazil's soybean exports are almost on track to meet USDA's record projection, which is expected to rise 21 percent. Export commitments are now lagging only a bit below the pace.

China's crushing margins are reportedly up sharply this week thanks to lower soybean futures and a stronger Yuan. The "spot" crush margin jumped 114 Yuan and is now is profitable for the first time since late February.

China remains the world's largest soybean importer. CBOT soybean prices were lifted, though moderately, for three consecutive sessions this week, obviously boosted by the news that a group of Chinese importers signed letters of intent to buy 3.8 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans in Omaha, Nebraska. However, soybean futures failed to post gains on a weekly basis.

Now all the eyes are on next week, when agricultural scouts plan to spread through the U.S. Midwest and hit more than 2,000 corn and bean fields in a bid to determine yield and production. A clearer picture will emerge when traders get the results of the crop tour.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 02:39:08|Editor: yan

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WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- A majority of Americans say that the United States should not threaten the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) with military action, according to a new poll.

Nearly six in ten Americans say that the United States should not threaten the DPRK with military action, while 33 percent say that military threats should be issued toward the DPRK, said the CBS News poll released early this week.

Opinions differ largely by party, the poll also found, with 82 percent od Democrats saying the United States should not and 63 percent of Republicans saying the United States should threaten with military action.

However, if the United States fails in its effort to solve the DPRK nuclear issue diplomatically, 58 percent of Americans say that they would approve of military action against the DPRK.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reaffirmed on Thursday that diplomatic effort was "first and foremost" choice in solving the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.

"In cooperation with other nations, we will continue to employ diplomatic and economic pressure to convince North Korea (DPRK) to end its illegal nuclear and ballistic missile program," said Tillerson here at a joint press conference with visiting Japanese officials.

"We continue our full-out efforts, working with partners, working with allies to bring that pressure," he added.

However, Tillerson warned that though not "our preferred pathway," the United States is "prepared militarily... with our allies to respondent, if that is necessary."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 03:09:18|Editor: yan

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DAR ES SALAAM, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The government of Tanzania admitted on Saturday that a Canadian firm was withholding its Bombardier Q400 aircraft that was expected to be delivered by the manufacturers last month.

"The aircraft is indeed being withheld by the Canadian firm, Canadian Sterling Civil Engineering," said Tanzania Information Services Acting Director General and Government Spokesperson Zamaradi Kawawa.

She was reacting to remarks made by Tundu Lissu, legal adviser of opposition party CHADEMA, who said on Friday that Canadian Sterling Civil Engineering has withheld the aircraft after Tanzanian government failed to pay 48 million U.S. dollars to the company.

The Singida East Member of Parliament said the Canadian firm won a tender seven years ago to construct the Wazo Hill to Bagamoyo road but the government terminated the deal and refused to compensate the firm.

The firm filed a case at an International Court of Arbitration in Montreal in its native country where the Tanzania government lost the case and in 2010 it was ordered to pay 25 million dollars in compensation with an eight percent interest, said Lissu.

He said the debt was not paid on time hence it increased to 38 million dollars by the end of June this year, which resulted into an order by the Canadian court to attach any government properties that would be found in Canada, France, the Netherlands, Belgium or the United Kingdom.

Kawawa said the move to withhold the purchased aircraft partly arose from actions of a few politicians seeking cheap popularity.

"The government has taken initiatives to ensure it settles the situation diplomatically," she told a news conference in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam.

The government was aware of some politicians sabotaging the government to hinder its development agenda, said Kawawa.

She said untrustworthy lawyers in the country filed the case about the debt the government owed the foreign firm, thus resulting into withholding of the aircraft.

She said such lawyers had no legal mandate to do something of that sort, as "they were lured by conmen and a few politicians who lacked patriotism."

"We will investigate all those involved in the issue and legal action will be taken against them," said Kawawa.

In his Friday meeting Lissu said that to sort out the matter, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and East Africa Cooperation, Augustine Mahiga, traveled to Canada in the past two weeks to negotiate with the construction firm over the plane.

According to the outspoken opposition lawyer, the meeting was also attended by Tanzania High Commissioner in Canada Jack Zoka, where an accord was reached for the government to pay a 12.5 million down payment, more than a third of the owed amount.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 03:30:00|Editor: Mengjie

An Ontario milk cow is seen at Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, Canada, on Aug. 18, 2017. The United States opened the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations Wednesday with a declaration that it wants major changes to the agreement that shifts the balance of trade. However, Canadian business owners are hoping U.S. negotiators will be receptive to maintaining, if not improving, the current flow of goods and workers across the border. Although the Canadian dairy industry was excluded from the original NAFTA deal in 1994, its supply management system for dairy has long been a point of contention with the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to push Canada for greater access to its markets for American dairy products in the NAFTA talks. (Xinhua/Li Haitao)

OTTAWA, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The United States opened the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations Wednesday with a declaration that it wants major changes to the agreement that shifts the balance of trade.

However, Canadian business owners are hoping U.S. negotiators will be receptive to maintaining, if not improving, the current flow of goods and workers across the border.

Raymond Yu, a senior media professional told Xinhua ensuring the current flow of products and skilled personnel is a very realistic prospect in the NAFTA talks and is important to the economies of Canada and the U.S.

He said the two countries have a very deeply connected supply chain, and employees flowing from one facility on one side of the border to another is very important to make sure that things run quickly and smoothly.

Andy Soong, a Ottawa businessman told Xinhua that there is a risk the U.S. will want to change the rules of origin and content requirements, affecting tariffs and the bottom line.

He said the current trade agreement is working well for Canada. "Of course, Canadian business people, especially in auto industry, have some great concerns about it, there's no question."

Although the Canadian dairy industry was excluded from the original NAFTA deal in 1994, its supply management system for dairy has long been a point of contention with the United State.

U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to push Canada for greater access to its markets for American dairy products in the NAFTA talks.

David Hans, a dairy farmer in Ontario told Xinhua that there is a lot of inaccuracy in the perception of unfairness on Canada's part.

He voiced his wish that Canadian dairy industry would remain out of NAFTA and that U.S. producers turn their focus on their domestic policies to control their problems with overproduction.

The U.S. dairy industry is reportedly unhappy that Canadian producers get profits from price controls, and then could sell skimmed-off higher protein components for cheese-making at lower market prices, squeezing Americans out of a growing market.

Hans is also anxious that the renegotiations may affect the price. Depite before NAFTA talks, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Freeland vowed to defend supply management on Canadian farms in the NAFTA negotiations.

Canada's dairy, egg and poultry industries are governed by a supply-management system that dates back to the 1970s. It has three parts: fixed prices, production quotas and tariffs to protect Canadian producers from foreign competition.

While the system reaches across the country, the overwhelming majority of farmers within the supply-managed system are in Ontario and Quebec. In dairy, the most valuable supply-managed sector, fully two-thirds of production is in Ontario and Quebec.

By contrast, concern that the defence of supply management will cost other sectors is most evident across the prairies provinces in the country.

Some Canadian observers said the worry that protecting supply management will come at a cost to Canada, and potentially to other farm groups, is quite reasonable.

"It is likely other Canadian farmers will pay the price," said Alexandre Moreau, public policy analyst at the Montreal Economic Institute. "Trump has promised increased market access to U.S. dairy farmers, he has directly taken aim at Canada's supply management. This is about politics."

Feuds over softwood lumber also have been a recurring part of Canada-U.S. relations since the 1980s. Their root cause is U.S. industry's contention that Canada unfairly subsidizes its lumber by providing cheap access to public land. It's led to a cycle of American punitive action, followed by trade cases mostly won by Canada, and then a compromise settlement.

The fifth and most recent lumber war was set off on April 24 this year when U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the U.S. would impose new anti-subsidy duties on Canadian softwood. The initial duties added up to about 20 per cent, but a second wave of anti-dumping duties in late June brought that total to about 27 per cent.

Early this month, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said there is real concern among its members that any changes to NAFTA could have significant effects on their ability to sell goods and services abroad.

It is worried that its members will have to increase their prices if tariffs go up under a renegotiated NAFTA.

The federation said uncertainty in how the trading partners will have to do business makes it difficult for Canada's small business owners to plan for the future.

In releasing its response to the start of the NAFTA talks, the federation quoted a farming business owner in British Columbia province as saying, "we are hoping that NAFTA remains relatively the same."

All business people know that negotiations are a process of give and take game, said Yu.

"If the Americans give us supply management, and allow Canada to protect areas like dairy, what are they going to take?" he asked. "Who can make sure there are no unintended consequences?"
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 03:35:02|Editor: yan

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DAR ES SALAAM, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Tanzanian authorities said on Saturday plans were afoot to invite local and foreign investors to acquire repossessed industries through public private partnership (PPP) agreements.

Godwill Wanga, Acting Director-General of the National Development Corporation (NDC), a state-owned public organization that oversees industrialization development in the east African nation, said the investors will be invited after the repossession mission ends.

On August 10, the government of Tanzania announced the repossession of 10 privatized industries after they had been dormant for 20 years.

Charles Mwijage, the Minister for Industry, Trade and Investment, said the government will reclaim all undeveloped industries by August 22.

Mwijage mentioned the repossessed industries as Lindi Cashewnut Processing Plant, Pugu Kaolin Mines, Mkata Saw Mills Ltd, Manawa Ginnery Co. Ltd, Dabada Tea Factory, Tembo Chipboards Ltd, Kilimanjaro Textile Mills, Mang'ula Mechanical and Machine Tools Co. Ltd and Polysacks Company Limited.

Wanga said initially, all industries were operating under NDC before they were handed over to the Presidential Parastatal Sector Reform Commission (PSRC) for privatization.

"Only strategic investors with financial muscles will be considered for investments in the factories as most of them require huge modern technology development," said Wanga.

He added: "We do not want to work with speculators and middlemen...we need real investors to be able to revamp the industries and equip them with high-tech machineries under PPP agreements."

Wanga said the most important thing was to get back the dormant industries together with their assets, including land, buildings and machinery.

He said NDC was well positioned to secure funds for development of the industries.

Official statistics show that some 274 state-owned industries had been privatized by 2012.

The repossession of the industries by the government came a few days after President John Magufuli ordered the Mwijage to reclaim them.

Speaking during a ceremony to launch Kilimanjaro Cement Company in Tanga on Sunday, President Magufuli disclosed that there were 197 dormant industries in the country.

"We made mistakes when we privatized the industries," said Magufuli.

On July 27, the government said it has started looking for investors to develop industries which it has repossessed from investors who abandoned them after privatization.

Elli Pallangyo, Investment and Research Director in the Ministry of Industries, Trade and Investment, said the abandoned industries will be repossessed by August 15, this year.

Pallangyo said out of 156 industries which were privatized between 1992 and 2004, a total of 54 industries remained dormant after they were privatized.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 03:50:04|Editor: Mengjie

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JERUSALEM, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia next week to discuss "recent development" in Syria.

A statement released by the Prime Minister's Office said the meeting will be held in Black Sea city of Sochi on Wednesday.

The two leaders are expected to talk about the recent development in Syria, where Russian forces are fighting along with President Bashar Assad's military, the statement said.

The meeting would be held amid Iran's alleged increasing presence in the war-torn country.

"It should be noted that over the past two years, Prime Minister Netanyahu has met President Putin once in every few months to discuss bilateral and regional issues to prevent friction between Israeli and Russian air forces in Syria," the statement read.

Yossi Cohen, head of Israel's Mossad national intelligence agency, warned last week against "Iranian expansion" into the regions that the Islamic State has relinquished in the Middle East.

"The areas where IS presence is decreasing, Iran is working to fill the void," Cohen said.

According to the intelligence chief, Iran is expanding through its proxies and local allies in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

Israel worries that Iran will deploy its forces near the Syrian border with Israel, creating an Iranian stronghold next to the Jewish state.

Netanyahu has called on Russian and U.S. leaders to contain Iranian presence in Syria in the framework of a possible cease-fire to end the eight-year-long civil war.

Israel has repeatedly declared it will not intervene in the fighting in Syria.

However, Israel's military responds to the random fire from Syria with artillery or airstrikes on posts of the Syrian army.

In addition, it is widely believed that Israel often carries out airstrikes on weapons convoys in Syria, and has been providing medical treatment to hundreds of wounded Syrians reaching the border.
Artur Parfyonchikov, acting head of the Republic of Karelia speaks during an exclusive interview with Xinhua in Kalevala, Russia, on August 15, 2017. (Xinhua/Lu Jinbo)

PETROZAVODSK, Russia, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Republic of Karelia in Russia's northwest and Fujian province in southern China are expected to sign an agreement during the upcoming BRICS summit that could see trade bolster significantly between the two favored jurisdictions, Karelia's top official said.

"Currently, the preparation for the establishment of a friendly and cooperative partnership between the two sides has entered the final stage. Hopefully, we will sign the agreement during the BRICS summit and start to carry out joint projects as soon as possible," Artur Parfyonchikov, acting head of the Republic of Karelia, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

The Ninth BRICS Summit to be held in early September in Fujian's resort city Xiamen, themed "BRICS: Stronger Partnership for a Brighter Future," will be the first summit among the BRICS members in the second "Golden Decade" of the multilateral organization.

Plans for expanding cooperation between Karelia and Fujian are based on their multiple similarities, Parfyonchikov noted.

Geographically, both are border regions. Economically, the two regions boast of rich resources in forestry, mining, tourism and other fields, and enjoy similar priorities in their respective country's national economic policy, which guarantees great potential for cooperation, he explained.

Joint projects in non-traditional industries including automation machinery, information technology, culture and education are also being explored by the two jurisdictions, he added.

In addition, the acting commissioner said Karelia has great advantages in attracting foreign investment and tourists, highlighting its well-conditioned railways, maritime and other transportation infrastructure, which efficiently connects the region to major cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg and Murmansk as well as neighboring Finland.

At present, Karelia is in talks with Chinese authorities to develop tourism projects and routes for Chinese tourists, according to Parfyonchikov.

Recalling a 50MW Beloporozhskaya hydropower plants project in Karelia launched in October last year, the first project in Russia financed by the BRICS New Development Bank, Parfyonchikov said it set an example for the pragmatic cooperation within the framework of BRICS.

"The construction of the hydropower plants is of great benefit to the local economy, and helps to boost employment as the workers involved in the construction of the project are mainly from the local community," he said.

Parfyonchikov expressed his confidence in future prospects for comprehensive cooperation among the BRICS countries, saying that BRICS provides its member countries with an efficient platform for dialogue and consultation.

"Karelia's hydropower stations project is a manifestation of the outcome of the BRICS Summit. I believe the ninth summit will enable us to take a further step ahead and open a new chapter in promoting cooperation among the BRICS countries," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 04:20:37|Editor: yan

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CAPE TOWN, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- South African Airways (SAA) said on Saturday it has stopped all its flights from Zimbabwe for the whole of Saturday.

The national carrier said it has taken the decision after one of its flights was stopped from taking off from Harare International Airport earlier in the day.

The airline said it was required by Zimbabwean authorities to produce a foreign operator's permit, although it has been operating in the country for over two decades.

But according to reports from Zimbabwe, the debacle came as one of the flights operated by Air Zimbabwe was prevented from leaving Johannesburg on Friday evening.

Zimbabwean authorities cited non-compliance as a factor for the grounding of the SAA flight.

Both SAA and Air Zimbabwe are said to have submitted the necessary compliance documents to resume flights.

The approval of the SAA certificate is expected to take a day, with SAA yet to confirm if Sunday flights will be operating as per normal.

"We are awaiting the decision by the Zimbabwean authorities to give us clearance to be able to operate," SAA spokesperson Tlali Tlali said.

SAA apologizes to its passengers and customers for the inconvenience that has been caused by this incident and the matter is receiving required and urgent attention in order to be resolved as quickly as possible, said the spokesperson.
Denise Truscello/WireImage via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- In the latest legal wrangling over the defamation suit Richard Simmons filed against National Enquirer, Radar Online and their parent company American Media, the alleged source behind the reports that Simmons was transitioning genders said in a signed declaration filed Thursday that he never told reporters the fitness guru was becoming a woman.



Simmons filed a lawsuit in May over stories claiming that the fitness icon is transitioning from male to female, according to court documents.



The media reports that alleged Simmons was changing genders used Mauro Oliveira, Simmons' former masseuse, as their source. Oliveira was also the one who sold photos to a media agency of Simmons dressed in women's clothing, which were used to accompany the stories.



In July, the media outlets asked for the lawsuit to be thrown out, arguing in court documents that saying someone is undergoing a gender transition is "not defamatory under modern jurisprudence."



Neville Johnson, Simmons' attorney, told ABC News that the National Enquirer "has gone out of its way to try and humiliate and embarrass and slander" Simmons.



"They have hyped this into a whole other story with all these other details that are simply wrong and false," Johnson added.



Simmons' move on Thursday argues the National Enquirer and Radar Online knowingly printed information that was false. Simmons' legal team filed a signed declaration from Oliveira, who claims that he never said that Simmons was transitioning genders.



"I was shocked and disturbed after discovering that the National Enquirer and Radar Online published cover stories claiming that Richard Simmons has transitioned into a woman and included the photos I supplied," Oliveira stated.



"Although I may have said that Richard Simmons's chest looks like the chest of someone who might be on hormones," Oliveira's statemend added, "I never stated that Richard Simmons is now a woman, had breast implants, or had sex-change surgery."



Johnson told ABC News that Simmons is "doing fine" in the midst of the legal battle.



"He just is private and he'd like to stay that way," Johnson said. "If he has to come forward and testify and have his body examined, so be it."



A spokesperson for American Media told ABC News the company "stands by its reporting."



"Its the height of sophistry to claim to be a supporter of LGBTQ rights, yet also claim to be defamed by being identified as transgender. But that shouldnt surprise anyone whos noted Mr. Simmons refusal to identify with or openly support gay and lesbian rights over the course of his entire career," the spokesperson said in a statement. "AMI stands by its reporting, which was not only supported by a lengthy on-the-record taped interview with Mr. Oliveira, it was also supported by photographs and videotape (which AMI possesses but did not publish), and was consistent with prior reporting about Mr. Simmons lifestyle. We look forward to litigating Mr. Simmons claims in a public court of law."



The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Aug. 30.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Criminal justice officials across the country are struggling to break the recidivism cycle in which prisoners are released only to land right back behind bars. These prisoners are among the most poorly educated people in the country, and that fact holds the key to a solution. Decades of research has shown that inmates who participate in prison education programs  even if they fail to earn degrees  are far more likely to stay out of prison once they are freed.

That prison education programs are highly cost effective is confirmed by a 2013 RAND Corporation study that covered 30 years of prison education research. Among other things, the study found that every dollar spent on prison education translated into savings of $4 to $5 on imprisonment costs down the line.

Other studies suggest that prisons with education programs have fewer violent incidents, making it easier for officials to keep order, and that the children of people who complete college are more likely to do so themselves, disrupting the typical pattern of poverty and incarceration.

Findings like these have persuaded corrections officials in both Democratic and Republican states to embrace education as a cost-effective way of cutting recidivism. But Republican legislators in New York  which spends about $60,000 per inmate per year  remain mired in know-nothingism and argue that spending public money on inmates insults taxpayers. They have steadfastly resisted Gov. Andrew Cuomo's common-sense proposal for making a modest investment in prison education programs that have already proved highly successful on a small scale in New York's prisons.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., stepped into the void left by the Legislature when he agreed l to pay for Governor Cuomo's prison education plan with more than $7 million in criminal forfeiture money secured from banks. Lauding what he described as a public safety measure, Mr. Vance said, "It makes no sense to send someone to prison with no pathway for them to succeed."

The goal of the program is to expand the number of inmates taking college courses to about 3,500 across much of the system from 1,000. The curriculum will be broad, covering science, math, philosophy, the social sciences and art. Among the schools that will participate are Cornell University, New York University, Mercy College and Bard College, which has run a highly regarded program since 2001. The recidivism rate is 4 percent for inmates who participate in the program and a mere 2 percent for those who earn degrees in prison, compared with about 40 percent for the New York State prison system as a whole.

Prison education programs were largely dismantled during the "tough on crime" 1990s, when Congress stripped inmates of the right to get the federal Pell grants that were used to pay tuition. The decision bankrupted many prison education programs across the country and left private donors and foundations to foot the bill for those that survived.

Despite limited and unreliable funding, these programs have more than proved their value. New York lawmakers who continue to block funding for them are putting ideology ahead of the public interest.

 The New York Times

President Donald Trump is right to be concerned about what is happening in Venezuela. He is wrong to consider use of U.S. military force to correct the situation.

Venezuela appears to be on the brink of chaos as a result of action taken by that country's leftist president, Nicolas Maduro. He is rewriting the nation's constitution to ensure he and his cronies remain in power and any opposition is crushed.

Asked about the situation Saturday, Trump told a reporter, "We have many options for Venezuela and, by the way, I'm not going to rule out a military option. . A military operation and military option is certainly something that we could pursue."

That should be considered only if Americans and/or American interests are jeopardized by the Maduro regime. Involvement in a Venezuelan civil war is the very last thing our nation needs right now, especially given the reaction that would come from others in the world community.

U.S. officials already have put economic sanctions in place against the Maduro government. For now, the only change in that should be to increase the sanctions' severity and target them more accurately at Maduro himself. Using the American military to oust him would be a mistake.

 The Leader-Herald, Gloversville

Last week, the Civil Service Employees Association made a stop in Chautauqua County. While meeting with members and residents took up a good portion of the four-day visit, there was one more thing on their agenda: recommending their members vote "no" on the state Constitutional Convention.

They are not alone. Last spring, both state Sen. Catharine Young and Assemblyman Andrew Goodell took the same angle when asked at the county Chamber of Commerce legislative breakfast in Lakewood.

That's important to note  as well as the fact voters need to decide on this issue, which comes up every 20 years. The most recent convention was in 1967 and all the recommendations made then were later rejected by voters.

Residents need to begin talking about this issue  and raising questions. Big money, no doubt, will play a large role in what you learn about the convention, which could take on issues such as term limits, redistricting and campaign finance reform.

Have the knowledge of the issue when going to the polls this November. It will be on the ballot as a proposition.

 The Evening Observer, Dunkirk
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Black Sea city of Sochi, Russia on Wednesday. (Reuters photos)

JERUSALEM, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that he will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia next week to discuss "recent development" in Syria.

A statement released by the Prime Minister's Office said the meeting will be held in Black Sea city of Sochi on Wednesday.

The two leaders are expected to talk about the recent development in Syria, where Russian forces are fighting along with President Bashar Assad's military, the statement said.

The meeting would be held amid Iran's alleged increasing presence in the war-torn country.

"It should be noted that over the past two years, Prime Minister Netanyahu has met President Putin once in every few months to discuss bilateral and regional issues to prevent friction between Israeli and Russian air forces in Syria," the statement read.

Yossi Cohen, head of Israel's Mossad national intelligence agency, warned last week against "Iranian expansion" into the regions that the Islamic State has relinquished in the Middle East.

"The areas where IS presence is decreasing, Iran is working to fill the void," Cohen said.

According to the intelligence chief, Iran is expanding through its proxies and local allies in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

Israel worries that Iran will deploy its forces near the Syrian border with Israel, creating an Iranian stronghold next to the Jewish state.

Netanyahu has called on Russian and U.S. leaders to contain Iranian presence in Syria in the framework of a possible cease-fire to end the eight-year-long civil war.

Israel has repeatedly declared it will not intervene in the fighting in Syria.

However, Israel's military responds to the random fire from Syria with artillery or airstrikes on posts of the Syrian army.

In addition, it is widely believed that Israel often carries out airstrikes on weapons convoys in Syria, and has been providing medical treatment to hundreds of wounded Syrians reaching the border.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 04:25:40|Editor: yan

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RIYADH, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia denied Saturday issuing orders to stop dealing in Qatari currency riyal, Saudi Press Agency reported.

The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) said it has not instructed any financial or exchange institutions operating in the kingdom to suspend transactions in Qatari riyal since diplomatic ties with the gas-rich Gulf country were cut off.

Qatari nationals can normally exchange Qatari riyal at or through banks and licensed money exchangers, as well as by using ATM machines, SAMA noted.

Saudi Arabia has been leading a number of countries in a diplomatic and commercial boycott against Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism and interfering in internal affairs of other countries, which Doha has repeatedly denied.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 04:35:48|Editor: ZD

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BUNIA, DR Congo, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The death toll has risen to at least 200 in the landslide on Thursday in three villages of Ituri province, in the northeastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Pacific Keta, deputy governor of the province told Xinhua Saturday.

"We are at the site to assess the situation of our compatriots affected by the disasters of the landslide in the three villages. Unfortunately, at least 200 people from about 100 households have lost their lives," Keta said.

According to him, who led this Saturday a joint delegation with the UN team in the devastated area, the difficult access to the area due to the mountainous environment of the affected villages and the lack of appropriate facilities have created enormous difficulties for the rescuers.

For the provincial authorities of Ituri, there is no longer any possibility of finding survivors trapped under the rubble since the night of Thursday. The deputy governor also indicated that he had ordered the cessation of search operations.

"There are still a lot of needs there, because there are still a lot of people stuck in the mud. We need national and international mobilization to help these thousands of people, including homeless women and children without food," said Keta.

Since the night of Thursday, three villages, including Tara, Kakakpa and Dhatsi, have been hit by a major landslide following a rain that struck the mountain which overhangs the villages around Lake Albert.

Landslides are often reported in this part of the country due to its geographical location.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 05:21:03|Editor: yan

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MOSCOW, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- A Tibetan cultural exchange delegation dispatched by China's State Council Information Office completed its three-day visit in Russia on Saturday, following in-depth panel discussions on Tibetan culture with the Russian academic community.

The delegation met with teachers and students from Moscow's universities and representatives of the Chinese community in Russia as they visited the Far East Studies Institute (IFES) of the Russian Academy of Science.

During the visit, the delegation introduced detailed information on China's Tibet Autonomous Region and discussed prospects for further Tibetan cultural exchanges between China and Russia within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, which was met with enthusiasm from the Russian side.

Tibetan culture brings public minds of certain regions of the two countries closer, as people in three republics within Russia's territory believe in Tibetan Buddhism and are eager to carry out cultural exchanges with Tibet, said Taras Ivchenko, head of the Confucius Institute of the Russian State University for the Humanities.

Religious culture, Tibetan medicine training and medical care are promising fields to start with, he added.

Speaking highly of the achievements of the Chinese government in boosting the development in Tibet, deputy head of the IFES Sergei Uianaev also expressed the think tank's readiness to enhance academic exchanges and cooperation with Chinese institutions as well as take example by Tibet's development experience.

The six-member delegation, led by head of the Religious Studies Institute of the China Tibetology Research Center Zhou Weiren, includes scholars and experts from Beijing and Tibet, regional government officials and living buddha.

The visit in Russia is part of an overseas exchange agenda of the delegation, which had previously visited Mongolia and is heading for Japan as the next stop.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 05:26:06|Editor: yan

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MEXICO CITY, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- At least one person was killed and five others were injured on Saturday when an illegally tapped oil pipeline exploded in east Mexico's Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, officials said.

The state's Secretariat of Civil Protection said in a press release the blast occurred at 7:30 a.m. as thieves were trying to steal fuel from the pipeline, which runs from the town of Minatitlan to the capital Mexico City.

Two women and three men were taken to the hospital with burns.

The blast sparked a fire and generated a thick plume of black smoke, and led Civil protection officials to evacuate residents of Zapoapan, where the incident occurred, as well as students at the nearby Technological University of Central Veracruz.

Pemex, the Mexican state-owned petroleum company, said it was finally able to bring the fire under control by noon, after company workers allowed the spilled fuel to burn off.

Fuel theft is on the rise in Mexico, with Pemex estimating annual losses of more than a billion U.S. dollars.
People perform dance during a culture and art festival in Dari County of Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, northwest China's Qinghai Province, Aug. 4, 2017. (Xinhua/Wang Bo)

MOSCOW, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- A Tibetan cultural exchange delegation dispatched by China's State Council Information Office completed its three-day visit in Russia on Saturday, following in-depth panel discussions on Tibetan culture with the Russian academic community.

The delegation met with teachers and students from Moscow's universities and representatives of the Chinese community in Russia as they visited the Far East Studies Institute (IFES) of the Russian Academy of Science.

During the visit, the delegation introduced detailed information on China's Tibet Autonomous Region and discussed prospects for further Tibetan cultural exchanges between China and Russia within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, which was met with enthusiasm from the Russian side.

Tibetan culture brings public minds of certain regions of the two countries closer, as people in three republics within Russia's territory believe in Tibetan Buddhism and are eager to carry out cultural exchanges with Tibet, said Taras Ivchenko, head of the Confucius Institute of the Russian State University for the Humanities.

Religious culture, Tibetan medicine training and medical care are promising fields to start with, he added.

Speaking highly of the achievements of the Chinese government in boosting the development in Tibet, deputy head of the IFES Sergei Uianaev also expressed the think tank's readiness to enhance academic exchanges and cooperation with Chinese institutions as well as take example by Tibet's development experience.

Led by head of the Religious Studies Institute of the China Tibetology Research Center Zhou Weiren, the delegation includes scholars and experts from Beijing and Tibet, regional government officials and Living Buddhas.

The visit in Russia is part of an overseas exchange agenda of the delegation, which had previously visited Mongolia and is heading for Japan as the next stop.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 05:51:11|Editor: yan

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RABAT, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Morocco's King Mohammed VI has granted pardon to 415 convicts found guilty of terrorism, the Ministry of Justice said Saturday.

Another convict got his sentence reduced from death penalty to a 30-year prison term, the ministry said in a statement.

The convicts "officially expressed their attachment to the nation's immutable values and national institutions, voiced their rejection of extremism and terrorism, while showing good conduct in prison," the statement noted.

The announcement came a day before Morocco's 64th anniversary of the Revolution of the King and the People.

Among the freed convicts are several arrested over links to the terror attacks targeting the Moroccan city of Casablanca in May 2003, which left 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers, dead.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 05:56:14|Editor: Lu Hui

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People place candles and flowers to commemorate the victims of Friday's stabbings at the Turku Market Square, Finland on Aug. 19, 2017. Another four Moroccans were detained and a warrant has been issued for a fifth after a young man stabbed people at the squares in the southwestern Finnish city of Turku, police said on Saturday. (Xinhua/Zhang Xuan)

HELSINKI, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Finnish police have started the probe into a violence that left two dead and eight wounded in southwest Finland city of Turku on Friday on basis of assumption that the attack was of terrorism nature.

And to determine whether it is linked to the recent series of terror attacks in Spain would also be one focus of the probe.

Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila said on Saturday if the incident turns out to be terrorism-related, it would be the first of its kind in Finland, a Nordic country known for its security and quietness.

WAVE OF ATTACKS IN EUROPE

Turku, the oldest city of Finland, witnessed bloody scenes on Friday afternoon when an 18-year-old man stabbed people with a huge knife from one square to another in the city center. Two Finnish women were killed and eight others were wounded. A Briton, a Swede and an Italian were among the wounded.

The stabber chose his targets randomly, but they were all women, said the police.

The main suspect, who was shot in the leg and detained on Friday, was identified as a Moroccan citizen. Overnight, four other Moroccans were also arrested and a fifth was still wanted. The police said the group had probably planned the assault beforehand.

Researcher Leena Malkki, a leading Finnish expert on terrorism, said on national broadcaster Yle that the connection with international terrorism remains open. "If there is such a connection, this is a continuation of the recent series of attacks in Europe."

Malkki said knives have become typical tools for terror attacks in Europe. She said knives are easy to use in Europe, where more complex attacks have become difficult due to increasing counterterrorism measures.

The Finnish police said on Saturday they were investigating the case as a terrorism-related one.

Under Finnish law, the definition of a terrorist attack requires that the motive must be either political or religious. Malkki believed the police had found indications of either.

POLARIZATION BECOMES CONCERN

Concerns about further polarization in Finnish society on the immigration issue dominated statements by political leaders, as the stabber was said to be an asylum seeker who entered Finland in 2016.

The police said he was "in the asylum process", but did not specify whether he had been given asylum or not.

Both Sipila and Interior Minister Paula Risikko refused at a press conference on Saturday to discuss the implications of the incident on the Finnish immigration policies. They noted the motives of the attack would only be known later and the possible impact on immigration policy could only be assessed thereafter.

However, heated debate on immigration seems unavoidable. An anti-immigration group called "Finland First" opened an information tent at the scene of the stabbing on the Market Square in Turku on Saturday.

On the same square, counter demonstrators against racism also showed up, chanting slogans such as "My Turku is international" and "No room for racism". The police decided to position the two sides further away to avoid possible clashes.

Ville Tavio, a local politician in Turku representing the populist Finns Party, said in a statement that "terrorists should be fought against with hard tools". The Finns Party recently elected immigration critical Jussi Halla-aho as its chairman. The party's presidential candidate Laura Huhtasaari has also voiced criticism against immigration beyond confirmed labor needs.

RISK LEVEL NOT RAISED

The Finnish Security police, Supo said the terrorism risk level would not be raised despite the deadly attack.

Supo's director Antti Pelttari said at a news conference on Saturday that the multiple stabbings in Turku remained within the previous Finnish analysis that "violence-inspired individuals" would be the main risk in Finnish society.

And Minister Risikko said the police are prepared to intervene in any revenge.

Meanwhile, both Sipila and Risikko underlined the need to revise the Finnish security legislation. Changes are underway but still require parliamentary approval.

Risikko noted that current laws allow surveillance of communications only when a threat is imminent or a possible crime has taken place, which limited the capability of the investigators to trace felons.

Sipila called for a nation wide moment of silence at 10 a.m. (07.00 GMT) Sunday morning. Finnish flags were at half mast all day Saturday upon recommendation of the interior ministry.

The prime minister said foreigners in Finland must not be labeled. He said in a release earlier that "hatred should not be encountered with hatred." Enditem

HELSINKI, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Finnish police have started the probe into a violence that left two dead and eight wounded in southwest Finland city of Turku on Friday on basis of assumption that the attack was of terrorism nature.

And to determine whether it is linked to the recent series of terror attacks in Spain would also be one focus of the probe.

Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila said on Saturday if the incident turns out to be terrorism-related, it would be the first of its kind in Finland, a Nordic country known for its security and quietness.

WAVE OF ATTACKS IN EUROPE

Turku, the oldest city of Finland, witnessed bloody scenes on Friday afternoon when an 18-year-old man stabbed people with a huge knife from one square to another in the city center. Two Finnish women were killed and eight others were wounded. A Briton, a Swede and an Italian were among the wounded.

The stabber chose his targets randomly, but they were all women, said the police.

The main suspect, who was shot in the leg and detained on Friday, was identified as a Moroccan citizen. Overnight, four other Moroccans were also arrested and a fifth was still wanted. The police said the group had probably planned the assault beforehand.

Researcher Leena Malkki, a leading Finnish expert on terrorism, said on national broadcaster Yle that the connection with international terrorism remains open. "If there is such a connection, this is a continuation of the recent series of attacks in Europe."

Malkki said knives have become typical tools for terror attacks in Europe. She said knives are easy to use in Europe, where more complex attacks have become difficult due to increasing counterterrorism measures.

The Finnish police said on Saturday they were investigating the case as a terrorism-related one.

Under Finnish law, the definition of a terrorist attack requires that the motive must be either political or religious. Malkki believed the police had found indications of either.

POLARIZATION BECOMES CONCERN

Concerns about further polarization in Finnish society on the immigration issue dominated statements by political leaders, as the stabber was said to be an asylum seeker who entered Finland in 2016.

The police said he was "in the asylum process", but did not specify whether he had been given asylum or not.

Both Sipila and Interior Minister Paula Risikko refused at a press conference on Saturday to discuss the implications of the incident on the Finnish immigration policies. They noted the motives of the attack would only be known later and the possible impact on immigration policy could only be assessed thereafter.

However, heated debate on immigration seems unavoidable. An anti-immigration group called "Finland First" opened an information tent at the scene of the stabbing on the Market Square in Turku on Saturday.

On the same square, counter demonstrators against racism also showed up, chanting slogans such as "My Turku is international" and "No room for racism". The police decided to position the two sides further away to avoid possible clashes.

Ville Tavio, a local politician in Turku representing the populist Finns Party, said in a statement that "terrorists should be fought against with hard tools". The Finns Party recently elected immigration critical Jussi Halla-aho as its chairman. The party's presidential candidate Laura Huhtasaari has also voiced criticism against immigration beyond confirmed labor needs.

RISK LEVEL NOT RAISED

The Finnish Security police, Supo said the terrorism risk level would not be raised despite the deadly attack.

Supo's director Antti Pelttari said at a news conference on Saturday that the multiple stabbings in Turku remained within the previous Finnish analysis that "violence-inspired individuals" would be the main risk in Finnish society.

And Minister Risikko said the police are prepared to intervene in any revenge.

Meanwhile, both Sipila and Risikko underlined the need to revise the Finnish security legislation. Changes are underway but still require parliamentary approval.

Risikko noted that current laws allow surveillance of communications only when a threat is imminent or a possible crime has taken place, which limited the capability of the investigators to trace felons.

Sipila called for a nation wide moment of silence at 10 a.m. (07.00 GMT) Sunday morning. Finnish flags were at half mast all day Saturday upon recommendation of the interior ministry.

The prime minister said foreigners in Finland must not be labeled. He said in a release earlier that "hatred should not be encountered with hatred."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 06:06:19|Editor: yan

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DAMASCUS, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Syrian army and allied Hezbollah retook several areas from Islamic State (IS) militants in western Qalamoun on Saturday, a military source told Xinhua.

Just hours after launching their offensive against IS, the Syrian army and Hezbollah made notable gains in western Qalamoun near the Lebanese borders, capturing 87 sq km of the IS-controlled 150 sq km in the region.

A dozen of IS militants surrendered to the army and Hezbollah, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Dubbed "If You Return We Will Return," the operation, which aims to clear IS militants from the badlands of the western Qalamoun, came just a couple of weeks after they dislodged the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front from the same area and the adjacent Juroud Arsal barrens on the Lebanese side of the border.

In the last battle against Nusra, the Syrian army and Hezbollah were fighting on the Syrian side of the border, while other fighters of Hezbollah were fighting on the Lebanese side of it.

At the time, the Lebanese army wasn't engaged in the fight but took defensive positions in case of any attempt by the Nusra militants to carry out counter-attacks.

In this battle against the IS, Hezbollah and the Syrian army are fighting in Syria, while the Lebanese army is fighting IS in Lebanon.

Lebanese officials said there was no coordination between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah or the Syrian army.

The army in Lebanon will have to liberate around 120 sq km of land from IS, while the Syrian army and Hezbollah are fighting to defeat IS in 150 sq km of border terrain.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 06:16:24|Editor: yan

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BAGHDAD, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- An Iraqi ship sank on Saturday after a collision with a bigger foreign ship in territorial waters off the country's southern coast, leaving at least four sailors killed, the Iraqi Ministry of Transportation said.

The incident took place at about 8:30 p.m. local time (1730 GMT) in Khor Abdullah waterway, when the Iraqi al-Misbar ship collided with the giant foreign ship Royal Arsenal, the ministry said in a statement.

The boats of the Iraqi naval force carried out a search at the scene and found eight surviving sailors and four bodies, out of 21 crew members of the Iraqi ship, the statement said.

The naval boats are still searching for the rest of the crew members, it said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-08-20 06:41:29|Editor: yan

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LOS ANGELES, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of residents in western Montana were evacuated as a wildfire coded "Lolo Peak fire" threatened two main communities in the area, according to the InciWeb Montana Saturday noon.

According to a new situation map uploaded just after 12:00 am by InciWeb, an inter-agency all-risk incident online information management system provided by the United States Forest Service, the "Lolo Peak fire" scorched additional 9,000 acres (36.4 square kilometers)in one night to bring the total burned area to 27,900 acres (112.9 square kilometers).

The blaze, first reported on July 15, so far roared to only one mile within Lolo and Florence, two biggest community located at the junction spot of U.S. Highway 12 and 93 with population of more than 4000.

Pictures posted on facebook by local people showed that a plume from the fire like volcanic eruption turned the sky orange during daytime and a flame wall along a ridge can be seen at night from Missoula, a city 6 miles (11.2 kilometers) northeast from Lolo.

Greg Scheytt, a 74-year-old retired from retail management, who lives in the community of Lolo, said in a video clips post by the local Big Fall Tribune newspaper that residents living there were all very concerned.

"There is no control of the wildfire at all, so it is a very nerve racking time for me and probably for thousands of people that have been evacuated," he said, "a very dangerous time for all of us."

Th U.S. Highway 12 was closed Saturday morning in order to create a fast channel for more than 650 firefighters and their professional equipment at the scene, who will be reinforced by crews from as far as state of Alaska.

InciWEb also disclosed that 155 soldiers of the Montana National Guard had been deployed Saturday morning to help manage checkpoints and patrol evacuated areas to provide relief for overtaxed local law enforcement.

Some 18.8 million U.S. dollars have been spent on fighting the fire, local KPAX 8.com reported Saturday, but zero of the wildfire has been contained.

Moreover, due to strong winds that is expected to push the fire farther to the north and the east, the official were worried that more residents have to be evacuated if the flame jumps cross U.S. Highway 93.
The recent opinion piece from Arizona Game and Fish Commission (AZGFD) Chairman Jim Ammon, Progress Seen in Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Efforts, should be read with much skepticism, especially his assurances that the recently released Mexican wolf draft recovery plan is based on the best available science.

Twice in the past decade (2003 and 2010), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has convened official recovery teams to develop an up-to-date (both legally and scientifically) Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan. Science advisors for those recovery teams, composed almost entirely (17 out of 18) of scientists with either wolf biology or conservation expertise, concluded that recovery would require three interconnected populations of Mexican wolvesalso known as the lobo in the United States, each with at least 250 wolves.

The recently released Draft Mexican Wolf Recovery Plan calls for only half that total with only one population of about 320 wolves in the U.S. and an isolated population of 170 in Mexico.

As the USFWS admits, the two other U.S. recovery areas (southern Colorado/northern New Mexico, and the Grand Canyon ecoregion) deemed essential for Mexican wolf recovery were discarded for geopolitical reasons and not the best available science. So, the Service scrapped them due to politics.

Another departure from the previous science-based recommendations is the wishful emphasis on the wolf packs in Mexico. While the potential role of Mexico in lobo recovery may be useful, the three U.S. population areas, not those in Mexico, have consistently emerged as essential for Mexican wolf survival.

Nevertheless, in a November 2015 letter from the Governors of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah to the USFWS, the states asserted recovery of the Mexican wolf cannot and will not be achieved if the Service does not recognize that the majority of Mexican wolf recovery must occur in Mexico[Mexico] must be home to the lions share of on-the-ground Mexican wolf recovery. This ultimatum was based, again, on political considerations and not the science.

Arizona has a checkered past regarding wolf management. For example, when Arizona Game and Fish assumed leadership of the wolf reintroduction program from 2003 through 2009, the wild population dropped from 55 to 42. Only when the federal USFWS resumed control of the program in 2009, as required by the Endangered Species Act, did the wolf population rise to 113 by early 2017.

The draft plan would allow Mexican wolves to lose protection under the Endangered Species Act with fewer than half the number that scientists say are needed for recovery. Should that happen, the states would assume full management responsibility for the lobos survival. That prospect, based on the states record of opposing wolf recovery, including the reintroduction of wolves, is a recipe for extinction, not recovery.

Given the science supporting wolf recovery in three U.S. populations, not to mention the improper  if not illegal  political interference in what should be a scientific analysis of what is needed for the Mexican wolfs survival, a credible scientific recovery plan is needed, not this recovery sham.
PHOENIX -- Gov. Doug Ducey's assertions that he has no role in deciding the future of four Confederate monuments on state land appear not to be backed up by statute, according to two key state lawmakers.

House Speaker J.D. Mesnard said any decisions about removing those monuments and memorials likely have to come in the form of legislation that has to be signed by the governor to take effect. And Mesnard said it's appropriate to have a "thoughtful'' conversation about each of the monuments on state property when the Legislature reconvenes in January.

By contrast, Ducey this past week made the pronouncement he does not favor removal of any of the monuments.

"I don't think we should try to hide our history,'' the governor said, including one within view of his office window at the Capitol that was not even erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy until 1961, a century after the Civil War and nearly 50 years after Arizona became a state.

Governors in several other states already had moved to take down some of these statues even before the violence at the white supremacist demonstration in Virginia.

Ducey, however, is seeking to distance himself from the debate, saying if people have concerns they should approach the Legislative Governmental Mall Commission which has purview over the park across from the state Capitol where one of the monuments is located.

But Kevin DeMenna, who chairs that panel, said neither he nor his commission has any authority to actually require that a monument be removed. The decision, he said, ultimately has to come from the Legislature and the governor would have to sign any measure.

That's also the way it appears to Mesnard.

"The mall commission's more of a manager,'' he said.

Senate President Steve Yarbrough agreed.

"The only way a memorial gets put on the mall or gets removed from the mall is with a bill,'' he said.

Yarbrough said if someone introduces legislation in January to get rid of any or all of the monuments he will assign it to one or more committees for a hearing. And if it passes the Senate and House, that puts the question squarely in the governor's lap.

Ducey, however, wants no part of the controversy.

Gubernatorial press aide Daniel Scarpinato cited a law that says the commission can ask to "relocate'' any monument or memorial. And he contends that includes the ability to "relocate'' it right off state property.

Even assuming Ducey is correct about who controls the memorial on the mall, that still leaves three others dedicated to remembering the Confederacy that are on state property. But unlike the Capitol mall, they are under the purview of state agencies whose directors all serve at the pleasure of the governor.

But Scarpinato deflected questions about how his boss thinks the public could weigh in about having those monuments removed -- other than petitioning Ducey himself, the situation the governor is trying to avoid.

"I have no answer for you on that,'' he said.

Mesnard said any legislative decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis, as there are some clear differences not only between the monuments but the text on each.

For example, Mesnard said he is uncomfortable with the verbiage on a monument at a cemetery run by the Arizona Department of Veterans Services in Sierra Vista -- placed there in 2010 -- saying it is a memorial to "Arizona Confederate veterans who sacrificed all in the struggle for independence and the constitutional right of self government.''

"If you read the Articles of Secession, they sound very similar to the Declaration of Independence except for one monumental difference,'' he said. "And that is the right to own slaves.''

Mesnard said he is a supporter of states' rights. But he called it "horrifying'' that "the South hung their state sovereignty hats on slavery.''

"That's not what I mean by state sovereignty,'' he said.

He has not taken a position on a separate monument along a stretch of US 60 near Apache Junction on the right of way owned by the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Originally placed along a different state road in 1943 by the Daughters of the Confederacy, it marks the Jefferson Davis Highway which was supposed to become a coast-to-coast road honoring the president of the Confederate States of America.

Earlier this week it was vandalized with tar and feathers.

Then there's Picacho Peak State Park, maintained by the Parks Department, where the only Civil War battle in Arizona was fought.

Erected there is a sign about the battle which has a Confederate flag and refers to the "War Between the States.'' There also is a plaque "dedicated to those Confederate frontiersmen'' who occupied the Arizona territory the Confederacy had claimed as its own and fought off Union soldiers.

Mesnard said there are things to consider when tearing down monuments to soldiers.

"They were drafted,'' he said.

"And probably most of the soldiers didn't own slaves or probably couldn't afford to own slaves anyway,'' he said. "So, again, a monument now to that, is that so wrong?

But Mesnard said he's not blind to what the war was about.

"They were fighting about slavery, which is an abhorrent institution,'' he said.

Rep. Reginald Bolding, D-Laveen, says Ducey should take the lead in removing all of the monuments to the Confederacy and those who fought for it.

"These were people who were saying people who looked like me should not have equal rights, we should be slaves,'' Bolding said. And he said it is "appalling'' that African Americans have to have these on public property and, in some cases, maintained at public expense.

Megan Rose, spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration, said her agency is responsible for maintenance and cleaning of all the monuments across from the Capitol as well as tending the areas around them. And when someone put white paint on the Confederate monument there this past week, it was state employees who cleaned it off.

Scarpinato said the public sides with Ducey in wanting to keep the monuments in place. He cited a national Marist Poll done for NPR and PBS which said 62 percent of Americans think the monuments and statues to the Confederacy should stay, with just 27 percent saying they should be removed because some find them offensive.
Several Flagstaff schools will be giving students a chance to safely view the solar eclipse and at the same time honor the request of traditional Navajo students who do not wish to view the eclipse.

Most schools, such as DeMiguel and Marshall elementaries, Sinagua Middle, Summit High School and Basis Flagstaff, will have some classes going outside to view the eclipse with safety solar glasses. These students should have had permission slips signed by their parents.

Other schools such as Knoles and Cromer elementary schools and Flagstaff Arts & Leadership Academy are going a bit further. Most students at Knoles will stay indoors but the fourth-grade classes will be experimenting with pin-hole cameras and wearing solar glasses during the eclipse. At Cromer Elementary students will have glasses and be working with pin-hole cameras and a solar telescope.

Students at FALA will be outside with glasses and watching a live stream of a group of FALA students and FALA science teacher Richard Krueger, who traveled to Oregon to see the total eclipse.

At Leupp Public School, all students will be kept indoors during the eclipse, said Principal Ryan Chee. The school will also adjust window blinds and encourage students, staff and teachers to lower their voices. There will be no outdoor science classes and no running in physical education classes. Lunch will also be served after the eclipse has finished, a snack will be offered before the eclipse. This is to honor the traditional Navajo culture of not eating, drinking, being physically active or looking at the eclipse. The Navajo people believe viewing an eclipse can lead to eye problems and eating or drinking during an eclipse can lead to stomach problems.

Parents who have sent in written directions for their students will have their requests honored, Chee said.
This week, local officials marked the completion of a months-long renovation of the Historic Fort Tuthill Quad at Fort Tuthill County Park. The quad served as the summer training facility for the Arizona National Guard from 1929 to 1948 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The renovation focused on upgrading the infrastructure at the site, including constructing a major drainage system to reduce the risk of water damage to historic mess halls, upgrading on-site electric and installing a public announcement system.

The project had a budget of $4.7 million that was funded by the 2002 voter-approved Coconino Parks and Open Space sales tax. The tax raised $33 million to acquire open space, develop parks and improve existing parks before it sunsetted in 2014.

The quad features several interesting historic elements, including two sections of concrete at the entrance that are stamped with USA WPA, indicating they were from the Works Progress Administration era.

Two 1930s-era fence columns were salvaged from an Arizona Department of Transportation roadway construction project and are located between the two buildings housing the Fort Tuthill Military Museum.

The site for the quad was chosen by an Army board after it toured the state in 1926 looking for a National Guard summer encampment. Flagstaffs climate played a role in the boards decision, as well as the communitys enthusiasm and cooperation on the camp, according to the book Mountain Town by Platt Cline.

The facility is named after Lieutenant General Alexander M. Tuthill, a physician and surgeon who served as the Adjutant General of Arizona from 1936 until 1952 and was a member of the 1910 Arizona Constitutional Convention that prepared Arizona for statehood, according to the National Register of Historic Places.
Young: Mouttets selection not flawed

Young also said Government retained its confidence in the board of the Port Authority at this time.

He told reporters it was not uncommon for several entities to be simultaneously conducting investigations into the same issue. Young cited a commission of enquiry (COE), police investigation and Central Bank investigations into the Clico/ CL Financial fiasco as an example. He said contrary to some media reports, the Port Authority is not conducting any probe into the procurement of the Ocean Flower II and the Cabo Star. He said a statement issued by the Port Authority was in reference to Mouttets appointment.

Young said Mouttet is being provided with resources from his ministry to undertake a fact finding assignment and submit a report to Rowley in 30 days. He reiterated that if the findings of Mouttets report warrant either civil or criminal action to be taken, the Government will act accordingly. Reminding reporters that the Integrity Commission is free to conduct its own probe into this matter, Young said, There is no crossing of the lines. He also said Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, as a former member of the Basdeo Panday Cabinet, is well aware that Mouttets appointment is not unique. Young said Persad-Bissessar was involved in that cabinets decisions to appoint former judge Jim Davis to look into the Police Service using Cherokee Jeeps
Lawyers paid to talk rubbish

Busby submitted video footage recorded by Crime Scene Investigator (CSI) WPC Aleong yesterday as evidence before the court.

However, he was met with fierce opposition from Merritt who argued that under section 14B of the Evidence Act, the reliability of the laptop on which the video footage was viewed was not provided by the prosecution and hence any footage viewed from the DVD should not be admissible as evidence.

Your Worship, this section is what I am talking about. I am saying that the prosecution must first satisfy the criteria on the reliability of the device on which the recording or the footage is being run. It is only then can you allow the admissibility of the footage as evidence, that is what the section clearly states. Busby responded by accusing the defence of stalling the progress of yesterdays proceedings and said that while no certificate on the reliability of the device had been provided, there were no grounds for the dismissal of the footage as evidence.

He (Merritt) wants to assert that the facts presented are not admissible.

He wants to say that this (footage) is not admissible because there are reasonable grounds for its dismissal. I have led evidence that there are no reasonable grounds as what the footage depicts is in fact accurate. The bottom line Your Worship is that lawyers are sometimes paid to talk rubbish. This prompted a brief outburst from both prisoners and occupants from the public gallery as Senior Magistrate Indrani Cedeno was forced to regain control of the courtroom.

You can see counsels, we are both going around in circles with this exchange so if there is a point to be made it should be made now. Footage of the video recorded was subsequently shown and a thorough cross-examination performed on WPC Aleong on records made during her investigation.

Earlier in yesterdays inquiry, defence attorney Criston J Williams urged the court to act efficiently in the processing of evidence and witness statements.

He emphasised this point by telling the court that its duty was to ensure that time and resources were managed efficiently to avoid dragging the matter on any longer than necessary.

The matter has been adjourned to August 25.

Former Lifesport coordinator Rajaee Ali and brothers, Ishmael and Hamid Ali, Devaughn Cummings, Ricardo Stewart, Earl Richards, Stephan Cummings, Kevin Parkinson, Leston Gonzales, Roger Boucher and Gareth Wiseman were implicated in the murder of Seetahal that took place while she was driving home from a casino on May 4, 2014.
Prosecutor laments Piarco and Seetahal inquiry clash

Peterson made the request yesterday in the Port of Spain Magistrates 4C Court during his closing remarks in which he raised the issue of clashes in the times of the Piarco airport and the Dana Seetahal murder inquiries. He serves as lead prosecutor in both matters.

Peterson explained security concerns of police officers and court officials pertaining to the transportation of Rajaee Ali and ten other accused, have led to challenges in transportation for him as well as other members of the prosecution.

However, one of the accused, Steve Ferguson expressed his objection to the proposed shift, saying any deviation from the schedule would be an inconvenience to him.

Your Worship, I have scheduled my life over the past two years to be here every Friday for the inquiry so it would be a great inconvenience to me if there was any kind of shift from Friday. Defence attorney Christophe Rodriguez echoed Fergusons sentiments and argued that the shift would be counter-productive to the continuation of the proceedings, citing the time his clients have spent before the courts for this matter.

This matter predates the Dana Seetahal inquiry your worship so it should be given some priority given the length of time it has been going on for. However Peterson was firm in his conviction and said that convenience was not the only factor to consider for the shift, as security concerns was also a top priority in the matter.

The point raised by the defence is not even the point your worship. Its also a matter of security as a portion of St Vincent street is cordoned off every Friday which causes even more difficulty in reaching the courts on time. Espinet adjourned the matter to September 8, which is a Thursday.

She said that further discussion on the feasibility of a shift would take place at that time.

During yesterdays hearing, accused Steve Ferguson and Ishwar Galbaransingh refused to sign caution documents. Galbaransingh explained that he would only be willing to sign the documents if he were able to make his statements before hand.

Your Worship, my position is that I want my statement to be given or I wont be signing the document.
Four Venezuelans detained

The Venezuelans remained in custody yesterday as police tried to get an interpreter to allow for formal charges to be laid.

According to reports, at about 3.20 pm on Thursday, officers of the Coast Guard were on patrol along the North Coast when they saw a Venezuelan Vessel named El Continent 2.4 nautical miles off Point Galeota. Officers called on the captain to take the vessel to shore so that it could be examined.

While on shore, officers of the Customs and Excise and Police searched the vessel thoroughly but nothing illegal was found.

It was then discovered the vessel had developed a leak and two of the six occupants were allowed to remain in the vessel under guard while the four others were taken away and placed in a cell at the Mayaro Police Station.

They are expected to be charged with illegally fishing in the territorial waters of Trinidad and Tobago.

Inspector Jurai of the Mayaro police is continuing enquiries.
Top COP may get 11th extension

On May 1, the commissioner was granted his tenth extension by the Police Service Commission (PSC) and that six-month extension will end on October 31.

Sources revealed that although a firm had been appointed to oversee the selection of a new Commissioner of Police, the process, which was expected to take at least four months, might not be completed by that time, therefore, paving a way for the commissioner to receive his 11th extension.

Yesterday, chairman of the PSC Dr Maria Therese Gomes could not say if an 11th extension would be granted.

She added that the firm overseeing the recruitment for new CoP is working closely with the PSC and that the vacancy should be advertised shortly.

Last Friday, it was announced that auditing firm KPMG was awarded the contract to assist the PSC in the recruitment and selection of a new police commissioner and deputies.

The press release noted that the PSC took the decision on July 20 as the body met to discuss the implementation of the project.

The recruitment phase of the project is expected to take four months to complete with the firm providing support to the commission in designing and managing the advertising, application and assessment processes so as to ensure that the TT Police Service has the leadership it requires to meet the needs of the organisation and to satisfy the requirements of safety and security for all of TT now and into the future, the release said.

The appointment comes two months after Acting Police Commissioner Stephen Williams was given a tenth six-month extension in his post, which he acquired after the resignation of Canadian Dwayne Gibbs in 2013.

In 2015, the Government introduced the Police (Selection Process) Order of 2015 in an effort to assist the PSC in hiring another firm to address the issue of the long-standing vacancies.

The order contained a provision requiring the Minister of National Security to initiate the recruitment procedure and another compelling the PSC to utilise State-owned procurement company, Nipdec, to select a local recruitment agency that would then be contracted to assist in the selection process.

However, the order was challenged by the Opposition, who claimed that it was unconstitutional as it infringed on the powers of the PSC, which has the exclusive remit of recruiting prospective candidates for the positions.

Newsday understands that the Acting CoP is expected to apply for the post of commissioner when it is advertised.

Former minister of National Security Gary Griffith has already stated publicly that he may consider applying for the post.
Unions deliver letter to Rowley

The three labour federations latest call to the PM came in the form of a letter which was hand delivered to the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) in St Clair yesterday.

In the letter, the three federations described the situation in the country today as a toxic societal cocktail, especially with regards to the retrenchment of workers.

They lamented being unable to meet with Rowley, despite numerous attempts to do so. Rowley has urged the labour movement to return to the National Tripartite Advisory Council (NTAC) which was launched last year. Speaking outside the OPM after delivering the letter, Communication Workers Union (CWU) head Joseph Remy said, The Prime Minister must be the one to repair the damage. Remy reiterated the CWUs concerns about who will benefit from the closure of the Tourism Development Corporation (TDC). He claimed the dismantling of the TDC, is not because of any incompetence in the tourism sector. Remy alleged the TDCs closure is connected to the proposed Sandals resort in Tobago and,who is going to benefit from that. He also reiterated the unions questions about TSTTs acquisition of Massy Communications Ltd. Remy claimed this was the,prelude for the Massy Group to turn around and take the cake in the telecommunications sector. He added, We are going to fight that right down the road because that is a dangerous thing. JTUM leader Ancel Roget slammed Governments handling of the Tobago seabridge fiasco. Roget said while different entities and individuals are contemplating what actions to take, Tobagonians in particular, are suffering in silence.
Hazel Manning appeals for Patricks artefacts

I have seen on Facebook lovely letters from him, she said. On the UTT librarys behalf, I am asking you to share them and to put them into the permanent collection. Manning spoke with the media on Thursday at the viewing of the collection, The Life and Times of Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning mounted by the University of Trinidad and Tobago at the Adult Library of the National Library in Port of Spain.

Manning, her son David, other relatives and friends viewed the collection of some 3,000 exhibits on the occasion of the late prime ministers 71st birth anniversary.

The pieces date back to 1971 when Manning first entered Parliament as MP for San Fernando East.

Among the exhibits was a video documentary of Mannings life. It was viewed against the background music of Frank Sinatras My Way, a favourite of Patrick Manning.

Asked how she felt viewing the exhibits on the occasion of his birthday, Mrs Manning said, I feel sad, very sad. Lots of memories. Earlier she was explaining stories behind the pictures. A lot of the stories are not known.

We will have to sit with them and go through as much as we know. On the exhibits in the collection, she said, The exhibition gives the essence of Patrick, who he was, how hard he worked. Asked what stood out, she said, the document, Vision 20/20, It was his dream and his vision that we could do much more because we have the resources. We have the talent. She said he believed citizens could do so much more. He believed that the natural resources would be depleted at some point in time and that human resources would have to take over for the sustainable development of the country.

Based on that he was very much active in getting Vision 20/20 to do that. Meanwhile, she said, the commemorative committee established to honour her husbands memory and which she heads, is putting together a programme that includes the publication of a book about his legacy and good governance.

The book will look at the system of good and sustainable governance, integrity, and the potential which could be realised.

So that at the end of the day, we could do very, very well and be an example to the world, as small as we are.

That was his dream.

That was his thinking, she said.

The committee also held a church service to mark Patrick Mannings death anniversary. It is working on a lecture series.

Asked how one could pay homage to Manning in the absence of a site to him, Mrs Manning said, Just go to church.

Go to church and say a prayer for him. Of the exhibition, the Mannings son David said, I am forced to compare Patrick Manning, the man, to the vision he had for his country. The country needs to remember what he did, who he was, and the plans he had for the country. UTT chief librarian Martha Preddie said UTT was proud to be selected to house the collection.

When Manning demitted office, she said, he handed over his collection which included photographs, plaques, some personal artefacts and books that showed not only his political work and international visits but the personal side to him.

The collection is to be housed at the UTT Signature Campus at Tamana which is nearing completion. Plans are also in train to have a roving exhibition periodically before it becomes a standing collection.
Dillon welcomes new Coast Guard vessel

Dillon expressed this view at a recent ceremony at the Foreign and Caricom Affairs Ministrys headquarters at Tower C of the Port-of-Spain International Waterfront Centre, for the signing of a framework agreement between TT and China. The agreement concerned the provision of a concessional loan agreement for the acquisition of the TTS Nelson II.

Dillon said the vessels addition to the Coast Guards fleet was important, given the increased focus on the protection of this countrys maritime borders. Foreign and Caricom Affairs Minister Dennis Moses and Chinese Ambassador to TT, Song Yumin, concurred that the agreement was a milestone in the long-standing relationship between TT and China. Moses and Yumin expressed their commitment to advancing cooperation in security and other areas for the mutual benefit of both countries.
Beacon Unitarian Universalist Congregation: 510 N. Leroux St. Jack Doggett and Nancy Paxton will present Beacon's annual summer celebration of poetry. This year, we will offer some thoughts and contemplative poems that explore the mysteries of mortality, spirituality and transcendence.

Calvary Bible Church: 6555 Townsend-Winona Road. Bible teaching by Duane Gagnon from Matthew 11:28-30. Adult Bible study followed by worship service. Evening service. AWANA begins Aug. 28. All interested please attend Aug. 27 leader's meeting for more information, 4:30 p.m. at the church. Wednesday night prayer and Bible study is studying Job. calvarybiblechurchflagstaff.com.

Center for Spiritual Living: Ponderosa High School, 2384 N. Steves Blvd. Our guest speaker at Sunday service will be Rev. Marilyn Chilleen. Prior to our service there will be a meditation time led by Hugh Clark. 522-9103.

Christ's Church of Flagstaff: 3475 E. Soliere Ave. This weekend we tackle "Life's Toughest Questions." ccof.church/.

Christian Science Society of Flagstaff: 619 W. Birch Ave. Sunday worship services and Sunday School (for children and young people up to the age of 20). The subject of this week's sermon is "Mind" from Philippians 2:5. Wednesday testimony meetings. Our Christian Science Reading Room, a quiet place for prayer and study, is open from 4-5:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and 10 a.m.-noon on Saturdays or by appointment. 556-0510.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon): Sunday services held at four Flagstaff locations: 4165 S. Lake Mary Road, 625 E. Cherry Ave., 2401 E. Linda Vista Dr. and, for young single adults, 239 E. Saunders Dr. Meetings are also held in Williams at 1111 Stockmens Road and at the Shrine of the Ages on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Check azdailysun.com or "Locations and Schedules" at LDS.org for meeting times by ward/branch. Sunday services consist of Sacrament Meeting, Sunday School and special instruction for various age and interest groups (Priesthood Meeting for men, Relief Society for women, Young Men/Young Women for youth and Primary for children).

Church of the Resurrection: 740 W. University Heights Drive South. "A Joyful Imprisonment" is the title of Pastor Bob Norton's sermon this week based on Phlippians 1:12-30. This is the third in the series "Jesus our Joy." Our services will close with prayer for healing and wholeness. Parents can sign children up for Tuesday afternoon Pioneer Club with biblical teaching, songs, games and snacks. Bring food for the People's Pantry. Volunteers are also needed to sign up now to serve food at the Flagstaff Family Food Center this Tuesday. 699-2715. cor-pca.org.

Eckankar: Friends (Quaker) Hall, 402 S. Beaver St. Join us Tuesday, 6-6:30 p.m., in singing Hu, a love song to god. 877-300-4949. eck-arizona.org/.

Episcopal Church of the Epiphany: 423 N. Beaver St. Priest Marianna Gronek celebrates and Deacon Scott Deasy preaches at all services this weekend. Plan to take a few extra minutes to get to church this weekend: Beaver Street is now torn up north of Birch. You have to go around and enter from Humphreys. There is limited parking on Elm Street - please leave this for handicapped folks who are coming to worship with us. This is Youth Sunday. We will worship at the 8 a.m. service, and then carpool down to Wet 'n' Wild in Phoenix for an afternoon of fun. 774-2911. epiphanyaz.org.

Faith Fellowship: Meeting in Knoles Elementary, 4055 E. Butler Ave. Charismatic, non-denominational. Kids church available for ages 1-12. This Sunday we will be serving communion and be speaking on "Pillars of Our Faith." In our evening service, we are speaking on "The Power of God." faithfellowshipflagstaff.com.

First Congregational Church of Flagstaff, United Church of Christ: 740 N. Turquoise Dr. Rev. Donna Cavedon will preach on "Miss Manners" based on Luke 14: 1, 7-14, and Hebrews 13: 1-8, 15-16. Aug. 23 (Wednesday), 7 p.m., spiritual meditation discussion and exercise; Aug. 24 (Thursday), church fellowship breakfast at Coco's Restaurant at 8 a.m. 774-0890. fccflagstaff.org.

Flagstaff Christian Fellowship: 123 S. Beaver St. Pastor Steve Cole's message for Sunday will be "How to Spend the Lord's Day" from various Scriptures followed by communion. Nursery is available for both services. Adult class concludes the series on Proverbs. Church barbecue at 12:30 p.m., hosted by the College Group; 2 p.m. baptism class. Sunday evening Tim and Flower Darby will share about Operation Mobilization. Wednesday, 7:30-8 p.m., "The Message of the Reformation" Reformation Profiles, week four of seven, Sola Fide / Through Faith Alone. Refreshments available. Thursdays at 6:30 p.m., Missions Focus Book Club "Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret" by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor (meet at Wildflower). 774-3603. fcfonline.org.

Flagstaff Federated Community Church: 400 W. Aspen Ave. This Sunday we will continue our worship series called, "Why Are We Here?" This Sunday's sermon, titled "A Beautiful Puzzle," is inspired by Genesis 45:1-15. Our Christian Living Class will discuss Progressive Christian faith by looking at our vision statement. Our Wired Word Class will continue to look at current events through the lens of faith. Second Breakfast for senior high school students will begin this Sunday at 9:30 a.m. Students will get food and explore scripture with Becky Weber. 774-7383. flagstafffederatedchurch.org.

Flagstaff Unity Church: 417 W. Santa Fe Ave. (Tranzend Studio). Rev. Hugh Clark will speak on the topic of "Oneness." Youth will learn about how we pray for the greater good. Coffee hour after the service. unityofflagstaff.org.

Greenlaw Baptist Church: 3400 E. Lockett Road. Sunday School classes for all ages. Pastor Barry Hall will bring the message "The Punch Line of the Lord's Prayer" from Matthew 6:9-13. Thursday worship service followed by dinner and breakout groups, including our Celebrate Recovery program. If you have an addiction, we can help you in this program. This is a non-judgmental, caring approach to your problem. 526-4939.

Harvest Bible Chapel Flagstaff: 2801 N. Izabel St. Pastor Joel Anderson will teach on Matthew 6:11-12. Children's ministry and contemporary worship. Sunday from 9-10:30 a.m., we will have a truck at Coconino High School to collect food for the People's Pantry. Financial Peace University classes start Sept. 11 from 6-7:30. This is open to the public. Register at harvestflagstaff.org. 773-1615. harvestflagstaff.org.

Holy Cross Orthodox Church: 6134 Black Bill Road. '9th Hour Morning prayer' with Father Basil. Divine Liturgy with Father Basil. (480) 991-3009. holycrossflagstaff.org/.

Living Christ Lutheran Church: 6401 N. US Highway 89. We gather weekly on Sundays to worship through music, teaching, prayer and sacraments. Fellowship time after service. Pastor Kurt Fangmeier will be leading worship. 526-8595. livingchristflagstaff.org.

Peace Lutheran Church: 3430 N. Fourth St. Pastor Brian Pape will be engaging the Word this Sunday with various verses from Romans chapter 11. Holy Communion will be celebrated at both services this week. Sunday school with youth and adult Bible classes will be held after fellowship time. 526-9578. peacelutheranflagstaff.org.

Refuge: A Flagstaff Community Church: 4000 Cummings St. Non-denominational. Meet weekly to enjoy God's word, fellowship and worship. Sunday school available for children. 607-5728. facebook.com/refugeinflagstaff/.

Religious Society of Friends (Quaker): Flagstaff Friends Meeting House, 402 S. Beaver St. At our unprogrammed Quaker Meeting we meet in silence of expectant listening, or, as more often happens, someone will feel moved to speak, to share something which may be of help or guidance to others. 779-3517. flagstaffquakers.org/.

San Francisco de Asis: 1600 E. Route 66. Fr. Dan and Fr. Clement will preach the Gospel of Matthew 15:21-28. 779-1341. sfdaparish.org.

Southwest Navajo Brush Arbor Camp Meeting: Grand Falls annual camp meeting is set for Aug. 13-26 at the late Mary McCabe's residence. Turn west between milepost 1 and 2 on Navajo Route 2. Go on a dirt road at an old red brick abandoned house. Follow signs and the camp is on the west side of the road. Sunday's church service will be back at Leupp Baptist Church west of Leupp on Navajo Route 15. Paster Jimmie McCabe. 853-1716.

Trinity Heights United Methodist Church: 3600 N. Fourth St. We are in week three of a four-part series "Four Themes of the Bible: Gods Love" and scripture is taken from 1 John 4:7-12. Children's Sunday School is offered for kids through 5th grade and nursery care is available at both services. We also have an Adult Sunday School class. 526-1397. thumc.com.

Western Navajo Bible Fellowship: September camp meetings: Sept. 1-2, Lawrence K. Gordy Memorial Camp Meeting, Cameron; 1-2, Porcupine Mesa camp meeting, Jimmie Mexicano's residence, Coppermine; 8-9, Gray Mountain Bible Church camp meeting; 15-16, Cameron all-family camp meeting, Rose Gordy's residence. Call for times or speakers. 209-3800.
UNC supports court solution in Ayers Caesar matter

Lee recalled Persad-Bissessars arguments were based on the grounds that any legislative intervention could be struck down by the courts. He claimed the announcement of this solution by Acting Attorney General Stuart Young at Thursdays post-Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Anns showed Young understood what Persad-Bissessar was saying.

He boasted this showed Persad- Bissessar had the experience, intellect, vision and political will to address the issues facing the country.

On Thursday, Young said the Opposition misunderstood that the legislative solution being proposed to resolve the 53 cases came from legal stakeholders such as the Director of Public Prosecutions and not from the Government. Young also said the Opposition knew that the tribunal referred to under Section 137 of the Constitution would not resolve this matter either. He said, We will basically lay the facts out as we know it, via affidavit, to the High Court and we will set out what are the various provisions of the existing law that apply and we will then invite the High Court to make a decision and to come to a conclusion as to how these 53 cases should be dealt with going forward.
Candidates split on poll delay

Former COP chairman Nicole Dyer-Griffith bemoaned the postponement, saying that COP members were getting frustrated by the repeated delay in them being able to exercise their vote but former deputy leader Sharon Gopaul-McNicols welcomed it.

Dyer-Griffith told Newsday, There was a draft order by the justice of the High Court.

He agreed to a consent order that was submitted by Jamieson Bahadur and Kirt Francis that the election would be postponed and that the National Executive must convene on or before September 4 to consider the election date and so on. So the elections have been postponed for a second time.

We have been calling members of all constituencies and they have been saying to us that if this election is postponed again, it shows that you all are not serious and you need to get your house in order.

And so said, so done.

It was so important to let the election go on no matter what the outcome would have been. At least you would have been afforded the opportunity to at least have an administrative position filled because right now there is no leader, no deputy leader and no general secretary.

Essentially, once you look at the health of the organisation, postponement of the election is a serious blow. Dyer-Griffith said she remained very satisfied with the number of members expressing support for her campaign.

We were calling members. The numbers on the board were so reflective of what was going to take place on Sunday, she said.

We conducted these polls in a very scientific manner and we were far, far ahead.

However, you know, it is what it is. Well see. I will continue with the momentum, she added.

Dyer-Griffith said the court-ordered delay was a minor setback.

Gopaul-McNicols told Newsday, I think it was a good decision to postpone the election because there were some clear irregularities about the candidacy of one person. She also said an election was untenable in light of the recent mass resignation of COP officials.

I think people realised things were unravelling and they decided to go the route of coming out of the party instead of standing and taking responsibility for the claims being made. Newsday was unable to contact the third leadership contender, COP former chairman Carolyn Seepersad- Bachan.
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Welcome back to the week in review, where we take a look at all the top stories making headlines on the Next Generation Communications community this week.

The week started off with the news that Qualcomm (News - Alert) Technologies Inc. has joined forces with the Industrial Technology Research Institute to accelerate 5G NR small cell product commercialization by Taiwanese OEMs and ODMs. This new collaboration will provide ITRI early access to Qualcomm Technologies key 5G small cell technology, including the creation of industry-grade quality assurance capability for communication protocol product and a live network test bed to enable product testing and performance verification under real world environment prior to product launch field trials, explained Dr. Tzi-Cker Chiueh, general director of information and communication labs at ITRI. Continue reading HERE.





Next up came the news that SK Telecom is developing and testing a 5G repeater. As TMCs (News - Alert) Paula Bernier writes, The South Korean service provider built the amplification solution to allow for longer reach. Reach is especially challenging for mobile networks relying on high frequency spectrum. And such spectrum is being used for 5G networks. Everything you need to know is HERE.

Bernier also discussed Huaweis (News - Alert) introduction of its X-Haul 5G bearer solution. The company will be demonstrating it at the Ultra-Broadband Forum in Hangzhou, China, on Oct. 18 and 19. You can find all the details pertaining to this solution HERE.

Finally, the week rounded out with the news that more and more senators are hopping on the 5G bandwagon. According to the New Hampshire Business Review, Senator Maggie Hassan has officially boarded the 5G bandwagon. Recently, the senator joined Senators Roger Wicker from Mississippi and Brian Schatz of Hawaii in introducing a bipartisan resolution thats aim is to support deploying 5G mobile broadband technology across the U.S., I wrote earlier in the week. You can find everything you need to know HERE.

Theres plenty more to read about over on the Next Generation Communications community. Be sure to check out the other articles, and come back next week to read all the latest news.
Never send a cop to do a man's job
Following a short delay,will make a welcome return to Nickelodeon Central and Eastern Europe's (CEE) schedules on Monday 2nd April 2018 - kicking off with brand-new episodes, airing weekdays at 18:35 CET!2018-04-02 - 18:35 - 2x06 - Patching Things Up / Cheater by the Dozen (A probatetel / Tizenketto egy tucat)2018-04-03 - 18:35 - 2x07 - Lock 'N Loud / The Whole Picture2018-04-04 - 18:35 - 2x08 - Frog Wild / No Such Luck2018-04-05 - 18:35 - 2x09b-2x10a - Party Down / Fed Up2018-04-06 - 18:35 - 2x10b-2x11a - Shell Shock / Pets Peeved2018-04-09 - 18:35 - 2x11b-2x12a - Pulp Friction / Potty Mouth2018-04-10 - 18:35 - 2x14 - Room with a Feud / Out of the Picture2018-04-11 - 18:35 - 1x25 - The Price of Admission/One Flu Over the Loud House (A szofogadatlansag ara / Jarvany Larmaseknal)The Hungarian children's television news blog Gyerek-Vilag is reporting the exciting news that Nickelodeon Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has revealed thatwill make a welcome return to the channels' schedules from November 2017, following the channel having to remove the series from its line-up due to the controversy surrounding the show in Africa earlier this year.Back in June, the Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) banned several children's television shows, including Nickelodeon'sand, as the organisation, and sadly I'm not making this up, ridiculously ruled that the shows "promote homosexuality". The ruling forced Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN) Africa to suspend broadcasts of all three shows from Nickelodeon and Nicktoons' schedules. Although Nickelodeon Central and Eastern Europe is primary broadcast in Europe's Central and Eastern countries, a feed of Nickelodeon Central and Eastern Europe was also broadcast in a handful of African countries, making Nick CEE also having to suspendfrom its schedules until a solution was worked out.Despitebeing taken off-air on Nickelodeon, the series still aired in Central and Eastern Europe on RTL. However, Nickelodeon will still remain the home of the latest episodes ofwhen the show returns later this year.It's currently unknown whetherwill also return to Nickelodeon Africa and Nicktoons Africa.Nickelodeon Central and Eastern Europe comprises Nickelodeon Malta, Nickelodeon Romania, Nickelodeon Hungary, Nickelodeon Czech Republic, Nickelodeon Croatia, Nickelodeon Ukraine, Nickelodeon Slovenia, Nickelodeon Serbia, and Nickelodeon Bulgaria.
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
From their rear base in Tindouf in South-Western Algeria, the Polisario front is watching with dismay the development momentum in the Moroccan southern provinces.

The opening of the first restaurant of the US fast-food giant, McDonals, in the largest city in the Southern Provinces, Laayoune, is yet another blow to the Algerian-funded separatist militias in their quest to keep foreign investments away from the region.

The flow of foreign investments to the Moroccan Sahara erodes the Polisarios allegations about the region and shows the credibility of Moroccos development efforts.

The Polisario fears that the increasing foreign investments in the region will eventually lead to an increasing international support for Moroccos territorial integrity and sovereignty over the Sahara, hence its fury at the opening of McDonalds.

On August 9, McDonals opened its first restaurant in Laayoune, on a surface area of 1,137 square meters.

The restaurant lies at the heart of the city adjacent to the Dcheira Battle square and employs 200 people in direct and indirect jobs.

The project is the fruit of the investment forum held in Laayoune in 2015.

This investment is reflective of the environment of peace and stability in the southern provinces conducive for the attraction of investments by multinationals.

Since it retrieved the Sahara from Spain in 1975, Morocco has been leading tireless efforts to upgrade the cities of the region, which now boasts development index higher than the national average.

At the international level, Morocco has also led a diplomatic and political battle after the 1991 ceasefire to defend its national sovereignty and the centuries-old territorial integrity of the country, of which the Sahara is an inseparable component.
That row of bollards kept this incident from being much worse. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Ever since cars first rolled onto city streets more than a century ago, pedestrians have lived with the threat of murder by motor vehicle. (The very first traffic death in America was in Manhattan.) Drivers slam their cars into crowds of people because they are drunk, angry, panicked, distracted, or fanatical. Whatever the reason, the result is always the same: streets strewn with mangled bodies. Its easy to shrug off those deaths as a fact of modern life, but the truth is that we have a simple tool to prevent many of them  one that cities dont use nearly enough. Bollards, knee-high columns of steel so slender that foot traffic flows freely among them, and so inconspicuous that people forget they are there, can be fiercely effective both at stopping vehicular attacks and deterring them in the first place.

When Richard Rojas barreled down a two-block stretch of sidewalk in Times Square last May, killing Alyssa Elsman, his Honda finally came to rest on a set of steel bollards that had only recently been installed to protect a pedestrian plaza. Had planners drawn the perimeter more widely, or broken his trajectory with an obstacle placed strategically mid-block, they would have drastically reduced the mayhem.

The driver who attacked Barcelona yesterday, killing 14 and maiming dozens, drove unimpeded along a quarter-mile of Las Ramblas wide, leafy median. There are a million ways of preventing that, says Rob Reiter, a pedestrian-safety consultant. If you put in a 20-foot-wide fountain that people could sit on, plus four or five bollards, and make them retractable so that emergency vehicles could get through, that would have taken away his ability to kill a lot of people. One of Reiters clients, Calpipe Security Bollards, installed the stanchions in Times Square.

The vulnerability of pedestrians is a morbid downside of a great improvement in city life. As more and more cities (including Barcelona) ban cars from central areas, planners have to confront the fact that crowds of pedestrians are natural targets, and the more people congregate there, the higher the number of potential casualties. Bollards make it easy to enshrine those urban transformations and at the same time protect pedestrians who are reclaiming turf from cars. James Alex Fields, the white supremacist who mowed down protestors in Charlottesville last weekend and killed Heather Heyer, used one of the streets that cross the pedestrian Downtown Mall. A county employee reportedly warned the city council in April that the setup made the Mall vulnerable to a terrorist attack; he was politely rebuffed.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has made reducing pedestrian casualties a priority, and council member Ydanis Rodriguez has called for better sidewalk protections. Many will see that as just one more element of an already invasive and expensive security apparatus. The streets around Trump Tower have become an oppressive no-mans land, excluding pedestrians as well as vehicles from a chunk of midtown Manhattan during the presidents sojourn. But unlike concrete barriers, fences, and temporary roadblocks, bollards can feel like ordinary pieces of street furniture, closer to lampposts or traffic signs than fortifications. They are not cheap  Reiter estimates that a single $2,500 piece can cost as much as $5,000 by the time its installed on a New York street  but they need not be ubiquitous to work. Instead of lining curbs with armies of stanchions, placing a few at busy intersections and a couple at mid-block can help deter deliberate attacks and mitigate the carnage from accidents. And while elaborate security cordons around specific buildings simply shifts the danger a few dozen feet, bollards can protect large areas that are vulnerable precisely because they attract the daily life of a city as well as those with grisly intent.
Carl Icahn. Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for New York Times

In a story that does not deserve to be overshadowed by Steve Bannons departure from the White House, it became clear today that multibillionaire corporate-raider legend Carl Icahn was no longer an adviser to his old friend Donald Trump on regulatory matters. But its an open question as to whether he was pushed out of the shadowy gig or chose to leave it.

During the 2016 campaign and immediately after, Trump often touted Icahns willingness to advise him on economic policy as a feather in his cap. It was no surprise when it was announced that he would serve as a special adviser to the president for regulatory affairs in December 2016. He has no clear job description and drew no salary. But after a while, it became apparent that he had a particular interest in the alleged regulatory burden placed on refineries like his own CVR Energy by rules involving ethanol production. So he became a magnet for concerns about conflicts of interest in the Trump administration, where he had a lot of influence despite his periodic claims he was just a private citizen who was advising the president in a non-self-interested fashion.

Today, Icahn informed the world via a released letter to the president that he was stepping down from his special adviser position. This was supposedly not, like the resignations this week by other corporate figures from advisory positions, a protest against the presidents words on Charlottesville or anything else:

I chose to end this arrangement (with your blessing) because I did not want partisan bickering about my role to in any way cloud your administration, Icahn wrote in a letter to Trump released on his website.

But heres the thing: As Patrick Radden Keefe disclosed in a vast article on the Icahn-Trump relationship published today by The New Yorker after the Icahn news broke, the White House had already fired the mogul by August 14, or perhaps was denying he ever had a position:

On August 14th, I asked the White House to confirm that Icahn was still a special adviser to the President. The spokeswoman e-mailed me back: Icahn is NOT a special adviser to the president for regulatory reform.  This was certainly news. In my conversations with Icahn and his lawyer, I had not developed any impression that his status had changed. Was the Administration cutting him loose?

I wrote back to the spokeswoman, asking when Icahn had been let go. She replied, There was no effective end date, because there was never a formal appointment or title after January 20.

There appear to have been multiple reasons for the rift. Icahn took a position on a rule governing ethanol production that was opposed by much of the rest of the industry, which happens to wield influence in key presidential-election state Iowa. And Keefe thinks Icahn never quite adjusted to the radical change in power dynamics he suffered when Trump was elected president.

Whatever the truth, its quite possible that theres trouble for Icahn down the road stemming from his vague but powerful role in the Trump administration and Trumps desire to keep a safe distance from the fallout.
Counterprotesters, decrying hate and white supremacy with signs and chants, showed up in massive numbers on Saturday. Photo: Michael Dwyer/AP

As many as 40,000 counterprotesters massed and marched against a right-wing free speech rally in Boston one week after a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville led to violence that killed one counterprotester and injured dozens more. In Boston on Saturday, counterprotesters flooded the city to march for unity as well as overwhelmingly oppose what animated the rally in Virginia, especially since some of that events organizers were supposed to attend the Boston rally. In the end, counterprotesters outnumbered rallygoers by as many as 800 to one, and as a result, the Boston rally seemed to fall apart soon after it was supposed to begin.

Unlike in Charlottesville, there was very little violence outside of some isolated skirmishes and a few confrontations between a small number of counterprotesters and police. No one was seriously injured, no property was damaged, and as of early Saturday evening, only 27 people had been arrested, mostly for disorderly conduct. Boston police commissioner William B. Evans said in a late-afternoon press conference virtually all of the counterprotesters were peaceful and that 99.9% of them had come for the right reason, which was standing tall against hatred and bigotry in our city.

Thats a good feeling, Evans added. President Trump, meanwhile, tweeted both criticism and praise for the counterprotesters on Saturday.

Boston started the summer with a controversy over a racist slur shouted at Fenway. Now here it is: pic.twitter.com/MqvTP6h8C1  Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) August 19, 2017

The demonstration against the right-wing rally (and what happened last week in Charlottesville) was massive, starting for many with a march from Roxbury to the Boston Common, the park where the rally was to be held. At one point, the column of marchers was reportedly more than two miles long.

Protesters prepare to march in Boston against a planned Free Speech Rally just one week after the violent Unite the Right rally in Virginia led to deadly violence. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The difference in crowd sizes was especially stark because the free speech protesters were allowed to assemble in an area of the Common that was protected by police barricades:

Crowd shouts at man wearing Trump shirt. Brief argument and cops take him toward #Bostonfreespeechrally pic.twitter.com/bIgvZRiHeU  Jan Ransom (@Jan_Ransom) August 19, 2017

Just look how big the buffer zone was  and how proportionally smaller the rally was compared to the counterprotest:

This is the first video I've seen that really shows the disparity between the "free speech" rally and the thousands of counter-demonstrators pic.twitter.com/Lca2J3vhsc  Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) August 19, 2017

The free speech rally was supposed to take place from 12:002:00 p.m., but seems to have lasted no more than 50 minutes, apparently falling apart and ending a little before 1:00 p.m., a police official told the Boston Globe. At that point, rally participants were given a police escort out of the park to the cheers and jeers of the counterprotesters who surrounded the rally. It seems no more than 50 rallygoers ultimately attended, though others may have been unable to make it to the rally on account of the massive crowds.

Heavy police presence on the Boston Common. They are creating a path for free speech protesters to enter the band stand. pic.twitter.com/hrbqjBryoh  Emily Mesa-Zendt (@emilyzendt) August 19, 2017

There were some skirmishes between the two sides, but they were limited to scuffles and shouting matches.

Verbal confrontation breaking out. Crowd yelling shame as this guy screams at Trump supporter in hat. pic.twitter.com/PTl9SdMeQW  Steve Annear (@steveannear) August 19, 2017

However, after the rally was over, there were some confrontations between counterprotesters and police. Most of that tension occurred as police were trying to load the rallygoers into vans to be safely transported away from the Common. Police had to hold back counterprotesters, some of whom attempted to charge at the police vehicles, and arrests followed.

Speakers from rally stuck in police van trying to get out. Plastic bottle of Gatorade thrown. "Make them walk" chant #bostoncommon pic.twitter.com/dyudKlSDcc  Rob Crilly (@robcrilly) August 19, 2017

There was also another confrontation where some demonstrators threw projectiles, including urine-filled bottles, at police near Tremont and West Streets. When police backed down, according to the Globe, that conflict dissipated.

Bostons police commissioner later said that none of this surprised the department, as they were well-prepared, and that the police response went according to plan. He criticized only the small number of people who came to the protests to cause trouble.

The limited conflict between demonstrators and police, which didnt reflect the overall peacefulness of the protest, unsurprisingly drew the ire of President Trump. He tweeted on Saturday afternoon that it looks like there were many anti-police agitators in Boston.

Looks like many anti-police agitators in Boston. Police are looking tough and smart! Thank you.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

Later, presumably after watching Boston authorities explain how peaceful and positive the day had been, President Trump changed his tone dramatically from both earlier in the day and earlier in the week when he seemed to equate the Charlottesville counterprotesters with the white supremacists and neo-Nazis they were opposing:

Our great country has been divided for decades. Sometimes you need protest in order to heal, & we will heal, & be stronger than ever before!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

I want to applaud the many protestors in Boston who are speaking out against bigotry and hate. Our country will soon come together as one!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

Boston Free Speech, the group which organized and obtained a permit for the rally, has tried to distance itself from the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, insisting that Saturdays rally would be nonviolent, encompass all political ideologies, and be focused on fighting censorship. The group originally publicized that Charlottesville organizers would be attending the event, however, and admitted there would likely be overlap between the two rallies since not everyone in Charlottesville was a white nationalist. Some of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally had been slated to speak in Boston, but either cancelled or were uninvited over the past week. The Boston Herald reports that some Ku Klux Klan members were planning to attend as well.

This guy says he was inspired by Tina Fey. He brought a cake reading "nazis suck" to the free speech rally, said it's choc + vanilla flavor pic.twitter.com/hitheRVkDz  Emily Mesa-Zendt (@emilyzendt) August 19, 2017

Its not clear how many white supremacists tried to demonstrate in Boston, but some protest-song composers opposed to Nazi job security were definitely there:

we did it  pic.twitter.com/hnwM7QEaEX  the mao kid  (@kid_mao) August 19, 2017

Boston mayor Marty Walsh had opposed the rally and, worried about more violence in the aftermath of what happened in Charlottesville, had asked the group the postpone the event. There is no place in Boston for the kind of hatred seen last week in Charlottesville, Walsh had said. In the end, he acknowledged the rallygoers had the right to hold the event. Ultimately, while the free speech event still happened, not many people showed up  at least on the rally side.

Counterprotesters left behind their signs, reminding the city of their message: #BostonFreeSpeechRally pic.twitter.com/Ah70NHj7fD  Jan Ransom (@Jan_Ransom) August 19, 2017

This post has been updated throughout to include new information as it became available.
Sebastian Gorka ponders his future. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Much has been made in recent weeks of the battle between Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner for the soul of Trumps White House. On Friday, President Trumps son-in-law appeared to claim victory when Bannon was pushed out of his role as senior strategist. The question now turns to whether any of his lackeys will follow him out the door.

The man who may be most at risk is Sebastian Gorka, the deputy assistant to the president and former Breitbart News editor who worked for Bannon at the right-wing website and reported directly to him at the White House. With his boss ousted, Gorkas fate is extremely uncertain, a source told the Daily Beast. And Bannons firing isnt the only reason.

Gorka is currently on vacation and wouldnt comment on this story. But several of his West Wing colleagues have said that Trumps newly installed chief of staff, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, was deeply displeased by some of Gorkas recent TV performances, according to one senior official who has discussed this with Kelly.

Kelly had recently undertaken an internal review of West Wing staffers responsibilities and portfolios. And another White House adviser said that the chief of staff doesnt know what [Gorka] does except go on TV sometimes.

This isnt the first time Gorka has been close to leaving the White House. In late April, multiple sources said the Islamophobic Englishman was on his way out, but the departure never happened.

Another likely soon-to-be-exWhite House employee is Julia Hahn. A special assistant to the president and former Breitbart employee, Hahn is an anti-immigration hardliner whos often described as Bannons protege. The Washington Post says she and Gorka are the two likeliest staffers to follow Bannon, and Politicos Jake Sherman tweeted that hes been told that Hahn is already out.

But they may have seen Bannons firing coming and prepared for it. The Post says both Gorka and Hahn have portrayed themselves in recent talks with colleagues as Trump allies first and Bannon allies second. And the Daily Beast notes that Hahn, along with Steven Miller, whose job is reportedly safe, have recently complained to colleagues about Bannons leaking and self-promotion, calling him a glory hog.

If either of these two Bannon allies do in fact find themselves pushed out of the West Wing, theyre likely to find a home with their mentor, who has already declared his intention to go to war for Trump.
Uganda is set to spend over Shs 71 trillion (about $20 billion) on the development of her oil and gas infrastructure as the country gears for first oil production in 2020.



The planned expenditure is nearly equivalent to three financial year budgets going by the Shs 29 trillion budget for FY 2017/2018.



Ernest Rubondo, the executive director of Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) says the money is to be spent in the next three years.



Rubondo says the development of 10 oil fields is likely to cost the country between $8 billion and $9 billion while construction of the refinery will cost an estimated $4 billion.

The construction of an export pipeline from Hoima to Tanga in Tanzania will cost close to $3.6 billion. That is minus the costs of construction of other supporting infrastructure going on in the Albertine region. There plans to construct the so-called oil roads, an airfield and upgrade of a railway line to Pakwach.



Uganda has proven crude oil reserves of 6.5 billion barrels in place. Of these, Rubondo estimates that about 1.4 to 1.7 billion barrels is recoverable at an investment of less than $4 billion.



The planned expenditure to be funded mainly by international oil companies, banks and other investors raises concern as to whether Uganda's oil will be profitable once it finally comes out the ground.



Government officials including Rubondo say; Uganda's oil will still be profitable after all expenditures have been deducted. Tullow Oil and some government officials have estimated that Uganda could earn up to $50 billion from its oil reserves over 25 years.



The question on whether Uganda's oil will be profitable has also been subject to local and international studies. One of the most recent studies on Uganda's oil was conducted by the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC).



KAPSARC is a non-profit global institution researching into energy economics, policy, technology and the environment across all types of energy.



Its analysis on Uganda titled, "Evaluating Uganda's Oil Sector: Estimation of Upstream Projects" found that Uganda's capital expenditure and operational expenditure combined will cost approximately $18.46 billion, or $17.50/barrel.



The total expenditure to produce a barrel of crude oil at about Shs 61,000 or $17.50/barrel according to the analysis, in general terms compares favourably with other producers worldwide. However, this estimation did not factor in the price discounting to account for wax content and the cost of transportation to market.



The analysis suggested that capital expenditure is likely to cost $8.640 billion while operational expenditure will cost the country $9.088 billion and that $731 million will be required for decommissioning.





Ugandan upstream oil and gas development is focused on three major projects on the shores of Lake Albert with Tullow Oil, Total and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) as partners.



The KAPSARC researchers said those projects are challenging due to their remoteness, complex geology and very waxy crude that is difficult to transport to market.



Researchers also raised concerned about costs reflected in the field development plans (FDPs) that the oil companies submitted to government in 2013.



They say the dynamics in the industry have since changed following a fall in international oil prices from 2014 onwards. The crude oil prices had by December 2016 fallen by 24 per cent.



The King Abdullah analysts said the changing environment in the last few years may also impact the future implementation of the 2013 Field Development Plans. Field Development plans remain confidential.



The King Abdullah analysis said some operators like Tullow had by early 2015 announced plans to reduce their Capital expenditures (CAPEX) through design changes. Tullow reportedly specifically targeted up to 20 per cent cuts in its CAPEX for Uganda.



Tullow in January this year, said it was transferring 21.57% of its 33.33% interests in Exploration Areas in Uganda to Total for $900 million. One of the most notable item on the list in the King Abdullah analysis is, the $196 million requirement for tariff charges.



The tariff will be incurred on heating the pipeline to prevent the waxy oil from solidifying while being transported from the refinery to Tanga port in Tanzania.



The analysis says the waxy nature of Uganda's crude suggests that it will not achieve the full market price per barrel, but will be discounted to reflect the costs implicit in its high wax content.



Oil analysts have been spending a lot of time discussing whether crude oil prices will not be much lower than the current $50 per barrel when Uganda begins its production. The price of oil fell to its lowest level in 11 years in 2015.



Patrick Mweheire, the chief executive officer of Stanbic Bank Uganda is expressed optimism that Uganda will still recoup its investments in the oil and gas sector. Stanbic has been playing a leading role in mobilising financing to oil and gas by promoting local participation.
Parliaments Natural Resources committee has instructed the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) to revive the kaveera (polythene bag) ban.

It is the umpteenth time an effort is being made to stop the manufacture, importation, sale and use of polythene bags with less than 30 microns because of their long-term adverse effect on the environment.

Unfortunately, we can bet on this effort suffering the same fate as those before it!

The ban has been imposed several times in the past, but the same government that bans it always finds a way to backtrack on its own decision, under pressure from kaveera manufacturers.

The latest reversal was engineered by President Museveni himself when he wrote to Nema last year, advising the environment watchdog to review the ban in the interest of industrialisation.

Not surprisingly, Nema interpreted the presidents letter as a directive to halt enforcement and they duly complied.

Besides pressure from kaveera manufacturers, enforcement has been made harder by the failure to generate consensus within government. The ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives, for instance, has never hidden its objection to the move.

Uganda first attempted to ban kaveera almost ten years ago. For a whole decade, manufacturers have argued that they need more time for consultations. Surely, this has been enough time to switch to more environmentally friendly products!

Yet it is not really surprising that the government has failed to walk the talk as indecision tends to be the rule rather than the exception in Uganda.

Evidence of that can be seen in the bans on smoking in public places and smoking of sisha in nightclubs, which have also suffered a stillbirth.

On the other hand, neighbouring Rwanda took the decisive step of not just banning but enforcing the ban on kaveera years ago. Residents and visitors arriving at their borders and airport are cautioned against bringing the forbidden items into the country.

Of course concerns that factories might close and jobs and tax revenue lost as a result are legitimate and cant be brushed aside.

However, we believe the benefits of having a cleaner environment in this case outweigh the economic gain accruing from kaveera manufacturing.

Above all, it is important that when the government takes a decision, it has weighed it enough to stick by it.
The pro-government constitutional assembly loyal to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro seized the powers of the opposition-led congress today, in a move that necessarily has Big Oil nervous that Trump will make good on his economic sanctions threat.

Maduros bold political move on Friday means further intensifies the dramatic decline of democracy that led Trump last week to threaten economic sanctions that could remove Venezuelan oil from the U.S. refining market.

It also comes right after Trump indicated that a military option was not off the table.

The government has accused opposition leaders of conspiring with Washington to overthrow Maduro.

As Venezuela disintegrates politically and economically, big oil is stepping in to urge Washington to refrain from resorting to economic sanctions against the country, the third-largest supplier to the U.S.

U.S. energy giants rely heavily on trade with Venezuelahome to the worlds largest oil reservesand the Trump administrations move last week to sanction eight top Venezuelan officials coupled with talk of country-level economic sanctions could negatively affect U.S. refineries, and drive up gas prices.

Everyone from Chevron and Phillips 66 to Valero and Citgoamong othersprocess heavy crude oil from Venezuela along the U.S. Gulf Coast. It would be prohibitively expensive to replace Venezuelas specific heavy crude with an alternative, as nearly two dozen major U.S. refineries are set up only to process this type of crude. Canada, Mexico and Colombia also provide heavy crude, but volumes are not considered to be high enough to replace Venezuelan. Saudi Arabia heavy crude would have to serve as a replacement, but a costly one.

Meanwhile, the letters of protest continue to find their way to the White House. Two letters pleading Trump to forego economic sanctions have been sent by the American Fuel & Petrochemicals Manufacturers advocacy group, of which Chevron is a member.

A third letter of appeal came from a group of lawmakers led by Texas Republican congressman Randy Weber.

The letter noted that while the group respected the efforts to deal with the disturbing decline of democracy in Venezuela, sanctions could end up losing Americans 525,000 refining-related jobs along the Gulf Coast.

Related: Aggressive U.S. Oil Sanctions Could Bankrupt Venezuela

International oil companies are said to be pulling staff out of Venezuela, especially after the end-July vote that Maduro orchestrated.

Repsol has recently pulled all of its foreign workers from Venezuela, Statoil has pulled out its expatriate staff, while Chevron and Total SA have withdrawn a small number of employees, according to Bloomberg.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The countdown has begun for the Great American Eclipse, which will arc across the country on Monday. For those staying in Flagstaff for the event, here's the latest information on weather, timing and viewing opportunities.

Monday forecast: A 30 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Partly sunny, with a high near 75.

How the eclipse will play out in Flagstaff:

9:14 a.m.: Eclipse begins

10:34 a.m.: Maximum eclipse (70% of sun covered)

12:01 p.m.: Eclipse ends

On viewing the eclipse: At no time during the eclipse in Flagstaff is it safe to look directly at the sun. Instead, viewers need to purchase special solar eclipse glasses. A list of reputable vendors, compiled by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), is available at https://eclipse.aas.org/resources/solar-filters. Authorized glasses are available locally at the Lowell Observatory gift shop for $2 each.

Both NASA and the Science Channel also will be live-streaming eclipse events. NASAs two-hour live broadcast can be seen at nasa.gov or on the NASA Channel.

The Science Channel will Facebook Live the eclipse from Lowell Observatory's event in Madras, Oregon, which is in the zone of totality. In Madras, the eclipse will take place from 9:06 a.m. to 11:41 a.m. with totality occurring from 10:19 a.m. to 10:21 a.m. Lowell Observatory will show the Science Channel's live stream on two large screens at its eclipse event Monday.

At 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday, the Science Channel will premiere The Great American Eclipse, a one-hour special featuring same-day footage from the event.

ECLIPSE EVENTS

Downtown Eclipse Pre-Party

When: Saturday 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Where: Heritage Square

Details: In this event to build excitement for Monday's eclipse, there will be a limited number of solar eclipse sunglasses available for free as well as pinhole viewers, interactive crafts and opportunities to learn about this celestial occurrence by talking to Lowell educators and looking through telescopes Lowell will have set up in the square. Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra also will be on hand with instruments for kids to play alongside professional musicians, straw pan flute craft, a hosaphone to try out, and a live jazz performance by the Elden Brass Quintet at 6:30 p.m.

After that, there will be a free showing of "The Incredibles" put on by Movies on the Square. All events are free and open to the public.

Great American Eclipse Viewing Party

Where: Lowell Observatory

When: Monday, 8 a.m. to normal closing at 10 p.m.

Details: Big screens will broadcast a live stream of the total solar eclipse from Lowells event in Madras, Oregon. Telescopes at the Flagstaff campus will be fitted with filters for solar viewing and there will be kids crafts, educator presentations, science demonstrations and a variety of local food trucks. Lowell astronomers and educators will be on site to answer any questions and explain the various stages and phenomena of the eclipse.

Normal admission rates apply, which are $15 for adults, $14 for seniors AAA members, members of the military and college students and $8 for children ages 5 to 17. Children under 5 and observatory members are free.

Solar eclipse viewing party at Meteor Crater

When: Monday, doors open at 7 a.m. with eclipse viewing from 9:15 a.m. to 12:03 p.m.

Where: Meteor Crater is located at I-40, Exit 233, 37 miles east of Flagstaff and 18 miles west of Winslow.

Details: A limited amount of eclipse viewing glasses will be given away on a first come, first served basis. Entry to Meteor Crater costs $18 for adults, $16 for seniors, $9 for juniors ages 6 to 17 and children under 5 are free.

Solar eclipse viewing at Wupatki National Monument

When: Monday 9 a.m. to noon.

Where: 25137 Sunset Crater-Wupatki Loop, Flagstaff, Arizona 86004

Details: Park rangers and volunteers will be at pueblos throughout the monument to show the public how they can safely view the eclipse without damaging their eyes. At 9:30 a.m. a park ranger will give a talk about eclipses at the visitor center, and there will be childrens activities throughout the morning. The entry fee to Wupatki is $20 per vehicle.

Solar Apoc-Eclipse Fun Run/Walk

When: Monday 9:15 a.m. to noon

Where: Buffalo Park

Details: Join the Northern Arizona Trail Runners Association to run through the height of the eclipse. Walk, run, jog as many laps as you can in Buffalo Park for the duration of the eclipse and we will see how many miles we can do as a group! There will be 20 Lowell Observatory Solar Experience viewers on hand.

Eclipse viewing from Arizona Snowbowls Scenic Chairlift

Where: Arizona Snowbowls Agassiz lift

When: The lift will open one hour earlier than normal, at 9 a.m. to allow visitors enough time to get to the top of Agassiz Peak and observe the eclipse. The ride up and down the mountain is approximately 25-30 minutes each way.

Details: Rides on the scenic chairlift cost $19 for adults, $13 for seniors and children ages 6 to 12 and free for children 5 and under. Guests who purchase scenic chairlift tickets by Sunday at midnight will be able to save up to $5 or choose a FREE $10 gift card with the purchase of a full-priced lift ticket. Details at www.arizonasnowbowl.com/specials
DEAR ABBY: I'm 14, starting my freshman year in high school and, of course, will be joining lots of clubs to prepare for college.

My best friend is gay, and when I asked her if she wanted to join any clubs together, she suggested the Gay-Straight Alliance club. As a saved Christian, I am unsure how to answer.

I believe Christians should treat homosexuals with kindness and respect. I believe also in same-sex marriage because of the legal protection it gives a couple. I respect my friend's decision, and I'm happy she's happy with her life. My family doesn't know how to respond either, though they have similar beliefs.

I am afraid if my church found out, they would dislike me for joining, as well as question where I really stand as a Christian. I feel conflicted about how to address both sides of my beliefs. Can you help?

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE IN KENTUCKY

DEAR CAUGHT: I, too, believe that Christians (and people of all faiths) should treat each other with kindness and respect, regardless of their sexual orientation. But somewhere you got the impression that sexual orientation is a choice. It isn't. Your friend's orientation was determined before she was born, just as yours was.

Wanting to support your friend by joining a Gay-Straight Alliance is a commendable thing to do, and it follows the Golden Rule. I can't see how a church that preaches love would object to that.

DEAR ABBY: I am a 24-year-old college graduate who has been unable to find a full-time teaching job, so I'm working as a teaching assistant. My salary is less than average, and between rent, bills and student loans, I am stretched more than thin.

Recently, a woman has been talking to me about nannying for her child after school. She'd like to hire me and have me meet her child in person, and we agreed on an hourly rate. I was excited about the opportunity and looking forward to starting.

This week she told me she wants to report my work for her on her taxes, which means I'll have to report as a freelancer and pay estimated quarterly taxes while I work for her. Abby, this is unheard of in the baby-sitting world! I have been baby-sitting from my preteens all the way through college, and never once have taxes ever been part of the conversation.

My mother says I shouldn't be upset because the woman is doing what she's supposed to as far as the IRS is concerned, but I feel shortchanged. Shouldn't she have been upfront about her intentions when we discussed my hourly rate? Am I wrong for asking her for more money per hour to make up for some of the taxes?

AFTER-SCHOOL NANNY

DEAR NANNY: William R. Turner, CPA, says your mother is correct. Your prospective employer is obeying the law. She wants you to meet her child, negotiate an hourly rate and hire you as a nanny, not as a baby sitter. Your new employer should have you fill out a form W-4 and pay you as an employee. Because payroll deductions will be taken out of your gross pay by your new employer, you should negotiate your hourly rate accordingly.
FORT EDWARD  The coyote that was shot and killed near the Five Combines park on Thursday has tested positive for rabies, and anyone who may have had contact with it was urged to contact Washington County Department of Public Health.

The canine is believed to have been responsible for a Wednesday morning attack on a woman at the park, and for accosting other park users a day earlier. Washington County Sheriff Jeff Murphy said test results were confirmed early Friday.

The Gansevoort woman who was bitten, Rita Sweenor, was hospitalized with severe bites to her legs, arms and face, and is undergoing preventive rabies treatment.

Sweenor is an amateur nature photographer who frequents the park, which is popular with bird watchers.

An update was posted on her Facebook page early Friday as to her recovery.

Thank you all for your prayers and positive thoughts. Still at Albany Med. Coyote was positive for rabies. (I am) on rabies shots. Will be a long recovery. Pretty beat up. May go home soon to recover. The trauma team here is excellent. Thanks again, her Facebook page reads.

Rabies is a deadly disease if left untreated. The county Public Health Department can be reached at 518-746-2400.

The park along the Feeder Canal was closed for about 24 hours Wednesday into Thursday as police searched for the animal, and a state conservation officer shot it between the Five Combines in Kingsbury and the village of Fort Edward early Thursday afternoon.

The Feeder Canal trail and Five Combines park will remain closed until Tuesday as police work to make sure there are no other rabid animals or aggressive coyotes in that area.

Just out of an abundance of caution, we thought it was the right thing to do. Wed hate to open it up and then have to close it again, Washington County Jeff Murphy said.

Some residents of the area are wondering whether there is a bigger rabies problem among coyotes in central Washington County.

Desiree Santiago said a coyote that appeared to be rabid, foaming at the mouth and wandering through yards on Route 197 during the daytime, was shot and killed by a resident of the area in early August. That is just a couple of miles southeast from the Feeder Canal, and coyotes routinely travel significant distances to feed.

She said police were called to pick up its remains for testing afterward, but it did not appear the body was retrieved.

A call to the state Department of Environmental Conservation about the issue was not immediately returned Friday.

A veterinarian from California who tracks coyote attacks across the country said they have been on the rise in parts of the nation in recent years.

Coyotes are not harmless fuzzy pets that kill rodents, they are dangerous predators, said Dr. Carol Meschter.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has information to prevent coyote conflicts at www.dec.ny.gov/animals/6971.html.
Reacting to President Donald Trumps hard-line immigration policies since taking office in January, many city leaders throughout the U.S. have said they would not assist federal agents in the deportation of their citizens.

Trump, with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has threatened denying federal grant dollars to cities if they do not let federal immigration agents interview suspects in their jails or do not assist agents by turning in names of petty offenders.

Last week, Chicago officials sued the justice department regarding its stance on sanctuary cities, and this week, California also filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department. On Wednesday, Sessions, while speaking in Miami, singled out Chicago for its stand against Trumps policies.

New York City and several other New York cities and counties have also vowed to fight Trumps demands, despite Sessions escalating threats.

Saratoga Springs has not evoked a sanctuary status.

According to Mayor Joanne Yepsen, instead of taking a sanctuary position, city leaders drafted a human rights statement.

We are hoping to create a more diverse community regardless of what language is spoken, she said. We are not labeling ourselves as a sanctuary city because it doesnt mean anything. Our resolution passed in December outlines clearly that we will not discriminate  actions speak louder than words.

Saratoga Springs Police Chief Gregory J. Veitch said that criminal offenders with a verified valid warrant from any federal agency, including ICE, would be held, pending transfer of custody to the arresting federal agency.
Editors note: This is the last story in a four-part series appearing Sundays on immigrants who are living in the Glens Falls region. To read the rest of the series, go to poststar.com/highlights. Some of the names in this story have been changed to protect people who could face legal consequences if identified.

SARATOGA SPRINGS  Miguel, an experienced exercise rider who has been working at Saratoga Race Course for more than seven years, says he was born in Peru in a horse stall.

Training and raising horses has been in my family for generations, he said in between rides on a late July morning. He talked about the skill it takes to work with thoroughbred horses. We are professionals, he said.

Now married to an American citizen, Miguel is waiting for word on a pending green card application that has been filed for more than a year.

Three years ago, Miguel was picked up by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, better known as ICE, in Rochester while sleeping on a Greyhound bus.

And today, despite living and working in the U.S. legally, Miguel worries about the same thing happening again.

Add to that rumors of an impending ICE raid at the Saratoga track and his unease intensifies, especially after two downtown raids this summer.

Everybody is really afraid. It feels like its the goal of the government to take out all immigrants from the country, he said.

He believes he and others get stopped and asked for papers because of their skin color. It feels like they are chasing us, like they dont respect anybody, and even with papers you are never really free.

New rules

Saratoga Springs Mayor Joanne Yepsen said she talked to ICE agents about this summers downtown raids of restaurant employees.

I asked, What are you doing? and they said, Under Trump, there are new rules in town,  Yepsen said. They are arresting people at their residences, they are taken away in a van  they are splitting up families.

ICE did not return The Post-Stars requests for comment about the Saratoga raids, despite repeated attempts to reach the agency by phone and email.

Yepsen said that even if those arrested have papers, they are being detained. They need to ask for asylum, she said. And why are just brown men being picked up?

Racehorse owner Jim Hooper wonders the same thing, saying that if a backstretch worker here illegally is white with blond hair, its unlikely he or she will get picked up.

Hooper co-owns Haven Oaks thoroughbred racehorse farm in Fort Edward with his wife, Sue Hooper. They do not hire undocumented workers, but he has seen an ICE arrest from the inside. Miguel was working for the Hoopers when he got picked up several years ago.

He was my right-hand man, he is like my brother, we traveled together, said Hooper, still unable to tell the story without tearing up. Seventy-five percent of his pay was going to his family members in Peru.

More arrests

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, ICE arrests have increased more than 38 percent nationally, with an average of 400 arrests a day.

Of 650 people arrested nationwide from July 23 to 26, ICE reported that 73 were from families and 120 were unaccompanied children. Only 150 of the 650 arrested had criminal convictions, according to a government press release.

Look, if we dont have border security, if we dont enforce the law thats written in the books, youre never going to control the border, said ICE Acting Director Tom Homan during a June 28 press gaggle at the White House. Why do you think we got 11 million to 12 million people in this country now? Because there has been this notion that if you get by the Border Patrol, you get in the United States, you have a U.S. citizen kid, no one is looking for you. But those days are over.

Downtown Saratoga Springs was hit by ICE agents twice this summer, and the Saratoga community worries about more to come.

In late May and again in late June, ICE agents pulled white, unmarked government vans into a downtown parking area. Agents then spread out in cars and on foot to pick up undocumented workers near their Saratoga homes.

Some have worked here for over seven years, said Mayor Yepsen. They are part of our community, they are part of our family. They are an important part of the Saratoga economy.

In the summer sweep, 27 individuals from Mexico and Guatemala were arrested on visa charges and eventually transported to the Batavia Federal Detention Center, where they face immigration hearings that will determine their U.S. status.

So far, two men have been deported. According to Saratoga immigration lawyer David Meyers, among the 27 was an immigrant who had already applied for asylum.

Under presidents Bush and Obama, if they applied for asylum, the government left them alone, Meyers said. Now with Trump, they are being picked up  they have changed their practice and not only people who have committed crimes, but people here without permission, are being picked up.

No safe place

Backstretch workers said they are afraid to move about freely. They believe theyre safe on the backstretch, so they stay there.

But Meyers thinks theyre wrong: In my opinion, there is nothing to prevent ICE from going on track property.

The day before the track opened in July, the head of the New York Racing Association, Chris Kay, told business leaders in a press conference that he cannot stop ICE.

If ICE shows up, do I block ICE at the doors? No. Im going to abide by the law, Kay said. If they arrive, I cant block the gates.

Sue and Jim Hooper say workers are in short supply because they have been scared away. The big barns snap up the workers here legally, they said. So they have been forced to do their own groom and stable work.

The Hoopers have about 20 horses on their farm, but just one at the track for this summer meet  a 3-year-old filly, Courageous Change.

One of the exercise riders told us that she was warned that ICE has assembled a task force for the track and that they plan to send a message, said Hooper. I had a guy tell me that one of the big trainers offered him $1,000 a week to groom horses because he couldnt get the help.

The Rev. Humberto Chavez doesnt believe rumors about a raid.

ICE is not going to warn us that they are coming, Chavez said. We have the same amount of track workers as we always have. What Ive seen is ICE is looking for individuals with a rap sheet.

Chavez also said it would be difficult for undocumented workers to be employed at the track, because everyone needs a current New York state identification card to get State Gaming Commission badges to work there. Nonetheless, he said that, because the worker population is always changing, its hard to pinpoint how many might be working at the track.

Detention

A few years back, Miguel married another woman (not his present wife) to stay in the U.S. legally. But the marriage was not working out and his visa expired.

At that time, he was working for Jim and Sue Hooper and helping Jim with Inherit the Gold, a graded stakes winner who is now retired at Haven Oaks.

Hooper had just gotten his trainers credentials and needed Miguels expertise.

I was greener than green, he said. Miguel got on my horse  he spoke fluent English, he was honest and hardworking.

Hooper said Miguel told him about the situation with immigration.

I said, Why dont you go there and get a divorce, then well work on your immigration status? I bought him the bus ticket to Ohio.

But Miguel said he wasnt able to complete that trip.

It was 11 p.m. at the Rochester Greyhound bus stop. ICE boarded the bus and started asking people for papers; I was sleeping, he said. I was nice to them, I explained that my visa had expired, that I paid my taxes and that I had a Social Security card. I asked if they wanted to see my Social Security card.

ICE agents told him that because he did not have papers they would have to take him to the Batavia detention center.

After several days, Miguel reached the Hoopers by phone.

When he called and said, Im in jail, I was shocked, Jim Hooper said.

Two days later, Sue Hooper went to Albany and met with the immigration judge. She had to post a $5,000 cash bond for his release.

According to immigration lawyer Meyers, the bond generally runs between $5,000 and $25,000.

She had to sign papers that he would not work while he was waiting for his hearing, said Jim Hooper. The immigration officer threatened that she could go to jail if he worked for us.

Both Jim and Sue Hooper said not allowing those out on bond to work creates an impossible situation. They have to feed their families, Jim said. Immigration is making these mass raids and making the entire situation worse. Now there are families with no one to support them.

Meyers said he could not comment on Miguels specific case because he did not review the paperwork.

Miguel, waiting for his green card decision, said he is always afraid.

I cant feel secure, he said, and he sometimes wonders if he should remain in the U.S.
GREENWICH  There was a lot more water than smoke and fire on the final day of the Adventures in Firefighting program Friday.

We threw so much at them that today was just a chance for them to play, use their skills and have fun, Greenwich Chief Michael White said as he watched the activity outside St. Joseph Church, where multiple firetrucks were set up and parents and others were watching the youths go through various firefighting drills.

In these days of the volunteer service being so short in numbers, its really important for us to do everything we can to get kids interested, White said.

Sixteen fourth- and fifth-grade students took part in the two-week program sponsored by Learning is Fun This Summer. Greenwich ran the same program two years ago.

On Friday, the students crawled through plastic tubes, rolled hoses, carried water in canvas buckets and blasted water to knock down window and door targets on a practice house that was belching smoke provided by the departments smoke machine.

It was amazing, said Savannah Wren, one of the students who took part. We did a lot of hard work, and they showed us all the things they do.

Lindsey Carpenter was also excited about the program.

Now I am thinking I want to be a firefighter, she said. Those buckets felt light, but when they were filled with water, they were heavy.

The program was organized by Kevin Shephard, a former Greenwich chief who is now a Washington County fire investigator.

We couldnt do this without him, said Mike Genevick, a Greenwich officer who has been involved in the program both years. This is our future. Were getting an Explorer program that the kids can join when they are 14, and hopefully we can get some of them to stick with it.

The students took part in a series of presentations, including:

Information on how fire departments are created and run, along with the hazards firefighters face.

Demonstrations of the gear, tools, equipment, personal protective equipment and training volunteer firefighters use and receive.

A visit to the Greenwich training building and a history of the department.

A visit by the Easton/Greenwich Rescue Squad, where students were instructed on all aspects of the service firefighters provide to the community, including training and the tools and equipment on the ambulances, as well as a visit from the LifeNet Medevac helicopter.

A visit from the Washington Fire Investigation Team and the Washington County J-fire (juvenile fire setter) Team.

A presentation from state forest rangers on how they fight brush fires and do searches for lost people.

A complete fire prevention program, including the fire prevention bus, and a visit from the MacBoston 18 Truck.

A demonstration from the Washington County Emergency Services in Fort Edward and the chance to see first-hand a live 911 emergency dispatcher in operation handling emergencies in the county.
Our immigration system hurts good people  people driven to take great risks for the sake of their families, so their parents will have food to eat and their children will have opportunities.

Before we judge people who have entered our country illegally or overstayed visas, we should ask ourselves a couple of questions: Who are they hurting, and what would we do in their circumstances?

Our country is being helped, not hurt, by people who work at jobs that employers say they otherwise could not fill, who contribute to our economy and our culture, who pay taxes but, because of their illegal immigration status, cannot receive the same benefits as citizens.

On Sunday, The Post-Star concludes its four-part series on immigration issues in the local area. We have seen in the first three stories that hundreds of immigrants work in the local area  at horse farms and dairy farms, in restaurants and quarries  and some of them are here legally and some illegally.

All of them would prefer to be here legally, but our immigration system does not always offer a way. Workers who come to Saratoga Springs just for the racing season, for example, can sometimes get seasonal visas, but that doesnt work for those who come to Washington County for employment on dairy farms. Dairy farmers require year-round workers.

So people are faced with a choice: Help lift their families out of poverty through work that is hard but fairly compensated or stay in legal but hopeless circumstances abroad.

Enforcement of immigration laws raises questions of proportionality. Is it fair or just to separate husbands from wives and parents from children because, in an effort to improve their lives, they overstayed a visa?

Laws should be followed, but laws that are unfair and unjust should be changed. People who have proven through years of hard work and contributions that they are good citizens should have a path to citizenship.

Our series has shown that the immigration system is complex and hard to navigate. Sundays story tells of a man who is living in an uncertain limbo in the United States while waiting for word on his green card application. Meanwhile, as the months stretch on, he is not allowed to work. What is he supposed to do? If he leaves the country, hell never get back in, at least not legally.

The system is complicated, but the feelings that develop between immigrants living in this country, legally or illegally, and native-born citizens are simple and strong. People get married, have children. Lifelong friendships are formed. Employers come to value and rely on their immigrant employees.

In Sundays story, Jim and Sue Hooper, horse trainers, talk about how valuable a man from Peru has become to them, personally and professionally.

He is like my brother, Jim Hooper says.

Failure to provide a way for these valuable members of our community to become citizens does not hurt only them, it hurts us. It hurts our economy. It hurts individuals like Jim Hooper on a deeper level.

This series was meant to reveal that, here in upstate New York, immigrants are a substantial, if quiet, presence. We are not offering specific solutions  many improvements to our current system have been brought forward in Congress over the years, only to be defeated. We are pointing out the system isnt working, not for immigrants and not for citizens, and for the countrys benefit it needs to be changed.
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After a week in which there were eight shootings that culminated in the death of a man Friday morning, Davenport Police Chief Paul Sikorski said Friday that more resources are being allocated in an effort to curb the violence.

Our patrol officers that are working the streets every day and every night will be supplemented with our traffic and NETS units and they will work in specific areas on specific groups and for specific people, Sikorski said Friday afternoon during a brief news conference outside the police department.

Our community will be seeing more police cars out there, he said.

There were two shooting incidents Friday, one at 2:48 a.m. in the 2000 block of Jebens Avenue, and the other at 9:03 a.m. in the 500 block of West 14th Street.

In the first incident, a home was struck by gunfire, but no injuries were reported.

In the second shooting, a man was killed. The victims identity had not been released late Friday and police had not released any additional details of the incident.

Officers taped off West 14th Street from Gaines Street to Ripley Street as they canvassed the neighborhood. Crime scene technicians also were on scene.

Residents in the neighborhood gathered to watch as police investigated the shooting.

One who lives in the area said she was "just totally afraid, petrified."

"It's been happening everywhere lately," she said. "You hear of more shootings and more shootings and more shootings, and these kids must be going crazy. I don't understand it."

Sikorski said that the shooting incidents over the past couple of weeks, as well as many others during the course of the year, have been target specific.

They are not random acts of violence, he said. They are people targeting other people, and then weve had retaliation.

Our investigators are aggressively working these incidents; all of them, he said.

Sikorski did not elaborate on the motives the shooters use to justify their actions because he did not want to get too specific about the course of the investigations.

As a police department, he said, our number one responsibility is the safety of our community. Whats going on right now is unacceptable in our city, its unacceptable to this police department and were going to put a stop to it.

Sikorski added that in order to curb the violence, Davenport police will be working closely with all Quad-City law enforcement agencies to find and arrest those responsible. There are many instances where the areas bridges are used as a means of coming into Davenport and then are used as a means of escape.

When it comes to violent crime, we work together as one law enforcement community, he said.

Of paramount importance to curbing the violence is the cooperation of residents, he said.

Community involvement is critical, Sikorski said, adding that there is no piece of information that is too small, and that the smallest piece may be the one that breaks a case open.

Even if our community members dont think its important, we want to know about it, he said. Were trying to put all of these pieces together.

Through Aug. 2, there had been 84 confirmed shooting incidents in Davenport this year. That number has climbed 97 confirmed shooting incidents with at least 13 confirmed shootings in August.

There were 17 shooting incidents in August 2016, and 28 in August 2015, according to Davenport Police statistics.

There were 168 shooting incidents in Davenport in 2015, and 152 in 2016.

In the meantime, if anyone sees or knows anything, Sikorski asked that they contact police.

The Davenport departments number is 563-326-6125, or people can leave an anonymous tip on the citys mobile apps, CityConnect Davenport, IA or CrimeReports by Motorola.
The Rock Island Community Foundation invested $2,500 in Girl Scout leadership development for girls participating in after-school programs at Rock Island Schools and the Martin Luther King Center.

As a community partner, the Rock Island Community Foundation has made it possible for more girls to learn about STEM, outdoors, life skills, and entrepreneurship.

Support from the Rock Island Community Foundation has made it possible to reach more girls beyond the traditional troop model, said Diane Nelson, CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois. Through these after-school programs, girls that face significant barriers can still participate in Girl Scouts and become courageous, self-sufficient leaders.

The Girl Scout program helps girls unleash their inner G.I.R.L. (Go-getter, Innovator, Risk-taker, Leader). The preeminent leadership development organization for girls provides members of varying backgrounds and abilities the opportunity to discover adventure, gain new skills, and change the world.
Markets firmed, then floundered last week. Early week stability gave way to a steep Thursday selloff, which seemed more responsive to political uncertainty than economic uncertainty. A full week of divisive posturing by the president, political leaders and business leaders over the violence that erupted in Virginia street rallies over the prior weekend seemed to lessen hopes for pro-growth economic initiatives from Washington.

All this took a toll on area company shares, leading to our Quad-City Times Key 15 falling 34.06 to 2,089.49 (1).

Indeed the economic backdrop did show firm growth trends in two broad-based sectors. The Commerce Departments Tuesday report on nationwide retail sales showed July sales up 4.2 percent from one year ago, very much in line with prior months. Job additions, wage increases, and stronger consumer confidence readings in recent months have all combined to keep this upward sales trend healthy. Auto sales growth was, in fact, among the best sectors. And, excluding auto sales, the remaining July sales were still up 3.8 percent. Nicely helping the healthy trend of overall sales has been the continuingly low gasoline prices we enjoy. Gasoline station sales were up just 1.3 percent, letting us spend more on other categories.

Similarly, Thursdays latest from the Federal Reserve on manufacturing output told of continuing growth, though slow growth, with total output up 1.3 percent compared to last July. Output is measured in units of goods, not dollars. Remarkably, though auto sales were solidly above last July, auto manufacturing output was lower, down 4.9 percent from last July as manufacturers worked to reduce inventories.

The highlight for Quad-Citians, however, may have been Deere & Co.s long-awaited third quarter earnings report, out early Friday following the Thursday market selloff.

Deere did not disappoint, posting total sales up 16 percent from one year ago to $7.81 billion. Worldwide equipment operations sales were up 17 percent to $6.83 billion. And, profits beat analysts consensus estimates, rising 27.1 percent from $1.55 per share one year ago to $1.97.

CEO Sam Allens released remarks credited improving market conditions throughout the world. He noted South American farm equipment sales seeing strong gains. He noted construction equipment sales now rising sharply. Importantly, Deere says to expect equipment sales to increase about 10 percent for the 2017 fiscal year, which ends in October after just one more quarter.

Allen was also able to proudly point out that the strong financial results were proof of our success in building a more durable business model, crediting todays more flexible cost structure and a leaner asset base. Deere shares retreated in the Thursday retreat. For the full week, shares were down 9.40 to 117.32 (1).

And 3M Company, with Cordova adhesives manufacturing, proudly announced Monday the addition of a new high level executive to its board of directors. Amy E. Hood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft Corporation, the computer software firm, has been elected to the board. Not surprisingly, she will work on 3Ms finance committee. 3Ms glowing announcement complimented Hoods tremendous skill and immense experience, noting her 15-year tenure at Microsoft was preceded by experience at Goldman Sachs in investment banking and capital markets. Shares of 3M were 2.37 lower last week at 203.53 (1).

And, Tyson Foods, with pork and beef processing right here, announced Wednesday plans to add to its poultry processing capacity. Tyson will invest another $84 million to grow its Union City, Tennessee, poultry operations, adding 300 new jobs when complete by mid-2019.

Doug Ramsey, Group President of Poultry, credited customer demand and overall consumer demand for protein, especially for chicken, as the driving forces requiring output increases. The project, expected to begin this fall, adds 25,000 square feet. Importantly, in order to feed the expanded demand from the plant, Tyson estimates that nearly 200 more broiler chicken houses will need to be built in northwestern Tennessee over the next two years, and invited farmers there to contact the company. New farming work along with new processing work is a double win for the area. And, Tyson shares were off .38 to 65.16 (1) last week.

Look for a week focused on housing in the coming days. New home sales will be reported Wednesday. Existing home sales come out Thursday. And, hope for a quieter week in the home of political rhetoric.
CEDAR RAPIDS  In addition to a good head of hair, a firm handshake and a winning smile, running for governor takes money.

A candidate for governor of Iowa should be prepared to raise upward of $5 million, according to Matt Paul, who has worked on campaigns from city hall to the White House.

In 2014, former Gov. Terry Branstad raised $10 million. His opponent raised less than $2 million. Campaigns arent all about money, but Branstad carried all but one of Iowas 99 counties.

Potential candidates generally know theyll have to raise a lot. But whatever they think theyll need to raise, usually theyre off by a factor of five, said Paul, who joined Cornerstone Government Affairs in Des Moines after working for two Cedar Rapids mayors, former Gov. Tom Vilsack and more recently as Iowa director of Hillary Clintons presidential campaign and as chief of staff for vice presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine.

There are a lot of similarities between launching a campaign and an entrepreneur going out and setting up company ABC to sell widgets or whatever, said Brian Dumas of Davenport-based Victory Enterprises.

Youve got to have a business plan. Youve got to have a salesman, basically, in the candidate selling their ideas and vision, he said. Then you have to build a team around them. And if you run out of money or cant raise enough venture capital or sell enough widgets, you close your doors.

As in business, he said, Youve got to be able to adjust and move quickly  maybe even more so in politics than in business.

Even before raising venture capital, Paul said a candidate must have an absolutely rock solid answer why they are the best person for the office.

A gubernatorial campaign can last two years, involve three or more nights a week away from family, time away from a job, travel and hours on the phone raising money.

Candidates have to come to be their own north star on why they are doing this in order to get through the day-to-day of the very unglamorous life of being a candidate, Paul said.

Its a troubling sign if a candidate cant articulate why she or he is running, said Jeff Link of LPCA Public Strategies in Des Moines, who works with Democratic candidates. In those cases, he tries to talk them out of running because the work is too hard, too tedious to continue unless you are really passionate.

Those second thoughts happen with some regularity, according to David Kochel, founder of Redwave Communications in Des Moines. They think about. Take a few steps. Then decide against it.

Paul has had four or five conversations in the current election cycle with potential candidates who decided against it after having that conversation.

If candidates can answer the why question, however, then its time to start putting together the building blocks of the campaign, said Kochel, a former Harvard Institute of Politics fellow who worked on campaigns for presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst.

The basic building block is money.

Link, who has worked with former U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin and Barack Obama in 2008 as well as with campaigns in the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Africa, asks potential candidates to make a spreadsheet of all the names in their phones and on their Christmas card and wedding guest lists. Next, he asks them to write how much money each person would give to the campaign if asked. In 25 years, hes had about three candidates follow through.

Paul tells candidates write the name of every person you will call and ask for $1,000 and come back when your notebook is full.

Its easy for a candidates to say they can raise $300,000, for example, but when you start writing down names and numbers, the numbers get real, real fast, Link said.

For an Iowa gubernatorial primary race, he estimates a candidate must be able to raise at least $1.5 million to run a viable campaign.

From a functional standpoint, launching the campaign is similar to starting a business venture, according to Sam Roecker, Links colleague at LPCA. In addition to employees, a campaign needs to recruit motivated volunteers, people who know how to organize, how to schedule the candidates time, how to keep the campaign on message, get that message out and when, where and how to advertise to build a statewide presence. And, Roecker said, a campaign needs a logo, a slogan, perhaps, and an office.

Nothing too glamorous, he said, because donors dont want to think their money is being spent on prime office space, nice furniture and fancy campaign swag. You do what you can to get by. Look for free furniture.

Technology has made the traditional campaign headquarters less important than in the past, Dumas said.

Twenty years ago, everyone came to the office to make phone calls, he said. Today, you log in from your home computer and make calls or you share a campaign message on Facebook and Twitter.

Candidates can run the day-to-day campaign operation, but Dumas said their time is better spent making personal appearances and raising money.

Campaigns are almost always about the candidate: who they are, their background, their capacity to lead and how prepared they are, Kochel said.

So to maximize their impact, candidates running for governor generally rely on campaign consultants to recommend and recruit professional staffers to help develop messaging and campaign strategies and help with the fundraising how-to.

To a large degree, Dumas said, Terry Branstad set the precedent for Iowa gubernatorial campaigns, and everyone after him is using some variation of the Branstad approach, including the whole 99-county thing, which was borrowed from Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Although there are agencies that will provide a campaign-in-a-box, Kochel and his colleagues are skeptical that off-the-shelf plans work in a state where running for governor is personal.

Iowans want to press the flesh, see and hear the candidate speak, to look them in the eye, have a conversation, Dumas said. They want to personally know their governor.

A candidate has to have a relationship with activists, with volunteers, with voters, Kochel said. You cant hire a professional to provide those things.

In the end, campaigns are sophisticated strategic organizations and the process tests candidates, Paul said. Thats not a bad thing considering the candidates are asking voters to trust them with the leadership of a state of 3 million people.

As frustrated as we all are with the fundraising side of this, this system does put candidates through the paces in preparation for what is a really complex challenge that impacts people on a daily basis, Paul said. If youre running for governor of Iowa, youre running to be the CEO of a $9 billion operation. So you should be able to handle a $9 (million) or $10 million election budget.
Iowa has over 10,000 factory farms, more than any other state. These facilities come under fire from animal rights groups, environmentalists, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

They are breeding grounds for diseases and generate 22 billion gallons of manure annually, which contaminates our rivers, streams, and wells with E. coli bacteria. Today, Iowa has a record-breaking 750 polluted waterbodies. The burden of clean-up falls upon everyday Iowans.

The Mater Matrix is a tool in the permitting process that is supposed to protect communities and the environment from factory farm pollution. But it has failed to live up to those promises. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has denied only 2 percent of applications, in spite of objections from citizens. The result is that Iowa has more factory farms and more pollution than ever.

We need to strengthen the permitting process for factory farms. The DNR needs to take up a petition filed last month by Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) and Food and Water Watch to strengthen the Master Matrix.

This is something the DNR needs to do right now because our Legislature has failed to address the problem. Iowans cant wait any longer.

Jan McGinnis

Marshalltown, Iowa

Editors note: McGinnis is a member of Citizens for Community Improvement
"You've awaken the sleeping, southern white conservative populationthere are millions of us standing behind them," says Phil Yerington, former mayor of Davenport on his Facebook page. The Quad-City Times reporter interviewed the best man for the job to express contempt for the counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Visit Phils Facebook page to get acquainted with him and his 1,500 friends. In one post, he even supported running over protesters if they were in the streets. Many posts wish all manner of ill will, even death on President Obama, Hillary Clinton and anyone who does not have the same political views as himself. Don't mention blacks, gays, and immigrants, but he's not racist or prejudice.

He is so blinded by his political dogma that he can't see that bought-and-paid-for politicians don't care about him or us; same game, different players. He calls it stirring the pot and sarcasm, but actually it's pretty cowardly trying to influence others to do his dirty work. Calls for unity, but preaches hate, like a true politician, speaking with a forked-tongue.

Ask Phil what one word best describes him, and he and his followers will say, Christ-like  laughing out loud. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Expose the haters. Peace.

Craig Clay

Davenport
As 50 boats head down the Louisiana bayou, heavy bells set one above the other clang out from the first boat, incense wafts from the second, and the third carries a priest, an altar and a tall monstrance displaying a saucer-sized communion wafer as the body of Christ. At the altar, two people pray and meditate. The boat behind them holds a statue of the Virgin Mary, celebrating her assumption to heaven.

Other communities around the Bayou State have boat parades and boat blessings, but this is something different: a full-dress religious procession. Weather permitting, it will stop Tuesday at a half-dozen churches on a 35-mile span along Bayou Teche from Leonville to St. Martinville.

"We have so many public crazinesses these days, to give the word of God in a public way is always good," said the Rev. Michael Champagne, who started and organizes it all.

Aug. 15 marked the third year for the Fete-Dieu du Teche (Corpus Christi of the Teche), but only the second procession down the bayou itself. Last year's floods made the bayou too dangerous, so the procession celebrating the eucharist went by road, Champagne said.

Champagne's fleet of mobile confessionals  two former ambulances repainted so people will read "CONFESSION" in their rearview mirrors, and a trailer called the Church Haul, with a stained-glass wrap  will go by road, making four outdoor confessionals, including the boat, available at each stop.

At each stop, the local priest prays the rosary and, using a special vestment that lets him hold the monstrance without touching it, makes a sign of the cross with it over the heads of the outdoor congregation.

"This is not the blessing of a priest, not the blessing of a mama for her children, not the blessing of the church," Champagne said. "It's Jesus himself who is present in the consecrated host that is lifted over the people to bless them."

It started in 2015 with the 250th anniversary of Louisiana's first Acadian settlement and of its church, St. Martin de Tours in St. Martinville.

The ancestors of today's Cajuns came down the bayou, so it seemed fitting, said Champagne. Part of the idea, he said, came from seeing a foot procession in the 1990s from the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, Italy, along a series of rafts tied together across the bay it fronts.

He said he thought, "Boy, we could have a procession by boat."

"I wasn't so sure the bishop would be in favor," Champagne said, but former Bishop Michael Jarrell of the Lafayette Diocese approved it, and bishop Glen John Provost of the Diocese of Lake Charles celebrated the Mass of the Assumption that preceded the procession of 2015.

Champagne estimates that at least 2,000 showed up  a spillover crowd of 1,100 or 1,200 at the church in Leonville, which holds 900, and a couple hundred or more at every stop.

"It was such a success  that's why we started to make it annual," Champagne said.

Crowd size wasn't the only measure of success, he said: he learned afterward that the occasion inspired some young people to commit themselves to life as priests, nuns or monks.

This year, Bishop John Douglas Deshotel, the current bishop of the Lafayette Diocese, will celebrate the Mass in Leonville.

The Bayou Teche procession is limited to about 50 vessels. Champagne broadcasts rosaries, psalms and scriptures to transmitters on the other boats so everyone can pray along, but the range is limited to about a mile. That's about the distance taken up by about 50 boats in single file, Champagne said.
JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii | Two U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers, under the command of U.S. Pacific Air Forces, joined their counterparts from the Republic of Korea and Japanese air forces in sequenced bilateral missions, Aug. 7.

This serves as the first mission for the crews and aircraft recently deployed from Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota in support of U.S. Pacific Commands Continuous Bomber Presence missions.

After taking off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, the B-1s assigned to the 37th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, flew to Japanese airspace, where they were joined by Koku Jieitai (Japan Air Self Defense Force) F-2 fighter jets. The B-1s then flew over the Korean Peninsula where they were joined by Republic of Korea Air Force KF-16 fighter jets. The B-1s then performed a pass over the Pilsung Range before leaving South Korean airspace and returning to Guam.

Throughout the approximately 10-hour mission, the aircrews practiced intercept and formation training, enabling them to enhance their combined capabilities and tactical skills, while also strengthening the long standing military-to-military relationships in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

Ellsworth B-1s were last deployed to Guam in August 2016 when they took over CBP operations from the B-52 Stratofortress bomber squadrons from Minot AFB, North Dakota, and Barksdale AFB, Louisiana.

How we train is how we fight and the more we interface with our allies, the better prepared we are to fight tonight, said a 37th EBS B-1 pilot. The B-1 is a long-range bomber that is well-suited for the maritime domain and can meet the unique challenges of the Pacific.

Aircrews, maintenance and support personnel, will continue generating B-1 bomber sorties to demonstrate the continuing U.S. commitment to stability and security in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, providing commanders with a strategic power projection platform and fulfilling the need for anytime mission-ready aircraft, an important part of national defense during a time of high regional tension.

While at home station my crews are constantly refining their tactics and techniques so that we can better integrate with our counterparts from other nations, said Lt. Col. Daniel Diehl, 37th EBS, commander. As demonstrated today, our air forces stand combat-ready to deliver airpower when called upon.

The U.S. has maintained a regular bomber presence in the Indo-Asia-Pacific since 2004 and this mission demonstrated our continued ironclad commitment to regional allies. Further, it increased our readiness and exercised our rights under international law to fly legally in the place and time of our choosing.
Got eclipse glasses?

If the answer is no, then you have just a slivered sunlight chance of obtaining a pair of the specially filtered safety glasses in time for Mondays once-in-a-lifetime astronomical show.

In an alignment occurring about every 18 months, the moon will swing between the Earth and the sun with the moons shadow gradually turning daytime into nighttime.

In Rapid City, the sun will be between 90 and 95 percent obscured by the moon at the event's peak just before noon Monday.

Most retail, grocery and convenience stores  even optometrists stocking glasses that allow safe viewing of the eclipse  were sold out of them as of earlier this week.

A sad-face emoji punctuated an apologetic notice proclaiming, Sorry, We are SOLD OUT of Eclipse glasses affixed to entry doors at Rapid Citys westside Safeway store on Thursday afternoon. A clerk said the store had been out of the glasses for about a week.

But there are at least a couple of last-minute glimmers of hope for would-be eclipse watchers: the Rapid City Public Library at 610 Quincy St. will hand out 500 pairs of glasses, strictly one per person and first come, first served, starting at 9 a.m. Monday.

And the NOSH food truck announced via its Facebook page plans to serve lunch for the Monday eclipse and offer 40 NASA-approved pairs of glasses for $10 each at Founders Park in Rapid City.

NOSH will open at 11 a.m., about one-half hour after the start of the eclipse, but before the peak of the event at about 11:50 a.m.

Library community relations director Laurinda Tapper said the library received 1,000 pairs of eclipse glasses through a grant. Patrons quickly snapped up the first 500 pairs last Monday.

They were gone in 2-1/2 hours, Tapper said.

Whos Hobby House in downtown Rapid City sold out at least two shipments of the glasses since stocking them in mid-June.

Employees said the store quickly sold out of its remaining glasses Aug. 12, with phones ringing nearly off the hook with inquiries since then.

Mark Haberman, manager of the Walmart Supercenter on Lacrosse Street, said customers emptied the last of two full display racks of glasses a couple of weeks ago. Asked if the store was likely to receive more glasses in time for Mondays eclipse, he replied, Im afraid not."

Proper eclipse glasses should include the ISO-12312-2 international standard for eye protection. Experts heavily caution against do-it-yourself direct viewing attempts. Some welding goggles and helmets may provide adequate protection, but only if the strongest filters are used. Ordinary sunglasses, even those with the darkest lenses, will not protect eyes.

Looking directly at any portion of the sun, even for just a few seconds, can cause permanent damage to the retina.

Taking video or photos of the eclipse without a proper lens filter can also damage a cellphone or digital cameras photo sensor.

Another alternative is to build a pinhole camera from a cardboard box, allowing viewers to safely watch a projected image of the eclipse.

Outdoor outfitter Cabelas in Rapid City did not stock eclipse eyewear, but media relations spokeswoman Kate Magbuhat said the store had also been besieged by requests for the glasses. She said the store had been trying to obtain glasses so its own employees could view the eclipse.

I guess were in the same boat as everyone else, Magbuhat said.

Rapid City and the Black Hills are tantalizingly close to the holy grail for eclipse chasers, an approximately 70-mile-wide shadow of the moon completely covering the sun, called the path of totality.

Mondays event is the first total eclipse seen only in the contiguous U.S. since 1918, and the first total eclipse seen in any part of the U.S. since 1979.

The moons shadow will bisect the U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina, coming closest to western South Dakota. It will swoop across south-central Wyoming and the Nebraska panhandle starting about 10:40 a.m., with totality beginning at 11:49 a.m. and lasting only a minute or two before the sun begins to re-emerge. The eclipse will end about 1 p.m.

Tapper said some callers indicated plans to camp out outside the library hours in advance of Mondays handout of glasses.

I dont know if thats going to happen or not. Its just what people have said, Tapper said.
It was obviously an earlier, less cynical time when the president of the United States could explain an unscheduled drive from the White House he had once taken.

"I was outraged," the president wrote when he was out of office, "when I read in the newspapers about a black family. ... The husband and wife were both employed in a government printing office. They had been harassed and a cross had been burned on their lawn."

The president and the first lady had driven, without fanfare, from the White House to the family home of Philip and Barbara Butler, which was in a predominantly white subdivision in suburban Prince George's County, Maryland. The president added, "Our motorcade had naturally been noticed ... and our farewells at curbside were warmly applauded by the neighbors."

The year of that visit was 1982, and the president was Ronald Reagan, who understood that the president is the only American who can speak to all of us and speak for all of us. That simple presidential visit was testimony to Reagan's personal identification with and support for the victims of a racial attack and also expressed the nation's sympathy.

As a candidate, Reagan had not always shown the same sense of moral clarity. In a still-unexplained decision, Reagan chose to launch his 1980 general election campaign with a speech championing states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi. That town was known to the country for one reason: There, 16 years earlier, three young Americans  Mickey Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney (two whites and one African-American), who had been registering black voters in the state  were, after being stopped, allegedly for a traffic violation, kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a gang of Klansmen.

Presidential moral leadership was the hallmark of the historic civil rights laws of the 1960s to end segregation of public places and to federally guarantee the right of African-Americans to vote in America. Five months before an assassin ended his life in Dallas, President John F. Kennedy spoke to the nation: "If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him ... who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?"

But the most indispensable moral leader on civil rights to be president since Abraham Lincoln was the son of a segregated Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson was 6 feet 4 inches tall and often used his size to invade the personal space of his political adversaries, which is exactly what he did to Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a 5'7" presidential challenger, in a private White House meeting at the time of the tragic "Bloody Sunday" at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

With Wallace sinking on a couch and Johnson sitting upright in a rocking chair, Johnson concluded their nearly two-hour conversation, according to presidential adviser Richard N. Goodwin, who was in the room, this way:

"Now listen, George. Don't think about 1968. You think about 1988. You and me, we'll be dead and gone then, George. Now, you've got a lot of poor people down there in Alabama, a lot of ignorant people. You can do a lot for them, George. Your president will help you. What do you want left after you when you die? Do you want a great big marble monument that reads, 'George Wallace  He Built'? Or do you want a little piece of scrawny pine board lying across that harsh caliche soil that reads, 'George Wallace  He Hated'?"

That same week, the president went to the Capitol to challenge a joint session of Congress and the nation to pass the Voting Rights Act, reminding his countrymen: "At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama."

And so it was again at Charlottesville in the summer of 2017, when Americans tragically recognized that there is no guarantee that our president will meet the challenge of providing the nation with moral leadership.
Darby schools start school on Monday with new opportunities for sophomores, new playground equipment, a new mission statement - and a solar eclipse.

Sophomores at Darby High School have the chance to work toward an Associate of Arts Degree while completing high school, Superintendent Loyd Rennaker announced Thursday.

You hear this happening all over the country and I think why not here, Rennaker said. Lets give our kids the opportunity to start college ahead.

Rennaker said high school biology and college biology quite similar, and he would have preferred skipping the large lecture classes when he attended college.

It was the same material, but in high school we took it over the course of a year and in college we did it in 15 weeks, he said. Were fortunate at Darby; we have a lot of teachers with masters degrees and a great relationship with Bitterroot College, who is behind us all the way. So I think it will work.

Rennaker announced that science teacher Nathan Olsen has been approved to teach dual credit and that all sophomores will take biology and some will do extra work to earn college credits.

Rennaker said that even if the students take all the dual credits offered during their school years, they will also have to take a summer class at Bitterroot College or online classes to meet the associate degree requirements by the time they graduate from high school. Each plan for every student will be different and advisor sessions are essential.

Even if they dont reach the associates degree level, it will be easy to earn 30 credits while theyre here, which equals one year of college, Rennaker said. Do the math. College costs $18,000 per semester at the University of Montana. If you do two years here before going there youve just saved $36,000.

Rennaker listed other advantages of graduating with an associates degree, including only having to take courses at college that apply to your major, the experience of rigorous college classes while in high school and saving two years at college.

Rennaker encouraged students to take this journey and make it happen.

Wouldnt it be cool in three years to have the class of 2020 walk across the stage receiving an associates degree from Bitterroot College, then come back a couple of weeks later and get a high school diploma? he said. Its happening all over the United States. Its time it started here.

Roch Turner arranges dual credit courses for Bitterroot College for the University of Montana. He provided details for nearly a dozen parents and students.

Were hoping to work with each of you individually from the beginning, so we can get you on the path you want, Turner said. The dual credit classes are going to be more rigorous.

Turner said the dual credit classes cost $52 per credit, but college credits cost approximately $800 each credit. In addition to the cost savings, Turner said the Greater Ravalli Foundation steps in to pay for qualifying students.

Last year they paid $17,000 valleywide at $42 per credit, Turner said. They generally tie that to free and reduced food. If someone is struggling financially, they dont want that to be the barrier.

Parent Amy Anderson said this opportunity for Darby students is great.

Im excited that my daughter will get her associates before she goes to real college, Anderson said. I think it will help her stay focused and stay in college instead of deciding not to go.

Anderson said she appreciates the savings.

It is cost effective and saves time. I really like the idea that they are getting college credit for classes they already have to take, she said. I think it will make college more exciting with taking classes geared toward what you want to do.

Darby sophomore Emmy Anderson said she is unsure of a career choice.

I want to do something where I can travel a lot, she said. I have so many ideas.

She said the associates degree opportunity is appealing.

Im excited about it and have been excited about college for a while too, Emmy Anderson said. Im excited to get stuff done. It will take less time, be less expensive and Ill be able to get out earlier.

She said she was worried that college would be too hard, but that taking more rigorous classes in high school would prepare her.

Ill do better on the ACT testing too, she said. Ill have had college level classes.

Rennaker said he is grateful to Bitterroot College.

These students will have more opportunity to earn college credit than ever before, Rennaker said.

The playground had a facelift this summer with the addition of two climbing apparatuses for the older students' playground, which were assembled and installed by Trapper Creek Job Corps. Brian Shay coordinated the work done by masonry students, lead by instructor Scott Sewell. Darby K-7 Principal Chris Toynbee, the schools maintenance department, and local businesses McCready Fence and Bitterroot Rock & Ready Mix completed the project.

It was nice to work with the Job Corps on a project that benefits students, Toynbee said.

The solar eclipse is ushering in the start of classes for Darby Schools this year, on Monday.

Grades K-6 will watch live streaming inside and older students will go out to the playground and experience the eclipse while wearing appropriate eye protective gear, thanks to provisions from Bitterroot College.

The Darby School District has a new mission statement: Our mission is to provide an environment where each child flourishes and is well prepared for their future.
Kathmandu, Nepal: Even though the government decision to add local levels in Province 2, has created complications to make necessary preparations to hold the third phases of local level elections slated there for September 18, the Elections Commission (EC) the constitutional body responsible to hold the elections in the country, has initiated necessary preparations.

The government has made decision with the aim to woo the agitating Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJPN) to take part in the elections scheduled elections. It is expected that the government decision to add the local units has created just a difficulties to manage the elections, which are going to be held just few weeks later.

Though the EC has not made any official statements regarding the recent increments in the number of local units, its office bearers have said informally that they would manage the things to hold the local elections in the newly added local units.

It is said that the government has made the decision to add the number of local units in province number 2 not only with understanding to the verdict of the Supreme Court (SC) but also consulting with the concerned agencies including the EC and the Constituency Delimitation Commission (CDC).

With the governments decision to add nine local units, the number of local levels has reached 753 in the country and 136 in Province 2.

Earlier the government had decided to add 22 local units in Terai districts as of the demands of the agitating RJPN.

The governments May 22 decision to add 22 local units in Terai districts was quashed by the Supreme Court on August 10.

The SC had quashed the governments decision as the numbers of local units were added even in the districts where the local level elections were already declared.

As the Supreme Court on August 10 had authorized the power to the government to increase local levels in Province 2 where local polls were yet to be held, the government made the decision to increase the local units only in the province number 2.

With the decision, the government has also published a notice in Nepal Gazette about the increase in local levels in Province 2.

Of the nine new local levels in Province 2, three in Sarlahi, two in Rautahat and one each in Parsa, Dhanusha, Bara district ad Saptari district.
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Mint on Sunday, August 5 2017

The false godmen of Maharashtra

In the three and a half years since Maharashtra passed a law against such practices, there have been hundreds of cases against fraudulent godmen who thrived on the superstition and fears of many

Self-styled agodmana Atish Patil. Photo: Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti

[by] Puja Changoiwala

When the 32-year-old Baba Kamble visited a self-styled godman in a remote village in Satara, Maharashtra, hoping to find a cure for his schizophrenic mother, Rameshsuresh aBabaa handed him a palm-sized stone.

The black piece of rock had a face drawn on it in sindooraa pair of eyes, a moustache, and lips. The godman had burnt cigarettes, lemons and eggs, and had rubbed their ash on the stone while chanting prayers to invite a divine incarnate into it. After a few minutes, when he was done, he told Kamble, a resident of Pune, that all his troubles would now leave him. The rock, which would cost Kamble Rs2,000, was now a deity.

aAnd this god will listen to you,a Rameshsuresh told Kamble, pointing at the stone. aKeep him in your house. Someone has practiced black magic against you. Thatas why your mother blabbers incoherently, and thatas also why your father has taken to drinking. Tell him these problems. Heall bring peace upon your home.a

Optimistic, Kamble returned to his family. He placed the rock close to the other idols in his apartment, and the family, as prescribed, would aspeaka to it.

Days melted into weeks, but the god didnat seem to respond to Kamble. His motheras schizophrenic tendencies persisted.

aThe black magic seems to be really strong,a Rameshsuresh responded to Kambleas concerns, aWe have to increase the strength of the gods in this rock. It will cost you Rs4,000.a

Baba Kamble.

Gradually, Kamble parted with a total of Rs12,000 in reviving the rockas powers over the past four years. He didnat believe in godmen, but kept visiting the aBabaa only to satisfy his ailing mother. A relative had told her about the godman, had convinced her that Rameshsuresh was indeed blessed with paranormal powers, and that he could turn rocks to personalized gods.

In March this year, the Bhuinj police in Satara arrested Rameshsuresh Bagal under the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act 2013.

Kambleas case, however, is only one of the 400 such complaints registered against fraudulent godmen across the state in the past three-and-a-half years after the act was published in December 2013. In Kambleas case, the losses were restricted to financial and emotional, but in several others, the repercussions have been far graverahuman sacrifices, and sexual exploitation of men and women.

aMore than 70% of the victims in these 400 complaints are women, and several of them have been sexually exploited,a said Dr Hamid Dabholkar, son of slain rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar, who campaigned for 18 years to bring about the anti-superstition act. The bill was hastily passed four days after the senior Dabholkar was shot dead in August 2013 by two bike-borne assailants near his home in Pune.

Hamid added: aWomen are most vulnerable to such godmen, and usually approach the babas for peace in their homes, male children or no children. The baba claims that since he is an avatar of the gods, he can impregnate her with a boy child.a

aSo, many women have been sexually assaulted this way. Also, on a few occasions, it is the families of these women who take them to the godmen, and unwittingly pave way for their oppression. Recently, a family from Panvel asked their daughter to be naked before a godman while he performed prayers to rid the family of their financial troubles, and bring about ashowers of rainsa. The woman approached the police, and the godman was arrested.a

In another case with allegations of sexual exploitation, a 30-year-old married man filed a complaint under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code for unnatural offences against 60-year-old godman Shri Krishna Lad in April 2015.

In his statement to the Rahimatpur city police, the complainant alleged, aWhen I was sleeping in the common hall of the ashram, around 10.30pm, baba came and stood next to my mattress. Out of respect, I stood up, and he hugged me. He then took my hand, and started walking toward his room. I wanted to become a volunteer in the ashram. I had told him about it, and assumed that he wanted to speak to me about the same.a

Shri Krishna Lad. Photo: Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti

aBut upon reaching the room, he threw me on his bed, unbuttoned my shirt, and started running his hand on my crotch. Even as I protested, he kissed my mouth, forced my pants down, touched my genitals... Scared, I rushed back to the hall.a

aThe next day, he said to me, aTo become a volunteer, you will have to sacrifice a few things.a I was extremely disturbed after that incident, and returned home. But even after I was back, I could not focus on anything, and ended up losing my job.a

Social activists opine that although cases of exploitation at the hands of godmen are not unheard of in metropolises, such ababasa usually target people in remote areas where literacy is limited and beliefs in superstitions are still thriving, and people are more vulnerable.

Almost all these godmen, say activists, claim to be divine reincarnates or possess divine powers. Under that guise, they dupe thousands of followers. Publicity comes from word-of-mouth apart from advertisements in local newspapers.

Flaw in the implementation of the law

aThe problem is that even the police shy away from registering complaints against such godmen,a said advocate Ranjana Gavande, who has worked on at least 35 cases involving fraudulent godmen in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. aThey believe that if the babas are indeed magical, they would be cursed for life.a

aI remember visiting this ashram in Sangamner with a few policemen once, including female constables. Someone had tipped us about this 13-year-old godman, a amiracle healera, who could also cure cancer and AIDS. When we reached, we learnt that the boy was acting at the behest of his father, asking followers to visit him at least 11 times to have their problems solved, and draining their pockets every time.a

aWhen we confronted the adolescent boy, he did not let go of his sham, and started saying things like, aAgyaan balak, you do not understand anything. Go away. Donat sin.a A woman constable, who was accompanying us, got so influenced that she collapsed,a added Gavande.

She added that the local police let the boy off after warning his father. Activists ensured that the ashram was shut, and the little divine incarnate was sent back to his eighth standard class, which he had quit to become a full-time guru.

Another problem, said Gavande, is that policemen are often not aware of the law. On several occasions, she has had to seek help of senior officers to get offences registered.

There is no guiding body, she said, to educate policemen about the law. Further, the common practice is to avoid registering a first information report (FIR) in order to evade doing further investigations. This aggravates the matter.

aAt times, even the police are in cahoots with the godmen, drawing fat sums of money in exchange for a blind eye to their deceitful practices,a said Ravande.

With the view to educate policemen about the act, the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS), a volunteer organization which has been working for decades to bust such godmen in the state, has trained around 2,000 policemen across six districts in the past three years. Members of the organization stated that gathering evidence is tricky in such cases since there has to be proof that the godmanas acts led to physical, emotional, psychological or financial violation of the victim.

aThese cases can get difficult to prove in courts of law,a said Hamid. aHence, there is a pressing need for a set of guidelines so that policemen have a thorough reference point when registering and investigating such cases. The law needs to be implemented properly.a

aThe demand for this act has existed for close to two decades now. But there was always opposition and debate since the rules ventured into grey areaaof religious practices being called superstitious. Now that we are past it, we require a holistic and effective implementation of this law.a

aCurea for all ills

Avinash Patil, executive president for MANS, stated that in his 30-odd years of working on the issue, the organization has busted over 5,000 dishonest gurus across the state. In order to attract followers, he said, several godmen develop unique selling propositions, make innovative claims and offer bizarre methods of cure.

To illustrate, one Gomasha (cattle fly) baba in Kolhapur, who was an opium addict, would claim to rid followers of their troubles by removing dirt and insects from their ears. He would push a thin test tube already containing dead insects into the ears of his visitors, pull it out, and place the insect corpses on the visitorsa palms. At Rs10 a bug, the godman is said to have gotten richer by thousands over his years of practice until he was busted.

In another case, an oil-water baba in Umaraga claimed to cure all diseasesaincluding paralysis, epilepsy and addictionsathrough a mixture of oil and water. The godman, who claimed to be a Christ reincarnate, would preach that the diseases were caused by aSatana , who had come to reside under the visitoras skin, and rubbing the oil-water solution on the affected area would drag the devil out.

In case of more severe ailments, the godman would beat his visitors with sticks and shoes, pull them by their hair, and dance around, chanting prayers. The baba, Kantu Gaikwad, a mason, was subsequently arrested.

Another fraudulent godmanaa transgender, who threatened his follower after he refused to payawas arrested in February last year by the Talbid police in the state. The alleged conman, Atish Patil, called himself aGuruaaia and claimed to posses special powers since he was a transgender.

Believing the tales, Subhash Yadav, 46, a businessman, approached Guruaai to remedy his financial losses. He soon realised that Guruaai was cheating him. He saw the deceit in the arbitrary demands for money.

When he refused to pay up, it did not go down well with Guruaai. He went to his home, and started stomping his feet on the ground, beating himself intermittently.

aMy gods will never pardon you,a Guruaai yelled aggressively. aIall show you. Iall make your mouth and nose bleed. Iall ruin your childrenas lives. I will make you like me, and Iall make you clap your hands. You be careful now.a

Bringing them to book

As for bringing these godmen to justice, advocate Gavande said that, of the 400 cases registered under the anti-superstition act in the state so far, only seven cases have been brought to trial. Of these, six witnessed convictions. The only acquittal saw the release of a godman accused of human sacrifice in Wardha. An appeal against the decision will be filed in the concerned high court, said Hamid.

aOf the 400 registered complaints, at least seven cases have been of human sacrifice, and at least four to five other attempts, which were prevented in the nick of time,a Hamid said.

aIn 2014, a local resident from Nashik informed us about suspicious activities in the home of his neighbour. He said the family had dug a huge pit in the backyard of their home, and some prayers were being offered. We reached in time and saved the eight-year-old boy, a relativeas son, who was to going to be sacrificed for financial gains for the family.a

aThe answers are in science,a said Kamble after his encounter with the baba who handed him the piece of rock. aMy mother is under a therapistas treatment for schizophrenia now, and is doing much better.a

Puja Changoiwala is a journalist and author of the true crime book, The Front Page Murders: Inside the Serial Killings that Shocked India.
Education Reporter

Mathew Burciaga is a Santa Maria Times reporter who covers education, agriculture and public safety. Prior to joining the Times, Mathew ran a 114-year-old community newspaper in Wyoming. He owns more than 40 pairs of crazy socks from across the globe.
'New York Times amends boba tea story after reader outcry https://t.co/jtA6E4wgSz pic.twitter.com/DOdDA5IRW4  Eater (@Eater) August 17, 2017

An article in the New York Times this week about SF-based Boba Guys and their popular new New York City location, since edited, made the faux pas of "discovering" boba tea as if it were some brand new invention, with the original title of the piece "The Blobs in Your Tea? Theyre Supposed to Be There." After an outcry from readers who are better informed than the article's writer, the Times issued an apology Thursday, saying, "In retrospect, we wish we had approached the topic differently (if at all). There may be a story in the expansion of bubble tea businesses in the United States, but there is no denying the drink has been around for quite a while."

Bubble tea has been around in Taiwan since the 1980s and began trending in major cities in the US a decade and a half ago, if not a full two decades ago. It's just that the Business section at the Times wasn't consulting the paper's own Food section, which wrote a piece just this past December titled "Bubble Tea? So 2002. A Sampling of Food-Trend Predictions."

This NYT boba piece, besides being comically late & breathtakingly stupid, is exactly why we need diverse newsrooms https://t.co/Gb5pbG0LsH  Frank Shyong (@frankshyong) August 17, 2017 Cool so the NYT published a story about Boba Guys in 2017 calling boba a confusing new food trend of exotic blobs from the Far East pic.twitter.com/Wf1DXL0E9g  ahmed ali akbar (@radbrowndads) August 17, 2017

As Eater NY points out, "hundreds of bubble tea shops dot the five boroughs, with companies like Boba Guys putting a trendier spin on the drink, serving it in Mason jars with organic ingredients as of late." They also note the "subtly ignorant parts to the [original] story, [which have since been edited,] like calling this Asian drink 'exotic' and 'curious' when it has been in the country and beyond for upwards of 30 years."

But this is hardly anything new for the Times  as Quartz reports, the paper Gawker used to call The Grey Lady "discovered" banh mi in 2009, ramen in 2004, and Korean food, generally, in 1999.

Andrew Chau, co-founder of Boba Guys (six years ago), tells Eater SF, I do think it was a genuine mistake. When we talked to them for our comments, we walked them through the industry, flavors, and backgrounds. They definitely had the intention of understanding what we do." He continues, "On the one hand, we dont want writers to stop writing about ramen, pho, sushi, or other ethnic foods that the mainstream culture thinks is exotic. But on the other hand, journalists have to develop more empathy and write from a more immersive and holistic perspective. Otherwise, we start objectifying culture. It becomes tone deaf in times when tone is everything."

So when it comes to calling out fake news, this would be a legitimate case, and the Times has owned up to it. Perhaps business writer Joanne Kaufman needs to get out more.
Art dealer and real estate developer Serge Sorokko, or as he should be known, model, writer and Russian goddess Tatiana Sorokko's husband, hopes to sell a prospective house in Tiburon for a whopping $35 million.

The Wall Street Journal tells us of the listing at 3820 Paradise Drive, Lot #5 which currently is just a plot of land with eastward views of the San Francisco Bay along with plans for an 8,000-square-foot home designed by noted SF architect Stanley Saitowitz, whom the WSJ reports as "an emeritus professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley whose designs include the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston." (He also designed this.)

Saitowitz, considered by Tatiana's husband to be one of the great artists of his time, designed the ultra-modern, almost museum-esque home to include six bedrooms, 5-and-a-half baths, a screening room, wine cellar, gym, infinity pool and guesthouse all atop 7.4 waterfront acres.





According to the property's listing, plans have been submitted for design review with the County of Marin.

"I had this dream of having a development in Tiburon and using some of the architects that I consider artists," said Tatiana's husband, who purchased the 19-acre property for $5 million in 1999. The luxuriously-named Lot #5 is one of five homes Sorokko plans to develop.

If the deal sells, the $35M estate will be completed in 2019. Alternately, a buyer could snatch up the property and just the plans for a reasonable $12.75 million, and deal with the construction on their own, or something like that.

Former Belvedere Mayor Bill Smith and realtor Scott Woods are handling the listing.

The Sorokkos won't be moving into the Tiburon home. As Tatiana blissfully explained to Harper's Bazaar in 2014, "I can live anywhere in the world as long as I'm with my husband. It could be rural Alaska for all I care. I will make it chic no matter where I go."

Related: Miss Bigelow's Social City By The Numbers
If youre not heading to Oregon with your hippie friends or attempting to conceive a child with a Craigslist rando during Monday mornings first full eclipse of the sun visible in the U.S. since 1979, there are still plenty of spots to watch the sun get blotted out by the moon. While the LA Times informs us that well only get a 75 percent eclipse here in the Bay Area at the peak 10:30 a.m. moment, its still a pretty unique phenomenon and  since its taking in the middle of the sky  will be visible from everywhere (and for the nth time, you should not stare at the sun without those stupid glasses). But weve aggregated a long list of places hosting Monday morning eclipse viewing parties, so you can turn around, bright eyes, every now and then fall apart, because theres you something you can say for the total eclipse of the sun.

As far as those stupid glasses go, the Chronicle reports that theyre pretty scarce to come by right now. But the Exploratorium still has them for $2.75 a pop, and Lick Observatory (which is all the way down in San Jose!) has them for $2.50 apiece. Additionally, the American Astronomical Society has some instructions on how to make those elementary school style pinhole projectors plus a list of reputable eclipse goggle vendors.

But nothing could be more San Francisco than watching the eclipse on your phone, and the Exploratorium will let you do just that. ABC 7 calls our attention to the Exploratorium eclipse livestream, which will also be broadcast via their Total Solar Eclipse app for iOS and Android that will have feeds from prime spots in Oregon and Wyoming, with background jams provided by Kronos Quartet.

...And Twitter will be livestreaming it too, in collaboration with The Weather Channel.

CBS 5 has a nice list of Bay Area eclipse watching parties happening Monday morning, and weve gone through the list and noted which ones require admission fees or advance RSVP.

Total Solar Eclipse: Live from the U.S.A.

The Exploratorium, Pier 15 (The Embarcadero at Green Street)

9 a.m., Adult tickets $29.95

The Great American Solar Eclipse

California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Drive

9:30 a.m., General admission $35.95

Eclipse Viewing and Toddler Storytime

Ortega Branch Library, 3223 Ortega Street (between 39th Avenue and 40th Avenue)

9 a,m., free, glasses available on a first come first serve basis

Partial Solar Eclipse

Chabot Space & Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland

8 a.m., free, but glasses are sold out

Partial Eclipse - Viewing Party!

Oakland Main Library, 125 14th Street, Oakland

9:30 a.m., free, but glasses are sold out

Alameda Free Library to View the Eclipse

Alameda Free Library, 1550 Oak Street, Alameda, CA

9 a.m., free, glasses not provided

Alameda County Library

Various branches

9 a.m., free, but glasses are sold out



Solar Eclipse 2017

Houge Park, Twilight Drive & White Oaks Avenue, San Jose

9 a.m., free with RSVP, glasses not provided

Related: ABC News Anchor In 1979 Hoped For A 'World At Peace' During 2017 Eclipse




Kyle Chapman, the 41-year-old SF-based right-wing activist who showed up to a Berkeley rally in March in a bicycle helmet and gas mask, carrying a stick and a shield with an American flag on it  forever endearing him to the alt-right and inspiring the meme Based Stickman  has now been charged with a felony in Alameda County and could face a stiff (no pun) sentence in the state pen.

As the East Bay Express reports, the district attorney filed a charge of felony possession of a leaded stick against Chapman stemming from widely circulated photos and video from the March 4 rally that was one of the first in what is becoming a series of street skirmishes nationwide  including the one in Charlottesville a week ago that claimed the life of one woman and two law enforcement officers.

Chapman was among 20 people arrested following an April 15 street battle in Berkeley, as there was already a warrant for his arrest related to the March 4 event. The Express writes that Chapmanwas "seen carrying a long baton into several fights [on March 4] and was filmed cracking the weapon over the heads of a masked antifa and other counter-demonstrators."

Because Chapman has two previous felonies on his record, this puts him in the three strikes category if he gets another conviction, as the Associated Press points out. And Chapman may not have access to a crowd-funded legal defense fund he started after Paypal last week decided to freeze the account he had with them.

Chapman, who today made a speaking appearance at the "free speech" rally in Boston, called these "trumped up bogus charges" in a Facebook post. He is scheduled to appear at the planned Patriot Prayer rally in San Francisco next Saturday.

We've made it out of the Boston Rally safe and sound. Thank you Boston PD Excellent job! Unlike Cville PD who stood down and caused violence pic.twitter.com/balL3y5nlp  Based Stickman (@BasedStickMan_) August 19, 2017 This is compleat horse shit! SET UP! https://t.co/U1OAOjOpNR https://t.co/s34d08Ede5  Based Stickman (@BasedStickMan_) August 18, 2017

Chapman's political views skew to the alt-right, and clearly he relished an opportunity to do battle with the antifa, however like Patriot Prayer organizer Joey Gibson he disowns white supremacy. (A post here on Altright.com shows Chapman posting to Facebook in March telling his brethren to "tone down the violence and racism talk," which upset up some of his white nationalist fans. Chapman considers himself an "American Nationalist" and said "I don't care about your race, religion, or sexual identity.")

An attorney working for Chapman has previously said he has "severe psychological problems."

Related: SF & Berkeley Mayors, Supervisors Seek Any Means To Halt Alt-Right Rallies
The event was co-organized by Thailand- Vietnam Enterprises Association, Kashikom Bank of Thailand, the Ministry of Planning and Investment of Vietnam and Vietnam Embassy to Thailand with the participation of 500 firms of the countries.



At the forum, PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc said that the two- way trade turnover of Vietnam and Thailand reached more than US$ 12.5 billion after four years of the establishment of the strategic partnership ties.

Thailand has had around 470 investment projects into Vietnam with total capital of over US$ 8 billion so far.

In the tourism sector, around 830, 000 Vietnamese travelers had arrived in Thailand, and Vietnam had attracted nearly 270,000 tourists from Thailand.

He said that Vietnam has been promoting Merge and Acquisition ( M& A) activities in combination with state-owned enterprises equalization in the fields of transport, infrastructure,food, agriculture, telecommunications, trade and services,tourism and construction

The country also continues encouraging startup activities between domestic and global enterprises and creating advantages for foreign investors into the market.

At the meeting with Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, both sides discussed about organizing of annual and once in two year-meetings to solve difficulties for investors and other issues.



Under the witness of the Prime Ministers, the nations enterprises exchanged the cooperation agreements and documents in the fields of electrical power, high-tech agriculture, goods distribution, agricultural product purchase, construction ...



Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc attends in an opening ceremony of Vietnamese Goods Week in Bangkok capital of Thailand



Thai enterprises highly appreciated strong economic development of Vietnam, administration and policy reforms; and thanked the Vietnamese Government's assisstances for creating favorable condition for Thai businesses as well as ASEAN countries which operating n the market.

On the occasion, SCG group unveiled development of Long Son Petrochemical Company (LSP), an investment and cooperation project between Petro Vietnam and SCG group.



Both sides co-signed memorandum of understandings on investment cooperation between SCG Chemicals Company and member companies of Petro Vietnam.



Within the visit framework to Thailand, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc had meetings with Head of Privy Council of Thailand Prem Tinsulanonda and President of the National Assembly of Thailand Pornpetch Wichitcholchai.



PM Phuc suggested the nations legislative agencies to strengthen information hoping that the partner will continue creating the best favorable business conditions for Vietnamese firms; calling for its investors into Vietnam.















BY HANH CHI- Translated by Huyen Huong
SIOUX CITY | In 1974, a Sioux City man took a photo of a partial solar eclipse he observed just south of the city.

Jim Bilsland submitted the image to The Journal, and it ran the following day on Page 1 above the fold, on Dec. 14, 1974. Bilsland's newspaper photo may have been the only print image some Siouxlanders saw of the notable natural event. Perhaps they saw a glimpse on a TV account.

Compare that to Monday, when a total solar eclipse will occur in the United States. In the social media era, people will be sharing photos on Facebook and running them through Twitter, and it is not difficult to imagine the eclipse as the top trending topic.

This is, after all, the first eclipse of the social media era. For some people, witnessing a total eclipse of the sun is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and they'll want to share that.

Michael Zeiler, of GreatAmericanEclipse.com, writes that "social media will have a huge impact on motivating eclipse visitors. The eclipse is exactly the type of event guaranteed to go viral on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms."

One of the prime hashtags on Twitter appears to be #Eclipse2017, which pops up a sun-related graphic.

In a younger generation, Bilsland's daughter Tami Fairbanks, also of Sioux City, said she likely will be one of those who will share photos she aims to take of the eclipse near Grand Island, Nebraska. Fairbanks said she expects to upload any good photos on Facebook, which should be rife with eclipse shots.

Compare that instant sharing via digital devices to the time Bilsland put into getting his image into The Journal. He had occasionally taken photos of wrecks or fires that were run as Journal submissions, and thought he had a worthy image on that December day almost 43 years ago.

He had a camera along while working a shift for Muv-All Trailer, and stopped to set up a tripod for it, between Sergeant Bluff and Sloan, Iowa, just before 10 a.m. He used a 400 millimeter lens.

"I was just looking for things that were worthy of a picture. It seemed like a likely thing, if I could do it... It was fairly big news that (the eclipse) was coming. But at the end, it was hard to see, there were clouds everywhere," Bilsland said.

He liked what he got, and dropped the film from his camera to Journal offices.

The newspaper workers processed the images, and the next day ran one, with the cutline, "Clouds which hid Friday's partial eclipse of the sun from watchers in Sioux City as well as other parts of the nation cleared briefly near Salix...Bilsland was working in the Salix area when the eclipse, in which the shadow of the moon move across the face of the sun, became visible."

The photo was also put on the Associated Press wire for other newspapers to use.

The 2017 total eclipse will be the first since 1918 with a path that crosses the Pacific and Atlantic coasts in the U.S. This time, the path will go from Oregon to South Carolina.

The prime path, or the so-called path of totality, of the eclipse will cover roughly 70 miles wide. It will skirt south of Siouxland, running in a diagonal across Nebraska from west to southeast, clipping where southwest Iowa connects to Nebraska and northwest Missouri.

The path of totality will hit the extreme southwest corner of Iowa in Fremont County, near Waubonsie State Park and the town of Hamburg. The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reports that at about 1:05 p.m. Monday, a small 582-acre area of Iowa will experience a 32-second glimpse of the total eclipse.

The time it will cross Nebraska is roughly 10 minutes, from 12:54 to 1:04 p.m.

We are making sure a portion of that small public area is mowed for eclipse watchers and we were lucky enough to locate a telescope to use at the viewing," Matt Moles of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources State Parks Bureau said in a release.

Parking is very limited at the site, but the towns of Hamburg and Sidney plan to provide shuttle services for the event.

Bilsland, 76, said he has no plans to drive 200 miles to see the eclipse in Nebraska or Iowa. His anticipation isn't as high as in 1974.

"I might just take a brief look with a box with a pinhole. I'm not sure how welding helmets will work for (observing) these," Bilsland said.

"It is now just a passing thing."
John Delaney says hes a different kind of Democrat.

I work to pursue goals that I think the Democratic Party shares broadly, but I think about how you do that differently, Delaney says.

Delaney is a member of Congress from Maryland and the first officially declared Democratic candidate for president in 2020.

It bears reminding that the 2020 presidential election is more than three years away, and even Iowas first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses are roughly 2 years off.

Yet here was Delaney, making his way around the 2017 Iowa State Fair this past week, holding multiple media interviews and meeting with people interested in his campaign over the span of a couple of days in Des Moines.

The 54-year-old Delaney said he is not a typical Democrat because he believes the best government work is done when both major political parties work together, and that he has a different view on economic issues because of his experience as an entrepreneur.

Assuming he stays in the race for the long haul --- during the interview he assured he would --- Delaney will be among what almost assuredly will be a large crowd of Democratic candidates. (CNN political analyst Chris Cillizza recently estimated more than 20 possibilities --- and that list did not include Delaney.) So Delaney will need a message that differentiates himself from the crowd.

A key element of Delaneys message is that he thinks federal officials are, as he said it, having the wrong conversation. He said too much political debate is about re-litigating battles of the past, and not enough about looking toward the future.

And a critical piece of that forward-looking debate, Delaney said, is technology and the disruption it will have on the global workforce.

Technology, automation, global interconnections, these are changing everything, Delaney said. These things are going to have profound effects over the next 20 or 30 years, and theyre going to create large-scale opportunities and challenges, and were doing nothing to prepare our country and our citizens.

Delaney said the federal government should be doing more to prepare for those profound effects by creating a more competitive and entrepreneurial business climate, creating a better educated and more well-trained workforce, investing in communities, and make smarter investments of government resources to create a healthier budget and environment.

That, to me, is a blueprint for the future, Delaney said.

Delaney founded two companies: a finance company for health care providers and a commercial lender. Both went public within three years of their founding, according to Delaneys biography.

He was first elected to Congress in 2012 and serves on the financial services committee.

Delaney said his business background gives him a different economic perspective that is different that some Democrats, that he does not view the private sector as the enemy.

And that message, Delaney said, is what will help Democrats regain voters they lost in 2016 --- including in Iowa, which went twice for former President Barack Obama but flipped for Trump.

I dont think its the policy goals of the Democratic Party are wrong. But I definitely think that we are not talking to people about what they care most about. We tend to talk to people about what we care most about. And those are very different things, Delaney said.

Obviously what most people care about is their job and the economy in their local community. Because really at the end of the day everything flows from that: a persons sense of dignity, their ability to raise a family, their ability to support their kids, the ability to make sure the community has the resources it needs so its vital and vibrant. And Democrats arent talking enough about that.

As for his early entry into the race, Delaney said part of the reason is his desire to be straight with voters, who he thinks are tired of all the b.s. in politics.

We all know there are a lot of people running for president right now, Delaney said. Theyre just not saying it.
CEDAR RAPIDS | In addition to a good head of hair, a firm handshake and a winning smile, running for governor takes money.

A candidate for governor of Iowa should be prepared to raise upwards of $5 million, according to Matt Paul, who has worked on campaigns from city hall to the White House.

In 2014, former Gov. Terry Branstad raised about $10 million. His opponent raised less than $2 million. Campaigns arent all about money, but Branstad carried all but one of Iowas 99 counties.

Potential candidates generally know theyll have to raise a lot. But whatever they think theyll need to raise, theyre usually off by a factor of five, said Paul, who joined Cornerstone Government Affairs in Des Moines after working for two Cedar Rapids mayors, former Gov. Tom Vilsack and more recently as Iowa director of Hillary Clintons presidential campaign and as chief of staff for vice presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine.

There are a lot of similarities between launching a campaign and an entrepreneur going out and setting up company ABC to sell widgets or whatever, said Brian Dumas of Davenport-based Victory Enterprises.

Youve got to have a business plan. Youve got to have a salesman, basically, in the candidate selling their ideas and vision, he said. Then you have to build a team around them. And if you run out of money or cant raise enough venture capital or sell enough widgets you close your doors.

As in business, he added, Youve got to be able to adjust and move quickly  maybe even more so in politics than in business.

Even before raising venture capital, Paul said a candidate must have an absolutely rock solid answer why they are the best person for the office.

A gubernatorial campaign can last two years, involve three or more nights a week away from family, time away from a job, travel and hours on the phone raising money.

Candidates have to come to be their own north star on why they are doing this in order to get through the day-to-day of the very unglamorous life of being a candidate, Paul said.

Its a troubling sign if a candidate cant articulate why she or he is running, said Jeff Link of LPCA Public Strategies in Des Moines, who works with Democratic candidates. In those cases, he tries to talk them out of running because the work is too hard, too tedious to continue unless you are really passionate.

Those second thoughts happen with some regularity, according to David Kochel, founder of Redwave Communications in Des Moines. They think about. Take a few steps. Then decide against it.

Paul has had four or five conversations in the current election cycle with potential candidates who decided against it after having that conversation.

However, if candidates can answer the why question, then its time to start putting together the building blocks of the campaign, said Kochel, a former Harvard Institute of Politics fellow who worked on campaigns for presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush and U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst.

The basic building block is money.

Link, who has worked with former U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin and Barack Obama in 2008 as well as with campaigns in the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Africa, asks potential candidates to make a spreadsheet of all the names in their phones and on their Christmas card and wedding guest lists, and next to them write how much money each person would give to the campaign if asked. In 25 years, hes had about three candidates follow through.

Paul tells candidates write the name of every person you will call and ask for $1,000, and come back when your notebook is full.

Its easy for a candidates to say they can raise $300,000, for example, but when you start writing down names and numbers, the numbers get real, real fast, Link said.

For an Iowa gubernatorial primary race, he estimates a candidate must be able to raise at least $1.5 million to run a viable campaign.

From a functional standpoint, launching the campaign is similar to starting a business venture, according to Sam Roecker, Links colleague at LPCA. In addition to employees, a campaign needs to recruit motivated volunteers, people who know how to organize, how to schedule the candidates time, how to keep the campaign on message, get that message out and when, where and how to advertise to build a statewide presence. And, Roecker said, a campaign needs a logo, a slogan, perhaps, and an office.

Nothing too glamorous, he said, because donors dont want to think their money is being spent on prime office space, nice furniture and fancy campaign swag. You do what you can to get by. Look for free furniture.

Technology has made the traditional campaign headquarters less important than in the past, Dumas said.

Twenty years ago, everyone came to the office to make phone calls, he said. Today, you log in from your home computer and make calls or you share a campaign message on Facebook and Twitter.

Candidates can run the day-to-day campaign operation, but Dumas said their time is better spent making personal appearances and raising money.

Campaigns are almost always about the candidate: Who they are, their background, their capacity to lead and how prepared they are, Kochel said. So to maximize their impact, candidates running for governor generally rely on campaign consultants to recommend and recruit professional staffers to help develop messaging and campaign strategies, and help with the fundraising how-to.

To a large degree, Dumas said, Terry Branstad set the precedent for Iowa gubernatorial campaigns and everyone after him is using some variation of the Branstad approach, including the whole 99-county thing, which was borrowed from Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Although there are agencies that will provide a campaign-in-a-box, Kochel and his colleagues are skeptical that off-the-shelf plans work in a state where running for governor is personal.

Iowans want to press the flesh, see and hear the candidate speak, to look them in the eye, have a conversation, Dumas said. They want to personally know their governor.

A candidate has to have a relationship with activists, with volunteers, with voters, Kochel said. You cant hire a professional to provide those things.

In the end, campaigns are sophisticated strategic organizations and the process tests candidates, Paul said. Thats not a bad thing considering the candidates are asking voters to trust them with the leadership of a state of three million people.

As frustrated as we all are with the fundraising side of this, this system does put candidates through the paces in preparation for what is a really complex challenge that impacts people on a daily basis, Paul said. If youre running for governor of Iowa, youre running to be the CEO of a $9 billion operation. So you should be able to handle a $9 (million) or $10 million election budget.
WASHINGTON -- It's a case of being careful what you wish for.

Critics left, right and center panned President Trump for his initial refusal to denounce the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, one of whom allegedly drove his car into counter-demonstrators, killing one and injuring 19. When Trump finally gave a canned and grudging disavowal of white supremacists, he was urged anew to say more, to be presidential, to bring the nation together.

Well, late Tuesday, Trump said more and told the nation what he really thought. It was downright ugly.

There, from Trump Tower in New York, was the president of the United States declaring that those protesting against Nazis were ... the same as Nazis. "You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that," said Trump.

Nobody wants to say that because there is -- and there can be -- no moral equivalence between Nazis and those who oppose Nazis. But Trump saw them as equal. He said the anti-Nazi demonstrators didn't have a permit and "were very, very violent." Trump maintained that those marching with the white supremacists have been treated "absolutely unfairly" by the press, and there "were very fine people, on both sides."

Trump was not done with his apology for white supremacists. He went on to endorse the cause that brought these racists, David Duke among them, to Charlottesville: the Confederacy. "I've condemned neo-Nazis. I've condemned many different groups," the president said. "But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee."

Right. The man who led an army against the United States. "So this week it's Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson's coming down," Trump went on. "I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?"

Thus did Trump, after putting Nazis on the same moral plane as anti-Nazis, put the father of our country and the author of the Declaration of Independence on the same moral plane as two men who made war on America. Duke and white-nationalist leader Richard Spencer applauded Trump's performance.

The nationalist-turned-presidential-adviser Stephen Bannon used to say that the publishing outfit he led, Breitbart, was a "platform for the alt-right," a euphemism for white nationalists and far-right extremists. But now there is a new platform for the alt-right in America: the White House.

It looks more and more like the White Nationalist House.

Trump, who this week retweeted an "alt-right" conspiracy theorist and ally of white supremacists, continues to employ in his White House not just Bannon and Stephen Miller, two darlings of the alt-right, but also Sebastian Gorka, who uses the platform to defend the embattled white man.

"It's this constant, 'Oh, it's the white man. It's the white supremacists. That's the problem.' No, it isn't," Gorka said in an interview with Breitbart days before the Charlottesville mayhem. "Go to the Middle East, and tell me what the real problem is today." At an inaugural ball in January, Gorka wore a medal from the Hungarian nationalist organization Vitezi Rend, a longtime anti-Semitic group that claimed Gorka as one of its own. (He denies it.)

It's more than words. The administration proposed eliminating the "Countering Violent Extremism" program; officials argued that the effort should target only Islamist radicalization, not right-wing extremism. In June, the Trump administration canceled a grant to a group called Life After Hate, which rehabilitates neo-Nazis. "At a time when this is the biggest threat in our country, to pull funding from the only organization in the United States helping people disengage from this is pretty suspect to me," the group's co-founder Christian Picciolini told me.

And now we have the spectacle of the president defending the character and motives of the neo-Nazi demonstrators in Charlottesville.

Trump, who has issued scores of tweets without benefit of accurate information, explained his initial unwillingness to single out the white supremacist who drove into a crowd of demonstrators: "Before I make a statement, I like to know the facts."

Trump, who has criticized others for failing to use the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism," declined to call the incident terrorism.

Asked about the culpability of the "alt-right" in the Charlottesville attack, Trump replied: "Okay, what about the alt-left that came charging them?"

Political violence, by anybody, is wrong. But to equate neo-Nazis with those who oppose them is, even for our alt-right president, a new low.
WASHINGTON -- We are past the time when mournful comments about President Trump's disgraceful behavior are sufficient. It is no longer defensible for his lieutenants or Republicans in Congress to tell themselves that they're staying close to Trump to contain the damage he could cause our country.

If their actual goal was to prevent damage, they have failed. True, we have not had a nuclear war and Trump hasn't shut down our democracy. But if this is the standard, if these are genuine fears, then Trump should have been gone long ago. A man this unstable, self-involved, uninformed, divisive and amoral -- a polite word in his case -- should be nowhere near the levers of power.

It should embarrass all who work in the White House (except for the genuine extremists) that after Trump's unhinged news conference on Tuesday, they were reduced to insisting, on background, that everything the president said was unplanned, off-script and shocking to them.

If they are so appalled by this man, why do they stick with him? Why do his chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and chief of staff John Kelly keep standing there? Kelly was supposed to turn this White House around. But since he arrived, Trump's troubles have only deepened. A much-honored Marine cannot possibly want this as his legacy.

Can any policy victory be worth it for Cohn and Mnuchin to absorb the damage further complicity with Trump will do to their reputations? As for Chao, her boss had already gone after her husband, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, even before he distanced himself from Trump on Wednesday. "There are no good neo-nazis," McConnell said. "And those who espouse their views are not supporters of American ideals and freedoms." Both Chao and McConnell have big decisions to make.

And every member of the administration should read Sohrab Ahmari's warning on Commentary magazine's website to his fellow conservatives "who are convinced that a responsible, presidential Trump is just around the corner." Ahmari concludes: "He will always disappoint you. And with each disappointment comes a fresh dose of humiliation." His warning to journalists applies even more to officials who imagine they serve the public interest by serving Trump.

In 1996, three members of President Clinton's administration stood up for their beliefs by resigning in disagreement with his decision to sign a welfare reform bill. Shouldn't opposition to neo-Nazis and white supremacists inspire an even more urgent devotion to principle? Will no one in the Trump orbit send the most powerful message possible by leaving his court in defense of decency?

Clearly, many CEOs have reached the conclusion that continued engagement with Trump is a bad idea. The president was thus forced to disband two business advisory councils on Wednesday because so many corporate executives were fleeing. There's a lesson here.

Many Republicans in Congress have scrambled to disassociate themselves publicly from the president's Trump Tower fiasco, which is better than silence or apologetics. But it's not enough. They need to rebuke Trump by name and support a congressional resolution to do so formally.

And censuring Trump could well be a first step toward removing him from office. The heart of the danger he poses to our nation is that he thinks only about himself, which he made obvious Tuesday when he bizarrely detoured to the claim of owning "one of the largest wineries in the United States."

Republicans have spoken a great deal in recent days about their commitment to racial justice, but they need to back up their talk. Now, for example, would be an excellent time for them to pass a revised Voting Rights Act and to end their voter suppression efforts.

And let there be soul-searching in the party about racial dog whistles that exploit white resentment in ways more subtle than Trump's but still scandalous. Party leaders failed to reproach Trump unequivocally for his birtherist attacks on President Obama. Birtherism was a first step toward Charlottesville.

The presence of an armed right-wing militia there should petrify us all. An ideological mob bearing semiautomatic weapons also complicated the task facing the police. Before we suffer more violence, how many Republicans will be willing to break with the NRA and pass laws to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people?

Every new Trump outrage seems to invite bold declarations that this time will be the end of the line. If this week's spectacle of moral obtuseness isn't the breaking point, may God save our republic.
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.
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.




Mohawk Racetrack hosted the two-year-old trotting colts and fillies on Friday evening (August 18) and the novices put on an impressive show in a trio of Gold Series divisions.

The fillies jump started the evening and Apprentice Ms effort had trainer Jonas Czernysons heart beating a little quicker than normal as she toured the Mohawk oval on the front end.

Starting from post five, Apprentice M was sitting fourth when Sorceress Seelster reached the opening quarter in :28.3, but driver Doug McNair of Guelph, Ont. soon moved the fan favourite to the front and Apprentice M sailed through fractions of :59 and 1:28 on her way to a three-quarter length win in 1:57.2 Sorceress Seelster finished second and Miss Mimi was third.

I was hoping for a come-from-behind trip with her and not being in the lead, but she did it and she got the job done from there, so Im very happy with that, said Czernyson, adding that his concern about her early move to the front was rooted in an equipment change made after her August 4 runner-up effort at The Meadowlands. A green horse and the first time open bridle too, so it was a little like I dont know if this is going to work, but she got it done.

The win was Apprentice Ms first after a pair of runner-up finishes, the other coming in the July 25 Gold leg at Mohawk. A Kadabra half-sister to $1.3 million winner Charmed Life, Apprentice M was an $85,000 yearling acquisition at last falls Lexington Selected Sale by Menhammar Stuteri AB of Paris, Kentucky, and Czernyson had high expectations for her early in the training process.

Shes done everything right from Day 1, pretty much, so Ive been very pleased with her, said the New Jersey-based trainer. Shes kind of a nice going filly and pretty easy to get along with.

The winner of the second $94,800 trotting filly division is also pretty easy to get along with, and just over an hour after her third straight Gold Series win Kadabra Queen was gobbling down her dinner and heading back outside to her paddock.

Were sitting here waiting for her to eat her dinner so I can turn her back out with her girlfriend and shell go and spend the night outside tonight, said trainer Chad Milner. She lived outside all winter, no blanket, the whole nine yards. I think shes maybe spent five nights in the barn this year.

The natural life clearly suits the Kadabra daughter, who has not been worse than third in six starts through her freshman campaign.

On Friday, she and driver Scott Coulter of Brantford, Ont. went gate-to-wire from post four, rolling through fractions of :29.1, :58.3 and 1:27.2 on the way to a one-length victory in a personal-best 1:57.1. Northern Lightning and favourite Smoke And Mirrors finished second and third.

Were very happy with her, first time on the front end, wire-to-wire, real happy, said Milner, adding that he had considered making his own equipment change after the filly made a brief bobble at the start of an overnight event at Mohawk on August 4 that resulted in a third-place finish.

I was too scared to change anything, Milner admitted with a laugh. I tried all week and I warmed her up in the [ear] plugs and she was fine, but I was like, you know what, shes already won two Golds without them, Im just going to leave them out.

Owned by breeder Harness Horsepower Inc. of Campbellville and Frank Monte of Markham, Ont., Kadabra Queen boosted her earnings to $150,900 with the win and stretched her lead out to 50 points in the two-year-old trotting filly division standings.

In the $124,200 trotting colt Gold division, Perfetto got a steady steer from Arthur, Ont. resident Trevor Henry, who sat mid-pack with the fan favourite for much of the race, waiting until the stretch to ask the novice trotter for a second gear. Perfetto responded with a sharp finishing kick that propelled him to a two and three-quarter length victory over Winning American in 1:57.3. Union Jack was well behind the leaders in third.

I think hes going to be a really nice colt. Hes very green and hes a little goofy, as we saw last week when he kind of made a break, said trainer Richard Nifty Norman. Hes just a little unsettled yet, but Trevor did a fantastic job driving him, and kept him really quiet. You know, the main thing was just to get him around in one piece and try and teach him something, and he did that and got paid for doing it, so it worked out really good.

Fridays outing was just Perfettos second lifetime; he finished third in the August 1 Gold leg at Mohawk, recovering from a bobble going to the half. The Majestic Son gelding, who was a $32,000 purchase from the Harrisburg Yearling Sale, is owned by Normans Enzed Racing Stable of Allentown, New Jersey and his partners David McDuffee of Delray Beach, Florida and Joe Hansford of Foothill, Alta.

The two-year-old trotting fillies and trotting colts will return to Mohawk Racetrack for their fourth Gold Series starts on September 25 and 26 after a series of open stake events, starting with the Champlain Stakes on August 31 and September 1.

On Saturday, the Campbellville oval will host the two-year-old pacing colts and fillies as they battle in their third Gold Series event. The pacing fillies will compete in Races 2 and 8, while the colts duel in Races 5 and 7. Mohawk Racetracks first race goes in behind the starting gate at 7:30 p.m.

To view Friday's harness racing results, click on the following link: Friday Results - Mohawk Racetrack.

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The Cougars are about ready to begin their elk studies.

Less than a month after the Legislature assigned WSU to lead the study of elk hoof rot disease, the university this week announced its plans to start its research into the debilitating condition.

According to Charlie Powell, spokesman for WSUs College of Veterinary Medicine, the university just created a search committee for a lead scientist position on Tuesday. He described WSUs efforts at the Elk Hoof Disease Public Working Group meeting at state Fish and Widlife regional headquarters Tuesday in Ridgefield.

Powell said the soft deadline for applications is Nov. 15. He acknowledged it might be difficult to find an expert on treponine, the bacteria most strongly associated with hoof rot.

If you consider the amount of people that are experts on treponine, thats not a long list of people, he said Friday. Recruiting someone for a position like this is difficult and could take a lot of time.

However, Powell acknowledged that WSU is under pressure to find answers.

We take very seriously what the Legislature has asked us to do, which is to get the preeminent lab for elk hoof disease up and running, he said.

Kyle Garrison, the hoof disease coordinator for Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said that although his department will no longer lead hoof rot research, hes excited to work alongside WSU.

Fish and Wildlife and WSU are going into this lockstep as partners, he said. We have management authority of elk, and they will establish a monitoring program for elk hoof disease in collaboration with us.

Not everyone is thrilled with WDFWs progress so far, however.

Mark Smith, owner of the local Eco Park Resort near Toutle, said the Fish and Wildlife officials didnt bring anything new to the table Tuesday, other than handing the reins to Washington State.

Fish and Wildlife had the same agenda that theyve always had, said Smith, who is a member of the Elk Hoof Disease Public Working Group. In a nutshell, they regurgitated the whole thing. There werent any lightning rods.

Smith, who said he asked around 75 percent of the questions during the meeting, also said he was frustrated by WDFWs slow-moving plans, and hopes WSU will show more proactive and aggressive scientific research.

Both WSU and WDFW feel it will take three to six months to get things organized, Smith wrote in an email. I feel this is too long, but theres not much we can do about it at this time.

Sightings of elk with deformed, broken, or missing hooves have increased dramatically in Southwest Washington in the past decade, and advocates for eradicating hoof rot said the disease has spread to nearly every county west of the Cascade Range.

Scientists at WSU and WDFW have not determined a cause for the spread of hoof rot, although they do know which bacteria are involved. Some local outdoors enthusiasts blame pesticides and herbicides that timber companies use after clear-cutting forests, but no conclusive evidence has emerged of a connection.

Powell asked local outdoors enthusiasts to be patient and said WSU and Fish and Wildlife cant rush into research.

This is a very complex disease problem that doesnt have simple answers like most people would like for there to be, he said. Its not unlike many other wildlife diseases that are very complex, and wildlife diseases that are at the intersection between wildlife and commercial livestock are one of the things WSU studies. We are very good at it.

Garrison backed up Powell, saying, Good science takes time.

According to Garrison, researchers from WSU have determined that treponeme is still the main bacterial culprit for hoof rot, but there are multiple pathogens that play a role.

Theres talk among some hunters that the latest harsh winter might have killed off many elk with hoof rot, reducing the diseases spread through survival of the fittest. Both Garrison and Powell said hoof rot could certainly be eliminated through natural causes, although neither had any evidence to support or deny the claim.

Its certainly possible that the disease could wane on its own, Garrison said. You see that in other wildlife diseases; we had hair loss syndrome and that peaked in the 90s, and its not as big of an issue now.
Tillerson condemns racism, calls for national reconciliation

Reuters, Washington :

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a forceful condemnation of "bigotry in all its forms" on Friday and called for national reconciliation as he promised to work toward making the government more racially diverse.

His remarks, to State Department interns and fellows, dozens of whom were recruited through programs targeting minority candidates, followed the backlash from political and business leaders over President Donald Trump's response to Saturday's white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Tillerson invoked the 1865 second inaugural address by Abraham Lincoln, the president who freed the slaves and presided over the Civil War against rebellious pro-slavery Confederate Southern States.

As the war drew to a close, Lincoln asked the nation to bind up its wounds from the conflict, Tillerson noted.

"We, too, today should seek to bind up the wounds," Tillerson said. "We must pursue reconciliation, understanding and respect regardless of skin colour, ethnicity or religious or political views." Though Tillerson acknowledged First Amendment protections for free speech, he said those who embrace hate speech "poison our public discourse and they damage the very country that they claim to love."
News In Brief

100 female students get bicycles, wheel chairs in Jessore

Jessore Correspondent

Sharsha upazila administration has distributed bicycles and wheel chairs among 100 female students of different educational institutions under the upazila. The distribution ceremony was held at the upazila council premises on Thursday.

Ashraf Uddin, Deputy Commissioner, Jessore handed over the bicycles and wheel chairs to the female students as the Chief Guest. The programme was attended among others by Sirajul Haque Manju, Chairman, Sharsha upazila council, Abdus Salam, upazila nirbahi officer, Mehedi Hasan, Aleya Ferdaus, Chowdhury Hafizur Rahman and Ibrahim Khalil.

90 underprivileged female students were given bicycles while rest 10 disabled were given wheel chairs by the upazila administration to ease their journey towards their educational institutions.

472 bottles phensedyl seized in Jhenaidah

Jhenaidah Correspondent

The RAB personnel in Jhenaidah arrested a drug peddler and seized 472 bottles of contra banned phensedyl syrup from their possession yesterday morning. The arrested was Bachchu Mia, 25, son of late Habiuddin Mia of Foila village under Kaliganj upazila in Jhenaidah. RAB-6 company commander Golam Morshed said, the RAB men raided the tin-shed house of Bachchu Mia at Puratan Gohata area under Kaliganj town at about 11.30 AM on Saturday and arrested him. Later the elite person seized 472 bottles of contra banned phensedyl syrup from the house. A case was filed with Kaliganj police station and the arrested was handed over to police, the RAB man said.

Janmashtami celebrated in Baraigram

Baraigram (Natore) Correspondent

Janmashtami, the birth anniversary of Sri Krisna was celebrated in Baraigram of Natore recently. On the occasion, Hindu communities arranged a peace procession and a discussion meeting. The meeting was presided over by the chairman of Baraigram Puza Udjaon Committee Mr. Direndranath Shaha. Parliament Member (MP) of Natore-4 seat Prof. Abdul Kuddus was present as a chief guest at the meeting . Also, chief speaker was Babu Chitta Ranjon Shaha and Upazila Chairman Dr. Siddikur Rahman Patwari, Upazila Nirbahi Officer Israth Farzana and Bonpara Pouro Mayor K.M.Jakir Hossain were present as special guests in meeting.


Corruption on health sector TIB exchanges views with journos

Staff Reporter, Kishoreganj :

Transperency International, Bangladesh (TIB) arranged an view exchange meeting with journalists on corruption in health sector at its Kishoreganj Unit Office on Friday evening.

President of the organisation freedom fighter Prof Md. Abdul Gani presided over the meeting. It was addressed amon others by Former Sanak President Journalist Saiful Hoque Mollah Dulu, Senior Advocate Nasiruddin Farooki, Mohila Somity President Adv Maya Bhowhmik, CAB President Alam Sarowar Tito, District Press Club President Mostafa Kamal, Journalist Ashraful Islam, City Press Club Secretery Md. Anowarul Islam Bhuiyan, M.M. Jowel and Mazahar Manna.
Master's degree in Education

Joanna Hughes :

Teachers make a difference in the lives of kids all over the world every day. However, the prospect of entering the teaching profession and remaining in it for the next 30 or more years can be a daunting one. Whether you're worried about landing a job in a competitive market or about making enough money to support yourself once you're hired, getting your master's degree can offer a smart solution. Let's count down four reasons why all teachers should consider graduate studies in education.

1. You'll increase your earning potential.

While many teaching jobs require master's degrees, others may call for just a bachelor's degree. In this case, getting the bare minimum can hurt you in several different ways. Not only does it lower your chances of getting hired when you're up again more qualified applicants, but it also means you'll likely end up collecting a higher starting salary.

According to The Houston Chronicle, most school districts offer teachers with master's degrees across the elementary, middle, and high school levels supplemental pay in the form of a "bonus" or "bump." According to analysis by the Center for American Progress this averages between an extra $3,000 and $10,000 a year! And while the cost of getting a master's degree can seem prohibitive, the degree can pay for itself in just a few years. Not only that, but most school districts require continuing education credits-doesn't it make sense to put those credits toward a degree?

2. You'll enjoy greater career mobility.

While a bachelor's degree may qualify you to be a classroom teacher, many other school jobs require advanced credentials. If career advancement is important to you, a master's degree is a must-have. Whether you're looking to work as a school administrator, curriculum director, content/subject area specialist, or school counselor, you'll likely need a master's degree or more.

Additionally, a master's degree can also open up new possibilities outside of the school system entirely. From textbook authors and community college teachers to educational consultants and educational researchers, these sought-after, well-paid professionals almost always have upper-level qualifications.

In addition to helping you move up the latter, a bachelor's degree can lead to broader career prospects, which can be an effective defense against teacher burnout-a pervasive phenomenon among today's hard-working teaching professionals.

3. You'll be a better teacher.

A master's degree isn't merely a means to an end. Rather, it's an opportunity for true growth and development. Your time in graduate school will benefit you in numerous ways, from understanding of your options as a teacher by exploring what truly interest you to acquiring tools which will enrich what you offer your students. While your undergraduate degree might have bestowed knowledge in a certain field of study, a master's in education places the focus on transitioning that and new knowledge to the classroom. Says Teach.com, "These degrees focus on teaching somebody how to be a teacher, with heavy emphasis on pedagogy, teaching methods, philosophy of education, and educational technology." According to one Reddit commenter, "It was a TON of work, and took a while, but it definitely made me a better teacher, both in increasing my knowledge and also making me more sympathetic to my students. Its interesting watching another person teach after you have been teaching all day, and seeing what you can do and what you shouldn't do."

One caveat worth keeping in mind? As with all advanced studies, you get out of a master's degree what you put into it. On the flip side, however, if you're pursuing your graduate coursework part-time while maintaining a teaching job, you'll have immediate opportunities to start making change. Another Reddit poster shared, "I love teaching while going to school because I can implement strategies I learn in class the next day."

4. You can make change at a higher level.

Teachers help nurture the growth and development of kids in classroom every day. If you're interested in making change at a higher level, however, a master's degree can help prepare you for a role in research, assessment or policy.

From regional school districts to local, state, and federal agencies, many organizations exist aimed at improving how teachers, schools and educational systems at large do what they do. They're all looking for people with the knowledge, experience and insights to help guide them.

One of the most compelling reasons prompting people to enter the teaching profession is the chance to make a difference in society. A master's degree will not only position you to achieve this goal, but it can also help you improve the quality of education at large while bettering your own life in the process.

(Joanna worked in higher education administration for many years at a leading research institution before becoming a full-time freelance writer. She lives in the beautiful White Mountains region of New Hampshire with her family).
Reducing US trade deficits in NAFTA renegotiations could prove difficult

Xinhua, New York :

Renegotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will hardly reduce the overall U.S. trade deficit and unemployment, experts said.

The United States, Canada and Mexico kicked off the first round of renegotiations on NAFTA in Washington earlier this week.

"We need to assure that huge trade deficits do not continue and we have balance and reciprocity. This should be periodically reviewed," U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer said in his opening remarks.

However, economists believe reducing U.S. trade deficits through NAFTA renegotiations could prove to be difficult.

"Certainly the opening statement by USTR Lighthizer suggested that he would try. But it will not reduce the overall trade deficit," Richard Cooper, a professor of international economy at Harvard University, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Trade negotiations lead to agreements regarding the rules for trading, which generally lead to more trade that can change a trade balance in any direction, said Paul Wachtel, a New York University economics professor.

"The negotiations are not going to have any direct consequences for the U.S. trade deficit," said Wachtel.

Statistics from Eric Lascelles, chief economist at RBC Global Asset Management Inc, show that U.S. companies tend to pay higher tariffs when conducting business in foreign markets than foreign firms do in the United States.

"But trade is a delicate issue. Incentivizing or pushing trading partners to lower barriers is one thing; imposing new tariffs is another," said Kelly Bogdanov, a portfolio analyst at RBC Wealth Management. "The latter usually doesn't end well-especially between major trading partners."
Trial on August 21 grenade attack case nearing completion



The proceedings of the case lodged over brutal grenade attack at the rally of the then opposition leader, Awami League President and incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in capital's Bangabandhu Avenue on August 21, 2004, is nearing its end.

"We are expecting the case to be wrapped up soon as the court has already completed examining all 225 prosecution witnesses in the case. Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 has also examined 13th witness from the defence till date," Syed Rezaur Rahman, chief prosecutor in the sensational case, told BSS.

The senior lawyer also added that the defence is expected to produce another eight witnesses before the court can start hearing the arguments in the case. The heinous attack was carried out on an anti-terrorism rally Awami League, aimed at killing the front ranking leaders including its President Sheikh Hasina to eliminate the party leaderships.

A total of 24 AL leaders and workers including the then Mohila Awami League President and wife of late President Zillur Rahman, Ivy Rahman, were killed and 500 others were injured. Sheikh Hasina and the front ranking leaders escaped the carnage narrowly.

According to the case documents, then sub-inspector Faruk Hossain of Motijheel Police Station filed the case on August 22, 2004.

Criminal Investigation Department (CID) senior ASP Fazlul Kabir on June 11, 2008, filed the charge sheet in the case against 22 people including chief of Bangladesh chapter of militant outfit Harkat-ul Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) Mufti Abdul Hannan.

Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 on August 3, 2009, ordered further investigation, accepting a plea of the prosecution. New investigation officer and superintendent of police of CID Abdul Kahar Akand on July 3, 2011, filed two separate charge sheets one for murder and another under explosive substances act against total 52, including BNP senior Vice-Chairman Tarique Rahman.

"Of the total 52 accused, 18 are yet to be arrested, eight are on bail and the rest are behind the bars. Two prime accused former Jamaat secretary general Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid has been hanged in crimes against humanity case, while Mufti Hannan and his associate Shahidul Alam Bipul have also been executed for 2004 grenade attack at Shah Jalal shrine in Sylhet and their names have been dropped from the case," advocate Mosharraf Hossain Kajal, special public prosecutor, told BSS.

Of the high profile accused in the case, former state minister for home affairs Lutfuzzaman Babar, former Deputy Minister for Information Abdus Salam Pintu are in jail.

Former top officials of police Ashraful Huda, Shahudul Haque, Khoda Boksh Chowdhury, SP Ruhul Amin, ASP Atikur Rahman and Abdur Rashid are on bail in the case.

According to the intelligence sources of the fugitives, Tarique Rahman is in London, Shah Mofazzal Hossain Kaikobad in the Middle East, Mohammad Hanif of Hanif Enterprise is in Kolkata, Major General (retd) ATM Amin in the USA, Lt Colonel (retd) Saiful Islam Joardar in Canada, Ratul Babu in India, Anisul Morsalin and Mohibul Mottakin are in Indian jail and Mawala Tazuddin is in South Africa.
Berlin confce to protect Sundarbans

A EUROPEAN conference on Sundarbans started in German capital Berlin yesterday to discuss how to protect the world's greatest mangrove forest from destruction at a time when our government is determined to continue with the construction of the giant Rampal Coal-fired Plant. It is being built as a joint venture with India National Thermal Power Corporation. No suggestion from local and international environment groups and human rights organization and even from UN bodies to relocate the power plant at a safe distance from the forest zone is working, as the government remained defiant to build the 1300 MW power plant. But people who are really concerned about protecting the forest listed by UNESCO as a world heritage can't sit idle either with their legs crossed.



The European conference arranged by European Action Group and Bangladesh's National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports shows the latest international protest to the power plant within 14km of the forest. Hundreds of international professionals and representatives organizations are reportedly taking part in the conference to discuss the impact of Rampal Power Plant and alternative sources of energy for Bangladesh.



People believe when India is shutting most of its coal run power plants and stopped planning new ones based on coal they should be equally sensitive to the concern of Bangladesh and refrain from setting up the giant power plant closer to Sundarbans. What is more alarming is that the India-Bangladesh joint venture has a second power plant of equal capacity at the same venue on card once the first one will be completed. Many believe the major decision is in India's hand and Bangladesh government is just happily collaborating.



The conference will end today with 'Berlin Declaration' to be signed by representatives of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Women Engage for a Common Future and such others. It seems to be the most appropriate move to highlight global concern on the sensitive issue and is expected to give fresh call to Bangladesh government to stop the power plant near Sundarbans and instead explore "Green Energy" solutions that make sense. The forest will be severely affected by air and water pollution once the power plant will start functioning. Plants will die from temperature warming and animals die from disturbance to peaceful wildlife.



In this background, the government enactment of a new law recently to severely punish protesters for creating troubles to the project is highly intriguing. The authorities have also started legalizing new industries and giving permission to new ones in the area closer to the forest zones. Villagers are being evicted and local markets dismantled as industries are spreading. Environmentalists fear it will further jeopardize the local communities, although the government claim that industrialization will bring jobs to people is also correct. We are not opposed to industries; the question is to keep the Sundarbans safe from extinction.






'Cell dismantled' as manhunt continues

BBC Online :

The cell behind the deadly attacks in Spain that left at least 14 dead has been "completely dismantled", according to Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido, as police continued a manhunt for one remaining suspect.

The cell is believed to have consisted of at least 12 young men, many of them Moroccan.

Spain will maintain its security alert at four, one notch below the maximum level, which would signal an attack was imminent, Zoido said on Saturday. "We are going to redirect our efforts and will adapt these to every place or area that needs special protection," Zoido told a news conference. He said that the government would reinforce security in crowded areas and tourist hotspots. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has claimed the attacks, which occurred on Thursday and Friday in the northeastern region of Catalonia.

Authorities said the attacks in Barcelona and the seaside resort of Cambrils were related and the work of a large cell that had been plotting for a long time from Alcanar, 200km from Barcelona.

Three Moroccans and one Spaniard are in police custody.

Spanish police on Saturday expanded a manhunt for one of the main suspects, 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaquoub. Early in the day, police searched two buses in northwest Catalonia in the hunt for any remaining members of the cell. Nothing was found in the searches in Girona and Garrigas, police said

on Twitter. Across the Pyrenees, French police carried out extra border checks on people coming from Spain.

Officials also announced a series of controlled explosions on Saturday in Alcanar, where the attacks were planned from a rented house, which was destroyed in a blast on Wednesday.

Authorities had initially written off the incident as a household gas accident.

They now believe the explosion, which killed at least one person and injured one of the people currently in custody, actually prevented a far deadlier attack, possibly a vehicle bomb. The blast forced the suspects to use more "rudimentary" vehicles instead, police said. In a tweet on Saturday, Catalan police urged Alcanar residents not to be alarmed by the controlled explosions. Police in Catalonia said three of the suspects shot dead in Cambrils were Moroccan nationals, identifying them as Moussa Oukabir, 17, Said Aallaa, 18, and Mohamed Hychami, 24. Moussa's brother Driss was one of the four arrested. In Morocco, their father Said said he was "in shock" and "completely devastated" by the news.

Moussa had been studying "normally" at school while Driss worked "honestly", he told the AFP news agency.

"I hope they will say he's innocent [...]. I don't want to lose my two sons." The dead and wounded in the two attacks came from 34 countries. The Catalan interior ministry said 59 people were still in hospital, including 15 in critical condition.


In warning to BNP, Quader says govt keeps tabs on everyone

bdnews24.com :

The BNP is now hatching a conspiracy after realising that it cannot go to power through elections, claims senior Awami League leader Obaidul Quader.

Addressing an event of the party's youth front on Saturday, he warned BNP leaders that they were keeping tabs on everyone "from London to Dhaka".

BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia is in the UK for the last one month, where she had undergone an eye surgery.

Her son Tarique Rahman, the party's senior vice chairman, has been living in London since 2008 after he was released on parole. He has been convicted in a money-laundering case and faces trial for several other corruption charges.

Referring to the Supreme Court verdict scrapping MPs powers to impeach top court judges, Quader said the BNP had been ecstatic over it.

"But after a few days, they now realise that their dream of coming back to power will not come true, so now they are hatching a conspiracy," said Quader, general secretary of Awami League.

According to him, the BNP was plotting to topple the government from abroad. "We have knowledge on everything. Who is going where, meeting whom and discussing what."

He claimed that secret meetings took place in London, Dubai and Bangkok to topple the Sheikh Hasina administration. "In this age of information technology, nothing remains secret."
Culture of impunity blamed

M M Jasim :

Sociologists, criminologists, educationists and rights activists have blamed the culture of impunity for the rising trend rape incidents across the country.

Abuse of technologies, social disorder, lack of exemplary punishment, absence of morality, social bonds and awareness are also the reasons of the shocking incidents, they said.

Syed Manzoorul Islam, Professor of English at the University of Dhaka, told The New Nation on Saturday that in most of the cases the culprits get rid of their heinous activities managing the powerful section of the society.

"After a rape incident the criminal goes to different powerful quarters in the society and somehow manages to escape from any kind of punishment. The social responsible persons like people's representatives can easily dismiss the matter. As a result, a culture of impunity has already developed in the society and the rape incidents are increasing alarmingly," Syed Manzoorul said.

Professor Zia Rahman of the Criminology Department at Dhaka University told this correspondent on Saturday evening that the com-modification of women in popular culture was a factor in the increasing incidences of sexual violence.

"The sex education related institutions fail to provide proper knowledge for creating awareness and to build the people to show respect to the women. That is why the rape cases are increasing day by day," he said.

Professor AKM Jamal Uddin of Sociology Department of the same university said, "The norms, values and tradition are weakening day by day. And the global and foreign cultures grasp the people's mind. They are inspired by the foreign culture which our society does not support. It is harmful for our society and some people involve themselves in rape incidents."

"The total social structure has collapsed. The people who are elected as people's representatives are mostly dishonest and illiterate. Sometimes the criminals are elected. The rapists are close to them and they save the culprits. As a result, the victims do not get justice and the culprits remain untouched," Professor Jamal said.

Mostafa Sohel Ahmed, Executive Director of Bangladesh Society for the Enforcement of Human Rights, said a culture of impunity, social and political unrest and a lack of awareness are major contributors to the sharp rise of rape incidents.

"Political parities and social organisations should unitedly raise voice to stop the rape and torture of women, otherwise it will not be stopped," he said.

Kazi Reazul Hoque, Chairman of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), has recently said culture of impunity, social unrest and the trend of not finishing trial proceedings on time are responsible for rape incidents.

It may be mentioned that in a latest incident the police on Friday arrested three persons who are involved with rape of five-year old baby girl in Dunot upazila of Bogra district.

Mizanur Rahman, Officer-in-Charge of Dunot Police Station confirmed the matter and said that the rapist was in police custody.

A primary schoolteacher has allegedly been gang-rapped in Barguna's Betagi upazila on Thursday afternoon.

Locals said the teacher was chatting with her husband in a classroom after the end of school hours on Thursday afternoon. All of a sudden, some people attempted to enter the school.

Frightened, the couple locked the collapsible gate of the building. After breaking the lock, the gang stormed into the building and beat them up. They then confined the teacher's husband to a classroom and raped the teacher in one after another, locals added.

On Thursday night, the assistant teacher filed a case with Betagi Police Station against six people of the upazila's Kadomtala village.

The police headquarters data showed that 7,658 women and girls were raped in the last two years across the country (2015-16) while 805 others were raped in the first three months (January-March) of the current year.
Lee College students receiving scholarships from the Community College Petrochemical Initiative attended a recognition luncheon Aug. 3 at the ExxonMobil office in Baytown. From left are Woody Paul, manager of the ExxonMobil Baytown Olefins Plant; Christina Ponce, Lee College executive vice president; students Crisol Napoles, Edmeade Prentice and Christopher Patterson; Angela Oriano, Lee College vice president of workforce and corporate partnerships; and Dennis Brown, Lee College president.
Mr traveller!

Frequent foreign trips by senior officials of Bangladesh Bank (BB) are not slowing down, rather on the rise. Many wonder what benefits such trips bring to the country at the expenses of national exchequer.

Foreign trips remained a talking point for many of the BB officials for last several years as their top bosses were making overseas tours so frequently due to absence of a proper guideline in this regard.

Former BB governor Dr Atiur Rahman faced intense criticisms for his frequent foreign trips. But such criticism apparently fails to prevent his successors from paying visits to foreign countries, officials said.

Abu Hena Mohd. Razee Hassan, who has been a Deputy Governor at the central bank since January 2012, will attend the "Third Bilateral Counter Terrorism Financial Banking Dialogue" to be held in Kuala Lumpur from August 28-30.

This will be his eleventh foreign trip in last 12 months.

He will participate in the programme as a guest of honour.

The organisers will bear his hotel rent and plane fares, and also provide him with a daily allowance for attending the event

However, Razee Hassan, who is also the Chief of Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), has sought an additional allocation of Tk 2.47 lakh from the concerned authorities for his Malaysia trip.

Since August 2016, Razee Hassan visited the United States thrice and one time each to Japan, Spain, Qatar, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Macao and Sri Lanka.

Most of the programmes he attended were official and the central bank had to bear the cost. But in some cases the conference organisers had paid the expenses for the trips.

This year, Razee Hassan first went to Qatar to attend "Egmond Group of Financial Intelligence Units'' Meetings. He stayed there for six days (from January 29-February 3).

In February, he went to Japan to attend Japan-IMF Macroeconomic Seminar for Asia (JIMS) in a four days trip. (From February 20 to February-24).

In May, he went to the USA to attend meeting with USDOJ, FBI, FinCEN and FRB NY. He stayed there for a week (May 15-22).

The Deputy Governor went to Spain in June this year to join the plenary and working groups meetings of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

He stayed Spain for six days (June 18-23).

Razee Hassan went to Macau to join the 24th Egmond Group Plenary Meetings held there from July 2-7.

He also visited Sri Lanka in the same month for attending APG Annual Meeting and Technical Assistance Forum held from July 17-21.

Last year, Razee Hassan in August 2016, visited Indonesia for attending 2nd Joint Indonesia Australia Regional Counter Terrorism Financing Summit-2016. He stayed there for three days from August 8-11.

He went to the USA during the third week of August in the same year. During his five days stay (August 15-19), he attended a tri-part meeting arranged by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Again, he went to the USA in September to attend APG Annual Meeting and stayed there for five days (September 5-8).

In November, he went Saudi Arabia to attend a workshop on "MENAFATE/APG Joint Typologies and Capacity Building". He stayed there for four days (Nov 28-December 1).

In the fiscal year (2017-18), the central bank has allocated Tk 11 crore for the purpose of foreign trips and trainings of its officials.

"On average, the Deputy Governor has been making one foreign trip every month. He may be following our former governor who made trips so frequently," a BB official told The New Nation on condition of anonymity.
Flood situation improves in north, worsens in central zone

Food, drinking water crises acute

Flood protection dam in different areas of Rajbari-Gaibandha washed away as Padma River still flowing above danger level. Thousands of people marooned due to erosion. This photo was taken on Saturday.

Staff Reporter :

With receding water and less rainfall, the flood situation in the northern districts has started improving.

However, many people are unable to return as their homes have been destroyed by the floodwaters.

On the other hand, the situation in the central zone of the country deteriorated as many areas were being submerged by onrush of water flowing towards the Bay of Bengal on Saturday.

The flood victims, especially in remote char areas, were passing hard days for lack of relief materials.

The flood situation in Kurigram, Lalmonirhat, Moulvibazar, Gaibandha and Natore districts has remained unchanged.

According to our correspondents, although the overall flood situation started improving in the country's northern region, the crisis of food and drinking water has turned acute in the affected areas.

The flood-affected people in the north are in distress, as rivers eroded their homesteads, making their rehabilitation difficult.

The Ganges-Padma and Kushiyara rivers are in rising trend; while the Brahmaputra-Jamuna and Surma rivers are in falling trend, the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre of Water Development Board (WDB) said on Saturday.

The Brahmaputra-Jamuna river is likely to continue falling in the next 72 hours. The Ganges river may continue rising in the next 48 hours. The Padma river may become steady in next 24 hours on Saturday.

The Surma river may continue falling, while the Kushiyara is expected to become steady today (Sunday).

The central zone like Faridpur, Rajbari, Munshiganj and Comilla district are reeling under floodwaters that marooned lakhs of people in their villages.

In Faridpur, around 90 villages of the low-lying areas in three upazilas - Sadar, Char Bhadrasan and Sadarpur - have been flooded due to onrush of water from the upstream and incessant rainfall, leaving more than one lakh people marooned.

Besides, 15,000 families of the district were marooned as Padma, Madhumati and Arial Khan and Kumar rivers have been flowing above the danger mark, according to locals.

Goaldangi road in North Channel union and Mohammadpur road in Charmadhobdia, the only means to road connectivity of the unions, were submerged by floodwater, snapping the communication with the district headquarters.

Some 29 schools in low-lying areas of the district have remained closed as water level in the rivers has risen suddenly.

In Rajbari, around 13000 of 13 villages under Habaspur and Bahadurpur unions of Pangsha upazila have been rendered homeless as floodwaters entered their dwellings.

In Dhaka, around 10,000 people of Dohar upazila of the district were marooned as Padma river has been flowing above the danger mark, according to locals.

The strong current coupled with rising water level continued disrupting ferry services on two major routes of the River Padma on Saturday, causing miseries to passengers and truckers.

Thousands of passengers to and from the south and south-western districts faced difficulty since Friday to cross the Paturia-Daulatdia and the Shimulia-Kathalbari river routes.

Hundreds of vehicles, mostly bus and goods-laden trucks, remained stuck behind the respective pontoons for hours, creating tailbacks stretching over a few kilometres on Saturday.

An official of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Corporation said ferries were in operation on the Paturia-Daulatdia route, but due to increased water on the Padma-Jamuna river, the ferries were taking long time to cross the river.

In Comilla, at least 11 villages of Monohorgonj upazila went under water affecting around 1.5 lakh people.

In Gaibandha, overall flood situation in Gobindaganj and Palashbari upazilas deteriorated inundating fresh areas in the last 24 hours till Saturday morning around as the Karatoa river swelled during the period.

WDB officials said the water level in the Karatoa rose by 7 cm during the period and it was flowing 76 cm above its danger level at Katakhali Bridge point of the district.

With the rise of water level in the Karatoa, 12 unions and Gobindaganj municipality of Gobindaganj upazila were flooded and 29,000 families marooned and many of them had taken shelter on the nearby embankment, said M. Zahirul Islam, upazila project implementation officer (PIO).

Five unions including Kishorgari and Hossainpur of Palashbari upazilas were also submerged affecting 17,000 families who are passing their days and nights miserably, said M. Shahinur Alam, PIO of the upazila.

A portion of Karatoa Flood Control Embankment at Cherenga area of Darbasta union of Gobindaganj upazila had been washed away by the pressure of the river water resulting in inundation of fresh areas in the union, said executive engineer of WDB M. Mahbubur Rahman.

The crops, partially T-Aman paddy, on 13,860 hectares of land have been washed away by the flood. Aman seed bed and summer vegetables of the upazilas went under flood water, said deputy director of Department of Agriculture Extension AKM Ruhul Amin.

As many as 118 government primary schools of the upazilas had been closed said M. Aminul Islam Mondal, district primary education officer.

District relief and rehabilitation officer AKM Idris Ali said 228 tonnes of rice and dry food worth Tk 5.80 lakh have so far been distributed among the flood victims of the upazilas.

In Natore, the overall flood situation in Singra upazila deteriorated on Saturday as the water of Atrai river was flowing 70cm above the danger mark.

The floodwater submerged new areas in the upazila. Many flood-affected people left their houses for safe shelter.

Aman paddy on at least seven hectares of land have already been damaged by the floodwater.

Paddy on 800 bighas of land in Temuk Nowdapara beel went under water on Friday evening as gushing water was entering through a damaged dam in Sidhakhali river.

In Lalmonirhat, the flood-affected people who left their houses started returning home at many places as the flood water is receding.

However, the flood victims in the Teesta and Dharla chars were passing their days in great misery for lack of food, drinking water and shelter.

Locals were trying to repair the damaged dam with sacks of soil.

They feared that the low-lying areas might be inundated in tide coupled with a rise in the water level of the rivers.

In Rajshahi, the devastating flood has washed away the fishes worth around Tk 1.25 crore from 350 commercial fish farming ponds in the district.

"The loss caused by the deluge in Tanore, Mohanpur and Bagmara is worst," said Subhash Chandra Saha, District Fisheries Officer told journalists on Saturday.

Around 53.25 tonnes of fishes worth about Tk 1.17 crore in 320 ponds in Bagmara, Mohanpur and Puthiya upazilas were washed away by the floodwater. Besides, 1.12 tonnes of fish fingerlings worth around Tk 11 lakh were affected badly, he added.

Shubhash Saha said 208 commercial hatcheries of 156 fish farmers were totally inundated, washing out 22 tonness of fishes and 70 tonnes of fingerlings in Bagmara Upazila.

He said the floodwater engulfed the three upazilas when an embankment of the Shiba River collapsed at Bhimnagar area under Mohanpur Upazila on August 13.

Meanwhile, standing crops on around 6,132 hectares of land were inundated by the floodwater in four upazilas of the district, said Deb Dulal Dhali, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE).

He said the extent of loss will rise if the situation prolongs. On the other hand, around 2,000 flood-affected people of four villages in Sonadanga Union under Bagmara Upazila received relief materials yesterday.


Coast Guard sends back 31 Rohingyas

Staff Reporter :

The Coast Guard on Saturday sent back a boat carrying 31 Rohingyas who were trying to illegally enter Bangladesh through the Naf River.

Members of the Coast Guard intercepted the boat on the river near Shahparir Dwip in Teknaf Upazila around 4am and sent them back to Myanmar, said Operations Officer of Coast Guard Chittagong East Zone Lt Commander Sheikh Fakhr Uddin, reports our Teknaf correspondent.

Among the Rohingyas, 18 were men, nine women and four children, he said.

Sheikh Fakhr Uddin said that two of the men were seriously injured.

About 1,000 Rohingya Muslims reportedly arrived in Bangladesh in the past two weeks amid fresh military operation in Myanmar's Rakhine state.

Following the report, the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and the Coast Guard have stepped up patrols on Bangladesh's border with Myanmar to prevent influx of Rohingyas into Bangladesh.

Members of BGB and Coast Guard were patrolling round the clock to check the influx.

"No one will be allowed to illegally cross into our country," a senior BGB official, told media, adding that the two countries were jointly patrolling frontier areas.

There had been no major influx recently, he said, adding that the border was peaceful.

Myanmar's army launched a massive crackdown in the state after Rohingyas reportedly killed nine police in October, 2016 but the flow of refugees into Bangladesh had slowed until hundreds more soldiers were deployed recently.

There had been a constant "slow movement of people across the border," reported Reuters quoting an unnamed senior UN official in Bangladesh.

About 1,000 households had crossed each month in April, May and June, estimated the official.

The figure rose to 1,300 households in July, the official said, adding that the border area was "definitely seeing more new arrivals" in August.

About 500 of the newly arrived Rohingya live near an unofficial refugee camp in Leda, near the Naf river separating Bangladesh from Myanmar, said Zayed, a Rohingya leader.

The rest have moved elsewhere in the border district of Cox's Bazar.

Before the latest inflow, about 75,000 Rohinhya had arrived in Bangladesh for security reason since October, joining tens of thousands already there and straining resources.
Mark Peretz shot dead at Sherway Louise Russo 2004 victim of thugs Mayor receives chain of office from Russo in 2014

Mark Peretz, the man shot dead in Sherway Plaza Wednesday morning was one of four thugs who shot and paralyzed for life a Toronto woman Louise Russo in 2004. It happened at the California Sandwich Shop on Chesswood Drive. Russo was waiting in line at the shop when four men came in shooting, a classic botched underworld hit. Ms. Russo is living her life in a wheelchair. She has dedicated her years to doing as much good work as possible and was chosen by Mayor Tory to give him the chain office after the 2014 election. The case was also noted for the murky arrangement by which Russo received $2 million in cash compensation from underworld parties as a form of compensation for the terrible verdict to which she was sentenced.

GANGLAND TAKEOVER?

Saturday, the Star reported that police are pondering whether a dissolving criminal partnership involving the London Hells Angels is behind two failed murder attempts in the GTA this month. Peretz death is one. The shooting and others are the latest in a string of more than a dozen unsolved violent incidents this year in southern Ontario, including killings, explosions and arson. They suggest the GTA is undergoing a power struggle between older criminals and young challengers often from outside the province.